Kitabı oku: «Poems», sayfa 10

IN ARCADY

 
  I remember, when a child,
  How within the April wild
  Once I walked with Mystery
  In the groves of Arcady….
  Through the boughs, before, behind,
  Swept the mantle of the wind,
  Thunderous and unconfined.
 
 
  Overhead the curving moon
  Pierced the twilight: a cocoon,
  Golden, big with unborn wings—
  Beauty, shaping spiritual things,
  Vague, impatient of the night,
  Eager for its heavenward flight
  Out of darkness into light.
 
 
  Here and there the oaks assumed
  Satyr aspects; shadows gloomed,
  Hiding, of a dryad look;
  And the naiad-frantic brook,
  Crying, fled the solitude,
  Filled with terror of the wood,
  Or some faun-thing that pursued.
 
 
  In the dead leaves on the ground
  Crept a movement; rose a sound:
  Everywhere the silence ticked
  As with hands of things that picked
  At the loam, or in the dew,—
  Elvish sounds that crept or flew,—
  Beak-like, pushing surely through.
 
 
  Down the forest, overhead,
  Stammering a dead leaf fled,
  Filled with elemental fear
  Of some dark destruction near—
  One, whose glowworm eyes I saw
  Hag with flame the crooked haw,
  Which the moon clutched like a claw.
 
 
  Gradually beneath the tree
  Grew a shape; a nudity:
  Lithe and slender; silent as
  Growth of tree or blade of grass;
  Brown and silken as the bloom
  Of the trillium in the gloom,
  Visible as strange perfume.
 
 
  For an instant there it stood,
  Smiling on me in the wood:
  And I saw its hair was green
  As the leaf-sheath, gold of sheen:
  And its eyes an azure wet,
  From within which seemed to jet
  Sapphire lights and violet.
 
 
  Swiftly by I saw it glide;
  And the dark was deified:
  Wild before it everywhere
  Gleamed the greenness of its hair;
  And around it danced a light,
  Soft, the sapphire of its sight,
  Making witchcraft of the night.
 
 
  On the branch above, the bird
  Trilled to it a dreamy word:
  In its bud the wild bee droned
  Honeyed greeting, drowsy-toned:
  And the brook forgot the gloom,
  Hushed its heart, and, wrapped in bloom,
  Breathed a welcome of perfume.
 
 
  To its beauty bush and tree
  Stretched sweet arms of ecstasy;
  And the soul within the rock
  Lichen-treasures did unlock
  As upon it fell its eye;
  And the earth, that felt it nigh,
  Into wildflowers seemed to sigh….
 
 
  Was it dryad? was it faun?
  Wandered from the times long gone.
  Was it sylvan? was it fay?—
  Dim survivor of the day
  When Religion peopled streams,
  Woods and rocks with shapes like gleams,—
  That invaded then my dreams?
 
 
  Was it shadow? was it shape?
  Or but fancy's wild escape?—
  Of my own child's world the charm
  That assumed material form?—
  Of my soul the mystery,
  That the spring revealed to me,
  There in long-lost Arcady?
 

PROTOTYPES

 
  Whether it be that we in letters trace
  The pure exactness of a wood bird's strain,
  And name it song; or with the brush attain
  The high perfection of a wildflower's face;
  Or mold in difficult marble all the grace
  We know as man; or from the wind and rain
  Catch elemental rapture of refrain
  And mark in music to due time and place:
  The aim of Art is Nature; to unfold
  Her truth and beauty to the souls of men
  In close suggestions; in whose forms is cast
  Nothing so new but 'tis long eons old;
  Nothing so old but 'tis as young as when
  The mind conceived it in the ages past.
 

MARCH

 
  This is the tomboy month of all the year,
  March, who comes shouting o'er the winter hills,
  Waking the world with laughter, as she wills,
  Or wild halloos, a windflower in her ear.
  She stops a moment by the half-thawed mere
  And whistles to the wind, and straightway shrills
  The hyla's song, and hoods of daffodils
  Crowd golden round her, leaning their heads to hear.
  Then through the woods, that drip with all their eaves,
  Her mad hair blown about her, loud she goes
  Singing and calling to the naked trees;
  And straight the oilets of the little leaves
  Open their eyes in wonder, rows on rows,
  And the first bluebird bugles to the breeze.
 

DUSK

 
  Corn-colored clouds upon a sky of gold,
  And 'mid their sheaves,—where, like a daisy-bloom
  Left by the reapers to the gathering gloom,
  The star of twilight glows,—as Ruth, 'tis told,
  Dreamed homesick 'mid the harvest fields of old,
  The Dusk goes gleaning color and perfume
  From Bible slopes of heaven, that illume
  Her pensive beauty deep in shadows stoled.
  Hushed is the forest; and blue vale and hill
  Are still, save for the brooklet, sleepily
  Stumbling the stone with one foam-fluttering foot:
  Save for the note of one far whippoorwill,
  And in my heart her name,—like some sweet bee
  Within a rose,—blowing a faery flute.
 

THE WINDS

 
  Those hewers of the clouds, the Winds,—that lair
  At the four compass-points,—are out to-night;
  I hear their sandals trample on the height,
  I hear their voices trumpet through the air:
  Builders of storm, God's workmen, now they bear,
  Up the steep stair of sky, on backs of might,
  Huge tempest bulks, while,—sweat that blinds heir sight,—
  The rain is shaken from tumultuous hair:
  Now, sweepers of the firmament, they broom,
  Like gathered dust, the rolling mists along
  Heaven's floors of sapphire; all the beautiful blue
  Of skyey corridor and celestial room
  Preparing, with large laughter and loud song,
  For the white moon and stars to wander through.
 

LIGHT AND WIND

 
  Where, through the myriad leaves of forest trees,
  The daylight falls, beryl and chrysoprase,
  The glamour and the glimmer of its rays
  Seem visible music, tangible melodies:
  Light that is music; music that one sees—
  Wagnerian music—where forever sways
  The spirit of romance, and gods and fays
  Take form, clad on with dreams and mysteries.
  And now the wind's transmuting necromance
  Touches the light and makes it fall and rise,
  Vocal, a harp of multitudinous waves
  That speaks as ocean speaks—an utterance
  Of far-off whispers, mermaid-murmuring sighs—
  Pelagian, vast, deep down in coral caves.
 

ENCHANTMENT

 
  The deep seclusion of this forest path,—
  O'er which the green boughs weave a canopy;
  Along which bluet and anemone
  Spread dim a carpet; where the Twilight hath
  Her cool abode; and, sweet as aftermath,
  Wood-fragrance roams,—has so enchanted me,
  That yonder blossoming bramble seems to be
  A Sylvan resting, rosy from her bath:
  Has so enspelled me with tradition's dreams,
  That every foam-white stream that, twinkling, flows,
  And every bird that flutters wings of tan,
  Or warbles hidden, to my fancy seems
  A Naiad dancing to a Faun who blows
  Wild woodland music on the pipes of Pan.
 

ABANDONED

 
  The hornets build in plaster-dropping rooms,
  And on its mossy porch the lizard lies;
  Around its chimneys slow the swallow flies,
  And on its roof the locusts snow their blooms.
  Like some sad thought that broods here, old perfumes
  Haunt its dim stairs; the cautious zephyr tries
  Each gusty door, like some dead hand, then sighs
  With ghostly lips among the attic glooms.
  And now a heron, now a kingfisher,
  Flits in the willows where the riffle seems
  At each faint fall to hesitate to leap,
  Fluttering the silence with a little stir.
  Here Summer seems a placid face asleep,
  And the near world a figment of her dreams.
 

AFTER LONG GRIEF

 
  There is a place hung o'er of summer boughs
  And dreamy skies wherein the gray hawk sleeps;
  Where water flows, within whose lazy deeps,
  Like silvery prisms where the sunbeams drowse,
  The minnows twinkle; where the bells of cows
  Tinkle the stillness; and the bobwhite keeps
  Calling from meadows where the reaper reaps,
  And children's laughter haunts an oldtime house:
  A place where life wears ever an honest smell
  Of hay and honey, sun and elder-bloom,—
  Like some sweet, simple girl,—within her hair;
  Where, with our love for comrade, we may dwell
  Far from the city's strife, whose cares consume.—
  Oh, take my hand and let me lead you there.
 

MENDICANTS

 
  Bleak, in dark rags of clouds, the day begins,
  That passed so splendidly but yesterday,
  Wrapped in magnificence of gold and gray,
  And poppy and rose. Now, burdened as with sins,
  Their wildness clad in fogs, like coats of skins,
  Tattered and streaked with rain; gaunt, clogged with clay,
  The mendicant Hours take their somber way
  Westward o'er Earth, to which no sunray wins.
  Their splashing sandals ooze; their foosteps drip,
  Puddle and brim with moisture; their sad hair
  Is tagged with haggard drops, that with their eyes'
  Slow streams are blent; each sullen fingertip
  Rivers; while round them, in the grief-drenched air
  Wearies the wind of their perpetual sighs.
 

THE END OF SUMMER

 
  Pods the poppies, and slim spires of pods
  The hollyhocks; the balsam's pearly bredes
  Of rose-stained snow are little sacs of seeds
  Collapsing at a touch: the lote, that sods
  The pond with green, has changed its flowers to rods
  And discs of vesicles; and all the weeds,
  Around the sleepy water and its reeds,
  Are one white smoke of seeded silk that nods.
  Summer is dead, ay me! sweet Summer's dead!
  The sunset clouds have built her funeral pyre,
  Through which, e'en now, runs subterranean fire:
  While from the east, as from a garden bed,
  Mist-vined, the Dusk lifts her broad moon—like some
  Great golden melon—saying, "Fall has come."
 

NOVEMBER

 
  The shivering wind sits in the oaks, whose limbs,
  Twisted and tortured, nevermore are still;
  Grief and decay sit with it; they, whose chill
  Autumnal touch makes hectic-red the rims
  Of all the oak leaves; desolating, dims
  The ageratum's blue that banks the rill;
  And splits the milkweed's pod upon the hill,
  And shakes it free of the last seed that swims.
  Down goes the day despondent to its close:
  And now the sunset's hands of copper build
  A tower of brass, behind whose burning bars
  The day, in fierce, barbarian repose,
  Like some imprisoned Inca sits, hate-filled,
  Crowned with the gold corymbus of the stars.
 

II

 
  There is a booming in the forest boughs;
  Tremendous feet seem trampling through the trees:
  The storm is at his wildman revelries,
  And earth and heaven echo his carouse.
  Night reels with tumult; and, from out her house
  Of cloud, the moon looks,—like a face one sees
  In nightmare,—hurrying, with pale eyes that freeze
  Stooping above with white, malignant brows.
  The isolated oak upon the hill,
  That seemed, at sunset, in terrific lands
  A Titan head black in a sea of blood,
  Now seems a monster harp, whose wild strings thrill
  To the vast fingering of innumerable hands—
  Spirits of tempest and of solitude.
 

THE DEATH OF LOVE

 
  So Love is dead, the Love we knew of old!
  And in the sorrow of our hearts' hushed halls
  A lute lies broken and a flower falls;
  Love's house stands empty and his hearth lies cold.
  Lone in dim places, where sweet vows were told,
  In walks grown desolate, by ruined walls
  Beauty decays; and on their pedestals
  Dreams crumble and th' immortal gods are mold.
  Music is slain or sleeps; one voice alone,
  One voice awakes, and like a wandering ghost
  Haunts all the echoing chambers of the Past—
  The voice of Memory, that stills to stone
  The soul that hears; the mind, that, utterly lost,
  Before its beautiful presence stands aghast.
 

UNANSWERED

 
  How long ago it is since we went Maying!
  Since she and I went Maying long ago!—
  The years have left my forehead lined, I know,
  Have thinned my hair around the temples graying.
  Ah, time will change us: yea, I hear it saying—
  "She too grows old: the face of rose and snow
  Has lost its freshness: in the hair's brown glow
  Some strands of silver sadly, too, are straying.
  The form you knew, whose beauty so enspelled,
  Has lost the litheness of its loveliness:
  And all the gladness that her blue eyes held
  Tears and the world have hardened with distress."—
  "True! true!" I answer, "O ye years that part!
  These things are chaned—but is her heart, her heart?"
 

UNCALLED

 
  As one, who, journeying westward with the sun,
  Beholds at length from the up-towering hills,
  Far-off, a land unspeakable beauty fills,
  Circean peaks and vales of Avalon:
  And, sinking weary, watches, one by one,
  The big seas beat between; and knows it skills
  No more to try; that now, as Heaven wills,
  This is the helpless end, that all is done:
  So 'tis with him, whom long a vision led
  In quest of Beauty; and who finds at last
  She lies beyond his effort; all the waves
  Of all the world between them: while the dead,
  The myriad dead, who people all the past
  With failure, hail him from forgotten graves.