Kitabı oku: «Poems», sayfa 4

FIELD AND FOREST CALL

I

 
  There is a field, that leans upon two hills,
  Foamed o'er of flowers and twinkling with clear rills;
  That in its girdle of wild acres bears
  The anodyne of rest that cures all cares;
  Wherein soft wind and sun and sound are blent
  With fragrance—as in some old instrument
  Sweet chords;—calm things, that Nature's magic spell
  Distills from Heaven's azure crucible,
  And pours on Earth to make the sick mind well.
    There lies the path, they say—
    Come away! come away!
 

II

 
  There is a forest, lying 'twixt two streams,
  Sung through of birds and haunted of dim dreams;
  That in its league-long hand of trunk and leaf
  Lifts a green wand that charms away all grief;
  Wrought of quaint silence and the stealth of things,
  Vague, whispering' touches, gleams and twitterings,
  Dews and cool shadows—that the mystic soul
  Of Nature permeates with suave control,
  And waves o'er Earth to make the sad heart whole.
    There lies the road, they say—
    Come away! come away!
 

OLD HOMES

 
  Old homes among the hills! I love their gardens;
  Their old rock fences, that our day inherits;
  Their doors, round which the great trees stand like wardens;
  Their paths, down which the shadows march like spirits;
  Broad doors and paths that reach bird-haunted gardens.
 
 
  I see them gray among their ancient acres,
  Severe of front, their gables lichen-sprinkled,—
  Like gentle-hearted, solitary Quakers,
  Grave and religious, with kind faces wrinkled,—
  Serene among their memory-hallowed acres.
 
 
  Their gardens, banked with roses and with lilies—
  Those sweet aristocrats of all the flowers—
  Where Springtime mints her gold in daffodillies,
  And Autumn coins her marigolds in showers,
  And all the hours are toilless as the lilies.
 
 
  I love their orchards where the gay woodpecker
  Flits, flashing o'er you, like a wingéd jewel;
  Their woods, whose floors of moss the squirrels checker
  With half-hulled nuts; and where, in cool renewal,
  The wild brooks laugh, and raps the red woodpecker.
 
 
  Old homes! old hearts! Upon my soul forever
  Their peace and gladness lie like tears and laughter;
  Like love they touch me, through the years that sever,
  With simple faith; like friendship, draw me after
  The dreamy patience that is theirs forever.
 

THE FOREST WAY

I

 
  I climbed a forest path and found
  A dim cave in the dripping ground,
  Where dwelt the spirit of cool sound,
  Who wrought with crystal triangles,
  And hollowed foam of rippled bells,
  A music of mysterious spells.
 

II

 
  Where Sleep her bubble-jewels spilled
  Of dreams; and Silence twilight-filled
  Her emerald buckets, star-instilled,
  With liquid whispers of lost springs,
  And mossy tread of woodland things,
  And drip of dew that greenly clings.
 

III

 
  Here by those servitors of Sound,
  Warders of that enchanted ground,
  My soul and sense were seized and bound,
  And, in a dungeon deep of trees
  Entranced, were laid at lazy ease,
  The charge of woodland mysteries.
 

IV

 
  The minions of Prince Drowsihead,
  The wood-perfumes, with sleepy tread,
  Tiptoed around my ferny bed:
  And far away I heard report
  Of one who dimly rode to Court,
  The Faery Princess, Eve-Amort.
 

V

 
  Her herald winds sang as they passed;
  And there her beauty stood at last,
  With wild gold locks, a band held fast,
  Above blue eyes, as clear as spar;
  While from a curved and azure jar
  She poured the white moon and a star.
 

SUNSET AND STORM

 
  Deep with divine tautology,
  The sunset's mighty mystery
  Again has traced the scroll-like west
  With hieroglyphs of burning gold:
  Forever new, forever old,
  Its miracle is manifest.
 
 
  Time lays the scroll away. And now
  Above the hills a giant brow
  Of cloud Night lifts; and from his arm,
  Barbaric black, upon the world,
  With thunder, wind and fire, is hurled
  His awful argument of storm.
 
 
  What part, O man, is yours in such?
  Whose awe and wonder are in touch
  With Nature,—speaking rapture to
  Your soul,—yet leaving in your reach
  No human word of thought or speech
  Commensurate with the thing you view.
 

QUIET LANES

From the lyrical eclogue "One Day and Another"

 
  Now rests the season in forgetfulness,
  Careless in beauty of maturity;
  The ripened roses round brown temples, she
  Fulfills completion in a dreamy guess.
  Now Time grants night the more and day the less:
  The gray decides; and brown
  Dim golds and drabs in dulling green express
  Themselves and redden as the year goes down.
  Sadder the fields where, thrusting hoary high
  Their tasseled heads, the Lear-like corn-stocks die,
  And, Falstaff-like, buff-bellied pumpkins lie.—
  Deepening with tenderness,
  Sadder the blue of hills that lounge along
  The lonesome west; sadder the song
  Of the wild redbird in the leafage yellow.—
  Deeper and dreamier, aye!
  Than woods or waters, leans the languid sky
  Above lone orchards where the cider press
  Drips and the russets mellow.
  Nature grows liberal: from the beechen leaves
  The beech-nuts' burrs their little purses thrust,
  Plump with the copper of the nuts that rust;
  Above the grass the spendthrift spider weaves
  A web of silver for which dawn designs
  Thrice twenty rows of pearls: beneath the oak,
  That rolls old roots in many gnarly lines,—
  The polished acorns, from their saucers broke,
  Strew oval agates.—On sonorous pines
  The far wind organs; but the forest near
  Is silent; and the blue-white smoke
  Of burning brush, beyond that field of hay,
  Hangs like a pillar in the atmosphere:
  But now it shakes—it breaks, and all the vines
  And tree tops tremble; see! the wind is here!
  Billowing and boisterous; and the smiling day
  Rejoices in its clamor. Earth and sky
  Resound with glory of its majesty,
  Impetuous splendor of its rushing by.—
  But on those heights the woodland dark is still,
  Expectant of its coming…. Far away
  Each anxious tree upon each waiting hill
  Tingles anticipation, as in gray
  Surmise of rapture. Now the first gusts play,
  Like laughter low, about their rippling spines;
  And now the wildwood, one exultant sway,
  Shouts—and the light at each tumultuous pause,
  The light that glooms and shines,
  Seems hands in wild applause.
 
 
  How glows that garden!—Though the white mists keep
  The vagabonding flowers reminded of
  Decay that comes to slay in open love,
  When the full moon hangs cold and night is deep;
  Unheeding still their cardinal colors leap
  Gay in the crescent of the blade of death,—
  Spaced innocents whom he prepares to reap,—
  Staying his scythe a breath
  To mark their beauty ere, with one last sweep,
  He lays them dead and turns away to weep.—
  Let me admire,—
  Before the sickle of the coming cold
  Shall mow them down,—their beauties manifold:
  How like to spurts of fire
  That scarlet salvia lifts its blooms, which heap
  With flame the sunlight. And, as sparkles creep
  Through charring vellum, up that window's screen
  The cypress dots with crimson all its green,
  The haunt of many bees.
  Cascading dark old porch-built lattices,
  The nightshade bleeds with berries; drops of blood
  Hanging in clusters 'mid the blue monk's-hood.
 
 
  There is a garden old,
  Where bright-hued clumps of zinnias unfold
  Their formal flowers; where the marigold
  Lifts a pinched shred of orange sunset caught
  And elfed in petals; the nasturtium,
  Deep, pungent-leaved and acrid of perfume,
  Hangs up a goblin bonnet, pixy-brought
  From Gnomeland. There, predominant red,
  And arrogant, the dahlia lifts its head,
  Beside the balsam's rose-stained horns of honey,
  Lost in the murmuring, sunny
  Dry wildness of the weedy flower bed;
  Where crickets and the weed-bugs, noon and night,
  Shrill dirges for the flowers that soon shall die,
  And flowers already dead.—
  I seem to hear the passing Summer sigh:
  A voice, that seems to weep,—
  "Too soon, too soon the Beautiful passes by!
  And soon, among these bowers
  Will dripping Autumn mourn with all her flowers"—
 
 
  If I, perchance, might peep
  Beneath those leaves of podded hollyhocks,
  That the bland wind with odorous murmurs rocks,
  I might behold her,—white
  And weary,—Summer, 'mid her flowers asleep,
  Her drowsy flowers asleep,
  The withered poppies knotted in her locks.
 

ONE WHO LOVED NATURE

I

 
  He was not learned in any art;
  But Nature led him by the hand;
  And spoke her language to his heart
  So he could hear and understand:
  He loved her simply as a child;
  And in his love forgot the heat
  Of conflict, and sat reconciled
  In patience of defeat.
 

II

 
  Before me now I see him rise—
  A face, that seventy years had snowed
  With winter, where the kind blue eyes
  Like hospitable fires glowed:
  A small gray man whose heart was large,
  And big with knowledge learned of need;
  A heart, the hard world made its targe,
  That never ceased to bleed.
 

III

 
  He knew all Nature. Yea, he knew
  What virtue lay within each flower,
  What tonic in the dawn and dew,
  And in each root what magic power:
  What in the wild witch-hazel tree
  Reversed its time of blossoming,
  And clothed its branches goldenly
  In fall instead of spring.
 

IV

 
  He knew what made the firefly glow
  And pulse with crystal gold and flame;
  And whence the bloodroot got its snow,
  And how the bramble's perfume came:
  He understood the water's word
  And grasshopper's and cricket's chirr;
  And of the music of each bird
  He was interpreter.
 

V

 
  He kept no calendar of days,
  But knew the seasons by the flowers;
  And he could tell you by the rays
  Of sun or stars the very hours.
  He probed the inner mysteries
  Of light, and knew the chemic change
  That colors flowers, and what is
  Their fragrance wild and strange.
 

VI

 
  If some old oak had power of speech,
  It could not speak more wildwood lore,
  Nor in experience further reach,
  Than he who was a tree at core.
  Nature was all his heritage,
  And seemed to fill his every need;
  Her features were his book, whose page
  He never tired to read.
 

VII

 
  He read her secrets that no man
  Has ever read and never will,
  And put to scorn the charlatan
  Who botanizes of her still.
  He kept his knowledge sweet and clean,
  And questioned not of why and what;
  And never drew a line between
  What's known and what is not.
 

VIII

 
  He was most gentle, good, and wise;
  A simpler heart earth never saw:
  His soul looked softly from his eyes,
  And in his speech were love and awe.
  Yet Nature in the end denied
  The thing he had not asked for—fame!
  Unknown, in poverty he died,
  And men forget his name.
 

GARDEN GOSSIP

 
  Thin, chisel-fine a cricket chipped
    The crystal silence into sound;
  And where the branches dreamed and dripped
  A grasshopper its dagger stripped
    And on the humming darkness ground.
 
 
  A bat, against the gibbous moon,
    Danced, implike, with its lone delight;
  The glowworm scrawled a golden rune
  Upon the dark; and, emerald-strewn,
    The firefly hung with lamps the night.
 
 
  The flowers said their beads in prayer,
    Dew-syllables of sighed perfume;
  Or talked of two, soft-standing there,
  One like a gladiole, straight and fair,
    And one like some rich poppy-bloom.
 
 
  The mignonette and feverfew
    Laid their pale brows together:—"See!"
  One whispered: "Did their step thrill through
  Your roots?"—"Like rain."—"I touched the two
    And a new bud was born in me."
 
 
  One rose said to another:—"Whose
    Is this dim music? song, that parts
  My crimson petals like the dews?"
  "My blossom trembles with sweet news—
    It is the love of two young hearts."
 

ASSUMPTION

I

 
  A mile of moonlight and the whispering wood:
    A mile of shadow and the odorous lane:
  One large, white star above the solitude,
    Like one sweet wish: and, laughter after pain,
    Wild-roses wistful in a web of rain.
 

II

 
  No star, no rose, to lesson him and lead;
    No woodsman compass of the skies and rocks,—
  Tattooed of stars and lichens,—doth love need
    To guide him where, among the hollyhocks,
    A blur of moonlight, gleam his sweetheart's locks.
 

III

 
  We name it beauty—that permitted part,
    The love-elected apotheosis
  Of Nature, which the god within the heart,
    Just touching, makes immortal, but by this—
    A star, a rose, the memory of a kiss.
 

SENORITA

 
  An agate-black, your roguish eyes
  Claim no proud lineage of the skies,
  No starry blue; but of good earth
  The reckless witchery and mirth.
 
 
  Looped in your raven hair's repose,
  A hot aroma, one red rose
  Dies; envious of that loveliness,
  By being near which its is less.
 
 
  Twin sea shells, hung with pearls, your ears,
  Whose slender rosiness appears
  Part of the pearls; whose pallid fire
  Binds the attention these inspire.
 
 
  One slim hand crumples up the lace
  About your bosom's swelling grace;
  A ruby at your samite throat
  Lends the required color note.
 
 
  The moon bears through the violet night
  A pearly urn of chaliced light;
  And from your dark-railed balcony
  You stoop and wave your fan at me.
 
 
  O'er orange orchards and the rose
  Vague, odorous lips the south wind blows,
  Peopling the night with whispers of
  Romance and palely passionate love.
 
 
  The heaven of your balcony
  Smiles down two stars, that say to me
  More peril than Angelica
  Wrought with her beauty in Cathay.
 
 
  Oh, stoop to me! and, speaking, reach
  My soul like song that learned sweet speech
  From some dim instrument—who knows?—
  Or flower, a dulcimer or rose.
 

OVERSEAS

Non numero horas nisi serenas

 
  When Fall drowns morns in mist, it seems
    In soul I am a part of it;
  A portion of its humid beams,
    A form of fog, I seem to flit
      From dreams to dreams….
 
 
  An old château sleeps 'mid the hills
    Of France: an avenue of sorbs
  Conceals it: drifts of daffodils
    Bloom by a 'scutcheoned gate with barbs
      Like iron bills.
 
 
  I pass the gate unquestioned; yet,
    I feel, announced. Broad holm-oaks make
  Dark pools of restless violet.
    Between high bramble banks a lake,—
      As in a net
 
 
  The tangled scales twist silver,—shines….
    Gray, mossy turrets swell above
  A sea of leaves. And where the pines
    Shade ivied walls, there lies my love,
      My heart divines.
 
 
  I know her window, slimly seen
    From distant lanes with hawthorn hedged:
  Her garden, with the nectarine
    Espaliered, and the peach tree, wedged
      'Twixt walls of green.
 
 
  Cool-babbling a fountain falls
    From gryphons' mouths in porphyry;
  Carp haunt its waters; and white balls
    Of lilies dip it when the bee
      Creeps in and drawls.
 
 
  And butterflies—each with a face
    Of faery on its wings—that seem
  Beheaded pansies, softly chase
    Each other down the gloom and gleam
      Trees interspace.
 
 
  And roses! roses, soft as vair,
    Round sylvan statues and the old
  Stone dial—Pompadours, that wear
    Their royalty of purple and gold
      With wanton air….
 
 
  Her scarf, her lute, whose ribbons breathe
    The perfume of her touch; her gloves,
  Modeling the daintiness they sheathe;
    Her fan, a Watteau, gay with loves,
      Lie there beneath
 
 
  A bank of eglantine, that heaps
    A rose-strewn shadow.—Naïve-eyed,
  With lips as suave as they, she sleeps;
    The romance by her, open wide,
      O'er which she weeps.
 

PROBLEMS

 
  Man's are the learnings of his books—
    What is all knowledge that he knows
  Beside the wit of winding brooks,
    The wisdom of the summer rose!
 
 
  How soil distills the scent in flowers
    Baffles his science: heaven-dyed,
  How, from the palette of His hours,
    God gives them colors, hath defied.
 
 
  What dream of heaven begets the light?
    Or, ere the stars beat burning tunes,
  Stains all the hollow edge of night
    With glory as of molten moons?
 
 
  Who is it answers what is birth
    Or death, that nothing may retard?
  Or what is love, that seems of Earth,
    Yet wears God's own divine regard?
 

TO A WINDFLOWER

I

 
  Teach me the secret of thy loveliness,
    That, being made wise, I may aspire to be
  As beautiful in thought, and so express
    Immortal truths to Earth's mortality;
  Though to my soul ability be less
    Than 'tis to thee, O sweet anemone.
 

II

 
  Teach me the secret of thy innocence,
    That in simplicity I may grow wise;
  Asking of Art no other recompense
    Than the approval of her own just eyes;
  So may I rise to some fair eminence,
    Though less than thine, O cousin of the skies.
 

III

 
  Teach me these things; through whose high knowledge, I,—
    When Death hath poured oblivion through my veins,
  And brought me home, as all are brought, to lie
    In that vast house, common to serfs and thanes,—
  I shall not die, I shall not utterly die,
    For beauty born of beauty—that remains.
 

VOYAGERS

 
  Where are they, that song and tale
    Tell of? lands our childhood knew?
  Sea-locked Faerylands that trail
    Morning summits, dim with dew,
  Crimson o'er a crimson sail.
 
 
  Where in dreams we entered on
    Wonders eyes have never seen:
  Whither often we have gone,
    Sailing a dream-brigantine
  On from voyaging dawn to dawn.
 
 
  Leons seeking lands of song;
    Fabled fountains pouring spray;
  Where our anchors dropped among
    Corals of some tropic bay,
  With its swarthy native throng.
 
 
  Shoulder ax and arquebus!—
    We may find it!—past yon range
  Of sierras, vaporous,
    Rich with gold and wild and strange
  That lost region dear to us.
 
 
  Yet, behold, although our zeal
    Darien summits may subdue,
  Our Balboa eyes reveal
    But a vaster sea come to—
  New endeavor for our keel.
 
 
  Yet! who sails with face set hard
    Westward,—while behind him lies
  Unfaith,—where his dreams keep guard
    Round it, in the sunset skies,
  He may reach it—afterward.
 

THE SPELL

  "We have the receipt of fern seed: we walk invisible."

  —HENRY IV

 
  And we have met but twice or thrice!—
    Three times enough to make me love!—
    I praised your hair once; then your glove;
  Your eyes; your gown;—you were like ice;
    And yet this might suffice, my love,
    And yet this might suffice.
 
 
  St. John hath told me what to do:
    To search and find the ferns that grow
    The fern seed that the faeries know;
  Then sprinkle fern seed in my shoe,
    And haunt the steps of you, my dear,
    And haunt the steps of you.
 
 
  You'll see the poppy pods dip here;
    The blow-ball of the thistle slip,
    And no wind breathing—but my lip
  Next to your anxious cheek and ear,
    To tell you I am near, my love,
    To tell you I am near.
 
 
  On wood-ways I shall tread your gown—
    You'll know it is no brier!—then
    I'll whisper words of love again,
  And smile to see your quick face frown:
    And then I'll kiss it down, my dear,
    And then I'll kiss it down.
 
 
  And when at home you read or knit,—
    Who'll know it was my hands that blotted
    The page?—or all your needles knotted?
  When in your rage you cry a bit:
    And loud I laugh at it, my love,
    And loud I laugh at it.
 
 
  The secrets that you say in prayer
    Right so I'll hear: and, when you sing,
    The name you speak; and whispering
  I'll bend and kiss your mouth and hair,
    And tell you I am there, my dear,
    And tell you I am there.
 
 
  Would it were true what people say!—
    Would I could find that elfin seed!
    Then should I win your love, indeed,
  By being near you night and day—
    There is no other way, my love,
    There is no other way.
 
 
  Meantime the truth in this is said:
    It is my soul that follows you;
    It needs no fern seed in the shoe,—
  While in the heart love pulses red,
    To win you and to wed, my dear,
    To win you and to wed.
 

UNCERTAINTY

"'He cometh not,' she said."—MARIANA

 
  It will not be to-day and yet
  I think and dream it will; and let
  The slow uncertainty devise
  So many sweet excuses, met
  With the old doubt in hope's disguise.
 
 
  The panes were sweated with the dawn;
  Yet through their dimness, shriveled drawn,
  The aigret of one princess-feather,
  One monk's-hood tuft with oilets wan,
  I glimpsed, dead in the slaying weather.
 
 
  This morning, when my window's chintz
  I drew, how gray the day was!—Since
  I saw him, yea, all days are gray!—
  I gazed out on my dripping quince,
  Defruited, gnarled; then turned away
 
 
  To weep, but did not weep: but felt
  A colder anguish than did melt
  About the tearful-visaged year!—
  Then flung the lattice wide, and smelt
  The autumn sorrow: Rotting near
 
 
  The rain-drenched sunflowers bent and bleached,
  Up which the frost-nipped gourd-vines reached
  And morning-glories, seeded o'er
  With ashen aiglets; whence beseeched
  One last bloom, frozen to the core.
 
 
  The podded hollyhocks,—that Fall
  Had stripped of finery,—by the wall
  Rustled their tatters; dripped and dripped,
  The fog thick on them: near them, all
  The tarnished, haglike zinnias tipped.
 
 
  I felt the death and loved it: yea,
  To have it nearer, sought the gray,
  Chill, fading garth. Yet could not weep,
  But wandered in an aimless way,
  And sighed with weariness for sleep.
 
 
  Mine were the fog, the frosty stalks;
  The weak lights on the leafy walks;
  The shadows shivering with the cold;
  The breaking heart; the lonely talks;
  The last, dim, ruined marigold.
 
 
  But when to-night the moon swings low—
  A great marsh-marigold of glow—
  And all my garden with the sea
  Moans, then, through moon and mist, I know
  My love will come to comfort me.