Chapter V

Gazing down in her white shroud,
Shroud of windy cloud,
Comes at night the phantom moon;
Comes and all the shadows soon,
Crowding in the rooms, arouse;
Shadows, ghosts, her rays lead on,
Till beneath the cloud
Like a ghost she's gone,
In her gusty shroud,
O'er the haunted house.

OCTOBER

I oft have met her slowly wandering
Beside a leafy stream, her locks blown wild,
Her cheeks a hectic flush, more fair than Spring,
As if on her the sumach copse had smiled.
Or I have seen her sitting, tall and brown,--
Her gentle eyes with foolish weeping dim,--
Beneath a twisted oak from whose red leaves
She wound great drowsy wreaths and cast them down;
The west-wind in her hair, that made it swim
Far out behind, deep as the rustling sheaves.

Or in the hill-lands I have often seen
The marvel of her passage; glimpses faint
Of glimmering woods that glanced the hills between,
Like Indian faces, fierce with forest paint.
Or I have met her 'twixt two beechen hills,
Within a dingled valley near a fall,
Held in her nut-brown hand one cardinal flower;
Or wading dimly where the leaf-dammed rills
Went babbling through the wildwood's arrased hall,
Where burned the beech and maples glared their power.

Or I have met her by some ruined mill,
Where trailed the crimson creeper, serpentine,
On fallen leaves that stirred and rustled chill,
And watched her swinging in the wild-grape vine.
While Beauty, sad among the vales and mountains,
More sad than death, or all that death can teach,
Dreamed of decay and stretched appealing arms,
Where splashed the murmur of the forest's fountains;
With all her loveliness did she beseech,
And all the sorrow of her wildwood charms.

Once only in a hollow, girt with trees,
A-dream amid wild asters filled with rain,
I glimpsed her cheeks red-berried by the breeze,
In her dark eyes the night's sidereal stain.
And once upon an orchard's tangled path,
Where all the golden-rod had turned to brown,
Where russets rolled and leaves were sweet of breath,
I have beheld her 'mid her aftermath
Of blossoms standing, in her gypsy gown,
Within her gaze the deeps of life and death.

INDIAN SUMMER

The dawn is a warp of fever,
The eve is a woof of fire;
And the month is a singing weaver
Weaving a red desire.

With stars Dawn dices with Even
For the rosy gold they heap
On the blue of the day's deep heaven,
On the black of the night's far deep.

It's--'Reins to the blood!' and 'Marry!'--
The season's a prince who burns
With the teasing lusts that harry
His heart for a wench who spurns.

It's--'Crown us a beaker with sherry,
To drink to the doxy's heels;
A tankard of wine o' the berry,
To lips like a cloven peel's.

''S death! if a king be saddened,
Right so let a fool laugh lies:
But wine! when a king is gladdened,
And a woman's waist and her eyes.'

He hath shattered the loom of the weaver,
And left but a leaf that flits,
He hath seized heaven's gold, and a fever
Of mist and of frost is its.

He hath tippled the buxom beauty,
And gotten her hug and her kiss--
The wide world's royal booty
To pile at her feet for this.

ALONG THE OHIO

Athwart a sky of brass long welts of gold;
A path of gold the wide Ohio lies;
Beneath the sunset, billowing manifold,
The dark-blue hill-tops rise.

And westward dips the crescent of the moon
Through great cloud-feathers, flushed with rosy ray,
That close around the crystal of her lune
The redbird wings of Day.

A little skiff slips o'er the burnished stream;
A fiery wake, that broadens far behind,
Follows in ripples; and the paddles gleam
Against the evening wind.

Was it the boat, the solitude and hush,
That with dead Indians peopled all the glooms?
That made each bank, meseemed, and every bush
Start into eagle-plumes?

That made me seem to hear the breaking brush,
And as the deer's great antlers swelled in view,
To hear the arrow twang from cane and rush,
That dipped to the canoe?

To see the glimmering wigwams by the waves?
And, wildly clad, around the camp-fires' glow,
The Shawnee chieftains with their painted braves,
Each grasping his war-bow?

But now the vision like the sunset fades,
The ribs of golden clouds have oozed their light;
And from the west, like sombre sachem shades,
Gallop the shades of night.

The broad Ohio glitters to the stars;
And many murmurs whisper in its woods--
Is it the sorrow of dead warriors
For their lost solitudes?

The moon goes down; and like another moon
The crescent of the river twinkles there,
Unchanged as when the eyes of Daniel Boone
Beheld it flowing fair.

A COIGN OF THE FOREST

The hills hang woods around, where green, below
Dark, breezy boughs of beech-trees, mats the moss,
Crisp with the brittle hulls of last year's nuts;
The water hums one bar there; and a glow
Of gold lies steady where the trailers toss
Red, bugled blossoms and a rock abuts;
In spots the wild-phlox and oxalis grow
Where beech-roots bulge the loam, protrude across
The grass-grown road and roll it into ruts.

And where the sumach brakes grow dusk and dense,
Among the rocks, great yellow violets,
Blue-bells and wind-flowers bloom; the agaric
In dampness crowds; a fungus, thick, intense
With gold and crimson and wax-white, that sets
The May-apples along the terraced creek
At bold defiance. Where the old rail-fence
Divides the hollow, there the bee-bird whets
His bill, and there the elder hedge is thick.

No one can miss it; for two cat-birds nest,
Calling all morning, in the trumpet-vine;
And there at noon the pewee sits and floats
A woodland welcome; and his very best
At eve the red-bird sings, as if to sign
The record of its loveliness with notes.
At night the moon stoops over it to rest,
And unreluctant stars. Where waters shine
There runs a whisper as of wind-swept oats.

CREOLE SERENADE

Under mossy oak and pine
Whispering falls the fountained stream;
In its pool the lilies shine
Silvery, each a moonlight gleam.

Roses bloom and roses die
In the warm rose-scented dark,
Where the firefly, like an eye,
Winks and glows, a golden spark.

Amber-belted through the night
Swings the alabaster moon,
Like a big magnolia white
On the fragrant heart of June.

With a broken syrinx there,
With bignonia overgrown,
Is it Pan in hoof and hair,
Or his image carved from stone?

See! her casement's jessamines part,
And, with starry blossoms blent,
Like the moon she leans--O heart,
'Tis another firmament.

SINGS

The dim verbena drugs the dusk
With lemon-heavy odours where
The heliotropes breathe drowsy musk
Into the jasmine-dreamy air;
The moss-rose bursts its dewy husk
And spills its attar there.

The orange at thy casement swings
Star-censers oozing rich perfumes;
The clematis, long-petalled, clings
In clusters of dark purple blooms;
With flowers, like moons or sylphide wings,
Magnolias light the glooms.

Awake, awake from sleep!
Thy balmy hair,
Down-fallen, deep on deep,
Like blossoms there,--
That dew and fragrance weep,--
Will fill the night with prayer.
Awake, awake from sleep!

And dreaming here it seems to me
A dryad's bosom grows confessed,
Bright in the moss of yonder tree,
That rustles with the murmurous West--
Or is it but a bloom I see,
Round as thy virgin breast?

Through fathomless deeps above are rolled
A million feverish worlds, that burst,
Like gems, from Heaven's caskets old
Of darkness--fires that throb and thirst;
An aloe, showering buds of gold,
The night seems, star-immersed.

Unseal, unseal thine eyes!
O'er which her rod
Sleep sways;--and like the skies,
That dream and nod,
Their starry majesties
Will fill the night with God.
Unseal, unseal thine eyes!

WILL O' THE WISPS

Beyond the barley meads and hay,
What was the light that beckoned there?
That made her sweet lips smile and say--
'Oh, busk me in a gown of May,
And knot red poppies in my hair.'

Over the meadow and the wood
What was the voice that filled her ears?
That sent into pale cheeks the blood,
Until each seemed a wild-brier bud
Mown down by mowing harvesters?...

Beyond the orchard, down the hill,
The water flows, the water whirls;
And there they found her past all ill,
A plaintive face but smiling still,
The cresses caught among her curls.

At twilight in the willow glen
What sound is that the silence hears,
When all the dusk is hushed again
And homeward from the fields strong men
And women go, the harvesters?

One seeks the place where she is laid,
Where violets bloom from year to year--
'O sunny head! O bird-like maid!
The orchard blossoms fall and fade
And I am lonely, lonely here.'

Two stars burn bright above the vale;
They seem to him the eyes of Ruth:
The low moon rises very pale
As if she, too, had heard the tale,
All heartbreak, of a maid and youth.

THE TOLLMAN'S DAUGHTER

She stood waist-deep among the briers:
Above in twisted lengths were rolled
The sunset's tangled whorls of gold,
Blown from the west's cloud-pillared fires.
And in the hush no sound did mar,
You almost heard o'er hill and dell,
Deep, bubbling over, star on star,
The night's blue cisterns slowly well.
A crane, like some dark crescent, crossed
The sunset, winging towards the west;
While up the east her silver breast
Of light the moon brought, white as frost.

So have I painted her, you see,
The tollman's daughter.--What an arm
And throat was hers! and what a form!--
Art dreams of such divinity.
What braids of night to hold and kiss!
There is no pigment anywhere
A man might use to picture this--
The splendour of her raven hair.
A face as beautiful and bright,
As rosy fair as twilight skies,
Lit with the stars of hazel eyes
And eyebrowed black with pencilled night.

For her, I know, where'er she trod
Each dewdrop raised a looking-glass
To flash her beauty from the grass;
That wild-flowers bloomed along the sod,
And whispered perfume when she smiled;
The wood-bird hushed to hear her song,
Or, all enamoured, tame, not wild,
Before her feet flew fluttering long.
The brook went mad with melody,
Eddied in laughter when she kissed
With naked feet its amethyst--
And I--I fell in love; ah me!

THE BOY COLUMBUS

And he had mused on lands each bird,--
That winged from realms of Falerina,
O'er seas of the Enchanted Sword,--
In romance sang him, till he heard
Vague foam on Islands of Alcina.

For rich Levant and old Castile
Let other seamen freight their galleys;
With Polo he and Mandeville
Through stranger seas a dreamy keel
Sailed into wonder-peopled valleys.

Far continents of flow'r and fruit,
Of everlasting spring; where fountains
'Mid flow'rs, with human faces, shoot;
Where races dwell, both man and brute,
In cities under golden mountains.

Where cataracts their thunders hurl
From heights the tempest has at mercy;
Vast peaks that touch the moon, and whirl
Their torrents down of gold and pearl;
And forests strange as those of Circe.

Let rapiered Love lute, in the shade
Of royal gardens, to the Palace
And Court, that haunt the balustrade
Of terraces and still parade
Their vanity and guile and malice.

Him something calls diviner yet
Than Love, more mighty than a lover;
Heroic Truth that will not let
Deed lag; a purpose, westward set,
In eyes far-seeing to discover.

SONG OF THE ELF

I

When the poppies, with their shields,
Sentinel
Forest and the harvest fields,
In the bell
Of a blossom, fair to see,
There I stall the bumble-bee,
My good stud;
There I stable him and hold,
Harness him with hairy gold;
There I ease his burly back
Of the honey and its sack
Gathered from each bud.

II

Where the glow-worm lights its lamp,
There I lie;
Where, above the grasses damp,
Moths go by;
Now within the fussy brook,
Where the waters wind and crook
Round the rocks,
I go sailing down the gloom
Straddling on a wisp of broom;
Or, beneath the owlet moon,
Trip it to the cricket's tune
Tossing back my locks.