Chapter IV (2)

When winter woods are armored by the frost,
And all the highways filled with soundless snows,
Then comes the sun to show his golden palm,
And I forget, forget the drift of time.

The mountains look upon me and the sea--
I hover on their crests in silver mists,
And with the waters pass beyond their verge,
And I forget, forget the drift of time.

THE VISITINGS OF TRUTH KNOWN ELSEWHERE.

Spending abroad these varied autumn days,
Their melancholy legend I deny.
They keep a vanished treasure I will seek,
And follow on a track of mystic hopes.
While watching in thy atmosphere, I see
The form of beauty changes, not its soul.
When with the Spring, the flying feet of youth
Spurning the present as it passed, and me,
I thought the world a mere environment
To hold my wishes and my happiness.
I have forgot that foolish, vain belief,
Now in my sere and yellow leaf, serene,
I offer Autumn all my homage now.
The eddies, whirling, rustling in my path,
Lure me like sprites, and from the leaves a voice:
"Say not our lesson is decay; we fall,
And lo, the naked trees in beauty lift
Their delicate tracery against the sky.
On the pale verdure of the grass we spread
A shining web of scarlet, bronze, and gold;
When the rain comes, the oaks uphold us still.
The holly shines, and waits the Christmas chimes,
Beneath the branches of the evergreens."
November's clouds without a shadow lift
The purple mountains of its airy sphere,
And all my purpose waits upon them now.
Day fades--a rose above the darkling sea,
And from the amber sky clear twilight falls;
The orange woods grow black, and I go forth,
And as I go, the noiseless airs pass by,
And touch me like the petals of a flower;
The cricket chirps me in the warm, dry sod,
Drowsy, and I would pipe a cheery strain;
But from the pines I hear the call of night,
And round the quiet earth the stars wheel up,
With me eternal, and I stay beneath,
Until I fade into the fading plain.

WE MUST WAIT.

The testimony of my loss and gain
Will I give utterance to, though none may hear.
When long ago, bereft of all I loved,
I sought in Nature recompense, implored
For pity, solace, or forgetfulness,
"The dear, familiar seasons as they pass,
The seal of memory on every place,"
I said, "will give the sympathy I seek,
The restoration which they owe to me."
By day and night I prayed as futile prayers
As the wind's shriek in lonesome winter nights;
By the sea they fell as empty as the shells
Upon its sands, uncertain as its mists.
With them I tracked the shadows of the woods,
And sowed them in the fields among the seed;
Whoso reaped harvest, I could gather none.
I wandered in the thickets, giving tongue
Like a lost hound, dazed by their solitude,
The while birds called their mates, the lilies blazed,
And roses opened to the wandering airs.
They vanished with the leaves that voyaged the brook,
Which babbled of no story but its own.
How blind I was to Nature's liberty!
Grief stalked beside me, I was sore beset,
And could not hear the turning of Time's wheel.
Still were the skies serene, the earth most fair,
When with the doleful chant of dust to dust
Mingled the laughter of this sunlit sea;
And through my tears I saw the ripples dance,
And June's sweet breezes kiss the swaying elms.
As he who turns the key within his door
And gazes at his walls before he goes,
Then forward sets his steps--so I set mine
To join a band whose purpose was to find
A world of action; but my heart was cold,
My mind supine. Yet I remained with them,
And answered to the roll called Honor, Fame!
Where were my memories and my ardent prayers?
The years stood far behind, their columns graved
Deep with the adage which youth names _No More_.
Like one who enters some old storied hall,
And down its vista suddenly beholds
A banner waving out its old device
Of victory--so suddenly I felt
My later life a void. I was recalled!
My prayers were answered, and behold me here;
Within the pale of all my loss and gain,
The dear, familiar seasons as they pass,
The seal of memory on every place,
Bestow the restoration which I sought.
At peace, I know, as those who suffer know,
There is no secret we can wrest at will
From Nature. Time must bring and share with her
The gift of resignation, cure for grief,
And cast upon our ways this ray of hope--
That I, the lost, and Nature may be one.

UNRETURNING.

Now all the flowers that ornament the grass,
Wherever meadows are and placid brooks,
Must fall--the "glory of the grass" must fall.
Year after year I see them sprout and spread--
The golden, glossy, tossing buttercups,
The tall, straight daisies and red clover globes,
The swinging bellwort and the blue-eyed bent,
With nameless plants as perfect in their hues--
Perfect in root and branch, their plan of life,
As if the intention of a soul were there:
I see them flourish as I see them fall!
But he, who once was growing with the grass,
And blooming with the flowers, my little son,
Fell, withered--dead, nor has revived again!
Perfect and lovely, needful to my sight,
Why comes he not to ornament my days?
The barren fields forget their barrenness,
The soulless earth mates with these soulless things,
Why should I not obtain _my_ recompense?
The budding spring should bring, or summer's prime,
At least a vision of the vanished child,
And let his heart commune with mine again,
Though in a dream--his life was but a dream;
Then might I wait with patient cheerfulness,
That cheerfulness which keeps one's tears unshed,
And blinds the eyes with pain--the passage slow
Of other seasons, and be still and cold
As the earth is when shrouded in the snow,
Or passive, like it, when the boughs are stripped
In autumn, and the leaves roll everywhere.
And he should go again; for winter's snows,
And autumn's melancholy voice, in winds,
In waters, and in woods, belong to me,
To me--a faded soul; for, as I said,
The sense of all his beauty, sweetness, comes
When blossoms are the sweetest; when the sea,
Sparkling and blue, cries to the sun in joy,
Or, silent, pale, and misty waits the night,
Till the moon, pushing through the veiling cloud,
Hangs naked in its heaving solitude:
When feathery pines wave up and down the shore,
And the vast deep above holds gentle stars,
And the vast world beneath hides him from me!

CLOSED.

The crimson dawn breaks through the clouded east,
And waking breezes round the casement pipe;
They blow the globes of dew from opening buds,
And steal the odors of the sleeping flowers.
The swallow calls its young ones from the eaves,
To dart above their shadows on the lake,
Till its long rollers redden in the sun,
And bend the lances of the mirrored pines.
Who knows the miracle that brings the morn?
Still in my house I linger, though the night--
The night that hides me from myself is gone.
Light robes the world, but strips me bare again.
I will not follow on the paths of day.
I know the dregs within its crystal hours;
The bearers of my cups have served me well;
I drained them, and the bearers come no more.
Rise, morning, rise, for those believing souls
Who seek completion in day's garish light.
My casement I will close, keep shut my door,
Till day and night are only dreams to me.

MEMORY IS IMMORTAL.

Time passed, as passes time with common souls,
Whose thoughts and wishes end with every day;
For whom no future is, whose present hours
Reveal no looming shade of that which was.

But Memory is immortal, for she comes
To me, from heaven or hell, to me, once more!
As birds that migrate choose the ocean wind
That beats them helpless, while it steers them home,
So I was this way driven--I chose this way--
Of old my dwelling-place, where all my race
Are buried. At first I was enchanted here;
Impossible appeared the pall, the shroud;
And in my spell I trod the grassy streets,
Where in the summer days mild oxen drew
The bristling hay, and in the winter snows
The creaking masts and knees for mighty ships,
Whose hulls were parted on the coral reefs,
Or foundered in the depth of Arctic nights.
I wandered through the gardens rank and waste,
Wonderful once, when I was like the flowers;
Along the weedy paths grew roses still,
Surviving empire, but remaining queens.

My mood established by the slumbrous town--
(Slumber with slumber, dream with dream should be)
I sought a mansion on the lonely shore,
From which, his feet made level with his head,
Its occupant was gone. I lived alone.
Whoso, beneath this roof, had played his part
In life's deep tragedy, not here again
Could be rehearsed its scenes of love or hate.
Upon the ancient walls my pictures hung,
Of men and women, strong and beautiful,
Whose shoulders pushed along the world's great wheel;
Landscapes, where cloud and mountain rose as one,
Where rivers crept in secret vales, or rolled
Past city walls, whose towers and palaces
By slaves were builded, and by princes fallen!
And books whose pages ever told one tale,
The tale of human love, in joy or pain,
The seed of our last hope--Eternity.
Days glided by, this mirage cheating all;
Morn came, eve went, and we were tranquil still.
If form, and sound, and color fail to show,
By poet's, painter's, sculptor's noble touch,
The subtle truth of Nature, can I tell
How Nature poised my mind in light and shade?

But Memory is immortal, and to me
She advanced, silent, slow, a muffled shape.
One moonlight night I walked through long white lanes;
The sky and sea were like a frosted web;
The air was heavy with familiar scents,
Which travelled down the wind, I knew from where--
The fragrance of a grove of Northern pines.
My feet were hastening thither--and my heart!
At last I stood before a funeral mound,
From which I fled when vanished love and life--
Long years ago--fled from my father's house;
Banished myself, to banish him I loved--
His broken history and his early grave.
And in the moonlight Memory floated on,
Immortal, with my now immortal Love!

THE TRYST.

Impelled by memory in a wayward mood,
Reluctant, yearning, with a faithless mind,
I sought once more a long neglected spot,
A wooded upland bordered by the sea,
Whose tides were swirling up the reedy sands,
Or floating noiseless in the yellow marsh.
My way was wild. The winds, awaking, smote
My face, but as I passed a ruined wall
Brambles and vines and waving blossoms dashed
A frolic-welcome, like a summer rain.
Shouldering the hills against the murky east
Stood stalwart oaks, and in the mossy sod
Below the trembling birches whispered me,
"Not here!" I reached the silence-loving pines,
And lingered. The mists swept from the wooded hills,
And, rolling seaward, hid the anchored ships.
So, happy, dreaming an old dream again,
Of keeping tryst in secret on the knoll,
I wandered on, listening in dreamy maze
To sounds I thought familiar,--the approach
Of well-known footsteps in the leafy path,--
A murmuring voice calling me by name!
Through the pine shafts the sunless light of dawn
Stole. Day was come. My dream would be fulfilled!
Above the hills the sky began to blaze,
And ushering morn the west flushed rosy-red;
Then, the Sun leaping from his bed of gold,
Scattered cloud-banners, crimson, gray, and white.
There was my shadow in the leafy path
Alone,--none was to keep the tryst with me!
No voice, no step among the hills I heard.
The joyous swallows from their nestlings flew,
Mad in the light with song. Far out at sea
The white sails fluttered in the eager breeze,
But Day was silent holding tryst with me,--
My pilgrimage rewarded--faith restored.

NO ANSWER.

You tell me not, green multitude of leaves,
Mingling and whirling with the willful breeze,
Nor you, bright grasses, trembling blade to blade,
What meaneth June, to hap us every year?

The spirit of the flowers is watching now,
As winking in the sun they suck the dew,
The thickets parley with the splendid fields--
What meaneth June, to hap us every year?

Up where the brook laps round the shining flags,
And tinkling foam bells pass the weedy shore,
And where the willow swings above the trout--
What meaneth June, to hap us every year?

The clouds hold knowledge in their snowy peaks,
They hide it in their moving fleecy folds,
They share it with the sunset's golden isles--
What meaneth June, to hap us every year?

Fullness and sweetness, and the power of life,
Must I in ignorance remain alone,
And yield the quest of speech for certain proof?
What meaneth June, to hap us every year?

Sweetness and beauty, and the power of life,
Is it creation's anthem--parts for all?
Is this the knowledge--will you answer me
What meaneth June, to hap us every year?

ON THE HILLTOP.

"By the margent of the sea
I would build myself a home."

Not by the margent of the sea,
But on the hilltop I would be,
My little house a mossy den,
Between me and the world of men.
Beside me dips a wide ravine,
Covered with a flowery screen;
Far round me rise a band of hills,
Whose voices reach me by their rills,
Or deep susurrus of the wood,
That stands in stately brotherhood,
Upholding one vast web of green,
Whereunder foot has never been--
The pine and elm, the birch and oak--
And thus their voices me invoke:
"If you would on the hilltop be,
We cannot share your misery;
Cease, cease this moaning for the Past:
The law of grief can never last."
When springtime brings anemones,
Upon the sod I take my ease,
Or search for Arethusa's pink,
Along the torrent's ragged brink;
Or in the tinted April hours
I watch the curtain of the showers
That fall beneath a lurking cloud,
Which for a moment throws a shroud
On the sun's arrows in the west,
Till it blaze up a golden crest.
The young moon bends her crescent horn
Against the lingering summer morn;
Then, riding down the starry sky,
She follows me till night goes by.
And when the dawn breaks on yon town,
I think the sleepers lying down
Must rise to shoulder dismal care
Methinks that once was but my fare.
But I upon the hilltop yet
Am free from every tangling fret;
So ever thus, in peace of mind,
I give my pity to my kind.
For me this noble solitude!
And as I face its varying mood,
Reflected in its every show,
Some higher self I come to know.
See, autumn here, with color glad,
Not like the poets--russet clad--
But scarlet, umber, green, and gold;
Then in a breath I must behold
The autumn winds tear down my screen,
And leave me not a leaf to glean.
The snow will cover glen and height,
And all my hilltop glisten white;
I see the crystal atoms fly
Under the dome of this gray sky.
Like gnomes are they, these spectral gleams?
Or shall I guess them only dreams?
Whatever is the truth, I say,
If up and down the world I stray,
Still on the hilltop I would be,
Not by the margent of the sea!

THE MESSAGE.

To you, my comrades, whether far or near,
I send this message. Let our past revive;
Come, sound reveille to our hearts once more.
Expecting, I shall wait till at my door
I see you enter, each and every one
Tumultuous, eager all, with clamorous speech,
To hide my stammering welcome and my tears.
I am no host carousing long and late,
Enticing guests with epicurean hints;
Nor am I Timon, sick of this sad world,
Who, jesting, cries, "The sky is overhead,
And underneath that famous rest, the earth:
Show me the man who can have more at last."

Without, the thunder of the city rolls;
Within, the quiet of the student reigns.
There is a change. Time was a childish voice.
Sweet as the lark's when from her nest she soars,
Thrilled over all, and vanished into heaven.
Music once triumphed here: the skilful hand
Of him who rarely struck the keys, and woke
My soul in harmony grand as his own,
Is folded on his breast, my soldier love.
Here hangs his portrait, under it his sword;
He served his country, and his grave's afar.
Dread not this place as one to relics given,
Though I have decked with amaranth my wall,
The testimony of a later loss--
His who long wandering in foreign lands,
Then dying, crossed the sea to die with me.
Behold the sunrise and the morning clouds
On yonder canvas, misty mountain-peaks--
The simple grandeur of a perfect art!
Behold these vivid woods, that gleam beside
The happy vision of an autumn eve,
When red leaves fall, and redder sunsets fade!
The world grows pensive sinking into night,
Whose melancholy space hides sighing winds:
Can they reply to sadder human speech?
What centuries are counted here--my books!
Shadows of mighty men; the chorus, hark!
The antique chant vibrates, and Fate compels!

Comrades, return; the midnight lamp shall gleam
As in old nights; the chaplets woven then--
Withered, perhaps, by time--may grace us yet;
The laurel faded is the laurel still,
And some of us are heroes to ourselves.
And amber wine shall flow; the blue smoke wreathe
In droll disputes, with metaphysics mixed;
Or float as lightly as the quick-spun verse,
Threading the circle round from thought to thought,
Sparkling and fresh as is the airy web
Spread on the hedge at morn in silver dew.
The scent of roses you remember well;
In the green vases they shall bloom again.
And me--do you remember? I remain
Unchanged, I think; though one I saw like me
Some years ago, with hair that was not white;
And she was with you then, as brave a soul
As souls can be whom Fate has not approached.
But seek and find me now, unchanged or changed,
Mirthful in tears, and in my laughter sad.

EXILE.

Blind in these stony streets, dumb in their crowds,
What can I do but dream of other days?
Whose is the love I had, and have not now?
If it be Nature's, let her answer me.
It wanders by the blue, monotonous sea,
Where rushes grow, or follows all the sweep
Of shallow summer brooks and umber pools.
Or does it linger in those hidden paths
Where starlike blossoms blow among dead leaves,
And dark groves murmur over darker shrubs,
Birds with their fledgelings sleep, and pale moths flit?
With sunset's crimson flags perhaps it goes,
And reappears with yellow Jupiter,
Riding the West beside the crescent moon.
Comes it with sunrise, when the sunrise floats
From Night's bold towers, vast in the East, and gray
Till tower and wall flash into fiery clouds,
Moving along the verge, stately and slow,
Ordered by the old music of the spheres?
Perchance it trembles in October's oaks;
Or, twining with the brilliant, berried vine,
Would hide the tender, melancholy elm.
Well might it rest within those solemn woods
Where sunlight never falls--whose tops are green
With airs from heaven,--its balmy mists and rains,--
While underneath black, mossy, mammoth rocks
Keep silence with the waste of blighted boughs.
If winter riots with the wreathing snow,
And ocean, tossing all his threatening plumes,
And winds, that tear the hollow, murky sky,
Can this, my love, which dwells no more with me,
Find dwelling there,--like some storm-driven bird,
That knows not whence it flew, nor where to fly,
Between the world of sea and world of cloud,
At last drops dead in the remorseless deep?

A SEASIDE IDYL.

I wandered to the shore, nor knew I then
What my desire,--whether for wild lament,
Or sweet regret, to fill the idle pause
Of twilight, melancholy in my house,
And watch the flowing tide, the passing sails,
Or to implore the air, and sea, and sky,
For that eternal passion in their power
Which souls like mine who ponder on their fate
May feel, and be as they--gods to themselves.
Thither I went, whatever was my mood.
The sands, the rocks, and beds of bending sedge,
I saw alone. Between the east and west,
Along the beach no creature moved besides.
High on the eastern point a lighthouse shone;
Steered by its lamp a ship stood out to sea,
And vanished from its rays towards the deep,
While in the west, above a wooded isle,
An island-cloud hung in the emerald sky,
Hiding pale Venus in its sombre shade.
I wandered up and down the sands, I loitered
Among the rocks, and trampled through the sedge:
But I grew weary of the stocks and stones.
"I will go hence," I thought; "the Elements
Have lost their charm; my soul is dead to-night.
Oh passive, creeping Sea, and stagnant Air,
Farewell! Dull sands, and rocks, and sedge, farewell."
Homeward I turned my face, but stayed my feet.
Should I go back but to revive again
The ancient pain? Hark! suddenly there came
From over sea, a sound like that of speech;
And suddenly I felt my pulses leap
As though some Presence were approaching me.
Loud as the voice of Ocean's dark-haired king
A breeze came down the sea,--the sea rose high;
The surging waves sang round me--this their song:
"Oh, yet your love will triumph! He shall come
In love's wild tumult; he shall come once more,--
By tracks of ocean or by paths of earth;
The wanderer will reach you and remain."
The breakers dashed among the rocks, and they
Seemed full of life; the foam dissolved the sands,
And the sedge trembled in the swelling tide.
Was this a promise of the vaunting Sea,
Or the illusion of a last despair?
Either, or both, still homeward I must go,
And that way turned mine eyes, and thought they met
A picture,--surely so,--or I was mad.
The crimson harvest-moon was rising full
Above my roof, and glimmered on my walls.
Within the doorway stood a man I knew--
No picture this. I saw approaching me
Him I had hoped for, grieved for, and despaired.
"My ship is wrecked," he cried, "and I return
Never to leave my love. You are my love?"
"I too am wrecked," I sighed, "by lonely years;
Returning, you but find another wreck."
He bent his face to search my own, and spake:
"What I have traversed sea and land to find,
I find. For liberty I fought, and life,
On savage shores and wastes of unknown seas,
While waiting for this hour. Oh, think you not
Immortal love mates with immortal love
Always? And now, at last, we know this love."
My soul was filling with a mighty joy
I could not show--yet must I show my love.
"From you whose will divided broke our hearts
I now demand a different kiss than that
Which then you said should be our parting kiss.
Given, I vow the past shall be forgot.
The kiss--and we are one! Give me the kiss."
Like the dark rocks upon the sands he stood,
When on his breast I fell, and kissed his lips.
All the wild clangor of the sea was hushed;
The rapid silver waves ran each to each,
Lapsed in the deep with joyous, murmured sighs.
Years of repentance mine, forgiveness his,
To tell. Happy, we paced the tranquil shores,
Till between sea and sky we saw the sun,
And all our wiser, loving days began.

THE CHIMNEY-SWALLOW'S IDYL.

From where I built the nest for my first young,
In the high chimney of this ancient house,
I saw the household fires burn and go down,
And know what was and is forever gone.
My dusky, swift-winged fledgelings, flying far
To seek their mates in clustered eaves or towers,
Would linger not to learn what I have learned,
Soaring through air or steering over sea--
These single, solitary walls must fade.
But I return, inhabiting my nest,
A little simple bird, which still survives
The noble souls now vanished from this hearth;
And none are here besides but she who shares
My life, and pensive vigil holds with me.
No longer does she mourn; she lives serene;
I see her mother's beauty in her face,
I see her father's quiet pride and power,
The linked traits and traces of her race;
Her brothers dying, like strong sapling trees
Hewn down by violent blows prone in dense woods,
Covered with aged boughs, decaying slow.
She muses thus: "Beauty once more abides;
The rude alarm of death, its wild amaze
Is over now. The chance of change has passed;
No doubtful hopes are mine, no restless dread,
No last word to be spoken, kiss to give
And take in passion's agony and end.
They cannot come to me, but in good time
I shall rejoin my silent company,
And melt among them, as the sunset clouds
Melt in gray spaces of the coming night."
So she holds dear as I this tranquil spot,
And all the flowers that blow, and maze of green,
The meadows daisy-full, or brown and sere;
The shore which bounds the waves I love to skim,
And dash my purple wings against the breeze.
When breaks the day I twitter loud and long,
To make her rise and watch the vigorous sun
Come from his sea-bed in the weltering deep,
And smell the dewy grass, still rank with sleep.
I hover through the twilight round her eaves,
And dart above, before her, in her path,
Till, with a smile, she gives me all her mind;
And in the deep of night, lest she be sad
In sleepless thought, I stir me in my nest,
And murmur as I murmur to my young;
She makes no answer, but I know she hears;
And all the cherished pictures in her thoughts
Grow bright because of _me_, her swallow friend!

LAST DAYS.

As one who follows a departing friend,
Destined to cross the great, dividing sea,
I watch and follow these departing days,
That go so grandly, lifting up their crowns
Still regal, though their victor Autumn comes.
Gifts they bestow, which I accept, return,
As gifts exchanged between a loving pair,
Who may possess them as memorials
Of pleasures ended by the shadow--Death.
What matter which shall vanish hence, if both
Are transitory--me, and these bright hours--
And of the future ignorant alike?
From all our social thralls I would be free.
Let care go down the wind--as hounds afar,
Within their kennels baying unseen foes,
Give to calm sleepers only calmer dreams.
Here will I rest alone: the morning mist
Conceals no form but mine; the evening dew
Freshens but faded flowers and my worn face.
When the noon basks among the wooded hills
I too will bask, as silent as the air
So thick with sun-motes, dyed like yellow gold,
Or colored purple like an unplucked plum.
The thrush, now lonesome, for her young have flown,
May flutter her brown wings across my path;
And creatures of the sod with brilliant eyes
May leap beside me, and familiar grow.
The moon shall rise among her floating clouds,
Black, vaporous fans, and crinkled globes of pearl,
And her sweet silver light be given to me.
To watch and follow these departing days
Must be my choice; and let me mated be
With Solitude; may memory and hope
Unite to give me faith that nothing dies;
To show me always, what I pray to know,
That man alone may speak the word--_Farewell_.