Chapter III

How can I help from loving, dear,
Since love is of the sweetened year?--
The very insects feel his power,
And chirr and chirrup hour on hour;
The bee and beetle in the noon,
The cricket underneath the moon:--
What else to do but follow too,
Since youth is on the wing,
Lord Life who follows through the dew
Lord Love a-carolling.

IN MIDDLE SPRING

Now the fields are rolled into turbulent gold,
And a ripple of fire and pearl is blent
With the emerald surges of wood and of wold,
A flower-foam bursting redolent:
Now the dingles and deeps of the woodland old
Are glad with a sibilant life new sent,
Too rare to be told are the manifold,
Sweet fancies that quicken, eloquent,
In the heart that no longer is cold.

How it knows of the wings of the hawk ere it swings
From the drippled dew scintillant seen!
Where the redbird hides, ere it flies or sings,
In melodious quiverings of green!
How the sun to the dogwood such kisses brings
That it laughs into blossoms of wonderful sheen;
While the wind, to the strings of his lute that rings,
Makes love to apple and nectarine,
Till the sap in them rosily springs.

Go seek in the ray for a sworded fay,
The chestnut's buds into blooms that rips;
And look in the brook, that runs laughing gay,
For the Nymph with the laughing lips;
In the brake for the Dryad whose eyes are gray,
From whose bosom the perfume drips;
The Faun hid away, where the branches sway,
Thick ivy low down on his hips,
Pursed lips on a syrinx at play.

So, ho! for the rose, the Romeo rose,
And the lyric it hides in its heart!
And, oh, for the epic the oak-tree knows,
Sonorous as Homer in art!
And it's ho! for the prose of the weed that grows
Green-writing Earth's commonest part!--
What God may propose let us learn of those,
The songs and the dreams that start
In the heart of each blossom that blows.

A SPRING SHOWER

We stood where the fields were beryl,
The redolent woodland was warm;
And the heaven above us, now sterile,
Was alive with the pulse-winds of storm.

We had watched the green wheat brighten
And gloom as it winced at each gust;
And the turbulent maples whiten
As the lane blew gray with dust.

White flakes from the blossoming cherry,
Pink snows of the peaches were blown,
And star-bloom wrecks of the berry
And dogwood petals were sown.

Then instantly heaven was sullied,
And earth was thrilled with alarm,
As a cloud, that the thunder had gullied,
Thrust over the sunlight its arm.

The birds to dry coverts had hurried,
And hid in their leafy-built rooms;
And the bees and the hornets had buried
Themselves in the bells of the blooms.

Then down from the clouds, as from towers,
Rode slant the tall lancers of rain,
And charged the fair troops of the flowers,
And trampled the grass of the plain.

And the armies of blossoms were scattered;
Their standards hung draggled and lank;
And the rose and the lily were shattered,
And the iris lay crushed on its bank.

But high in the storm was the swallow,
And the rock-loud voice of the fall,
From its ramparts of forest, rang hollow
Defiance and challenge o'er all.

But the storm and its clouds passed over,
And left but one cloud in the west,
Wet wafts that were fragrant with clover,
And the sun slow-sinking to rest.

Rain-drippings and rain in the poppies,
And scents as of honey and bees;
A touch of wild light on the coppice,
That turned into flames the drenched trees.

Then the cloud in the sunset was riven,
And bubbled and rippled with gold,
And over the gorges of heaven,
Like a gonfalon vast was unrolled.

HEPATICAS

In the frail hepaticas--
That the early Springtide tossed,
Sapphire-like, along the ways
Of the woodlands that she crossed--
I behold, with other eyes,
Footprints of a dream that flies.

One who leads me; whom I seek:
In whose loveliness there is
All the glamour that the Greek
Knew as wind-borne Artemis.--
I am mortal. Woe is me!
Her sweet immortality!

Spirit, must I always fare,
Following thy averted looks?
Now thy white arm, now thy hair,
Glimpsed among the trees and brooks?
Thou who hauntest, whispering,
All the slopes and vales of Spring.

Cease to lure! or grant to me
All thy beauty! though it pain,
Slay with splendor utterly!
Flash revealment on my brain!
And one moment let me see
All thy immortality!

SPIRITS OF SPRING

I

Over the summer seas,
From the Hesperides,
Warm as the southern breeze,
Gather the Spirits,
Clad on with sun and rain,
Fire in each ardent vein,
Who, with a wild refrain,
Waken the germs that the Season inherits.

II

See, where they come, like mist,
Gleaming with amethyst,
Trailing the light that kissed
Vine-tangled mountains
Looming o'er tropic lakes,
Where every wind, that shakes
Tamarisk coverts, makes
Music that haunts like the falling of fountains.

III

You may behold the beat
Of their wild hearts of heat,
And their rose-flashing feet
Flying before us:
Hear them among the trees
Whispering like far-off seas,
Waking the drowsy bees,
Wild-birds and flowers and torrents sonorous.

IV

You may behold their eyes,
Star-like, that sapphire dyes,
To which the blossoms rise
Star-like; and shadows
Flee from: and, golden deep,
As through the woods they sweep,
See their wild curls that keep
Asphodel memories that kindle the meadows.

V

Music of forest-streams,
Fragrance and dewy gleams,
Daybreak and dawn and dreams,
High things and lowly,
Mix in their limbs of light,
Which, what they touch of blight,
Quicken to blossom white,
Raise to be beautiful, perfect, and holy.

VI

Come! do not sit and wait
Now that once desolate
Fields are intoxicate
With birds and flowers!
And all the woods are rife
With resurrected life,
Passion and purple strife
Of the warm winds and the turbulent showers.

VII

Come! let us lie and dream
Here by the wildwood stream,
Where many a twinkling gleam
Falls on the rooty
Banks; and the forest glooms
Rain down their redbud blooms,
Armfuls of wild perfumes--
Winds! or Auloniads busy with beauty.

MIRABILE DICTU

I

There dwells a goddess in the West,
An Island in death-lonesome seas;
No towered towns are hers confessed,
No castled forts or palaces;
Hers, simple worshipers at best,
The buds, the birds, the bees.

II

And she hath wonder-words of song,
So heavenly beautiful and shed
So sweetly from her honeyed tongue,
The savage creatures, it is said,
Hark, marble-still, their wilds among,
And nightingales fall dead.

III

I know her not, nor have I known:
I only feel that she is there:
For when my heart is most alone,
Her deep communion fills the air,--
Her influence calls me from my own,--
Miraculously fair.