Chapter VII: Part V: Winter (1)

We, whom God sets a task,
Striving, who ne’er attain,
We are the curst!--who ask
Death, and still ask in vain.
We, whom God sets a task.

I

_In the silence of his room. After many days_:

All, all are shadows. All must pass
As writing in the sand or sea:
Reflections in a looking-glass
Are not less permanent than we.

The days that mold us--what are they?
That break us on their whirling wheel?
What but the potters! we the clay
They fashion and yet leave unreal.

Linked through the ages, one and all,
In long anthropomorphous chain,
The human and the animal
Inseparably must remain.

Within us still the monstrous shape
That shrieked in air and howled in slime,
What are we?--partly man and ape--
The tools of fate, the toys of time!

II

_The bitterness of his bereavement speaks in him_:

Vased in her bedroom window, white
As her glad girlhood, never lost,
I smelt the roses--and the night
Outside was fog and frost.

What though I claimed her dying there!
God nor one angel understood
Nor cared, who from sweet feet to hair
Had changed to snow her blood.

She had been mine so long, so long!
Our harp of life was one in word--
Why did death thrust his hand among
The chords and break one chord!

What lily lilier than her face!
More virgin than her lips I kissed!
When morn, like God, with gold and grace,
Broke massed in mist! broke massed in mist!

III

_Her dead face seems to rise up before him_:

The face that I said farewell to,
Pillowed a flower on flowers,
Comes back, with its eyes to tell to
My soul what my heart should quell to
Calm, that is mine at hours.

Dear, is your soul still daggered
There by something amiss?
Love--is _he_ ever laggard?
Hope--is _her_ face still haggard?
Tell me what it is!

You, who are done with to-morrow!
Done with these worldly skies!
Done with our pain and sorrow!
Done with the griefs we borrow!
Joys that are born of sighs!

Must we say “gone forever?”
Or will it all come true?
Does mine touch your thought ever?
And, over the doubts that sever,
Rise to the fact that ’s you?

Love, in my flesh so fearful,
Medicine me this pain!--
Love, with the eyes so tearful,
How can my soul be cheerful,
Seeing its joy is slain!...

Gone!--’t was only a vision!--
Gone! like a thought, a gleam!--
Such to our indecision
Utter no empty mission;--
Truth is in all we dream!

IV

_He sinks into deep thought_:

There are shadows that compel us,
There are powers that control:
More than substance these can tell us,
Speaking to the human soul.

In the moonlight, when it glistened
On my window, white of glow,
Once I woke and, leaning, listened
To a voice that sang below.

Full of gladness, full of yearning,
Strange with dreamy melody,
Like a bird whose heart was burning,
Wildly sweet it sang to me.

I arose; and by the starlight,
Pale beneath the summer sky,
There I saw it, full of far light,--
My dead joy go singing by.

In the darkness, when the glimmer
Of the storm was on the pane,
Once I sat and heard a dimmer
Voice lamenting in the rain.

Full of parting and unspoken
Heartbreak, faint with agony,
Like a bird whose heart was broken,
Moaning low it cried to me.

I arose; and in the darkness,
Wan beneath the winter sky,
There I saw it, cold to starkness,--
My dead love go wailing by.

V

_He arouses from his abstraction, buries his face in his hands and
thinks_:

So long it seems since last I saw her face,
So long ago it seems,
Like some sad soul in unconjectured space,
Still seeking happiness through perished grace
And unrealities, a little while
Illusions lead me, ending in the smile
Of Death, triumphant in a thorny place,
Among Love’s ruined roses and dead dreams.

Since she is gone, no more I feel the light,--
Since she has left all dark,--
Cleave, with its revelation, all the night.
I wander blindly, on a crumbling height,
Among the fragments and the wrecks and stones
Of Life, where Hope, amid Life’s skulls and bones,
With weary face, disheartened, wild and white,
Trims her pale lamp with its expiring spark.

Now she is dead, the Soul, naught can o’erawe,--
Now she is gone from me,--
Questions God’s justice that seems full of flaw,
As is His world, where misery is law,
And all men fools, too willing to be slaves.--
My House of Faith, built up on dust of graves,
The wind of doubt sweeps down as made of straw,
And all is night and I no longer see.

VI

_He looks from his window toward the sombre west_:

Ridged and bleak the gray, forsaken
Twilight at the night has guessed;
And no star of dusk has taken
Flame unshaken in the west.

All day long the woodlands, dying,
Moaned, and drippings as of grief
Rained from barren boughs with sighing
Death of flying twig and leaf.

Ah, to live a life unbroken
Of the flings and scorns of fate!
Like that tree, with branches oaken,
Strength’s unspoken intimate.--

Who can say that we have never
Lived the life of plants and trees?--
Not so wide the lines that sever
Us forever here from these.

Colors, odors, that are cherished,
Haply hint we once were flowers:
Memory alone has perished
In this garnished world that’s ours.

Music,--that all things expresses,
All for which we’ve sought and sinned,--
Haply in our treey tresses
Once was guesses of the wind.

But I dream!--The dusk, dark braiding
Locks that lack both moon and star,
Deepens; and, the darkness aiding,
Earth seems fading, faint and far.

And within me doubt keeps saying--
“What is wrong, and what is right?
Hear the cursing! hear the praying!
All are straying on in night.”

VII

_He turns from the window, takes up a book, and reads_:

The soul, like Earth, hath silences
Which speak not, yet are heard:
The voices mute of memories
Are louder than a word.

Theirs is a speech which is not speech;
A language that is bound
To soul-vibrations, vague, that reach
Deeper than any sound.

No words are theirs. They speak through things,
A visible utterance
Of thoughts--like those some sunset brings,
Or withered rose, perchance.

The heavens that once, in purple and flame,
Spake to two hearts as one,
In after years may speak the same
To one sad heart alone.

Through it the vanished face and eyes
Of her, the sweet and fair,
Of her the lost, again shall rise
To comfort his despair.

And so the love that led him long
From golden scene to scene,
Within the sunset is a tongue
That speaks of what has been.--

How loud it speaks of that dead day,
The rose whose bloom is fled!
Of her who died; who, clasped in clay,
Lies numbered with the dead.

The dead are dead; with them ’tis well
Within their narrow room;--
No memories haunt their hearts who dwell
Within the grave and tomb.

But what of those--the dead who live!
The living dead, whose lot
Is still to love--ah, God forgive!--
To live and love, forgot!

VIII

_The storm is heard sounding wildly outside with wind and hail_:

The night is wild with rain and sleet;
Each loose-warped casement claps or groans:
I hear the plangent woodland beat
The tempest with long blatant moans,
Like one who fears defeat.

And sitting here beyond the storm,
Alone within the lonely house,
It seems that some mesmeric charm
Holds all things--even the gnawing mouse
Has ceased its faint alarm.

And in the silence, stolen o’er
Familiar objects, lo, I fear--
I fear--that, opening yon door,
I ’ll find my dead self standing near,
With face that once I wore.

The stairway creaks with ghostly gusts:
The flue moans; all its gorgon throat
One wail of winds: ancestral dusts,--
Which yonder Indian war-gear coat
With gray, whose quiver rusts,--

Are shaken down.--Or, can it be,
That he who wore it in the dance,
Or battle, now fills shadowy
Its wampumed skins? and shakes his lance
And spectral plume at me?--

Mere fancy!--Yet those curtains toss
Mysteriously as if some dark
Hand moved them.--And I would not cross
The shadow there, that hearthstone’s spark,
A glow-worm sunk in moss.

Outside ’t were better!--Yes, I yearn
To walk the waste where sway and dip
Deep, dark December boughs--where burn
Some late last leaves, that drip and drip
No matter where you turn.

Where sodden soil, you scarce have trod,
Fills oozy footprints--but the blind
Night there, though like the frown of God,
Presents no fancies to the mind,
Like those that have o’erawed.--

The months I count: how long it seems
Since summer! summer, when with her,
When on her porch, in rainy gleams
We watched the flickering lightning stir
In heavens gray as dreams.

When all the west, a sheet of gold,
Flared,--like some Titan’s opened forge,--
With storm; revealing, manifold,
Vast peaks of clouds with crag and gorge,
Where thunder-torrents rolled.

Then came the wind: again, again
Storm lit the instant earth--and how
The forest rang with roaring rain!--
We could not read--where is it now?--
That tale of Charlemagne:

That old romance! that tale, which we
Were reading; till we heard the plunge
Of distant thunder sullenly,
And left to watch the lightning lunge,
And storm-winds toss each tree.

That summer!--How it built us there,
Of sorcery and necromance,
A mental-world, where all was fair;
A land like one great pearl, a-trance
With lilied light and air.

Where every flower was a thought;
And every bird, a melody;
And every fragrance, zephyr brought,
Was but the rainbowed drapery
Of some sweet dream long sought.

’Mid which we reared our heart’s high home,
Fair on the hills; with terraces,
Vine-hung and wooded, o’er the foam
Of undiscovered fairy seas,
All violet in the gloam.

O land of shadows! shadow-home,
Within my world of memories!
Around whose ruins sweeps the foam
Of sorrow’s immemorial seas,
To whose dark shores I come!

How long in your wrecked halls, alone
With ghosts of joys must I remain?
Between the unknown and the known,
Still hearing through the wind and rain
My lost love moan and moan.

IX

_He sits by the slowly dying fire. The storm is heard with increased
violence_:

Wild weather. The lash of the sleet
On the gusty casement, clapping--
The sound of the storm like a sheet
My soul and senses wrapping.

Wild weather. And how is she,
Now the rush of the rain falls serried
There on the turf and the tree
Of the place where she is buried?

Wild weather. How black and deep
Is the night where the mad winds scurry!--
Do I sleep? do I dream in my sleep
That I hear her footsteps hurry?

Hither they come like flowers--
And I see her raiment glisten,
Like the robes of one of the hours
Where the stars to the angels listen.

Before me, behold, how she stands!
With lips high thoughts have weighted,
With testifying hands,
And eyes with glory sated.

I have spoken and I have kneeled:
I have kissed her feet in wonder--
But, lo! her lips--they are sealed,
God-sealed, and will not sunder.

Though I sob, “Your stay was long!
You are come,--but your feet were laggard!--
With mansuetude and song
For the heart your death has daggered.”

Never a word replies,
Never, to all my weeping--
Only a sound of sighs,
And of raiment past me sweeping....

I wake; and a clock tolls three--
And the night and the storm beat serried
There on the turf and the tree
Of the place where she is buried.

RED LEAVES AND ROSES

I

And he had lived such loveless years
That suffering had made him wise;
And she had known no graver tears
Than those of girlhood’s eyes.

And he, perhaps, had loved before--
One, who had wedded, or had died;--
So life to him had been but poor
In love for which he sighed.

In years and heart she was so young
Love paused and beckoned at the gate,
And bade her hear his songs, unsung;
She laughed that “love must wait.”

He understood. She only knew
Love’s hair was faded, face was gray--
Nor saw the rose his autumn blew
There in her heedless way.

II

If he had come to her when May
Danced down the wildwood,--every way
Marked with white flow’rs, as if her gown
Had torn and fallen,--it might be
She had not met him with a frown,
Nor used his love so bitterly.

Or if he had but come when June
Set stars and roses to one tune,
And breathed in honeysuckle throats
Clove-honey of her spicy mouth,
His heart had found some loving notes
In hers to cheer his life’s long drouth.

He came when Fall made mad the sky,
And on the hills leapt like a cry
Of battle; when his youth was dead;
To _her_, the young, the wild, the white;
Whose symbol was the rose, blood-red,
And his the red leaf pinched with blight.

He might have known, since youth was flown,
And autumn claimed him for its own;
And winter neared with snow, wild whirled,
His love to her would seem absurd;
To youth like hers; whose lip had curled
Yet heard him to his last sad word.

Then laughed and--well, his heart denied
The words he uttered then in pride;
And he remembered how the gray
Was his of autumn, ah! and hers,
The rose-hued colors of the May,
And May was all her universe.

And then he left her: and, like blood,
In her deep hair, the rose; whose bud
Was badge to her: while unto him,
His middle-age, must still remain
The red-leaf, withering at the rim,
As symbol of the all-in-vain.

III

“Such days as these,” she said, and bent
Among her marigolds, all dew,
And dripping zinnia stems, “were meant
For spring not autumn; days we knew
In childhood; _these_ endearing those;
Much dearer since they have grown old:
Days, once imperfect with the rose,
Now perfect with the marigold.”

“Such days as these,” he said, and gazed
Long with unlifted eyes that held
Sad autumn nights, “our hopes have raised
In futures that are mist-enspelled.
And so it is the fog blows in
Days dearer for the death they paint
With hues of life and joy,--as sin,
At death, puts off all earthly taint.”

IV

Like deeds of hearts that have not kept
Their riches, as a miser, when
Sad souls have asked, with eyes that wept,
Among the toiling tribes of men,
The summer days gave Earth sweet alms
In silver of white lilies, while
Each night, with healing, outstretched palms
Stood Christ-like with its starry smile.

Will she remember him when dull
Months drag their duller hours by?
With feet that crush the beautiful
And leave the beautiful to die?
Or never see? nor sit with lost
Dreams withered, ’mid hope’s empty husks,
And wait, heart-counting-up the cost
Of love’s illusions ’mid life’s dusks?

V

He is as one who, treading salty scurf
Of lonely sea-sands, hears the roaring rocks
Of some lost isle of misty crags and lochs;
Who sees no sea, but, through a world of surf,
Gray ghosts of gulls and screaming petrel flocks:
When, from the deep’s white ruin and wild wreck,
Above the fog, beneath the ghostly gull,
The iron ribs of some storm-shattered hull
Loom, packed with pirate treasure to the deck
A century rotten: feels his wealth replete,
When long-baulked ocean claims it; and one dull
Wave flings, derisive at despondent feet,
A skull, one doubloon rattling in the skull.

VI

And when full autumn sets the dahlia stems
On fire with flowers, and the chill dew turns
The maple trees, above geranium urns,
To Emir tents, and strings with flawless gems
The moon-flower and the wahoo-bush that burns;
Calmly she sees the year grow sad and strange,
And stands with one among the wilted walks
Of the old garden of the gray, old grange,
And feels no sorrow for the frost-maimed stalks
Since--though the wailing autumn to her talks--
Youth marks swift spring on life’s far mountain-range.
Or she will lean to her old harpsichord;
A youthful face beside her; and the glow
Of hickory on the hearth will balk the blow
Of blustering rain that beats the casement hard;
And sing of summer and so thwart the snow.

“Haply, some day, she yet may sit alone,”
He thinks, “within the shadow-saddened house,
When round the gables stormy echoes moan,
And in the closet gnaws the lonesome mouse;
And Memory come stealing down the stair
From dusty attics where is piled the Past--
Like so much rubbish that we hate to keep--
And turn the knob; and, framed in frosty hair,
A grave, forgotten face look in at last,
And she will know, and bow her head and weep.”

WILD THORN AND LILY

I

That night, returning to the farm, we rode
Before a storm. Uprolling from the west,
Incessant with distending fire, loomed
The multitudes of tempest: towering here
A shadowy Shasta, there a cloudy Hood,
Veined as with agonies, aurora-born,
Of torrent gold; resplendent heaven to heaven,
Far peak to peak, terrific spoke; the vast
Sierras of the storm, within which beat
The caverned thunder like a mighty stream:
Vibrating on, with rushing wind and flame,
Now th’ opening welkin shone, one livid sheet
Of instantaneous gold, a giant’s forge,
Wild-clanging; now, with streak on angled streak
Of momentary light, a labyrinth
Where shouting Darkness stalked with Titan torch:
Again the firmament hung hewn with fire
Whence leapt the thunder; and it seemed that hosts
Of Heaven rushed to war with blazing shields
And swords of splendor. And before the storm
We galloped, while the frantic trees above
Went wild with rain, through whose mad limbs and leaves
Splashed black the first big drops. On, on we drove,
And gained the gates, pillaring the avenue
Of ancient beech, at whose far, flickering end,
At last, beaconed the lights of home.

And she?
Was it the lightning that lent lividness
And terror to her countenance? or fear
Of her own heart? revulsion? memory?
Did deep regret, that, now the thing _was_ done,
That she was mine, a yearning to be free,
Away from me, assail her? or, the thought,
The knowledge, that she did not love the man
Whom she had wedded? knowing better now
That all her heart was Julien’s from the first,
And would be Julien’s until the end.
And did she now look backward on the past?
Or forward--on the barrier that the church
For all the future years had placed between
The possible and impossible? God knows!

Yet I had won her honestly with words
Love, only, uttered out of its soul’s truth;
Had won her--was it openly?--perhaps!--
Although engaged to Julien.--What else
Had led us to elopement?--Well, ’t was done!
The whole, mad, lovely, miserable affair
Of love and youthful folly. Being done
We must abide the reckoning. That is,
_I_ would; and she?--she saw her duty there
Beside her husband. And within myself,
When we alighted from the carriage, thus,--
Beneath the porch,--my mind resolved the thing:
“I am her husband now, and she my wife.
Less than her husband, I, much less a man,
Were I not able to regain and keep
The love she gave me, that she thinks is his,
That is not his. ’T is pity merely now
That makes her pensive. I am pensive, too,
For Julien, the poet and the friend;
The dreamer and the lover.--But all ’s fair
In love they say; and I,--well, willingly
I’ll bear the burthen of the blame of all.”
Scarce had we entered when high heaven oped
Vast gates of bronze and doors of booming brass
That dammed a deluge, and the deluge poured.--
I thought of him still; for I felt that she
Was thinking too of Julien and his moods,
That often swept his soul with storm like this,
Yet oftener with sunlight than with storm;
That soul of sun and tempest, ray and rain,
My school-friend Julien! whom once she won
To think she loved--I know not how. My play
Was open as the morning, and as fair.
His poverty and genius here, and here
My wealth and--platitude; and I had won.
But it was hard for him. I did not dream
That it would end so. And when Gwendolyn
Used every gentleness--and that is much--
I did not dream his poet’s temperament
Were so affected of a love affair,
A wrong or right; he, whose sole aim seemed song.
I did not dream he ’d take it desperately,
And end so tragically. Who ’d have thought
His character, although so sensitive,
Would fall into extremes of morbidness
And melancholy! Had it now been I,
Whose heart had lost in the great game of love,
None would have wondered; for I am of those
Whose vigorous iron does not bend, but break
At one decisive blow: _his_ should have sprung--
Or so I think, not broken as it had--
Elastic as fine-tempered steel that bends
And then resumes its usual usefulness.

A pale smile strained the corners of her mouth
When, from the porch, into the parlor’s blaze
I led her. And her mother met us there,
Her mother and her father. And I saw
The slow reflection of their happiness
Make glad her eyes, as their approval grew
From half-severe rebukes, that were well meant,
To open, glad avowal of their joy.
She had done well, and we were soon forgiven....

But I resumed _his_ letter when alone:
His letter written her three months before,
When all was over, and we two were one,
And well upon our way to Italy
For six sweet months of honeymoon. His word,
His letter, all of her, that came to me
At Venice, that I opened in mistake,
Amid a lot of papers sent from home.
She had not read, and never should while I
Had power to conceal until I ’d read.
I would not let the dead scrawl mar or soil
My late-won joy, my testament of love.
No! I would read it, afterwards destroy.
Thoughts made of music for a last farewell,
When he knew all and asked her to perpend
Expressions of past things her gift of love
Had given speech to in the happy days.
And so I read:--

II

“The rhyme is mine, but yours
The thought and all the music, springing from
The rareness of the love that dawned on me
A little while to make my sad life glad.
Should I regret the sunset it refused,
Since all my morn was richer than the world?
Or that my day should stride without a change
Of crimson, or of purple, or of gold,
Into the barren blackness where the moon
And all God’s stars lay dead? Should I complain,
Upbraid or censure or one moment curse,
_I_ with my morning? ’T is a memory
That stains the midnight now: one wild-rose ray
Laid like a finger pointing me the path
I follow, and I go rejoicingly.

Our love was very young (nor had it aged--
If we had lived long lifetimes--here in me),
When one day, strolling in the sun, you spoke
Words I perceived should hint a coming change:
I made three stanzas of the thought, you see:
But now ’t is like the sea-shell that suggests,
And still associates us with the sea
In its vague song and elfland workmanship.
Yet it has lost a something that it had
There by the far sand’s foaming; something rare,
A different beauty like an element:

I wonder on what life will do
When love is loser of all love;
When life still longs to love anew
And has not love enough:--
I ’ll turn my heart into a ray,
And wait--a day?

I wonder on what love will hold
When life is weary of all life;
And life and love have both grown old
With scars of sin and strife:--
I’ll change my soul into a flower,
And wait--an hour?

I wonder on why men forget
The life that love made laugh; and why
Weak women will remember yet
The life that love made sigh:--
I’ll sing my thought into a song,
And wait--how long?

III

“And once you questioned of our mocking-bird,
And of the German nightingale, and I
Knowing a sweeter bird than those sweet two,
Made fast associates of birds and brooks
And learned their numbers. Middle April made
The path of lilac leading to your porch
A rift of fallen Paradise; a blue
So full of fragrance that the birds that built
Among the lilacs thought that God was there,
And of God’s goodness they would sing and sing,
Till every throat seemed bursting with its song,
Note on wild note, diviner each than each.
And waiting by the gate, that reached the lane,
For you, who gave sweet eloquence to all,
The afternoon, the lilacs and the spring,
My heart was singing and it sang of you:

Two glow-worms are the jewels in
Her ears; and underneath her chin
A diamond like a firefly:
There is no starlight in the sky
When Gwendolyn stands in the maze
Of woodbine, near the portico;
For all the stars are in her gaze,
The night and stars I know.

A clinging dream of mist the lawn
She wears; and like a bit of dawn
Her fan with one red jewel pinned:
Among the boughs there breathes no wind
When Gwendolyn comes down the path
Of lilacs from the portico;
For all the breeze her coming hath,
The beam and breeze I know.

Two locust-blooms her hands; and slips
Of eglantine her cheeks and lips;
Her hair, a hyacinth of gloom:
The balmy buds give no perfume
When Gwendolyn draws near to me,
The gate beyond the portico;
For all aroma sweet is she,
All fragrance that I know.

Life, love, and faith are in her face,
And in her presence all their grace:
And my religion is a word,
A wish of hers. No mocking-bird,
When Gwendolyn laughs near, dare float
One bubble from the portico;
For all of song is in her throat,
All music that I know.

IV

“The mocking-bird! and then weird fancy filled
My soul with vision, and I saw a song
Pursue a bird that was no bird--a voice
Concealed in dim expressions of the spring,--
Who sits among the forests and the fields,
With dark-blue eyes smiling to life the flowers,--
Where we strolled happy as the April hills:

A sunbeam, all the day that fell
Upon the fountain,--
Like laughter gurgling in the dell
Below the mountain,--
Drank, with its sparkle, one by one,
The water-words that, in the sun,
Made melody,--the sun-rays tell,--
That never yet was done.

A moon-ray, that had gone astray
’Mid wildwood alleys,
Where Echo haunts the forest way
Among the valleys,
The livelong night upon the rocks
Slept, hid among girl Echo’s locks,
And stole her voice,--the moonbeams say,--
That mocks and only mocks.

A shadow, that had made its seat
Amid the roses
And thorns--the bitter and the sweet
That life discloses--
Mixed with the rose-balm and the dew
And crimson thorns that pierced it through,
Until its soul,--the shades repeat,--
Was portion of them, too.

A Fairy found the beam of gold,
And ray of glitter;
The shadow, whose dim soul did hold
Both sweet and bitter;
And made a bird, that haunts the morn
And night; that flits from flower to thorn,
A voice of laughter,--it is told,--
Love, mockery, and scorn.

V

“Among the white haw-blossoms, where the creek
Droned under drifts of dogwood and of haw,
The red-bird, like a crimson blossom blown
Against the snow-white bosom of the Spring,
The chaste confusion of her lawny breast,
Sang on, prophetic of serener days,
As confident as June’s completer hours.
And I stood listening like a hind, who hears
A wood-nymph breathing in a forest flute
Among gray beech-trees of myth-haunted ways:
And when it ceased, the memory of the air
Blew like a syrinx in my brain: I made
A lyric of the notes that men might know:

He flies with flirt and fluting--
As flies a falling star
From flaming star-beds shooting shooting--
From where the roses are.

Wings past and sings; and seven
Notes, sweet as fragrance is,--
That turn to sylphs in heaven,--
Float round him full of bliss.

He sings; each burning feather
Thrills, throbbing at his throat;
A song of glow-worm weather,
And of a firefly boat:

Of Elfland and a princess
Who, born of a perfume,
His music lulls,--where winces
That rose’s cradled bloom.

No bird is half so airy,
No bird of dusk or dawn,
O masking King of Fairy!
O red-crowned Oberon.

VI

“Alas! the nightingale I never heard.
Yet I, remembering how your voice would thrill
Me with exalted expectation, felt
The passion-throated nightingale would win
Into my soul in some wild way like this,
With reminiscences of dusks long dead,
Presentiments of nights, that mate the flowers
And the prompt stars, and marry them with song.
Of such,--love whispered me when deep in dreams,--
I made my nightingale. It is a voice
Heard in the April of our year of love:

Between the stars and roses
There lies a path no man may see,
Where every breeze that blows is
A wandering melody;
Down which each bright star gazes
Upon each rose that raises
Its face up lovingly,
As if with prayers and praises.

The star and rose are wiser
Than all but love beneath the skies;
No hoard of any miser
Is rich as these are wise:
No bee may reach or rifle,
No mist may cloud or stifle
Their love that never dies,
That knows nor trick nor trifle.

There is a bird that carries
Love-messages; and comes and goes
Between each star that tarries,
And every rose that blows:
A bird that can not tire,
Whose throat ’s a throbbing lyre,
Whose song is now a rose,
And now a starry fire.

VII

“O May-time woods! O May-time lanes and hours!
And stars, that knew how often there at night
Beside the path, where woodbine odors blew
Between the drowsy eyelids of the dusk,--
When, like a great, white, pearly moth, the moon
Hung, silvering long windows of your room,--
I stood among the shrubs! The dark house slept.
I watched and waited for--I know not what--
Some tremor of your gown: a velvet leaf’s
Unfolding to caresses of the spring:
A rustle of your footsteps: or the dew
That softly rolled, a syllable of love,
In sweet avowal, from a rose’s lips
Of odorous scarlet: or the whispered word
Of something lovelier than new leaf or rose--
The word young lips half murmur in a dream:

Serene with sleep, light visions load her eyes;
And underneath her window blooms a quince.
The night is a sultana who doth rise
In slippered caution, to admit a prince,
Love, who her eunuchs and her lord defies.

Are these her dreams? or is it that the breeze
Pelts me with petals of the quince, and lifts
The Balm-of-Gilead buds? and seems to squeeze
Aroma on aroma through sweet rifts
Of Eden, dripping from the rainy trees?

Along the path the buckeye trees begin
To heap their hills of blossoms.--Oh, that they
Were Romeo ladders, whereby I might win
Her chamber’s sanctity,--where love must pray
And guard her soul!--so stainless of all sin!

There might I see the balsam scent erase
Its sweet intrusion; and the starry night
Conclude majestic pomp; the virgin grace
Of every bud abashed before the white,
Pure passion-flower of her sleeping face.

VIII

“And once, in early May, a sparrow sang
Among the garden bushes; and you asked
If the suave song stayed knocking at my heart.
I smiled some answer, and, behold, that night
Found that my heart had locked this fancy in:

Rain, rain, and a ribbon of song
Uncurled where the blossoms are sprinkled;
The song-sparrow sings, and I long
For, the silver-sweet throat, that has tinkled,
To sing in the bloom and the rain,
Sing again, and again, and again,
Under my window-pane.

Rain, rain, and the trickling tips
Of the million pink blooms of the quinces;
And I hear the song rill from the lips,
The lute-haunted lips of my princess:
O love! in the rain and the bloom,
Sing again in the pelting perfume,
Sweetheart, under my room.

Rain, rain, and the dripping of drops
From cups of the blossoms they load, or
Tilt over with tipsiest tops:
And eyes as of sun-beam and odor,
There, under the bloom-blowing tree--
A face like a flower to see,
Love is looking at me.

IX

“Once in the village I had heard a song,
A melody which I wrote down for you,
And which you sang. But, there among your hills,
The dawns and sunsets and the serious stars
Made trite its thought and words, that seemed as stale
As musty parlors of the commonplace.
I changed its words, and here and there its thought,
But, though you praised, you never sang it more,
And so I knew, like some poor poet, it
Had fallen on disfavor, God knows why,
With its high patron. Thus its metre ran:
Look, happy eyes, and let me know
The timid flower her love hath cherished
Fades not before the fruit shall show,
Seen in the clear truth of your glow
Where naught of love hath perished.

Lift, happy lips, and let me take
The sacred secret of her spirit
To mine in kisses, that shall make
Mute marriage of our souls, and wake
The heart’s sweet silence near it.

X

“And so I wrote another filled with birds,
Deliberate twilight and eve’s punctual star;
And made the music of that song obey
The metre of my own and melody:

Only to hear that you love me,
Only to feel it is true;
Stars and the gloaming above me,
I in the gloaming with you.
Staining through violet fire,
A sunset of poppy and gold,
Red as a heart with desire,
Rich with a secret untold.

Deep where the shadows are doubled,
Deep where the blossoms are long,
Listen!--deep love in the bubbled
Breath of a mocking-bird’s song.
You, who have made them the dearer,
Drawing them near from afar!--
Stars and the heaven the nearer,
Sweet, through the joy that you are.

XI

“Confronted with the certainty that I
Had no approval for my love from you,
No visible sign, but my own prompting hope’s,
Conforming with my heart’s one wild desire,
Who had not dreaded disappointment there!
The shadow of a heart’s unformed denial,
That should take form and soon confirm the doubt:
The doubt that would content itself with this:

If I might hold her by the hand,--
Her hands so full of soothing peace!--
Her heart would hear and understand
My heart’s demand,
And all her idling cease.

If she would let my eyes look in
Her eyes, whose deeps are full of truth,
Her soul might see how mine would win
Her, without sin,
In all her happy youth.

If I might kiss her mouth, and lead
The kiss up to her eyes and hair,
There is no prayer that so could plead,--
And find sure heed,--
My love’s divine despair.

XII

“And, uninstructed, smiled and wrote ‘despair,’
Enamoured, yet fearful of the shade that should
Some day come stealing through my silent door
To sit unbidden through the lonely hours.--
I cast the shudder off, and in the fields
Found hope again, and beauty born of dreams:
For it was summer, and all living things,
The common flowers and the birds and bees,
Became interpreters of love for me:

Say that he can not tell her how he loves her--
Words, for such adoration, often fail,--
When but a bow of ribbon, glove that gloves her,
Clothes her fair femininity in mail.

So many ways and wisdoms to express what
To th’ language of devotion is denied;
Ambassadors to make the maiden guess what
Before her heart’s high fortress long has sighed.

A bird to sing his secret--she’ll perpend him:
A bee to bid her soul to hear and see:
A blossom, like a sweet appeal, to bend him,
Before her there, upon a worshiping knee.

XIII

“So was my love confessed to you. I thought
You loved me as love led me to believe:
And so, no matter where I, dreaming, went
Among the hills, the woods, and quiet fields,
All had a poetry so intimate,
So happy and so ready that, for me,
’Twas but to stoop and gather as I went,
As one goes reaching roses in the June.
Three withered wild ones that I gathered then
I send you now. Their scent and bloom are dust:

1

What wild-flower shows perfection
Such as thy face, no blemish mars?
I leave to the selection
Of all the wild-flower stars:
To every wildwood bloom that blows,
Wild phlox, wild daisy, and wild rose.

What cascade hath suspicion
O’ the marvel that thy whiteness is?
I leave to the decision
Of each proclaiming breeze:
To winds that kiss the buds awake,
And roll the ripple on the lake.

What bird can sing the naming
Of all the music that thou art?
I leave to the proclaiming
Of that within my heart:
My heart, wherein, the whole day long,
Sits adoration rapt in song.

2

What witch then hast thou met,
Who wrought this amulet?
This charm, that makes each look, love,
Of thine a rose;
Thy face an open book, love,
Where beauty gleams and glows,
And thought to music set.

What fairy of the wood,
To whom thou once wast good,
Gave thee this gift?--Thy words, love,
Should be pure gold;
And all thy songs as bird’s, love,
Sweet as the Mays of old
With youth and love imbued.

What elfin of the glade
This white enchantment made,
That filled thee with the essence
Of all the Junes?
That made thy soul, thy presence,
Like to the moon’s
Above a far cascade.

What wizard of the cave
Hath made my heart thy slave?
That dreams of thee when sleeping,
And, when awake,
My anxious spirit keeping
’Neath spells I can not break,
Sweet spells, whence naught can save.

3

Dear, (though given conclusion to),
Songs,--no memory surrenders,--
Still their music breathe in you;
Silence meditation renders
Audible with notes it knew.

Sweet, when all the flowers are dead,
Perfumes,--that the heart remembers
Made of them a marriage-bed,--
Shall not fail me in December’s
Gloom, but from your face be shed.

Dear, when night denies a star,
Darkness will not suffer, seeing
Song and fragrance are not far;
Starlight of the summer being
In the loveliness you are.

XIV

“Revealing distant vistas where I thought
I saw your love stand as ’mid lily blooms,
Long, angel goblets molded out of stars,
Pouring aroma at your feet: and life
Took fire with thoughts your soul must help you read:

A song; and songs (who does not know?)
Reveal no music but is thine.
Thou singest, and the waters flow,
The breezes blow,
The sunbeams shine,
And all the earth grows young, divine.

Low laughter; and I look away;
Whate’er the time of year, I dream
I walk beneath sweet skies of May
On ways where play
Both gloom and gleam,
And hear a bird and forest stream.

A thought; and straight it seems to me,
However dark, the stars arise,
And rain down memories of thee,--
As, it may be,
From Paradise
One feels an angel-lover’s eyes.

XV

“But is it well to tell you what I felt
When I beheld no change beyond the moods
That gloomed or glistened in your raven eyes?
When I sat singing ’neath one steadfast star
Of morning with no phantoms of strange fears
To slay the look or word that helped me sing:
When song came easier than come buds in spring,
That make the barren boughs one pomp of pearls:

Oh, let the happy day go past,
And let the night be short or long,
When life and love are one at last,
And hearts are full of song,
’Tis sweet midsummer of the dream,
And all the dreams thou hast
Are truer than they seem.

And once I dreamt in autumn of
Death with cadaverous eyes that gazed
From out a shadow.... It was love
Whose deathless eyes were raised
From the deep darkness that unrolled
Wild splendor; and, amazed,
Thy soul I did behold.

And then it seemed that some one said,
The dead are nearer than dost know.
And when they tell thee love is dead,--
Although it seems ’t is so,--
Still shalt thou feel in every beat
And heart-throb of thy woe
Love breathing, bitter-sweet.

XVI

“One evening when I came to talk with you,
Impatience hurt me in your brief replies.
And I who had refused,--because we dread
Approaching horror of our lives made maimed,--
The inevitable, could not help but see
Some change in you to’ards me.--That night I dreamed
I wandered ’mid old ruins, where the snake
And scorpion crawled in poison-spotted heat;
Plague-bloated bulks of hideous vine and root
Wrapped fallen fanes; and bristling cacti bloomed
Blood-red and death-white on forgotten tombs.
And from my soul went forth a bitter cry
That pierced the silence that was packed with death
And pale presentiment. And so I went,
A white flame beckoning before my face,
And in my ears sounds of primordial seas
That boasted preadamic gods and men:
A flame before me and, beyond, a voice:
But, lo, the white flame when I reached for it
Became thin ashes like a dead man’s dust;
And when I thought I should behold the sea,
Stagnation, turned to filth and rottenness,
Rolled out a swamp: the voice became a stench.

If we should pray together now
For sunshine and for rain,
And thou shouldst get fair weather now,
And I the clouds again,
Would ray and rain keep single,
Or for the rainbow mingle?

Dear, if this should be made to me,
That I had asked for light,
And God had given shade to me,
And all to thee that’s bright,
Wouldst thou go by with scorning,
Refusing darkness morning?

If all my life were winter, love,
And all thy life were spring,
And mine with frost should splinter, love,
While thine with birds should sing,
Wouldst thou walk past and glitter,
Forgetful mine is bitter?

XVII

“Still on the anguish of a dying hope
An infant hope was nourished; all in vain.
For, at the last, although we parted friends,
The friendship lay like sickness on my soul,
That saw all gladness perish from the world
With loss of thee; and, ’mid the future years,
Love building high a sepulchre for hope.

Ah, could you learn forgetfulness,
And teach my heart how to forget;
And I unlearn all fretfulness,
And teach your soul that still will fret;
The mornings of the world would burn
Before us and we would not turn,
For we would not regret.

Did you but know what sorrow keeps,
That drives the joy of life away,
And I what each to-morrow keeps
For us until it is to-day;
No grief or change would then surprise
Our lives with what our lives were wise,
And nothing could betray.

If you could be interior to
My dreams that are all love’s desire;
And I could be superior to
Myself and such in you inspire;
Long stairways would the years unroll
To lift us upward, soul to soul,
To what celestial fire!

XVIII

“There came no words of comfort from your lips.
Not that I asked for pity! that had been
As fire unto the scalded or dry bread
Unto the famished fallen ’mid the sands!
But all your actions said that I was wrong,
But how, I know not and have ceased to care;
Still standing like one stricken blind at noon,
Who gropes and fumbles, feeling all grow strange
That once was so familiar; cursing God
Who locks him in with darkness and despair.--
Your judgment had been juster had it had
A lesser love than mine to judge.--O love,
Where lay the justice of thy judge in this?--

‘If thou hadst praised thy God as long
As thou hast praised a woman’s eyes,
Perhaps thou hadst not suffered wrong,
As now, and sat with sighs:
But, through thy prayer and praise made strong,
Perhaps thou hadst grown wise.

‘If thou hadst bade thy God be more
Than I, thy life had not been sad;
His love to thee had not been poor
As mine. But thou wast mad,
And cam’st, a beggar, to my door,
And had more than I had.

‘If thou hadst taught me how to love,
Nor played with love as monarchs play,
My heart had learned right soon enough,
From thine, love’s lowlier way.
But all thy love stood far above,
Nor touched my soul to sway.’

XIX

“Thus did you write me, or in words like these,
When all was over and your heart was led,
Through pity, haply, thus to justify
Yourself, that needed not to justify,
Since all your reason lay in four small words,
Enough to wreck my world and all my life,
_You did not love_: what more is there to tell?--
Yet, haply, it was this: One soul, that still
Demanded more than it could well return;
And, searching inward, yet could never pierce
Beyond its superficiality.
You did not know; yet I had felt in me
The rich fulfillment of a rare accord,
And could not, though the longing lay like song
And music on me, win your soul’s response.

Were it well, lifting me
Eyes that give heed,
Down in your soul to see
Thought, the affinity
Of act and deed?
Knowing what naught may tell
Of heart and soul:
Yet were the knowledge whole,
And were it well?

Were it well, giving true
Love all enough,
Still to discover new
Depths of true love for you,
Infinite love?
Feeling what naught may tell
Of heart and soul:
Yet were the knowledge whole,
And were it well?

XX

“What else but, laboring for some good, to lift
Ourselves above the despotism of self,
All egoism strangling strength and hope,
To work and work, and, in the love of work,
Which takes the place, in some, of love’s real self,
To quench the flame that eats into the heart?
Art, our intensest and our truest love,
Immaculateness that has never led
One of her lovers wrong, his love all soul!
I followed beauty, and my ardor prayed
Your memory would, feature and form and face,
Be blotted out within me; rise no more
To mar the labor that I owed to Art.
I prayed, yea, to forget you, you I loved:
I prayed; and, see!--how Heaven answered me:

I have no song to tell thee
The love that I would sing;
The song that should enspell thee
With words, and so compel thee
That thou, with love, must wing
Into my life to-morrow--
For all my songs are sorrow.

My strength is not a giant
To hold thee with strong hands,
To make thee less defiant;
Thy spirit more compliant
With all my love demands:
Alas! my love is meekness,
And all my strength is weakness.

What hope have I to hover--
When wings refuse to rise--
Within thy heart’s close cover,
And there to play the lover,
Concealed from mortal eyes?
What hope! to give me boldness,
When all thy looks are coldness?

XXI

“I prayed; and for a time felt strong as strength,
And held both hands out to the loveliness
That lured in the ideal. And I felt
Compelling power upon me that would lift
My face to heaven, now, to see the stars,
Now bend it back to earth to see the flowers.
I learned long lessons ’twixt a look and look:

Breezes and linden blooms,
Sunshine and showers;
Rain, that the May perfumes,
Cupped in the flowers:
Clouds and the leaves that patter
Raindrops that glint and glare--
Or be they gems that scatter?
Sapphires the sylphides shake,
When their loose fillets break,
Out of their radiant hair?

Now is my heart a lute!
Now doth it pinion
Song in love’s swift pursuit
In thought’s dominion!
Dreaming of all thou meanest,
Thou, with uneager eyes,
Nature! of worlds thou queenest,
Whither thy mother hand
Draws us from land to land,
Far from the worldly wise!

XXII

“Thus would I scatter grain around my life,
Gold grain of song, to lure them down to me,
Cloud-colored doves of peace to fill my soul,
And find them turn to ravens while they flew,
Black ravens of despair that would not out.
The old, dull, helpless aching at the heart,
As if some scar had turned a wound again.
While idle grief stared at the brutal past,
Which held a loss that made the past more rich
Than all Earth’s arts: that marveled how it came
Such puny folly should usurp love’s high
Proud pedestal of life that held your form,
In Parian, sculptured by the hands of thought.
And oft I shook myself,--for nightmares weighed
Each sense,--and seemed to wake; yet evermore
Beheld a death’s-head grinning at my eyes.

So when the opening of the door doth thrill
My soul with sudden knowledge death is come,
Let me forget you or remember still,
It will not matter then that life went ill,
When death bends to me and my lips are dumb.

Then I shall not remember: and shall leave
No memory behind me, and no trace
Of aught my life accomplished. Let none grieve.
There is no heart my passing will bereave;
And there are thousands who can fill my place.

Who knocks?--The night camps on each hill and heath:
And round my door are minions of the night:
And like a weapon, riven from its sheath,
The wind sweeps, and the tempest grinds its teeth
Around me and my wild, hand-hollowed light.

Who knocks?--the door is open!--And I see
The Darkness threatening, with distorted fists
Of cloudy terror, Courage on her knee:
Shine far, O candle! for it so may be
Love is bewildered in the night and mists.--

No wandering wisp art thou, that haunts the rain
With pallid flicker, fading as it flies!--
The door is open!--Will he knock again?--
The door is open!--Shall it be in vain?--
Come in! delay not! thou, whose ways are wise!

Who knocked has entered: let the darkness pass,
The door be closed!--Now morning lights shall thrust
It open; and the sunlight shine and mass
Its splendor here where once but darkness was,
And in its rays--motes and a little dust.”

* * * * *

XXIII

And I had read, read to the bitter end;
Half hearing lone surmises of the rain
And trouble of the wind. At last I rose
And went to Gwendolyn. She did not know
The kiss I gave her had a shudder in it;
Nor how the form of Julien rose between
Me and her lips, a blood-stain o’er his heart.

THE IDYLL OF THE STANDING-STONE

I

She knows its windings and its crooks;
The wildflowers of its lovely woods;
The crowfoot’s golden sisterhoods,
That crowd its sunny nooks:
The iris, whose blue blossoms seem
Mab’s bonnets; and, each leaf a-gleam,
The trillium’s fairy-books.

He knows its shallows and its pools,
Its stair-like beds of rock that go,
Foaming, with waterfall and flow,
Where dart the minnow schools;
Its grassy banks that herons haunt,
Or where the woodcock call; and gaunt
The mushrooms lift their stools.

She seeks the columbine and phlox,
The bluebell, where the bushes fill
The old stones of the ruined mill;
She wades among the rocks:
Her feet are rose-pearl in the stream;
Her eyes are bluet-blue; a beam
Lies on her nut-brown locks.

He comes with fishing-reel and line
To angle in the darker deeps,
Where the reflected forest sleeps
Of sycamore and pine:
And now and then a shadow swoops
Above him of a hawk that stoops
From skies as clear as wine.

And will he see, if they should meet,
That she is fairer than each flower
Her apron fills? and in that hour
Feel life less incomplete?...
He stops below: she walks above--
The brook floats down, as white as love,
One blossom to his feet.

And she?--should she behold the tan
Of manly face and honest eyes,
Would all her soul idealize
Him? make him more than man?...
She dropped one blossom when she heard
Soft whistling--was it man or bird,
Whose notes so sweetly ran?

Where the woodcock call Page 161

_The Idyll of the Standing-Stone_]

They knew before they came to meet;
For some divulging influence
Had touched them thro’ the starry lens
God holds to bring in beat
Two hearts--her heart one haunting wish,
And his--forgetful of the fish,
Her flower at his feet.

II

The sassafras twigs had just lit up
The yellow stars of their fragrant candles,
And the dogwood brimmed each blossom-cup
With spring to its brown-tipped handles;
When down the orchard, ’mid apple blooms--
Say, ho, the hum o’ the honey-bee!--
A glimpse of Spring in the sprinkled glooms?
Or only a girl? with the warm perfumes
Blown round her breezily.