Chapter IV

Or in the peace that follows storm, when Even,
Within the west, stands dreaming, lone and far,
Clad on with green and silver, and the Heaven
Is brightly brooched with one gold-glittering star,
I will lie down beside a mountain lake,
Round which the tall pines sigh,
And, breathing musk of rain from boughs that shake
Storm balsam, blowing by,
Make friends of Dream and Contemplation high,
And Music, listening to the mocking-bird,--
Who through the hush sends its melodious cry,--
And so forget a while that other word,
That all loved things must die.

NIGHT

Out of the East, as from an unknown shore,
Thou comest with thy children in thine arms,--
Slumber and Dream,--whom mortals so adore,--
Their flowing raiment sculptured to their charms:
Soft on thy breast thy lovely children rest,
Laid like two roses in one balmy nest.
Silent thou comest, swiftly too and slow.
There is no other presence like to thine,
When thou approachest with thy babes divine,
Thy shadowy face above them bending low,
Blowing the ringlets from their brows of snow.

Oft have I taken Sleep from thy dark arms,
And fondled her fair head, with poppies wreathed,
Within my bosom’s depths, until its storms
With her were hushed and I but faintly breathed:
And then her sister, Dream, with frolic art
Arose from rest, and in my sleeping heart
Blew bubbles of dreams where elfin worlds were lost;
Worlds where my stranger soul looked down at me,
Or walked with spirits by a rainbowed sea,
Or smiled, an unfamiliar shape of frost,
Floating on gales of breathless melody.

Day comes to us in garish glory garbed;
But thou, thou bringest to the tired heart
Rest and sweet silence, wherein are absorbed
All the vain tumults of the mind and mart.
Whether thou comest with hands full of stars,
Or clothed in storm and cloud, the lightning bars,
Rolling the thunder like a mighty dress,
God moves with thee; we seem to hear His feet,
Wind-like, along the floors of Heaven beat;
To see His face, revealed in awfulness,
Through thee, O Night, to ban us or to bless.

THE HAUNTED HOUSE

I

The shadows sit and stand about its door
Like uninvited guests and poor;
And all the long, hot summer day
The ceaseless locust dins its roundelay
In one old sycamore.
The squirrel leaves upon its rotting roof
Its wandering tracks
In empty hulls; and in its clapboard cracks
The spider weaves a windy woof,
And cells of clay the mud-wasp packs.
The she-fox whelps upon its floor;
And o’er its sun warped door
The owlet roosts; and where the mosses run,
The freckled snake basks in the sun.

II

The children of what fathers sleep
Beneath those melancholy pines?
The slow slugs slime their headstones there where creep
The doddered poison-vines.
The orchard, near the meadow deep,
Lifts up decrepit arms,
Black-lichened in a withering heap.
No sap swells up to make it leap
And shout against spring’s storms;
No blossom lulls its age asleep;
The winds bring sad alarms.
Big, bell-round pears and pippins, russet-red,
No maiden gathers now;
The worm-bored trunks weep tears of gum instead,
Oozing from each old bough.

III

The woodlands around it are solitary
And fold it like gaunt hands;
The sunlight is sad and the moonlight is dreary,
The hum of the country is lonesome and weary,
And the bees go by in bands
To gladder and lovelier lands.
The grasses are rotting in walk and in bower;
The loneliness,--dank and rank
As a chamber where lies for a lonely hour
An old-man’s corpse with many a flower,--
Is hushed and blank.
And even the birds have passed it by,
Gone with their songs to a happier sky,
A happier sky and bank.

IV

In its desolate halls are lying,
Gold, blood-red, and browned,
Drifted leaves of autumn dying;
And the winds, above them sighing,
Turn them round and round,
Make a ghostly sound
As of footsteps falling, flying,
Ghostly footsteps, faintly flying
Through the haunted house.