Chapter II

There is a pipe that plays to me
From tree to tree:
A bramble pipe an elfin holds
To golden lips in berry brakes,
And, swinging o’er the elder wolds,
A flickering music makes:--
“Come over! Come over
The new-mown clover!
Come over the fresh-cut hay!
Where, there by the berries,
With cheeks like cherries,
And locks with which the warm wind merries,
Brown girls are hilling the hay,
All day!
Come over the fields and away!--
Come over! Come over!”

HILLS OF THE WEST

Hills of the west, that gird
Forest and farm,
Home of the nesting bird,
Housing from harm,
When, on your tops, is heard
Storm.

Hills of the west, that bar
Belts of the gloam,
Under the twilight’s star,
Where the mists roam,
Take ye the wanderer
Home.

Hills of the west, that dream
Under the moon,
Making of wind and stream,
Late heard and soon,
Parts of your lives that seem
Tune.

Hills of the west, that take
Silence to ye,
Be it for sorrow’s sake
Or memory,
Part of such silence make
Me.

THE WIND OF SPRING

The wind that breathes of columbines
And celandines that crowd the rocks;
That shakes the balsam of the pines
With music from his airy locks,
Stops at my city door and knocks.

He calls me far a-forest, where
The twin-leaf and the blood-root bloom;
And, circled by the amber air,
Life sits with beauty and perfume
Weaving the new web of her loom.

He calls me where the waters run
Through fronding fern where wades the hern;
And, sparkling in the equal sun,
Song leans beside her brimming urn,
And dreams the dreams that love shall learn.

The wind has summoned, and I go:
To con God’s meaning in each line
The wildflow’rs write; and, walking slow,
God’s purpose, of which song is sign,--
The wind’s great, gusty hand in mine.

THE WILLOW BOTTOM

Lush green the grass that grows between
The willows of the bottom-land;
Edged by the careless water, tall and green
The brown-topped cat-tails stand.

The cows come gently here to browse,
Slow through the great-leafed sycamores:
You hear a dog bark from a low-roofed house
With cedars round its doors.

Then all is quiet as the wings
Of the one buzzard floating there:
Anon a woman’s high-pitched voice that sings
An old camp-meeting air.

A cock that flaps and crows; and then--
Heard drowsy through the rustling corn--
A flutter, and the cackling of a hen
Within a hay-sweet barn.

How still again! no water stirs:
No wind is heard: although the weeds
Are waved a little: and from silk-filled burrs
Drift by a few soft seeds.

So drugged with dreams the place, that you
Expect to see her gliding by,--
Hummed round of bees, through blossoms spilling dew,--
The Spirit of July.

THE RED-BIRD

Red clouds and reddest flowers,
And now two redder wings
Swim through the rosy hours;
Red wings among the flowers;
And now the red-bird sings.

God makes the red clouds ripples
Of flame that seem to split
In rubies and in dripples
Of rose where rills and ripples
The singing flame that lit.

Red clouds of sundered splendor;
God whispered one small word,
Rich, sweet, and wild and tender--
Straight, in the vibrant splendor,
The word became a bird.

He flies beneath the garnet
Of clouds that flame and float,--
When summer hears the hornet
Hum round the plum, turned garnet,--
Heaven’s music in his throat.

CLEARING

Before the wind, with rain-drowned stocks,
The pleated, crimson hollyhocks
Are bending;
And, smouldering in the breaking brown,
Above the hills that rim the town,
The day is ending.

The air is heavy with the damp;
And, one by one, each cottage lamp
Is lighted;
Infrequent passers of the street
Stroll on or stop to talk or greet,
Benighted.

I look beyond my city yard,
And watch the white moon struggling hard,
Cloud-buried;
The wind is driving toward the east,
A wreck of pearl, all cracked and creased
And serried.

At times the moon, erupting, streaks
Some long cloud, raised in mountain peaks
Of shadow,--
That, seamed with silver, vein on vein,
Grows to a far volcano chain
Of Eldorado.

The wind, that blows from out the hills,
Is like a woman’s touch that stills
A sorrow:
The moon sits high with many a star
In the deep calm: and fair and far
Abides to-morrow.

AUTUMN SORROW

Ah me! too soon the Autumn comes
Among these purple-plaintive hills!
Too soon among the forest gums
Premonitory flame she spills,
Bleak, melancholy flame that kills.

Her white fogs veil the morn, that rims
With wet the moon-flow’r’s elfin moons;
And, like exhausted starlight, dims
The last slim lily-disk; and swoons
With scents of hazy afternoons.

Her gray mists haunt the sunset skies,
And build the west’s cadaverous fire,
Where Sorrow sits with lonely eyes,
And hands that wake her ancient lyre,
Beside the ghost of dead Desire.

A DARK DAY OF SUMMER

Though Summer walks the world to-day
With corn-crowned hours for her guard,
Her thoughts have clad themselves in gray,
And wait in Autumn’s weedy yard.

And where the larkspur and the phlox
Spread carpets for her feet to pass,
She stands with sombre, dripping locks
Bound bleak with fog-washed zinnias.

Sad terra-cotta-colored flowers,
Whose disks the trickling wet has tinged
With dingy lustre, like the bowers,
Flame-flecked with leaves, the frost has singed.

She, with slow feet,--’mid gaunt gold blooms
Of marigolds her fingers twist,--
Passes, dim-swathed in Fall’s perfumes
And dreams of sullen rain and mist.

DAYS AND DAYS

The days that clothed white limbs with heat,
And rocked the red rose on their breast,
Have passed with amber-sandaled feet,
Into the ruby-gated west.

These were the days that filled the heart
With overflowing riches of
Life; in whose soul no dream shall start
But hath its origin in love.

Now come the days gray-huddled in
The haze; whose foggy footsteps drip;
Who pin beneath a gypsy chin
The frosty marigold and hip.--

The days, whose forms fall shadowy
Athwart the heart; whose misty breath
Shapes saddest sweets of memory
Out of the bitterness of death.

DROUTH IN AUTUMN

Gnarled acorn-oaks against a west
Of copper, cavernous with fire;
A wind of frost that gives no rest
To such lean leaves as haunt the brier,
And hide the cricket’s vibrant wire.

Sere, shivering shocks, and stubble blurred
With bramble-blots of dull maroon;
And creekless hills whereon no herd
Finds pasture, and whereo’er the loon
Flies, haggard as the rainless moon.

IN SUMMER

When in dry hollows, hilled with hay,
The vesper-sparrow sings afar;
And golden gray dusk dies away
Beneath the amber evening-star:
There, where a warm and shadowy arm
The woodland lays around the farm,
I’ll meet you at the tryst, the tryst!
And kiss your lips no man hath kissed!
I’ll meet you at the twilight tryst,--
With a hey and a ho!--
Sweetheart!
I’ll kiss you at the tryst!

When clover fields smell cool with dew,
And crickets cry, and roads are still;
And faint and few the fireflies strew
The dark where calls the whippoorwill;
There, in the lane, where sweet again
The petals of the wild-rose rain,
I’ll take in mine your hand, your hand!
And say the words you’ll understand!
Your soft hand nestling in my hand,--
With a hey and a ho!--
Sweetheart!
All loving hand in hand!

IN WINTER

I

When black frosts pluck the acorns down,
And in the lane the waters freeze;
And ’thwart red skies the wild-fowl flies,
And death sits grimly in the trees;
When home-lights glitter through the brown
Of dusk like shaggy eyes,--
Before the door his feet, sweetheart,
And two white arms that greet, sweetheart,
And two white arms that greet.

II

When ways are drifted with the leaves,
And winds make music in the thorns;
And lone and lost above the frost
The new-moon shows its silver horns;
When underneath the lamplit eaves
The opened door is crossed,--
A happy heart and light, sweetheart,
And lips that kiss good night, sweetheart,
And lips that kiss good night.

ON THE FARM

I

He sang a song as he sowed the field,
Sowed the field at break of day:
“When the pursed-up leaves are as lips that yield
Balm and balsam, and Spring,--concealed
In the odorous green,--is so revealed,
Halloo and oh!
Hallo for the woods and the far away!”

II

He trilled a song as he mowed the mead,
Mowed the mead as noon begun:
“When the hills are gold with the ripened seed,
As the sunset stairs of the clouds that lead
To the sky where Summer knows naught of need,
Halloo and oh!
Hallo for the hills and the harvest sun!”

III

He hummed a song as he swung the flail,
Swung the flail in the afternoon:
“When the idle fields are a wrecker’s tale,
That the Autumn tells to the twilight pale,
As the Year turns seaward a crimson sail,
Halloo and oh!
Hallo for the fields and the hunter’s-moon!”

IV

He whistled a song as he shouldered his axe,
Shouldered his axe in the evening storm:
“When the snow of the road shows the rabbit’s tracks,
And the wind is a whip that the Winter cracks,
With a herdsman’s cry, o’er the clouds black backs,
Halloo and oh!
Hallo for home and a fire to warm!”

PATHS

I

What words of mine can tell the spell
Of garden ways I know so well?--
The path that takes me, in the spring,
Past quince-trees where the bluebirds sing,
Where peonies are blossoming,
Unto a porch, wistaria-hung,
Around whose steps May-lilies blow,
A fair girl reaches down among,
Her arm more white than their sweet snow.

II

What words of mine can tell the spell
Of garden ways I know so well?--
Another path that leads me, when
The summer-time is here again,
Past hollyhocks that shame the west
When the red sun has sunk to rest;
To roses bowering a nest,
A lattice, ’neath which mignonette
And deep geraniums surge and sough,
Where, in the twilight, starless yet,
A fair girl’s eyes are stars enough.

III

What words of mine can tell the spell
Of garden ways I know so well?--
A path that takes me, when the days
Of autumn wrap the hills in haze,
Beneath the pippin-pelting tree,
’Mid flitting butterfly and bee;
Unto a door where, fiery,
The creeper climbs; and, garnet-hued,
The cock’s-comb and the dahlia flare,
And in the door, where shades intrude,
Gleams bright a fair girl’s sunbeam hair.

IV

What words of mine can tell the spell
Of garden ways I know so well?--
A path that brings me through the frost
Of winter, when the moon is tossed
In clouds; beneath great cedars, weak
With shaggy snow; past shrubs blown bleak
With shivering leaves; to eaves that leak
The tattered ice, whereunder is
A fire-flickering window-space;
And in the light, with lips to kiss,
A fair girl’s welcome-giving face.

A SONG IN SEASON

I

When in the wind the vane turns round,
And round, and round;
And in his kennel whines the hound:
When all the gable eaves are bound
With icicles of ragged gray,
A tattered gray;
There is little to do, and much to say,
And you hug your fire and pass the day
With a thought of the springtime, dearie.

II

When late at night the owlet hoots,
And hoots, and hoots;
And wild winds make of keyholes flutes:
When to the door the goodman’s boots
Stamp through the snow the light strains red,
The firelight’s red;
There is nothing to do, and all is said,
And you quaff your cider and go to bed
And dream of the summer, dearie.