Chapter IV

Where is she? ah, where is she?
She to whom both love and duty
Bind me, yea, immortally.--
Where is she? ah, where is she?
Symbol of the Earth-soul’s beauty.
I have lost her. Help my heart
Find her! her, who is a part
Of the pagan soul of me!

BEFORE THE RAIN

Before the rain, low in the obscure east,
Weak and morose the moon hung, sickly gray;
Around its disc the storm mists, cracked and creased,
Wove an enormous web, wherein it lay
Like some white spider hungry for its prey.
Vindictive looked the scowling firmament,
In which each star, that flashed a dagger ray,
Seemed filled with malice of some dark intent.

The marsh-frog croaked; and underneath the stone
The peevish cricket raised a creaking cry.
Within the world these sounds were heard alone,
Save when the ruffian wind swept from the sky,
Making each tree like some sad spirit sigh;
Or shook the clumsy beetle from its weed,
That, in the drowsy darkness, bungling by,
Sharded the silence with its feverish speed.

Slowly the tempest gathered. Hours passed
Before was heard the thunder’s sullen drum
Rumbling night’s hollow; and the Earth at last,
Restless with waiting,--like a woman, dumb
With doubting of the love that should have clomb
Her casement hours ago,--avowed again,
’Mid protestations, joy that he had come.
And all night long I heard the Heavens explain.

AFTER RAIN

Behold the blossom-bosomed Day again,
With all the star-white Hours in her train,
Laughs out of pearl-lights through a golden ray,
That, leaning on the woodland wildness, blends
A sprinkled amber with the showers that lay
Their oblong emeralds on the leafy ends.
Behold her bend with maiden-braided brows
Above the wildflower, sidewise with its strain
Of dewy happiness, to kiss again
Each drop to death; or, under rainy boughs,
With fingers, fragrant as the woodland rain,
Gather the sparkles from the sycamore,
To set within the core
Of crimson roses girdling her hips,
Where each bud dreams and drips.

Smoothing her blue-black hair,--where many a tusk
Of iris flashes,--like the falchions keen
Of Faery round blue banners of their Queen,--
Is it a Naiad singing in the dusk,
That haunts the spring, where all the moss is musk
With footsteps of the flowers on the banks?
Or but a wild-bird voluble with thanks?

Balm for each blade of grass: the Hours prepare
A festival each weed’s invited to.
Each bee is drunken with the honied air:
And all the heaven is eloquent with blue.
The wet hay glitters, and the harvester
Tinkles his scythe,--as twinkling as the dew,--
That shall not spare
Blossom or brier in its sweeping path;
And, ere it cut one swath,
Rings them they die, and tells them to prepare.

What is the spice that haunts each glen and glade?
A Dryad’s lips, who slumbers in the shade?
A Faun, who lets the heavy ivy-wreath
Slip to his thigh as, reaching up, he pulls
The chestnut blossoms in whole bosomfuls?
A sylvan Spirit, whose sweet mouth doth breathe
Her viewless presence near us, unafraid?
Or troops of ghosts of blooms, that whitely wade
The brook? whose wisdom knows no other song
But that the bird sings where it builds beneath
The wild-rose and sits singing all day long.

Oh, let me sit with silence for a space,
A little while forgetting that fierce part
Of man that struggles in the toiling mart;
Where God can look into my heart’s own heart
From unsoiled heights made amiable with grace;
And where the sermons that the old oaks keep
Can steal into me.--And what better then
Than, turning to the moss a quiet face,
To fall asleep? a little while to sleep
And dream of wiser worlds and wiser men.

SUNSET CLOUDS

Low clouds, the lightning veins and cleaves,
Torn from the wilderness of storm,
Sweep westward like enormous leaves
O’er field and farm.

And in the west, on burning skies,
Their wrath is quenched, their hate is hushed,
And deep their drifted thunder lies
With splendor flushed.

The black turns gray, the gray turns gold;
And sea’d in deeps of radiant rose,
Summits of fire, manifold,
They now repose.

What dreams they bring! what thoughts reveal!
That have their source in loveliness,
Through which the doubts I often feel
Grow less and less.

Through which I see that other night,
That cloud called Death, transformed of Love
To flame, and pointing with its light
To life above.

RICHES

What mines the morning heavens unfold!
What far Alaskas of the skies!
That, veined with elemental gold,
Sierra on Sierra rise.

Heap up the gold of all the world,
The ore that makes men fools and slaves:
What is it to the gold, cloud-curled,
That rivers through the sunset’s caves.

Search Earth for riches all who will,
The gold that soils, that turns to dust--
Mine be the wealth no thief can steal,
The gold of Beauty naught can rust.

THE AGE OF GOLD

The clouds that tower in storm, that beat
Arterial thunder in their veins;
The wildflowers lifting, shyly sweet,
Their perfect faces from the plains,--
All high, all lowly things of Earth
For no vague end have had their birth.

Low strips of mist, that mesh the moon
Above the foaming waterfall;
And mountains that God’s hand hath hewn,
And forests where the great winds call,--
Within the grasp of such as see
Are parts of a conspiracy;

To seize the soul with beauty; hold
The heart with love: and thus fulfill
Within ourselves the Age of Gold,
That never died, and never will,--
As long as one true nature feels
The wonders that the world reveals.

A SONG FOR LABOR

I

Oh, the morning meads, the dewy meads,
Where he ploughs and harrows and sows the seeds,
Singing a song of manly deeds,
In the blossoming springtime weather:
The heart in his bosom as high as the word
Said to the sky by the mating bird,
While the beat of an answering heart is heard,
His heart and hers together.

II

Oh, the noonday heights, the sunlit heights,
Where he stoops to the harvest his keen scythe smites,
Singing a song of the work that requites,
In the ripening summer weather:
The soul in his body as light as the sigh
Of the little cloud-breeze that cools the sky,
While he hears an answering soul reply,
His soul and hers together.