Chapter III

Years of care can not efface
Visions of the hills and trees
Closing in its dam and race;
Nor the mile-long memories
Of the mill-stream’s lovely place.

How the sunsets used to stain
Mirrors of the waters lying
Under eaves made dark with rain!
Where the red-bird, westward flying,
Lit to try its song again.

Dingles, hills and woods, and springs,
Where we came in calm and storm,
Swinging in the grapevine swings,
Wading where the rocks were warm,
With our fishing-nets and strings.

Here the road plunged down the hill,
Under ash and chinquapin,--
Where the grasshoppers would drill
Ears of silence with their din,--
To the willow-girdled mill.

There the path beyond the ford
Takes the woodside; just below
Shallows that the lilies sword,
Where the scarlet blossoms blow
Of the trumpet-vine and gourd.

Summer winds, that sink with heat,
On the pelted waters winnow
Moony petals that repeat
Crescents, where the startled minnow
Beats a glittering retreat.

Summer winds that bear the scent
Of the ironweed and mint,
Weary with sweet freight and spent,
On the deeper pools imprint
Stumbling steps, whose ripples dent.

Summer winds, that split the husk
Of the peach and nectarine,
Trail along the amber dusk
Hazy skirts of gold and green,
Spilling balms of dew and musk.

Where with balls of bursting juice
Summer sees the red wild-plum
Strew the gravel; ripened loose,
Autumn hears the pawpaw drum
Plumpness on the rocks that bruise:

There we found the water-beech,
One forgotten August noon,
With a hornet-nest in reach,--
Like a fairyland balloon,
Full of bustling fairy speech.

Some invasion, sure, it was;
For we heard the captains scold;
Waspish cavalry a-buzz,--
Troopers uniformed in gold,
Sable-slashed,--to charge on us.

Could I find the sedgy angle,
Where the dragon-flies would turn
Slender flittings into spangle
On the sunlight? or would burn--
Where the berries made a tangle--

Sparkling green and brassy blue;
Rendezvousing, by the stream,
Bands of elf-banditti, who,
Brigands of the bloom and beam,
Drunken were with honey-dew.

Could I find the pond that lay
Where vermilion blossoms showered
Fragrance down the daisied way?
That the sassafras embowered
With the spice of early May?

Could I find it--should I seek--
The old mill? Its weather-beaten
Wheel and gable by the creek?
With its warping roof; worm-eaten,
Dusty rafters worn and weak.

Where old shadows haunt old places,
Loft and hopper, stair and bin;
Ghostly with the dust that laces
Webs that usher phantoms in,
Wistful with remembered faces.

While the frogs’ grave litanies
Drowse in far-off antiphone,
Supplicating, till the eyes
Of dead friendships, long alone
In the dusky corners,--rise.

Moonbeams? or the twinkling tip
Of a star? or, in the darkling
Twilight, fireflies? there that dip--
As if Night a myriad sparkling
Jewels from her hands let slip.

Where, I dream, my youth still crosses,
With a corn-sack for the meal,
Through the sprinkled ferns and mosses,
To the gray mill’s lichened wheel,
Where the water drips and tosses.

ENCHANTMENT

The deep seclusion of this forest path,--
O’er which the green boughs weave a canopy;
Along which bluet and anemone
Spread a dim carpet; where the Twilight hath
Her dark abode; and, sweet as aftermath,
Wood-fragrance roams,--has so enchanted me,
That yonder blossoming bramble seems to be
Some Sylvan resting, rosy from her bath:
Has so enspelled me with tradition’s dreams,
That every foam-white stream that, twinkling, flows,
And every bird that flutters wings of tan,
Or warbles hidden, to my fancy seems
A Naiad dancing to a Faun who blows
Wild woodland music on the pipes of Pan.

IN THE FOREST

One well might deem, among these miles of woods,
Such were the Forests of the Holy Grail,--
Brocéliand and Dean: where, clothed in mail,
The Knights of Arthur rode, and all the broods
Of legend laired.--And, where no sound intrudes
Upon the ear, except the glimmering wail
Of some far bird; or, in some flowery swale,
A brook that murmurs to the solitudes,
Might think he hears the laugh of Vivien
Blent with the moan of Merlin, muttering bound
By his own magic to one stony spot:
And, in the cloud that looms above the glen,--
In which the sun burns like the Table Round,--
Might dream he sees the towers of Camelot.

CAN SUCH THINGS BE

Meseemed that while she played, while lightly yet
Her fingers fell, as roses bloom by bloom,
I listened--dead within a mighty room
Of some old palace where great casements let
Gaunt moonlight in, that glimpsed a parapet
Of statued marble: in the arrased gloom
Majestic pictures towered, dim as doom,
The dreams of Titian and of Tintoret.
And then, it seemed, along a corridor,
A mile of oak, a stricken footstep came,
Hurrying, yet slow.... I thought long centuries
Passed ere she entered--she, I loved of yore,
For whom I died, who wildly wailed my name
And bent and kissed me on the mouth and eyes.

KNIGHT-ERRANT

Onward he gallops through enchanted gloom.--
The phantoms of the forest, dark and dim,
And shadows of vast death environ him--
Onward he spurs victorious over doom.
Before his eyes that love’s far fires illume--
Where courage sits, impregnable and grim--
The form and features of _her_ beauty swim,
Beckoning him on with looks that fears consume.
The thought of her distress, her lips to kiss,
Mails him in triple might; and so at last
To Lust’s huge keep he comes; its giant wall,
Wild-towering, frowning from the precipice:
And through its gate, borne like a bugle-blast,
O’er night and hell he thunders to his all.

THE ARTIST

In story books, when I was very young,
I knew her first, one of the Fairy Race;
And then it was her picture took its place,
Framed round with love’s deep gold, and draped and hung
High in my heart’s red room: no song was sung,
No tale of passion told, I did not grace
With her associated form and face,
And intimated charm of touch and tongue.
As years went on she grew to more and more,
Until each thing, symbolic to my heart
Of beauty,--such as honor, truth, and fame,--
Within the studio of my soul’s thought wore
Her lineaments, whom I, with all my art,
Strove to embody and to give a name.

POETRY AND PHILOSOPHY

Out of the past the dim leaves spake to me
The thoughts of Pindar with a voice so sweet
Hyblæan bees seemed swarming my retreat
Around the reedy well of Poesy.
I closed the book. Then, knee to neighbor knee,
Sat with the soul of Plato, to repeat
Doctrines, till mine seemed some Socratic seat
High on the summit of Philosophy.
Around the wave of one Religion taught
Her first rude children. From the stars that burned
Above the mountained ether, Science learned
The first vague lessons of the work she wrought.
Daughters of God, in whom we still behold
The Age of Iron and the Age of Gold.

“QUO VADIS”

It is as if imperial trumpets broke
Again the silence on War’s iron height;
And Cæsar’s armored legions marched to fight,
While Rome, blood-red upon her mountain-yoke,
Blazed like an awful sunset. At a stroke,
Again I see the living torches light
The horrible revels, and the bloated, white,
Bayed brow of Nero smiling through the smoke:
And here and there a little band of slaves
Among dark ruins; and the form of Paul,
Bearded and gaunt, expounding still the Word:
And towards the North the tottering architraves
Of empire; and, wild-waving over all,
The flaming figure of a Gothic sword.

TO A CRITIC

R. H. S.

Song hath a catalogue of lovely things
Thy kind hath oft defiled,--whose spite misleads
The world too often!--where the poet reads,
As in a fable, of old envyings,
Crows, such as thou, which hush the bird that sings,
Or kill it with their cawings: thorns and weeds,
Such as thyself, ’midst which the wind sows seeds
Of flow’rs, these crush before one blossom swings.
But here and there the wisdom of a School
Unknown to these hath often written down
“Fame” in white ink the future hath turned brown;
When every beauty, heaped with ridicule,
In their ignoble prose, proved their renown,
Making each famous--as an ass or fool.

QUATRAINS

I

_Poetry_

Who hath beheld the goddess face to face,
Blind with her beauty, all his days shall go
Climbing lone mountains towards her temple’s place,
Weighed with Song’s sweet, inexorable woe.

II

_The Unimaginative_

Each form of beauty’s but the new disguise
Of thoughts more beautiful than forms can be;
Sceptics, who search with unanointed eyes,
Never the Earth’s wild Fairy-dance shall see.

III

_Music_

God-born before the Sons of God, she hurled,
With awful symphonies of flood and fire,
God’s name on rocking chaos--world by world
Flamed as the universe rolled from her lyre.

IV

_The Three Elements_

They come as couriers of Heaven: their feet
Sonorous-sandaled with majestic awe;
In raiment of swift foam and wind and heat,
Blowing the trumpets of God’s wrath and law.

V

_Rome_

Above the Circus of the World she sat,
Beautiful and base, a harlot crowned with pride:
Fierce Nations, upon whom she sneered and spat,
Shrieked at her feet and for her pastime died.