Chapter II: Optimist

There is never a dream but it shall come true,
And never a deed but was wrought by plan;
And life is filled with the strange and new,
And ever has been since the world began.

As mind develops and soul matures
These two shall parent Earth’s mightier acts;
Love is a fact, and ’tis love endures
‘Though the world make wreck of all other facts.

Through thought alone shall our age obtain
Above all ages gone before;
The tribes of sloth, of brawn, not brain,
Are the tribes that perish, are known no more.

Within ourselves is a voice of Awe,
And a hand that points to balanced Scales;
The one is Love, and the other, Law,
And their presence alone it is avails.

For every shadow about our way
There is a glory of moon and sun;
But the hope within us hath more of ray
Than the light of the sun and the moon made one.

Behind all being a purpose lies,
Undeviating as God hath willed;
And he alone it is who dies,
Who leaves that purpose unfulfilled.

Life is an epic the Master sings,
Whose theme is Man, and whose music, Soul,
Where each is a word in the Song of Things,
That shall roll on while the ages roll.

MEETING IN THE WOODS

Through ferns and moss the path wound to
A hollow where the touch-me-nots
Swung horns of honey filled with dew;
And where--like footprints--violets blue
And bluets made sweet sapphire blots,
’Twas there that she had passed I knew.

The grass, the very wilderness
On either side, breathed rapture of
Her passage: ’twas her hand or dress
That touched some tree--a slight caress--
That made the wood-birds sing above;
Her step that woke the flowers, I guess.

I hurried, till across my way,
Foam-footed, bounding through the wood,
A brook, like some wild child at play,
Went laughing loud its roundelay;
And there upon its bank she stood,
A sunbeam clad in forest gray.

And when she saw me, all her face
Bloomed like a wild-rose by the stream;
And to my breast a moment’s space
I gathered her; and all the place
Seemed conscious of some happy dream
Come true to add to Earth its grace:

Some union, that was Heav’n’s intent--
For which God made the world--the bliss,
The love, that raised her innocent
Young face to mine that, smiling, bent
And sealed her first words with a kiss--
As Love might close his testament.

ROSE AND RUE

Mamie Dean, ah, Mamie Dean,
Do you remember where
The willows used to screen
The water flowing fair?
The mill-stream’s banks of green
Where first our love begun,
When you were seventeen,
And I was twenty-one?

Mamie Dean, ah, Mamie Dean,
Do you remember how
From th’ old bridge we would lean--
The bridge that’s broken now--
To watch the minnows sheen
Through ripples of the Run,
When you were seventeen,
And I was twenty-one?

Mamie Dean, ah, Mamie Dean,
Do you remember, too,
The old beech-tree, between
Whose roots the windflowers grew?
Where oft we sat at E’en,
When stars were few or none,
When you were seventeen,
And I was twenty-one?

Mamie Dean, ah, Mamie Dean,
The bark is grown around
The names I cut therein,
And the true-love knot that bound;
The love-knot, clear and clean,
I carved when our love begun,
When you were seventeen,
And I was twenty-one.

Mamie Dean, ah, Mamie Dean,
The roof of the farm-house gray
Is fallen and mossy green;
Its rafters rot away:
The old path scarce is seen
Where oft our feet would run,
When you were seventeen,
And I was twenty-one.

Mamie Dean, ah, Mamie Dean,
Through each old tree and bough
The lone winds cry and keen--
The place is haunted now
With ghosts of what-has-been,
And dreams of love-long-done,
When you were seventeen,
And I was twenty-one.

Mamie Dean, ah, Mamie Dean,
There, in your world of wealth,
There, where you move a queen,
Broken in heart and health,
Does there ever rise a scene
Of days, your thought would shun,
When you were seventeen,
And I was twenty-one?

Mamie Dean, ah, Mamie Dean,
Here, ’mid the rose and rue,
Would God that your grave were green,
And I were lying, too!
Here on the hill, I mean,
Where oft we laughed in the sun,
When you were seventeen,
And I was twenty-one.

A MAID WHO DIED OLD

Frail, shrunken face, so pinched and worn,
That life has carved with care and doubt!
So weary waiting, night and morn,
For that which never came about!
Pale lamp, so utterly forlorn,
In which God’s light at last is out.

Gray hair, that lies so thin and prim
On either side the sunken brows!
And soldered eyes, so deep and dim,
No word of man could now arouse!
And hollow hands, so virgin slim,
Forever clasped in silent vows!

Poor breasts! that God designed for love,
For baby lips to kiss and press!
That never felt, yet dreamed thereof,
The human touch, the child caress--
That lie like shriveled blooms above
The heart’s long-perished happiness.

O withered body, Nature gave
For purposes of death and birth,
That never knew, and could but crave
Those things perhaps that make life worth--
Rest now, alas! within the grave,
Sad shell that served no end of Earth.

COMMUNICANTS

Who knows the things they dream, alas!
Or feel, who lie beneath the ground?
Perhaps the flowers, the leaves and grass
That close them round.

In spring the violets may spell
The moods of them we know not of;
Or lilies sweetly syllable
Their thoughts of love.

Haply, in summer, dew and scent
Of all they feel may be a part;
Each red rose be the testament
Of some rich heart.

The winds of fall be utterance,
Perhaps, of saddest things they say;
Wild leaves may word some dead romance
In some dim way.

In winter all their sleep profound
Through frost may speak to grass and stream,
Stilling them with the silent sound
Of all they dream.

THE DEAD DAY

The west builds high a sepulchre
Of cloudy granite and of gold,
Where twilight’s priestly hours inter
The day like some great king of old.

A censer, rimmed with silver fire,
The new moon swings above his tomb;
While, organ-stops of God’s own choir,
Star after star throbs in the gloom.

And night draws near, the sadly sweet--
A nun whose face is calm and fair--
And kneeling at the dead day’s feet
Her soul goes up in silent prayer.

In prayer, we feel through dewy gleam
And flowery fragrance, and--above
All Earth--the ecstasy and dream
That haunt the mystic heart of love.

ALLUREMENT

Across the world she sends me word,
From gardens fair as Falerina’s,
Now by a blossom, now a bird,
To come to her, who long has lured
With magic sweeter than Alcina’s.

I know not what her word may mean,
I know not what may mean the voices
She sends as messengers unseen,
That through the hush around me lean,
And whisper till my heart rejoices.

Soon must I go. I must away.
Must take the path that is appointed.
God grant I reach her realm some day,
Where by her love, as by a ray,
My soul shall be anointed.

AUGUST

I

Clad on with glowing beauty and the peace,
Benign, of calm maturity, she stands
Among her meadows and her orchard-lands,
And on her mellowing gardens and her trees,
Out of the ripe abundance of her hands
Bestows increase
And fruitfulness, as, wrapped in sunny ease,
Blue-eyed and blonde she goes,
Upon her bosom Summer’s richest rose.

II

And he who follows where her footsteps lead,
By hill and rock, by forest-side and stream,
May glimpse the glory of her visible dream,
In flower and fruit, in rounded nut and seed:
She, in whose path the very shadows gleam;
Whose humblest weed
Seems lovelier than June’s loveliest flower, indeed,
And sweeter to the smell
Than April’s self within a rainy dell.

III

Hers is a sumptuous simplicity
Within the fair Republic of her flowers,
Where you may see her standing hours on hours,
Breast-deep in gold, soft-holding up a bee
To her hushed ear; or sitting under bowers
Of greenery,
A butterfly a-tilt upon her knee;
Or lounging on her hip,
Dancing a cricket on her finger-tip.

IV

Ay, let me breathe hot scents that tell of you:
The hoary catnip and the meadow-mint,
On which the honor of your touch doth print
Itself as odor. Let me drink the hue
Of ironweed and mist-flower here that hint
With purple and blue,
The rapture that your presence doth imbue
Their inmost essence with,
Immortal, though as transient as a myth.

V

Yea, let me feed on sounds that still assure
Me where you hide: the brooks’, whose happy din
Tells where, the deep, retired woods within,
Disrobed, you bathe; the birds’, whose drowsy lure
Tells where you slumber, your warm, nestling chin
Soft on the pure,
Pink cushion of your palm.... What better cure
For care and memory’s ache
Than to behold you thus, and watch you wake.

THE BUSH-SPARROW

I

Ere wild-haws, looming in the glooms,
Build bolted drifts of breezy blooms;
And in the whistling hollow there
The red-bud bends, as brown and bare
As buxom Roxy’s up-stripped arm;
From some gray hickory or larch,
Sighed o’er the sodden meads of March,
The sad heart thrills and reddens warm
To hear you braving the rough storm,
Frail courier of green-gathering powers;
Rebelling sap in trees and flowers;
Love’s minister come heralding--
O sweet saint-voice among bleak bowers!
O brown-red pursuivant of Spring!

II

“Moan,” sob the woodland waters still
Down bloomless ledges of the hill;
And gray, gaunt clouds like harpies hang
In harpy heavens, and swoop and clang
Sharp beaks and talons of the wind:
Black scowl the forests, and unkind
The far fields as the near: while song
Seems murdered and all beauty wrong.
One weak frog only in the thaw
Of spawny pools wakes cold and raw,
Expires a melancholy bass
And stops as if bewildered: then
Along the frowning wood again,
Flung in the thin wind’s vulture face,
From woolly tassels of the proud,
Red-bannered maples, long and loud,
“The Spring is come! is here! her Grace! her Grace!