Chapter III

“Her Grace, the Spring! her Grace! her Grace!
Climbs, beautiful and sunny browed,
Up, up the kindling hills and wakes
Blue berries in the berry brakes:
With fragrant flakes, that blow and bleach,
Deep-powders smothered quince and peach:
Eyes dogwoods with a thousand eyes:
Teaches each sod how to be wise
With twenty wildflowers to one weed,
And kisses germs that they may seed.
In purest purple and sweet white
Treads up the happier hills of light,
Bloom-, cloudy-borne, song in her hair
And balm and beam of odorous air.
Winds, her retainers; and the rains
Her yeomen strong who sweep the plains:
Her scarlet knights of dawn, and gold
Of eve, her panoply unfold:
Her herald tabarded behold!
Awake to greet! prepare to sing!
She comes, the darling Duchess, Spring!”

QUIET

A log-hut in the solitude,
A clapboard roof to rest beneath!
This side, the shadow-haunted wood;
That side, the sunlight-haunted heath.

At daybreak Morn will come to me
In raiment of the white winds spun;
Slim in her rosy hand the key
That opes the gateway of the sun.

Her smile will help my heart enough
With love to labor all the day,
And cheer the road, whose rocks are rough,
With her smooth footprints, each a ray.

At dusk a voice will call afar,
A lone voice like the whippoorwill’s;
And, on her shimmering brow one star,
Night will descend the western hills.

She at my door till dawn will stand,
With gothic eyes, that, dark and deep,
Are mirrors of a mystic land,
Fantastic with the towns of sleep.

MUSIC

Thou, oh, thou!
Thou of the chorded shell and golden plectrum, thou
Of the dark eyes and pale pacific brow!
Music, who by the plangent waves,
Or in the echoing night of labyrinthine caves,
Or on God’s mountains, lonely as the stars,
Touchest reverberant bars
Of immemorial sorrow and amaze;--
Keeping regret and memory awake,
And all the immortal ache
Of love that leans upon the past’s sweet days
In retrospection!--now, oh, now,
Interpreter and heart-physician, thou
Who gazest on the heaven and the hell
Of life, and singest each as well,
Touch with thy all-mellifluous finger-tips
Or thy melodious lips,
This sickness named my soul,
Making it whole
As is an echo of a chord,
Or some symphonic word,
Or sweet vibrating sigh,
That deep, resurgent, still doth rise and die
On thy voluminous roll;
Part of the beauty and the mystery
That axles Earth with music; as a slave,
Swinging it round and round on each sonorous pole,
’Mid spheric harmony,
And choral majesty,
And diapasoning of wind and wave;
Speeding it on its far elliptic way
’Mid vasty anthemings of night and day.--
O cosmic cry
Of two eternities, wherein we see
The phantasms, Death and Life,
At endless strife
Above the silence of a monster grave.

A DREAM SHAPE

With moon-white hearts that held a gleam
I gathered wildflowers in a dream,
And shaped a woman, whose sweet blood
Was odor of the wildwood bud.

From dew, the starlight arrowed through,
I wrought a woman’s eyes of blue;
The lids that on her eyeballs lay
Were rose-pale petals of the May.

Out of a rosebud’s veins I drew
The fragrant crimson beating through
The languid lips of her, whose kiss
Was as a poppy’s drowsiness.

Out of the moonlight and the air
I wrought the glory of her hair,
That o’er her eyes’ blue heaven lay
Like some gold cloud o’er dawn of day.

My spirit saw her pass Page 432

_A Dream Shape_]

I took the music of the breeze
And water, whispering in the trees,
And shaped the soul that breathed below
A woman’s blossom breasts of snow.

A shadow’s shadow in the glass
Of sleep, my spirit saw her pass:
And thinking of it now, meseems
We only live within our dreams.

For in that time she was to me
More real than our reality;
More real than Earth, more real than I--
The unreal things that pass and die.

THE OLD BARN

Low, swallow-swept and gray,
Between the orchard and the spring,
All its wide windows overflowing hay,
And crannied doors a-swing,
The old barn stands to-day.

Deep in its hay the Leghorn hides
A round white nest; and, humming soft
On roof and rafter, or its log-rude sides,
Black in the sun-shot loft,
The building hornet glides.

Along its corn-crib, cautiously
As thieving fingers, skulks the rat;
Or in warped stalls of fragrant timothy,
Gnaws at some loosened slat,
Or passes shadowy.

A dream of drouth made audible
Before its door, hot, harsh, and shrill
All day the locust sings.... What other spell
Shall hold it, lazier still
Than the long day’s, now tell:--

Dusk and the cricket and the strain
Of tree-toad and of frog; and stars
That burn above the rich west’s ribbéd stain;
And dropping pasture bars,
And cowbells up the lane.

Night and the moon and katydid,
And leaf-lisp of the wind-touched boughs;
And mazy shadows that the fireflies thrid;
And sweet breath of the cows,
And the lone owl here hid.

THE WOOD WITCH

There is a woodland witch who lies
With bloom-bright limbs and beam-bright eyes,
Among the water-flags that rank
The slow brook’s heron-haunted bank.
The dragonflies, in brass and blue,
Are signs she works her sorcery through;
Weird, wizard characters she weaves
Her spells with under forest leaves,--
These wait her word, like imps, upon
The gray flag-pods; their wings, of lawn
And gauze; their bodies, gleaming green.
While o’er the wet sand,--left between
The running water and the still,--
In pansy hues and daffodil,
The fancies that she doth devise
Assume the forms of butterflies,
Rich-colored.--And ’tis she you hear,
Whose sleepy rune, hummed in the ear
Of silence, bees and beetles purr,
And the dry-droning locusts whirr;
Till, where the wood is very lone,
Vague monotone meets monotone,
And Slumber is begot and born,
A faery child beneath the thorn.
There is no mortal who may scorn
The witchery she spreads around
Her dim demesne, wherein is bound
The beauty of abandoned time,
As some sweet thought ’twixt rhyme and rhyme.
And through her spells you shall behold
The blue turn gray, the gray turn gold
Of hollow heaven; and the brown
Of twilight vistas twinkled down
With fireflies; and in the gloom
Feel the cool vowels of perfume
Slow-syllabled of weed and bloom.
But, in the night, at languid rest,--
When like a spirit’s naked breast
The moon slips from a silver mist,--
With star-bound brow, and star-wreathed wrist,
If you should see her rise and wave
You welcome--ah! what thing could save
You then? forevermore her slave!

MAY

The golden discs of the rattlesnake-weed,
That spangle the woods and dance--
No gleam of gold that the twilights hold
Is strong as their necromance:
For, under the oaks where the woodpaths lead,
The golden discs of the rattlesnake-weed
Are the May’s own utterance.

The azure stars of the bluet bloom,
That sprinkle the woodland’s trance--
No blink of blue that a cloud lets through
Is sweet as their countenance:
For, over the knolls that the woods perfume,
The azure stars of the bluet bloom
Are the light of the May’s own glance.

With her wondering words and her looks she comes,
In a sunbeam of a gown;
She needs but think and the blossoms wink,
But look, and they shower down.
By orchard ways, where the wild bee hums,
With her wondering words and her looks she comes
Like a little maid to town.

RAIN

I

Around, the stillness deepened; then the grain
Went wild with wind; and every briery lane
Was swept with dust; and then, tempestuous black,
Hillward the tempest heaved a monster back,
That on the thunder leaned as on a cane;
And on huge shoulders bore a cloudy pack,
That gullied gold from many a lightning crack:
One great drop splashed and wrinkled down the pane,
And then field, hill, and wood were lost in rain.