Chapter II

At last, through clouds,--as from a cavern hewn
Into night’s heart,--the sun burst, angry roon;
And every cedar, with its weight of wet,
Against the sunset’s fiery splendor set,
Startled to beauty, seemed with rubies strewn:
Then in drenched gardens, like sweet phantoms met,
Dim odors rose of pink and mignonette;
And in the east a confidence, that soon
Grew to the calm assurance of the moon.

FALL

Sad-hearted Spirit of the solitudes,
Who comest through the ruin-wedded woods!
Gray-gowned in fog, gold-girdled with the gloom
Of tawny sunsets; burdened with perfume
Of rain-wet uplands, chilly with the mist;
And all the beauty of the fire-kissed
Cold forests crimsoning thy indolent way,
Odorous of death and drowsy with decay.
I think of thee as seated ’mid the showers
Of languid leaves that cover up the flowers,--
The little flower-sisterhoods, whom June
Once gave wild sweetness to, as to a tune
A singer gives her soul’s wild melody,--
Watching the squirrel store his granary.
Or, ’mid old orchards, I have pictured thee:
Thy hair’s profusion blown about thy back;
One lovely shoulder bathed with gypsy black;
Upon thy palm one nestling cheek, and sweet
The rosy russets tumbled at thy feet.

Was it a voice lamenting for the flowers?
Or heart-sick bird that sang of happier hours?
A cricket dirging days that soon must die?
Or did the ghost of Summer wander by?

SUNSET IN AUTUMN

Blood-colored oaks, that stand against a sky of gold and brass;
Gaunt slopes, on which the bleak leaves glow of brier and sassafras,
And broom-sedge strips of smoky pink and pearl-gray clumps of grass
In which, beneath the ragged sky, the rain pools gleam like glass.

From west to east, from wood to wood, along the forest-side,
The winds,--the sowers of the Lord,--with thunderous footsteps stride;
Their stormy hands rain acorns down; and mad leaves, wildly dyed,
Like tatters of their rushing cloaks, stream round them far and wide.

The frail leaf-cricket in the weeds sounds its far fairy-bell;
And like a torch of phantom ray the milkweed’s windy shell
Glimmers; while, wrapped in withered dreams, the wet, autumnal smell
Of loam and leaf, like Fall’s own ghost, steals over field and dell.

The oaks, against a copper sky--o’er which, like some black lake
Of Dis, bronze clouds, (like surges fringed with sullen fire) break--
Loom sombre as Doom’s citadel above the vales that make
A pathway to a land of mist the moon’s pale feet shall take.

Now, dyed with burning carbuncle, a limbo-litten pane,
Red in wild walls of storm, the west opens to hill and plain,
On which the wild-geese ink themselves, a far triangled train;
And then the shuttering clouds close down--and night it comes again.

CONTENT

When I behold how some pursue
Fame that is Care’s embodiment,
Or fortune, whose false face looks true,--
An humble home with sweet content
Is all I ask for me and you.

An humble home, where pigeons coo,
Whose path leads under breezy lines
Of frosty-berried cedars to
A gate, one mass of trumpet-vines,
Is all I ask for me and you.

A garden, which, all summer through,
The roses old make redolent,
And morning-glories, gay of hue,
And tansy with its homely scent,
Is all I ask for me and you.

An orchard, that the pippins strew,
From whose bruised gold the juices spring;
A vineyard, where the grapes hang blue,
Wine-big and ripe for vintaging,
Is all I ask for me and you.

A lane, that leads to some far view
Of forest or of fallow-land,
Bloomed o’er of rose and meadow-rue,
Each with a bee in its hot hand,
Is all I ask for me and you.

At morn, a pathway deep with dew,
And birds that vary time and tune;
At eve, a sunset avenue,
And whippoorwills that haunt the moon,
Is all I ask for me and you.

Dear heart, with wants so small and few,
And faith, that’s better far than gold,
A lowly friend; a child or two,
To care for us when we are old,
Is all I ask for me and you.

OCTOBER

Long hosts of sunlight, and the bright wind blows
A tourney-trumpet on the listed hill;
Past is the splendor of the royal rose
And duchess daffodil.

Crowned queen of beauty, in the garden’s space,
Strong daughter of a bitter race and bold,
A ragged beggar with a lovely face,
Reigns the sad marigold.

And I, who sought June’s butterfly for days,
Now find it--like a coreopsis bloom--
Amber and seal, rain-murdered ’neath the blaze
Of this sunflower’s plume.

Here drones the bee; and there, sky-voyaging wings
Dare the blue gulfs of heaven: the last song
The red-bird flings me as adieu, still rings
Upon that pear-tree’s prong.

No angry sunset brims with rubier red
The bowl of heaven than the days, indeed,
Pour in the blossoms of this salvia-bed
Where each leaf seems to bleed.

And where the wood-gnats dance, a little mist,
Above the efforts of the weedy stream,
The girl, October, tired of the tryst,
Dreams a diviner dream.

One foot just dipping the caressing wave,
One knee at languid angle; locks that drown
Hands nut-stained; hazel-eyed, she lies, and grave,
Watching the leaves drift down.

DISCOVERY

What is it now that I shall seek
Where woods dip downward, in the hills?--
A mossy nook, a ferny creek,
And May among the daffodils.

Or in the valley’s vistaed glow,
Past rocks of terraced trumpet-vines,
Shall I behold her coming slow,
Sweet May, among the columbines?

With red-bud cheeks and bluet eyes,
Big eyes, the homes of happiness,
To meet me with the old surprise,
Her hoiden hair all bonnetless.

Who waits for me, where, note for note,
The birds make glad the forest trees?
A dogwood blossom at her throat,
My May among th’ anemones.

As sweetheart breezes kiss the blooms,
And dewdrops drink the moon’s bright beams,
My soul shall kiss her lips’ perfumes,
And drain the magic of her dreams.

THE OLD SPRING

I

Under rocks whereon the rose
Like a strip of morning glows;
Where the azure-throated newt
Drowses on the twisted root;
And the brown bees, humming homeward,
Stop to suck the honeydew;
Fern and leaf-hid gleaming gloamward,
Drips the wildwood spring I knew,
Drips the spring my boyhood knew.

II

Myrrh and music everywhere
Haunt its cascades--like the hair
That a Naiad tosses cool,
Swimming strangely beautiful,
With white fragrance for her bosom,
And her mouth a breath of song:--
Under leaf and branch and blossom
Flows the woodland spring along,
Sparkling, singing flows along.