Chapter III

Still the wet wan mornings touch
Its gray rocks, perhaps; and such
Slender stars as dusk may have
Pierce the rose that roofs its wave;
Still the thrush may call at noontide
And the whippoorwill at night;
Nevermore, by sun or moontide,
Shall I see it gliding white,
Falling, flowing, wild and white.

THE FOREST SPRING

Push back the brambles, berry-blue;
The hollowed spring is full in view:
Deep-tangled with luxuriant fern
Ripples its rock-embedded urn.

Not for the loneliness that keeps
The coigne wherein its crystal sleeps;
Not for wild butterflies that sway
Their pansy pinions all the day
Above its mirror; nor the bee,
Nor dragon-fly, that, passing, see
Themselves reflected in its spar;
Not for the one white liquid star
That twinkles in its firmament;
Nor moon-shot clouds, so slowly sent
Athwart it when the kindly night
Beads its long grasses with the light
Small jewels of the dimpled dew:
Not for the day’s inverted blue,
Nor the quaint, dimly colored stones
That dance within it where it moans;
Not for all these I love to sit
In silence and to gaze in it.
But, lo! a nymph with merry eyes
Greets mine within its laughing skies;
A glimmering, shimmering nymph who plays
All the long fragrant summer days
With instant sights of bees and birds,
And talks with them in water-words;
And for whose nakedness the air
Weaves moony mists; and on whose hair,
Unfilleted, the night will set
That lone star as a coronet.

THE HILLS

There is no joy of earth that thrills
My bosom like the far-off hills!
Th’ unchanging hills, that, shadowy,
Beckon our mutability
To follow and to gaze upon
Foundations of the dusk and dawn.
Meseems the very heavens are massed
Upon their shoulders, vague and vast
With all the skyey burden of
The winds and clouds and stars above.
Lo, how they sit before us, seeing
The laws that give all Beauty being!
Behold! to them, when dawn draws near,
The nomads of the air appear,
Unfolding crimson camps of day
In brilliant bands; then march away;
And under burning battlements
Of evening plant their tinted tents.
The truth of olden myths, that brood
By haunted stream and haunted wood,
They see; and feel the happiness
Of old at which we only guess:
The dreams, the ancients loved and knew,
Still as their rocks and trees are true:
Not otherwise than presences
The tempest and the calm to these:
One, shouting on them all the night,
Black-limbed and veined with lambent light:
The other, with the ministry
Of all soft things that company
With music--whose embodied form
Fills all the solitude with charm
Of leaves and waters and the peace
Of bird-begotten melodies--
And who at night doth still confer
With the mild moon, that telleth her
Pale tale of lonely love, until
Wan shadows of her passion fill
The heights with shapes that glimmer by
Clad on with sleep and memory.

THE SONG OF THE THRUSH

Overhead, overhead a wood thrush flutes,
And it seems to me
All the sweet words in the world,
Married to melody, could not express
What its few, wild notes,
Inspired, and simple, and free, express,
Say to me
Of expectation and woodland mystery,
Dreams, and wonder-visions never appearing,
Remote and unattainably beautiful--
O indescribable song!
Song of the wild brown thrush!
O June! O love! O youth!
Of you, of you it speaks to me!
Of the lost, the irremediable,
The indescribably fair and far and yet to be found;
The mysteriously hidden, too:
The lure of the undiscoverable calling, calling,
Bidding me on and on,
In the voice of all my longings,
Down the dim, the deep, the cadenced aisles of the forest.

TRANSMUTATION

To me all beauty that I see
Is melody made visible:
An earth-translated state, may be,
Of music heard in Heaven or Hell.

Out of some love-impassioned strain
Of saints, the rose evolved its bloom;
And, dreaming of it here again,
Perhaps relives it as perfume.

Out of some chant, that demons sing
Of hate and pain, the sunset grew;
And, haply, still remembering,
Relives it here as some wild hue.

FROST

Magician he, who, autumn nights,
Down from the starry darkness whirls;
Heav’n’s harlequin, whose spangled tights
And wand are powdered thick with pearls.

Through him each pane presents a scene,
A Lilliputian landscape, where
The world is white instead of green,
And trees and houses hang in air.

Where Elfins gambol and delight,
And bow the jewelled bells of flowers;
Where upside-down we see the night
With many moons and meteor showers.

And surely in his wand and hand
Lies Midas magic, for, behold,
Some morn we wake and find the land,
Both field and forest, turned to gold.

ADVENTURERS

Seemingly over the hilltops,
Possibly under the hills,
A tireless wing that never drops,
And a song that never stills.

Epics heard on the stars’ lips?
Lyrics read in the dew?--
To sing the song at our finger-tips,
And live the world anew!

Cavaliers of the Cortés kind,
Bold and free and strong,--
And, oh, for a fine and muscular mind
To sing a New-World’s song!

Sailing seas of the silver morn,
Blown of its balm and spice,
To put the Old-World art to scorn
At the price of any price!

Danger, death, but the hope high!
God’s, though the purpose fail!--
Into the deeds of a vaster sky
Sailing a dauntless sail.

INVOCATION

I

O Life! O Death; O God!
Have we not striven?
Have we not known Thee, God,
As Thy stars know Heaven?
Have we not held Thee true,
True as Thy deepest,
Sweet and immaculate blue
Heaven whence rains Thy dew!
Have we not _known_ Thee true,
O God who keepest!

II

O God, our Father, God!--
Who gav’st us fire,
To rise above the sod,
To soar, aspire--
What though we strive and strive,
And all our soul says “live”?
Will not the scorn of men,
Like some wild bird, again
Falcon it down with sneers,
As often in past years?
And, O sun-centered high,
Thou, too, who ’rt Poet,
Beneath Thy seeing sky
Each day new Keatses die,
Crying, “Why should we try!
That which we seek ’s a lie!”--
Why is this so?--O why?--
Thou who dost know it!

III

We know Thee beautiful,
We know Thee bitter!
Help Thou!--Men’s eyes are dull,
O God most beautiful!
Make Thou their souls less full
Of things mere glitter.
Dost Thou not see our tears?
Dost Thou not hear the years
Treading our hearts to shards,
O Lord of all the Lords?--
Give heed, O God of Hosts,
There ’mid Thy glorious ghosts,
Most high and holy!
Have mercy on our tears!
Have mercy on our years!
Our strivings and our fears,
O Lord of lordly peers,
On us, so lowly!