Chapter II

"Come follow, come follow, to caverns hollow,
That sound with the sighing sea!
Come follow me o'er the waters hoar!--
Come away, come away with me!
Come follow, oh, follow, to grottoes hollow,
And caves that are ocean-whist,
Where the sea-weeds twine and the star-fish shine,
And the rosy corals twist.

"Come follow me home on the wandering foam,
That rolls my world above!
My bosom shall bear thee safely where
The Sea-nymphs dream of love.
They will lie at thy feet and thy heart shall beat
To the music of their sighs;
They will lean to thy face and, like stars, thou shalt trace
Their radiant, love-lit eyes.

"Come away, come away! where, under the spray,
The haliötis glows,
The nautilus gleams and the sponge-grove dreams,
And the crimson dulse like sunset streams,
And the coral-forest grows.
Come away to my caves, my emerald caves,
From the moon and the sun deep hid!
Forget the world, down under the waves,--
The world of man that sighs and slaves,--
Forget the world, there under the waves,
In the arms of a Nereid!"

THE MERMAID

The moon in the east was glowing
When I sought the moaning sea;
The winds from the sea were blowing,
And they brought strange dreams to me.

The waves at my feet were breaking;
The stars in the sky were wan;
And I watched a white mist making
For the shore and glimmering on.

And was it a sound of wailing
That the sea-wind bore to me?
Did I hear a footstep trailing?
Or was it a wave of the sea?

The night hung pale above me
Upon her starry throne,
And a voice said, "Youth, come love me!
For my heart for thee makes moan."

And out of the mist came slipping
A mermaid, tall and fair;
Her limbs with sea-dew dripping,
And moonlight in her hair.

Her locks, with the salt sea dripping,
She wrung with a snowy hand;
Her gown hung, thinly clipping
Her breasts the sea-wind fanned.

Amort from the sea came speeding
This creature samite-clad;
And my heart for her was bleeding,
But its beating I forbade.

On the strand where the sand was rocking
She stood and sang an air;
And the winds in her hair kept locking
Their fingers cool and bare.

Soft in her arms did she fold me,
And evermore she moaned,
While her love and her grief she told me,
And the ocean sighed and groaned.

But I stilled my heart's wild beating,
For I knew her love was dim;
Oh, cold, oh, cold was my greeting,
Though my love burnt in each limb.

To her bosom white she pressed me
With arms of foam and mist;
With her arms and her lips caressed me,
And smiled in my eyes and kissed.

But ever I kept repeating,
"A mermaid false is she!"
And cold, oh, cold was my greeting,
Though the heart beat wild in me.

To my ears she laid her sighing
Sweet mouth, like a rosy shell;
Her arms round my neck were lying,
And her bosom rose and fell.

With her kisses soft did she woo me,
But I hushed my heart's wild beat;
With her lips and her eyes did she sue me,
But met in my own defeat.

With the cloud of her sea-dipped tresses
She veiled her beautiful face--
And, oh, how I longed for her kisses,
And sighed for her soft embrace!

But out in the mist she went wailing
When dawn besilvered the night,
Her robes of samite trailing
The foam-flowers, sad and white.

Like a spirit lost went sighing
In the twilight over the sea;
And it seemed the night was crying--
Or was it the heart in me?

Then she turned to me and, weeping,
Faded into the night;
And I saw the wild waves leaping
Under the haunted height.

I heard a far-off sobbing,
A sound of agony--
Oh, was it the ocean throbbing?
Or was it the heart in me?

But I hushed my heart's wild beating,
With "a mermaid false is she!"
While ever I kept repeating,
"Would she'd return to me!"

Oh, heart, so full of yearning
For a loveliness that's gone,
A beauty unreturning,
Be still! or break with dawn!

CHILDREN O' THE MOON

I

To-night, perhaps, after the rain is done,
Led by a moonbeam or the flickering torch
The firefly flares, amid the loneliness,
The hereditary loneliness of the trees,
I, too, may see,--as sees the star that peeps
Through interlacing boughs, the toadstools heave
Their white roofs through the ferns, like goblin huts,
An elfin town; and, squatting on their tops,
Punch-bellied things, peak-kneed, their knees up-drawn
To perpendicular eyes of glow-worm flame,
And arms akimbo i' the light o' the moon,
Watching the dew-drops tag the toadstools' rims,
Or from the mushroom roll the orbéd rain:
Or, where the tall weed drips and spunkwood smells
Make musk the underwoods, slim woodland imps,--
Snail-eyed, frog-footed,--oust the sleeping bees
From rocking cradles of the wild flowers' bells
Belfrying, with foxglove-purple, a moonbeam space.

II

On the road in the April wood,
Under the oaks I stopped and stood,
Watching the mole that stealthily heaved
The soft loose clay of its barrow:
The oaks above were auburn-leaved;
And near me bloomed the yarrow;
When down from a leaf a gray snail fell,
Its long stilt-eyes thrust out of its shell:
And I thought, "This color is worn of the fays,
Whose fashion runs to dimmish grays:
A snail-brown tunic each elfin eunuch
Wears in the harem the Elf King keeps:
And a snail-gray gown each fairy clown
Dons when the elf dance whirls and leaps
In the light of the moon on the upland down.
A snail-shell house for his ouphen spouse
Each elfin builds by the snail-white moon,
Where his fairykin love he boards and beds,
Under the dandelion's wisp-white heads,
Where ever he pipes his cricket tune."

III

The sphinx-moth, clothed in downy hues,
In woolly whites and fawns and blues,
Goes fluttering through the evening dews.

Above the nicotiana's blooms'
Narcotic horns it waves its plumes,
Made drowsy with the drugged perfumes.

It seems some Fairy Queen who goes
'Mid trumpets lifted in long rows
Of white whereon the Elfworld blows.

Attendant and triumphant strains
Of fragrance, greeting her who reigns,
Who takes the air in fairy lanes
Of flowers, that the moonlight stains.

A MOTIVE IN GOLD AND GRAY

I

To-night he sees their star bead, dewy bright,
Deep in the pansy, eve hath made for it,
Low in the west--a placid purple lit
At its far edge with warm auroral light:
Love's planet hangs above a cedared height;
And there in shadow, like gold music writ
Of dusk's dark fingers, scale-like fireflies flit
Now up, now down the balmy bars of night.
How different from that eve a year ago!
Which was a stormy flower in the hair
Of dolorous day, whose sombre eyes looked blurred
Into night's sibyl face, and saw the woe
Of parting here, and imaged a despair,
As now a hope caught from a homing word.

II

She came unto him--as the springtime does
Unto the land where all lies dead and cold,
Until her rosary of days is told
And beauty, prayer-like, blossoms where death was.--
Nature divined her coming; yea, the dusk
Seemed thinking of that happiness: behold,
No cloud it had to blot its marigold
Moon--great and golden--o'er the slopes of musk;
Whereon earth's voice made music; tree and stream
Lilting the same low lullaby again,
To coax the wind, who romped among the hills
All day--a tired child--to sleep and dream:
When through the moonlight of the locust-lane
She came, as spring comes through her daffodils.

III

White as a lily molded of Earth's milk
That eve the moon bloomed in a hyacinth sky;
Soft in the gleaming glens the wind went by,
Faint as a phantom clothed in unseen silk:
Bright as a Naiad's limbs, from shine to shade
The runnel twinkled through the shaken brier;
Above the hills one long cloud, pulsed with fire,
Flashed like a great enchantment-welded blade.
And when the western sky seemed some weird land,
And night a witch's spell, at whose command
One sloping star fell green from heav'n; and deep
The warm rose opened, for the moth to sleep;
Then she, consenting, laid her hands in his,
And lifted up her lips for their first kiss.

IV

There where they part the porch's steps are strewn
With wind-dropped petals of the purple vine;
Athwart the porch the shadow of a pine
Cleaves the white moonlight; and, like some calm rune
Heaven says to Earth, shines the majestic moon;
And now a meteor draws a lilac line
Across the welkin, as if God would sign
The perfect poem of this night of June.
The wood-wind stirs the flowering chestnut-tree,
Whose curving blossoms strew the glimmering grass
Like crescents that wind-wrinkled waters glass;
And, like a moonstone in a frill of flame,
The dewdrop trembles in the peony,
As in a lover's heart his sweetheart's name.

V

In after years shall she stand here again,
In heart regretful? and with lonely sighs
Think on that night of love, and realize
Whose was the fault whence grew the parting pain?
And, in her soul, persuading still in vain,
Shall doubt take shape, and all its old surmise
Bid darker phantoms of remorse arise
Trailing the raiment of a dead disdain?
Masks, unto whom shall her avowal yearn
With looks clairvoyant, seeing how each is
A different form with eyes and lips that burn
Into her heart with love's last look and kiss?--
And, ere they pass, shall she behold them turn
To her a face which evermore is his?

VI

In after years shall he remember how
Dawn had no breeze sweet as her murmured name?
And day no sunlight that availed the same
As her bright smile or beauty of her brow?
Nor had the conscious twilight's golds and grays
Her soul's allurement, that was free from blame,--
Nor dusk's advances, soft with starry flame,
More young bewitchment than her own sweet ways.--
Then as the night with moonlight and perfume,
And dew and darkness, qualifies the whole
Dim world with glamour, shall the past with dreams--
That were the love-theme of their lives--illume
The present with remembered hours, with gleams,
Long lost to him, that bring them soul to soul?

VII

No! not for her and him that part--the Might-
Have-Been's sad consolation! where had bent,
Haply, in prayer and patience penitent,
Both, though apart, before no blown-out light.
The otherwise of fate for them, when white
The lilacs bloom again, and, innocent,
Spring comes with beauty for her testament,
Singing the praises of the day and night.
When orchards blossom and the distant hill
Is pale with haw-trees as a ridge with mist,
The moon shall see him where a watch he keeps
By her young form that lieth white and still,
With lidded eyes and passive wrist on wrist,
While by her side he bows himself and weeps.

VIII

What pain for him to see the blooms appear
Of haw and dogwood in the spring again;
The primrose dragging with its weight of rain,
And hill-sloped orchards swarming far and near.
To see the old fields, that her steps made dear,
Grow green with deepening plenty of the grain,
Yet feel how this excess of life is vain,--
How vain to him!--since she no more is here.
What though the woodland bourgeon, water flow,
Like a rejoicing harp, beneath the boughs!
The cat-bird and the oriole arouse
Day with the impulsive music of their love!
Beneath the graveyard sod she will not know,
Nor what his heart is all too conscious of!

IX

How bless'd is he who, gazing in the tomb,
Can yet behold beneath the investing mask
Of mockery,--whose horror seems to ask
Sphinx-riddles of the soul within the gloom,--
Upon dead lips no dust of Love's dead bloom;
And in dead hands no shards of Faith's rent flask;
But Hope, who still stands at her starry task,
Weaving the web of promise on her loom!
Thrice bless'd! who, 'though he hear the tomb proclaim
How all is Death's and Life Death's other name,
Can yet reply: "O Grave, these things are yours!
But that is left which life indeed assures--
Love, through whose touch I shall arise the same!
Love, of whose self was wrought the universe!"

INTIMATIONS

I

Is it uneasy moonlight,
On the restless field, that stirs?
Or wild white meadow-blossoms
The night-wind bends and blurs?

Is it the dolorous water,
That sobs in the wood and sighs?
Or heart of an ancient oak-tree,
That breaks and, sighing, dies?

The wind is vague with the shadows
That wander in No-Man's-Land;
The water is dark with the voices
That weep on the Unknown's strand.

O ghosts of the winds that call me!
O ghosts of the whispering waves!
Sad as forgotten flowers
That die upon nameless graves!

What is this thing you tell me
In tongues of a twilight race,
Of death, with the vanished features,
Mantled, of my own face?

II

The old enigmas of the deathless dawns,
And riddles of the all immortal eves,--
That still o'er Delphic lawns
Speak as the gods spoke through oracular leaves--
I read with new-born eyes,
Remembering how, a slave,
They buried me, a living sacrifice,
Once in a dead king's grave.

Or, crowned with hyacinth and helichrys,
How, towards the altar in the marble gloom,--
Hearing the magadis
Dirge through the pale amaracine perfume,--
'Mid chanting priests I trod,
With never a sigh or pause,
To give my life to pacify a god,
And save my country's cause.

Again: Cyrenian roses on wild hair,
And oil and purple smeared on breasts and cheeks,
How, with mad torches there,--
Reddening the cedars of Cithæron's peaks,--
With gesture and fierce glance,
Lascivious Mænad bands
Once drew and slew me in the Pyrrhic dance
With Bacchanalian hands.

III

The music now that lays
Dim lips against my ears,
Some far-off thing it says,--
Unto my soul,--of years
Long passed into the haze
Of tears.

Meseems before me are
The dark eyes of a queen,
A queen of Istakhar:
I seem to see her lean
More lovely than a star
Of mien.

A slave, I stand before
Her jeweled throne; I kneel,
And, in a song, once more
My love for her reveal;
How once I did adore
I feel.

Again her dark eyes gleam;
Again her red lips smile;
And in her face the beam
Of love that knows no guile;
And so she seems to dream
A while.

Out of her deep hair then
A rose she takes--and I
Am made a god 'mid men!
Her rose, that here did lie
When I, in th' wild-beasts' den,
Did die.

IV

Old paintings on its wainscots,
And, in its oaken hall,
Old arras; and the twilight
Of sorrow over all.

Old grandeur on its stairways;
And in its haunted rooms
Old souvenirs of greatness,
And ghosts of dead perfumes.

The winds are phantom voices
Around its carven doors;
The moonbeams, specter footsteps
Upon its polished floors.

Old cedars build around it
A solitude of sighs;
And the old hours pass through it
With immemorial eyes.

But more than this I know not;
Nor where the house may be;
Nor what its ancient secret
And ancient grief to me.

It seems my soul remembers,--
Of which this house is part,--
Once, in a former lifetime,
'Twas here I broke my heart.

V

In eons of the senses,
My spirit knew of yore,
I found the Isle of Circe
And felt her magic lore;
And still the soul remembers
What I was once before.

She gave me flowers to smell of
That wizard branches bore,
Of weird and wondrous beauty,
Whose stems dripped human gore--
Their scent when I remember
I know that world once more.

She gave me fruits to eat of
That grew beside the shore,
Of necromantic ripeness,
With human flesh at core--
Their taste when I remember
I know that life once more.

And then, behold! a serpent,
That glides my face before,
With eyes of tears and fire
That glare me o'er and o'er--
I look into its eyeballs,
And know myself once more.