Chapter VI

I did not dream to see the soulless eyes
Of _you_ I hated; nor the lips where lies
And kisses curled: _your_ features,--that were tuned
To all demonic,--smiling up as might
Some deep damnation! while ... my God! I swooned!...
Oozed slowly out, between the breasts' dead white,
The ghastly red of that wide dagger-wound.

THE LEGEND OF THE STONE

The year was dying, and the day
Was almost dead;
The west, beneath a sombre gray,
Was sombre red:
The gravestones in the ghostly light,
That glimmered there,
Seemed phantoms, wandering wan and white,
'Mid trees half bare.

I stood beside the grave of one
Who, here in life,
Was false to me; who had undone
My child and wife:
I stood beside his grave until
The moon came up--
It seemed the dark, unhallowed hill
Lifted a cup.

No stone was there to mark his grave,
No flower to grace--
'Twas meet that weeds alone should wave
In such a place:
I stood beside his grave until
The stars swam high,
And all the night was iron-still
From sky to sky.

What cared I though strange eyes glowed bright
Within the gloom!
Though, evil blue, a witch's-light
Burnt by each tomb!
Or that each crooked thorn-tree seemed
A hag, black-cloaked!
Or that the owl above me screamed,
The raven croaked!

I cursed him: cursed him when the day
Burnt sullen red;
Had cursed him when the west was gray,
And day was dead:
And now when night made dark the pole,
Both soon and late
I cursed his body, yea, and soul,
With th' hate of hate.

Once at my side I seemed to hear
A low voice say,--
"'Twere better to forgive,--and fear
Thy God,--and pray."
I laughed; and from pale lips of stone
On sculptured tombs
Wild laughter leapt, and then a moan
Swept through the glooms.

And then I felt a change--a force,
That seemed to seize
My body, like some fearful curse,
And, fastening, freeze
It downward, deeper than the knees,
Into the earth--
While still among the twisted trees
Rang mocking mirth.

And then I felt such fear, despair,
As lost ones feel,
When, knotted in their pitch-stiff hair,
They feel the steel
Of devils' forks lift up, through sleet
Of Hell's slant fire,
Then plunge,--as white from head to feet
I grew entire.

A voice without me, yet within,
As still as frost,
Intoned: "Thy sin is more than sin,
O damned and lost!
Behold, how God would punish thee
For this thy crime--
Thy crime of hate and blasphemy--
Through endless time!

"O'er him, whom thou wouldst not forgive,
Record what good
He did on Earth! and let him live
Loved, understood!
Be memory thine of all the worst
He did thine own!"...
There at the head of him I cursed
I stood--a stone.

THE RUINED MILL

On the wild South Fork of Harrod's Creek,
O'ergrown with creepers, if you should seek,
You will find an ancient water-mill
Of stone below a wooded hill.
Its weedy wheel is not less still
Than its image that sleeps in the grassy pool
Where the moccasin swims; and, slimly cool
Like streaks of light through blurs of sun,
The silver minnows and crawfish run.
So lone the place, in its sycamore
The blue crane builds; and from the shore
The shitepoke wanders about its door.
The burdock sprawls on its sill of pine;
And, in its pathway, eglantine
And blackberry tangle and intertwine;
Ox-daisies checker with pearl and gold
The bushy banks of its mill-race old;
The owl in its loft as safely lairs
As the fox in its cellar, that whelps and cares
Naught for the hunters who gallop by
With their baying hounds; the martins fly
Around its chimney and build therein;
And wasp and hornet, with murmurous din,
Plaster their nests, that none disturb,
On window-lintel and hopper-curb.

Once I stood in this old, stone mill,
Once as the day died over the hill,
And night came on; and stark and still
I met with phantoms upon its stairs;
Shadows, that took me unawares,
Eyed with fire and cowled with gloom--
Twilight phantoms, that crowded, dark,
Its dim interior, each eye a spark
Of sunset, creviced, within the room--
While a moist, chill, moldering, dead perfume
Of crumbling timbers and rotting grain,
On floors all warped with the sun and rain,
Made of the stagnant air a cell,
Round the cobwebbed rafters hung like a spell;
Making my mind, despite me, run
On thoughts of a hidden skeleton,
There in the walls; or, dripping dank,
Under the floor, 'neath a certain plank;
Glowering, grim in the mossy wet,
In its hollow eyes a dark regret.
I had entered when the evening-star
In the saffron heaven was sparkling afar,
In all its glory of light divine,
Like a diamond drowned in kingly wine;
And I stayed till the heavens hung low and gray,
And the clouds of the storm drove down and away,
Like the tattered leaves of an Autumn day;
And the wild rain beat on the rotting roof
The goblin dance of the Fiend's own hoof,
Till the spider dropped from its dusty woof;
And the thunder throbbed like a mighty heart;
And the wild wind filled each crannied part
Of the mill with moanings, that seemed to be
The voice of an ancient agony--
Till the beetle shrunk in its board of pine;--
While the lightning lit with its instant shine
The tossing terror of tree and vine ...
Then, all on a sudden, the storm was still--
And I saw _her_ there, near the shattered sill,
At the window, gazing from the mill
Into the darkness under the storm;
Around her flickering hair and form
Unearthly glimmer. She seemed to lean
To the rushing waters that roared unseen:
A moment only she seemed to sway
Before me there in the lightning gray,
Then vanished utterly away:
Like a blown-out light....

And was it she,
The miller's daughter who died, they say,
Who flung herself on the mill's great wheel,
Long years ago, in her heart's despair?--
Or was it a dream, a fantasy,
That the place and the moment made me feel,
And imagination imaged there?

ON FLOYD'S FORK

When the hoot of the owl comes over the hill,
At twelve o'clock when the night is still,
And pale on the pool where the creek-frogs croon,
Glimmering gray is the light o' the moon;
And under the willows, where shadows lie,
The torch of the firefly wanders by;--
They say that the miller walks here, walks here,
All covered with chaff, with his crooked staff,
And his horrible hobble and hideous laugh;
The old, lame miller hung many a year:
When the hoot of the owl comes over the hill,
He walks in the night by Harrod's mill.

When the bark of the fox sounds lone on the hill,
At twelve o'clock when the night is chill
With the autumn wind, and the waters creep
Where the starlight fails and the shadows sleep;
And under the willows, that toss and moan,
The glow-worm kindles its lanthorn lone;--
They say that a woman floats dead, floats dead,
In a weedy space that the lilies lace,
A curse in her eyes and a smile on her face;
The miller's young wife with a gash in her head:
When the bark of the fox sounds lone on the hill,
She floats in the night by Harrod's mill.

When the howl of the hound comes over the hill,
At twelve o'clock when the night is ill,
And the thunder mutters and rain-winds sob,
And the foxfire glows like the lamp of a Lob;
And under the willows, that gloom and glance,
The will-o'-the-wisps hold a devil's-dance;--
They say that that crime is reacted again.
And each cranny and chink of the mill doth wink
With the light o' hell, or the lightning's blink,
And a woman's shrieks are heard through the rain:
When the howl of the hound comes over the hill,
No man will walk by Harrod's mill.

THE WOMAN BY THE WATER

She stands within the stormy glow
Of sunset, with a face of snow,
The white embodiment of woe,
As night comes on:

She stands within the sombre glare
Of dusk, with dark neglected hair,
An apparition of despair,
When day is gone.

The haggard house within the vale
Looks spectral as a ragged sail
The Dutchman hoists against the gale
On haunted seas:

And in the garden,--one vast brake
Of dock and thistle,--snail and snake
Crawl; and the death-watch taps, awake
In rotting trees.

The stagnant stream along the night
Creeps, like a nightmare, where each white
Lily is an uneasy light,
A wisp up-tossed:

And through the cypress-trees and vines
The gray fox skulks and laps and whines;
The owl hoots; and the foxfire shines
In darkness lost.

She stands beside the stagnant stream;
Her garments drip at every seam;
She looks a shadow in a dream
Of dread and woe:

No star stares half so steadily
At earth as at the water she;
And what she sees there--it may be
The owlets know.

A STREET OF GHOSTS

The drowsy day, with half-closed eyes,
Dreams in this quaint forgotten street,
That, like some old-world wreckage lies,--
Left by the sea's receding beat,--
Far from the city's restless feet.

Abandoned pavements, that the trees'
Huge roots have wrecked; whose flagstones feel
No more the sweep of draperies;
And sunken curbs, whereon no wheel
Grinds, and no gallant's spur-bound heel.

Old houses, walled with rotting brick,
Thick-creepered, dormered, weather-vaned,--
Like withered faces, sad and sick,--
Stare from each side, all broken paned,
With battered doors the rain has stained.

And though the day be white with heat,
Their ancient yards are dim and cold;
Where now the toad makes its retreat,
'Mid flower-pots green-caked with mold,
And naught but noisome weeds unfold.

The slow gray slug and snail have trailed
Their slimy silver up and down
The beds where once the moss-rose veiled
Rich beauty; and the mushroom brown
Swells where the lily tossed its crown.

The shadowy scents, that oft are wont
To flit among the walks and boughs,
Seem ghosts of sweethearts here who haunt
And wander round each empty house,
Wrapped in the fragrance of dead vows.

And, haply, when the evening droops
Her amber eyelids in the west,
Here you may hear the swish of hoops,
Or catch the glint of hat and vest,
As two dim lovers past you pressed.

And, instant as some star's slant flame,
That scores the swarthy cheek of night,
Perhaps behold Colonial dame
And gentleman in stately white
Go glimmering down the pale moonlight.

In powder, patch, and furbelow,
Cocked hat and sword; and every one,--
Tory and Whig of long-ago,--
As real as in the days long done,
The courtly days of Washington.

BEFORE THE TOMB

The way led under cedared gloom
Where, o'er the entrance of her tomb,
The moon hung, like a cactus bloom.

I had an hour of night and thin
Sad starlight; and I set my chin
Against the grating and looked in.

A gleam, like moonlight, through a square
Of opening--I knew not where--
Shone on her coffin resting there.

And on its oval silver-plate
I read her name and age and date,
And smiled, soft-thinking on my hate.

There was no insect sound to chirr;
No wind to make a little stir:
I stood and looked and thought on her.

The gleam stole downward from her head,
Till at her feet it rested, red
On Gothic gold, whose letters said:--

"God to her love lent a weak reed
Of strength: and gave no light to lead:
Pray for her soul: for it hath need."

There was no night-bird's twitter near;
No low, vague water I might hear
To make a small sound in the ear.

The gleam, that made a burning mark
Of each dim word, died to a spark;
Then left the tomb and coffin dark.

I had a little while to wait;
And prayed with hands against the grate,
And heart that yearned and knew too late.

There was no light below, above,
To point my soul the way thereof,--
The way of hate that led to love.

FLAMENCINE

I

It was a gipsy maiden
Within the forest green;
It was a gipsy maiden
Who shook a tambourine:
The star of eve had not the face,
The cascade's foam had not the grace
Of Flamencine.

II

Her bodice was of purple,
Her shoes of satin sheen;
Her bodice was of purple
With scarlet laid between:
The wind of eve was in the tread,
The black of night was on the head
Of Flamencine.

III

Among the dreaming vistas,
The darkling dells between,
Among the dreaming vistas
I heard her tambourine:
And far within the ghostly glade
The moonbeams and the shadows played
Round Flamencine.

IV

Among the beechen shadows
When fireflies are seen,
Among the beechen shadows
When glow-worms glimmer green,
Then down the darkness, like a light,
She dances; and the eyes are bright
Of Flamencine.

V

There lies a gipsy maiden
Within the forest green;
There lies a gipsy maiden
Beside her tambourine:
These many years I am her slave--
The violets grow upon the grave
Of Flamencine.

HILDEGARD

I

Hildegard the dæmons name
Her, who meets me on the mountain:
Her, whose hair is like the flame
Of a sunset-fevered fountain:
I can tell her by her eyes,
Dreadful eyes of bitter beryl,
Where the anguish never dies,
And the suffering soul sits sterile
In such light as ever lies
On the unsailed seas of peril.

II

How we met I never knew.
Once I turned--and there she trembled
Near me, glimmering like the dew
In the sessions of assembled
Flowers.--Hers some influence
Of soft, serpent magnetism,
Vanquishing my every sense
With essential mesmerism;
Holding me beneath the lens
Of her will's compelling prism.

III

I can not escape. She treads
Noiseless as the forest flowers
Walked on by the wind; their heads
Pavements for the mottled hours:
She is whiter than the trees
When their blossoms are unsheathing;
She is lissome as the ease
Of the lilied water wreathing;
She is subtle as the breeze
Through the summer foliage breathing.

IV

When she speaks, within my ears,
Like wild music heard in fever
Is her voice; and it appears
That my soul can never leave her:
Babylonian necromance,
Oldest witcheries,--that harrow
Yet compel,--are hers; her glance
Holds me; and my very marrow
Feels it; and I stand a-trance,
While her pupils slowly narrow.

V

Thus she binds me with her gaze,
While her white hands weigh my shoulders;
And my weak will swings and sways
To her gaze that burns and smolders.
So she draws me far away,
Under boughs where summer dallies:
Over peaks of purple day:
Far away through Eden alleys:
All the way is one long May
Till we come to her dark valleys.