Chapter XII

Across the hills, that roll and rise
Beneath the blue, adoring skies,
Maturing Beauty by the old,
Dark forest stands, as might a slave
Before a Sultan sitting grave,
Grim-gazing from a throne of gold.

Across the hills, that rise and fall,
I gaze with eyes grown spiritual,
And see the Spirit of the Dew
From out the morn, that stains the mist
With amber and with amethyst,
Blown, bubble-bright, along the blue.

What king such kingly pomp can show
As on the hills the afterglow?
Where ’mid red woods the maples sit,
Like scarlet-mantled sagamores,
Who, from their totemed wigwam doors,
Watch, through red fires, the ghost-dance flit.

At night, as comes the fox, shall come
The Spirit of the Frost, whose thumb
Shall squeeze the chestnut burs, and press
Each husk bare; whisper every flower
Such tales of death that in an hour
It dies of utter happiness.

Until the moon sets I shall walk,
And listen how the woodlands talk
Of bygone lovely nights and days:
My soul, made silent intimate
Of all their sorrow, soon and late
A portion of the autumn haze.

XIII

What revelations fill with song
The cycles? and to what belong
Life’s far convictions of the light?
Through which the spirit waxeth strong,
The darkling soul surmounts the night,
By builded rainbows, to some height
Near mountain stars of Truth and Right,
Beyond the vulture-wing of Wrong?--

To Nature! who adjusts the deeps
Of her soul’s needs to man’s; and keeps
Such grave response as grief shall hear
When on her heart it sinks and weeps;
For every gladness, clean and clear
Its glad reflection lying near--
The wild accord of hope and fear
Which in her inmost bosom sleeps.

XIV

The mallow, like an Elfland moon,
Along the stream gleams grottoed gold;
Its bell-shaped blossom seems to hold
All the lost beauty of last June.
September’s mist haunts, white and cold,
The windings of the forest stream,
As death might haunt a thought or dream.

And who with idle words hath stood,
With idle thoughts, and gazed into
The face of one he loved and knew,
Dying in all her womanhood?
No words, but silence, then will do,
No thoughts but help the heart to hear:
So seems it with the fading year.

XV

The snowy flutter of a hand
Seems beckoning in the morning mist,
And from the mist a jewelled wrist
Of dew now waves us a command:
And in the skies, behold! the Land
Of Far-away-beyond-the-dawn,
Where, crowned with roses wild and wan,
The Futures of the World speed on.

Along the eve a fiery arm
Now points us to the waning west,
And all the sorrow, that oppressed
Our hearts once, straight becomes a charm
Of beauty, whose dim spells transform
The Present to the Long-ago,
All grief to joy,--or seeming so,--
We see through thaumaturgic glow.

XVI

Pearl-lilac blent with pearly rose,
The dawn bloomed slowly out of dusk,--
As some huge cactus from its husk
Bursts vast a bloom whose chalice glows
A grotto of transmuted dyes;--
Such wild, auroral light as flows
On ice-peaks from unearthly skies.

Dove-purple shifting into shades
Of opal,--like the tints which dwell
With fire in the ocean-shell,--
The sunset flashed above the glades
Through skies of nacre and of flame;--
Such supernatural light as braids
Dim coral caves, that have no name.

XVII

Draw from thine eyes the veil that hides
Ideal visions; beckonings
Of loveliness, whose soul abides
Beneath the commonplace of things:
No brook within the woodland then
But shows its sparkling god to thee;
Upon the ancient hills no tree
Whose whispering spirit thou shalt not see,
Fairer than children born of men.
Refine thy flesh that never hears
The inner music of all things,--
The deaf flesh,--from thy spirit’s ears,
And list the vaster voice that sings
With pregnant lips unto the Earth:
Mornings, who hymn with gold the sky,
To which the eves with gold reply--
The everlasting heavens that cry
The visible psalms of death and birth.

XVIII

The flowers of the fall I seek:
The purple aster,--like a gauze
Of pearl,--beneath the nodding haws
Or making gay each tangled creek:
The hairy, small herb-Robert, lost,--
Yet seen,--among the weeds which crush
Or crowd it, with its bluish blush;
Its rough, low stalk stung red with frost.

Around the rail-fence, climbing up,
The nightshade hangs rich berries down,--
Clusters of cochineal,--that drown
The flowering bind-weed’s pendant cup:
And where the boggy bottom sets
Its burs as breastworks and as tents,
Like bivouacking regiments,
The cat-tails stack their bayonets.

From amaranth--in tree and flower--
To asphodel-in weed and bloom--
The season swings a magic loom
Of sun and mist from hour to hour:
In its wide warp it weaves the dyes
Of morning’s brilliant blue and gray;
And crimson through the weft of day
Flings the wild woof of evening skies.

XIX

What intimations made them wise,
The mournful pine, the mighty beech?
Some strange and esoteric speech--
(Communicated from the skies
In secret whispers)--that invokes
The boles that sleep within the seeds,
And out of narrow darkness leads
The vast assemblies of the oaks.

Within his knowledge, what one reads
The poems written by the flowers?
The sermons, past all speech that’s ours,
Preached in the gospel of the weeds?--
O eloquence of coloring!
O thoughts of syllabled perfume!
O beauty uttered into bloom!
Teach me your dreams so I may sing!

XX

What time the great lobelia fills
The wildwood with the blue of spring--
And asters, scattered o’er the hills,
Bloom, starry-sown, through everything--
My fancy takes me wandering,
My fancy, clothed in daffodils.

In lavender lights, which sleep among
The ferns, my heart is at a loss
To find the love that leads along
Down magic ways of tufted moss--
Now, like the brook, it calls across,
Now, like a bird, it lures with song.

It leads me to the land which lies
Within a world no man can see;
Wherein the Elfland cities rise,
Faint haunts of musk and melody;
That with the butterfly and bee
And congregated flowers are wise.

XXI

Upon the Earth what hints are rife,
Of life when change hath left us still!
When death within us doth fulfil
Its end, whose part is one with life!
What hints, which tell us not alone
Immortal is the spirit, for
Flesh too,--corruption can but mar,--
The incorruptible puts on.

The blood but fills a part that’s higher
Of color, and pervades all flowers;
The brain informs the twinkling hours
With dreams of resurrected fire;
The heart performs the function of
A fragrance; and the countenance
Lends new expression to, perchance,
The face of beauty that we love.