Chapter IV

Wassail! wassail! when snow and hail
Make white the lands where Winter stands;
When wild winds from the forests flail
The last dead leaves, and, in the gale,
The trees wring hands in ghostly bands:
When snow and hail make white the lands,
Wassail! wassail! oh, let us trail,
My heart and I, where love commands.

REVEALMENT

A sense of sadness in the golden air,
A pensiveness, that has no part in care,
As if the Season, by some woodland pool,
Braiding the early blossoms in her hair,
Seeing her loveliness reflected there,
Had sighed to find herself so beautiful.

A breathlessness, a feeling as of fear,
Holy and dim, as of a mystery near,
As if the World, about us, listening went,
With lifted finger and hand-hollowed ear,
Harkening a music, that we can not hear,
Haunting the quickening earth and firmament.

A prescience of the soul that has no name,
Expectancy that is both wild and tame,
As if the Earth, from out its azure ring
Of heavens, looked to see, as white as flame,--
As Perseus once to chained Andromeda came,--
The swift, divine revealment of the Spring.

A YELLOW ROSE

The old gate clicks, and down the walk,
Between clove-pink and hollyhock,
Still young of face though gray of lock,
Among her garden’s flowers she goes,
At evening’s close,
Deep in her hair a yellow rose.

The old house shows one gable-peak
Above its trees; and sage and leek
Blend with the flowers’ their scent: the creek,
Leaf-hidden, past the garden flows,
That on it snows
Pale petals of the yellow rose.

The crickets pipe in dewy damps;
And everywhere the fireflies’ lamps
Flame like the lights of fairy camps;
While, overhead, the soft sky shows
One star that glows,
As, in gray locks, a yellow rose.

There is one spot she seeks for where
The roses make a fragrant lair,
A spot where once he kissed her hair,
And told his love, as each one knows,
Each flower that blows,
And pledged it with a yellow rose.

The years have turned her dark hair gray
Since that far time: and still, they say,
She keeps the tryst as on that day;
And through the garden softly goes,
At evening’s close,
Wearing for him that yellow rose.

WHIPPOORWILL TIME

I

Let down the bars; drive in the cows:
The west is barred with burning rose.
Unhitch the horses from the ploughs,
And from the cart the ox that lows,
And light the lamp within the house:--
The whippoorwill is calling,
“Whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will,”
Where the locust blooms are falling
On the hill;
The sunset’s rose is dying,
And the whippoorwill is crying,
“Whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will;”
Soft, now shrill,
The whippoorwill is crying,
“Whip-poor-will.”

II

Unloose the watch-dog from his chain:
The first stars wink their drowsy eyes:

A sheep-bell tinkles in the lane,
And where the shadow deepest lies
A lamp makes bright the kitchen pane:--
The whippoorwill is calling,
“Whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will,”
Where the berry-blooms are falling
On the rill;
The first faint stars are springing,
And the whippoorwill is singing,
“Whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will;”
Softly still
The whippoorwill is singing,
“Whip-poor-will.”

III

The cows are milked: the cattle fed:
The last far streaks of evening fade:
The farm-hand whistles in the shed,
And in the house the table’s laid,
Its lamp streams on the garden-bed:--
The whippoorwill is calling,
“Whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will,”
Where the dogwood blooms are falling
On the hill:
The afterglow is waning,
And the whippoorwill’s complaining,
“Whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will;”
Wild and shrill,
The whippoorwill’s complaining,
“Whip-poor-will.”

IV

The moon blooms out, a great white rose;
The stars wheel onward towards the west;
The barnyard-cock wakes once and crows;
The farm is wrapped in peaceful rest;
The cricket chirrs; the firefly glows:--
The whippoorwill is calling,
“Whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will,”
Where the bramble-blooms are falling
On the rill;
The moon her watch is keeping,
And the whippoorwill is weeping,
“Whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will:”
Lonely still,
The whippoorwill is weeping,
“Whip-poor-will.”

NOVEMBER

I

_Morning_

Deep in her broom-sedge, burrs, and ironweeds,
Her frost-slain asters and dead mallow-moons,
Where gray the wilding clematis balloons
The brake with puff-balls: where the slow stream leads
Her slower steps; decked with the scarlet beads,
Of hip and haw; through dolorous maroons
And desolate golds, she goes; the wailing tunes
Of all the winds about her like wild reeds.
The red wrought-iron hues that flush the green
Of blackberry briers, and the bronze that stains
The oak’s sere leaves, are in her cheeks: the gray
Of forest pools, thin-clocked with ice, is keen
In her cold eyes; and in her hair, the rain’s
Chill silver shimmers like a moonlight ray.

II

_Noon_

Lost in the sleepy grays and drowsy browns
Of woodlands, smoky with the autumn haze,
Where dull the last, leafed maples, smouldering, blaze
Like ghosts of sachem fires, the month uncrowns
Her frosty hair; and where the forest drowns
The road in darkness, in the rutted ways,
Filled full of freezing rain, her robe she lays
Of tattered gold, and seats herself and frowns.
And at her frown each wood and bosky hill
Shudders with prescience of approaching storm,
Her soul’s familiar fiend, who, with wild broom
Of wind and rain, works her resistless will,
Sweeping the world, and driving with fierce arm
The clouds, like leaves, through the tumultuous gloom.

III

_Evening_

The shivering wind sits in the oaks, whose limbs,
Twisted and tortured, nevermore are still;
Grief and decay sit with it; they, whose chill
Autumnal touch makes hectic red the rims
Of all the oak-leaves; desolating, dims
The ageratum’s blue that banks the rill;
And splits the milkweed’s pod upon the hill,
And shakes it free of the last seed that swims.
Down goes the day despondent to its close:
And now the sunset’s hands of copper build
A tower of brass, behind whose burning bars,
The Day, in fierce, barbarian repose,
Like some imprisoned Inca sits, hate-filled,
Crowned with the gold corymbus of the stars.