Chapter IV: Night

There is a booming in the forest boughs;
Tremendous feet seem trampling through the trees:
The storm is at his wildman revelries,
And earth and heaven echo his carouse.
Night reels with tumult; and, from out her house
Of cloud, the moon looks,--like a face one sees
In nightmare,--hurrying, with pale eyes that freeze,
Stooping above with white, malignant brows.
The isolated oak upon the hill,
That seemed, at sunset, in terrific lands
A Titan head black in a sea of blood,
Now seems a monster harp, whose wild strings thrill
To the vast fingering of innumerable hands--
Spirits of tempest and of solitude.

HALLOWMAS

All hushed of glee,
The last chill bee
Clings wearily
To the dying aster:
The leaves drop faster:
And all around, red as disaster,
The forest crimsons with tree on tree.

A butterfly,
The last to die,
Droops heavily by,
Weighed down with torpor:
The air grows sharper:
And the wind in the trees, like some sad harper,
Sits and sorrows with sigh on sigh.

The far crows call;
The acorns fall;
And over all
The Autumn raises
Dun mists and hazes,
Through which her soul, it seemeth, gazes
On ghosts and dreams in carnival.

The end is near:
The dying Year
Leans low to hear
Her own heart breaking,
And Beauty taking
Her flight, and all her dreams forsaking
Her soul, bowed down ’mid the sad and sere.

AUBADE

Awake! the Dawn is on the hills! Behold, at her cool throat a rose, Blue-eyed and beautiful she goes, Leaving her steps in daffodils.-- Awake! arise! and let me see Thine eyes, whose deeps epitomize All dawns that were or are to be, O love, all Heaven in thine eyes!-- Awake! arise! come down to me!

Behold! the Dawn is up: behold! How all the birds around her float, Wild rills of music, note on note, Spilling the air with mellow gold.-- Arise! awake! and, drawing near, Let me but hear thee and rejoice! Thou, who bear’st captive, sweet and clear, All song, O love, within thy voice! Arise! awake! and let me hear!

See, where she comes, with limbs of day, The Dawn! with wild-rose hands and feet, Within whose veins the sunbeams beat, And laughters meet of wind and ray. Arise! come down! and, heart to heart, Love, let me clasp in thee all these— The sunbeam, of which thou art part, And all the rapture of the breeze!— Arise! come down! loved that thou art!

WOMAN’S LOVE

Sweet lies! the sweetest ever heard,
To her he said:
Her heart remembers every word
Now he is dead.
I ask:--“If thus his lies can make
Your young heart grieve for his false sake,
Had he been true what had you done,
For true love’s sake?"--
“Upon his grave there in the sun,
Avoided now of all--but one,
I’d lay my heart with all its ache,
And let it break, and let it break.”

And falsehood! fairer ne’er was seen
Than he put on:
Her heart recalls each look and mien
Now he is gone.
I ask:--“If thus his treachery
Can hold your heart with lie on lie,
What had you done for manly love,
Love without lie?"--
“There in the grass that grows above
His grave, where all could know thereof,
I’d lay me down without a sigh,
And gladly die, and gladly die.”

AT MOONRISE

Pale faces looked up at me, up from the earth, like flowers.
Pale hands reached down to me, out of the dusk, like stars,
As over the hills, robed on with twilight, the Hours,
The Day’s last Hours departed, and the Night put up her bars.

Pale fingers beckoned me on, pale fingers, like starlit mist;
Dim voices called to me, dim as the wind’s dim rune,
As up from the trees, like a Nymph from the amethyst
Of her waters, as silver as foam, rose the round, white
breast of the moon.

And I followed the pearly waving and beckon of hands,
The luring glitter and dancing glimmer of feet,
And the sibilant whisper of silence, that summoned to lands
Remoter than legend or faery, where Myth and Tradition meet.

And I came to a place where the shadow of ancient Night
Brooded o’er ruins, far wilder than castles of dreams,
Fantastic, a mansion of phantoms, where, wandering white,
I met with a shadowy presence whose voice I had followed it seems.

And the ivy waved in the wind and the moonlight laid,
Like a ghostly benediction, a finger wan
On the face of the one from whose eyes the darkness rayed,
The presence I knew for one I had known in the years long gone.

And she looked in my face and kissed me on brow and on cheek,
Murmured my name and wistfully smiled in my eyes;
And the tears welled up in my heart that was wild and weak,
And my bosom seemed bursting with yearning and my soul with sighs.

And there ’mid the ruins we sat.--Oh, strange were the
words that she said!
Distant and dim and strange:--and hollow the looks that she gave:--
And I knew her then for a joy, a joy that was dead,
A hope, a beautiful hope, that my youth had laid in its grave.

THE LAMP AT THE WINDOW

Like some gaunt ghost the tempest wails
Outside my door; its icy nails
Beat on my pane. And night and storm
Around the house, with furious flails
Of wind, from which the slant sleet hails,
Stalk up and down; or, arm in arm,
Stand giant guard; the wild-beast lair
Of their fierce bosoms black and bare....
My lamp is lit. I have no fear.
Through night and storm my love draws near.

Now through the forest how they go,
With whirlwind hoofs, and maned with snow,
The beasts of tempest! winter herds,
That lift huge heads of mist and low
Like oxen; beasts of air, that blow
Ice from their nostrils; winged like birds,
And bullock-breasted, onward hurled,
That shake with tumult all the world....
My lamp is set where love can see,
Who through the tempest comes to me.

I press my face against the pane,
And seem to see, from wood and plain,
In phantom thousands, stormy pale,
The ghosts of forests, tempest-slain,
Vast wraiths of woodlands, rise and strain
And rock wild limbs against the gale;
Or, borne in fragments overhead,
Sow night with horror and with dread....
He comes! My light is as an arm
To guide him onward through the storm.

I hear the tempest from the sky
Cry, eagle-like, its battle-cry;
I hear the night, upon the peaks,
Send back its condor-like reply;
And then again come booming by
The forest’s challenge, hoarse as speaks
Hate unto hate, or wrath to wrath,
When each draws sword and sweeps the path.--
But let them rage! through darkness far
My bright light leads him like a star.

The cliffs, with all their plumes of pines,
Bow down high heads: the battle-lines
Of all the hills, that iron seams,
Shudder through all their rocky spines:
And under shields of matted vines
The vales crouch down: and all the streams
Are hushed and frozen as with fear
As from the deeps the winds draw near....
But let them come! my lamp is lit!
Nor shall their fury flutter it.

Now round and round, with stride on stride,
In Boreal armor, tempest-dyed,
I hear the thunder of their strokes--
The heavens are rocked on every side
With all their clouds; and far and wide
The earth roars back with all its oaks....
Still at the pane burns bright my light
To guide him onward through the night,
To lead love through the night and storm
Where my young heart will make him warm.

ACHIEVEMENT

He held himself splendidly forward
Both early and late;
The aim of his purpose was starward,
To master his fate.
So he wrought and he toiled and he waited,
Till he rose o’er the hordes that he hated,
And stood on the heights, as was fated,
Made one of the great.

Then, lo! on the top of the mountain,
With walls that were wide,
A city! from which, like a fountain,
Rose voices that cried:--
“He comes! Let us forth now to meet him!
Both mummer and priest let us greet him!
In the city he built let us seat him
On the throne of his pride!”

Then out of the city he builded,
Of shadows it seems,
From gates that his fancy had gilded
With thought’s brightest beams,
Strange mimes and chimeras came trooping,
With moping and mowing and stooping--
And he saw with a heart that was drooping,
That these were his dreams.

He entered; and, lo! as he entered,
They murmured his name;
And led him where, burningly centered,
An altar of flame
Made lurid a temple,--erected
Of self,--where a form he detected--
The love that his life had rejected ...
And this was his fame!

MYSTERIES

Soft and silken and silvery brown,
In shoes of lichen and leafy gown,
Little blue butterflies fluttering around her,
Deep in the forest, afar from town,
There, where a stream was trickling down,
I met with Silence, who wove a crown
Of sleep whose mystery bound her.

I gazed in her eyes, that were mossy green
As the rain that pools in the hollow between
The twisted roots of a tree that towers;
And I saw the things that none has seen,--
That mean far more than facts may mean,--
The dreams, that are true, of an age that has been,
That God has thought into flowers.

I gazed at her lips, that were dewy gray
As the mist that clings, at the close of day,
To the wet hillside when the winds cease blowing:
And I heard the things that none may say,--
That are holier far than the prayers we pray,--
The murmured music God breathes alway
Through the hearts of all things growing.

Soft and subtle and vapory white,
In shoes of shadow and gown of light,
Crimson poppies asleep around her,
Far in the forest, beneath a height,
I came on Slumber, who wove from night
A wreath of silence, that, darkly bright,
With its mystic beauty crowned her.

I looked in her face, that was pale and still
As the moon that rises above the hill
Where the pines loom sombre as sorrow:
And the things that all have known and will,
I knew for a moment--the myths that fill
And people the past of the soul and thrill
Its hope with a far to-morrow.

I heard her voice, that was strange with pain
As a wind that whispers of wreck and rain
To the leaves of the autumn rustling lonely:
And I felt the things that are felt in vain
By all--the longings that haunt the brain
Of man, that come and depart again
And are part of his dreamings only.

A SONG OF THE SNOW

I

Roaring winds that rocked the crow,
High in his eyrie,
All night long, and to and fro
Swung the cedar and drove the snow
Out of the North, have ceased to blow,
And dawn breaks fiery.

Sing, Ho, a song of the winter dawn,
When the air is still and the clouds are gone,
And the snow lies deep on hill and lawn,
And the old clock ticks, “’Tis time! ’tis time!”
And the household rises with many a yawn--
Sing, Ho, a song of the winter dawn!
Sing, Ho!

II

Deep in the East a rosy glow
Broadens and brightens,
Glints through the icicles, row on row,
Flames on the panes of the farm-house low,
And over the miles of drifted snow
Silently whitens.

Sing, Ho, a song of the winter sky,
When the last star closes its icy eye,
And deep in the road the snow drifts lie,
And the old clock ticks, “’Tis late! ’tis late!”
And the flame on the hearth leaps red, leaps high--
Sing, Ho, a song of the winter sky!
Sing, Ho!

III

Into the heav’n the sun comes slow,
All red and frowsy:
Out of the shed the muffled low
Of the cattle comes; the rooster’s crow
Sounds strangely distant beneath the snow
And dull and drowsy.

Sing, Ho, a song of the winter morn,
When the snow makes ghostly the wayside thorn,
And hills of pearl are the shocks of corn,
And the old clock ticks, “Tick-tock, tick-tock;”
And the goodman bustles about the barn--
Sing, Ho, a song of the winter morn!
Sing, Ho!