Chapter IV

Now to their tasks the farm-hands go,
Cheerily, cheerily:
With ears a-tingle and cheeks a-glow,
She with her pail and he with his hoe,
To milk the cows and to path the snow,
Merrily, merrily.

Sing, Ho, a song of the winter day,
When ermine-capped are the stacks of hay,
And the wood-smoke pillars the air with gray,
And the old clock ticks, “To work! to work!”
And the goodwife sings as she churns away--
Sing, Ho, a song of the winter day!
Sing, Ho!

THE WOOD WATER

An evil, stealthy water, dark as hate,
Sunk from the light of day,
’Thwart which is hung a ruined water-gate,
Creeps on its stagnant way.

Moss and the spawny duckweed, dim as air,
And green as copperas,
Choke its dull current; and, like hideous hair,
Tangles of twisted grass.

Above it sinister trees,--as crouched and gaunt
As huddled Terror,--lean;
Guarding some secret in that nightmare haunt,
Some horror they have seen.

Something the sunset points at from afar,
Spearing the sullen wood
And hag-gray water with a single bar
Of flame as red as blood.

Something the stars, conspiring with the moon,
Shall look on, and remain
Frozen with fear; staring as in a swoon,
Striving to flee in vain.

Something the wisp that, wandering in the night,
Above the ghastly stream,
Haply shall find; and, filled with frantic fright,
Light with its ghostly gleam.

Something that lies there under weed and ooze,
With wide and awful eyes
And matted hair, and limbs the waters bruise,
That strives yet can not rise.

THE EGRET HUNTER

Through woods the Spanish moss makes gray,
With deeps the daylight never reaches,
The water sluices slow its way,
And chokes with weeds its beaches.

’Twas here, lost in this lone bayou,
Where poison brims each blossom’s throat,
Last night I followed a firefly glow,
And oared a leaky boat.

The way was dark; and overhead
The wailing limpkin moaned and cried;
The moss, like cerements of the dead,
Waved wildly on each side.

The way was black, albeit the trees
Let here and there the moonlight through,
The shadows, ’mid the cypress-knees,
Seemed ominous of hue.

And then, behold! a boat that oozed
Slow slime and trailed rank water-weeds
Loomed on me: in which, interfused,
Great glow-worms glowed like beads.

And in its rotting hulk, upright,
His eyeless eyes fixed far before,
A dead man sat, and stared at night,
Grasping a rotting oar.

Slowly it passed; and fearfully
The moccasin slid in its wake;
The owl shrunk shrieking in its tree;
And in its hole the snake.

But I, who met it face to face,
I could not shrink nor turn aside:
Within that dark and demon place
There was nowhere to hide.

Slowly it passed; for me too slow!
The grim Death, in the moon’s faint shine,
Whose story, haply, none may know
Save th’ owl that haunts the pine.

THE MIRACLE OF THE DAWN

What would it mean for you and me
If dawn should come no more!
Think of its gold along the sea,
Its rose above the shore!
That rose of awful mystery,
Our souls bow down before.

What wonder that the Inca kneeled,
The Aztec prayed and pled
And sacrificed to it, and sealed,--
With rites that long are dead,--
The marvels that it once revealed
To them it comforted.

What wonder, yea! what awe, behold!
What rapture and what tears
Were ours, if wild its rivered gold,--
That now each day appears,--
Burst on the world, in darkness rolled,
Once every thousand years!

Think what it means to me and you
To see it even as God
Evolved it when the world was new!
When Light rose, earthquake-shod,
And slow its gradual splendor grew
O’er deeps the whirlwind trod.

What shoutings then and cymballings
Arose from depth and height!
What worship-solemn trumpetings,
And thunders, burning-white,
Of winds and waves, and anthemings
Of Earth received the Light.

Think what it means to see the dawn!
The dawn, that comes each day!--
What if the East should ne’er grow wan,
Should nevermore grow gray!
That line of rose no more be drawn
Above the ocean’s spray!

PENETRALIA

I am a part of all you see
In Nature; part of all you feel:
I am the impact of the bee
Upon the blossom; in the tree
I am the sap,--that shall reveal
The leaf, the bloom,--that flows and flutes
Up from the darkness through its roots.

I am the vermeil of the rose,
The perfume breathing in its veins;
The gold within the mist that glows
Along the west and overflows
The heaven with light; the dew that rains
Its freshness down and strings with spheres
Of wet the webs and oaten ears.

I am the egg that folds the bird,
The song that beaks and breaks its shell;
The laughter and the wandering word
The water says; and, dimly heard,
The music of the blossom’s bell
When soft winds swing it; and the sound
Of grass slow-creeping o’er the ground.

I am the warmth, the honey-scent
That throats with spice each lily-bud
That opens, white with wonderment,
Beneath the moon; or, downward bent,
Sleeps with a moth beneath its hood:
I am the dream that haunts it too,
That crystallizes into dew.

I am the seed within its pod;
The worm within its closed cocoon:
The wings within the circling clod,
The germ that gropes through soil and sod
To beauty, radiant in the noon:
I am all these, behold! and more--
I am the love at the world-heart’s core.

THE HEAVEN-BORN

Not into these dark cities,
These sordid marts and streets,
That the sun in his rising pities,
And the moon with sorrow greets,
Does she, with her dreams and flowers,
For whom our hearts are dumb,
Does she of the golden hours,
Earth’s heaven-born Beauty come.

Afar ’mid the hills she tarries,
Beyond the farthest streams,
In a world where music marries
With color that blooms and beams;
Where shadow and light are wedded,
Whose children people the Earth,
The fair, the fragrant-headed,
The pure, the wild of birth.

Where Morn with rosy kisses
Wakes ever the eyes of Day;
And, winds in her radiant tresses,
Haunts every wildwood way:
Where Eve, with her mouth’s twin roses,
Her kisses sweet with balm,
The eyes of the glad Day closes,
And, crowned with stars, sits calm.

There, lost in contemplation
Of things no mortal sees,
She dwells, the incarnation
Of idealities;
Of dreams, that long have fired
Men’s hearts with joy and pain,--
The far, the dear-desired,
Whom no man shall attain.

THE BALLAD OF THE ROSE

Booted and spurred he rode toward the west,
A rose, from the woman who loved him best,
Lay warm with her kisses there in his breast,
And the battle beacons were burning.

As over the draw he galloping went,
She, from the gateway’s battlement,
With a wafted kiss and a warning bent--
“Beware of the ford at the turning!”

An instant only he turned in his sell,
And lightly fingered his petronel,
Then settled his sword in its belt as well,
And the horns to battle were sounding.

She watched till he reached the beacon there,
And saw its gleam on his helm and hair,
Then turned and murmured, “God keep thee, Clare!
From that wolf of the hills and his hounding.”

And on he rode till he came to the hill,
Where the road turned off by the ruined mill,
Where the stream flowed shallow and broad and still,
And the battle beacon was burning.

Into the river with little heed,
Down from the hill he galloped his steed--
The water whispered on rock and reed,
“Death hides by the ford at the turning!”

And out of the night on the other side,
Their helms and corselets dim descried,
He saw ten bandit troopers ride,
And the horns to battle were blaring.

Then he reined his steed in the middle ford,
And glanced behind him and drew his sword,
And laughed as he shouted his battle-word,
“Clare! Clare! and my steel needs airing!”

Then down from the hills at his back there came
Ten troopers more. With a face of flame
Red Hugh of the Hills led on the same,
In the glare of the beacon’s burning.

Again the cavalier turned and gazed,
Then quick to his lips the rose he raised,
And kissed it, crying, “Now God be praised!
And help her there when mourning!”

Then he rose in his stirrups and loosened rein,
And shouting his cry spurred on amain
Into the troopers to slay and be slain,
While the horns to battle were blowing.

With ten behind him and ten before,
And the battle beacon to light the shore,
Small doubt of the end in his mind he bore,
With her rose in his bosom glowing.

One trooper he slew with his petronel,
And one with his sword when his good steed fell,
And they haled him, fighting, from horse and sell
In the light of the beacon’s burning.

Quoth Hugh of the Hills,--“To yonder tree
Now hang him high where she may see;
Then bear this rose and message from me--
‘The ravens feast at the turning.’”

BERTRAND DE BORN

_Knight and Troubadour, to his Lady the beautiful Maenz of Martagnac._

The burden of the sometime years,
That once my soul did overweigh,
Falls from me, with its griefs and fears,
When gazing in thine eyes of gray;
Wherein, behold, like some bright ray
Of dawn, thy hearts fond love appears,
To cheer my life upon its way.

Thine eyes! the daybreak of my heart!
That give me strength to do and dare;
Whose beauty is a radiant part
Of all my songs; the music there;
The morning, that makes dim each care,
And glorifies my mind’s dull mart,
And helps my soul to do and dare.

God, when He made thy fresh fair face,
And thy young body, took the morn
And made thee like a rose, whose race
Is not of Earth; without a thorn,
And dewed thee with the joy that’s born
Of love, wherein hope hath its place
Like to the star that heralds morn.

I go my way through town and thorp:
In court and hall and castle bower
I tune my lute and strike my harp:
And often from some twilight tower
A lady drops to me a flower,
That bids me scale the moat’s steep scarp,
And climb to love within her bower.

I heed them not, but go my ways:
What is their passion unto me!
My songs are only in thy praise;
Thy face alone it is I see,
That fills my heart with melody--
My sweet aubade! that makes my days
All music, singing here in me!

One time a foul knight in his towers
Sneered thus: “God’s blood! why weary us
With this one woman all our hours!--
Sing of _our_ wenches! amorous
Yolande and Ysoarde here!--Not thus
Shalt sing, but of _our_ paramours!--
What is thy Lady unto us!”

And then I flung my lute aside;
And from its baldric flew my sword;
And down the hall ’twas but a stride;
And in his brute face and its word
My gauntlet; and around the board
The battle, till all wild-beast-eyed
He lay and at his throat my sword.

Thou dost remember in Provence
The vile thing that I slew; and how
With my good jongleurs and my lance
Kept back his horde!--The memory now
Makes fierce my blood and hot my brow
With rage.--Ah, what a madman dance
We led them, and escaped somehow!

Oft times, when, in the tournament,
I see thee sitting yet uncrowned;
And bugles blow and spears are bent,
And shields and falchions clash around,
And steeds go crashing to the ground;
And thou dost smile on me,--though spent
With war, again my soul is crowned:

And I am fire to strike and slay;
Before my face there comes a mist
Of blood; and like a flame I play
Through the loud lists; all who resist
Go down like corn; until thy wrist,
Kneeling, I kiss; the wreath they lay
Of beauty on thy head’s gold mist.

And then I seize my lute and sing
Some chanson or some wild aubade
Full of thy beauty and the swing
Of swords and love which I have had
Of thee, until, with music mad,
The lists reel with thy name and ring
The echoed words of my aubade.

I am thy knight and troubadour,
Bertrand de Born, whom naught shall part
From thee: who art my life’s high lure,
And wild bird of my wilder heart
And all its music: yea, who art
My soul’s sweet sickness and its cure,
From which, God grant! it ne’er shall part.

THE TROUBADOUR, PONS DE CAPDEUIL

_In Provence, to his Lady, Azalis de Mercœur in Anjou_

The gray dawn finds me thinking still
Of thee who hadst my thoughts all night;
Of thee, who art my lute’s sweet skill,
And of my soul the only light;
My star of song to whom I turn
My face and for whose love I yearn.

Thou dost not know thy troubadour
Lies sick to death; no longer sings:
That this alone may work his cure--
To feel thy white hand, weighed with rings,
Smoothed softly through his heavy hair,
Or resting with the old love there.

To feel thy warm cheek laid to his;
Thy bosom fluttering with love;
Then on his eyes and lips thy kiss--
Thy kiss alone were all enough
To heal his heart, to cure his soul,
And make his mind and body whole.

The drought, these three months past, hath slain
All green things in this weary land,
As in my life thy high disdain
Hath killed ambition: yea, my hand
Forgets its cunning; and my heart,
Sick to stagnation, all its art.

Once to my castle there at Puy,
In honor of thy beauty, came
The Angevin nobility,
To hear me sing of thee, whose fame
Was high as Helen’s.--Azalis,
Hast thou forgot? Forget’st thou this?

And in the lists how often there
I broke a spear for thee? and placed
The crown of beauty on thy hair,
While thou sat’st, like the fair moon faced,
Amid the human firmament
Of faces that toward thee bent.

I take my hawk, my peregrine--
No falconer or page beside--
And ride from morn till eve begin;
I ride forgetting that I ride,
And all save this: that thou no more
Dost ride beside me as of yore.

A heron sweeps above me: I
Remember then how oft were cast
Thy hawk and mine at such: and sigh
Thinking of thee and days long past,
When through the Anjou fields and bowers
We used to hawk and hunt for hours.

And when, unhappy, I return,
And take my lute and seek again
The terrace where, beside some urn,
The castle gathers,--while the stain
Of sunset crimsons all the sea,--
And sing old songs once loved of thee:

The soul within me overflows
With longing; and I seem to hear
Thy voice through fountains and the rose
Calling afar, while, wildly near,
The rossignol makes mute my tongue
With memories of things long sung.

Here in Provence I pine for thee;
And there in Anjou dost forget!--
All beauty here is less to me
Than is the ribbon lightly set
At thy white throat; or, on thy foot,
The shoe that I have loved to lute.

Thy foot, that I have loved to kiss;
To kiss and sing of!--Song hath died
In me since then, my Azalis;
Since to my soul e’en that’s denied:
Thy kiss, that now alone could cure
The sick heart of thy Troubadour.

THE OLD HOME

An old lane, an old gate, an old house by a tree;
A wild wood, a wild brook--they will not let me be:
In boyhood I knew them, and still they call to me.

Down deep in my heart’s core I hear them and my eyes
Through tear-mists behold them beneath the old-time skies,
’Mid bee-boom and rose-bloom and orchard-lands arise.

I hear them; and heartsick with longing is my soul,
To walk there, to dream there, beneath the sky’s blue bowl;
Around me, within me, the weary world made whole.

To talk with the wild brook of all the long-ago;
To whisper the wood-wind of things we used to know
When we were old companions, before my heart knew woe.

To walk with the morning and watch its rose unfold;
To drowse with the noontide lulled on its heart of gold;
To lie with the night-time and dream the dreams of old.

To tell to the old trees, and to each listening leaf,
The longing, the yearning, as in my boyhood brief,
The old hope, the old love, would ease me of my grief.

The old lane, the old gate, the old house by the tree;
The wild wood, the wild brook--they will not let me be:
In boyhood I knew them, and still they call to me.

THE OLD HERB-MAN

On the barren hillside lone he sat;
On his head he wore a tattered hat;
In his hand he bore a crooked staff;
Never heard I laughter like his laugh,
On the barren hillside, thistle-hoar.

Cracked his laughter sounded, harsh as woe,
As the croaking, thinned, of a crow:
At his back hung, pinned, a wallet old,
Bulged with roots and simples caked with mould:
On the barren hillside in the wind.

Roots of twisted twin-leaf; sassafras;
Bloodroot, tightly whipped round with grass;
Adder’s-tongue; and, tipped brown and black,
Yellowroot and snakeroot filled his pack,
On the barren hillside, winter-stripped.

There is nothing sadder than old age;
Nothing saddens more than that stage
When, forlornly poor, bent with toil,
One must starve or wring life from the soil,
From the barren hillside, wild and hoar.

Down the barren hillside slow he went,
Cursing at the cold, bowed and bent;
With his bag of mold, herbs and roots,
In his clay-stained garments, clay-caked boots,
Down the barren hillside, poor and old.

THE SOLITARY

Upon the mossed rock by the spring
She sits, forgetful of her pail,
Lost in remote remembering
Of that which may no more avail.

Her thin, pale hair is dimly dressed
Above a brow lined deep with care,
The color of a leaf long pressed,
A faded leaf that once was fair.

You may not know her from the stone
So still she sits who does not stir,
Thinking of this one thing alone--
The love that never came to her.

FOOTPATHS

_What though I dreamed of mountain heights, Of peaks, the barriers of the world, Around whose tops the Northern Lights And tempests are unfurled!_

_Mine are the footpaths leading through Life’s lowly fields and woods,--with rifts, Above, of heaven’s Eden blue,--By which the violet lifts_

_Its shy appeal; and, holding up Its chaliced gold, like some wild wine, Along the hillside, cup on cup, Blooms bright the celandine._

_Where soft upon each flowering stock The butterfly spreads damask wings; And under grassy loam and rock The cottage cricket sings._

_Where, overhead, eve blooms with fire, In which the new moon bends her bow, And, arrow-like, one white star by her Burns through the afterglow._

_I care not, so the sesame I find; the magic flower there, Whose touch unseals each mystery In water, earth and air._

_Which, in the oak-tree, lets me hear Its heart’s deep speech, its soul’s wise words; And to my mind makes crystal clear The melodies of birds._

_Why should I care, who live aloof, Beyond the din of life and dust, While dreams still share my humble roof, And love makes sweet my crust?_

ELFIN

I

When wildflower blue and wildflower white
The wildflowers lay their heads together,
And the moon-moth glimmers along the night,
And the wandering firefly flares its light,
And the full moon rises broad and bright,
Then, then it is elfin weather.

II

And fern and flower on top of the hill
Are a fairy wood where the fairies camp;
And there, to the pipe of the cricket shrill,
And the owl’s bassoon or the whippoorwill,
They whirl their wildest and trip their fill
By the light of the glow-worm’s lamp.

III

And the mottled toad and the katydid
Are the henchmen set to guard their dance;
At whose cry they creep ’neath the dewy lid
Of a violet’s eye, or close lie hid
In a bluebell’s ear, if a mortal ’mid
The moonlit woods should chance.