Chapter V

Sometimes I think that she must be
No part of earth, but merely this--
The fair, elusive thing we miss
In Nature, that we dream we see
Yet never see: that goldenly
Beckons; that, limbed with rose and pearl,
The Greek made a divinity:--
A nymph, a god, a glimmering girl,
That haunts the forest’s mystery.

THE LOST GARDEN

Roses, brier on brier,
Like a hedge of fire,
Walled it from the world and rolled
Crimson round it; manifold
Blossoms, ’mid which once of old
Walked my Heart’s Desire.

There the golden Hours
Dwelt; and ’mid the bowers
Beauty wandered like a maid;
And the Dreams that never fade
Sat within its haunted shade
Gazing at the flowers.

There the winds that vary
Melody and marry
Perfume unto perfume, went,
Whispering to the buds, that bent,
Messages whose wonderment
Made them sweet to carry.

There the waters hoary
Murmured many a story
To the leaves that leaned above,
Listening to their tales of love,
While the happiness thereof
Flushed their green with glory.

There the sunset’s shimmer
’Mid the bowers,--dimmer
Than the woods where Fable dwells,
And Romance her legends tells,--
Wrought dim dreams and dimmer spells,
Filled with golden glimmer.

There at night the wonder
Of the moon would sunder
Foliage deeps with breast of pearl,
Wandering like a glimmering girl,
Fair of form and bright of curl,
Through the trees and under.

There the stars would follow,
Over hill and hollow,
Spirit shapes that danced the dew
From frail cups of sparry hue;
Firefly forms that fleeter flew
Than the fleetest swallow.

There my heart made merry;
There, ’mid bloom and berry,
Dreamed the dreams that are no more,
In that garden lost of yore,
Set in seas, without a shore,
That no man may ferry.

Where perhaps her lyre,--
Wreathed with serest brier,--
Sorrow strikes now; sad its gold
Sighing where, ’mid roses old,
Fair of face and dead and cold
Lies my Heart’s Desire.

LATE OCTOBER WOODS

Clumped in the shadow of the beech,--
In whose brown top the crows are loud,--
Where, every side, great briers reach
And cling like hands,--the beech drops crowd
The mossy cirque with neutral tints
Of gray; and deep, with berries bowed,
The buckbush reddens ’mid the mints.

O’erhead the forest scarcely stirs:
The wind is laid: the sky is blue:
Bush-clover, with its links of burrs,
And some last blooms,--few, pink of hue,--
Makes wild the way: and everywhere
Slim, white-ribbed cones of fungi strew
The grass that’s like a wildman’s hair.

The jewel-weeds, whose pods bombard
The hush with fairy batteries
Of seeds, grow dense here; pattering hard
Their sacs explode, persuade the eyes
To search the heaven for show’rs:--One seems
To walk where old Enchantment plies
Her shuttle of lost days and dreams.

And, lo! yon rock of fern and flower,
That heaves its height from bramble deeps,
All on a sudden seems the tower
Wherein the Sleeping Beauty sleeps:
And that red vine the fire-drake,
The flaming dragon, is, that keeps
The world from her no man may wake.

IN THE BEECH WOODS

Amber and emerald, cairngorm and chrysoprase,
Stream through the autumn woods, scatter the beech-wood ways:
Ways where the wahoo-bush brightens with scarlet;
And where the aster-stalk lifts its last starlet.

Ways where the brier burns; poplars drop, one by one,
Leaves that seem beaten gold, each like a splash of sun:
Round which the beeches rise, tree upon golden tree,
That, with each wind that blows, sound like a summer sea.

Ways where the papaw leans, great-leaved and beryl-green,
Like some grand forester one in Romance hath seen;
And like some Indian queen, sung of in story,
Flaming the gum-tree stands, crowned with its glory.

Ways where the bittersweet, cleaving its pods of gold,
Brightens the brake with flame, torches the dingle old:
And where the dogwood, too, crimsons with ruby seeds;
Spicewood and buckbush bend ruddy with rosy beads.

These are the woods of gold; forests our childhood knew,
Where the Enchanted dwelt, she with the eyes of blue;
She of the raven locks, and of the lovely looks,
She who oft gazed at us out of the Story Books.

And with that Prince again, striding his snow-white steed,
To her deliverance through the gold wood we speed;
On through the wood of flame to the Dark Tower,
Where like a light she gleams high in her bower.

THE WORD IN THE WOOD

I

The acorn-oak
Sullens to sombre crimson all its leaves;
And where it hugely heaves
A giant head dark as congested blood,
The gum-tree towers, against the sky a stroke
Of purpling gold; and every blur of wood
Is color on the pallet that she drops,
The Autumn, dreaming on the hazed hilltops.

II

And as I went
Through golden forests in a golden land,
Where Magic waved her wand
And dimmed the air with dreams my boyhood knew,
Enchantment met me; and again she bent
Her face to mine, and smiled with eyes of blue,
And kissed me on the mouth and bade me heed
Old tales again from books no man may read.

III

And at her word
The wood became transfigured; and, behold!
With hair of wavy gold
A presence walked there; and its beauty was
The beauty not of Earth: and then I heard
Within my heart vague voices, murmurous
And multitudinous as leaves that sow
The firmament when winds of autumn blow.

IV

And I perceived
The voices were but one voice made of sighs,
That sorrowed in this wise:
“I am the child-soul that grew up and died,
The child-soul of the world that once believed,
Believed in me, but long ago denied;
The Faery Faith it needs no more to-day,
The folk-lore Beauty long since passed away.”

THE NIGHT-WIND

I

I have heard the wind on a winter’s night,
When the snow-cold moon looked icily through
My window’s flickering firelight,
Where the frost his witchery drew:
I have heard the wind on a winter’s night,
Wandering ways that were frozen white,
Wail in my chimney-flue:
And its voice was the voice,--so it seemed to me,--
The voice of the world’s vast misery.

II

I have heard the wind on a night of spring,
When the leaves unclasped their girdles of gold,
And the bird on the bough sang slumbering,
In the lilac’s fragrant fold:

I have heard the wind on a night of spring,
Shaking the musk from its dewy wing,
Sigh in my garden old:
And it seemed that it said, as it sighed above,
“I am the voice of the Earth’s great love.”

III

I have heard the wind on a night of fall,
When a devil’s-dance was the rain’s downpour,
And the wild woods reeled to its demon call,
And the carpet fluttered the floor:
I have heard the wind on a night of fall,
Heaping the leaves by the garden wall,
Weep at my close-shut door:
And its voice, so it seemed, as it sorrowed there,
Was the old, old voice of the world’s despair.

IV

I have heard the wind on a summer night,
When the myriad stars stormed heaven with fire,
And the moon-moth glimmered in phantom flight,
And the crickets creaked in choir:
I have heard the wind on a summer night,
Rocking the red rose and the white,
Murmur in bloom and brier:
And its voice was the voice,--so it seemed to me,--
Of Earth’s primordial mystery.

GOD’S GREEN BOOK

I

Out, out in the open fields,
Where the great, green book of God,--
The book that its wisdom yields
To each soul that is not a clod,--
Lies wide for the world to read,
I would go; and in flower and weed,
That letter the lines of the grass,
Would read of a better creed
Than that which the town-world has.

II

Too long in the city streets,
The alleys of grime and sin,
Have I heard the iron beats
Of the heart of toil; whose din,
And the throb of whose wild unrest
Have stunned the song in my breast,
Have marred its music and slain
The bird that was once its guest,
And my soul would find it again.