Chapter VI

As strange how the power begot it
As why--but to kill it and rot it.

MY SUIT.

Faith! the Dandelion is
To my mind too lowly;
Then the winsome Violet
Is, forsooth, too holy.

There's the Touch-me-not--go to!
What! a face that's speckled
Like a buxom milking-maid's
Which the sun hath freckled!

And the Tiger-lily's wild,
Flirts, is fierce and haughty;
And the Sweet-Brier Rose, I swear,
Pricks you and is naughty.

Columbine a fool's cap hath,
Then she is too merry;
Gossip, I would sooner woo
Some plebeian Berry.

There's the shy Anemone,--
Well--her face shows sorrow;
Pale, goodsooth! alive to-day,
Dead and gone to-morrow.

And that big-eyed, fair-cheeked wench,
The untoward Daisy,
She's been wooed, aye! overmuch--
Then she is too lazy.

Pleasant persons are they all,
And their virtues many;
Faith, I know but good of all,
And naught ill of any.

Marry! 'tis a May-apple,
Fair-skinned as a Saxon,
Whom I woo, a fragrant thing
Delicate and waxen.

THE FAMILY BURYING-GROUND.

A wall of crumbling stones doth keep
Watch o'er long barrows where they sleep,
Old chronicled grave-stones of its dead,
On which oblivious mosses creep
And lichens gray as lead.

Warm days the lost cows as they pass
Rest here and browse the juicy grass
That springs about its sun-scorched stones;
Afar one hears their bells' deep brass
Waft melancholy tones.

Here the wild morning-glory goes
A-rambling as the myrtle grows,
Wild morning-glories pale as pain,
With holy urns, that hint at woes,
The night hath filled with rain.

Here are blackberries largest seen,
Rich, winey dark, whereon the lean
Black hornet sucks, noons sick with heat,
That bend not to the shadowed green
The heavy bearded wheat.

At dark, for its forgotten dead,
A requiem, of no known wind said,
Through ghostly cedars moans and throbs,
While to thin starlight overhead
The shivering screech-owl sobs.

THE WATER-MAID.

There she rose as white as death,
Stars above and stars beneath;
Where the ripples brake in splendor
To a million, million starlets
Twinkling on lake-lilies tender,
Rocking to the ripple barlets.
She, brow-belted with white lilies,
Rose and oared a shining shoulder
To a downward-purpling boulder:
With slim fingers soft and milky,
Haled her from the spray-sprent lilies
To a ledge, and sitting silky
Sang unto the list'ning lilies,
Sang and sang beneath the heaven,
Belted, wreathed with lilies seven;
Falsely sang a wild, wild ditty
To a wool-white moon;
Till a child both frail and pretty
Found her singing on the boulder,--
Dark locks on a milky shoulder,--
'Neath the wool-white moon.
And the creature singing there
Strangled him in her long hair.

THE SEA-KING.

1

In green sea-caverns dim,
Deep down,
A monarch pale and slim,
Whose soul's a frown,
He ruleth cold and grim
In foamy crown:
In green sea-caverns dim,
Deep down.

2

He hears the Mermaid sing
So sad!
Far off like some curs'd thing,
That ne'er is glad,
A vague, wild murmuring,
That drives men mad:
He hears the Mermaid sing
So sad!

3

Strange monster bulks are there,
That yawn
Or roll huge eyes that glare
And then are gone;
Weird foliage passing fair
Where clings the spawn:
Strange monster bulks are there,
That yawn.

4

What cares he for wrecked hulls
These years!
Red gold the water dulls!
Grim, dead-men jeers
On jaws of a thousand skulls
Of mariners!
What cares he for wrecked hulls
These years!

5

Man's tears are loved of him,
Deep down;
Set in the foamy rim
Of his frail crown
To pearls the tear-drops dim
Freeze at his frown:
Man's tears are loved of him,
Deep down.

6

Here be the halls of Sleep
Full mute,
Chill, shadowy, and deep,
Where hangs no lute
To make the still heart leap
Of man or brute:
Here be the halls of Sleep
Full mute.

WHERE AND WHAT?

Her ivied towers tall
Old forests belt and bar,
And oh! the West's dim mountain crests
That line the blue afar.

Her gardens face dark cliffs,
That seeth against a sea
As blue and deep as the eyes of Sleep
With saddening mystery.

Red sands roll leagues on leagues
Ribbed of the wind and wave;
The near warm sky bends from on high
The pale brow of a slave.

And when the morning's beams
Lie crushed on crag and bay,
A wail of flutes and soft-strung lutes
O'er the lone land swoons away.

The woods are 'roused from rest,
A scent of earth and brine,
By brake and lake the wild things wake,
And torrents leap and shine.

But she in one gray tower
White-faced knows how he died,
And a murderous scorn on her lips is born
To curse his heart that lied.

She smiles and sorrows not:
"Ah, death! to know," she moans,
"The gluttonous grave of the bitter wave
Laughs loud above his bones!"

She laughs and hating yearns
Out toward the surf's far reach,
Like one in sleep, who, wild to weep,
Hath only moans for speech.

And when the sun had set,
And crocus heavens had fed
Their wan fire soon to a thorn-thin moon,
The flocking stars that led,

A breeze set in from sea
Most odorous with spice,
And streamed among big stars that hung
Thin mists as white as ice.

And then her eyes waxed large
With one last hideous hope,
And her throat she bent toward the firmament,
Star-scattered scope on scope.

The haunted night, that felt
The rapture so accursed,
Shook, loosening one green star that spun
Wild down the dusk and burst.

Fair was her face as Sin's;
"Ah, wretch!" she wailed, "to know
A wormy seat at Death's lean feet
May not undo such woe!

"The devil-wrangling pit
Much dearer than God's deeps
Of serious skies, where thought ne'er dies
And memory never sleeps!

"And dearer far than both,
Than Heaven or Hell, the jest,
The godless lot to rot and rot,
And not be cursed or blessed!"

THE SPRING.

"_O Fons Bandusiae!_"

Push back the brambles, berry-blue,
The hollowed spring is full in view;
Deep tangled with luxuriant fern
Its rock-imbedded crystal urn.

Not for the loneliness that keeps
The coigne wherein its silence sleeps;
Not for wild butterflies that sway
Their pansy pinions all the day
Above its mirror; nor the bee,
Nor dragon-fly which passing see
Themselves reflected in its spar;
Not for the one white, liquid star
That twinkles in its firmament,
Nor moon-shot clouds so slowly sent
Athwart it when the kindly night
Beads all its grasses with the light,
Small jewels of the dimpled dew;
Not for the day's reflected blue,
Nor the quaint, dainty colored stones
That dance within it where it moans;
Not for all these I love to sit
In silence and to gaze in it.
But, know, a nymph with merry eyes
Meets mine within its laughing skies;
A graceful, naked nymph who plays
All the long fragrant summer days
With instant sight of bees and birds,
And speaks with them in water-words.
One for whose nakedness the air
Weaves moony mists, and on whose hair,
Unfilleted, the night will set
That lone star as a coronet.

LILLITA.

Can I forget how, when you stood
'Mid orchards whence spring bloom had fled,
Stars made the orchards seem a-bud,
And weighed the sighing boughs o'erhead
With shining ghosts of blossoms dead!

Or when you bowed, a lily tall,
Above your August lilies slim,
Transparent pale, that by the wall
Like softest moonlight seemed to swim,
Brimmed with faint fragrance to the brim.

And in the cloud that lingered low--
A silent pallor in the West--
There stirred and beat a golden glow
Of some great heart that could not rest,
A heart of gold within its breast.

Your heart, your life was in the wild,
Your joy to hear the whip-poor-will
Lament its love, when wafted mild
The harvest drifted from the hill:
The deep, deep wildwood where had trod
The red deer o'er the fallen hush
Of Fall's torn leaves, when the low tod
Was frosty 'neath each berried bush.

At dusk the whip-will still complains
Above your lolling lilies, where
Their faces white the moonlight stains,
The dreamy stream flows far and fair
Whisp'ring of rest an easeful air ...

O music of the falling rain,
At night unto her painless rest
Sound sweet and sad, then is she fain
To see the wild flowers on her breast
Lift moist, pure faces up again
To breathe to God their fragrance blest.
Thick-pleated beeches long have crossed
Old, mighty arms above her tomb
Where oft I watch at night her ghost
Bow to the wild-flower's full-blown bloom
A mist of curls, where Summer lost
Her tangled sunbeams and perfume.

ARTEMIS.

Oft of the hiding Oread wast thou seen
At earliest morn, a tall imperial shape,
High-buskined, dew-dripped, and on close, chaste curls,
Long blackness of thick hair, the tipsy drops
Caught from the dipping sprays of under bosks,
Kissed of thy cheek and of thy shoulder brushed,
Thy rosy cheek as haughty Hera's fair,
Thy snow-soft shoulder luminous as light.

Oft did the shaggy hills and solitudes
Of Arethusa shout and ring and reel,
Reverberate and echo merrily
With the mad chiding of thy merry hounds,
Big mouthed and musical, that on the stag,
Or bristling wild-boar furious grew in quest,
And thou, as keen, fleet-footed and clean-limbed,
Thou, thou, O goddess, with thy quivered crew,
Most loveliest maids and fit to wed with gods,
Rushed, swinging on the wind free limbs and lithe,
Long as thy radiant locks flung free to blow
And lighten in the wine-sharp air of morn.

Ai me! their throats, their lusty, dimpled throats,
That made the hills sing and the wood-ways dance
As if to Orphic strains, and gave them life!
Ai me! their bosoms' deepness and the soft,
Sweet, happy beauty of their delicate limbs,
That stormed the forest vacancies with light,
Swift daylight of their splendor and made blow,
Within the glad sonorous solitudes,
Old germs of flowerets a century cold.

The woodland Naiad whispered by her rock;
The Hamadryad, limpid-eyed and wild,
Expectant rustled by her usual oak,
And laughed in wonder; and mad Pan himself
Reeled piping fiercely down the dingled deeps
With rollicking eye that rolled a brutish lust.
And did the unwed maiden, musing where
Her father's well, beyond the god-graced hills
Bubbled and babbled, hear the full, high cry
Of the chaste huntress, while her dripping jar
Unheeded brimmed, vowed with her chastity,
And shorn gold hair to veil her virgin feet.

But, ah! not when the saucy daylight swims,
Filling the forests with a glamorous green,
Let me behold thee, goddess! but, when dim
The slow night settles on the haunted wild,
And walks in sober sark, and heatful stars
Shine out intensely and the echoy waste
Far off, far off, in shudders palpitates
Unto the Limnad's song unmerciful,
Unmerciful and mad and bitter sweet!
Then come in all thy godhead, beautiful!
Thou beautiful and gentle, as thou cam'st
To lorn Endymion, who, in Lemnos once,
Lone in the wizard magic of the wild,
Wandered a gentle boy, unfriended, sad.
It grew far off adown the stirring trees,
Thy silent beauty blossoming flowerlike,
Between the tree trunks and the lacing limbs,
Bright in the leaves that kissed for very joy
And drunkenness of glory thus revealed.
He saw it all, the naked brow and limbs,
The polished silver of thy glossy breast,
Alone, uncompanied of handmaidens;
Like some full, splendid fruit Hesperian
Not e'en for deities; thy sweet far voice
Came tinkling on his wistful ear and lisped
Like leaves that cling and slip to cling again.
And on such perilous beauty that must kill,
The poisonous favor of thy godliness,
Feasting his every sense through eyes and ears,
His soul exalted waxed and amorous,--
Like the high gods who quaff deep golden bowls
Of rosy nectar,--with immortal love,--
And what remained, ah, what remained but death!

IN NOVEMBER.

No windy white of wind-blown clouds is thine,
No windy white but low and sodden gray,
That holds the melancholy skies and kills
The wild song and the wild bird; yet, ai me!
Thy melancholy skies and mournful woods,
Brown, sighing forests dying that I love!
Thy long thick leaves deep, deep about my feet,
Slow, weary feet that halt or falter on;
Thy long, sweet, reddened leaves that burn and die
With silent fever of the sickened wold.

I love to hear in all thy windy coigns,
Rain-wet and choked with bleached and rotting weeds,
The baby-babble of the many leaves,
That, fallen on barren ways, like fallen hopes
Once held so high on all the Summer's heart
Of strong majestic trees, now come to such,
Would fainly gossip in hushed undertones,--
Sad weak yet sweet as natures that have known
True tears and hot in bleak remorseless days,--
Of all their whilom glory vanished so.

A CHARACTER.

He lived beyond us and we stood
As pygmies to his every mood,
Mere pupils at his beck and nod,
That spoke the influence of a god.
And oft we wondered, when his thought
Made our humanity seem naught,
If he, like Uther's mystic son,
Were not a birth for Avalon.

When wand'ring 'neath the sighing trees,
His soul waxed genial with the breeze,
That, voiceful, from the piney glades
Companioned seemed of Oreads;
A Dryad life lived in each oak,
And with its many leaf-tongues spoke,
Glorying the deity whose power
Gave it its life in sun and shower.
By every violet-hallowed brook,
Where every bramble-matted nook
Rippled and laughed with water-sounds,
He walked as one on sainted grounds,
Fearing intrusion on the spell
That kept some fountain-spirit's well,
Or woodland genius sitting where
Brown racy berries kissed his hair.

And when the wind far o'er the hill
Had fall'n and left the wildwood still
As moonlight jets on quiet moss,--
Beneath the pied boughs arched across
Long limpid vistas, brimmed with ripe
Green-swimming sunbeams, heard the pipe
Of some hid follower of Pan
And worshiper, half brute half man;
Who, hairy-haunched, a savage rhyme
Puffed in his reed to rudest time;
With swollen jowl and rolling eye
Danced boisterous where the silver sky
Smiled in the forest's broken roof;
The strident branch beneath his hoof
Snapped on the sod which, interfused
Between black roots, was crushed and bruised.

And often when he wandered through
Old forests at the fall of dew,--
A lone Endymion who sought
A higher beauty yet uncaught,--
Some night, we thought, most surely he
Were favored of her deity,
And in the holy solitude
Her sudden presence, long pursued,
Unto his eyes would be confessed;
The awful moonlight of her breast
Come high with majesty and hold
His heart's blood till his heart were cold,
Unpulsed, unsinewed, all undone,
And snatch his soul to Avalon.

A MOOD.

Bowed hearts that hold the saddest memories
Are the most beautiful; and such make sweet
Light happy moods of alien natures which
Their sadness contacts, and so sanctifies.

And such to me is an old, gabled house,
Deserted and neglected and unknown
Within the dreamy hollow of its hills,
Dark, cedared hills and fruitless orchards sear;
With but its host of shrouded memories
Haunting its low and desolate rooms and halls,
Its roomy hearths and cob-webbed crevices.

Here in dim rainy noons I love to sit,
And hear the running rain along the roof,
The creak and crack of noises that are born
Of unseen and mysterious agencies;
The dripping footfalls of the wind adown
Lone winding stairways massy-banistered;
A clapping door and then a sudden hush
That brings a pleasant terror stiffening through
The tingling veins and staring from the eyes.
Then comes the running rain along the roof's
Rain-rotten gables and on rain-stained walls
Invokes vague images and memories
Of all its sometime lords and mistresses,
Until the stale material will assume
All that's clairvoyant, and the fine-strung ear
In quaint far rooms or dusty corridors
Hear wrinkled ladies all beruffled trail
Long haughty silks "miraculously stiff."

A THOUGHT.

And I have thought of youth which strains
Nearer its God to rise,--
What were ambition and its pains
Were life a cowardice!

The grander souls that rose above
Thought's noblest heights to tread,
Found their endeavor in their love,
And truth behind the dead.

A secret glory in the tomb,
A night that dawns in light,
An intense presence veiled with gloom,
And not an endless night....

Nepenthe of this struggling world,
Thou who dost stay mad Care
When her fury's scourge above is curled
And we see her writhing hair!

SONG.

I

Far over the summer sea,
Ere the white-eyed stars wax pale,
From the groves where a nightingale
Wails a mystical melody,
I turn my ghostly sail
Away, away,
To follow a face I see
Far over the summer sea.

II

Far over the summer sea,
Ere the cliff which highest soars
From the foam re-echoing shores
Reddens all rosily,
Where the witch-white water roars,
Far on, far on,
Thro' the night I follow thee
Far over the summer sea.

III

Far over the summer sea,
When the great gold moon low lies
In the purple-deepened skies
I drift on tearfully
Till a spirit form doth rise
Low down, low down,
'Twixt the orbed moon and me
Far over the summer sea.