Chapter III

When the skies of December gray dripped and dripped,
And icicles eaves of the big barn tipped,
And loud hens flew over the snow or slipped,
And the north wind hooted and bit and stung,
And the ears of the milkmaid, Miriam, nipped,
And the chappy cheeks of the farm boy whipped,
A goddess unloosened the tongue,
And one's mouth with wild honey was lipped.

IN THE SOUTH.

[SERENADE.]

The dim verbena drugs the dusk
With heavy lemon odors rare;
Wan heliotropes Arabian musk
Exhale into the dreamy air;
A sad wind with long wooing husk
Swoons in the roses there.

The jasmine at thy casement flings
Star-censers oozing rich perfumes;
The clematis, long petaled, swings
Deep clusters of dark purple blooms;
With flowers like moons or sylphide wings
Magnolias light the glooms.

Awake, awake from sleep!
Thy balmy hair,
Unbounden deep on deep,
Than blossoms fair,
Who sweetest fragrance weep,
Will fill the night with prayer.
Awake, awake from sleep!

And dreaming here it seems to me
Some dryad's bosoms grow confessed
Nude in the dark magnolia tree,
That rustles with the murmurous West,--
Or is it but a dream of thee
That thy white beauty guessed?

In southern heavens above are rolled
A million feverish gems, which burst
From night's deep ebon caskets old,
With inner fires that seem to thirst;
Tall oleanders to their gold
Drift buds where dews are nursed.

Unseal, unseal thine eyes,
Where long her rod
Queen Mab sways o'er their skies
In realms of Nod!
Confessed, such majesties
Will fill the night with God.
Unseal, unseal thine eyes!

PAN.

1

Haunter of green intricacies,
Where the sunlight's amber laces
Deeps of darkest violet;
Where the ugly Satyr chases
Shining Dryads, fair as Graces,
Whose lithe limbs with dew are wet;
Piper in hid mountain places,
Where the blue-eyed Oread braces
Winds which in her sweet cheeks set
Of Aurora rosy traces,
Whiles the Faun from myrtle mazes
Watcheth with an eye of jet:
What art thou and these dim races,
Thou, O Pan! of many faces,
Who art ruler yet?

2

Tell me, piper, have I ever
Heard thy hollow syrinx quiver
Trickling music in the trees?
Where dark hazel copses shiver,
Have I heard its dronings sever
The warm silence, or the bees?
Ripple murmurings, that never
Could be born of fall or river,
Whisperings and subtleties,
Melodies so very clever,
None can doubt that thou, the giver,
Master Nature's keys.

3

What glad awes of storm are given
Thy mad power, which has striven,--
Where the craggy forests glare,--
In wild mockery, when Heaven
Splits with thunder wedges driven
Red through night and rainy air!
What art thou, whose presence, even
While its fear the heart hath riven,
Heals it with a prayer?

PAX VOBISCUM.

1

Her violets in thine eyes
The Springtide stained I know,
Two bits of mystic skies
On which the green turf lies,
Whereon the violets blow.

2

I know the Summer wrought
From thy sweet heart that rose,
With that faint fragrance fraught,
Its sad poetic thought
Of peace and deep repose.

3

That Autumn, like some god,
From thy delicious hair--
Lost sunlight 'neath the sod
Shot up this golden-rod
To toss it everywhere.

4

That Winter from thy breast
The snowdrop's whiteness stole--
Much kinder than the rest--
Thy innocence confessed,
The pureness of thy soul.

MIRABILE DICTU.

There lives a goddess in the West,
An island in death-lonesome seas;
No towered towns are hers confessed,
No castled forts and palaces.
Hers, simple worshipers at best,
The buds, the birds, the bees.

And she hath wonder-worlds of song
So heavenly beautiful, and shed
So sweetly from her honeyed tongue,
The savage creatures, it is said,
Hark marble-still their wilds among,
And nightingales fall dead.

I know her not, nor have I known;
I only feel that she is there;
For when my heart is most alone
There broods communion on the air,
Concedes an influence not its own,
Miraculously fair.

Then fain is it to sing and sing,
And then again to fly and fly
Beyond the flight of cloud or wing,
Far under azure arcs of sky.
Its love at her chaste feet to fling,
Behold her face and die.

QUESTIONINGS.

Now when wan winter sunsets be
Canary-colored down the sky;
When nights are starless utterly,
And sleeted winds cut moaning by,
One's memory keeps one company,
And conscience puts his "when" and "why."

Such inquisition, when alone,
Wakes superstition in the head,
A Gorgon face of hueless stone
With staring eyes to terror wed,
Stamped on her brow God's words, "Unknown!
Behind the dead, behind the dead."

And, oh! that weariness of soul
That leans upon our dead, the clod
And air have taken as a whole
Through some mysterious period:--
Life! with thy questions of control:
Death! with thy unguessed laws of God.

WAITING.

Were we in May now, while
Our souls are yearning,
Sad hearts would bound and smile
With red blood burning;
Around the tedious dial
No slow hands turning.

Were we in May now, say,
What joy to know
Her heart's streams pulse away
In winds that blow,
See graceful limbs of May
Revealed to glow.

Were we in May now, think
What wealth she has;
The dog-tooth violets pink,
Wind-flowers like glass,
About the wood brook's brink
Dark sassafras.

Nights, which the large stars strew
Heav'n on heav'n rolled,
Nights, whose feet flash with dew,
Whose long locks hold
Aromas cool and new,
A moon's curved gold.

This makes me sad in March;
I long and long
To see the red-bud's torch
Flame far and strong,
Hear on my vine-climbed porch
The blue-bird's song.

What else then but to sleep
And cease from such;
Dream of her and to leap
At her white touch?
Ah me! then wake and weep,
Weep overmuch.

This is why day by day
Time lamely crawls,
Feet clogged with winter clay
That never falls,
While the dim month of May
Me far off calls.

IN LATE FALL.

Such days as break the wild bird's heart;
Such days as kill it and its songs;
A death which knows a sweeter part
Of days to which such death belongs.

And now old eyes are filled with tears,
As with the rain the frozen flowers;
Time moves so slowly one but fears
The burthen on his wasted powers.

And so he stopped;--and thou art dead!
And that is found which once was feared:--
A farewell to thy gray, gray head,
A goodnight to thy goodly beard!

MIDWINTER.

The dew-drop from the rose that slips
Hath not the sparkle of her lips,
My lady's lips.

Than her long braids of yellow hold
The dandelion hath not more gold,
Her braids like gold.

The blue-bell hints not more of skies
Than do the flowers in her eyes,
My lady's eyes.

The sweet-pea blossom doth not wear
More dainty pinkness than her ear,
My lady's ear.

So, heigho! then, tho' skies be gray,
My heart's a garden that is gay
This sorry day.

LONGING.

When rathe wind-flowers many peer
All rain filled at blue April skies,
As on one smiles one's lady dear
With the big tear-drops in her eyes;

When budded May-apples, I wis,
Be hidden by lone greenwood creeks,
Be bashful as her cheeks we kiss,
Be waxen as her dimpled cheeks;

Then do I pine for happier skies,
Shy wild-flowers fair by hill and burn;
As one for one's sweet lady's eyes,
And her white cheeks might pine and yearn.

IN MIDDLE SPRING.

When the fields are rolled into naked gold,
And a ripple of fire and pearl is blent
With the emerald surges of wood and wold
Like a flower-foam bursting violent;
When the dingles and deeps of the woodlands old
Are glad with a sibilant life new sent,
Too rare to be told are the manifold
Sweet fancies that quicken redolent
In the heart that no longer is cold.

How it knows of the wings of the hawk that swings
From the drippled dew scintillant seen;
Why the red-bird hides where it sings and sings
In melodious quiverings of green;
How the wind to the red-bud and dogwood brings
Big pearls of worth and corals of sheen,
Whiles he lisps to the strings of a lute that rings
Of love in the South who is queen,
Where the fountain of poesy springs.

Go seek in the ray for a sworded fay
The chestnut's buds into blooms that rips;
And look in the brook that runs laughing gay
For the nymph with the laughing lips;
In the brake for the dryad whose eyes are gray,
From whose bosom the perfume drips;
The faun hid away where the grasses sway
Thick ivy low down on his hips,
Pursed lips on a syrinx at play.

So ho, for the rose, the Romeo rose,
And the lyric he hides in his heart;
And ho, for the epic the oak tree knows,
Sonorous and mighty in art.
The lily with woes that her white face shows
Hath a satire she yearns to impart,
But none of those, her hates and her foes,
For a heart that sings but for sport,
And shifts where the song-wind blows.

TYRANNY.

There is not aught more merciless
Than such fast lips that will not speak,
That stir not if I curse or bless
A God that made them weak.

More madd'ning to one there is naught,
Than such white eyelids sealed on eyes,
Eyes vacant of the thing named thought,
An exile in the skies.

Ah, silent tongue! ah, ear so dull!
How angel utterances low
Have wooed you! they more beautiful
Than mortal harsh with woe!

VISIONS.

When the snow was deep on the flower-beds,
And the sleet was caked on the brier;
When the frost was down in the brown bulbs' heads,
And the ways were clogged with mire;

When the wind to syringa and bare rose-tree
Brought the phantoms of vanished flowers,
And the days were sorry as sorry could be,
And Time limped cursing his fardle of hours:

Heigho! had I not a book and the logs?
And I swear that I wasn't mistaken,
But I heard the frogs croaking in far-off bogs,
And the brush-sparrow's song in the braken.

And I strolled by paths which the Springtide knew,
In her mossy dells, by her ferny passes,
Where the ground was holy with flowers and dew,
And the insect life in the grasses.

And I knew the Spring as a lover who knows
His sweetheart, to whom he has given
A kiss on the cheek that warmed its white rose,
In her eyes brought the laughter of heaven.

For a poem I'd read, a simple thing,
A little lyric that had the power
To make the brush-sparrow come and sing,
And the winter woodlands flower.

THE OLD BYWAY

Its rotting fence one scarcely sees
Through sumach and wild blackberries,
Thick elder and the white wild-rose,
Big ox-eyed daisies where the bees
Hang droning in repose.

The limber lizards glide away
Gray on its moss and lichens gray;
Warm butterflies float in the sun,
Gay Ariels of the lonesome day;
And there the ground squirrels run.

The red-bird stays one note to lift;
High overhead dark swallows drift;
'Neath sun-soaked clouds of beaten cream,
Through which hot bits of azure sift,
The gray hawks soar and scream.

Among the pungent weeds they fill
Dry grasshoppers pipe with a will;
And in the grass-grown ruts, where stirs
The basking snake, mole-crickets shrill;
O'er head the locust whirrs.

At evening, when the sad West turns
To dusky Night a cheek that burns,
The tree-toads in the wild-plum sing,
And ghosts of long-dead flowers and ferns
The wind wakes whispering.

DIURNAL.

I

A molten ruby clear as wine
Along the east the dawning swims;
The morning-glories swing and shine,
The night dews bead their satin rims;
The bees rob sweets from shrub and vine,
The gold hangs on their limbs.

Sweet morn, the South,
A royal lover,
From his fragrant mouth,
Sweet morn, the South
Breathes on and over
Keen scents of wild honey and rosy clover.

II

Beside the wall the roses blow
Long summer noons the winds forsake;
Beside the wall the poppies glow
So full of fire their hearts do ache;
The dipping butterflies come slow,
Half dreaming, half awake.

Sweet noontide, rest,
A slave-girl weary
With her babe at her breast;
Sweet noontide, rest,
The day grows dreary
As soft limbs that are tired and eyes that are teary.