Kitobni o'qish: «Poems», sahifa 2

IN MAY

I

 
  When you and I in the hills went Maying,
    You and I in the bright May weather,
    The birds, that sang on the boughs together,
  There in the green of the woods, kept saying
    All that my heart was saying low,
    "I love you! love you!" soft and low,—
      And did you know?
  When you and I in the hills went Maying.
 

II

 
  There where the brook on its rocks went winking,
    There by its banks where the May had led us,
    Flowers, that bloomed in the woods and meadows,
  Azure and gold at our feet, kept thinking
    All that my soul was thinking there,
    "I love you! love you!" softly there—
      And did you care?
  There where the brook on its rocks went winking.
 

III

 
  Whatever befalls through fate's compelling,
    Should our paths unite or our pathways sever,
    In the Mays to come I shall feel forever
  The wildflowers thinking, the wild birds telling,
      In words as soft as the falling dew,
      The love that I keep here still for you,
        Both deep and true,
  Whatever befalls through fate's compelling.
 

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 keep'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!
 

APOCALYPSE

 
  Before I found her I had found
    Within my heart, as in a brook,
  Reflections of her: now a sound
    Of imaged beauty; now a look.
 
 
  So when I found her, gazing in
    Those Bibles of her eyes, above
  All earth, I read no word of sin;
    Their holy chapters all were love.
 
 
  I read them through. I read and saw
    The soul impatient of the sod—
  Her soul, that through her eyes did draw
    Mine—to the higher love of God.
 

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
  With light the heaven; 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 the 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.
 

ELUSION

I

 
  My soul goes out to her who says,
  "Come, follow me and cast off care!"
  Then tosses back her sun-bright hair,
  And like a flower before me sways
  Between the green leaves and my gaze:
  This creature like a girl, who smiles
  Into my eyes and softly lays
  Her hand in mine and leads me miles,
  Long miles of haunted forest ways.
 

II

 
  Sometimes she seems a faint perfume,
  A fragrance that a flower exhaled
  And God gave form to; now, unveiled,
  A sunbeam making gold the gloom
  Of vines that roof some woodland room
  Of boughs; and now the silvery sound
  Of streams her presence doth assume—
  Music, from which, in dreaming drowned,
  A crystal shape she seems to bloom.
 

III

 
  Sometimes she seems the light that lies
  On foam of waters where the fern
  Shimmers and drips; now, at some turn
  Of woodland, bright against the skies,
  She seems the rainbowed mist that flies;
  And now the mossy fire that breaks
  Beneath the feet in azure eyes
  Of flowers; now the wind that shakes
  Pale petals from the bough that sighs.
 

IV

 
  Sometimes she lures me with a song;
  Sometimes she guides me with a laugh;
  Her white hand is a magic staff,
  Her look a spell to lead me long:
  Though she be weak and I be strong,
  She needs but shake her happy hair,
  But glance her eyes, and, right or wrong,
  My soul must follow—anywhere
  She wills—far from the world's loud throng.
 

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.
 

WOMANHOOD

I

 
  The summer takes its hue
  From something opulent as fair in her,
  And the bright heaven is brighter than it was;
  Brighter and lovelier,
  Arching its beautiful blue,
  Serene and soft, as her sweet gaze, o'er us.
 

II

 
  The springtime takes its moods
  From something in her made of smiles and tears,
  And flowery earth is flowerier than before,
  And happier, it appears,
  Adding new multitudes
  To flowers, like thoughts, that haunt us evermore.
 

III

 
  Summer and spring are wed
  In her—her nature; and the glamour of
  Their loveliness, their bounty, as it were,
  Of life and joy and love,
  Her being seems to shed,—
  The magic aura of the heart of her.
 

THE IDYLL OF THE STANDING STONE

 
  The teasel and the horsemint spread
    The hillside as with sunset, sown
    With blossoms, o'er the Standing-Stone
  That ripples in its rocky bed:
    There are no treasuries that hold
    Gold richer than the marigold
  That crowns its sparkling head.
 
 
  'Tis harvest time: a mower stands
    Among the morning wheat and whets
    His scythe, and for a space forgets
  The labor of the ripening lands;
    Then bends, and through the dewy grain
    His long scythe hisses, and again
  He swings it in his hands.
 
 
  And she beholds him where he mows
    On acres whence the water sends
    Faint music of reflecting bends
  And falls that interblend with flows:
    She stands among the old bee-gums,—
    Where all the apiary hums,—
  A simple bramble-rose.
 
 
  She hears him whistling as he leans,
    And, reaping, sweeps the ripe wheat by;
    She sighs and smiles, and knows not why,
  Nor what her heart's disturbance means:
    He whets his scythe, and, resting, sees
    Her rose-like 'mid the hives of bees,
  Beneath the flowering beans.
 
 
  The peacock-purple lizard creeps
    Along the rail; and deep the drone
    Of insects makes the country lone
  With summer where the water sleeps:
    She hears him singing as he swings
    His scythe—who thinks of other things
  Than toil, and, singing, reaps.
 

NOËRA

 
  Noëra, when sad Fall
    Has grayed the fallow;
  Leaf-cramped the wood-brook's brawl
    In pool and shallow;
  When, by the woodside, tall
    Stands sere the mallow.
 
 
  Noëra, when gray gold
    And golden gray
  The crackling hollows fold
    By every way,
  Shall I thy face behold,
    Dear bit of May?
 
 
  When webs are cribs for dew,
    And gossamers
  Streak by you, silver-blue;
    When silence stirs
  One leaf, of rusty hue,
    Among the burrs:
 
 
  Noëra, through the wood,
    Or through the grain,
  Come, with the hoiden mood
    Of wind and rain
  Fresh in thy sunny blood,
    Sweetheart, again.
 
 
  Noëra, when the corn,
    Reaped on the fields,
  The asters' stars adorn;
    And purple shields
  Of ironweeds lie torn
    Among the wealds:
 
 
  Noëra, haply then,
    Thou being with me,
  Each ruined greenwood glen
    Will bud and be
  Spring's with the spring again,
    The spring in thee.
 
 
  Thou of the breezy tread;
    Feet of the breeze:
  Thou of the sunbeam head;
    Heart like a bee's:
  Face like a woodland-bred
    Anemone's.
 
 
  Thou to October bring
    An April part!
  Come! make the wild birds sing,
    The blossoms start!
  Noëra, with the spring
    Wild in thy heart!
 
 
  Come with our golden year:
    Come as its gold:
  With the same laughing, clear,
    Loved voice of old:
  In thy cool hair one dear
    Wild marigold.
 

THE OLD SPRING

I

 
  Under rocks whereon the rose
  Like a streak of morning glows;
  Where the azure-throated newt
  Drowses on the twisted root;
  And the brown bees, humming homeward,
  Stop to suck the honeydew;
  Fern- and leaf-hid, gleaming gloamward,
  Drips the wildwood spring I knew,
  Drips the spring my boyhood knew.
 

II

 
  Myrrh and music everywhere
  Haunt its cascades—like the hair
  That a Naiad tosses cool,
  Swimming strangely beautiful,
  With white fragrance for her bosom,
  And her mouth a breath of song—
  Under leaf and branch and blossom
  Flows the woodland spring along,
  Sparkling, singing flows along.
 

III

 
  Still the wet wan mornings touch
  Its gray rocks, perhaps; and such
  Slender stars as dusk may have
  Pierce the rose that roofs its wave;
  Still the thrush may call at noontide
  And the whippoorwill at night;
  Nevermore, by sun or moontide,
  Shall I see it gliding white,
  Falling, flowing, wild and white.
 

A DREAMER OF DREAMS

 
  He lived beyond men, and so stood
  Admitted to the brotherhood
  Of beauty:—dreams, with which he trod
  Companioned like some sylvan god.
  And oft men wondered, when his thought
  Made all their knowledge seem as naught,
  If he, like Uther's mystic son,
  Had not been born for Avalon.
 
 
  When wandering mid the whispering trees,
  His soul communed with every breeze;
  Heard voices calling from the glades,
  Bloom-words of the Leimoniäds;
  Or Dryads of the ash and oak,
  Who syllabled his name and spoke
  With him of presences and powers
  That glimpsed in sunbeams, gloomed in showers.
 
 
  By every violet-hallowed brook,
  Where every bramble-matted nook
  Rippled and laughed with water sounds,
  He walked like one on sainted grounds,
  Fearing intrusion on the spell
  That kept some fountain-spirit's well,
  Or woodland genius, sitting where
  Red, racy berries kissed his hair.
 
 
  Once when the wind, far o'er the hill,
  Had fall'n and left the wildwood still
  For Dawn's dim feet to trail across,—
  Beneath the gnarled boughs, on the moss,
  The air around him golden-ripe
  With daybreak,—there, with oaten pipe,
  His eyes beheld the wood-god, Pan,
  Goat-bearded, horned; half brute, half man;
  Who, shaggy-haunched, a savage rhyme
  Blew in his reed to rudest time;
  And swollen-jowled, with rolling eye—
  Beneath the slowly silvering sky,
  Whose rose streaked through the forest's roof—
  Danced, while beneath his boisterous hoof
  The branch was snapped, and, interfused
  Between gnarled roots, the moss was bruised.
 
 
  And often when he wandered through
  Old forests at the fall of dew—
  A new Endymion, who sought
  A beauty higher than all thought—
  Some night, men said, most surely he
  Would favored be of deity:
  That in the holy solitude
  Her sudden presence, long-pursued,
  Unto his gaze would stand confessed:
  The awful moonlight of her breast
  Come, high with majesty, and hold
  His heart's blood till his heart grew cold,
  Unpulsed, unsinewed, all undone,
  And snatch his soul to Avalon.
 

DEEP IN THE FOREST

I. SPRING ON THE HILLS

 
  Ah, shall I follow, on the hills,
    The Spring, as wild wings follow?
  Where wild-plum trees make wan the hills,
    Crabapple trees the hollow,
    Haunts of the bee and swallow?
 
 
  In redbud brakes and flowery
    Acclivities of berry;
  In dogwood dingles, showery
    With white, where wrens make merry?
    Or drifts of swarming cherry?
 
 
  In valleys of wild strawberries,
    And of the clumped May-apple;
  Or cloudlike trees of haw-berries,
    With which the south winds grapple,
    That brook and byway dapple?
 
 
  With eyes of far forgetfulness,—
    Like some wild wood-thing's daughter,
  Whose feet are beelike fretfulness,—
    To see her run like water
    Through boughs that slipped or caught her.
 
 
  O Spring, to seek, yet find you not!
    To search, yet never win you!
  To glimpse, to touch, but bind you not!
    To lose, and still continue,
    All sweet evasion in you!
 
 
  In pearly, peach-blush distances
    You gleam; the woods are braided
  Of myths; of dream-existences….
    There, where the brook is shaded,
    A sudden splendor faded.
 
 
  O presence, like the primrose's,
    Again I feel your power!
  With rainy scents of dim roses,
    Like some elusive flower,
    Who led me for an hour!
 

II. MOSS AND FERN

 
  Where rise the brakes of bramble there,
    Wrapped with the trailing rose;
  Through cane where waters ramble, there
    Where deep the sword-grass grows,
        Who knows?
  Perhaps, unseen of eyes of man,
        Hides Pan.
 
 
  Perhaps the creek, whose pebbles make
    A foothold for the mint,
  May bear,—where soft its trebles make
    Confession,—some vague hint,
       (The print,
  Goat-hoofed, of one who lightly ran,)
       Of Pan.
 
 
  Where, in the hollow of the hills
    Ferns deepen to the knees,
  What sounds are those above the hills,
    And now among the trees?—
       No breeze!—
  The syrinx, haply, none may scan,
       Of Pan.
 
 
  In woods where waters break upon
    The hush like some soft word;
  Where sun-shot shadows shake upon
    The moss, who has not heard—
       No bird!—
  The flute, as breezy as a fan,
       Of Pan?
 
 
  Far in, where mosses lay for us
    Still carpets, cool and plush;
  Where bloom and branch and ray for us
    Sleep, waking with a rush—
        The hush
  But sounds the satyr hoof a span
        Of Pan.
 
 
  O woods,—whose thrushes sing to us,
    Whose brooks dance sparkling heels;
  Whose wild aromas cling to us,—
    While here our wonder kneels,
        Who steals
  Upon us, brown as bark with tan,
        But Pan?
 

III. THE THORN TREE

 
  The night is sad with silver and the day is glad with gold,
  And the woodland silence listens to a legend never old,
  Of the Lady of the Fountain, whom the faery people know,
  With her limbs of samite whiteness and her hair of golden glow,
  Whom the boyish South Wind seeks for and the girlish-stepping Rain;
  Whom the sleepy leaves still whisper men shall never see again:
  She whose Vivien charms were mistress of the magic Merlin knew,
  That could change the dew to glowworms and the glowworms into dew.
  There's a thorn tree in the forest, and the faeries know the tree,
  With its branches gnarled and wrinkled as a face with sorcery;
  But the Maytime brings it clusters of a rainy fragrant white,
  Like the bloom-bright brows of beauty or a hand of lifted light.
  And all day the silence whispers to the sun-ray of the morn
  How the bloom is lovely Vivien and how Merlin is the thorn:
  How she won the doting wizard with her naked loveliness
  Till he told her dæmon secrets that must make his magic less.
 
 
  How she charmed him and enchanted in the thorn-tree's thorns to lie
  Forever with his passion that should never dim or die:
  And with wicked laughter looking on this thing which she had done,
  Like a visible aroma lingered sparkling in the sun:
  How she stooped to kiss the pathos of an elf-lock of his beard,
  In a mockery of parting and mock pity of his weird:
  But her magic had forgotten that "who bends to give a kiss
  Will but bring the curse upon them of the person whose it is":
  So the silence tells the secret.—And at night the faeries see
  How the tossing bloom is Vivien, who is struggling to be free,
  In the thorny arms of Merlin, who forever is the tree.
 

IV. THE HAMADRYAD

 
  She stood among the longest ferns
    The valley held; and in her hand
  One blossom, like the light that burns
    Vermilion o'er a sunset land;
    And round her hair a twisted band
  Of pink-pierced mountain-laurel blooms:
    And darker than dark pools, that stand
 
 
  Below the star-communing glooms,
  Her eyes beneath her hair's perfumes.
 
 
  I saw the moonbeam sandals on
    Her flowerlike feet, that seemed too chaste
  To tread true gold: and, like the dawn
    On splendid peaks that lord a waste
    Of solitude lost gods have graced,
  Her face: she stood there, faultless-hipped,
    Bound as with cestused silver,—chased
  With acorn-cup and crown, and tipped
  With oak leaves,—whence her chiton slipped.
 
 
  Limbs that the gods call loveliness!—
    The grace and glory of all Greece
  Wrought in one marble shape were less
    Than her perfection!—'Mid the trees
    I saw her—and time seemed to cease
  For me.—And, lo! I lived my old
    Greek life again of classic ease,
  Barbarian as the myths that rolled
  Me back into the Age of Gold.
 

PRELUDES

I

 
  There is no rhyme that is half so sweet
  As the song of the wind in the rippling wheat;
  There is no metre that's half so fine
  As the lilt of the brook under rock and vine;
  And the loveliest lyric I ever heard
  Was the wildwood strain of a forest bird.—
  If the wind and the brook and the bird would teach
  My heart their beautiful parts of speech,
  And the natural art that they say these with,
  My soul would sing of beauty and myth
  In a rhyme and metre that none before
  Have sung in their love, or dreamed in their lore,
  And the world would be richer one poet the more.
 

II

 
  A thought to lift me up to those
  Sweet wildflowers of the pensive woods;
  The lofty, lowly attitudes
  Of bluet and of bramble-rose:
  To lift me where my mind may reach
  The lessons which their beauties teach.
 
 
  A dream, to lead my spirit on
  With sounds of faery shawms and flutes,
  And all mysterious attributes
  Of skies of dusk and skies of dawn:
  To lead me, like the wandering brooks,
  Past all the knowledge of the books.
 
 
  A song, to make my heart a guest
  Of happiness whose soul is love;
  One with the life that knoweth of
  But song that turneth toil to rest:
  To make me cousin to the birds,
  Whose music needs not wisdom's words.
 

MAY

 
  The golden discs of the rattlesnake-weed,
    That spangle the woods and dance—
  No gleam of gold that the twilights hold
    Is strong as their necromance:
  For, under the oaks where the woodpaths lead,
  The golden discs of the rattlesnake-weed
    Are the May's own utterance.
 
 
  The azure stars of the bluet bloom,
    That sprinkle the woodland's trance—
  No blink of blue that a cloud lets through
    Is sweet as their countenance:
  For, over the knolls that the woods perfume,
  The azure stars of the bluet bloom
    Are the light of the May's own glance.
 
 
  With her wondering words and her looks she comes,
    In a sunbeam of a gown;
  She needs but think and the blossoms wink,
    But look, and they shower down.
  By orchard ways, where the wild bee hums,
  With her wondering words and her looks she comes
    Like a little maid to town.
 

WHAT LITTLE THINGS!

From "One Day and Another"

 
  What little things are those
    That hold our happiness!
  A smile, a glance, a rose
    Dropped from her hair or dress;
  A word, a look, a touch,—
    These are so much, so much.
 
 
  An air we can't forget;
    A sunset's gold that gleams;
  A spray of mignonette,
    Will fill the soul with dreams
  More than all history says,
    Or romance of old days.
 
 
  For of the human heart,
    Not brain, is memory;
  These things it makes a part
    Of its own entity;
  The joys, the pains whereof
    Are the very food of love.
 

IN THE SHADOW OF THE BEECHES

 
  In the shadow of the beeches,
    Where the fragile wildflowers bloom;
  Where the pensive silence pleaches
    Green a roof of cool perfume,
  Have you felt an awe imperious
  As when, in a church, mysterious
    Windows paint with God the gloom?
 
 
  In the shadow of the beeches,
    Where the rock-ledged waters flow;
  Where the sun's slant splendor bleaches
    Every wave to foaming snow,
  Have you felt a music solemn
  As when minster arch and column
    Echo organ worship low?
 
 
  In the shadow of the beeches,
    Where the light and shade are blent;
  Where the forest bird beseeches,
    And the breeze is brimmed with scent,—
  Is it joy or melancholy
  That o'erwhelms us partly, wholly,
    To our spirit's betterment?
 
 
  In the shadow of the beeches
    Lay me where no eye perceives;
  Where,—like some great arm that reaches
    Gently as a love that grieves,—
  One gnarled root may clasp me kindly,
  While the long years, working blindly,
    Slowly change my dust to leaves.