  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.
IV And the forest-fly with its gossamer wings,
And filmy body of rainbow dye,
Is the ouphen steed each elfin brings,
Whereon by the light of the stars he swings,
When the dance is done and the barn-cock sings,
And the dim dawn streaks the sky.
AUTHORITIES The unpretentious flowers of the woods,
That rise in bright and banded brotherhoods,
Waving us welcome, and with kisses sweet
Laying their lives down underneath our feet,
Lesson my soul more than the tomes of man,
Packed with the lore of ages, ever can,
In love and truth, hope and humility,
And such unselfishness as to the bee,
Lifting permissive petals dripping nard,
Yields every sweet up, asking no reward.
The many flowers of wood and field and stream,
Filling our hearts with wonder and with dream,
That know no ceremony, yet that are
Attended of such reverence as that star—
That punctual point of flame, which, to our eyes,
Leads on the vast procession of the skies,
Sidereal silver, glittering in the west—
Compels, assertive of heaven’s loveliest.
Where may one find suggestion simpler set
Than in the radius of a violet?
Or more authentic loveliness than glows
In the small compass of a single rose?
Or more of spiritual thought than perfumes from
The absolute purity of a lily-bloom?
THE WILLOW WATER Deep in the hollow wood he found a way
Winding unto a water, dim and gray,
Grayer and dimmer than the break of day;
By which a wildrose blossomed; flower on flower
Leaning above its image hour on hour,
Musing, it seemed, on its own loveliness,
And longing with sweet longing to express
Some thought to its reflection.
Dropping now
Bee-shaken pollen from the voluble bough,
And now a petal, delicate as a blush,
It seemed to sigh or whisper to the hush
The dreams, the myths and marvels it had seen
Tip-toeing dimly through the woodland green:
Faint shapes of fragrance; forms like flowers, that go
Footing the moss; or, shouldered with moonbeam glow,
Through starlit waves oaring an arm of snow.
He sat him down and gazed into the pool:
And as he gazed, two petals, silken cool,
Fell, soft as star beams fall that arrow through
The fern-hung trembling of a drop of dew;
And, pearly-placid, on the water lay,
Two curves of languid ruby, where, green-gray,
The shadow of a willow dimmed the stream.
And suddenly he saw—or did he dream
He saw?—the rose-leaves change to rosy lips,
A laughing crimson. And, with silvery hips,
And eyes of luminous emerald, full of sleep
And all the stillness of the under deep,
The shadow of the tree become a girl,
A shadowy girl, who shook from many a curl
Faint, tangled glimmerings of shell and pearl.
A girl who called him, beckoned him to come,
The day, unsplendid, at last is ended,
Is dead and buried, and night has come;—
Night, blind and footless, and foul and fruitless,
With weeping wearied, and sorrow-dumb.
Ah, God! for thunder! for winds to sunder
The clouds and o’er us smite rushing bars!
And through wild masses of storm, that passes,
Roll calm the chorus of moon and stars.
AFTER STORM Great clouds of sullen seal and gold
Bar bleak the tawny west,
From which all day the thunder rolled,
And storm streamed, crest on crest.
Now silvery in its deeps of bronze
The new moon fills its sphere;
And point by point the darkness dons
Its pale stars there and here.
But still behind the moon and stars,
The peace of heaven remains
Suspicion of the wrath that wars,
That Nature now restrains.
As, lined ’neath tiger eyelids, glare
The wild-beast eyes that sleep,
So smoulders in its sunset lair
The rage that rent the deep.
SUNSET ON THE RIVER I A sea of onyx are the skies,
Cloud-islanded with fire;
Such nacre-colored flame as dyes
A sea-shell’s rosy spire;
And at its edge one star sinks slow,
Burning, into the overglow.
II Save for the cricket in the grass,
Or passing bird that twitters,
The world is hushed. Like liquid glass
The soundless river glitters
Between the hills that hug and hold
Its beauty like a hoop of gold.
III The glory deepens; and, meseems,
A vasty canvas, painted
With revelations of God’s dreams
And visions symbol-sainted,
The west is, that each night-cowled hill
Kneels down before in worship still.
IV There is no thing to wake unrest;
No sight or sound to jangle
The peace that evening in the breast
Brings, smoothing out the tangle
Of gnarls and knots of care and strife
That snarl the colored cord of life.
TABERNACLES The little tents the wildflowers raise
Are tabernacles where Love prays
And Beauty preaches all the days.
I walk the woodland through and through,
And everywhere I see their blue
And gold where I may worship too.
All hearts unto their inmost shrine
Of fragrance they invite; and mine
Enters and sees the All Divine.
I hark; and with some inward ear
Soft words of praise and prayer I hear,
And bow my head and have no fear.
For God is present as I see
In them; and gazes out at me
Kneeling to His divinity.
Oh, holiness that Nature knows,
That dwells within each thing that grows,
Vestured with dreams, as is the rose
With perfume! whereof all things preach—
The birds, the brooks, the leaves that reach
Our hearts and souls with loving speech;
That makes a tabernacle of
The flow’rs; whose priests are Truth and Love,
Who help our souls to rise above
The Earth and that which we name sin,
Unto the knowledge, that is kin
To Heaven, to which at last we win.
THE CAT-BIRD I The tufted gold of the sassafras,
And the gold of the spicewood-bush,
Bewilder the ways of the forest pass,
And brighten the underbrush:
The white-starred drifts of the wild-plum tree,
And the haw with its pearly plumes,
And the redbud, misted rosily,
Dazzle the woodland glooms.
II And I hear the song of the cat-bird wake
I’ the boughs o’ the gnarled wild-crab,
Or there where the snows of the dogwood shake,
That the silvery sunbeams stab:
And it seems to me that a magic lies
In the crystal sweet of its notes,
That a myriad blossoms open their eyes
As its strain above them floats.
III I see the bluebell’s blue unclose,
And the trillium’s stainless white;
The bird-foot violet’s purple and rose,
And the poppy, golden-bright!
And I see the eyes of the bluet wink,
And the heads of the white-hearts nod;
And the baby mouths of the woodland pink
And the sorrel salute the sod.
IV And this, meseems, does the cat-bird say,
As the blossoms crowd i’ the sun:—
“Up, up! and out! oh, out and away!
Up, up! and out, each one!
Sweethearts! sweethearts! oh, sweet, sweet, sweet!
Come listen and hark to me!
The Spring, thA modern Poet addresses his Muse, to whom he has devoted the best Years of his Life I Not here, O belovÉd! not here let us part, in the city, but there!
Out there where the storm can enfold us, on the hills, where its breast is made bare:
Its breast, that is rainy and cool as the fern that drips by the fall
In the luminous night of the woodland where winds to the waters call.
Not here, O belovÉd! not here! but there! out there in the storm!
The rush and the reel of the heavens, the tempest, whose rapturous arm
Shall seize us and sweep us together,—resistless as passions seize men,—
Through the rocking world of the woodland, with its multitude music, and then,
With the rain on our lips, belovÉd! in the heart of the night’s wild hell,
One last, long kiss forever, and forever and ever farewell.
II I am sick of the madness of men; of the bootless struggle and strife:
Of the pain and the patience of waiting; the scoff and the scorning of life:
I am sick of the shapes and the shadows; the sins and the sorrows that crowd
The gateways of heart and of brain; of the laughter, the shout that is loud
In the mouth of Success—Success, that was never for me, ah me!—
And all the wrong and neglect that are heaped beloved, on thee!
I am sick of the whining of failure; the boast and the brag of Success;
The vainness of effort and longing; the dreams and the days that oppress:
I am sick of them all; but am sickest, am sickest in body and soul,
Of the love that I bear thee, beloved! and only thy death can make whole.
III Imperfect, imperfect God made us,—or the power that men call God.—
And I think that a Power so perfect, that made us with merely a nod,
Could have fashioned us beings less faulty; more able to wear and to bear;
Less open to mar and to fracture; less filled with the stuff of despair:
Less damned with the unavailing; less empty of all good things—
The hopes and the dreams that mature not while the clay still to them clings:
I am sick of it all, belovÉd! of the world and the ways of God;
The thorns that have pierced thy bosom; the shards of the paths we have trod:
I am sick of going and coming; and of love I am sickest of all:
The striving, the praying, the dreaming; and the things that never befall.—
So there in the storm and the darkness,—O fair, and O fugitive!—
Out there in the night, belovÉd, must thou die so I may live!
THE FIRST QUARTER I January Shaggy with skins of frost-furred gray and drab,
Harsh, hoary hair framing a bitter face,
He bends above the dead Year’s fireplace
Nursing the last few embers of its slab
To sullen glow: from pinched lips, cold and crab,
The starved flame shrinks; his breath, like a menÁce,
Shrieks in the flue, fluttering its sooty lace,
Piercing the silence like an icy stab.
From rheum-gnarled knees he rises, slow with cold,
And to the frost-bound window, muttering, goes,
With iron knuckles knocking on the pane;
And, lo! outside, his minions manifold
Answer the summons: wolf-like shapes of woe,
Hunger and suffering, trooping to his train.
II February Gray-muffled to his eyes in rags of cloud,
His whip of winds forever in his hand,
Driving the herded storms along the land,—
That shake the wild sleet from wild hair and crowd
Heaven with tumultuous bulks,—he comes, low-browed
And heavy-eyed; the hail, like stinging sand,
Whirls white behind, swept backward by his band
Of wild-hoofed gales that o’er the world ring loud.
All day the tatters of his dark cloak stream
Congealing moisture, till in solid ice
The forests stand; and, clang on thunderous clang,
All night is heard,—as in the moon’s cold gleam
Tightens his grip of frost, his iron vise,—
The boom of bursting boughs that icicles fang.
III March This is the tomboy month of all the year,
March, who comes shouting o’er the winter hills,
Waking the world with laughter, as she wills,
Or wild halloos, a windflower in her ear.
She stops a moment by the half-thawed mere
And whistles to the wind, and straightway shrills
The hyla’s song, and hoods of daffodils
Crowd golden round her, leaning their heads to hear.
Then through the woods, that drip with all their eaves,
Her mad hair blown about her, loud she goes
Singing and calling to the naked trees,
And straight the oilets of the little leaves
Open their eyes in wonder, rows on rows,
And the first bluebird bugles to the breeze.
ZERO The gate, on ice-hoarse hinges, stiff with frost,
Croaks open; and harsh wagon-wheels are heard
Creaking through cold; the horses’ breath is furred
Around their nostrils; and with snow deep-mossed
The hut is barely seen, from which, uptossed,
The wood-smoke pillars the icy air unstirred;
And every sound, each axe-stroke and each word,
Comes as through crystal, then again is lost.
The sun strikes bitter on the frozen pane,
And all around there is a tingling,—tense
As is a wire stretched upon a disk
Vibrating without sound:—It is the strain
That Winter plays, to which each tree and fence,
It seems, is strung, as ’twere of ringing bisque.
ON THE HILLTOP. There is no inspiration in the view.
From where this acorn drops its thimbles brown
The landscape stretches like a shaggy frown;
The wrinkled hills hang haggard and harsh of hue:
Above them hollows the heaven’s stony blue,
Like a dull thought that haunts some sleep-dazed clown
Plodding his homeward way; and, whispering down,
The dead leaves dance, a sere and shelterless crew.
Let the sick day stagger unto its close,
Morose and mumbling, like a hoary crone
Beneath her faggots—huddled fogs that soon
Shall flare the windy west with ashen glows,
Like some deep, dying hearth; and let the lone
Night come at last—night, and its withered moon.
AUTUMN STORM The wind is rising and the leaves are swept
Wildly before it, hundreds on hundreds fall
Huddling beneath the trees. With brag and brawl
Of storm the day is grown a tavern, kept
Of madness, where, with mantles torn and ripped
Of flying leaves that beat above it all,
The wild winds fight; and, like some half-spent ball,
The acorn stings the rout; and, silver-stripped,
The milkweed-pod winks an exhausted lamp:
Now, in his coat of tatters dark that streams,
The ragged rain sweeps stormily this way,
With all his clamorous followers—clouds that camp
Around the hearthstone of the west where gleams
The last chill flame of the expiring day.
THE JONGLEUR Last night I lay awake and heard the wind,
That madman jongleur of the world of air,
Making wild music: now he seemed to fare
With harp and lute, so intimately twinned
They were as one; now on a drum he dinned,
Now on a tabor; now, with blow and blare
Of sackbut and recorder, everywhere
Shattered the night; then on a sudden thinned
To bagpipe wailings as of maniac grief
That whined itself to sleep. And then, me-seemed,
Out in the darkness, mediÆval-dim,
I saw him dancing, like an autumn leaf,
In tattered tunic, while around him streamed
His lute’s wild ribbons ’thwart the moon’s low rim.
OLD SIR JOHN Bald, with old eyes a blood-shot blue, he comes
Into the Boar’s Head Inn: the hot sweat streaks
His fulvous face, and all his raiment reeks
Of all the stews and all the Eastcheap slums.
Upon the battered board again he drums
And croaks for sack: then sits, his harsh-haired cheeks
Sunk in his hands, rough with the grime of weeks,
While round the tap one great bluebottle hums.
All, all are gone, the old companions—they
Who made his rogue’s world merry: of them all
Not one is left. Old, toothless now, and gray,
Alone he waits: the swagger of that day
Gone from his bulk—departed even as Doll,
And he, his Hal, who broke his heart, they say.
IN AGES PAST I stood upon a height and listened to
The solemn psalmody of many pines,
And with the sound I seemed to see long lines
Of mountains rise, blue peak on cloudy blue,
And hear the roar of torrents hurling through
Riven ravines; or from the crags’ gaunt spines
Pouring wild hair, where,—as an eyeball shines,—
A mountain pool shone, clear and cold of hue.
And then my soul remembered—felt, how once,
In ages past, ’twas here that I, a Faun,
Startled an Oread at her morning bath,
Who stood revealed; her beauty, like the sun’s,
Veiled in her hair, heavy with dews of dawn,
Through which, like stars, burnt blue her eyes’ bright wrath.
THE MISER Withered and gray as winter; gnarled and old,
With bony hands he crouches by the coals;
His beggar’s coat is patched and worn in holes;
Rags are his shoes: clutched in his claw-like hold
A chest he hugs wherein he hoards his gold.
Far-heard a bell of midnight slowly tolls:
The bleak blasts shake his hut like wailing souls,
And door and window chatter with the cold.
Nor sleet nor snow he heeds, nor storm nor night.
Let the wind howl! and let the palsy twitch
His rheum-racked limbs! here’s that will make them glow
And warm his heart! here’s comfort, joy and light!—
How the gold glistens!—Rich he is; how rich—
Only the death that knocks outside shall know.
UNTO WHAT END Unto what end, I ask, unto what end
Is all this effort, this unrest and toil?
Work that avails not? strife and mad turmoil?
Ambitions vain that rack our hearts and rend?
Did labor but avail! did it defend
The soul from its despair, who would recoil
From sweet endeavor then? work that were oil
To still the storms that in the heart contend!
But still to see all effort valueless!
To toil in vain year after weary year
At Song! beholding every other Art
Considered more than Song’s high holiness,—
The difficult, the beautiful and dear!—
Doth break my heart, ah God! doth break my heart!
EPILOGUE We have worshipped two gods from our earliest youth,
Soul of my soul and heart of me!
Young forever and true as truth—
The gods of Beauty and Poesy.
Sweet to us are their tyrannies,
Sweet their chains that have held us long,
For God’s own self is a part of these,
Part of our gods of Beauty and Song.
What to us if the world revile!
What to us if its heart rejects!
It may scorn our gods, or curse with a smile,
The gods we worship, that it neglects:
Nothing to us is its blessing or curse;
Less than nothing its hate and wrong:
For Love smiles down through the universe
Smiles on our gods of Beauty and Song.
We go our ways: and the dreams we dream,
People our path and cheer us on;
And ever before is the golden gleam,
The star we follow, the streak of dawn:
Nothing to us is the word men say;
For a wiser word still keeps us strong,
God’s word, that makes fine fire of clay,
That shaped our gods of Beauty and Song.
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