Blooms of the Berry

HARVESTING

I

NOON

 
The tanned and sultry noon climbs high
Up gleaming reaches of the sky;
Below the balmy belts of pines
The cliff-lunged river laps and shines;
Adown the aromatic dell
Sifts the warm harvest's musky smell.
And, oh! above one sees and hears
The brawny-throated harvesters;
Their red brows beaded with the heat,
By twos and threes among the wheat
Flash their hot sickles' slenderness
In loops of shine; and sing, and sing,
Like some mad troop of piping Pan,
Along the hills that swoon or ring
With sounds of Ariel airiness
That haunted freckled Caliban:
 
 
"O ho! O ho! 'tis noon, I say;
The roses blow.
Away, away, above the hay
The burly bees to the roses gay
Hum love-tunes all the livelong day,
So low! so low!
The roses' Minnesingers they."
 

II

TWILIGHT

 
Up velvet lawns of lilac skies
The tawny moon begins to rise
Behind low blue-black hills of trees,
As rises from faint Siren seas,
To rock in purple deeps, hip-hid,
A virgin-bosom'd Oceanid.
Gaunt shadows crouch by rock and wood,
Like hairy Satyrs, grim and rude,
Till the white Dryads of the moon
Come noiseless in their silver shoon
To beautify them with their love.
The sweet, sad notes I hear, I hear,
Beyond dim pines and mellow hills,
Of some fair maiden harvester,
The lovely Limnad of the grove
Whose singing charms me while it kills:
 
 
"O deep! O deep! the twilight rare
Pales on to sleep;
And fair, so fair! fades the rich air.
The fountain shines in its ferny lair,
Where the cold Nymph sits in her oozy hair
To weep, to weep,
For a mortal youth who is not there."
 

GOING FOR THE COWS

I

 
The juice-big apples' sullen gold,
Like lazy Sultans laughed and lolled
'Mid heavy mats of leaves that lay
Green-flatten'd 'gainst the glaring day;
And here a pear of rusty brown,
And peaches on whose brows the down
Waxed furry as the ears of Pan,
And, like Diana's cheeks, whose tan
Burnt tender secresies of fire,
Or wan as Psyche's with desire
Of lips that love to kiss or taste
Voluptuous ripeness there sweet placed.
And down the orchard vistas he, —
Barefooted, trousers out at knee,
Face shadowing from the sloping sun
A hat of straw, brim-sagging broad, —
Came, lowly whistling some vague tune,
Upon the sunbeam-sprinkled road.
Lank in his hand a twig with which
In boyish thoughtlessness he crushed
Rare pennyroyal myriads rich
In pungent souls that warmly gushed.
Before him whirled in rattling fear
The saffron-bellied grasshopper;
And ringing from the musky dells
Came faint the cows' melodious bells,
Where whimp'ring like a fretful hound
The fountain bubbled up in sound.
 

II

 
Yellow as sunset skies and pale
As fairy clouds that stay or sail
Thro' azure vaults of summer, blue
As summer heavens the violets grew;
And mosses on which spurts of light
Fell laughing, like the lips one might
Feign for a Hebe or a girl
Whose mouth heat-lightens up with pearl;
Limp ferns in murmuring shadows shrunk
And silent as if stunned or drunk
With moist aromas of the wood;
Dry rustlings of the quietude;
On silver fronds' thin tresses new
Cold limpid blisters of the dew.
Across the rambling fence she leaned:
A gingham gown to ankles bare;
Her artless beauty, bonnet-screened,
Tempestuous with its stormy hair.
A rain-crow gurgled in a vine, —
She heard it not – a step she hears;
The wild rose smelt like delicate wine, —
She knew it not – 'tis he that nears.
With smiles of greeting all her face
Grew musical; with rustic grace
He leant beside her, and they had
Some parley, with light laughter glad;
I know not what; I know but this,
Its final period was a kiss.
 

SONG OF THE SPIRITS OF SPRING

I

 
Wafted o'er purple seas,
From gold Hesperides,
Mixed with the southern breeze,
Hail to us spirits!
Dripping with fragrant rains,
Fire of our ardent veins,
Life of the barren plains,
Woodlands and germs that the woodland inherits.
 

II

 
Wan as the creamy mist,
Tinged with pale amethyst,
Warm with the sun that kissed
Vine-tangled mountains
Looming o'er tropic lakes,
Where ev'ry air that shakes
Tamarisk coverts makes
Music that haunts like the falling of fountains.
 

III

 
Swift are our flashing feet,
Fleet with the winds that meet,
Winds that, blown, billow sweet,
And with light porous,
Boom with the drunken bees,
Sigh with the surge of seas,
Rush with the rush of trees,
Birds and wild wings and of torrents sonorous.
 

IV

 
Stars in our liquid eyes,
Stars of the darkest skies,
And on our fingers lies
Starlight; and shadows,
Unmooned, of nights that creep
Hide in our tresses deep,
And in our limbs white sleep
Dreams like a baby in asphodel meadows.
 

V

 
Music of many streams,
Strength of a million beams,
Fire and sainted dreams,
Murmuring lowly,
Pulse on hot lips of light,
Which, what they kiss of blight,
Quicken and blossom white,
Raise to be beautiful, perfect, and holy.
 

VI

 
Oh, will you sit and wait,
When fields, erst desolate,
Now are intoxicate
With life that flowers?
Purple with love and rife
With their fierce budded life,
Passion and rosy strife
Drained from warm winds and the turbulent showers?
 

VII

 
Nay! at our feet you'll lie:
For the winds lullaby,
For our completest sky,
And largess flying
Of pinky pearls of blooms,
For the one bee that booms,
And the warm-spilled perfumes
Forget for a moment already we're dying!
 

THE SPIRITS OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS

[VOICES SINGING.]

FIRST CHORUS

 
Ere the birth of Death and of Time,
Ere the birth of Hell and its torments,
Ere the orbs of heat and of rime
And the winds to the heavens were as garments,
Worm-like in the womb of Space,
Worm-like from her monster womb,
We sprung, a myriad race
Of thunder and tempest and gloom.
 

SECOND CHORUS

 
As from the evil good
Springs like a fire,
As bland beatitude
Wells from the dire,
So was the Chaos brood
Of us the sire.
 

FIRST CHORUS

 
We had lain for gaunt ages asleep
'Neath her breast in a bulk of torpor,
When down through the vasts of the deep
Clove a sound like the notes of a harper;
Clove a sound, and the horrors grew
Tumultuous with turbulent night,
With whirlwinds of blackness that blew,
And storm that was godly in might.
And the walls of our prison were shattered
Like the crust of a fire-wrecked world;
Like torrents of clouds that are scattered
On the face of the Night we are hurled.
 

SECOND CHORUS

 
Us, in unholy thought
Patiently lying,
Eons of violence wrought,
Violence defying.
When on a mighty wind, —
Born of a godly mind
Large with a motive kind, —
Girdled with wonder,
Flame and a strength of song
Rushed in a voice along,
Burst and, lo! we were strong —
Strong as the thunder.
 

FIRST CHORUS

 
We lurk in the upper spaces,
Where the oceans of tempest are born,
Where the scowls of our shadowy faces
Are safe from the splendors of morn.
Our homes are wrecked worlds and each planet
Whose sun is a light that is sped;
Bleak moons whose cold bodies of granite
Are hollow and flameless and dead.
 

SECOND CHORUS

 
We in the living sun
Live like a passion;
Ere all his stars begun
We and the sun were one,
As God did fashion.
Lo! from our burning hands,
Flung like inspired brands,
Hurled we the stars, like sands
Whirled in the ocean;
And all our breath was life,
Life to those worlds and rife
With ever-moving strife,
Passion for motion.
 

FIRST CHORUS

 
Our beds are the tombs of the mortals;
We feed on their crimes and the thought
That falters and halts at the portals
Of actions, intentions unwrought.
We cover the face of to-morrow;
We frown in the hours that be;
We breathe in the presence of sorrow,
And death and destruction are we.
 

SECOND CHORUS

 
We are the hope and ease,
Joy and the pleasure,
Authors of love and peace,
Love that shall never cease,
Free as the azure.
Birth of our eyes – the might,
Power and strength of light,
Victor o'er death and night,
Flesh and its yearnings:
And from our utt'rance streams
Beauty with burnings
After completer dreams,
Fuller discernings.
 
 
Morning and birth are ours,
Dew that is blown
From our light lips like flowers;
Clouds and the beating showers,
Stars that are sown;
Song and the bursting buds,
Life of the many floods,
Winds that are strown.
 
 
Ye in your darkness are
Dark and infernal;
Subject to death and mar!
But in the spaces far,
Like our effulgent star,
We are eternal!
 

TO SORROW

I

 
O tear-eyed goddess of the marble brow,
Who showerest snows of tresses on the night
Of anguished temples! lonely watcher, thou
Who bendest o'er the couch of life's dead light!
Who in the hollow hours of night's noon
Rockest the cradle of the child,
Whose fever-blooded eyeballs seek the moon
To cool their pulses wild.
Thou who dost stoop to kiss a sister's cheek,
Which rules the alabastar death with youth;
Thou who art mad and strangely meek, —
Empress of passions, couth, uncouth,
We kneel to thee!
 

II

 
O Sorrow, when the sapless world grows white,
And singing gathers on her springtide robes,
On some bleak steep which takes the ruby light
Of day, braid in thy locks the spirit globes
Of cool, weak snowdrops dashed with frozen dew,
And hasten to the leas below
Where Spring may wandered be from the rich blue
Which rims yon clouds of snow.
From the pied crocus and the violet's hues,
Think then how thou didst rake the bosoming snow,
To show some mother the soft blues
Of baby eyes, the sparkling glow
Of dimple-dotted cheeks.
 

III

 
On some hoar upland, hoar with clustered thorns,
Hard by a river's wind-blown lisp of waves,
Sit with young white-skinned Spring, whose dewy morns
Laugh in his pouting cheeks which Health enslaves.
There feast thee on the brede of his long hair,
Where half-grown roses royal blaze.
And cool-eyed primroses wide-diskéd bare,
Frail stars of moonish haze,
Contented lie wound in his breathing arms: —
'Tis meet that grief should mingle with the wan,
That blue of calms and gloom of storms
Reign on the burning throne of dawn
To glorify the world.
 

IV

 
Or in the peaceful calm of stormy evens,
When the sick, bloodless West doth winding spread
A sheeted shroud of silver o'er the heavens
And brooches it with one rich star's gold head,
Low lay thee down beside a mountain lake,
Which dimples at the twilight's sigh,
Couched on plush mosses 'neath green bosks that shake
Storm fragrance from on high, —
The cold, pure spice of rain-drenched forests deep, —
And gorge thy grief upon the nightingale,
Who with the hush a war doth keep
That bubbles down the starlit vale
To Silence's rapt ear.
 

THE PASSING OF THE BEAUTIFUL

 
On southern winds shot through with amber light,
Breeding soft balm, and clothed in cloudy white,
The lily-fingered Spring came o'er the hills
Waking the crocus and the daffodils.
O'er the cold earth she breathed a tender sigh, —
The maples sang and flung their banners high,
Their crimson-tasseled pennons, and the elm
Bound his dark brows with a green-crested helm.
Beneath the musky rot of Autumn's leaves,
Under the forest's myriad naked eaves,
Life woke and rose in gold and green and blue,
Robed in the star-light of the twinkling dew.
With timid tread adown the barren wood
Spring held her way, when, lo! before her stood
White-mantled Winter wagging his white head,
Stormy his brow, and stormily he said: —
"Sole lord of terror, and the fiend of storm,
Crowned king of despots, my envermeiled arm
Slew these vast woodlands crimsoning all their bowers!
Thou, Spirit of Beauty, with thy bursting flowers,
Swollen with pride, wouldst thou usurp my throne,
Long planted here deep in the waste's wild moan?
Sworn foe of beauty, with a band of ice
I'll strangle thee tho' thou be welcomer thrice!"
So round her throat a band of blasting frost,
Her sainted throat of snow, he coiled and crossed,
And cast her on the dark, unfeeling mold;
Her tender blossoms, blighted in the fold
Of her warm bosoms, trembling bowed their brows
In holy meekness, or in scattered rows
Huddled about her white and silent feet,
Or on pale lips laid fond last kisses sweet,
And died: lilacs all musky for the May,
And bluer violets, and snow drops lay
Silent and dead, but yet divinely fair,
Like ice gems glist'ning in Spring's lovely hair.
The Beautiful, so innocent, sweet, and pure,
Why must thou perish, and the evil still endure?
Too soon must pass the Beautiful away!
Too long doth Terror hold anarchal sway!
Alas! sad heart, bow not beneath the pain,
Time changeth all, the Beautiful wakes again!
We can not question such; a higher power
Knows best what bud is ripest in its flower;
Silently plucks it at the fittest hour.
 

A NOVEMBER SKETCH

 
The hoar-frost hisses 'neath the feet,
And the worm-fence's straggling length,
Smote by the morning's slanted strength,
Sparkles one rib of virgin sleet.
 
 
To withered fields the crisp breeze talks,
And silently and sadly lifts
The bronz'd leaves from the beech and drifts
Them wadded down the woodland walks.
 
 
Reluctantly and one by one
The worthless leaves sift slowly down,
And thro' the mournful vistas blown
Drop rustling, and their rest is won.
 
 
Where stands the brook beneath its fall,
Thin-scaled with ice the pool is bound,
And on the pebbles scattered 'round
The ooze is frozen; one and all
 
 
White as rare crystals shining fair.
There stirs no life: the faded wood
Mourns sighing, and the solitude
Seems shaken with a mighty care.
 
 
Decay and silence sadly drape
The vigorous limbs of oldest trees,
The rotting leaves and rocks whose knees
Are shagged with moss, with misty crape.
 
 
To sullenness the surly crow
All his derisive feeling yields,
And o'er the barren stubble-fields
Flaps cawless, wrapped in hungry woe.
 
 
The eve comes on: the teasel stoops
Its spike-crowned head before the blast;
The tattered leaves drive whirling past
Like skeletons in whistling troops.
 
 
The pithy elder copses sigh;
Their broad blue combs with berries weighed,
Like heavy pendulums are swayed
With ev'ry gust that hurries by.
 
 
Thro' matted walls of tangled brier
That hedge the lane, the sumachs thrust
Their scarlet torches red as rust,
Burning with flames of stolid fire.
 
 
The evening's here – cold, hard, and drear;
The lavish West with bullion bright
Of molten silver walls the night
Far as one star's thin rays appear.
 
 
Wedged toward the West's cold luridness
The wild geese fly 'neath roseless domes;
The wild cry of the leader comes
Distant and harsh with loneliness.
 
 
The pale West dies, and in its cup
Bubble on bubble pours the night:
The East glows with a mystic light;
The stars are keen; the moon is up.
 

THE WHITE EVENING

 
From gray, bleak hills 'neath steely skies
Thro' beards of ice the forests roar;
Along the river's humming shore
The skimming skater bird-like flies.
 
 
On windy meads where wave white breaks,
Where fettered briers' glist'ning hands
Reach to the cold moon's ghastly lands,
Hoots the lorn owl, and crouching quakes.
 
 
With frowsy snow blanched is the world;
Stiff sweeps the wind thro' murmuring pines,
Then fiend-like deep-entangled whines
Thro' the dead oak, that vagrant twirled
 
 
Phantoms the cliff o'er the wild wold:
Ghost-vested willows rim the stream,
Low hang lank limbs where in a dream
The houseless hare leaps o'er the cold
 
 
On snow-tressed crags that twinkling flash,
Like champions mailed for clanking war,
Glares down large Phosphor's quiv'ring star,
Where teeth of foam the fierce seas gnash.
 
 
Slim o'er the tree-tops weighed with white
The country church's spire doth swell,
A scintillating icicle,
While fitfully the village light
 
 
In sallow stars stabs the gray dark;
Homeward the creaking wagons strain
Thro' knee-deep drifts; the steeple's vane
A flitting ghost whirls in its sark.
 
 
Down from the flaky North with clash,
Swathed in his beard of flashing sleet,
With steeds of winds that jangling beat
Life from the world, and roaring dash, —
 
 
Loud Winter! ruddy as a rose
Blown by the June's mild, musky lips;
The high moon dims her horn that dips,
And fold on fold roll down the snows.
 

SUMMER

I

 
Now Lucifer ignites her taper bright
To greet the wild-flowered Dawn,
Who leads the tasseled Summer draped with light
Down heaven's gilded lawn.
Hark to the minstrels of the woods,
Tuning glad harps in haunted solitudes!
List to the rillet's music soft,
The tree's hushed song:
Flushed from her star aloft
Comes blue-eyed Summer stepping meek along.
 

II

 
And as the lusty lover leads her in,
Clad in soft blushes red,
With breezy lips her love he tries to win,
Doth many a tear-drop shed:
While airy sighs, dyed in his heart,
Like Cupid's arrows, flame-tipped o'er her dart,
He bends his yellow head and craves
The timid maid
For one sweet kiss, and laves
Her rose-crowned locks with tears until 'tis paid.
 

III

 
Come to the forest or the musky meadows
Brown with their mellow grain;
Come where the cascades shake green shadows,
Where tawny orchards reign.
Come where fall reapers ply the scythe,
Where golden sheaves are heaped by damsels blithe:
Come to the rock-rough mountain old,
Tree-pierced and wild;
Where freckled flowers paint the wold,
Hail laughing Summer, sunny-haired, blonde child!
 

IV

 
Come where the dragon-flies in coats of blue
Flit o'er the wildwood streams,
And fright the wild bee from the honey-dew
Where if long-sipping dreams.
Come where the touch-me-nots shy peep
Gold-horned and speckled from the cascades steep:
Come where the daisies by the rustic bridge
Display their eyes,
Or where the lilied sedge
From emerald forest-pools, lance-like, thick rise.
 

V

 
Come where the wild deer feed within the brake
As red as oak and strong;
Come where romantic echoes wildly wake
Old hills to mystic song.
Come to the vine-hung woodlands hoary,
Come to the realms of hunting song and story;
But come when Summer decks the land
With garb of gold,
With colors myriad as the sand —
A birth-fair child, tho' thousand summers old.
 

VI

 
Come where the trees extend their shining arms
Unto the star-sown skies;
Displaying wrinkled age in limb-gnarled charms
When Night, moon-eyed, brown lies
Upon their bending lances seen
With fluttered pennons in the moon's broad sheen.
Come where the pearly dew is spread
Upon the rose;
Come where the fire-flies wed
The drowsy Night flame-stained with sudden glows.
 

VII

 
Come to the vine-dark dingle's whispering glens
White with their blossoms pale;
Come to the willowed weed-haired lakes and fens;
Come to the tedded vale.
Come all, and greet the brown-browed child
With lips of honey red as a poppy wild,
Clothed in her vernal robes of old,
Her hair with wheat
All tawny as with gold;
Hail Summer with her sandaled grain-bound feet!
 

NIGHT

 
Lo! where the car of Day down slopes of flame
On burnished axle quits the drowsy skies!
And as his snorting steeds of glowing brass
Rush 'neath the earth, a glimmering dust of gold
From their fierce hoofs o'er heaven's azure meads
Rolls to yon star that burns beneath the moon.
With solemn tread and holy-stoled, star-bound,
The Night steps in, sad votaress, like a nun,
To pace lone corridors of th' ebon-archéd sky.
How sad! how beautiful! her raven locks
Pale-filleted with stars that dance their sheen
On her deep, holy eyes, and woo to sleep,
Sleep or the easeful slumber of white Death!
How calm o'er this great water, in its flow
Silent and vast, smoothes yon cold sister sphere,
Her lucid chasteness feathering the wax-white foam!
As o'er a troubled brow falls calm content:
As clear-eyed chastity in this bleak world
Tinges and softens all the darker dross.
 
 
See, where the roses blow at the wood's edge
In many a languid bloom, bowed to the moon
And the dim river's lisp; sleep droops their lids
With damask lashes trimmed and fragile rayed,
Which the mad, frolic bee – rough paramour —
So often kissed beneath th' enlivening sun.
How cool the breezes touch the tired head
With unseen fingers long and soft! and there
From its white couch of thorn-tree blossoms sweet,
Pillowed with one milk cluster, floating, swooning,
Drops the low nocturne of a dreaming bird,
Ave Maria, nun-like, slumb'ring sung.
See, there the violet mound in many an eye,
A deep-blue eye, meek, delicate, and sad,
As Sorrow's own sad eyes, great with far dreams,
When haltingly she bends o'er Lethe's waves
Falt'ring to drink, and falt'ring still remains,
The Night with feet of moon-tinged mist swept o'er
Them now, but as she passed she bent and kissed
Each modest orb that selfless hung as tho'
Thought-freighted low; then groped her train of jet
Which billowing by did merely waft the sound
Of a brief gust to each wild violet,
To kiss each eye and laugh; then shed a tear
Upon each downward face which nestled there.
 
 
She weeping from her silent vigil turns,
As some pale mother from her cradled child,
Frail, sick, and wan, with kisses warm and songs
Wooed to a peaceful ease and tranquil rest,
When the rathe cock crows to the graying East.