When in her cloudy chiton
Spring freed the donjoned rills,
And trumpeting, a Triton,
Wind-war was on the hills;
O'er ways, hope's buds bedizen,
Long ways the glory lies on,
Love spread us an horizon
Of gold beyond life's ills.

When Summer came with sickle
Stuck in a sheaf of gleams,
And eves were honey-trickle
From bee-hives of the beams;
Scrolls of the days blue-blotted,
Scrolls of the night star-dotted,
To love and us allotted
A world of woven dreams.

When Autumn waited tired —
A fair-faced heretic —
Auto-de-fés Frost fired
In Winter's Bishopric;
Our loves, a song had started,
Grew with the song sad-hearted,
Sweet loves long-sworn were parted,
Though life for love was sick.

Now is the Winter waited
'Neath skies of frozen gold,
Or raining heavens hated
Of winds that curse and scold. —
Shall this be so: that never
Shall sunlight snowlight sever?
Forever and forever
The heart wait winter-cold?

2

Soft music bring that seems to weep
All this dull sorrow of the soul;
Vague music soft to utter sleep,
Sleep and undying dole:
Forgetting not – forgotten most —
How love is well though lost.

So weary, oh! and yet so fain
In silent service of the heart;
Still feeling if it be in vain
Love's spirit hath His part;
And if in death God grant the rest
Life were but kind at best.

3

Last night I slept till midnight
Then woke, and far away
A cock crowed; lonely and distant
Came mournful a watch-dog's bay;
But lonelier, slower the tedious
Old clock ticked on towards day.

And what a day! – remember
The morns of a Summer and Spring,
That bound two lives together?
Each morn a wedding ring
Of dew and dreams and sparkle,
Of flowers and birds a-wing?

Broad morns when I strolled the garden
Awaiting one the rose
Expected, fresh in its blushes —
The Giant of Battle that grows
A head of radiance and fragrance,
The champion of the close.

Not in vain did I wait, departed
Summer, this morning mocks;
'Mid the powdery crystal and crimson
Of your hollow hollyhocks;
Your fairy-bells and poppies,
And the bee that in them rocks.

Cool-clad 'mid the pendulous purple
Of the morning-glory vine,
By the giant pearls pellucid
Of the peonies a-line,
The snapdragons' and the pansies'
Deep-colored jewel mine.

Shall I ever see my mealy,
Drunk dusty-millers gay;
My lady-slippers bashful
Of butterfly and ray;
My gillyflowers as spicy
Each as a day of May?

Oh, dear when I think of the handfuls
Of little gold coin a-mass,
My bachelor's-buttons scatter
Over the garden grass;
Of the marigold that boasts its
One bit of burning brass;

More bitter I feel the winter
Tighten to spirit and heart;
And dream of the days remembered
As lost – of the past a part;
Of the ways we went, all blotted,
Tear-blotted on love's chart.

And I see the mill and the diamonds
Of foam tossed from its wheel;
Red lilies tumbled together,
The madcap wind at heel;
And the timid veronicas' blossoms —
Those prayers the woods conceal.

The wild-cat gray of the meadows
That the ox-eyed daisies dot,
Fawn-eyed and a leopard-yellow,
That tangle a tawny spot —
As if some panther tired
Lay dozing tame and hot.

Ah! back again with the present,
With winds that pinch and twist
Each leaf in their peevish passion,
And whirl wherever they list;
With the morning hoary and nipping,
Whose mausolean mist

Builds white a tomb for the daylight —
A frosty, shaggy fog,
That fits gray wigs on the cedars,
And furs with wool each log;
Carpets with satin the meadow,
And velvets white the bog.

Alone at morn – indifferent;
Alone at eve – I sigh;
And wait, like the wind complaining,
Complain and know not why;
But ailing and longing and hating
Because I cannot die.

How dull are the sunsets! dreary
Cold, hard and harsh and dead!
Far richer were those of August,
One stain of wine-dark red —
The juice of a mulberry vintage —
To the new moon overhead.

But now I sit with the sighing
Dead wests of a dying year!
Like the fallen leaves and the acorns
Am worthless and feel as sear;
For the soul and the body sicken,
And the heart's one scalding tear.

And I stare from my window! The darkness,
Like a bravo, his cloak throws on;
The moon, like a hidden lanthorn,
Glitters – or dagger drawn;
All my heart cries out beseeching:
"Strike here! strike and be gone!"

4

When friends are sighing
Round one and one
Nearer is lying,
Nearer the sun,
When one is dying
And all is done;

I may remember,
You may forget
Words, each an ember,
Burning here yet —
In dead December
One will regret.

Love we have given,
Over and o'er,
All, who has driven
Us from his door,
Is he forgiven
When he is poor?

What if you wept once,
What though he knew!
What if he slept once!
Still he was true,
If he but kept once
Something of you.

Never forgetful,
Love may forget;
Froward and fretful,
Child, he will fret;
Ever regretful,
He will regret.

Love would be sweeter
If we but knew;
Lives be completer
To themselves true;
Hearts more in metre,
Truth looking through.

Flesh never near it,
Being impure,
Mind must endear it
Making it sure —
Love in the spirit,
That will endure.

So when to-morrow
Ceases and we
Quit this we borrow,
Mortality,
Such chastens sorrow
So it may see.

There will be weeping,
Weary and deep, —
God's be the keeping
Of those that weep! —
When our loved, sleeping,
Sleep their long sleep;

Then they are dearer
Than we're aware;
Character clearer,
Being more fair;
Then they are nearer,
Nearer by prayer.

5

They will not say I can not live beyond the weary night,
But then I know that I shall die before comes morning's light.
How frail is flesh! – but you 'll forgive me now I tell you how
I loved you, love you; and the pain it gives to leave you now?
This could not be on earth; the flesh, that clothes the soul of me —
Ordained at birth a sacrifice to this heredity —
Denied, forbade. – Ah, you have seen the bright spots in my cheeks
Grow hectic, as before comes night blood dyes the sunset's streaks?

Consumption. "But I promised you my love" – 't is left forlorn
Of life God summons unto him, and is it then forsworn?
Oh, I was glad in love of you; but think: if I had died
Ere babe of mine had come to be a solace at your side?
Had it been little then, your grief, when Heaven had made us one
In everything that's good on earth and then the good undone?
No! no! – and had I lived to raise a boy we saw each day
Bud into beauty, with that blight born in him that must slay!

Just when we cherish him the most, and youthful, sunny pride
Sits on his curly front, he pines and dies ere I have died.
Whose fault? – not mine! but hers or his, that ancestor who gave
Escutcheon to our humble house – a death's-head and a grave.
Beneath the pomp of those grim arms we live and may not move;
Nor faith, nor fame, nor wealth avail to hurl them down, nor love.
How could I tell you this? – not then! when all the world was spun
Of morning colors for our love to walk and dance upon.

I could not tell you how disease hid here a viper germ,
Precedence slowly claiming and so slowly fixing firm.
And when I broke our plighted troth and would not tell you why,
I loved you, thinking "time enough when I have come to die."
Draw off my rings and let my hands rest so … the wretched cough
Will interrupt my feeble speech and will not be put off…

Ah, anyhow, my anodyne is this – to feel that you
Are near me, that your healthy hand soothes mine's unhealthy dew.
And that your heart excuses all, and that you will not fret
Because you understand me now and never will forget. —
Now bring me roses pale and pure and tell me death's a lie,
– Late was it hard for me to live, now it is hard to die.

PART V

1

Vased in her bedroom window, white
As her glad girlhood, never lost,
I smelt the roses; and the night
Outside was fog and frost.

What though I claimed her dying there!
God nor one angel understood
Nor cared, who from loved feet to hair
Had changed to mist her blood.

Love, love had claimed us long, and long
Our hearts sang harp-strung, late and soon;
But God! – God jangles thus the song
And makes discord of tune.

What lily lilier than her face!
More virgin than her lips I kissed!
When morn like God, with gold and grace
Broke massed in mist! broke massed in mist!

2

Love, to your face farewell now,
Pillowed a flower on flowers;
Eyes, white-weighed with a spell now;
Lips, with nothing to tell now,
That bade adieu to ours.

Dear, is your soul so daggered
There by a world that hates?
Love – is he ever laggard?
Hope – is her face so haggard?
You, who are one with the Fates?

Never to wait to-morrow
Under such worldly skies!
Never to sleep with sorrow!
Hour by hour to borrow
Joy that has only sighs!

Sweet, farewell forever;
And a burning tear or two —
Will they reach your knowledge ever,
And touch through the dreams that sever
My life from the life of you?

O Life, in my flesh so fearful
Medicine me this pain!
Thy eyes with a science cheerful,
But mine, with a mystery tearful,
Tearful and slumber-fain.

Love, to your lips farewell now —
Your spirit through them I kiss;
Lips – so sealed with a spell now!
Lips, with nothing to tell now
But this! but this! but this!..

3

So long it seems since last I saw her face,
So long ago it seems,
Like some sad soul, in unconjectured space,
Lost in the happiness of some dead grace
Remembered – I. And, oh! a little while
The sorrow stabs and Death conceals no smile
From Love bowed weeping in a thorny place —
So long ago, our love is what are dreams!

Since she is gone no more I feel the light,
Since she is gone beyond,
Burst like a revelation out of night, —
Golden convictions of far futures bright, —
Whiles clouds around the west take marble tones;
For Hope sits sighing in a place of stones,
Dark locks dishevelled and face very white, —
Since she is gone and life's an iron bond.

Now she is dead the doubt Love dulled with awe,
Now she is dead to me,
Questions the wisdom of diviner law.
Self-solved of self I search to find a flaw —
O egotism of Earth's fools and slaves! —
For Faith leans thoughtful in a place of graves,
On that unseen from this seen known to draw,
Now she is dead and it is hard to see.

4

Ridged and bleak the gray forsaken
Twilight at the night has guessed,
Where no star of dusk has taken
Flame unshaken in the west.

All the day the woodlands dying
Moaned, and drippings as of grief
Tossed from barren boughs with sighing
Death of flying twig and leaf.

Ah, to be a dream unbroken,
Past the ironies of Fate!
Born a tree; with branches oaken
Dear unspoken intimate.

Who may say that man has never
Lived the mighty hearts of trees?
Graduating Godward ever,
The Forever finds through these?

Colors, we have lived, are cherished;
Odors, we have been, are ours;
Entity alone has perished;
Beauty-nourished souls were flowers.

Music, when the fancy guesses,
Lifts us loftier thoughts among;
Spirit that the flesh distresses,
But expresses self with song…

Heaven in darkness bends upbraiding
Without moonlight, without star;
Darkness and the reason aiding,
All but fading phantoms are.

Still philosophy is saying:
"Now that hope with life seems gone,
Some are cursing, some are praying,
God smiles raying in the dawn!"

5

Wild weather; the whip of the sleet
On the shuttered casement tapping;
A shadow from face to feet,
Like a shroud, my spirit wrapping,

Wild weather; and how is she
Now the sting of the storm beats serried,
Over the stone and the tree
Of the grave where she is buried?

Wild weather; I cannot weep —
But the skies weep on and worry;
So I sleep, and dream in my sleep
How I hear dim garments hurry…

Star weather and footsteps of stars;
And I see white raiment glisten,
Like the glow on the face of Mars
When the stars to the angels listen.

And with me I see how she stands
With lips high thought has weighted;
With testifying hands,
And eyes with purity mated.

Have I spoken and have I kneeled
To the prayer I worship, I wonder? —
What waits on her lips that are sealed?
God-sealed and who shall sunder!

I sob, "Oh your stay was long!
You are come, but your feet were laggard,
With mansuetude and song
For a heart your death has daggered."

And I lift wet eyes to her
Unutterable with weeping,
And beg for the loves that were,
Now passed into Heaven's keeping…

I wake and a clock tolls three —
And the night and the storm lie serried
On the testament that's she,
Closed, clasped, and forever buried.

6

The night is shrewd with storm and sleet;
Each loose-warped casement raps or groans;
I hear the wailing woodland beat
The tempest with long blatant moans,
Like one who fears defeat.

And sitting here beyond the storm,
Alone within the lonely house,
It seems of Sleep the Fairy charm
Weaves incantations; even the mouse
That scratched has come to harm.

And in this grave light, stolen o'er
Familiar objects, grown severe,
I 'm strange – as, opening a door,
One finds one's dead self standing near,
One knew not dead before.

The old stair rings with growling gusts;
Each hearth's flue gasps a gorgon throat
That snores and sleeps; the spectral dusts,
Which yonder Shawnee war-gear coat,
Whose quiver hangs and rusts,

Are shaken; till I feel that he,
Who wore it in the wild war-dance,
And died in it, fills shadowy
Its wampumed skins; its plume, perchance,
Shakes, scowling eyes at me.

And so the Swedenborge I toss
Aside, contented with the dark
That takes me. O'er the fire-light cross;
Pass where the andirons spit and spark,
And ponder o'er her loss.

Or from the flaw-splashed window yearn
Out toward the waste, where sway and dip
Dank, dark December boughs, where burn
Some late last leaves, that icy drip
No matter where you turn.

Where sodden soil, you scarce have trod,
Fills oozy footprints; and the night
So ugly that it mocks at God,
Creating monsters which the sight
Fancies, unseen, abroad.

The months I count: how long it seems
Since that bland summer when with her,
There on her porch, in rainy gleams
We watched the mellow lightning stir
In rain-clouds gray as dreams!

When all the west a torn gold sheet —
Swift openings of some Titan's forge —
Laid bald with storm; in quivering heat
Pitched precipice and nightmare gorge,
Where thunder torrents beat.

And strong the wind was as again
Storm lit the instant earth; and how
The wood sprang out one virent stain;
We read no more – lost is it now! —
In Romance of a Reign;

A tale of nowhere; then that we
Were reading till we heard the plunge
Of distant thunder sullenly,
And left to mark long lightnings lunge
Convulsions fiery.

What worlds love wrought us, dreaming there,
Of sorcery and necromance!
With spirits lustrous of the air,
A land like one great pearl, a trance
Of floods and forests fair.

Where white-faced flowers sang and thought;
Where fragrant birds flew, brilliant-blown,
In winging odors; feather-fraught
With light, where breathing colors shone,
On throbbing music brought.

Or built us some snug country home
Among the hills; with terraces
Vine-hung and orchared o'er the foam
Of the Ohio, far one sees
Wind crimson in the gloam.

And this! and this! – alone! alone!
To hear the sweep of winter rain,
The missiled sleet's sharp arrows blown;
Dark shadow on the freezing pane,
And on my heart a moan!