Buch lesen: «One Day & Another: A Lyrical Eclogue», Seite 4

16

He, at parting:

 
Yes, to-morrow. Early morn. —
When the House of Day uncloses
Portals that the stars adorn, —
Whence Light's golden presence throws his
Fiery lilies, burning roses
On the world, – how good to ride
With one's sweetheart at one's side!
 
 
So to-morrow we will ride
To the wood's cathedral places;
Where the prayer-like wildflowers hide,
Sweet religion in their faces;
Where, in truest, untaught phrases,
Worship in each rhythmic word,
God is praised by many a bird.
 
 
Look above you. – Pearly white,
Star on star now crystallizes
Out of darkness; and the night
Hangs them round her like devices
Of strange jewels. Vapour rises,
Glimmering, from each wood and dell —
Till to-morrow, then, farewell.
 

PART III
LATE SUMMER

 
Heat lightning flickers in one cloud,
As in a flow'r a firefly;
Some rain-drops, that the rose-bush bowed,
Jar through the leaves and dimly lie;
Among the trees, now low, now loud,
The whispering breezes sigh.
The place is lone; the night is hushed;
Upon the path a rose lies crushed.
 

1

Musing he strolls among the quiet lanes by farm and field

 
Now rests the season in forgetfulness,
Careless in beauty of maturity;
The ripened roses 'round brown temples, she
Fulfils completion in a dreamy guess.
Now Time grants night the more and day the less;
The gray decides; and brown
Dim golds and drabs in dulling green express
Themselves and redden as the year goes down.
Sadder the fields where, thrusting hoary high
Their tasseled heads, the Lear-like corn-stocks die,
And, Falstaff-like, buff-bellied pumpkins lie. —
Deeper to tenderness,
Sadder the blue of hills that lounge along
The lonesome west; sadder the song
Of the wild red-bird in the leafage yellow. —
Deeper and dreamier, ay!
Than woods or waters, leans the languid sky
Above lone orchards where the cider-press
Drips and the russets mellow.
 
 
Nature grows liberal: from the beechen leaves
The beech-nuts' burs their little pockets thrust,
Bulged with the copper of the nuts that rust;
Above the grass the spendthrift spider weaves
A web of silver for which Dawn designs
Thrice twenty rows of pearls; beneath the oak,
That rolls old roots in many gnarly lines, —
The polished acorns, from their saucers broke,
Strew wildwood agates. – On sonorous pines
The far wind organs, but the forest near
Is silent; and the blue-white smoke
Of burning brush, beyond that field of hay,
Hangs like a pillar in the atmosphere;
But now it shakes – it breaks; and all the vines
And tree-tops tremble; – see! the wind is here!
Billowing and boisterous; and the smiling day
Rejoices with its clamor. Earth and sky
Resound with glory of its majesty,
Impetuous splendor of its rushing by. —
But on those heights the forest yet is still,
Expectant of its coming. Far away
Each anxious tree upon each waiting hill
Tingles anticipation, as in gray
Surmise of rapture. Now the first gusts play,
Like little laughs, about their rippling spines;
And now the wildwood, one exultant sway,
Shouts – and the light at each tumultuous pause,
The light that glooms and shines,
Seems hands in wild applause.
 
 
How glows that garden! though the white mists keep
The vagabonding flowers reminded of
Decay that comes to slay in open love,
When the full moon hangs cold and night is deep;
Unheeding still, their happy colors leap
And laugh encircled of the scythe of death, —
Like lovely children he prepares to reap, —
Staying his blade a breath
To mark their beauty ere, with one last sweep,
He lays them dead and turns away to weep. —
Let me admire, —
Ere yet the sickle of the coming cold
Has mown them down, – their beauties manifold: —
How like to spurts of fire
That scarlet salvia lifts its blooms, which heap
Yon space of sunlight. And, as sparkles creep
Through charring parchment, up that window's screen
The cypress dots with crimson all its green,
The haunt of many bees.
And, showering down cascaded lattices,
That nightshade bleeds with berries; drops of blood,
In clusters hanging 'mid the blue monk's-hood.
 
 
There in the garden old
The bright-hued clumps of zinnias unfold
Their formal flowers; and the marigold
Lifts its pinched shred of orange sunset caught
And elfed in petals. The nasturtium,
All pungent leaved and bitter of perfume,
Hangs up its goblin bonnet, fairy bought
From Gnomeland. There, predominant, red,
And arrogant the dahlia lifts its head,
Beside the balsam's rosy horns of honey,
Within the murmuring, sunny
Dry wildness of the weedy flower bed;
Where crickets and the weed-bugs, noon and night,
Sing dirges for the flowers that soon will die,
For flowers already dead. —
I seem to hear the passing Summer sigh;
A voice, that seems to weep,
"Too soon, too soon the Beautiful passes by!" —
If I perchance might peep
Beneath those leaves of podded hollyhocks,
That the bland wind with odorous whispers rocks,
I might behold her, – white
And weary, – Summer, 'mid her flowers asleep,
Her drowsy flowers asleep,
The withered poppies knotted in her locks.
 

2

He is reminded of another day with her

 
The hips were reddening on this rose,
Those haws were hung with fire,
That day we went this way that goes
Up hills of bough and brier.
This hooked thorn caught her gown and seemed
Imploring her to linger;
Upon her hair a sun-ray streamed
Like some baptizing finger.
 
 
This false-foxglove, so golden now
With yellow blooms like bangles,
Was fading then. But yonder bough, —
The sumach's plume entangles, —
Was like an Indian's painted face;
And, like a squaw, attended
That bush, in vague vermilion grace
With beads of berries splendid.
 
 
And here we turned to mount that hill,
Down which the wild brook tumbles;
And, like to-day, that day was still,
And soft winds swayed the umbles
Of these wild carrots lawny gray;
And there, deep-dappled o'er us,
 
 
An orchard stretched; and in our way
Dropped ripened fruit before us.
A muffled thud the pippin fell,
And at our feet rolled dusty;
A hornet clinging to its bell,
The pear lay bruised and rusty.
The smell of pulpy peach and plum,
From which the juice oozed yellow,
Around which bees made sleepy hum,
Filled warm the air and mellow.
 
 
And then we came where, many hued,
The wet wild-morning-glory
Hung its balloons in shadows dewed
For dawning's offertory.
With bush and bramble, far away,
Beneath us stretched the valley,
Cleft of one creek, as clear as day,
That bickered musically.
 
 
The brown, the bronze, the green, the red
Of weed and brier ran riot
To walls of woods, whose vistas led
To shadowy nooks of quiet.
Long waves of feathering golden-rod
Ran through the gray in patches;
As in a cloud the gold of God
Burns, that the sunset catches.
 
 
And there, above the blue hills, rolled,
Like some vast conflagration,
The sunset, flaming rose and gold,
We watched in exultation.
Then turning homeward, she and I
Went in love's sweet derangement —
How different now seem earth and sky,
Since this undreamed estrangement!
 

3

He enters the woods. He sits down despondently

 
Here where the day is dimmest,
And silence company,
Some might find sympathy
For loss, or grief the grimmest,
In each great-hearted tree —
Here where the day is dimmest —
But, ah, there's none for me!
 
 
In leaves might find communion,
Returning sigh for sigh,
For love the heavens deny;
The love that yearns for union,
Yet parts and knows not why. —
In leaves might find communion —
But, ah, not I, not I!
 
 
My eyes with tears are aching. —
Why has she written me?
And will no longer see? —
My heart with grief is breaking,
With grief that this should be —
My eyes with tears are aching —
Why has she written me?
 

4

He proceeds in the direction of a stream

 
Better is death than sleep,
Better for tired eyes. —
Why do we weep and weep
When near us the solace lies?
There in that stream, that, deep, —
Reflecting woods and skies, —
Could comfort all our sighs.
 
 
The mystery of things,
Of dreams, philosophies,
'Round which the mortal clings,
That can unriddle these. —
What is't the water sings?
What is't it promises? —
End to all miseries!
 

5

He seats himself on a rock and gazes steadily into the stream

 
And here alone I sit and it is so! —
O vales and hills! O valley lands and knobs!
What cure have you for woe?
None that my heart may know! —
The wearying sameness! – yet this thing is so! —
This thing is so, and still the waters flow,
The leaves drop slowly down; the daylight throbs
With sun and wind, and yet this thing is so! —
Here, at this culvert's mouth,
The shadowy water, flowing towards the south,
Seems deepest, stagnant-stayed. —
What is there yonder that makes me afraid? —
Of my own self afraid? – what is't below?
What power draws me to the striate stream?
What evil or what dream? —
Me, dropping pebbles in the quiet wave,
That echoes, strange as music in a cave,
Hollow and thin; vibrating in the shade
Like sound of tears – the shadow of some woe,
An ailing phantom that will not be laid,
Since this is so, since this sad thing is so.
 
 
There, in the water, how the lank green grass
Mats its rank blades, each blade a crooked kris,
Making a marsh; 'mid which the currents miss
Their rock-born melodies.
But there, and there one sees
The wide-belled mallow, as within a glass,
Long-pistiled, leaning o'er
The root-contorted shore,
As if its own pink image it would kiss.
And there the tangled wild-potato vine
Lifts conical blossoms, each a cup of wine,
As pale as moonlight is.
And there tall gipsy lilies, all a-sway,
Their savage, coppery faces, fierce of hue,
Dull purple-streaked, bend in inverted view. —
And where the stream around those rushes creeps,
The dragon-fly, in endless error, keeps
Sewing the pale gold gown of day
With tangled stitches of a burning blue:
Its brilliant body seems a needle fine,
A thread of azure ray.
But here below me where my pensive shade
Looks up at me, the stale stream stagnant lies,
Deep, dark, but clear and silent; save the hiss
Of bursting bubbles in the spawny ooze. —
All flowers here refuse
To grow or blossom; beauties, too, are few,
That haunt its depths: no glittering minnows braid
Its languid crystal; and no gravels strew
With colored orbs its bottom. Half afraid
I shrink from my own eyes
There in its cairngorm skies —
I know not why, and yet it seems 'tis this: —
 
 
I know not what – but where the kildees wade
Slim in the foamy scum,
From that direction hither doth it come,
And makes my heart afraid.
Nearer it draws to where those low rocks ail,
Warm rocks on which some water-snake hath clomb
To bask its spotted body, coiling numb. —
At first it seemed a prism on the grail,
A bubble's prism yonder; then a trail,
An angled sparkle in a shadow, swayed
Frog-like through deeps, to crouch a flaccid, pale,
Squat bulk below… Reflected trees and skies,
And breeze-blown clouds that lounge at sunny loss,
Seem in its stolid eyes,
Deep down – the dim disguise
Of something ghoulish there, whose features fail,
Then come again in rhythmic waviness,
With arms like tentacles that seem to press
Up towards me. Limbs that writhe, and fade,
And clench – tough limbs, that twist and cross
Through flabby hair like smoky moss.
 
 
How horrible to see this thing at night!
Or when the sunset slants its brimstone light
Above the water! when, in phantom flight,
The will-o'-the-wisps, perhaps, above it reel.
Then haply would it rise, a rotting green,
Up, up, and gather me with arms of steel,
Soft steel, and drag me where the wave is white,
Beneath that boulder there, that plants a keel
Against the ripple there, a shoulder lean. —
No! no! I must away before 'tis night!
Before the fire-flies dot
The dusk with sulphur blurrings bright!
Before upon yon height
The white wild-carrots vanish from the sight;
And boneset blossoms, tossing there in clusters,
Fade to a ridge, a streak of ghostly lustres.
And in yon sunlit spot,
That cedar tree is not! —
But a huge cap instead, that, half-asleep,
Some giant dropped while driving home his sheep.
And 'mid those fallow browns
And russet grays, the fragrant peak
Of yonder timothy stack,
Is not a stack, but something hideous, black,
That threatens and, grotesquely demon, frowns.
 
 
I must away from here. —
Already dusk draws near.
The owlet's dolorous hoot
Sounds quavering as a gnome's wild flute;
The toad, within the wet,
Begins to tune its goblin flageolet.
The slow sun sinks behind
Those hills; and like a withered cheek,
Distorted there, the spectral moon's defined
Above those trees; above that mass of vines
That, like a wrecked appentice, roofs those pines. —
Oh, I am faint and weak. —
I must away, away,
Before the close of day! —
Already at my back
I feel the woods grow black;
And sense the evening wind,
Guttural and gaunt and blind,
Snarling behind me like a were-wolf pack. —
When will it cease to pierce,
This anguish dull and fierce,
At heart and soul? when will it let me go? —
 
 
At last, with footsteps slow,
With half averted cheek,
I've reached this woodland creek,
Far from that place of fear;
And still I seem to hear
A dripping footstep near;
A gurgling voice dim glimmering at my ear.
I try to fly! – I can not! – yes, and no! —
What horror holds me! – God! that obscene, slow,
Sure mastering chimera there
Has yet some horrible feeler round my neck,
Or in my scattered hair! —
Off! off! thou devil's coil! —
The waters, thrashing, boil —
Once more I'm free! once more I'm free!
Glad of that firefly fleck,
That, like a lamp of golden fairy oil,
Lights me the way I flee. —
No more I stare, magnetic-fixed; nor reck,
Nor little care to foil
The madness there! the murder there! that slips
Back to its lair of slime, that seeps and drips,
That sought in vain to fasten on my lips.