Undertones

THE OLD SPRING

I

 
Under rocks whereon the rose,
Like a strip of morning, glows;
Where the azure-throated newt
Drowses on the twisted root;
And the brown bees, humming homeward,
Stop to suck the honey-dew;
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,
For 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 morns may 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.
 

HILLS OF THE WEST

 
Hills of the west, that gird
Forest and farm,
Home of the nestling bird,
Housing from harm,
When on your tops is heard
Storm:
 
 
Hills of the west, that bar
Belts of the gloam,
Under the twilight star,
Where the mists roam,
Take ye the wanderer
Home.
 
 
Hills of the west, that dream
Under the moon,
Making of wind and stream,
Late-heard and soon,
Parts of your lives that seem
Tune.
 
 
Hills of the west, that take
Slumber to ye,
Be it for sorrow's sake
Or memory,
Part of such slumber make
Me.
 

FLOWERS

 
Oh, why for us the blighted bloom!
The blossom that lies withering!
The Master of Life's changeless loom
Hath wrought for us no changeless thing.
 
 
Where grows the rose of fadeless Grace?
Wherethrough the Spirit manifests
The fact of an immortal race,
The dream on which religion rests.
 
 
Where buds the lily of our Faith?
That grows for us in unknown wise,
Out of the barren dust of death,
The pregnant bloom of Paradise.
 
 
In Heaven! so near that flowers know!
That flowers see how near! – and thus
Reflect the knowledge here below
Of love and life unknown to us.
 

SECOND SIGHT

 
They lean their faces to me through
Green windows of the woods;
Their white throats sweet with honey-dew
Beneath low leafy hoods —
No dream they dream but hath been true
Here in the solitudes.
 
 
Star trillium, in the underbrush,
In whom Spring bares her face;
Sun eglantine, that breathes the blush
Of Summer's quiet grace;
Moon mallow, in whom lives the hush
Of Autumn's tragic pace.
 
 
For one hath heard the dryad's sighs
Behind the covering bark;
And one hath felt the satyr's eyes
Gleam in the bosky dark;
And one hath seen the naiad rise
In waters all a-spark.
 
 
I bend my soul unto them, stilled
In worship man hath lost;
The old-world myths that science killed
Are living things almost
To me through these whose forms are filled
With Beauty's pagan ghost.
 
 
And through new eyes I seem to see
The world these live within, —
A shuttered world of mystery,
Where unreal forms begin
The real of ideality
That has no unreal kin.
 

DEAD SEA FRUIT

 
All things have power to hold us back.
Our very hopes build up a wall
Of doubt, whose shadow stretches black
O'er all.
 
 
The dreams, that helped us once, become
Dread disappointments, that oppose
Dead eyes to ours, and lips made dumb
With woes.
 
 
The thoughts that opened doors before
Within the mind's house, hide away;
Discouragement hath locked each door
For aye.
 
 
Come, loss, more frequently than gain!
And failure than success! until
The spirit's struggle to attain
Is still!
 

THE WOOD WITCH

 
There is a woodland witch who lies
With bloom-bright limbs and beam-bright eyes,
Among the water-flags, that rank
The slow brook's heron-haunted bank:
The dragon-flies, in brass and blue,
Are signs she works her sorcery through;
Weird, wizard characters she weaves
Her spells by under forest leaves, —
These wait her word, like imps, upon
The gray flag-pods; their wings, of lawn
And gauze; their bodies gleamy green.
While o'er the wet sand, – left between
The running water and the still, —
In pansy hues and daffodil,
The fancies that she meditates
Take on most sumptuous shapes, with traits
Like butterflies. 'Tis she you hear,
Whose sleepy rune, hummed in the ear
Of silence, bees and beetles purr,
And the dry-droning locusts whirr;
Till, where the wood is very lone,
Vague monotone meets monotone,
And slumber is begot and born,
A faery child, beneath the thorn.
There is no mortal who may scorn
The witchery she spreads around
Her dim demesne, wherein is bound
The beauty of abandoned time,
As some sweet thought 'twixt rhyme and rhyme.
And by her spell you shall behold
The blue turn gray, the gray turn gold
Of hollow heaven; and the brown
Of twilight vistas twinkled down
With fire-flies; and, in the gloom,
Feel the cool vowels of perfume
Slow-syllabled of weed and bloom.
But, in the night, at languid rest, —
When like a spirit's naked breast
The moon slips from a silver mist, —
With star-bound brow, and star-wreathed wrist,
If you should see her rise and wave
You welcome, – ah! what thing shall save
You then? forevermore her slave!
 

AT SUNSET

 
Into the sunset's turquoise marge
The moon dips, like a pearly barge
Enchantment sails through magic seas,
To fairyland Hesperides,
Over the hills and away.
 
 
Into the fields, in ghost-gray gown,
The young-eyed Dusk comes slowly down;
Her apron filled with stars she stands,
And one or two slip from her hands
Over the hills and away.
 
 
Above the wood's black caldron bends
The witch-faced Night and, muttering, blends
The dew and heat, whose bubbles make
The mist and musk that haunt the brake
Over the hills and away.
 
 
Oh, come with me, and let us go
Beyond the sunset lying low,
Beyond the twilight and the night,
Into Love's kingdom of long light,
Over the hills and away.