Undertones

AT LAST

 
What shall be said to him,
Now he is dead?
Now that his eyes are dim,
Low lies his head?
What shall be said to him,
Now he is dead?
 
 
One word to whisper of
Low in his ear;
Sweet, but the one word "love"
Haply he'll hear.
One word to whisper of
Low in his ear.
 
 
What shall be given him,
Now he is dead?
Now that his eyes are dim,
Low lies his head?
What shall be given him,
Now he is dead?
 
 
Hope, that life long denied
Here to his heart,
Sweet, lay it now beside,
Never to part.
Hope, that life long denied
Here to his heart.
 

A DARK DAY

 
Though Summer walks the world to-day
With corn-crowned hours for her guard,
Her thoughts have clad themselves in gray,
And wait in Autumn's weedy yard.
 
 
And where the larkspur and the phlox
Spread carpets wheresoe'er she pass,
She seems to stand with sombre locks
Bound bleak with fog-washed zinnias. —
 
 
Fall's terra-cotta-colored flowers,
Whose disks the trickling wet has tinged
With dingy lustre when the bower's
Thin, flame-flecked leaves the frost has singed;
 
 
Or with slow feet, 'mid gaunt gold blooms
Of marigolds her fingers twist,
She seems to pass with Fall's perfumes,
And dreams of sullen rain and mist.
 

FALL

 
Sad-hearted spirit of the solitudes,
Who comest through the ruin-wedded woods!
Gray-gowned with fog, gold-girdled with the gloom
Of tawny twilights; burdened with perfume
Of rain-wet uplands, chilly with the mist;
And all the beauty of the fire-kissed
Cold forests crimsoning thy indolent way,
Odorous of death and drowsy with decay.
I think of thee as seated 'mid the showers
Of languid leaves that cover up the flowers, —
The little flower-sisterhoods, whom June
Once gave wild sweetness to, as to a tune
A singer gives her soul's wild melody, —
Watching the squirrel store his granary.
Or, 'mid old orchards I have pictured thee:
Thy hair's profusion blown about thy back;
One lovely shoulder bathed with gipsy black;
Upon thy palm one nestling cheek, and sweet
The rosy russets tumbled at thy feet.
Was it a voice lamenting for the flowers?
A heart-sick bird, that sang of happier hours?
A cricket dirging days that soon must die?
Or did the ghost of Summer wander by?
 

UNDERTONE

 
Ah me! too soon the Autumn comes
Among these purple-plaintive hills!
Too soon among the forest gums
Premonitory flame she spills,
Bleak, melancholy flame that kills.
 
 
Her white fogs veil the morn that rims
With wet the moonflow'r's elfin moons;
And, like exhausted starlight, dims
The last slim lily-disk; and swoons
With scents of hazy afternoons.
 
 
Her gray mists haunt the sunset skies,
And build the west's cadaverous fire,
Where Sorrow sits with lonely eyes,
And hands that wake her ancient lyre,
Beside the ghost of dead Desire.
 

CONCLUSION

 
The songs Love sang to us are dead:
Yet shall he sing to us again,
When the dull days are wrapped in lead,
And the red woodland drips with rain.
 
 
The lily of our love is gone,
That touched our spring with golden scent;
Now in the garden low upon
The wind-stripped way its stalk is bent.
 
 
Our rose of dreams is passed away,
That lit our summer with sweet fire;
The storm beats bare each thorny spray,
And its dead leaves are trod in mire.
 
 
The songs Love sang to us are dead;
Yet shall he sing to us again,
When the dull days are wrapped in lead,
And the red woodland drips with rain.
 
 
The marigold of memory
Shall fill our autumn then with glow;
Haply its bitterness will be
Sweeter than love of long ago.
 
 
The cypress of forgetfulness
Shall haunt our winter with its hue;
The apathy to us not less
Dear than the dreams our summer knew.
 

MONOCHROMES

I

 
The last rose falls, wrecked of the wind and rain;
Where once it bloomed the thorns alone remain:
Dead in the wet the slow rain strews the rose.
The day was dim; now eve comes on again,
Grave as a life weighed down by many woes, —
So is the joy dead, and alive the pain.
 
 
The brown leaf flutters where the green leaf died;
Bare are the boughs, and bleak the forest side:
The wind is whirling with the last wild leaf.
The eve was strange; now dusk comes weird and wide,
Gaunt as a life that lives alone with grief, —
So doth the hope go and despair abide.
 
 
An empty nest hangs where the wood-bird pled;
Along the west the dusk dies, stormy red:
The frost is subtle as a serpent's breath.
The dusk was sad; now night is overhead,
Grim as a soul brought face to face with death —
So life lives on when love, its life, lies dead.
 

II

 
Go your own ways. Who shall persuade me now
To seek with high face for a star of hope?
Or up endeavor's unsubmissive slope
Advance a bosom of desire, and bow
A back of patience in a thankless task?
Alone beside the grave of love I ask,
Shalt thou? or thou?
 
 
Leave go my hands. Fain would I walk alone
The easy ways of silence and of sleep.
What though I go with eyes that cannot weep,
And lips contracted with no uttered moan,
Through rocks and thorns, where every footprint bleeds,
A dead-sea path of desert night that leads
To one white stone!
 
 
Though sands be black and bitter black the sea,
Night lie before me and behind me night,
And God within far Heaven refuse to light
The consolation of the dawn for me, —
Between the shadowy bournes of Heaven and Hell,
It is enough love leaves my soul to dwell
With memory.
 

DAYS AND DAYS

 
The days that clothed white limbs with heat,
And rocked the red rose on their breast,
Have passed with amber-sandalled feet
Into the ruby-gated west.
 
 
These were the days that filled the heart
With overflowing riches of
Life; in whose soul no dream shall start
But hath its origin in love.
 
 
Now come the days gray-huddled in
The haze; whose foggy footsteps drip;
Who pin beneath a gipsy chin
The frosty marigold and hip. —
 
 
The days, whose forms fall shadowy
Athwart the heart; whose misty breath
Shapes saddest sweets of memory
Out of the bitterness of death.