Weeds by the Wall: Verses

THE GRASSHOPPER

 
What joy you take in making hotness hotter,
In emphasizing dullness with your buzz,
Making monotony more monotonous!
When Summer comes, and drouth hath dried the water
In all the creeks, we hear your ragged rasp
Filing the stillness. Or, – as urchins beat
A stagnant pond whereon the bubbles gasp, —
Your switch-like music whips the midday heat.
O bur of sound caught in the Summer's hair,
We hear you everywhere!
 
 
We hear you in the vines and berry-brambles,
Along the unkempt lanes, among the weeds,
Amid the shadeless meadows, gray with seeds,
And by the wood 'round which the rail-fence rambles,
Sawing the sunlight with your sultry saw.
Or, – like to tomboy truants, at their play
With noisy mirth among the barn's deep straw, —
You sing away the careless summer-day.
O brier-like voice that clings in idleness
To Summer's drowsy dress!
 
 
You tramp of insects, vagrant and unheeding,
Improvident, who of the summer make
One long green mealtime, and for winter take
No care, aye singing or just merely feeding!
Happy-go-lucky vagabond, – 'though frost
Shall pierce, ere long, your green coat or your brown,
And pinch your body, – let no song be lost,
But as you lived into your grave go down —
Like some small poet with his little rhyme,
Forgotten of all time.
 

THE TREE TOAD

I

 
Secluded, solitary on some underbough,
Or cradled in a leaf, 'mid glimmering light,
Like Puck thou crouchest: Haply watching how
The slow toad-stool comes bulging, moony white,
Through loosening loam; or how, against the night,
The glow-worm gathers silver to endow
The darkness with; or how the dew conspires
To hang at dusk with lamps of chilly fires
Each blade that shrivels now.
 

II

 
O vague confederate of the whippoorwill,
Of owl and cricket and the katydid!
Thou gatherest up the silence in one shrill
Vibrating note and send'st it where, half hid
In cedars, twilight sleeps – each azure lid
Drooping a line of golden eyeball still. —
Afar, yet near, I hear thy dewy voice
Within the Garden of the Hours apoise
On dusk's deep daffodil.
 

III

 
Minstrel of moisture! silent when high noon
Shows her tanned face among the thirsting clover
And parching meadows, thy tenebrious tune
Wakes with the dew or when the rain is over.
Thou troubadour of wetness and damp lover
Of all cool things! admitted comrade boon
Of twilight's hush, and little intimate
Of eve's first fluttering star and delicate
Round rim of rainy moon!
 

IV

 
Art trumpeter of Dwarfland? does thy horn
Inform the gnomes and goblins of the hour
When they may gambol under haw and thorn,
Straddling each winking web and twinkling flower?
Or bell-ringer of Elfland? whose tall tower
The liriodendron is? from whence is borne
The elfin music of thy bell's deep bass,
To summon fairies to their starlit maze,
To summon them or warn.
 

THE SCREECH-OWL

 
When, one by one, the stars have trembled through
Eve's shadowy hues of violet, rose, and fire —
As on a pansy-bloom the limpid dew
Orbs its bright beads; – and, one by one, the choir
Of insects wakes on nodding bush and brier:
Then through the woods – where wandering winds pursue
A ceaseless whisper – like an eery lyre
Struck in the Erl-king's halls, where ghosts and dreams
Hold revelry, your goblin music screams,
Shivering and strange as some strange thought come true.
 
 
Brown as the agaric that frills dead trees,
Or those fantastic fungi of the woods
That crowd the dampness – are you kin to these
In some mysterious way that still eludes
My fancy? you, who haunt the solitudes
With witch-like wailings? voice, that seems to freeze
Out of the darkness, – like the scent which broods,
Rank and rain-sodden, over autumn nooks, —
That, to the mind, might well suggest such looks,
Ghastly and gray, as pale clairvoyance sees.
 
 
You people night with weirdness: lone and drear,
Beneath the stars, you cry your wizard runes;
And in the haggard silence, filled with fear,
Your shuddering hoot seems some bleak grief that croons
Mockery and terror; or, – beneath the moon's
Cloud-hurrying glimmer, – to the startled ear,
Crazed, madman snatches of old, perished tunes,
The witless wit of outcast Edgar there
In the wild night; or, wan with all despair,
The mirthless laughter of the Fool in Lear.
 

THE CHIPMUNK

 
He makes a roadway of the crumbling fence,
Or on the fallen tree, – brown as a leaf
Fall stripes with russet, – gambols down the dense
Green twilight of the woods. We see not whence
He comes, nor whither – 'tis a time too brief! —
He vanishes; – swift carrier of some Fay,
Some pixy steed that haunts our child-belief —
A goblin glimpse from woodland way to way.
 
 
What harlequin mood of nature qualified
Him so with happiness? and limbed him with
Such young activity as winds, that ride
The ripples, have, that dance on every side?
As sunbeams know, that urge the sap and pith
Through hearts of trees? yet made him to delight,
Gnome-like, in darkness, – like a moonlight myth, —
Lairing in labyrinths of the under night.
 
 
Here, by a rock, beneath the moss, a hole
Leads to his home, the den wherein he sleeps;
Lulled by near noises of the cautious mole
Tunnelling its mine – like some ungainly Troll —
Or by the tireless cricket there that keeps
Picking its drowsy and monotonous lute;
Or slower sounds of grass that creeps and creeps,
And trees unrolling mighty root on root.
 
 
Such is the music of his sleeping hours.
Day hath another – 'tis a melody
He trips to, made by the assembled flowers,
And light and fragrance laughing 'mid the bowers,
And ripeness busy with the acorn-tree.
Such strains, perhaps, as filled with mute amaze —
The silent music of Earth's ecstasy —
The Satyr's soul, the Faun of classic days.
 

LOVE AND A DAY

I

 
In girandoles of gladioles
The day had kindled flame;
And Heaven a door of gold and pearl
Unclosed when Morning, – like a girl,
A red rose twisted in a curl, —
Down sapphire stairways came.
 
 
Said I to Love: "What must I do?
What shall I do? what can I do?"
Said I to Love: "What must I do?
All on a summer's morning."
 
 
Said Love to me: "Go woo, go woo."
Said Love to me: "Go woo.
If she be milking, follow, O!
And in the clover hollow, O!
While through the dew the bells clang clear,
Just whisper it into her ear,
All on a summer's morning."
 

II

 
Of honey and heat and weed and wheat
The day had made perfume;
And Heaven a tower of turquoise raised,
Whence Noon, like some wan woman, gazed —
A sunflower withering at her waist —
Within a crystal room.
 
 
Said I to Love: "What must I do?
What shall I do? what can I do?"
Said I to Love: "What must I do,
All in the summer nooning?"
 
 
Said Love to me: "Go woo, go woo."
Said Love to me: "Go woo.
If she be 'mid the rakers, O!
Among the harvest acres, O!
While every breeze brings scents of hay,
Just hold her hand and not take 'nay,'
All in the summer nooning."
 

III

 
With song and sigh and cricket cry
The day had mingled rest;
And Heaven a casement opened wide
Of opal, whence, like some young bride,
The Twilight leaned, all starry-eyed,
A moonflower on her breast.
 
 
Said I to Love: "What must I do?
What shall I do? what can I do?"
Said I to Love: "What must I do,
All in the summer gloaming?"
 
 
Said Love to me: "Go woo, go woo."
Said Love to me: "Go woo.
Go meet her at the trysting, O!
And, 'spite of her resisting, O!
Beneath the stars and afterglow,
Just clasp her close and kiss her so,
All in the summer gloaming."
 

DROUTH

I

 
The hot sunflowers by the glaring pike
Lift shields of sultry brass; the teasel tops,
Pink-thorned, advance with bristling spike on spike
Against the furious sunlight. Field and copse
Are sick with summer: now, with breathless stops,
The locusts cymbal; now grasshoppers beat
Their castanets: and rolled in dust, a team, —
Like some mean life wrapped in its sorry dream, —
An empty wagon rattles through the heat.
 

II

 
Where now the blue, blue flags? the flow'rs whose mouths
Are moist and musky? Where the sweet-breathed mint,
That made the brook-bank herby? Where the South's
Wild morning-glories, rich in hues, that hint
At coming showers that the rainbows tint?
Where all the blossoms that the wildwood knows? —
The frail oxalis hidden in its leaves;
The Indian-pipe, pale as a soul that grieves;
The freckled touch-me-not and forest-rose.
 

III

 
Dead! dead! all dead besides the drouth-burnt brook,
Shrouded in moss or in the shriveled grass.
Where waved their bells, – from which the wild-bee shook
The dew-drop once, – gaunt, in a nightmare mass,
The rank weeds crowd; through which the cattle pass,
Thirsty and lean, seeking some meagre spring,
Closed in with thorns, on which stray bits of wool
The panting sheep have left, that sought the cool,
From morn till evening wearily wandering.
 

IV

 
No bird is heard; no throat to whistle awake
The sleepy hush; to let its music leak
Fresh, bubble-like, through bloom-roofs of the brake:
Only the green-blue heron, famine weak, —
Searching the stale pools of the minnowless creek, —
Utters its call; and then the rain-crow, too,
False prophet now, croaks to the stagnant air;
While overhead, – still as if painted there, —
A buzzard hangs, black on the burning blue.
 

BEFORE THE RAIN

 
Before the rain, low in the obscure east,
Weak and morose the moon hung, sickly gray;
Around its disc the storm mists, cracked and creased,
Wove an enormous web, wherein it lay
Like some white spider hungry for its prey.
Vindictive looked the scowling firmament,
In which each star, that flashed a dagger ray,
Seemed filled with malice of some dark intent.
 
 
The marsh-frog croaked; and underneath the stone
The peevish cricket raised a creaking cry.
Within the world these sounds were heard alone,
Save when the ruffian wind swept from the sky,
Making each tree like some sad spirit sigh;
Or shook the clumsy beetle from its weed,
That, in the drowsy darkness, bungling by,
Sharded the silence with its feverish speed.
 
 
Slowly the tempest gathered. Hours passed
Before was heard the thunder's sullen drum
Rumbling night's hollow; and the Earth at last,
Restless with waiting, – like a woman, dumb
With doubting of the love that should have clomb
Her casement hours ago, – avowed again,
'Mid protestations, joy that he had come.
And all night long I heard the Heavens explain.
 

THE BROKEN DROUTH

 
It seemed the listening forest held its breath
Before some vague and unapparent form
Of fear, approaching with the wings of death,
On the impending storm.
 
 
Above the hills, big, bellying clouds loomed, black
And ominous, yet silent as the blue
That pools calm heights of heaven, deepening back
'Twixt clouds of snowdrift hue.
 
 
Then instantly, as when a multitude
Shout riot and war through some tumultuous town,
Innumerable voices swept the wood
As wild the wind rushed down.
 
 
And fierce and few, as when a strong man weeps,
Great rain-drops dashed the dust; and, overhead,
Ponderous and vast down the prodigious deeps,
Went slow the thunder's tread.
 
 
And swift and furious, as when giants fence,
The lightning foils of tempest went insane;
Then far and near sonorous Earth grew dense
With long sweet sweep of rain.
 

FEUD

 
A mile of lane, – hedged high with iron-weeds
And dying daisies, – white with sun, that leads
Downward into a wood; through which a stream
Steals like a shadow; over which is laid
A bridge of logs, worn deep by many a team,
Sunk in the tangled shade.
 
 
Far off a wood-dove lifts its lonely cry;
And in the sleepy silver of the sky
A gray hawk wheels scarce larger than a hand.
From point to point the road grows worse and worse,
Until that place is reached where all the land
Seems burdened with some curse.
 
 
A ragged fence of pickets, warped and sprung, —
On which the fragments of a gate are hung, —
Divides a hill, the fox and ground-hog haunt,
A wilderness of briers; o'er whose tops
A battered barn is seen, low-roofed and gaunt,
'Mid fields that know no crops.
 
 
Fields over which a path, o'erwhelmed with burs
And ragweeds, noisy with the grasshoppers,
Leads, – lost, irresolute as paths the cows
Wear through the woods, – unto a woodshed; then,
With wrecks of windows, to a huddled house,
Where men have murdered men.
 
 
A house, whose tottering chimney, clay and rock,
Is seamed and crannied; whose lame door and lock
Are bullet-bored; around which, there and here,
Are sinister stains. – One dreads to look around. —
The place seems thinking of that time of fear
And dares not breathe a sound.
 
 
Within is emptiness: the sunlight falls
On faded journals papering its walls;
On advertisement chromos, torn with time,
Around a hearth where wasps and spiders build. —
The house is dead; meseems that night of crime
It, too, was shot and killed.
 

UNANOINTED

I

 
Upon the Siren-haunted seas, between Fate's mythic shores,
Within a world of moon and mist, where dusk and daylight wed,
I see a phantom galley and its hull is banked with oars,
With ghostly oars that move to song, a song of dreams long dead:
 
 
"Oh, we are sick of rowing here!
With toil our arms are numb;
With smiting year on weary year
Salt-furrows of the foam:
Our journey's end is never near,
And will no nearer come —
Beyond our reach the shores appear
Of far Elysium."
 

II

 
Within a land of cataracts and mountains old and sand,
Beneath whose heavens ruins rise, o'er which the stars burn red,
I see a spectral cavalcade with crucifix in hand
And shadowy armor march and sing, a song of dreams long dead:
 
 
"Oh, we are weary marching on!
Our limbs are travel-worn;
With cross and sword from dawn to dawn
We wend with raiment torn:
The leagues to go, the leagues we've gone
Are sand and rock and thorn —
The way is long to Avalon
Beyond the deeps of morn."
 

III

 
They are the curs'd! the souls who yearn and evermore pursue
The vision of a vain desire, a splendor far ahead;
To whom God gives the poet's dream without the grasp to do,
The artist's hope without the scope between the quick and dead:
 
 
I, too, am weary toiling where
The winds and waters beat;
When shall I ease the oar I bear
And rest my tired feet?
When will the white moons cease to glare,
The red suns veil their heat?
And from the heights blow sweet the air
Of Love's divine retreat?