The House of the Trees
The House of the Trees
OPE your doors and take me in,
Spirit of the wood;
Wash me clean of dust and din,
Clothe me in your mood.
Take me from the noisy light
To the sunless peace,
Where at midday standeth Night,
Signing Toil’s release.
All your dusky twilight stores
To my senses give;
Take me in and lock the doors,
Show me how to live.
Lift your leafy roof for me,
Part your yielding walls,
Let me wander lingeringly
Through your scented halls.
Ope your doors and take me in,
Spirit of the wood;
Take me—make me next of kin
To your leafy brood.
The Sun on the Trees
THE sun within the leafy woods
Is like a midday moon,
So soft upon these solitudes
Is bent the face of noon.
Loosed from the outside summer blaze
A few gold arrows stray;
A vagrant brilliance droops or plays
Through all the dusky day.
The gray trunk feels a touch of light,
While, where dead leaves are deep,
A gleam of sunshine golden white
Lies like a soul asleep.
And just beyond dank-rooted ferns,
Where darkening hemlocks sigh
And leaves are dim, the bare road burns
Beneath a dazzling sky.
Moonlight
WHEN I see the ghost of night
Stealing through my window-pane,
Silken sleep and silver light
Struggle for my soul in vain;
Silken sleep all balmily
Breathes upon my lids oppressed,
Till I sudden start to see
Ghostly fingers on my breast.
White and skyey visitant,
Bringing beauty such as stings
All my inner soul to pant
After undiscovered things,
Spare me this consummate pain!
Silken weavings intercreep
Round my senses once again,
I am mortal—let me sleep.
Pine Needles
HERE where the pine tree to the ground
Lets slip its fragrant load,
My footsteps fall without a sound
Upon a velvet road.
O poet pine, that turns thy gaze
Alone unto the sky,
How softly on earth’s common ways
Thy sweet thoughts fall and lie!
So sweet, so deep, seared by the sun,
And smitten by the rain,
They pierce the heart of every one
With fragrance keen as pain.
Or if some pass nor heed their sweet,
Nor feel their subtle dart,
Their softness stills the noisy feet,
And stills the noisy heart.
O poet pine, thy needles high
In starry light abode,
And now for footsore passers-by
They make a velvet road.
The Sound of the Axe
WITH the sound of an axe on the light wind’s tracks
For my only company,
And a speck of sky like a human eye
Blue, bending over me,
I lie at rest on the low moss pressed,
Whose loose leaves downward drip;
As light they move as a word of love
Or a finger to the lip.
’Neath the canopies of the sunbright trees
Pierced by an Autumn ray,
To rich red flakes the old log breaks
In exquisite decay.
While in the pines where no sun shines
Perpetual morning lies.
What bed more sweet could stay her feet,
Or hold her dreaming eyes?
No sound is there in the middle air
But sudden wings that soar,
As a strange bird’s cry goes drifting by—
And then I hear once more
That sound of an axe till the great tree cracks,
Then a crash comes as if all
The winds that through its bright leaves blew
Were sorrowing in its fall.
The Prayer of the Year
LEAVE me Hope when I am old,
Strip my joys from me,
Let November to the cold
Bare each leafy tree;
Chill my lover, dull my friend,
Only, while I grope
To the dark the silent end,
Leave me Hope!
Blight my bloom when I am old,
Bid my sunlight cease;
If it need be from my hold
Take the hand of Peace.
Leave no springtime memory,
But upon the slope
Of the days that are to be,
Leave me Hope!
The Hay Field
WITH slender arms outstretching in the sun
The grass lies dead;
The wind walks tenderly, and stirs not one
Frail, fallen head.
Of baby creepings through the April day
Where streamlets wend,
Of childlike dancing on the breeze of May,
This is the end.
No more these tiny forms are bathed in dew,
No more they reach,
To hold with leaves that shade them from the blue
A whispered speech.
No more they part their arms, and wreathe them close
Again to shield
Some love-full little nest—a dainty house
Hid in a field.
For them no more the splendor of the storm,
The fair delights
Of moon and star-shine, glimmering faint and warm
On summer nights.
Their little lives they yield in summer death,
And frequently
Across the field bereaved their dying breath
Is brought to me.
Twilight
I SAW her walking in the rain,
And sweetly drew she nigh;
And then she crossed the hills again
To bid the day good-by.
“Good-by! good-by!
The world is dim as sorrow;
But close beside the morning sky
I’ll say a glad Good-morrow!”
O dweller in the darling wood,
When near to death I lie,
Come from your leafy solitude,
And bid my soul good-by.
Good-by! good-by!
The world is dim as sorrow;
But close beside the morning sky
O say a glad Good-morrow!
The Sky Path
I HEAR the far moon’s silver call
High in the upper wold;
And shepherd-like it gathers all
My thoughts into its fold.
Oh happy thoughts, that wheresoe’er
They wander through the day,
Come home at eve to upper air
Along a shining way.
Though some are weary, some are torn,
And some are fain to grieve,
And some the freshness of the morn
Have kept until the eve,
And some perversely seek to roam
E’en from their shepherd bright,
Yet all are gathered safely home,
And folded for the night.
Oh happy thoughts, that with the streams
The trees and meadows share
The sky path to the gate of dreams,
In their white shepherd’s care.
Fall and Spring
FROM the time the wind wakes
To the time of snowflakes,
That’s the time the heart aches
Every cloudy day;
That’s the time the heart takes
Thought of all its heart-breaks,
That’s the time the heart makes
Life a cloudy way.
From the time the grass creeps
To the time the wind sleeps,
That’s the time the heart leaps
To the golden ray;
That’s the time that joy sweeps
Through the depths of heart-deeps,
That’s the time the heart keeps
Happy holiday.
The Woodside Way
I WANDERED down the woodside way,
Where branching doors ope with the breeze,
And saw a little child at play
Among the strong and lovely trees;
The dead leaves rustled to her knees;
Her hair and eyes were brown as they.
“Oh, little child,” I softly said,
“You come a long, long way to me;
The trees that tower overhead
Are here in sweet reality,
But you’re the child I used to be,
And all the leaves of May you tread.”
A Rainy Day
IT has been twilight all the day,
And as the twilight peace
On daily fetters seems to lay
The finger of release,
So, needless as to tree and flower
Seem care and fear and pain;
Our hearts grow fresher every hour,
And brighten in the rain.
When Twilight Comes
ALL out of doors for all life’s way,
The fields and the woods and the good sunlight;
And then in the chill of the evening gray,
A sheltered nook and the hearth-fire bright.
No hearth, no shelter attend my way!
Not late, dear life, linger not too late;
But before the chill and before the gray,
Let the sunset gild the grave-stone date.
Leafless April
LEAFLESS April chased by light,
Chased by dark and full of laughter,
Stays a moment in her flight
Where the warmest breezes waft her,
By the meadow brook to lean,
Or where winter rye is growing,
Showing in a lovelier green
Where her wayward steps are going.
Blithesome April brown and warm,
Showing slimness through her tatters,
Chased by sun or chased by storm—
Not a whit to her it matters.
Swiftly through the violet bed,
Down to where the stream is flooding
Light she flits—and round her head
See the orchard branches budding!
The Visitors
IN the room where I was sleeping
The sun came to the floor;
Its silent thought went leaping
To where in woods of yore
It felt the sun before.
At noon the rain was slanting
In gray lines from the west;
A hurried child all panting
It pattered to my nest,
And smiled when sun-caressed.
At eve the wind was flying
Bird-like from bed to chair,
Of brown leaves sere and dying
It brought enough to spare,
And dropped them here and there.
At night-time without warning,
I felt almost to pain
The soul of the sun in the morning,
And the soul of the wind and rain
In my sleeping-room remain.
Autumn Days
AUTUMN days are sun crowned,
Full of laughing breath;
Light their leafy feet are dancing
Down the way to death.
Scarlet-shrouded to the grave
I watch them gayly go;
So may I as blithely die
Before November snow.
Woodland Worship
HERE ’mid these leafy walls
Are sylvan halls,
And all the Sabbaths of the year
Are gathered here.
Upon their raptured mood
My steps intrude,
Then wait—as some freed soul might wait
At heaven’s gate.
Nowhere on earth—nowhere
On sea or air,
Do I as easily escape
This earthly shape,
As here upon the white
And dizzy height
Of utmost worship, where it seems
Too still for dreams.
When Days Are Long
WHEN twilight late delayeth,
And morning wakes in song,
And fields are full of daisies,
I know the days are long;
When Toil is stretched at nooning,
Where leafy pleasures throng,
When nights o’errun in music,
I know the days are long.
When suns afoot are marching,
And rains are quick and strong,
And streams speak in a whisper,
I know the days are long.
When hills are clad in velvet,
And winds can do no wrong,
And woods are deep and dusky,
I know the days are long.
Out of Doors
IN the urgent solitudes
Lies the spur to larger moods;
In the friendship of the trees
Dwell all sweet serenities.
Make Room
ROOM for the children out of doors,
For heads of gold or gloom;
For raspberry lips and rose-leaf cheeks and palms,
Make room—make room!
Room for the springtime out of doors,
For buds in green or bloom;
For every brown bare-handed country weed
Make room—make room!
Room for earth’s sweetest out of doors,
And for its worst a tomb;
For housed-up griefs and fears, and scorns, and sighs,
No room—no room!
The Humming Bird
AGAINST my window-pane
He plunges at a mass
Of buds—and strikes in vain
The intervening glass.
O sprite of wings and fire
Outstretching eagerly,
My soul with like desire
To probe thy mystery,
Comes close as breast to bloom,
As bud to hot heart-beat,
And gains no inner room,
And drains no hidden sweet.
September
BUT yesterday all faint for breath,
The Summer laid her down to die;
And now her frail ghost wandereth
In every breeze that loiters by.
Her wilted prisoners look up,
As wondering who hath broke their chain,
Too deep they drank of summer’s cup,
They have no strength to rise again.
How swift the trees, their mistress gone,
Enrobe themselves for revelry!
Ungovernable winds upon
The wold are dancing merrily.
With crimson fruits and bursting nuts,
And whirling leaves and flushing streams,
The spirit of September cuts
Adrift from August’s languid dreams.
A little while the revellers
Shall flame and flaunt and have their day,
And then will come the messengers
Who travel on a cloudy way.
And after them a form of light,
A sense of iron in the air,
Upon the pulse a touch of might
And winter’s legions everywhere.
The March Orchard
UNLEAVED, undrooping, still, they stand,
This stanch and patient pilgrim band;
October robbed them of their fruit,
November stripped them to the root,
The winter smote their helplessness
With furious ire and stormy stress,
And now they seem almost to stand
In sight of Summer’s Promised Land.
Yet seen through frosty window-panes,
When bared and bound in wintry chains,
Their lightsome spirits seemed to play
With February as with May.
The snow that turned the skies afrown
Enwrapt them in the softest down,
And rains that dulled the landscape o’er
But left them livelier than before.
But now this June-like day of March
With patient strength their branches arch,
Not as unmindful of the breeze
That makes midsummer melodies,
But knowing Spring a fickle maid,
And that rough days must dawn and fade
Before, all blossoming bright, they stand
In sight of Summer’s Promised Land.
The Blind Man
THE blind man at his window bars
Stands in the morning dewy dim;
The lily-footed dawn, the stars
That wait for it, are naught to him.
And naught to his unseeing eyes
The brownness of a sunny plain,
Where worn and drowsy August lies,
And wakens but to sleep again.
And naught to him a greening slope,
That yearns up to the heights above,
And naught the leaves of May, that ope
As softly as the eyes of love.
And naught to him the branching aisles,
Athrong with woodland worshippers,
And naught the fields where summer smiles
Among her sunburned laborers.
The way a trailing streamlet goes,
The barefoot grasses on its brim,
The dew a flower cup o’erflows
With silent joy, are hid from him.
To him no breath of nature calls;
Upon his desk his work is laid;
He looks up at the dingy walls,
And listens to the voice of Trade.
To the October Wind
OLD playmate, showering the way
With thick leaf storms in red and gold,
I’m only six years old to-day,
You’ve made me feel but six years old.
In yellow gown and scarlet hood
I whirled, a leaf among the rest,
Or lay within the thinning wood,
And played that you were Red-of-breast.
Old comrade, lift me up again;
Your arms are strong, your feet are swift,
And bear me lightly down the lane
Through all the leaves that drift and drift,
And out into the twilight wood,
And lay me softly down to rest,
And cover me just as you would
If you were really Red-of-breast.
A Midday in Midsummer
THE sky’s great curtains downward steal,
The earth’s fair company
Of trees and streams and meadows feel
A sense of privacy.
Upon the vast expanse of heat
Light-footed breezes pace;
To waves of gold they tread the wheat,
They lift the sunflower’s face.
The cruel sun is blotted out,
The west is black with rain,
The drooping leaves in mingled doubt
And hope look up again.
The weeds and grass on tiptoe stand,
A strange exultant thrill
Prepares the dazed uncertain land
For the wild tempest’s will.
The wind grows big and breathes aloud
As it runs hurrying past;
At one sharp blow the thunder-cloud
Lets loose the furious blast.
The earth is beaten, drenched and drowned,
The elements go mad;
Swift streams of joy flow o’er the ground,
And all the leaves are glad.
Then comes a momentary lull,
The darkest clouds are furled,
And lo, new washed and beautiful
And breathless gleams the world.
A Slow Rain
A DROWSY rain is stealing
In slowness without stop;
The sun-dried earth is feeling
Its coolness, drop by drop.
The clouds are slowly wasting
Their too long garnered store,
Each thirsty clod is tasting
One drop—and then one more.
Oh, ravishing as slumber
To wearied limbs and eyes,
And countless as the number
Of stars in wintry skies,
And sweet as the caresses
By baby fingers made,
These delicate rain kisses
On leaf and flower and blade.