[VOICES SINGING.]
FIRST CHORUS.
Ere the birth of Death and of Time,
Ere the birth of Hell and its torments,
Ere the orbs of heat and of rime
And the winds to the heavens were as garments,
Worm-like in the womb of Space,
Worm-like from her monster womb,
We sprung, a myriad race
Of thunder and tempest and gloom.
SECOND CHORUS.
As from the evil good
Springs like a fire,
As bland beatitude
Wells from the dire,
So was the Chaos brood
Of us the sire.
FIRST CHORUS.
We had lain for gaunt ages asleep
'Neath her breast in a bulk of torpor,
When down through the vasts of the deep
Clove a sound like the notes of a harper;
Clove a sound, and the horrors grew
Tumultuous with turbulent night,
With whirlwinds of blackness that blew,
And storm that was godly in might.
And the walls of our prison were shattered
Like the crust of a fire-wrecked world;
Like torrents of clouds that are scattered
On the face of the Night we are hurled.
SECOND CHORUS.
Us, in unholy thought
Patiently lying,
Eons of violence wrought,
Violence defying.
When on a mighty wind,—
Born of a godly mind
Large with a motive kind,—
Girdled with wonder,
Flame and a strength of song
Rushed in a voice along,
Burst and, lo! we were strong—
Strong as the thunder.
FIRST CHORUS.
We lurk in the upper spaces,
Where the oceans of tempest are born,
Where the scowls of our shadowy faces
Are safe from the splendors of morn.
Our homes are wrecked worlds and each planet
Whose sun is a light that is sped;
Bleak moons whose cold bodies of granite
Are hollow and flameless and dead.
SECOND CHORUS.
We in the living sun
Live like a passion;
Ere all his stars begun
We and the sun were one,
As God did fashion.
Lo! from our burning hands,
Flung like inspired brands,
Hurled we the stars, like sands
Whirled in the ocean;
And all our breath was life,
Life to those worlds and rife
With ever-moving strife,
Passion for motion.
FIRST CHORUS.
Our beds are the tombs of the mortals;
We feed on their crimes and the thought
That falters and halts at the portals
Of actions, intentions unwrought.
We cover the face of to-morrow;
We frown in the hours that be;
We breathe in the presence of sorrow,
And death and destruction are we.
SECOND CHORUS.
We are the hope and ease,
Joy and the pleasure,
Authors of love and peace,
Love that shall never cease,
Free as the azure.
Birth of our eyes—the might,
Power and strength of light,
Victor o'er death and night,
Flesh and its yearnings:
And from our utt'rance streams
Beauty with burnings
After completer dreams,
Fuller discernings.
Morning and birth are ours,
Dew that is blown
From our light lips like flowers;
Clouds and the beating showers,
Stars that are sown;
Song and the bursting buds,
Life of the many floods,
Winds that are strown.
Ye in your darkness are
Dark and infernal;
Subject to death and mar!
But in the spaces far,
Like our effulgent star,
We are eternal!
TO SORROW.
I.
O tear-eyed goddess of the marble brow,
Who showerest snows of tresses on the night
Of anguished temples! lonely watcher, thou
Who bendest o'er the couch of life's dead light!
Who in the hollow hours of night's noon
Rockest the cradle of the child,
Whose fever-blooded eyeballs seek the moon
To cool their pulses wild.
Thou who dost stoop to kiss a sister's cheek,
Which rules the alabastar death with youth;
Thou who art mad and strangely meek,—
Empress of passions, couth, uncouth,
We kneel to thee!
II.
O Sorrow, when the sapless world grows white,
And singing gathers on her springtide robes,
On some bleak steep which takes the ruby light
Of day, braid in thy locks the spirit globes
Of cool, weak snowdrops dashed with frozen dew,
And hasten to the leas below
Where Spring may wandered be from the rich blue
Which rims yon clouds of snow.
From the pied crocus and the violet's hues,
Think then how thou didst rake the bosoming snow,
To show some mother the soft blues
Of baby eyes, the sparkling glow
Of dimple-dotted cheeks.
III.
On some hoar upland, hoar with clustered thorns,
Hard by a river's wind-blown lisp of waves,
Sit with young white-skinned Spring, whose dewy morns
Laugh in his pouting cheeks which Health enslaves.
There feast thee on the brede of his long hair,
Where half-grown roses royal blaze.
And cool-eyed primroses wide-diskéd bare,
Frail stars of moonish haze,
Contented lie wound in his breathing arms:—
'Tis meet that grief should mingle with the wan,
That blue of calms and gloom of storms
Reign on the burning throne of dawn
To glorify the world.
IV.
Or in the peaceful calm of stormy evens,
When the sick, bloodless West doth winding spread
A sheeted shroud of silver o'er the heavens
And brooches it with one rich star's gold head,
Low lay thee down beside a mountain lake,
Which dimples at the twilight's sigh,
Couched on plush mosses 'neath green bosks that shake
Storm fragrance from on high,—
The cold, pure spice of rain-drenched forests deep,—
And gorge thy grief upon the nightingale,
Who with the hush a war doth keep
That bubbles down the starlit vale
To Silence's rapt ear.
THE PASSING OF THE BEAUTIFUL.
On southern winds shot through with amber light,
Breeding soft balm, and clothed in cloudy white,
The lily-fingered Spring came o'er the hills
Waking the crocus and the daffodils.
O'er the cold earth she breathed a tender sigh,—
The maples sang and flung their banners high,
Their crimson-tasseled pennons, and the elm
Bound his dark brows with a green-crested helm.
Beneath the musky rot of Autumn's leaves,
Under the forest's myriad naked eaves,
Life woke and rose in gold and green and blue,
Robed in the star-light of the twinkling dew.
With timid tread adown the barren wood
Spring held her way, when, lo! before her stood
White-mantled Winter wagging his white head,
Stormy his brow, and stormily he said:—
"Sole lord of terror, and the fiend of storm,
Crowned king of despots, my envermeiled arm
Slew these vast woodlands crimsoning all their bowers!
Thou, Spirit of Beauty, with thy bursting flowers,
Swollen with pride, wouldst thou usurp my throne,
Long planted here deep in the waste's wild moan?
Sworn foe of beauty, with a band of ice
I'll strangle thee tho' thou be welcomer thrice!"
So round her throat a band of blasting frost,
Her sainted throat of snow, he coiled and crossed,
And cast her on the dark, unfeeling mold;
Her tender blossoms, blighted in the fold
Of her warm bosoms, trembling bowed their brows
In holy meekness, or in scattered rows
Huddled about her white and silent feet,
Or on pale lips laid fond last kisses sweet,
And died: lilacs all musky for the May,
And bluer violets, and snow drops lay
Silent and dead, but yet divinely fair,
Like ice gems glist'ning in Spring's lovely hair.
The Beautiful, so innocent, sweet, and pure,
Why must thou perish, and the evil still endure?
Too soon must pass the Beautiful away!
Too long doth Terror hold anarchal sway!
Alas! sad heart, bow not beneath the pain,
Time changeth all, the Beautiful wakes again!
We can not question such; a higher power
Knows best what bud is ripest in its flower;
Silently plucks it at the fittest hour.
A NOVEMBER SKETCH.
The hoar-frost hisses 'neath the feet,
And the worm-fence's straggling length,
Smote by the morning's slanted strength,
Sparkles one rib of virgin sleet.
To withered fields the crisp breeze talks,
And silently and sadly lifts
The bronz'd leaves from the beech and drifts
Them wadded down the woodland walks.
Reluctantly and one by one
The worthless leaves sift slowly down,
And thro' the mournful vistas blown
Drop rustling, and their rest is won.
Where stands the brook beneath its fall,
Thin-scaled with ice the pool is bound,
And on the pebbles scattered 'round
The ooze is frozen; one and all
White as rare crystals shining fair.
There stirs no life: the faded wood
Mourns sighing, and the solitude
Seems shaken with a mighty care.
Decay and silence sadly drape
The vigorous limbs of oldest trees,
The rotting leaves and rocks whose knees
Are shagged with moss, with misty crape.
To sullenness the surly crow
All his derisive feeling yields,
And o'er the barren stubble-fields
Flaps cawless, wrapped in hungry woe.
The eve comes on: the teasel stoops
Its spike-crowned head before the blast;
The tattered leaves drive whirling past
Like skeletons in whistling troops.
The pithy elder copses sigh;
Their broad blue combs with berries weighed,
Like heavy pendulums are swayed
With ev'ry gust that hurries by.
Thro' matted walls of tangled brier
That hedge the lane, the sumachs thrust
Their scarlet torches red as rust,
Burning with flames of stolid fire.
The evening's here—cold, hard, and drear;
The lavish West with bullion bright
Of molten silver walls the night
Far as one star's thin rays appear.
Wedged toward the West's cold luridness
The wild geese fly 'neath roseless domes;
The wild cry of the leader comes
Distant and harsh with loneliness.
The pale West dies, and in its cup
Bubble on bubble pours the night:
The East glows with a mystic light;
The stars are keen; the moon is up.
THE WHITE EVENING.
From gray, bleak hills 'neath steely skies
Thro' beards of ice the forests roar;
Along the river's humming shore
The skimming skater bird-like flies.
On windy meads where wave white breaks,
Where fettered briers' glist'ning hands
Reach to the cold moon's ghastly lands,
Hoots the lorn owl, and crouching quakes.
With frowsy snow blanched is the world;
Stiff sweeps the wind thro' murmuring pines,
Then fiend-like deep-entangled whines
Thro' the dead oak, that vagrant twirled
Phantoms the cliff o'er the wild wold:
Ghost-vested willows rim the stream,
Low hang lank limbs where in a dream
The houseless hare leaps o'er the cold
On snow-tressed crags that twinkling flash,
Like champions mailed for clanking war,
Glares down large Phosphor's quiv'ring star,
Where teeth of foam the fierce seas gnash.
Slim o'er the tree-tops weighed with white
The country church's spire doth swell,
A scintillating icicle,
While fitfully the village light
In sallow stars stabs the gray dark;
Homeward the creaking wagons strain
Thro' knee-deep drifts; the steeple's vane
A flitting ghost whirls in its sark.
Down from the flaky North with clash,
Swathed in his beard of flashing sleet,
With steeds of winds that jangling beat
Life from the world, and roaring dash,—
Loud Winter! ruddy as a rose
Blown by the June's mild, musky lips;
The high moon dims her horn that dips,
And fold on fold roll down the snows.
SUMMER.
I.
Now Lucifer ignites her taper bright
To greet the wild-flowered Dawn,
Who leads the tasseled Summer draped with light
Down heaven's gilded lawn.
Hark to the minstrels of the woods,
Tuning glad harps in haunted solitudes!
List to the rillet's music soft,
The tree's hushed song:
Flushed from her star aloft
Comes blue-eyed Summer stepping meek along.
II.
And as the lusty lover leads her in,
Clad in soft blushes red,
With breezy lips her love he tries to win,
Doth many a tear-drop shed:
While airy sighs, dyed in his heart,
Like Cupid's arrows, flame-tipped o'er her dart,
He bends his yellow head and craves
The timid maid
For one sweet kiss, and laves
Her rose-crowned locks with tears until 'tis paid.
III.
Come to the forest or the musky meadows
Brown with their mellow grain;
Come where the cascades shake green shadows,
Where tawny orchards reign.
Come where fall reapers ply the scythe,
Where golden sheaves are heaped by damsels blithe:
Come to the rock-rough mountain old,
Tree-pierced and wild;
Where freckled flowers paint the wold,
Hail laughing Summer, sunny-haired, blonde child!
IV.
Come where the dragon-flies in coats of blue
Flit o'er the wildwood streams,
And fright the wild bee from the honey-dew
Where if long-sipping dreams.
Come where the touch-me-nots shy peep
Gold-horned and speckled from the cascades steep:
Come where the daisies by the rustic bridge
Display their eyes,
Or where the lilied sedge
From emerald forest-pools, lance-like, thick rise.
V.
Come where the wild deer feed within the brake
As red as oak and strong;
Come where romantic echoes wildly wake
Old hills to mystic song.
Come to the vine-hung woodlands hoary,
Come to the realms of hunting song and story;
But come when Summer decks the land
With garb of gold,
With colors myriad as the sand—
A birth-fair child, tho' thousand summers old.
VI.
Come where the trees extend their shining arms
Unto the star-sown skies;
Displaying wrinkled age in limb-gnarled charms
When Night, moon-eyed, brown lies
Upon their bending lances seen
With fluttered pennons in the moon's broad sheen.
Come where the pearly dew is spread
Upon the rose;
Come where the fire-flies wed
The drowsy Night flame-stained with sudden glows.
VII.
Come to the vine-dark dingle's whispering glens
White with their blossoms pale;
Come to the willowed weed-haired lakes and fens;
Come to the tedded vale.
Come all, and greet the brown-browed child
With lips of honey red as a poppy wild,
Clothed in her vernal robes of old,
Her hair with wheat
All tawny as with gold;
Hail Summer with her sandaled grain-bound feet!
NIGHT.
Lo! where the car of Day down slopes of flame
On burnished axle quits the drowsy skies!
And as his snorting steeds of glowing brass
Rush 'neath the earth, a glimmering dust of gold
From their fierce hoofs o'er heaven's azure meads
Rolls to yon star that burns beneath the moon.
With solemn tread and holy-stoled, star-bound,
The Night steps in, sad votaress, like a nun,
To pace lone corridors of th' ebon-archéd sky.
How sad! how beautiful! her raven locks
Pale-filleted with stars that dance their sheen
On her deep, holy eyes, and woo to sleep,
Sleep or the easeful slumber of white Death!
How calm o'er this great water, in its flow
Silent and vast, smoothes yon cold sister sphere,
Her lucid chasteness feathering the wax-white foam!
As o'er a troubled brow falls calm content:
As clear-eyed chastity in this bleak world
Tinges and softens all the darker dross.
See, where the roses blow at the wood's edge
In many a languid bloom, bowed to the moon
And the dim river's lisp; sleep droops their lids
With damask lashes trimmed and fragile rayed,
Which the mad, frolic bee—rough paramour—
So often kissed beneath th' enlivening sun.
How cool the breezes touch the tired head
With unseen fingers long and soft! and there
From its white couch of thorn-tree blossoms sweet,
Pillowed with one milk cluster, floating, swooning,
Drops the low nocturne of a dreaming bird,
Ave Maria, nun-like, slumb'ring sung.
See, there the violet mound in many an eye,
A deep-blue eye, meek, delicate, and sad,
As Sorrow's own sad eyes, great with far dreams,
When haltingly she bends o'er Lethe's waves
Falt'ring to drink, and falt'ring still remains,
The Night with feet of moon-tinged mist swept o'er
Them now, but as she passed she bent and kissed
Each modest orb that selfless hung as tho'
Thought-freighted low; then groped her train of jet
Which billowing by did merely waft the sound
Of a brief gust to each wild violet,
To kiss each eye and laugh; then shed a tear
Upon each downward face which nestled there.
She weeping from her silent vigil turns,
As some pale mother from her cradled child,
Frail, sick, and wan, with kisses warm and songs
Wooed to a peaceful ease and tranquil rest,
When the rathe cock crows to the graying East.
DAWN.
I.
Mist on the mountain height
Silvery creeping;
Incarnate beads of light
Bloom-cradled sleeping,
Dripped from the brow of Night.
II.
Shadows, and winds that rise
Over the mountain;
Stars in the spar that lies
Cold in the fountain,
Pale as the quickened skies.
III.
Sheep in the wattled folds
Dreamily bleating,
Dim on the thistled wolds,
Where, glad with meeting,
Morn the thin Night enfolds.
IV.
Sleep on the moaning sea
Hushing his trouble;
Rest on the cares that be
Hued in Life's bubble,
Calm on the woes of me....
V.
Mist from the mountain height
Hurriedly fleeting;
Star in the locks of Night
Throbbing and beating,
Thrilled with the coming light.
VI.
Flocks on the musky strips;
Pearl in the fountain;
Winds from the forest's lips;
Red on the mountain;
Dawn from the Orient trips.
JUNE.
I.
Hotly burns the amaryllis
With its stars of red;
Whitely rise the stately lilies
From the lily bed;
Withered shrinks the wax May-apple
'Neath its parasol;
Chilly dies the violet dapple
In its earthly hall.
II.
March is but a blust'ring liar,
April a sad love,
May a milkmaid from the byre
Flirting in the grove.
June is rich in many blossoms,
She's the one I'll woo;
Health swells in her sunny bosoms,
She's my sweetheart true.
THE JESSAMINE AND THE MORNING-GLORY.
I.
On a sheet of silver the morning-star lay
Fresh, white as a baby child,
And laughed and leaped in his lissome way,
On my parterre of flowers smiled.
For a morning-glory's spiral bud
Of shell-coned tallness slim
Stood ready to burst her delicate hood
And bloom on the dawning dim:
A princess royal in purple born
To beauty and pride in the balmy morn.
II.
And she shook her locks at the morning-star
And her raiment scattered wide;
Low laughed at a hollyhock's scimetar,
Its jewels of buds to deride.
The pomegranate near, with fingers of flame,
The hot-faced geraniums nigh,
Their proud heads bowed to the queenly dame
For they knew her state was high:
The fuchsia like a bead of blood
Bashfully blushed in her silvery hood.
III.
All wit that this child of the morning light
Was queen of the morn and them,
That the orient star in his beams of white
Was her prince in a diadem;
For lavish he showered those pearls that flash
And cluster the front of her smock;
From his lordly fingers of rays did dash
Down zephyrs her crib to rock.
But a jessamine pale 'neath the arbor grew,
Meek, selfless, and sweet, and a virgin true.
IV.
But the morning-glory disdained her birth,
Of her chastity made a scorn:
"I marvel," she said, "if thy mother earth
Was not sick when thou wast born!
Thou art pale as an infant an hour dead—
Wan thing, dost weary our eye!"
And she weakly laughed and stiffened her head
And turned to her love i' the sky.
But the jessamine turned to the rose beside
With a heavy glance and but sadly sighed.
V.
And the orient grew to a wealth of bars
'Neath which foam-fires churned,
And the princess proud saw her lord of stars
In a torrid furnace burned;
And the giant of life with his breath of flame
Glared down with one red eye,
And 'neath his breath this gorgeous dame
In her diamonds did wilt and die;
But the jessamine fragrant waxed purer with light;
For my lady's bosom I culled it that night.
THE HEREMITE TOAD.
A human skull in a church-yard lay;
For the church was a wreck, and the tombstones old
On the graves of their dead were rotting away
To the like of their long-watched mould.
And an heremite toad in this desolate seat
Had made him an hermitage long agone,
Where the ivy frail with its delicate feet
Could creep o'er his cell of bone.
And the ground was dark, and the springing dawn,
When it struck from the tottering stones of each grave
A glimmering silver, the dawn drops wan
This skull and its ivy would lave.
* * * * * * *
The night her crescent had thinly hung
From a single star o'er the shattered wall,
And its feeble light on the stone was flung
Where I sat to hear him call.
And I heard this heremite toad as he sate
In the gloom of his ghastly hermitage,
To himself and the gloom all hollowly prate,
Like a misanthropic sage:
"O, beauty is well and is wealth to all,
But wealth without beauty makes fair;
And beauty with wealth brings wooers tall
Whom she snares in her golden hair.
"Tho' beauty be well and be wealth to all,
And wealth without beauty draw men,
Beauty must come to the vaulted wall,
And what is wealth to her then?...
"This skeleton face was beautiful erst;
These sockets could mammonites sway;
So she barter'd her beauty for gold accurs'd—
But both have vanished away.
"But beauty is well when the mind it reveals
More beautiful is than the head;
For beauty and wealth the tomb congeals,
But the mind grows lovelier dead."
And he blinked at the moon from his grinning cell,
And the darnels and burdocks around
Bowed down in the night, and I murmured "Well!"
For I deemed his judgment sound.
THE HEART OF SPRING.
I.
Whiten, O whiten, ye clouds of fleece!
Whiten like lilies floating above,
Blown wild about like a flock of white geese!
But never, O never; so cease! so cease!
Never as white as the throat of my love!
II.
Blue-black night on the mountain peaks,
Blacker the locks of my maiden love!
Silvery star 'mid the evening streaks
Over the torrent that flashes and breaks,
Brighter the eyes of my laughing love!
III.
Horn of a new moon golden 'mid gold,
Broken, fluted in the tarn's close skies;
Shattered and beaten, wave-like and cold,
Crisper my love's locks fold on fold,
Cooler and brighter where dreaming she lies!
IV.
Silvery star o'er the precipice snow,
Mist in the vale where the rivulet sings,
Dropping from ledge to ledge below,
Where we stood in the roseate glow,
Softer the voice of her whisperings!
V.
Sound o' May winds in the blossoming trees,
Sweeter the breeze my love's breath brings!
Song of wild birds on the morning breeze,
Song o' wild birds and murmur o' wild bees,
Sweeter my love's voice when she sings!
VI.
To the star of dawning bathed with dew,
Blow, moony Sylph, your bugle of gold!
Blow thro' the hyaline over the blue,
Blow from the sunset the morning lands thro',
Let the star of love of our love be told!
THE OLD HOUSE BY THE MERE.
Five rotten gables look upon
Wan rotting roses and rank weeds,
Old iron gates on posts of stone,
Dim dingles where the vermin breeds.
Five rotten gables black appear
Above bleak yews and cedars sad,
And thence they see the sleepy mere
In lazy lilies clad.
At morn the slender dragon-fly,
A burnished ray of light, darts past;
The knightly bee comes charging by
Winding a surly blast.
At noon amid the fervid leaves
The quarreling insects gossip hot,
And thro' the grass the spider weaves
A weft with silver shot.
At eve the hermit cricket rears
His vesper song in shrillful shrieks;
The bat a blund'ring voyage steers
Beneath the sunset's streaks.
The slimy worm gnaws at the bud,
The Katydid talks dreamily;
The sullen owl in monkish hood
Chants in the old beech tree.
At night the blist'ring dew comes down
And lies as white as autumn frost
Upon the green, upon the brown,
You'd deem each bush a ghost.
The crescent moon with golden prow
Plows thro' the frothy cloud and 's gone;
A large blue star comes out to glow
Above the house alone.
The oozy lilies lie asleep
On glist'ring beds of welt'ring leaves;
The starlight through the trees doth peep,
And fairy garments weaves.
And in the mere, all lily fair,
A maiden's corpse floats evermore,
Naked, and in her raven hair
Wrapped o'er and o'er.
And when the clock of yon old town
Peals midnight o'er the fenny heath,
In haunted chambers up and down
Marches the pomp of Death:
And stiff, stiff silks make rustlings,
Sweep sable satins murmuringly;
And then a voice so sweetly sings
An olden melody.
And foam-white creatures flit and dance
Along the dusty galleries,
With long, loose locks that strangely glance
And demon-glaring eyes.
But in one chamber, when the moon
Casts her cold silver wreath on wreath,
Holds there proud state on ghastly throne
The skeleton Death.
SUBSTRATUM.
Hear you r o music in the creaks
Made by the sallow grasshopper,
Who in the hot weeds sharply breaks
The mellow dryness with his cheer?
Or did you by the hearthstones hear
The cricket's kind, shrill strain when frost
Worked mysteries of silver near
Upon the casement's panes, and lost
Without the gate-post seemed a sheeted ghost?
Or through the dank, dim Springtide's night
Green minstrels of the marshlands tune
Their hoarse lyres in the pale twilight,
Hailing the sickle of the moon
From flag-thronged pools that glassed her lune?
Or in the Summer, dry and loud,
The hard cicada whirr aboon
His long lay in a poplar's cloud,
When the thin heat rose wraith-like in a shroud?
The cloud that lids the naked moon,
And smites the myriad leaves with night
Of stormy lashes, livid strewn
With veins of branched and splintered light;
The fruitful glebe with blossoms white,
The thistle's purple plume; the tears
Pearling the matin buds' delight,
Contain a something, it appears,
'Neath their real selves—a poetry that cheers.
Nor scoff at those who on the wold
See fairies whirling in the shine
Of prodigal moons, whose lavish gold
Paves wood-ways, forests wild with vine,
When all the wilderness with wine
Of tipsy dew is dazed; nor say
Our God's restricted to confine
His wonders solely to the day,
That yields the abstract tangible to clay.
Ponder the entrance of the Morn
When from her rubric forehead far
Shines one clean star, and the dead tarn,
The wooded river's red as war:
Where arid splinters of the scar
Lock horns above a blue abyss,
How roses prank each icy bar,
While piled aloft the mountains press,
Fling dawn below from many a hoary tress.
The jutting crags, all stubborn-veined
With iron life, where eaglets scream
In dizzy flocks, and cleave the stained
Mist-rainbows of the mountain stream;
Thus you will drink the thickest cream
Of nature if you do not scan
The bald external; and must deem
A plan existent in a plan—
As life in thrifty trees or soul in man.
ALONG THE OHIO.
Athwart a sky of brass rich ribs of gold;
A bullion bulk the wide Ohio lies;
Beneath the sunset, billowing manifold,
The purple hill-tops rise.
And lo! the crescent of a crystal moon,
And great cloud-feathers flushed with crimson light
Drifting above the pureness of her lune,
Rent from the wings of night.
A crescent boat slips o'er the burnished stream;
A silver wake, that broadens far behind,
Follows in ripples, and the paddles gleam
Against the evening wind.
So, in this solitude and evening hush,
Again to me the Old Kentucky glooms
Behold the red man lurking in yon bush
In paint and eagle plumes.
And now the breaking of the brittle brush—
An altered forehead hirsute swells in view,
And now comes stealing down the river's gush
The dip of the canoe.
The wigwams glimmer in night's settling waves,
And, wildly clad, around the camp-fire's glow
Sit long-haired chieftains 'mid their wily braves,
Each grasping his war-bow.
But now yon boat on fading waters fades;
The ostrich-feathered clouds have lost their light,
And from the West, like somber sachem shades,
Gallop the shades of night.
The broad Ohio wavers 'neath the stars,
And many murmurs whisper 'mid the woods—
Tumultuous mournings of dead warriors
For their lost solitudes.
And like a silver curl th' Ohio lies
Among the earth's luxuriance of hair;
Majestic as she met the red man's eyes—
As beautiful and fair.
No marvel that the warrior's love waxed flame
Fighting for thee, Kentucky, till he wound
Inseparably 'round thee that old name
Of dark and bloody ground!
But peace to those wild braves whose bones are thine!
And peace to those rude pioneers whose moon
Of glory rose, 'mid stars of lesser shine,
In name of Daniel Boone!
"Peace! peace!" the lips of all thy forests roar;
The rivers mutter peace unto thy strand:
Thy past is dead, and let us name thee o'er,
The hospitable land!
THE OHIO FALLS.
Here on this jutting headland, where the trees
Spread a dusk carpet for the sun to cast
And count his golden guineas on, we'll stay;
For hence is the best prospect of the Falls,
Whose roar no more astounds the startled ear,
As when we bent and marked it from the bridge
Seething beneath and bounding like a steed—
A tameless steed with mane of flying spray—
Between the pillars rising sheer above.
But mark how soft its clamor now is grown,
Incessant rush like that of vernal groves
When, like some sweet surprise, a wand'ring wind,
Precursor of the coming rain, rides down
From a gray cloud and sets their leafy tongues
A-gabbing of the fresh, impending shower.
There runs the dam, and where its dark line cuts
The river's sheen, already you may see
The ripples glancing to the fervid sun,
As if the waves had couched a hundred spears
And tossed a hundred plumes of fleecy foam
In answer to the challenge of the Falls,
Blown on his bugle from the battlements
Of his subaqueous city's rocky walls.
And now you see their maddened coursers charge,
Hear wavy hoof-strokes on the jagged stones,
That pave the pathway of the current, beat,
While billowing they ride to ringing lists,
With shout and yell, and toss their hundred plumes,
And shock their riply spears in tournament
Upon the opposing billows' shining shields.
Now sinks a pennon, but 'tis raised again;
There falls or breaks a spear or sparkling sword;
A shattered helmet flies in flakes of foam
And on the frightened wind hisses away:
And o'er it all you hear the sound, the roar
Of waves that fall in onset or that strive.
On, on they come, a beautiful, mad troop!
On, on, along the sandy banks that fling
Red pebble-freckled arms far out to stay
The riotous waves that ride and hurl along
In casque and shield and wind their wat'ry horns.
And there where thousand oily eddies whirl,
And turn and turn like busy wheels of steel,
Is the Big Eddy, whose deep bottom none
As yet have felt with sounding plummet-line.
Like a huge giant, wily in its strength,
The Eddy lies; and bending from the shore
The spotted sycamores have looked and looked,
Watching his motions as a school boy might
A sleeping serpent coiled upon his path.
So long they've watched that their old backs have grown
Hump'd, gnarl'd, and crooked, nor seem they this to heed,
But gaze and gaze, and from the glossy waves
Their images stare back their wonderment.
Mayhap they've seen the guardian Genius lie
At its dark bottom in an oozy cave
Of shattered rock, recumbent on his mace
Of mineral; his locks of dripping green
Circling a crown of ore; his fishy eyes
Dull with the monotony of his aqueous realms.
But when the storm's abroad and smites the waves
With stinging lashes of the myriad rain,
Or scars with thunder some ancestral oak,
Sire of a forest, then he wakes in wrath,
And on the dark foundations of the stream
Stands monarch of the flood in iron crown,
And murmurs till the tempest fiends above
Stand stark with awe, and all the eddy breaks
To waves like those whose round and murky bulks.
Ribbed white with foam, wallow like battened swine
Along yon ridge of ragged rock o'erstrewn
With petrifactions of Time's earliest dawn;
Mollusks and trilobites and honey-combs
Of coral white; and here and there a mass
Of what seems writhing reptiles there convolved,
And in one moment when the change did come,
Which made and unmade continents and seas,
That teemed and groaned with dire monstrosities,
Had froze their glossy spines to sable stones.
There where uprises a dun knoll o'erstrewn
With black and rotten stumps in the mid river,
Erst rose an island green and beautiful
With willows, beeches, dappled sycamores;
Corn Island, on whose rich and fertile soil
The early pioneers a colony
Attempted once to found, ere ever this
Fair "City of the Falls"—now echoing to
The tingling bustle of its busy trade—
Was dreamed of. Here the woodman built
His rude log cabin; here he sowed his maize;
Here saw it tassel 'neath the Summer's smile,
And glance like ranks of feathered Indians thro'
The misty vistas of the broken woods;
Here reaped and sheaved its wealth of ivory ears
When Autumn came like a brown Indian maid
Tripping from the pink sunset o'er the hills,
That blushed for love and cast beneath her feet
Untold of gold in leaves and yellow fruit.
Here lived the pioneer and here he died,
And mingled his rough dust with the raw earth
Of that long isle which now disparted stands,
And nothing save a bed of limestone rock,—
Where in the quarry you may see the blast
Spout heavenward the dust and dirt and stone,
And flap and pound its echoes 'round the hills
Like giant strokes of some huge airy hammer,—
And that lone mound of stumpy earth to show
That there once stood an isle as rich and fair
As any isle that rises up to kiss
The sun and dream in tropic seas of balm.
There lies the other half of what was once
Corn Island; a broad channel flows between.
And this low half, mantled with a dwarf growth
Of what was once high brakes and forest land,
Goose Island now is named. In the dim morn,
Ere yet the East assumes her faintest blush.
Here may you hear the melancholy snipe
Piping, or see her paddling in the pools
That splash the low bed of the rocky isle.
Once here the Indian stole in natural craft
From brush to brush, his head plumes like a bird
Flutt'ring and nodding 'mid the undergrowth;
In his brown hand the pliant, polished bow,
And at his back his gaudy quiver filled
With tufted arrows headed with blue flint.
And while the deep flamingo colored West
Flamed on his ruddy cheek its airy fire,
Strung his quick bow and thro' the gray wild goose,
That rose with clamor from the rushy pool,
Launched a fleet barb, crested with quills—perchance
Plucked yestere'en from its dead mate's gray wing
To decorate the painted shaft that should
Dabble to-day their white in its mate's blood;—
It falling, gasping at its moccasined feet,
Its wild life breathed away, while the glad brave
Whooped to the sunset, and yon faint blue hills
Answered his exultation with a whoop.
THE RUINED MILL.
There is the ruined water-mill
With its rotten wheel, that stands as still
As its image that sleeps in the glassy pool
Where the water snake coils dim and cool
In the flaky light of the setting sun
Showering his gold in bullion.
And the languid daisies nod and shine
By the trickling fall in a starry line;
The drowsy daisies with eyes of gold—
Large as the eyes of a queen of old
Dreaming of revels by day and night—
Coyly o'erdropped with lashes white.
The hawk sails high in the sleepy air,
The buzzard on wings as strong and fair
Circles and stoops 'neath the lazy cloud,
And crows in the wood are cawing aloud.
Will ye enter with me this ruined mill
When the shades of night its chambers fill,
Stand and lurk in the heavy dark
Like scowling fiends, each eye a spark,
A spark of moonlight shot thro' gloom?
While a moist, rank, stifling, dead perfume
Of rotting timbers and rotting grain,
And roofs all warped with the sun and rain
Makes of the stagnant air a cell,
In the haunted chambers broods like a spell?
A spell that makes the awed mind run
To the thoughts of a hidden skeleton,
A skeleton ghastly and livid and lank
'Neath the mossy floors in a cellar dank,
Grinning and glow'ring, moisture wet,
In its hollow eyes a mad regret.
Or with me enter when the evening star
In the saffron heaven is sparkling afar,
In all its glory of light divine,
Like a diamond bathed in kingly wine.
Or when the heavens hang wild and gray,
And the chilly clouds are hurrying away
Like the driven leaves of an Autumn day;
When the night-rain sounds on the sodden roof,
And the spider lulls in his dusty woof;
When the wet wind whines like a hound that's lashed,
'Round the crazy angles strongly dashed,
Or wails in a cranny—'tis she who plays
On her airy harp sad, olden lays,
And sings and moans in a room above
Of a vague despair and a blighted love.
You will see her sit on the shattered sill,
Her sable tresses dropped loose at will;
And down in the West 'neath the storm's black bank
A belt of wild green, cold, livid, and lank,
And a crescent moon, like a demon's barque,
Into the green dips a horn from the dark,
While a lurid light of ghoulish gold
On the eldrich creature falls strangely cold.
Her insane eyes bulge mad with desire,
And her face's beauty is darkly dire;
For she sees in the pool, that solidly lies
'Neath the mill's great wheel and the stormy skies,
Her murdered lover lie faint and white,
A haunting horror, a loadstone's might
Drawing and dragging her soul from its seat
To the glimmering ice of his ghastly feet.
FROST.
White artist he, who, breezeless nights,
From tingling stars jocosely whirls,
A harlequin in spangled tights,
His wand a pot of pounded pearls.
The field a hasty pallet; for,
In thin or thick, with daub and streak,
It stretches from the barn-gate's bar
To the bleached ribbon of the creek.
A great geometer is he;
For, on the creek's diaphanous silk,
Sphere, cone, and star exquisitely
He's drawn in crystal lines of milk.
Most delicate, his talent keen
On casement panes he lavishes,
In many a Lilliputian scene
Of vague white hives and milky bees,
That sparkling in still swarms delight,
Or bow the jeweled bells of flowers;—
Of dim, deep landscapes of the night,
Hanging down limpid domes quaint showers
Of feathery stars and meteors
Above an upland's glimmering ways,
Where gambol 'neath the feverish stars
The erl-king and the fleecy fays.
Or last, one arabesque of ferns,
Chrysanthemums and mistletoe,
And death-pale roses bunched in urns
That with an innate glory glow.
In leafless woodlands saturnine,
Where reckless winds, like goblins mad,
Screech swinging in each barren vine,
His wagship shapes a lesson sad:
When slyly touched by his white hand
Of Midas-magic, forests old
Dariuses of pomp then stand
Barbaric-crowned with living gold....
Patrician state, plebeian blood
Soon foster sybarites, and they,
Squand'ring their riches, wood by wood,
Die palsied wrecks debauched and gray.
INVOCATION.
I.
O Life! O Death! O God!
Have I not striven?
Have I not known thee, God,
As thy stars know Heaven?
Have I not held thee true,
True as thy deepest,
Sweet and immaculate blue,
Of nights that feel thy dew?
Have I not known thee true,
O God that keepest?
II.
O God, my father, God!
Didst give me fire
To rise above the clod,
And soar, aspire!
What tho' I strive and strive,
And all my life says live,
The sneerful scorn of men
But beats it down again;
And, O! sun-centered high,
O God! grand poet!
Beneath thy tender sky
Each day new Keatses die,
And thou dost know it!
III.
They know thee beautiful!
They know thee bitter!
And all their eyes are full,
O God! most beautiful!
Of tears that glitter.
Thou art above their tears;
Thou art beyond their years;
Thou sittest, God of Hosts,
Among thy glorious ghosts,
So high and holy;
And canst thou know the tears,
The strivings and the fears,
O God of godly peers!
Of such so lowly?
IV.
They who were fondly fain
To tell what mother pain
Of Nature makes the rain;
They who were glad to know
The sorrow of her snow,
Of her wild winds the woe;
The magic of her light,
The passion of her night,
And of her death the might;
They who had tears and sighs
For every bud that dies
While the dew on it lies;
They who had utterance for
Each warm, rose-hearted star
That stammers from afar;
The demon of vast seas,
The lips of lyric trees,
Lays of sonorous bees;
The fragrance-fays that dower
Each wildwood bosk and bower
With its faint musk of flower;
Of Time the feverish flight;
Earth, man, and, last, man's right
To thee, O Infinite!
FAIRIES.
On the tremulous coppice,
From her plenteous hair,
Large golden-rayed poppies
Of moon-litten air
The Night hath flung there.
In the fern-favored hollow
The fire-flies fleet
Uncertainly follow
Pale phantoms of heat,
Druid shadows that meet.
Hidden flowers are fragrant;
The night hazes furl
O'er the solitudes vagrant
In purple and pearl,
Sway-swinging and curl.
From moss-cushioned valley
Where the red sunlight fails,
Rocks where musically
The hollow spring wails,
And the limber fern trails,
With a ripple and twinkle
Of luminous arms,
Of voices that tinkle,
And feet that are storms
Of chaste, naked charms,
Like echoes that revel
On hills, where the brier
Vaults roofs of dishevel
And green, greedy fire,
They come as a choir.
At the root of the mountain
Where the dim forest lies,
By the spar-spouting fountain
Where the low lily dies,
With their star-stinging eyes.
They gather sweet singing
In voices that seem
Faint ringing and clinging
In dreams that we dream,
In visions that gleam.
Sweet lisping of kisses,
Dry rustle of hair;
A footfall that hisses
Like a leaf in the air
When the brown boughs are bare.
The music that scatters
From love-litten eyes;
The music that flatters
In words and low sighs,
In laughter that dies:
"Come hither, come hither,
In the million-eyed night,
Ere the moon-flowers wither
And the harvester white,
Morning reaps them with light.
"Come hither, where singing
Is pleasant as tears,
Or dead kisses, clinging
To the murdering years,
In memory's ears.
"Come hither where kisses
Are waiting for you,
For lips and long tresses,
As for wild flowers blue
The moon-heated dew.
"Come hither from coppice
And violet dale,
The mountain whose top is
In vapors that sail
With pearly hail pale.
"Why tarry? come hither
While the molten moon beams,
Ere the golden spark wither
Of the glow-worm that gleams
Like a star in still streams!"
THE TRYST.
Had fallen a fragrant shower;
The leaves were dripping yet;
Each fern and rain-weighed flower
Around were gleaming wet;
On ev'ry bosky bower
A million gems were set.
The dust's moist odors sifted
Cool with the summer rain,
Mixed with the musk that drifted
From orchard and from plain;—
Her garden's fence white lifted
Its length along the lane.
The moon the clouds had shattered
In curdled peaks of pearl;
The honeysuckle scattered
Warm odors from each curl,
Where the white moonlight, flattered,
Hung molten 'round a girl.
Then grew the night completer
With light and cloud and air;
Aromas sweet blew sweeter,
Sweet flowers fair, more fair;
Fleet feet and fast grew fleeter
Thro' that fair sorceress there.
AN ANTIQUE.
Mildewed and gray the marble stairs
Rise from their balustraded urns
To where a chiseled satyr glares
From a luxuriant bed of ferns;
A pebbled walk that labyrinths
'Twixt parallels of verdant box
To where, broad-based on grotesque plinths,
'Mid cushions of moss-padded rocks,
Rises a ruined pleasure-house,
Of shattered column, broken dome,
Where, reveling in thick carouse,
The buoyant ivy makes its home.
And here from bank, and there from bed,
Down the mad rillet's jubilant lymph,
The lavish violet's odors shed
In breathings of a fountain nymph.
And where, in lichened hoariness,
The broken marble dial-plate
Basks in the Summer's sultriness,
Rich houri roses palpitate.
Voluptuous, languid with perfumes,
As were the beauties that of old,
In damask satins, jeweled plumes,
With powdered gallants here that strolled.
When slender rapiers, proud with gems,
Sneered at the sun their haughty hues,
And Touchstone wit and apothegms
Laughed down the long, cool avenues.
Two pleated bowers of woodbine pave,
'Neath all their heaviness of musk,
Two fountains of pellucid wave,
With sunlight-tessellated dusk.
Beholding these, I seem to feel
An exodus of earthly sight,
An influx of ecstatic weal
Poured thro' my eyes in jets of light.
And so I see the fountains twain
Of hate and love in Arden there;
The time of regal Charlemagne,
Of Roland and of Oliver.
Rinaldo of Montalban's towers
Sleeps by the spring of hate; above
Bows, spilling all his face with flowers,
Angelica, who quaffed of love.
A GUINEVERE.
Sullen gold down all the sky,
In the roses sultry musk;
Nightingales hid in the dusk
Yonder sob and sigh.
You are here; and I could weep,
Weep for joy and suffering.
"Where is he?" He'd have me sing;—
There he sits asleep.
Think not of him! he is dead
For the moment to us twain;
He were dead but for this pain
Drumming in my head.
"Am I happy?" Ask the fire
When it bursts its bounds and thrills
Some mad hours as it wills
If those hours tire.
He had gold. As for the rest—
Well you know how they were set,
Saying that I must forget,
And 'twas for the best.
I forget! but let it go!—
Kiss me as you did of old.
There! your kisses are not cold!
Can you love me so,
Knowing what I am to him
Sitting in his gouty chair
On the breezy terrace where
Amber fire-flies swim?
"Yes?"—Your cheek a tear-drop wets,
But your kisses on my lip
Fall as warm as bees that sip
Sweets from violets.
See! the moon has risen white
As this bursten lily here
Rocking on the dusky mere
Like a silent light.
Let us walk. We soon must part—
All too soon! but he may miss!
Give me but another kiss;
It will heat my heart
And the bitter winter there.
So; we part, my Launcelot,
My true knight! and am I not
Your true Guinevere?
Oft they parted thus they tell
In that mystical romance.
Were they placed, think you, perchance,
For such love in hell?
No! it can not, can not be!
Love is God and God is love,
And they live and love above,
Guinevere and he!
I must go now. See! there fell,
Molten into purple light,
One wild star. Kiss me good-night;
And, once more, farewell!
CLOUDS.
All through the tepid Summer night
The starless sky had poured a cool
Monotony of pleasant rain
In music beautiful.
And for an hour I'd sat to watch
Clouds moving on majestic feet,
Had heard down avenues of night
Their hearts of thunder beat;
Saw ponderous limbs far-veined with gold
Pulse fiery life o'er wood and plain,
While scattered, fell from monstrous palms
The largess of the rain;
Beholding at each lightning's flash
The generous silver on the sod,
In meek devotion bowed, I thanked
These almoners of God.
NO MORE.
I.
The slanted storm tossed at their feet
The frost-nipped Autumn leaves;
The park's high pines were caked with sleet
And ice-spears armed the eaves.
They strolled adown the pillared pines
To part where wet and twisted vines
About the gate-posts flapped and beat.
She watched him dimming in the rain
Along the river's misty shore,
And laughed with lips that sneered disdain
"To meet no more!"
II.
'Mong heavy roses weighed with dew
The chirping crickets hid;
Down the honeysuckle avenue
Creaked the green katydid.
The scattered stars smiled thro' the pines;
Thro' stately windows draped with vines
The rising moonlight's silver blew.
He stared at lips proud, white, and dead,
A chiseled calm that wore;
Despair moaned on the lips that said
"To meet no more."
DESERTED.
A broken rainbow on the skies of May
Touching the sodden roses and low clouds,
And in wet clouds like scattered jewels lost:
Upon the heaven of a soul the ghost
Of a great love, perfect in its pure ray,
Touching the roses moist of memory
To die within the Present's grief of clouds—
A broken rainbow on the skies of May.
A flashing humming-bird amid strange flowers,
Or red or white; its darting length of tongue
Sucking and drinking all the cell-stored sweet,
And now the surfeit and the hurried fleet:
A love that put into expanding bowers
Of one's large heart a tongue's persuasive powers
To cream with joy, and riffled, so was gone—
A flashing humming-bird amid strange flowers.
A foamy moon which thro' a night of fleece
Moves amber girt into a bulk of dark,
And, lost to eye, rims all the black with froth:
A love of smiles, that, tinctured like a moth,
Moved thro' a soul's night-dun and made a peace—
More bland than Melancholy's white—to cease
In blanks of Time zoned with pale Memory's spark—
A foamy moon that brinks a storm with fleece.
A blaze of living thunder—not a leap—
Momental spouting balds the piléd storm,
The ghastly mountains and the livid ocean,
The pine-roared crag, then blots the sight's commotion:
A love that swiftly pouring bared the deep,
Which cleaves white Life from Death, Death from white Sleep,
And, ceasing, gave a brain one blur of storm—
Blank blast of midnight, love for Death and Sleep.
THE DREAM OF CHRIST.
I saw her twins of eyelids listless swoon
Mesmeric eyes,
Like the mild lapsing of a lulling tune
On wide surprise,
While slow the graceful presence of a moon
Mellowed the purple skies.
And had she dreamed or had in fancy gone
As one who sought
To hail the influx of a godly dawn
Of heavenly thought,
Trod trembling o'er old sainted hill and lawn
With intense angels fraught?
Sailed thro' majestic domes of the deep night
By isles of stars,
Wand'ring like some pure blessing warm with light
From worldly jars
To the high halls of morning, pearly white,
And heaped with golden bars.
Past temples vast, deluged with sandy seas,
Whose ruins stand
Like bleaching bones of dead monstrosities
Crashed to the land,
Stupendous homes of cursed idolatries
Fallen to dust and sand.
Ugly and bestial gods caked thick with gold—
Their hideousness
Blaspheming Christ—'mid shattered altars rolled
To rottenness,
Their slaves abolished and their priests of old
Trodden to nothingness.
Thro' Syrian plains curtained with curling mist
The grass she trailed,
Where the shy floweret; by the dew-drop kissed,
Sweet blushing quailed;
And drowned in purple vales of amethyst
The moon-mad bulbuls wailed.
On glimmering wolds had seemed to hear the bleat
Of folded flocks;
Seen broad-browed sages pass with sandaled feet
And hoary locks,
While swimming in a bath of molten heat
A great star glorious rocks.
In fancy o'er a beaming baby bent—
Cradled amiss
In a rude manger—on its brow to print
One holy kiss,
While down the slant winds faint aromas went
And anthems deep of bliss....
And then she woke. The winter moon above
Burst on her sight;
And with strange sweetness all her dream was wove
In its far flight,
For jubilant bells rocked booming "peace and love"
Down all the aisles of night.
TO AUTUMN.
I oft have net thee, Autumn, wandering
Beside a misty stream, thy locks flung wild;
Thy cheeks a hectic flush more fair than Spring,
As if on thee the scarlet copse had smiled.
Or thee I've seen a twisted oak beneath,
Thy gentle eyes with foolish weeping dim,
Beneath a faded oak from whose tinged leaves
Thou woundedst drowsy wreaths, while the soft breath
Of Morn did kiss thy locks and make them swim
Far out behind, brown as the rustling sheaves.
Oft have I thee upon a hillock seen,
Dream-visaged, all agaze at glimpses faint
Of glimmering woods that glanced the hills between
With Indian faces from thy airy paint.
Or I have met thee 'twixt two dappled hills
Within a dingled valley nigh a fall,
Clasped in thy tinted hand a ruddy flower,
And lowly stooping where the leaf-dammed rills
Went babbling low thro' wildwood's arrased hall,
Where burned the beech and maples glared their power.
Oft have I seen thee in a ruined mill,
Where basked the crimson creeper serpentine;
Where fallen leaves did stir and rustle chill,
And saw thee rest beneath a wild grape-vine.
While Echo, sad amid his deep-voiced mountains—
More sad than erst—did raise a dreamy speech
And call thee to his youthful, amorous arms,
Where splashed the murmuring forest's limpid fountains;
And tho' his words thy pink-shell ears did reach,
Thou wouldst not heed or guile him with thy charms.
Once saw thee in a hollow girt with trees,
A-dream amid the harvest's tawny grain;
Thy plushy cheek faint flushing in the breeze,
In thy deep eyes a drowsy sky's blue stain.
And where within the woodland's twilight path
The cloud-winged skies did peep all speechless down,
And stirred the gaudy leaves with fragrant breath,
I've seen thee walk, nor fear the Winter's wrath;
There drop asleep clad in thy gipsy gown,
While Echo bending o'er dropp'd tears upon thy wreath.
AN ADDRESS TO NIGHT.
Like some sad spirit from an unknown shore
Thou comest with two children in thine arms:
Flushed, poppied Sleep, whom mortals aye adore,
Her flowing raiment sculptured to her charms.
Soft on thy bosom in pure baby rest
Clasped as a fair white rose in musky nest;
But on thy other, like a thought of woe,
Her brother, lean, cold Death doth thin recline,
To thee as dear as she, thy maid divine,
Whose frowsy hair his hectic breathings blow
In poppied ringlets billowing all her marble brow.
Oft have I taken Sleep from thy vague arms
And fondled her faint head, with poppies wreath'd,
Within my bosom's depths, until its storms
With her were hushed and I but mildly breath'd.
And then this child, O Night! with frolic art
Arose from rest, and on my panting heart
Blew bubbles of dreams where elfin worlds were lost,
Until my airy soul smiled light on me
From some far land too dim for day to see,
And wandered in a shape of limpid frost
Within a dusky dale where soundless streams did flee.
Welcome to Earth, O Night the saintly garbed!
Slip meek as love into the Day's flushed heart!
Drop in a dream from where the meteors orbed
Wander past systems scorning map or chart;
Or sit aloft, thy hands brimmed full of stars,
Or come in garb of storms 'mid thunder jars,
When lightning-frilled gleams wide thy cloud-frounced dress,
Then art thou grand! but, oh, when thy pure feet
Along the star-strewn floors of Heaven beat,
And thy cool breath the heated world doth bless,
Thou art God's angel of true love and gentleness!