III. THE LANDSMAN.
"It well may be just as you say,
Will Carver, that your tales are true;
Yet think what I must put away,
Will Carver, if sail with you."
"If you should sail with me (the wind
Is west, the tide's at full, my men!)
The things that you have left behind
Will be as nothing to you then."
"Inland, it's June! And birds sing
Among the wooded hills, I know;
Between green fields, unhastening,
The Nashwaak's shadowed waters flow.
"What know you of such things as these
Who have the grey sea at your door,—
Whose path is as the strong winds please
Beyond this narrow strip of shore?"
"Your fields and woods! Now, answer me:
Up what green path have your feet run
So wide as mine, when the deep sea
Lies all-uncovered to the sun?
And down the hollows of what hills
Have you gone—half so glad of heart
As you shall be when our sail fills
And the great waves ride far apart?"
"O! half your life is good to live,
Will Carver; yet, if I should go,
What are the things that you can give
Lest I regret the things I know!
"Lest I desire the old life's way?
The noises of the crowded town?
The busy streets, where, night and day,
The traffickers go up and down?"
"What can I give for these? Alas,
That all unchanged your path must be!
Strange lights shall open as we pass
And alien wakes traverse the sea;
"Your ears shall hear (across your sleep)
New hails, remote, disquieted,
For not a hand-breadth of the deep
But has to soothe some restless dead.
"These things shall be. And other things,
I think, not quite so sad as these!
—Know you the song the rigging sings
When up the opal-tinted seas
"The slow south-wind comes amorously?
The sudden gleam of some far sail
Going the same glad way as we,
Hastily, lest the good wind fail?
"The dreams that come (so strange, so fair!)
When all your world lies well within
The moving magic circle where
The sea ends and the skies begin?"......
......"What port is that, so far astern,
Will Carver? And how many miles
Shall we have run ere the tide turn?
—And is it far to the farthest isles?"
IV. THE GHOST.
Just where the field becomes the wood
I thought I saw again
Her old remembered face—made grey
As it had known the rain.
The trees grow thickly there; no place
Has half so many trees;
And hunted things elude one there
Like ancient memories.
The path itself is hard to find,
And slopes up suddenly;
—In the old days it was a path
None knew so well as we.
The path slopes upward, till it leaves
The great trees far behind;
—I met her once where the slender birch
Grow up to meet the wind.
Where the poplars quiver endlessly
And the falling leaves are grey,
I saw her come, and I was glad
That she had learned the way.
She paused a moment where the path
Grew sunlighted and broad;
Within her hair slept all the gold
Of all the golden-rod.
And then the wood closed in on her.
And my hand found her hand;
She had no words to say, yet I
Was quick to understand.
I dared to look in her two eyes;
They too, I thought, were grey:
But no sun shone, and all around
Great, quiet shadows lay.
Yet, as I looked, I surely knew
That they knew nought of tears,—
But this was very long ago,
—A year, perhaps ten years.
All this was long ago. Today,
Her hand met not with mine;
And where the pathway widened out
I saw no gold hair shine.
I had a weary, fruitless search,
—I think that her wan face
Was but the face of one asleep
Who dreams she knew this place.
V. A SONG IN AUGUST.
O gold is the West and gold the river-waters
Washing past the sides of my yellow birch canoe,
Gold are the great drops that fall from my paddle,
The far-off hills cry a golden word of you.
I can almost see you! Where its own shadow
Creeps down the hill's side, gradual and slow.
There you stand waiting; the goldenrod and thistle
Glad of you beside them—the fairest thing they know.
Down the worn foot-path, the tufted pines behind you,
Grey sheep between,—unfrightened as you pass;
Swift through the sun-glow, I to my loved one
Come, striving hard against the long trailing grass.
Soon shall I ground on the shining gravel-reaches:
Through the thick alders you will break your way:
Then your hand in mine, and our path is on the waters,—
For us the long shadows and the end of day.
Whither shall we go? See, over to the westward,
An hour of precious gold standeth still for you and me;
Still gleams the grain, all yellow on the uplands;
West is it, or East, O Love that you would be?
West now, or East? For, underneath the moonrise,
Also it is fair; and where the reeds are tall,
And the only little noise is the sound of quiet waters,
Heavy, like the rain, we shall hear the duck-oats fall.
And perhaps we shall see, rising slowly from the driftwood,
A lone crane go over to its inland nest:
Or a dark line of ducks will come in across the islands
And sail overhead to the marshes of the west.
Now a little wind rises up for our returning;
Silver grows the East as the West grows grey;
Shadows on the waters, shaded are the meadows,
The firs on the hillside—naught so dark as they.
Yet we have known the light!—Was ever such an August?
Your hand leave mine; and the new stars gleam
As we separately go to our dreams of opened heaven,—
The golden dawn shall tell you that you did not dream.
VI. TO AUTUMN.
How shall I greet thee, Autumn? with loud praise
And joyous song and wild, tumultuous laughter?
Or unrestrained tears?
Shall I behold only the scarlet haze
Of these thy days
That come to crown this best of all the years?
Or shall I hear, even now, those sad hours chime—
Those unborn hours that surely follow after
The shedding of thy last-relinquished leaf—
Till I, too, learn the strength and change of time
Who am made one with grief?
For now thou comest not as thou of old
Wast wont to come; and now mine old desire
Is sated not at all
With sunset-visions of thy splendid gold
Or fold on fold
Of the stained clouds thou hast for coronal.
Still all these ways and things are thine, and still
Before thine altar burneth the ancient fire;
The blackness of the pines is still the same,
And the same peace broodeth behind the hill
Where the old maples flame.
I, counting these, behold no change; and yet,
To-day, I deem, they know not me for lover,
Nor live because of me.
And yesterday, was it not thou I met,
Thy warm lips wet
And purpled with wild grapes crushed wantonly,
And yellow wind-swept wheat bound round thy hair,
Thy brawn breast half set free and half draped over
With long green leaves of corn? Was it not thou,
Thy feet unsandaled, and thy shoulders bare
As the gleaned fields are now?
Yea, Autumn, it was thou, and glad was I
To meet thee and caress thee for an hour
And fancy I was thine;
For then I had not learned all things must die
Under the sky,—
That everywhere (a flaw in the design!)
Decay crept in, unquickening the mass,—
Creed, empire, man-at-arms, or stone, or flower.
In my unwisdom then, I had not read
The message writ across Earth's face, alas,
But scanned the sun instead.
For all men sow; and then it happeneth—
When harvest time is come, and thou are season—
Each goeth forth to reap.
"This cometh unto him" (perchance one saith)
"Who laboreth:
This is my wage: I will lie down and sleep."—
He maketh no oblation unto Earth.
Another, in his heart divine unreason,
Seeing his fields lie barren in the sun,
Crieth, "O fool! Behold the little worth
Of that thy toil hath won!"
And so one sleepeth, dreaming of no prayer;
And so one lieth sleepless, till thou comest
To bid his cursing cease;
Then, in his dreams, envieth the other's share.
Whilst, otherwhere,
Thou showest still thy perfect face of peace,
O Autumn, unto men of alien lands!
Along their paths a little while thou roamest.
A little while they deem thee queenliest,
And good the laying-on of thy warm hands,—
And then, they, too, would rest.
They, too, would only rest, forgetting thee!
But I, who am grown the wiser for thy loving,
Never may thee deny!
And when the last child hath forsaken me,
And quietly
Men go about the house wherein I lie,
I shall lie glad, feeling across my face
Thy damp and clinging hair, and thy hands moving
To find my wasted hands that wait for thine
Beneath white cloths; and, for one whisper's space,
Autumn, thy lips on mine!
VII. THREE GREY DAYS.
If she would come, now, and say, What will you Lover?—
She who has the fairest gifts of all the earth to give—
Think you I should ask some tremendous thing to prove her,
Her life, say, and all her love, so long as she might live?
Should I touch her hair? her hands? her garments, even?
Nay! for such rewards the gods their own good time have set!
Once, these were all mine: the least, poor one was heaven:
Now, lest she remember, I pray that she forget.
Merely should I ask—ah! she would not refuse them
Who still seems very kind when I meet with her in dreams—
Only three of our old days, and—should she help to choose them
Would the first not be in April, beside the sudden streams?......
Once, upon a morning, up the path that we had taken,
We saw Spring come where the willow-buds are grey;
Heard the high hills, as with tread of armies, shaken;
Felt the strong sun—O, the glory of that day!
And then—what? one afternoon of quiet summer weather
O, woodlands and meadow-lands along the blue St. John,
My birch finds a path—though your rafts lie close together—
Then O! what starry miles before the grey o' the dawn!........
I have met the new day, among the misty islands,
Come with whine of saw-mills and whirr of hidden wings,
Gleam of dewy cobwebs, smell of grassy highlands.—
Ah! the blood grows young again thinking of these things.
Then, last and best of all! Though all else were found hollow
Would Time not send a little space, before the Autumn's close,
And lead us up the road—the old road we used to follow
Among the sunset hills till the Hunter's Moon arise?......
Then, Home through the poplar-wood! damp across our faces
The grey leaves that fall, the moths that flutter by:
Yea! this for me, now, of all old hours and places,
To keep when I am dead, Time, until she come to die.