The deep seclusion of this forest path,—
O'er which the green boughs weave a canopy;
Along which bluet and anemone
Spread dim a carpet; where the Twilight hath
Her cool abode; and, sweet as aftermath,
Wood-fragrance roams,—has so enchanted me,
That yonder blossoming bramble seems to be
A Sylvan resting, rosy from her bath:
Has so enspelled me with tradition's dreams,
That every foam-white stream that, twinkling, flows,
And every bird that flutters wings of tan,
Or warbles hidden, to my fancy seems
A Naiad dancing to a Faun who blows
Wild woodland music on the pipes of Pan.
ABANDONED
The hornets build in plaster-dropping rooms,
And on its mossy porch the lizard lies;
Around its chimneys slow the swallow flies,
And on its roof the locusts snow their blooms.
Like some sad thought that broods here, old perfumes
Haunt its dim stairs; the cautious zephyr tries
Each gusty door, like some dead hand, then sighs
With ghostly lips among the attic glooms.
And now a heron, now a kingfisher,
Flits in the willows where the riffle seems
At each faint fall to hesitate to leap,
Fluttering the silence with a little stir.
Here Summer seems a placid face asleep,
And the near world a figment of her dreams.
AFTER LONG GRIEF
There is a place hung o'er of summer boughs
And dreamy skies wherein the gray hawk sleeps;
Where water flows, within whose lazy deeps,
Like silvery prisms where the sunbeams drowse,
The minnows twinkle; where the bells of cows
Tinkle the stillness; and the bobwhite keeps
Calling from meadows where the reaper reaps,
And children's laughter haunts an oldtime house:
A place where life wears ever an honest smell
Of hay and honey, sun and elder-bloom,—
Like some sweet, simple girl,—within her hair;
Where, with our love for comrade, we may dwell
Far from the city's strife, whose cares consume.—
Oh, take my hand and let me lead you there.
MENDICANTS
Bleak, in dark rags of clouds, the day begins,
That passed so splendidly but yesterday,
Wrapped in magnificence of gold and gray,
And poppy and rose. Now, burdened as with sins,
Their wildness clad in fogs, like coats of skins,
Tattered and streaked with rain; gaunt, clogged with clay,
The mendicant Hours take their somber way
Westward o'er Earth, to which no sunray wins.
Their splashing sandals ooze; their foosteps drip,
Puddle and brim with moisture; their sad hair
Is tagged with haggard drops, that with their eyes'
Slow streams are blent; each sullen fingertip
Rivers; while round them, in the grief-drenched air
Wearies the wind of their perpetual sighs.
THE END OF SUMMER
Pods the poppies, and slim spires of pods
The hollyhocks; the balsam's pearly bredes
Of rose-stained snow are little sacs of seeds
Collapsing at a touch: the lote, that sods
The pond with green, has changed its flowers to rods
And discs of vesicles; and all the weeds,
Around the sleepy water and its reeds,
Are one white smoke of seeded silk that nods.
Summer is dead, ay me! sweet Summer's dead!
The sunset clouds have built her funeral pyre,
Through which, e'en now, runs subterranean fire:
While from the east, as from a garden bed,
Mist-vined, the Dusk lifts her broad moon—like some
Great golden melon—saying, "Fall has come."