FULFILLMENT
There are some souls who may look in on these
Essential peoples of the earth and air—
That have the stars and flowers in their care—
And read their soul-suggestive secrecies:
Heart-intimates and comrades of the trees,
Who from them learn, what no known schools declare,
God’s knowledge; and from winds, that, singing, fare,
God’s gospel, filled with mighty harmonies.
Souls, unto whom the waves impart a word
Of fuller faith; the sunset and the dawn
Preach sermons more inspired even than
The tongues of Pentecost; as, distant heard
In forms of change, through Nature upward drawn,
God doth address th’ immortal part of Man.
TOO LATE
I looked upon a dead girl’s face and heard
What seemed the voice of Death cry out to me,
Deep in her heart, all of the agony
Of her lost dreams, complaining word on word:—
How on her soul no soul had touched, or stirred
Her life’s sad depths to rippling melody,
Or made the imaged longing, there, to be
The realization of a hope deferred.
So in her life had Love behaved to her.
Between the lonely chapters of her years
And her young eyes making no golden blur
With god-bright face and hair; who led me to
Her side at last, and bade me, through my tears,
With Death’s dumb lips, too late, to see and know.
THE WITCH
She gropes and hobbles, where the dropsied rocks
Are hairy with the lichens and the twist
Of knotted wolf’s-bane, mumbling in the mist,
Hawk-nosed and wrinkle-eyed with scrawny locks.
At her bent back the moon, slow-sinking, mocks,
Like some lewd evil whom the Fiend hath kissed;
Once at her feet the slipping serpent hissed,
And once the owl called to the forest fox.—
What Sabboth brew does she intend? What root
Now seek for, seal for what satanic spell
Of incantations and demonic fire?—
From her rude hut, hill-huddled in the brier,
What dark Familiar points her sure pursuit,
There, with gaunt eyes, red with the glow of Hell?