There is no inspiration in the view.
From where this acorn drops its thimbles brown
The landscape stretches like a shaggy frown;
The wrinkled hills hang haggard and harsh of hue:
Above them hollows the heaven’s stony blue,
Like a dull thought that haunts some sleep-dazed clown
Plodding his homeward way; and, whispering down,
The dead leaves dance, a sere and shelterless crew.
Let the sick day stagger unto its close,
Morose and mumbling, like a hoary crone
Beneath her faggots—huddled fogs that soon
Shall flare the windy west with ashen glows,
Like some deep, dying hearth; and let the lone
Night come at last—night, and its withered moon.
AUTUMN STORM
The wind is rising and the leaves are swept
Wildly before it, hundreds on hundreds fall
Huddling beneath the trees. With brag and brawl
Of storm the day is grown a tavern, kept
Of madness, where, with mantles torn and ripped
Of flying leaves that beat above it all,
The wild winds fight; and, like some half-spent ball,
The acorn stings the rout; and, silver-stripped,
The milkweed-pod winks an exhausted lamp:
Now, in his coat of tatters dark that streams,
The ragged rain sweeps stormily this way,
With all his clamorous followers—clouds that camp
Around the hearthstone of the west where gleams
The last chill flame of the expiring day.
THE JONGLEUR
Last night I lay awake and heard the wind,
That madman jongleur of the world of air,
Making wild music: now he seemed to fare
With harp and lute, so intimately twinned
They were as one; now on a drum he dinned,
Now on a tabor; now, with blow and blare
Of sackbut and recorder, everywhere
Shattered the night; then on a sudden thinned
To bagpipe wailings as of maniac grief
That whined itself to sleep. And then, me-seemed,
Out in the darkness, mediæval-dim,
I saw him dancing, like an autumn leaf,
In tattered tunic, while around him streamed
His lute’s wild ribbons ’thwart the moon’s low rim.
OLD SIR JOHN
Bald, with old eyes a blood-shot blue, he comes
Into the Boar’s Head Inn: the hot sweat streaks
His fulvous face, and all his raiment reeks
Of all the stews and all the Eastcheap slums.
Upon the battered board again he drums
And croaks for sack: then sits, his harsh-haired cheeks
Sunk in his hands, rough with the grime of weeks,
While round the tap one great bluebottle hums.
All, all are gone, the old companions—they
Who made his rogue’s world merry: of them all
Not one is left. Old, toothless now, and gray,
Alone he waits: the swagger of that day
Gone from his bulk—departed even as Doll,
And he, his Hal, who broke his heart, they say.
IN AGES PAST
I stood upon a height and listened to
The solemn psalmody of many pines,
And with the sound I seemed to see long lines
Of mountains rise, blue peak on cloudy blue,
And hear the roar of torrents hurling through
Riven ravines; or from the crags’ gaunt spines
Pouring wild hair, where,—as an eyeball shines,—
A mountain pool shone, clear and cold of hue.
And then my soul remembered—felt, how once,
In ages past, ’twas here that I, a Faun,
Startled an Oread at her morning bath,
Who stood revealed; her beauty, like the sun’s,
Veiled in her hair, heavy with dews of dawn,
Through which, like stars, burnt blue her eyes’ bright wrath.