Not till ripe walnuts rain their spice
Of frost-nipped nuts down, and the oak
Pelts with brown acorns, stroke on stroke,
The creek that slides through hints of ice;
And in the lane the wagon pulls,
Crunching, through thick-strewn hickory hulls:
Not till through frosty fogs, which hold
Wet mornings with their phantom night,
Like torches glimmering through the white,
The woods burn crimson blurs and gold,
And through the mist come muffled sounds
Of hunting-horns and baying hounds:
Shall I on hills, where looming pines
Against vermilion sunsets stand—
Black ruins in a blood-red land—
In wrecks of sumac and wild vines,
Go seek her, where she lies asleep,
Her dark, sad eyes too tired to weep.
VIII
It holds and beckons in the streams;
It lures and touches us in all
The flowers of the golden fall—
The mystic essence of our dreams:
A nymph blows bubbling music where
Faint water ripples down the rocks;
A faun goes dancing hoiden locks,
And piping a Pandean air,
Through trees the instant wind shakes bare.
Our dreams are never otherwise
Than real when they hold us so;
We in some future life shall know
Them parts of it and recognize
Them as ideal substance, whence
The actual is—(as flowers and trees,
From color sources no one sees,
Draw dyes, the substance of a sense)—
Material with intelligence.
IX
Once more I watch the hills take fire
With dawn; and, shaggy spine by spine,
Flush like dark tyrants o’er their wine,
Who grasp the sword and break the lyre,
And carve the world to their desire;
While, red as blocks where kingdoms bleed,
The rocks trail crimson vine and weed.
To walls of gold, Enchantment built,
Again my fancy bids me go—
Through woods, bewitched with fire, where blow
Wild horns of tournament and tilt—
A fairy-prince, whose spear hath spilt
No blood but in a shadow-world,
While at the real his gage is hurled.
What far, æolian echoes lead
My longing?—as a voice might wake
A lost child from deep sleep and take,
With music of a magic reed,
Him home where love will give him heed:—
What echoes, blown from lands that lie
Melodious ’neath no mortal sky?