The Garden of Dreams
Madison Cawein




Madison J. Cawein

The Garden of Dreams




TO My Brothers


		Not while I live may I forget
		That garden which my spirit trod!
		Where dreams were flowers, wild and wet,
		And beautiful as God.

		Not while I breathe, awake adream,
		Shall live again for me those hours,
		When, in its mystery and gleam,
		I met her 'mid the flowers.

		Eyes, talismanic heliotrope,
		Beneath mesmeric lashes, where
		The sorceries of love and hope
		Had made a shining lair.

		And daydawn brows, whereover hung
		The twilight of dark locks; and lips,
		Whose beauty spoke the rose's tongue
		Of fragrance-voweled drips.

		I will not tell of cheeks and chin,
		That held me as sweet language holds;
		Nor of the eloquence within
		Her bosom's moony molds.

		Nor of her large limbs' languorous
		Wind-grace, that glanced like starlight through
		Her ardent robe's diaphanous
		Web of the mist and dew.

		There is no star so pure and high
		As was her look; no fragrance such
		At her soft presence; and no sigh
		Of music like her touch.

		Not while I live may I forget
		That garden of dim dreams! where I
		And Song within the spirit met,
		Sweet Song, who passed me by.




A FALLEN BEECH


		Nevermore at doorways that are barken
		Shall the madcap wind knock and the noonlight;
		Nor the circle, which thou once didst darken,
		Shine with footsteps of the neighboring moonlight,
		Visitors for whom thou oft didst hearken.

		Nevermore, gallooned with cloudy laces,
		Shall the morning, like a fair freebooter,
		Make thy leaves his richest treasure-places;
		Nor the sunset, like a royal suitor,
		Clothe thy limbs with his imperial graces.

		And no more, between the savage wonder
		Of the sunset and the moon's up-coming,
		Shall the storm, with boisterous hoof-beats, under
		Thy dark roof dance, Faun-like, to the humming
		Of the Pan-pipes of the rain and thunder.

		Oft the satyr spirit, beauty-drunken,
		Of the Spring called; and the music-measure
		Of thy sap made answer; and thy sunken
		Veins grew vehement with youth, whose pressure
		Swelled thy gnarly muscles, winter-shrunken.

		And the germs, deep down in darkness rooted,
		Bubbled green from all thy million oilets,
		Where the spirits, rain-and-sunbeam-suited,
		Of the April made their whispering toilets,
		Or within thy stately shadow footed.

		Oft the hours of blonde Summer tinkled
		At the windows of thy twigs, and found thee
		Bird-blithe; or, with shapely bodies, twinkled
		Lissom feet of naked flowers around thee,
		Where thy mats of moss lay sunbeam-sprinkled.

		And the Autumn with his gipsy-coated
		Troop of days beneath thy branches rested,
		Swarthy-faced and dark of eye; and throated
		Songs of hunting; or with red hand tested
		Every nut-bur that above him floated.

		Then the Winter, barren-browed, but rich in
		Shaggy followers of frost and freezing,
		Made the floor of thy broad boughs his kitchen,
		Trapper-like, to camp in; grimly easing
		Limbs snow-furred and moccasoned with lichen.

		Now, alas! no more do these invest thee
		With the dignity of whilom gladness!
		They – unto whose hearts thou once confessed thee
		Of thy dreams – now know thee not! and sadness
		Sits beside thee where forgot dost rest thee.




THE HAUNTED WOODLAND


		Here in the golden darkness
		And green night of the woods,
		A flitting form I follow,
		A shadow that eludes —
		Or is it but the phantom
		Of former forest moods?

		The phantom of some fancy
		I knew when I was young,
		And in my dreaming boyhood,
		The wildwood flow'rs among,
		Young face to face with Faery
		Spoke in no unknown tongue.

		Blue were her eyes, and golden
		The nimbus of her hair;
		And crimson as a flower
		Her mouth that kissed me there;
		That kissed and bade me follow,
		And smiled away my care.

		A magic and a marvel
		Lived in her word and look,
		As down among the blossoms
		She sate me by the brook,
		And read me wonder-legends
		In Nature's Story Book.

		Loved fairy-tales forgotten,
		She never reads again,
		Of beautiful enchantments
		That haunt the sun and rain,
		And, in the wind and water,
		Chant a mysterious strain.

		And so I search the forest,
		Wherein my spirit feels,
		In tree or stream or flower
		Herself she still conceals —
		But now she flies who followed,
		Whom Earth no more reveals.




DISCOVERY


		What is it now that I shall seek,
		Where woods dip downward, in the hills? —
		A mossy nook, a ferny creek,
		And May among the daffodils.

		Or in the valley's vistaed glow,
		Past rocks of terraced trumpet-vines,
		Shall I behold her coming slow,
		Sweet May, among the columbines?

		With redbud cheeks and bluet eyes,
		Big eyes, the homes of happiness,
		To meet me with the old surprise,
		Her hoiden hair all bonnetless.

		Who waits for me, where, note for note,
		The birds make glad the forest-trees?
		A dogwood blossom at her throat,
		My May among the anemones.

		As sweetheart breezes kiss the blooms,
		And dewdrops drink the moonlight's gleams,
		My soul shall kiss her lips' perfumes,
		And drink the magic of her dreams.




COMRADERY


		With eyes hand-arched he looks into
		The morning's face, then turns away
		With schoolboy feet, all wet with dew,
		Out for a holiday.

		The hill brook sings, incessant stars,
		Foam-fashioned, on its restless breast;
		And where he wades its water-bars
		Its song is happiest.

		A comrade of the chinquapin,
		He looks into its knotted eyes
		And sees its heart; and, deep within,
		Its soul that makes him wise.

		The wood-thrush knows and follows him,
		Who whistles up the birds and bees;
		And 'round him all the perfumes swim
		Of woodland loam and trees.

		Where'er he pass the supple springs'
		Foam-people sing the flowers awake;
		And sappy lips of bark-clad things
		Laugh ripe each fruited brake.

		His touch is a companionship;
		His word, an old authority:
		He comes, a lyric at his lip,
		Unstudied Poesy.




OCCULT


		Unto the soul's companionship
		Of things that only seem to be,
		Earth points with magic fingertip
		And bids thee see
		How Fancy keeps thee company.

		For oft at dawn hast not beheld
		A spirit of prismatic hue
		Blow wide the buds, which night has swelled?
		And stain them through
		With heav'n's ethereal gold and blue?

		While at her side another went
		With gleams of enigmatic white?
		A spirit who distributes scent,
		To vale and height,
		In footsteps of the rosy light?

		And oft at dusk hast thou not seen
		The star-fays bring their caravans
		Of dew, and glitter all the green,
		Night's shadow tans,
		From many starbeam sprinkling-cans?

		Nor watched with these the elfins go
		Who tune faint instruments? whose sound
		Is that moon-music insects blow
		When all the ground
		Sleeps, and the night is hushed around?




WOOD-WORDS



I

		The spirits of the forest,
		That to the winds give voice —
		I lie the livelong April day
		And wonder what it is they say
		That makes the leaves rejoice.

		The spirits of the forest,
		That breathe in bud and bloom —
		I walk within the black-haw brake
		And wonder how it is they make
		The bubbles of perfume.

		The spirits of the forest,
		That live in every spring —
		I lean above the brook's bright blue
		And wonder what it is they do
		That makes the water sing.

		The spirits of the forest.
		That haunt the sun's green glow —
		Down fungus ways of fern I steal
		And wonder what they can conceal,
		In dews, that twinkles so.

		The spirits of the forest,
		They hold me, heart and hand —
		And, oh! the bird they send by light,
		The jack-o'-lantern gleam by night,
		To guide to Fairyland!


II

		The time when dog-tooth violets
		Hold up inverted horns of gold, —
		The elvish cups that Spring upsets
		With dripping feet, when April wets
		The sun-and-shadow-marbled wold, —

		Is come. And by each leafing way
		The sorrel drops pale blots of pink;
		And, like an angled star a fay
		Sets on her forehead's pallid day,
		The blossoms of the trillium wink.

		Within the vale, by rock and stream, —
		A fragile, fairy porcelain, —
		Blue as a baby's eyes a-dream,
		The bluets blow; and gleam in gleam
		The sun-shot dog-woods flash with rain.

		It is the time to cast off care;
		To make glad intimates of these: —
		The frank-faced sunbeam laughing there;
		The great-heart wind, that bids us share
		The optimism of the trees.


III

		The white ghosts of the flowers,
		The green ghosts of the trees:
		They haunt the blooming bowers,
		They haunt the wildwood hours,
		And whisper in the breeze.

		For in the wildrose places,
		And on the beechen knoll,
		My soul hath seen their faces,
		My soul hath met their races,
		And felt their dim control.


IV

		Crab-apple buds, whose bells
		The mouth of April kissed;
		That hang, – like rosy shells
		Around a naiad's wrist, —
		Pink as dawn-tinted mist.

		And paw-paw buds, whose dark
		Deep auburn blossoms shake
		On boughs, – as 'neath the bark
		A dryad's eyes awake, —
		Brown as a midnight lake.

		These, with symbolic blooms
		Of wind-flower and wild-phlox,
		I found among the glooms
		Of hill-lost woods and rocks,
		Lairs of the mink and fox.

		The beetle in the brush,
		The bird about the creek,
		The bee within the hush,
		And I, whose heart was meek,
		Stood still to hear these speak.

		The language, that records,
		In flower-syllables,
		The hieroglyphic words
		Of beauty, who enspells
		The world and aye compels.




THE WIND AT NIGHT



I

		Not till the wildman wind is shrill,
		Howling upon the hill
		In every wolfish tree, whose boisterous boughs,
		Like desperate arms, gesture and beat the night,
		And down huge clouds, in chasms of stormy white
		The frightened moon hurries above the house,
		Shall I lie down; and, deep, —
		Letting the mad wind keep
		Its shouting revel round me, – fall asleep.


II

		Not till its dark halloo is hushed,
		And where wild waters rushed, —
		Like some hoofed terror underneath its whip
		And spur of foam, – remains
		A ghostly glass, hill-framed; whereover stains
		Of moony mists and rains,
		And stealthy starbeams, like vague specters, slip;
		Shall I – with thoughts that take
		Unto themselves the ache
		Of silence as a sound – from sleep awake.




AIRY TONGUES



I

		I hear a song the wet leaves lisp
		When Morn comes down the woodland way;
		And misty as a thistle-wisp
		Her gown gleams windy gray;
		A song, that seems to say,
		"Awake! 'tis day!"

		I hear a sigh, when Day sits down
		Beside the sunlight-lulled lagoon;
		While on her glistening hair and gown
		The rose of rest is strewn;
		A sigh, that seems to croon,
		"Come sleep! 'tis noon!"

		I hear a whisper, when the stars,
		Upon some evening-purpled height,
		Crown the dead Day with nenuphars
		Of dreamy gold and white;
		A voice, that seems t' invite,
		"Come love! 'tis night!"


II

		Before the rathe song-sparrow sings
		Among the hawtrees in the lane,
		And to the wind the locust flings
		Its early clusters fresh with rain;
		Beyond the morning-star, that swings
		Its rose of fire above the spire,
		Between the morning's watchet wings,
		A voice that rings o'er brooks and boughs —
		"Arouse! arouse!"

		Before the first brown owlet cries
		Among the grape-vines on the hill,
		And in the dam with half-shut eyes
		The lilies rock above the mill;
		Beyond the oblong moon, that flies
		Its pearly flower above the tower,
		Between the twilight's primrose skies,
		A voice that sighs from east to west —
		"To rest! to rest!"




THE HILLS


		There is no joy of earth that thrills
		My bosom like the far-off hills!
		Th' unchanging hills, that, shadowy,
		Beckon our mutability
		To follow and to gaze upon
		Foundations of the dusk and dawn.
		Meseems the very heavens are massed
		Upon their shoulders, vague and vast
		With all the skyey burden of
		The winds and clouds and stars above.
		Lo, how they sit before us, seeing
		The laws that give all Beauty being!
		Behold! to them, when dawn is near,
		The nomads of the air appear,
		Unfolding crimson camps of day
		In brilliant bands; then march away;
		And under burning battlements
		Of twilight plant their tinted tents.
		The faith of olden myths, that brood
		By haunted stream and haunted wood,
		They see; and feel the happiness
		Of old at which we only guess:
		The dreams, the ancients loved and knew,
		Still as their rocks and trees are true:
		Not otherwise than presences
		The tempest and the calm to these:
		One shouting on them, all the night,
		Black-limbed and veined with lambent light:
		The other with the ministry
		Of all soft things that company
		With music – an embodied form,
		Giving to solitude the charm
		Of leaves and waters and the peace
		Of bird-begotten melodies —
		And who at night doth still confer
		With the mild moon, who telleth her
		Pale tale of lonely love, until
		Wan images of passion fill
		The heights with shapes that glimmer by
		Clad on with sleep and memory.




IMPERFECTION


		Not as the eye hath seen, shall we behold
		Romance and beauty, when we've passed away;
		That robed the dull facts of the intimate day
		In life's wild raiment of unusual gold:
		Not as the ear hath heard, shall we be told,
		Hereafter, myth and legend once that lay
		Warm at the heart of Nature, clothing clay
		In attribute of no material mold.
		These were imperfect of necessity,
		That wrought thro' imperfection for far ends
		Of perfectness – As calm philosophy,
		Teaching a child, from his high heav'n descends
		To Earth's familiar things; informingly
		Vesting his thoughts with that it comprehends.




ARCANNA


		Earth hath her images of utterance,
		Her hieroglyphic meanings which elude;
		A symbol language of similitude,
		Into whose secrets science may not glance;
		In which the Mind-in-Nature doth romance
		In miracles that baffle if pursued —
		No guess shall search them and no thought intrude
		Beyond the limits of her sufferance.
		So doth the great Intelligence above
		Hide His own thought's creations; and attire
		Forms in the dream's ideal, which He dowers
		With immaterial loveliness and love —
		As essences of fragrance and of fire —
		Preaching th' evangels of the stars and flowers.




SPRING


		First came the rain, loud, with sonorous lips;
		A pursuivant who heralded a prince:
		And dawn put on a livery of tints,
		And dusk bound gold about her hair and hips:
		And, all in silver mail, then sunlight came,
		A knight, who bade the winter let him pass,
		And freed imprisoned beauty, naked as
		The Court of Love, in all her wildflower shame.
		And so she came, in breeze-borne loveliness,
		Across the hills; and heav'n bent down to bless:
		Before her face the birds were as a lyre;
		And at her feet, like some strong worshiper,
		The shouting water pæan'd praise of her,
		Who, with blue eyes, set the wild world on fire.




RESPONSE


		There is a music of immaculate love,
		That breathes within the virginal veins of Spring: —
		And trillium blossoms, like the stars that cling
		To fairies' wands; and, strung on sprays above,
		White-hearts and mandrake blooms, that look enough
		Like the elves' washing, white with laundering
		Of May-moon dews; and all pale-opening
		Wild-flowers of the woods, are born thereof.
		There is no sod Spring's white foot brushes but
		Must feel the music that vibrates within,
		And thrill to the communicated touch
		Responsive harmonies, that must unshut
		The heart of beauty for song's concrete kin,
		Emotions – that be flowers – born of such.




FULFILLMENT


		Yes, there are some who may look on these
		Essential peoples of the earth and air —
		That have the stars and flowers in their care —
		And all 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 discourse there,
		God's gospel of diviner mysteries:
		To whom the waters shall divulge a word
		Of fuller faith; the sunset and the dawn
		Preach sermons more inspired even than
		The tongues of Penticost; as, distant heard
		In forms of change, through Nature upward drawn,
		God doth address th' immortal soul of Man.




TRANSFORMATION


		It is the time when, by the forest falls,
		The touchmenots hang fairy folly-caps;
		When ferns and flowers fill the lichened laps
		Of rocks with color, rich as orient shawls:
		And in my heart I hear a voice that calls
		Me woodward, where the Hamadryad wraps
		Her limbs in bark, or, bubbling in the saps,
		Laughs the sweet Greek of Pan's old madrigals.
		There is a gleam that lures me up the stream —
		A Naiad swimming with wet limbs of light?
		Perfume, that leads me on from dream to dream —
		An Oread's footprints fragrant with her flight?
		And, lo! meseems I am a Faun again,
		Part of the myths that I pursue in vain.




OMENS


		Sad o'er the hills the poppy sunset died.
		Slow as a fungus breaking through the crusts
		Of forest leaves, the waning half-moon thrusts,
		Through gray-brown clouds, one milky silver side;
		In her vague light the dogwoods, vale-descried,
		Seem nervous torches flourished by the gusts;
		The apple-orchards seem the restless dusts
		Of wind-thinned mists upon the hills they hide.
		It is a night of omens whom late May
		Meets, like a wraith, among her train of hours;
		An apparition, with appealing eye
		And hesitant foot, that walks a willowed way,
		And, speaking through the fading moon and
		flowers,
		Bids her prepare her gentle soul to die.




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.




THE CREEK-ROAD


		Calling, the heron flies athwart the blue
		That sleeps above it; reach on rocky reach
		Of water sings by sycamore and beech,
		In whose warm shade bloom lilies not a few.
		It is a page whereon the sun and dew
		Scrawl sparkling words in dawn's delicious speech;
		A laboratory where the wood-winds teach,
		Dissect each scent and analyze each hue.
		Not otherwise than beautiful, doth it
		Record the happ'nings of each summer day;
		Where we may read, as in a catalogue,
		When passed a thresher; when a load of hay;
		Or when a rabbit; or a bird that lit;
		And now a bare-foot truant and his dog.




THE COVERED BRIDGE


		There, from its entrance, lost in matted vines, —
		Where in the valley foams a water-fall, —
		Is glimpsed a ruined mill's remaining wall;
		Here, by the road, the oxeye daisy mines
		Hot brass and bronze; the trumpet-trailer shines
		Red as the plumage of the cardinal.
		Faint from the forest comes the rain-crow's call
		Where dusty Summer dreams among the pines.
		This is the spot where Spring writes wildflower verses
		In primrose pink, while, drowsing o'er his reins,
		The ploughman, all unnoticing, plods along:
		And where the Autumn opens weedy purses
		Of sleepy silver, while the corn-heaped wains
		Rumble the bridge like some deep throat of song.




THE HILLSIDE GRAVE


		Ten-hundred deep the drifted daisies break
		Here at the hill's foot; on its top, the wheat
		Hangs meagre-bearded; and, in vague retreat,
		The wisp-like blooms of the moth-mulleins shake.
		And where the wild-pink drops a crimson flake,
		And morning-glories, like young lips, make sweet
		The shaded hush, low in the honeyed heat,
		The wild-bees hum; as if afraid to wake
		One sleeping there; with no white stone to tell
		The story of existence; but the stem
		Of one wild-rose, towering o'er brier and weed,
		Where all the day the wild-birds requiem;
		Within whose shade the timid violets spell
		An epitaph, only the stars can read.




SIMULACRA


		Dark in the west the sunset's somber wrack
		Unrolled vast walls the rams of war had split,
		Along whose battlements the battle lit
		Tempestuous beacons; and, with gates hurled back,
		A mighty city, red with ruin and sack,
		Through burning breaches, crumbling bit by bit,
		Showed where the God of Slaughter seemed to sit
		With conflagration glaring at each crack.
		Who knows? perhaps as sleep unto us makes
		Our dreams as real as our waking seems
		With recollections time can not destroy,
		So in the mind of Nature now awakes
		Haply some wilder memory, and she dreams
		The stormy story of the fall of Troy.




BEFORE THE END


		How does the Autumn in her mind conclude
		The tragic masque her frosty pencil writes,
		Broad on the pages of the days and nights,
		In burning lines of orchard, wold, and wood?
		What lonelier forms – that at the year's door stood
		At spectral wait – with wildly wasted lights
		Shall enter? and with melancholy rites
		Inaugurate their sadder sisterhood? —
		Sorrow, who lifts a signal hand, and slow
		The green leaf fevers, falling ere it dies;
		Regret, whose pale lips summon, and gaunt Woe
		Wakes the wild-wind harps with sonorous sighs;
		And Sleep, who sits with poppied eyes and sees
		The earth and sky grow dream-accessories.




WINTER


		The flute, whence Autumn's misty finger-tips
		Drew music – ripening the pinched kernels in
		The burly chestnut and the chinquapin,
		Red-rounding-out the oval haws and hips, —
		Now Winter crushes to his stormy lips
		And surly songs whistle around his chin:
		Now the wild days and wilder nights begin
		When, at the eaves, the crooked icicle drips.
		Thy songs, O Autumn, are not lost so soon!
		Still dwells a memory in thy hollow flute,
		Which, unto Winter's masculine airs, doth give
		Thy own creative qualities of tune,
		By which we see each bough bend white with fruit,
		Each bush with bloom, in snow commemorative.




HOAR-FROST


		The frail eidolons of all blossoms Spring,
		Year after year, about the forest tossed,
		The magic touch of the enchanter, Frost,
		Back from the Heaven of the Flow'rs doth bring;
		Each branch and bush in silence visiting
		With phantom beauty of its blooms long lost:
		Each dead weed bends, white-haunted of its ghost,
		Each dead flower stands ghostly with blossoming.
		This is the wonder-legend Nature tells
		To the gray moon and mist a winter's night;
		The fairy-tale, which her weird fancy 'spells
		With all the glamour of her soul's delight:
		Before the summoning sorcery of her eyes
		Making her spirit's dream materialize.




THE WINTER MOON


		Deep in the dell I watched her as she rose,
		A face of icy fire, o'er the hills;
		With snow-sad eyes to freeze the forest rills,
		And snow-sad feet to bleach the meadow snows:
		Pale as some young witch who, a-listening, goes
		To her first meeting with the Fiend; whose fears
		Fix demon eyes behind each bush she nears;
		Stops, yet must on, fearful of following foes.
		And so I chased her, startled in the wood,
		Like a discovered Oread, who flies
		The Faun who found her sleeping, each nude limb
		Glittering betrayal through the solitude;
		Till in a frosty cloud I saw her swim,
		Like a drowned face, a blur beneath the ice.




IN SUMMER


		When in dry hollows, hilled with hay,
		The vesper-sparrow sings afar;
		And, golden gray, dusk dies away
		Beneath the amber evening-star:
		There, where a warm and shadowy arm
		The woodland lays around the farm,
		To meet you where we kissed, dear heart,
		To kiss you at the tryst, dear heart,
		To kiss you at the tryst!

		When clover fields smell cool with dew,
		And crickets cry, and roads are still;
		And faint and few the fire-flies strew
		The dark where calls the whippoorwill;
		There, in the lane, where sweet again
		The petals of the wild-rose rain,
		To stroll with head to head, dear heart,
		And say the words oft said, dear heart,
		And say the words oft said!




RAIN AND WIND


		I hear the hoofs of horses
		Galloping over the hill,
		Galloping on and galloping on,
		When all the night is shrill
		With wind and rain that beats the pane —
		And my soul with awe is still.

		For every dripping window
		Their headlong rush makes bound,
		Galloping up, and galloping by,
		Then back again and around,
		Till the gusty roofs ring with their hoofs,
		And the draughty cellars sound.

		And then I hear black horsemen
		Hallooing in the night;
		Hallooing and hallooing,
		They ride o'er vale and height,
		And the branches snap and the shutters clap
		With the fury of their flight.

		Then at each door a horseman, —
		With burly bearded lip
		Hallooing through the keyhole, —
		Pauses with cloak a-drip;
		And the door-knob shakes and the panel quakes
		'Neath the anger of his whip.

		All night I hear their gallop,
		And their wild halloo's alarm;
		The tree-tops sound and vanes go round
		In forest and on farm;
		But never a hair of a thing is there —
		Only the wind and storm.




UNDER ARCTURUS



I

		"I belt the morn with ribboned mist;
		With baldricked blue I gird the noon,
		And dusk with purple, crimson-kissed,
		White-buckled with the hunter's moon.

		"These follow me," the season says:
		"Mine is the frost-pale hand that packs
		Their scrips, and speeds them on their ways,
		With gipsy gold that weighs their backs."


II

		A daybreak horn the Autumn blows,
		As with a sun-tanned band he parts
		Wet boughs whereon the berry glows;
		And at his feet the red-fox starts.

		The leafy leash that holds his hounds
		Is loosed; and all the noonday hush
		Is startled; and the hillside sounds
		Behind the fox's bounding brush.

		When red dusk makes the western sky
		A fire-lit window through the firs,
		He stoops to see the red-fox die
		Among the chestnut's broken burs.

		Then fanfaree and fanfaree,
		Down vistas of the afterglow
		His bugle rings from tree to tree,
		While all the world grows hushed below.


III

		Like some black host the shadows fall,
		And darkness camps among the trees;
		Each wildwood road, a Goblin Hall,
		Grows populous with mysteries.

		Night comes with brows of ragged storm,
		And limbs of writhen cloud and mist;
		The rain-wind hangs upon her arm
		Like some wild girl that will be kissed.

		By her gaunt hand the leaves are shed
		Like nightmares an enchantress herds;
		And, like a witch who calls the dead,
		The hill-stream whirls with foaming words.

		Then all is sudden silence and
		Dark fear – like his who can not see,
		Yet hears, aye in a haunted land,
		Death rattling on a gallow's tree.


IV

		The days approach again; the days,
		Whose mantles stream, whose sandals drag;
		When in the haze by puddled ways
		Each gnarled thorn seems a crookéd hag.

		When rotting orchards reek with rain;
		And woodlands crumble, leaf and log;
		And in the drizzling yard again
		The gourd is tagged with points of fog.

		Oh, let me seat my soul among
		Your melancholy moods! and touch
		Your thoughts' sweet sorrow without tongue,
		Whose silence says too much, too much!




OCTOBER


		Long hosts of sunlight, and the bright wind blows
		A tourney trumpet on the listed hill:
		Past is the splendor of the royal rose
		And duchess daffodil.

		Crowned queen of beauty, in the garden's space,
		Strong daughter of a bitter race and bold,
		A ragged beggar with a lovely face,
		Reigns the sad marigold.

		And I have sought June's butterfly for days,
		To find it – like a coreopsis bloom —
		Amber and seal, rain-murdered 'neath the blaze
		Of this sunflower's plume.

		Here basks the bee; and there, sky-voyaging wings
		Dare God's blue gulfs of heaven; the last song,
		The red-bird flings me as adieu, still rings
		Upon yon pear-tree's prong.

		No angry sunset brims with rosier red
		The bowl of heaven than the days, indeed,
		Pour in each blossom of this salvia-bed,
		Where each leaf seems to bleed.

		And where the wood-gnats dance, a tiny mist,
		Above the efforts of the weedy stream,
		The girl, October, tired of the tryst,
		Dreams a diviner dream.

		One foot just dipping the caressing wave,
		One knee at languid angle; locks that drown
		Hands nut-stained; hazel-eyed, she lies, and grave,
		Watching the leaves drift down.




BARE BOUGHS


		O heart, that beat the bird's blithe blood,
		The blithe bird's message that pursued,
		Now song is dead as last year's bud,
		What dost thou in the wood?

		O soul, that kept the brook's glad flow,
		The glad brook's word to sun and moon,
		What dost thou here where song lies low
		As all the dreams of June?

		Where once was heard a voice of song,
		The hautboys of the mad winds sing;
		Where once a music flowed along,
		The rain's wild bugles ring.

		The weedy water frets and ails,
		And moans in many a sunless fall;
		And, o'er the melancholy, trails
		The black crow's eldritch call.

		Unhappy brook! O withered wood!
		O days, whom death makes comrades of!
		Where are the birds that thrilled the blood
		When life struck hands with love?

		A song, one soared against the blue;
		A song, one bubbled in the leaves;
		A song, one threw where orchards grew
		All appled to the eaves.

		But now the birds are flown or dead;
		And sky and earth are bleak and gray;
		The wild winds sob i' the boughs instead,
		The wild leaves sigh i' the way.




A THRENODY



I

		The rainy smell of a ferny dell,
		Whose shadow no sunray flaws,
		When Autumn sits in the wayside weeds
		Telling her beads
		Of haws.


II

		The phantom mist, that is moonbeam-kissed,
		On hills where the trees are thinned,




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