Madison Julius Cawein: Verses about Beautiful

High as a star, yet lowly as a flower,
Unknown she takes her unassuming place
At Earth's proud masquerade-the appointed hour
Strikes, and, behold, the marvel of her face.

There is no rhyme that is half so sweet
As the song of the wind in the rippling wheat;
There is no metre that's half so fine
As the lilt of the brook under rock and vine;
And the loveliest lyric I ever heard
Was the wildwood strain of a forest bird.
If the wind and the brook and the bird would teach
My heart their beautiful parts of speech.
And the natural art that they say these with,
My soul would sing of beauty and myth
In a rhyme and a metre that none before
Have sung in their love, or dreamed in their lore,
And the world would be richer one poet the more.

THERE is no rhyme that is half so sweet
As the song of the wind in the rippling wheat;
There is no metre that ’s half so fine
As the lilt of the brook under rock and vine;
And the loveliest lyric I ever heard
Was the wildwood strain of a forest bird.—
If the wind and the brook and the bird would teach
My heart their beautiful parts of speech,
And the natural art that they say these with,
My soul would sing of beauty and myth
In a rhyme and a metre that none before
Have sung in their love, or dreamed in their lore,
And the world would be richer one poet the more.

There is a world Life dreams of, long since lost:
Invisible save only to the heart:
That spreads its cloudy islands, without chart,
Above the Earth,'mid oceans none has crossed:
Far Faerylands, that have become a part
Of mortal longings; that, through difficult art,
Man strives to realize to the uttermost.
Could we attain that Land of Faërie
Here in the flesh, what starry certitudes
Of loveliness were ours! what mastery
Of beauty and the dream that still eludes!
What clearer vision! Ours were then the key
To Mystery, that Nature jealously
Locks in her heart of hearts among the woods.

First Came the rain, loud, with sonorous lips;
A pursuivant who heralded a prince:
And dawn put on her livery of tints,
And dusk bound gold about her hair and hips:
And, all in silver mail, the 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:
Above her head the birds were as a lyre;
And at her feet, like some strong worshipper,
The shouting water pæn'd praise of her
Who, with blue eyes, set the wild world on fire.

Little leaves, that lean your ears
From each branch and bough of spring,
What is that your rapture hears?
Song of bird or flight of wing,
All so eager, little ears?
'Hush, oh, hush! Oh, don't you hear
Steps of beauty drawing near?
Neither flight of bee nor bird
Hark! the steps of Love are heard!'...
Little buds, that crowd with eyes
Every bush and every tree,
What is this that you surmise?
What is that which you would see,
So attentive, little eyes?
'Look, oh, look! Oh, can't you see
Loveliness camps 'neath each tree?
See her hosts and hear them sing,
Marching with the maiden Spring!'

So Love is dead, the Love we knew of old!
And in the sorrow of our hearts' hushed halls
A lute lies broken and a flower falls;
Love's house stands empty and his hearth lies cold.
Lone in dim places, where sweet vows were told,
In walks grown desolate, by ruined walls
Beauty decays; and on their pedestals
Dreams crumble and th' immortal gods are mold.
Music is slain or sleeps; one voice alone,
One voice awakes, and like a wandering ghost
Haunts all the echoing chambers of the Past-
The voice of Memory, that stills to stone
The soul that hears; the mind, that, utterly lost,
Before its beautiful presence stands aghast.

Thou art the music that I hear in sleep,
The poetry that lures me on in dreams;
The magic, thou, that holds my thought with themes
Of young romance in revery's mystic keep.
The lily's aura, and the damask deep
That clothes the rose; the whispering soul that seems
To haunt the wind; the rainbow light that streams,
Like some wild spirit, 'thwart the cataract's leap
Are glimmerings of thee and thy loveliness,
Pervading all my world; interpreting
The marvel and the wonder these disclose:
For, lacking thee, to me were meaningless
Life, love and hope, the joy of every thing,
And all the beauty that the wide world knows.

Here is the place where Loveliness keeps house,
Between the river and the wooded hills,
Within a valley where the Springtime spills
Her firstling wind-flowers under blossoming boughs:
Where Summer sits braiding her warm, white brows
With bramble-roses; and where Autumn fills
Her lap with asters; and old Winter frills
With crimson haw and hip his snowy blouse.
Here you may meet with Beauty. Here she sits
Gazing upon the moon, or all the day
Tuning a wood-thrush flute, remote, unseen;
Or when the storm is out, 'tis she who flits
From rock to rock, a form of flying spray,
Shouting, beneath the leaves' tumultuous green.

Here is a tale for men and women teachers:
There was a girl who'd ceased to be a maiden;
Who walked by night with heart like Lilith's laden;
A child of sin anathemaed of preachers.
She had been lovely once; but dye and scarlet,
On hair and face, had ravaged all her beauty;
Only her eyes still did her girl-soul duty,
Showing the hell that hounded her poor harlot!
One day a fisherman from out the river
Fished her pale body, (like a branch of willlow,
Or golden weed) self-murdered, drowned and broken:
The sight of it had made a strong man shiver;
And on her poor breast, as upon a pillow,
A picture smiled, a baby's, like some token

How good it is, when overwrought,
To seek the woods and find a thought,
That to the soul's attentive sense
Delivers much in evidence
Of truths for which man long has sought
Truths, which no vulture years contrive
To rob the heart of, holding it
To all the glory infinite
Of beauty that shall aye survive.
Still shall it lure us. Year by year
Addressing now the spirit ear
With thoughts, and now the spirit eye
With visions that like gods go by,
Filling the mind with bliss and fear
In spite of modern man who mocks
The Loveliness of old, nor minds
The ancient myths, gone with the winds,
And dreams that people woods and rocks.

How long ago it is since we went Maying!
Since she and I went Maying long ago!-
The years have left my forehead lined, I know,
Have thinned my hair around the temples graying.
Ah, time will change us: yea, I hear it saying-
'She too grows old: the face of rose and snow
Has lost its freshness: in the hair's brown glow
Some strands of silver sadly, too, are straying.
The form you knew, whose beauty so enspelled,
Has lost the litheness of its loveliness:
And all the gladness that her blue eyes held
Tears and the world have hardened with distress.'-
'True! true!' I answer, 'O ye years that part!
These things are chaned-but is her heart, her heart?'

I

The summer takes its hue
From something opulent as fair in her,
And the bright heaven is brighter than it was;
Brighter and lovelier,
Arching its beautiful blue,
Serene and soft, as her sweet gaze, o'er us.

II

The springtime takes its moods
From something in her made of smiles and tears,
And flowery earth is flowerier than before,
And happier, it appears,
Adding new multitudes
To flowers, like thoughts, that haunt us evermore.

III

Summer and spring are wed
In her-her nature; and the glamour of
Their loveliness, their bounty, as it were,
Of life and joy and love,
Her being seems to shed,-
The magic aura of the heart of her.

Wherein is it so beautiful?
In all things dim and all things cool:
In silence, that is built of leaves
And wind and spray of waterfall;
And, golden as the half-ripe sheaves,
In light that is not light at all.

II.

Wherein is it like joy and spring?
In petaled musk and singing wing:
In dreams, that come like butterflies
And moths, dim-winged with downy grey;
And myths, that watch with bark-brown eyes
Beauty who sleeps beside the way.

III.

Wherein, heart, is it all in all?
In what to me did there befall:
The echo of a word once said,
That haunts it still like some sweet ghost;
Youth's rapture, bright and gold of head,
And the wild love there found and lost.

On nights like this, when bayou and lagoon
Dream in the moonlight's mystic radiance,
I seem to walk like one deep in a trance
With old-world myths born of the mist and moon.

Lascivious eyes and mouths of sensual rose
Smile into mine; and breasts of luring light,
And tresses streaming golden to the night,
Persuade me onward where the forest glows.

And then it seems along the haunted hills
There falls a flutter as of beautiful feet,
As if tempestuous troops of Mænads meet
To drain deep bowls and shout and have their wills.

And then I feel her limbs will be revealed
Like some great snow-white moth among the trees;
Her vampire beauty, waiting there to seize
And dance me downward where my doom is sealed.

A sense of sadness in the golden air;
A pensiveness, that has no part in care,
As if the Season, by some woodland pool,
Braiding the early blossoms in her hair,
Seeing her loveliness reflected there,
Had sighed to find herself so beautiful.

A breathlessness; a feeling as of fear;
Holy and dim, as of a mystery near,
As if the World, about us, whispering went
With lifted finger and hand-hollowed ear,
Hearkening a music, that we cannot hear,
Haunting the quickening earth and firmament.

A prescience of the soul that has no name;
Expectancy that is both wild and tame,
As if the Earth, from out its azure ring
Of heavens, looked to see, as white as flame,-
As Perseus once to chained Andromeda came,-
The swift, divine revealment of the Spring.

In the frail hepaticas,-
That the early Springtide tossed,
Sapphire-like, along the ways
Of the woodlands that she crossed,-
I behold, with other eyes,
Footprints of a dream that flies.

One who leads me; whom I seek:
In whose loveliness there is
All the glamour that the Greek
Knew as wind-borne Artemis.-
I am mortal. Woe is me!
Her sweet immortality!

Spirit, must I always fare,
Following thy averted looks?
Now thy white arm, now thy hair,
Glimpsed among the trees and brooks?
Thou who hauntest, whispering,
All the slopes and vales of Spring.

Cease to lure! or grant to me
All thy beauty! though it pain,
Slay with splendor utterly!
Flash revealment on my brain!
And one moment let me see
All thy immortality!

TEACH me the secret of thy loveliness,
That, being made wise, I may aspire to be
As beautiful in thought, and so express
Immortal truths to earth’s mortality;
Though to my soul ability be less
Than ’t is to thee, O sweet anemone.

Teach me the secret of thy innocence,
That in simplicity I may grow wise,
Asking from Art no other recompense
Than the approval of her own just eyes;
So may I rise to some fair eminence,
Though less than thine, O cousin of the skies.

Teach me these things, through whose high knowledge, I,—
When Death hath poured oblivion through my veins,
And brought me home, as all are brought, to lie
In that vast house, common to serfs and Thanes,—
I shall not die, I shall not utterly die,
For beauty born of beauty—that remains.

The gods are dead; but still for me
Lives on in wildwood brook and tree
Each myth, each old divinity.

For me still laughs among the rocks
The Naiad; and the Dryad's locks
Drop perfume on the wildflower flocks.

The Satyr's hoof still prints the loam;
And, whiter than the wind-blown foam,
The Oread haunts her mountain home.

To him, whose mind is fain to dwell
With loveliness no time can quell,
All things are real, imperishable.

To him-whatever facts may say-
Who sees the soul beneath the clay,
Is proof of a diviner day.

The very stars and flowers preach
A gospel old as God, and teach
Philosophy a child may reach;

That cannot die; that shall not cease;
That lives through idealities
Of Beauty, ev'n as Rome and Greece.

That lifts the soul above the clod,
And, working out some period
Of art, is part and proof of God.

What magic through your snowy crystal gleams!
Your hollow spar, Spring brims with fragrancy;
That, like the cup of Comus, drugs with dreams
This woodland place, so drowsed with mystery.
What miracle evolved you from the mold?

Dreamed you, as 't were, into reality
Out of the Winter's death and night and cold?
Are you a sign, a message, that the Spring
Out of her soul unto the eye reveals?
A symboled something, telling many a thing
Of beauty she within her breast conceals?
The word significant, that conquers Death;
That through eternity with Nature deals,
As did the Christ, Jesus of Nazareth.

Or, of the rapture of the Earth a part,
Are you a thought that crystallized from dew
Into a flower? Nature, on her heart,
Bewildered with the hope from whence you grew
Your loveliness, wears as an evidence
Of immortality; a hint, a clue
To that which still evades our mortal sense.

Let me forget her face!
So fresh, so lovely! the abiding place
Of tears and smiles that won my heart to her;
Of dreams and moods that moved my soul's dim deeps,
As strong winds stir
Dark waters where the starlight glimmering sleeps.
In every lineament the mind can trace,
Let me forget her face!

II.

Let me forget her form!
Soft and seductive, that contained each charm,
Each grace the sweet word maidenhood implies;
And all the sensuous youth of line and curve,
That makes men's eyes
Bondsmen of beauty eager still to serve.
In every part that memory can warm,
Let me forget her form!

III.

Let me forget her, God!
Her who made honeyed love a bitter rod
To scourge my heart with, barren with despair;
To tear my soul with, sick with vain desire!
Oh, hear my prayer!
Out of the hell of love's unquenchable fire
I cry to thee, with face against the sod,
Let me forget her, God!

Sad-Hearted spirit of the solitudes,
Who comest through the ruin-wedded woods!
Gray-gowned with fog, gold-girdled with the gloom
Of tawny twilights; burdened with perfume
Of rain-wet uplands, chilly with the mist;
And all the beauty of the fire-kissed
Cold forests crimsoning thy indolent way,
Odorous of death and drowsy with decay.
I think of thee as seated 'mid the showers
Of languid leaves that cover up the flowers,
The little flower-sisterhoods, whom June
Once gave wild sweetness to, as to a tune
A singer gives her sours wild melody,
Watching the squirrel store his granary.
Or, 'mid old orchards I have pictured thee:
Thy hair's profusion blown about thy back;
One lovely shoulder bathed with gypsy black;
Upon thy palm one nestling check, and sweet
The rosy russets tumbled at thy feet.
Was it a voice lamenting for the flowers?
A heart-sick bird that sang of happier hours?
A cricket dirging days that soon must die?
Or did the ghost of Summer wander by?

Darkly October; Where the wild fowl fly,
Utters a harsh and melancholy cry;
And slowly closing, far a sunset door,
Day wildly glares upon.the world once more,
Where Twilight, with one star to lamp her by,
Walks with the Wind that haunts the hills and shore.

The Spirit of Autumn, with averted gaze,
Comes slowly down the ragged garden ways;
And where she walks she lays a finger cold
On rose and aster, lily and marigold,
And at her touch they turn, in mute amaze,
And bow their heads, assenting to the cold.

And all around rise phantoms of the flowers,
Scents, ghost-like, gliding from the dripping bowers;
And evermore vague, spectral voices ring
Of Something gone, or Something perishing:
Joy's requiem; hope's tolling of the Hours;
Love's dirge of dreams for Beauty sorrowing.

And now the moon above the garden side
Lifts a pale face and looks down misty-eyed,
As if she saw the ghost of yesteryear
That once with Happiness went wandering here
And the young Loveliness of days that died
Sitting with Memory 'mid the sad and sere.

'Teach me the wisdom of thy beauty, pray,
That, being thus wise, I may aspire to see
What beauty is, whence, why, and in what way
Immortal, yet how mortal utterly:
For, shrinking loveliness, thy brow of day
Pleads plaintive as a prayer, anemone.

'Teach me wood-wisdom, I am petulant:
Thou hast the wildness of a Dryad's eyes,
The shyness of an Oread's, wild plant:-
Behold the bashful goddess where she lies
Distinctly delicate!- inhabitant
Ambrosial-earthed, star-cousin of the skies.

'Teach me thy wisdom, for, thro' knowing, yet,
When I have drunk dull Lethe till each vein
Thuds full oblivion, I shall not forget;-
For beauty known is beauty; to sustain
Glad memories with life, while mad regret
And sorrow perish, being Lethe slain.'

'Teach thee my beauty being beautiful
And beauty wise?- My slight perfections, whole
As world, as man, in their creation full
As old a Power's cogitation roll.
Teach thee?- Presumption! thought is young and dull-
Question thy God what God is, soul what soul.'

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: wild birds,
Her lips, that spoke the rose's tongue
Of fragrance-voweled words.

I will not tell of cheeks and chin,
That held me as sweet language holds;
Nor of the eloquence within
Her breasts' twin-mooned molds.

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

There is no star so pure and high
As was her look; no fragrance such
As 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 Beauty born of Music met,
Whose spirit passed me by.

THERE is a house beside a way,
Where dwells a ghost of Yesterday:
The old face of a beauty, faded,
Looks from its garden: and the shaded
Long walks of locust-trees, that seem
Forevermore to sigh and dream,
Keep whispering low a word that's true,
Of shapes that haunt its avenue,
Clad as in days of belle and beau,
Who come and go
Around its ancient portico.
At first, in stock and beaver-hat,
With flitting of the moth and bat,
An old man, leaning on a cane,
Comes slowly down the locust lane;
Looks at the house; then, groping, goes
Into the garden where the rose
Still keeps sweet tryst with moth and moon;
And, humming to himself a tune,
—'Lorena' or 'Ben Bolt' we'll say,—
Waits, bent and gray,
For some fair ghost of Yesterday.
The Yesterday that holds his all —
More real to him than is the wall
Of mossy stone near which he stands,
Still reaching out for her his hands —
For her, the girl, who waits him there,
A lace-gowned phantom, dark of hair,
Whose loveliness still keeps those walks,
And with whose Memory he talks;
Upon his heart her happy head,—
So it is said,—
The girl, now half a century dead.

Come with me where April twilights
Wigwam blue the April hills;
Where the shadows and the high lights
Swarm the woods that Springtime fills.
Tents where dwell the tribes of beauty,
Tasseled scouts whose camp-fires glow
Over leagues of wild-flower booty
Rescued from the camps of snow.

II.

A thousand windflowers blowing!
They print the ways with palest pearl,
As if with raiment flowing
Here passed some glimmering girl.
A thousand bluets breaking!
They take the heart with glad surprise,
As if some wild girl waking
Looked at you with bewildered eyes.
A thousand buds and flowers,
A thousand birds and bees:
What spirit haunts the bowers!
What dream that no one sees!

III.

Her kirtle is white as the wild-plum bloom,
Her girdle is pink as the crab;
Her face is sweet as a wood perfume
Or haw that the sunbeams stab.
Her boddice is green as the beetle's wing
That jewels the light o' the sun;
And the earth and the air around her sing
Wherever her mad feet run.
Her beautiful feet, that bloom and bud
And print with blossoms each place.
Oh, let us follow them into the wood
And gaze on her, face to face.

An agate-black, your roguish eyes
Claim no proud lineage of the skies,
No starry blue; but of good earth
The reckless witchery and mirth.

Looped in your raven hair's repose,
A hot aroma, one red rose
Dies; envious of that loveliness,
By being near which its is less.

Twin sea shells, hung with pearls, your ears,
Whose slender rosiness appears
Part of the pearls; whose pallid fire
Binds the attention these inspire.

One slim hand crumples up the lace
About your bosom's swelling grace;
A ruby at your samite throat
Lends the required color note.

The moon bears through the violet night
A pearly urn of chaliced light;
And from your dark-railed balcony
You stoop and wave your fan at me.

O'er orange orchards and the rose
Vague, odorous lips the south wind blows,
Peopling the night with whispers of
Romance and palely passionate love.

The heaven of your balcony
Smiles down two stars, that say to me
More peril than Angelica
Wrought with her beauty in Cathay.

Oh, stoop to me! and, speaking, reach
My soul like song that learned sweet speech
From some dim instrument-who knows?-
Or flower, a dulcimer or rose.

I

There is no rhyme that is half so sweet
As the song of the wind in the rippling wheat;
There is no metre that's half so fine
As the lilt of the brook under rock and vine;
And the loveliest lyric I ever heard
Was the wildwood strain of a forest bird.-
If the wind and the brook and the bird would teach
My heart their beautiful parts of speech,
And the natural art that they say these with,
My soul would sing of beauty and myth
In a rhyme and metre that none before
Have sung in their love, or dreamed in their lore,
And the world would be richer one poet the more.

II

A thought to lift me up to those
Sweet wildflowers of the pensive woods;
The lofty, lowly attitudes
Of bluet and of bramble-rose:
To lift me where my mind may reach
The lessons which their beauties teach.

A dream, to lead my spirit on
With sounds of faery shawms and flutes,
And all mysterious attributes
Of skies of dusk and skies of dawn:
To lead me, like the wandering brooks,
Past all the knowledge of the books.

A song, to make my heart a guest
Of happiness whose soul is love;
One with the life that knoweth of
But song that turneth toil to rest:
To make me cousin to the birds,
Whose music needs not wisdom's words.

Let us mix a cup of Joy
That the wretched may employ,
Whom the Fates have made their toy.

Who have given brain and heart
To the thankless world of Art,
And from Fame have won no part.

Who have labored long at thought;
Starved and toiled and all for naught;
Sought and found not what they sought….

Let our goblet be the skull
Of a fool; made beautiful
With a gold nor base nor dull:

Gold of madcap fancies, once
It contained, that, sage or dunce,
Each can read whoever runs.

First we pour the liquid light
Of our dreams in; then the bright
Beauty that makes day of night.

Let this be the must wherefrom,
In due time, the mettlesome
Care-destroying drink shall come.

Folly next: with which mix in
Laughter of a child of sin,
And the red of mouth and chin.

These shall give the tang thereto,
Effervescence and rich hue
Which to all good wine are due.

Then into our cup we press
One wild kiss of wantonness,
And a glance that says not less.

Sparkles both that give a fine
Lustre to the drink divine,
Necessary to good wine.

Lastly in the goblet goes
Sweet a love-song, then a rose
Warmed upon her breast's repose.

These bouquet our drink. Now measure
With your arm the waist you treasure
Lift the cup and,'Here's to Pleasure!'

She stood waist-deep among the briers:
Above in twisted lengths were rolled
The sunset's tangled whorls of gold,
Blown from the west's cloud-pillared fires.

And in the hush no sound did mar,
You almost heard o'er hill and dell,
Deep, bubbling over, star on star,
The night's blue cisterns slowly well.

A crane, like some dark crescent, crossed
The sunset, winging towards the west;
While up the east her silver breast
Of light the moon brought, white as frost.

So have I painted her, you see,
The tollman's daughter. What an arm
And throat was hers! and what a form!
Art dreams of such divinity.

What braids of night to hold and kiss!
There is no pigment anywhere
A man might use to picture this
The splendour of her raven hair.

A face as beautiful and bright,
As rosy fair as twilight skies,
Lit with the stars of hazel eyes
And eyebrowed black with pencilled night.

For her, I know, where'er she trod
Each dewdropp raised a looking-glass
To flash her beauty from the grass;
That wild-flowers bloomed along the sod,

And whispered perfume when she smiled;
The wood-bird hushed to hear her song,
Or, all enamoured, tame, not wild,
Before her feet flew fluttering long.

The brook went mad with melody,
Eddied in laughter when she kissed
With naked feet its amethyst
And I I fell in love; ah me!

When by the wall the tiger-flower swings
A head of sultry slumber and aroma;
And by the path, whereon the blown rose flings
Its obsolete beauty, the long lilies foam a
White place of perfume, like a beautiful breast-
Between the pansy fire of the west,
And poppy mist of moonrise in the east,
This heartache will have ceased.

The witchcraft of soft music and sweet sleep-
Let it beguile the burthen from my spirit,
And white dreams reap me as strong reapers reap
The ripened grain and full blown blossom near it;
Let me behold how gladness gives the whole
The transformed countenance of my own soul-
Between the sunset and the risen moon
Let sorrow vanish soon.

And these things then shall keep me company:
The elfins of the dew; the spirit of laughter
Who haunts the wind; the god of melody
Who sings within the stream, that reaches after

The flow'rs that rock themselves to his caress:
These of themselves shall shape my happiness,
Whose visible presence I shall lean upon,
Feeling that care is gone.

Forgetting how the cankered flower must die;
The worm-pierced fruit fall, sicklied to its syrup;
How joy, begotten 'twixt a sigh and sigh,
Waits with one foot forever in the stirrup,-
Remembering how within the hollow lute
Soft music sleeps when music's voice is mute;
And in the heart, when all seems black despair,
Hope sits, awaiting there.

The roses mourn for her who sleeps
Within the tomb;
For her each lily-flower weeps
Dew and perfume.

In each neglected flower-bed
Each blossom droops its lovely head,
They miss her touch, they miss her tread,
Her face of bloom,
Of happy bloom.

The very breezes grieve for her,
A lonely grief;
For her each tree is sorrower,
Each blade and leaf.

The foliage rocks itself and sighs,
And to its woe the wind replies,
They miss her girlish laugh and cries,
Whose life was brief,
Was very brief.

The sunlight, too, seems pale with care,
Or sick with woe;
The memory haunts it of her hair,
Its golden glow.

No more within the bramble-brake
The sleepy bloom is kissed awake
The sun is sad for her dear sake,
Whose head lies low,
Lies dim and low.

The bird, that sang so sweet, is still
At dusk and dawn;
No more it makes the silence thrill
Of wood and lawn.

In vain the buds, when it is near,
Open each pink and perfumed ear,
The song it sings she will not hear
Who now is gone,
Is dead and gone.

Ah, well she sleeps who loved them well,
The birds and bowers;
The fair, the young, the lovable,
Who once was ours.

Alas! that loveliness must pass!
Must come to lie beneath the grass!
That youth and joy must fade, alas!
And die like flowers,
Earth's sweetest flowers!

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 truth 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 cloth still confer
With the mild moon, that 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.

There is a place (I know it well)
Where beech trees crowd into a gloom,
And where a twinkling woodland well
Flings from a rock a rippling plume,
And, like a Faun beneath a spell,
The silence breathes of beam and bloom.

And here it was I met with her,
The child I never hoped to see,
Who long had been heart's-comforter,
And soul's-companion unto me,
Telling me oft of myths that were,
And of far faerylands to-be.

She stood there smiling by the pool,
The cascade made below the rocks;
Innocent, naked, beautiful,
The frail gerardia in her locks,
A flower, elfin-sweet and cool,
Freckled as faery four-o -clocks.

Her eyes were rain-bright; and her hair
An amber gleam like that which tips
The golden leaves when Fall comes fair;
And twin red berries were her lips;
Her beauty, pure and young and bare,
Shone like a star from breasts to hips.

Oft had I seen her thus, of old,
In dreams, where she played many parts:
A form, possessing in its mold
The high perfection of all Arts,
With all the hopes to which men hold,
And loves for which they break their hearts.

And she was mine. Within her face
I read' her soul. . . . Then, while she smiled,
A sudden wind swept through the place
And she was gone. My heart beat wild;
The leaves shook and, behold, no trace
Was there of her, the faery child.

Only a ray of gold that hung
Above the water; and a bough,
Rain-bright and berried, low that swung:
Yet, in my heart of hearts, somehow,
I felt (I need not search among
The trees) that she was hiding now.

Rock and root and fern and flower
They had led him for an hour
To the inmost forest, where,
In a hollow, green with moss,
That the deep ferns trailed across,
Fell a fall, a presence fair,
Syllabling to the air,
Charming with cool sounds the bower.

It was she he used to know
In some land of Long Ago,
Some far land of Yesterday,
Where he listened to her words,
And she lured him, like the birds,
To her lips; and in his way
Danced a bubble or rainbow-ray,
Or a minnow's silvery bow.

Round him now her arms she flung,
And, as dripping there she clung,
In her gaze of green and gold
He beheld a beauty gleam,
And the shadow of a dream,
That to no man hath been told,
Like a Faery tale of old,
Rise up glimmering, ever young.

As his form to hers she drew
In his soul, it seemed, he knew
She was daughter of a king,
Hate-transformed into a fall
By a witch; long-held in thrall,
And condemned to sigh and sing
Till some mortal find the ring,
Charm, that would the spell undo.

In a pool of spray and foam,
With a crystal-bubble dome,
Suddenly he saw the charm:
Newt-like, coiling, there it lay
Could he seize it he would stay,
Master all! and, white and warm,
Clasp the princess in his arm,
Lead her to her palace home!
He would free her; share her crown.

So he thought; and, bare and brown,
Clove the water at a blow.
But, behold, a mottled form,
Like a newt's, stretched out an arm,
Crimson-freckled, from below;
And before his heart could know,
With wild laughter drew him down.

The night is sad with silver and the day is glad with gold,
And the woodland silence listens to a legend never old,
Of the Lady of the Fountain, whom the faery people know,
With her limbs of samite whiteness and her hair of golden glow,
Whom the boyish South Wind seeks for and the girlish-stepping Rain;
Whom the sleepy leaves still whisper men shall never see again:
She whose Vivien charms were mistress of the magic Merlin knew,
That could change the dew to glowworms and the glowworms into dew.
There's a thorn tree in the forest, and the faeries know the tree,
With its branches gnarled and wrinkled as a face with sorcery;
But the Maytime brings it clusters of a rainy fragrant white,
Like the bloom-bright brows of beauty or a hand of lifted light.
And all day the silence whispers to the sun-ray of the morn
How the bloom is lovely Vivien and how Merlin is the thorn:
How she won the doting wizard with her naked loveliness
Till he told her daemon secrets that must make his magic less.
How she charmed him and enchanted in the thorn-tree's thorns to lie
Forever with his passion that should never dim or die:
And with wicked laughter looking on this thing which she had done,
Like a visible aroma lingered sparkling in the sun:
How she stooped to kiss the pathos of an elf-lock of his beard,
In a mockery of parting and mock pity of his weird:
But her magic had forgotten that'who bends to give a kiss
Will but bring the curse upon them of the person whose it is':
So the silence tells the secret. And at night the faeries see
How the tossing bloom is Vivien, who is struggling to be free,
In the thorny arms of Merlin, who forever is the tree.

On southern winds shot through with amber light,
Breathing soft balm and clothed in cloudy white,
The lily-fingered Spring came o'er the hills,
Waking the crocus and the daffodils.
O'er the cold Earth she breathed a tender sigh
The maples sang and flung their banners high,
Their crimson-tasselled pennons, and the elm
Bound his dark brows with a green-crested helm.
Beneath the musky rot of Autumn's leaves,
Under the forest's myriad naked eaves,
Life woke and rose in gold and green and blue,
Robed in the starlight of the twinkling dew.
With timid tread adown the barren wood
Spring held her way, when, lo! before her stood
White-mantled Winter wagging his white head,
Stormy his brow and stormily he said:
'The God of Terror, and the King of Storm,
Must I remind thee how my iron arm
Raised my red standards 'mid these conquered bowers,
Turning their green to crimson? Thou, with flowers,
Thou wouldst supplant me! nay! usurp my throne!
Audacious one!' And at her breast he tossed
A bitter javelin of ice and frost;
And left her lying on th' unfeeling mould.
The fragile blossoms, gathered in the fold
Of her warm bosom, fell in desolate rows
About her beauty, and, like fragrant snows,
Covered her lovely hands and beautiful feet,
Or on her lips lay like last kisses sweet
That died there. Lilacs, musky of the May,
And bluer violets and snowdrops lay
Entombed in crystal, icy dim and fair,
Like teardrops scattered in her heavenly hair.
Alas! sad heart, break not beneath the pain!
Time changeth all; the Beautiful wakes again.
We should not question such; a higher power
Knows best what bud is ripest or what flower,
And silently plucks it at the fittest hour.

Again the earth, miraculous with May,
Unfolds its vernal arras. Yesteryear
We strolled together 'neath the greening trees,
And heard the robin tune its flute note clear,
And watched above the white cloud squadrons veer,
And saw their shifting shadows drift away
Adown the Hudson, as ships seek the seas.
The scene is still the same. The violet
Unlids its virgin eye; its amber ore
The dandelion shows, and yet, and yet,
He comes no more, no more!
He of the open and the generous heart,
The soul that sensed all flowerful loveliness,
The nature as the nature of a child;
Who found some rapture in the wind's caress,
Beauty in humble weed and mint and cress,
And sang, with his incomparable art,
The magic wonder of the wood and wild.
The little people of the reeds and grass,
Murmur their blithe, companionable lore,
The rills renew their minstrelsy. Alas,
He comes no more, no more!
And yet it seems as though he needs must come,
Albeit he has cast off mortality,
Such was his passion for the burgeoning time,
Such to his spirit was the ecstasy
The hills and valleys chorus when set free,
No music mute, no lyric instinct dumb,
But keyed to utterance of immortal rhyme.
Ah, haply in some other fairer spring
He sees bright tides sweep over slope and shore,
But here how vain is all my visioning!
He comes no more, no more!
Poet and friend, wherever you may fare
Enwrapt in dreams, I love to think of you
Wandering amid the meads of asphodel,
Holding high converse with the exalted few
Who sought and found below the elusive clue
To beauty, and in that diviner air
Bowing in worship still to its sweet spell.
Why sorrow, then, though fate unkindly lays
Upon our questioning hearts this burden sore,
And though through all our length of hastening days
He comes no more, no more!

I

Beautiful-bosomed, O Night, in thy noon
Move with majesty onward! soaring, as lightly
As a singer may soar the notes of an exquisite tune,
The stars and the moon
Through the clerestories high of the heaven, the firmament's halls:
Under whose sapphirine walls,
June, hesperian June,
Robed in divinity wanders. Daily and nightly
The turquoise touch of her robe, that the violets star,
The silvery fall of her feet, that lilies are,
Fill the land with languorous light and perfume.-
Is it the melody mute of burgeoning leaf and of bloom?
The music of Nature, that silently shapes in the gloom
Immaterial hosts
Of spirits that have the flowers and leaves in their keep,
Whom I hear, whom I hear?
With their sighs of silver and pearl?
Invisible ghosts,-
Each sigh a shadowy girl,-

Who whisper in leaves and glimmer in blossoms and hover
In color and fragrance and loveliness, breathed from the deep
World-soul of the mother,
Nature; who over and over,-
Both sweetheart and lover,-
Goes singing her songs from one sweet month to the other.

II

Lo! 'tis her songs that appear, appear,
In forest and field, on hill-land and lea,
As visible harmony,
Materialized melody,
Crystallized beauty, that out of the atmosphere
Utters itself, in wonder and mystery,
Peopling with glimmering essence the hyaline far and the near….

III

Behold how it sprouts from the grass and blossoms from flower and tree!
In waves of diaphanous moonlight and mist,
In fugue upon fugue of gold and of amethyst,
Around me, above me it spirals; now slower, now faster,
Like symphonies born of the thought of a musical master.-
O music of Earth! O God, who the music inspired!
Let me breathe of the life of thy breath!
And so be fulfilled and attired
In resurrection, triumphant o'er time and o'er death!