Mathilde Blind: Verses about Nature

I planted a rose tree in my garden,
In early days when the year was young;
I thought it would bear me roses, roses,
While nights were dewy and days were long.

It bore me once, and a white rose only--
A lovely rose with petals of light;
Like the moon in heaven, supreme and lonely;
And the lightning struck it one summer night.

The year is on the wing, my love,
With tearful days and nights;
The clouds are on the wing above
With gathering swallow-flights.

The year is on the wing, my sweet,
And in the ghostly race,
With patter of unnumbered feet,
The dead leaves fly apace.

The year is on the wing, and shakes
The last rose from its tree;
And I, whose heart in parting breaks,
Must bid adieu to thee.

ALL my heart is stirring lightly
Like dim violets winter-bound,
Quickening as they feel the brightly
Glowing sunlight underground.

Yea, this drear and silent bosom,
Hushed as snow-hid grove but now,
Breaketh into leaf and blossom
Like a gleaming vernal bough.

Oh the singing, singing, singing!
Callow hopes that thrill my breast!
Can the lark of love be winging
Back to its abandoned nest?

All my heart is stirring lightly
Like dim violets winter-bound,
Quickening as they feel the brightly
Glowing sunlight underground.

Yea, this drear and silent bosom,
Hushed as snow-hid grove but now,
Breaketh into leaf and blossom
Like a gleaming vernal bough.

Oh the singing, singing, singing!
Callow hopes that thrill my breast!
Can the lark of love be winging
Back to its abandoned nest?

I.
SUNBEAMS can fling no purer brightness o'er the sea
And rain-showers bring no surer blessing to the lea,
And lilies wing with no more sweetness the gold bee,
Than those few lines thy hand has penned have brought to me.


II.
Soft lies the silent fall of snow
Upon the hemlock tree;
Soft lies the moonlight's silver flow
Upon the troubled sea.

Sweet on the blossom of the vines
The night-dews drop from high;
But softer, sweeter far, thy lines
Upon my spirit lie.

Three tall poplars beside the pool
Shiver and moan in the gusty blast,
The carded clouds are blown like wool,
And the yellowing leaves fly thick and fast.

The leaves, now driven before the blast,
Now flung by fits on the curdling pool,
Are tossed heaven-high and dropped at last
As if at the whim of a jabbering fool.

O leaves, once rustling green and cool!
Two met here where one moans aghast
With wild heart heaving towards the past:
Three tall poplars beside the pool.

The rain beat in our faces,
And shrill the wild airs grew;
The long-maned clouds in races
Coursed o'er heaven's windy blue.

The tortured trees were lashing
Each other in their wrath,
Their wet leaves wildly dashing
Across the forest path.

We did not heed the sweeping
Of storm-bewildered rain;
Our cheeks were wet with weeping,
Our hearts were wrung with pain.

For where the cross-roads sever,
Parting to East and West,
We bade good-bye for ever,
To what we each loved best.

Coral.coloured yew-berries
Strew the garden ways,
Hollyhocks and sunflowers
Make a dazzling blaze
In these latter days.

Marigolds by cottage doors
Flaunt their golden pride,
Crimson-punctured bramble leaves
Dapple far and wide
The green mountain-side.

Far away, on hilly slopes
Where fleet rivulets run,
Miles on miles of tangled fern,
Burnished by the sun,
Glow a copper dun.

For the year that's on the wane,
Gathering all its fire,
Flares up through the kindling world
As, ere they expire,
Flames leap high and higher.

It is a solemn evening, golden-clear--
The Alpine summits flame with rose-lit snow
And headlands purpling on wide seas below,
And clouds and woods and arid rocks appear
Dissolving in the sun's own atmosphere
And vast circumference of light, whose slow
Transfiguration--glow and after-glow--
Turns twilight earth to a more luminous sphere.

Oh heart, I ask, seeing that the orb of day
Has sunk below, yet left to sky and sea
His glory's spiritual after-shine:
I ask if Love, whose sun hath set for thee,
May not touch grief with his memorial ray,
And lend to loss itself a joy divine?

LOST amid gloom and solitude,
A pool lies hidden in the wood,
A pool the autumn rain has made
Where flowers with their fair shadows played.

Bare as a beggar's board, the trees
Stand in the water to their knees;
The birds are mute, but far away
I hear a bloodhound's sullen bay.

Blue-eyed forget-me-nots that shook,
Kissed by a little laughing brook,
Kissed too by you with lips so red,
Float in the water drowned and dead.

And dead and drowned 'mid leaves that rot,
Our angel-eyed Forget-me-not,
The love of unforgotten years,
Floats corpse-like in a pool of tears

Is it snow or snowdrops' shimmer
Whitens thus the bladed grass,
With a faint aërial glimmer,--
Spring or winter, which did pass?
For the sky is dim and tender
With an evanescent light,
And the fading fields are white,
White with snow or snowdrops, under
The fair firstling stars of night.


Little robin, softly, cheerly
Piping on yon wintry bough,
Why have all the fields that pearly
Iridescence, knowest thou?
Did old Winter, grim and hoary,
Aim a parting dart at Spring
As she fled on azure wing,
Or did she with rainbow glory
In his face her snowdrops fling?

THOU camest with the coming Spring!
With swallows, and the murmuring
Of unloosed waters, with the birth
Of daisies dimpling the green earth.

And when the perfect rose of June
Responded to the golden noon,
My heart's deep core, suffused with bliss,
Broke into flower beneath thy kiss.

But now the swallows seaward fly,
The winds in chorus wail, 'Good-bye!'
The dead leaves whirl, and like a leaf
My heart shakes on the gusts of grief.

And yet awhile earth's flowerless breast
In lethal folds of snow will rest;
On thee too heart, with all thy woe,
Death falls one day like falling snow.

THOU camest with the coming Spring!
With swallows, and the murmuring
Of unloosed waters, with the birth
Of daisies dimpling the green earth.

And when the perfect rose of June
Responded to the golden noon,
My heart's deep core, suffused with bliss,
Broke into flower beneath thy kiss.

But now the swallows seaward fly,
The winds in chorus wail, 'Good-bye!'
The dead leaves whirl, and like a leaf
My heart shakes on the gusts of grief.

And yet awhile earth's flowerless breast
In lethal folds of snow will rest;
On thee too heart, with all thy woe,
Death falls one day like falling snow.

HIS Eve of Women! She, whose mortal lot
Was linked to an Immortal's unaware,
With Love's lost Eden in her blissful air,
Perchance would greet him in this blessed spot.
No shadow of the coming days durst blot,
The flower-like face, so innocently fair,
As lip met lip, and lily arms, all bare,
Clung round him in a perfect lover's knot.

Was not this Anne the flame-like daffodil
Of Shakespeare's March, whose maiden beauty took
His senses captive? Thus the stripling brook
Mirrors a wild flower nodding by the mill,
Then grows a river in which proud cities look,
And with a land's load widens seaward still

Dost thou remember ever, for my sake,
When we two rowed upon the rock-bound lake?
How the wind-fretted waters blew their spray
About our brows like blossom-falls of May
One memorable day?

Dost thou remember the glad mouth that cried--
"Were it not sweet to die now side by side,
To lie together tangled in the deep
Close as the heart-beat to the heart--so keep
The everlasting sleep?"

Dost thou remember? Ah, such death as this
Had set the seal upon my heart's young bliss!
But, wrenched asunder, severed and apart,
Life knew a deadlier death: the blighting smart
Which only kills the heart.

No breath of wind stirs in the painted leaves,
The meadows are as stirless as the sky,
Like a Saint's halo golden vapours lie
Above the restful valley's garnered sheaves.
The journeying Sun, like one who fondly grieves,
Above the hills seems loitering with a sigh,
As loth to bid the fruitful earth good-bye,
On these hushed hours of luminous autumn eves.

There is a pathos in his softening glow,
Which like a benediction seems to hover
O'er the tranced earth, ere he must sink below
And leave her widowed of her radiant Lover,
A frost-bound sleeper in a shroud of snow,
While winter winds howl a wild dirge above her.

Cleave thou the waves that weltering to and fro
Surge multitudinous. The eternal Powers
Of sun, moon, stars, the air, the hurrying hours,
The winged winds, the still dissolving show
Of clouds in calm or storm, for ever flow
Above thee; while the abysmal sea devours
The untold dead insatiate, where it lowers
O'er glooms unfathomed, limitless, below.

No longer on the golden-fretted sands,
Where many a shallow tide abortive chafes,
Mayst thou delay; life onward sweeping blends
With far-off heaven: the dauntless one who braves
The perilous flood with calm unswerving hands,
The elements sustain: cleave thou the waves.

Would we but love what will not pass away!
The sun that on each morning shines as clear
As when it rose first on the world's first year;
The fresh green leaves that rustle on the spray.
The sun will shine, the leaves will be as gay
When graves are full of all our hearts held dear,
When not a soul of those who loved us here,
Not one, is left us--creatures of decay.

Yea, love the Abiding in the Universe
Which was before, and will be after us.
Nor yet for ever hanker and vainly cry
For human love--the beings that change or die;
Die--change--forget: to care so is a curse,
Yet cursed we'll be rather than not care thus.

The storm which shook the silence of the hills
And sleeping pinnacles of ancient snow
Went muttering off in one last thunder throe
Mixed with a moan of multitudinous rills;
Yea, even as one who has wept much, but stills
The flowing tears of some convulsive woe
When a fair light of hope begins to glow
Athwart the gloom of long remembered ills:

So does the face of this scarred mountain height
Relax its stony frown, while slow uprolled
Invidious mists are changed to veiling gold.
Wild peaks still fluctuate between dark and bright,
But when the sun laughs at them, as of old,
They kiss high heaven in all embracing light.

Alone--with one fair star for company,
The loveliest star among the hosts of night,
While the grey tide ebbs with the ebbing light--
I pace along the darkening wintry sea.
Now round the yule-log and the glittering tree
Twinkling with festive tapers, eyes as bright
Sparkle with Christmas joys and young delight,
As each one gathers to his family.

But I--a waif on earth where'er I roam--
Uprooted with life's bleeding hopes and fears
From that one heart that was my heart's sole home,
Feel the old pang pierce through the severing years,
And as I think upon the years to come
That fair star trembles through my falling tears.

The year's grown songless! No glad pipings thrill
The hedge-row elms, whose wind-worn branches shower
Their leaves on the sere grass, where some late flower
In golden chalice hoards the sunlight still.
Our summer guests, whose raptures used to fill
Each apple-blossomed garth and honeyed bower,
Have in adversity's inclement hour
Abandoned us to bleak November's chill.

But hearken! Yonder russet bird among
The crimson clusters of the homely thorn
Still bubbles o'er with little rills of song--
A blending of sweet hope and resignation:
Even so, when life of love and youth is shorn,
One friend becomes its last, best consolation.

Oh in this dearth and winter of the soul,
When even Hope, still wont to soar and sing,
Droopeth, a starveling bird whose downy wing
Stiffens ere dead through the dank drift it fall--
Yea, ere Hope perish utterly, I call
On thee, fond Memory, that thou haste and bring
One leaf, one blossom from that far-off spring
When love's auroral light lay over all.

Bring but one pansy: haply so the thrill
Of poignant yearning for those glad dead years
May, like the gusty south, breathe o'er the chill
Of frozen grief, dissolving it in tears,
Till numb Hope, stirred by that warm dropping rain,
Will deem, perchance, Love's springtide come again.

Peace, throbbing heart, nor let us shed one tear
O'er this late love's unseasonable glow;
Sweet as a violet blooming in the snow,
The posthumous offspring of the widowed year
That smells of March when all the world is sere,
And, while around the hurtling sea-winds blow--
Which twist the oak and lay the pine tree low--
Stands childlike in the storm and has no fear.

Poor helpless blossom orphaned of the sun,
How could it thus brave winter's rude estate?
Oh love, more helpless, why bloom so late,
Now that the flower-time of the year is done?
Since thy dear course must end when scarce begun,
Nipped by the cold touch of relentless fate.

There was intoxication in the air;
The wind, keen blowing from across the seas,
O'er leagues of new-ploughed land and heathery leas,
Smelt of wild gorse whose gold flamed everywhere.
And undertone of song pulsed far and near,
The soaring larks filled heaven with ecstasies,
And, like a living clock among the trees,
The shouting cuckoo struck the time of year.

For now the Sun had found the earth once more,
And woke the Sleeping Beauty with a kiss;
Who thrilled with light of love in every pore,
Opened her flower-blue eyes, and looked in his.
Then all things felt life fluttering at their core--
The world shook mystical in lambent bliss.

ON THE RIVIERA.

In tortuous windings up the steep incline
The sombre street toils to the village square,
Whose antique walls in stone and moulding bear
Dumb witness to the Moor. Afar off shine,
With tier on tier, cutting heaven's blue divine,
The snowy Alps; and lower the hills are fair,
With wave-green olives rippling down to where
Gold clusters hang and leaves of sunburnt vine.

You may perchance, I never shall forget
When, between twofold glory of land and sea,
We leant together o'er the old parapet,
And saw the sun go down. For, oh, to me,
The beauty of that beautiful strange place
Was its reflection beaming from your face.

The woods shake in an ague-fit,
The mad wind rocks the pine,
From sea to sea the white gulls flit
Into the roaring brine.

The moon as if in panic grief
Darts through the clouds on high,
Blown like a wild autumnal leaf
Across the wilder sky.

The gusty rain is driving fast,
And through the rain we hear,
Above the equinoctial blast,
The thunder of the Weir.

The voices of the wind and rain
Wail echoing through my heart--
That love is ever dogged by pain
And fondest souls must part.

You made heart's summer, O my friend,
But now we bid adieu,
There will be winter without end
And tears for ever new.

AS many stars as are aglow
Deep in the hollows of the night
As many as the flowers that blow
Beneath the kindling light;

As many as the birds that fly
Unpiloted across the deep;
As many as the clouds on high,
And all the drops they weep;

As many as the leaves that fall
In autumn, on the withering lea,
When wind to thundering wind doth call,
And sea calls unto sea;

As many as the multitude
Of quiet graves, where mutely bide
The wicked people and the good,
Laid softly side by side;--

So many thoughts, so many tears,
Such hosts of prayers, are sent on high,
Seeking, through all Man's perished years,
A love that will not die.

DURING THE GREAT FROST, 1881.


Thou sign-post of the Desert! Obelisk,
Once fronting in thy monumental pride
Egypt's fierce sun, that blazing far and wide,
Sheared her of tree and herb, till like a disk
Her waste stretched shadowless, and fraught with risk
To those who with their beasts of burden hied
Across the seas of sand until they spied
Thy pillar, and their flagging hearts grew brisk:

Now reared beside out Thames so wintry grey,
Where blocks of ice drift with the drifting stream,
Thou risest o'er the alien prospect! Say,
Yon dull, blear, rayless orb whose lurid gleam
Tinges the snow-draped ships and writhing steam,
Is this the sun which fired thine orient day?

A thrush alit on a young-leaved spray,
And, lightly clinging,
It rocked in its singing
As the rapturous notes rose loud and gay;
And with liquid shakes,
And trills and breaks,
Rippled though blossoming bough of May.

Like a ball of fluff, with a warm brown throat
And throbbing bosom,
'Mid the apple-blossom,
The new-fledged nestling sat learning by rote
To echo the song
So tender and strong,
As it feebly put in its frail little note.

O blissfullest lesson amid the green grove!
The low wind crispeth
The leaves, where lispeth
The shy little bird with its parent above;
Two voices that mingle
And make but a single
Hymn of rejoicing in praise of their love.

Once on a golden day,
In the golden month of May,
I gave my heart away--
Little birds were singing.

I culled my heart in truth,
Wet with the dews of youth,
For love to take, forsooth--
Little flowers were springing.

Love sweetly laughed at this,
And between kiss and kiss
Fled with my heart in his:
Winds warmly blowing.

And with his sun and shower
Love kept my heart in flower,
As in the greenest bower
Rose richly glowing.

Till, worn at evensong,
Love dropped my heart among
Stones by the way ere long;
Misprizèd token.

There in the wind and rain,
Trampled and rent in twain,
Ne'er to be whole again,
My heart lies broken.

THE young birds shy twitter
In hedges and bowers,
Fields brighten and glitter
With dewdrops and flowers.
Over flood, over fallow,
Impelled by old yearning,
The nest-building swallow
Exults at returning;
For dark days and hoary
Are routed and over,
Dark Winter is gone;
Resplendent in glory,
The earth meets her lover,
Her bridegroom the Sun.

Must I alone sorrow,
Despairingly languish,
Breaks never a morrow
On the night of my anguish?
The jubilant gladness
In bird, beam, and blossom,
But deepens the sadness
That weighs on my bosom.
Oh, Spring, in whose azure
Wake follow the starling,
The daisy, the dove;
Sweet spendthrift of pleasure,
Brings also my darling,
Oh bring me my love!

I would I were the glow-worm, thou the flower,
That I might fill thy cup with glimmering light;
I would I were the bird, and thou the bower,
To sing thee songs throughout the summer night.

I would I were a pine tree deeply rooted,
And thou the lofty, cloud-beleaguered rock,
Still, while the blasts of heaven around us hooted,
To cleave to thee and weather every shock.

I would I were the rill, and thou the river;
So might I, leaping from some headlong steep,
With all my waters lost in thine for ever,
Be hurried onwards to the unfathomed deep.

I would--what would I not? O foolish dreaming!
My words are but as leaves by autumn shed,
That, in the faded moonlight idly gleaming,
Drop on the grave where all our love lies dead.

SOFTLY in a dream I heard,
Ere the day was breaking,
Softly call a cuckoo bird
Between sleep and waking.

Calling through the rippling rain
And red orchard blossom;
Calling up old love again,
Buried in my bosom;

Calling till he brought you too
From some magic region;
And the whole spring followed you,
Birds on birds in legion.

Youth was in your beaming glance,
Love a rainbow round you;
Blushing trees began to dance,
Wreaths of roses crowned you.

And I called your name, and woke
To the cuckoo's calling;
And you waned in waning smoke,
As the rain was falling.

Had the cuckoo called 'Adieu,'
Ere the day was breaking?
All the old wounds bled anew
Between sleep and waking.

She stood against the Orient sun,
Her face inscrutable for light;
A myriad larks in unison
Sang o'er her, soaring out of sight.

A myriad flowers around her feet
Burst flame-like from the yielding sod,
Till all the wandering airs were sweet
With incense mounting up to God.

A mighty rainbow shook, inclined
Towards her, from the Occident,
Girdling the cloud-wrack which enshrined
Half the light-bearing firmament.

Lit showers flashed golden o'er the hills,
And trees flung silver to the breeze,
And, scattering diamonds, fleet-foot rills
Fled laughingly across the leas.

Yea, Love, the skylarks laud but thee,
And writ in flowers thine awful name;
Spring is thy shade, dread Ecstasy,
And life a brand which feeds thy flame.

In a lonesome burial-place
Crouched a mourner white of face;
Wild her eyes--unheeding
Circling pomp of night and day--
Ever crying, "Well away,
Love lies a-bleeding!"

And her sighs were like a knell,
And her tears for ever fell,
With their warm rain feeding
That purpureal flower, alas!
Trailing prostrate in the grass,
Love lies a-bleeding.

Through the yews' black-tufted gloom
Crimson light fell on the tomb,
Funeral shadows breeding:
In the sky the sun's light shed
Dyed the earth one awful red--
Love lies a-bleeding.

Came grey mists, and blanching cloud
Bore one universal shroud;
Came the bowed moon leading,
From the infinite afar
Star that rumoured unto star--
Love that lies a-bleeding.

The April rain, the April rain,
Comes slanting down in fitful showers,
Then from the furrow shoots the grain,
And banks are fledged with nestling flowers;
And in grey shaw and woodland bowers
The cuckoo through the April rain
Calls once again.

The April sun, the April sun,
Glints through the rain in fitful splendour,
And in grey shaw and woodland dun
The little leaves spring forth and tender
Their infant hands, yet weak and slender,
For warmth towards the April sun,
One after one.

And between shower and shine hath birth
The rainbow's evanescent glory;
Heaven's light that breaks on mists of earth!
Frail symbol of our human story,
It flowers through showers where, looming hoary,
The rain-clouds flash with April mirth,
Like Life on earth.

Sun-Tanned men and women, toiling there together;
Seven I count in all, in yon field of wheat,
Where the rich ripe ears in the harvest weather
Glow an orange gold through the sweltering heat.

Busy life is still, sunk in brooding leisure:
Birds have hushed their singing in the hushed tree tops;
Not a single cloud mars the flawless azure;
Not a shadow moves o'er the moveless crops;

In the grassy shallows, that no breath is creasing,
Chestnut-coloured cows in the rushes dank
Stand like cows of bronze, save when they flick the teasing
Flies with switch of tail from each quivering flank.

Nature takes a rest-even her bees are sleeping,
And the silent wood seems a church that's shut;
But these human creatures cease not from their reaping
While the corn stands high, waiting to be cut.

Blossom of the apple trees!
Mossy trunks all gnarled and hoary,
Grey boughs tipped with rose-veined glory,
Clustered petals soft as fleece
Garlanding old apple trees!

How you gleam at break of day!
When the coy sun, glancing rarely,
Pouts and sparkles in the pearly
Pendulous dewdrops, twinkling gay
On each dancing leaf and spray.

Through your latticed boughs on high,
Framed in rosy wreaths, one catches
Brief kaleidoscopic snatches
Of deep lapis-lazuli
In the April-coloured sky.

When the sundown's dying brand
Leaves your beauty to the tender
Magic spells of moonlight splendour,
Glimmering clouds of bloom you stand,
Turning earth to fairyland.

Cease, wild winds, O, cease to blow!
Apple-blossom, fluttering, flying,
Palely on the green turf lying,
Vanishing like winter snow;
Swift as joy to come and go.

Sun, moon, and stars, the ample air,
The birds shrill whistling everywhere,
Fields white with lambs and daisies;
The pearls of eve, the jewelled morn,
The rose rich blowing on the thorn,
The glow of blush-rose faces;
The silver glint of sun-smit rain,
The shattered sun-gold of the main,
And heaven's sweet breath that moves it;
The earth, our myriad-bosomed nurse,
This whole miraculous universe
Belongs to him who loves it!


Why fret then for the gold of this,
The fame of that man, or the bliss,
Or such another's graces?
Oh heart that chim'st with golden verse,
My heart, thou art the magic purse
Which all dull trouble chases;
Thine too fruition of all fame
When the live soul, as flame with flame,
Weds the dead soul that moves it;
Then sing for aye, and aye rehearse,
This whole miraculous universe
Belongs to him who loves it!

TWO travellers, worn with sun and rain
And gropings o'er dim paths unknown,
Meet where long separate ways have grown
To one, and then diverge again.

They halt anigh the green wayside,
Where groves pant with the impassioned song
Of nightingales; wild roses throng
There round them leaning side by side.

As close and still more close they cling,
Like some weird tale--once more in dreams
Lived through with ghastlier horror--seems
That old, cold, lonely wayfairing.

Oh close sweet clasp of hands! oh sweet
Close beat of heart on happy heart;
Beating as though no more apart
Their pulses ever again should beat!

One look of love! one long embrace!
One kiss that welds two lives in one!
And lo, the sudden lifted sun
Lights their slow feet on separate ways.

Fledged by strong love, their wingèd speech
Is borne awhile from soul to soul,
Then ever-widening waters roll
And drown their voices each from each.