FOREWORD

 
In the first rare spring of song,
In my heart's young hours,
In my youth 't was thus I sang,
Choosing 'mid the flowers: —
 
 
"Fair the Dandelion is,
But for me too lowly;
And the winsome Violet
Is, forsooth, too holy.
'But the Touchmenot?' Go to!
What! a face that's speckled
Like a common milking-maid's,
Whom the sun hath freckled.
Then the Wild-Rose is a flirt;
And the trillium Lily,
In her spotless gown, 's a prude,
Sanctified and silly.
By her cap the Columbine,
To my mind, 's too merry;
Gossips, I would sooner wed
Some plebeian Berry.
And the shy Anemone —
Well, her face shows sorrow;
Pale, goodsooth! alive to-day,
Dead and gone to-morrow.
Then that bold-eyed, buxom wench,
Big and blond and lazy, —
She's been chosen overmuch! —
Sirs, I mean the Daisy.
Pleasant persons are they all,
And their virtues many;
Faith I know but good of each,
And naught ill of any.
But I choose a May-apple;
She shall be my Lady;
Blooming, hidden and refined,
Sweet in places shady."
 
 
In my youth 'twas thus I sang,
In my heart's young hours,
In the first rare spring of song,
Choosing 'mid the flowers.
So I hesitated when
Time alone was reckoned
By the hours that Fancy smiled,
Love and Beauty beckoned.
Hard it was for me to choose
From the flowers that flattered;
And the blossom that I chose
Soon lay dead and scattered.
Hard I found it then, ah, me!
Hard I found the choosing;
Harder, harder since I've found,
Ah, too hard the losing.
Haply had I chosen then
From the weeds that tangle
Wayside, woodland and the wall
Of my garden's angle,
I had chosen better, yea,
For these later hours —
Longer last the weeds, and oft
Sweeter are than flowers.
 

A WILD IRIS

 
That day we wandered 'mid the hills, – so lone
Clouds are not lonelier, – the forest lay
In emerald darkness 'round us. Many a stone
And gnarly root, gray-mossed, made wild our way;
And many a bird the glimmering light along
Showered the golden bubbles of its song.
 
 
Then in the valley, where the brook went by,
Silvering the ledges that it rippled from, —
An isolated slip of fallen sky,
Epitomizing heaven in its sum, —
An iris bloomed – blue, as if, flower-disguised,
The gaze of Spring had there materialized.
 
 
I have forgotten many things since then —
Much beauty and much happiness and grief;
And toiled and dreamed among my fellow-men,
Rejoicing in the knowledge life is brief.
"'T is winter now," so says each barren bough;
And face and hair proclaim 't is winter now.
 
 
I would forget the gladness of that spring!
I would forget that day when she and I,
Between the bird-song and the blossoming,
Went hand in hand beneath the soft spring sky! —
Much is forgotten, yea – and yet, and yet,
The things we would we never can forget. —
 
 
Nor I how May then minted treasuries
Of crowfoot gold; and molded out of light
The sorrel's cups, whose elfin chalices
Of limpid spar were streaked with rosy white.
Nor all the stars of twinkling spiderwort,
And mandrake moons with which her brows were girt.
 
 
But most of all, yea, it were well for me,
Me and my heart, that I forget that flower,
The wild blue iris, azure fleur-de-lis,
That she and I together found that hour.
Its recollection can but emphasize
The pain of loss, remindful of her eyes.
 

THE PATH BY THE CREEK

 
There is a path that leads
Through purple iron-weeds,
By button-bush and mallow
Along a creek;
A path that wildflowers hallow,
That wild birds seek;
Roofed thick with eglantine
And grape and trumpet-vine.
 
 
This side, blackberries sweet
Glow cobalt in the heat;
That side, a creamy yellow,
In summertime
The pawpaws slowly mellow;
And autumn's prime
Strews red the Chickasaw,
Persimmon brown and haw.
 
 
The glittering dragon-fly,
A wingéd flash, goes by;
And tawny wasp and hornet
Seem gleams that drone;
The beetle, like a garnet,
Slips from the stone;
And butterflies float there,
Spangling with gold the air.
 
 
Here the brown thrashers hide,
The chat and cat-bird chide;
The blue kingfisher houses
Above the stream,
And here the heron drowses
Lost in his dream;
The vireo's flitting note
Haunts all the wild remote.
 
 
And now a cow's slow bell
Tinkles along the dell;
Where breeze-dropped petals winnow
From blossomy limbs
On waters, where the minnow,
Faint-twinkling, swims;
Where, in the root-arched shade,
Slim prisms of light are laid.
 
 
When in the tangled thorn
The new-moon hangs a horn,
Or, 'mid the sunset's islands,
Guides a canoe,
The brown owl in the silence
Calls, and the dew
Beads here its orbs of damp,
Each one a firefly lamp.
 
 
Then when the night is still
Here sings the whippoorwill;
And stealthy sounds of crickets,
And winds that pass,
Whispering, through bramble thickets
Along the grass,
Faint with far scents of hay,
Seem feet of dreams astray.
 
 
And where the water shines
Dark through tree-twisted vines,
Some water-spirit, dreaming,
Braids in her hair
A star's reflection; seeming
A jewel there;
While all the sweet night long
Ripples her quiet song…
 
 
Would I could imitate,
O path, thy happy state!
Making my life all beauty,
All bloom and beam;
Knowing no other duty
Than just to dream,
And far from pain and woe
Lead feet that come and go.
 
 
Leading to calm content,
O'er ways the Master went,
Through lowly things and humble,
To peace and love;
Teaching the lives that stumble
To look above,
Forget the world of toil
And all its sad turmoil.
 

THE ROAD HOME

 
Over the hills, as the pewee flies,
Under the blue of the Southern skies;
Over the hills, where the red-bird wings
Like a scarlet blossom, or sits and sings:
 
 
Under the shadow of rock and tree,
Where the warm wind drones with the honey-bee;
And the tall wild-carrots around you sway
Their lace-like flowers of cloudy gray:
 
 
By the black-cohosh with its pearly plume
A nod in the woodland's odorous gloom;
By the old rail-fence, in the elder's shade,
That the myriad hosts of the weeds invade:
 
 
Where the butterfly-weed, like a coal of fire,
Blurs orange-red through bush and brier;
Where the pennyroyal and mint smell sweet,
And blackberries tangle the summer heat,
 
 
The old road leads; then crosses the creek,
Where the minnow dartles, a silvery streak;
Where the cows wade deep through the blue-eyed grass,
And the flickering dragonflies gleaming pass.
 
 
That road is easy, however long,
Which wends with beauty as toil with song;
And the road we follow shall lead us straight
Past creek and wood to a farmhouse gate.
 
 
Past hill and hollow, whence scents are blown
Of dew-wet clover that scythes have mown;
To a house that stands with porches wide
And gray low roof on the green hill-side.
 
 
Colonial, stately; 'mid shade and shine
Of the locust-tree and the Southern pine;
With its orchard acres and meadowlands
Stretched out before it like welcoming hands.
 
 
And gardens, where, in the myrrh-sweet June,
Magnolias blossom with many a moon
Of fragrance; and, in the feldspar light
Of August, roses bloom red and white.
 
 
In a woodbine arbor, a perfumed place,
A slim girl sits with a happy face;
Her bonnet by her, a sunbeam lies
On her lovely hair, in her earnest eyes.
 
 
Her eyes, as blue as the distant deeps
Of the heavens above where the high hawk sleeps;
A book beside her, wherein she read
Till she saw him coming, she heard his tread.
 
 
Come home at last; come back from the war;
In his eyes a smile, on his brow a scar;
To the South come back – who wakes from her dream
To the love and peace of a new regime.
 

A TWILIGHT MOTH

 
Dusk is thy dawn; when Eve puts on her state
Of gold and purple in the marbled west,
Thou comest forth like some embodied trait,
Or dim conceit, a lily-bud confessed;
Or, of a rose, the visible wish; that, white,
Goes softly messengering through the night,
Whom each expectant flower makes its guest.
 
 
All day the primroses have thought of thee,
Their golden heads close-haremed from the heat;
All day the mystic moonflowers silkenly
Veiled snowy faces, – that no bee might greet
Or butterfly that, weighed with pollen, passed; —
Keeping Sultana charms for thee, at last,
Their lord, who comest to salute each sweet.
 
 
Cool-throated flowers that avoid the day's
Too fervid kisses; every bud that drinks
The tipsy dew and to the starlight plays
Nocturnes of fragrance, thy winged shadow links
In bonds of secret brotherhood and faith;
O bearer of their order's shibboleth,
Like some pale symbol fluttering o'er these pinks.
 
 
What dost thou whisper in the balsam's ear
That sets it blushing, or the hollyhock's, —
A syllabled silence that no man may hear, —
As dreamily upon its stem it rocks?
What spell dost bear from listening plant to plant,
Like some white witch, some ghostly ministrant,
Some spectre of some perished flower of phlox?
 
 
O voyager of that universe which lies
Between the four walls of this garden fair, —
Whose constellations are the fireflies
That wheel their instant courses everywhere, —
'Mid fairy firmaments wherein one sees
Mimic Boötes and the Pleiades,
Thou steerest like some fairy ship-of-air.
 
 
Gnome-wrought of moonbeam fluff and gossamer,
Silent as scent, perhaps thou chariotest
Mab or king Oberon; or, haply, her
His queen, Titania, on some midnight quest. —
O for the herb, the magic euphrasy,
That should unmask thee to mine eyes, ah, me!
And all that world at which my soul hath guessed!
 

ALONG THE STREAM

 
Where the violet shadows brood
Under cottonwoods and beeches,
Through whose leaves the restless reaches
Of the river glance, I've stood,
While the red-bird and the thrush
Set to song the morning hush.
 
 
There, – when woodland hills encroach
On the shadowy winding waters,
And the bluets, April's daughters,
At the darling Spring's approach,
Star their myriads through the trees, —
All the land is one with peace.
 
 
Under some imposing cliff,
That, with bush and tree and boulder,
Thrusts a gray, gigantic shoulder
O'er the stream, I've oared a skiff,
While great clouds of berg-white hue
Lounged along the noonday blue.
 
 
There, – when harvest heights impend
Over shores of rippling summer,
And to greet the fair new-comer, —
June, – the wildrose thickets bend
In a million blossoms dressed, —
All the land is one with rest.
 
 
On some rock, where gaunt the oak
Reddens and the sombre cedar
Darkens, like a sachem leader,
I have lain and watched the smoke
Of the steamboat, far away,
Trailed athwart the dying day.
 
 
There, – when margin waves reflect
Autumn colors, gay and sober,
And the Indian-girl, October,
Wampum-like in berries decked,
Sits beside the leaf-strewn streams, —
All the land is one with dreams.
 
 
Through the bottoms where, – out-tossed
By the wind's wild hands, – ashiver
Lean the willows o'er the river,
I have walked in sleet and frost,
While beneath the cold round moon,
Frozen, gleamed the long lagoon.
 
 
There, – when leafless woods uplift
Spectral arms the storm-blasts splinter,
And the hoary trapper, Winter,
Builds his camp of ice and drift,
With his snow-pelts furred and shod, —
All the land is one with God.
 

THE CRICKET

I

 
First of the insect choir, in the spring
We hear his faint voice fluttering in the grass,
Beneath some blossom's rosy covering
Or frond of fern upon a wildwood pass.
When in the marsh, in clamorous orchestras,
The shrill hylodes pipe; when, in the haw's
Bee-swarming blooms, or tasseling sassafras,
Sweet threads of silvery song the sparrow draws,
Bow-like, athwart the vibrant atmosphere, —
Like some dim dream low-breathed in slumber's ear, —
We hear his "Cheer, cheer, cheer."
 

II

 
All summer through the mellowing meadows thrill
To his blithe music. Be it day or night,
Close gossip of the grass, on field and hill
He serenades the silence with delight:
Silence, that hears the melon slowly split
With ripeness; and the plump peach, hornet-bit,
Loosen and fall; and everywhere the white,
Warm, silk-like stir of leafy lights that flit
As breezes blow; above which, loudly clear, —
Like joy who sings of life and has no fear, —
We hear his "Cheer, cheer, cheer."
 

III

 
Then in the autumn, by the waterside,
Leaf-huddled; or along the weed-grown walks,
He dirges low the flowers that have died,
Or with their ghosts holds solitary talks.
Lover of warmth, all day above the click
And crunching of the sorghum-press, through thick
Sweet steam of juice; all night when, white as chalk,
The hunter's-moon hangs o'er the rustling rick,
Within the barn 'mid munching cow and steer, —
Soft as a memory the heart holds dear, —
We hear his "Cheer, cheer, cheer."
 

IV

 
Kinsman and cousin of the Faëry Race,
All winter long he sets his sober mirth, —
That brings good-luck to many a fire-place, —
To folk-lore song and story of the hearth.
Between the back-log's bluster and the slim
High twittering of the kettle, – sounds that hymn
Home-comforts, – when, outside, the starless Earth
Is icicled in every laden limb, —
Defying frost and all the sad and sear, —
Like love that dies not and is always near, —
We hear his "Cheer, cheer, cheer."
 

VOICES

 
When blood-root blooms and trillium flowers
Unclasp their stars to sun and rain,
My heart strikes hands with winds and showers
And wanders in the woods again.
 
 
O urging impulse, born of spring,
That makes glad April of my soul,
No bird, however wild of wing,
Is more impatient of control.
 
 
Impetuous of pulse it beats
Within my blood and bears me hence;
Above the housetops and the streets
I hear its happy eloquence.
 
 
It tells me all that I would know,
Of birds and buds, of blooms and bees;
I seem to hear the blossoms blow,
And leaves unfolding on the trees.
 
 
I seem to hear the blue-bells ring
Faint purple peals of fragrance; and
The honey-throated poppies fling
Their golden laughter o'er the land.
 
 
It calls to me; it sings to me;
I hear its far voice night and day;
I can not choose but go when tree
And flower clamor, "Come, away!"
 

THE GRASSHOPPER

 
What joy you take in making hotness hotter,
In emphasizing dullness with your buzz,
Making monotony more monotonous!
When Summer comes, and drouth hath dried the water
In all the creeks, we hear your ragged rasp
Filing the stillness. Or, – as urchins beat
A stagnant pond whereon the bubbles gasp, —
Your switch-like music whips the midday heat.
O bur of sound caught in the Summer's hair,
We hear you everywhere!
 
 
We hear you in the vines and berry-brambles,
Along the unkempt lanes, among the weeds,
Amid the shadeless meadows, gray with seeds,
And by the wood 'round which the rail-fence rambles,
Sawing the sunlight with your sultry saw.
Or, – like to tomboy truants, at their play
With noisy mirth among the barn's deep straw, —
You sing away the careless summer-day.
O brier-like voice that clings in idleness
To Summer's drowsy dress!
 
 
You tramp of insects, vagrant and unheeding,
Improvident, who of the summer make
One long green mealtime, and for winter take
No care, aye singing or just merely feeding!
Happy-go-lucky vagabond, – 'though frost
Shall pierce, ere long, your green coat or your brown,
And pinch your body, – let no song be lost,
But as you lived into your grave go down —
Like some small poet with his little rhyme,
Forgotten of all time.
 

THE TREE TOAD

I

 
Secluded, solitary on some underbough,
Or cradled in a leaf, 'mid glimmering light,
Like Puck thou crouchest: Haply watching how
The slow toad-stool comes bulging, moony white,
Through loosening loam; or how, against the night,
The glow-worm gathers silver to endow
The darkness with; or how the dew conspires
To hang at dusk with lamps of chilly fires
Each blade that shrivels now.
 

II

 
O vague confederate of the whippoorwill,
Of owl and cricket and the katydid!
Thou gatherest up the silence in one shrill
Vibrating note and send'st it where, half hid
In cedars, twilight sleeps – each azure lid
Drooping a line of golden eyeball still. —
Afar, yet near, I hear thy dewy voice
Within the Garden of the Hours apoise
On dusk's deep daffodil.
 

III

 
Minstrel of moisture! silent when high noon
Shows her tanned face among the thirsting clover
And parching meadows, thy tenebrious tune
Wakes with the dew or when the rain is over.
Thou troubadour of wetness and damp lover
Of all cool things! admitted comrade boon
Of twilight's hush, and little intimate
Of eve's first fluttering star and delicate
Round rim of rainy moon!
 

IV

 
Art trumpeter of Dwarfland? does thy horn
Inform the gnomes and goblins of the hour
When they may gambol under haw and thorn,
Straddling each winking web and twinkling flower?
Or bell-ringer of Elfland? whose tall tower
The liriodendron is? from whence is borne
The elfin music of thy bell's deep bass,
To summon fairies to their starlit maze,
To summon them or warn.
 

THE SCREECH-OWL

 
When, one by one, the stars have trembled through
Eve's shadowy hues of violet, rose, and fire —
As on a pansy-bloom the limpid dew
Orbs its bright beads; – and, one by one, the choir
Of insects wakes on nodding bush and brier:
Then through the woods – where wandering winds pursue
A ceaseless whisper – like an eery lyre
Struck in the Erl-king's halls, where ghosts and dreams
Hold revelry, your goblin music screams,
Shivering and strange as some strange thought come true.
 
 
Brown as the agaric that frills dead trees,
Or those fantastic fungi of the woods
That crowd the dampness – are you kin to these
In some mysterious way that still eludes
My fancy? you, who haunt the solitudes
With witch-like wailings? voice, that seems to freeze
Out of the darkness, – like the scent which broods,
Rank and rain-sodden, over autumn nooks, —
That, to the mind, might well suggest such looks,
Ghastly and gray, as pale clairvoyance sees.
 
 
You people night with weirdness: lone and drear,
Beneath the stars, you cry your wizard runes;
And in the haggard silence, filled with fear,
Your shuddering hoot seems some bleak grief that croons
Mockery and terror; or, – beneath the moon's
Cloud-hurrying glimmer, – to the startled ear,
Crazed, madman snatches of old, perished tunes,
The witless wit of outcast Edgar there
In the wild night; or, wan with all despair,
The mirthless laughter of the Fool in Lear.