A Jongleur Strayed | Page 9

filled with ease--?And pointed where a wild-rose grew,?Suddenly fair in that grim place:?"We should know all, if we but knew?Whence came this flower, and whence--this face."
The loveliest face! My thoughts went around:?"Strange sister of this little rose,?So softly 'scaped from underground;?O tell me if your beauty knows,?Being itself so fair a thing,?How came this lovely thing so fair,?How came it to such blossoming,?Leaning so strangely from the air?
"The wonder of its being born,?So lone and lovely--even as you--?Half maiden-moon, half maiden-morn,?And delicately sad with dew;?How came it in this rocky place??Or shall I ask the rose if she?Knows how this marvel of your face?On this harsh planet came to be?"
Earth's bluest eyes gazed into mine,?And on her head Earth's brightest gold?Made all the rocks with glory shine--?But still the secret went untold;?For rose nor girl, no more than I,?Their own mysterious meaning knew,?Save that alike from earth and sky?Each her enchanted being drew.
Both from deep wells of wonder sprang,?Both children of the cosmic dream,?Alike with yonder bird that sang,?And little lives that flit and gleam;?Sparks from the central rose of fire?That at the heart of being burns,?That draws the lily from the mire?And trodden dust to beauty turns.
Strange wand of Beauty--that transforms?Old dross to dreams, that softly glows?On the fierce rainbowed front of storms,?And smiles on unascended snows,?That from the travail of lone seas?Wrests sighing shell and moonlit pearl,?And gathers up all sorceries?In the white being of one girl.
AS IN THE WOODLAND I WALK
As in the woodland I walk, many a strange thing I learn-- How from the dross and the drift the beautiful things return, And the fires quenched in October in April reburn;
How foulness grows fair with the stern lustration
of sleets and snows,?And rottenness changes back to the breath and the cheek
of the rose,?And how gentle the wind that seems wild to each blossom
that blows;
How the lost is ever found, and the darkness the door
of the light,?And how soft the caress of the hand that to shape
must not fear to smite,?And how the dim pearl of the moon is drawn from the gulf
of the night;
How, when the great tree falls, with its empire
of rustling leaves,?The earth with a thousand hands its sunlit ruin receives, And out of the wreck of its glory each secret artist weaves
Splendours anew and arabesques and tints on his swaying loom, Soft as the eyes of April, and black as the brows of doom, And the fires give back in blue-eyed flowers the woodland
they consume;
How when the streams run dry, the thunder calls on the hills, And the clouds spout silver showers in the laps
of the little rills,?And each spring brims with the morning star,
and each thirsty fountain fills;
And how, when the songs seemed ended, and all the music mute, There is always somewhere a secret tune, some string
of a hidden lute,?Lonely and undismayed that has faith in the flower
and the fruit.
So I learn in the woods--that all things come again,?That sorrow turns to joy, and that laughter is born of pain, That the burning gold of June is the gray of December's rain.
TO A MOUNTAIN SPRING
Strange little spring, by channels past our telling,?Gentle, resistless, welling, welling, welling;?Through what blind ways, we know not whence?You darkling come to dance and dimple--?Strange little spring!?Nature hath no such innocence,?And no more secret thing--?So mysterious and so simple;?Earth hath no such fairy daughter?Of all her witchcraft shapes of water.?When all the land with summer burns,?And brazen noon rides hot and high,?And tongues are parched and grasses dry,?Still are you green and hushed with ferns,?And cool as some old sanctuary;?Still are you brimming o'er with dew?And stars that dipped their feet in you.
And I believe when none is by,?Only the young moon in the sky--?The Greeks of old were right about you--?A naiad, like a marble flower,?Lifts up her lovely shape from out you,?Swaying like a silver shower.
So in old years dead and gone?Brimmed the spring on Helicon,?Just a little spring like you--?Ferns and moss and stars and dew--?Nigh the sacred Muses' dwelling,?Dancing, dimpling, welling, welling.
NOON
Noon like a naked sword lies on the grass,?Heavy with gold, and Time itself doth drowse;?The little stream, too indolent to pass,?Loiters below the cloudy willow boughs,?That build amid the glare a shadowy house,?And with a Paradisal freshness brims?Amid cool-rooted reeds with glossy blade;?The antic water-fly above it skims,?And cows stand shadow-like in the green shade,?Or knee-deep in the grassy glimmer wade.
The earth in golden slumber dreaming lies,?Idly abloom, and nothing sings or moves,?Nor bird, nor bee; and even the butterflies,?Languid with noon, forget their painted loves,?Nor hath the woodland any talk of doves.?Only at times a little breeze will stir,?And send a ripple o'er the sleeping stream,?Or run its fingers through the willows' hair,?And sway the rushes momently agleam--?Then all fall back again into a dream.
A RAINY DAY
The beauty of this rainy