Among the Millet and Other Poems | Page 9

lace.?In the autumn's cheek is a hectic trace;?Behind her the ghost of the winter stands;?Sweet summer will moan in her soft gray place:?Mantle her head with your glowing hands.
_Envoi._
Till the slayer be slain and the spring displace?The might of his arms with her rose-crowned bands,?Let her heart not gather a dream that is base:?Shadow her head with your golden hands.
WINTER.
The long days came and went; the riotous bees?Tore the warm grapes in many a dusty-vine,?And men grew faint and thin with too much ease,
And Winter gave no sign:?But all the while beyond the northmost woods?He sat and smiled and watched his spirits play?In elfish dance and eery roundelay,
Tripping in many moods?With snowy curve and fairy crystal shine.
But now the time is come: with southward speed?The elfin spirits pass: a secret sting?Hath fallen and smitten flower and fruit and weed,
And every leafy thing.?The wet woods moan: the dead leaves break and fall;?In still night-watches wakeful men have heard?The muffled pipe of many a passing bird,
High over hut and hall,?Straining to southward with unresting wing.
And then they come with colder feet, and fret?The winds with snow, and tuck the streams to sleep?With icy sheet and gleaming coverlet,
And fill the valleys deep?With curvèd drifts, and a strange music raves?Among the pines, sometimes in wails, and then?In whistled laughter, till affrighted men
Draw close, and into caves?And earthy holes the blind beasts curl and creep.
And so all day above the toiling heads?Of men's poor chimneys, full of impish freaks,?Tearing and twisting in tight-curlèd shreds
The vain unnumbered reeks,?The Winter speeds his fairies forth and mocks?Poor bitten men with laughter icy cold,?Turning the brown of youth to white and old
With hoary-woven locks,?And grey men young with roses in their cheeks.
And after thaws, when liberal water swells?The bursting eaves, he biddeth drip and grow?The curly horns of ribbèd icicles
In many a beard-like row.?In secret moods of mercy and soft dole,?Old warpèd wrecks and things of mouldering death?That summer scorns and man abandoneth
His careful hands console?With lawny robes and draperies of snow.
And when night comes, his spirits with chill feet,?Winged with white mirth and noiseless mockery,?Across men's pallid windows peer and fleet,
And smiling silverly?Draw with mute fingers on the frosted glass?Quaint fairy shapes of icèd witcheries,?Pale flowers and glinting ferns and frigid trees
And meads of mystic grass,?Graven in many an austere phantasy.
But far away the Winter dreams alone,?Rustling among his snow-drifts, and resigns?Cold fondling ears to hear the cedars moan
In dusky-skirted lines?Strange answers of an ancient runic call;?Or somewhere watches with his antique eyes,?Gray-chill with frosty-lidded reveries,
The silvery moonshine fall?In misty wedges through his girth of pines.
Poor mortals haste and hide away: creep soon?Into your icy beds: the embers die;?And on your frosted panes the pallid moon
Is glimmering brokenly.?Mutter faint prayers that spring will come e'erwhile,?Scarring with thaws and dripping days and nights?The shining majesty of him that smites
And slays you with a smile?Upon his silvery lips, of glinting mockery.
WINTER HUES RECALLED.
Life is not all for effort: there are hours,?When fancy breaks from the exacting will,?And rebel thought takes schoolboy's holiday,?Rejoicing in its idle strength. 'Tis then,?And only at such moments, that we know?The treasure of hours gone--scenes once beheld,?Sweet voices and words bright and beautiful,?Impetuous deeds that woke the God within us,?The loveliness of forms and thoughts and colors,?A moment marked and then as soon forgotten.?These things are ever near us, laid away,?Hidden and waiting the appropriate times,?In the quiet garner-house of memory.?There in the silent unaccounted depth,?Beneath the heated strainage and the rush?That teem the noisy surface of the hours,?All things that ever touched us are stored up,?Growing more mellow like sealed wine with age;?We thought them dead, and they are but asleep.?In moments when the heart is most at rest?And least expectant, from the luminous doors,?And sacred dwelling place of things unfeared,?They issue forth, and we who never knew?Till then how potent and how real they were,?Take them, and wonder, and so bless the hour.
Such gifts are sweetest when unsought. To me,?As I was loitering lately in my dreams,?Passing from one remembrance to another,?Like him who reads upon an outstretched map,?Content and idly happy, these rose up,?Out of that magic well-stored picture house,?No dream, rather a thing most keenly real,?The memory of a moment, when with feet,?Arrested and spell bound, and captured eyes,?Made wide with joy and wonder, I beheld?The spaces of a white and wintery land?Swept with the fire of sunset, all its width?Vale, forest, town, and misty eminence,?A miracle of color and of beauty.
I had walked out, as I remember now,?With covered ears, for the bright air was keen,?To southward up the gleaming snow-packed fields,?With the snowshoer's long rejoicing stride,?Marching at ease. It was a radiant day?In February, the month of the great struggle?'Twixt sun and frost, when with advancing spears,?The glittering golden vanguard of the spring?Holds the broad winter's yet unbroken rear?In long-closed