Among the Millet and Other Poems | Page 6

ever as ye piped, on every tree
The great buds swelled; among the pensive woods
The spirits of first

flowers awoke and flung
From buried faces the close fitting hoods,

And listened to your piping till they fell,
The frail spring-beauty with
her perfumed bell,
The wind-flower, and the spotted adder-tongue.
III.
All the day long, wherever pools might be
Among the golden
meadows, where the air
Stood in a dream, as it were moorèd there

Forever in a noon-tide reverie,
Or where the birds made riot of their
glee
In the still woods, and the hot sun shone down,
Crossed with
warm lucent shadows on the brown
Leaf-paven pools, that bubbled
dreamily,
Or far away in whispering river meads
And watery marshes where
the brooding noon,
Full with the wonder of its own sweet boon,

Nestled and slept among the noiseless reeds,
Ye sat and murmured,
motionless as they,
With eyes that dreamed beyond the night and day.
IV.
And when, day passed and over heaven's height,
Thin with the many
stars and cool with dew,
The fingers of the deep hours slowly drew

The wonder of the ever-healing night,
No grief or loneliness or wrapt
delight
Or weight of silence ever brought to you
Slumber or rest;
only your voices grew
More high and solemn; slowly with hushed
flight
Ye saw the echoing hours go by, long-drawn,
Nor ever stirred,
watching with fathomless eyes,
And with your countless clear
antiphonies
Filling the earth and heaven, even till dawn,
Last-risen,
found you with its first pale gleam,
Still with soft throats unaltered in
your dream.
V.

And slowly as we heard you, day by day,
The stillness of enchanted
reveries
Bound brain and spirit and half-closèd eyes,
In some divine
sweet wonder-dream astray;
To us no sorrow or upreared dismay

Nor any discord came, but evermore
The voices of mankind, the
outer roar,
Grew strange and murmurous, faint and far away.
Morning and noon and midnight exquisitely,
Wrapt with your voices,
this alone we knew,
Cities might change and fall, and men might die,

Secure were we, content to dream with you,
That change and pain
are shadows faint and fleet,
And dreams are real, and life is only
sweet.
AN IMPRESSION.
I heard the city time-bells call
Far off in hollow towers,
And one by
one with measured fall
Count out the old dead hours;
I felt the march, the silent press
Of time, and held my breath;
I saw
the haggard dreadfulness
Of dim old age and death.
SPRING ON THE RIVER.
O sun, shine hot on the river;
For the ice is turning an ashen hue,

And the still bright water is looking through,
And the myriad streams
are greeting you
With a ballad of life to the giver,
From forest and
field and sunny town,
Meeting and running and tripping down,

With laughter and song to the river.
Oh! the din on the boats by the river;
The barges are ringing while
day avails,
With sound of hewing and hammering nails,
Planing
and painting and swinging pails,
All day in their shrill endeavour;

For the waters brim over their wintry cup,
And the grinding ice is
breaking up,
And we must away down the river.
Oh! the hum and the toil of the river;
The ridge of the rapid sprays

and skips:
Loud and low by the water's lips,
Tearing the wet pines
into strips,
The saw mill is moaning ever.
The little grey sparrow
skips and calls
On the rocks in the rain of the water falls,
And the
logs are adrift in the river.
Oh! restlessly whirls the river;
The rivulets run and the cataract
drones:
The spiders are flitting over the stones:
Summer winds float
and the cedar moans;
And the eddies gleam and quiver.
O sun,
shine hot, shine long and abide
In the glory and power of thy summer
tide
On the swift longing face of the river.
WHY DO YE CALL THE POET LONELY.
Why do ye call the poet lonely,
Because he dreams in lonely places?

He is not desolate, but only
Sees, where ye cannot, hidden faces.
HEAT.
From plains that reel to southward, dim,
The road runs by me white
and bare;
Up the steep hill it seems to swim
Beyond, and melt into
the glare.
Upward half way, or it may be
Nearer the summit, slowly
steals
A hay-cart, moving dustily
With idly clacking wheels.
By his cart's side the wagoner
Is slouching slowly at his ease,

Half-hidden in the windless blur
Of white dust puffing to his knees.

This wagon on the height above,
From sky to sky on either hand,

Is the sole thing that seems to move
In all the heat-held land.
Beyond me in the fields the sun
Soaks in the grass and hath his will;

I count the marguerites one by one;
Even the buttercups are still.

On the brook yonder not a breath
Disturbs the spider or the midge.

The water-bugs draw close beneath
The cool gloom of the bridge.
Where the far elm-tree shadows flood
Dark patches in the burning
grass,
The cows, each with her peaceful cud,

Lie waiting for the

heat to pass.
From somewhere on the slope near by
Into the pale
depth of the noon
A wandering thrush slides leisurely
His thin
revolving tune.
In intervals of dreams I hear
The cricket from the droughty ground;

The grass-hoppers spin into mine ear
A small innumerable sound.
I
lift