Among the Millet and Other Poems | Page 9

her,
To the holy forest bowers,
Where the trees were dense
and serried,
And her corpse we buried, buried,
In the graveyard of
the flowers.
Now the leaves, as death grows vaster,
Yellowing deeper, dropping
faster,
All the grave wherein she lies
With their bodies cover, cover,

With their hearts that love her, love her,
For they live not when she
dies:
And we left her so, but stay not
Of our tears, and yet we may not,

Though they coldly thickly fall,
Give the dead leaves any, any,
For
they lie so many, many,
That we cannot weep for all.
BALLADE OF SUMMER'S SLEEP.
Sweet summer is gone; they have laid her away--
The last sad hours
that were touched with her grace-- In the hush where the ghosts of the
dead flowers play;
The sleep that is sweet of her slumbering space

Let not a sight or a sound erase
Of the woe that hath fallen on all the
lands:
Gather ye, dreams, to her sunny face,
Shadow her head with
your golden hands.
The woods that are golden and red for a day
Girdle the hills in a
jewelled case,
Like a girl's strange mirth, ere the quick death slay

The beautiful life that he hath in chase.
Darker and darker the
shadows pace
Out of the north to the southern sands,
Ushers
bearing the winter's mace:
Keep them away with your woven hands.
The yellow light lies on the wide wastes gray,
More bitter and cold
than the winds that race,
From the skirts of the autumn, tearing away,

This way and that way, the woodland 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