In Divers Tones | Page 9

thou not in it,?That I should hold it worth?Much toil to win it?
What were success?Didst thou not share it??As Spring can spare the snows?I well could spare it!
Love, what were love?But of thy giving?That it should much prevail?To sweeten living?
Nay, what were life,?Save thou inspire it,?That I should bid my soul?Greatly desire it?
ON THE CREEK.
Dear Heart, the noisy strife?And bitter carpings cease.?Here is the lap of life,?Here are the lips of peace.
Afar from stir of streets,?The city's dust and din,?What healing silence meets?And greets us gliding in!
Our light birch silent floats;?Soundless the paddle dips.?Yon sunbeam thick with motes?Athro' the leafage slips,
To light the iris wings?Of dragon-flies alit?On lily-leaves, and things?Of gauze that float and flit.
Above the water's brink?Hush'd winds make summer riot;?Our thirsty spirits drink?Deep, deep, the summer quiet.
We slip the world's gray husk,?Emerge, and spread new plumes;?In sunbeam-fretted dusk,?Thro' populous golden glooms,
Like thistledown we slide,?Two disembodied dreams,--?With spirits alert, wide-eyed,?Explore the perfume-streams.
For scents of various grass?Stream down the veering breeze;?Warm puffs of honey pass?From flowering linden-trees;
And fragrant gusts of gum,?From clammy balm-tree buds,?With fern-brake odors, come?From intricate solitudes.
The elm-tops are astir?With flirt of idle wings.?Hark to the grackles' chirr?Whene'er an elm-bough swings!
From off yon ash-limb sere?Out-thrust amid green branches,?Keen like an azure spear?A kingfisher down launches.
Far up the creek his calls?And lessening laugh retreat;?Again the silence falls,?And soft the green hours fleet.
They fleet with drowsy hum?Of insects on the wing;--?We sigh--the end must come!?We taste our pleasure's sting.
No more, then, need we try?The rapture to regain.?We feel our day slip by,?And cling to it in vain.
But, Dear, keep thou in mind?These moments swift and sweet!?Their memory thou shall find?Illume the common street;
And thro' the dust and din,?Smiling, thy heart shall hear?Quiet waters lapsing thin,?And locusts shrilling clear.
LOTOS.
Wherefore awake so long,?Wide-eyed, laden with care??Not all battle is life,?But a little respite and peace?May fold us round as a fleece?Soft-woven for all men's wear.?Sleep, then, mindless of strife;?Slumber, dreamless of wrong;--?Hearken my slumber-song,
Falling asleep.
Drowsily all noon long?The warm winds rustle the grass?Hush'dly, lulling thy brain,--?Burthened with murmur of bees?And numberless whispers, and ease.?Dream-clouds gather and pass?Of painless remembrance of pain.?Havened from rumor of wrong,?Dreams are thy slumber-song,
Fallen asleep.
THE SOWER.
A brown sad-colored hillside, where the soil,?Fresh from the frequent harrow, deep and fine,?Lies bare; no break in the remote sky-line,?Save where a flock of pigeons streams aloft,?Startled from feed in some low-lying croft,?Or far-off spires with yellow of sunset shine;?And here the Sower, unwittingly divine,?Exerts the silent forethought of his toil.
Alone he treads the glebe, his measured stride?Dumb in the yielding soil; and tho' small joy?Dwell in his heavy face, as spreads the blind?Pale grain from his dispensing palm aside,?This plodding churl grows great in his employ;--?Godlike, he makes provision for mankind.
THE POTATO HARVEST.
A high bare field, brown from the plough, and borne?Aslant from sunset; amber wastes of sky?Washing the ridge, a clamor of crows that fly?In from the wide flats where the spent tides mourn?To yon their rocking roosts in pines wind-torn;?A line of gray snake-fence, that zigzags by?A pond, and cattle, from the homestead nigh?The long deep summonings of the supper horn.
Black, on the ridge, against that lonely flush,?A cart, and stoop-necked oxen; ranged beside,?Some barrels, and the day-worn harvest folk,?Here emptying their baskets, jar the hush?With hollow thunders; down the dusk hillside?Lumbers the wain; and day fades out like smoke.
AFLOAT.
Afloat!--?Ah Love, on the mirror of waters?All the world seems with us afloat,--?All the wide, bright world of the night;?But the mad world of men is remote,?And the prating of tongues is afar.?We have fled from the crowd in our flight,?And beyond the gray rim of the waters?All the turmoil has sunk from our sight.?Turn your head, Love, a little, and note?Low down in the south a pale star.?The mists of the horizon-line drench it,?The beams of the moon all but quench it,?Yet it shines thro' this flood-tide of light.?Love, under that star is the world?Of the day, of our life, and our sorrow,?Where defamers and envious are.?Here, here is our peace, our delight,--?To our closest love-converse no bar.?Yet, as even in the moonbeam's despite?Still is seen the pale beam of the star,?So the light of our rapture this hour?Cannot quench the remembrance of morrow.?Though the wings of all winds are upfurled?And a limitless silence hath power,?Still the envious strife we forget not;?For the future is skilful to mar,?And the past we have banished not quite.
But this hour--Ah Love, if it might?With this splendor, this shining moon, set not!?If only forever as now?In this silence of silver adrift,?In this reeling, slow, luminous sphere,?This hollow great round of the night,?We might drift with the tide-flow, and lift?With the infinite pulse of the waters,?See each but the other, and hear?Our own language alone, I and thou,?I here at the stern, at the prow?The one woman, God's costliest gift!?So only to see you,