In Divers Tones | Page 4

hour of unremembering calm!
Blowing over the roofs, and down
The bright streets of this inland
town,
These busy crowds, these rocking trees--
What strange note hast thou
caught from these?
A note of waves and rushing tides,
Where past the dikes the red flood
glides,
To brim the shining channels far
Up the green plains of Tantramar.

Once more I snuff the salt, I stand
On the long dikes of
Westmoreland;
I watch the narrowing flats, the strip
Of red clay at the water's lip;
Far off the net-reels, brown and high,
And boat-masts slim against the
sky;
Along the ridges of the dikes
Wind-beaten scant sea-grass, and spikes
Of last year's mullein; down the slopes
To landward, in the sun, thick
ropes
Of blue vetch, and convolvulus,
And matted roses glorious.
The liberal blooms o'erbrim my hands;
I walk the level, wide
marsh-lands;
Waist-deep in dusty-blossomed grass
I watch the swooping breezes
pass
In sudden, long, pale lines, that flee
Up the deep breast of this green
sea.
I listen to the bird that stirs
The purple tops, and grasshoppers
Whose summer din, before my feet
Subsiding, wakes on my retreat.
Again the droning bees hum by;
Still-winged, the gray hawk wheels
on high;
I drink again the wild perfumes,
And roll, and crush the grassy
blooms.
Blown back to olden days, I fain
Would quaff the olden joys again;
But all the olden sweetness not
The old unmindful peace hath

brought.
Wind of this summer afternoon,
Thou hast recalled my childhood's
June;
My heart--still is it satisfied
By all the golden summer-tide?
Hast thou one eager yearning filled,
Or any restless throbbing stilled,
Or hast thou any power to bear
Even a little of my care?--
Ever so little of this weight
Of weariness canst thou abate?
Ah, poor thy gift indeed, unless
Thou bring the old
child-heartedness,--
And such a gift to bring is given,
Alas, to no wind under heaven!
Wind of the summer afternoon,
Be still; my heart is not in tune.
Sweet is thy voice; but yet, but yet--
Of all 'twere sweetest to forget!
FREDERICTON, N. B.
THE PIPES OF PAN.
Ringed with the flocking of hills, within shepherding watch of
Olympus, Tempe, vale of the gods, lies in green quiet withdrawn;

Tempe, vale of the gods, deep-couched amid woodland and woodland,
Threaded with amber of brooks, mirrored in azure of pools,
All day
drowsed with the sun, charm-drunken with moonlight at midnight,
Walled from the world forever under a vapor of dreams,--
Hid by the
shadows of dreams, not found by the curious footstep, Sacred and
secret forever, Tempe, vale of the gods.
How, through the cleft of its
bosom, goes sweetly the water Penëus! How by Penëus the sward
breaks into saffron and blue!
How the long slope-floored
beech-glades mount to the wind-wakened uplands, Where, through

flame-berried ash, troop the hoofed Centaurs at morn! Nowhere greens
a copse but the eye-beams of Artemis pierce it. Breathes no laurel her
balm but Phoebus' fingers caress.
Springs no bed of wild blossom but
limbs of dryad have pressed it. Sparkle the nymphs, and the brooks
chime with shy laughter and calls.
Here is a nook. Two rivulets fall to mix with Penëus,
Loiter a space,
and sleep, checked and choked by the reeds. Long grass waves in the
windless water, strown with the lote-leaf; Twist thro' dripping soil great
alder roots, and the air
Glooms with the dripping tangle of leaf-thick
branches, and stillness Keeps in the strange-coiled stems, ferns, and
wet-loving weeds. Hither comes Pan, to this pregnant earthy spot, when
his piping Flags; and his pipes outworn breaking and casting away,

Fits new reeds to his mouth with the weird earth-melody in them,
Piercing, alive with a life able to mix with the god's.
Then, as he
blows, and the searching sequence delights him, the goat-feet Furtive
withdraw; and a bird stirs and flutes in the gloom
Answering. Float
with the stream the outworn pipes, with a whisper,-- "What the god
breathes on, the god never can wholly evade!" God-breath lurks in each
fragment forever. Dispersed by Penëus Wandering, caught in the
ripples, wind-blown hither and there, Over the whole green earth and
globe of sea they are scattered, Coming to secret spots, where in a
visible form
Comes not the god; though he come declared in his
workings. And mortals Straying in cool of morn, or bodeful hasting at
eve,
Or in the depths of noonday plunged to shadiest coverts,
Spy
them, and set to their lips; blow, and fling them away!
Ay, they fling them away,--but never wholly! Thereafter
Creeps
strange fire in their veins, murmur strange tongues in their brain,
Sweetly evasive; a secret madness takes them,--a charm-struck Passion
for woods and wild life, the solitude of the hills. Therefore they fly the
heedless throngs and traffic of cities, Haunt mossed caverns, and wells
bubbling ice-cool; and their souls Gather a magical gleam of the secret
of life, and the god's voice Calls to them, not from afar, teaching them
wonderful things.

BEFORE THE