Lyrics of Earth | Page 4

weary that cried for
rest.
I strayed through the midst of the city
Like one distracted or mad.

"Oh, Life! Oh, Life!" I kept saying,
And the very word seemed sad.
I passed through the gates of the city,
And I heard the small birds sing,

I laid me down in the meadows
Afar from the bell-ringing.
In the depth and the bloom of the meadows
I lay on the earth's quiet
breast,
The poplar fanned me with shadows,
And the veery sang me
to rest.
Blue, blue was the heaven above me,
And the earth green at my feet;

"Oh, Life! Oh, Life!" I kept saying,
And the very word seemed
sweet.
WITH THE NIGHT
O doubts, dull passions, and base fears,
That harassed and oppressed
the day,
Ye poor remorses and vain tears,
That shook this house of
clay:
All heaven to the western bars
Is glittering with the darker dawn;

Here with the earth, the night, the stars,
Ye have no place: begone!
JUNE
Long, long ago, it seems, this summer morn
That pale-browed April passed with pensive tread
Through the frore
woods, and from its frost-bound bed Woke the arbutus with her silver
horn;
And now May, too, is fled,
The flower-crowned month, the merry

laughing May,
With rosy feet and fingers dewy wet,
Leaving the woods and all cool
gardens gay
With tulips and the scented violet.
Gone are the wind-flower and the adder-tongue
And the sad drooping bellwort, and no more
The snowy trilliums
crowd the forest's floor;
The purpling grasses are no longer young,
And summer's wide-set door
O'er the thronged hills and the broad
panting earth
Lets in the torrent of the later bloom,
Haytime, and harvest, and the
after mirth,
The slow soft rain, the rushing thunder plume.
All day in garden alleys moist and dim,
The humid air is burdened with the rose;
In moss-deep woods the
creamy orchid blows;
And now the vesper-sparrows' pealing hymn
From every orchard close
At eve comes flooding rich and silvery;
The daisies in great meadows swing and shine;
And with the wind a
sound as of the sea
Roars in the maples and the topmost pine.
High in the hills the solitary thrush
Tunes magically his music of fine dreams,
In briary dells, by
boulder-broken streams;
And wide and far on nebulous fields aflush

The mellow morning gleams.
The orange cone-flowers purple-bossed
are there,
The meadow's bold-eyed gypsies deep of hue,
And slender
hawkweed tall and softly fair,
And rosy tops of fleabane veiled with dew.
So with thronged voices and unhasting flight
The fervid hours with long return go by;
The far-heard hylas piping
shrill and high
Tell the slow moments of the solemn night
With unremitting cry;
Lustrous and large out of the gathering drouth
The planets gleam; the baleful Scorpion
Trails his dim fires along the
droused south;
The silent world-incrusted round moves on.
And all the dim night long the moon's white beams
Nestle deep down in every brooding tree,
And sleeping birds, touched
with a silly glee,
Waken at midnight from their blissful dreams,
And carol brokenly.
Dim surging motions and uneasy dreads
Scare the light slumber from men's busy eyes,
And parted lovers on
their restless beds
Toss and yearn out, and cannot sleep for sighs.
Oft have I striven, sweet month, to figure thee,
As dreamers of old time were wont to feign,
In living form of flesh,
and striven in vain;
Yet when some sudden old-world mystery

Of passion fired my brain,
Thy shape hath flashed upon me like no
dream,
Wandering with scented curls that heaped the breeze, Or by the hollow
of some reeded stream
Sitting waist-deep in white anemones;
And even as I glimpsed thee thou wert gone,
A dream for mortal eyes too proudly coy,
Yet in thy place for subtle
thought's employ
The golden magic clung, a light that shone
And filled me with thy joy.
Before me like a mist that streamed and
fell
All names and shapes of antique beauty passed
In garlanded
procession with the swell
Of flutes between the beechen stems; and last,
I saw the Arcadian valley, the loved wood,
Alpheus stream divine, the sighing shore,
And through the cool green
glades, awake once more, Psyche, the white-limbed goddess, still
pursued,
Fleet-footed as of yore,
The noonday ringing with her frighted peals,
Down the bright sward and through the reeds she ran, Urged by the
mountain echoes, at her heels
The hot-blown cheeks and trampling feet of Pan.
DISTANCE
To the distance! Ah, the distance!

Blue and broad and dim!
Peace is not in burgh or meadow,
But beyond the rim.
Aye, beyond it, far beyond it;
Follow still my soul,
Till this earth is lost in heaven,
And thou feel'st the whole.
THE BIRD AND THE HOUR
The sun looks over a little hill
And floods the valley with gold--
A torrent of gold;
And the hither field is green and still;
Beyond it a
cloud outrolled,
Is glowing molten and bright;
And soon the hill,
and the valley and all,
With a quiet fall,
Shall be gathered into the night.
And yet a
moment more,
Out