Lyrics of Earth | Page 7

stand peaked and withering, half concealed In the rough earth, the orange pumpkins lie,?Full-ribbed; and in the windless pasture-field?The sleek red horses o'er the sun-warmed ground?Stand pensively about in companies,?While all around them from the motionless trees?The long clean shadows sleep without a sound.
Under cool elm-trees floats the distant stream,?Moveless as air; and o'er the vast warm earth?The fathomless daylight seems to stand and dream,?A liquid cool elixir--all its girth?Bound with faint haze, a frail transparency,?Whose lucid purple barely veils and fills?The utmost valleys and the thin last hills,?Nor mars one whit their perfect clarity.
Thus without grief the golden days go by,?So soft we scarcely notice how they wend,?And like a smile half happy, or a sigh,?The summer passes to her quiet end;?And soon, too soon, around the cumbered eaves?Sly frosts shall take the creepers by surprise,?And through the wind-touched reddening woods shall rise October with the rain of ruined leaves.
A RE-ASSURANCE
With what doubting eyes, oh sparrow,
Thou regardest me,?Underneath yon spray of yarrow,
Dipping cautiously.
Fear me not, oh little sparrow,
Bathe and never fear,?For to me both pool and yarrow
And thyself are dear.
THE POET'S POSSESSION
Think not, oh master of the well-tilled field,?This earth is only thine; for after thee,?When all is sown and gathered and put by,?Comes the grave poet with creative eye,?And from these silent acres and clean plots,?Bids with his wand the fancied after-yield,?A second tilth and second harvest, be,?The crop of images and curious thoughts.
AN AUTUMN LANDSCAPE
No wind there is that either pipes or moans;?The fields are cold and still; the sky?Is covered with a blue-gray sheet?Of motionless cloud; and at my feet?The river, curling softly by,?Whispers and dimples round its quiet gray stones.
Along the chill green slope that dips and heaves?The road runs rough and silent, lined?With plum-trees, misty and blue-gray,?And poplars pallid as the day,?In masses spectral, undefined,?Pale greenish stems half hid in dry gray leaves.
And on beside the river's sober edge?A long fresh field lies black. Beyond,?Low thickets gray and reddish stand,?Stroked white with birch; and near at hand,?Over a little steel-smooth pond,?Hang multitudes of thin and withering sedge.
Across a waste and solitary rise?A ploughman urges his dull team,?A stooped gray figure with prone brow?That plunges bending to the plough?With strong, uneven steps. The stream?Rings and re-echoes with his furious cries.
Sometimes the lowing of a cow, long-drawn,?Comes from far off; and crows in strings?Pass on the upper silences.?A flock of small gray goldfinches,?Flown down with silvery twitterings,?Rustle among the birch-cones and are gone.
This day the season seems like one that heeds,?With fixèd ear and lifted hand,?All moods that yet are known on earth,?All motions that have faintest birth,?If haply she may understand?The utmost inward sense of all her deeds.
IN NOVEMBER
With loitering step and quiet eye,?Beneath the low November sky,?I wandered in the woods, and found?A clearing, where the broken ground?Was scattered with black stumps and briers,?And the old wreck of forest fires.?It was a bleak and sandy spot,?And, all about, the vacant plot?Was peopled and inhabited?By scores of mulleins long since dead.?A silent and forsaken brood?In that mute opening of the wood,?So shrivelled and so thin they were,?So gray, so haggard, and austere,?Not plants at all they seemed to me,?But rather some spare company?Of hermit folk, who long ago,?Wandering in bodies to and fro,?Had chanced upon this lonely way,?And rested thus, till death one day?Surprised them at their compline prayer,?And left them standing lifeless there.
There was no sound about the wood?Save the wind's secret stir. I stood?Among the mullein-stalks as still?As if myself had grown to be?One of their sombre company,?A body without wish or will.?And as I stood, quite suddenly,?Down from a furrow in the sky?The sun shone out a little space?Across that silent sober place,?Over the sand heaps and brown sod,?The mulleins and dead goldenrod,?And passed beyond the thickets gray,?And lit the fallen leaves that lay,?Level and deep within the wood,?A rustling yellow multitude.
And all around me the thin light,?So sere, so melancholy bright,?Fell like the half-reflected gleam?Or shadow of some former dream;?A moment's golden revery?Poured out on every plant and tree?A semblance of weird joy, or less,?A sort of spectral happiness;?And I, too, standing idly there,?With muffled hands in the chill air,?Felt the warm glow about my feet,?And shuddering betwixt cold and heat,?Drew my thoughts closer, like a cloak,?While something in my blood awoke,?A nameless and unnatural cheer,?A pleasure secret and austere.
BY AN AUTUMN STREAM
Now overhead,?Where the rivulet loiters and stops,?The bittersweet hangs from the tops?Of the alders and cherries?Its bunches of beautiful berries,?Orange and red.
And the snowbirds flee,?Tossing up on the far brown field,?Now flashing and now concealed,?Like fringes of spray?That vanish and gleam on the gray?Field of the sea.
Flickering light,?Come the last of the leaves down borne,?And patches of pale white corn?In the wind complain,?Like the slow rustle of rain?Noticed by night.
Withered and thinned,?The sentinel mullein looms,?With the pale gray shadowy