Lyrics of Earth | Page 9

the hay-racks bend and rock,?As they take each scented cock,?Jolting over dip and rise;?And the wavering butterflies?O'er the spaces brown and bare?Light and wander here and there.
I shall stray by many a stream,?Where the half-shut lilies gleam.?Napping out the sultry days?In the quiet secluded bays;?Where the tasseled rushes tower,?O'er the purple pickerel-flower.?And the floating dragon-fly--?Azure glint and crystal gleam--?Watches o'er the burnished stream?With his eye of ebony;?Where the bull-frog lolls at rest?On his float of lily-leaves,?That the swaying water weaves,?And distends his yellow breast,?Lowing out from shore to shore?With a hollow vibrant roar;?Where the softest wind that blows?As it lightly comes and goes,?O'er the jungled river meads,?Stirs a whisper in the reeds,?And wakes the crowded bull-rushes?From their stately reveries,?Flashing through their long-leaved hordes?Like a brandishing of swords;?There, too, the frost-like arrow-flowers?Tremble to the golden core,?Children of enchanted hours,?Whom the rustling river bore?In the night's bewildered noon,?Woven of water and the moon.
I shall hear the grasshoppers?From the parched grass rehearse,?And with drowsy note prolong?Evermore the same thin song.?I shall hear the crickets tell?Stories by the humming well,?And mark the locust, with quaint eyes,?Caper in his cloak of gray?Like a jester in disguise?Rattling by the dusty way.
I shall dream by upland fences,?Where the season's wealth condenses?Over many a weedy wreck,?Wild, uncared-for, desert places,?That sovereign Beauty loves to deck?With her softest, dearest graces.?There the long year dreams in quiet,?And the summer's strength runs riot.?Shall I not remember these,?Deep in winter reveries??Berried brier and thistle-bloom,?And milkweed with its dense perfume;?Slender vervain towering up?In a many-branchèd cup,?Like a candlestick, each spire?Kindled with a violet fire;?Matted creepers and wild cherries,?Purple-bunchèd elderberries,?And on scanty plots of sod?Groves of branchy goldenrod.
What though autumn mornings now,?Winterward with glittering brow,?Stiffen in the silver grass;?And what though robins flock and pass,?With subdued and sober call,?To the old year's funeral;?Though October's crimson leaves?Rustle at the gusty door,?And the tempest round the eaves?Alternate with pipe and roar;?I sit, as erst, unharmed, secure,?Conscious that my store is sure,?Whatsoe'er the fencèd fields,?Or the untilled forest yields?Of unhurt remembrances,?Or thoughts, far-glimpsed, half-followed, these?I have reaped and laid away,?A treasure of unwinnowed grain,?To the garner packed and gray?Gathered without toil or strain.
And when the darker days shall come,?And the fields are white and dumb;?When our fires are half in vain,?And the crystal starlight weaves?Mockeries of summer leaves,?Pictured on the icy pane;?When the high aurora gleams?Far above the Arctic streams?Like a line of shifting spears,?And the broad pine-circled meres,?Glimmering in that spectral light,?Thunder through the northern night;?Then within the bolted door?I shall con my summer store;?Though the fences scarcely show?Black above the drifted snow,?Though the icy sweeping wind?Whistle in the empty tree,?Safe within the sheltered mind,?I shall feed on memory.
Yet across the windy night?Comes upon its wings a cry;?Fashioned forms and modes take flight,?And a vision sad and high?Of the laboring world down there,?Where the lights burn red and warm,?Pricks my soul with sudden stare,?Glowing through the veils of storm.?In the city yonder sleep?Those who smile and those who weep,?Those whose lips are set with care,?Those whose brows are smooth and fair;?Mourners whom the dawning light?Shall grapple with an old distress;?Lovers folded at midnight?In their bridal happiness;?Pale watchers by belovèd beds,?Fallen a-drowse with nodding heads,?Whom sleep captured by surprise,?With the circles round their eyes;?Maidens with quiet-taken breath,?Dreaming of enchanted bowers;?Old men with the mask of death;?Little children soft as flowers;?Those who wake wild-eyed and start?In some madness of the heart;?Those whose lips and brows of stone?Evil thoughts have graven upon,?Shade by shade and line by line,?Refashioning what was once divine.
All these sleep, and through the night,?Comes a passion and a cry,?With a blind sorrow and a might,?I know not whence, I know not why,?A something I cannot control,?A nameless hunger of the soul.?It holds me fast. In vain, in vain,?I remember how of old?I saw the ruddy race of men,?Through the glittering world outrolled,?A gay-smiling multitude,?All immortal, all divine,?Treading in a wreathèd line?By a pathway through a wood.
THE SUN CUP
The earth is the cup of the sun,?That he filleth at morning with wine,?With the warm, strong wine of his might?From the vintage of gold and of light,?Fills it, and makes it divine.
And at night when his journey is done,?At the gate of his radiant hall,?He setteth his lips to the brim,?With a long last look of his eye,?And lifts it and draineth it dry,?Drains till he leaveth it all?Empty and hollow and dim.
And then, as he passes to sleep,?Still full of the feats that he did,?Long ago in Olympian wars,?He closes it down with the sweep?Of its slow-turning luminous lid,?Its cover of darkness and stars,?Wrought once by Heph?stus of old?With violet and vastness and gold.
The first edition of this book consists of five hundred copies, printed by the Boston Engraving and McIndoe Printing Company, Boston, during March, 1896, with fifty additional copies on Arnold paper.
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