Myth and Romance | Page 2

dreamed may lingert brown?And young as joy, around the forestside;?Some dream within whose heart lives no disdain?For such as I whose love is sweet and sane;?That may repeat, so none but I may hear--?As one might tell a pearl-strung rosary--?Some epic that the trees have learned to croon,?Some lyric whispered in the wild-flower's ear,?Whose murmurous lines are sung by bird and bee,?And all the insects of the night and noon.
IV
For, all around me, upon field and hill,?Enchantment lies as of mysterious flutes;?As if the music of a god's good-will?Had taken on material attributes?In blooms, like chords; and in the water-gleam,?That runs its silvery scales from stream to stream;?In sunbeam bars, up which the butterfly,?A golden note, vibrates then flutters on--?Inaudible tunes, blown on the pipes of Pan,?That have assumed a visible entity,?And drugged the air with beauty so, a Faun,?Behold, I seem, and am no more a man.
_The?Rain-Crow_
I
Can freckled August,--drowsing warm and blonde?Beside a wheat-shock in the white-topped mead,?In her hot hair the oxeyed daisies wound,--?O bird of rain, lend aught but sleepy heed?To thee? when no plumed weed, no feather'd seed?Blows by her; and no ripple breaks the pond,?That gleams like flint between its rim of grasses,?Through which the dragonfly forever passes
Like splintered diamond.
II
Drouth weights the trees, and from the farmhouse eaves?The locust, pulse-beat of the summer day,?Throbs; and the lane, that shambles under leaves?Limp with the heat--a league of rutty way--?Is lost in dust; and sultry scents of hay?Breathe from the panting meadows heaped with sheaves--?Now, now, O bird, what hint is there of rain,?In thirsty heaven or on burning plain,
That thy keen eye perceives?
III
But thou art right. Thou prophesiest true.?For hardly hast thou ceased thy forecasting,?When, up the western fierceness of scorched blue,?Great water-carrier winds their buckets bring?Brimming with freshness. How their dippers ring?And flash and rumble! lavishing dark dew?On corn and forestland, that, streaming wet,?Their hilly backs against the downpour set,
Like giants vague in view.
IV
The butterfly, safe under leaf and flower,?Has found a roof, knowing how true thou art;?The bumble-bee, within the last half-hour,?Has ceased to hug the honey to its heart;?While in the barnyard, under shed and cart,?Brood-hens have housed.--But I, who scorned thy power,?Barometer of the birds,--like August there,--?Beneath a beech, dripping from foot to hair,
Like some drenched truant, cower.
_The?Harvest Moon_
I
Globed in Heav'n's tree of azure, golden mellow?As some round apple hung?High in hesperian boughs, thou hangest yellow?The branch-like mists among:?Within thy light a sunburnt youth, named Health,?Rests 'mid the tasseled shocks, the tawny stubble;?And by his side, clad on with rustic wealth?Of field and farm, beneath thy amber bubble,?A nut-brown maid, Content, sits smiling still:?While through the quiet trees,?The mossy rocks, the grassy hill,?Thy silvery spirit glides to yonder mill,?Around whose wheel the breeze?And shimmering ripples of the water play,?As, by their mother, little children may.
II
Sweet spirit of the moon, who walkest,--lifting?Exhaustless on thy arm,?A pearly vase of fire,--through the shifting?Cloud-halls of calm and storm,?Pour down thy blossoms! let me hear them come,?Pelting with noiseless light the twinkling thickets,?Making the darkness audible with the hum?Of many insect creatures, grigs and crickets:?Until it seems the elves hold revelries?By haunted stream and grove;?Or, in the night's deep peace,?The young-old presence of Earth's full increase?Seems telling thee her love,?Ere, lying down, she turns to rest, and smiles,?Hearing thy heart beat through the myriad miles.
_The Old?Water-Mill_
Wild ridge on ridge the wooded hills arise,?Between whose breezy vistas gulfs of skies?Pilot great clouds like towering argosies,?And hawk and buzzard breast the azure breeze.?With many a foaming fall and glimmering reach?Of placid murmur, under elm and beech,?The creek goes twinkling through long glows and glooms?Of woodland quiet, poppied with perfumes:?The creek, in whose clear shallows minnow-schools?Glitter or dart; and by whose deeper pools?The blue kingfishers and the herons haunt;?That, often startled from the freckled flaunt?Of blackberry-lilies--where they feed and hide--?Trail a lank flight along the forestside?With eery clangor. Here a sycamore,?Smooth, wave-uprooted, builds from shore to shore?A headlong bridge; and there, a storm-hurled oak?Lays a long dam, where sand and gravel choke?The water's lazy way. Here mistflower blurs?Its bit of heaven; there the oxeye stirs?Its gloaming hues of bronze and gold; and here,?A gray cool stain, like dawn's own atmosphere,?The dim wild-carrot lifts its crumpled crest:?And over all, at slender flight or rest,?The dragon-flies, like coruscating rays?Of lapis-lazuli and chrysoprase,?Drowsily sparkle through the summer days;?And, dewlap-deep, here from the noontide heat?The bell-hung cattle find a cool retreat:?And through the willows girdling the hill,?Now far, now near, borne as the soft winds will,?Comes the low rushing of the water-mill.?Ah, lovely to me from a little child,?How changed the place! wherein once, undefiled,?The glad communion of the sky and stream?Went with me like a presence and a dream.?Where once the brambled meads and orchardlands?Poured ripe abundance down with mellow hands?Of summer; and the birds of field and wood?Called to me in a