Ride to the Lady | Page 9

winding high,?Roofed far up with light-green flicker,?Save one midmost star of sky.?Underfoot 'tis all pale brown?With the dead leaves matted down?One on other, thick and thicker;?Soft, but springing to the tread.?There a youth late met a maid?Running lightly,--oh, so fleetly!?"Whence art thou?" the herd-boy said.?Either side her long hair swayed,?Half a tress and half a braid,?Colored like the soft dead leaf,?As she answered, laughing sweetly,?On she ran, as flies the swallow;?He could not choose but follow?Though it had been to his grief.
"I have come up from the valley,--?From the valley!" Once he caught her,?Swerving down a sidelong alley,?For a moment, by the hand.?"Tell me, tell me," he besought her,?"Sweetest, I would understand?Why so cold thy palm, that slips?From me like the shy cold minnow??The wood is warm, and smells of fern,?And below the meadows burn.?Hard to catch and hard to win, oh!?Why are those brown finger tips?Crinkled as with lines of water?"
Laughing while she featly footed,?With the herd-boy hasting after,?Sprang she on a trunk uprooted,?Clung she by a roping vine;?Leaped behind a birch, and told,?Still eluding, through its fine,?Mocking, slender, leafy laughter,?Why her finger tips were cold:
"I went down to tease the brook,?With her fishes, there below;?She comes dancing, thou must know,?And the bushes arch above her;?But the seeking sunbeams look,?Dodging through the wind-blown cover,?Find and kiss her into stars.?Silvery veins entwine and crook?Where a stone her tripping bars;?There be smooth, clear sweeps, and swirls?Bubbling up crisp drops like pearls.?There I lie, along the rocks?Thick with greenest slippery moss,?And I have in hand a strip?Of gray, pliant, dappled bark;?And I comb her liquid locks?Till her tangling currents cross;?And I have delight to hark?To the chiding of her lip,?Taking on the talking stone?With each turn another tone.?Oh, to set her wavelets bickering!?Oh, to hear her laughter simple,?See her fret and flash and dimple!?Ha, ha, ha!" The woodland rang?With the rippling through the flickering.?At the birch the herd-boy sprang.
On a sudden something wound?Vine-like round his throbbing throat;?On a sudden something smote?Sharply on his longing lips,?Stung him as the birch bough whips:?Was it kiss or was it blow??Never after could he know;?She was gone without a sound.
Never after could he see?In the wood or in the mead,?Or in any company?Of the rustic mortal maids,?Her with acorn-colored braids;?Never came she to his need.?Never more the lad was merry,?Strayed apart, and learned to dream,?Feeding on the tart wild berry;?Murmuring words none understood,--?Words with music of the wood,?And with music of the stream.
SUMMER HOURS
Hours aimless-drifting as the milkweed's down?In seeming, still a seed of joy ye bear?That steals into the soul when unaware,?And springs up Memory in the stony town.
LOVE UNSUNG
Seven jewelled rays has the Sun fast bound
In his arrow of blinding sheen;?But he quickens the breast of the fruitful ground
With a subtlest ray unseen.
And the rainbow moods of this love of ours
I may blend in the song I bring;?But the magic that makes life laugh with flowers
Is the love that I cannot sing.
THE WISH FOR A CHAPLET
Vineleaf and rose I would my chaplet make:?I would my word were wine for all men's sake.?Pure from the pressing of the stainless feet?Of unblamed Hours, and for an altar meet.
Vineleaf and rose: I would, had I the art,?Distil, to lasting sweet, Joy's rosy heart,?That no sere autumn should its fragrance wrong,?Closed in the crystal glass of slender song.
SONNETS
THE TORCH-RACE
Brave racer, who hast sped the living light?With throat outstretched and every nerve a-strain,?Now on thy left hand labors gray-faced Pain,?And Death hangs close behind thee on the right.?Soon flag the flying feet, soon fails the sight,?With every pulse the gaunt pursuers gain;?And all thy splendor of strong life must wane?And set into the mystery of night.
Yet fear not, though in falling, blindness hide?Whose hand shall snatch, before it scars the sod,?The light thy lessening grasp no more controls:?Truth's rescuer, Truth shall instantly provide:?This is the torch-race game, that noblest souls?Play on through time beneath the eyes of God.
TO SLEEP
All slumb'rous images that be, combined,?To this white couch and cool shall woo thee, Sleep!?First will I think on fields of grasses deep?In gray-green flower, o'er which the transient wind?Runs like a smile; and next will call to mind?How glistening poplar-tops, when breezes creep?Among their leaves, a tender motion keep,?Stroking the sky, like touch of lovers kind.
Ah, having felt thy calm kiss on mine eyes,?All night inspiring thy divine pure breath,?I shall awake as into godhood born,?And with a fresh, undaunted soul arise,?Clear as the blue convolvulus at morn.?--Dear bedfellow, deals thus thy brother, Death?
SISTER SNOW
Praised be our Lord (to echo the sweet phrase?Of saintly Francis) for our sister Snow:?Whose soft, soft coming never man may know?By any sound; whose down-light touch allays?All fevers of worn earth. She clothes the days?In garments without spot, and hence doth go?Her noiseless shuttle swiftly to and fro,?And very pure, and pleasant, are her ways.
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