Songs In Many Keys | Page 6

slopes are fringed with tender green;?On sheltered banks, beneath the dripping eaves,?Spring's earliest nurslings spread their glowing leaves,?Bright with the hues from wider pictures won,?White, azure, golden,--drift, or sky, or sun,--?The snowdrop, bearing on her patient breast?The frozen trophy torn from Winter's crest;?The violet, gazing on the arch of blue?Till her own iris wears its deepened hue;?The spendthrift crocus, bursting through the mould?Naked and shivering with his cup of gold.?Swelled with new life, the darkening elm on high?Prints her thick buds against the spotted sky?On all her boughs the stately chestnut cleaves?The gummy shroud that wraps her embryo leaves;?The house-fly, stealing from his narrow grave,?Drugged with the opiate that November gave,?Beats with faint wing against the sunny pane,?Or crawls, tenacious, o'er its lucid plain;?From shaded chinks of lichen-crusted walls,?In languid curves, the gliding serpent crawls;?The bog's green harper, thawing from his sleep,?Twangs a hoarse note and tries a shortened leap;?On floating rails that face the softening noons?The still shy turtles range their dark platoons,?Or, toiling aimless o'er the mellowing fields,?Trail through the grass their tessellated shields.
At last young April, ever frail and fair,?Wooed by her playmate with the golden hair,?Chased to the margin of receding floods?O'er the soft meadows starred with opening buds,?In tears and blushes sighs herself away,?And hides her cheek beneath the flowers of May.
Then the proud tulip lights her beacon blaze,?Her clustering curls the hyacinth displays;?O'er her tall blades the crested fleur-de-lis,?Like blue-eyed Pallas, towers erect and free;?With yellower flames the lengthened sunshine glows,?And love lays bare the passion-breathing rose;?Queen of the lake, along its reedy verge?The rival lily hastens to emerge,?Her snowy shoulders glistening as she strips,?Till morn is sultan of her parted lips.
Then bursts the song from every leafy glade,?The yielding season's bridal serenade;?Then flash the wings returning Summer calls?Through the deep arches of her forest halls,--?The bluebird, breathing from his azure plumes?The fragrance borrowed where the myrtle blooms;?The thrush, poor wanderer, dropping meekly down,?Clad in his remnant of autumnal brown;?The oriole, drifting like a flake of fire?Rent by a whirlwind from a blazing spire.?The robin, jerking his spasmodic throat,?Repeats, imperious, his staccato note;?The crack-brained bobolink courts his crazy mate,?Poised on a bulrush tipsy with his weight;?Nay, in his cage the lone canary sings,?Feels the soft air, and spreads his idle wings.
Why dream I here within these caging walls,?Deaf to her voice, while blooming Nature calls;?Peering and gazing with insatiate looks?Through blinding lenses, or in wearying books??Off, gloomy spectres of the shrivelled past!?Fly with the leaves that fill the autumn blast?Ye imps of Science, whose relentless chains?Lock the warm tides within these living veins,?Close your dim cavern, while its captive strays?Dazzled and giddy in the morning's blaze!
THE STUDY
YET in the darksome crypt I left so late,?Whose only altar is its rusted grate,--?Sepulchral, rayless, joyless as it seems,?Shamed by the glare of May's refulgent beams,--?While the dim seasons dragged their shrouded train,?Its paler splendors were not quite in vain.?From these dull bars the cheerful firelight's glow?Streamed through the casement o'er the spectral snow;?Here, while the night-wind wreaked its frantic will?On the loose ocean and the rock-bound hill,?Rent the cracked topsail from its quivering yard,?And rived the oak a thousand storms had scarred,?Fenced by these walls the peaceful taper shone,?Nor felt a breath to slant its trembling cone.
Not all unblest the mild interior scene?When the red curtain spread its falling screen;?O'er some light task the lonely hours were past,?And the long evening only flew too fast;?Or the wide chair its leathern arms would lend?In genial welcome to some easy friend,?Stretched on its bosom with relaxing nerves,?Slow moulding, plastic, to its hollow curves;?Perchance indulging, if of generous creed,?In brave Sir Walter's dream-compelling weed.?Or, happier still, the evening hour would bring?To the round table its expected ring,?And while the punch-bowl's sounding depths were stirred,--?Its silver cherubs smiling as they heard,--?Our hearts would open, as at evening's hour?The close-sealed primrose frees its hidden flower.
Such the warm life this dim retreat has known,?Not quite deserted when its guests were flown;?Nay, filled with friends, an unobtrusive set,?Guiltless of calls and cards and etiquette,?Ready to answer, never known to ask,?Claiming no service, prompt for every task.?On those dark shelves no housewife hand profanes,?O'er his mute files the monarch folio reigns;?A mingled race, the wreck of chance and time,?That talk all tongues and breathe of every clime,?Each knows his place, and each may claim his part?In some quaint corner of his master's heart.?This old Decretal, won from Moss's hoards,?Thick-leaved, brass-cornered, ribbed with oaken boards,?Stands the gray patriarch of the graver rows,?Its fourth ripe century narrowing to its close;?Not daily conned, but glorious still to view,?With glistening letters wrought in red and blue.?There towers Stagira's all-embracing sage,?The Aldine anchor on his opening page;?There sleep the births of Plato's heavenly mind,?In yon dark tomb by jealous clasps confused,?"Olim e libris" (dare I call it mine?)?Of Yale's