Songs Out of Doors | Page 9

eyes with pain;?And while I vainly longed, and looked in vain?For sign or trace of life, my spirit said,?"Shall any living thing that dares to tread?This royal lair of Death escape again?"
But even then I saw before my feet?A line of pointed footprints in the snow:?Some roving chamois, but an hour ago,?Had passed this way along his journey fleet,?And left a message from a friend unknown?To cheer my pilgrim-heart, no more alone.
Zermatt, 1872.
III
MOVING BELLS
I love the hour that comes, with dusky hair?And dewy feet, along the Alpine dells,?To lead the cattle forth. A thousand bells?Go chiming after her across the fair?And flowery uplands, while the rosy flare?Of sunset on the snowy mountain dwells,?And valleys darken, and the drowsy spells?Of peace are woven through the purple air.
Dear is the magic of this hour: she seems?To walk before the dark by falling rills,?And lend a sweeter song to hidden streams;?She opens all the doors of night, and fills?With moving bells the music of my dreams,?That wander far among the sleeping hills.
Gstaad, August, 1909.
A SNOW-SONG
Does the snow fall at sea??Yes, when the north winds blow,?When the wild clouds fly low,?Out of each gloomy wing,?Silently glimmering,?Over the stormy sea?Falleth the snow.
Does the snow hide the sea??Nay, on the tossing plains?Never a flake remains;?Drift never resteth there;?Vanishing everywhere,?Into the hungry sea?Falleth the snow.
What means the snow at sea??Whirled in the veering blast,?Thickly the flakes drive past;?Each like a childish ghost?Wavers, and then is lost;?In the forgetful sea?Fadeth the snow.
1875.
ROSLIN AND HAWTHORNDEN
Fair Roslin Chapel, how divine?The art that reared thy costly shrine!?Thy carven columns must have grown?By magic, like a dream in stone.
Yet not within thy storied wall?Would I in adoration fall,?So gladly as within the glen?That leads to lovely Hawthornden.
A long-drawn aisle, with roof of green?And vine-clad pillars, while between,?The Esk runs murmuring on its way,?In living music night and day.
Within the temple of this wood?The martyrs of the covenant stood,?And rolled the psalm, and poured the prayer,?From Nature's solemn altar-stair.
Edinburgh, 1877.
THE HEAVENLY HILLS OF HOLLAND
The heavenly hills of Holland,--?How wondrously they rise?Above the smooth green pastures?Into the azure skies!?With blue and purple hollows,?With peaks of dazzling snow,?Along the far horizon?The clouds are marching slow.
No mortal foot has trodden?The summits of that range,?Nor walked those mystic valleys?Whose colours ever change;?Yet we possess their beauty,?And visit them in dreams,?While ruddy gold of sunset?From cliff and canyon gleams.
In days of cloudless weather?They melt into the light;?When fog and mist surround us?They're hidden from our sight;?But when returns a season?Clear shining after rain,?While the northwest wind is blowing,?We see the hills again.
The old Dutch painters loved them,?Their pictures show them fair,--?Old Hobbema and Ruysdael,?Van Goyen and Vermeer.?Above the level landscape,?Rich polders, long-armed mills,?Canals and ancient cities,--?Float Holland's heavenly hills.
The Hague, November, 1916.
FLOOD-TIDE OF FLOWERS
IN HOLLAND
The laggard winter ebbed so slow?With freezing rain and melting snow,?It seemed as if the earth would stay?Forever where the tide was low,?In sodden green and watery gray.
But now from depths beyond our sight,?The tide is turning in the night,?And floods of colour long concealed?Come silent rising toward the light,?Through garden bare and empty field.
And first, along the sheltered nooks,?The crocus runs in little brooks?Of joyance, till by light made bold?They show the gladness of their looks?In shining pools of white and gold.
The tiny scilla, sapphire blue,?Is gently seeping in, to strew?The earth with heaven; and sudden rills?Of sunlit yellow, sweeping through,?Spread into lakes of daffodils.
The hyacinths, with fragrant heads,?Have overflowed their sandy beds,?And fill the earth with faint perfume,?The breath that Spring around her she?And now the tulips break in bloom!
A sea, a rainbow-tinted sea,?A splendour and a mystery,?Floods o'er the fields of faded gray:?The roads are full of folks in glee,?For lo,--to-day is Easter Day!
April, 1916.
SALUTE TO THE TREES
Many a tree is found in the wood?And every tree for its use is good:?Some for the strength of the gnarled root,?Some for the sweetness of flower or fruit;?Some for shelter against the storm,?And some to keep the hearth-stone warm;?Some for the roof, and some for the beam,?And some for a boat to breast the stream;--?In the wealth of the wood since the world began?The trees have offered their gifts to man.
But the glory of trees is more than their gifts:?'Tis a beautiful wonder of life that lifts,?From a wrinkled seed in an earth-bound clod,?A column, an arch in the temple of God,?A pillar of power, a dome of delight,?A shrine of song, and a joy of sight!?Their roots are the nurses of rivers in birth;?Their leaves are alive with the breath of the earth;?They shelter the dwellings of man; and they bend?O'er his grave with the look of a loving friend.
I have camped in the whispering forest of pines,?I have slept in the shadow of olives and vines;?In the knees of an oak, at the foot of a palm?I have found good rest