The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell | Page 6

solid gray wall of rain?Shuts off the landscape, mile by mile; 50 For a breath's space I see the blue wood again,?And ere the next heart-beat, the wind-hurled pile,?That seemed but now a league aloof,?Bursts crackling o'er the sun-parched roof;?Against the windows the storm comes dashing,?Through tattered foliage the hail tears crashing,
The blue lightning flashes,?The rapid hail clashes,?The white waves are tumbling,?And, in one baffled roar, 60 Like the toothless sea mumbling?A rock-bristled shore,?The thunder is rumbling?And crashing and crumbling,--?Will silence return nevermore?
Hush! Still as death,?The tempest holds his breath?As from a sudden will;?The rain stops short, but from the eaves?You see it drop, and hear it from the leaves, 70 All is so bodingly still;?Again, now, now, again?Plashes the rain in heavy gouts,?The crinkled lightning?Seems ever brightening,?And loud and long?Again the thunder shouts
His battle-song,--?One quivering flash,?One wildering crash, 80 Followed by silence dead and dull,
As if the cloud, let go,?Leapt bodily below?To whelm the earth in one mad overthrow.
And then a total lull.
Gone, gone, so soon!?No more my half-dazed fancy there,?Can shape a giant In the air,?No more I see his streaming hair,?The writhing portent of his form;-- 90
The pale and quiet moon?Makes her calm forehead bare,?And the last fragments of the storm,?Like shattered rigging from a fight at sea,?Silent and few, are drifting over me.
LOVE
True Love is but a humble, low-born thing,?And hath its food served up in earthen ware;?It is a thing to walk with, hand in hand,?Through the everydayness of this workday world,?Baring its tender feet to every flint,?Yet letting not one heart-beat go astray?From Beauty's law of plainness and content;?A simple, fireside thing, whose quiet smile?Can warm earth's poorest hovel to a home;?Which, when our autumn cometh, as it must,?And life in the chill wind shivers bare and leafless,?Shall still be blest with Indian-summer youth?In bleak November, and, with thankful heart,?Smile on its ample stores of garnered fruit,?As full of sunshine to our aged eyes?As when it nursed the blossoms of our spring.?Such is true Love, which steals into the heart?With feet as silent as the lightsome dawn?That kisses smooth the rough brows of the dark,?And hath its will through blissful gentleness,?Not like a rocket, which, with passionate glare,?Whirs suddenly up, then bursts, and leaves the night?Painfully quivering on the dazèd eyes;?A love that gives and takes, that seeth faults,?Not with flaw-seeking eyes like needle points,?But loving-kindly ever looks them down?With the o'ercoming faith that still forgives;?A love that shall be new and fresh each hour,?As is the sunset's golden mystery,?Or the sweet coming of the evening-star,?Alike, and yet most unlike, every day,?And seeming ever best and fairest now;?A love that doth not kneel for what it seeks,?But faces Truth and Beauty as their peer,?Showing its worthiness of noble thoughts?By a clear sense of inward nobleness;?A love that in its object findeth not?All grace and beauty, and enough to sate?Its thirst of blessing, but, in all of good?Found there, sees but the Heaven-implanted types?Of good and beauty in the soul of man,?And traces, in the simplest heart that beats,?A family-likeness to its chosen one,?That claims of it the rights of brotherhood.?For love is blind but with the fleshly eye,?That so its inner sight may be more clear;?And outward shows of beauty only so?Are needful at the first, as is a hand?To guide and to uphold an infant's steps:?Fine natures need them not: their earnest look?Pierces the body's mask of thin disguise,?And beauty ever is to them revealed,?Behind the unshapeliest, meanest lump of clay,?With arms outstretched and eager face ablaze,?Yearning to be but understood and loved.
TO PERDITA, SINGING
Thy voice is like a fountain,?Leaping up in clear moonshine;?Silver, silver, ever mounting,
Ever sinking,?Without thinking,?To that brimful heart of thine.?Every sad and happy feeling,?Thou hast had in bygone years,?Through thy lips comes stealing, stealing,
Clear and low; 10?All thy smiles and all thy tears?In thy voice awaken,?And sweetness, wove of joy and woe,?From their teaching it hath taken:?Feeling and music move together,?Like a swan and shadow ever?Floating on a sky-blue river?In a day of cloudless weather.
It hath caught a touch of sadness,
Yet it is not sad; 20?It hath tones of clearest gladness,
Yet it is not glad;?A dim, sweet twilight voice it is?Where to-day's accustomed blue?Is over-grayed with memories,?With starry feelings quivered through.
Thy voice is like a fountain?Leaping up in sunshine bright,?And I never weary counting?Its clear droppings, lone and single, 30?Or when in one full gush they mingle,?Shooting in melodious light.
Thine is music such as yields?Feelings of old brooks and fields,?And, around this pent-up room,?Sheds a woodland, free perfume;?Oh, thus forever sing to me!
Oh, thus forever!?The green, bright grass of childhood bring to me, 39?Flowing like an emerald river,?And the bright blue skies above!?Oh, sing them back, as fresh as ever,?Into the bosom of my love,--?The sunshine and the merriment,?The unsought, evergreen content,?Of that never cold time,?The joy, that, like