xt7h707wmk7t https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7h707wmk7t/data/mets.xml Cawein, Madison Julius, 1865-1914. 1896  books b92-184-30604844 English Copeland and Day, : Boston : Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Vndertones  / by Madison Cawein. text Vndertones  / by Madison Cawein. 1896 2002 true xt7h707wmk7t section xt7h707wmk7t 
UNDERTONES



By



Madison



Cawein

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OATEN STOP SERIES
        III

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VNDJRTONES
BY MADISON CAWEIN



BOSTON COPELAND AND DAY
    M D CCC XCVI

 









































COPYRIGHT I896 BY COPELAND AND DAY

 











INSCRIBED TO THE PATHETIC
  MEMORY OF THE POET
     HENRY TIMROD

 






Long are the days, and three times long the nights.
The weary hours are a heavy chain
Upon the fret of all Earth's dear delights,
Holding them ever prisoners to pain.
What shall beguile me to believe again
In hope, that faith 'within her parable 'writes
Of life, care reads with eyes 'whose tear-drops
    stain 
Shall such assist me to subdue the heights 
Long is the night, and overlong the day.
The burden of all being ! - is it 'worse
Or better, lo ! that they 'who toil and pray
May win not more than they who toil and curse 
A little sleep, a little love, ah me!
And the slow 'weighl up the soul's Calvary!


 






CONTENTS



THE DREAMER
QUIET.
UNQUALIFIED
UNENCOURAGED ASPIRA
THE WOOD
WOOD NOTES .
SUCCESS . .
SONG
THE OLD SPRING
HILLS OF THE WEST
FLOWERS
SECOND SIGHT
DEAD SEA FRUIT
THE WOOD WITCH
AT SUNSET
MAY
THE WIND OF SPRING
INTERPRETED . .
THE WILLOW BOTTOM
THE OLD BARN
CLEARING. . .
REQUIEM
AT LAST
                vii



            PAGE
              I
              2
              3
TION .  .  .    3
              4
              5
              7
              7
              8
              I10



              '3
              '4

              '7
. .  . . ..    7






             '9
             10
             22
             2,3
             25
   .  .  .   z6. 6

 

CONTENTS



A DARK DAY
FALL
UNDERTONE
CONCLUSION
MONOCHROMES
DAYS AND DAYS
DROUTH IN AUTUMN
MID-WINTER
COLD
IN WINTER
ON THE FARM
PATHS.
A SONG IN SEASON
APART.
FAERY MORRIS
THE WORLD'S DESIRE
THE UNATTAINA-BLE
REMEMBERED . .
THE SEA SPIRIT .
A DREAM SHAPE.
THE VAMPIRE
WILL-O' -THE-WISP
THE HEADLESS HORSEMi
THE WERE-WOLF
THE TROGLODYTE
THE CITY OF DARKNESS
TRANSMUTATION ..
               viii



            PAGE
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             5'1
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   .... ........56
AN.  .     57
             59
             6z
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   .... .........65


 




          UNDERTONES




          THE DREAMER

EVEN as a child he loved to thrid the
        bowers,
And mark the loafing sunlight' s lazy laugh;
Or, on each season, spell the epitaph
Of its dead months repeated in their flowers;
Or list the music of the strolling showers,
Whose vagabond notes strummed through
    a twinkling staff;
Or read the day' s delivered monograph
Through all the chapters of its dadal
    hours.
Still with the same child-faith and child-
    regard
He looks on Nature, hearing, at her heart,
The beautiful beat out the time and place,
Whereby no lesson of this life is hard,
No struggle vain of science or of art,
That dies with failure written on its face.
                                 I1


 
UNDERTONES



                QUIET

A   LOG-HUT in the solitude,
      A clapboard roof to rest beneath!
This side, the shadow-haunted wood ;
  That side, the sunlight-haunted heath.

At daybreak Morn shall come to me
  In raiment of the white winds spun;
Slim in her rosy hand the key
  That opes the gateway of the sun.

Her smile shall help my heart enough
  With love to labor all the day,
And cheer the road, whose rocks are rough,
  With her smooth footprints, each a ray.

At dusk a voice shall call afar,
  A lone voice like the whippoorwill's;
And, on her shimmering brow one star,
  Night shall descend the western hills.

She at my door till dawn shall stand,
  With Gothic eyes, that, dark and deep,
Are mirrors of a mystic land,
  Fantastic with the towns of sleep.
    2


 
UNENCOURAGED ASPIRATION



           UNQUALIFIED
  NOT his the part to win the goal,
     The flaming goal that flies before,
  Into whose course the apples roll
    Of self that stay his feet the more.

  Beyond himself he shall not win
    Whose flesh is as a driven dust,
  That his own soul must wander in,
    Seeing no farther than his lust.

 UNENCOURAGED ASPIRATION
 IS mine the part of no companion hand
 1Of help, except my shadow's silent self
 A moonlight traveller in Fancy's land
 Of leering gnome and hollow-laughing elf;

 Whose forests deepen and whose moon
    goes down,
When Night's blind shadow shall usurp
    my own;
And, mid the dust and wreck of some
    old town,
The City of Dreams, I grope and fall alone.
                               3


 
UNDERTONES



           THE WOOD

W ITCH-HAZEL, dogwood, and the
AAT     maple here;
  And there the oak and hickory;
Linn, poplar, and the beech-tree, far and
      near
    As the eased eye can see.

Wild-ginger; wahoo, with its wan balloons;
  And brakes of briers of a twilight green;
And fox-grapes plumed with summer; and
      strung moons
    Of mandrake flowers between.

Deep gold-green ferns, and mosses red and
      gray,
  Mats for what naked myth's white feet -
And, cool and calm, a cascade far away
    With even-falling beat.

Old logs, made sweet with death; rough
      bits of bark;
  And tangled twig and knotted root;
And sunshine splashes and great pools of
      dark;
    And many a wild-bird's flute.
    4


 
WOOD NOTES



Here let me sit until the Indian, Dusk,
  With copper-colored feet, comes down;
Sowing the wildwood with star-fire and
      musk,
    And shadows blue and brown.

Then side by side with some magician
      dream,
  To take the owlet-haunted lane,
Half-roofed with vines; led by a firefly
      gleam,
    That brings me home again.


          WOOD NOTES

                  I.
  THERE is a flute that follows me
     From tree to tree:
 A water flute a spirit sets
 To silver lips in waterfalls,
 And through the breath of violets
     A sparkling music calls:
       "Hither! halloo! Oh, follow!
       Down leafy hill and hollow,
       Where, through clear swirls,
                                 5

 

UNDERTONES



    With feet like pearls,
    Wade up the blue-eyed country girls.
        Hither! halloo! Oh, follow!


                  II.

There is a pipe that plays to me
      From tree to tree:
A bramble pipe an elfin holds
To golden lips in berry brakes,
And, swinging o'er the elder wolds,
   A flickering music makes:
     " Come over! Come over
     The new-mown clover!
     Come over the new-mown hay!
     Where, there by the berries,
     W0ith cheeks like cherries,
     And locks with which the warm wind
           merries,
     Brown girls are hilling the hay,
           All day!
     Come over the fields and away!
     Come over! Come over!"



6


 
SONG



               SUCCESS
HOW some succeed who have least need,
   In that they make no effort for!
And pluck, where others pluck a weed,
The burning blossom of a star,
Grown from no earthly seed.
For some shall reap that never sow;
And some shall toil and not attain,
What boots it in ourselves to know
Such labor here is not in vain,
When we still see it so!


                SONG
   NTO the portal of the House of Song,
U Symbols of wrong and emblems of
       unrest,
And mottoes of despair and envious jest,
And stony masks of scorn and hate belong.

Who enters here shall feel his soul denied
All welcome: lo! the chiselled form of Love,
That stares in marble on the shrine above
The tomb of Beauty, where he dreamed and
    died!
                                7


 
UNDERTONES



Who enters here shall know no poppyflowers
Of Rest, or harp-tones of serene Content;
Only sad ghosts of music and of scent
Shall mock the mind with their remembered
    powers.

Here must he wait till striving patience carves
His name upon the century-storied floor;
His heart's blood staining one dim pane the
    more
In Fame's high casement while he sings and
    starves.


        THE OLD SPRING

                   I.
U NDER rocks whereon the rose,
     Like a strip of morning, glows;
Where the azure-throated newt
Drowses on the twisted root;
And the brown bees, humming homeward,
Stop to suck the honey-dew;
Fern and leaf-hid, gleaming gloamward,
Drips the wildwood spring I knew,
Drips the spring my boyhood knew.
     8

 
THE OLD SPRING



                II.

Myrrh and music everywhere
Haunt its cascades; - like the hair
That a naiad tosses cool,
Swimming strangely beautiful,
With white fragrance for her bosom,
For her mouth a breath of song; -
Under leaf and branch and blossom
Flows the woodland spring along,
Sparkling, singing, flows along.


              III.

Still the wet wan morns may touch
Its gray rocks, perhaps; and such
Slender stars as dusk may have
Pierce the rose that roofs its wave;
Still the thrush may call at noontide,
And the whippoorwill at night;
Nevermore, by sun or moontide,
Shall I see it gliding white,
Falling, flowing, wild and white.



9


 
UNDERTONES



HILLS OF THE WEST


HILLS of the west, that gird
      Forest and farm,
Home of the nestling bird,
  Housing from harm,
When on your tops is heard
      Storm:

Hills of the west, that bar
  Belts of the gloam,
Under the twilight star,
  Where the mists roam,
Take ye the wanderer
      Home.


Hills of the west, that dream
  Under the moon,
Making of wind and stream,
  Late-heard and soon,
Parts of your lives that seem
      Tune.



I 0


 
FLOWERS



     Hills of the west, that take
       Slumber to ye,
     Be it for sorrow's sake
       Or memory,
     Part of such slumber make
           Me.

           FLOWERS
    H, why for us the blighted bloom!
The blossom that lies withering!
The Master of Life's changeless loom
Hath wrought for us no changeless thing.

Where grows the rose of fadeless Grace
Wherethrough the Spirit manifests
The fact of an immortal race,
The dream on which religion rests.

Where buds the lily of our Faith 
That grows for us in unknown wise,
Out of the barren dust of death,
The pregnant bloom of Paradise.
In Heaven! so near that flowers know!
That flowers see how near! - and thus
Reflect the knowledge here below
Of love and life unknown to us.
                            I I


 
UNDERTONES



           SECOND SIGHT

THEY lean their faces to me through
Green windows of the woods;
Their white throats sweet with honey-dew
  Beneath low leafy hoods-
No dream they dream but hath been true
  Here in the solitudes.


Star trillium, in the underbrush,
  In whom Spring bares her face;
Sun eglantine, that breathes the blush
  Of Summer's quiet grace;
Moon mallow, in whom lives the hush
  Of Autumn's tragic pace.


For one hath heard the dryad's sighs
  Behind the covering bark;
And one hath felt the satyr's eyes
  Gleam in the bosky dark;
And one hath seen the naiad rise
  In waters all a-spark.



2


 
DEAD SEA FRUIT



I bend my soul unto them, stilled
  In worship man hath lost;
The old-world myths that science killed
  Are living things almost
To me through these whose forms are filled
  With Beauty's pagan ghost.

And through new eyes I seem to see
  The world these live within,
A shuttered world of mystery,
  Where unreal forms begin
The real of ideality
  That has no unreal kin.


        DEAD SEA FRUIT

A LL things have power to hold us back.
   Our very hopes build up a wall
Of doubt, whose shadow stretches black
           O'er all.

The dreams, that helped us once, become
Dread disappointments, that oppose
Dead eyes to ours, and lips made dumb
           With woes.
                               ' 3


 
UND ERTONES



  The thoughts that opened doors before
  Within the mind's house, hide away;
  Discouragement hath locked each door
           For aye.

  Come, loss, more frequently than gain!
  And failure than success! until
  The spirit's struggle to attain
           Is still!



       THE WOOD WITCH

THERE is a woodland witch who lies
   With bloom-bright limbs and beam-
        bright eyes,
Among the water-flags, that rank
The slow brook's heron-haunted bank:
The dragon-flies, in brass and blue,
Are signs she works her sorcery through;
Weird, wizard characters she weaves
Her spells by under forest leaves, -
These wait her word, like imps, upon
The gray flag-pods; their wings, of lawn
And gauze; their bodies gleamy green.
While o'er the wet sand, - left between
     14

 
THE WOOD WITCH



The running water and the still,
In pansy hues and daffodil,
The fancies that she meditates
Take on most sumptuous shapes, with traits
Like butterflies. 'T is she you hear,
Whose sleepy rune, hummed in the ear
Of silence, bees and beetles purr,
And the dry-droning locusts whirr;
Till, where the wood is very lone,
Vague monotone meets monotone,
And slumber is begot and born,
A faery child, beneath the thorn.
There is no mortal who may scorn
The witchery she spreads around
Her dim demesne, wherein is bound
The beauty of abandoned time,
As some sweet thought 'twixt rhyme and
      rhyme.
And by her spell you shall behold
The blue turn gray, the gray turn gold
Of hollow heaven; and the brown
Of twilight vistas twinkled down
With fire-flies; and, in the gloom,
Feel the cool vowels of perfume
Slow-syllabled of weed and bloom.
But, in the night, at languid rest,
When like a spirit's naked breast
                               I 5


 
UNDERTONES



The moon slips from a silver mist, -
With star-bound brow, and star-wreathed
     wrist,
If you should see her rise and wave
You welcome, - ah! what thing shall save
You then  forevermore her slave!


             AT SUNSET

INTO the sunset' s turquoise marge
    The moon dips, like a pearly barge
Enchantment sails through magic seas,
To fairyland Hesperides,
       Over the hills and away.

Into the fields, in ghost-gray gown,
The young-eyed Dusk comes slowly down;
Her apron filled with stars she stands,
And one or two slip from her hands
       Over the hills and away.

Above the wood's black caldron bends
The witch-faced Night and, muttering, blends
The dew and heat, whose bubbles make
The mist and musk that haunt the brake
      Over the hills and away.


 
MAY



     Oh, come with me, and let us go
     Beyond the sunset lying low,
     Beyond the twilight and the night,
     Into Love's kingdom of long light,
           Over the hills and away.



                 MAY

rHE golden disks of the rattlesnake-weed,
T That spangle the woods and dance -
No gleam of gold that the twilights hold
  Is strong as their necromance:
For, under the oaks where the wood-paths
       lead,
The golden disks of the rattlesnake-weed
  Are the May's own utterance.

The azure stars of the bluet bloom
  That sprinkle the woodland's trance-
No blink of blue that a cloud lets through
  Is sweet as their countenance:
For, over the knolls that the woods perfume,
The azure stars of the bluet bloom
  Are the light of the May's own glance.
                               I 7


 
UNDERTONES



With her wondering words and her looks
      she comes,
  In a sunbeam of a gown;
She needs but think and the blossoms wink,
  But look, and they shower down.
By orchard ways, where the wild-bee hums,
With her wondering words and her looks
      she comes,
  Like a little maid to town.



     THE WIND OF SPRING

r  HE wind that breathes of columbines
   And bleeding-hearts that crowd the
          rocks ;
That shakes the balsam of the pines
With music from his flashing locks,
Stops at my city door and knocks.

He calls me far a-forest; where
The twin-leaf and the blood-root bloom;
And, circled by the amber air,
Life sits with beauty and perfume
Weaving the new web of her loom.
     i8


 
INTERPRETED



He calls me where the waters run
Through fronding ferns where haunts the
      hern;
And, sparkling in the equal sun,
Song leans beside her brimming urn,
And dreams the dreams that love shall learn.

The wind has summoned, and I go,
To con God' s meaning in each line
The flowers write, and, walking slow,
God' s purpose, of which song is sign,
The wind's great, gusty hand in mine.


          INTERPRETED

V5 THAT magic shall solve us the secret
VV Of beauty that's born for an hour
That gleams like the flight of an egret,
  Or burns like the scent of a flower,
      With death for a dower

What leaps in the bosk but a satyr 
  What pipes on the wind but a faun 
Or laughs in the waters that scatter,
  But limbs of a nymph who is gone,
      When we walk in the dawn
                              19


 
UNDERTONES



What sings on the hills but a fairy 
  Or sighs in the fields but a sprite 
What breathes through the leaves but the airy
  Soft spirits of shadow and light,
      When we walk in the night 

Behold how the world-heart is eager
  To draw us and hold us and claim!
Through truths of the dreams that beleaguer
  Her soul she makes ours the same,
      And death but a name.



      THE WILLOW BOTTOM

L USH green the grass that grows between
  L The willows of the bottom-land;
Verged by the careless water, tall and green,
The brown-topped cat-tails stand.

The cows come gently here to browse,
Slow through the great-leafed sycamores;
You hear a dog bark from a low-roofed house
With cedars round its doors.



20

 
THE WILLOW BOTTOM



Then all is quiet as the wings
Of the high buzzard floating there;
Anon a woman's high-pitched voice that
       sings
An old camp-meeting air.

A flapping cock that crows; and then-
Heard drowsy through the rustling corn
A flutter, and the cackling of a hen
Within a hay-sweet barn.

How still again! no water stirs;
No wind is heard ; although the weeds
Are waved a little; and from silk-filled burrs
Drift by a few soft seeds.

So drugged with sleep and dreams, that you
Expect to see her gliding by, -
Hummed round of bees, through blossoms
       spilling dew,-
The Spirit of July.



221


 

UNDERTONES



          THE OLD BARN

LOW, swallow-swept and gray,
Between the orchard and the spring,
All its wide windows overflowing hay,
And crannied doors a-swing,
The old barn stands to-day.

Deep in its hay the Leghorn hides
A round white nest; and, humming soft
On roof and rafter, or its log-rude sides,
Black in the sun-shot loft,
The building hornet glides.

Along its corn-crib, cautiously
As thieving fingers, skulks the rat;
Or, in warped stalls of fragrant timothy,
Gnaws at some loosened slat,
Or passes shadowy.

A dream of drouth made audible
Before its door, hot, smooth, and shrill
All day the locust sings. . . . What other
       spell
Shall hold it, lazier still
Than the long day' s, now tell -
      2


 
CLEARING



Dusk and the cricket and the strain
Of tree-toad and of frog; and stars
That burn above the rich west's ribbdd stain;
And dropping pasture bars,
And cow-bells up the lane.
Night and the moon and katydid,
And leaf-lisp of the wind-touched boughs;
And mazy shadows that the fire-flies thrid;
And sweet breath of the cows;
And the lone owl here hid.

             CLEARING
BEFORE the wind, with rain-drowned
    B  stocks,
The pleated crimson hollyhocks
         Are bending;
And, smouldering in the breaking brown,
Above the hills that edge the town,
         The day is ending.
The air is heavy with the damp;
And, one by one, each cottage lamp
         Is lighted ;
Infrequent passers of the street
Stroll on or stop to talk or greet,
        Benighted.

 
UNDERTONES



I look beyond my city yard,
And watch the white moon struggling hard,
         Cloud-buried;
The wind is driving toward the east,
A wreck of pearl, all cracked and creased
         And serried.

At times the moon, erupting, streaks
Some long cloud ; like Andean peaks
         That double
Horizon-vast volcano chains,
The earthquake scars with lava veins
         That bubble.

The wind that blows from out the hills
Is like a woman's touch that stills
         A sorrow:
The moon sits high with many a star
In the deep calm: and fair and far
         Abides to-morrow.



24


 
REQUIEM



                   1.
N O more for him, where hills look down,
.. Is  Shall Morning crown
Her rainy brow with blossom bands! -
         Whose rosy hands
Drop wild flowers of the breaking skies
Upon the sod 'neath which he lies.-
         No more! no more!

                  II.
No more for him where waters sleep,
         Shall Evening heap
The long gold of the perfect days!
         Vhose pale hand lays
Great poppies of the afterglow
Upon the turf he rests below. -
         No more! no more!

                  III.
No more for him, where woodlands loom,
         Shall Midnight bloom
The star-flow'red acres of the blue!
         Whose brown hands strew
Dead leaves of darkness, hushed and deep,
Upon the grave where he doth sleep.-
         No more! no more!
                               25


 
UNDERTONES



                  IV.
The hills that Morning's footsteps wake;
        The waves that take
A brightness from the Eve , the woods
        O'er which Night broods,
Their spirits have, whose parts are one
With his whose mortal part is done.
        Whose part is done!



             AT LAST

      W5 THAT shall be said to him,
      ,VvNow he is dead
      Now that his eyes are dim,
        Low lies his head 
      What shall be said to him,
        Now he is dead 

      One word to whisper of
        Low in his ear i
      Sweet, but the one word "love"
        Haply he'll hear.
      One word to whisper of
        Low in his ear.
     z6


 
A DARK DAY



        What shall be given him,
          Now he is dead 
        Now that his eyes are dim,
          Low lies his head 
        What shall be given him,
          Now he is dead 

        Hope, that life long denied
          Here to his heart,
        Sweet, lay it now beside,
          Never to part.
        Hope, that life long denied
           Here to his heart.


           A DARK DAY

THOUGH Summer walks the world to-
       day
  With corn-crowned hours for her guard,
Her thoughts have clad themselves in gray,
  And wait in Autumn's weedy yard.

And where the larkspur and the phlox
  Spread carpets wheresoe'er she pass,
She seems to stand with sombre locks
  Bound bleak with fog-washed zinnias. -
                               27


 
UNDERTONES



Fall's terra-cotta-colored flowers,
  Whose disks the trickling wet has tinged
With dingy lustre when the bower's
  Thin, flame-flecked leaves the frost has
      singed;

Or with slow feet, 'mid gaunt gold blooms
  Of marigolds her fingers twist,
She seems to pass with Fall's perfumes,
  And dreams of sullen rain and mist.



                 FALL

SAD-HEARTED spirit of the solitudes,
     Who comest through the ruin-wedded
       woods !
Gray-gowned with fog, gold-girdled with
       the gloom
Of tawny twilights ; burdened with perfume
Of rain-wet uplands, chilly with the mist;
And all the beauty of the fire-kissed
Cold forests crimsoning thy indolent way,
Odorous of death and drowsy with decay.


 
UNDERTONE



I think of thee as seated 'mid the showers
Of languid leavesthat cover up the flowers,-_
The little flower-sisterhoods, whom June
Once gave wild sweetness to, as to a tune
A singer gives her soul's wild melody,-
Watching the squirrel store his granary.
Or, 'mid old orchards I have pictured thee .
Thy hair' s profusion blown about thy back;
One lovely shoulder bathed with gipsy black;
Upon thy palm one nestling cheek, and sweet
The rosy ruissets tumbled at thy feet.
Was it a voice lamenting for the flowers 
A heart-sick bird, that sang of happier hours
A cricket dirging days that soon must die 
Or did the ghost of Summer wander by 




            UNDERTONE

 A H me! too soon the Autumn comes
 AAmong these purple-plaintive hills!
Too soon among the forest gums
Premonitory flame she spills,
Bleak, melancholy flame that kills.



29


 

UNDERTONES



  Her white fogs veil the morn that rims
  With wet the moonflow'r's elfin moons;
  And, like exhausted starlight, dims
  The last slim lily-disk ; and swoons
  With scents of hazy afternoons.

  Her gray mists haunt the sunset skies,
  And build the west's cadaverous fire,
  Where Sorrow sits with lonely eyes,
  And hands that wake her ancient lyre,
  Beside the ghost of dead Desire.



            CONCLUSION

THE songs Love sang to us are dead:
1 Yet shall he sing to us again,
When the dull days are wrapped in lead,
And the red woodland drips with rain.

The lily of our love is gone,
That touched our spring with golden scent;
Now in the garden low upon
The wind-stripped way its stalk is bent.



30

 
CONCLUSION



Our rose of dreams is passed away,
That lit our summer with sweet fire;
The storm beats bare each thorny spray,
And its dead leaves are trod in mire.

The songs Love sang to us are dead;
Yet shall he sing to us again,
When the dull days are wrapped in lead,
And the red woodland drips with rain.

The marigold of memory
Shall fill our autumn then with glow;
Haply its bitterness will be
Sweeter than love of long ago.

The cypress of forgetfulness
Shall haunt our winter with its hue,
The apathy to us not less
Dear than the dreams our summer knew.



3I


 
UNDERTONES



          MONOCHROMES

                   I.
THE last rose falls, wrecked of the wind
      and rain;
Where once it bloomed the thorns alone
      remain:
  Dead in the wet the slow rain strews the
      rose.
The day was dim; now eve comes on again,
  Grave as a life weighed down by many
      woes,
So is the joy dead, and alive the pain.

The brown leaf flutters where the green leaf
      died;
Bare are the boughs, and bleak the forest side:
  The wind is whirling with the last wild
      leaf.
The eve was strange; now dusk comes weird
      and wide,
  Gaunt as alife that livesalone with grief,
So doth the hope go and despair abide.
     32

 
MONOCHROMES



An empty nest hangs where the wood-bird
      pled;
Along the west the dusk dies, stormy red:
  The frost is subtle as a serpent's breath.
The dusk was sad i now night is overhead,
  Grim as a soul brought face to face with
      death
So life lives on when love, its life, lies dead.


                  II.

Go your own ways. Who shall persuade
      me now
  To seek with high face for a star of hope 
  Or up endeavor's unsubmissive slope
Advance a bosom of desire, and bow
  A back of patience in a thankless task 
  Alone beside the grave of love I ask,
         Shalt thou  or thou 


Leave go my hands. Fain would I walk
      alone
  The easy ways of silence and of sleep.
  What though I go with eyes that cannot
      weep,
                               33


 
UNDERTONES



And lips contracted with no uttered moan,
  Through rocks and thorns, where every
      footprint bleeds,
  A dead-sea path of desert night that leads
        To one white stone!

Though sands be black and bitter black the
      sea,
  Night lie before me and behind me night,
  And God within far Heaven refuse to light
The consolation of the dawn for me, -
  Between the shadowy bournes of Heaven
      and Hell,
  It is enough love leaves my soul to dwell
        With memory.



        DAYS AND DAYS

THE days that clothed white limbs with
     heat,
  And rocked the red rose on their breast,
Have passed with amber-sandalled feet
  Into the ruby-gated west.



34


 
DROUTH IN AUTUMN



These were the days that filled the heart
  With overflowing riches of
Life; in whose soul no dream shall start
  But hath its origin in love.

Now come the days gray-huddled in
  The haze; whose foggy footsteps drip;
Who pin beneath a gipsy chin
  The frosty marigold and hip.-

The days, whose forms fall shadowy
  Athwart the heart ; whose misty breath
Shapes saddest sweets of memory
  Out of the bitterness of death.




      DROUTH IN AUTUMN

G NARLED acorn-oaks against a west
     Of copper, cavernous with fire;
A wind of frost that gives no rest
  To such lean leaves as haunt the brier,
  And hide the cricket's vibrant wire.



35


 
UNDERTONES



Sear, shivering shocks, and stubble blurred
  With bramble-blots of dull marooni
And creekless hills whereon no herd
  Finds pasture, and whereo'er the loon
  Flies, haggard as the rainless moon.



           MID-WINTER

ALL day the clouds hung ashen with the
       cold i
And through the snow the muffled waters
       fell i
The day seemed drowned in grief too deep
       to tell,
Like some old hermit whose last bead is told.
At eve the Wind woke, and the snow-clouds
       roiled
Aside to leave the fierce sky visible;
Harsh as an iron landscape of wan hell
The dark hills hung framed in with gloomy
      gold.
And then, towards night, the wind seemed
       some one at
My window wailing: now a little child
Crying outside the door ; and now the long
      36


 
COLD



Howl of some starved beast down the flue.
       I sat
And knew 't was Winter with his madman
       song
Of miseries, whereon he stared and smiled.



                 COLD

 A MIST that froze beneath the moon
 A    and shook
 Minutest frosty fire in the air.
All night the wind was still as lonely Care
Who sighs before her shivering ingle-nook.
The face of Winter wore a crueler look
Than when he shakes the icicles from his
       hair,
And, in the boisterous pauses, lets his stare
Freeze through the forest, fettering bough
      and brook.
He is the despot now who sits and dreams
Of Desolation and Despair, and smiles
At Poverty, who hath no place to rest,
Who wanders o'er Life's snow-made path-
       less miles,
                                37


 

UNDERTONES



And sees the Home-of-Comfort's window
      gleams,
And hugs her rag-wrapped baby to her
      breast.



            IN WINTER

                  I.
W5 THEN black frosts pluck the acorns
   VY down,
   And in the lane the waters freeze;
And 'thwart red skies the wild-fowl flies,
  And death sits grimly 'mid the trees ;
When home-lights glitter in the brown
  Of dusk like shaggy eyes, -
Before the door his feet, sweetheart,
And two white arms that greet, sweetheart,
    And two white arms that greet.

                  II.
When ways are drifted with the leaves,
  And winds make music in the thorns;
And lone and lost above the frost
  The new moon shows its silver horns;
     38


 
ON THE FARM



  When underneath the lamp-lit eaves
    The opened door is crossed, --
  A happy heart and light, sweetheart,
  And lips to kiss good-night, sweetheart,
      And lips to kiss good-night.



          ON THE FARM

                   I.
HE sang a song as he sowed the field,
11    Sowed the field at break of day:
"When the pursed-up leaves are as lips that
      yield
Balm and balsam, and Spring, - concealed
In the odorous green, - is so revealed,
         Halloo and oh !
Hallo for the woods and the far away!"

                    II.
He trilled a song as he mowed the mead,
  Mowed the mead as noon begun:
" When the hills are gold with the ripened
       seed,
As the sunset stairs that loom and lead
                                39

 
UNDERTONES



To the sky where Summer knows naught
           of need,
         Halloo and oh
Hallo for the hills and the harvest sun !'

                  III.

He hummed a song as he swung the flail,
  Swung the flail in the afternoon:
"XWhen the idle fields are a wrecker's tale,
That the Autumn tells to the twilight pale,
As the Year turns seaward a crimson sail,
         Halloo and oh !
Hallo for the fields and the hunter' s-moon!"

                  IV.

He whistled a song as he shouldered his axe,
  Shouldered his axe in the evening storm:
"When the snow of the road shows the
      rabbit's tracks,
And the wind is a whip that the Winter
      cracks,
With a herdsman' s cry, o'er the clouds'
           black backs,
         Halloo and oh!
Hallo for home and a hearth to warm !'
    40


 

PATHS



                    I.

W5 jwHAT words of mine can tell the spell
      Of garden ways I know so well  _
The path that takes me, in the spring,
Past quinces where the blue-birds sing,
Where peonies are blossoming,
Unto a porch, wistaria-hung,
Around whose steps May-lilies blow,
A fair girl reaches down among,
Her arm more white than their sweet snow.


                   IL.
What words of mine can tell the spell
Of garden ways I know so well 
Another path that leads me, when