Blooms of the Berry

HAWKING

I

 
I see them still, when poring o'er
Old volumes of romantic lore,
Ride forth to hawk in days of yore,
By woods and promontories;
Knights in gold lace, plumes and gems,
Maidens crowned with anadems, —
Whose falcons on round wrists of milk
Sit in jesses green of silk, —
From bannered Miraflores.
 

II

 
The laughing earth is young with dew;
The deeps above are violet blue;
And in the East a cloud or two
Empearled with airy glories:
And with laughter, jest and singing,
Silver bells of falcons ringing,
Hawkers, rosy with the dawn,
Gayly ride o'er hill and lawn
From courtly Miraflores.
 

III

 
The torrents silver down the crags;
Down dim-green vistas browse the stags;
And from wet beds of reeds and flags
The frightened lapwing hurries;
And the brawny wild-boar peereth
At the cavalcade that neareth;
Oft his shaggy-throated grunt
Brings the king and court to hunt
At royal Miraflores.
 

IV

 
The May itself in soft sea-green
Is Oriana, Spring's high queen,
And Amadis beside her seen
Some prince of Fairy stones:
Where her castle's ivied towers
Drowse above her budded bowers,
Flaps the heron thro' the sky,
And the wild swan gives a cry
By woody Miraflores.
 

LA BEALE ISOUD

I

 
With bloodshot eyes the morning rose
Upon a world of gloom and tears;
A kindred glance queen Isoud shows —
Come night, come morn, cease not her fears.
The fog-clouds whiten all the vale,
The sunlight draws them to its love;
The diamond dews wash ev'ry dale,
Where bays the hunt within the grove.
Her lute – the one her touch he taught
To wake beneath the stars a song
Of swan-caught music – is as naught
And on yon damask lounge is flung.
Down o'er her cheeks her hair she draws
In golden rays 'twixt lily tips,
And gazes sad on gloomy shaws
'Neath which had often touched their lips.
 

II

 
With irised eyes, from morn to noon.
And noon to middle night she stoops
From her high lattice 'neath the moon,
Hoping to see him 'mid the groups
Of mail-swathed braves come jingling by.
And once there came a dame in weft
All pearl besprent, as when the sky
A springtide day hath wept and left
A stormy eve one flash of gems.
"'Mid neatherds he's a naked waif
Unwitted," said she, lipping scorn:
And shook deep curls with a weak laugh
Tib clinked the gold thick in them worn.
 

III

 
"How long to wait!" and far she bent
From her tall casement toward the lawn;
A prospect of a wide extent
Glassed in her eyes and hateful shown.
Along the white lake windy crags
Blue with coarse brakes and ragged pines;
A bandit keep with trembling flags;
And barren scars, and waste marsh lines,
And now a palfried dame and knight.
Deep deer-behaunted forests old,
Whose sinewy boughs dark blocked the cave
Of Heav'n o'er Earth; a blasted hold
'Mid livid fields; a torrent's wave.
And o'er the bridge whose marble arched
The torrent's foam, dim in the dew
Of morning, one all glimmering marched
In glittering steel from helm to shoe,
With lance whose fang smote back the dawn.
 

IV

 
Selled on a barb whose trappings shone
Red brass, – a morning star of jousts
Upon the dawning beaming lone
Burst from the hills' empurpled crusts.
A lying star, whose double tongue
Was slave to gold: "I saw him die! —
'Tis ruth, for he was brave and young, —
I saw him in the close clay lie."
Then passed he rattling from the court…
So grief in furrows ploughed her front's
Smooth surface wan, and toward the eve, —
The bloodshot eve upon the mounts,
Who o'er day's flow'ry bier did grieve
And bow her melancholy star, —
O'er teenful eyes she bent the light
Of her crown-crescent's gem, and far
She lingered till the full-mooned night
Showered ripple-stars the gray mere o'er.
 

V

 
"And I'm like her who trims a flame
Of sickly color, bowing low
To balk the wind; in wanton game
One stoops in secret toward her brow
With wind-bulged cheeks, a quick breath sends —
And then the world is blind with gloom,
And filled with phantoms and with fiends,
That strain huge eyes and jibe her doom."
Thus thought Isoud in her despair,
Of Launcelot then thoughts grew on,
And Arthur's lovely queen away
In castled courts of Caerleon,
And all their joy and dalliance gay.
Until she could have thawed the spars
Of her clear-fountained eyes to tears,
And gush wild grief long-seared by wars
Of passionate anguish and great fears:
"Oh Tristram gone! oh death in life!"
Soft down below in the thick dark
A fountain throbbed monotonous foam,
Unseen within the starlit park,
Deep in the tower's shadowed dome.
"And thus my heart drums frigid life
In hateful gloom of fear and woe!
One flood of sorrow, cataract-rife,
My full-flush heart streams come and go
Since Tristram's gone and I'm alone!"
 

VI

 
Then sunk the moon, and far away,
Beside the bickering lake, the towers
Of bandit braves shone tall and gray,
Like specters in her lonely hours.
And 'twixt the nodding grove and lake
A glimmering fawn stalked thro' the night;
And with full brow the musks did take,
Then bowed to drink – she veiled her sight
And moaning said, "Death is but life!
The fawn 'mid lilies from the mere
Sucks genial draughts to dull its thirsts;
O fondest spirit, art thou near?
Draw to thy soul this soul that bursts!
The vivid lilies to the stars
Clasp their white eyes and sink to sleep:
O anguish, to thy burning wars
Lock my sad heart and drag it deep!" —
Albeit she slept, she dreamed in grief.
 

BELTENEBROS AT MIRAFLORES

I

 
The quickening East climbs to yon star,
That, cradled, rocks herself in morn;
The liquid silver broad'ning far
Dawn drencheth cliff, holt, down and tarn.
The trembling splendors gild the sky,
Breath'd from her tawny champion's lips;
The clear green dews above me lie,
Their lustre the dark eyelash tips
Of Oriana sitting by.
 
 
The crested cock 'mid his stout dames
Crows from the purple-clover hill;
His glossy coat the morn enflames,
And all his leaping heart doth thrill.
His curving tail sickles the plume
That rosy nods against his eye.
Laughs from deep beds of twinkling bloom
The lilied East when wand'reth nigh
My Oriana in the gloom.
 
 
The rooks swarm clatt'ring 'round the tow'rs;
The falcon jingles in the air;
The bursting dawn around him show'rs
A clinging glory of wan glare.
From the green knoll the shouting hunt
With swollen cheeks clangs his alarms;
Mayhap I hear the bristler's grunt:
But where my Oriana charms
The wood, hushed is its ev'ry haunt.
 
 
The willowed lake is cool with cloud
Breaking and dimming into shreds,
Which gauze the azure, thinly crowd
The mist-pink West with hazy threads.
A wild swan ruffles o'er the mere
Soft as the drifting of a soul;
A double swan she doth appear
In mirage fixed 'twixt pole and pole
When Oriana singeth near.
 

II

 
Spring high into the shuddering stars,
O florid sunset, burning gold!
Flash on our eyeballs lurid bars
To beam them with air-fires cold!
The blowing dingles soak with light,
The purple coppice hang with blaze;
But where we stand a meeker white
Bloom on us thro' the hill's soft haze,
For Oriana stars the night!
 
 
Float from the East, O silver world,
Unto the ocean of the West;
And the foam-sparkles upward hurled,
That fringe the twilight's surging crest,
Snatch up and gather 'round thy brow
In lustrous twine of rosy heat,
And rain on us its starry glow, —
O fragment of the evetide's sheet, —
And Oriana's eyes o'erflow.
 
 
O courting cricket, with thy pipe
Now shrill true love thro' the warm grain
O feathered buds, that nodding stripe
The blue glen's night, sigh love again!
Thou glimmering bird, that aye doth wail
From some wind-wavered branch of snow,
Sweep down the moonlit, hay-sweet dale
Thy bubbled anguish, swooning low,
For Oriana walks the vale!
 
 
The moon comes sowing all the eve
With myriad star-grains of her light;
The torrent on the crag doth grieve;
The glittering lake is smooth with night.
O mellow lights that o'er us slide,
O wrinkled woods that ridge the steep,
O bearded stems that billowing glide,
With laughing night-dews happy weep,
For Oriana'll be my bride!
 

THE IDEAL

 
Thee have I seen in some waste Arden old,
A white-browed maiden by a foaming stream,
With eyes profound and looks like threaded gold,
And features like a dream.
 
 
Upon thy wrist the jessied falcon fleet,
A silver poniard chased with imageries
Hung at a buckled belt, while at thy feet
The gasping heron dies.
 
 
Have fancied thee in some quaint ruined keep
A maiden in chaste samite, and her mien
Like that of loved ones visiting our sleep,
Or of a fairy queen.
 
 
She, where the cushioned ivy dangling hoar
Disturbs the quiet of her sable hair,
Pores o'er a volume of romantic lore,
Or hums an olden air.
 
 
Or a fair Bradamant both brave and just,
Intense with steel, her proud face lit with scorn,
At heathen castles, demons' dens of lust,
Winding her bugle horn.
 
 
Just as stern Artegal; in chastity
A second Britomart; in hardihood
Like him who 'mid King Charles' chivalry
A pillared sunbeam stood.
 
 
Or one in Avalon's deep-dingled bowers,
On which old yellow stars and waneless moons
Look softly, while white downy-lippèd flowers
Lisp faint and fragrant tunes.
 
 
Where haze-like creatures with smooth houri forms
Stoop thro' the curling clouds and float and smile,
While calm as hope in all her dreamy charms
Sleeps the enchanted isle.
 
 
And where cool, heavy bow'rs unstirred entwine,
Upon a headland breasting purple seas,
A crystal castle like a thought divine
Rises in mysteries.
 
 
And there a sorceress full beautiful
Looks down the surgeless reaches of the deep,
And, bubbling from her lily throat, songs lull
The languid air to sleep.
 
 
About her brow a diadem of spars,
At her fair casement seated fleecy white
Heark'ning wild sirens choiring to the stars
Thro' all the raven night.
 
 
And when she bends above the glow-lit waves
She sees the sea-king's templed city old
Wrought from huge shells and labyrinthine caves
Ribbed red with rusty gold.
 
 
But nor the sirens' nor the ocean king's
Love will she heed, but still sits yearning there
To have the secret bird that vaguely sings
Her aching heart to share.
 

TREACHERY

I

 
Came a spicy smell of showers
On the purple wings of night,
And a pearl-encrusted crescent
On the lake looked still and white,
While a sound of distant singing
From the vales rose sad and light.
 

II

 
Dripped the musk of sodden roses
From their million heavy sprays,
And the nightingales were sobbing
Of the roses amorous praise
Where the raven down of even
Caught the moonlight's bleaching rays.
 

III

 
And the turrets of the palace,
From its belt of ancient trees,
On the mountain rose romantic
White as foam from troubled seas;
And the murmur of an ocean
Smote the chords of ev'ry breeze.
 

IV

 
Where the moon shone on the terrace
And its fountain's lisping foam;
Where the bronzen urns of flowers
Breathed faint perfume thro' the gloam,
By the alabaster Venus
'Neath the quiet stars we'd roam.
 

V

 
And we stopped beside the statue
Of the marble Venus there
Deeply pedestaled 'mid roses,
Who their crimson hearts laid bare,
Breathing out their lives in fragrance
At her naked feet and fair.
 

VI

 
And we marked the purple dingles
Where the lazy vapors lolled,
Like thin, fleecy ribs of moonlight
Touched with amethyst and gold;
And we marked the wild deer glimmer
Like dim specters where they strolled…
 

VII

 
But from out those treach'rous roses
Crept a serpent and it stung,
Poisoned him who'd tuned my heart-strings
Till for him alone they sung,
Froze the nerves of hands that only
From its chords a note had wrung.
 

VIII

 
Now the nightingales in anguish
To cold, ashen roses moan;
Now a sound of desolate wailing
In the darkened palace lone
From a harp Æolian quavers
Broken on an empty throne.
 

ORLANDO MAD

I

 
In mail of black my limbs I girt,
Angelica!
And when the bugles clanged the charge,
The rolling battle's bristling marge
Beheld me a black storm of war
Dash on the foe;
While Durindana glitt'ring far
Made many a foeman mouth the dirt
In bleeding woe: —
For thou didst fire me to the war
'Mid many a Paynim scimetar,
Angelica!
 

II

 
No more the battle fires my blood,
Angelica!
No more gay lists flaunt all their guiles,
And chivalry's charge, and beauty's smiles!
I wander lone the thistly wold
When night-snows fall,
And crispy frosts the wild grass hold.
Great knights go glimmering thro' the wood,
The clarion's call
Wakes War upon his desert wold —
I see the dawning breaking cold,
Angelica!
 

III

 
When Southern winds sowed all the skies,
Angelica!
With bloom-storms of the flowering May;
When all the battle-field was gay
With scented garb of sainted flowers,
I found a stream
Cold as thy heart to paramours!
Deep as the depth of thy blue eyes!
And like a dream
I found a grotto 'mid the flowers,
Cool 'mid the sunlight-sprinkled bowers,
Angelica!
 

IV

 
My casque I dofft to scoop the fount,
Angelica!
With beaded pureness bubbling cool —
It clashed into the purling pool; —
Thy name lay chiseled in the rock,
And underneath —
And then meseemed deep night did block
My steel-chained heart in one huge mount
Foreshadowing death! —
Medoro deep in every rock!
The Moorish name my soul did mock,
Angelica!
 

V

 
No more wild war my veins ensteeps,
Angelica!
No more gay lists flaunt all their guiles! —
White wastes before me miles on miles
With one low, ruby sunset bound —
Thou fleest before,
I follow on: a far off sound
Of oceans gnawing at dark steeps
Swells to a roar. —
'Mid foam thou smil'st: I spurn the ground —
I sink, I swim, waves hiss around —
Oh, could I sink 'neath the profound,
And think of thee no more!
 

THE HAUNTED ROOM

 
Its casements' diamond disks of glass
Stare myriad on a terrace old,
Where urns, unkempt with ragged grass,
Foam o'er with frothy cold.
The snow rounds o'er each stair of stone;
The frozen fount is hooped with pearl;
Down desolate walks, like phantoms lone,
Thin, powd'ry snow-wreaths whirl.
 
 
And to each rose-tree's stem that bends
With silver snow-combs, glued with frost,
It seems each summer rosebud sends
Its airy, scentless ghost.
The stiff Elizabethan pile
Chatters with cold thro' all its panes,
And rumbling down each chimney file
The mad wind shakes his reins.
 

* * * * * * *

 
Lone in the Northern angle, dim
With immemorial dust, it lay,
Where each gaunt casement's stony rim
Stared lidless to the day.
Drear in the Northern angle, hung
With olden arras dusky, where
Tall, shadowy Tristrams fought and sung
For shadowy Isolds fair.
 
 
Lies by a dingy cabinet
A tarnished lute upon the floor;
A talon-footed chair is set
Grotesquely by the door.
A carven, testered bedstead stands
With rusty silks draped all about;
And like a moon in murky lands
A mirror glitters out.
 
 
Dark in the Northern angle, where
In musty arras eats and clings
The drowsy moth; and frightened there
The wild wind sighs and sings
Adown the roomy flue and takes
And swings the ghostly mirror till
It shrieks and creaks, then pulls and shakes
The curtains with a will.
 
 
A starving mouse forever gnaws
Behind a polished panel dark,
And 'long the floor its shadow draws
A poplar in the park.
I have been there when blades of light
Stabbed each dull, stained, and dusty pane;
I have been there at dead of night,
But never will again…
 
 
She grew upon my vision as
Heat sucked from the dry summer sod;
In taffetas as green as grass
Silent and faint she trod;
And angry jewels winked and frowned
In serpent coils on neck and wrist,
And 'round her dainty waist was wound
A zone of silver mist.
 
 
And icy fair as some bleak land
Her pale, still face stormed o'er with night
Of raven tresses, and her hand
Was beautiful and white.
Before the ebon mirror old
Full tearfully she made her moan,
And then a cock crew far and cold;
I looked and she was gone.
 
 
As if had come a sullying breath
And from the limpid mirror passed,
Her presence past, like some near death
Leaving my blood aghast.
Tho' I've been there when blades of light
Stabbed each dull, stained, and dusty pane;
Tho' I've been there at dead of night,
I never will again.
 

SERENADE

 
By the burnished laurel line
Glimmering flows the singing stream;
Oily eddies crease and shine
O'er white pebbles, white as cream.
 
 
Richest roses bud or die
All about the splendid park;
Fountains glass a wily eye
Where the fawns browse in the dark.
 
 
Amber-belted through the night
Floats the alabaster moon,
Stooping o'er th' acacia white
Where my mandolin I tune.
 
 
By the twinkling mere I sing
Where lake lilies stretch pale eyes,
And a bulbul there doth fling
Music at the moon who flies.
 
 
With a broken syrinx there,
From enameled beds of buds,
Rises Pan in hoof and hair —
Moonlight his dim sculpture floods.
 
 
The pale jessamines have felt
The large passion of her gaze;
See! they part – their glories melt
Round her in a starry haze.
 

THE MIRROR

 
An antique mirror this,
I like it not at all,
In this lonely room where the goblin gloom
Scowls from the arrased wall.
 
 
A mystic mirror framed
In ebon, wildly carved;
And the prisoned air in the crevice there
Moans like a man that's starved.
A truthful mirror where,
In the broad, chaste light of day,
From the window's arches, like fairy torches,
Red roses swing and sway.
 
 
They blush and bow and gaze,
Proud beauties desolate,
In their tresses cold the sunlight's gold,
In their hearts a jealous hate.
 
 
A small green worm that gnaws,
For the nightingale that low
Each eve doth rave, the passionate slave
Of the wild white rose below.
 
 
The night-bird wails below;
The stars creep out above;
And the roses soon in the sultry moon
Shall palpitate with love.
 
 
The night-bird sobs below;
The roses blow and bloom;
Thro' the diamond panes the moonlight rains
In the dim unholy room.
 
 
Ancestors grim that stare
Stiff, starched, and haughty down
From the oaken wall of the noble hall
Put on a sterner frown.
 
 
The old, bleak castle clock
Booms midnight overhead,
And the rose is wan and the bird is gone
When walk the shrouded dead.
 
 
And grim ancestors gaunt
In smiles and tears faint flit;
By the mirror there they stand and stare,
And weep and sigh to it.
 
 
In rare, rich ermine earls
With rapiers jeweled rare,
With a powdered throng of courtiers long
Pass with stiff and stately air.
 
 
With diamonds and perfumes
In ruff and golden lace,
Tall ladies pass by the looking-glass,
Each sighing at her face.
 
 
An awful mirror this,
I like it not at all,
In this lonely room where the goblin gloom
Scowls from the arrased wall.
 

THE RIDE

 
She rode o'er hill, she rode o'er plain,
She rode by fields of barley,
By morning-glories filled with rain,
And beechen branches gnarly.
 
 
She rode o'er plain, she rode o'er hill,
By orchard land and berry;
Her face was buoyant as the rill,
Her eyes and heart were merry,
 
 
A bird sang here, a bird sang there,
Then blithely sang together,
Sang sudden greetings every where,
"Good-morrow!" and "good weather!"
 
 
The sunlight's laughing radiance
Laughed in her radiant tresses;
The bold breeze set her curls a-dance,
Made red her lips with kisses.
 
 
"Why ride ye here, why ride ye there,
Why ride ye here so merry?
The sunlight living in your hair,
And in your cheek the cherry?
 
 
"Why ride ye with your sea-green plumes,
Your sea-green silken habit,
By balmy bosks of faint perfumes
Where squats the cunning rabbit?"
 
 
"The morning's feet are wrought of gold,
The hunter's horn is jolly;
Sir Richard bold was rich and old,
Was old and melancholy.
 
 
"A wife they'd have me to his bed,
And to the kirk they hurried;
But now, gramercy! he is dead,
Perdie! is dead and buried.
 
 
"I ride by tree, I ride by rill,
I ride by rye and clover,
For by the kirk beyond the hill
Awaits a better lover."