Shapes and Shadows

Dreams

 
My thoughts have borne me far away
To Beauties of an older day,
Where, crowned with roses, stands the Dawn,
Striking her seven-stringed barbiton
Of flame, whose chords give being to
The seven colours, hue for hue;
The music of the colour-dream
She builds the day from, beam by beam.
 
 
My thoughts have borne me far away
To Myths of a diviner day,
Where, sitting on the mountain, Noon
Sings to the pines a sun-soaked tune
Of rest and shade and clouds and skies,
Wherein her calm dreams idealize
Light as a presence, heavenly fair,
Sleeping with all her beauty bare.
 
 
My thoughts have borne me far away
To Visions of a wiser day,
Where, stealing through the wilderness,
Night walks, a sad-eyed votaress,
And prays with mystic words she hears
Behind the thunder of the spheres,
The starry utterance that's hers,
With which she fills the Universe.
 

The Old House

 
Quaint and forgotten, by an unused road,
An old house stands: around its doors the dense
Blue iron-weeds grow high;
The chipmunks make a highway of its fence;
And on its sunken flagstones slug and toad
Silent as lichens lie.
 
 
The timid snake upon its hearth's cool sand
Sleeps undisturbed; the squirrel haunts its roof;
And in the clapboard sides
Of closets, dim with many a spider woof,
Like the uncertain tapping of a hand,
The beetle-borer hides.
 
 
Above its lintel, under mossy eaves,
The mud-wasps build their cells; and in the floor
Of its neglected porch
The black bees nest. Through each deserted door,
Vague as a phantom's footsteps, steal the leaves,
And dropped cones of the larch.
 
 
But come with me when sunset's magic old
Transforms the ruin of that ancient house;
When windows, one by one, —
Like age's eyes, that youth's love-dreams arouse, —
Grow lairs of fire; and glad mouths of gold
Its wide doors, in the sun.
 
 
Or let us wait until each rain-stained room
Is carpeted with moonlight, pattened oft
With the deep boughs o'erhead;
And through the house the wind goes rustling soft,
As might the ghost – a whisper of perfume —
Of some sweet girl long dead.
 

The Rock

 
Here, at its base, in dingled deeps
Of spice-bush, where the ivy creeps,
The cold spring scoops its hollow;
And there three mossy stepping-stones
Make ripple murmurs; undertones
Of foam that blend and follow
With voices of the wood that drones.
 
 
The quail pipes here when noons are hot;
And here, in coolness sunlight-shot
Beneath a roof of briers,
The red-fox skulks at close of day;
And here at night, the shadows gray
Stand like Franciscan friars,
With moonbeam beads whereon they pray.
 
 
Here yawns the ground-hog's dark-dug hole;
And there the tunnel of the mole
Heaves under weed and flower;
A sandy pit-fall here and there
The ant-lion digs and lies a-lair;
And here, for sun and shower,
The spider weaves a silvery snare.
 
 
The poison-oak's rank tendrils twine
The rock's south side; the trumpet-vine,
With crimson bugles sprinkled,
Makes green its eastern side; the west
Is rough with lichens; and, gray-pressed
Into an angle wrinkled,
The hornets hang an oblong nest.
 
 
The north is hid from sun and star,
And here, – like an Inquisitor
Of Faëry Inquisition,
That roots out Elf-land heresy, —
Deep in the rock, with mystery
Cowled for his grave commission,
The Owl sits magisterially.
 

Rain

 
Around, the stillness deepened; then the grain
Went wild with wind; and every briery lane
Was swept with dust; and then, tempestuous black,
Hillward the tempest heaved a monster back,
That on the thunder leaned as on a cane;
And on huge shoulders bore a cloudy pack,
That gullied gold from many a lightning-crack:
One great drop splashed and wrinkled down the pane,
And then field, hill, and wood were lost in rain.
 
 
At last, through clouds, – as from a cavern hewn
Into night's heart, – the sun burst, angry roon;
And every cedar, with its weight of wet,
Against the sunset's fiery splendour set,
Frightened to beauty, seemed with rubies strewn;
Then in drenched gardens, like sweet phantoms met,
Dim odours rose of pink and mignonette;
And in the East a confidence, that soon
Grew to the calm assurance of the Moon.
 

Standing-Stone Creek

 
A weed-grown slope, whereon the rain
Has washed the brown rocks bare,
Leads tangled from a lonely lane
Down to a creek's broad stair
Of stone, that, through the solitude,
Winds onward to a quiet wood.
 
 
An intermittent roof of shade
The beech above it throws;
Along its steps a balustrade
Of beauty builds the rose;
In which, a stately lamp of green
At intervals the cedar's seen.
 
 
The water, carpeting each ledge
Of rock that runs across,
Glints 'twixt a flow'r-embroidered edge
Of ferns and grass and moss;
And in its deeps the wood and sky
Seem patterns of the softest dye.
 
 
Long corridors of pleasant dusk
Within the house of leaves
It reaches; where, on looms of musk,
The ceaseless locust weaves
A web of summer; and perfume
Trails a sweet gown from room to room.
 
 
Green windows of the boughs, that swing,
It passes, where the notes
Of birds are glad thoughts entering,
And butterflies are motes;
And now a vista where the day
Opens a door of wind and ray.
 
 
It is a stairway for all sounds
That haunt the woodland sides;
On which, boy-like, the southwind bounds,
Girl-like, the sunbeam glides;
And, like fond parents, following these,
The oldtime dreams of rest and peace.
 

The Moonmen

 
I stood in the forest on Huron Hill
When the night was old and the world was still.
 
 
The Wind was a wizard who muttering strode
In a raven cloak on a haunted road.
 
 
The Sound of Water, a witch who crooned
Her spells to the rocks the rain had runed.
 
 
And the Gleam of the Dew on the fern's green tip
Was a sylvan passing with robe a-drip.
 
 
The Light of the Stars was a glimmering maid
Who stole, an elfin, from glade to glade.
 
 
The Scent of the Woods in the delicate air,
A wildflower shape with chilly hair.
 
 
And Silence, a spirit who sat alone
With a lifted finger and eyes of stone.
 
 
And it seemed to me these six were met
To greet a greater who came not yet.
 
 
And the speech they spoke, that I listened to,
Was the archetype of the speech I knew.
 
 
For the Wind clasped hands with the Water's rush,
And I heard them whisper, Hush, oh, hush!
 
 
The Light of the Stars and the Dew's cool gleam
Touched lips and murmured, Dream, oh dream!
 
 
The Scent of the Woods and the Silence deep
Sighed, bosom to bosom, Sleep, oh, sleep!
 
 
And so for a moment the six were dumb,
Then exulted together, They come, they come!
 
 
And I stood expectant and seemed to hear
A visible music drawing near.
 
 
And the first who came was the Captain Moon
Bearing a shield in God's House hewn.
 
 
Then an Army of glamour, a glittering Host,
Beleaguered the night from coast to coast.
 
 
And the world was filled with spheric fire
From the palpitant chords of many a lyre,
 
 
As out of the East the Moonmen came
Smiting their harps of silver and flame.
 
 
More beauty and grace did their forms express
Than the Queen of Love's white nakedness.
 
 
More chastity too their faces held
Than the snowy breasts of Diana swelled.
 
 
Translucent-limbed, I saw the beat
In their hearts of pearl of the golden heat.
 
 
And the hair they tossed was a crystal light,
And the eyes beneath it were burning white.
 
 
Their hands that lifted, their feet that fell,
Made the darkness blossom to asphodel.
 
 
And the heavens, the hills, and the streams they trod
Shone pale with th' communicated God.
 
 
A placid frenzy, a waking trance,
A soft oracular radiance,
 
 
Wrapped forms that moved as melodies move,
Laurelled with god-head and halo'd with love.
 
 
So there in the forest on Huron Hill
The Moonmen camped when the world was still…
 
 
What wonder that they who have looked on these
Are lost to the earth's realities!
 
 
That they sit aside with a far-off look
Dreaming the dreams that are writ in no book!
 
 
That they walk alone till the day they die,
Even as I, yea, even as I!