This path will tell me where dark daisies dance
To the white sycamores that dell them in;
Where crow and flicker cry melodious din,
And blackberries in ebon ripeness glance
Luscious enticings under briery green.
It will slip under coppice limbs that lean
Brushingly as the slow-belled heifer pants
Toward weedy water-plants
That shade the pool-sunk creek's reluctant trance.

I shall find bell-flower spires beside the gap
And lady phlox within the hollow's cool;
Cedar with sudden memories of Yule
Above the tangle tipped with blue skullcap.
The high hot mullein fond of the full sun
Will watch and tell the low mint when I've won
The hither wheat where idle breezes nap,
And fluffy quails entrap
Me from their brood that crouch to escape mishap.

Then I shall reach the mossy water-way
That gullies the dense hill up to its peak,
There dally listening to the eerie eke
Of drops into cool chalices of clay.
Then on, for elders odorously will steal
My senses till I climb up where they heal
The livid heat of its malingering ray,
And wooingly betray
To memory many a long-forgotten day.

There I shall rest within the woody peace
Of afternoon. The bending azure frothed
With silveryness, the sunny pastures swathed,
Fragrant with morn-mown clover and seed-fleece;
The hills where hung mists muse, and Silence calls
To Solitude thro' aged forest halls,
Will waft into me their mysterious ease,
And in the wind's soft cease
I shall hear hintings of eternities.

FROM ABOVE

What do I care if the trees are bare
And the hills are dark
And the skies are gray.

What do I care for chill in the air
For crows that cark
At the rough wind's way.

What do I care for the dead leaves there —
Or the sullen road
By the sullen wood.

There's heart in my heart
To bear my load!
So enough, the day is good!

BY THE INDUS

Thou art late, O Moon,
Late,
I have waited thee long.
The nightingale's flown to her nest,
Sated with song.
The champak hath no odour more
To pour on the wind as he passeth o'er —
But my heart it will not rest.

Thou art late, O Love,
Late,
For the moon is a-wane.
The kusa-grass sighs with my sighs,
Burns with my pain.
The lotus leans her head on the stream —
Shall I not lean to thy breast and dream,
Dream ere the night-cool dies?

Thou art late, O Death,
Late,
For he did not come!
A pariah is my heart,
Cast from him – dumb!
I cannot cry in the jungle's deep —
Is it not time for the Tomb – and Sleep?
O Death, strike with thy dart!

EVOCATION

(Nikko, Japan, 1905)

Dim thro' the mist and cryptomeria
Booms the temple bell,
Down from the tomb of Iêyasü
Yearning, as a knell.

Down from the tomb where many an æon
Silently has knelt;
Many a pilgrimage of millions —
Still about it felt.

Still, for I see them gather ghostly
Now, as the numb sound
Floats, an unearthly necromancy,
From the past's dead ground.

See the invisible vast millions,
Hear their soundless feet
Climbing the shrine-ways to the gilded
Carven temple's seat.

And, one among them – pale among them —
Passes waning by.
What is it tells me mystically
That strange one was I?..

Weird thro' the mist and cryptomeria
Dies the bell – 'tis dumb.
After how many lives returning
Shall I hither come?

Hither again! and climb the votive
Ever mossy ways?
Who shall the gods be then, the millions
Meek, entreat or praise?

THE CHILD GOD GAVE

"Give me a little child
To draw this dreary want out of my breast,"
I cried to God.
"Give, for my days beat wild
With loneliness that will not rest
But under the still sod!"

It came – with groping lips
And little fingers stealing aimlessly
About my heart.
I was like one who slips
A-sudden into Ecstasy
And thinks ne'er to depart.

"Soon he will smile," I said,
"And babble baby love into my ears —
How it will thrill!"
I waited – Oh, the dread,
The clutching agony, the fears! —
He was so strange and still.

Did I curse God and rave
When they came shrinkingly to tell me 'twas
A witless child?
No … I … I only gave
One cry … just one … I think … because …
You know … he never smiled.

THE WINDS

The East Wind is a Bedouin,
And Nimbus is his steed;
Out of the dusk with the lightning's thin
Blue scimitar he flies afar,
Whither his rovings lead.
The Dead Sea waves
And Egypt caves
Of mummied silence laugh
When he mounts to quench the Siroc's stench
And to wrench
From his clutch the tyrant's staff.

The West Wind is an Indian brave
Who scours the Autumn's crest.
Dashing the forest down as a slave,
He tears the leaves from its limbs and weaves
A maelstrom for his breast.
Out of the night
Crying to fright
The earth he swoops to spoil —
There is furious scathe in the whirl of his wrath,
In his path
There is misery and moil.

The North Wind is a Viking – cold
And cruel, armed with death!
Born in the doomful deep of the old
Ice Sea that froze ere Ymir rose
From Niflheim's ebon breath.
And with him sail
Snow, Frost, and Hail,
Thanes mighty as their lord,
To plunder the shores of Summer's stores —
And his roar's
Like the sound of Chaos' horde.

The South Wind is a Troubadour;
The Spring 's his serenade.
Over the mountain, over the moor,
He blows to bloom from the winter's tomb
Blossom and leaf and blade.
He ripples the throat
Of the lark with a note
Of lilting love and bliss,
And the sun and the moon, the night and the noon,
Are a-swoon —
When he woos them with his kiss.

TRANSCENDED

I who was learnèd in death's lore
Oft held her to my heart
And spoke of days when we should love no more —
In the long dust, apart.

"Immortal?" No – it could not be,
Spirit with flesh must die.
Tho' heart should pray and hope make endless plea,
Reason would still outcry.

She died. They wrapped her in the dust —
I heard the dull clod's dole,
And then I knew she lived – that death's dark lust
Could never touch her soul!

LOVE'S WAY TO CHILDHOOD

We are not lovers, you and I,
Upon this sunny lane,
But children who have never known
Love's joy or pain.

The trees we pass, the summer brook,
The bird that o'er us darts —
We do not know 'tis they that thrill
Our childish hearts.

The earth-things have no name for us,
The ploughing means no more
Than that they like to walk the fields
Who plough them o'er.

The road, the wood, the heaven, the hills
Are not a World to-day —
But just a place God's made for us
In which to play.

AUTUMN

I know her not by fallen leaves
Or resting heaps of hay;
Or by the sheathing mists of mauve
That soothe the fiery day.

I know her not by plumping nuts,
By redded hips and haws,
Or by the silence hanging sad
Under the wind's sere pause.

But by her sighs I know her well —
They are like Sorrow's breath;
And by this longing, strangely still,
For something after death.

SHINTO

(Miyajima, Japan, 1905)

Lowly temple and torii,
Shrine where the spirits of wind and wave
Find the worship and glory we
Give to the one God great and grave —

Lowly temple and torii,
Shrine of the dead, I hang my prayer
Here on your gates – the story see
And answer out of the earth and air.

For I am Nature's child, and you
Were by the children of Nature built.
Ages have on you smiled – and dew
On you for ages has been spilt —

Till you are beautiful as Time
Mossy and mellowing ever makes:
Wrapped as you are in lull – or rhyme
Of sounding drum that sudden breaks.

This is my prayer then, this: that I
Too may reverence all of life,
Lose no power and miss no high
Awe, of a world with wonder rife!

That I may build in spirit fair
Temples and torii on each place
That I have loved – Oh, hear it, Air,
Ocean and Earth, and grant your grace!

MAYA

(Hiroshima, Japan, 1905)

Pale sampans up the river glide,
With set sails vanishing and slow;
In the blue west the mountains hide,
As visions that too soon will go.

Across the rice-lands, flooded deep,
The peasant peacefully wades on —
As, in unfurrowed vales of sleep,
A phantom out of voidness drawn.

Over the temple cawing flies
The crow with carrion in his beak.
Buddha within lifts not his eyes
In pity or reproval meek;

Nor, in the bamboos, where they bow
A respite from the blinding sun,
The old priest – dreaming painless how
Nirvana's calm will come when won.

"All is illusion, Maya, all
The world of will," the spent East seems
Whispering in me; "and the call
Of Life is but a call of dreams."

A JAPANESE MOTHER

(In Time of War)

The young stork sleeps in the pine-tree tops,
Down on the brink of the river.
My baby sleeps by the bamboo copse —
The bamboo copse where the rice field stops:
The bamboos sigh and shiver.

The white fox creeps from his hole in the hill;
I must pray to Inari.
I hear her calling me low and chill —
Low and chill when the wind is still
At night and the skies hang starry.

And ever she says, "He's dead! he's dead!
Your lord who went to battle.
How shall your baby now be fed,
Ukibo fed, with rice and bread —
What if I hush his prattle?"

The red moon rises as I slip back,
And the bamboo stems are swaying.
Inari was deaf – and yet the lack,
The fear and lack, are gone, and the rack,
I know not why – with praying.

For though Inari cared not at all,
Some other god was kinder.
I wonder why he has heard my call,
My giftless call – and what shall befall?..
Hope has but left me blinder!