I
A glory on the chamber wall!
A glory in the brain!
Triumphant floods of glory fall
On heath, and wold, and plain.
Earth lieth still in hopeless bliss;
She has, and seeks no more;
Forgets that days come after this,
Forgets the days before.
Each ripple waves a flickering fire
Of gladness, as it runs;
They laugh and flash, and leap and spire,
And toss ten thousand suns.
But hark! low, in the world within,
One sad aeolian tone:
“Ah! shall we ever, ever win
A summer of our own?”
II
A morn of winds and swaying trees—
Earth’s jubilance rushing out!
The birds are fighting with the breeze;
The waters heave about.
White clouds are swept across the sky,
Their shadows o’er the graves;
Purpling the green, they float and fly
Athwart the sunny waves.
The long grass—an earth-rooted sea—
Mimics the watery strife.
To boat or horse? Wild motion we
Shall find harmonious life.
But whither? Roll and sweep and bend
Suffice for Nature’s part;
But motion to an endless end
Is needful for our heart.
III
The morn awakes like brooding dove,
With outspread wings of gray;
Her feathery clouds close in above,
And roof a sober day.
No motion in the deeps of air!
No trembling in the leaves!
A still contentment everywhere,
That neither laughs nor grieves!
A film of sheeted silver gray
Shuts in the ocean’s hue;
White-winged feluccas cleave their way
In paths of gorgeous blue.
Dream on, dream on, O dreamy day,
Thy very clouds are dreams!
Yon child is dreaming far away—
He is not where he seems.
IV
The lark is up, his faith is strong,
He mounts the morning air;
Lone voice of all the creature throng,
He sings the morning prayer.
Slow clouds from north and south appear,
Black-based, with shining slope;
In sullen forms their might they rear,
And climb the vaulted cope.
A lightning flash, a thunder boom!—
Nor sun nor clouds are there;
A single, all-pervading gloom
Hangs in the heavy air.
A weeping, wasting afternoon
Weighs down the aspiring corn;
Amber and red, the sunset soon
Leads back to golden morn.
I
The dreary wind of night is out,
Homeless and wandering slow;
O’er pale seas moaning like a doubt,
It breathes, but will not blow.
It sighs from out the helpless past,
Where doleful things abide;
Gray ghosts of dead thought sail aghast
Across its ebbing tide.
O’er marshy pools it faints and flows,
All deaf and dumb and blind;
O’er moor and mountain aimless goes—
The listless woesome wind!
Nay, nay!—breathe on, sweet wind of night!
The sigh is all in me;
Flow, fan, and blow, with gentle might,
Until I wake and see.
II
The west is broken into bars
Of orange, gold, and gray;
Gone is the sun, fast come the stars,
And night infolds the day.
My boat glides with the gliding stream,
Following adown its breast
One flowing mirrored amber gleam,
The death-smile of the west.
The river moves; the sky is still,
No ceaseless quest it knows:
Thy bosom swells, thy fair eyes fill
At sight of its repose.
The ripples run; all patient sit
The stars above the night.
In shade and gleam the waters flit:
The heavens are changeless bright!
III
Alone I lie, buried amid
The long luxurious grass;
The bats flit round me, born and hid
In twilight’s wavering mass.
The fir-top floats, an airy isle,
High o’er the mossy ground;
Harmonious silence breathes the while
In scent instead of sound.
The flaming rose glooms swarthy red;
The borage gleams more blue;
Dim-starred with white, a flowery bed
Glimmers the rich dusk through.
Hid in the summer grass I lie,
Lost in the great blue cave;
My body gazes at the sky,
And measures out its grave.
IV
What art thou, gathering dusky cool,
In slow gradation fine?
Death’s lovely shadow, flickering full
Of eyes about to shine.
When weary Day goes down below,
Thou leanest o’er his grave,
Revolving all the vanished show
The gracious splendour gave.
Or art thou not she rather—say—
Dark-browed, with luminous eyes,
Of whom is born the mighty Day,
That fights and saves and dies?
For action sleeps with sleeping light;
Calm thought awakes with thee:
The soul is then a summer night,
With stars that shine and see.
I
We bore him through the golden land,
One early harvest morn;
The corn stood ripe on either hand—
He knew all about the corn.
How shall the harvest gathered be
Without him standing by?
Without him walking on the lea,
The sky is scarce a sky.
The year’s glad work is almost done;
The land is rich in fruit;
Yellow it floats in air and sun—
Earth holds it by the root.
Why should earth hold it for a day
When harvest-time is come?
Death is triumphant o’er decay,
And leads the ripened home.
II
And though the sun be not so warm,
His shining is not lost;
Both corn and hope, of heart and farm,
Lie hid from coming frost.
The sombre woods are richly sad,
Their leaves are red and gold:
Are thoughts in solemn splendour clad
Signs that we men grow old?
Strange odours haunt the doubtful brain
From fields and days gone by;
And mournful memories again
Are born, are loved, and die.
The mornings clear, the evenings cool
Foretell no wintry wars;
The day of dying leaves is full,
The night of glowing stars.
III
’Tis late before the sun will rise,
And early he will go;
Gray fringes hang from the gray skies,
And wet the ground below.
Red fruit has followed golden corn;
The leaves are few and sere;
My thoughts are old as soon as born,
And chill with coming fear.
The winds lie sick; no softest breath
Floats through the branches bare;
A silence as of coming death
Is growing in the air.
But what must fade can bear to fade—
Was born to meet the ill:
Creep on, old Winter, deathly shade!
We sorrow, and are still.
IV
There is no longer any heaven
To glorify our clouds;
The rising vapours downward driven
Come home in palls and shrouds.
The sun himself is ill bested
A heavenly sign to show;
His radiance, dimmed to glowing red,
Can hardly further go.
An earthy damp, a churchyard gloom,
Pervade the moveless air;
The year is sinking to its tomb,
And death is everywhere.
But while sad thoughts together creep,
Like bees too cold to sting,
God’s children, in their beds asleep,
Are dreaming of the spring.
I
O night, send up the harvest moon
To walk about the fields,
And make of midnight magic noon
On lonely tarns and wealds.
In golden ranks, with golden crowns,
All in the yellow land,
Old solemn kings in rustling gowns,
The shocks moon-charmed stand.
Sky-mirror she, afloat in space,
Beholds our coming morn:
Her heavenly joy hath such a grace,
It ripens earthly corn;
Like some lone saint with upward eyes,
Lost in the deeps of prayer:
The people still their prayers and sighs,
And gazing ripen there.
II
So, like the corn moon-ripened last,
Would I, weary and gray,
On golden memories ripen fast,
And ripening pass away.
In an old night so let me die;
A slow wind out of doors;
A waning moon low in the sky;
A vapour on the moors;
A fire just dying in the gloom;
Earth haunted all with dreams;
A sound of waters in the room;
A mirror’s moony gleams;
And near me, in the sinking night,
More thoughts than move in me—
Forgiving wrong, and loving right,
And waiting till I see.
III
Across the stubble glooms the wind;
High sails the lated crow;
The west with pallid green is lined;
Fog tracks the river’s flow.
My heart is cold and sad; I moan,
Yet care not for my grief;
The summer fervours all are gone;
The roses are but leaf.
Old age is coming, frosty, hoar;
The snows of time will fall;
My jubilance, dream-like, no more
Returns for any call!
O lapsing heart! thy feeble strain
Sends up the blood so spare,
That my poor withering autumn brain
Sees autumn everywhere!
IV
Lord of my life! if I am blind,
I reck not—thou canst see;
I well may wait my summer mind,
When I am sure of thee!
I made no brave bright suns arise,
Veiled up no sweet gray eves;
I hung no rose-lamps, lit no eyes,
Sent out no windy leaves!
I said not “I will cast a charm
These gracious forms around;”
My heart with unwilled love grew warm;
I took but what I found!
When cold winds range my winter-night,
Be thou my summer-door;
Keep for me all my young delight,
Till I am old no more.
I
The sky has turned its heart away,
The earth its sorrow found;
The daisies turn from childhood’s play,
And creep into the ground.
The earth is black and cold and hard;
Thin films of dry white ice,
Across the rugged wheel-tracks barred,
The children’s feet entice.
Dark flows the stream, as if it mourned
The winter in the land;
With idle icicles adorned,
That mill-wheel soon will stand.
But, friends, to say ’tis cold, and part,
Is to let in the cold;
We’ll make a summer of the heart,
And laugh at winter old.
II
With vague dead gleam the morning white
Comes through the window-panes;
The clouds have fallen all the night,
Without the noise of rains.
As of departing, unseen ghost,
Footprints go from the door;
The man himself must long be lost
Who left those footprints hoar!
Yet follow thou; tread down the snow;
Leave all the road behind;
Heed not the winds that steely blow,
Heed not the sky unkind;
For though the glittering air grow dark,
The snow will shine till morn;
And long ere then one dear home-spark
Will winter laugh to scorn.
III
Oh wildly wild the roaring blast
Torments the fallen snow!
The wintry storms are up at last,
And care not how they go!
In foam-like wreaths the water hoar,
Rapt whistling in the air,
Gleams through the dismal twilight frore;
A region in despair,
A spectral ocean lies outside,
Torn by a tempest dark;
Its ghostly billows, dim descried,
Leap on my stranded bark.
Death-sheeted figures, long and white,
Rave driving through the spray;
Or, bosomed in the ghastly night,
Shriek doom-cries far away.
IV
A morning clear, with frosty light
From sunbeams late and low;
They shine upon the snow so white,
And shine back from the snow.
Down tusks of ice one drop will go,
Nor fall: at sunny noon
’Twill hang a diamond—fade, and grow
An opal for the moon.
And when the bright sad sun is low
Behind the mountain-dome,
A twilight wind will come and blow
Around the children’s home,
And puff and waft the powdery snow,
As feet unseen did pass;
While, waiting in its bed below,
Green lies the summer grass.
I
Back shining from the pane, the fire
Seems outside in the snow:
So love set free from love’s desire
Lights grief of long ago.
The dark is thinned with snow-sheen fine,
The earth bedecked with moon;
Out on the worlds we surely shine
More radiant than in June!
In the white garden lies a heap
As brown as deep-dug mould:
A hundred partridges that keep
Each other from the cold.
My father gives them sheaves of corn,
For shelter both and food:
High hope in me was early born,
My father was so good.
II
The frost weaves ferns and sultry palms
Across my clouded pane;
Weaves melodies of ancient psalms
All through my passive brain.
Quiet ecstasy fills heart and head:
My father is in the room;
The very curtains of my bed
Are from Love’s sheltering loom!
The lovely vision melts away;
I am a child no more;
Work rises from the floor of play;
Duty is at the door.
But if I face with courage stout
The labour and the din,
Thou, Lord, wilt let my mind go out
My heart with thee stay in.
III
Up to my ear my soul doth run—
Her other door is dark;
There she can see without the sun,
And there she sits to mark.
I hear the dull unheeding wind
Mumble o’er heath and wold;
My fancy leaves my brain behind,
And floats into the cold.
Like a forgotten face that lies
One of the speechless crowd,
The earth lies spent, with frozen eyes,
White-folded in her shroud.
O’er leafless woods and cornless farms,
Dead rivers, fireless thorps,
I brood, the heart still throbbing warm
In Nature’s wintered corpse.
IV
To all the world mine eyes are blind:
Their drop serene is—night,
With stores of snow piled up the wind
An awful airy height.
And yet ’tis but a mote in the eye:
The simple faithful stars
Beyond are shining, careless high,
Nor heed our storms and jars.
And when o’er storm and jar I climb—
Beyond life’s atmosphere,
I shall behold the lord of time
And space—of world and year.
Oh vain, far quest!—not thus my heart
Shall ever find its goal!
I turn me home—and there thou art,
My Father, in my soul!
I
A gentle wind, of western birth
On some far summer sea,
Wakes daisies in the wintry earth,
Wakes hopes in wintry me.
The sun is low; the paths are wet,
And dance with frolic hail;
The trees—their spring-time is not yet—
Swing sighing in the gale.
Young gleams of sunshine peep and play;
Clouds shoulder in between;
I scarce believe one coming day
The earth will all be green.
The north wind blows, and blasts, and raves,
And flaps his snowy wing:
Back! toss thy bergs on arctic waves;
Thou canst not bar our spring.
II
Up comes the primrose, wondering;
The snowdrop droopeth by;
The holy spirit of the spring
Is working silently.
Soft-breathing breezes woo and wile
The later children out;
O’er woods and farms a sunny smile
Is flickering about.
The earth was cold, hard-hearted, dull;
To death almost she slept:
Over her, heaven grew beautiful,
And forth her beauty crept.
Showers yet must fall, and waters grow
Dark-wan with furrowing blast;
But suns will shine, and soft winds blow,
Till the year flowers at last.
III
The sky is smiling over me,
Hath smiled away the frost;
White daisies star the sky-like lea,
With buds the wood’s embossed.
Troops of wild flowers gaze at the sky
Up through the latticed boughs;
Till comes the green cloud by and by,
It is not time to house.
Yours is the day, sweet bird—sing on;
The winter is forgot;
Like an ill dream ’tis over and gone:
Pain that is past, is not.
Joy that was past is yet the same:
If care the summer brings,
’Twill only be another name
For love that broods, not sings.
IV
Blow on me, wind, from west and south;
Sweet summer-spirit, blow!
Come like a kiss from dear child’s mouth,
Who knows not what I know.
The earth’s perfection dawneth soon;
Ours lingereth alway;
We have a morning, not a noon;
Spring, but no summer gay.
Rose-blotted eve, gold-branded morn
Crown soon the swift year’s life:
In us a higher hope is born,
And claims a longer strife.
Will heaven be an eternal spring
With summer at the door?
Or shall we one day tell its king
That we desire no more?
I
The flush of green that dyed the day
Hath vanished in the moon;
Flower-scents float stronger out, and play
An unborn, coming tune.
One southern eve like this, the dew
Had cooled and left the ground;
The moon hung half-way from the blue,
No disc, but conglobed round;
Light-leaved acacias, by the door,
Bathed in the balmy air,
Clusters of blossomed moonlight bore,
And breathed a perfume rare;
Great gold-flakes from the starry sky
Fell flashing on the deep:
One scent of moist earth floating by,
Almost it made me weep.
II
Those gorgeous stars were not my own,
They made me alien go!
The mother o’er her head had thrown
A veil I did not know!
The moon-blanched fields that seaward went,
The palm-flung, dusky shades,
Bore flowering grasses, knotted, bent,
No slender, spear-like blades.
I longed to see the starry host
Afar in fainter blue;
But plenteous grass I missed the most,
With daisies glimmering through.
The common things were not the same!
I longed across the foam:
From dew-damp earth that odour came—
I knew the world my home.
III
The stars are glad in gulfy space—
Friendly the dark to them!
From day’s deep mine, their hiding-place,
Night wooeth every gem.
A thing for faith ’mid labour’s jar,
When up the day is furled,
Shines in the sky a light afar,
Mayhap a home-filled world.
Sometimes upon the inner sky
We catch a doubtful shine:
A mote or star? A flash in the eye
Or jewel of God’s mine?
A star to us, all glimmer and glance,
May teem with seraphim:
A fancy to our ignorance
May be a truth to Him.
IV
The night is damp and warm and still,
And soft with summer dreams;
The buds are bursting at their will,
And shy the half moon gleams.
My soul is cool, as bathed within
By dews that silent weep—
Like child that has confessed his sin,
And now will go to sleep.
My body ages, form and hue;
But when the spring winds blow,
My spirit stirs and buds anew,
Younger than long ago.
Lord, make me more a child, and more,
Till Time his own end bring,
And out of every winter sore
I pass into thy spring.