Like some black host the shadows fall, And darkness camps among the trees; Each wildwood road, a Goblin Hall, Grows populous with mysteries.
Night comes with brows of ragged storm, And limbs of writhen cloud and mist; The rain-wind hangs upon her arm Like some wild girl that will be kissed.
By her gaunt hand the leaves are shed Like nightmares an enchantress herds; And, like a witch who calls the dead, The hill-stream whirls with foaming words.
Then all is sudden silence and Dark fear--like his who can not see, Yet hears, aye in a haunted land, Death rattling on a gallow"s tree.
IV.
The days approach again; the days, Whose mantles stream, whose sandals drag; When in the haze by puddled ways Each gnarled thorn seems a crooked hag.
When rotting orchards reek with rain; And woodlands crumble, leaf and log; And in the drizzling yard again The gourd is tagged with points of fog.
Oh, let me seat my soul among Your melancholy moods! and touch Your thoughts" sweet sorrow without tongue, Whose silence says too much, too much!
OCTOBER
Long hosts of sunlight, and the bright wind blows A tourney trumpet on the listed hill: Past is the splendor of the royal rose And d.u.c.h.ess daffodil.
Crowned queen of beauty, in the garden"s s.p.a.ce, Strong daughter of a bitter race and bold, A ragged beggar with a lovely face, Reigns the sad marigold.
And I have sought June"s b.u.t.terfly for days, To find it--like a coreopsis bloom-- Amber and seal, rain-murdered "neath the blaze Of this sunflower"s plume.
Here basks the bee; and there, sky-voyaging wings Dare G.o.d"s blue gulfs of heaven; the last song, The red-bird flings me as adieu, still rings Upon yon pear-tree"s p.r.o.ng.
No angry sunset brims with rosier red The bowl of heaven than the days, indeed, Pour in each blossom of this salvia-bed, Where each leaf seems to bleed.
And where the wood-gnats dance, a tiny mist, Above the efforts of the weedy stream, The girl, October, tired of the tryst, Dreams a diviner dream.
One foot just dipping the caressing wave, One knee at languid angle; locks that drown Hands nut-stained; hazel-eyed, she lies, and grave, Watching the leaves drift down.
BARE BOUGHS
O heart, that beat the bird"s blithe blood, The blithe bird"s message that pursued, Now song is dead as last year"s bud, What dost thou in the wood?
O soul, that kept the brook"s glad flow, The glad brook"s word to sun and moon, What dost thou here where song lies low As all the dreams of June?
Where once was heard a voice of song, The hautboys of the mad winds sing; Where once a music flowed along, The rain"s wild bugles ring.
The weedy water frets and ails, And moans in many a sunless fall; And, o"er the melancholy, trails The black crow"s eldritch call.
Unhappy brook! O withered wood!
O days, whom death makes comrades of!
Where are the birds that thrilled the blood When life struck hands with love?
A song, one soared against the blue; A song, one bubbled in the leaves; A song, one threw where orchards grew All appled to the eaves.
But now the birds are flown or dead; And sky and earth are bleak and gray; The wild winds sob i" the boughs instead, The wild leaves sigh i" the way.
A THRENODY
I.
The rainy smell of a ferny dell, Whose shadow no sunray flaws, When Autumn sits in the wayside weeds Telling her beads Of haws.
II.
The phantom mist, that is moonbeam-kissed, On hills where the trees are thinned, When Autumn leans at the oak-root"s scarp, Playing a harp Of wind.
III.
The crickets" chirr "neath brier and burr, By leaf-strewn pools and streams, When Autumn stands "mid the dropping nuts, With the book, she shuts, Of dreams.
IV.
The gray "alas" of the days that pa.s.s, And the hope that says "adieu,"
A parting sorrow, a shriveled flower, And one ghost"s hour With you.
SNOW
The moon, like a round device On a shadowy shield of war, Hangs white in a heaven of ice With a solitary star.
The wind is sunk to a sigh, And the waters are stern with frost; And gray, in the eastern sky, The last snow-cloud is lost.
White fields, that are winter-starved, Black woods, that are winter-fraught, Cold, harsh as a face death-carved With the iron of some black thought.