Poems of Philip Henry Savage / Philip Henry Savage [electronic text]

POEMS

A.D. MDCCCXCVIII

TO CITRIODORA

I turn and see you passing in the street When you are not. I take another way, Lest missing you the fragrance of the day Exhale, and I know not that it is sweet. And marking you I follow, and when we meet Love laughs to see how sudden I am gay; Sweetens the air with fragrance like a spray Of sweet verbena, and bids my heart to beat.

Love laughs; and girls that take you by the hand, Know that a sweet thing has befallen them; And women give their hearts into your heart. There is, I think, no man in all the land But would be glad to touch your garment's hem. And I, I love you with a love apart.

I

SPINOZA polished glasses clear To view the heavenly hemisphere; I verses, that my friend therethrough My arc of earth may rightly view.

II

IF one should call my branching verse Bundles of fagot sticks, or worse,

Each bush, I pray, let shed perfume, And burn with fire and not consume;

And may each branch, like Aaron's rod, Bud and betray the vital god.

III

BROTHER, Time is a thing how slight! Day lifts and falls, and it is night. Rome stands an hour, and the green leaf Buds into being bright and brief. For us, God has at least in store One shining moment, less or more. Seize, then, what mellow sun we may, To light us in the darker day.

IV

"BELIEVE in me!" Lord, who art thou That bid'st me to believe in thee? I have my life to live, and now Thy yoke would but a burden be; I would be free.

"Come, follow me!" Nay, Lord, my way Is wide of thine along the sea; Among the hills I love to stray, Nor walks there anyone with me; Why I with thee?

V

MARCH 20

"RETURN, return!" the unheard cry Of robins in the upper sky, As by and long this barren coast, In March comes up the southern host.

Low-anchored in the tangled swale I mark them slant along the gale, At speed, with every feather set For some more distant harbor yet.

Around me is the mellow lisp Of bluebirds warbling, and the crisp Chick! of the sparrow, and the cheer Of homing robins harbored here.

No forward aspen-leaf or oak Has through his leathern jacket broke; The grass puts up a doubtful wing; The hazel censers coldly swing.

But maple-buds, new fashionèd On every stem, are tipped with red. Green, saffern-flushing osiers glow Above the wakened waters' flow.

Year in, year out, the fire of spring Burns through its ashen covering, Bursts up in flower and scent and song, And drives the laggard March along.

Year after year the birds will fly Along this same gray, mortal sky. Praise God I see them and can say, Another year, another day!

VI

THE SPARROW

THE morning lay divinely bright Across near field and distant height. From his high tower the influent sun Controlled the shifting tides of air, Which first in flow would lightly run, Then fall in ebb of radiance rare.

One sparrow on an elm-tree high Conceived the day as fair as I. Midway the high bank of the tree He sat upon a beakèd branch, And poured into the engulfing sea His music's slender avalanche.

His pipe was sharp, his numbers few, And caught no ear but me and you. Yet forth upon his promontory He stood in the wide sea of air, And bore his witness to the glory With all the heart a thrush might dare.

VII

PRESTO

QUICK-fingered Spring her wand choragic, A cherry branch, has waved in air; And swift by arts of natural magic The clustered cherry-blooms are there.

You 've seen the children in their pastime Plunge rods into a syrop thick, Three times or four, and at the last time Hold up in joy a candy-stick.

You 've seen a chemist, quick and curious, Observe a liquid saturate, And mark, when least the jar seemed furious, The crystal-flowers precipitate.

And now, of cherry-blooms creator Ere yet the woods and walks are green, Rose-fingered prestidigitator, Young chemic Spring at work you 've seen

VIII

IN DOVE COTTAGE GARDEN

ON the terrace lies the sunlight, fretted with the shade Of the wilding apple-orchard Wordsworth made.

Sunlight falls upon the aspen, and the cedar glows Like the laurel or the climbing Christmas rose.

Through green-golden vistas downward if your glances fall, Hardly would you guess the cottage there at all.

Bines of bryony and bramble overhang the green Of the crowding scarlet-runner and the bean.

But I mark one quiet casement, ivy-covered still. There he sat, I think, and loved this little hill;

Loved the rocky stair that led him upward to the seat Coleridge fashioned; loved the fragrant, high retreat

In the wood above the garden. There he walked, and there In his heart the beauty gathered to a prayer.

In the sunshine by the cottage doorway I can see, In among her Christmas roses, Dorothy.

Deeper joy and truer service, fuller draught of life, Came I doubt not to the sister, and the wife.

Laurel, it may be, too early on his brow he set, And the thorn of life too lightly could forget.

Dorothy, wild heart and woman, chose the better way, Met the world with love and service every day.

Love for life and life for loving, and the poet's part Is to love his life and, living, love his art.

But the shadow from the fellside falls, and all the scene Melts and runs, green-gold to slumbrous golden-green.

Showers of golden light on Grasmere tremble into shade, While the garden grasses gather blade with blade;

And one patient robin-redbreast, waiting, waiting long, Seals the twilight in the garden with a song.

IX

A WREATH OF BUDS AND LAVENDER

DEATH has a power to fright the soul, And unseat courage from control.

But when, by love and sorrow led, I passed your door and looked, with dread To see the symbols of the dead;

And found, in place of black despair, Which I all-looked for, hanging there A wreath of buds and lavender;

I blessed the heart that would out-brave, For love, the terror of the grave.

X

SWEET THORN

WHAT is St. Francis' flower? 'T is not The daisy nor the melilot, Nor that white little flower that springs In Grasmere's quiet garden-plot.

'T is not the lily-flower that blows In some high heaven of repose. 'T is not the sorrow of the thorn, Nor utter passion of the rose.

It is the wild-heart eglantine, (Sweet bush to a far sweeter wine), With joy for man, sweet-thorn for Christ, Not pagan all, not all divine.

XI

SILKWEED

LIGHTER than dandelion down, Or feathers from the white moth's wing, Out of the gates of bramble-town The silkweed goes a-gypsying.

Too fair to fly in autumn's rout, All winter in the sheath it lay; But now, when spring is pushing out, The zephyr calls, "Away! Away!"

Through mullein, bramble, brake, and fern, Up from their cradle-spring they fly, Beyond the boundary wall to turn And voyage through the friendly sky.

Softly, as if instinct with thought, They float and drift, delay and turn; And one avoids and one is caught Between an oak-leaf and a fern.

And one holds by an airy line The spider drew from tree to tree; And if the web is light and fine, 'T is not so light and fine as he!

And one goes questing up the wall As if to find a door; and then, As if he did not care at all, Goes over and adown the glen.

And all in airiest fashion fare Adventuring, as if, indeed, 'T were not so grave a thing to bear The burden of a seed!

XII

THE FIRE-FLY

TO-DAY as writing in the park I sat, came twilight and the dark. There as I watched the color run In waves above the sunken sun, A lightning-bug, (for candle), took His post just here upon my book. His wing he raised, his golden urn Of fire he let a moment burn. Pray, for his sake, behold this line With a not common brightness shine.

XIII

CLEAR AND FAR

HOW clear, when 't is most far from clear, Far sounds across the dark you hear: Approaching wheels, when in the lane The mist is turning into rain; A baying hound below the hill; A train, when all the night is still. The silent air, now dense and drowned, A carriage makes for every sound. How far, when 't is from clear most far, Most clear at night far noises are.

XIV

ARCHITECTURE

YOU 'VE seen a sky, besprent with mist Across the sleepy amethyst, Break when the western wind has sent His harriers to the orient. Then in the azure deeps Gathers the mist and sleeps In snowy towering heaps.

You 've seen the leafy storm of May Sweep the brown April earth like spray, And round some gray stem, bare of late, In full and body nucleate. Then all the earliest trees Hang out upon the breeze Their perfumed greeneries.

In the vexed heaven of the mind You 've seen a fresh, irradiant wind Clear all and set in order fair The gray untextured vapors there. Then quick from every part The towering fancies start In frame and form of art.

XV

TO A PINE-TREE

IF I could stand in such a plain, With such bright sap in every vein; Could throw upon so blue an air, Branches so light and strong and fair;

If I could sink my roots so deep In darkness where the spirits creep, So broadly base, so firmly rear My stem in such an atmosphere;

If I could balance and reveal So utterly from head to heel The music I was born to be, In strophe and antistrophe;

Thou 'dst not more nobly stand and shine Than I, proud Atlantean pine.

XVI

OPAL

PALE as a pearl the morning lay In cloud diaphanous and gray; While slow the smothered sun goes by A smouldering opal in the sky.

Faint color in the wood he throws Like scattered petals of a rose; And lays by every stem a hue Most sagely, delicately blue.

XVII

MORNING

NOT least, 't is ever my delight To drink the early morning light; To take the air upon my tongue And taste it while the day is young. So let my solace be the breath Of morning, when I move to death.

XVIII

I KNOW not what it is, but when I pass Some running bit of water by the way, A river brimming silver in the grass, And rippled by a trailing alder-spray,

Hold in my heart I cannot from a cry, It is so joyful at the merry sight; So gracious is the water running by, So full the simple grass is of delight.

And if by chance a redwing, passing near, Should light beside me in the alder-tree; And if, above the ripple, I should hear The lusty conversation of the bee,

I think that I should lift my voice and sing; I know that I should laugh and look around, As if to catch the meadows answering, As if expecting whispers from the ground.

XIX

ANADYOMENE

GIVE o'er the strife! The poet cries The maiden mercy, in whose eyes He sees the light of paradise.

Beyond the coppice, at the edge Where ends the poet's Privilege Along the lake, in June one day I sat to meditate this lay; Wherein, forgetting Love, I planned To sing the sea and sky and land. And first, the picture — all the scene A dark uninterrupted green. No flower uplifted from the floor Breaks from the forest to the shore.

No daffodil that nods along The bloss'my banks of English song; Myrtles nor roses, that entwine In many a fragrant Attic line, Here spring, to aid while I rehearse The homely numbers of my verse. Poppy nor violet is here, Where fern, with cornel and severe Bay, and the low-set laurel shine Beneath a sombre front of pine. Here as I lay among the brakes I watched the bright, green forest-snakes, The wasp go over, and the toad Sit undecided of his road; And sudden, from a tufted top, The gray, silk-cinctured spider drop. Out of the high, benignant blue The earth a golden opiate drew. Low-lying, level waves of heat Along the glassèd waters beat. Each ashen stem and each green leaf Lay sunned asleep; and every sheaf Of needles, glittering on the pines, Inwove the light in glancing lines, Until I too had slept, ere this, But for the chimes I would not miss.

What sound was there? A chipping bird That idly in the bushes stirred;

A locust droning in the brake; The hum the darting midges make. What sound was there? A sudden wind That caught the ripples from behind And kissed them as they ran; that drave The whispering rout within the cave In rocks below me where I lay. You would have said 't was elves at play, With muffled hammers keeping time Beneath the wave in some cool chime On amber bells, — k-link, k-lunk, (With quiet joy the sound I drunk), K-link, k-lunk! Now high, now low, The chimes came bubbling from below. If I could get into my rhymes The lapping music of the chimes, All men who read would run once more To hear the ripples on the shore. Then, as the last light wave of air Drew off in ebb and failure there, Fell back, and faintly, far away, Broke in the pines across the bay, Low on the fall and silence crept A sudden sound, then sank and slept. Again, in pulse and faint, awoke In matted leaves of pine and oak, Where through the jungle of the grass The armies of the emmets pass.

Then on that cess and failure came, As from a crypt and smothered flame, An incense, on the fall and swell Of every piny thurible. No scent of rose or spices rare Perfumed the quiet courses there; No scattered homely mint and thyme Wove in the sun an odorous rhyme; But June upon the air abroad Summoned the soul of leaf and sod, Shot with the glamour, and divine With the o'er-mastering scent of pine.

Ah Summer, Summer! Fragrant June, Sweet as a moth from the cocoon! My thoughts in winter come and go As aimless as the errant snow; Or lie, by wind and weather pressed, A dumb conservator at best. But April comes, and to the plain They fall and labor with the rain; Sing as they fall and fallen, jet Their life into the violet; And measure, in this homely rune, The drowsy summer-song of June.

This was the picture; this the green And golden magic of the scene; The lapping music, and the boon

Delight of lotos-drowsy June, Ungraced and unadorned. Was heard No mellow-ringing song of bird; No grace of woven grasses spread, With white and purple diapred Of blooms, to strike and snare the sense With jets of odorous frankincense. But peaceful as I lay and took These fancies down, (to make my book), Out of the lake, in spite of me, She rose, Anadyomene!

Give o'er the strife! The poet cries The maiden mercy, in whose eyes He sees the light of paradise. She came, and shot through that dull clime Sharp scent of marjoram and thyme, Cool vervain, and the forest rang Quick with the song my own heart sang. She came, with love, and in one ray Redeemed the dulness of the day, Until the world, (sea, sky, and land), Lay in the hollow of her hand.

XX

PROCESSIONAL

BENEATH the rooftree of the dark, Like Noah shut within the ark, I welcome from the waste of night The earliest olive-branch of light.

Like Jacob, I my load of sleep Cast off and see the angels creep, Processional in bright array Up the wide avenues of day;

See with Isaiah one who flies From that high orient sacrifice, Who, with a live coal in his hands Touches to voice th' unpurgèd land.

Then swift from hazel copse and brake The voices, voices, voices wake, In twilight woods, in choirèd bush, Antiphonal to the sweet thrush.

Like rain across the eastern hill The dropping harmonies distil, Or run upon the roseate sky In silver bars of melody.

The notes upon the chorded air Vibrate in thrilling pulse of prayer, And on my heart responses win, The harp without, the harp within.

Each morning on the walls of night Unfolds the oriflamme of light. Each morning westward with the sun, A tide of song, the voices run;

A hint of that clear day of gold The dewy morn has aye foretold, When these fresh voices shall prolong An everlasting morning-song.

XXI

TO A BULL-FROG

THOU hoarse Aristophanic mime, Grotesque Silenus of the slime, That dar'st to lift a comic voice Where thrushes worship and rejoice,

When I would build, apart from space, A simple shrine with simple grace, And lift the walls and arches there Of all that's high-distilled and fair,

God knows, who is the architect Of all I summon and reject, Thy mask is there, and with the choir Thy hoary bass-note will aspire.

XXII

ROSE IN GRAY

LIGHTLY moves the silver moon Through these glimmering nights of June, Lightly falls, and in the shine Of her moon-rays hyaline, Lifts the nightfall and the hush From the red rose on the bush, And the rose's heart discovers To her nightly wandering lovers

I could tell you, Phyllis dear, How the rose looked faint and clear In the moonlight; how she burned Like the sacred fire inurned; Distant, with the far-withdrawn Sweet shamefacedness of dawn; Quaintly cool, with yet the glow Of a lamp through falling snow.

So; but when I whisper, "Sweet, Take my hand, come let us see 't," 'T is the very smothered rose In your milk-white cheek that glows.

XXIII

TO FLOWERS

VITAL breathings of delight Flush your cheeks with blue and gold, Painted bannerets of light, Picketed 'twixt cold and cold.

Yet with purpose bear ye must Seasoned cannikins of fruit, Ere the red autumnal rust Crinkles downward to the root.

This your little year, as ours, Blossoms cannot make sublime. Ye are rooted in the hours, Ye are passengers of time.

XXIV

ON COMING OF AGE

THROUGH days wherein I heard no purpose speak, Through years that passed me as a quiet stream, I dreamed and did not seek; to-day I seek Who may no longer dream.

XXV

IT is long waiting for the dear companions, The friends that come not, though God knows I need them. I smile and wait; and yet The heart will fret.

A white cloud in the east is shining; sadly I see; my heart is all too full of longing, With the old-time delight To view the sight.

Wherefore I turn and in the eyes of women, In the strong hands of men, seek compensation. My prayer begins and ends, God give me friends.

XXVI

MARY, when the wild-rose Blossomed on the vine, Hearts were light, eyes were bright, But none so bright as thine.

Lightly the month of May, Sweet bud of June, Opened like a rose in gray, Under the moon.

When the heart of summer Withered with rust, Bitter blows laid the rose Broken in the dust.

Crystal wells, amber wells, On the hills of blue, Chiming like silver bells When the heart is true,

Boom with the billows On the black shore; Sweetness to bitterness Forevermore.

Sweetly the waters ran, (Wild rose for thee); The fountains of the heart of man Are bitter like the sea.

XXVII

IN A GARDEN

SWEET, my Sweet, by the winding-water Sit and sing as the days go by. (What if the sounding sea had taught her Lust of life and the fear to die!)

Here in the circuit thou hast drawn Consult the mayflower and the dew; And peace attend thee on the lawn, Beneath a sky forever blue.

The green be grateful to thine eyes, The blue a benediction be; The waters bless thee where they rise; But look not downward to the sea.

A limpid source of water, silver Bubbling up through golden sand, Leads, ah! down to the rolling river, Down, ah, down! to the sounding strand.

There the waves on the shifting margent, Night and day with a rhythmic roar, Beat and batter the black and argent Reef and rock of the sullen shore.

Spring will rise with a broken wing, Crippled in leaf and bud and stem; The winding-water cease to sing, The dawn will drop her diadem,

When thou but once beyond the pale Hast learned to look, or dared to see The sunrise shattered in the gale, The brazen terror of the sea.

Rather, at rest in what is thine, Sip thou the honey as it flows, Nor lift thy wing above the line, A blind bee in a garden-close.

XXVIII

NEPTUNIAN

MIDWAY the height of one sheer granite rock I sat in face of the barbarian sea, And heard the god, out of the dreadful, deep, Midmost Atlantic summoning strength and here, In accents clear above the sullen roar Of all his waves, condemn the jutting world.

"Populous Egypt was a realm and ruled By men that strove when Greece was yet unborn. I strive not, yet is Pharaoh deep in death, And still the seas sweep unappeased and new. Kings were ere Priam. Knew ye not? I hold The substance, in my swift and solvent brine, Of all the race since Adam, and of strange, Unfeatured men ere Paradise. And I Sang to them all and cradled them and drank Their breath, their dust, their family and fame. Earth the grain-giver in my hands I hold, And if I will I love and if I will Hate, and I know no master but the sun, Who drinks the years up in a thin blue flame. From me the rivers and the rain from me Lead down their due-returning silver streams In circuit just; and all the gulfs are mine

Beneath the earth that echo of the deep. Laugh then, be glad! E'en though I swallow down, To rock upon my oozy floor, the hulls Of odd ten thousand hurrying ships. They swell And mantle o'er with all the amorous life Ye reck not of, and in a year are gone. Laugh and be glad! Tremble and fear! I beat, Beneath the shining forward of the dawn, The dim high noon, and the red stars at night, Daylight and dark forever I beat, I beat The bulwarks of the shore, daylight and dark, With the blue night about me and the dawn."

On billow billow rolling, in the press Confounded of the furious, following surge, Thunders the Deep, intolerant and sublime; Gray-heart and grim to spurn of this black rock The temerarious front, and here to wrench The frame of earth aside before the sea.

XXIX

SHAKESPEARE

THROUGH time untimed, if truly great, a Name Reverence compels and, that forgotten, shame. But in the stress of living you shall scan, Yea, touch and censure, great or small, the Man.

XXX

THE WATER-CLOCK

EVER with fainter pulse and throw The heart's red clepsydra will flow. Then test the drops run on to waste, Make haste, for love of life, make haste!

XXXI

WE welcome lightly and with ease The gifts which providence foresees. But relish more the sudden grants Of unexpected circumstance.

XXXII

IN AUGUST

WHEN the petal falls and lies Wrinkled like a leaf that dies, When the flower that once was merry Sobers to the russet berry, When the rose and hawthorn draws Slowly down to hips and haws, 'T is the season birds are mute, 'Twixt the flower and the fruit.

XXXIII

DOG-DAYS

EVERY morning dies the sun On the eastern horizon, And a blazing god is born From the white egg of the morn.

Then the chorus that saluted Rosy-fingered dawn is muted, And the spirits of the earth Shrink beneath that fiery birth.

Underneath the green they lie Where a water-brook goes by; In a cowslip or, in turn, Couched below a fragrant fern.

You shall find them in the shadow Where the woodside meets the meadow; Lift the arum, they are there Breathing some cool well of air;

Waiting in the hopeful grass Till the fiery day shall pass, Till the flame is laid to rest On the red hearse of the west.

XXXIV

THROUGH rain the forest, roof and floor, Is green as it was ne'er before. And, dense along the forest-track, The boles of trees were ne'er so black.

Each driving cataract of rain The picture dyes a deeper stain. Yet, though the black be blacker seen, More vivid glows the vital green.

XXXV

FAGOTS

IN Autumn, as the year comes round, (The seasons fall without a sound), By slow and stealth an ashen hue Comes on the green, comes on the blue.

The sticks I burned beneath a larch The first bright day of tawny March, Gave out their heat and fell away Successive into rose and gray.

Thus covertly, and term by term, Like as the year, I grow infirm; Thus spend my substance like the fire, And like the last cold ash expire.

XXXVI

OCTOBER 10

THIS cool white morning by the wall How welcome does the sunlight fall To the curled aster, with its blue Close-folded petals, out of view. They open shining to the sun, As if their year had just begun; Nor guess, (prophetic in the blast), That this warm day may be the last.

XXXVII

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither areyour ways my ways, saith the Lord.

GOD, thou art good, but not to me. Some dark, some high and holier plan Is hid beyond the world with thee. To the immortals, not to man, God, thou art good.

I do conceive thee wholly wise, And good beyond the power of touch. Eternal lovingkindness lies In all thy purposes; so much I do conceive.

I do confess in thee above, All that thy lovers have to thee Ascribed, of fellowship and love. The words of Jesus on the tree I do confess.

Into thy hands I do commend My spirit. All thy ways I trust; In fear acknowledge to the end Thy will, and perish with the dust Into thy hands.

God, thou art good, but not to man. Thy purposes do not contain The mighty things I hope. Thy plan Looks past humanity and pain. God, thou art good.

XXXVIII

THE PINE-TREE

WHEN blood was in my heart like wine I crept beneath a branching pine; With passion drank the piny breath And no thought further then than death.

Now blood is colder and instead I mind the liquor of the head, Wherein I see, as in a glass, The pine decay, the season pass.

And I have known, with sudden sight, A shadow from the pine like night, And sorrowing breezes, verse by verse, Lament above the spirit's hearse;

And found some comfort, but not all, Where the red needles wove a pall, To mark through that dead carpet shine The promise of a seedling pine.

XXXIX

I DARE not think that thou art by, to stand And face omnipotence so near at hand! When I consider thee how must I shrink, How must I say, I do not understand, I dare not think!

I cannot stand before the thought of thee, Infinite Fulness of Eternity! So close that all the outlines of the land Are lost, — in the inflowing of thy sea I cannot stand.

I think of thee, and as the crystal bowl Is broken and the waters of the soul Go down to death within the crystal sea, I faint and fail when, (thou, the perfect whole), I think of thee.

XL

THE ANCHOR

AS when, these autumn days, I ride Along the painted country-side, Meadow and way and wood go by, A never-ending race, But yet, beyond their passing, my Wachusett holds his place;

So let each wingèd month and year Sweep into place and disappear; In order seen and loved, be sure! Ere ends its period; But let, beyond them all, endure One year, and that be God.

XLI

THE frost has walked across my world, Has killed the sallows and has curled The ferns. Ah, Summer, at what cost, For harvest, you invite the frost!

XLII

THE QUIET HARVEST

WITHIN a thicket ere the sun Was up, I heard a whisper run. Each bush and tree was bidding, now, Its yellow leaves forsake the bough. And each leaf, having had its day, Stepped down to earth the shortest way.

In April budding on the tree; In hot July full-blown and free; October bids them no more be. I had, I think, as fair a spring; July let equal fortune bring; God give as quiet harvesting.

XLIII

THE MAPLE-TREE

DAY after day I travel down From Billerica to the town; Day after day, in passing by A cedar-pasture, gray and high, See, shining clear and far, (a mile), The white church-steeple of Carlisle; And bright between Carlisle and me, Daily a glowing maple-tree.

Suffused with yellow, every part Is burning saffron at the heart. Upwards and warm the colors gain From ruddy gold to claret-stain; And downward tending, lightly lean To citron yellow and cold green. Day after autumn day it still More deeply burns against the hill. And now I 've made of it a type Of hopes, like mine, near autumn-ripe, And watch, intent, which first shall be, The consummation of the tree, Or that gold harvest-hope prepared for me.

XLIV

IN MEMORIAM. — PATSEY

MAXWELL, the master, built above His dog this testament of love, Where, on a granite block incised, These words told how the dog was prized:

"Here Patsey lies, by bitter chanceDead ere his time, by fates unruly;Stranger, regard this circumstanceAnd solemn rite; we loved him truly."

And quite as if 't had been a man, The slow foot of the moss began, Envious, to mar this simple state, And the poor name t' obliterate.

XLV

THE ivy leaves, (behind the shed), Turned bright and blushed a rosy red. Bit by the frost they sobered down, And now can show but russet-brown. Another frost and they will fall, And there will be no leaves at all. Thus down, through scarlet, gray, and dun, The earth will fall into the sun.

XLVI

GREEK AND CHRISTIAN

MAKE haste, my soul, the Wise Man whispered, go! Gather the golden ears before the snow; There is no harvest after death. But low, The Shining One replied, It is not so.

XLVII

DISSOLUTION

THE leaf will fall, through green and gold, To dissolution in the mould.

The tree will fall, and in the sod Complete its final period.

The night will die when one bright ray Shoots up and beckons in the day.

And that bright ray in turn will lie Coffined with all bright things that die;

Swept out to space, when on this shore Leaf, tree, the earth, (which all upbore), And day and night shall be no more.

XLVIII

NOVEMBER

THE sun, this old November, Across the sodden slope, May bid the heart remember, But cannot bid it hope.

XLIX

AGAINST FORGIVENESS

WE do not ask to be forgiven, Nor out of earth to win An unpremeditated heaven, Nor quit the claim of sin.

Our acts be on our head. As yet While masterful we live, The world we ask not to forget, Nor ask God to forgive.

L

CONFESSION

IN Adam's sin Did I begin.

With toil and sweat My bread I get;

At once, with Abel Spread my table,

Rebel with Cain And sin again.

O'er all the earth, (Which is my birth),

I joy to find My human kind;

Read in the sky That I must die,

Yet needs must sing When it is spring.

And though I run Before the sun,

By autumn brought To steady thought,

I still rehearse The primal curse,

And in the snow Confess my woe.

Yet here apart, Deep in my heart,

Kin to the sod I wait for God.

LI

NOVEMBER-BLIND

IN this November though I bend. My heart I cannot find a friend About the wood. The green is down From water-mead to forest crown; (Save where the myrtle in the lane Paints the gray sod an emerald stain; Save where the pines below the hill Glow with the suns of summer still). The hardy juniper to dust Corrodes in this autumnal rust. The goldenrod and aster-head Are black and broke and more than dead. This morning, fog about the height Creeps up and chokes the growing light; Lies like a blanket through the wood, And doubly trebles solitude. And when the sun above the mist Shall clear a space of amethyst, He too shall hunt, November-blind, A friend about the wood to find.

LII

WINTER A CAVERN

THROUGH dim November down as through an arch, I move in cavern darkness until March; Whence looking back, I can no more remember, For joy, the days sinister since November.

LIII

ON A WEED UNCOVERED BY THE RAINS IN DECEMBER

IN all its grace This was the Solomon's Seal, When summer shone. Now winter glooms, and here On flower and stalk has set his iron heel. Another year, my life, another year!

LIV

DECEMBER

NEW friends forbear, and let old friends remember With pity him who ends his course to-day; Nor heap with scorn his grave in dead December Whose life bore golden promises in May.

LV

ISAIAH VI:13

"As a teil-tree or an oak," So the ancient prophet spoke "Whose heart remaineth when they shed Their leaves!" The prophet now is dead, But on a girl his mantle falls And heartens other funerals.

December stood in confidence, Winter long had pitched his tents, When she and I together came Along a way without a name; And there she bade me lift my head The while those verses old she said.

A knotted oak above the snow I saw within a pasture grow; A sturdy tree, not over high, — Some several inches more than I. His leaves were gone, but in the air His branches other beauty wear.

About him little whips of wind A wreath of winter sunlight bind.

The snow upon his feet is cold, But in his heart is more than gold. And light that only winter knows Springs up to blossom on the snows.

LVI

NEW ENGLAND

WHOE'ER thou art, who walkest there Where God first taught my feet to roam, Breathe but my name into the air, I am content, for that is home.

A sense, a color comes to me, Of baybushes that heavy lie With juniper along the sea, And the blue sea along the sky.

New England is my home; 't is there I love the pagan sun and moon. 'T is there I love the growing year, December and young-summer June.

I'd rather love one blade of grass That grows on one New England hill, Than drain the whole world in the glass Of fortune, when the heart is still.

LVII

SERENE

THIS crystal sapphire of the sky Is saner far than you and I, Who in our passions and our dreams Run evermore to wild extremes.

The pure perfection of the sea Lies not in mirth and tragedy; But like the silence of the snows In breadth of beauty and repose.

God give one moment, ere we die, As crystal clear as the blue sky, Serene as ocean, white as snow, And glowing as the heavens glow.

LVIII

FROM Billerica forth I send My book. Pray take it for a friend. Or should it chance offend you, know It is not willingly your foe.