The Lonely Dancer and Other Poems Part 3

AUGUST MOONLIGHT

The solemn light behind the barns, The rising moon, the cricket's call, The August night, and you and I-- What is the meaning of it all!

Has it a meaning, after all?

Or is it one of Nature's lies, That net of beauty that she casts Over Life's unsuspecting eyes?

That web of beauty that she weaves For one strange purpose of her own,-- For this the painted b.u.t.terfly, For this the rose--for this alone!

Strange repet.i.tion of the rose, And strange reiterated call Of bird and insect, man and maid,-- Is that the meaning of it all?

If it means nothing, after all!

And nothing lives, except to die-- It is enough--that solemn light Behind the barns, and you and I.

TO A ROSE

O rose! forbear to flaunt yourself, All bloom and dew-- I once, sad-hearted as I am, Was young as you.

But, one by one, the petals fell Earthward to rot; Only a berry testifies A rose forgot.

INVITATION

Unless you come while still the world is green, A place of birds and the blue dreaming sea, In vain has all the singing summer been, Unless you come, and share it all with me.

Ah! come, ere August flames its heart away, Ere, like a golden widow, autumn goes Across the woodlands, sad with thoughts of May, An aster in her bosom for a rose.

SUMMER GOING

Crickets calling, Apples falling.

Summer dying, Life is flying.

So soon over-- Love and lover.

AUTUMN TREASURE

Who will gather with me the fallen year, This drift of forgotten forsaken leaves, Ah! who give ear To the sigh October heaves At summer's pa.s.sing by!

Who will come walk with me On this Persian carpet of purple and gold The weary autumn weaves, And be as sad as I?

Gather the wealth of the fallen rose, And watch how the memoried south wind blows Old dreams and old faces upon the air, And all things fair.

WINTER

Winter, some call thee fair, Yea! flatter thy cold face With vain compare Of all thy glittering ways And magic snows With summer and the rose; Thy phantom flowers And fretted traceries Of crystal breath, Thy frozen and fantastic art of death, With April as she showers The violet on the leas, And bares her bosom In the blossoming trees, And dances on her way To laugh with May-- Winter that hath no bird To sing thee, and no bloom To deck thy brow: To me thou art an empty haunted room, Where once the music Of the summer stirred, And all the dancers Fallen on silence now.

THE MYSTIC FRIENDS

I nothing did all yesterday But listen to the singing rain On roof and weeping window-pane, And, 'whiles I'd watch the flying spray And smoking breakers in the bay: Nothing but this did I all day--

Save turn anon to trim the fire With a new log, and mark it roar And flame with yellow tongues for more To feed its mystical desire.

No other comrades save these three, The fire, the rain, and the wild sea,

All day from morn till night had I-- Yea! and the wind, with fitful cry, Like a hound whining at the door.

Yet seemed it, as to sleep I turned, Pausing a little while to pray, That not mis-spent had been the day; That I had somehow wisdom learned From those wild waters in the bay, And from the fire as it burned; And that the rain, in some strange way, Had words of high import to say; And that the wind, with fitful cry, Did some immortal message try, Striving to make some meaning clear Important for my soul to hear.

But what the meaning of the rain, And what the wisdom of the fire, And what the warning of the wind, And what the sea would tell, in vain My soul doth of itself enquire,-- And yet a meaning too doth find:

For what am I that hears and sees But a strange brother of all these That blindly move, and wordless cry, And I, mysteriously I, Answer in blood and bone and breath To what my gnomic kindred saith; And, as in me they all have part, Translate their message to my heart--

And know, yet know not, what they say: Know not, yet know, the fire's tongue And the rain's elegiac song, And the white language of the spray, And all the wind meant yesterday-- Yea! wiser he, when the day ends, Who shared it with those four strange friends.

THE COUNTRY G.o.dS

I dwell, with all things great and fair: The green earth and the l.u.s.tral air, The sacred s.p.a.ces of the sea, Day in, day out, companion me.

Pure-faced, pure-thoughted, folk are mine With whom to sit and laugh and dine; In every sunlit room is heard Love singing, like an April bird, And everywhere the moonlit eyes Of beauty guard our paradise; While, at the ending of the day, To the kind country G.o.ds we pray, And dues of our fair living pay.

Thus, when, reluctant, to the town I go, with country suns.h.i.+ne brown, So small and strange all seems to me-- the boonfellow of the sea-- That these town-people say and be: Their insect lives, their insect talk, Their busy little insect walk, Their busy little insect stings-- And all the while the sea-weed swings Against the rock, and the wide roar Rises foam-lipped along the sh.o.r.e.

Ah! then how good my life I know, How good it is each day to go Where the great voices call, and where The eternal rhythms flow and flow.

In that august companions.h.i.+p, The subtle poisoned words that drip, With guileless guile, from friendly lip, The lie that flits from ear to ear, Ye shall not speak, ye shall not hear; Nor shall you fear your heart to say, Lest he who listens shall betray.

The man who hearkens all day long To the sea's cosmic-thoughted song Comes with purged ears to lesser speech, And something of the skyey reach Greatens the gaze that feeds on s.p.a.ce; The starlight writes upon his face That bathes in starlight, and the morn Chrisms with dew, when day is born, The eyes that drink the holy light Welling from the deep springs of night.

And so--how good to catch the train Back to the country G.o.ds again.

III

TO ONE ON A JOURNEY

Why did you go away without one word, Wave of the hand, or token of good-bye, Nor leave some message for me with flower or bird, Some sign to find you by;

Some stray of blossom on the winter road, To know your feet had gone that very way, Told me the star that points to your abode, And tossed me one faint ray

To climb from out the night where now I dwell-- Or, seemed it best for you to go alone To heaven, as alone I go to h.e.l.l Upon the four winds blown.

HER PORTRAIT IMMORTAL

Must I believe this beauty wholly gone That in her picture here so deathless seems, And must I henceforth speak of her as one Tells of some face of legend or of dreams, Still here and there remembered--scarce believed, Or held the fancy of a heart bereaved.

So beautiful she--was; ah! "was," say I, Yet doubt her dead--I did not see her die.

Only by others borne across the sea Came the incredible wild blasphemy They called her death--as though it could be true Of such an immortality as you!