Days and Dreams Part 2

When 't is dawn, bestowing Day Strews with coins of golden Every furlong of his way-- Like a Sultan gone to pray At a Kaaba olden.

Warlock Night, when dips the dark, Opens, tire on tire, Windows of an heavenly ark, Whence the stars swarm, spark on spark, b.u.t.terflies of fire.

With the night, the day, the spring,-- G.o.dly chords of beauty,-- We the instrument will string Of our lives and love shall sing Songs of truth and duty.

13.

_She._

How it was I can not tell, For I know not where nor why, And the beautiful befell In a land that does not lie East or West where mortals dwell-- But beneath a vaguer sky.

Was it in the golden ages, Or the iron, that I heard, In prophetic speech of sages, How had come a snowy bird 'Neath whose wing lay written pages Of an unknown lover's word?

I forget; you may remember How the earthquake shook our s.h.i.+ps; How our city, one huge ember, Blazed within the thick eclipse; When you found me--deep December Sealed on icy eyes and lips.

I forget. No one may say Pre-existences are true: Here 's a flower dies to-day, Resurrected blooms anew: Death is dumb and Life is gray-- Who shall doubt what G.o.d can do!

14.

_He._

As to this, nothing to tell, You being all my belief; Doubt may not enter or dwell Here where your image is chief, Royal, to quicken or quell, Swaying no sceptre of grief.

Wise with the wisdom of Spring-- Dew-drops, a world in each prism, Gems from the universe ring:-- Free of all creed and all schism, Buds that are speechless but bring G.o.d-uttered G.o.d aphorism.

See how the synod is met There of the planets to preach us-- Freed from the frost's...o...b..iette, Here how the flowers beseech us-- Were it not well to forget Winter and night as they teach us?

Dew-drop, a bud, and a star, These--each a separate thought Over man's logic how far!-- G.o.d to a unit hath wrought-- Love, making these what they are, For without love they were naught.

Millions of stars; and they roll Over your path that is white, Here where we end the long stroll.-- Seen of the innermost sight, All of the love of my soul Kisses your spirit. Good-night.

PART II.

1.

_She delays, meditating._

Sad skies and a foggy rain Dripping from streaming eaves; Over and over again Dead drop of the trickling leaves; And the woodward winding lane, And the hill with its shocks of sheaves, One scarce perceives.

Must I go in such sad weather By the lane or over the hill?

Where the splitting milk-weed's feather Dim, diamond-like rain-drops fill?

Or where, ten stars together, Buff ox-eyes rank the rill By the old corn-mill?

The creek by this is swollen, And its foaming cascades sound; And the lilies, smeared with pollen, In the race look dull and drowned;-- 'T is the path we oft have stolen To the bridge, that rambles round With willows crowned.

Through a bottom wild with berry Or packed with the iron-weeds, With their blue combs washed and very Purple; the sorghum meads Glint green near a wilding cherry; Where the high wild-lettuce seeds The fenced path leads.

A bird in the rain beseeches; And the balsams' budding b.a.l.l.s Smell drenched by the way which reaches The wood where the water falls; Where the warty water-beeches Hang leaves one blister of galls, The mill-wheel drawls.

My shawl instead of a bonnet!...

Though the wood be soaking yet Through the wet to the rock I 'll run it-- How sweet to meet in the wet!-- Our rock with the vine upon it, Each flower a fiery jet-- ...

He won't forget!

2.

_He speaks, rowing._

Deep are the lilies here that lay Lush, lambent leaves along our way, Or pollen-dusty bob and float White nenuphars about our boat This side the woodland we have reached; Two rapid strokes our skiff is beached.

There is no path. Heaped foxgrapes choke Huge trunks they wrap. This giant oak Floods from the Alleghanies bore To wedge here by this sycamore; Its wounded bulk, heart-rotted white, Lights ghostly foxfire in the night.

Now oar we through this willow fringe The bulging sh.o.r.e that bosks,--a tinge Of green mists down the marge;--where old, Scarred cottonwoods build walls of shade With breezy balsam pungent; bowled Around vined trunks the floods have made Concentric hollows. On we pa.s.s.

As we pa.s.s, we pa.s.s, we pa.s.s, In daisy jungles deep as gra.s.s, A bubbling sparrow flirts above In wood-words with its woodland love: A white-streaked woodp.e.c.k.e.r afar Knocks: slant the sun dashed, each a star, Three glittering jays flash over: slim The piping sand-snipes skip and skim Before us: and a finch or thrush-- Who may discover where such sing?-- The silence rinses with a gush Of mellow music gurgling.

On we pa.s.s, and onward oar To yon long lip of ragged sh.o.r.e, Where from yon rock spouts, babbling frore A ferny spring; where dodging by Rests sulphur-disced that b.u.t.terfly; Mallows, rank crowded in for room, 'Mid wild bean and wild mustard bloom; Where fishers 'neath those cottonwoods Last Spring encamped those ashes say And charcoal boughs.--'T is long till buds!-- Here who in August misses May?

3.

_He speaks, resting._

Here the sh.o.r.es are irised; gra.s.ses Clump the water gray that gla.s.ses Broken wood and deepened distance: Far the musical persistence Of a field-lark lingers low In the west where tulips blow.

White before us flames one pointed Star; and Day hath Night anointed King; from out her azure ewer Pouring starry fire, truer Than true gold. Star-crowned he stands With the starlight in his hands.

Will the moon bleach through the ragged Tree-tops ere we reach yon jagged Rock, that rises gradually?

Pharos of our homeward valley.

Down the dusk burns golden-red; Embers are the stars o'erhead.

At my soul some Protean elf is: You 're Simaetha, I am Delphis; You are Sappho and her Phaon-- I. We love. There lies a ray on All the dark aeolian seas 'Round the violet Lesbian leas.

On we drift. He loves you. Nearer Looms our island. Rosier, clearer The Leucadian cliff we follow, Where the temple of Apollo Lifts a pale and pillared fire-- Strike, oh, strike the Lydian lyre; Out of h.e.l.las blows the breeze Singing to the Sapphic seas.

4.

_He sings._

Night, Night, 't is night. The moon before to love us, And all the moonlight tangled in the stream: Love, love, my love, and all the stars above us, The stars above and every star a dream.

In odorous purple, where the falling warble Of water cascades and the plunged foam glows, A columned ruin heaps its sculptured marble Curled with the chiselled rebeck and the rose.