Days and Dreams Part 8

The night is shrewd with storm and sleet; Each loose-warped cas.e.m.e.nt raps or groans; I hear the wailing woodland beat The tempest with long blatant moans, Like one who fears defeat.

And sitting here beyond the storm, Alone within the lonely house, It seems of Sleep the Fairy charm Weaves incantations; even the mouse That scratched has come to harm.

And in this grave light, stolen o'er Familiar objects, grown severe, I 'm strange--as, opening a door, One finds one's dead self standing near, One knew not dead before.

The old stair rings with growling gusts; Each hearth's flue gasps a gorgon throat That snores and sleeps; the spectral dusts, Which yonder Shawnee war-gear coat, Whose quiver hangs and rusts,

Are shaken; till I feel that he, Who wore it in the wild war-dance, And died in it, fills shadowy Its wampumed skins; its plume, perchance, Shakes, scowling eyes at me.

And so the Swedenborge I toss Aside, contented with the dark That takes me. O'er the fire-light cross; Pa.s.s where the andirons spit and spark, And ponder o'er her loss.

Or from the flaw-splashed window yearn Out toward the waste, where sway and dip Dank, dark December boughs, where burn Some late last leaves, that icy drip No matter where you turn.

Where sodden soil, you scarce have trod, Fills oozy footprints; and the night So ugly that it mocks at G.o.d, Creating monsters which the sight Fancies, unseen, abroad.

The months I count: how long it seems Since that bland summer when with her, There on her porch, in rainy gleams We watched the mellow lightning stir In rain-clouds gray as dreams!

When all the west a torn gold sheet-- Swift openings of some t.i.tan's forge-- Laid bald with storm; in quivering heat Pitched precipice and nightmare gorge, Where thunder torrents beat.

And strong the wind was as again Storm lit the instant earth; and how The wood sprang out one virent stain; We read no more--lost is it now!-- In _Romance of a Reign_;

A tale of nowhere; then that we Were reading till we heard the plunge Of distant thunder sullenly, And left to mark long lightnings lunge Convulsions fiery.

What worlds love wrought us, dreaming there, Of sorcery and necromance!

With spirits l.u.s.trous of the air, A land like one great pearl, a trance Of floods and forests fair.

Where white-faced flowers sang and thought; Where fragrant birds flew, brilliant-blown, In winging odors; feather-fraught With light, where breathing colors shone, On throbbing music brought.

Or built us some snug country home Among the hills; with terraces Vine-hung and orchared o'er the foam Of the Ohio, far one sees Wind crimson in the gloam.

And this! and this!--alone! alone!

To hear the sweep of winter rain, The missiled sleet's sharp arrows blown; Dark shadow on the freezing pane, And on my heart a moan!

DAYS AND DREAMS.

He dreamed of hills so deep with woods Storm-barriers on the summer sky Are not more dark, where plunged loud floods Down rocks of sullen dye.

Flat ways were his where spa.r.s.ely grew Gnarled, iron-colored oaks, with rifts, Between dead boughs, of Eden-blue: Ways where the speedwell lifts

Its shy appeal, and spreading far-- The gold, the fallen gold of dawn Staining each blossom's balanced star-- Hollows of cowslips wan.

Where 'round the feet the lady-smock And pearl-pale lady-slipper creep; White b.u.t.terflies upon them rock Or seal-brown suck and sleep.

At eve the west shoots crooked fire Athwart a half-moon leaning low; While one white, arrowy star throbs higher In curdled honey-glow.

Was it some elfin euphrasy That purged his spirit so that there Blue harebells, by those ways that be, Seemed summoning to prayer?

For all the death within him prays; Not he--his higher self, whose love Fire-filled the flesh. Its light still stays Touched by the soul above.

They found him dead his songs beside, Six stairs above the din and dust Of life: and that for which he died Denied him even a crust.

DEITY.

No personal; a G.o.d divinely crowned With gold and raised upon a golden throne Deep in a golden glory, whence he nods Man this or that--and little more than man!

And shalt thou see Him individual?

Not till the freed intelligence hath sought Ten hundred hundred years to rise and love, Piercing the singing cycles under G.o.d,-- Their iridescent evolutions...o...b..d In wild prismatic splendors,--shall it see-- Through G.o.d-propinquity become a G.o.d-- See, lightening out of spheric harmonies, Resplendencies of empyrean light, Prisms and facets of ten million beams Starring a crystal of berainbowed rays, And in this--eyes of burning sapphire, eyes Deep as the music of the beautiful; And o'er the eyes, limpid hierarchal brows, As they were lilies of seraphic fire; Lips underneath, of trembling ruby--lips Whose tongue's a chord, and every sound a song: Cherubic faces of intensity In multiplying myriads to a word Forming the unit--G.o.d; Supremity Creative and ubiquitous.

From this Thy intellect, detached, expelled and breathed Exaltant into flesh endowed with soul, One sparkle of the Essence clothed with clay.-- O high development! devolvings up From matter to unmattered potencies, Up to the source and fountain of all mind, Beauty and truth, inviolable Love, And so resumed and reabsorbed in G.o.d, One more expression of eternity!

SELF.

A Sufi debauchee of dreams Spake this:--From Sodomite to Peri Earth tablets us; we live and are Man's own long commentary.

Is one begat in Ba.s.sora, One lies in Damietta dying-- The plausibilities of G.o.d All possibles o'erlying.

But burns the l.u.s.t within the flesh?-- h.e.l.l's but a homily to Heaven,-- Put then the individual first, And of thyself be shriven.

Neither in adamant nor bra.s.s The scrutinizing eye records it; The arm is rooted in the heart, The heart that rules and lords it.

Be that it is and thou art all; And what thou art so thou hast written Thee of the lutanists of Love, Or of the torture-smitten.

SELF AND SOUL.

It came to me in my sleep, And I rose from my sleep and went Out in the night to weep, Over the bristling bent.

With my soul, it seemed, I stood Alone in a moaning wood.

And my soul said, gazing at me, "Shall I show you another land Than other this flesh can see?"

And took into hers my hand.-- We pa.s.sed from the wood to a heath As starved as the ribs of Death.

Three skeleton trees we pa.s.s, Bare bones on an iron moor, Where every leaf and the gra.s.s Was a thorn and a thistle h.o.a.r.

And my soul said, looking on me, "_The past of your life you see._"