LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Class 
 
NATURE-NOTES AND 
 IMPRESSIONS 
 
NATURE-NOTES 
 
 AND 
 
 IMPRESSIONS 
 
 IN PROSE AND VERSE 
 BY 
 
 MADISON CAWEIN 
 
 NEW YORK 
 E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY 
 
 1906 
 
Copyright, 1906, 
 BY MADISON CAWEIN. 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A. 
 
C0 tjje 
 
 OF 
 
 GEORGE H. ELLWANGER 
 
 TRUE FRIEND AND LOVER AND INTERPRETER OF 
 
 NATURE, 
 
 AS A SLIGHT TOKEN OF ESTEEM 
 AND ADMIRATION 
 
Would I could talk as the flowers talk 
 
 To my soul / and the stars, in their ceaseless walk 
 
 Through Heaven / and tell to the high and low 
 
 The things that they say, so all might know 
 
 The dreams they dream, and have told to me ! 
 
 As Nature sees would I could see ! 
 
 Then might I speak with authority / 
 
 / stand below and look above, 
 
 And see her busy with life and love, 
 
 And can tell the world so little thereof. 
 
 Oh, for a soul that could feel much less / 
 
 Or, feeling more, could so express 
 
 The things it feels and their tenderness : 
 
 The very essence, the soul of art, 
 
 And all the heavens and hells of heart! 
 
 Then might I rise to the very peak, 
 
 The summit of song, which poets seek, 
 
 And speak with a voice as the masters speak. 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 WITH few if any changes the 
 contents of this volume, both 
 prose and verse, with the 
 exception of the short sketch at the 
 end and one or two of the poems, 
 have been copied almost word for 
 word from my note-books of many 
 years. They are impressions, ideas, 
 fancies, more or less fragmentary, that 
 struck me at the moment; notes, sug 
 gestions, what you will, jotted down 
 hurriedly, sometimes taking the form 
 of prose, other times that of verse as 
 the fancy moved me, while wander 
 ing in the woods at all seasons, making 
 a record of days extending over a 
 period of some twenty odd years. All 
 the verses and prose-notes contained 
 in the first part, "1883-1886," were 
 written while hardly more than a boy, 
 vii 
 
Foreword 
 
 between the ages of eighteen and 
 twenty-one and while attending high 
 school. 
 
 A number of the verses have ap 
 peared in the magazines during the 
 past year or two : several fragments, 
 under the title " Reed Notes," in 
 "The Atlantic ";"Autum.n Etchings" 
 in the "Outlook"; and others in 
 "Ainslee s," "Success," "Smart Set," 
 " Lippincott s," "Metropolitan," and 
 " Munsey s." 
 
 MADISON CAWEIN. 
 LOUISVILLE, Kv. 
 
 Vlll 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Nature-Notes and Impressions 
 
 PAGE 
 
 1883-1886 * 
 
 1887-1890 46 
 
 1891-1900 79 
 
 1901-1905 135 
 
 Poems 
 
 CATKINS 2 54 
 
 ANNOUNCEMENT 258 
 
 " WHEN SPRING COMES DOWN THE WILD- 
 WOOD WAY" 260 
 
 HILDA OF THE HILLSIDE 261 
 
 DAWN IN THE ALLEGHANIES 263 
 
 Music 26 5 
 
 AUTUMN ETCHINGS 267 
 
 WOOD- WAYS 272 
 
 THE CHARCOAL-BURNER S HUT. . . . 273 
 
 IN CLAY 276 
 
 ix 
 
Contents 
 
 PAGE 
 
 GRAY SKIES 2 77 
 
 SUNSET DREAMS 2 77 
 
 MENDICANTS 2 79 
 
 WINTER RAIN 280 
 
 MARINERS . 2 ^ x 
 
 Prose Sketch 
 
 WOMAN OR WHAT? 287 
 
NATURE-NOTES 
 and IMPRESSIONS 
 
 Nature never did betray the heart that loved her. 
 
 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 1883-1886 
 
 I HAVE not delved in the ruins 
 of antiquity, nor moralized upon 
 the past, as Byron did, but have 
 kept, or tried to keep, two lines of 
 Keats, two lines of Endymion, for 
 ever in mind while writing, and 
 striven to the uttermost to make my 
 lines worthy the text. 
 
 Lead me, thou Bard of Beauty, through 
 
 those caves 
 
 Of pale Diana ! let me hear the moan 
 Of Ocean, sorrowing with all his waves 
 As once he sorrowed on that Island lone 
 
 i I 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 In siren moonlight. Here, where twilight 
 
 paves 
 The woodland paths, I seem to hear her 
 
 trail 
 
 Dim raiment; her, that damsel who en 
 slaves 
 
 My soul ; that Beauty, sad, divinely pale, 
 That haunts thy song, mastering the 
 
 gamut whole 
 Of dreams and music; on whose easeful 
 
 breast, 
 As once Endymion s head, soft-dreaming, 
 
 pressed 
 That Indian maiden s bosom, rests my 
 
 soul. 
 
 O let me sing as thou didst, Keats, and 
 
 die! 
 With soul poured on the circling starry 
 
 night; 
 
 When Dian s lune hangs dewy in the sky, 
 And the wild nightingale with an 
 guished might 
 Bewails in some dense bramble s spicy 
 
 dusk 
 
 Its old heart-sorrow to the wild rose 
 wan; 
 
 2 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 Or let me, like thyself, drink in the musk 
 Of some dull draught from Lethe s 
 
 waters drawn, 
 And sink, as thou didst, into dreamless 
 
 sleep, 
 Where disappointment, heartache, grief 
 
 and scorn, 
 
 And human misery can no longer heap 
 The soul that treads life s path set 
 
 round with thorn; 
 
 Ay! fall asleep, as thou didst fall asleep 
 Under the alien skies, of hope forlorn! 
 
 In the forest of music often and often, 
 To the murmuring song of the winds and 
 
 waters, 
 
 Have our spirits mingled and mixed 
 In the wildflower dance of the Hours 
 On the mossy carpet under the whispering 
 
 leaves : 
 
 Or wandered, hand in shadowy hand, 
 Beneath the song-suggestive stillness of 
 
 the moon: 
 Or leaned, listening, 
 Over deep glens of echoing green, 
 Carved in the ancient bosoms of the hills 
 3 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 By sonorous and impetuous waters, 
 Bearing upon their foamy crests 
 Crescents and points, starry and still, 
 Of reflected emerald flame, 
 When the heavens bloomed and blazed 
 
 with a million quivering fires. 
 Dost thou know her name? 
 Fairest of the Daughters of Music is she, 
 Loveliest of all the Children of Art. 
 
 The puff-ball of the autumn ways 
 is Puck s fat fist thrust threateningly 
 out of the half-concealing weeds at 
 the bee to whom the blossom offers 
 her milk-white bosom. 
 
 When winter nights are cold and shrill, 
 
 And winds sit rocking wild their arms, 
 Far off, beyond the treeless hill, 
 
 Sound ghostly faint the owl s alarms. 
 Wail, wail, thou bird of ill omen, 
 
 Within thy freezing glen! 
 Screech, screech through all the frosty 
 night 
 
 Where gleams the cold moonlight! 
 4 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 Well with man s mood thy song accords, 
 Thy song that knows but wailing words. 
 
 Lo, where the oats in barn are housed, 
 
 The screech-owl sits and croons and 
 
 cries, 
 Until the cocks are all aroused 
 
 And know to-night some pullet dies. 
 Hush, hush, thou staring owl ! 
 
 And leave the roosting fowl ! 
 Go, seek the shivering wood, 
 
 And there, where wild winds brood, 
 Sing to the soul that hope has lost, 
 The soul that still is tempest-tost. 
 
 When snows drift deep the forest path, 
 
 And sleet bows down the strongest trees, 
 Like Edgar s fear and Lear s crazed 
 wrath, 
 
 The screech-owl s voice makes wild the 
 
 breeze. 
 Mourn, mourn, thou feathered witch 
 
 Above the frozen ditch ! 
 Weep, weep, unto the icy gale, 
 
 Where icicles hang pale, 
 As weeps the heart, ingratitude 
 Makes winter of, the grief pursued. 
 
 5 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 Like a pearl, dissolving in a goblet 
 of golden wine, is the new moon in 
 the drowning deeps of the sunset. 
 
 JULY 9 
 
 The sea-pink and the tall wild bell- 
 flower divide the honors of July; the 
 one, pearly pink, the other, turquoise- 
 azure, conspicuously placed in her 
 flower-garland in fragrant frater 
 nity, each proud of its showy loveli 
 ness and of the abundant beauty of 
 the month that bore them. 
 
 Toadstools, large and little, over 
 run the woods to-day after a day and 
 night of rain: red and yellow and 
 white, green and saffron and gray; 
 upright, sidewise; some with the 
 woodland loam and leaves, upheaved 
 with them, still strewing their tops; 
 graceful and slender, or bloated and 
 distorted they stand; poisonous-look 
 ing some of them, and of a blue mot 
 tled color, which, when broken, exude 
 6 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 a thin cobalt-colored watery juice that 
 stains whatever it touches; some of 
 them a burnt-umber brown and of 
 enormous size, looking like huge flat 
 hats, rims turned up, swollen with 
 rain, rotting and reeking in the under 
 woods and filling the air with a fetid 
 fungous odor. 
 
 Great clumps of the Mayapples, 
 beaten down and ruined by the rain 
 here and there by the wayside, show 
 the smooth green and ripening yellow 
 of their oval fruit, often too large and 
 heavy for the stalk to support. 
 
 The elecampane and the black-eyed 
 Susan, with their frank, wide eyes of 
 gold and bronze; the thimble- weed, 
 with its terminal greenish white blos 
 soms and stiff thyrsus-like thimbles 
 of green thrust from and over the 
 surrounding briers and weeds; and 
 the lacy white of the wild-carrot 
 together with the bugled scarlet of the 
 trumpet-vine, make a perfect riot of 
 7 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 color in an angle of an old worm- 
 fence separating a bit of fallow-field 
 from a bit of sown, wherein a bob- 
 white keeps calling ; repeatedly tying, 
 as it were, with a thread of three 
 notes, the stillness and the heat: the 
 first two, soft, careful, and prelimi 
 nary; the last one, whipped out em 
 phatically, straight as a thread thrust 
 through the eye of a needle, complet 
 ing and forming the final knot to its 
 own satisfaction and that also of the 
 listening summer day. 
 
 Across a wooded vista a red-bird 
 suddenly wings. Its flight is as the 
 swift unfurling of a ribbon of living 
 crimson uniting tree to tree, with a 
 bright bowknot of silken song at 
 either end. 
 
 In the careless shadow of a flower 
 ing tree she sat a witch whiter 
 than a windflower. Her song was all 
 of poison, hemlock, the squeez- 
 8 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 ing of the dark juice through white 
 fingers. A sound as of owlet wings 
 kept time to her wild singing. At her 
 feet lay a youth with closed eyes, 
 whose lips and forehead she kissed 
 repeatedly, each kiss leaving a mark 
 as of a serpent s fang. He was 
 dead, and yet he seemed to live, his 
 heart and soul, through her kisses, 
 ashes and dust within him. His face 
 was pinched into smiles that were 
 not smiles. She laughed, and be 
 neath her laugh the monkshood and 
 nightshade covered themselves with 
 poison-dripping blossoms, and the 
 wild-rose was slimed with snails. 
 
 The spirits of the tempest advance 
 their embattled hosts, thunderous 
 rank on rank, black with their shields 
 of midnight. Beneath the flashings 
 of their terrible helmets and the hiss 
 ing and rebounding rain of their 
 9 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 arrows, the hills lift up their writhing 
 arms of trees, and the river, foaming 
 with fear, hurls itself headlong at its 
 banks. 
 
 Twilight with her dusky locks binds 
 up the beautiful eyes of day, whose 
 head she pillows on flaming flowers, 
 tulip and poppy and rose. Her 
 voice is plaintive as echo s amid the 
 rocks where sleeping waves in dull 
 green mantles lie beneath the cav- 
 erned cliff; or billows climb, white- 
 shouldered, with long fingers of 
 foam. 
 
 Here are passion-flowers, purple 
 of heart, bearing the cross, as it 
 were, of some stainless flower-creed; 
 acacias, too, spotless as the angel 
 innocence of a babe, and expressing 
 in fragrance what the poet thinks but 
 cannot say. 
 
 10 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 The roar of winter through the palsied 
 oaks, 
 
 Wind-tortured on the withered fields, 
 Is as the sound of giant chariot spokes, 
 
 And clashing of innumerable shields. 
 
 I Ve wooed soft sleep all night, 
 Clothed in her mantle white 
 
 And dim as rain; 
 I ve lain all night and wept 
 For death, who past me crept, 
 
 To still this pain, 
 
 Heart s pain, but all in vain. 
 
 Why cam st thou not, O death? 
 
 Why cam st thou not, O sleep ? 
 Death s brother, calm of breath, 
 
 For whom I keep 
 Vigil the long night through : 
 At last the day breaks blue 
 
 And dim the dawn. 
 Would that you yet might hear, 
 And hearing me, draw near 
 
 Ere night be gone. 
 
 II 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 The night is wild ; the bitter blasts sweep 
 
 by; 
 The shrouded snows with ghostly fingers 
 
 beat 
 The shuddering casements, and the candle 
 
 flame 
 Seems fluttered of phantom lips whose 
 
 kiss is death. 
 
 Next to children, birds and flowers 
 are the most beautiful gifts of God. 
 
 A treasure seems concealed here 
 where the moss is damp and deep, 
 and the golden blossoms of the crow 
 foot and the wood-sorrel are spilled 
 like little yellow coins. 
 
 As I reached up among the blos 
 soming clusters of the elder copse, 
 was it a faun concealed in the boscage 
 who blinded me with a storm of white 
 stars showered into my face, or was 
 it merely the wind that passed, low 
 laughing to itself, and whispering of 
 12 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 forgotten things, lost long ago, and 
 living now only in the land of dreams 
 and song? 
 
 With its helm of silver and spur of gold 
 A fairy knight is the toad-flax bold, 
 Who takes this form to mortal eyes, 
 The form of a flower of golden dyes. 
 
 By the willow copse near the river shore, 
 Where the white waves hush their splash 
 
 and roar, 
 
 With an idle sail and an idle oar 
 I seemed to drift into other streams, 
 Borne on by the sleepy current of dreams. 
 
 O wilding of the young, young June, 
 That this old rock holds fast, 
 
 Thy day is done too soon, too soon, 
 Too beautiful to last. 
 
 Water lily, do the Nisses weave 
 from you their nuptial raiment of 
 white? Or does the enamoured 
 13 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 Necken pluck you for his hair to lure 
 some maiden mortal to his arms ? Or 
 the mermaid dew you with her tears 
 when lamenting that she cannot be 
 redeemed? Speak! and with your 
 white, sweet lips now tell me ! I know 
 the young Nisses weep because they 
 cannot be saved. Often do I fancy 
 them as seated on your broad green 
 pads, harping and singing sad songs 
 of sad mortality in the light of the 
 setting moon, the vibrant silver of 
 their strings and the hollow gold of 
 their harps sobbing like some wild 
 bird in the silence of the night. And 
 often have you bent your pensive head 
 in helpless meekness, making yourself 
 a bud again, closing the wildness of 
 their music into the imprisoning 
 petals of your beautiful bosom, to 
 give it forth again in perfume. 
 
 When all the orchards faded lie, 
 
 When roses drop and lilies die, 
 
 14 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 When fall s full moon makes deep the sky, 
 
 Lay me asleep, 
 Where breezes bend the sighing trees, 
 
 Lay me asleep. 
 
 When all the dusty autumn day 
 
 Is heard the locust s roundelay, 
 
 And, dropping leaves, the tree-tops sway 
 
 And wildflowers there, 
 Beneath the wildflowers let me rest, 
 
 The wildflowers there. 
 
 Let not thy hand disturb the grass 
 To plant an alien flower there ; 
 Let those wild infants, free as fair, 
 Above me, sleeping, bloom and pass, 
 
 Forgotten die, 
 Forgotten as myself, alas! 
 
 Who neath them lie. 
 
 Gems and crystals lay scattered 
 around him, on marble the color of 
 fire: sea-green chrysoprase and co- 
 palite from Zanzibar; spar the color 
 of amber ; alexandrines green by 
 day, by night purple or crimson 
 15 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 from the Urals; iron, with red 
 streaks of jasper through it; lapis- 
 lazuli and chrysoberyl; fluorspar 
 crystals, white, amethystine, pink and 
 green; cairngorms, dark and clear 
 as an Ethiope s eye; topazes, smoky 
 and blue and wine-colored; and 
 heaped high amid them, like violets 
 smothered under the snows of spring, 
 great sapphires mingled and mixed 
 with the milky fire of many opals. 
 
 The great stars wax and wane, and 
 the moon rises over gull-haunted 
 crags, honeycombed with caves, in 
 whose dark crevices the yellow mol- 
 lusks cling like ingots of gold, and 
 upon whose floors of green the red 
 coral is strewn like branches of bleed 
 ing ruby. 
 
 I cannot help admiring the great 
 gray hawk. How bold, how bright, 
 16 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 how swift he is! Let him but show 
 his shadow and the shrieking hens 
 scatter, flying to cover; and the 
 blood-red cock, that braggart of the 
 barn-yard, hides his proud crest in 
 fear. 
 
 To-day I found a flower unknown 
 to me, a flower white as a pearl 
 and spotted with crimson, as if some 
 wild bird, stabbed with a thorn, had 
 breathed its small life out upon the 
 altar of its loveliness. 
 
 The moon is a lemon petal, 
 And the west a wild-rose red, 
 
 And the twilight twines her dusky locks 
 With lily-like stars o erhead. 
 
 Deep down, deep down, deep, deep, deep ! 
 Follow us ! come with us ! See how we 
 
 leap! 
 Daughters of ^Eger, veiled white with the 
 
 spray, 
 
 Beckoning, calling you. Oh, come away! 
 17 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 Children of Earth, come hither, where we 
 Dwell in Ran s realms of cerulean hue; 
 Where through her caverns of green and 
 
 of blue 
 
 Echo our songs, our songs of the sea, 
 Dirging the dead, the sailors who sleep 
 Deep down, deep down, deep, deep, deep! 
 Come, where the dulse and the nautilus 
 
 cling ! 
 Come away, come away, here where we 
 
 sing! 
 Where of your eyes we will fashion pale 
 
 homes, 
 Hollow, for pearls and the glimmering 
 
 foams. 
 
 The pale-haired Waves and the 
 white- veiled Billows, daughters of 
 Ran, hurry to meet ^Eger, King of 
 Ocean, in his helmet of terrifying 
 darkness, amid the roaring reefs and 
 booming breakers. The demons of 
 the deep, armored and helmeted with 
 mist, swarm from the caves of the 
 cliffs, howling to the legions of the 
 18 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 storm, driving some vessel, helpless 
 and tattered of sail, toward them. 
 
 Come, kiss me, beautiful Death, 
 
 And lull me with thy wings ; 
 Breathe on me with thy breath, 
 
 And touch my soul with things 
 Unknown of life. Imbue 
 My body with thy dew 
 
 And bear me far away 
 Into a deeper dawn 
 Than lights life s shadowy lawn, 
 
 Some fairer break-of-day. 
 
 Life s sickness, long and old, 
 
 Cure in me ; everything : 
 Life s greed for fame and gold 
 
 And love and suffering. 
 Yea, I am young and fair ! 
 Come, take me by the hair 
 
 And kiss me on the eyes ; 
 Then bear me through the deep, 
 As thy brother, dream-tossed Sleep, 
 
 Hath borne me loving-wise. 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 The new moon is the golden battle- 
 bow of a sylph; the evening star is 
 the arrow with which it pierces the 
 sunset. 
 
 I saw the Spirits of Day and of 
 Darkness meet. Whiter than the 
 bloom of crystal were his cheeks ; and 
 hers, a hectic flush that seemed the 
 reflection of some inward fire, like the 
 scarlet of the autumn woods. To 
 grace her drowsy head he wove for 
 her a chaplet of poppied clouds. 
 
 Cheerily rang the bugle horn, 
 
 Cheerily through the wood, 
 For the ten-tined buck by the hunt out 
 worn 
 
 At bay neath the old oak stood. 
 
 The morn, like some blear-eyed 
 beggar, came trailing her tatters in, 
 streaming with vapor, dark and dis- 
 20 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 mal, her sodden hair blinding her 
 eyes. 
 
 The noon was clear; but now, as 
 the sun sinks, the broadening black 
 of one tremendous cloud breaks into 
 peaks, creviced and ravined and riv- 
 ered with burning gold, cascading 
 and circling and cleaving their crags 
 of storm. The thunder seems the 
 sound of its mighty flowing. Nearer 
 and nearer the blue lines of the rain 
 shadow and streak the woods, the 
 hills, and the heavens. Now they 
 plunge, big-dropped, crackling, and 
 resilient, clamoring on the reverber 
 ating stones ; so thin the film of spray 
 of the shattered drops that the white- 
 tufted dandelion loses not one light 
 seed in the shelter of this rock, where, 
 like a host of fairy helms, the rose 
 bush bristles against the rain a 
 myriad green buds. Again, and yet 
 again, the thunder, breaking, travels 
 ponderously along the clouds, the 
 
 21 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 gray-steel flash of the lightning like 
 a torch before its rolling chariot. 
 
 And now yon crystal mount of clouds 
 Silvers with light as t were of wings, 
 
 Whose base the thunder s blackness 
 
 shrouds, 
 While to its summit brightness clings. 
 
 Along the west, flashed through the dun, 
 Leaping, the angled lightnings fly, 
 
 Cleaving the deeps, where thunders run 
 Like mountain torrents down the sky. 
 
 Out of it rises, partly hid, 
 
 A cloud, rose-spar t all fair of form, 
 Like some sky-pointed pyramid, 
 
 Or pillar of light, above the storm. 
 
 MAY 23, 1885 ; 6 P. M. 
 
 The broad Ohio s darkening stream 
 Seems now as still as liquid glass, 
 
 In which the bridge s pillars dream 
 
 Unwavering where the still waves pass. 
 
 22 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 The shattered thunder fragments fly; 
 
 One cloud alone makes dark the west, 
 Low stooping to the evening sky, 
 
 A champion with a burning crest: 
 
 Through whose mailed breast of darkness 
 dim 
 
 And ragged rents of vapors deep, 
 The sun sweeps lances, long and slim, 
 
 Of flame that fall on vale and steep. 
 
 Through stratas torn of windy rack 
 Full flashes now its crimson star, 
 
 Blazing blood-red through stormy black 
 And bronze of tempest scattered far. 
 MAY 23, 1885 ; 6.30 P. M. 
 
 O wind of eve, what spices, steeped 
 In some more aromatic clime, 
 
 Thou breathest, as from islands reaped 
 Of Summer, over seas of thyme, 
 
 Thou bearest odor on thy breath 
 
 Fresh as the scent of ocean s waves ; 
 
 Cool as if thou hadst lain beneath, 
 All day, in dark and crystal .caves. 
 23 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 Xight comes, with sparkling fireflies 
 Like jewels tangled in her hair, 
 
 And all around her perfumes rise 
 Of rain, as t were dim spirits there. 
 
 To-day I am like one drifting, drift 
 ing, and beholding, as in a dream, 
 never nearer, never farther away, a 
 line of dim shore, cliffed and pined 
 and cascaded, against the sunset s 
 luminous seas. 
 
 When eve casts on the day s dark bier 
 The rhododendrons of her light, 
 
 And trims her stars, like tapers clear, 
 At feet and head, how fair is night. 
 
 To-day I have learned with Keats 
 " heart s lightness from the merri 
 ment " of late summer, instead of 
 " May," and wandered with Shake 
 speare 
 
 " Over hill, over dale, 
 Thorough bush, thorough brier/ 
 24 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 and seen many things that the ordi 
 nary eye would refuse to consider: 
 the Chickasaw plum, red as the cheek 
 of an Oread; the jellied spawn of the 
 frog in a pond, a flaccid white blotched 
 with black like the freckled face of 
 Caliban; mushrooms, low and lean 
 ing, Puck s own footstools; rocks, 
 green with lichen, carved of the rain 
 and frost and heat into fantastic 
 shapes as of rebeck and of rose, fairer 
 to my eyes than any templed frieze 
 of old Greece, where the Amazons 
 and Bacchantes still seem to live in 
 marble; lethargic pawpaws, rotund 
 and jolly as the bottle-belly of 
 old Silenus ; and blackberry-lilies, 
 freaked and streaked with rose and 
 ruby, like the hood of Ariel ; morning- 
 glories, azure and crimson and crys 
 tal, finely fragile, and hung up like 
 the petticoats of the fays, the fairies 
 own laundry, at the entrance to the 
 wood, that holds in its green heart 
 25 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 many a woodland spring, like a pure 
 thought, framed in with rocks and 
 ferns, the secret mirrors of glim 
 mering shapes, the sylvan spirits of 
 the solitude. 
 
 O my Kentucky, forest old ! 
 
 Where Beauty dwells, the stalwart child 
 Of Love and Life, where I behold 
 
 The dreams still glow that long beguiled 
 
 The marble and the bronze of men, 
 Whose Art made fair the world of old, 
 
 Yet never held, of classic ken, 
 
 A form like thine which I would mould. 
 
 Around me now I turn and gaze : 
 
 The earth is green ; the heaven is clear : 
 
 Where smile the stars, or bloom the days 
 More absolutely fair than here! 
 
 Young still is she, and fresh as morn, 
 Standing her sister States among; 
 
 Ah ! would I were a poet born, 
 To sing her as she should be sung ! 
 26 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 Bidding her keep beneath her heel 
 
 The lust for wealth, wrong s iron 
 crown ; 
 
 Her pioneer pride, a shield of steel, 
 A buckler that no foe may down. 
 
 Sister to Hospitality ! 
 
 Mother of Lincoln and of Clay ! 
 Make thyself worthy still to be 
 
 Mother of men as great as they. 
 
 Mother of loves and hopes that dare; 
 
 Of dreams and deeds that sing and toil, 
 Whose hands are open as the air, 
 
 Whose honor none on earth may soil ! 
 
 Let mightier dreams be thine ! arise ! 
 
 Let all the world behold thee set 
 A constellation in the skies 
 
 Where all thy sister Stars are met ! 
 
 1885. 
 
 The noisome hollow of the wood 
 was fetid with toadstools. The trees 
 were crippled and swollen with 
 wormy galls, and twisted like tor 
 tured things with disease, and dis- 
 27 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 torted with huge fungous growths. 
 Nearby, surrounded with such trees, 
 a rushless and reedless pool lay stag 
 nant and sullen in the sun, where 
 toads and newts and water-snakes 
 abounded, breeding in the rankness 
 of its slime and ooze. The horrible 
 hillside, rising from the pool, was 
 smothered with thistle and nettle and 
 burdock and the evil-smelling jimson- 
 weed; one wild-rose bush eked out 
 a sickly existence amid this army of 
 evils, its stems and leaves leprous with 
 the mining larvae, and labyrinthed 
 with the web-white trails of the red 
 spider. By the side of the pool, in the 
 shadow of the rose-bush, like some 
 lean yellow spider, or obscene larva, 
 sat a man, hideous and old, with long, 
 straggly gray beard and bristling 
 eyebrows, through which his small 
 eyes glittered like a snake s. Hatless 
 and perfectly bald he sat, a mirth 
 less, a cruel smile, repugnant and un- 
 28 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 changing, wreathing his wrinkled 
 face, watching a viper devour a 
 toad. 
 
 A distant river glimpsed through deep- 
 leaved trees. 
 
 A field of fragment flint, blue, gray, and 
 red. 
 
 Rocks overgrown with twigs of trailing 
 vines 
 
 Thick-hung with clusters of the green 
 wild-grape. 
 
 Old chestnut groves the haunt of drowsy 
 cows, 
 
 Full-uddered kine chewing a sleepy cud ; 
 
 Or, at the gate, around the dripping 
 trough, 
 
 Docile and lowing, waiting the milking- 
 time. 
 
 Lanes where the wild-rose blooms, mur 
 murous with bees, 
 
 The bumble-bee tumbling their frowsy 
 heads, 
 
 Rumbling and raging in the bell-flower s 
 bells, 
 
 Drunken with honey, singing himself 
 asleep. 
 
 29 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 Old in romance a shadowy belt of woods. 
 A house, wide-porched, before which 
 
 sweeps a lawn 
 Gray-boled with beeches and where elder 
 
 blooms. 
 And on the lawn, whiter of hand than 
 
 milk, 
 And sweeter of breath than is the elder 
 
 bloom, 
 A woman with a wild-rose in her hair. 
 
 How long she had waited! It 
 seemed ages since that morn, blood 
 shot of eye, arose from the couch 
 of old Tithonos, and she, with 
 kindred eyes of sleepless hours and 
 tears, arose from Mark s hated 
 side. 
 
 From her casement she sees the 
 castle lake, lilied and fountained, and 
 far beyond the moated walls the for 
 ested mountains where Tristram, it 
 is whispered, runs naked, a madman 
 amid swineherds. 
 
 Now sinks the sadder eve, blood- 
 30 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 shot of gaze as morn, over the 
 shadowy bier of day bowing her mel 
 ancholy star. And so o er their dead 
 past her sorrowing fancy bends, lit 
 with the light of tearful eyes. Tris 
 tram naked and lost among vile 
 men and barren hills and savage 
 woods. Why could she not die! 
 Yes, she w r ould die! To-morrow 
 should not gaze upon her misery, 
 the misery of Isoud the Beautiful! 
 Why had God cursed her with this 
 great, this sinful love? Yes, she 
 would die. Morn would find her 
 dead, morn that she loved, the 
 fresh and radiant morn! Ah! she 
 would miss the oxen s far-off low; 
 the smell of early meadows tedded and 
 deep with hay; the cock s clear 
 clarion call; and under the eaved 
 cottage thatch, as often she and Tris 
 tram rode afield, the twittering of 
 sparrows. And, sighing, from the 
 window slow she turned, and took 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 her lute; touching its strings, she 
 sang: 
 
 " No more for me shall gray-robed Dawn 
 
 look through 
 Heaven s windows of the fog, or rain, or 
 
 dew, 
 The maiden Dawn with eyes of beautiful 
 
 blue." 
 
 I saw sweet Summer go 
 Into a woodland green, 
 Unto a sliding stream, 
 
 A drowsy water; 
 With cheeks of sunset glow 
 Dreaming she seemed to lean, 
 Dreaming a wild-wood dream, 
 The wood s wild daughter. 
 
 She seemed to smile, then w r eep, 
 Then lift, then bow her head, 
 Deep with its golden hair, 
 
 Sad as some maiden 
 Who loveless falls asleep, 
 Her eyes to sorrow wed, 
 
 Her cheeks as wild flowers fair 
 With dewdrops laden. 
 32 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 I heard the streamlet moan ; 
 I heard the wood-wind wail ; 
 I heard the forest sob : 
 
 " Summer is dying ! " 
 Whiter she lay than stone, 
 And down each dell and dale 
 I heard the wild heart-throb 
 Of Nature sighing : 
 
 Come back ! Oh, art thou dead, 
 Thou, thou my sweetest child? 
 Come back with all thy flowers ! "- 
 
 But naught she heeded, 
 Lying with wild-flowered head 
 In beauty undefiled, 
 
 While round her sad the Hours 
 Bowed down and pleaded. 
 
 Then through the woodland there, 
 With ribbons flying gay, 
 
 Mocking at Summer s death 
 
 With laughter hollow, 
 Tossing her gipsy hair, 
 In Romany array, 
 
 Autumn, all wild of breath, 
 
 Cried, "Follow! follow!" 
 3 33 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 Is it an iron harp smitten of iron 
 hands ? or only the winter wind in the 
 palsied and ancient oaks, Lear-like, 
 that toss their hoary arms on the 
 withered hills? All day, all night, I 
 hear them, rustling, warring, sigh 
 ing or roaring with the wind, their 
 few last, brown leaves beating their 
 frantic tatters to and fro. The sound 
 of their shriveled sorrow will not let 
 me sleep. An ancient agony seems 
 theirs, older than that which wrings 
 the hearts of mortals. 
 
 When the jeweled lights of the fireflies 
 
 gleam 
 
 In fairy revelry; 
 When the waning moon on the forest 
 
 stream 
 
 Looks down, I love to sit and dream, 
 To dream her again with me. 
 
 We speak of the past ; of the things once 
 
 said; 
 
 Of the happiness long gone by; 
 34 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 While one blue star burns bright over 
 head : 
 
 For sweet it is to talk with the dead, 
 The dead that do not die. 
 
 With the dead that are never far away, 
 
 That are even as yonder star, 
 Whose light the darkness, ray on ray, 
 Makes visible, viewless all the day 
 
 Though shining still afar. 
 
 Like a lonely beautiful flower wild 
 In the limitless lands of space, 
 
 That star is, blossoming undefiled ; 
 
 More beautiful for that loneness, mild 
 It shines on my upturned face. 
 
 Mid the fairy lights of the fireflies, 
 In the light of the waning moon, 
 Born of the grief that never dies, 
 Into my eyes gaze her dark eyes, 
 The eyes death closed last June. 
 
 And I hear her speak, and I hear her 
 
 sigh : 
 
 For, the dead they never forget : 
 Around my heart her white hands lie, 
 And she kisses my face and asks me why 
 My cheeks with tears are wet. 
 35 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 And as in life I clasp her and hold, 
 
 And meseems it is no dream 
 That here we meet, as oft of old, 
 When the lights of the fireflies lamps 
 
 gleam gold, 
 In the trysting place by the stream. 
 
 On autumn eves in the beautiful 
 Indian Summer, sitting wrapt in con 
 templation of the sunset, the world 
 seems compact of imagination. As 
 the fancy bodies forth, thought gives 
 substance to things, and unrolling the 
 Nubian curtains of night, behold, it 
 is not the sunset that I see, but a sea 
 of gold dotted with islands vermilion 
 as the continents of Mars; their 
 bowers and streams burning rose and 
 pearl, among and beside which, robed 
 in shadowy silver, sylphid shapes 
 wander, spirits, naked and beau 
 tiful as stars, flashing flame-like 
 from the caverns of purple-pinnacled 
 peaks, or leaning from the battle- 
 
 36 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 merited blue of ethereal cities. 
 Changing, ever changing, now, be 
 hold, it is some mainland of isolated 
 heaven, moving in mirage, forested 
 ^vith trees of ruby and silver, oozing 
 and weeping gold and amber into 
 lakes and rivers of gold, from 
 whose crimson banks bronzed sav 
 ages launch a crescent canoe. 
 
 Sleep came to me distilling dews 
 of dreams, within whose diamond 
 spheres an ethereal world lay of 
 thought and scene. Methought that 
 I was dead; that I was drowned: 
 and, in a cavern vaster and bluer than 
 night, before a shadowy presence of 
 hoary foam and weedy shell, the pres 
 ence of that Ancient of the Sea, I 
 stood; the shadow of whose sceptre 
 huge, a rib of cloudy pearl, lay white 
 upon me. Around him circled and 
 sang the mermaids, chanting that 
 song whose mystery fills old and 
 
 37 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 unchanging the mouths of the 
 murmur-haunted shells of ocean. 
 And, behold ! I heard a mermaid tell 
 m song, standing before that throned 
 and ancient presence, how she had 
 stolen and taken on the beauty and 
 the liigynggs of a mortal maiden and 
 lured with these the maiden s lover 
 to save her apparently from the sea, 
 dragging him down into its green 
 depths. And at the Ancient s feet 
 she laid a body, wan- faced with 
 wide and ghastly eyes. I looked upon 
 the face and, lo! the face was 
 mine. 
 
 Here follows the synopsis of a 
 poem that was partly completed and 
 afterwards destroyed : 
 
 The gathering gloom of the sea; 
 the revels of Storm and Tempest; the 
 dancing of the winds with the daugh 
 ters of ^ger, the waves, by the wild 
 38 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 torches of the lightning. In the midst 
 of it all, illuminated by the phosphor 
 escent glow of mountainous waters, 
 a barque is discovered, torn of 
 sail, driving rudderless towards, and 
 crashing thunderously upon opposing 
 cliffs of granite, an island in a white 
 whirl of booming surf. The vessel, 
 overwhelmed and engulfed, is borne 
 down, down, down into the wild 
 waters by the daughters of ^Eger, to 
 be plunged among the piled-up wrecks 
 in the treasure caves of the Sea King. 
 
 Dawn. Near the shore of a trop 
 ical island a youth lies, awaking 
 slowly from a swoon. His despair 
 on finding himself the sole survivor 
 of the vessel, and cast on a desert 
 island. Wearily, in search of food, 
 he wanders inland. Coming upon 
 what seems to him a beautiful lake, 
 but which is really the crater of an 
 extinct volcano filled with the sea and 
 39 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 connecting with the sea, he seats him 
 self despondently beside it, lamenting 
 his fate. A mermaid rises. Appar 
 ently all unconscious of his presence 
 she proceeds to comb her hair, richly 
 auburn as the auburn seaweed, with 
 a comb of pearl, singing a song all the 
 while such as only the shells and the 
 caves of the deep have ever heard 
 before. She sings of the bliss that is 
 in store for all mortals who, weary 
 of life in the world of earth and air, 
 visit the world of waters, and become 
 vassals of the Sea King, deep down 
 in his wonder caves of coral and of 
 crystal. In the ecstasy of the mo 
 ment, dazed as it were by her chant 
 ing, the youth extends her his hand. 
 It is seized instantly in a grasp that 
 he cannot resist even if he desired 
 to; and the creature, changing her 
 song from one of love-longing to one 
 of triumph, drags him, still unresist 
 ing, fathoms deep, into the emerald 
 40 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 waters, casting him senseless upon 
 the silvery sands of a coral cavern. 
 
 The green glimmer of the sea-cave, 
 broken here and there with purple 
 blurs and shafts of light, on his awak 
 ening, shows him where, at the far 
 end of the mighty cavern, on a vast 
 throne of piled-up, wave-welded gold 
 and gems, treasures of wrecked ships, 
 mingled with the skulls and bones of 
 drowned men, looms a shadowy pres 
 ence, weed-bearded and hoary with 
 shells and pearls, crowned with a 
 crown of ore set round, like gems, 
 with the eyes of the drowned; his 
 sceptre, a broken and mighty anchor 
 of iron and gold. Combing their 
 long locks and circling around him, 
 many mermaids sing. Vast bulks, 
 whales, cuttlefish, and sea-serpents, 
 amorphous monsters of the deep, 
 herds of ocean, pass and repass, 
 driven of mermen from pasture to 
 41 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 pasture of the underworld of waters. 
 Storm and Tempest, chained and 
 manacled with adamantine chains, lie 
 restlessly beneath his throne. 
 
 Standing before this terrible pres 
 ence the youth begs that his love, 
 lost in the wreck of yesterday, be 
 returned to him. The King prom 
 ises that she will be restored on one 
 condition that they remain his sub 
 jects forever beneath the sea. He 
 consents. His love is brought to him 
 by a mermaid. Pale as a pearl she 
 stands before him, her beauty over 
 shadowing even the beauty of the 
 mermaids. 
 
 Gathering gradually, far above, a 
 muttering is heard; a calling, as it 
 were, to the over-deeps. Storm and 
 Tempest rise on their hideous feet, 
 shaking their tremendous chains. 
 Mournful echoes, wave-like and wind- 
 42 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 like, sigh through the glimmering 
 cavern, labyrinthed like a shell: a 
 far, wild sound as of a voice, sono 
 rous and deep as thunder, calling and 
 summoning Storm and Tempest to 
 rise. They strain at their huge 
 gyves, howling to be set free. /Eger 
 smites them mightily down, again 
 and yet again, with his terrible 
 sceptre of gold and iron. The voice 
 above seems multiplied into myriad 
 voices, pleading, insistent, importu 
 nate. Storm and Tempest rend their 
 chains asunder; the cavern is lashed 
 into furious foam, and the throne is 
 lost in whirling and overwhelming 
 waters. Storm and Tempest reign 
 supreme mid darkness and foam and 
 thunder. The lovers borne on the 
 backs of the billows are cast, clasped 
 in each other s arms, naked and cold 
 in death, on the shores of the desert 
 island. 
 
 43 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 Thus in the dusk as ghosts they met, 
 
 Culling the pansy-violet, 
 
 The violet of sweet regret 
 
 And memory, dim and dewy wet. 
 
 These are not bees, my child, but 
 fairies disguised, seeking the souls of 
 little children in the cups of the wild 
 .flowers. There it was, closed in the 
 bud of a wild rose, that they found 
 thine. Therefore is it that thou art 
 so fair and sunny and fragrant and 
 pink. See, as this sweet bud closes 
 in all its perfume, so does thy love 
 liness contain thy innocence. 
 
 In dimly lighted cloisters of the heart 
 I met with one whose face was like to 
 
 thine, 
 The ghost-face of the love that once 1 
 
 wronged. 
 
 All day the world has swooned 
 with heat. Now, shaking back his 
 44 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 raven locks of storm, lit with the 
 lightning of terrific eyes, comes on 
 the storm. 
 
 Amid the summer fields and flowers, 
 Let us be children for a day, 
 
 Where laughter speeds the joyful hours 
 And drives dull care away. 
 
 Keep thou my face engraven in thine 
 heart, 
 
 Now that we part ; 
 Forget me not ; or if thou dost forget 
 
 Hold me to blame, 
 
 Who leave thee now, without one heart s 
 regret, 
 
 Forgotten even thy name. 
 
 One milk-white hand she stretched to me, 
 My heart sobbed, " O beware ! " 
 
 But both my arms reached out to her 
 Despite my soul s despair. 
 
 45 
 
1887-1890 
 
 HER soul, after a night of 
 tears, is like a butterfly 
 after a night of rain: at 
 tempting to fly, little by little, to rise 
 to the blossoms, the joys above it, as 
 the sun, the warmth of affection, dries 
 the moisture on its wings. 
 
 Now that the dawn is up, is up, 
 
 And your vine drips dewy with cup on 
 
 cup, 
 
 Lean out, lean out, rare Marguerite, 
 Lean out of your window over the street, 
 Where Love stands waiting, sweet, for 
 
 you, 
 Like a rose mid roses wet with dew. 
 
 Joy, shaking his chubby sides, in 
 a dewdrop of the dawning, laughs 
 at me out of the wild-rose blossoms. 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 From the tears of Cypris (Aphro 
 dite), when she wept over dead 
 Adonis, sprang the purple wind- 
 flower: and from the tears of love 
 mourning over loss spring the fair 
 est flowers of poesy. 
 
 Dark woodland ways of drowsy rustlings 
 Where, in the road, the clay-red nodules 
 
 lie; 
 And where the wild grape, green with 
 
 clusters, swings, 
 Dimmer than rain, the cool noon hours 
 
 steal by. 
 
 The thunder boomed from cloudy ridge 
 
 to ridge, 
 
 Trailing the terror of sonorous arms ; 
 Making the lightning for his wrath a 
 
 bridge, 
 
 Planting his banners on the heights of 
 storms. 
 
 47 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 Who now hath understood, 
 Whose art may ever reach 
 
 The velvet blush of the bud, 
 The velvet bloom of the peach ? 
 
 High up she glides, high up, the quartz- 
 white moon, 
 
 Tipping the mountains with exultant fire, 
 And in her light each pine becomes a lyre, 
 And every wind an Oread-whispered tune. 
 
 The hope, the hate, the bitterness of love 
 Were in her eyes that levelly looked at me, 
 While th rebel blood went storming up 
 
 her cheek. 
 
 Devil and angel was she in a breath, 
 Cursing and kissing me whom she wished 
 
 dead. 
 
 Barbaric burgonets, heavy with gems, 
 And armor wrought of wondrous alchemy, 
 The Spirits of the sunset don, and sweep, 
 Vast, cloudy-charioted, along the skies. 
 
 Some demon, hidden in the arras, 
 shakes its figured folds ; I seem to see 
 48 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 his narrow eyes, two slits of cat-like 
 flame, glaring or is it the sunset 
 raying a rent with gold ? 
 
 Thou hast no thought for one who walks 
 
 mid flowers, 
 Whiling away the humming-bird-like 
 
 hours, 
 
 Nay, nay, not thou ! 
 
 Nor think I now of thee who sittest where 
 The vine leaves wreathe thy beautiful 
 brow and hair, 
 
 Forgotten now. 
 
 The fragrance of a dead flower fills 
 this dingle of the forest as the fra 
 grant memory of some beautiful girl, 
 long dead, haunts some old room. 
 Wait a while and we may see its es 
 sence take form, as a spirit takes 
 form in the twilight of a haunted 
 chamber. 
 
 4 49 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 The pink-blossomed wild mint, hot 
 and pungent as the breath of an 
 oriental harem, and the chicory, odor 
 less blue, paint with patches of oppos 
 ing color the sparsely treed hillside, 
 whose thin grass, especially around 
 the old and blackened stumps, is hot 
 with the sunlight and the oily-smell 
 ing pennyroyal. The September 
 heaven is a vast, a fleckless chicory 
 blossom; a deep and cloudless azure. 
 
 The bronze-tinted, amber-emerald 
 blur of shadowy daylight that strikes 
 upon and shimmers through the tall, 
 tufted grass of the fallow, mingled 
 with the gold-green budded masses 
 of the goldenrod, is like the light 
 that shines unearthly through some 
 strange, some wonderful crystal, 
 smoky gold and green, cairngorm and 
 chrysoberyl: a vitreous, lunar light 
 like that, I imagine, which glimmers 
 50 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 eerily over the World of Faery, the 
 Land of Gnomes, where forever on 
 the twilighted hills, swiftly and sound 
 lessly, whirls and circles the never- 
 ending dance. 
 
 The gerardia, frailly hung with its 
 harebell-like blossoms, delicately pink, 
 seems to me too slight a flower for 
 the chill winds of these October days ; 
 too slender a life to withstand the icy 
 dews and mists that whiten and 
 drench these October nights. It 
 reminds me of some women, who, 
 slight and delicate, yet are able to 
 stand more than those their sisters 
 who are stouter and seemingly 
 stronger. 
 
 Thou art to me the whole of heaven, 
 Its sun, its stars, its golden moon; 
 
 Thou art to me as music given, 
 
 As song that holds the world in tune. 
 51 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 Two unshed tears made beautiful her eyes 
 Lighting their liquid turquoise sorrowful ; 
 Yet was she false, in spite of all her tears, 
 And with sin pregnant as the seeds of hell. 
 
 How shall I describe the sunset at 
 which I am now looking? The clouds, 
 broken and black, are ragged rocks 
 veined here and there with molten 
 and running ore, pooling golden in 
 glittering crevices and edging with 
 ingot flame their opaque darkness. 
 
 A gerfalcon, peregrine falcon, and 
 tiercelet were usually borne with 
 jesses or leather thongs about the 
 legs; sometimes with a hood and 
 bell. They were then jessed, hooded, 
 and belled. When feeding the hawks 
 were " at prey." The lure was a 
 bunch of feathers toward which the 
 bird was taught to return. It was 
 the custom to slip over the claws of 
 52 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 the young birds a gold or silver 
 ring which could not afterwards be 
 removed. 
 
 Thou art the wild falcon of my 
 heart. An untamed eyas, un jessed, 
 unhooded, rebellious. Oh, could I 
 but slip the golden ring, coercing, 
 binding, compelling, upon thy hand, 
 then might I tame thee, wild falcon 
 of my heart ! 
 
 The bar-lachi is a loadstone with 
 which, the gypsies say, one may work 
 charms when one knows how to make 
 use of it. Give a woman a pinch of 
 it, grated, in a glass of water and she 
 will not be able to resist you. Now 
 will I make intimates of the gypsies, 
 and with their assistance seek out this 
 loadstone. Thou shalt yet come to 
 love me as no woman has ever loved 
 before and I I will ruin and cast 
 thee aside. May God have mercy 
 upon thee, for I will have none. 
 53 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 All day I have wandered in the 
 woods seeing but two birds ; only two 
 birds. Surely these beech trees, boun 
 tiful and beautiful granaries of the 
 birds, with arms so full and so 
 abundantly bestowing, should lure 
 myriads into these woods. Is that 
 a fragment of the western glow? 
 or only the orange berries of the 
 bittersweet, whose pods imprison the 
 scarlet of autumnal sunsets? 
 
 Oh, for the gods of the Greeks, 
 
 The oaks of Dodona ! 
 For the white-bosomed gods of the Greeks ! 
 The gods whom my fancy seeks 
 
 Mid these woods whence is blown a 
 Murmur of Naiad creeks ; 
 Here where this old oak speaks, 
 To my soul, like a god of the Greeks, 
 
 An oak of Dodona ! 
 
 How often in the old garden, 
 grandmother s garden of oldfash- 
 54 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 ioned flowers, have you come upon a 
 clove-pink, a clump of heliotrope, a 
 verbena or petunia, the pungent per 
 fume of which excited a hunger, as it 
 were, a desire not only to smell but to 
 taste to test its quality of flavor ! 
 
 A languid land of lazy moons and stars 
 I wander in, watching the ripple bars 
 Rocking the hyacinths and nenuphars. 
 
 The haymakers sickles 
 
 Flash wet on the leas ; 
 The wild honey trickles 
 
 From tops of the trees, 
 The noon is a poppy, the winds are its 
 bees. 
 
 She whom I loved too well, 
 Crowned with the pomegranate bell 
 Sits empress now in Hell; 
 
 And there 
 
 My soul sits by her, kissing her eyes and 
 hair. 
 
 55 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 Tell me, do you love to lie 
 
 With the dipping boughs above you, 
 Where blue glimpses of the sky 
 
 Greet you like the eyes that love you ? 
 
 The dim dawn broke with driz 
 zling rain. The bleached sunflower, 
 weighed heavily with the wet, rot 
 ting in the autumn garden, held up 
 by a morning-glory vine, blue with 
 blossoms and hung thick with the 
 dangling aiglets of its seeds, re 
 minded me of decrepit old age sup 
 ported by sturdy youth. 
 
 What gladness of the young, young Earth 
 Conceived the lily and rose? 
 
 What sweetness of her soul s deep thought 
 Into their fragrance flows? 
 
 Maid Marian rose in the morn betime, 
 Looked in her glass and hummed a rhyme. 
 I saw her walk by the blossoming bean 
 Busked in a gown of bombazine. 
 
 56 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 Look at me over your shoulder, lass, 
 As you often look in your looking-glass, 
 And trill to me that merry rhyme, 
 That rhyme of love and the glad spring 
 time, 
 
 With a fol-de-rol-de-rey oh! 
 
 Oh, could I only grieve you, 
 
 And grieve you more and more! 
 I who no more believe you, 
 
 You, falser than before ! 
 Ah, could I but deceive you, 
 
 You, whom I still adore! 
 Oh! would I were a bee, my love, 
 And you a wild-rose tree, my love, 
 I d sip the sweets I see, my love, 
 
 And be no longer poor. 
 
 When apple buds are breaking, 
 And winds with musk o erflow; 
 
 When wren and thrush are making 
 Sweet song where er we go, 
 
 The kiss I 11 then be taking 
 Is the kiss that still you owe. 
 57 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 You who would not have me 
 Now may not save me ; 
 Now you pursue me, 
 I will not woo thee : 
 
 Love is grown cold; 
 
 Love is grown old. 
 
 Dim gleam and gloom 
 And breezy boom 
 Of wild bees in the mustard bloom 
 Swoon through the windows of my room, 
 As if the young Spring trailed her raiment 
 
 of perfume 
 
 Through the old house, rustling from 
 room to room. 
 
 Along the west a cloud-wrought crimson 
 
 cloth 
 The curtained sunset draws, to which one 
 
 star 
 Clings, fluttering silver, like a glimmering 
 
 moth, 
 
 Pale and crepuscular. 
 
 58 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 What voice is that which wanders in the 
 
 wood? 
 
 Is it the Twilight murmuring to the hills ? 
 Or, wrapped in mystery of the solitude, 
 The far-off whippoorwills ? 
 
 With my whole soul to the soul of 
 her whose perfection I know that I 
 know not, only knowing that I love 
 her more than I do my own soul, 
 I strive to attain to a knowledge of 
 what she is the unattainable, the 
 divinely beautiful. 
 
 What of the sea when the storm clouds 
 
 thicken ? 
 What of the soul when its loved hopes 
 
 sicken ? 
 
 Look in my eyes and tell me this, 
 What of our lives when our hearts are 
 
 stricken, 
 
 Given and taken our love s last kiss? 
 59 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 Between the meads of millet 
 
 The soft wind breathes and blows ; 
 
 Between the meads of millet 
 I kissed her mouth s warm rose, 
 
 And on her hand I placed the band, 
 Where all my future glows. 
 
 The Khalif appeared preceded by 
 nearly a hundred eunuchs with drawn 
 swords, and compassed about with 
 a score of damsels, as they were 
 moons about a sun, holding each a 
 lighted flambeau; on each one s 
 head glimmered a crown set with 
 rubies. Mesrour, Afif, and Wesif 
 went before him. Shemsennehar and 
 her damsels rose to receive him. 
 Clapping her hands, slaves with 
 lighted flambeaux and perfumes and 
 essences and instruments of music 
 entered, and Gheram, the sweetest 
 lutanist of them all, smote her lute, 
 singing like a bulbul in the Vale of 
 Cashmere. 
 
 60 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 A table of juniper inlaid with gems 
 and pearls was set with dishes of 
 silver full of all manner of meats. 
 The table removed, they washed 
 their hands in rose-water, brought 
 by waiting women in castingbottles 
 of mother-of-pearl, from which they 
 sprinkled them, perfuming them then 
 with aloes and ambergris and other 
 perfumes from swinging censers of 
 filigree silver. 
 
 After which were placed before 
 them dishes of graven gold, contain 
 ing all manner of sherbets, fruits, and 
 confections; and a slave brought a 
 flagon of cornelian full of wine of 
 Shiraz. After which they retired to 
 a chamber vaulted on four pillars, 
 as it were the pavilion of Paradise, 
 where ten handmaids and ten singing 
 women awaited them, high-bosomed, 
 of an equal age, with dark and lan 
 guorous eyes, cheeks like blood-red 
 anemones, and skin like the bloom of 
 61 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 fragrant camomile, joined eyebrows, 
 and hands stained with henna; and 
 these, fair as houris, played and sang 
 and recited verses. 
 
 Shemsennehar, scarved with the 
 luxuriance of her dark hair and 
 dressed in a blue robe and a veil 
 of silk embroidered with gold and 
 jewels, about her waist a girdle set 
 with various kinds of precious stones, 
 lay under a canopy of peacock plumes 
 on a couch strewn with roses of Rock- 
 nabad. Her words were more en- 
 scorcelling than Harout and Marout 
 (two fallen angels employed to tempt 
 men by teaching them the art of 
 magic). And the play of her glances 
 more misleading than Tahhout (an 
 idol of the Arabs before Moham 
 med). And hearkening her words 
 and gazing into her eyes Haroun 
 reclined near her on a mattress of 
 satin embroidered both sides with 
 gold and quilted with Irak silk; 
 62 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 under his head a pillow stuffed with 
 ostrich down. 
 
 Eyes were hers pure as crystal 
 drops, and clear as the topaz-colored 
 pools of October forests. 
 
 Her eyes were dark with the darkness of 
 hell 
 
 And sweet with the sweetness of sin, 
 And I was a dream of love, they tell, 
 
 To her eyes that entered in. 
 
 Was it Demosthenes who said: 
 
 " You write ; the scroll remains : 
 Think, student, what s to come " ? 
 
 Would that more writers of the pres 
 ent day would remember this when 
 they set pen to paper, myself, for 
 instance. 
 
 63 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 Night came, treading the darkness into 
 
 burning stars, 
 
 And in my heart waking again old wars. 
 The shadow of the past lay on my mind s 
 
 sick gloom 
 As on a waste the shadow of a tomb. 
 
 Here among the autumn fields the 
 stubble, between the tent-like shocks 
 of corn, is strewn with pumpkins, a 
 golden yellow; as if some army, in 
 conceivably rich, had, before depart 
 ing, bombarded this particular spot, 
 leaving the ground strewn thick with 
 great balls and shells of gold. 
 
 All day the great, gaunt cactus, 
 bristling with thorns, blazed its blood- 
 red blossoms; all night the cereus, 
 trailing over the rocks, orbed its pale 
 and fragrant moons; and day and 
 night, like lost souls, we wandered 
 weeping among them. 
 64 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 On the sunset s cloudy tide 
 Triremes of the storm did sit, 
 
 All their hundred ports flung wide 
 With wild battle lanterns lit. 
 
 Looking into her eyes he said: 
 " The materials of my life, too, for 
 the past few years would make mat 
 ter for a tragedy, a soul s tragedy, un 
 speakably sad, sadder even than 
 yours. For what agonizes more than 
 the knowledge that you cannot obtain 
 that which you would obtain? That 
 effort avails not? That work is not 
 rewarded with success? 
 
 " I often ask myself, 
 
 Will fortune never come with both hands 
 
 full, 
 But write her fair words still in foulest 
 
 letters? 
 
 " However, let me still go on 
 dreaming; searching for the philos 
 opher s stone of success : the powder 
 
 5 6 5 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 of projection; elixir vitse: attempt 
 ing still the transmutation of mental 
 metals, thoughts that seemingly have 
 no value, through spiritual alembics, 
 cucurbites and pelicans of language 
 and expression, like Albertus Mag 
 nus of old." 
 
 The buckbush now is covered with 
 cranberry-colored berries. The bind 
 weed with small blue conical blos 
 soms. From the marshes rise the 
 seal-brown spear-heads of the cat 
 tails; and the herb-Robert tinges 
 with bluish red the autumn hill 
 side. Overhead the morning widens, 
 pearly-pink, like some gigantic mus 
 sel-shell, slowly opening, showing be 
 tween its luminous valves the sun like 
 a huge red pearl. 
 
 How correct is the fire of the stars ; 
 the crow of a cock; the color and the 
 66 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 shape of a flower. How accurate 
 Nature is. How punctual in timing 
 the appearance of a flower or a star. 
 As regular as the beating of her own 
 great heart. 
 
 Poetry is the rhythmical expres 
 sion of the relation of the ideal, which 
 is the beautiful, to the actual. And 
 here in the April woods what poetry 
 addresses me in voices of the wind! 
 What does it say, rushing and roar 
 ing by? tossing and tumbling, until 
 distracted, the heads of the towering 
 trees on the Indiana hilltops? within 
 their fibrous hearts the responding 
 timbre of a mighty music. Voices of 
 jubilation, of acclaim, epic, elemental, 
 shouting their message over the bar 
 riers of the world, bidding it prepare 
 itself for the advent of Loveliness ; to 
 doff its ashen-colored garb of peni 
 tence and don rejoicing vestments of 
 67 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 azure and gold. Shawms, cymbals 
 and sackbuts unite in the voices to 
 produce one voice, loud, imperious, 
 sonorous as some million-stringed in 
 strument, to which the forests yield 
 themselves up, rocking to and fro, 
 like wild fanatics filled with the 
 frenzy of some mad god whose rites 
 they celebrate, Corybantic, the sere 
 leaves of last year whirling and swirl 
 ing around and around them like rent 
 and riven raiment. 
 
 How much happier are the little 
 things, the lowly things of life, how 
 much more secure from the buffet- 
 ings of fate than are the mighty, the 
 aspiring things! This wildflower, 
 for instance; slight, unassuming, and 
 safe, entirely unaffected, fluttering 
 delicately and tranquilly at the foot 
 of this huge oak that the same 
 wind, which merely bowed the 
 bluet s head, a moment ago crash- 
 ingly overthrew. 
 
 68 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 I heard the trees in the silence of 
 the spring night whispering, mur 
 muring among themselves, gossiping 
 of the radiant garments, bud and 
 blossom and leaf, which they were 
 soon to don. And then I heard them 
 quietly laughing, as old people 
 might, telling quaint stories of their 
 little ones, and speaking gently, 
 crooningly to the tiny wildflowers 
 nestling at their feet: flowers which 
 the singing of the sap in their old 
 hearts and roots had awakened, ere 
 the rain and wind had called to them 
 and the sunbeam had pointed them a 
 place wherein to rise: blossoms that 
 even now were gazing wonderingly 
 around them, or at the stars thro 
 their branches, as listening children 
 might at the eyes of their loving 
 parents telling them legends and tales 
 of faery. 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 Alas ! how hearts go groping 
 For that which may not be ! 
 Braving the gates where hoping, 
 
 T is written, none shall see ! 
 In ways of blind endeavor 
 And darkness of the never 
 The gates are closed once open ; 
 The end is misery. 
 
 Why is it thus with me as days go by ? 
 
 Oh, why, oh, why? 
 
 Less frequent is the smile, more often now 
 the sigh. 
 
 Swift as the poplar, with its lordly height, 
 To clothe itself in green when Springtime 
 
 calls, 
 
 When forests still are bare, is hope to come 
 Into our lives when love has said " pre 
 pare." 
 
 From the hilltop here in Kentucky, 
 under the Aprilian blue of a perfect 
 afternoon, a great blur of glimmer 
 ing amber, gold tinged with auburn, 
 70 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 shows me where the budded but still 
 blossomless black-haw stands covered 
 with young leaves ; as tenderly tinted 
 as the festal raiment of some sylvan 
 of the woods, or haunter of the val 
 leys: some Dryad or Auloniad, who 
 has come forth, slenderly and deli 
 cately, from her tree or bower to greet 
 and meet the young-eyed Year. 
 
 Or is it the Rapunzel Spring her 
 self, delicate and divine, odorous of 
 fable, who has let down her tawny 
 hair, its magnificent mane of abun 
 dant and beautiful gold, for her lover, 
 the Wind, to clasp, to overwhelm him 
 self with; to kiss and climb by into 
 her enchanted tower, there to deliver 
 himself over forever to her love? 
 
 Wild-ginger, under these leafing 
 wahoos, almost covers the April-wet 
 hillside with its low, lush leaves; its 
 belled, or chaliced blossom, huddled 
 in the fork of its succulent stem, 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 divided into three pointed lobes, is 
 the color of the nearby wake-robin, a 
 clear, brown, port-wine red. 
 
 The silvern and golden flowers of 
 the adder s-tongue star the brier- 
 buried and bushy banks of the creeks. 
 What is more beautiful than a great 
 bed of these dog s-tooth violets with 
 their gracefully bending and curving- 
 petaled blossoms, pearl and topaz 
 colored, fairly illuminating, as with 
 fairy lamps, the sodden and turfless 
 soil of the creek-rivage ! These are 
 gems indeed that any one can have 
 for the stooping and gathering. And 
 their spiritual value, if not their ma 
 terial, is, at least to me, even greater 
 than that of real pearls and topazes. 
 
 Apple blossoms and bees; pelting 
 petals; honeyed hummings. What 
 glory ! what memorable music ! what 
 beauty redolent of immortal mem 
 ories! A mountain of blooms, large 
 72 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 and white, delicately tinged with pink, 
 with occasional clusters of rosy, puck 
 ered buds, waving in and perfuming 
 the balmy wind of April. How this 
 old tree, with its million blossoms and 
 its murmuring bees, brings back viv 
 idly the memory of my boyhood 
 passed among the Indiana hills! 
 Every falling petal, every bee mur 
 mur is fraught with the fragrance 
 of remembered happiness. And now, 
 drowned in its deeps of blossoming 
 and exultant snow, a catbird goes 
 mad with music. Or is it the voice 
 of my lost dreams singing to me in 
 words that only my soul can under 
 stand ? And there where, whis 
 pers of pearl, little silvery sighs of 
 happiness breathed by the pure lips 
 of Spring, the dog s-tooth violets 
 blur gray the creek banks, I seem to 
 see a presence passing, dimly, a bright 
 shadow with windflowers in its hair. 
 The materialized memory of a spring 
 
 73 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 long gone; a spring of my earliest 
 youth; with cheeks and mouth a 
 brier-rose red, her eyes a pansy-violet 
 azure, singing a song of home. 
 
 Or there, asway on a carpet of 
 celandine gold and bluebell blue, now 
 with a " wick, wick, wick," of a flicker 
 fiddle; now with a "cheer, cheer, 
 cheer," of a redbird reed, I seem to 
 see and hear her, that long-lost 
 Spring, playing an air to which the 
 chipmunks dance the little ground- 
 squirrels their blood a-beat with the 
 intoxication of springtime. 
 
 She is the same as she was when, 
 with whippoorwill words, she lured 
 and led my boyhood into her twilight 
 woods at dewy dusk; her forests 
 filled with faery fancies ; to a seques 
 tered and vine-embowered spot, 
 where the first Mayapples unfolded 
 their miniature moons under the 
 young May moon; and amid whose 
 parasols and blossoms she seated me 
 
 74 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 in the whippoorwill-haunted hush, 
 and, to the music of the cricket, told 
 me wonder stories, elfin tales, my 
 heart shall never forget. 
 
 On a low fern-based rock, mossy 
 shrine of the wood-god who has this 
 particular forest under his protec 
 tion, before which, like a cande 
 labrum before an altar, burning with 
 many silken flames of greenish gold, 
 a young hickory lifted up its hun 
 dred pointed leaf-sheaths, and a paw 
 paw shook its sacramental bells of 
 bronze, I laid an offering of wild 
 flowers this last day of April: 
 Mayapples, with their milky moons; 
 trilliums, stainless of star and whiter 
 than alabaster; the belled ivory of 
 the bellwort; the lavender and lilac 
 bonnets of the iris ; the hooded green 
 and mulberry-purple of the Indian- 
 turnip ; the disced amber and gold of 
 the crowfoot and the hawkweed; the 
 75 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 hollow sapphire of the polemonium 
 or Jacob s-ladder ; the bugled crim 
 son of the columbine ; the crystal and 
 azure of the wild dwarf larkspur; 
 and the constellated loveliness of a 
 myriad bluets, starflowers, and bird s- 
 foot violets. 
 
 Let us follow this path, that leads 
 us past wild crabapple trees , huge 
 bouquets of shell-pink blooms, 
 through wild strawberries starring 
 their blossoms under budded black 
 berry briers, to a heron-haunted 
 creek, a ribbon of silver winding 
 around a woodland where the cuckoo, 
 the chat, and the thrush keep up a 
 continual calling; and at whose en 
 trance the haw-tree and dogwood, in 
 full flower, stand like white-stoled 
 worshippers before the entrance to a 
 great green temple, a temple whose 
 floor is marbled with green and mo- 
 saiced with pearl and gold and azure ; 
 76 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 oxalis, ranunculus, and houstonia; 
 and lamped with the veined feldspar 
 of the wild geranium and the silken 
 sapphire of the spidenvort. 
 
 While lone I stood 
 
 Within the wood 
 I heard the feet of Silence edge 
 And stumble on a rocky ledge 
 A sound of waters foaming down 
 Between mossed banks of green and 
 
 brown : 
 
 And through the trees, that leaned to listen, 
 I caught a momentary glisten 
 Of her white limbs all interwound 
 With white confusion of her gown, 
 That made a dim and glimmering sound. 
 
 What a queer bird is the whippoor- 
 will ! that has, or seems to have, no 
 sense of concealment, so far as its 
 nest is concerned. Perhaps this is 
 because it usually selects the most 
 unfrequented parts of the forest to 
 77 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 brood in. To-day I startled one from 
 its hover. Soundlessly it flew be 
 fore me, clothed like the night in 
 russet and sable, a drowsy flutter 
 of wings, trying to lure me away 
 from the two cream-white eggs. 
 the customary number. brown-and- 
 blue-spotted, lying where I could not 
 help but see them, without the sign 
 of a nest, on the dead oak leaves 
 right before me, partly protected by 
 the dead branch of a tree, 
 
 A little farther on, in a different 
 part of the forest, at the foot of a 
 huge beech, sat a great, dark brown 
 owl, a hawk-like owl; round-headed 
 and round-eyed ; a day owL Almost 
 as silently as the whippoorwill it arose 
 at my approach, disappearing, downy 
 of flight, dark and swift, into the 
 green and gray of the deep beeches, 
 like some impish evil. 
 
iSgi-igoo 
 
 WHERE the spring is sunken 
 in the damp gray rock, 
 mossy with moisture, the 
 wild larkspur, petunia, morning- 
 glory and wild potato bloom. And 
 there, at the end of the path, like a 
 terra-cotta-colored torch, the pleu 
 risy-root flames ; the snake-root, with 
 its evil-smelling flowers, like long 
 white candles, seems to wish to light 
 me further on ; on to where the but 
 ternut and water-beech embrace one 
 another above the stream, like lovers 
 parted by some petty spite, locking 
 arms above its gossip, in the foliage 
 sanctity of their hearts nesting a 
 cooing dove. 
 
 The small gray-blue heron, the 
 fly-up-the-creek, frightened from its 
 79 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 fishing, rises gracefully from its pool, 
 winging and fading, shadow-like, a 
 soft and silent flight, far down the 
 creek. 
 
 In a swirl of butterflies, mottled 
 maroon, pied yellow and gray, and 
 velvety gold and seal, I pass along 
 the creek, where, startled by my foot 
 steps, the water-snake slides sound 
 less, like a crooked root, from the 
 shore; and the silvery minnows, as 
 with one impulse, twinkle instantly 
 and swiftly out of sight. 
 
 The tufted titmouse fusses in the 
 buckeye tree near by; and the shad 
 ows of the slender willow leaves ap 
 pear, imaged in the shallow pool, to 
 be the silverless phantoms of a min 
 now-school. Here the blossoming 
 horsemint and teasel blur with pink 
 the weedy hillside. Along the creek 
 banks and amid the pebbles and rocks 
 of its dry watercourse the black 
 berry-lilies mass themselves, a mot- 
 80 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 tied ruddy red, reflected here and 
 there in the lazy-running water; 
 lazier than the small white summer 
 clouds that float above, or the bril 
 liant dragon-flies that haunt its banks. 
 
 A vagabond foot and a vagabond road, 
 And the love in our hearts our only load. 
 
 An easy foot in an easy shoe, 
 And who is it cares where the road leads 
 to? 
 
 An old plank gate at a lane s green end, 
 And who is it cares where the lane may 
 wend? 
 
 A bowl of milk and a bit of bread, 
 Who richer fares or is better fed ? 
 
 A crust, a spring and a blackberry, 
 And who is it sups as well as we ? 
 
 A hut by the road and a girl to kiss, 
 What man hath greater joy than this ? 
 6 81 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 a ptOonr of Ifiyv 
 \Vliosc bed 9 sweeter ABB tins, I say " 
 
 are deeper r whose sleep as 
 
 IDC cawing" of crows reminds IDC 
 of the carping of ciilics; whether 
 tbeir voices be raised in praise or 
 blame it is aH die same a lot of 
 mnr that fcads to ^yritwig The 
 world jogs along jttst as usual in spite 
 OK "what ttfaey c*w?^*Oft" tDdr own nu~ 
 and in a fittk whfle all their 
 ImgolicM; Ac workL like 
 the woods around, has heard hut has 
 it heeded? It wffl judge for itself 
 later on when their cawings hare 
 
 It-lrrl. 
 
 Art is a virgin whose children are 
 all immambtrhr coocehred and born. 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 Along the St. John s River soft 
 maples, rnddily tufted, made bright 
 the sombre banks, showing only occa 
 sionally a pine or palmetto amid the 
 wilderness of express trees trailing 
 with moss. Cherokee roses too rarely 
 ran a rambling riot of great white 
 blossoms aroond the hole of scene 
 live-oak. The water, of a solkn 
 blackness, had no nwre carrent than 
 a pood or lagoon. The furrow of oar 
 Iktk steamer fell away from the stern 
 in a sort of yeasty, smoky-topaz foam. 
 Water-lilies laid* long bonks of blos 
 soms along either shore. An affiga- 
 tor, a sqnamocts and ittgpA balk, 
 slowly crossed a lily-pa ven inkt. 
 
 Lflies: more lilies; internmiat- 
 m^lv at times they seemed to spread 
 over the entire river a doth of gold. 
 Hemlocks, cypresses, and black-gams 
 seemed to welcome us with die 
 waving ot funereal banners, long 
 streamers of Spanish moss, as we 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 entered the Ocklawaha, passing a 
 leaky-looking rowboat with an old 
 negro in it, picturesque among the 
 yellow lilies of a lagoon. Lilies; 
 lilies, holding up everywhere innum 
 erable fists tight full of gold. The 
 dogwood and jessamine, in full bloom, 
 diversified with white and gold the 
 seemingly impenetrable woods. Here 
 and there on the high-lifted, desolate 
 branches of twisted trees, looking 
 like the huge nests of unknown birds 
 of prey, great clumps and masses of 
 mistletoe were seen. The Ever 
 glades could hardly look more for 
 bidding than the forested swamp that 
 stretched out on either side of our 
 boat. 
 
 One would imagine that the Ock 
 lawaha was entirely destitute of cur 
 rent, until, gazing downward, deep 
 into the clear but dark-brown depths, 
 one beheld, at intervals, the long 
 water-grasses, growing on its bottom, 
 
 84 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 streaming green, streaks of cop 
 peras inclosed in crystal. In its 
 placid, mirror-like depths the skies 
 and woods are so exactly reproduced 
 that you are often deceived as to 
 which is the real and which is the 
 reflection. Bittern and heron and 
 egret haunt here; often winging 
 slowly over the ivied and creepered 
 solitudes. And startled by our ap 
 proach crane and kingfisher swing 
 along its surface, beneath which 
 swim their images amid the green 
 streaks of grass, that reminds one of 
 the streaming hair of kelpies. Hell- 
 divers or didappers rise, flash away, 
 and the teal, with their instant wings, 
 skip the water into ripples. At twi 
 light the limpkins begin their wild 
 wailing, plaintive as that of a lost 
 child; and like a vulture, silent and 
 solitary, on the dead limb of a tree 
 the water-turkey sits, sombre above 
 the uncurling, ghostly spider-lilies, 
 85 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 hanging, long strips of white, among 
 the cypress-knees. 
 
 In the darkness, before the coming 
 of the moon, we seemed passing be 
 tween immaterial walls of phantom 
 forest, clothed in the fluttering cere 
 ments of the dead, the dark wild- 
 trailing moss or was it the waving 
 of spectral arms, ghostly strouds and 
 mantles of dead Seminoles? Enor 
 mous hands, taloned and crooked of 
 finger, seemed clutching up at us out 
 of the unseen waters, or impended, 
 threateningly, above, eager and wait 
 ing an opportunity to snatch us away 
 into the phantom forest; nearly al 
 ways they resolved themselves into 
 the gaunt and twisted limbs of lean 
 ing trees. 
 
 The moon is up. A flare of pine- 
 knots is blazing in a huge iron sconce 
 at the top of the pilot-house. The 
 deck-hands are gathered together at 
 the bow of the Okeehumkee with 
 86 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 banjo and guitar. The forest echoes 
 awaken to the strains of negro 
 melodies : " In de mornin by de 
 bright light"; " Did not old Pharaoh 
 git lost in dat Red Sea "; " Way up 
 de Ocklawaha " ; " Carve dat pos 
 sum," etc., etc., etc. 
 
 From an almost sleepless night in 
 my narrow cabin, having been kept 
 awake by the clattering and crashing 
 of branches that raked every now 
 and then the sides of the Okeehumkee 
 in its passage up the stream, I arose 
 to find the morning massed and 
 streaming with mist; the forests 
 seemingly more spectral-looking 
 through the banks and flying shreds 
 of vapor than they were last night. 
 Suddenly the sun rose scattering with 
 level crimson lances, wildly glorious, 
 the routed and ribboned fog. We had 
 left the Ocklawaha and were steam 
 ing up Silver Spring Run. Drenched 
 with the mist and dew the moss hung 
 87 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 motionless from the trees, smoky- 
 brown and dripping. The butterflies 
 that had taken shelter upon our decks 
 during the night were too weighed 
 down with the wet to lift their wings. 
 The water of Silver Spring Run is 
 perfectly pellucid; to the depth of 
 some forty odd feet everything is 
 plainly visible. Garfish, bream, black- 
 bass, pickerel, and turtle are dis 
 cernible swimming slowly or swiftly 
 away from our advancing keel. At 
 Silver Spring itself we gaze down, as 
 we pass over it, upon a mighty ledge 
 of rock, magnified by the refraction 
 of the water probably, forty-eight 
 feet from the surface; it seems to 
 be, with its great rift, the entrance 
 to some vast cavern that disgorges 
 an underground river which fur 
 nishes the water of this great spring. 
 At the depth of eighty-four feet the 
 bottom is perfectly visible and the 
 ripples of a rowboat, oaring and 
 88 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 breaking the surface, are magnified 
 a hundredfold on the rocks below, 
 irisated into wonderful colors: em 
 erald green and ultramarine blue, 
 blurring and streaking the bottom; 
 the effect being the same as that of 
 some glimmering submarine scene 
 presented in pantomime on the stage. 
 The clear, round lake, hemmed in 
 as far as the eye can see with forests 
 of cypress, black-gum, live-oak, pine 
 and palmetto, solemn-hung with their 
 gray moss, is a weird setting for its 
 mysterious crystal. Here and there 
 the cypresses and black-gums, swollen 
 by the water, bulge out abruptly, the 
 tree-trunk seemingly supported on a 
 black pedestal. The cypress-knees, 
 extinguisher-shaped (like so many 
 giant clubs thrust knot downward 
 into the water), bristled along the 
 shore; and the forest towering above 
 them, silent and sad, was like some 
 strange woodland turned to stone. 
 89 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 Amid it all, as I sat dreaming 
 alone by the shore, and the sunset 
 built up vast teocallis and temples of 
 copper-colored cloud in the west, I 
 felt as one might feel who, be 
 yond the condor-haunted Cordilleras, 
 comes suddenly upon some ancient 
 and dead city of Yucatan, Honduras, 
 or Mexico : Mitla, Uxmal, Palenque, 
 or Copan, lost in stupendous and im 
 penetrable forests of the ceiba, mi 
 mosa, and yucca, trailing enormous 
 creepers and huge cacti, and wild and 
 wonderful lianas, cataracts of gor 
 geous crimson flowers. 
 
 THE OCKLAWAHA AND SILVER SPRING, FLA., 
 
 FEB., 1893. 
 
 I have talked of the curculio, the 
 codling-moth, the rust of the oats 
 and the smut of the corn with the 
 farmers until the better part of the 
 morning is past. At last I am by 
 myself again, on the hilltop among 
 90 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 the creepered trees and rocks. The 
 sunlight strikes athwart the dew and 
 every cedar glitters as if clothed in 
 silver-linked mail. The bob-white 
 calls to his mate through the fresh 
 ness and the dew of the deep August 
 morning; and where the mist trails 
 its fleecy folds from hilltop to hill 
 top, the wild hawk, soaring, screams 
 and screams. The birds are out 
 doing each other in vocal gymnas 
 tics; and now the sound of the wind 
 in the leagues of trees is like the 
 breaking of far waters on a shelly 
 shore. 
 
 The tops of the oaks nod, ruddy in 
 the sun, like Celtic kings giving audi 
 ence to wild tribes, the winds, 
 their gold-red beards and hair quiver 
 ing with wrath. The tree-toad s 
 guttural fluting is like the blowing 
 of bubbles of cloudy crystal through 
 hollow silver; the lonely sound seems 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 more suitable to the melancholy of 
 the evening than to the mirth of the 
 morning. The day, in spite of its 
 clouds, promises to be fair. 
 
 As, all distraught, with dark, neglected 
 
 hair 
 
 She lifted up her face to mine I saw 
 The moon-white glory of her soul, and 
 
 love 
 Smiled sadly at me from her shadowy 
 
 eyes. 
 
 Now is the sunset s presence fra 
 grant and beautiful as the presence 
 of some young Greek: his feet 
 anointed with Megallian oils, his 
 bosom and arms odorous of the es 
 sence of thyme; his eyebrows and 
 hair sweet with marjoram; his knees 
 and neck with oil of wild ivy: robed 
 in a robe of murex-dye, smelling 
 sweeter than the costly ointment of 
 Peron, he walks the twilight world, 
 92 
 
V O r THC 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF 
 
 Nature-Notes 
 
 supple and gleaming of limb, sowing 
 the earth with immaterial blossoms, 
 ground-thyme, crocus, hyacinth, heli- 
 chryse and amaracus. 
 
 In the " Deipnosophists " Athen- 
 seus speaks thus : " Formerly, to be 
 popular with the vulgar was reck 
 oned a certain sign of a want of real 
 skill: on which account Asopodorus, 
 the Phliasian, when some flute-player 
 was being much applauded, while 
 he himself was remaining in the 
 hyposcenium (a certain part of the 
 theatre), said, What is all this? 
 the man has evidently committed 
 some great blunder/ " 
 
 How true is this of a great many 
 of our suddenly successful writers, 
 whose works meet with such over 
 whelming applause from the public, 
 which is the vulgar, and reach such 
 phenomenal sales. I never hear of 
 93 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 a new book that everybody praises 
 and recommends but that I am 
 straightway suspicious of its literary 
 merit and avoid reading it, feeling 
 sure that the author has probably 
 " committed some great blunder." 
 
 I have read somewhere of the heli- 
 chryse, which some one, is it Athen- 
 seus? says is a flower like the lotus. 
 Also of the amaracus, a purple lily, 
 which is called by some people the 
 sampsychus: I have never seen the 
 helichryse nor the amaracus, but 
 neither, I will venture to say, could 
 compare in splendid beauty with this 
 trumpet-flower, glowing scarlet, and 
 this Turk s-cap lily, streaked with 
 crimson, growing here in our un- 
 classic fields. 
 
 The Greeks claimed that the most 
 fragrant roses grew in Cyrene; on 
 which account the perfumes said to 
 94 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 have been made there surpassed all 
 others in sweetness; this was said to 
 be true also of the perfumes made 
 from violets and other flowers grown 
 there which were most pure and 
 heavenly; and, above all, the fra 
 grance of the crocus which was said 
 to be indescribably sweet Now I 
 will venture again to say that no 
 Cyrenian rose could smell sweeter 
 than the brier-rose I have found 
 blooming on our own hills and in our 
 own valleys, by the streamside and 
 the roadside, in May and June. And 
 no violet and no crocus of Greece ever 
 attained to such elusive and subtle 
 sublimity of scent as does our wild 
 crabapple blossom. 
 
 Is not the poet s inspiration like 
 
 that fabulous Fountain of Elusides, 
 
 spoken of in old chronicles, whose 
 
 miraculous waters, it is said, rose to 
 
 9S 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 the sound of music, and, the music 
 ceasing, sank again? 
 
 The milkweeds nod their Rip- Van-Winkle 
 
 heads 
 When Autumn blows ; and in the snoring 
 
 flue 
 The chill wind sleeps. All night it seems 
 
 to me 
 
 A goblin gnome, a Lob Lie-by-the-Fire, 
 Sits humped upon the hob whining of cold, 
 Or whistling to the flame to keep him 
 
 warm. 
 
 These misty forests of white and 
 black and red and chestnut oak that 
 drop their acorns around me as I go, 
 and fill the air with sad fragrance 
 premonitory of their decay, bring to 
 my mind, I know not why, the As 
 syrian dwarf-oak that is said to 
 secrete manna, from whose branches 
 it is gathered in quantities. During 
 foggy weather the manna is distilled 
 96 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 on the rocks and even on the sand, 
 as here the acorns, agate-brown and 
 black, are showered over the ways 
 mast that is manna to many 
 things, birds and beasts and, per 
 haps, men. 
 
 The sunrise this morning was 
 yellow as Median marble, the marble 
 of Tabriz which is so transparent, 
 it is said, that it may be cut thin and 
 used instead of window glass. Grad 
 ually the heaven above grew blue, 
 blue as Phoenician lapis lazuli, while 
 below it the horizon deepened into 
 red, crimson as Choaspian agate, 
 fading upwards into amethystine 
 purple and smaragdine green, lordly 
 colors through which the sun ad 
 vanced like a mighty monarch, re 
 splendent in burning mail of gold, 
 pacing the glittering lines and bar 
 baric splendors of his court. 
 7 97 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 In the Garden of Skulls and Serpents, 
 
 By a tower of gold, 
 Stood a woman, fair as fire, 
 
 Wonderful to behold. 
 
 Webs of starry flame she wove there, 
 
 Webs of moony fire. 
 Snares to seize the souls of mortals, 
 
 Slav them with desire. 
 
 The pure precision of a star, a flower, 
 The punctuality of their return 
 And order of their coming fill my soul 
 With the astonishment which mortals feel 
 For Bible beauties that no man explains. 
 
 I have listened long unto the promises, 
 The confidences of the trees ; and now, 
 Continuous with the trees, a stream ex 
 
 pands, 
 
 Expounding all the woods dim mysteries 
 In ripple rhymes sung softly to itself. 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 I saw the Spring- go by, her mouth a thread 
 
 Of wild-rose red, 
 Blowing a golden oat ; 
 And now, a crown of barley on her head, 
 The Summer comes, a poppy at her throat. 
 
 As Lais obtained ascendency over 
 the cynical spirit of Diogenes, so does 
 the moonlight, brightly beautiful, 
 overcome the retired and moody 
 darkness of this glade. And, like 
 Phryne, whose charms exposed be 
 fore the judges saved her from sen 
 tence of death, and whose beauty 
 inspired the sculptor Praxiteles when 
 he modelled the Venus of Knidos, 
 also Apelles when he painted Venus 
 rising from the sea, so does the 
 naked moon fill with wondering awe 
 the bosoms of the hills and streams, 
 mastering and compelling them with 
 her beauty. 
 
 99 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 An Eldorado of vales and peaks, 
 That the cloudy ore of the sunset streaks, 
 Is the Eldorado my fancy seeks : 
 Where the gold lies thick that they feign 
 
 to find, 
 
 That never in earthly mine was mined, 
 In the airy caves of the dsemonkind. 
 
 A rune of glimmer and a scrawl of light, 
 Printing with gold the black-bound page 
 
 of night, 
 The glow-worm is, making its blackness 
 
 bright. 
 
 The deep blue spike of the great lobelia 
 glows 
 
 Beside the cardinal-flower along the ways 
 
 Where Summer goes stripping the way 
 side rose 
 
 Of all its blooms, and plumping red its 
 hips ; 
 
 Her grasshopper gown of rustling golds 
 and grays 
 
 Bristling with burrs caught from the tre 
 foil s sprays, 
 
 And from the thorny marigold s tick-like 
 tips. 
 
 100 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 Now do the katydids, leaf-crickets 
 and weed-insects of the dusk, that 
 stridulate the long night through, 
 celebrate their Erotidia, or festivals 
 of love. Or are they elves disguised, 
 insect-like, in long close coats of 
 green and gray, that, by the light of 
 the harvest-moon, hold wild revelry? 
 chanting, as at their banquets the 
 Greeks, a cricket-scholium a song 
 which went the rounds; sung to the 
 lyre by the guests, one after the other, 
 each guest holding a myrtle branch 
 which he passed on to any one he 
 chose. 
 
 No lovelier, no wittier women lived 
 than the courtesans of Greece: wit 
 ness Nesera, Cottina, the celebrated 
 Lacedaemonian courtesan, and the 
 Athenian courtesan by name Mania, 
 whose beauty was as great as that of 
 Phryne and whose wit and repartee 
 equalled that of Aspasia. They were 
 101 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 women appreciative of the best in art 
 and literature. Therefore it is no 
 wonder that they were sought out by, 
 and became the powerful mistresses 
 of, the greatest philosophers, poets, 
 and statesmen of Greece. 
 
 Watching the fireflies to-night, 
 flashing hither and thither, up and 
 down the darkness, reminds me of 
 some elfin dance with torches: some 
 Bacchic or Pyrrhic dance of the 
 fairies: a dance like that danced by 
 the worshippers of Bacchus in an 
 cient Greece, wherein the dancers 
 carried thyrsi and torches, and moved 
 to the most beautiful airs. Perhaps 
 it is really and truly the Pyrrhic dance 
 of Elfland at which I am looking. 
 This, however, is a respectable, not 
 an indecorous dance who could 
 conceive the fairies engaging in any 
 but a respectable dance? No; such 
 102 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 indecent dances as the Pyrrhic or 
 Codax dances are not for them ; this 
 dance is like that, wild and yet re 
 strained, which the Greeks called the 
 Emmelia. 
 
 I wonder if the summer insects, 
 such as the leaf-cricket and the green 
 grig and grasshopper, with their 
 stinging music, did not first suggest 
 to some one the thought of inventing 
 a stringed instrument; we are all 
 acquainted with the myth of how the 
 lyre came to be fashioned by Mercury 
 out of the shell of a tortoise, but no 
 one, so far as I am aware, has told 
 us how the other stringed instru 
 ments used by the ancients came 
 to be invented. Perhaps it was a 
 grasshopper that suggested to the 
 Parthians the making of the sam- 
 buca, a musical instrument of four 
 strings; and the cricket that sug 
 gested the magadis and pectis, both 
 103 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 played without a plectrum. Terpan- 
 der, although they say he invented 
 the barbitos to correspond to, and 
 answer the pectis in use among the 
 Lydians, may have got his idea from 
 a long-legged grig or leaf-cricket 
 singing merrily in the summer grass 
 by some Arcadian stream. 
 
 This is the month when the wild- 
 sage silvers green in the shade of 
 elder-brake and trumpet-vine; the 
 wild-parsnip goldens its flowering 
 ulms; and the moth-mullein discs 
 its pedicels with blossoming yellow 
 or white, tinged delicately with purple 
 or crimson. 
 
 The aster does not always post 
 pone until late summer or early fall 
 its time of flowering, for weaving its 
 intricate lacework of blossoming 
 stars : I have found both the pink and 
 104 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 white aster blooming in the middle 
 of June in retired and moist places 
 of brushy underwoods and hollows, 
 lost in a riot of weedy vervain, 
 overwhelming everything with their 
 numberless blue and white terminal 
 tongues of blossoms. 
 
 Aug. 4, 1894, 7.15 P.M.; twi 
 light. The west is a deep orange 
 red above which and within which 
 silvers the crescent moon; against 
 the sky s gamboge the trees are out 
 lined greenish black; the wooded 
 valleys, of a dusky damson purple, 
 look hazy through a thin veil 
 of blue wood-smoke of burning 
 brush. A bob-white whistles and 
 a vesper-sparrow, plaintively, pen 
 sively, warbles a moment in a heavily 
 foliaged locust tree; its mate replies 
 in a tree near by; and in the orchard 
 another takes up the song and passes 
 it on to one who responds in the 
 105 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 vineyard; the dusk seems holier for 
 their singing. 
 
 The green leaf-cricket, the climb 
 ing-cricket, moves its fragile wings of 
 transparent shell, making a delicate 
 tremolo sound, soothing and dreamily 
 melancholy, like a dim reed, ghostly 
 and golden, blown by a weed-hidden 
 fairy. The west fades into ashen and 
 rose and night comes starry and cool 
 and calm. 
 
 I gazed upon the wasted lips of Want 
 Within a city haunt 
 Of vice and sin, 
 And thought of the green, the abundant 
 
 fields beyond 
 
 The sordid streets, whither Want could 
 not win, 
 
 The sick and fond; 
 And, where the white-top like dim streaks 
 
 of steam 
 Wavers its whiteness, lay him down and 
 
 dream, 
 
 Lapped in the murmur of a meadowed 
 stream. 
 
 1 06 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 As a dead leaf is lifted by no dis 
 cernible wind, but seemingly by its 
 own volition, in the forests of spring, 
 stayed and swayed and suspended for 
 a moment over its silent and withered 
 companions, and then dropped sud 
 denly, instantly, precipitately upon 
 them and mingled indistinguishably 
 with them : so is the fancy, that yes 
 terday was alive and green and fair, 
 taken up subconsciously, by no per 
 ceptible wind of thought, and poised 
 and considered for a moment and 
 then dropped silently among the 
 dead fancies of many dead days of 
 dreaming. 
 
 Clouds suddenly obscured the sky, 
 spreading smoke-like through the 
 calm of heaven as black soil, loose 
 and loamy, dropped from a precipi 
 tate hand, discolors, extending out 
 ward from the central disturbance, 
 107 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 a pool of perfectly clear water, cloud 
 ing it circularly. 
 
 April is here, smelling spicily as 
 does the young gold green of the 
 gummy velvet sheaths that hold the 
 leaves of the hickory trees; her hair 
 gay with apple blossoms, odorous of 
 rain, she comes, a sunny and showery 
 presence, down the orchard ways. 
 Here she walks under the shadowy 
 cedars, pressing with warm fingers 
 the distending and opening cones, dis 
 tinctly heard, snap on snap, like the 
 clapping of the great beak of some 
 unknown and invisible bird. I notice 
 that this year (April, 1898) the 
 bumble-bees are more numerous 
 among the apple blossoms than are 
 the honey-bees. Query: Do the 
 bumble-bees appear earlier than the 
 honey-bees? 
 
 The bumble-bee is no respecter of 
 108 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 the virgin bud of the apple tree: 
 forcibly he takes possession of her; 
 pushing the tender petals violently 
 aside with his fore feet he rudely 
 thrusts his head into the very 
 heart of the nectary, sucking up 
 its inmost sweet. A ravisher of 
 beauty and of innocence, he com 
 mits many rapes, thousands of them, 
 daily. 
 
 You can smell the wild rose in the 
 leaf even before the bush is budded: 
 it is a racy, juice-suggestive smell 
 like that of a ripe June-apple. 
 
 May 6th, 1898. Snowing hard; 
 the worst snow storm we have had 
 this year. I cannot help thinking 
 how bland the wind blew was it 
 only yesterday ? and how like a 
 fickle woman the month has already 
 proven herself: now warm, now cold; 
 now inviting, now repelling, but al- 
 109 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 ways sweet of voice even when 
 coldest. 
 
 "The devil hath not in all his quiver s 
 
 choice 
 An arrow for the heart like a sweet voice." 
 
 Green in the circle of contingent trees 
 The water lies wherein the new leaf sees 
 Its twinkling shadow. Through the bos 
 cage leers 
 
 The beast-like visage with the satyr smile 
 Of what has followed me this many a mile, 
 Earth s lust, hot-eyed, with horrible mouth 
 and ears. 
 
 I imagine the Bible of the Fairies 
 to be a book whose pages are the 
 gossamer wings, pale, delicate, trans 
 parent green, of the climbing leaf- 
 cricket; its binding, of moth wings 
 elaborately tooled and mottled with 
 azure and gray and gold edged with 
 seal-brown or ruby ; the letters of its 
 text minute as the tracks of ants, 
 no 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 High up, in inaccessible reaches of 
 violet and rose, the morning s rever 
 berated fires dazzle the eyes like the 
 burning points of a myriad sylphide 
 spears. 
 
 On every side the roses rise 
 
 In crimson insolence and pride; 
 
 And near them, steeped in lordly dyes, 
 
 That to the roses are allied, 
 
 Of transitory purple and pearl, 
 
 The poppies delicate flowers uncurl. 
 
 The shadows where no light looked 
 
 through, 
 
 Ephemeral sapphire, lay in pools of blue; 
 And there the spendthrift flowers flung 
 Their petaled gold ; and many a tongue 
 Of many a wild bird of their beauty sung. 
 
 With all my heart I deem it no great folly 
 To be in love with gentle Melancholy ; 
 
 with her, who, to my thinking, ex 
 presses all that is most sad, and 
 in 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 therefore most pensively beautiful, in 
 Nature. The winds and the waters 
 and the leaves, the moon and the stars 
 and the flowers are eloquent of her. 
 Her sad loveliness addresses us in 
 the dewy voice of the hyla, and the 
 crepuscular, the tenebrious tones of 
 the leaf -cricket : like Wordsworth s 
 poet, 
 
 " She is retired as noontide dew 
 Or fountain in a noonday grove, 
 And you must love her ere to you 
 She will seem worthy of your love." 
 
 The inviolable and unapproachable 
 presence of a spirit seems regarding 
 me from the sunset; clothed in stu 
 pendous colors it towers, addressing 
 in words of violet and rose the earth 
 and the heavens, inaudible harmonies 
 of fire, hushing the universe to sleep. 
 
 Wordsworth never beheld our little 
 bluet, the houstonia c<zrulea. I never 
 112 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 see it, among the earliest of our 
 spring wildflowers, with its starry 
 eyes of watchet-blue looking up at 
 me from the forest floor, shyly as if 
 afraid of its own loveliness, that I do 
 not think of those beautiful lines of 
 his: 
 
 " So fair, so sweet, withal so sensitive : 
 Would that the little flowers were born 
 
 to live 
 Conscious of half the pleasure that they 
 
 give. 
 That to this mountain daisy s self were 
 
 known 
 The beauty of its star-shaped shadow 
 
 thrown 
 On the smooth surface of this naked 
 
 stone." 
 
 What bird is that that sings so long? 
 
 To hear whose song 
 Each bashful bud opens its rosy ear, 
 Leaning it near. 
 
 While here, 
 8 113 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 Under the blossoming button-tree, 
 
 I seem to see 
 
 A shape, a presence look out at me ; 
 And, clothed in raiment of white and gray, 
 Pass on like the Spirit of Easter Day. 
 
 Not for things which we know, but 
 for things which we feel should we 
 value life most. 
 
 The sunset lets its heavy curtains down 
 Of thunder-purple orphreyed deep with 
 
 gold 
 
 Around the cloudy-builded couch of Day, 
 Canopied with the star-wrought blue of 
 
 heaven. 
 
 These are the cups of Comus, w 
 These tulips pranked with flame, 
 
 The tulip-burning twilight fills 
 With wine of wondrous name. 
 
 Yea ; death behind her, gazing through her 
 
 hair ; 
 
 Death in her lips and in her body fair ; 
 114 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 Ten hundred deaths to him whose heart 
 
 is hers, 
 
 Who kisses her death, darkness, and 
 despair. 
 
 Dr. Johnson says : " Women 
 have a perpetual envy of our vices; 
 they are less vicious than we, not 
 from choice, but because we restrict 
 them; they are the slaves of order 
 and fashion; their virtue is of more 
 consequence to us than our own, so 
 far as concerns this world." 
 
 This lumbering cloud, lazily drift 
 ing through the literary firmament of 
 the eighteenth century, occasionally 
 shed great truths from its bounteous 
 bulk, rain-like, on the surrounding 
 land, giving new life to its parsi 
 monious and ungrateful growths, 
 swelling every little river that it 
 touched upon, such as Boswell, 
 with a portion of its own importance. 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 The blue wild hyssop, with its dewy 
 
 mouth, 
 
 Cool, moist, and heavenly mid the pink- 
 bloomed mint 
 Along the shallow creek, shrunk with the 
 
 drouth, 
 
 Seen suddenly thus, seems, swift, an in 
 stant s hint 
 Of some dim being one, whom, still in 
 
 vain, 
 
 I follow where their many delicate ears 
 The purple beard s-tongue and lobelia lean 
 Sidewise to silence, listening for the rain 
 Tiptoeing the trees through which she 
 
 flees again 
 
 The presence that my soul adores yet fears, 
 The Loveliness my eyes have never seen. 
 
 Here bloomed the black-eyed Su 
 san and the white wild carrot, with 
 its resinous odor, beneath the Chick- 
 asaw plum tree whose crimson fruit 
 strewed, like blood-red agates, scat 
 tered by the hand of August, the dry 
 bed of the creek, or glimpsed, like a 
 dryad s lips, a luscious red, through 
 116 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 the intricate green of the boughs 
 above. There the vervain with its 
 ragged witch-wisps of weedy blos 
 soms nodded at me from the dusty 
 roadside together with the hot yellow 
 eyes of the wild sunflowers and 
 daisies. Seated upon a stone I said 
 to myself, " Love is the wizard s 
 circle which circumscribes life; inside 
 it, all the joys of Earth and Paradise : 
 outside it, and beyond it, death and 
 darkness and hell." 
 
 Drab-colored seed pods of the autumn 
 
 hung, 
 Like beggar s tatters, on the red-bud 
 
 boughs : 
 Around the old, old house there was no 
 
 sound, 
 No song or sound, save on the rotting 
 
 shed, 
 The dim old shed, a dove made plaintive 
 
 moan. 
 In rapt clairvoyance gray the shadows 
 
 lay 
 
 117 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 Around it seeing many things unseen 
 Of mortal eyes, strange things now dead 
 
 and gone, 
 Ghosts of the sometime gladness dwelling 
 
 there, 
 Spectres of age and youth, and sorrows 
 
 old, 
 
 Older than all the oldness sleeping there 
 Mid clemencies of days forever gone. 
 
 A poet s soul s unconscious of its dreams 
 As is the night unconscious of its stars, 
 As is the heaven of all its clouds and 
 
 winds, 
 And Earth, retentive Earth, of all its 
 
 flowers. 
 
 The bright half moon, a boat pearl- 
 white, 
 Floats down the cloud-canals of night. 
 
 The ghostly blue of the night sky 
 seen through the white wrack-rem 
 nants of the storm is the blue of bluet 
 blossoms showing their dim patches 
 and streaks through the white petals 
 dropped by the blossoming dogwoods. 
 118 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 How wonderfully bright the stars 
 are after storm! it is with them too 
 as it is with the flowers, as if they 
 had been washed clean. And, like 
 the flowers, the reserved wildflowers, 
 they seem pregnant with some mes 
 sage, some secret which they are 
 yearning to impart, that they would 
 divulge but dare not. 
 
 When earth forgets one flower that comes 
 
 with spring, 
 And heaven one star that beautifies the 
 
 night, 
 Shall I forget that song I heard her sing. 
 
 An old Spanish saying is that " a 
 kiss without a moustache is like an 
 egg without salt." 
 
 And what says Boccaccio? 
 
 " Lips for kissing forfeit no favor ; 
 Nay, they renew as the moon doth ever." 
 
 So must the bees and the butter 
 flies think who are never weary of 
 119 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 saluting the flowers; and love par 
 ticularly to kiss, if I am not mis 
 taken, those that are bearded of 
 lip, such as the larkspur, the snap 
 dragon, the hairy beard s-tongue, 
 toad-flax, and hyssop, iris, foxglove 
 and catkin, whose mouths are elfin 
 horns of honey, or vats of fairy 
 wine. 
 
 What pictures on wood, painted by 
 Tuscan artists, taken from the shrines 
 and altars of old churches, predellas 
 and triptychs, or three-folding tab 
 lets, shaped quaintly in Gothic peaks, 
 gleaming with backgrounds of an 
 tique gold, could compare in coloring 
 with the illuminated painting of a 
 butterfly s wings? such a butterfly as 
 I beheld to-day cobalt and crimson 
 and gold, bronze and purple and 
 black, wing-wide on a corymb of 
 blossoming weed. 
 
 120 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 All night it rained. Now in the dawn 
 The purple-berried cedars stand 
 Weighed down with wet the sun strikes 
 through. 
 
 Last night, July the I3th, 1897, 
 at 8:30 o clock, a phenomenon was 
 presented to my gaze such as it was 
 never my fortune to see before and, 
 I suppose, will never be my fortune 
 to see again. A moon-bow, a lunar 
 rainbow, of gigantic proportions, 
 arched its phantom reflection over 
 the not distant wood, stretching 
 dimly away to the north and south, 
 outlining its spectral colors against 
 the showering clouds of the west as 
 the moon, broad and bright and full, 
 rose in the unclouded east. 
 
 This morning I find the forest 
 dotted with bulbous and spongy 
 fungi; strange things, fluted and 
 lobed, ooze from decaying trunks of 
 trees or from old stumps and logs, 
 rusted and rotted red; yellow and 
 121 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 buttery-looking things on which the 
 slug and snail feed. And every 
 where, everywhere the dotting domes 
 and parasols and cushions of the 
 toadstools, pink-ribbed or white, on 
 thin or squat stems, make bright 
 spots of color crimson, green, gray, 
 fawn, white, and salmon. To-night 
 perhaps, if I watch and am favored 
 as is the slug that slimes the cobweb 
 stretched across the hollow stump, or 
 the firefly, that flits its lamp search- 
 ingly hither and thither, I, too, may 
 see them heave their white roofs 
 through the ferns like goblin huts, 
 an elfin city. 
 
 I love to linger o er the roseless rose 
 When hips are ripe and candle-flames they 
 
 seem, 
 
 Orange and red, lit in the Autumn s honor, 
 Who softly goes, 
 Her ruby crown upon her, 
 Adown the ways where vines like banners 
 stream. 
 
 122 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 The auroral scent of morning lilies blows 
 Mixed with nocturnal perfumes of the rose 
 Around the Dawn whose state invades the 
 
 sky 
 
 Trailing wild raiment of sidereal dye, 
 Holding her torch of spheric fire high. 
 
 Its banks clumped with the hot 
 bronze and yellow of the black-eyed 
 Susans and the rocket-like stars of 
 the towering elecampane, not far 
 from where I am sitting, beneath a 
 bower, as it were, of berry-clustered 
 bittersweet, already turning orange, 
 and huge, yellow- white blossom- 
 plumes of the Hercules-club, is a 
 lily-leafed pond, the quivering crystal 
 of which is wrinkled and circled into 
 frantic lines by the swift, mad move 
 ments of a swarm of gunmetal-col- 
 ored waterbugs, whose dull-shining 
 backs are boat-shaped. Watching 
 them, curious to learn the reason for 
 their Corybantic antics, I hear the 
 123 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 sudden cat-like squeak of a young 
 frog that has just taken leave of its 
 tadpole part and plunged into the 
 water to rejoice with its fellows, or 
 brag to the great frog, with the big, 
 bass voice, like the twang of a bow 
 string, of how very soon he will out- 
 sing him by the light of the August 
 moon. This, probably, it was that 
 drove the waterbugs into such dem 
 onstrations of delight : or was it 
 the flashing by of that living shuttle 
 of checkered white and black, that 
 aerial weaver of weird dances, the 
 dragon-fly, whose erratic revolutions 
 inspired them with a reciprocal desire 
 to imitate on the water the lines and 
 curves it wove overhead? 
 
 August ist. Heavy, heaven-purple 
 plumes of the hyssop azure the shad 
 owy tangles of the briered, sumached 
 and sassafrassed fallows; and where 
 124 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 the sunlight dusts down glimmering 
 gold, mottling the cool gloom of the 
 woods, their massed blossoms seem 
 imprisoned patches of sky, vaguely 
 violet, bringing the heart into the 
 mouth with the suddenness of their 
 beauty, and, as the spot of day 
 light at the far end of a cavern, after 
 hours of darkness, holding the eye 
 and lifting the soul with hope. 
 
 The last of the ox-eyed daisies are 
 now blooming, as clean and white 
 looking as their sisters were that 
 hailed the advent of June, scat 
 tered among the black-eyed Susans 
 and the wild coreopsis that spread a 
 cloth of gold for the feet of August, 
 who comes clad in the royal purple 
 of the iron-weed, a starry crown of 
 the rudbeckia, an Ariadne coronal, 
 upon her auburn hair ; within 
 whose front the rubied aigret of a 
 cardinal-flower flames; in her hand 
 a great plume of goldenrod, a torch 
 125 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 lighting her way; her gown, embroi 
 dered with the rosy moons of the 
 marsh-mallow, rustling locust-loud, 
 or rasping grasshopper-like as she 
 goes, an elecampane blossom glowing 
 at her throat. 
 
 From the inexhaustible fountains 
 of the stars, ancient, unalterable, 
 the night pours out her radiance as 
 of old; and in their light I go the 
 old trodden way of trees as oft I 
 went when, in my boyhood s days, 
 I walked with song and story. 
 
 The salmon-colored broomsedge 
 seems sunset fire fallen on the au 
 tumn fields. The puddles left of last 
 night s rain gleam like mirrors of 
 polished steel. Among the awns and 
 beards of the bristling gray grasses 
 the wind hisses angrily, and a soli 
 tary climbing cricket mournfully 
 moves its wings, making a quavering 
 126 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 and reedy music. The sun slopes 
 slowly towards his setting, and there, 
 in a black cloud, suddenly an eye 
 seems to shape itself, oblong, sinister, 
 narrowed to a line of flame, glaring 
 as a fiend might from behind dark 
 folds of haunted arras. 
 
 As I went riding toward the sea, 
 By field and hill and flower and tree, 
 The thickets parted and suddenly 
 A satyr s face laughed out at me. 
 
 Now is the ageratum, or mist- 
 flower, seen blooming, blue as the late 
 September heavens, everywhere, by 
 the wayside, in the woods, and along 
 the banks of autumn waters. It is 
 as if one were walking amid fallen 
 and scattered strips and streaks and 
 patches of azure heaven. Their blos 
 soms populate with blue, rank on 
 rank, especially the banks of the 
 127 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 slowly-sliding streams ; crowding 
 each other into the water in order to 
 gaze upon their own reflected loveli 
 ness, leaning far over, careless of 
 drowning, only to get a glimpse of 
 themselves. Here and there, scat 
 tered among them, glow the sturdy 
 stalks of the great lobelia, torches of 
 feldspar fire. 
 
 I walked by the golden-tessellated 
 streams of fall; waters, scattered 
 with the slender leaves of the willow, 
 whose currents slowly carry down to 
 stirless pools patens of gold and 
 bronze, arranging them in wonderful 
 mosaics. Here and there along their 
 banks, from a wilderness of blossom 
 ing goldenrod, the reddening su 
 machs thrust up heavy, brick-red 
 plumes of seeds, frosted and glisten 
 ing with oil; a gipsy carmine, that 
 Autumn employs to stain her cheeks 
 with, here where in the hazy woods 
 128 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 she stands leaning upon a stump 
 whose lower part is ruffed round, 
 like a brown and wrinkled throat, 
 with cream-white fungus. Whereso 
 ever she steps mushrooms and toad 
 stools spring up, and the rotting and 
 sodden roots of decaying trees don 
 fantastic frills, green and gray and 
 orange colored, and the air is filled 
 with the agaric odor of dampness and 
 decay. 
 
 Who is it that can define poetry, 
 the indefinable? I have tried again 
 and again to define it, but all my defi 
 nitions have proven unsatisfactory to 
 me; one definition I remember, that 
 seemed to arrive nearer to it than 
 all the others, is that poetry is the 
 metrical or rhythmical expression of 
 the emotions occasioned by the sight 
 or the knowledge of the beautiful, the 
 melancholy, and the noble in nature 
 and in man. 
 
 9 129 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 The polished berries, oval crim 
 son, of the spicewood bush brighten 
 through the dark green leaves, like 
 the wreath that crowns a dryad s 
 hair, in the woodlands of Septem 
 ber that lean, in quiet contemplation 
 of themselves, over the sluggish 
 waters of a creek. The furtive craw 
 fish darts sidewise-backward, swiftly, 
 claws advanced, over the brown bot 
 tom of the creek-bed, taking refuge 
 from my outreached hand under the 
 oozy edge of a rock, on which lies 
 the singularly globed and angled 
 shadow, bubble-like, of the water- 
 strider. The great lobelia s purple 
 and the blue of the mist-flower to 
 gether with the cardinal-flower s 
 scarlet lend splendid tone to the 
 banks of the running streams or 
 weedy and waterless ditches of the 
 wayside. 
 
 130 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 Her hair wreathed round with the 
 wild oats bristling awns September 
 went; and now October follows her, 
 crowned with the black-gum s crim 
 son leaves pointed here and there 
 with the purple-black of its berries. 
 Among the brush by the roadside the 
 hazels show their long, grayish white 
 buds; and on leafless branches the 
 ripened nuts gloom in brown clusters 
 and gold, reminding one of elfin 
 heads peeping out of scolloped ruffs. 
 
 Early in October I found the Her 
 cules-club towering by the dusty way 
 or hanging its heavy head of elder- 
 like berries wearily over the waters, 
 dominating the autumn tangle of su 
 mach and green-brier; its putty-col 
 ored stalk one bristle of thorny spikes, 
 it certainly looked every bit of its 
 name. The small trees of the box- 
 elder rustled their maple-like wings, 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 or keys, stirring uneasily with every 
 gust. The iron-wood trees, covered 
 with hop-like clusters, whispered 
 something to the October wind that 
 kept tirelessly wandering around 
 them. The creepers, crowning the 
 rail-fence with crimson, gave the 
 tops of the cross-rails the ap 
 pearance, thrust over the inter- 
 tangling bosks and bushes, of being 
 the feathered and scarlet-fluttering 
 heads of hidden Indians watching 
 where, 
 
 Clung o er with cockle-burrs and thorny 
 seeds, 
 
 Sad Autumn dreamed among her feather 
 ing weeds. 
 
 November 4th. The purple and 
 white ray flowers of the wild asters 
 are transformed into round, gray- 
 brown witch-heads of gossamer seeds 
 that nod and beckon fantastically, 
 132 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 shimmering, a silver gauze, in the 
 afternoon sunlight. The oaks retain 
 their leaves longer than any of the 
 other trees, loath to disrobe them 
 selves, and reddening with rage and 
 shame that the month demands it of 
 them. Their boughs and branches 
 twinkle bronze and ruddy gold with 
 every movement of the wind. Stal 
 wart they hold the hills, a host, whose 
 blood-red banners are advanced far 
 above the other trees, and whose 
 bronze-dark armor glitters as t were 
 for battle. 
 
 To-day, November loth, I found 
 the yellow primrose freshly blooming 
 on its tall green stalk, a fairy moon, 
 it seemed, shining by day amid a 
 firmament of aster stars. I also 
 found, covering, balloon-like, the sere 
 masses of briers with many feathery 
 pompons, their centres showing a 
 133 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 single black point, the puffball 
 seed-heads of the wild clematis. 
 Near by, the slender stream was 
 clocked with ice, the frozen road was 
 seamed with silver ruts. 
 
 134 
 
igoi-igos 
 
 I NEVER see an old farmhouse 
 with its Quaker-like front and 
 its old-fashioned kitchen gar 
 den full of flowers and simples and 
 vegetables, but it reminds me of the 
 good gray Quaker poet and certain 
 lines of his, beautiful and true, come 
 to my mind; lines, that, as it were, 
 epitomize his creed : 
 
 " For still in mutual sufferance lies 
 The secret of true living; 
 Love scarce is love that never knows 
 The sweetness of forgiving/* 
 
 April loth, 1901. What tipplers 
 the bees and the flies and even the 
 135 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 ants are ! How fond are they of the 
 saccharine in Nature! To-day I 
 came upon a sugar maple which a 
 woodpecker had drilled with several 
 tiny holes, from which, sap-satu 
 rated, the sweet moisture was exud 
 ing; around these holes and down 
 the dampened side of the tree trunk 
 the bees, the flies, and the ants 
 swarmed, like drunkards around a 
 free and flowing tap, literally drown 
 ing themselves in the brew. 
 
 Around me on every side the 
 spring-beauty, anemone, and blood- 
 root bloomed in multitudes, blurring, 
 innumerable, their white stars here 
 and there in galaxies over the ground, 
 misty and nebulous from a distance. 
 Occasionally I came upon a preco 
 cious spray of Dutchman s-breeches, 
 or wild bleedingheart, hung frailly 
 with delicately transparent shell-like 
 blossoms. The Virginia cowslip was 
 also putting forth its tufts of heaven- 
 136 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 blue, belf ried bells, seemingly, that 
 call the fairies to prayer. The 
 leaves, adder-mottled, of the dog s- 
 tooth violet speared the loam here 
 and there, a myriad brown-blotted 
 beaks of green. Not a wood violet 
 did I see. The spicewood with its 
 yellow buds and the red-bud with its 
 purplish blooms gave or loaned color 
 to the drab background of the yet 
 unleafmg brush and trees. A prole 
 tarian, bent on gathering early honey, 
 on filling his fairy sack, the bulky bee 
 went booming by. I stopped a mo 
 ment to see him rumble and tumble 
 among the pussy-willows in a little 
 hollow, green-spread with a grassy 
 carpet patterned with wildflowers, 
 smelling of honeyed musk, like the 
 fragrant dressing-room of Spring. 
 
 April 27th, 1901. The expanding 
 sheaths of the leaves of the lirioden- 
 137 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 dron, or tulip tree, are like pale vel 
 vety green fingers, umber-tipped, 
 pointing heavenward or is it to 
 passing April, or approaching May? 
 They are covered with an adhering 
 and balsamic gum, giving them a 
 varnished golden appearance. More 
 truly speaking they are of a silvery, 
 fuzzy golden appearance but what 
 words can describe adequately or im 
 part perfectly the impression of the 
 colors which Spring employs in 
 painting her young leaves and her 
 flowers? 
 
 And there are the cherry trees! 
 What wonders, what marvels of 
 whiteness! Black-heart and white- 
 heart heaping their huge drifts of 
 snowy blossoms. I never beheld any 
 thing more beautiful than are these 
 beautiful trees this spring. Their 
 odorous snow intoxicates the air and 
 ravishes the senses; bee, bird, and 
 breeze make their great mounds, like 
 138 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 motionless clouds anchored to earth, 
 murmurous and revelous haunts of 
 melody. 
 
 Near a pond a maple tree stands 
 crimson as if Autumn had touched it 
 with fiery finger, instead of Spring; 
 giving flame to its numberless dan 
 gling double-winged keys or seed 
 pods, out of whose rosy clusters the 
 pearly points of the sprouted leaves 
 project tips of tiny candles that 
 will soon glow with emerald green. 
 The whole tree gives one the impres 
 sion of a flaming torch, but burning 
 from the bottom upwards instead of 
 from the top downwards. 
 
 I catch the fragrance of the blos 
 soms of the plum tree now which is 
 exactly that of new-made wine, a 
 heliotrope and vanilla-like odor. No 
 wonder that the bees and the butter 
 flies are intoxicated with it and go 
 reeling away in honeyed happiness 
 after revelling in its blossoms a while. 
 139 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 The fragrance of the plum trees vies 
 with that of the cherry trees. Noth 
 ing that I ever smelled is so delicately, 
 so deliciously intoxicating as is their 
 mingled perfume, borne by that great 
 mixer the wind, from their masses of 
 white bloom, in which the inebriate 
 bees and breezes make perpetual mur 
 mur, and the birds drown themselves, 
 their songs rising, like bubbles, from 
 their fragrant deeps. 
 
 The lush green smell of the young 
 grass, cool and warm at the same 
 time, invites one to rest and dream 
 on its emerald carpet. The black 
 bird s continual, vibrant, wire-like, 
 metallic note creaks and creaks in the 
 top of a sweet-gum tree like a rusty 
 reed tuned in praise of spring. 
 
 Here in the damp places of the 
 wood and the shadowy parts of the 
 orchard one comes frequently upon 
 140 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 the succulent cones of the sponge 
 mushroom, the earliest edible fungus 
 of the year. On the hillside, in the 
 woods, the dwarf larkspur, a watery 
 blue and white, bristles with spurry 
 spikes of blossoms. This spot of 
 deadened wood and stumps is a reg 
 ular rallying place for them. I stop 
 a moment, seating myself upon a 
 dead tree trunk. How curious are 
 the worm-worn borings under the 
 torn-off bark of a fallen and red- 
 rotted tree ! hieroglyphic and crooked 
 and erratic as the lines that mark, 
 I imagine, some antique gem of 
 Arabia, the seal of some long-dead 
 Sultan. 
 
 " The noon was clouded, yet no shower 
 
 fell 
 
 Though in her lids hung the sweet tears 
 of May." 
 
 May is here. The red oak crim 
 sons into tenderly velvet leaves, and 
 141 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 the white oak clothes itself in vair 
 and mauve and lavender and rose. 
 The indefinable, bittersweet, apple 
 fragrance of the wild-crab blossoms 
 makes every wind swoon with joy. 
 No perfume cultivated by fashion is 
 more refined or subtly haunting than 
 is this wild-apple odor with which the 
 May makes sweet her body. 
 
 May isth, 1901. Came upon an 
 entire hillside of the bird s-foot violet. 
 Their pansy-purple blossoms, scat 
 tered like sapphires among the moss 
 and dead leaves under the soft un 
 folding velvet of the oaks, made a 
 picture too beautiful for words to de 
 scribe. I carried the memory of it 
 home to the city with me and it has 
 remained with me ever since. 
 
 How curious looking are the 
 curdled mud chimneys that the craw- 
 142 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 fish mason in the wet woods and 
 clayey fields! Lying at the bottom 
 of the hole which their chimney con 
 tinues and protects, their great claws 
 advanced threateningly before them, 
 they remind me of some unimagin 
 able monster of the fairy world ; some 
 elfin dragon or kraken, lying in wait 
 for venturesome, lost, or belated 
 fairykins, ready to seize them with 
 their formidable talons and instantly 
 devour. In the deeps of the marsh- 
 wood, at night, I have heard him 
 heaving up his hollow house, the rude 
 wall of his oozy tower, a wet, vague 
 sound of slime. 
 
 How the various sounds of Nature 
 haunt our memories! To-day, mid- 
 May, standing listening to the rust 
 ling of the leaves of these trees, I 
 cannot help thinking how different 
 now is the sound of the movement 
 143 
 
Nature-Notes , 
 
 of their limbs, clothed in green, from 
 what it was in February when, un 
 wieldy and weighed down with crush 
 ing and incasing sleet, blown stiffly 
 by the wind, the crystalline and crack 
 ling noise of their branches was as 
 the sound of heavily moving silk. 
 
 In Georgia, May 7th, 1902. Who 
 was it said was it Lorenzo the 
 Magnificent ? or who ? 
 
 " That on every side we find 
 Absence, as men say, estranges; 
 Fancy ranges as the eye ranges ; 
 Out of sight is out of mind. 
 
 " Love departs and is not love ; 
 As from sight the eye departs 
 Even so do hearts from hearts ; 
 And at other hands we prove 
 
 " Fancies rove as the eyes rove, 
 Parted pleasures come again." 
 
 And to me twofold they come 
 
 here in beautiful May in beautiful 
 144 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 Georgia ! Here you might truthfully 
 say the brooks babble silver over bars 
 of pearl and topaz, or drop lucid 
 music into pools basined with crystal, 
 for their very channels are paved 
 with blocks and pebbles of spar. 
 Their banks, covered with ferns as 
 high, and often higher than a man s 
 waist, lean over to admire the reflec 
 tion of their own adornments, 
 glories of mountain laurel, with its 
 calico-like clusters of blossoms, aza 
 leas, sunset-colored, and wild honey 
 suckle, rose and cream, that mass 
 themselves everywhere. The cali- 
 canthus and Solomon s-seal, bird s- 
 foot violet, great pools, as it were, 
 of purple and azure poured from 
 some huge cornucopia of color, 
 and the wild phlox, streaking the 
 vistas of woods here and there with 
 broad lines of lavender, seemingly 
 bouquet the earth with blossoms in 
 honor of the loveliest month of 
 10 145 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 spring. And over it all the wood- 
 thrush, that liquid-throated lover of 
 the leaves, pipes his mellowest, his 
 most triumphant music, as if he, too, 
 would give her praise May, and 
 lay his soul in song at her feet, her 
 alding her presence to every breeze 
 that blows, and to every tree and 
 wild flower that grows, in notes as 
 deep and crystal-cool and clear as 
 her own eyes. 
 
 Visited a whippoorwill s nest to 
 day, May 3Oth ; one that I discovered 
 about a week ago. The mother bird 
 rose, fluttering almost from under my 
 feet, and had I not known just where 
 to look for them, I never would have 
 been able to distinguish between the 
 two little, light, red-brown balls of 
 hairy down and the dead oak leaves 
 on which they lay, almost completely 
 concealed by the parent bird, before 
 she quit her nest, under two brown 
 146 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 leaves. Quietly the two little gro 
 tesques lay, about a day old, with 
 tightly closed eyes, huddled side to 
 side, among the sere leaves. I care 
 fully recovered them with the two 
 brown leaves, and to the relief of 
 their parent, who kept up a continual 
 fluttering among the neighboring 
 underbrush left them to become, 
 doubtless in time, like herself, weird 
 voices of the dusk, haunters, too, of 
 the twilight. 
 
 Circled with trees, in Indiana, I 
 came upon a water, a forest pool, and 
 sat an hour looking into it. Now and 
 then I saw was it a turtle? or 
 merely some strange water creature 
 conjured up by my imagination ? a 
 spraddle-legged, shell-backed shadow 
 ferrying slowly through the cairn 
 gorm deeps. Then a little waggle- 
 tailed frog or was it a frog? or 
 a fairy philosopher regarding me 
 147 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 through his goggle eye-glasses? 
 seated on a lily pad, addressed me in 
 a high, piping voice, like a professor 
 delivering a lecture. Here and there 
 others took up his note, like a lot of 
 mimicking students, bandying it back 
 and forth raucously high or low, ac 
 cording to their size. Most of them 
 were still very young; in the transi 
 tional stage between tadpole and 
 frog and with their bass or tenor 
 voices reminded me very much of an 
 Apollo Club, in swallow-tailed suits, 
 giving a full-dress, batrachian con 
 cert, each crouching gnome-like on 
 his lily-leaf platform. When I moved 
 they plunged precipitately into the 
 pond, spattering the lily pads with 
 rolling and glittering rounds of liquid 
 brilliants diamonds spilled on em 
 erald mats. 
 
 Among these green, spectacled 
 haunters of the pool, gnarled gnomes 
 of the water, that meditate magic 
 148 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 each one in his own sorcerous circle 
 of green lily leaf ; in a shadowy place, 
 under a trailing trumpet-vine, a 
 riot of June, clustered over, as it 
 were, with splashes of tubular scarlet, 
 
 There was an old frog 
 
 Sat on a log 
 
 In the light of the crescent moon, aboon, 
 In the light of the pale new moon : 
 
 And he said to the crescent, 
 
 " My dear, look pleasant ! 
 I m going to sing you a tune, real soon ; 
 I am going to sing you a tune." 
 
 The acrid, warm odor of the fields 
 of white-top and wild carrot lay like 
 a spell upon the land. Noon hummed 
 and buzzed, grasshopper-like, at the 
 wood s edge, or drowsily whistled, 
 like a bob-white, from the harvest 
 field, that slept, sultry with sunshine, 
 in the heavy, hot fragrance of the 
 blossoming elder; pelted with petals, 
 149 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 and the downy pearl blossoms of the 
 flowering chestnut tree, that fell in 
 long splashes of white, slenderly 
 curved, as from a pale-towering, 
 never-falling fountain. 
 
 So let Noon lead me till at last she reaches 
 That spot where Evening tarries brown 
 Beneath the trees, through which the sun 
 set bleaches ; 
 Deep in a wood of ancient oaks and 
 
 beeches, 
 
 Where I may lay me down, 
 With all the loveliness that Nature teaches, 
 And watch Night crown her with her 
 starry crown. 
 
 Violet mists of the rain veiling 
 with vapor the distant hills and val 
 leys, checkered here and there with 
 great blurs and streaks of interchang 
 ing sunlight and shadow as the dark 
 blue clouds of wind and rain roll 
 heavily over them. The woods and 
 ways are literally spangled with but- 
 150 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 terflies of all descriptions, colors, 
 sizes, and shapes: small and large; 
 brown and moth-mottled with dim 
 and dusty blues and blacks; terra 
 cotta-colored and copper-marked ; 
 scarlet and seal and gold, making 
 gay the stalks of withered weeds as 
 with a sudden, a magic burst of 
 strange and tropical blossoms. 
 
 The catbird says " Sweet 
 you, sweet you, sweet you ! 
 Very sweet you, you, you ! Sweet, 
 sweet !" 
 
 Nature is full of voices; some 
 heard; some unheard; all of them 
 eloquent of loveliness, happy or mel 
 ancholy, preaching or singing the 
 gospel of the beautiful. 
 
 Yesterday, walking in the woods 
 of autumn, the wind kept up a con 
 tinual whispering around me, as if 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 desirous of communicating some old 
 and awful trouble to my soul. When 
 it discovered that I could not or 
 would not understand, it cried an 
 grily in the trees, withering through 
 the sere, red, restless oaks, complain 
 ing to them of something sadder than 
 life. The witch-faced moon of day 
 looked down upon the faded forest 
 like the ghost of old tragedy weary 
 unto wonder. The smoky, dun, and 
 drab-colored woodlands, that belted 
 the hill, lifted up imploring arms of 
 ashen branches, as if beseeching 
 heaven to spare them; the sunlight 
 of the afternoon piercing them with 
 its chilly gold in broad gray blades 
 of mournful and dusty-looking light. 
 
 Nemophilist that I am, I also am 
 
 a lover of the fields, of the meadows; 
 
 especially after a night of rain when 
 
 the clean green of the autumn fallows 
 
 152 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 is dotted with the meadow mush 
 rooms, holding up, each one, its white 
 pileus, like parasols of the elves, 
 ribbed with delicate pink gills. And 
 when 
 
 Above the hills the sunset s rolled 
 One long deep streak of lurid gold, 
 
 from the nemorous side of a hill, over 
 the waving plumes of goldenrod and 
 aster, I have often fancied I could 
 see, in lamels of refulgent armor, the 
 eidolon of the autumn day beckoning 
 me on to follow, over the glittering 
 meadows, into some wonder world 
 of mystery and magic, towering, 
 shadowy gold and fire, beyond the 
 sunset s clouds and mists of purple 
 and flame. 
 
 March I7th, 1903. For the first 
 time this year, here in Kentucky, to 
 day I heard the hylodes piping in the 
 153 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 marshy places: those elfin music- 
 makers of March, fairy horn-blowers 
 heralding the approach of Spring. 
 
 A myriad golden-thighed honey 
 bees, with one great black bumblebee, 
 burly and crapulous choragus of 
 the Bacchic chorus, were zooming 
 and booming among the fluffy, furry 
 catkins of the willows that hung, a 
 green-gold mist, along the borders of 
 a stream; the fragrance and honey 
 of the pussy-willows had made bois 
 terous Bacchantes of them all. 
 
 The chortling orchestration of the 
 hylodes; the warbling of the bush- 
 sparrow in tufting cotton woods; the 
 violet, breaking azure over the sod; 
 the moist spring smell of the fresh 
 new grass, and glimmer of the cat 
 kins, combined to form a symphony 
 of sounds, aromas, and colors that no 
 man-made music could ever equal. 
 
 Cobwebs, iridescent in the sunlight, 
 streamed by, the tattered and rent 
 154 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 remnants of the banners of elfdom, 
 caught here and there on the with 
 ered weeds of last year: or shim 
 mered in broken arches, the gossamer 
 bridges of fairyland; or floated 
 slowly away in torn shreds, shattered 
 rainbows of the fays. 
 
 The cottonwoods blooms made the 
 winds haunting and balsam-sweet, 
 smelling like the Balm-of-Gilead, and 
 sonorous with the joy of a thousand 
 busy honey-bees. 
 
 March i8th, 1903. Wildflowers, 
 everywhere, up in profusion. Within 
 a few feet of each other I found 
 anemones, spring-beauties and wood- 
 violets blooming, and the adder s- 
 tongue, or dog s-tooth violet, showing 
 its brown-freckled leaf. 
 
 The trees were perfect clerestories 
 for the birds, whence the bluebird, 
 the robin, the wren, sap-sucker, spar- 
 155 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 row, catbird and redbird chorused 
 their songs, to which the meadow- 
 lark, like a priest before the altar cel 
 ebrating the High Mass of Spring, 
 antiphoned responses. 
 
 Suddenly, in a shadowy opening of 
 the trees, I glimpsed the bluebell, or 
 Virginia cowslip, its porcelain-like, 
 purple-pink heads of clustered buds 
 bowing heavily over the lush green 
 stem of greener leaves promises 
 of beauty that the month, a week 
 hence, shall behold perfect and blush 
 ing beneath the million leaf-points of 
 the beeches. 
 
 A little further on, in a hollow of 
 sodden loam and leaf the bloodroot 
 lifted its virgin chalices of hollow 
 snow, making the moist, musk- 
 haunted aisles of the cathedral-like 
 forest holy with its pale, lamp-like 
 flowers the spiritual presences, as 
 it were, of many little sangraals. Or 
 here a clumped colony of the twin- 
 
 156 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 leaf, hardly distinguishable from the 
 bloodroot, immaculate, with sloping, 
 white, half-open blossoms, tapered 
 through the enfolding leaves like frail 
 candles of souls celebrating the ad 
 vent of spring. 
 
 The bloodroot leaves of middle March 
 Lift up their blooms, each one a torch 
 Of creamy crystal in whose white 
 The calyx is a golden light. 
 
 March 23d, 1903. The tooth wort, 
 with its white, four-petaled flowers, 
 variegates, along with the spring- 
 beauty, the floor of the forest under 
 the bourgeoning beeches : amid their 
 delicate enameling, a solitary star, 
 one dog s-tooth violet mosaics its 
 pearl-pallid blossom; a stray from 
 the innumerable host that, like some 
 invasion, pierces and spears the 
 shady hillside with countless bronze- 
 speckled points of leaves. 
 157 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 A storm is rising. The bare 
 boughs roar and tumult with the 
 rushing winds of March. The pha 
 lanxes of dead leaves panic before it 
 in galloping skeleton thousands, rust 
 ling wildly in withered flight. Winds, 
 vaunt couriers of the clouds that 
 roll up in black battalions, sweep 
 the booming boughs, announcing ter 
 rific things to the reeling trees, whose 
 tops bow down and, billowing, swirl 
 and swing, doing obeisance to the 
 storm. And now the full force of 
 the tempest is among them; ruin- 
 footed it stalks with enormous 
 strides, crashing and clashing their 
 rumbling trunks together as if 
 they were so many reeds. There 
 is a noise as of hurling and hurry 
 ing hands, the trampling of gigan 
 tic feet, the roaring of riven oak, 
 of rended beech, ponderous, pro 
 testing, in terrified and awful pain, 
 sounding hugely over it all, over 
 158 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 the wild roar and wilder rush of 
 
 ram. 
 
 March 26th, 1903. The amber- 
 green of the sassafras blossom glints 
 in the sunlight, tufting with flame the 
 dark and leafless boughs, and drench 
 ing the air with subtle and spicy fra 
 grance. The wild-bleeding-heart, the 
 harbinger of spring, the anemone, 
 yellow and blue violets, spring-beauty, 
 bloodroot, hepatica, and the budded 
 pendants of the bluebells enamel the 
 wood floor with white and gold, pink 
 and azure. Here also the starry eyes 
 of the adder s-tongue, bashful as a 
 little Puritan s, look demurely down. 
 And the celandine-poppy scatters its 
 nuggets of early gold prodigally 
 among the underwoods, or employs its 
 natural alchemy to cover with ingots 
 of young yellow the trickling hillside, 
 gleaming here and there amid the 
 dead leaves and mossy rocks like 
 159 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 Croppings out of unmined gold, 
 Of secret wealth no man hath told. 
 
 Moist, rocky places of the spring, 
 Rich with dark woodland loam, 
 
 Where hosts of golden poppies cling 
 And breaks the bloodroot s and the 
 twinleaf s foam. 
 
 The mossy hillside s bulging rocks 
 O er which the fragile white-heart flocks, 
 Whose penciled leaves and shell-shaped 
 
 blooms 
 Seem fancies from the fairies looms. 
 
 The hairy stems of the hepatica, 
 Beneath the wahoo-bush and leafing haw, 
 Nod delicate as the heads of elfin maids 
 Of fairy tales who haunt the forest glades ; 
 
 And bluets, like a Naiad s eyes adream, 
 Assert their azure by the woodland 
 
 stream ; 
 And, where the wind-flower braved the 
 
 winds of March, 
 
 The poppy lights its golden torch. 
 160 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 Come dance, come flaunt yourselves, ye 
 wild little wind-flowers of March ! 
 
 And, poppies, come light their way with 
 the hollow gold of your torch ! 
 
 March 3ist, 1903. The mole- 
 heaved turf that smells of spring; 
 the gummy gold and green and Balm- 
 of-Gilead scented leaf-buds of the 
 cottonwoods, shelling their crisp 
 cusps, blown hither and thither by the 
 wind of late March, languor the 
 air with indescribable essence that 
 softly weighs upon one s eyelids, 
 soothing them to sleep. I lie beneath 
 a great cottonwood by the Ohio, gaz 
 ing at the sky through its boughs and 
 breathing the essence of spring dis 
 tilled from the breeze-swung censers 
 of its blossoms, crimson turning to 
 gold-gray, tasselling the huge room 
 of its branches. The curled bronze 
 and black, as if burned, sticky with 
 aromatic gum, of the leaf-bud 
 ii 161 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 sheaths scatter the sand and the 
 young grass on which I lie. 
 
 April 6th, 1903. Great white-heart 
 cherry trees drifted with snow of 
 blossoms and pelting the passer-by 
 with flying flakes of petals. The 
 buckeye tree, the great horse-chest 
 nut, is a huge candelabrum of leaf- 
 buds, each bud a point of fragrant 
 bronze infolding pale gold, a com 
 pact and imprisoned flame, gummy 
 and glistening with spring and sap 
 in the sunlight of early April. The 
 balsam-pungent smell of the leaf- 
 cusps of the cottonwoods resembles 
 spice blown from the lattices of ori 
 ental harems. Not " blossom by 
 blossom" does spring begin here, 
 but with a rush, a very tempest of 
 blossoms. Gill-over-the-ground, den- 
 taria, starwort, golden corydalis, mer- 
 tensia, celandine, trillium, wake-robin 
 162 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 and bluet, regiment on regiment, host 
 on host, literally storm the bewildered 
 woodlands with their blossoms. High 
 among them, like a purple oriflamme, 
 flutter the violet clusters of the Ja- 
 cob s-ladder. 
 
 April 8th, 1903. The Lepidoptera, 
 
 some very large, some very small, 
 
 black and brown and blue, make 
 the Judas-tree, with its cloud of rosy 
 blossoms, a little world of flutter and 
 of frenzy. By goes a great dragon 
 fly, the first of the season, like a bolt 
 from a cross-bow. Everywhere is 
 the mirth, the babble and bubble, 
 the gurgle and whisper of wood 
 land waters, mingled with the jubi 
 lation of birds and the clapping of 
 leaf-hands, the contented rubbing 
 together of rustling boughs and 
 branches as if in applause. 
 
 I came into a wind-torn wood of 
 oaks, over whose rocky and rooty 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 floor, sparsely scattered, shone the 
 first wan stars of the bluets, and 
 whiter than blurs of frost, the blos 
 soms of the white wild-plantain. 
 Oaks, oaks, all around me oaks, don 
 ning their velvet vestments of pink 
 and purple and gold the young, 
 unfolding leaves and yet unblossom- 
 ing buds, long and silken, of their 
 clustered flowers. 
 
 Far off, from the valley below, 
 rose a vague chirping, the reedy 
 notes of the hylodes, like an orches 
 tra of fairy flutes tuned in time to 
 the swift steps of Spring. Their 
 music, suggestive to me of pale gray, 
 glaucous golden bubbles blown all 
 in the same direction by the wind, 
 now rose, now fell, with every passing 
 breeze. 
 
 Through the satiny amber and lav 
 ender and rose mists of the leafing 
 oaks, tasselled with golden-green of 
 blossoms, the occasional dogwoods 
 164 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 showed brownish blurs of buds try 
 ing to be white. And against a dark 
 background of leafless woods the sas 
 safras, breaking into chrysoprase, 
 gleamed glassy golden. 
 
 The hillside and the valley seemed 
 streaked and blotted with ochre and 
 umber, grayish green and violet, dim 
 lilac and amber hues, where Spring 
 had touched the winter-washed 
 boughs of the woodlands. And climb 
 ing the hills and invading the hollows, 
 clothed in the colors of happiness, 
 like attendants in her rosy train, 
 peach orchard and cherry orchard 
 glowed in raiment of pink and pearl. 
 
 April 27th, 1903. The early, dusty 
 gray-green of the budded birch has 
 been succeeded by a glistening and 
 glimmering emerald-green, amid 
 which the catbird and the bluebird 
 have gone mad with joy. 
 165 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 With the first warm days of April 
 came the large blue and gray dragon- 
 flies, flitting and whirring erratically 
 over the ponds and the pools and 
 creeks. Whence do they come? 
 From the South, I suppose ; for sud 
 denly they are here, and no one has 
 seen them come; probably brought 
 hither on the wings of the wind that 
 beat about my roof last night with 
 plaintive rain. 
 
 The two blossoms that God made 
 alike, the bloodroot and the twinleaf, 
 are now no more. The dogwood 
 dazzles the woods, a steadfast form 
 of snow and light that keeps guard 
 at the gateway of the Courts of 
 Spring and poses brilliantly for our 
 admiration. The tender pink and 
 delicate mauve of the spotted leaves 
 of the wild-grape, roofing with twi 
 light the saplinged hillside, where 
 like lamps of gold the celandine- 
 poppies are scattered, build a 
 166 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 green temple within whose sanctuary 
 sunbeams glimmer, like spirits wor 
 shipping and offering up flowery sac 
 rifice to the maiden Spring. At its 
 entrance, like Galahad the pure 
 knight, in armor of dazzling white 
 ness, stands the blossoming dogwood. 
 
 Deep in the leaves* concealing green 
 
 A wood-thrush flutes, 
 
 The first thrush seen 
 
 Or heard this spring, and straight, me- 
 
 seems, 
 
 Its notes take on the attributes 
 Of mythic fancies and of dreams 
 A faun goes piping o er the roots 
 And mosses, gliding through dim gleams 
 And glooms, and while he glides he flutes, 
 Though still unseen, 
 Mid thorny berry and wild-bean. 
 
 The ripened heads of the rattle 
 snake plantain nod their touseled tufts 
 167 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 of thistledown at me, or is it at 
 the little blue butterflies that flutter 
 around them? as if they knew a 
 thing or two about what happens 
 among their stalks in the light of the 
 May moon when the little people are 
 abroad, and the cricket makes dance- 
 music for them. 
 
 The dewberries are blooming now : 
 The days are long; the nights are short; 
 The dogwood blossom from its bough 
 Drops snowy petals, heart by heart, 
 Here where she laid gainst mine her brow 
 When we did part. 
 
 Soon where the dewberries blossoms 
 
 gleam 
 
 The berries red will, ripening, glow ; 
 And if the dogwood by the stream 
 Did ever bloom, no one will know, 
 And she, too, seem a vanished dream 
 Of long ago. 
 168 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 The yellow star-flower shows its gold 
 Among the trees, half hid in grass ; 
 Already do the leaves grow old; 
 Already doth the springtime pass ; 
 And last year s leaf hath turned to mould, 
 As love, alas! 
 
 The crowfoot blossom lifts its eyes 
 Of amber hue from round my feet ; 
 The bluet apes the Mayday skies 
 With glances blue as they are sweet, 
 Here where last spring we met with sighs, 
 No more to meet. 
 
 Purple the hills stretch under purple mists, 
 A damson-frosted purple that persists 
 Even in the valley, darkling there that 
 
 lies 
 No bluer black hath night, no darker dyes. 
 
 The low gray clouds, whose edges are 
 thinned, 
 
 And spun 
 By the sun 
 And the wind, 
 How they swirl and curl 
 And furl and unfurl 
 Into lawny lengths of snow and pearl ! 
 169 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 Now feathering white as the moon-mists 
 
 do, 
 
 For the wind and the sun to tempest 
 through, 
 
 Now closing over, 
 Cloud-cover on cover, 
 Deep azure chasms of fringing blue. 
 
 The cedars are breaking into gold. 
 Their dark green sprays are flushed 
 with the young gold of May, tufted 
 and spined and edged as with amber- 
 flickering fire. 
 
 It is like coming upon a bit of the 
 Orient, a dream of Samarcand or 
 Bagdad, to come upon this clump of 
 great crimson- and orange-headed 
 poppies, sultry with slumber and 
 magnificently indolent in the sun 
 light. Their sullen hearts, opium- 
 pollened, smooth, deep brown or 
 purple-black, they hold up and 
 open, languid and beautiful courte- 
 170 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 sans, to every passing bee, inviting 
 them to drug themselves and dream 
 within their voluptuous bosoms. Me, 
 too, they have drugged: days shall 
 pass, months, perhaps years, and 
 still shall the memory of their beauty 
 haunt me their faces of henna- 
 colored flame; or, raimented in ruby, 
 their bosoms of fire, sullen-centred 
 with hearts of powdery purple. 
 
 Hark how the honey-throated thrush 
 With notes of limpid harmony 
 Scatters the noonday s liquid hush, 
 Taking the woods with witchery. 
 Hid in the foliage deeps of green 
 He flutes his wildwood notes serene, 
 Like some tree-spirit, lost, unseen. 
 
 May 1 5th, 1903. Deep-hearted 
 peonies, soft-souled as sleep and gor 
 geous as a dream that comes tricked 
 out in Shakespeare s fancy, now 
 make sumptuous the garden ways. 
 171 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 Holding up their heavy, dew- jewelled 
 gowns of crumpled crimson or cream, 
 they stand, stately as the Athenian 
 ladies in Midsummer-Night s Dream 
 smiling at their lovers. 
 
 The milk-white stars of the water- 
 lilies peep from between the green 
 pads of the pond, at whose edge the 
 sparrow and the thrush are taking 
 their morning bath, preening with 
 wet beaks their backs and wings and 
 breasts. 
 
 Bubbles of bursting coolness rise 
 between the lily-leaves, marking the 
 way the gold carp goes, a crimson 
 blur, a rosy shadow, a slow, strange 
 streak of chilly flame, moving dimly 
 under the lilies in the smoky crystal 
 of the waters. 
 
 Giant irises clump and crowd the 
 water s edge. Their beautiful blos 
 soms, azure and white, are the huge 
 notes of a soundless symphony under 
 whose spell the water seems to sleep. 
 172 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 The ground is strewn with the dead oak- 
 bloom, 
 
 Brown and withered as autumn broom : 
 And there, in a hollow of the hills, 
 Like a giant pearl in a giant hand, 
 Is a white-washed hut where an old man 
 
 tills 
 
 A barren acre of barren land. 
 An arid acre, that soon shall blow 
 With wild-rose crimson and elder snow. 
 
 I unlabyrinthed to-day a little 
 worm no larger than a pin s head 
 that had caused a weed s stem to 
 swell and swell, eating its long, larval 
 way through the heart of the weed. 
 
 That little worm shall become a fly, 
 
 And sing and sting neath the summer 
 
 sky; 
 Or a gnat, like that which grows in the 
 
 gall 
 
 High on the oak leaf there a ball 
 That the elves shall loose and toss over all 
 Merrily under the next new moon ; 
 173 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 When it 11 grow itself wings and a sting 
 
 and a tune, 
 Stinging and singing its way into June. 
 
 The cow-spit flecks the ragweed s 
 stem with frothy white, a slimy foam 
 with which a flat green worm seems 
 to deluge itself pumping it up out of 
 the green of the weed. It reminds 
 me of certain novelists whose impos 
 sible styles are literally overwhelmed 
 with the froth and fury of their 
 fictions. 
 
 The red clay of the road is bored 
 and heaved up by some sort of insect, 
 a mining hornet, or spider hiding 
 from a hornet, to which the bug in 
 the weed, drowned in its own spittle, 
 bears some resemblance. Each has 
 its own little world to live in, whether 
 it be a hole in the earth or a hole in 
 a weed. 
 
 174 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 May i6th, 1903. Bells of the blos 
 soming huckleberries ringing their 
 inaudible white music up and down 
 the Maytime hills, and a million 
 bluets blooming, among whose blos 
 soms one gold-thighed bee goes 
 roaming, 
 
 Invite my soul to rest awhile 
 
 And dream beneath their azure smile. 
 
 The smell of tannin in the ozoned air 
 Under the oaks when the woods are 
 
 green, 
 And the scent of the soil and moisture 
 
 where 
 The young leaves dangle and make a 
 
 screen, 
 Where the hiding wood-nymph combs her 
 
 hair, 
 Have breathed me full of the Faun 
 
 again, 
 
 And made me kin to the wind and 
 rain. 
 
 175 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 The stealthy squirrel skips along; 
 The bush-bird lifts its twilight song ; 
 The great frog sounds his resonant gong 
 At nightfall. 
 
 The small wood-gnat, that stings and flies, 
 And drowns itself for rage in your eyes, 
 Sings and whines and thinly cries 
 At nightfall. 
 
 The hairy spiders, that crouch outside 
 Their earth-bored lairs, now stealthily 
 
 glide, 
 
 Or spin great webs for the moths that hide 
 Till nightfall. 
 
 May 1 7th, 1903. Three birds have 
 followed and haunted my steps all the 
 afternoon. First, a catbird, singing 
 a paean in praise of the day, filled with 
 a passion of splendid sunlight and 
 warm wind, perched in the top of 
 a cottonwood whose woolly wisps 
 are blown like fragments of fleece 
 through the air. Second, a song- 
 sparrow, small and sweet, lilting a 
 176 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 pensive little lay, small and sweet as 
 itself, a tinkle, as it were, a silvering 
 down of dewy notes. Thirdly, a 
 crimson-winged blackbird, repeat 
 ing monotonously its one strident, 
 persistently piercing and importu 
 nate note, emphasized occasionally by 
 prolonging the expression " sweet " 
 into " s-w-e-e-e-e-t," or is it " sweet- 
 er-ee," or "o-ka-lee"? 
 
 Colorado, June I2th, 1903. The 
 pools of water left by the rain of last 
 night in the rocks of the mountains 
 are the mirrors over which the 
 Oreads braid their hair, heavy with 
 the wet of the mountain mists and 
 twined with the mountain flowers. 
 I can fancy them, white and naked as 
 the stars that haunt the loftiest peaks, 
 leaning like lilies over these pools, by 
 the moon s cold light, wondering and 
 marvelling at their own wild love- 
 12 177 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 liness, their eyes shining through 
 their locks, dark and dishevelled, 
 as the mountain dawn breaks, 
 violet-gray, through scud of stream 
 ing storm. 
 
 October 28th, 1903. Autumn is 
 with us. She who endears herself 
 to us through her decay. Again 
 the sober brown carpet of the leaves 
 rustles on the forest floors. Once 
 more, here in Kentucky, the long 
 bronze-green blurs and streaks, 
 stealthily serpentine, of the duck 
 weed marble the sluggish streams 
 and pools with copperas hues, mak 
 ing of each a huge moss-agate, 
 under the clear lemon and burnt 
 brown of the beeches. Again the 
 huckleberry bushes seem turned into 
 garnet and ruby, their leaves, colored 
 with carmine and vermilion, cover 
 each bush, making it burn like that 
 from which God addressed Moses. 
 178 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 Again the moss, crisp, dry and gray, 
 starred here and there with plushy 
 green, makes mute the step. Again 
 the acorns sow the way, falling con 
 tinually, and crunching and crack 
 ling under the feet, along with the 
 burrs of the beech and chestnut now 
 emptied of their nuts. Again the 
 oleander-colored skies of sunset, seen 
 through the columned iron of the 
 oaks, invite the soul to wander and 
 lose itself in the forest of dreams and 
 shadows. The blue-winged wasp 
 and the yellow-winged grasshopper 
 seem aweary of their own singing. 
 The bush-clover, tired of its papil 
 ionaceous, pink blossoms, is convert 
 ing them rapidly into links of flat 
 green burrs that loosen and cling to 
 all that touches them. Burr-mari 
 golds besiege the woodland ways, 
 bristling an army of brown burr- 
 heads, dishevelled spikes of forked 
 thorns. Flame-flecked leaves, or 
 179 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 leaves stained with blood-red fire, 
 flutter and fall around us, heaping 
 the path that leads to the leaf-clogged 
 stream, reflecting all the sorrow and 
 savagery of the year, the cinnabar of 
 the burning-bush, the scarlet of the 
 sumachs, already half-stripped of 
 their leaves, and the crimson and 
 gold of the maples. Now and then 
 one catches the pungent, alkali odor, 
 so characteristic of autumn, of burn 
 ing wood and weeds ; and in the twi 
 light, dotting it like the eyes of some 
 forest animal, the distant smoulder 
 or flare of a brush-fire. And then at 
 night with what a feeling of awe 
 we walk the autumn woods! What 
 wonders, what whispers walk with us ! 
 Death and Melancholy and Decay, 
 mysterious and invisible companions 
 of the rain and the wind, seem never 
 weary of telling us of the sorrow, the 
 sadness of existence, complaining 
 ceaselessly to the sighing and weep- 
 180 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 ing trees and the unhappy and dying 
 flowers. 
 
 Where the rain that comes at night 
 tip-toes in its whispering gown, the 
 briers are bruised and veined with 
 bronze and blood; 
 
 Each leaf is marked with fire 
 And flame makes fierce each spire. 
 
 The oaks sullen into swarthy crim 
 son ; or, masses of brown and bronze, 
 they sombre themselves against the 
 ember-smouldering West. 
 
 Yesterday among the beeches, to-day 
 
 among the oaks: 
 
 Those with their emerald and gold, 
 Their amber golds and grays, 
 These with their blood-dark bronze, 
 Translucent, frosty reds: 
 The gold the Autumn dons, 
 The blood her sad heart sheds, 
 As slow she goes her ways; 
 Sheds at each step, that cloaks 
 Each pool that glimmers cold, 
 181 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 Sunk in the woodland mould, 
 
 Mid the oaks, of whose russets and reds 
 
 Winds make their beds, 
 
 Bowing their withered heads, 
 
 That are old, so old, 
 
 Where the Autumn cons, 
 
 In her golds and grays, 
 
 Her Book of Days. 
 
 The wind is rising and the leaves are 
 
 blown, 
 Wild, swallow-high, reluctant still to 
 
 fall, 
 Swarming from hill to hill; and over 
 
 all 
 The sere, wild-sounding oaks a voice calls 
 
 lone, 
 As if the wood some ancient word were 
 
 sighing, 
 Some unintelligible word of beauty 
 
 dying. 
 
 The dawn comes in clad all in hodden 
 
 gray, 
 And, like a tattered cloak its wildness 
 
 wears, 
 
 182 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 The ragged rain sweeps stormily this 
 
 way: 
 The acorn, like a bullet, strikes the 
 
 soil; 
 
 And blown from its wild pod the milk 
 weed s plume, 
 
 Wan in the ghostly and the gusty gloom, 
 Flares like a lamp hand-hollowed of 
 
 trembling toil. 
 NOVEMBER i2th, 1904. 
 
 Hylas, that pipe the little buds awake; 
 
 The shrill hylodes, how they sing 
 Before the wind-flower and the bloodroot 
 
 shake 
 
 Their twinkling stars frail in the locks 
 of Spring. 
 
 The rose-bruised blue of the bluebell s 
 
 buds 
 Will soon make gay the hem of her 
 
 gown ; 
 Green as the green of the young oak 
 
 woods 
 
 W r ith changing tints of mauve and 
 brown. 
 
 183 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 And soon will golden poppies cling 1 
 In woodland places deep with loam, 
 
 And we shall glimpse the feet of Spring 
 White in the twinleaf s flowers of foam. 
 
 And all the hillside s rugged rocks 
 
 She 11 shower with shell-shaped white- 
 heart blooms, 
 Shaken from out her radiant locks, 
 
 As down she comes through greenwood 
 glooms. 
 
 Spring is late this year. It is now 
 March I2th, and hardly a bud or 
 blossom is to be seen anywhere in 
 field or forest; not a wildflower, 
 neither harbinger-of-spring, spring- 
 beauty, nor anemone. All is still sere 
 and sad in the bare brown of the 
 windy woods. Not even a violet to 
 push aside the dead leaves and open 
 its baby eyes to the stormy sunlight. 
 Only Spring s presence, or is it her 
 approach? is evidenced by the 
 warm, wet smell of turf and loam and 
 184 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 leaf the aroma that haunts her 
 gown s green hem brushing here and 
 there the edges of the woods ; and by 
 the sunlight basking white on the 
 hilltops the slow silver of her de 
 laying feet. 
 
 Still are the forests barren of all buds, 
 And all the woods of wildflowers; but, 
 
 behold! 
 
 Within a week or less the invading hosts, 
 Myriad and many as the stars of heaven, 
 Shall utterly invade these woodland ways, 
 When every foot of soil shall show and 
 
 boast 
 
 Its bud or blossom or balsam-beaked leaf, 
 Bragging of beauty to the passer-by, 
 Beggared and bankrupt of all words to 
 
 praise. 
 
 Come, let us forth and homage her, 
 Clothed on with warmth and musk and 
 
 myrrh, 
 
 The indescribable odor wild that clings 
 Around her like a garment : let us sing 
 
 185 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 Songs to her, glad as grass and all the 
 
 things 
 Exulting in her presence greening 
 
 things 
 And airy that have gotten them new 
 
 wings : 
 Come, let us forth and give our praise to 
 
 Spring. 
 
 The flowers now are holding their 
 public pomps and pageants making 
 gay the worlds of the woods. Warm 
 scents of rain and of sun, of loam and 
 of leaf courier their coming, and the 
 wind is a herald s bugle, bannered 
 with the blue of heaven, sounding 
 before them. 
 
 My mind s washed clean by the wind that 
 
 brings 
 The wild warm scent of the woods on its 
 
 wings, 
 
 The racy sweets of the bourgeonings 
 Of flower and tree and brier that clings. 
 186 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 My head I bare to the winds that 
 
 blare, 
 That blow from the purple heart of the 
 
 cloud, 
 
 - Now low, now loud, 
 From the heart of the cloud, like a giant s 
 
 hair, 
 
 Blown everywhere, 
 Blue-black and low, 
 Heavy with rain and the pearly glow 
 Of sunlight gulfing its deeps with snow. 
 Blow, winds of spring! O blow, blow, 
 
 blow! 
 
 Caress my brow like fingers fair, 
 Cool fingers touching my eyes and hair ! 
 Blow, spring winds, blow ! O blow, blow, 
 
 blow ! 
 
 Blow out of my soul all cark and care ! 
 And out of my heart, aye! out of my 
 
 heart, despair! 
 
 The wind goes groping among the 
 trees, 
 
 Telling the bees 
 
 Where the little buds open that no one 
 sees. 
 
 187 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 At intervals, as softly cool it blows, 
 
 The wild-plum shows 
 Its bee-swarm d clusters twixt the wood s 
 dark rows. 
 
 The sluggish snake now basks his uncoiled 
 
 length 
 
 Beside the windings of the water-course ; 
 With torpid beady eyes he lies and dreams 
 Where warm the sunlight sleeps. Near by 
 
 him claws 
 Of some strange beast have marked the 
 
 furrowed sand 
 
 As with deep talonings of mighty rage 
 Here on the wild road where it fords the 
 
 stream. 
 
 Rocked by the winds of March the trees 
 
 become, 
 
 Each one a maddened pendulum 
 Swayed every way as if in time 
 To some wild music, roaring rhyme 
 Shouted from storm-tossed hill to hill, 
 Amid the forests that are never still. 
 
 What dance is wilder than that the 
 dead leaves dance, made frantic by 
 188 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 the winds of March? What music 
 more welcome than the bucksaw 
 sound of the hylas chorusing a song 
 in praise of spring in the flooded 
 bottom-lands and marshy pools of 
 the valleys? Or what is rosier 
 than the rosy tassels that tag the 
 sugar tree when it lifts itself like 
 a banner unfurled in the very fore 
 front of the advancing armies of 
 spring? 
 
 March 27th, 1905. I found the 
 hepatica with its twisted hairy stems 
 and three-lobed leaves blooming re 
 tiredly at the protecting base of an 
 old beech, hidden, or trying to hide, 
 in a rooty angle of lichen and leaves 
 and moss. A peculiarity of these 
 hepatica blossoms is that they are a 
 delicate pink, almost white, and not 
 blue the color generally attributed 
 to the liverwort. 
 
 180 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 Think of the strength of the sprout 
 ing germ of such a tender and frail 
 thing as a wildflower ! lifting or dis 
 placing a clod, or even a small stone 
 often with its pointed bud; piercing 
 with its slender green the superim 
 posed layers of dead leaves as a 
 needle might; and not till they 
 are pierced, unfolding the large 
 beauty of its leaf. Thus to-day I 
 noted many of the leaves of the 
 adder s-tongue, or dog s-tooth violet, 
 collared or ruffed curiously with a 
 collar or ruff of dead leaves, which 
 they had neatly and completely 
 pierced. 
 
 The spicewood bush is now in 
 bloom. Its yet leafless branches are 
 illuminated with many fuzzy little 
 flowers, lights of pale amber, aro 
 matic as some oriental pastil. 
 
 The gold-green blooms of the spicebush 
 
 burn 
 
 Lighting the wood at every turn ; 
 190 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 Like the starry tufts of the sassafras, 
 Whose fragrance thrills us as we pass, 
 From out their patens of gold they spill 
 A faint aroma that haunts the hill. 
 
 How late joy is in coming ! late as 
 is the young hickory to don its rai 
 ment of green and gold; whereas it 
 should be rathe as the redbud that, 
 a month ago, flaunted a mass of re 
 joicing rose, making happy the other 
 wise barren forestside: or as the 
 pawpaw that, days ago, gladdened 
 the woods with its bells of deep, dark 
 bronze, belfrying its leafless boughs 
 where the winds hung, like bell- 
 ringers, ringing the month s mar 
 riage peals. 
 
 Placid and pure and clean the wild-phlox 
 
 blooms 
 Make glad the hillsides and deep-wooded 
 
 banks 
 
 191 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 Of wandering creeks. Beneath the old, 
 
 gray beech 
 
 The Mayapples, in myriad colonies, 
 Advance-guards of the wildflowers fol 
 lowing hosts, 
 Lift up their green-and-umber tents of 
 
 leaves, 
 Each unrolled tent tipped with its furled- 
 
 up flag, 
 Its pea-like bud, a knob of delicate 
 
 green, 
 Wherein the milk-white, blazoned deep 
 
 with gold, 
 Of its broad bloom, its banner s packed 
 
 away. 
 While at the wood s edge, at the turn o* 
 
 the lane, 
 
 A clear, a chilly crimson in its keys, 
 Its million blooms, the maple fairly 
 
 glows, 
 
 Making a crystal blur of rosy gloom ; 
 Wherein the bluebird, like a sapphire 
 
 closed 
 
 In an enormous ruby, sits and sings ; 
 Upon his back and on his wayward 
 
 wings 
 
 The lapis-lazuli o the April sky. 
 APRIL 5th, 1905. 
 
 192 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 Who is it knows 
 
 How the huckleberry grows, 
 
 Blooms and blows ? 
 
 Only the bird that sings and sings, 
 
 Waving its wings, 
 
 Saying, " Come see it where it swings ! 
 
 Ruddy green and amber rose, 
 
 See, oh, see, 
 
 In honor of Spring, 
 
 Under this tree, 
 
 See how they ring 
 
 Their tiny bells, that cluster out, 
 
 Silvery red, in a rosy rout." 
 
 In the poorest soil of the hillside, 
 amid rocks, felled wood, and mosses, 
 I found the bird s-foot violet with its 
 pansy-like blossoms, purple and blue, 
 scattered and glowing like vari-col- 
 ored sapphires. And under the April 
 crimson that the oaks had donned 
 the yellow puccoon made bright the 
 barren ways of the waste hillside. 
 On May the ist, I found its tubular 
 gold, like little trumpets of the elves, 
 13 193 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 held up, as if ready to salute me with 
 golden announcement, by every road 
 side and in the grassless places of the 
 hills. 
 
 The bright star-of-Bethlehem, im 
 maculate white, fixed its shining eye 
 upon me, like the bright eyes of 
 adventure, here and there, looking 
 out of every grassy place I passed as 
 from a green, small firmament all its 
 own. 
 
 May 5th, 1905. The dead-leaf car 
 pet of the underwoods, covered 
 white with the dropped petals of the 
 fallen and drifted blossoms of the dog 
 woods, is as if it were flaked with 
 snow. Here and there amid their 
 white the tall, spadixed blossoms of 
 the Indian-turnip are seen, green and 
 purple, or bluish white striped with 
 clear gray-green. 
 
 The wood, this morning, is in 
 vaded of snails. An elfin army, black, 
 194 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 gray, and brown, thrusting forth their 
 horns, like some strange weapon of 
 defence, their shells looking like so 
 many queer knapsacks, they storm the 
 stumps of the trees, swarm over the 
 roads, and scatter their skirmishers 
 among the rocks and roots of the 
 forest, investing everything before 
 them, leaf and blossom and fungus. 
 Three I found attacking a single 
 leaf, two thirds of which had already 
 disappeared. At another place a 
 great reddish brown snail was busy 
 devouring what seemed at first to be 
 a caterpillar and which afterwards 
 proved to be a long, fuzzy, yellow 
 blossom ; the watery red of the snail 
 and the golden-white of the blossom 
 producing quite a peculiar color 
 effect. 
 
 What if curses should fall as 
 
 thickly as snails come after a rainy 
 
 night in early May? Irresistible as 
 
 the impulse of spring to leaf and blos- 
 
 195 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 som and bear and bless us with the 
 beautiful what if this impulse 
 should suddenly take the opposite 
 course, producing, instead of the 
 beautiful, the terrible and the hor 
 rible, like this slimy vermin swarm 
 ing over the woodland ways ! 
 
 Who will tell me why ants are con 
 tinually and persistently climbing the 
 trees? wandering here and there, 
 irresolutely, indefinitely, at a loss as 
 to what they are seeking, over the 
 flat broad surfaces of the leaves ; and 
 at length reaching the topmost twig 
 of a branch, or a leaf, or of the tree, 
 turning and retracing their way just 
 as hurriedly downward? There are 
 no aphides, no insect kine for them 
 to stroke and milk ; no honey-dew, no 
 gummy sweetness perceptible that 
 might attract them. Can it be that 
 the fascination, the curiosity to see 
 196 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 how the earth looks from a great 
 height lures and compels them, too, 
 as it often does us mortals? 
 
 May 1 8th, 1905. The strawberry- 
 bush (running euonymus) is now in 
 full bloom ; covered with five-petaled, 
 flat, fleshy, green flowers which shall 
 eventually evolve the crimson-burred 
 pods, packed with scarlet seeds, of 
 early autumn. 
 
 Like a carcanet of living and 
 graceful emerald, the green snake 
 glides across my way; silently sinu 
 ous, moving swiftly to the upper twigs 
 of the euonymus; under which, lum 
 bering along slowly beneath its 
 mottled and incasing shell, a land- 
 turtle rustles over and through the 
 leaves an ungainly bulk, whose 
 rubber-colored neck and feet and 
 tail protrude grotesquely from the 
 shell, into which at a movement 
 197 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 of my foot they are instantly 
 withdrawn. 
 
 I found the shin-leaf with its 
 rocket-like flowers of white-blue blos 
 soming in the open woods to-day. 
 On it, like a Japanese design, sat 
 a butterfly, wings outspread, the 
 sumptuous coloring of which defies 
 description. 
 
 The first heavy-headed stalks of 
 the beard s-tongue, lilac and white, 
 plume with orchid-like blossoms the 
 fields and the forest ways. 
 
 Here on the slope of the hill, shel 
 tering under the oaks, fresh as the 
 break of day, and breathing rainy 
 fragrance around, I found the innu 
 merable wild-rose blooming, each one 
 a round pink yawn of perfume, young 
 and fresh and sweet as the young, 
 sweet, dewy beauty of a baby s mouth. 
 
 The wild-potato vine, too, I found 
 in full bloom; its large chalices, 
 white cups of opaque crystal, spotting 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 and dotting the open fields and vistas 
 of the woods. The wild-parsley, 
 with its lacy, gracefully penciled 
 umbels, hedged with tall gold the 
 banks of a creek that slid tinkling 
 from the gloom, from the hillside 
 where, in patches, among the rocks, 
 like outcroppings of gold, shining in 
 the sunlight, yellowed the blossoms 
 of the puccoon. 
 
 The blossoms of the shin-leaf, hued 
 and shaped like forget-me-nots, on 
 the tops of their stiff, prim-looking 
 stalks, tower gracefully from the 
 low whorl of their large mullein-like 
 leaves. Not far away the goat s-rue, 
 with its papilionaceous flowers, look 
 ing like many saffron and rose col 
 ored butterflies, makes glorious the 
 rocky hillside sloping to the little 
 creek singing, like a happy child amid 
 its gathered wildflowers, unseen in 
 the woody hollow. 
 199 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 Snug in its curled-up leaf the spider 
 hides, safe from the searching mud- 
 wasp, whining impatiently, flitting 
 from flower to leaf. The blue-winged 
 wasp and the yellow-winged grass 
 hopper seem to be the only insects 
 awake here where in countless num 
 bers the wild onion blooms. Like 
 the insects, the blossoms too seem 
 asleep; their six-petaled, star-shaped 
 flowers, pale lavender, almost white, 
 dot the distance dimly. Their knob- 
 like seeds on their tall, stiff, succulent 
 stems give a polka-dot effect to the 
 tall grass white dottings on a 
 green background. Here in the 
 dense underwoods the wood-dove 
 nests. Far away, mournful in the 
 nooning, I heard her cooing. 
 
 Here and there in the hollows of 
 the woods stout and stocky toadstools, 
 marble-gray and white, look like so 
 200 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 many tents, or temples, that the imps 
 of the moon and the starlight have 
 raised. In the shadows, along the 
 wood ways, damp and dumpy, fat 
 and lean, white and yellow, terra 
 cotta and crimson, green and blue, 
 poisonous looking, and, when not 
 bloated, beautiful as strange blos 
 soms are beautiful of the ranker 
 weeds, pearl- and pink-gilled, slender 
 or thick-stemmed, they orb their 
 cones and discs grotesque as the 
 work of gnomes. 
 
 The Robin s-plantain lifts its lilac 
 round of ray-flowers, looking down, 
 like a yellow-pupiled eye, upon the 
 snail that clings gnawing on a wild- 
 rose near by, as melancholy clings 
 gnawing at a heart. Suddenly I hear 
 the Carolina wren singing in the top 
 of a haw tree, " Cheer up, and cheer 
 up, and cheer up ! " 
 201 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 That trees have an intelligent as 
 well as a sentient life to me is evident 
 and provable. That plants have a 
 sense perception of taste and feeling 
 has been proven. If sense percep 
 tion, why not thought perception as 
 well? About a month ago, early 
 in May, sitting under this oak on the 
 top of Kenwood Hill, I conceived 
 the idea of stripping the leaves from 
 one of its branches and of seeing 
 what within a month would happen. 
 I carefully cut away every leaf at its 
 base where attached to the twigs, 
 doing no injury to the young acorns 
 that were just forming. Returning 
 to the same place a month thereafter 
 I find that the bough has put forth 
 new leaves tenderly slender and 
 palely delicate, invalid-looking leaves 
 smaller and less sturdy it is true 
 than the ones which I removed, but 
 leaves nevertheless. It is to me as 
 if the tree had become conscious of 
 202 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 the bareness of this one bough, and 
 the parent stem had corrected its 
 condition, clothing it with green 
 again. 
 
 Now the question that arises in my 
 mind is how did the tree know 
 that this particular limb had been 
 stripped of its leaves? It certainly 
 must have known it or it never would 
 have put forth new leaves again so 
 early in the season. There must be 
 some manner of intelligent communi 
 cation between the outmost branches 
 and the roots of the tree, its fibrous 
 heart or brain or nervous centre, 
 whatever you call it, that is capable 
 of receiving information of, and then 
 of remedying, some accidental de 
 fect, not vital, in its body. In fact 
 I truly believe that trees are capable 
 of thought the same as animals 
 are, though, of course, in a lesser 
 degree. 
 
 JUNE 22d, 1905. 
 
 203 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 Clothed in redundancy of bloom 
 and beauty June meets me at every 
 turn of this leafy lane, offering me 
 now a spray of red half-ripe black 
 berries, now a handful of herbs 
 mixed with the white ulms of the wild 
 hydrangea, and now a double armful 
 of elder blossoms, redolent of sun and 
 rain and imprisoning within their 
 starry stems a whole summer of hot 
 perfume. 
 
 The liquid note of the thrush what 
 words can describe it? 
 
 Above me now I hear it, dropping its 
 globed harmony, 
 
 Golden-bubbled, crystalline clear, inde 
 scribably deep. 
 
 Questioningly, answeringly its music falls, 
 
 Notes of antiphonal gold, 
 
 Full of youth and joy; 
 
 A tree-spirit, seemingly, 
 
 Voicing the innocence, the exuberance, the 
 beauty of invisible, 
 
 Inviolable things; wild myths that popu 
 late 
 
 204 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 The world of the woods and streams. 
 Pensively, hopefully now it pleads, 
 Pleads for the dreams that haunt the hearts 
 
 of the trees, 
 
 The soul of the woodland 
 Dreams that it sees from its leafy height, 
 Its breezy eyrie of green, 
 Dreams that it sees and knows. 
 And now for me its music, too, takes 
 
 form, 
 
 Visible, material form: 
 And I seem to see 
 A presence, young with the youth that 
 
 never ages, 
 A Faun, a Spirit, slender and naked as 
 
 Spring, 
 Deep in the forest, approaching and now 
 
 retreating, 
 
 Blowing his flute of flowers, 
 Gleaming, vanishing far in the verdurous 
 
 glooms : 
 
 A Spirit, happy with all that is happy, 
 Communicated joy of all that is beauty, 
 The wild, wild beauty it drew from the 
 
 breasts of its mother, 
 Its beautiful mother, Nature: 
 A phantom supernal in loveliness, respon 
 sive and tender, 
 205 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 Diaphanous, hyaline, translucently green 
 
 and golden, 
 Golden and green like the sound of a 
 
 thrush s fluting: 
 A form of light like that which shimmers 
 
 and shades 
 Under the day-deep boughs of the myriad 
 
 beeches ; 
 Flitting, wavering now like a joy that 
 
 dances, 
 Silent, alone in the heart of the 
 
 forest, 
 Shimmering, glimmering here like the 
 
 ray that stars the ripples, 
 Sun-speared, flashing and fading on wood 
 land waters, 
 Falling, calling, foamy-lipped, like a 
 
 Naiad, 
 Lost in the leaves, the remotest deeps of 
 
 the forest. 
 Like the rain that tips the point of a poplar 
 
 leaf, 
 Trembling, a liquid star, to its twinkling 
 
 fall, 
 There it glances and glints, tinkling with 
 
 silver the silence; 
 There it hazes like heat that haunts the 
 
 summer meadows, 
 206 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 To whose kisses the wildflowers open their 
 
 wondering and fragrant eyes : 
 A glimmering form it leads me, musical 
 
 ever of motion, 
 From wild wood place to place, 
 Retreating, advancing, luring from vista 
 
 to vista, 
 Far and far in the forest, the haunted 
 
 deeps of the forest, 
 To slay me there, perhaps, at last, 
 At last with some last, long and lovelier 
 
 note, 
 
 Ringing as gold 
 And deeper in magic than the myths of 
 
 old. 
 
 The milkweed s ball of lilac-col 
 ored blossoms swings, heavy with the 
 wet, by the wayside. In it a striped 
 beetle burrows, drunken with the 
 honeyed perfume that filters from its 
 hundred mouths of nectar. 
 
 Guidons of fairy cavalry, slender 
 
 gold and emerald and azure, the 
 
 dragon-flies twinkle hither and thither 
 
 or rest alert of wing on the wild-flag 
 
 207 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 blades that rim, as it were with an 
 abatis of green swords, the woodland 
 water, the way to which is literally 
 lost in and overwhelmed with the 
 bugled stalks of the jewel weed or 
 touch-me-not. 
 
 A wood-thrush flutes overhead. 
 And again I think all the sweet 
 words in the world married to melody 
 by the greatest musical genius could 
 not express to me what its few simple 
 but inspired notes express of ex 
 pectation, of woodland mystery, 
 dreams, and wonder-visions never to 
 be seen, remote, unattainably beauti 
 ful. O indescribable song of the 
 thrush ! O June ! O love ! O youth ! 
 of you, of you it speaks to me! and 
 of the lost, the irremediable; the 
 indescribably fair and far and yet to 
 be found, the mysteriously hidden, 
 the undiscoverable, calling me in the 
 voice of all my longings through the 
 cadenced aisles of the forest. 
 208 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 Crystal gleaming, quicksilver- 
 sparkling brilliants, moonbeam jewels 
 for sylvan spirits to braid in their 
 bark-brown tresses, or string in 
 starry carcanets of liquid spar around 
 their throats of wildflower white 
 ness, are the drops of rounded rain 
 caught and held in the green hollows 
 of the leaves that the rays of the 
 afternoon sun love to linger upon, im 
 pregnating them with cool white 
 fires. 
 
 Already are the burning bushes 
 (the running euonymus) covered 
 with little round warty capsules of 
 beryl-green that in September shall 
 astonish this path with color glow 
 ing into ruby and rose, making a 
 diminutive sunset of fragmentary 
 scarlet under the dark vault of tangled 
 thorns and limbs of unescapable 
 beeches. 
 
 14 209 
 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 The woodpecker! hear him, the red- 
 capped, 
 
 Driving home his bill ! 
 
 Driving deliberately home his bill 
 
 In the top limb of yonder tree. 
 
 Swiftly, instantly, repeatedly it sounds, 
 
 Resonant, distinct in the hollow wood. 
 
 What a prospect from such an outlook, 
 
 What a world of limb and leaf, 
 
 Ever moving, restless in its rest, 
 
 Must that be from where he raps ! 
 
 That tallest giant of them all, 
 
 That poplar there 
 
 Where so unconcernedly he clings. 
 
 What exultation of height! 
 
 What intoxication of cloud and sky! 
 
 Of wind and rapture in the blowing hair 
 of the tree! 
 
 Its rocking and nodding head ! 
 
 Oh, that I too had wings ! 
 
 The crawfish in his tower of ooze and 
 
 clay 
 
 What knows he of the day ! 
 Like some crabb d misanthrope, 
 Sans joy, sans hope, 
 
 210 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 He sits within his pit 
 Seeing no part of heaven, that azures over 
 it. 
 
 The lizard streaks itself from view, 
 swiftly a noise of clutching and 
 hurrying claws, around the dark- 
 gray trunk of the oak; bark-colored 
 itself, it is hardly distinguishable 
 from the lichens that scrawl curiously 
 with wandering hieroglyphics the 
 sunless side on which it hides. 
 
 Hag-tapers bow their heads i the wind 
 Like candles the witches bear ; and, thinned 
 As the moonlight is where a soul has 
 
 sinned, 
 
 Their blossoms look; and a flower red 
 Blooms near them, shaped like a viper s 
 
 head, 
 A blood-blotched flower, like a symbol 
 
 pinned 
 
 To the breast of a gipsy dagger-dead, 
 A damsel frail as a flower, oh! 
 
 211 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 June 29th, 1905. Here late in 
 June bloom the black cohosh and the 
 butterfly-weed : the one holding high 
 its plumes of snowy-white, like some 
 champion of the woods; the other, 
 umbels of flame, splashing as with 
 battle-stains the open vistas of the 
 trees. 
 
 The blue-black wasp, black-winged, 
 its two orange-bright feathers flying 
 from its head, dashes swiftly by 
 a fairy courier bearing dispatches 
 from Mab to Oberon : alert, undelay- 
 ing, fearless, his dagger ever ready, 
 he proceeds determinedly upon his 
 way. 
 
 Some snakes are beautiful, others, 
 hideous ; I have met with both kinds, 
 never molesting them if they exhib 
 ited no signs of a desire to molest me. 
 How fearfully some of them are 
 fashioned; this one, for instance, 
 which I have just crushed with a 
 stone, short, darkly diamonded, that, 
 212 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 with its spreading neck and head, 
 gave me such a start a moment ago. 
 
 Here where the twilight-colored trunks of 
 
 trees, 
 Mottled with lichen, arch the twilight 
 
 way, 
 Where every crooked bough, swayed by 
 
 the breeze, 
 Now seems a knotted serpent, viperous 
 
 gray, 
 Because of one whose flat and horrible 
 
 head, 
 Reared in my woodland way, I crushed 
 
 to-day, 
 
 Fanging with poison its own side instead 
 Of me advancing where unseen it lay. 
 
 The purple racemes of the blazing 
 star and the cobalt corymbs of the 
 ironweed are torches in the train of 
 Summer advancing over the hills. 
 The huckleberries are spilling their 
 fullness at her feet; and the black 
 berries and wild plums heap her path 
 213 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 with ripening abundance. Old Earth, 
 in fact, is trying herself again in 
 flowers and fruit, and the world is a 
 very pleasant place to be in. It is of 
 very little consequence what we have 
 to eat, or whether we have too little 
 or enough or too much, so long as we 
 have many beautiful things to look 
 upon. I don t know any better phil 
 osophy than this. 
 
 Silvered with sun and rain the hills and 
 vales, 
 
 O er which a ragged rim of thunder trails, 
 
 Show like some lunar landscape, pearl and 
 frost, 
 
 Crystaled with moon-dust and with star- 
 drift crossed, 
 
 Misted of silver and in silver lost. 
 
 Elderberries are now ripe; hang 
 ing in huge clusters of polished purple 
 by the roadside and along the sumach 
 brake from which the brick-colored 
 214 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 plumes of the sumach are thrust. 
 Where are the snows, the fragrant 
 snows, that weighed with odorous 
 white each elder-bush but yesterday? 
 Surely it seems but yesterday that I 
 passed this way and stopped a mo 
 ment to gather a spray from the 
 masses that banked this lane. 
 
 August loth. The large golden 
 touch-me-not, blunt-spurred and 
 lemon-yellow, and the tall blue bell- 
 flower, bluebell blue, make a wilder 
 ness of color on the shady hillside, 
 changing kaleidoscopic with the 
 seasons, leading precipitately over 
 rocks and roots to the creek that, 
 swollen clay-red with last night s 
 rain, and haunted of the kingfisher 
 and the small green heron, flows 
 slowly, sluggishly along, heavy with 
 soil, as a life with sins, between its 
 weedy and sycamore banks. There 
 215 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 is a warm, damp, green, forest odor 
 of wet earth and leaves and weeds 
 everywhere, and the path along the 
 stream is lost in the dense, high, 
 succulent stalks of the jewel weed 
 hung with its orange-colored, red- 
 freckled horns, brimming with rain 
 veritable vats of wild-honey for 
 the bees and butterflies to drown 
 themselves in. 
 
 Cleared of woodland, the hot hill 
 side here is covered with the blos 
 soms of the wild-bean ; their puckered 
 pink, dotting thickly the thin, pale 
 grass and broom-sedge, gives the hill 
 side the appearance of being spread 
 with an old-fashioned, single-pat 
 terned quilt of gigantic proportions. 
 
 To-day a month ago, August 
 
 1 4th, I gathered and enjoyed the 
 
 first huckleberries of the season. 
 
 The bushes are still freighted purple 
 
 216 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 with them, purpler and larger and 
 sweeter than those of a month ago. 
 To-day also I gathered luscious 
 handfuls of wild blackberries in the 
 wood-ways, along the roadside. It 
 seems rather late for berries such as 
 the huckleberry and the blackberry 
 now that pawpaws are beginning to 
 mellow and the Chickasaw plums 
 to redden and Summer is preparing 
 to bid us good-by. 
 
 On the hilltop, no possible pool or 
 creek in the vicinity from which they 
 might have strayed to their death, 
 I find the road, for the distance of 
 many yards, strewn with the dead 
 bodies of a number of small frogs 
 not toads but small green frogs. 
 Can it be that they fell with this 
 morning s heavy rain? that, as I have 
 often heard but never believed, here 
 has taken place a peculiar, an un- 
 217 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 usual phenomenon, which scarcely 
 seems credible? 
 
 Already are the seeds in the green, 
 burred pods of the strawberry-bush 
 orange-colored; each one pluniply 
 packed in its own little corner, closely 
 together, snugly awaiting the fogs 
 and frosts of fall that shall split and 
 divide the gnarly capsule, curling and 
 peeling it and laying bare the rounded 
 scarlet of its contents. Seeds that 
 shall glow vermilion with the ap 
 proach of Autumn, while the pods 
 crimson gradually, rosily as Septem 
 ber drowses on towards October. 
 
 The prim, white spikes of the 
 lady s-tresses, twisted and curled as if 
 blown by the wind, are slender tapers 
 in the wild procession, bannered 
 with gold and purple, of blossom 
 ing weeds, that crowds and caval- 
 218 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 cades the briery banks of the branch 
 that twinkles and pearls under the 
 overhanging roots of a chestnut tree 
 whose green and thorny burrs already 
 begin to strew the gravel and grass 
 at its foot. 
 
 The haw, too, ruddying its round 
 and clustered globes, against the dark 
 green background of the forest, looks 
 like a huge bunch of holly, emerald 
 dotted with ruby, that the Forest 
 Folk have placed, in celebration of 
 some festivity, at the entrance to the 
 wood. 
 
 August 23d. Thrust over a tangle 
 of blackberry and green-brier the 
 spiraled spikes of the false drag- 
 onhead, or obedient plant, deeply 
 heliotrope, with foxglove-shaped blos 
 soms, arrest my gaze. Each blossom 
 is a rosy mouth of honey, its 
 lower lip and its throat freckled and 
 219 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 streaked with purplish pink, on 
 which the bees kiss themselves to 
 sleep, drowsily rumbling all the 
 while. 
 
 I don t know of any flower more 
 distinguished looking, more elegantly 
 splendid, ardent with the ardor that 
 burns and beats in the amorous veins 
 of mid-August, and warm with the 
 warmth of her own glowing bosom, 
 than is this flower, the false dragon- 
 head, that in a riot of richly blossom 
 ing weeds, goldenrod, blazing-star, 
 and trumpet weed, the roving eye 
 singles out as one might a plumed 
 and silken prince amid his suite, mag 
 nificent with velvet and vair, of su 
 perbly-attired attendants. 
 
 The flowering spurge, with its 
 
 masses of myosotis-like calyces, 
 
 starry-white, makes miniature Milky 
 
 Ways here and there in the summer 
 
 220 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 fields, quivering with the visible heat. 
 Scattered mid the larger pink blos 
 soms of the Bouncing-Bet, a strayed 
 cluster of this euphorbia glints and 
 glimmers now and then like the 
 nebula in Lyra, lost in a firmament of 
 weeds and flowers. 
 
 The curious, clay-colored mole- 
 cricket, with its little paw-like claws 
 pushing its stealthy way through the 
 damp creek clay and sand, frequently 
 fools me with its shrill, high cry, per 
 sistent, piercing, coming, seemingly, 
 from no discoverable where. One 
 would imagine that the earth through 
 which it tunnels its narrow gallery 
 would smother, or, at least, muffle 
 the sound, but it does not. Shrill and 
 distinct it rises in the summer silence, 
 louder even than the twilight sound 
 of its brother, the climbing cricket, 
 whose wings vibrate pensively, plain- 
 221 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 tively, on the concealing side of a 
 sassafras or green-brier leaf. 
 
 The old tree, on which the man was 
 
 hanged, sighed to itself: 
 " Alas ! why am I made an instrument of 
 
 violent death? 
 What have I done that I should be so 
 
 punished ? 
 
 Made a participant in such a crime? 
 I, whose life has evermore been one of 
 
 peace and love: 
 Whose mind has ever been employed with 
 
 thoughts of mercy: 
 Whose arms have always been stretched 
 
 forth 
 
 In kindness and protection, 
 Sheltering the baby blossoms, 
 The shy, the tender, the timid, 
 The wild things of the woods, 
 That love to nestle and lie at my mossy 
 
 foot: 
 
 I, whose limbs have unselfishly made, 
 Year after year, 
 A quiet cirque of coolth and comfort for 
 
 the weary traveler, 
 Hot and dusty from the road, 
 
 222 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 Refreshing and restoring him with the 
 
 soothing whisper, 
 The lullabying lilt of my leaves : 
 My verdurous bosom the home and haunt 
 
 of unstudied song, 
 Birds and breezes rejoicing in its shelter 
 ing and maternal amplitude. 
 Ah me! henceforward will Beauty and 
 
 Love avoid me, 
 Frequent visitors before ! 
 And Fear and Hate tenant in my 
 
 boughs. 
 
 The Dryad, who dwelt in my heart, 
 Its beautiful and innocent inhabitant, is 
 
 fled away. 
 No more will the loveliness of things 
 
 within me and about me 
 Be as it was before. 
 Accursed am I among trees ! 
 Accursed with the curse of murder! 
 The contact and contamination of 
 
 crime ! 
 
 Accursed with the stigma of slaughter! 
 And accursed shall I ever remain through 
 
 the crime of man, 
 The most cruel, the most destructive, the 
 
 most ferocious of all animals. 
 Would now that some devastating bolt, 
 223 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 Blindingly launched from yonder ap 
 proaching cloud, 
 
 Might fell me, thunderingly, to earth! 
 
 Making me really that which I feel that I 
 am become 
 
 A horrible thing, twisted and gnarled and 
 black, 
 
 Hideously crippled and scarred, 
 
 Blasted and branded, as the brow of Cain, 
 
 With withering, with elemental fire: 
 
 Laying me prone; or leaving a towering 
 and tortured trunk, 
 
 A blackened shape, 
 
 In the shuddering and rejecting forest 
 
 A trysting place for Murder, 
 
 A roost for obscene things, 
 
 Buzzards, carrion-crows, and owls." 
 
 August 25th. In the sunny places, 
 among the open fields, and along the 
 dry banks of the weedy creeks, the 
 wild senna, orbed and richly yellow, 
 glows like spilled gold doubloons 
 scattered or lost by the marauder 
 Month, each piece centred and stained 
 224 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 with red, spotted, as it were, with 
 blood the blood of wounded and 
 dying Summer. 
 
 The stalk of the false Solomon s 
 Seal is tipped and bent over by its 
 bunch of currant-colored berries, a 
 polished and glassy crimson. How 
 bright they look held up or leaning 
 from the masses of dark green under 
 growth of the forest where there is 
 no other sign of color to relieve the 
 green except the ruddy horns of the 
 touch-me-nots. 
 
 The woolly white of the boneset, 
 heavy with dew; the fuzzy yellow of 
 the goldenrod, drowsy with bees ; and 
 the ragged, butterfly-haunted purple 
 of the ironweed, encumber the sun 
 tanned arms of late August as she 
 makes her way slowly through brier 
 and berry and thorn, burr and blos 
 som and fungus, to the summer s 
 close, the marigold garden where she 
 shall deliver her burden with a sigh 
 is 225 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 to fruit-stained September and lay 
 her down to sleep. 
 
 Where like an angry tyrant roars the sea, 
 Pulling his yeasty beard, upon his throne 
 Of iron crags; and where, like storm- 
 lights strewn, 
 
 The baleful stars redden tempestuously, 
 I see him stand, blind Winter, all alone, 
 Wild hair and beard, like snow, about him 
 blown. 
 
 What boots it to keep saying 
 That " life s a hollow farce "? 
 
 That " men are fools " ? that " praying 
 Helps not, nor doth remorse " ? 
 
 What boots it to keep dwelling 
 On grief and sin and shame? 
 
 The old, old story telling, 
 
 "The end for all s the same"? 
 
 Who says that He, the Power 
 
 That made us, as a rule 
 Made fools with farce for dower, 
 
 He only is the fool. 
 226 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 It is not very frequently that we 
 find the Indian-pipe in this locality. 
 But to-day I came upon it while 
 walking along an abandoned wood- 
 road and admiring the various col 
 ored fungi that dotted the wood and 
 exuded from the boles and stumps of 
 trees, such as the Cinnabar Fungus 
 and the Sulphury Polypous, like an 
 enormous yellow ruff. Among the 
 many mushrooms I recognized the 
 poisonous but beautiful Fly Aminita, 
 gracefully poised on its slender stem, 
 its top a lemon-yellow patched here 
 and there with delicate white scales; 
 the edible Chantarelle, of a uniform 
 yolk-yellow color ; the Green Russula 
 and the Masked Tricholoma, pearly 
 gray or brown, both of them snail- 
 eaten and both of them esculents. In 
 fact the chill mists and dews of late 
 summer seemed to have summoned 
 up from the earth all the grotesque 
 forms that fancy dreams of, and scat- 
 227 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 tered them among the drowsy trees. 
 Among them, solitary as a spirit 
 among imps and gnomes, delicate, 
 transparent, as it were of virgin ala 
 baster, the Ghost-flower lifted up its 
 fragile stem, its flower-head waxen 
 white, bent as if in meditation or 
 grief. It seemed to me the melan 
 choly phantom of some sad wild- 
 flower returned to earth to haunt the 
 spot it had once bloomed in and to 
 muse upon its past loveliness and 
 happiness there. 
 
 The place was full of a pallid, a 
 shadowy beauty; mossy and dark 
 and silent save for the veery s occa 
 sional note, remote and elusive as 
 a note blown on a pipe by a young 
 Faun in the green intricacies of the 
 forest, and the quiet, scarcely 
 audible murmur of a stream, trick 
 ling thinly, as if afraid of its own 
 sound, down dark rocks, dimly drip 
 ping, and under a bank brambled and 
 228 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 spired here and there with the tall, 
 pink-flowered stalks of the horsemint 
 where the sunlight faintly filtered 
 through the thickly matted leaves. 
 It was a place for wildwood ghosts 
 and dreams, both of which I found, 
 hidden from the eyes of men, 
 sweet, sorrowful ghosts that would 
 not let me go. 
 
 The cardinal-flower s scarlet flashes 
 and flames through the weeds and 
 bushes, arresting the eye and holding 
 it as a redbird might, suddenly alight 
 ing before one. Fierce as the frag 
 ment of some war-banner, bathed in 
 the blood of battle, caught on the 
 thorns and briers as it swept wildly 
 by in onset or retreat, it flutters and 
 flaunts, defiant to the end. 
 
 What is more divinely fragrant, 
 more elusively fresh and cool and 
 229 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 morning-suggestive in aroma than is 
 this September primrose, golden and 
 moist as a streak of dawn, found 
 blooming by this wooded brook 
 among the jewel weeds and black 
 berry bushes? It reminds me, in its 
 simple and solitary loveliness, with 
 its clean, cool aroma, of a girl, a 
 country maiden, primrose-fair, and 
 fresh and sweet-smelling as her own 
 old-fashioned garden dewy with the 
 dewiness of the moon. 
 
 Out of the arrow-heads, that 
 thrust their broad leaf-blades, like so 
 many halberts or glaives, from the 
 pooled creek-water, the blue heron 
 rises with a sharp, short, impatient 
 cry, slowly and softly winging away, 
 like some weird bird of our Fairy- 
 story Days, some fairy guardian of 
 a magic and haunted water, an en 
 chanted damsel who takes the form 
 230 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 of a water-lily at our approach, while 
 the warden elf transforms himself 
 into a bird. 
 
 Sept. 1 6th. Happening to glance 
 up as I was musing along I saw what 
 seemed to me scattered clusters of 
 large ripe blackberries, glistening jet- 
 like ; but in place of the briers of the 
 blackberry, I saw that these berries 
 were held up on long, branched, 
 smooth stems that shot up from 
 broad-leafed lily blades. They were 
 the podless seeds of the blackberry 
 lily, that resemble so closely, in ap 
 pearance only, the real blackberry 
 that one unacquainted with the flower 
 would, until plucked and tasted, mis 
 take it for the blackberry. 
 
 Singly or thick-clustered, little, 
 pointed rounds of ruby and polished 
 agate, the berries of the dogwood red- 
 231 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 den, pointing with changeless flame, 
 as flashes of fire might a great smoke, 
 the dense green of its leaves. The 
 roadway is scattered with their crim 
 son. Xearby the wahoo s capsules, 
 a rosy cinnabar, have opened, disclos 
 ing their vermilion seeds seemingly 
 the imprisoned carmine of the autumn 
 sunset 
 
 Not quite so conspicuous as the 
 wahoo, the spice bush too bleeds with 
 berries; their glistening red pun- 
 gently aromatic to taste and smell; 
 it does not permit the dogwood to 
 outdo it in brightness of color. 
 
 Here and there in the moist, dark 
 places of the beech wood the Indian- 
 pipe, or Ghost-flower, lifts its frail, 
 retiring stalk a few inches above the 
 rotted damp leaves of last year. The 
 stalks, at first ghostly in their white 
 ness, after a day or so turn a delicate 
 232 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 pink flaked and scaled with diapha 
 nous white which is their leaves. 
 Each blossom, which resembles a 
 tightly wrapped rosebud, terminates 
 the bended stalk, pale as a nun s face 
 bowed in meditation or prayer above 
 her rosary. 
 
 Under the old beech the clownish 
 clumps of the beechdrops bristle, 
 straggly and stiff, resembling wild 
 wisps of coarse cow-colored hair, 
 tufts torn out and scattered to right 
 and left by the wood-witches at their 
 satanic orgies, celebrating their sab 
 batic rites when the storm was abroad 
 and the horned owl hooted in the 
 hollow tree and the fox barked near 
 the blackened rock where they found 
 the murdered man. 
 
 An iridescent, an indefinable blue, 
 glitteringly metallic, was the little 
 233 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 lizard I saw to-day, slender and 
 swift, all alert on the limb of a fallen 
 tree in the deep woods. It reminded 
 me of a jewel, a living gem, won 
 derful in workmanship, such as, I 
 imagine, the wood-spirits wear in 
 their green hair or at their throats 
 of mushroom whiteness. 
 
 Goldenrod, lobelia, ageratum, prim 
 rose and cardinal-flower lead down 
 the bright battalions of their blos 
 soms to the brookside, swarming its 
 banks, rank upon rank, their glorious 
 array mirrored and reflected in the 
 smooth-flowing waters. Their plumed 
 and bannered hosts startle and aston 
 ish the fields with a splendid, a 
 mighty invasion the fields that 
 have not felt a plough for years. 
 Now a chattering jay flashes above 
 them, garrulous, jubilant, intoxicated 
 with the sea of colors, itself a winged 
 234 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 blossom, a great lobelia, blue, freaked 
 with white, endowed with a voice, 
 and hurrahing its happiness to the 
 sky and the trees. 
 
 The life-everlasting, grayish white, 
 higher than the cardinal flower and 
 lower than the boneset bloom, gives 
 colorless tone to the wild fields thick 
 with the rust-colored corymbs of the 
 ironweeds, whose purple is almost 
 departed now, so populous and im 
 perial a few weeks ago, dominating 
 the fallows. Its fragrance, quiet and 
 unintrusive, scents with sadness and 
 rest the idle fields, filling the heart 
 with oldtime memories of happy 
 places, country attics, ramshackle 
 rafters, old, homely lofts of boyhood 
 days on the farm, where the wasp 
 and mud-dauber buzzed and built, 
 and where were stored for winter use 
 all the sunlight and warmth of the 
 235 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 summer fields in simples such as this, 
 fragrant life-everlasting, and herbs 
 and dried fruits of the garden ; apple- 
 scented places full of rustic peace and 
 plenty where our boyhood passed like 
 a dream. 
 
 The huge yellow spider, the writ 
 ing-spider, in hot, weedy places, stri 
 dent with the stinging music of the 
 weed-bugs; and the corpulent red 
 spider, with its big abdomen ; and the 
 angular black spider, ungainly and 
 humped of back, enameled, as it were, 
 with white, a porcelain-backed hor 
 ror, spin their webs across the 
 open paths of the woods, patiently 
 awaiting the arrival of prey, some 
 wood-fly, gnat, moth, wasp, or grass 
 hopper, hurrying or lumbering blindly 
 along that entangles itself in their 
 nets. 
 
 How they remind me of that 
 horrible humanity that lairs in our 
 236 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 large cities and spreads its snares 
 for the destruction of the innocent 
 the unsuspecting! whose mined or 
 dead remnants are found lying in the 
 street or in some alley-way, unrecojf- 
 mzable, by some early riser, as this 
 insect, this burnished beetle is found 
 by me stretched, a mere sheD, in a 
 corner of this web. 
 
 It is remarkable to see how the ox- 
 eyed daisy still holds on- Here it is 
 past the middle of September and I 
 find it blooming, fresh of white and 
 young of gold among the mist-flower, 
 the life-everlasting, the false dragon- 
 head, and the goldenrod a starry 
 stain in the richly embroidered apron 
 of Fall, a pearly spot that will not 
 out. 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 Until we meet again 
 Heaven keep thee gay! 
 
 Neath skies of sun or rain, 
 Or gold or gray, 
 Heaven keep thee gay. 
 
 Even as the sun-dial does, 
 
 So let thy days 
 Record no hour that was 
 
 Not full of rays, 
 Even as the sun-dial does. 
 
 Where bloomed the rose but yesterday, 
 Lamp upon lamp the hips burn red ; 
 
 And one by one leaves float away, 
 
 Red leaves dropped in the wood-stream s 
 bed. 
 
 And now the spectres of the flowers 
 Stream white across the stubble plains; 
 
 Ghosts, shaken from their wind-swept 
 
 bowers, 
 Of weeds that tangle all the lanes. 
 
 The partridge pipes; the blue- jays call; 
 
 And caws the crow, that ribald bird : 
 The woods turn gold ; the acorns fall ; 
 
 And all day long the hunt is heard. 
 
 238 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 A wood of thorns thorn trees, 
 thorn trees everywhere; low, dense, 
 dwarfed, tall, scrawny trees, thrust 
 ing at you from every direction their 
 murderous looking, formidable limbs 
 and trunks armed with great pronged 
 spikes and spurs. The wood to me 
 seems as wild, forbidding and threat 
 ening as I imagine was the impene 
 trable and bristling brake of thorns 
 that grew up around the Castle of the 
 Sleeping Beauty. Here and there the 
 sunlight strikes upon a thorn that is 
 a part of this year s growth, and 
 it stands out conspicuous crimson, 
 transparent ruby; red as if dyed 
 through and through with the blood 
 of some gentle, slain thing some 
 hope, perhaps, that threading the 
 forest, endeavoring to penetrate its 
 fastnesses to some far dream of love, 
 lost, shut in, despairing of deliver 
 ance, within its savage and silent 
 deeps, imprisoned and enchanted in 
 239 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 some horror of rock and weed and 
 vine, in the darkness and the 
 storm had pierced its wild heart and 
 breathed out its young life here. 
 
 The climbing cricket clings, 
 Moving its vibrant wings, 
 
 To some green brier amid the fields 
 turned sere: 
 
 And to me, dreaming here, 
 Its plaintive music seems 
 An utterance of dreams 
 
 And it itself lute of the dying Year. 
 
 My soul is sick of many things, 
 
 But mainly of the word, 
 The word of hope day never brings ; 
 
 That like some beautiful bird 
 Above me and beyond me wings, 
 
 Yet nevermore is heard. 
 
 Ah, not in vain 
 I see again 
 
 The roses ruined of the rain: 
 240 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 And in the mist 
 
 The amethyst 
 
 Of morning-glories wet and whist : 
 
 The moonflower bent 
 
 And torn and rent 
 
 That yestereve was redolent. 
 
 Back to my heart 
 They bring the smart 
 Of thoughts from which I can not 
 part. 
 
 Analogies 
 
 Of memories 
 
 That fall like rain on autumn leas. 
 
 Sad memories all, 
 Like rain, that fall 
 On joy, a rose wrecked by the wall. 
 
 I came across a great, pulpy, green 
 mushroom, the Green Russula, to 
 day among many fall fungi, cupped 
 and parasoled, red, slate-gray, white, 
 and brown, under the low boughs 
 16 241 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 of a beech in the rain-sodden woods. 
 To its fluted underside, near its stem, 
 two small gray snails were clinging, 
 eating away for dear life: and to its 
 top and about its rim, ragged with 
 the gnawing of numerous insects, 
 wood-ants and beetles, a slow slug 
 lay gorging deliberately, like some 
 fat, fairy Caliban. 
 
 The fungus seemed to me a great, 
 green vegetable confection upon 
 which these small fry of the forest 
 were feasting. Or was it a great 
 table that the gnomes had wrought 
 of mingled mist, rain, musk, and 
 milk o the moon, a materialized 
 fancy of Faery, and laboriously 
 lifted up from the earth to the monot 
 onous music of the grig? A table 
 which the elfins had spread with a 
 forest feast, whose exhalations had 
 saturated it through and through with 
 fine flavors and savors, spilth of their 
 imp-carousal, that left it a stained 
 242 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 and luscious morsel for the gnat and 
 the ant, the snail, the slug and the 
 beetle to batten upon. 
 
 How Nature protects her insects, 
 her bugs, her beetles, and her butter 
 flies ! painting their wings and bodies 
 with hues hardly distinguishable from 
 the earth, the rock, or the bark which 
 they frequent or inhabit. This butter 
 fly, for instance, softly opening and 
 closing its wings on the gray trunk 
 of this old oak. When closed, the 
 protective coloring of the underside 
 of its wings so confuses the eye that 
 the insect is not detachable in color 
 from the bark to which it clings, 
 being dyed a soft, mottled gray, like 
 that of the lichen that overspreads 
 and spots the trunk of the tree. When 
 open what a revelation of dyes! 
 it is as if the creature had doffed its 
 Lenten habit for one of festival ; had 
 243 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 unfolded its sober cloak, astonishing 
 us with the richness of its lining, its 
 under apparel, velvet and vair, reve 
 lations of ruddy seal and dim ermine : 
 its body and the interior part of its 
 wings furfine and downy, the color 
 of rich old port wine, edged irregu 
 larly with a dim, soft gray, a lichen 
 white, sprinkled with minute specks 
 of dull gold and marked at regular 
 intervals with orbs or ovals of a 
 shadowy blue. 
 
 I have stood for half an hour ab 
 sorbed upon its beauty; watching it 
 slowly and gracefully opening and 
 closing its wings. What a wonder 
 ful piece of workmanship! And to 
 think that this was once a worm! 
 obscene and hideous, crawling and 
 gorging itself upon every green thing 
 in its hairy way! Now how it puts 
 to scorn the beauty wrought of the 
 labored Art of man ! What a jewel, 
 winged and living, for the Spirit of 
 244 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 Autumn to wear in her Romany hair 
 or at her gipsy throat as she takes 
 her way through the crimsoning 
 woodlands to tryst with the quiet 
 Spirit of Indian Summer! 
 
 Wandering along a country road 
 to-day, the middle of October, an un 
 usual thing to see at this time of the 
 year, was an apple tree in bloom. 
 Dotted here and there over its almost 
 entirely leafless branches, gnarled and 
 dead in many places, freshened the 
 pink and white tufts of the blossoms, 
 like love knots in the sober raiment 
 of an old woman who was once a belle. 
 
 The old tree must have been 
 dreaming of the spring and uncon 
 sciously put forth blossoms, expres 
 sions of its heart s deep yearnings, 
 responsive and anticipatory, at the 
 time when everything had ceased, or 
 was ceasing, to bloom, and the Spirit 
 245 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 of Death instead of the Spirit of Birth 
 was abroad in the world. 
 
 A thin fall rain, 
 Whose spite again 
 Whips wild the drizzled window- 
 pane: 
 
 Through which I see 
 
 The blinded bee 
 
 Beat down and ended utterly : 
 
 The marigold 
 
 And zinnia old 
 
 Bent, wet, and wretched in the cold : 
 
 And all the bowers 
 Forlorn of flowers 
 As are the hopes which once were 
 ours. 
 
 Ephemeral gold, 
 
 Deciduous emerald, 
 
 And crumbling ruby all the forests old 
 Fling to the shining wind, deep-rolled 
 Like some loud music through them : 
 Majestic music, sad and manifold, 
 246 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 The music of that ancient skald, 
 
 October called, 
 Who sits wild chanting to them. 
 
 There is a sense of something un 
 utterably sad, irretrievably lost, in 
 the wind that sighs, and never ceases 
 to sigh, in the fast-fading forests. I 
 seem walking with some vast and 
 ancient woe, some gigantic melan 
 choly, invisible and swiftly moving, 
 whose dark and mighty cloak sweeps 
 stormily the boughs, shredding the 
 leaves and hurling the acorns down. 
 
 Oct. 23d. Two ragged, belated 
 ox-eyed daisies, and a last pink plume 
 of the dragonhead hold solitary 
 flower-sway over the sere autumn 
 fields, full of the ghosts of dead 
 flowers; glinting and glimmering 
 gray with the silken seeds and 
 feathery wisps of the salmon-colored 
 247 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 broom-sedge and dead goldenrod; the 
 wan, frost-nipped stars and tufted 
 heads of the wild aster, and the 
 woolly white tops of the life-ever 
 lasting. 
 
 Berries there are in abundance, 
 purple and pink and crimson; orange 
 and ruby and vermilion; cat-brier 
 berries, a frosted damson blue; dog 
 wood and spicewood berries, like 
 polished carnelian ; sumach and Her 
 cules-club and hellebore berries, 
 brick-dust color and mulberry black; 
 buck-bush berries, cranberry or apple 
 red; bittersweet berries, gold and 
 scarlet glowing; running euonymus, 
 or strawberry-bush, rose and crim 
 son ; and wahoo berries, mingling the 
 cameo and crimson hues of stormy 
 autumn sunsets and dawns. 
 
 All around me in the wind-tossed 
 woods patter the nuts; heard sud- 
 248 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 denly each nut is as startling as the 
 fall of an unexpected footstep. Chest 
 nut, acorn, hickory and beech nut, 
 how they rain ! shaken each one from 
 its infirm hold by every breeze that 
 sweeps the wood. Mast, with which 
 the agile squirrel stores his winter 
 granary, snug in the top of some old 
 and hollow tree. 
 
 The birds seem to be all gone away ; 
 at least, if present, they are silent; 
 all except two the crow and the 
 jay, who are never weary of cawing 
 and screaming, making the woods 
 noisy with their cries, the one trying 
 to outdo the other in ridicule and 
 vituperation. 
 
 In the underbrush, flitting secretly, 
 silently, searching apparently for its 
 mate, dead with the summer, I beheld 
 a grosbeak, warm-looking in its plaid 
 suit of brown and black and red and 
 gray. Soundlessly it vanished, sud 
 denly disappearing, visible a moment, 
 249 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 then gone in the hush of the autumn 
 woods was it a bird or only the 
 ghost of one? 
 
 The scarlet and the gold and bronze, 
 
 The lemon, rose and gray, 
 The splendors that October dons, 
 
 Seen from this hilltop far away, 
 Like some wild bugle blast, far blown, 
 The visible sound of something wild, un 
 known, 
 
 Crimsonly calling, shake my blood that 
 thrills; 
 
 Commanding me to follow 
 
 Beyond the farthest hills; 
 
 Exultantly to follow, 
 
 Through flaming holt and hollow, 
 
 Whereso their music wills ; 
 
 The trumpet-pealing fires 
 
 Of trees and vines and briers, 
 
 Whose leaves like notes are falling, 
 
 The clarion color calling 
 
 My heart beyond the hills. 
 
 What is more startling than the 
 unexpected explosion of a covey of 
 250 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 quail when one is walking and mus 
 ing in the winter fields? thinking of 
 nothing, or, if of anything, then of 
 the difference between the appear 
 ance of the landscape now, bleak and 
 bare and forbidding, and that which 
 it was when these same birds were 
 calling " bob-white " to one another 
 in the same fields, full of flowers and 
 sunlight and redolent with summer. 
 
 The thin window-pane-like ice lac 
 ing and scaling the frozen wood-road 
 ruts and the leaf-cramped streams 
 and pools of the December woods, 
 glimmeringly or glitteringly seen, 
 glinting in the chilly winter sunlight, 
 fills me with the fairy fancies of my 
 boyhood, indefinable, almost for 
 gotten memories of ice-maidens, 
 elves and spirits, who, my childhood 
 fancied, are busy all the winter night, 
 by the light of the moon and the stars, 
 251 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 with the frost-furred window-panes 
 of the farmhouse and the shallow 
 forest streams and ponds; their 
 noiseless fingers of icy crystal swiftly 
 transforming them into sheets of 
 ferned and flowered diamond and 
 pearl. 
 
 All day long the frost hoars the 
 hillside here where the sun never 
 strikes. Here, too, the shallow and 
 sluggish water marbles bluely under 
 the thin, frail ice of the frozen stream 
 let changing constantly and slowly 
 its visible form: liquid grotesques, 
 flowing figurings of foam forming 
 and fading away phantoms of blue 
 rain; shadowy shapes that inhabit 
 the stream; constantly striving to 
 free themselves, seemingly, from 
 their dungeon of crystal; moving, 
 Protean and fantastic in appearance, 
 hither and thither, stealthily silent as 
 if fearful of awaking him who never 
 252 
 
Nature-Notes 
 
 sleeps, their hoary gaoler, the im 
 prisoning, the unpersuadable Frost. 
 
 Ochre-colored broom-sedge 
 Yellowing desolate ways, 
 Fields, the black thorns hedge, 
 Bleached with sodden strays, 
 Strays of leaves and flowers of dead, for 
 gotten days. 
 
 In the forest by the rain-wild creeks, 
 Where the wet wind fumbles in the 
 boughs, 
 
 Rake the leaves away and, lo ! the beaks 
 Of a myriad germs, beneath, that house : 
 
 Fingertips of gold and green and gray, 
 Tongues and fingertips of countless 
 
 flowers, 
 Pointing us and telling us the way, 
 
 Path up which the Springtime leads her 
 Hours : 
 
 At whose step awake the thousand pipes 
 Of the hylas, ere our eye perceives 
 
 In her cheeks the rose that morning stripes, 
 In her hair the gold of all the eves. 
 253 
 
CATKINS 
 
 Misty are the far-off hills 
 And misty are the near ; 
 Purple hazes dimly lie 
 Veiling hill and field and sky, 
 Marshes where the hylas cry, 
 Like a myriad bills 
 Piping, " Spring is here ! " 
 
 II 
 
 A redbird flits, 
 
 Then sings and sits 
 
 And calls to his mate, 
 
 "She is late! she is late! 
 
 How long, how long must the woodland 
 
 wait 
 
 For its emerald plumes 
 And its jewelled blooms ? 
 She is late! she is late!" 
 254 
 
Catkins 
 
 in 
 
 Along the stream, 
 A cloudy gleam, 
 
 The pussy-willows, tufted white, 
 Make of each tree a mighty light ; 
 Pearl and silver and glimmering gray 
 They tassel the boughs of the willow way ; 
 And as they swing they seem to say, 
 With mouths of bloom 
 And warm perfume : 
 
 IV 
 
 " Awake ! awake ! 
 For young Spring s sake, 
 O little brown bees in hive and brake ! 
 Awake! awake! 
 For sweet Spring s sake, 
 O butterflies whose wild wings ache 
 With colors rare 
 As flowers wear ! 
 And hither, hither, 
 Before we wither ! 
 Oh, come to us, 
 All amorous 
 
 With honey for your mouths to buss. 
 255 
 
Catkins 
 
 "Hearken! hearken! 
 
 Last night we heard 
 
 A wondrous word : 
 
 When dusk did darken 
 
 The rain and the wind sat in these boughs, 
 
 As in a great and shadowy house. 
 
 At first we deemed 
 
 We only dreamed, 
 
 And then it seemed 
 
 We heard them whisper of things to be, 
 
 The wind and the rain in the willow tree, 
 
 A sweet, delicious conspiracy, 
 
 To take the world with witchery : 
 
 They talked of the fairy brotherhoods 
 
 Of blooms and blossoms and leaves and 
 
 buds, 
 
 That ambushed under the winter mold 
 And under the bark of the forest old : 
 And they took our breath 
 With the shibboleth, 
 The secret word that casts off death, 
 That word of life no man may guess ; 
 That wondrous word 
 Which we then heard, 
 
 256 
 
Catkins 
 
 That bids life rise 
 
 Beneath the skies; 
 
 Rise up and fill 
 
 Far wood and hill 
 
 With myriad hosts of loveliness, 
 
 Invading beauty that love shall bless. 
 
 VI 
 
 " Then in our ears, 
 
 Our woolly ears, 
 
 Our little ears of willow bloom, 
 
 Like wild perfume 
 
 We seemed to hear dim woodland cheers 
 
 Of hosts of flowers 
 
 That soon would run 
 
 Through fields and bowers, 
 
 And to the sun 
 
 Lift high their banners of blue and gold, 
 
 And storm the ways of the woodland old. 
 
 VII 
 
 " Awake ! awake ! 
 For young Spring s sake, 
 O hylas sleeping in marsh and lake! 
 Tune up your pipes and play, play, play ! 
 Tune, tune your reeds in ooze and clay, 
 17 257 
 
Announcement 
 
 And pipe and sing 
 
 Till everything 
 
 Knows, gladly knows, 
 
 Sowing the rose, 
 
 The lily and rose, 
 
 With her breast blown bare 
 
 And the wind in her hair, 
 
 And the birds around her everywhere, 
 
 The Spring, the Spring, 
 
 The young witch Spring, 
 
 With lilt and laughter, and rain and ray, 
 
 Comes swiftly, wildly up this way." 
 
 ANNOUNCEMENT 
 
 The night is loud with reeds of rain 
 
 Rejoicing at my window-pane, 
 
 And murmuring, " Spring comes again ! " 
 
 I hear the wind take up their song 
 And on the sky s vibrating gong 
 Beat out and roar it all night long. 
 
 Then waters, where they pour their might 
 In foam, halloo it down the night, 
 From vale to vale and height to height. 
 
 358 
 
Announcement 
 
 And I thank God that down the deep 
 She comes, her ancient tryst to keep 
 With Earth again who wakes from sleep 
 
 From death and sleep, that held her fast 
 So long, pale cerements round her cast, 
 Her penetential raiment vast. 
 
 Now, Lazarus-like, within her grave 
 She stirs, who hears the words that save, 
 The Christ-like words of wind and wave. 
 
 And, hearing, bids her soul prepare 
 The germs of blossoms in her there 
 To make her body sweet and fair; 
 
 To meet in manifest audience 
 The eyes of Spring, and reverence, 
 With beauty, God in soul and sense. 
 
 259 
 
"The Wildwood Way" 
 
 "WHEN SPRING COMES DOWN 
 THE WILDWOOD WAY" 
 
 When Spring comes down the wildwood 
 
 way, 
 
 A crocus in her ear, 
 Sweet in her train, returned with May, 
 
 The Love of Yester-year 
 Will follow, carolling his lay, 
 
 His lyric lay, 
 Whose music she will hear. 
 
 The crowfoot in the grass shall glow, 
 And lamp his way with gold ; 
 
 The snowdrop toss its bells of snow, 
 The bluebell s blue unfold, 
 
 To glad the path that Love shall go, 
 
 High-hearted go, 
 As often in the days of old. 
 
 The way he went when hope was keen, 
 
 Was high in girl and boy : 
 Before the sad world came between 
 Their young hearts and their joy : 
 Their hearts, that Love has still kept clean, 
 
 Kept whole and clean, 
 Through all the years annoy. 
 260 
 
Hilda of the Hillside 
 
 How long it seems until the spring! 
 
 Until his heart shall speak 
 To hers again, and make it sing, 
 
 And with its great joy weak! 
 .When on her hand he 11 place the ring, 
 The wedding-ring, 
 
 And kiss her mouth and cheek! 
 
 HILDA OF THE HILLSIDE 
 
 Who is she, like the spring, who comes 
 
 down 
 From the hills to the smoke-huddled town ? 
 
 With her peach-petal face 
 
 And her wildflower grace, 
 Bringing sunshine and gladness to each 
 sorry place ? 
 
 Her cheeks are twin buds o the brier, 
 
 Mixed fervors of snow and of fire; 
 
 Her lips are the red 
 
 Of a rose that is wed 
 To dew and aroma when dawn is o erhead : 
 
 Her eyes are twin bits o the skies, 
 
 Blue glimpses of Paradise ; 
 261 
 
Hilda of the Hillside 
 
 The strands of her hair 
 Are sunlight and air 
 Herself is the argument that she is fair, 
 This girl with the dawn in her eyes. 
 
 II 
 
 If Herrick had looked on her face 
 His lyrics had learned a new grace : 
 Her face is a book 
 Where each laugh and each look, 
 Each smile is a lyric, more sweet than a 
 
 brook: 
 Her words they are birds that are 
 
 heard 
 Singing low where the roses are 
 
 stirred, 
 
 The buds of her lips, 
 Whence each of them slips 
 With music as soft as the fragrance that 
 
 drips 
 
 From a dew-dreaming bloom ; 
 With their sound and perfume 
 Making all my glad heart a love-haunted 
 room. 
 
 262 
 
Dawn in the Alleghanies 
 
 in 
 
 But she she knows nothing of love ! 
 She she with the soul of a dove, 
 
 Who dwells on the hills, 
 
 Knowing naught of the ills 
 Of the vales, of the hearts that with pas 
 sion she fills: 
 
 For whom all my soul 
 
 Is a harp from which roll 
 The songs that she hears not, the voice of 
 my love, 
 
 This girl who goes singing above. 
 
 DAWN IN THE ALLEGHANIES 
 
 The waters leap, 
 The waters roar ; 
 And on the shore 
 One sycamore 
 Stands, towering hoar. 
 The mountains heap 
 Gaunt pines and crags 
 That hoar-frost shags; 
 And, pierced with snags, 
 Like horns of stags, 
 
 263 
 
Dawn in the Alleghanies 
 
 The water lags, 
 The water drags, 
 Where trees, like hags, 
 Lean from the steep. 
 
 The mist begins 
 To swirl ; then spins 
 Mid outs and ins 
 Of heights ; and thins 
 Where the torrent dins; 
 And lost in sweep 
 Of its whiteness deep 
 The valleys sleep. 
 
 Now morning strikes 
 On wild rampikes 
 Of forest spikes, 
 And, down dim dykes 
 Of dawn, like sheep, 
 Scatters the mists, 
 And amethysts 
 With light, that twists, 
 And rifts that run 
 Azure with sun, 
 Wild-whirled and spun, - 
 The foggy dun 
 O the heavens deep. 
 264 
 
Music 
 
 Look! how they keep 
 
 Majestic ward, 
 
 Gigantic guard ! 
 
 And gaze, rock-browed, 
 
 Through mist and cloud ! 
 
 Eternal, vast, 
 
 As ages past ! 
 
 And seem to speak, 
 
 With peak on peak, 
 
 Of God ! and see 
 
 Eternity ! 
 
 MUSIC 
 
 Oh, let me die in Music s arms, 
 Clasped by some milder melody 
 
 Than that which thrills with soft alarms 
 The souls of Love and Ecstasy! 
 Until the tired heart in me 
 Is stilled of storms. 
 
 So let me die, a slave of slaves, 
 
 Within her train of lyric gold : 
 Borne onward through her vasty caves 
 Of harmony, that echo old 
 With all our sad hearts hope and hold, 
 And all life craves. 
 265 
 
Music 
 
 Come with the pleasures dear to men 
 In one long Triumph ! what are they 
 
 Beside the one that sweeps us when 
 Her harp she smites? and far away 
 She bears us from the cares of day 
 Unto her glen? 
 
 Her hollow glen, where, like a star, 
 
 That, in deep heaven, thrills and throbs, 
 She sits, her wild harp heard afar, 
 
 Strung with the gold of grief that sobs, 
 And love that sighs, and, whispering, 
 
 robs 
 All life of jar. 
 
 Beneath her all-compelling eye 
 
 Our souls lie naked : nothing seems 
 That is : but that which is not, by 
 Her magic, lives : and all our dreams 
 Are real, and, clothed in heavenly 
 
 gleams, 
 Smile, leaning nigh. 
 
 The soul of love that can not die 
 
 Breathes on our eyelids starry fire ; 
 And sorrow, with sweet lips that sigh, 
 Kisses our lips ; and faith, the choir 
 Of all our hopes, its heart a lyre, 
 Goes singing by. 
 266 
 
Autumn Etchings 
 
 AUTUMN ETCHINGS 
 
 I 
 
 MORNING 
 
 Her rain-kissed face is fresh as rain, 
 
 Is cool and fresh as a rain-wet leaf; 
 She glimmers at my window-pane, 
 
 And all my grief 
 
 Becomes a feeble rushlight, seen no more 
 When the gold of her gown sweeps in my 
 door. 
 
 II 
 
 FORENOON 
 
 Great blurs of woodland waved with wind ; 
 
 Gray paths, down which October came, 
 That now November s blasts have thinned 
 
 And flecked with fiercer flame, 
 Are her delight. She loves to lie 
 Regarding with a gray-blue eye 
 The far-off hills that hold the sky: 
 And I I lie and gaze with her 
 
Autumn Etchings 
 
 Beyond the autumn woods and ways 
 Into the hope of coming days, 
 The spring that nothing shall deter, 
 That puts my soul in unison 
 .With what s to do and what is done. 
 
 Ill 
 
 NOON 
 
 Wild grapes that purple through 
 
 Leaves that are golden ; 
 Brush-fires that pillar blue 
 
 Woods, that, en f olden 
 Deep in the haze of dreams, 
 
 In resignation 
 Give themselves up, it seems, 
 
 To divination : 
 Woods, that, ablaze with oak, 
 
 That the crow flew in, 
 Gaze through the brushwood smoke 
 
 On their own ruin, 
 
 And on the countenance of Death who 
 stalks 
 
 Amid their miles, 
 While to himself he talks 
 
 And smiles : 
 
 268 
 
Autumn Etchings 
 
 Where, in their midst, Noon sits and holds 
 Communion with their grays and golds, 
 Transforming with her rays their golds 
 
 and grays, 
 And in my heart the memories of dead 
 
 days. 
 
 ; IV 
 
 AFTERNOON 
 
 Wrought-iron hues of blood and bronze, 
 
 Like some wild dawn s, 
 Make fierce each leafy spire 
 
 Of blackberry brier, 
 Where, through their thorny fire, 
 She goes, the Afternoon, from wood to 
 
 wood, 
 
 From crest to oak-crowned crest 
 Of the high hill-lands, where the Morning 
 
 stood 
 
 With rosy-ribboned breast. 
 Along the hills she takes the tangled path 
 Unto the quiet close of day, 
 Musing on what a lovely death she hath 
 The unearthly golden beryl far away 
 Banding the gradual west, 
 269 
 
Autumn Etchings 
 
 Seen through cathedral columns of the 
 
 pines 
 And minster naves of woodlands arched 
 
 with vines; 
 The golden couch, spread of the setting 
 
 sun, 
 For her to lie, and me to gaze, upon. 
 
 V 
 
 EVENING 
 
 The winds awake, 
 
 And, whispering, shake 
 The aster-flower whose doom is sealed ; 
 
 The sumach-bloom 
 
 Bows down its plume; 
 And, blossom-Bayard of the field, 
 
 The chicory stout 
 
 To the winds wild rout 
 Lifts up its ragged shield. 
 Low in the west the Evening shows 
 
 A ridge of rose; 
 And, stepping Earthward from the hills, 
 
 Where er she goes 
 
 The cricket wakes, and all the silence spills 
 With reed-like music shaken from the 
 weeds : 
 
 270 
 
Autumn Etchings 
 
 She takes my hand 
 
 And leads 
 
 Softly my soul into the Fairyland, 
 The wonder-world of gold and chrysolite, 
 She builds there at the haunted edge of 
 night. 
 
 VI 
 NIGHT 
 
 Autumn woods the winds tramp down 
 Sowing acorns left and right, 
 Where, in rainy raiment, Night 
 
 Tiptoes, rustling wild her gown 
 Dripping in the moon s pale light, 
 
 In the moonlight wan that hurries 
 Trailing now a robe of cloud 
 Now of glimmer, ghostly browed, 
 
 Through the leaves whose wildness skur- 
 ries, 
 
 And whose tatters swirl and swarm 
 
 Round her in her stormy starkness ; 
 
 She who takes my heart that leaps, 
 
 That exults, and onward sweeps, 
 
 Like a red leaf in the darkness 
 
 And the tumult of the storm. 
 271 
 
Wood- Ways 
 
 WOOD-WAYS 
 
 O roads, O paths, O ways that lead 
 Through woods where all the oak-trees 
 
 bleed 
 
 With autumn ! and the frosty reds 
 Of fallen leaves make whispering beds 
 For winds to toss and turn upon, 
 Like restless Care that can not sleep, 
 Beneath whose rustling tatters wan 
 The last wildflow r is buried deep : 
 One way of all I love to wend, 
 That towards the golden sunset goes, 
 A way, o er which the red leaf blows, 
 With an old gateway at its end, 
 Where Summer, that my soul o erflows, 
 My summer of love, blooms like a wild- 
 wood rose. 
 
 II 
 
 O winter ways, when spears of ice 
 Arm every bough ! and in a vice 
 Of iron frost the streams are held ; 
 When, where the deadened oak was felled 
 272 
 
The Charcoal-Burner s Hut 
 
 For firewood, deep the snow and sleet, 
 Where lone the muffled woodsmen 
 
 toiled, 
 
 Are trampled down by heavy feet, 
 And network of the frost is spoiled, 
 O road I love to take again ! 
 While gray the heaven sleets or snows, 
 At whose far end. at twilight s close, 
 Glimmers an oldtime window-pane, 
 Where spring, that is my heart s repose; 
 My spring of love, like a great fire glows. 
 
 THE CHARCOAL-BURXER S HUT 
 
 Deep in a valley, green with ancient beech, 
 And wandered through of one small, 
 
 silent stream, 
 Whose bear-grassed banks bristled with 
 
 brush and burr, 
 
 Tick-trefoil and the thorny marigold. 
 Bush-clover and the wahoo, hung with 
 
 pods, 
 
 And mass on mass of bugled jewelweed. 
 Horsemint and doddered ragweed, dense, 
 
 unkempt, 
 I came upon a charcoal-burner s hut, 
 
 18 -V3 
 
The Charcoal-Burner s Hut 
 
 Abandoned and forgotten long ago; 
 His hut and weedy pit, where once the 
 
 wood 
 Smouldered both day and night like some 
 
 wild forge, 
 A wildwood forge, glaring as wild-cat 
 
 eyes. 
 
 A mossy roof, black, fallen in decay, 
 And rotting logs, exuding sickly mold 
 And livid fungi, and the tottering 
 
 wreck, 
 Rude remnants, of a chimney, clay and 
 
 sticks, 
 Were all that now remained to say that 
 
 once, 
 
 In time not so remote, one labored here, 
 Labored and lived, his world bound by 
 
 these woods : 
 
 A solitary soul whose life was toil, 
 Toil, grimy and unlovely: sad, recluse, 
 A life, perhaps, that here went out 
 
 alone, 
 Alone and unlamented. 
 
 Lost forever, 
 Haply, somewhere, in some far wilder 
 
 spot, 
 
 Far in the forest, lone as was his life, 
 A crave, an isolated grave, may mark, 
 274 
 
The Charcoal-Burner s Hut 
 
 Tangled with cat-brier and the strawberry- 
 bush, 
 
 The place he lies in; undistinguishable 
 From the surrounding forest where the 
 
 lynx 
 Whines in the moonlight and the she-fox 
 
 whelps. 
 
 A life as some wood-fungus now for 
 gotten : 
 The Indian-pipe, or ghost-flower, here that 
 
 rises 
 
 And slowly rots away in autumn rains. 
 Or, it may be, a comrade carved a line 
 Of date and death on some old trunk of 
 
 tree, 
 
 Whose letters long ago th erasing rust 
 Of moss and gradual growth of drowsy 
 
 years 
 
 Slowly obliterated : or, may be, 
 The rock, all rudely lettered, like his life, 
 Set up above him by some kindly hand, 
 A tree s great, grasping roots have over 
 thrown, 
 Where lichens long ago effaced his name. 
 
 275 
 
In Clay 
 
 IN CLAY 
 
 Here went a horse with heavy laboring 
 stride 
 
 Along the woodland side ; 
 Deep in the clay his iron hoof-marks show, 
 
 Patient and slow, 
 Where with his human burden yesterday 
 
 He passed this way. 
 
 Would that this wind that tramples round 
 me here, 
 
 Among the sad and sere 
 Of winter-weary forests, were a steed, 
 
 Mighty indeed, 
 And tameless as the tempest of its pace, 
 
 Upon whom man might place 
 The boundless burden of his mortal cares, 
 
 Life s griefs, despairs, 
 And ruined dreams that bow the spirit so ! 
 
 And let him go 
 
 Bearing them far from the sad world, ah 
 me! 
 
 Leaving it free 
 
 As in that Age of Gold, of which men tell, 
 When Earth was glad and gods came here 
 to dwell. 
 
 276 
 
Gray Skies 
 
 GRAY SKIES 
 
 It is not well 
 For me to dwell 
 On what upon that day befell, 
 On that dark day of fall befell ; 
 When through the landscape, bowed and 
 
 bent, 
 
 With Love and Death I slowly went, 
 And wild rain swept the firmament. 
 
 Ah, Love that sighed ! 
 
 Ah, Joy that died ! 
 
 And Heart that humbled all its pride ; 
 In vain that humbled all its pride ! 
 The roses ruin and rot away 
 Upon your grave where grasses sway, 
 And all is dim, and all is gray. 
 
 SUNSET DREAMS 
 
 The moth and beetle wing about 
 
 The garden ways of other days ; 
 Above the hills, a fiery shout 
 Of gold, the day dies slowly out, 
 277 
 
Sunset Dreams 
 
 Like some wild blast a huntsman 
 blows : 
 
 And o er the hills my Fancy goes, 
 Following the sunset s golden call 
 Unto a vine-hung garden wall, 
 Where she awaits me in the gloom, 
 
 Between the lily and the rose, 
 With arms and lips of warm perfume, 
 
 The Dream of Love my Fancy knows. 
 
 The glow-worm and the firefly glow 
 Among the ways of bygone days ; 
 
 A golden shaft shot from a bow 
 
 Of silver, star and moon swing low 
 Above the hills where twilight lies : 
 And o er the hills my Longing flies, 
 
 Following the star s far, arrowed gold, 
 
 Unto a gate where, as of old, 
 She waits amid the rose and rue, 
 
 With star-bright hair and night-dark 
 
 eyes, 
 
 The Dream, to whom my heart is 
 true, 
 
 My Dream of Love that never dies. 
 
 278 
 
Mendicants 
 
 MENDICANTS 
 
 Bleak, in dark rags of clouds, the day 
 begins, 
 
 That passed so splendidly but yesterday 
 
 Wrapped in magnificence of gold and gray. 
 
 And poppy and rose. Now, burdened as 
 with sins, 
 
 Their wildness clad in fogs, like coats of 
 skins, 
 
 Tattered and streaked with rain, gaunt, 
 clogged with clay, 
 
 The mendicant Hours take their sombre 
 way 
 
 Westward o er Earth, to which no sunray 
 wins. 
 
 Their splashing sandals ooze; their foot 
 steps drip, 
 
 Puddle and brim with moisture ; their sad 
 hair 
 
 Is tagged with haggard drops, that with 
 their eyes 
 
 Slow streams are blent ; each sullen finger 
 tip 
 
 Rivers ; while round them, in the drenched 
 air, 
 
 Wearies the wind of their perpetual sighs. 
 279 
 
Winter Rain 
 
 WINTER RAIN 
 Wild clouds roll up, slag-dark and slaty 
 
 And in the oaks the sere wind sobs and 
 
 sighs, 
 
 Weird as a word a man before he dies 
 Mutters beneath his breath yet fears to say : 
 The rain drives down ; and by each forest 
 
 way 
 Each dead leaf drips, and murmurings 
 
 arise 
 As of fantastic footsteps, one who 
 
 flies, 
 
 Whispering, the dim eidolon of the day. 
 Now is the wood a place where phantoms 
 
 house : 
 Around each tree wan ghosts of flowers 
 
 crowd, 
 And spectres of sweet weeds that once 
 
 were fair, 
 Rustling; and through the bleakness of 
 
 bare boughs 
 A voice is heard, now low, now stormy 
 
 loud, 
 
 As if the ghosts of all the leaves were 
 there. 
 
 280 
 
Mariners 
 
 MARINERS 
 (Class Poem, Read June, 1886) 
 
 A beardless crew we launched our little 
 boat; 
 
 Laughed at its lightness; joyed to see it 
 float, 
 
 Veer in the wind, and, with the freshen 
 ing gale, 
 
 Bend o er the foaming prow the swollen 
 sail. 
 
 No fears were ours within that stanch- 
 built barque; 
 
 No fears were ours though all the west 
 was dark, 
 
 And overhead were unknown stars; the 
 ring 
 
 Of ocean sailless and no bird a-wing: 
 
 Yet there was light; radiance that 
 dimmed the stars 
 
 Dancing like bubbles in Night s sapphire 
 jars. 
 
 We knew not what: only adown the 
 skies 
 
 A shape that led us, with sidereal eyes, 
 281 
 
Mariners 
 
 Brow-bound and shod with elemental 
 
 fire, 
 Beckoning us onward like the god Desire. 
 
 Brisk blew the breeze; and through the 
 
 starry gloam, 
 
 Flung from our prow, flew white the fur 
 rowed foam. 
 Long, long we sailed; and now have 
 
 reached our goal. 
 Come, let us rest us here and call the 
 
 roll. 
 
 How few we are! Alas, alas, how few! 
 How many perished! Every storm that 
 
 blew 
 
 Swept from our deck or from our stag 
 gering mast 
 Some well-loved comrade in the boiling 
 
 vast. 
 Wildly we saw them sink beneath our 
 
 prow, 
 
 Helpless to aid; pallid of face and brow, 
 Lost in the foam we saw them sink or 
 
 fade 
 
 Beneath the tempest s rolling cannonade. 
 They sank; but where they sank, above 
 
 the wave 
 
 282 
 
Mariners 
 
 A corposant danced, a flame that marked 
 
 their grave; 
 And o er the flame, whereon were fixed 
 
 our eyes, 
 
 An albatross, huge in volcanic skies. 
 They died ; but not in vain their stubborn 
 
 strife, 
 The zeal that held them onward, great of 
 
 life: 
 They too are with us; they, in spite of 
 
 death, 
 Have reached here first. Upon our brows 
 
 their breath 
 Breathes softly, vaguely, sweetly as the 
 
 breeze 
 
 From isles of spice in summer-haunted seas. 
 From palaces and pinnacles of mist 
 The sunset builds in heaven s amethyst, 
 Beyond yon headland where the billows 
 
 break, 
 Perhaps they beckon now ; the winds that 
 
 shake 
 These tamarisks, that never bowed to 
 
 storm, 
 Haply are but their voices filled with 
 
 charm 
 
 Bidding us rest from labor ; toil no more ; 
 Draw up our vessel on the happy shore; 
 
 283 
 
Mariners 
 
 And of the lotus of content and peace, 
 Growing far inland, eat, and never cease 
 To dream the dreams that keep the heart 
 
 still young, 
 
 Hearing forever how the foam is flung 
 Beneath the cliff; forgetting all life s 
 
 care; 
 Easing the soul of all its long despair. 
 
 Let us forget how once within that 
 
 barque, 
 Like some swift eagle sweeping through 
 
 the dark, 
 We weighed the sun; we weighed the 
 
 farthest stars; 
 
 Traced the dim continents of fiery Mars ; 
 Measured the vapory planets whose long 
 
 run 
 Takes centuries to gird their glimmering 
 
 sun: 
 
 Let us forget how oft the crystal moun 
 tains 
 Of the white moon we searched; and 
 
 plumbed her fountains, 
 That hale the waters of the seonian deep 
 In ebb and flow, and in her power keep; 
 Let us remember her but as a gem, 
 A mighty pearl, placed in Night s anadem : 
 284 
 
Mariners 
 
 Let us forget how once we pierced the 
 
 flood, 
 
 Fathomed its groves of coral, red as blood, 
 Branching and blooming underneath our 
 
 keel, 
 Through which like birds the nautilus 
 
 and eel, 
 The rainbowed conch and irised fishes 
 
 swept, 
 And where the sea-snake like a long weed 
 
 slept. 
 Here let us dream our dreams : let Helen 
 
 bare 
 Her white breast for us; and let Dido 
 
 share 
 
 Her rich feast with us; or let Lalage 
 Laugh in our eyes as once, all lovingly, 
 She laughed for Flaccus. We are done 
 
 with all 
 The lusts of life! its loves are ours. Let 
 
 fall 
 
 The Catilines! the Qesars! and in Gaul 
 Their legions perish! And let Phillip s 
 
 son 
 
 In Ammon s desert die; and never a one 
 Lead back to Greece of all his conquering 
 
 line 
 From gemmed Hydaspes. 
 
 285 
 
Mariners 
 
 Here we set our shrine! 
 Here on this headland templed of God s 
 
 peaks, 
 
 Where Beauty only to our worship speaks 
 Her mighty truths, gazing beyond the 
 
 shore 
 
 Into the heart of God: her eyes a door 
 Wherethrough we see the dreams, the 
 
 mysteries, 
 That grew to form in the Art that once 
 
 was Greece: 
 Making them live once more for us, the 
 
 shapes 
 That filled the woods, the mountains, 
 
 and the capes 
 
 Of Hellas: Dryad, Oread, and Faun; 
 Naiad and Nereid, and all the hosts of 
 
 Dawn. 
 
 286 
 
WOMAN OR WHAT? 
 
 " "TTT is a subject suited to the 
 I genius of the poet who wrote 
 Bad Dreams/ " remarked 
 the Professor as he abandoned him 
 self wearily to the luxuriance of his 
 armchair. What was there to be 
 done? Absolutely nothing; and the 
 fabric of the mystery accumulating 
 around the letter and the lady began 
 to occupy so great a portion of the 
 gray matter of his brain that, instead 
 of viewing the dream merely as a 
 dream, he was almost persuaded to 
 regard it, in connection with these 
 other things, in the light of an actual 
 occurrence, so vividly was it im 
 pressed upon his mind. 
 
 It might have been an hour, or 
 only the fractional part of an hour, 
 287 
 
Woman or What? 
 
 that he sat there stolidly staring into 
 vacancy, when with a " What can it 
 mean ? Strange ! But this won t 
 do ! I 11 become as fantastic as 
 night if I continue in this manner," 
 he arose and lighting the gas, pro 
 ceeded to the window. Drawing the 
 heavy oriental curtains that during 
 the daytime made perpetual twilight 
 of the room, he stood looking out upon 
 the deserted square. It was near 
 midnight and late in August. The 
 waning moon shone above the black 
 roofs, subduing and softening all the 
 ugly angles of the buildings into sil 
 very blurs of shadow, and touching 
 with pearl the tops of a few sickly 
 maples that kept up a withered rust 
 ling under his window. Abruptly 
 turning away from the serene sad 
 ness of the night, the Professor moved 
 in the direction of his writing table, 
 intending to obliterate the persistent 
 sub-consciousness of the dream in a 
 288 
 
Woman or What? 
 
 practical appeal to a book and a 
 pipe. 
 
 A great student of mental philos 
 ophy, it was difficult for him to delib 
 erately relegate the analysis of his 
 condition to that puzzling limbo 
 wherein the uninitiated easily discard 
 all visionary impressions. Although 
 an able psychologist, he did not at 
 tain to this conclusion of mental agi 
 tation at one bound; it was a slow 
 and gradual process assisted by nu 
 merous soporific puffs of the pipe and 
 concentrated attention on the volume 
 before him. At last he laid them aside, 
 the degree of indifference desired hav 
 ing been attained. He was about to 
 retire, to drown in sleep whatever 
 speculations his fancy might conjure 
 up again, when his eye lighted upon a 
 manuscript translation he had been en 
 gaged upon for the past several days. 
 
 It was late, but he could not resist 
 taking the writing up and glancing 
 19 289 
 
Woman or What? 
 
 over it now that it was completed. 
 He did not care to compare it with 
 the original German scrawl, with its 
 angular and distorted letters in faded 
 ink and its ragged and bewildering 
 blots, that, after infinite application, 
 he had succeeded in deciphering. He 
 was done with that. And now he felt 
 a certain degree of satisfaction in 
 looking upon the finished work as it 
 confronted him with its new face, the 
 familiar English one, which he had 
 given it. His efforts had been re 
 warded by what appeared to be a dis 
 connected legend, detached from a 
 rich mass of now scattered, and per 
 haps lost, German folk-lore, relating 
 to some remote ancestors on his 
 father s side. He had expected some 
 thing quite different from the final 
 result of the writing when he under 
 took its translation. 
 
 The manuscript had been included 
 among a lot of old papers, faded 
 290 
 
Woman or What? 
 
 almost beyond deciphering, of a 
 grand-uncle of his, Herr Hermann, 
 a bachelor and a misanthrope, who, 
 recently dying, had left to the Pro 
 fessor, as sole heir and last scion of 
 the once mighty House of Otto, the 
 decrepit and partially ruined remains 
 of an ancient castle on the Rhine, 
 along with a musty bundle of yellow 
 parchment manuscripts. 
 
 The knowledge of this hitherto un 
 known relationship, together with the 
 importance of being sole representa 
 tive of a powerful line of German 
 pf alzgraf s who in mediaeval times 
 had ruled the Rhine lands with a 
 hand of iron was very disturbing 
 to the gentle-minded professor. He 
 immediately busied himself with in 
 vestigating the authenticity of these 
 new genealogical claims, and con 
 firming the order of his descent. 
 And so at last was established his 
 right to the coat-of-arms, which 
 291 
 
Woman or What? 
 
 he had always had stamped on his 
 writing paper and envelopes as a 
 mere matter of fashion, consisting 
 of three spiked bludgeons, argent on 
 a field sable, cresting which, above a 
 wreath of golden thistle, shone out a 
 blood-red gauntlet. He could not say 
 that he was proud of being the de 
 scendant of so wicked a line of feudal 
 counts and viscounts, or of the legacy 
 of the tottering and tumbling castle, 
 litigation had about stripped to a 
 kreutzer s worth of antique finery 
 and furniture. His coat-of-arms was 
 useful to him; his castle was not. 
 The one was an everyday visual 
 demonstration; the other merely a 
 visionary expectation appertaining 
 more to the past than to the present. 
 Both were curious, likewise interest 
 ing to him as directly relating to 
 himself and as being identified with 
 his name and blood. Yet he, in this 
 new country, speaking a different lan- 
 292 
 
Woman or What? 
 
 guage, living such a different life, 
 seemed so far removed, so remote 
 from all that they suggested and 
 symbolized, that it seemed impos 
 sible that it should be so, and also 
 preposterous. 
 
 The translation of the manuscripts 
 left him by Herr Hermann would 
 have been a difficult task for even a 
 native-born German scholar, how 
 much more so for him, written as 
 they were in an ancient, small, crab 
 bed and aguish hand, hardly decipher 
 able. As it was, after several days 
 of vexatious vacillation between con 
 firmations, doubts and guesses, the 
 Professor had only been able to secure 
 the following from the deplorable 
 mass of obscurity: 
 
 " Pfalzgraf Otto, from whom the 
 Hermanns are descended, was a man 
 of ferocious and brutal nature. Not 
 only did he delight in the torture 
 and oppression of his peasantry and 
 293 
 
Woman or What? 
 
 people, but it was his boast that he 
 could blaspheme God and His angels 
 with impunity; that if there was a 
 God why did He not protect the weak 
 and innocent to say nothing of re 
 senting an insult to Himself? No! 
 there was no God; and what the 
 foolish people worshipped was merely 
 a creation of the minds of the igno 
 rant and licentious monks, of whom 
 the Pope was the great arch-hypo 
 crite and scoundrel. And as to the 
 Bible why, that was merely a fab 
 rication of superstition of the He 
 brews, identical with the similar 
 mythologies of Greece and Italy. 
 The Old Testament was the record of 
 many myths ; the New, of but one 
 Christ. Indeed, if Otto believed in 
 anything it must have been Satan 
 himself, with whom, it was whis 
 pered, he had struck up a contract, 
 swearing cheek by jowl, for services 
 received, one tempestuous night in 
 294 
 
Woman or What? 
 
 the Harz mountains, to be the Fiend s 
 leal brother-in-arms in this world, 
 and in case there did prove to be 
 another, then forever after for all 
 eternity. 
 
 " The liberty and license of his 
 predatory retainers were limited only 
 by his own. The goods of the hus 
 bandman, the wife and the daughter 
 of the husbandman, were the ruffian 
 sport of this despot and his butchers. 
 Murder, fire, and rapine were the 
 three croaking ravens that attended, 
 as black familiars, the blacker banner 
 of Graff von Otto when he led his 
 bearded and beer-blown bullies, with 
 curse and song, from the ponderous 
 gates of the Schloss. 
 
 " It was by might alone that 
 the Pfalzgraf had won three wives. 
 These had all died suddenly when 
 they had ceased to be pleasing to 
 the fastidious monster, in horrible 
 agonies, it was affirmed by eye wit- 
 
 2 95 
 
Woman or What? 
 
 nesses, and while banqueting in the 
 great hall. Graff von Otto had seen 
 some younger, some more flaxen- 
 haired fraiilein who interested him 
 more, pleased him more perhaps, than 
 the present Pfalzgrafinn. His con 
 fidential servant had received secret 
 orders but who shall say how the 
 terrible mistake was made of spicing 
 the boiled wine of the last incum 
 bent with wolf s-bane instead of sweet 
 basil? 
 
 " It was in the year 14 that 
 the Graff determined to take unto 
 himself another wife, the fourth it is 
 said, and this time his choice had 
 fallen upon the daughter of the re 
 spectable burgermeister of Muhl- 
 hofen. He had only to make public 
 his intention of interesting himself 
 in the welfare of any maiden in the 
 community and straightway, behold, 
 all other suitors disappeared; some 
 vanished mysteriously but utterly, 
 296 
 
Woman or What? 
 
 while others discreetly retired, gen 
 erously leaving the field open to his 
 worshipful possession, while the 
 parents meekly and hastily arranged 
 about the dowry. In this case, how 
 ever, there were murmurs of dis 
 approval, discontent, and even of 
 resistance. For you must remember 
 the villagers of Miihlhofen had the re 
 cent monstrous deaths of the Graffs 
 former wives before them as an ever 
 lasting warning as to the probable 
 fate that awaited any future succes 
 sor. Moreover, this was the daughter 
 of their beloved burgermeister ; and 
 a more beautiful and lovable damsel 
 than she was not to be found in the 
 Rheinpfalz. 
 
 " It came to pass that Otto and his 
 robbers got wind of this disaffection 
 of Miihlhofen, through spies some 
 said, through his sworn friend and 
 boon companion, the Fiend, others 
 said. However it was, one after- 
 297 
 
Woman or What? 
 
 noon, with a volley of oaths, armed to 
 the teeth, he and his desperadoes 
 galloped thunderingly over the draw 
 bridge of the Schloss down the wind 
 ing road of rock and root, to wreak 
 vengeance upon the unsuspecting 
 burgers of Miihlhofen. 
 
 " Not one rat of them shall es 
 cape! Fools and sots! I will reduce 
 the place to a desert, roof and cellar, 
 and make an owl s roost of it ! 
 
 " But in the decrees of destiny 
 this was not to be. For as he rode 
 breakneck, devil-may-care over stock 
 and stone through the forest, that 
 stretched its dark miles between his 
 castle and the village, he happened to 
 startle a wolf, snow-white, as it were 
 a shaft of moonlight. Miihlhofen, 
 burgers, and burgermeister were all 
 forgotten in the excitement of the 
 chase and the securing of such a 
 quarry. He must have the skin of 
 the white wolf to match the whiter 
 298 
 
Woman or What? 
 
 skin of his bride. In his eagerness 
 the Pfalzgraf never once noticed that 
 he at first had distanced and then 
 completely lost his retinue of re 
 tainers. Not a solitary junker fol 
 lowed him. Blind to everything but 
 the beast before him, onward he 
 spurred, mad with the intoxication 
 of pursuit, the wolf gleaming and 
 bounding through the tangled and 
 deepening vistas of the trees, now 
 vanishing like a long ray of hurrying 
 moonlight, now reappearing like a 
 silvery shaft of shadow. 
 
 " At last the Graff was compelled 
 to abandon his horse; and without 
 even taking the trouble to tie him to 
 some tree, eagerly continued the 
 chase on foot among the wild rocks 
 and matted roots of the forest. At 
 last he came to a tar-black torrent 
 that foamed darkly down savage and 
 bewildering stones through fantastic 
 and hideous foliage. Where the sul- 
 299 
 
Woman or What? 
 
 len water emptied itself into a dismal 
 pool, covered with a sulphurous sort 
 of scum and green and yellow duck 
 weed, he saw what appeared to be 
 the white wolf standing outlined 
 against the sombre crimson of the 
 west, seemingly awaiting him on a 
 rock high above the sinister water. 
 With a ferocious laugh of exultation, 
 stumbling and clutching at the evil 
 and hairy weeds and roots that cov 
 ered the hillside and the rocks, Graff 
 von Otto hurled himself awkwardly 
 and heavily in his weight of armor, 
 sword in hand, at the creature quietly 
 awaiting him there above the stag 
 nant pool. 
 
 " But what had become of the 
 wolf ? That was no wolf that con 
 fronted him with burning gaze! but 
 a woman, white as a star and with 
 eyes of yellow fire, like lucid topazes, 
 and hair as black as a stormy night. 
 She looked at him steadily, and the 
 300 
 
Woman or What? 
 
 Pfalzgraf felt the very marrow of his 
 bones and his heart s blood freezing, 
 slowly freezing, beneath that cat-like 
 gaze. Then she spoke; and the 
 sound of her voice was as the sound 
 of distant winds in the moonlit woods, 
 mixed with the music of limpid 
 waters falling over pebbles of spar 
 into basins of crystal, and yet terrible 
 as doom: 
 
 " Blasphemer of God ! behold in 
 me the hereditary spirit of the 
 House of Otto. I appear only to 
 those who are about to perish vio 
 lently. Farewell ! . . . 
 
 " It is said that many days elapsed 
 before they found the body of the 
 Pfalzgraf, bloated and blistered be 
 yond recognition, tangled in his rusty 
 mail, among the slime and oozy spawn 
 and waterweeds of a forest pool." 
 
 The Professor laid aside the manu 
 script. The fact that he was the sole 
 301 
 
Woman or What? 
 
 descendant, the only surviving rep 
 resentative, of such a family was 
 gruesome to him to say the least. Yet, 
 repellant and attractive at the same 
 time, he brooded over the idea with 
 a fascination that he could not 
 explain. 
 
 Again the insistent expression of 
 the eyes of the lady of his dream oc 
 curred to him, and his mind would 
 persist in associating that look with 
 a certain passage in the manuscript. 
 He understood it now, yes; but he 
 must sleep and see how all this ratio 
 cination bore the explanation in the 
 rational light of morning. If he 
 again received a letter, precisely sim 
 ilar to the two already received on 
 the preceding mornings, and if the 
 lady of his dreams of the two preced 
 ing nights again visited him to-night 
 with the same peculiar look, then these, 
 the lady and the letters, must be some 
 thing more than mere coincidences. 
 302 
 
Woman or What? 
 
 It was three o clock before he fell 
 into a frail, uneasy slumber, wherein 
 Graff von Otto and his bandit bravos 
 played battledore and shuttlecock 
 with milk-white wolves heads and the 
 glowing golden eyes of star-white 
 women: that finally resolved them 
 selves into the eyes of one woman, the 
 woman of his dreams, who regarded 
 him steadily and fearfully from a 
 gradually decreasing distance. 
 
 The day was far advanced; in 
 deed, the buhl clock on his mantel had 
 chimed the hour of noon ere he arose. 
 He had dreaded it as we dread the 
 inevitable, but would have been dis 
 appointed, after having dreamed that 
 dream again, had the letter not been 
 there. There it was, however, char 
 acterized by its foreign-looking en 
 velope of vivid yellow inclosing a slip 
 of spotless paper, perfectly blank, and 
 nothing more. Not a line. He curi 
 ously examined the address. It was 
 303 
 
Woman or What? 
 
 correct, and written in a fine, angu 
 lar, female hand. The script was 
 German, but the postmark was Amer 
 ican his own city s. Placing it in 
 an inside pocket the Professor left his 
 apartments; they seemed to com 
 press and stifle his soul that seemed 
 dilating and expanding beyond his 
 comprehension and unto what ? 
 He was as one dazed, wandering he 
 knew not whither. Some mysterious 
 influence seemed governing all his 
 movements. He appeared to have no 
 will of his own. Could it be that he 
 was on the verge of some serious sick 
 ness, and did this persistent dream, 
 always the same, never varying an 
 iota in its strange details, indicate 
 this? Were the letters merely illu 
 sions? At this thought mechanically 
 he felt in his pocket, drew forth the 
 letter that had arrived that morning 
 and stared at it as at some curious 
 and horrible thing, then slowly tore 
 304 
 
Woman or What? 
 
 it across, shredding it into small bits 
 which he tossed into the street. 
 
 Now he would go into the country. 
 There he would forget it all. In a 
 long ramble dissipate this haunting 
 thought, this nightmare which had 
 made horror of three past days and 
 nights. . . . 
 
 The electric lights had commenced 
 to dot the evening glimmer as he re 
 turned on foot by an unfrequented 
 way. He was in an unknown quarter 
 of the town which had been his resi 
 dence for twenty years ; a quarter dis 
 tinguished by nothing that he knew; 
 its houses older than any he had 
 ever seen in any other part of the 
 city; most of them great, square, 
 colonial-columned buildings sitting 
 far back from the street each one in 
 its grove of old trees. In the course 
 of his saunter, curiosity led him into 
 a quaint old cemetery with queer, 
 gaunt tombstones and cellared vaults. 
 20 305 
 
Woman or What? 
 
 Rusty iron railings enclosed little 
 squares of myrtled and mounded si 
 lence pathetic with tottering or fallen 
 headstones. Here and there flat and 
 lichened tombs covered and hid a sad 
 handful of dust and remembrance. 
 The fireflies were twinkling like elfin 
 lanterns, or will-o -the-wisps, up and 
 down the plaintive vistas of elm and 
 cedar and weeping willow. A pleas 
 ant feeling of melancholy, dreamy 
 and undefined, pervaded the soul of 
 the Professor as he strolled among 
 the gray, neglected graves. He had 
 forgotten entirely the disagreeable 
 things that had impelled him away 
 from the city at noon. The letter, the 
 lady, even Herr Hermann and his 
 unholy manuscript were completely 
 forgotten. Absorbed upon the sor 
 rowful beauty of the neglected place 
 in which so strangely he found him 
 self, he continued to wander among 
 the tall weeds and flowers that had 
 
Woman or What? 
 
 overgrown all its walks. He had in 
 tended going in a quite different direc 
 tion, but suddenly seemed compelled, 
 by some strange power, in an oppo 
 site one from that he desired to take ; 
 and in a little while he found himself, 
 like the poet in Ulalume, standing in 
 the uncertain twilight before a " le- 
 gended tomb," a looming and crum 
 bling vault of mossy stone at the 
 extreme western end of the cemetery. 
 Could he be mistaken ? No, he was 
 not. There under the sorrowful trees, 
 near the ghostly entrance of the tomb, 
 among a wilderness of weeds and 
 roses and ruined headstones, wavered 
 the white of a woman s dress. He 
 had hardly recovered from his sur 
 prise, and, embarrassed, for he was 
 a very shy, retired man, was about 
 to turn away, when the wearer of the 
 white dress came hastily and eagerly 
 towards him. Stopping suddenly in 
 front of him she regarded him fixedly 
 307 
 
Woman or What? 
 
 from head to foot as if desirous of 
 identifying before addressing him. 
 
 He, by the fast-fading light of the 
 west, dimly discerned that she was 
 very beautiful and very pale. A 
 large, foreign hat of some fleecy 
 material, white and white-feathered, 
 partially shaded her face, concealing 
 her eyes completely. The grace and 
 elegance of her form would have in 
 dicated her from white-shawled 
 shoulders to white-shod feet a 
 woman of distinction, even had it not 
 been for the costly lace and lawn that 
 hung like draperies of foam about 
 her. One long, white-gloved hand 
 held a white lace fan of wonderful 
 workmanship. Extending the Pro 
 fessor her disengaged hand she said 
 quietly, as if she had expected him, 
 had known him for a long time, ad 
 dressing him by name : 
 
 " You have kept me waiting. Why 
 are you not more prompt with your 
 
 308 
 
Woman or What? 
 
 engagements ? Did you not receive 
 my letters? or could you not find the 
 place appointed? " Here she broke 
 into a little musical laugh that seemed 
 familiar to him, but, after a hopeless 
 effort to place it, he helplessly gave it 
 up. For a moment he stood staring 
 at her, unable to answer her fusillade 
 of questions. Then before he could 
 courteously reply, assuring her that 
 she had made a mistake, that it was 
 not he whom she had expected, she 
 quietly took his arm, and leaning 
 lightly upon it, said, " Let us walk 
 in this direction ; " indicating a long 
 dark avenue of larch and elm trees, 
 along which the gravestones glim 
 mered like ghosts, and at whose far 
 end, like a torch at the end of a cav 
 ern, glittered and hissed the globe of 
 an electric light. After a pause she 
 continued questioningly : "You are 
 glad to see me? You do not object to 
 walking with me ? " 
 309 
 
Woman or What? 
 
 The Professor could only stammer 
 a breathless reply in the affirmative 
 and the negative to both her ques 
 tions ; but which one he said " yes " 
 to, and which one he said " no " to, 
 he could not for the life of him tell. 
 He was so entirely under the sway of 
 some strange influence that it seemed 
 he had lost complete control of all his 
 faculties, mental and physical, and 
 possessed no preference that did not 
 first defer to this woman s ; no impulse 
 that did not emanate from the domin 
 ating intentions of herself. He won 
 dered if he had not fallen asleep and 
 if he were not dreaming that strange 
 dream again; dreaming as he had 
 dreamed only last night ; that dream 
 which had so absorbed and possessed 
 him for the past three days. Only 
 how different was this woman from 
 the supernatural creature of his 
 dream, the stately, mournful beauty 
 in trailing black! Here was coquet- 
 310 
 
Woman or What? 
 
 tish loveliness clad in happy white, 
 defiant and yielding, compliant and 
 resistant. He could see that her hair 
 was intensely black, and from the 
 glimpses now and then of the 
 classic purity of her delicate cheek, 
 chin, and throat, he suspicioned mar 
 vels of loveliness the darkness kept 
 unrevealed. 
 
 They had almost reached the end 
 of the avenue of trees, and the gate 
 by the sexton s bell-hung, dilapidated, 
 old brick cottage, and were passing 
 under the electric light at the en 
 trance to the cemetery, when she 
 stopped, turned facing him, and sud 
 denly looked up as if about to put a 
 direct and abrupt question to him. 
 In that moment he got a full view of 
 her face and eyes a face white as 
 marble, and eyes, two lucid topazes, 
 a luminous yellow. 
 
The Vale of Tempe 
 
 By MADISON CAWEIN 
 
 Price, $1.50 
 Sent on receipt of price by the publishers 
 
 E. P. BUTTON & CO., New York 
 
 IN calling attention to THE VALE OF TEMPE, we do so with 
 the assurance that it is a volume of classic quality and on 
 a level with some of the highest work of the nineteenth cen 
 tury. It has been commended in a very high quarter of 
 cultivated taste and judgment, and has been emphasized in the 
 reviews as of more than ordinary interest. We might point to indi 
 vidual poems of unquestionable beauty, but our purpose will be 
 better served and our readers confidence perhaps better secured 
 if we quote the ripe critical opinion of the Evening Post, where the 
 discoverable faults are as plainly pointed out as the generally high 
 and axceptional quality of the work is plainly acknowledged. 
 
 "THE VALE OF TEMPE," says the Post, "is a volume which, 
 along with some crudities and weakness, has both the old glamour 
 of poesy and an individual tang, so to say, that is uncommon in our 
 contemporary verse. Mr. Cawein draws his inspiration in equal 
 draughts frdm the I^entucky landscape and from the world of pagan 
 poetry, and in at le&t two of the aptitudes of the poet he stands 
 pretty much by himself. His turn for vivid, imaginative phrase is 
 of the first order, whether he is dealing with lurid grotesque, as in 
 the striking phrase, gaunt as huddle terror, or with the beautiful, 
 as in his fine couplet 
 
 " Invisible crystals of aerial ring 
 
 Against the wind I hear the bluebird fling. 
 
 His command of the technique of tone color is also exceptional. He 
 is a master of tone, whether in the difficult key of v as in this 
 description of Oaks in Spring (a quotation from the poem), or in 
 the initiative pedal-tones of this : (a quotation from the poem, Wind 
 and Cloud ). In poetry like Mr. Cawein s, for the most part so 
 limpid and musical in tone, small discords are specially noticeable." 
 Here the critic points to some " minor defects " and proceeds : " All 
 this, however, is by the way. Mr. Cawein is a true poet, both in 
 his art and in his inspiration. The concluding strophes of his fine 
 ode, In Solitary Places, will serve to show his safety in the Siege 
 Perilous of the poetic hall." 
 
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