LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 38-3 
 
 
 
 L 
 
Of this book there have been printed 
 but jfo copies from type. 
 
INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 DAYS AND DREAMS $1.25 
 
 MOODS AND MEMORIES ..... 2.00 
 RED LEAVES AND ROSES . . . .1.25 
 POEMS OF NATURE AND LOVE . . . 1.50 
 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL . . . 1.50 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM S SONS 
 
INTIMATIONS OF THE 
 BEAUTIFUL 
 
 AND 
 
 POEMS 
 
 BY 
 
 MADISON CAWEIN 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM S SONS 
 
 NEW YORK LONDON 
 
 27 West Twenty-third Street 24 Bedford Street, Strand 
 
 ty ftaiehtrbothw $x8g 
 1894 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1894 
 
 BY 
 MADISON CAWEIN 
 
 Printed and Bound by 
 
 Ube ftnicfeerbocfeer press, flew 
 G. P. PUTNAM S SONS 
 
TO 
 THE AUTHOR OF 
 
 GOD IN HIS WORLD 
 
 WITH 
 PROFOUND ADMIRATION 
 
 1 57238 
 
They took him into confidence each oak 
 Of the far forest : and all day he sat 
 Hearing of Nature from an autocrat, 
 
 An oak so old, Dodona might have spoke 
 
 Its infant oracles through it that, part 
 Of the oracular beauty of the gods, 
 
 Yet irresponsible, down in its heart 
 Still felt the rapture of their periods. 
 
 They took him into confidence the skies : 
 And all night long he lay beneath one star, 
 Hearing of God . . . One that was chorister 
 
 At Earth s first morning ; that beheld fierce eyes 
 
 Of rebel angels, and the birth of Hell ; 
 Whom God set over Eden and o er them, 
 
 The two, as destiny ; that did foretell 
 How Christ lay born at far-off Bethlehem. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL i 
 
 KNOWLEDGE AND BEAUTY . . . . .71 
 
 ELEUSINIAN . . . . . . . .72 
 
 CHRYSELEPHANTINE . . ... . . . 74 
 
 SIBYLLINE . . . . . ... .76 
 
 LETHE 78 
 
 LOTUS 81 
 
 MOLY 84 
 
 POPPY AND MANDRAGORA 86 
 
 NIGHTSHADE . . . . . . . 90 
 ROSEMARY . . . . ... . .92 
 
 AT TWILIGHT 94 
 
 DAY AND NIGHT ..... . . .95 
 
 REVELATION . . 96 
 
 SYMBOLIC ......... 97 
 
 ARGONAUTS . . . 98 
 
 THE KNIGHT-ERRANT . 100 
 
VI CONTENTS. 
 
 IN SHADOW ......... I0 3 
 
 LEGENDARY ......... 105 
 
 THE MILL WATER ....... 108 
 
 EIDOLONS ......... m 
 
 UNDER DARK SKIES ....... 113 
 
 THE SECRET ........ 115 
 
 PHANTOMS . . . ...... 117 
 
 THREE BIRDS ........ 119 
 
 IDENTITIES ......... 120 
 
 A VISION ......... 122 
 
 THE NORMAN KNIGHT ...... 126 
 
 THE SALAMANDER ....... 128 
 
 THE ROSICRUCIAN ..... . . 138 
 
 ARABAH ......... 141 
 
 NORTH BEACH, FLORIDA . . ... . 143 
 
 THE WATCHER ........ 145 
 
 ANALOGIES ......... 146 
 
 IMITATED FROM OSSIAN . . . . . .148 
 
 THE BATTLE ........ 153 
 
 THE MESSAGE ........ 155 
 
 MOSBY AT HAMILTON ....... 157 
 
 IN HOSPITAL ........ 159 
 
 IN SILHOUETTE ........ 160 
 
 ASSUMPTION ......... 162 
 
 CARA MIA ......... 163 
 
CONTENTS. Vll 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ESOTERIC . . . . . . , . . 165 
 
 MNEMONICS 168 
 
 THE NAIAD . . . . . . . . 170 
 
 THE RED-BIRD . . 172 
 
 THE STORM 174 
 
 MARIE 177 
 
 LINES TO M. ..."... 178 
 
 CIRCE 180 
 
 THE PAPHIAN VENUS 183 
 
 METAMORPHOSIS . . 187 
 
 BEFORE THE TEMPLE . . . . . . .188 
 
 THE DEAD FAUN . . . . . . igo 
 
 APOLLO . . . . . . . . . 192 
 
 THE FEUD 196 
 
 THE RAID 199 
 
 DEAD MAN S RUN 201 
 
 THE MOONSHINER 204 
 
INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 A THOUGHT, to lift me up to those 
 Sweet wildflowers of the pensive woods ; 
 The lofty, lowly attitudes 
 Of bluet and of bramble-rose : 
 
 To lift me where the mind may reach 
 The lessons that their beauties teach. 
 
 A dream, to lead my spirit on 
 
 In sounds of fairy shawms and flutes, 
 And all mysterious attributes 
 
 Of skies of dusk and skies of dawn : 
 To lead me, like the dreamy brooks, 
 Past all the knowledge of the books. 
 
 A song, to make my heart a guest 
 Of happiness whose soul is love ; 
 One with the life that knoweth of 
 
INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 But song that turneth toil to rest : 
 To make me cousin to the birds, 
 Whose music needs not wisdom s words. 
 
 I feel thee, as one feels a flower s, 
 A dead flower s, fragrance in a room, 
 A dim, gray grief that haunts the hours 
 With sad perfume. 
 
 Thou charm st me, as a ghostly lily 
 Might charm a garden s withered place, 
 With the pale pathos and the chilly 
 Hush of thy face. 
 
 I hearken in thy fogs ; I hearken 
 Ere, like the ghastly ghost of Night, 
 With immaterial limbs they darken 
 The day with white. 
 
 With wrecks of rain and mad winds, heaping 
 Red ruins of riven rose and leaf, 
 
INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 Make glad my heart, O Autumn, sweeping 
 The joy with grief. 
 
 n. 
 
 The gods of Greece are mine once more ! 
 
 The old philosophies again ! 
 For I have drunk the hellebore 
 
 Of dreams, and dreams have made me san< 
 The wine of dreams ! that doth unfold 
 
 My other self, mid shadowy shrines 
 Of myths which marble held of old, 
 Part of the Age of Bronze or Gold, 
 
 That lives a pagan mid the pines. 
 
 Dead myths, to whom such dreams belong ! 
 
 O beautiful philosophies 
 Of Nature ! crystallized in song 
 
 And marble, peopling lost seas, 
 Lost forests and the star-lost vast, 
 
 Grant me the childlike faith that clung, 
 Through loveliness that could not last, 
 To Heaven in the pagan past, 
 
 Calling for God with infant tongue ! 
 
4 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 III. 
 
 Idea, O god of Plato ! one 
 
 With beauty, justice, truth and love : 
 Who, type by type, the world begun 
 
 From an ideal world above ! 
 Reason, who into Nature wrought 
 
 Your real entities, which are 
 
 Ideas, giving to our star 
 Their beauty through reflected thought ; 
 
 The reminiscences, that flame 
 
 Momental through the mind of man, 
 
 Of things his memory cannot name 
 
 Lost things his knowledge cannot scan, 
 
 Hints of past periods, are not these ? 
 His soul hath lived since it had birth 
 From God . . . Yea, who shall name the Earth 
 
 More ancient than himself who sees ? 
 
 IV. 
 
 Beside us, and yet far above, 
 
 She leads us to no base renown 
 The Ideal, with her sun-white crown, 
 
INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 5 
 
 And starry raiment of her love : 
 She leads us by ascending ways 
 
 Of Nature to her purposed ends, 
 Who in the difficult, dark days 
 
 Of trial with her smile defends. 
 
 Beyond the years, that blindly grope, 
 
 To climb with her, from year to year, 
 
 To some exalted atmosphere, 
 Were more than earthly joy and hope ! 
 Though in that atmosphere we find 
 
 Not her her influence, pointing to 
 New elevations of the mind 
 
 By some superior avenue. 
 
 v. 
 
 The climbing-cricket in the dusk 
 Moves wings of moony gossamer ; 
 Its vague, vibrating note I hear 
 
 Among the boughs of dew and musk, 
 
 Whence, rustling with a mellow thud, 
 
 The ripe quince falls. Low, deep and clear, 
 
 The west is bound with burning blood. 
 
INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 The slanting bats beneath the moon, 
 A dark disk edged with glittering white, 
 Spin loops of intertangled night : 
 
 An owl wakes, hooting over soon, 
 
 Within the forest far away : 
 
 And now the heaven fills, light by light, 
 
 And all the blood-red west grows gray. 
 
 I hear no sound of wind or wave ; 
 No sob or song, except the slow 
 Leaf-cricket s flute-soft tremolo, 
 
 Among wet walks grown gray and grave. 
 
 In raiment mists of silver sear, 
 
 With strange, pale eyes thou comest, O 
 
 Thou spirit of the waning year ! 
 
 VI. 
 
 The hills are full of prophecies 
 And ancient voices of the dead ; 
 
 Of hidden shapes that no one sees, 
 
 Pale, visionary presences, 
 
 That speak the things no tongue hath said, 
 No mind hath thought, no eye hath read. 
 
INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 The streams are full of oracles, 
 And momentary whisperings ; 
 
 An immaterial beauty swells 
 
 Its breezy silver o er the shells 
 
 With wordless speech that sings and sings 
 The present life of unknown things. 
 
 No indeterminable thought is theirs, 
 
 The stars, the sunsets and the flowers ; 
 Whose inexpressible speech declares 
 Th immortal Beautiful, who shares 
 This mortal riddle that is ours, 
 Beyond the forward flying hours. 
 
 VII. 
 
 The hornet stings the garnet grape, 
 
 Whose hull splits with the honeyed heat ;- 
 Fall hears the long loud locust beat 
 
 Its song out, where, a girl-like shape, 
 
 She watches through the wine-press crust 
 Sweet trickle of the purple must. 
 
INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 The bee clings to the scarlet peach, 
 That thrusts a dryad s cheek between 
 The leaves of golden gray and green ; 
 
 Fall walks where orchard branches reach 
 Abundance to her hands, or drop 
 Their ripeness down to make her stop. 
 
 The bitter-sweet and sassafras 
 
 Hang yellow seeds and crimson-black 
 Along the rails, that ramble back 
 
 Among the corn where she must pass ; 
 Where, on her hair, a golden haze 
 Showers the pollen of the maize. 
 
 Not till mid sad, chill scents all day 
 The green leaf-cricket lisps its tune, 
 And underneath the hunter s-moon 
 
 The oxen plod through clinging clay, 
 Or when beyond the dripping pane 
 The night sets in with whirling rain : 
 
 Not till ripe walnuts spill their spice . 
 Of frost-nipped nuts down, and the oak 
 
INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. \ 
 
 Pelts with brown acorns, stroke on stroke, 
 The creek which slides through hints of ice ; 
 And in the lane the wagon pulls, 
 Crunching, through thick-strewn hickory hulls 
 
 Not till through frosty fogs, which hold 
 Wet mornings with their phantom night, 
 Like torches glimmering through the white, 
 
 The woods burn crimson blurs and gold, 
 And through the mist come muffled sounds 
 Of hunting-horns and baying hounds : 
 
 Shall I on hills, where looming pines 
 Against vermilion sunsets stand . 
 Black ruins in a blood-red land 
 
 In wrecks of sumach and wild vines, 
 Go seek her, where she lies asleep, 
 Her dark, sad eyes too tired to weep. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 It holds and beckons in the streams ; 
 It lures and touches us in all 
 The flowers of the golden fall 
 
IO INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 The mystic essence of our dreams : 
 A nymph blows bubbling music where 
 
 Faint water ripples down the rocks ; 
 
 A faun goes dancing hoiden locks, 
 And piping some Pandean air, 
 Through trees the instant wind shakes bare. 
 
 Our dreams are never otherwise 
 
 Than real if they hold us so ; 
 
 We in some other life shall know 
 Them parts of it and recognize 
 Them as ideal substance, whence 
 
 The actual is (as flowers and trees, 
 
 From color sources no one sees, 
 Draw dyes, the substance of a sense) 
 Material with intelligence. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Once more I watch the hills take fire 
 In dawn ; and shaggy spine by spine, 
 Flush like dark tyrants o er their wine, 
 
 Who grasp the sword and smite the lyre, 
 
INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. II 
 
 And carve the world to their desire ; 
 
 While red as blocks where kingdoms bleed, 
 The rocks trail savage vine and weed. 
 
 To walls of gold, Enchantment built, 
 
 Again my fancy bids me go 
 
 Through woods, bewitched with fire, that blow 
 Wild horns of tournament and tilt 
 A fairy prince, whose spear hath spilt 
 
 No blood but in a shadow-world, 
 
 While at the real his gauge was hurled. 
 
 What far, aeolian echoes lead 
 
 My longing ? as a voice might wake 
 A lost child from deep sleep and take, 
 
 With music of a magic reed, 
 
 Him home where love shall give him heed : 
 What echoes, blown from lands that lie 
 Melodious neath no mortal sky ? 
 
 x. 
 
 The fire, to which the Magi prayed, 
 The Aztecs sacrificed and kneeled, 
 
12 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 Whose ceremonies now are sealed, 
 Whose priests are dust, whose people weighed, 
 
 Since God permitted such, should man, 
 All ignorant of heavenly ends, 
 
 Despise the means, since Earth began, 
 He works by to perfect His plan, 
 Which through immediate forms ascends 
 Of Nature, lifting, race by race, 
 Man to the beauty of His face ? 
 
 Through Nature only we arrive 
 
 At God : identical with truth, 
 
 By periods of repeated youth, 
 Through Nature must the Ages strive ; 
 
 The Epochs, that must purify 
 Themselves through her experience, 
 
 Her knowledge, which each Age lays by 
 
 To clothe it better for the sky 
 In robes of new intelligence 
 
 Befitting life, that upwardly 
 
 Approaches ends but God can see. 
 
^X 
 OF THF A 
 
 UNIVERSITY 1 
 or J 
 
 INTIMA TIONS\ $F vJ&BEA UTIFUL. 1 3 
 XI. 
 
 Within the life awake behold 
 
 A life asleep . . . the wildwood shades ! 
 With limbs of glimmering coolness lolled 
 Along the purple forest glades : 
 
 Sleep in each unremembering face, 
 The sea-worn Greeks knew these of old 
 
 Day s languid lotus-eating race. 
 
 Within the mind asleep I mark 
 
 A mind awake ; and see the sense 
 That stirs the sap beneath the bark 
 
 With tender hints of violence, 
 
 The liquid germs of leaf and bud, 
 And in the ponderable dark 
 
 Fulfils the offices of blood. 
 
 O wiser than Thy works ! behind 
 
 Thy works, who shall behold Thy place ? 
 
 Beyond the suns whose beams burn blind 
 Before the glory of Thy face ! 
 
14 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 Among the least of these, shall we 
 Presume to give to Thee, defined, 
 A place and personality ! 
 
 XII. 
 
 Across the hills, that roll and rise 
 Beneath the blue, adoring skies, 
 
 Maturing Beauty by the old, 
 Fierce forest stands, as might a slave 
 Before a Sultan sitting grave, 
 
 Grim-gazing from a throne of gold. 
 
 Across the hills, that rise and fall, 
 I gaze with eyes grown spiritual, 
 
 And see the spirit of the dew 
 From out the morn, that stains the mist 
 With amber and with amethyst, 
 
 Blown bubble-bright along the blue. 
 
 What king such kingly pomp can show 
 As on the hills the afterglow ? 
 Where mid red woods the maples sit, 
 
INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 1 5 
 
 Like scarlet-mantled sagamores, 
 
 Who, from their totemed wigwam doors, 
 
 Watch through red fires the ghost-dance flit. 
 
 At night, as comes the fox, shall come 
 The spirit of the frost, whose thumb 
 
 Shall squeeze the chestnut burs, and press 
 Each husk bare ; whisper every flower 
 Such tales of death that in an hour 
 
 It dies of utter happiness. 
 
 Until the moon sets I shall walk, 
 And listen wold and woodland talk 
 
 Of by-gone lovely nights and days : 
 My soul made silent intimate 
 Of all its sorrow soon and late 
 
 A neighbor of the autumn haze. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 What revelations fill with song 
 The cycles ? and to what belong 
 
 Life s far convictions of the light ? 
 Through which the spirit waxeth strong, 
 
1 6 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 The darkling soul surmounts the night 
 By builded rainbows to some height, 
 Near mountain stars of Truth and Right, 
 Beyond the vulture wing of Wrong ? 
 
 Nature ! who still adjusts the deeps 
 
 Of her soul s needs to man s ; and keeps 
 Such grave response as grief shall hear 
 
 When on her heart it sinks and weeps ; 
 For every gladness, clean and clear 
 Its glad reflection lying near 
 The wild accord of hope and fear 
 
 Which in her inmost bosom sleeps. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 The mallow, like an Elfland moon, 
 
 Within the marsh gleams grottoed gold ; 
 Its bell-shaped blossom seems to hold 
 
 All the lost beauty of last June : 
 
 September s mist haunts, white and cold, 
 
 The windings of the forest stream, 
 
 As death might haunt soft eyes that dream. 
 
INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. I*] 
 
 And who with idle words hath stood, 
 With idle thoughts, and gazed into 
 The face of one he loved and knew, 
 
 Dying in all her womanhood ? 
 No words, but silence, then will do, 
 
 When the beloved falls asleep, 
 
 No thoughts but help the heart to weep. 
 
 xv. 
 
 The snowy flutter of a hand 
 
 Shall glitter in the morning mist, 
 And from the mist a jewelled wrist 
 Of dew shall beckon and command : 
 And hope shall see the unknown Land 
 Of Far Away beyond the Dawn, 
 Where, crowned with roses wild and wan, 
 The Futures of the World speed on. 
 
 Along the eve a fiery arm 
 
 Shall point us to the waning west, 
 And all the sorrow, that oppressed 
 
 The heart once, shall become a charm 
 
1 8 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 Of patience, which shall so transform 
 The Present in the Long Ago, 
 The Past from lands we used to know- 
 Shall lean with lilies dropping slow. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Pearl-lilac blent with pearly rose, 
 
 The dawn bloomed slowly out of dusk, 
 As some huge cactus from its husk 
 
 Might burst a bloom whose chalice glows 
 A grotto of transmuted dyes ; 
 
 Such wild, auroral light as flows 
 On ice-peaks from unearthly skies. 
 
 Dove-purple shifting into shades 
 
 Of opal, like the tints which dwell 
 
 With fire in the ocean-shell, 
 The sunset flashed above the glades 
 
 Through skies of nacre and of flame ; 
 Such supernatural light as braids 
 
 Dim coral caves that have no name. 
 
INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 19 
 XVII. 
 
 Draw from thine eyes the veil which hides 
 
 Ideal vision s beckonings ; 
 Behold the beauty which abides 
 
 Beneath the common-place of things : 
 No brook within the woodland then 
 
 But shows its sparkling god to thee ; 
 
 Upon the ancient hills no tree 
 
 Whose whispering spirit thou shalt not see, 
 Fairer than children born of men. 
 
 Refine thy flesh, which never hears 
 
 The inner music of all things, 
 The deaf flesh, from thy spirit s ears, 
 
 And list the vaster voice that sings 
 With pregnant lips unto the Earth : 
 
 Mornings, who shout from sky to sky 
 
 God s psalms to which the eves reply 
 
 The everlasting heavens that cry 
 The visible truths of death and birth. 
 
20 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 XVIII. 
 
 The flowers of the fall I seek : 
 The golden aster, like a gauze 
 Of gold, beneath the nodding haws, 
 
 Or making gay each tangled creek ; 
 
 The hairy, small herb-Robert, lost, 
 
 Yet seen, among the weeds which crush 
 Or crowd it, with its bluish blush ; 
 
 Its rough, low stalk stung red with frost. 
 
 Around the rail-fence, climbing up, 
 
 The nightshade hangs rich berries down,- 
 Clusters of cochineal, that drown 
 
 The flowering bind-weed s pendant cup : 
 
 And where the boggy bottom sets 
 Its burs as breastworks and as tents, 
 Like bivouacking regiments, 
 
 The cat-tails lift their bayonets. 
 
 From amaranth in tree and flower 
 To asphodel in weed and bloom 
 The season swings a magic loom 
 
INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 21 
 
 Of sun and mist from hour to hour : 
 In its wide warp it weaves the dyes 
 
 Of morning s brilliant blue and gray ; 
 
 And crimson through the weft of day 
 Flings the wild woof of evening skies. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 What intimations made them wise, 
 
 The mournful pine, the mighty beech ? 
 Some strange and esoteric speech 
 
 (Communicated from the skies 
 
 In secret symbols) that invokes 
 
 The boles which sleep within the seeds, 
 And out of narrow darkness leads 
 
 The vast assemblies of the oaks. 
 
 Within his knowledge what one reads 
 The poems written by the flowers ? 
 The sermons, past all speech that s ours, 
 
 Preached in the gospel of the weeds ? 
 
 Thou eloquence of coloring ! 
 
22 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 Oh, thoughts of syllabled perfume ! 
 Oh, beauty uttered into bloom ! 
 Thou utterance named blossoming ! 
 
 xx. 
 
 What time the great lobelia fills 
 
 The wildwood with young hopes of spring- 
 And bluets, scattered o er the hills, 
 
 Bloom, starry-sown, through everything 
 
 My fancy takes me wandering, 
 Looking from wizard window-sills. 
 
 In lavender lights, which sleep among 
 The ferns, my heart is at a loss 
 
 To know the love that leads along 
 Down magic ways of faery moss 
 A brook, perhaps, will call across, 
 
 An unseen bluebird burst in song. 
 
 And so to reach the land, which lies 
 
 Yon side the world, we just can see ; 
 Wherein the Elfland cities rise, 
 
INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 2$ 
 
 Faint haunts of musk and melody ; 
 Wherein the singing-bird and bee, 
 And congregated flowers grow wise. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 Upon the Earth what hints are rife 
 
 Of life when change hath left us still ! 
 
 When death within the flesh doth kill 
 All recollection that was life ! 
 
 What hints, which tell us not alone 
 Immortal is the spirit, for 
 Flesh too, corruption can but mar, 
 
 The incorruptible puts on : 
 
 The blood shall fill a part that s higher 
 
 Of color, and pervade all flowers ; 
 
 The brain inform the twinkling hours 
 With dreams of resurrected fire ; 
 
 The heart perform the function of 
 A fragrance ; and the countenance 
 Lend new expression to, perchance, 
 
 The face of beauty that we love, 
 
24 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 XXII. 
 
 Oh, joy, to walk the way which goes 
 
 Through woods of sweet-gum and of beech ! 
 
 Where, like a ruby left in reach, 
 The berry of the dog-wood glows : 
 
 Or where the bristling hillsides mass, 
 
 Twixt belts of tawny sassafras, 
 Brown shocks of corn in wigwam rows ! 
 
 Where, in the hazy morning, runs 
 
 The stony branch that pools and drips, 
 The red-haws and the wild-rose hips 
 
 Are strewn like pebbles ; and the sun s 
 Own gold seems captured by the weeds ; 
 To see, through scintillating seeds, 
 
 The hunters steal with glimmering guns ! 
 
 Oh, joy, to go the path which lies 
 
 Through woodlands where the oaks are tall ! 
 
 Beneath the misty moon of fall, 
 Whose ghostly girdle prophesies 
 
 A morn wind-swept and gray with rain ; 
 
INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 2$ 
 
 When, o er the lonely, leafy lane, 
 The night-bird, like a dead leaf, flies ! 
 
 To stand within the dewy ring 
 
 Where pale death smites the boneset blooms, 
 And everlasting s flowers, and plumes 
 
 Of mint, with aromatic wing ! 
 
 And hear the creek, whose sobbing seems 
 A wild-man murmuring in his dreams, 
 
 And insect violins that sing ! 
 
 Or where the dim persimmon-tree 
 
 Wastes on the path its frosty fruit, 
 
 And in its top the owl doth hoot 
 Beneath the moon and mist, to see 
 
 The outcast Year come, Hagar-wise, 
 
 With far-off, melancholy eyes, 
 And lips that thirst for sympathy ! 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 Along my mind flies suddenly 
 
 A wildwood thought that will not die, 
 
26 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 That makes me brother to the bee, 
 And kindred to the butterfly : 
 
 A thought, such as gives perfume to 
 The blushes of the bramble-rose, 
 And, fixed in quivering crystal, glows 
 
 A captive in the prismed dew. 
 
 It leads the feet no certain way, 
 
 No frequent path of human feet ; 
 Its wild eyes follow me all day, 
 
 All day I hear its wild heart beat : 
 And in the night it sings and sighs 
 
 The songs the winds and waters love ; 
 
 Its wild heart lying tranced above, 
 And tranced the wildness of its eyes. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 With eyes regardless of their tears 
 
 I look upon the twilight fields : 
 
 The stars swing down their shimmering shields, 
 And fill the phalanx of their spears. 
 I can not see, I only know 
 
INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 2/ 
 
 A flower dies beneath my feet ; 
 The fragrance of its death is sweet 
 And bitter as my heart s own woe. 
 
 With thoughts which find not what they seek 
 I question Earth and Heaven, and find 
 That they are dark and I am blind, 
 
 And in my blindness very weak. 
 
 I do not know, I only feel 
 
 Behind all death a purpose stands, 
 With hallowed and magnetic hands, 
 
 Beneficent and strong to heal. 
 
 xxv. 
 
 These too shall tell me what my heart, 
 
 And what my soul desireth : 
 
 The flowers, that bloom serene for death, 
 The stars, that know no mortal part. 
 One shall inspire my heart with acts 
 
 Of life so that the death responds ; 
 One to the soul breathe higher facts 
 
 Of death that shall annul such bonds. 
 
28 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 Sufficient for my love these terms, 
 Beyond my understanding s scope : 
 I merely know all life must grope 
 
 Not downward from its darkling germs. 
 
 Sufficient for my faith is such : 
 
 That, in the narrow night which binds 
 
 The seed, its life shall feel in touch 
 With light above it seeks and finds. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 Beyond the violet-colored hill 
 The golden-deepened daffodil 
 Of dusk bloomed out with thrill on thrill : 
 And, drifting west, the crescent moon 
 Gleamed like a sword of Scanderoon 
 A satrap dropped on floors of gold ; 
 Near which, one loosened gem that rolled 
 Out of the jewelled scimitar, 
 The evening star. 
 
 Behind the trees, where, darkly deep 
 As indigo, the shadows sleep, 
 
INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 2Q 
 
 As if the Titan world would heap 
 A throne with purple for its god, 
 Whose pomp comes with vermilion shod, 
 The west, thwart which the wild-ducks fly, 
 Burns, richer than the orient dye 
 Phoenician vessels brought from Tyre, 
 With carmine fire. 
 
 Above black hills the heavens are gray. 
 The sear, bleak forests sound and sway. 
 The ashen rain-clouds roll this way. 
 The green grig in the withered weeds 
 Sings, and the wild snipe seeks the reeds. 
 With hurling winds, that moan and wail 
 Like Demon-huntsmen, dark with hail 
 And rain, which blots the cabin s light, 
 Comes on the night. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 There is a rushing in the woods, 
 The murmur-haunted solitudes, 
 
 When night comes in with winds that sweep 
 
3o INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 The wild rain from the hills ; and reap 
 
 The roaring harvest of the leaves 
 
 With sounding scythes Death stalks behind 
 And Desolation, fierce and blind, 
 
 Heaping the storm s tumultuous sheaves. 
 
 There is a sighing in the woods, 
 
 The rocks of hill-topped solitudes, 
 
 When on the night, the winds have strewn 
 With crowding clouds, the stormy moon 
 
 Bursts like a herald shouting Cease ! 
 Through darkness o er a battle-field 
 Of Hell ; the splendor of his shield 
 
 Inscribed with silence and with peace. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 The storm, that makes the sky its own, 
 And smites its spirit through Earth s nerves, 
 And, like an instrument which serves 
 
 High purposes to us unknown 
 
 Of song which knows not that it sings, 
 Itself is all majestic things 
 
INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 3! 
 
 Imagination forms or feels ; 
 Itself all wonders it reveals 
 
 To thought, which knows but semblances 
 
 Of such concealed realities. 
 
 The star, that flames through storm and crowds 
 An instant with its utterance 
 Of silence and serene romance, 
 
 And glides again into the clouds, 
 
 Shone for some present end, and filled 
 A moment s need as Heaven willed : 
 
 A thought, some dreamer labored for, 
 
 Immaculate as is a star ; 
 
 A hope, some weary watcher read 
 Pale in the loved face of his dead. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 Towards evening, where the sweet-gum flung 
 Its thorny balls among the weeds, 
 And where the milkweed s sleepy seeds, 
 
 A fairy Feast of Lanterns, swung ; 
 The crickets tuned a plaintive lyre, 
 
32 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 And o er the hills the sunset hung 
 
 A purple parchment scrawled with fire. 
 
 From silver-blue to amethyst 
 
 The shadows broadened in the vale ; 
 
 And, belt by belt, the pearly pale 
 Aladdin fabric of the mist 
 
 Stretched its vague exhalation far ; 
 A jewel on an Afrit s wrist, 
 
 One star scarred sunset s cinnabar. 
 
 Then night drew near, as when, alone, 
 
 The heart and soul grow intimate ; 
 
 And on the hills the twilight sate 
 With shadows, whose wild robes were sown 
 
 With dreams and whispers dreams, that led 
 The heart once with love s monotone, 
 
 Searching among the living dead. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 Of Life and of Eternity 
 
 These are the dreams which came to me : 
 
 The one : A whitened whirl of sea ; 
 
INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 33 
 
 A gallows beetling through the rains, 
 And, tossing in its rusty chains, 
 
 A skeleton on the gallows-tree : 
 Gaunt ravens roost above or tear 
 Long strips from shrivelled skin and hair : 
 
 A ship hurls pounding on the rocks : 
 
 Wild minute-guns boom through the spume 
 And crashing surf : out of the gloom 
 
 The strangled dead leers down and mocks. 
 
 An incorporeal solitude 
 
 Which darkness out of darkness hewed, 
 The other dream : enormous deeps 
 Of naught, where ancient Silence sleeps, 
 
 The eldest of Heav n s Titan brood : 
 In unilluminated night, 
 Vast and insufferable white 
 
 A summit soars : its light, which dyes 
 Not darkness, of itself is born : 
 Around its splendor, as in scorn, 
 
 Night s dark, defiant radiance lies. 
 
 3 
 
34 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 XXXI. 
 
 Past midnight, gathering from the west, 
 With rolling rain the storm came on, 
 And tore and tossed until the dawn, 
 Like some dark demon of unrest : 
 
 The stairways creaked ; the chimneys 
 
 boomed ; 
 
 I heard the wild leaves blown about 
 The windy windows ; and the shout 
 Of forests that the storm had doomed. 
 
 I listened, and remembered how 
 
 On yesterday I went alone 
 
 A sunlit path through fields o ergrown 
 With sumach brakes, turned crimson now ; 
 
 Where asters strung blue pearls and white 
 Beside the golden-rod s soft ruff ; 
 The groundsel, silvery puff on puff, 
 
 Danced many a twinkling witch s-light. 
 
 Her joy the Autumn uttered so 
 
 To skies where gold and azure blent ; 
 
INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 35 
 
 Now storm is the embodiment 
 Of all her utterance of woe : 
 
 The two within me so decide 
 That of the two my mind partakes, 
 As one, who walks asleep, awakes, 
 
 Walks on and thinks, " To-night I died. 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 What sympathies of Heaven and Earth 
 
 The human ego enters in ! 
 
 The universal stain of sin 
 Which qualifies this from its birth 
 Denying it their highest worth. 
 
 There is a parallel of kin 
 Twixt earth and man, that dignifies 
 Endeavor with such sympathies. 
 
 The all mysterious wisdom waits 
 In mountain, wood and waterfall, 
 Sky, rock and sea, to hear the call 
 
 Of something firmer than the Fates 
 
 Deep in the soul it elevates ; 
 
36 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 And to the splendor of the All 
 Advances, through the night s immense, 
 The spirit of experience. 
 
 So think I now while, long and loud, 
 The wind its maniac music beats, 
 And storm a madman s song repeats 
 
 To echoes in the rushing cloud ; 
 
 While all the world to wrath is vowed, 
 No starlight triumphs or defeats 
 
 The darkness and the rain that raves 
 
 Above the all-unheeding graves. 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 All night the rain-gusts shook the leaves 
 Around my window ; and the blast 
 Rumbled the flickering flue, and fast 
 
 The storm streamed from the dripping eaves. 
 
 As if neath skies gone mad with fear 
 The witches sabboth galloped past, 
 
 The forests leapt like startled deer. 
 
INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 37 
 
 All night I heard the sweeping sleet ; 
 
 And when the morning came, as slow 
 
 As pale affliction, with the woe 
 Of all the world dragged at her feet, 
 No spear of purple shattered through 
 
 The dark gray of the east ; no bow, 
 Whose golden arrows cleft the blue. 
 
 But rain, that whipped the windows ; filled 
 The spouts with rushing ; and around 
 The garden stamped, and sowed the ground 
 
 With limbs and leaves ; the wood-pool filled 
 
 With overgurgling. Bleak and cold 
 
 The fields looked, where the foot-path wound 
 
 Through teasel and bur-marigold. . . . 
 
 There is a kindness in such days 
 Of gloom, that doth console regret 
 With sympathy of tears which wet 
 
 Old eyes that watch the back-log blaze 
 
 A kindness, alien to the deep 
 Glad blue of sunny days that let 
 
 No thought in of the sad who weep. 
 
38 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 XXXIV. 
 
 This dawn, through which the Autumn glowers,- 
 As might a face within our sleep, 
 With coffined eyes that can not weep, 
 
 And dead brows bound with withered flowers, 
 
 Is sunset to some sister land ; 
 A land of ruins and of palms ; 
 Rich sunset, crimson with long calms, 
 Whose burning belt low mountains bar, 
 
 That sees some brown Rebecca stand 
 
 Beside a well the camel band 
 Winds down to neath the evening-star. 
 
 O sunset, sister to this dawn ! 
 
 O dawn, whose face is turned away ! 
 
 Who gazest not upon this day 
 But back upon the day that s gone ! 
 Enamoured so of loveliness, 
 
 The retrospect of what thou wast, 
 
 Oh, to thyself the present trust ! 
 
 And as thy past make beautiful 
 
INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 39 
 
 With hues, that never can grow less ! 
 Waiting thy pleasure to express 
 
 New beauty, lest the world grow dull ! 
 
 xxxv. 
 
 At day-break from the woodland come 
 Echoes of hunting ; or the chop 
 
 Of some far woodman s axe, that cleaves 
 The tingling oak, whose russet leaves 
 Drop drowsy where the white chips drop : 
 The air is fragrant with the loam, 
 
 Where, through the mists of steaming gold, 
 The sudden sun strikes fold on fold. 
 
 Out of the window, filmed with fog, 
 I look into the wreck which was 
 
 The kitchen-garden, drenched with rain ; 
 Among the death I mark again 
 One pink convolvulus that draws 
 A gray vignette along a log, 
 
 With pencilled tendrils washed and wan 
 The garden-legend s colophon. 
 
4O INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 XXXVI. 
 
 More storm than calm, less gold than gray, 
 
 Along the years our lives must tread, 
 Makes sad the scenes around our way, 
 Makes grave the heavens overhead : 
 
 For on Life s storied page, behold, 
 Reflections of Earth s countless dead ! 
 The neutral tint Time s fingers lay 
 Around a tale that s never told. 
 
 Time writes with sunshine less than rain, 
 
 With starlight less than mist, the scroll 
 A thousand memories of pain 
 To one of joy of his own soul : 
 The golden hues of life occur 
 In his dim palimpsest, whose whole 
 Death scrawls with dusty lines again, 
 Making the scroll one leaden blur. 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 Down in the woods a sorcerer, 
 
 Out of rank rain and death, distills, 
 
INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 41 
 
 Through chill alembics of the air, 
 Aromas that brood everywhere 
 
 Among the dingles of the hills : 
 
 The bitter myrrh of dead leaves fills 
 Wet valleys, where the gaunt weeds bleach, 
 
 With dreamy scents of wood decay ; 
 
 As if a spirit all the day 
 Sat breathing softly neath the beech. 
 
 What other eyes shall see her flit, 
 
 The white witch of the wild perfumes, 
 Among her sleepy owls, that sit, 
 A fluffy white, in crescent-lit 
 
 Lost glens and opalescent glooms ? 
 
 Where for her magic buds and blooms 
 Mysterious perfumes, while she stands, 
 
 A fragrant radiance, summoning 
 
 The eery odors that take wing, 
 Like bubbles, from her dewy hands. 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 With leagues of fog, which showed the sun 
 An agate-red without a ray, 
 
42 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 And drowned the world in ghostly gray, 
 The chill, autumnal day begun : 
 A phantom in the mist, a run 
 
 Foamed over phantom ledges lone 
 Of forest that seemed far away, 
 A forest of enchanted stone. 
 
 With horses saffron to the knees 
 
 A country cart drove through the fog ; 
 Its creaking wheels grown one great clog 
 Of clay, and clanking swingle-trees ; 
 Its smothered rumble did not cease 
 
 Till hidden in the woodland mist, 
 Where, leaning on his axe and log, 
 The muffled woodman blew his fist. 
 
 Another world I wander in 
 
 Of unlaid ghosts and dreams unfled ; 
 
 A twilight world of drowsyhead 
 And mystery, built figment-thin 
 Between the worlds of death and sin ; 
 
 Where dim and vague and incomplete 
 
INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 43 
 
 And substance less seem things not dead, 
 And sorrowful as sadly sweet. 
 
 xxxix. 
 
 Among the woods they call to me 
 The lights that lie on rock and stream ; 
 
 Chaste voices of such ecstasy 
 
 As walks with hushed lips through a dream 
 
 They stand in nimbused essences, 
 Or flash with glittering limbs across 
 Their golden shadows on the moss, 
 
 Or slip in silver through the trees. 
 
 What love can give the heart in me 
 
 More hope and exaltation than 
 The hand of light that tips the tree 
 
 And calls me from the world of man ? 
 That reaches foamy fingers through 
 
 The broken ripple, and denies 
 
 No sparkling speech of fearless eyes, 
 Nor lips that sing and still pursue ? 
 
44 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 XL. 
 
 Oh, bright the day, and calm and cool 
 With clouds, like cotton-fields that swoon 
 Beneath the silver summer moon ; 
 
 And, quiet as a forest pool, 
 
 Where Autumn stoops to comb her locks, 
 And strews with rainbow leaves and roon, 
 
 The shadows rest among the rocks. 
 
 The sun pours airy amber on 
 
 The withered wood-ways, where the late 
 
 Green-crickets oboes vibrate ; 
 And, fainter than the lines of dawn, 
 The fields shine labyrinthed with rays, 
 
 With gossamers, that figurate 
 Bright figments of the feverish days. 
 
 Beyond the yarrow s meekness now, 
 Wood-sorrel s lowliness, the shy 
 Hepatica s humility, 
 
 The Year hath grown : makes brave her brow 
 
INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 4$ 
 
 With crowning crimson of the lands, 
 And robes her limbs in sunset dye, 
 And by the lonely waters stands. 
 
 XLI. 
 
 Pure thought-creations of the mind, 
 Within the circle of the soul, 
 The emanations that control 
 Life to its God-predestined goal, 
 
 Are spirit shapes no flesh can bind : 
 Within the soul desire ordains 
 Achievements which the will obtains ; 
 
 And far above us, on before, 
 
 Our thoughts a beautiful people soar, 
 To wait us on celestial plains. 
 
 So Nature pours her thoughts in forms 
 
 Realities we move among 
 
 Of fragrance, color, and of song ; 
 
 Sense-emanations which belong, 
 Invisible, to spiritual charms ; 
 
 The sensuous substance of her thought 
 
46 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 From immaterial matter wrought 
 Matter, which death can not annul, 
 That constitutes the Beautiful, 
 
 And dead, repeats itself from naught. 
 
 XLII. 
 
 Give me the streams ! which counterfeit 
 The starlight of autumnal skies ; 
 
 The silent, shadowy waters, lit 
 With fire like a woman s eyes : 
 
 Slow waters which, in autumn, glass 
 
 The scarlet-strewn and golden grass, 
 And drink the sunset s tawny dyes. 
 
 Give me the pools ! which lie among 
 
 The centuried forests : give me those 
 Deep, dim, and sad as shadows hung 
 
 Dark neath the sunset s sombre rose ; 
 Pale pools, in whose vague mirrors look- 
 Like ragged gypsies round a book 
 Of magic trees in wild repose. 
 
INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 4? 
 
 No quiet thing or innocent 
 
 Of water, earth, or air shall please 
 
 My soul now : but the violent 
 Between the sunset and the trees : 
 
 The fierce, the splendid and intense, 
 
 That love matures in innocence, 
 Like awful music, give me these. 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 As Nature in herself resolves 
 All parts of beauty to one whole, 
 
 And from the perfect whole evolves 
 The high ideas that control 
 
 Advancement, till the time be ripe 
 
 To doff disguise and, type by type, 
 Reveal the emanated soul : 
 
 So should the Beautiful in man 
 Evolve the best in him ; to be 
 
 The lofty purpose life began 
 
 For ends which only Heaven shall see 
 
48 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 The absolute, that sees how thought 
 Its high ideal s shape hath wrought 
 To be its far affinity. 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 I hold them here ; they are no less ; 
 I see them still the changeful grays 
 Of threatening skies above the haze 
 My hills ! that roll long, murmuring miles 
 
 Of savage-painted wilderness, 
 
 On which the saddened sunlight smiles ; 
 Or, like a fallen- angel s frown 
 Severe beneath a burning crown 
 
 Through sombre silvers, that oppress 
 With clouds its glory, rushes down. 
 
 I hear the coming storm again ; 
 
 Again behold the streaming clouds ; 
 The autumn wind drives down and crowds 
 Wild, sibylline voices through the leaves, 
 And whispering octaves of the rain ; 
 A wilder wind, vibrating, heaves 
 
INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 49 
 
 God s music through the rolling woods 
 Upon my soul the grandeur broods 
 Like some archangel s trumpet strain, 
 Or organ-pomp that sweeps all moods. 
 
 XLV. 
 
 Such circumstance of passionate praise 
 Hath no religion ; and the creeds 
 
 No pomp of worship or of grace 
 
 Like Nature s, standing face to face 
 With God, whose inmost thought she reads : 
 No multitude of words she needs, 
 
 Since all her worship is one word 
 
 Of love, like that creation heard. 
 
 God leaves progression in her care : 
 Through her it must materialize 
 
 Our mother ! with strong lips of prayer, 
 
 Majestic-browed, with hands that bare 
 Immortal fire from the skies : 
 Who looks with no evasive eyes 
 
 Through life, and, smiling, sees beneath 
 
 The beautiful, dark eyes of death. 
 
5O INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 XLVI. 
 
 Between the sunset and the stars 
 
 Long clouds lie as the sachems loom, 
 In war-paint and the eagle plume, 
 
 Among their wampumed warriors, 
 
 When council fires burn red and set 
 On stoic cheeks the battle bloom, 
 
 Around the smoking calumet. 
 
 Beneath the stars and hunter s-moon 
 
 The frost spreads ghosts of pearls, that glance 
 Like goblin jewels in the dance 
 
 Which whirls on fairied hills of June : 
 
 The night is calm ; no luminous veil 
 Conceals the spirit utterance 
 
 Of her dark beauty, pure and pale. 
 
 XLVII. 
 
 I sat alone with song and sleep, 
 
 And in the singing silence heard 
 The darkness draw from out the deep. 
 
INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. $] 
 
 With star on star, like word on word : 
 A sound of twilight and swift shades 
 
 Materializing into Night, 
 
 Who hears the breaking waves of light, 
 And towards the shores of Morning wades. 
 
 I sat alone with dawn and death, 
 
 And in my waking vision saw 
 The form of silence, like a breath 
 
 Of bodiless beauty and of awe, 
 Whose sibyl eyes said unto me 
 
 The things the sealed lips would not word, 
 
 That eons of the stars record 
 In volumes of eternity. 
 
 XLVIII. 
 
 The dead gold of the marybud, 
 The dusky, tarnished orange-red 
 Of zinnias, fire the flower-bed, 
 
 Like frosty autumn gleams that scud 
 
 The darkening dusks and gradual dawns 
 Above the mist-enveloped lawns. 
 
52 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 With tired eyes, and heart grown grave, 
 And thoughts more listless than the night, 
 I watch the dwindling of the light, 
 
 And hear the rising night-winds rave, 
 As one might hear, when half-asleep, 
 Another self make moan and weep. 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 Behold, the winds have speech and speak ! 
 
 The stars of heaven are eloquent ! 
 A voice within us bids us seek 
 
 The word the flowers write with scent : 
 
 The spiritual encouragement 
 Of beauty that the burning scrolls 
 Of eve and morning give our souls. 
 
 There is one language of the mart ; 
 Another of the rocks and trees : 
 
 Unrest and greed is this one s heart ; 
 The heart of that is rest and peace : 
 Within our souls we know of these ; 
 
INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 53 
 
 They lead us by the myths we love, 
 Yet never see and know not of. 
 
 L. 
 
 When thorn-tree copses still were bare 
 
 And black along the brawling brook ; 
 
 When catkined willows blurred and shook 
 Great tawny tangles in the air ; 
 
 In bottom-lands, the first thaw makes 
 An oozy bog, beneath the trees, 
 
 Prophetic of the spring that wakes, 
 Sang the sonorous Hylodes. 
 
 Now when wild winds have stripped the thorn, 
 
 And strewn with leaves the forest creek ; 
 
 Now when the woods look brown and bleak, 
 And webs are frosty white at morn ; 
 
 At night beneath the spectral sky, 
 A far foreboding cry I hear 
 
 The wild-fowl calling as they fly ? 
 Or vague voice of the dying year ? 
 
54 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 LI. 
 
 Night, who within heaven s uttermost 
 Dark walls uncloses shadowy gates, 
 Beyond the Spirit of Light she hates, 
 
 Speeds like a ghost before a ghost 
 
 Upon the twilight-haunted coast 
 Of death between the seas of sleep : 
 
 Her lips are dumb with awe that hears ; 
 And in her eyes, that never weep, 
 
 Is anguish of eternal tears. 
 
 Out of the terrible gulfs of God 
 Into God s awful deeps she goes, 
 Revealing in heaven s golden glows 
 
 The ways her footsteps tread and trod 
 
 From period to period : 
 
 Her lips are still for she hath heard 
 
 God s voice that moves the universe : 
 Her eyes are sad beyond the word 
 
 The eyes of vastness gazed in hers. 
 
INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 55 
 LII. 
 
 And still to hold the heart at tryst 
 When chestnuts hiss among the coals, 
 The hallowed evening near All Souls, 
 
 When all the night is moon and mist, 
 And all the world is mystery. 
 
 To dream lips kissed that death hath kissed ; 
 Eyes seen no eyes can ever see ; 
 And love returned long lost to thee ! 
 
 To hear the weird wind s velvet glove 
 
 Flutter the window : or the knob 
 
 Of some dark door turn, with a sob 
 As when love comes to murder love 
 
 And steals with horror through the room : 
 Or now the iron gauntlet of 
 
 The gust a knight, who comes with gloom 
 
 To meet his lady by her tomb. 
 
 So fancy takes the mind, and paints 
 The darkness with eidolon light, 
 
56 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 And writes the dead s romance in white, 
 On the dim Evening of All Saints : 
 
 Unheard the hissing nuts ; the clink 
 Of falling coals, whose shadow faints, 
 
 A spectre risen on memory s brink, 
 
 Around us where we sit and think. 
 
 Lin. 
 
 No thing occult of Heaven or Earth, 
 
 Or influence of such, I feel 
 But hath a meaning and a worth 
 
 God in His wisdom doth conceal : 
 Reflections of another birth, 
 
 Existent with and kin to ours, 
 
 Announcing through supernal powers 
 Facts of a world it would reveal. 
 
 In Nature dost perceive it, too, 
 
 This other life thou canst not see : 
 
 A spirit sparkles in the dew, 
 
 The trees have tongues which speak to thee 
 
 That Earth is green and Heaven, blue, 
 
INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 57 
 
 The sight alone may satisfy ; 
 The soul sees with a different eye 
 The meaning neath the mystery. 
 
 LIV. 
 
 The shadow of uncertain things 
 And all unearthly whisperings, 
 The premonition pale of blight, 
 Leans from the sepulchre of night ; 
 And on the Earth fall shadowings, 
 
 And prophesies of near decay ; 
 And, lovelier than a dead delight, 
 The starlit skies of glittering gray. 
 
 Still shall the Season claim and keep 
 Her wild-girl beauty ; doubly deep 
 The purport of her dreams shall rise 
 Out of her heart into her eyes, 
 Till very dreaming makes her sleep ; 
 
 And death, with pale, pure lips and arms, 
 Shall touch her from the frosty skies, 
 Making a memory of her charms. 
 
58 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 LV. 
 
 Sometime shall Beauty hide no more 
 The chaste conceptions she conceives 
 Beneath the abstract veil she weaves 
 
 Before her face the few adore ; 
 The self-denying few, who long 
 Live lofty lives of art and song, 
 
 And, dying, leave the world less poor. 
 
 No more are these alone when she, 
 From the subjective world she rules, 
 Confronts the falsehood of the schools 
 
 With her high front of purity ; 
 And on the dark and general way 
 Lets fall her individual ray 
 
 That low as well as high may see. 
 
 LVI. 
 
 The ghost of what was loveliness 
 Sits in the waning woods, with bare 
 And bleeding feet, and wintry hair, 
 
INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 59 
 
 And brows the thorns of care distress ; 
 
 She makes a comfort of despair, 
 And, Rachel-like, with eyes wept red, 
 Refuses to be comforted. 
 
 To funeral torches for the Year, 
 
 With tree by tree, the forests turned ; 
 Then, fiery coals in ashes, burned 
 
 A few last leaves among the sere ; 
 
 Where, robed with purple pomp, she yearned 
 
 To die, like some fair queen ; and died, 
 
 Crowned with magnificence and pride. 
 
 LVII. 
 
 She meets us with impressive hands 
 
 And eyes of earnest emphasis 
 Between the known and unknown lands, 
 
 And beautifies us with her kiss, 
 This spirit of the solitude 
 Named Meditation ; thought-imbued, 
 
 On whom all beauty ministers ; 
 
60 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 Whose silent, dreaming worshippers 
 Lay unresisting hands in hers, 
 Knowing their hearts are understood. 
 
 The holy harp she holds and smites 
 Was tuned among concordant spheres ; 
 
 The heavenly pen with which she writes 
 Was dipped in angel smiles and tears : 
 
 Between her eyebrows and her eyes 
 
 The starry stamp of silence lies ; 
 
 Between her symboled lips and tongue, 
 The song the stars of morning sung : 
 To this her heavenly harp is strung, 
 
 In that her holy pen is wise. 
 
 LVIII. 
 
 Again the night is wild with rain ; 
 
 Again distracted with the gale ; 
 
 Upon the hills I hear a wail 
 Of lamentation and of pain, 
 
 As when, on some high burial-place, 
 
INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 6 1 
 
 Moaning among the windy graves, 
 The Indian squaws lament the braves, 
 Who fell in battle for their race. 
 
 Another day of storm shall dawn 
 
 Within the east ; and, darkly lit, 
 
 Its brows of stern abstraction knit, 
 Absorbed in moody thought, pass on. 
 
 Bear not too hard, is all I ask, 
 Upon the hearts that toil and yearn ! 
 O despotism of days, that spurn 
 
 All gladness, with your frowning mask ! 
 
 LIX. 
 
 No wind is this which cries forlorn 
 Around the hilltops and the woods ! 
 Earth, weary with her multitudes 
 
 Of dead, despairing of the morn, 
 Calls through illimitable night 
 
 The wailing words no thing may know : 
 Deep in her memory-haunted sight 
 
62 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 Sleeps no remembrance of delight, 
 But death and everlasting woe. 
 
 No wind ! a voice whose sense is form ; 
 
 A form whose sense is but a sound ; 
 
 That smites the constant skies around, 
 And shakes the steadfast hills with storm : 
 
 Along life s desolate deep it cries 
 The words death s sterile lips must learn 
 
 From Law, the Law that never dies 
 
 Such utterless wild speech as sighs 
 In stone and cinerary urn. 
 
 LX. 
 
 I heard the wind, before the morn 
 
 Stretched gaunt, gray fingers at my pane, 
 Drive clouds down, a dark dragon train ; 
 
 Its iron visor closed, a horn 
 Of steel from out the north it wound. 
 
 No morn like yesterday s ! whose mouth, 
 
 A cool carnation, from the south 
 
INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 63 
 
 Breathed through a golden reed the sound 
 Of days that drop sweet gold upon 
 Melodious silver floors of dawn. 
 
 And all of yesterday is lost 
 
 And swallowed in to-day s wild light 
 
 The birth deformed of day and night, 
 The illegitimate, who cost 
 
 Its mother secret tears and sighs ; 
 Unlovely since unloved ; and chilled 
 With sorrows and the shame that filled 
 
 Its parents love ; which was not wise 
 In passion as that day and night 
 Who love, and marry light to light 
 
 LXI. 
 
 We know not of one mood that s hers, 
 Or glad or grave, which hath not drawn 
 
 Its source from God s blue universe, 
 As th hours draw the day from dawn 
 
 Nature s ! who holds us quietly 
 
64 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 But earnestly, as by a spell, 
 Whose contact with us seems to be 
 Actual and yet intangible. 
 
 In us she thus asserts her claims 
 
 Of kinship and divine control ; 
 God-teacher of exalted aims, 
 
 The high consents of star and soul : 
 Imperfectly man sees and feels, 
 
 Through earthly mediums of his fate, 
 The premonitions she reveals 
 
 For issues that shall elevate. 
 
 LXII. 
 
 Down through the dark, indignant trees, 
 
 On indistinguishable wings 
 
 Of storm, the wind of evening swings ; 
 Before its insane anger flees 
 
 The mad leaf and the broken bough : 
 There is a rushing, as when seas 
 
 Of thunder beat an iron prow 
 
INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 65 
 
 On reefs of wrath and roaring wreck : 
 Mid stormy leaves, a hurrying speck 
 Of flickering blackness, driven by 
 The mad bats whirl along the sky. 
 
 Part of the sadness of such eves, 
 
 A melancholy visible 
 
 Within the forest s wizard spell 
 A gaunt girl stands among the leaves, 
 
 The night-wind in her dolorous dress : 
 Symbolic of the life that grieves, 
 
 The toil that patience makes not less, 
 Her load of fallen faggots there. 
 A wilder shadow sweeps the air ; 
 She hears the bleak, bewildered hum 
 Of woods, and waits, like grief struck dumb. 
 
 LXIII. 
 
 No songs but what are sorrowful 
 
 And sweet in pensive notes and words, 
 Shall fill my heart, as singing birds 
 
 Might build a nest within a skull. . . . 
 
66 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 The nunlike days, in stoles of white, 
 Chant requiems for the dying Year ; 
 The monklike nights about her bier, 
 In cowls of black, with lights that blear, 
 
 The service for the dead recite. 
 
 Into my soul the litanies 
 
 Of life and death strike golden bars ; 
 
 I hear the far, responding stars, 
 That voice the multiplying skies, 
 Reverberate from cause to cause 
 
 Results that terminate in man ; 
 
 From world to world, the rounding plan 
 
 Of change, that circumstance began, 
 Of which both life and death are laws. 
 
 LXIV. 
 
 No sunlight strews with gold the plain ; 
 
 No moonlight stains the hill with white ; 
 Clouds, sullen with the undropped rain, 
 
 And motionless with unspent spite, 
 Dome deep with uninvaded gray 
 
INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 67 
 
 The dull, ignoble term of day, 
 The duller ultimate of night. 
 
 Yea, ev n the mad, marauding Wind, 
 
 Who whipped his wild steeds east and west, 
 
 Whose whirlwind wheels rolled down and dinned 
 Along the booming forest s crest, 
 
 Lies dead upon his mountains, where 
 His sister Breezes beat the breast, 
 
 Sighing through their unshaken hair. 
 
 LXV. 
 
 The griefs of Nature like her joys 
 Are placid and yet passionate ; 
 These, in her heart which knows no hate, 
 
 She for the beautiful employs. . . . 
 
 Behold how thoughts of happiness 
 
 Rebuke the tears on sorrow s face ! 
 
 Upon the brow of joy no less 
 
 How grief restrains with seriousness ! 
 
 Each to the other lending grace. 
 
68 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 Oh, tenderness of grief that knows 
 
 Some happiness still lies before ! 
 
 That for the rose which blooms no more 
 Shall bloom a no less perfect rose ! 
 Oh, pensiveness of joy that takes 
 
 Sweet dignity from grief that died ! 
 Remembering, though the morning shakes 
 Her bright locks from blue eyes and wakes, 
 
 Night sleeps on the same mountain side ! 
 
 LXVI. 
 
 What sorcery do the woods conceal 
 
 Desired by the desperate days ? 
 
 With feet of fog and hands of haze 
 They search the crumbled woods and steal 
 With mutt rings, gaunt as hags who deal 
 
 In witchcraft, where the dark bough sways, 
 And, venerable, with staff a-slant, 
 Death sits like some old mendicant. 
 
 Around me all s despondency, 
 
 Like darkness on th unwilling world ; 
 
INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 69 
 
 A twilight sadness held and hurled 
 With sobbing silence over me : 
 I feel the thorns no man shall see, 
 
 The snake which strikes where none is curled 
 Oh, melancholy of the soul 
 That struggles and attains no goal ! 
 
 The song-birds ? are they flown away ? 
 
 The song-birds of the summer-time, 
 That sang their souls into the day, 
 
 And set the laughing days to rhyme ? 
 No catbird scatters through the hush 
 
 The sparkling crystals of its song ; 
 Within the woods no hermit-thrush 
 
 Trails an enchanted flute along, 
 A sweet assertion of the hush. 
 
 All day the crows fly cawing past ; 
 
 The acorns drop ; the forests scowl : 
 At night I hear the bitter blast 
 
 Hoot with the hooting of the owl. 
 The wild creeks freeze ; the ways are strewn 
 
7O INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 With leaves that rot : beneath the tree 
 The bird, that set its toil to tune, 
 
 And made a home for melody, 
 Lies dead beneath the death-white moon. 
 
KNOWLEDGE AND BEAUTY. 
 
 KNOWLEDGE AND BEAUTY. 
 
 HALL I forget and yet behold 
 How earth hath said its secret, to 
 The violet s appealing blue, 
 Of fragrance ; old as earth is old, 
 The knowledge that is never told ? 
 
 Shall I behold and yet forget, 
 The soft blue of the heaven fell, 
 Between the dusk and dawn, to tell 
 
 Its purpose, to the violet, 
 
 Of beauty none hath fathomed yet ? 
 
 Between the earth and sky, above, 
 The wind goes singing all day long ; 
 And he who listens to its song 
 May catch an instant s meaning of 
 The end of life, the end of love. 
 
72 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 ELEUSINIAN. 
 
 PRAXITELEAN marbles, fairer forms 
 Than Phryne s and than hers, who loved 
 
 and knew 
 The Attic cynic s soul, the rosy charms 
 
 Of lovely Lai s, gradually grew 
 Before my eyelids, like a floating mist, 
 Out of the music of the citharist. 
 
 And there were Dryads, laughing sidewise eyes, 
 Among Cithaeron s ash-trees ; and uncouth 
 
 Brown Satyrs, dancing neath Boeotian skies ; 
 And by a fountain sat a beautiful youth, 
 
 Like some white flow r, with dim, dejected grace, 
 
 In love with the reflection of his face. 
 
 And then a chord of soft bewitchment swept 
 
 Along my soul ; and, oh ! within a vale, 
 Like some young god, a godlike mortal slept ; 
 
ELEUSINIAN. 73 
 
 And there was splendor on the heights, and pale 
 The presence of supernal purity, 
 Whose face was as a marble melody. 
 
 And now two chords, that were two hands that 
 strewed 
 
 Innumerable memories upon 
 My eyelids and my spirit understood 
 
 How, ages past, I was Endymion ; 
 Feeling once more the old, wild rapture of 
 Immortal sorrow and immortal love. 
 
74 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 CHRYSELEPHANTINE, 
 i. 
 
 AMONG the hills and morning-colored ways 
 Let us go forth, oh, let us go with singing ! 
 Within the hearts of better bosoms bringing 
 jV gift of gifts, one day of all our days, 
 Unto the golden temple of God s praise, 
 And ivory altar of the beautiful : 
 The woods are deep, the woods are dark and cool ; 
 Let us go forth with timbrels of rejoicing, 
 And lutes of love, and lips forever voicing 
 The beautiful ! 
 
 2. 
 
 The milkwort s pink and barley s gold and green, 
 Twined with the purple of the wilding pansies, 
 Wild pansies dreamy as an old romance is 
 
 With sad blue eyes of some enchanted queen 
 
CHR YSELEPHA N TINE. J 5 
 
 In fairyland, through fable casements seen 
 Wreathed with mauve leaves, to give to loveliness, 
 On moss as cool and soft as a caress : 
 
 Let us go forth, arrayed as is the morning, 
 With psalteries of praise, to the adorning 
 Of loveliness ! 
 
 No spotted snake shall hiss within the shrine 
 
 High God ordains, within the heav nlit distance, 
 Young love shall build, with life to give as 
 sistance, 
 
 Of fragrance and of song ; whereon shall shine 
 All of His stars to make it all divine : 
 No toad without shall croak ; but purity 
 Shall guard the entrance, none impure shall 
 
 see ! 
 
 For worshippers of beauty in the spirit, 
 The offerers of thought, which doth inherit 
 But purity. 
 
76 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 SIBYLLINE. 
 
 i. 
 
 THERE is a glory in the apple boughs 
 Of silver moonlight ; like a torch of myrrh, 
 Burning upon an altar of sweet vows, 
 
 Dropped from the hand of some wan worshipper : 
 And there is life among the apple blooms 
 
 Of whisp ring winds ; as if a god addressed 
 The flamen from the sanctuary glooms 
 
 With secrets of the bourne that hope hath 
 
 guessed, 
 
 Saying : " Behold ! a darkness which illumes, 
 A waking which is rest." 
 
 2. 
 
 There is a blackness in the apple trees 
 Of tempest ; like the ashes of an urn 
 
SIBYLLINE. 77 
 
 Hurt hands have gathered upon blistered knees, 
 With salt of tears, out of the flames that burn : 
 
 And there is death among the blooms, that fill 
 The night with breathless scent, as when, above 
 
 The priest, the vision of his faith doth will 
 
 Forth from his soul the beautiful form thereof, 
 
 Saying : " Behold ! a silence never still ; 
 The other form of love." 
 
78 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 LETHE, 
 i. 
 
 THERE is a scent of roses and spilt wine 
 Between the moonlight and the laurel 
 
 coppice ; 
 The marble idol glimmers on its shrine, 
 
 White as a star, among a heaven of poppies. 
 Here all my life lies like a spilth of wine. 
 There is a mouth of music like a lute, 
 
 A nightingale that singeth to one flower ; 
 Between the falling flower and the fruit, 
 Where love hath died, the music of an hour. 
 
 2. 
 
 To sit alone with memory and a rose ; 
 
 To dwell with shadows of whilom romances ; 
 To make one hour of a year of woes, 
 
 And walk on starlight, in ethereal trances, 
 
LETHE. 79 
 
 With one fair face white as a moon-white rose : 
 To win from music s body and the bud s 
 
 A spirit and an essence of sweet fire, 
 Between the heart-beat s burning and the blood s, 
 
 Is part of love and of the dream s desire. 
 
 There is a song to silence and the stars 
 
 From virgin lips a first love s passion parches ; 
 And down the stream of night, like nenuphars, 
 
 The tossing fires of their cedar torches. 
 Here all my life dreams lonely as the stars. 
 Shall not one hour of all those hours suffice 
 
 For resignation, God hath given as dower ? 
 Between the summons and the sacrifice 
 
 One hour of love, th eternity of an hour ? 
 
 The shrine is shattered and the bird is gone ; 
 
 Dark is the house of music and of bridal ; 
 The stars are stricken and the storm sweeps on ; 
 
 White, neath a wreck of roses, lies the idol, 
 
8O INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 Sad as the memory of a joy that s gone : 
 To dwell with slumber while the fingers kiss 
 
 To dreams one last chord of love s broken lyre, 
 Between remembering and forgetting, this 
 
 Is part of life and of the world s desire. 
 
LOTUS. 8 1 
 
 LOTUS. 
 
 WHERE is the vale and mountain, 
 And where the rock and stream, 
 That held one life of music, 
 Another life of gleam ; 
 Where she and I were shadows 
 And all our world, a dream ? 
 
 A thousand spells for waking, 
 
 And only two for sleep : 
 The first of these is sorrow 
 
 Of love that can not weep : 
 The other one is terror 
 
 Of love no man would keep. 
 
 And was it in the valley, 
 
 Where all the sad wind saith, 
 Is " I am weary, weary," 
 
 That I heard her whisper, " Death " ? 
 
82 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 As if upon pale eyelids 
 
 The Beautiful breathed its breath. 
 
 There was no tomb before us, 
 
 Nor any stone to tell 
 Of love, or hate, or horror 
 
 In heaven or in hell 
 But on her lips the legend, 
 
 And in her eyes the spell. 
 
 And was it on the mountain, 
 The stealthy stars have crossed 
 
 To stand austere with silence, 
 
 That I heard her murmur, " Lost " ? 
 
 As if dark eyes one moment 
 The Terrible should accost. 
 
 There was no memoried presence 
 
 Of flower or star or bird 
 To tell of tears and parting 
 
 That heartbreak once had heard 
 But in her face the vision, 
 
 And in her heart the word. 
 
LOTUS. 83 
 
 Where is the vale and mountain, 
 And where the rock and stream, 
 
 That held one life of music, 
 Another life of gleam, 
 
 Where she and I were shadows 
 And all our world, a dream ? 
 
84 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 MOLY. 
 
 WHEN by the wall the tiger-flower swings 
 A head of sultry slumber and aroma ; 
 And by the path, whereon the blown 
 
 rose flings 
 
 Its obsolete beauty, the long lilies foam a 
 White place of perfume, like a beautiful breast ; 
 Between the pansy fire of the west, 
 And poppy mist of moonrise in the east, 
 This heartache will have ceased. 
 
 The witchcraft of soft music and sweet sleep 
 Let it beguile the burthen from my spirit, 
 
 And white dreams reap me, as strong reapers reap 
 The golden grain and gorgeous blossom near it ; 
 
 Let me behold how gladness gives the whole 
 
 The transformed countenance of my own soul ; 
 
 Between the sunset and the risen moon, 
 Let sorrow vanish soon. 
 
MOLY. 85 
 
 And these things then shall keep me company : 
 The eye-glance of the dew ; the look and laughter 
 
 Of flower and bird ; the soul and sorcery 
 Of every wind and water reaching after 
 
 The secret of the stars, to glass a guess ; 
 
 These of themselves shall shape my happiness, 
 
 A visible presence I shall lean upon, 
 Feeling that care is gone. 
 
 Forgetting how the cankered flower must die ; 
 
 The unripe fruit fall, sicklied to its syrup ; 
 How joy, begotten twixt a sigh and sigh, 
 
 Waits with one foot forever in the stirrup ; 
 Remembering how within the hollow lute 
 Soft music sleeps when music s voice is mute ; 
 And in the heart, when all seems wild despair, 
 Hope still sits waiting there. 
 
86 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 POPPY AND MANDRAGORA. 
 
 L 
 
 IFE shall not keep me here : 
 
 Here there is sadness in the early 
 
 year; 
 
 Here sorrow comes where joy went laughing late ; 
 The sicklied face of heaven hangs like hate 
 Above the woodland and the meadow land ; 
 And Spring hath taken fire in her hand 
 Of frost and made a dead bloom of her face, 
 Which was a flower of chastity and grace, 
 And light s serenest fragrance long ago. 
 Life shall not keep me, no ! 
 
 I shall go far away 
 Into the sunrise of a calmer day : 
 Where all the nights resign them to the moon, 
 And drug their hearts with odor and soft tune, 
 And speak dim dreams in starlight ; where the 
 hours 
 
POPPY AND MANDRAGORA. 87 
 
 Teach immortality with fadeless flowers ; 
 And all the day the bee delights the bloom, 
 And all the night the moth spills strange perfume 
 From bell and bugle, like an influence. 
 I shall go far from hence. 
 
 Why should I sit and weep, 
 And yearn with heavy eyelids still to sleep ? 
 Forever hiding from my heart the fate, 
 Death within death, life doth accumulate, 
 Like winter snows, along the barren leas 
 And sterile hills, whereon no lover sees 
 The crocus limn the beautiful in flame ; 
 The hyacinth and jonquil write the name 
 Of God in fire, with a certain eye. 
 
 Why should I sit and sigh ? 
 
 I will not stay and long, 
 Here where my soul is wasting for a song ; 
 Where no bird sings ; and far beneath the stars 
 No silver water strikes melodious bars ; 
 And in the rocks and forest-haggard hills 
 No quick-tongued echo from her grotto fills 
 
88 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 With eery syllables the solitude 
 The vocal image of the voice which wooed 
 She, of sweet sound the elfin looking-glass, 
 Sick with life s sad Alas ! 
 
 What should I say to her ? 
 A hollow-eyed, a sad-faced wanderer, 
 Love looks not on, nor gives one thought unto : 
 Love, busy with the birth of bud and dew, 
 And vague gold wings within the chrysalis ; 
 Who will not miss me, nor the timid kiss 
 She knew not of, who had no kiss for me 
 Who gave my heart to her in poesy, 
 A gift of love, a boon of burgeoning. 
 
 What should I say or sing ? 
 
 I shall go far away. 
 
 She will not care, who murders thus my day 
 With the dark daggers of neglectful eyes, 
 Lips sword of silence ! . . . Had she sighed me 
 
 lies, 
 
 Not passionate, yet falsely tremulous ; 
 And lent her mouth to mine, in mockery ; thus 
 
POPPY AND MANDRAGORA. 89 
 
 Smiled from calm eyes a scornful negative ; 
 Then, then my heart had taught itself to live, 
 Feeding its love on her indifference. 
 But no ! and I will hence. 
 
 So be the Bible shut 
 Of all her beauty, and her wisdom but 
 A clasp of memory ! I shall not seek 
 The light that came not when the soul was weak 
 With waiting, and the darkness gave no sign 
 Of star-born comfort. Nay ! why should I pine 
 For psalms of patience and hosannas of 
 Sad hope and dreary canticles of love ? 
 Leave me alone. My soul hath long supposed 
 
 For me God s book was closed. 
 
QO INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 NIGHTSHADE. 
 
 SINCE she hath lifted up my face to hers, 
 And kissed the lips of worship she denied, 
 
 There is no mouth of verse, 
 Here in the shadow of the crucified, 
 Or voice of love, to tell her mine hath died, 
 
 To tell her and to curse ! 
 She asks me now for flowers that are ashes, 
 
 Here where the red flow r of my life lies slain ; 
 For love, that lashed me once and now that lashes 
 Itself in vain. 
 
 n. 
 
 Since she hath gazed into mine eyes and said, 
 " Beloved, look thou in my soul and see," 
 
 And I have looked and read 
 The burthen of a kindred Calvary, 
 
NIGHTSHADE. 91 
 
 I am grown glad that this hath come to be 
 Between the quick and dead. 
 
 She asks me now for songs, that only falter, 
 Here where the music of my life is hushed ; 
 
 For love, that died upon the iron altar 
 Where hers lies crushed. 
 
 in. 
 
 Since she hath touched hot lips to mine and wept, 
 From out the hell of her own soul, fierce tears, 
 
 Each little look love kept 
 Of her disdain, unknowingly these years, 
 And word of scorn, is crier at mine ears 
 
 To wake the hate that slept. 
 She asks me now for water that shall cherish, 
 When hot sands choke my life s dry fountain- 
 head ; 
 
 For love, that stirs not though her love should 
 perish 
 
 Where mine lies dead. 
 
Q2 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 ROSEMARY. 
 
 I. 
 
 SHE shall but breathe her wild breath in my 
 face, 
 She shall but shake her wild hair past mine 
 
 eyes, 
 
 When life sits tearless in grief s sunless cham 
 ber ; 
 
 And through the fire of revealing space, 
 The marvel of her love shall bid me rise 
 And claim her. 
 
 n. 
 
 This shall not be until within my soul 
 
 Joy s voice is dumb, and broke the instrument, 
 
 And love lies dead beside one withered flower ; 
 And dark the windows of the home of dole 
 Whence the last flicker of life s taper went 
 Shall tower. 
 
ROSEMARY. 93 
 
 III. 
 
 She shall but bend her open eyes on mine, 
 She shall but lend one open thought to me, 
 When life sits sleepless in sleep s caverned 
 
 hollow ; 
 
 And in the night a sudden star shall shine, 
 And love shall rise in whiter mystery 
 And follow. 
 
 IV. 
 
 This shall not be until within my heart 
 
 Hope s lips are still, and song that suffereth, 
 
 And love lies dead beside his silent numbers ; 
 And in the halls of silence, all apart, 
 
 Oblivion sits with the dead face of death 
 And slumbers. 
 
94 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 AT TWILIGHT. 
 
 ONCE more she holds me with her pensive 
 eyes, 
 
 Once more I feel her voice s witchery 
 Within my heart unfountain tears and sighs, 
 And fill the soul of me. 
 
 Once more she bends a silent face above ; 
 
 Once more I feel her hands soft touches shake 
 My life, unbinding long-imprisoned love, 
 Bidding my lost dreams wake. 
 
 Once more I see her serious smile ; and touch 
 Once more the lips of her whose kisses say 
 " The night was long, and thou hast suffered much : 
 At last, dear heart, t is day ! " 
 
DA Y AND NIGHT. 95 
 
 DAY AND NIGHT. 
 
 THEY say to me, the days are not so far off 
 When she will come and stay a day with me, 
 A day of dreams, till twilight s lonely star, off 
 The old-time hills, dips dewy to the sea. 
 
 Ah, no ! not this ! One night, that gave its soul of 
 Calm beauty to the earth ! as she did give 
 
 Her love s white starlight to the rugged whole of 
 My haggard world and bade me see and live. 
 
 I want no days ! when all my soul recalls but 
 The revelations of the midnight sky ! 
 
 No days ! whose hours are as narrow walls, but 
 Of whiter shadow, where we toil and die. 
 
 The day is error s : it can but deceive us 
 
 With shows of Earth, blind with the primal curse. 
 
 The night is truth s : its myriad fires weave us 
 The thoughts of God, the visible universe. 
 
INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 I 
 
 REVELATION. 
 WRITE these things that men may hear. 
 
 This was the word that gave me cheer : 
 There sate a daemon at mine ear, 
 Who whispered me, " Man knoweth naught 
 First know thyself wouldst thou know aught." 
 
 This was the word that brought me grace : 
 There fell a shape before my face, 
 Who motioned me, " All forms are sin s 
 He aims above himself who wins." 
 
 This was the word that made me wise : 
 There stood an angel at mine eyes, 
 Who looked, " The world lives selfishly 
 Give thy own self if thou wouldst see." 
 
 These are the words they brought to me. 
 
SYMBOLIC. 97 
 
 SYMBOLIC. 
 
 r I "*HE trees before the coming storm 
 
 Leap, mad as shrieking Corybants 
 Who toss to Cybele an arm 
 Of rapture, and a face that pants 
 Through hair the ritual frenzy slants. 
 
 Vague, stormy shapes of tempest sit, 
 August, majestic and immense, 
 
 Beneath the stars ; as, levin-lit, 
 A god might give wild audience 
 To awe and night and violence. 
 
 Storm is her signet ; hers, who writes 
 Stern laws in lightning ; shadowy, 
 
 With thunder seals the rolled-out nights, 
 And sits in terrible mystery, 
 The mountain-crowned Cybele. 
 
98 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 ARGONAUTS. 
 
 WITH argosies of dawn he sails, 
 And triremes of the dusk, 
 The Seas of Song, whereon the gales 
 Are summers breathing musk. 
 
 He hears the hail of Siren bands 
 On headlands sunset-kissed ; 
 
 The Lotus-eaters wave pale hands 
 Within a land of mist. 
 
 For many a league he hears the roar 
 
 Of the Symplegades ; 
 And through the far foam of its shore 
 
 The Isle of Circe sees. 
 
 All day he looks with hazy lids 
 As sea-gods cleave the deep ; 
 
 All night he hears the Nereids 
 Sing their wild eyes to sleep. 
 
ARC ON A UTS. 99 
 
 When heaven thunders overhead, 
 
 And hell upheaves the vast, 
 Dim faces of the ocean s dead 
 
 Mock him from every mast. 
 
 He but repeats the oracle 
 
 That bade him first set sail ; 
 And cheers his soul with, " It is well ! 
 
 Go on ! I shall not fail ! " 
 
 Behold ! he sails no earthly barque, 
 
 And on no earthly sea ; 
 Adown the years he sails the dark 
 
 Deeps of futurity. 
 
 Ideals are the ships of Greece 
 
 His purpose steers afar ; 
 The skies, his seas ; the Golden Fleece 
 
 He seeks, the farthest star. 
 
100 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 T 
 
 THE KNIGHT-ERRANT. 
 
 HE witch-elm shivers in the gale, 
 The thorn-tree s top is bowed ; 
 The night is black with rain and hail, 
 And mist and cloud. 
 
 The winds, upon the woods and fields, 
 
 Are swords two fiends unsheathe, 
 Two fiends, that snarl behind their shields 
 And grind their teeth. 
 
 The fox-fire, in a haunted place, 
 
 As I ride on and on, 
 Gleams like a sudden dead-man s face 
 And then is gone. 
 
 The owl shrieks from the splintered pine 
 
 Demonic ridicule ; 
 I hear the wild wolf howl and whine 
 And splash the pool. 
 
THE KNIGHT-ERRANT. IOI 
 
 Black bats beat blindly by my eyes 
 Like death s own horrible hands ; 
 The quest leads under hideous skies 
 To hideous lands. 
 
 I ride with fire upon my casque, 
 
 And fire upon my spear, 
 The roadway of my soul-set task, 
 And know no fear. 
 
 Song steels the sinews of my steed, 
 And tempers my straight sword ; 
 I ride the causeway of my creed 
 Without a word. 
 
 No man shall make the iron pause 
 
 In gauntlet and in thew ; 
 I ride the highway of God s cause 
 To die or do. 
 
 My purpose leads me, like a flame, 
 
 Mid wisps that haunt the fen, 
 To castle walls of wrong and shame 
 And blood-fed men. 
 
102 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 Faith s are the lips that wind the horn 
 
 Before the gates of lust ; 
 Though fifty dragons hiss it scorn, 
 Still shall it trust. 
 
 Truth s is the hand that thunders at 
 
 The entrances of night ; 
 Though ten score devils dash it flat, 
 Still shall it fight. 
 
 Love s are the eyes whose might shall thrill 
 
 The portals vast of sin ; 
 A thousand deaths may rise to kill, 
 Still shall it win. 
 
IN SHADOW. IO3 
 
 IN SHADOW. 
 
 A MOTH sucks in a flaming flower : 
 The moon beams on the old church-tower 
 I watch the moth and waning moon 
 A moth-white slip 
 One silver tip 
 
 In ghostly tree-tops, drifting soon 
 To gleam above the church an hour. 
 
 II. 
 
 The gray moth on the dewy pod 
 Dreams ; and the sleepy poppies nod 
 Their drugged heads in the balmy breeze, 
 That loves to sing 
 Of wave and wing, 
 And, drowsing in the purple trees, 
 Drops snowy petals on the sod. 
 
IO4 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 III. 
 
 My soul dreams at life s blood-red heart 
 Of that thou art ; of thee, who art 
 All silence ; saying something rare 
 As spirits know 
 When lilies blow 
 
 Beneath sweet heaven ; phantom-fair, 
 The beauty thou hast grown a part. 
 
 IV. 
 
 My soul is sad as any bloom 
 The moonlight haunts beside a tomb ; 
 So very weary with the love 
 
 No words may speak 
 Oh, wild and weak ! 
 Here where thy tombstone s marble dove 
 Makes of the moonlight plaintive gloom. 
 
LEGENDARY. 105 
 
 LEGENDARY. 
 
 IT was a gipsy maiden 
 Within the forest green ; 
 It was a gipsy maiden 
 Who shook a tambourine : 
 The star of eve had not the face, 
 The woodland wind had not the grace 
 Of Flamencine. 
 
 n. 
 
 Her bodice was of purple, 
 
 Her shoes of satin sheen ; 
 Her bodice was of purple 
 
 With scarlet laid between : 
 The dew of dusk was in the tread, 
 The black of night was on the head 
 Of Flamencine. 
 
106 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 III. 
 
 Among the dreaming vistas, 
 The darkling dells between, 
 
 Among the dreaming vistas 
 I heard her tambourine : 
 
 And far within the ghostly glade 
 
 The moonbeams and the shadows play d 
 Round Flamencine. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Among the beechen shadows 
 
 When fire-flies are seen, 
 Among the beechen shadows 
 
 When glow-worms glimmer green, 
 Then down the darkness like a light 
 She dances ; and the eyes are bright 
 Of Flamencine. 
 
 v. 
 
 There is a gipsy maiden 
 Within the forest green ; 
 
LEG. 
 
 y. 
 
 107 
 
 There is a gipsy maiden 
 
 Who shakes a tambourine : 
 These many years I am her slave ; 
 The violets grow upon the grave 
 Of Flamencine. 
 
108 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 THE MILL WATER. 
 
 THE water-flag and wild cane grows 
 Round banks whereon the sunlight sows 
 Fantastic gold when, on its shores, 
 The wind sighs through the sycamores. 
 
 In one green angle, just in reach, 
 Between a willow-tree and beech, 
 Moss-grown and leaky lies a boat 
 The thick-grown lilies keep afloat. 
 
 And where the wild-grapes build a brake 
 Still swims the spotted water-snake ; 
 And from the hills, a gray blue streak 
 Soars down the gaunt fly-up-the-creek. 
 
 Between the lily-pads and blooms 
 The water-spirits set their looms, 
 To weave the restless lace that dims 
 The glimmering leaves of under limbs. 
 
THE MILL WATER. 1 09 
 
 Each lily is the hiding place 
 Of some gray witch-thing s elfish face, 
 That watches you with gold-green eyes 
 Where bubbles of its breathing rise. 
 
 I fancy, when the waxing moon 
 Leans through the trees and dreams of June ; 
 And when the black bat slants its wing, 
 And lonelier the green-frogs sing ; 
 
 I fancy, when the whippoorwill 
 In some old tree sings wild and shrill, 
 With glow-worm eyes that dot the dark, 
 Each holding high a firefly spark 
 
 To torch its way, the witch-things come : 
 And some float rocking here ; and some 
 Unmoor the lily leaves and oar 
 Around the old boat on the shore. 
 
 They climb through oozy weeds and moss ; 
 They swarm its rotting sides and toss 
 Their firefly torches o er its edge, 
 Or hang them in the tangled sedge. 
 
IIO INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 The boat is loosed. The moon is pale. 
 Around the dam they slowly sail. 
 Upon the bow, to pilot it, 
 A ghastly will-o -the-wisp doth sit. 
 
 And have I seen it all in dreams ? 
 Or more ? forgotten ! For, it seems, 
 Beneath the stern . . . what saw I there ?- 
 A woman s face with weedy hair ! 
 
EIDOLONS. 1 1 1 
 
 EIDOLONS. 
 
 THE white moth-mullein thrust its slim 
 Cool, fairy flowers around his knee ; 
 In places where the way lay dim 
 
 The tree-tops, arching suddenly, 
 Made tomb-like mystery for him. 
 
 The wild-rose and the elder, drenched 
 With rain, perfumed a misty place, 
 
 As if the ghost of sorrow blenched 
 Pale raiment fragrant past his face, 
 
 Who walked with white lips closed and clenched. 
 
 And far within the forest, where 
 
 Weird shadows stood like murdered men, 
 
 And where the ground-hog dug its lair, 
 The she-fox whelped and had its den, 
 
 Was it his own voice crying there ? 
 
112 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 One dead trunk, like a ruined tower, 
 
 Dark green with toppling trailers, shoved 
 
 Its wild wreck o er the brush ; one bower 
 
 Looked like a dead knight casqued and gloved 
 
 In starlit steel that haunted hour. 
 
 Now, near, the strange voice spake him ; thin 
 
 As echoes of a thought that sings 
 To sleep ; and, sitting with his chin 
 
 Upon his palm was it the wings 
 Of owls that shuddered out and in ? 
 
 And now the voice was still ; and slow, 
 With eyes that stared on naught but night, 
 
 He looked and saw what none shall know ! 
 His soul s reflection, wild and white ? 
 
 Or form of immaterial woe ? 
 
 And men who found him, weary led 
 By the wild fox, within that place 
 
 Saw in his staring eyes, t is said, 
 The thing he met there face to face, 
 
 The thing that left him sitting dead. 
 
UNDER DARK SKIES. 113 
 
 UNDER DARK SKIES. 
 
 HILLS rolled in woods, that lair the owl and 
 fox; 
 
 Harsh fields, that fall before the woods advance 
 As wild-men fly from hunters, tossing locks 
 
 Through which their eyes of yellow fire glance ; 
 Great blurs of briers and lugubrious rocks, 
 Like crumbled blackness, with a pool beneath, 
 Whereon the wisps, like something evil, dance ; 
 And then a house, like the wrecked face of death. 
 
 ii. 
 There where the moon hangs sinister, o er parched 
 
 And haggard thorns, a golden battle-bow, 
 Or shield of bronze, God s wars have scarred and 
 
 scorched, 
 
 What crime hath cursed it ... who shall 
 ever know ? 
 
114 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 Night only ! Night with eyeless eyes, who 
 
 torched 
 
 And felt the stigma of its branded sod, 
 As from the pool a ghastly face rose slow 
 Beneath the storm and rushing fire of God. 
 
THE SECRET. 115 
 
 THE SECRET. 
 
 SHE stands within the stormy glow 
 Of sunset, with a face of snow, 
 The white embodiment of woe, 
 As night comes on. 
 
 She stands within the sombre glare 
 Of dusk, with dark neglected hair, 
 An apparition of despair, 
 
 When day is gone. 
 
 The hideous house within the vale 
 Looks spectral as a ragged sail 
 The Dutchman hoists against the gale 
 On haunted seas. 
 
 And in the garden, one vast brake 
 Of dock and thistle, snail and snake 
 Crawl ; and the death-watch lies awake 
 Among the trees. 
 
Il6 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 The stagnant stream along the night 
 Creeps, like a nightmare, where each white 
 Lily seems an uneasy light 
 By goblins tossed. 
 
 And through the cypress-trees and vines 
 The red-fox skulks and laps and whines ; 
 The owl hoots, and its eyeball shines 
 In darkness lost. 
 
 She stands beside the sleepy stream ; 
 Her garment drips at every seam ; 
 She seems a shadow in a dream 
 Of death and woe. 
 
 No star stares half so steadily 
 On earth as in the stream stares she ; 
 And what she sees there, it may be 
 The owls they know. 
 
PHANTOMS. 117 
 
 T 
 
 PHANTOMS. 
 
 HIS was her home ; one mossy gable thrust 
 Above the cedars and the locust trees : 
 
 This was her home, whose beauty now is dust, 
 A lonely memory for melodies 
 The wild birds sing, the wild birds and the bees. 
 
 Here every evening is a prayer : no boast 
 
 Or ruin of sunset makes the wan world wroth ; 
 
 Where, through the twilight, like a pale flower s 
 
 ghost, 
 
 A drowsy flutter, flies the tiger-moth ; 
 And dusk spreads darkness like a dewy cloth. 
 
 In vagabond velvet, all the placid day, 
 A stain of crimson, lolled the butterfly ; 
 
 The south-wind sowed with ripple and with ray 
 The pleasant waters ; and the gentle sky 
 Looked on his gladness like a quiet eye. 
 
Il8 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 Its melancholy quaver, lone and low, 
 The gray tree-toad at gloaming will repeat ; 
 
 The whippoorwill, far in the afterglow, 
 
 Complain to silence ; and the lightning beat, 
 In one still cloud, glimmers of golden heat. 
 
 He comes not yet. Not till the dusk be dead, 
 And all the western glow be far withdrawn ; 
 
 Not till, a sleepy mouth love s kiss makes red, 
 The baby bud opes in a rosy yawn, 
 Breathing sweet guesses at the dreamed-of dawn. 
 
 When in the shadows, like a rain of gold, 
 The fire-flies stream steadily ; and bright 
 
 Along the moss the glow-worm, as of old, 
 A crawling sparkle like a crooked light 
 In smoldering vellum scrawls a square of night : 
 
 Then, ghost of his dead love ! dost lean to him, 
 Within a space that hath not any place, 
 
 Between the starlight and his eyes ; so dim 
 With suave control and soul-compelling grace, 
 He can not help but see thee, face to face. 
 
THREE BIRDS. 119 
 
 A 
 
 THREE BIRDS. 
 
 RED-BIRD sang upon the bough 
 When wind-flowers nodded in the dew ; 
 My spring of bird and flower wast thou, 
 O tried and true ! 
 
 A brown bird warbled on the wing 
 
 When poppy buds were hearts of heat ; 
 I wooed thee with a golden ring, 
 O sad and sweet ! 
 
 A black-bird twittered in the mist 
 
 When nightshade blooms were filled with frost ; 
 The leaves upon thy grave are whist, 
 O loved and lost ! 
 
120 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 I 
 
 IDENTITIES. 
 
 SAT alone in the manor room 
 
 Of beautiful Sin in her winding shroud ; 
 
 The night was stricken with glare and gloom, 
 
 And the haunted wind was loud. 
 
 I heard the gallop of one who rode 
 
 Like the sough of leaves that the rain-wind 
 
 crisps ; 
 
 The night with the speed of her steed was sowed 
 With streaming will-o -the-wisps. 
 
 And it cried in me, " T is a long-lost Shame, 
 Who rides to thy house through the night and 
 
 rain ! 
 
 She will blaze in the blackness a face of flame 
 When she opens thy door again ! " 
 
 I thought of the blame of her lips and brow ; 
 And stared at the door she must enter in 
 
IDENTITIES. 121 
 
 To sear my soul with her eyes, and bow 
 My heart by the corpse of Sin. 
 
 As hushed as the mansion of death was night, 
 
 When, dark as a sob of the storm, she came 
 But her face, like beautiful Sin s, was white, 
 And her face and Sin s the same ! 
 
122 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 A VISION. 
 
 (AS IT WAS GIVEN TO ME IN SLEEP.) 
 
 I. 
 
 STARLESS and still and lustreless 
 And sombre black, it seemed to me, 
 The heaven hung in hideousness 
 Of Hell s serenity. 
 Indefinite and vague and old 
 
 As nothing that is ours, 
 It rose with steeples, dark with mold, 
 Like two colossal towers. 
 
 n. 
 
 Infernal monsters crumbled mid 
 The trefoils of its dim fa9ade, 
 
A VISION. 123 
 
 And, hideous as murder, hid 
 
 Gnarled in the pillared shade. 
 And all below and overhead, 
 
 In cancerous blotches, grew 
 The gray gangrene of lichens dead, 
 
 And fungi, sickly blue. 
 
 ill. 
 
 Beneath the black impending skies, 
 
 Weird as Death s countenance it stood, 
 Hollow, with vacant window eyes 
 
 Staring on solitude. 
 The grass was black ; the gravestones white ; 
 
 A weary white were they ; 
 And league on league along the night 
 
 Like phantoms stretched away. 
 
 IV. 
 
 And I, who entered in, could hear 
 No organ notes resound and roll ; 
 
124 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 The presence of an awful fear 
 Stood unseen near my soul. 
 
 And, lo ! I saw, like Hell s wild songs, 
 The vast interior carved 
 
 With stony shapes of women throngs, 
 Naked, obscene, and starved. 
 
 v. 
 
 Medusa mouths and Harpy hands, 
 
 Dead eyes, in which the Graeae nod ; 
 Like idols, wherein heathen lands 
 
 Image the plague s black god. 
 Round arched door and window-frame, 
 
 On floor and vault, behold, 
 The chiselled forms were all the same ! 
 
 Gray with exuding mold. 
 
 VI. 
 
 And I, who entered in, unled, 
 
 Could hear no sweet voice lift the hymn ; 
 
A VISION. 125 
 
 But felt th effluvia of the dead 
 
 Around my senses swim 
 Miasms, that rotted from their waves 
 
 This horrible eminence, 
 Where, throned upon a thousand graves, 
 
 Death dreams of pestilence. 
 
126 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 THE NORMAN KNIGHT. 
 
 WITHIN the castle chamber 
 The Norman knight lay dead ; 
 The quarterings of the casement 
 Shone holy round his head. 
 
 And first there came a maiden ; 
 
 Her face was wet and white ; 
 She kissed his mouth and murmured, 
 
 " Thou wast my own true knight." 
 
 Within the arrased chamber 
 The Norman knight lay dead ; 
 
 And tapers four and twenty 
 Burnt at his feet and head. 
 
 And next there came a friar 
 And prayed beside his bier ; 
 
 " Thou art a blessed angel, 
 Who wast so noble here." 
 
THE NORMAN KNIGHT. I2/ 
 
 Within the lofty chamber 
 
 The Norman knight lay dead ; 
 
 Dim through the carven casement 
 The moonbeams lit his head. 
 
 And then there came a varlet 
 Loud laughed he in his face : 
 
 " Thus do I spit upon thee, 
 Thee and thy cursed race ! " 
 
 Within the silent chamber 
 
 The Norman knight lay dead 
 
 Nor Norman knight nor Saxon serf 
 Heard what the dead man said. 
 
128 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 THE SALAMANDER. 
 (LOVE DAEMONIC.) 
 
 ONCE she breathed upon my eyes, 
 Touched the soul that dreamed within 
 me ; 
 
 All the magic that might win me 
 Whispered to my heart with sighs 
 Darkness can not make them lies ! . . . 
 
 Bring me moly, hellebore ! 
 Mix them for my soul s nepenthe, 
 For my spirit s dread Amenti, 
 
 For the curse which comes once more 
 With unutterable lore ! 
 
 Sunlight, starlight or the moon, 
 Stormlight, firelight or the sheening 
 Witchlight, realize no meaning 
 
 Of her glory s plenilune ; 
 
THE SALAMANDER. 1 29 
 
 Of her self s unriddled rune, 
 And most awful beauty ! nor 
 
 Actual, nor yet ideal ! 
 
 Mortal and immortal real ! 
 
 Of the red heat, of the star, 
 
 And no part of what these are ! 
 
 I am hers and woe is mine ! 
 Has she drugged me with the gladness 
 Of some elemental madness ? 
 Like a demigod I pine 
 Twixt the mortal and divine. 
 When I see her, lo, she stands 
 In the luminous electre 
 Of a star : a smiling spectre 
 
 With white scintillating hands 
 Luring to unhallowed lands. 
 
 And I see, in fearful file, 
 A mirage of tower and terrace, 
 Lawn, and mountain range, that buries 
 
 Flame in frost, loom ; mile on mile 
 
 Gleams the crescent of her isle : 
 
130 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 Where the lurid waters lull 
 Shores that roll the rainbow fire ; 
 Sweet with living lute and lyre, 
 
 Neath the rose-red guiding gull, 
 Glides her star-like galley s hull. 
 
 Wind-like shapes the slaves who row 
 Us where rise her walls of amber, 
 Towers of vivid ruby clamber 
 Over terraces below 
 Summits of refulgent snow : 
 Lambent lazuli and shell 
 Portals ; courts with sunset marbled, 
 Where the lightning fountains warbled 
 Out of basined pearl and fell 
 Into hollowed curbuncle. 
 
 Rosy silver is the skin 
 Of her reaching arm commanding, 
 With its shapely hand, me, standing 
 
 At her gates, to enter in, 
 
 Burning as a Seraphin. 
 
THE SALAMANDER. 131 
 
 Limpid blackness are her eyes, 
 Where the frozen fire smolders ; 
 And upon her shining shoulders, 
 
 Like a tangible glitter, lies 
 
 Hair voluptuous topaz dyes. 
 
 Mouth of sibilant soft flame ; 
 Lilith lips, whose language brightens 
 With illusive love, that lightens 
 Into music and the name 
 Of desire no man shall tame : 
 
 Passion and the thoughts that wed 
 Love and languor ; and caresses 
 Of sweet touch whose kiss expresses 
 
 Love, that dreams have lured and led ; 
 Love, upon which dreams are fed. 
 
 She has touched me with her lips ; 
 Kissed me at her palace portal ; 
 And the fire, which is immortal, 
 
 All that s mortal in me sips 
 
 Ah, the spirit-part s eclipse ! 
 
132 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 As when moon and planet swoon 
 Unto each ; the world is kindled 
 Strangely ; while the disc is dwindled 
 Of the earth-o ershadowed moon, 
 Darkening from lune to lune. 
 
 And she laughs ; and leads me where 
 Cloudy, wild, chameleon color 
 Marbles halls with hues, the duller 
 For her astral presence there, 
 Beaming white with beaming hair : 
 
 Where in roses purple pale, 
 Dropping like a ruby bubble 
 Through the moon dust, " Double, double," 
 Throbs the crimson nightingale ; 
 And its song a fiery trail. 
 
 Gardens where the scarlet snake 
 Coils beneath the flaming flowers ; 
 Where the musk mimosa bowers 
 
 Vague vermilion shadows make 
 
 In the coruscating lake : 
 
THE SALAMANDER. 133 
 
 Where the brilliant moths go by 
 Like great diamonds ; opal-burning 
 Butterflies ; and rainbow-turning 
 Peacock-spangled newts, that vie 
 With the rocks whereon they lie. 
 
 Constellated moss which fills 
 Banks with lustre ; where the leaden 
 Lichen and the fungus redden, 
 And the sparkling orchid spills 
 Gleaming globules on the hills : 
 
 Where, in iridescent light, 
 Glow the golden-checkered zinnias ; 
 Blazing bugles, the gloxinias 
 
 Burn a radiant red and white, 
 Making morning of each height. 
 
 I have gazed in eyes not mine, 
 Where the liquid moonlight glittered 
 Of the rivers that were littered 
 
 With the grail, like prisms in wine, 
 
 Angles of seductive shine : 
 
134 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 Where, in sunset-colored moss, 
 Glow-worms, smoldering emeralds, twinkled ; 
 And the blood-red shade was sprinkled 
 With convulsive sapphire gloss 
 Where the fire-flies rained across. 
 
 Where the reeds made rays of rose, 
 And white mirrored moons, the lotus 
 Like a spirit giving notice 
 
 Of the unseen light which glows 
 Where the under water flows 
 
 Dreams have met us on the way ; 
 Where, like an auroral splendor, 
 Rolled the forest, soft and tender 
 As the light of dying day, 
 Moon-crowned dreams, who bade us stay. 
 
 Through the violetish light, 
 
 Winged with nautilus and lily 
 
 Fire, adown the forest s stilly 
 Vistas, starry whirls of white, 
 Floated birds with eyes of night. 
 
THE SALAMANDER. 135 
 
 I must follow where she leads 
 Blinding portals of her castle 
 To my entering feet are facile . . . 
 Love no terrible trumpet needs 
 At such gates to bugle deeds. 
 
 Lo, my reason never veils 
 Thoughts from her. To her caresses 
 All my heart knows it confesses 
 With a faith that never fails, 
 Though it hears the truth which wails 
 
 In its soul s admonishment, 
 Of the curse which sits in session 
 In each amorous confession 
 Of her beauty s indolent 
 Love, which nothing angel sent. 
 
 I have drained the feverish cup 
 
 Of all darkness ! Made a leman 
 
 Of an elemental demon, 
 
 While my soul stood staring up 
 Drinking poison at each sup ! 
 
136 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 While she smiles on me, t is well. 
 I shall follow, though she take me 
 Out of conscience ; ne er to wake me 
 From the dream of asphodel 
 To the curse yea ! it is well ! 
 
 And her wine s mesmeric gold 
 Of clairvoyance, that romances 
 In informing Protean fancies 
 With a beauty never old, 
 And emotion never cold, 
 
 She will bring me if I wake 
 From the trances which environ 
 Me, and neath the subtle siren 
 
 See the demon s dreaming snake 
 With destroying eyes that ache : 
 
 While the slow laconic look 
 
 Of her eyes bespeak no censure ; 
 Languid eyes, which still adventure 
 Ways her serpent fancy took, 
 Wiser than the wisest book : 
 
THE SALAMANDER. 
 
 And my soul shall reverence 
 Her, whose gaze is God s negation, 
 Seeing, like an emanation, 
 
 All she dreams an influence 
 Of mirage that chains each sense. 
 
 And her eyes shall seem to say : 
 " One more dream before the morning ! 
 Since thy soul hath given warning, 
 One more dream ere break of day ! 
 One more dream and then away ! " 
 
 And my soul shall never see, 
 Till her basilisk beauty flashes, 
 And the curse from out the ashes 
 Of her passion suddenly 
 Coils around the heart of me. 
 
138 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 THE ROSICRUCIAN. 
 
 THE tripod flared with a purple spark, 
 And the mist hung emerald in the dark 
 Now he stooped to the lilac flame 
 Over the glare of the amber embers, 
 Thrice to utter no earthly name ; 
 
 Thrice, like a mind that half remembers ; 
 Bathing his face in the magic mist 
 Where the brilliance burned like an amethyst. 
 
 II. 
 
 " Sylph, whose soul was born of mine, 
 Born of the love that made me thine, 
 Once more flash on the flesh ! Again 
 
 Be the loved caresses taken ! 
 Lip to lip let our mouths remain ! 
 
 Here in the circle of sense, awaken ! 
 
THE ROSICRUCIAN. 139 
 
 Ere spirit meets spirit, the flesh laid by, 
 Let me know thee, and let me die ! " 
 
 in. 
 
 Sunset heavens may burn, but never 
 
 Bring such splendor ! There bloomed an ever 
 
 Opaline orb, where the sylphid rose, 
 
 A shape of luminous white ; diviner 
 White than the essence of light that sows 
 
 The moons and suns through space ; and finer 
 Than radiance born of a shooting star, 
 Or the wild Aurora that streams afar. 
 
 IV. 
 
 " Look on the face of the soul to whom 
 Thou givest thy soul like added perfume !_ 
 Thou, who heard st me who long had prayed, 
 
 Waiting alone at evening s portal ! 
 Thus on thy lips let my lips be laid, 
 
 Love, who hast made me twice immortal ! 
 Give me thine arms now ! Come and rest 
 Happiness out on my beaming breast ! " 
 
140 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 V. 
 
 Was it her soul ? or the sapphire fire 
 That sang like the note of a Seraph s lyre ? 
 Out of her mouth there came no word 
 
 She spake with her soul, as a flower speaketh 
 Fragrant messages none hath heard, 
 
 Which the sense divines when the spirit seek- 
 
 eth. . . . 
 
 And he seemed alone in a place so dim 
 That the angel s face, who was gazing at him, 
 For its burning eyes, he could not see 
 And he knew he was dead ; and that he and she 
 Were one and he saw that this was he. 
 
ARABAH. 141 
 
 ARABAH. 
 
 AND one brought pearls and one brought 
 passion-flowers 
 
 To blind Arabah as he lay in dreams, 
 And one brought visions of the after hours : 
 So he beheld the rainbow-rolling streams 
 Of Eden on harmonious sands of gold, 
 
 And battlements builded of prismatic beams. 
 Nor sightless was he now, nor weak, nor old, 
 
 For, lo ! the dark-eyed girls of Paradise 
 Leaned kissing him with kisses manifold. 
 
 Feeble Arabah with unseeing eyes 
 No longer sightless, since each kiss they gave 
 Was youth immortal, love that never dies. 
 
 "Who s he who lies upon the mosque s cold 
 
 pave?" 
 
 " A blind man, whom an angel s hand shall 
 lead." 
 
142 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 " A beggar, richer than the rich who have." 
 " Behold the lesson, such as Sufis feed 
 
 The soul upon ! O faith, blind-praying ! see 
 Out of thyself how God repays indeed 
 
 Ten-thousand fold one generosity ! " 
 
 Who knew it not ? how, at the hour of prayer, 
 A slave beneath each shoulder, it was he, 
 
 Old, blind Arabah, whom a suppliant there, 
 Footsore and hungry, met and asked for bread. 
 
 "Alas ! my son, God s poor are everywhere," 
 Hoar as a Koreish priest, Arabah said ; 
 
 !< The rich one I though penniless indeed ! 
 Take thou these slaves and sell, and buy thee 
 bread." 
 
 And thrust them from him saying, " Thou hast 
 
 need. 
 Refuse, and I renounce them ! " And the wall 
 
 Struck with his staff, saying, "Can this not 
 
 lead ? " 
 
 While from some mosque rang the muezzin s call, 
 " God is most mighty ! Allah seeth all ! " 
 
NORTH BEACH, FLORIDA. 143 
 
 NORTH BEACH, FLORIDA. 
 
 SURGE upon surge, the miles of surf uncurl 
 Volutes of murmur ; and the far shore 
 
 foams ; 
 The thundering billows, boiling into pearl, 
 
 The wild wind clouds and combs. 
 
 Wave upon wave, as when the Nereids pour 
 
 Green tresses from white fillets, when the arms 
 Of Tritons reach them racing to the shore, 
 Bursts on the beach that storms. 
 
 Oh thou primeval solitude ! that rolled 
 
 Out of creation when the world was young ! 
 And shall roll on when man is not, and old 
 The ages yet unsung ! 
 
 Time shall not flaw thy music ! thou hast heard 
 God s spirit on thy waters, and no night 
 
144 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 Annuls the memory of that one Word 
 Which blossomed into light. 
 
 With such impression as upon thy face 
 
 The soaring seagulls make, man comes and 
 
 came ; 
 
 And countless myriads, race on warring race, 
 Have found thee thus the same. 
 
 Thy part is to destroy and still remain 
 
 Immutable midst mutability : 
 The symbol of all change, that clothes again 
 Mystery in mystery ! 
 
THE WATCHER. 
 
 145 
 
 THE WATCHER. 
 
 AH, young the dream which held her when 
 The world was moon-white with the May ; 
 She watched the singing fishermen 
 Sail out to sea at break of day : 
 Soft, as the morning heaven then, 
 The eyes that watched him sail away. 
 
 Ah, calm her grief when summer filled 
 
 The world with warm maturity : 
 Far off she watched the nets that spilled 
 
 Their twinkling foison by the sea : 
 And sat upon the cliffs and stilled 
 
 With song the baby on her knee. 
 
 Who to her love would make them lies 
 Those vows his sea-slain manhood swore ? 
 
 Beneath the raining autumn skies 
 The fishing vessels put to shore : 
 
 She watches with remembering eyes 
 
 For the brown face that comes no more. 
 
146 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 ANALOGIES. 
 
 OF Rosamond the beautiful, of her 
 The joy and pride of Cunimund, last 
 
 king 
 Of the fierce Gepidse, a warrior 
 
 Such as the old-world minstrels loved to sing, 
 To Alboin, Prince of Lombardy, at war 
 
 With Cunimund her father, fame did bring 
 Report of such proud loveliness and grace 
 That he had loved her ere he saw her face. 
 
 War was between them and the hate of thrones : 
 For he had slain a son of Turismund 
 
 And brother of King Cunimund. His bones 
 Were as a wall between desire unsunned 
 
 Of such encouragement as young Love owns ; 
 Young Love, before the ruined lips that stunned 
 
 Appeal with dead defiance, and the grim 
 
 Confrontment mocking as the hopes of him. 
 
 
ANALOGIES. 147 
 
 Such oft is Life ! that, standing with Despair 
 
 Looks on some crime, as looked the conqueror 
 
 Of Rosamond, ere goaded on to dare 
 Fate by the stern arbitrament of war : 
 
 Death smiles within the danger of her hair ; 
 Defeat, more deadly than the wild Avar, 
 
 Gleams armored in her eyes ; and in her mouth 
 
 An exarch marshals legions from the south. 
 
 Yet, should he so prevail against her might 
 Her woman Pride, her hosts of beautiful 
 
 Angers and Scorns that she be forced, some 
 
 night, 
 To pledge him faith in Hate s full cup, a skull 
 
 What though he sees Revenge writ fiery white 
 Upon her brow ! Revenge, that hides a dull 
 
 Poison for sleep, or dagger all prepared ! 
 
 Life writes not Failure where Fate writes 
 He dared. 
 
148 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 IMITATED FROM OSSIAN. 
 
 OINA-MORUL S LAMENT. 
 
 AND singing she said with emotion : 
 " Who looks from the surf-sounding rocks 
 On the white-closing mists of the ocean, 
 
 Like the wing of the raven his locks ? 
 Dark care on his brow is a furrow ; 
 
 And dark is the grief of his eye ; 
 But darker than sorrow my sorrow 
 
 Tonthermod, my love, must thou die ! 
 From Malorchul s high hall I will wander 
 
 To islands unknown of a barque ! 
 With the race of the sea-kings around her, 
 
 The soul of Oina is dark. . . . 
 Is the sound of the storm on the ocean, 
 
 Where the darkness is riven with flame ? 
 Or the voice of Cruth-Loda s emotion 
 
IMITATED FROM O SSI AN. 149 
 
 As he boasts in the might of his name ? 
 The dark-bosomed ships, bending over, 
 
 Kiss the white-bosomed breasts of the sea 
 But thou ! thou art lost, O my lover, 
 
 Tonthermod, forever to me ! " 
 
 n. 
 
 TOSCAR AND COLMADONA. 
 
 LIKE the rippling stream of Crona 
 Where the forests darken down, 
 Were the locks of Colmadona 
 
 O er her white neck falling brown. 
 
 And the night lay soft and sable 
 
 Over Carul s druid walls ; 
 Round the mighty oaken table 
 
 Rang the harps through ancient halls. 
 
 With the harp now Carul s daughter 
 Blends the music of her voice ; 
 
I5O INTIMATIONS OF 7"HE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 Like the sound of falling water 
 In the moonlight is her voice. 
 
 Toscar, gazing, leans and listens 
 To the singing of the maid 
 
 Like a beam that falls and glistens 
 Where the stormy deep is laid ; 
 
 Like a gleam that leaps and lightens 
 From the midnight clouds that roll, 
 
 And the troubled water brightens, 
 Came she to his troubled soul. . . . 
 
 In the morn they rose and hunted 
 
 Through the hills with spear and bow ; 
 
 Bleeding by the stream it wonted 
 Fell the arrow-stricken roe. 
 
 Through wild Crona s vale returning, 
 From the wood a youth drew near ; 
 
 On his arm a shield was burning, 
 In his hand a pointless spear. 
 
IMITATED FROM OSSIAN. 151 
 
 " Whence," said Toscar then of Lutha, 
 " Comes this flying beam of war ? 
 
 Is there peace at wide Colamon 
 Round the lovely maid of Car ? " 
 
 Said the youth, " At wide Colamon 
 
 Colmadona once did dwell, 
 Fair as any foaming fountain 
 
 Springing in a lonely dell. 
 
 " There she dwelt ! Ah, canst thou hear 
 it? 
 
 With the King of Lochlin s son, 
 Luth, who won with love her spirit, 
 
 To the mountains she is gone." 
 
 " Stranger," then said Toscar sadly, 
 
 " Hast thou marked the chieftain s path ? 
 
 He must die ! I loved her madly ! 
 He must fall before my wrath ! 
 
 " Thou art armed . . . Give me thy 
 
 bossy 
 Shield ! " and on it hands he laid 
 
152 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 Lo ! behind it, white and glossy, 
 Rose the bosom of a maid. 
 
 The high-bosomed Colmadona, 
 Carul s blue-eyed daughter there, 
 
 Standing by the reedy Crona, 
 In her armor very fair. 
 
 Warrior-like her love for Toscar 
 Led her from her father s hall 
 
 Love will laugh at kings and armies 
 
 In the halls of great Fingal. 
 1886. 
 
THE BATTLE. 153 
 
 THE BATTLE. 
 
 THE night had passed. The day had come, 
 Bright-born, into a cloudless sky : 
 We heard the rolling of the drum, 
 And saw the war-flags fly. 
 
 And noon had crowded upon morn 
 Ere Conflict shook her red locks far, 
 
 And blew her brazen battle-horn 
 Upon the hills of War. 
 
 Noon darkened into dusk one blot 
 
 Of nightmare lit with hell-born suns ; 
 
 We heard the scream of shell and shot 
 And booming of the guns. 
 
 On batteries of belching grape 
 
 We saw the thundering cavalry 
 Spur headlong iron shape on shape 
 
 Led starlike on to die. 
 
154 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 And dusk had moaned itself to night, 
 Rain-haunted. And we slept again 
 
 To dream of many a bivouac light, 
 And dark fields vast with slain. 
 
THE MESSAGE. 155 
 
 THE MESSAGE. 
 
 A DAY of drought foreboding rain and wind, 
 As if stern heaven, feeling earth had sinned, 
 Looked on with hatred. When the evening 
 
 came, 
 
 Down in the west, no sunset fire had thinned, 
 Black as the smoke of battle, flame on flame, 
 
 The lightning signalled and the heaven spoke 
 
 In thunder, and storm s pent-up torrents broke : 
 
 She saw the wild night when the dark pane 
 
 flashed ; 
 Heard, where she stood, the disemboweled oak 
 
 Roar into fragments when the welkin crashed. 
 
 
 Long had she waited for a word. And, lo, 
 Anticipation still would not say no : 
 
 He has not written ; he will come to her ; 
 At dawn ! to-night ! Her heart hath told her so ; 
 
 And so expectancy and love aver. 
 
I$6 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 Hope bids her hear his fingers on the pane 
 The glass is blurred, she can not see for rain : 
 
 Bids hear his horse the wind is never still : 
 Bids see his cloak, ah ! surely that is plain 
 
 A torn vine tossing at the window-sill. 
 
 Her soul goes forth to meet him : Pale and wet, 
 She sees his face ; the war-soiled epaulet ; 
 
 The sabre-scar there on the soldier s cheek ; 
 And now he smiles, and now their lips have met ; 
 
 And now . . . Dear heart ! he fell at Cedar 
 Creek. 
 
MOSB Y AT HAMIL TON. I 57 
 
 MOSBY AT HAMILTON. 
 
 DOWN Loudon lanes, with swinging reins 
 And clash of spur and sabre, 
 And bugling of the battle horn, 
 Six score and eight we rode that morn, 
 Six score and eight of Southern born, 
 All tried in love and labor. 
 
 Full in the sun, at Hamilton, 
 
 We met the South s invaders ; 
 Who, over fifteen hundred strong, 
 Mid blazing homes had marched along 
 All night, with Northern shout and song, 
 
 To crush the rebel raiders. 
 
 Down Loudon lanes, with streaming manes, 
 
 We spurred in wild March weather ; 
 And all along our war-scarred way 
 The graves of Southern heroes lay 
 
158 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 Our guide-posts to revenge that day, 
 As we rode grim together. 
 
 Old tales still tell some miracle 
 
 Of saints in holy writing 
 But who shall say why hundreds fled 
 Before the few that Mosby led, 
 Unless the noblest of our dead 
 
 Charged with us then when fighting ! 
 
 While Yankee cheers still stunned our ears, 
 
 Of troops at Harper s Ferry ; 
 While Sheridan led on his Huns, 
 And Richmond rocked to roaring guns, 
 We felt the South still had some sons 
 
 She would not scorn to bury. 
 
IN HOSPITAL. 159 
 
 IN HOSPITAL. 
 
 WOUNDED to death he lay and dreamed 
 The drums of battle beat afar, 
 And round the roaring trenches screamed 
 The hell of war. 
 
 Then woke ; and, weeping, heard no word 
 
 To say a sweetheart bent above ; 
 Yet, in the white-washed ward was heard 
 A song of love. 
 
 Lay this upon him in his grave, 
 
 The portrait that he kissed, then sighed 
 " My mother ! " and " Be brave ! be brave ! " 
 Then smiled and died. 
 
l6o INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 IN SILHOUETTE. 
 
 THE storm-red sun, through wrecks of wind and 
 rain, 
 
 And dead leaves driven from the frantic boughs, 
 Where, on the hill-top, stood a gaunt, gray house, 
 Flashed wildest ruby on each rainy pane. 
 
 Then woods grew sadder than remembered grief ; 
 
 And crimson through the woodland s ruin 
 streamed 
 
 The sunset s glare a furious eye, which seemed 
 Watching the moon rise like a yellow leaf : 
 
 An autumn leaf, blown tattered from the lair 
 Of dusk behind the storm-swept hill, whereon 
 A lonely woman waited ; darkly drawn 
 
 With sombre dress and wind-dishevelled hair. 
 
IN SILHOUETTE. l6l 
 
 II. 
 
 She who stands looking with no quiet tears 
 For the young face of one she knows is lost, 
 While, in her heart, the melancholy frost 
 
 Gathers of all the unforgotten years ; 
 
 If she should hear to-night a hurrying horse 
 Bring home a more immedicable grief, 
 Wild as the whirling of the withered leaf, 
 
 Than the soiled features of a blood-stained corse ? 
 
 A shattered shape, who names her his own wife ; 
 A soldier no ! a wreck, that bends at last 
 A face, that late made lovely all her past, 
 
 And groans, " Live with me ! I am death in life ! " 
 
1 62 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 ASSUMPTION, 
 i. 
 
 A MILE of moonlight and the whispering wood; 
 A mile of shadow, and the odorous lane ; 
 One large white star above the quietude 
 
 Like one sweet wish ; and, laughter after pain, 
 Wild roses wistful in a web of rain. 
 
 ii. 
 
 No star, no rose, when love assumes the lead ! 
 No woodsman compass of the skies and rocks, 
 
 Tattooed with stars and lichens, shall he need 
 To guide him where, among the hollyhocks, 
 A blur of moonlight, gleam his sweetheart s locks 
 
 in. 
 
 We name it beauty that permitted part, 
 The Love-elected apotheosis 
 
 Of Nature, which the god within the heart 
 Just touching makes immortal, but by this, 
 A star, a rose, the memory of a kiss. 
 
CARA MIA. 163 
 
 CARA MIA. 
 
 TO M. 
 
 SOFT lips to kiss to sleep, 
 Soft eyes to make you dream, 
 Soft hands to waken ; 
 Two sweetest flow rs to keep, 
 Soft lips that kiss to sleep ; 
 Two brightest stars to beam, 
 Soft eyes that make you dream ; 
 Wings that are shaken, 
 Soft hands that waken. 
 
 n. 
 
 Her lips, to give perfume ; 
 Her eyes, to kindle light ; 
 
 Her hands to hallow ; 
 To every flow r in bloom 
 
164 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 Her lips shall give perfume ; 
 In every star at night 
 Her eyes shall kindle light ; 
 Wings that are callow 
 Her hands shall hallow. 
 
 in. 
 
 Who would not love to rest ? 
 Who would not love to lie ? 
 
 Who would not love them ? 
 Such flowers on their breast, 
 Who would not love to rest ? 
 Such stars within their sky, 
 Who would not love to lie ? 
 
 Such wings above them, 
 Who would not love them ? 
 
ESOTERIC. 165 
 
 ESOTERIC, 
 i. 
 
 WITHIN the old, old forest 
 The wind hath whispered me 
 Thou livest thou, who warest 
 With birds in melody, 
 And all the wood-way starest 
 With flowers fragrantly, 
 Thou presence none may see ! 
 
 n. 
 
 If I should seek thee sitting 
 Beneath the woodland tree, 
 
 The elder blossoms knitting 
 In wreaths of witchery, 
 
 Between the glimpse and flitting, 
 What wouldst thou show to me, 
 Thou presence none may see ? 
 
1 66 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 III. 
 
 O thou, who, mayhap, hidest 
 A flow r upon the tree ; 
 
 Or in a color glidest 
 Beyond me secretly ; 
 
 Or in a scent abidest, 
 
 A fragrance, show to me 
 The thing my heart would see ! 
 
 IV. 
 
 If I should seek thee dreaming 
 
 Upon the wild-rose lea, 
 Thy feet and white hands gleaming 
 
 More pollened than the bee, 
 Between the real and seeming, 
 
 What wouldst thou say to me, 
 
 Thou presence none may see ? 
 
 v. 
 
 O thou, who, mayhap, talkest 
 With birds that sing of thee ; 
 
ESOTERIC. 167 
 
 Or with the water walkest, 
 
 A hidden harmony ; 
 Or in the sweet wind mockest, 
 
 A music, say to me 
 
 The thoughts my soul would see ! 
 
1 68 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 MNEMONICS. 
 
 IT shall not be forgotten 
 Of any one who sees, 
 The sorrel-flow r amid the moss, 
 The wind-flower mid the trees. 
 
 Though I can but remember 
 
 All flowers by her face, 
 
 That flow r, which is my life s perfume, 
 
 Kin to the wildflow r race. 
 
 It shall not be forgotten 
 Of any one who looks, 
 The falling-star above the hills, 
 Or imaged in the brooks. 
 
 Though I can but remember 
 The star-fire by her eyes, 
 Those stars, which are my destiny, 
 Bright sisters to the skies . 
 
MNEMONICS. 169 
 
 And, oh, the song that follows 
 The wing-step of the bird ! 
 It shall not be forgotten 
 When once such song is heard. 
 
 Though I can but remember 
 
 All music by her words, 
 
 That song, which is my heart s response, 
 
 Kin to the building bird s. 
 
 How shall they be forgotten, 
 
 The fair and fugitive, 
 
 When in all birds and stars and flowers 
 
 Love s intimations live ! 
 
I/O INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 THE NAIAD. 
 
 SHE sits among the iris stalks 
 Of bubbling brooks ; and leans for hours 
 Among the river s lily flowers, 
 Or on their whiteness walks : 
 
 Above dark forest pools, lone rocks 
 Wall in, she leans with dripping locks, 
 And listening to the echo, talks 
 With her fair face lothera. 
 
 There is no forest of the hills, 
 No valley of the solitude, 
 Nor fern, nor moss, which may elude 
 
 Her searching step that stills : 
 
 She dreams among the wild-rose brakes 
 Of fountains that the ripple shakes, 
 
 And, dreaming of herself, she fills 
 The silence with " lothera." 
 
 And every wind, which haunts the ways 
 Of leaf and bough, once having kissed 
 Her virgin nudity, goes whist 
 
THE NAIAD. I *J\ 
 
 With wonder and with praise : 
 
 There blows no breeze which hath not learned 
 Her name s sweet melody, and yearned 
 
 To kiss her mouth that laughs and says 
 " lothera, lothera." 
 
 No wild thing of the wood, no bird, 
 
 Or brown or blue, or gold or gray, 
 
 Beneath the sun s or moonlight s ray, 
 That hath not loved and heard : 
 
 They are her pupil s ; she may say 
 
 No new thing, but, within a day, 
 They have its music, word for word, 
 
 Harmonious as lothera. 
 
 No man who lives and is not wise 
 
 With love for common flowers and trees, 
 Bee, bird and beast, and brook and breeze, 
 
 And rocks and hills and skies, 
 
 Search where he will, shall ever see 
 One flutter of her drapery, 
 
 One glimpse of limbs, or hair, or eyes 
 Of beautiful lothera. 
 
INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 THE RED-BIRD. 
 
 RED clouds and reddest flowers, 
 And now two redder wings 
 Swim through the rosy hours ; 
 Red wings among the flowers ; 
 And now the red-bird sings. 
 
 God gives the red clouds ripples 
 
 Of flame that seem to split 
 In rubies and in dripples 
 Of rose where rills and ripples 
 The singing flame that lit. 
 
 Red clouds of sundered splendor ; 
 
 God whispered one small word, 
 Rich, sweet, and wild and tender 
 And, in the vibrant splendor, 
 
 The word became a bird. 
 
THE RED- BIRD. 
 
 He flies beneath the garnet 
 
 Of clouds that flame and float, 
 When summer hears the hornet 
 Hum round the plum turned garnet, 
 Heaven s music in his throat. 
 
174 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 THE STORM. 
 
 A DAEMON glares on the hills, 
 The frown of his black brow showing, 
 The hiss of his fierce breath blowing 
 Like hail through his beard that it fills. 
 The forests are taken ; 
 
 The violent oaks 
 Are twisted and shaken 
 As by chariot spokes, 
 Where mountains awaken 
 The hoofs of his yokes 
 Reined sheer with the strength of his arm- 
 Ride forth, O spirit of storm ! 
 What hope for the sparrow, 
 
 Or nest of the bird ! 
 Where fords were once narrow, 
 
 What hope for the herd ! 
 When arrow on arrow 
 He empties the third 
 
THE STORM. I 
 
 Of his quiver against their alarm 
 
 Descend, O spirit of storm ! 
 You may measure the might that he brings 
 By the welkin which echoes his felloes ; 
 By the fork of the lightning, that yellows 
 The darkness, the sword that he swings. 
 The cattle are scattered 
 
 And low from the shore ; 
 The roses are shattered 
 
 That grew at the door ; 
 The swallows look tattered, 
 
 And twitter and soar, 
 Made glad with the force of his form 
 Rejoice, O spirit of storm ! 
 On levels that sunder 
 
 The might of the main, 
 He ploughs with the thunder 
 
 And sows with the rain ; 
 No sunbeam shall blunder 
 
 Through black till the plain 
 Is planted with storm as a farm 
 Sweep on, O spirit of storm ! 
 
INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 His path is the abysm, which heaps 
 
 The wild wind behind him, and hovers 
 A whirlwind before, that discovers 
 The hurricane lair where he sleeps. 
 On tempests that wrestle 
 
 God s stars shall descend ! 
 To guard the good vessel 
 
 From rocks that would rend ;- 
 Like mercies that nestle, 
 God s stars, to defend 
 The father and his from all harm 
 From thee, O spirit of storm ! 
 
MARIE. 177 
 
 M 
 
 MARIE. 
 
 ARIE draws near : 
 
 I seem to hear 
 The shy approach of dreamy innocence : 
 As if brown leaves her crown 
 A dryad should step down 
 From some dim oak-tree where the woods are dense. 
 
 ii. 
 
 Marie s with me : 
 
 I seem to see 
 
 The brambles blossom where just touched her 
 dress : 
 
 For, as the whole spring glows 
 
 In one wild, woodland rose, 
 In her for me lives all life s loveliness. 
 
1 78 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 LINES TO M. 
 
 
 WHAT better praise for all her ways, 
 Than that all hours her ways illume? 
 Such brightness as the maiden year 
 Knows, when God s kindness seems as near 
 As flowers whose wisdom s but to bloom. 
 
 Hers the deep hair : a face more fair 
 
 Than gardens June sets blossoming ; 
 The sunshine of her gladness gleams 
 In bloom-bright lips and cheeks, and dreams 
 Upon her throat s soft coloring. 
 
 Her voice is sweet as birds that greet 
 With song the coming of the light ; 
 
 The serious happy gleam that lies 
 
 In the dark lustre of her eyes 
 Is as the starlight in the night. 
 
LINES TO M. 179 
 
 Beyond the sea such girls as she 
 It was whom Titian loved to paint 
 
 With calm Madonna eyes and hair, 
 
 Divinely pale and dim and fair, 
 Soft as the halo of a saint. 
 
180 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 CIRCE. 
 
 THE pillared portals of her home once rose 
 from out the sea ; 
 Its casements burnt with green sea-fire of ocean 
 
 mystery ; 
 And all its halls of love were full of mermaid melody. 
 
 Its battlements of beauty were a pharos from afar, 
 To lure the wand ring seamen like a constellated 
 
 star ; 
 Life may question ; death is silent ; will it answer 
 
 where they are ? 
 
 It is enough to know that once love led me with a 
 
 lute- 
 To taste the honey of her soul and of her flesh the 
 
 fruit ; 
 Between the soul and flesh she changed my self into 
 
 a brute. 
 
 
CIRCE. l8l 
 
 It is enough to know that love once sate me at a 
 
 feast 
 Her word was bread and oil to me, her kiss was 
 
 wine at least ; 
 Between the word and kiss she changed my self into 
 
 a beast. 
 
 The marble now is vanished where the columned 
 
 wonder rose ; 
 The billow beats complaining there, a heart of many 
 
 woes ; 
 The sea wind sings uncertain things of what the 
 
 siren knows. 
 
 Ah me ! you know not how it is with him who once 
 
 hath been 
 A portion of such passion and the slave of such a 
 
 queen ! 
 What such possession of her love to his whole life 
 
 may mean ! 
 
 The world of languid attitudes that lured him to 
 despair ; 
 
1 82 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 Abandonments of beauty that his heart would not 
 
 beware 
 A red rose suffering death, to live one hour in her 
 
 hair. 
 
 Yea, just to be again to her as music to the lute, 
 As fragrance to the senses, as to lips the blood-red 
 
 fruit, 
 Between the soul and flesh again, unto her beauty, 
 
 brute ! 
 
 Her alabaster stairways and her casements filled 
 
 with light, 
 
 Her corridors of melody and colonnades of night 
 Shall haunt his soul forever with the magic of her 
 
 might ! 
 
THE PAP HI AN VENUS. 183 
 
 THE PAPHIAN VENUS. 
 
 WITH anxious eyes and dry, expectant lips, 
 Within the sculptured stoa by the sea, 
 All day she waited while, like ghostly ships, 
 Long clouds rolled over Paphos : the wild bee 
 Sucked in the sultry poppy, half asleep, 
 Beside the shepherd and his drowsy sheep. 
 
 White-robed she waited day by day ; alone 
 
 With the white temple s shrined concupiscence, 
 
 The Paphian goddess on her obscene throne, 
 Binding all chastity to violence, 
 
 All innocence to lust that feels no shame 
 
 Venus Mylitta born of filth and flame. 
 
 So must they haunt her marble portico, 
 The devotees of passion, grown as pale 
 
 As moonlight streaming through the stormy snow ; 
 Dark eyes desirous of the stranger sail, 
 
1 84 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 The gods shall bring across the Cyprian Sea, 
 And him elected to their mastery. 
 
 A priestess of the temple came, when eve 
 Blazed, like a satrap s triumph, in the west ; 
 
 And watched her listening to the ocean s heave, 
 Dusk s golden glory on her face and breast, 
 
 And in her hair the rosy wind s caress, 
 
 Pitying her dedicated tenderness. 
 
 When out of darkness night persuades the stars, 
 A dream shall bend above her saying, " Soon 
 
 A barque shall come with purple sails and spars, 
 Sailing from Tarsus neath a low white moon ; 
 
 And thou shalt see one in a robe of Tyre 
 
 Facing toward thee like the god Desire. 
 
 " Rise then ! as, clad in starlight, riseth night 
 Thy nakedness clad on with loveliness ! 
 
 So shalt thou see him, like the god Delight, 
 
 Breast through the foam and climb the cliff to 
 press 
 
 Hot lips to thine and lead thee in before 
 
 Love s awful presence where ye shall adore." 
 
THE PAPHIAN VENUS. 185 
 
 So at her heart the vision entered in, 
 
 With lips of lust the lips of song had kissed, 
 
 And eyes of passion laughing with sweet sin, 
 A starry splendor robed in amethyst, 
 
 Seen like that star set in the glittering gloam 
 
 Venus Mylitta born of fire and foam. 
 
 So shall she dream until, near middle night, 
 When on the blackness of the ocean s rim 
 
 The moon, like some war-galleon all alight 
 
 With blazing battle, from the sea shall swim, 
 
 A shadow, with inviolate eyes that pray, 
 
 Severe and sad, shall stoop to her and say : 
 
 " So hast thou heard the promises of one, 
 
 Of her ! with whom the God of gods is wroth, 
 
 For whom was prophesied at Babylon 
 The second death Chaldsean Mylidoth ! 
 
 Whose feet take hold on darkness and despair, 
 
 Hissing destruction in her heart and hair ! 
 
 " Wouldst thou behold the vessel she would bring ? 
 A wreck ! ten hundred years have smeared with 
 slime : 
 
1 86 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 A hulk ! where all abominations cling, 
 
 The spawn and vermin of the seas of time : 
 Wild waves have rotted it, fierce suns have scorched, 
 Mad winds have tossed and stormy stars have 
 torched. 
 
 " Can lust give birth to love ! The vile and foul 
 Be mother to beauty ? Lo ! can this thing be ? 
 
 A monster like a man shall rise and howl 
 Upon the wreck across the crawling sea, 
 
 Then plunge ; and swim unto thee ; like an ape, 
 
 A beast all belly Thou canst not escape ! " 
 
 Gone was the shadow with the suffering brow ; 
 
 And in the temple s porch she lay and wept, 
 Alone with night, the ocean, and her vow. 
 
 Then up the east the moon s full splendor swept, 
 And, dark between it wreck ? or argosy ? 
 A sudden vessel far away at sea. 
 
METAMORPHOSIS. 1 8? 
 
 METAMORPHOSIS. 
 
 BEFORE Love s lofty goddess Life hath 
 toiled 
 
 To form from burning dew and dewy fire 
 Who kneel and worship with a heart that s soiled, 
 Within the secret temple of Desire ; 
 Their curse is such : that, even while they pray, 
 They shall not see, nor shall they know thereof, 
 Their deity is turned a thing of clay, 
 Lust, fashioned in the very form of Love. 
 
1 88 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 A 
 
 BEFORE THE TEMPLE. 
 
 ND desolate she sate her down 
 
 Upon the marble of the temple s stair. 
 You would have thought her, with her 
 
 eyes of brown 
 
 White cheeks and hazel hair, 
 A dryad dreaming there. 
 
 A priest of Bacchus passed, nor stopped 
 To chide her ; deeming her whose chiton hid 
 But half her bosom, and whose girdle dropped 
 
 Some grief-drowned Bassarid, 
 
 The god of wine had chid. 
 
 With wreaths of woodland cyclamen 
 For Dian s shrine, a shepherdess drew near, 
 All her young thoughts on vestal beauty, when- 
 
 She dare not look for fear 
 
 Its visible godhead here ! 
 
BEFORE THE TEMPLE. 189 
 
 Fierce lights on shields of bossy brass 
 And helms of gold, next from the hills deploy 
 Tall youths of Argos. And she sees him pass, 
 
 Flushed with heroic joy, 
 
 On towards the siege of Troy. 
 
INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 THE DEAD FAUN. 
 
 r ~p*HE joys that touched thee once be mine ! 
 \ The sympathies of sky and sea, 
 
 The friendships of each rock and pine, 
 That made thy lonely life, ah me ! 
 In Tempe or in Gargaphie ! 
 
 Such joy as thou didst feel when first, 
 
 On some wild crag, thou stood st alone, 
 
 To watch the mountain tempest burst, 
 
 With streaming thunder, lightning-sown, 
 On Latmos or on Pelion ! 
 
 Thy awe ! when, crowned with vastness, Night 
 And Silence ruled the deep s abyss ; 
 
 And through dark leaves thou saw st the white 
 Breasts of the starry maids who kiss 
 Pale feet of moony Artemis. 
 
THE DEAD FAUN. igi 
 
 Thy dreams ! when breasting matted weeds 
 Of Arethusa, thou didst hear 
 
 The music of the wind-swept reeds ; 
 
 And down dim forest-ways drew near 
 Shy herds of slim Arcadian deer. 
 
 Thy wisdom ! that knew naught but love 
 And beauty, with which love is fraught ; 
 
 The wisdom of the heart whereof 
 
 All noblest passions spring that thought, 
 As Nature thinks, " All else is naught." 
 
 Thy hope ! wherein to-morrow set 
 
 No shadow ; hope, that, lacking care 
 
 And retrospect, could not regret, 
 
 And bloomed in rainbows everywhere 
 Of whilom joys again grown fair. 
 
 These were thine all : in all life s moods 
 Embracing all of happiness : 
 
 And when within thy long-loved woods 
 Didst lay thee down to die, no less 
 Thy happiness stood by to bless. 
 
192 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 APOLLO. 
 
 i. 
 
 ALL the Lydian notes revealing, 
 Son of Leto, oh, come stealing 
 As the wind Thessalian rivers 
 Whisper of ! the wind, that shivers 
 Every ripple into stars, 
 Blowing bubble-bars on bars. 
 Bring the harp that haunts the oaks, 
 Wherein melody invokes 
 Naiad music of the fount, 
 Oread music of the mount ; 
 And such Satyre song as keeps 
 Revel on Lycsean steeps, 
 When Night nods, a Maenad shape 
 Purple with the staining grape. 
 Wake the chords that dewy grounds 
 Echo when no mortal hounds 
 
APOLLO. 193 
 
 Bell the hunt, whose spear-point shines 
 Through Arcadia s tangled vines, 
 When the half-awakened Dawn, 
 Dreaming on a mountain lawn, 
 Lets her golden sandals lie 
 And walks bare-footed through the sky ; 
 And by Arethusa s bank, 
 Swift upon the red hart s flank, 
 Drives Diana s buskined band 
 Down the cistus-blooming strand. 
 Then love s minors, swooning o er 
 The mountain hush, the ocean roar, 
 As Selene, stealing, sails 
 O er the Lemnos lakes to vales 
 Where Endymion dreams and feels 
 Love her stolen kiss reveals. 
 
 n. 
 
 Thou hast sung of Helicon : 
 How the sister Muses won 
 From the nine Pierides 
 Empire o er all harmonies. 
 
194 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 Thou hast sung of Tempe s maid, 
 
 And the sudden laurel s shade. 
 
 Thou hast sung of classic loves, 
 
 In the temple-columned groves, 
 
 Where the marble altar stands 
 
 Rose-heaped by the balmy hands 
 
 Of Achaian maiden bands ; 
 
 Where the bay-crowned priest lifts up 
 
 Wine-wet hands that tilt the cup. 
 
 Sung, as wild Amphion sung, 
 
 Songs, Parnassian rocks, that swung 
 
 Each in its lyric niche, and massed 
 
 Melodious walls like Thebes . And last, 
 
 Sung, what wrung forth tears in Hell, 
 
 Love no snake-haired Fears could quell. 
 
 in. 
 
 Ours shall be no island song, 
 Suited to a maiden throng, 
 Dancing with their wreaths of roses 
 To the double-flute s soft closes ! 
 But a Nation s ! whose large eyes 
 
APOLLO. 
 
 With life s liberty are wise, 
 And consenting sympathies 
 Of all arts and sciences. 
 She ! who stands above the storms 
 With truth s thunders in her arms, 
 And the star-serenity 
 Of her hope bound burningly 
 Round her brow ; and at her knee 
 The spirit of progress who is shod 
 With ethereal fire of God. . . . 
 Yea ! thy last shall still be first 
 Some grand epopee to burst 
 With such organ notes as rang 
 When the stars of morning sang, 
 And the Sons of Heaven sent 
 Shoutings through the firmament ; 
 As our years have justified 
 And the stars have prophesied. 
 1886. 
 
196 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 THE FEUD. 
 
 ROCKS, trees and rocks ; and down a mossy 
 stone 
 
 The murmuring ooze and trickle of a stream 
 Of water, where the mountain spring lies lone, 
 A gleaming cairngorm where the shadows 
 
 dream, 
 And one wild road winds like a saffron seam. 
 
 Here sang the thrush, whose pure, mellifluous note 
 Dropped golden sweetness on the fragrant June ; 
 
 Here cat- and blue-bird and wood-sparrow wrote 
 Their presence on the silence with a tune ; 
 
 And here the fox drank neath the mountain moon. 
 
 Frail ferns and dewy mosses and dark brush, 
 
 Impenetrable briers, deep and dense, 
 And wiry bushes, brush, that seemed to crush 
 
THE FEUD. IQ7 
 
 The struggling saplings with its tangle, whence 
 Sprawled out the ramble of an old rail-fence. 
 
 A wasp buzzed by ; and then a butterfly 
 In orange and amber, like a floating flame ; 
 
 And then a man, hard-eyed and very sly, 
 
 Gaunt-cheeked and haggard and a little lame, 
 
 With an old rifle, down the mountain came. 
 
 He listened, drinking from a flask he took 
 Out of the ragged pocket of his coat ; 
 
 Then all around him cast a stealthy look ; 
 
 Lay down ; and watched an eagle soar and float, 
 
 His fingers hidden in his hairy throat. 
 
 The shades grew longer ; and each Cumberland 
 
 height 
 Loomed framed in splendors of the dolphin 
 
 dusk. 
 Around the road a horseman rode in sight ; 
 
 Young, tall, blond-bearded. Silent, grim and 
 
 brusque, 
 He in the thicket aimed Quick, harsh, then husk, 
 
198 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 The echoes barked among the hills and made 
 Repeated instants of the shot s distress ; 
 
 Then silence and the trampled bushes swayed ; 
 Then silence, packed with murder and the press 
 
 Of distant hoofs that galloped riderless. 
 
THE RAID. 199 
 
 THE RAID. 
 
 FAR in the forest, where the rude road winds 
 Through twisted briers and weeds, stamped 
 
 down and caked 
 With mountain mire, the clashing boughs are 
 
 raked 
 Again with rain whose sobbing frenzy blinds. 
 
 There is a noise of winds ; a gasp and gulp 
 Of swollen torrents ; and the sodden smell 
 Of woodland soil, dead trees that long since 
 fell 
 
 Among the moss red-rotted into pulp. 
 
 Fogged by the rain, far up the mountain glen, 
 Deep in the dark, an elfish wisp of light ; 
 And stealthy shadows stealing through the night 
 
 With strong, set faces of determined men. 
 
2OO INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 II. 
 
 Twixt fog and fire, in pomps of chrysoprase, 
 Above vague peaks, the morning hesitates 
 Ere, o er the threshold of her golden gates, 
 
 Her chariot speeds the splendor of its rays. 
 
 A gleaming glimmer in the sun-speared mist, 
 A cataract, reverberating, falls : 
 Upon a pine a gray hawk sits and calls, 
 
 Then soars away, no bigger than the fist. 
 
 Along the wild path, through the oaks and firs, 
 Rocks, where the rattler coils itself and suns, 
 Big-booted, belted, and with twinkling guns, 
 
 The posse marches with three moonshiners. 
 
DEAD MAN S RUN. 2OI 
 
 DEAD MAN S RUN. 
 
 HE rode adown the autumn wood, 
 A man dark-eyed and brown ; 
 A mountain girl before him stood 
 Clad in a homespun gown. 
 
 " To ride this road is death for you ! 
 
 My father waits you there ; 
 My father and my brother, too. 
 
 You know the oath they swear." 
 
 He holds her by one berry-brown wrist, 
 And by one berry-brown hand ; 
 
 And he hath laughed at her and kissed 
 Her cheek the sun hath tanned. 
 
 " The feud is to the death, sweetheart ; 
 
 But forward will I ride." 
 " And if you ride to death, sweetheart, 
 
 My place is at your side." 
 
2O2 IN TIM A TIONS OF THE SEA UTIFUL. 
 
 Low hath he laughed again and kissed 
 And helped her with his hand ; 
 
 And they have rode into the mist 
 That belts the autumn land. 
 
 And they had passed by Devil s Den, 
 And come to Dead Man s Run, 
 
 When in the brush rose up two men, 
 Each with a levelled gun. 
 
 " Down, down ! my sister ! " cries the one ;- 
 She gives the reins a twirl ; 
 
 The other shouts, " He shot my son ! 
 And now he steals my girl ! " 
 
 The rifles crack : she will not wail : 
 
 He will not cease to ride : 
 But, oh ! her face is pale, is pale, 
 
 And the red blood stains her side. 
 
 " Sit fast, sit fast by me, sweetheart ! 
 
 The road is rough to ride ! " 
 The road is rough by gulch and bluff, 
 
 And her hair blows wild and wide. 
 
DEAD MAN S RUN. 2O$ 
 
 " Sit fast, sit fast by me, sweetheart ! 
 
 The bank is steep to ride ! " 
 The bank is steep for a strong man s leap, 
 
 And her eyes are staring wide. 
 
 " Sit fast, sit fast by me, sweetheart ! 
 
 The Run is swift to ride ! " 
 The Run is swift with mountain drift, 
 
 And she sways from side to side. 
 
 Is it a wash of the yellow moss, 
 
 Or a drift of the autumn s gold, 
 The mountain torrent foams across 
 
 For the dead pine s roots to hold ? 
 
 Is it the bark of the sycamore, 
 
 Or bark of the white birch-tree, 
 The mountaineer on the other shore 
 
 Hath followed and still can see ? 
 
 No mountain moss or leaves, my heart ! 
 
 No bark of birchen gray ! 
 Young hair of gold and a face death-cold 
 
 The wild stream sweeps away. 
 
204 INTIMA T10NS OF THE BE A UTIFUL. 
 
 THE MOONSHINER. 
 
 HOW long we had lain and had listened ! 
 Where the trees let in winks of the sun, 
 Ere their gun-barrels glittered and glistened 
 
 In the gully below by the run ! 
 We had watched all the night and the morning 
 
 And our limbs stoven stiff with the chill 
 Of the dew ; but my Lise had the warning, 
 
 And we knew all was up with the still 
 If we ever gave over our waiting, 
 
 The four of us : I and Bud Roe, 
 Two Tollivers hated and hating 
 
 And the posse nigh twenty or so. 
 
 The evening before we had reckoned 
 
 Their men would ride up through the glen ; 
 
 And it took little more than a second 
 To say how we d manage it then : 
 
THE MOONSHINER. 2O$ 
 
 For the valley wound up like an alley, 
 
 Built blind with steep bluffs, and no trees 
 At the bottom ; the rest of the valley 
 
 Scrub bush that just reached to the knees. 
 With me and one Tolliver watching 
 
 In front, and Bud Roe in the gap 
 With a Tolliver danger of botching ? 
 
 Them jumbled like rats in a trap ! 
 
 So we all took a pull at the bottle 
 
 Lise brought me that morning ; and though 
 We had eaten, nor left what would throttle 
 
 An ant, we were hungry, I know, 
 For the other, as hungry as quiet ! 
 
 For the first of the gang had n t reached 
 The gully, or hardly passed by it, 
 
 When a wild -hawk they thought it had 
 
 screeched. 
 When a pewee had whistled, we knew it 
 
 The signal the posse were in, 
 Every man of them. Well, they would do it ! 
 
 And we well, we had to begin ! 
 
206 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 A pistol each side and a rifle 
 
 Or two ready loaded. Our height 
 Would leave me to aim just a trifle 
 
 To left and my pard to the right. 
 And we lay in the rocks, never winking, 
 
 Just ready. I heard the dry buzz 
 Of the grasshoppers ; thinking and thinking 
 
 How solemn and silent it was : 
 When sudden, I raised in a hurry, 
 
 The laurel whipped back I could curse ! 
 Lise could n t get rid of her worry, 
 
 And had to come there for the worse ! 
 
 Just then through the gully and thicket 
 
 The heads of their horses and stocks 
 O the Winchesters. Click of the cricket? 
 
 Or cocking of guns in the rocks ? 
 We waited until the last came in. 
 
 I lined on the sheriff and said 
 " Shoot ! " hoarsely ; and ushered the game in 
 
 With the sheriff and deputy dead. 
 Some down ; and the other ones very 
 
THE MOONSHINER. 2QJ 
 
 Much taken with terror rode back ; 
 Then the two in the gap made it merry 
 With death-dealing crack upon crack. 
 
 And back to the open with frightened 
 
 Wild faces the rest : and again 
 The guns at our shoulders were tightened : 
 
 They spurred on us loosening the rein. 
 They were cornered : they saw it : and grimly 
 
 They turned on their death ; and I leant 
 With my gun on the rocks, and saw dimly 
 
 They rode at us shooting, and went 
 Through the smoke for the thick of our fire : 
 
 Then Lise, who was loading my gun, 
 Screamed something and jumped and a wire 
 
 Of blood down her face : she was done. 
 
 There were six of them left, but a baby 
 
 Could have done for me then, with her dead 
 
 In the stead of myself ! And it may be 
 The two of us there had eat lead, 
 
 If Bud had n t come with the other 
 
208 INTIMATIONS OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 The three were enough for the rest, 
 Dying hard as they did ! I would bother 
 
 With nothing, my hand on her breast, 
 Till they led me away, and together 
 
 Brought her to the still with the shot 
 In her brow. But the buzzards will feather 
 
 And roost on the rest where they rot ! 
 " 
 
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