One Day & Another: A Lyrical Eclogue
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He walks aimlessly onBeyond those twisted apple-trees,That partly hide the old brick-barn,Its tattered arms and tattered kneesA scare-crow tosses to the breezeAmong the shocks of corn.My heart is gray as is the day,In which the rain-wind drearilyMakes all the sounding branches sway,And in the hollows far awayThe dry leaves rustle wearily.And soon we'll hear the far wild-geeseHonk in frost-bitten heavens underArcturus; when my walks must cease,And by the fireside's log-heaped peaceI'll sit and nod and ponder. —When every fall of this loud creekIs architectured ice; and hintedBrown acres of yon corn stretch bleak,White-sculptured with the snows, that streakThe hillsides bitter-tinted,I'll sit and dream of that glad mornWe went down ways where blooms were blowing;That dusk we strolled through flower and thorn,By tasseled meads of cane and corn,To where the stream was flowing.Again I'll oar our boat amongThe lily-pads that dot the river;And reach her hat the grape-vine longStrikes in the stream; we'll sing that song,And then… I'll wake and shiver.Why is it that my mind revertsTo that sweet past? while full of partingThe present is; so full of hurtsAnd heartache, that what it assertsAdds only to the smarting.How often shall I sit and thinkOf that sweet past! through lowered lashesWhat-might-have-been trace link by link;Then watch it gradually sinkAnd crumble into ashes.Outside I'll hear the sad wind weepLike some lone spirit, grieved, forsaken;Then shuddering to bed shall creepAnd lie awake, or haply sleepA sleep by visions shaken.Dreams of the past that paint and drawThe present in a hue that's wanting;A scare-crow thing of sticks and straw, —Like that just now I, passing, saw, —Its empty tatters flaunting.9
He compares the present day with a past oneThe sun a splintered splendor wasIn trees, whose waving branches blurredIts disc, that day we went together,'Mid wild-bee hum and whirring buzzOf insects, through the fields that purredWith Summer in the perfect weather.So sweet it was to look and leanTo her young face and feel the lightOf eyes that met my own unsaddened!Her laugh, that left lips more serene;Her speech, that blossomed like the whiteLife-everlasting there and gladdened.Maturing Summer! you were fraughtWith more of beauty then than nowParades the pageant of September:Where what-is-now contrasts in thoughtWith what-was-once, that bloom and boughCan only help me to remember.10
He pauses before a deserted house by the roadsideThrough iron-weeds and rosesAnd ancient beech and oak,Old porches it disclosesAbove the weeds and roses,The drizzling raindrops soak.Neglected walks a-tangleWith dodder-strangled grass;And every mildewed angleHeaped with dead leaves that spangleThe paths that round it pass.The creatures there that buryAnd hide within its rooms,And spidered closets – veryDim with gray webs – will hurryOut when the twilight glooms.Owls roost in room and basement;Bats haunt its hearth and porch,And through some paneless casementFlit, in the moon's enlacement,Or firefly's twinkling torch.There is a sense of frost here,And gusts that sigh away. —What was it that was lost here?Long, long ago was lost here? —Can anybody say?My foot perhaps would startleSome bird that mopes within;Some owl above its portal,That stares upon the mortalAs on a thing of sin.The rutty road winds by itThis side the dusty toll. —Why do I stop to eye it?My heart can not deny it —The house is like my soul.11
He proceeds on his wayI bear a burden – look not therein!Naught will you find but sorrow and sin;Sorrow and sin that wend with meWherever I go. And misery,A gaunt companion, a wretched bride,Goes always with me, side by side.Sick of myself and all the Earth,I ask my soul now – is life worthThe little pleasure that we gainFor all our sorrow and our pain?The love, to which we gave our best,That turns a mockery and a jest?12
Among the twilight fieldsThe things we love, the loveliest things we cherish,Pass from us soonest, vanish utterly.Dust are our deeds, and dust our dreams that perishEre we can say they be!I have loved man and learned we are not brothers —Within myself, perhaps, may lie the cause; —Then set one woman high above all others,And found her full of flaws.Made unseen stars my keblahs of devotion;Aspired to knowledge and remained a clod:With heart and soul, led on by blind emotion,The way to failure trod.Chance, say, or fate that works through good and evil;Or destiny, that nothing may retard,That to some end, above life's empty level,Perhaps withholds reward.PART IV
LATE AUTUMN
1
Sick and sad, propped among pillows, she sits at her window'Though the dog-tooth violet comeWith April showers,And the wild-bees' music humAbout the flowers,We shall never wend as whenLove laughed leading us from menOver violet vale and glen,Where the bob-white piped for hours,And we heard the rain-crow's drum.Now November heavens are gray;Autumn killsEvery joy – like leaves of MayIn the rills. —Still I sit and lean and listenTo a voice that has arisenIn my heart – with eyes that glistenLooking at the happy hillsFading dark-blue far away.2
She gazes out upon the dying gardenThere rank death clutches at the flowersAnd drags them down and stamps in earth.At morn the thin, malignant hours,Shrill-mouthed among the windy bowers,Clamor a bitter mirth. —Or is it heart-break that, forlorn,Would so conceal itself in scorn?At noon the weak, white sunlight crawls,Like feeble feet once beautiful,From mildewed walks to mildewed walls,Down which the oozing moisture fallsUpon the cold toadstool. —Faint on the leaves it drips and creeps —Or is it tears of one who weeps?At night a misty blur of moonSlips through the trees, – pale as a faceOf melancholy marble hewn; —And, like the phantom of some tune,Winds whisper in the place. —Or is it love come back again,Seeking its perished joy in vain?3
She muses upon the pastWhen in her cloudy chiton,Spring freed the frozen rills,And walked in rainbowed light onThe forests, fields, and hills;Beyond the world's horizon,That no such glory lies on,And no such hues bedizen,Love led us far from ills.When Summer came, a sickleStuck in her sheaf of gleams,And let the honey trickleFrom out the beehives' seams;Within the violet-blottedSweet book to us alloted, —Whose lines are starry dotted, —Love read us still his dreams.Then Autumn came, – a liar,A fair-faced heretic; —In gypsy garb of fire,Throned on a harvest rick. —Our lives, that fate had thwarted,Stood pale and broken hearted, —Though smiling when we parted, —Where love to death lay sick.Now is the Winter waited,The tyrant hoar and old,With death and hunger mated,Who counts his crimes like gold. —Once more before foreverWe part – once more, then never —Once more before we severMust I his face behold!4
She takes up a book and readsWhat little things are thoseThat hold our happiness!A smile, a glance, a roseDropped from her hair or dress;A word, a look, a touch, —These are so much, so much.An air we can't forget;A sunset's gold that gleams;A spray of migonette,Will fill the soul with dreamsMore than all history says,Or romance of old days.For of the human heart,Not brain, is memory;These things it makes a partOf its own entity;The joys, the pains whereofAre the very food of love.5
She lays down the bookHow true! how true! – but words are weakIn sympathy they give the soul,To music – music, that can speakAll the heart's pain and dole;Still making us remember mostThe love we've lost, the love we've lost.So weary am I, and so fainTo see his face, to feel his kissThrill rapture through my soul again,There is no hell like this. —Ah, God! my God, were it not bestTo give me rest, to give me rest?6
She writes to him to come to herDead lie the dreams we cherished,The dreams we loved so well;Like forest leaves they perished,Like autumn leaves they fell.Alas! that dreams so soon should pass!Alas! Alas!The stream lies bleak and aridThat once went singing on;The flowers once that variedIts banks are dead and gone:Where these were once are thorns and thirst —The place is curst.Come to me; I am lonely:Forgive what you have heard. —Come to me; if for onlyOne last sad parting word:For one last word before the pallFalls over all.The day and hour are suitedFor what I'd say to youOf love that I uprooted —But I have suffered too!Come to me; I would say good-byBefore I die.7
The wind rises; the trees are agitatedWoods, that beat the wind with franticGestures and drop darkly 'roundAcorns gnarled and leaves that anticWildly on the rustling ground!Is it tragic grief that saddensThrough your souls this autumn day?Or the joy of death that gladdensIn exultance of decay?Arrogant you lift defiantBoughs against the moaning blast,That, like some invisible giant,Wrapped in tumult, thunders past.Is it that in such insurgentFury tossed from tree to tree,You would quench the fiercely urgentPangs of some old memory?As in toil and violent action,That still help them to forget,Mortals drown the dark distractionAnd insistence of regret.8
She muses in the gathering twilightLast night I slept till midnight; then woke, and far awayA cock crowed; lonely and distant came mournful a watch-dog's bay:But lonelier, sadder the tedious, old clock ticked on towards day.And what a day! – remember those morns of summer and spring,That bound our lives together! each morn a wedding-ringOf dew, aroma and sparkle, and flowers and birds a-wing.Sweet morns when I strolled my garden awaiting him, the roseExpected too, with blushes – the Giant-of-Battle that growsA bank of radiance and fragrance where the gate its shadow throws.Not in vain did I wait, departed summer, amid your phlox!The powdery crystal and crimson of your hollow hollyhocks;Your fairy-bells and poppies and the bee that in them rocks.Cool-clad 'neath the pendulous purple of the morning-glory vine,By the jewel-mine of the pansies and the snapdragons in line,I waited, and there he met me whose heart was one with mine.How warm was the breath of the garden when he met me there that day!How the burnished beetle and butterfly flew past us, each a ray! —The memory of those meetings still bears me far away.Ah, me! when I think of the handfuls of little gold coins a-massMy bachelor's-buttons scattered over the garden grass,And the marigolds that boasted their bits of burning brass;More bitter I feel the autumn tighten 'round spirit and heart;And regret the days remembered as lost – that stand apart,A chapter holy and sacred, I read with eyes that smart.Again to the woods a-trysting by the watermill I steal,Where the lilies tumble together, the madcap wind at heel;And meet him among the blossoms that the rocks and the trees conceal.Or the wild-cat grey of the meadows that the ox-eyed daisies dot;Fawn-eyed and tiger-yellow, that tangle a tawny spotOf languid leopard beauty that dozes fierce and hot…Ah! back again with the present! with winds that pinch and twistThe leaves in their peevish passion, and whirl wherever they list;With the autumn, hoary and nipping, whose mausolean mistBuilds wan a tomb for the daylight; – each morning shaggy with fog,That fits grey wigs to the cedars, and furs with frost each log;That carpets with pearl the meadow, and marbles brook and bog, —Alone at dawn – indifferent: alone at eve – I sigh:And wait, like the wind complaining: complain and know not why:But ailing and longing and pining because I do not die.How dull is that sunset! dreary and cold, and hard and dead!The ghost of the one last August that, deeply rich and red,Like the wine of God's own vintage, poured purple overhead.But now I sit with the sighing dead dreams of a dying year;Like the fallen leaves and the acorns, am worthless and feel as sear,With a withered soul and body whose heart is one big tear.As I stare from my window the daylight, like a bravo, its cloak puts on.The moon, like a cautious lanthorn, glitters and then is gone. —Will he come to-night? will he answer? – Oh, God! would it were dawn!9
He enters. Taking her in his arms he speaksThey said you were dying —You shall not die!..Why are you crying?Why do you sigh? —Cease that sad sighing! —Love, it is I.All is forgiven! —Love is not poor;Though he was drivenOnce from your door,Back he has striven,To part nevermore!Will you rememberWhat I forget? —Words, each an ember,That you regret?Now in November,Now we have met?What if love wept once!What though you knew!What if he crept oncePleading to you! —He never slept once,Nor was untrue.Often forgetful,Love may forget;Froward and fretful,Dear, he will fret;Ever regretful,He will regret.Life is completerThrough his control;Living made sweeterEven through dole,Hearing Love's metreSing in the soul.Flesh may not hear it,Being impure;And mind may fear it,May not endure;But in the spirit —There we are sure.So when to-morrowCeases, and weQuit this we borrow,Mortality,Love chastens sorrowSo it can see…Still you are weeping!Why do you weep? —Are tears in keepingWith joy so deep?Gladness so sweeping? —Are you asleep?Speak to me, dearest!Say it is true! —That I am nearest,Dearest to you. —Smile with those clearestEyes of grey blue.10
She smiles through her tears; holding his hands she speaksThey did not say I could not live beyond this weary night,But now I know that I shall die before the morning's light.How weak I am! – but you'll forgive me when I tell you howI loved you – love you; and the pain it is to leave you now?We could not marry! – See, the flesh, that clothes the soul of me,Ordained at birth a sacrifice to this heredity,Denied, forbade. – Ah, you have seen the bright spots in my cheeksFlush hectic, as before the night the west burns blood-red streaks?Consumption. – "But I promised you my hand"? – a thing forlornOf life; diseased! – Oh, God! – and so, far better so, forsworn! —Oh, I was jealous of your love. But think: if I had diedEre babe of mine had come to be a solace at your side!Had it been little then – your grief, when Heaven had made us oneIn everything that's good on earth and then the good undone?No! no! and had I had a child, what grief and agonyTo know that blight born in him, too, against all help of me!Just when we cherish him the most, and youthful, sunny prideSits on his curly front, to see him die ere we have died. —Whose fault? – Ah, God! – not mine! but his, that ancestor who gaveEscutcheon to our humble house – a Death's-head and a Grave.Beneath the pomp of those grim arms I live and may not move;Nor faith, nor truth, nor wealth avail to hurl them down, nor love!How could I tell you this? – not then! when all the world was spunOf morning colors for our love to walk and dance upon.I could not tell you how disease hid here a hideous germ,Precedence slowly claiming and so slowly fixing firm.And when I broke our plighted troth and would not tell you why,I loved you, thinking, "time enough when I have come to die."Draw off my rings, and let my hands rest so … the wretched coughWill interrupt my feeble speech and will not be put off…Ah, anyhow my anodyne is this – to know that youAre near me, love me! – Kiss me now, as you were wont to do.And tell me you forgive me all; and say you will forgetThe sorrow of that breaking-off, the fever and the fret. —Now set those roses near my face and tell me death's a lie —Once it was hard for me to live … now it is hard to die.PART V
WINTER
1
In the silence of his room. After many daysAll, all are shadows. All must passAs writing in the sand or sea;Reflections in a looking-glassAre not less permanent than we.The days that mould us – what are they?That break us on their whirling wheel?What but the potters! we the clayThey fashion and yet leave unreal.Linked through the ages, one and all,In long anthropomorphous chain,The human and the animalInseparably must remain.Within us still the monster shapeThat shrieked in air and howled in slime,What are we? – partly man and ape —The tools of fate, the toys of time!2
The bitterness of his bereavement speaks in himVased in her bedroom window, whiteAs her chaste girlhood, never lost,I smelt the roses – and the nightOutside was fog and frost.What though I claimed her dying there!God nor one angel understoodNor cared, who from sweet feet to hairHad changed to snow her blood.She had been mine so long, so long!Our harp of life was one in word —Why did death thrust his hand amongThe chords and break one chord!A placid lily was the face,A sad pale rose the mouth I kissedThat morn, when filled with Heaven's own graceShe passed into the mist.3
Her dead face seems to rise up before himThe face that I said farewell to,Pillowed a flower on flowers,Comes back with its eyes to tell toMy soul what its lips would spell too —Comes back to me at hours! —Dear, is your heart still daggeredThere by something amiss?Love – is he still a laggard?Hope – is her face still haggardTell me what it is!You, who are done with To-morrow!Done with these worldly skies!Done with our pain and sorrow!Done with the griefs we borrow!Prayers and tears and sighs!Must we say "gone forever"?Or will it all come true?Shall I attain to you ever?And, o'er the doubts that sever,Rise to the truth that's you?Love, in my flesh so fearful,Medicine me this pain! —Love, with the eyes so tearful,How can my soul be cheerful,Seeing its joy is slain!Gone! – 'twas only a vision! —Gone! like a thought, a gleam! —Such to our indecisionUtter no empty mission,Truer than that they seem.4
He sinks into deep thoughtThere are shadows that compel us,There are voices that control;More than substance these can tell us,Speaking to the human soul.In the moonlight, when it glistenedOn my window, white as snow,Once I woke and, leaning, listenedTo a voice that sang below.Full of gladness, full of yearning,Strange with dreamy melody,Like a bird whose heart is burning,Wildly sweet it sang to me.I arose; and by the starlight,Pale beneath the mystic sky,I have seen it full of far light, —My dead joy go singing by.In the darkness, when the glimmerOf the storm was on the pane,I have sat and heard a dimmerVoice lamenting in the rain.Full of parting and unspokenHeartbreak, faint with agony,Like a bird whose heart is broken,Sadly low it cried to me.I arose; and in the darknessWan beneath the haunted sky,I have seen it, cold to starkness, —My dead love go weeping by.5
He arouses from his abstractionSo long it seems since last I saw her face,So long ago it seems,Like some sad soul in unconjectured spaceStill seeking happiness through perished graceAnd unrealities, – a little whileIllusions lead me, ending in the smileOf Death triumphant in a thorny placeAmong Love's ruined roses and dead dreams.Since she is gone, no more I see the light, —Since she has left all dark, —Cleave like a revelation through the night.I wander blindly, filled with fear and fright,Among the fragments and the wrecks and stonesOf life, where Hope, amid the skulls and bones,With weary face, disheartened, wild and white,Trims her pale lamp with its expiring spark.Now she is dead, the Soul, naught can o'erawe, —Now she has passed from me, —Questions God's justice that seems full of flawAs is His world, where misery is law,And men but fools too willing to be slaves. —My House of Faith, built up on dust of graves,The wind of doubt sweeps down as made of straw,And all is night, and I no longer see.6
He looks from his window toward the sombre westRidged and bleak the gray forsakenTwilight at the night has guessed;And no star of dusk has takenFlame unshaken in the west.All day long the woodlands dyingMoaned, and drippings as of griefTossed from barren boughs with sighingDeath of flying twig and leaf.Ah, to live a life unbroken,Scornful of the worst of fate!Like that tree … with branches oaken…Joy's unspoken intimate. —Who can say that man has neverLived the life of plants and trees?Not so wide the lines that severUs forever here from these.Colors, odors, that are cherished,Haply hint we once were flowers;Memory alone has perishedIn this garished world of ours.Music, – that all things expresses,All for which we've loved or sinned, —Haply in our treey tressesOnce was guesses of the wind…But I dream! – The dusk, upbraiding,Deepens without moon or star;Darkness and my sorrow aiding,We but fading phantoms are.And within me doubt keeps saying —"What is wrong? and what is right?Hear the cursing! hear the praying!All are straying on in night."7
He turns from the window, takes up a book and readsThe Soul, like Earth, hath silencesWhich speak not, yet are heard —The voices mute of memoriesAre louder than a word.Theirs is a speech which is not speech;A language that is boundTo soul-vibrations vague that reachDeeper than any sound.No words are theirs. They speak through things,A visible utteranceOf thoughts – like those some sunset bringsOr withered rose perchance.The heavens that once, in purple and flame,Spake to two hearts as one,In after years may speak the sameTo one sad heart alone.Through it the vanished face and eyesOf her, the sweet and fair,Of her the lost, again shall riseTo comfort his despair.And so the love that led him longFrom golden scene to scene,Within the sunset is a tongueTo tell him what has been. —How loud it speaks of that dead day,The rose whose bloom is fled!Of her who died; who, clasped in clay,Lies numbered with the dead.The dead are dead; with them 'tis wellWithin their narrow room; —No memories haunt their hearts who dwellWithin the grave and tomb.But what of those – the dead who live!The living dead, whose lotIs still to love – ah, God forgive! —To live and love, forgot! —8
The storm is heard sounding wildly with wind and hailThe night is wild with rain and sleet.Each loose-warped casement claps and groans.I hear the plangent forest beatThe tempest with long blatant moansAs of despair, defeat.And sitting here beyond the storm,Alone within the lonely house,It seems that some mesmeric charmHangs over all. – Why, even the mouse,That gnawed, has come to harm.And in the silence, stolen o'erAll things, I strangely seem to fearMyself – that, opening yon door,I'd find my dead self drawing near,With face that once I wore.The stairway creaks with ghostly gusts.The flue moans – 'tis a gorgon throatOf wailing winds. Ancestral dusts, —That yonder Indian war-gear coatWith gray and spectral crusts, —Are trembled down. – Or can it be,That he who wore it in the dance,Or battle, now fills shadowyIts wampumed skins? And shakes his lanceAnd warrior plume at me? —Mere fancy! – Yet those curtains tossMysteriously as if some darkHand moved them. – And I'd fear to crossThe shadow there where lies that spark —A glow-worm sunk in moss.Outside 'twere better! – Yes, I yearnTo walk the waste where sway and dipThe dark December boughs – where burnSome late last leaves, that drip and dripNo matter where you turn.Where sodden soil, you scarce have trod,Fills oozy footprints – but the blindNight there, tho' like the frown of God,Presents no phantoms to the mind,Like these that have o'erawed. —The months I count: how long it seemsSince summer! summer, when with her,There on her porch, in rainy gleamsWe watched the flickering lightning stirIn heavens gray as dreams.When all the west, a sheet of gold,Flared, – like some Titan's opened forge, —With storm; revealing manifoldVast peaks of clouds with crag and gorge,Where thunder torrents rolled.Then came the wind; again, againThe lightning lit the world – and howThe tempest roared with rushing rain!..We could not read. – Where is it now,That tale of Charlemagne?That old romance, ah me! that weWere reading? till we heard the plungeOf summer thunder sullenly,And left to watch the lightning lunge,And winds bend down each tree. —That summer! how it built us thereA world of love and necromance!A spirit-world, where all was fair;An island, sleeping in a tranceOf lilied light and air.Where every flower was a thought;And every bird, a melody;And every fragrance, zephyr brought,Was but the rainbowed draperyOf some sweet dream long sought.O land of shadows! shadow-home,Within my world of memories!Around whose ruins sweeps the foamOf sorrow's immemorial seas,By whose dark shores I roam!How long in your wrecked halls aloneWith ghosts of joys must I remain?Between the unknown and the known,Still listening to the wind and rain,And my own heart's wild moan.