Snow of wild-plums in bloom, and crimson tints of the red-bud;
Looked on the pasture-fields where the cattle were lazily grazing, —
Soft, and sweet, and thin came the faint, far notes of the cow-bells, —
Looked on the oft-trodden lanes, with their elder and blackberry borders,
Looked on the orchard, a bloomy sea, with its billows of blossoms.
Fair was the scene, yet suddenly strange and all unfamiliar,
As are the faces of friends, when the word of farewell has been spoken.
Long together they gazed; then at last on the little log-cabin —
Home for so many years, now home no longer forever —
Rested their tearless eyes in the silent rapture of anguish.
Up on the morning air no column of smoke from the chimney
Wavering, silver and azure, rose, fading and brightening ever;
Shut was the door where yesterday morning the children were playing;
Lit with a gleam of the sun the window stared up at them blindly.
Cold was the hearthstone now, and the place was forsaken and empty.
Empty? Ah no! but haunted by thronging and tenderest fancies,
Sad recollections of all that had been, of sorrow or gladness.
Still they sat there in the glow of the wide red fire in the winter,
Still they sat there by the door in the cool of the still summer evening,
Still the mother seemed to be singing her babe there to slumber,
Still the father beheld her weep o’er the child that was dying,
Still the place was haunted by all the Past’s sorrow and gladness!
Neither of them might speak for the thoughts that came crowding their hearts so,
Till, in their ignorant trouble aloud the children lamented;
Then was the spell of silence dissolved, and the father and mother
Burst into tears and embraced, and turned their dim eyes to the Westward.
Ohio, 1859.
THROUGH THE MEADOW.
The summer sun was soft and bland,
As they went through the meadow land.
The little wind that hardly shook
The silver of the sleeping brook
Blew the gold hair about her eyes, —
A mystery of mysteries!
So he must often pause, and stoop,
And all the wanton ringlets loop
Behind her dainty ear — emprise
Of slow event and many sighs.
Across the stream was scarce a step, —
And yet she feared to try the leap;
And he, to still her sweet alarm,
Must lift her over on his arm.
She could not keep the narrow way,
For still the little feet would stray,
And ever must he bend t’ undo
The tangled grasses from her shoe, —
From dainty rosebud lips in pout,
Must kiss the perfect flowér out!
Ah! little coquette! Fair deceit!
Some things are bitter that were sweet.
GONE.
Is it the shrewd October wind
Brings the tears into her eyes?
Does it blow so strong that she must fetch
Her breath in sudden sighs?
The sound of his horse’s feet grows faint,
The Rider has passed from sight;
The day dies out of the crimson west,
And coldly falls the night.
She presses her tremulous fingers tight
Against her closéd eyes,
And on the lonesome threshold there,
She cowers down and cries.
THE SARCASTIC FAIR.
Her mouth is a honey-blossom,
No doubt, as the poet sings;
But within her lips, the petals,
Lurks a cruel bee, that stings.
RAPTURE.
In my rhyme I fable anguish,
Feigning that my love is dead,
Playing at a game of sadness,
Singing hope forever fled, —
Trailing the slow robes of mourning,
Grieving with the player’s art,
With the languid palms of sorrow
Folded on a dancing heart.
I must mix my love with death-dust,
Lest the draught should make me mad;
I must make believe at sorrow,
Lest I perish, over-glad.
DEAD.
I.
Something lies in the room
Over against my own;
The windows are lit with a ghastly bloom
Of candles, burning alone, —
Untrimmed, and all aflare
In the ghastly silence there!
II.
People go by the door,
Tiptoe, holding their breath,
And hush the talk that they held before,
Lest they should waken Death,
That is awake all night
There in the candlelight!
III.
The cat upon the stairs
Watches with flamy eye
For the sleepy one who shall unawares
Let her go stealing by.
She softly, softly purrs,
And claws at the banisters.
IV.
The bird from out its dream
Breaks with a sudden song,
That stabs the sense like a sudden scream;
The hound the whole night long
Howls to the moonless sky,
So far, and starry, and high.
THE DOUBT.
She sits beside the low window,
In the pleasant evening-time,
With her face turned to the sunset,
Reading a book of rhyme.
And the wine-light of the sunset,
Stolen into the dainty nook,
Where she sits in her sacred beauty,
Lies crimson on the book.
O beautiful eyes so tender,
Brown eyes so tender and dear,
Did you leave your reading a moment
Just now, as I passed near?
Maybe, ’tis the sunset flushes
Her features, so lily-pale;
Maybe, ’tis the lover’s passion,
She reads of in the tale.
O darling, and darling, and darling,
If I dared to trust my thought;
If I dared to believe what I must not,
Believe what no one ought, —
We would read together the poem
Of the Love that never died,
The passionate, world-old story
Come true, and glorified.
THE THORN.
“Every Rose, you sang, has its Thorn,
But this has none, I know.”
She clasped my rival’s Rose
Over her breast of snow.
I bowed to hide my pain,
With a man’s unskilful art;
I moved my lips, and could not say
The Thorn was in my heart!
THE MYSTERIES.
Once on my mother’s breast, a child, I crept,
Holding my breath;
There, safe and sad, lay shuddering, and wept
At the dark mystery of Death.
Weary and weak, and worn with all unrest,
Spent with the strife, —
O mother, let me weep upon thy breast
At the sad mystery of Life!
THE BATTLE IN THE CLOUDS.
“The day had been one of dense mists and rains, and much of General Hooker’s battle was fought above the clouds, on the top of Lookout Mountain.” — GENERAL MEIG’S Report of the Battle before Chattanooga.
Where the dews and the rains of heaven have their fountain,
Like its thunder and its lightning our brave burst on the foe,
Up above the clouds on Freedom’s Lookout Mountain
Raining life-blood like water on the valleys d
own below.
O, green be the laurels that grow,
O sweet be the wild-buds that blow,
In the dells of the mountain where the brave are lying low.
Light of our hope and crown of our story,
Bright as sunlight, pure as starlight shall their deeds of daring glow,
While the day and the night out of heaven shed their glory,
On Freedom’s Lookout Mountain whence they routed Freedom’s foe.
O, soft be the gales when they go
Through the pines on the summit where they blow,
Chanting solemn music for the souls that passed below.
FOR ONE OF THE KILLED.
There on the field of battle
Lies the young warrior dead:
Who shall speak in the soldier’s honor?
How shall his praise be said?
Cannon, there in the battle,
Thundered the soldier’s praise,
Hark! how the volumed volleys echo
Down through the far-off days!
Tears for the grief of a father,
For a mother’s anguish, tears;
But for him that died in his country’s battle,
Glory and endless years.
THE TWO WIVES.
(TO COLONEL J. G. M., IN MEMORY OF THE EVENT BEFORE ATLANTA.)
I.
The colonel rode by his picket-line
In the pleasant morning sun,
That glanced from him far off to shine
On the crouching rebel picket’s gun.
II.
From his command the captain strode
Out with a grave salute,
And talked with the colonel as he rode; —
The picket levelled his piece to shoot.
III.
The colonel rode and the captain walked, —
The arm of the picket tired;
Their faces almost touched as they talked,
And, swerved from his aim, the picket fired.
IV.
The captain fell at the horse’s feet,
Wounded and hurt to death,
Calling upon a name that was sweet
As God is good, with his dying breath.
V.
And the colonel that leaped from his horse and knelt
To close the eyes so dim,
A high remorse for God’s mercy felt,
Knowing the shot was meant for him.
VI.
And he whispered, prayer-like, under his breath,
The name of his own young wife:
For Love, that had made his friend’s peace with Death,
Alone could make his with life.
BEREAVED.
The passionate humming-birds cling
To the honeysuckles’ hearts;
In and out at the open window
The twittering house-wren darts,
And the sun is bright.
June is young, and warm, and sweet;
The morning is gay and new;
Glimmers yet the grass of the door-yard,
Pearl-gray with fragrant dew,
And the sun is bright.
From the mill, upon the stream,
A busy murmur swells;
On to the pasture go the cattle,
Lowing, with tinkling bells,
And the sun is bright.
She gathers his playthings up,
And dreamily puts them by;
Children are playing in the meadow,
She hears their joyous cry,
And the sun is bright.
She sits and clasps her brow,
And looks with swollen eyes
On the landscape that reels and dances, —
To herself she softly cries,
And the sun is bright.
THE SNOW-BIRDS.
The lonesome graveyard lieth,
A deep with silent waves
Of night-long snow, all white, and billowed
Over the hidden graves.
The snow-birds come in the morning,
Flocking and fluttering low,
And light on the graveyard brambles,
And twitter there in the snow.
The Singer, old and weary,
Looks out from his narrow room:
“Ah, me! but my thoughts are snow-birds,
Haunting a graveyard gloom,
“Where all the Past is buried
And dead, these many years,
Under the drifted whiteness
Of frozen falls of tears.
“Poor birds! that know not summer,
Nor sun, nor flowèrs fair, —
Only the graveyard brambles,
And graves, and winter air!”
VAGARY.
Up and down the dusty street,
I hurry with my burning feet;
Against my face the wind-waves beat,
Fierce from the city-sea of heat.
Deep in my heart the vision is,
Of meadow grass and meadow trees
Blown silver in the summer breeze,
And ripe, red, hillside strawberries.
My sense the city tumult fills, —
The tumult that about me reels
Of strokes and cries, and feet and wheels.
Deep in my dream I list, and, hark!
From out the maple’s leafy dark,
The fluting of the meadow lark!
About the throngéd street I go:
There is no face here that I know;
Of all that pass me to and fro
There is no face here that I know.
Deep in my soul’s most sacred place,
With a sweet pain I look and trace
The features of a tender face,
All lit with love and girlish grace.
Some spell is on me, for I seem
A memory of the past, a dream
Of happiness remembered dim,
Unto myself that walk the street
Scathed with the city’s noontide heat,
With puzzled brain and burning feet.
FEUERBILDER.
The children sit by the fireside
With their little faces in bloom;
And behind, the lily-pale mother,
Looking out of the gloom,
Flushes in cheek and forehead
With a light and sudden start;
But the father sits there silent,
From the firelight apart.
“Now, what dost thou see in the embers?
Tell it to me, my child,”
Whispers the lily-pale mother
To her daughter sweet and mild.
“O, I see a sky and a moon
In the coals and ashes there,
And under, two are walking
In a garden of flowers so fair.
“A lady gay, and her lover,
Talking with low-voiced words,
Not to waken the dreaming flowers
And the sleepy little birds.”
Back in the gloom the mother
Shrinks with a sudden sigh.
“Now, what dost thou see in the embers?”
Cries the father to the boy.
“O, I see a wedding-procession
Go in at the church’s door, —
Ladies in silk and knights in steel, —
A hundred of them, and more.
“The bride’s face is as white as a lily,
And the groom’s head is white as snow;
And without, with plumes and tapers,
A funeral paces slow.”
Loudly then laughed the father,
And shouted again for cheer,
And called to the drowsy housemaid
To fetch him a pipe and beer.
AVERY.
[NIAGARA, 1853.]
I.
All night long they heard in the houses beside the shore,
Heard, or seemed to hear, through the multitudinous roar,
Out of the hell of the rapids as ‘twere
a lost soul’s cries, —
Heard and could not believe; and the morning mocked their eyes,
Showing, where wildest and fiercest the waters leaped up and ran
Raving round him and past, the visage of a man
Clinging, or seeming to cling, to the trunk of a tree that, caught
Fast in the rocks below, scarce out of the surges raught.
Was it a life, could it be, to yon slender hope that clung?
Shrill, above all the tumult the answering terror rung.
II.
Under the weltering rapids a boat from the bridge is drowned,
Over the rocks the lines of another are tangled and wound;
And the long, fateful hours of the morning have wasted soon,
As it had been in some blessed trance, and now it is noon.
Hurry, now with the raft! But O, build it strong and stanch,
And to the lines and treacherous rocks look well as you launch!
Over the foamy tops of the waves, and their foam-sprent sides,
Over the hidden reefs, and through the embattled tides,
Onward rushes the raft, with many a lurch and leap, —
Lord! if it strike him loose from the hold he scarce can keep!
No! through all peril unharmed, it reaches him harmless at last,
And to its proven strength he lashes his weakness fast.
Now, for the shore! But steady, steady, my men, and slow;
Taut, now, the quivering lines; now slack; and so, let her go!
Thronging the shores around stand the pitying multitude;
Wan as his own are their looks, and a nightmare seems to brood
Heavy upon them, and heavy the silence hangs on all,
Save for the rapids’ plunge, and the thunder of the fall.
But on a sudden thrills from the people still and pale,
Chorussing his unheard despair, a desperate wail:
Caught on a lurking point of rock it sways and swings,
Sport of the pitiless waters, the raft to which he clings.
III.
All the long afternoon it idly swings and sways;
And on the shore the crowd lifts up its hands and prays:
Lifts to heaven and wrings the hands so helpless to save,
Prays for the mercy of God on him whom the rock and the wave
Battle for, fettered betwixt them, and who, amidst their strife,
Struggles to help his helpers, and fights so hard for his life, —
Tugging at rope and at reef, while men weep and women swoon.
Priceless second by second, so wastes the afternoon,
Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells Page 1149
