The surrendered hours
Pour about the sweet Spring's knees —
Crowding babies of the breeze,
Her unstudied flowers.
When 't is dawn, bestowing Day
Strews with coins of golden
Every furlong of his way —
Like a Sultan gone to pray
At a Kaaba olden.
Warlock Night, when dips the dark,
Opens, tire on tire,
Windows of an heavenly ark,
Whence the stars swarm, spark on spark,
Butterflies of fire.
With the night, the day, the spring, —
Godly chords of beauty, —
We the instrument will string
Of our lives and love shall sing
Songs of truth and duty.
How it was I can not tell,
For I know not where nor why,
And the beautiful befell
In a land that does not lie
East or West where mortals dwell —
But beneath a vaguer sky.
Was it in the golden ages,
Or the iron, that I heard,
In prophetic speech of sages,
How had come a snowy bird
'Neath whose wing lay written pages
Of an unknown lover's word?
I forget; you may remember
How the earthquake shook our ships;
How our city, one huge ember,
Blazed within the thick eclipse;
When you found me – deep December
Sealed on icy eyes and lips.
I forget. No one may say
Pre-existences are true:
Here 's a flower dies to-day,
Resurrected blooms anew:
Death is dumb and Life is gray —
Who shall doubt what God can do!
As to this, nothing to tell,
You being all my belief;
Doubt may not enter or dwell
Here where your image is chief,
Royal, to quicken or quell,
Swaying no sceptre of grief.
Wise with the wisdom of Spring —
Dew-drops, a world in each prism,
Gems from the universe ring: —
Free of all creed and all schism,
Buds that are speechless but bring
God-uttered God aphorism.
See how the synod is met
There of the planets to preach us —
Freed from the frost's oubliette,
Here how the flowers beseech us —
Were it not well to forget
Winter and night as they teach us?
Dew-drop, a bud, and a star,
These – each a separate thought
Over man's logic how far! —
God to a unit hath wrought —
Love, making these what they are,
For without love they were naught.
Millions of stars; and they roll
Over your path that is white,
Here where we end the long stroll. —
Seen of the innermost sight,
All of the love of my soul
Kisses your spirit. Good-night.
PART II
Sad skies and a foggy rain
Dripping from streaming eaves;
Over and over again
Dead drop of the trickling leaves;
And the woodward winding lane,
And the hill with its shocks of sheaves,
One scarce perceives.
Must I go in such sad weather
By the lane or over the hill?
Where the splitting milk-weed's feather
Dim, diamond-like rain-drops fill?
Or where, ten stars together,
Buff ox-eyes rank the rill
By the old corn-mill?
The creek by this is swollen,
And its foaming cascades sound;
And the lilies, smeared with pollen,
In the race look dull and drowned; —
'T is the path we oft have stolen
To the bridge, that rambles round
With willows crowned.
Through a bottom wild with berry
Or packed with the iron-weeds,
With their blue combs washed and very
Purple; the sorghum meads
Glint green near a wilding cherry;
Where the high wild-lettuce seeds
The fenced path leads.
A bird in the rain beseeches;
And the balsams' budding balls
Smell drenched by the way which reaches
The wood where the water falls;
Where the warty water-beeches
Hang leaves one blister of galls,
The mill-wheel drawls.
My shawl instead of a bonnet!..
Though the wood be soaking yet
Through the wet to the rock I 'll run it —
How sweet to meet in the wet! —
Our rock with the vine upon it,
Each flower a fiery jet – …
He won't forget!
Deep are the lilies here that lay
Lush, lambent leaves along our way,
Or pollen-dusty bob and float
White nenuphars about our boat
This side the woodland we have reached;
Two rapid strokes our skiff is beached.
There is no path. Heaped foxgrapes choke
Huge trunks they wrap. This giant oak
Floods from the Alleghanies bore
To wedge here by this sycamore;
Its wounded bulk,