An elf who rowels his spiteful bay,
Like a mote on a ray, away, away;
An elf who saddles the hornet lean
To din i' the ear o' the swinging bean;
Who hunts with a hat cocked half awry
The bottle-blue o' the dragon-fly:—
O ho, O hi! Oh, well know I.
An elf there is where the clover tips
A horn whence the summer leaks and drips,
Where lanthorns of mustard-flowers bloom,
In the dusk awaits the bee's dull boom;
Gay gold brocade from head to knee,
Who robs the caravan bumble-bee;
Big bags of honey bee-merchants pay
To the bandit elf of the Fairy way—
O ho, O hey! I have heard them say.
Another ouphen the butterflies know,
Who paints their wings like the buds that blow;
Flowers, staining the dew-drops through,
Seals their colors in tubes of dew;
Colors to dazzle the butterflies' wing—
The evening moth is another thing:
The butterfly's glory he got at dawn,
The moon-moth's got when the moon was wan;
He it is, that the hollyhocks hear,
Who dangles a brilliant i' each one's ear;
Teases at noon the pane's green fly,
And lights at night the glow-worm's eye:—
O ho, O hi! Oh, well know I.
But the dearest elf, so the poets say,
Is the elf who hides in an eye of gray;
Who curls in a dimple and slips along
The strings of a lute or a lover's song;
Shines in a scent, or wings a rhyme,
And laughs in the bells of a wedding chime;
Hides unhidden, where none may know,
In her bosom's blossom or throat's blue bow—
O ho, O ho!—a friend or foe?
11.
She, seriously.
Who the loser, who the winner,
If the Fancy fail as preacher?—
None who loved was yet beginner
Though another's love-beseecher;
Love's revealment 's of the inner
Life and deity, the teacher.
Who may falsify the feeling
To the lover who is loser?
Has she felt:—the mere revealing
Of the passion 's his accuser;
She conceals it; the concealing
Is her own love's self-abuser.
One hath said, no flower knoweth
Of the fragrance it revealeth;
Song, its soul that overfloweth,
Never nightingale's heart feeleth—
Such the love the spirit groweth,
Love unconscious if it healeth.
12.
He.
Handsels of anemones
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.
13.
She.
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!
14.
He.
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