The sun set late, and wafts of wind arose,
And cuffed the blossom from the blossoming quince;
Shatter red attar vials of the rose,
And made the clover wince.
By dusking forests, thro' whose fretful boughs
In flying fragments shot the evening's flame,
Adown the tangled lane the quiet cows
With dreary tinklings came.
The sun set late; but hardly had he gone
When o'er the moon's gold-litten crescent there,
Clean Phosphor, polished as a precious stone,
Pulsed in fair deeps of air.
As from faint stars the glory waned and waned,
The fussy insects made the garden shrill;
Beyond the luminous pasture lands complained
One lonely whippoorwill.
FRAGMENTS.
I.
STARS.
The fields of space gleam bright, as if some ancient giant, old
As the moon and her extinguished mountains,
Had dipped his fingers huge into the twilight's sea of gold
And sprinkled all the heavens from these fountains.
II.
GHOSTS.
In soft sad nights, when all the still lagoon
Lolls in a wealth of golden radiance,
I sit like one enchanted in a trance,
And see them 'twixt the haunted mist and moon.
Lascivious eyes 'neath snow-pale sensual brows,
Flashing hot, killing lust, and tresses light,
Lose, satin streaming, purple as the night,
Night when the storm sings and the forest bows.
And then, meseems, along the wild, fierce hills
A whisper and a rustle of fleet feet,
As if tempestuous troops of Mænads meet
To drain deep bowls and shout and have their wills.
And once I see large, lustrous limbs revealed,
Moth-white and lawny, 'twixt sonorous trees;
And then a song, faint as of fairy seas,
Lulls all my senses till my eyes are sealed.
III.
MOONRISE AT SEA.
With lips that were hoarse with a fury
Of foam and of winds that are strewn,
Of storm and of turbulent hurry,
The ocean roared, heralding soon
A birth of miraculous glory,
Of madness, affection—the moon.
And soon from her waist with a slipping
And shudder and clinging of light,
With a loos'ning and pushing and ripping
Of the raven-laced bodice of Night,
With a silence of feet and a dripping
The goddess came, virginal white.
And the air was alive with the twinkle
And tumult of silver-shod feet,
The hurling of stars, and the sprinkle
Of loose, lawny limbs and a sweet
Murmur and whisper and tinkle
Of beam-weaponed moon spirits fleet.
THE RAIN.
We stood where the fields were tawny,
Where the redolent woodland was warm,
And the summer above us, now lawny,
Was alive with the pulse winds of storm.
And we watched weak wheat waves lighten,
And wince and hiss at each gust,
And the turbulent maples whiten,
And the lane grow gray with dust.
White flakes from the blossoming cherry,
Pink snows of the peaches were blown,
And star-fair blooms of the berry
And the dogwood's flowers were strewn.
And the luminous hillocks grew sullied,
And shadowed and thrilled with alarm,
When the body of the blackness was gullied
With the rapid, keen flame of the storm.
And the birds to dry coverts had hurried,
And the musical rillet ran slow,
And the buccaneer bee was worried,
And the red lilies swung to and fro.
Till the elf-cuirassiers of the showers
Came, bright with slant lances of rain,
And charged the bare heads of the flowers,
And trampled the grass of the plain.
And the armies of the leaves were shattered,
Their standards drenched, heavy and lank;
And the iron weed's purple was spattered,
And the lily lay broke on the bank.
But high in the storm was the swallow,
And the rain-strong voice of the fall
In the bough-grottoed dingle sang hollow
To the sky-blue flags on its wall.
But the storm and its clouds passed over,
And left but one cloud in the West,
Wet wafts that were fragrant with clover,
And the sun low sunken to rest;
Soft spices of rain-studded poppies,
Of honey unfilched of a bee,
And balm of the mead and the coppice,
And musk of the rain-breathing tree.
Then the cloud in the West was riven,
And bubbled and bursten with gold,