A Boy's Will

Into My Own

One of my wishes is that those dark trees,
So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze,
Were not, as ’twere, the merest mask of gloom,
But stretched away unto the edge of doom. 
I should not be withheld but that some day
Into their vastness I should steal away,
Fearless of ever finding open land,
Or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand. 
I do not see why I should e’er turn back,
Or those should not set forth upon my track
To overtake me, who should miss me here
And long to know if still I held them dear. 
They would not find me changed from him they knew—­
Only more sure of all I thought was true.

Ghost House

    I dwell in a lonely house I know
    That vanished many a summer ago,
    And left no trace but the cellar walls,
    And a cellar in which the daylight falls,
    And the purple-stemmed wild raspberries grow. 
    O’er ruined fences the grape-vines shield
    The woods come back to the mowing field;
    The orchard tree has grown one copse
    Of new wood and old where the woodpecker chops;
    The footpath down to the well is healed. 
    I dwell with a strangely aching heart
    In that vanished abode there far apart
    On that disused and forgotten road
    That has no dust-bath now for the toad. 
    Night comes; the black bats tumble and dart;
    The whippoorwill is coming to shout
    And hush and cluck and flutter about: 
    I hear him begin far enough away
    Full many a time to say his say
    Before he arrives to say it out. 
    It is under the small, dim, summer star. 
    I know not who these mute folk are
    Who share the unlit place with me—­
    Those stones out under the low-limbed tree
    Doubtless bear names that the mosses mar. 
    They are tireless folk, but slow and sad,
    Though two, close-keeping, are lass and lad,—­
    With none among them that ever sings,
    And yet, in view of how many things,
    As sweet companions as might be had.

My November Guest

    My Sorrow, when she’s here with me,
    Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
    Are beautiful as days can be;
    She loves the bare, the withered tree;
    She walks the sodden pasture lane. 
    Her pleasure will not let me stay. 
    She talks and I am fain to list: 
    She’s glad the birds are gone away,
    She’s glad her simple worsted gray
    Is silver now with clinging mist. 
    The desolate, deserted trees,
    The faded earth, the heavy sky,
    The beauties she so truly sees,
    She thinks I have no eye for these,
    And vexes me for reason why. 
    Not yesterday I learned to know
    The love of bare November days
    Before the coming of the snow,
    But it were vain to tell her so,
    And they are better for her praise.

Love and a Question

    A Stranger came to the door at eve,
    And he spoke the bridegroom fair. 
    He bore a green-white stick in his hand,
    And, for all burden, care. 
    He asked with the eyes more than the lips
    For a shelter for the night,
    And he turned and looked at the road afar
    Without a window light. 
    The bridegroom came forth into the porch
    With, ’Let us look at the sky,
    And question what of the night to be,
    Stranger, you and I.’ 
    The woodbine leaves littered the yard,
    The woodbine berries were blue,
    Autumn, yes, winter was in the wind;
    ‘Stranger, I wish I knew.’ 
    Within, the bride in the dusk alone
    Bent over the open fire,
    Her face rose-red with the glowing coal
    And the thought of the heart’s desire. 
    The bridegroom looked at the weary road,
    Yet saw but her within,
    And wished her heart in a case of gold
    And pinned with a silver pin. 
    The bridegroom thought it little to give
    A dole of bread, a purse,
    A heartfelt prayer for the poor of God,
    Or for the rich a curse;
    But whether or not a man was asked
    To mar the love of two
    By harboring woe in the bridal house,
    The bridegroom wished he knew.

A Late Walk

    When I go up through the mowing field,
    The headless aftermath,
    Smooth-laid like thatch with the heavy dew,
    Half closes the garden path. 
    And when I come to the garden ground,
    The whir of sober birds
    Up from the tangle of withered weeds
    Is sadder than any words. 
    A tree beside the wall stands bare,
    But a leaf that lingered brown,
    Disturbed, I doubt not, by my thought,
    Comes softly rattling down. 
    I end not far from my going forth
    By picking the faded blue
    Of the last remaining aster flower
    To carry again to you.

Stars

    How countlessly they congregate
    O’er our tumultuous snow,
    Which flows in shapes as tall as trees
    When wintry winds do blow!—­
    As if with keenness for our fate,
    Our faltering few steps on
    To white rest, and a place of rest
    Invisible at dawn,—­
    And yet with neither love nor hate,
    Those stars like some snow-white
    Minerva’s snow-white marble eyes
    Without the gift of sight.

Storm Fear

    When the wind works against us in the dark,
    And pelts with snow
    The lowest chamber window on the east,
    And whispers with a sort of stifled bark,
    The beast,
    ’Come out!  Come out!’—­
    It costs no inward struggle not to go,
    Ah, no! 
    I count our strength,
    Two and a child,
    Those of us not asleep subdued to mark
    How the cold creeps as the fire dies at length,—­
    How drifts are piled,
    Dooryard and road ungraded,
    Till even the comforting barn grows far away
    And my heart owns a doubt
    Whether ’tis in us to arise with day
    And save ourselves unaided.

Wind and Window Flower

    LOVERS, forget your love,
    And list to the love of these,
    She a window flower,
    And he a winter breeze. 
    When the frosty window veil
    Was melted down at noon,
    And the cagèd yellow bird
    Hung over her in tune,
    He marked her through the pane,
    He could not help but mark,
    And only passed her by,
    To come again at dark. 
    He was a winter wind,
    Concerned with ice and snow,
    Dead weeds and unmated birds,
    And little of love could know. 
    But he sighed upon the sill,
    He gave the sash a shake,
    As witness all within
    Who lay that night awake. 
    Perchance he half prevailed
    To win her for the flight
    From the firelit looking-glass
    And warm stove-window light. 
    But the flower leaned aside
    And thought of naught to say,
    And morning found the breeze
    A hundred miles away.

To the Thawing Wind (audio)

    Come with rain, O loud Southwester! 
    Bring the singer, bring the nester;
    Give the buried flower a dream;
    Make the settled snow-bank steam;
    Find the brown beneath the white;
    But whate’er you do to-night,
    Bathe my window, make it flow,
    Melt it as the ices go;
    Melt the glass and leave the sticks
    Like a hermit’s crucifix;
    Burst into my narrow stall;
    Swing the picture on the wall;
    Run the rattling pages o’er;
    Scatter poems on the floor;
    Turn the poet out of door.

A Prayer in Spring

    Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;
    And give us not to think so far away
    As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
    All simply in the springing of the year. 
    Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
    Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
    And make us happy in the happy bees,
    The swarm dilating round the perfect trees. 
    And make us happy in the darting bird
    That suddenly above the bees is heard,
    The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
    And off a blossom in mid air stands still. 
    For this is love and nothing else is love,
    The which it is reserved for God above
    To sanctify to what far ends He will,
    But which it only needs that we fulfil.

Flower-gathering

    I left you in the morning,
    And in the morning glow,
    You walked a way beside me
    To make me sad to go. 
    Do you know me in the gloaming,
    Gaunt and dusty grey with roaming? 
    Are you dumb because you know me not,
    Or dumb because you know? 
    All for me?  And not a question
    For the faded flowers gay
    That could take me from beside you
    For the ages of a day? 
    They are yours, and be the measure
    Of their worth for you to treasure,
    The measure of the little while
    That I’ve been long away.

Rose Pogonias

    A SATURATED meadow,
    Sun-shaped and jewel-small,
    A circle scarcely wider
    Than the trees around were tall;
    Where winds were quite excluded,
    And the air was stifling sweet
    With the breath of many flowers,—­
    A temple of the heat. 
    There we bowed us in the burning,
    As the sun’s right worship is,
    To pick where none could miss them
    A thousand orchises;
    For though the grass was scattered,
    Yet every second spear
    Seemed tipped with wings of color,
    That tinged the atmosphere. 
    We raised a simple prayer
    Before we left the spot,
    That in the general mowing
    That place might be forgot;
    Or if not all so favoured,
    Obtain such grace of hours,
    That none should mow the grass there
    While so confused with flowers.

Asking for Roses

    A house that lacks, seemingly, mistress and master,
    With doors that none but the wind ever closes,
    Its floor all littered with glass and with plaster;
    It stands in a garden of old-fashioned roses. 
    I pass by that way in the gloaming with Mary;
    ‘I wonder,’ I say, ’who the owner of those is. 
    ‘Oh, no one you know,’ she answers me airy,
    ‘But one we must ask if we want any roses.’ 
    So we must join hands in the dew coming coldly
    There in the hush of the wood that reposes,
    And turn and go up to the open door boldly,
    And knock to the echoes as beggars for roses. 
    ‘Pray, are you within there, Mistress Who-were-you?’
    ’Tis Mary that speaks and our errand discloses. 
    ’Pray, are you within there?  Bestir you, bestir you! 
    ’Tis summer again; there’s two come for roses. 
    ’A word with you, that of the singer recalling—­
    Old Herrick:  a saying that every maid knows is
    A flower unplucked is but left to the falling,
    And nothing is gained by not gathering roses.’ 
    We do not loosen our hands’ intertwining
    (Not caring so very much what she supposes),
    There when she comes on us mistily shining
    And grants us by silence the boon of her roses.

Waiting
Afield at Dusk

    What things for dream there are when spectre-like,
    Moving among tall haycocks lightly piled,
    I enter alone upon the stubble field,
    From which the laborers’ voices late have died,
    And in the antiphony of afterglow
    And rising full moon, sit me down
    Upon the full moon’s side of the first haycock
    And lose myself amid so many alike. 
    I dream upon the opposing lights of the hour,
    Preventing shadow until the moon prevail;
    I dream upon the night-hawks peopling heaven,
    Each circling each with vague unearthly cry,
    Or plunging headlong with fierce twang afar;
    And on the bat’s mute antics, who would seem
    Dimly to have made out my secret place,
    Only to lose it when he pirouettes,
    And seek it endlessly with purblind haste;
    On the last swallow’s sweep; and on the rasp
    In the abyss of odor and rustle at my back,
    That, silenced by my advent, finds once more,
    After an interval, his instrument,
    And tries once—­twice—­and thrice if I be there;
    And on the worn book of old-golden song
    I brought not here to read, it seems, but hold
    And freshen in this air of withering sweetness;
    But on the memory of one absent most,
    For whom these lines when they shall greet her eye.

In a Vale

    When I was young, we dwelt in a vale
    By a misty fen that rang all night,
    And thus it was the maidens pale
    I knew so well, whose garments trail
    Across the reeds to a window light. 
    The fen had every kind of bloom,
    And for every kind there was a face,
    And a voice that has sounded in my room
    Across the sill from the outer gloom. 
    Each came singly unto her place,
    But all came every night with the mist;
    And often they brought so much to say
    Of things of moment to which, they wist,
    One so lonely was fain to list,
    That the stars were almost faded away
    Before the last went, heavy with dew,
    Back to the place from which she came—­
    Where the bird was before it flew,
    Where the flower was before it grew,
    Where bird and flower were one and the same. 
    And thus it is I know so well
    Why the flower has odor, the bird has song. 
    You have only to ask me, and I can tell. 
    No, not vainly there did I dwell,
    Nor vainly listen all the night long.

A Dream Pang

    I had withdrawn in forest, and my song
    Was swallowed up in leaves that blew alway;
    And to the forest edge you came one day
    (This was my dream) and looked and pondered long,
    But did not enter, though the wish was strong: 
    You shook your pensive head as who should say,
    ’I dare not—­too far in his footsteps stray—­
    He must seek me would he undo the wrong. 
    Not far, but near, I stood and saw it all
    Behind low boughs the trees let down outside;
    And the sweet pang it cost me not to call
    And tell you that I saw does still abide. 
    But ’tis not true that thus I dwelt aloof,
    For the wood wakes, and you are here for proof.

In Neglect

    They leave us so to the way we took,
    As two in whom they were proved mistaken,
    That we sit sometimes in the wayside nook,
    With mischievous, vagrant, seraphic look,
    And try if we cannot feel forsaken.

The Vantage Point

    If tired of trees I seek again mankind,
    Well I know where to hie me—­in the dawn,
    To a slope where the cattle keep the lawn. 
    There amid lolling juniper reclined,
    Myself unseen, I see in white defined
    Far off the homes of men, and farther still,
    The graves of men on an opposing hill,
    Living or dead, whichever are to mind. 
    And if by moon I have too much of these,
    I have but to turn on my arm, and lo,
    The sun-burned hillside sets my face aglow,
    My breathing shakes the bluet like a breeze,
    I smell the earth, I smell the bruisèd plant,
    I look into the crater of the ant.

Mowing

    There was never a sound beside the wood but one,
    And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground. 
    What was it it whispered?  I knew not well myself;
    Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun,
    Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound—­
    And that was why it whispered and did not speak. 
    It was no dream of the gift of idle hours,
    Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf: 
    Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak
    To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows,
    Not without feeble-pointed spikes of flowers
    (Pale orchises), and scared a bright green snake. 
    The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows. 
    My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make.

Going for Water

    The well was dry beside the door,
    And so we went with pail and can
    Across the fields behind the house
    To seek the brook if still it ran;
    Not loth to have excuse to go,
    Because the autumn eve was fair
    (Though chill), because the fields were ours,
    And by the brook our woods were there. 
    We ran as if to meet the moon
    That slowly dawned behind the trees,
    The barren boughs without the leaves,
    Without the birds, without the breeze. 
    But once within the wood, we paused
    Like gnomes that hid us from the moon,
    Ready to run to hiding new
    With laughter when she found us soon. 
    Each laid on other a staying hand
    To listen ere we dared to look,
    And in the hush we joined to make
    We heard, we knew we heard the brook. 
    A note as from a single place,
    A slender tinkling fall that made
    Now drops that floated on the pool
    Like pearls, and now a silver blade.