The House of the Trees & Other Poems 6

The House of the Trees & Other Poems 6

October

 

 

Against the winter’s heav’n of white the blood

Of earth runs very quick and hot to-day;

A storm of fiery leaves are out at play

Around the lingering sunset of the wood.

Where rows of blackberries unnoticed stood,

Run streams of ruddy color wildly gay;

The golden lane half dreaming picks its way

Through ’whelming vines, as through a gleaming flood.

 

O warm, outspoken earth, a little space

Against thy beating heart my heart shall beat,

A little while they twain shall bleed and burn,

And then the cold touch and the gray, gray face,

The frozen pulse, the drifted winding-sheet,

And speechlessness, and the chill burial urn.

 

 

 

 

Winter

 

 

Now that the earth has hid her lovely brood

Of green things in her breast safe out of sight,

And all the trees have stripped them for the fight,

The winter comes with wild winds singing rude

Hoarse battle songs--so furious in feud

That nothing lives that has not felt their bite.

They sound a trumpet in the dead of night

That makes more solitary solitude.

 

Against the forest doors how fierce they beat!

Against the porch, against the school-bound boy

With crimson cheek bent to his shaggy coat.

The earth is pale but steadfast, hearing sweet

But far--how far away! the stream of joy

Outpouring from a bluebird’s tender throat.

 

 

 

 

The Snow-Storm

 

 

The great, soft, downy snow-storm like a cloak

Descends to wrap the lean world head to feet;

It gives the dead another winding-sheet,

It buries all the roofs until the smoke

Seems like a soul that from its clay has broke;

It broods moon-like upon the Autumn wheat,

And visits all the trees in their retreat,

To hood and mantle that poor shiv’ring folk.

 

With wintry bloom it fills the harshest grooves

In jagged pine stump fences. Every sound

It hushes to the footstep of a nun.

Sweet Charity! that brightens where it moves,

Inducing darkest bits of churlish ground

To give a radiant answer to the sun.

 

 

 

 

To February

 

 

O master-builder, blustering as you go

About your giant work, transforming all

The empty woods into a glittering hall,

And making lilac lanes and footpaths grow

As hard as iron under stubborn snow,

Though every fence stand forth a marble wall,

And windy hollows drift to arches tall,

There comes a might that shall your might o’erthrow.

 

Build high your white and dazzling palaces,

Strengthen your bridges, fortify your towers,

Storm with a loud and a portentous lip;

And April with a fragmentary breeze,

And half a score of gentle, golden hours,

Shall leave no trace of your stern workmanship.

 

 

 

 

Rest

 

 

From the depths of dreams I am drawn

To the inner depth of a pine,

That near my window keeps the dawn--

A dawn that is wholly mine.

Dream-rest and pine-rest,

And a cool, gray path between--

A cool, gray path from the night’s breast

To the heart of the living green.

 

To the depths of dreams I go

On the sounds of falling rain,

That in the night-time gently flow

In a stream on my window-pane.

Stream-rest and dream-rest,

And a cool, dark path between--

A cool, dark path from the rain’s breast

To the heart of the soft unseen.

 

 

 

 

The Shy Sun

 

 

The sun went with me to the wood,

And lingered at the door;

One glance he gave from where he stood,

But dared not venture more,

 

Nor knew that in the heart of her

Who felt his presence nigh,

His love was all the lovelier

Because his look was shy.

 

 

 

 

In April

 

 

When Spring unbound comes o’er us like a flood,

My spirit slips its bars,

And thrills to see the trees break into bud

As skies break into stars;

 

And joys that earth is green with eager grass,

The heavens gray with rain,

And quickens when the spirit breezes pass,

And turn and pass again;

 

And dreams upon frog melodies at night,

Bird ecstasies at dawn,

And wakes to find sweet April at her height

And May still beck’ning on;

 

And feels its sordid work, its empty play,

Its failures and its stains

Dissolved in blossom dew, and washed away

In delicate spring rains.

 

 

 

 

Apple Blossoms

 

 

Amid the young year’s breathing hopes,

When eager grasses wrap the earth,

I see on greening orchard slopes

The blossoms trembling into birth.

They open wide their rosy palms

To feel the hesitating rain,

Or beg a longed-for golden alms

From skies that deep in clouds have lain.

 

They mingle with the bluebird’s songs,

And with the warm wind’s reverie;

To sward and stream their snow belongs,

To neighboring pines in flocks they flee.

O doubly crowned, with breathing hopes

The branches bending down to earth,

That feel on greening orchard slopes

Their blossoms trembling into birth.