The Magic House and Other Poems 3

The Magic House and Other Poems 3

AN IMPROMPTU

 

 

The stars are in the ebon sky,

Burning, gold, alone;

The wind roars over the rolling earth,

Like water over a stone.

 

We are like things in a river-bed

The stream runs over,

They see the iris, and arrowhead,

Anemone, and clover.

 

But they cannot touch the shining things,

For all their strife,

For the strong river swirls and swings--

And that is much like life.

 

For life is a plunging and heavy stream,

And there’s something bright above;

But the ills of breathing only seem,

When we know the light is love.

 

The stars are in the ebon sky,

Burning, gold, alone;

The wind roars over the rolling earth,

Like water over a stone.

 

 

 

 

FROM THE FARM ON THE HILL

 

TO A.P.S.

 

 

The night wind moves the gloom

In the shadowy basswood;

Mysteriously the leaves sway and sing;

So slow, so tender is the wind,

The slender elm-tree

Is hardly stirred.

 

The sky is veiled with clouds,

With diaphanous tissue;

Through their dissolving films

The stars shine,

But how infinitely removed;

How inaccessible!

 

In the distant city

Under the obscure towers

The lights of watchers gleam;

From the dim fields

At intervals in the silence

A cuckoo utters

A distorted cry;

Through the low woods,

Haunted with vain melancholy,

A whip-poor-will wanders,

Forcing his monotonous song.

 

All the ancient desire

Of the human spirit

Has returned upon me in this hour,

All the wild longing

That cannot be satisfied.

Break, O anguish of nature,

Into some glorious sound!

Let me touch the next circle of being,

For I have compassed this life.

 

 

 

 

AT SCARBORO’ BEACH

 

 

The wave is over the foaming reef

Leaping alive in the sun,

Seaward the opal sails are blown

Vanishing one by one.

 

’Tis leagues around the blue sea curve

To the sunny coast of Spain,

And the ships that sail so deftly out

May never come home again.

 

A mist is wreathed round Richmond point,

There’s a shadow on the land,

But the sea is in the splendid sun,

Plunging so careless and grand.

 

The sandpipers trip on the glassy beach,

Ready to mount and fly;

Whenever a ripple reaches their feet

They rise with a timorous cry.

 

Take care, they pipe, take care, take care,

For this is the treacherous main,

And though you may sail so deftly out,

You may never come home again.

 

 

 

 

THE FIFTEENTH OF APRIL

 

TO A.L.

 

 

Pallid saffron glows the broken stubble,

Brimmed with silver lie the ruts,

Purple the ploughed hill;

Down a sluice with break and bubble

Hollow falls the rill;

Falls and spreads and searches,

Where, beyond the wood,

Starts a group of silver birches,

Bursting into bud.

 

Under Venus sings the vesper sparrow,

Down a path of rosy gold

Floats the slender moon;

Ringing from the rounded barrow

Rolls the robin’s tune;

Lighter than the robin; hark!

Quivering silver-strong

From the field a hidden shore-lark

Shakes his sparkling song.

 

Now the dewy sounds begin to dwindle,

Dimmer grow the burnished rills,

Breezes creep and halt,

Soon the guardian night shall kindle

In the violet vault,

All the twinkling tapers

Touched with steady gold,

Burning through the lawny vapours

Where they float and fold.

 

 

 

 

IN AN OLD QUARRY

 

NOVEMBER

 

 

Above the lifeless pools the mist films swim,

On the lowlands where sedges chaff and nod;

The withered fringes of the golden-rod

Hang frayed and formless at the quarry’s rim.

Filled with the wine of sunset to the brim,

These limestone pits are cups for the night god,

Set for his lips when he strays hither, shod

With shadows, all the stars following him.

And as gloom grows and deepens like a psalm,

This broken field which summer has passed by

Has caught the ultimate lethean calm,

The fabulous quiet of far Thessaly,

And though the land has lost the bloom and balm,

Nature is all content in liberty.

 

 

 

 

TO WINTER

 

 

Come, O thou conqueror of the flying year;

Come from thy fastness of the Arctic suns;

Mass on the purple waste and wide frontier

Thy wanish hosts and silver clarions.

 

Then heap this sombre shoulder of the world

With shifting bastions; let thy storm winds blare;

Drift wide thy pallid gonfalon unfurled;

And arm with daggers all the desperate air.

 

These are but raids in dreams, and friendly brawls;

Thou art a gentle giant that half sleeps,