The Magic House and Other Poems 5

The Magic House and Other Poems 5

There is a honey scent along the air;

The hermit thrush has tuned his fleeting note.

Among the silver birches far remote

His spirit voice appeareth here and there,

To fail and fade,

A visionary cadence falling fair,

That lifts and lingers in the hollow shade.

 

And now a spirit in the east, unseen,

Raises the moon above her misty eyes,

And travels up the veiled and starless skies,

Viewing the quietude of her demesne;

Stainless and slow,

I watch the lustre of her planet’s sheen,

From burnished gold to liquid silver flow.

 

And now I leave the dead with you, O night;

You wear the semblance of their fathomless state,

For you we long when the day’s fire is great,

And when stern life is cruellest in his might,

Of death we dream:

A country of dim plain and shadowy height,

Crowned with strange stars and silences supreme:

 

Rest here, for day is hot to follow you,

Rest here until the morning star has come,

Until is risen aloft dawn’s rosy dome,

Based deep on buried crimson into blue,

And morn’s desire

Has made the fragile cobweb drenched with dew

A net of opals veiled with dreamy fire.

 

 

 

 

SONG

 

 

I have done,

Put by the lute;

Songs and singing soon are over,

Soon as airy shades that hover

Up above the purple clover--

I have done, put by the lute.

Once I sang as early thrushes

Sing about the dewy bushes,

Now I’m mute;

I am like a weary linnet,

For my throat has no song in it,

I have had my singing minute.

I have done,

Put by the lute.

 

 

 

 

THE MAGIC HOUSE

 

 

In her chamber, wheresoe’er

Time shall build the walls of it,

Melodies shall minister,

Mellow sounds shall flit

Through a dusk of musk and myrrh.

 

Lingering in the spaces vague,

Like the breath within a flute,

Winds shall move along the stair;

When she walketh mute

Music meet shall greet her there.

 

Time shall make a truce with Time,

All the languid dials tell

Irised hours of gossamer,

Eve perpetual

Shall the night or light defer.

 

From her casement she shall see

Down a valley wild and dim,

Swart with woods of pine and fir;

Shall the sunsets swim

Red with untold gold to her.

 

From her terrace she shall see

Lines of birds like dusky motes

Falling in the heated glare;

How an eagle floats

In the wan unconscious air.

 

From her turret she shall see

Vision of a cloudy place,

Like a group of opal flowers

On the verge of space,

Or a town, or crown of towers.

 

From her garden she shall hear

Fall the cones between the pines;

She shall seem to hear the sea,

Or behind the vines

Some small noise, a voice may be.

 

But no thing shall habit there,

There no human foot shall fall,

No sweet word the silence stir,

Naught her name shall call,

Nothing come to comfort her.

 

But about the middle night,

When the dusk is loathéd most,

Ancient thoughts and words long said,

Like an alien host,

There shall come unsummonéd.

 

With her forehead on her wrist

She shall lean against the wall

And see all the dream go by;

In the interval

Time shall turn Eternity.

 

But the agony shall pass--

Fainting with unuttered prayer,

She shall see the world’s outlines

And the weary glare

And the bare unvaried pines.

 

 

 

 

IN THE HOUSE OF DREAMS

 

 

I

 

The lady Lillian knelt upon the sward,

Between the arbour and the almond leaves;

Beyond, the barley gathered into sheaves;

A blade of gladiolus, like a sword,

Flamed fierce against the gold; and down toward

The limpid west, a pallid poplar wove

A spell of shadow; through the meadow drove

A deep unbroken brook without a ford.

 

A fountain flung and poised a golden ball;

On the soft grass a frosted serpent lay,

With oval spots of opal over all;

Upon the basin’s edge within the spray,

Lulled by some craft of laughter in the fall,

An ancient crow dreamed hours and hours away.

 

 

II

 

The lady watched the serpent and the crow

For days, then came a little naked lad,

And smote the serpent with a spear he had;

Then stooped and caught the coil, and straining slow,

Took the lithe weight upon his shoulder, so,

And tugged, but could not move the ponderous thing,

Then flushing red with rage, his spear did fling,

And cut the gladiolus at one blow.

 

Then back he swung his flaming weapon high,

And smote the snake and called a magic name;

Then the whole garden vanished utterly,

And through a mist the lightning went and came,

And flooded all the caverns of the sky,

A rosy gulf of unimprisoned flame.

 

 

 

 

THE RIVER TOWN

 

 

There’s a town where shadows run

In the sparkle and the blue,

By the river and the sun

Swept and flooded thro’ and thro’.