The Magic House and Other Poems 8

The Magic House and Other Poems 8

A PORTRAIT

 

 

All her hair is softly set,

Like a misty coronet,

Massing darkly on her brow,

Like the pines above the snow;

And her eyebrows lightly drawn,

Slender clouds above the dawn,

Or like ferns above her eyes,

Ferns and pools in Paradise.

 

Her sweet mouth is like a flower,

Like a poppy full of power,

Shaken light and crimson stain,

Pressed together by the rain,

Glowing liquid in the sun,

When the rain is done.

 

When she moves, her motionings

Seem to shadow hidden wings;

So the cuckoo going to light

Takes a little further flight,

Fluttering onward, poised there,

Half in grass and half in air.

 

When she speaks, her girlish voice

Makes a very pleasant noise,

Like a brook that hums along

Under leaves an undersong:

When she sings, her voice is clear,

Like the waters swerving sheer,

In the sunlight magical,

Down a ringing fall.

 

Here her spirit came to dwell

From the passionate Israfel;

One of those great songs of his

Rounded to a soul like this;

And when she seems so strange at even,

He must be singing in the heaven;

When she wears that charméd smile,

Listening, listening all the while,

She is stirred with kindred things,

Starry fire and sweeping wings,

And the seraph’s sobbing strings.

 

 

 

 

AT THE LATTICE

 

 

Good-night, Marie, I kiss thine eyes,

A tender touch on either lid;

They cover, as a cloud, the skies

Where like a star your soul lies hid.

 

My love is like a fire that flows,

This touch will leave a tiny scar,

I’ll claim you by it for my rose,

My rose, my own, where’er you are.

 

And when you bind your hair, and when

You lie within your silken nest,

This kiss will visit you again,

You will not rest, my love, you will not rest.

 

 

 

 

THE FIRST SNOW

 

 

I

 

The field pools gathered into frosted lace;

An icy glitter lined the iron ruts,

And bound the circle of the musk-rat huts;

A junco flashed about a sunny space

Where rose stems made a golden amber grace;

Between the dusky alders’ woven ranks,

A stream thought yet about his summer banks,

And made an August music in the place.

 

Along the horizon’s faded shrunken lines,

Veiling the gloomy borders of the night,

Hung the great snow clouds washed with pallid gold;

And stealing from his covert in the pines,

The wind, encouraged to a stinging flight,

Dropped in the hollow conquered by the cold.

 

 

II

 

Then a light cloud rose up for hardihood,

Trailing a veil of snow that whirled and broke,

Blown softly like a shroud of steam or smoke,

Sallied across a knoll where maples stood,

Charged over broken country for a rood,

Then seeing the night withdrew his force and fled,

Leaving the ground with snow-flakes thinly spread,

And traces of the skirmish in the wood.

 

The stars sprang out and flashed serenely near,

The solid frost came down with might and main,

It set the rivers under bolt and bar;

Bang! went the starting eaves beneath the strain,

And e’er Orion saw the morning-star

The winter was the master of the year.

 

 

 

 

IN NOVEMBER

 

TO J. A. R.

 

 

The ruddy sunset lies

Banked along the west;

In flocks with sweep and rise

The birds are going to rest.

 

The air clings and cools,

And the reeds look cold,

Standing above the pools,

Like rods of beaten gold.

 

The flaunting golden-rod

Has lost her worldly mood,

She’s given herself to God,

And taken a nun’s hood.

 

The wild and wanton horde,

That kept the summer revel,

Have taken the serge and cord,

And given the slip to the Devil.

 

The winter’s loose somewhere,

Gathering snow for a fight;

From the feel of the air

I think it will freeze to-night.

 

 

 

 

THE SLEEPER

 

 

Touched with some divine repose,

Isabelle has fallen asleep,

Like the perfume from the rose

In and out her breathings creep.

 

Dewy are her rosy palms,

In her cheek the flushes flit,

And a dream her spirit calms

With the pleasant thought of it.

 

All the rounded heavens show

Like the concave of a pearl,

Stars amid the opal glow

Little fronds of flame unfurl.

 

Then upfloats a planet strange,

Not the moon that mortals know,

With a magic mountain range,

Cones and craters white as snow;

 

Something different yet the same--

Rain by rainbows glorified,

Roses lit with lambent flame--

’Tis the maid moon’s other side.

 

When the sleeper floats from sleep,

She will smile the vision o’er,

See the veinéd valleys deep,

No one ever saw before.

 

Yet the moon is not betrayed,