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WHEN FIRST I SAW HER
WHEN first I saw her, at the stroke | |
| The heart of nature in me spoke; | |
| The very landscape smiled more sweet, | |
| Lit by her eyes, pressed by her feet; | |
| She made the stars of heaven more bright | 5 |
| By sleeping under them at night; | |
| And fairer made the flowers of May | |
| By being lovelier than they. | |
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| Softly down where the sunshine spread, | |
| Dark in the grass I laid my head; | 10 |
| And let the lights of earth depart | |
| To find her image in my heart; | |
| While through my being came and went | |
| Tones of some heavenly instrument, | |
| As if where its blind motions roll | 15 |
| This world should wake and be a soul. | |
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THE SECRET
NIGHTINGALES warble about it | |
| All night under blossom and star; | |
| The wild swan is dying without it, | |
| And the eagle crieth afar; | 20 |
| The sun, he doth mount but to find it, | |
| Searching the green earth o’er; | |
| But more doth a man’s heart mind it— | |
| O more, more, more! | |
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| Over the gray leagues of ocean | 25 |
| The infinite yearneth alone; | |
| The forests with wandering emotion | |
| The thing they know not intone; | |
| Creation arose but to see it, | |
| A million lamps in the blue; | 30 |
| But a lover, he shall be it, | |
| If one sweet maid is true. | |
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O, INEXPRESSIBLE AS SWEET
O, INEXPRESSIBLE as sweet, | |
| Love takes my voice away; | |
| I cannot tell thee when we meet | 35 |
| What most I long to say. | |
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| But hadst thou hearing in thy heart | |
| To know what beats in mine, | |
| Then shouldst thou walk, where’er thou art, | |
| In melodies divine. | 40 |
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| So warbling birds lift higher notes | |
| Than to our ears belong; | |
| The music fills their throbbing throats, | |
| But silence steals the song. | |
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THE ROSE OF STARS
WHEN Love, our great Immortal, | 45 |
| Put on mortality, | |
| And down from Eden’s portal | |
| Brought this sweet life to be, | |
| At the sublime archangel | |
| He laughed with veilëd eyes, | 50 |
| For he bore within his bosom | |
| The seed of Paradise. | |
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| He did it in his bosom, | |
| And there such warmth it found, | |
| It brake in bud and blossom, | 55 |
| And the rose fell on the ground; | |
| As the green light on the prairie, | |
| As the red light on the sea, | |
| Through fragrant belts of summer | |
| Came this sweet life to be. | 60 |
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| And the grave archangel seeing | |
| Spread his mighty wings for flight, | |
| But the glow hung round him fleeing | |
| Like the rose of an Arctic night; | |
| And sadly moving heavenward | 65 |
| By Venus and by Mars, | |
| He heard the joyful planets | |
| Hail Earth, the Rose of Stars. | |
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DIVINE AWE
TO tremble, when I touch her hands, | |
| With awe that no man understands; | 70 |
| To feel soft reverence arise | |
| When, lover-sweet, I meet her eyes; | |
| To see her beauty grow and shine | |
| When most I feel this awe divine,— | |
| Whate’er befall me, this is mine; | 75 |
| And where about the room she moves, | |
| My spirit follows her, and loves. | |
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HOMEWARD BOUND
I
INTO the west of the waters on the living ocean’s foam, | |
| Into the west of the sunset where the young adventurers roam, | |
| Into the west of the shining star, I am sailing, sailing home; | 80 |
| Home from the lonely cities, time’s wreck, and the naked woe, | |
| Home through the clean great waters where freemen’s pennants blow, | |
| Home to the land men dream of, where all the nations go; | |
| ’T is home but to be on the waters, ’t is home already here, | |
| Through the weird red-billowing sunset into the west to steer, | 85 |
| To fall asleep in the rocking dark with home a day more near. | |
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II
By morning light the ship holds on, alive with happy freight, | |
| A thousand hearts with one still joy, and with one hope elate, | |
| To reach the land that mothered them and sweetly guides their fate; | |
| Whether the purple furrow heaps the bows with dazzling spray, | 90 |
| Or buried in green-based masses they dip the storm-swept day, | |
| Or the white fog ribbons o’er them, the strong ship holds her way; | |
| And when another day is done, by the star of love we steer | |
| To the land of all that we love best and all that we hold dear; | |
| We are sailing westward, homeward; our western home is near. | 95 |
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THE CHILD
IT was only the clinging touch | |
| Of a child’s hand in the street, | |
| But it made the whole day sweet; | |
| Caught, as he ran full-speed, | |
| In my own stretched out to his need, | 100 |
| Caught, and saved from the fall, | |
| As I held, for the moment’s poise, | |
| In my circling arms the whole boy’s | |
| Delicate slightness, warmëd mould; | |
| Mine, for an instant mine, | 105 |
| The sweetest thing the heart can divine, | |
| More precious than fame or gold, | |
| The crown of many joys, | |
| Lay in my breast, all mine. | |
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| I was nothing to him; | 110 |
| He neither looked up nor spoke; | |
| I never saw his eyes; | |
| He was gone ere my mind awoke | |
| From the action’s quick surprise | |
| With vision blurred and dim. | 115 |
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| You say I ask too much: | |
| It was only the clinging touch | |
| Of a child in a city street; | |
| It hath made the whole day sweet. | |
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O, STRUCK BENEATH THE LAUREL
O, STRUCK beneath the laurel, where the singing fountains are, | 120 |
| I saw from heaven falling the star of love afar; | |
| O, slain in Eden’s bower nigh the bourn where lovers rest, | |
| I fell upon the arrow that was buried in my breast; | |
| Farewell the noble labor, farewell the silent pain, | |
| Farewell the perfect honor of the long years lived in vain; | 125 |
| I lie upon the moorland where the wood and pasture meet, | |
| And the cords that no man breaketh are bound about my feet. | |
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SO SLOW TO DIE
THE RAINBOW on the ocean | |
| A moment bright, | |
| The nightingale’s devotion | 130 |
| That dies on night, | |
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| Eve’s rosy star a-tremble | |
| Its hour of light,— | |
| All things that love resemble | |
| Too soon take flight. | 135 |
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| The violets we cherish | |
| Died in the spring; | |
| Roses and lilies perish | |
| In what they bring; | |
| And joy and beauty wholly | 140 |
| With life depart; | |
| But love leaves slow, how slowly! | |
| Life’s empty heart. | |
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| O, strange to me, and wondrous, | |
| The storm passed by, | 145 |
| With sound of voices thund’rous | |
| Swept from the sky; | |
| But stranger, love, thy fashion,— | |
| O, tell me why | |
| Art thou, dark storm of passion, | 150 |
| So slow to die? | |
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| As roll the billowy ridges | |
| When the great gale has blown o’er; | |
| As the long winter-dirges | |
| From frozen branches pour; | 155 |
| As the whole sea’s harsh December | |
| Pounds on the pine-hung shore; | |
| So will love’s deep remember, | |
| So will deep love deplore. | |
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SEAWARD
I WILL rise, I will go from the places that are dark with passion and pain, | 160 |
| From the sorrow-changëd woodlands and a thousand memories slain. | |
| O light gone out in darkness on the cliff I seek no more | |
| Where she I worshipped met me in her girlhood at the door! | |
| O, bright though years how many! fare-well, sweet guiding star— | |
| The wild wind blows me seaward over the harbor-bar! | 165 |
| Better thy waste, gray Ocean, the homeless, heaving plain, | |
| Than to choke the fount of life and the flower of honor stain! | |
| I will seek thy blessed shelter, deep bosom of sun and storm, | |
| From the fever and fret of the earth and the things that debase and deform; | |
| For I am thine; from of old thou didst lay me, a child, at rest | 170 |
| In thy cradle of many waters, and gav’st to my hunger thy breast; | |
| Remember the dreamful boy whom thy beauty preserved from wrong,— | |
| Thou taughtest me music, O Singer of the never-silent song! | |
| Man-grown, I will seek thy healing; though from worse than death I fly, | |
| Not mine the heart of the craven, not here I mean to die! | 175 |
| Let me taste on my lips thy salt, let me live with the sun and the rain, | |
| Let me lean to the rolling wave and feel me man again! | |
| O, make thee a sheaf of arrows as when thy winters rage forth,— | |
| Whiten me as thy deep-sea waves with the blanching breath of the North! | |
| O, take thee a bundle of spears from thine azure of burning drouth, | 180 |
| Smite into my pulses the tremors, the fervors, the blaze of the South! | |
| So might my breath be snow-cold, and my blood be pure like fire, | |
| The heavenly souls that have left me will come back to sustain and inspire. | |
| Take me—I come—O, save me in the paths my fathers trod! | |
| Then fling me back to the battle where men labor the peace of God! | 185 |
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