Songs Ysame

Whose quiet waters late were crossed
By shadows of the bending fern,
Are fair with fringes of the frost.

Wherever cowslips crowded thick,
Or banks of buttercups would be,
A host of airy forms in white,
Like ghosts of flowers returned, I see.

It may be clustered flakes of snow,
Or frozen dew still glistening there,
But still it seems as if there came
A rare, strange odor through the air.

October

ACROSS the stubble fields the lazy breezes pass,
From Autumn orchards sloping southward in the sun,
Where dropping from the low-hung branches, one by one,
The apples hide in tangles of the wind-blown grass.
A warm, sweet scent of mellow fruit fills all the air,
And faintly over hills and hollows comes the cry
Of some shrill bluejay, and his mate's far-off reply.
Like Ruth, the winds will go a-gleaning, by and by,
And garner in the leaves till all the woods are bare.

But now my boyhood's love has come again to me,
October – in her royal red and gold arrayed!
She comes with glowing cheeks, my dusky Indian maid,
And all the world seems bright because so bright is she.
Unto her lips the wild grapes hold their spicy wine.
Persimmons, sweet and golden with an early frost,
Drop at her feet; and where the narrow creek has crossed
The woods, and in the ferns and flag its way has lost,
Blood-red the corals of the dog-wood berries shine.

And thus she comes, my Love I loved when I was young!
We wander for a little while across the hills,
And, as of old, her sunny presence warms and fills
My heart. But like a lute with one string left unstrung,
When I would sing again the song of other years,
Something is lost. The harmony is incomplete.
And though the same old melody I still repeat,
One alto note of joy is gone that made it sweet,
And something trembles in the Autumn haze like tears.

At Twilight

A    TINY bird flits through the twilight brown,
When sunset dreams make all the garden fair,
Whose soft notes fall into the quiet air
Like olive leaves on waters smooth dropped down.
Emblems of rest, when floods of care do cease,
Into my heart, as well, they fall and float,
An olive leaf each faint and dreamy note —
I recognize their sign, and feel at peace.

The Prophet

DARKNESS and silence, such as only fall
At midnight, wrap the sleeping hamlets all;
No life in all the dim world seems to be.
Then suddenly,
Across the hills, far off and faint, I hear
Sound through the dark, as through a dream, the call
(How strange it seems!) of some bold chanticleer.

(Half in my sleep I hear that clarion ring,
With distant calls, like echoes, answering;
And, as at war's alarum, soldiers leap
From guarded sleep
And seize their arms, and hasten from their tents,
So, at this sound, my drowsy senses spring,
Alert to man the mind's dark battlements.)

To tell night's mid-hour tolls no startled bell;
Only thy voice is heard, brave sentinel,
Who, like the ancient watchman on the towers,
Calls forth the hours,
And to the wistful questioners, who see
No gleam through pain's long vigil, dost foretell
"The morning cometh," oft and cheerily.

How canst thou know when, weary with his race,
The Day turns back, his pathway to retrace?
Canst thou the maiden Dawn's light footsteps hear,
Approaching near?
Or dost thou stand in converse with the skies,
And know what time she leaves her hiding-place
By joyful flashes of their starry eyes?

Thou art a prophet, like to those of old,
Who in the darkness sat, but firm and bold
Looked with undaunted eyes towards the dim
Horizon's rim,
And thrilled with faith of waiting ages born,
That soon from out the Night's strong prisonhold,
Should burst the golden glory of the Morn.

The Potter's Field