No More Learning

52

? Visitation
SUNLIGHT slantingly flows
Down through the rampart notches
Onto thine house by the thicket,
Onto thy garden-close.
When the birds swirl on the sward,
When the trees wave their branches,
After sundown the early
Wayfarers wander abroad.
Plenish the pail at the well,
Sprinkle the sand on the pathway,
Bushes and beds of the grass-plot,
Roses and heather-bell.
And on the wall, by the seat,
Break the entangled ivy,
Scatter buds for a carpet,
Let all be balmy and sweet.
Lest as a pilgrim, again,
In such twilight shadows,
HE should alight, peradventure
Onto our earth, and then
Over the way he should glide,
--Parting the leaves with his radiance-
Through the copse to thy threshold,
There awhile to abide.
63

? Dream--Darkness
LANDSCAPE I
THE wild resplendence of the year resolves,
The sombre mood of evening fades away
Within a wood, where from a late array
Of saffron, bronze and crimson--dole dissolves.
And leaf on leaf in languid flakes alight
Upon the surface of a silent pool,
Whereby a boy keeps watch with eyelets cool;
Already cruel spouse to falling night.
And through the solitudes remote and strange
The golden gloss of eve, from tree to tree,
Descends, amid the yellow, flamingly,
Then darksome mists o'er darksome bushes range.
Night-shades assemble, edges white with foam,
Around a wall of blood-red barren thorn,
Pale hands throng forward, groping tired and torn--
If only through the thicket sleep would come! . .
Then "mid the gray there peeps a glimmer soon,
A new light rises 'neath the evening star,
A grass-plot stretches o'er a crag afar.
Along there glides among the violets strewn
A row of slender stems, like lances free.
The azure vault in silver shimmers soft,
A dewy breeze with fragrance soars aloft. . . .
And blossoms fall upon an open sea.
54

? LANDSCAPE II
DOTH live for thee again, Beloved, that October,
That stroll we took--and how we went astray,
When midst the bronze-like beams of fir-trees dark
and sober,
And flaming crimson leaves we made our way
From tree to tree--upon the pathway silent vagrants,
Divided, and in loving strife beset,
While each in secret hearkened, midst the foliage
fragrance,
To music of a dream that is not yet.
At first, the elf-like laughter of a streamlet roaming
Down in the valley, served us still as guide,
Which hastened onward, growing softer and more
gloaming,
Till unobserved its sobbing echoes died.
So charmed were we, so long we tarried o'er this
ramble,
That soon the path forsook us, soon the light,
Until a child, who late plucked berries from the
bramble,
Across the thicket guided us aright.
Along the lichened pathway of the leaf-crowned alley,
With faltering footsteps tardily we passed,
And then through ever lighter-glimmering twigs, the
valley
With distant dome re-opened forth at last.
55

? Our loving arms towards the mossy bark extended,
We bid farewell unto the final tree,
Then down through flowers towards our lovely goal
descended:
And earth and ether swam in a golden sea.
56

? Roses
IN white and glowing blossomy undulation,
From shrubs encircling distant heights and hollows,
You lost yourself . . .