No More Learning

"From the Coosa and Altamaha,
With a thought of the dim blue Gulf;
From the Roanoke and Kanawha;
From the musical Southern rivers,
O'er the land where the fierce war-wolf
Lies slain and buried in flowers;
I come to your chill, sad hours
And the woods where the sunlight shivers.
I come like an echo: 'Awake! '
I answer the sky and the lake
And the clear, cool color that quivers
In all your azure rills.
I come to your wan, bleak hills
For a greeting that rises dearer,
To homely hearts draws me nearer
Than the warmth of the rice-fields or wealth of the ranches.

"I will charm away your sorrow,
For I sing of the dewy morrow:
My melody sways like the branches
My light feet set astir:
I bring to the old, as I hover,
The days and the joys that were,
And hope to the waiting lover!
Then, take my note and sing,
Filling it with the longing
And the blithe, unfettered thronging
Of your spirit's blossoming! "

Not long that music lingers:
Like the breath of forgotten singers
It flies,--or like the March-cloud's shadow
That sweeps with its wing the faded meadow
Not long! And yet thy fleeting,
Thy tender, flute-toned greeting,
O bluebird, wakes an answer that remains
The purest chord in all the year's refrains.






THE VOICE OF THE VOID


I warn, like the one drop of rain
On your face, ere the storm;
Or tremble in whispered refrain
With your blood, beating warm.
I am the presence that ever
Baffles your touch's endeavor,--
Gone like the glimmer of dust
Dispersed by a gust.
I am the absence that taunts you,
The fancy that haunts you;
The ever unsatisfied guess
That, questioning emptiness,
Wins a sigh for reply.
Nay; nothing am I,
But the flight of a breath--
For I am Death!






"O WHOLESOME DEATH"


O wholesome Death, thy sombre funeral-car
Looms ever dimly on the lengthening way
Of life; while, lengthening still, in sad array,
My deeds in long procession go, that are
As mourners of the man they helped to mar.
I see it all in dreams, such as waylay
The wandering fancy when the solid day
Has fallen in smoldering ruins, and night's star,
Aloft there, with its steady point of light
Mastering the eye, has wrapped the brain in sleep.
Ah, when I die, and planets hold their flight
Above my grave, still let my spirit keep
Sometimes its vigil of divine remorse,
'Midst pity, praise, or blame heaped o'er my corse!
INCANTATION


When the leaves, by thousands thinned,
A thousand times have whirled in the wind,
And the moon, with hollow cheek,
Staring from her hollow height,
Consolation seems to seek
From the dim, reechoing night;
And the fog-streaks dead and white
Lie like ghosts of lost delight
O'er highest earth and lowest sky;
Then, Autumn, work thy witchery!

Strew the ground with poppy-seeds,
And let my bed be hung with weeds,
Growing gaunt and rank and tall,
Drooping o'er me like a pall.
Send thy stealthy, white-eyed mist
Across my brow to turn and twist
Fold on fold, and leave me blind
To all save visions in the mind.
Then, in the depth of rain-fed streams
I shall slumber, and in dreams
Slide through some long glen that burns
With a crust of blood-red ferns
And brown-withered wings of brake
Like a burning lava-lake;--
So, urged to fearful, faster flow
By the awful gasp, "Hahk! hahk! " of the crow,
Shall pass by many a haunted rood
Of the nutty, odorous wood;
Or, where the hemlocks lean and loom,
Shall fill my heart with bitter gloom;
Till, lured by light, reflected cloud,
I burst aloft my watery shroud,
And upward through the ether sail
Far above the shrill wind's wail;--
But, falling thence, my soul involve
With the dust dead flowers dissolve;
And, gliding out at last to sea,
Lulled to a long tranquillity,
The perfect poise of seasons keep
With the tides that rest at neap.
So must be fulfilled the rite
That giveth me the dead year's might;
And at dawn I shall arise
A spirit, though with human eyes,
A human form and human face;
And where'er I go or stay,
There the summer's perished grace
Shall be with me, night and day.






FAMINE AND HARVEST

[PLYMOUTH PLANTATION: 1622]


The strong and the tender,
The young and the old,
Unto Death we must render;--
Our silver, our gold.

To break their long sleeping
No voice may avail:
They hear not our weeping--
Our famished love's wail.

Yea, those whom we cherish
Depart, day by day.
Soon we, too, shall perish
And crumble to clay.

And the vine and the berry
Above us will bloom;
The wind shall make merry
While we lie in gloom.

Fear not! Though thou starvest,
Provision is made:
God gathers His harvest
When our hopes fade!






THE CHILD'S WISH GRANTED


Do you remember, my sweet, absent son,
How in the soft June days forever done
You loved the heavens so warm and clear and high;
And when I lifted you, soft came your cry,--
"Put me 'way up--'way, 'way up in blue sky"?

I laughed and said I could not;--set you down,
Your gray eyes wonder-filled beneath that crown
Of bright hair gladdening me as you raced by.