Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems Part 17

Sigh and sigh! and sigh and sigh!

Never end of sighing; Rain and rain for our reply-- Hopes half-drowned and dying; Peering through the window-pane, Naught but endless raining-- Endless sighing, and, as vain, Endlessly complaining.

Shine and shine! and shine and shine!

Ah! to-day the splendor!-- All this glory yours and mine-- G.o.d! but G.o.d is tender!

We to sigh instead of sing, _Yesterday_, in sorrow, While the Lord was fashioning This for our To-morrow!

THE BLOSSOMS ON THE TREES.

Blossoms crimson, white, or blue, Purple, pink, and every hue, From sunny skies, to tintings drowned In dusky drops of dew, I praise you all, wherever found, And love you through and through;-- _But_, Blossoms On The Trees, With your breath upon the breeze, There's nothing all the world around As half as sweet as you!

Could the rhymer only wring All the sweetness to the lees Of all the kisses cl.u.s.tering In juicy Used-to-bes, To dip his rhymes therein and sing The blossoms on the trees,-- "O Blossoms on the Trees,"

He would twitter, trill and coo, "However sweet, such songs as these Are not as sweet as you:-- For you are _blooming_ melodies The _eyes_ may listen to!"

A DISCOURAGING MODEL.

Just the airiest, fairiest slip of a thing, With a Gainsborough hat, like a b.u.t.terfly's wing, Tilted up at one side with the jauntiest air, And a knot of red roses sown in under there Where the shadows are lost in her hair.

Then a cameo face, carven in on a ground Of that shadowy hair where the roses are wound; And the gleam of a smile O as fair and as faint And as sweet as the masters of old used to paint Round the lips of their favorite saint!

And that lace at her throat--and the fluttering hands Snowing there, with a grace that no art understands, The flakes of their touches--first fluttering at The bow--then the roses--the hair--and then that Little tilt of the Gainsborough hat.

O what artist on earth with a model like this, Holding not on his palette the tint of a kiss, Nor a pigment to hint of the hue of her hair, Nor the gold of her smile--O what artist could dare To expect a result half so fair?

LAST NIGHT--AND THIS.

Last night--how deep the darkness was!

And well I knew its depths, because I waded it from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e, Thinking to reach the light no more.

She would not even touch my hand.-- The winds rose and the cedars fanned The moon out, and the stars fled back In heaven and hid--and all was black!

But ah! To-night a summons came, Signed with a teardrop for a name,-- For as I wondering kissed it, lo, A line beneath it told me so.

And _now_--the moon hangs over me A disk of dazzling brilliancy, And every star-tip stabs my sight With splintered glitterings of light!

SEPTEMBER DARK.

I.

The air falls chill; The whip-poor-will Pipes lonesomely behind the hill: The dusk grows dense, The silence tense; And lo, the katydids commence.

II.

Through shadowy rifts Of woodland, lifts The low, slow moon, and upward drifts, While left and right The fireflies' light Swirls eddying in the skirts of Night.

III.

O Cloudland, gray And level, lay Thy mists across the face of Day!

At foot and head, Above the dead, O Dews, weep on uncomforted!

A GLIMPSE OF PAN.

I caught but a glimpse of him. Summer was here, And I strayed from the town and its dust and heat And walked in a wood, while the noon was near, Where the shadows were cool, and the atmosphere Was misty with fragrances stirred by my feet From surges of blossoms that billowed sheer O'er the gra.s.ses, green and sweet.

And I peered through a vista of leaning trees, Tressed with long tangles of vines that swept To the face of a river, that answered these With vines in the wave like the vines in the breeze, Till the yearning lips of the ripples crept And kissed them, with quavering ecstacies, And gurgled and laughed and wept.

And there, like a dream in a swoon, I swear I saw Pan lying,--his limbs in the dew And the shade, and his face in the dazzle and glare Of the glad sunshine; while everywhere, Over, across, and around him blew Filmy dragonflies. .h.i.ther and there, And little white b.u.t.terflies, two and two, In eddies of odorous air.

OUT OF NAZARETH.

"He shall sleep unscathed of thieves Who loves Allah and believes."

Thus heard one who shared the tent, In the far-off Orient, Of the Bedouin ben Ahrzz-- n.o.bler never loved the stars Through the palm-leaves nigh the dim Dawn his courser neighed to him!

He said: "Let the sands be swarmed With such thieves as I, and thou Shalt at morning rise, unharmed, Light as eyelash to the brow Of thy camel, amber-eyed, Ever munching either side, Striding still, with nestled knees, Through the midnight's oases.

"Who can rob thee an thou hast More than this that thou hast cast At my feet--this dust of gold?

Simply this and that, all told!

Hast thou not a treasure of Such a thing as men call love?

"Can the dusky band I lead Rob thee of thy daily need Of a whiter soul, or steal What thy lordly prayers reveal?

Who could be enriched of thee By such h.o.a.rd of poverty As thy n.i.g.g.ard hand pretends To dole me--thy worst of friends?

Therefore shouldst thou pause to bless One indeed who blesses thee; Robbing thee, I dispossess But myself.--Pray thou for me!"

He shall sleep unscathed of thieves Who loves Allah and believes.

THE WANDERING JEW.