Undertones Part 4

UNDERTONE

Ah me! too soon the Autumn comes Among these purple-plaintive hills!

Too soon among the forest gums Premonitory flame she spills, Bleak, melancholy flame that kills.

Her white fogs veil the morn that rims With wet the moonflow'r's elfin moons; And, like exhausted starlight, dims The last slim lily-disk; and swoons With scents of hazy afternoons.

Her gray mists haunt the sunset skies, And build the west's cadaverous fire, Where Sorrow sits with lonely eyes, And hands that wake her ancient lyre, Beside the ghost of dead Desire.

CONCLUSION

The songs Love sang to us are dead: Yet shall he sing to us again, When the dull days are wrapped in lead, And the red woodland drips with rain.

The lily of our love is gone, That touched our spring with golden scent; Now in the garden low upon The wind-stripped way its stalk is bent.

Our rose of dreams is pa.s.sed away, That lit our summer with sweet fire; The storm beats bare each th.o.r.n.y spray, And its dead leaves are trod in mire.

The songs Love sang to us are dead; Yet shall he sing to us again, When the dull days are wrapped in lead, And the red woodland drips with rain.

The marigold of memory Shall fill our autumn then with glow; Haply its bitterness will be Sweeter than love of long ago.

The cypress of forgetfulness Shall haunt our winter with its hue; The apathy to us not less Dear than the dreams our summer knew.

MONOCHROMES

I.

The last rose falls, wrecked of the wind and rain; Where once it bloomed the thorns alone remain: Dead in the wet the slow rain strews the rose.

The day was dim; now eve comes on again, Grave as a life weighed down by many woes,-- So is the joy dead, and alive the pain.

The brown leaf flutters where the green leaf died; Bare are the boughs, and bleak the forest side: The wind is whirling with the last wild leaf.

The eve was strange; now dusk comes weird and wide, Gaunt as a life that lives alone with grief,-- So doth the hope go and despair abide.

An empty nest hangs where the wood-bird pled; Along the west the dusk dies, stormy red: The frost is subtle as a serpent's breath.

The dusk was sad; now night is overhead, Grim as a soul brought face to face with death-- So life lives on when love, its life, lies dead.

II.

Go your own ways. Who shall persuade me now To seek with high face for a star of hope?

Or up endeavor's unsubmissive slope Advance a bosom of desire, and bow A back of patience in a thankless task?

Alone beside the grave of love I ask, Shalt thou? or thou?

Leave go my hands. Fain would I walk alone The easy ways of silence and of sleep.

What though I go with eyes that cannot weep, And lips contracted with no uttered moan, Through rocks and thorns, where every footprint bleeds, A dead-sea path of desert night that leads To one white stone!

Though sands be black and bitter black the sea, Night lie before me and behind me night, And G.o.d within far Heaven refuse to light The consolation of the dawn for me,-- Between the shadowy bournes of Heaven and h.e.l.l, It is enough love leaves my soul to dwell With memory.

DAYS AND DAYS

The days that clothed white limbs with heat, And rocked the red rose on their breast, Have pa.s.sed with amber-sandalled feet Into the ruby-gated west.

These were the days that filled the heart With overflowing riches of Life; in whose soul no dream shall start But hath its origin in love.

Now come the days gray-huddled in The haze; whose foggy footsteps drip; Who pin beneath a gipsy chin The frosty marigold and hip.--

The days, whose forms fall shadowy Athwart the heart; whose misty breath Shapes saddest sweets of memory Out of the bitterness of death.

DROUTH IN AUTUMN

Gnarled acorn-oaks against a west Of copper, cavernous with fire; A wind of frost that gives no rest To such lean leaves as haunt the brier, And hide the cricket's vibrant wire.

Sear, shivering shocks, and stubble blurred With bramble-blots of dull maroon; And creekless hills whereon no herd Finds pasture, and whereo'er the loon Flies, haggard as the rainless moon.

MID-WINTER

All day the clouds hung ashen with the cold; And through the snow the m.u.f.fled waters fell; The day seemed drowned in grief too deep to tell, Like some old hermit whose last bead is told.

At eve the wind woke, and the snow-clouds rolled Aside to leave the fierce sky visible; Harsh as an iron landscape of wan h.e.l.l The dark hills hung framed in with gloomy gold.

And then, towards night, the wind seemed some one at My window wailing: now a little child Crying outside the door; and now the long Howl of some starved beast down the flue. I sat And knew 'twas Winter with his madman song Of miseries, whereon he stared and smiled.

COLD