Excerpt
The Evanescent Beautiful. Day after Day, young with eternal beauty,Pays flowery duty to the month and clime;Night after night erects a vasty portalOf stars immortal for the march of Time. But where are now the Glory and the Rapture,That once did capture me in cloud and stream?Where now the Joy that was both speech and silence?Where the beguilance that was fact and dream? I know that Earth and Heaven are as goldenAs they of olden made me feel and see;Not in themselves is lacking aught of powerThrough star and flower—something's lost in me. Return! Return! I cry, O Visions vanished,O Voices banished, to my Soul again!—The near Earth blossoms and the far Skies glisten,I look and listen, but, alas! in vain.
August. I Clad on with glowing beauty and the peace,Benign, of calm maturity, she standsAmong her meadows and her orchard-lands,And on her mellowing gardens and her trees,Out of the ripe abundance of her hands,Bestows increaseAnd fruitfulness, as, wrapped in sunny ease,Blue-eyed and blonde she goes,Upon her bosom Summer's richest rose. II And he who follows where her footsteps lead,By hill and rock, by forest-side and stream,Shall glimpse the glory of her visible dream,In flower and fruit, in rounded nut and seed:She in whose path the very shadows gleam;Whose humblest weedSeems lovelier than June's loveliest flower, indeed,And sweeter to the smellThan April's self within a rainy dell. III Hers is a sumptuous simplicityWithin the fair Republic of her flowers,Where you may see her standing hours on hours,Breast-deep in gold, soft-holding up a beeTo her hushed ear; or sitting under bowersOf greenery,A butterfly a-tilt upon her knee;Or, lounging on her hip,Dancing a cricket on her finger-tip. IV Aye, let me breathe hot scents that tell of you:The hoary catnip and the meadow-mint,On which the honour of your touch doth printItself as odour. Let me drink the hueOf ironweed and mist-flow'r here that hint,With purple and blue,The rapture that your presence doth imbueTheir inmost essence with,Immortal though as transient as a myth. V Yea, let me feed on sounds that still assureMe where you hide: the brooks', whose happy dinTells where, the deep retired woods within,Disrobed, you bathe; the birds', whose drowsy lureTells where you slumber, your warm-nestling chinSoft on the purePink cushion of your palm ... What better cureFor care and memory's acheThan to behold you so and watch you wake!
The Higher Brotherhood. To come in touch with mysteriesOf beauty idealizing Earth,Go seek the hills, grown old with trees,The old hills wise with death and birth. There you may hear the heart that beatsIn streams, where music has its source;And in wild rocks of green retreatsBehold the silent soul of force. Above the love that emanatesFrom human passion, and reflectsThe flesh, must be the love that waitsOn Nature, whose high call elects None to her secrets save the fewWho hold that facts are far less realThan dreams, with which all facts indueThemselves approaching the Ideal.
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