id="id00177">Winter, some call thee fair,
Yea! flatter thy cold face
With vain compare
Of all thy glittering ways
And magic snows
With summer and the rose;
Thy phantom flowers
And fretted traceries
Of crystal breath,
Thy frozen and fantastic art of death,
With April as she showers
The violet on the leas,
And bares her bosom
In the blossoming trees,
And dances on her way
To laugh with May—
Winter that hath no bird
To sing thee, and no bloom
To deck thy brow:
To me thou art an empty haunted room,
Where once the music
Of the summer stirred,
And all the dancers
Fallen on silence now.

THE MYSTIC FRIENDS

I nothing did all yesterday
But listen to the singing rain
On roof and weeping window-pane,
And, 'whiles I'd watch the flying spray
And smoking breakers in the bay:
Nothing but this did I all day—

Save turn anon to trim the fire
With a new log, and mark it roar
And flame with yellow tongues for more
To feed its mystical desire.
No other comrades save these three,
The fire, the rain, and the wild sea,

All day from morn till night had I—
Yea! and the wind, with fitful cry,
Like a hound whining at the door.

Yet seemed it, as to sleep I turned,
Pausing a little while to pray,
That not mis-spent had been the day;
That I had somehow wisdom learned
From those wild waters in the bay,
And from the fire as it burned;
And that the rain, in some strange way,
Had words of high import to say;
And that the wind, with fitful cry,
Did some immortal message try,
Striving to make some meaning clear
Important for my soul to hear.

But what the meaning of the rain,
And what the wisdom of the fire,
And what the warning of the wind,
And what the sea would tell, in vain
My soul doth of itself enquire,—
And yet a meaning too doth find:

For what am I that hears and sees
But a strange brother of all these
That blindly move, and wordless cry,
And I, mysteriously I,
Answer in blood and bone and breath
To what my gnomic kindred saith;
And, as in me they all have part,
Translate their message to my heart—

And know, yet know not, what they say:
Know not, yet know, the fire's tongue
And the rain's elegiac song,
And the white language of the spray,
And all the wind meant yesterday—
Yea! wiser he, when the day ends,
Who shared it with those four strange friends.

THE COUNTRY GODS

I dwell, with all things great and fair:
The green earth and the lustral air,
The sacred spaces of the sea,
Day in, day out, companion me.
Pure-faced, pure-thoughted, folk are mine
With whom to sit and laugh and dine;
In every sunlit room is heard
Love singing, like an April bird,
And everywhere the moonlit eyes
Of beauty guard our paradise;
While, at the ending of the day,
To the kind country gods we pray,
And dues of our fair living pay.

Thus, when, reluctant, to the town
I go, with country sunshine brown,
So small and strange all seems to me—
the boonfellow of the sea—
That these town-people say and be:
Their insect lives, their insect talk,
Their busy little insect walk,
Their busy little insect stings—
And all the while the sea-weed swings
Against the rock, and the wide roar
Rises foam-lipped along the shore.
Ah! then how good my life I know,
How good it is each day to go
Where the great voices call, and where
The eternal rhythms flow and flow.
In that august companionship,
The subtle poisoned words that drip,
With guileless guile, from friendly lip,
The lie that flits from ear to ear,
Ye shall not speak, ye shall not hear;
Nor shall you fear your heart to say,
Lest he who listens shall betray.

The man who hearkens all day long
To the sea's cosmic-thoughted song
Comes with purged ears to lesser speech,
And something of the skyey reach
Greatens the gaze that feeds on space;
The starlight writes upon his face
That bathes in starlight, and the morn
Chrisms with dew, when day is born,
The eyes that drink the holy light
Welling from the deep springs of night.

And so—how good to catch the train
Back to the country gods again.

III

TO ONE ON A JOURNEY

Why did you go away without one word,
  Wave of the hand, or token of good-bye,
Nor leave some message for me with flower or bird,
  Some sign to find you by;

Some stray of blossom on the winter road,
  To know your feet had gone that very way,
Told me the star that points to your abode,
  And tossed me one faint ray

To climb from out the night where now I
    dwell—
  Or, seemed it best for you to go alone
To heaven, as alone I go to hell
  Upon the four winds blown.

HER PORTRAIT IMMORTAL

Must I believe this beauty wholly gone
  That in her picture here so deathless seems,
And must I henceforth speak of her as one
  Tells of some face of legend or of dreams,
Still here and there remembered—scarce believed,
Or held the fancy of a heart bereaved.

So beautiful she—was; ah! "was," say I,
  Yet doubt her dead—I did not see her die.
Only by others borne across the sea
 Came the incredible wild blasphemy
They called her death—as though it could be true
Of such an immortality as you!

True of these eyes that from her picture gaze,
  Serene, star-steadfast, as the heaven's own eyes;
Of that deep bosom, white as hawthorn sprays,
  Where my world-weary head forever lies;
True of these quiet hands, so marble-cool,
Still on her lap as lilies on a pool.

Must I believe her dead—that this sweet clay,
  That even from her picture breathes perfume,
Was carried on a fiery wind away,
  Or foully locked in the worm-whispering tomb;
This casket rifled, ribald fingers thrust
'Mid all her dainty treasure—is this dust!

Once such a dewy marvel of a girl,
  Warm as the sun, and ivory as the moon;
All gone of her, all lost—except this curl
  Saved from her head one summer afternoon,
Tied with a little ribbon from her breast—
This only mine, and Death's now all the rest.

Must I believe it true! Bid me not go
Where on her grave the English violets blow;
Nay, leave me—if a dream, indeed, it be—
Still in my dream that she is somewhere she,
Silent, as was her wont. It is a lie—
She is not dead—I did not see her die.

SPRING'S PROMISES

When the spring comes again, will you be there?
  Three springs I watched and waited for your face,
And listened for your voice upon the air;
  I sought for you in many a hidden place,
Saying, "She must be there."

"Surely some magic slumber holds her fast,
  She whose blue eyes were morning's earliest flowers,"