August
I
Dead is the air, and still! the leaves of the locust and walnut
Lazily hang from the boughs, inlaying their intricate outlines
Rather on space than the sky,—on a tideless expansion of slumber.
Faintly afar in the depths of the duskily withering grasses
Katydids chirp, and I hear the monotonous rattle of crickets.
Dead is the air, and ah! the breath that was wont to refresh me
Out of the volumes I love, the heartful, whispering pages,
Dies on the type, and I see but wearisome characters only.
Therefore be still, thou yearning voice from the garden in Jena,—
Still, thou answering voice from the park-side cottage in Weimar,—
Still, sentimental echo from chambers of office in Dresden,—
Ye, and the feebler and farther voices that sound in the pauses!
Each and all to the shelves I return: for vain is your commerce
Now, when the world and the brain are numb in the torpor of August.
II
Over the tasselled corn, and fields of the twice-blossomed clover,
Dimly the hills recede in the reek of the colorless hazes:
Dull and lustreless, now, the burnished green of the woodlands;
Leaves of blackberry briers are bronzed and besprinkled with copper;
Weeds in the unmown meadows are blossoming purple and yellow,
Roughly entwined, a wreath for the tan and wrinkles of Summer.
Where shall I turn? What path attracts the indifferent footstep,
Eager no more as in June, nor lifted with wings as in May-time?
Whitherward look for a goal, when buds have exhausted their promise,
Harvests are reaped, and grapes and berries are waiting for Autumn?
Wander, my feet, as ye list! I am careless, to-day, to direct you.
Take, here, the path by the pines, the russet carpet of needles
Stretching from wood to wood, and hidden from sight by the orchard!
Here, in the sedge of the slope, the centaury pink, as a sea-shell,
Opens her stars all at once, and with finer than tropical spices
Sweetens the season's drouth, the censer of fields that are sterile.
Now, from the height of the grove, between the irregular tree-trunks,
Over the falling fields and the meadowy curves of the valley,
Climmer the peaceful farms, the mossy roofs of the houses,
Gables gray of the neighboring barns, and gleams of the highway
Climbing the ridges beyond to dip in the dream of a forest.
III
Ah, forsaking the shade, and slowly crushing the stubble,
Parting the viscous roseate stems and the keen pennyroyal,
Rises a different scene, suggestion of heat and of stillness,—
Heat as intense and stillness as dumb, the immaculate ether's
Hush when it vaults the waveless Mediterranean sea-floor;
Golden the hills of Cos, with pencilled cerulean shadows;
Phantoms of Carian shores that are painted and fade in the distance;
Patmos behind, and westward the flushed Ariadnean Naxos,—
Once as I saw them sleeping, drugged by the poppy of Summer.
There, indeed, was the air, as with floating stars of the thistle
Filled with impalpable forms, regrets, possibilities, longings,
Beauty that was and was not, and Life that was rhythmic and joyous,
So that the sun-baked clay the peasant took for his wine-jars
Brighter than gold I thought, and the red acidity nectar.
Here, at my feet, the clay is clay and a nuisance the stubble,
Flaring St. John's-wort, milk-weed, and coarse, unpoetical mullein;—
Yet, were it not for the poets, say, is the asphodel fairer?
Were not the mullein as dear, had Theocritus sung it, or Bion?
Yea, but they did not; and we, whose fancy's tenderest tendrils
Shoot unsupported, and wither, for want of a Past we can cling to,
We, so starved in the Present, so weary of singing the Future,—
What is 't to us, if, haply, a score of centuries later,
Milk-weed inspires Patagonian tourists, and mulleins are classic?
IV
Idly balancing fortunes, feeling the spite of them, maybe,—
For the little withheld outweighs the much that is given,—
Feeling the pang of the brain, the endless, unquenchable yearning
Born of the knowledge of Beauty, not to be shared or imparted,
Slowly I stray, and drop by degrees to the thickets of alder
Fringing a couch of the stream, a basin of watery slumber.
Broken, it seems; for the splash and the drip and the bubbles betoken
What?—the bath of a nymph, the bashful strife of a Hylas?
Broad is the back, and bent from an un-Olympian stooping,
Narrow the loins and firm, the white of the thighs and the shoulders
Changing to reddest and toughest of tan at the knees and the elbows.
Is it a faun? He sees me, nor cares to hide in the thickets.
Faun of the bog is he, a sylvan creature of Galway
Come from the ditch below, to cleanse him of sweat and of muck-stain;
Willing to give me speech, as, naked, he stands in the shallows.
Something of coarse, uncouth, barbaric, he leaves on the bank there;
Something of primitive human fairness cometh to clothe him.
Were he not bent with the pick, but straightened from reaching the bunches
Hung from the mulberry branches,—heard he the bacchanal cymbals,
Took from the sun an even gold on the web of his muscles,
Knew the bloom of his stunted bud of delight of the senses,—
Then as faun or shepherd he might have been welcome in marble.
Yea, but he is not; and I, requiring the beautiful balance,
Music of life in the body, and limbs too fair to be hidden,
Find, indeed, some delicate colors and possible graces,—
Moral hints of the man beneath the unsavory garments,—
Find them, and sigh, lamenting the law reversed of the races
Starting the world afresh on the basis unlovely of Labor.
V
Was it a spite of fate that blew me hither, an exile,
Still unweaned, and not to be weaned, from the milk I was born to?
Bitter the stranger's bread to the homesick, hungering palate;
Bitterer still to the soul the taste of the food that is foreign!
Yet must I take it, yet live, and somehow seem to be healthy,
Lest my neighbors, perchance, be shocked by an uncomprehended
Violent clamor for that which I crave and they cannot supply me,—
Hunger unmeet for the times, anachronistical passions,—
Beauty seeming distorted because the rule is distortion.
Here is a tangle which, now, too idle am I to unravel,
Snared, moreover, by bitter-sweet, moon-seed, and riotous fox-grape,
Meshing the thickets: procul, O procul , unpractical fancies!
Verily, thus bewildering myself in the maze of æsthetic,
Solveless problems, the feet were wellnigh heedlessly fettered.
Thoughtless, 'tis true, I relinquished my books: but crescit eundo
Wisely was said,—for desperate vacancy prompted the ramble,
Memories prolonged, and a phantom of logic urges it onward.
VI
Here are the fields again! The soldierly maize in tassel
Stands on review, and carries the scabbarded ears in its arm-pits.
Rustling I part the ranks,—the close, engulfing battalions
Shaking their plumes overhead,—and, wholly bewildered and heated,
Gain the top of the ridge, where stands, colossal, the pin-oak.
Yonder, a mile away, I see the roofs of the village,—
See the crouching front of the meeting-house of the Quakers,
Oddly conjoined with the whittled Presbyterian steeple.
Right and left are the homes of the slow, conservative farmers,
Loyal people and true, but, now that the battles are over,
Zealous for Temperance, Peace, and the Right of Suffrage for Women.
Orderly, moral, are they,—at least, in the sense of suppression;
Given to preaching of rules, inflexible outlines of duty;
Seeing the sternness of life, but, alas! overlooking its graces.
Let me be juster: the scattered seeds of the graces are planted
Widely apart; but the trumpet-vine on the porch is a token;
Yea, and awake and alive are the forces of love and affection,
Plastic forces that work from the tenderer models of beauty.
Who shall dare to speak of the possible? Who shall encounter
Pity and wrath and reproach, recalling the record immortal
Left by the races when Beauty was law and Joy was religion?
Who to the Duty in drab shall bring the garlanded Pleasure?—
Break with the chant of the gods, the gladsome timbrels of morning,
Nasal, monotonous chorals, sung by the sad congregation?
Better it were to sleep with the owl, to house with the hornet,
Than to conflict with the satisfied moral sense of the people.
VII
Nay, but let me be just; nor speak with the alien language
Born of my blood; for, cradled among them, I know them and love them.
Was it may fault, if a strain of the distant and dead generations
Rose in my being, renewed, and made me other than these are?
Purer, perhaps, their habit of law than the freedom they shrink from;
So, restricted by will, a little indulgence is riot.
They, content with the glow of a carefully tempered twilight,
Measured pulses of joy, and colorless growth of the senses,
Stand aghast at my dream of the sun, and the sound, and the splendor!
Mine it is, and remains, resenting the threat of suppression,
Stubbornly shaping my life, and feeding with fragments its hunger.
Drifted from Attican hills to stray on a Scythian level,
So unto me it appears,—unto them a perversion and scandal.
VIII
Lo! in the vapors, the sun, colossal and crimson and beamless,
Touches the woodland; fingers of air prepare for the dew-fall.
Life is fresher and sweeter, incensely toning to softness
Needs and desires that are but the broidered hem of its mantle,
Not the texture of daily use; and the soul of the landscape,
Breathing of justified rest, of peace developed by patience,
Lures me to feel the exquisite senses that come from denial,
Sharper passion of Beauty never fulfilled in external
Forms or conditions, but always a fugitive has-been or may-be.
Bright and alive as a want, incarnate it dozes and fattens.
Thus, in aspiring, I reach what were lost in the idle possession;
Helped by the laws I resist, the forces that daily depress me;
Bearing in secreter joy a luminous life in my bosom,
Fair as the stars on Cos, the moon on the boscage of Naxos!
Thus the skeleton Hours are clothed with rosier bodies:
Thus the buried Bacchanals rise unto lustier dances:
Thus the neglected god returns to his desolate temple:
Beauty, thus rethroned, accepts and blesses her children!
Dead is the air, and still! the leaves of the locust and walnut
Lazily hang from the boughs, inlaying their intricate outlines
Rather on space than the sky,—on a tideless expansion of slumber.
Faintly afar in the depths of the duskily withering grasses
Katydids chirp, and I hear the monotonous rattle of crickets.
Dead is the air, and ah! the breath that was wont to refresh me
Out of the volumes I love, the heartful, whispering pages,
Dies on the type, and I see but wearisome characters only.
Therefore be still, thou yearning voice from the garden in Jena,—
Still, thou answering voice from the park-side cottage in Weimar,—
Still, sentimental echo from chambers of office in Dresden,—
Ye, and the feebler and farther voices that sound in the pauses!
Each and all to the shelves I return: for vain is your commerce
Now, when the world and the brain are numb in the torpor of August.
II
Over the tasselled corn, and fields of the twice-blossomed clover,
Dimly the hills recede in the reek of the colorless hazes:
Dull and lustreless, now, the burnished green of the woodlands;
Leaves of blackberry briers are bronzed and besprinkled with copper;
Weeds in the unmown meadows are blossoming purple and yellow,
Roughly entwined, a wreath for the tan and wrinkles of Summer.
Where shall I turn? What path attracts the indifferent footstep,
Eager no more as in June, nor lifted with wings as in May-time?
Whitherward look for a goal, when buds have exhausted their promise,
Harvests are reaped, and grapes and berries are waiting for Autumn?
Wander, my feet, as ye list! I am careless, to-day, to direct you.
Take, here, the path by the pines, the russet carpet of needles
Stretching from wood to wood, and hidden from sight by the orchard!
Here, in the sedge of the slope, the centaury pink, as a sea-shell,
Opens her stars all at once, and with finer than tropical spices
Sweetens the season's drouth, the censer of fields that are sterile.
Now, from the height of the grove, between the irregular tree-trunks,
Over the falling fields and the meadowy curves of the valley,
Climmer the peaceful farms, the mossy roofs of the houses,
Gables gray of the neighboring barns, and gleams of the highway
Climbing the ridges beyond to dip in the dream of a forest.
III
Ah, forsaking the shade, and slowly crushing the stubble,
Parting the viscous roseate stems and the keen pennyroyal,
Rises a different scene, suggestion of heat and of stillness,—
Heat as intense and stillness as dumb, the immaculate ether's
Hush when it vaults the waveless Mediterranean sea-floor;
Golden the hills of Cos, with pencilled cerulean shadows;
Phantoms of Carian shores that are painted and fade in the distance;
Patmos behind, and westward the flushed Ariadnean Naxos,—
Once as I saw them sleeping, drugged by the poppy of Summer.
There, indeed, was the air, as with floating stars of the thistle
Filled with impalpable forms, regrets, possibilities, longings,
Beauty that was and was not, and Life that was rhythmic and joyous,
So that the sun-baked clay the peasant took for his wine-jars
Brighter than gold I thought, and the red acidity nectar.
Here, at my feet, the clay is clay and a nuisance the stubble,
Flaring St. John's-wort, milk-weed, and coarse, unpoetical mullein;—
Yet, were it not for the poets, say, is the asphodel fairer?
Were not the mullein as dear, had Theocritus sung it, or Bion?
Yea, but they did not; and we, whose fancy's tenderest tendrils
Shoot unsupported, and wither, for want of a Past we can cling to,
We, so starved in the Present, so weary of singing the Future,—
What is 't to us, if, haply, a score of centuries later,
Milk-weed inspires Patagonian tourists, and mulleins are classic?
IV
Idly balancing fortunes, feeling the spite of them, maybe,—
For the little withheld outweighs the much that is given,—
Feeling the pang of the brain, the endless, unquenchable yearning
Born of the knowledge of Beauty, not to be shared or imparted,
Slowly I stray, and drop by degrees to the thickets of alder
Fringing a couch of the stream, a basin of watery slumber.
Broken, it seems; for the splash and the drip and the bubbles betoken
What?—the bath of a nymph, the bashful strife of a Hylas?
Broad is the back, and bent from an un-Olympian stooping,
Narrow the loins and firm, the white of the thighs and the shoulders
Changing to reddest and toughest of tan at the knees and the elbows.
Is it a faun? He sees me, nor cares to hide in the thickets.
Faun of the bog is he, a sylvan creature of Galway
Come from the ditch below, to cleanse him of sweat and of muck-stain;
Willing to give me speech, as, naked, he stands in the shallows.
Something of coarse, uncouth, barbaric, he leaves on the bank there;
Something of primitive human fairness cometh to clothe him.
Were he not bent with the pick, but straightened from reaching the bunches
Hung from the mulberry branches,—heard he the bacchanal cymbals,
Took from the sun an even gold on the web of his muscles,
Knew the bloom of his stunted bud of delight of the senses,—
Then as faun or shepherd he might have been welcome in marble.
Yea, but he is not; and I, requiring the beautiful balance,
Music of life in the body, and limbs too fair to be hidden,
Find, indeed, some delicate colors and possible graces,—
Moral hints of the man beneath the unsavory garments,—
Find them, and sigh, lamenting the law reversed of the races
Starting the world afresh on the basis unlovely of Labor.
V
Was it a spite of fate that blew me hither, an exile,
Still unweaned, and not to be weaned, from the milk I was born to?
Bitter the stranger's bread to the homesick, hungering palate;
Bitterer still to the soul the taste of the food that is foreign!
Yet must I take it, yet live, and somehow seem to be healthy,
Lest my neighbors, perchance, be shocked by an uncomprehended
Violent clamor for that which I crave and they cannot supply me,—
Hunger unmeet for the times, anachronistical passions,—
Beauty seeming distorted because the rule is distortion.
Here is a tangle which, now, too idle am I to unravel,
Snared, moreover, by bitter-sweet, moon-seed, and riotous fox-grape,
Meshing the thickets: procul, O procul , unpractical fancies!
Verily, thus bewildering myself in the maze of æsthetic,
Solveless problems, the feet were wellnigh heedlessly fettered.
Thoughtless, 'tis true, I relinquished my books: but crescit eundo
Wisely was said,—for desperate vacancy prompted the ramble,
Memories prolonged, and a phantom of logic urges it onward.
VI
Here are the fields again! The soldierly maize in tassel
Stands on review, and carries the scabbarded ears in its arm-pits.
Rustling I part the ranks,—the close, engulfing battalions
Shaking their plumes overhead,—and, wholly bewildered and heated,
Gain the top of the ridge, where stands, colossal, the pin-oak.
Yonder, a mile away, I see the roofs of the village,—
See the crouching front of the meeting-house of the Quakers,
Oddly conjoined with the whittled Presbyterian steeple.
Right and left are the homes of the slow, conservative farmers,
Loyal people and true, but, now that the battles are over,
Zealous for Temperance, Peace, and the Right of Suffrage for Women.
Orderly, moral, are they,—at least, in the sense of suppression;
Given to preaching of rules, inflexible outlines of duty;
Seeing the sternness of life, but, alas! overlooking its graces.
Let me be juster: the scattered seeds of the graces are planted
Widely apart; but the trumpet-vine on the porch is a token;
Yea, and awake and alive are the forces of love and affection,
Plastic forces that work from the tenderer models of beauty.
Who shall dare to speak of the possible? Who shall encounter
Pity and wrath and reproach, recalling the record immortal
Left by the races when Beauty was law and Joy was religion?
Who to the Duty in drab shall bring the garlanded Pleasure?—
Break with the chant of the gods, the gladsome timbrels of morning,
Nasal, monotonous chorals, sung by the sad congregation?
Better it were to sleep with the owl, to house with the hornet,
Than to conflict with the satisfied moral sense of the people.
VII
Nay, but let me be just; nor speak with the alien language
Born of my blood; for, cradled among them, I know them and love them.
Was it may fault, if a strain of the distant and dead generations
Rose in my being, renewed, and made me other than these are?
Purer, perhaps, their habit of law than the freedom they shrink from;
So, restricted by will, a little indulgence is riot.
They, content with the glow of a carefully tempered twilight,
Measured pulses of joy, and colorless growth of the senses,
Stand aghast at my dream of the sun, and the sound, and the splendor!
Mine it is, and remains, resenting the threat of suppression,
Stubbornly shaping my life, and feeding with fragments its hunger.
Drifted from Attican hills to stray on a Scythian level,
So unto me it appears,—unto them a perversion and scandal.
VIII
Lo! in the vapors, the sun, colossal and crimson and beamless,
Touches the woodland; fingers of air prepare for the dew-fall.
Life is fresher and sweeter, incensely toning to softness
Needs and desires that are but the broidered hem of its mantle,
Not the texture of daily use; and the soul of the landscape,
Breathing of justified rest, of peace developed by patience,
Lures me to feel the exquisite senses that come from denial,
Sharper passion of Beauty never fulfilled in external
Forms or conditions, but always a fugitive has-been or may-be.
Bright and alive as a want, incarnate it dozes and fattens.
Thus, in aspiring, I reach what were lost in the idle possession;
Helped by the laws I resist, the forces that daily depress me;
Bearing in secreter joy a luminous life in my bosom,
Fair as the stars on Cos, the moon on the boscage of Naxos!
Thus the skeleton Hours are clothed with rosier bodies:
Thus the buried Bacchanals rise unto lustier dances:
Thus the neglected god returns to his desolate temple:
Beauty, thus rethroned, accepts and blesses her children!
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