Arabs with Alpine goats may rank,
And there they find a choice of passes
Even like to dwarfs that climb the masses
Of glaciers blank.
Shall lichen in your crevice fit?
Nay, sterile all and granite-knit:
Weather nor weather-stain ye rue,
But aridly you cleave the blue
As lording it.
Morn’s vapor floats beneath your peak,
Kites skim your side with pinion weak;
To sand-storms, battering, blow on blow,
Raging to work your overthrow,
You—turn the cheek.
All elements unmoved you stem,
Foursquare you stand and suffer them:
Time’s future infinite you dare,
While, for the Past, ’tis you that wear
Eld’s diadem.
Slant from your inmost lead the caves
And labyrinths rumored. These who braves
And penetrates (old palmers said)
Comes out afar on deserts dead
And, dying, raves.
Craftsmen, in dateless quarries dim,
Stones formless into form did trim,
Usurped on Nature’s self with Art,
And bade this dumb I AM to start,
Imposing Him.
L’ENVOY
The Return of the Sire de Nesle
A.D. 16—
MY towers at last! These rovings end,
Their thirst is slaked in larger dearth:
The yearning infinite recoils,
For terrible is earth.
Kaf thrusts his snouted crags through fog:
Araxes swells beyond his span,
And knowledge poured by pilgrimage
Overflows the banks of man.
But thou, my stay, thy lasting love
One lonely good, let this but be!
Weary to view the wide world’s swarm,
But blest to fold but thee.
WEEDS AND WILDINGS CHIEFLY:
WITH
A ROSE OR TWO
“Youth is the proper, permanent and genuine condition of man.”
Nathaniel Hawthorne
CONTENTS
WEEDS AND WILDINGS
To Winnefred
PART I: THE YEAR
The Loiterer
When forth the Shepherd leads the flock
The Little Good Fellows
Clover
Madcaps
The Old Fashion
Butterfly Ditty
The Blue-Bird
The Lover and the Syringa bush
The Dairyman’s Child
Trophies of Peace
A Way-side Weed
The Chipmunk
Field Asters
Always with us!
Stockings in the farm-house Chimney
A Dutch Christmas
PART II: THIS, THAT AND THE OTHER
Time’s Betrayal
Profundity and Levity
Inscription
The Cuban Pirate
The Avatar
The American Aloe on Exhibition
A Ground-Vine
PART III: RIP VAN WINKLE’S LILAC
To a Happy Shade
Rip Van Winkle’s Lilac
A ROSE OR TWO
PART I: AS THEY FELL
The Ambuscade
Amoroso
The New Rosicrucians
The Vial of Attar
Hearth-Roses
Rose Window
Rosary Beads
The Devotion of the Flowers to their Lady
PART II: THE ROSE FARMER
The Rose Farmer
L’envoi
APPENDIX OF DELETED POEMS
The Old Shipmaster and his crazy Barn
Shadow at the Feast
Iris
Under the Ground
WEEDS AND WILDINGS
To Winnefred
WITH YOU AND ME, Winnie, Red Clover has always been one of the dearest of the flowers of the field: an avowal—by the way—as you well ween, which implies no undelight as to this ruddy young brother’s demure little half-sister, White Clover. Our feeling for both sorts originates in no fanciful associations egotistic in kind. It is not, for example, because in any exceptional way we have verified in experience the aptness of that pleasant figure of speech, Living in clover—not for this do we so take to the Ruddy One, for all that we once dwelt annually surrounded by flushed acres of it. Neither have we, jointly or severally, so frequently lighted upon that rare four-leaved variety accounted of happy augury to the finder; though, to be sure, on my part, I yearly remind you of the coincidence in my chancing on such a specimen by the wayside on the early forenoon of the fourth day of a certain bridal month, now four years more than four times ten years ago.
But, tell, do we not take to this flower—for flower it is, though with the florist hardly ranking with the floral clans—not alone that in itself it is a thing of freshness and beauty, but also that being no delicate foster-child of the nurseryman, but a hardy little creature of out-of-doors accessible and familiar to every one, no one can monopolise its charm. Yes, we are communists here.
Sweet in the mouth of that brindled heifer whose breath you so loved to inhale, and doubtless pleasant to her nostril and eye; sweet as well to the like senses in ourselves; prized by that most practical of men, the farmer, to whom wild amaranths in a pasture, though emblems of immortality, are but weeds and anathema; finding favor even with so peevish a busybody as the bee; is it not the felicitous fortune of our favorite, to incur no creature’s displeasure, but to enjoy, and without striving for it, the spontaneous good-will of all? Why it is that this little peasant of the flowers revels in so enviable an immunity and privilege, not in equal degree shared by any of us mortals however gifted and good; that indeed is something the reason whereof may not slumber very deep. But—In pace: always leave a sleeper to his repose.
How often at our adopted homestead on the hill-side—now ours no more—the farm-house, long ago shorn by the urbane barbarian succeeding us in the proprietorship—shorn of its gambrel roof and dormer windows, and when I last saw it indolently settling in serene contentment of natural decay; how often, Winnie, did I come in from my ramble, early in the bright summer mornings of old, with a handful of these cheap little cheery roses of the meek, newly purloined from the fields to consecrate them on that bit of a maple-wood mantel—your altar, somebody called it—in the familiar room facing your belovèd South! And in October most did I please myself in gathering them from the moist matted aftermath in an enriched little hollow near by, soon to be snowed upon and for consecutive months sheeted from view. And once—you remember it—having culled them in a sunny little flurry of snow, winter’s frolic skirmisher in advance, the genial warmth of your chamber melted the fleecy flakes into dew-drops rolling off from the ruddiness. “Tears of the happy,” you said.
Well, and to whom but to thee, Madonna of the Trefoil, should I now dedicate these “Weeds and Wildings,” thriftless children of quite another and yet later spontaneous after-growth, and bearing indications too apparent it may be, of that terminating season on which the offerer verges. But take them. And for aught suggestive of the “melting mood” that any may possibly betray, call to mind the dissolved snow-flakes on the ruddy oblation of old, and remember your “Tears of the Happy.”
PART I: THE YEAR
The Loiterer
1
SHE will come though she loiter, believe,
Her pledge it assigns not the day;
&nb
sp; Why brood by the embers night after night,
Sighing over their dying away—
Well, let her delay;
She is everywhere longed for, as here;
A favorite, freakish and young:
Her can we gladden, though us she can cheer?
Let us think no wrong.
2
But watch and wait.
Wait by the pasture-bars
Or watch by the garden-gate;
For, after coming, though wide she stray,
First ever she shows on the slender way—
Slim sheep-track threads the hill-side brown,
Or foot-path leads to the garden down.
3
While snow lingered under the fir,
Loth to melt from embrace of the earth,
And ashy red embers of logs
In noon-light dozed on the hearth;
And in cage by the window sun-warmed
Our bird was enheartened to song;
It was then that, as yearly before,
By the self-same foot-path along,
She drew to the weather-beat door
That was sunned through the skeleton-tree:
Nothing she said, but seemed to say—
“Old folks, aren’t ye glad to see me!”
And tears brimmed our eyes—bless the day!
Then she turned; and where was she not?
She was here—she was there,
Eager—everywhere,
Like one who revisits scenes never forgot.
When forth the Shepherd leads the flock
WHEN forth the shepherd leads the flock,
White lamb and dingy ewe,
And there’s dibbling in the garden,
Then the world begins anew.
When Buttercups make bright
The meadows up and down,
The Golden Age returns to fields
If never to the town.
When stir the freshning airs
Forerunning showers to meads,
And Dandelions prance,
Then Heart-Free shares the dance—
A Wilding with the Weeds!
But alack and alas
For things of wilding feature!
Since hearsed was Pan
Ill befalls each profitless creature—
Profitless to man!
Buttercup and Dandelion,
Wildings, and the rest,
Commoners and holiday-makers,
Note them in one test:
The farmers scout them,
Yea, and would rout them,
Hay is better without them—
Tares in the grass!
The florists pooh-pooh them;
Few but children do woo them,
Love them, reprieve them,
Retrieve and inweave them,
Never sighing—Alas!
The Little Good Fellows
MAKE way, make way, give leave to rove
Your orchard under as above;
A yearly welcome if ye love!
And all who loved us alway throve.
Love for love. For ever we
When some unfriended man we see
Lifeless under forest-eaves,
Cover him with buds and leaves;
And charge the chipmunk, mouse, and mole—
Molest not this poor human soul!
Then let us never on green floor
Where your paths wind roundabout,
Keep to the middle in misdoubt,
Shy and aloof, unsure of ye;
But come, like grass to stones on moor,
Fearless wherever mortals be.
But toss your caps, O maids and men,
Snow-bound long in farm-house pen:
We chace Old Winter back to den.
See our red waiscoats! Alive be then—
Alive to the bridal-favors when
They blossom your orchards every Spring,
And cock-robin curves on a bridegroom’s wing!
Clover
THE June day dawns, the joy-winds rush,
Your jovial fields are drest;
Rosier for thee the Dawn’s red flush,
Ruddier the Ruddock’s breast.
Madcaps
THROUGH the orchard I follow
Two children in glee.
From an apple-tree’s hollow
They startle the bee.
The Clover it throws
Perfume in their way
To the hedge of Red Rose;
Between Roses and Clover
The Strawberry grows.
It is Lilly and Cherry
Companioned by Butterflies,
Madcaps as merry!
The Old Fashion
HOW youthful is Ver,
And the same, and forever,
Year after year;
And her bobolinks sing,
And they vary never
In juvenile cheer.
Old-fashioned is Ver
Though eternally new,
And her bobolinks young
Keep the old-fashion true:
Chee, Chee! they will sing
While the welkin is blue.
Butterfly Ditty
SUMMER comes in like a sea,
Wave upon wave how bright;
Through the heaven of summer we’ll flee
And tipple the light!
From garden to garden,
Such charter have we,
We’ll rove and we’ll revel,
And idlers we’ll be!
We’ll rove and we’ll revel,
Concerned but for this,—
That Man, Eden’s bad boy,
Partakes not the bliss.
The Blue-Bird
BENEATH yon Larkspur’s azure bells
That sun their bees in balmy air,
In mould no more the Blue-Bird dwells
Though late he found interment there.
All stiff he lay beneath the Fir
When shrill the March piped overhead.
And Pity gave him sepulchre
Within the Garden’s sheltered bed.
And soft she sighed—Too soon he came;
On wings of hope he met the knell;
His heavenly tint the dust shall tame:
Ah, some misgiving had been well!
But, look, the clear etherial hue
In June it makes the Larkspur’s dower;
It is the self-same welkin-blue—
The Bird’s transfigured in the Flower!
The Lover and the Syringa bush
LIKE a lit-up Christmas Tree,
Like a grotto pranked with spars,
Like white corals in green sea,
Like night’s sky of crowded stars—
To me like these you show, Syringa,
Such heightning power has love, believe,
While here by Eden’s gate I linger
Love’s tryst to keep with truant Eve.
The Dairyman’s Child
SOFT as the morning
When South winds blow,
Sweet as peach-orchards
When blossoms are seen,
Pure as a fresco
Of roses and snow,
Or an opal serene.
Trophies of Peace
&
nbsp; Illinois in 1840
FILES on files of Prairie Maize:
On hosts of spears the morning plays!
Aloft the rustling streamers show:
The floss embrowned is rich below.
When Asia scarfed in silks came on
Against the Greek at Marathon,
Did each plume and pennon dance
Sun-lit thus on helm and lance
Mindless of War’s sickle so?
For them, a tasseled dance of death:
For these—the reapers reap them low.
Reap them low, and stack the plain
With Ceres’ trophies, golden grain.
Such monuments, and only such,
O Prairie! termless yield,
Though trooper Mars disdainful flout
Nor Annals fame the field.
A Way-side Weed
BY orchards red he whisks along,
A charioteer from villa fine;
With passing lash o’ the whip he cuts
A way-side Weed divine.
But knows he what it is he does?
He flouts October’s god
Whose sceptre is this Way-side Weed,
This swaying Golden Rod?
The Chipmunk
Heart of autumn!
Weather meet,
Like to sherbert
Herman Melville- Complete Poems Page 73