it quivered through the Grass
and a Green Chill upon the Heat
so ominous did pass
We barred the Windows and the Doors
as from an Emerald Ghost—
the Doom’s electric Moccasin
that very instant passed—
on a strange Mob of panting Trees
and Fences fled away
and Rivers where the Houses ran
Those looked that lived—that Day—
The Bell within the steeple wild
the flying tidings told—
how much can come
and much can go,
and yet abide the World!
There’s a certain slant of light1
There’s a certain Slant of light,
winter Afternoons—
that oppresses, like the Heft
of Cathedral Tunes—
Heavenly Hurt, it gives us—
we can find no scar,
but internal difference,
where the Meanings, are—
None may teach it—Any—
‘tis the Seal Despair—
an imperial affliction
sent us of the air—
When it comes, the Landscape listens—
shadows—hold their breath—
when it goes, ’tis like the Distance
on the look of Death—
To make a prairie it takes a clover1
To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,
one clover, and a bee,
and revery.
The revery alone will do,
if bees are few.
We Grow Accustomed to the Dark2
We grow accustomed to the Dark—
when light is put away—
as when the Neighbor holds the Lamp
to witness her Goodbye—
A Moment—We uncertain step
for newness of the night—
then—fit our Vision to the Dark—
and meet the Road—erect—
And so of larger—Darkness—
those Evenings of the Brain—
when not a Moon disclose a sign—
or Star—come out—within—
The Bravest—grope a little—
and sometimes hit a Tree
directly in the Forehead—
but as they learn to see—
Either the Darkness alters—
or something in the sight
adjusts itself to Midnight—
and Life steps almost straight.
Wild nights! Wild nights!1
Wild Nights—Wild Nights!
Were I with thee
wild Nights should be
our luxury!
Futile—the Winds—
to a Heart in port—
done with the Compass—
done with the Chart!
Rowing in Eden—
ah, the Sea!
Might I but moor—Tonight—
in Thee!
Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830 – 1894)
Goblin Market2
Morning and evening
maids heard the goblins cry:
“Come buy our orchard fruits,
come buy, come buy:
apples and quinces,
lemons and oranges,
plump unpecked cherries—
melons and raspberries,
bloom-down-cheeked peaches,
swart-headed mulberries,
wild free-born cranberries,
crab-apples, dewberries,
pine-apples, blackberries,
apricots, strawberries—
all ripe together
in summer weather—
morns that pass by,
fair eves that fly;
come buy, come buy;
our grapes fresh from the vine,
pomegranates full and fine,
dates and sharp bullaces,
rare pears and greengages,
damsons and bilberries,
taste them and try:
currants and gooseberries,
bright-fire-like barberries,
figs to fill your mouth,
citrons from the South,
sweet to tongue and sound to eye,
come buy, come buy.”
Evening by evening
among the brookside rushes,
Laura bowed her head to hear,
Lizzie veiled her blushes:
crouching close together
in the cooling weather,
with clasping arms and cautioning lips,
with tingling cheeks and finger-tips.
“Lie close,” Laura said,
pricking up her golden head:
we must not look at goblin men,
we must not buy their fruits:
who knows upon what soil they fed
their hungry thirsty roots?”
“Come buy,” call the goblins
hobbling down the glen.
“O! cried Lizzie, Laura, Laura,
you should not peep at goblin men.”
Lizzie covered up her eyes
covered close lest they should look;
Laura reared her glossy head,
and whispered like the restless brook:
“Look, Lizzie, look, Lizzie,
down the glen tramp little men.
One hauls a basket,
one bears a plate,
one lugs a golden dish
of many pounds’ weight.
How fair the vine must grow
whose grapes are so luscious;
how warm the wind must blow
through those fruit bushes.”
“No,” said Lizzie, “no, no, no;
their offers should not charm us,
their evil gifts would harm us.”
She thrust a dimpled finger
in each ear, shut eyes and ran:
curious Laura chose to linger
wondering at each merchant man.
One had a cat’s face,
one whisked a tail,
one tramped at a rat’s pace,
one crawled like a snail,
one like a wombat prowled obtuse and furry,
one like a rattle tumbled hurry-scurry.
Lizzie heard a voice like voice of doves
cooing all together:
they sounded kind and full of loves
in the pleasant weather.
Laura stretched her gleaming neck
like a rush-imbedded swan,
like a lily from the beck,
like a moonlit poplar branch,
like a vessel at the launch
when its last restraint is gone.
Backwards up the mossy glen
turned and trooped the goblin men,
with their shrill repeated cry,
“Come buy, come buy.”
when they reached where Laura was
they stood stock still upon the moss,
leering at each other,
brother with queer brother;
signaling each other,
brother with sly brother.
One set his basket down,
one reared his plate;
one began to weave a crown
of tendrils, leaves, and rough nuts brown
(men sell not such in any town);
one heaved the golden weight
of dish and fruit to offer her:
“Come buy, come buy,” was still their cry.
Laura stared but did not stir,
longed but had no money:
the whisk-tailed merchant bade her taste
in tones as smooth as honey,
the cat-faced purr’d,
the rat-paced spoke a word
of welcome, and the snail-paced even was heard;
one parrot-voiced and jolly
cried “Pretty Goblin” still for “Pretty Polly”;
one whistled like a bird.
But sweet-tooth Lau
ra spoke in haste:
“Good folk, I have no coin;
to take were to purloin:
I have no copper in my purse,
I have no silver either,
and all my gold is on the furze
that shakes in windy weather
above the rusty heather.”
“You have much gold upon your head,”
they answered altogether:
“buy from us with a golden curl.”
She clipped a precious golden lock,
she dropped a tear more rare than pearl,
then sucked their fruit globes fair or red:
sweeter than honey from the rock,
stronger than man-rejoicing wine,
clearer than water flowed that juice;
she never tasted such before,
how should it cloy with length of use?
She sucked and sucked and sucked the more
fruits which that unknown orchard bore,
she sucked until her lips were sore;
then flung the emptied rinds away,
but gathered up one kernel stone,
and knew not was it night or day
as she turned home alone.
Lizzie met her at the gate
full of wise upbraidings:
“Dear, you should not stay so late,
twilight is not good for maidens;
should not loiter in the glen
in the haunts of goblin men.
Do you not remember Jeanie,
how she met them in the moonlight,
took their gifts both choice and many,
ate their fruits and wore their flowers
plucked from bowers
where summer ripens at all hours?
But ever in the moonlight
she pined and pined away;
sought them by night and day,
found them no more, but dwindled and grew gray;
then fell with the first snow,
while to this day no grass will grow
where she lies low:
I planted daisies there a year ago
that never blow.
You should not loiter so.”
“Nay hush,” said Laura.
“Nay hush, my sister:
I ate and ate my fill,
yet my mouth waters still;
to-morrow night I will
buy more,” and kissed her.
“Have done with sorrow;
I’ll bring you plums to-morrow
fresh on their mother twigs,
cherries worth getting;
you cannot think what figs
my teeth have met in,
what melons, icy-cold
piled on a dish of gold
too huge for me to hold,
what peaches with a velvet nap,
pellucid grapes without one seed:
odorous indeed must be the mead
whereon they grow, and pure the wave they drink,
with lilies at the brink,
and sugar-sweet their sap.”
Golden head by golden head,
like two pigeons in one nest
folded in each other’s wings,
they lay down, in their curtained bed:
like two blossoms on one stem,
like two flakes of new-fallen snow,
like two wands of ivory
tipped with gold for awful kings.
Moon and stars beamed in at them,
wind sang to them lullaby,
lumbering owls forbore to fly,
not a bat flapped to and fro
round their rest:
cheek to cheek and breast to breast
locked together in one nest.
Early in the morning
when the first cock crowed his warning,
neat like bees, as sweet and busy,
Laura rose with Lizzie:
fetched in honey, milked the cows,
aired and set to rights the house,
kneaded cakes of whitest wheat,
cakes for dainty mouths to eat,
next churned butter, whipped up cream,
fed their poultry, sat and sewed;
talked as modest maidens should
Lizzie with an open heart,
Laura in an absent dream,
one content, one sick in part;
one warbling for the mere bright day’s delight,
one longing for the night.
At length slow evening came—
they went with pitchers to the reedy brook;
Lizzie most placid in her look,
Laura most like a leaping flame.
They drew the gurgling water from its deep
Lizzie plucked purple and rich golden flags,
then turning homeward said: “The sunset flushes
those furthest loftiest crags;
come, Laura, not another maiden lags,
no willful squirrel wags,
the beasts and birds are fast asleep.”
But Laura loitered still among the rushes
and said the bank was steep.
And said the hour was early still,
the dew not fallen, the wind not chill:
listening ever, but not catching
the customary cry,
“Come buy, come buy,”
with its iterated jingle
of sugar-baited words:
not for all her watching
once discerning even one goblin
racing, whisking, tumbling, hobbling;
let alone the herds
that used to tramp along the glen,
in groups or single,
of brisk fruit-merchant men.
Till Lizzie urged, “O Laura, come,
I hear the fruit-call, but I dare not look:
you should not loiter longer at this brook:
come with me home.
The stars rise, the moon bends her arc,
each glow-worm winks her spark,
let us get home before the night grows dark;
for clouds may gather even
though this is summer weather,
put out the lights and drench us through;
then if we lost our way what should we do?”
Laura turned cold as stone
to find her sister heard that cry alone,
that goblin cry,
“Come buy our fruits, come buy.”
Must she then buy no more such dainty fruit?
Must she no more such succous pasture find,
gone deaf and blind?
Her tree of life drooped from the root:
she said not one word in her heart’s sore ache;
but peering thro’ the dimness, naught discerning,
trudged home, her pitcher dripping all the way;
so crept to bed, and lay
silent ’til Lizzie slept;
then sat up in a passionate yearning,
and gnashed her teeth for balked desire, and wept
as if her heart would break.
Day after day, night after night,
Laura kept watch in vain,
In sullen silence of exceeding pain.
She never caught again the goblin cry:
“Come buy, come buy,”
she never spied the goblin men
hawking their fruits along the glen:
but when the noon waxed bright
her hair grew thin and gray;
she dwindled, as the fair full moon doth turn
to swift decay, and burn
her fire away.
One day remembering her kernel-stone
she set it by a wall that faced the south;
dewed it with tears, hoped for a root,
watched for a waxing shoot,
but there came none;
it never saw the sun,
it never felt the trickling moisture run:
while with sunk eyes and faded mouth
she dreamed of melons, as a traveler sees
false waves in desert drouth
with shade of leaf-crowned trees,
and burns the thirstier in the sandful breeze.
She no more swept the house,
tended the fowls or cows,
fetched honey, kneaded cakes of wheat,
brought water from the brook:
but sat down listless in the chimney-nook
and would not eat.
Tender Lizzie could not bear
to watch her sister’s cankerous care,
yet not to share.
She night and morning
caught the goblins’ cry:
“Come buy our orchard fruits,
come buy, come buy.”
Beside the brook, along the glen
she heard the tramp of goblin men,
the voice and stir
poor Laura could not hear;
longed to buy fruit to comfort her,
but feared to pay too dear,
she thought of Jeanie in her grave,
who should have been a bride;
but who for joys brides hope to have
fell sick and died
in her gay prime,
in earliest winter-time,
with the first glazing rime,
with the first snow-fall of crisp winter-time.
Till Laura, dwindling,
seemed knocking at Death’s door:
then Lizzie weighed no more
better and worse,
but put a silver penny in her purse,
kissed Laura, crossed the heath with clumps of furze
at twilight, halted by the brook,
and for the first time in her life
began to listen and look.
Laughed every goblin
when they spied her peeping:
came towards her hobbling,
flying, running, leaping,
puffing and blowing,
chuckling, clapping, crowing,
clucking and gobbling,
mopping and mowing,
full of airs and graces,
pulling wry faces,
demure grimaces,
cat-like and rat-like,
ratel and wombat-like,
snail-paced in a hurry,
parrot-voiced and whistler,
helter-skelter, hurry-skurry,
chattering like magpies,
fluttering like pigeons,
gliding like fishes,—
hugged her and kissed her;
squeezed and caressed her;
stretched up their dishes,
panniers and plates:
“Look at our apples
russet and dun,
bob at our cherries
bite at our peaches,
citrons and dates,
grapes for the asking,
pears red with basking
out in the sun,
plums on their twigs;
pluck them and suck them,
pomegranates, figs.”
“Good folk,” said Lizzie,
mindful of Jeanie,
The Giant Book of Poetry Page 19