THE EAVESDROPPER

The apple harvest days are here,
The boding apple harvest days,
And down the flaming valley ways,
The foresters of time draw near.

Through leagues of bloom I went with Spring,
To call you on the slopes of morn,
Where in imperious song is borne
The wild heart of the golden wing.

I roamed through alien summer lands,
I sought your beauty near and far;
To-day, where russet shadows are,
I hold your face between my hands.

On runnels dark by slopes of fern,
The hazy undern sleeps in sun.
Remembrance and desire, undone,
From old regret to dreams return.

The apple harvest time is here,
The tender apple harvest time;
A sheltering calm, unknown at prime,
Settles upon the brooding year.

Wanderer, wanderer, whither away?
What saith the morning unto thee?
"Wanderer, wanderer, hither, come hither,
Into the eld of the East with me!"

Saith the wide wind of the low red morning,
Making in from the gray rough sea.
"Wanderer, come, of the footfall weary,
And heavy at heart as the sad-heart sea.

"For long ago, when the world was making,
I walked through Eden with God for guide;
And since that time in my heart forever
His calm and wisdom and peace abide.

"I am thy spirit and thy familiar,
Child of the teeming earth's unrest!
Before God's joy upon gloom begot thee
I had hungered and searched and ended the quest.

"I sit by the roadside wells of knowledge;
I haunt the streams of the springs of thought;
But because my voice is the voice of silence,
The heart within thee regardeth not.

"Yet I await thee, assured, unimpatient,
Till thy small tumult of striving be past.
How long, O wanderer, wilt thou a-weary,
Keep thee afar from my arms at the last?"

Wanderer, wanderer, whither away?
What saith the high noon unto thee?
"Wanderer, wanderer, hither, turn hither,
Far to the burning South with me,"

Saith the soft wind on the high June headland,
Sheering up from the summer sea,
"While the implacable warder, Oblivion,
Sleeps on the marge of a foamless sea!

"Come where the urge of desire availeth,
And no fear follows the children of men;
For a handful of dust is the only heirloom
The morrow bequeaths to its morrow again.

"Touch and feel how the flesh is perfect
Beyond the compass of dream to be!
'Bone of my bone,' said God to Adam;
'Core of my core,' say I to thee.

"Look and see how the form is goodly
Beyond the reach of desire and art!
For he who fashioned the world so easily
Laughed in his sleeve as he walked apart.

"Therefore, O wanderer, cease from desiring;
Take the wide province of seaway and sun!
Here for the infinite quench of thy craving,
Infinite yearning and bliss are one."

Wanderer, wanderer, whither away?
What saith the evening unto thee?
"Wanderer, wanderer, hither, haste hither,
Into the glad-heart West with me!"

Saith the strong wind of the gold-green twilight,
Gathering out of the autumn hills,
"I am the word of the world's first dreamer
Who woke when Freedom walked on the hills.

"And the secret triumph from daring to doing,
From musing to marble, I will be,
Till the last fine fleck of the world is finished,
And Freedom shall walk alone by the sea.

"Who is thy heart's lord, who is thy hero?
Bruce or Cæsar or Charlemagne,
Hannibal, Olaf, Alaric, Roland?
Dare as they dared and the deed's done again!

"Here where they come of the habit immortal,
By the open road to the land of the Name,
Splendor and homage and wealth await thee
Of builded cities and bruited fame.

"Let loose the conquering toiler within thee;
Know the large rapture of deeds begun!
The joy of the hand that hews for beauty
Is the dearest solace beneath the sun."

Wanderer, wanderer, whither away?
What saith the midnight unto thee?
"Wanderer, wanderer, hither turn home,
Back to thy North at last to me!"

Saith the great forest wind and lonely,
Out of the stars and the wintry hills.
"Weary, bethink thee of rest, and remember
Thy waiting auroral Ardise hills!

"Was it not I, when thy mother bore thee
In the sweet, solemn April night,
Took thee safe in my arms to fondle,
Filled thy dream with the old delight?

"Told thee tales of more marvelous summers
Of the far away and the long ago,
Made thee my own nurse-child forever
In the tender dear dark land of the snow?

"Have I not rocked thee, have I not lulled thee,
Crooned thee in forest, and cradled in foam,
Then with a smile from the hearthstone of childhood
Bade thee farewell when thy heart bade thee roam?

"Ah, my wide-wanderer, thou blessed vagrant,
Dear will thy footfall be nearing my door.
How the glad tears will give vent at thy coming,
Wayward or sad-heart to wander no more!"

Morning and midday I wander, and evening,
April and harvest and golden fall;
Seaway or hillward, taut sheet or saddle-bow,
Only the night wind brings solace at all.

Then when the tide of all being and beauty
Ebbs to the utmost before the first dawn,
Comes the still voice of the morrow revealing
Inscrutable valorous hope—and is gone.

Therefore is joy more than sorrow, foreseeing
The lust of the mind and the lure of the eye
And the pride of the hand have their hour of triumph,
But the dream of the heart will endure by-and-by.

There's a garden in the South
Where the early violets come,
Where they strew the floor of April
With their purple, bloom by bloom.

There the tender peach-trees blow,
Pink against the red brick wall,
And the hand of twilight hushes
The rain-children's least footfall,

Till at midnight I can hear
The dark Mother croon and lean
Close above me. And her whisper
Bids the vagabonds convene.

Then the glad and wayward heart
Dreams a dream it must obey;
And the wanderer within me
Stirs a foot and will not stay.

I would journey far and wide
Through the provinces of spring,
Where the gorgeous white azaleas
Hear the sultry yorlin sing.

I would wander all the hills
Where my fellow-vagrants wend,
Following the trails of shadows
To the country where they end.

Well I know the gypsy kin,
Roving foot and restless hand,
And the eyes in dark elusion
Dreaming down the summer land.

On the frontier of desire
I will drink the last regret,
And then forth beyond the morrow
Where I may but half forget.

So another year shall pass,
Till some noon the gardener Sun
Wanders forth to lay his finger
On the peach-buds one by one.

And the Mother there once more
Will rewhisper her dark word,
That my brothers all may wonder,
Hearing then as once I heard.

There will come the whitethroat's cry,
That far lonely silver strain,
Piercing, like a sweet desire,
The seclusion of the rain.

And though I be far away,
When the early violets come
Smiling at the door with April,
Say, "The vagabonds are home!"

Across the harbor's tangled yards
We watch the flaring sunset fail;
Then the forever questing stars
File down along the vanished trail,

To no discovered country, where
They will forgather when the hands
Of the strong Fates shall take away
Their burdens and unloose their bands.

Westward and lone the hill-road gray
Mounts to the skyline sheer and wan,
Where many a weary dream puts forth
To strike the trail where they are gone.

The sleepless guide to that outland
Is the great Mother of us all,
Whose molded dust and dew we are
With the blown flowers by the wall.

Girt with the twilight she is grave,
The strong companion, wise and free;
She leads beyond the dales of time,
The earldom of the calling sea—

Beyond these dull green miles of dike,
And gleaming breakers on the bar—
To the white kingdom of her lord,
The nameless Word, whose breath we are.

And all the world is but a scheme
Of busy children in the street,
A play they follow and forget
On summer evenings, pale with heat.

The dusty courtyard flags and walls
Are like a prison gate of stone,
To every spirit for whose breath
The long sweet hill-winds once have blown.

But waiting in the fields for them
I see the ancient Mother stand,
With the old courage of her smile,
The patience of her sunbrown hand.

They heed her not, until there comes
A breath of sleep upon their eyes,
A drift of dust upon their face;
Then in the closing dusk they rise,

And turn them to the empty doors;
But she within whose hands alone
The days are gathered up as fruit,
Doth habit not in brick and stone.

But where the wild shy things abide,
Along the woodside and the wheat,
Is her abiding, deep withdrawn;
And there, the footing of her feet.

There is no common fame of her
Upon the corners, yet some word
Of her most secret heritage
Her lovers from her lips have heard.

Her daisies sprang where Chaucer went;
Her darkling nightingales with spring
Possessed the soul of Keats for song;
And Shelley heard her skylark sing;

With reverent clear uplifted heart
Wordsworth beheld her daffodils;
And he became too great for haste,
Who watched the warm green Cumner hills.

She gave the apples of her eyes
For the delight of him who knew,
With all the wisdom of a child,
"A bank whereon the wild thyme grew."

Still the old secret shifts, and waits
The last interpreter; it fills
The autumn song no ear hath heard
Upon the dreaming Ardise hills.

The poplars babble over it
When waking winds of dawn go by;
It fills her rivers like a voice,
And leads her wanderers till they die.

She knows the morning ways whereon
The windflowers and the wind confer;
Surely there is not any fear
Upon the farthest trail with her!

And yet, what ails the fir-dark slopes,
That all night long the whippoorwills
Cry their insatiable cry
Across the sleeping Ardise hills?

Is it that no fair mortal thing,
Blown leaf, nor song, nor friend can stray
Beyond the bourne and bring one word
Back the irremeable way?

The noise is hushed within the street;
The summer twilight gathers down;
The elms are still; the moonlit spires
Track their long shadows through the town.

With looming willows and gray dusk
The open hillward road is pale,
And the great stars are white and few
Above the lonely Ardise trail.

And with no haste nor any fear,
We are as children going home
Along the marshes where the wind
Sleeps in the cradle of the foam.