WHEN SPRING GOES BY

Now swoops the wind from every coign and crest;
Like filaments of silver, ripped and spun,
The snow reels off the drift-ridge in the sun;
And smoky clouds are torn across the west,
Clouds that would snow if they had time to rest;
The sparrows brangle and the icicles clash;
The grosbeaks search for berries in the ash;
The shore-lark tinkles while he plans his nest.

Now in the steaming woods the maples drip,
And plunging in with the last load of sap,
Beyond the branches through a starry gap,
The driver sees the frail aurora flow,
And round the sinking Pleiads bend and blow;
A rosy banner and a silver ship.

The clouds that veil the early day
Are very near and soft and fine,
The heaven peeps between the gray,
A luminous and pearly line.

The breeze is up, now soft, now full,
And moulds the vapor light as fleece,
It trembles, then, with drip and lull,
The rain drifts gently through the trees.

It trails into a silver blur,
And hangs about the cherry tops
That sprinkle, with the wind astir,
In little sudden whirls of drops.

The apple orchards, banked with bloom,
Are drenched and dripping with the wet,
And on the breeze their deep perfume
Grows and fades by and lingers yet.

In some green covert far remote
The oven-bird is never still,
And, golden-throat to golden-throat,
The orioles warble on the hill.

Now over all the gem-like woods
The delicate mist is blown again,
And after dripping interludes
Lets down the lulling silver rain.

A storm from the mountain is coming,
With lightning and thunder and rain,
The wind is sweeping and humming
In the butternut trees on the plain.

The cloud is ebon that follows,
The fore-cloud is livid and pale,
There’s the flash and the tossing of swallows
In the turn of the eddying gale.

The rain is awake on the mountain,
’T is lashing the forest afar
With fall of a shattering fountain
And the tramp and tumult of war,

With the drums of the detoning thunder,
And the clang in the bugles of wind,
With the gonfalons tortured asunder
By the rush of the host from behind.

The plains are leaping with shadows,
The highlands go out like a blot,
And over the eddying meadows
The rain is hurtled like shot.

The darkness is glooming and brightening,
There is alternate chaos and form,
With the parry and thrust of the lightning
In the turbulent heart of the storm.

Now the storm is over,
And the greener plain
Seems to glow and hover
Through the thinning rain.

Now the wind is gusty
In the maple tops,
Striking out the lusty
Storms of gleaming drops.

Now the goldfinch whistles
In his spattered vest,
Balanced on the thistles,
Bolder than the best.

And the hermit thrushes
On the sparkling hills,
Link the dripping hushes
With their silver thrills.

She stands full-throated and with careless pose,
This woman of a weird and waning race,
The tragic savage lurking in her face,
Where all her pagan passion burns and glows;
Her blood is mingled with her ancient foes,
And thrills with war and wildness in her veins;
Her rebel lips are dabbled with the stains
Of feuds and forays and her father’s woes.

And closer in the shawl about her breast,
The latest promise of her nation’s doom,
Paler than she her baby clings and lies,
The primal warrior gleaming from his eyes;
He sulks, and burdened with his infant gloom,
He draws his heavy brows and will not rest.

Vengeance was once her nation’s lore and law:
When the tired sentry stooped above the rill,
Her long knife flashed, and hissed, and drank its fill;
Dimly below her dripping wrist she saw,
One wild hand, pale as death and weak as straw,
Clutch at the ripple in the pool; while shrill
Sprang through the dreaming hamlet on the hill,
The war-cry of the triumphant Iroquois.

Now clothed with many an ancient flap and fold,
And wrinkled like an apple kept till May,
She weighs the interest-money in her palm,
And, when the Agent calls her valiant name,
Hears, like the war-whoops of her perished day,
The lads playing snow-snake in the stinging cold.

With a golden rolling sound
Booming came a bell,
From the aery in the tower
Eagles fell;
So with regal wings
Hurled, and gleaming sound and power,
Sprang the fatal spell.

Then a storm of burnished doves
Gleaming from the cote
Flurried by the almonry
O’er the moat,—
Fell and soared and fell
With the arc and iris eye
Burning breast and throat.

Avis heard the beaten bell
Break the quiet space,
Gathering softly in the room
Round her face;
And the sound of wings
From the deeps of rosy gloom
Rustled in the place.

Nothing moved along the wall,
Weltered on the floor;
Only in the purple deep,
Streaming o’er,
Came the dream of sound
Silent as the dale of sleep,
Where the dreams are four.

(One of love without a word,
Wan to look upon,
One of fear without a cry,
Cowering stone,
And the dower of life,—
Grief without a single sigh,
Pain without a moan.)

“Avis—Avis!” cried a voice;
Then the voice was mute.
“Avis!” soft the echo lay
As the lute.
Where she was she fell,
Drowsy as mandragora,
Trancèd to the root.

Then she heard her mother’s voice,
Tender as a dove;
Then her lover plain and sigh,
“Avis—Love!”
Like the mavis bird
Calling, calling lonelily
From the eerie grove.

Then she heard within the vast
Closure of the spell,
Rolled and moulded into one
Rounded swell,
All the sounds that ever were
Uttered underneath the sun,
Heard in heaven or hell.

In the arras moved the wind,
And the window cloth
Rippled like a serpent barred,
Gray with wrath;
In the brazier gold
The wan ghost of a rose charred
Fluttered like a moth.

Tranquil lay her darkened eyes
As the pools that keep
Auras dim of fern and frond
Dappled, deep,
Dreamy as the map of Nod;
Moveless was she as a wand
In the wind of sleep.

Then the birds began to cry
From the crannied wall,
Piping as the morning rose
Mystical,
Gray with whistling rain,
Silver with the light that flows
In the interval.

Pallid poplars cast a shade,
Twinkling gray and dun,
Where the wind and water wove
Into one
All the linnet leaves,
Greening from the mere and grove
In the undern sun.

Night fell with the ferny dusk,
Planets paled and grew,
Up, with lilt and clarid turns
Throbbing through,
Rose the robin’s song,
Heart of home and love that burns
Beating in the dew.

But she neither moved nor heard,
Trancèd was her breath;
Lip on charmèd lip was laid
(One who saith
“Love—Undone” and falls).
Silent was she as a shade
In the dells of death.

Here in the inmost of the master’s heart
This violet crisp with early dew,
Has come to leave her beauty and to part
With all her vivid hue.

And while in hollow glades and dells of musk,
Her fellows will reflower in bands,
Clasping the deeps of shade and emerald dusk,
With sweet inviolate hands,

She will lie here, a ghost of their delight,
Their lucent stems all ashen gray,
Their purples fallen into pulvil white,
Dull as the bluebird’s alula.

But here where human passions pulse in power,
She will transcend our Shakespeare’s art,
From Desdemona to a smothered flower,
Will leap the tragic heart.

And memory will recall in keener mood
The precinct fair where passion grew,
The stars within the water in the wood,
The moonlit grove, the odorous dew.

The voice that throbbed along the summer dark
Will float and pause and thrill,
In lonely cadence silvern as the lark,
To fail below the hill.

The reader will grow weary of the play,
Finding his heart half understood,
And with the young moon in the early dusk will stray
Beside the starry water in the wood.

A deep bell that links the downs
To the drowsy air;
Every loop of sound that swoons,
Finds a circle fair,
Whereon it doth rest and fade;
Every stroke that dins is laid
Like a node,
Spinning out the quivering, fine,
Vibrant tendrils of a vine:
(Bim—bim—bim.)
How they wreathe and run,
Silvern as a filmy light,
Filtered from the sun:
The god of sound is out of sight,
And the bell is like a cloud,
Humming to the outer rim,
Low and loud:
(Bim—bim—bim.)
Throwing down the tempered lull,
Fragile, beautiful:
Married drones and overtones,
How we fancy them to swim,
Spreading into shapes that shine,
With the aura of the metals,
Prisoned in the bell,
Fulvous tinted as a shell,
Dreamy, dim,
Deep in amber hyaline:
(Bim—bim—bim.)