THE NIGHTINGALE IN THE STUDY. | Gay, tragic, rapt, right heart of Spain Fed with the sap of old romances. "COME forth!" my catbird calls to me, Shall hang a garden of Alcina. My ode to ripening summer classic? "Or, if to me you will not hark, By Beaver Brook a thrush is ringing Till all the alder-coverts dark Seem sunshine-dappled with his singing. "Come out beneath the unmastered sky, With its emancipating spaces, Without premeditated graces. A nature mummy-wrapt in learning? "The leaves wherein true wisdom lies On living trees the sun are drinking; Those white clouds, drowsing through the skies, Grew not so beautiful by thinking. "Come out! with me the oriole cries, Escape the demon that pursues you! And, hark, the cuckoo weatherwise, Still hiding, farther onward wooes you." "Alas, dear friend, that, all my days, Has poured from that syringa thicket The quaintly discontinuous lays To which I hold a season-ticket, "A season-ticket cheaply bought With a dessert of pilfered berries, "A bird is singing in my brain "I ask no ampler skies than those And does not Doña Clara love me? "Cloaked shapes, a twanging of guitars, "O music of all moods and climes, Vengeful, forgiving, sensuous, saintly, Where still, between the Christian chimes, The moorish cymbal tinkles faintly! "O life borne lightly in the hand, For friend or foe with grace Castilian! O valley safe in Fancy's land, Not tramped to mud yet by the million! "Bird of to-day, thy songs are stale To his, my singer of all weathers, My Calderon, my nightingale, My Arab soul in Spanish feathers. "Ah, friend, these singers dead so long, And still, God knows, in purgatory, IN THE TWILIGHT. MEN say the sullen instrument, Whispers the ravished strings Old summers in its memory glow; And bubbling o'er with mingled fan- The magical moonlight then cies, Steeped every bough and cone; The roar of the brook in the glen Came dim from the distance blown; O my life, have we not had seasons But made us all feeling and voice? When we went with the winds in their blowing, When Nature and we were peers, And we seemed to share in the flowing Of the inexhaustible years? Have we not from the earth drawn Too fine for earth's sordid uses? All I feel and I know? Doth my heart overween? Sometimes a breath floats by me, Of memories that stay not and go not, That cannot forget or reclaim it, it To make it a show, THE FOOT-PATH. Ir mounts athwart the windy hill Through sallow slopes of upland bare, By day, a warmer-hearted blue Stoops softly to that topmost swell; Its thread-like windings seem a clew To gracious climes where all is well. By night, far yonder, I surmise An ampler world than clips my ken, I look and long, then haste me home, From former good, old overmuch; The bird I list hath never come Within the scope of mortal ear; Behind the hill, behind the sky, The song itself must lend the wings. Sing on, sweet bird close hid, and raise A something too vague, could I That climb from these low-vaulted days name it, For others to know, As if I had lived it or dreamed it, And yet, could I live it over, This life that stirs in my brain, Could I be both maiden and lover, Moon and tide, bee and clover, As I seem to have been, once again, This pleasure more sharp than pain, In the ages glad, City of Elf-land, just without I build thee in yon sunset cloud, Whose edge allures to climb the height; I hear thy drowned bells, inly-loud, From still pools dusk with dreams of night. Thy gates are shut to hardiest will, Thy countersign of long-lost speech, Those fountained courts, those chambers still, Fronting Time's far East, who shall reach? I know not, and will never pry, But trust our human heart for all; Wonders that from the seeker fly Into an open sense may fall. Hide in thine own soul, and surprise The password of the unwary elves; Seek it, thou canst not bribe their spies; Unsought, they whisper it themselves. |