There are many countries that I have not seen,
And many kinds of men I have not met,
But all the gracious towns where I have been
Haunt in my brain and whisper there and set
Strange echoes going with their lovely names,
Birdlip and Paris, Fontainebleau and Wells,
Places that live in me like happy dreams
And sound in the present day like distant bells.
Here I am set and there's no end, no end ;
Too soon the vision closes, too long remains,
Like the last long talk one had with a lost friend,
Whose memory lingers on, when friendship wanes.
Better to stay at home ! The towns one sees
Trammel the day with stupid memories.
There will be rose and rhododendron
When you are dead and under ground;
Still will be heard from white syringas
Heavy with bees, a sunny sound;
Still will the tamaracks be raining
After the rain has ceased, and still
Will there be robins in the stubble,
Brown sheep upon the warm green hill.
Spring will not ail nor autumn falter;
Nothing will know that you are gone,
Saving alone some sullen plough-land
None but yourself sets foot upon;
Saving the may-weed and the pig-weed
Nothing will know that you are dead,--
These, and perhaps a useless wagon
Standing beside some tumbled shed.
Oh, loveliest throat of all sweet throats,
Where now no more the music is,
With hands that wrote you little notes
I write you little elegies!
I know what my heart is like
Since your love died:
It is like a hollow ledge
Holding a little pool
Left there by the tide,
A little tepid pool,
Drying inward from the edge.
April this year, not otherwise
Than April of a year ago,
Is full of whispers, full of sighs,
Of dazzling mud and dingy snow;
Hepaticas that pleased you so
Are here again, and butterflies.
There rings a hammering all day,
And shingles lie about the doors;
In orchards near and far away
The grey wood-pecker taps and bores;
The men are merry at their chores,
And children earnest at their play.
The larger streams run still and deep,
Noisy and swift the small brooks run
Among the mullein stalks the sheep
Go up the hillside in the sun,
Do the boys and girls still go to Siever’s
For cider, after school, in late September?
Or gather hazel nuts among the thickets
On Aaron Hatfield’s farm when the frosts begin?
For many times with the laughing girls and boys
Played I along the road and over the hills
When the sun was low and the air was cool,
Stopping to club the walnut tree
Standing leafless against a flaming west.
Now, the smell of the autumn smoke,
And the dropping acorns,
And the echoes about the vales
Bring dreams of life.
They hover over me.
They question me:
Where are those laughing comrades?
They brought me ambrotypes
Of the old pioneers to enlarge.
And sometimes one sat for me—
Some one who was in being
When giant hands from the womb of the world
Tore the republic.
What was it in their eyes?—
For I could never fathom
That mystical pathos of drooped eyelids,
And the serene sorrow of their eyes.
It was like a pool of water,
Amid oak trees at the edge of a forest,
Where the leaves fall,
As you hear the crow of a cock
From a far-off farm house, seen near the hills
Where the third generation lives, and the strong men
It was only a little house of two rooms—
Almost like a child’s play-house—
With scarce five acres of ground around it;
And I had so many children to feed
And school and clothe, and a wife who was sick
From bearing children.
One day lawyer Whitney came along
And proved to me that Christian Dallman,
Who owned three thousand acres of land,
Had bought the eighty that adjoined me
In eighteen hundred and seventy-one
For eleven dollars, at a sale for taxes,
While my father lay in his mortal illness.
So the quarrel arose and I went to law.
But when we came to the proof,
A survey of the land showed clear as day
I was a peasant girl from Germany,
Blue-eyed, rosy, happy and strong.
And the first place I worked was at Thomas Greene’s.
On a summer’s day when she was away
He stole into the kitchen and took me
Right in his arms and kissed me on my throat,
I turning my head. Then neither of us
Seemed to know what happened.
And I cried for what would become of me.
And cried and cried as my secret began to show.
One day Mrs. Greene said she understood,
And would make no trouble for me,
And, being childless, would adopt it.
(He had given her a farm to be still.)
So she hid in the house and sent out rumors,
As if it were going to happen to her.
You were always a dreamer, Rose, red Rose,
As you swung on your perfumed spray.
Swinging, and all the world was true,
Swaying, what did it trouble you ?
A rose will fade in a day.
Why did you smile to his face, red Rose,
As he whistled across your way ?
And all the world went mad for you,
All the world it knelt to woo.
A rose will bloom in a day.
I gather your petals. Rose, red Rose,
The petals he threw away.
And all the world derided you ;
Ah ! the world, how well it knew
A rose will fade in a day.
The green has come to the leafless tree,
The earth brings forth its grain ;
The rose has come for the honey bee :
You will not come again.
The birds have come to the empty nest,
All winter full of rain ;
Music has come where the silence was :
You will not come again.
Love swift will come for the weak lambs' cry ;
Ah for my heart's dull pain !
Lone in the cycle of change am I :
You will not come again.
The Dream of his Soul, in flesh and blood--
Not to possess, but only to see--
Was given him, for an hour:
Ah, fool, he lingered longer,--
The Dream died like the shadow of a Star!