The Coming of the Princess, and Other Poems Part 3

He has gathered a golden handful, A leaning over the bars.

He has shaken the curls from his forehead, And is looking up this way,-- O where is my sun-bonnet, mother?

He was thinking of me all day,--

And I'm going down to the meadow, For I know he is waiting there, To wreathe the suns.h.i.+ny blossoms In the curls of my yellow hair.

THE VOICE OF MANY WATERS.

Oh Sea, that with infinite sadness, and infinite yearning Liftest thy crystal forehead toward the unpitying stars,-- Evermore ebbing and flowing, and evermore returning Over thy fathomless depths, and treacherous island bars:--

Oh thou complaining sea, that fillest the wide void s.p.a.ces Of the blue nebulous air with thy perpetual moan, Day and night, day and night, out of thy desolate places-- Tell me thy terrible secret, oh Sea! what hast thou done.

Sometimes in the merry mornings, with the suns.h.i.+ne's golden wonder Glancing along thy cheek, unwrinkled of any wind, Thou seemest to be at peace, stifling thy great heart under A face of absolute calm,--with danger and death behind!

But I hear thy voice at midnight, smiting the awful silence With the long suspiration of thy pain suppressed; And all the blue lagoons, and all the listening islands Shuddering have heard, and locked thy secret in their breast!

Oh Sea! thou art like my heart, full of infinite sadness and pity,-- Of endless doubt and endeavour, of sorrowful question and strife, Like some unlighted fortress within a beleagured city, Holding within and hiding the mystery of life.

THE DEATH OF AUTUMN.

Discrowned and desolate, And wandering with dim eyes and faded hair, Singing sad songs to comfort her despair, Grey Autumn meets her fate.

Forsaken and alone She haunts the ruins of her queenly state, Like banished Eve at Eden's flaming gate, Making perpetual moan.

Crazed with her grief she moves Along the banks of the frost-charmed rills, And all the hollows of the wooded hills, Searching for her lost loves.

From verdurous base to cope, The sunny hill-sides, and sweet pasture lands, Where bubbling brooks reach ever-dimpled hands Along the amber slope,--

And valleys drowsed between, In the rich purple of the vintage time, When cups of gold that drop with fragrant wine, From orchard branches lean;--

And far beyond them, spread Broad fields thick set with sheaves of yellow wheat, Where scarlet poppies, slumberously sweet, Glow with a dusky red--

To the remotest zone Of hazy woodland pencilled on the sky, On whose far spires the clouds of sunset lie,-- She held her regal throne!

Queen of a princely race, Whose ministers were all the elements; Suns.h.i.+ne, and rain, and dew she did dispense With a right royal grace.

Now, not a breath of air, Nor sunbeam, nor the voice of beast or bird, Stirring the lonely woods, hath any word To comfort her despair.

Insidious, day by day A smouldering flame, a lurid crimson creeps Into the ashy whiteness of her cheeks, And burns her life away.

The cavernous woods are dumb!

Through their oracular depths and secret nooks, To the mute supplication of her looks No mystic voices come

And through the still grey air The night comes down, and hangs her lamp on high, Like a wan lily blossomed on the sky, s.h.i.+ning so ghostly fair,

Or looming up the heights, Those awful spectres of the frozen zone Splinter the crystal of heaven's sapphire dome, With arrowy-glancing lights.

The while hoa.r.s.e night winds rave, The old year looking backward to his prime With dim fond eyes, down the last steps of time Goes maundering to his grave!

A FAREWELL

Down the steep west unrolled, I watch the river of the sunset flow, With all its crimson lights, and gleaming gold, Into the dusk below.

And even as I gaze, The soft lights fade,-the pageant gay is o'er, And all is grey and dark, like those lost days, The days that are no more.

No more through whispering pines, I shall behold, in the else silent even, The first faint star-watch set along the lines Of the white tents of heaven.

Before the earliest buds Have softly opened, heralding the May With tender light illuming the gray woods, I shall be gone away.

Ah! wood-walks winding sweet Through all the valleys sloping to the west, Where glad brooks wander with melodious feet, In musical unrest,--

Ye will not miss me here With all the bright things of the coming May, And the rejoicing of the awakened year,-- I shall be far away.

Yet in your loneliest nooks, I know where all the greenest mosses grow, And where the violets lift their first sweet looks, Out of the waning snow.

And I have heard, unsought, Under the musing shadows of the beech, Wood-voices answering my unspoken thought, In half-articulate speech.

And oh! ye shadowy bands, Rank above rank along yon rocky height, That lift into the heavens your mailed hands, And linked armour bright.

What other eyes will trace From this dear window haunted with the past, Strange likeness to some well beloved face, Among your profiles vast?

What stranger hands will tend The nameless treasures I must leave behind,-- My flowers, my birds, and each inanimate friend, Linked closer than my kind.

These glorious landscapes old, Framed in my cottage windows,--hill-sides dun, With umber shadows lightened to pale gold By touches of the sun,--

Valleys like emeralds set Lonely and sweet in the dusk hills afar, That half enclose them, like a carcanet That holds a diamond star.

Will any gentler face, Weary and sad sometimes, like mine grow bright Touched with your simple beauty-in my place, My garden of delight?--

I know not,--yet farewell Sweet home of mine,--my parting song is o'er, And stranger forms among your bowers shall dwell, Where I return no more.

THE NEWS-BOY'S DREAM OF THE NEW YEAR

Under the bare brown rafters, In his garret bed he lay, And dreamed of the bright hereafters.

And the merry morns of May.