The Two Twilights

A HOLIDAY ECLOGUE

ABOVE

First Mason:

 
Tink-a-link! Tink-a-link! Hear the trowels ring;
Feel the merry breezes make the scaffold swing;
See the skimming swallow brush us with her wing: —
Go it with your hammers, boys; time us while we sing.
 

BELOW

First Student:

 
See the yellow sparkle of the Neckar in the glass,
And through the cedar branches sparkles blue the sea;
Hear the sweet piano – hear the German lass
Sing Freut" euch des Lebens – Oh! "I love I love the free!"
 

Second Student:

 
I like the canary better;
Look, how he swells his throttle!
He gurgles like musical water
That dances and sings in a bottle.
 

ABOVE

Second Mason:

 
D'ye mind the students down in the grove
Drinking their wine and beer?
That's an easy life they lead.
 

First Mason:

 
So do we up here
When the weathercock points west
And the look-off's clear.
 

Third Mason:

 
House-top Jim's the boy for work!
 

First Mason:

 
True for you, my dear.
(Whistles "The Girl I Left Behind me.")
 

BELOW

First Student:

 
See the Dutchmen on those settees:
Isn't it like the Rhine?
And the old church-tower up over the trees —
Kellner! Noch ein Stein!
 

Third Student:

 
I'd like to work with those masons there
Half way up the sky.
The air is sweet where the pigeons build,
And the world is all in their eye.
 

Second Student:

 
But "Love is of the valley: " the Gretchen and the Kellner
Haunt the cheerful levels of the lower story.
Glory in the garret – comfort in the cellar:
I will keep the comfort – you may take the glory.
 

ABOVE

First Mason:

 
Look up at the pointers: they 're drawing close together;
'T is here we get the earliest news of sun, and moon, and weather;
We can hear time's pulse a-ticking, with the whistling weathercock.
Drop your mortar-boards, my lads, it's coming twelve o'clock.
 

Third Mason:

 
Oh! it's hungry that I am with working in the wind,
But there's a shawl and bonnet – below there: do you mind?
It's Molly with the dinner-pail: she's coming in the door.
Faith, my belly thinks my throat is cut this half an hour and more.
 

(The church clock strikes the noon.)

A MEMORY

 
I came across the marsh to-night,
And though the wind was cold,
I stayed a moment on the bridge
To note the paly gold
 
 
That lingered on the darkening bay;
The creek which ran below
Was frozen dumb; the dreary flats
Were overspread with snow.
 
 
The college bell began to ring,
And as the north wind blew
Its distant janglings out to sea,
I thought, dear Friend, of you;
 
 
And how one warm September day,
While yet the woods were green,
We strayed across the happy hills
And this wide marsh between.
 
 
The hay-stacks dotted here and there
The water-meadows wide:
The even lines of sluices black
Were filling with the tide.
 
 
Then this salt stream, now winter bound,
Fled softly through the sedge,
Retreating from the sparkling Sound;
And there along its edge
 
 
We strolled, and marked the far-off sloops,
And watched the cattle graze.
O'erhead the swallows rushed in troops,
While bright with purple haze,
 
 
West Rock looked down the winding plain —
Ah! this was long ago;
The summer's gone, and you are gone,
As everything must go.
 

AMOURS PASSAGÈRES

 
Light loves and soon forgotten hates,
Heat-lightnings of the brooding summer sky —
Ye too bred of the summer's heat,
Ye too, like summer, fleet —
Ye have gone by.
Walks in the woods and whispers over gates,
Gay rivalries of tennis and croquet —
Gone with the summer sweet,
Gone with the swallow fleet
Southward away!
 
 
Breath of the rose, laughter of maids
Kissed into silence by the setting moon;
Wind of the morn that wakes and blows,
And hastening night that goes
Too soon – too soon!
Meetings and partings, tokens, serenades,
Tears – idle tears – and coy denials vain;
Flower of the summer's rose,
Say, will your leaves unclose
Ever again?
 

ON A MINIATURE

 
Thine old-world eyes – each one a violet
Big as the baby rose that is thy mouth —
Set me a dreaming. Have our eyes not met
In childhood – in a garden of the South?
 
 
Thy lips are trembling with a song of France,
My cousin, and thine eyes are dimly sweet;
'Wildered with reading in an old romance
All afternoon upon the garden seat.
 
 
The summer wind read with thee, and the bees
That on the sunny pages loved to crawl:
A skipping reader was the impatient breeze,
And turned the leaves, but the slow bees read all.
 
 
And now thy foot descends the terrace stair:
I hear the rustle of thy silk attire;
I breathe the musky odors of thy hair
And airs that from thy painted fan respire.
 
 
Idly thou pausest in the shady walk,
Thine ear attentive to the fountain's fall:
Thou mark'st the flower-de-luce sway on her stalk,
The speckled vergalieus ripening on the wall.
 
 
Thou hast the feature of my mother's race,
The gilded comb she wore, her smile, her eye:
The blood that flushes softly in thy face
Crawls through my veins beneath this northern sky.
 
 
As one disherited, though next of kin,
Who lingers at the barred ancestral gate,
And sadly sees the happy heir within
Stroll careless through his forfeited estate;
 
 
Even so I watch thy southern eyes, Lisette,
Lady of my lost paradise and heir
Of summer days there were my birthright. Yet
Beauty like thine makes usurpation fair.
 

IM SCHWARZWALD

 
The winter sunset, red upon the snow,
Lights up the narrow way that I should go;
Winding o'er bare white hilltops, whereon lie
Dark churches and the holy evening sky.
That path would lead me deep into the west,
Even to the feet of her I love the best.
 
 
But this scarce broken track in which I stand
Runs east, up through the tan-wood's midnight land;
Where now the newly risen moon doth throw
The shadows of long stems across the snow.
This path would take me to the Jäger's Tree
Where stands the Swabian girl and waits for me.
 
 
Her eyes are blacker than the woods at night
And witching as the moon's uncertain light;
And there are tones in that low voice of hers
Caught from the wind among the Schwarzwald firs,
And from the Gutach's echoing waters, when
Still evening listens in the Forsthaus glen.
 
 
I must – I must! Thou wilt forgive me, sweet;
My heart flies west but eastward move my feet;
The mad moon brightens as the sunset dies,
And yonder hexie draws me with her eyes.
Ruck, ruck an meine grüne Seit! she sings
And with her arms the frozen trunk enrings,
 
 
And lays upon its bark her little face.
How canst thou be so dead in her embrace —
So cold against her kisses, happy tree?
Thou hast no love beyond the western sea.
Methinks that at the lightest touch of her
Thy wooden trunk should tremble, thy boughs stir:
 
 
But at the pressure of her tender form
Thy inmost pith should feel her and grow warm:
The torpid sap should race along the vein;
The resinous buds should swell, and once again
Fresh needles shoot, as though the breeze of spring
Already through the woods came whispering.
 

WAITING FOR WINTER

 
What honey in the year's last flowers can hide,
These little yellow butterflies may know:
With falling leaves they waver to and fro,
Or on the swinging tops of asters ride.
But I am weary of the summer's pride
And sick September's simulated show:
Why do the colder winds delay to blow
And bring the pleasant hours that we abide;
To curtained alcove and sweet household talks,
Or sweeter silence by our flickering Lars,
Returning late from autumn evening walks
Upon the frosty hills, while reddening Mars
Hangs low between the withered mullein stalks,
And upward throngs the host of winter stars?
 

[Greek: Tò Pan]

 
The little creek which yesterday I saw
Ooze through the sedges, and each brackish vein
That sluiced the marsh, now filled and then again
Sucked dry to glut the sea's unsated maw,
All ebb and flow by the same rhythmic law
That times the beat of the Atlantic main —
They also fastened to the swift moon's train
By unseen cords that no less strongly draw.
So, poet, may thy life's small tributary
Threading some bitter marsh, obscure, alone,
Feel yet one pulse with the broad estuary
That bears an emperor's fleets through half a zone:
May wait upon the same high luminary
And pitch its voice to the same ocean's tone.