Mnemosyne

IT'S autumn in the country I remember.

How warm a wind blew here about the ways!

And shadows on the hillside lay to slumber

During the long sun-sweetened summer-days.

It's cold abroad the country I remember.

The swallows veering skimmed the golden grain

At midday with a wing aslant and limber;

And yellow cattle browsed upon the plain.

It's empty down the country I remember.

I had a sister lovely in my sight:

Her hair was dark, her eyes were very sombre;

We sang together in the woods at night.

It's lonely in the country I remember.

The babble of our children fills my ears,

And on our hearth I stare the perished ember

To flames that show all starry thro' my tears.

It's dark about the country I remember.

There are the mountains where I lived. The path

Is slushed with cattle-tracks and fallen timber,

The stumps are twisted by the tempests' wrath.

But that I knew these places are my own,

I'd ask how came such wretchedness to cumber

The earth, and I to people it alone.

It rains across the country I remember.

Trumbull Stickney

They Lived Enamoured of the Lovely Moon

THEY lived enamoured of the lovely moon,

The dawn and twilight on their gentle lake.

Then Passion marvellously born did shake

Their breast and drave them into the mid-noon.

Their lives did shrink to one desire, and soon

They rose fire-eyed to follow in the wake

Of one eternal thought,--when sudden brake

Their hearts. They died, in miserable swoon.

Of all their agony not a sound was heard.

The glory of the Earth is more than they.

She asks her lovely image of the day:

A flower grows, a million boughs are green,

And over moving ocean-waves the bird

Chases his shadow and is no more seen.

Trumbull Stickney

On Some Shells Found Inland

THESE are my murmur-laden shells that keep

A fresh voice tho' the years be very gray.

The wave that washed their lips and tuned their lay

Is gone, gone with the faded ocean sweep,

The royal tide, gray ebb and sunken neap

And purple midday,--gone! To this hot clay

Must sing my shells, where yet the primal day,

Its roar and rhythm and splendour will not sleep.

What hand shall join them to their proper sea

If all be gone? Shall they forever feel

Glories undone and world that cannot be?--

'Twere mercy to stamp out this aged wrong,

Dash them to earth and crunch them with the heel

And make a dust of their seraphic song.

Trumbull Stickney

Be Still. The Hanging Gardens Were a Dream

BE still. The Hanging Gardens were a dream

That over Persian roses flew to kiss

The curled lashes of Semiramis.

Troy never was, nor green Skamander stream.

Provence and Troubadour are merest lies.

The glorious hair of Venice was a beam

Made within Titian's eye. The sunsets seem,

The world is very old and nothing is.

Be still. Thou foolish thing, thou canst not wake,

Nor thy tears wedge thy soldered lids apart,

But patter in the darkness of thy heart.

Thy brain is plagued. Thou art a frighted owl

Blind with the light of life thou'ldst not forsake,

And Error loves and nourishes thy soul.

Trumbull Stickney

Mt. Lykaion

ALONE on Lykaion since man hath been

Stand on the height two columns, where at rest

Two eagles hewn of gold sit looking East

Forever; and the sun goes down between.

Far down the mountain's oval green

An order keeps the falling stones abreast.

Below within the chaos last and least

A river like a curl of light is seen.

Beyond the river lies the even sea,

Beyond the sea another ghost of sky,--

O God, support the sickness of my eye

Lest the far space and long antiquity

Suck out my heart, and on this awful ground

The great wind kill my little shell with sound.

Trumbull Stickney

Six O'Clock

NOW burst above the city's cold twilight

The piercing whistles and the tower-clocks:

For day is done. Along the frozen docks

The workmen set their ragged shirts aright.

Thro' factory doors a stream of dingy light

Follows the scrimmage as it quickly flocks

To hut and home among the snow's gray blocks.--

I love you, human labourers. Good-night!

Good-night to all the blackened arms that ache!

Good-night to every sick and sweated brow,

To the poor girl that strength and love forsake,

To the poor boy who can no more! I vow

The victim soon shall shudder at the stake

And fall in blood: we bring him even now.

Trumbull Stickney

Dramatic Fragment

SIR, say no more.

Within me 't is as if

The green and climbing eyesight of a cat

Crawled near my mind's poor birds.

Trumbull Stickney

Loneliness

THESE autumn gardens, russet, gray and brown,

The sward with shrivelled foliage strown,

The shrubs and trees

By weary wings of sunshine overflown

And timid silences,--

Since first you, darling, called my spirit yours,

Seem happy, and the gladness pours

From day to day,

And yester-year across this year endures

Unto next year away.

Now in these places where I used to rove

And give the dropping leaves my love

And weep to them,

They seem to fall divinely from above,

Like to a diadem

Closing in one with the disheartened flowers.

High up the migrant birds in showers

Shine in the sky,

And all the movement of the natural hours

Turns into melody.

Trumbull Stickney

In Ampezzo

ONLY once more and not again--the larches

Shake to the wind their echo, "Not again,"--

We see, below the sky that over-arches

Heavy and blue, the plain

Between Tofana lying and Cristallo

In meadowy earths above the ringing stream:

Whence interchangeably desire may follow,

Hesitant as in dream,

At sunset, south, by lilac promontories

Under green skies ato Italy, or forth

By calms of morning beyond Lavinores

Tyrolward and to north:

As now, this last of latter days, when over

The brownish field by peasants are undone

Some widths of grass, some plots of mountain clover

Under the autumn sun,

With honey-warm perfume that risen lingers

In mazes of low heat, or takes the air,

Passing delicious as a woman's fingers

Passing aid the hair;

When scythes are swishing and the mower's muscle

Spans a repeated crescent to and fro,

Or in dry stalks of corn the sickles rustle,

Tangle, detach and go,

Far thro' the wide blue day and greening meadow

Whose blots of amber beaded are with sheaves,

Whereover pallidly a cloud-shadow

Deadens the earth and leaves:

Whilst high around and near, their heads of iron

Sunken in sky whose azure overlights

Ravine and edges, stand the gray and maron

Desolate Dolomites,--

And older than decay from the small summit

Unfolds a stream of pebbly wreckage down

Under the suns of midday, like some comet

Struck into gravel stone.

Faintly across this gold and amethystine

September, images of summer fade;

And gentle dreams now freshen on the pristine

Viols, awhile unplayed,

Of many a place where lovingly we wander,

More dearly held that quickly we forsake,--

A pine by sullen coasts, an oleander

Reddening on the lake.

And there, each year with more familiar motion,

From many a bird and windy forestries,

Or along shaking fringes of the ocean,

Vapours of music rise.

From many easts the morning gives her splendour;

The shadows fill with colours we forget;

Remembered tints at evening grow tender,

Tarnished with violet.

Let us away! soon sheets of winter metal

On this discoloured mountain-land will close,

While elsewhere Spring-time weaves a crimson petal,

Builds and perfumes a rose.

Away! for her the mountain sinks in gravel.

Let us forget the unhappy site with change,

And go, if only happiness be travel

After the new and strange:--

Unless 'twere better to be very single,

To follow some diviner monotone,

And in all beauties, where ourselves commingle,

Love but a love, but one,

Across this shadowy minute of our living,

What time our hearts so magically sing,

To meditate our fever, simply giving

All in a little thing?

Just as here, past yon dumb and melancholy

Sameness of ruin, while the mountains ail,

Summer and sunset-coloured autumn slowly

Dissipate down the vale;

And all these lines along the sky that measure

Sorapis and the rocks of Mezzodi

Crumble by foamy miles into the azure

Mediterranean sea:

Whereas to-day at sunrise, under brambles,

A league above the moss and dying pines

I picked this little--in my hand that trembles--

Parcel of columbines.

Trumbull Stickney

In a City Garden

HOW strange that here is nothing as it was!

The sward is young and new,

The sod there shapes a different mass,

The random trees stand other than I knew.

No, here the Past has left no residue,

No aftermath!

By a new path

The workmen homeward in the city twilight pass.

Yet was this willow here.

It hung as now its olive skeins aloft

Into the sky, then blue and clear,--

And yonder pair of poplar trees

Rose also, soft

And sibilant in the glory of the breeze.

It's early dark. One scarce distinguishes

Their sullen feathering in the autumn sky.

'Tis warm and still.

Dull o'er the town the vapours lie.

Innumerable

And dodging the uncertain stare,

The small, shrewd lampions dot the air.

Many like me

Loiter perhaps as I in after years,

As looking here to see

Some vestige of the living that was theirs,

Some trace of yesterday,

Somae hint or remnant, echo, clue--some thing,

Some very little thing of what was they.

Sure such are near! Else were it not so still

This evening,

So human-still and warm and kind.

'Tis as of many moved

In unison of will and mind to sing

Low litanies to that which they had wholly loved.

How sweet it is

Under the perishable trees

To hear the wings of the one human soul

Fluttering up

In Time's dark branches to the lucid stars.

More than Despair is Hope,

And more than Hope is the Hope that despairs,

And more than all

Is Love that disbelieves the real years.

Here in this place

One August morning--when the earlier crowd,

Showmen or populace,

From many a region and of curious face,

Abroad the holiday

Quaint in the sun with garb and gesture glowed,

And, speaking grave or gay

The various accent of their lonely race,

Between the shadowy gold bazars idled away--

She, as a cloud

All sunrise-coloured and alone,

Thro' the blue summer tremblin came to me.

I dried her tears and here we sat us down.

Little by little, as tripping oversea

On flame-tipped waves the daylight's long surprise

Sweeps world and heaven in one,

So love across our eyes

Broke with the sun.

Happy we walked away. The fairy sight

Untangling shook a thousand chequered fires.

Low under scarlet awnings rung on rung,

Copper and bronze and azurite,

Ranged on the sagging wires

The trifles clinked in the red light.

From beam and niche vendors in strange attires,

Slipping dark hands along,

Unhooked the quiet wool, the gaudy chintz,

Or, precious where it hung,

Long fluid jewels of auroral silk:

And dryly to the sense

Their attars old and dusty powders clung.

Still passed the weavers and the dyers

Many a jar, a bowl

Turned as of water or of milk--

Glazen and jade and porcelain--

Far down the shadows colouring stole.

As one had shook a jungle after rain

And basketing the drops at random spilled

Their red and green, their topaz and sapphires,

All were here piled.--

And wandering out we smiled

To see across the glowing noon so high,

So high and far,

The incandescent minarets and domes and spires

Lifting the fusion of the coloured choirs

To the sky

Softly--save only where

A flag or pennant fallen slack

Shotted the dazzling air.

I came to-day to find her, I came back

Humble with sweet desires

Across this dun September atmosphere

To her.

I came, I knew she was not here:

Now let me go.

I came, I come because I love her so.

Not in the acres of the Soul

Does Nature drive the ploughshare of her change.

It is not strange

That here in part and whole

The faithful eye sees all things as before.

For past the newer flowers,

Above the recent trees and clouds come o'er,

Love finds the other hours

Once more.

Trumbull Stickney

Live Blindly and Upon the Hour

LIVE blindly and upon the hour. The Lord,

Who was the Future, died full long ago.

Knowledge which is the Past is folly. Go,

Poor, child, and be not to thyself abhorred.

Around thine earth sun-winged winds do blow

And planets roll; a meteor draws his sword;

The rainbow breaks his seven-coloured chord

And the long strips of river-silver flow:

Awake! Give thyself to the lovely hours.

Drinking their lips, catch thou the dream in flight

About their fragile hairs' aerial gold.

Thou art divine, thou livest,--as of old

Apollo springing naked to the light,

And all his island shivered into flowers.

Trumbull Stickney

The Melancholy Year is Dead with Rain

THE melancholy year is dead with rain.

Drop after drop on every branch pursues.

From far away beyond the drizzled flues

A twilight saddens to the window pane.

And dimly thro' the chambers of the brain,

From place to place and gently touching, moves

My one and irrecoverable love's

Dear and lost shape one other time again.

So in the last of autumn for a day

Summer or summer's memory returns.

So in a mountain desolation burns

Some rich belated flower, and with the gray

Sick weather, in the world of rotting ferns

From out the dreadful stones it dies away.

Trumbull Stickney