Weeds by the Wall Part 2

THE GRa.s.sHOPPER.

What joy you take in making hotness hotter, In emphasizing dullness with your buzz, Making monotony more monotonous!

When Summer comes, and drouth hath dried the water In all the creeks, we hear your ragged rasp Filing the stillness. Or,--as urchins beat A stagnant pond whereon the bubbles gasp,-- Your switch-like music whips the midday heat.

O bur of sound caught in the Summer's hair, We hear you everywhere!

We hear you in the vines and berry-brambles, Along the unkempt lanes, among the weeds, Amid the shadeless meadows, gray with seeds, And by the wood 'round which the rail-fence rambles, Sawing the sunlight with your sultry saw.

Or,--like to tomboy truants, at their play With noisy mirth among the barn's deep straw,-- You sing away the careless summer-day.

O brier-like voice that clings in idleness To Summer's drowsy dress!

You tramp of insects, vagrant and unheeding, Improvident, who of the summer make One long green mealtime, and for winter take No care, aye singing or just merely feeding!

Happy-go-lucky vagabond,--'though frost Shall pierce, ere long, your green coat or your brown, And pinch your body,--let no song be lost, But as you lived into your grave go down-- Like some small poet with his little rhyme, Forgotten of all time.

THE TREE TOAD.

I.

Secluded, solitary on some underbough, Or cradled in a leaf, 'mid glimmering light, Like Puck thou crouchest: Haply watching how The slow toad-stool comes bulging, moony white, Through loosening loam; or how, against the night, The glow-worm gathers silver to endow The darkness with; or how the dew conspires To hang at dusk with lamps of chilly fires Each blade that shrivels now.

II.

O vague confederate of the whippoorwill, Of owl and cricket and the katydid!

Thou gatherest up the silence in one shrill Vibrating note and send'st it where, half hid In cedars, twilight sleeps--each azure lid Drooping a line of golden eyeball still.-- Afar, yet near, I hear thy dewy voice Within the Garden of the Hours apoise On dusk's deep daffodil.

III.

Minstrel of moisture! silent when high noon Shows her tanned face among the thirsting clover And parching meadows, thy tenebrious tune Wakes with the dew or when the rain is over.

Thou troubadour of wetness and damp lover Of all cool things! admitted comrade boon Of twilight's hush, and little intimate Of eve's first fluttering star and delicate Round rim of rainy moon!

IV.

Art trumpeter of Dwarfland? does thy horn Inform the gnomes and goblins of the hour When they may gambol under haw and thorn, Straddling each winking web and twinkling flower?

Or bell-ringer of Elfland? whose tall tower The liriodendron is? from whence is borne The elfin music of thy bell's deep ba.s.s, To summon fairies to their starlit maze, To summon them or warn.

THE SCREECH-OWL.

When, one by one, the stars have trembled through Eve's shadowy hues of violet, rose, and fire-- As on a pansy-bloom the limpid dew Orbs its bright beads;--and, one by one, the choir Of insects wakes on nodding bush and brier: Then through the woods--where wandering winds pursue A ceaseless whisper--like an eery lyre Struck in the Erl-king's halls, where ghosts and dreams Hold revelry, your goblin music screams, s.h.i.+vering and strange as some strange thought come true.

Brown as the agaric that frills dead trees, Or those fantastic fungi of the woods That crowd the dampness--are you kin to these In some mysterious way that still eludes My fancy? you, who haunt the solitudes With witch-like wailings? voice, that seems to freeze Out of the darkness,--like the scent which broods, Rank and rain-sodden, over autumn nooks,-- That, to the mind, might well suggest such looks, Ghastly and gray, as pale clairvoyance sees.

You people night with weirdness: lone and drear, Beneath the stars, you cry your wizard runes; And in the haggard silence, filled with fear, Your shuddering hoot seems some bleak grief that croons Mockery and terror; or,--beneath the moon's Cloud-hurrying glimmer,--to the startled ear, Crazed, madman s.n.a.t.c.hes of old, perished tunes, The witless wit of outcast Edgar there In the wild night; or, wan with all despair, The mirthless laughter of the Fool in Lear.

THE CHIPMUNK.

He makes a roadway of the crumbling fence, Or on the fallen tree,--brown as a leaf Fall stripes with russet,--gambols down the dense Green twilight of the woods. We see not whence He comes, nor whither--'tis a time too brief!-- He vanishes;--swift carrier of some Fay, Some pixy steed that haunts our child-belief-- A goblin glimpse from woodland way to way.

What harlequin mood of nature qualified Him so with happiness? and limbed him with Such young activity as winds, that ride The ripples, have, that dance on every side?

As sunbeams know, that urge the sap and pith Through hearts of trees? yet made him to delight, Gnome-like, in darkness,--like a moonlight myth,-- Lairing in labyrinths of the under night.

Here, by a rock, beneath the moss, a hole Leads to his home, the den wherein he sleeps; Lulled by near noises of the cautious mole Tunnelling its mine--like some ungainly Troll-- Or by the tireless cricket there that keeps Picking its drowsy and monotonous lute; Or slower sounds of gra.s.s that creeps and creeps, And trees unrolling mighty root on root.

Such is the music of his sleeping hours.

Day hath another--'tis a melody He trips to, made by the a.s.sembled flowers, And light and fragrance laughing 'mid the bowers, And ripeness busy with the acorn-tree.

Such strains, perhaps, as filled with mute amaze-- The silent music of Earth's ecstasy-- The Satyr's soul, the Faun of cla.s.sic days.

LOVE AND A DAY.

I.

In girandoles of gladioles The day had kindled flame; And Heaven a door of gold and pearl Unclosed when Morning,--like a girl, A red rose twisted in a curl,-- Down sapphire stairways came.

Said I to Love: "What must I do?

What shall I do? what can I do?"

Said I to Love: "What must I do?

All on a summer's morning."

Said Love to me: "Go woo, go woo."

Said Love to me: "Go woo.

If she be milking, follow, O!

And in the clover hollow, O!

While through the dew the bells clang clear, Just whisper it into her ear, All on a summer's morning."

II.

Of honey and heat and weed and wheat The day had made perfume; And Heaven a tower of turquoise raised, Whence Noon, like some wan woman, gazed-- A sunflower withering at her waist-- Within a crystal room.

Said I to Love: "What must I do?