Winter-Store

Subtly conscious, all awake,Let us clear our eyes, and breakThrough the cloudy chrysalis,See the wonder as it is.Down a narrow alley, blind,Touch and vision, heart and mind;Turned sharply inward, still we plod,Till the calmly smiling godLeaves us, and our spirits growMore thin, more acrid, as we go.Creeping by the sullen wall,We forego the power to see,The threads that bind us to the All,God or the Immensity;Whereof on the eternal roadMan is but a passing mode.

Too blind we are, too little seeOf the magic pageantry,Every minute, every hour,From the cloudflake to the flower,Forever old, forever strange,Issuing in perpetual changeFrom the rainbow gates of Time.

But he who through this common airSurely knows the great and fair,What is lovely, what sublime,Becomes in an increasing span,One with earth and one with man,One, despite these mortal scars,With the planets and the stars;And Nature from her holy place,Bending with unveilèd face,Fills him in her divine employWith her own majestic joy.

Up the fielded slopes at morn,Where light wefts of shadow pass,Films upon the bending corn,I shall sweep the purple grass.Sun-crowned heights and mossy woods,And the outer solitudes,Mountain-valleys, dim with pine,Shall be home and haunt of mine.I shall search in crannied hollows,Where the sunlight scarcely follows,And the secret forest brookMurmurs, and from nook to nookForever downward curls and cools,Frothing in the bouldered pools.

Many a noon shall find me laidIn the pungent balsam shade,Where sharp breezes spring and shiverOn some deep rough-coasted river,And the plangent waters come,Amber-hued and streaked with foam;Where beneath the sunburnt hillsAll day long the crowded millsWith remorseless champ and screamOverlord the sluicing stream,And the rapids' iron roarHammers at the forest's core;Where corded rafts creep slowly on,Glittering in the noonday sun,And the tawny river-dogs,Shepherding the branded logs,Bind and heave with cadenced cry;Where the blackened tugs go by,Panting hard and straining slow,Laboring at the weighty tow,Flat-nosed barges all in trim,Creeping in long cumbrous line,Loaded to the water's brimWith the clean, cool-scented pine.

Perhaps in some low meadow-land,Stretching wide on either hand,I shall see the belted beesRocking with the tricksy breezeIn the spirèd meadow-sweet,Or with eager trampling feetBurrowing in the boneset blooms,Treading out the dry perfumes.Where sun-hot hay-fields newly mownClimb the hillside ruddy brown,I shall see the haymakers,While the noonday scarcely stirs,Brown of neck and booted gray,Tossing up the rustling hay,While the hay-racks bend and rock,As they take each scented cock,Jolting over dip and rise;And the wavering butterfliesO'er the spaces brown and bareLight and wander here and there.

I shall stray by many a stream,Where the half-shut lilies gleam.Napping out the sultry daysIn the quiet secluded bays;Where the tasseled rushes tower,O'er the purple pickerel-flower.And the floating dragon-fly--Azure glint and crystal gleam--Watches o'er the burnished streamWith his eye of ebony;Where the bull-frog lolls at restOn his float of lily-leaves,That the swaying water weaves,And distends his yellow breast,Lowing out from shore to shoreWith a hollow vibrant roar;Where the softest wind that blowsAs it lightly comes and goes,O'er the jungled river meads,Stirs a whisper in the reeds,And wakes the crowded bull-rushesFrom their stately reveries,Flashing through their long-leaved hordesLike a brandishing of swords;There, too, the frost-like arrow-flowersTremble to the golden core,Children of enchanted hours,Whom the rustling river boreIn the night's bewildered noon,Woven of water and the moon.

I shall hear the grasshoppersFrom the parched grass rehearse,And with drowsy note prolongEvermore the same thin song.I shall hear the crickets tellStories by the humming well,And mark the locust, with quaint eyes,Caper in his cloak of grayLike a jester in disguiseRattling by the dusty way.

I shall dream by upland fences,Where the season's wealth condensesOver many a weedy wreck,Wild, uncared-for, desert places,That sovereign Beauty loves to deckWith her softest, dearest graces.There the long year dreams in quiet,And the summer's strength runs riot.Shall I not remember these,Deep in winter reveries?Berried brier and thistle-bloom,And milkweed with its dense perfume;Slender vervain towering upIn a many-branchèd cup,Like a candlestick, each spireKindled with a violet fire;Matted creepers and wild cherries,Purple-bunchèd elderberries,And on scanty plots of sodGroves of branchy goldenrod.

What though autumn mornings now,Winterward with glittering brow,Stiffen in the silver grass;And what though robins flock and pass,With subdued and sober call,To the old year's funeral;Though October's crimson leavesRustle at the gusty door,And the tempest round the eavesAlternate with pipe and roar;I sit, as erst, unharmed, secure,Conscious that my store is sure,Whatsoe'er the fencèd fields,Or the untilled forest yieldsOf unhurt remembrances,Or thoughts, far-glimpsed, half-followed, theseI have reaped and laid away,A treasure of unwinnowed grain,To the garner packed and grayGathered without toil or strain.

And when the darker days shall come,And the fields are white and dumb;When our fires are half in vain,And the crystal starlight weavesMockeries of summer leaves,Pictured on the icy pane;When the high aurora gleamsFar above the Arctic streamsLike a line of shifting spears,And the broad pine-circled meres,Glimmering in that spectral light,Thunder through the northern night;Then within the bolted doorI shall con my summer store;Though the fences scarcely showBlack above the drifted snow,Though the icy sweeping windWhistle in the empty tree,Safe within the sheltered mind,I shall feed on memory.

Yet across the windy nightComes upon its wings a cry;Fashioned forms and modes take flight,And a vision sad and highOf the laboring world down there,Where the lights burn red and warm,Pricks my soul with sudden stare,Glowing through the veils of storm.In the city yonder sleepThose who smile and those who weep,Those whose lips are set with care,Those whose brows are smooth and fair;Mourners whom the dawning lightShall grapple with an old distress;Lovers folded at midnightIn their bridal happiness;Pale watchers by belovèd beds,Fallen a-drowse with nodding heads,Whom sleep captured by surprise,With the circles round their eyes;Maidens with quiet-taken breath,Dreaming of enchanted bowers;Old men with the mask of death;Little children soft as flowers;Those who wake wild-eyed and startIn some madness of the heart;Those whose lips and brows of stoneEvil thoughts have graven upon,Shade by shade and line by line,Refashioning what was once divine.

All these sleep, and through the night,Comes a passion and a cry,With a blind sorrow and a might,I know not whence, I know not why,A something I cannot control,A nameless hunger of the soul.It holds me fast. In vain, in vain,I remember how of oldI saw the ruddy race of men,Through the glittering world outrolled,A gay-smiling multitude,All immortal, all divine,Treading in a wreathèd lineBy a pathway through a wood.