Dreams and Days | Page 8

roll to battle; when the knotted cloud,
With an
echoing loud,
Bursts asunder
At the sudden resurrection of the
thunder;
And the fountains of the air,
Unsealed again, sweep,
ruining, everywhere,
To wrap the world in a watery winding-sheet.
III
O myriad sweet voices of the rain!
When the airy war doth wane,

And the storm to the east hath flown,
Cloaked close in the whirling
wind,
There's a voice still left behind
In each heavy-hearted tree,

Charged with tearful memory
Of the vanished rain:
From their leafy
lashes wet
Drip the dews of fresh regret
For the lover that's gone!

All else is still;
Yet the stars are listening,
And low o'er the wooded
hill
Hangs, upon listless wing
Outspread, a shape of damp, blue
cloud,
Watching, like a bird of evil
That knows nor mercy nor
reprieval,
The slow and silent death of the pallid moon.
IV
But soon, returning duly,
Dawn whitens the wet hilltops bluely.
To
her vision pure and cold
The night's wild tale is told
On the
glistening leaf, in the mid-road pool,
The garden mold turned dark

and cool,
And the meadows' trampled acres.
But hark, how fresh
the song of the winged music-makers!
For now the moanings bitter,

Left by the rain, make harmony
With the swallow's matin-twitter,

And the robin's note, like the wind's in a tree.
The infant morning
breathes sweet breath,
And with it is blent
The wistful, wild, moist
scent
Of the grass in the marsh which the sea nourisheth:
And
behold!
The last reluctant drop of the storm,
Wrung from the roof,
is smitten warm
And turned to gold;
For in its veins doth run
The
very blood of the bold, unsullied sun!
BREAKERS
Far out at sea there has been a storm,
And still, as they roll their
liquid acres,
High-heaped the billows lower and glisten.
The air is
laden, moist, and warm
With the dying tempest's breath;
And, as I
walk the lonely strand
With sea-weed strewn, my forehead fanned

By wet salt-winds, I watch the breakers,
Furious sporting, tossed and
tumbling,
Shatter here with a dreadful rumbling--
Watch, and muse,
and vainly listen
To the inarticulate mumbling
Of the hoary-headed
deep;
For who may tell me what it saith,
Muttering, moaning as in
sleep?
Slowly and heavily
Comes in the sea,
With memories of storm
o'erfreighted,
With heaving heart and breath abated,
Pregnant with
some mysterious, endless sorrow,
And seamed with many a gaping,
sighing furrow.
Slowly and heavily
Grows the green water-mound;
But drawing
ever nigher,
Towering ever higher,
Swollen with an inward rage


Naught but ruin can assuage,
Swift, now, without sound,
Creeps
stealthily
Up to the shore--
Creeps, creeps and undulates;
As one
dissimulates
Till, swayed by hateful frenzy,
Through passion grown
immense, he
Bursts forth hostilely;
And rising, a smooth billow--

Its swelling, sunlit dome
Thinned to a tumid ledge
With keen,

curved edge
Like the scornful curl
Of lips that snarl--
O'ertops
itself and breaks
Into a raving foam;
So springs upon the shore

With a hungry roar;
Its first fierce anger slakes
On the stony
shallow;
And runs up on the land,
Licking the smooth, hard sand,

Relentless, cold, yet wroth;
And dies in savage froth.
Then with its backward swirl
The sands and the stones, how they
whirl!
O, fiercely doth it draw
Them to its chasm'd maw,
And
against it in vain
They linger and strain;
And as they slip away

Into the seething gray
Fill all the thunderous air
With the horror of
their despair,
And their wild terror wreak
In one hoarse, wailing
shriek.
But scarce is this done,
When another one
Falls like the bolt from a
bellowing gun,
And sucks away the shore
As that did before:
And
another shall smother it o'er.
Then there's a lull--a half-hush;
And forward the little waves rush,

Toppling and hurrying,
Each other worrying,
And in their haste

Run to waste.
Yet again is heard the trample
Of the surges high and ample:
Their
dreadful meeting--
The wild and sudden breaking--
The dinting,
and battering, and beating,
And swift forsaking.
And ever they burst and boom,
A numberless host;
Like heralds of
doom
To the trembling coast;
And ever the tangled spray

Is
tossed from the fierce affray,
And, as with spectral arms
That taunt
and beckon and mock,
And scatter vague alarms,
Clasps and
unclasps the rock;
Listlessly over it wanders;
Moodily, madly
maunders,
And hissingly falls
From the glistening walls.
So all day along the shore
Shout the breakers, green and hoar,

Weaving out their weird tune;
Till at night the full moon
Weds the

dark with that ring
Of gold that you see her fling
On the misty air.

Then homeward slow returning
To slumbers deep I fare,
Filled
with an infinite yearning,
With thoughts that rise and fall
To the
sound of the sea's hollow call,
Breathed now from white-lit waves
that reach
Cold fingers o'er the damp, dark beach,
To scatter a spray
on my dreams;
Till the slow and measured rote
Brings a drowsy
ease
To my spirit, and seems
To set it soothingly afloat
On broad
and buoyant seas
Of endless rest, lulled by the dirge
Of the
melancholy surge.
BLACKMOUTH, OF COLORADO
"Who is Blackmouth?" Well, that's hard to say.
Mebbe he might ha'
told you, 't other day,
If you'd been here. Now,--he's gone away.

Come to think on, 't wouldn't ha' been no use
If you'd called here
earlier. His excuse
Always was, whenever folks would ask him

Where he hailed from, an' would tease an' task him;--
What d' you
s'pose? He just said, "I don' know."
That was truth. He came here long ago;
But, before that, he'd been
born somewhere:
The conundrum started first, right there.
Little
shaver--afore he