The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell | Page 6

fall.
Now on the hills I hear the thunder mutter,
The wind is gathering in the west;
The upturned leaves first whiten
and flutter,
Then droop to a fitful rest;
Up from the stream with sluggish flap

Struggles the gull and floats away;
Nearer and nearer rolls the
thunder-clap,--
We shall not see the sun go down to-day:
Now leaps
the wind on the sleepy marsh, 40 And tramples the grass with terrified
feet,
The startled river turns leaden and harsh,
You can hear the
quick heart of the tempest beat.
Look! look! that livid flash!
And instantly follows the rattling thunder,


As if some cloud-crag, split asunder,
Fell, splintering with a ruinous crash,
On the Earth, which crouches
in silence under;
And now a solid gray wall of rain
Shuts off the
landscape, mile by mile; 50 For a breath's space I see the blue wood
again,
And ere the next heart-beat, the wind-hurled pile,
That
seemed but now a league aloof,
Bursts crackling o'er the sun-parched
roof;
Against the windows the storm comes dashing,
Through
tattered foliage the hail tears crashing,
The blue lightning flashes,
The rapid hail clashes,
The white waves
are tumbling,
And, in one baffled roar, 60 Like the toothless sea
mumbling
A rock-bristled shore,
The thunder is rumbling
And
crashing and crumbling,--
Will silence return nevermore?
Hush! Still as death,
The tempest holds his breath
As from a sudden
will;
The rain stops short, but from the eaves
You see it drop, and
hear it from the leaves, 70 All is so bodingly still;
Again, now, now,
again
Plashes the rain in heavy gouts,
The crinkled lightning

Seems ever brightening,
And loud and long
Again the thunder
shouts
His battle-song,--
One quivering flash,
One wildering crash, 80
Followed by silence dead and dull,
As if the cloud, let go,
Leapt bodily below
To whelm the earth in
one mad overthrow.
And then a total lull.
Gone, gone, so soon!
No more my half-dazed fancy there,
Can
shape a giant In the air,
No more I see his streaming hair,
The
writhing portent of his form;-- 90
The pale and quiet moon
Makes her calm forehead bare,
And the

last fragments of the storm,
Like shattered rigging from a fight at sea,

Silent and few, are drifting over me.
LOVE
True Love is but a humble, low-born thing,
And hath its food served
up in earthen ware;
It is a thing to walk with, hand in hand,

Through the everydayness of this workday world,
Baring its tender
feet to every flint,
Yet letting not one heart-beat go astray
From
Beauty's law of plainness and content;
A simple, fireside thing,
whose quiet smile
Can warm earth's poorest hovel to a home;

Which, when our autumn cometh, as it must,
And life in the chill
wind shivers bare and leafless,
Shall still be blest with Indian-summer
youth
In bleak November, and, with thankful heart,
Smile on its
ample stores of garnered fruit,
As full of sunshine to our aged eyes

As when it nursed the blossoms of our spring.
Such is true Love,
which steals into the heart
With feet as silent as the lightsome dawn

That kisses smooth the rough brows of the dark,
And hath its will
through blissful gentleness,
Not like a rocket, which, with passionate
glare,
Whirs suddenly up, then bursts, and leaves the night

Painfully quivering on the dazèd eyes;
A love that gives and takes,
that seeth faults,
Not with flaw-seeking eyes like needle points,
But
loving-kindly ever looks them down
With the o'ercoming faith that
still forgives;
A love that shall be new and fresh each hour,
As is
the sunset's golden mystery,
Or the sweet coming of the evening-star,

Alike, and yet most unlike, every day,
And seeming ever best and
fairest now;
A love that doth not kneel for what it seeks,
But faces
Truth and Beauty as their peer,
Showing its worthiness of noble
thoughts
By a clear sense of inward nobleness;
A love that in its
object findeth not

All grace and beauty, and enough to sate
Its thirst
of blessing, but, in all of good
Found there, sees but the
Heaven-implanted types
Of good and beauty in the soul of man,

And traces, in the simplest heart that beats,
A family-likeness to its

chosen one,
That claims of it the rights of brotherhood.
For love is
blind but with the fleshly eye,
That so its inner sight may be more
clear;
And outward shows of beauty only so
Are needful at the first,
as is a hand
To guide and to uphold an infant's steps:
Fine natures
need them not: their earnest look
Pierces the body's mask of thin
disguise,
And beauty ever is to them revealed,
Behind the
unshapeliest, meanest lump of clay,
With arms outstretched and eager
face ablaze,
Yearning to be but understood and loved.
TO PERDITA, SINGING
Thy voice is like a fountain,
Leaping up in clear moonshine;
Silver,
silver, ever mounting,
Ever sinking,
Without thinking,
To that brimful heart of thine.

Every sad and happy feeling,
Thou hast had in bygone years,

Through thy lips comes stealing, stealing,
Clear and low; 10
All thy smiles and all thy tears
In thy voice
awaken,
And sweetness, wove of joy and woe,
From their teaching
it hath taken:
Feeling and music move together,
Like a swan and
shadow ever
Floating on a sky-blue river
In a day of cloudless
weather.
It hath caught a touch of sadness,
Yet it is