Poems New and Old. John Freeman

With eyes of dazzling bright

       Shakes Venus mid the twinèd boughs of the night;

       Rose-limb'd, soft-stepping

       From low bough to bough

       Shaking the wide-hung starry fruitage—dimmed

       Its bloom of snow

       By that sole planetary glow.

      Venus, avers the astronomer,

       Not thus idly dancing goes

       Flushing the eternal orchard with wild rose.

       She through ether burns

       Outpacing planetary earth,

       And ere two years triumphantly returns,

       And again wave-like swelling flows,

       And again her flashing apparition comes and goes.

      This we have not seen,

       No heavenly courses set,

       No flight unpausing through a void serene:

       But when eve clears,

       Arises Venus as she first uprose

       Stepping the shaken boughs among,

       And in her bosom glows

       The warm light hidden in sunny snows.

      She shakes the clustered stars

       Lightly, as she goes

       Amid the unseen branches of the night,

       Rose-limb'd, rose-bosom'd bright.

       She leaps: they shake and pale; she glows—

       And who but knows

       How the rejoiced heart aches

       When Venus all his starry vision shakes;

      When through his mind

       Tossing with random airs of an unearthly wind,

       Rose-bosom'd, rose-limb'd,

       The mistress of his starry vision arises,

       And the boughs glittering sway

       And the stars pale away,

       And the enlarging heaven glows

       As Venus light-foot mid the twinèd branches goes.

BEECHWOOD

       Table of Contents

      Hear me, O beeches! You

       That have with ageless anguish slowly risen

       From earth's still secret prison

       Into the ampler prison of aery blue.

       Your voice I hear, flowing the valleys through

       After the wind that tramples from the west.

       After the wind your boughs in new unrest

       Shake, and your voice—one voice uniting voices

       A thousand or a thousand thousand—flows

       Like the wind's moody; glad when he rejoices

       In swift-succeeding and diminishing blows,

       And drooping when declines death's ardour in his breast;

       Then over him exhausted weaving the soft fan-like noises

       Of gentlest creaking stems and soothing leaves

       Until he rest,

       And silent too your easied bosom heaves.

      That high and noble wind is rootless nor

       From stable earth sucks nurture, but roams on

       Childless as fatherless, wild, unconfined,

       So that men say, "As homeless as the wind!"

       Rising and falling and rising evermore

       With years like ticks, æons as centuries gone;

       Only within impalpable ether bound

       And blindly with the green globe spinning round.

       He, noble wind,

       Most ancient creature of imprisoned Time,

       From high to low may fall, and low to high may climb,

       Andean peak to deep-caved southern sea,

       With lifted hand and voice of gathered sound,

       And echoes in his tossing quiver bound

       And loosed from height into immensity;

       Yet of his freedom tires, remaining free.

       —Moulding and remoulding imponderable cloud,

       Uplifting skiey archipelagian isles

       Sunnier than ocean's, blue seas and white isles

       Aflush with blossom where late sunlight glowed;—

       Still of his freedom tiring yet still free,

       Homelessly roaming between sky, earth and sea.

      But you, O beeches, even as men, have root

       Deep in apparent and substantial things—

       Earth, sun, air, water, and the chemic fruit

       Wise Time of these has made. What laughing Springs

       Your branches sprinkle young leaf-shadows o'er

       That wanting the leaf-shadows were no Springs

       Of seasonable sweet and freshness! nor

       If Summer of your murmur gathered not

       Increase of music as your leaves grow dense,

       Might even kine and birds and general noise of wings

       Of summer make full Summer, but the hot

       Slow moons would pass and leave unsatisfied the sense.

       Nor Autumn's waste were dear if your gold snow

       Of leaves whirled not upon the gold below;

       Nor Winter's snow were loveliness complete

       Wanting the white drifts round your breasts and feet.

       To hills how many has your tossed green given

       Likeness of an inverted cloudy heaven;

       How many English hills enlarge their pride

       Of shape and solitude

       By beechwoods darkening the steepest side!

       I know a Mount—let there my longing brood

       Again, as oft my eyes—a Mount I know

       Where beeches stand arrested in the throe

       Of that last onslaught when the gods swept low

       Against the gods inhabiting the wood.

       Gods into trees did pass and disappear,

       Then closing, body and huge members heaved

       With energy and agony and fear.

       See how the thighs were strained, how tortured here.

       See, limb from limb sprung, pain too sore to bear.

       Eyes once looked from those sockets that no eyes

       Have worn since—oh, with what desperate surprise!

       These arms, uplifted still, were raised in vain

       Against alien triumph and the inward pain.

       Unlock your arms, and be no more distressed,

       Let the wind glide over you easily again.

       It is a dream you fight, a memory

       Of battle lost. And how should dreaming be

       Still