6.

And here alone I sit and see it so. A vale of willows swelling into knobs, A bulwark eastward. Sloping low Westward the scooping waters flow Under a rocky culvert's arch that throbs With clanging wheels of transient trains that go Screaming to north and south. Here all the weary waters, stagnant stayed, Sleep at the culvert's mouth; The current's hungry hiccup still afraid, Haply, that I should never know The secret 'neath the striate scum o' the stream The devil and the dream, I, dropping gravels so the echo sob Mocking and thin as music of a shade In shades that wring from rocks a hollow woe, Complaining phantoms of faint whispers rob.

There, up the valley where the lank grass leaps Blades each a crooked kris, The currents strike or miss Dream melodies: No wide-belled mallow sleeps Monandrous flowers oval as a kiss; No mandrake curling convolutions up Loops heavy blossoms, each a conical cup That swoons moon-nectar and a serpent's hiss; No tiger-lily, where the crayfish play, Mirrors a savage face, a copper hue Streaked with a crimson dew; No dragon-fly in endless error keeps Sewing the pale-gold gown of day With tangled stitches of a burning blue,— Whose brilliant body but a needle is, An azurn and incarnate ray:— But here, where haunted with the shade, The dull stream stales and dies, Are beauties none or few, Such sinister and new; And one at widest noon-gaze shrinks afraid Beneath the timid skies; So, if you ask me why I answer this:—

You know not; only where the kildees wade There in the foamy scum, There where the wet rocks ail,— Low rocks to which the water-reptiles come, Basking pied bodies in the brindled shade,— Dim as a bubble's prism on the grail Below, an angled sparkle rayed, While lights and shadows aid From breeze-blown clouds that lounge at sunny loss, Deep down, a sense of wavy features quail The heart; with lips that writhe and fade And clench; tough, rooty limbs that twist and cross, And flabby hair of smoky moss.

A brimstone sunset. And at night The twinkling flies in will-o'-the-wisp dance wheel Through copse and open, all a gnomish green. I hear the water, and the wave is white There where the boulder plants a keel, And each taunt ripple 's sheen.— Where instant insects dot The dark with spurts of sulphur—bright, Beneath the hazy height, No bitter-almond trees make wan the night, Building bloom ridges of a ghostly lustre, But white-tops tossing cluster over cluster: Huge-seen within that twilight spot— As if a hill-born giant, half asleep, Had dropped his night-cap while he drove his sheep Foldward through fallow browns And foxy grays,—a something crowns The knoll—is it the odorous peak Of one June-savory timothy stack?

Now, one dead ash behind, A weak moon shows a withered cheek Of Quaker quiet, wasted o'er the vines' Appentice ruins roofing pillared pines: Beyond these, back and back, An oak-wood stretches black— And here the whining were-wolves of the wind Snuff snarling: but their eyes are blind, Although their fangs are fierce; And though they never pierce Beyond the bad, bedevilled woodland streak, I hear them, yes, I hear A padding o' footsteps near, A prowling pant in ear And can not fly!—yes!—no!— What horror holds me?—That uncoiling slow, Sure, mastering chimera there, Hooping firm unseen feelers 'round my neck A binding, bruising coil ... The waters burn and boil; The fire-flies the dappled darkness fleck With impish dabs of blazing wizard's oil ... Deep, deep into the black eye of the beck I stare, magnetic fixed, and little reck If all the writhing shadow slips, Dripping around me, to the eyes and hips, Where grinning murder leers with lupine lips.