Poems (Spofford)/Sarah Hildreth Butler

SARAH HILDRETH BUTLER.

I.

Do you remember, O you wondrous woman,
In those dim regions where you wander now,—
You, who were always something more than human,
With the large light upon your lofty brow,—
Do you remember all the hours we spent,
All the gay mornings when the tremulous hazes
Swathed the two silver rivers, and the heights
Of pillared Arlington shone through their mazes?
Do you remember the delightful nights
On the proud hill-top, while the city lay
Sparkling below us with her swarming lights,
We like the spirits of some other day,—
Do you remember, you so far away?

II.

What woods were those where, in the April weather,
Dell under dell of darkness and of dew,
Along the Rock Creek paths we rode together!
Over us swept the eagles, swept the blue;
Under us, in green gloom of ferns and foam,
The brook glanced. Here the red-bud broke in blushes,
And like a press of moonbeams far abroad
The dogwood lit the forest glades. The thrushes
Answered our songs unseen. The horses trod
In measure to our music, that glad noon,
On beds of the wild heart's-ease velvet shod.
Singing, we sped, and recked not in our tune.
Of storm, eclipse, and the dark interlune!

III.

Whether the ford splash round me now, or slowly
I loiter up the great hill-side, to rest
Where some old earthwork hides its melancholy
In dew-meshed cobwebs quivering on its breast,
As the rank grass shakes with the wings that skim
From coverts in the blossoming embrasure,
Your conscious presence follows. I am stirred
To see your shape upon the sunlit azure,
To hear the ringing of the voice once heard
In stories of those battailous days when you
Stood with that Lion Heart, whose flaming word
The shackle from the slave forever threw,
While your pulse beat the strain his trumpets blew!

IV.

Again, I mark the mad scream of the breakers
Off Hatteras, and on the slant wet deck,
Amid the wild waste of the whitening acres
Of awful waters leaping for the wreck,
Calm as upon your summer gallery
I see you stitching on the silken pennon;
Firing the faint and waiting hearts of men
That in transfiguring flash and smoke of cannon
Had sprung to fate's embraces. And again,
In the far South, where rolls the turbid tide
Through the morass that plague has made its den,
In veiling vapors creeping far and wide,
I see the yellow death before you hide.

V.

Oh, fair these streets of palaces, with glory
Of columns in long flying lines of light,
With their high fields of sunshine, and the hoary
Vast wastes of the illimitable night,
Mirrored beneath in all the marshy meres,
Whose fusing emerald and sapphire render
Again, where beautiful Potomac slides,
The phantom of the city's marbled splendor,
Or in a dusky wash of starry tides!
Oh, fair these gardens we have haunted, too,
Blown full of roses, where the air that rides
Past cedars and magnolias drenched with dew
Enchants the dark it dreams and dallies through!

VI.

And fair, o'er all, that shrine where, once, adoring,
We saw the moonlight sheet the shining walls,
We saw the inner lamplight softly pouring,
Till the whole pile seemed lucent, and its halls
Twin temples of our liberty; the while,
You gazed,—where high the airier lustre shimmered,
A cloud upon the clouds light lay the dome,
A star among the stars the tholus glimmered,—
Like some patrician lady of old Rome.
Alas! how many women died with you!
For, later, when you turned the page at home,
Your face, your grace, your tears, Queen Constance drew,
The serpent of old Nile your likeness grew!

VII.

To-night, within that home, while all are sleeping,
I sit alone, and watch the midnight wear.
Is it the wind that round the house comes creeping?
Is it your footfall on the polished stair?
Strange visions in the mirrors gleam and go:
Your smiles, your grief, your youth-renewing rapture
In her whose beauty dazzled half a world,
Here, where so late you lived and loved, I capture,
Despite the dart that destiny has hurled.
Oh, answer me: where are you, if not here?
Break the appalling silence round you furled;
Say if your great flame fell, or burns it clear
To-night in some sublimer atmosphere!

VIII.

Alas! With you the whole earth somewhat faded,
Turned from its path of sunshine, where the way
With shadow of great mysteries was shaded;
Some bloom forsook the skies, some charm the day;
Some secret lost the song I paused to hear.
I seem to tread on graves since your swift going
The trembling gates of loss wide open threw;
All things were shaken in your overthrowing,
And age its frosty breath upon me blew.
And still, though life is dear, and dear shall be
Love, and the fresh delights that are not few,
My heart cries to you, wandering far and free,
O great, sweet ghost, do you remember me?