The Star-Treader and Other Poems

Incumbent seemingly

On the jagged points of peaks

That end the visible west,

The rounded moon yet floods

The valleys hitherward

With fall of torrential light,

Ere from the overmost

Aggressive mountain-cusp,

She slip to the lower dark.

But here, on an eastward slope

Pointed and thick with its pine,

The forest scarcely remembers

Her light that is gone as a vision

Or ecstasy too poignant

And perilous for duration.

Withdrawn in what darker web

Or dimension of dream I know not,

In silence pre-occupied

And solemnest rectitude

The pines uprear, and no sigh

For the rapture of moonlight past,

Comes from their bosom of boughs.

Far in their secrecy

I stand, and the burden of dusk

Dull, but at times made keen

With tingle of fragrances,

Falls on me as a veil

Between my soul and the world.

What veil of trance, O pines,

Divides you from my soul,

That I feel but enter not

Your distances of dream?

Ah! strange, imperative sense

Of world-deep mystery

That shakes from out your boughs—

A fragrance yet more keen,

Pressing upon the mind.

The wind shall question you

Of the dream I may not gain,

And all its sombreness

And depth immeasurable,

Shall tremble away in sound

Of speech not understood

That my heart must break to hear.