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.