VIII
Up by the idling, idling bell
The tide comes in;
And to the restless heart to-day
The wind has many things to say;
The sea has many a tale to tell
His younger kin.
The gray sea-horses troop and roam;
The shadows fly
Along the wind-floor at their heels;
And where the golden daylight wheels,
A white gull searches the blue dome
With keening cry.
THE COUNTRY OF HAR
For the Centenary of Blake’s “Songs of Innocence”
Once a hundred years ago
There was a light in London town,
For an angel of the snow
Walked her street sides up and down.
As a visionary boy
He put forth his hand to smite
Songs of innocence and joy
From the crying chords of night,
Like a muttering of thunder
Heard beneath the polar star;
For his soul was all a-wonder
At the calling vales of Har.
He, a traveller by day
And a pilgrim of the sun,
Took his uncompanioned way
Where the journey is not done.
Where no mortal might aspire
His clear heart was set to climb,
To the uplands of desire
And the river wells of time.
Home he wandered to the valley
Where the springs of morning are,
And the sea-bright cohorts rally
On the twilit plains of Har.
There he found the Book of Thel
In the lily-garth of bliss,
Fashioned, how no man can tell,
As a white windflower is:
Like the lulling of a sigh
Uttered in the trembling grass,
When a shower is gone by,
And the sweeping shadows pass,—
Through the hyacinthine weather,
Wheel them down without a jar,—
Heaving all the dappled heather
In the streaming vales of Har.
There was manna in the rain;
And above the rills, a voice:
“Son of mine, dost thou complain?
I will make thee to rejoice.
“Thou shalt be a child to men,
With confusion on thy speech;
And the worlds within thy ken
Shall not lie within thy reach.
“But the rainbirds shall discover,
And the daffodils unbar,
Quiet waters for their lover
On the shining plains of Har.
“April rain and iron frost
Shall make flowers to thy hand;
Every field thy feet have crossed
Shall revive from death’s command.
“Hunting with a leash of wind
Through the corners of the earth,
Take the hounds of Spring to find
The forgotten trails of mirth;
“For the lone child-heart is dying
Of a love no time can mar,
Hearing not a voice replying
From the gladder vales of Har.
“Flame thy heart forth! Yet, no haste:
Have not I prepared for thee
The king’s chambers of the East
And the wind halls of the sea?
“Be a gospeller of things
Nowhere written through the wild,
With that gloaming call of Spring’s,
When old secrets haunt the child.
“Let the bugler of my going
Wake no clarion of war;
For the paper reeds are blowing
On the river plains of Har.”
Centuries of soiled renown
To the roaring dark have gone:
There is woe in London town,
And a crying for the dawn.
April frost and iron rain
Ripen the dead fruit of lust,
And the sons of God remain
The dream children of the dust,
For their heart hath in derision,
And their jeers have mocked afar,
The delirium of vision
From the holy vales of Har.
Once in Autumn came a dream;
The white Herald of the North,
Faring West to ford my stream,
Passed my lodge and bade me forth;
Glad I rose and went with him,
With my shoulder in his hand;
The auroral world grew dim,
And the idle harvest land.
Then I saw the warder lifting
From its berg the Northern bar,
And eternal snows were drifting
On the wind-bleak plains of Har.
“Listen humbly,” said my guide.
“I am drear, for I am death,”
Whispered Snow; but Wind replied,
“I outlive thee by a breath,
I am Time.” And then I heard,
Dearer than all wells of dew,
One gray golden-shafted bird
Hail the uplands; so I knew
Spring, the angel of our sorrow,
Tarrying so seeming far,
Should return with some long morrow
In the calling vales of Har.
TO RICHARD LOVELACE
Ah, Lovelace, what desires have sway
In the white shadow of your heart,
Which no more measures day by day,
Nor sets the years apart?
How many seasons for your sake
Have taught men over, age by age,
“Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage!”—
Since that first April when you fared
Into the Gatehouse, well content,
Caring for nothing so you cared
For honor and for Kent.
How many, since the April rain
Beat drear and blossomless and hoar
Through London, when you left Shoe Lane,
A-marching to no war!
Till now, with April on the sea,
And sunshine in the woven year,
The rain-winds loose from reverie
A lyric and a cheer.
A SEAMARK
A Threnody for Robert Louis Stevenson
Cold, the dull cold! What ails the sun,
And takes the heart out of the day?
What makes the morning look so mean,
The Common so forlorn and gray?
The wintry city’s granite heart
Beats on in iron mockery,
And like the roaming mountain rains,
I hear the thresh of feet go by.
It is the lonely human surf
Surging through alleys chill with grime,
The muttering churning ceaseless floe
Adrift out of the North of time.
Fades, it all fades! I only see
The poster with its reds and blues
Bidding the heart stand still to take
Its desolating stab of news.
That intimate and magic name:
“Dead in Samoa.” ... Cry your cries,
O city of the golden dome,
Under the gray Atlantic skies!
But I have wander-biddings now.
Far down the latitudes of sun,
An island mountain of the sea,
Piercing the green and rosy zone,
Goes up into the wondrous day.
And there the brown-limbed island men
Are bearing up for burial,
Within the sun’s departing ken,
The master of the roving kind.
And there where time will set no mark
For his irrevocable rest,
Under the spacious melting dark,
With all the nomad tented stars
About him, they have laid him down
Above the crumbling of the sea,
Beyond the turmoil of renown.
O all you hearts about the world
In whom the truant gipsy blood,
Under the frost of this pale time,
Sleeps like the daring sap and flood
That dream of April and reprieve!
You whom the haunted vision drives,
Incredulous of home and ease,
Perfection’s lovers all your lives!
You whom the wander-spirit loves
To lead by some forgotten clue
Forever vanishing beyond
Horizon brinks forever new;
The road, unmarked, ordained, whereby
Your brothers of the field and air
Before you, faithful, blind and glad,
Emerged from chaos pair by pair;
The road whereby you too must come,
In the unvexed and fabled years
Into the country of your dream,
With all your knowledge in arrears!
You, who can never quite forget
Your glimpse of Beauty as she passed,
The well-head where her knee was pressed,
The dew wherein her foot was cast;
O you who bid the paint and clay
Be glorious when you are dead,
And fit the plangent words in rhyme
Where the dark secret lurks unsaid;
You brethren of the light-heart guild,
The mystic fellowcraft of joy,
Who tarry for the news of truth,
And listen for some vast ahoy
Blown in from sea, who crowd the wharves
With eager eyes that wait the ship
Whose foreign tongue may fill the world
With wondrous tales from lip to lip;
Our restless loved adventurer,
On secret orders come to him,
Has slipped his cable, cleared the reef,
And melted on the white sea-rim.
O granite hills, go down in blue!
And like green clouds in opal calms,
You anchored islands of the main,
Float up your loom of feathery palms!
For deep within your dales, where lies
A valiant earthling stark and dumb,
This savage undiscerning heart
Is with the silent chiefs who come
To mourn their kin and bear him gifts,—
Who kiss his hand, and take their place,
This last night he receives his friends,
The journey-wonder on his face.
He “was not born for age.” Ah no,
For everlasting youth is his!
Part of the lyric of the earth
With spring and leaf and blade he is.
’Twill nevermore be April now
But there will lurk a thought of him
At the street corners, gay with flowers
From rainy valleys purple-dim.
O chiefs, you do not mourn alone!
In that stern North where mystery broods,
Our mother grief has many sons
Bred in those iron solitudes.
It does not help them, to have laid
Their coil of lightning under seas;
They are as impotent as you
To mend the loosened wrists and knees.
And yet how many a harvest night,
When the great luminous meteors flare
Along the trenches of the dusk,
The men who dwell beneath the Bear,
Seeing those vagrants of the sky
Float through the deep beyond their hark,
Like Arabs through the wastes of air,—
A flash, a dream, from dark to dark,—
Must feel the solemn large surmise:
By a dim vast and perilous way
We sweep through undetermined time,
Illumining this quench of clay,
A moment staunched, then forth again.
Ah, not alone you climb the steep
To set your loving burden down
Against the mighty knees of sleep.
With you we hold the sombre faith
Where creeds are sown like rain at sea;
And leave the loveliest child of earth
To slumber where he longed to be.
His fathers lit the dangerous coast
To steer the daring merchant home;
His courage lights the dark’ning port
Where every sea-worn sail must come.
And since he was the type of all
That strain in us which still must fare,
The fleeting migrant of a day,
Heart-high, outbound for otherwhere,
Now therefore, where the passing ships
Hang on the edges of the noon,
And Northern liners trail their smoke
Across the rising yellow moon,
Bound for his home, with shuddering screw
That beats its strength out into speed,
Until the pacing watch descries
On the sea-line a scarlet seed
Smolder and kindle and set fire
To the dark selvedge of the night,
The deep blue tapestry of stars,
Then sheet the dome in pearly light,
There in perpetual tides of day,
Where men may praise him and deplore,
The place of his lone grave shall be
A seamark set forevermore,
High on a peak adrift with mist,
And round whose bases, far beneath
The snow-white wheeling tropic birds,
The emerald dragon breaks his teeth.
THE WORD OF THE WATER
For the Unveiling of the Stevenson Fountain in San Francisco
God made me simple from the first,
And good to quench your body’s thirst.
Think you he has no ministers
To glad that wayworn soul of yours?
Here by the thronging Golden Gate
For thousands and for you I wait,
Seeing adventurous sails unfurled
For the four corners of the world.
Here passed one day, nor came again,
A prince among the tribes of men.
(For man, like me, is from his birth
A vagabond upon this earth.)
Be thankful, friend, as you pass on,
And pray for Louis Stevenson,
That by whatever trail he fare
He be refreshed in God’s great care!
PHILLIPS BROOKS
This is the white winter day of his burial.
Time has set here of his toiling the span
Earthward, naught else. Cheer him out through the portal,
Heart-beat of Boston, our utmost in man!
Out in the broad open sun be his funeral,
Under the blue for the city to see.
Over the grieving crowd mourn for him, bugle!
Churches are narrow to hold such as he.
Here on the steps of the temple he builded,
Rest him a space, while the great city square
Throngs with his people, his thousands, his mourners;
Tears for his peace and a multitude’s prayer.
How comes it, think you, the town’s traffic pauses
Thus at high noon? Can we wealthmongers grieve?
Here in the sad surprise greatest America
Shows for a moment her heart on her sleeve.
She who is said to give life-blood for silver,
Proves, without show, she sets higher than gold
Just the straight manhood, clean, gentle, and fearless,
Made in God’s likeness once more as of old.
Once more the crude makeshift law overproven,—
Soul pent from sin will seek God in despite;
Once more the gladder way wins revelation,—
Soul bent on God forgets evil outright.
Once more the seraph voice sounding to beauty,
Once more the trumpet tongue bidding, no fear!
Once more the new, purer plan’s vindication,—
Man be God’s forecast, and Heaven is here.
Bear him to burial, Harvard, thy hero!
Not on thy shoulders alone is he borne;
They of the burden go forth on the morrow,
Heavy and slow, through a world left forlorn.
No grief for him, for ourselves the lamenting;
What giant arm to stay courage up now?
March we a thousand file up to the City,
Fellow with fellow linked, he taught us how!
Never dismayed at the dark nor the distance!
Never deployed for the steep nor the storm!
Hear him say, “Hold fast, the night wears to morning!
This God of promise is God to perform.”
Up with thee, heart of fear, high as the heaven!
Thou hast known one wore this life without stain.
What if for thee and me,—street, Yard, or Common,—
Such a white captain appear not again!
Fight on alone! Let the faltering spirit
Within thee recall how he carried a host,
Rearward and van, as Wind shoulders a dust-heap;
One Way till strife be done, strive each his most.
Take the last vesture of beauty upon thee,
Thou doubting world; and with not an eye dim
Say, when they ask if thou knowest a Saviour,
“Brooks was His brother, and we have known him.”
JOHN ELIOT BOWEN
Here at the desk where once you sat,
Who wander now with poets dead
And summers gone, afield so far,
There sits a stranger in your stead.
Here day by day men come who knew
Your steadfast ways and loved you well;
And every comer with regret
Has some new thing of praise to tell.
The poet old, whose lyric heart
Is fresh as dew and bright as flame,
Longs for “his boy,” and finds you not,
And goes the wistful way he came.
Here where you toiled without reproach,
Builded and loved and dreamed and planned,
At every door, on every page,
Lurks the tradition of your hand.
And if to you, like reverie,
There comes a thought of how they fare
Whose footsteps go the round you went
Of noisy street and narrow stair,
Know they have learned a new desire,
Which puts unfaith and faltering by;
And triumph fills their dream because
One life was leal, one hope was high.
HENRY GEORGE
We are only common people,
And he was a man like us.
But he loved his fellows before himself;
And he died for me and you,
To redeem the world anew
From cruelty and greed—
For love the only creed,
For honor the only law.
There once was a man of the people,
A man like you and me,
Who worked for his daily bread,
And he loved his fellows before himself.
But he died at the hands of the throng
To redeem the world from wrong,
And we call him the Son of God,
Because of the love he had.
And there was a man of the people,
Who sat in the people’s chair,
And bade the slaves go free;
For he loved his fellows before himself.
They took his life; but his word
They could not take. It was heard
Over the beautiful earth,
A thunder and whisper of love.
And there is no other way,
Since man of woman was born,
Than the way of the rebels and saints,
With loving and labor vast,
To redeem the world at last
From cruelty and greed;
For love is the only creed,
And honor the only law.
ILICET
Friends, let him rest
In midnight now.
Desire has gone
On the weary quest
With aching brow;
Until the dawn,
Friends, let him rest.
With a boy’s desire
He set the cup
To his lips to drink;
The ruddy fire
Was lifted up
At day’s cool brink,
With a boy’s desire.
The heart of a boy!
He tasted life,
And the bitter sting
Of sorrow in joy,
Failure in strife,
Was pain to wring
The heart of a boy.
In a childish whim,
He spilled the wine
Upon the floor,—
In beads on the brim
Was a glitter of brine,—
Then, out at the door
In a childish whim!
Out of the storm,
In the flickering light,
A broken glass
Lies on our warm
Hearthstone to-night,
While shadows pass
Out of the storm.
Friends, let him rest
In midnight now.
Desire has gone
On the weary quest
With aching brow:
Until the dawn,
Friends, let him rest.
In sorrow and shame
For the craven heart,
In manhood’s breast
With valor’s name,
Let him depart
Unto his rest
In sorrow and shame.
In after years
God, who bestows
Or withholds the valor,
Shall wipe all tears—
Haply, who knows?—
From his face’s pallor
In after years.
He could not learn
To fight with his peers
In sturdier fashion;
Let him return
Through the night with tears,
Stung with the passion
He could not learn.
All-bountiful, calm,
Where the great stars burn,
And the spring bloom smothers
The night with balm,
Let him return
To the silent Mother’s
All-bountiful calm.
Friends, let him rest
In midnight now.
Desire has gone
On the weary quest
With aching brow:
Until the dawn,
Friends, let him rest.
TO RAPHAEL
Master of adored Madonnas,
What is this men say of thee?
Thou wert something less than honor’s
Most exact epitome?
Yes, they say you loved too many,
Loved too often, loved too well.
Just as if there could be any
Over-loving, Raphael!
Was it, “Sir, and how came this tress,
Long and raven? Mine are gold!”
You should have made Art your mistress,
Lived an anchorite and old!
Ah, no doubt these dear good people
On familiar terms with God,
Could devise a parish steeple
Built to heaven without a hod.
You and Solomon and Cæsar
Were three fellows of a kind;
Not a woman but to please her
You would leave your soul behind.
Those dead women with their beauty,
How they must have loved you well,—
Dared to make desire a duty,
With the heretics in hell!
And your brother, that Catullus,
What a plight he must be in,
If those silver songs that lull us
Were result of mortal sin!
If the artist were ungodly,
Prurient of mind and heart,
I must think they argue oddly
Who make shrines before his art.
Not the meanest aspiration
Ever sprung from soul depraved
Into art, but art’s elation
Was the sanctity it craved.
Oh, no doubt you had your troubles,
Devils blue that blanched your hope.
I dare say your fancy’s bubbles,
Breaking, had a taste of soap.
Did your lady-loves undo you
In some mediæval way?
Ah, my Raphael, here’s to you!
It is much the same to-day.
Did their tantalizing laughter
Make your wisdom overbold?
Were you fire at first; and after,
Did their kisses leave you cold?
Did some fine perfidious Nancy,
With the roses in her hair,
Play the marsh-fire to your fancy
Over quagmires of despair?
My poor boy, were there more flowers
In your Florence and your Rome,
Wasting through the gorgeous hours,
Than your two hands could bring home?
Be content; you have your glory;
Life was full and sleep is well.
What the end is of the story,
There’s no paragraph to tell.
TO P. V.
So they would raise your monument,
Old vagabond of lovely earth?
Another answer without words
To Humdrum’s, “What are poets worth?”
Not much we gave you when alive,
Whom now we lavishly deplore,—
A little bread, a little wine,
A little caporal—no more.
Here in our lodging of a day
You roistered till we were appalled;
Departing, in your room we found
A string of golden verses scrawled.
The princely manor-house of art,
A vagrant artist entertains;
And when he gets him to the road,
Behold, a princely gift remains.
Abashed, we set your name above
The purse-full patrons of our board;
Remind newcomers with a nudge,
“Verlaine took once what we afford!”
The gardens of the Luxembourg,
Spreading beneath the brilliant sun,
Shall be your haunt of leisure now
When all your wander years are done.
There you shall stand, the very mien
You wore in Paris streets of old,
And ponder what a thing is life,
Or watch the chestnut blooms unfold.
There you will find, I dare surmise,
Another tolerance than ours,
The loving-kindness of the grass,
The tender patience of the flowers.
And every year, when May returns
To bring the golden age again,
And hope comes back with poetry
In your loved land across the Seine,
Some youth will come with foreign speech,
Bearing his dream from over sea,
A lover of your flawless craft,
Apprenticed to your poverty.
He will be mute before you there,
And mark those lineaments which tell
What stormy unrelenting fate
Had one who served his art so well.
And there be yours, the livelong day,
Beyond the mordant reach of pain,
The little gospel of the leaves,
The Nunc dimittis of the rain!
A NORSE CHILD’S REQUIEM
Sleep soundly, little Thorlak,
Where all thy peers have lain,
A hero of no battle,
A saint without a stain!
Thy courage be upon thee,
Unblemished by regret,
For that adventure whither
Thy tiny march was set.
The sunshine be above thee,
With birds and winds and trees.
Thy way-fellows inherit
No better things than these.
And silence be about thee,
Turned back from this our war
To front alone the valley
Of night without a star.
The soul of love and valor,
Indifferent to fame,
Be with thee, heart of vikings,
Beyond the breath of blame.
Thy moiety of manhood
Unspent and fair, go down,
And, unabashed, encounter
Thy brothers of renown.
So modest in thy freehold
And tenure of the earth,
Thy needs, for all our meddling,
Are few and little worth.
Content thee, not with pity;
Be solaced, not with tears;
But when the whitethroats waken
Through the revolving years,
Hereafter be that peerless
And dirging cadence, child,
Thy threnody unsullied,
Melodious, and wild.
Then winter be thy housing,
Thy lullaby the rain,
Thou hero of no battle,
Thou saint without a stain.
IN THE HEART OF THE HILLS
In the warm blue heart of the hills
My beautiful, beautiful one
Sleeps where he laid him down
Before the journey was done.
All the long summer day
The ghosts of noon draw nigh,
And the tremulous aspens hear
The footing of winds go by.
Down to the gates of the sea,
Out of the gates of the west,
Journeys the whispering river
Before the place of his rest.
The road he loved to follow
When June came by his door,
Out through the dim blue haze
Leads, but allures no more.
The trailing shadows of clouds
Steal from the slopes and are gone;
The myriad life in the grass
Stirs, but he slumbers on;
The inland wandering tern
Skreel as they forage and fly;
His loons on the lonely reach
Utter their querulous cry;
Over the floating lilies
A dragon-fly tacks and steers;
Far in the depth of the blue
A martin settles and veers;
To every roadside thistle
A gold-brown butterfly clings;
But he no more companions
All the dear vagrant things.
The strong red journeying sun,
The pale and wandering rain,
Will roam on the hills forever
And find him never again.
Then twilight falls with the touch
Of a hand that soothes and stills,
And a swamp-robin sings into light
The lone white star of the hills.
Alone in the dusk he sings,
And a burden of sorrow and wrong
Is lifted up from the earth
And carried away in his song.
Alone in the dusk he sings,
And the joy of another day
Is folded in peace and borne
On the drift of years away.
But there in the heart of the hills
My beautiful weary one
Sleeps where he laid him down;
And the large sweet night is begun.
AN AFTERWORD
To G. B. R.
Brother, the world above you
Is very fair to-day,
And all things seem to love you
The old accustomed way.
Here in the heavenly weather
In June’s white arms you sleep,
Where once on the hills together
Your haunts you used to keep.
The idling sun that lazes
Along the open field
And gossips to the daisies
Of secrets unrevealed;
The wind that stirs the grasses
A moment, and then stills
Their trouble as he passes
Up to the darkling hills,—
And to the breezy clover
Has many things to say
Of that unwearied rover
Who once went by this way;
The miles of elm-treed meadows;
The clouds that voyage on,
Streeling their noiseless shadows
From countries of the sun;
The tranquil river reaches
And the pale stars of dawn;
The thrushes in their beeches
For reverie withdrawn;
With all your forest fellows
In whom the blind heart calls,
For whom the green leaf yellows,
On whom the red leaf falls;
The dumb and tiny creatures
Of flower and blade and sod,
That dimly wear the features
And attributes of God;
The airy migrant comers
On gauzy wings of fire,
Those wanderers and roamers
Of indefinite desire;
The rainbirds and all dwellers
In solitude and peace,
Those lingerers and foretellers
Of infinite release;
Yea, all the dear things living
That rove or bask or swim,
Remembering and misgiving,
Have felt the day grow dim.
Even the glad things growing,
Blossom and fruit and stem,
Are poorer for your going
Because you were of them.
Yet since you loved to cherish
Their pleading beauty here,
Your heart shall not quite perish
In all the golden year;
But God’s great dream above them
Must be a tinge less pale,
Because you lived to love them
And make their joy prevail.
SEVEN WIND SONGS
Now these are the seven wind songs
For Andrew Straton’s death,
Blown through the reeds of the river,
A sigh of the world’s last breath,
Where the flickering red auroras
Out on the dark sweet hills
Follow all night through the forest
The cry of the whip-poor-wills.
For the meanings of life are many,
But the purpose of love is one,
Journeying, tarrying, lonely
As the sea wind or the sun.