4
And will be soon! For last night near to day,
Dreaming, God called me thro' the space-built sphere
Of heaven and said, "Come, waiting one, and lay
Thine ear unto my Heart—there thou shall hear
The secrets of this world where evils war."
Such things I heard as must rend mortal clay
To tell, and trembled—till God, pitying,
Said, "Listen" ... Oh, my love, I heard thee sing
Out of thy window to the morning star!
[AVOWAL TO THE NIGHTINGALE]
Though thou hast ne'er unpent thy pain's delight
Upon these airs, bird of the poet's love,
Yet must I sing thy singing! for the Night
Has poured her jewels o'er the lap of heaven
As they who've heard thee say thou dost above
The wood such ecstasies as were not given
By nestling breasts of Venus to the dove.
Oft I have watched the moon orb her fair gold,
Still clung to by the tattered mists of day
And look for thee. Then has my hope grown bold
Till almost I could see how the near laurels
Would tremble with thy trembling: but the sway
Of bards who've wreathed thee with unfading chorals
Has held my longing lips from this poor lay.
None but the sky-hid lark whose spirit is
Too high for earth may vie for praise with thee
In aery rhapsody. And since 'tis his
To sing of day and joy as thou of sorrow
And night o'erhovering singest, thou'lt e'er be
More dear than he—till hearts shall cease to borrow
From grief the healing for life's mystery.
Then loose thy song! Though no grave ear may list
Its lyric trouble, still 'tis soothing sweet
To know that songs unheard and graces missed
By every eye melt on the skies that nourish
Us with immortal blue; and, changed, repeat
Their protean loveliness in all we cherish.
For beauty cannot die, howe'er 'tmay fleet.
[STORM-EBB]
Dusking amber dimly creeps
Over the vale,
Lit by the kildee's silver sweeps,
Sad with his wail.
Eastward swing the silent clouds
Into the night.
Burdens of day they seem—in crowds
Hurled from earth's sight.
Tilting gulls whip whitely far
Over the lake,
Tirelessly on o'er buoy and spar
Till they o'ertake
Shadow and mingled mist—and then
Vanish to wing
Still the bewildering night-fen,
Where the waves ring.
Dusking amber dimly dies
Out of the vale.
Dead from the dunes the winds arise—
Ghosts of the gale.
[SLAVES]
A host of bloody centuries lie prone
Upon the fields of Time—but still the wake
Of Progress loud is haunted with the groan
Of myriads, from whose peaceful veins, to slake
His scarlet thirst, has War, fierce Polypheme
Of fate, insatiately drunk Life's stream.
We bid the courier lightning leap along
Its metal path with spaceless speed—command
Stars lost in night-eternity to throng
Before the magnet eye of Science—stand
On Glory's peak and triumphingly cry
Out mastery of earth and sea and air.
But unto War's necessity we bare
Our piteous breasts—and impotently die.
[WAKING]
Oh, the long dawn, the weary, endless dawn,
When sleep's oblivion is torn away
From love that died with dying yesterday
But still unburied in the heart lies on!
Oh, the sick gray, the twitter in the trees,
The sense of human waking o'er the earth!
The quivering memories of love's fair birth
Now strown as deathless flowers o'er its decease!
Oh, the regret, and oh, regretlessness,
Striving for sovranty within the soul!
Oh, fear that life shall never more be whole,
And immortality but make it less!
[FAUN-CALL]
Oh, who is he will follow me
With a singing,
Down sunny roads where windy odes
Of the woods are ringing?
Where leaves are tossed from branches lost
In a tangle
Of vines that vie to clamber high—
But to vault and dangle!
Oh, who is he?—His eye must be
As a lover's
To leap and woo the chicory's hue
In the hazel-hovers!
His hope must dance like radiance
O'er the shadows
Of clouds that fling their threatening
On the stubbly meadows!
And he must see that Autumn's glee
And her laughter
From his lips and heart will quell all smart—
Of before and after!
[LINGERING]
I lingered still when you were gone,
When tryst and trust were o'er,
While memory like a wounded swan
In sorrow sung love's lore.
I lingered till the whippoorwill
Had cried delicious pain
Over the wild-wood—in its thrill
I heard your voice again.
I lingered and the mellow breeze
Blew to me sweetly dewed—
Its touch awoke the sorceries
Your last caresses brewed.
But when the night with silent start
Had sown her starry seed,
The harvest which sprang in my heart
Was loneliness and need.
[STORM-TWILIGHT]
Tossing, swirling, swept by the wind,
Beaten abaft by the rain,
The swallows high in the sodden sky
Circle oft and again.
They rise and sink and drift and swing,
Twitterless in the chill;
A-haste, for stark is the coming dark
Over the wet of the hill.
Wildly, swiftly, at last they stream
Into their chimney home.
A livid gash in the west, a crash—
Then silence, sadness, gloam.
[WILDNESS]
To drift with the drifting clouds,
And blow with the blow of breezes,
To ripple with waves and murmur with caves,
To soar, as the sea-mew pleases!
To dip with the dipping sails,
And burn with the burning heaven—
My life! my soul! for the infinite roll
Of a day to wildness given!
[BEFORE AUTUMN]
Summer's last moon has waned—
Waned
As amber fires
Of an Aztec shrine.
The invisible breath of coming death has stained
The withering leaves with its nepenthean wine—
Autumn's near.
Winds in the woodland moan—
Moan
As memories
Of a chilling yore.
Magnolia seeds like Indian beads are strewn
From crimson pods along the earth's sere floor—
Autumn's near.
Solitude slowly steals,
Steals
Her silent way
By the songless brook.
At the gnarly yoke of a solemn oak she kneels,
The musing joy of sadness in her look—
Autumn's near.
Yes, with her golden days—
Days
When hope and toil
Are at peace and rest—
Autumn is near, and the tired year 'mid praise
Lies down with leaf and blossom on her breast—
Autumn's near.
[FULFILMENT]
A-bask in the mellow beauty of the ripening sun,
Sad with the lingering sense of summer's purpose done,
The cut and searing fields stretch from me one by one
Along the creek.
The corn-stooks drop their shadows down the fallow hill;
Wearing autumnal warmth the farm sleeps by the mill,
Around each heavy eave low smoke hangs blue and still—
Life's flow is weak.
Along the weedy roads and lanes I walk—or pause—
Ponder a fallen nut or quirking crow whose caws
Seem with prehuman hintings fraught or ancient awes
Of forest-deeps.
Of forest deeps the pale-face hunter never trod,
Nor Indian, with the silent stealth of Nature shod;
Deeps tense with the timelessness and solitude of God
Who never sleeps.
And many times has Autumn, on her harvest way,
Gathered again into the earth leaf, fruit, and spray;
Here many times dwelt rueful as she dwells to-day,
The while she reaps.
[TO THE FALLEN LEAVES]
I hear the moaning rains beat on your rest
In the long nights of Winter and his wind—
And Death, the woeful, guilty of your fall,
Crying that he has sinned.
[MAYA]
(Hiroshima, Japan, 1905)
Pale sampans up the river glide
With set sails vanishing and slow;
In the blue west the mountains hide
As visions that too soon will go.
Across the rice-lands flooded deep
The peasant peacefully wades on—
As in unfurrowed vales of sleep,
A phantom out of voidness drawn.
Over the temple cawing flies
The crow with carrion in his beak.
Buddha within lifts not his eyes
In pity or reproval meek;
Nor, in the bamboos, where they bow
A respite from the blinding sun,
The old priest—dreaming painless how
Nirvana's calm will come when won.
"All is allusion, Maya, all
The world of will," the spent East seems
Whispering in me, "And the call
Of Life is but a call of dreams."
[SPIRIT OF RAIN]
(Miyanoshita, Japan, 1905)
Spirit of rain—
With all thy ghosts of mist about the mountain, lonely
As a gray train
Of souls newly discarnate seeking new life only!
Spirit of rain!
Leading them thro' dim torii, up fane-ways onward
Till not in vain
They tremble upon the peaks and plunge rejoicing dawnward.
Spirit of rain!
So would I lead my dead thoughts high and higher,
Till they regain
Birth and the beauty of a new life's fire.
[THE NYMPH AND THE GOD]
She lay by the river dead,
A broken reed in her hand,
The nymph whom an idle god had wed
And led from her maidenland.
The god was the great god, Jove.
Two notes would the bent reed blow,
The one was sorrow, the other love,
Enwove with a woman's woe.
She lay by the river dead,
And he at feasting forgot.
The gods, shall they be disquieted
By dread of a mortal's lot?
[A SEA-GHOST]
Oh, fisher-fleet, go in from the sea
And furl your wings.
The bay is gray with the twilit spray
And the loud surf springs.
The chill buoy-bell is rung by the hands
Of all the drowned,
Who know the woe of the wind and tow
Of the tides around.
Go in, go in! O haste from the sea,
And let them rest—
A son and one who was wed and one
Who went down unblest.
Aye, even as I whose hands at the bell
Now labour most.
The tomb has gloom, but O the doom
Of the drear sea-ghost!
He evermore must wander the ooze
Beneath the wave,
Forlorn—to warn of the tempest born,
And to save—to save!
Then go, go in! and leave us the sea,
For only so
Can peace release us and give us ease
Of our salty woe.
[LAST SIGHT OF LAND]
The clouds in woe hang far and dim:
I look again and lo
Only a faint and shadow line
Of shore—I watch it go.
The gulls have left the ship and wheel
Back to the cliff's gray wraith.
Will it be so of all our thoughts
When we set sail on Death?
And what will the last sight be of life
As lone we fare and fast?
Grief and the face we love in mist—
Then night and awe too vast?
Or the dear light of Hope—like that,
O see, from the lost shore
Kindling and calling "Onward, you
Shall reach the Evermore!"
[SILENCE]
Silence is song unheard,
Is beauty never born,
Is light forgotten—left unstirred
Upon Creation's morn.