THE PHANTOM AND THE DREAMER
Phantom:
Thick stands the hill in garb of fir,
And winter-stripped the branching shrub.
Cold gray the sky, and glistered o’er
With star-dust pulsing tremorously.
Snow, the lady of the Winter Knight,
Hath danced her weary and fallen to her rest.
She lieth stretched in purity
And dimpled ’neath the trees.
A trackless waste doth lie from hill
To valley ’neath, and Winter’s Knight
Doth sing a wooing lay unto his love.
Cot on cot doth stand deserted,
And thro’ the purpled dark they show
Like phantoms of a life long passed
To nothingness. Hear thou the hollowness
Of the sea’s coughing beat against
The cliff beneath, and harken ye
To the silence of the valley there.
Doth chafe ye of thy loneliness?
Then sleep and let me put a dream to thee.
See ye the cot—
A speck o’ dark adown the hillside,
And sheltered o’er with fir-bows,
Heavy-laden with the kiss of Lady Snow?
Come hither then. Let’s bruise this snowy breast,
And fetch us there unto its door.
See! Here a twig
Hath battled with the wind, and lost.
We then may cast it ’mid its brothers
Of the bush and plow us on.
Look ye to the thick thatch
O’er the gable of the roof,
Piled higher with a blanketing of snow;
And shutters hang agape, to rattle
Like the cackle of a crone.
The blackness of a pit within,
And filled with sounds that tho’ they be
But seasoning of the log, doth freeze
Thy marrowmeat. I feel the quake
And shake thee for thy fear.
Stride thou within and set a flint to brush
Within the chimney-place. We then shall rouse
The memory of the tenant here—
A night, my friend, thee’lt often call to mind.
The flame hath sprung and lappeth at the twigs.
Thee’lt watch the burning of thy hastiness,
And wait thee long
Until the embers slip away to smoke.
Then strain ye to its weaving
And spell to me the reading of its folds.
Dreamer:
I see thin, threading lines that writhe them
To a shape—a visage ever changeful,
Or mine eyes do play me false,
For it doth smile to twist it to a leer,
And sadden but to laugh in mockery.
I see a lad whose face
Doth shine illumed, and he doth bear
The kiss of wisdom on his brow.
I see him travail ’neath a weary load,
And close beside him Wisdom follows on.
Burdened not is he. Do I see aright?
For still the light of wisdom shineth o’er.
But stay! What! Do mine eyes then cheat?
This twisting smoke-wreath
Filleth all too much my sight!
Phantom:
Nay, friend, strain thee now anew.
The lad! Now canst thou see?
Nay, for like to him
Thou hast looked thee at the face of Doubt.
Dreamer:
Who art thou, shape or phantom, then,
That thou canst set my dream to flight?
I doubt me that the lad could stand
Beneath the load!
Phantom:
Nay, thee canst ravel well, my friend.
The lad was thee, and Doubt
O’ertook with Wisdom on thy way.
Come, bury Doubt aneath the ash.
We travel us anew.
Seest thou, a rimming moon doth show
From ’neath the world’s beshadowed side.
A night bird chatteth to its mate,
And lazily the fir-boughs wave.
We track us to the cot whose roof
Doth sag—and why thy shambling tread?
I bid ye on!
Dreamer:
Who art thou—again I that demand—
That I shall follow at thy bidding?
Who set me then this task?
Phantom:
Step thou within!
Stand thee on the thresh of this roofless void!
Look thou! Dost see the maid
Who coyly stretcheth forth her hand
To welcome thee? She biddeth thee
To sit and sup. I bid thee speak.
Awaken thee unto her welcoming.
Dreamer:
Enough! This fancy-breeding sickeneth
My very soul! A skeleton of murdered trees,
Ribbed with pine and shanked of birch!
And thee wouldst bid me then
Embrace the emptiness.
I see naught, and believe but what I see.
Phantom:
Look thou again, and strain.
What seest thou?
Dreamer:
I see a newly kindled fire,
And watch its burning glow until
The embers die and send their ghosts aloft.
But ash remaineth—and I chill!
For rising there, a shape
Whose visage twisteth drunkenly,
And from her garments falls a dust of ash.
Phantom:
Doubt! Unburied, friende! We journey on,
And mark ye well each plodding footfall
Singing like to golden metal with the frost.
The night a scroll of white, and lined
With blackish script—
The lines of His own putting!
Read thee there! Thou seest naught,
And believe but what ye see!
Stark nakedness and waste—but hearken ye!
The frost skirt traileth o’er the crusted snow
And singeth young leaves’ songs of Spring.
Still art thou blind!
But at His touching shall the darkness bud
And bloom to rosy morn. And even now,
Were I to snap a twig ’twould bleed and die.
See ye; ’tis done! Look ye!
Ye believe but what ye see:
Here within thy very hand
Thou holdest Doubt’s undoing.
I bid ye look upon the bud
Already gathered ’neath the tender bark.
The sun’s set and rise hath coaxed it forth.
Thee canst see the rogue hath stolen red
And put it to its heart. And here
Aneath the snow the grass doth love the earth
And nestles to her breast.
I stand me here, and lo, the Spring hath broke!
The dark doth slip away to hide,
And flowering, singing, sighing, loving Spring
Is here!
Dreamer:
Aye, thou art indeed
A wonder-worker in the night!
A black pall, a freezing blast,
An unbroken path—and thou
Wouldst have me then to prate o’ Spring,
And pluck a bud where dark doth hide the bush!
Who cometh from the thicket higher there?
Phantom:
’Tis Doubt to meet thee, friend!
Dreamer:
Who art thou? I fain would flee,
And yet I fear to leave lest I be lost.
I hate thee and thy weary task!
Phantom:
Nay, brother, thy lips do spell,
But couldst thee read their words aright
Thee wouldst meet again with Doubt.
Come! We journey on unto the cot
Beloved the most by me. I bid thee
Let thy heart to warm within thy breast.
A thawing melteth frozen Hope.
See how, below, the sea hath veiled
Her secret held so close,
And murmured only to the winds
Who woo her ever and anon.
The waves do lap them, hungry for the sands.
Careful! Lest the sun’s pale rise
Should blind thee with its light.
A shaft to put it through
The darkness of thy soul must needs
But be a glimmering to blind.
Step ye to the hearthstone then,
And set thee there a flame anew.
I bid ye read again
The folding of the smoke.
Dreamer:
’Tis done, thou fiend!
A pretty play for fools, indeed.
I swear me that ’tis not
For loving of the task I builded it,
But for the warming of its glow.
Phantom:
In truth ye speak. But read!
Dreamer:
I see a hag whose brow
Doth wrinkle like a summer sea.
For do I look unto the sea
At Beauty’s own fair form,
It writheth to a twisted shape,
And I do doubt me of her loveliness.
The haggard visage of the crone
I now behold, doth set me doubting
Of mine eye, for dimples seem
To flutter ’neath the wrinkled cheek.
Phantom:
So, then, thee believest
But what thine eyes behold!
Thee findest then
Thy seeing in a sorry plight.
I marvel at thy wisdom, lad.
Look ye anew. Mayhap thee then
Canst coax the crone away.
Dreamer:
Enough! The morn hath kissed the night adieu,
And even while I prate
A redwing crimsoneth the snow in flight.
Kindled tinder smoldereth away,
And I do strain me to its fold.
I glut me of the loveliness I there behold,
For from the writhing stream a sprite is born
Whose beauteous form bedazzles me,
And she doth point me
To the golding gray of morn. The sea
Is singing, singing her unto my soul.
I dreamed she sighed, but waked to hear her sing.
I hear thee, Phantom, bidding me on, on!
But morn hath stolen dreams away.
I strain me to the hills to trace our path,
And lo, unbroken is the snow,
And cots have melted with the light,
And yet, methinks a murmuring doth come
From out the echoes of the night,
That hid them ’neath the crannies of the hills.
Life! Life! I lead thee on!
And faith doth spring from seedlings of thy doubt!
Epilogue.
Thick stands the hill in garb of fir and snow.
The Lady of the Winter’s Knight hath danced
Her weary, and stretched her in her purity,
To cover aching wounds of Winter’s overloving woo.
“And faith doth spring from seedlings of thy doubt!” plainly meaning an active doubt that searches for the truth and finds it. But she personifies Doubt in another and more forbidding form in this:
Like to a thief who wrappeth him
Within the night-tide’s robe,
So standeth the specter o’ the Earth;
Yea, he doth robe him o’ the Earth’s fair store.
Yea, he decketh in the star-hung purple o’ the eve,
And reacheth from out the night unto the morn,
And wringeth from her waking all her gold,
And at his touching, lo, the stars are dust,
And morn’s gold but heat’s glow, and ne’er
The golden blush of His own metal store.
Yea, he strideth then
Upon the flower-hung couches of the field,
And traileth him thereon his robe,
And lo, the flowers do die of thirst
And parch of scoarching of his breath.
Yea, and ’mid the musics of the earth he strideth him,
And full-songed throats are mute.
Yea, music dieth of his luring glance.
And e’en the love of earth he seeketh out
And turneth it unto a folly-play.
Yea, beneath his glance, the fairy frost
Upon the love sprite’s wing
Doth flutter, as a dust, and drop, and leave
But bruised and broken bearers for His store.
Yea, and ’mid man’s day he ever strideth him
And layeth low man’s reasoning. His robes
Are hung of all the earth’s most loved.
From off the flowers their fresh; from off the day
The fairness of her hours. For dark, and hid
Beneath his cloak, he steppeth ever,
And doth hiss his name to thee—
Doubt.
I have said that the message of Patience Worth contained a revelation, a religion and a promise. The revelation is too obvious to need a pointer. In the preceding chapter were presented the elements of the religion that she reveals, with which should be included the unfaltering faith expressed in these poems. Love and Faith—these are the two Graces upon whom, to personify them, all her work is rested, and from them spring the promise she conveys. That promise has to do with the hereafter, and Patience knows the human attitude in relation to that universal problem, and she gives courage to the shrinking heart in this poem on the fear of death:
I stride abroad before my brothers like a roaring lion,
Yet at even’s close from whence cometh the icy hand
That clutcheth at my heart and maketh me afraid—
The slipping of myself away, I know not whither?
And lo, I fall atremble.
When I would grasp a straw, ’tis then I find it not.
Can I then trust me on this journey lone
To country I deem peopled, but know not?
My very heart declareth faith, yet hath not thine
Been touched and chilled by this same phantom?
Ah, through the granite sips the lichen—
And hast thou not a long dark journey made?
Why fear? As cloud wreaths fade
From spring’s warm smile, so shall fear
Be put to flight by faith.
I pluck me buds of varied hue and choose the violet
To weave a garland for my loved and best.
I search for bloom among the rocks
And find but feathery plume.
I weave, and lo, the blossoms fade
Before I reach the end,
And faded lie amid my tears—
And yet I weave and weave.
I search for jewels ’neath the earth,
And find them at the dawn,
Besprinkled o’er the rose and leaf,
And showered by the sparrow’s wing,
Who seeketh ’mid the dew-wet vine
A harbor for her home.
I search for truth along the way
And find but dust and web,
And in the smile of infant lips
I know myself betrayed.
I watch the swallow skim across the blue
To homelands of the South,
And ah, the gnawing at my heart doth cease;
For how he wings and wings
To lands he deemeth peopled by his brothers,
Whose song he hears in flight!
Not skimming on the lake’s fair breast is he,
But winging on and on,
And dim against the feathery cloud
He fades into the blue.
I stand with withered blossoms crushed,
And weave and weave and weave.
This is Patience’s answer to the eternal question:
Can I then trust me on this journey lone
To country I deem peopled, but know not?
It is the cry of him who believes and yet doubts, and Patience points to the swallow winging across the blue “to lands he deemeth peopled with his brothers” who have gone on before. In imagination he can hear their song in the home lands of the South, and though he cannot see them, and cannot have had word from them, he knows they are there, and he does not skim uncertainly about the lake, but with unfaltering faith “wings him on and on” until—
Dim against the feathery cloud
He fades into the blue.
But Patience does not content herself with appeals to faith, eloquent as they may be. While her communications are always clothed in figures of speech, they are sometimes more definite in statement than in the lines which have been thus far presented. In the prose poem which follows, she asks and answers the question in a way that can leave no doubt of her meaning:
“Shall I arise and know thee, brother, when like a bubble I am blown into Eternity from this pipe of clay? Or shall I burst and float my atoms in a joyous spray at the first beholding of this home prepared for thee and me, and shall we together mingle our joys in one supreme joy in Him? It matters not, beloved, so comfort thee. For should the blowing be the end, what then? Hath not thy pack been full, and mine? We are o’erweary with the work of living, and sinking to oblivion would be rest. Yet sure as sun shall rise, my dust shall be unloosed, and blow into new fields of new days. I see full fields yet to be harvested, and I am weary. I see fresh business of living, work yet to be done, and I am weary. Oh, let me fold these tired hands and sleep. Beloved, I trust, and expect my trust, for ne’er yet did He fail.”
She puts this into the mouth of one who lives, but it is not merely an expression of faith; it is a positive assertion. “Yet sure as sun shall rise, my dust shall be unloosed, and blow into new fields of new days.”
And again she sings:
What carest, dear, should sorrow trace
Where dimples sat, and should
Her dove-gray cloud to settle ’neath thine eye?
The withering of thy curving cheek
Bespeaks the spending of thy heart.
Lips once full are bruised
By biting of restraint. Wax wiser, dear.
To wane is but to rest and rise once more.
Or she puts the thought in another form in this assurance:
Weary not, O brother!
’Tis apaled, the sun’s gold sink.
Then weary not, but set thy path to end,
E’en as the light doth fade and leave
Nay trace to mar the night’s dark tide.
Sink thou, then, as doth the sun,
Assured that thou shalt rise!
All these, however, are but preparatory to the communication in which she asserts not only the actuality of the future life but something of the nature of it. One might say that the preceding poems and prose-poems, taken alone and without regard to the mystery of their source, were merely expressions of belief, but in this communication she seems to speak with knowledge, seems even to have overstepped the bounds within which, she has often asserted, she is held. “My lips be astopped,” she has said in answer to a request for information of this forbidden character, but here she appears to have been permitted to give a glimpse of the unknown, and to present a promise of universal application. This poem, from the spiritual standpoint, is the most remarkable of all her productions.
How have I caught at fleeting joys
And swifter fleeting sorrows!
And days and nights, and morns and eves,
And seasons, too, aslipping thro’ the years, afleet.
And whither hath their trend then led?
Ah, whither!
How do I to stop amid the very pulse o’ life.
Afeared! Yea, fear clutcheth at my very heart!
For what? The night? Nay, night doth shimmer
And flash the jewels I did count
E’er fear had stricken me.
The morn? Nay, I waked with morn atremor,
And know the day-tide’s every hour.
How do I then to clutch me
At my heart, afeared?
The morrow? Nay,
The morrow but bringeth old loves
And hopes anew.
Ah, woe is me, ’tis emptiness, aye, naught—
The bottomlessness o’ the pit that doth afright!
Afeared? Aye, but driven fearless on!
What! Promise ye ’tis to mart I plod?
What! Promise ye new joys?
Ah, but should I sleep, to waken me
To joys I ne’er had supped!
I see me stand abashed and timid,
As a child who cast a toy beloved,
For bauble that but caught the eye
And left the heart ahungered.
What! Should I search in vain
To find a sorrow that had fleeted hence
Afore my coming and found it not?
Ah, me, the emptiness!
And what! should joys that but a prick
Of gladness dealt, and teased my hours
To happiness, be lost amid this promised bliss?
Nay, I clutch me to my heart
In fear, in truth!
Do harken Ye! And cast afearing
To the wiles of beating gales and wooing breeze.
I find me throat aswell and voice attuned.
Ah, let me then to sing, for joy consumeth me!
I’ve builded me a land, my mart,
And fear hath slipped away to leave me sing.
I sleep, and feel afloating.
Whither! Whither! To wake,—
And wonder warmeth at my heart,
I’ve waked in yester-year!
What! Ye? And what! I’st thou?
Ah, have I then slept, to dream? Come,
Ne’er a dream-wraith looked me such a welcoming!
’Twas yesterday this hand wert then afold,
And now,—ah, do I dream?
’Tis warm-pressed within mine own!
Dreams! Dreams! And yet, we’ve met afore!
I see me flitting thro’ this vale,
And tho’ I strive to spell
The mountain’s height and valley’s depth,
I do but fall afail.
Wouldst thou then drink a potion
Were I to offer thee an empty cup?
Couldst thou to pluck the rainbow from the sky?
As well, then, might I spell to thee.
But I do promise at the waking,
Old joys, and sorrows ripened to a mellow heart.
And e’en the crime-stained wretch, abasked in light,
Shall cast his seed and spring afruit!
Then do I cease to clutch the emptiness
And sleep, and sleep me unafeared!
What is it that affrights, she asks, when we think of death? It is the emptiness, she answers, the utter lack of knowledge of what lies beyond. And if we waken to “joys we ne’er have supped”—using the word sup in the sense of to taste or to know—what is there to attract us in the prospect? It is an illustration she presents of our attitude toward promises of joys with which we are unfamiliar; and which therefore do not greatly interest us—the child who casts aside a well beloved toy “for bauble that but caught the eye and left the heart ahungered.” Shall the joys, she makes us exclaim, which we have known here but barely tasted in this fleeting life, “be lost amid this promised bliss!” and shall we “search in vain to find a sorrow that had fleeted hence before our coming?”—meaning, apparently, shall we look there in vain for a loved one who has gone before? She answers these questions of the heart. Personality persists beyond the grave, she gives us plainly to understand. We take with us all of ourselves but the material elements. “Thou art ye,” she has said, “and I be me and ye be ye, aye, ever so.” The transition is but a change from the material to the spiritual. We “wake in yesteryear,” she says,—amid the friends and associations of the past; and the joys of that life, one must infer, are the spiritual joys of this one, the joy that comes from love, from good deeds, from work accomplished. For it is quite evident that she would have us believe that there is a continuous advancement in that other life.
And e’en the crime-stained wretch, abasked in light,
Shall cast his seed and spring afruit.
This can mean nothing else than that the hardened sinner, amid supernal influences, shall develop into something higher, and as no one can be supposed to be perfect when leaving earth, it follows that progress is common to all. Progress implies effort, and this indicates that there will be something for everyone to do—a view quite different from the monotony of eternal idleness.
But this I promise at the waking,
Old joys, and sorrows ripened to a mellow heart.
To those who would peer into the other land these are perhaps the most important lines she has given. But what does she mean by “sorrows ripened to a mellow heart?” She was asked to make that plainer and she said:
“That that hath flitted hence be sorrows of earth, and ahere be ripened and thine. Love alost be sorrow of earth and dwell ahere.”
She thus makes these lines an answer to the question put before:
What! Should I search in vain
To find a sorrow that had fleeted hence
Afore my coming and found it not?
These are the sorrows that are “ripened to a mellow heart,” and she was asked if there were new sorrows to be borne in that other life. She replied:
“Nay. Earth be a home of sorrow’s dream. For sorrow be but dream of the soul asleep. ’Tis wake (death) that setteth free.”
And after such assurance comes the cry of faith and content and peace:
Then do I cease to clutch the emptiness,
And sleep, and sleep me unafeared!
With this comforting assurance in mind one may cheerfully approach her solemn address to Death:
Who art thou,
Who tracketh ’pon the path o’ me—
O’ each turn, aye, and track?
Thou! And thou astand!
And o’er thy face a cloud,
Aye, a darked and somber cloud!
Who art thou,
Thou tracker ’mid the day’s bright,
And ’mid the night’s deep;
E’en when I be astopped o’ track?
Who art thou,
That toucheth o’ the flesh o’ me,
And sendeth chill unto the heart o’ me?
Aye, and who art thou,
Who putteth forth thy hand
And setteth at alow the hopes o’ me?
Aye, who art thou,
Who bideth ever ’mid a dream?
Aye, and that the soul o’ me
Doth shrink at know?
Who art thou? Who art thou,
Who steppeth ever to my day,
And blotteth o’ the sun away?
Who art thou,
Who stepped to Earth at birth o’ me,
And e’en ’mid wail o’ weak,
Aye, at the birth o’ wail,
Did set a chill ’pon infant flesh;
And at the track o’ man ’pon Earth
Doth follow ever, and at height afollow,
And doth touch,
And all doth crumble to a naught.
Thou! Thou! Who art thou?
Ever do I to ask, and ever wish
To see the face o’ thee,
And ne’er, ne’er do I to know thee—
Thou, the Traveler ’pon the path o’ me.
And, Brother, thou dost give
That which world doth hold
From see o’ me!
Stand thou! Stand thou!
And draw thy cloak from o’er thy face!
Ever hath the dread o’ thee
Clutched at the heart o’ me.
Aye, and at the end o’ journey,
I beseech thee,
Cast thy cloak and show thee me!
Aye, show thee me!
Ah, thou art the gift o’ Him!
The Key to There! The Love o’ Earth!
Aye, and Hate hath made o’ man
To know thee not—
Thou! Thou! O Death!
She finds Death terrible from the human point of view, and reveals him at the end as “the gift of Him, the Key to There!”
One of her constant objects seems to be to rob death of its terrors, and to bring the “There” into closer and more intimate connection with us. Here is another effort:
Spring’s morn afulled o’ merry-song,
Aye, and tickle o’ streams-thread through Summer’s noon;
Arock o’ hum o’ hearts-throb,
And danced awhite the air at scorch;
Winter’s rage asing o’ cold
And wail o’ Winter’s sorry at the Summer’s leave;
Ashivered breeze, abear o’ leaf’s rustling
At dry o’ season’s ripe;
Night’s deep, where sound astarteth silence;
Morn’s sweet, awooed by bird’s coax.
Earth’s sounds, ye deem?
I tell thee ’tis but the echoing o’ Here.
Thy days be naught
Save coax o’ Here athere!
All that is worth while on earth is but the echoes of Heaven, and there would be nothing to life but for the joys that have been “coaxed” from there. How closely that thought unites the here and the there. Earth sounds but the echoes of the other land adjoining! She makes it something tangible, something almost material, something we may nearly comprehend; and then, having opened the door a little way, as far, no doubt, as it is possible for her to do, she presents this response to human desires, this promise of joys to come:
Swift as light-flash o’ storm, swift, swift,
Would I send the wish o’ thine asearch.
Swift, swift as bruise o’ swallows’ wing ’pon air,
I’d send asearch thy wish, areach to lands unseen;
I’d send aback o’ answer laden.
Swift, swift, would I to flee unto the Naught
Thou knowest as the Here.
Swift, swift I’d bear aback to thee
What thou wouldst seek. Swift, swift,
Would I to bear aback to thee.
Dost deem the path ahid doth lead to naught?
Dost deem thy footfall leadest thee to nothingness?
Dost pin not ’pon His word o’ promising,
And art at sorry and afear to follow Him?
I’d put athin thy cup a sweet, a pledge o’ love’s-buy.
I’d send aback a glad-song o’ this land.
Sing thou, sing on, though thou art ne’er aheard—
Like love awaked, the joy o’ breath
Anew born o’ His loving.
Set thee at rest, and trod the path unfearing.
For He who putteth joy to earth, aplanted joy
Athin the reach o’ thee, e’en through
The dark o’ path at end o’ journey.
His smile! His word! His loving!
Put forth thy hand at glad, and I do promise thee
That Joy o’ earth asupped shall fall as naught,
And thou shalt sup thee deep o’ joys,
O’ Bearer, aye, and Source; and like glad light o’ day
And sweet o’ love, thy coming here shall be!
With this promise, this covenant, we bring the narrative of Patience to an end. There will be many and widely varied views of the nature of this intelligence, but surely there can be but one opinion of the beauty of her words and the purity of her purpose. She has brought a message of love at a time when the world is sadly deficient in that attribute, wisely believed to be the best thing in earth or heaven; and an inspiration to faith that was never so greatly in need of strength as now. An inevitable consequence of the world-war will be a universal introspection. There will be a great turning of thought to serious things. That tendency is already discernible. May it not be possible that it is the mission of Patience Worth to answer the question that is above all questions at a time when humanity is filled with interrogation?
FINIS.