TOO LATE

Here was I with my arm and heart

And brain, all yours for a word, a want

Put into a look—just a look, your part,—

While mine, to repay it ... vainest vaunt,

Were the woman, that's dead, alive to hear,

Had her lover, that's lost, love's proof to show!

But I cannot show it; you cannot speak

From the churchyard neither, miles removed,

Though I feel by a pulse within my cheek,

Which stabs and stops, that the woman I loved

Needs help in her grave and finds none near,

Wants warmth from the heart which sends it—so!

Did I speak once angrily, all the drear days

You lived, you woman I loved so well,

Who married the other? Blame or praise,

Where was the use then? Time would tell,

And the end declare what man for you,

What woman for me, was the choice of God.

But, Edith dead! no doubting more!

I used to sit and look at my life

As it rippled and ran till, right before,

A great stone stopped it: oh, the strife

Of waves at the stone some devil threw

In my life's midcurrent, thwarting God!

But either I thought, "They may churn and chide

Awhile, my waves which came for their joy

And found this horrible stone full-tide:

Yet I see just a thread escape, deploy

Through the evening-country, silent and safe,

And it suffers no more till it finds the sea."

Or else I would think, "Perhaps some night

When new things happen, a meteor-ball

May slip through the sky in a line of light,

And earth breathe hard, and landmarks fall,

And my waves no longer champ nor chafe,

Since a stone will have rolled from its place: let be!"

But, dead! All 's done with: wait who may,

Watch and wear and wonder who will.

Oh, my whole life that ends to-day!

Oh, my soul's sentence, sounding still,

"The woman is dead that was none of his;

And the man that was none of hers may go!"

There's only the past left: worry that!

Wreak, like a bull, on the empty coat,

Rage, its late wearer is laughing at!

Tear the collar to rags, having missed his throat;

Strike stupidly on—"This, this and this,

Where I would that a bosom received the blow!"

I ought to have done more: once my speech,

And once your answer, and there, the end,

And Edith was henceforth out of reach!

Why, men do more to deserve a friend,

Be rid of a foe, get rich, grow wise,

Nor, folding their arms, stare fate in the face.

Why, better even have burst like a thief

And borne you away to a rock for us two,

In a moment's horror, bright, bloody and brief,

Then changed to myself again—"I slew

Myself in that moment; a ruffian lies

Somewhere: your slave, see, born in his place!"

What did the other do? You be judge!

Look at us, Edith! Here are we both!

Give him his six whole years: I grudge

None of the life with you, nay, loathe

Myself that I grudged his start in advance

Of me who could overtake and pass.

But, as if he loved you! No, not he,

Nor any one else in the world, 'tis plain:

Who ever heard that another, free

As I, young, prosperous, sound and sane,

Poured life out, proffered it—"Half a glance

Of those eyes of yours and I drop the glass!"

Handsome, were you? 'T is more than they held,

More than they said; I was 'ware and watched:

I was the scapegrace, this rat belled

The cat, this fool got his whiskers scratched:

The others? No head that was turned, no heart

Broken, my lady, assure yourself!

Each soon made his mind up; so and so

Married a dancer, such and such

Stole his friend's wife, stagnated slow,

Or maundered, unable to do as much,

And muttered of peace where he had no part:

While, hid in the closet, laid on the shelf,—

On the whole, you were let alone, I think!

So, you looked to the other, who acquiesced;

My rival, the proud man,—prize your pink

Of poets! A poet he was! I've guessed:

He rhymed you his rubbish nobody read,

Loved you and doved you—did not I laugh!

There was a prize! But we both were tried.

Oh, heart of mine, marked broad with her mark,

Tekel, found wanting, set aside,

Scorned! See, I bleed these tears in the dark

Till comfort come and the last be bled:

He? He is tagging your epitaph.

If it would only come over again!

—Time to be patient with me, and probe

This heart till you punctured the proper vein,

Just to learn what blood is: twitch the robe

From that blank lay-figure your fancy draped,

Prick the leathern heart till the—verses spirt!

And late it was easy; late, you walked

Where a friend might meet you; Edith's name

Arose to one's lip if one laughed or talked;

If I heard good news, you heard the same;

When I woke, I knew that your breath escaped;

I could bide my time, keep alive, alert.

And alive I shall keep and long, you will see!

I knew a man, was kicked like a dog

From gutter to cesspool; what cared he

So long as he picked from the filth his prog?

He saw youth, beauty and genius die,

And jollily lived to his hundredth year.

But I will live otherwise: none of such life!

At once I begin as I mean to end.

Go on with the world, get gold in its strife,

Give your spouse the slip and betray your friend!

There are two who decline, a woman and I,

And enjoy our death in the darkness here.

I liked that way you had with your curls

Wound to a ball in a net behind:

Your cheek was chaste as a Quaker-girl's,

And your mouth—there was never, to my mind,

Such a funny mouth, for it would not shut;

And the dented chin too—what a chin!

There were certain ways when you spoke, some words

That you know you never could pronounce:

You were thin, however; like a bird's

Your hand seemed—some would say, the pounce

Of a scaly-footed hawk—all but!

The world was right when it called you thin.

But I turn my back on the world: I take

Your hand, and kneel, and lay to my lips.

Bid me live, Edith! Let me slake

Thirst at your presence! Fear no slips:

'Tis your slave shall pay, while his soul endures,

Full due, love's whole debt, summum jus.

My queen shall have high observance, planned

Courtship made perfect, no least line

Crossed without warrant. There you stand,

Warm too, and white too: would this wine

Had washed all over that body of yours.

Ere I drank it, and you down with it, thus!

ABT VOGLER
(AFTER HE HAS BEEN EXTEMPORIZING UPON THE MUSICAL INSTRUMENT OF HIS INVENTION)

Would that the structure brave, the manifold music I build,

Bidding my organ obey, calling its keys to their work,

Claiming each slave of the sound, at a touch, as when Solomon willed

Armies of angels that soar, legions of demons that lurk,

Man, brute, reptile, fly,—alien of end and of aim,

Adverse, each from the other heaven-high, hell-deep removed,—

Should rush into sight at once as he named the ineffable Name,

And pile him a palace straight, to pleasure the princess he loved!

Would it might tarry like his, the beautiful building of mine,

This which my keys in a crowd pressed and importuned to raise!

Ah, one and all, how they helped, would dispart now and now combine,

Zealous to hasten the work, heighten their master his praise!

And one would bury his brow with a blind plunge down to hell,

Burrow awhile and build, broad on the roots of things,

Then up again swim into sight, having based me my palace well,

Founded it, fearless of flame, flat on the nether springs.

And another would mount and march, like the excellent minion he was,

Ay, another and yet another, one crowd but with many a crest,

Raising my rampired walls of gold as transparent as glass,

Eager to do and die, yield each his place to the rest:

For higher still and higher (as a runner tips with fire,

When a great illumination surprises a festal night—

Outlined round and round Rome's dome from space to spire)

Up, the pinnacled glory reached, and the pride of my soul was in sight.

In sight? Not half! for it seemed, it was certain, to match man's birth,

Nature in turn conceived, obeying an impulse as I;

And the emulous heaven yearned down, made effort to reach the earth,

As the earth had done her best, in my passion, to scale the sky:

Novel splendors burst forth, grew familiar and dwelt with mine,

Not a point nor peak but found and fixed its wandering star;

Meteor-moons, balls of blaze: and they did not pale nor pine,

For earth had attained to heaven, there was no more near nor far.

Nay more; for there wanted not who walked in the glare and glow,

Presences plain in the place; or, fresh from the Protoplast,

Furnished for ages to come, when a kindlier wind should blow,

Lured now to begin and live, in a house to their liking at last;

Or else the wonderful Dead who have passed through the body and gone,

But were back once more to breathe in an old world worth their new:

What never had been, was now; what was, as it shall be anon;

And what is,—shall I say, matched both? for I was made perfect too.

All through my keys that gave their sounds to a wish of my soul,

All through my soul that praised as its wish flowed visibly forth,

All through music and me! For think, had I painted the whole,

Why, there it had stood, to see, nor the process so wonder-worth:

Had I written the same, made verse—still, effect proceeds from cause.

Ye know why the forms are fair, ye hear how the tale is told;

It is all triumphant art, but art in obedience to laws,

Painter and poet are proud in the artist-list enrolled:—

But here is the finger of God, a flash of the will that can,

Existent behind all laws, that made them and, lo, they are!

And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed to man,

That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound, but a star.

Consider it well: each tone of our scale in itself is naught:

It is everywhere in the world—loud, soft, and all is said:

Give it to me to use! I mix it with two in my thought:

And there! Ye have heard and seen: consider and bow the head!

Well, it is gone at last, the palace of music I reared;

Gone! and the good tears start, the praises that come too slow;

For one is assured at first, one scarce can say that he feared,

That he even gave it a thought, the gone thing was to go.

Never to be again! But many more of the kind

As good, nay, better perchance: is this your comfort to me?

To me, who must be saved because I cling with my mind

To the same, same self, same love, same God: ay, what was, shall be.

Therefore to whom turn I but to thee, the ineffable Name?

Builder and maker, thou, of houses not made with hands!

What, have fear of change from thee who art ever the same?

Doubt that thy power can fill the heart that thy power expands?

There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as before;

The evil is null, is naught, is silence implying sound;

What was good shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more;

On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven a perfect round.

All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist;

Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power

Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist

When eternity affirms the conception of an hour.

The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard,

The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky,

Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard;

Enough that he heard it once: we shall hear it by and by.

And what is our failure here but a triumph's evidence

For the fulness of the days? Have we withered or agonized?

Why else was the pause prolonged but that singing might issue thence?

Why rushed the discords in, but that harmony should be prized?

Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear,

Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal and woe:

But God has a few of us whom he whispers in the ear;

The rest may reason and welcome: 'tis we musicians know.

Well, it is earth with me; silence resumes her reign:

I will be patient and proud, and soberly acquiesce.

Give me the keys. I feel for the common chord again,

Sliding by semitones till I sink to the minor,—yes,

And I blunt it into a ninth, and I stand on alien ground,

Surveying awhile the heights I rolled from into the deep;

Which, hark, I have dared and done, for my resting-place is found,

The C Major of this life: so, now I will try to sleep.