THE GREAT SILENCE
I
Magnificent, my Own,
Across the City’s crash of sound,
Above the marching of her war-shod feet,
I hear you call, “I am alone,—alone!”
In that full, tragic voice of yours repeat,
Echo and tone,
“Alone,—I am alone!”
II
Oh, Splendid One,
The stars still hang the City’s night
With peace and light!
What wars could ever bind
The signing of God’s universe in space?
You turn your eyes,
Burning, ancient, wise,
And speak, “All have I seen,
Evil and good,
All man has been,
All man has done,—
And I am blind.”
But God, I cried ...
Then came your moan,
Like Pontius Pilate overthrown,
“God I have denied!”
III
Magnificent, my Own,
There beyond the City’s sky
Are pinnacle and dream,
The rushing of a mighty stream,
The night-wind’s cry
And thunder-harp of pine.
“Oh, Christ,” you weep,
“They are not mine,
They are not mine!
I cannot see, I cannot hear,
Only I remember year on year
Abel and Cain.
Yet somewhere in this welter of my pain
I keep
Memory of another,—
those two lost syllables of doom.”
“What syllables are they, my Own?”
“That word is ‘Brother’!”
WHITE HAIR
All the warmth has gone out of white hair,
It only answers to the wind
And lifts and stirs like creeping snow
Close to the frozen scalp of earth.
It has no gold of autumn grasses
Or red of beech buds
Or warm brown of tree bark
Or depths of quiet
In which eyes burn like star-flame in a dark night.
Has death white hair
And the cramped empty shoulders of old age?
If he has, I shall be as a child, frightened and trying to hide from him.
But if his touch is the touch of warm rain,
If his breath is sweet like the gray-green fruit of the juniper,
If his shoulder is deep and strong like the up-heaved root of hemlock
And his hair velvet-dusk as a moth’s wing,
Then I shall go to him gladly,
And sleep well....