The eager night and the impetuous winds,
The hints and whispers of a thousand lures,
And all the swift persuasion of the Spring,
Surged from the stars and stones, and swept me on....
The smell of honeysuckles, keen and clear,
Startled and shook me, with the sudden thrill
Of some well-known but half-forgotten voice.
A slender stream became a naked sprite,
Flashed around curious bends, and winked at me
Beyond the turns, alert and mischievous.
A saffron moon, dangling among the trees,
Seemed like a toy balloon caught in the boughs,
Flung there in sport by some too-mirthful breeze....
And as it hung there, vivid and unreal,
The whole world’s lethargy was brushed away;
The night kept tugging at my torpid mood
And tore it into shreds. A warm air blew
My wintry slothfulness beyond the stars;
And over all indifference there streamed
A myriad urges in one rushing wave....
Touched with the lavish miracles of earth,
I felt the brave persistence of the grass;
The far desire of rivulets; the keen,
Unconquerable fervor of the thrush;
The endless labors of the patient worm;
The lichen’s strength; the prowess of the ant;
The constancy of flowers; the blind belief
Of ivy climbing slowly toward the sun;
The eternal struggles and eternal deaths—
And yet the groping faith of every root!
Out of old graves arose the cry of life;
Out of the dying came the deathless call.
And, thrilling with a new sweet restlessness,
The thing that was my boyhood woke in me—
Dear, foolish fragments made me strong again;
Valiant adventures, dreams of those to come,
And all the vague, heroic hopes of youth,
With fresh abandon, like a fearless laugh,
Leaped up to face the heaven’s unconcern....
And then—veil upon veil was torn aside—
Stars, like a host of merry girls and boys,
Danced gaily ’round me, plucking at my hand;
The night, scorning its ancient mystery,
Leaned down and pressed new courage in my heart;
The hermit-thrush, throbbing with more Song,
Sang with a happy challenge to the skies;
Love, and the faces of a world of children,
Swept like a conquering army through my blood—
And Beauty, rising out of all its forms,
Beauty, the passion of the universe,
Flamed with its joy, a thing too great for tears,
And, like a wine, poured itself out for me
To drink of, to be warmed with, and to go
Refreshed and strengthened to the ceaseless fight;
To meet with confidence the cynic years;
Battling in wars that never can be won,
Seeking the lost cause and the brave defeat.
Century Louis Untermeyer
PATTERNS
Would you lay a pattern on life and say, thus shall ye live?
I tell you that is a denial of life;
I say that thus we pour our spirits in a mold, and they cake and die.
I want to go to the man who quickens me;
I want the gift of life, the flame of his spirit eating along the tinder of my heart;
I want to feel the flood-gates within flung open and the tides pouring through me;
I want to take what I am and bring it to fruit.
Quicken me, and I will grow;
Touch me with flame, and the blossoms will open and the fruit appear.
Call forth in me a creator, and the god will answer.
And then, if I commit what you call a sin,
Better so.
It will not be a sin. It will be a mere breaking of your patterns;
For the only sin is death, and the only virtue to be altogether alive and your own authentic self.
Century James Oppenheim
NEW YORK
Sea-rimmed and teeming with millions poured out on thy granite shore
Surge upon surge, many-nationed, O City far-famed for the roar
Of thy cavernous iron streets and thy towers half hung in the sun,
Rising in layer on layer, twelve cities piled upon one,
All feeding and sleeping and breeding, enormous, half palace, half den,
With ever a tide washing through thee whose clamoring waters are men,
O where is the hand of thy builder? What god, canst thou tell,
Hath his hand on the clay of thy face? Or what demon from Hell?
I have viewed with the eye of the stranger and the pride of the New World man
The mountainous leap of thy glory, the miles of thy endless span,
And my heart has gone up with thy towers and my love has fallen as dew
On thy night-blooming lamps in rows on thy beautiful Avenue.
I have stood with a seaman’s glass on the roofs of thy high hotels;
I have rolled through the sheer ravines where the cliff dweller dwells;
I have peered from the place of the Tomb far up where the hills break free
And the length of the lordly River comes down as a bride to the sea;
I have fled with a roar through the rock where the myriad lights flash by;
I have heard the song of the soaring steel come down from the sky;
I have watched as a lover thy waters all mottled with cloud and with sun
Where the ocean comes in to caress thee, O Beautiful One;
And the days and the years of my life are a gift unto thee,
And I dwell in thy marvelous gates, O Goddess cast up by the sea!