[PART I]
[Ballad of a Lost House]
[PART II]
[Duet]
[I’ll be your Epitaph]
[Third Floor Landing]
[Therapy]
[Witch!]
[Deep Sea Fishing]
[Onlooker]
[Affinity]
[Cantares]
[She says, being forbidden:]
[Little Lover]
[Kleptomaniac]
[To a Song of Sappho discovered in Egypt]
[Hyacinths]
[The Story as I understand It]
[Two Passionate Ones Part]
[This City Wind]
[PART III]
[October Trees]
[New England Cottage]
[Migration]
[Sand-pipings]
[King’s Garden]
[Abrigada]
[PART IV]
[ITALIAN QUATRAINS]
[Naples]
[Pompeii]
[Rome]
[Paganini’s Violins]
[Bavarian Roadside]
[“Hark! Hark!”]
[Bagpipe Player]
[Oberammergau]
[One Version]
[Protest in Passing]
[Saul! Saul!]
[PART V]
[Fiddler’s Farewell]
[PART VI]
[Of Mountains]
[CONTENTS]

FIDDLER’S FAREWELL

LEONORA SPEYER

FIDDLER’S FAREWELL

NEW YORK

ALFRED · A · KNOPF

MCMXXVI

COPYRIGHT, 1926, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.

MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

TO MY HUSBAND

“His smile, it listens well and long,

His sadness, charitable to mirth,

His silence, hospitable to song.”

No words to cover:

Soft linen, trailing silk of phrase

To deck the pampered song;

Fine feathers to the wing

For deft adventuring

Ecstatic ways

Along.

No many-colored coat of precious words!

Rather to dare

A stark undress,

Wear but a crying nakedness,

Venture the bright discomfort

Of a word that strips—

The startled candor of the heart

Bare on the vehement lips.

PART I

Ballad of a Lost House

I

Hungry Heart, Hungry Heart, where have you been?

I’ve been to a town where lives a queen.

Hungry Heart, Hungry Heart, what did you there?

I ran all the way to a certain Square.

Hungry Heart, say what you did that for!

To find a street and a certain door;

And there I knocked my knuckles sore.

II

That was a foolish thing to do,

Alone in the night the long hours through;

Gaping there like a chalky clown

At a stranger-door that had been your own.

Where was your pluck and where your pride?

They both were there, and love beside;

And suddenly the door swung wide.

I heard the sound of a violin

That seemed to bid me enter in:

For a fiddle’s a key for many a lock,

And will open a door though it’s built in rock.

III

Tell me, Hungry, what did you see?

A lighted hall where friends made free.

I trod with them a well-known stair—

How did you dare, Heart! How did you dare?

For a frowning face you may trust and like,

But who shall say when a smile will strike?

IV

Up the oaken stair went I,

And all made way to let me by.

Some reached a hand and some looked down,

But I never saw their smile nor frown.

I never saw familiar things

That sought me with quaint beckonings:

The carven saints in postures mild,

Kind Virgins with the Heavenly Child,

Ladies and Knights in tapestries—

I never saw nor looked at these.

Only the Christ from a canvas dim,

Drooping there on His leafless Limb;

He looked at me and I looked at Him.

V

Where did you go, old Unafraid?

Up to a place where children played—

The happy hubbub the small three made!

Patter and prattle and toys and games,

Dolls in rows with curious names,

Voices lifted like high thin tunes,

Lively suppers with round-tipped spoons!

Where should I go but up the stair

To the welcome I knew was waiting there?

But all was dark, as only can be

A long deserted nursery;

And never a sound to succor me.

VI

So I turned to a room where a woman slept

In a gay gold bed, and near I crept,

And lingered and listened—oh anguished morn,

Oh fluty cry of a babe new-born,

Clearer than trumpeting Gabriel’s horn!

Oh sea of Life, with Love for a chart—

On with the tale, old Hungry Heart!

VII

On with the tale and on to a door

Where a man had passed to pass no more:

A quiet man with a quiet strength,

And over the threshold his shadow’s length

Lay like an answer for Time to weigh;

And the dust from his feet spread thick and gray.

And I thought: Well shaken! Let friend or foe

Sweep up the dust an it please them so;

Let Lord and Valet tend to the room;

Lady, and House-maid, here with the broom!

Bid Town and Tattle see to it too

That the windows be washed of the mud they threw.

Dust and ashes of what has been!

Sweep the clean house. And keep it clean.

VIII

I thought to curse—but strange, a prayer

Rose to my lips as I stood there.

And this my praying: Now all good cheer

To him who sleeps where slept my dear,

For the sake of the good dreams once dreamed here.

IX

Back to the stair and down I sped,

Passing a loud room table-spread;

Passing, but pausing, as house-wives do,

Judging the viands that came to view;

Trusting the sauce was tuned to the meat,

The wine well cooled and the pudding sweet;

Pausing, but passing—

Stay, Heart of mine,

What of the guests? For I divine

Their looks were grand and their manners fine.

X

A goodly company, I’ll admit,

And some had beauty and some had wit—

And some you loved?

Well, what of it?

And some loved you!

Perhaps, perhaps,

With linen napkins in their laps,

With cups that foamed and piled-up plates;

They loved me with a hundred hates!

They hated in such lovely ways,

With laughter, singing, kisses, praise—

How could I know? How could I know?

Hungry Heart, Hungry Heart, cry not so!

XI

And as I lingered watching them,

I felt a tugging at my hem;

My little dog was cowering there,

A glassy terror in its stare;

My veins turned ice—O smacking lips,

O dainty greedy finger-tips!

’Twas bones of Hungry Heart they ate,

Broken and boiled and delicate,

Platter on platter the board along,

And as they supped they sang a song:

An ancient ardent melody

About a lady passing by

Whom they must love until they die.

XII

And as they drank I saw the wine,

It never came from ripened vine,

It never was brewed in tub or vat,

Knew web of spider or squeak of rat—

But it knows their thirst and it pours for that.

A thirsty stream that none may gauge,

That none shall slake though the stream assuage,

Of wine the very counterpart,

Out of the side of Hungry Heart.

And mixed with the toast, a violin,

Mellow and merry above the din,

Held shoulder high ’neath a woman’s chin.

XIII

Hungry Heart, come, make haste, make haste,

Out of the house of hopes laid waste,

Out of the town of teeth laid bare

Under its smiling debonair.

Wait not, weep not, get you gone,

Better the stones to rest upon,

The wind and the rain for a roof secure,

Hyssop and tares for your nouriture:

These shall endure. These shall endure.

XIV

I got me gone. On stumbling feet

I reached the stair and I reached the street;

The door slammed to with an iron scream,

And behind it lay the end of a dream;

Behind it lifted barren walls,

And I thought of a play when the curtain falls

On a comedy written of shrouds and palls.

XV

Hungry Heart, Hungry Heart, what did you then?

I fell on my knees and I cried, Amen!

But now and again—now and again—

I come to the door in the dead of night,

I wander the rooms till the panes are white;

A landlord ghost! Aye, one who knows

His lease out-lived with the cock that crows,

A wraith content that contented goes.

Goes at the cry of the bird unseen,

Calling the friends of what has been;

And some it names lie sleeping near—

Ah, wake them not, friend Chanticleer!

XVI

Three times it calls the end of the dream,

And still I return, for still I seem

To comfort a house that lives aloof

From all who live beneath its roof.

I must return! to dispossess

Those bartered walls of loneliness:

Mortar and brick and iron and bole,

Where all may pass who pay their toll;

The husk of a house that has lost its soul.

XVII

For out of that house went its soul with me,

Leaping and crying after me,

To bear me faithful company

Over a clear and quickening sea.

PART II

Duet

(I sing with myself)

Out of my sorrow

I’ll build a stair,

And every to-morrow

Will climb to me there—

With ashes of yesterday

In its hair.

My fortune is made

Of a stab in the side,

My debts are paid

In pennies of pride—

Little red coins

In a heart I hide.

The stones that I eat

Are ripe for my needs,

My cup is complete

With the dregs of deeds—

Clear are the notes

Of my broken reeds.

I carry my pack

Of aches and stings,

Light with the lack

Of all good things—

But not on my back,

Because of my wings!

I’ll be your Epitaph

Over your dear dead heart I’ll lift

As blithely as a bough,

Saying, “Here lies the cruel song,

Cruelly quiet now.”

I’ll say, “Here lies the lying sword,

Still dripping with my truth;

Here lies the woven sheath I made,

Embroidered with my youth.”

I’ll sing, “Here lies, here lies, here lies—”

Ah, rust in peace below!

Passers will wonder at my words,

But your dark dust will know.

Third Floor Landing

A stranger knocked upon your door,

A stranger-voice cried out, “Come in!”

Beyond, a sofa, plump and red,

Crouched where a carven chest had been.

I craned to see the things I knew

Could not be there, since you were gone—

Oh twilight of the household gods,

Dishonored altars where they shone!

I saw instead a gilded glimpse

Of trivial things that seemed to shout

A trivial welcome from the wall;

The door swung to and shut me out.

Only the landing was unchanged,

The closed door donned a friendly air;

I had no quarrel with my place,

I was at home upon the stair.

Therapy

There is a way

Of healing love with love,

They say.

But I say no!

What! shall pain comfort pain,

Fever calm fever,

Woe minister to woe?

Shall tear, remembering,

Wash cool remembering tear?

Shall scar play host to scar,

Loneliness shelter loneliness;

And is forgetting here?

Poor patch-work of the heart,

This healing love with love;

Binding the wound to wound,

The smart to smart!

Grafting the dream upon the other dream

As a gardener grafts tree to tree,

And both from the same wild root

Bearing their bitter fruit:

The new dream dreaming in the old,

The old dream in the new—

And neither dreaming true.

Is there, I wonder,

A heaven above the heaven we knew?

And is there under

Our dream’s stern waking

A sterner hell?

And shall we know them too?

One thing I know:

Of an unreckoned giving that is a taking,

A wrong, a robbery!

Perhaps you so wronged me;

I so robbed you.

Therapy—therapy—

I am content to feel

This health of heart that will not heal;

I am content to think

That I am one with hunger,

Given to thirst,

And that I need not eat nor drink.

I am full-nourished so.

They say

There is a way

Of healing love with love.

But I say no!

*  *  *

Beyond the sands

Of all they say

I see you still,

Holding toward me those eager hands

I could not fill;

My hands still curve and close,

Deeming they hoard

The shining things you poured

That I let spill.

Over us lift the years—

Hill upon hill

Of days that wither into night,

And nights that ache to day;

Reiterated emptiness of shade and light

Crowding the empty way.

Up to this sullen therapy

Of time,

Shall we two climb?

*  *  *

I am too tired to climb;

Nor would I go

So far from the loved overthrow.

Climb you to healing! while I keep

Vigil in this lost place

A little while;

Weep

If I choose,

The honest abject tear,

Let the grief break and pour;

Gather the shadows comfortably near,

And sleep as children sleep.

A little little while!

To wake and smile,

Indifferent to the dark,

Holding to me my one-time joy

As children clutch an ancient battered toy

They will not have renewed;

Smile, and lie closer to a loss

That tunes itself to gain,

(Inexorable lullaby),

Lie softer, safer,

Pillowed on fortitude—

Drowsy—

Beneath my pain.

Witch!

Ashes of me,

Whirl in the fires I may not name.

Lick, lovely flame!

Will the fagot not burn?

Throw on the tired broom

Stabled still in my room.

I have ridden wide and well.

Shall I say with whom?

(Stop the town bell!)

Listen now,

Listen now if you dare:

I have lain with hope

Under the dreadful bough,

I have suckled Judas’ rope

As it swung on the air—

Go find the silver pieces in the moon.

I hid them there.

Deep Sea Fishing

Sometimes I cast my longing like a line,

Watch it sink deep and deeper in the blue

Immoderate waters that are dreams of you,

Flooding the parched land that is sleep of mine.

Impassively I float the pale hours through,

With quiet eyes upon the quivering twine,

Aware of lurking shapes that give no sign

Of rising, though they move as fishes do.

Your hands, your hands, a thousand multiplied,

Cool, slim, and wary, darting to and fro,

For every touch of yours I knew, a hand!

Then breaks the line along the failing tide,

I lean—to drown among them as they go—

Knowing I may not drown on waking sand!

Onlooker

I urged my will against my mind,

My mind shook like a rocking wall

But did not fall;

My will was like a wind-blown tree;

And neither knew the victory.

I hurled my mind against my will;

They did not break or bend or spill:

But in my heart the song grew still.

Affinity

Her mouth was shaped to happy tunes

That flying, she let fall,

But when his silence mended them

She could not sing at all.

She could not fly without her tunes,

They were her only wings,

But there were pleasant ways to walk

Among sure-footed things.

She walks content, her hand in his;

But neither of them sings.

Cantares

I

Sweet, my sweet!

Was I a fool to show you the sky—

Then strap my wings to your feet?

II

I lied—trusting you knew

I could not lie to you.

Beloved friend, I lied, and am forgiven: but I

Cannot forgive that you believed my lie!

III

Suffer the moths to singe their wings

At your proud prodigal light

All night!

But you, but you,

Singeing your flame

At their frail wings—

Ah shame!

IV

Close not the door, dear love,—he cried—

I stand and wait; ah, throw it wide!

Wherefore,—she said—and you inside?

She says, being forbidden:

And was there not a king somewhere who said:

“Back, waves! I do command you!” I forget

His name, beloved, or his race, and yet

I know the story and am comforted.

The tides will rise, are rising—see, they spread

About your robes, your ermine will be wet,

Your velvet shoes, your dear dear feet! Ah let

Me warn you, sir, the waves will reach your head!

My king, my kingly love, how shall we stay

The bold broad lifting of this lovely sea?

What is the master word that we must say

To bring these roaring waters to the knee?

The other king went scampering away!

Will you so do? Or will you drown with me?

Little Lover

You made your little lover kind,

And quick of word and kiss and tear,

And everything a woman craves;

You could not make him big, my dear.

And so you made your great self small,

As only a great woman can,

Nor cared a jot; but ah, he knew

And cared a lot, the little man.

He knew and hated you at last.

Let me be fair! He left you then.

That one big generous thing he did:

Left you to grieve to heights again.

Kleptomaniac

She stole his eyes because they shone,

Stole the good things they looked upon;

They were no brighter than her own.

She stole his mouth—her own was fair—

She stole his words, his songs, his prayer;

His kisses too, since they were there.

She stole the journeys of his heart—

Her own, their very counterpart—

His seas and sails, his course and chart.

She stole his strength so fierce and true,

Perhaps for something brave to do;

Wept at his weakness, stole that too.

But she was caught one early morn!

She stood red-handed and forlorn,

And stole his anger and his scorn.

Upon his knee she laid her head,

Refusing to be comforted;

“Unkind—unkind—” was all she said.

Denied she stole; confessed she did;

Glad of such plunder to be rid—

Clutching the place where it was hid.

As he forgave she snatched his soul;

She did not want it, but she stole.

To a Song of Sappho discovered in Egypt

And Sappho’s flowers, so few,

But roses all.

Meleager.

Jonah wept within the whale;

But you have sung these centuries

Under the brown banks of the Nile

Within a dead dried crocodile:

So fares the learned tale.

When they embalmed the sacred beast

The Sapphic scroll was white and strong

To wrap the spices that were needed,

Its song unheard, its word unheeded

By crocodile or priest.

The song you sang on Lesbos when

Atthis was kind, or Mica sad;

The startled whale spewed Jonah wide,

From out the monster mummified

Your roses sing again.

Your roses! from the seven strands

Of the small harp whereon they grew;

The holy beast has had his pleasure,

His bellyful of Attic measure

Under the desert sands.

Along strange winds your petals blew

In singing fragments, roses all;

The air is heavy on the Nile,

The drowsy gods drowse on the while

As gods are wont to do.

Hyacinths

Leda, they say, once found an egg

Hidden under hyacinths ...

... much whiter than an egg ...

Sappho

Did she pluck it from the curly flowers;

Make a nest

Of her long light hair?

Or did she slip the white thing in her breast,

As smooth, as fair?

Lie smiling through the hours?

(Proudly aware

Of tiny flutterings,

Knowing well

What she guarded there,

Hidden within the shell!)

Did she dream of powerful white wings

That beat upon her like a milky tide—

Again—again—?

Did she swoon beneath a dream of hyacinths?

And then,

Did the shell open wide

Under her crying kiss?

I with children at my side,

Ponder so on this.

The Story as I understand It

I think that Eve first told the callow Tree of apples,

And taught the adolescent Serpent how to hiss

Its first wise word.

I think the Angel with the Flaming Sword

Followed her with hot holy eyes,

Remembering the red curve of her kiss

As she passed out of Paradise.

See, how the apple-boughs are twisted in their pain,

Weighed down with many a red-cheeked little Cain,

And how the serpent writhes away

From man to this far day.

An angel is a lovely lonely thing

Of boundless wing.

They are the banished ones that grieve;

Not Eve!

Not Eve, her body quick with coming pride,

Nor Adam walking there at her white side—

A little heavily perhaps,

Because of things scarce known,

As yet not named:

New tenderness for Eve, but not for Eve alone,

Fears not yet fears—

And out beyond, the world untamed

Of which to make

Their surer paradise of tears!

But in the Garden is a hallowed emptiness

Of laws, forgotten now,

Concerning fruit and flowers,

That none shall ever bless

Or break;

And in the Garden is the one plucked Bough

That blossoms whimpering

Through a divine monotony

Of spring on spring.

Two Passionate Ones Part

Why stamp the sovereign fires out?

They would have burned themselves away,

Finally flickered red to gray.

Had you but let them lift and roar,

Scorch and consume you, whirl and dart,

Ember on ember as heart on heart!

What had divided the fiery dust,

Ashes of you, and ashes of you?

Pity, pity, impatient two!

Now you go reeling out of love—

Look, as you stumble on alone:

This is the way you would have gone!

Why not have walked it hand in hand,

One-time lovers and all-time friends?

Love has a hundred gentle ends.

Ends—and beyonds—oh ghosts of flames

That never lived, that never died,

Bitter and lean, unsatisfied—

These are the fires shall warm you now,

Sit and dream at them, dream and sigh;

These are the dead that cannot die.

Fires are meant to leap and fade.

Who are you to rule otherwise,

Monarchs with madness in your eyes?

Who are you to challenge change?

What, would you carve love’s wings in stone?

Fling them your sky! Their course is their own!

Grieving impetuous passionate two—

Here was a feast on the white cloth spread,

Love was the wine, and liking the bread.

You drank and drank, but you ate no crumb;

Love was the wine, but ah, the bread,

Had you dipped it deep in the cup instead.

Pale-lipped lovers that taste the lees,

Dull, undrinkable, stale and flat,

How the good crust had sweetened these—

Pity you never thought of that!

This City Wind

This city wind with puny strength to crawl

The town’s wet streets, and furtively to tease

Loose doors and windows, making sport of these,

Comes bruised from battered jetty and sea-wall;

Comes as one limping from a sailor’s brawl,

Seeking the comfort of tall roofs and trees,

With tales of dying on disastrous seas—

This city wind that is not wind at all.

Because an area-door is left ajar,

Clapping its fretful word of autumn storm,

I sense these distant tumults, half-asleep,

I know ships founder where black waters are.

What of home-bodies, lying safe and warm,

Drowning in dreams as bitter and as deep?

PART III

I heard

The poet pass with a sound

Like the breaking of ground,

Like a storm, like a violent bird;

His head was a king’s,

And I noted the gay common things

Of his strange diadem;

I was blinded by them.

Crown of weeds!

For his brow debonair,

For his vagabond needs,

Crown of weeds,

Bud, berry, thistle and tare:

Yes! but who flung the far seeds?

October Trees

It seemed a cup that brimmed hot leaves,

That held all fires, all fruits;

I put the red tree to my lips

And drained it to the roots.

*  *  *

Beneath the smouldering trees I walk at night.

I know they burn! although they give no light.

*  *  *

I plucked a flame from off a tree,

Not thinking it would injure me;

It scorched my hand, it caught my hair,

It burned my heart to ashes there;

I played with fire in the wood—

No woman should, no woman should!

*  *  *

All day it rains—but on the hill

The dripping embers warm me still!

*  *  *

Hush—

Is this the burning bush

That Moses heard?

And was the voice a bird?

New England Cottage

The house is all in wooden rags,

The chimney tilts, the gable sags,

And where I pass

Are weedy flags

That my feet guess.

A horse-shoe rusts above the door,

Young roses prowl the porch’s floor,

Up in the dark

Wide sycamore

Is thrushes’ talk.

And here, a well not yet gone dry!

Lean in and meet its mellow eye,

Look deep, to where

A round of sky

Lurks with its star.

Happy old house of moldy beams,

Of cobweb rooms and loosening seams,

Besieged old walls

That guard their dreams

Like sentinels.

Old ark—slow-withering stick and stone,

Oak flesh that fades on iron bone;

And not deserted,

Just alone

And drowsy-hearted.

Migration

The dawn is dizzy with birds:

Summer’s last handful scattered wide,

Summer’s last pennies sung aside!

Jingle of birds in the dawn:

Hedges and bushes in beggared need,

Lifting brown hands with a desolate greed!

Spendthrift content in the dawn:

Squandered uncounted across the sky,

But into no purse will these winged coins fly!

The dawn is a resolute path

Of irresolute flight and dim half-tunes—

But I am a miser of hoarded Junes!

The dawn is dizzy with birds.

Sand-pipings

GULLS

Strong wings in the stormy weather—

Gray stitches that hold

The raveling fabrics of sea and sky

Forever together!

STORM’S END

As if engraved upon the dawn,

The sleek gulls stand

Along the rim of an exhausted sea

That rumbles up the sand.

Amazing birds, untired and trim of wing,

Whose round unflinching eyes

Meet like a challenge the leaden-lidded sun

About to rise.

FOR A SPRING DAY

Here is no bud, no blade,

No young green thing;

This stark earth knows a meager spring.

Gulls are the only birds,

And thin their cries,

Bleak winter in their frosty eyes.

Somewhere, are fields and boughs,

A hill, a brook;

I would not lift my head to look

From this wind-shapen dune,

This stern still place,

This sea that stares me in the face,

This unimpeded sun!—

And for my hand,

The fine unfecund yellow sand!

King’s Garden

Who was the royal Ming

That bade his tinkling musicians play

All through a wide and windy day

Of spring

To the royal flowers?

—Bliss

Of tall iris,

Discreet applause

Of cherry and almond boughs

Along the ledges

Of sun-lacquered hours;

Pursed lily-pods

Out-lipping one by one,

And sudden hush

Amid the lush

Green sedges!—

There walked the king

Beneath the quivering

Leaves,

The weary players bidden

Play on and on,

With slight, imperial nods;

And in his satin sleeves

His hands, omniscient, hidden,

As are the hands of gods.

Abrigada

I had been told

A foolish tale:

Of stone, dank, cold.

But you,

Erect to winter storm,

To clutch of frosty-fingered gale,

Are warm.

I thought that stone was silent too,

Unmoved by beauty,

Unaware of season or of mirth,

(Stern sister of quiet earth),

But I hear laughter, singing, as I lay

My face against your gray

Surely I hear a rhythm of near waves

And sense the leaping spray,

Mixed with wild-rose and honeysuckle,

Budding sassafras,

And the cool breath of pungent leafy bay?

I knew that walls were sheltering

And strong,

But you have sheltered love so long

That love is part

Of your straight towering,

Lifting you straighter still,

As heart lifts heart—

Hush—

How the Whip-poor-will

Wails from his bush,

The thrush

Is garrulous with delight,

There is a rapture in that liquid monotone:

“Bob-White! Bob-White!”

(Dear living stone!)

*  *  *

In the great room below,

Where arches hold the listening spaces,

Flames crackle, toss and gleam

In the red fire-places;

Memories dream—

Of other memories, perhaps,

Of other lives;

Of births

And of re-births that men deem death;

Of voices, foot-steps tapping the stone floor,

And faces—faces—

Beyond, the open door,

The meadow drowsy with the moon,

The mild outline of dune,

The lake, the silver magic in the trees:

Walls, you are one with these.

*  *  *

Up on the loggia-roof,

Under stars pale as they,

Two silent ones have crept away,

Seeking the deeper silence lovers know;

Into the drifting shadows of the night,

Into the aching beauty of the night

They dare to go.

The moon

Is a vast cocoon,

Spinning her wild white thread

Across the sky;

A thousand crickets croon

Their sharp-edged lullaby;

I hear a murmuring of lips on lips:

“All that I am, beloved—

All—”

(Lovers’ eternal cry!)

Hold them still closer, wall!

*  *  *

You stand serene.

The salt winds linger, lean

Upon your breast;

The mist

Lifts up a gray face to be kissed;

The east and west

Hang you with banners,

Flaunt their brief victories of dusk and dawn;

Seasons salute you as they pass,

Call to you and are gone.

Amid your meadow-grass,

Lush, green,

You stand serene.

*  *  *

Houses are like the hearts of men,

I think;

They must have life within,

(This is their meat and drink),

They must have fires and friends and kin,

Love for the day and night,

Children in strong young laps:

Then they live—then!

Houses and hearts of men,

Joyful and woeful,

Haunted perhaps;

Loving, forgetting,

Loved and forgot,

Fading at last, to die,

Crumble and rot:

But they who know you, Abrigada,

They and I

Forget you not.

*  *  *

Nor they who stand

On Abrigada’s roof,

(Red-tiled, aloof),

Who climb as I climb now,

Withdrawn from reach of hand,

From call of crowd,

Looking down on distance, dune and bough,

And looking up on distance, cloud and cloud.

Only not looking back!

For it is well finally to forget

The thirst, the much-lipped cup,

The plethora, the piteous lack,

The broken things, the stains, the scars—

Well to look up and up:

To dream undaunted dreams aloud

And stumble toward the stars!

*  *  *

This be in praise

Of Abrigada,

In all the ways

That come to me

Through the mild midsummer days.

In speech;

In rhyme and rhythm of written word—

Name it a poem, maybe!

In song:

Tuck the brown shining wood under my chin—

My bird,

My heart,

My violin!

In dream;

In prayer;

In silence, best of all,

Leaning there

On the beloved wall.

In silence like a cry,

Ardent and high;

A note of Abrigada’s silence

Sung to a quiet sky.

PART IV

I saw the Piper hanging on a tree,

Leaf-crowned

And crucified.

“Pan! Pan!” I cried.

The awful eye, still roving, fell on me,

Then sought along the ground.

I found

The pipes still lying near,

Held them like hyssop to the straining lips—

And oh, the sound, the sound,

Forever in my ear,

And in my side

The last note like a spear!

ITALIAN QUATRAINS

Naples

PALAZZO

Lordly amid the rotting houses of the street,

It lifts a marble scorn, while at its carven feet

They crowd in ancient filth. It does not look at them,

These crumbling beggars catching at its stony hem.

NEAPOLITAN WASHING

Hellene and Roman bred this race;

Unconsciously these drying rags

Make of the squalid market-place

A conqueror’s city hung with flags!

HAIR-DRESSING

There in the littered street she sits and chats with passing friends,

While a deft neighbor combs her hair, pins close the sleek black ends;

She holds her gushing nipple to the child upon her knee,

Plucks vermin from its curls and sells her oranges to me.

STREET OF STEPS

(Flower Market)

In the noon shadows milch-goats lie and doze,

The air drips musk, carnation, lilac, rose;

The gutters ooze and spill, one walks with care—

And yet Pan might come leaping down the stair!

“GABINETTO SEGRETO”

(Naples Museum)

Then came the saints, the men of grace,

(I heard the old god say),

Destroyed my shameless laughing face,

Preserved my feet of clay!

Pompeii

SHE SINGS

So let us eat and drink, to singing and guitar,

Before we pace the mournful streets where the gray houses are;

Vesuvio, the guilty, leans lazy on the sky.

The very gods are dead, my love—and we have still to die!

NEW EXCAVATIONS

A workman with a spade in half a day

Can push two thousand lagging years away.

See, how the tragic villas, one by one,

Like drowsy lizards creep into the sun.

I EXCAVATE

They let me play at digging in that place,

Scoop ash from painted walls—a girl’s Greek face

Stared from the frieze! Between her and the skies

I hid the smoking mountain from her eyes.

GREEK FRAGMENTS

These arching feet that trip their shattered dance,

This satyr’s mocking mouth, the tumbled scroll,

Straight thigh of boy, strong hand upon the lance:

If these be fragments, tell me, what is whole?

OLIVE TREE

Moonlight is always on its leaves;

At noon there is a midnight air

About its branches, that deceives

Lovers who chance to wander there.

Rome

UNDER THE DOME OF ST. PETER’S

At last they builded wide enough, O Lord!

Here is no walled confinement of Thy Heart,

No ending to the echoes of Thy Word:

This lifting dome lifts on to where Thou art.

STATUE OF THE SAINT

This shining bronze is Peter’s living toe,

Kiss upon faithful kiss have made it so.

Prayer upon prayer hold safe the Heavenly Keys.

Thou who denied! Great Saint, deny not these!

Paganini’s Violins

(Genoa)

All April’s larks in her most lavish sky

Know less of song than these. O mournful two,

Birds of Cremona, what shall rouse in you

The jocund venture of your keen-edged cry?

Like carrier-doves, dismissed, unwinged, you lie

In dusty fame, your loosened strings untrue

To any key, hang limp as grasses do

After the long long drought when meadows die.

This is no mood for lordly violins,

These mellow masters in their disarray

Behind museum doors, these gypsy kings!

I’d set them singing, tucked beneath the chins

Of fiddler-folk whose fingers know the way,

Prancing like peacocks up the four gay strings!

Bavarian Roadside

Leave the chicory where it stands,

It will wither in your hands

If you pick it;

All its lovely blue will blacken

To a dull weed dry as bracken,

Leave it leaning by the thicket,

Leave it where it stands.

If your hunger crave for blue

Let the cornflower comfort you.

Where the gray goats browse and bleat,

All along the roadside dusty,

Where the tides of early wheat

Prophesy a golden leaven

Warm and crusty,

Leave the tangled chicory,

Bluer than the windy sky,

Leave the jaunty bit of heaven

Till it choose to die!

If your thirst you cannot bear,

Drink its color sparkling there

Like a blue wine brewed in air.

“Hark! Hark!”

No sight of it, only the song,

Hours long;

Hidden in the sun, yet near—

See, see the tiny trilling dot appear,

To disappear!

As if a pranking star had lowered it

By a thread

Over the listener’s head,

(Scarce swinging),

And then

Had pulled it up again,

Up, up, to the impenetrable blue,

And through—

Still singing!

Bagpipe Player

(Nuremberg Fountain)

He plays a sprightly tune in water.

Each note spurts from the bronze pipe-holes;

The piper plays

Four sprays

That mix and make a chord their own,

Bubbling in the bowl of stone.

(I know this tune!

First played

In some deep German wood

Some drowsy June;

Where hoofed and hairy things

Roused from the sleepy shade,

Drew near

To hear;

And nymphs were unafraid!)

Hans Sachs and Dürer passed this fountain,

And Peter Vischer, Martin Luther’s friend;

Passed to their worthy end.

But did they mark the goat-god’s godless ditty?

Or did the dripping little knave

Play drier tunes for them

In the staid street of the red-gabled city?

Oberammergau

Rich man, poor man, beggar-man, thief,

Over the hills to the mountain folk,

Doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief,

Across the world they find their way;

Christ will be crucified to-day.

Christ will hang crowned, and we are here.

Villager, are there beds enough?

Soup and bread and a pot of beer?—

Weary Gentile, Turk and Jew,

Lord and peasant, Christian too.

*  *  *

Who called His Name? What was it spoke?

Perhaps I dreamed. Then my walls dreamed!

I saw them shaking as I woke;

The dawn tuned silver harps, and there

The Star hung singing in the air.

“Rich man, rich man, drawing near,

Have you not heard of the needle’s eye?

Beggar, whom do you follow here?

Did you give to the poor as He bade you do?

Proud sir, which of the thieves are you?”

“Doctor, lawyer, whom do you seek?

Do you succor the needy and ask no fee?

Chief, will you turn the other cheek?

Merchant, there is a story grim

Of money-changers scourged by Him!”

The Star leaned lower from the sky:

“Oh men in holy orders dressed,

Hurrying so to see Him die,

Important, as becomes your creed,

Why bring you dogma for His need?”

*  *  *

The streets of Oberammergau

Are waking now, are crowding now;

The Star has fallen like a tear;

There is a tree with a waiting bough

Not far from here.

Rich man, poor man, beggar and thief,

Over the hills to the mountain folk,

Doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief,

Magdalene, Mary great with grief,

And Martha walking heavily—

Doubter—dreamer—which am I?

Lord, help Thou mine unbelief!

One Version

I think that Mary Magdalene

Was just a woman who went to dine,

And her jewels covered her empty heart

And her gown was the color of wine.

I think that Mary Magdalene

Sat by a stranger with shining head.

“Haven’t we met somewhere?” she asked.

Magdalene!—Mary!—he said.

I think that Mary Magdalene

Fell at his feet and called his name,

Sat at his feet and wept her woe

And rose up clean of shame.

Nobody knew but Magdalene,

Mary the woman who went to dine,

Nobody saw how he broke the bread

And poured for her peace the wine.

This is the story of Magdalene;

It’s not the tale the Apostles tell,

But I know the woman it happened to—

I know the woman well.

Protest in Passing

This house of flesh was never loved of me,

Though I have known much love beneath its roof,

Always was I a guest who stood aloof,

Loth to accept such hospitality.

When the house slumbered, how I woke! for then

I knew of half-escapes along the night,

But now there comes a safer swifter flight:

I go; nor need endure these rooms again.

I have been cowed too long by closed-in walls,

By masonry of muscle, blood and bone;

This quaking house of flesh that was my own,

High roof-tree of the heart, see how it falls!

I go—but pause upon the threshold’s rust,

To shake from off my feet my own dead dust.

Saul! Saul!

I braced myself in that vast hour,

Marking His mighty nod,

Strange winds directed my poor aim:

I hurled my soul to God.

I saw His casual Hand reach out,

The gaping stars grew dim,

My soul lay weeping in His Palm:

Well caught! I cried to Him.

PART V

You gave me wings to fly;

Then took away my sky.

Fiddler’s Farewell

Fold now the song within the songster.

Small sturdy one,

Roistering down the centuries,

Drunk with the fiddlers’ fingers,

(Never a dearth of these,

The living crowding where the dead have been),

Pure promiscuous dandled violin!

Cæsar of sound, my songs in passing, cry,

Morituri te salutamus!—and passing, die.

Fold now the song away.

Close the lid down

Upon the gradual dismay

Of disconcerted singing,

Unloose the fingers’ clinging

That has so lost its cunning,

Turn from the faltering renown,

Fame of the little town

After the flag-hung city;

Deny the ruin pity!

Pity? Yes, for the failing song

That like a droughty stream

Crawls, drips

Over an arid land,

(Yet deep enough to drown)—

O violin that slips

From the relinquishing hand,

Brown brightness hid—

Let fall the incurious lid.

*  *  *

Let me find words

With which to sing of silence,

Better than all this blurred half-sound

Of tattered music trailing on the ground,

(That was a banner in the wind),

Words

And their pacing pride

For the frustrated heart,

That stoic singer in the side,

Unviolined!

Be not afraid,

My songs, my full-throats,

Be not stampeded into muffled herds,

Mouthing and terrified—

O fierce white music that I made,

Proud notes,

Chords, choirs of taut tuned strings,

And slender strength

Of bow that was a bough;

Tread this last length

Of singing, mellow and muted, staid,

Pass unbewildered now

With this processional of rhymed recording words.

Be not afraid.

*  *  *

What is a violin?

Who shall reveal this mystery of thin

Vibrating wood?

Of forest voices multi-voiced—

Wind, rain, on many leaves,

Bent branches moaning under

The crash of clouds that meet,

The cool pale hiss of snow?

And birds?

And pattering furry feet?

(Young cries along the leaves!)

All musics and all seasons

Seeping and soaking in,

Into the very core

Of the green bud

Of destined fiddle-wood—

Long long before

The master-mind conceives,

The hand achieves

The carven whole,

The curving sides, the twisted scroll,

Shapes it and stains it to this red russet thing

Of expectant string,

Names it, invests it

With its adolescent voice,

Fondles it, fingers it,

Breasts it!

How light it seems,

Swinging between the abdicating finger and thumb,

How frail this unbarred stronghold

Of sweet gold—

All fortunes and all raptures and all dreams—

Kind horn of plenty!

And who shall count the glittering sum?

*  *  *

Words for my fiddle now,

Abundance of goodly words:

My deft, my dear,

My witty one

With your brave answer ever ready,

My box of birds,

Crony and hearty,

Winged hubbub,

Tool,

And tear—

Fiddler, fiddle,

To leave you lying here!

What then?

Stand stripped of music?

Resolutely attain

A dull and obdurate ear

For the blithe hurricane?

Shiver, and gather closer these aphonous rags

Like a beggar’s coat;

Shut the bland thunder out?

Acknowledge silence—

But what if there be none?

What if all sound go sounding on and on

Upon a loftier air,

The green note and its fellow

Roused to a greener loudness

Forever lifting there?

Let me declare

That music never dies;

That music never dies.

Let me in potent mood create

Of this my fantasy a faith,

A little paradise

Immaculate,

True as the tested string is true,

For all the lovely cries

Of all the violins—

And of mine too!

*  *  *

In time

A stranger with the supple fiddler’s hand,

And the rapt eye

That sees the sound sublime,

Will come,

(Must come, I wish it so!)

To coax these stagnant strings,

Kindle their numb

And awful apathy with one imperative blow

Of the fleet accurate bow;

Release the fiddle-cry.

O faithless—

Faithful only to sound,

(That loud-lipped passer-by),

You will forget straightway

The player for the player;

And both for the tune you play!

In time I too shall turn

To others’ music,

Shall learn

A niggardly delight

In some slight

Lord of nimble fingers

Tossing me sops of song;

The long

And measured wisdom of wide symphonies

Will find me listening;

A singer, a child’s hand on the candid keys,

A whistle on the wing:

All these!

I’ll not disdain the fine

And effervescent draught,

Filling the echoing cup

(That was so full!)

With others’ wine.

I’ll not refuse to drink.

But first

I must know thirst.

So must this violin of mine,

I think.

*  *  *

How still it lies;

An empty shell along the empty sand

Is not more still;

But put your hand

To the shining thing

As music passes!

Do you feel the quickening

Of the languid wood?

Come, lay your ear

To the shell—

Heart, leaning near,

So near—

Do you hear

The stirring and the throbbing

Above your tuneless sobbing?

PART VI

Measure me, sky!

Tell me I reach by a song

Nearer the stars;

I have been little so long.

Weigh me, high wind!

What will your wild scales record?

Profit of pain,

Joy by the weight of a word.

Horizon, reach out,

Catch at my hands, stretch me taut,

Rim of the world!

Widen my eyes by a thought.

Sky, be my depth,

Wind, be my tolerant height,

World, my heart’s span—

Loneliness, wings for my flight!

Of Mountains

... Then I rose up

And swept the dust of planets from my eyes,

And wandered shouting down that shouting hour,

Pausing to pluck a mountain like a flower

That grew against the skies.

All through the night I am aware

Of hills that are not hills

Beyond my window;

I am aware of flight,

High, heavy,

Across the sky.

Mountains—

And over them a crumbling moon,

A snow-flake on fire,

Scattered from their frosty tips.

Stone wings,

So sure of the way!

Lying there I can see them

Blue hour on hour;

And from my safe pillow I follow

Their granite flight,

White hills fastened to my heels!

*  *  *

Morning lies prone upon the lake,

Like a pale woman on a silver bed

Who will not lift her head.

—I had forgotten the green of trees at dawn, and how withdrawn are they from day. I had forgotten too how trees stray in their sleep across deep drowsy water, until the first breeze ripples them away.—

Along the shore

Are little boats that dream

Of little journeys they will make;

Of journeys made no more.

—Far up the slopes gleam languid patches of midsummer snow that never go; dim flocks of snow among the rocks of a perched mountain meadow.—

Only the mountains are awake,

Guarding the vague low sky;

And a bird for its own song’s sake—

And I!

—Only a bird would dare to break the stillness of this hour; make of the shattered air this cool unbroken note—O tiny master-tool within the tiny throat!—

*  *  *

Mountains—high mothers—

Storms lie in their laps,

Thunders and lightnings play about their iron knees;

I have seen them rock the sky to sleep.

The mist lifts them;

Flint and ice floating as clouds float,

Unpeopled islands of a white unfathomed sea.

They are like an unanswered crying turned to stone,

And beyond

Are stone echoes of the crying;

Beyond—and beyond—

Is a veiled whispering on its knees,

On its face,

Hushed at last on the far plains.

*  *  *

Out of blazing noon and into its cleft side

I creep,

To where the cataract,

Silver artery of the mountain,

Pounds through its bleak heart.

Abashed

I stand in that covert place,

Silenced in the roar of the silent one!

*  *  *

Flowers and trees grow timid,

Follow me no further;

Grass runs to green safety on the lower hills.

Under my climbing feet earth climbs

And starves;

Its boulders start like bones from its gaunt sides.

Livid and alone

It hurls itself forever upward,

Turned to blind granite

Beneath the glare of hostile spaces

And of skies estranged.

*  *  *

This is the hill!

Mournful against the sky, and bare,

Where wind and darkness meet,

Crucified in the air.

And at its feet

Hills gather there,

Crowding, and casting lots

For a green cloak to wear.

*  *  *

The way that I have come,

Winding so cannily,

Is a brown zig-zag serpent

Alert along the tilting slopes,

Ready to leap and strike.

And looking down

I fear its wily coils,

Knowing that I must tread them

To reach again the cluttered toys

In the valley—

Where I shall sleep to-night.

*  *  *

They say the sea was here;

And it is like the sea to-day.

Waves, waves,

Green tides and tempests

Closing in on me,

Granite waters that have crashed together,

Flooded and filled the hollows!

What are a million years?

These spread peaks

Are Eternity’s stone fingers

On which she reckons the rhythm

Of centuries.

And they say the jungle crawled, lush and savage,

In this ascetic place.

Once I saw a glacier-rock

Lying numbered on a museum-shelf,

And as if carved upon it,

The drooping slender outline of a palm-leaf

Fallen from a too hot sky.

Count on, stone fingers!

Fingers of ice, recount these careless wonders!

The sea was here.

Hidden beneath the ripples of oncoming hills

Cattle are grazing on its grassy floor;

The sound of bells drifts by

Like sea-weed on the surface of the air.

What are a million years?

*  *  *

I thought: These shall endure

Though the sky tumble!—

But now, with a slow hand

They are removed from off the summer land

Without a cry or rumble.

This thing I know:

The mist is stronger than these massive hills,

And when it wills

They go.

And I know too

Its silence is the greater;

It can subdue

Their august hush to less

Than nothingness.

And yet it grants to me

Enough of path to tread;

And one dim tree

To keep me comforted.

*  *  *

But at evening

The mountains lean from out the sky

To lap the glossy waters of the lake.

So came Hannibal’s elephants,

Humped gray backs,

Heads lowered,

Lumbering through the passes,

Knee-deep in the deep water.

Snow clings to their rough flanks,

Their shoulders heave under the red and purple blows

Of the sun-set;

Detached from earth and sky,

They emerge,

They tread mightily up the valley.

And I watch them,

Mild beasts wading into the lake;

And I wonder they do not break its shining mirror.

The boatman glanced along its darkening side,

From the pale water paler with the night,

And in his face I saw a sturdy pride,

An understanding of its strength and height,

Its silences, its storms, its lonely ways:

He who had lived beside it all his days.

He pulled upon his oar and naught he said;

But in his eyes were hills inherited.

*  *  *

Under the iron wheels that lift us,

And about the sooty scars that tunnels make,

The mountain scatters flowers from an ample garden,

(Fox-glove and hare-bell pirouetting on the giddy ledges),

And we of the summer valley

Stumble shivering along its constant snows

On feet that never climbed.

Our voices are thin in the thin air,

Our little hearts thud strangely.

We are near the nearness of its swift deaths

On these relentless heights—

Death, in the swerving shelves of blue bitter ice,

Death, in the sly shrouds that hang from its sinister banks,

Death, unconcerned!

And we shall trickle down to life again

Unimportantly:

We of the summer valley.

*  *  *

Dusk wanders here alone;

No cloud or star runs at her side,

The lit sky is her own.

Along her paths of snow,

In that far fearless garden

She walks alone;

And from dim paths below,

I watch her plucking crimson flowers,

Roses in ice and stone.

*  *  *

And suddenly I fear these mountains!

There is a howling in the air

That is their intolerable voice,

They leap the sky,

They tear at the clouds,

Foam drips from their steep jaws.

They sit hunched up along the passes,

Snarling in the gorges;

And one, his lean head straining toward the moon,

Howls, howls!

Night is a clanging of loud bronze,

And I fear these mountains;

All the winds of the air

Are blown from their stretched throats.

*  *  *

The morning wears a Gothic air,

And Sabbath bells are carved on its blue arches.

I am rimmed round with hills

Upon their knees.

So rose the first prayer to the first sky—

A wide doxology of early earth

The while God rested.

*  *  *

Summer is leaving these high places.

With all their weight

The mountains cannot fasten to the meadow

One warm blade,

Hold to the bough its truest leaf,

Dismay or clamp upon the sky

Any small wing that chooses flight.

Not all the phalanx of these hills

Piled each on each

Can do this thing,

Although they barricade the stars!

Summer is leaving these high places.

*  *  *

Traveler, if you would go,

Go now:

Follow the breathless gray-lipped stream,

The bony finger of the bough,

Follow the fading falling road,

Forget the whole green episode;

Go now.

Go now if you would go;

That is a different denser snow

Along the black cliffs of the sky,

And down the hills

Their harvest spills

Its slanting squares of wheat and rye;

But overhead

Something is stricken

In the air

That will not quicken.

If you would not see hill-sides die,

Stripped bare

And brown,

With stormy wreaths on the indomitable brow

That wears this hour like a crown,

Go now!

*  *  *

Hills that are not hills,

But a deliberate violent gesture of earth

Away from earth,

(Upward, always upward),

What are seasons to you?

What are arrivals or departures?

But I,

How shall I go?

It is so long since I have seen the curved bar

Of the horizon,

Making a prison of the world!

How shall I walk the plains again,

Go down and down—

Into the valley of the shadow of life?

Only because of mountains in my heart

For me to climb,

Heights, my own,

Depths, higher still;

And I, the pioneer!

*  *  *

Who is the pioneer?

He is the follower here,

Perhaps the last

Of all who passed.

He does not fear nor scorn

To tread

The ventured path, the worn,

Of those ahead;

Nor shall he fail

To blaze his own brave trail

Along the beaten track,

Make of the old a newer way

Of stouter clay

For others at his back.

He is the pioneer who climbs,

Who dares to climb

His own high heart,

Although he fall

A thousand times;

Who dares to crawl

On honest hands and knees

Along its stony ecstasies

Up to the utmost snows:

Nor knows

He stands on these!

Who is the pioneer?

I say he is the follower here,

Dogged and undeterred,

Perhaps the last

Of all who passed.

He passes too,

The wingless one, the heavy bird,

Limping along—

Ah, but his song,

His song!

Let not my death be long,

But light

As a bird’s swinging;

Happy decision in the height

Of song—

Then flight

From off the ultimate bough!

And let my wing be strong,

And my last note the first

Of another’s singing.

See to it, Thou!

The author wishes to thank the following magazines for permission to reprint the contents of this book:

The Century Magazine, the North American Review, the Nation, the American Mercury, Chicago Poetry, Voices, the Measure, the Forum, Contemporary Verse, Rhythmus, the Freeman, the Literary Supplement of the New York Evening Post, the Saturday Review, the Bookman, Commonweal and the Lyric.

Also the Poetry Society of South Carolina, which awarded the poem “Oberammergau” the Blindman Prize for 1923.

“Fiddler’s Farewell” was read at the College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Va., before the Alpha Chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa at the author’s initiation as a member of that Society.

“The Ballad of a Lost House” was awarded the Guarantor’s Prize for 1925 by Poetry: A Magazine of Verse.

CONTENTS

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Transcriber's Note:

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