New York Nocturnes
And Other Poems

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

VERSE:

Orion and Other Poems. (Out of Print.) Lippincott.

In Divers Tones. D. Lothrop Co.

Songs of the Common Day. Longmans, Green & Co.

The Book of the Native. Lamson, Wolffe & Co.

PROSE:

The Canadians of Old. From the French of de Gaspé. D. Appleton & Co.

Around the Camp Fire. T. Y. Crowell & Co.

Earth’s Enigmas. Lamson, Wolffe & Co.

A History of Canada. Lamson, Wolffe & Co.

The Forge in the Forest. Lamson, Wolffe & Co.

A Sister to Evangeline. A Romance of Old Acadia. (In Press.) Lamson, Wolffe & Co.

New York Nocturnes
And Other Poems

By
Charles G. D. Roberts
Lamson, Wolffe and Company
Boston, New York and London
MDCCCXCVIII

Copyright, 1898,
By Lamson, Wolffe and Company.
All rights reserved.

THE IDEAL

To Her, when life was little worth,

When hope, a tide run low,

Between dim shores of emptiness

Almost forgot to flow,—

Faint with the city’s fume and stress

I came at night to Her.

Her cool white fingers on my face—

How wonderful they were!

More dear they were to fevered lids

Than lilies cooled in dew.

They touched my lips with tenderness,

Till life was born anew.

The city’s clamour died in calm;

And once again I heard

The moon-white woodland stillnesses

Enchanted by a bird;

The wash of far, remembered waves;

The sigh of lapsing streams;

And one old garden’s lilac leaves

Conferring in their dreams.

A breath from childhood daisy fields

Came back to me again,

Here in the city’s weary miles

Of city-wearied men.

CONTENTS

New York Nocturnes
Ὦ Θεοί, τίς ἆρα Κύπρις, ἢ τίς ἵμερος, τοῦδε ξυνήψατο;

New York Nocturnes

In the Crowd

I walk the city square with thee.

The night is loud; the pavements roar.

Their eddying mirth and misery

Encircle thee and me.

The street is full of lights and cries.

The crowd but brings thee close to me.

I only hear thy low replies;

I only see thine eyes.

Night in a Down-town Street

Not in the eyed, expectant gloom,

Where soaring peaks repose

And incommunicable space

Companions with the snows;

Not in the glimmering dusk that crawls

Upon the clouded sea,

Where bourneless wave on bourneless wave

Complains continually;

Not in the palpable dark of woods

Where groping hands clutch fear,

Does Night her deeps of solitude

Reveal unveiled as here.

The street is a grim cañon carved

In the eternal stone,

That knows no more the rushing stream

It anciently has known.

The emptying tide of life has drained

The iron channel dry.

Strange winds from the forgotten day

Draw down, and dream, and sigh.

The narrow heaven, the desolate moon

Made wan with endless years,

Seem less immeasurably remote

Than laughter, love, or tears.

At the Railway Station

Here the night is fierce with light,

Here the great wheels come and go,

Here are partings, waitings, meetings,

Mysteries of joy and woe.

Here is endless haste and change,

Here the ache of streaming eyes,

Radiance of expectant faces,

Breathless askings, brief replies.

Here the jarred, tumultuous air

Throbs and pauses like a bell,

Gladdens with delight of greeting,

Sighs and sorrows with farewell.

Here, ah, here with hungry eyes

I explore the passing throng.

Restless I await your coming

Whose least absence is so long.

Faces, faces pass me by,

Meaningless, and blank, and dumb,

Till my heart grows faint and sickens

Lest at last you should not come.

Then—I see you. And the blood

Surges back to heart and brain.

Eyes meet mine,—and Heaven opens.

You are at my side again.

Nocturnes of the Honeysuckle
I

Forever shed your sweetness on the night,

Dear honeysuckle, flower of our delight!

Forever breathe the mystery of that hour

When her hand touched me, lightlier than a flower,—

And life became forever strange and sweet,

A gift to lay with worship at her feet.

Nocturnes of the Honeysuckle
II

Oh, flower of the honeysuckle,

Tell me how often the long night through

She turns in her dream to the open window,

She turns in her dream to you.

Oh, flower of the honeysuckle,

Tell me how tenderly out of the dew

You breathe her a dream of that night of wonder

When life was fashioned anew.

Oh, flower of the honeysuckle,

Tell me how long ere, the sweet night through,

She will turn not to you but to me in the darkness,

And dream and desire come true.

My Garden

I have a garden in the city’s grime

Where secretly my heart keeps summer time;

Where blow such airs of rapture on my eyes

As those blest dreamers know in Paradise,

Who after lives of longing come at last

Where anguish of vain love is overpast.

When the broad noon lies shadeless on the street,

And traffic roars, and toilers faint with heat,

Where men forget that ever woods were green,

The wonders of my garden are not seen.

Only at night the magic doors disclose

Its labyrinths of lavender and rose;

And honeysuckle, white beneath its moon,

Whispers me softly thou art coming soon;

And led by Love’s white hand upon my wrist

Beside its glimmering fountains I keep tryst.

O Love, this moving fragrance on my hair,—

Is it thy breath, or some enchanted air

From far, uncharted realms of mystery

Which I have dreamed of but shall never see?

O Love, this low, wild music in my ears,

Is it the heart-beat of thy hopes and fears,

Or the faint cadence of some fairy song

On winds of boyhood memory blown along?

O Love, what poignant ecstasy is this

Upon my lips and eyes? Thy touch,—thy kiss.

Presence

Dawn like a lily lies upon the land

Since I have known the whiteness of your hand.

Dusk is more soft and more mysterious where

Breathes on my eyes the perfume of your hair.

Waves at your coming break in livelier blue;

And solemn woods are glad because of you.

Brooks of your laughter learn their liquid notes.

Birds to your voice attune their pleading throats.

Fields to your feet grow smoother and more green;

And happy blossoms tell where you have been.

Twilight on Sixth Avenue

Over the tops of the houses

Twilight and sunset meet.

The green, diaphanous dusk

Sinks to the eager street.

Astray in the tangle of roofs

Wanders a wind of June.

The dial shines in the clock-tower

Like the face of a strange-scrawled moon.

The narrowing lines of the houses

Palely begin to gleam,

And the hurrying crowds fade softly

Like an army in a dream.

Above the vanishing faces

A phantom train flares on

With a voice that shakes the shadows,—

Diminishes, and is gone.

And I walk with the journeying throng

In such a solitude

As where a lonely ocean

Washes a lonely wood.

The Street Lamps

Eyes of the city,

Keeping your sleepless watch from sun to sun,

Is it for pity

You tremble, seeing innocence undone;

Or do you laugh, to think men thus should set

Spies on the folly day would fain forget?

In Darkness

I have faced life with courage,—but not now!

O Infinite, in this darkness draw thou near.

Wisdom alone I asked of thee, but thou

Hast crushed me with the awful gift of fear.

In the Solitude of the City

Night; and the sound of voices in the street.

Night; and the happy laughter where they meet,

The glad boy lover and the trysting girl.

But thou—but thou—I cannot find thee, Sweet!

Night; and far off the lighted pavements roar.

Night; and the dark of sorrow keeps my door.

I reach my hand out trembling in the dark.

Thy hand comes not with comfort any more.

O Silent, Unresponding! If these fears

Lie not, nor other wisdom come with years,

No day shall dawn for me without regret,

No night go uncompanioned by my tears.

A Nocturne of Exile

Out of this night of lonely noise,

The city’s crowded cries,

Home of my heart, to thee, to thee

I turn my longing eyes.

Years, years, how many years I went

In exile wearily,

Before I lifted up my face

And saw my home in thee.

I had come home to thee at last.

I saw thy warm lights gleam.

I entered thine abiding joy,—

Oh, was it but a dream?

Ere I could reckon with my heart

The sum of our delight,

I was an exile once again

Here in the hasting night.

Thy doors were shut; thy lights were gone

From my remembering eyes.—

Only the city’s endless throng!

Only the crowded cries!

A Street Vigil

Here is the street

Made holy by the passing of her feet,—

The little, tender feet, more sweet than myrrh,

Which I have washed with tears for love of her.

Here she has gone

Until the very stones have taken on

A glory from her passing, and the place

Is tremulous with memory of her face.

Here is the room

That holds the light to lighten all my gloom.

Beyond that blank white window she is sleeping

Who hath my hope, my health, my fame, in keeping.

A little peace

Here for a little, ere my vigil cease

And I turn homeward, shaken with the strife

Of hope that struggles hopeless, sick for life.

Surely the power

That lifted me from darkness that one hour

To a dear heaven whereof no word can tell

Not wantonly will thrust me back to hell.

A Nocturne of Trysting

Broods the hid glory in its sheath of gloom

Till strikes the destined hour, and bursts the bloom,

A rapture of white passion and perfume.

So the long day is like a bud

That aches with coming bliss,

Till flowers in light the wondrous night

That brings me to thy kiss.

Then, with a thousand sorrows forgotten in one hour,

In thy pure eyes and at thy feet I find at last my goal;

And life and hope and joy seem but a faint prevision

Of the flower that is thy body and the flame that is thy soul.

In a City Room

O city night of noises and alarms,