Poems of Sidney Lanier.Part 2 out of 5The Waving of the Corn. Ploughman, whose gnarly hand yet kindly wheeled Thy plough to ring this solitary tree With clover, whose round plat, reserved a-field, In cool green radius twice my length may be -- Scanting the corn thy furrows else might yield, To pleasure August, bees, fair thoughts, and me, That here come oft together -- daily I, Stretched prone in summer's mortal ecstasy, Do stir with thanks to thee, as stirs this morn With waving of the corn. Unseen, the farmer's boy from round the hill Whistles a snatch that seeks his soul unsought, And fills some time with tune, howbeit shrill; The cricket tells straight on his simple thought -- Nay, 'tis the cricket's way of being still; The peddler bee drones in, and gossips naught; Far down the wood, a one-desiring dove Times me the beating of the heart of love: And these be all the sounds that mix, each morn, With waving of the corn. From here to where the louder passions dwell, Green leagues of hilly separation roll: Trade ends where yon far clover ridges swell. Ye terrible Towns, ne'er claim the trembling soul That, craftless all to buy or hoard or sell, From out your deadly complex quarrel stole To company with large amiable trees, Suck honey summer with unjealous bees, And take Time's strokes as softly as this morn Takes waving of the corn. ____ West Chester, Pa., 1876. The Song of the Chattahoochee. Out of the hills of Habersham, Down the valleys of Hall, I hurry amain to reach the plain, Run the rapid and leap the fall, Split at the rock and together again, Accept my bed, or narrow or wide, And flee from folly on every side With a lover's pain to attain the plain Far from the hills of Habersham, Far from the valleys of Hall. All down the hills of Habersham, All through the valleys of Hall, The rushes cried `Abide, abide,' The willful waterweeds held me thrall, The laving laurel turned my tide, The ferns and the fondling grass said `Stay,' The dewberry dipped for to work delay, And the little reeds sighed `Abide, abide, Here in the hills of Habersham, Here in the valleys of Hall.' High o'er the hills of Habersham, Veiling the valleys of Hall, The hickory told me manifold Fair tales of shade, the poplar tall Wrought me her shadowy self to hold, The chestnut, the oak, the walnut, the pine, Overleaning, with flickering meaning and sign, Said, `Pass not, so cold, these manifold Deep shades of the hills of Habersham, These glades in the valleys of Hall.' And oft in the hills of Habersham, And oft in the valleys of Hall, The white quartz shone, and the smooth brook-stone Did bar me of passage with friendly brawl, And many a luminous jewel lone -- Crystals clear or a-cloud with mist, Ruby, garnet and amethyst -- Made lures with the lights of streaming stone In the clefts of the hills of Habersham, In the beds of the valleys of Hall. But oh, not the hills of Habersham, And oh, not the valleys of Hall Avail: I am fain for to water the plain. Downward the voices of Duty call -- Downward, to toil and be mixed with the main, The dry fields burn, and the mills are to turn, And a myriad flowers mortally yearn, And the lordly main from beyond the plain Calls o'er the hills of Habersham, Calls through the valleys of Hall. ____ 1877. From the Flats. What heartache -- ne'er a hill! Inexorable, vapid, vague and chill The drear sand-levels drain my spirit low. With one poor word they tell me all they know; Whereat their stupid tongues, to tease my pain, Do drawl it o'er again and o'er again. They hurt my heart with griefs I cannot name: Always the same, the same. Nature hath no surprise, No ambuscade of beauty 'gainst mine eyes From brake or lurking dell or deep defile; No humors, frolic forms -- this mile, that mile; No rich reserves or happy-valley hopes Beyond the bend of roads, the distant slopes. Her fancy fails, her wild is all run tame: Ever the same, the same. Oh might I through these tears But glimpse some hill my Georgia high uprears, Where white the quartz and pink the pebble shine, The hickory heavenward strives, the muscadine Swings o'er the slope, the oak's far-falling shade Darkens the dogwood in the bottom glade, And down the hollow from a ferny nook Bright leaps a living brook! ____ Tampa, Florida, 1877. The Mocking-Bird. Superb and sole, upon a plumed spray That o'er the general leafage boldly grew, He summ'd the woods in song; or typic drew The watch of hungry hawks, the lone dismay Of languid doves when long their lovers stray, And all birds' passion-plays that sprinkle dew At morn in brake or bosky avenue. Whate'er birds did or dreamed, this bird could say. Then down he shot, bounced airily along The sward, twitched in a grasshopper, made song Midflight, perched, prinked, and to his art again. Sweet Science, this large riddle read me plain: How may the death of that dull insect be The life of yon trim Shakespeare on the tree? Tampa Robins. The robin laughed in the orange-tree: "Ho, windy North, a fig for thee: While breasts are red and wings are bold And green trees wave us globes of gold, Time's scythe shall reap but bliss for me -- Sunlight, song, and the orange-tree. Burn, golden globes in leafy sky, My orange-planets: crimson I Will shine and shoot among the spheres (Blithe meteor that no mortal fears) And thrid the heavenly orange-tree With orbits bright of minstrelsy. If that I hate wild winter's spite -- The gibbet trees, the world in white, The sky but gray wind over a grave -- Why should I ache, the season's slave? I'll sing from the top of the orange-tree `Gramercy, winter's tyranny.' I'll south with the sun, and keep my clime; My wing is king of the summer-time; My breast to the sun his torch shall hold; And I'll call down through the green and gold `Time, take thy scythe, reap bliss for me, Bestir thee under the orange-tree.'" ____ Tampa, Florida, 1877. The Crystal. At midnight, death's and truth's unlocking time, When far within the spirit's hearing rolls The great soft rumble of the course of things -- A bulk of silence in a mask of sound, -- When darkness clears our vision that by day Is sun-blind, and the soul's a ravening owl For truth and flitteth here and there about Low-lying woody tracts of time and oft Is minded for to sit upon a bough, Dry-dead and sharp, of some long-stricken tree And muse in that gaunt place, -- 'twas then my heart, Deep in the meditative dark, cried out: "Ye companies of governor-spirits grave, Bards, and old bringers-down of flaming news From steep-wall'd heavens, holy malcontents, Sweet seers, and stellar visionaries, all That brood about the skies of poesy, Full bright ye shine, insuperable stars; Yet, if a man look hard upon you, none With total lustre blazeth, no, not one But hath some heinous freckle of the flesh Upon his shining cheek, not one but winks His ray, opaqued with intermittent mist Of defect; yea, you masters all must ask Some sweet forgiveness, which we leap to give, We lovers of you, heavenly-glad to meet Your largesse so with love, and interplight Your geniuses with our mortalities. Thus unto thee, O sweetest Shakespeare sole, A hundred hurts a day I do forgive ('Tis little, but, enchantment! 'tis for thee): Small curious quibble; Juliet's prurient pun In the poor, pale face of Romeo's fancied death; Cold rant of Richard; Henry's fustian roar Which frights away that sleep he invocates; Wronged Valentine's unnatural haste to yield; Too-silly shifts of maids that mask as men In faint disguises that could ne'er disguise -- Viola, Julia, Portia, Rosalind; Fatigues most drear, and needless overtax Of speech obscure that had as lief be plain; Last I forgive (with more delight, because 'Tis more to do) the labored-lewd discourse That e'en thy young invention's youngest heir Besmirched the world with. Father Homer, thee, Thee also I forgive thy sandy wastes Of prose and catalogue, thy drear harangues That tease the patience of the centuries, Thy sleazy scrap of story, -- but a rogue's Rape of a light-o'-love, -- too soiled a patch To broider with the gods. Thee, Socrates, Thou dear and very strong one, I forgive Thy year-worn cloak, thine iron stringencies That were but dandy upside-down, thy words Of truth that, mildlier spoke, had mainlier wrought. So, Buddha, beautiful! I pardon thee That all the All thou hadst for needy man Was Nothing, and thy Best of being was But not to be. Worn Dante, I forgive The implacable hates that in thy horrid hells Or burn or freeze thy fellows, never loosed By death, nor time, nor love. And I forgive Thee, Milton, those thy comic-dreadful wars Where, armed with gross and inconclusive steel, Immortals smite immortals mortalwise And fill all heaven with folly. Also thee, Brave Aeschylus, thee I forgive, for that Thine eye, by bare bright justice basilisked, Turned not, nor ever learned to look where Love Stands shining. So, unto thee, Lucretius mine (For oh, what heart hath loved thee like to this That's now complaining?), freely I forgive Thy logic poor, thine error rich, thine earth Whose graves eat souls and all. Yea, all you hearts Of beauty, and sweet righteous lovers large: Aurelius fine, oft superfine; mild Saint A Kempis, overmild; Epictetus, Whiles low in thought, still with old slavery tinct; Rapt Behmen, rapt too far; high Swedenborg, O'ertoppling; Langley, that with but a touch Of art hadst sung Piers Plowman to the top Of English songs, whereof 'tis dearest, now, And most adorable; Caedmon, in the morn A-calling angels with the cow-herd's call That late brought up the cattle; Emerson, Most wise, that yet, in finding Wisdom, lost Thy Self, sometimes; tense Keats, with angels' nerves Where men's were better; Tennyson, largest voice Since Milton, yet some register of wit Wanting; -- all, all, I pardon, ere 'tis asked, Your more or less, your little mole that marks You brother and your kinship seals to man. But Thee, but Thee, O sovereign Seer of time, But Thee, O poets' Poet, Wisdom's Tongue, But Thee, O man's best Man, O love's best Love, O perfect life in perfect labor writ, O all men's Comrade, Servant, King, or Priest, -- What `if' or `yet', what mole, what flaw, what lapse, What least defect or shadow of defect, What rumor, tattled by an enemy, Of inference loose, what lack of grace Even in torture's grasp, or sleep's, or death's, -- Oh, what amiss may I forgive in Thee, Jesus, good Paragon, thou Crystal Christ?" ____ Baltimore, 1880. The Revenge of Hamish. It was three slim does and a ten-tined buck in the bracken lay; And all of a sudden the sinister smell of a man, Awaft on a wind-shift, wavered and ran Down the hill-side and sifted along through the bracken and passed that way. Then Nan got a-tremble at nostril; she was the daintiest doe; In the print of her velvet flank on the velvet fern She reared, and rounded her ears in turn. Then the buck leapt up, and his head as a king's to a crown did go Full high in the breeze, and he stood as if Death had the form of a deer; And the two slim does long lazily stretching arose, For their day-dream slowlier came to a close, Till they woke and were still, breath-bound with waiting and wonder and fear. Then Alan the huntsman sprang over the hillock, the hounds shot by, The does and the ten-tined buck made a marvellous bound, The hounds swept after with never a sound, But Alan loud winded his horn in sign that the quarry was nigh. For at dawn of that day proud Maclean of Lochbuy to the hunt had waxed wild, And he cursed at old Alan till Alan fared off with the hounds For to drive him the deer to the lower glen-grounds: "I will kill a red deer," quoth Maclean, "in the sight of the wife and the child." So gayly he paced with the wife and the child to his chosen stand; But he hurried tall Hamish the henchman ahead: "Go turn," -- Cried Maclean -- "if the deer seek to cross to the burn, Do thou turn them to me: nor fail, lest thy back be red as thy hand." Now hard-fortuned Hamish, half blown of his breath with the height of the hill, Was white in the face when the ten-tined buck and the does Drew leaping to burn-ward; huskily rose His shouts, and his nether lip twitched, and his legs were o'er-weak for his will. So the deer darted lightly by Hamish and bounded away to the burn. But Maclean never bating his watch tarried waiting below Still Hamish hung heavy with fear for to go All the space of an hour; then he went, and his face was greenish and stern, And his eye sat back in the socket, and shrunken the eyeballs shone, As withdrawn from a vision of deeds it were shame to see. "Now, now, grim henchman, what is't with thee?" Brake Maclean, and his wrath rose red as a beacon the wind hath upblown. "Three does and a ten-tined buck made out," spoke Hamish, full mild, "And I ran for to turn, but my breath it was blown, and they passed; I was weak, for ye called ere I broke me my fast." Cried Maclean: "Now a ten-tined buck in the sight of the wife and the child I had killed if the gluttonous kern had not wrought me a snail's own wrong!" Then he sounded, and down came kinsmen and clansmen all: "Ten blows, for ten tine, on his back let fall, And reckon no stroke if the blood follow not at the bite of thong!" So Hamish made bare, and took him his strokes; at the last he smiled. "Now I'll to the burn," quoth Maclean, "for it still may be, If a slimmer-paunched henchman will hurry with me, I shall kill me the ten-tined buck for a gift to the wife and the child!" Then the clansmen departed, by this path and that; and over the hill Sped Maclean with an outward wrath for an inward shame; And that place of the lashing full quiet became; And the wife and the child stood sad; and bloody-backed Hamish sat still. But look! red Hamish has risen; quick about and about turns he. "There is none betwixt me and the crag-top!" he screams under breath. Then, livid as Lazarus lately from death, He snatches the child from the mother, and clambers the crag toward the sea. Now the mother drops breath; she is dumb, and her heart goes dead for a space, Till the motherhood, mistress of death, shrieks, shrieks through the glen, And that place of the lashing is live with men, And Maclean, and the gillie that told him, dash up in a desperate race. Not a breath's time for asking; an eye-glance reveals all the tale untold. They follow mad Hamish afar up the crag toward the sea, And the lady cries: "Clansmen, run for a fee! -- Yon castle and lands to the two first hands that shall hook him and hold Fast Hamish back from the brink!" -- and ever she flies up the steep, And the clansmen pant, and they sweat, and they jostle and strain. But, mother, 'tis vain; but, father, 'tis vain; Stern Hamish stands bold on the brink, and dangles the child o'er the deep. Now a faintness falls on the men that run, and they all stand still. And the wife prays Hamish as if he were God, on her knees, Crying: "Hamish! O Hamish! but please, but please For to spare him!" and Hamish still dangles the child, with a wavering will. On a sudden he turns; with a sea-hawk scream, and a gibe, and a song, Cries: "So; I will spare ye the child if, in sight of ye all, Ten blows on Maclean's bare back shall fall, And ye reckon no stroke if the blood follow not at the bite of the thong!" Then Maclean he set hardly his tooth to his lip that his tooth was red, Breathed short for a space, said: "Nay, but it never shall be! Let me hurl off the damnable hound in the sea!" But the wife: "Can Hamish go fish us the child from the sea, if dead? Say yea! -- Let them lash ME, Hamish?" -- "Nay!" -- "Husband, the lashing will heal; But, oh, who will heal me the bonny sweet bairn in his grave? Could ye cure me my heart with the death of a knave? Quick! Love! I will bare thee -- so -- kneel!" Then Maclean 'gan slowly to kneel With never a word, till presently downward he jerked to the earth. Then the henchman -- he that smote Hamish -- would tremble and lag; "Strike, hard!" quoth Hamish, full stern, from the crag; Then he struck him, and "One!" sang Hamish, and danced with the child in his mirth. And no man spake beside Hamish; he counted each stroke with a song. When the last stroke fell, then he moved him a pace down the height, And he held forth the child in the heartaching sight Of the mother, and looked all pitiful grave, as repenting a wrong. And there as the motherly arms stretched out with the thanksgiving prayer -- And there as the mother crept up with a fearful swift pace, Till her finger nigh felt of the bairnie's face -- In a flash fierce Hamish turned round and lifted the child in the air, And sprang with the child in his arms from the horrible height in the sea, Shrill screeching, "Revenge!" in the wind-rush; and pallid Maclean, Age-feeble with anger and impotent pain, Crawled up on the crag, and lay flat, and locked hold of dead roots of a tree -- And gazed hungrily o'er, and the blood from his back drip-dripped in the brine, And a sea-hawk flung down a skeleton fish as he flew, And the mother stared white on the waste of blue, And the wind drove a cloud to seaward, and the sun began to shine. ____ Baltimore, 1878. To Bayard Taylor. To range, deep-wrapt, along a heavenly height, O'erseeing all that man but undersees; To loiter down lone alleys of delight, And hear the beating of the hearts of trees, And think the thoughts that lilies speak in white By greenwood pools and pleasant passages; With healthy dreams a-dream in flesh and soul, To pace, in mighty meditations drawn, From out the forest to the open knoll Where much thyme is, whence blissful leagues of lawn Betwixt the fringing woods to southward roll By tender inclinations; mad with dawn, Ablaze with fires that flame in silver dew When each small globe doth glass the morning-star, Long ere the sun, sweet-smitten through and through With dappled revelations read afar, Suffused with saintly ecstasies of blue As all the holy eastern heavens are, -- To fare thus fervid to what daily toil Employs thy spirit in that larger Land Where thou art gone; to strive, but not to moil In nothings that do mar the artist's hand, Not drudge unriched, as grain rots back to soil, -- No profit out of death, -- going, yet still at stand, -- Giving what life is here in hand to-day For that that's in to-morrow's bush, perchance, -- Of this year's harvest none in the barn to lay, All sowed for next year's crop, -- a dull advance In curves that come but by another way Back to the start, -- a thriftless thrift of ants Whose winter wastes their summer; O my Friend, Freely to range, to muse, to toil, is thine: Thine, now, to watch with Homer sails that bend Unstained by Helen's beauty o'er the brine Tow'rds some clean Troy no Hector need defend Nor flame devour; or, in some mild moon's shine, Where amiabler winds the whistle heed, To sail with Shelley o'er a bluer sea, And mark Prometheus, from his fetters freed, Pass with Deucalion over Italy, While bursts the flame from out his eager reed Wild-stretching towards the West of destiny; Or, prone with Plato, Shakespeare and a throng Of bards beneath some plane-tree's cool eclipse To gaze on glowing meads where, lingering long, Psyche's large Butterfly her honey sips; Or, mingling free in choirs of German song, To learn of Goethe's life from Goethe's lips; These, these are thine, and we, who still are dead, Do yearn -- nay, not to kill thee back again Into this charnel life, this lowlihead, Not to the dark of sense, the blinking brain, The hugged delusion drear, the hunger fed On husks of guess, the monarchy of pain, The cross of love, the wrench of faith, the shame Of science that cannot prove proof is, the twist Of blame for praise and bitter praise for blame, The silly stake and tether round the wrist By fashion fixed, the virtue that doth claim The gains of vice, the lofty mark that's missed By all the mortal space 'twixt heaven and hell, The soul's sad growth o'er stationary friends Who hear us from our height not well, not well, The slant of accident, the sudden bends Of purpose tempered strong, the gambler's spell, The son's disgrace, the plan that e'er depends On others' plots, the tricks that passion plays (I loving you, you him, he none at all), The artist's pain -- to walk his blood-stained ways, A special soul, yet judged as general -- The endless grief of art, the sneer that slays, The war, the wound, the groan, the funeral pall -- Not into these, bright spirit, do we yearn To bring thee back, but oh, to be, to be Unbound of all these gyves, to stretch, to spurn The dark from off our dolorous lids, to see Our spark, Conjecture, blaze and sunwise burn, And suddenly to stand again by thee! Ah, not for us, not yet, by thee to stand: For us, the fret, the dark, the thorn, the chill; For us, to call across unto thy Land, "Friend, get thee to the minstrels' holy hill, And kiss those brethren for us, mouth and hand, And make our duty to our master Will." ____ Baltimore, 1879. A Dedication. To Charlotte Cushman. As Love will carve dear names upon a tree, Symbol of gravure on his heart to be, So thought I thine with loving text to set In the growth and substance of my canzonet; But, writing it, my tears begin to fall -- This wild-rose stem for thy large name's too small! Nay, still my trembling hands are fain, are fain Cut the good letters though they lap again; Perchance such folk as mark the blur and stain Will say, `It was the beating of the rain;' Or, haply these o'er-woundings of the stem May loose some little balm, to plead for them. ____ 1876. To Charlotte Cushman. Look where a three-point star shall weave his beam Into the slumb'rous tissue of some stream, Till his bright self o'er his bright copy seem Fulfillment dropping on a come-true dream; So in this night of art thy soul doth show Her excellent double in the steadfast flow Of wishing love that through men's hearts doth go: At once thou shin'st above and shin'st below. E'en when thou strivest there within Art's sky (Each star must o'er a strenuous orbit fly), Full calm thine image in our love doth lie, A Motion glassed in a Tranquillity. So triple-rayed, thou mov'st, yet stay'st, serene -- Art's artist, Love's dear woman, Fame's good queen! ____ Baltimore, 1875. The Stirrup-Cup. Death, thou'rt a cordial old and rare: Look how compounded, with what care! Time got his wrinkles reaping thee Sweet herbs from all antiquity. David to thy distillage went, Keats, and Gotama excellent, Omar Khayyam, and Chaucer bright, And Shakespeare for a king-delight. Then, Time, let not a drop be spilt: Hand me the cup whene'er thou wilt; 'Tis thy rich stirrup-cup to me; I'll drink it down right smilingly. ____ Tampa, Florida, 1877. A Song of Eternity in Time. Once, at night, in the manor wood My Love and I long silent stood, Amazed that any heavens could Decree to part us, bitterly repining. My Love, in aimless love and grief, Reached forth and drew aside a leaf That just above us played the thief And stole our starlight that for us was shining. A star that had remarked her pain Shone straightway down that leafy lane, And wrought his image, mirror-plain, Within a tear that on her lash hung gleaming. "Thus Time," I cried, "is but a tear Some one hath wept 'twixt hope and fear, Yet in his little lucent sphere Our star of stars, Eternity, is beaming." ____ Macon, Georgia, 1867. Revised in 1879. Owl against Robin. Frowning, the owl in the oak complained him Sore, that the song of the robin restrained him Wrongly of slumber, rudely of rest. "From the north, from the east, from the south and the west, Woodland, wheat-field, corn-field, clover, Over and over and over and over, Five o'clock, ten o'clock, twelve, or seven, Nothing but robin-songs heard under heaven: How can we sleep? `Peep!' you whistle, and `cheep! cheep! cheep!' Oh, peep, if you will, and buy, if 'tis cheap, And have done; for an owl must sleep. Are ye singing for fame, and who shall be first? Each day's the same, yet the last is worst, And the summer is cursed with the silly outburst Of idiot red-breasts peeping and cheeping By day, when all honest birds ought to be sleeping. Lord, what a din! And so out of all reason. Have ye not heard that each thing hath its season? Night is to work in, night is for play-time; Good heavens, not day-time! A vulgar flaunt is the flaring day, The impudent, hot, unsparing day, That leaves not a stain nor a secret untold, -- Day the reporter, -- the gossip of old, -- Deformity's tease, -- man's common scold -- Poh! Shut the eyes, let the sense go numb When day down the eastern way has come. 'Tis clear as the moon (by the argument drawn From Design) that the world should retire at dawn. Day kills. The leaf and the laborer breathe Death in the sun, the cities seethe, The mortal black marshes bubble with heat And puff up pestilence; nothing is sweet Has to do with the sun: even virtue will taint (Philosophers say) and manhood grow faint In the lands where the villainous sun has sway Through the livelong drag of the dreadful day. What Eden but noon-light stares it tame, Shadowless, brazen, forsaken of shame? For the sun tells lies on the landscape, -- now Reports me the `what', unrelieved with the `how', -- As messengers lie, with the facts alone, Delivering the word and withholding the tone. But oh, the sweetness, and oh, the light Of the high-fastidious night! Oh, to awake with the wise old stars -- The cultured, the careful, the Chesterfield stars, That wink at the work-a-day fact of crime And shine so rich through the ruins of time That Baalbec is finer than London; oh, To sit on the bough that zigzags low By the woodland pool, And loudly laugh at man, the fool That vows to the vulgar sun; oh, rare, To wheel from the wood to the window where A day-worn sleeper is dreaming of care, And perch on the sill and straightly stare Through his visions; rare, to sail Aslant with the hill and a-curve with the vale, -- To flit down the shadow-shot-with-gleam, Betwixt hanging leaves and starlit stream, Hither, thither, to and fro, Silent, aimless, dayless, slow (`Aimless? Field-mice?' True, they're slain, But the night-philosophy hoots at pain, Grips, eats quick, and drops the bones In the water beneath the bough, nor moans At the death life feeds on). Robin, pray Come away, come away To the cultus of night. Abandon the day. Have more to think and have less to say. And CANNOT you walk now? Bah! don't hop! Stop! Look at the owl, scarce seen, scarce heard, O irritant, iterant, maddening bird!" ____ Baltimore, 1880. A Song of the Future. Sail fast, sail fast, Ark of my hopes, Ark of my dreams; Sweep lordly o'er the drowned Past, Fly glittering through the sun's strange beams; Sail fast, sail fast. Breaths of new buds from off some drying lea With news about the Future scent the sea: My brain is beating like the heart of Haste: I'll loose me a bird upon this Present waste; Go, trembling song, And stay not long; oh, stay not long: Thou'rt only a gray and sober dove, But thine eye is faith and thy wing is love. ____ Baltimore, 1878. Opposition. Of fret, of dark, of thorn, of chill, Complain no more; for these, O heart, Direct the random of the will As rhymes direct the rage of art. The lute's fixt fret, that runs athwart The strain and purpose of the string, For governance and nice consort Doth bar his wilful wavering. The dark hath many dear avails; The dark distils divinest dews; The dark is rich with nightingales, With dreams, and with the heavenly Muse. Bleeding with thorns of petty strife, I'll ease (as lovers do) my smart With sonnets to my lady Life Writ red in issues from the heart. What grace may lie within the chill Of favor frozen fast in scorn! When Good's a-freeze, we call it Ill! This rosy Time is glacier-born. Of fret, of dark, of thorn, of chill, Complain thou not, O heart; for these Bank-in the current of the will To uses, arts, and charities. ____ Baltimore, 1879-80. Rose-Morals. I. -- Red. Would that my songs might be What roses make by day and night -- Distillments of my clod of misery Into delight. Soul, could'st thou bare thy breast As yon red rose, and dare the day, All clean, and large, and calm with velvet rest? Say yea -- say yea! Ah, dear my Rose, good-bye; The wind is up; so; drift away. That songs from me as leaves from thee may fly, I strive, I pray. II. -- White. Soul, get thee to the heart Of yonder tuberose: hide thee there -- There breathe the meditations of thine art Suffused with prayer. Of spirit grave yet light, How fervent fragrances uprise Pure-born from these most rich and yet most white Virginities! Mulched with unsavory death, Grow, Soul! unto such white estate, That virginal-prayerful art shall be thy breath, Thy work, thy fate. ____ Baltimore, 1875. Corn. To-day the woods are trembling through and through With shimmering forms, that flash before my view, Then melt in green as dawn-stars melt in blue. The leaves that wave against my cheek caress Like women's hands; the embracing boughs express A subtlety of mighty tenderness; The copse-depths into little noises start, That sound anon like beatings of a heart, Anon like talk 'twixt lips not far apart. The beech dreams balm, as a dreamer hums a song; Through that vague wafture, expirations strong Throb from young hickories breathing deep and long With stress and urgence bold of prisoned spring And ecstasy of burgeoning. Now, since the dew-plashed road of morn is dry, Forth venture odors of more quality And heavenlier giving. Like Jove's locks awry, Long muscadines Rich-wreathe the spacious foreheads of great pines, And breathe ambrosial passion from their vines. I pray with mosses, ferns and flowers shy That hide like gentle nuns from human eye To lift adoring perfumes to the sky. I hear faint bridal-sighs of brown and green Dying to silent hints of kisses keen As far lights fringe into a pleasant sheen. I start at fragmentary whispers, blown From undertalks of leafy souls unknown, Vague purports sweet, of inarticulate tone. Dreaming of gods, men, nuns and brides, between Old companies of oaks that inward lean To join their radiant amplitudes of green I slowly move, with ranging looks that pass Up from the matted miracles of grass Into yon veined complex of space Where sky and leafage interlace So close, the heaven of blue is seen Inwoven with a heaven of green. I wander to the zigzag-cornered fence Where sassafras, intrenched in brambles dense, Contests with stolid vehemence The march of culture, setting limb and thorn As pikes against the army of the corn. There, while I pause, my fieldward-faring eyes Take harvests, where the stately corn-ranks rise, Of inward dignities And large benignities and insights wise, Graces and modest majesties. Thus, without theft, I reap another's field; Thus, without tilth, I house a wondrous yield, And heap my heart with quintuple crops concealed. Look, out of line one tall corn-captain stands Advanced beyond the foremost of his bands, And waves his blades upon the very edge And hottest thicket of the battling hedge. Thou lustrous stalk, that ne'er mayst walk nor talk, Still shalt thou type the poet-soul sublime That leads the vanward of his timid time And sings up cowards with commanding rhyme -- Soul calm, like thee, yet fain, like thee, to grow By double increment, above, below; Soul homely, as thou art, yet rich in grace like thee, Teaching the yeomen selfless chivalry That moves in gentle curves of courtesy; Soul filled like thy long veins with sweetness tense, By every godlike sense Transmuted from the four wild elements. Drawn to high plans, Thou lift'st more stature than a mortal man's, Yet ever piercest downward in the mould And keepest hold Upon the reverend and steadfast earth That gave thee birth; Yea, standest smiling in thy future grave, Serene and brave, With unremitting breath Inhaling life from death, Thine epitaph writ fair in fruitage eloquent, Thyself thy monument. As poets should, Thou hast built up thy hardihood With universal food, Drawn in select proportion fair From honest mould and vagabond air; From darkness of the dreadful night, And joyful light; From antique ashes, whose departed flame In thee has finer life and longer fame; From wounds and balms, From storms and calms, From potsherds and dry bones And ruin-stones. Into thy vigorous substance thou hast wrought Whate'er the hand of Circumstance hath brought; Yea, into cool solacing green hast spun White radiance hot from out the sun. So thou dost mutually leaven Strength of earth with grace of heaven; So thou dost marry new and old Into a one of higher mould; So thou dost reconcile the hot and cold, The dark and bright, And many a heart-perplexing opposite, And so, Akin by blood to high and low, Fitly thou playest out thy poet's part, Richly expending thy much-bruised heart In equal care to nourish lord in hall Or beast in stall: Thou took'st from all that thou mightst give to all. O steadfast dweller on the selfsame spot Where thou wast born, that still repinest not -- Type of the home-fond heart, the happy lot! -- Deeply thy mild content rebukes the land Whose flimsy homes, built on the shifting sand Of trade, for ever rise and fall With alternation whimsical, Enduring scarce a day, Then swept away By swift engulfments of incalculable tides Whereon capricious Commerce rides. Look, thou substantial spirit of content! Across this little vale, thy continent, To where, beyond the mouldering mill, Yon old deserted Georgian hill Bares to the sun his piteous aged crest And seamy breast, By restless-hearted children left to lie Untended there beneath the heedless sky, As barbarous folk expose their old to die. Upon that generous-rounding side, With gullies scarified Where keen Neglect his lash hath plied, Dwelt one I knew of old, who played at toil, And gave to coquette Cotton soul and soil. Scorning the slow reward of patient grain, He sowed his heart with hopes of swifter gain, Then sat him down and waited for the rain. He sailed in borrowed ships of usury -- A foolish Jason on a treacherous sea, Seeking the Fleece and finding misery. Lulled by smooth-rippling loans, in idle trance He lay, content that unthrift Circumstance Should plough for him the stony field of Chance. Yea, gathering crops whose worth no man might tell, He staked his life on games of Buy-and-Sell, And turned each field into a gambler's hell. Aye, as each year began, My farmer to the neighboring city ran; Passed with a mournful anxious face Into the banker's inner place; Parleyed, excused, pleaded for longer grace; Railed at the drought, the worm, the rust, the grass; Protested ne'er again 'twould come to pass; With many an `oh' and `if' and `but alas' Parried or swallowed searching questions rude, And kissed the dust to soften Dives's mood. At last, small loans by pledges great renewed, He issues smiling from the fatal door, And buys with lavish hand his yearly store Till his small borrowings will yield no more. Aye, as each year declined, With bitter heart and ever-brooding mind He mourned his fate unkind. In dust, in rain, with might and main, He nursed his cotton, cursed his grain, Fretted for news that made him fret again, Snatched at each telegram of Future Sale, And thrilled with Bulls' or Bears' alternate wail -- In hope or fear alike for ever pale. And thus from year to year, through hope and fear, With many a curse and many a secret tear, Striving in vain his cloud of debt to clear, At last He woke to find his foolish dreaming past, And all his best-of-life the easy prey Of squandering scamps and quacks that lined his way With vile array, From rascal statesman down to petty knave; Himself, at best, for all his bragging brave, A gamester's catspaw and a banker's slave. Then, worn and gray, and sick with deep unrest, He fled away into the oblivious West, Unmourned, unblest. Old hill! old hill! thou gashed and hairy Lear Whom the divine Cordelia of the year, E'en pitying Spring, will vainly strive to cheer -- King, that no subject man nor beast may own, Discrowned, undaughtered and alone -- Yet shall the great God turn thy fate, And bring thee back into thy monarch state And majesty immaculate. Lo, through hot waverings of the August morn, Thou givest from thy vasty sides forlorn Visions of golden treasuries of corn -- Ripe largesse lingering for some bolder heart That manfully shall take thy part, And tend thee, And defend thee, With antique sinew and with modern art. ____ Sunnyside, Georgia, August, 1874. The Symphony. "O Trade! O Trade! would thou wert dead! The Time needs heart -- 'tis tired of head: We're all for love," the violins said. "Of what avail the rigorous tale Of bill for coin and box for bale? Grant thee, O Trade! thine uttermost hope: Level red gold with blue sky-slope, And base it deep as devils grope: When all's done, what hast thou won Of the only sweet that's under the sun? Ay, canst thou buy a single sigh Of true love's least, least ecstasy?" Then, with a bridegroom's heart-beats trembling, All the mightier strings assembling Ranged them on the violins' side As when the bridegroom leads the bride, And, heart in voice, together cried: "Yea, what avail the endless tale Of gain by cunning and plus by sale? Look up the land, look down the land The poor, the poor, the poor, they stand Wedged by the pressing of Trade's hand Against an inward-opening door That pressure tightens evermore: They sigh a monstrous foul-air sigh For the outside leagues of liberty, Where Art, sweet lark, translates the sky Into a heavenly melody. `Each day, all day' (these poor folks say), `In the same old year-long, drear-long way, We weave in the mills and heave in the kilns, We sieve mine-meshes under the hills, And thieve much gold from the Devil's bank tills, To relieve, O God, what manner of ills? -- The beasts, they hunger, and eat, and die; And so do we, and the world's a sty; Hush, fellow-swine: why nuzzle and cry? "Swinehood hath no remedy" Say many men, and hasten by, Clamping the nose and blinking the eye. But who said once, in the lordly tone, "Man shall not live by bread alone But all that cometh from the Throne?" Hath God said so? But Trade saith "No:" And the kilns and the curt-tongued mills say "Go! There's plenty that can, if you can't: we know. Move out, if you think you're underpaid. The poor are prolific; we're not afraid; Trade is trade."'" Thereat this passionate protesting Meekly changed, and softened till It sank to sad requesting And suggesting sadder still: "And oh, if men might some time see How piteous-false the poor decree That trade no more than trade must be! Does business mean, `Die, you -- live, I?' Then `Trade is trade' but sings a lie: 'Tis only war grown miserly. If business is battle, name it so: War-crimes less will shame it so, And widows less will blame it so. Alas, for the poor to have some part In yon sweet living lands of Art, Makes problem not for head, but heart. Vainly might Plato's brain revolve it: Plainly the heart of a child could solve it." And then, as when from words that seem but rude We pass to silent pain that sits abrood Back in our heart's great dark and solitude, So sank the strings to gentle throbbing Of long chords change-marked with sobbing -- Motherly sobbing, not distinctlier heard Than half wing-openings of the sleeping bird, Some dream of danger to her young hath stirred. Then stirring and demurring ceased, and lo! Every least ripple of the strings' song-flow Died to a level with each level bow And made a great chord tranquil-surfaced so, As a brook beneath his curving bank doth go To linger in the sacred dark and green Where many boughs the still pool overlean And many leaves make shadow with their sheen. But presently A velvet flute-note fell down pleasantly Upon the bosom of that harmony, And sailed and sailed incessantly, As if a petal from a wild-rose blown Had fluttered down upon that pool of tone And boatwise dropped o' the convex side And floated down the glassy tide And clarified and glorified The solemn spaces where the shadows bide. From the warm concave of that fluted note Somewhat, half song, half odor, forth did float, As if a rose might somehow be a throat: "When Nature from her far-off glen Flutes her soft messages to men, The flute can say them o'er again; Yea, Nature, singing sweet and lone, Breathes through life's strident polyphone The flute-voice in the world of tone. Sweet friends, Man's love ascends To finer and diviner ends Than man's mere thought e'er comprehends For I, e'en I, As here I lie, A petal on a harmony, Demand of Science whence and why Man's tender pain, man's inward cry, When he doth gaze on earth and sky? I am not overbold: I hold Full powers from Nature manifold. I speak for each no-tongued tree That, spring by spring, doth nobler be, And dumbly and most wistfully His mighty prayerful arms outspreads Above men's oft-unheeding heads, And his big blessing downward sheds. I speak for all-shaped blooms and leaves, Lichens on stones and moss on eaves, Grasses and grains in ranks and sheaves; Broad-fronded ferns and keen-leaved canes, And briery mazes bounding lanes, And marsh-plants, thirsty-cupped for rains, And milky stems and sugary veins; For every long-armed woman-vine That round a piteous tree doth twine; For passionate odors, and divine Pistils, and petals crystalline; All purities of shady springs, All shynesses of film-winged things That fly from tree-trunks and bark-rings; All modesties of mountain-fawns That leap to covert from wild lawns, And tremble if the day but dawns; All sparklings of small beady eyes Of birds, and sidelong glances wise Wherewith the jay hints tragedies; All piquancies of prickly burs, And smoothnesses of downs and furs Of eiders and of minevers; All limpid honeys that do lie At stamen-bases, nor deny The humming-birds' fine roguery, Bee-thighs, nor any butterfly; All gracious curves of slender wings, Bark-mottlings, fibre-spiralings, Fern-wavings and leaf-flickerings; Each dial-marked leaf and flower-bell Wherewith in every lonesome dell Time to himself his hours doth tell; All tree-sounds, rustlings of pine-cones, Wind-sighings, doves' melodious moans, And night's unearthly under-tones; All placid lakes and waveless deeps, All cool reposing mountain-steeps, Vale-calms and tranquil lotos-sleeps; -- Yea, all fair forms, and sounds, and lights, And warmths, and mysteries, and mights, Of Nature's utmost depths and heights, -- These doth my timid tongue present, Their mouthpiece and leal instrument And servant, all love-eloquent. I heard, when `"All for love"' the violins cried: So, Nature calls through all her system wide, `Give me thy love, O man, so long denied.' Much time is run, and man hath changed his ways, Since Nature, in the antique fable-days, Was hid from man's true love by proxy fays, False fauns and rascal gods that stole her praise. The nymphs, cold creatures of man's colder brain, Chilled Nature's streams till man's warm heart was fain Never to lave its love in them again. Later, a sweet Voice `Love thy neighbor' said; Then first the bounds of neighborhood outspread Beyond all confines of old ethnic dread. Vainly the Jew might wag his covenant head: `"All men are neighbors,"' so the sweet Voice said. So, when man's arms had circled all man's race, The liberal compass of his warm embrace Stretched bigger yet in the dark bounds of space; With hands a-grope he felt smooth Nature's grace, Drew her to breast and kissed her sweetheart face: Yea man found neighbors in great hills and trees And streams and clouds and suns and birds and bees, And throbbed with neighbor-loves in loving these. But oh, the poor! the poor! the poor! That stand by the inward-opening door Trade's hand doth tighten ever more, And sigh their monstrous foul-air sigh For the outside hills of liberty, Where Nature spreads her wild blue sky For Art to make into melody! Thou Trade! thou king of the modern days! Change thy ways, Change thy ways; Let the sweaty laborers file A little while, A little while, Where Art and Nature sing and smile. Trade! is thy heart all dead, all dead? And hast thou nothing but a head? I'm all for heart," the flute-voice said, And into sudden silence fled, Like as a blush that while 'tis red Dies to a still, still white instead. Thereto a thrilling calm succeeds, Till presently the silence breeds A little breeze among the reeds That seems to blow by sea-marsh weeds: Then from the gentle stir and fret Sings out the melting clarionet, Like as a lady sings while yet Her eyes with salty tears are wet. "O Trade! O Trade!" the Lady said, "I too will wish thee utterly dead If all thy heart is in thy head. For O my God! and O my God! What shameful ways have women trod At beckoning of Trade's golden rod! Alas when sighs are traders' lies, And heart's-ease eyes and violet eyes Are merchandise! O purchased lips that kiss with pain! O cheeks coin-spotted with smirch and stain! O trafficked hearts that break in twain! -- And yet what wonder at my sisters' crime? So hath Trade withered up Love's sinewy prime, Men love not women as in olden time. Ah, not in these cold merchantable days Deem men their life an opal gray, where plays The one red Sweet of gracious ladies'-praise. Now, comes a suitor with sharp prying eye -- Says, `Here, you Lady, if you'll sell, I'll buy: Come, heart for heart -- a trade? What! weeping? why?' Shame on such wooers' dapper mercery! I would my lover kneeling at my feet In humble manliness should cry, `O sweet! I know not if thy heart my heart will greet: I ask not if thy love my love can meet: Whate'er thy worshipful soft tongue shall say, I'll kiss thine answer, be it yea or nay: I do but know I love thee, and I pray To be thy knight until my dying day.' Woe him that cunning trades in hearts contrives! Base love good women to base loving drives. If men loved larger, larger were our lives; And wooed they nobler, won they nobler wives." There thrust the bold straightforward horn To battle for that lady lorn, With heartsome voice of mellow scorn, Like any knight in knighthood's morn. "Now comfort thee," said he, "Fair Lady. For God shall right thy grievous wrong, And man shall sing thee a true-love song, Voiced in act his whole life long, Yea, all thy sweet life long, Fair Lady. Where's he that craftily hath said, The day of chivalry is dead? I'll prove that lie upon his head, Or I will die instead, Fair Lady. Is Honor gone into his grave? Hath Faith become a caitiff knave, And Selfhood turned into a slave To work in Mammon's cave, Fair Lady? Will Truth's long blade ne'er gleam again? Hath Giant Trade in dungeons slain All great contempts of mean-got gain And hates of inward stain, Fair Lady? For aye shall name and fame be sold, And place be hugged for the sake of gold, And smirch-robed Justice feebly scold At Crime all money-bold, Fair Lady? Shall self-wrapt husbands aye forget Kiss-pardons for the daily fret Wherewith sweet wifely eyes are wet -- Blind to lips kiss-wise set -- Fair Lady? Shall lovers higgle, heart for heart, Till wooing grows a trading mart Where much for little, and all for part, Make love a cheapening art, Fair Lady? Shall woman scorch for a single sin That her betrayer may revel in, And she be burnt, and he but grin When that the flames begin, Fair Lady? Shall ne'er prevail the woman's plea, `We maids would far, far whiter be If that our eyes might sometimes see Men maids in purity,' Fair Lady? Shall Trade aye salve his conscience-aches With jibes at Chivalry's old mistakes -- The wars that o'erhot knighthood makes For Christ's and ladies' sakes, Fair Lady? Now by each knight that e'er hath prayed To fight like a man and love like a maid, Since Pembroke's life, as Pembroke's blade, I' the scabbard, death, was laid, Fair Lady, I dare avouch my faith is bright That God doth right and God hath might. Nor time hath changed His hair to white, Nor His dear love to spite, Fair Lady. I doubt no doubts: I strive, and shrive my clay, And fight my fight in the patient modern way For true love and for thee -- ah me! and pray To be thy knight until my dying day, Fair Lady." Made end that knightly horn, and spurred away Into the thick of the melodious fray. And then the hautboy played and smiled, And sang like any large-eyed child, Cool-hearted and all undefiled. "Huge Trade!" he said, "Would thou wouldst lift me on thy head And run where'er my finger led! Once said a Man -- and wise was He -- `Never shalt thou the heavens see, Save as a little child thou be.'" Then o'er sea-lashings of commingling tunes The ancient wise bassoons, Like weird Gray-beard Old harpers sitting on the high sea-dunes, Chanted runes: "Bright-waved gain, gray-waved loss, The sea of all doth lash and toss, One wave forward and one across: But now 'twas trough, now 'tis crest, And worst doth foam and flash to best, And curst to blest. Life! Life! thou sea-fugue, writ from east to west, Love, Love alone can pore On thy dissolving score Of harsh half-phrasings, Blotted ere writ, And double erasings Of chords most fit. Yea, Love, sole music-master blest, May read thy weltering palimpsest. To follow Time's dying melodies through, And never to lose the old in the new, And ever to solve the discords true -- Love alone can do. And ever Love hears the poor-folks' crying, And ever Love hears the women's sighing, And ever sweet knighthood's death-defying, And ever wise childhood's deep implying, But never a trader's glozing and lying. And yet shall Love himself be heard, Though long deferred, though long deferred: O'er the modern waste a dove hath whirred: Music is Love in search of a word." ____ Baltimore, 1875. My Springs. In the heart of the Hills of Life, I know Two springs that with unbroken flow Forever pour their lucent streams Into my soul's far Lake of Dreams. Not larger than two eyes, they lie Beneath the many-changing sky And mirror all of life and time, -- Serene and dainty pantomime. Shot through with lights of stars and dawns, And shadowed sweet by ferns and fawns, -- Thus heaven and earth together vie Their shining depths to sanctify. Always when the large Form of Love Is hid by storms that rage above, I gaze in my two springs and see Love in his very verity. Always when Faith with stifling stress Of grief hath died in bitterness, I gaze in my two springs and see A Faith that smiles immortally. Always when Charity and Hope, In darkness bounden, feebly grope, I gaze in my two springs and see A Light that sets my captives free. Always, when Art on perverse wing Flies where I cannot hear him sing, I gaze in my two springs and see A charm that brings him back to me. When Labor faints, and Glory fails, And coy Reward in sighs exhales, I gaze in my two springs and see Attainment full and heavenly. O Love, O Wife, thine eyes are they, -- My springs from out whose shining gray Issue the sweet celestial streams That feed my life's bright Lake of Dreams. Oval and large and passion-pure And gray and wise and honor-sure; Soft as a dying violet-breath Yet calmly unafraid of death; Thronged, like two dove-cotes of gray doves, With wife's and mother's and poor-folk's loves, And home-loves and high glory-loves And science-loves and story-loves, And loves for all that God and man In art and nature make or plan, And lady-loves for spidery lace And broideries and supple grace And diamonds and the whole sweet round Of littles that large life compound, And loves for God and God's bare truth, And loves for Magdalen and Ruth, Dear eyes, dear eyes and rare complete -- Being heavenly-sweet and earthly-sweet, -- I marvel that God made you mine, For when He frowns, 'tis then ye shine! ____ Baltimore, 1874. In Absence. I. The storm that snapped our fate's one ship in twain Hath blown my half o' the wreck from thine apart. O Love! O Love! across the gray-waved main To thee-ward strain my eyes, my arms, my heart. I ask my God if e'en in His sweet place, Where, by one waving of a wistful wing, My soul could straightway tremble face to face With thee, with thee, across the stellar ring -- Yea, where thine absence I could ne'er bewail Longer than lasts that little blank of bliss When lips draw back, with recent pressure pale, To round and redden for another kiss -- Would not my lonesome heart still sigh for thee What time the drear kiss-intervals must be? II. So do the mottled formulas of Sense Glide snakewise through our dreams of Aftertime; So errors breed in reeds and grasses dense That bank our singing rivulets of rhyme. By Sense rule Space and Time; but in God's Land Their intervals are not, save such as lie Betwixt successive tones in concords bland Whose loving distance makes the harmony. Ah, there shall never come 'twixt me and thee Gross dissonances of the mile, the year; But in the multichords of ecstasy Our souls shall mingle, yet be featured clear, And absence, wrought to intervals divine, Shall part, yet link, thy nature's tone and mine. III. Look down the shining peaks of all my days Base-hidden in the valleys of deep night, So shalt thou see the heights and depths of praise My love would render unto love's delight; For I would make each day an Alp sublime Of passionate snow, white-hot yet icy-clear, -- One crystal of the true-loves of all time Spiring the world's prismatic atmosphere; And I would make each night an awful vale Deep as thy soul, obscure as modesty, With every star in heaven trembling pale O'er sweet profounds where only Love can see. Oh, runs not thus the lesson thou hast taught? -- When life's all love, 'tis life: aught else, 'tis naught. IV. Let no man say, `He at his lady's feet Lays worship that to Heaven alone belongs; Yea, swings the incense that for God is meet In flippant censers of light lover's songs.' Who says it, knows not God, nor love, nor thee; For love is large as is yon heavenly dome: In love's great blue, each passion is full free To fly his favorite flight and build his home. Did e'er a lark with skyward-pointing beak Stab by mischance a level-flying dove? Wife-love flies level, his dear mate to seek: God-love darts straight into the skies above. Crossing, the windage of each other's wings But speeds them both upon their journeyings. ____ Baltimore, 1874. Acknowledgment. I. O Age that half believ'st thou half believ'st, Half doubt'st the substance of thine own half doubt, And, half perceiving that thou half perceiv'st, Stand'st at thy temple door, heart in, head out! Lo! while thy heart's within, helping the choir, Without, thine eyes range up and down the time, Blinking at o'er-bright science, smit with desire To see and not to see. Hence, crime on crime. Yea, if the Christ (called thine) now paced yon street, Thy halfness hot with His rebuke would swell; Legions of scribes would rise and run and beat His fair intolerable Wholeness twice to hell. `Nay' (so, dear Heart, thou whisperest in my soul), `'Tis a half time, yet Time will make it whole.' II. Now at thy soft recalling voice I rise Where thought is lord o'er Time's complete estate, Like as a dove from out the gray sedge flies To tree-tops green where cooes his heavenly mate. From these clear coverts high and cool I see How every time with every time is knit, And each to all is mortised cunningly, And none is sole or whole, yet all are fit. Thus, if this Age but as a comma show 'Twixt weightier clauses of large-worded years, My calmer soul scorns not the mark: I know This crooked point Time's complex sentence clears. Yet more I learn while, Friend! I sit by thee: Who sees all time, sees all eternity. III. If I do ask, How God can dumbness keep While Sin creeps grinning through His house of Time, Stabbing His saintliest children in their sleep, And staining holy walls with clots of crime? -- Or, How may He whose wish but names a fact Refuse what miser's-scanting of supply Would richly glut each void where man hath lacked Of grace or bread? -- or, How may Power deny Wholeness to th' almost-folk that hurt our hope -- These heart-break Hamlets who so barely fail In life or art that but a hair's more scope Had set them fair on heights they ne'er may scale? -- Somehow by thee, dear Love, I win content: Thy Perfect stops th' Imperfect's argument. IV. By the more height of thy sweet stature grown, Twice-eyed with thy gray vision set in mine, I ken far lands to wifeless men unknown, I compass stars for one-sexed eyes too fine. No text on sea-horizons cloudily writ, No maxim vaguely starred in fields or skies, But this wise thou-in-me deciphers it: Oh, thou'rt the Height of heights, the Eye of eyes. Not hardest Fortune's most unbounded stress Can blind my soul nor hurl it from on high, Possessing thee, the self of loftiness, And very light that Light discovers by. Howe'er thou turn'st, wrong Earth! still Love's in sight: For we are taller than the breadth of night. ____ Baltimore, 1874-5. Laus Mariae. Across the brook of Time man leaping goes On stepping-stones of epochs, that uprise Fixed, memorable, midst broad shallow flows Of neutrals, kill-times, sleeps, indifferencies. So twixt each morn and night rise salient heaps: Some cross with but a zigzag, jaded pace From meal to meal: some with convulsive leaps Shake the green tussocks of malign disgrace: And some advance by system and deep art O'er vantages of wealth, place, learning, tact. But thou within thyself, dear manifold heart, Dost bind all epochs in one dainty Fact. Oh, sweet, my pretty sum of history, I leapt the breadth of Time in loving thee! ____ Baltimore, 1874-5. Special Pleading. Time, hurry my Love to me: Haste, haste! Lov'st not good company? Here's but a heart-break sandy waste 'Twixt Now and Then. Why, killing haste Were best, dear Time, for thee, for thee! Oh, would that I might divine Thy name beyond the zodiac sign Wherefrom our times-to-come descend. He called thee `Sometime'. Change it, friend: `Now-time' sounds so much more fine! Sweet Sometime, fly fast to me: Poor Now-time sits in the Lonesome-tree And broods as gray as any dove, And calls, `When wilt thou come, O Love?' And pleads across the waste to thee. Good Moment, that giv'st him me, Wast ever in love? Maybe, maybe Thou'lt be this heavenly velvet time When Day and Night as rhyme and rhyme Set lip to lip dusk-modestly; Or haply some noon afar, -- O life's top bud, mixt rose and star, How ever can thine utmost sweet Be star-consummate, rose-complete, Till thy rich reds full opened are? Well, be it dusk-time or noon-time, I ask but one small boon, Time: Come thou in night, come thou in day, I care not, I care not: have thine own way, But only, but only, come soon, Time. ____ Baltimore, 1875. The Bee. What time I paced, at pleasant morn, A deep and dewy wood, I heard a mellow hunting-horn Make dim report of Dian's lustihood Far down a heavenly hollow. Mine ear, though fain, had pain to follow: `Tara!' it twanged, `tara-tara!' it blew, Yet wavered oft, and flew Most ficklewise about, or here, or there, A music now from earth and now from air. But on a sudden, lo! I marked a blossom shiver to and fro With dainty inward storm; and there within A down-drawn trump of yellow jessamine A bee Thrust up its sad-gold body lustily, All in a honey madness hotly bound On blissful burglary. A cunning sound In that wing-music held me: down I lay In amber shades of many a golden spray, Where looping low with languid arms the Vine In wreaths of ravishment did overtwine Her kneeling Live-Oak, thousand-fold to plight Herself unto her own true stalwart knight. As some dim blur of distant music nears The long-desiring sense, and slowly clears To forms of time and apprehensive tune, So, as I lay, full soon Interpretation throve: the bee's fanfare, Through sequent films of discourse vague as air, Passed to plain words, while, fanning faint perfume, The bee o'erhung a rich, unrifled bloom: "O Earth, fair lordly Blossom, soft a-shine Upon the star-pranked universal vine, Hast nought for me? To thee Come I, a poet, hereward haply blown, From out another worldflower lately flown. Wilt ask, `What profit e'er a poet brings?' He beareth starry stuff about his wings To pollen thee and sting thee fertile: nay, If still thou narrow thy contracted way, -- Worldflower, if thou refuse me -- -- Worldflower, if thou abuse me, And hoist thy stamen's spear-point high To wound my wing and mar mine eye -- Nathless I'll drive me to thy deepest sweet, Yea, richlier shall that pain the pollen beat From me to thee, for oft these pollens be Fine dust from wars that poets wage for thee. But, O beloved Earthbloom soft a-shine Upon the universal Jessamine, Prithee, abuse me not, Prithee, refuse me not, Yield, yield the heartsome honey love to me Hid in thy nectary!" And as I sank into a dimmer dream The pleading bee's song-burthen sole did seem: "Hast ne'er a honey-drop of love for me In thy huge nectary?" ____ Tampa, Florida, 1877. The Harlequin of Dreams. Swift, through some trap mine eyes have never found, Dim-panelled in the painted scene of Sleep, Thou, giant Harlequin of Dreams, dost leap Upon my spirit's stage. Then Sight and Sound, Then Space and Time, then Language, Mete and Bound, And all familiar Forms that firmly keep Man's reason in the road, change faces, peep Betwixt the legs and mock the daily round. Yet thou canst more than mock: sometimes my tears At midnight break through bounden lids -- a sign Thou hast a heart: and oft thy little leaven Of dream-taught wisdom works me bettered years. In one night witch, saint, trickster, fool divine, I think thou'rt Jester at the Court of Heaven! ____ Baltimore, 1878. Street Cries. Oft seems the Time a market-town Where many merchant-spirits meet Who up and down and up and down Cry out along the street Their needs, as wares; one THUS, one SO: Till all the ways are full of sound: -- But still come rain, and sun, and snow, And still the world goes round. I. Remonstrance. "Opinion, let me alone: I am not thine. Prim Creed, with categoric point, forbear To feature me my Lord by rule and line. Thou canst not measure Mistress Nature's hair, Not one sweet inch: nay, if thy sight is sharp, Would'st count the strings upon an angel's harp? Forbear, forbear. "Oh let me love my Lord more fathom deep Than there is line to sound with: let me love My fellow not as men that mandates keep: Yea, all that's lovable, below, above, That let me love by heart, by heart, because (Free from the penal pressure of the laws) I find it fair. "The tears I weep by day and bitter night, Opinion! for thy sole salt vintage fall. -- As morn by morn I rise with fresh delight, Time through my casement cheerily doth call `Nature is new, 'tis birthday every day, Come feast with me, let no man say me nay, Whate'er befall.' "So fare I forth to feast: I sit beside Some brother bright: but, ere good-morrow's passed, Burly Opinion wedging in hath cried `Thou shalt not sit by us, to break thy fast, Save to our Rubric thou subscribe and swear -- `Religion hath blue eyes and yellow hair:' She's Saxon, all.' "Then, hard a-hungered for my brother's grace Till well-nigh fain to swear his folly's true, In sad dissent I turn my longing face To him that sits on the left: `Brother, -- with you?' -- `Nay, not with me, save thou subscribe and swear `Religion hath black eyes and raven hair:' Nought else is true.' "Debarred of banquets that my heart could make With every man on every day of life, I homeward turn, my fires of pain to slake In deep endearments of a worshipped wife. `I love thee well, dear Love,' quoth she, `and yet Would that thy creed with mine completely met, As one, not two.' "Assassin! Thief! Opinion, 'tis thy work. By Church, by throne, by hearth, by every good That's in the Town of Time, I see thee lurk, And e'er some shadow stays where thou hast stood. Thou hand'st sweet Socrates his hemlock sour; Thou sav'st Barabbas in that hideous hour, And stabb'st the good "Deliverer Christ; thou rack'st the souls of men; Thou tossest girls to lions and boys to flames; Thou hew'st Crusader down by Saracen; Thou buildest closets full of secret shames; Indifferent cruel, thou dost blow the blaze Round Ridley or Servetus; all thy days Smell scorched; I would "-- Thou base-born Accident of time and place -- Bigot Pretender unto Judgment's throne -- Bastard, that claimest with a cunning face Those rights the true, true Son of Man doth own By Love's authority -- thou Rebel cold At head of civil wars and quarrels old -- Thou Knife on a throne --
Back to Full Books |