Chapters 8
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1 01 - Poems by E. Estlin Cummings 6:11
Poems by E. Estlin Cummings.
Thou in whose sword great story shine the deeds of history her heroes sound the tread of those vast armies of the marching dead, with standards and the neighing of great steeds, moving to war across the smiling meads. Thou by whose page we break the precious bread of dear communion with the past and wed to valor, Battle with heroic breeds. Thou, Freysart, for that thou didst love the pen while others wrote in steel, accept all praise of after ages and of hungering days for whom the old glories move, the old trumpets cry, who gavest as one of those immortal men his life that his fair city might not die. A Chorus Girl. When thou hast taken thy last applause, and when the final curtain strikes the world away, leaving to shadowy silence and dismay that stage which shall not know thy smile again, lingering a little while I see them then ponder a tinsel part, they let thee play.
I see the redmouth tarnished, the face gray, and the smileless silent eyes of Magdalen. The lights have lapped their last. Without the street-darkling awaiteth her, whose feet have trod the silly souls of men to golden dust. She pauses on the lintel of defeat. Her heart breaks in a smile, and she's lust, mine also little painted poem of God. This is the garden, colors come and go, frail azures fluttering from night's outer wing, strong silent greens serenely lingering. Absolute lights, like baths of golden snow. This is the garden. Purr's lips do blow upon cold flutes within wide glooms, and sing a harp celestial to the quivering string, invisible faces hauntingly and slow. This is the garden.
Time shall surely reap, and on death's blade lie many a flower curled. In other lands, where other songs be sung, Yet stand they here enraptured, as among the slow, deep trees perpetual of sleep, some silver-fingered fountain steals the world. It may not always be so, and I say, that if your lips, which I have loved, should touch another's, and your dear fingers clutch his heart as mine in time not far away, If on another's face your sweet hair lay in such a silence as I know, or such great writhing words as uttering overmuch, stand helplessly before the spirit at bay. If this should be, I say, if this should be, you of my heart, send me a little word, that I may go unto him and take his hands, saying, Accept all happiness from me.
Then shall I turn my face and hear one bird sing terribly afar in the lost lands. Crepuscule. I will wait out till my thighs are steeped in burning flowers. I will take the sun in my mouth and leap into the ripe air, alive, with closed eyes to dash against darkness in the sleeping curves of my body, Shall enter fingers of smooth mastery with chasteness of sea-girls. Will I complete the mystery of my flesh? I will rise after a thousand years, lipping flowers, and set my teeth in the silver of the moon. Phenis. Over silent waters, day descending, night descending, floods the gentle glory of the sunset in a golden greeting, splendidly to westward. As pale twilight trembles into darkness, comes the last light's gracious exhortation.
Lifting up to peace, so when life shall falter, standing on the shores of the eternal God, may I behold my sunset flooding over silent waters. The lover speaks. Your little voice over the wires came leaping, and I felt suddenly, Dizzy. With the jostling and shouting of merry flowers, we skipping high-heeled flames, courtesied before my eyes, or twinkling over to my side. Looked up with impertinently exquisite faces. Floating hands were laid upon me. I was whirled and tossed into delicious dancing, up, up, with the pale important stars and the humorous moon. Dear girl, How I was crazy, how I cried when I heard over time and tide and death. Leaping, sweetly, your voice. Epitaph. Tumbling hair. Picker of buttercups, violets, dandelions, and the big bullying daisies.
Through the field wonderful, with eyes a little sorry. Another comes. Also, picking flowers.
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2 02 - Poems by S. Foster Damon 10:33
Poems by S. Foster Damon. Incae Su Patuit Deus. The little clattering stones along the street dance with each other round my swimming feet. The street itself, as in some crazy dream, streaks past, a half-perceived material stream. Brighter than early dawn's most brilliant dye are blown clear bands of color through the sky that swirl and sweep And meet, to break and foam like rainbow veils upon a bubble's dome. Yours are the songs that burst about my ears, or blow away as many-colored spheres. You are the star that made the skies all bright, yet tore itself away in flaming flight. You are the tree that suddenly awoke. You are the rose that came to life and spoke. Guided by you, how we might stroll towards death, our only music one another's breath, through gardens intimate with hollyhocks, where silent poppies burned between the rocks, by pools where birches bend to confidants above green waters scummed with lily plants.
There we might wander, you and I alone, through gardens filled with marble seats moss-grown. And fountains, water-threads that winds disperse, while in the spray the birds sit and converse. And when the fireflies mix their circling glow through the dark plants, then gently might I know your lips, light as the wings of the dragonflies, merely dreams, fluttering in my eyes.
You thought I had forgotten.
You thought I had forgotten. Well, I had. Although I never guessed I could forget those few great moments when we both went mad. The other day at someone's tea we met, smiling gaily, bowed, and went our several ways, complacent with successful coldness. Yet suddenly I was back in the old days before you felt we ought to drift apart. It was some trick. The way your eyebrows raise, your hands, some vivid trifle. With a start then I remembered how I lived alone, writing bad poems and eating out my heart all for your beauty. How the time has flown!
Venice.
In a sunset glowing of crimson and gold, she lies. The glory of the world. A beached king's galley, whose sails are furled, who is hung with tapestries rich and old. Beautiful as a woman is she, a woman whose autumn of fire is here, proud and calm at the end of the year with the grace that now is majesty.
The sleeping waters bathe her sighs. The warm blue streams of the Adrian Sea. She dreams and drowses languorously, swayed in the swaying of the tides. She is a goddess left for us. Veiled with the softening veils of time, her blue-veined breasts are now sublime, her molded torso glorious. The pity that we must come and go. While the old gold and the marble stays, forever gleaming its soft, strong blaze, calm in the early evening glow. And still the sensitive silhouettes of the gondolas pass and leave no track, light on the tides as lilies, and black in the rippling waters of long sunsets.
The New Macabre. The pleasant graveyard of my soul with sentimental cypress-trees and flowers is filled, that I may stroll in meditation at my ease. The little marble stones are lost in flowers surging from the dead, nor is there any mournful ghost to wait until the night is sped. And while night rustles through the trees, dragging the stars along, I know the moon is rising on the breeze, quivering as in a river's flow. And, ah, that moon of silver sheen! It is my heart hung in the sky, and no clouds ever float between the grave flowers and my heart on high. I do not read upon each stone the name that once was carven there. I merely note new blossoms blown and breathe the perfume of the air. Thus walk I through my wonderland while all the evening is a tune, beneath the cypress-trees that stand like candles to the barren moon.
To War The music beats up the chasmed street, then flares from around the curve. The cheers break out from the waving crowd. Our soldiers march superb. Over the track-lined city street the young men, the grinning men, pass. Last night they danced to that very tune. Today they march away. Tomorrow, perhaps no band at all, or the band beside the grave. Above, in the long blue strip of sky, the whirling pigeons, the thoughtless pigeons, pass. Another band beats down the street. Contending rhythms clash. New melodies win place, then fade, and the flashing legs move past. Down the cheering, gray-paved street, the fringed flags, the erect flags pass.
Calm day with rollers. Always the ships that move in mystery on the dim horizon, shadow-filled sails of dreams sliding over the blue-gray ocean, far from the rock-edged shore where willow-green waves are rushing, and white foam-people leap to stand erect for the moment. Ho, ye sails that seem to wander in dream-filled meadows, say, Is the shore, where I stand, the only field of struggle? Or are ye hit and battered out there by waves and wind-gusts as ye tack over a clashing sea of watery echoes?
Phonograph Tango. Old dances are simplified of their yearning, bleached by time. Yet from one black disk we tasted again the bite of crude Spanish passion. He had got into her courtyard. She was alone that night. Through the black night rain, he sang to her window bars. Love me, love. Ah, love me. If you will not, I can follow into the highest of mountains, and there, in the wooden cabin, I will strangle you for your lover. That was but rustling of dripping plants in the dark. More tightly under his cloak, he clasped his guitar. Love, ah, love me, love me. If you will do this, I can buy a fringed silk scarf of yellow, a high comb carved of tortoise. Then we will dance in the plaza. She was alone that night.
He had broken into her courtyard. Above the gurgling gutters he heard, Surely, a door unchained. The passage was black, but he risked it, death in the darkness, or her hot arms. Love, love me, ah! A good old tune, she murmured, and I found we were dancing.
Decoration A little pagan child-god plays beyond the far horizon haze, and underneath the twilight trees he blows a bubble to the breeze, which is borne upward in the night and makes the heavens shine with light. But soon it sinks to earth again, and, hitting hills, it bursts. And then, with foam, the skies are splashed and sprayed, and that's how all the stars are made.
Threnody. She is lain with high things and with low. She lies with shut eyes, rocked in the eternal flow of silence evermore. Desperately immortal, she, she stands with wide hands dim through the veil of eternity behind the supreme door.
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3 03 - Poems by J.R. Dos Passos 12:09
Poems by J.R. Dos Passos.
The Bridge.
The lonely bridge cuts dark across the marsh, whose long pools glow with the light of a flaring summer sunset. At this end, limp bushes overhang, palely reflected in the amber-colored water. Among them, a constant banjo-twanging of frogs and shrilling of toads and of insects rises and falls in chorus rhythmic and stirring. Dark with crumbling railing and planks, the bridge leads into the sunset. Across it many lonely figures, their eyes aflare with the sunset, their faces glowing with its colors, tramp past me through the evening. I am tired of sitting quiet among the bushes of the shore, while the dark bridge stretches onward and the long pools gleam with light. I am tired of the shrilling of insects and the croaking of frogs in the rushes, for the wild rice in the marsh pools waves its beckoning streamers in the wind, and the red sky glory fades.
Salvation Army. A drum pounds out the hymn, loud with gaudy angels, tinsel cherubim, to drown the fanfare of the street, and with exultant lilting beat, to mingle the endless rumbles of carts, the scrape of feet, the noise of marts, the dinning market stalls, where women shout their wares and meat hangs out, grotesque, distorted by the gas flares light, into one sacred rhythm for the devil's spite. A woman's thin, raucous voice carries the tune, bids men rejoice. Bathe in God's mercy, draw near, and learn salvation. See with their own eyes the mystery. Symbols at the hands of a tired girl, slim wisp amid the swirl of crowded streets, take up the tune, monotonously importune. Faces are wan and the arc-light's livid glare.
A wind gust carries the band's flare of song in noisy eddowes echoing round lonely backstreet corners, till, with distance dimming, it fades away among the silent dark array of city houses where no soul stirs. The crowd thins. The players are alone. In their faith's raucous monotone, loud with gaudy angels, tinsel cherubim, a drum pounds out the hymn.
Incarnation. Incessantly, the long rain falls slanting on black walls, which glisten gold where a street lamp shines, in a shop window spangled in long lines. By rain drops all aglow, an Italian woman's face flames into my soul as I go hastily by in the turbulent darkness. An oval-olived face with the sweetly sullen grace of the Virgin, when first she sees, amid her garden's silver lilies, the white-robed angel gleam, and softly, as by a sultry dream, feels all her soul subdued into the fire and radiance of her ecstasy. So in some picture on which, as on a lyre, an old Italian painter laboriously has played his soul away, his love, all his desire for fragrant things afar from earth, shines the Madonna, as with a veil overlaid by incense, smoke, and dust age old, at whose feet, in time of dearth or need, a myriad men have laid their sorrows and arisen bold.
Incessantly, the long rain falls, slanting on black walls, but through the dark, interminable streets, along pavements where rain beats its sharp tattoo, and gas lamps shine greenish gold in their solitude, the vision flames through my mood of that Italian woman's face through the dripping windowpane.
Memory. Between rounded hills, white with patches of buckwheat, whose fragrance fills the little breeze that makes the birch leaves quiver, beside a rollicking swift river, light green in the deeps, like your eyes in sunshine, winds the canal, lazy and brown as a water snake, full of dazzle and sheen, where the breeze sweeps the water with gossamer garments that shake the reed-standing sentinel, and the marginal line of birches and willows. Our little steamer pulls its way with jingle of bells and panting throb of old engines. In stiff array the water reeds wave and solemnly sway to the wash and swell of our passing. Among the reeds the ripples sob and die away. Till the canal is still again, save for a kingfisher's flashing across the noon's shimmer.
I stood beside you in the bow. Watched the sunlight lose itself among your hair that the breeze tugged at. Bright as the shattered sun rays where the prow cut the still water, the warm light caught and tangled there, red gold amid your hair. You were very slim in your blue serge dress. We talked of meaningless things, education, agreed that unless something were changed, disaster would come to the nation. You smiled when I pointed where a group of birches shivered in the greenwood shadow, up to their knees in water, white and fair as dryads bathing. A row of flat white houses and a wharf glided in sight. The hoarse whistle shrieked for landing. Bells jangled. You were standing a slim blue figure amid the wharf's crowd.
The little steamer creaked against the side. Loud screamed the whistle again. Monotonously, the solemn reeds waved to our passing. Ahead, the canal shimmered, blotched green by the water-weeds. With a grinding swing and seesaw of sound, the steamer slunk down the canal. I never even knew your name. That night, from a dingy hotel room, I saw the moon. Like a golden gong, redly loom across the lake, like a golden gong in a temple which a priest ere long will strike into throbbing song to wake some silent, twinkling city to prayer. The lake waves were flakes of red gold, burnished to copper, gold-red as the tangled gleam of sunlight in your hair.
Saturnalia In earth's womb the old gods stir, Firthonian deities of old time. With cymbals and rattle of castanets, and shriek of slughorns, the north wind bows the oak and the moaning fir, on russet hills and by roadside stiff with rime. In nature dead the life gods stir, From Radamanthus and the Isles where Saturn rules the Age of Gold, come old, old ghosts of bygone gods, while dim mist earth's outline blur and drip all night from lichen-green roof tiles. In men's hearts the mad gods rise and fill the streets with reveling, with torchlight that glances on frozen pools, with tapers starring the thick-fogged night, a dance like strayed fireflies, mid dim mad throngs whose Saturn's Ariasens sing.
In driven clouds the old gods come, when fogs the face of Apollo have veiled, a fear of things unhallowed, strange, and a fierce free The joy flares in the land. Men mutter runes in a language dead by night with rumbling drum. In quaking groves where the woodland spirits are hailed. To earth's brood of souls of old, with covered heads and aspen wands, mist-shrouded priests Do ancient rites. The black ram's fleece is stained with blood that steams dull red on the frozen ground, and pale votaries shiver with the cold that numbs the earth and etches pattern mirrors on the ponds.
When that April Is it the song of the meadow lark off the brown seer-salt marshes, or the eager patches in door-yards of yellow and pale lilac crocuses, or else the suburban street golden with sunlight and bare branches of elm-trees twined in the delicate sky? Or is it the merry piping of a distant hurdy-gurdy that makes me so weary and faint with desire for strange lands and new scents? For the rough rhythm clank of train couplings at night, and the stormy, gay-tinted sunrises that shade with purple the contours of far-off, unfamiliar hills.
Night Peace. A silver web has the moon spun, a silver web upon all the sky, where the frail stars quiver, every one like tangled gnats that hum and die. The moon has tangled the dull night in her silver skein, and set alight each dew-damp branch with milky flame, and huge the moon broods on the night. My soul is caught in the web of the moon, like a shrilling gnat in a spider's web. Importunate memories shrill in my ears like the gnats that die in the spider's web. Lovely is death in the moon's shroud. Were town streets, gray houses dim, full of strange peace in the silent night. As we walked, our footsteps clattered loud. We felt the night as a troubled song. Oh, the triumphing sense of life a-throb.
Behind those walls in the dark streets, like the sound of a river, swift unseen, flowing in darkness. Oh, the hoarse half-heard murmur, swirling beneath the snowy beauty of moonlight. And that other night, when the river rippled with faint spears of streetlights vaguely reflected. Gray the evening, like an opal. Lo, a gray moon shrouded in sea-fog. Air pregnant with spring. Rasp of my steps beside the lapping water, within the dark. Down the worn-out years, a sob of broken loves, old pain of dead farewells, and one face fading into gray. A silver web has the moon spun, a silver web over all the sky. In her flooding glory, one by one, like gnats in a web, the stars die.
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4 04 - Poems by Robert Hillyer 9:20
Poems by Robert Hilliard.
Four sonnets from a sonnet sequence. One quickly and pleasantly the seasons blow over the meadows of eternity. As wave on wave, the pulsings of the sea merge and are lost, each in the others flow. Time is no lover, it is only he that is the one unconquerable foe. He is the sudden tempest none can know. Wing it with swift winds, the none may hope to flee. Fair child of loveliness, these endless fears are naught to us. Let us be gods of stone. And set our images beyond the years on some high mount where we can be alone. And thou shalt ever be as now thou art, and I shall watch thee with untroubled heart. Two. Then judge me as thou wilt, I cannot flee, I cannot turn away from thee forever. For there are bonds that wisdom cannot sever, and slaves with souls far freer than the free.
Such strong desires the universal giver with unknown plan has buried deep in me, that the exquisite joy of watching thee has dominated all my life's endeavor. Thou weariest of having me so near, I feel the scorn thou hast within thy heart, and yet thy face has never seemed so dear as now, when I am minded to depart. Though thou shouldst drive me hence, I love thee so. That I would watch thee when thou dost not know. Three, fly, joyous wind, through all the wakened earth. Now when the portals of the dawn outpour, a myriad of wonders from the radiant store, of spring's deep passion and loud ringing mirth. Cry to the world that I despair no more. Heart greets my heart, and hope has proved its worth.
Fly where the legions of the sun have birth. Chant everywhere and everywhere adore. Circle the basking hills in fragrant flight. Shout, Rapture, Rapture, if sweet sorrow passes, and whisper low in intimate delight my love-song to the undulating grasses. Grief is no more. Love rises with the spring. Oh, fly, free wind, and Rapture, Rapture, sing. Four. Long after both of us are scattered dust, and some strange souls perchance shall read of thee, finding the yearnings that have crushed from me these poor confessions of my love and trust, I know how misinterpreted will be these lines, or men will laugh, or more unjust, thinking not once of love, but only lust, will stain the vesture of our memory.
And yet a few there may be. Who will feel my deep devotion and my true desires, and know that these unhappy words reveal only new images in changeless fires, and they perchance will linger with a sigh to think that beauty such as thine must die.
A Sea-Gull. Gray wings, oh, gray wings against a cloud, over the rough waves flashing. Whose was the scream, startling and loud? Keen through the skies, was it thine, over the moaning wind and the whine of the wide seas dashing? Whose was the scream that I heard, in the midst of the hurrying air? Was it thine, lost bird, or the voice of an old despair, chanting from years long dead, inexorable spirit flying, on tempest-wings that passed and fled, through the storm crying? Doomsday. The garlands and the songs of May shall welcome in the judgment-day. About the basking countryside blossoms the souls of them that died. O dead, awake, arise in bloom upon the joyous dawn of doom. They rise up from the bleeding earth in gracious legions of rebirth, each as a flower or a tree of verdant immortality.
An host of glad-voiced angels sing In the rippling groves of spring. From the grave of youth there grows a passionately petaled rose. Where the virgin whitely lies, a lily fair as paradise, and in that old oak's leafy glee, some gouty sire makes sport of me. O dead of yore and yesterday, all hail the resurrecting May. Beside you in the flowering grass, the feet of youth and love shall pass. And we that greet you with a smile shall join you in a little while. To a Pass-Pied by Scarlatti. Strange little tune so thin and rare, like scents of roses long ago, quavering lightly upon the strings of a violin and dying there, with a dancing flutter of delicate wings, thy courtly joy, thy gentle woe, thy gracious gladness and plaintive fears, Are lost in the clamorous age we know, and pale like a moon in the lurid day, a phantom of music strangely fled from the princely halls of the quiet dead, down the long lanes of the vanished years, echoing fraily and far away.
Elegy for Antinous. Come, let us hasten hence and weep no more. The sinking sea flows on its tranquil ways. Night looms serenely at the eastern door, and trails the last cloud into lifeless haze. Antinous is dead, we kneel before the portals of our past in vain, nor raise the laughing phantoms of our yesterdays upon this desolate and empty shore. Now deepening pools of shadow overflow into the sea of dark a far-off bell, sobs with a sweet vibration long and low. Alas, Farewell. Forevermore. Farewell. And will he wake and hear? We cannot tell. And will he answer? Ah, we do not know. Song. O Crimson Rose, O Crimson Rose, Crushed lightly in two little hands. A child's soft kiss was in your heart.
A child's warm breath was in your soul. The child is gone, O Crimson Rose, and stained and hardened are the hands. And who shall find your golden heart, and who shall kiss your withered soul? Happy are you, O Crimson Rose, but I have stains upon my hands. You died with kisses in your heart. I live with sorrow in my soul.
My peace I leave with you. He pondered long, and watched the darkening space, close the red portals whence the hours had run, as like young wistful angels, one by one. The stars cast timid flowers about his face. Yea, now another scarlet day is done, he cried in anguish, and with sudden grace, stretched forth his arms as though he would erase the few dim embers of the scattered sun. The scarlet day is done, and soon the light will wake again my desecrated skies. Oh, that another dawn might never rise, my foolish children! Through the vast of night the young stars shivered in a silver hoard before the infinite sorrow of their lord. The recompense. When the last song is sung, and the last spark of light dies out forever, and the dark, the voiceless dark eternal, shrouds the earth.
When the last cries of pain and shouts of mirth sink in the desolate silences of space, where, then, shall flower the beauty of your face? O love, the laughing, youth, the rose in hand, in what unknown and undiscovered land shall flower then the beauty of your face? I know not, but I know that all returns, at last unchanged, and to the heart that yearns, shall be repaid all loneliness and loss. Some time, with the shadowy sails, shall fly across, the shoreless ocean of infinity, a ship from out the past and the great sea, Of life shall bear you from the strange worlds over, the waves, and back again to the old lover. Yes, in some future far beyond surmise, you will dream here with half-remembering eyes, and I shall write these words, content a while, in the slow round of time, to see you smile.
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5 05 - Poems by R. S. Mitchell 15:29
V. Poems by R.
S. Mitchell. POPPY SONG. I. Footsteps soft as fall the rose's petals on a dewy lawn, Shaken when the wind uncloses golden gateways for the dawn. Laughter light as is a swallow's chatter in the evening sky, Wafted upward from the hollows where the limpid waters lie. Weeping faint as is the willows by the margin of the lake, Trembling into tiny billows that the silent tear-drops make. Phantoms fitful and uncertain as the pearly autumn rain, sweeping on in cloudy curtain down the wide way of the plain.
Two. Oh, unhappy now to waken, when the dream had scarce begun, out of gentle twilight taken, into realms of burning sun. Oh, unhappy now to find me lost neath heavens hot with noon, all that fairy land behind me, Poppy-fields and rising moon. Dropbridge and portcullis screeching, bugles braying soon and late. Who are they that come beseeching, calling at my castle gate? Drive them hence, for they encumber days and nights with waking pain. Tell them that I lie and slumber under poppies, wet with rain. Who art thou that bendest praying over me with clasp'd palms? Dim through surging darkness, saying words of prayer and murmured psalms. Who art thou that kneelest weeping by the border of my bed?
Seest thou, for I was but sleeping, dreaming only, and not dead. Three phantoms flitting and uncertain, sweeping round the endless plain, autumn twilight's dusky curtain, drowsy poppies, drenched with rain.
Love-dream. Strange that on warp and woof of dreams fancy should weave the web of truth, and yet this very figment seems part of a half-forgotten youth, stolen from days I thought were sped out of the world beyond the dead. Smiled she not when at the edge of evening we walked alone, plucking spring's blossoms from the hedge that she might wear them as her own, or—or Do I hold a hopeless tryst, here with a shadow, made of mist? Now, as will crumpled rose-leaves, pent by fingers we can never know, rouse with the richness of their scent thoughts of a summer long ago, all the expanse of land and sea speaks with a thousand tongues to me. "'Twas from coast we watched slow form out of the frosty ocean's breath, the blue-gray ramparts of the storm.
Flashing with signal fires of death, whilst with a murmur, far and wide swept in the low wind with the tide. Then, at last, when lips were dumb with fear of parting, did we wend along the metal lanes that come from nowhere, and in nothing end. And smiling kiss, though ill at ease, under the rustling orchard trees. But will the promise given keep? Can the heart love still, when tis dead? What if the spirit, waked from sleep, never recall the words, it said? Dwell in a dreamland, or else be lost in life's eternity?
The Island of Death. There is an island in a silent sea that rises, four rough rugged walls, on high above the ocean in calm majesty. A mountain of despair against the sky. About its summit soaring sea-gulls fly, or rest them in its lofty cypress-trees, and greet the black barge bearing those who die, upon our earth to everlasting ease and pleasant lives that know not man's eternities.
White halls and palaces, their dwellings stand, these shadowy souls are all unknown to graves, and live, faint phantoms in a fairyland of dreams and idleness. They hear the waves sing, and the winds come calling from the caves of night beyond the ocean, and the cry of screaming gulls stare at each ship that braves this wilderness of waters, and glides by in awestruck silence, ever fearing to draw nigh.
The sun, descending, sows the sea with gold, and showers splendor through the fading skies, whilst from the murky waters they behold the moon, A shape of silver, slow arise, and every evening, as the daylight dies, there comes that bark of death, whose white sail seems an angel in the dark. A while it lies below them in the harbor, then there gleams a new shape on the stairs, up to that land of dreams.
From the Arabian Nights Then, as the whispering evening crossed the sea, Sweeping the waters with her veil of gray, wave-worn and weary of the ocean, we beheld the enchanted island far away. Half hidden in the twilight, lo, it lay, on the horizon like a lazy cloud, its coast encompassed with long lines of spray. We spread the sails, and swiftly the ship ploughed to the purple path ahead, until the surf sang loud.
Between the cliffs, by the faint stars, we found a gloomy gate, and, boldly sailing in, watched the dark mountains slowly chasing round, and heard faint echoes of the ocean's din, melting like spirits' voices, fleet and thin. When, of a sudden, as we faltered nigh, out of the hills where only night had been, a mist of minarets and towers high rose like the yellow light of morning in the sun.
Gazing. We drifted towards that golden bloom of palaces whose light glowed on our sail. There we floated rapt in wild perfume, then music burst upon us in a gale. Grave, deep-toned trumpets and the lyre's long wail, and farther the faint sound of singing men. We grasped our oars, but slowly, as will pale the morning star, the vision faded. Then the empty dark swept in, and all was night again.
Threnody. Have you forgotten me, O my beloved? Have you deserted me now in the autumn? See where the swallows fly south over the ocean. Soon will the winter winds sweep the Aegean. Up from the vineyard comes music of laughter. Far through the valleys they gather the harvest. Westward the evening star sinks in the mountains. Pale neath the rising moon lies Mytilene. Here, where the headland looks wide o'er the water, I have brought laurel-leaves decking your barrow. Why do I linger now, vainly lamenting? Oh, it is lonely, love, lonely in Le Beau.
Helen. Again the voices of the hunting-horns and the new moon, low lying on the hills, tell that the summer night is on its way. O languid heart, shalt thou much longer watch this pale procession of the silent hours melt into shadows of unending years? Much longer feed on yearning and despair and all the anguish of departed time. Tomorrow is as yesterday. Today no nearer than the morning when there stood in Lyta's palace, asking for my hand, tall Menelaus, with his yellow hair. No nearer now than the first time these hands dared linger in caress upon the curls of him whose dark eyes laughed their love to mine. Tis only as if one short, restless sleep lay over the wide chasm of the years, beyond which loom lost faith and ruined Troy.
The night-wind brings, as twenty summers since, the silver-breasted swallows from the Nile to quiet Sparta nestled in her hills. Locked inland from the voices of the sea, and far across the porticoes I hear the ivory shuttle singing in the loom, midst maidens chatter as in olden days, and men still murmur as they pass me by. Lo, look at her, the wonder of the world, beauteous Helen, Lassimodian's queen. I watched them gaze intently on my face, as they would keep it in their memory forever, and the very while they gaze, I see the flame of Troy gleam in their eyes.
I think sometimes I have already passed into the kingdom of untroubled death, and wandering lonely amongst them I knew in Hyllus or in land beyond the seas. Behold each shadow as it passes by shrink half involuntarily, and turn, and veil its face and vanish in the gloom. Whilst out of that dim distance whence my steps are moving, and to which they shall return after an interval of endless years, there comes a voice that calls me from afar. Art thou not, Helen, dowered of the gods with all that man can covet? Wart thou not created the most beautiful of earth? And is not beauty wisdom wisdom power? What hast thou done with their almighty gift?
And then... Ere I would answer, silence falls around me, and the dark divides, and I see the blue twilight on the spartan hills.
Largo Thou only from this sorrow were to relief, In violet death, grave deity of rest, Wherein all things to pass somehow seem the best That ever could have come to be. Proud grief, her lustrous torch hath lighted in this brief dim time before the dark, when the wide west fades, where inimitable skies suggest days vanished in the beauty of belief. As one unto a battle come, that stands aloof a while, beholding friend and foe, clashing in conflict till his soul commands he Two pressed on whither the bugle's blow, lifting his eye sees over wasted lands, life's dust and shadow drifting to and fro.
Lazarus. At morn we passed a hall where song and dance had been and wine flowed free, and where, mid wrecks of revelry, had laid the feasters all night long. They saw us through the midst of dawn, and turning, called us to their feast. The sound of lutes and cymbals ceased, but one he fixed his gaze upon. In whose wide eyes there seemed to be, behind the laughing wine-flushed face and tilted ivy-crown's gay grace, faint glimpses of eternity.
Then sad, the master bowed his head, and, through the rosy twilight dim, walked up, and softly spake to him, Art thou not he that late was dead?
The drinker raised his cup on high, and murmured, Priest of Nazareth, I am he thou didst raise from death. Lo, thus I wait again to die.
A Crucifix This was the cross of God on which men's eyes dwelt with the love of dead divinity as they who by the desolate orient sea in battle made their sainted sacrifice, dreaming their boundless striving should devise a symbol whereby men might know that he who wins his way on earth to victory thus in his consummated sorrow dies. All things are sacred to that tender sight. Time's ancient altars went strange incense curled innocent to the unknown gods. The light of love is thine. Faith's banner is unfurled, even where the furthest watchmen through the night call on the cloud-wrapped ramparts of the world.
Neath. Somehow the spirit of that day, rain-cloud streets and brooding air, Determined me to live and dare, living, to laugh the world away. As in a crystal, dreamers see out of unwinding midst to rise the splendors of some paradise, woven of gold and ivory.
Deep in the globe of thought, I saw dawn from tempestuous dust that formed towards which the endless ages storm uproarious, to break with awe. Of all things ignorant, yet wise, sitting enthroned at life's last goal, dividing body from the soul, looking at each with blameless eyes, immutable, unknown, unsung, through triumph and delight unearned, through sorrow undeserved, I learned salvation from thy wordless tongue. Then, flying the embracing gloom of burnt-out days and parched desire, I built my soul an altar-fire of laughter in the face of doom.
A Farewell. Nay, by this desolate sea our troubled ways shall separate forever. Swift hath sped the hour of youth, and yet to hang the head lamenting lost things of departed days Were only from that shadow land to rise, a wraith, that whispering of the quiet dead, would mimic the strange life of love. Instead, let us relent and hail the past with praise. Go, then. And should inevitable fate lead us at last beyond the world of men, where laurel and applause content no more, whither the soul takes silence for its mate, there might we meet, and smiling, once again, Clasp hands and part upon some windy shore.
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6 06 - Poems by William A. Norris 7:11
VIII. POEMS BY WI. A. NORRIS.
OF TOO MUCH SONG. Sedges, have you sung too much? Sedges gray along the shore. Can this autumn tempest touch answering chords in you no more? Is the summer all forgot? Now the ice is dark and strong that has bound you to the spot. Did you die of too much song? Something in me is a harp played by every wanton breeze. Moaning soft and piping sharp are its wondrous melodies. Is the playing overfast, though the answer now is strong, like the sedges at the last? Will it die of too much song? Wherever My Dreams Go Wherever my dreams go, you are always there, and you and I have gone to many a land, seeing high hills at dawn and desert sand, temples and mosques and people bowed in prayer. We too have prayed in many places where beauty has come, as I have clasped your hand, and through long silence learned to understand the dumb sweet language of your eyes and hair.
We have been lovers in all fair romances beyond the rising or the sunken sun. There have been foes to meet, and I have done great deeds beneath the splendor of your glances. And yet I dreamed alone, and you could not guess what joy you brought into my loneliness. Out of the littleness, out of the littleness that wraps my days, the oppressive mist of gray and common things, Sometimes my dream on its audacious wings, dripping with golden fire above the haze, flashes and veers against the sudden blaze of sunlight. There no other wings may gleam but only yours, companioning my dream in its strange flight up new and radiant ways. And once, I thought, in a far solitude, the black waves moaned and broke unutterably on a stern cliff where hand in hand we stood.
There were none near us when the dark had gone, only the clean wind of a sailless sea, and you and I alone in the great dawn. Nahant Last night the sea was an enchanted moan and a pale pathway that the moonlight made. All night it sorrowed in the dark alone, groping with ghostly fingers half-afraid, up the great rocks and sobbing back again. Weary of search, Yet still unsatisfied. It seemed to have the voice of all dead men, and all fair women who had ever died. But now the sun has risen, and the spray leaps into the sudden light along the shore. Each little wave has caught a golden ray, as if the dawn had never come before. Beyond the cliffs, brown fishing-boats go by under the reach of the wide laughing sky.
Qui sub luna errant. In a strange land they dwell, too far away from sunlight and the common mirth of men ever to come with an arcasual kin. We see them not, but if by chance we stray down Cypress Isles, where the wan summer day draws to a thin and sickly close, we hear murmur of mad speech by some watery weir or languid laughter and faint sound of play. They never see the dawn, like the pale moths that haunt lugubrious shadows of dim trees. They celebrate their lunar mysteries at woodland shrines, where, with green thyrus rods and weak limbs wrapped in silken sensuous cloths, they chant the names of their dead pagan gods.
Across the taut strings. Across the taut strings of my yearning soul pass fingers of all fleet and beautiful things, comings of dawn and moonlight glimmerings, midsummer hush and sabbath bells that toll over broad fields, a sound of thrush's wings near sunset hour, a girl with lips apart, wonder and laughter. These things have touched my heart and left their music lingering on its strings. At twilight of some gray eventual year, a few late friends will turn, with trembling breath, from the raw mound of earth that hides my face. Yet I shall still find beauty, even in death, and some lone traveler of the night will hear an echo of music in that quiet place. Escape. They danced beneath the stars, a crazy rout with antic steps that had some little grace, and one leapt high with song and frenzied shout, and one ran silent with a gleaming face.
They danced until the shy moon, looking down, deemed herself lost above some Grecian glade. A mile away, the trim New England town echoed the bacchanalian din they made, and still they danced until the moon sank low. Blushing a little, and night's diadem of stars grew pale before the eastern glow, and with the dawn their keepers came for them. On a street corner. But all the time you spoke I did not hear the words you said. I only heard a far faint sound of summer waters and a clear calling of music from some lonely star. I thought I heard the lisp of falling dew in a dark meadow where no breezes stirred. Then, all at once, the noisy street, and you smiling at me because I had not heard. Sea Burial Over the sands the swollen tide came creeping, Over the sands beneath the gleaming moon.
At first it seemed a child's uncertain croon, And then a sound of many mourners weeping. Then all at once a crested wave was sweeping around the still form in the moonlight there, twining its silver fingers in her hair. And yet it could not rouse her from her sleeping. With dawn the tide went seaward, bearing her in its strong arms that clung so tenderly, and laid her in a strange place far away where the tall seaweeds rise and never stir. And there she sleeps, while pass alternately. The brooding night and the green luminous day.
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7 07 - Poems by Dudley Poore 12:52
A Renaissance Picture Come little figure, Ivy-crowned, How long beneath the barren tree Where this pale, martyred god has found, Surcease from his long agony, You watch with an untroubled gaze life move on its accustomed ways. Within your childish heart there dwells no sorrow that uprising dims, your eye whence not a teardrop wells, for pity of those writhing limbs, or for the travail of a race consummate in one lifeless face. Though tinkling caravans go by forever over twilight sands, with myrrh and cassia laden high, For other shrines in other lands, No weight of grief thereat you know, But softly on your panpipes blow. From what dim mountain have you strayed, Where, ringed by the hellenic seas, You dwelt in an untrodden glade, Sacred to woodland deities, Along whose faint paths went at dawn Andinion, or a dancing fawn, From groves where sacrificing throngs Called you by some fair Grecian name, with ritual meat and caric songs, strange that to this dark hill you came, to seek unmindful of their loss a refuge underneath the cross.
There is some deeper secret lies, hidden out of human sight, in keeping of those tranquil eyes that shine with such immortal light, and in their shadows gleam and glow, while still upon your pipes you blow. All but inscrutable, your gaze declares your place is even here, sharing this martyr's cup of praise, and year by sadly westering year, till the last altar-lights grow dim, dividing sovereignty with him. The Philosopher's Garden Some strange and exquisite desire has thrilled this flowering almond-tree, whose branches shake so wistfully Else wherefore does it bloom in fire? Why scatter pollen on the air, marry its pale buds each to each? The year's unkindly tempests bear, or to the calm clear sunlight reach?
Yet I can give that hope no name, nor that divine emotion share. For though I see it flowering there, because our speech is not the same, the passionate secret must lie hid. Burdened with unexpressed delight, where none of all man's race can bid it forth or voice its beauty right. There's naught in earth or heaven knows that hope for which our being longs. The stars are busied with their songs, the universal springtime flows. From sun to sun in scorn of man, careless if he be quick or dead, or if this earth as it began be voiceless and untenanted. The Tree of Stars. There stands a tree where no man knows, and like an earthly tree it grows, save that upon its branches wide, the earth and all the stars beside, the chilly moon and the great sun, the little planets one by one, are hung like fruit to redden there, and ripen in the heavenly air.
And when the seeds are round and full, the watchful gods will come and pull. The ripened fruit from off the tree, and then that heavenly company will bear the shining planets in, and garner them in a deep bin, and sort them out and save the seed, to plant new trees in time of need. After Rain. All day the heavy skies have lowered, long beaten by autumnal rain. The lilac's withered leaves lie showered, where little rain pools star the plain. All things that for a season flowered sink back to earth again. Strange, then, that with the years decrease, and out of gathering dusk you rise, seeking love's ultimate surcease, phantom whose memory-haunted eyes. Know that there never can be peace hoped for till memory dies.
In vain where these dead leaves lie strown, where all things bending earthward fail, Like a young spirit, newly flown, flower-fragile, blossom-like, and pale, you search and must fly back, a-blown, rose-leaf on the cold gale. You might have rested but for this, that love's intense flame-burning brew, the shuddering body with a kiss, woke in the prison spirit too, so keen an ecstasy of bliss, as could for all they made amiss. Nor life, nor death undo. Cor Cordium. Deep in a hearth, beneath o'erhanging boughs, Love built himself a house. And whoso entered in, Love bade him stay, Nor ever from that feast to come away, Dissatisfieth or weary of the fair, Love set him there. Forever through the groves and glades, Kind thoughts went softly to and fro, And memories like white-footed maids, With gentle tread, would come and go.
Among the ever-garrulous trees, and through the branches overhead, I know not what spirits strayed, or what commandment spirits led. Their mazy dances, but one played so deftly on a psaltery, that they for joy must needs keep singing, all the chambers of love's house, with that sweet minstrelsy were ringing. Faces to the windows came, tears to happy eyelids started. Feeling as by sudden flame their cares and their sad hearts disparted, each old clinging sorrow dead. All who ever guested there to each other murmuring said, In this heart breathes purer air. The thoughts that move across this sky have had a more mysterious birth, are lovelier, float more stately than clouds across the sky of earth.
All guests within that heart's deep wood All friends together in that house, high converse held with an aerial rude, with spirit folk, kept delicate carouse. None ever turned un greeted from that door. Sorrow himself was guessed a weary while. But yesterday, when I passed by once more, met me no welcoming smile, nor any breath the unwavering branch to stir. Silent each glad aerial chorister. Three Darzee poppies, rooted by the wall, lonely and tall. Then as I leaned above their crimson bloom, the flower of day grew old and withered. Night with a sigh sat down beside her loom, winding her shuttle with a silver thread. Suddenly, from the starlit plains of air, ethereal tumult, airy tempest blew.
Immortal music, showering everywhere, Flashed to the earth in inharmonious dew, leaped jubilant from cloud to craggy cloud, binding the moon in a melodious chain, storming the troubled stars, a luminous crowd, dropping in fiery streaks to earth again. From out the windows of God's house, faint as a far-echoing wave, the angels bending their calm brows, song for song in answer gave, and faster than a falcon flies, Thronging spirits in a cluster, passed before my dazzled eyes, shedding an aerial lustre. Burning with translucent fire, shaking from their dewy wings wild, ineffable desire, of starry and immortal things, torturing with delicious pain. Past telling sweet the bewildered heart, piercing the poor mortal brain, with beauty a keen fiery dart.
Ah, even as an oracle, Whose soul a god has breathed upon, The beauteousness unbearable Possessed me, so all strength was gone. Smitten by a barbaric joy My sense with rapturous pain grew dim. Joy pierced me as it would destroy. Still higher rose the celestial hymn. And then of all that starry throng That streamed toward the upper sky One spirit darted down again And stood upon a bough nearby. Even I unsealed thy sight, he said, Alas, that shape I did not know, for he was so transfigured, so circled by the unearthly glow, of his pulsating aureole. I who so well the flesh had known, I did not know the soul. With troubled eyes he bended down, and all about me where I stood, every blossom, every tree, all the branches of that wood, were trembling in their ecstasy.
They knew, ere I had half divined, but at his voice old dreams awoke, in dusty chambers of the mind, and when again he softly spoke, with sudden tears mine eyes were wet, and lowlier still he bent his head. Dost thou, dear friend, not know me yet? Yes, for I know thy voice, I said. Dear Phantom, this immortal guise, this disembodied self of thine, hath dazed mine unacquainted eyes. Thou dweller on the steps divine. Thou image of a god's desire, Thou sparkly celestial flame, Art fashioned out of wind and fire, And elements without a name. What sacred fingers mingled them, And trembled with a god's delight? Thy body is a burning gem, Thy limbs are crecelite. A glory hangs about thy head, For thou and thine immortal lot, In heaven's own light art garmented, I know thee, yet I know thee not.
Then he with shining eyes half shut, Radiantly standing there, I did but change my leafy hut For a mansion in the air. The eerie wood, the enchanted ground, The dim bird-haunted blades we trod, Grew all untuneful when I found A dwelling in the heart of God. I latched the gate of dawn of day, I planted poppies by the door, To his retreats I came away, and I shall wander thence no more. The windy heights are all my love, the spheral lights, the spheral chimes, the trailing fires, the hosts that move, in concourse through sidereal climes. I trooped with the celestial choirs. We have not any wish to be, sad pilgrims torn by sad desires, wayfarers of mortality. The husk of flesh we have put by, the dark seed planted in the earth, Have blossomed in the upper sky, in airy gardens have new birth.
There did he make an end, for, oh, those spirits singing darted by again, and at the showering sound he trembled so, I saw his earthly dalliance give him pain, and cried in sorrow, oh, my friend, farewell. Now from the luminous paradisal bands, Gabriel, Israfel, Ithurio, Beckon to you with their exulting hands. The withered leaf, the faded flower, be mine. The withered leaf, the faded flower, be mine, the broken shrine, all things that, knowing beauty for a day, have passed away, to dwell in the illimitable wood of quietude, undying, radiant, young, past years among. No blighting wind upon their beauty blows. The altar glows, with flames unquenchable and bright, by day, by night, secure from envious time's deflowering breath.
They know no death, but silently, imperishably fair. Grow lovelier there, he who adores too much the impending hour, the budding flower, who knows not with what dies an hour that's dead is garmented, who walks with glimmering shapes companionless, He cannot guess with how great love and thankfulness I praise the yesterdays.
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8 08 - Poems by Cuthbert Wright 8:41
The end of it.
We met, and on the decorous drive touched hands. "'Good-bye. A pleasant trip to you,' I said. The sunlight slept upon the still uplands, your figure fading in the dusty red. I watched awhile, then turned with casual face to where a torrent glimmered down a glade. No human voice troubled the lovely place, only the fall a cruel music made." A time I lay, and marked with curious stare, the keen sunlances quiver on the lawn, and thought on shrines all voiceless now and bare, the holy genius of their vows withdrawn, till with hoarse cry the train that you were on stabbed the indifference of the empty air. Then I awoke, and knew that you were gone.
The New Platonist, circa 1640. Our loves as flowers fall to dust, the noblest singing hath an end. No man to his own soul may trust, nor to the kind arms of his friend. Yet I have glimpsed by lonely tree bright baths of immortality. My faultless teachers bid me fair, the cypress path of blood and tears, treading the thorny world to where the painful cross of Christ appears. "'Twas on another summer hill. I met you first, my miracle. The painted windows burn and flame up through the music-haunted air. These were my gods. And then you came with flowers crowned and sun-kissed hair, making this northern river seem some laughter-girdled Grecian stream. When the fierce foreman of our race marshals his lords of lust and pride, you spring within a moment's space, full-armed and smiling to my side.
O golden heart, the love you gave me alone has saved, and yet will save me. Perchance we have no perfect city beyond the rack of these our wars, till death alone in sacred pity wash with long sleep our wounds and scars. So much the more I praise in measure the generous gods for you, my treasure.
The Room Over the River Good night, my love. Good night. The wan moon holds her lantern high, and softly threads with nodding light the violet posterns of the sky. Below, the tides run swift and bright into the sea. Odors and sounds come in to us, faint with the passion of this night. One little dream hangs luminous above you in the scented light. Roses and mist, Stars and bright dew draw down to you. How often in the dewy break I've heard above the sighing weirs the nightbird singing for your sake his lonely song of love and tears. He, too, sad heart hath turned to rest, and sleep is best. Flower of my soul. Let us be true to youth and love and all delight, clean and refreshed, and one with you I would be ever as to-night.
And heed not what the day will bring, nor anything. And now the moon is safe away. Far off her carriage lampions flare. Lost in the sunken roads of day, they vanish in the icy air. Good night, my love. Good night. Good night.
THE FIDDLER Once more I thought I heard him playing, that unseen fiddler in the lane, under the timid twilight moon, playing his visionary strain. No other soul was in the place, as up the hill I came apace, though once I heard him every day, I never once have seen his face. It was my immemorial year, when rhymes came fast and blood beat clear. He, too, perchance, was then alive. Now separate ghosts we wander here. Sometimes his ghostly rondelet broke on my dream at dawn of day, and through my open window stole the perfumed marvel of the May. Sometimes in midnight lanes I heard the twitter of a darkling bird, as hidden from the ashen moon the pathos of his music stirred. Oh, happy time! How goodly seemed the dauntless, timeless dream I dreamed, those dear imaginary sins, the joys that in one torrent streamed.
When the moon and stars go out for A, I am dead and cast away. This autumn city I have loved will know me not. But he will stay. In faded suburbs he will play, some other boys' brief morn away, till sapphire windows palely burn amid the undefeated gray. And yet sometimes I seem to know I shall not scape his phantom bow. More paramount than death or pain, this ghost will follow me where I go. In some well-kept, untroubled hell, where frustrate souls like mine may dwell, I shall look up and hear his note coming across the asphodel. No shades will gather at his tune to dance their ghostly rigadoon. Only that lonely voice will cleave the everlasting afternoon.
Falstaff's Page To Reginald Sheffield In blaze of curls and cowslip-colored coat, he pranks away before the wheezy night. Tall Windsor shows no blossom like this white, by park or sedgy pool or bearded moat. A skylark burbles in that milk-white throat, and I have heard him down a singing stream, ere the brute mourns shattered by happy dream upon the sill, and weeping I awoke. We had a music once, a poesy, sweet as a maiden, lathsome as this lad, full of rich merriment and gentle joy, that other England lives and laughs in thee, appeal of Morris music, blithe and glad. Thou spray of a bloom, thou flower of a boy.
A dull Sunday. After Debussy.
It has been a long day, a long, long day, and now in floods of twilight, in long green waves of sunset softly flowing evening. It is evening over the great towns. It is evening in our hearts, and though the last frail tendrils and flowers of incense have long ago uncurled themselves around the cynical cathedral, I hear the thin white voices of children. Little girls and little boys, calling the name of Jesus and his most sacred heart, singing about a kind of parish heaven, a little walled city, all golden and lilac, like the one seen by Francois Vion's mother in an old bituminous smoke-bitten painting of the Middle Ages. And in this faith she wished to live and die.