Chapter I: Front Matter

POEMS

POEMS

_by
Nora May French_

_San Francisco
The Strange Company_

_1910_

Copyright 1910,
BY THE STRANGE COMPANY

Printed by
The Stanley-Taylor Company
San Francisco

NORA MAY FRENCH WAS BORN
AT AURORA, NEW YORK, APRIL
THE TWENTY-SIXTH, 1881, AND
DIED AT CARMEL, CALIFORNIA,
NOVEMBER THE FOURTEENTH,
1907, AGED TWENTY-SIX YEARS

CONTENTS

The Outer Gate 1

Rain 2

Best-Loved 3

The Rose 4

Between Two Rains 5

The Message 6

By the Hospital 7

Oh, Dryad Thoughts 8

Music in the Pavilion 9

Rebuke 10

In Camp 11

The Nymph 12

Vivisection 16

The Stranger 17

The Constant Ones 18

Instinct 19

San Francisco, New Year’s, 1907 20

The Poppy Field 22

You 23

Just a Dog 24

Mirage 25

Dusk 26

The Spanish Girl--Part I 29

The Spanish Girl--Part II 39

The Spanish Girl--Part III 49

The Garden of Dolores 59

Indifference 60

After-Knowledge 61

Two Spendthrift Kings 62

Growth 63

Change 64

Wistaria 65

My Nook 66

When Plaintively and Near the Cricket Sings 68

The Little Memories 69

Pass By 70

In Empty Courts 71

Down the Trail 72

“Bells from Over the Hills Sound Sweet” 74

In Town 75

Moods 76

A Misty Morning 77

Two Songs 78

Noon 79

Your Beautiful Passing 80

By Moonlight 81

One Day 82

The Mission Graves 83

Along the Track 84

A Place of Dreams 85

Think Not, O Lilias 86

To Rosy Buds 87

Yesterday 88

The Mourner 89

Ave atque Vale 90

Notes 91

THE OUTER GATE[1]

Life said: “My house is thine with all its store;
Behold, I open shining ways to thee--
Of every inner portal make thee free:
O child, I may not bar the outer door.
Go from me if thou wilt, to come no more;
But all thy pain is mine, thy flesh of me;
And must I hear thee, faint and woefully,
Call on me from the darkness and implore?”

Nay, mother, for I follow at thy will.
But oftentimes thy voice is sharp to hear,
Thy trailing fragrance heavy on the breath;
Always the outer hall is very still,
And on my face a pleasant wind and clear
Blows straitly from the narrow gate of Death.

RAIN

The rain was grey before it fell,
And through a world where light had died
There ran a mournful little wind
That shook the trees and cried.

The rain was brown upon the earth,
In turbid stream and tiny seas--
In swift and slender shafts that beat
The flowers to their knees.

The rain is mirror to the sky,
To leaning grass in image clear,
And drifting in the shining pools
The clouds are white and near.

BEST-LOVED

It was a joy whose stem I did not break--
A little thing I passed with crowded hands,
And gave a backward look for beauty’s sake.

Of all I pulled and wove and flung aside,
Was any hue preferred above the rest?
I only know they pleased me well, and died.

But this--it lives distinct in Memory’s sight,
A little thing, incurving like a pearl.
I think its heart had never seen the light.

THE ROSE[2]

Ay, pluck a jonquil when the May’s a-wing!
Or please you with a rose upon the breast,
A sweeter violet chosen from the rest,
To match your mood with blue caprice of spring--
Leave windy vines a tendril less to swing.
Why, what’s a flower? A day’s delight at best,
A perfume loved, a faded petal pressed,
A whimsey for an hour’s remembering.

But wondrous careful must he draw the rose
From jealous earth, who seeks to set anew
Deep root, young leafage, with a gardener’s art--
To plant her queen of all his garden close,
And make his varying fancy wind and dew,
Cloud, rain, and sunshine for one woman’s heart.

BETWEEN TWO RAINS

It is a silver space between two rains;
The lulling storm has given to the day
An hour of windless air and riven grey;
The world is drained of color; light remains.
Beyond the curving shore a gull complains;
Unceasing, on the bastions of the bay,
With gleam of shields and veer of vaporing spray
The long seas fall, the grey tide wars and wanes.

It is a silver space between two rains:
A mood too sweet for tears, for joy too pale--
What stress has swept or nears us, thou and I?
This hour a mist of light is on the plains,
And seaward fares again with litten sail
Our laden ship of dreams adown the sky.

THE MESSAGE[3]

So might it brush my cheek with errant wings,
So might it speak with thrilling touch and light
Of answering eyes, of dim, unuttered things--
A moth from hidden gardens of the night.

So, in a land of hills, where twilight lay,
Might come a sudden bird-call to the ear,
Across the canyons, faint and far away....
O Heart, how sweet ... half heard and wholly dear.

BY THE HOSPITAL

Who goes to meet the windy night
With unseen comrades shouting by,
Who grips a bough in swift delight
To let it dip and loose and fly;

Who runs for rest that running gives,
Runs till his throbbing muscles speak;
Who bends to feel how keenly lives
The joyous grass beneath his cheek--

With sudden tears his eyes shall fill,
With quick-drawn breath he sees them plain--
Those bodies that must lie so still,
So tired--in the House of Pain.

“OH, DRYAD THOUGHTS”

Oh, Dryad thoughts of lovely yesterday!--
You melted through a sunny wood like mist,
With here a wind of laughter, there a stray
Pleased flower, tipped and kissed.

To-day among the noises of the street,
The press of faces, sullen, gay, and wise,
I hear you calling, calling me; I meet
Your clear, untroubled eyes.

MUSIC IN THE PAVILION

Faces that throng and stare and come and go--
The air a-quiver as the voices meet;
And loud Humanity in mingled flow
Passes with jarring tread of many feet.

But over all the chatter of the crowd
(The background for its delicate relief)
Now trembling in a thread, now wild and loud,
The violin laughs and sings, and cries its grief.

Then, through it all, and round it all, the sea;
A solemn heart with never-ceasing beat,
Bearing an undertone of mystery
The harsh and lovely notes, the shrill and sweet.

Surely it is my life--of plodding days,
With one Ideal holding clear and good;
And sounding over, under, through my ways,
Something apart--and never understood.

REBUKE

The tortured river-banks, the toiling piers--
I walked thereby as older grew the day,
And sick with sorry clamor in mine ears,
Heart-weary turned my steps and went my way.

“O place full-voiced of wretchedness!” I cried.
(The sun had set, the dusk was closing in)
“O place where laboring Life goes heavy-eyed,
Compound of grime and discord, strife and sin!”

I turned me back, and lo, a miracle!
For misty violet lay along the land.
The shining river in mysterious spell
(Divinely touched by some transmuting hand).

A path of wonder was, and on it stirred,
(Black-shaped, and jeweled with a crimson spark)
A ship that slowly moved; and, faintly heard,
A cheery song rose blithely to the dark.

IN CAMP

I

As down I bent with eager lips
Above the stones and cresses cool--
The yellow tent, the little moon,
I found within my twilight pool.

The fringing trees, the floating moon,
The bubble tent--I passed them by,
And sipped a tiny, shattered star,
Deep drinking from that mirrored sky.

II

My tent is shadowed day and night
With leaves that shift in moon and sun;
Across its walls of lucent white
The lovely varied tracings run;

And black and slender, quickly sped,
I watch the little feet at dawn--
A sudden oriole overhead,
A darting linnet come and gone.

THE NYMPH

From forest paths we turned us, nymphs, new-made,
And, lifting eyes abashed with great desire
Before high Jove, the gift of souls we prayed.

Whereat he said: “O perfect as new leaves
New glossed and veined with blood of perfect days
And stirred to murmured speech in fragrant eves,

“Still ask ye souls? Behold, I give instead
Into each breast a bird with fettered wings,
A bird fast holden with a silken thread:

“To fall from trial of flight with strength swift spent,
To sing of mating and the brooding grass,
To turn thy being earthward to content.”

Within me sudden wrath and terror strove,
And, casting forth his gift I cried aloud:
“I pray thee for a soul in truth, great Jove!”

Then smiled he slowly, lifting to my look
A fabric where the rippled lustre played
And shifted like the humor of a brook--

All prism-hued, as upward eyes may see
The sun through dazzled lashes. Straight I cried:
“I know not this!” “Thy soul,” he answered me.

But when my joy had seized it, “Nay,” he said,
And cast it gleaming to the scattering wind--
Hues green and golden, blue and fervent red.

Within his hand the brightest shred of all--
The very heart and secret of the web--
That held he fast and loosed he not at all;

But to me said: “O thou who scorned the dole
That gave thee peace of days and long content,
Do now _my_ will. Go forth and find thy soul.”

To earth we went, nor knew I from that hour
My sister’s joy or pain; but on great morns
When low light slept above a world in flower,

Through drowsing noons where heat and color lie
In ever wavering tides of airy seas,
Winged by the darting ships of dragon-flies--

Through these and twilight peace I went, and rid
My steps of comrades. Lonely must I find
The silent places where my soul was hid.

In sheltered ways with summer showers sweet
I wandered on a day, and singing found
The very green I sought beneath my feet.

In leafing forests when the year was new,
And heaven ribboned in the crossing boughs,
I gathered marvelous strip on strip of blue.

When on a lonely stream the moon was bright,
A Naiad from her treasure plucked me forth
Such gold as bound my web with threads of light.

And red. Ah, love! thou knowest how I came
Unto thy fluting in the breathless eve,
And burned my heart’s pale flower to scarlet flame!...

One morn I found within a drop of dew
My very soul: a crystal world it was
Wherein the varied earth and heaven’s blue

And myself gazing glassed in perfect sphere--
But long above it was my wonder bent,
And lo! it dried more swiftly than a tear.

Now is this truth, O Jove, that I have won
And woven all the shreds thou gav’st the wind?
But how, I pray thee, can my task be done

Unless thou ope thine hand, unless thou loose
The very heart and secret of the web
Where every thread may end and know its use?

Joy hast thou not withheld, nor love denied,
Nor any beauty dimmed on earth or sky,
Yet by thy will I roam unsatisfied.

But couldst thou hear again that earliest plea,
Again my choice would flout the lesser gift,
And willing take this task thou grantest me--

To search the heart and secret of the whole,
To twine the eager hues of varied days,
And to its bright perfection weave a soul.

VIVISECTION

We saw unpitying skill
In curious hands put living flesh apart,
Till, bare and terrible, the tiny heart
Pulsed, and was still.

We saw Grief’s sudden knife
Strip through the pleasant flesh of soul-disguise--
Lay for a second’s space before our eyes
A naked life.

THE STRANGER

She sat so quiet day by day,
The sweet withdrawal of a nun,
With busy hands and downward eyes--
The shyest thing beneath the sun.

Nor knew we, tossing each to each
Our rapid speech, our careless words,
That through them, always, half-afraid,
Her thoughts had gone like seeking birds,

Plucking a twig, a shining straw,
A happy thread with silken gleams,
To carry homeward to her heart,
And weave a hidden nest of dreams.

THE CONSTANT ONES

The tossing trees had every flag unfurled
To hail their chief, but now the sun is set,
And in the sweet new quiet on the world
The king is dead, the fickle leaves forget.

A placid earth, an air serene and still;
In misty blue the gradual smoke is thinned--
Only the grasses, leaning to his will,
The grasses hold a memory of wind.

INSTINCT

To Reason with the praise of one I go
To fall back, silent, at her whispered “No.”

And always of the other says she, “Trust--
He doeth thus and thus, O thou unjust!”

Yet meet one eye to eye and queries end--
An eager hand goes out to greet a friend,

And let the other please me, soon or late
Wakes with a hiss the little snake of hate.

SAN FRANCISCO NEW YEAR’S, 1907

Said the Old Year to the New: “They will never welcome you
As they sang me in and rang me in upon my birthday night--
All above the surging crowd, bells and voices calling loud--
A throng attuned to laughter and a city all alight.

“Kind had been the years of old, drowsy-lidded, zoned with gold;
They swept their purples down the bay and sped the homeward keel;
The years of fruits and peace, smiling days and rich increase--
Too indolent with wine and sun to grasp the slaying steel.

“As my brothers so I came, panther-treading, silken, tame;
The sword was light within my hand, I kept it sheathed and still--
The jeweled city prayed me and the laughing voices stayed me--
A little while I pleased them well and gave them all their will.

“As a panther strikes to slay, so I wrenched my shuddering prey.
I lit above the panic throng my torches’ crimson flare;
For they made my coming bright and I gave them light for light--
I filled the night with flaming wings and Terror’s streaming hair.

“They were stately walls and high--as I felled them so they lie--
Lie like bodies torn and broken, lie like faces seamed with scars;
Here where Beauty dwelt and Pride, ere my torches flamed and died,
The empty arches break the night to frame the tranquil stars.

“Though of all my brothers scorned, I, betrayer, go unmourned,
It is I who tower shoulder-high above the level years;
You who come to build anew, joy will live again with you,
But mightiest I who walked with Death and taught the sting of tears!”

THE POPPY FIELD

Beyond the tangled poppies lies a lake;
And ever sings to him who muses here
The murmur of the hidden streams and clear
That flow thereto by arching fern and brake.
But never, slumber-heavy, does he wake
To heed the music calling in his ear,
Nor ever knows the water, deep and near,
Ashine with silver lilies for his sake.

And never he will heed, that love of thine;
The poppies of thy beauty drug his sleep;
Nor heedest thou that I must hear the streams,
And follow all thy crystal thought and fine,
And love at last the lilies folded deep
Within thy soul’s unknown beyond his dreams.

YOU

All elfish woodland things that Fancy broods--
The comrades of my solitary moods--
Would crouch when heavy footsteps passed them by,
And peer from shelter--freakish folk and shy.

At you they pricked their furry ears in doubt;
Then, “This one sees--he knows!” they cried.
“Come out!”
They thought to hush their piping till you passed.
“Come out!” they cried. “We dare be brave at last!”

So forth the gay procession sways and weaves;
And some are crowned with roses, some with leaves,
And all are mine, but some I never knew.
I could not wake them, but they come for you.

JUST A DOG[4]

So many times in those dark days,
Instinct with sudden hope he crept,
(When sad, infrequent hands would raise
The startled notes where sound had slept)
Seeking the voice he used to hear,
Close-crouching at his master’s knees,
Hoping to find again the dear
Familiar hand upon the keys.

In very truth there was a soul
Behind his brown and faithful eyes.
There live some mortals, on the whole
Less loving, tender, loyal, wise;
And though we give it to decay,
His poor old body, worn and scarred;
Yet He who judges soul and clay
Will give one dog his just reward.

And that would be to let him come
Toward dim-heard music, far and sweet;
Seeking with eyes rejoiced and dumb;
Seeking with swift, unerring feet,
With love supreme to guide him true,
Across the misty ways of space,--
Until he found the one he knew,
And looked into his master’s face.

MIRAGE[5]

I see upon the desert’s yellow rim,
Beyond the trodden sand and herbage white
Of level noon intolerably bright,
A purple lure of love divine and dim.
I hasten toward the fronded palm trees slim--
The fountains of the city of delight--
And stand bewildered to my heart’s despite
In empty plains where hot horizons swim.

Will I who love the vision gain at last
For very love of love the city’s gates?
I, weary, desert-wandering, knowing this:
That waiting me the golden doors are fast,
And fathom-deep in dream the Princess waits,
Her curving mouth uplifted for the kiss.

DUSK

Earth’s parchèd lips
Drink coolness once again, for daylight dies.
The young moon dips,
A threaded gleam where sunset languid lies,
And slowly twilight opens starry eyes.

Low in the West
Day’s fading embers cast a last faint glow
Behind a crest
Where curving hills on primrose paleness show
Sharp-lined in jet. Dusk stillness broods below.

A first long sigh
Stirs from the broad and dew-wet breast of night.
The leaves reply
With soft small rustling, moths take ghostly flight,
And waking crickets shrill long-drawn delight.

THE SPANISH GIRL