Chapter I: Front Matter

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Transcriber's note:

Minor punctuation errors have been corrected without notice.
One printer's error has been changed, and it is listed at the end.
All other inconsistencies are as in the original.

SHIPS IN HARBOUR

by

DAVID MORTON

G. P. Putnam's Sons New York and London The Knickerbocker Press 1921

Copyright, 1921 by G. P. Putnam's Sons

Printed in the United States of America

To
T. B. M.
AND
M. W. M.
THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED

For the privilege of reprinting some of the poems included in this book, the author's thanks are due to _The Bookman_, _The Century_, _The New York Evening Post_, _Harper's Magazine_, _Poetry: A Magazine of Verse_, _The Designer_, _The Nation_, _The New York Sun_, _Collier's Weekly_, _Good Housekeeping_, _The Bellman_, _Contemporary Verse_, _Everybody's Magazine_, _The Smart Set_, _Ainslee's_, _The Sonnet_, _McCall's Magazine_, _The Touchstone Magazine_, _The Forum_, and _The Lyric_.

CONTENTS

PAGE

WOODEN SHIPS 3

OCTOBER DAY-MOON 4

A GARDEN WALL 5

NAPOLEON IN HADES 6

SYMBOLS 7

EXILED 8

MARY SETS THE TABLE 9

AUTUMN TEA TIME 10

BATTLEFIELDS 11

ONE DAY IN AUTUMN 12

AN OLD HOUSE AND GARDEN 13

IMMORTALIS 14

TOURING 15

SUMMER 17

OLD SHIPS 18

THE TOWN 19

AFTER SUMMER RAIN 24

THE KINGS ARE PASSING DEATHWARD 25

RENEWAL 26

RESPONDIT 27

JEWELS 28

CHORUS 29

SYMBOL 30

TO AN UNKNOWN ANCESTOR 31

INTIMATION 32

ON A DEAD MOTH 33

MYSTIC 34

LEVIATHANS 35

INVIOLATE 36

MANUSCRIPTS 37

IN AN OLD BURIAL GROUND 38

ENCORE 39

REDEMPTION 40

THE HUNTED 41

THE SCHOOLBOY READS HIS ILIAD 42

MOMENTS 43

CLEAR MORNING 44

RENAISSANCE 45

AN OLD LOVER 46

ONE DAY IN SUMMER 47

VINES 48

AUDIENCE 49

THE DANCE 50

ON HEARING A BIRD SING AT NIGHT 51

DAWN 52

DAFFODILS OVER NIGHT 53

VALUES 54

A GHOST OUT OF STRATFORD 55

WHO WALKS WITH BEAUTY 56

RACONTEUR 57

AFFINITIES 58

TRANSFIGURATION 59

ONE WAY OF SPRING 60

FOR A SEQUESTERED LADY 61

HERITAGE 63

"SHIPPING NEWS" 64

ARTICULATION 65

MOONFLOWERS 66

CHALLENGE 67

BEFORE SPRING 68

MOONS KNOW NO TIME 69

MY NEIGHBOUR 70

AT THE NEXT TABLE 71

SALVAGE 72

IN A GIRL'S SCHOOL 73

AT ELSINORE 74

TO WILLIAM GRIFFITH 75

REVELATION 76

DISCOVERY 77

FOR BOB: A DOG 78

IN SUMMER 79

SURVIVAL 80

NOMENCLATURE 81

TO ONE RETURNED FROM A JOURNEY 82

ATTENDANTS 83

RENDEZVOUS 84

SONNETS FROM A HOSPITAL 85

THIS LANE IN MAY 89

FUGITIVE 90

AN OLD GARDENER 91

THE VEIL 92

THE YEAR IS OLD 93

MARINERS 94

AN ABANDONED INN 95

PRONE 96

REVIVAL 97

IMPOSTOR 98

SNOW DUSK 99

MOOD 100

SHIPS IN HARBOUR 101

SHIPS IN HARBOUR

WOODEN SHIPS

They are remembering forests where they grew,--
The midnight quiet, and the giant dance;
And all the murmuring summers that they knew
Are haunting still their altered circumstance.
Leaves they have lost, and robins in the nest,
Tug of the goodly earth denied to ships,
These, and the rooted certainties, and rest,--
To gain a watery girdle at the hips.

Only the wind that follows ever aft,
They greet not as a stranger on their ways;
But this old friend, with whom they drank and laughed,
Sits in the stern and talks of other days
When they had held high bacchanalias still,
Or dreamed among the stars on some tall hill.

OCTOBER DAY-MOON

Loosed from her secret moorings,
The thin and silver moon,
Floats wide above these oceans
Of yellow afternoon,--
Who slipped her fragile cables,
And blew to sea too soon.

She bears no bales--but wonder,
Not anything of note:
How should she, being merely
A slender petal-boat?...
But rated in the shipping:
The dearest tramp afloat.

A GARDEN WALL

The Roman wall was not more grave than this,
That has no league at all with great affairs,
That knows no ruder hands than clematis,
No louder blasts than blowing April airs.
Yet, with a grey solemnity it broods,
Above the walk where simple folk go past,
And in its crannies keeps their transient moods,
Holding their careless words unto the last.

The rains of summer, and the creeping vine
That season after season clings in trust,
And shivered poppies red as Roman wine,--
These things at last will haunt its crumbled dust--
Not dreams of empires shattered where they lie,
But children's laughter, birds, and bits of sky.

NAPOLEON IN HADES

They stirred uneasily, drew close their capes,
And whispered each to each in awed surprise,
Seeing this figure brood along the shapes,
World tragedies thick-crowding through his eyes.
On either side the ghostly groups drew back
In huddled knots, yielding him way and room,
Their foolish mouths agape and fallen slack,
Their bloodless fingers pointing through the gloom.

Still lonely and magnificent in guilt,
Splendid in scorn, rapt in a cloudy dream,
He paused at last upon the Stygian silt,
And raised calm eyes above the angry stream....
Hand in his breast, he stood till Charon came,
While Hades hummed with gossip of his name.

SYMBOLS

Beautiful words, like butterflies, blow by,
With what swift colours on their fragile wings!--
Some that are less articulate than a sigh,
Some that were names of ancient, lovely things.
What delicate careerings of escape,
When they would pass beyond the baffled reach,
To leave a haunting shadow and a shape,--
Eluding still the careful traps of speech.

And I who watch and listen, lie in wait,
Seeing the cloudy cavalcades blow past,--
Happy if some bright vagrant, soon or late,
May venture near the snares of sound, at last--
Most fortunate captor if, from time to time,
One may be taken, trembling, in a rhyme.

EXILED

Sensing these sweet renewals through the earth,
Where seed and soil most happily conspire
To furnish forth gay rituals of mirth,
Of shaken leaves and pointed blooms of fire,--
I wonder then that thoughtful man, alone,
Walks darkly and all puzzled with a doubt,
Bewildered, and in truth, half-fearful grown
Of wild, wild earth and April's joyous rout.

When we are dust again with soil and seed,
With happy earth through many a happy Spring,
We yet may learn that joy was all our need,--
That man's long thought is but a broken wing,
Of less account, as things may come to pass,
Than Spring's first robin breasting through the grass.

MARY SETS THE TABLE

She brings such gay and shining things to pass,
With delicate, deft fingers that are learned
In ways of silverware and cup and glass,
Arrayed in ordered patterns, trimly turned;--
And never guesses how this subtle ease
Is older than the oldest tale we tell,
This gift that guides her through such tricks as these,----
And my delight in watching her, as well.

She thinks not how this art with spoon and plate,
Is one with ancient women baking bread:
An epic heritance come down of late
To slender hands, and dear, delightful head,--
How Trojan housewives vie in serving me,
Where Mary sets the table things for tea.

AUTUMN TEA TIME

The late light falls across the floor,
Turned amber from a yellow tree,--
And there are yellow cups for four,
And lemon for the tea.

The maples, with a million flames,
Have lit the golden afternoon,
An ambient radiance that shames
The ineffective moon....

Till dull and smoky greys return,
Quenching the street with chills and damps--
Leaving these asters where they burn,
Mellow like evening lamps.

BATTLEFIELDS

Unto these fields of torn and rutted earth,
These hills that lift their many a naked scar,
There yet shall come the indomitable mirth
Of Springs that have remembered where they are.
The slow processions of sweet sun and rain
Will crown the changing seasons as they pass,
With healing and green fruit and swollen grain,
And banners of the gay and dauntless grass.

Here little paths will find their way again,
And here the patient cattle come to stand,
Until, grown half-incredulous, these men
Looking from doorways on the evening land,
Can scarcely think--so deep the quiet lies--
How all of this was ever otherwise.

ONE DAY IN AUTUMN

With all our going through this golden weather,
Where leaves have littered every forest way,
If there be lovers, they should be together:
For this is golden ... but the end is grey.
Beyond this shimmer where the bright leaves fall,
Behind this haze of silver shot with gold,
There is a greyness waiting for it all,--
A little longer ... and the world is old.

And never loneliness grew more and more,
As this that haunts these late October days,
With smoky twilights gathering at the door,
With grey mist clouding on familiar ways ...
And well for him who has another near,
When fires are lighted for the dying year.

AN OLD HOUSE AND GARDEN

After wet twilights, when the rain is done,
I think they walk these ways that knew their feet,
And tread these sunken pavements, one by one,
Keen for old Summers that were wild and sweet;
Where rainy lilacs blow against the dark,
And grasses bend beneath the weight they bear,
The night grows troubled, and we still may mark
Their ghostly heart-break on the tender air.

Be still! We cannot know what trysts they keep,
What eager hands reach vainly for a door,
Remembered since they folded them in sleep,--
Frail hands that lift like lilacs, evermore,
And lean along the darkness, pale and still,
To touch a window or a crumbling sill.

IMMORTALIS

All loved and lovely women, dear to rhyme:
Thais, Cassandra, Helen and their fames,
Burn like tall candles through forgotten time,
Lighting the Past's dim arras with their names.
Around their faces wars the eager dark,
Wherein all other lights are sunken now;
Yet, casting back, the seeker still may mark
A flame of hair, a bright, immortal brow.

Surely, where they have passed, one after one,
Wearing their radiance to the darkened room,----
Surely, new-comers to Oblivion
May still descry, in that all-quenching gloom,
Rare faces, lovely, lifted and alight,
Like tapers burning through the windy night.

TOURING

God of Summer--I have seen
World on world of summer green--
Summer earth and summer sky,
Fields of summer turning by;
Hills beyond us fall away,
Tumbled slopes in disarray,
Fold and melt into a plain:
Fire and gold of summer grain.

Orchards curving on a hill,
Heavy-fruited, green and still,
Heave a shoulder to the sky,
Bend and bow and hurry by;
Fields of clover burn and pass,
Cattle knee-deep in the grass
Lift a lazy head and look
Pictures in a picture-book....
Corn in swift, revolving rows,
Dripping sunlight where it goes,
Wheels and glitters and returns:
Bladed beauty's lifted urns;
Woods all shadowed, cooling earth,
Murmuring of a quiet mirth,
Pour damp odours where they pass,
Breath of fern and earth and grass ...
Ramblers on a lichened wall,
Ramblers, ramblers pouring all
Colour that the world has known
Out upon an aging stone.--
Little towns of street and spire,
Dooryard roses, heart's desire,
Light a dream within the mind,
Light a dream ... and fall behind.

God of mercies--when I slept,
World on world of summer kept
Turning, turning softly by,--
Summer earth and summer sky:
Fields of summer that will be
Summer always unto me--
Never lost, not left behind:
Always summer for my mind.

SUMMER

From what lost centuries that were sweet before,
Comes this long wave of Summer, bursting white
In shivered apple-blossoms on the shore
That is our homeland for a day and night!
A wide, hushed spirit floats above the foam,
A sweetness that was ancient flower and face,
When wine-red poppies stained the walls of Rome,
And daisies starred those summer fields of Thrace.

Something survives and haunts the leafy shade,
Some fragrance that was petals, once, and lips,
And whispered, brief avowals that they made,--
Borne hither, now, in vague, invisible ships,
Whose weightless cargoes, poured upon the air,
Are flowers forgot, and faces that were fair.

OLD SHIPS

There is a memory stays upon old ships,
A weightless cargo in the musty hold,--
Of bright lagoons and prow-caressing lips,
Of stormy midnights,--and a tale untold.
They have remembered islands in the dawn,
And windy capes that tried their slender spars,
The tortuous channels where their keels have gone,
And calm, blue nights of stillness and the stars.

Ah, never think that ships forget a shore,
Or bitter seas, or winds that made them wise;
There is a dream upon them, evermore;--
And there be some who say that sunk ships rise
To seek familiar harbours in the night,
Blowing in mists, their spectral sails like light.

THE TOWN

(_For Morristown, N. J._)

I

Men loved not Athens in her maiden days
More tenderly than these their tree-lined Town
Which, lacking Muses for a wider praise,
Lives in their hearts in still and sweet renown.
The market square, the wagons in the dawn,
The streets like music when their names are said,
The Sunday spire, the green, untrammelled lawn,--
These be the things on which their hearts are fed.

And one long street climbs slowly to a hill
That lifts her crosses for the Town to see
How sleep those quiet neighbours, townsmen still,
How there is peace for such as weary be ...
And as they come, each like a sleepy guest,
She takes them, one by one, and gives them rest.

II

SUNDAY MORNING

A thoughtful quiet lies upon the street,
There is a hushed suspension on the air,
And the slow bells summon unhurried feet
To dim reclosures kept for praise and prayer.
Drawn blinds have shut the merchant's wares away,
Where two by two the goodly folk go by,
Out of their toilsome days into this day
Of special airs beneath a special sky.

A little while, and all at last are gone;
The streets are stilled of passers up and down;
Only the pealing bells toll on and on,--
Till these, too, cease, and all the silent Town
In street, and roof, and spire, and grassy sod,
Lies steeped in sunlight, smiling back at God.

III

IN APRIL

The way of Spring with little steepled towns
Is such a shy, transforming sorcery
Of special lights and swift, incredible crowns,
That grave men wonder how such things may be.
No friendly spire, no daily-trodden way
But somehow alters in the April air,
Grown dearer still, on some enchanted day,
For shining garments they have come to wear.

The way the spring comes to our Town is such
That something quickens in the hearts of men,
Turning them lovers at its subtle touch,
Till they must lift their heads again--again--
As lovers do, with frank, adoring eyes,
Where the long street of lifted steeples lies.

IV

WATCHERS

I think those townsmen, sleeping on the hill,
Are never careless how the Town may fare,
But jealous of her quiet beauty still,
Her ways and worth are things for which they care:
For shuttered house, and gateways and the grass,
And how the streets, tree-bordered all and cool,
Are still a pleasant way for folks to pass:
Men at their work and children home from school.
I cannot doubt that they are pleased to see
Their planted elms grown dearer year by year:
Their living witness unto such as we ...
And they are less regretful when they hear
Some name we speak, some tale we tell again,
Of days when they were warm and living men.