Chapter VII: On the Pacific

A storm broods far on the foam of the deep;
The moon-path gleams before.
A day and a night, a night and a day,
And the way, love, will be o'er.

Six thousand wandering miles we have come
And never a sail have seen.
The sky above and the sea below
And the drifting clouds between.

Yet in our hearts unheaving hope
And light and joy have slept.
Nor ever lonely has seemed the wave
Tho' heaving wild it leapt.

For there is talismanic might
Within our vows of love
To breathe us over all seas of life--
On to that Port, above,

Where the great Captain of all ships
Shall anchor them or send
Them forth on a vaster Voyage, yea,
On one that shall not end.

And upon _that_ we two, I think,
Together still shall sail.
Oh, may it be, my own, or may
We perish in death's gale!

THE ATONER

Winter has come in sackcloth and ashes
(Penance for Summer's enverdured sheaves).
Bitterly, cruelly, bleakly he lashes
His limbs that are naked of grass and leaves.

He moans in the forest for sins unforgiven
(Sins of the revelous days of June)--
Moans while the sun drifts dull from the heaven,
Giftless of heat's beshriving boon.

Long must he mourn, and long be his scourging,
(Long will the day-god aloof frown cold),
Long will earth listen the rue of his dirging--
Till the dark beads of his days are told.

TO THE SPRING WIND

Ah, what a changeling!
Yester you dashed from the west,
Altho' it is Spring,
And scattered the hail with maniac zest
Thro' the shivering corn--in scorn
For the labour of God and man.
And now from the plentiful South you haste,
With lovingest fingers,
To ruefully lift and wooingly fan
The lily that lingers a-faint on the stalk:
As if the chill waste
Of the earth's May-dreams,
The flowers so full of her joy,
Were not--as it seems--
A wanton attempt to destroy.

THE RAMBLE

Down the road which asters tangle,
Thro' the gap where green-briar twines,
By the path where dry leaves dangle
Sere from the ivy vines

We go--by sedgy fallows
And along the stifled brook,
Till it stops in lushy mallows
Just at the bridge's crook.

Then, again, o'er fence, thro' thicket,
To the mouth of the rough ravine,
Where the weird leaf-hidden cricket
Chirrs thro' the weirder green,

There's a way, o'er rocks--but quicker
Is the beat of heart and foot,
As the beams above us flicker
Sun upon moss and root!

And we leap--as wildness tingles
From the air into our blood--
With a cry thro' golden dingles
Hid in the heart of the wood.

Oh, the wood with winds a-wrestle!
With the nut and acorn strown!
Oh, the wood where creepers trestle
Tree unto tree o'ergrown!

With a climb the ledging summit
Of the hill is reached in glee.
For an hour we gaze off from it
Into the sky's blue sea.

But a bell and sunset's crimson
Soon recall the homeward path.
And we turn as the glory dims on
The hay-field's mounded math.

Thro' the soft and silent twilight
We come, to the stile at last,
As the clear undying eyelight
Of the stars tells day is past.

RETURN

Ah, it was here--September
And silence filled the air--
I came last year to remember,
And muse, hid away from care.
It was here I came--the thistle
Was trusting her seed to the wind;
The quail in the croft gave whistle
As now--and the fields lay thinned.

I know how the hay was steeping,
Brown mows under mellow haze;
How a frail cloud-flock was creeping
As now over lone sky-ways.
Just there where the catbird's calling
Her mock-hurt note by the shed,
The use-worn wain was stalling
In the weedy brook's dry bed.

And the cricket, lone little chimer
Of day-long dreams in the vines,
Chirred on like a doting rhymer
O'er-vain of his firstling lines.
He's near me now by the aster,
Beneath whose shadowy spray
A sultry bee seeps faster
As the sun slips down the day.

And there are the tall primroses
Like maidens waiting to dance.
They stood in the same shy poses
Last year, as if to entrance
The stately mulleins to waken
From death and lead them around:
And still they will stand untaken,
Till drops their gold to the ground.

Yes, it was here--September
And silence round me yearned.
Again I've come to remember,
Again for musing returned
To the searing fields' assuaging,
And the falling leaves' sad balm:
Away from the world's keen waging--
To harvest and hills and calm.

LISETTE

Oh ... there was love in her heart--no doubt of it--
Under the anger.
But see what came out of it!

Not a knave, he!--A smitten rhyme-smatterer,
Cloaking in languor
And heartache to flatter her.

And just as a woman will--even the best of them--
She yielded--brittle.
God spare me the rest of them!

For! though but kisses--she swore!--he had of her,
Was it so little?
She thought 'twas not bad of her,

Said I would lavish a burning hour-full
On any grisette.
And silenced me, powerful!

But she was mine, and blood is inflammable--
For a Lisette!
My rage was undammable....

Could a stiletto's one prick be prettier?
Look at the gaping.
No?--then you're her pitier!

Pah! she's the better, and I ... I'm your prisoner.
Loose me the strapping--
I'll lay one more kiss on her.

FROM ONE BLIND

I cannot say thy cheek is like the rose,
Thy hair like rippled sunbeams, and thine eyes
Like violets, April-rich and sprung of God.
My barren gaze can never know what throes
Such boons of beauty waken, tho' I rise
Each day a-tremble with the ruthless hope
That light will pierce my useless lids--then grope
Till night, blind as the worm within his clod.

Yet unto me thou art not less divine,
I touch thy cheek--and know the mystery hid
Within the twilight breeze; I smooth thy hair
And understand how slipping hours may twine
Themselves into eternity: yea, rid
Of all but love, I kiss thine eyes and seem
To see all beauty God Himself may dream.
Why then should I o'ermuch for earth-sight care?

IN A CEMETERY

When Autumn's melancholy robes the land
With silence, and sad fadings mystical
Of other years move thro' the mellow fields,
I turn unto this meadow of the dead,
Strewn with the leaves stormed from October trees,
And wonder if my resting shall be dug
Here by this cedar's moan or under the sway
Of yonder cypress--lair of winds that rove
As Valkyries sent from Valhalla's court
In search of worthy slain.
And sundry times with questioning I tease
The entombed of their estate--seeking to know
Whether 'tis sweeter in the grave to feel
The oblivion of Nature's silent flow,
Or here to wander wistful o'er her face.
Whether the harvesting of pain and joy
Which men call Life ends so, or whether death
Pours the warm chrism of Immortality
Into each human heart whose glow is spent.

And oft the Silence hears me. For a voice
Of sighing wind may answer, or a gaze,
Though wordless, from a marble seraph's face.
Or sometimes from unspeakable deeps of gold,
That ebb along the west, revealings wing
And tremble, like ethereal swift tongues
Unskilled of human speech, about my heart--
Till youth, age, death, even earth's all, it seems,
Are but brave moments wakened in that Soul,
To whom infinities are as a span,
Eternities as bird-flights o'er the sun,
And worlds as sands blown from Sahara's wilds
Into the ceaseless surging of the sea....

Then twilight hours lead back my wandered spirit
From out the wilderness of mystery
Whence none may find a path to the Unknown,
And chastened to content I turn me home.

WAKING

Oh, the long dawn, the weary, endless dawn,
When sleep's oblivion is torn away
From love that died with dying yesterday
But still unburied in the heart lies on!

Oh, the sick gray, the twitter in the trees,
The sense of human waking o'er the earth!
The quivering memories of love's fair birth
Now strown as deathless flowers o'er its decease!

Oh, the regret, and oh, regretlessness,
Striving for sovranty within the soul!
Oh, fear that life shall never more be whole,
And immortality but make it less!

STORM-EBB

Dusking amber dimly creeps
Over the vale,
Lit by the kildee's silver sweeps,
Sad with his wail.

Eastward swing the silent clouds
Into the night.
Burdens of day they seem--in crowds
Hurled from earth's sight.

Tilting gulls whip whitely far
Over the lake,
Tirelessly on o'er buoy and spar
Till they o'ertake

Shadow and mingled mist--and then
Vanish to wing
Still the bewildering night-fen,
Where the waves ring.

Dusking amber dimly dies
Out of the vale.
Dead from the dunes the winds arise--
Ghosts of the gale.

LINGERING

I lingered still when you were gone,
When tryst and trust were o'er,
While memory like a wounded swan
In sorrow sung love's lore.

I lingered till the whippoorwill
Had cried delicious pain
Over the wild-wood--in its thrill
I heard your voice again.

I lingered and the mellow breeze
Blew to me sweetly dewed--
Its touch awoke the sorceries
Your last caresses brewed.

But when the night with silent start
Had sown her starry seed,
The harvest which sprang in my heart
Was loneliness and need.

FAUN-CALL

Oh, who is he will follow me
With a singing,
Down sunny roads where windy odes
Of the woods are ringing?

Where leaves are tossed from branches lost
In a tangle
Of vines that vie to clamber high--
But to vault and dangle!

Oh, who is he?--His eye must be
As a lover's
To leap and woo the chicory's hue
In the hazel-hovers!

His hope must dance like radiance
That hurries
To scatter shades from the silent glades
Where the quick hare scurries.

And he must see that Autumn's glee
And her laughter
From his lips and heart will quell all smart--
Of before and after!

THE LIGHTHOUSEMAN

When at evening smothered lightnings
Burn the clouds with fretted fires;
When the stars forget to glisten,
And the winds refuse to listen
To the song of my desires,
Oh, my love, unto thee!

When the livid breakers angered
Churn against my stormy tower;
When the petrel flying faster
Brings an omen to the master
Of his vessel's fated hour--
Oh, the reefs! ah, the sea!

Then I climb the climbing stairway,
Turn the light across the storm;
You are watching, fisher-maiden
For the token-flashes laden
With a love death could not harm--
Lo, they come, swift and free!

_One_--that means, "I think of thee!"
_Two_--"I swear me thine!"
_Three_--Ah, hear me tho' you sleep!--
Is, that I know thee mine!
Thro' the darkness, One, Two, Three,
All the night they sweep:
Thro' raging darkness o'er the deep,
One--and Two--and Three.

SERENITY

And could I love it more--this simple scene
Of cot-strewn hills and fields long-harvested,
That lie as if forgotten were all green,
So bare, so dead!

Or could my gaze more tenderly entwine
Each pallid beech and silvery sycamore
Outreaching arms in patience to divine
If winter's o'er?

Ah no, the wind has blown into my veins
The blue infinity of sky, the sense
Of meadows free to-day from icy pains--
From wintry vents.

And sunny peace more virgin than the glow
Falling from eve's first star into the night,
Brings hope believing what it ne'er can know
With mortal sight.

WANTON JUNE

I knew she would come!
Sarcastic November
Laughed cold and glum
On the last red ember
Of forest leaves.
He was laughing, the scorner,
At me forlorner
Than any that grieves--
Because I asked him if June would come!

But I knew she would come
When snow-hearted winter
Gripped river and loam,
And the wind sped flinter
On icy heel,
I was chafing my sorrow
And yearning to borrow
A hope that would steal
Across the hours--till June should come.

And now she is here--
The wanton!--I follow
Her steps, ever near,
To the shade of the hollow
Where violets blow:
And chide her for leaving,
Tho' half believing
She taunted me so,
To make her abided return more dear.

SPIRIT OF RAIN

(MIYANOSHITA, JAPAN, 1905)

Spirit of rain--
With all thy mountain mists that wander lonely
As a gray train
Of souls newly discarnate seeking new life only!

Spirit of rain!
Leading them thro' dim torii, up fane-ways onward
Till not in vain
They tremble upon the peaks and plunge rejoicing dawnward.

Spirit of rain!
So would I lead my dead thoughts high and higher,
Till they regain
Birth and the beauty of a new life's fire.

AUTUMN AT THE BRIDGE

Brown dropping of leaves,
Soft rush of the wind,
Slow searing of sheaves
On the hill;
Green plunging of frogs,
Cool lisp of the brook,
Far barking of dogs
At the mill;
Hot hanging of clouds,
High poise of the hawk,
Flush laughter of crowds
From the Ridge;
Nut-falling, quail-calling,
Wheel-rumbling, bee-mumbling--
Oh, sadness, gladness, madness,
Of an autumn day at the bridge!

TEARLESS

Do women weep when men have died?
It cannot be!
For I have sat here by his side,
Breathing dear names against his face,
That he must list to, were his place
Over God's throne--
Yet have I wept no tear and made no moan.

Do women weep--not gaze stone-eyed?
Grief seems in vain.
Do women weep?--I was his bride--
They brought him to me cold and pale--
Upon his lids I saw the trail
Of deathly pain.
They said, "Her tears will fall like autumn rain."

I cannot weep! Not if hot tears,
Dropped on his lids,
Might burn him back to life and years
Of yearning love, would any rise
To flood the anguish from my eyes--
And I'm his bride!
Ah me, do women weep when men have died?

SUNSET-LOVERS

Upon how many a hill,
Across how many a field,
Beside how many a river's restful flowing,
They stand, with eyes a-thrill,
And hearts of day-rue healed,
Gazing, O wistful sun, upon thy going!

They have forgotten life,
Forgotten sunless death;
Desire is gone--is it not gone for ever?
No memory of strife
Have they, or pain-sick breath.
No hopes to fear or fears hope cannot sever.

Silent the gold steals down
The west, and mystery
Moves deeper in their hearts and settles darker.
'Tis faded--the day's crown;
But strange and shadowy
They see the Unseen as night falls stark and starker.

Like priests whose altar fires
Are spent, immovable
They stand, in awful ecstasy uplifted.
Zephyrs awake tree-lyres,
The starry deeps are full,
Earth with a mystic majesty is gifted.

Ah, sunset-lovers, though
Time were but pulsing pain,
And death no more than its eternal ceasing,
Would you not choose the throe,
Hold the oblivion vain,
To have beheld so many a day's releasing?

THE EMPTY CROSS

The eve of Golgotha had come,
And Christ lay shrouded in the garden Tomb:
Among the olives, Oh, how dumb,
How sad the sun incarnadined the gloom!

The hill grew dim--the pleading cross
Reached empty arms toward the closing gate.
Jerusalem, oh, count thy loss!
Oh, hear ye! hear ye! ere it be too late!

Reached bleeding arms--but how in vain!
The murmurous multitude within the wall
Already had forgot His pain--
To-morrow would forget the cross--and all!

They knew not Rome, before its sign,
Bending her brow bound with the nations' threne,
Would sweep all lands from Nile to Rhine
In servitude unto the Nazarene.

Nor knew that millions would forsake
Ancestral shrines great with the glow of time,
And lifting up its token shake
Aeons with thrill of love or battle's crime.

With empty arms aloft it stood:
Ah, Scribe and Pharisee, ye builded well!
The cross emblotted with His blood
Mounts, highest Hope of men, against earth's hell!

UNBURTHENED

Not grief nor the sunny wine
Of gladness steeps my spirit as I gaze
Over these meads that lie engarmented
In stubble robes of winter-weary brown.
For, as those solitary trees afar
Have reached unbudding boughs to the dim day
And melted on the infinite calm of space,
So have I reached, and am no more distraught
With the quivering pangs of memory's yesterday.
But the boon of blue skies deeper than despair,
Of rest that rises as a tide of sleep,
Of care borne on the plumes of swan-swift clouds
Away to the sullen shades of the low west,
Have lulled my soul with soft infinitude--
And lent it faith's illimitable Peace.

SONG

Her voice is vibrant beauty dipt
In dreams of infinite sorrow and delight.
Thro' an awaiting soul 'tis slipt
And lo, words spring that breathe immortal.

TO HER WHO SHALL COME

1

Out of the night of lovelessness I call
Thee, as, in a chill chamber where no rays
Of unbelievable light and freedom fall,
Might cry one manacled! And tho' the ways
Thou'lt come I cannot see; tho' my heart's sore
With emptiness when morning's silent grays
Wake me to long aloneness; yet I know
Thou hast been with me, who like dawn wilt go
Beside me, when I have found thee, evermore!

2

So in the garden of my heart each day
I plant thee a flower. Now the pansy, peace,
And now the lily, faith--or now a spray
Of the climbing ivy, hope. And they ne'er cease
Around the still unblossoming rose of love
To bend in fragrant tribute to her sway.
Then--for thy shelter from life's sultrier suns,
The oak of strength I set o'er joy that runs
With brooklet glee from winds that grieve above.

3

But where now art thou? Watching with love's eye
The eve-star wander? Listening through dim trees
Some thrilled muezzin of the forest cry
From his leafy minaret? Or by the sea's
Blue brim, while the spectral moon half o'er it hangs
Like the faery isle of Avalon, do these
My yearnings speak to thee of days thy feet
Have never trod?--Sweet, sweet, oh, more than sweet,
My own, must be our meeting's mystic pangs.

4

And will be soon! For last night near to-day,
Dreaming, God called me thro' the space-built sphere
Of heaven and said, "Come, waiting one, and lay
Thine ear unto my Heart--there thou shalt hear
The secrets of this world where evils war."
Such things I heard as must rend mortal clay
To tell, and trembled--till God, pitying,
Said, "Listen" ... Oh, my love, I heard thee sing
Out of thy window to the morning star!

STORM-TWILIGHT

Tossing, swirling, swept by the wind,
Beaten abaft by the rain,
The swallows high in the sodden sky
Circle oft and again.

They rise and sink and drift and swing,
Twitterless in the chill;
A-haste, for stark is the coming dark
Over the wet of the hill.

Wildly, swiftly, at last they stream
Into their chimney home.
A livid gash in the west, a crash--
Then silence, sadness, gloam.

SLAVES

A host of bloody centuries lie prone
Upon the fields of Time--but still the wake
Of Progress loud is haunted with the groan
Of myriads, from whose peaceful veins, to slake
His scarlet thirst, has War, fierce Polypheme
Of fate, insatiately drunk life's stream.
We bid the courier lightning leap along
Its instant path with spirit speed--command
Stars lost in night-eternity to throng
Before the magnet eye of Science--stand
On Glory's peak and triumphingly cry
Out mastery of earth and sea and air.
But unto War's necessity we bare
Our piteous breasts--and impotently die.

AVOWAL TO THE NIGHTINGALE

Tho' thou hast ne'er unpent thy pain's delight
Upon these airs, bird of the poet's love,
Yet must I sing thy singing! For the Night
Has poured her jewels o'er the lap of heaven
As they who hear thee say thou dost above
The wood such ecstasies as were not given
By nestling breasts of Venus to the dove.

2

Oft have I watched the moon with her fair gold
Still clung to by the tattered mists of day
Arise and look for thee. Then hope grew bold.
And almost I could see how the near laurels
Would tremble with thy trembling: but the sway
Of bards who wreathed thee with unfading chorals
Has held my longing lips from this poor lay.

3

But take it now. And if the lark--who is
Too high for earth--may vie for praise with thee
In aery rhapsody, yet it is his
To sing of day and joy, while thou of sorrow
And night o'erhovering singest. So thou'lt be
More dear than he--till hearts shall cease to borrow
From grief the healing for life's mystery.

WILDNESS

To drift with the drifting clouds,
And blow with the blow of breezes,
To ripple with waves and murmur with caves
To soar, as the sea-mew pleases!

To dip with the dipping sails,
And burn with the burning heaven--
My life! my soul! for the infinite roll
Of a day to wildness given!

BEFORE AUTUMN

Summer's last moon has waned--
Waned
As amber fires
Of an Aztec shrine.
The invisible breath of coming death has stained
The withering leaves with its nepenthean wine--
Autumn's near.

Winds in the woodland moan--
Moan
As memories
Of a chilling yore.
Magnolia seeds like Indian beads are strown
From crimson pods along the earth's sere floor--
Autumn's near.

Solitude slowly steals,
Steals
Her silent way
By the songless brook.
At the gnarly yoke of a solemn oak she kneels,
The musing joy of sadness in her look--
Autumn's near.

Yes, with her golden days--
Days
When hope and toil
Are at peace and rest--
Autumn is near, and the tired year 'mid praise
Lies down with leaf and blossom on his breast--
Autumn's near.

FULFILMENT

A-bask in the mellow beauty of the ripening sun,
Sad with the lingering sense of summer's purpose done,
The shorn and searing fields stretch from me one by one
Along the creek.

The corn-stalks drop their shadows down the fallow hill;
Wearing autumnal warmth the farm sleeps by the mill,
Around each heavy eave low smoke hangs blue and still--
Life's flow is weak.

Along the weedy roads and lanes I walk--or pause--
Ponder a fallen nut or quirking crow whose caws
Seem with prehuman hintings fraught or ancient awes
Of forest deeps.

Of forest deeps the pale-face hunter never trod,
Nor Indian, with the silent stealth of Nature shod;
Deeps tense with the timelessness and solitude of God,
Who never sleeps.

And many times has Autumn, on her harvest way,
Gathered again into the earth leaf, fruit, and spray;
Here many times dwelt rueful as she dwells to-day,
The while she reaps.

LAST SIGHT OF LAND

The clouds in woe hang far and dim:
I look again, and lo,
Only a faint and shadow line
Of shore--I watch it go.

The gulls have left the ship and wheel
Back to the cliff's gray wraith.
Will it be so of all our thoughts
When we set sail on Death?

And what will the last sight be of life
As lone we fare and fast?
Grief and the face we love in mist--
Then night and awe too vast?

Or the dear light of Hope--like that,
Oh, see, from the lost shore
Kindling and calling "Onward, you
Shall reach the Evermore!"

SILENCE

Silence is song unheard,
Is beauty never born,
Is light forgotten--left unstirred
Upon Creation's morn.

THE END