Chapter XVIII

Let it be so: More sweet it is to be A listener of love's ephemeral song, And live with beauty though it be not long, And die enamoured of eternity, Though in the apogee Of time there sit no individual Godhead of life, than to reject the plea Of passionate beauty: loveliness is all, And love is more divine than memory.

Azrael. [Robert Gilbert Welsh]

The angels in high places Who minister to us, Reflect God's smile, -- their faces Are luminous; Save one, whose face is hidden, (The Prophet saith), The unwelcome, the unbidden, Azrael, Angel of Death. And yet that veiled face, I know Is lit with pitying eyes, Like those faint stars, the first to glow Through cloudy winter skies. That they may never tire, Angels, by God's decree, Bear wings of snow and fire, -- Passion and purity; Save one, all unavailing, (The Prophet saith), His wings are gray and trailing, Azrael, Angel of Death. And yet the souls that Azrael brings Across the dark and cold, Look up beneath those folded wings, And find them lined with gold.

The Flight. [Lloyd Mifflin]

Upon a cloud among the stars we stood. The angel raised his hand and looked and said, "Which world, of all yon starry myriad, Shall we make wing to?" The still solitude Became a harp whereon his voice and mood Made spheral music round his haloed head. I spake -- for then I had not long been dead -- "Let me look round upon the vasts, and brood A moment on these orbs ere I decide . . . What is yon lower star that beauteous shines And with soft splendour now incarnadines Our wings? -- THERE would I go and there abide." Then he as one who some child's thought divines: "That is the world where yesternight you died."

The Rival. [James Whitcomb Riley]

I so loved once, when Death came by I hid
Away my face,
And all my sweetheart's tresses she undid
To make my hiding-place.

The dread shade passed me thus unheeding; and
I turned me then
To calm my love -- kiss down her shielding hand
And comfort her again.

And lo! she answered not: and she did sit
All fixedly,
With her fair face and the sweet smile of it,
In love with Death, not me.

A Rhyme of Death's Inn. [Lizette Woodworth Reese]

A rhyme of good Death's inn! My love came to that door; And she had need of many things, The way had been so sore.

My love she lifted up her head, "And is there room?" said she; "There was no room in Bethlehem's inn For Christ who died for me."

But said the keeper of the inn, "His name is on the door." My love then straightway entered there: She hath come back no more.

The Outer Gate. [Nora May French]

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.

The Ashes in the Sea. [George Sterling]

N. M. F.

Whither, with blue and pleading eyes, -- Whither, with cheeks that held the light Of winter's dawn in cloudless skies, Evadne, was thy flight?

Such as a sister's was thy brow; Thy hair seemed fallen from the moon -- Part of its radiance, as now, Of shifting tide and dune.

Did Autumn's grieving lure thee hence, Or silence ultimate beguile? Ever our things of consequence Awakened but thy smile.

Is it with thee that ocean takes A stranger sorrow to its tone? With thee the star of evening wakes More beautiful, more lone?

For wave and hill and sky betray A subtle tinge and touch of thee; Thy shadow lingers in the day, Thy voice in winds to be.

Beauty -- hast thou discovered her By deeper seas no moons control? What stars have magic now to stir Thy swift and wilful soul?

Or may thy heart no more forget The grievous world that once was home, That here, where love awaits thee yet, Thou seemest yet to roam?

For most, far-wandering, I guess Thy witchery on the haunted mind, In valleys of thy loneliness, Made clean with ocean's wind.

And most thy presence here seems told, A waif of elemental deeps, When, at its vigils unconsoled, Some night of winter weeps.

We needs must be divided in the Tomb. [George Santayana]

We needs must be divided in the tomb, For I would die among the hills of Spain, And o'er the treeless, melancholy plain Await the coming of the final gloom. But thou -- O pitiful! -- wilt find scant room Among thy kindred by the northern main, And fade into the drifting mist again, The hemlocks' shadow, or the pines' perfume.

Let gallants lie beside their ladies' dust In one cold grave, with mortal love inurned; Let the sea part our ashes, if it must, The souls fled thence which love immortal burned, For they were wedded without bond of lust, And nothing of our heart to earth returned.

Departure. [Hermann Hagedorn]

My true love from her pillow rose And wandered down the summer lane. She left her house to the wind's carouse, And her chamber wide to the rain.

She did not stop to don her coat, She did not stop to smooth her bed -- But out she went in glad content There where the bright path led.

She did not feel the beating storm, But fled like a sunbeam, white and frail, To the sea, to the air, somewhere, somewhere -- I have not found her trail.

Song. [Richard Le Gallienne]

She's somewhere in the sunlight strong, Her tears are in the falling rain, She calls me in the wind's soft song, And with the flowers she comes again.

Yon bird is but her messenger, The moon is but her silver car; Yea! Sun and moon are sent by her, And every wistful, waiting star.

The Invisible Bride. [Edwin Markham]

The low-voiced girls that go In gardens of the Lord, Like flowers of the field they grow In sisterly accord.

Their whispering feet are white Along the leafy ways; They go in whirls of light Too beautiful for praise.

And in their band forsooth Is one to set me free -- The one that touched my youth -- The one God gave to me.

She kindles the desire Whereby the gods survive -- The white ideal fire That keeps my soul alive.

Now at the wondrous hour, She leaves her star supreme, And comes in the night's still power, To touch me with a dream.

Sibyl of mystery On roads unknown to men, Softly she comes to me, And goes to God again.

The Inverted Torch. [Edith M. Thomas]

Threading a darksome passage all alone, The taper's flame, by envious current blown, Crouched low, and eddied round, as in affright, So challenged by the vast and hostile night, Then down I held the taper; -- swift and fain Up climbed the lovely flower of light again!

Thou Kindler of the spark of life divine, Be henceforth the Inverted Torch a sign That, though the flame beloved thou dost depress, Thou wilt not speed it into nothingness; But out of nether gloom wilt reinspire, And homeward lift the keen empyreal fire!

Night's Mardi Gras. [Edward J. Wheeler]

Night is the true democracy. When day Like some great monarch with his train has passed, In regal pomp and splendor to the last, The stars troop forth along the Milky Way, A jostling crowd, in radiant disarray, On heaven's broad boulevard in pageants vast, And things of earth, the hunted and outcast, Come from their haunts and hiding-places; yea, Even from the nooks and crannies of the mind Visions uncouth and vagrant fancies start, And specters of dead joy, that shun the light, And impotent regrets and terrors blind, Each one, in form grotesque, playing its part In the fantastic Mardi Gras of Night.

The Mystic. [Cale Young Rice]

There is a quest that calls me, In nights when I am lone, The need to ride where the ways divide The Known from the Unknown. I mount what thought is near me And soon I reach the place, The tenuous rim where the Seen grows dim And the Sightless hides its face.

~I have ridden the wind,
I have ridden the sea,
I have ridden the moon and stars.
I have set my feet in the stirrup seat
Of a comet coursing Mars.
And everywhere
Thro' the earth and air
My thought speeds, lightning-shod,
It comes to a place where checking pace
It cries, "Beyond lies God!"~

It calls me out of the darkness, It calls me out of sleep, "Ride! ride! for you must, to the end of Dust!" It bids -- and on I sweep To the wide outposts of Being, Where there is Gulf alone -- And thro' a Vast that was never passed I listen for Life's tone.

~I have ridden the wind,
I have ridden the night,
I have ridden the ghosts that flee
From the vaults of death like a chilling breath
Over eternity.
And everywhere
Is the world laid bare --
Ether and star and clod --
Until I wind to its brink and find
But the cry, "Beyond lies God!"~

It calls me and ever calls me! And vainly I reply, "Fools only ride where the ways divide What Is from the Whence and Why"! I'm lifted into the saddle Of thoughts too strong to tame And down the deeps and over the steeps I find -- ever the same.

~I have ridden the wind,
I have ridden the stars,
I have ridden the force that flies
With far intent thro' the firmament
And each to each allies.
And everywhere
That a thought may dare
To gallop, mine has trod --
Only to stand at last on the strand
Where just beyond lies God.~

I would I might forget that I am I. [George Santayana]

I would I might forget that I am I, And break the heavy chain that binds me fast, Whose links about myself my deeds have cast. What in the body's tomb doth buried lie Is boundless; 't is the spirit of the sky, Lord of the future, guardian of the past, And soon must forth, to know his own at last. In his large life to live, I fain would die.

Happy the dumb beast, hungering for food, But calling not his suffering his own; Blessed the angel, gazing on all good, But knowing not he sits upon a throne; Wretched the mortal, pondering his mood, And doomed to know his aching heart alone.

To William Sharp. [Clinton Scollard]

(Fiona Macleod)

The waves about Iona dirge, The wild winds trumpet over Skye; Shrill around Arran's cliff-bound verge The gray gulls cry.

Spring wraps its transient scarf of green, Its heathery robe, round slope and scar; And night, the scudding wrack between, Lights its lone star.

But you who loved these outland isles, Their gleams, their glooms, their mysteries, Their eldritch lures, their druid wiles, Their tragic seas,

Will heed no more, in mortal guise, The potent witchery of their call, If dawn be regnant in the skies, Or evenfall.

Yet, though where suns Sicilian beam The loving earth enfolds your form, I can but deem these coasts of dream And hovering storm

Still thrall your spirit -- that it bides By far Iona's kelp-strewn shore, There lingering till time and tides Shall surge no more.

The Quiet Singer. [Charles Hanson Towne]

(Ave! Francis Thompson)

He had been singing -- but I had not heard his voice; He had been weaving lovely dreams of song, O many a morning long. But I, remote and far, Under an alien star, Listened to other singers, other birds, And other silver words. But does the skylark, singing sweet and clear, Beg the cold world to hear? Rather he sings for very rapture of singing, At dawn, or in the blue, mild Summer noon, Knowing that, late or soon, His wealth of beauty, and his high notes, ringing Above the earth, will make some heart rejoice. He sings, albeit alone, Spendthrift of each pure tone, Hoarding no single song, No cadence wild and strong. But one day, from a friend far overseas, As if upon the breeze, There came the teeming wonder of his words -- A golden troop of birds, Caged in a little volume made to love; Singing, singing, Flinging, flinging Their breaking hearts on mine, and swiftly bringing Tears, and the peace thereof. How the world woke anew! How the days broke anew! Before my tear-blind eyes a tapestry I seemed to see, Woven of all the dreams dead or to be. Hills, hills of song, Springs of eternal bloom, Autumns of golden pomp and purple gloom Were hung upon his loom. Winters of pain, roses with awful thorns, Yet wondrous faith in God's dew-drenched morns -- These, all these I saw, With that ecstatic awe Wherewith one looks into Eternity.

And then I knew that, though I had not heard His voice before, His quiet singing, like some quiet bird At some one's distant door, Had made my own more sweet; had made it more Lovely, in one of God's miraculous ways. I knew then why the days Had seemed to me more perfect when the Spring Came with old bourgeoning; For somewhere in the world his voice was raised, And somewhere in the world his heart was breaking; And never a flower but knew it, sweetly taking Beauty more high and noble for his sake, As a whole wood grows lovelier for the wail Of one sad nightingale.

Yet if the Springs long past Seemed wonderful before I heard his voice, I tremble at the beauty I shall see In seasons still to be, Now that his songs are mine while Life shall last. O now for me New floods of vision open suddenly . . . Rejoice, my heart! Rejoice That you have heard the Quiet Singer's voice!

After a Dolmetsch Concert. [Arthur Upson]

Out of the conquered Past Unravishable Beauty; Hearts that are dew and dust Rebuking the dream of Death; Flower o' the clay downcast Triumphant in Earth's aroma; Strings that were strained in rust A-tremble with Music's breath!

Wine that was spilt in haste Arising in fumes more precious; Garlands that fell forgot Rooting to wondrous bloom; Youth that would flow to waste Pausing in pool-green valleys -- And Passion that lasted not Surviving the voiceless Tomb!

On a Fly-Leaf of Burns' Songs. [Frederic Lawrence Knowles]

These are the best of him, Pathos and jest of him; Earth holds the rest of him.

Passions were strong in him, -- Pardon the wrong in him; Hark to the song in him! --

Each little lyrical Grave or satirical Musical miracle!

Miniver Cheevy. [Edwin Arlington Robinson]

Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn, Grew lean while he assailed the seasons; He wept that he was ever born, And he had reasons.

Miniver loved the days of old When swords were bright and steeds were prancing; The vision of a warrior bold Would set him dancing.

Miniver sighed for what was not, And dreamed, and rested from his labors; He dreamed of Thebes and Camelot, And Priam's neighbors.

Miniver mourned the ripe renown That made so many a name so fragrant; He mourned Romance, now on the town, And Art, a vagrant.

Miniver loved the Medici, Albeit he had never seen one; He would have sinned incessantly Could he have been one.

Miniver cursed the commonplace And eyed a khaki suit with loathing; He missed the mediaeval grace Of iron clothing.

Miniver scorned the gold he sought, But sore annoyed was he without it; Miniver thought, and thought, and thought, And thought about it.

Miniver Cheevy, born too late, Scratched his head and kept on thinking; Miniver coughed, and called it fate, And kept on drinking.

At the End of the Day. [Richard Hovey]

There is no escape by the river, There is no flight left by the fen; We are compassed about by the shiver Of the night of their marching men. Give a cheer! For our hearts shall not give way. Here's to a dark to-morrow, And here's to a brave to-day!

The tale of their hosts is countless, And the tale of ours a score; But the palm is naught to the dauntless, And the cause is more and more. Give a cheer! We may die, but not give way. Here's to a silent morrow, And here's to a stout to-day!

God has said: "Ye shall fail and perish; But the thrill ye have felt to-night I shall keep in my heart and cherish When the worlds have passed in night." Give a cheer! For the soul shall not give way. Here's to the greater to-morrow That is born of a great to-day!

Now shame on the craven truckler And the puling things that mope! We've a rapture for our buckler That outwears the wings of hope. Give a cheer! For our joy shall not give way. Here's in the teeth of to-morrow To the glory of to-day!

The Joy of the Hills. [Edwin Markham]

I ride on the mountain tops, I ride; I have found my life and am satisfied. Onward I ride in the blowing oats, Checking the field-lark's rippling notes -- Lightly I sweep From steep to steep: Over my head through the branches high Come glimpses of a rushing sky; The tall oats brush my horse's flanks; Wild poppies crowd on the sunny banks; A bee booms out of the scented grass; A jay laughs with me as I pass.

I ride on the hills, I forgive, I forget
Life's hoard of regret --
All the terror and pain
Of the chafing chain.
Grind on, O cities, grind:
I leave you a blur behind.
I am lifted elate -- the skies expand:
Here the world's heaped gold is a pile of sand.
Let them weary and work in their narrow walls:
I ride with the voices of waterfalls!

I swing on as one in a dream -- I swing Down the airy hollows, I shout, I sing! The world is gone like an empty word: My body's a bough in the wind, my heart a bird!

The Lesser Children. [Ridgely Torrence]

A Threnody at the Hunting Season

In the middle of August when the southwest wind Blows after sunset through the leisuring air, And on the sky nightly the mythic hind Leads down the sullen dog star to his lair, After the feverous vigil of July, When the loud pageant of the year's high noon Passed up the ways of time to sing and part, Grief also wandered by From out the lovers and the leaves of June, And by the wizard spices of his hair I knew his heart was very Love's own heart. Deep within dreams he led me out of doors As from the upper vault the night outpours, And when I saw that to him all the skies Yearned as a sea asleep yearns to its shores, He took a little clay and touched my eyes.

What saw I then, what heard? Multitudes, multitudes, under the moon they stirred! The weaker brothers of our earthly breed; Watchmen of whom our safety takes no heed; Swift helpers of the wind that sowed the seed Before the first field was or any fruit; Warriors against the bivouac of the weed; Earth's earliest ploughmen for the tender root, All came about my head and at my feet A thousand, thousand sweet, With starry eyes not even raised to plead; Bewildered, driven, hiding, fluttering, mute! And I beheld and saw them one by one Pass and become as nothing in the night. Clothed on with red they were who once were white; Drooping, who once led armies to the sun, Of whom the lowly grass now topped the flight: In scarlet faint, who once were brave in brown; Climbers and builders of the silent town, Creepers and burrowers all in crimson dye, Winged mysteries of song that from the sky Once dashed long music down.

O who would take away music from the earth? Have we so much? Or love upon the hearth? No more -- they faded; The great trees bending between birth and birth Sighed for them, and the night wind's hoarse rebuff Shouted the shame of which I was persuaded. Shall Nature's only pausing be by men invaded? Or shall we lay grief's fagots on her shoulders bare? Has she not borne enough? Soon will the mirroring woodland pools begin to con her, And her sad immemorial passion come upon her; Lo, would you add despair unto despair? Shall not the Spring be answer to her prayer? Must her uncomforted heavens overhead, Weeping, look down on tears and still behold Only wings broken or a fledgling dead, Or underfoot the meadows that wore gold Die, and the leaves go mourning to the mould Beneath poor dead and desperate feet Of folk who in next summer's meadows shall not meet? Who has not seen in the high gulf of light What, lower, was a bird, but now Is moored and altered quite Into an island of unshaded joy? To whom the mate below upon the bough Shouts once and brings him from his high employ. Yet speeding he forgot not of the cloud Where he from glory sprang and burned aloud, But took a little of the day, A little of the colored sky, And of the joy that would not stay He wove a song that cannot die. Then, then -- the unfathomable shame; The one last wrong arose from out the flame, The ravening hate that hated not was hurled Bidding the radiant love once more beware, Bringing one more loneliness on the world, And one more blindness in the unseen air. Nor may the smooth regret, the pitying oath Shed on such utter bitter any leaven. Only the pleading flowers that knew them both Hold all their bloody petals up to heaven.

Winds of the fall that all year to and fro Somewhere upon the earth go wandering, You saw, you moaned, you know: Withhold not then unto all time to tell Lest unborn others of us see this thing. Bring our sleek, comfortable reason low: Recount how souls grown tremulous as a bell Came forth each other and the day to greet In morning air all Indian-Summer sweet, And crept upstream, through wood or field or brake, Most tremblingly to take What crumbs that from the Master's table fell. Cry with what thronging thunders they were met, And hide not how the least leaf was made wet. Cry till no watcher says that all is well With raucous discord through the leaning spheres. But tell With tears, with tears How the last man is harmed even as they Who on these dawns are fire, at dusk are clay. Record the dumb and wise, No less than those who lived in singing guise, Whose choric hearts lit each wild green arcade. Make men to see their eyes, Forced to suspect behind each reed or rose The thorn of lurking foes. And O, before the daylight goes, After the deed against the skies, After the last belief and longing dies, Make men again to see their eyes Whose piteous casements now all unafraid Peer out to that far verge where evermore, Beyond all woe for which a tear atones, The likeness of our own dishonor moans, A sea that has no bottom and no shore.

What shall be done By you, shy folk who cease thus heart by heart? You for whose fate such fate forever hovers? O little lovers, If you would still have nests beneath the sun Gather your broods about you and depart, Before the stony forward-pressing faces Into the lands bereft of any sound; The solemn and compassionate desert places. Give unto men no more the strong delight To know that underneath the frozen ground Dwells the warm life and all the quick, pure lore. Take from our eyes the glory of great flight. Let us behold no more People untroubled by a Fate's veiled eyes, Leave us upon an earth of faith forlorn. No more wild tidings from the sweet far skies Of love's long utmost heavenward endeavor. So shall the silence pour on us forever The streaming arrows of unutterable scorn.

Nor shall the cry of famine be a shield The altar of a brutish mood to hide. Stains, stains, upon the lintels of our doors Wail to be justified. Shall there be mutterings at the seasons' yield? Has eye of man seen bared the granary floors? Are the fields wasted? Spilled the oil and wine? Is the fat seed under the clod decayed? Does ever the fig tree languish or the vine? Who has beheld the harvest promise fade? Or any orchard heavy with fruit asway Withered away? No, not these things, but grosser things than these Are the dim parents of a guilt not dim; Ancestral urges out of old caves blowing, When Fear watched at our coming and our going The horror of the chattering face of Whim. Hates, cruelties new fallen from the trees Whereto we clung with impulse sad for love, Shames we have had all time to rid us of, Disgraces cold and sorrows long bewept, Recalled, revived, and kept, Unmeaning quarrels, blood-compelling lust, And snarling woes from our old home, the dust.

Yet even of these one saving shape may rise; Fear may unveil our eyes. For know you not what curse of blight would fall Upon a land lorn of the sweet sky races Who day and night keep ward and seneschal Upon the treasury of the planted spaces? Then would the locust have his fill, And the blind worm lay tithe, The unfed stones rot in the listless mill, The sound of grinding cease. No yearning gold would whisper to the scythe, Hunger at last would prove us of one blood, The shores of dream be drowned in tides of need, Horribly would the whole earth be at peace. The burden of the grasshopper indeed Weigh down the green corn and the tender bud, The plague of Egypt fall upon the wheat, And the shrill nit would batten in the heat.

But you, O poor of deeds and rich of breath, Whose eyes have made our eyes a hue abhorred, Red, eager aids of aid-unneeding Death, Hunters before the Lord, If on the flinted marge about your souls In vain the heaving tide of mourning rolls, If from your trails unto the crimson goals The weeper and the weeping must depart, If lust of blood come on you like a fiery dart And darken all the dark autumnal air, Then, then -- be fair. Pluck a young ash tree or a sapling yew And at the root end fix an iron thorn, Then forth with rocking laughter of the horn And passing, with no belling retinue, All timorous, lesser sippers of the dew, Seek out some burly guardian of the hills And set your urgent thew against his thew. Then shall the hidden wisdoms and the wills Strive, and bear witness to the trees and clods How one has dumb lore of the rocks and swales And one has reason like unto the gods. Then shall the lagging righteousness ensue, The powers at last be equal in the scales, And the man's club and the beast's claw be flails To winnow the unworthy of the two. Then on the earth, in the sky and the heavenly court That broods behind it, Justice shall be awakened and aware, Then those who go forth greatly, seeking sport, Shall doubtless find it, And all things be fair.

A Vagabond Song. [Bliss Carman]

There is something in the autumn that is native to my blood -- Touch of manner, hint of mood; And my heart is like a rhyme, With the yellow and the purple and the crimson keeping time.

The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry Of bugles going by. And my lonely spirit thrills To see the frosty asters like a smoke upon the hills.

There is something in October sets the gypsy blood astir; We must rise and follow her, When from every hill of flame She calls and calls each vagabond by name.

Somewhere. [John Vance Cheney]

The weasel thieves in silver suit, The rabbit runs in gray; And Pan takes up his frosty flute To pipe the cold away.

The flocks are folded, boughs are bare, The salmon take the sea; And O my fair, would I somewhere Might house my heart with thee!

"Frost To-Night". [Edith M. Thomas]

Apple-green west and an orange bar, And the crystal eye of a lone, one star . . . And, "Child, take the shears and cut what you will, Frost to-night -- so clear and dead-still."

Then, I sally forth, half sad, half proud, And I come to the velvet, imperial crowd, The wine-red, the gold, the crimson, the pied, -- The dahlias that reign by the garden-side.

The dahlias I might not touch till to-night! A gleam of the shears in the fading light, And I gathered them all, -- the splendid throng, And in one great sheaf I bore them along.

. . . . .

In my garden of Life with its all-late flowers I heed a Voice in the shrinking hours: "Frost to-night -- so clear and dead-still" . . . Half sad, half proud, my arms I fill.

Under Arcturus. [Madison Cawein]