Chapter I: Give Thanks (3)

I cannot always feel his greatness.
Sometimes he walks beside me, step by step,
And paces slowly in the ways—
The simple, wingless ways
That my thoughts tread. He gossips with me then,
And finds it good;
Not as an eagle might, his great wings folded, be content
To walk a little, knowing it his choice,
But as a simple man,
My friend.
And I forget.

Then suddenly a call floats down
From the clear airy spaces,
The great keen, lonely heights of being.
And he who was my comrade hears the call
And rises from my side, and soars,
Deep-chanting, to the heights.
Then I remember.
And my upward gaze goes with him, and I see
Far off against the sky
The glint of golden sunlight on his wings.

Ridgely Torrence

THE BIRD AND THE TREE

Blackbird, blackbird in the cage,
There’s something wrong tonight.
Far off the sheriff’s footfall dies,
The minutes crawl like last year’s flies
Between the bars, and like an age
The hours are long tonight.

The sky is like a heavy lid
Out here beyond the door tonight.
What’s that? A mutter down the street.
What’s that? The sound of yells and feet.
For what you didn’t do or did
You’ll pay the score tonight.

No use to reek with reddened sweat,
No use to whimper and to sweat.
They’ve got the rope; they’ve got the guns,
They’ve got the courage and the guns;
And that’s the reason why tonight
No use to ask them any more.
They’ll fire the answer through the door—
You’re out to die tonight.

There where the lonely cross-road lies,
There is no place to make replies;
But silence, inch by inch, is there,
And the right limb for a lynch is there;
And a lean daw waits for both your eyes,
Blackbird.

Perhaps you’ll meet again some place.
Look for the mask upon the face:
That’s the way you’ll know them there—

A white mask to hide the face.
And you can halt and show them there
The things that they are deaf to now,
And they can tell you what they meant—
To wash the blood with blood. But how
If you are innocent?

Blackbird singer, blackbird mute,
They choked the seed you might have found.
Out of a thorny field you go—
For you it may be better so—
And leave the sowers of the ground
To eat the harvest of the fruit,
Blackbird.

THE SON

_Southern Ohio Market Town_

I heard an old farm-wife,
Selling some barley,
Mingle her life with life
And the name “Charley.”

Saying: “The crop’s all in,
We’re about through now;
Long nights will soon begin,
We’re just us two now.

“Twelve bushel at sixty cents,
It’s all I carried—
He sickened making fence;
He was to be married—

“It feels like frost was near—
His hair was curly.
The spring was late that year,
But the harvest early.”

Charles Hanson Towne

BEYOND THE STARS

Three days I heard them grieve when I lay dead,
(It was so strange to me that they should weep!)
Tall candles burned about me in the dark,
And a great crucifix was on my breast,
And a great silence filled the lonesome room.

I heard one whisper, “Lo! the dawn is breaking,
And he has lost the wonder of the day.”
Another came whom I had loved on earth,
And kissed my brow and brushed my dampened hair.
Softly she spoke: “Oh, that he should not see
The April that his spirit bathed in! Birds
Are singing in the orchard, and the grass
That soon will cover him is growing green.
The daisies whiten on the emerald hills,
And the immortal magic that he loved
Wakens again—and he has fallen asleep.”
Another said: “Last night I saw the moon
Like a tremendous lantern shine in heaven,
And I could only think of him—and sob.
For I remembered evenings wonderful
When he was faint with Life’s sad loveliness,
And watched the silver ribbons wandering far
Along the shore, and out upon the sea.
Oh, I remembered how he loved the world,
The sighing ocean and the flaming stars,
The everlasting glamour God has given—
His tapestries that wrap the earth’s wide room.
I minded me of mornings filled with rain
When he would sit and listen to the sound
As if it were lost music from the spheres.
He loved the crocus and the hawthorn-hedge,
He loved the shining gold of buttercups,
And the low droning of the drowsy bees
That boomed across the meadows. He was glad
At dawn or sundown; glad when Autumn came
With her worn livery and scarlet crown,
And glad when Winter rocked the earth to rest.
Strange that he sleeps today when Life is young,
And the wild banners of the Spring are blowing
With green inscriptions of the old delight.”

I heard them whisper in the quiet room.
I longed to open then my sealed eyes,
And tell them of the glory that was mine.
There was no darkness where my spirit flew,
There was no night beyond the teeming world.
Their April was like winter where I roamed;
Their flowers were like stones where now I fared.
Earth’s day! it was as if I had not known
What sunlight meant!... Yea, even as they grieved
For all that I had lost in their pale place,
I swung beyond the borders of the sky,
And floated through the clouds, myself the air,
Myself the ether, yet a matchless being
Whom God had snatched from penury and pain
To draw across the barricades of heaven.
I clomb beyond the sun, beyond the moon;
In flight on flight I touched the highest star;
I plunged to regions where the Spring is born,
Myself (I asked not how) the April wind,
Myself the elements that are of God.
Up flowery stairways of eternity
I whirled in wonder and untrammeled joy,
An atom, yet a portion of His dream—
His dream that knows no end....
I was the rain,
I was the dawn, I was the purple east,
I was the moonlight on enchanted nights,
(Yet time was lost to me); I was a flower
For one to pluck who loved me; I was bliss,
And rapture, splendid moments of delight;
And I was prayer, and solitude, and hope;
And always, always, always I was love.
I tore asunder flimsy doors of time,
And through the windows of my soul’s new sight
I saw beyond the ultimate bounds of space.
I was all things that I had loved on earth—
The very moonbeam in that quiet room,
The very sunlight one had dreamed I lost,
The soul of the returning April grass,
The spirit of the evening and the dawn,
The perfume in unnumbered hawthorn-blooms.
There was no shadow on my perfect peace,
No knowledge that was hidden from my heart.
I learned what music meant; I read the years;
I found where rainbows hide, where tears begin;
I trod the precincts of things yet unborn.

Yea, while I found all wisdom (being dead),
They grieved for me ... I should have grieved for them!

Louis Untermeyer

LANDSCAPES

The rain was over, and the brilliant air
Made every little blade of grass appear
Vivid and startling—everything was there
With sharpened outlines, eloquently clear,
As though one saw it in a crystal sphere.

The rusty sumac with its struggling spires;
The goldenrod with all its million fires
(A million torches swinging in the wind);
A single poplar, marvellously thinned,
Half like a naked boy, half like a sword;
Clouds, like the haughty banners of the Lord;
A group of pansies with their shrewish faces,
Little old ladies cackling over laces;
The quaint, unhurried road that curved so well;
The prim petunias with their rich, rank smell;
The lettuce-birds, the creepers in the field—
How bountifully were they all revealed!
How arrogantly each one seemed to thrive—
So frank and strong, so radiantly alive!

And over all the morning-minded earth
There seemed to spread a sharp and kindling mirth,
Piercing the stubborn stones until I saw
The toad face heaven without shame or awe,
The ant confront the stars, and every weed
Grow proud as though it bore a royal seed;
While all the things that die and decompose
Sent forth their bloom as richly as the rose....
Oh, what a liberal power that made them thrive
And keep the very dirt that died, alive.

And now I saw the slender willow-tree
No longer calm or drooping listlessly,
Letting its languid branches sway and fall
As though it danced in some sad ritual;
But rather like a young, athletic girl,
Fearless and gay, her hair all out of curl,
And flying in the wind—her head thrown back,
Her arms flung up, her garments flowing slack,
And all her rushing spirits running over....
What made a sober tree seem such a rover—

Or made the staid and stalwart apple-trees,
That stood for years knee-deep in velvet peace,
Turn all their fruit to little worlds of flame,
And burn the trembling orchard there below?
What lit the heart of every golden-glow—
Oh, why was nothing weary, dull, or tame?...
Beauty it was, and keen, compassionate mirth
That drives the vast and energetic earth.

And, with abrupt and visionary eyes,
I saw the huddled tenements arise.
Here where the merry clover danced and shone
Sprang agonies of iron and of stone;
There, where green Silence laughed or stood enthralled,
Cheap music blared and evil alleys sprawled.
The roaring avenues, the shrieking mills;
Brothels and prisons on those kindly hills—
The menace of these things swept over me;
A threatening, unconquerable sea....

A stirring landscape and a generous earth!
Freshening courage and benevolent mirth—
And then the city, like a hideous sore....
Good God, and what is all this beauty for?

“FEUERZAUBER”

I never knew the earth had so much gold—
The fields run over with it, and this hill
Hoary and old,
Is young with buoyant blooms that flame and thrill.

Such golden fires, such yellow—lo, how good
This spendthrift world, and what a lavish God—
This fringe of wood,
Blazing with buttercup and goldenrod.

You too, beloved, are changed. Again I see
Your face grow mystical, as on that night
You turned to me,
And all the trembling world—and you—were white.

Aye, you are touched; your singing lips grow dumb;
The fields absorb you, color you entire....
And you become
A goddess standing in a world of fire!

ON THE BIRTH OF A CHILD

_Jerome Epstein—August 8, 1912_

Lo—to the battle-ground of life,
Child, you have come, like a conquering shout,
Out of a struggle—into strife;
Out of a darkness—into doubt.

Girt with the fragile armor of youth,
Child, you must ride into endless wars,
With the sword of protest, the buckler of truth,
And a banner of love to sweep the stars.

About you the world’s despair will surge;
Into defeat you must plunge and grope—
Be to the faltering an urge;
Be to the hopeless years a hope!

Be to the darkened world a flame;
Be to its unconcern a blow—
For out of its pain and tumult you came,
And into its tumult and pain you go.

IRONY

Why are the things that have no death
The ones with neither sight nor breath!
Eternity is thrust upon
A bit of earth, a senseless stone.
A grain of dust, a casual clod
Receives the greatest gift of God.
A pebble in the roadway lies—
It never dies.

The grass our fathers cut away
Is growing on their graves to-day;
The tiniest brooks that scarcely flow
Eternally will come and go.
There is no kind of death to kill
The sands that lie so meek and still....
But Man is great and strong and wise—
And so he dies.

Allen Upward

SCENTED LEAVES FROM A CHINESE JAR

THE ACACIA LEAVES

The aged man, when he beheld winter approaching, counted the leaves as they lapsed from the acacia trees; while his son was talking of the spring.

THE BITTER PURPLE WILLOWS

Meditating on the glory of illustrious lineage I lifted up my eyes and beheld the bitter purple willows growing round the tombs of the exalted Mings.

THE CORAL FISHER

The coral fisher, who had been a long time beneath the water, rose to the surface with nothing in his hand but a spray of crimson seaweed. In answer to the master of the junk he said, “While I was in the world of fishes this miserable weed appeared to me more beautiful than coral.”

THE DIAMOND

The poet Wong, after he had delighted a company of mandarins at a feast, sat silent in the midst of his household. He explained, “The diamond sparkles only when it is in the light.”

THE ESTUARY

Some one complained to the Master, “After many lessons I do not fully understand your doctrine.” In response the Master pointed to the tide in the mouth of the river, and asked, “How wide is the sea in this place?”

THE INTOXICATED POET

A poet, having taken the bridle off his tongue, spoke thus: “More fragrant than the heliotrope, which blooms all the year round, better than vermilion letters on tablets of sendal, are thy kisses, thou shy one!”

THE JONQUILS

I have heard that a certain princess, when she found that she had been married by a demon, wove a wreath of jonquils and sent it to the lover of former days.

THE MARIGOLD

Even as the seed of the marigold, carried by the wind, lodges on the roofs of palaces, and lights the air with flame-colored blossoms, so may the child-like words of the insignificant poet confer honor on lofty and disdainful mandarins.

THE MERMAID

The sailor boy who leant over the side of the Junk of Many Pearls, and combed the green tresses of the sea with his ivory fingers, believing that he had heard the voice of a mermaid, cast his body down between the waves.

THE MIDDLE KINGDOM

The emperors of fourteen dynasties, clad in robes of yellow silk embroidered with the Dragon, wearing gold diadems set with pearls and rubies, and seated on thrones of incomparable ivory, have ruled over the Middle Kingdom for four thousand years.

THE MILKY WAY

My mother taught me that every night a procession of junks carrying lanterns moves silently across the sky, and the water sprinkled from their paddles falls to the earth in the form of dew. I no longer believe that the stars are junks carrying lanterns, no longer that the dew is shaken from their oars.

THE ONION

The child who threw away leaf after leaf of the many-coated onion, to get to the sweet heart, found in the end that he had thrown away the heart itself.

THE SEA-SHELL

To the passionate lover, whose sighs come back to him on every breeze, all the world is like a murmuring sea-shell.

THE STUPID KITE

A kite, while devouring a skylark, complained, “Had I known that thy flesh was no sweeter than that of a sparrow I should have listened longer to thy delicious notes.”

THE WINDMILL

The exquisite painter Ko-tsu was often reproached by an industrious friend for his fits of idleness. At last he excused himself by saying, “You are a watermill—a windmill can grind only when the wind blows.”

THE WORD

The first time the emperor Han heard a certain Word he said, “It is strange.” The second time he said, “It is divine.” The third time he said, “Let the speaker be put to death.”

John Hall Wheelock

SUNDAY EVENING IN THE COMMON

Look—on the topmost branches of the world
The blossoms of the myriad stars are thick;
Over the huddled rows of stone and brick
A few sad wisps of empty smoke are curled
Like ghosts, languid and sick.

One breathless moment now the city’s moaning
Fades, and the endless streets seem vague and dim;
There is no sound around the world’s rim,
Save in the distance a small band is droning
Some desolate old hymn.

Van Wyck, how often have we been together
When this same moment made all mysteries clear—
The infinite stars that brood above us here,
And the gray city in the soft June weather,
So tawdry and so dear!

SPRING

The air is full of dawn and spring;
Outside the room I see
A swallow, like a shaft of light,
Shift sideways suddenly.

There is no room for death at all
In earth or heaven above;
He never yet believed in death
Who ever learned to love.

Build me a tomb when I am dead,
But leave a window free
That I may watch the swallow’s flight,
And spring come back to me.

Build me a tomb of steel and stone,
But leave one window free,
That I may feel the spring come back—
And you come back to me!

LIKE MUSIC

Your body’s motion is like music;
Her stride ecstatical and bright
Moves to the rhythm of dumb music,
The unheard music of delight.

The silent splendor of the creation
Speaks through your body’s stately strength,
And the lithe harmony of beauty
Undulates through its lovely length.

And rhythmically your bosom’s arches,
Alternately, with every breath
Lift lifeward in long lines of beauty
And lapse along the slopes of death.

THE THUNDER-SHOWER

The lightning flashed, and lifted
The lids of heaven apart,
The fiery thunder rolled you
All night long through my heart.

From dreams of you at dawn
I rose to the window ledge:
The storm had passed away,
The lake lapped on the sedge.

The lyre of heaven trembled
Still with the thought of you,
The twilight on the waters,
And all my spirit, too.

SONG

All my love for my sweet
I bared one day to her.
Carelessly she took it,
And like a conqueror
She bowed the neck of my soul
To fit it to her yoke,
And bridled the lips of Song—
Fear within me awoke!
But Love cried: “Swiftly, swiftly
Bear her along the road;
Beautiful is the goal
And Beauty is the goad.”

ALONE

Ah, never in all my life
Have I ever fled away
From the loneliness that follows
My spirit night and day!

Though I fly to the dearest face,
It follows without rest—
To the kind heart of love,
And the belovèd breast.

Though I walk amid the crowd,
Still I walk apart;
Alone, alone I lie
Even at the loved one’s heart.

NIRVANA

Sleep on—I lie at heaven’s high oriels,
Over the stars that murmur as they go
Lighting your lattice-window far below.
And every star some of the glory spells
Whereof I know.

I have forgotten you, long long ago;
Like the sweet, silver singing of thin bells
Vanished, or music fading faint and low.
Sleep on—I lie at heaven’s high oriels,
Who loved you so.

TRIUMPH OF THE SINGER

I shake my hair in the wind of morning
For the joy within me that knows no bounds.
I echo backward the vibrant beauty
Wherewith heaven’s hollow lute resounds.

I shed my song on the feet of all men,
On the feet of all shed out like wine;
On the whole and the hurt I shed my bounty,
The beauty within me that is not mine.

Turn not away from my song, nor scorn me,
Who bear the secret that holds the sky
And the stars together; but know within me
There speaks another more wise than I.

Nor spurn me here from your heart to hate me,
Yet hate me here if you will. Not so
Myself you hate, but the love within me
That loves you whether you would or no.

Here love returns with love to the lover
And beauty unto the heart thereof,
And hatred unto the heart of the hater,
Whether he would or no, with love!

Hervey White

LAST NIGHT

Last night the full moon laid a cloth of white
Within my window, spread upon my bed,
And, with her old-time splendor, asked of me
To share her harvest supper. I arose,
And stepped without to pay my greetings. When, Behold!
The old world flowered again, as it had done
When I was twenty, at the gate of life;
The meadows held untouched their virgin bloom,
The darkling trees with gleaming leaves flashed bright,
Dewy and pendant till the waiting morn;
The shadows lay like cool soft soothing hands
Upon the pastures pulsing with sweet June:
I, too, was young again, and God was just,
And through my blood propelled great future acts—
Big things to do, and thoughts, and voice to speak—
So potent was the charm of my white queen.
It was not till I walked for many miles,
And came back weary to my quiet room,
That I had once more taken back my years,
My cares, my listlessness, and stagnant grief.
And, even as I sit in full faced day,
My memory faintly shadows out this song.