Chapter I: Am the Wind (1)

I am the wind that wavers,
You are the certain land;
I am the shadow that passes
Over the sand.

I am the leaf that quivers,
You the unshaken tree;
You are the stars that are steadfast,
I am the sea.

You are the light eternal—
Like a torch I shall die;
You are the surge of deep music,
I but a cry!

CONQUERED

O pale! O vivid! dear!
O disillusioned eyes
Forever near!
O Dream, arise!

I will not turn away
From the face I loved again;
Your beauty may sway
My life with pain.

I will drink the wine you pour,
I will seek to put asunder
Our ways no more—
O Love! O Wonder!

THE WANDERER

The ships are lying in the bay,
The gulls are swinging round their spars;
My soul as eagerly as they
Desires the margin of the stars.

So much do I love wandering,
So much I love the sea and sky,
That it will be a piteous thing
In one small grave to lie.

Richard Aldington

THE POPLAR

Why do you always stand there shivering
Between the white stream and the road?

The people pass through the dust
On bicycles, in carts, in motor-cars;
The wagoners go by at dawn;
The lovers walk on the grass path at night.

Stir from your roots, walk, poplar!
You are more beautiful than they are.

I know that the white wind loves you,
Is always kissing you and turning up
The white lining of your green petticoat.
The sky darts through you like blue rain,
And the grey rain drips on your flanks
And loves you.
And I have seen the moon
Slip his silver penny into your pocket
As you straightened your hair;
And the white mist curling and hesitating
Like a bashful lover about your knees.

I know you, poplar;
I have watched you since I was ten.
But if you had a little real love,
A little strength,
You would leave your nonchalant idle lovers
And go walking down the white road
Behind the wagoners.

There are beautiful beeches
Down beyond the hill.
Will you always stand there shivering?

LESBIA

Grow weary if you will, let me be sad.
Use no more speech now;
Let the silence spread gold hair above us,
Fold on delicate fold.
Use no more speech;
You had the ivory of my life to carve....

And Picus of Mirandola is dead;
And all the gods they dreamed and fabled of,
Hermes, and Thoth and Bêl are rotten now,
Rotten and dank.

And through it all I see your pale Greek face;
Tenderness
Makes me eager as a little child to love you,
You morsel left half-cold on Cæsar’s plate.

IMAGES

I

Like a gondola of green scented fruits
Drifting along the dank canals at Venice,
You, O exquisite one,
Have entered my desolate city.

II

The blue smoke leaps
Like swirling clouds of birds vanishing.
So my love leaps forth towards you,
Vanishes and is renewed.

III

A rose-yellow moon in a pale sky
When the sunset is faint vermilion
In the mist among the tree-boughs,
Art thou to me.

IV

As a young beech-tree on the edge of a forest
Stands still in the evening,
Yet shudders through all its leaves in the light air
And seems to fear the stars—
So are you still and so tremble.

V

The red deer are high on the mountain,
They are beyond the last pine trees.
And my desires have run with them.

VI

The flower which the wind has shaken
Is soon filled again with rain;
So does my mind fill slowly with misgiving
Until you return.

CHORICOS

The ancient songs
Pass deathward mournfully.

Cold lips that sing no more, and withered wreaths,
Regretful eyes and drooping breasts and wings—
Symbols of ancient songs
Mournfully passing
Down to the great white surges,
Watched of none
Save the frail sea-birds
And the lithe pale girls,
Daughters of Okeanos.

And the songs pass
From the green land
Which lies upon the waves as a leaf
On the flowers of hyacinth;
And they pass from the waters,
The manifold winds and the dim moon,
And they come,
Silently winging through soft Kimmerian dusk,
To the quiet level lands
That she keeps for us all,
That she wrought for us all for sleep
In the silver days of the earth’s dawning—
Prosperine, daughter of Zeus.

And we turn from the Kuprian’s breasts,
And we turn from thee,
Phoibos Apollon,
And we turn from the music of old
And the hills that we loved and the meads,
And we turn from the fiery day,
And the lips that were over-sweet;
For silently
Brushing the fields with red-shod feet,
With purple robe
Searing the flowers as with a sudden flame,
Death,
Thou hast come upon us.

And of all the ancient songs
Passing to the swallow-blue halls
By the dark streams of Persephone,
This only remains:
That in the end we turn to thee,
Death,
That we turn to thee, singing
One last song.

O Death,
Thou art an healing wind
That blowest over white flowers
A-tremble with dew;
Thou art a wind flowing
Over long leagues of lonely sea;
Thou art the dusk and the fragrance;
Thou art the lips of love mournfully smiling;
Thou art the pale peace of one
Satiate with old desires;
Thou art the silence of beauty,
And we look no more for the morning;
We yearn no more for the sun,
Since with thy white hands,
Death,
Thou crownest us with the pallid chaplets,
The slim colorless poppies
Which in thy garden alone
Softly thou gatherest.

And silently;
And with slow feet approaching;
And with bowed head and unlit eyes,
We kneel before thee.
And thou, leaning towards us,
Caressingly layest upon us
Flowers from thy thin cold hands,
And, smiling as a chaste woman
Knowing love in her heart,
Thou sealest our eyes
And the illimitable quietude
Comes gently upon us.

Mary Aldis

BARBERRIES

You say I touch the barberries
As a lover his mistress?
What a curious fancy!
One must be delicate, you know—
They have bitter thorns.
You say my hand is hurt?
Oh no, it was my breast,
It was crushed and pressed.
I mean—why yes, of course, of course—
There is a bright drop—isn’t there?—
Right on my finger;
Just the color of a barberry,
But it comes from my heart.

Do you love barberries?
In the autumn
When the sun’s desire
Touches them to a glory of crimson and gold?
I love them best then.
There is something splendid about them:
They are not afraid
Of being warm and glad and bold;
They flush joyously,
Like a cheek under a lover’s kiss;
They bleed cruelly
Like a dagger wound in the breast;
They flame up madly for their little hour,
Knowing they must die.
Do you love barberries?

WHEN YOU COME

“_There was a girl with him for a time. She took him to her room when
he was desolate and warmed him and took care of him. One day he could
not find her. For many weeks he walked constantly in that locality in
search of her._”—From _Life of Francis Thompson_.

When you come tonight
To our small room
You will look and listen—
I shall not be there.

You will cry out your dismay
To the unheeding gods;
You will wait and look and listen—
I shall not be there.

There is a part of you I love
More than your hands in mine at rest;
There is a part of you I love
More than your lips upon my breast.

There is a part of you I wound
Even in my caress;
There is a part of you withheld
I may not possess.

There is a part of you I hate—
Your need of me
When you would be alone,
Alone and free.

When you come tonight
To our small room
You will look and listen—
I shall not be there.

FLASH-LIGHTS

I

Candles toppling sideways in tomato cans
Sputter and sizzle at head and foot.
The gaudy patterns of a patch-work quilt
Lie smooth and straight
Save where upswelling over a silent shape.
A man in high boots stirs something on a rusty stove
Round and round and round,
As a new cry like a bleating lamb’s
Pierces his brain.
After a time the man busies himself
With hammer and nails and rough-hewn lumber,
But fears to strike a blow.
Outside the moonlight sleeps white upon the plain
And the bark of a coyote shrills across the night.

II

A smell of musk
Comes to him pungently through the darkness.
On the screen
Scenes from foreign lands,
Released by the censor,
Shimmer in cool black and white
Historic information.
He shifts his seat sideways, sideways—
A seeking hand creeps to another hand,
And a leaping flame
Illuminates the historic information.

III

Within the room, sounds of weeping
Low and hushed:
Without, a man, beautiful with the beauty
Of young strength,
Holds pitifully to the handle of the door.
He hiccoughs and turns away,
While a hand-organ plays,
“The hours I spend with thee, dear heart.”

Walter Conrad Arensberg

VOYAGE À L’INFINI

The swan existing
Is like a song with an accompaniment
Imaginary.

Across the grassy lake,
Across the lake to the shadow of the willows,
It is accompanied by an image—
As by Debussy’s
“_Reflets dans l’eau_.”

The swan that is
Reflects
Upon the solitary water—breast to breast
With the duplicity:
“_The other one!_”

And breast to breast it is confused.
O visionary wedding! O stateliness of the procession!
It is accompanied by the image of itself
Alone.

At night
The lake is a wide silence,
Without imagination.

AT DAYBREAK

I had a dream and I awoke with it—
Poor little thing that I had not unclasped
After the kiss good-by.

And at the surface how it gasped—
This thing that I had loved in the unlit
Depth of the drowsy sea....
Ah me!
This thing with which I drifted toward the sky.

Driftwood upon a wave—
Senseless the motion that it gave.

TO HASEKAWA

Perhaps it is no matter that you died.
Life’s an _incognito_ which you saw through:
You never told on life—you had your pride;
But life has told on you.

DIALOGUE

Be patient, Life, when Love is at the gate,
And when he enters let him be at home.
Think of the roads that he has had to roam.
Think of the years that he has had to wait.

_But if I let Love in I shall be late.
Another has come first—there is no room.
And I am thoughtful of the endless loom—
Let Love be patient, the importunate._

O Life, be idle and let Love come in,
And give thy dreamy hair that Love may spin.
_But Love himself is idle with his song.
Let Love come last, and then may Love last long._

Be patient, Life, for Love is not the last.
Be patient now with Death, for Love has passed.

SONG OF THE SOULS SET FREE

Wrap the earth in cloudy weather
For a shroud.
We have slipped the earthly tether,
We’re above the cloud.
Peep and draw the cloud together,
Peep upon the bowed.

What can they be bowing under,
Wild and wan?
Peep, and draw the cloud asunder,
Peep, and wave a dawn.
It will make them rise and wonder
Whether we are gone.

Wilton Agnew Barrett

A NEW ENGLAND CHURCH

The white church on the hill
Looks over the little bay—
A beautiful thing on the hill
When the mist is gray;
When the hill looks old, and the air turns cold
With the dying day!

The white church on the hill—
A Greek in a Puritan town—
Was built on the brow of the hill
For John Wesley’s God’s renown,
And a conscience old set a steeple cold
On its Grecian crown.

In a storm of faith on the hill
Hands raised it over the bay.
When the night is clear on the hill,
It stands up strong and gray;
But its door is old, and the tower points cold
To the Milky Way.

The white church on the hill
Looks lonely over the town.
Dim to them under the hill
Is its God’s renown,
And its Bible old, and its creed grown cold,
And the letters brown.

Joseph Warren Beach

RUE BONAPARTE

You that but seek your modest rolls and coffee,
When you have passed the bar, and have saluted
Its watchful madam, then pray enter softly
The inner chamber, even as one who treads
The haunts of mating birds, and watch discreetly
Over your paper’s edge. There in the corner,
Obscure, ensconced behind the uncovered table,
A man and woman keep their silent tryst.
Outside the morning floods the pavement sweetly;
Yonder aloft a maid throws back the shutters;
The hucksters utter modulated cries
As wistful as some old pathetic ballad.
Within the brooding lovers, unaware,
Sit quiet hand in hand, or in low whispers
Communicate a more articulate love.
Sometimes she plays with strings and, gently leaning
Against his shoulder, shows him childish tricks.
She has not touched the glass of milk before her,
Her breakfast and the price of their admittance.
She has a look devoted and confiding
And might be pretty were not life so hard.
But he, gaunt as his rusty bicycle
That stands against the table, and with features
So drawn and stark, has only futile strength.
The love they cherish in this stolen meeting
Through all the day that follows makes her sweeter,
And him perhaps it only leaves more bitter.
But you that have not love at all, old men
That warm your fingers by this fire, discreetly
Play out your morning game of dominoes.

THE VIEW AT GUNDERSON’S

Sitting in his rocker waiting for your tea,
Gazing from his window, this is what you see:

A cat that snaps at flies; a track leading down
By log-built shanties gray and brown;

The corner of a barn, and tangled lines of fence
Of rough-hewn pickets standing dense;

The ghost of a tree on a dull, wet day;
And the blanket fog where lies the bay.

But when he’s seen the last of you,
Sitting in his rocker, what’s _his_ view?

(For there he sits, day in, day out,
Nursing his leg—and his dreams, no doubt.)

The snow-slide up behind the _gaard_;
The farm beside old Trondjem _fjord_;

Daughters seven with their cold blue eyes,
And the great pine where his father lies;

The boat that brought him over the sea;
And the toothless woman who makes his tea.

(Their picture, framed on the rough log wall,
Proves she had teeth when he was tall.)

He sees the balsam thick on the hill,
And all he’s cleared with a stubborn will.

And last he sees the full-grown son
For whom he hoards what he has won.

You saw little worth the strife:
What he sees is one man’s life.

William Rose Benét

THE FALCONER OF GOD

I flung my soul to the air like a falcon flying.
I said, “Wait on, wait on, while I ride below!
I shall start a heron soon
In the marsh beneath the moon—
A strange white heron rising with silver on its wings,
Rising and crying
Wordless, wondrous things;
The secret of the stars, of the world’s heart-strings
The answer to their woe.
Then stoop thou upon him, and grip and hold him so!”

My wild soul waited on as falcons hover.
I beat the reedy fens as I trampled past.
I heard the mournful loon
In the marsh beneath the moon.
And then, with feathery thunder, the bird of my desire
Broke from the cover
Flashing silver fire.
High up among the stars I saw his pinions spire.
The pale clouds gazed aghast
As my falcon stooped upon him, and gript and held him fast.

My soul dropped through the air—with heavenly plunder?—
Gripping the dazzling bird my dreaming knew?
Nay! but a piteous freight,
A dark and heavy weight
Despoiled of silver plumage, its voice forever stilled—
All of the wonder
Gone that ever filled
Its guise with glory. O bird that I have killed,
How brilliantly you flew
Across my rapturous vision when first I dreamed of you!

Yet I fling my soul on high with new endeavor,
And I ride the world below with a joyful mind.
_I shall start a heron soon
In the marsh beneath the moon—
A wondrous silver heron its inner darkness fledges!_
I beat forever
The fens and the sedges.
The pledge is still the same—for all disastrous pledges,
All hopes resigned!
My soul still flies above me for the quarry it shall find!

THE HORSE THIEF

There he moved, cropping the grass at the purple canyon’s lip.
His mane was mixed with the moonlight that silvered his snow-white
side,
For the moon sailed out of a cloud with the wake of a spectral ship.
I crouched and I crawled on my belly, my lariat coil looped wide.

Dimly and dark the mesas broke on the starry sky.
A pall covered every color of their gorgeous glory at noon.
I smelt the yucca and mesquite, and stifled my heart’s quick cry,
And wormed and crawled on my belly to where he moved against the moon!

Some Moorish barb was that mustang’s sire. His lines were beyond all
wonder.
From the prick of his ears to the flow of his tail he ached in my
throat and eyes.
Steel and velvet grace! As the prophet says, God had “clothed his neck
with thunder.”
Oh, marvelous with the drifting cloud he drifted across the skies!

And then I was near at hand—crouched, and balanced, and cast the coil;
And the moon was smothered in cloud, and the rope through my hands
with a rip!
But somehow I gripped and clung, with the blood in my brain aboil,—
With a turn round the rugged tree-stump there on the purple canyon’s
lip.

Right into the stars he reared aloft, his red eye rolling and raging.
He whirled and sunfished and lashed, and rocked the earth to thunder
and flame.
He squealed like a regular devil horse. I was haggard and spent and
aging—
Roped clean, but almost storming clear, his fury too fierce to tame.

And I cursed myself for a tenderfoot moon-dazzled to play the part,
But I was doubly desperate then, with the posse pulled out from town,
Or I’d never have tried it. I only knew I must get a mount and a start.
The filly had snapped her foreleg short. I had had to shoot her down.

So there he struggled and strangled, and I snubbed him around the tree.
Nearer, a little nearer—hoofs planted, and lolling tongue—
Till a sudden slack pitched me backward. He reared right on top of me.
Mother of God—that moment! He missed me ... and up I swung.

Somehow, gone daft completely and clawing a bunch of his mane,
As he stumbled and tripped in the lariat, there I was—up and astride
And cursing for seven counties! And the mustang? _Just insane!_
Crack-bang! went the rope; we cannoned off the tree—then—gods, that
ride!

A rocket—that’s all, a rocket! I dug with my teeth and nails.
Why, we never hit even the high spots (though I hardly remember
things),
But I heard a monstrous booming like a thunder of flapping sails
When he spread—well, _call_ me a liar!—when he spread those wings,
those wings!

So white that my eyes were blinded, thick-feathered and wide unfurled
They beat the air into billows. We sailed, and the earth was gone.
Canyon and desert and mesa withered below, with the world.
And then I knew that mustang; for I—was Bellerophon!

Yes, glad as the Greek, and mounted on a horse of the elder gods,
With never a magic bridle or a fountain-mirror nigh!
_My chaps and spurs and holster must have looked it?_ What’s the odds?
I’d a leg over lightning and thunder, careering across the sky!

And forever streaming before me, fanning my forehead cool,
Flowed a mane of molten silver; and just before my thighs
(As I gripped his velvet-muscled ribs, while I cursed myself for a
fool),
The steady pulse of those pinions—their wonderful fall and rise!

The bandanna I bought in Bowie blew loose and whipped from my neck.
My shirt was stuck to my shoulders and ribboning out behind.
The stars were dancing, wheeling and glancing, dipping with smirk and
beck.
The clouds were flowing, dusking and glowing. We rode a roaring wind.

We soared through the silver starlight to knock at the planets’ gates.
New shimmering constellations came whirling into our ken.
Red stars and green and golden swung out of the void that waits
For man’s great last adventure; the Signs took shape—and then

I knew the lines of that Centaur the moment I saw him come!
The musical-box of the heavens all around us rolled to a tune
That tinkled and chimed and trilled with silver sounds that struck you
dumb,
As if some archangel were grinding out the music of the moon.

Melody-drunk on the Milky Way, as we swept and soared hilarious,
Full in our pathway, sudden he stood—the Centaur of the Stars,
Flashing from head and hoofs and breast! I knew him for Sagittarius.
He reared, and bent and drew his bow. He crouched as a boxer spars.

Flung back on his haunches, weird he loomed—then leapt—and the dim void
lightened.
Old White Wings shied and swerved aside, and fled from the
splendor-shod.
Through a flashing welter of worlds we charged. I knew why my horse was
frightened.
He _had_ two faces—a dog’s and a man’s—that Babylonian god!

Also, he followed us real as fear. Ping! went an arrow past.
My broncho buck-jumped, humping high. We plunged ... I guess that’s
all!
I lay on the purple canyon’s lip, when I opened my eyes at last—
Stiff and sore and my head like a drum, but I broke no bones in the
fall.

So you know—and now you may string me up. Such was the way you caught
me.
Thank you for letting me tell it straight, though you never could
greatly care.
For I took a horse that wasn’t mine!... But there’s one the heavens
brought me,
And I’ll hang right happy, because I know he is waiting for me up
there.

From creamy muzzle to cannon-bone, by God, he’s a peerless wonder!
He is steel and velvet and furnace-fire, and death’s supremest prize;
And never again shall be roped on earth that neck that is “clothed with
thunder” ...
String me up, Dave! Go dig my grave! _I rode him across the skies!_

Maxwell Bodenheim

THE REAR-PORCHES OF AN APARTMENT-BUILDING

A sky that has never known sun, moon or stars,
A sky that is like a dead, kind face,
Would have the color of your eyes,
O servant-girl, singing of pear-trees in the sun,
And scraping the yellow fruit you once picked
When your lavender-white eyes were alive....
On the porch above you are two women,
Whose faces have the color of brown earth that has never felt rain.
The still wet basins of ponds that have been drained
Are their eyes.
They knit gray rosettes and nibble cakes....
And on the top-porch are three children
Gravely kissing each others’ foreheads—
And an ample nurse with a huge red fan....

The passing of the afternoon to them
Is but the lengthening of blue-black shadows on brick walls.

THE INTERNE

Oh, the agony of having too much power! In my passive palm are hundreds of lives. Strange alchemy!—they drain my blood: My heart becomes iron; my brain copper; my eyes silver; my lips brass. Merely by twitching a supple finger, I twirl lives from me—strong-winged, Or fluttering and broken. They are my children, I am their mother and father. I watch them live and die.

THE OLD JEW

No fawn-tinged hospital pajamas could cheat him of his austerity, Which tamed even the doctors with its pure fire. They examined him; made him bow to them: Massive altars were they, at whose swollen feet grovelled a worshiper. Then they laughed, half in scorn of him; and there came a miracle. The little man was above them at a bound. His austerity, like an irresistible sledge-hammer, drove them lower and lower: They dwindled while he soared.

THE MINER

Those on the top say they know you, Earth—they are liars. You are my father, and the silence I work in is my mother. Only the son knows his father. We are alike—sweaty, inarticulate of soul, bending under thick knowledge. I drink and shout with my brothers when above you— Like most children we soon forget the parents of our souls. But you avidly grip us again—we pay for the little noise of life we steal.

TO AN ENEMY

I despise my friends more than you.
I would have known myself, but they stood before the mirrors
And painted on them images of the virtues I craved.
You came with sharpest chisel, scraping away the false paint.
Then I knew and detested myself, but not you:
For glimpses of you in the glasses you uncovered
Showed me the virtues whose images you destroyed.

TO A DISCARDED STEEL RAIL

Straight strength pitched into the surliness of the ditch,
A soul you have—strength has always delicate secret reasons.
Your soul is a dull question.
I do not care for your strength, but for your stiff smile at Time—
A smile which men call rust.

Gordon Bottomley

NIGHT AND MORNING SONGS

MY MOON

My moon was lit in an hour of lilies;
The apple-trees seemed older than ever.
It rose from matted trees that sever
The oats from the meadow, and woke the fillies
That reared in dew and gleamed with dew
And ran like water and shadow, and cried.
It moistened and veiled the oats yet new,
And seemed to drip long drops of the tide,
Of the mother-sea so lately left.
Feathers of flower were each bereft
Of color and stem, and floated low;
Another lily opened then
And lost a little gold dust; but when
The lime-boughs lifted there seemed to go
Some life of the moon, like breath that moves
Or parting glances that flutter and strain—
A ghost with hands the color of doves
And feet the color of rain.

ELEGIAC MOOD

From song and dream for ever gone
Are Helen, Helen of Troy,
And Cleopatra made to look upon,
And many a daring boy—
Young Faust and Sigurd and Hippolytus:
They are twice dead and we must find
Great ladies yet unblemished by the mind,
Heroes and acts not cold for us
In amber or spirits of too many words.
Ay, these are murdered by much thinking on.
I hanker even for new shapes of swords,
More different sins, and raptures not yet done.
Yet, as I wait on marvels, such a bird
As maybe Sigurd heard—
A thrush—alighting with a little run
Out-tops the daisies as it passes
And peeps bright-eyed above the grasses.

DAWN

A thrush is tapping a stone
With a snail-shell in its beak;
A small bird hangs from a cherry
Until the stem shall break.
No waking song has begun,
And yet birds chatter and hurry
And throng in the elm’s gloom
Because an owl goes home.

Rollo Britten

BIRD OF PASSION

Leave the lovely words unsaid;
For another thought is fled
From my dream-entangled mind.
Bird of passion, unenshrined,
I can never phrase thee quite—
So I speed thee on thy flight,
Unembodied thus forever,
Floating in a mist that never
May be raised. Thou art one
Of the black-winged birds that run,
With uncomprehended flight,
Unimpeded down the night.

Rupert Brooke

RETROSPECT

In your arms was still delight,
Quiet as a street at night;
And thoughts of you, I do remember,
Were green leaves in a darkened chamber,
Were dark clouds in a moonless sky.
Love, in you, went passing by,
Penetrative, remote, and rare,
Like a bird in the wide air;
And, as the bird, it left no trace
In the heaven of your face.
In your stupidity I found
The sweet hush after a sweet sound.
All about you was the light
That dims the graying end of night;
Desire was the unrisen sun,
Joy the day not yet begun,
With tree whispering to tree,
Without wind, quietly.
Wisdom slept within your hair,
And Long-suffering was there,
And, in the flowing of your dress,
Undiscerning Tenderness.
And when you thought, it seemed to me,
Infinitely, and like a sea,
About the slight world you had known
Your vast unconsciousness was thrown....
O haven without wave or tide!
Silence, in which all songs have died!
Holy book, where hearts are still!
And home at length under the hill!
O mother quiet, breasts of peace,
Where love itself would faint and cease!
O infinite deep I never knew,
I would come back, come back to you,
Find you, as a pool unstirred,
Kneel down by you, and never a word,
Lay my head, and nothing said,
In your hands, ungarlanded;
And a long watch you would keep;
And I should sleep, and I should sleep!

NINETEEN-FOURTEEN

I—PEACE

Now, God be thanked who has matched us with his hour,
And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping!
With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power,
To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping,
Glad about a world grown old and cold and weary;
Leave the sick hearts that honor could not move,
And half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary,
And all the little emptiness of love!
Oh! we, who have known shame, we have found release there,
Where there’s no ill, no grief, but sleep has mending,
Naught broken save this body, lost but breath;
Nothing to shake the laughing heart’s long peace there,
But the only agony, and that has ending;
And the worst friend and enemy is but Death.

II—SAFETY

Dear! of all happy in the hour, most blest
He who has found our hid security,
Assured in the dark tides of the world that rest,
And heard our word, “Who is so safe as we?”
We have found safety with all things undying.
The winds, and morning, tears of men and mirth,
The deep night and birds singing, and clouds flying,
And sleep, and freedom, and the autumnal earth.
We have built a house that is not for Time’s throwing.
We have gained a peace unshaken by pain for ever.
War knows no power. Safe shall be my going,
Secretly armed against all death’s endeavor;
Safe though all safety’s lost; safe where men fall;
And if these poor limbs die, safest of all.

III—THE DEAD

Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead!
There’s none of these so lonely and poor of old,
But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold.
These laid the world away; poured out the red
Sweet wine of youth; gave up the years to be
Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene
That men call age; and those who would have been
Their sons they gave, their immortality.
Blow, bugles, blow! They brought us, for our dearth,
Holiness, lacked so long, and Love, and Pain.
Honor has come back, as a king, to earth,
And paid his subjects with a royal wage;
And Nobleness walks in our ways again;
And we have come into our heritage.

IV—THE DEAD

These hearts were woven of human joys and cares,
Washed marvellously with sorrow, swift to mirth.
The years had given them kindness. Dawn was theirs,
And sunset, and the colors of the earth.
These had seen movement, and heard music; known
Slumber and waking; loved; gone proudly friended;
Felt the quick stir of wonder; sat alone;
Touched flowers and furs, and cheeks. All this is ended.
There are waters blown by changing winds to laughter
And lit by the rich skies, all day. And after,
Frost, with a gesture, stays the waves that dance
And wandering loveliness. He leaves a white
Unbroken glory, a gathered radiance,
A width, a shining peace, under the night.

V—THE SOLDIER

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England’s, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

Witter Bynner

TO CELIA

I—CONSUMMATION

There was a strangeness on your lips,
Lips that had been so sure;
You still were mine but in eclipse,
Beside me but obscure.

There was a cloud upon your heart;
For, Celia, where you lay,
Death, come to break your life apart,
Had led your love away.

Through the cold distance of your eyes
You could no longer see.
But when you died, you heard me rise
And followed suddenly.

And close beside me, looking down
As I did on the dead,
You made of time a wedding-gown,
Of space a marriage-bed.

I took, in you, death for a wife,
You married death in me,
Singing, “There is no other life,
No other God than we!”

II—DURING A CHORALE BY CESAR FRANCK

In an old chamber softly lit
We heard the Chorale played,
And where you sat, an exquisite
Image of Life and lover of it,
Death sang a serenade.

I know now, Celia, what you heard,
And why you turned and smiled.
It was the white wings of a bird
Offering flight, and you were stirred
Like an adventurous child.

Death sang: “Oh, lie upon your bier,
Uplift your countenance!”
Death bade me be your cavalier,
Called me to march and shed no tear,
But sing to you and dance.

And when you followed, lured and led
By those mysterious wings,
And when I heard that you were dead,
I could not weep. I sang instead,
As a true lover sings.

· · · · ·

Today a room is softly lit;
I hear the Chorale played.
And where you come, an exquisite
Image of Death and lover of it,
Life sings a serenade.

III—SONGS ASCENDING

Love has been sung a thousand ways—
So let it be;
The songs ascending in your praise
Through all my days
Are three.

Your cloud-white body first I sing;
Your love was heaven’s blue,
And I, a bird, flew carolling
In ring on ring
Of you.

Your nearness is the second song;
When God began to be,
And bound you strongly, right or wrong,
With his own thong,
To me.

But oh, the song, eternal, high,
That tops these two!—
You live forever, you who die,
I am not I
But you.

GRIEVE NOT FOR BEAUTY

Grieve not for the invisible, transported brow
On which like leaves the dark hair grew,
Nor for the lips of laughter that are now
Laughing inaudibly in sun and dew,
Nor for those limbs that, fallen low
And seeming faint and slow,
Shall yet pursue
More ways of swiftness than the swallow dips
Among ... and find more winds than ever blew
The straining sails of unimpeded ships!
Mourn not!—yield only happy tears
To deeper beauty than appears!

Joseph Campbell

AT HARVEST

Earth travails,
Like a woman come to her time.

The swaying corn-haulms
In the heavy places of the field
Cry to be gathered.
Apples redden, and drop from their rods.
Out of their sheath of prickly leaves
The marrows creep, fat and white.
The blue pallor of ripeness
Comes on the fruit of the vine-branch.

Fecund and still fecund
After æons of bearing:
Not old, not dry, not wearied out;
But fresh as when the unseen Right Hand
First moved on Brí,
And the candle of day was set,
And dew fell from the stars’ feet,
And cloths of greenness covered thee.

Let me kiss thy breasts:
I am thy son and lover.

Womb-fellow am I of the sunburnt oat,
Friendly gossip of the mearings;
Womb-fellow of the dark and sweet-scented apple;
Womb-fellow of the gourd and of the grape:
Like begotten, like born.

And yet without a lover’s knowledge
Of thy secrets
I would walk the ridges of the hills,
Kindless and desolate.

What were the storm-driven moon to me,
Seed of another father?
What the overflowing
Of the well of dawn?
What the hollow,
Red with rowan fire?
What the king-fern?
What the belled heath?
What the drum of grouse’s wing,
Or glint of spar,
Caught from the pit
Of a deserted quarry?

Let me kiss thy breasts:
I am thy son and lover.

ON WAKING

Sleep, gray brother of death,
Has touched me,
And passed on.

I arise, facing the east—
Pearl-doored sanctuary
From which light,
Hand-linked with dew and fire,
Dances.

Hail, essence, hail!
Fill the windows of my soul
With beauty:
Pierce and renew my bones:
Pour knowledge into my heart
As wine.

Cualann is bright before thee.
Its rocks melt and swim:
The secret they have kept
From the ancient nights of darkness
Flies like a bird.

What mourns?
Cualann’s secret flying,
A lost voice
In endless fields.
What rejoices?
My voice lifted praising thee.

Praise! Praise! Praise!
Praise out of trumpets, whose brass
Is the unyoked strength of bulls;
Praise upon harps, whose strings
Are the light movements of birds;
Praise of leaf, praise of blossom,
Praise of the red-fibred clay;
Praise of grass,
Fire-woven veil of the temple;
Praise of the shapes of clouds;
Praise of the shadows of wells;
Praise of worms, of fetal things,
And of the things in time’s thought
Not yet begotten.
To thee, queller of sleep,
Looser of the snare of death.

THE OLD WOMAN

As a white candle
In a holy place,
So is the beauty
Of an agèd face.

As the spent radiance
Of the winter sun,
So is a woman
With her travail done.

Her brood gone from her,
And her thoughts as still
As the waters
Under a ruined mill.

Nancy Campbell

THE APPLE-TREE

I saw the archangels in my apple-tree last night,
I saw them like great birds in the starlight—
Purple and burning blue, crimson and shining white.

And each to each they tossed an apple to and fro,
And once I heard their laughter gay and low;
And yet I felt no wonder that it should be so.

But when the apple came one time to Michael’s lap
I heard him say: “The mysteries that enwrap
The earth and fill the heavens can be read here, mayhap.”

Then Gabriel spoke: “I praise the deed, the hidden thing.”
“The beauty of the blossom of the spring
I praise,” cried Raphael. Uriel: “The wise leaves I sing.”

And Michael: “I will praise the fruit, perfected, round,
Full of the love of God, herein being bound
His mercies gathered from the sun and rain and ground.”

So sang they till a small wind through the branches stirred,
And spoke of coming dawn; and at its word
Each fled away to heaven, winged like a bird.

THE MONKEY

I saw you hunched and shivering on the stones,
The bleak wind piercing to your fragile bones,
Your shabby scarlet all inadequate:
A little ape that had such human eyes
They seemed to hide behind their miseries—
Their dumb and hopeless bowing down to fate—
Some puzzled wonder. Was your monkey soul
Sickening with memories of gorgeous days,
Of tropic playfellows and forest ways,
Where, agile, you could swing from bole to bole
In an enchanted twilight with great flowers
For stars; or on a bough the long night hours
Sit out in rows, and chatter at the moon?
Shuffling you went, your tiny chilly hand
Outstretched for what you did not understand;
Your puckered mournful face begging a boon
That but enslaved you more. They who passed by
Saw nothing sorrowful; gave laugh or stare,
Unheeding that the little antic there
Played in the gutter such a tragedy.

Skipwith Cannéll

THE RED BRIDGE

The arches of the red bridge
Are stronger than ever:
The arches of the scarlet bridge
Are of rough, bleak stone.

(Why should such massive arches be the span
From cloud to tenuous cloud?)

Let us not seek omens in the guts
Of newly slain fowls;
Leaving such play to the children,
Let us pluck wild swans
From under the moon;
Or, challenging strong, terrible men,
Let us slay them and seek truth
In their smoking entrails.

Let us fling runners
Across the red bridge,
Deep-lunged runners who will return to us
With tidings of the far countries
And the strange seas!

There be many terrible men
Going out upon the bridge,
Through the little door
That is by the steps from the river.

THE KING

Seven full-paunched eunuchs came to me,
Bearing before them upon a silver shield
The secrets of my enemy.

As they crossed my threshold to stand,
With stately and hypocritical gesture
In a row before me,
One stumbled.
The dull, incurious eyes of the others
Blazed into no laughter,
Only a haggard malice
At the discomfiture
Of their companion.

Why should such _Things_ have power
Not spoken for in the rules of men?

I would not receive them.
With my head covered I motioned them
To go forth from my presence.

Where shall I find an enemy
Worthy of me as him they defaced?

As they left me,
Bearing with them
Lewd shield and scarlet crown,
One paused upon the threshold,
Insolent,
To sniff a flower.
Even him I permitted to go forth
Safely.

· · · · ·

Therefore
I have renounced my kingdom;
In a little bronze boat I have set sail
Out
Upon the sea.

There is no land, and the sea
Is black like the cypresses waiting
At midnight in the place of tombs;
Is black like the pool of ink
In the palm of a soothsayer.

My boat
Fears the white-lipped waves
That snatch at her,
Hungrily,
Furtively,
As they steal past like cats
Into the night:
And beneath me, in their hidden places,
The great fishes talk of me
In a tongue I have forgotten.

Willa Sibert Cather

THE PALATINE

_In the “Dark Ages”_

“Have you been with the King to Rome,
Brother, big brother?”
“I’ve been there and I’ve come home.
Back to your play, little brother.”

“Oh, how high is Cæsar’s house,
Brother, big brother?”
“Goats about the doorways browse;
Night-hawks nest in the burnt roof-tree.
Home of the wild bird and home of the bee,
A thousand chambers of marble lie
Wide to the sun and the wind and the sky.
Poppies we find amongst our wheat
Grow on Cæsar’s banquet seat.
Cattle crop and neat-herds drowse
On the floors of Cæsar’s house.”

“But what has become of Cæsar’s gold,
Brother, big brother?”
“The times are bad and the world is old—
Who knows the where of the Cæsar’s gold?
Night comes black o’er the Cæsar’s hill;
The wells are deep and the tales are ill;
Fireflies gleam in the damp and mold—
All that is left of the Cæsar’s gold.
Back to your play, little brother.”

“What has become of the Cæsar’s men,
Brother, big brother?”
“Dogs in the kennel and wolf in the den
Howl for the fate of the Cæsar’s men,
Slain in Asia, slain in Gaul,
By Dacian border and Persian wall.
Rhineland orchard and Danube fen
Fatten their roots on Cæsar’s men.”

“Why is the world so sad and wide,
Brother, big brother?”
“Saxon boys by their fields that bide
Need not know if the world is wide.
Climb no mountain but Shere-end Hill,
Cross no water but goes to mill.
Ox in the stable and cow in the byre,
Smell of the wood-smoke and sleep by the fire;
Sun-up in seed-time—a likely lad
Hurts not his head that the world is sad.
Back to your play, little brother.”

SPANISH JOHNNY

The old West, the old time,
The old wind singing through
The red, red grass a thousand miles—
And, Spanish Johnny, you!
He’d sit beside the water ditch
When all his herd was in,
And never mind a child, but sing
To his mandolin.

The big stars, the blue night,
The moon-enchanted lane;
The olive man who never spoke,
But sang the songs of Spain.
His speech with men was wicked talk—
To hear it was a sin;
But those were golden things he said
To his mandolin.

The gold songs, the gold stars,
The word so golden then;
And the hand so tender to a child—
Had killed so many men.
He died a hard death long ago
Before the Road came in—
The night before he swung, he sang
To his mandolin.

Padraic Colum

POLONIUS AND THE BALLAD SINGERS

A gaunt-built woman and her son-in-law—
A broad-faced fellow, with such flesh as shows
Nothing but easy nature—and his wife,
The woman’s daughter, who spills all her talk
Out of a wide mouth, but who has eyes as gray
As Connemara, where the mountain-ash
Shows berries red indeed: they enter now—
Our country singers!

“Sing, my good woman, sing us some romance
That has been round your chimney-nooks so long
’Tis nearly native; something blown here
And since made racy—like yon tree, I might say,
Native by influence if not by species,
Shaped by our winds. You understand, I think?”

“I’ll sing the song, sir.”

To-night you see my face—
Maybe nevermore you’ll gaze
On the one that for you left his friends and kin;
For by the hard commands
Of the lord that rules these lands
On a ship I’ll be borne from Cruckaunfinn!

Oh, you know your beauty bright
Has made him think delight
More than from any fair one he will gain;
Oh, you know that all his will
Strains and strives around you till
As the hawk upon his hand you are as tame!

Then she to him replied:
I’ll no longer you deny,
And I’ll let you have the pleasure of my charms;
For to-night I’ll be your bride,
And whatever may betide
It’s we will lie in one another’s arms!

“You should not sing
With body doubled up and face aside—
There is a climax here—‘It’s we will lie’—
Hem—passionate! And what does your daughter sing?”

“A song I like when I do climb bare hills—
’Tis all about a hawk.”

No bird that sits on rock or bough
Has such a front as thine;
No king that has made war his trade
Such conquest in his eyne!
I mark thee rock-like on the rock
Where none can see a shape.
I climb, but thou dost climb with wings,
And like a wish escape,
She said—
And like a wish escape!

No maid that kissed his bonny mouth
Of another mouth was glad;
Such pride was in our chieftain’s eyes,
Such countenance he had!
But since they made him fly the rocks,
Thou, creature, art my quest.
Then lift me with thy steady eyes.
If then to tear my breast,
She said—
If then to tear my breast!

“The songs they have
Are the last relics of the feudal world:
Women will keep them—byzants, doubloons,
When men will take up songs that are as new
As dollar bills. What song have you, young man?”

“A song my father had, sir. It was sent him
From across the sea, and there was a letter with it,
Asking my father to put it to a tune
And sing it all roads. He did that, in troth,
And five pounds of tobacco were sent with the song
To fore-reward him. I’ll sing it for you now—
_The Baltimore Exile_.”

The house I was bred in—ah, does it remain?
Low walls and loose thatch standing lone in the rain,
With the clay of the walls coming through with its stain,
Like the blackbird’s left nest in the briar!

Does a child there give heed to the song of the lark,
As it lifts and it drops till the fall of the dark,
When the heavy-foot kine trudge home from the paurk,
Or do none but the red-shank now listen?

The sloe-bush, I know, grows close to the well,
And its long-lasting blossoms are there, I can tell,
When the kid that was yeaned when the first ones befell
Can jump to the ditch that they grow on!

But there’s silence on all. Then do none ever pass
On the way to the fair or the pattern or mass?
Do the gray-coated lads drive the ball through the grass
And speed to the sweep of the hurl?

O youths of my land! Then will no Bolivar
Ever muster your ranks for delivering war?
Will your hopes become fixed and beam like a star?
Will they pass like the mists from your fields?

The swan and the swallows, the cuckoo and crake,
May visit my land and find hillside and lake.
And I send my song. I’ll not see her awake—
I’m too old a bird to uncage now!

“Silver’s but lead in exchange for songs,
But take it and spend it.”

“We will. And may we meet your honor’s like
Every day’s end.”

“A tune is more lasting than the voice of the birds.”

“A song is more lasting than the riches of the world.”

NOTE. _The last stanza in the first ballad sung is a fragment of an old country song; the rest of it, with the other two ballads, is invented. But they are all in the convention of songs still sung by strolling ballad-singers. I have written the common word for pasture-field “paurk” so as not to give a wrong association: it might be written “park,” as Burns, using the word in the same sense, writes it. “Paurk” or “park” is Gaelic for pasture field, and is always used in Irish country speech in that sense. The two last lines spoken are translations of a Gaelic phrase which has been used by Dr. Douglas Hyde as a motto for his collection of Connacht love songs. P. C._

THE SEA BIRD TO THE WAVE

On and on,
O white brother!
Thunder does not daunt thee!
How thou movest!
By thine impulse—
With no wing!
Fairest thing
The wide sea shows me!
On and on
O white brother!
Art thou gone!

OLD MEN COMPLAINING

_First Old Man_
_He threw his crutched stick down: there came
Into his face the anger flame,
And he spoke viciously of one
Who thwarted him—his son’s son.
He turned his head away._—“I hate
Absurdity of language, prate
From growing fellows. We’d not stay
About the house the whole of a day
When we were young,
Keeping no job and giving tongue!

“Not us in troth! We would not come
For bit or sup, but stay from home
If we gave answers, or we’d creep
Back to the house, and in we’d peep
Just like a corncrake.

“My grandson and his comrades take
A piece of coal from you, from me
A log, or sod of turf, maybe;
And in some empty place they’ll light
A fire, and stay there all night,
A wisp of lads! Now understand
The blades of grass under my hand
Would be destroyed by company!
There’s no good company: we go
With what is lowest to the low!
He stays up late, and how can he
Rise early? Sure he lags in bed,
And she is worn to a thread
With calling him—his grandmother.
She’s an old woman, and she must make
Stir when the birds are half awake
In dread he’d lose this job like the other!”

_Second Old Man_
“They brought yon fellow over here,
And set him up for an overseer:
Though men from work are turned away
That thick-necked fellow draws full pay—
Three pounds a week.... They let burn down
The timber yard behind the town
Where work was good; though firemen stand
In boots and brasses big and grand
The crow of a cock away from the place.
And with the yard they let burn too
The clock in the tower, the clock I knew
As well as I know the look in my face.”

_Third Old Man_
“The fellow you spoke of has broken his bounds—
He came to skulk inside of these grounds:
Behind the bushes he lay down
And stretched full hours in the sun.
He rises now, and like a crane
He looks abroad. He’s off again:
Three pounds a week, and still he owes
Money in every street he goes,
Hundreds of pounds where we’d not get
The second shilling of a debt.”

_First Old Man_
“Old age has every impediment
Vexation and discontent;
The rich have more than we: for bit
The cut of bread, and over it
The scrape of hog’s lard, and for sup
Warm water in a cup.
But different sorts of feeding breaks
The body more than fasting does
With pains and aches.

“I’m not too badly off, for I
Have pipe and tobacco, a place to lie,
A nook to myself; but from my hand
Is taken the strength to back command—
I’m broken, and there’s gone from me
The privilege of authority.”

_I heard them speak—
The old men heavy on the sod,
Letting their angers come
Between them and the thought of God._

Grace Hazard Conkling

REFUGEES

_Belgium—1914_

“Mother, the poplars cross the moon;
The road runs on, so white and far,
We shall not reach the city soon:
Oh, tell me where we are!”