Chapter III

We name it beauty--that permitted part,
The love-elected apotheosis
Of Nature, which the god within the heart,
Just touching, makes immortal, but by this--
A star, a rose, the memory of a kiss.

PROEM TO “UNDERTONES”

Long are the days, and overlong the nights.
The weary hours are a heavy chain
Upon the feet of all Earth’s dear delights,
Holding them ever prisoners to pain.
What shall beguile me to believe again
In hope, that Faith within her parable writes
Of life, Care reads with eyes whose teardrops stain?
Shall such assist me to subdue the heights?
Long is the night, and overlong the day.--
The burden of all being!--Is it worse
Or better, lo! that they who toil and pray
May win no more than they who toil and curse
A little sleep, a little love, ah me!
And the slow weight up the soul’s Calvary!

UNQUALIFIED

Not his the part to win the goal,
The flaming goal that flies before,
Into whose course the apples roll
Of self that stay the feet the more.

Beyond himself he shall not win
Whose aim is as a driven dust,
That his own soul must wander in,
Seeing no farther than his lust.

UNENCOURAGED ASPIRATION

Mine is the part of no companion hand
Of help, except my shadow’s silent self:
A moonlight traveller in Fancy’s land
Of leering gnome and hollow-laughing elf:

Whose forests deepen and whose moon goes down,
When night’s blind shadow shall usurp my own;
And, ’midst the dust and wreck of some old town,
The City of Dreams, I grope and fall alone.

INTERPRETED

What magic shall solve us the secret
Of beauty that’s born for an hour?
That gleams, in the flight of an egret,
Or swoons, in the scent of a flower,
With death for a dower?

What leaps in the bosk but a satyr?
What pipes in the wind but a faun?
What blooms in the waters that scatter
But limbs of a nymph that is gone,
When we walk in the dawn?

What sings on the hills but a fairy?
Or sighs in the fields but a sprite?
What breathes through the leaves but the airy
Dim spirits of shadow and light,
When we walk in the night?

Behold how the world-heart is eager
To draw us and hold us and claim!
Through truths of the dreams that beleaguer
Her soul she makes ours the same,
And death but a name.

SECOND SIGHT

They lean their faces to me through
Green windows of the woods;
Their cool throats sweet with honey-dew
Beneath their leafy hoods--
No dream they dream but hath been true
Here in the solitudes.

Star trillium, in the underbrush,
In whom Spring bares her face;
Sun eglantine, that breathes the blush
Of Summer’s quiet grace;
Moon mallow, in whom lives the hush
Of Autumn’s tragic pace.

This one hath heard the dryad’s sighs
Behind the covering bark;
That one hath felt the satyr’s eyes
Gleam through the bosky dark;
And one hath seen the Naiad rise
In waters all a-spark.

I bend my soul unto them, stilled
In worship man hath lost:--
The old-world myths that science killed
Are living things almost
To me through these whose forms are filled
With Beauty’s pagan ghost.

And with new eyes I seem to see
The world these live within,--
A shuttered world of mystery,
Where unreal forms begin
Real forms of ideality
That have no unreal kin.

SUCCESS

How some succeed, who have least need,
In that they make no effort for!
And pluck, where others pluck a weed,
The burning blossom of a star,
Grown from no earthly seed.

For some shall reap who never sow;
And some shall toil and ne’er attain--
What boots it, in ourselves to know
Such labor here is not in vain,
When we still see it so!

THE HOUSE OF SONG

Unto the portal of the House of Song,
Symbols of wrong and emblems of unrest,
And mottoes of despair and envious jest,
And stony masks of scorn and hate belong.

Who enters here shall feel his soul denied
All welcome; where the chiselled form of Love
Stares down in marble on the shrine above
The tomb of Beauty where he dreamed and died.

Who enters here shall know no poppy flowers
Of Rest, or harp-tones of serene Content;
Only sad ghosts of music and of scent
Shall mock his mind with their remembered powers.

Here must he wait till striving Patience carves
His name upon the century-storied floor;
His heart’s blood staining one dim pane the more
In Fame’s high casement while he sings and starves.

FLOWERS

Oh, why for us the blighted bloom,
The blossom that lies withering!--
Why has He, of Life’s changeless loom,
Created here no changeless thing?

Where grows the rose of fadeless Grace?
Through which the spirit manifests
The fact of an immortal place,
The dream on which religion rests.

Where buds the lily of our Faith?
That grows for us in unknown wise,
Out of the barren dust of death,
The pregnant bloom of Paradise.

In Heaven! so near that flowers know!
That flowers see how near!--and thus
Reflect the knowledge here below
Of love and life unknown to us.

DEAD SEA FRUIT

All things have power to hold us back.
Our very hopes build up a wall
Of doubt, whose shadow stretches black
O’er all.

The dreams, that helped us once, become
Dread disappointments, that oppose
Dead eyes to ours, and lips made dumb
With woes.

The thoughts that opened doors before
Within the mind’s house, hide away;
Discouragement hath locked the door
For aye.

Come, loss, more frequently than gain!
And failure than success! until
The spirit’s struggle to attain
Is still!

REQUIEM

I

No more for him, where hills look down,
Shall Morning crown
Her rainy brow with blossom bands!--
The Morning Hours, whose rosy hands
Drop wild-flowers of the breaking skies
Upon the sod ’neath which he lies.--
No more for him! No more! no more!

II

No more for him, where waters sleep,
Shall Evening heap
The long gold of the perfect days!
The Eventide, whose warm hand lays
Great poppies of the afterglow
Upon the turf he rests below.--
No more for him! No more! no more!

III

No more for him, where woodlands loom,
Shall Midnight bloom
The star-flow’red acres of the blue!
The Midnight Hours, whose dim hands strew
Dead leaves of darkness, hushed and deep,
Upon the grave where he doth sleep.--
No more for him! No more! no more!