Chapter 4

You had best be very cautious how you say, I love you. If you accent the I, she has an opening for, who are you to strut on ahead and hint there aren't others, aren't, weren't and won't be? Blurt out the love, she has suspicion for, so?-- why not hitherto?-- what brings you bragging now?-- and what'll it be hereafter? Defer to the you, she has certitude for, me? thanks, lad!-- but why argue about it?-- or fancy I'm lonesome?-- do I look as though you had to? And having determined how you'll say it, you had next best ascertain whom it is that you say it to. That you're sure she's the one, that there'll never be another, never was one before. And having determined whom and having learned how, when you bring these together, inform the far of the intimate-- like a bubble on a pond, emerging from below, round wonderment completed by the first sight of the sky-- what good will it do, if she shouldn't, I love you?-- a bubble's but a bubble once, a bubble grows to die.

DIRGE

Death alone has sympathy for weariness: understanding of the ways of mathematics: of the struggle against giving up what was given: the plus one minus one of nitrogen for oxygen: and the unequal odds, you a cell against the universe, a breath or two against all time: Death alone takes what is left without protest, criticism or a demand for more than one can give who can give no more than was given: doesn't even ask, but accepts it as it is, without examination, valuation, or comparison.

COLOPHON

(_For W. W._)

The Occident and the Orient, posterior and posterior, sitting tight, holding fast the culture dumped by them on to primitive America, Atlantic to Pacific, were monumental colophons a disorderly country fellow, vulgar Long Islander. not overfond of the stench choking native respiration, poked down off the shelf with the aid of some mere blades of grass; and deliberately climbing up, brazenly usurping one end of the new America, now waves his spears aloft and shouts down valleys, across plains, over mountains, into heights: Come, what man of you dares climb the other?

SARA TEASDALE

WISDOM

It was a night of early spring, The winter-sleep was scarcely broken; Around us shadows and the wind Listened for what was never spoken.

Though half a score of years are gone, Spring comes as sharply now as then-- But if we had it all to do It would be done the same again.

It was a spring that never came; But we have lived enough to know That what we never have, remains; It is the things we have that go.

PLACES

I

~Twilight~

(_Tucson_)

Aloof as aged kings, Wearing like them the purple, The mountains ring the mesa Crowned with a dusky light; Many a time I watched That coming-on of darkness Till stars burned through the heavens Intolerably bright.

It was not long I lived there, But I became a woman Under those vehement stars, For it was there I heard For the first time my spirit Forging an iron rule for me, As though with slow cold hammers Beating out word by word:

"Take love when love is given, But never think to find it A sure escape from sorrow Or a complete repose; Only yourself can heal you, Only yourself can lead you Up the hard road to heaven That ends where no one knows."

II

Full Moon

(_Santa Barbara_)

I listened, there was not a sound to hear In the great rain of moonlight pouring down, The eucalyptus trees were carved in silver, And a light mist of silver lulled the town.

I saw far off the gray Pacific bearing A broad white disk of flame, And on the garden-walk a snail beside me Tracing in crystal the slow way he came.

III

Winter Sun

(_Lenox_)

There was a bush with scarlet berries, And there were hemlocks heaped with snow, With a sound like surf on long sea-beaches They took the wind and let it go.

The hills were shining in their samite, Fold after fold they flowed away; "Let come what may," your eyes were saying, "At least we two have had to-day."

IV

Evening

(_Nahant_)

There was an evening when the sky was clear, Ineffably translucent in its blue; The tide was falling, and the sea withdrew In hushed and happy music from the sheer Shadowy granite of the cliffs; and fear Of what life may be, and what death can do, Fell from us like steel armor, and we knew The beauty of the Law that holds us here.

It was as though we saw the Secret Will, It was as though we floated and were free; In the south-west a planet shone serenely, And the high moon, most reticent and queenly, Seeing the earth had darkened and grown still, Misted with light the meadows of the sea.

WORDS FOR AN OLD AIR

Your heart is bound tightly, let Beauty beware; It is not hers to set Free from the snare.

Tell her a bleeding hand Bound it and tied it; Tell her the knot will stand Though she deride it.

One who withheld so long All that you yearned to take, Has made a snare too strong For Beauty's self to break.

THOSE WHO LOVE

Those who love the most Do not talk of their love; Francesca, Guenevere, Dierdre, Iseult, Heloise In the fragrant gardens of heaven Are silent, or speak, if at all, Of fragile, inconsequent things.

And a woman I used to know Who loved one man from her youth, Against the strength of the fates Fighting in lonely pride, Never spoke of this thing, But hearing his name by chance, A light would pass over her face.

TWO SONGS FOR SOLITUDE

I

~The Crystal Gazer~

I shall gather myself into myself again, I shall take my scattered selves and make them one, I shall fuse them into a polished crystal ball Where I can see the moon and the flashing sun.

I shall sit like a sibyl, hour after hour intent, Watching the future come and the present go-- And the little shifting pictures of people rushing In tiny self-importance to and fro.

II

~The Solitary~

My heart has grown rich with the passing of years, I have less need now than when I was young To share myself with every comer, Or shape my thoughts into words with my tongue.

It is one to me that they come or go If I have myself and the drive of my will, And strength to climb on a summer night And watch the stars swarm over the hill.

Let them think I love them more than I do, Let them think I care, though I go alone, If it lifts their pride, what is it to me Who am self-complete as a flower or a stone?

LOUIS UNTERMEYER

MONOLOG FROM A MATTRESS

_Heinrich Heine ætat 56, loquitur:_

Can that be you, _la mouche?_ Wait till I lift This palsied eye-lid and make sure.... Ah, true. Come in, dear fly, and pardon my delay In thus existing; I can promise you Next time you come you'll find no dying poet-- Without sufficient spleen to see me through, The joke becomes too tedious a jest. I am afraid my mind is dull to-day; I have that--something--heavier on my chest And then, you see, I've been exchanging thoughts With Doctor Franz. He talked of Kant and Hegel As though he'd nursed them both through whooping cough And, as he left, he let his finger shake Too playfully, as though to say, "Now off With that long face--you've years and years to live." I think he thinks so. But, for Heaven's sake, Don't credit it--and never tell Mathilde. Poor dear, she has enough to bear already....

This _was_ a month! During my lonely weeks One person actually climbed the stairs To seek a cripple. It was Berlioz-- But Berlioz always was original. Meissner was also here; he caught me unawares, Scribbling to my old mother. "What!" he cried, "Is the old lady of the _Dammthor_ still alive? And do you write her still?" "Each month or so." "And is she not unhappy then, to find How wretched you must be?" "How can she know? You see," I laughed, "she thinks I am as well As when she saw me last. She is too blind To read the papers--some one else must tell What's in my letters, merely signed by me. Thus she is happy. For the rest-- That any son should be as sick as I, No mother could believe." _Ja_, so it goes.

Come here, my lotus-flower. It is best I drop the mask to-day; the half-cracked shield Of mockery calls for younger hands to wield. Laugh--or I'll hug it closer to my breast. So ... I can be as mawkish as I choose And give my thoughts an airing, let them loose For one last rambling stroll before--Now look! Why tears? You never heard me say "the end." Before ... before I clap them in a book And so get rid of them once and for all. This is their holiday--we'll let them run-- Some have escaped already. There goes one ... What, I have often mused, did Goethe mean? So many years ago at Weimar, Goethe said "Heine has all the poet's gifts but love." Good God! But that is all I ever had. More than enough! So much of love to give That no one gave me any in return. And so I flashed and snapped in my own fires Until I stood, with nothing left to burn, A twisted trunk, in chilly isolation. _Ein Fichtenbaum steht einsam_--you recall? I was that Northern tree and, in the South, Amalia.... So I turned to scornful cries, Hot iron songs to save the rest of me; Plunging the brand in my own misery. Crouching behind my pointed wall of words, Ramparts I built of moons and loreleys, Enchanted roses, sphinxes, love-sick birds, Giants, dead lads who left their graves to dance, Fairies and phoenixes and friendly gods-- A curious frieze, half Renaissance, half Greek, Behind which, in revulsion of romance, I lay and laughed--and wept--till I was weak. Words were my shelter, words my one escape, Words were my weapons against everything. Was I not once the son of Revolution? Give me the lyre, I said, and let me sing My song of battle: Words like flaming stars Shot down with power to burn the palaces; Words like bright javelins to fly with fierce Hate of the oily Philistines and glide Through all the seven heavens till they pierce The pious hypocrites who dare to creep Into the Holy Places. "Then," I cried, "I am a fire to rend and roar and leap; I am all joy and song, all sword and flame!" Ha--you observe me passionate. I aim To curb these wild emotions lest they soar Or drive against my will. (So I have said These many years--and still they are not tame.) Scraps of a song keep rumbling in my head ... Listen--you never heard me sing before.

When a false world betrays your trust And stamps upon your fire, When what seemed blood is only rust, Take up the lyre!

How quickly the heroic mood Responds to its own ringing; The scornful heart, the angry blood Leap upward, singing!

Ah, that was how it used to be. But now, _Du schöner Todesengel_, it is odd How more than calm I am. Franz said it shows Power of religion, and it does, perhaps-- Religion or morphine or poultices--God knows. I sometimes have a sentimental lapse And long for saviours and a physical God. When health is all used up, when money goes, When courage cracks and leaves a shattered will, Then Christianity begins. For a sick Jew, It is a very good religion ... Still, I fear that I will die as I have lived, A long-nosed heathen playing with his scars, A pagan killed by weltschmerz ... I remember, Once when I stood with Hegel at a window, I, being full of bubbling youth and coffee, Spoke in symbolic tropes about the stars. Something I said about "those high Abodes of all the blest" provoked his temper. "Abodes? The stars?" He froze me with a sneer, "A light eruption on the firmament." "But," cried romantic I, "is there no sphere Where virtue is rewarded when we die?" And Hegel mocked, "A very pleasant whim. So you demand a bonus since you spent One lifetime and refrained from poisoning Your testy grandmother!" ... How much of him Remains in me--even when I am caught In dreams of death and immortality.

To be eternal--what a brilliant thought! It must have been conceived and coddled first By some old shopkeeper in Nuremberg, His slippers warm, his children amply nursed, Who, with his lighted meerschaum in his hand, His nightcap on his head, one summer night Sat drowsing at his door. And mused, how grand If all of this could last beyond a doubt-- This placid moon, this plump _gemüthlichkeit_; Pipe, breath and summer never going out-- To vegetate through all eternity ... But no such everlastingness for me! God, if he can, keep me from such a blight.

_Death, it is but the long, cool night, And Life's a dull and sultry day. It darkens; I grow sleepy; I am weary of the light._

_Over my bed a strange tree gleams And there a nightingale is loud. She sings of love, love only ... I hear it, even in dreams._

My Mouche, the other day as I lay here, Slightly propped up upon this mattress-grave In which I've been interred these few eight years, I saw a dog, a little pampered slave, Running about and barking. I would have given Heaven could I have been that dog; to thrive Like him, so senseless--and so much alive! And once I called myself a blithe Hellene, Who am too much in love with life to live. (The shrug is pure Hebraic) ... For what I've been, A lenient Lord will tax me--and forgive. _Dieu me pardonnera--c'est son metier._ But this is jesting. There are other scandals You haven't heard ... Can it be dusk so soon? Or is this deeper darkness ...? Is that you, Mother? How did you come? Where are the candles?... _Over my bed a strange tree gleams_--half filled With stars and birds whose white notes glimmer through Its seven branches now that all is stilled. What? Friday night again and all my songs Forgotten? Wait ... I still can sing-- _Sh'ma Yisroel Adonai Elohenu, Adonai Echod ..._ Mouche--Mathilde!...

WATERS OF BABYLON

What presses about us here in the evening As you open a window and stare at a stone-gray sky, And the streets give back the jangle of meaningless movement That is tired of life and almost too tired to die.

Night comes on, and even the night is wounded; There, on its breast, it carries a curved, white scar. What will you find out there that is not torn and anguished? Can God be less distressed than the least of His creatures are?

Below are the blatant lights in a huddled squalor; Above are futile fires in freezing space. What can they give that you should look to them for compassion Though you bare your heart and lift an imploring face?

They have seen, by countless waters and windows, The women of your race facing a stony sky; They have heard, for thousands of years, the voices of women Asking them: "Why ...?"

Let the night be; it has neither knowledge nor pity. One thing alone can hope to answer your fear; It is that which struggles and blinds us and burns between us.... Let the night be. Close the window, belovèd.... Come here.

THE FLAMING CIRCLE

Though for fifteen years you have chaffed me across the table, Slept in my arms and fingered my plunging heart, I scarcely know you; we have not known each other. For all the fierce and casual contacts, something keeps us apart.

Are you struggling, perhaps, in a world that I see only dimly, Except as it sweeps toward the star on which I stand alone? Are we swung like two planets, compelled in our separate orbits, Yet held in a flaming circle far greater than our own?

Last night we were single, a radiant core of completion, Surrounded by flames that embraced us but left no burns, To-day we are only ourselves; we have plans and pretensions; We move in dividing streets with our small and different concerns.

Merging and rending, we wait for the miracle. Meanwhile The fire runs deeper, consuming these selves in its growth. Can this be the mystical marriage--this clash and communion; This pain of possession that frees and encircles us both?

PORTRAIT OF A MACHINE

What nudity is beautiful as this Obedient monster purring at its toil; These naked iron muscles dripping oil And the sure-fingered rods that never miss. This long and shining flank of metal is Magic that greasy labor cannot spoil; While this vast engine that could rend the soil Conceals its fury with a gentle hiss.

It does not vent its loathing, does not turn Upon its makers with destroying hate. It bears a deeper malice; lives to earn Its master's bread and laughs to see this great Lord of the earth, who rules but cannot learn, Become the slave of what his slaves create.

ROAST LEVIATHAN

"_Old Jews!_" Well, David, aren't we? What news is that to make you see so red, To swear and almost tear your beard in half? Jeered at? Well, let them laugh. You can laugh longer when you're dead.

What? Are you still too blind to see? Have you forgot your Midrash!... They were right, The little _goyim_, with their angry stones. You should be buried in the desert out of sight And not a dog should howl miscarried moans Over your foul bones....

Have you forgotten what is promised us, Because of stinking days and rotting nights? Eternal feasting, drinking, blazing lights With endless leisure, periods of play! Supernal pleasures, myriads of gay Discussions, great debates with prophet-kings! And rings of riddling scholars all surrounding God who sits in the very middle, expounding The Torah.... _Now_ your dull eyes glisten! Listen:

It is the final Day. A blast of Gabriel's horn has torn away The last haze from our eyes, and we can see Past the three hundred skies and gaze upon The Ineffable Name engraved deep in the sun. Now one by one, the pious and the just Are seated by us, radiantly risen From their dull prison in the dust. And then the festival begins! A sudden music spins great webs of sound Spanning the ground, the stars and their companions; While from the cliffs and cañons of blue air, Prayers of all colors, cries of exultation Rise into choruses of singing gold. And at the height of this bright consecration, The whole Creation's rolled before us. The seven burning heavens unfold.... We see the first (the only one we know) Dispersed and, shining through, The other six declining: Those that hold The stars and moons, together with all those Containing rain and fire and sullen weather; Cellars of dew-fall higher than the brim; Huge arsenals with centuries of snows; Infinite rows of storms and swarms of seraphim....

* * * * *

Divided now are winds and waters. Sea and land, Tohu and Bohu, light and darkness, stand Upright on either hand. And down this terrible aisle, While heaven's ranges roar aghast, Pours a vast file of strange and hidden things: Forbidden monsters, crocodiles with wings And perfumed flesh that sings and glows With more fresh colors than the rainbow knows.... The _reëm_, those great beasts with eighteen horns, Who mate but once in seventy years and die In their own tears which flow ten stadia high. The _shamir_, made by God on the sixth morn, No longer than a grain of barley corn But stronger than the bull of Bashan and so hard It cuts through diamonds. Meshed and starred With precious stones, there struts the shattering _ziz_ Whose groans are wrinkled thunder.... For thrice three hundred years the full parade Files past, a cavalcade of fear and wonder. And then the vast aisle clears.

Now comes our constantly increased reward. The Lord commands that monstrous beast, Leviathan, to be our feast. What cheers ascend from horde on ravenous horde! One hears the towering creature rend the seas, Frustrated, cowering, and his pleas ignored. In vain his great, belated tears are poured-- For this he was created, kept and nursed. Cries burst from all the millions that attend: _"Ascend, Leviathan, it is the end! We hunger and we thirst! Ascend!" ..._

Observe him first, my friend.

_God's deathless plaything rolls an eye Five hundred thousand cubits high. The smallest scale upon his tail Could hide six dolphins and a whale. His nostrils breathe--and on the spot The churning waves turn seething hot. If he be hungry, one huge fin Drives seven thousand fishes in; And when he drinks what he may need, The rivers of the earth recede. Yet he is more than huge and strong-- Twelve brilliant colors play along His sides until, compared to him, The naked, burning sun seems dim. New scintillating rays extend Through endless singing space and rise Into an ecstasy that cries: "Ascend, Leviathan, ascend!"_

God now commands the multi-colored bands Of angels to intrude and slay the beast That His good sons may have a feast of food. But as they come, Leviathan sneezes twice ... And, numb with sudden pangs, each arm hangs slack. Black terror seizes them; blood freezes into ice And every angel flees from the attack! God, with a look that spells eternal law, Compels them back. But, though they fight and smite him tail and jaw, Nothing avails; upon his scales their swords Break like frayed cords or, like a blade of straw, Bend towards the hilt and wilt like faded grass. Defeat and fresh retreat.... But once again God's murmurs pass among them and they mass With firmer steps upon the crowded plain. Vast clouds of spears and stones rise from the ground; But every dart flies past and rocks rebound To the disheartened angels falling around.

A pause. The angel host withdraws With empty boasts throughout its sullen files. Suddenly God smiles.... On the walls of heaven a tumble of light is caught. Low thunder rumbles like an afterthought; And God's slow laughter calls: "Behemot!"

_Behemot, sweating blood, Uses for his daily food All the fodder, flesh and juice That twelve tall mountains can produce._

_Jordan, flooded to the brim, Is a single gulp to him; Two great streams from Paradise Cool his lips and scarce suffice._

_When he shifts from side to side Earthquakes gape and open wide;_ _When a nightmare makes him snore, All the dead volcanoes roar._

_In the space between each toe, Kingdoms rise and saviours go; Epochs fall and causes die In the lifting of his eye._

_Wars and justice, love and death, These are but his wasted breath; Chews a planet for his cud-- Behemot sweating blood._