Chapter 2
Glad for the murmur of his hard renown, Year after year he shambled through the town, -- A loveless exile moving with a staff; And oftentimes there crept into his ears A sound of alien pity, touched with tears, -- And then (and only then) did Aaron laugh.
The Garden
There is a fenceless garden overgrown With buds and blossoms and all sorts of leaves; And once, among the roses and the sheaves, The Gardener and I were there alone. He led me to the plot where I had thrown The fennel of my days on wasted ground, And in that riot of sad weeds I found The fruitage of a life that was my own.
My life! Ah, yes, there was my life, indeed! And there were all the lives of humankind; And they were like a book that I could read, Whose every leaf, miraculously signed, Outrolled itself from Thought's eternal seed, Love-rooted in God's garden of the mind.
Cliff Klingenhagen
Cliff Klingenhagen had me in to dine With him one day; and after soup and meat, And all the other things there were to eat, Cliff took two glasses and filled one with wine And one with wormwood. Then, without a sign For me to choose at all, he took the draught Of bitterness himself, and lightly quaffed It off, and said the other one was mine.
And when I asked him what the deuce he meant By doing that, he only looked at me And grinned, and said it was a way of his. And though I know the fellow, I have spent Long time a-wondering when I shall be As happy as Cliff Klingenhagen is.
Charles Carville's Eyes
A melancholy face Charles Carville had, But not so melancholy as it seemed, -- When once you knew him, -- for his mouth redeemed His insufficient eyes, forever sad: In them there was no life-glimpse, good or bad, -- Nor joy nor passion in them ever gleamed; His mouth was all of him that ever beamed, His eyes were sorry, but his mouth was glad.
He never was a fellow that said much, And half of what he did say was not heard By many of us: we were out of touch With all his whims and all his theories Till he was dead, so those blank eyes of his Might speak them. Then we heard them, every word.
The Dead Village
Here there is death. But even here, they say, -- Here where the dull sun shines this afternoon As desolate as ever the dead moon Did glimmer on dead Sardis, -- men were gay; And there were little children here to play, With small soft hands that once did keep in tune The strings that stretch from heaven, till too soon The change came, and the music passed away.
Now there is nothing but the ghosts of things, -- No life, no love, no children, and no men; And over the forgotten place there clings The strange and unrememberable light That is in dreams. The music failed, and then God frowned, and shut the village from His sight.
Boston
My northern pines are good enough for me, But there's a town my memory uprears -- A town that always like a friend appears, And always in the sunrise by the sea. And over it, somehow, there seems to be A downward flash of something new and fierce, That ever strives to clear, but never clears The dimness of a charmed antiquity.
Two Sonnets
I
Just as I wonder at the twofold screen Of twisted innocence that you would plait For eyes that uncourageously await The coming of a kingdom that has been, So do I wonder what God's love can mean To you that all so strangely estimate The purpose and the consequent estate Of one short shuddering step to the Unseen.
No, I have not your backward faith to shrink Lone-faring from the doorway of God's home To find Him in the names of buried men; Nor your ingenious recreance to think We cherish, in the life that is to come, The scattered features of dead friends again.
II
Never until our souls are strong enough To plunge into the crater of the Scheme -- Triumphant in the flash there to redeem Love's handsel and forevermore to slough, Like cerements at a played-out masque, the rough And reptile skins of us whereon we set The stigma of scared years -- are we to get Where atoms and the ages are one stuff.
Nor ever shall we know the cursed waste Of life in the beneficence divine Of starlight and of sunlight and soul-shine That we have squandered in sin's frail distress, Till we have drunk, and trembled at the taste, The mead of Thought's prophetic endlessness.
The Clerks
I did not think that I should find them there When I came back again; but there they stood, As in the days they dreamed of when young blood Was in their cheeks and women called them fair. Be sure, they met me with an ancient air, -- And yes, there was a shop-worn brotherhood About them; but the men were just as good, And just as human as they ever were.
And you that ache so much to be sublime, And you that feed yourselves with your descent, What comes of all your visions and your fears? Poets and kings are but the clerks of Time, Tiering the same dull webs of discontent, Clipping the same sad alnage of the years.
Fleming Helphenstine
At first I thought there was a superfine Persuasion in his face; but the free glow That filled it when he stopped and cried, "Hollo!" Shone joyously, and so I let it shine. He said his name was Fleming Helphenstine, But be that as it may; -- I only know He talked of this and that and So-and-So, And laughed and chaffed like any friend of mine.
But soon, with a queer, quick frown, he looked at me, And I looked hard at him; and there we gazed With a strained shame that made us cringe and wince: Then, with a wordless clogged apology That sounded half confused and half amazed, He dodged, -- and I have never seen him since.
For a Book by Thomas Hardy
With searching feet, through dark circuitous ways, I plunged and stumbled; round me, far and near, Quaint hordes of eyeless phantoms did appear, Twisting and turning in a bootless chase, -- When, like an exile given by God's grace To feel once more a human atmosphere, I caught the world's first murmur, large and clear, Flung from a singing river's endless race.
Then, through a magic twilight from below, I heard its grand sad song as in a dream: Life's wild infinity of mirth and woe It sang me; and, with many a changing gleam, Across the music of its onward flow I saw the cottage lights of Wessex beam.
Thomas Hood
The man who cloaked his bitterness within This winding-sheet of puns and pleasantries, God never gave to look with common eyes Upon a world of anguish and of sin: His brother was the branded man of Lynn; And there are woven with his jollities The nameless and eternal tragedies That render hope and hopelessness akin.
We laugh, and crown him; but anon we feel A still chord sorrow-swept, -- a weird unrest; And thin dim shadows home to midnight steal, As if the very ghost of mirth were dead -- As if the joys of time to dreams had fled, Or sailed away with Ines to the West.
The Miracle
"Dear brother, dearest friend, when I am dead, And you shall see no more this face of mine, Let nothing but red roses be the sign Of the white life I lost for him," she said; "No, do not curse him, -- pity him instead; Forgive him! -- forgive me! . . God's anodyne For human hate is pity; and the wine That makes men wise, forgiveness. I have read Love's message in love's murder, and I die." And so they laid her just where she would lie, -- Under red roses. Red they bloomed and fell; But when flushed autumn and the snows went by, And spring came, -- lo, from every bud's green shell Burst a white blossom. -- Can love reason why?
Horace to Leuconoe
I pray you not, Leuconoe, to pore With unpermitted eyes on what may be Appointed by the gods for you and me, Nor on Chaldean figures any more. 'T were infinitely better to implore The present only: -- whether Jove decree More winters yet to come, or whether he Make even this, whose hard, wave-eaten shore Shatters the Tuscan seas to-day, the last -- Be wise withal, and rack your wine, nor fill Your bosom with large hopes; for while I sing, The envious close of time is narrowing; -- So seize the day, -- or ever it be past, -- And let the morrow come for what it will.
Reuben Bright
Because he was a butcher and thereby Did earn an honest living (and did right), I would not have you think that Reuben Bright Was any more a brute than you or I; For when they told him that his wife must die, He stared at them, and shook with grief and fright, And cried like a great baby half that night, And made the women cry to see him cry.
And after she was dead, and he had paid The singers and the sexton and the rest, He packed a lot of things that she had made Most mournfully away in an old chest Of hers, and put some chopped-up cedar boughs In with them, and tore down the slaughter-house.
The Altar
Alone, remote, nor witting where I went, I found an altar builded in a dream -- A fiery place, whereof there was a gleam So swift, so searching, and so eloquent Of upward promise, that love's murmur, blent With sorrow's warning, gave but a supreme Unending impulse to that human stream Whose flood was all for the flame's fury bent.
Alas! I said, -- the world is in the wrong. But the same quenchless fever of unrest That thrilled the foremost of that martyred throng Thrilled me, and I awoke . . . and was the same Bewildered insect plunging for the flame That burns, and must burn somehow for the best.
The Tavern
Whenever I go by there nowadays And look at the rank weeds and the strange grass, The torn blue curtains and the broken glass, I seem to be afraid of the old place; And something stiffens up and down my face, For all the world as if I saw the ghost Of old Ham Amory, the murdered host, With his dead eyes turned on me all aglaze.
The Tavern has a story, but no man Can tell us what it is. We only know That once long after midnight, years ago, A stranger galloped up from Tilbury Town, Who brushed, and scared, and all but overran That skirt-crazed reprobate, John Evereldown.
Sonnet
Oh for a poet -- for a beacon bright To rift this changeless glimmer of dead gray; To spirit back the Muses, long astray, And flush Parnassus with a newer light; To put these little sonnet-men to flight Who fashion, in a shrewd, mechanic way, Songs without souls, that flicker for a day, To vanish in irrevocable night.
What does it mean, this barren age of ours? Here are the men, the women, and the flowers, The seasons, and the sunset, as before. What does it mean? Shall not one bard arise To wrench one banner from the western skies, And mark it with his name forevermore?
George Crabbe
Give him the darkest inch your shelf allows, Hide him in lonely garrets, if you will, -- But his hard, human pulse is throbbing still With the sure strength that fearless truth endows. In spite of all fine science disavows, Of his plain excellence and stubborn skill There yet remains what fashion cannot kill, Though years have thinned the laurel from his brows.
Whether or not we read him, we can feel From time to time the vigor of his name Against us like a finger for the shame And emptiness of what our souls reveal In books that are as altars where we kneel To consecrate the flicker, not the flame.
Credo
I cannot find my way: there is no star In all the shrouded heavens anywhere; And there is not a whisper in the air Of any living voice but one so far That I can hear it only as a bar Of lost, imperial music, played when fair And angel fingers wove, and unaware, Dead leaves to garlands where no roses are.
No, there is not a glimmer, nor a call, For one that welcomes, welcomes when he fears, The black and awful chaos of the night; For through it all, -- above, beyond it all, -- I know the far-sent message of the years, I feel the coming glory of the Light!
On the Night of a Friend's Wedding
If ever I am old, and all alone, I shall have killed one grief, at any rate; For then, thank God, I shall not have to wait Much longer for the sheaves that I have sown. The devil only knows what I have done, But here I am, and here are six or eight Good friends, who most ingenuously prate About my songs to such and such a one.
But everything is all askew to-night, -- As if the time were come, or almost come, For their untenanted mirage of me To lose itself and crumble out of sight, Like a tall ship that floats above the foam A little while, and then breaks utterly.
Sonnet
The master and the slave go hand in hand, Though touch be lost. The poet is a slave, And there be kings do sorrowfully crave The joyance that a scullion may command. But, ah, the sonnet-slave must understand The mission of his bondage, or the grave May clasp his bones, or ever he shall save The perfect word that is the poet's wand!
The sonnet is a crown, whereof the rhymes Are for Thought's purest gold the jewel-stones; But shapes and echoes that are never done Will haunt the workshop, as regret sometimes Will bring with human yearning to sad thrones The crash of battles that are never won.
Verlaine
Why do you dig like long-clawed scavengers To touch the covered corpse of him that fled The uplands for the fens, and rioted Like a sick satyr with doom's worshippers? Come! let the grass grow there; and leave his verse To tell the story of the life he led. Let the man go: let the dead flesh be dead, And let the worms be its biographers.
Song sloughs away the sin to find redress In art's complete remembrance: nothing clings For long but laurel to the stricken brow That felt the Muse's finger; nothing less Than hell's fulfilment of the end of things Can blot the star that shines on Paris now.
Sonnet
When we can all so excellently give The measure of love's wisdom with a blow, -- Why can we not in turn receive it so, And end this murmur for the life we live? And when we do so frantically strive To win strange faith, why do we shun to know That in love's elemental over-glow God's wholeness gleams with light superlative?
Oh, brother men, if you have eyes at all, Look at a branch, a bird, a child, a rose, -- Or anything God ever made that grows, -- Nor let the smallest vision of it slip, Till you can read, as on Belshazzar's wall, The glory of eternal partnership!
Supremacy
There is a drear and lonely tract of hell From all the common gloom removed afar: A flat, sad land it is, where shadows are, Whose lorn estate my verse may never tell. I walked among them and I knew them well: Men I had slandered on life's little star For churls and sluggards; and I knew the scar Upon their brows of woe ineffable.
But as I went majestic on my way, Into the dark they vanished, one by one, Till, with a shaft of God's eternal day, The dream of all my glory was undone, -- And, with a fool's importunate dismay, I heard the dead men singing in the sun.
The Night Before
Look you, Dominie; look you, and listen! Look in my face, first; search every line there; Mark every feature, -- chin, lip, and forehead! Look in my eyes, and tell me the lesson You read there; measure my nose, and tell me Where I am wanting! A man's nose, Dominie, Is often the cast of his inward spirit; So mark mine well. But why do you smile so? Pity, or what? Is it written all over, This face of mine, with a brute's confession? Nothing but sin there? nothing but hell-scars? Or is it because there is something better -- A glimmer of good, maybe -- or a shadow Of something that's followed me down from childhood -- Followed me all these years and kept me, Spite of my slips and sins and follies, Spite of my last red sin, my murder, -- Just out of hell? Yes? something of that kind? And you smile for that? You're a good man, Dominie, The one good man in the world who knows me, -- My one good friend in a world that mocks me, Here in this hard stone cage. But I leave it To-morrow. To-morrow! My God! am I crying? Are these things tears? Tears! What! am I frightened? I, who swore I should go to the scaffold With big strong steps, and -- No more. I thank you, But no -- I am all right now! No! -- listen! I am here to be hanged; to be hanged to-morrow At six o'clock, when the sun is rising. And why am I here? Not a soul can tell you But this poor shivering thing before you, This fluttering wreck of the man God made him, For God knows what wild reason. Hear me, And learn from my lips the truth of my story. There's nothing strange in what I shall tell you, Nothing mysterious, nothing unearthly, -- But damnably human, -- and you shall hear it. Not one of those little black lawyers had guessed it; The judge, with his big bald head, never knew it; And the jury (God rest their poor souls!) never dreamed it. Once there were three in the world who could tell it; Now there are two. There'll be two to-morrow, -- You, my friend, and -- But there's the story: --
When I was a boy the world was heaven. I never knew then that the men and the women Who petted and called me a brave big fellow Were ever less happy than I; but wisdom -- Which comes with the years, you know -- soon showed me The secret of all my glittering childhood, The broken key to the fairies' castle That held my life in the fresh, glad season When I was the king of the earth. Then slowly -- And yet so swiftly! -- there came the knowledge That the marvellous life I had lived was my life; That the glorious world I had loved was my world; And that every man, and every woman, And every child was a different being, Wrought with a different heat, and fired With passions born of a single spirit; That the pleasure I felt was not their pleasure, Nor my sorrow -- a kind of nameless pity For something, I knew not what -- their sorrow. And thus was I taught my first hard lesson, -- The lesson we suffer the most in learning: That a happy man is a man forgetful Of all the torturing ills around him. When or where I first met the woman I cherished and made my wife, no matter. Enough to say that I found her and kept her Here in my heart with as pure a devotion As ever Christ felt for his brothers. Forgive me For naming His name in your patient presence; But I feel my words, and the truth I utter Is God's own truth. I loved that woman, -- Not for her face, but for something fairer, Something diviner, I thought, than beauty: I loved the spirit -- the human something That seemed to chime with my own condition, And make soul-music when we were together; And we were never apart, from the moment My eyes flashed into her eyes the message That swept itself in a quivering answer Back through my strange lost being. My pulses Leapt with an aching speed; and the measure Of this great world grew small and smaller, Till it seemed the sky and the land and the ocean Closed at last in a mist all golden Around us two. And we stood for a season Like gods outflung from chaos, dreaming That we were the king and the queen of the fire That reddened the clouds of love that held us Blind to the new world soon to be ours -- Ours to seize and sway. The passion Of that great love was a nameless passion, Bright as the blaze of the sun at noonday, Wild as the flames of hell; but, mark you, Never a whit less pure for its fervor. The baseness in me (for I was human) Burned like a worm, and perished; and nothing Was left me then but a soul that mingled Itself with hers, and swayed and shuddered In fearful triumph. When I consider That helpless love and the cursed folly That wrecked my life for the sake of a woman Who broke with a laugh the chains of her marriage (Whatever the word may mean), I wonder If all the woe was her sin, or whether The chains themselves were enough to lead her In love's despite to break them. . . . Sinners And saints -- I say -- are rocked in the cradle, But never are known till the will within them Speaks in its own good time. So I foster Even to-night for the woman who wronged me, Nothing of hate, nor of love, but a feeling Of still regret; for the man -- But hear me, And judge for yourself: --