Part 2

And closer in the shawl about her breast, The latest promise of her nation’s doom, Paler than she her baby clings and lies, The primal warrior gleaming from his eyes; He sulks, and burdened with his infant gloom, He draws his heavy brows and will not rest.

WATKWENIES.[1]

Vengeance was once her nation’s lore and law: When the tired sentry stooped above the rill, Her long knife flashed, and hissed, and drank its fill; Dimly below her dripping wrist she saw, One wild hand, pale as death and weak as straw, Clutch at the ripple in the pool; while shrill Sprang through the dreaming hamlet on the hill, The war-cry of the triumphant Iroquois.

Now clothed with many an ancient flap and fold, And wrinkled like an apple kept till May, She weighs the interest-money in her palm, And, when the Agent calls her valiant name, Hears, like the war-whoops of her perished day, The lads playing snow-snake in the stinging cold.

Footnote 1:

The Woman who Conquers.

AVIS.

With a golden rolling sound Booming came a bell, From the aery in the tower Eagles fell; So with regal wings Hurled, and gleaming sound and power, Sprang the fatal spell.

Then a storm of burnished doves Gleaming from the cote Flurried by the almonry O’er the moat,— Fell and soared and fell With the arc and iris eye Burning breast and throat.

Avis heard the beaten bell Break the quiet space, Gathering softly in the room Round her face; And the sound of wings From the deeps of rosy gloom Rustled in the place.

Nothing moved along the wall, Weltered on the floor; Only in the purple deep, Streaming o’er, Came the dream of sound Silent as the dale of sleep, Where the dreams are four.

(One of love without a word, Wan to look upon, One of fear without a cry, Cowering stone, And the dower of life,— Grief without a single sigh, Pain without a moan.)

“Avis—Avis!” cried a voice; Then the voice was mute. “Avis!” soft the echo lay As the lute. Where she was she fell, Drowsy as mandragora, Trancèd to the root.

Then she heard her mother’s voice, Tender as a dove; Then her lover plain and sigh, “Avis—Love!” Like the mavis bird Calling, calling lonelily From the eerie grove.

Then she heard within the vast Closure of the spell, Rolled and moulded into one Rounded swell, All the sounds that ever were Uttered underneath the sun, Heard in heaven or hell.

In the arras moved the wind, And the window cloth Rippled like a serpent barred, Gray with wrath; In the brazier gold The wan ghost of a rose charred Fluttered like a moth.

Tranquil lay her darkened eyes As the pools that keep Auras dim of fern and frond Dappled, deep, Dreamy as the map of Nod; Moveless was she as a wand In the wind of sleep.

Then the birds began to cry From the crannied wall, Piping as the morning rose Mystical, Gray with whistling rain, Silver with the light that flows In the interval.

Pallid poplars cast a shade, Twinkling gray and dun, Where the wind and water wove Into one All the linnet leaves, Greening from the mere and grove In the undern sun.

Night fell with the ferny dusk, Planets paled and grew, Up, with lilt and clarid turns Throbbing through, Rose the robin’s song, Heart of home and love that burns Beating in the dew.

But she neither moved nor heard, Trancèd was her breath; Lip on charmèd lip was laid (One who saith “Love—Undone” and falls). Silent was she as a shade In the dells of death.

THE VIOLET PRESSED IN A COPY OF SHAKESPEARE.

Here in the inmost of the master’s heart This violet crisp with early dew, Has come to leave her beauty and to part With all her vivid hue.

And while in hollow glades and dells of musk, Her fellows will reflower in bands, Clasping the deeps of shade and emerald dusk, With sweet inviolate hands,

She will lie here, a ghost of their delight, Their lucent stems all ashen gray, Their purples fallen into pulvil white, Dull as the bluebird’s alula.

But here where human passions pulse in power, She will transcend our Shakespeare’s art, From Desdemona to a smothered flower, Will leap the tragic heart.

And memory will recall in keener mood The precinct fair where passion grew, The stars within the water in the wood, The moonlit grove, the odorous dew.

The voice that throbbed along the summer dark Will float and pause and thrill, In lonely cadence silvern as the lark, To fail below the hill.

The reader will grow weary of the play, Finding his heart half understood, And with the young moon in the early dusk will stray Beside the starry water in the wood.

ANGELUS.

A deep bell that links the downs To the drowsy air; Every loop of sound that swoons, Finds a circle fair, Whereon it doth rest and fade; Every stroke that dins is laid Like a node, Spinning out the quivering, fine, Vibrant tendrils of a vine: (Bim—bim—bim.) How they wreathe and run, Silvern as a filmy light, Filtered from the sun: The god of sound is out of sight, And the bell is like a cloud, Humming to the outer rim, Low and loud: (Bim—bim—bim.) Throwing down the tempered lull, Fragile, beautiful: Married drones and overtones, How we fancy them to swim, Spreading into shapes that shine, With the aura of the metals, Prisoned in the bell, Fulvous tinted as a shell, Dreamy, dim, Deep in amber hyaline: (Bim—bim—bim.)

ADAGIO.

Grave maid, surrounded by the austere air Of this delaying spring, what gentle grief, What hovering, mystical melancholy Hath covered thee with the translucent shadow? The glaucous silver buds upon the tree, And the light burst of blossom in the bush Are the new year’s evangel: soon the birch Will breathe in heaven with her myriad leaves, And hide the birds’ nests from the tuliped lawn; But thou, with look askance and dreaming eyes, Brooding on something subtly sad and sweet, Art passive, and the world may have her way, Hide the moraine of immemorial days With bines and blossoms, so thine unvaried hour Be not perplexèd with the change of growth. Within this sombre circle of the hills, Thy girlish eyes have seen the winter’s close, And what may lie beyond, where the sun falls, When the vale fills with rose, and the first star Looks liquidly, thy quiet heart knows not. The permanence of beauty haunts thy dreams, And only as a land beyond desire, Where the fixed glow may stain the vivid flower, Where youth may lose his wings but keep his joy, Does that far slope in the reluctant light Lure thee beyond the barrier of the hills. And often in the morning of the heart, When memories are like crocus-buds in spring, Thou hast up-builded in thy crystal soul Immutable forms of things loved once and lost, Or loved and never gained. Now while the wind From the reflowering bush gushes with perfume, Thou hast a vision of a precinct fair, Daled in the lustrous hills, where the mossed dial Holds the slow shadow narrowed to a line; Where a parterre of tulips hoards the light, Changeless and pure in cups of tranquil gold; Where bee-hives gray against the poplar shade, Peopled with bees, hum in perpetual drone; In a pavilion centred in the close, Four viols build the perfect cube of sound; A path beside the rosy barberry hedge, Leads to the cool of water under spray, Leads to the fountain-echoing ivied wall; Pedestaled there, flecked with the linden shadows, A guardian statue carved in purest stone, Love and Mnemosyne; Mnemosyne Mothering the Truant to an all-cherishing breast, The wells of lore deepening her eyes, would speak— But Love hath laid his hand upon her lips.

DIRGE FOR A VIOLET.

Here was a happy flower, Born in sun and shower, In the meadow; Sorrow was her dower, And shadow.

Bid the gentle mole Dig his deepest hole, For her rest; Sleep has charmed her soul, Sleep is best.

Bid the vervain spire Light the funeral fire, And the yarrow Build a shady choir, For the sparrow.

Bid him chirp and cry, “Everything must die, She is dead,” Now in exequy, All is said.

EQUATION.

When we grow old, and time looks like a thief, That was the spendthrift of our dearest days; When color mingles merged in silvered grays; When joys are ever memoried to be brief; When beauty fades; when hope is under feof; When all our moods are mantled in a haze; When sprightly pleasure for a penance plays The part of prudence in the weeds of grief; It will suffice if unto memory Visit the voices and the eager grace Of days that promised never to forget; If they will flow like rumors of the sea, Heard under honied lindens in the place, Where start the marguerite and the mignonette.

AFTERWARDS.

Her life was touched with early frost, About the April of her day, Her hold on earth was lightly lost, And like a leaf she went away.

Her soul was chartered for great deeds, For gentle war unwonted here: Her spirit sought her clearer needs, An Empyrean atmosphere.

At hush of eve we hear her still Say with her clear, her perfect smile, And with her silver-throated thrill: “A little while—a little while.”

STONE BREAKING.

March wind rough Clashed the trees, Flung the snow; Breaking stones, In the cold, Germans slow Toiled and toiled; Arrowy sun Glanced and sprang, One right blithe German sang: Songs of home, Fatherland: Syenite hard, Weary lot, Callous hand, All forgot: Hammers pound, Ringing round; Rise the heaps, To his voice, Bounds and leaps Toise on toise: Toil is long, But dear God Gives us song, At the end, Gives us rest, Toil is best.

THE LESSON.

When the great day is done, That seems so long, So full of fret and fun, Our little girl is in her cradle laid: She takes the soft dark-petaled flower of sleep Between her fragile hands, Striving to pluck it: And as the dream-roots slowly part, She is not in possession of the lands, Where flowered her tender heart, Nor in this turmoil dire of cark and strife, Which we call life, The which, husbanding all our art, We will keep veiled until the latest day, And from her wrapt away: Then when the drowsy flower Has parted from the dreamful mead, And in her palm lies plucked indeed, When her dear breathing steadies after sighs, And the soft lids have clouded the blue eyes, A tiny hand falls on my cheek— Lightly and so fragrantly As if a snow-flake could a rose-leaf be— And in the dark touches a tear Which has sprung clear, From eyes unconscious of their own distress, At the deep pathos of such tender helplessness. And then she claims her sleep, As if she knows my love and trusts it deep.

Dear God! to whom the bravest of us is a child, When I am weary, when I cannot rest, I have stretched out my hand into the dark, And felt the shadow stark, But no face brooding near, Nor any tear Compassionately wept: I have not slept.

But now I learn my lesson from the sage, Who burns his lore with acid on the heart; I will not whimper when I feel the smart, And for my comfort will look down, not up; I will give ever from a brimming sky, Not telling how or why; I will be answered in this little child, I will be reconciled.

FROM SHADOW.

Now the November skies, And the clouds that are thin and gray, That drop with the wind away; A flood of sunlight rolls, In a tide of shallow light, Gold on the land and white On the water, dim and warm in the wood; Then it is gone, and the wan Clear of the shade Covers field and barren and glade. The peace of labor done, Is wide in the gracious earth; The harvest is won; Past are the tears and the mirth; And we feel in the tenuous air How far beyond thought or prayer Is the grace of silent things, That work for the world alway, Neither for fear nor for pay, And when labor is over, rest.

The moil of our fretted life Is borne anew to the soul, Borne with its cark and strife, Its burden of care and dread, Its glories elusive and strange; And the weight of the weary whole Presses it down, till we cry: Where is the fruit of our deeds? Why should we struggle to build Towers against death on the plain? All things possess their lives Save man, whose task and desire Transcend his power and his will.

The question is over and still; Nothing replies: but the earth Takes on a lovelier hue From a cloud that neighbored the sun, That the sun burned down and through, Till it glowed like a seraph’s wing; The fields that were gray and dun Are warm in the flowing light; Fair in the west the night Strikes in with a vibrant star.

Something has stirred afar In the shadow that winter flings; A message comes up to the soul From the soul of inanimate things: A message that widens and grows Till it touches the deeds of man, Till we see in the torturous throes Some dawning glimmer of plan; Till we feel in the deepening night The hand of the angel Content, That stranger of calmness and light, With his brow over us bent, Who moves with his eyes on the earth, Whose robe of lambent green, A tissue of herb and its sheen, Tells the mother who gave him birth. The message plays through his touch, It grows with the roots of his power, Till it flames exultant in thought, As the quince-tree triumphs in flower.

The fruit that is checked and marred Goes under the sod: The good lives here in the world; It persists,—it is God.

THE PIPER OF ARLL.

There was in Arll a little cove Where the salt wind came cool and free: A foamy beach that one would love, If he were longing for the sea.

A brook hung sparkling on the hill, The hill swept far to ring the bay; The bay was faithful, wild or still, To the heart of the ocean far away.

There were three pines above the comb That, when the sun flared and went down, Grew like three warriors reaving home The plunder of a burning town.

A piper lived within the grove, Tending the pasture of his sheep; His heart was swayed with faithful love, From the springs of God’s ocean clear and deep.

And there a ship one evening stood, Where ship had never stood before; A pennon bickered red as blood, An angel glimmered at the prore.

About the coming on of dew, The sails burned rosy, and the spars Were gold, and all the tackle grew Alive with ruby-hearted stars.

The piper heard an outland tongue, With music in the cadenced fall; And when the fairy lights were hung, The sailors gathered one and all,

And leaning on the gunwales dark, Crusted with shells and dashed with foam, With all the dreaming hills to hark, They sang their longing songs of home.

When the sweet airs had fled away, The piper, with a gentle breath, Moulded a tranquil melody Of lonely love and longed-for death.

When the fair sound began to lull, From out the fireflies and the dew, A silence held the shadowy hull, Until the eerie tune was through.

Then from the dark and dreamy deck An alien song began to thrill; It mingled with the drumming beck, And stirred the braird upon the hill.

Beneath the stars each sent to each A message tender, till at last The piper slept upon the beach, The sailors slumbered round the mast.

Still as a dream till nearly dawn, The ship was bosomed on the tide; The streamlet, murmuring on and on, Bore the sweet water to her side.

Then shaking out her lawny sails, Forth on the misty sea she crept; She left the dawning of the dales, Yet in his cloak the piper slept.

And when he woke he saw the ship, Limned black against the crimson sun; Then from the disc he saw her slip, A wraith of shadow—she was gone.

He threw his mantle on the beach, He went apart like one distraught, His lips were moved—his desperate speech Stormed his inviolable thought.

He broke his human-throated reed, And threw it in the idle rill; But when his passion had its mead, He found it in the eddy still.

He mended well the patient flue, Again he tried its varied stops; The closures answered right and true, And starting out in piercing drops,

A melody began to drip That mingled with a ghostly thrill The vision-spirit of the ship, The secret of his broken will.

Beneath the pines he piped and swayed, Master of passion and of power; He was his soul and what he played, Immortal for a happy hour.

He, singing into nature’s heart, Guiding his will by the world’s will, With deep, unconscious, childlike art Had sung his soul out and was still.

And then at evening came the bark That stirred his dreaming heart’s desire; It burned slow lights along the dark That died in glooms of crimson fire.

The sailors launched a sombre boat, And bent with music at the oars; The rhythm throbbing every throat, And lapsing round the liquid shores,

Was that true tune the piper sent, Unto the wave-worn mariners, When with the beck and ripple blent He heard that outland song of theirs.

Silent they rowed him, dip and drip, The oars beat out an exequy, They laid him down within the ship, They loosed a rocket to the sky.

It broke in many a crimson sphere That grew to gold and floated far, And left the sudden shore-line clear, With one slow-changing, drifting star.

Then out they shook the magic sails, That charmed the wind in other seas, From where the west line pearls and pales, They waited for a ruffling breeze.

But in the world there was no stir, The cordage slacked with never a creak, They heard the flame begin to purr Within the lantern at the peak.

They could not cry, they could not move, They felt the lure from the charmed sea; They could not think of home or love Or any pleasant land to be.