Chapter 3

I know some force is mighty, some force I cannot reach. I know that words are said to me that are not said with speech. My heart has learned a lesson that I can never teach. Only this I know, that I am overtaken By a swifter runner Whose breath is never shaken, That I follow on His pace, and that round me, as I waken, Are the headlands of home and the blue sea swinging And the flowers of the valleys their fresh scents flinging And the prophets and the poets, with their singing--with their singing!

MINIATURE

For all your gestures, for your gray-blue eyes And Irish mouth, and hair that makes you child, When shaken out at evening; for your mirth And your quick pity, and your mother's breast; For the great tenderness that you have given And the rich dreams through purple-flowing night, The holy lull of effort and the peace Of a deep love; because of all these things, Wherever I should be,--beyond what seas Of an enchanted music, on what isles, I know not, of a strange irradiance, In dream or life or death,--dissatisfied With splendor or white mystery, my heart Would break--my heart would break--never to hear Your tones again or feel your hair again Beneath my lips, or see your lifted eyes Brimming with all the secrets of the stars!

DEATH WILL MAKE CLEAR

What in the night says the clock that ticks time to eternity, Swimmer of waves of your thought that are dark waves and deep? What in the night says the moon, from her patient infinity, Laying pale hands on your heart, hands of peace and of sleep? What say the stars to her eyes, who has loosed by the window The billow of her hair, as the dark of the trees feels her fear? And over the cradle what whisper is breathing, is breathing. As over the bed of the bride or the catafalqued bier, Or over the flung and clawed earth where a soldier is dying? "Death will make clear!"

Furious and fleet is man's soul, like a hound through the woodland, On through the tangle of trees and the green and the gold. Yes, for the senses are goads, but the lineage noble, Not for the warren or hutch to be cornered and sold, Then there is freedom and ease, and a dream that persuades one On, till the track quakes on black whence the death-lilies peer. So the bronzed shoulder, that sets to the crust of the boulder Heaving it up--as the mill-wheel that turns at the weir-- Bring--? They bring silence and candles and creaking and whispers. Death will make clear.

Why that white work from the crag and the hands of the sculptor Smitten in a moment to rubble as earth heaves her breast? Why that intangible glory, remote but God-in-us, Golden and crumbling to pathos of dusk in the west? Why the pure curve of the arm and the breast of a mother, Yes, and the proud head of man held erect on the mere Void of blue heaven,--the seas and the ships and the trumpets, Towers and horizons, all shouting? The answer is here, Here in thy breast, son of man, sorry son of the ages. Death will make clear.

Lord of the mighty, as Lord of the weak and the lowly, Lord of the sage and the madman, of clean and unclean; Breeder of suns and of excrement, loathly and holy, Graving the skull with the pity of all that had been,-- Death, oh thou graver of countenance knighted austerely, Yea, on the pitiful clay, such poor flesh in its fear Of God and the soul and the singing of stars that may teach us Wisdom at last,--oh thou ultimate searcher and seer, Beckon--I follow. At last on my lips set thy finger; Thou wilt make clear!

SUNLIGHT

Sunlight is full of age. Ah, so old! Older than any sage Has ever told!

The draught our Lord quaffed up To the bloody lees; The aching hemlock cup Of Socrates.

It is a golden sword; The veil of the Grail; The unfathomable Word That will not fail.

Along a summer street It often lies Shimmering to repeat Immortal paradise.

As a mountain lake can mirror The exalted with the near, Heaven's wonder and terror-- Both shine here.

It says all things in nought; And, saying them, passes To gild like gentle thought Trees and grasses.

It sways upon the ocean Like a god asleep Where the waves' wandering motion Hides the deep.

It shafts through forest aisles Like miracle; It trembles and smiles On the lip of Hell.

It has touched Greece and Rome And Persia's might-- And stirs the vines of home With flickering light.

It lay on Cain's hot neck As he stooped to slay. David's stone from the beck Glittered its day.

Cleopatra gazed upon it Through shadowed lids. High halls they built to shun it In the Pyramids.

It opens babies' hands That crawl to snatch its beams. Through hovels in ancient lands Its splendor streams.

Eternal wells of light Its largeness shows. There shall be no more night Its conscience knows.

It is a smiling stranger, A fainting hour, Love and peace and danger And the mock of power.

Yet have I said no word Of what it is. Only--my heart is stirred By its mysteries!

AND A LONG WAY OFF HE SAW FAIRYLAND

I lived once with fairies, (And I know they're _true_ fairies!) One lifts laughing eyes In a way I most admire. Truth goes by contraries, For you don't know they're fairies Till there isn't any firelight, Nor song beside the fire.

One fairy's small to hold, And her hair is fairy gold. One's a feminine fairy With unusual address. One fairy's just Jim. You just look and love him, With his nonsense and his laugh And his sturdy steadfastness.

And the fairy queen I knew Has eyes that are blue, Has moods that are decided, And courage that denies It is ever brave at all. She mends them when they fall; She tends the little fairies In absurd, delightful wise.

They bring her thoughts like birds And very funny words And mountainous decisions And things to make you cry. But, after all, it's airy In the house of a fairy, With a face like that to sob to And those arms close by.

I lived once with a fairy. I was wild and contrary. I'm _still_ wild and contrary. But her heart's a heart for two. She sees rooms of starry graces, Kind firelight on our faces, And a watch on sleeping fairies, And the fairy home come true. Once again, with gentle evening And the dreaming trees, come true.

IN TIME OF TROUBLE

In memory of your desolate eyes I know That words are words, with nothing to gainsay The testimony of pain, the heavy day; But searching in the ruins of overthrow I gathered you this wreath that now I show; Small and barbaric brightness on the gray,-- Glimmering irony, perhaps. I lay It down before your eyes, and softly go.

You are a vista blundered on in Arden Where the fool grasps his bells, that he may hark; A sudden skyward path where cliffs are warden Of waves that foam to reach a high tide-mark; Whisper of blossoms in a midnight garden; A fountain whitely flowering on the dark.

ANOMALY

Men who are fain to change, look wizenedly Into the flowing mirror of your thought And see on what strange reefs your joys are caught And contemplate your vexed variety: Grief that was hooded for eternity Casting the stole for spangled domino, Awe on its pinnacle jigging heel and toe. Love laughing into hate and mockery.

What shoots the warp to patterns that reblend And spread and fade,--and working out what end? In time of pain why be as voluble As one who tells an endless useless sum, Yet simple clay, pallid and deaf and dumb Through the one moment forging Heaven or Hell?

THE LOVER

I rooted silver stars from heaven in showers, Rived adamant to show an azure gap, Captured the very Psyche in my cap, Filched from the sack of Time six diamond hours. Hyperborean in my crown of flowers I ran and leapt the cliff of thunderclap Plunging through green sea-light where bronze fronds wrap Crumbling pearl palaces and coral bowers.

Now--"Could I move, all humankind would pant Even to think such effort! Could my songs Cry out, dusked heaven would shudder at my wrongs!" I moaned, and then looked flushed and palpitant On Love's rapt face, that frenzied flagellant Wielding with zeal the welting golden thongs.

JUDGMENT

Down the deep steps of stone through iron doors I entered that red room and saw the rack, And round the walls I saw them sit in black, The immutable and urgent councillors. My heart was clotted with an old remorse, Despair a vulture fast upon my back. I saw my body like an empty sack Tossed disarticulate on grated floors.

But even a wilder wonder at this crime Tried in the dungeon of my own grim life Woke, as your memory awoke with tune That crazed the very walls. I stared through Time Like to a man who stands with smoking knife Above his dead, and sees the rising moon.

UNFORGOTTEN

Wakening in the night, the pain that slumber Strikes with her mace of silence dead and dumb Loomed over me and, formless, said, "I come! Bringing illusions lost beyond all number. Rigid you lie, yet for a little cumber This flaming world, where some die proudly, some Glitter like granite, or dream millenium." It left me toiled in mountainous clouds of umber.

I lay sustaining all the old emotion, Numbed as beneath the blows of iron cars. Then slowly, slowly some supreme devotion Crept down, and drew me out of ageless wars, Like a dear voice heard over darkened ocean When all dim heaven is trembling into stars.

THE PALE DANCER

My heart's a still shore; all the golden sails are gone. A pale, silver floor in the hugeness of dawn My heart lies once more, and the little ripples beat This small, idle tune, like the fall of elves' feet, "Oh, come, airy dancer--come dance on us, Sweet!"

She comes like a breeze in the midnight of May. The tumbling of the seas makes a tune far away. She comes with closed eyes, with light footsteps she nears, And she sings the low song that each lipping ripple hears. "In love there is laughter, and after--come tears!"

She dances like the moonlight--light, languorous, aswoon. Her face floats uplifted, a flower to the moon, To the moon pale in heaven and the dawn coming slow, And under her measure the ripples breathe low, "The dancer, the dancer from ages ago!"

Oh, dance me no more! Witching dancer be gone! For my heart's a still shore in the hugeness of dawn, And some answer is thrilling, is trembling for me In the eerie still brightness of heaven and sea, And the little ripples whisper, "What thing can it be?"

Pale dancer, pale dancer, atread without breath, Majestic and yearning and brooding as death, Oh, passion of my heart, oh, enchanted despair That glides before God like a bird from a snare, Return, then, return to me, clothe me with care!-- But the beautiful dancer has vanished in air.

PREMONITION

(_Written in absence and unaware of her desperate condition, a few days before her death_.)

This is the song I shall make. Love with white wing bids it wake. Love with dark wing bids it die. Trailing to dimness, the flood of my passion, Glittering to darkness, the necklace I fashion To loop on the breast of the sky!

I have climbed high, even I, Following a light through a rift in the blue, Following a silence that pierced like a cry, Following the image of you.

This is the song I will fashion for you.

Oh ragged-jawed, jagged-toothed Dragon of Time, What will you do with the weft of my rhyme, You who have pawed every jewel in slime-- _You!_

No, in this space between darkness and light, Holiness gleams like a rift in the night Here where I stand and command the full height, All of the glory and gall ... Wrestle and struggle and surge for the height-- And fall....

Pain, your pale hands are clenched loose in my hair. My heaving breast to your bleakness is bare. Each of the other as brothers aware, Backward and forward we strain. What is this struggle, why my despair, Pain?

God is somewhere in the night. Listen! The night is so still God could be heard if he walked on the height As a man at night will walk on a hill Lulled by the darkness and dim. Heaven is the hill under Him. Is there not glimmer of light at its rim?

Pain? Ah the struggle again. Drive then your darts in me, drive! Pang after pang of it, Pain. Wounds that will wake me alive. Listen! The night is a hive Of sound like a swarming of myriad bees. Drive the gold darts in me, whet them and drive, Pain! But his shadow flees. What is this plain, whose these shapes that connive Peace?

Peace? But your garment is smirched With grime and the stain of blood! Peace! When I struggled and searched, Ah, when have I understood? I who was broken and spent, I who was baffled, and meant Only to wrench my release!

Who are Those crouching behind you, so still and intent, Peace?

Memories? Why do they haunt? Lust and vainglory and pride? What is it now of my victory they want? What of you, Peace, the crucified? This is the height. Can they scan it? This is no space-festering planet. This is no rack of vain tears! Even a dream, can they cloud it and ban it,-- Fears?

Years go over me, cloud me and cover me, Years--haunted years.

Only one thing I say over and over Under that catafalque glooming to cover My shame and disaster and wraith of faith. Only one thing I say over and over, Your name, said under my breath.

There, like a storm on the sea line, you hover, Death!

Ripples and eddies and whirlpools of light Swirling like veils on the face of the night. Down from the infinite, down from the height Stricken and whirled, Swept like a leaf on the blast of the night Back to the world!

Breathing beside me--your breath! Listen! The night is so still God could be heard if he talked with Death As a man at night might talk on a hill Gently and sad to a friend Of the things we always intend ... Night without end for Him--_night without end_...!

This is the song I have made Of the night when I was afraid, Of the night too breathless, too still, When I lay like stone--alone--alone, However near me the love we kill. What of the love we kill?

Pride that died and darkness that grew! This is the song I began to wreathe ... Ah, but God remembered,--it is not true! _And you--you live, you breathe!_

AFTER

(Introductory Poem)

I

On Sunday in the sunlight With brightness round her strown And murmuring beauty of the sky At last her very own, She who had loved all children And all high things and clean Turned away to silentness And bliss unseen.

Rending, blinding anguish, Is all a man can know; Yet still I kneel beside her For she would have it so, Kneel and pray beside her In light she left behind-- Light and love in silentness, Sight to the blind.

Oh living light burn through me! Oh speak, as spoke to me Her deep sweet eyes and faithful, Voice on Calvary! Oh light be near and shining, Nearer than I guess, And teach me that true language Of silentness!

II

If now I fall away From faith, may never day Shine as it shone With inmost sanctities Of those sun-glittering trees-- We two alone.

The darkness toils and heaves. The Wood of Glittering Leaves You gave--you gave, Dearest in life and death, Dearest with every breath, Lamp of the brave!

You came in sunlight, still As God, with Whom your will Was always one. You knew me, and you knew I read your presence through That sacred sun.

League upon league of light, As the train raced the night, With night on me, With pain that gripped and wrung As the cars clashed and swung,-- I yet could see

The slim trees of that wood Brighter than tears or blood, Fairy with day; That dark marsh land made bright, Veiled in miraculous light,-- Your way!

I hold it fast. I hold All that mysterious gold, All that it weaves Of Heaven to understand-- Our radiant bridal land Of glittering leaves.

III

Honest hands to help, honest eyes to see, Light that lives in God: Such our dearest was, such will ever be Under Heaven. Nothing in this life gives to you and me Such a sunlight-shod, Sunlight-crowned delight in our memory As was given.

There was not a harm in these roaring hours That could touch Her head Perfect was Her charm borne against the powers Gnashing still. In her heart a field laughed with golden flowers Where Her soul could tread. Swift, serene, she passed all that snarls and cowers, White of will.

Song can give her nothing. We who brave the night Say Her name again Raise it like a cup full of sacred light Up to Heaven. Now we know our pain blinding, burning bright In the world of men. Yet we know our joy, knowing now aright What was given.

IV

Base rewards and glamours, the beating tide of hours, The crying and clamors and the surge of silent powers Pass me and pass me now. Silently I go The one road, the only road I know.

Oh, bare and bright as dreams And laced with silver streams Lies the land on either hand, past the darkness and dread. Though a man must grip his soul lest it start from all control, And must bow his head.

Where are your footprints on air that I may find them? Where your radiant garments that I may hide behind them? No, it is my own road, straight and black That turns not back.

I will search till the darkness sears on either hand With the drifting sparkles of some fiery brand, Of some pain that lights me nearer to the land of your endeavor. I will search forever.

The torrent of the hours like a veil veiling heaven, The war with bitter powers--I am given. But light that you left me--light, your own decision, Your secret and your vision.

Time? What is Time now. Standing to the thong And the dream that is passing, time is not long. And I shall find the valley past the mountains that defeat me, And see you come to meet me.

V

Not all the spoils you cast, not all the dark was bearing In dream across the sea, across the murmurous sea; Not beauty that has passed or crowns the stars were wearing Or flame that fierce and fast through darkness hunted me; Not the frustrate desire, the web of memory broken, The silence where your speech dizzies through all the air; Not these elude my reach when the dark hours have spoken As does that priceless token, your soul of passionate prayer.

Oh race that falters on, the striving and the stricken Passing with fruits and garlands and dust upon the head; Oh burning sunset gone wherein was hope to quicken The surge of starry dawn rising above the dead; Oh clamor over shame, yoke of the little-wiser On the unwilling shoulders, clenched by the quivering hands; Patience and proof that were and are your still appriser Now veil her and disguise her, gone from the spectral lands.

The spectral lands of time, the eternal torrent pouring Of dark and light around us, who fear both dark and light; And grief that wails in rhyme, and flesh the soul abhorring, And dismal pantomine played on a stage moon-bright; Why should such things as these assail her happy meadow, Creep on the court of children, come crying through the shine? We who are too unskilled even to taunt the shadow Groan only in the darkness and spill the precious wine!

For round us beating, beating her wings are in the mirror Of sleep, the mirror of silence built up with perilous breath. And in our conscience meeting her smile is on the terror That chains us round with error and desperate fear of death; Kind as a child's small hands her faithfulness is round us With swift and fading gestures, wise as a child is wise; Out of the gathering clouds that curtain and confound us, Ecstasy and enchantment--sudden and swift, her eyes!

The hills shall lay away their sombreness unspoken, The seas shall hush their murmur, the saddened wind be still, When the long league of silence 'twixt earth and beast is broken When at the end of all things the stones speak on the hill. Then Calvary shall cry with glorious joy to heaven, Aceldama be hearkened and purged by words aware,-- For that in days gone by her voice to His was given, And to the joy of heaven her soul of passionate prayer.

VI

I listened to the wind who speaks of finding Among the litter of his blown leaves of days All rainbow gold of tears that are so blinding; And then again he says Something of glittering jewels in the haze, Incense of praise, myrtles and bays for binding The wounds that blossom blood upon his ways.

I listened to the sun who can recover Miraculous instants of an earlier time Surprise Her eyes alinger on her lover And run like rhyme On leaf and stream. He spoke of dream and clime Sacred with everlasting Spring, ahover With light more cadenced than bright bells in chime.

I listened to the earth and sea. Their voices, Too mixed with men, came sombrer and more sad. They droned awhile of all the tangled choices That every man has had, And moaned like ancients with mere age gone mad And left me nothing that reasons or rejoices-- That seemed so reasonless in being glad.

I listened starward where the ghostly weaving Of wandering lights is all of Heaven we know And worlds are lamps and darkness comes bereaving The world of ebb and flow, And 'tis as if a bosom were heaving slow With firmamental care,--ah, heaving, heaving With an unfathomable earlier woe.

"Listener at many doors,--for what disaster?--" Her spirit murmur crept into my ears. "Brooder on pictures breathed on by the Master, Listen at the heart that hears,-- Ah, listen softly, breathing low!" The years Were not--for there She was--and, gazing past her, I saw the Vision raised by blood and tears.

VII

For the eyes loved, For the face lifted In that still light, Dark trees are groved, The snow drifted, And the mound white.

And the grave dug And the words spoken And the flowers shed-- And the eyes tearless But the heart broken For the brave dead.

Though a soul thrill To the stars' fire And a mind sing To a keen will Of a high desire And a great thing,--

Ah, who listens? Who--who hearkens Or answer makes,-- Though the moon glistens And the night darkens And the heart breaks?

Lay her sword by her, Her steel of spirit, Her phantom blade, Lest the loud liar In his hell inherit What her soul made!

Sweet sword, she came To pierce and quicken My heart to grace,-- Oh, white flame, Oh, heart life-stricken, Oh, deathless face!

VIII

Now the snow drives. The day Goes on in whirling gray. Still the world roars, As if no striving flame Had gone, as it suddenly came, Passing blind doors;

As if no eyes, no smile, No heart that could beguile Evil from earth, Had hovered just a space To light one holy place In the dark and the dearth.

Was it always as fierce and strange-- This blank and sudden change Men have known ever? This veil as hard and keen As the blade of a guillotine Flashing to sever?

Oh, ears that hark in the night, Eyeballs that strain for sight, Pulses that know The same dull burning ache, Though a man sleep, though he wake,-- Was it always so?

IX

True love runs wild and wildly understands. I took the bread of Heaven once from your two hands. And your eyes are upon me even as I sing, Saying, "Be of comfort. Death is a little thing."

Oh, magic child and woman, who crept into my heart, Who hold me with strong arms from all the world apart-- No, I will not say it--for your eyes grieve; I will say you draw us all to Heaven--_your_ Heaven, by your leave!

Lady Simplicitas, who hummed like any bee Little quaint and olden rhymes to keep simplicity, Lady of the downcast eyes and sudden starry mirth, And eloquence by torchlight for the wronged of all the earth,

True love runs wild and wildly understands! I took the wine of Heaven once from your two hands; And when your eyes were darkened for the world's red smart You made a violet twilight as you pressed against my heart.

For that coiled hair's brown crown, for that sweet and seemly way, The straight thoughts, the eager words, the dazzle of your day, Shall I turn base then and learn to whine and curse? Not though daggers of memory flicker through this verse!

For true love runs wild and wildly understands. I took the sacrament of love from your two hands. So shall I cross the sunset hill and climb the pasture bars And meet you in our porch at last, in the Village of the Stars.

X