Part 2

Betwixt the upper Mill-stone _Yes_ And the nether Mill-stone _No_, Whence cometh _burr_ and _burr_ and _burr_ And much noise of quarrel, The Miller poured the hopper full Of corn from the bag, And in the corn lay one violet, (Maybe the farmer's little girl dropped it in When the boy went to the bin to fill the bag). And _burr_ quoth the upper Mill-stone, And _burr you back again_ the nether, And the violet was ground with the corn, But passed not into the bag with the meal, Thank God! The odor of crushed violet flew forth And passed about the ages; And men here and there had a sense Of somewhat rich and high-intense, Dewy, fiery, dear, forlorn, Delicate, grave, new out of the morn, But saturate yet With the night despair that every flower will wet.

[_Credo, and Other Poems_]

A BUSINESS TRANSACTION

The poet stepped into a grimy den, Where the sign above the door Said: Money to lend, in sums to suit, On Real Estate, &c.

I want, said the Poet, (So many thousand dollars). So said Cent per Cent, rubbing his hands, Where is the property?

I offer, said the Poet, My Castle in Spain, 'Tis a lovely house, So many rooms, acres, &c.

Ambling, ambling round the ring, Round the ring of daily duty, Leap, Circus-rider, man, through the paper hoop of death, —Ah, lightest thou, beyond death, on this same slow-ambling, padded horse of life.

Youth, the circus-rider, fares gaily round the ring, standing with one foot on the bare-backed horse—the Ideal. Presently, at the moment of manhood, Life (exacting ring-master) causes another horse to be brought in who passes under the rider's legs, and ambles on. This is the Real. The young man takes up the reins, places a foot on each animal, and the business now becomes serious.

For it is a differing pace, of these two, the Real and the Ideal.

And yet no man can be said to make the least success in life who does not contrive to make them go well together.

The Age is an Adonis that pursues the boar Wealth: yet shall the rude tusk of trade wound this blue-veined thigh,—if _Love_ come not to the rescue; Adon despises Love.

Sometimes Providence seems to have a bee in his bonnet. Else why should hell, the greatest risk, be the most improvable fact, and himself, the only light, be the most completely undiscoverable? If the angels are good company, why shut us out from them? I look for good boys for my children. Hide not your light under a bushel, is His own command: and yet He is completely obscured under the inexorable _quid pro quo_ of Nature and the hateful measure of Evil.

[_Credo, and Other Poems_]

The black-birds giving a shimmer of sound, { transparent tremors As midday hills give forth { luminous of heat and haze.

FOR A FLOWER DECORATION OF SOLDIERS' GRAVES

Unto your house, O sleepers, Unto these graves that house you since ye died, Unto these little rooms wherein ye sleep, A serenade of Love who sings in flowers, If sense more dim than thought May pierce through the deep dream of death wherein ye lie.

In a silence embroidered with whispers of lovers, As the darkness is purfled with fire-flies.

The feverish heaven with a stitch in the side, Of lightning.

For Pray'r the Ocean is, where diversely Men steer their course, each to a several coast, Where all our interests so discordant be, Half begging God for winds that Would send the other half to hell.

As many blades of grass as be In all thy horizontal round, So many dreams brood over thee.

To stand with quietude in the midst of the prodigious Unknown which we call the World, also to look with tranquil eyes upon the unfathomable blackness which limits our view to the little space enclosed betwixt birth and death.

So pray we to the God we dimly hope Against calamities we clearly know.

It may be that the world can get along without God: but _I_ can not. The universe-finity is to me like the chord of the dominant seventh, always leading towards, always inviting onwards, a Chord of Progress; God is the tonic Triad, a chord of Repose.

SONGS OF ALDHELM

Songs from the Sun, Songs from the ground, Songs from the ... stars, Songs, { fine souls of the body of sound, { joined souls and bodies of sound, ... ghosts of songs that died, Songs of Birth and of Death, of ... Beat million-rhythmed in the heart of my hearing, The world is all sound and still signs of sound.

It appears that if I were perfect, I could not be perfect. For with whoever is perfect, there is nothing more to be done. But if there were nothing more to do, I would be very sorry: that is, I would not be perfect. Therefore it appears that I would not be perfect if I were perfect.

[_Credo, and Other Poems_]

We know more than we know. That the Lord is all, I know: That I am part, I know. But how shall we settle our provinces and diplomacies and boundaries, the Lord and I? Let us talk of this matter, dear Lord, I talking in silence.

_But the corruption, the rascality, the &c., &c._, I am not afraid. _But the stock broker, the whiskey ring_, I am not afraid. _Nay, but the war in the East_, I am not afraid. I see God about his godly affairs, The cat-bird sits in the tree and sings While the boy kills the &c. beneath.

The mocking-bird hanging over the street sings, though robbery, murder, fire, &c., go on.

WATER AT DAWN

Gray iris of the eyeball earth, Limpid Intelligence.

It is the easiest thing in the world to make one falsehood out of two truths.

O Science, wilt thou take my Christ, Oh, wilt thou crucify him o'er Betwixt false thieves with thieves' own pain, Never to rise again? Leave me this love, O cool-eyed One, Leave me this Saviour.

_Science_: Down at the base of a statue, A flower of strange hue I dug, that I might see and know the root thereof, And lo, the statue is prone, fallen. They did but crucify the godhead of Christ, (_My God, my God_, He said, _why hast thou forsaken me?_) The manhood rose and lives forever, The Leader, the Friend, the Beloved of all men and women, The strongest, the wisest, the dearest, the sweetest.

Come with me, Science; let us go into the Church here (say in Georgia); let alone the youth here, they have roses in their cheeks, they know that life is delicious, what need have they of thee? But fix thy keen eye on these grave-faced and mostly sallow married women who make at least half this congregation—these women who are the people that carry around the subscription cards, and feed the preacher and keep him in heart always. See, there is Mrs. S.: her husband and son were killed in the war; Mrs. B.—her husband has been a thriftless fellow, and she has finally found out the damnable fact that she is both stronger and purer than he is, which she is, however, yet sweetly endeavoring to hide from herself and all people; Mrs. C. D. and the rest of the alphabet in the same condition;—Science, I grasp thee by the throat and ask thee with vehement passion, wilt thou take away the Christ (who is to each Deficiency in this house the Completion and Hoped Perfectness) from these women?

To-day The Stars tease me, as it were gadflies: And I cannot bear the impudent reds and yellows of the flowers.

To many inarticulate Like the great vague wind Against the wire, one word larger Than some languages, nowhere flippant, My song is of all men and times and thoughts, Therefore many, caring not For aught save one man, this time, and finance, Many, many listen not Because I sing for all. Sang I of that little king That owns this special little time, The world were mine; but oh, but oh, I sing all Time that hath no king. And if I sang this man or that, Haply the singer's fee I win; But part's too little: I sing all: I know not parties, cliques, nor times.

The old Obligation of goodness has now advanced into the Delight of goodness; the old Curse of Labor into the Delight of Labor; the old Agony of blood-shedding sacrifice into the tranquil Delight of Unselfishness. The Curse of the Jew of Genesis is the Blessing of the modern Gentile. It is as if an avalanche, in the very moment of crushing the kneeling villagers, should turn to a gentle and fruitful rain, and be minister not of death but of life.

A GARDEN PARTY

Invitation brought by the wind, and sent by the rose and the oak. I sat on the steps—warm summer noon—in a garden, and half cloudy with low clouds, sun hot, rich mocking bird singing, bee brushing down a big raindrop from a flower, where it hung tremulous. The bird's music is echoed from the breasts of roses, and reflex sound comes doubly back with grace of odor.—First came the lizard, dandiest of reptiles; then the bee, then small strange insects that wear flap-wings and spider-web legs, and crawl up the slim green stalks of grass; the catbirds, the flowers, with each a soul—this is the company I like; the talk, the gossip anent the last news of the spirit, the marriage of man and nature, the betrothal of Science and Art, the failure of the great house of Buy and Sell (see following note[1]), a rumor out of the sun, and many messages concerning the stars.

Footnote 1:

Buy and Sell failed because Love was a partner. "This Love, now, who is he?" said a comfortable burgher oak. "I hear much of him these later days." Why, Love, he owneth all things: trees and land and water power.

Oh, man falls into this wide sea of life Like a pebble dropped by idle bands in water. The little circle of the stir he makes Does lessen as it widens, until Death Comes on, and straightway the round ripple is gone out.

The grave is a cup Wherewith I dip up My draughts from the lake of life. (Death, loquitor.)

Death is the cup-bearer of Heaven, God's Ganymede, and his cup is the grave, and life is the wine that fills it.

Birth is but a folding of our wings.

When bees, in honey-frenzies, rage and rage, And their hot dainty wars with flowers wage, Foraying in the woods for sweet rapine And spreading odorous havoc o'er the green.

All men are pearl-divers, and we have but plunged down into this straggling salt-sea of Life—to find a pearl. This Pearl, like all others, comes from a wound: it is the Pearl of Love after Grief.

It is always sunrise and always sunset somewhere on the earth. And so, with a silver sunrise before him and a golden sunset behind him, the Royal Sun fares through Heaven, like a king with a herald and a retinue.

Night's a black-haired poet, and he's in love with Day. But he never meets her save at early morn and late eve, when they fall into each other's arms and draw out a lingering kiss: so folded together at such times that we cannot distinguish bright maid from dark lover; and so we call it Dawn and Twilight—it being

Not light, but lustrous dark; Not dark, but secret light.

These green and swelling hills, crowned with white tents, Like vast green waves, white-foaming at the top.

Hunger and a whip: with these we tame wild beasts. So, to tame us, God continually keeps our hearts hungry for love, and continually lashes our souls with the thongs of relentless circumstance.

Star-drops lingering after sunlight's rain.

The earth, a grain of pollen dropped in the vast calyx of Heaven.

Our beliefs needed pruning, that they might bring forth more fruit: and so Science came.

I, the artist, fought with a Knight that was cased in a mail of gold; and my weapon, with all my art, would not penetrate his armor. Gold is a soft metal, but makes the hardest hauberk of all. What shall I do to pierce this covering? For I am hungry for this man, this business man of stocks and drygoods, and now it seems as if there were no pleasure nor hope nor life for me until I win him to my side.

My Desire is round, It is a great globe. If my desire were no bigger than this world It were no bigger than a pin's head. But this world is to the world I want As a cinder to Sirius.

I am startled at the gigantic suggestions in this old story of the Serpent who introduces knowledge to man in Eden. How could the Jew who wrote Genesis have known the sadness that ever comes with learning—as if wisdom were still the protégé of the Devil.

On the advantage of reducing facts—like fractions—to a common denominator.

We explain: but only in terms of x and y, which are themselves symbols of we know not what, graphs of mystery. We establish relations betwixt this and that mystery. We reduce x and y to a common denominator, so that we can add them together, and make a scientific generalization, or subtract them, and make a scientific analysis: but more we can not do. The mystery is still a mystery, and this is all the material out of which we must weave our life.

I had a dog, And his name was not _Fido_, but _Credo_. (In America they shorten his name to "_Creed_.") My child fell into the water: Then in plunged Credo, and brought me out my child, My beloved One, Brought him out, truly, But lo, in my Child's throat and in his limbs, In the throat and the limbs of the child of man, Credo's teeth had bitten deep. (A good dog but a stern one was _Credo_) And my child, though sound, Was scarred in his beautiful face And was maimed in his manful limbs For life, alas, for life. Thus _Credo_ saved and scarred and maimed The Son of Man, my Child.

There was a flower called Faith: Man plucked it, and kept it in a vase of water. This was long ago, mark you. And the flower is now faint, For the water with time and dust is foul. Come let us pour out the old water, And put in new, That the flower of faith be red again.

Ten Lilies and ten Virgins, And, mild marvel to mine eyes, Five of the Virgins were foolish, But _all_ of the lilies were wise.

Look out, Death, I am coming. Art thou not glad? What talks we'll have, what memories Of old battles. Come, bring the bowl, Death; I am thirsty.

_Cut the Cord, Doctor!_ quoth the baby, man, in the nineteenth century. _I am ready to draw my own breath._

Whether one is an optimist or an orthodox religionist or what not, it would seem that faith must centre upon Christ.

The Church is too hot, and Nothing is too cold. I find my proper Temperature in Art. Art offers to me a method of adoring the sweet master Jesus Christ, the beautiful souled One, without the straitness of a Creed which confines my genuflexions, a Church which confines my limbs, and without the vacuity of the doubt which numbs them. An unspeakable gain has come to me in simply turning a certain phrase the other way: the beauty of holiness becomes a new and wonderful saying to me when I figure it to myself in reverse as the holiness of beauty. This is like opening a window of dark stained glass, and letting in a flood of white light. I thus keep upon the walls of my soul a church-wall rubric which has been somewhat clouded by the expiring breaths of creeds dying their natural death. For in art there is no doubt. My heart beat all last night without my supervision: for I was asleep; my heart did not doubt a throb; I left it beating when I slept, I found it beating when I woke; it is thus with art: it beats in my sleep. A holy tune was in my soul when I fell asleep: it was going when I awoke. This melody is always moving along in the background of my spirit. If I wish to compose, I abstract my attention from the thoughts which occupy the front of the stage, the _dramatis personæ_ of the moment, and fix myself upon the deeper scene in the rear.

It is now time that one should arise in the world and cry out that Art is made for man and not man for art: that government is made for man and not man for government: that religion is made for man and not man for religion: that trade is made for man and not man for trade. This is essentially the utterance of Christ in declaring that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath.

Like the forest whose edges near man's dwellings are embroidered with birds, while its inner recesses are the unbroken solid color of solitude.

To him that humbly here will look I'll ope the heavens wide, But ne'er a blessing brings a book To him that reads in pride. Whoe'er shall search me but to see Some fact he hath foretold, Making my gospel but his prophecy. My New his little Old. To him that opens his hands upwards to me like a thirsty plant I am Rain, But to him that merely stands as a patron by to see me perform I am Zero and a Drought.

Then three tall lilies floated white along To these woods: we come from Nature, Ambassadors, for thou gavest us consideration, For thou said'st, Consider the lilies, And who considers them will soon consider And how that they did exceed the glory of Solomon.

How in the Age gone by Thou took'st the Time upon thy knee As a child, A Time that smote thee in the face Even whilst thou did kiss it, And how it tore out thy loving eyes Even while thou didst teach it.

The monstrous things the mighty world hath kept In reverence 'gainst the law of reverence: The lies of Judith, Brutus' treachery, Damon's deceit, all wiles of war.

TO A CERTAIN THREE OAKS IN DRUID HILL PARK

Let me lean against you, my Loves, Give me a place, my darlings, I am so happy, so fain, so full, in your large company.

I knew a saint that said he never went among men without returning home less a man than he was before he went forth. But it is not so with you: I am always more a man when I converse with you. Who is so manly and so manifold sweet as a tree? There is none that can talk like a tree: for a tree says always to me exactly that which I wish him to say. A man is apt to say what I did not desire to hear, or what I had no need to know at that time. A tree knows always my necessity.

O Earth, O mother, thou my Beautiful, Why frowns this shallow feud 'twixt me and thee? Were I a bad son, deaf, undutiful, Nor loved thy mother-talk, thy gramarye Of groves, thy hale discourse of fact in terms That mince not, yea, thy sharp cold winter Like as the love lore thine expressive germs Of spring do plainly petal forth,—'twere cause Conceivable of quarrel.

HOW TWELVE STAGS PLOWED FOR SAINT LEONOR

Ere yet to brakeward stole the feeding fawn, While grave and lone about the greenwood lay All soft seclusions of the dimmest dawn, Forth from his hut, in heavenly airs to pray

Fared Father Leonor, wrapt with morn and God, New-perfected in look and limb with sleep, Fain of each friendly tree whereby he trod, At dew-drop salutations smiling deep.

He paced the hollow towards his pleasant goal Where burst from out a tall oak's roots a spring, As prayer from priviest fibres of the soul Leaps forth in loneliness. There stood a stalwart ring

Of twelve great oaks about that middle Oak, Which uttered forth the fount, as erstwhile stood The sweetest Twelve of time round Him who spoke The words that watered life's long drought of good.

Straight fell the father Leonor on his knees Down by the foot of that Christ-Oak, and cried, My master, while they sleep, I pray for these, My soul's dear sons, my sixty, that abide

About my cell since first my wandering feet In these Armoric wilds were stayed: O Lord,[2] . . . . . .

Footnote 2:

"The Legend of St. Leonor" is given in full in Mr. Lanier's "Retrospects and Prospects."

WHAT AM I WITHOUT THEE?

What am I without thee, Beloved? A mere stem, that hath no flower; A sea forever at storm, without its calms; A shrine, with the Virgin stolen out; A cloud void of lightning; A bleak moor where yearnings moan like the winter winds; A rock on sea-sand, whence the sea hath retired, and no longer claspeth and loveth it; A hollow oak with the heart riven thereout, living by the bark alone; A dark star; A bird with both wings broken; A Dryad in a place where no trees are; A brook that never reacheth the sea; A mountain without sunrise thereon and without springs therein; A wave that runneth on forever, to no shore; A raindrop suspended between Heaven and Earth, arrested in his course; A bud, that will never open;

A hope that is always dying; An eye with no sparkle in it; A tear wept, dropped in the dust, cold; A bow whereof the string is snapped; An orchestra, wanting the violin; A poor poem; A bent lance; A play without plot or dénouement; An arrow, shot with no aim; Chivalry without his Ladye; A sound unarticulated; A water-lily left in a dry lake-bed; Sleep without a dream and without a waking-time; A pallid lip; A grave whereafter cometh neither Heaven nor hell; A broken javelin fixed in a breastplate; A heart that liveth, but throbbeth not; An Aurora of the North, dying upon the ice, in the night; A blurred picture; A lonesome, lonesome, lonesome yearning lover!

My birds, my pretty pious buccaneers That haunt the shores of daybreak and of dusk, Truly my birds did find to-day A-strand out yonder on the Balsam hills A bright bulk, where the night wave left it, High upon the Balsam peaks. Then my birds, my sweet, my heavenly [day prickers], Did open up the day Like as some castaway bale of flotsam sunlight-stuff And jetsam of woven Easternry: one loud exclaimed Upon brocaded silver with more silver voice: And one, when gold embroideries flamed in golden songs of better broidered tones, Translated them. And one from out some rare tone-tissue in his soul Shook fringes of sweet indecisive sound, And purfled all that ravishment of light with ravishment of music that not left Heat, or dry longing, or any indictment of God, Or question.

[_Lynn, N. C., August, 1881_]