Chapter 2

Glimmering eyes,--and silent, mostly, Sort of a whisper, sort of a purr, Asking something, asking it over, If you get a sound from her.--

Ever see her, any of you?-- Strangest thing I've ever known,-- Every night since I moved in, And I came to be alone.

"Thin Rain, hush with your knocking! You may not come in! This is I that you hear rocking; Nobody's with me, nor has been!"

Curious, how she tried the window,-- Odd, the way she tries the door,-- Wonder just what sort of people Could have had this house before . . .

EBB

I know what my heart is like Since your love died: It is like a hollow ledge Holding a little pool Left there by the tide, A little tepid pool, Drying inward from the edge.

ELAINE

OH, come again to Astolat! I will not ask you to be kind. And you may go when you will go, And I will stay behind.

I will not say how dear you are, Or ask you if you hold me dear, Or trouble you with things for you The way I did last year.

So still the orchard, Lancelot, So very still the lake shall be, You could not guess--though you should guess-- What is become of me.

So wide shall be the garden-walk, The garden-seat so very wide, You needs must think--if you should think-- The lily maid had died.

Save that, a little way away, I'd watch you for a little while, To see you speak, the way you speak, And smile,--if you should smile.

BURIAL

Mine is a body that should die at sea! And have for a grave, instead of a grave Six feet deep and the length of me, All the water that is under the wave!

And terrible fishes to seize my flesh, Such as a living man might fear, And eat me while I am firm and fresh,-- Not wait till I've been dead for a year!

MARIPOSA

Butterflies are white and blue In this field we wander through. Suffer me to take your hand. Death comes in a day or two.

All the things we ever knew Will be ashes in that hour, Mark the transient butterfly, How he hangs upon the flower.

Suffer me to take your hand. Suffer me to cherish you Till the dawn is in the sky. Whether I be false or true, Death comes in a day or two.

THE LITTLE HILL

OH, here the air is sweet and still, And soft's the grass to lie on; And far away's the little hill They took for Christ to die on.

And there's a hill across the brook, And down the brook's another; But, oh, the little hill they took,-- I think I am its mother!

The moon that saw Gethsemane, I watch it rise and set: It has so many things to see, They help it to forget.

But little hills that sit at home So many hundred years, Remember Greece, remember Rome, Remember Mary's tears.

And far away in Palestine, Sadder than any other, Grieves still the hill that I call mine,-- I think I am its mother!

DOUBT NO MORE THAT OBERON

Doubt no more that Oberon-- Never doubt that Pan Lived, and played a reed, and ran After nymphs in a dark forest, In the merry, credulous days,-- Lived, and led a fairy band Over the indulgent land! Ah, for in this dourest, sorest Age man's eye has looked upon, Death to fauns and death to fays, Still the dog-wood dares to raise-- Healthy tree, with trunk and root-- Ivory bowls that bear no fruit, And the starlings and the jays-- Birds that cannot even sing-- Dare to come again in spring!

LAMENT

Listen, children: Your father is dead. From his old coats I'll make you little jackets; I'll make you little trousers From his old pants. There'll be in his pockets Things he used to put there, Keys and pennies Covered with tobacco; Dan shall have the pennies To save in his bank; Anne shall have the keys To make a pretty noise with. Life must go on, And the dead be forgotten; Life must go on, Though good men die; Anne, eat your breakfast; Dan, take your medicine; Life must go on; I forget just why.

EXILED

Searching my heart for its true sorrow, This is the thing I find to be: That I am weary of words and people, Sick of the city, wanting the sea;

Wanting the sticky, salty sweetness Of the strong wind and shattered spray; Wanting the loud sound and the soft sound Of the big surf that breaks all day.

Always before about my dooryard, Marking the reach of the winter sea, Rooted in sand and dragging drift-wood, Straggled the purple wild sweet-pea;

Always I climbed the wave at morning, Shook the sand from my shoes at night, That now am caught beneath great buildings, Stricken with noise, confused with light.

If I could hear the green piles groaning Under the windy wooden piers, See once again the bobbing barrels, And the black sticks that fence the weirs,

If I could see the weedy mussels Crusting the wrecked and rotting hulls, Hear once again the hungry crying Overhead, of the wheeling gulls,

Feel once again the shanty straining Under the turning of the tide, Fear once again the rising freshet, Dread the bell in the fog outside,--

I should be happy,--that was happy All day long on the coast of Maine! I have a need to hold and handle Shells and anchors and ships again!

I should be happy, that am happy Never at all since I came here. I am too long away from water. I have a need of water near.

THE DEATH OF AUTUMN

When reeds are dead and a straw to thatch the marshes, And feathered pampas-grass rides into the wind Like aged warriors westward, tragic, thinned Of half their tribe, and over the flattened rushes, Stripped of its secret, open, stark and bleak, Blackens afar the half-forgotten creek,-- Then leans on me the weight of the year, and crushes My heart. I know that Beauty must ail and die, And will be born again,--but ah, to see Beauty stiffened, staring up at the sky! Oh, Autumn! Autumn!--What is the Spring to me?

ODE TO SILENCE

Aye, but she? Your other sister and my other soul Grave Silence, lovelier Than the three loveliest maidens, what of her? Clio, not you, Not you, Calliope, Nor all your wanton line, Not Beauty's perfect self shall comfort me For Silence once departed, For her the cool-tongued, her the tranquil-hearted, Whom evermore I follow wistfully, Wandering Heaven and Earth and Hell and the four seasons through; Thalia, not you, Not you, Melpomene, Not your incomparable feet, O thin Terpsichore, I seek in this great hall, But one more pale, more pensive, most beloved of you all. I seek her from afar, I come from temples where her altars are, From groves that bear her name, Noisy with stricken victims now and sacrificial flame, And cymbals struck on high and strident faces Obstreperous in her praise They neither love nor know, A goddess of gone days, Departed long ago, Abandoning the invaded shrines and fanes Of her old sanctuary, A deity obscure and legendary, Of whom there now remains, For sages to decipher and priests to garble, Only and for a little while her letters wedged in marble, Which even now, behold, the friendly mumbling rain erases, And the inarticulate snow, Leaving at last of her least signs and traces None whatsoever, nor whither she is vanished from these places. "She will love well," I said, "If love be of that heart inhabiter, The flowers of the dead; The red anemone that with no sound Moves in the wind, and from another wound That sprang, the heavily-sweet blue hyacinth, That blossoms underground, And sallow poppies, will be dear to her. And will not Silence know In the black shade of what obsidian steep Stiffens the white narcissus numb with sleep? (Seed which Demeter's daughter bore from home, Uptorn by desperate fingers long ago, Reluctant even as she, Undone Persephone, And even as she set out again to grow In twilight, in perdition's lean and inauspicious loam). She will love well," I said, "The flowers of the dead; Where dark Persephone the winter round, Uncomforted for home, uncomforted, Lacking a sunny southern slope in northern Sicily, With sullen pupils focussed on a dream, Stares on the stagnant stream That moats the unequivocable battlements of Hell, There, there will she be found, She that is Beauty veiled from men and Music in a swound."

"I long for Silence as they long for breath Whose helpless nostrils drink the bitter sea; What thing can be So stout, what so redoubtable, in Death What fury, what considerable rage, if only she, Upon whose icy breast, Unquestioned, uncaressed, One time I lay, And whom always I lack, Even to this day, Being by no means from that frigid bosom weaned away, If only she therewith be given me back?" I sought her down that dolorous labyrinth, Wherein no shaft of sunlight ever fell, And in among the bloodless everywhere I sought her, but the air, Breathed many times and spent, Was fretful with a whispering discontent, And questioning me, importuning me to tell Some slightest tidings of the light of day they know no more, Plucking my sleeve, the eager shades were with me where I went. I paused at every grievous door, And harked a moment, holding up my hand,--and for a space A hush was on them, while they watched my face; And then they fell a-whispering as before; So that I smiled at them and left them, seeing she was not there. I sought her, too, Among the upper gods, although I knew She was not like to be where feasting is, Nor near to Heaven's lord, Being a thing abhorred And shunned of him, although a child of his, (Not yours, not yours; to you she owes not breath, Mother of Song, being sown of Zeus upon a dream of Death). Fearing to pass unvisited some place And later learn, too late, how all the while, With her still face, She had been standing there and seen me pass, without a smile, I sought her even to the sagging board whereat The stout immortals sat; But such a laughter shook the mighty hall No one could hear me say: Had she been seen upon the Hill that day? And no one knew at all How long I stood, or when at last I sighed and went away.

There is a garden lying in a lull Between the mountains and the mountainous sea, I know not where, but which a dream diurnal Paints on my lids a moment till the hull Be lifted from the kernel And Slumber fed to me. Your foot-print is not there, Mnemosene, Though it would seem a ruined place and after Your lichenous heart, being full Of broken columns, caryatides Thrown to the earth and fallen forward on their jointless knees, And urns funereal altered into dust Minuter than the ashes of the dead, And Psyche's lamp out of the earth up-thrust, Dripping itself in marble wax on what was once the bed Of Love, and his young body asleep, but now is dust instead.

There twists the bitter-sweet, the white wisteria Fastens its fingers in the strangling wall, And the wide crannies quicken with bright weeds; There dumbly like a worm all day the still white orchid feeds; But never an echo of your daughters' laughter Is there, nor any sign of you at all Swells fungous from the rotten bough, grey mother of Pieria!

Only her shadow once upon a stone I saw,--and, lo, the shadow and the garden, too, were gone.

I tell you you have done her body an ill, You chatterers, you noisy crew! She is not anywhere! I sought her in deep Hell; And through the world as well; I thought of Heaven and I sought her there; Above nor under ground Is Silence to be found, That was the very warp and woof of you, Lovely before your songs began and after they were through! Oh, say if on this hill Somewhere your sister's body lies in death, So I may follow there, and make a wreath Of my locked hands, that on her quiet breast Shall lie till age has withered them!

(Ah, sweetly from the rest I see Turn and consider me Compassionate Euterpe!) "There is a gate beyond the gate of Death, Beyond the gate of everlasting Life, Beyond the gates of Heaven and Hell," she saith, "Whereon but to believe is horror! Whereon to meditate engendereth Even in deathless spirits such as I A tumult in the breath, A chilling of the inexhaustible blood Even in my veins that never will be dry, And in the austere, divine monotony That is my being, the madness of an unaccustomed mood.

This is her province whom you lack and seek; And seek her not elsewhere. Hell is a thoroughfare For pilgrims,--Herakles, And he that loved Euridice too well, Have walked therein; and many more than these; And witnessed the desire and the despair Of souls that passed reluctantly and sicken for the air; You, too, have entered Hell, And issued thence; but thence whereof I speak None has returned;--for thither fury brings Only the driven ghosts of them that flee before all things. Oblivion is the name of this abode: and she is there."

Oh, radiant Song! Oh, gracious Memory! Be long upon this height I shall not climb again! I know the way you mean,--the little night, And the long empty day,--never to see Again the angry light, Or hear the hungry noises cry my brain! Ah, but she, Your other sister and my other soul, She shall again be mine; And I shall drink her from a silver bowl, A chilly thin green wine, Not bitter to the taste, Not sweet, Not of your press, oh, restless, clamorous nine,-- To foam beneath the frantic hoofs of mirth-- But savoring faintly of the acid earth, And trod by pensive feet From perfect clusters ripened without haste Out of the urgent heat In some clear glimmering vaulted twilight under the odorous vine.

Lift up your lyres! Sing on! But as for me, I seek your sister whither she is gone.

MEMORIAL TO D. C. [VASSAR COLLEGE, 1918]

Oh, loveliest throat of all sweet throats, Where now no more the music is, With hands that wrote you little notes I write you little elegies!

EPITAPH

Heap not on this mound Roses that she loved so well; Why bewilder her with roses, That she cannot see or smell? She is happy where she lies With the dust upon her eyes.

PRAYER TO PERSEPHONE

Be to her, Persephone, All the things I might not be; Take her head upon your knee. She that was so proud and wild, Flippant, arrogant and free, She that had no need of me, Is a little lonely child Lost in Hell,--Persephone, Take her head upon your knee; Say to her, "My dear, my dear, It is not so dreadful here."

CHORUS

Give away her gowns, Give away her shoes; She has no more use For her fragrant gowns; Take them all down, Blue, green, blue, Lilac, pink, blue, From their padded hangers; She will dance no more In her narrow shoes; Sweep her narrow shoes From the closet floor.

ELEGY

Let them bury your big eyes In the secret earth securely, Your thin fingers, and your fair, Soft, indefinite-colored hair,-- All of these in some way, surely, From the secret earth shall rise; Not for these I sit and stare, Broken and bereft completely; Your young flesh that sat so neatly On your little bones will sweetly Blossom in the air.

But your voice,--never the rushing Of a river underground, Not the rising of the wind In the trees before the rain, Not the woodcock's watery call, Not the note the white-throat utters, Not the feet of children pushing Yellow leaves along the gutters In the blue and bitter fall, Shall content my musing mind For the beauty of that sound That in no new way at all Ever will be heard again.

Sweetly through the sappy stalk Of the vigorous weed, Holding all it held before, Cherished by the faithful sun, On and on eternally Shall your altered fluid run, Bud and bloom and go to seed; But your singing days are done; But the music of your talk Never shall the chemistry Of the secret earth restore. All your lovely words are spoken. Once the ivory box is broken, Beats the golden bird no more.

DIRGE

Boys and girls that held her dear, Do your weeping now; All you loved of her lies here.

Brought to earth the arrogant brow, And the withering tongue Chastened; do your weeping now.

Sing whatever songs are sung, Wind whatever wreath, For a playmate perished young,

For a spirit spent in death. Boys and girls that held her dear, All you loved of her lies here.

SONNETS

I

We talk of taxes, and I call you friend; Well, such you are,--but well enough we know How thick about us root, how rankly grow Those subtle weeds no man has need to tend, That flourish through neglect, and soon must send Perfume too sweet upon us and overthrow Our steady senses; how such matters go We are aware, and how such matters end. Yet shall be told no meagre passion here; With lovers such as we forevermore Isolde drinks the draught, and Guinevere Receives the Table's ruin through her door, Francesca, with the loud surf at her ear, Lets fall the colored book upon the floor.

II

Into the golden vessel of great song Let us pour all our passion; breast to breast Let other lovers lie, in love and rest; Not we,--articulate, so, but with the tongue Of all the world: the churning blood, the long Shuddering quiet, the desperate hot palms pressed Sharply together upon the escaping guest, The common soul, unguarded, and grown strong. Longing alone is singer to the lute; Let still on nettles in the open sigh The minstrel, that in slumber is as mute As any man, and love be far and high, That else forsakes the topmost branch, a fruit Found on the ground by every passer-by.

III

Not with libations, but with shouts and laughter We drenched the altars of Love's sacred grove, Shaking to earth green fruits, impatient after The launching of the colored moths of Love. Love's proper myrtle and his mother's zone We bound about our irreligious brows, And fettered him with garlands of our own, And spread a banquet in his frugal house. Not yet the god has spoken; but I fear Though we should break our bodies in his flame, And pour our blood upon his altar, here Henceforward is a grove without a name, A pasture to the shaggy goats of Pan, Whence flee forever a woman and a man.

IV

Only until this cigarette is ended, A little moment at the end of all, While on the floor the quiet ashes fall, And in the firelight to a lance extended, Bizarrely with the jazzing music blended, The broken shadow dances on the wall, I will permit my memory to recall The vision of you, by all my dreams attended. And then adieu,--farewell!--the dream is done. Yours is a face of which I can forget The color and the features, every one, The words not ever, and the smiles not yet; But in your day this moment is the sun Upon a hill, after the sun has set.

V

Once more into my arid days like dew, Like wind from an oasis, or the sound Of cold sweet water bubbling underground, A treacherous messenger, the thought of you Comes to destroy me; once more I renew Firm faith in your abundance, whom I found Long since to be but just one other mound Of sand, whereon no green thing ever grew. And once again, and wiser in no wise, I chase your colored phantom on the air, And sob and curse and fall and weep and rise And stumble pitifully on to where, Miserable and lost, with stinging eyes, Once more I clasp,--and there is nothing there.

VI

No rose that in a garden ever grew, In Homer's or in Omar's or in mine, Though buried under centuries of fine Dead dust of roses, shut from sun and dew Forever, and forever lost from view, But must again in fragrance rich as wine The grey aisles of the air incarnadine When the old summers surge into a new. Thus when I swear, "I love with all my heart," 'Tis with the heart of Lilith that I swear, 'Tis with the love of Lesbia and Lucrece; And thus as well my love must lose some part Of what it is, had Helen been less fair, Or perished young, or stayed at home in Greece.

VII

When I too long have looked upon your face, Wherein for me a brightness unobscured Save by the mists of brightness has its place, And terrible beauty not to be endured, I turn away reluctant from your light, And stand irresolute, a mind undone, A silly, dazzled thing deprived of sight From having looked too long upon the sun. Then is my daily life a narrow room In which a little while, uncertainly, Surrounded by impenetrable gloom, Among familiar things grown strange to me Making my way, I pause, and feel, and hark, Till I become accustomed to the dark.

VIII

And you as well must die, beloved dust, And all your beauty stand you in no stead; This flawless, vital hand, this perfect head, This body of flame and steel, before the gust Of Death, or under his autumnal frost, Shall be as any leaf, be no less dead Than the first leaf that fell,--this wonder fled. Altered, estranged, disintegrated, lost. Nor shall my love avail you in your hour. In spite of all my love, you will arise Upon that day and wander down the air Obscurely as the unattended flower, It mattering not how beautiful you were, Or how beloved above all else that dies.

IX

Let you not say of me when I am old, In pretty worship of my withered hands Forgetting who I am, and how the sands Of such a life as mine run red and gold Even to the ultimate sifting dust, "Behold, Here walketh passionless age!"--for there expands A curious superstition in these lands, And by its leave some weightless tales are told.

In me no lenten wicks watch out the night; I am the booth where Folly holds her fair; Impious no less in ruin than in strength, When I lie crumbled to the earth at length, Let you not say, "Upon this reverend site The righteous groaned and beat their breasts in prayer."

X