Part 2

Joy, and the triumph and the doom of gladness Make in my breast a music sweet as sadness; Shall I not sing for sorrow, and again Cry out, for the sheer joyousness of pain! For all life’s moods go murmuring like strings In a low chord, and all things sound all things, Through alternations of the grave and glad: Yet, in the end, all things are grave and sad. I feel all things, but cannot comprehend; And run, laughing and weeping, to the end Of the dear mystery, the fated race-- And the deep darkness covers up my face.

IN THE DARK CITY

There is a harper plays Through the long watches of the lonely night When, like a cemetery, Sleeps the dark city, with her millions, laid each in his tomb.

I feel it in my dream, but when I wake-- Suddenly, like some secret thing not to be overheard, It ceases-- And the gray night grows dumb

Only in memory Linger those veiled adagios, fading, fading ... Till, with the morning, they are lost.

What door was opened then? What worlds, undreamed of, lie around us in our sleep, That yet we may not know? Where is it one sat playing Over and over, with such high and dreadful peace, The passion and sorrow of the eternal doom?

II

SPACE AND SOLITUDE

IMMENSITY

At noon I watched In the large hollow of eternal heaven A soaring hawk climb slowly toward the sun Through gyres of adoration without end. His flight was a great prayer....

SEA-HORIZONS

The sorrowful expanse from heaven to heaven, From zone to zone, from deep to height above, The mute arch of the everlasting heaven Bends over me with Your unwearied love.

Immeasurable, unutterable, and soundless-- Wide as the east from the west Your love is wide; The unfathomable distances are boundless Infinite tenderness on every side.

Against the dark strength of Your huge endurance My little being beats her baffled wings, Lifts her shrill voice, and wounds the calm assurance And tenderness of Your large evenings.

In the vast robes of Your serene compassion She hides her soiled and burning face of shame-- Your solemn and inexorable passion Lifts her blurred eyes to meet Your glance of flame.

As bread that for my daily fare is broken, The eternal loveliness before me spread-- Unutterable gesture--word unspoken, In the proud silences forever said!

The sun puts forth his strength, the reaches shimmer With inarticulate rapture, and the proud Waters are thrilled; the fields of ocean glimmer With shifting light and overshadowing cloud.

Noon upon noon in heaven takes up his station, Day follows night, and night succeeds to day: Your infinite and lonely meditation Sinks with the sunset down the starry way.

Veiled is the Vast: the heaven of evening burning. Reveals on the large waters of the sea Hopelessness--hopelessness--the patient yearning And dumb caress of the Immensity.

What message have You left for me, what token Of Your lone love, whose laboring Will has wrought The firmament over my head, and spoken Unto my nothingness Your starry Thought!

Sorrowful is the mighty Heart that reaches Around this brief and scornful heart of mine-- The dim curve of the melancholy beaches, And vacancies along the lone sea-line.

In the huge longing of the far sea-spaces, The tremulous rim about the waters curled, Waits the eternal Gentleness, and traces His sad horizons ’round the fading world.

Cloud beyond cloud, the arch of heaven goes over-- Steep beyond steep, the patient skies descend: The illimitable wastes and waves discover Loneliness--loneliness--without an end.

Inexorable Compassion, may I never Reach the last verge and limits of Your love! Beyond me, still beyond me melt forever The eternal margins, fading as I move.

OF DAY CAME NIGHT

We lay by the sea, and knew Darkness must make us one: Heaven was thrilled clean through By the trumpets of the sun, The sea burned gold and blue.

The sand in the pale heat Was parched as desert sand-- Your wrist where the veins meet, The cool veins of your hand, Made thirst seem bitter-sweet.

Never a word was said Of what must be so soon; In longing and in dread The golden afternoon Burned down, till dusk was shed.

It was not hope, nor fear, Yet something of them both, That held us trembling here, Half eager and half loath For darkness, dread but dear.

Few were the words were spoken, But in each other’s eyes We read the certain token That sealed our destinies-- Our wings of pride were broken.

So, while the waters paled Around us, and the west Fainted, our hearts that failed, In silence were confessed. Silence at last prevailed.

And now up her clear stair The evening-star began To climb, where heaven was bare A homing fish-hawk ran Down avenues of air.

Night swallowed up the sun, And darkness, like a hood, Sank--and the sea breathed on; In silence and solitude The eternal will was done.

PILGRIM

The cold wind cries across the rolling dunes, The gray sails fleck the margins of the world: I watch the rolling dunes along the barren sky, And wan, white waters by the swift wind hurled.

O where are Queen Faustina, and Babylon, and Tyre, And pale Troy, lost in a silver mist of tears-- And I, O earth, your child, more old than all these others, What have you done to me these many thousand years!

BY THE GRAY SEA

Where the gray sea lay sad and vast You turned your head away, And we sat silently at last-- There was no word to say:

_By the thunder, By the iron thunder of the sea._

We could not speak, for the lost hope Of the glad days before; We sat beside the long sea-slope, Watching the endless shore--

_By the thunder, By the iron thunder of the sea._

So that, as in the old despair, I reached you pleading hands; But you sat pale and helpless there, Beside the barren sands:

_By the thunder, By the iron thunder of the sea!_

THE FISH-HAWK

On the large highway of the awful air that flows Unbounded between sea and heaven, while twilight screened The sorrowful distances, he moved and had repose; On the huge wind of the Immensity he leaned His steady body in long lapse of flight--and rose

Gradual, through broad gyres of ever-climbing rest, Up the clear stair of the eternal sky, and stood Throned on the summit! Slowly, with his widening breast, Widened around him the enormous Solitude, From the gray rim of ocean to the glowing west.

Headlands and capes forlorn of the far coast, the land Rolling her barrens toward the south, he, from his throne Upon the gigantic wind, beheld: he hung--he fanned The abyss for mighty joy, to feel beneath him strown Pale pastures of the sea, with heaven on either hand--

The world with all her winds and waters, earth and air, Fields, folds, and moving clouds. The awful and adored Arches and endless aisles of vacancy, the fair Void of sheer heights and hollows hailed him as her lord And lover in the highest, to whom all heaven lay bare!

Till from that tower of ecstasy, that baffled height, Stooping, he sank; and slowly on the world’s wide way Walked, with great wing on wing, the merciless, proud Might, Hunting the huddled and lone reaches for his prey Down the dim shore--and faded in the crumbling light.

Slowly the dusk covered the land. Like a great hymn The sound of moving winds and waters was; the sea Whispered a benediction, and the west grew dim Where evening lifted her clear candles quietly ... Heaven, crowded with stars, trembled from rim to rim.

DISDAINFUL BEAUTY

On the wide waste the web of twilight, trembling Hangs low with stars and night; The dying day in the worn west, dissembling, Crowns his defeat with light.

Here by the grave, gray sea my soul sinks crying, By beauty stabbed to death-- “O, in the dusk of the world, let me, too, dying, Mix with all these my breath!”

There is no answer. In the cold heavens shining, Star trembles unto star: The virgin moon in the clear west declining Hangs, like a scimitar.

MY LONELY ONE

Even as a hawk’s in the large heaven’s hollow Are the great ways and gracious of your love: No lesser flight or wearier wing may follow In those broad gyres where you rest and move.

Most merciless, most high, most proud, most lonely-- In the clear space between the sky and sea Wheel her huge orbits, where the sea-winds only Wander the sun-roads of Immensity.

Yet have I known your heart and of what fashion Your love, how great, how hardly to be borne-- Your tenderness, too perfect for compassion, Your divine strength, too pure and proud for scorn.

You are most beautiful, but it is given But few to find you, fewer still to keep Your high path through the solitude of heaven, My lonely one, your watch upon the Deep.

Now toward the gold glow of the sunset’s splendor Veer your great vans. What haven in the west Now draws you--while the mellowing light makes tender Your dripping plumes--what islands of the blest?

Lift me, O lift me up to you forever, Beautiful Terror! Let your sacred might Stoop to me here, and save--O let me never Sink from you now, to share a lesser flight!

Even as I pray, my wings of longing fail me, And my heart flags. In solitude you move Down the night’s shore: not praying shall avail me, To lift me, fallen from your faultless love.

III

THE LOST TRAVELLER’S DREAM

WILD THOUGHT

Surf of song upon my heart Breaks forever, where thou art;

The dark ocean in my breast, Of wild love, may never rest:

Still one thought upon her shore Breaks in dream forevermore!

JOURNEY’S END

Forgive me, dear, if I have lost my way, In coming home to you Through storm and shadow of the gathering night; If I did stray, Still I was seeking, and I never knew How near me burned the dear and friendly light.

Now at your door, ere the great Dark begin, Alone I stand, and knock: Say not it is too late that I have come-- O take me in, For I am yours! Darling, unlock, unlock-- All Time to this was but a journey home!

BELATED LOVE

Come home to me, are you come home to me, O heart of mine--but in what dolorous guise! And the great hour, O ’twas otherwise Love had imagined it in days to be! These pleading hands--these lips--How dreadfully, At what strange lips and in what alien eyes Have you sought mine? Beneath what darkening skies Come home to me at last, come home to me?

I would not know the reason: here upon This breast of sorrows loose your aching breast; Tell me again and yet again, and say Still the eternal word, still babble on Your voiceless tale of some unhappy quest-- How in the night and storm you lost your way.

A LEAVE-TAKING

Well I remember it, that night in May, That last, sweet night in the Old World long ago, The last ere my departure--the dark room That brooded ’round us, and the drowsy breath, Out of the courtyard, of the linden-trees, Pungent and sad. Only your hand I felt, Reached to me in the darkness; and the beat All through its fingers of the unconscious blood, Your life at battle, in the silence told Immortally to mine its plaintive tale And doom eternal--only your hand I felt, Reached to me in the darkness--yet it seemed In your hand’s touch I touched your very self, Your very presence, changeable, careless, wild-- But O how poignant--sharp with all delight, And gracious with dear bounties to bestow, How greatly granted! Drowsily then at last, In the old way, you begged me for some legend Out of my boyhood’s record, some romance From the far world that bore me; and my voice, In the sweet, alien tongue, your mother-tongue, Moved through the darkness with a peace unfeigned-- For a grave peace was on us, and the fear That thrilled the midnight, fell away. The street Slumbered, save where, departing, like a ghost’s, Faint footfalls down the farthest distance sighed; And dwindled out forever.... So you slept.

Well I remember it, that night in May-- The sleep, the hushed awakenings, full of dread, From haunted meres of horror and disdain, From dreams of terror--and the mad return Into the bounteous pity of two arms, The comfort and the kindness. O the return Forever and forever, wild and sad, Seraphic with all weariness and pain, Insatiate with all love--as if to slake In one abandon all the desperate drought Of the years to come! Upon my own I felt The wet, salt quivering of your lips, and all Your being fold me in, urgent to save, Urgent to hide the approaching loneliness, Our bitter portion; prismed in tears, the dusk Swam ’round with dizzy color: the nightingales, Beauty’s disdain above the war of things, Beauty’s high pity from her virgin heights, Our meeting hearts pierced with a single pang-- Like a bright sword of sorrow through the breast Driven, and like a bruising sword withdrawn.

The sun arose-- Fled were the nightingales, the love, the joy-- And with him rose at last the relentless fear, Like a harsh face never to be pushed back, Between your face and mine; till all the terror, The loneliness, the irrevocable fate, In the dim twilight hugged me, and a cry, Up from _my_ self to _your_ self, would have rent My hesitant lips, in the great need, to you Turned for the last compassion.... But you slept. At peace you lay. Over you in the dawn I leaned, and knew you truly what you were.

Then a great love Triumphing over sorrow, like the light Clearing the west when sunset’s wrath has waned Before the risen stars--a mystery--welled Up through me radiant, helpless where you lay In the calm pose of sleep: and above Time, Our little passion, and the circumstance Of temporal tumult, self to self we met; And sundered reverent.... Faintest breath of flowers Stirred in the twilight fragrantly, and there The pathos of our days together filled me With a new wonder--flooding on me came A host of memories, as to one long dead, Lifted beyond his living; till all seemed Marvellous and immortal and benign.

And now The hour was come. Beside your quiet breast I begged forgiveness for my many sins Done to you, though unwitting--all the hurt-- In a swift prayer, and even for this last-- To wake you to your sorrow. And your lips Forgave me--yes, in the silence. So I touched Your lids with kisses. And you woke, and wept.

But brave to the end with a heart-breaking bravery-- Gallant and gracious, dear with sacred eyes, You let me go. With a half-kiss we parted.

II

Along the city-ways Already day’s vehement tumult had begun: Through street and justled alley, court and square, The tireless and eternal Heart poured forth Its myriad human faces, grave or glad, On the old course of toil (a choral hymn From the lips of Life) each face a testimony Of some prefiguring love. O the delight, The incredible bounty and sustaining will Of passionate longing, peopling all the earth-- And the joy of man and woman! The laughing boys! The milkman clanking along in his cart, and there Two bonneted old women, and there a thief, Perhaps, with a night’s booty sneaking home! Yet solemn all and sacred, with new eyes I saw them then, and in each face I seemed With a new soul to read the soul beneath; Through love and pain and sorrow having passed Into the breast of all humanity-- Through love and sorrow. Yes, and for your sake, Being human, all things human touched to love This heart of mine, made holy; and the thought Of the million other hearts beyond the dawn-- The gladness, and the sadness, and the pain-- Came back upon me like a lifting music, Beautiful, and most sorrowful, and divine.

Till a vast compassion Up through the springs of all my being welled Intolerably! Ah, even as to myself, Unfaithful, the exuberant Bounty stooped With arms of pity; so I longed to do-- To lose myself at last in the Great Self That beams upon the just and the unjust, Carelessly shedding radiant light around: Compassing finite hate with infinite love, With beauty, ugliness, and death with life!

So through that street of pouring souls I passed, Torn between grief and ecstasy. But none Guessed the immortal secret that I bore Close at the fluttering heart--the fear--the joy-- The very beat and memory in my blood, The exquisite sense and lingering pain of you.

BUT LOVE--

Flowing in the sunlight here, The river shines like a glass, Even as it did last year; On the hillside the grass Bows, as the breezes pass-- But my love is gone, my love is gone.

Where is she--where, and how? Has she forgotten me yet? Ah, she has forgotten me now! She is too lovely for regret: Would that I ever could forget, My love is gone, my love is gone!

It is so still--so still ... The sound of a rumbling train Rushes into the hill. Autumn comes again With the old wonder and pain-- But love comes never again

ANNE

Belovèd--O adorable and false-- Whom have you taken now in the dear toils?

By what pale margins do your footsteps stray, Or what enchanted wood? What valleys hold The lily of your loveliness? What hills Have known your weight upon them, what far shores?

Twilight comes tenderly, while evening lifts Along the pallid rim her lonely star--

O happy heart on which your heart is laid!

THE SILENCE

In the evening, in the quiet Park, we walked together After so many and after so many years-- We walked again in the evening, in the warm May weather, After the partings and tears.

And under the splendor, under the starry skies, We walked, without sound or sigh, in a calm unbroken; As the dead walk together in a long-lost Paradise-- Silent, with no word spoken.

EXULTATION

Before the dawn the very thought of you, That wakes me, as the morning wakes the night, Floods all my heart with most exultant joy.

The thought of you that rises with the stars, When evening wheels all glittering through the dark, Floods all my heart with most exultant joy.

O life and joy and breath and death of me, With every breath I draw you in like air! O I shall die of you, of you, of you!

Though now you banish me forevermore, Never to look upon your face again-- Think you that I shall sorrow for my love?

Though I shall lie upon my bed of death And know you have forgotten me forever-- Think you that I shall sorrow for my love?

O life and joy and breath and death of me, I shall cry out exultant--and lie dead! O I shall die of you, of you, of you!

O love, I love you better than you know! I love you as the water loves the sea. I love you as the twilight loves the dark.

The trumpets of the morning, to my heart From shining towers blow the thought of you; The waves of evening flood my heart with you.

O life and joy and breath and death of me, With every breath I draw you in like air! O I shall die of you, of you, of you!

SONG OF SONGS

My heart is like a shady grove That harbors, for a June, My thoughts, like song-birds mad with love Under the moon.

On all the windy boughs they sit And in the blowing grass-- But one bird silently enters it, And sings, alas!

Then all the rest grow sad and still That made a happy noise: There is no sound on all the hill But that one voice,

Faint with the memories in his breast-- It is the thought of _you_-- And when it ceases, all the rest Are silent, too.

SORROWFUL FREEDOM

Long days I begged of my heart to be Released from a love that haunted me-- The memory of a last embrace, A tyrannous and a lovely face.

“Free me,” I said, “from an old love, The memory and the might thereof-- Free to follow and take my fill Of beauty and laughter where I will.”

Never a word my heart replied: But on a day the old love died; Vanished, never to come again, All the passion and all the pain.

Come--we are free to take our fill Of beauty and laughter where we will-- O heart, are we free forevermore From the old sorrow we loved before!

STARLESS MORNING

Toward starless morning, when deep night had bowed On slumber’s pillow my unhappy head, Through the dim room it drifted like a cloud-- And swayed in silence by my lonely bed.

What had they done to you, that dumbly so You covered with your hands your quiet face-- Dear, out of kindness, that I might not know What horror there had wrought its dark disgrace!

It was those hands, too passionately, too well Loved, that betrayed you--O most piteous guest! And to my heart, in the intolerable Rage of despair, that shadow I had pressed,

Mingling in a shrill cry our grief supreme-- My sweet--my pretty! But, as I had drawn That anguish to my arms, they clasped a dream; And heaven glimmered with the approaching dawn.

PHANTOM

Along the edge of the great, moving sea-- That moaned forever on her barren bars, The old, sad love came back again to me, Moving quietly under the quiet stars.

O sad love, do not smile upon me so, Nodding so gently with your little head-- All the old wonder of your eyes is dead, And the sea-winds have chilled you long ago!

LEGEND

Where are you hid from me, belovèd one That I am seeking through the lonely world-- A wanderer, on my way home to you?

Dark is the night and perilous the road: At many a breast in longing have I leaned, At many a wayside worshipped; and my heart Is tired from long travelling.

Perhaps In centuries to come you wait for me, And are as yet an iris by the stream Lifting her single blossom, or the faint Tremulous haze upon the hills--and we Have missed each other.

O if it be so, Then may this song reach to the verge of doom-- Ages unborn--to find you where you are, My lonely one; and like a murmuring string, Faint with one music, endlessly repeat

To you, not even knowing I was yours, Her plaintive burden from the dolorous past: Telling of one upon a hopeless quest-- How in the dark of Time he lost his way!

IV

THE DIVINE FANTASY

Brother, from what dim world of lonely light, Trembling on heaven’s pinnacles to-night, Is lifted your sad face of love while you Stare upward toward me, staring upward, too, At that faint flame which is your home, between The leafy branches of these poplars seen-- So hushed, so far! Perhaps to-night you scan Your starry heaven for the star of Man, High in the trellis of eternity And glittering arches hung; perhaps like me You, too, look up and wonder. Is it fair, That world of yours? Are there great cities there, Populous millions, hearts that beat as these, Clear meadows and far mountains, shoreless seas, Shadows of moving armies, thrones that shake? Does the heart thrill for love there, does it break-- Tell me, are there hushed gardens, quiet tombs? And mighty poets weaving at their looms The old, dim wisdoms that outweary Time; And saints, and lifted saviours, and sublime Faiths and high fortitudes beyond belief? --All blotted out by one small poplar leaf In the light wind of languid summer stirred!