Part 1

Chapter 13,290 wordsPublic domain

THE LOST CHIMES _And Other Poems_

GUSTAV MELBY

BOSTON RICHARD G. BADGER THE GORHAM PRESS

THE GORHAM PRESS, BOSTON, U. S. A.

_To the Memory of My Friend_

DR. FRANK J. CRESSY

_Whose Skill as a Physician Saved My Child’s Life, and Whose Kindness as a Friend Lent Inspiration to Life’s Pursuits_

CONTENTS

Page

The Lost Chimes 13

The Sibyl’s Prophecy 91

Elegiacs

In Memoriam 105

The Farewell 117

Baby Bruce 119

A Funeral of a Child on Christmas Eve 120

The Wreath 121

Lines Written on Receiving News of My Father’s Death 122

The Great Strife

War and Providence 127

The Yellow Peril 128

The Veteran 129

Dies Irae 130

A May Morning, 1917 131

My Sailor-Lad’s Letter 132

The Bugle Call 134

Flag-Raising 136

The Red Cross 137

The Doleful Mother of Mankind 138

Midwinter’s Dream (1918) 139

By the Wayside

The Canadian Prairies 143

The Rocky Mountains 143

Mount Shasta 144

Verses 145

To an Unknown Musician 146

Seattle 147

Gjoa 148

The Grave in the Desert 149

The Mountains of the Prophet 150

Chicago 151

The Isle of Dreams 152

Lake Harriet 153

The Cubist 154

The Handclasp 155

A Country Store 156

Sunsets on Clearwater Lake, Minn. 158

Twilight 162

April 162

I’m a Part of the Wind and the Curling Wave 164

The Chipping Sparrow 165

In the Lilac-Blossom-Time 166

The Runnel’s Ditty 168

The Child and the Gospel of St. John 169

The Birthday Cake 170

My Goldfish 170

The Fiddler’s Christmas Music 172

Cruel Kitty 175

To 176

Farewell 177

Alone 178

Lines on an Old Songbook 178

Pearls and Palaces 180

Victor Hugo 183

To a Friend 184

To a “Knocker” 185

A Vision 186

Signs Celestial 187

Despair 188

Hope 188

Be Still My Soul, Be Still 190

Awake 190

The Awakening 192

Asters 192

Butterflies 193

The Rosebush 194

Two Aspects 195

The Great “I Am” 196

The Death Chant 196

The Letter 197

God’s Truth-Teller 199

The Death of the Poet 200

In Search of the Perfect 202

The Christmas Cactus 203

Christmas Night 204

A New Year’s Invocation, 1918 205

Easter 207

Sonnets

Lux Ex Oriente 211

On the Statue of Voltaire 212

A Venetian Well Head 213

The Prospect 214

The Harvest 215

The Reward of Epimenides 215

THE LOST CHIMES

“Count not the cost, a thousand more or less Is not the question, but a perfect tone, A clang as clear as the Italian sky, As strong and joyful as the victor’s cry, As deep and mellow as the ocean’s moan, And tender as a mother’s fond caress.”

“And let there be no stint of pure alloy, Of bronze and silver, no, not even of gold, Yea, let this be thy very master-piece, In all its making,--if it doth me please, Half of my fortune shall to thee be told, And to its praise my life I shall employ.”

Thus spake Sordino, noble Florentine, To one who was renowned for casting bells, Who now was asked to make a set of chimes, A task he had accomplished many times, But this, he thought, the highest skill compels, And yet the work he promised to begin.

But first for thoughts and dreams he leisure found, For consecration to the work at hand, Since this the glory of his life should be, A grand creation, a sweet symphony Of human life, which all might understand, Their souls re-echoed in the liquid sound.

He was a man of many changing moods, Impetuous, like mighty Angelo, And kindly, like the saintly Raphael, His patience, like Palissy’s, nought could quell, In worship, like the good Angelico, And yet the “fickled Fame” his name excludes.

He nature loved, and wandered oft alone Mid deep recesses of some shady wood, And listened to the many varied sounds, From notes of birds to noise of baying hounds, And oftentimes as if enraptured stood, Held by the music of the undertone.

Once had he loved a maiden, in whose eyes He read the happiness of human life, And mystery of the immortal soul, A love to which he gave himself and all, With but one aim, to win her as his wife, And realize his dream of Paradise.

But death did also mark her for his own, With hectic flushes on the pallid cheek, And growing languor in the sprightly limbs; And as the day before night’s darkness dims, So did her youthful buoyancy grow weak, And like a vision fair, she soon was gone.

And sorrow, with its wintry blast did chill His manly nature to the very core, And many months he spent in utter woe; But, like the flow’r which grows beneath the snow, A life which he had never known before Rose from submission to the Higher Will.

These elements did pass into his work, His love and grief, his dreams and changing moods, And all he was seemed mingle in the mold Of molten metal, and was subtly told By silver tonguéd bells in solitudes Of monastery, or of country kirk.

III

As one who summons all the latent pow’r Within his soul, for one last great attempt To reach an aim of lifelong beckoning, Thus did he give himself to this one thing, Began his task in spotless white, and kempt, Emerging from the sacramental hour.

He days and nights upon his labor fixed, Forgetful both of hunger and of sleep,-- His soul reflected in the fiery glow; And some did say, he let his life-blood flow, And others, that he sometimes stopped to weep, And with his blood and tears the metal mixed.

And when at last the chimes were cast, there came A great collapse of utter weariness Upon him, and he slept for many days; The finishing, with all artistic ways, Was patience’s work, more like a fond caress Of something born of inspiration’s flame.

The day of testing came, the final test; Sordino coming early in the morn, Since eager was his soul to know for sooth, If its ideal of the highest truth-- Of harmony--incarnate can be born, And with the works of man itself invest.

And when two skilful hands intoned a hymn, And gave the chimes a chance for utterance,-- As shining on a scaffold high they hung,-- It seemed to him, it was by angels sung, So pure, so sweet, it did his soul entrance, And with the tears of joy his eyes make dim.

The task was done, a work of perfect art; And handsome was the price Sordino paid, A fortune to the maker of those bells, Of whom, henceforth, tradition nothing tells, We know not where his future course was laid, Nor when or where from life he did depart.

The chimes found their exalted place within A high cathedral tow’r, Sordino’s gift To a beloved fane of Italy, And that their melodies might always be Within his hearing, he his home did shift From country silence to the city’s din.

Where, like some voices from an unseen realm Their music did announce each fleeting hour To all the throngs which moved in streets below, And as their harmonies upon the air did flow, They seemed to have a superhuman pow’r O’er listening hearts, yea, even to overwhelm The meditative mind with such a joy Of loveliness and beauty, that a tear Would glisten in the upward look of pray’r; And they would lift the heavy loads of care From souls oppressed, and banish carking fear, And grief and black remorse which life destroy.

And thus they day and night gripped human souls With hope and cheer mid life’s divers pursuits; But on the Sabbath and the sacred days, When man is called to think of better ways, They seemed so jubliant with heavenly truths, That none did doubt that God His children calls.

They had a gladness which at sundry times Was almost riotous, like children’s play, And seemed to send out peals of laughter sweet, When they a merry bridal train did greet, As to the church it gaily made its way, Transported with the rapture of the chimes.

But when the dead were carried to their rest, Its dirges were of all most wonderful, A depth of sadness--such as none can tell-- A sadness which the gayest did compel To see a shadow of the ghastly skull, And yet to feel that even the grave is blest.

In all these cadences Sordino found A true delight, but most in solemn dirge, For melancholy was his common mood, Though sometimes he was in an altitude Of such hilarity, that it did verge Upon the wildness of a mind unsound.

Indeed, the whisper passed, he was insane, Since only one with shattered reason could Half of his fortune spend for such a thing: To hear a set of golden churchbells ring, And none of his few friends quite understood His pleasure in a funeral refrain.

He loved to walk ’mongst tombs and ancient graves, And read the epitaphs on crumbling stones, Or muse beside some gloomy cypress tree, While list’ning to a mournful melody, Mark how the harmony of all the tones Did vanish far away o’er sunlit waves.

He was a seeker after harmony, Such harmony in which all life shall blend, In perfect peace and concord, this he heard Expressed in those deep tones which moved and stirred His brooding mind, and seemed an answer lend To all its questions of life’s destiny.

Unhappiness had marred his early life; His marriage to a girl who loved him not, And yet who lived within his childless home, For binding was the tie once made by Rome, Until at last her ways became a blot, And by her sins she ceased to be his wife.

Since then he lived a recluse more or less, Except when boon-companions with him met, To dine, or rather to a revelry, When wine and music set his spirit free, When he life’s disappointments could forget, And when some transient bliss he did caress.

But feasts, of such a nature, yearly grew Less frequent, for his real self was good, And governed him, as he in age advanced; And now the chimes his being so entranced, That all the hunger of his heart found food In their sweet intonations, ever new.

They fed his innate philosophic bent, And made him delve into the subtlest lore Of Metaphysics and Theology, That he through these, perchance, might clearer see The truth which echoed from another shore, Each time their sovereign voice the silence rent.

And he waxed confident, the human cry Is wafted somewhere to a higher sphere, Where it is answered with a perfect peace,-- That not a soul from earth does find release, Release from darkness and the night of fear, Without a morn of better hope on high.

The grave has, after all, the truest peace; The graveyard is the greatest moralist; And it was wisdom that in days of eld, The living with the dead communion held, For they did worship in their very midst, A custom which in our good times must cease.

No longer can we lay our dead within The shadow of the church, but far away, In some secluded spot where seldom seen Is their last resting-place, beneath the green, Where some good farmer makes his loads of hay, And murmurs that it is in places thin.

We do not, in this shallow age, endure To think of death, such thoughts do not amuse, But mock the things which we are striving after; It tickles not our vein of silly laughter, The subject is unpleasant and obtruse, Of which the preachers even are not sure.

The graveyard, ne’ertheless, is preaching more To thinking minds than many homilies,-- It tells in no uncertain language of The vanity in all which here we love,-- That all our restless seeking after bliss Is but the drifting to another shore.

That men and empires have their little day, Then turn to dust, as others have before, That death is still the monarch of the world, Before whose feet all things at last are hurled, Before whose realm there is no closing door, And has for all but one sad, darksome way.

VII

Of all the seasons of the year there’s none To melancholy people, like the fall, That is, to persons of poetic mind, For in this season they a beauty find In earth and sky, which is transcending all The wondrous glory of the summer gone.

For all its mellow beauty has a sadness, Twixt tears and smiles, a sadness seen and heard In nature’s varied aspects and its notes, Upon the air’s dim haziness it floats: The shrill cry of the migratory bird, And tunes of vintage-reapers in their gladness.

’Tis in the fatal drooping of the flower, ’Tis in the stubble of the fields and meads, Where crickets hold a concert day and night, ’Tis in the stormcloud’s shadow and its flight Across the waters and the sighing reeds, ’Tis in the gold and crimson of the bower.

’Tis in the rain that strikes against the pane And leaves its diamonds on the bending straw, ’Tis in the mist which follows nightly shower, A floating mantle of the Morning Hour, ’Tis in the swelling brooks which onward go, With mystic songs to the majestic main.

And Melancholy is the Truth, said one, Whose genius pierced through the life of man, Who hated cant, deriding the Tartuffe, And saw beneath the robe the devil’s hoof, A wandering exile from his native land, The fascinating bard, the great Byron.

Forgive, O, lustrous name, that I should use Thy music for a lyre so poorly strung! But I did often in my youth, even now, Admire the glory of his laurelled brow, And felt that truth and freedom ne’er was sung, As by this suff’ring highpriest of the Muse.

O, all ye learned critics of his art, Who analyze by a mechanic rule, Ye fail to see the grandeur of his soul, That soared above the petty and the small, Indifferent to the existing school, Preferring Pegasus to any cart.

With the sublime he ever was in tune, ’Mid Alpen heights, or on “the boundless deep,” Or ’mid the storm and deaf’ning thunders crash, In darkest night, lit by the lightning’s flash, Or on the plains where vanished empires sleep, Time’s desolation ’neath a waning moon.

His harp did catch the minor music’s flow From nature’s heart and human tragedy, And when he laughed it was the cynic’s smile, Though he at heart was tender as a child, But death to him had sweeter harmony, Than life’s brief dream with its relentless woe.

Likewise Sordino, after years of thinking, Found in the dirge the acme of his search, The home-call to a truer life’s beginning, When man shall cease from sorrow and from sinning, The great, the final welcome of the church, The note of peace which heav’n to earth is linking.

VIII

At length there came upon Sordino’s city An enemy with armies great and strong, And laid a siege about its buttressed walls, And since the strongest bulwark sometime falls Before a cannonading fierce, and long, So did its self-defences, without pity.

The conqueror did loot and kill and ravage, While o’er it all the chimes sang forth the hour, In notes which shamed the horror of that day, And as he listened said: “Take them away, Their music hath upon my men a pow’r, Which makes a saint out of a bloody savage!”

Then from the lofty tow’r they were removed, Against Sordino’s pleadings, these to spare, And carried hence, none but the victor knew-- And captive toilers whom at last he slew,-- Their value he surmised and used such care, As for their preservation it behooved.

O, heinous War, Hell’s very incarnation! Whose countenance is black with darkest hate, Whose eyes have serpent’s gleam of greed and lust, And fiendish satisfaction, when the dust Of God’s fair earth with precious blood is sate, Who laughs at the destruction of a nation.

Whose breath is pois’nous fumes and dire disease, And darting flames, devouring man’s abodes, Whose voice with terror fills all living things, And nought attracts except the vulture’s wings, Its rending roar the very heaven goads Until the dark’ning cloud a-weeping flees.

Whose brutish hands, with gore and grime polluted, Are strangling innocents and ripping wombs, And gagging Virtue’s cry, and sundering The maiden from her mother; plundering The aged and the sick, yea, even the tombs Of those “at rest” are by this monster looted.

It rules the empires, and it rules the seas, It is the prince of power in the air, And kings and nations worship it with fear, But drunk with blood they loud and wildly cheer, And think its glory great beyond compare, Yea, worth all loss and human miseries.

O, Christ, who stood on storm-tossed Galilee, Reproaching evil, saying: “Peace be still!” So all the fury of the storm and wave Abated, and the struggling ship was safe, Speak thou again that word divine, until The world shall hear, and war shall cease to be!

O, may the day-spring from on High appear, When this foul monster shall be chained in Hell, When man, freed from its tyranny, shall be The blessed of the Lord, in harmony With every race which under heaven dwell, And all his life be like a golden year!

Sordino from the fated city fled, When he beheld destruction’s hand engaged In Vandalism on the house of God; It seemed to him an awful chastening-rod, Because of sin which heaven had enraged, For which the blood of thousands now was shed.

When he perceived resistance was in vain, The city’s doom declared in blood and fire, He left it under cover of the night, With thousand others. Pausing in his flight He saw the flames from the cathedral spire Leap ’gainst the angry clouds of storm and rain.

He first sought safety at his country-seat, A villa rich in orchard and in field, Where he did shelter homeless refugees, And here, for many days they lived in peace, Until the country, too, itself must yield, And valiant men before the foe retreat.

We will not here relate the conflict’s trend, Sufficient that at last the enemy Was driven from the land by armies strong, And as in days of the heroic song, With plunder rich, across the stormy sea, They to their home-land shores the course did wend.

Deep sadness fell upon Sordino’s heart For all the sorrow of his countrymen, For all the ravages wrought by the foe, But most of all his cup seemed overflow With grief beyond the measure of our ken, Because he from his chimes did have to part.

He restless grew, no place found him content, No pleasure could his spirit satisfy, His former love of study him forsook, And e’en on nature he did cease to look With that true, heartfelt joy of years gone by,-- His days in gloom and ennui were spent.

At last he in his heart resolved to go Upon a journey--he knew hardly where-- In quest of his beloved bells, though none For certain seemed to know where they had gone, Still he would travel over land and mere,-- With this resolve his soul was soon aglow.

To France he first of all did make his way,-- Enduring hardship on the boistrous sea, And dangers on the shores of sullen foes, But since to hearts of purpose strong no woes Insufferable seem, thus agony, Of any kind, could not his zeal allay.