Chapter 2

When we who hugged awhile the golden bowl Of greed behold it now a sieve Through which is drained invisibly A nectar we were saving for the soul, Then not in vain have many gone The empty ways of stealth Seeking a firmer base than honesty For building happiness upon.... And by the ancient agonizing test We have slowly guessed That a just portion of the whole Is all there is of wealth. When those who labor wake And care ... And through the tingling air A dead man's voice, by living men renewed And women, dares democracy To self-respect: "Open the lands! Let mankind share The ample livelihood they bear!"-- Then not in vain have the poor known distress, Teaching the rich that happiness Is something no man may--possess. Little by little we, whose fathers fought Impassioned, are ashamed Of the familiar thought That waste of blood is honourable feud: Little by little from the wondering land The agitation and the lie of war Shall pass; for in the heart disclaimed Murder shall be abandoned by the hand. And while there grows a fellowship of unshed blood To stop the wound and heal the scar Of time, with sudden glorious aptitude Woman assumes her part. Her pity in a flood Flings down the gate. She has been made to wait Too long, undreaming and untaught The touch and beauty of democracy. But, entering now the strife In which her saving sense is due, She watches and she grows aware, Holding a child more dear than property, That the many perish to empower the few, That homeless politics have split apart The common country of the human heart. (Your heart is beating, Celia, like a song!) .... For man has need Not merely of the lips that kiss and hands that feed But of the hearts that heed And of the minds that speed Like rain. Loving a mother or a wife, Let him release her tenderness, to make him strong, And use her beauty and receive her law: The very life of life.

In temporary pain The age is bearing a new breed Of men and women, patriots of the world And one another. Boundaries in vain, Birthrights and countries, would constrain The old diversity of seed To be diversity of soul. O mighty patriots, maintain Your loyalty!--till flags unfurled For battle shall arraign The traitors who unfurled them, shall remain And shine over an army with no slain, And men from every nation shall enroll And women--in the hardihood of peace! What can my anger do but cease? Whom shall I fight and who shall be my enemy When he is I and I am he?

Let me have done with that old God outside Who watched with preference and answered prayer, The Godhead that replied Now here, now there, Where heavy cannon were Or coins of gold! Let me receive communion with all men, Acknowledging our one and only soul! For not till then Can God be God, till we ourselves are whole.

VI

Once in a smoking-car, I saw a scene That made my blood stand still.... While the sun smouldered in a great ravine, And I, with elbow on the window-sill, Was watching the dim ember of the west, Half-heard, but poignant as a bell For fire, there came a moan; the voice of one in hell. I turned. Across the car were two young men, Yet hardly more than boys, French by their look, and brothers, And one was moaning on the other's breast. His face was hid away. I could not tell What words he said, half English and half French. I only knew Both men were suffering, not one but two. And then that face came into view, Gaunt and unshaved, with shadows and wild eyes, A face of madness and of desolation. And his cries, For all his mate could do, Rang out, a shrill and savage noise, And tears ran down the stubble of his cheek. The other face was younger, clean and sad With the manful stricken beauty of a lad Who had intended always to be glad. .... The touch of his compassion, like a mother's, Pitied the madman, soothed him and caressed. And then I heard him speak, In a low voice: "Mon frere, mon frere! Calme-toi! Right here's your place." And, opening his coat, he pressed Upon his heart the wanderer's face And smoothed the tangled hair. After a moment peaceful there, The maniac screamed--struck out and fell Across his brother's arm. Love could not quell His anger. Wrists together high in air He rose and with a yell Brought down his handcuffs toward his brother's face-- But his hands were pinned below his waist, By a burly, silent sheriff, and some hideous thing was bound Around his arms and feet And he was laid upon the narrow seat. And then that sound, That moan Of one forsaken and alone! "Seigneur! Le createur du ciel et de la terre! Forgotten me! Forgotten me!" .... And when the voice grew weak The brother leaned again, embraced The huddled body. But a shriek Repulsed him: "Non! Detache-moi! I don't care For you. Non! Tu es l'homme qui m'a trahi! Non! Tu n'es pas mon frere!"

But as often as that stricken mind would fill With the great anguish and the rush of hate, The boy, his young eyes older, older, Would curve his shoulder To the other's pain and hold that haunted face close to his face And say: "O wait! You will know me better by and by. Mon pauvre petit, be still! Right here's your place." .... The gleam! and then the blinded stare, The cry: "Non, tu n'es pas mon frere!"

I saw myself, myself, as blind As he. And something smothers My reason. And I do not know my brothers.... But every day declare: "Non, tu n'es pas mon frere!"

But in the outcome, I can see.... Closer than any brother Shall they be to one another And to me, Closer than mother, father, daughter, son, O closer than a lover shall they be, When madness like a storm shall roll Away, leaving illumination. Within everyone The nearness has begun Toward some loved life and toward the soul Perceived therein: the elemental ache to be made whole With beauty and with love.--O I have ached and longed in the embrace Of one I love to be undone Of differences, to yield and run Within the very blood and being of my dear, One body and one face, One spirit in all space, Mingled and indissoluble. And I have felt a mortal tear Smart on my lids, when I had been so near To Celia that I knew not which was I, Yet the day returned between us and the sky Held distances that were not clear To us and we were two again that had been almost one.

A mother yields herself to enter Her child, who nestles close and sleeps With all his wisdom pressed For comfort to her breast. I can remember my relinquishment Of consciousness and care, Almost of life, upon my mother's heart--the great content Of being there.

And then I loved a starry boy of three, Who looked about him, smiled and took to me, Held out his arms and chose me among men For his companion, to confide His smiles in and to be At ease with. Closely by my side He sat and touched the world, to see If it were solid and worth touching. When he died, I too was dead ... and yet I hear him say, Laughing within my heart today: "Lo, being you, And having lived your years, this will I do, And this, and this!" I have my boy again. I greet him nearer than a kiss.

And so, from birth to death, out of confusion The secret creeps Across the deeps From its eternal centre In the soul. Communion is the cause and the conclusion And the unfailing sacrament Not only of the mystical frequenter Of temples, where the body of the dead Creates divine The living body through the bread And wine, But God discovers and discovers His beauty in all lovers. And, to make His beauty whole, Body and body, soul and soul, combine His one identity with yours and mine.

I know a fellow in a steel-mill who, intent Upon his labours and his happiness, had meant In his own wisdom to be blest, Had made his own unaided way To schooling, opportunity, Success. And then he loved and married. And his bride, After a brief year, died. I went to him to see If I might comfort him. The comfort came to me.

"David," I said, "under the temporary ache There is unwonted nearness with the dead." I felt his two hands take The sentence from me with a grip Forged in the mills. He told me that his tears were shed Before her breath went. After that, instead Of grief, she came herself. He felt her slip Into his being like a miracle, her lip Whispering on his, to slake His need of her.--"And in the night I wake With wonder and I find my bride And her embrace there in our bed, Within my very being, not outside! .... We have each other more, much more," He said, "now than before. This very moment while I shake Your hand, my friend, Not only I, But she is touching you--and laughs with me because I cried For her.... People would think me crazy if I told. But something in what you said made me bold To let you meet my bride!"

It was not madness. David's eye Was clear and open-seeing. His life Had faced in death and understood in his young wife, As I when Celia died, The secret of God's being.

VII

Among good citizens, I praise Again a woman whom I knew and know, A citizen whom I have seen Most heartily, most patiently Making God's mind, A citizen who, dead, Yet shines across her white-remembered ways As the nearness of a light across the snow.... My Celia, mystical, serene, Laughing and kind.

And still I hear among New Hampshire trees Her happy speech: "Democracy is beauty's inmost reach." And still her voice announces plain The mystic gain Of friends from adversaries and of peace from pain: Beauty's control Of every soul Surrendering in victory. .... Well I recall how she explained to me With sunlight on her head When last we looked, as many times before, Over those hundred foothills rolling like the sea. "Where mountains are, door after door Unlocks within me, opens wide And leaves no difference in my heart," she said, "From anything outside."

Not only Celia, speaking, taught me these The tenets of her beauty; but her life was such That I believed as by a palpable touch That heals and tends. Not better nor more learned nor more wise In many ways than others of my friends, Celia was happier. Their excellencies and their destinies Became, contributing, a part of her, Anointed her awhile among all men An eminent citizen, A generous arbiter.

Not less bereaved than others of my friends, Celia was lovelier. And now, though something of her dies, Her heart of love assembles and transcends Laws, letters, personalities, Beginnings, passages and ends.

Often I start and look beside me for the stir Of her sweet presence come again. I have cried out to her, So vivid has begun Some dear-remembered sentence in her voice. If a deluded wakeful thrush, Seeing a light in a window, sings to the sun, Yet he shall soon rejoice; When the great dawn of day Opens a thousand windows into one.

On a path where thrushes wake--called Celia's Way-- Time after time She led me high among the rills. And always when I pass again our chosen pine And feel upon my brow the fine Soft pressure of an unseen web and brush It from my face expectantly and climb Wide-eyed into the mountains' windy hush, Among the green and healing hills I have found Celia. For the morning fills With her and afternoon and twilight. She is always there As sweet within me as the intimate air.

We are together still in the deep solitude Which is the essence of all companies, Not in its loneliness but in its brood Of presences, the dawn chanting with birds, the trees Translating unremembered memories Of the returning dead. And Celia, who has learned to die, Is well aware--and so through her am I-- That, one by one interpreted, All hopes and pains and powers Are hers and mine to try On every star, through every age. .... And, still together, on this page We quote the sun-dial of the sage: "_I number none but happy hours._" For we remember still The morning-hymn we heard: "Ye shall fulfill Your destiny and joy, Each in the other, both in that Italian boy And he in you, like flowers in a hill."

She said to me one day, where a hill renewed its flowers, "How easy it would be to live and die If we would only see the ultimate Oneness of life, quicken Our hearts with it and know that they who hate And strike become by their own blow the stricken!"... "A stranger might be God," the Hindus cry. But Celia says, importunate: "Everyone must be God and you and I."

VIII

Almost the body leads the laggard soul; bidding it see The beauty of surrender, the tranquillity Of fusion with the earth. The body turns to dust Not only by a sudden whelming thrust, Or at the end of a corrupting calm, But oftentimes anticipates and, entering flowers and trees Upon a hillside or along the brink Of streams, encounters instances Of its eventual enterprise: Inhabits the enclosing clay, In rhapsody is caught away On a great tide Of beauty, to abide Translated through the night and day Of time and, by the anointing balm Of earth, to outgrow decay.

Hark in the wind--the word of silent lips! Look where some subtle throat, that once had wakened lust, Lies clear and lovely now, a silver link Of change and peace! Hollows and willows and a river-bed, Anemones and clouds, Raindrops and tender distances Above, beneath, Inherit and bequeath Our far-begotten beauty. We are wed With many kindred who were seeming dead. Only the delicate woven shrouds Are vanished, beauty thrown aside To honor and uncover A deeper beauty--as the veil that slips Breathless away between a lover And his bride.

So, by the body, may the soul surmise The beauty of surrender, the tranquillity Of fusion: when, set free From semblance of mortality, Yielding its dust the richer to endue A common avenue Of earth for other souls to journey through, It shall put on in purer guise The mutual beauty of its destiny. And who shall fear for his identity And who shall cling to the poor privacy Of incompleteness, when the end explains That what pride forfeits, beauty gains! Therefore, O spirit, as a runner strips Upon a windy afternoon, Be unencumbered of what troubles you-- Arise with grace And greatly go!--the wind upon your face!

Grieve not for the invisible transported brow On which like leaves the dark hair grew, Nor for the lips of laughter that are now Laughing inaudibly in sun and dew, Nor for the limbs that, fallen low And seeming faint and slow, Shall alter and renew Their shape and hue Like birches white before the moon Or a young apple-tree In spring or the round sea And shall pursue More ways of swiftness than the swallow dips Among ... and find more winds than ever blew The straining sails of unimpeded ships!

A sudden music, Celia, through a poplar-bough, Where leaves are small and new, Comes laughing and goes hastening like you.

Beauty is more than hands or face or eyes Or the long curve that lies Upon a bed waiting, more than the rise Of sun among the birds, more than the oar that plies Under the moon for lovers, more than a tune that buys Pennies from time. Vision and touch comprise Yesterday's promise, today's token Of a fulfillment that shall have no need to be perceived or spoken, Wherein all love is the award Poured upon beauty and no heart is broken And no grief is stored.

For never beauty dies That lived. Nightly the skies Assemble stars, the light of hopeful eyes, And daily brood on the communal breath-- Which we call death. Nothing is lost. Nothing I have of loveliness Exceeds a minute part Of my own loveliness when it shall be fulfilled With Celia's and all loveliness that lies In every heart. All that I have is but the start And the beginning, the bewildering guess Of what shall be distilled Out of my soul by you and you, Each soul of all souls, till one soul remains Which every beauty shall imbue Clean of the differences and pains.... I shall be Celia's everlastingness.

IX

A little hill among New Hampshire hills Touches more stars than any height I know. For there the whole earth--like a single being--fills And expands with heaven. It is the hill where Celia used to go To watch Monadnock and the miles that met In slow-ascending slopes of peace. She said: "When I am here, I find release From every petty debt I owe, The goods I bring with me increase, The ills are riven And blown away. And there remains a single debt Toward all the world for me, A single duty and one destiny." "There shall be many births of God In this humanity," She said, "and many crucifixions on the hills, Before we learn that where Christ trod We all shall tread; and as he died to give Himself to us, we too shall die--and live." "Though slowly knowledge comes, yet in the birth Is joy," said Celia, "joy As well as pain: The clear and clouded beauty of the earth. .... This I forget in cities. For cities are a great Impassable gate Of tumult. But by mountains and by seas I gain Path after path of peace."

One evening Celia led me, late, Among the many whispers before rain, To touch and climb her hill again. I felt it rise invisible as fate, Not for the eye but for the soul to see. And when at last, among the oaks, we came Upon the top, a perfect voice Thrilled in the air like flame-- Was it uprisen death we heard? Was it immortal youth, Out of the body, witnessing the truth, Attesting glory in an angel's voice? Blindly we listened to the singer and the single strain Containing joy. And then the voice was still and all the world and we-- Till "Run," she said, "and bring him back to me!" I ran, I called ... but in the nearing rain, No mortal answered, nothing stirred. Was it uprisen death we heard? .... Perhaps the hills and night Had made a prophet of some wandering boy, Prompting him in that instant to rejoice As never in his life before. He must have had his own delight As well in silence as in song; For, though we waited long, He sang no more.

Afterward Celia said: "That voice we heard Singing among the oak-leaves, and then still, We cannot answer how it sings or how it comes and goes.... But only that its beauty ever grows Within us both, in ways no voice has told. .... So let me be to you. When night has drawn its fold Of darkness and no word May reach your heart from mine, Take then my love, my beauty! Hear me still When you are old And I am ageless as a changing hill! O hear me like that voice at night, Clearer than sound, nearer than sight, And let me be--as beauty is--divine!"

There is a hill of hills That holds my heart on high and stills All other sound Than joy. Robins and thrushes, whip-poor-wills And morning-sparrows sing it round With echoes. Waterfalls abound And many streams convoy The breath of music. I have found A hill-path rising sudden on a city-street, Out of a quarrel, out of black despair, And climbed it with my winged feet. It hurries me above All this illusion, all these ills, It rises quickly to the shining air. .... Celia, I hear you on the hill of hills, Announcing love.

And O my citizen, perhaps the few Whom I shall tell of you Will see with me your beauty who are dead, Will hear with me your voice and what it said! Let but a line of mine, A single one, Be made to shine With your whole-heartedness as with the sun, And I shall so consign Your touch to younger and yet younger hands, That they shall carry beauty through more lands Than ever Helen laid her touch upon.

In your new world I see The immigrants arriving from the ships.... O Celia, my democracy, My destiny, Beauty has had its answer on your lips!