Chapter 1

THE SINGING MAN

A Book of Songs and Shadows

By JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY

_BOSTON_ and _NEW YORK_

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

The Riverside Press Cambridge

1911

COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY JOSEPHINE PEABODY MARKS

_Published November 1911_

NOTE

Thanks are especially due to the editors of The American Magazine, Scribner's, The Atlantic Monthly, and to Messrs. Harper and Brothers, for their courteous permission to reprint certain of the poems included in this volume.

FOREWORD

We make our songs as we must, from fragments of the joy and sorrow of living. What Life itself may be, we cannot know till all men share the chance to know.

Until the day of some more equal portion, there is no human brightness unhaunted by this black shadow: the thought of those unnumbered who pay all the heavier cost of life, to live and die without knowledge that there is any Joy of Living.

No song could face such blackness, but for the will to share, and for hope of the day of sharing.

Upon that hope and that mindfulness, the poems in this book are linked together.

J.P.M.

4 October, 1911.

CONTENTS

THE SINGING MAN 3

THE TREES 15

_O, do you remember? How it came to be?_ 21

RICH MAN, POOR MAN 23

_But we did walk in Eden_ 29

THE FOUNDLING 31

_Love sang to me. And I went down the stair_ 35

THE FEASTER 37

_Belovèd, if the moon could weep_ 43

THE GOLDEN SHOES 45

NOON AT PÆSTUM 47

VESTAL FLAME 48

_The dark had left no speech save hand-in-hand_ 51

THE PROPHET 53

THE LONG LANE 56

_Ah but, Belovèd, men may do_ 59

ALISON'S MOTHER TO THE BROOK 61

_You, Four Walls, wall not in my heart!_ 65

CANTICLE OF THE BABE 67

_And thou, Wayfaring Woman whom I meet_ 73

GLADNESS 75

THE NIGHTINGALE UNHEARD 81

_Envoi_ 87

THE SINGING MAN

AN ODE OF THE PORTION OF LABOR

'_The profit of the Earth is for all._' --ECCLESIASTES.

THE SINGING MAN

I

He sang above the vineyards of the world. And after him the vines with woven hands Clambered and clung, and everywhere unfurled Triumphing green above the barren lands; Till high as gardens grow, he climbed, he stood, Sun-crowned with life and strength, and singing toil, And looked upon his work; and it was good: The corn, the wine, the oil.

He sang above the noon. The topmost cleft That grudged him footing on the mountain scars He planted and despaired not; till he left His vines soft breathing to the host of stars. He wrought, he tilled; and even as he sang, The creatures of his planting laughed to scorn The ancient threat of deserts where there sprang The wine, the oil, the corn!

He sang not for abundance.--Over-lords Took of his tilth. Yet was there still to reap, The portion of his labor; dear rewards Of sunlit day, and bread, and human sleep. He sang for strength; for glory of the light. He dreamed above the furrows, 'They are mine!' When all he wrought stood fair before his sight With corn, and oil, and wine.

_Truly, the light is sweet Yea, and a pleasant thing It is to see the Sun. And that a man should eat His bread that he hath won;-- (So is it sung and said), That he should take and keep, After his laboring, The portion of his labor in his bread, His bread that he hath won; Yea, and in quiet sleep, When all is done._

He sang; above the burden and the heat, Above all seasons with their fitful grace; Above the chance and change that led his feet To this last ambush of the Market-place. 'Enough for him,' they said--and still they say-- 'A crust, with air to breathe, and sun to shine; He asks no more!'--Before they took away The corn, the oil, the wine.

He sang. No more he sings now, anywhere. Light was enough, before he was undone. They knew it well, who took away the air, --Who took away the sun; Who took, to serve their soul-devouring greed, Himself, his breath, his bread--the goad of toil;-- Who have and hold, before the eyes of Need, The corn, the wine,--the oil!

_Truly, one thing is sweet Of things beneath the Sun; This, that a man should earn his bread and eat, Rejoicing in his work which he hath done. What shall be sung or said Of desolate deceit. When others take his bread; His and his children's bread?-- And the laborer hath none. This, for his portion now, of all that he hath done. He earns; and others eat. He starves;--they sit at meat Who have taken away the Sun._

II

Seek him now, that singing Man. Look for him, Look for him In the mills, In the mines; Where the very daylight pines,-- He, who once did walk the hills! You shall find him, if you scan Shapes all unbefitting Man, Bodies warped, and faces dim. In the mines; in the mills Where the ceaseless thunder fills Spaces of the human brain Till all thought is turned to pain. Where the skirl of wheel on wheel, Grinding him who is their tool, Makes the shattered senses reel To the numbness of the fool. Perisht thought, and halting tongue (Once it spoke;--once it sung!) Live to hunger, dead to song. Only heart-beats loud with wrong Hammer on,--_How long_? ... _How long_?--_How long_?

Search for him; Search for him; Where the crazy atoms swim Up the fiery furnace-blast. You shall find him, at the last,-- He whose forehead braved the sun,-- Wreckt and tortured and undone. Where no breath across the heat Whispers him that life was sweet; But the sparkles mock and flare, Scattering up the crooked air. (Blackened with that bitter mirk,-- Would God know His handiwork?)

Thought is not for such as he; Naught but strength, and misery; Since, for just the bite and sup, Life must needs be swallowed up. Only, reeling up the sky, Hurtling flames that hurry by, Gasp and flare, with _Why_--_Why_, ... _Why_?...

Why the human mind of him Shrinks, and falters and is dim When he tries to make it out: What the torture is about.-- Why he breathes, a fugitive Whom the World forbids to live. Why he earned for his abode, Habitation of the toad! Why his fevered day by day Will not serve to drive away Horror that must always haunt:-- ... _Want_ ... _Want_! Nightmare shot with waking pangs;-- Tightening coil, and certain fangs, Close and closer, always nigh ... ... _Why_?... _Why_?

Why he labors under ban That denies him for a man. Why his utmost drop of blood Buys for him no human good; Why his utmost urge of strength Only lets Them starve at length;-- Will not let him starve alone; He must watch, and see his own Fade and fail, and starve, and die.

* * * * *

... _Why_?... _Why_?

* * * * *

Heart-beats, in a hammering song, Heavy as an ox may plod, Goaded--goaded--faint with wrong, Cry unto some ghost of God ... _How long_?... _How long_? .......... _How long_?

III

Seek him yet. Search for him! You shall find him, spent and grim; In the prisons, where we pen These unsightly shards of men. Sheltered fast; Housed at length; Clothed and fed, no matter how!-- Where the householders, aghast, Measure in his broken strength Nought but power for evil, now. Beast-of-burden drudgeries Could not earn him what was his: He who heard the world applaud Glories seized by force and fraud, He must break,--he must take!-- Both for hate and hunger's sake. He must seize by fraud and force; He must strike, without remorse! Seize he might; but never keep. Strike, his once!--Behold him here. (Human life we buy so cheap, Who should know we held it dear?)

No denial,--no defence From a brain bereft of sense, Any more than penitence. But the heart-beats now, that plod Goaded--goaded--dumb with wrong, Ask not even a ghost of God ............._How long_?

_When the Sea gives up its dead, Prison caverns, yield instead This, rejected and despised; This, the Soiled and Sacrificed! Without form or comeliness; Shamed for us that did transgress; Bruised, for our iniquities, With the stripes that are all his! Face that wreckage, you who can. It was once the Singing Man._

IV

Must it be?--Must we then Render back to God again This His broken work, this thing, For His man that once did sing? Will not all our wonders do? Gifts we stored the ages through, (Trusting that He had forgot)-- Gifts the Lord requirèd not?

Would the all-but-human serve! Monsters made of stone and nerve; Towers to threaten and defy Curse or blessing of the sky; Shafts that blot the stars with smoke; Lightnings harnessed under yoke; Sea-things, air-things, wrought with steel, That may smite, and fly, and feel! Oceans calling each to each; Hostile hearts, with kindred speech. Every work that Titans can; Every marvel: save a man, Who might rule without a sword.-- Is a man more precious, Lord?

Can it be?--Must we then Render back to Thee again Million, million wasted men? Men, of flickering human breath, Only made for life and death?

Ah, but see the sovereign Few, Highly favored, that remain! These, the glorious residue, Of the cherished race of Cain. These, the magnates of the age, High above the human wage, Who have numbered and possesst All the portion of the rest!

What are all despairs and shames, What the mean, forgotten names Of the thousand more or less, For one surfeit of success?

For those dullest lives we spent, Take these Few magnificent! For that host of blotted ones, Take these glittering central suns. Few;--but how their lustre thrives On the million broken lives! Splendid, over dark and doubt, For a million souls gone out! These, the holders of our hoard,-- Wilt thou not accept them, Lord?

V

Oh, in the wakening thunders of the heart, --The small lost Eden, troubled through the night, Sounds there not now,--forboded and apart, Some voice and sword of light? Some voice and portent of a dawn to break?-- Searching like God, the ruinous human shard Of that lost Brother-man Himself did make, And Man himself hath marred?

It sounds!--And may the anguish of that birth Seize on the world; and may all shelters fail, Till we behold new Heaven and new Earth Through the rent Temple-vail! When the high-tides that threaten near and far To sweep away our guilt before the sky,-- Flooding the waste of this dishonored Star, Cleanse, and o'erwhelm, and cry!--

Cry, from the deep of world-accusing waves, With longing more than all since Light began, Above the nations,--underneath the graves,-- 'Give back the Singing Man!'

THE TREES

I

Now, in the thousandth year, When April's near, Now comes it that the great ones of the earth Take all their mirth Away with them, far off, to orchard-places,-- Nor they nor Solomon arrayed like these,-- To sun themselves at ease; To breathe of wind-swept spaces; To see some miracle of leafy graces;-- To catch the out-flowing rapture of the trees. Considering the lilies. --Yes. And when Shall they consider Men?

(_O showering May-clad tree, Bear yet awhile with me._)

II

For now at last, they have beheld the trees. Lo, even these!-- The men of sounding laughter and low fears; The women of light laughter, and no tears; The great ones of the town. And those, of most renown, That once sold doves,--now grown so pennywise To bargain with forlorner merchandise,-- They buy and sell, they buy and sell again, The life-long toil of men. Worn with their market strife to dispossess The blind,--the fatherless, They too go forth, to breathe of budding trees, And woods with beckoning wonders new unfurled. Yes, even these: The money-changers and the Pharisees; The rulers of the darkness of this world.

(_O choiring Summer tree, Bear yet awhile with me._)

III

For now, behold their heart's desire is thrall To simpleness.--O new delight, unguessed, In very rest! And precious beyond all, A garden-place, a garden with a wall! To the green earth! All bountiful to bless Hearts sickening with excess. To the green earth, whose blithe replenishments Shall fresh the jaded sense! To the green earth, the dust-corrupted soul Returns to be made whole. For now it comes indeed, They will go forth, all they, to see a reed So shaken by the wind. Men are no longer blind To aught, save human kind.

(_O mellowing August tree, Bear yet awhile with me._)

IV

The wonder this. For some there are no trees; Or in the trees no beauty and no mirth:-- Those dullest millions, pent In life-long banishment From all the gifts and creatures of the earth, Shut in the inner darkness of the town; Those blighted things you see, But the Sun sees not, at its going down:-- Warped outcasts of some human forestry; Blind victims of the blind, Wreckt ones and dark of mind, With the poor fruit, after their piteous kind. And if you take some Old One to the fields, To see what Nature yields With fullest hands to men already free, It well may be, As on some indecipherable book The Guest will look, With eyes too old,--too old, too dim to see; Too old, too old to learn; Or to discern-- Before it slips away, The joy of such a late half-holiday! Proffer those starved eyes your belated cup: They look not up. Too late, too late for any sky to do Brief kindness with its blue. And what behold they, then? In the shamed moment, when Old eyes bow down again?

_Down in the night and blackness of the heart, The drowned things start. And he recks nothing of the meadow air, Because of what is There. Lost things of hope and sorrow without tongue: The human lilies, sprung Out of the ooze, and trodden, Even as they breathed and clung! Lost lilies, bruised and sodden; Lost faces, gleaming there, Where misery blasphemes the sacred young! Mute outcry, most, of those Small suffering hands defrauded of their rose; Faces the daylight shuns; Ruinous faces of the little ones,-- Pale witness, unaware. Starved lips, and withering blood-- O broken in the bud!-- Blank eyes, and blighted hair._

(_O golden, golden tree! Bear yet awhile with me._)

So is it, haply, when Dull eyes look up, and then Dull eyes look down again. Waste no vain holiday on such as these; For them there is no joy in blossomed trees.

V

For them there is no joy in blossomed trees. And with what eye-shut ease We leave them, at the last, for company, The Tree, Whose two stark boughs no springtime yet unfurled, Ever, since time began; Nor bloom so strange to see!-- Behold, the Man, With His two arms outstretched to fold the world.

_O, do you remember?--How it came to be? Far, golden windows gazing from the shore; Golden ebb of daylight; heart could hold no more: Belovèd and Belovèd, and the sea._

_Westward the sun,--low, slow and golden; Eastward the moon climbed, honey-pale. O do you remember? while our eyes were holden, Close, close upon us,--the Golden Sail? Wind-swift she came,--thing of living flame, Sea-breathing Glory, to make the heart afraid! The ripples, fold on fold Of coiling gold, Trailing a thousand ways Her golden maze, Rocked in a golden tumult, every one, The gondolas, the ships .. Westward she made ..... A portent from the sky,--gone by, gone by, To golden, far eclipse; ... Into the Sun._

_Behold, a mystery That shook to golden throbbing all the sea. Oh, and what needed one more wonder be For thee and me, Belovèd? thee and me?_

RICH MAN, POOR MAN

'_Rich man, Poor man, Beggar man, Thief, Doctor, Lawyer, Merchant, Chief._'

I

Highway, stretched along the sun, Highway, thronged till day is done; Where the drifting Face replaces Wave on wave on wave of faces, And you count them, one by one: '_Rich man--Poor man--Beggar man--Thief: Doctor--Lawyer--Merchant--Chief._' Is it soothsay?--Is it fun?

Young ones, like as wave and wave; Old ones, like as grave and grave; Tide on tide of human faces With what human undertow! Rich man, poor man, beggar-man, thief!-- Tell me of the eddying spaces, Show me where the lost ones go; Like and lost, as leaf and leaf. What's your secret grim refrain Back and forth and back again, Once, and now, and always so? Three days since, and who was Thief? Three days more, and who'll be Chief? Oh, is that beyond belief, _Doctor, Lawyer--Merchant-Chief?_

(_Down, like grass before the mowing; On, like wind in its mad going:-- Wind and dust forever blowing._)

Highway, shrill with murderous pride, Highway, of the swarming tide! Why should my way lead me deeper? I am not my Brother's keeper.

II

Byway, ambushed with the dark, Byway, where the ears may hark; Live and fierce when day is done, You, that do without the Sun:-- What's this game you bring to nought?-- Muttering like a thing distraught, Reckoning like a simpleton? (Since the hearing must be brief,-- Living or a dying thief!) Cobbled with the anguished stones That the thoroughfare disowns; Stones they gave you for your bread Of the disinherited! Where the Towers of Hunger loom, Crowding in the dregs of doom; Where the lost sky peering through Sees no more the grudging grass,-- Only this mud-mirrored blue, Like some shattered looking-glass.

(_Under, with the sorry reaping! Underneath the stones of weeping, For the Dark to have in keeping._)

Byway, you, so foully marred; You, whose sodden walls and scarred, See no light, but only where Fevered lamps are set to stare In the eyes of such despair! Tell me--as a Byway can-- Was this Beggar once a Man? '_Rich man--Poor man--Beggar man--Thief!_' Like and lost as leaf and leaf. Stammering out your wrongs and shames, Must you cry their very names? Must you sob your shame, your grief? --'_Poor man--Poor man!--Beggar--Thief._'

III

Highway, where the Sun is wide; Byway, where the lost ones hide, Byway, where the Soul must hark, Byway, dreadful with the Dark: Can you nothing do with Man? Doctor, Lawyer, Merchant, Chief, Learns he nothing, even of grief? Must it still be all his wonder Some men soar, while some go under? He has heard, and he has seen: Make him know the thing you mean. He has prayed since time began,-- He's so curious of the Plan! He will pray you till he die, For the Whence and for the Why; Mad for wisdom--when 'tis cheaper! '_Why should my way lead me deeper? Am I, then, my Brother's keeper?_'

Show him, Byway, if you can; Lest he end as he began, Rich and poor,--this beggar, Man.

_But we did walk in Eden, Eden, the garden of God;-- There, where no beckoning wonder Of all the paths we trod, No choiring sun-filled vineyard, No voice of stream or bird, But was some radiant oracle And flaming with the Word!_

_Mine ears are dim with voices; Mine eyes yet strive to see The black things here to wonder at, The mirth,--the misery. Beloved, who wert with me there, How came these shames to be?-- On what lost star are we?_

_Men say: The paths of gladness By men were never trod!-- But we have walked in Eden, Eden, the garden of God._

THE FOUNDLING

Beautiful Mother, I have toiled all day; And I am wearied. And the day is done. Now, while the wild brooks run Soft by the furrows--fading, gold to gray, Their laughters turned to musing--ah, let me Hide here my face at thine unheeding knee, Beautiful Mother; if I be thy son.

The birds fly low. Gulls, starlings, hoverers, Along the meadows and the paling foam, All wings of thine that roam Fly down, fly down. One reedy murmur blurs The silence of the earth; and from the warm Face of the field the upward savors swarm Into the darkness. And the herds are home.

All they are stalled and folded for their rest, The creatures: cloud-fleece young that leap and veer; Mad-mane and gentle ear; And breath of loving-kindness. And that best,-- O shaggy house-mate, watching me from far, With human-aching heart, as I a star-- Tempest of plumèd joys, just to be near!

So close, so like, so dear; and whom I love More than thou lovest them, or lovest me. So beautiful to see, Ah, and to touch! When those far lights above Scorch me with farness--lights that call and call To the far heart, and answer not at all; Save that they will not let the darkness be.

And what am I? That I alone of these Make me most glad at noon? That I should mark The after-glow go dark? This hour to sing--but never have--heart's-ease! That when the sorrowing winds fly low, and croon Outside our happy windows their old rune, Beautiful Mother, I must wake, and hark?

Who am I? Why for me this iron _Must_? Burden the moon-white ox would never bear; Load that he cannot share, He, thine imperial hostage of the dust. Else should I look to see the god's surprise Flow from his great unscornful, lovely eyes-- The ox thou gavest to partake my care.

Yea, all they bear their yoke of sun-filled hours. I, lord at noon, at nightfall no more free, Take on more heavily The yoke of hid, intolerable Powers. --Then pushes here, in my forgetful hand, This near one's breathless plea to understand. Starward I look; he, even so, at me!

And she who shines within my house, my sight Of the heart's eyes, my hearth-glow, and my rain, My singing's one refrain-- Are there for her no tidings from the height? For her, my solace, likewise lost and far, Islanded with me here, on this lone star Washed by the ceaseless tides of dark and light.

What shall it profit, that I built for her A little wayside shelter from the stark Sky that we hear, and mark? Lo, in her eyes all dreams that ever were! And cheek-to-cheek with me she shares the quest, Her heart, as mine for her, sole tented rest From light to light of day; from dark--till Dark.

Yea, but for her, how should I greatly care Whither and whence? But that the dark should blast Our bright! To hold her fast,-- Yet feel this dread creep gray along the air. To know I cannot hold her so my own, But under surge of joy, the surges moan That threaten us with parting at the last!

Beautiful Mother, I am not thy son. I know from echoes far behind the sky. I know; I know not why. Even from thy golden, wide oblivion: Thy careless leave to help thy harvesting, Thy leave to work a little, live, and sing; Thy leave to suffer--yea, to sing and die, Beautiful Mother! ... Ah, Whose child am I?

_Love sang to me. And I went down the stair, And out into the darkness and the dew; And bowed myself unto the little grass, And the blind herbs, and the unshapen dust Of earth without a face. So let me be._

_For as I hear, the singing makes of me My own desire, and momently I grow. Yea, all the while with hands of melody, The singing makes me, out of what I was, Even as a potter shaping Eden clay._

_Ever Love sings, and saith in words that sing, 'Beloved, thus art thou; and even so Lovely art thou, Beloved!'--Even so, As the Sea weaves her path before the light, I hear, I hear, and I am glorified._

_Love sang to me, and I am glorified Because of some commandment in the stars. And I shall grow in favour and in shining, Till at the last I am all-beautiful; Beautiful, for the day Love sings no more._

THE FEASTER