 | A Sculptor and Other Poems |  |
14
TOLD IN THE FIRELIGHT.
At last, old friend, after all the years of hope that, deferr'd, doth tire
The heart as surely as pain itself, you are sitting here by my fire:
'Twas worth the waiting to find your heart the same as ever still,
Though alter'd much is that dear old face since last we met, friend Will.
The eyes are as bright as ever they were, but, just about the mouth,
The lines, not stern, but tenderly grave, tell something of parted youth:
And your step is slower than us'd to be, and bow'd is the stalwart form
Which minded us all of a rock that bade defiance to beat of storm:
And the waves of care have swept o'er your head, and left, just here and there,
A little streak of their silvery foam on the seaweed brown of your hair.
But oh! on your face is the sweetness still that oft is wrung out by pain
From natures less noble than yours, as the juice is crusht away from the cane.
The heart as surely as pain itself, you are sitting here by my fire:
'Twas worth the waiting to find your heart the same as ever still,
Though alter'd much is that dear old face since last we met, friend Will.
The eyes are as bright as ever they were, but, just about the mouth,
The lines, not stern, but tenderly grave, tell something of parted youth:
And your step is slower than us'd to be, and bow'd is the stalwart form
Which minded us all of a rock that bade defiance to beat of storm:
And the waves of care have swept o'er your head, and left, just here and there,
A little streak of their silvery foam on the seaweed brown of your hair.
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From natures less noble than yours, as the juice is crusht away from the cane.
Both of us, Will, have lov'd; each sought, in the Spring of his life, to be
The Knight of knights in the gentle eyes of the one belov'd lady:
Your dream, old friend, was realiz'd in the gift of your beautiful one—
To love her made you exceeding glad, to lose her, exceeding lone.
I remember the grace of her movements light, and her voice as soft as the sigh
Of wind among summer's full-leav'd trees—she was very fair to die—
But I think, such sweetness was on her brow, such pureness on her tongue,
She was lov'd with the mystic immortal love they say is death to the young.
Hand in hand together we stood on the still September morn
While the reapers' sickles rustled like wind against the yellow corn,
Hard by the place of your dove's last nest there under the light, loose turf
Whose bending grass should never be stirr'd by wind that had moan'd on the surf.
We parted soon for a long, long while: you went to the morning land
Where Nature spreadeth a daily feast of her lovely things and grand,
And the spirit of love and of those sweet songs which lips of the true have sung
Watcht o'er you by night and day and kept the harp of your life well-strung,
Else how, since grief doth age the heart, can your heart be so fresh and young?
The Knight of knights in the gentle eyes of the one belov'd lady:
Your dream, old friend, was realiz'd in the gift of your beautiful one—
To love her made you exceeding glad, to lose her, exceeding lone.
I remember the grace of her movements light, and her voice as soft as the sigh
Of wind among summer's full-leav'd trees—she was very fair to die—
But I think, such sweetness was on her brow, such pureness on her tongue,
She was lov'd with the mystic immortal love they say is death to the young.
Hand in hand together we stood on the still September morn
While the reapers' sickles rustled like wind against the yellow corn,
Hard by the place of your dove's last nest there under the light, loose turf
Whose bending grass should never be stirr'd by wind that had moan'd on the surf.
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Where Nature spreadeth a daily feast of her lovely things and grand,
And the spirit of love and of those sweet songs which lips of the true have sung
Watcht o'er you by night and day and kept the harp of your life well-strung,
Else how, since grief doth age the heart, can your heart be so fresh and young?
My story you ask for, old comrade? Well, you shall have it and welcome too:
I could not have told it in letters, I think, but am glad to tell it to you,
Face to face and hand to hand this eventide by my fire,
Here, as so often I've wanted you with restless, great desire.
Is it not strange how the certain hand of Time can utterly smooth
Down into calm the passionate storms that trouble the heart of youth?
The wine that, in drinking, was bitterest, is mixt in remembrance with myrrh—
So, Will, it does not hurt me now to think or to speak of her.
Calm on my life's love-threshold she stood, with the forehead smooth and square
That gleam'd like a silver star against the drifts of her cloud-like hair;
And cheeks too young, too young to be so utterly pale and grave,
And lips where delicate pathos lay at the heart of each smile they gave.
A still, calm presence that, moonlike, wrought such a passionate tide in my breast,
That to me the love which I priz'd so dear was only a name for unrest.
My whole life gather'd up at once its trouble and joy and desire,
And laid itself down at her feet and pour'd out its strength in words of fire.
At first, as she listen'd, those lips of hers that stately were, but mild,
Curv'd into a pitying, quiet smile, as if for a wayward child;
But soon, with the force of my pleading strong, there came a look in her eyes,
As if she were gazing back to the past with its mazes and mysteries.
And when I ceast, she droopt her lids, and the few, low words she said
Were utter'd so faintly, I only caught the sound of the last one—dead!
Then I was dumb, and it seem'd as if a many ages swept
Over my life that, trembling there, its sorrowful silence kept.
Was it the ghost of her pain or else the wraith of mine that had come
And stood, a shadow between us two, in the shadows of evening's gloom?
I could not have told it in letters, I think, but am glad to tell it to you,
Face to face and hand to hand this eventide by my fire,
Here, as so often I've wanted you with restless, great desire.
Is it not strange how the certain hand of Time can utterly smooth
Down into calm the passionate storms that trouble the heart of youth?
The wine that, in drinking, was bitterest, is mixt in remembrance with myrrh—
So, Will, it does not hurt me now to think or to speak of her.
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That gleam'd like a silver star against the drifts of her cloud-like hair;
And cheeks too young, too young to be so utterly pale and grave,
And lips where delicate pathos lay at the heart of each smile they gave.
A still, calm presence that, moonlike, wrought such a passionate tide in my breast,
That to me the love which I priz'd so dear was only a name for unrest.
My whole life gather'd up at once its trouble and joy and desire,
And laid itself down at her feet and pour'd out its strength in words of fire.
At first, as she listen'd, those lips of hers that stately were, but mild,
Curv'd into a pitying, quiet smile, as if for a wayward child;
But soon, with the force of my pleading strong, there came a look in her eyes,
As if she were gazing back to the past with its mazes and mysteries.
And when I ceast, she droopt her lids, and the few, low words she said
Were utter'd so faintly, I only caught the sound of the last one—dead!
18
Over my life that, trembling there, its sorrowful silence kept.
Was it the ghost of her pain or else the wraith of mine that had come
And stood, a shadow between us two, in the shadows of evening's gloom?
She laid on my arm a kind calm hand, and spoke to me, with the grace
Of her womanhood's pitying tenderness soft on her beautiful clear-cut face:
Just in the very fewest words and the simplest ones, she told
A story old and common enough, and as sad as common and old:
Something of poverty—parting—and then the struggle for daily bread
In a far-off land, and at last the news that crusht her hope—he was dead.
Ah! would that I never had spoken the words that I spoke out then to her
Whose love and pain should have been to me the veriest barrier—
“Hate me,” I said, “if you will, if you will, so you let me kneel and adore
The light that shall be my star of stars for ever and evermore.”
Commonplace words enough they sound, but nothing is commonplace
To a woman who sees a man's whole heart leap out to her in his face:
And her voice was softer than even its wont, and her eyes had tears unshed—
“I never shall love again, but yet—if you will, so be it.” she said.
Then I fain had drawn her close to the heart that would shelter hers for ever,
But she shudder'd, as if with pain or cold, and pray'd of me just to leave her,
Leave her a little while; she would strive her woman's duty to do;
Well she knew me and trusted me; she call'd me a good man and true;
Knew that I lov'd her; but all was strange and new, and the crisis of life
Was come unto her who had surely thought she never should be a wife.
And we parted then; but all night long, with a weight as heavy as lead,
It lay on my heart and haunted me, or waking, or sleeping, —Dead.
Of her womanhood's pitying tenderness soft on her beautiful clear-cut face:
Just in the very fewest words and the simplest ones, she told
A story old and common enough, and as sad as common and old:
Something of poverty—parting—and then the struggle for daily bread
In a far-off land, and at last the news that crusht her hope—he was dead.
Ah! would that I never had spoken the words that I spoke out then to her
Whose love and pain should have been to me the veriest barrier—
“Hate me,” I said, “if you will, if you will, so you let me kneel and adore
The light that shall be my star of stars for ever and evermore.”
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To a woman who sees a man's whole heart leap out to her in his face:
And her voice was softer than even its wont, and her eyes had tears unshed—
“I never shall love again, but yet—if you will, so be it.” she said.
Then I fain had drawn her close to the heart that would shelter hers for ever,
But she shudder'd, as if with pain or cold, and pray'd of me just to leave her,
Leave her a little while; she would strive her woman's duty to do;
Well she knew me and trusted me; she call'd me a good man and true;
Knew that I lov'd her; but all was strange and new, and the crisis of life
Was come unto her who had surely thought she never should be a wife.
And we parted then; but all night long, with a weight as heavy as lead,
It lay on my heart and haunted me, or waking, or sleeping, —Dead.
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Fell on my life from that life of hers and bade its unrest to cease:
Her life so full of the duties fair that were order'd smooth and even,
To know her was beauty and grace and good, and to love her was very heaven.
Yet sometimes, despite, in my heart of hearts, a fathomless longing would rise
For storms and sunshine instead of the blue of those fair, untroubled skies;
For the delicate hearth-fire to cherish and tend, instead of the distant star;
For the beam of the lesser light close by, instead of the greater afar.
Well, seeing the time was passing fast in that gentle light and clear,
I askt her when should my hope be crown'd, and she pray'd me for a year,
And I thought in that year perhaps, perhaps, the waters of time might sweep
Lethe-like over her heart and drown all pain in a wakeless sleep.
We said we would part for that one year, and I left our country's shore
Not to see her again till the time I never should leave her more:
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And I thought of the world-sick preacher's words that all is but vanity.
The year was over and gone at last, and both of us bound for home;
I and another, an artist-friend I had made while I stay'd at Rome.
A genial, open-hearted man, who was coming home to claim
The right to give to his best-belov'd the gift of the ring and name.
He told me more than I told him, Will, but somehow, it seem'd to strike
A chill on my heart that our hope should be so like and yet so unlike.
He told me about a morning bleak in the time of early snow,
When he parted from her, his lady dear, just five long years ago,
Knowing not when they should meet again, but strong in the trust and truth
That keep the flowers of the heart so fresh in the dew and beauty of youth.
Ay, the times change and we with them, but he knew he should find her the same
In heart and soul as the last sweet time he had heard her name his name.
Never a letter had past between them: her kinsfolk and friends disallow'd
The trothplight, for he was poor and young and they were poor and proud.
He had struggled hard and overcome by the force of that which gains
The crown and the palm—the patient “power of taking infinite pains;”
And when, at last, success had come, he had hugg'd with a miser's grasp
The gold that was bringing him every day more near to the deathless clasp
Of her virgin-hand, and the tender light of her lustrous violet eye
For evermore and for evermore—it was wonderful ecstasy.
I and another, an artist-friend I had made while I stay'd at Rome.
A genial, open-hearted man, who was coming home to claim
The right to give to his best-belov'd the gift of the ring and name.
He told me more than I told him, Will, but somehow, it seem'd to strike
A chill on my heart that our hope should be so like and yet so unlike.
He told me about a morning bleak in the time of early snow,
When he parted from her, his lady dear, just five long years ago,
Knowing not when they should meet again, but strong in the trust and truth
That keep the flowers of the heart so fresh in the dew and beauty of youth.
Ay, the times change and we with them, but he knew he should find her the same
In heart and soul as the last sweet time he had heard her name his name.
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The trothplight, for he was poor and young and they were poor and proud.
He had struggled hard and overcome by the force of that which gains
The crown and the palm—the patient “power of taking infinite pains;”
And when, at last, success had come, he had hugg'd with a miser's grasp
The gold that was bringing him every day more near to the deathless clasp
Of her virgin-hand, and the tender light of her lustrous violet eye
For evermore and for evermore—it was wonderful ecstasy.
He pac'd the long deck to and fro, and lookt so blest and proud
In his love and trust that I know not how I utter'd my thought aloud,
With a touch of cynicism that now I think of, Will, with pain,
As I said, “But how if you lose, good friend, where you only think to gain?”
He stopt his walk and lookt at me with the look of perfect calm
That comes to the face when the life is tun'd to the pitch of love's great psalm;—
“Ah, yes, I have thought of that before; she may be lying low
With violets quick on her dear dead breast; God's will be done, if so;
Or else she may have thought me dead, and given herself to one
As true and loving as I could be;—to say God's will be done
Truly were harder if so it were; in the book of the heart I have read
More bitter is grief for the living lost than ever it is for the dead.
All's in God's hands; but somehow I feel so strong in my love and trust
I think that He will not suffer this hope of mine to crumble to dust.
She cannot else be lost I know;—there's a word that Society uses
When a frivolous woman plays with a heart as long as her fancy chooses,
Then casts the poor plaything away for others to toy with, unless, indeed,
It be too much broken for that, and cares not and takes not the slightest heed—
Flirting they call it—but she, yes, she is so pure and true and high,
As far above that unwomanly shame as a star in its depth of sky,
And all that is lofty and beautiful in her is so surely blent,
My treasure perhaps may be lost to me, but it cannot have thus been spent.”
I had seen her again, my statue-love, she had met me with never a touch
In his love and trust that I know not how I utter'd my thought aloud,
With a touch of cynicism that now I think of, Will, with pain,
As I said, “But how if you lose, good friend, where you only think to gain?”
He stopt his walk and lookt at me with the look of perfect calm
That comes to the face when the life is tun'd to the pitch of love's great psalm;—
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With violets quick on her dear dead breast; God's will be done, if so;
Or else she may have thought me dead, and given herself to one
As true and loving as I could be;—to say God's will be done
Truly were harder if so it were; in the book of the heart I have read
More bitter is grief for the living lost than ever it is for the dead.
All's in God's hands; but somehow I feel so strong in my love and trust
I think that He will not suffer this hope of mine to crumble to dust.
She cannot else be lost I know;—there's a word that Society uses
When a frivolous woman plays with a heart as long as her fancy chooses,
Then casts the poor plaything away for others to toy with, unless, indeed,
It be too much broken for that, and cares not and takes not the slightest heed—
Flirting they call it—but she, yes, she is so pure and true and high,
As far above that unwomanly shame as a star in its depth of sky,
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My treasure perhaps may be lost to me, but it cannot have thus been spent.”
Of true-love joyaunce and eager bliss, and my whole soul crav'd for such:
I had lookt in vain, in vain, for the crimson beacon of love on her cheek,
As a watcher looks with longing eyes to the East for the morning-streak.
Tender and meek as of old she was, and I thought “Has she come to forget
The Past with its sweetness and bitterness, and will she love me yet?”
Such women never forget, albeit, outliving their agony,
From their sweet souls is born the grace of infinite charity.
We were sitting together one eventide; her hand lay light in mine,
The quiet hand that, to-morrow morn, was to wear my marriage-sign:
I was reading a quaint old ballad aloud that pleas'd my lady much,
When we heard a footstep—an open'd door—and she drew her hand from my touch,
And lifted her eyes—and then—O Will!—with a cry, on my heart that rang
As a joybell might on a doom'd man's ear who waits for his deat?, she sprang,
With a deer-like bound in the eager joy that quiver'd through all her frame
To her home on his breast for evermore, and he kiss'd her and nam'd her name.
The quiet hand that, to-morrow morn, was to wear my marriage-sign:
I was reading a quaint old ballad aloud that pleas'd my lady much,
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And lifted her eyes—and then—O Will!—with a cry, on my heart that rang
As a joybell might on a doom'd man's ear who waits for his deat?, she sprang,
With a deer-like bound in the eager joy that quiver'd through all her frame
To her home on his breast for evermore, and he kiss'd her and nam'd her name.
Only a moment thus they stood, forgetting all but the joy
Of a love whose infinite sweetness and strength nor time nor pain could destroy,
And then she started back from his arms with a glorious crimson glow,
Love's banner, flasht out over her face from her chin to her very brow;
So was the wonderful loveliness now full-lit by the light of the human,
Grown beneath love's true hand at once to the fairest beauty of woman.
My heart sent forth a desperate cry as wordless I past from the door,
Like the last long wail of one who is drown'd in sight of the ship and the shore.
Of a love whose infinite sweetness and strength nor time nor pain could destroy,
And then she started back from his arms with a glorious crimson glow,
Love's banner, flasht out over her face from her chin to her very brow;
So was the wonderful loveliness now full-lit by the light of the human,
Grown beneath love's true hand at once to the fairest beauty of woman.
My heart sent forth a desperate cry as wordless I past from the door,
Like the last long wail of one who is drown'd in sight of the ship and the shore.
26
All that God does, and the way He does it, is sure to be wise and right.
And I call it nothing but casting reproach on Him and His perfect plan,
Who made the love of man for woman, the love of woman for man,
When those who have lost that bliss, or those to whom it has been denied,
Sneer at the holy name of love and smother with selfish pride
The seeds of the sacred flowers God holds to be given in service meet
When twin'd for a darling's brow or laid at tir'd humanity's feet.
And life has autumn and winter joys left yet, and I love to see
Her little children, whom I had hop'd should be mine, around my knee:
Ay, give me your hand, old friend, true friend—there was once a tender and true man
Like you, who gave to his friend a love passing the love of woman.
| A Sculptor and Other Poems | |