University of Virginia Library


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2. PART II

“THE POET'S DAY”

The poet's day is different from another,
Tho' he doth count each man his own heart's brother.
So crystal-clear the air that he looks through,
It gives each color an intenser hue;
Each bush doth burn, and every flower flame;
The stars are sighing; silence breathes a name.
The world wherein he wanders, dreams, and sings
Thrills with the beating of invisible wings;
And all day long he hears from hidden birds
The low, melodious pour of musicked words.

“HOW TO THE SINGER COMES THE SONG?”

I

How to the singer comes the song?
At times a joy, alone;
A wordless tone
Caught from the crystal gleam of ice-bound trees;
Or from the violet-perfumed breeze;
Or the sharp smell of seas
In sunlight glittering many an emerald mile;
Or the keen memory of a love-lit smile.

II

Thus to the singer comes the song:
Gazing at crimson skies
Where burns and dies
On day's wide hearth the calm celestial fire,
The poet with a wild desire

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Strikes the impassioned lyre,
Takes into tunèd sound the flaming sight
And ushers with new song the ancient night.

III

How to the singer comes the song?
Bowed down by ill and sorrow
On every morrow—
The unworded pain breaks forth in heavenly singing;
Not all too late dear solace bringing
To broken spirits winging
Through mortal anguish to the unknown rest—
A lyric balm for every wounded breast.

IV

How to the singer comes the song?
How to the summer fields
Come flowers? How yields
Darkness to happy dawn? How doth the night
Bring stars? O, how do love and light
Leap at the sound and sight
Of her who makes this dark world seem less wrong—
Life of his life, and soul of all his song!

“LIKE THE BRIGHT PICTURE”

Like the bright picture ere the lamp is lit,
Or silent page whereon keen notes are writ;
So was my love, all vacant, all unsaid,
Ere she the lamp did light, ere she the music read.

REMEMBRANCE OF BEAUTY

Love's look finds loveliness in all the world:
Ah, who shall say—This, this is loveliest!

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Forgetting that pure beauty is impearled
A thousand perfect ways, and none is best.
Sometimes I deem that dawn upon the ocean
Thrills deeper than all else; but, sudden, there,
With serpent gleam and hue, and fixèd motion,
Niagara curves its scimitar in air.
So when I dream of sunset, oft I gaze
Again from Bellosguardo's misty hight,
Or memory ends once more one day of days—
Carrara's mountains purpling into night.
There is no loveliest, dear Love, but thee—
Through whom all loveliness I breathe and see.

MUSIC IN SOLITUDE

I

In this valley far and lonely
Birds sang only,
And the brook,
And the rain upon the leaves;
And all night long beneath the eaves
(While with soft breathings slept the housèd cattle)
The hivèd bees
Made music like the murmuring seas;
From lichened wall, from many a leafy nook,
The chipmunk sounded shrill his tiny rattle;
Through the warm day boomed low the droning flies,
And the huge mountain shook
With the organ of the skies.

II

Dear these songs unto my heart;
But the spirit longs for art,
Longs for music that is born

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Of the human soul forlorn,
Or the beating heart of pleasure.
Thou, sweet girl, didst bring this boon
Without stint or measure!
Many a tune
From the masters of all time
In my waiting heart made rhyme.

III

As the rain on parchèd meadows,
As cool shadows
Falling from the sultry sky,
As loved memories die,
But live again when a well-tunèd voice
Makes with old joy the grievèd heart rejoice,
So came once more with thy clear touch
The melodies I love—
Ah, not too much,
But all earth's natural songs far, far above!
For they are nature felt, and living,
And human, and impassioned;
And they full well are fashioned
To bring to sound and sense the eternal striving,
The inner soul of the inexpressive world,
The meaning furled
Deep at the heart of all—
The thought that mortals name divine,
Whereof all beauty is the sign,
That comes,—ah! surely comes,—at music's solemn call.

“A POWER THERE IS”

A power there is that trembles through the earth;
It lives in nature's mirth,

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Making that fearful as the touch of pain;
It strikes the sunlit plain,
And harvests flash, or bend with rushing rain;
It is not far when tempests make their moan,
And lightnings leap, and bursts the thunder-stone.
It comes in morning's beam of living light,
And the imperial night
Knows it, and all its company of stars,
And the auroral bars.
Through nature all, the subtile current thrills;
It built in flood and fire the crystal hills;
It molds the flowers,
And all the branchèd forests that abide
Forever on the teeming mountain-side.
It lives where music times the soft, processional hours;
And where on that lone hill of art
Proud Phidias carved in stone his lyric heart;
And where wild battle is, and where
Glad lovers breathe in starry night the quivering air.

THE SONG'S ANSWER

Me mystic? Have your way!
But sing me, if ye may;—
Then shall ye know the power
Of the seed's thought of the flower,
Of the dawn's thought of the day.

THE 'CELLO

When late I heard the trembling 'cello play,
In every face I read sad memories
That from dark, secret chambers where they lay
Rose, and looked forth from melancholy eyes.

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So every mournful thought found there a tone
To match despondence; sorrow knew its mate;
Ill fortune sighed, and mute despair made moan;
And one deep chord gave answer, “Late,—too late.”
Then ceased the quivering strain, and swift returned
Into its depths the secret of each heart;
Each face took on its mask, where lately burned
A spirit charmed to sight by music's art;
But unto one who caught that inner flame
No face of all can ever seem the same.

THE VALLEY ROAD

By this road have past
Hope and Joy adance;
And one at dark fled fast,
Quick breath, and look askance;
And in this dust have dropt
Tears that never stopt.
Childhood, caught by flowers,
Cannot choose but dally;
Slowly through the hours
Age creeps down the valley;
Only Youth goes swift—
Eager, and head alift.
Summer, and the night,
Calm and cloudless moon,
And lo! a path of light!
Heaven would come too soon
To lovers wandering slowly
Through the starlight holy.

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And by this road was borne,—
Betwixt sweet banks of fern,
And willow rows, and corn,—
He, who will return
Not, tho' others may,
The old, familiar way.
Two streams within these walls
For ever and ever flow;
Back and forth the current falls,
The long processions go;
A hundred years have flown,
The human tides pour on—
And shall, when you and I
Pass no more again.
Beneath the bending sky
Shall be no lack of men;
Never the road run bare,
Tho' other feet may fare.

HAWTHORNE IN BERKSHIRE

Mountains and valleys! dear ye are to me:
Your streams wild-wandering, ever-tranquil lakes,
And forests that make murmur like the sea;
And this keen air that from the hurt soul takes
Its pain and languor.—Doubly dear ye are
For many a lofty memory that throws
A splendor on these hights.—'Neath yon low star,
That like a dewdrop melts in heaven's rose,
Dwelt once a starry spirit; there he smote
Life from the living hills; a little while
He rested from the raging of the world.

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This Brook of Shadows, whose dark waters purled
Solace to his deep mind, it felt his smile—
Haunted, and melancholy, and remote.

LATE SUMMER

Tho' summer days are all too fleet,
Not yet the year is touched with cold;
Through the long billows of the wheat
The green is lingering in the gold.
The birds that thrilled the April copse,
Ah! some have flown on silent wings;
Yet one sweet music never stops:
The constant vireo sings and sings.

AN HOUR IN A STUDIO

Each picture was a painted memory
Of the far plains he loved, and of their life,—
Weird, mystical, dark, inarticulate,—
And cities hidden high against the blue,
Whose sky-hung steps one Indian could guard.
The enchanted Mesa there its fated wall
Lifted, and all its story lived again—
How, in the happy planting time, the strong
Went down to push the seeds into the sand,
Leaving the old and sick. Then reeled the world
And toppled to the plain the perilous path.
Death climbed another way to them who stayed.
He showed us pictured thirst, a dreadful sight;
And many tales he told that might have come,
Brought by some planet-wanderer—fresh from Mars,
Or from the silver deserts of the moon.

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But I remember better than all else
One night he told of in that land of fright—
The love-songs swarthy men sang to their herds
On the high plains to keep the beasts in heart;
Piercing the silence one keen tenor voice
Singing “Ai nostri monti” clear and high:
Instead of stakes and fences round about
They circled them with music in the night.

ILLUSION

What strange, fond trick is this mine eyes are playing!
I know 't is but the visioning mind perplexes,—
The inward sight the outer sense betraying,—
Yet the sweet lie the spirit wounds and vexes:
As at still midnight pondering here, and reading,
Right on the book's white page, and 'twixt the lines,
And wreathing through the words, and quick receding,
Only to come again (as 'mid the vines
The dryads flash and hide), white arms are gleaming,
A light hand hovers, curvèd lips are red,
Locks in a warm and soundless wind are streaming
Across the image of one glorious head;
No more,—no more,—shut now the volume lies
On that swift, piercing look, those haunting eyes.

A SONG OF THE ROAD

Speed, speed, speed
Through the day, through the night!
Cities are beads on the thread of our flight;
Peaks melt in peaks and are lost in the air.
Speed, speed, speed—
But, O, the dearth of it,
Thou not there!

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Every journey is good if love be the goal of it.
What's all the world if love's not the soul of it;
What were the worth of it—
Thou not there!

“NOT HERE”

I

Not here, but somewhere, so men say,
More bright the day,
And the blue sky
More nigh;
Somewhere, afar, the bird of dawn sings sweeter;
Somewhere completer
The round of hopes and heart-beats that make life
More than a bootless strife.

II

But, ah! there be that know
Where joy alone doth grow.
Led by one true star,
The journey is not far.
'T is in a garden in no distant land,
High-walled on every hand;
And the key thereof
Is love.

“‘NO, NO,’ SHE SAID”

“No, no,” she said;
“I may not wed;
If say I must—nay must I say;
I cannot stay;
Nay, nay, I needs must flout thee!”

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He turned about;
His life went out;
“If go I must, so must I go!”
Cried she—“No, no;
Ah, what were life without thee!”

A SOUL LOST, AND FOUND

I

Lo! here another
Soul has gone down.
Hope led each morrow;
Honor was all;
Faith had no fall;
Fortune no frown.
Brother by brother
Bowed to each sorrow.
None had lost heart;
Life was love, life was art.

II

We could but follow!
Quenchless his fire;
The mightier the burden
The stronger his soul,
The higher the goal.
Now see the mire
Soil him and swallow!
Heaven! what guerdon
Worth such a cost!
Love, art, life—lost, all lost.

III

Down to the pallid
Figure of death

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Love's face is pressing;
Listens and waits,
Beseeching the Fates
For heart-beat and breath—
Sign clear and valid,
Life still confessing.
Dead! He is dead!
All is lost!—He has fled.

IV

Behold now, a moving,
A flutter of life!
Forth from the starkness,
Horror, and slime,
See, he doth climb.
With himself is the strife;
Back to the loving
From mire and the darkness,
Back to the sun!
He has fought—he has won.

“THIS HOUR MY HEART WENT FORTH, AS IN OLD DAYS”

This hour my heart went forth, as in old days,
To one I loved, forgetting she was dead—
So fluttered back the message, like the dove
That found no rest in all the weltering world.
Is it then so—all blankness and black void,
No welcome, no response, no voice, no sign?
Ah, Heaven! let us be foolish—give us faith
In what is not; cheat us a little longer;
Comfort us mortals with envisioned forms;
Let us, tho' but in dreams, see spirits near,

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And touch the draperies of imagined shapes
That hold the souls we love—that have gone forth
Into the land of shadows, but still live
In memory, O, most dear! Beguile our lives
With dim, half-fashioned phantoms of dead hours,
Lest the long way grow hateful; give us faith
Unreasoned, vague, unsubstanced, but still faith;
For faith is hope, and hope alone is life.

“EVEN WHEN JOY IS NEAR”

Even when joy is near
These ghosts of banished thoughts do haunt the mind:
The awful void of space wherein our earth,
An atom in the unending whirl of stars,
Circles, all helpless, to a nameless doom;
The swift, indifferent marshaling of fate
Whereby the world moves on, rewarding vice
And punishing angelic innocence
As 't were the crime of crimes; the brute, dull, slow
Persistence in the stifled mind of man
Of forces that drive all his being back
Into the slime; the silent cruelty
Of nature, that doth crush the unseen soul
Hidden within its sensitive shell of flesh;
The anguish and the sorrow of all time,—
These are forever with me,—but grow dim
When I remember my sweet mother's face.
Somewhere, at heart of all, the right must reign
If in the garden of the infinite
Such loveliness be brought to perfect bloom.

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RESURRECTION

Back to my body came I in the gray of the dawning,
Back to my bed in the mold, 'neath the sod and the blossoms;
Not strange seemed my natural couch, not new, not afflicting;
But strange now, and new, and afflicting my natural body,
Alien long while my soul took the wings of the morning.
I lifted my hands to the light—then swiftly I followed,
With fingers that carefully prest, the curve of the muscles;
All was familiar; this was the frame I had nurtured,
I had loved as a man loves the body so long his companion;
Again was I 'ware of the brow where the dew of sweet kisses
Fell, ere forth went the stripling to life and the shudder
Of battle;—again from the mirror of waters the features
Not unloved of dear comrades looked forth. I beheld in amazement
The bodily presence so long laid aside and forgotten;
Overwhelmed was my soul with its shackles; I grieved, I lamented
As a prisoner dragged back to his cell, as an eagle recaptured.

“AS SOARS THE EAGLE”

As soars the eagle, intimate of light,
Fear not the face of the sun;
Nor all the blasts of earth.
Child of Him, the untrembling One,
O, prove thee worthy of thy birth!

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Let no ill betray thee!
Let no death dismay thee!
The eagle seeks the sky,
Nor fears the infinite light;
Thus, soul of mine, escape the night
And 'gainst the morning fly!