The poetical works of Edward Rowland Sill

A life,—a common, cleanly, quiet life,
Full of good citizenship and repute,
New, but with promise of prosperity,—
A well-bred, fair, young-gentlemanly life,—
What business had a girl to bring her eyes,
And her blonde hair, and her clear, ringing voice,
And break up life, as a bell breaks a dream?
Had Love Christ's wrath, and did this life sell doves
In the world's temple, that Love scourged it forth
Beyond the gates? Within, the worshipers,—
Without, the waste, and the hill-country, where
The life, with smarting shoulders and stung heart,
Unknowing that the hand which scourged could heal,
Drave forth, blind, cursing, in despair to die,
Or work its own salvation out in fear.

Old World—old, foolish, wicked World—farewell!
Since the Time-angel left my soul with thee,
Thou hast been a hard stepmother unto me.
Now I at last rebel
Against thy stony eyes and cruel hands.
I will go seek in far-off lands
Some quiet corner, where my years shall be
Still as the shadow of a brooding bird
That stirs but with her heart-beats. Far, unheard
May wrangle on the noisy human host,
While I will face my Life, that silent ghost,
And force it speak what it would have with me.

Not of the fair young Earth,
The snow-crowned, sunny-belted globe;
Not of its skies, nor Twilight's purple robe,
Nor pearly dawn; not of the flowers' birth,
And Autumn's forest-funerals; not of storms,
And quiet seas, and clouds' incessant forms;
Not of the sanctuary of the night,
With its solemnities, nor any sight
And pleasant sound of all the friendly day:
But I am tired of what we call our lives;
Tired of the endless humming in the hives,—
Sick of the bitter honey that we eat,
And sick of cursing all the shallow cheat.

Let me arise, and away
To the land that guards the dying day,

Whose burning tear, the evening-star,
Drops silently to the wave afar;
The land where summers never cease
Their sunny psalm of light and peace.
Whose moonlight, poured for years untold,
Has drifted down in dust of gold;
Whose morning splendors, fallen in showers,
Leave ceaseless sunrise in the flowers.

There I will choose some eyrie in the hills,
Where I may build, like a lonely bird,
And catch the whispered music heard
Out of the noise of human ills.

So, I am here at last;
A purer world, whose feet the old, salt Past
Washes against, and leaves it fresh and free
As a new island risen from the sea.

Three dreamy weeks we lay on Ocean's breast,
Rocked asleep, by gentle winds caressed,
Or crooned with wild wave-lullabies to rest.
A memory of foam and glassy spray;
Wave chasing wave, like young sea-beasts at play;
Stretches of misty silver 'neath the moon,
And night-airs murmuring many a quiet tune.
Three long, delicious weeks' monotony
Of sky, and stars, and sea,

Broken midway by one day's tropic scene
Of giant plants, tangles of luminous green,
With fiery flowers and purple fruits between.

I have found a spot for my hermitage,—
No dank and sunless cave,—
I come not for a dungeon, nor a cage,—
Not to be Nature's slave,
But, as a weary child,
Unto the mother's faithful arms I flee,
And seek the sunniest footstool at her knee,
Where I may sit beneath caresses mild,
And hear the sweet old songs that she will sing to me.

'T is a grassy mountain-nook,
In a gorge, whose foaming brook
Tumbles through from the heights above,
Merrily leaping to the light
From the pine-wood's haunted gloom,—
As a romping child,
Affrighted, from a sombre room
Leaps to the sunshine, laughing with delight:
Be this my home, by man's tread undefiled.
Here sounds no voice but of the mourning dove,
Nor harsher footsteps on the sands appear
Than the sharp, slender hoof-marks of the deer,
Or where the quail has left a zigzag row
Of lightly printed stars her track to show.

Above me frowns a front of rocky wall,
Deep cloven into ruined pillars tall
And sculptures strange; bald to its dizzy edge,
Save where, in some deep crevice of a ledge
Buttressed by its black shadow hung below,
A solitary pine has cleft the rock,—
Straight as an arrow, feathered to the tip,
As if a shaft from the moon-huntress' bow
Had struck and grazed the cliff's defiant lip,
And stood, still stiffly quivering with the shock.

Beyond the gorge a slope runs half-way up,
With hollow curve as for a giant's cup,
Brimming with blue pine-shadows: then in air
The gray rock rises bare,
Its front deep-fluted by the sculptor-storms
In moulded columns, rounded forms,
As if great organ-pipes were chiseled there,
Whose anthems are the torrent's roar below,
And chanting winds that through the pine-tops go.
Here bursts of requiem music sink and rise,
When the full moonlight, slowly streaming, lies
Like panes of gold on some cathedral pave,
While floating mists their silver incense wave,
And from on high, through fleecy window-bars,
Gaze down the saintly faces of the stars.

Against the huge trunk of a storm-snapped tree,
(Whose hollow, ready-hewn by long decay,

Above, a chimney, lined with slate and clay,
Below, a broad-arched fireplace makes for me,)
I 've built of saplings and long limbs a hut.
The roof with lacing boughs is tightly shut,
Thatched with thick-spreading palms of pine,
And tangled over by a wandering vine,
Uprooted from the woods close by,
Whose clasping tendrils climb and twine,
Waving their little hands on high,
As if they loved to deck this nest of mine.
Within, by smooth white stones from the brook's beach
My rooms are separated, each from each.
On yonder island-rock my table 's spread,
Brook-ringed, that no stray, fasting ant may come
To make himself with my wild fare at home.

Here will I live, and here my life shall be
Serene, still, rooted steadfastly,
Yet pointing skyward, and its motions keep
A rhythmic balance, as that cedar tall,
Whose straight shaft rises from the chasm there,
Through the blue, hollow air,
And, measuring the dizzy deep,
Leans its long shadow on the rock's gray wall.

Through the sharp gap of the gorge below,
From my mountains' feet the gaze may go
Over a stretch of fields, broad-sunned,
Then glance beyond,

Across the beautiful bay,
To that dim ridge, a score of miles away,
Lifting its clear-cut outline high,
Azure with distance on the azure sky,
Whose flocks of white clouds brooding on its crests
Have winged from ocean to their piny nests.
Beyond the bright blue water's further rim,
Where waves seem ripples on its far-off brim,
The rich young city lies,
Diminished to an ant-hill's size.
I trace its steep streets, ribbing all the hill
Like narrow bands of steel,
Binding the city on the shifting sand:
Thick-pressed between them stand
Broad piles of buildings, pricked through here and there
By a sharp steeple; and above, the air
Murky with smoke and dust, that seem to show
The bright sky saddened by the sin below.

The voice of my wild brook is marvelous;
Leaning above it from a jutting rock
To watch the image of my face, that forms
And breaks, and forms again (as the image of God
Is broken and re-gathered in a soul),
I listen to the chords that sink and swell
From many a little fall and babbling run.
That hollow gurgle is the deepest bass;

Over the pebbles gush contralto tones,
While shriller trebles tinkle merrily,
Running, like some enchanted-fingered flute,
Endless chromatics.
Now it is the hum
And roar of distant streets; the rush of winds
Through far-off forests: now the noise of rain
Drumming the roof; the hiss of ocean-foam:
Now the swift ripple of piano-keys
In mad mazurkas, danced by laughing girls.

So, night and day, the hurrying brook goes on;
Sometimes in noisy glee, sometimes far down,
Silent along the bottom of the gorge,
Like a deep passion hidden in the soul,
That chafes in secret hunger for its sea:
Yet not so still but that heaven finds its course;
And not so hid but that the yearning night
Broods over it, and feeds it with her stars.

When earth has Eden spots like this for man,
Why will he drag his life where lashing storms
Whip him indoors, the petulant weather's slave?
There he is but a helpless, naked snail,
Except he wear his house close at his back.
Here the wide air builds him his palace walls,—
Some little corner of it roofed, for sleep;
Or he can lie all night, bare to the sky,

And feel updrawn against the breast of heaven,
Letting his thoughts stretch out among the stars,
As the antennæ of an insect grope
Blindly for food, or as the ivy's shoots
Clamber from cope and tower to find the light,
And drink the electric pulses of the sun.

As from that sun we draw the coarser fire
That swells the veins, and builds the brain and bone,
So from each star a finer influence streams,
Kindling within the mortal chrysalis
The first faint thrills of its new life to come.

Here is no niggard gap of sky above,
With murk and mist below, but all sides clear,—
Not an inch bated from the full-swung dome;
Each constellation to the horizon's rim
Keen-glittering, as if one only need
Walk to the edge there, spread his wings, and float,
The dark earth spurned behind, into the blue.

I love thee, thou brown, homely, dear old Earth!
Those fairer planets whither fate may lead,
Whatever marvel be their bulk or speed,
Ringed with what splendor, belted round with fire,
In glory of perpetual moons arrayed,
Can ne'er give back the glow and fresh desire
Of youth in that old home where man had birth,

Whose paths he trod through wholesome light and shade.
Out of their silver radiance to thy dim
And clouded orb his eye will turn,
As an old man looks back to where he played
About his father's hearth, and finds for him
No splendor like the fires which there did burn.

See: I am come to live alone with thee.
Thou hast had many a one, grown old and worn,
Come to thee weary and forlorn,
Bent with the weight of human vanity.
But I come with my life almost untried,
In thy perpetual presence to abide.
Teach me thy wisdom; let me learn the flowers,
And know the rocks and trees,
And touch the springs of all thy hidden powers.
Let the still gloom of thy rock-fastnesses
Fall deep upon my spirit, till the voice
Of brooks become familiar, and my heart rejoice
With joy of birds and winds; and all the hours,
Unmaddened by the babble of vain men,
Bring thy most inner converse to my ken.
So shall it be, that, when I stand
On that next planet's ruddy-shimmering strand,
I shall not seem a pert and forward child
Seeking to dabble in abstruser lore
With alphabet unlearned, who in disgrace
Returns, upon his primer yet to pore—

But those examiners, all wise and mild,
Shall gently lead me to my place,
As one that faithfully did trace
These simpler earthly records o'er and o'er.

Beckoned at sunrise by the surf's white hand,
I have strayed down to sit upon the beach,
And hear the oratorio of the Sea.
On this steep, crumbling bank, where the high tides
Have crunched the earth away, a crooked oak—
A hunch-backed dwarf, whose limbs, cramped down by gales,
Have twisted stiffening back upon themselves—
Spreads me a little arbor from the sun.

On the brown, shining beach, all ripple-carved,
Gleams now and then a pool; so smooth and clear,
That, though I cannot see the plover there
Pacing its farther edge (so much he looks
The color of the sand), yet I can trace
His image hanging in the glassy brine—
Slim legs and rapier-beak—like silver-plate
With such a pictured bird clean-etched upon it.

Beyond, long curves of little shallow waves
Creep, tremulous with ripples, to the shore,

Till the whole bay seems slowly sliding in,
With edge of snow that melts against the sand.

Above its twinkling blue, where ceaselessly
The white curve of a slender arm of foam
Is reached along the water, and withdrawn,
A flock of sea-birds darken into specks;
Then whiten, as they wheel with sunlit wings,
Winking and wavering against the sky.

The earth for form, the sea for coloring,
And overhead, fair daughters of the two,
The clouds, whose curves were moulded on the hills,
Whose tints of pearl and foam the ocean gave.

O Sea, thou art all-beautiful, but dumb!
Thou hast no utterance articulate
For human ears; only a restless moan
Of barren tides, that loathe the living earth
As alien, striving towards the barren moon.
Thou art no longer infinite to man:
Has he not touched thy boundary-shores, and now
Laid his electric fetters round thy feet?
Thy dumb moan saddens me; let me go back
And listen to the silence of the hills.

At last I live alone:
No human judgment-seats are here

Thrust in between man and his Maker's throne,
With praise to covet, or with frown to fear:
No small, distorted judgments bless, or blame;
Only to Him I own
The inward sense of worth, or flush of shame.

God made the man alone;
And all that first grand morning walked he so.
Then was he strong and wise, till at the noon,
When tired with joyous wonder he lay prone
For rest and sleep, God let him know
The subtile sweetness that is bound in Two.

Man rises best alone:
Upward his thoughts stream, like the leaping flame,
Whose base is tempest-blown;
Upward and skyward, since from thence they came,
And thither they must flow.
But when in twos we go,
The lightnings of the brain weave to and fro,
Level across the abyss that parts us all;
If upward, only slantwise, as we scale
Slowly together that night-shrouded wall
Which bounds our reason, lest our reason fail.
If linked in threes, and fives,
However heavenward the spirit strives,
The lowest stature draws the highest down,—
The king must keep the level of the clown.
The grosser matter has the greater power

In all attraction; every hour
We slide and slip to lower scales,
Till weary aspiration fails,
And that keen fire which might have pierced the skies
Is quenched and killed in one another's eyes.

A child had blown a bubble fair
That floated in the sunny air:
A hundred rainbows danced and swung
Upon its surface, as it hung
In films of changing color rolled,
Crimson, and amethyst, and gold,
With faintest streaks of azure sheen,
And curdling rivulets of green.
“If so the surface shines,” cried he,
“What marvel must the centre be!”
He caught it— on his empty hands
A drop of turbid water stands!

With men, to help the moments fly,
I tossed the ball of talk on high,
With glancing jest, and random stings,
Grazing the crests of thoughts and things,
In many a shifting ray of speech
That shot swift sparkles, each to each.
I thought, “Ah, could we pierce below
To inner soul, what depths would show!”

In friendships many, loves a few,
I pierced the inner depths, and knew
'T was but the shell that splendor caught:
Within, one sour and selfish thought.

I found a grotto, hidden in the gorge,
Paved by the brook in rare mosaic work
Of sand, and lucent depths, and shadow-streaks
Veining the amber of the sun-dyed wave.
Between two mossy masses of gray rock
Lay a clear basin, which, with sun and shade
Bewitched, a great transparent opal made,
Over whose broken rims the water ran.
Above each rocky side leaned waving trees
Whose lace of branches wove a restless roof,
Trailed over by green vines that sifted down
A dust of sunshine through the chilly shade.

Leaning against a trunk of oak, rock-wedged,
Whose writhen roots were clenched upon the stones,
I was a Greek, and caught the sudden flash
Of a scared Dryad's vanishing robe, and heard
The laughter, half-suppressed, of hiding Fauns.
Up the dark stairway of the tumbling stream
The sun shot through, and struck each foamy fall
Into a silvery veil of dazzling fire.
Along its shady course, the tossing drops
By some swift sunbeam ever caught, were lit
To sparkling stars, that fell, and flashed, and fell,

Incessantly rekindled. Bubble-troops
Came dancing by, to break just at my feet;
Lo! every bubble mirrored the whole scene—
The streak of blue between the roofing-boughs,
And on it my own face in miniature
Quaintly distorted, as if some small elf
Peered up at me beneath his glassy dome.

If men but knew the mazes of the brain
And all its crowded pictures, they would need
No Louvre or Vatican: behind our brows
Intricate galleries are built, whose walls
Are rich with all the splendors of a life.
Each crimson leaf of every autumn walk,
Dewdrops of childhood's mornings, every scene
From any window where we 've chanced to stand,
Forgotten sunsets, summer afternoons,
Hang fresh in those immortal galleries.
Few ever can unlock them, till great Death
Unrolls our lifelong memory as a scroll.
One key is solitude, and silence one,
And one a quiet mind, content to rest
In God's sufficiency, and take His world,
Not dabbling all the Master's work to death
With our small interference. God is God.

Yet we must give the children leave to use
Our garden-tools, though they spoil tool and plant

In learning. So the Master may not scorn
Our awkwardness, as with these bungling hands
We try to uproot the ill, and plant with good
Life's barren soil: the child is learning use.
Perhaps the angels even are forbid
To laugh at us, or may not care to laugh,
With kind eyes pitying our little hurts.

'T is ludicrous that man should think he roams
Freely at will a world planned for his use.
Lo, what a mite he is! Snatched hither and yon,
Tossed round the sun, and in its orbit flashed
Round other centres, orbits without end;
His bit of brain too small to even feel
The spinning of the little hailstone, Earth.
So his creeds glibly prate of choice and will,
When his whole fate is an invisible speck
Whirled through the orbits of Eternity.

We think that we believe
That human souls shall live, and live,
When trees have rotted into mould,
And all the rocks which these long hills enfold
Have crumbled, and beneath new oceans lie.
But why—ah, why—
If puny man is not indeed to die,
Watch I with such disdain
That human speck creeping along the plain,

And turn with such a careless scorn of men
Back to the mountain's brow again,
And feel more pleased that some small, fluttering thing
Trusts me and hovers near on fearless wing,
Than if the proudest man in all the land
Had offered me in friendliness his hand?
However small the present creature man,—
Ridiculous imitation of the gods,
Weak plagiarism on some completer world,—
Yet we can boast of that strong race to be.
The savage broke the attraction which binds fast
The fibres of the oak, and we to-day
By cunning chemistry can force apart
The elements of the air. That coming race
Shall loose the bands by which the earth attracts;
A drop of occult tincture, a spring touched
Shall outwit gravitation; men shall float,
Or lift the hills and set them where they will.
The savage crossed the lake, and we the sea.
That coming race shall have no bounds or bars,
But, like the fledgeling eaglet, leave the nest,—
Our earthly eyrie up among the stars,—
And freely soar, to tread the desolate moon,
Or mingle with the neighbor folk of Mars.
Yea, if the savage learned by sign and sound
To bridge the chasm to his fellow's brain,

Till now we flash our whispers round the globe,
That race shall signal over the abyss
To those bright souls who throng the outer courts
Of life, impatient who shall greet men first
And solve the riddles that we die to know.

'T is night: I sit alone among the hills.
There is no sound, except the sleepless brook,
Whose voice comes faintly from the depths below
Through the thick darkness, or the sombre pines
That slumber, murmuring sometimes in their dreams.
Hark! on a fitful gust there came the sound
Of the tide rising yonder on the bay.
It dies again: 't was like the rustling noise
Of a great army mustering secretly.
There rose an owl's cry, from the woods below,
Like a lost spirit's.—Now all 's still again.—
'T is almost fearful to sit here alone
And feel the deathly silence and the dark.
I will arise and shout, and hear at least
My own voice answer.—Not an echo even!
I wish I had not uttered that wild cry;
It broke with such a shock upon the air,
Whose leaden silence closed up after it,
And seemed to clap together at my ears.
The black depths of these muffled woods are thronged
With shapes that wait some signal to swoop out,
And swirl around and madden me with fear.

I will go climb that bare and rocky height
Into the clearer air.

So, here I breathe;
That silent darkness smothered me.
Away
Across the bay, the city with its lights
Twinkling against the horizon's dusky line,
Looks a sea-dragon, crawled up on the shore,
With rings of fire across his rounded back,
And luminous claws spread out among the hills.
Above, the glittering heavens.—Magnificent!
Oh, if a man could be but as a star,
Having his place appointed, here to rise,
And there to set, unchanged by earthly change,
Content if it can guide some wandering bark,
Or be a beacon to some homesick soul!

Those city-lights again: they draw my gaze
As if some secret human sympathy
Still held my heart down from the lonely heaven.
A new-born constellation, settling there
Below the Sickle's ruby-hilted curve,
They gleam—Not so! No constellation they;
I mock the sad, strong stars that never fail
In their eternal patience; from below
Comes that pale glare, like the faint, sulphurous flame
Which plays above the ashes of a fire:
So trembles the dull flicker of those lamps
Over the burnt-out energies of man.

University of Virginia Library

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