[Poems by Tabb in] Father Tabb :: :: University of Virginia Library

I woke: the wind at intervals,
A mournful vigil kept,
As o'er a sepulchre, around
The chamber where I slept.
The casement rattled in the blast,
The breathing curtains stirred;
Anon, throughout their shroudy length,
A stifled sigh was heard—
A brooding dread, low whispering
In mystic monotone—
“It was a deed of darkness,
And in the darkness done.”

Again at noon, but thinner, faintlier, there
As spent with vigil, heaves a stifled sigh
(I turn to see; but nothing meets the eye)
“Beware!”

The pallor of a wasted lamp,
A fitful glimmer flung
Athwart a miniature above
The sculptured mantel hung,
Where gleams of melancholy light,
With conscious shadows wrought
Upon the lineaments portrayed

210

A malady of thought—
A dim-remembered agony,
Interpreting the tone—
“It was a deed of darkness,
And in the darkness done!”

At twilight grim, in nature's dumb despair,
As swoops the prowling darkness of the day,
Throbs, in a sudden torment of dismay,
“Beware!”

Aghast, I listened, motionless,
When lo! a chilling sound—
The vague pulsation of a heart
Beneath a mortal wound—
And from the picture quivering,
As smitten wan with pain
Dark, stormy drops fell suddenly
As a reluctant rain:
And still the moaning monody
Rhymed on in undertone—
“It was a deed of darkness
And in the darkness done.”

At midnight, like an incantation drear,
The hollow tide in broken thunder-tone
Sobs, with the beating of my heart, a groan,
“Beware!”

The spectral eyes drooped languidly,
The hand convulsive clung,
The bell of midnight clashed the hour
With stern prophetic tongue;
Then, all was blank—oblivious
In icy calm I lay—
The morning whitened to behold
My raven tresses gray;
And beats forever on my brain
The throbbing monotone—
“It was a deed of darkness
And in the darkness done.”

211

Thus, as a strain bewildered, everywhere,
The trooping echoes of a formless fear,
Like startled phantoms, flock upon my ear,
“Beware!”

RUIN

It stands like Night,
The sepulchre of a departed light,
Whose glory gone,
Each hoary vestige chronicles
Of crumbling stone.

The portal now,
A broken arch majestic, as a brow
O'er Evening's eye,
Catches an azure glimpse beyond
Of fading sky.

On either hand,
Grim sentinels, the lofty turrets stand,
With many a scar
Of Time and tameless Elements
That wage his war.

The windows tall
Stare blindly from the ivy-shagged wall
Of massive power,
Stern as the eyeless Nazarite
In Gaza's tower.

O'er shattered frieze,
O'er buried plinth and capital, the breeze
That wanders by,
Woos the rank weed, low answering
Its plaintive sigh.

Time was, when one,
Mild as a maiden star to look upon,
Of pensive mood,
Here wrought a destiny obscure
In solitude.

212

Vague phantoms wove,
About her being, sympathies that move
To subtle thought—
Seraphic reveries that lure
The soul distraught,

Unto her mind
The melting moonlight and the moving wind,
The molten gleam
Of starry beacons jewelling
The limpid stream;

The sheen and shade
Of waking dawn and drowsy twilight made—
Each multiform
Design of earth and ocean,
Calm and storm—

Spake mysteries,
Revealing all the harmony that lies
In things we see:
Of life and death, the tides of joy
And misery.

So grew her soul,
Enamored of the spirits that control
The universe,
That powers beyond the visible
Communed with hers,

And each became
The warder of a consecrated flame;
As angels high
O'ershadowing the crystal shrine
Of Chastity.

But light, alas!
As to the stainless dewdrops in the grass,
A fatal gleam
Smote of its own satiety
The splendid dream;

213

And swift as fire,
Doom-driven to the wanton wind's desire
A hurricane
Of howling desolation leaped
The cloistered brain,

Wild as the woe
That rends the womb of Nature in the throes
Of mountain-birth,
Shuddered the dome celestial
And startled Earth,

With Echoes torn
From raping wrath and agonies of scorn—
A demon cry—
Lost in this dark contending cloud
Of Destiny.

The curse was past;
A sullen vapor silently o'ercast
The naked Night,
Till Ruin, hideous with Morn,
Appalled the sight.

THE GHOST CHAMBER

Into the lonely room,
Spawning an icy gloom,
Lost in a wandering swoon
Gloats the wide-horned moon.

Silent the shadows gray
Shrink from her touch away,
Loathing her leprous light
Spotting the robe of Night,
Moulting a hoary gloom
Over a haunted room.

Cometh no whisper there:
Spasms of dank despair
Curdle the echoes round,

214

Stifling the birth of sound
In the grim charnel-womb
Of the deserted room.

Stark are the staring walls,
Like unto lidless balls—
Domes of departed sleep—
Doomed evermore to keep
Watch o'er the prisoned gloom
Of the forsaken room.

THE BRIDE ELECT

When God created man,
Of destiny so dim,
And deigned His work to scan,
Behold, He pitied him;
Nay, more, for love of him began
A greater mystery to plan.

Within the sleeper's brain,
His waking hours to bless,
Was born—alas! in vain—
A dream of loveliness
That ne'er Omniscence had known
In light of shadeless heaven alone.

This vision of the night
The Image-Maker caught
And for his soul's delight,
A revelation wrought
Out of the dreamer's open side—
Flesh of his flesh—a virgin bride.

CHOPIN

Soul, that in music, as a flower in light,
Didst gem, and bloom, and vanish, with a breath
That mist-like o'er the sullen tide of death
Keeps fragrant still the memory of thy flight;

215

Dost thou, immortal, on the topmost height
Of harmony, forget the world beneath,
And all its chords tumultuous? Wandereth
No echo upwards through the sundering night?
Aye; notes of thine own making, now forlorn,
Like fledglings fluttered from the nest of love,
Tell of thy care; while with harmonious wing
They fan the depths of silence, listening
To hear anon thy mandate from above,
Hence to their home, thy bosom, to return.

DISTANCE

Fair sorceress, upon thy calm domain
We gaze in ceaseless wonder, compassed round
By slow-expanding visions interwound
With phantasies of pleasure, hope, and pain.
In thee life's wearied echoes find again
A silent fold: in thee each herald sound,
As in an Ocean's slumberous depth profound,
Awaits the future and her shadowy train.
All hearts the mild enchantment of thy sway
Subdues to subtlest sympathies benign—
To thee the golden Present, day by day,
For some far-glittering idol we resign,
And, like to exiles, homeward journeying, say:
“Our sighs, our dreams, our longings, all are thine.”

THE INDIAN

Still westward with the lessening light ye go,
Dejected people, and the forests tall,
Bewidowed of their dusky children, fall
Behind you with an echoing wail of woe.
Year after year the warrior winds lay low
The leafy tribes, and with prophetic call
Denounce the silent massacre of all
Before the pale usurper's conquering bow.
Heed ye the signs? or look your longing eyes

216

Beyond the winter, where the selfsame voice,
Warm with the breath of unawakened flowers,
Comes softly singing to the world, “Rejoice!
The snow is gone: and with the April showers
Each buried seed is hastening to arise!”

PREMONITION

As when at Mary's voice Elizabeth
Felt in her womb the restlessness of feet
That would outrun delaying birth, and greet
Alike unseen, the Conqueror of Death:
So, at the hour of midnight, wakes a breath
That in the womb of darkness, moves to meet
The soul of Morning, and a silence sweet
As incense tells of one that worshipeth.
Yea; life forever in expectancy
Stands tip-toe on the utmost brink of time,
Hushing the past, and listening to hear
(As poets the inevitable rhyme)
A dream's fulfilment in the echoes clear
That sing the present in futurity.

THE SCORE

This is the chart that tells of one who went,
Like John, into the wilderness alone—
Into a land of Silence, all unknown
Till thither by the Muses he was sent.
And we upon his wanderings intent
Must mark his perilous footsteps, tone by tone,
Or else be lost in mazes overgrown
With Discord, in a place of banishment.
Alone he went; but from his solitude
Returning, lo, there followed him a train
Of Echoes in an innumerable brood—
By Fancy from their sylvan sleep beguiled,
But ne'er from wedded Harmonies atwain,
Henceforth to slumber in their native wild.

217

SWINBURNE

How far soe'er thou wanderest from His law,
The gift of God we reverence in thee,
Painting thy thought in gorgeous pageantry,
To thrill the soul with ecstacy and awe—
Now with voluptuous syllables to draw
Remorseful tears; now, like the wintry sea,
All tempest-tongued, in midnight majesty,
Dread as the void primeval darkness saw.
For, since Titanic Milton smote the sky,
And echoes in the depths responsive found
Of chaos and the howling gates of hell,
No messenger of song hath soared so high,
Nor strewn with ranker luxury the ground,
Than thou, that singest of the worst so well.

ADEST

“Heaven is not far,” the Violet saith,
“The fragrance of my censer-breath,
That lures to Love,
Upon the altar whence it came
Commingles with the sacred flame
That burns above.”

MY BIRTH-CHAMBER

When first I wakened from the night,
Within that lonely room,
Methought in exile lived the Light
That left me in the goom—
Its destiny henceforth to be
With memories apart from me.

218

“BREAK, BREAK, BREAK”

Break, silent Dawn, and flood with light
The fathomless abyss of night;
Break, thunderous Ocean, till the bound
Of utmost silence swim with sound;
Break, troubled heart! No more for thee
Shall light, or sound, or motion be.

A LEPER'S GRAVE

Here, where untainted flesh
Hath dread
Corruption's bride to be,
Her life-long victim finds
A bed
From her embraces free.

LEGEND

The Brook goes babbling to the Sea
In language of the Land,
Of hill, and dale, and leafy tree,
Of song-bird, fragrant flower, and bee,
Beyond the sloping strand.
Alas! 'Tis all a mystery!
She doth not understand.

LIGHTS IN DARKNESS

The Moon, like Mary, bore to be
The partner of His agony.
The Sun, in pity for the race,
Like God, the Father, hid his face,
That, haled as witness, he might say,
“I saw not, for I turned away.”

219

THE QUEST

O Time, where hast thou laid
My Self of yesterday?
Where at his tomb I prayed
I come again to pray—
'Tis empty! Who hath hither strayed
And taken him away?

THE RIDDLE

Out of the Eater, meat:
Thou dost the streams devour.
Out of the strong, the sweet;
The brine begets the shower.
'Tis thus, O Samson Sea,
I solve thy mystery.

SONG

Nay, thou hast not my heart
Or I such cruel smart
No more could feel;
Nor, with my heart couldst thou
Still heartless prove as now
Its wound to heal.

SURVIVAL

“Each plays his part and goes his way,”
Our hearts at seeming distance say;
But twixt the blossom and the fruit—
The topmost twig and lowest root,
Till seed again to seed shall fall—
There lies no languid interval;
And soul is life-allied to soul
As parts unto the perfect whole.

220

VALE

God speed thee, setting sun!
Thy beams for me have spun
Of light today
A memory that one
Alone could bring, and none
Can take away.

WHENCE AND WHERE?

Do the blossoms come and go
As the waters ebb and flow?
Or, as stars, the livelong year,
Are they ever blooming here
In a garden of delight,
Clear or clouded to the sight
As the Seasons o'er the land
Lift or lower a wizard wand?

THE WHISTLER

'Tis spring; but laid
In ambuscade
The Snow malignant lingers,
And on the hill
The March wind still
At times must blow his fingers.

THE DOVE

The lone horizon listening seems to thee
As to a soul beloved—
Life's center, by the zone of destiny
Forever far removed.

221

THE DEATHLESS WIND

Thou canst not die; for who can slay
A spirit like to thee?
Yet do we envy not thy stay
When all things else that be
Thy boon companions pass away,
And perish utterly.

And is it, restless Wanderer,
The secret of the sigh
That in thy gentlest moods we hear
Or of the wailing cry
When tempests fill thee with fear—
To know thou canst not die?

IN EXCELSIS

To highest heaven the Lark alone
Of earthly messengers is known;
To Silence all things else above,
He chants the litany of Love.

OLD AND NEW

Ever old and ever new,
Else it never could be true.
Failing leaf and falling snow,
Budding germ and blossom glow,
Tell us of a dream come true—
Ever old and ever new.

“SWEET TO THE SWEET”

What say the flowers above Ophelia's tomb?
“We bloom to fade; she faded but to bloom.”

222

THE BIOLOGIST

I seek the poles of Being; but the breath of icy death
That bans the sailor from the utmost sea
Still baffles me.

What if the flash of naked knowledge blind
The dazzled mind?
What if beyond it depths unfathomed be
Of mystery—

Of limitless intelligence, that man,
Alert to scan,
Must headlong to annihilation fall,
Or grasp the All?

What then? Of what alone I'd compassed none
But mine—the One,
Omniscent, Omnipotent—could be
The Sovereignty.

A PRESENCE

As on the lids of slumber lies a dream,
Or fragrance on the petals of a flower,
Or on the bosom of the deep, a beam
At twilight's nuptial hour,
So with me, in the soul of Silence, thou Abidest now.

A SONG OF EXPECTANCY

Time will tell us: only wait;
He alone the secret knows,
He alone the Delphic gate
Shuts, or open throws.

Time will tell us: kind is he;
Sorrow wins not by delay,
But the wine of joy to be
Ripens day by day.

223

LOSS AND GAIN

“Behold Thy Mother! 'Tis the loss
Of heaven, the load of shame,
The sweat of agony, the cross,
That ratifies thy claim.”

He heard; and for the tender name,
A Babe to Bethlehem He came.

MOUNTAINEERS

They climb with eager feet,
One east, one west,
As if in haste to meet
Upon the crest;
Yet each alone—
A fate unknown—
Nor deeming one, if either fails, how far
Or near they are.

SNOWDROP

The white lips just above the ground
Where sleeps my latest-born, I found;
And, kneeling for the sleeper's sake,
I kissed the blossom just awake.

224

“PEACE!”

A little warbler dead—
A muted melody
Of dimpled-notes that spread
Like circles on the sea:

One whispered word to chill
The panting bosom warm,
And suddenly to still
The passion of the storm.

ROOFLESS

O Winter-Wind, behold,
You call no more in vain,
As in the nights of old,
When door and window-pane
Were barred against you and the cold
That followed in your train.

Come in; for I have known
You now this many a year;
And dying thus alone,
'Tis sweet again to hear
A voice familiar as my own,
The latest in my ear.

THE OMEN

He crept behind me, and his gentle hand
Laid on my lids, lest I too soon should see
The face in all the world most dear to me.
The meaning then I did not understand.

But now that he is vanished, I have guessed
The import of the far foreshadowed sign:
For closer than was his the hand Divine
Is tenderly upon mine eyelids pressed.

225

NIAGARA

On Regan and on Goneril—
The rugged rocks below—
He pours as from the mouth of hell
The torrent of his woe;
While o'er him, with protecting hands,
Cordelia—the rainbow—stands.

RUTS

I count the wrinkles in the road,
As men are wont to trace
The ravages of Time and Thought
Upon a human face.

Such are the vestiges of feet
That day by day appear,
And such of sightless memories
Whose track alone is here.

TRANSPLANTED

No seed of Joy within us lies.
So, if our souls the blossom bear,
It is a flower of Paradise
That Love has planted there.

And in its vanished light we trace
A halo of the sunset skies;
A fragrance in the holy place
Survives the sacrifice.

SHAKESPEARE'S KEY

“Unlocked his heart?” Not he!
Of thine the cunning key
He keeps, to open still
And enter at his will.

226

BETWEEN

Beneath the dome of Yesterday,
My buried Self I see—
Of Time a portion passed away,
And nevermore to be.

Beneath lo, morrow's dome, a breath
Of unawakened Morn,
I wait nativity—of Death
Or Life a babe unborn.

EYES

Sweet spirits born together
To dwell in orbs apart,
And feel the changeful weather
That clouds or clears the Heart;

Ye see not one the other,
But in the smile or tear
That makes of both a mother
Each knows a sister near.

MY SONG

I go; but thou, my Song,
Shall live as long
As Tongue and fervid Heart
Life's passion-power impart.

Henceforth, of Love and thee
Eternal Harmony
Makes one; nor Time nor Death
The soul-chord sundereth.

MY TRUANT

I bade him sleep, and he obeyed;
But when I called him back to pain
Within the slumber-world he stayed
And would not wake again.

227

LOVE'S USURY

I love you; and because you do not love,
I am the poorer and the richer, too;
The poorer, for you've taken all whereof
I gave; the richer, for enriching you.

“WRIT IN WATER”

E'en so; and where the fountain flows along,
Unsatisfied, the burning lips of Love
(Each passion growing with the taste thereof)
Drink, as of wine, the torrent of thy song.

SEPARATION

“Till Death do us part,
Ever one to remain,”
To the new-plighted heart
Was a whisper of pain:

For the soul cannot die;
And the life that is fled
Waits, bewidowed as I,
Until Death us do wed.

TO SLEEP

O tender Mother, blind and dumb,
Who dost to all thy children come
When others flee—
Like Mary at the cross to stay
E'en when our Father turns away,
Come now to me!

WILTED

Little blossom, thou and I
Both were born alike to die.
Less of time allowed to thee;
Haply, more Eternity.

228

VAPORS

In silence from the earth we rise
To learn the language of the skies;
Then, brimmed with music, melt again,
In soft soliloquies of rain,
To wake the seed-land slumbering deep,
And soothe the laborer to sleep.

ASPIRATION

Make me, O Cloud, thy comrade! Let me be
As thou, the silent Sister of the Wind;
The nursling of the Sun and of the Sea;
A shade of Earth in light celestial shrined.

IN BANISHMENT

Though from the waking world withdrawn,
Night's boundary to keep,
Thou floodest with a softer dawn
The hemisphere of Sleep.

BEETHOVEN (DEAF)

So, he who Samson-like of sound
Hath wrought our captive chains
In everlasting silence bound
A prisoner remains.

CONTACT

The universe is but the lordly hem
Of God's out-flowing garment; and to them
That touch in faith, its mysteries reveal
A sacrament each mortal wound to heal.

229

THE FIRST DREAMER

He woke to clasp the vision of his dream.
A self from self divided, that apart—
Twin banks begotten of the selfsame stream—
Each might in God behold the other's heart.

ENSHRINED

Each soul a sunbeam in a shroud
Of folding mist appears;
Now touched with rainbows, like a cloud,
And now dissolved in tears.

EXPECTANCY

An eagle on the summit—Hope and Fear,
Alternate pinions, moving restlessly.
O Distance, doth the better part appear
Doubt, or fulfilment of the thing to be?

LEAR'S FOOL

“I'll go to bed at noon.”
Ah, Fool, 'twas wisely said;
For Sorrow ne'er too soon
The requiem-call to bed.

FULFILMENT

Since that the unfulfilled desire of Shame
Meets the full-measured blame,
So must the prayer that missed the deed of Love
Find recompense above.

PRESENTIMENT

In boreal calm thy spirit feels
A far-off thunder roll;
And through each tropic passion steals
A current from the pole.

230

“THROUGH THE SHARP HAWTHORNE BLOWS THE COLD WIND”

O Wind, like raging Lear forlorn,
Against the sharp opposing thorne
Thou barest thy bosom, as in scorn
Of hearts with lesser anguish torn.

SCIENCE

Like Martha, she, with question manifold,
Pursues her daily round;
Nor sees that Faith her sister, as of old,
The better part has found.

SLEEP

A house of hands not builded like the sky,
O'erbending, but unsullied by the sod—
Where Guilt alike oblivious may lie
With Innocence, beside the lamb of God.

APRIL

“How is it you are laughing, dear,
With both your eyes a-twinkle?
Alas, 'tis all too soon, I fear
To let my little buds appear.
But now each restless prisoner
Attempts my foot to tickle,
And once to laugh if I begin,
They know I cannot keep them in.”

“CROSSING THE BAR”

No need, O weary traveller,
To seek the ocean far;
For here, whene'er the coast is clear,
The schooners cross the bar.

231

ABDUL'S CHANCES

With 'leven, it were not surprising
Should Abdul get another rising,
Or with the bakers over there
Or brewers, he should get a bier.

IN THE CONFESSIONAL

“Well, Pat, have you no more to say?”
“That's all, yer Riverence, today;
But with the help of Hiven, be sure
Anither toime I'll tell ye more.”

EUREKA

I love, as when a boy,
That note exultant of domestic joy,
When, triumph won,
The Hen, like Archimedes, proclaims,
“I've found it! If ye doubt me,
Dons and Dames,
Come see what I have done.”

AN INCONGRUITY

As they have safely reached the Church,
It seems a thing to smile at
That, to direct them in the search,
We had a Pounch-as Pilot.

INCOME FROM GO-OUT

A fellow with a gouty foot
Was on a restless donkey put,
At which he swore in vain;
But soon he hired the donkey out,
And what he got relieved the gout,
For it ass-waged his pain.

232

THE TIDES AT PANAMA

“An effort gigantic,”
Exclaims the Atlantic,
“Is making, to wed us by force.”
“Indeed, 'tis terrific,”
Replies the Pacific,
“But cannot we get a divorce?
For Teddy
Is ready
To sanction an ocean
Whose aim
Is a claim
To prevent Trust-promotion.”

MY TROUBLE

Alas! what shall I do?
I have lost my nearest friend;
He tender was and true,
And faithful to the end.

In sunshine and in shade
He closer stuck to me
Than handle to a blade,
Or wax unto a bee.

But he'll not come again,
Nor know what I'm about,
For when he gave me pain,
The doctor cut him out.

And sad it is to me
That I can never tell
If my appendix be
In heaven or in hell.

A FINE PENALTY

He offered but a poor defence,
That advocate of mine;
And yet, despite the evidence,
The penalty was fine.

233

The greater mystery it is
The more we think upon it,
That 'tis the oldest style of Miss
That wants the youngest bonnet.

Nor is it levity of mind
That leads to such selection,
For 'tis the fruit we often find,
Of much mature reflection.

MAID OF ALGERIA

There was an old maid of Algeria
Whose lungs were but cells of bacteria;
So she cut them both out,
Exclaiming, no doubt,
“It will be said that I died of Hysteria.”

234

THE FRISKING LAMB

Tho' gay its life, in fact and fable,
In death its fate is lamb-on-table.

A BRIEF PEDIGREE

My mother was a Mare;
My father was, alas,
(It pains me to declare),
A veritable Ass.
With rare exceptions, as a rule,
There're no descendants from a Mule—
The simple reason why, no doubt,
Some other families die out.

A PIECE OF PRESUMPTION

Asked a possum of a canner
In his most seductive manner,
“Can you take me in, old man?”
He replied, “Possum, I can.”

SEA-SICKNESS

Her doctor advising, a victim of grippe
Set out on a journey to Rome;
But ere she reached Naples, she threw up her trip
And returned by the next steamer home.

D---D

D. D. O. sioux, appeal to you?
And D. D. favor win?
In D. D. D. appeal; and we
Politely took him in.

235

SONG OF THE SIOUX

O'Gorman comes! Your knives unsheathe,
To slice so sweet an appetiser!
Kindle the fire! and whet your teeth!
And be each a man a Gormandiser!

“Dr. O'Gorman, of the Catholic University, has just been appointed Bishop of Sioux Falls; hence this letter.”

DEFIANCE

Tho' the modern woman pants
To disguise her gender,
Yet no fear my spirits haunts
Lest I should offend her.

Vain it were indeed to hiss—
Vainer still to chide her;
The hit offends her, and the Miss
Makes the breeeches wider.

JOB-PRINTING

“Job-Printing!” I suspected so,
For none was ever half so slow
But Job, who by the gift he had
Of patience drove the devil mad.