University of Virginia Library

previous section The poems of Trumbull Stickney
next section
161

III
LATER LYRICS

165

[I
Listen! As though from other times and days]

Listen! As though from other times and days,
Continuous and one and hard to know,
An hymn of human angels very low
Drifts o'er the ground and by the seashore stays
Ebbed in the lonely ripple. Hush, it strays
More near the time and being that are now,
And, as together with them soon to go,
Sings itself further on and on always.
And it will come to pass we also then,
In some more crimson twilight of our lives,
Suddenly in the choir nor knowing why,
Will have a voice within us: all we men
Between the time that gives and that deprives
Take up the theme and pass it, as we die.
166

[II
I saw how that a painter, given o'er]

I saw how that a painter, given o'er
To love's persuasion, heeded less and less
The voice that crying in the wilderness
Had made him strong and lonely and obscure;
Then as he wandered in the world once more,
Upon his canvas coloured a distress
Of dreams and fancy dirtied in the press,
And gray descended where was light before.
Wherefore my soul in suffering addressed
Her question, asking if these lovers e'er
Had laid the burden of themselves to rest.
I know that either, smothering despair,
Had turned away and shed a dreadful tear,—
And notwithstanding sought each other's breast.
167

[III
With long black wings an angel standing by]

With long black wings an angel standing by
Opened his arms, as had he a lover been.
His lips were very cold and lingered thin
Along my lips half-broken with a cry.
From all his body I most dreadfully
Did draw the cruel cold and slowly win
Heart-ache on heart-ache; yet I gathered in
The great black wings that stiffened as to fly.
In that embrace it seemed that years of pain
Passed very slow, and yet my body tight
I held to his till darkness took my brain.
Somehow I woke, and up the dying night
I saw him spread great glittering wings of white.
I knew your brow was cooled, you well again.
168

[IV
You are to me the full vermilion rose]

You are to me the full vermilion rose
That Love with trembling arms uplifted crowned,
Yet moist from April's irised diamond,
Queen of the summer over all that grows.
And while the rings of petal still disclose,
My spirit likewise tenderly unbound
Falls out in webs of shadow, and around
The mercy of your beauty finds repose.
And often when the airs of midnight fail,
I dream I lift you skyward all for me
Into the moonlight of futurity,
A darkling star, a quiet nightingale
That wakens in my arms beyond the pale
Of what I was or am or thought to be.
169

[V
The trees and shrubbery glimmer]

The trees and shrubbery glimmer.
Lilacs are over.
A little more sun, and summer
Will glow in the clover.
Darling, why tarry so? Come to your lover!
I have played alone in the Spring,
Laughed at the flowers
And the birds that nibbling their wing
Perched on the old gray towers.
But, darling, the leaves cannot stay on the bowers.
I've tripped it away with your shadow
Over the grasses,
And stayed where a breath of meadow
Happily passes
Into the city and under the chestnut masses.
170

[VI
A glad little rift, so shy]

A glad little rift, so shy
Back of the boughs' black net,
Shows in the hurrying sky
Blue as a violet,
There!—but it 's all blown by.
O what a wind to-day
Playing at hide and seek
After the pale sun-ray
That slips from the cloud,—and quick
It 's raining over the way.
But I know the winter is done,
No one but me! I know.
Listen, Lovely, my own,
Where under the melted snow
Softly we lie alone.
Open the darling eyes,
Breathe of the early air!
My heart, if the weather surprise,
Will shelter thy bud from care.
Trust me, darling, arise.
171

[VII
I love thee longer and I love thee most]

I love thee longer and I love thee most—
Altho' I love thee always to the end—
To-day among the blossoms lightly tossed
That with the sunshine blend,
Below the bright new leaves and wandering
Within the warm and lilac-laden breeze,
I love thee most this only day of spring
Under the open trees.
This thick curled hyacinth is all for thee.
The tulips yonder wave to get a smile.
Make them as happy, love! Ah happy me!
Love them a little while.
I am so happy, happy, being thine!
There draws throughout my breast from backward far
A lonely highroad up to the sky line,
To thee, my sunset-star.
And tip-toe on the height my soul looked up
With asking eyes, and softly flew away.
I love thee in the ways of Paradise,
I love thee most to-day.
The sun is westering in thy dark red hair;
Let me throw down my armful here of bloom,
And leaned on this acacia let us share
The daylight going home.
172

And suffer once that from thy lips I drink
The livelong happiness of our to-day,
Till at thy feet in songs and prayer I sink
That thou shouldst call me thine.
173

[VIII
Dear and rich as a dawn of summer]

Dear and rich as a dawn of summer
Over the sea and the irised foam,
Out of the past a bright newcomer
Into my arms thou wingest home.
Here on the shore with wild lips parted
I lift my hands in quivering prayer.
Sunlight is thou, and thou sunhearted
Draw'st bright-eyed thro' the golden air.
All the days that have tarried sterile
Burst into flower and lift their crown.
Walk, my sweet, from the past and peril
Into my heart and lay thee down.
For nothing of life or the days I wander,
Myself, hereafter, before or now,
Or the hour I save or the year I squander
Is anything any more but thou.
I've pressed thee a perfume of all my spirit
And jewelled the twilight of my soul:
O my darling, anoint thee! wear it!
The days blow by and the seasons roll.
Come! 'bove us here in the russet heather
Hold thou away to the westering sun
This bunch of grapes, till they grow together
And glow and globe like a harvest moon!
174

Then we'll ravish them for a greeting,
And look so near in each other's eyes
I'll feel thy blood thro' my bosom beating
And sigh for my all of life thy sighs.
Nay, and here are my lips that kiss thee,
Here my cheek on thy bosom rests;
And filled with light, in my eyes grown misty,
The lilies in evening of thy breasts;
Here is the cup of my life's full measure:
Put thy lips to it, Heaven of mine!
Thine so long as it be thy pleasure,—
Were 't so no longer, yet always thine.
175

[IX
And, the last day being come, Man stood alone]

And, the last day being come, Man stood alone
Ere sunrise on the world's dismantled verge,
Awaiting how from everywhere should urge
The Coming of the Lord. And, behold, none
Did come,—but indistinct from every realm
Of earth and air and water, growing more
And louder, shriller, heavier, a roar
Up the dun atmosphere did overwhelm
His ears; and as he looked affrighted round
Every manner of beast innumerable
All thro' the shadows crying grew, until
The wailing was like grass upon the ground.
Asudden then within his human side
Their anguish, since the goad he wielded first,
And, since he gave them not to drink, their thirst,
Darted compressed and vital.—As he died,
Low in the East now lighting gorgeously
He saw the last sea-serpent iris-mailed
Which, with a spear transfixèd, yet availed
To pluck the sun down into the dead sea.
176

X
DEDICATION

Soft be your journey as a bird's
Who, feeling winter whet the air,
Gyres and from the zenith there
Slants infinitely down southwards
On outspread wings
And sings.
Within my bosom blew this rose
That on the moonlit autumn wind
I toss to you—and may you find
Upon your pillow of repose
The flower of
My love.
177

XI
A FLOWER

As kneeling at a water's edge
Into my heart when I look down,
Thy face uprising from the sedge
Lies on the surface water-blown;
And while the current pushes rings
About thy cheek, thy chin and brow,
I muse and ponder many things:
For who am I? am I not thou?
'T is therefore all these idle hours
I spend alone and none knows why:
I see thee in the water-flowers
Upon the current doubtfully.
178

XII
A STONE

With burning hands and eyes all dull
I bring to you this drop of fire,
This topaz where the summerful
Of August afternoons expire.
The stone you gave me long ago:
A meteor from your life, it sought
My lonely bosom and below
Lay glowing in the gloom of thought.
From thence I took it pure and whole
To comfort me to-day, and found
That from the waters of my soul
These bands of gold have drawn around,
This little setting's nervous art,
Slow-formed but mighty, made to hold
The sunshine visiting the dark—
You, darling, that my arms enfold.
179

XIII
PARDON

I dreamed that I was blind and you were mine;
And for that I had spoiled your better part,
Did iron shame and frenzy pace my heart
Like wolves. Yet sweeter ne'er the sun did shine,
The swaying flowers, the colours vespertine
And the strange quietude of human art.
In my dead eyes I felt the water start
And falling down I prayed: “If I am thine,
That here within thy shadow I am well
And live so in the nearness of thy soul,
Forgive me that I linger in thy sight!
Forgive that up the cliffs of heaven I stole
And at the brink seized thee and with thee fell
Backward and down the oceans of the night.”
180

XIV
SERVICE

Chide me not, darling, that I sing
Familiar thoughts and metres old:
Nay, do not scold
My spirit's childish uttering.
I know not why 't is that or this
I murmur to you thus or so:
Only I know
It throbs across my silences,
It blows over my heart,—a long
Infinite wind, again, again!
Again! and then
My life kneels down into a song.
181

XV
CHESTNUTS IN NOVEMBER

I

Not all the trees are done, the branches mean,
The trunks begrimed and sodden, no, not all.
How fresh and, tho' a few, how prodigal
On yonder chestnut here and there are seen
White wisps, and, frilled about them, bits of green!
They colour on the deadness of the Fall,
They spring and with the 'lated swallows call
Happy next year into the year that 's been.
O call not Nature spendthrift, and of these
Say not they bloom in error for the frost!
The sweetness of all things are promises
That sing our souls a little further on
Toward that which may be found in what is lost,
Which may come back again of what is gone.
182

II

I also, where I stand within thy soul
A plant of thine and growing in thy year,
Must, if the season turneth to the sere,
If so it please thee, lose my aureole.
Yet tho' my leaves to the last one should roll
Away down on the wind and disappear,
And I should nothing question but the drear
Great darkness should impenetrate me whole,
The midnight in my eyes would ne'ertheless
Not firmly hang, but sway, and breaking shine
With thoughts of gold and stars of happiness,
That at the end thou mightest repossess,
Mightest possess again and further bless
My sad and human acres, that are thine.
183

XVI
FIDELITY

Not lost or won but above all endeavour
Thy life like heaven circles around mine;
Thy eyes it seems upon my eyes did shine
Since forever.
For aught he summon up his earliest hour
No man remembers the surprise of day,
For where he saw with virgin wonder play
The first flower.
And o'er the imagination's last horizon
No brain has leaning descried nothing more:
Still there are stars and in the night before
More have arisen.
Not won or lost is unto thee my being;
Our eyes were always so together met.
If mine should close, if ever thine forget,
Time is dying.
184

[XVII
With thy two eyes look on me once again]

With thy two eyes look on me once again.
Since certain days, I know not how it is,
I feel the swell of tidal darknesses
Climb in my soul and overwhelm my brain.
To-day is Spring, I know that it is Spring.
The new-mown hay about the lilac bush
Sweetens the morning wind, and there a flush
Of roses leads the garden's offering.
From leafy heights of chestnut hang and play
Long webs of sun and shadow, and the bloom
Is leaning up its head above the gloom—
White in the happy blue and yellow May.
And all the air sparkles with minstrelsy—
Fresh, early love-songs twittered wing to wing
Over the dew. O loved one, it is Spring!
With thy two eyes look on me ere I die.
It must be thus, I knew it thus would be;
And it embalms my soul now to behold
The eternal year disclose its heart of gold
And whirl in petalled clouds about the sky.
I do beseech thee here, as falling down
Before thy feet I render thee my love,
Look on me now, look on me from above
As tho' in heavenly truth thou wert my own.
185

[XVIII
When bye and bye relenting you regret]

When bye and bye relenting you regret
All of these possible and vanished hours,
And, rolling up, the certain tempest scours
Your sky where not another star will set;
When all before your eyes, no longer wet,
By life's memorial paths and fading bowers
Shrivels the remnant of a thousand flowers,
Do not forget, I say, do not forget
The long and lonely hours I burned away,
The lonely days; in pity do recall
What miles of solitude I suffered o'er.
It need not so have been, but you did say
It should be so, and I replied, It shall,
And lo, it is, it is for evermore
186

XIX
LONELINESS

These autumn gardens, russet, gray and brown,
The sward with shrivelled foliage strown,
The shrubs and trees
By weary wings of sunshine overflown
And timid silences,—
Since first you, darling, called my spirit yours,
Seem happy, and the gladness pours
From day to day,
And yester-year across this year endures
Unto next year away.
Now in these places where I used to rove
And give the dropping leaves my love
And weep to them,
They seem to fall divinely from above,
Like to a diadem
Closing in one with the disheartened flowers.
High up the migrant birds in showers
Shine in the sky,
And all the movement of the natural hours
Turns into melody.
187

[XX
As pilgrims, when the ways of winter ope]

As pilgrims, when the ways of winter ope,
Would fain behold the places where they prayed
Alive with violets and new with shade,
And, where they knelt, a golden buttercup:
So strains within my soul a wandering hope
To see how brightly now are rearrayed
The stations where I saw her, and, afraid,
My kneeling life was lost and carried up—
A thing that in the praise of vanishing
Did like an incense for a moment's space,
Burning itself away from what it was,
Outsoar the elevation and outsing
The choirs of glory, while with fragrant wing
It veiling passed before Madonna's face.
188

[XXI
Quiet after the rain of morning]

Quiet after the rain of morning
Midday covers the dampened trees;
Sweet and fresh in the languid breeze
Still returning
Birds are twittering at ease.
And to me in the far and foreign
Land as further I go and come,
Sweetly over the wearisome
Endless barren
Flutter whisperings of home.
There between the two hillocks lightens
Straight and little a bluish bar:
I feel the strain of the mariner
Grows and tightens
After home and after her.
189

[XXII
If tho' alone I scarce do sigh]

If tho' alone I scarce do sigh
Because thy spirit stayeth by,
Think what it were if thou wert near,
If thou wert here.
Within the sweet-aired mountain town
So far, so strange, so all our own,—
Why makest thou so long delay
So far away?
The waters tumbling make a sound
Of all our joys that fall to ground;
The stars shine to the uttermost
Of what we lost.
If some one only happy be
For this our narrowed destiny!
If some one draw a gladder breath
Out of our death.
190

[XXIII
Grudge not that I so long for thee]

Grudge not that I so long for thee,
These foreign hours within the land
Where every day brings song for thee
And 'fore my sight
In every light
Thou dost stand.
I ask thee not to follow me
And leave the treasure of thy soul,
Nor e'er again to hallow me
With the surprise
Of thy sweet eyes
Opened whole.
My dream shall not lie heavy on
The tender region of thy hope,—
The sunrise of oblivion
Across the sky's
Nocturnities
Flutters up!
But when across the greenery
Of forest tree and meadow grass
And o'er the summer scenery
Sunlit and kind
The twilight wind
Comes to pass,
191

The tears arise so fortunate,
The heart's delight so fair and free—
Alas that I'm importunate,
If yet I grieve
Not then to give
Half to thee.
192

[XXIV
Spirits that might have been]

Spirits that might have been,
Ye birds and butterflies
Under the showers!
Why will ye ever lean
Your weft of music and of irises
On my plain flowers?
Come here, I pray, no more,
Or for a little while
Let me alone.
More honey 's at the core
Of the blue thyme and little camomile
There further on.
The sky is still and blue,
But changing in your flight
Flushes and sings.
Then do I crimson too
And humming gladly, suffer all the night
Your absent wings.
193

XXV
SEPARATION

Good-night, my sweetheart. Spring has come again
And the May moonlight strokes the rainy trees.
The sky is fresh and happy; fireflies
Rise in its azure edge and wane.
Alone I go and lay me down alone,
Yet on my lips the sweetness of thy breast,—
Yet on thy bosom lay my cheek to rest
And fold my soul forever in thy own.
194

XXVI
AT SAINTE-MARGUERITE

The gray tide flows and flounders in the rocks
Along the crannies up the swollen sand.
Far out the reefs lie naked—dunes and blocks
Low in the watery wind. A shaft of land
Going to sea thins out the western strand.
It rains, and all along and always gulls
Career sea-screaming in and weather-glossed.
It blows here, pushing round the cliff; in lulls
Within the humid stone a motion lost
Ekes out the flurried heart-beat of the coast.
It blows and rains a pale and whirling mist
This summer morning. I that hither came—
Was it to pluck this savage from the schist,
This crazy yellowish bloom without a name,
With leathern blade and tortured wiry frame?
Why here alone, away, the forehead pricked
With dripping salt and fingers damp with brine,
Before the offal and the derelict
And where the hungry sea-wolves howl and whine
Live human hours? now that the columbine
195

Stands somewhere shaded near the fields that fall
Great starry sheaves of the delighted year,
And globing rosy on the garden wall
The peach and apricot and soon the pear
Drip in the teasing hand their sugared tear.
Inland a little way the summer lies.
Inland a little and but yesterday
I saw the weary teams, I heard the cries
Of sicklemen across the fallen hay,
And buried in the sunburned stacks I lay
Tasting the straws and tossing, laughing soft
Into the sky's great eyes of gold and blue
And nodding to the breezy leaves aloft
Over the harvest's mellow residue.
But sudden then—then strangely dark it grew.
How good it is, before the dreary flow
Of cloud and water, here to lie alone
And in this desolation to let go
Down the ravine one with another, down
Across the surf to linger or to drown
The loves that none can give and none receive,
The fearful asking and the small retort,
The life to dream of and the dream to live!
Very much more is nothing than a part,
Nothing at all and darkness in the heart.
196

I would my manhood now were like the sea.—
Thou at high-tide, when compassing the land
Thou find'st the issue short, questioningly
A moment poised, thy floods then down the strand
Sink without rancour, sink without command,
Sink of themselves in peace without despair,
And turn as still the calm horizon turns,
Till they repose little by little nowhere
And the long light unfathomable burns
Clear from the zenith stars to the sea-ferns.
Thou art thy Priest, thy Victim and thy God.
Thy life is bulwarked with a thread of foam,
And of the sky, the mountains and the sod
Thou askest nothing, evermore at home
In thy own self's perennial masterdom.
[1902?]
197

[XXVII
I dreamed. Aye, it was very dark]

I dreamed. Aye, it was very dark
And yet the cliffs were red.
I sat me down hard by a watershed
And watched as in the current sped
Spark after spark
Down the dark.
The pine-trees with their branches hummed
A warm, mid-summer air.
That night none of the nightingales were there.
A cricket, in the grasses rare,
Close by, benumbed,
Sometimes thrummed.
I leaned over the water's flight,
And where the foam threads whirred,
Out of the cataract I freshly heard
The voice of an alighting bird;
“Come down the night
To the light.”
[1903]
198

[XXVIII
Leave him now quiet by the way]

Leave him now quiet by the way
To rest apart.
I know what draws him to the dust alway
And churns him in the builder's lime:
He has the fright of time.
I heard it knocking in his breast
A minute since;
His human eyes did wince,
He stubborned like the massive slaughter beast
And as a thing o'erwhelmed with sound
Stood bolted to the ground.
Leave him, for rest alone can cure—
If cure there be—
This waif upon the sea.
He is of those who slanted the great door
And listened—wretched little lad—
To what they said.
[1903]
199

XXIX
AN ATHENIAN GARDEN

The burned and dusty garden said:
“My leaves are echoes, and thy earth
Is packed with footsteps of the dead.
“The strength of spring-time brought to birth
Some needles on the crooked fir,—
A rose, a laurel—little worth.
“Come here, ye dreaming souls that err
Among the immortals of the grave:
My summer is your sepulchre.
“On earth what darker voices rave
Than now this sea-breeze, driving dust
And whirling radiance wave on wave,
“With lulls so fearful thro' the gust
That on the shapeless flower-bed
Like timber splits the yellow crust.
“O thirsty, thirsty are the dead,
Still thirsty, ever unallayed.
Where is no water, bring no bread.”
200

I then had almost answer made,
When round the path in pleasure drew
Three golden children to the shade.
They stirred the dust with pail and hoe.
Then did the littlest from his fears
Come up and with his eyes of blue
Give me some berries seriously.
And as he turned to his brother, I
Looked after him thro' happy tears.
[1903]
201

XXX
SONNETS FROM GREECE

[1903]

SUNIUM

These are the strings of the Ægean lyre
Across the sky and sea in glory hung:
Columns of white thro' which the wind has flung
The clouds and stars, and drawn the rain and fire.
Their flutings now to fill the notes' desire
Are strained and dubious, yet in music young
They cast their full-blown answer far along
To where in sea the island hills expire.
How bravely from the quarry's earthen gloom
In snow they rose amid the blue to stand
Melodious and alone on Sunium!
They shall not wither back into the land.
The sun that harps them with his golden hand
Doth slowly with his hand of gold consume.
202

MT. LYKAION

Alone on Lykaion since man hath been
Stand on the height two columns, where at rest
Two eagles hewn of gold sit looking East
Forever; and the sun goes up between.
Far down around the mountain's oval green
An order keeps the falling stones abreast.
Below within the chaos last and least
A river like a curl of light is seen.
Beyond the river lies the even sea,
Beyond the sea another ghost of sky,—
O God, support the sickness of my eye
Lest the far space and long antiquity
Suck out my heart, and on this awful ground
The great wind kill my little shell with sound.
203

NEAR HELIKON

By such an all-embalming summer day
As sweetens now among the mountain pines
Down to the cornland yonder and the vines,
To where the sky and sea are mixed in gray,
How do all things together take their way
Harmonious to the harvest, bringing wines
And bread and light and whatsoe'er combines
In the large wreath to make it round and gay.
To me my troubled life doth now appear
Like scarce distinguishable summits hung
Around the blue horizon: places where
Not even a traveller purposeth to steer,—
Whereof a migrant bird in passing sung,
And the girl closed her window not to hear.
204

ELEUSIS

Here for a thousand years processional
Winding around the Eleusinian bay,
The world with drooping eyes has made her way
By stair and portal to the sombre Hall.
As then the litanies antiphonal
Obscurely through the pillars sang away,
It dawned, and in the shaft of sudden day
Demeter smiling gave her bread to all.
They drew as waves out of a twilight main,
Long genuflecting multitudes, to feed
With God upon the sacramental grain.
And lo, the temple veil was rent in twain;
But thro' the rift their choirs in silver train
Still passing out rehearsed the human creed.
205

MT. IDA

I

I long desired to see, I now have seen.
Yonder the heavenly everlasting bride
Draws the white shadows to her virgin side,
Ida, whom long ago God made his Queen.
The daylight weakens to a fearful sheen;
The mountains slumber seaward sanctified,
And cloudy shafts of bluish vapour hide
The places where a sky and world have been.
O Ida, snowy bride that God espoused
Unto that day that never wholly is,
Whiten thou the horizon of my eyes,
That when the momentary sea aroused
Flows up in earthquake, still thou mayest rise
Sacred above the quivering Cyclades.
206

II

Art thou still veiled, and ne'er before my sight
At sunset, as I yearn to see thee most,
Wilt thou appear in crimson robes and lost,
Aloft the crystal vapours of the night?
Is it the rule of all things infinite
To trail across remoteness and in clouds
The glory of their sacerdotal shrouds,
And shade with evening their eternal light?
O travellers abroad the mortal plain
On weary beasts of burden overta'en
By the unspeakable hours, I say: Press on.
For tho' a little part be hardly seen,
Hope spangles out the rest, and while ye strain
Another cloud already, look, is gone.
207

III

As now my ship at midday passes out
Into the lonely circles of the sea,
Thou o'er thy southern island loftily
Vague in the light appearest like a thought.
Over the blazing waves my vessel caught
Continues more into infinity:
And, as adoring I look after thee,
My eyes see white and in thy place is nought.
In the decline and speed of human things
When time drags on the dreamer by the hand
Like an unwilling child and reprobate,
It is enough if on the parting sings
The certain voice he could not understand—
It is enough, it is not yet too late.
208

XXXI
SIX O'CLOCK

Now burst above the city's cold twilight
The piercing whistles and the tower-clocks:
For day is done. Along the frozen docks
The workmen set their ragged shirts aright.
Thro' factory doors a stream of dingy light
Follows the scrimmage as it quickly flocks
To hut and home among the snow's gray blocks.—
I love you, human labourers. Good-night!
Good-night to all the blackened arms that ache!
Good-night to every sick and sweated brow,
To the poor girl that strength and love forsake,
To the poor boy who can no more! I vow
The victim soon shall shudder at the stake
And fall in blood: we bring him even now.
[1903]
209

XXXII
IN A CITY GARDEN

How strange that here is nothing as it was!
The sward is young and new,
The sod there shapes a different mass,
The random trees stand other than I knew.
No, here the Past has left no residue,
No aftermath!
By a new path
The workmen homeward in the city twilight pass.
Yet was this willow here.
It hung as now its olive skeins aloft
Into the sky, then blue and clear,—
And yonder pair of poplar trees
Rose also, soft
And sibilant in the glory of the breeze.
It's early dark. One scarce distinguishes
Their sullen feathering in the autumn sky.
'T is warm and still.
Dull o'er the town the vapours lie.
Innumerable
And dodging the uncertain stare,
The small, shrewd lampions dot the air.
Many like me
Loiter perhaps as I in after years,
As looking here to see
Some vestige of the living that was theirs,
210

Some trace of yesterday,
Some hint or remnant, echo, clue—some thing,
Some very little thing of what was they.
Sure such are near! Else were it not so still
This evening,
So human-still and warm and kind.
'T is as of many moved
In unison of will and mind to sing
Low litanies to that which they had wholly loved.
How sweet it is
Under the perishable trees
To hear the wings of the one human soul
Fluttering up
In Time's dark branches to the lucid stars.
More than Despair is Hope,
And more than Hope is the Hope that despairs,
And more than all
Is Love that disbelieves the real years.
Here in this place
One August morning—when the earlier crowd,
Showmen or populace,
From many a region and of curious face,
Abroad the holiday
Quaint in the sun with garb and gesture glowed,
And, speaking grave or gay
The various accent of their lonely race,
Between the shadowy gold bazars idled away—
211

She, as a cloud
All sunrise-coloured and alone,
Thro' the blue summer trembling came to me.
I dried her tears and here we sat us down.
Little by little, as tripping oversea
On flame-tipped waves the daylight's long surprise
Sweeps world and heaven in one,
So love across our eyes
Broke with the sun.
Happy we walked away. The fairy sight
Untangling shook a thousand chequered fires.
Low under scarlet awnings rung on rung,
Copper and bronze and azurite,
Ranged on the sagging wires
The trifles clinked in the red light.
From beam and niche vendors in strange attires,
Slipping dark hands along,
Unhooked the quiet wool, the gaudy chintz,
Or, precious where it hung,
Long fluid jewels of auroral silk:
And dryly to the sense
Their attars old and dusty powders clung.
Still passed the weavers and the dyers
Many a jar, a bowl
Turned as of water or of milk—
Glazen and jade and porcelain—
Far down the shadows colouring stole.
As one had shook a jungle after rain
And basketing the drops at random spilled
212

Their red and green, their topaz and sapphires,
All were here piled.—
And wandering out we smiled
To see across the glowing noon so high,
So high and far,
The incandescent minarets and domes and spires
Lifting the fusion of their coloured choirs
To the sky
Softly—save only where
A flag or pennant fallen slack
Shotted the dazzling air.
I came to-day to find her, I came back
Humble with sweet desires
Across this dun September atmosphere
To her.
I came, I knew she was not here:
Now let me go.
I came, I come because I love her so.
Not in the acres of the Soul
Does Nature drive the ploughshare of her change.
It is not strange
That here in part and whole
The faithful eye sees all things as before.
For past the newer flowers,
Above the recent trees and clouds come o'er,
Love finds the other hours
Once more.
[1904]
previous section The poems of Trumbull Stickney
next section