The poems of Trumbull Stickney

I heard a strange philosophy, which taught
The Art is Man, the Artist is his Art;
That Poetry lives fleshly in the heart
Of poets, and mechanic in their thought.
And then, as oft before some ruined shrine
I have seen the pious man stand awed and pale,
So I, to see my heart's ideal trail
In dust and grey in ashes, once divine.
Yet came the Spring, and o'er the fleetness ran
A breath of song, a subtle fire, a life,
A voice: Say not the sum of things is man;
For like the wave-rolled spiral shell is he,
Wherein a vaster voice rings rich and rife—
A shadowy murmur of the parent sea.

[1892]

240

II
MUSIC

The air breaks into flutters low and sweet,
Smooth as the liquid passage of the bird;
And as the ocean-murmur, faintly heard
Before the storm, its rippling echoes beat
The ear. But then with swifter, bolder feet
The message comes; the music stirs the heart
To wild pulsations, until every part
Is glowing, fervid with a throbbing heat.
Slowly the memories of the past then rise
In pallid glory; richer streams of sound,
Wild with mysterious truth, all cloudlike, roll
About the heart and flood with tears the eyes:
But then a silence, stern, abrupt, profound:
A vaster echo trembles in the soul!

[1892]

241

III
NIGHT

Great night! no soothing friend to pain thou art,
Whereto a stricken soul may pour its grief.
To thee these human sorrows be too brief
To wake the pulse of thine eternal heart.
Thy powers are dead; and sterner peace impart
The silences of thy vast eloquence.
Our reason fails; our minds succumb, too tense
To act; ourselves grow fragile, part by part.
So when thy pale infinitudes unfold
Their vastness, and th' eternal harmonies,
Threading their labyrinthine paths of gold,
Break on the vision with a sudden sting,
The soul is loosed, and in the boundless skies
A dazzling light uprises on her wing.

[1892]

242

IV
EVENING

A STUDY IN METRE

Summer is sweet,
In the air of the tepid night,
In the drowsy breeze,
In the blossoming trees;—
Summer is sweet
With its scented heat
And the lazy hours that ease

Every heart
From the toil of the day's hot light
And ceaseless throes,
With their pale repose.
Every heart
Sips of its part
Of the love that summer bestows.

Laggard and sweet,
The evening glides on its way;
And the glistening star
From the eastern bar,
Laggard and sweet,
With golden feet,
Climbs stilly the skies from afar.

243

Liquid and light,
A tremulous harmony sings
O'er the sleepy guitar
Its reverberate bar,
Liquid and light,
To the moon-paled night,
And the love of the glistening star.

Heavy perfumes
From the vine that grows, clambering still,
Wondrous and fair
On the trellis' tall stair,—
Heavy perfumes,
Through the moonlit glooms,
Drift away from her purple hair.

Night rustles late
Through the trees with a measured tread;
And the late, late word
Have the gold stars heard;
Night rustles late
To the eastern gate,
By the goad of the east-light spurred.

Swift are the hours
Now sped on their dusk-feathered wing
To the land of the west,
To the land of their rest;
Swift are the hours

244

O'er the dew-sprent flowers
Away, by the grey dawn pressed!

Slower and slower
Dies the song of the low-voiced guitar;
Like the bend of a stream,
The whole to a dream,
Slower and slow,
With a silvery flow
Ebbs away. ...

Away, while slow
To the fields of the poppies of sleep
I wander, I tread
In the maze of their bed
Away, while slow
And deep and low
In their peace I lay my head.

[1892]

245

V
AGE AND YOUTH

Spare whitened hair, a withered cheek,
A trembling voice, a fireless eye,—
Do these show Age's victory?

I deem it truer that the man,
Whose frame is now more fragile grown,
Is younger than the child new-born.

For he who enters life's long road
Is old with duties yet to be
And white with long expectancy;

Yet as the years roll slowly by,
As dross that leaves the vessel bright,
His duties fall away. The light

Of freer manhood makes him young
And younger, till, those duties past,
He stands in perfect youth at last.

Thus grow we younger toward the grave,
That finds us in our fulness free,
And on the brink of which we see

246

Close 'round us some such light as shone
On Man and Nature's virgin dawn,
Grey years ago, ere Sin was born.

[1892]

247

[VI
This is the nursling of an hundred years]

This is the nursling of an hundred years.
Save this the horny cactus cannot bloom,
That heeds not if the violets shed perfume,
The roses blow, the August swell the ears
Of corn, or the dull wintry silence nears.
But ah! how shorn is all the garden-room
Of beauty! Flowers and shrubbery dropped in gloom,
The fountain lost in everlasting tears.
Thou, stranger, art too late—too late for home,
Tho' Time and Hope conspired to give thee life.
And shalt thou live, where thro' the sultry air
Death reigns and all malignant harms are rife?
Or shall thy trust not rather be a snare
To lure thy tardy beauty to its doom?

[1893]

248

[VII
Tho', moored along the quiet quay on some]

Tho', moored along the quiet quay on some
Errand of commerce bent, she rides at rest,
Her title, half-obliterate at the crest,
Speaks the soft language of a distant home.
Her time shall be, and she invite the foam
About her prow, the winds to blow the West
Open,—and all her hopes move forward, blest
And favoured 'neath the Heaven's unclouded dome
So whilst this life of duties we discharge,
Chained to the moorings of a mortal thought,
The inspiring evening calls us from the marge.
Hail, star and wind and current! Sunset, hail!
Away, for firmly here the helm is caught,
And the new moon hangs in the homeward sail.

[1893]

249

VIII
THE DEATH OF AISCHYLOS

(A HEADLAND NEAR SYRACUSE. WILD STORM)

The wind walks wildly in the trees to-night.
I feel mine age. Like this Sikelian day
From gold faded to Erebos, so I;
My triumphs like clouds I gather round me, and
Sink now. The travail of the storm-scourged sea,
The windy rack, the thunder's vivid leap
Where the slit-lightnings ope their ghastly lips,—
It merges all, and from ten thousand worlds,
Sucked in the caves by slimy shores, I hear
Only the windy sough of Acheron!
There 's storm in heaven, the wroth gods threaten war,
And Zeus in agony hurls on the impotent world
His foamy spleen. Our 'lated end has come,
Tho' the Earth start up Promethean to rebel;
She shudders, and her bowels, gouged and rent
By the fell tempest's horns, shall lie like dust
Distracted thro' the oblivious universe.
The Erinys range abroad: of old they worked
On men—thieves, liars, adulterers, parricides,
The horde of crime; on nations—Lydian wealth
And Persia's loud-mouthed greed; to-day, the world!
For there are world's Erinys even as men's,

250

And on her bloody track they follow. Now the worlds,
Hellas and all that is not Hellas, pay. ...

Hellas—Athenai! By the immortal gods,
Athenai, thou shalt die. Like some light girl
She shook her tresses to the Ægean wind,
Where on the listless shore playing she dipped
Her pink foot in the foam-hemmed sea and smiled.
Wet were her asking eyes; and fresh her arms,
Rhythmic with dull repose; her naked side
Quivered, touched by the feathery wind,—O Zeus!
Lustful and fickle! From the unvenged dead
Helen is come, and fronting Salamis
Takes up her fatal dwelling!

Thou 'dst not hear
My sober voice. The rigid days are gone.
Virtue, austere and pale, is gone. Thou list'st
The wanton poet; thou lov'st the unmanly plays,
The gilded talkers; lapp'st thy youth in vice,
Musics lascivious, vile philosophies;
Hugg'st in thy warm embrace the ignobly born,
Slaves, and slaves' children come from barbarous loins;
Fooled by a trinket, lazy, irreverent
Of all the gods; and scorn'st with ribald lips
The eternal prophesies. Athenai! aye,
Heinous indeed is thine unending crime,
And in thy fresh girl's side the serpent sword
Churns thy red life blood into black, stark death!

251

Zeus, bear me hence! Forefend my scanty hair,
Blessed with the endless kisses of the Muse,
Should clot with dust of earth. Forefend my lips,
Withered with singing too sublime a song,
Should eat vileness; these eyes, now pale with age,
Scorched with long searching of thy Heavens and shot
That on the irradiate spasms of morning light
Round thine Olympos fixed, should from their holes,
Where stretched I lie, downward my livid face,
Stare stark into the worm-begrovelled earth!
Oh, bear me hence! Great Zeus, I cannot die,
I cannot live. Oh, rend the impassioned storm,
Pierce my huge breast with lightnings, strew my corpse
Like ashes on the world-encircling stream!
Shred me like fleeces, and dismembered lay
Upon thine altar that is all the world.

[A pause.]
Athenai! How thou shamed'st me! me, ye gods!
Who sweat and bled for liberty, threw my life
Before thy feet and went to Marathon,
By lordly Salamis' acanthine dawn
Ploughed up the sea and in the furrows sowed
Persians, a sterile crop! And if in song
I picked His leavings, yet the Nine vouchsafed
Some glory, by the gods, that yet shall wind
Its clarion down the building aisles of time.
Yet oh! the shame when to belittled singers
Thou gav'st thy prize! Within mine ear yet crawls
His voice, puny and weak, who grimed our Muse

252

With the pale passions of the common day;
Who danced by Victory's torchlight, glistening-limbed.
His body wet with music, the ivies black
Plaited in honey-hair, and his lithe skin
Laughing with subtle fires of blood—a shame!
And he rose up from the uninspirèd throng
To win, to snatch thy prize, Melpomene.
I had sung with all the voices of the world;
Thunders I knew; the primal gods revealed
Their forces, secrets; and I made them rise
Out of the chaos of legend, stand and speak,
Moving their shadow past our little life.
Yet him, who figments of the ignoble day
Made over into rhythms, him they preferred
And crowned, the beardless Sophokles! And I
Slunk homeward, soiled my brow, my better art
Defaced.—O Zeus! too many, many days
I have lived, beyond my setting striven to hold
The sky, outlived myself. Fulfil thy vow!
Remember! when I stood white-robed, black-locked,
Beneath thine oaks, thy wind ran on the leaves
And like a hurricane's song, thou swor'st: “Thy death
Comes by my tortoise from my dog.” Then come!
No fitter storm shall yelling hound this earth.
Strike my thin breast—I bare it, supplicate
A rending of my being; lo! here my head!
Rack my dry skull and let me, let me die!
[A long pause. He descries an eagle.]

253

Ride, child of storm, ride master on thy gale.
Feathers unshrivelled by the lightning, skim
The wrathful breaker on Sikelia's shore.
Like a black dream, thy frown slips thro' the night!
Thy sprayed wings fan the windy black. He seeks
The march. For prey? What miserable torn life
Shall his clawed beak pierce?—Gone! Folded tonight!
Fly on to Zeus, black bird, fly on, remote,
And house thee in the abode of hurricanes—

Stay, gods! great gods! Hither and hither still
He flies. His stinging eye flames thro' the dusk.
Away! His hooked mouth holds—away! How grim
His stiff, iron feathers near me! Lightnings, blast
His flight! ye gods, avert! How close he skims!
O, shrivelling terror of the cloudy god,
Be gone, black—

[The tortoise falls on his head. He sinks to the ground.]

Death. Alas! Alas! Alas!
My prayer was heard! My brow clotted with wet—
How comes it? Shattered by a fall of stone—
Or—agonies! wild pain! horrible night!
Mother, what wretchedness thy youth brought forth,
My lot of crazèd suffering, exile, death!
Stupours enshroud—gray morning, wilt thou ne'er
Shudder into the East; gray dawn, of gray,

254

Here is thy wonted throne Athenai, here;
Quit thy bed, tangled in the Cyclades,—
Gray dawn—dream—dulness—gray, gray, gray, how gray.
Alas, what sick, slow pain—my brain! my brain!

[He dies.]

[1894]

255

[IX
My note is highest of them all]

My note is highest of them all,
And uppermost along the choir
With tremors of my treble I call
The mist of stars to point their fire,
While nevermore my echoes fall
Tho' silence hath an interval
For love of order on the lyre.

I am the Lady of the Scale;
For all that moveth music is...
[OMITTED]
The reasons of my note prevail
Thro' pause and change of melodies;
And singing down the endless gale
I do command the fiery trail.

Howe'er, my song is not of me.
The sphere and circuit of each star
Flashes that ... their degree,
And storm their light with swell of war.
The dragons of the auroral sea
Taking their pleasure to be free
Are yet divine and regular.

[1894?]

256

[X
When you've averaged emotion, found where Nature goes to school]

When you've averaged emotion, found where Nature goes to school,
“After many years discovered” who God be and how he rule;
Reckoned that Castalia's fountain ran a gallon to the hour,—
Doubtless it and you shall dry. Another race will claim a dower.

Lightly you have sold your meadow and the freedom of the lea,
Sunlight-ripple and sea-burst, the winy air, the spumy sea,
And the wreaths of land whose edge it lifting kisses; and the soul
Of the stars in violet air that wrapt gold circles round the pole:

Lightly sold your heart; forgotten passion, courage, pang and throe,
Love the love and hate the hatred, keenly feel and largely do,—
You that daub with gorgeous colours, hum the strenuous key that pearled
With a nightingale's and Shakespeare's song the æon-withered world.

257

Life is his that lives. By living, not by learning, may we learn.
And a hand that grasps not life, is gathering ashes for its urn.—
But a breathless race comes flooding from the portals of the sun.
Richer dawns and larger days and wider evenings are begun.

[1895]

258

XI
ODE

Hills, mountains, lakes, farewell!
Summits and snows;
And thou, thou sunful air of Engadin;
Gentian and daisy and bell,
Where the wind blows;
Yea, all thou Nature that mine eyes have seen:
Farewell!
Never again
Shall we behold your archèd skies,
Save when estranged by pain,
With pale and old and other eyes.

Here, to these sights,
Enlaced about with human thought
We came.
A terror spelled us at the windy lights;
Our breath grew lame
And on this world our vision fell distraught.
Too stinging near the sun!
The space too utter large! the air
Acrid so fine it was!
Our beaten spirit, impotent to share,
Became as glass
Brittle and dead before the vision:

259

We could our face but hide,
Our arms about us for a pall;
“Heaven has shattered us,” we cried and cried.
Our ear dissolved; our voice quavered; and we were small.

Yet the rich passage of the natural days
Dragging their carmine webs and violet hems
Over the flowered world;
And all about unfurled
The languid nets of evening dripping gems
Thro' the low rays;
With aftertrain of stars,
Sober divinities and simple diadems!
Where on your cars
You move in circle to the tracks of day!
Ye enfolded us and we did lose
The little habit of the hour and way.
We have seen—
Above the fluid air,
The effacèd languor of ravine
And this long valley peopled as a lair
With smoky forms—
The morn's gray-lidded star
Alone;
We 've felt the storm's
Approach, the rocks with echo jar;
We 've heard as war
Of world on world the moving glacier moan:

260

Till to the brain
The healing knowledge of eternal things,
The sufferance of limit and the lore
O' the world's serene adjustment quiet gave;
Till we felt sorrow for the obedient star,
Pity and patience for the taxèd moon
And all this broil of universe that serves
Its taskmaster; O, till it seemèd then
Time was a noisy bellman, tiredly
That rung in stellar deserts his dull bell
Calling the planets home. A finished day!
The orbèd meadow-land of solar gold
Was waxen sterile and embrowned; a spell
Had soon distilled the system to a drop,
And of the whole destroyed
One fiery globule wavered in the endless void.—
So runs the dream about your height!
So man may stand with open eye,
A dying acolyte
Amid your ceremonies that do not die;
And hear,
In sober and subduèd soul,
Without fear
The roll
And tidal motion of the sacramental air.

Farewell! again farewell!
From where ye dwell
We shall descend within the gentle plain,—

261

There life is speakable:
The while your train,
In light of days that set not but still fare
Upon the spirit's skies,
More sober, more serene
Shall rise,
From all the things that were
Apart,
To that high backward of the heart
Whereto the thought that travels ne'er hath wholly been.

[1895]

262

[XII
'T was yet an hour to dawn. Revengeful storm]

'T was yet an hour to dawn. Revengeful storm
Tortured the Ægean air. The sea was high,
And things of mist and water without form
Rose, ran, were lost. The darkness swelled with cry.

Then greatly heard, 'mid all that night's alarms
Most hideous, was a sound of cities torn,
Of glory strangled in an ocean's arms,
Of death. The tempest sped;—and it was morn.

From high Oliaros looking forth alone,
The sculptor saw a sea with isles impearled,—
But not yon island of the golden stone:
Paros was sunk. A calm lay on the world.

His frighted lip grew calm. He looked around.
Never shone day more marvellous.—But he
Swore to his heart an oath that had no sound,
Darkly, and cast his chisel to the sea.

[1895]

263

XIII
COLOGNE CATHEDRAL

O earth, this is not earthly, nor of stone;
Nor did thy bowels yield the stuff that made
The pale gray roof whereunder light and shade
Move undiurnal to the greater sun.
Prayer carved the sable flowers; a choral spun
Rose-windows in the aisle; and music stayed
So silken-long by arch and colonnade
That the lines trembled out and followed on.
'T is here philosopher and peasant sings
In pauses of the mind, when thought and faith,
The I and Thou, are bubbles of the breath;—
From on the citadel of human things
Sheer to God's sky, in life rather than death,
The serfs with quiet eyes watch with the kings.

[1895]

264

[XIV
When by you lies my broken heart, and I]

When by you lies my broken heart, and I,
Up on the hill where of this world is heard
At most the love note of a vernal bird
And breaking leaves that flutter in the sky;
When nothing more of all this agony
And strange disease that in our body stirred,
Is left, and with mine ashes are interred
My hope and name and all that I might be;
If then one said it differed not, to live
Or not to live, since living all is death,
And seeing then, beyond the yews and grove,
The fading fragments that our years did give,
Should say 't were better never to feel breath,
I answer, No. For life is less than love.

[1895–96]

265

[XV
Now the lovely moon is wilted]

Now the lovely moon is wilted,
Lost her petals down the sky.
Sorrily the wind goes by;
Rosebuds where the branches tilted
Yield their flowers with a sigh.

June, the wonderment of blossom,
With her necklace' thirsty pearls,
With her tearful eyes and girl's
Changing, ever changing bosom,
With the hot sun in her curls—

This is last of all the June-nights.—
Let us softly speak of living,
Thou whose life was but forgiving
I that in the passèd moonlight's
Shadow, moved thee with my grieving.

Memory saddens our caresses.
Feel, thy tired heart is cold,
All the rich and devious gold
Warm with shadow-waves, thy tresses,
Surfeits with my kisses old.

Long ago our love was broken.
Habit poisons the embrace.—
Yet, O changeless in thy grace,

266

Speak the word thou oft hast spoken
And the moon was on thy face.

Kisses, loved one! All is ashen
Thro' the life that lies before;
Drink my glowing wine that o'er
Hearts grown cold with vanished passion
Kindles what was wild of yore.

[1895–96]

267

[XVI
I know where all the singers hide]

I know where all the singers hide
And music wanders far along,—
Down the steep rock and country side
A mile of song;
And sighs that the hazel sighed
Mix and grow strong.

There tired winds come home to say
Their tale of acres bowed in flight,
And streamless hollows where they lay.
There shade and light
All the delicious day
Linger and light.

Down sudden slips in turns and turns
Aglitter, sings the rivulet;
White bubbles float the little burns,
And round are set
Fringes of lucid ferns
Fragile and wet.

[1895–96]

268

[XVII
Hold still, my brain! My temples burst! Shall e'er]

Hold still, my brain! My temples burst! Shall e'er
This marble burgeon with her? I can see
An Aphrodite, poised; a falling fold
About her loins,—and nothing more but sky,
Sky, sun, light, air, and rolling spheres, and men.
Where is my chisel?—Paros is an isle
Does make earth more magnificent than aught
Of conquest. I believe it 's the old heart
Of world and universe; were the quarry-slave
Ambitious, he should find below, far, far
Below, motion, life—and a regency
So splendid as would shrivel him to ash.

The splinters shine like gold! Away! Away,—
Somewhere within here she,—Apollo, help!
That I may bid her rise, and mix with stone
My Phryne with the never-opened eye,
The holy oval face, the rich long neck
And serious body and—Oh the arms! the arms!
My lips grow dull with kissing of her arms,
Dull, yes! and sad!
She shall be here eternally while I
Make her eternal. I shall bid her come,
Sit near, and say things in her golden Greek,
And singing freshen some old mythos with
Warm melody. I'll call her.—No! not yet!

269

Not yet! Despair's enough without herself
To make my heart at such comparison
Break. Memory first shall guide my hand,—
Memory made fresher by herself. Some eve
We'll mix our water and wine; we'll chaplets
Of ivy, sail for Athens, and in spring
Hear the great plays and drink at festivals
And run to some wild cry, some terrible
Sharp song, away, away; the spotted skin
Slips thro' the starlight; thyrsus at her throat
Lengthened, and head thrown wildly back to see
More rich the winy heaven dissolve and run!
Where is she? Phryne! Phryne! Look, my love,
Upon me and my marble. A snow more white
Ne'er fell; with the influence and love of years
We'll build an outline, thou and I, or thou
Rather, that verily my lips and breast
Will shudder but believe. Ah come away!
We'll go and hear the music of the sea
And pity the old singer; watch the moon,
Sad harmonist on the unresponsive earth;
Feel the far stars,—yet hear and watch and feel
Nothing but thee, thou jewel of my soul!

[1895–96]

270

XVIII
NIMIUM PASSUS

If I could find three words to say
My fill of hatred, I believe
The affrighted earth would roll away
And leave me here alone to live.

They had some little gift to give,
Some rank or ribbon to bestow.
God knows, I asked not to receive,—
They teased me, held me up for show.

But, as I think, it 's blow for blow
Before the throne of righteous Time.
I have them yet, tho' right be slow
And wrath needs age to grow sublime.

Then, when the testament of earth
Names one or other of us heir,
I shall grow hideous with mirth,
Curse them, and pluck them by the hair.

[1896]

271

[XIX
Spring is come. From the wind lightly dissipate feathers of mist that an upland exhales]

Spring is come. From the wind lightly dissipate feathers of mist that an upland exhales
Whence in a glitter the soluble snows' tightened gray is in silver dissolved to the vales.

Juices of sun-sweetened clay, that the broken seed cupped, press higher; and now shall unfold
Milk-white curls whose secret of crimson the sun shall divide with his arrow of gold.

Far over tremulous shrubbery glistens an ointment morning and April and sky,
Bluer 's the gloom of the cypress, silverer the olives, and sweeter the poplar's cry.

Till from a thousand hills that surround her, marvellous murmurs gathering sing
As from round foam-chapleted oceans in circles of song growing single: Spring.

[1897]

272

XX
IN AMPEZZO

In days of summer let me go
Up over fields, at afternoon,
And, lying low against my stone
On slopes the scythe has pain to mow,
Look southward a long hour alone.

For evening there is lovelier
Than vision or enchanted tale:
When wefts of yellow vapour pale,
And green goes down to lavender
On rosy cliffs, shutting the vale

Whose smoke of violet forest seeks
The steep and rock, where crimson crawls,
And drenched with carmine fire their walls
Go thinly smouldering to the peaks,
High, while the sun now somewhere falls;

Except a cloud-caught ochre spark
In one last summit,—and away
On lazy wings of mauve and gray,
Away and near, like memory, dark
Is bluish with the filmy day,

What time the swallows flying few
Over uncoloured fields become

273

Small music thro' the shining dome;
And sleepy leaves are feeling dew
Above the crickets' under-hum,

In bye-tone to a savage sound
Of waters that with discord smite
The frigid wind and lurking light,
And swarm behind the gloom, and
Down sleepy valleys to the night:

And thoughts delicious of the whole,
Gathering over all degrees,
Yet sad for something more than these
Across low meadow-lands of soul
Grow large, like north-lights no one

I care not if the painter wrought
The tinted dream his spirit hid,
When rich with sight he saw, amid
A jarring world, one tone, and caught
The colour passing to his lid.

Be still, musician and thy choir!
Where trumpets blare and the bow stings
In symphony a thousand strings
To cry of wood-wind and desire
Of one impassioned voice that sings.

Nay, silence have the poet's mode
And southern vowels all! let die,

274

So ghostly-vague, the northern cry!—
This world is better than an ode
And evening more than elegy.—

Yet what shall singing do for me?
How shall a verse be crimsoned o'er?
I ever dream one art the more;
I who did never paint would see
The colour painters languish for,

And wisely use the instruments
That earlier harmony affords;
I dream a poesy of chords
Embroidered very rich in tints:
'T is not enough, this work of words.

A wilder thing inflames our hearts.
We do refuse to sift and share.
For we would musically bear
The burden of the gathered arts
Together which divided were,

And, passing Knowledge, highly rear
Upon her iron architrave
These airy images we rave,—
Lest wholly vain and fallen sheer
Our vision dress us for the grave.

[1898]

275

[XXI
If, in the night and madness of thy mind]

If, in the night and madness of thy mind,
The tearing storm appear to thee a thing
Lit sharply with thy hate and suffering,—
A cause, a God, above the screaming wind;
Or, when the sunlight infinitely kind
Moves the meadow and mountain land to sing,
Thou seem to see the glister of a wing—
Know it is nothing, and thy eyeballs blind.
Remember all this little humour of despair
Wrongs the rich summer-time when summer is,
And even so thy subtle ecstasies
The winter hurricane and awful air.
Fall down upon thy knees and lift thy eyes,
That all things are forever as they were.

[1899?]

276

[XXII
Henceforward I no longer shall be known]

Henceforward I no longer shall be known
Among you all, with whom I strove to dwell.
For all our loves were wholly pitiable:
I was a stranger, you were not my own.
And over all I was I ring a knell,
As a broad blasted landscape at sundown.
I would not have the flames break from my frown
Against you. I will go away,—Farewell!—
Not as the Spaniard and his argosies
Who ran greedily thro' the screaming sea
Into the sunset after enterprise,
But with dispassionate and quiet eyes
Watching my destiny depart from me
Like flushes in lotus after sunrise.

[1900]

277

XXIII
A LETTER

Your own sweet flowers are here to see:
Crisp leaves, a sudden warm perfume
And crumbling little blossoms, from
Italy.—

Pallanza in the bay I know,
And Intra, and the point between.
They scent the lilac, golden, green
Afterglow

I' the garden lying half-asleep,
Where curious aloes feel the star
Thro' webs of Indian deodar
Tremble and weep.

And so even now, tho' autumn 's wet
And leaves about me falling fast,
With you some plants and this at last
Flower yet!

They 've come to sadden here by me.
Already every leaf is numb.
'T was yesterday they reached me from
Italy!

278

We 're like your flowers, you and I.
Tho' years since I was—alien there,
I feel I in this northern air
Nearly die.

Yet would you venture that the home,
The peace that heals, the love that cures,
Is mine in old Val d'Arno, yours,
Say, in Rome?

I ask. My novel has it so:
I treat a travelling patriot
In a sharp style. But—I'd forgot—
You don't know!

I was a singer then of scenes
Where roses played a rôle. Enough!
To-day I trade in prose and stuff
Magazines.

Sometimes I muster, to be sure,
A rhyme, a manner, a technique;
But all of me is, so to speak,
Literature. ...

For your sweet flowers—alas how vain!
You see they made the echoes rise!
“Only a moment” Age replies.
Thanks again.

[1901]

279

[XXIV
My life shall count by the smile and tear]

My life shall count by the smile and tear,
By the flash of blue in an eye I know.
It's a world of time since June last year
And a timeless world I am living now.

One year ago! That we should have walked
The very path we are walking now!
And—tell me, do you remember?—talked
Likewise one little year ago?

Dear love, what a trick Time plays on us!—
As tho' the hour and day could give
A rule for passage! or all this fuss
Of the sun be measure how long we live!

Life is older than all the æons;
And younger than any moment, youth.
For aught that the earth go gathering seasons
The fact o' the Spring is the world's best truth.

280

XXV
You'll say when here again after it all

You'll say when here again after it all
I recollect these things, that I devise,
Like a poor devot in confessional,
By saying aloud to make them otherwise,

And with the thrust of that terrific guilt
Grown soft and coward, to talk away the stain.—
Not so—The wrong is done, the blood is spilt,
I know it—if sense at all be in my brain.

'T is sorry homage, yes, and pitiful,
After so long to bring before your eyes
The frayed and dusty flowers of my soul
With such belated show of sacrifice.

281

XXVI
This is the violin. If you remember—

This is the violin. If you remember—
One afternoon late, in the early days,
One of those inconsolable December
Twilights of city haze,

You came to teach me how the hardened fingers
Must drop and nail the music down, and how
The sound then drags and nettled cries, then lingers
After the dying bow.—

For so all that could never be is given
And flutters off these piteously thin
Strings, till the night of a midsummer heaven
Quivers ... a violin.

I struggled, and alongside of a duty,
A nagging everyday-long commonplace!
I loved this hopeless exercise of beauty
Like an allotted grace,—

The changing scales and broken chords, the trying
From sombre notes below to catch the mark,
I have it all thro' my heart, I tell you, crying
Childishly in the dark.

University of Virginia Library

V JUVENILIA

I ART IN MAN

II MUSIC

III NIGHT

IV EVENING

A STUDY IN METRE

V AGE AND YOUTH

[VI This is the nursling of an hundred years]

[VII Tho', moored along the quiet quay on some]

VIII THE DEATH OF AISCHYLOS

(A HEADLAND NEAR SYRACUSE. WILD STORM)

[IX My note is highest of them all]

[X When you've averaged emotion, found where Nature goes to school]

XI ODE

[XII 'T was yet an hour to dawn. Revengeful storm]

XIII COLOGNE CATHEDRAL

[XIV When by you lies my broken heart, and I]

[XV Now the lovely moon is wilted]

[XVI I know where all the singers hide]

[XVII Hold still, my brain! My temples burst! Shall e'er]

XVIII NIMIUM PASSUS

[XIX Spring is come. From the wind lightly dissipate feathers of mist that an upland exhales]

XX IN AMPEZZO

[XXI If, in the night and madness of thy mind]

[XXII Henceforward I no longer shall be known]

XXIII A LETTER

[XXIV My life shall count by the smile and tear]

XXV You'll say when here again after it all

XXVI This is the violin. If you remember—

V
JUVENILIA

I
ART IN MAN

II
MUSIC

III
NIGHT

IV
EVENING

V
AGE AND YOUTH

[VI
This is the nursling of an hundred years]

[VII
Tho', moored along the quiet quay on some]

VIII
THE DEATH OF AISCHYLOS

[IX
My note is highest of them all]

[X
When you've averaged emotion, found where Nature goes to school]

XI
ODE

[XII
'T was yet an hour to dawn. Revengeful storm]

XIII
COLOGNE CATHEDRAL

[XIV
When by you lies my broken heart, and I]

[XV
Now the lovely moon is wilted]

[XVI
I know where all the singers hide]

[XVII
Hold still, my brain! My temples burst! Shall e'er]

XVIII
NIMIUM PASSUS

[XIX
Spring is come. From the wind lightly dissipate feathers of mist that an upland exhales]

XX
IN AMPEZZO

[XXI
If, in the night and madness of thy mind]

[XXII
Henceforward I no longer shall be known]

XXIII
A LETTER

[XXIV
My life shall count by the smile and tear]

XXV
You'll say when here again after it all

XXVI
This is the violin. If you remember—