[Poems by Hovey in] More songs from Vagabondia :: :: University of Virginia Library

JONGLEURS.

And ever with the vanguard
The vagrant singers come
The gamins of the city
Who dance before the drum

What is the stir in the street?
Hurry of feet!
And after,
A sound as of pipes and of tabers!

Men of the conflicts and labors,
Struggling and shifting and shoving,
Pushing and pounding your neighbors,
Fighting for leeway for laughter,
Toiling for leisure for loving!
Hark, through the window and up to the rafter,
Madder and merrier,
Deeper and verier,
Sweeter, contrarier,
Dafter and dafter,
A song arises,—
A thrill, an intrusion,
A reel, an illusion,
A rapture, a crisis
Of bells in the air!

Ay, up from your work and look out of the window!
“Who are the newcomers, Arab or Hindoo?
Persians, or Japs, or the children of Isis?”
—Guesses, surmises—
Forth with you, fare
Down in the street to draw nearer and stare!
Come from your palaces, come from your hovels!
Lay down your ledgers, your picks and your shovels,
Your trowels and bricks,

Hammers and nails,
Scythes and flails,
Bargains and sales,
And the trader's tricks,
Deals, overreachings,
Worries and griefs,
Teachings and preachings,
Boluses, briefs,
Writs and attachments,
Quarterings, hatchments,
Clans and cognomens,
Tomes, prolegomens,
Comments and scholia,
(World's melancholia)—
Cast them aside, and good riddance to rubbish!
Here at the street-corner, hearken, a strain,
Rough and off-hand and a bit rub-a-dub-ish,
Gives us a taste of the life we 'd attain.

Who are they, what are they, whence have they come to us?
Where will they go when their singing is done?
What is the garb they wear, tattered and sumptuous,
Faded with days and superb in the sun?
What are they singing of?
Hush!
... There 's a ringing of
Delicate chimes;
And the blush
Of a veiled bride morning
Beats in the rhymes.
Listen!
Out of the merriment,
Clear as the glisten
Of dew on the brier,
A silver warning!

Sudden, a dare—
Lyric experiment—
Up like a lark in the air,
Higher and higher and higher,
The song shoots out of our blunder
Of thought to the blue sky of wonder,
And broken strains only fall down
Like pearls on the roofs of the town.

Somebody says they have come from the moon,
Seen with their eyes Eldorado,
Sat in the Bo-tree's shadow,
Wandered at noon
In the valleys of Van,
Tented in Lebanon, tarried in Ophir,
Last year in Tartary piped for the Khan.
Now it 's the song of a lover;
Now it 's the lilt of a loafer,—
Under the trees in a midsummer noon,
Dreaming the haze into isles to discover,
Beating the silences into a croon;
Soon
Up from the marshes a call of the plover!
Out from the cover
A flurry of quail!
Down from the height where the slow hawks hover,
The thin far ghost of a hail!
And near, and near,
Throbbing and tingling,—
With a human cheer
In the earth-song mingling,—
Mirth and carousal,
Wooing, espousal,
Clinking of glasses
And laughter of lasses—

And the wind in the garden stoops down as it passes
To play with the hair
Of the loveliest there,
And the wander-lust catches the will in its snare;
Hill-wind and spray-lure,
Call of the heath;
Dare in the teeth
Of the balk and the failure;
The clasp and the linger
Of loosening finger,
Loth to dissever;
Thrill of the comrade heart to its fellow
Through droughts that sicken and blasts that bellow
From purple furrow to harvest yellow,
Now and forever.
How our feet itch to keep time to their measure!
How our hearts lift to the lilt of their song!
Let the world go, for a day's royal pleasure!
Not every summer such waifs come along.

Now they are off to the inn;
Hear the clean ring of their laughter!
Cool as a hill-brook after
The heat of the noon sets in!
Gentlemen even in jollity—
Certainly people of quality!—
Waifs and estrays no less,
Roofless and penniless,
They are the wayside strummers
Whose lips are man's renown,
Those wayward brats of Summer's
Who stroll from town to town;
Spendthrift of life, they ravish
The days of an endless store,

And ever the more they lavish
The heap of the hoard is more.
For joy and love and vision
Are alive and breed and stay
When dust shall hold in derision
The misers of a day.

THE WOOD-GOD.

Brother, lost brother!
Thou of mine ancient kin!
Thou of the swift will that no ponderings smother!
The dumb life in me fumbles out to the shade
Thou lurkest in.
In vain—evasive ever through the glade
Departing footsteps fail;
And only where the grasses have been pressed,
Or by snapped twigs I follow a fruitless trail.
So—give o'er the quest!
Sprawl on the roots and moss!
Let the lithe garter squirm across my throat!
Let the slow clouds and leaves above me float
Into mine eyeballs and across,—
Nor think them further! Lo, the marvel! now,
Thou whom my soul desireth, even thou
Sprawl'st by my side, who fled'st at my pursuit.
I hear thy fluting; at my shoulder there
I see the sharp ears through the tangled hair,
And birds and bunnies at thy music mute.

FAUN'S SONG.

Cool! cool! cool!
Cool and sweet
The feel of the moss at my feet!
And sweet and cool
The touch of the wind, of the wind!

Cool wind out of the blue,
At the touch of you
A little wave crinkles and flows
All over me down to my toes.

“Coo-loo! Coo-loo!”
Hear the doves in the tree-tops croon.
“Coo-loo! Coo-loo!”
Love comes soon.

“June! June!”
The veery sings,
Sings and sings,
“June! June!”—
A pretty tune!

Wind with your weight of perfume,
Bring me the bluebells' bloom!

THE MOCKING-BIRD.

Hear ! hear! hear!
Listen! the word
Of the mocking-bird!
Hear! hear! hear!
I will make all clear;
I will let you know
Where the footfalls go
That through the thicket and over the hill
Allure, allure.
How the bird-voice cleaves
Through the weft of leaves
With a leap and a thrill
Like the flash of a weaver's shuttle, swift and sudden and sure!

And lo, he is gone—even while I turn
The wisdom of his runes to learn.
He knows the mystery of the wood,
The secret of the solitude;
But he will not tell, he will not tell,
For all he promises so well.

KARLENE.

Word of a little one born in the West,—
How like a sea-bird it comes from the sea,
Out of the league-weary waters' unrest
Blown with white wings, for a token, to me!

Blown with a skriel and a flurry of plumes
(Sea-spray and flight-rapture whirled in a gleam!)
Here for a sign of the comrade that looms
Large in the mist of my love as I dream.

He with the heart of an old violin,
Vibrant at every least stir in the place,
Lyric of woods where the thrushes begin,
Wave-questing wanderer, still for a space,—

What will the child of his be (so I muse),
Wood-flower, sea-flower, star-flower rare?
Worlds here to choose from, and which will she choose,
She whose first world is an armsweep of air?

Baby Karlene, you are wondering now
Why you can't reach the great moon that you see
Just at your hand on the edge of the bough
That waves in the window-pane—how can it be?

All your world yet hardly lies out of reach
Of ten little fingers and ten little toes.
You are a seed for the sky there to teach
(And the sun and the wind and the rain) as it grows.

Just a green leaf piercing up to the day,
Pale fleck of June to come, just to be seen
Through the rough crumble of rubble and clay
Lifting its loveliness, dawn-child, Karlene!

Fragile as fairycraft, dew-dream of love,—
Never a clod that has marred the slim stalk,
Never a stone but its frail fingers move,
Bent on the blue sky and nothing can balk!

Blue sky and wind-laughters, that is thy dream.
Ah the brave days when thy leafage shall toss
High where gold noondays and sunsets a-stream
Mix with its moving and kiss it across.

There the great clouds shall go lazily by,
Cool thee with shadows and dazzle with shine,
Drench thee with rain-guerdons, bless thee with sky,
Till all the knowledge of earth shall be thine.

Wind from the ice-floe and wind from the palm,
Wind from the mountains and wind from the lea—
How they will sing thee of tempest and calm!
How they will lure thee with tales of the sea!

What will you be in that summer, Karlene?
Apple-tree, cherry-tree, lily, or corn?
Red rose or yellow rose, gray leaf or green?
Which will you choose now the year 's at its morn?

Somewhere even now in thy heart is the will,—
“I shall be Golden Rod, slender and tall—
I shall be Pond Lily, secret and still—
I shall be Sweetbriar, Queen of them all—

“I shall give shade for the weary to rest—
I shall grow flax for the naked to wear—
Figs for a feast and all comers to guest—
Wreaths that girls twine in the laugh of their hair—

“Ivy for scholars and myrtle for lovers,
Laurel for conquerors, poets, and kings—
Broad-spreading beech-boughs whose benison covers
Clamor of bird-notes and flutter of wings—

“I shall rise tall as an elm in my grace—
I shall be clothed as catalpa is clad—
Poets shall crown me with lyrics of praise—
Lovers for lure of my blossoms go mad!”

Which shall it be, baby? Guess you at all?
Only I know in the lull of the year
You have said now where your choosing shall fall,
Only you have not yet heard yourself, dear.

So, like a mocking-bird, up in the trees,
I watching wondering where you have grown,
Borrow a note from a birdfellow's glees,
Fittest to sing you, and make it my own.

Only I know as I wonder, Karlene,
Singing up here where you think me a star,
Heaven 's still above me, and some one serene
Laughs in the blue sky and knows what you are.

KAVIN AGAIN.

It is not anything he says,
It's just his presence and his smile,
The blarney of his silences
That cocker and beguile.

ACROSS THE TABLE.

To A. L. L.

Here's to you, Arthur! You and I
Have seen a lot of stormy weather,
Since first we clinked cups on the sly
At school together.

The winds of fate have had their will
And blown our crafts so far apart
We hardly knew if either still
Were on the chart.

But now I know the love of man
Is more than time or space or fate,
And laugh to scorn the powers that ban,
With you for mate.

It 's good to have you sitting by,
Old man, to prove the world no botch,
To shame the devil with your eye
And pass the Scotch.

BARNEY McGEE.

Barney McGEE, there's no end of good luck in you,
Will-o'-the-wisp, with a flicker of Puck in you,
Wild as a bull-pup and all of his pluck in you,—
Let a man tread on your coat and he'll see!—
Eyes like the lakes of Killarney for clarity,
Nose that turns up without any vulgarity,
Smile like a cherub, and hair that is carroty,—
Wow, you 're a rarity, Barney McGee!
Mellow as Tarragon,
Prouder than Aragon—
Hardly a paragon,
You will agree—
Here 's all that 's fine to you!
Books and old wine to you!
Girls be divine to you,
Barney McGee!

Lucky the day when I met you unwittingly,
Dining where vagabonds came and went flittingly.
Here 's some Barbera to drink it befittingly,
That day at Silvio's, Barney McGee!
Many 's the time we have quaffed our Chianti there,
Listened to Silvio quoting us Dante there,—
Once more to drink Nebiolo spumante there,
How we 'd pitch Pommery into the sea!
There where the gang of us
Met ere Rome rang of us,
They had the hang of us
To a degree.
How they would trust to you!
That was but just to you.
Here 's o'er their dust to you,
Barney McGee!

Barney McGee, when you 're sober you scintillate,
But when you 're in drink you 're the pride of the intellect;
Divil a one of us ever came in till late,
Once at the bar where you happened to be—
Every eye there like a spoke in you centering,
You with your eloquence, blarney, and bantering—
All Vagabondia shouts at your entering,
King of the Wander-kin, Barney McGee!
There 's no satiety
In your society
With the variety
Of your esprit.
Here 's a long purse to you,
And a great thirst to you!
Fate be no worse to you,
Barney McGee!

Och, and the girls whose poor hearts you deracinate,
Whirl and bewilder and flutter and fascinate!
Faith, it 's so killing you are, you assassinate,—
Murder 's the word for you, Barney McGee!
Bold when they 're sunny and smooth when they 're showery,—
Oh, but the style of you, fluent and flowery!
Chesterfield's way, with a touch of the Bowery!
How would they silence you, Barney machree?
Naught can your gab allay,
Learned as Rabelais
(You in his abbey lay
Once on the spree).
Here 's to the smile of you,
(Oh, but the guile of you!)
And a long while of you,
Barney McGee!

Facile with phrases of length and Latinity,
Like honorificabilitudinity,
Where is the maid could resist your vicinity,
Wiled by the impudent grace of your plea?
Then your vivacity and pertinacity
Carry the day with the divil's audacity;
No mere veracity robs your sagacity
Of perspicacity, Barney McGee.
When all is new to them,
What will you do to them?
Will you be true to them?
Who shall decree?
Here 's a fair strife to you!
Health and long life to you!
And a great wife to you,
Barney McGee!

Barney McGee, you 're the pick of gentility;
Nothing can phase you, you 've such a facility;
Nobody ever yet found your utility,—
That is the charm of you, Barney McGee;
Under conditions that others would stammer in,
Still unperturbed as a cat or a Cameron,
Polished as somebody in the Decameron,
Putting the glamour on prince or Pawnee!
In your meanderin',
Love, and philanderin',
Calm as a mandarin
Sipping his tea!
Under the art of you,
Parcel and part of you,
Here 's to the heart of you,
Barney McGee!

You who were ever alert to befriend a man,
You who were ever the first to defend a man,
You who had always the money to lend a man,
Down on his luck and hard up for a V!
Sure, you'll be playing a harp in beatitude
(And a quare sight you will be in that attitude)—
Some day, where gratitude seems but a platitude,
You'll find your latitude, Barney McGee.
That's no flim-flam at all,
Frivol or sham at all,
Just the plain—Damn it all,
Have one with me!
Here 's luck and more to you!
Friends by the score to you,
True to the core to you,
Barney McGee!

THE SEA GYPSY.

I am fevered with the sunset,
I am fretful with the bay,
For the wander-thirst is on me
And my soul is in Cathay.

There 's a schooner in the offing,
With her topsails shot with fire,
And my heart has gone aboard her
For the Islands of Desire.

I must forth again to-morrow!
With the sunset I must be
Hull down on the trail of rapture
In the wonder of the sea.

SPEECH AND SILENCE.

The words that pass from lip to lip
For souls still out of reach!
A friend for that companionship
That 's deeper than all speech!

SECRETS.

Three secrets that never were said:
The stir of the sap in the spring,
The desire of a man to a maid,
The urge of a poet to sing.

A STEIN SONG.

Give a rouse, then, in the Maytime
For a life that knows no fear!
Turn night-time into daytime
With the sunlight of good cheer!
For it 's always fair weather
When good fellows get together,
With a stein on the table and a good song ringing clear.

When the wind comes up from Cuba
And the birds are on the wing,
And our hearts are patting juba
To the banjo of the spring,
Then it 's no wonder whether
The boys will get together,
With a stein on the table and a cheer for everything.

For we 're all frank-and-twenty
When the spring is in the air;
And we 've faith and hope a-plenty,
And we 've life and love to spare;
And it 's birds of a feather
When we all get together,
With a stein on the table and a heart without a care.

For we know the world is glorious,
And the goal a golden thing,
And that God is not censorious
When his children have their fling;
And life slips its tether
When the boys get together,
With a stein on the table in the fellowship of spring.

IN A SILENCE.

Heart to heart!
And the stillness of night and the moonlight, like hushed breathing
Silently, stealthily moving across thy hair!

O womanly face!
Tender and strong and lucent with infinite feeling,
Shrinking with startled joy, like wind-struck water,
And yet so frank, so unashamed of love!

Ay, for there it is, love—that 's the deepest.
Love 's not love in the dark.
Light loves wither i' the sun, but Love endureth,
Clothing himself with the light as with a robe.

I would bare my soul to thy sight—
Leave not a secret deep unsearched,
Unrevealing its shame or its glory.
Love without Truth shall die as a soul without God.
A lying love is the love of a day
But the brave and true shall love forever.

Build Love a house;
Let the walls be thick;
Shut him in from the sight of men;
But hide not Love from himself.

Ah, the summer night!
The wind in the trees and the moonlight!
And my kisses on thy throat
And thy breathing in my hair!

Silent, lips to lips!
But our souls have held speech, thought answering echoing thought,
Though the only words were kisses.

THE BATHER.

I saw him go down to the water to bathe;
He stood naked upon the bank.

His breast was like a white cloud in the heaven, that catches the sun;
It swelled with the sharp joy of the air.

His legs rose with the spring and curve of young birches;
The hollow of his back caught the blue shadows:

With his head thrown up to the lips of the wind;
And the curls of his forehead astir with the wind.

I would that I were a man, they are so beautiful;
Their bodies are like the bows of the Indians;
They have the spring and the grace of bows of hickory.

I know that women are beautiful, and that I am beautiful;
But the beauty of a man is so lithe and alive and triumphant,
Swift as the flight of a swallow and sure as the pounce of the eagle.

NOCTURNE: IN ANJOU.

I dreamed of Sappho on a summer night.
Her nightingales were singing in the trees
Beside the castled river; and the wind
Fell like a woman's fingers on my cheek.
And then I slept and dreamed and marked no change;

The night went on with me into my dream.
This only I remember, that I cried:
“O Sappho! ere I leave this paradise,
Sing me one song of those lost books of yours
For which we poets still go sorrowing;
That when I meet my fellows on the earth
I may rejoice them more than many pearls;”
And she, the sweetly smiling, answered me,
As one who dreams, “I have forgotten them.”

NOCTURNE: IN PROVENCE.

The blue night, like an angel, came into the room,—
Came through the open window from the silent sky
Down trellised stairs of moonlight into the dear room
As if a whisper breathed of some divine one nigh.
The nightingales, like brooks of song in Paradise,
Gurgled their serene rapture to the silent sky—
Like springs of laughter bubbling up in Paradise,
The serene nightingales along the riverside
Purled low in every tree their star-cool melodies
Of joy—in every tree along the riverside.

Did the vain garments melt in music from your side?
Did you rise from them as a lily flowers i' the air?
—But you were there before me like the Night's own bride—
I dared not call you mine. So still and tall you were,
I never dreamed that you were mine—I never dreamed

I loved you—I forgot I loved you. You were air
And music, and the shadows that you stood in, seemed
Like priests that keep their sombre vigil round a shrine—
Like sombre priests that watch about a glorious shrine.

And then you stepped into the moonlight and laid bare
The wonder of your body to the night, and stood
With all the stars of heaven looking at you there,
As simply as a saint might bare her soul to God—
As simply as a saint might bathe in lakes of prayer—
Stood with the holy moonlight falling on you there
Until I thought that in a glory unaware
I had seen a soul stand forth and bare itself to God—
A saintly soul lay bare its innocence to God.

JUNE NIGHT IN WASHINGTON.

The scent of honeysuckle,
Drugging the twilight
With its sweet opiate of lovers' dreams!
The last red glow of the setting sun
On the red brick wall
Of the neighboring house,
And the scramble of red roses over it!

Slowly, slowly
The night smokes up from the city to the stars,
The faint foreshadowed stars;
The smouldering night

Breathes upward like the breath
Of a woman asleep
With dim breasts rising and falling
And a smile of delicate dreams.

Softly, softly
The wind comes into the garden,
Like a lover that fears lest he waken his love,
And his hands drip with the scent of the roses
And his locks weep with the opiate odor of honeysuckle.
Sighing, sighing
As a lover that yearns for the lips of his love,
In a torment of bliss,
In a passionate dreaming of bliss,
The wind in the trees of the garden!

How intimate are the trees,—
Rustling like the secret darkness of the soul!
How still is the starlight,—
Aloof in the placidity of dream!

Outside the garden
A group of negroes passing in the street
Sing with ripe lush voices,
Sing with voices that swim
Like great slow gliding fishes
Through the scent of the honeysuckle:

My love 's waitin',
Waitin' by the river,
Waitin' till I come along!
Wait there, child; I'm comin'.

Jay-bird tol' me,
Tol' me in the mornin',

Tol' me she 'd be there to-night.
Wait there, child; I'm comin'.

Waves of dream!
Spell of the summer night!
Will of the grass that stirs in its sleep!
Desire of the honeysuckle!
And further away,
Like the plash of far-off waves in the fluid night,
The negroes, singing:

Whip-po'-will tol' me,
Tol' me in the evenin',
“Down by the bend where the cat-tails grow.”
Wait there, child; I'm comin'.

Lo, the moon,
Like a galleon sailing the night;
And the wash of the moonlight over the roofs and the trees!

Oh, my bride,
Come down from yonder lattice where you bide
Like a charmed princess in a Persian song!
I look up at your yellow window-panes
Set in the night with far-off wizardry.
Come down, come down; the night is fain of you,
The garden waits your footstep on its walks.

Lo, the moon,
Like a galleon sailing the night;
And the wash of the moonlight over the red brick wall and the roses!

A gleam of lamplight through an open door!
A footfall like the wind's upon the grass!
A rustle like the wind's among the leaves! ...
Dim as a dream of pale peach blooms of light,

Blue in the blue soft pallor of the moon,
She comes between the trees as a faint tune
Falls from a flute far off into the night. ...
So Death might come to one who knew him Love.

A SONG FOR MARNA.

Dame of the night of hair.
Like blue smoke blown!
World yet undreamed-of there
Lurks to be known.

Dame of the dizzy eyes,
Lure of dim quests!
World of what midnights lies
Under thy breasts!

Dame of the quench of love,
Give me to quaff!
There 's all the world 's made of
Under thy laugh.

Dame of the dare of gods,
Let the sky lower!
Time, give the world for odds,—
I choose this hour.

SEPTEMBER WOODLANDS.

This is not sadness in the wood;
The yellowbird
Flits joying through the solitude,
By no thought stirred
Save of his little duskier mate
And rompings jolly.

If there 's a Dryad in the wood,
She is not sad.
Too wise the spirits are to brood;
Divinely glad,
They dream with countenance sedate
Not melancholy.

THREE OF A KIND.

Three of us without a care
In the red September
Tramping down the roads of Maine,
Making merry with the rain,
With the fellow winds a-fare
Where the winds remember.

Three of us with shocking hats,
Tattered and unbarbered,
Happy with the splash of mud,
With the highways in our blood,
Bearing down on Deacon Platt's
Where last year we harbored.

We 've come down from Kennebec,
Tramping since last Sunday,
Loping down the coast of Maine,
With the sea for a refrain,
And the maples neck and neck
All the way to Fundy.

Sometimes lodging in an inn,
Cosey as a dormouse—
Sometimes sleeping on a knoll
With no rooftree but the Pole—
Sometimes halely welcomed in
At an old-time farmhouse.

Loafing under ledge and tree,
Leaping over boulders,
Sitting on the pasture bars,
Hail-fellow with storm or stars—
Three of us alive and free,
With unburdened shoulders!

Three of us with hearts like pine
That the lightnings splinter,
Clean of cleave and white of grain—
Three of us afoot again,
With a rapture fresh and fine
As a spring in winter!

All the hills are red and gold;
And the horns of vision
Call across the crackling air
Till we shout back to them there,
Taken captive in the hold
Of their bluff derision.

Spray-salt gusts of ocean blow
From the rocky headlands;
Overhead the wild geese fly,
Honking in the autumn sky;
Black sinister flocks of crow
Settle on the dead lands.

Three of us in love with life,
Roaming like wild cattle,
With the stinging air a-reel
As a warrior might feel
The swift orgasm of the knife
Slay him in mid-battle.

Three of us to march abreast
Down the hills of morrow!

With a clean heart and a few
Friends to clench the spirit to!—
Leave the gods to rule the rest,
And good-by, sorrow!

SHAKESPEARE HIMSELF:

FOR THE UNVEILING OF MR. PARTRIDGE'S STATUE OF THE POET.

The body is no prison where we lie
Shut out from our true heritage of sun;
It is the wings wherewith the soul may fly.
Save through this flesh so scorned and spat upon,
No ray of light had reached the caverned mind,
No thrill of pleasure through the life had run,
No love of nature or of humankind,
Were it but love of self, had stirred the heart
To its first deed. Such freedom as we find,
We find but through its service, not apart.
And as an eagle's wings upbear him higher
Than Andes or Himalaya, and chart
Rivers and seas beneath; so our desire,

With more celestial members yet, may soar
Into the space of empyrean fire,
Still bodied but more richly than before.

The body is the man; what lurks behind
Through it alone unveils itself. Therefore
We are not wrong, who seek to keep in mind
The form and feature of the mighty dead.
So back of all the giving is divined
The giver, back of all things done or said
The man himself in elemental speech
Of flesh and bone and sinew utterèd.

This is thy language, Sculpture. Thine to reach
Beneath all thoughts, all feelings, all desires,
To that which thinks and lives and loves, and teach
The world the primal selfhood of its sires,
Its heroes and its lovers and its gods.
So shall Apollo flame in marble fires,
The mien of Zeus suffice before he nods,
So Gautama in ivory dream out
The calm of Time's untrammelled periods,
So Sigurd's lips be in themselves a shout.

Mould us our Shakespeare, sculptor, in the form
His comrades knew, rare Ben and all the rout
That found the taproom of the Mermaid warm
With wit and wine and fellowship, the face
Wherein the men he chummed with found a charm
To make them love him; carve for us the grace
That caught Anne Hathaway in Shottery-side,
The hand that clasped Southampton's in the days
Ere that dark dame of passion and of pride
Burned in his heart the brand of her disdain,
The eyes that wept when little Hamnet died,
The lips that learned from Marlowe's and again

Taught riper lore to Fletcher and the rest,
The presence and demeanor sovereign
At last at Stratford calm and manifest,
That rested on the seventh day and scanned
His work and knew it good, and left the quest
And like his own enchanter broke his wand.

No viewless mind! The very shape, no less,
He used to speak and smile with, move and stand!
God is most God not in his loneliness,
Unfellowed, discreationed, unrevealed,
Nor thundering on Sinai, pitiless,
Nor when the seven vials are unsealed,
But when his spirit companions with our thought
And in his fellowship our pain is healed;
And we are likest God when we are brought
Most near to all men. Bring us near to him,
The gentle, human soul whose calm might wrought
Imperious Lear and made our eyes grow dim
For Imogen,—who, though he heard the spheres
“Still choiring to the young-eyed cherubim,”
Could laugh with Falstaff and his loose compeers
And love the rascal with the same big heart
That o'er Cordelia could not stay its tears.

For still the man is greater than his art.
And though thy men and women, Shakespeare, rise
Like giants in our fancy and depart,
Thyself art more than all their masteries,
Thy wisdom more than Hamlet's questionings
Or the cold searching of Ulysses' eyes,
Thy mirth more sweet than Benedick's flouts and flings,
Thy smiling dearer than Mercutio's,
Thy dignity past that of all thy kings,
And thy enchantment more than Prospero's.

For thou couldst not have had Othello's flaw,
Nor erred with Brutus,—greater, then, than those
For all their nobleness. Oh, albeit with awe,
Leave we the mighty phantoms and draw near
The man that fashioned them and gave them law
The Master Poet found with scarce a peer
In all the ages his domain to share,
Yet of all singers gentlest and most dear!
Oh, how shall words thy proper praise declare,
Divine in thy supreme humanity
And near as the inevitable air?

So he that wrought this image deemed of thee;
So I, thy lover, keep thee in my heart;
So may this figure set for men to see
Where the world passes eager for the mart,
Be as a sudden insight of the soul
That makes a darkness into order start,
And lift thee up for all men, fair and whole,
Till scholar, merchant, farmer, artisan,
Seeing, divine beneath the aureole
The fellow heart and know thee for a man.

VERLAINE.

Avid of life and love, insatiate vagabond,
With quest too furious for the graal he would have won,
He flung himself at the eternal sky, as one
Wrenching his chains but impotent to burst the bond.

Yet under the revolt, the revel, the despond,
What pools of innocence, what crystal benison!
As through a riven mist that glowers in the sun,
A stretch of God's blue calm glassed in a virgin pond.

Prowler of obscene streets that riot reels along,
And aisles with incense numb and gardens mad with rose,
Monastic cells and dreams of dim brocaded lawns,

Death, which has set the calm of Time upon his song,
Surely upon his soul has kissed the same repose
In some fair heaven the Christ has set apart for Fauns.

DISTILLATION.

They that eat the uncrushed grape
Walk with steady heels;
Lo, now, how they stare and gape
Where the poet reels!
He has drunk the sheer divine
Concentration of the vine.

A FRIEND'S WISH.

To C. W. S.

Give me your last Aloha,
When I go out of sight,
Over the dark rim of the sea
Into the Polar night!

And all the Northland give you
Skoal for the voyage begun,
When your bright summer sail goes down
Into the zones of sun!

HUNTING-SONG:

FROM “KING ARTHUR.”

Oh, who would stay indoor, indoor,
When the horn is on the hill?

(Bugle: Tarantara!

With the crisp air stinging, and the huntsmen singing,
And a ten-tined buck to kill!

Before the sun goes down, goes down,
We shall slay the buck of ten;

(Bugle: Tarantara!

And the priest shall say benison, and we shall ha'e venison,
When we come home again.

Let him that loves his ease, his ease,
Keep close and house him fair;

(Bugle: Tarantara!

He'll still be a stranger to the merry thrill of danger
And the joy of the open air.

But he that loves the hills, the hills,
Let him come out to-day!

(Bugle: Tarantara!

For the horses are neighing, and the hounds are baying,
And the hunt 's up, and away!

MARY OF MARKA.

Eric of Marka holds the knife:
“A nameless death for a nameless life.”—

“Mary of Marka, bid him stay,
And the morrow shall be our wedding-day.”—

“Will the blessing of priest give back my faith,
Or life to the child you left to death?”—

Eric of Marka holds the knife,
And turns to the mother that is no wife:

“Mary of Marka, have your will!
Shall I spare him, or shall I kill?”—

“He wrought me wrong when the days were sweet,
And he'll get no more but a winding-sheet.”

PREMONITION.

He said, “Good-night, my heart is light,
To-morrow morn at day
We two together in the dew
Shall forth and fare away.

“We shall go down the halls of dawn
To find the doors of joy;
We shall not part again, dear heart.”
And he laughed out like a boy.

He turned and strode down the blue road
Against the western sky
Where the last line of sunset glowed
As sullen embers die.

The night reached out her kraken arms
To clutch him as he passed,
And for one sudden moment
My soul shrank back aghast.

ACCIDENT IN ART.

What painter has not with a careless smutch
Accomplished his despair?—one touch revealing
All he had put of life, thought, vigor, feeling,
Into the canvas that without that touch
Showed of his love and labor just so much
Raw pigment, scarce a scrap of soul concealing!
What poet has not found his spirit kneeling
A-sudden at the sound of such or such
Strange verses staring from his manuscript,
Written he knows not how, but which will sound
Like trumpets down the years? So Accident
Itself unmasks the likeness of Intent,
And ever in blind Chance's darkest crypt
The shrine-lamp of God's purposing is found.

AT THE END OF THE DAY.

There is no escape by the river,
There is no flight left by the fen;
We are compassed about by the shiver
Of the night of their marching men.
Give a cheer!
For our hearts shall not give way.
Here 's to a dark to-morrow,
And here 's to a brave to-day!

The tale of their hosts is countless,
And the tale of ours a score;
But the palm is naught to the dauntless,
And the cause is more and more.
Give a cheer!
We may die, but not give way.
Here 's to a silent morrow,
And here 's to a stout to-day!

God has said: “Ye shall fail and perish;
But the thrill ye have felt to-night
I shall keep in my heart and cherish
When the worlds have passed in night.”
Give a cheer!
For the soul shall not give way.
Here 's to the greater to-morrow
That is born of a great to-day!

Now shame on the craven truckler
And the puling things that mope!
We 've a rapture for our buckler
That outwears the wings of hope.
Give a cheer!
For our joy shall not give way.
Here 's in the teeth of to-morrow
To the glory of to-day!