The complete poems of S. Weir Mitchell | ||
POEMS OF OCCASION
A DOCTOR'S CENTURY
READ AT THE CENTENNIAL DINNER OF THE COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS OF PHILADELPHIA, 1887
Good-night to those one hundred years,
To all the memories they bear
Of honest help for pains or tears;
When North and South were sad with graves,
Bore the true Christ of charity
Across the battles' crimson waves.
Our peerage,—yes, our lords of thought;
Their blazonry, unspotted lives
Which all the ways of honor taught.
For those who won no larger prize
Than humble days well lived can win
From thankful hearts and weeping eyes.
Shall bid us scan our honored roll,
For jolly jesters gay and good,
Who healed the flesh and charmed the soul,
Would make our prudish conscience tingle,
Then bore their devious lanterns home,
And slept, or heard the night-bell jingle.
Without a doctor or a nurse,
Without a “post,” without a dose,
He 's off on Time's old rattling hearse.
To all pathologists is dim;
An intercurrent malady,—
Bacterium chronos, finished him!
Like some young doctor fresh from college,
Disturbs our prudent age with doubts
And misty might of foggy knowledge.
The gains his calmer days shall store,
For them that in a hundred years
Shall see our “science grown to more,”
May stand beside some fleshly fellow,
And marvel what on earth he means,
When this new century's old and mellow.
That knowledge dies of newer truth,
That only duty simply done
Walks always with the step of youth.
With higher aims and larger light;
Give welcome to the century new,
And to the past a glad good-night.
MINERVA MEDICA
VERSES READ AT THE DINNER COMMEMORATIVE OF THE FIFTIETH YEAR OF THE DOCTORATE OF D. HAYES AGNEW, M. D., APRIL 6, 1888
To honor for our ancient guild a life of blameless days,
If from the well-worn road of toil I step aside to find
A poet's roses for the wreath your kindly wishes bind,
Be certain that their fragrance types, amid your laurel leaves,
The gentle love a tender heart in duty's chaplet weaves.
But it was on a chilly night, some month or two ago.
Within, the back-log warmed my toes; without, the frozen rain,
Storm-driven by the angry wind, clashed on my window-pane.
I lit a pipe, stirred up the fire, and, dry with thirst for knowledge,
Plunged headlong in an essay by a Fellow of the College.
But, sir, I 've often seen of late that this especial thirst
Is not of all its varied forms the keenest or the worst.
At all events, that gentleman—that pleasant College Fellow—
He must have been of all of us the juiciest and most mellow.
You ask his name, degree, and fame; you want to know that rare man?
It was n't you,—nor you,—nor you,—no, sir, 't was not the Chairman!
For minutes ten I drank of him; quenched was my ardent thirst;
Another minute, and my veins with knowledge, sir, had burst;
A moment more, my head fell back, my lazy eyelids closed,
And on my lap that Fellow's book at equal peace reposed.
Then I remembered me the night that essay first was read,
And how we thought it could n't all have come from one man's head.
A snore as of an actor shy rehearsing for his part.
At ten, a shameless chorus around the hall had run,
The Chairman dreamed a feeble joke, and said the noes had won.
At twelve the Treasurer fell asleep, the wakeful Censors slumbered,
The Secretary's minutes grew to hours quite unnumbered.
At six A. M. that Fellow paused, perchance a page to turn,
And up I got, and cried, “I move the College do adjourn!”
They did n't, sir; they sat all day. It made my flesh to creep.
All night they sat;—that could n't be. Goodness! was I asleep?
Was I asleep? With less effect that Fellow might have tried
Codeia, Morphia, Urethan, Chloral, Paraldehyde.
In vain my servant called aloud, “Sir, here 's a solemn letter
To say they want a song from you, for lack of some one better.
The Chairman says his man will wait, while you sit down and write;
He says he's not in any haste,—and make it something light;
He says you need n't vex yourself to try to be effulgent,
Because, he says, champagne enough will keep them all indulgent.”
I slept—at least I think I slept—an hour by estimation,
But if I slept, I must have had unconscious cerebration,
Pray take it as you take your wife,—“for better or for worse.”
This spring-tide day from that do sadly part,
When, 'mid a learned throng, one shy, grave lad,
Half conscious, won the Mistress of our Art.
Unseen of men, and claimed the student boy;
Touched with her cool, sweet lips his ruddy cheek,
And bade him follow her through grief and joy.
“Be mine to-day, as Paré once was mine;
Like Hunter mine, and all who nobly won
The fadeless honors of that shining line.
The steadfast forehead, and the constant soul;
Mine the firm heart on simple duty bent,
And mine the manly gift of self-control.
That gilds the child of barter and of trade;
That steady hand, that ever-pitying touch,
Not in my helping shall be thus repaid.
And I will set your feet in honor's ways;
Friends I will give, and length of crowded years,
And crown your manhood with a nation's praise.
The anguished sufferer in the clutch of pain,
The camp, the field, the long, sad, waiting ward,
Shall seek your kindly face, nor seek in vain;
The lines of pity 'neath the brow of thought,
Below your whitening hair the hurt shall read
How well you learned what I my best have taught.”
Upon the noisy century's sharp divide,
And at your side, to-night, I see her still,
The gracious woman, strong and tender-eyed.
Changeless and beautiful and wise and brave,
Full fifty years have gone since first your lips
To noblest uses pledged that forehead grave.
His golden-wedding chimes I heard to-night;
We know its offspring; lo, from sea to sea
His pupil-children bless his living light.
What lacks he that on well-used years attends?
All that we have to give are his to-day,—
Love, honor, and obedience, troops of friends.
VERSES
READ ON THE PRESENTATION BY S. WEIR MITCHELL TO THE PHILADELPHIA COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS OF SARAH W. WHITMAN'S PORTRAIT OF OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, M. D.
To summon tears and stir the human heart,
With fictive grief to bring the soul annoy,
And leave a dew-drop in the rose of joy.
A nobler purpose had the Masters wise
Who from your walls look down with kindly eyes.
Theirs the firm hand and theirs the ready brain
Strong for the battle with disease and pain.
Large were their lives: these scholars, gentle, brave,
Knew all of man from cradle unto grave.
What note of torment had they failed to hear?
All grief's stern gamut knew each pitying ear.
Nor theirs the useless sympathy that stands
Beside the suffering with defenceless hands;
Divinely wise, their pity had the art
To teach the brain the ardor of the heart.
These left a meaner for a nobler George;
These trod the red snows by the Valley Forge,
Saw the wild birth-throes of a nation's life,
The long-drawn misery and the doubtful strife:
Yea, and on darker fields they left their dead
Where grass-grown streets heard but the bearer's tread,
While the sad death-roll of those fatal days
Left small reward beyond the poor man's praise.
Lips seem to move now for a century dumb:
From tongues long hushed the sound of welcome falls,
“Place, place for Holmes upon these honored walls.”
The lights are out, the festal flowers fade,
Our guests are gone, the great hall wrapped in shade.
Lone in the midst this silent picture stands,
Ringed with the learning of a score of lands.
Fromy dusty tomes in many a tongue I hear
A gentle Babel,—“Welcome, Brother dear.
Yea, though Apollo won thy larger hours,
And stole our fruit, and only left us flowers,
The poet's rank thy title here completes—
Doctor and Poet,—so were Goldsmith,—Keats.”
The voices failing murmur to an end
With “Welcome, Doctor, Scholar, Poet, Friend.”
When the great Hub had not so many spokes,
Two wandering gods, upon the Common, found
A weary schoolboy sleeping on the ground.
Swift to his brain their eager message went,
Swift to his heart each ardent claim was sent:
“Be mine,” Minerva cried. “This tender hand
Skilled in the art of arts shall understand
With magic touch the demon pain to lay.
From skill to skill and on to clearer day
Far through the years shall fare that ample brain
To read the riddles of disease and pain.”
“Nay, mine the boy,” Apollo cried aloud,
“His the glad errand, beautiful and proud,
To wing the arrows of delightful mirth,
To slay with jests the sadder things of earth.
At his clear laugh each morbid fancy flies.
Rich is the quiver I shall give his bow,
The eagle's pinion some bold shafts shall know;
Swift to its mark the angry arrow-song
Shall find the centre of a nation's wrong;
Or in a people's heart one tingling shot
Pleads not in vain against the war-ship's lot.
Yea, I will see that for a gentler flight
The dove's soft feathers send his darts aright
When smiles and pathos, kindly wedded, chant
The plaintive lay of that unmarried aunt;
Or sails his Nautilus the sea of time,
Blown by the breezes of immortal rhyme,
Or with a Godspeed from her poet's brain,
Sweet Clémence trips adown the Rue de Seine.
The humming-bird shall plume the quivering song,
Blithe, gay, and restless, never dull or long,
Where gaily passionate his soul is set
To sing the Katydid's supreme regret,
Or creaking jokes, through never-ending days,
Rolls the quaint story of the Deacon's chaise.
Away with tears! When this glad poet sings,
The angel Laughter spreads her broadest wings.
By land and sea where'er St. George's cross
And the starred banner in the breezes toss,
The merry music of his wholesome mirth
Sends rippling smiles around our English earth.”
Divide the honors,—let us share the boy!”
A DECANTER OF MADEIRA, AGED 86, TO GEORGE BANCROFT, AGED 86
GREETING:
I
Good master, you and I were bornIn “Teacup days” of hoop and hood,
And when the silver cue hung down,
And toasts were drunk, and wine was good;
II
When kin of mine (a jolly brood)From sideboards looked, and knew full well
What courage they had given the beau,
How generous made the blushing belle.
III
Ah, me! what gossip could I prateOf days when doors were locked at dinners!
Believe me, I have kissed the lips
Of many pretty saints—or sinners.
IV
Lip service have I done, alack!I don't repent, but come what may,
What ready lips, sir, I have kissed,
Be sure at least I shall not say.
V
Two honest gentlemen are we,—I Demi John, whole George are you;
When Nature grew us one in years
She meant to make a generous brew.
VI
She bade me store for festal hoursThe sun our south-side vineyard knew;
To sterner tasks she set your life,
As statesman, writer, scholar, grew.
VII
Years eighty-six have come and gone;At last we meet. Your health to-night.
Take from this board of friendly hearts
The memory of a proud delight.
VIII
The days that went have made you wise,There 's wisdom in my rare bouquet.
I'm rather paler than I was;
And, on my soul, you 're growing gray.
IX
I like to think, when Toper TimeHas drained the last of me and you,
Some here shall say, They both were good,—
The wine we drank, the man we knew.
THE BIRTH AND DEATH OF PAIN
A POEM READ OCTOBER SIXTEENTH, MDCCCXCVI, AT THE COMMEMORATION OF THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FIRST PUBLIC DEMONSTRATION OF SURGICAL ANÆSTHESIA IN THE MASSACHUSETTS GENERAL HOSPITAL, BOSTON.
Delay the task your honoring kindness set.
I miss one face to all men ever dear;
I miss one voice that all men loved to hear.
How glad were I to sit with you apart,
Could the dead master use his higher art
To lift on wings of ever-lightsome mirth
The burdened muse above the dust of earth,
To stamp with jests the heavy ore of thought,
To give a day with proud remembrance fraught,
The vital pathos of that Holmes-spun art
Which knew so well to reach the common heart!
Alas! for me, for you, that fatal hour!
Gone is the master! Ah! not mine the power
To gild with jests that almost win a tear
The thronging memories that are with us here.
Come back with me to nature's primal day.
What mighty forces pledged the dust to life!
What awful will decreed its silent strife,
Till through vast ages rose on hill and plain
Life's saddest voice, the birthright wail of pain!
Served but to add a torment twice refined,
As life, more tender as it grew more sweet,
The cruel links of sorrow found complete
When yearning love, to conscious pity grown,
Felt the mad pain-thrills that were not its own.
Set this stern fiat for the tribes of men?
This none shall 'scape who share our human fates:
One stern democracy of anguish waits
By poor men's cots, within the rich man's gates.
What purpose hath it? Nay, thy quest is vain:
Earth hath no answer. If the baffled brain
Cries, 'T is to warn, to punish!—ah, refrain.
When writhes the child beneath the surgeon's hand,
What soul shall hope that pain to understand?
Lo! Science falters o'er the hopeless task,
And Love and Faith in vain an answer ask,
When thrilling nerves demand what good is wrought
Where torture clogs the very source of thought.
Seeks but to count a lessening sum of tears.
The rack is gone; the torture-chamber lies
A sorry show for shuddering tourist eyes.
How useless pain both Church and State have learned
Since the last witch or patient martyr burned.
Yet still, forever, he who strove to gain
By swift despatch a shorter lease for pain
Saw the grim theatre, and 'neath his knife
Felt the keen torture in the quivering life.
A word for him who, silent, grave, serene,
Recorded pity through the hand of skill,
Heard not a cry, but, ever conscious, still
In mercy merciless, swift, bold, intent,
Felt the slow moment that in torture went
While 'neath his touch, as none to-day has seen,
In anguish shook life's agonized machine.
The task is o'er; the precious blood is stayed;
But double price the hour of tension paid.
A pitying hand is on the sufferer's brow—
“Thank God, 't is over!” Few who face me now
Recall this memory. Let the curtain fall;
Far gladder days shall know this storied hall!
Still taught our art to close some fount of tears,
Yet who that served this sacred home of pain
Could e'er have dreamed one scarce-imagined gain,
Or hoped a day would bring his feartful art
No need to steel the ever-kindly heart?
Some trust delusive left the old despair;
Some comet thought flashed fitful through the night,
Prophetic promise of the coming light;
Then radiant morning broke, and ampler hope
To art and science gave illumined scope.
What love divine with noblest courage fired
One eager soul that paid in bitter tears
For the glad helping of unnumbered fears,
From the strange record of creation tore
Struck from the roll of pangs one awful sum,
Made pain a dream, and suffering gently dumb!
Whatever triumphs still shall hold the mind,
Whatever gift shall yet enrich mankind,
Ah! here no hour shall strike through all the years,
No hour as sweet as when hope, doubt, and fears,
'Mid deeping stillness, watched one eager brain,
With Godlike will, decree the Death of Pain.
No pæans greeted, and no poet sang;
No cannon thundered from the guarded strand
This mighty victory to a grateful land!
We took the gift so humbly, simply given,
And, coldly selfish—left our debt to Heaven.
How shall we thank him? Hush! A gladder hour
Has struck for him; a wiser, juster power
Shall know full well how fitly to reward
The generous soul that found the world so hard.
Shall deal not vainly with man's changing fates,
Of free-born thought or war's heroic deeds,
Much have your proud hands given, but naught exceeds
This heaven-sent answer to the cry of prayer,
This priceless gift which all mankind may share.
To note the process of creation's laws!
Ah, surely, He whose dark, unfathomed mind
With prescient thought the scheme of life designed,
Who bade His highest creature slowly rise,
Saw with a God's pure joy His ripening plan,
His highest mercy brought by man to man.
A PRAYER, AFTER SANTIAGO
“And in Thy majesty ride prosperously, because of truth and meekness and righteousness; and Thy right hand shall teach Thee terrible things.”—
Psalm xlv. 4.Of every arm we dare to wield,
Be Thine the thanks, as Thine the force,
On reeling deck or stricken field;
The thunder of the battle hour
Is but the whisper of Thy power.
Oh, give us, more than strength and skill,
The calmness born of sense of right,
The steadfast heart, the quiet will
To keep the awful tryst with death,
To know Thee in the cannon's breath.
All hearts upon the victor deck,
When, high above the battle-shroud,
The white flag fluttered o'er the wreck,
And Thine the hand that checked the cheer
In that wild hour of death and fear!
To teach, amid the wrath of war,
Sweet pity for a humbled race,
Some thought of those in lands afar
Where sad-eyed women vainly yearn
For them that never shall return.
Whose children are of every land,
Inform with love our alien rule,
And stay us with Thy warning hand
If, tempted by imperial greed,
We, in Thy watchful eyes, exceed;
When we ourselves have passed away,
And all are gone who drew the sword,
The children of our breed may say,
These were our sires, who, doubly great,
Could strike, yet spare the fallen state.
BOOKS AND THE MAN
That give no quarter, and the ranks of love
Break here and there, untouched there still abide
Friends whom no adverse fate can wound or move:
Who neither fail nor falter; we, alas!
Can hope no more of friendship than to fill
The mortal hour of earth and, mortal, pass.
Through every fortune with unchanging looks,
Unasked no counsel give, are silent folk;
The careless-minded lightly call them books.
Fair, courteous gentlemen who wait our will
When come the lonely hours the scholar loves,
And glows the hearth and all the house is still.
Quaint, learned and odd, or very wisely shrewd,
Or with Dan Chaucer win a quiet hour
Far from our noisy century's alien mood?
In the high company of gallant souls,
Where, ringed with stately death, proud Grenville lies,
Or the far thunder of the Armada rolls?
And Padua knew, and that heroic soul—
Our brave Vesalius? Long the list of friends,
Far through the ages runs that shining roll.
A mystic language reads between the lines:
Gay, gallant fancies, songs unheard before,
Ripe with the worldless wisdom love divines;
The viewless dreams of poet, scholar, sage;
What marginalia of unwritten thought
With glowing rubrics deck the splendid page!
Where Bacon pondered o'er the words we scan.
Here grave Montaigne with cynic wisdom played,
And lo, the book becomes for us a man!
Where Lamb, forgetting sorrow, loved to dwell,
Or that which won from Thackeray's face a smile,
Or lit the gloom of Raleigh's prison cell?
The comrade heart to pain an easier prey,
They, too, were heirs of sorrow; well they know
With what brave thoughts to charm thy cares away.
From mortal cares that mock the mind's control,
For thee Cervantes laughs the world away!
What priest is wiser than our Shakespeare's soul?
This wiser turn a larger wisdom lends:
Show me the books he loves and I shall know
The man far better than through mortal friends.
And gaily winged with thought the flying night,
And won with ease the friendship of the mind?—
I like to call it friendship at first sight.
And, in the practice of life's happiest art,
You little guessed how readily you won
The added friendship of the open heart.
In noble service of life's highest ends,
And my glad capture of a London night
Disputes with me a continent of friends.
The fruitful amity of forty years,—
A score for me, a score for you, and so
How simple that arithmetic appears!
Must friendships own to earn the title old?
Shall none seem old save he who won or lost
When fists were up or ill-kept wickets bowled?
Or with a shinny whacked the youthful shin?
Or knew the misery of the pliant birch?
Or, apple-tempted, shared in Adam's sin?
Old friends are best, and, like to well-worn shoes,
The oldest are the easiest. Not for me!
The easy friend is not the friend I choose.
I 'd have the proverb otherwise expressed—
Friends are not best because they're merely old,
But only old because they proved the best.
ON THE RETURN OF THE CONFEDERATE FLAGS BY CONGRESS
The crash of the musketry's rattle,
The bugle and drum.
We have drooped in the dust, long and lonely;
The blades that flashed joy are rust only,
The far-rolling war-music dumb.
For whom overhead proudly flying
We challenged the foe.
The storm of the charge we have breasted,
In the pride of a day, long ago.
Shall answer both those past awaking
And life's cry of pain;
But we never more shall be tossing
On surges of battle where crossing
The swift-flying death-bearers rain.
Again with the war-lust are dreaming
The call of the shell.
What gray heads look up at us sadly?
Are these the stern troopers who madly
Rod straight at the battery's hell?
Pale spectres of battle surround us;
The gray line is dressed.
Ye hear not, but they who are bringing
Your symbols of honor are singing
The song of death's bivouac rest.
O star flag! once eager to meet us
When war-lines were set.
Go carry to far fields of glory
The soul-stirring thrill of the story,
Of days when in anger we met.
In quiet, where God the heart searches,
That under us met
The voice of the torn banners saying,
“Forgive, but ah, never forget.”
REMARKS OF DR. S. WEIR MITCHELL AT THE DINNER IN HONOR OF WILLIAM H. WELCH, 2 APRIL, 1910.
Dr. Mitchell: Mr. Chairman, Gentlemen, and You, my Friend, the Sacrificial Victim of the After-Dinner Hour: Travel in strange lands is the more pleasant for knowledge of the language spoken, and it was the fact of my lack of tongues which made me doubt how fit I was to appear on this occasion, where, as I learned somewhat appalled, everybody was expected to talk Welch. To stumble bewildered, an intellectual tenderfoot, in the learned land of Johns Hopkins, might certainly give any man pause, but in the court of wisdom there must be of necessity a fool, and so I accept the position of the provider of sentimental folly and make my little venture.
'T is said that hovering near your infant couchThe fairy forms of Art and Science flew
In generous counsel o'er the golden gifts
They bade a joyous future pledge to you.
And if, they said, your life shall fail to give
What Bacon called the “hostages to fate,”
Unnumbered friends shall challenge love with love,
And ever through your happy hours elate.
Reluctant mysteries from their lovers dear,
Shall on victorious quests divinely smile
And tell her secrets to your listening ear.
Not yours shall be, companioned by the stars,
To soar through space on thought's ambitious wings
To worlds unseen; nay, yours shall be to roam
That wondrous other realm of little things.
There, half unread, the ever less and less
Lost in the lessening less, eludes our sight
In space as sunless and more dark with fate
Than are the baleful planets of the night.
There shall you stand upon the twilight verge,
Where fades the sight of each material thing,
And baffled, wonder, what an hundred years
To other eyes than ours may haply bring.
A lilliputian world to you we give,
Where deadly swarm the grim bacterial blights,
With amboceptors, strange malignant priests,
For demon marriage with satanic rites.
Here stegomyia and anopheles
Are huge behemoths of this lesser sphere
Where gay spirilla wriggle lively tails,
And vexed erythrocytes grow pale with fear.
“Be these your friends,” the flitting fairies cried,
“But who is this that leads a pirate crew?
“Bacterium chronos! Get you gone from hence,
“Or hungry leucocytes we'll set on you!”
Has rung the fatal hour of Osler's jest:
Still young, the merry smile, the glowing mind,
No least sad failure ever yet confessed.
Life's summer overflow reserves for you
The golden days of lingering life's September,
October loitering waits for you, my friend,
And summer haunted glories of November.
Perhaps Johns Hopkins has some secret charm
That lets professors very neatly swindle
The robber time and feel enfeebling days
Toward youthful vigor quite reversely dwindle!
Alas, a most appalling doom awaits!—
A pedriatic clinic at the end—
Pertussis, measles, teeth to cut, and then
The bottle,—but which bottle? Ah! my friend,
We'll ask of Kelly, he will surely know
When comes at last your latest, earliest year,
With all of physiology at fault
How shall you ever gently disappear?
Far be the day for you. One grief I own;
What science won my art has something cost
Since the clear mind and ever-ready smile
Were to the bedside visit sadly lost.
Ave et vale! O magister, take
Greeting and blessing from our greatest soul!
The rippling sweetness of his echoing verse
I seem to hear from that far century roll.
The stately splendor of the Latin line;
Ah! happy he to whom this greeting went—
Thy spirit-kinsman, Harvey—makes it thine!
“Vir doctissime!
Humanissime!
Vale mi' Amantissime!
Tuus ex anima.”
TO ABRAHAM JACOBI, M.D.
At the dinner given to celebrate his seventieth birthday.
From youth to age has known one single end.
Take from our lips two well-won titles now,
Magister et Amicus—Master, Friend.
Far from the rugged path you knew to climb,
Take, with our thanks for high example set,
The palm of honor in this festal time.
The hopes of freedom armed your sturdy youth;
As true and brave in these maturer years
Your ardent struggle in the cause of truth.
Could break your vigor of unconquered will;
And the gray years which build as cruel walls
Have found and left you ever victor still.
The well-earned praise of all who love our art
For this long season of unending work,
For strength of brain, and precious wealth of heart.
The gallant life that taught men how to meet
Unfriended exile, sorrow, want, and all
That crush the weak with failure and defeat.
With many gifts proud freedom's generous hand
That bade you largely breathe a freer air,
And made you welcome to a freer land.
Are they who watched you thro' laborious years,
Beyond these walls, in many a grateful home,
Your step dismissed a thousand pallid fears.
Thro' darkened hours how many a mother knew!
And in that look won sweet reprieve of hope,
Sure that all earth could give was there with you.
That lie before you, thronged with busy hours!
Ave Amice! Take our earnest prayer
That all their ways fair fortune strew with flowers.
IN MEMORY OF WILLIAM HENRY DRUMMOND
THE CANADIAN POET
To sing for those who know not how to praise
The woodsman's life, the farmer's patient toil,
The peaceful drama of laborious days.
And with the touch that makes the world akin,
A welcome guest of lonely cabin-homes,
Found, too, no heart he could not enter in.
The humble heroes of the lumber drives,
Love, laugh, or weep along his peopled verse,
Blithe 'mid the pathos of their meagre lives.
He left us pictures no one may forget—
Courteau, Baptiste, Camille mon frère, and, best,
The good, brave curé, he of Calumette.
The silent forest and the birches' flight
Down the white peril of the rapids' rush,
And the cold glamor of the Northern night.
Some wonder-secret of the poet's spell
Died with this master of the peasant thought.
Peace to this Northland singer, and farewell!
ODE ON A LYCIAN TOMB
On this famous monument, known as Les Pleureuses, and now in the museum at Constantinople, one and the same mourning woman is carved in many attitudes of grief. These eighteen figures stand niched between Doric columns. Above and below are funeral scenes—battle and the chase.
I
One woman garbed in sorrow's every mood;
Each sad presentment celled apart, in fear
Lest that herself upon herself intrude
And break some tender dream of sorrow's day,
Here cloistered lonely, set in marble gray.
Forever married to immortal grief!
All life's high-passioned sorrow far above,
Past help of time's compassionate relief:
These changeless stones are treasuries of regret
And mock the term by time for sorrow set.
To weep with thee, and give thy grief a voice;
And such as have not added to life's sum
The count of loss, they who do still rejoice
In love which time yet leaveth unassailed,
Here tremble, by prophetic sadness paled.
For surely I, who deepest grief have known,
Share thy stilled sadness, which must ever be
Too changeless, and unending like my own,
And sorrow that can never compass peace.
Which wakes sad rhythms in the human heart,
Must oft with thee have wondered silently,
Touched by the strange revealments of his art,
When at his side you watched the chisel's grace
Foretell what time would carve upon thy face.
Suggests its speechless plea in marbles old,
We add the anguish of an equal pain,
Shall not the sorrow of these statues cold
Inherit memories of our tears, and keep
Record of grief long time in death asleep?
If, in that timeless time the soul should wake
To wander heart-blind where no years may dull
Remembrance, with a heart forbid to break.
—Dove of my home, that fled life's stranded ark,
The sea of death is shelterless and dark.—
Too much my thoughts have dwelt with thee apart;
Again my grief is young: full well I know
The pang re-born, that mocked my feeble art
With that too human wail in pain expressed,
The parent cry above the empty nest!
Not islandless is this uncharted sea;
Nor any terror of what is to be.
'T is but to trust one pilot; soon are seen
The sunlit peaks of thought and peace serene.”
II
In one God worship, very surely He
Will for thy tears and mine have some reply,
When death assumes the trust of life, and we
Hear once again the voices of our dead,
And on a newer earth contented tread.
Thy dream of heaven no wiser than my own;
Nature and love, the sound of children's feet,
Home, husbands, friends; what better hast thou known?
What of the gods could ask thy longing prayer
Except again this earth and love to share?
We build of dreams another earth than ours,
And high in thought's thinned atmosphere, with wings
That helpless beat, and mock our futile powers,
Falter and flutter, seeing naught above,
And naught below except the earth we love.
With death's dark riddle answered, and unspoiled
By fear, or sin, or pain; where joy and mirth
Have no sad shadows, and love is not foiled,
And where, companioned by the mighty dead,
The dateless books of time and fate are read.
III
This innocent marble with eternal doom!
What most imperious grief doth here oppress
The one sad soul which haunts this peopled tomb
In many forms that all these years have worn
One thought, for time's long comment more forlorn!
Reluctant, in these marbles eloquent,
The ancient tale of loss doth here confess
The first confusing, mad bewilderment,
Life's unbelief in death, in love fore-spent,
Thought without issue, child-like discontent.
Again his glass hath turned: I see thee stand
Thought-netted, or, like one who in a dream
Self-wildered, in some alien forest land
Lone-wandering, in endless mazes lost,
Wearily stumbles over tracks re-crossed.
Roses and laurel on thy warrior's grave,
And with thy marble self again to grieve,
Glad of what genius unto sorrow gave,
Interpreting what had been and would be,
Love, tears, despair, attained serenity.
Grow in the urgent anguish of defeat,
And with mysterious confidence await
Wherefore this quiet face so proudly set
To front life's duties, but naught to forget.
Whereon the master hand of grief doth fall,
Leaving love's vibrant tissue resonant
With echoes, ever waking at the call
Of every kindred tone: so grief doth change
The instrument o'er which his fateful fingers range.
VESPERAL
The mists lie low on hill and bay,
The autumn sheaves are dewless, dry;
But I have had the day.
When at Thy call I have the night,
Brief be the twilight as I pass
From light to dark, from dark to light.
The complete poems of S. Weir Mitchell | ||