University of Virginia Library

OVER THE RED LEAVES.

In the sad season whose torches had kindled the woodlands and shades
Rolling their splendour through porches of quiet and dim colonnades,
Under the breast of the pigeon and over the red leaves of fire
Came to me like a religion the light of a holy desire,
Came in the sunset and glamour of colour and ravishing balm
When all the world and its clamour were lost in an infinite calm;
Pulse of a passionate craving for something above and yet nigh
Bred between resting and slaving, born between love and the sigh,
Marked by the sweep of the swallow dividing the air for its food,
Felt in the hush of the hollow and breathed in a maidenly mood.
Ever one beautiful yearning for what I still longed to achieve
Taught not by books and the learning of wisdom that did but deceive,
Quest for a virginal era of peace where no trumpet was blown,
Chase of a hopeless chimera and graces unheard and unknown—
Ever that impulse had haunted my seeking by night and by day
Stemmed not by mockers who taunted me, starved not by death or decay,
Leading me on with a vision that yet I interpreted not
Right in the teeth of derision and enmity and hatred and plot,
Full of unspeakable sorrow and big with unquenchable joy
Bridging to-day and to-morrow and time as if only a toy;
Strong as necessity calling me, through the vain babble of earth
Surging in billows, and falling as lightly as dew upon dearth;
Calm with an iron compulsion that drew me from baubles of gain
Back by a bitter revulsion to penance and exquisite pain,
Forward like destiny lifting me over impassable bars
Idly erected and rifting the fogs and unveiling the stars;
Yet it was gentle and lowly, and softer than infancy sleep,
Breathing an atmosphere holy and rounded by silences deep,
Stealing like snowflakes that stilly descend from its winterly womb,
Out of All-Space when the shrilly fierce blasts are at rest in their tomb.
Thirsting, unsatisfied hunger that raised me to dizzy ascents,
Thought re-creating me younger than children, divine discontents,
Weariness, doubtings importunate, touched with a beautiful fear,
Moments of error unfortunate, smiles blotted out with a tear,
Terrible dumbness and flashes of speech, the disconsolate voice
Mourning above its gray ashes and mocked by the crimes that rejoice,
Sudden recoils from the awful great plunge into deeps of the dark,
Trifling with treasures unlawful and ladders of song with the lark,
Emptiness aching and lonely, the populous roar of the mart,
Failure when failure was only the tenant that stifled the heart;
These were the feelings and fancies that lashed me with pitiless thong
Over my ruined romances by profitless marchings along,
Through the great pillars of broken white temples that scaled the blue sky
Rich with a promise unspoken and poets' unsyllabled cry,
Whither I knew not by windings of desert and mountain and moor
Tricked by the turns and the findings that never yet opened one door;
Seeking I knew not what haven in regions unguessed and unmapt,
Though on my heart was engraven a hope with which earth seemed enwrapt,
Through all the dead and the living and through all the ominous air
Sapping the whole with misgiving and counsels of gloom and despair.
Thus did I suffer and travel the worlds of the wandering thought
Helpless, and could not unravel the riddle the centuries wrought,
Till in the autumn and setting of suns that had guided me wrong,
Came with a kindly forgetting of each old enchantment and song
Under the breast of the pigeon and over the red leaves of fire—
Came to me like a religion the light of a holy desire,
Out of All-Time into vision and glory that suddenly brake
Sweet with a solemn decision and bade my dark besom awake.
Not in vain pomps that bedizen the fool for his soul and its loss
Clear on the golden horizon was painted in scarlet a Cross,
Written in blood and the letters put forth at an infinite grief
Paid for the loosing of fetters demanding that awful relief.
Then like a mist of black draping my doubts in a moment were gone,
Truth in its masterful shaping before me no mystery shone
Beaconing home, and my error which sent me in search of the Crown
Dwindled away with the terror that long held its prisoner down.
Now in each horrible stigma and study of passion and pain
All undeserved the enigma and trouble of life became plain,
Now I beheld as in lightning and blazoned with beautiful tears
Broadening for ever and brightening the secret of sorrowing years.
Not to the Cross is the journey of pilgrims who seek for the Crown
Ready to strive in the tourney with evil and win them renown;
Nay, but the Cross is the starting of faith when it steps to the fight,
Bucklered and brave at the parting of ways in the shadow or light
Upward or down, and the mortal who fain would be victor and son,
Enters alone by the portal which oped for the Crucified One,
Hanging himself and his burden of sin with which sorely he ails
Only to find the fair guerdon at last on the jewelling nails.