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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/37557-8.txt b/37557-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1f8ff99 --- /dev/null +++ b/37557-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2283 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Open Water, by Arthur Stringer + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Open Water + +Author: Arthur Stringer + +Release Date: October 12, 2011 [EBook #37557] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OPEN WATER *** + + + + +Produced by Al Haines + + + + + + + + + + +OPEN WATER + + +BY + +ARTHUR STRINGER + +AUTHOR OF "THE WOMAN IN THE RAIN," "IRISH POEMS," ETC. + + + + +NEW YORK--JOHN LANE COMPANY + +LONDON--JOHN LANE--THE BODLEY HEAD + +TORONTO--BELL & COCKBURN + +MCMXIV + + + + +Copyright, 1914, by + +JOHN LANE COMPANY + + + +Press of J. J. Little & Ives Co. + +New York, U. S. A. + + + + +CONTENTS + + + A Foreword + Milkweed + Home Thoughts + Life + Some Day, Oh Seeker of Dreams + Black Hours + Before Renewal + Hill-Top Hours + Letters from Home + Chains + The Drums + Anæsthesia + A Summer Night + Sappho's Tomb + The Wild Swans Pass + At Notre Dame + The Pilot + Doors + Spring Floods + The Turn of the Year + If I Love You + What Shall I Care? + Hunter and Hunted + Apple Blossoms + The House of Life + Ultimata + The Life on the Table + You Bid Me to Sleep + The Last of Summer + At Charing Cross + Prescience + The Steel Workers + The Children + The Nocturne + The Wild Geese + The Day + The Revolt + Atavism + March Twilight + The Echo + Autumn + Faces + There Is Strength in the Soil + Life-Drunk + My Heart Stood Empty + One Night in the Northwest + Dreamers + The Question + The Gift of Hate + The Dream + One Room in My Heart + The Meaning + The Veil + The Man of Dreams + April on the Rialto + The Surrender + The Passing + Protestations + I Sat in the Sunlight + + + + +A FOREWORD + +To even the casual reader of poetry who may chance to turn to the +following pages it will be evident that the lyrics contained therein +have been written without what is commonly known as end-rhyme. It may +also be claimed by this reader that the lyrics before him are without +rhythm. As such, it may at first seem that they mark an effort in +revolt against two of the primary assets of modern versification. + +All art, of course, has its ancestry. While it is the duty of poetry +both to remember and to honour its inherited grandeurs, the paradoxical +fact remains that even this most convention-ridden medium of emotional +expression is a sort of warfare between the embattled soul of the +artist, seeking articulation, and the immuring traditions with which +time and the prosodian have surrounded him. + +In painting and in music, as in sculpture and the drama, there has been +a movement of late to achieve what may be called formal emancipation, a +struggle to break away from the restraints and the technical +obligations imposed upon the worker by his artistic predecessors. In +one case this movement may be called Futurism, and in another it may be +termed Romanticism, but the tendency is the same. The spirit of man is +seen in rebellion against a form that has become too intricate or too +fixed to allow him freedom of utterance. + +Poetry alone, during the last century, seems to have remained stable, +in the matter of structure. Few new forms have been invented, and with +one or two rare exceptions success has been achieved through +ingeniously elaborating on an already established formula and through +meticulously re-echoing what has already been said. This has resulted, +on the one hand, in a technical dexterity which often enough resembles +the strained postures of acrobatism, and, on the other, in that +constantly reiterated complaint as to the hollowness and aloofness of +modern poetry. Yet this poetry is remote and insincere, not because +the modern spirit is incapable of feeling, but because what the singer +of to-day has felt has not been directly and openly expressed. His +apparel has remained mediæval. He must still don mail to face Mausers, +and wear chain-armour against machine-guns. He must scout through the +shadowy hinterlands of consciousness in attire that may be historic, +yet at the same time is distressingly conspicuous. And when he begins +his assault on those favouring moments or inspirational moods which +lurk in the deeper valleys and by-ways of sensibility, he must begin it +as a marked man, pathetically resplendent in that rigid steel which is +an anachronism and no longer an armour. + +Rhyme, from the first, has been imposed upon him. His only escape from +rhyme has been the larger utterance of blank verse. Yet the iambic +pentameter of his native tongue, perfected in the sweeping sonority of +the later Shakespearean tragedies and left even more intimidatingly +austere in the organ-like roll of Milton, has been found by the later +singer to be ill-fitted for the utterance of those more intimate moods +and those subjective experiences which may be described as +characteristically modern. Verse, in the nature of things, has become +less epic and racial, and more and more lyric and personal. The poet, +consequently, has been forced back into the narrower domain so formally +and so rigidly fenced in by rhyme. And before touching on the +limitations resulting from this incarceration, it may be worth while to +venture a brief glance back over the history of what Milton himself +denominated as "the jingling sounds of like endings" and Goldsmith +characterized as "a vile monotony" and even Howells has spoken of as +"the artificial trammels of verse." + +It has been claimed that those early poets of Palestine who affected +the custom of beginning a number of lines or stanzas with the same +letter of the alphabet unconsciously prepared the way for that +latter-day ornamental fringe known as end-rhyme. Others have claimed +that this insistence of a consonance of terminals is a relique of the +communal force of the chant, where the clapping of hands, the stamping +of feet, or the twanging of bow-strings marked the period-ends of +prehistoric recitative. The bow-string of course, later evolved into +the musical instrument, and when poetry became a written as well as a +spoken language the consonantal drone of rhyming end-words took the +place of the discarded instrument which had served to mark a secondary +and wider rhythm in the progress of impassioned recitative. + +It must be admitted, however, even in the face of this ingenious +pleading, that rhyme is a much more modern invention than it seems. +That it is not rudimentary in the race is evidenced by the fact that +many languages, such as the Celtic, the Teutonic, and the Scandinavian, +are quite without it. The Greeks, even in their melic poetry, saw no +need for it. The same may be said of the Romans, though with them it +will occasionally be found that the semi-feet of the pentameter +constitute what may be called accidental rhyme. Rhyming Latin verse, +indeed, does not come into existence until the end of the fourth +century, and it is not until the time of the Conquest that end-rhyme +becomes in any way general in English song. Layman, in translating +Wace's _Le Brut d'Angleterre_, found the original work written in +rhymed lines, and in following that early model produced what is +probably the first rhymed poem written in England. + +With the introduction of end-rhymes came the discovery that a +decoration so formal could convert verse into something approaching the +architectural. It gave design to the lyric. With this new +definiteness of outline, of course, came a newer rigidity of medium. +Form was acknowledged as the visible presentation of this particular +art. Formal variations became a matter of studious attention. Efforts +were made to leave language in itself instrumental, and in these +efforts sound frequently comes perilously near triumphing over sense. +The exotic formal growths of other languages were imported into +England. No verbal _tour de force_ of _troubadour_ or _trouvère_ or +_jongleur_ or Ronsardist was too fantastic for imitation and adoption. +The one-time primitive directness of English was overrun by such forms +as the ballade, the chant royal, the rondel, the kyrielle, the rondeau +and the rondeau redoublé, the virelai and the pantoum, the sestina, the +villanelle, and last, yet by no means least, the sonnet. But through +the immense tangle of our intricate lyric growths it can now be seen +that mere mechanics do not always make poetry. While rhyme has, +indeed, served its limited purposes, it must be remembered that the +highest English verse has been written without rhyme. This verbal +embroidery, while it presents to the workman in words a pleasingly +decorative form, at the same time imposes on him both an adventitious +restraint and an increased self-consciousness. The twentieth century +poet, singing with his scrupulously polished vocalisation, usually +finds himself content to re-echo what has been said before. He is +unable to "travel light"; pioneering with so heavy a burden is out of +the question. Rhyme and meter have compelled him to sacrifice content +for form. It has left him incapable of what may be called abandonment. +And the consciousness of his technical impedimenta has limited the +roads along which he may adventure. His preoccupation with formal +exactions has implanted in him an instinctive abhorrence for anything +beyond the control of what he calls common-sense. Dominated by this +emotional and intellectual timidity, he has attributed to end-rhyme and +accentual rhythm the self-sufficiency of mystic rites, in the face of +the fact that the fewer the obstacles between feeling and expression +the richer the literary product must be, and forgetting, too, that +poetry represents the extreme vanguard of consciousness both +adventuring and pioneering along the path of future progress. + +For the poet to turn his back on rhythm, as at times he has been able +to do with rhyme, is an impossibility. For the rhythmising instinct is +innate and persistent in man, standing for a law which permeates every +manifestation of energy. The great heart of Nature itself beats with a +regular systole and diastole. But, rhythmically, the modern versifier +has been a Cubist without quite comprehending it. He has been viewing +the world mathematically. He has been crowding his soul into a +geometrically designed mould. He has bowed to a rule-of-thumb order of +speech, arbitrarily imposed on him by an ancestry which wrung its +ingenuous pleasure out of an ingenuous regularity of stress and accent. +To succeed under that law he must practise an adroit form of +self-deception, solemnly pretending to fit his lines to a mould which +he actually over-runs and occasionally ignores. He has not been +satisfied with the rhythm of Nature, whose heart-beats in their +manifold expressions are omnipresent but never confined to any single +sustained pulse or any one limited movement. It is not argued that he +should ignore rhythm altogether. To do so, as has already been said, +would be impossible, since life itself is sustained by the rise and +fall of mortal breasts and the beat and throb of mortal hearts. Rhythm +is in man's blood. The ear of the world instinctively searches for +cadences. The poet's efforts towards symphonic phrasing have long +since become habitual and imperative. But that he should confine +himself to certain man-made laws of meter, that he should be shackled +by the prosodian of the past, is quite another matter. His +predecessors have fashioned many rhythms that are pretty, many +accentual forms that are cunningly intricate, but at a time when his +manner of singing has lost its vital swing it is well for man to forget +these formal prettinesses and equally well to remember that poetry is +not an intellectual exercise but the immortal soul of perplexed +mortality seeking expression. + +To abandon fixed rhythm, or meter, for the floating rhythm of the chant +may not be an immediate solution of the problem. To follow the Psalms +of David, for example, will not suddenly conjure a new school of verse +into the world. But to return to the more open movement of the chant, +which is man's natural and rudimentary form of song, may constitute a +step towards freedom. The mere effort towards emancipation, in fact, +is not without its value. It may serve to impress on certain minds the +fact that poetry is capable of exhausting one particular form of +expression, of incorporating and consuming one particular embodiment of +perishable matter and passing on to its newer fields. Being a living +organism, it uses up what lies before it, and to find new vigour must +forever feed on new forms. Being the product of man's spirit, which is +forever subject to change, verse must not be worshipped for what it has +been, but for what it is capable of being. No necrophilic regard for +its established conventions must blind the lover of beautiful verse to +the fact that the primary function of poetry is both to intellectualize +sensation and to elucidate emotional experience. If man must worship +beauty only as he has known it in the past, man must be satisfied with +worshipping that which has lived and now is dead. + +A. S. + + + + + OPEN WATER + + + + + MILKWEED + + I + + The blue, blue sea, + And the drone of waves, + And the wheeling swallows, + And the sun on the opal sails, + And the misty and salt-bleached headlands, + And the milkweed thick at my feet, + And the milkweed held in the hand of a child + Who dreams on the misty cliff-edge, + Watching the fading sails + And the noonday blue + Of the lonely sea! + + + II + + Was it all years ago, + Or was it but yesterday? + I only know that the scent + Of the milkweed brings it back, + Back with a strangle of tears: + The child and the misty headlands, + The drone of the dark blue sea, + And the opal sails + In the sun! + + + + + HOME THOUGHTS + + I am tired of the dust + And the fever and noise + And the meaningless faces of men; + And I want to go home! + Oh, day after day I get thinking of home + Where the black firs fringe the skyline, + And the birds wheel down the silence, + And the hemlocks whisper peace, + And the hill-winds cool the blood, + And the dusk is crowned with glory, + And the lone horizon softens, + And the world's at home with God! + Oh, I want to go there! + _I want to go home!_ + + + + + LIFE + + A rind of light hangs low + On the rim of the world; + A sound of feet disturbs + The quiet of the cell + Where a rope and a beam looms high + At the end of the yard. + + But in the dusk + Of that walled yard waits a woman; + And as the thing from its cell, + Still guarded and chained and bound, + Crosses that little space, + Silent, for ten brief steps, + A woman hangs on his neck. + + _And that walk from a cell to a sleep + Is known as Life, + And those ten dark steps + Of tangled rapture and tears + Men still call Love._ + + + + + SOME DAY, O SEEKER OF DREAMS + + Some day, O Seeker of Dreams, they will seek even us! + Some day they will wake, Fellow Singer, and hunger and want + For the Ways to the Lonelier Height! + So let us, Shy Weaver of Beauty, take heart, + For out of their dust they will call to us yet! + Let us wait, and sing, and be wise, + As the sea has waited and sung, + As the hills through the night have been wise! + For we are the Bringers of Light, and the Voices of Love, + Aye, we are the Soothers of Pain, the Appeasers of Death, + The Dusk and the Star and the Gleam and the Loneliest Peak! + And when they have found and seen, and know not whither they trend, + They will come to us, crying aloud like a child in the night; + And when they have learned of our lips, + Still back to our feet they will grope + For that ultimate essence and core of all song, + To usher them empty and naked, then, out to the unanswering stars, + Where Silence and Dreaming and Music are one! + + + + + BLACK HOURS + + I have drunk deep + Of the well of bitterness. + Black hours have harried me, + Blind fate has bludgeoned my bent head, + And on my brow the iron crown + Of sorrow has been crushed. + And being mortal, I have cried aloud + At anguish ineluctable. + But over each black hour has hung + Forlorn this star of knowledge: + The path of pain too great to be endured + Leads always unto peace; + And when the granite road of anguish mounts + Up and still up to its one ultimate + And dizzy height of torture, + Softly it dips and meets + The valley of endless rest! + + + + + BEFORE RENEWAL + + Summer is dead. + And love is gone. + And life is glad of this. + For sad were both, with having given much; + And bowed were both, with great desires fulfilled; + And both were grown too sadly wise + Ever to live again. + Too aged with hours o'er-passionate, + Too deeply sung by throats + That took no thought of weariness, + Moving too madly toward the crest of things, + Giving too freely of the fountaining sap, + Crowding too gladly into grass and leaves, + Breathing too blindly into flower and song! + Again the lyric hope may thrill the world, + Again the sap may sweeten into leaves, + Again will grey-eyed April come + With all her choiring throats; + But not to-day-- + For the course is run. + And the cruse is full, + And the loin ungirt, + And the hour ordained! + And now there is need of rest; + And need of renewal there is; + And need of silence, + And need of sleep. + Too clear the light + Now lies on hill and valley; + And little is left to say, + And nothing is left to give. + Summer is dead; + And love is gone! + + + + + HILL-TOP HOURS + + I am through with regret. + No more shall I kennel with pain. + I have called to this whimpering soul, + This soul that is sodden with tears + And sour with the reek of the years! + And now we shall glory in light! + Like a tatter of sail in the wind, + Like a tangle of net on the sand, + Like a hound stretched out in the heat, + My soul shall lie in the sun, + And be drowsy with peace, + And not think of the past! + + + + + LETTERS FROM HOME + + Letters from Home, you said. + Unopened they lay on the shack-sill + As you stared with me at the prairie + And the foothills bathed with light. + Letters from Home, you whispered, + And the homeland casements shone + Through the homeland dusk again, + And the sound of the birds came back, + And the soft green sorrowing hills, + And the sigh of remembered names, + The wine of remembered youth,-- + Oh, these came back, + Back with those idle words + Of "Letters from Home"! + + Over such desolate leagues, + Over such sundering seas, + Out of the lost dead years, + After the days of waiting, + After the ache had died, + After the brine of failure, + After the outland peace + Of the trail that never turns back, + Now that the night-wind whispers + How Home shall never again be home, + And now that the arms of the Far-away + Have drawn us close to its breast, + Out of the dead that is proved not dead, + To waken the sorrow that should have died, + To tighten the throat that never shall sing, + To sadden the trails that we still must ride, + Too late they come to us here-- + Our Letters from Home! + + + + + CHAINS + + I watched the men at work on the stubborn rock, + But mostly the one man poised on a drill + Above the steam that hissed and billowed about him + White in the frosty air, + Where the lordly house would stand. + + Majestic, muscular, high like a god, + He stood, + And controlled and stopped + And started his thundering drill, + Offhand and careless and lordly as Thor, + Begrimed and solemn and crowned with sweat, + Where the great steel chains swung over the buckets of rock. + + Then out of a nearby house came a youth, + All gloved and encased in fur and touched with content, + Thin-shouldered and frail and finished, + Leading a house-dog out on a silver chain. + He peered at the figure that fought with the drill + Above the billowing steam and tumult of sound, + Peered up for a moment impassive, + With almost pitying eyes, + And then went pensively down the Avenue's calm, + In the clear white light of the noonday sun, + Not holding, but held by his silvery chain! + + + + + THE DRUMS + + A village wrapped in slumber, + Silent between the hills, + Empty of moon-lit marketplace, + Empty of moving life-- + Such is my quiet heart. + Shadowy-walled it rests, + Sleeping its heavy sleep; + But sudden across the dark + Tingles a sound of drums! + The drums, the drums, the distant drums, + The throb of the drums strikes up, + The beat of the drums awakes! + Then loud through the little streets, + And strange to the startled roofs, + The drums, the drums approach and pound, + And throb and clamour and thrill and pass, + And between the echoing house-walls + All swart and grim they go, + The battalions of regret, + After the drums, the valiant drums + That die away in the night! + + + + + ANÆSTHESIA + + I caught the smell of ether + From the glass-roofed room + Where the hospital stood. + Suddenly all about me + I felt a mist of anguish + And the old, old hour of dread + When Death had shambled by. + + Yellow with time it is, + This letter on which I look; + But up from it comes a perfume + That stabs me still to the heart; + And suddenly, at the odour, + Through a ghost-like mist I know + Rapture and love and wild regret + When Life, and You, went by. + + + + + A SUMMER NIGHT + + Mournful the summer moon + Rose from the quiet sea. + Golden and sad and full of regret + As though it would ask of earth + Where all her lovers had vanished + And whither had gone the rose-red lips + That had sighed to her light of old. + Then I caught a pulse of music, + Brokenly, out at the pier-end, + And I heard the voices of girls + Going home in the dark, + Laughing along the sea-wall + Over a lover's word! + + + + + SAPPHO'S TOMB + + I + + In an old and ashen island, + Beside a city grey with death, + They are seeking Sappho's tomb! + + + II + + Beneath a vineyard ruinous + And a broken-columned temple + They are delving where she sleeps! + There between a lonely valley + Filled with noonday silences + And the headlands of soft violet + Where the sapphire seas still whisper, + Whisper with her sigh; + Through a country sad with wonder + Men are seeking vanished Sappho, + Men are searching for the tomb + Of muted Song! + + + III + + They will find a Something there, + In a cavern where no sound is, + In a room of milky marble + Walled with black amphibolite + Over-scored with faded words + And stained with time! + + + IV + + Sleeping in a low-roofed chamber, + With her phials of perfume round her, + In a terra-cotta coffin + With her image on the cover, + Childish echo of her beauty + Etched in black and gold barbaric-- + Lift it slowly, slowly, seekers, + Or your search will end in dust! + + + V + + With a tiny nude Astarte, + Bright with gilt and gravely watching + Over grass-green malachite, + Over rubies pale, and topaz, + And the crumbled dust of pearls! + + + VI + + With her tarnished silver mirror, + With her rings of beaten gold, + With her robes of faded purple, + And the stylus that so often + Traced the azure on her eyelids,-- + Eyelids delicate and weary, + Drooping, over-wise! + And at her head will be a plectron + Made of ivory, worn with time, + And a flute and gilded lyre + Will be found beside her feet, + And two little yellow sandals, + And crude serpents chased in silver + On her ankle rings-- + And a cloud of drifting dust + All her shining hair! + + + VII + + In that lost and lonely tomb + They may find her; + Find the arms that ached with rapture, + Softly folded on a breast + That for evermore is silent; + Find the eyes no longer wistful, + Find the lips no longer singing, + And the heart, so hot and wayward + When that ashen land was young, + Cold through all the mists of time, + Cold beneath the Lesbian marble + In the low-roofed room + That drips with tears! + + + + + THE WILD SWANS PASS + + In the dead of the night + You turned in your troubled sleep + As you heard the wild swans pass; + And then you slept again. + + You slept-- + While a new world swam beneath + That army of eager wings, + While plainland and slough and lake + Lay wide to those outstretched throats, + While the far lone Lights allured + That phalanx of passionate breasts. + + And I who had loved you more + Than a homing bird loves flight,-- + I watched with an ache for freedom, + I rose with a need for life, + Knowing that love had passed + Into its unknown North! + + + + + AT NOTRE DAME + + I + + O odour of incense, pride of purple and gold, + Burst of music and praise, and passion of flute and pipe! + O voices of silver o'er-sweet, and soothing antiphonal chant! + O Harmony, ancient, ecstatic, a-throb to the echoing roof, + With tremulous roll of awakened reverberant tubes, and thunder of sound! + And illusion of mystical song and outclangour of jubilant bell, + And glimmer of gold and taper, and throbbing, insistent pipe-- + If song and emotion and music were all-- + Were it only all! + + + II + + For see, dark heart of mine, + How the singers have ceased and gone! + See, how all of the music is lost and the lights are low, + And how, as our idle arms, these twin ineloquent towers + Grope up through the old inaccessible Night to His stars! + How in vain we have stormed on the bastions of Silence with sound! + How in vain with our music and song and emotion assailed the Unknown, + How beat with the wings of our worship on Earth's imprisoning bars! + For the pinions of Music have wearied, the proud loud tubes have tired, + Yet still grim and taciturn stand His immutable stars, + And, lost in the gloom, to His frontiers old I turn + Where glimmer those sentinel fires, + Beyond which, Dark Heart, we two + Some night must steal us forth, + Quite naked, and alone! + + + + + THE PILOT + + I lounge on the deck of the river-steamer, + Homeward bound with its load, + Churning from headland to headland, + Through moonlight and silence and dusk. + And the decks are alive with laughter and music and singing, + And I see the forms of the sleepers + And the shadowy lovers that lean so close to the rail, + And the romping children behind, + And the dancers amidships. + But high above us there in the gloom, + Where the merriment breaks like a wave at his feet, + Unseen of lover and dancer and me, + Is the Pilot, impassive and stern, + With his grim eyes watching the course. + + + + + DOORS + + Listen! + Footsteps + Are they, + That falter through the gloom, + That echo through the lonely chambers + Of our house of life? + + Listen! + Did a door close? + Did a whisper waken? + Did a ghostly something + Sigh across the dusk? + + From the mournful silence + Something, something went! + Far down some shadowy passage + Faintly closed a door-- + And O how empty lies + Our house of life! + + + + + SPRING FLOODS + + You stood alone + In the dusky window, + Watching the racing river. + Touched with a vague unrest, + And if tired of loving too much + More troubled at heart to find + That the flame of love could wither + And the wonder of love could pass, + You kneeled at the window-ledge + And stared through the black-topped maples + Where an April robin fluted,-- + Stared idly out + At the flood-time sweep of the river, + Silver and paling gold + In the ghostly April twilight. + + Shadowy there in the dusk + You watched with shadowy eyes + The racing, sad, unreasoning + Hurrying torrent of silver + Seeking its far-off sea. + Faintly I heard you sigh, + And faintly I heard the robin's flute, + And faintly from rooms remote + Came a broken murmur of voices. + And life, for a breath, stood bathed + In a wonder crowned with pain, + And immortal the moment hung; + And I know that the thought of you + There at the shadowy window, + And the matted black of the maples, + And the sunset call of a bird, + And the sad wide reaches of silver, + Will house in my haunted heart + Till the end of Time! + + + + + THE TURN OF THE YEAR + + The pines shake and the winds wake, + And the dark waves crowd the sky-line! + The birds wheel out on a troubled sky; + The widening road runs white and long, + And the page is turned, + And the world is tired! + + So I want no more of twilight sloth, + And I want no more of resting, + And of all the earth I ask no more + Than the green sea, the great sea, + The long road, the white road, + And a change of life to-day! + + + + + IF I LOVE YOU + + If I love you, woman of rose + And warmth and wondering eyes, + If it so fall out + That you are the woman I choose, + Oh, what is there left to say, + And what should it matter to me, + Or what can it mean to you? + For under the two white breasts + And the womb that makes you woman + The call of the ages whispers + And the countless ghosts awaken, + And stronger than sighs and weeping + The urge that makes us one, + And older than hate or loving or shame + This want that builds the world! + + + + + WHAT SHALL I CARE? + + What shall I care for the ways + Of these idle and thin-flanked women in silk + And the lisping men-shadows that trail at their heels? + What are they worth in my world + Or the world that I want, + These flabby-armed, indolent, delicate women + And these half-women daring to call themselves men + Yet afraid to get down to the earth + And afraid of the wind, + Afraid of the truth, + And so sadly afraid of themselves? + How can they help me in trouble and death? + How can they keep me from hating my kind? + Oh, I want to get out of their coffining rooms, + I want to walk free with a man, + A man who has lived and dared + And swung through the cycle of life! + God give me a man for a friend + To the End, + Give me a man with his heel on the neck of Hate, + With his fist in the face of Death, + A man not fretted with womanish things, + Unafraid of the light, + Of the worm in the lip of a corpse, + Unafraid of the call from the cell of his heart,-- + God give me a man for friend! + + + + + HUNTER AND HUNTED + + I + + When the sun is high, + And the hills are happy with light, + Then virile and strong I am! + Then ruddy with life I fare, + The fighter who feels no dread, + The roamer who knows no bounds, + The hunter who makes the world his prey, + And shouting and swept with pride, + Still mounts to the lonelier height! + + + II + + In the cool of the day, + When the huddling shadows swarm, + And the ominous eyes look out + And night slinks over the swales + And the silence is chill with death, + Then I am the croucher beside the coals, + The lurker within the shadowy cave, + Who listens and mutters a charm + And trembles and waits, + A hunted thing grown + Afraid of the hunt, + A silence enisled in silence, + A wonder enwrapped in awe! + + + + + APPLE BLOSSOMS + + I saw a woman stand + Under the seas of bloom, + Under the waves of colour and light, + The showery snow and rose of the odorous trees + That made a glory of earth. + She stood where the petals fell, + And her hands were on her breast, + And her lips were touched with wonder, + And her eyes were full of pain-- + For pure she was, and young, + And it was Spring! + + + + + THE HOUSE OF LIFE + + Quietly I closed the door. + Then I said to my soul: + "I shall never come back, + Back to this haunted room + Where Sorrow and I have slept." + I turned from that hated door + And passed through the House of Life, + Through its ghostly rooms and glad + And its corridors dim with age. + Then lightly I crossed a threshold + Where the casements showed the sun + And I entered an unknown room,-- + And my heart went cold, + For about me stood that Chamber of Pain + I had thought to see no more! + + + + + ULTIMATA + + I am desolate, + Desolate because of a woman. + When at midnight walking alone + I look up at the slow-wheeling stars, + I see only the eyes of this woman. + In bird-haunted valleys and by-ways secluded, + Where once I sought peace, + I find now only unrest + And this one unaltering want. + When the dawn-wind stirs in the pine-tops + I hear only her voice's whisper. + When by day I gaze into the azure above me + I see only the face of this woman. + In the sunlight I cannot find comfort, + Nor can I find peace in the shadows. + Neither can I take joy in the hill-wind, + Nor find solace on kindlier breasts; + For deep in the eyes of all women I watch + I see only her eyes stare back. + Nor can I shut the thought of her out of my heart + And the ache for her out of my hours. + Ruthlessly now she invades even my dreams + And wounds me in sleep; + And my body cries out for her, + Early and late and forever cries out for her, + And her alone,-- + _And I want this woman!_ + + I am sick at heart because of this woman; + I am lost to shame because of my want; + And mine own people have come to mean naught to me; + And with many about me still am I utterly alone, + And quite solitary now I take my way + Where men are intent on puny things + And phantasmal legions pace! + And a wearisome thing is life, + And forever the shadow of this one woman + Is falling across my path. + The turn in the road is a promise of her. + The twilight is thronged with her ghosts; + The grasses speak only of her, + The leaves whisper her name forever; + The odorous fields are full of her. + Her lips, I keep telling myself, + Are a cup from which I must drink; + Her breast is the one last pillow + Whereon I may ever find peace! + Yet she has not come to me, + And being denied her, everything stands denied, + And all men who have waited in vain for love + Cry out through my desolate heart; + And the want of the hungering world + Runs like fire through my veins + And bursts from my throat in the cry + _That I want this woman!_ + + I am possessed of a great sickness + And likewise possessed of a great strength, + And the ultimate hour has come. + I will arise and go unto this woman, + And with bent head and my arms about her knees + I shall say unto her: "Beloved beyond all words, + Others have sought your side, + And many have craved your kiss, + But none, O body of flesh and bone, + Has known a hunger like mine! + And though evil befall, or good, + This hunger is given to me, + And is now made known to you,-- + For I must die, + Or you must die, + Or Desire must die + This night!" + + + + + THE LIFE ON THE TABLE + + In the white-walled room + Where the white bed waits + Stand banks of meaningless flowers; + In the rain-swept street + Are a ghost-like row of cabs; + And along the corridor-dusk + Phantasmal feet repass. + Through the warm, still air + The odour of ether hangs; + And on this slenderest thread + Of one thin pulse + Hangs and swings + The hope of life-- + The life of her + I love! + + + + + YOU BID ME TO SLEEP + + You bid me to sleep,-- + But why, O Daughter of Beauty, + Was beauty thus born in the world? + Since out of these shadowy eyes + The wonder shall pass! + And out of this surging and passionate breast + The dream shall depart! + And out of these delicate rivers of warmth + The fire shall wither and fail! + And youth like a bird from your body shall fly! + And Time like a fang on your flesh shall feed! + And this perilous bosom that pulses with love + Shall go down to the dust from which it arose,-- + Yet Daughter of Beauty, close, + Close to its sumptuous warmth + You hold my sorrowing head, + And smile with shadowy eyes, + And bid me to sleep again! + + + + + THE LAST OF SUMMER + + The opal afternoon + Is cool, and very still. + A wash of tawny air, + Sea-green that melts to gold, + Bathes all the skyline, hill by hill. + Out of the black-topped pinelands + A black crow calls, + And the year seems old! + A woman from a doorway sings, + And from the valley-slope a sheep-dog barks, + And through the umber woods the echo falls. + Then silence on the still world lies, + And faint and far the birds fly south, + And behind the dark pines drops the sun, + And a small wind wakes and sighs, + And Summer, see, is done! + + + + + AT CHARING-CROSS + + Alone amid the Rockies I have stood; + Alone across the prairie's midnight calm + Full often I have fared + And faced the hushed infinity of night; + Alone I have hung poised + Between a quietly heaving sea + And quieter sky, + Aching with isolation absolute; + And in Death's Valley I have walked alone + And sought in vain for some appeasing sign + Of life or movement, + While over-desolate my heart called out + For some befriending face + Or some assuaging voice! + But never on my soul has weighed + Such loneliness as this, + As here amid the seething London tides + I look upon these ghosts that come and go, + These swarming restless souls innumerable, + Who through their million-footed dirge of unconcern + Must know and nurse the thought of kindred ghosts + As lonely as themselves, + Or else go mad with it! + + + + + PRESCIENCE + + I + + "The sting of it all," you said, as you stooped low over your roses, + "The worst of it is, when I think of Death, + That Spring by Spring the Earth shall still be beautiful, + And Summer by Summer be lovely again, + --And I shall be gone!" + + + II + + "I would not care, perhaps," you said, watching your roses, + "If only 'twere dust and ruin and emptiness left behind! + But the thought that Earth and April + Year by casual year + Shall waken around the old ways, soft and beautiful, + Year by year when I am away, + --This, this breaks my heart!" + + + + + THE STEEL WORKERS + + I watched the workers in steel, + The Pit-like glow of the furnace, + The rivers of molten metal, + The tremulous rumble of cranes, + The throb of the Thor-like hammers + On sullen and resonant anvils! + I saw the half-clad workers + Twisting earth's iron to their use, + Shaping the steel to their thoughts; + And, in some way, out of the fury + And the fires of mortal passion, + It seemed to me, + In some way, out of the torture + And tumult of inchoate Time, + The hammer of sin is shaping + The soul of man! + + + + + THE CHILDREN + + The city is old in sin, + And children are not for cities, + And, wan-eyed woman, you want them not, + You say with a broken laugh. + Yet out of each wayward softness of voice, + And each fulness of breast, + And each flute-throated echo of song, + Each flutter of lace and quest of beautiful things, + Each coil of entangling hair built into its crown, + Each whisper and touch in the silence of night, + Each red unreasoning mouth that is lifted to mouth, + Each whiteness of brow that is furrowed no more with thought, + Each careless soft curve of lips that can never explain, + Arises the old and the inappeasable cry! + Every girl who leans from a tenement sill + And flutters a hand to a youth, + Every woman who waits for a man in the dusk, + Every harlotous arm flung up to a drunken heel + That would trample truth down in the dust, + Reaches unknowingly out for its own, + And blind to its heritage waits + For its child! + + + + + THE NOCTURNE + + Remote, in some dim room, + On this dark April morning soft with rain, + I hear her pensive touch + Fall aimless on the keys, + And stop, and play again. + + And as the music wakens + And the shadowy house is still, + How all my troubled soul cries out + For things I know not of! + Ah, keen the quick chords fall, + And weighted with regret, + Fade through the quiet rooms; + And warm as April rain + The strange tears fall, + And life in some way seems + Too deep to bear! + + + + + THE WILD GEESE + + Over my home-sick head, + High in the paling light + And touched with the sunset's glow, + Soaring and strong and free, + The unswerving phalanx sweeps, + The honking wild geese go,-- + Go with a flurry of wings + Home to their norland lakes + And the sedge-fringed tarns of peace + And the pinelands soft with Spring! + + I cannot go as the geese go, + But into the steadfast North, + The North that is dark and tender, + My home-sick spirit wings,-- + Wings with a flurry of longing thoughts + And nests in the tarns of youth. + + + + + THE DAY + + I + + Dewy, dewy lawn-slopes, + Is this the day she comes? + O wild-flower face of Morning, + Must you never wake? + Silvery, silvery sea-line, + Does she come to-day? + O murmurous, murmurous birch-leaves, + Beneath your whispering shadow + She will surely pass; + And thrush beneath the black-thorn + And white-throat in the pine-top, + Sing as you have never sung, + For she will surely come! + + + II + + The lone green of the lawn-slope, + The grey light on the sky-line, + The mournful stir of birch-leaves, + The thin note of the brown thrush, + And the call of troubled white-throats + Across the afternoon!-- + Ah, Summer now is over, + And for us the season closed, + For she who came an hour ago + Has gone again-- + Has gone! + + + + + THE REVOLT + + God knows that I've tinkled and jingled and strummed, + That I've piped it and jigged it until I'm fair sick of the game, + That I've given them slag and wasted the silver of song, + That I've thrown them the tailings and they've taken them up content! + But now I want to slough off the bitterness born of it all, + I want to throw off the shackles and chains of time, + I want to sit down with my soul and talk straight out, + I want to make peace with myself, + And say what I have to say, + While still there is time! + + Yea, I will arise and go forth, I have said, + To the uplands of truth, to be free as the wind, + Rough and unruly and open and turbulent-throated! + Yea, I will go forth and fling from my soul + The shackles and chains of song! + + But, lo, on my wrists are the scars, + And here on my ankles the chain-galls, + And the cell-pallor, see, on my face! + And my throat seems thick with the cell-dust, + And for guidance I grope to the walls, + And after my moment of light + + I want to go back to the Dark, + Since the Open still makes me afraid, + And silence seems best in the sun, + And song in the dusk! + + + + + ATAVISM + + I feel all primal and savage to-day. + I could eat and drink deep and love strong + I could fight and exult and boast and be glad! + I could tear out the life of a wild thing and laugh at it! + I could crush into panting submission the breast of a woman + A-stray from her tribe and her smoke-stained tent-door! + I could glory in folly and fire and ruin, + And race naked-limbed with the wind, + And slink on the heels of my foes + And dabble their blood on my brows-- + For to-day I am sick of it all, + This silent and orderly empty life, + And I feel all savage again! + + + + + MARCH TWILIGHT + + Black with a batter of mud + Stippled with silvery pools + Stands the pavement at the street-end; + And the gutter snow is gone + From cobble and runnelling curb; + And no longer the ramping wind + Is rattling the rusty signs; + And moted and soft and misty + Hangs the sunlight over the cross-streets, + And the home-bound crowds of the city + Walk in a flood of gold. + + And suddenly out of the dusk + There comes the ancient question: + Can it be that I have lived + In earlier worlds unknown? + Or is it that somewhere deep + In this husk that men call Me + Are kennelled a motley kin + I never shall know or name,-- + Are housed still querulous ghosts + That sigh and awaken and move, + And sleep once more? + + + + + THE ECHO + + I + + I am only a note in the chorus, + A leaf in the fluttering June, + A wave on the deep. + These things that I struggle to utter + Have all been uttered before. + In many another heart + The selfsame song was born, + The ancient ache endured, + The timeless wonder faced, + The unanswered question nursed, + The resurgent hunger felt, + And the eternal failure known! + + + II + + But glad is the lip of its whisper; + The wave, of its life; + The leaf, of its lisp; + And glad for its hour is my soul + For its echo of godlier music, + Its fragment of song! + + + + + AUTUMN + + The thin gold of the sun lies slanting on the hill; + In the sorrowful greys and muffled violets of the old orchard + A group of girls are quietly gathering apples. + Through the mingled gloom and green they scarcely speak at all, + And their broken voices rise and fall unutterably sad. + There are no birds, + And the goldenrod is gone. + And a child calls out, far away, across the autumn twilight; + And the sad grey of the dusk grows slowly deeper, + And all the world seems old! + + + + + FACES + + I tire of these empty masks, + These faces of city women + That seem so vapid and well-controlled. + I get tired of their guarded ways + And their eyes that are always empty + Of either passion or hate + Or promise or love, + And that seem to be old + And are never young! + I think of the homelier faces + That I have seen, + The vital and open faces + In the by-ways of the world: + A Polish girl who met + Her lover one wintry morning + Outside the gaol at Ossining; + A lean young Slav violinist + And the steerage women about him, + Held by the sound of his music; + A young and deep-bosomed Teuton + Suckling her shawl-wrapped child + On a grey stone bridge in Detmold; + A group of girls from Ireland, + Crowding the steps of a colonist-car + And singing half-sadly together + As their train rocked on and on + Over the sun-bathed prairie; + A mournful Calabrian mother + Standing and staring out + Past the mists of Ischia + After a fading steamer; + A Nautch girl held by a sailor + Who'd taken a knife from her fingers + But not the fire from her eyes; + And a silent Sicilian mother + Standing alone in the Marina + Awaiting her boy who had been + Long years away!-- + These I remember! + And of these + I never tire! + + + + + THERE IS STRENGTH IN THE SOIL + + There is strength in the soil; + In the earth there is laughter and youth. + There is solace and hope in the upturned loam. + And lo, I shall plant my soul in it here like a seed! + And forth it shall come to me as a flower of song; + For I know it is good to get back to the earth + That is orderly, placid, all-patient! + It is good to know how quiet + And noncommittal it breathes, + This ample and opulent bosom + That must some day nurse us all! + + + + + LIFE-DRUNK + + On opal Aprilian mornings like this + I seem dizzy and drunk with life. + I waken and wander and laugh in the sun; + With some mystical knowledge enormous + I lift up my face to the light. + Drunk with a gladness stupendous I seem; + With some wine of Immensity god-like I reel; + And my arm could fling Time from His throne; + I could pelt the awed taciturn arch + Of Morning with music and mirth; + And I feel, should I find but a voice for my thought, + That the infinite orbits of all God's loneliest stars + That are weaving vast traceries out on the fringes of Night + Could never stand more than a hem on the robe of my Song! + + + + + MY HEART STOOD EMPTY + + My heart stood empty and bare, + So I hung it with thoughts of a woman. + The remembered ways of this woman + Hung sweet in my heart. + So I followed where thought should lead, + And it led to her feet. + But the mouth of this woman was pain, + And the love of this woman, regret; + And now only the thought + Of all those remembered thoughts + Of remembered ways, + Is shut in my heart! + + + + + ONE NIGHT IN THE NORTHWEST + + When they flagged our train because of a broken rail, + I stepped down out of the crowded car, + With its clamour and dust and heat and babel of broken talk. + I stepped out into the cool, the velvet cool, of the night, + And felt the balm of the prairie-wind on my face, + And somewhere I heard the running of water, + I felt the breathing of grass, + And I knew, as I saw the great white stars, + That the world was made for good! + + + + + DREAMERS + + There's a poet tombed in you, + Man of blood and iron! + There's a dreamer dead and buried + Deep beneath your cynic frown, + Deep beneath your toil! + + And deep beneath my music, + There's a strong man stirs in me; + There's a ghost of blood and granite + Coffined in this madness + Carpentered of Song! + + You live your day and drain it; + I weave my dream and lose it; + But the red blood lost in me awakens still at times, + At all your city's sky-line, + At all your roaring market-place, + At all its hum of power-- + And the poet dead within you stirs + Still at the plaintive note or two + Of a dreamer's plaintive song! + + + + + THE QUESTION + + I + + Glad with the wine of life, + Reeling I go my way, + Drunk with the ache of living + And mouthing my drunken song! + Then comes the lucid moment + And the shadow across the lintel; + And I hear the ghostly whisper, + And I glimpse with startled eyes + The Door beyond the doorway, + And I see the small dark house + Where I must sleep. + + + II + + Then song turns sour on my lips, + And the warmth goes out of my blood, + And I turn me back to the beaker, + And re-draining my cup of dream, + I drown the whispering voices, + I banish the ghostly question + As to which in the end is true: + The wine and the open road? + Or the waiting Door? + + + + + THE GIFT OF HATE + + Empty it seems, at times, their cry about Love, + Their claim that love is the only thing that survives. + For I who am born of my centuries strewn with hate, + Who was spewed into life from a timeless tangle of sin, + I can hate as strong and as long as I love! + + There are hours and issues I hate; + There are creeds and deeds and doubts I hate; + There are men I hate to the uttermost; + And although in their graves they listen and weep, + Earth's mothers and wistful women who cried for peace, + I hate this King of Evil who has crowned my heart with Hate! + + + + + THE DREAM + + I lay by your side last night. + By you, in my dreams, + I felt the damp of the grave. + I was dead with you-- + And my bones still ache with Death. + For my hand went out and I touched your lips, + And I found them fallen away, + Wasted and lost! + Those lips once warm with life + Were eaten and gone! + And my soul screamed out in the dark + At the intimate blackness of Death. + And then I arose from the dead + And returned to the day; + And my bones and my heart still ache with it all, + And I hunger to hear the relieving babble of life, + The crowd in the hurrying street, + The tumult and laughter and talk, + To make me forget! + + + + + ONE ROOM IN MY HEART + + One room in my heart shall be closed, I said; + One chamber at least in my soul shall be secret and locked! + I shall hold it my holy of holies, and no one shall know it! + But you, calm woman predestined, with casual hands, + You came with this trivial key, + And ward by obdurate ward the surrendering lock fell back, + And disdainfully now you wander and brood and wait + In this room that I thought was my own! + + + + + THE MEANING + + It isn't the Sea that I love, + But the ships + That must dare and endure and defy and survive it! + It isn't the flesh that I love, + But the spirit + That guides and derides and controls and outlives it! + It isn't this earth that I love, + But the mortals + Who give to it meaning and colour and passion and life! + For what is the Sea without ships? + And what is the flesh without soul? + And what is a world without love? + + + + + THE VEIL + + You have said that I sold + My life for a song; + Laid bare my heart + That men might listen + And go their ways-- + My inchoate heart + That I dare not plumb, + That goes unbridled + To the depths of Hell, + That sings in the sun + To the brink of Heaven! + I have tossed you the spindrift + Born of its fretting + On its shallowest coast, + But over the depths of it + Bastioned in wonder + And silent with fear + God sits with me! + + + + + THE MAN OF DREAMS + + All my lean life + I garnered nothing but a dream or two, + These others gathered harvests + And grew fat with grain. + But no man lives by bread, + And bread alone. + So, forgetful of their scorn, + When starved, they cried for life, + I gave them my last dreams, + I bared for them my heart, + That they might eat! + + + + + APRIL ON THE RIALTO + + A canyon of granite and steel, + A river of grim unrest, + And over the fever and street-dust + Arches the azure of dream. + And fretting along the tumult, + Threading the iron curbs, + Tawdry in tinsel and feather + Drift the daughters of pleasure, + The sad-eyed traders in song, + The makers of joy, + The Columbines of the city + Seeking their ends! + But under the beaded eye-lash, + Under the lip with its rouge, + Under the mask of white + Splashed with geranium-red, + As God's own arch of azure + Leans softly over the street, + Surely, this day, runs warmer + The blood through a wasted breast! + + + + + THE SURRENDER + + Must I round my life to a song, + As the waves wear smooth the shore-stone? + Shall the mortal beat and throb + Of this heart of mine + Be only to crumble a dream, + And fashion the pebbles of fancy, + That the tides of time may cover, + Or a child may find? + + Little in truth it matters; + But this at the most I know: + Infinite is the ocean + That thunders upon man's soul, + And the sooner the soul falls broken, + The smoother will be its song! + + + + + THE PASSING + + Ere the thread is loosed, + And the sands run low, + And the last hope fails, + Wherever we fare, + O Fond and True, + May it fall that we come in the end, + Come back to the crimson valleys, + Back to the Indian Summer, + Back to the northern pine-lands, + And the grey lakes draped with silence, + And the sunlight thin and poignant, + And the leaf that flutters earthward, + And the skyline green and lonely, + And the ramparts of the dead world + Ruddy with wintry rose! + May we fare, O Fond and True, + Through our soft-houred Indian Summer, + Through the paling twilight weather, + And facing the lone green uplands, + And greeting the sun-warmed hills, + Step into the pineland shadows + And enter the sunset valley + And go as the glory goes + Out of the dreaming autumn, + Out of the drifting leaf + And the dying light! + + + + + PROTESTATIONS + + If I tire of you, beautiful woman, + I know that the fault is mine; + Yet not all mine the failure + And not all mine the loss! + In loveliness still you walk; + But I have walked with sorrow! + I have threaded narrows, + And I have passed through perils + That you know nothing of! + And I in my grief have gazed + In eyes that were not yours; + And my emptier hours have known + The sigh of kindlier bosoms, + The kiss of kindlier mouths! + Yet the end of all is written, + And nothing, O rose-leaf woman, + You ever may dream or do + Henceforth can bring me anguish + Or crown my days with joy! + + _Three tears, O stately woman, + You said could float your soul, + So little a thing it seemed! + Yet all that's left of life + I'd give to know your love, + I'd give to show my love, + And feel your kiss again!_ + + + + + I SAT IN THE SUNLIGHT + + I sat in the sunlight thinking of life; + I sat there, dreaming of Death. + And a moth alit on the sun-dial's face, + And the birds sang sleepily, + And the leaves stirred, + And the sun lay warm on the hills, + And the afternoon grew old. + + So, some day I knew the birds would sing, + And the leaves would stir, + And the afternoon grow old-- + And I would not be there. + And the warmth went out of the day, + And a wind blew out of the West where I sat, + And the birds were still! 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Open Water + +Author: Arthur Stringer + +Release Date: October 12, 2011 [EBook #37557] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OPEN WATER *** + + + + +Produced by Al Haines + + + + + +</pre> + + +<BR><BR> + +<P CLASS="t1"> +OPEN WATER +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="t3"> +BY +</P> + +<P CLASS="t2"> +ARTHUR STRINGER +</P> + +<P CLASS="t4"> +AUTHOR OF "THE WOMAN IN THE RAIN," "IRISH POEMS," ETC. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<P CLASS="t3"> +NEW YORK—JOHN LANE COMPANY +<BR> +LONDON—JOHN LANE—THE BODLEY HEAD +<BR> +TORONTO—BELL & COCKBURN +<BR> +MCMXIV +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<P CLASS="t4"> +Copyright, 1914, by +<BR> +JOHN LANE COMPANY +</P> + +<BR><BR> + +<P CLASS="t4"> +Press of J. J. Little & Ives Co. +<BR> +New York, U. S. A. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<P CLASS="t2"> +CONTENTS +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="noindent" STYLE="margin-left: 10%"> +<A HREF="#p9">A Foreword</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p21">Milkweed</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p23">Home Thoughts</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p24">Life</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p26">Some Day, Oh Seeker of Dreams</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p28">Black Hours</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p30">Before Renewal</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p33">Hill-Top Hours</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p34">Letters from Home</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p37">Chains</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p39">The Drums</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p41">Anæsthesia</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p43">A Summer Night</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p44">Sappho's Tomb</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p49">The Wild Swans Pass</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p41">At Notre Dame</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p54">The Pilot</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p56">Doors</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p58">Spring Floods</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p61">The Turn of the Year</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p62">If I Love You</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p64">What Shall I Care?</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p66">Hunter and Hunted</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p68">Apple Blossoms</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p69">The House of Life</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p70">Ultimata</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p75">The Life on the Table</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p76">You Bid Me to Sleep</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p78">The Last of Summer</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p80">At Charing Cross</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p82">Prescience</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p84">The Steel Workers</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p86">The Children</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p88">The Nocturne</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p90">The Wild Geese</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p92">The Day</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p94">The Revolt</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p97">Atavism</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p99">March Twilight</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p101">The Echo</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p103">Autumn</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p104">Faces</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p107">There Is Strength in the Soil</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p108">Life-Drunk</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p110">My Heart Stood Empty</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p111">One Night in the Northwest</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p112">Dreamers</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p114">The Question</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p116">The Gift of Hate</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p118">The Dream</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p120">One Room in My Heart</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p121">The Meaning</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p122">The Veil</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p124">The Man of Dreams</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p125">April on the Rialto</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p127">The Surrender</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p128">The Passing</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p130">Protestations</A><BR> +<A HREF="#p132">I Sat in the Sunlight</A><BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p9"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +A FOREWORD +</H3> + +<P> +To even the casual reader of poetry who may chance to turn to the +following pages it will be evident that the lyrics contained therein +have been written without what is commonly known as end-rhyme. It may +also be claimed by this reader that the lyrics before him are without +rhythm. As such, it may at first seem that they mark an effort in +revolt against two of the primary assets of modern versification. +</P> + +<P> +All art, of course, has its ancestry. While it is the duty of poetry +both to remember and to honour its inherited grandeurs, the paradoxical +fact remains that even this most convention-ridden medium of emotional +expression is a sort of warfare between the embattled soul of the +artist, seeking articulation, and the immuring traditions with which +time and the prosodian have surrounded him. +</P> + +<P> +In painting and in music, as in sculpture and the drama, there has been +a movement of late to achieve what may be called formal emancipation, a +struggle to break away from the restraints and the technical +obligations imposed upon the worker by his artistic predecessors. In +one case this movement may be called Futurism, and in another it may be +termed Romanticism, but the tendency is the same. The spirit of man is +seen in rebellion against a form that has become too intricate or too +fixed to allow him freedom of utterance. +</P> + +<P> +Poetry alone, during the last century, seems to have remained stable, +in the matter of structure. Few new forms have been invented, and with +one or two rare exceptions success has been achieved through +ingeniously elaborating on an already established formula and through +meticulously re-echoing what has already been said. This has resulted, +on the one hand, in a technical dexterity which often enough resembles +the strained postures of acrobatism, and, on the other, in that +constantly reiterated complaint as to the hollowness and aloofness of +modern poetry. Yet this poetry is remote and insincere, not because +the modern spirit is incapable of feeling, but because what the singer +of to-day has felt has not been directly and openly expressed. His +apparel has remained mediæval. He must still don mail to face Mausers, +and wear chain-armour against machine-guns. He must scout through the +shadowy hinterlands of consciousness in attire that may be historic, +yet at the same time is distressingly conspicuous. And when he begins +his assault on those favouring moments or inspirational moods which +lurk in the deeper valleys and by-ways of sensibility, he must begin it +as a marked man, pathetically resplendent in that rigid steel which is +an anachronism and no longer an armour. +</P> + +<P> +Rhyme, from the first, has been imposed upon him. His only escape from +rhyme has been the larger utterance of blank verse. Yet the iambic +pentameter of his native tongue, perfected in the sweeping sonority of +the later Shakespearean tragedies and left even more intimidatingly +austere in the organ-like roll of Milton, has been found by the later +singer to be ill-fitted for the utterance of those more intimate moods +and those subjective experiences which may be described as +characteristically modern. Verse, in the nature of things, has become +less epic and racial, and more and more lyric and personal. The poet, +consequently, has been forced back into the narrower domain so formally +and so rigidly fenced in by rhyme. And before touching on the +limitations resulting from this incarceration, it may be worth while to +venture a brief glance back over the history of what Milton himself +denominated as "the jingling sounds of like endings" and Goldsmith +characterized as "a vile monotony" and even Howells has spoken of as +"the artificial trammels of verse." +</P> + +<P> +It has been claimed that those early poets of Palestine who affected +the custom of beginning a number of lines or stanzas with the same +letter of the alphabet unconsciously prepared the way for that +latter-day ornamental fringe known as end-rhyme. Others have claimed +that this insistence of a consonance of terminals is a relique of the +communal force of the chant, where the clapping of hands, the stamping +of feet, or the twanging of bow-strings marked the period-ends of +prehistoric recitative. The bow-string of course, later evolved into +the musical instrument, and when poetry became a written as well as a +spoken language the consonantal drone of rhyming end-words took the +place of the discarded instrument which had served to mark a secondary +and wider rhythm in the progress of impassioned recitative. +</P> + +<P> +It must be admitted, however, even in the face of this ingenious +pleading, that rhyme is a much more modern invention than it seems. +That it is not rudimentary in the race is evidenced by the fact that +many languages, such as the Celtic, the Teutonic, and the Scandinavian, +are quite without it. The Greeks, even in their melic poetry, saw no +need for it. The same may be said of the Romans, though with them it +will occasionally be found that the semi-feet of the pentameter +constitute what may be called accidental rhyme. Rhyming Latin verse, +indeed, does not come into existence until the end of the fourth +century, and it is not until the time of the Conquest that end-rhyme +becomes in any way general in English song. Layman, in translating +Wace's <I>Le Brut d'Angleterre</I>, found the original work written in +rhymed lines, and in following that early model produced what is +probably the first rhymed poem written in England. +</P> + +<P> +With the introduction of end-rhymes came the discovery that a +decoration so formal could convert verse into something approaching the +architectural. It gave design to the lyric. With this new +definiteness of outline, of course, came a newer rigidity of medium. +Form was acknowledged as the visible presentation of this particular +art. Formal variations became a matter of studious attention. Efforts +were made to leave language in itself instrumental, and in these +efforts sound frequently comes perilously near triumphing over sense. +The exotic formal growths of other languages were imported into +England. No verbal <I>tour de force</I> of <I>troubadour</I> or <I>trouvère</I> or +<I>jongleur</I> or Ronsardist was too fantastic for imitation and adoption. +The one-time primitive directness of English was overrun by such forms +as the ballade, the chant royal, the rondel, the kyrielle, the rondeau +and the rondeau redoublé, the virelai and the pantoum, the sestina, the +villanelle, and last, yet by no means least, the sonnet. But through +the immense tangle of our intricate lyric growths it can now be seen +that mere mechanics do not always make poetry. While rhyme has, +indeed, served its limited purposes, it must be remembered that the +highest English verse has been written without rhyme. This verbal +embroidery, while it presents to the workman in words a pleasingly +decorative form, at the same time imposes on him both an adventitious +restraint and an increased self-consciousness. The twentieth century +poet, singing with his scrupulously polished vocalisation, usually +finds himself content to re-echo what has been said before. He is +unable to "travel light"; pioneering with so heavy a burden is out of +the question. Rhyme and meter have compelled him to sacrifice content +for form. It has left him incapable of what may be called abandonment. +And the consciousness of his technical impedimenta has limited the +roads along which he may adventure. His preoccupation with formal +exactions has implanted in him an instinctive abhorrence for anything +beyond the control of what he calls common-sense. Dominated by this +emotional and intellectual timidity, he has attributed to end-rhyme and +accentual rhythm the self-sufficiency of mystic rites, in the face of +the fact that the fewer the obstacles between feeling and expression +the richer the literary product must be, and forgetting, too, that +poetry represents the extreme vanguard of consciousness both +adventuring and pioneering along the path of future progress. +</P> + +<P> +For the poet to turn his back on rhythm, as at times he has been able +to do with rhyme, is an impossibility. For the rhythmising instinct is +innate and persistent in man, standing for a law which permeates every +manifestation of energy. The great heart of Nature itself beats with a +regular systole and diastole. But, rhythmically, the modern versifier +has been a Cubist without quite comprehending it. He has been viewing +the world mathematically. He has been crowding his soul into a +geometrically designed mould. He has bowed to a rule-of-thumb order of +speech, arbitrarily imposed on him by an ancestry which wrung its +ingenuous pleasure out of an ingenuous regularity of stress and accent. +To succeed under that law he must practise an adroit form of +self-deception, solemnly pretending to fit his lines to a mould which +he actually over-runs and occasionally ignores. He has not been +satisfied with the rhythm of Nature, whose heart-beats in their +manifold expressions are omnipresent but never confined to any single +sustained pulse or any one limited movement. It is not argued that he +should ignore rhythm altogether. To do so, as has already been said, +would be impossible, since life itself is sustained by the rise and +fall of mortal breasts and the beat and throb of mortal hearts. Rhythm +is in man's blood. The ear of the world instinctively searches for +cadences. The poet's efforts towards symphonic phrasing have long +since become habitual and imperative. But that he should confine +himself to certain man-made laws of meter, that he should be shackled +by the prosodian of the past, is quite another matter. His +predecessors have fashioned many rhythms that are pretty, many +accentual forms that are cunningly intricate, but at a time when his +manner of singing has lost its vital swing it is well for man to forget +these formal prettinesses and equally well to remember that poetry is +not an intellectual exercise but the immortal soul of perplexed +mortality seeking expression. +</P> + +<P> +To abandon fixed rhythm, or meter, for the floating rhythm of the chant +may not be an immediate solution of the problem. To follow the Psalms +of David, for example, will not suddenly conjure a new school of verse +into the world. But to return to the more open movement of the chant, +which is man's natural and rudimentary form of song, may constitute a +step towards freedom. The mere effort towards emancipation, in fact, +is not without its value. It may serve to impress on certain minds the +fact that poetry is capable of exhausting one particular form of +expression, of incorporating and consuming one particular embodiment of +perishable matter and passing on to its newer fields. Being a living +organism, it uses up what lies before it, and to find new vigour must +forever feed on new forms. Being the product of man's spirit, which is +forever subject to change, verse must not be worshipped for what it has +been, but for what it is capable of being. No necrophilic regard for +its established conventions must blind the lover of beautiful verse to +the fact that the primary function of poetry is both to intellectualize +sensation and to elucidate emotional experience. If man must worship +beauty only as he has known it in the past, man must be satisfied with +worshipping that which has lived and now is dead. +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +A. S. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p21"></A> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> + OPEN WATER +</H2> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +MILKWEED<BR> +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +I<BR> +</H4> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +The blue, blue sea,<BR> +And the drone of waves,<BR> +And the wheeling swallows,<BR> +And the sun on the opal sails,<BR> +And the misty and salt-bleached headlands,<BR> +And the milkweed thick at my feet,<BR> +And the milkweed held in the hand of a child<BR> +Who dreams on the misty cliff-edge,<BR> +Watching the fading sails<BR> +And the noonday blue<BR> +Of the lonely sea!<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +II<BR> +</H4> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Was it all years ago,<BR> +Or was it but yesterday?<BR> +I only know that the scent<BR> +Of the milkweed brings it back,<BR> +Back with a strangle of tears:<BR> +The child and the misty headlands,<BR> +The drone of the dark blue sea,<BR> +And the opal sails<BR> +In the sun!<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p23"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +HOME THOUGHTS<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +I am tired of the dust<BR> +And the fever and noise<BR> +And the meaningless faces of men;<BR> +And I want to go home!<BR> +Oh, day after day I get thinking of home<BR> +Where the black firs fringe the skyline,<BR> +And the birds wheel down the silence,<BR> +And the hemlocks whisper peace,<BR> +And the hill-winds cool the blood,<BR> +And the dusk is crowned with glory,<BR> +And the lone horizon softens,<BR> +And the world's at home with God!<BR> +Oh, I want to go there!<BR> +<I>I want to go home!</I><BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p24"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +LIFE<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +A rind of light hangs low<BR> +On the rim of the world;<BR> +A sound of feet disturbs<BR> +The quiet of the cell<BR> +Where a rope and a beam looms high<BR> +At the end of the yard.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +But in the dusk<BR> +Of that walled yard waits a woman;<BR> +And as the thing from its cell,<BR> +Still guarded and chained and bound,<BR> +Crosses that little space,<BR> +Silent, for ten brief steps,<BR> +A woman hangs on his neck.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +<I>And that walk from a cell to a sleep<BR> +Is known as Life,<BR> +And those ten dark steps<BR> +Of tangled rapture and tears<BR> +Men still call Love.</I><BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p26"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +SOME DAY, O SEEKER OF DREAMS<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Some day, O Seeker of Dreams, they will seek even us!<BR> +Some day they will wake, Fellow Singer, and hunger and want<BR> +For the Ways to the Lonelier Height!<BR> +So let us, Shy Weaver of Beauty, take heart,<BR> +For out of their dust they will call to us yet!<BR> +Let us wait, and sing, and be wise,<BR> +As the sea has waited and sung,<BR> +As the hills through the night have been wise!<BR> +For we are the Bringers of Light, and the Voices of Love,<BR> +Aye, we are the Soothers of Pain, the Appeasers of Death,<BR> +The Dusk and the Star and the Gleam and the Loneliest Peak!<BR> +And when they have found and seen, and know not whither they trend,<BR> +They will come to us, crying aloud like a child in the night;<BR> +And when they have learned of our lips,<BR> +Still back to our feet they will grope<BR> +For that ultimate essence and core of all song,<BR> +To usher them empty and naked, then, out to the unanswering stars,<BR> +Where Silence and Dreaming and Music are one!<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p28"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +BLACK HOURS<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +I have drunk deep<BR> +Of the well of bitterness.<BR> +Black hours have harried me,<BR> +Blind fate has bludgeoned my bent head,<BR> +And on my brow the iron crown<BR> +Of sorrow has been crushed.<BR> +And being mortal, I have cried aloud<BR> +At anguish ineluctable.<BR> +But over each black hour has hung<BR> +Forlorn this star of knowledge:<BR> +The path of pain too great to be endured<BR> +Leads always unto peace;<BR> +And when the granite road of anguish mounts<BR> +Up and still up to its one ultimate<BR> +And dizzy height of torture,<BR> +Softly it dips and meets<BR> +The valley of endless rest!<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p30"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +BEFORE RENEWAL<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Summer is dead.<BR> +And love is gone.<BR> +And life is glad of this.<BR> +For sad were both, with having given much;<BR> +And bowed were both, with great desires fulfilled;<BR> +And both were grown too sadly wise<BR> +Ever to live again.<BR> +Too aged with hours o'er-passionate,<BR> +Too deeply sung by throats<BR> +That took no thought of weariness,<BR> +Moving too madly toward the crest of things,<BR> +Giving too freely of the fountaining sap,<BR> +Crowding too gladly into grass and leaves,<BR> +Breathing too blindly into flower and song!<BR> +Again the lyric hope may thrill the world,<BR> +Again the sap may sweeten into leaves,<BR> +Again will grey-eyed April come<BR> +With all her choiring throats;<BR> +But not to-day—<BR> +For the course is run.<BR> +And the cruse is full,<BR> +And the loin ungirt,<BR> +And the hour ordained!<BR> +And now there is need of rest;<BR> +And need of renewal there is;<BR> +And need of silence,<BR> +And need of sleep.<BR> +Too clear the light<BR> +Now lies on hill and valley;<BR> +And little is left to say,<BR> +And nothing is left to give.<BR> +Summer is dead;<BR> +And love is gone!<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p33"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> + HILL-TOP HOURS +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +I am through with regret.<BR> +No more shall I kennel with pain.<BR> +I have called to this whimpering soul,<BR> +This soul that is sodden with tears<BR> +And sour with the reek of the years!<BR> +And now we shall glory in light!<BR> +Like a tatter of sail in the wind,<BR> +Like a tangle of net on the sand,<BR> +Like a hound stretched out in the heat,<BR> +My soul shall lie in the sun,<BR> +And be drowsy with peace,<BR> +And not think of the past!<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p34"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +LETTERS FROM HOME<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Letters from Home, you said.<BR> +Unopened they lay on the shack-sill<BR> +As you stared with me at the prairie<BR> +And the foothills bathed with light.<BR> +Letters from Home, you whispered,<BR> +And the homeland casements shone<BR> +Through the homeland dusk again,<BR> +And the sound of the birds came back,<BR> +And the soft green sorrowing hills,<BR> +And the sigh of remembered names,<BR> +The wine of remembered youth,—<BR> +Oh, these came back,<BR> +Back with those idle words<BR> +Of "Letters from Home"!<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Over such desolate leagues,<BR> +Over such sundering seas,<BR> +Out of the lost dead years,<BR> +After the days of waiting,<BR> +After the ache had died,<BR> +After the brine of failure,<BR> +After the outland peace<BR> +Of the trail that never turns back,<BR> +Now that the night-wind whispers<BR> +How Home shall never again be home,<BR> +And now that the arms of the Far-away<BR> +Have drawn us close to its breast,<BR> +Out of the dead that is proved not dead,<BR> +To waken the sorrow that should have died,<BR> +To tighten the throat that never shall sing,<BR> +To sadden the trails that we still must ride,<BR> +Too late they come to us here—<BR> +Our Letters from Home!<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p37"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAINS<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +I watched the men at work on the stubborn rock,<BR> +But mostly the one man poised on a drill<BR> +Above the steam that hissed and billowed about him<BR> +White in the frosty air,<BR> +Where the lordly house would stand.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Majestic, muscular, high like a god,<BR> +He stood,<BR> +And controlled and stopped<BR> +And started his thundering drill,<BR> +Offhand and careless and lordly as Thor,<BR> +Begrimed and solemn and crowned with sweat,<BR> +Where the great steel chains swung over the buckets of rock.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Then out of a nearby house came a youth,<BR> +All gloved and encased in fur and touched with content,<BR> +Thin-shouldered and frail and finished,<BR> +Leading a house-dog out on a silver chain.<BR> +He peered at the figure that fought with the drill<BR> +Above the billowing steam and tumult of sound,<BR> +Peered up for a moment impassive,<BR> +With almost pitying eyes,<BR> +And then went pensively down the Avenue's calm,<BR> +In the clear white light of the noonday sun,<BR> +Not holding, but held by his silvery chain!<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p39"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE DRUMS<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +A village wrapped in slumber,<BR> +Silent between the hills,<BR> +Empty of moon-lit marketplace,<BR> +Empty of moving life—<BR> +Such is my quiet heart.<BR> +Shadowy-walled it rests,<BR> +Sleeping its heavy sleep;<BR> +But sudden across the dark<BR> +Tingles a sound of drums!<BR> +The drums, the drums, the distant drums,<BR> +The throb of the drums strikes up,<BR> +The beat of the drums awakes!<BR> +Then loud through the little streets,<BR> +And strange to the startled roofs,<BR> +The drums, the drums approach and pound,<BR> +And throb and clamour and thrill and pass,<BR> +And between the echoing house-walls<BR> +All swart and grim they go,<BR> +The battalions of regret,<BR> +After the drums, the valiant drums<BR> +That die away in the night!<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p41"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +ANÆSTHESIA<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +I caught the smell of ether<BR> +From the glass-roofed room<BR> +Where the hospital stood.<BR> +Suddenly all about me<BR> +I felt a mist of anguish<BR> +And the old, old hour of dread<BR> +When Death had shambled by.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Yellow with time it is,<BR> +This letter on which I look;<BR> +But up from it comes a perfume<BR> +That stabs me still to the heart;<BR> +And suddenly, at the odour,<BR> +Through a ghost-like mist I know<BR> +Rapture and love and wild regret<BR> +When Life, and You, went by.<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p43"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +A SUMMER NIGHT<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Mournful the summer moon<BR> +Rose from the quiet sea.<BR> +Golden and sad and full of regret<BR> +As though it would ask of earth<BR> +Where all her lovers had vanished<BR> +And whither had gone the rose-red lips<BR> +That had sighed to her light of old.<BR> +Then I caught a pulse of music,<BR> +Brokenly, out at the pier-end,<BR> +And I heard the voices of girls<BR> +Going home in the dark,<BR> +Laughing along the sea-wall<BR> +Over a lover's word!<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p44"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +SAPPHO'S TOMB<BR> +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +I<BR> +</H4> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +In an old and ashen island,<BR> +Beside a city grey with death,<BR> +They are seeking Sappho's tomb!<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +II<BR> +</H4> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Beneath a vineyard ruinous<BR> +And a broken-columned temple<BR> +They are delving where she sleeps!<BR> +There between a lonely valley<BR> +Filled with noonday silences<BR> +And the headlands of soft violet<BR> +Where the sapphire seas still whisper,<BR> +Whisper with her sigh;<BR> +Through a country sad with wonder<BR> +Men are seeking vanished Sappho,<BR> +Men are searching for the tomb<BR> +Of muted Song!<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +III<BR> +</H4> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +They will find a Something there,<BR> +In a cavern where no sound is,<BR> +In a room of milky marble<BR> +Walled with black amphibolite<BR> +Over-scored with faded words<BR> +And stained with time!<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +IV<BR> +</H4> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Sleeping in a low-roofed chamber,<BR> +With her phials of perfume round her,<BR> +In a terra-cotta coffin<BR> +With her image on the cover,<BR> +Childish echo of her beauty<BR> +Etched in black and gold barbaric—<BR> +Lift it slowly, slowly, seekers,<BR> +Or your search will end in dust!<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +V<BR> +</H4> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +With a tiny nude Astarte,<BR> +Bright with gilt and gravely watching<BR> +Over grass-green malachite,<BR> +Over rubies pale, and topaz,<BR> +And the crumbled dust of pearls!<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +VI<BR> +</H4> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +With her tarnished silver mirror,<BR> +With her rings of beaten gold,<BR> +With her robes of faded purple,<BR> +And the stylus that so often<BR> +Traced the azure on her eyelids,—<BR> +Eyelids delicate and weary,<BR> +Drooping, over-wise!<BR> +And at her head will be a plectron<BR> +Made of ivory, worn with time,<BR> +And a flute and gilded lyre<BR> +Will be found beside her feet,<BR> +And two little yellow sandals,<BR> +And crude serpents chased in silver<BR> +On her ankle rings—<BR> +And a cloud of drifting dust<BR> +All her shining hair!<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +VII<BR> +</H4> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +In that lost and lonely tomb<BR> +They may find her;<BR> +Find the arms that ached with rapture,<BR> +Softly folded on a breast<BR> +That for evermore is silent;<BR> +Find the eyes no longer wistful,<BR> +Find the lips no longer singing,<BR> +And the heart, so hot and wayward<BR> +When that ashen land was young,<BR> +Cold through all the mists of time,<BR> +Cold beneath the Lesbian marble<BR> +In the low-roofed room<BR> +That drips with tears!<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p49"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE WILD SWANS PASS<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +In the dead of the night<BR> +You turned in your troubled sleep<BR> +As you heard the wild swans pass;<BR> +And then you slept again.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +You slept—<BR> +While a new world swam beneath<BR> +That army of eager wings,<BR> +While plainland and slough and lake<BR> +Lay wide to those outstretched throats,<BR> +While the far lone Lights allured<BR> +That phalanx of passionate breasts.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +And I who had loved you more<BR> +Than a homing bird loves flight,—<BR> +I watched with an ache for freedom,<BR> +I rose with a need for life,<BR> +Knowing that love had passed<BR> +Into its unknown North!<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p51"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> + AT NOTRE DAME +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +I<BR> +</H4> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +O odour of incense, pride of purple and gold,<BR> +Burst of music and praise, and passion of flute and pipe!<BR> +O voices of silver o'er-sweet, and soothing antiphonal chant!<BR> +O Harmony, ancient, ecstatic, a-throb to the echoing roof,<BR> +With tremulous roll of awakened reverberant tubes, and thunder of sound!<BR> +And illusion of mystical song and outclangour of jubilant bell,<BR> +And glimmer of gold and taper, and throbbing, insistent pipe—<BR> +If song and emotion and music were all—<BR> +Were it only all!<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +II<BR> +</H4> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +For see, dark heart of mine,<BR> +How the singers have ceased and gone!<BR> +See, how all of the music is lost and the lights are low,<BR> +And how, as our idle arms, these twin ineloquent towers<BR> +Grope up through the old inaccessible Night to His stars!<BR> +How in vain we have stormed on the bastions of Silence with sound!<BR> +How in vain with our music and song and emotion assailed the Unknown,<BR> +How beat with the wings of our worship on Earth's imprisoning bars!<BR> +For the pinions of Music have wearied, the proud loud tubes have tired,<BR> +Yet still grim and taciturn stand His immutable stars,<BR> +And, lost in the gloom, to His frontiers old I turn<BR> +Where glimmer those sentinel fires,<BR> +Beyond which, Dark Heart, we two<BR> +Some night must steal us forth,<BR> +Quite naked, and alone!<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p54"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE PILOT<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +I lounge on the deck of the river-steamer,<BR> +Homeward bound with its load,<BR> +Churning from headland to headland,<BR> +Through moonlight and silence and dusk.<BR> +And the decks are alive with laughter and music and singing,<BR> +And I see the forms of the sleepers<BR> +And the shadowy lovers that lean so close to the rail,<BR> +And the romping children behind,<BR> +And the dancers amidships.<BR> +But high above us there in the gloom,<BR> +Where the merriment breaks like a wave at his feet,<BR> +Unseen of lover and dancer and me,<BR> +Is the Pilot, impassive and stern,<BR> +With his grim eyes watching the course.<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p56"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +DOORS<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Listen!<BR> +Footsteps<BR> +Are they,<BR> +That falter through the gloom,<BR> +That echo through the lonely chambers<BR> +Of our house of life?<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Listen!<BR> +Did a door close?<BR> +Did a whisper waken?<BR> +Did a ghostly something<BR> +Sigh across the dusk?<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +From the mournful silence<BR> +Something, something went!<BR> +Far down some shadowy passage<BR> +Faintly closed a door—<BR> +And O how empty lies<BR> +Our house of life!<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p58"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +SPRING FLOODS<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +You stood alone<BR> +In the dusky window,<BR> +Watching the racing river.<BR> +Touched with a vague unrest,<BR> +And if tired of loving too much<BR> +More troubled at heart to find<BR> +That the flame of love could wither<BR> +And the wonder of love could pass,<BR> +You kneeled at the window-ledge<BR> +And stared through the black-topped maples<BR> +Where an April robin fluted,—<BR> +Stared idly out<BR> +At the flood-time sweep of the river,<BR> +Silver and paling gold<BR> +In the ghostly April twilight.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Shadowy there in the dusk<BR> +You watched with shadowy eyes<BR> +The racing, sad, unreasoning<BR> +Hurrying torrent of silver<BR> +Seeking its far-off sea.<BR> +Faintly I heard you sigh,<BR> +And faintly I heard the robin's flute,<BR> +And faintly from rooms remote<BR> +Came a broken murmur of voices.<BR> +And life, for a breath, stood bathed<BR> +In a wonder crowned with pain,<BR> +And immortal the moment hung;<BR> +And I know that the thought of you<BR> +There at the shadowy window,<BR> +And the matted black of the maples,<BR> +And the sunset call of a bird,<BR> +And the sad wide reaches of silver,<BR> +Will house in my haunted heart<BR> +Till the end of Time!<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p61"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE TURN OF THE YEAR<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +The pines shake and the winds wake,<BR> +And the dark waves crowd the sky-line!<BR> +The birds wheel out on a troubled sky;<BR> +The widening road runs white and long,<BR> +And the page is turned,<BR> +And the world is tired!<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +So I want no more of twilight sloth,<BR> +And I want no more of resting,<BR> +And of all the earth I ask no more<BR> +Than the green sea, the great sea,<BR> +The long road, the white road,<BR> +And a change of life to-day!<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p62"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +IF I LOVE YOU<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +If I love you, woman of rose<BR> +And warmth and wondering eyes,<BR> +If it so fall out<BR> +That you are the woman I choose,<BR> +Oh, what is there left to say,<BR> +And what should it matter to me,<BR> +Or what can it mean to you?<BR> +For under the two white breasts<BR> +And the womb that makes you woman<BR> +The call of the ages whispers<BR> +And the countless ghosts awaken,<BR> +And stronger than sighs and weeping<BR> +The urge that makes us one,<BR> +And older than hate or loving or shame<BR> +This want that builds the world!<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p64"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +WHAT SHALL I CARE?<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +What shall I care for the ways<BR> +Of these idle and thin-flanked women in silk<BR> +And the lisping men-shadows that trail at their heels?<BR> +What are they worth in my world<BR> +Or the world that I want,<BR> +These flabby-armed, indolent, delicate women<BR> +And these half-women daring to call themselves men<BR> +Yet afraid to get down to the earth<BR> +And afraid of the wind,<BR> +Afraid of the truth,<BR> +And so sadly afraid of themselves?<BR> +How can they help me in trouble and death?<BR> +How can they keep me from hating my kind?<BR> +Oh, I want to get out of their coffining rooms,<BR> +I want to walk free with a man,<BR> +A man who has lived and dared<BR> +And swung through the cycle of life!<BR> +God give me a man for a friend<BR> +To the End,<BR> +Give me a man with his heel on the neck of Hate,<BR> +With his fist in the face of Death,<BR> +A man not fretted with womanish things,<BR> +Unafraid of the light,<BR> +Of the worm in the lip of a corpse,<BR> +Unafraid of the call from the cell of his heart,—<BR> +God give me a man for friend!<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p66"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +HUNTER AND HUNTED<BR> +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +I<BR> +</H4> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +When the sun is high,<BR> +And the hills are happy with light,<BR> +Then virile and strong I am!<BR> +Then ruddy with life I fare,<BR> +The fighter who feels no dread,<BR> +The roamer who knows no bounds,<BR> +The hunter who makes the world his prey,<BR> +And shouting and swept with pride,<BR> +Still mounts to the lonelier height!<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +II<BR> +</H4> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +In the cool of the day,<BR> +When the huddling shadows swarm,<BR> +And the ominous eyes look out<BR> +And night slinks over the swales<BR> +And the silence is chill with death,<BR> +Then I am the croucher beside the coals,<BR> +The lurker within the shadowy cave,<BR> +Who listens and mutters a charm<BR> +And trembles and waits,<BR> +A hunted thing grown<BR> +Afraid of the hunt,<BR> +A silence enisled in silence,<BR> +A wonder enwrapped in awe!<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p68"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +APPLE BLOSSOMS<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +I saw a woman stand<BR> +Under the seas of bloom,<BR> +Under the waves of colour and light,<BR> +The showery snow and rose of the odorous trees<BR> +That made a glory of earth.<BR> +She stood where the petals fell,<BR> +And her hands were on her breast,<BR> +And her lips were touched with wonder,<BR> +And her eyes were full of pain—<BR> +For pure she was, and young,<BR> +And it was Spring!<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p69"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE HOUSE OF LIFE<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Quietly I closed the door.<BR> +Then I said to my soul:<BR> +"I shall never come back,<BR> +Back to this haunted room<BR> +Where Sorrow and I have slept."<BR> +I turned from that hated door<BR> +And passed through the House of Life,<BR> +Through its ghostly rooms and glad<BR> +And its corridors dim with age.<BR> +Then lightly I crossed a threshold<BR> +Where the casements showed the sun<BR> +And I entered an unknown room,—<BR> +And my heart went cold,<BR> +For about me stood that Chamber of Pain<BR> +I had thought to see no more!<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p70"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +ULTIMATA<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +I am desolate,<BR> +Desolate because of a woman.<BR> +When at midnight walking alone<BR> +I look up at the slow-wheeling stars,<BR> +I see only the eyes of this woman.<BR> +In bird-haunted valleys and by-ways secluded,<BR> +Where once I sought peace,<BR> +I find now only unrest<BR> +And this one unaltering want.<BR> +When the dawn-wind stirs in the pine-tops<BR> +I hear only her voice's whisper.<BR> +When by day I gaze into the azure above me<BR> +I see only the face of this woman.<BR> +In the sunlight I cannot find comfort,<BR> +Nor can I find peace in the shadows.<BR> +Neither can I take joy in the hill-wind,<BR> +Nor find solace on kindlier breasts;<BR> +For deep in the eyes of all women I watch<BR> +I see only her eyes stare back.<BR> +Nor can I shut the thought of her out of my heart<BR> +And the ache for her out of my hours.<BR> +Ruthlessly now she invades even my dreams<BR> +And wounds me in sleep;<BR> +And my body cries out for her,<BR> +Early and late and forever cries out for her,<BR> +And her alone,—<BR> +<I>And I want this woman!</I><BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +I am sick at heart because of this woman;<BR> +I am lost to shame because of my want;<BR> +And mine own people have come to mean naught to me;<BR> +And with many about me still am I utterly alone,<BR> +And quite solitary now I take my way<BR> +Where men are intent on puny things<BR> +And phantasmal legions pace!<BR> +And a wearisome thing is life,<BR> +And forever the shadow of this one woman<BR> +Is falling across my path.<BR> +The turn in the road is a promise of her.<BR> +The twilight is thronged with her ghosts;<BR> +The grasses speak only of her,<BR> +The leaves whisper her name forever;<BR> +The odorous fields are full of her.<BR> +Her lips, I keep telling myself,<BR> +Are a cup from which I must drink;<BR> +Her breast is the one last pillow<BR> +Whereon I may ever find peace!<BR> +Yet she has not come to me,<BR> +And being denied her, everything stands denied,<BR> +And all men who have waited in vain for love<BR> +Cry out through my desolate heart;<BR> +And the want of the hungering world<BR> +Runs like fire through my veins<BR> +And bursts from my throat in the cry<BR> +<I>That I want this woman!</I><BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +I am possessed of a great sickness<BR> +And likewise possessed of a great strength,<BR> +And the ultimate hour has come.<BR> +I will arise and go unto this woman,<BR> +And with bent head and my arms about her knees<BR> +I shall say unto her: "Beloved beyond all words,<BR> +Others have sought your side,<BR> +And many have craved your kiss,<BR> +But none, O body of flesh and bone,<BR> +Has known a hunger like mine!<BR> +And though evil befall, or good,<BR> +This hunger is given to me,<BR> +And is now made known to you,—<BR> +For I must die,<BR> +Or you must die,<BR> +Or Desire must die<BR> +This night!"<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p75"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE LIFE ON THE TABLE<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +In the white-walled room<BR> +Where the white bed waits<BR> +Stand banks of meaningless flowers;<BR> +In the rain-swept street<BR> +Are a ghost-like row of cabs;<BR> +And along the corridor-dusk<BR> +Phantasmal feet repass.<BR> +Through the warm, still air<BR> +The odour of ether hangs;<BR> +And on this slenderest thread<BR> +Of one thin pulse<BR> +Hangs and swings<BR> +The hope of life—<BR> +The life of her<BR> +I love!<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p76"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +YOU BID ME TO SLEEP<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +You bid me to sleep,—<BR> +But why, O Daughter of Beauty,<BR> +Was beauty thus born in the world?<BR> +Since out of these shadowy eyes<BR> +The wonder shall pass!<BR> +And out of this surging and passionate breast<BR> +The dream shall depart!<BR> +And out of these delicate rivers of warmth<BR> +The fire shall wither and fail!<BR> +And youth like a bird from your body shall fly!<BR> +And Time like a fang on your flesh shall feed!<BR> +And this perilous bosom that pulses with love<BR> +Shall go down to the dust from which it arose,—<BR> +Yet Daughter of Beauty, close,<BR> +Close to its sumptuous warmth<BR> +You hold my sorrowing head,<BR> +And smile with shadowy eyes,<BR> +And bid me to sleep again!<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p78"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE LAST OF SUMMER<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +The opal afternoon<BR> +Is cool, and very still.<BR> +A wash of tawny air,<BR> +Sea-green that melts to gold,<BR> +Bathes all the skyline, hill by hill.<BR> +Out of the black-topped pinelands<BR> +A black crow calls,<BR> +And the year seems old!<BR> +A woman from a doorway sings,<BR> +And from the valley-slope a sheep-dog barks,<BR> +And through the umber woods the echo falls.<BR> +Then silence on the still world lies,<BR> +And faint and far the birds fly south,<BR> +And behind the dark pines drops the sun,<BR> +And a small wind wakes and sighs,<BR> +And Summer, see, is done!<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p80"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +AT CHARING-CROSS<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Alone amid the Rockies I have stood;<BR> +Alone across the prairie's midnight calm<BR> +Full often I have fared<BR> +And faced the hushed infinity of night;<BR> +Alone I have hung poised<BR> +Between a quietly heaving sea<BR> +And quieter sky,<BR> +Aching with isolation absolute;<BR> +And in Death's Valley I have walked alone<BR> +And sought in vain for some appeasing sign<BR> +Of life or movement,<BR> +While over-desolate my heart called out<BR> +For some befriending face<BR> +Or some assuaging voice!<BR> +But never on my soul has weighed<BR> +Such loneliness as this,<BR> +As here amid the seething London tides<BR> +I look upon these ghosts that come and go,<BR> +These swarming restless souls innumerable,<BR> +Who through their million-footed dirge of unconcern<BR> +Must know and nurse the thought of kindred ghosts<BR> +As lonely as themselves,<BR> +Or else go mad with it!<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p82"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +PRESCIENCE<BR> +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +I<BR> +</H4> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +"The sting of it all," you said, as you stooped low over your roses,<BR> +"The worst of it is, when I think of Death,<BR> +That Spring by Spring the Earth shall still be beautiful,<BR> +And Summer by Summer be lovely again,<BR> +—And I shall be gone!"<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +II<BR> +</H4> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +"I would not care, perhaps," you said, watching your roses,<BR> +"If only 'twere dust and ruin and emptiness left behind!<BR> +But the thought that Earth and April<BR> +Year by casual year<BR> +Shall waken around the old ways, soft and beautiful,<BR> +Year by year when I am away,<BR> +—This, this breaks my heart!"<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p84"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE STEEL WORKERS<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +I watched the workers in steel,<BR> +The Pit-like glow of the furnace,<BR> +The rivers of molten metal,<BR> +The tremulous rumble of cranes,<BR> +The throb of the Thor-like hammers<BR> +On sullen and resonant anvils!<BR> +I saw the half-clad workers<BR> +Twisting earth's iron to their use,<BR> +Shaping the steel to their thoughts;<BR> +And, in some way, out of the fury<BR> +And the fires of mortal passion,<BR> +It seemed to me,<BR> +In some way, out of the torture<BR> +And tumult of inchoate Time,<BR> +The hammer of sin is shaping<BR> +The soul of man!<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p86"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE CHILDREN<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +The city is old in sin,<BR> +And children are not for cities,<BR> +And, wan-eyed woman, you want them not,<BR> +You say with a broken laugh.<BR> +Yet out of each wayward softness of voice,<BR> +And each fulness of breast,<BR> +And each flute-throated echo of song,<BR> +Each flutter of lace and quest of beautiful things,<BR> +Each coil of entangling hair built into its crown,<BR> +Each whisper and touch in the silence of night,<BR> +Each red unreasoning mouth that is lifted to mouth,<BR> +Each whiteness of brow that is furrowed no more with thought,<BR> +Each careless soft curve of lips that can never explain,<BR> +Arises the old and the inappeasable cry!<BR> +Every girl who leans from a tenement sill<BR> +And flutters a hand to a youth,<BR> +Every woman who waits for a man in the dusk,<BR> +Every harlotous arm flung up to a drunken heel<BR> +That would trample truth down in the dust,<BR> +Reaches unknowingly out for its own,<BR> +And blind to its heritage waits<BR> +For its child!<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p88"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE NOCTURNE<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Remote, in some dim room,<BR> +On this dark April morning soft with rain,<BR> +I hear her pensive touch<BR> +Fall aimless on the keys,<BR> +And stop, and play again.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +And as the music wakens<BR> +And the shadowy house is still,<BR> +How all my troubled soul cries out<BR> +For things I know not of!<BR> +Ah, keen the quick chords fall,<BR> +And weighted with regret,<BR> +Fade through the quiet rooms;<BR> +And warm as April rain<BR> +The strange tears fall,<BR> +And life in some way seems<BR> +Too deep to bear!<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p90"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE WILD GEESE<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Over my home-sick head,<BR> +High in the paling light<BR> +And touched with the sunset's glow,<BR> +Soaring and strong and free,<BR> +The unswerving phalanx sweeps,<BR> +The honking wild geese go,—<BR> +Go with a flurry of wings<BR> +Home to their norland lakes<BR> +And the sedge-fringed tarns of peace<BR> +And the pinelands soft with Spring!<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +I cannot go as the geese go,<BR> +But into the steadfast North,<BR> +The North that is dark and tender,<BR> +My home-sick spirit wings,—<BR> +Wings with a flurry of longing thoughts<BR> +And nests in the tarns of youth.<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p92"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE DAY<BR> +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +I<BR> +</H4> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Dewy, dewy lawn-slopes,<BR> +Is this the day she comes?<BR> +O wild-flower face of Morning,<BR> +Must you never wake?<BR> +Silvery, silvery sea-line,<BR> +Does she come to-day?<BR> +O murmurous, murmurous birch-leaves,<BR> +Beneath your whispering shadow<BR> +She will surely pass;<BR> +And thrush beneath the black-thorn<BR> +And white-throat in the pine-top,<BR> +Sing as you have never sung,<BR> +For she will surely come!<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +II<BR> +</H4> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +The lone green of the lawn-slope,<BR> +The grey light on the sky-line,<BR> +The mournful stir of birch-leaves,<BR> +The thin note of the brown thrush,<BR> +And the call of troubled white-throats<BR> +Across the afternoon!—<BR> +Ah, Summer now is over,<BR> +And for us the season closed,<BR> +For she who came an hour ago<BR> +Has gone again—<BR> +Has gone!<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p94"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE REVOLT<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +God knows that I've tinkled and jingled and strummed,<BR> +That I've piped it and jigged it until I'm fair sick of the game,<BR> +That I've given them slag and wasted the silver of song,<BR> +That I've thrown them the tailings and they've taken them up content!<BR> +But now I want to slough off the bitterness born of it all,<BR> +I want to throw off the shackles and chains of time,<BR> +I want to sit down with my soul and talk straight out,<BR> +I want to make peace with myself,<BR> +And say what I have to say,<BR> +While still there is time!<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Yea, I will arise and go forth, I have said,<BR> +To the uplands of truth, to be free as the wind,<BR> +Rough and unruly and open and turbulent-throated!<BR> +Yea, I will go forth and fling from my soul<BR> +The shackles and chains of song!<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +But, lo, on my wrists are the scars,<BR> +And here on my ankles the chain-galls,<BR> +And the cell-pallor, see, on my face!<BR> +And my throat seems thick with the cell-dust,<BR> +And for guidance I grope to the walls,<BR> +And after my moment of light<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +I want to go back to the Dark,<BR> +Since the Open still makes me afraid,<BR> +And silence seems best in the sun,<BR> +And song in the dusk!<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p97"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +ATAVISM<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +I feel all primal and savage to-day.<BR> +I could eat and drink deep and love strong<BR> +I could fight and exult and boast and be glad!<BR> +I could tear out the life of a wild thing and laugh at it!<BR> +I could crush into panting submission the breast of a woman<BR> +A-stray from her tribe and her smoke-stained tent-door!<BR> +I could glory in folly and fire and ruin,<BR> +And race naked-limbed with the wind,<BR> +And slink on the heels of my foes<BR> +And dabble their blood on my brows—<BR> +For to-day I am sick of it all,<BR> +This silent and orderly empty life,<BR> +And I feel all savage again!<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p99"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +MARCH TWILIGHT<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Black with a batter of mud<BR> +Stippled with silvery pools<BR> +Stands the pavement at the street-end;<BR> +And the gutter snow is gone<BR> +From cobble and runnelling curb;<BR> +And no longer the ramping wind<BR> +Is rattling the rusty signs;<BR> +And moted and soft and misty<BR> +Hangs the sunlight over the cross-streets,<BR> +And the home-bound crowds of the city<BR> +Walk in a flood of gold.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +And suddenly out of the dusk<BR> +There comes the ancient question:<BR> +Can it be that I have lived<BR> +In earlier worlds unknown?<BR> +Or is it that somewhere deep<BR> +In this husk that men call Me<BR> +Are kennelled a motley kin<BR> +I never shall know or name,—<BR> +Are housed still querulous ghosts<BR> +That sigh and awaken and move,<BR> +And sleep once more?<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p101"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> + THE ECHO +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +I<BR> +</H4> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +I am only a note in the chorus,<BR> +A leaf in the fluttering June,<BR> +A wave on the deep.<BR> +These things that I struggle to utter<BR> +Have all been uttered before.<BR> +In many another heart<BR> +The selfsame song was born,<BR> +The ancient ache endured,<BR> +The timeless wonder faced,<BR> +The unanswered question nursed,<BR> +The resurgent hunger felt,<BR> +And the eternal failure known!<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +II<BR> +</H4> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +But glad is the lip of its whisper;<BR> +The wave, of its life;<BR> +The leaf, of its lisp;<BR> +And glad for its hour is my soul<BR> +For its echo of godlier music,<BR> +Its fragment of song!<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p103"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +AUTUMN<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +The thin gold of the sun lies slanting on the hill;<BR> +In the sorrowful greys and muffled violets of the old orchard<BR> +A group of girls are quietly gathering apples.<BR> +Through the mingled gloom and green they scarcely speak at all,<BR> +And their broken voices rise and fall unutterably sad.<BR> +There are no birds,<BR> +And the goldenrod is gone.<BR> +And a child calls out, far away, across the autumn twilight;<BR> +And the sad grey of the dusk grows slowly deeper,<BR> +And all the world seems old!<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p104"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +FACES<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +I tire of these empty masks,<BR> +These faces of city women<BR> +That seem so vapid and well-controlled.<BR> +I get tired of their guarded ways<BR> +And their eyes that are always empty<BR> +Of either passion or hate<BR> +Or promise or love,<BR> +And that seem to be old<BR> +And are never young!<BR> +I think of the homelier faces<BR> +That I have seen,<BR> +The vital and open faces<BR> +In the by-ways of the world:<BR> +A Polish girl who met<BR> +Her lover one wintry morning<BR> +Outside the gaol at Ossining;<BR> +A lean young Slav violinist<BR> +And the steerage women about him,<BR> +Held by the sound of his music;<BR> +A young and deep-bosomed Teuton<BR> +Suckling her shawl-wrapped child<BR> +On a grey stone bridge in Detmold;<BR> +A group of girls from Ireland,<BR> +Crowding the steps of a colonist-car<BR> +And singing half-sadly together<BR> +As their train rocked on and on<BR> +Over the sun-bathed prairie;<BR> +A mournful Calabrian mother<BR> +Standing and staring out<BR> +Past the mists of Ischia<BR> +After a fading steamer;<BR> +A Nautch girl held by a sailor<BR> +Who'd taken a knife from her fingers<BR> +But not the fire from her eyes;<BR> +And a silent Sicilian mother<BR> +Standing alone in the Marina<BR> +Awaiting her boy who had been<BR> +Long years away!—<BR> +These I remember!<BR> +And of these<BR> +I never tire!<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p107"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THERE IS STRENGTH IN THE SOIL<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +There is strength in the soil;<BR> +In the earth there is laughter and youth.<BR> +There is solace and hope in the upturned loam.<BR> +And lo, I shall plant my soul in it here like a seed!<BR> +And forth it shall come to me as a flower of song;<BR> +For I know it is good to get back to the earth<BR> +That is orderly, placid, all-patient!<BR> +It is good to know how quiet<BR> +And noncommittal it breathes,<BR> +This ample and opulent bosom<BR> +That must some day nurse us all!<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p108"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +LIFE-DRUNK<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +On opal Aprilian mornings like this<BR> +I seem dizzy and drunk with life.<BR> +I waken and wander and laugh in the sun;<BR> +With some mystical knowledge enormous<BR> +I lift up my face to the light.<BR> +Drunk with a gladness stupendous I seem;<BR> +With some wine of Immensity god-like I reel;<BR> +And my arm could fling Time from His throne;<BR> +I could pelt the awed taciturn arch<BR> +Of Morning with music and mirth;<BR> +And I feel, should I find but a voice for my thought,<BR> +That the infinite orbits of all God's loneliest stars<BR> +That are weaving vast traceries out on the fringes of Night<BR> +Could never stand more than a hem on the robe of my Song!<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p110"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +MY HEART STOOD EMPTY<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +My heart stood empty and bare,<BR> +So I hung it with thoughts of a woman.<BR> +The remembered ways of this woman<BR> +Hung sweet in my heart.<BR> +So I followed where thought should lead,<BR> +And it led to her feet.<BR> +But the mouth of this woman was pain,<BR> +And the love of this woman, regret;<BR> +And now only the thought<BR> +Of all those remembered thoughts<BR> +Of remembered ways,<BR> +Is shut in my heart!<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p111"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +ONE NIGHT IN THE NORTHWEST<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +When they flagged our train because of a broken rail,<BR> +I stepped down out of the crowded car,<BR> +With its clamour and dust and heat and babel of broken talk.<BR> +I stepped out into the cool, the velvet cool, of the night,<BR> +And felt the balm of the prairie-wind on my face,<BR> +And somewhere I heard the running of water,<BR> +I felt the breathing of grass,<BR> +And I knew, as I saw the great white stars,<BR> +That the world was made for good!<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p112"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +DREAMERS<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +There's a poet tombed in you,<BR> +Man of blood and iron!<BR> +There's a dreamer dead and buried<BR> +Deep beneath your cynic frown,<BR> +Deep beneath your toil!<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +And deep beneath my music,<BR> +There's a strong man stirs in me;<BR> +There's a ghost of blood and granite<BR> +Coffined in this madness<BR> +Carpentered of Song!<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +You live your day and drain it;<BR> +I weave my dream and lose it;<BR> +But the red blood lost in me awakens still at times,<BR> +At all your city's sky-line,<BR> +At all your roaring market-place,<BR> +At all its hum of power—<BR> +And the poet dead within you stirs<BR> +Still at the plaintive note or two<BR> +Of a dreamer's plaintive song!<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p114"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE QUESTION<BR> +</H3> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +I<BR> +</H4> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Glad with the wine of life,<BR> +Reeling I go my way,<BR> +Drunk with the ache of living<BR> +And mouthing my drunken song!<BR> +Then comes the lucid moment<BR> +And the shadow across the lintel;<BR> +And I hear the ghostly whisper,<BR> +And I glimpse with startled eyes<BR> +The Door beyond the doorway,<BR> +And I see the small dark house<BR> +Where I must sleep.<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +II<BR> +</H4> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Then song turns sour on my lips,<BR> +And the warmth goes out of my blood,<BR> +And I turn me back to the beaker,<BR> +And re-draining my cup of dream,<BR> +I drown the whispering voices,<BR> +I banish the ghostly question<BR> +As to which in the end is true:<BR> +The wine and the open road?<BR> +Or the waiting Door?<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p116"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE GIFT OF HATE<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Empty it seems, at times, their cry about Love,<BR> +Their claim that love is the only thing that survives.<BR> +For I who am born of my centuries strewn with hate,<BR> +Who was spewed into life from a timeless tangle of sin,<BR> +I can hate as strong and as long as I love!<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +There are hours and issues I hate;<BR> +There are creeds and deeds and doubts I hate;<BR> +There are men I hate to the uttermost;<BR> +And although in their graves they listen and weep,<BR> +Earth's mothers and wistful women who cried for peace,<BR> +I hate this King of Evil who has crowned my heart with Hate!<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p118"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE DREAM<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +I lay by your side last night.<BR> +By you, in my dreams,<BR> +I felt the damp of the grave.<BR> +I was dead with you—<BR> +And my bones still ache with Death.<BR> +For my hand went out and I touched your lips,<BR> +And I found them fallen away,<BR> +Wasted and lost!<BR> +Those lips once warm with life<BR> +Were eaten and gone!<BR> +And my soul screamed out in the dark<BR> +At the intimate blackness of Death.<BR> +And then I arose from the dead<BR> +And returned to the day;<BR> +And my bones and my heart still ache with it all,<BR> +And I hunger to hear the relieving babble of life,<BR> +The crowd in the hurrying street,<BR> +The tumult and laughter and talk,<BR> +To make me forget!<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p120"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +ONE ROOM IN MY HEART<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +One room in my heart shall be closed, I said;<BR> +One chamber at least in my soul shall be secret and locked!<BR> +I shall hold it my holy of holies, and no one shall know it!<BR> +But you, calm woman predestined, with casual hands,<BR> +You came with this trivial key,<BR> +And ward by obdurate ward the surrendering lock fell back,<BR> +And disdainfully now you wander and brood and wait<BR> +In this room that I thought was my own!<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p121"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE MEANING<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +It isn't the Sea that I love,<BR> +But the ships<BR> +That must dare and endure and defy and survive it!<BR> +It isn't the flesh that I love,<BR> +But the spirit<BR> +That guides and derides and controls and outlives it!<BR> +It isn't this earth that I love,<BR> +But the mortals<BR> +Who give to it meaning and colour and passion and life!<BR> +For what is the Sea without ships?<BR> +And what is the flesh without soul?<BR> +And what is a world without love?<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p122"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE VEIL<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +You have said that I sold<BR> +My life for a song;<BR> +Laid bare my heart<BR> +That men might listen<BR> +And go their ways—<BR> +My inchoate heart<BR> +That I dare not plumb,<BR> +That goes unbridled<BR> +To the depths of Hell,<BR> +That sings in the sun<BR> +To the brink of Heaven!<BR> +I have tossed you the spindrift<BR> +Born of its fretting<BR> +On its shallowest coast,<BR> +But over the depths of it<BR> +Bastioned in wonder<BR> +And silent with fear<BR> +God sits with me!<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p124"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE MAN OF DREAMS<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +All my lean life<BR> +I garnered nothing but a dream or two,<BR> +These others gathered harvests<BR> +And grew fat with grain.<BR> +But no man lives by bread,<BR> +And bread alone.<BR> +So, forgetful of their scorn,<BR> +When starved, they cried for life,<BR> +I gave them my last dreams,<BR> +I bared for them my heart,<BR> +That they might eat!<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p125"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +APRIL ON THE RIALTO<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +A canyon of granite and steel,<BR> +A river of grim unrest,<BR> +And over the fever and street-dust<BR> +Arches the azure of dream.<BR> +And fretting along the tumult,<BR> +Threading the iron curbs,<BR> +Tawdry in tinsel and feather<BR> +Drift the daughters of pleasure,<BR> +The sad-eyed traders in song,<BR> +The makers of joy,<BR> +The Columbines of the city<BR> +Seeking their ends!<BR> +But under the beaded eye-lash,<BR> +Under the lip with its rouge,<BR> +Under the mask of white<BR> +Splashed with geranium-red,<BR> +As God's own arch of azure<BR> +Leans softly over the street,<BR> +Surely, this day, runs warmer<BR> +The blood through a wasted breast!<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p127"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE SURRENDER<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Must I round my life to a song,<BR> +As the waves wear smooth the shore-stone?<BR> +Shall the mortal beat and throb<BR> +Of this heart of mine<BR> +Be only to crumble a dream,<BR> +And fashion the pebbles of fancy,<BR> +That the tides of time may cover,<BR> +Or a child may find?<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Little in truth it matters;<BR> +But this at the most I know:<BR> +Infinite is the ocean<BR> +That thunders upon man's soul,<BR> +And the sooner the soul falls broken,<BR> +The smoother will be its song!<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p128"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE PASSING<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +Ere the thread is loosed,<BR> +And the sands run low,<BR> +And the last hope fails,<BR> +Wherever we fare,<BR> +O Fond and True,<BR> +May it fall that we come in the end,<BR> +Come back to the crimson valleys,<BR> +Back to the Indian Summer,<BR> +Back to the northern pine-lands,<BR> +And the grey lakes draped with silence,<BR> +And the sunlight thin and poignant,<BR> +And the leaf that flutters earthward,<BR> +And the skyline green and lonely,<BR> +And the ramparts of the dead world<BR> +Ruddy with wintry rose!<BR> +May we fare, O Fond and True,<BR> +Through our soft-houred Indian Summer,<BR> +Through the paling twilight weather,<BR> +And facing the lone green uplands,<BR> +And greeting the sun-warmed hills,<BR> +Step into the pineland shadows<BR> +And enter the sunset valley<BR> +And go as the glory goes<BR> +Out of the dreaming autumn,<BR> +Out of the drifting leaf<BR> +And the dying light!<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p130"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +PROTESTATIONS<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +If I tire of you, beautiful woman,<BR> +I know that the fault is mine;<BR> +Yet not all mine the failure<BR> +And not all mine the loss!<BR> +In loveliness still you walk;<BR> +But I have walked with sorrow!<BR> +I have threaded narrows,<BR> +And I have passed through perils<BR> +That you know nothing of!<BR> +And I in my grief have gazed<BR> +In eyes that were not yours;<BR> +And my emptier hours have known<BR> +The sigh of kindlier bosoms,<BR> +The kiss of kindlier mouths!<BR> +Yet the end of all is written,<BR> +And nothing, O rose-leaf woman,<BR> +You ever may dream or do<BR> +Henceforth can bring me anguish<BR> +Or crown my days with joy!<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + <I>Three tears, O stately woman,<BR> + You said could float your soul,<BR> + So little a thing it seemed!<BR> + Yet all that's left of life<BR> + I'd give to know your love,<BR> + I'd give to show my love,<BR> + And feel your kiss again!</I><BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="p132"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +I SAT IN THE SUNLIGHT<BR> +</H3> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +I sat in the sunlight thinking of life;<BR> +I sat there, dreaming of Death.<BR> +And a moth alit on the sun-dial's face,<BR> +And the birds sang sleepily,<BR> +And the leaves stirred,<BR> +And the sun lay warm on the hills,<BR> +And the afternoon grew old.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +So, some day I knew the birds would sing,<BR> +And the leaves would stir,<BR> +And the afternoon grow old—<BR> +And I would not be there.<BR> +And the warmth went out of the day,<BR> +And a wind blew out of the West where I sat,<BR> +And the birds were still!<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR><BR> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Open Water, by Arthur Stringer + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OPEN WATER *** + +***** This file should be named 37557-h.htm or 37557-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/7/5/5/37557/ + +Produced by Al Haines + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Open Water + +Author: Arthur Stringer + +Release Date: October 12, 2011 [EBook #37557] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OPEN WATER *** + + + + +Produced by Al Haines + + + + + + + + + + +OPEN WATER + + +BY + +ARTHUR STRINGER + +AUTHOR OF "THE WOMAN IN THE RAIN," "IRISH POEMS," ETC. + + + + +NEW YORK--JOHN LANE COMPANY + +LONDON--JOHN LANE--THE BODLEY HEAD + +TORONTO--BELL & COCKBURN + +MCMXIV + + + + +Copyright, 1914, by + +JOHN LANE COMPANY + + + +Press of J. J. Little & Ives Co. + +New York, U. S. A. + + + + +CONTENTS + + + A Foreword + Milkweed + Home Thoughts + Life + Some Day, Oh Seeker of Dreams + Black Hours + Before Renewal + Hill-Top Hours + Letters from Home + Chains + The Drums + Anaesthesia + A Summer Night + Sappho's Tomb + The Wild Swans Pass + At Notre Dame + The Pilot + Doors + Spring Floods + The Turn of the Year + If I Love You + What Shall I Care? + Hunter and Hunted + Apple Blossoms + The House of Life + Ultimata + The Life on the Table + You Bid Me to Sleep + The Last of Summer + At Charing Cross + Prescience + The Steel Workers + The Children + The Nocturne + The Wild Geese + The Day + The Revolt + Atavism + March Twilight + The Echo + Autumn + Faces + There Is Strength in the Soil + Life-Drunk + My Heart Stood Empty + One Night in the Northwest + Dreamers + The Question + The Gift of Hate + The Dream + One Room in My Heart + The Meaning + The Veil + The Man of Dreams + April on the Rialto + The Surrender + The Passing + Protestations + I Sat in the Sunlight + + + + +A FOREWORD + +To even the casual reader of poetry who may chance to turn to the +following pages it will be evident that the lyrics contained therein +have been written without what is commonly known as end-rhyme. It may +also be claimed by this reader that the lyrics before him are without +rhythm. As such, it may at first seem that they mark an effort in +revolt against two of the primary assets of modern versification. + +All art, of course, has its ancestry. While it is the duty of poetry +both to remember and to honour its inherited grandeurs, the paradoxical +fact remains that even this most convention-ridden medium of emotional +expression is a sort of warfare between the embattled soul of the +artist, seeking articulation, and the immuring traditions with which +time and the prosodian have surrounded him. + +In painting and in music, as in sculpture and the drama, there has been +a movement of late to achieve what may be called formal emancipation, a +struggle to break away from the restraints and the technical +obligations imposed upon the worker by his artistic predecessors. In +one case this movement may be called Futurism, and in another it may be +termed Romanticism, but the tendency is the same. The spirit of man is +seen in rebellion against a form that has become too intricate or too +fixed to allow him freedom of utterance. + +Poetry alone, during the last century, seems to have remained stable, +in the matter of structure. Few new forms have been invented, and with +one or two rare exceptions success has been achieved through +ingeniously elaborating on an already established formula and through +meticulously re-echoing what has already been said. This has resulted, +on the one hand, in a technical dexterity which often enough resembles +the strained postures of acrobatism, and, on the other, in that +constantly reiterated complaint as to the hollowness and aloofness of +modern poetry. Yet this poetry is remote and insincere, not because +the modern spirit is incapable of feeling, but because what the singer +of to-day has felt has not been directly and openly expressed. His +apparel has remained mediaeval. He must still don mail to face Mausers, +and wear chain-armour against machine-guns. He must scout through the +shadowy hinterlands of consciousness in attire that may be historic, +yet at the same time is distressingly conspicuous. And when he begins +his assault on those favouring moments or inspirational moods which +lurk in the deeper valleys and by-ways of sensibility, he must begin it +as a marked man, pathetically resplendent in that rigid steel which is +an anachronism and no longer an armour. + +Rhyme, from the first, has been imposed upon him. His only escape from +rhyme has been the larger utterance of blank verse. Yet the iambic +pentameter of his native tongue, perfected in the sweeping sonority of +the later Shakespearean tragedies and left even more intimidatingly +austere in the organ-like roll of Milton, has been found by the later +singer to be ill-fitted for the utterance of those more intimate moods +and those subjective experiences which may be described as +characteristically modern. Verse, in the nature of things, has become +less epic and racial, and more and more lyric and personal. The poet, +consequently, has been forced back into the narrower domain so formally +and so rigidly fenced in by rhyme. And before touching on the +limitations resulting from this incarceration, it may be worth while to +venture a brief glance back over the history of what Milton himself +denominated as "the jingling sounds of like endings" and Goldsmith +characterized as "a vile monotony" and even Howells has spoken of as +"the artificial trammels of verse." + +It has been claimed that those early poets of Palestine who affected +the custom of beginning a number of lines or stanzas with the same +letter of the alphabet unconsciously prepared the way for that +latter-day ornamental fringe known as end-rhyme. Others have claimed +that this insistence of a consonance of terminals is a relique of the +communal force of the chant, where the clapping of hands, the stamping +of feet, or the twanging of bow-strings marked the period-ends of +prehistoric recitative. The bow-string of course, later evolved into +the musical instrument, and when poetry became a written as well as a +spoken language the consonantal drone of rhyming end-words took the +place of the discarded instrument which had served to mark a secondary +and wider rhythm in the progress of impassioned recitative. + +It must be admitted, however, even in the face of this ingenious +pleading, that rhyme is a much more modern invention than it seems. +That it is not rudimentary in the race is evidenced by the fact that +many languages, such as the Celtic, the Teutonic, and the Scandinavian, +are quite without it. The Greeks, even in their melic poetry, saw no +need for it. The same may be said of the Romans, though with them it +will occasionally be found that the semi-feet of the pentameter +constitute what may be called accidental rhyme. Rhyming Latin verse, +indeed, does not come into existence until the end of the fourth +century, and it is not until the time of the Conquest that end-rhyme +becomes in any way general in English song. Layman, in translating +Wace's _Le Brut d'Angleterre_, found the original work written in +rhymed lines, and in following that early model produced what is +probably the first rhymed poem written in England. + +With the introduction of end-rhymes came the discovery that a +decoration so formal could convert verse into something approaching the +architectural. It gave design to the lyric. With this new +definiteness of outline, of course, came a newer rigidity of medium. +Form was acknowledged as the visible presentation of this particular +art. Formal variations became a matter of studious attention. Efforts +were made to leave language in itself instrumental, and in these +efforts sound frequently comes perilously near triumphing over sense. +The exotic formal growths of other languages were imported into +England. No verbal _tour de force_ of _troubadour_ or _trouvere_ or +_jongleur_ or Ronsardist was too fantastic for imitation and adoption. +The one-time primitive directness of English was overrun by such forms +as the ballade, the chant royal, the rondel, the kyrielle, the rondeau +and the rondeau redouble, the virelai and the pantoum, the sestina, the +villanelle, and last, yet by no means least, the sonnet. But through +the immense tangle of our intricate lyric growths it can now be seen +that mere mechanics do not always make poetry. While rhyme has, +indeed, served its limited purposes, it must be remembered that the +highest English verse has been written without rhyme. This verbal +embroidery, while it presents to the workman in words a pleasingly +decorative form, at the same time imposes on him both an adventitious +restraint and an increased self-consciousness. The twentieth century +poet, singing with his scrupulously polished vocalisation, usually +finds himself content to re-echo what has been said before. He is +unable to "travel light"; pioneering with so heavy a burden is out of +the question. Rhyme and meter have compelled him to sacrifice content +for form. It has left him incapable of what may be called abandonment. +And the consciousness of his technical impedimenta has limited the +roads along which he may adventure. His preoccupation with formal +exactions has implanted in him an instinctive abhorrence for anything +beyond the control of what he calls common-sense. Dominated by this +emotional and intellectual timidity, he has attributed to end-rhyme and +accentual rhythm the self-sufficiency of mystic rites, in the face of +the fact that the fewer the obstacles between feeling and expression +the richer the literary product must be, and forgetting, too, that +poetry represents the extreme vanguard of consciousness both +adventuring and pioneering along the path of future progress. + +For the poet to turn his back on rhythm, as at times he has been able +to do with rhyme, is an impossibility. For the rhythmising instinct is +innate and persistent in man, standing for a law which permeates every +manifestation of energy. The great heart of Nature itself beats with a +regular systole and diastole. But, rhythmically, the modern versifier +has been a Cubist without quite comprehending it. He has been viewing +the world mathematically. He has been crowding his soul into a +geometrically designed mould. He has bowed to a rule-of-thumb order of +speech, arbitrarily imposed on him by an ancestry which wrung its +ingenuous pleasure out of an ingenuous regularity of stress and accent. +To succeed under that law he must practise an adroit form of +self-deception, solemnly pretending to fit his lines to a mould which +he actually over-runs and occasionally ignores. He has not been +satisfied with the rhythm of Nature, whose heart-beats in their +manifold expressions are omnipresent but never confined to any single +sustained pulse or any one limited movement. It is not argued that he +should ignore rhythm altogether. To do so, as has already been said, +would be impossible, since life itself is sustained by the rise and +fall of mortal breasts and the beat and throb of mortal hearts. Rhythm +is in man's blood. The ear of the world instinctively searches for +cadences. The poet's efforts towards symphonic phrasing have long +since become habitual and imperative. But that he should confine +himself to certain man-made laws of meter, that he should be shackled +by the prosodian of the past, is quite another matter. His +predecessors have fashioned many rhythms that are pretty, many +accentual forms that are cunningly intricate, but at a time when his +manner of singing has lost its vital swing it is well for man to forget +these formal prettinesses and equally well to remember that poetry is +not an intellectual exercise but the immortal soul of perplexed +mortality seeking expression. + +To abandon fixed rhythm, or meter, for the floating rhythm of the chant +may not be an immediate solution of the problem. To follow the Psalms +of David, for example, will not suddenly conjure a new school of verse +into the world. But to return to the more open movement of the chant, +which is man's natural and rudimentary form of song, may constitute a +step towards freedom. The mere effort towards emancipation, in fact, +is not without its value. It may serve to impress on certain minds the +fact that poetry is capable of exhausting one particular form of +expression, of incorporating and consuming one particular embodiment of +perishable matter and passing on to its newer fields. Being a living +organism, it uses up what lies before it, and to find new vigour must +forever feed on new forms. Being the product of man's spirit, which is +forever subject to change, verse must not be worshipped for what it has +been, but for what it is capable of being. No necrophilic regard for +its established conventions must blind the lover of beautiful verse to +the fact that the primary function of poetry is both to intellectualize +sensation and to elucidate emotional experience. If man must worship +beauty only as he has known it in the past, man must be satisfied with +worshipping that which has lived and now is dead. + +A. S. + + + + + OPEN WATER + + + + + MILKWEED + + I + + The blue, blue sea, + And the drone of waves, + And the wheeling swallows, + And the sun on the opal sails, + And the misty and salt-bleached headlands, + And the milkweed thick at my feet, + And the milkweed held in the hand of a child + Who dreams on the misty cliff-edge, + Watching the fading sails + And the noonday blue + Of the lonely sea! + + + II + + Was it all years ago, + Or was it but yesterday? + I only know that the scent + Of the milkweed brings it back, + Back with a strangle of tears: + The child and the misty headlands, + The drone of the dark blue sea, + And the opal sails + In the sun! + + + + + HOME THOUGHTS + + I am tired of the dust + And the fever and noise + And the meaningless faces of men; + And I want to go home! + Oh, day after day I get thinking of home + Where the black firs fringe the skyline, + And the birds wheel down the silence, + And the hemlocks whisper peace, + And the hill-winds cool the blood, + And the dusk is crowned with glory, + And the lone horizon softens, + And the world's at home with God! + Oh, I want to go there! + _I want to go home!_ + + + + + LIFE + + A rind of light hangs low + On the rim of the world; + A sound of feet disturbs + The quiet of the cell + Where a rope and a beam looms high + At the end of the yard. + + But in the dusk + Of that walled yard waits a woman; + And as the thing from its cell, + Still guarded and chained and bound, + Crosses that little space, + Silent, for ten brief steps, + A woman hangs on his neck. + + _And that walk from a cell to a sleep + Is known as Life, + And those ten dark steps + Of tangled rapture and tears + Men still call Love._ + + + + + SOME DAY, O SEEKER OF DREAMS + + Some day, O Seeker of Dreams, they will seek even us! + Some day they will wake, Fellow Singer, and hunger and want + For the Ways to the Lonelier Height! + So let us, Shy Weaver of Beauty, take heart, + For out of their dust they will call to us yet! + Let us wait, and sing, and be wise, + As the sea has waited and sung, + As the hills through the night have been wise! + For we are the Bringers of Light, and the Voices of Love, + Aye, we are the Soothers of Pain, the Appeasers of Death, + The Dusk and the Star and the Gleam and the Loneliest Peak! + And when they have found and seen, and know not whither they trend, + They will come to us, crying aloud like a child in the night; + And when they have learned of our lips, + Still back to our feet they will grope + For that ultimate essence and core of all song, + To usher them empty and naked, then, out to the unanswering stars, + Where Silence and Dreaming and Music are one! + + + + + BLACK HOURS + + I have drunk deep + Of the well of bitterness. + Black hours have harried me, + Blind fate has bludgeoned my bent head, + And on my brow the iron crown + Of sorrow has been crushed. + And being mortal, I have cried aloud + At anguish ineluctable. + But over each black hour has hung + Forlorn this star of knowledge: + The path of pain too great to be endured + Leads always unto peace; + And when the granite road of anguish mounts + Up and still up to its one ultimate + And dizzy height of torture, + Softly it dips and meets + The valley of endless rest! + + + + + BEFORE RENEWAL + + Summer is dead. + And love is gone. + And life is glad of this. + For sad were both, with having given much; + And bowed were both, with great desires fulfilled; + And both were grown too sadly wise + Ever to live again. + Too aged with hours o'er-passionate, + Too deeply sung by throats + That took no thought of weariness, + Moving too madly toward the crest of things, + Giving too freely of the fountaining sap, + Crowding too gladly into grass and leaves, + Breathing too blindly into flower and song! + Again the lyric hope may thrill the world, + Again the sap may sweeten into leaves, + Again will grey-eyed April come + With all her choiring throats; + But not to-day-- + For the course is run. + And the cruse is full, + And the loin ungirt, + And the hour ordained! + And now there is need of rest; + And need of renewal there is; + And need of silence, + And need of sleep. + Too clear the light + Now lies on hill and valley; + And little is left to say, + And nothing is left to give. + Summer is dead; + And love is gone! + + + + + HILL-TOP HOURS + + I am through with regret. + No more shall I kennel with pain. + I have called to this whimpering soul, + This soul that is sodden with tears + And sour with the reek of the years! + And now we shall glory in light! + Like a tatter of sail in the wind, + Like a tangle of net on the sand, + Like a hound stretched out in the heat, + My soul shall lie in the sun, + And be drowsy with peace, + And not think of the past! + + + + + LETTERS FROM HOME + + Letters from Home, you said. + Unopened they lay on the shack-sill + As you stared with me at the prairie + And the foothills bathed with light. + Letters from Home, you whispered, + And the homeland casements shone + Through the homeland dusk again, + And the sound of the birds came back, + And the soft green sorrowing hills, + And the sigh of remembered names, + The wine of remembered youth,-- + Oh, these came back, + Back with those idle words + Of "Letters from Home"! + + Over such desolate leagues, + Over such sundering seas, + Out of the lost dead years, + After the days of waiting, + After the ache had died, + After the brine of failure, + After the outland peace + Of the trail that never turns back, + Now that the night-wind whispers + How Home shall never again be home, + And now that the arms of the Far-away + Have drawn us close to its breast, + Out of the dead that is proved not dead, + To waken the sorrow that should have died, + To tighten the throat that never shall sing, + To sadden the trails that we still must ride, + Too late they come to us here-- + Our Letters from Home! + + + + + CHAINS + + I watched the men at work on the stubborn rock, + But mostly the one man poised on a drill + Above the steam that hissed and billowed about him + White in the frosty air, + Where the lordly house would stand. + + Majestic, muscular, high like a god, + He stood, + And controlled and stopped + And started his thundering drill, + Offhand and careless and lordly as Thor, + Begrimed and solemn and crowned with sweat, + Where the great steel chains swung over the buckets of rock. + + Then out of a nearby house came a youth, + All gloved and encased in fur and touched with content, + Thin-shouldered and frail and finished, + Leading a house-dog out on a silver chain. + He peered at the figure that fought with the drill + Above the billowing steam and tumult of sound, + Peered up for a moment impassive, + With almost pitying eyes, + And then went pensively down the Avenue's calm, + In the clear white light of the noonday sun, + Not holding, but held by his silvery chain! + + + + + THE DRUMS + + A village wrapped in slumber, + Silent between the hills, + Empty of moon-lit marketplace, + Empty of moving life-- + Such is my quiet heart. + Shadowy-walled it rests, + Sleeping its heavy sleep; + But sudden across the dark + Tingles a sound of drums! + The drums, the drums, the distant drums, + The throb of the drums strikes up, + The beat of the drums awakes! + Then loud through the little streets, + And strange to the startled roofs, + The drums, the drums approach and pound, + And throb and clamour and thrill and pass, + And between the echoing house-walls + All swart and grim they go, + The battalions of regret, + After the drums, the valiant drums + That die away in the night! + + + + + ANAESTHESIA + + I caught the smell of ether + From the glass-roofed room + Where the hospital stood. + Suddenly all about me + I felt a mist of anguish + And the old, old hour of dread + When Death had shambled by. + + Yellow with time it is, + This letter on which I look; + But up from it comes a perfume + That stabs me still to the heart; + And suddenly, at the odour, + Through a ghost-like mist I know + Rapture and love and wild regret + When Life, and You, went by. + + + + + A SUMMER NIGHT + + Mournful the summer moon + Rose from the quiet sea. + Golden and sad and full of regret + As though it would ask of earth + Where all her lovers had vanished + And whither had gone the rose-red lips + That had sighed to her light of old. + Then I caught a pulse of music, + Brokenly, out at the pier-end, + And I heard the voices of girls + Going home in the dark, + Laughing along the sea-wall + Over a lover's word! + + + + + SAPPHO'S TOMB + + I + + In an old and ashen island, + Beside a city grey with death, + They are seeking Sappho's tomb! + + + II + + Beneath a vineyard ruinous + And a broken-columned temple + They are delving where she sleeps! + There between a lonely valley + Filled with noonday silences + And the headlands of soft violet + Where the sapphire seas still whisper, + Whisper with her sigh; + Through a country sad with wonder + Men are seeking vanished Sappho, + Men are searching for the tomb + Of muted Song! + + + III + + They will find a Something there, + In a cavern where no sound is, + In a room of milky marble + Walled with black amphibolite + Over-scored with faded words + And stained with time! + + + IV + + Sleeping in a low-roofed chamber, + With her phials of perfume round her, + In a terra-cotta coffin + With her image on the cover, + Childish echo of her beauty + Etched in black and gold barbaric-- + Lift it slowly, slowly, seekers, + Or your search will end in dust! + + + V + + With a tiny nude Astarte, + Bright with gilt and gravely watching + Over grass-green malachite, + Over rubies pale, and topaz, + And the crumbled dust of pearls! + + + VI + + With her tarnished silver mirror, + With her rings of beaten gold, + With her robes of faded purple, + And the stylus that so often + Traced the azure on her eyelids,-- + Eyelids delicate and weary, + Drooping, over-wise! + And at her head will be a plectron + Made of ivory, worn with time, + And a flute and gilded lyre + Will be found beside her feet, + And two little yellow sandals, + And crude serpents chased in silver + On her ankle rings-- + And a cloud of drifting dust + All her shining hair! + + + VII + + In that lost and lonely tomb + They may find her; + Find the arms that ached with rapture, + Softly folded on a breast + That for evermore is silent; + Find the eyes no longer wistful, + Find the lips no longer singing, + And the heart, so hot and wayward + When that ashen land was young, + Cold through all the mists of time, + Cold beneath the Lesbian marble + In the low-roofed room + That drips with tears! + + + + + THE WILD SWANS PASS + + In the dead of the night + You turned in your troubled sleep + As you heard the wild swans pass; + And then you slept again. + + You slept-- + While a new world swam beneath + That army of eager wings, + While plainland and slough and lake + Lay wide to those outstretched throats, + While the far lone Lights allured + That phalanx of passionate breasts. + + And I who had loved you more + Than a homing bird loves flight,-- + I watched with an ache for freedom, + I rose with a need for life, + Knowing that love had passed + Into its unknown North! + + + + + AT NOTRE DAME + + I + + O odour of incense, pride of purple and gold, + Burst of music and praise, and passion of flute and pipe! + O voices of silver o'er-sweet, and soothing antiphonal chant! + O Harmony, ancient, ecstatic, a-throb to the echoing roof, + With tremulous roll of awakened reverberant tubes, and thunder of sound! + And illusion of mystical song and outclangour of jubilant bell, + And glimmer of gold and taper, and throbbing, insistent pipe-- + If song and emotion and music were all-- + Were it only all! + + + II + + For see, dark heart of mine, + How the singers have ceased and gone! + See, how all of the music is lost and the lights are low, + And how, as our idle arms, these twin ineloquent towers + Grope up through the old inaccessible Night to His stars! + How in vain we have stormed on the bastions of Silence with sound! + How in vain with our music and song and emotion assailed the Unknown, + How beat with the wings of our worship on Earth's imprisoning bars! + For the pinions of Music have wearied, the proud loud tubes have tired, + Yet still grim and taciturn stand His immutable stars, + And, lost in the gloom, to His frontiers old I turn + Where glimmer those sentinel fires, + Beyond which, Dark Heart, we two + Some night must steal us forth, + Quite naked, and alone! + + + + + THE PILOT + + I lounge on the deck of the river-steamer, + Homeward bound with its load, + Churning from headland to headland, + Through moonlight and silence and dusk. + And the decks are alive with laughter and music and singing, + And I see the forms of the sleepers + And the shadowy lovers that lean so close to the rail, + And the romping children behind, + And the dancers amidships. + But high above us there in the gloom, + Where the merriment breaks like a wave at his feet, + Unseen of lover and dancer and me, + Is the Pilot, impassive and stern, + With his grim eyes watching the course. + + + + + DOORS + + Listen! + Footsteps + Are they, + That falter through the gloom, + That echo through the lonely chambers + Of our house of life? + + Listen! + Did a door close? + Did a whisper waken? + Did a ghostly something + Sigh across the dusk? + + From the mournful silence + Something, something went! + Far down some shadowy passage + Faintly closed a door-- + And O how empty lies + Our house of life! + + + + + SPRING FLOODS + + You stood alone + In the dusky window, + Watching the racing river. + Touched with a vague unrest, + And if tired of loving too much + More troubled at heart to find + That the flame of love could wither + And the wonder of love could pass, + You kneeled at the window-ledge + And stared through the black-topped maples + Where an April robin fluted,-- + Stared idly out + At the flood-time sweep of the river, + Silver and paling gold + In the ghostly April twilight. + + Shadowy there in the dusk + You watched with shadowy eyes + The racing, sad, unreasoning + Hurrying torrent of silver + Seeking its far-off sea. + Faintly I heard you sigh, + And faintly I heard the robin's flute, + And faintly from rooms remote + Came a broken murmur of voices. + And life, for a breath, stood bathed + In a wonder crowned with pain, + And immortal the moment hung; + And I know that the thought of you + There at the shadowy window, + And the matted black of the maples, + And the sunset call of a bird, + And the sad wide reaches of silver, + Will house in my haunted heart + Till the end of Time! + + + + + THE TURN OF THE YEAR + + The pines shake and the winds wake, + And the dark waves crowd the sky-line! + The birds wheel out on a troubled sky; + The widening road runs white and long, + And the page is turned, + And the world is tired! + + So I want no more of twilight sloth, + And I want no more of resting, + And of all the earth I ask no more + Than the green sea, the great sea, + The long road, the white road, + And a change of life to-day! + + + + + IF I LOVE YOU + + If I love you, woman of rose + And warmth and wondering eyes, + If it so fall out + That you are the woman I choose, + Oh, what is there left to say, + And what should it matter to me, + Or what can it mean to you? + For under the two white breasts + And the womb that makes you woman + The call of the ages whispers + And the countless ghosts awaken, + And stronger than sighs and weeping + The urge that makes us one, + And older than hate or loving or shame + This want that builds the world! + + + + + WHAT SHALL I CARE? + + What shall I care for the ways + Of these idle and thin-flanked women in silk + And the lisping men-shadows that trail at their heels? + What are they worth in my world + Or the world that I want, + These flabby-armed, indolent, delicate women + And these half-women daring to call themselves men + Yet afraid to get down to the earth + And afraid of the wind, + Afraid of the truth, + And so sadly afraid of themselves? + How can they help me in trouble and death? + How can they keep me from hating my kind? + Oh, I want to get out of their coffining rooms, + I want to walk free with a man, + A man who has lived and dared + And swung through the cycle of life! + God give me a man for a friend + To the End, + Give me a man with his heel on the neck of Hate, + With his fist in the face of Death, + A man not fretted with womanish things, + Unafraid of the light, + Of the worm in the lip of a corpse, + Unafraid of the call from the cell of his heart,-- + God give me a man for friend! + + + + + HUNTER AND HUNTED + + I + + When the sun is high, + And the hills are happy with light, + Then virile and strong I am! + Then ruddy with life I fare, + The fighter who feels no dread, + The roamer who knows no bounds, + The hunter who makes the world his prey, + And shouting and swept with pride, + Still mounts to the lonelier height! + + + II + + In the cool of the day, + When the huddling shadows swarm, + And the ominous eyes look out + And night slinks over the swales + And the silence is chill with death, + Then I am the croucher beside the coals, + The lurker within the shadowy cave, + Who listens and mutters a charm + And trembles and waits, + A hunted thing grown + Afraid of the hunt, + A silence enisled in silence, + A wonder enwrapped in awe! + + + + + APPLE BLOSSOMS + + I saw a woman stand + Under the seas of bloom, + Under the waves of colour and light, + The showery snow and rose of the odorous trees + That made a glory of earth. + She stood where the petals fell, + And her hands were on her breast, + And her lips were touched with wonder, + And her eyes were full of pain-- + For pure she was, and young, + And it was Spring! + + + + + THE HOUSE OF LIFE + + Quietly I closed the door. + Then I said to my soul: + "I shall never come back, + Back to this haunted room + Where Sorrow and I have slept." + I turned from that hated door + And passed through the House of Life, + Through its ghostly rooms and glad + And its corridors dim with age. + Then lightly I crossed a threshold + Where the casements showed the sun + And I entered an unknown room,-- + And my heart went cold, + For about me stood that Chamber of Pain + I had thought to see no more! + + + + + ULTIMATA + + I am desolate, + Desolate because of a woman. + When at midnight walking alone + I look up at the slow-wheeling stars, + I see only the eyes of this woman. + In bird-haunted valleys and by-ways secluded, + Where once I sought peace, + I find now only unrest + And this one unaltering want. + When the dawn-wind stirs in the pine-tops + I hear only her voice's whisper. + When by day I gaze into the azure above me + I see only the face of this woman. + In the sunlight I cannot find comfort, + Nor can I find peace in the shadows. + Neither can I take joy in the hill-wind, + Nor find solace on kindlier breasts; + For deep in the eyes of all women I watch + I see only her eyes stare back. + Nor can I shut the thought of her out of my heart + And the ache for her out of my hours. + Ruthlessly now she invades even my dreams + And wounds me in sleep; + And my body cries out for her, + Early and late and forever cries out for her, + And her alone,-- + _And I want this woman!_ + + I am sick at heart because of this woman; + I am lost to shame because of my want; + And mine own people have come to mean naught to me; + And with many about me still am I utterly alone, + And quite solitary now I take my way + Where men are intent on puny things + And phantasmal legions pace! + And a wearisome thing is life, + And forever the shadow of this one woman + Is falling across my path. + The turn in the road is a promise of her. + The twilight is thronged with her ghosts; + The grasses speak only of her, + The leaves whisper her name forever; + The odorous fields are full of her. + Her lips, I keep telling myself, + Are a cup from which I must drink; + Her breast is the one last pillow + Whereon I may ever find peace! + Yet she has not come to me, + And being denied her, everything stands denied, + And all men who have waited in vain for love + Cry out through my desolate heart; + And the want of the hungering world + Runs like fire through my veins + And bursts from my throat in the cry + _That I want this woman!_ + + I am possessed of a great sickness + And likewise possessed of a great strength, + And the ultimate hour has come. + I will arise and go unto this woman, + And with bent head and my arms about her knees + I shall say unto her: "Beloved beyond all words, + Others have sought your side, + And many have craved your kiss, + But none, O body of flesh and bone, + Has known a hunger like mine! + And though evil befall, or good, + This hunger is given to me, + And is now made known to you,-- + For I must die, + Or you must die, + Or Desire must die + This night!" + + + + + THE LIFE ON THE TABLE + + In the white-walled room + Where the white bed waits + Stand banks of meaningless flowers; + In the rain-swept street + Are a ghost-like row of cabs; + And along the corridor-dusk + Phantasmal feet repass. + Through the warm, still air + The odour of ether hangs; + And on this slenderest thread + Of one thin pulse + Hangs and swings + The hope of life-- + The life of her + I love! + + + + + YOU BID ME TO SLEEP + + You bid me to sleep,-- + But why, O Daughter of Beauty, + Was beauty thus born in the world? + Since out of these shadowy eyes + The wonder shall pass! + And out of this surging and passionate breast + The dream shall depart! + And out of these delicate rivers of warmth + The fire shall wither and fail! + And youth like a bird from your body shall fly! + And Time like a fang on your flesh shall feed! + And this perilous bosom that pulses with love + Shall go down to the dust from which it arose,-- + Yet Daughter of Beauty, close, + Close to its sumptuous warmth + You hold my sorrowing head, + And smile with shadowy eyes, + And bid me to sleep again! + + + + + THE LAST OF SUMMER + + The opal afternoon + Is cool, and very still. + A wash of tawny air, + Sea-green that melts to gold, + Bathes all the skyline, hill by hill. + Out of the black-topped pinelands + A black crow calls, + And the year seems old! + A woman from a doorway sings, + And from the valley-slope a sheep-dog barks, + And through the umber woods the echo falls. + Then silence on the still world lies, + And faint and far the birds fly south, + And behind the dark pines drops the sun, + And a small wind wakes and sighs, + And Summer, see, is done! + + + + + AT CHARING-CROSS + + Alone amid the Rockies I have stood; + Alone across the prairie's midnight calm + Full often I have fared + And faced the hushed infinity of night; + Alone I have hung poised + Between a quietly heaving sea + And quieter sky, + Aching with isolation absolute; + And in Death's Valley I have walked alone + And sought in vain for some appeasing sign + Of life or movement, + While over-desolate my heart called out + For some befriending face + Or some assuaging voice! + But never on my soul has weighed + Such loneliness as this, + As here amid the seething London tides + I look upon these ghosts that come and go, + These swarming restless souls innumerable, + Who through their million-footed dirge of unconcern + Must know and nurse the thought of kindred ghosts + As lonely as themselves, + Or else go mad with it! + + + + + PRESCIENCE + + I + + "The sting of it all," you said, as you stooped low over your roses, + "The worst of it is, when I think of Death, + That Spring by Spring the Earth shall still be beautiful, + And Summer by Summer be lovely again, + --And I shall be gone!" + + + II + + "I would not care, perhaps," you said, watching your roses, + "If only 'twere dust and ruin and emptiness left behind! + But the thought that Earth and April + Year by casual year + Shall waken around the old ways, soft and beautiful, + Year by year when I am away, + --This, this breaks my heart!" + + + + + THE STEEL WORKERS + + I watched the workers in steel, + The Pit-like glow of the furnace, + The rivers of molten metal, + The tremulous rumble of cranes, + The throb of the Thor-like hammers + On sullen and resonant anvils! + I saw the half-clad workers + Twisting earth's iron to their use, + Shaping the steel to their thoughts; + And, in some way, out of the fury + And the fires of mortal passion, + It seemed to me, + In some way, out of the torture + And tumult of inchoate Time, + The hammer of sin is shaping + The soul of man! + + + + + THE CHILDREN + + The city is old in sin, + And children are not for cities, + And, wan-eyed woman, you want them not, + You say with a broken laugh. + Yet out of each wayward softness of voice, + And each fulness of breast, + And each flute-throated echo of song, + Each flutter of lace and quest of beautiful things, + Each coil of entangling hair built into its crown, + Each whisper and touch in the silence of night, + Each red unreasoning mouth that is lifted to mouth, + Each whiteness of brow that is furrowed no more with thought, + Each careless soft curve of lips that can never explain, + Arises the old and the inappeasable cry! + Every girl who leans from a tenement sill + And flutters a hand to a youth, + Every woman who waits for a man in the dusk, + Every harlotous arm flung up to a drunken heel + That would trample truth down in the dust, + Reaches unknowingly out for its own, + And blind to its heritage waits + For its child! + + + + + THE NOCTURNE + + Remote, in some dim room, + On this dark April morning soft with rain, + I hear her pensive touch + Fall aimless on the keys, + And stop, and play again. + + And as the music wakens + And the shadowy house is still, + How all my troubled soul cries out + For things I know not of! + Ah, keen the quick chords fall, + And weighted with regret, + Fade through the quiet rooms; + And warm as April rain + The strange tears fall, + And life in some way seems + Too deep to bear! + + + + + THE WILD GEESE + + Over my home-sick head, + High in the paling light + And touched with the sunset's glow, + Soaring and strong and free, + The unswerving phalanx sweeps, + The honking wild geese go,-- + Go with a flurry of wings + Home to their norland lakes + And the sedge-fringed tarns of peace + And the pinelands soft with Spring! + + I cannot go as the geese go, + But into the steadfast North, + The North that is dark and tender, + My home-sick spirit wings,-- + Wings with a flurry of longing thoughts + And nests in the tarns of youth. + + + + + THE DAY + + I + + Dewy, dewy lawn-slopes, + Is this the day she comes? + O wild-flower face of Morning, + Must you never wake? + Silvery, silvery sea-line, + Does she come to-day? + O murmurous, murmurous birch-leaves, + Beneath your whispering shadow + She will surely pass; + And thrush beneath the black-thorn + And white-throat in the pine-top, + Sing as you have never sung, + For she will surely come! + + + II + + The lone green of the lawn-slope, + The grey light on the sky-line, + The mournful stir of birch-leaves, + The thin note of the brown thrush, + And the call of troubled white-throats + Across the afternoon!-- + Ah, Summer now is over, + And for us the season closed, + For she who came an hour ago + Has gone again-- + Has gone! + + + + + THE REVOLT + + God knows that I've tinkled and jingled and strummed, + That I've piped it and jigged it until I'm fair sick of the game, + That I've given them slag and wasted the silver of song, + That I've thrown them the tailings and they've taken them up content! + But now I want to slough off the bitterness born of it all, + I want to throw off the shackles and chains of time, + I want to sit down with my soul and talk straight out, + I want to make peace with myself, + And say what I have to say, + While still there is time! + + Yea, I will arise and go forth, I have said, + To the uplands of truth, to be free as the wind, + Rough and unruly and open and turbulent-throated! + Yea, I will go forth and fling from my soul + The shackles and chains of song! + + But, lo, on my wrists are the scars, + And here on my ankles the chain-galls, + And the cell-pallor, see, on my face! + And my throat seems thick with the cell-dust, + And for guidance I grope to the walls, + And after my moment of light + + I want to go back to the Dark, + Since the Open still makes me afraid, + And silence seems best in the sun, + And song in the dusk! + + + + + ATAVISM + + I feel all primal and savage to-day. + I could eat and drink deep and love strong + I could fight and exult and boast and be glad! + I could tear out the life of a wild thing and laugh at it! + I could crush into panting submission the breast of a woman + A-stray from her tribe and her smoke-stained tent-door! + I could glory in folly and fire and ruin, + And race naked-limbed with the wind, + And slink on the heels of my foes + And dabble their blood on my brows-- + For to-day I am sick of it all, + This silent and orderly empty life, + And I feel all savage again! + + + + + MARCH TWILIGHT + + Black with a batter of mud + Stippled with silvery pools + Stands the pavement at the street-end; + And the gutter snow is gone + From cobble and runnelling curb; + And no longer the ramping wind + Is rattling the rusty signs; + And moted and soft and misty + Hangs the sunlight over the cross-streets, + And the home-bound crowds of the city + Walk in a flood of gold. + + And suddenly out of the dusk + There comes the ancient question: + Can it be that I have lived + In earlier worlds unknown? + Or is it that somewhere deep + In this husk that men call Me + Are kennelled a motley kin + I never shall know or name,-- + Are housed still querulous ghosts + That sigh and awaken and move, + And sleep once more? + + + + + THE ECHO + + I + + I am only a note in the chorus, + A leaf in the fluttering June, + A wave on the deep. + These things that I struggle to utter + Have all been uttered before. + In many another heart + The selfsame song was born, + The ancient ache endured, + The timeless wonder faced, + The unanswered question nursed, + The resurgent hunger felt, + And the eternal failure known! + + + II + + But glad is the lip of its whisper; + The wave, of its life; + The leaf, of its lisp; + And glad for its hour is my soul + For its echo of godlier music, + Its fragment of song! + + + + + AUTUMN + + The thin gold of the sun lies slanting on the hill; + In the sorrowful greys and muffled violets of the old orchard + A group of girls are quietly gathering apples. + Through the mingled gloom and green they scarcely speak at all, + And their broken voices rise and fall unutterably sad. + There are no birds, + And the goldenrod is gone. + And a child calls out, far away, across the autumn twilight; + And the sad grey of the dusk grows slowly deeper, + And all the world seems old! + + + + + FACES + + I tire of these empty masks, + These faces of city women + That seem so vapid and well-controlled. + I get tired of their guarded ways + And their eyes that are always empty + Of either passion or hate + Or promise or love, + And that seem to be old + And are never young! + I think of the homelier faces + That I have seen, + The vital and open faces + In the by-ways of the world: + A Polish girl who met + Her lover one wintry morning + Outside the gaol at Ossining; + A lean young Slav violinist + And the steerage women about him, + Held by the sound of his music; + A young and deep-bosomed Teuton + Suckling her shawl-wrapped child + On a grey stone bridge in Detmold; + A group of girls from Ireland, + Crowding the steps of a colonist-car + And singing half-sadly together + As their train rocked on and on + Over the sun-bathed prairie; + A mournful Calabrian mother + Standing and staring out + Past the mists of Ischia + After a fading steamer; + A Nautch girl held by a sailor + Who'd taken a knife from her fingers + But not the fire from her eyes; + And a silent Sicilian mother + Standing alone in the Marina + Awaiting her boy who had been + Long years away!-- + These I remember! + And of these + I never tire! + + + + + THERE IS STRENGTH IN THE SOIL + + There is strength in the soil; + In the earth there is laughter and youth. + There is solace and hope in the upturned loam. + And lo, I shall plant my soul in it here like a seed! + And forth it shall come to me as a flower of song; + For I know it is good to get back to the earth + That is orderly, placid, all-patient! + It is good to know how quiet + And noncommittal it breathes, + This ample and opulent bosom + That must some day nurse us all! + + + + + LIFE-DRUNK + + On opal Aprilian mornings like this + I seem dizzy and drunk with life. + I waken and wander and laugh in the sun; + With some mystical knowledge enormous + I lift up my face to the light. + Drunk with a gladness stupendous I seem; + With some wine of Immensity god-like I reel; + And my arm could fling Time from His throne; + I could pelt the awed taciturn arch + Of Morning with music and mirth; + And I feel, should I find but a voice for my thought, + That the infinite orbits of all God's loneliest stars + That are weaving vast traceries out on the fringes of Night + Could never stand more than a hem on the robe of my Song! + + + + + MY HEART STOOD EMPTY + + My heart stood empty and bare, + So I hung it with thoughts of a woman. + The remembered ways of this woman + Hung sweet in my heart. + So I followed where thought should lead, + And it led to her feet. + But the mouth of this woman was pain, + And the love of this woman, regret; + And now only the thought + Of all those remembered thoughts + Of remembered ways, + Is shut in my heart! + + + + + ONE NIGHT IN THE NORTHWEST + + When they flagged our train because of a broken rail, + I stepped down out of the crowded car, + With its clamour and dust and heat and babel of broken talk. + I stepped out into the cool, the velvet cool, of the night, + And felt the balm of the prairie-wind on my face, + And somewhere I heard the running of water, + I felt the breathing of grass, + And I knew, as I saw the great white stars, + That the world was made for good! + + + + + DREAMERS + + There's a poet tombed in you, + Man of blood and iron! + There's a dreamer dead and buried + Deep beneath your cynic frown, + Deep beneath your toil! + + And deep beneath my music, + There's a strong man stirs in me; + There's a ghost of blood and granite + Coffined in this madness + Carpentered of Song! + + You live your day and drain it; + I weave my dream and lose it; + But the red blood lost in me awakens still at times, + At all your city's sky-line, + At all your roaring market-place, + At all its hum of power-- + And the poet dead within you stirs + Still at the plaintive note or two + Of a dreamer's plaintive song! + + + + + THE QUESTION + + I + + Glad with the wine of life, + Reeling I go my way, + Drunk with the ache of living + And mouthing my drunken song! + Then comes the lucid moment + And the shadow across the lintel; + And I hear the ghostly whisper, + And I glimpse with startled eyes + The Door beyond the doorway, + And I see the small dark house + Where I must sleep. + + + II + + Then song turns sour on my lips, + And the warmth goes out of my blood, + And I turn me back to the beaker, + And re-draining my cup of dream, + I drown the whispering voices, + I banish the ghostly question + As to which in the end is true: + The wine and the open road? + Or the waiting Door? + + + + + THE GIFT OF HATE + + Empty it seems, at times, their cry about Love, + Their claim that love is the only thing that survives. + For I who am born of my centuries strewn with hate, + Who was spewed into life from a timeless tangle of sin, + I can hate as strong and as long as I love! + + There are hours and issues I hate; + There are creeds and deeds and doubts I hate; + There are men I hate to the uttermost; + And although in their graves they listen and weep, + Earth's mothers and wistful women who cried for peace, + I hate this King of Evil who has crowned my heart with Hate! + + + + + THE DREAM + + I lay by your side last night. + By you, in my dreams, + I felt the damp of the grave. + I was dead with you-- + And my bones still ache with Death. + For my hand went out and I touched your lips, + And I found them fallen away, + Wasted and lost! + Those lips once warm with life + Were eaten and gone! + And my soul screamed out in the dark + At the intimate blackness of Death. + And then I arose from the dead + And returned to the day; + And my bones and my heart still ache with it all, + And I hunger to hear the relieving babble of life, + The crowd in the hurrying street, + The tumult and laughter and talk, + To make me forget! + + + + + ONE ROOM IN MY HEART + + One room in my heart shall be closed, I said; + One chamber at least in my soul shall be secret and locked! + I shall hold it my holy of holies, and no one shall know it! + But you, calm woman predestined, with casual hands, + You came with this trivial key, + And ward by obdurate ward the surrendering lock fell back, + And disdainfully now you wander and brood and wait + In this room that I thought was my own! + + + + + THE MEANING + + It isn't the Sea that I love, + But the ships + That must dare and endure and defy and survive it! + It isn't the flesh that I love, + But the spirit + That guides and derides and controls and outlives it! + It isn't this earth that I love, + But the mortals + Who give to it meaning and colour and passion and life! + For what is the Sea without ships? + And what is the flesh without soul? + And what is a world without love? + + + + + THE VEIL + + You have said that I sold + My life for a song; + Laid bare my heart + That men might listen + And go their ways-- + My inchoate heart + That I dare not plumb, + That goes unbridled + To the depths of Hell, + That sings in the sun + To the brink of Heaven! + I have tossed you the spindrift + Born of its fretting + On its shallowest coast, + But over the depths of it + Bastioned in wonder + And silent with fear + God sits with me! + + + + + THE MAN OF DREAMS + + All my lean life + I garnered nothing but a dream or two, + These others gathered harvests + And grew fat with grain. + But no man lives by bread, + And bread alone. + So, forgetful of their scorn, + When starved, they cried for life, + I gave them my last dreams, + I bared for them my heart, + That they might eat! + + + + + APRIL ON THE RIALTO + + A canyon of granite and steel, + A river of grim unrest, + And over the fever and street-dust + Arches the azure of dream. + And fretting along the tumult, + Threading the iron curbs, + Tawdry in tinsel and feather + Drift the daughters of pleasure, + The sad-eyed traders in song, + The makers of joy, + The Columbines of the city + Seeking their ends! + But under the beaded eye-lash, + Under the lip with its rouge, + Under the mask of white + Splashed with geranium-red, + As God's own arch of azure + Leans softly over the street, + Surely, this day, runs warmer + The blood through a wasted breast! + + + + + THE SURRENDER + + Must I round my life to a song, + As the waves wear smooth the shore-stone? + Shall the mortal beat and throb + Of this heart of mine + Be only to crumble a dream, + And fashion the pebbles of fancy, + That the tides of time may cover, + Or a child may find? + + Little in truth it matters; + But this at the most I know: + Infinite is the ocean + That thunders upon man's soul, + And the sooner the soul falls broken, + The smoother will be its song! + + + + + THE PASSING + + Ere the thread is loosed, + And the sands run low, + And the last hope fails, + Wherever we fare, + O Fond and True, + May it fall that we come in the end, + Come back to the crimson valleys, + Back to the Indian Summer, + Back to the northern pine-lands, + And the grey lakes draped with silence, + And the sunlight thin and poignant, + And the leaf that flutters earthward, + And the skyline green and lonely, + And the ramparts of the dead world + Ruddy with wintry rose! + May we fare, O Fond and True, + Through our soft-houred Indian Summer, + Through the paling twilight weather, + And facing the lone green uplands, + And greeting the sun-warmed hills, + Step into the pineland shadows + And enter the sunset valley + And go as the glory goes + Out of the dreaming autumn, + Out of the drifting leaf + And the dying light! + + + + + PROTESTATIONS + + If I tire of you, beautiful woman, + I know that the fault is mine; + Yet not all mine the failure + And not all mine the loss! + In loveliness still you walk; + But I have walked with sorrow! + I have threaded narrows, + And I have passed through perils + That you know nothing of! + And I in my grief have gazed + In eyes that were not yours; + And my emptier hours have known + The sigh of kindlier bosoms, + The kiss of kindlier mouths! + Yet the end of all is written, + And nothing, O rose-leaf woman, + You ever may dream or do + Henceforth can bring me anguish + Or crown my days with joy! + + _Three tears, O stately woman, + You said could float your soul, + So little a thing it seemed! + Yet all that's left of life + I'd give to know your love, + I'd give to show my love, + And feel your kiss again!_ + + + + + I SAT IN THE SUNLIGHT + + I sat in the sunlight thinking of life; + I sat there, dreaming of Death. + And a moth alit on the sun-dial's face, + And the birds sang sleepily, + And the leaves stirred, + And the sun lay warm on the hills, + And the afternoon grew old. + + So, some day I knew the birds would sing, + And the leaves would stir, + And the afternoon grow old-- + And I would not be there. + And the warmth went out of the day, + And a wind blew out of the West where I sat, + And the birds were still! 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