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diff --git a/old/60146-0.txt b/old/60146-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 2ffebcd..0000000 --- a/old/60146-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,2714 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Secret Way, by Zona Gale - -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/license - - -Title: The Secret Way - -Author: Zona Gale - -Release Date: August 21, 2019 [EBook #60146] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SECRET WAY *** - - - - -Produced by Tim Lindell, Chuck Greif and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This -file was produced from images generously made available -by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) - - - - - - - - - - THE SECRET WAY - - _By_ - ZONA GALE - - - BIRTH - CHRISTMAS - MOTHERS TO MEN - HEART’S KINDRED - FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE - NEIGHBORHOOD TALES - PEACE IN FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE - WHEN I WAS A LITTLE GIRL - FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE LOVE STORIES - THE LOVES OF PELLEAS AND ETTARRE - - [Illustration: portrait of the author. - - Copyrighted by E. O. Hoppé] - - - - - THE SECRET WAY - - BY - ZONA GALE - - New York - THE MACMILLAN COMPANY - 1921 - - _All rights reserved_ - - - - - PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA - - - COPYRIGHT, 1921, - BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. - - Set up and printed. Published September, 1921. - - - Press of - J. J. Little & Ives Company - New York, U. S. A. - - - “A great life, an entire civilization lies just outside the pale of - common thought.... Such life is different from any yet imagined.... - I see as clearly as the noonday that this is not all. I see other - and higher conditions than existence.... The very idea that there - is another Idea is something gained.” - - --RICHARD JEFFRIES. - - - - -CONTENTS - - -PART I - -(EARLY VERSE) - - PAGE - - THE SECRET WAY 4 - - TERZA RIMA: - - I OLD TALK 8 - - II MAGIC 1 - -III NIGHT IS HERE 13 - - BALLADES OF THREE SENSES: - - I BALLADE OF EYES THAT SEE 14 - - II BALLADE OF LISTENING 16 - - III BALLADE OF OLD PERFUMES 18 - - HALF THOUGHTS 20 - - SONNETS AND VARIATIONS: - - WHEN DID SPRING DIE? 22 - - ONE DAWN SHE AWOKE ME 23 - - THERE ARE WITHIN US LIVES WE NEVER LIVE 24 - - LAST NIGHT I DREAMED I SAW MY MOTHER YOUNG 25 - - WHY AM I SILENT? 26 - - I WANDERED WHERE THE WONDER OF THE SKY-- 27 - - HERE A HILL FIELD 28 - - RETURN 29 - - BY MY SIDE ALL DAY ANOTHER WENT 30 - - IN J. P. P.’S METRE: - - I 31 - - II 32 - -III (TO A POET) 33 - - EXERCISE IN SPENSERIANS 35 - - -PART II - - I KNOW WHERE A DOVE 51 - - PROLOCUTOR 52 - - WONDER 53 - - A MEETING 54 - - HALF THOUGHT 55 - - EPITAPHS 56 - - ALIAS 57 - - IN ARVIA’S ROOM 58 - - HALF THOUGHT 64 - - UMBRA 65 - - WRAITHS 66 - - HALF THOUGHT 67 - - WIND SONG 68 - - HALF THOUGHT 70 - - TROTH 71 - - BELOVED, IT IS DAYBREAK ON THE HILLS 72 - - CREDO 73 - - WHO IS THIS THAT IS SO NEAR? 74 - - INMOST ONE 75 - - STONE CELL 77 - - LIGHT 78 - - HALF THOUGHT 81 - - CONTOURS 82 - - -PART III - - NEWS NOTES OF PORTAGE, WISCONSIN: - - I KILBOURN ROAD 85 - -II VIOLIN 91 - -III NORTH STAR 96 - - PROSE NOTES: - - THE BUREAU 98 - - MINUET 99 - - THE DINING ROOM 101 - - PARADISE AND PURGATORY 103 - - AT LEAST 105 - - ROSES 106 - - SPRING EVENING 109 - - SECOND SIGHT 109 - - DOES SOMETHING WAIT? 113 - - DOORS 114 - - LEVITATION 116 - - ENCHANTMENT 118 - - - - - PART I - - EARLY VERSE - - - - - THE SECRET WAY - - - Stark on the window’s early grey - Lined out in squares by casement bars, - She saw her lily lift to take - The sinking stars. - - Within the room’s delaying dark - Intimate things lay dim and still - With all their day-time friendliness - Gone false and chill. - - Her hand upon the coverlet, - Her face low in the linen’s cleft, - They were as wan as water-flowers - By light bereft. - - And never was bloom brought to her couch - But shed the odour of a sigh - Because she was as white as they, - And they must die. - - “O Pale, lit deep within the dark - Of your young eyes, a stifled light - Leaps thin and keen as melody - And leavens night. - - “It is a light that did not burn - When you were gay at mart and fair; - O Pale, what is that starry fire, - Fed unaware?” - - Then softly she: “I may not tell - What other eyes behold in mine; - But I have melted night and day - In some wild wine. - - “I may not read the graven cup - Exhaustless as a brimming bell - Distilling silver; but I drank - And all is well. - - “One morn like this, bitter still, - I waited for the early stir - Of those who slept the while I watched - What muffled wonders were. - - “I saw my lily on the sill; - I saw my mirror on the wall - Take light that was not; and I saw - My spectral taper tall. - - “Why I had known these quiet things - Since I could speak. Yet suddenly - They all touched hands and in one breath - They spoke to me. - - “I may not tell you what they said. - The strange part is that I must lie - And never tell you what we say---- - These things and I. - - “I only know that common things - Bear sudden little spirits set - Free by the rose of dawn and by - Night’s violet. - - “I only know that when I hear - Clear tone, the haunted echoes bear - Legions of little winged feet - On printless air. - - “And when warm colour weds my look - A word is uttered tremblingly, - With meaning fall--but I know not - What it may be. - - “I only know that now I find - Abiding beauty everywhere; - Or if it bide not, that it fades - Is still more fair. - - I long to question those I love - And yet I know not what to say; - I am alone as one upon - Some secret way. - - “My words are barren of my bliss; - The strange part is that I must lie - And never tell you what we say-- - These things and I. - - “So will it be when I am not. - A little more perhaps to tell; - Yet then as now I may not say - What I know well.” - - She died when all the east was red. - And we are they who know her fate - Because we love the way of life - That she had found too late. - - - - - TERZA RIMA - - - I: OLD TALK - - Old Eyelot sees what never is. - She says: “Pale lights move on the hill, - Deep in the air are treasuries.” - - She says: “I never go to mill - Wood-way but something walks with me, - So go wood-way I always will. - - Wood-walking, I go mad to see - What will die out just as I turn - To catch it by the crooked tree. - - I pass the bush that I saw burning - With wild black flame at full of moon. - That was a sight to set one learning - - What things one merely doubts at noon. - A-well, I know not what I learned. - God send that you may learn it soon. - - Windows for walls, thoughts that have turned - Back into folk, gateways of horn, - And the wild hearts that men have burned, - - These things I see. And ay, one morn - I saw the little people bear - Away my little child new-born. - - They gave her food yielded in air, - Honey and rose-down. - I looked and she was very fair. - - So when the people of the town - (Who did not know) believed her dead - And wrapped her in a cloudy gown - - I did not mourn. I only said: - “She is the daughter of the Day - And with the Night she has been wed. - - “I am the mother of that one - Born for two worlds. And I am she - Who sees more things than moon and sun - And little stars will ever see.” - - * * * - - Old Eyelot sees what never is. - She says: “Green lights move on the leas, - Deep in the air are treasuries.” - I wonder what old Eyelot sees? - - - II: MAGIC - - An ancient wildwood showed its heart to me. - (O Little Wind that brought me what it said!) - I went within its great nave reverently. - - There dwelt the silence ever lightly wed - With winged sound. There the persuading green - Took ancient citadels with soundless tread. - - Was not the opening blue of buds between - Soft solitary leaves a lyric set - To music of the things that lift and lean? - - My hands were mother-tender of the net - Of silk they found. My feet were light - To loose no dew from the least violet. - - The fragile fabric of dissolved night - Seemed in the air. A million little minds - Kept concert in the very realm of sight. - - O--and suddenly as sunlight finds - White towers I heard the ancient wood unfold - Its ancient secret piped by little winds. - - “Behold the beauty in me. O behold - The beauty that makes utter peace, in me; - Beauty that is immeasurably old.” - - The whole world like a bell heard echoingly. - Words wonderful! I found a fairy bed - And saw that which the wildwood let me see. - (O Little Wind that brought me what it said!) - - - III: NIGHT IS HERE - - Night is here and star-rise - And demeanour of the dark. - Visioned by my closed eyes - - Now I lie within an arc. - Lyric loom, - All the silence is a-hark - - For a poppy bud to bloom - In some flowery harmony - Woven through this quiet room. - - Prick of light and shadow take me, - Fire and stars and voices keep, - Fairy clamour will not wake me ... - ... Sleep. - - But that warm grave of sleep - Nothing save myself immures. - Singing light and dreaming deep - Now my spirit walks with yours. - - - - - BALLADES OF THREE SENSES - - - I - - BALLADE OF EYES THAT SEE - - Leaves loosened when there blow - No winds; long fields whose green - Dim beneath the darling bow - Of the May-moon is seen; - Robins at dawn; the keen - Sour odour of vines--these show - Frail meanings caught between - The bourne of yes and no. - Yet there is tender art - To fathom what they mean, - Deep in the heart. - - I go among them. Now I lean - Where willows fret the flow - Of water that has been - For miles to glean. - And in the osiers--O - An ouphe, an elfin queen. - I did not see her--lo, - The osiers did not part, - Yet she was there I ween, - Deep in the heart. - - _Envoy_ - - Spells, lay upon the screen - The things that move me so. - I ask the better part: - To see with eyes serene - What things these others know---- - Deep in the heart. - - - II - - BALLADE OF LISTENING - - On summer slopes lit white - With old desire of day, - The air with pearl bedight - Prepares for gold array. - The sun-drugged stars delay - To die; the winds take fright - And question, and betray - Frail sounds for my delight. - O voice of ancient springs! - O little echo-flight! - O harp of things! - - In grasses that lie bright, - In grasses that lie grey, - Up on the clouded height - Down in the zone of May - Are printless feet astray. - Airy the hands that smite - The lyre in nameless lay; - And the great gods invite - Echo of earth chantings - On quiet wing away. - O--harp of things! - - _Envoy_ - - Harp, is it this that you say? - “Delicate is my might, - Quickening the voice that sings; - For I am sense grown fey. - I am word of the morn and the night.” - O harp of things! - - - III - - BALLADE OF OLD PERFUMES - - Now out of dream old springs - Flow soft with many red - And golden fluttering things. - Sweetly from underhead - All the wan air is fed - With faint rememberings - Of hours long buried. - Rose-rumours steal and stir; - They come on wind-like wings. - The old odours that were - Nard and mint and myrrh. - - I think that as there clings - Colour to blossoms shed, - So love and all that sings, - So hearts that beat and bled - Were with old fragrance wed. - Now when the garden flings - On many a secret thread - Sweets to the wanderer, - Some buried witch-bell rings - The old odours that were - Nard and mint and myrrh. - - _Envoy_ - - Spring, let me lay my head - Where the wild season sings - Some dead girl’s heart from her. - O young heart, ages dead, - Old odours thrill mute strings. - The old odours that were - Nard and mint and myrrh. - - - - - HOKKU - - - The way that shadow fell along the floor! - I too have waited for a shadow. - - - HOKKU - - Two butterflies. Two birds. O the wide night of space. - Sweet, hold me close. - - - HOKKU - - Yellow I see is my close friend. - She can create a sun. - - - HOKKU - - I would have stayed the dawn down the dark sky. - But there were many dawns. - - - HOKKU - - A child’s faint cry. But you and I have had - A birth since birth. Only there was no cry. - - - HOKKU - - A candle flame. My love has put it out. - It did not know its bliss. Shall I, in death? - - - HOKKU - - Cloths, fans, stones slumberous, colour and fancy and lilt. - No hard straight place to be. O quiet sky. - - - HOKKU - - I made a garden. Afterward it died. - It never even knew it was a garden. - - - - - SONNETS AND VARIATIONS - - - - - WHEN DID SPRING DIE? - - - When did Spring die? I did not see her go - Down the bright lane she painted. All flower-still - She moved among her emblems on the hill - Touching away their burden of old snow. - Was it on some great down where long winds flow - That the wild spirit of Spring went out to fill - The eyes of Summer? Did a daffodil - Lift the pale urn remote where she lies low? - - O not as other moments did she die, - That woman-season outlined like a rose. - Before the banner of Autumn’s scarlet bough - The Summer fell; and Winter with a cry - Wed with March wind. Spring did not die like those - But vaguely, as if Love had prompted: Now. - - - - - ONE DAWN SHE WOKE ME---- - - - One dawn she woke me when the darkness lay - Faint on the Summer fields. The air - Was like a question. Green was grey - With dew distilled in delitesence where - Covert, the night-folk wrought. She said: “Dear one, - It is our holiday.” Forth we went - Finding new kindred, new bequest of sun, - Inheriting again the firmament. - - Long ago ... - The old years lie upon her grave like flowers. - The alchemy of hours - Has made me someone whom she would not know. - How strangely that frail morning lives and towers - When I am other and when she lies low. - - - - - THERE ARE WITHIN US LIVES WE NEVER LIVE - - - There are within us lives we never live - By sense or soul, for being does not know - To tell their depth or breast their flow - Or to taste the sweetness that they give. - And now in distance, now in voices still, - In pity or in harmony, in sleep, - We lead unconscious lives, old, deep, - Upon the far slope of an unknown hill. - - Is it not here that life walks wreathed at last? - Many a soul meets many a soul with this: - That muted lips and wistful eyes are passed - In silence; yet a sign there is - Burning in air, though but a shadow fall - Or some pale sunbeam steal along the wall. - - - - - LAST NIGHT I DREAMED I SAW MY MOTHER YOUNG - - - Last night I dreamed I saw my mother young. - I never knew her till her hair was grey; - Last night I saw the shadows lit away - And pearls about her shoulders strung. - Out from our haunts of home among - She came as if she knew them not. There lay - Old hope in her young eyes. And gay - Her speech came in some laughing tongue. - - I who had watched the stolen march of days - And would not see the theft which was their sign - Moved happily to meet her, mute with praise - For this the witchery that made her fair. - But yet the pretty hand that lay in mine - Was not the one I love upon my hair. - - - - - WHY AM I SILENT? - - - Why am I silent? Tell me how to speak - With all the sweet familiars of the way; - Call Summer by her name; and with the Day - Walk royally companioned cheek on cheek - For that faint speech awhile withheld, that weak - Task of the Word undone is the great Nay, - The winged thunder that denies the ray. - Yet once when first I saw the hapless Greek - By present impulse of the god urged on - Seek out the shadow of the awful grove, - I felt the word. I caught it once again - In a sweet flash of arrowy sun that shone - Thickening on flowers. But when - You sorrowed, Love, - I knew it then.... - - - - - I WANDERED WHERE THE WONDER OF THE SKY---- - - - I wandered where the wonder of the sky - Was wide upon me. Isle beyond isle the east - Was signing that the Summer night had ceased - Upon the dawn. Then came a stranger by - Immersed in the magic as was I. - We stood together at the sorcerer’s feast - Saying half-words; and as the day increased - We parted with a farewell almost shy. - - Something was there. There was drawn silently - Through into life some fiery, clouded thing. - O wise - For one sweet flash of time we stood to see - Death and the Inbeing - Lie dreaming in each other’s eyes. - - - - - HERE A STILL FIELD - - - Here a still field. I move within the green, - It lies aloof. Look where I will - The steady glory of noon on the hill - Lays its divine indifference on the scene. - I seem too far. I listen and I lean, - Yet never will the burying hours fulfill - One hope of nearness to the Far and Still, - But wound me with the sweet that they might mean. - - Is there no keener speech for us than this - Old incommunicable urge to know - The speech of silence.... Yes--here a still field! - What more--what more? For here the Comrade is, - The God who waits alone and would have sealed - Our compact with glad laughter long ago. - - - - - RETURN - - - How they come back ... I never see retreat - Down the long beach the phalanx of bright foam - But faint across the fields that fold them home - I hear the rhythmic fall of speeding feet. - And they who loved the garden of the sea - And died, come back. I never know a land - Of cities but there come to me - Their dead to touch my hand. - - Dead, who dare not let your eyes - Flower from the dusk and flame into our own, - Yet come you as hushed notes in harmonies - To ways of life that you have known: - Virgil in blowing spray round swift-prowed ships, - Dante in every cry of lips for lips. - - - - - BY MY SIDE ALL DAY ANOTHER WENT - - - By my side all day another went. - We breathed the cold spiced air of the Spring dark - Before the dawn; together at the hark - Of noon we listened; and we bent - To borrow from still grasses the warm scent - Of afternoon and dusk. We stood to mark - The deathless ark - Unveiled before the light was spent. - - Prodigal of sweetness that old day - I passed, nor might - See how that one beside me stooped to lay - Something aside. Now in the night - The gleaner hunts me down - Bringing regret. I wear it for a crown. - - - - - IN J. P. P.’s METRE - - - I - - Here a vine, there a voice, - Then a violin; - All the quiet is astir - Like a flute within. - - Here a light, there a leaf, - Little boughs that lean; - And the people who move by - Wonder what they mean. - - “Look,” they say, “there a star - Watching in a well; - Line and green and melody----” - Then they try to tell. - - O why ask what they mean? - What is there to win? - Have we not the light, the leaf - And the violin? - - - II - - All the air is liveried - In a kind of white; - It is not like the darkness - Or the light; - It is like the covenant - Of a clearer sight. - - Now a sudden bud is born - Burning in the dew; - There the fog rose palely lifting - All as if it knew - The faint flowing speech - Of the friendly blue. - - Oh the little hurrying wing - Like a blowing leaf; - Oh the shadows gathering in - Many a sheaf; - There a cloud is carved like some - Airy coral reef. - - Like a new sense these venture - In the veins and lo, - All the blood is musical - In its beat and flow; - And we wait wondering - What new thing we know. - - - III - - TO A POET - - Woo a little choir of words, - Teach them to sing; - Let them thrill the air like birds - Love-summoning. - Thread the silence with a lute, - Sound the spiral of a flute. - ... Vain, but vain. The words are mute. - - Open now your own heart - Where a rose may be; - Live your love and use your art, - Make melody, - For your joy, your joy is there, - Sing the secret thing you bear! - ... Only silence everywhere. - - ... Show the ancient pain that lies - With remembered things - Down the dark within your eyes - Where nothing sings. - Now at last there throng - Images that waited long, - And the silence flowers in song. - - - - - EXERCISE IN SPENSERIANS - - - The air is purged of gold and in its stead - Is poured a fire of silver on the green; - And now the moon new-risen from the dead - Of dearer nights than this finds her demesne - Lonely of stars, as they to greet their queen - Had rushed in argent riot from the blue - To spill themselves like flowers or waste unseen - In stealing perfumes that elude and woo - As now eludes now woos the wind the sweet night through. - - Down from her turret when the dusk was new - The Lady Margot stepped and lured by wile - Of faint near things that croon of what they do - With wandering touch she thought to walk the while - The hours were printless on the idle dial. - Deep in a garden lamped with lily bells - Which hold the light as does some opal vial - She took her way near where a fountain wells - And wakes its rainbow ribbons into madrigals. - - Fluttering she peered within the hollow gloom - That cloistered a wild wood beyond the wall; - For shapes are woven by the troubled loom - Of night; and tremulous tapestries oft fall - Across familiar paths and make them all - Astir with effigies that snarl and grin - And take strange steps along a horrid hall - Which is by day a lane of leaves within; - As if at night a holy nun should dream of sin. - - At length she reached a little windless glade - Fragrant with natal April not long flown - And dreamful of the days when lips were laid - On lips that trembled as they found their own. - There where the mooned close was thickest sown - With shadows was the lady met with one - Who sat with drooping head and made soft moan. - He was a stranger knight whose armour shone - Bright as the molten golden javelins of the sun. - - “What things are griefs?” the Lady Margot sighed - And moved a little nearer pityingly. - “The wonder wasteth from my days,” he cried, - “The burden of my blessings wearieth me! - Lo I have journeyed from an unoared sea - In the white north to where the winds caress - Warm sail-sown oceans murmuring round a key - Odorous with wine and fruit in fragrant dress---- - And yet I passion for some little happiness.” - - “Ay, now,” the lady cried, “most strangely come - Are you, Sir Knight, for I am one who longs - As never heart has longed before for some - Strange world, strange tongue tuneful with alien songs, - Strange mad old cities brooding on their wrongs, - With unfamiliar streets which smile and show - Me many a colonnade and portico - Where some unclaimed and starry hour belongs. - O you who know all that I long for--bid me go!” - - No strange thing seemed her prayer unto the knight - Who knew her father’s little court by name, - And pitied her that all her beauty bright - Must fail and fade in such confined fame. - Swiftly he knelt to her and with no shame - She gave her hand the while he led her where - Within the close the moon took silvery aim - And lured a sickle bed of bloom to bear - In bloom’s sweet stead a birth of stars pearly as air. - - The lady stooped and laid her little hand - Upon a dreaming lily whose faint cream - And gold, stirred at the fingers’ soft demand, - Dreamed that the white touch was their sweetest dream. - The lady rose and every opiate beam - Made lucent pillage from her unbound hair - And moths brushed lightly through the saffron stream - In quest of stars. The lady was so fair - That the dusk swooned with passion and the light with prayer. - - “Nay, now, my child,” the knight said courteously, - “Would that your joy lay in your castle home, - In phantom folk who pace your broidery, - In haunted parchment of a pictured tome. - But if you are of those whose hearts must roam - Afar afield to meet the hushed advance - Of spheres and win from the blown spray and foam - What weaker some leave to impotent chance - Then, by my blade, that blade shall bring deliverance!” - - A little door, covert in creeping green, - Gave from the court upon the room where lay - The aged doting nurse who wept, I ween, - At all the Lady Margot strove to say. - But when it had proved vain to weep or pray, - She rose and bade her trembling fingers light - Her taper and thereby she led the way - Through secret gates till, soberly bedight, - The three set forth together in the faery night. - - O many a league for many a day they went, - And some magician kind they were aware - Delivered captive treasuries and spent - His lavish store of beauty everywhere: - Slim brazen towers that taught the sun to share - Its shining he revealed; and odorous gloom - Packing with odours the receiving air; - Flowered silken sails that set the sea abloom; - Isles spread with fabrics from the moon’s high loom. - - Sometimes the lady knelt in a fleet prow - That flung the gaudy bubbles from the blue, - And joyed to hear the lean blade of the bow - Plunging the thundering sundered breakers through; - Keen swept the foam-born breaths of salt, to do - Sweet violence to her pale cheek; and all - The spirit of her fancy peopled new - The perilous sea’s impermanent citadel - That kindled into spray with the ship’s rise and fall. - - Sometimes she stepped within a pillared way - Dim grey with shade and honey-bright with sun - Where all the costly stuffs for barter lay, - And she might hear how many a drowsing one, - Stretched on a pea-cock patterned skin, would run - Soft syllable along soft syllable - Praising the violet and vermilion - Of gems and cloths, right eager-tongued to tell - News musical with names to one who loved them well. - - Meanwhile the stranger knight was by her side - Burning to serve and welcoming command; - And never wish of hers might be denied - For his swift sword was like a dexterous wand. - And by her side in all that alien land - The old nurse journeyed plaintive and perplexed, - Condemning what she did not understand - And with all other understanding vexed; - Palsied and muttering charms for what should tide them next. - - Then it befell that as they fared the knight - Forgot his weariness and many a morn - He faced with joy the lottery of light - And walked no more apart in mood forlorn. - And now, her tremulous shyness half outworn, - The Lady Margot oft passed through a town - And saw therein but trinkets to adorn - Her little bodice and her silken gown; - And when he spoke she looked up swiftly and looked down. - - O sweet it was to see the two dream on. - She wistful of the runes that he could teach - Of men and cities dreamed that in such wan - Delights lay life; and he for her sweet speech - With all its faery fancies would beseech - And dreamed that in such fancies lay delight! - And all the time the heart of each for each - Was calling with the ancient urge of night - For night what time the lotus of the dawn is white. - - At length they came to a melodious marge - Where with sweet perturbation the moved sea - Crept lovingly about the land in large - Embrace and from such soft nativity - The music mounted in dissolving key - And wed with wind. There in a crescent cove - Sun-lorn and still, the eyes of each leaped free - And all the world in a wild silence strove - To bare its spirit in their breathed words of love. - - “O Sweet, my Sweet,” the knight quoth reverently, - “Lo now the marvel: That I wearied sore - On such a singing earth as this to be - One whom the gods give ever one gift more! - There is no spot from shore to patient shore - That is not burdened with its waiting bliss; - O yet, dear love, how little bliss it bore - Were you not near to tremble at my kiss. - At last we know the truth: The best of life is this.” - - Slow-dipped the idle sail without the bay - Sun-smitten in the drowsy afternoon; - Unimaged in the ripples’ purple play - White reefs of clouds on airy shores were strewn. - All fairly the shadows fell and soon - When gloaming was poured soft on beach and foam - The sea gave up a silver shell--the moon. - Then tenderly she turned who longed to roam - Afar and whispered: “Love, would that our way led home!” - - Nearby upon a rainbow drift of weeds - The old nurse mumbled at her prayers and charms, - And now her shaking fingers felt her beads, - And now in incantation her old arms - Were raised to shadowy powers. O grim alarms - Beset the gaping ones when love appears! - And never lovers’ glance or kiss half warms - The world but that some dotard nods and leers - And all the charnel souls are tip-toe with their fears. - - Now silently across the glimmering sands - Slow-paced the lady and the stranger knight, - And there were clinging lips and clinging hands - And all the uses of the hour were bright; - But when they came to where the moon was white - Upon the wet weeds, there the old dame lay - Stark on the sea-moss and the labyrinth light - Received her soul that knew it not. There may - Be heaven for such as mock at love but none can say. - - Upon the sands the lady knelt and wept; - Her lover kissed away her pitying tears; - “Nay, tender soul,” he said, “we have but kept - The truce of nature with the yester-years. - Now are the old things passed away, and fears - For the new day are vain. Therefore arise. - Love vanquishes the past itself. Love hears - The siren cities chant of home. Love’s eyes - Have lit a sullen world for me to Paradise.” - - Into the silver dark the lovers went, - Over the silver sea to golden isles, - Piping their songs of heavenly wonderment - And fabling the unhaunted age with smiles. - And ever with the swift melodious miles - A sterner harmony breathed through their bliss; - “The old shall be outworn. That which reviles - The gods shall perish by their ministries. - But we will walk with truth: The best of life is this.” - - - - - PART II - - - - - I KNOW WHERE A DOVE---- - - - I know where a dove sits brooding in the dark - Nested in leaves the quiet boughs among; - And when the midnight falls I lean to mark - Her home where a star is hung. - The star, it does not know the secret dove, - The dove that firefly planet may not see. - What lovelier things the night may fold from me---- - The watching eye, the brooding heart, and love. - - - - - PROLOCUTOR - - - O for one of the stars to know me, - To say “That is she” as I say “It is there.” - O for my hills to show me - If they care. - But when I speak to them nothing hears me. - Even the bird on the near bough fears me. - The fire on my hearth does not know that it cheers me. - ... Heart that waits by the fire, do you guess - All you must voice in your tenderness? - - - - - WONDER - - - Here are the shadows veiling green with grey - And winning all the wonder from the light; - Here phantom fragrance swells and fails like sound; - The hour distills itself to dark; the day - Dreams in its grave and lo, the dream is night. - - Beloved, all the marvel of the May, - The altared dark, the petals’ solemn white, - The moments rich with farewell from the lips - Of dying moments--what are these? We lay - Our love beside them and exceed the night. - - - - - A MEETING - - - I hear a sound like piping and like sails - In silken talk with wind and like the speech - Of someone quiet in the blue of dawn - Upon a quiet beach. - - I see a light as when the last star - Flowers faintly in the ashen morning sky - And long wings appear and disappear, - Wheeling by. - - I think of moons forgotten with their tides; - I think of all the red of east and west; - I hear the secret stir of nameless dead - Conferring in my breast. - - You make me long for colour and for song - And for old words on lips I did not know. - You make me dream of all I learned to dream - How long ago. - - - - - HALF THOUGHT - - - O Day of Wind and laughter, - A goddess born are you - Whose eyes are in the morning - Blue--blue. - The slumberous noon your body is, - Your feet are the shadows’ flight. - But the immortal soul of you - Is night. - - - - - EPITAPH - - - He loved to lie where Summer lay, - His roof a cloud, a bough; - There stretched full-length to dream all day. - It is so with him now. - - - - - EPITAPH - - - How fair a bride-groom Death must be. - He took her in his arms, - Her answering kiss now Spring is here - The valley leafage warms. - - - - - ALIAS - - - Between the dawn and the first breath - Of dusk there slips away - Something that partly is like death - And partly is like day. - - - - - IN ARVIA’S ROOM - - - _For Her Cradle_ - - I cannot tell you what you ask. - But of my life to be - You who are wise and know your speech, - Tell me. - - - _For Her Mirror_ - - Look in the deep of me: - What are we going to do? - If I am I, as I am, - Who in the world are you? - - - _For a Comb of Ivory_ - - Use me and think of soul and mind and wonder yet to be. - This is the jest: Could soul touch soul if it were not for me? - - - _For Her Doll’s House_ - - Girl doll would be a silken flower and look as real flowers do; - Boy doll would be a telephone and have the world speak through. - The poet doll would like to be the doorbell with a tongue - For other little dolls like bells most sensitively rung. - The paper doll would be a queen, the Dinah doll a star, - And all--how ignominious!--are only what they are. - - - _For Her Candle-stick_ - - Taper, winnow the world of its angles and where - Were sharp things lay softness, Night-god of the air! - - - _For the Chimney-place_ - - I am the causeway to the upper places - That the fire understands. - I am the link with everything unspoken. - How well I warm your hands. - - - _For a Flower Pot_ - - Call sweetness into being. - Let it live in me. - The seed, the soil, the sun and I - Work with authority. - - - _For the Telephone_ - - I the absurdity - Proving what cannot be. - Come, when you talk with me - Does it become you well - To doubt a miracle? - - - _Along Her Book-shelf_ - - Lay one hand on us; but keep the other free to touch far - things which are not far--tenderly. - - - _Where Boughs Touch the Glass_ - - They lap on the indoor shore, - The waves of the leaf mere. - They say: We tell you as well as we can, - We wonder what you hear. - - - _For Her Window_ - - I see the stones, I see the stars, - I know not what I see. - Things always say words to themselves - And now and then to me. - But sometimes when I look between - Large stones and little stars - I almost know--but what I know - Flies through the window bars. - - - - - NON NOBIS - - - _Find me little doors of air, - Let me in and in. - I will come and go all day.... - None will miss me from my place - In the room, the porch, the lawn_; - And yet I shall have a way - To enter and find quiet. - - _Knit me in a garment. - Weave me in a spell. - I shall look the same to them. - They will see me in the street - In the shop, the car, the hall_, - And yet all the time I shall be my own, - In a place where they do not come. - - _Will you not, dare you not, - Is it never meet? - I will never let them know---- _ - _Sweet, my Spirit, pardon me! - I had forgot that stars are new - And that it is the dawn of earth._ - Doors and garments and spells I must make for myself. - Among ten thousand of us I must find silence. - - - - - HALF THOUGHT - - - I saw Fair Yellow in the west, - Fair Yellow in the air, - The sand, the corn, a bird’s breast, - A woman’s hair. - At night - My little room burst into light---- - Fair Yellow had come there. - - Fair Yellow is a being. - For when I said her name - I found a way of seeing - Her as she came. - O how - Do our dull senses fail us now - And leave us in some elemental shame! - - There is so much to see and say - If we could find the way.... - - - - - UMBRA - - - The birds of the air are about me - For I am the conjuring one; - How they dip and hover and circle - Through hyaline regions of sun. - - One has a wing like a petal, - One wears a feather of flame, - Silk and snow is the breast of another - With a word like a flute for a name. - - How they sing ... in the morning, - Tilting soft the light beat of their flight; - How their passionate chorales give cadence - Down the ample arcade of the night. - - Yes, the songs of the air are about me - Sweet ... clear ... but they sing - Of the light of another morning - In the deep of another Spring. - - - - - WRAITHS - - - Who hears the answer when I cry? - O quiet hours and empty blue---- - You? - But the echoful air beats back no sigh. - - Who is glad of the love that I give the green? - O haunted hollow in tide of leaves, - Who weaves - Delight of mine on the flowery screen? - - Who harbours that little straying ghost - Of our thought for each other before we knew - Love true? - Warm, warm in my heart and never lost. - - - - - HALF THOUGHT - - - Believe not Sorrow, her who brings - Confession of the folded wings, - But seek you, burning, some frail birth - That sings. - It is her spirit beating through. - Handful of earth, - It may be breath to you! - - - - - WIND SONG - - - Horn of the morning! - And the little night pipings fail. - The day is launched like a hollow ship - With the sun for a sail. - The way is wide and blue and lone - With all the miles inviolate, - Save for the swinging stars they’ve sown - And a thistle of cloud remote and blown. - O I passion for something nearer than these! - How shall I know that this live thing is I - With only the morning for proof and the sky? - I long for a music more dear to its keys, - For a touch that shall teach me the new sureties, - Give me some griefs and some loyalties - And a child’s mouth on my own.... - - Lullaby, - Babe of the world, swing high, - Swing low. - I am a mother you never may know, - But oh, - And oh, how long the wind will know you, - With lullaby for the dead night through. - Babe of the earth, as I blow.... - Swing high, - To touch at the sky, - And at last lie low. - Lullaby.... - - - - - HALF THOUGHT - - - When all the leaves of Spring turn gold - And the wind has no song, - To whom then does the changeling green - Belong? - And who on what far waveless shore - Harps as Spring wind shall harp no more - In Winter’s beat and roll? - O You, who such forgotten beauties hold, - Find some faint loveliness unseen - And save it in a soul. - - - - - TROTH - - - To-day an odour lay upon the air - And did not fall from any mortal flower. - Deep they won their way within the hour - Who laid that odour there. - - A perfume as of all that cannot give - A perfume--ivory and ore, - Colour and cloud and pearl and marl; and store - Of the wild aroma of cave and hive. - - It was an inner perfume filtering - From other level than the great Midgard; - From a far and sphery home full-friendlier starred - Where marvels lift light wing. - - By fragrance, fire and music do we prove - The tender contact of a lovelier day, - And these fair guarantors gently outray - From their far home--these three and also love. - - - - - BELOVED, IT IS DAYBREAK ON THE HILLS - - - Beloved, it is daybreak on the hills. - Dark glimmers and goes out in cloudy light. - Faint on the marge of night the watchet dawn - Lifts like a lily from a quiet water. - And that within me which is consonant - Is at its door to meet God’s infinite. - - O Love, what banner shall we lift? And what - Timbrel and incense bear? How shall we greet - God’s day, his hills, his fire, and join their beauty? - Voices reply that are no voice but breath: - “Like beauty be thou nothing save his vesture.” - - - - - CREDO - - - O you not only worshipful but dear - Now have I learned not merely majesty - But gentleness and friendlihood to be - Your way of drawing near. - - And late, upon a blue and yellow day, - Wandering alone along a hill of Spring - I caught another tender summoning, - As if you were the comrad of my play. - - How strange that I have looked so lone and far - When it is you, Great Love, who lonely are. - How I have sought you in your cosmic leisure - When you are eager in my childish pleasure. - - Why there is no dim doctrine to believe! - Only to feel this touching at my sleeve. - - - - - WHO IS THIS THAT IS SO NEAR? - - - Who is this that is so near? - Not a face and not a voice. - But a sense of someone here, - Or of something not ourselves. - - At no altar, from no ark---- - Is it He? O wonderful - In the day and in the dark - To behold Him by no eyes. - - Is it They? Ask us not who. - As trees know when creatures pass, - We may know when Those look through - From another kind of day. - - He and They within our sense. - As we hope of bird or root: - “Lo, it has intelligence!” - Hidden ones may hope of us. - - - - - INMOST ONE - - - Brilliant and lone she sat - Upon eternal height - And veiled her face about. - She was in fear of sin, - She was in fear of deadly night, - I saw her eyes peer out. - - I saw her eyes peer out - And knew she was divine, - But oh, her stedfast, dreadful gaze - And her importunate doubt. - She did not make me word or sign - Or turn away her face. - - She did not make word or sign, - But as she watched me err - Her eyes grew cold like the dark star - And her body ceased to shine. - I could not breathe for the breath of her - Was frost of Winter and fire of war. - - Her body ceased to shine. - I dare not let her die. - I opened my heart to the sun - And I breathed her breath for mine. - Behold, that Inmost One was I, - And I was the inmost one. - - I opened my heart to the sun. - O colour and line, and birth - Of wonder and word and light! - Through love and her I have won - The earth within the earth - And the sight that is more than sight. - - O colour and line and birth, - Birth of an order new, - Of a life that is more than my own ... - Birth that is your birth ... - Birth in me of you - O God, brilliant and lone! - - - - - STONE CELL - - - Let me not see thee, Lord God of my essential life, where thou art not. - Let me not look upon colour and pray to thee believing thee to be colour. - Let me not go in silence or in dream and dream thee to be that silence. - With the failing of the light let me not thrill at the intricate - touch of that spirit - Who films light to shadow, and kneel believing ecstasy to be prayer. - From my dreams, from the siren singing and the imperious call, - From the blinding joy and the august mystery of simple beauty - Wilt not thou, compassionate, O deliver me, faint for beauty. - - God! If I were praying to be delivered from thee ... - - - - - LIGHT - - - We do not touch the texture of the light. - But one may see with a secret eye - The things that are. - Then we divine that we need not die - To win our heritage of sight. - As well this earth as any other star. - - Waking from dream there trails an alien air, - A residue of other suns than these; - We know that we have walked an inner way, - Have met familiars there - And kept our step in exquisite concord - The while we spoke some unremembered word. - And over all there lay - Light whose vibrations ran to other keys - Than those we woke upon. Light whose long play - Was dappled colour delicately kissed. - Strange fires rayed from strange regions of the Lord. - Light from the sun behind the sun fell where - We went to keep our tryst. - - In sleep and in the solitary dusk there come - Fine lines of light upon the lowered lids, - A flush that lets us in the heart of night - And hints dear wonders to be there at home; - As if the universal fabric bids - Its human pattern know that all is light. - In snow - Have we not seen the whiteness smitten through - With sudden rays of glory, vague with veils, - Of some beloved hue that pales - To earthly rose and violet and blue? - Oh you - Who pulse within that light--we know, we know! - - Soon - From without transition night - We would come into this, our own. - Then the dim tune - The which we almost hear, - The low-keyed colour and the word - We have not heard, - All these we shall be shown, - And infinitely near - To God, breathe for our breath his light. - - - - - HALF THOUGHT - - - I close my eyes and on the night - A face looks in at me. - It speaks a word like burning light, - I answer joyfully. - It dims away. The word is sped. - I know not what we two have said. - - The old dark sparkles like a star. - And when shall we be touched with sight - To find the things that are? - - - - - CONTOURS - - - I am glad of the straight lines of the rain; - Of the free blowing curves of the grain; - Of the perilous swirling and curling of fire; - The sharp upthrust of a spire; - Of the ripples on the river - Where the patterns curl and quiver - And sun thrills; - Of the innumerable undulations of the hills. - But the true line is drawn from my spirit to some - infinite outward place ... - That line I cannot trace. - - - - - PART III - - - - - NEWS NOTES OF PORTAGE, WISCONSIN - - - I - - THE KILBOURN ROAD - - In June the road to Kilbourn is a long green hall, - A corridor of leafage pillared white - By birches and with wild-rose patterns on the wall, - And all melodious with the fluid fall - Or lift of red-winged blackbirds fluting mating cries. - The very air - Is visible, not by the light, - Not by the shades that drift - And dip, but by an essence rhythmic with the flood - That flows - Not in the sap, not in the blood, - But otherwhere. - And of that essence grows - All men see in the air of Paradise. - He lay upon a little upland slope - Deep, deep with grass. - And when I saw his head above the green - Where I must pass, - The battered hat, the squinting eyes - Blinking the westering sun, I felt a sting of fear---- - Alas, that in June’s delicate demesne - A watching human face can teach one fear. - So then I spoke to him, gave him good day, - And seeing his gun said what I always say - Meeting a huntsman: “Friend, I hope - You have killed nothing here.” - He stared and grinned. And with his grin - I felt his trustiness. So when - He scrambled down the bank and followed me, - I waited for him as my kind and kin. - - He was a thing of seventeen. And men - Compounded in his blood had set him here - Wizened and hump-backed. But his little face - Held something of the one he was to be - In some eternity. - He talked as freely as a child. He’d shot, he said, - At a young wood-chuck. Now his gun was broke, - And it’d cost a dollar and a half - To mend it. Then I spoke - About a little kerchief made of lace - Lost on the road that day. He turned his head. - “Did it have money in it, Lady?”--with quick grace - Caught from some knightlier place. - And when I asked him what he read - He tried to rise to all my speech awoke. - “A person give me a book a while ago. - Oh, I donno - The name--the cover’s off. I got, I guess, - Two pages done. Time the stock’s fed - I get so sleepy I jump into bed.” - --And with this, for defence, a rueful laugh. - I named the town not two miles distant. No, - He hardly ever went there. Motion picture show? - His eyes lit. Several times he’d been. - War pictures was the best. He liked to kill? - He hung his head. “No, but I never will - Shoot pups or kittens when they want me to. - War’s different.” School? He’d seen - Four years of that--well, four years, more or less. - Dad needed him--dad had so much to do. - - So then I faced him and his need to live. - I put it plain: “But you? - What do you want to do?” - His answer lay within him, ready made. - He met my eyes with all he had to give. - “I’d like,” he said, “to learn the artist trade.” - - Questioned, he told me bit by little bit. - He’d had a horse that died--he’d painted her. - He’d painted Tige, the dog. The pigeon house. - The fence that crossed the slough. The willow tree. - Would he let me see? - Oh, well--they wasn’t much. He couldn’t stir---- - The paint right, and he didn’t have enough. - All that he’d done was rough. - I tried to spell his dream,--to see if his face lit - At flame of it. - He only said: “Mebbe I couldn’t learn.” - And his eyes did not burn. - (“Perhaps,” I thought, “there’s nothing here at all.”) - “Dad’s going to have me paint the house,” he said. - I questioned where he led. - “Yellow and brown,” he answered. And my fancy’s fall - He must have fathomed in my face for a slow red - Mounted and swept his cheek. His eyes sought mine, - His look was piteous with a kind of light. - “I don’t like that. They picked it out,” he said. “I wanted white.” - And all his tone was shame. - The craftsman wounded in his craftsman’s right - In ways he could not name. - - He took the cross-road. Where I saw him go - Wild fever-few made narrow paths of snow - Through the flat fields of dying afternoon. - Bravely in tune - With every little part as with some whole - A red wing answered to an oriole - And met a cat bird’s call. - The sun! The sun! The road to Kilbourn like a long green hall! - The very air a spirit like our own - So nearly shown - That one could almost see. - The veil so thin that presence was outrayed. - - But all the great blue day came facing me, - And crying from the vault and from the sod: - “Oh God, oh God. - ‘_I’d like_,’ he said, ‘_to learn the artist trade!_’” - - - II - - VIOLIN - - One night on some light errand I sat beside - The cooking-stove in Johann’s sitting-room. - Within there was the cheer of lamp and fire, - The stove-draught yawning red and wide, - The table with its rosy cotton spread, - A blue chair-cover from a home-land loom, - A baby’s bed. - And in that odour of cleanliness and food - Johann, the labourer worthy of his hire - For seven days a week, twelve hours a day - At some vague toil “down in the yard.” - “Hard? - What o’ that? Look at the luck I’ve got to keep the place - And draw my pay.” - He had been strong - And still his body kept its ruggedness. - Yet he was old and stiffened and he moved - As one who is wrapped round in something thick. - But O, his face, - His face was like the faces that look out - From bark and hole of trees all marred and grooved, - All laid about - With old varieties of silence and of wrong. - Such faces are locked long - In men, in stones, in wood, in earth, - Awaiting birth. - And Johann’s face was less - Expectant than the happy dead awaiting to become the quick. - - His wife said much about how hard she tried. - She chattered high and shrill - About the burden and the eating ill. - His mother, little, thin, half-blind and cross, - With scarlet flannel round her throat, - Put in her note, - Muttered about the cold, the draught, her side---- - Small ineffectual chants of little loss, - With never a word - Of the great gossip which she had not heard: - That life had passed her by. - The little room beset me like the din - And prick of scourges. All - At once I looked upon the spattered wall - And saw a violin. - - _A hall - Vast, bright and breathing. - In the upper air - A chord, a flower of tone, a quiet wreathing - Along the lift and fall - Of some clear current in the blood - Now delicately understood, - Till all the hearing ones below - Are where - The voices call. - O now they know - What music is. It is that which they are - Themselves. Infinite bells, - Of silence in a little sheath. Deep wells - Of being in a little cup. Star upon star - Veiled save one reaching ray. - And see! The people turn - And for a breath they look - Out into one another’s eyes - And shine and burn - Wise, wise, - With ultimate knowledge of the good - That seeks one whole. - And how - Eternity begins - And ever is beginning now - A thousand hearts learn from the violins._ - - “My back ain’t right. My head ain’t right. I’m almost dead. - Fill the hot water bag. I’m goin’ to bed....” - “Ten pairs of socks I’ve darned to-night. I try - To do the best I can....” - I put the women by. - “Johann,” I said, “you play?” He shook his head. - “I lost it, loggin’----” he held up a stump of thumb. - “I took six lessons once,” he said. - I sat there, dumb. - - From out the inner place of music there had come - Long long ago, - Some viewless one to tell him how to know - What waits upon the page - To beat the rhythm of the world. He heard; and tried - To stumble toward the door graciously wide - For other feet than his. - “I took six lessons once,” he said with pride. - This - Was all we gave him of his heritage. - - - III - - NORTH STAR - - His boy had stolen some money from a booth - At the County Fair. I found the father in his kitchen. - For years he had driven a dray and the heavy lifting - Had worn him down. So through his evenings - He slept by the kitchen stove as I found him. - The mother was crying and ironing. - I thought about the mother, - For she brought me a photograph - Taken at a street fair on her wedding day. - She was so trim and white and he so neat and alert - In the picture with their friends about them---- - I saw that she wanted me to know their dignity from the first. - But afterward I thought more about the father. - For as he came with me to the door I could not forbear - To say how bright and near the stars seemed. - Then he leaned and peered from beneath his low roof, - And he said: - “_There used to be a star called the Nord Star._” - - - - - PROSE NOTES - - - I - - THE BUREAU - - In anger, in irritation, in argument, what happens to you and me? - Something fine weaving us round is torn open. - Something fine permeating us is drawn from the veins. - Presences waiting to understand us retreat to a farther ante-room of us. - Little cells are incommunicably sealed. - - All this happened to me and some strange progress was halted - until something in me could be repaired. - The whole race halted with me. - The light of the remotest star, do you imagine that it did not know? - Innumerable influences ceased to pour upon us all. - And it was because someone left the attic window open and it - had rained on an old bureau. - - - II - - MINUET - - I went from Fifth avenue into the Plaza on a sunny Winter morning. - There on a little stage it was Spring. A shepherdess walked. - Beside a stream girls were tying garlands. A harp was touched. - The shepherdess and her lovers danced a minuet on the - bright emerald of that shining field. - - Down by Brooklyn Bridge---- - Now this sharp contrast will shock you, but we must not - interrupt the minuet---- - I know a place down by Brooklyn Bridge where a woman - (Young, once pretty, still with tender eyes) - Carries water up five flights of stairs to do washing. - - I watched the minuet and I thought about that woman. - Did God create two worlds? - Or has man made a world? And can man see that his world is good? - - - III - - THE DINING ROOM - - I laid the blue dishes on the table. - The dining room was still and sunny. - Zinnias were in a brown basket, - The grape-fruit plant was glossy in a window. - Skilful fingers had wrought the border of the curtain. - My grand-mother’s blue pitcher was on the sideboard. - There were chestnut leaves in the brown rug. - Barometer and thermometer recorded miracle on the rose wall. - Dark wood paneled and beamed us in together. - - As I worked these exquisite patient familiar things let me within. - They let me look with their eyes, feel with their beating - pulses of hurrying molecules. - I perceived how locomotion and consciousness and - self-consciousness have advanced us. - By what means shall we go forward now? - Does anyone wonder at my slow patience as I wonder at the - slow patience of these exquisite and familiar things? - - - IV - - PARADISE AND PURGATORY - - Do you ever go into your room and find familiar things unfamiliar. - Muslin curtains thinned by moonlight, - Open window, candle, mirror, expectant chairs, - Long smooth waiting bed--do they not bear another aspect - As if you had divined them doing their duty, - As if to be inanimate clearly involved a process, - As if they were surprised at their creeping task of going - back to earth, rising in plants, quickening into beings. - That is the great work of those patient things. - That is why they look so intent. - So with all your preoccupation in dressing for to-day - Your object is the same as that of these humble ones. - Only you have reached a paradise where you can hasten your way. - But these others are yet in purgatory. - - - V - - AT LEAST ... - - On that day of wild joyous wind - I filled my being with warm hurrying air. - The pouring sun was in my heart like water in a well. - I ran in the pulsing tonic currents. - And all the time, melodious in my mind, - There beat and strove the measure of a tune. - Then for a breath I understood: Glory without and flame within, - They passioned to belong to each other. - I--I was the interruption. - - From that time I gave my body to be a harp: - Wind of the world without, breath of the soul within, - I will try to let you interflow. - August Presences, at least, at least may I not hinder you. - - - VI - - ROSES - - Only once have I been sure that a rose answered me. - Always the reticence of roses was the aloofness of the peak - A rose would never admit me, speak to me, - Listen to me, reply to me, do other than suffer me. - But one day after our barbarous fashion I lifted a rose to my face. - Suddenly, thrillingly, the rose replied. It, too, touched at me. - We had something to exchange. - What am I to do that this shall be true of every flower, - Every animal, every stone, every manufactured article, - Every created object--yes, even every person of the world? - - - VII - - SPRING EVENING - - I heard her at the telephone. - “Do come early,” she was saying, “while the light lasts. - The dog-wood is in blossom, the mountains are wonderful. - It is,” she said, “too heavenly. Do come, while the light lasts....” - Outside on the veranda I could see the light, - I could see the dog-wood in bloom and a mountain - _And more!_ - What else there was I am trying to tell: - Not colour for I am no artist. Not glamour for I am not in love; - Not any more magic than I am accustomed to; - Not presence I think--though perhaps after all it was presence. - But something else was there, exquisite, insistent. - When she came back I looked up to see if it met her. - But she only said: “It is too heavenly. - I hope they will come while the light lasts.” - I knew that she did not see what I saw. - But what did I see.... - - - VIII - - SECOND SIGHT - - Can the world have been created for you and me to do all - that fills our days: - Care of a house, lawn, shop, billion dollar business? - These are not enough for us. - Can the world have been created for the nations to do - all that fills their days: - Trading, peacefully penetrating, warring, - Or when the mood changes, motoring down one another’s roads, - decorating one another, bowing at one another’s courts? - These are not enough for the nations. - - What is the world for? - - Once in an apple orchard at mid-day - I had a moment of second sight as I watched a child at play. - She shone with light like a holy child. She was pure. - She was growing. She was nothing, nothing but love. - She was all that we might be, we and the nations. - She was all that we shall be. - Come, let us face it! - - - IX - - DOES SOMETHING WAIT? - - Go and wait somewhere. Take no book, no paper, no - solitaire or needle task. - Nay but forbid yourself also that you reckon the profit or plan a feast - Or discern dust on the lamp; - That you consider to whom to sell or what to wear. - Go and wait somewhere, with forgotten muscles. - - Now does something wait with you, glad and welcoming - that you are free to turn to it? - Then you have bread that you know not of and it is brought to you. - Or do you merely sit with an hundred fibres in you pressing to be gone? - Then you are in danger of starvation. - By this means we may almost know what we are. - - - X - - DOORS - - At the edge of consciousness is a little door. - What goes by? - Now a wing of brightness, of colour, of something out - there that I love more than I am accustomed to loving. - Now fares by a delicate shadow, patterned, fleet, that - I long to know more than I am accustomed to knowing. - There must be so much more to love and to know than the - little loves and the little knowledge. - - Then someone knocks at my door. - Thou! - The wing of brightness, the delicate shadow were but the sign. - What am I to do? - I will find my way to the edge of my consciousness, - I will gain the door, I will have my freedom, - I will love and know and be all being. - Thou art the liberator. Why it is true.... - “Behold, I stand at the door and knock.” - - - XI - - LEVITATION - - Three times that day came the sense of levitation. - As if court-house walk, walnut shadow, a length of sunny - lawn let her go by with no tribute of her touch. - It seemed as if the wonderful would happen. - She waited, prepared for the vision. - The day flowered, ripened, mellowed, fell upon night. - No presence opened or signaled. - Then she went to embosom that which the hours had left her. - She faced her day, and her day gathered itself as a living - thing with a voice and deep eyes. - It said, I was wonderful. - - Yet the only thing to happen that day had been this: - Old Edgerton Bascom came to the porch, selling buttons. - She bought from him, picked her dahlias for his wife. - He went away, comforted, restored to self-respect by her purchase. - Perhaps when levitation comes it will be a matter of this kind - Rather than of calculation and reckoning. - - - XII - - ENCHANTMENT - - In this house I perform all as seriously as may be required. - I accept my desk, my little tools, lamp, paper. - I write in the one language which I have been taught and - about the few things with which I am familiar. - I eat the little round of food which it is said will nourish my body. - About my books I am docile and I learn from them. - I look no farther than my window permits. - When I wish to emerge I go obediently to the door as if - there were conceivable no other way of exit. - At night I fall into sleep as if that were eternal purpose. - - I suffer from absence, I submit to distance, - I am subject to innumerable influences, - I am open to them all with a sober face. - - But all the time I have knowledge that I am something other; - That all these things shall ultimately have no more power over me. - That I consent to them because of some delicate exigency - in this moment of eternity. - Even now I am often free of them. - There was the day when I moved among the hills and lost - every sense of difference from them. - With the crowning cloud and the far filament of the river - I found myself in common. - The air was vocal with all that is identical and in that - hour it offered to me my identity. - I became everything. I had no question to ask for it was - I, too, who was answering. - The hour dissolved. The ultimate star was my neighbour. - - ... Suddenly I remembered myself down in the valley moving - about in a house. - And I perceived that for years I have been enchanted. - I am listening to be set free. - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Secret Way, by Zona Gale - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SECRET WAY *** - -***** This file should be named 60146-0.txt or 60146-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/0/1/4/60146/ - -Produced by Tim Lindell, Chuck Greif and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This -file was produced from images generously made available -by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) - - -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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