Sat alone in the flickering red of the flame, and the cricket
Carked to the stillness, and ever, with sullen throbs of the pendule
Sighed the time-worn clock for the death of the days that were perished, —
It was her whim to be sad, and she brought him the book they were reading.
“Read it to-night,” she said, “that I may not seem to be going.”
Said, and mutely reproached him with all the pain she had wrought him.
From her hand he took the volume and read, and she listened, —
All his voice molten in secret tears, and ebbing and flowing,
Now with a faltering breath, and now with impassioned abandon, —
Read from the book of a poet the rhyme of the fatally sundered,
Fatally met too late, and their love was their guilt and their anguish,
But in the night they rose, and fled away into the darkness,
Glad of all dangers and shames, and even of death, for their love’s sake.
Then, when his voice brake hollowly, falling and fading to silence,
Thrilled in the silence they sat, and durst not behold one another,
Feeling that wild temptation, that tender, ineffable yearning,
Drawing them heart to heart. One blind, mad moment of passion
With their fate they strove; but out of the pang of the conflict,
Through such costly triumph as wins a waste and a famine,
Victors they came, and Love retrieved the error of loving.
So, foreknowing the years, and sharply discerning the future,
Guessing the riddle of life, and accepting the cruel solution, —
Side by side they sat, as far as the stars are asunder.
Carked the cricket no more, but while the audible silence
Shrilled in their ears, she, suddenly rising and dragging the thistle
Out of her clinging hair, laughed mockingly, casting it from her:
“Perish the thorns and splendor, — the bloom and the sweetness are perished.
Dreary, respectable calm, polite despair, and one’s Duty, —
These and the world, for dead Love! — The end of these modern romances!
Better than yonder rhyme?... Pleasant dreams and good night, Cousin Clement.”
BY THE SEA.
I walked with her I love by the sea,
The deep came up with its chanting waves,
Making a music so great and free
That the will and the faith, which were dead in me,
Awoke and rose from their graves.
Chanting, and with a regal sweep
Of their ‘broidered garments up and down
The strand, came the mighty waves of the deep,
Dragging the wave-worn drift from its sleep
Along the sea-sands bare and brown.
“O my soul, make the song of the sea!” I cried.
“How it comes, with its stately tread,
And its dreadful voice, and the splendid pride
Of its regal garments flowing wide
Over the land!” to my soul I said.
My soul was still; the deep went down.
“What hast thou, my soul,” I cried,
“In thy song?” “The sea-sands bare and brown,
With broken shells and sea-weed strown,
And stranded drift,” my soul replied.
SAINT CHRISTOPHER.
In the narrow Venetian street,
On the wall above the garden gate
(Within, the breath of the rose is sweet,
And the nightingale sings there, soon and late),
Stands Saint Christopher, carven in stone,
With the little child in his huge caress,
And the arms of the baby Jesus thrown
About his gigantic tenderness;
And over the wall a wandering growth
Of darkest and greenest ivy clings,
And climbs around them, and holds them both
In its netted clasp of knots and rings,
Clothing the saint from foot to beard
In glittering leaves that whisper and dance
To the child, on his mighty arm upreared,
With a lusty summer exuberance.
To the child on his arm the faithful saint
Looks up with a broad and tranquil joy;
His brows and his heavy beard aslant
Under the dimpled chin of the boy,
Who plays with the world upon his palm,
And bends his smiling looks divine
On the face of the giant mild and calm,
And the glittering frolic of the vine.
He smiles on either with equal grace, —
On the simple ivy’s unconscious life,
And the soul in the giant’s lifted face,
Strong from the peril of the strife:
For both are his own, — the innocence
That climbs from the heart of earth to heaven,
And the virtue that gently rises thence
Through trial sent and victory given.
Grow, ivy, up to his countenance,
But it cannot smile on my life as on thine;
Look, Saint, with thy trustful, fearless glance,
Where I dare not lift these eyes of mine.
Venice, 1863.
ELEGY ON JOHN BUTLER HOWELLS,
Who died, “with the first song of the birds,” Wednesday morning,
April 27, 1864.
I.
In the early morning when I wake
At the hour that is sacred for his sake,
And hear the happy birds of spring
In the garden under my window sing,
And through my window the daybreak blows
The sweetness of the lily and rose,
A dormant anguish wakes with day,
And my heart is smitten with strange dismay:
Distance wider than thine, O sea,
Darkens between my brother and me!
II.
A scrap of print, a few brief lines,
The fatal word that swims and shines
On my tears, with a meaning new and dread,
Make faltering reason know him dead,
And I would that my heart might feel it too,
And unto its own regret be true;
For this is the hardest of all to bear,
That his life was so generous and fair,
So full of love, so full of hope,
Broadening out with ample scope,
And so far from death, that his dying seems
The idle agony of dreams
To my heart, that feels him living yet, —
And I forget, and I forget.
III.
He was almost grown a man when he passed
Away, but when I kissed him last
He was still a child, and I had crept
Up to the little room where he slept,
And thought to kiss him good-by in his sleep;
But he was awake to make me weep
With terrible homesickness, before
My wayward feet had passed the door.
Round about me clung his embrace,
And he pressed against my face his face,
As if some prescience whispered him then
That it never, never should be again.
IV.
Out of far-off days of boyhood dim,
When he was a babe and I played with him,
I remember his looks and all his ways;
And how he grew through childhood’s grace,
To the hopes, and strifes, and sports, and joys,
And innocent vanity of boys;
I hear his whistle at the door,
His careless step upon the floor,
His song, his jest, his laughter yet, —
And I forget, and I forget.
V.
Somewhere in the graveyard that I know,
Where the strawberries under the che
stnuts grow,
They have laid him; and his sisters set
On his grave the flowers their tears have wet;
And above his grave, while I write, the song
Of the matin robin leaps sweet and strong
From the leafy dark of the chestnut-tree;
And many a murmuring honey-bee
On the strawberry blossoms in the grass
Stoops by his grave and will not pass;
And in the little hollow beneath
The slope of the silent field of death,
The cow-bells tinkle soft and sweet,
And the cattle go by with homeward feet,
And the squirrel barks from the sheltering limb,
At the harmless noises not meant for him;
And Nature, unto her loving heart
Has taken our darling’s mortal part,
Tenderly, that he may be,
Like the song of the robin in the tree,
The blossoms, the grass, the reeds by the shore,
A part of Summer evermore.
VI.
I write, and the words with my tears are wet, —
But I forget, O, I forget!
Teach me, Thou that sendest this pain,
To know and feel my loss and gain!
Let me not falter in belief
On his death, for that is sorest grief:
O, lift me above this wearing strife,
Till I discern his deathless life,
Shining beyond this misty shore,
A part of Heaven evermore.
Venice, Wednesday Morning, at Dawn, May 16, 1864.
THANKSGIVING.
I.
Lord, for the erring thought
Not into evil wrought:
Lord, for the wicked will
Betrayed and baffled still:
For the heart from itself kept,
Our thanksgiving accept.
II.
For ignorant hopes that were
Broken to our blind prayer:
For pain, death, sorrow, sent
Unto our chastisement:
For all loss of seeming good,
Quicken our gratitude.
A SPRINGTIME.
One knows the spring is coming:
There are birds; the fields are green;
There is balm in the sunlight and moonlight,
And dew in the twilights between.
But over there is a silence,
A rapture great and dumb,
That day when the doubt is ended,
And at last the spring is come.
Behold the wonder, O silence!
Strange as if wrought in a night, —
The waited and lingering glory,
The world-old, fresh delight!
O blossoms that hang like winter,
Drifted upon the trees,
O birds that sing in the blossoms,
O blossom-haunting bees, —
O green, green leaves on the branches,
O shadowy dark below,
O cool of the aisles of orchards,
Woods that the wild flowers know, —
O air of gold and perfume,
Wind, breathing sweet and sun,
O sky of perfect azure —
Day, Heaven and Earth in one! —
Let me draw near thy secret,
And in thy deep heart see
How fared, in doubt and dreaming,
The spring that is come in me.
For my soul is held in silence,
A rapture, great and dumb, —
For the mystery that lingered,
The glory that is come!
1861.
IN EARLIEST SPRING.
Tossing his mane of snows in wildest eddies and tangles,
Lion-like, March cometh in, hoarse, with tempestuous breath,
Through all the moaning chimneys, and thwart all the hollows and angles
Round the shuddering house, threating of winter and death.
But in my heart I feel the life of the wood and the meadow
Thrilling the pulses that own kindred with fibres that lift
Bud and blade to the sunward, within the inscrutable shadow,
Deep in the oak’s chill core, under the gathering drift.
Nay, to earth’s life in mine some prescience, or dream, or desire
(How shall I name it aright?) comes for a moment and goes, —
Rapture of life ineffable, perfect, — as if in the brier,
Leafless there by my door, trembled a sense of the rose.
THE BOBOLINKS ARE SINGING.
Out of its fragrant heart of bloom, —
The bobolinks are singing!
Out of its fragrant heart of bloom
The apple-tree whispers to the room,
“Why art thou but a nest of gloom,
While the bobolinks are singing?”
The two wan ghosts of the chamber there, —
The bobolinks are singing!
The two wan ghosts of the chamber there
Cease in the breath of the honeyed air,
Sweep from the room and leave it bare,
While the bobolinks are singing.
Then with a breath so chill and slow, —
The bobolinks are singing!
Then with a breath so chill and slow,
It freezes the blossoms into snow,
The haunted room makes answer low,
While the bobolinks are singing.
“I know that in the meadow-land, —
The bobolinks are singing!
I know that in the meadow-land
The sorrowful, slender elm-trees stand,
And the brook goes by on the other hand,
While the bobolinks are singing.
“But ever I see, in the brawling stream, —
The bobolinks are singing!
But ever I see in the brawling stream
A maiden drowned and floating dim,
Under the water, like a dream,
While the bobolinks are singing.
“Buried, she lies in the meadow-land! —
The bobolinks are singing!
Buried, she lies in the meadow-land,
Under the sorrowful elms where they stand.
Wind, blow over her soft and bland,
While the bobolinks are singing.
“O blow, but stir not the ghastly thing, —
The bobolinks are singing!
O blow, but stir not the ghastly thing
The farmer saw so heavily swing
From the elm, one merry morn of spring,
While the bobolinks were singing.
“O blow, and blow away the bloom, —
The bobolinks are singing!
O blow, and blow away the bloom
That sickens me in my heart of gloom,
That sweetly sickens the haunted room,
While the bobolinks are singing!”
PRELUDE.
(TO AN EARLY BOOK OF VERSE.)
In March the earliest bluebird came
And caroled from the orchard-tree
His little tremulous songs to me,
And called upon the summer’s name,
And made old summers in my heart
All sweet with flower and sun again;
So that I said, “O, not in vain
Shall be thy lay of little art,
“Though never summer sun may glow,
Nor summer flower for thee may bloom;
Though winter turn in sudden gloom,
And drowse the stirring spring with snow”;
And learned to trust, if I should call
Upon the sacred name of Song,
Though chill through March I languish long,
And never feel the May at all,
Yet may I touch, in some who hear,
The hearts, wherein old songs asleep
Wait but the feeblest touch to leap
In music sweet as summer air!
I sing in
March brief bluebird lays,
And hope a May, and do not know:
May be, the heaven is full of snow, —
May be, there open summer days.
THE MOVERS.
SKETCH.
Parting was over at last, and all the good-bys had been spoken.
Up the long hillside road the white-tented wagon moved slowly,
Bearing the mother and children, while onward before them the father
Trudged with his gun on his arm, and the faithful house-dog beside him,
Grave and sedate, as if knowing the sorrowful thoughts of his master.
April was in her prime, and the day in its dewy awaking:
Like a great flower, afar on the crest of the eastern woodland,
Goldenly bloomed the sun, and over the beautiful valley,
Dim with its dew and shadow, and bright with its dream of a river,
Looked to the western hills, and shone on the humble procession,
Paining with splendor the children’s eyes, and the heart of the mother.
Beauty, and fragrance, and song filled the air like a palpable presence.
Sweet was the smell of the dewy leaves and the flowers in the wild-wood,
Fair the long reaches of sun and shade in the aisles of the forest.
Glad of the spring, and of love, and of morning, the wild birds were singing:
Jays to each other called harshly, then mellowly fluted together;
Sang the oriole songs as golden and gay as his plumage;
Pensively piped the querulous quails their greetings unfrequent,
While, on the meadow elm, the meadow lark gushed forth in music,
Rapt, exultant, and shaken with the great joy of his singing;
Over the river, loud-chattering, aloft in the air, the kingfisher
Hung, ere he dropped, like a bolt, in the water beneath him;
Gossiping, out of the bank flew myriad twittering swallows;
And in the boughs of the sycamores quarrelled and clamored the blackbirds.
Never for these things a moment halted the Movers, but onward,
Up the long hillside road the white-tented wagon moved slowly.
Till, on the summit, that overlooked all the beautiful valley,
Trembling and spent, the horses came to a standstill unbidden;
Then from the wagon the mother in silence got down with her children,
Came, and stood by the father, and rested her hand on his shoulder.
Long together they gazed on the beautiful valley before them;
Looked on the well-known fields that stretched away to the woodlands,
Where, in the dark lines of green, showed the milk-white crest of the dogwood,
Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells Page 1148