The exorable god, thy pledge confirmed,
Should yield thee back the daughter of thy tears?
Such might is thine?
Beyond Cithaeron, see
The footsteps of the rain upon the hills.
Tell me whence thy daughter must be led.
So much at least it shall be mine to do.
If ever urgency hath plumed thy heels,
By Psyttaleia and the outer isles
Westward still winging thine ethereal way,
Beyond the moon-swayed reaches of the deep,
And that unvestiged midnight that confines
The verge of being, succourable god,
Haste to the river by whose sunless brim
Dark Aides leads forth his languid flocks.
There shalt thou find Persephone enthroned.
Beside the ruler of the dead she sits,
And shares, unwilling, his long sovereignty.
Thence lead her to Demeter and these groves.
Round thy returning feet the earth shall laugh
As I, when of my body she was born!
Lo, thy last word is as a tardy shaft
Lost in his silver furrow. Ere thou speed
Its fellow, we shall see his face again
And not alone. The gods are justified.
Ah, how impetuous are the wings of joy!
Swift comes she, as impatient to be gone!
Swifter than yonder rain moves down the pass
I see the wonder run along the deep.
The light draws nearer. . . . Speak to me, my child!
I feel the first slow rain-drop on my hand . . .
She fades. Persephone comes, led by Hermes.
How sweet the hawthorn smells along the hedge . . .
And, mother, mother, sweeter are these tears.
Pale art thou, daughter, and upon thy brow
Sits an estranging darkness like a crown.
Look up, look up! Drink in the light’s new wine.
Feelest thou not beneath thine alien feet
Earth’s old endearment, O Persephone?
Dear is the earth’s warm pressure under foot,
And dear, my mother, is thy hand in mine.
As one who, prisoned in some Asian wild,
After long days of cheated wandering
Climbing a sudden cliff, at last beholds
The boundless reassurance of the sea,
And on it one small sail that sets for home,
So look I on the daylight, and thine eyes.
Thy voice is paler than the lips it leaves.
Thou wilt not stay with me! I know my doom.
Ah, the sweet rain! The clouds compassionate!
Hide me, O mother, hide me from the day!
What are these words? It is my love thou fearest.
I fear the light. I fear the sound of life
That thunders in mine unaccustomed ears.
Here is no sound but the soft-falling rain.
Dost thou not hear the noise of birth and being,
The roar of sap in boughs impregnated,
And all the deafening rumour of the grass?
Love hear I, at his endless task of life.
The awful immortality of life!
The white path winding deathlessly to death!
Why didst thou call the rain from out her caves
To draw a dying earth back to the day?
Why fatten flocks for our dark feast, who sit
Beside the gate, and know where the path ends?
O pitiless gods--that I am one of you!
They are not pitiless, since thou art here.
Who am I, that they give me, or withhold?
Think’st thou I am that same Persephone
They took from thee?
Within thine eyes I see
Some dreadful thing--
At first I deemed it so.
Loving thy doom, more dark thou mak’st it seem.
Love? What is love? This long time I’ve unlearned
Those old unquiet words. There where we sit,
By the sad river of the end, still are
The poplars, still the shaken hearts of men,
Or if they stir, it is as when in sleep
Dogs sob upon a phantom quarry’s trail.
And ever through their listlessness there runs
The lust of some old anguish; never yet
Hath any asked for happiness: that gift
They fear too much! But they would sweat and strive,
And clear a field, or kill a man, or even
Wait on some long slow vengeance all their days.
Since I have sat upon the stone of sorrow,
Think’st thou I know not how the dead may feel?
But thou, look up; for thou shalt learn from me,
Under the sweet day, in the paths of men,
All the dear human offices that make
Their brief hour longer than the years of death.
Thou shalt behold me wake the sleeping seed,
And wing the flails upon the threshing-floor,
Among young men and maidens; or at dawn,
Under the low thatch, in the winnowing-creel,
Lay the new infant, seedling of some warm
Noon dalliance in the golden granary,
Who shall in turn rise, walk, and drive the plough,
And in the mortal furrow leave his seed.
Execrable offices are theirs and thine!
Mine only nurslings are the waxen-pale
Dead babes, so small that they are hard to tell
From the little images their mothers lay
Beside them, that they may not sleep alone.
Yet other nurslings to those mothers come,
And live and love--
Thou hast not seen them meet,
Ghosts of dead babes and ghosts of tired men,
Or thou wouldst veil thy face, and curse the sun!
Thou wilt forget the things that thou hast seen.
More dreadful are the things thou hast to show.
Art thou so certain? Hard is it for men
To know a god, and it has come to me
That we, we also, may be blind to men.
O mother, thou hast spoken! But for me,
I, that have eaten of the seed of death,
And with my dead die daily, am become
Of their undying kindred, and no more
Can sit within the doorway of the gods
And laughing spin new souls along the years.
Daughter, speak low. Since I have walked with men
Olympus is a little hill, no more.
Stay with me on the dear and ample earth.
The kingdom of the dead is wider still,
And there I heal the wounds that thou hast made.
And yet I send thee beautiful ghosts and griefs!
Dispeopling earth, I leave thee none to rule.
O that, mine office ended, I might end!
Stand off from me. Thou knowest more than I,
Who am but the servant of some lonely will.
Perchance the same. But me it calls from hence.
On earth, on earth, thou wouldst have wounds to heal!
Free me. I hear the voices of my dead.
She goes.
( after a long silence)
I hear the secret whisper of the wheat.
"The Hymn of the Lusitania." New York Herald, 7 May 1915: 1.
"The Great Blue Tent." New York Times, 25 Aug. 1915: 10.
"Battle Sleep." Century Magazine 90 (Sept. 1915): 736. by EDITH WHARTON
SOMEWHERE, O sun, some corner there must be
Thou visitest, where down the strand
Quietly, still, the waves go out to sea
From the green fringes of a pastoral land.
Deep in the orchard-bloom the roof-trees stand,
The brown sheep graze along the bay,
And through the apple-boughs above the sand
> The bees’ hum sounds no fainter than the spray.
There through uncounted hours declines the day
To the low arch of twilight’s close,
And, just as night about the moon grows gray,
One sail leans westward to the fading rose.
Giver of dreams, O thou with scatheless wing
Forever moving through the fiery hail,
To flame-seared lids the cooling vision bring,
And let some soul go seaward with that sail!
"’On Active Service’; American Expeditionary Force (R. S., August 12, 1918)." Scribner’s Magazine 64 (Nov. 1918): 619. By Edith Wharton
HE is dead that was alive.
How shall friendship understand?
Lavish heart and tireless hand
Bidden not to give or strive,
Eager brain and questing eye
Like a broken lens laid by.
He, with so much left to do,
Such a gallant race to run,
What concern had he with you,
Silent Keeper of things done?
Tell us not that, wise and young,
Elsewhere he lives out his plan.
Our speech was sweetest to his tongue,
And his great gift was to be man.
Long and long shall we remember,
In our breasts his grave be made.
It shall never be December
Where so warm a heart is laid,
But in our saddest selves a sweet voice sing,
Recalling him, and Spring.
August, 1918.
"You and You; to the American private in the great war." Scribner’s Magazine 65 (Feb. 1919): 152-153. By Edith Wharton
EVERY one of you won the war--
You and you and you--
Each one knowing what it was for,
And what was his job to do.
Every one of you won the war,
Obedient, unwearied, unknown,
Dung in the trenches, drift on the shore,
Dust to the world’s end blown;
Every one of you, steady and true,
You and you and you--
Down in the pit or up in the blue,
Whether you crawled or sailed or flew,
Whether your closest comrade knew
Or you bore the brunt alone--
All of you, all of you, name after name,
Jones and Robinson, Smith and Brown,
You from the piping prairie town,
You from the Fundy fogs that came,
You from the city’s roaring blocks,
You from the bleak New England rocks
With the shingled roof in the apple boughs,
You from the brown adobe house--
You from the Rockies, you from the Coast,
You from the burning frontier-post
And you from the Klondyke’s frozen flanks,
You from the cedar-swamps, you from the pine,
You from the cotton and you from the vine,
You from the rice and the sugar-brakes,
You from the Rivers and you from the Lakes,
You from the Creeks and you from the Licks
And you from the brown bayou--
You and you and you--
You from the pulpit, you from the mine,
You from the factories, you from the banks,
Closer and closer, ranks on ranks,
Airplanes and cannon, and rifles and tanks,
Smith and Robinson, Brown and Jones,
Ruddy faces or bleaching bones,
After the turmoil and blood and pain
Swinging home to the folks again
Or sleeping along in the fine French rain--
Every one of you won the war.
Every one of you won the war--
You and you and you--
Pressing and pouring forth, more and more,
Toiling and straining from shore to shore
To reach the flaming edge of the dark
Where man in his millions went up like a spark,
You, in your thousands and millions coming,
All the sea ploughed with you, all the air humming,
All the land loud with you,
All our hearts proud with you,
All our souls bowed with the awe of your coming!
Where’s the Arch high enough,
Lads, to receive you,
Where’s the eye dry enough,
Dears, to perceive you,
When at last and at last in your glory you come,
Tramping home?
Every one of you won the war,
You and you and you--
You that carry an unscathed head,
You that halt with a broken tread,
And oh, most of all, you Dead, you Dead!
Lift up the Gates for these that are last,
That are last in the great Procession.
Let the living pour in, take possession,
Flood back to the city, the ranch, the farm,
The church and the college and mill,
Back to the office, the store, the exchange,
Back to the wife with the babe on her arm,
Back to the mother that waits on the sill,
And the supper that’s hot on the range.
And now, when the last of them all are by,
Be the Gates lifted up on high
To let those Others in,
Those Others, their brothers, that softly tread,
That come so thick, yet take no ground,
That are so many, yet make no sound,
Our Dead, our Dead, our Dead!
O silent and secretly-moving throng,
In your fifty thousand strong,
Coming at dusk when the wreaths have dropt,
And streets are empty, and music stopt,
Silently coming to hearts that wait
Dumb in the door and dumb at the gate,
And hear your step and fly to your call--
Every one of you won the war,
But you, you Dead, most of all!
November, 1918.
"With the Tide." Saturday Evening Post 191, 29 Mar. 1919: 8.
SOMEWHERE I read, in an old book whose name
Is gone from me, I read that when the days
Of a man are counted, and his business done,
There comes up the shore at evening, with the tide,
To the place where he sits, a boat --
And in the boat, from the place where he sits, he sees,
Dim in the dusk, dim and yet so familiar,
The faces of his friends long dead; and knows
They come for him, brought in upon the tide,
To take him where men go at set of day.
Then rising, with his hands in theirs, he goes
Between them his last steps, that are the first
Of the new life -- and with the ebb they pass,
Their shaken sail grown small upon the moon.
Often I thought of this, and pictured me
How many a man who lives with throngs about him,
Yet straining through the twilight for that boat
Shall scarce make out one figure in the stern,
And that so faint its features shall perplex him
With doubtful memories -- and his heart hang back.
But others, rising as they see the sail
Increase upon the sunset, hasten down,
Hands out and eyes elated; for they see
Head over head, crowding from bow to stern,
Repeopling their long loneliness with smiles,
The faces of their friends; and such go forth
Content upon the ebb tide, with safe hearts.
But never
To worker summoned when his day was done
Did mounting tide bring in such freight of friends
As stole to you up the white wintry shingle
That night while they that watched you thought you slept.
Softly they came, and beached the boat, and gathered
In the still cove under the icy stars,
Your last-born, and the dear loves of your heart,
And all men that have loved right more than ease,
And honor above honors; all who gave
Free-handed of their best for other men,
And thought their giving taking: they who knew
Man’s natural state is effort, up and up --
All these were there, so great a company
Perchance you marveled, wondering what great ship
Had brought that throng unnumbered to the cove
Where the boys used to beach their light canoe
After old happy picnics --
But these, your friends and children, to whose hands
Committed, in the silent night you rose
And took your last faint steps --
These led you down, O great American,
Down to the winter night and the white beach,
And there you saw that the huge hull that waited
Was not as are the boats of the other dead,
Frail craft for a brief passage; no, for this
Was first of a long line of towering transports,
Storm-worn and ocean-weary every one,
The ships you launched, the ships you manned, the ships
That now, returning from their sacred quest
With the thrice-sacred burden of their dead,
Lay waiting there to take you forth with them,
Out with the ebb tide, on some farther quest.
Hyeres, January 7th, 1919.
Edith Wharton's Verse, 1879-1919, from various journals. Page 8