path: root/73705-0.txt

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 73705 ***



                          FIDDLER’S FAREWELL




                            LEONORA SPEYER

                          FIDDLER’S FAREWELL




                            [Illustration]


                               NEW YORK

                          ALFRED · A · KNOPF

                                MCMXXVI




               COPYRIGHT, 1926, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.

              MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA




                            _TO MY HUSBAND_

                 “His smile, it listens well and long,
                  His sadness, charitable to mirth,
                  His silence, hospitable to song.”




    _No words to cover:
     Soft linen, trailing silk of phrase
     To deck the pampered song;
     Fine feathers to the wing
     For deft adventuring
     Ecstatic ways
     Along._

    _No many-colored coat of precious words!
     Rather to dare
     A stark undress,
     Wear but a crying nakedness,
     Venture the bright discomfort
     Of a word that strips--
     The startled candor of the heart
     Bare on the vehement lips._




PART I




Ballad of a Lost House


    I

   _Hungry Heart, Hungry Heart, where have you been?_
    I’ve been to a town where lives a queen.

   _Hungry Heart, Hungry Heart, what did you there?_
    I ran all the way to a certain Square.

   _Hungry Heart, say what you did that for!_
    To find a street and a certain door;
    And there I knocked my knuckles sore.


    II

   _That was a foolish thing to do,
    Alone in the night the long hours through;_

   _Gaping there like a chalky clown
    At a stranger-door that had been your own._

   _Where was your pluck and where your pride?_
    They both were there, and love beside;
    And suddenly the door swung wide.

    I heard the sound of a violin
    That seemed to bid me enter in:
    For a fiddle’s a key for many a lock,
    And will open a door though it’s built in rock.


    III

   _Tell me, Hungry, what did you see?_
    A lighted hall where friends made free.

    I trod with them a well-known stair--
   _How did you dare, Heart! How did you dare?_

   _For a frowning face you may trust and like,
    But who shall say when a smile will strike?_


    IV

    Up the oaken stair went I,
    And all made way to let me by.

    Some reached a hand and some looked down,
    But I never saw their smile nor frown.

    I never saw familiar things
    That sought me with quaint beckonings:

    The carven saints in postures mild,
    Kind Virgins with the Heavenly Child,

    Ladies and Knights in tapestries--
    I never saw nor looked at these.

    Only the Christ from a canvas dim,
    Drooping there on His leafless Limb;
    He looked at me and I looked at Him.


    V

   _Where did you go, old Unafraid?_
    Up to a place where children played--
    The happy hubbub the small three made!

    Patter and prattle and toys and games,
    Dolls in rows with curious names,

    Voices lifted like high thin tunes,
    Lively suppers with round-tipped spoons!

    Where should I go but up the stair
    To the welcome I knew was waiting there?

    But all was dark, as only can be
    A long deserted nursery;
    And never a sound to succor me.


    VI

    So I turned to a room where a woman slept
    In a gay gold bed, and near I crept,

    And lingered and listened--oh anguished morn,
    Oh fluty cry of a babe new-born,
    Clearer than trumpeting Gabriel’s horn!

    Oh sea of Life, with Love for a chart--
   _On with the tale, old Hungry Heart!_


    VII

    On with the tale and on to a door
    Where a man had passed to pass no more:

    A quiet man with a quiet strength,
    And over the threshold his shadow’s length

    Lay like an answer for Time to weigh;
    And the dust from his feet spread thick and gray.

    And I thought: Well shaken! Let friend or foe
    Sweep up the dust an it please them so;

    Let Lord and Valet tend to the room;
    Lady, and House-maid, here with the broom!

    Bid Town and Tattle see to it too
    That the windows be washed of the mud they threw.

    Dust and ashes of what has been!
    Sweep the clean house. And keep it clean.


    VIII

    I thought to curse--but strange, a prayer
    Rose to my lips as I stood there.

    And this my praying: Now all good cheer
    To him who sleeps where slept my dear,
    For the sake of the good dreams once dreamed here.


    IX

    Back to the stair and down I sped,
    Passing a loud room table-spread;

    Passing, but pausing, as house-wives do,
    Judging the viands that came to view;

    Trusting the sauce was tuned to the meat,
    The wine well cooled and the pudding sweet;

    Pausing, but passing--
                            _Stay, Heart of mine,
    What of the guests? For I divine
    Their looks were grand and their manners fine._


    X

    A goodly company, I’ll admit,
    And some had beauty and some had wit--

   _And some you loved?_
                            Well, what of it?

   _And some loved you!_
                            Perhaps, perhaps,
    With linen napkins in their laps,

    With cups that foamed and piled-up plates;
    They loved me with a hundred hates!

    They hated in such lovely ways,
    With laughter, singing, kisses, praise--

    How could I know? How could I know?
   _Hungry Heart, Hungry Heart, cry not so!_


    XI

    And as I lingered watching them,
    I felt a tugging at my hem;

    My little dog was cowering there,
    A glassy terror in its stare;

    My veins turned ice--O smacking lips,
    O dainty greedy finger-tips!

    ’Twas bones of Hungry Heart they ate,
    Broken and boiled and delicate,

    Platter on platter the board along,
    And as they supped they sang a song:

    An ancient ardent melody
    About a lady passing by
    Whom they must love until they die.


    XII

    And as they drank I saw the wine,
    It never came from ripened vine,

    It never was brewed in tub or vat,
    Knew web of spider or squeak of rat--
    But it knows their thirst and it pours for that.

    A thirsty stream that none may gauge,
    That none shall slake though the stream assuage,

    Of wine the very counterpart,
    Out of the side of Hungry Heart.

    And mixed with the toast, a violin,
    Mellow and merry above the din,
    Held shoulder high ’neath a woman’s chin.


    XIII

   _Hungry Heart, come, make haste, make haste,
    Out of the house of hopes laid waste,_

   _Out of the town of teeth laid bare
    Under its smiling debonair._

   _Wait not, weep not, get you gone,
    Better the stones to rest upon,_

   _The wind and the rain for a roof secure,
    Hyssop and tares for your nouriture:
    These shall endure. These shall endure._


    XIV

    I got me gone. On stumbling feet
    I reached the stair and I reached the street;

    The door slammed to with an iron scream,
    And behind it lay the end of a dream;

    Behind it lifted barren walls,
    And I thought of a play when the curtain falls
    On a comedy written of shrouds and palls.


    XV

   _Hungry Heart, Hungry Heart, what did you then?_
    I fell on my knees and I cried, Amen!
    But now and again--now and again--

    I come to the door in the dead of night,
    I wander the rooms till the panes are white;

    A landlord ghost! Aye, one who knows
    His lease out-lived with the cock that crows,
    A wraith content that contented goes.

    Goes at the cry of the bird unseen,
    Calling the friends of what has been;

    And some it names lie sleeping near--
    Ah, wake them not, friend Chanticleer!


    XVI

    Three times it calls the end of the dream,
    And still I return, for still I seem

    To comfort a house that lives aloof
    From all who live beneath its roof.

    I must return! to dispossess
    Those bartered walls of loneliness:

    Mortar and brick and iron and bole,
    Where all may pass who pay their toll;
    The husk of a house that has lost its soul.


    XVII

    For out of that house went its soul with me,
    Leaping and crying after me,
    To bear me faithful company
    Over a clear and quickening sea.




PART II




Duet

(_I sing with myself_)


    Out of my sorrow
    I’ll build a stair,
    And every to-morrow
    Will climb to me there--

   _With ashes of yesterday
    In its hair_.

    My fortune is made
    Of a stab in the side,
    My debts are paid
    In pennies of pride--

   _Little red coins
    In a heart I hide_.

    The stones that I eat
    Are ripe for my needs,
    My cup is complete
    With the dregs of deeds--

   _Clear are the notes
    Of my broken reeds_.

    I carry my pack
    Of aches and stings,
    Light with the lack
    Of all good things--

   _But not on my back,
    Because of my wings_!




I’ll be your Epitaph


    Over your dear dead heart I’ll lift
    As blithely as a bough,
    Saying, “Here lies the cruel song,
    Cruelly quiet now.”

    I’ll say, “Here lies the lying sword,
    Still dripping with my truth;
    Here lies the woven sheath I made,
    Embroidered with my youth.”

    I’ll sing, “Here lies, here lies, here lies--”
    Ah, rust in peace below!
    Passers will wonder at my words,
    But your dark dust will know.




Third Floor Landing


    A stranger knocked upon your door,
    A stranger-voice cried out, “Come in!”
    Beyond, a sofa, plump and red,
    Crouched where a carven chest had been.

    I craned to see the things I knew
    Could not be there, since you were gone--
    Oh twilight of the household gods,
    Dishonored altars where they shone!

    I saw instead a gilded glimpse
    Of trivial things that seemed to shout
    A trivial welcome from the wall;
    The door swung to and shut me out.

    Only the landing was unchanged,
    The closed door donned a friendly air;
    I had no quarrel with my place,
    I was at home upon the stair.




Therapy


    There is a way
    Of healing love with love,
    They say.
    But I say no!
    What! shall pain comfort pain,
    Fever calm fever,
    Woe minister to woe?

    Shall tear, remembering,
    Wash cool remembering tear?
    Shall scar play host to scar,
    Loneliness shelter loneliness;
    And is forgetting here?

    Poor patch-work of the heart,
    This healing love with love;
    Binding the wound to wound,
    The smart to smart!
    Grafting the dream upon the other dream
    As a gardener grafts tree to tree,
    And both from the same wild root
    Bearing their bitter fruit:
    The new dream dreaming in the old,
    The old dream in the new--
    And neither dreaming true.

    Is there, I wonder,
    A heaven above the heaven we knew?
    And is there under
    Our dream’s stern waking
    A sterner hell?
    And shall we know them too?

    One thing I know:
    Of an unreckoned giving that is a taking,
    A wrong, a robbery!
    Perhaps you so wronged me;
    I so robbed you.

    Therapy--therapy--
    I am content to feel
    This health of heart that will not heal;
    I am content to think
    That I am one with hunger,
    Given to thirst,
    And that I need not eat nor drink.
    I am full-nourished so.

    They say
    There is a way
    Of healing love with love.
    But I say no!

           *       *       *

    Beyond the sands
    Of all they say
    I see you still,
    Holding toward me those eager hands
    I could not fill;
    My hands still curve and close,
    Deeming they hoard
    The shining things you poured
    That I let spill.

    Over us lift the years--
    Hill upon hill
    Of days that wither into night,
    And nights that ache to day;
    Reiterated emptiness of shade and light
    Crowding the empty way.

    Up to this sullen therapy
    Of time,
    Shall we two climb?

           *       *       *

    I am too tired to climb;
    Nor would I go
    So far from the loved overthrow.
    Climb you to healing! while I keep
    Vigil in this lost place
    A little while;
    Weep
    If I choose,
    The honest abject tear,
    Let the grief break and pour;
    Gather the shadows comfortably near,
    And sleep as children sleep.

    A little little while!
    To wake and smile,
    Indifferent to the dark,
    Holding to me my one-time joy
    As children clutch an ancient battered toy
    They will not have renewed;
    Smile, and lie closer to a loss
    That tunes itself to gain,
    (Inexorable lullaby),
    Lie softer, safer,
    Pillowed on fortitude--
    Drowsy--
    Beneath my pain.




Witch!


    Ashes of me,
    Whirl in the fires I may not name.
    Lick, lovely flame!

    Will the fagot not burn?
    Throw on the tired broom
    Stabled still in my room.

    I have ridden wide and well.
    Shall I say with whom?
    (Stop the town bell!)

    Listen now,
    Listen now if you dare:
    I have lain with hope
    Under the dreadful bough,
    I have suckled Judas’ rope
    As it swung on the air--

    Go find the silver pieces in the moon.
    I hid them there.




Deep Sea Fishing


    Sometimes I cast my longing like a line,
    Watch it sink deep and deeper in the blue
    Immoderate waters that are dreams of you,
    Flooding the parched land that is sleep of mine.
    Impassively I float the pale hours through,
    With quiet eyes upon the quivering twine,
    Aware of lurking shapes that give no sign
    Of rising, though they move as fishes do.

    Your hands, your hands, a thousand multiplied,
    Cool, slim, and wary, darting to and fro,
    For every touch of yours I knew, a hand!
    Then breaks the line along the failing tide,
    I lean--to drown among them as they go--
    Knowing I may not drown on waking sand!




Onlooker


    I urged my will against my mind,
    My mind shook like a rocking wall
    But did not fall;
    My will was like a wind-blown tree;
    And neither knew the victory.

    I hurled my mind against my will;
    They did not break or bend or spill:
    But in my heart the song grew still.




Affinity


    Her mouth was shaped to happy tunes
    That flying, she let fall,
    But when his silence mended them
    She could not sing at all.

    She could not fly without her tunes,
    They were her only wings,
    But there were pleasant ways to walk
    Among sure-footed things.

    She walks content, her hand in his;
    But neither of them sings.




Cantares


    I

    Sweet, my sweet!
    Was I a fool to show you the sky--
    Then strap my wings to your feet?


    II

    I lied--trusting you knew
    I could not lie to you.

    Beloved friend, I lied, and am forgiven: but I
    Cannot forgive that you believed my lie!


    III

    Suffer the moths to singe their wings
    At your proud prodigal light
    All night!

    But you, but you,
    Singeing your flame
    At their frail wings--
    Ah shame!


    IV

    Close not the door, dear love,--he cried--
    I stand and wait; ah, throw it wide!
    Wherefore,--she said--_and you inside_?




She says, being forbidden:


    And was there not a king somewhere who said:
    “Back, waves! I do command you!” I forget
    His name, beloved, or his race, and yet
    I know the story and am comforted.
    The tides will rise, are rising--see, they spread
    About your robes, your ermine will be wet,
    Your velvet shoes, your dear dear feet! Ah let
    Me warn you, sir, the waves will reach your head!

    My king, my kingly love, how shall we stay
    The bold broad lifting of this lovely sea?
    What is the master word that we must say
    To bring these roaring waters to the knee?
    The other king went scampering away!
    Will you so do? Or will you drown with me?




Little Lover


    You made your little lover kind,
    And quick of word and kiss and tear,
    And everything a woman craves;
    You could not make him big, my dear.

    And so you made your great self small,
    As only a great woman can,
    Nor cared a jot; but ah, he knew
    And cared a lot, the little man.

    He knew and hated you at last.
    Let me be fair! He left you then.
    That one big generous thing he did:
    Left you to grieve to heights again.




Kleptomaniac


    She stole his eyes because they shone,
    Stole the good things they looked upon;
    They were no brighter than her own.

    She stole his mouth--her own was fair--
    She stole his words, his songs, his prayer;
    His kisses too, since they were there.

    She stole the journeys of his heart--
    Her own, their very counterpart--
    His seas and sails, his course and chart.

    She stole his strength so fierce and true,
    Perhaps for something brave to do;
    Wept at his weakness, stole that too.

    But she was caught one early morn!
    She stood red-handed and forlorn,
    And stole his anger and his scorn.

    Upon his knee she laid her head,
    Refusing to be comforted;
    “Unkind--unkind--” was all she said.

    Denied she stole; confessed she did;
    Glad of such plunder to be rid--
    Clutching the place where it was hid.

    As he forgave she snatched his soul;
    She did not want it, but she stole.




To a Song of Sappho discovered in Egypt

                 _And Sappho’s flowers, so few,
                  But roses all._
                                      MELEAGER.


    Jonah wept within the whale;
    But you have sung these centuries
    Under the brown banks of the Nile
    Within a dead dried crocodile:
    So fares the learned tale.

    When they embalmed the sacred beast
    The Sapphic scroll was white and strong
    To wrap the spices that were needed,
    Its song unheard, its word unheeded
    By crocodile or priest.

    The song you sang on Lesbos when
    Atthis was kind, or Mica sad;
    The startled whale spewed Jonah wide,
    From out the monster mummified
    Your roses sing again.

    Your roses! from the seven strands
    Of the small harp whereon they grew;
    The holy beast has had his pleasure,
    His bellyful of Attic measure
    Under the desert sands.

    Along strange winds your petals blew
    In singing fragments, roses all;
    The air is heavy on the Nile,
    The drowsy gods drowse on the while
    As gods are wont to do.




Hyacinths

                 _Leda, they say, once found an egg
                  Hidden under hyacinths_ ...

                  ... _much whiter than an egg_ ...

                                            SAPPHO


    Did she pluck it from the curly flowers;
    Make a nest
    Of her long light hair?

    Or did she slip the white thing in her breast,
    As smooth, as fair?
    Lie smiling through the hours?
    (Proudly aware
    Of tiny flutterings,
    Knowing well
    What she guarded there,
    Hidden within the shell!)

    Did she dream of powerful white wings
    That beat upon her like a milky tide--
    Again--again--?
    Did she swoon beneath a dream of hyacinths?

    And then,
    Did the shell open wide
    Under her crying kiss?

    I with children at my side,
    Ponder so on this.




The Story as I understand It


    I think that Eve first told the callow Tree of apples,
    And taught the adolescent Serpent how to hiss
    Its first wise word.
    I think the Angel with the Flaming Sword
    Followed her with hot holy eyes,
    Remembering the red curve of her kiss
    As she passed out of Paradise.

    See, how the apple-boughs are twisted in their pain,
    Weighed down with many a red-cheeked little Cain,
    And how the serpent writhes away
    From man to this far day.
    An angel is a lovely lonely thing
    Of boundless wing.
    They are the banished ones that grieve;
    Not Eve!

    Not Eve, her body quick with coming pride,
    Nor Adam walking there at her white side--
    A little heavily perhaps,
    Because of things scarce known,
    As yet not named:
    New tenderness for Eve, but not for Eve alone,
    Fears not yet fears--
    And out beyond, the world untamed
    Of which to make
    Their surer paradise of tears!

    But in the Garden is a hallowed emptiness
    Of laws, forgotten now,
    Concerning fruit and flowers,
    That none shall ever bless
    Or break;
    And in the Garden is the one plucked Bough
    That blossoms whimpering
    Through a divine monotony
    Of spring on spring.




Two Passionate Ones Part


    Why stamp the sovereign fires out?
    They would have burned themselves away,
    Finally flickered red to gray.

    Had you but let them lift and roar,
    Scorch and consume you, whirl and dart,
    Ember on ember as heart on heart!

    What had divided the fiery dust,
    Ashes of you, and ashes of you?
    Pity, pity, impatient two!

    Now you go reeling out of love--
    Look, as you stumble on alone:
    This is the way you would have gone!

    Why not have walked it hand in hand,
    One-time lovers and all-time friends?
    Love has a hundred gentle ends.

    Ends--and beyonds--oh ghosts of flames
    That never lived, that never died,
    Bitter and lean, unsatisfied--

    These are the fires shall warm you now,
    Sit and dream at them, dream and sigh;
    These are the dead that cannot die.

    Fires are meant to leap and fade.
    Who are you to rule otherwise,
    Monarchs with madness in your eyes?

    Who are you to challenge change?
    What, would you carve love’s wings in stone?
    Fling them your sky! Their course is their own!

    Grieving impetuous passionate two--
    Here was a feast on the white cloth spread,
    Love was the wine, and liking the bread.

    You drank and drank, but you ate no crumb;
    Love was the wine, but ah, the bread,
    Had you dipped it deep in the cup instead.

    Pale-lipped lovers that taste the lees,
    Dull, undrinkable, stale and flat,
    How the good crust had sweetened these--
    Pity you never thought of that!




This City Wind


    This city wind with puny strength to crawl
    The town’s wet streets, and furtively to tease
    Loose doors and windows, making sport of these,
    Comes bruised from battered jetty and sea-wall;
    Comes as one limping from a sailor’s brawl,
    Seeking the comfort of tall roofs and trees,
    With tales of dying on disastrous seas--
    This city wind that is not wind at all.

    Because an area-door is left ajar,
    Clapping its fretful word of autumn storm,
    I sense these distant tumults, half-asleep,
    I know ships founder where black waters are.
    What of home-bodies, lying safe and warm,
    Drowning in dreams as bitter and as deep?




PART III




   _I heard
    The poet pass with a sound
    Like the breaking of ground,
    Like a storm, like a violent bird;
    His head was a king’s,
    And I noted the gay common things
    Of his strange diadem;
    I was blinded by them._

   _Crown of weeds!
    For his brow debonair,
    For his vagabond needs,
    Crown of weeds,
    Bud, berry, thistle and tare:
    Yes! but who flung the far seeds?_




October Trees


    It seemed a cup that brimmed hot leaves,
    That held all fires, all fruits;
    I put the red tree to my lips
    And drained it to the roots.

           *       *       *

    Beneath the smouldering trees I walk at night.
    I know they burn! although they give no light.

           *       *       *

    I plucked a flame from off a tree,
    Not thinking it would injure me;
    It scorched my hand, it caught my hair,
    It burned my heart to ashes there;
    I played with fire in the wood--
    No woman should, no woman should!

           *       *       *

    All day it rains--but on the hill
    The dripping embers warm me still!

           *       *       *

    Hush--

    Is this the burning bush
    That Moses heard?
    And was the voice a bird?




New England Cottage


    The house is all in wooden rags,
    The chimney tilts, the gable sags,
    And where I pass
    Are weedy flags
    That my feet guess.

    A horse-shoe rusts above the door,
    Young roses prowl the porch’s floor,
    Up in the dark
    Wide sycamore
    Is thrushes’ talk.

    And here, a well not yet gone dry!
    Lean in and meet its mellow eye,
    Look deep, to where
    A round of sky
    Lurks with its star.

    Happy old house of moldy beams,
    Of cobweb rooms and loosening seams,
    Besieged old walls
    That guard their dreams
    Like sentinels.

    Old ark--slow-withering stick and stone,
    Oak flesh that fades on iron bone;
    And not deserted,
    Just alone
    And drowsy-hearted.




Migration


    The dawn is dizzy with birds:
    Summer’s last handful scattered wide,
    Summer’s last pennies sung aside!

    Jingle of birds in the dawn:
    Hedges and bushes in beggared need,
    Lifting brown hands with a desolate greed!

    Spendthrift content in the dawn:
    Squandered uncounted across the sky,
    But into no purse will these winged coins fly!

    The dawn is a resolute path
    Of irresolute flight and dim half-tunes--
    But I am a miser of hoarded Junes!

    The dawn is dizzy with birds.




Sand-pipings


   _GULLS_

    Strong wings in the stormy weather--
    Gray stitches that hold
    The raveling fabrics of sea and sky
    Forever together!


   _STORM’S END_

    As if engraved upon the dawn,
    The sleek gulls stand
    Along the rim of an exhausted sea
    That rumbles up the sand.

    Amazing birds, untired and trim of wing,
    Whose round unflinching eyes
    Meet like a challenge the leaden-lidded sun
    About to rise.


   _FOR A SPRING DAY_

    Here is no bud, no blade,
    No young green thing;
    This stark earth knows a meager spring.

    Gulls are the only birds,
    And thin their cries,
    Bleak winter in their frosty eyes.

    Somewhere, are fields and boughs,
    A hill, a brook;
    I would not lift my head to look

    From this wind-shapen dune,
    This stern still place,
    This sea that stares me in the face,

    This unimpeded sun!--
    And for my hand,
    The fine unfecund yellow sand!




King’s Garden


    Who was the royal Ming
    That bade his tinkling musicians play
    All through a wide and windy day
    Of spring
    To the royal flowers?

    --Bliss
    Of tall iris,
    Discreet applause
    Of cherry and almond boughs
    Along the ledges
    Of sun-lacquered hours;
    Pursed lily-pods
    Out-lipping one by one,
    And sudden hush
    Amid the lush
    Green sedges!--

    There walked the king
    Beneath the quivering
    Leaves,
    The weary players bidden
    Play on and on,
    With slight, imperial nods;
    And in his satin sleeves
    His hands, omniscient, hidden,
    As are the hands of gods.




Abrigada


    I had been told
    A foolish tale:
    Of stone, dank, cold.
    But you,
    Erect to winter storm,
    To clutch of frosty-fingered gale,
    Are warm.

    I thought that stone was silent too,
    Unmoved by beauty,
    Unaware of season or of mirth,
    (Stern sister of quiet earth),
    But I hear laughter, singing, as I lay
    My face against your gray
    Surely I hear a rhythm of near waves
    And sense the leaping spray,
    Mixed with wild-rose and honeysuckle,
    Budding sassafras,
    And the cool breath of pungent leafy bay?

    I knew that walls were sheltering
    And strong,
    But you have sheltered love so long
    That love is part
    Of your straight towering,
    Lifting you straighter still,
    As heart lifts heart--

    Hush--
    How the Whip-poor-will
    Wails from his bush,
    The thrush
    Is garrulous with delight,
    There is a rapture in that liquid monotone:
    “Bob-White! Bob-_White_!”
    (Dear living stone!)

           *       *       *

    In the great room below,
    Where arches hold the listening spaces,
    Flames crackle, toss and gleam
    In the red fire-places;
    Memories dream--
    Of other memories, perhaps,
    Of other lives;
    Of births
    And of re-births that men deem death;
    Of voices, foot-steps tapping the stone floor,
    And faces--faces--

    Beyond, the open door,
    The meadow drowsy with the moon,
    The mild outline of dune,
    The lake, the silver magic in the trees:
    Walls, you are one with these.

           *       *       *

    Up on the loggia-roof,
    Under stars pale as they,
    Two silent ones have crept away,
    Seeking the deeper silence lovers know;
    Into the drifting shadows of the night,
    Into the aching beauty of the night
    They dare to go.

    The moon
    Is a vast cocoon,
    Spinning her wild white thread
    Across the sky;
    A thousand crickets croon
    Their sharp-edged lullaby;
    I hear a murmuring of lips on lips:
    “All that I am, beloved--
    All--”
    (Lovers’ eternal cry!)
    Hold them still closer, wall!

           *       *       *

    You stand serene.
    The salt winds linger, lean
    Upon your breast;
    The mist
    Lifts up a gray face to be kissed;
    The east and west
    Hang you with banners,
    Flaunt their brief victories of dusk and dawn;
    Seasons salute you as they pass,
    Call to you and are gone.
    Amid your meadow-grass,
    Lush, green,
    You stand serene.

           *       *       *

    Houses are like the hearts of men,
    I think;
    They must have life within,
    (This is their meat and drink),
    They must have fires and friends and kin,
    Love for the day and night,
    Children in strong young laps:
    Then they live--then!
    Houses and hearts of men,
    Joyful and woeful,
    Haunted perhaps;

    Loving, forgetting,
    Loved and forgot,
    Fading at last, to die,
    Crumble and rot:

    But they who know you, Abrigada,
    They and I
    Forget you not.

           *       *       *

    Nor they who stand
    On Abrigada’s roof,
    (Red-tiled, aloof),
    Who climb as I climb now,
    Withdrawn from reach of hand,
    From call of crowd,
    Looking down on distance, dune and bough,
    And looking up on distance, cloud and cloud.

    Only not looking back!
    For it is well finally to forget
    The thirst, the much-lipped cup,
    The plethora, the piteous lack,
    The broken things, the stains, the scars--

    Well to look up and up:
    To dream undaunted dreams aloud
    And stumble toward the stars!

           *       *       *

   _This be in praise
    Of Abrigada,
    In all the ways
    That come to me
    Through the mild midsummer days._

   _In speech;
    In rhyme and rhythm of written word--
    Name it a poem, maybe!_

   _In song:
    Tuck the brown shining wood under my chin--
    My bird,
    My heart,
    My violin!_

   _In dream;
    In prayer;
    In silence, best of all,
    Leaning there
    On the beloved wall._

   _In silence like a cry,
    Ardent and high;
    A note of Abrigada’s silence
    Sung to a quiet sky._




PART IV




   _I saw the Piper hanging on a tree,
    Leaf-crowned
    And crucified.
    “Pan! Pan!” I cried._

   _The awful eye, still roving, fell on me,
    Then sought along the ground._

   _I found
    The pipes still lying near,
    Held them like hyssop to the straining lips--_

   _And oh, the sound, the sound,
    Forever in my ear,
    And in my side
    The last note like a spear!_




ITALIAN QUATRAINS




Naples


   _PALAZZO_

    Lordly amid the rotting houses of the street,
    It lifts a marble scorn, while at its carven feet
    They crowd in ancient filth. It does not look at them,
    These crumbling beggars catching at its stony hem.


   _NEAPOLITAN WASHING_

    Hellene and Roman bred this race;
    Unconsciously these drying rags
    Make of the squalid market-place
    A conqueror’s city hung with flags!


   _HAIR-DRESSING_

    There in the littered street she sits and chats with passing friends,
    While a deft neighbor combs her hair, pins close the sleek black ends;
    She holds her gushing nipple to the child upon her knee,
    Plucks vermin from its curls and sells her oranges to me.


   _STREET OF STEPS_

   (Flower Market)

    In the noon shadows milch-goats lie and doze,
    The air drips musk, carnation, lilac, rose;
    The gutters ooze and spill, one walks with care--
    And yet Pan might come leaping down the stair!


  “_GABINETTO SEGRETO_”

   (Naples Museum)

   _Then came the saints, the men of grace_,
    (I heard the old god say),
   _Destroyed my shameless laughing face_,
    Preserved my feet of clay!




Pompeii


   _SHE SINGS_

    So let us eat and drink, to singing and guitar,
    Before we pace the mournful streets where the gray houses are;
    Vesuvio, the guilty, leans lazy on the sky.
    The very gods are dead, my love--and we have still to die!


   _NEW EXCAVATIONS_

    A workman with a spade in half a day
    Can push two thousand lagging years away.
    See, how the tragic villas, one by one,
    Like drowsy lizards creep into the sun.


   _I EXCAVATE_

    They let me play at digging in that place,
    Scoop ash from painted walls--a girl’s Greek face
    Stared from the frieze! Between her and the skies
    I hid the smoking mountain from her eyes.


   _GREEK FRAGMENTS_

    These arching feet that trip their shattered dance,
    This satyr’s mocking mouth, the tumbled scroll,
    Straight thigh of boy, strong hand upon the lance:
    If these be fragments, tell me, what is whole?


   _OLIVE TREE_

    Moonlight is always on its leaves;
    At noon there is a midnight air
    About its branches, that deceives
    Lovers who chance to wander there.




Rome


   _UNDER THE DOME OF ST. PETER’S_

    At last they builded wide enough, O Lord!
    Here is no walled confinement of Thy Heart,
    No ending to the echoes of Thy Word:
    This lifting dome lifts on to where Thou art.


   _STATUE OF THE SAINT_

    This shining bronze is Peter’s living toe,
    Kiss upon faithful kiss have made it so.
    Prayer upon prayer hold safe the Heavenly Keys.
    Thou who denied! Great Saint, deny not these!




Paganini’s Violins

(_Genoa_)


    All April’s larks in her most lavish sky
    Know less of song than these. O mournful two,
    Birds of Cremona, what shall rouse in you
    The jocund venture of your keen-edged cry?
    Like carrier-doves, dismissed, unwinged, you lie
    In dusty fame, your loosened strings untrue
    To any key, hang limp as grasses do
    After the long long drought when meadows die.

    This is no mood for lordly violins,
    These mellow masters in their disarray
    Behind museum doors, these gypsy kings!
    I’d set them singing, tucked beneath the chins
    Of fiddler-folk whose fingers know the way,
    Prancing like peacocks up the four gay strings!




Bavarian Roadside


    Leave the chicory where it stands,
    It will wither in your hands
    If you pick it;
    All its lovely blue will blacken
    To a dull weed dry as bracken,
    Leave it leaning by the thicket,
    Leave it where it stands.

    If your hunger crave for blue
    Let the cornflower comfort you.

    Where the gray goats browse and bleat,
    All along the roadside dusty,
    Where the tides of early wheat
    Prophesy a golden leaven
    Warm and crusty,
    Leave the tangled chicory,
    Bluer than the windy sky,
    Leave the jaunty bit of heaven
    Till it choose to die!

    If your thirst you cannot bear,
    Drink its color sparkling there
    Like a blue wine brewed in air.




“Hark! Hark!”


    No sight of it, only the song,
    Hours long;
    Hidden in the sun, yet near--
    See, see the tiny trilling dot appear,
    To disappear!

    As if a pranking star had lowered it
    By a thread
    Over the listener’s head,
    (Scarce swinging),
    And then
    Had pulled it up again,
    Up, up, to the impenetrable blue,
    And through--
    Still singing!




Bagpipe Player

(_Nuremberg Fountain_)


    He plays a sprightly tune in water.
    Each note spurts from the bronze pipe-holes;
    The piper plays
    Four sprays
    That mix and make a chord their own,
    Bubbling in the bowl of stone.

    (I know this tune!
    First played
    In some deep German wood
    Some drowsy June;
    Where hoofed and hairy things
    Roused from the sleepy shade,
    Drew near
    To hear;
    And nymphs were unafraid!)

    Hans Sachs and Dürer passed this fountain,
    And Peter Vischer, Martin Luther’s friend;
    Passed to their worthy end.
    But did they mark the goat-god’s godless ditty?
    Or did the dripping little knave
    Play drier tunes for them
    In the staid street of the red-gabled city?




Oberammergau


    Rich man, poor man, beggar-man, thief,
    Over the hills to the mountain folk,
    Doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief,
    Across the world they find their way;
    Christ will be crucified to-day.

    Christ will hang crowned, and we are here.
    Villager, are there beds enough?
    Soup and bread and a pot of beer?--
    Weary Gentile, Turk and Jew,
    Lord and peasant, Christian too.

           *       *       *

    Who called His Name? What was it spoke?
    Perhaps I dreamed. Then my walls dreamed!
    I saw them shaking as I woke;
    The dawn tuned silver harps, and there
    The Star hung singing in the air.

  “_Rich man, rich man, drawing near,
    Have you not heard of the needle’s eye?
    Beggar, whom do you follow here?
    Did you give to the poor as He bade you do?
    Proud sir, which of the thieves are you?_”

  “_Doctor, lawyer, whom do you seek?
    Do you succor the needy and ask no fee?
    Chief, will you turn the other cheek?
    Merchant, there is a story grim
    Of money-changers scourged by Him!_”

    The Star leaned lower from the sky:
  “_Oh men in holy orders dressed,
    Hurrying so to see Him die,
    Important, as becomes your creed,
    Why bring you dogma for His need?_”

           *       *       *

    The streets of Oberammergau
    Are waking now, are crowding now;
    The Star has fallen like a tear;
    There is a tree with a waiting bough
    Not far from here.

    Rich man, poor man, beggar and thief,
    Over the hills to the mountain folk,
    Doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief,
    Magdalene, Mary great with grief,
    And Martha walking heavily--

    Doubter--dreamer--which am I?
    Lord, help Thou mine unbelief!




One Version


    I think that Mary Magdalene
    Was just a woman who went to dine,
    And her jewels covered her empty heart
    And her gown was the color of wine.

    I think that Mary Magdalene
    Sat by a stranger with shining head.
    “Haven’t we met somewhere?” she asked.
   _Magdalene!--Mary!_--he said.

    I think that Mary Magdalene
    Fell at his feet and called his name,
    Sat at his feet and wept her woe
    And rose up clean of shame.

    Nobody knew but Magdalene,
    Mary the woman who went to dine,
    Nobody saw how he broke the bread
    And poured for her peace the wine.

    This is the story of Magdalene;
    It’s not the tale the Apostles tell,
    But I know the woman it happened to--
    I know the woman well.




Protest in Passing


    This house of flesh was never loved of me,
    Though I have known much love beneath its roof,
    Always was I a guest who stood aloof,
    Loth to accept such hospitality.
    When the house slumbered, how I woke! for then
    I knew of half-escapes along the night,
    But now there comes a safer swifter flight:
    I go; nor need endure these rooms again.

    I have been cowed too long by closed-in walls,
    By masonry of muscle, blood and bone;
    This quaking house of flesh that was my own,
    High roof-tree of the heart, see how it falls!
    I go--but pause upon the threshold’s rust,
    To shake from off my feet my own dead dust.




Saul! Saul!


    I braced myself in that vast hour,
    Marking His mighty nod,
    Strange winds directed my poor aim:
    I hurled my soul to God.

    I saw His casual Hand reach out,
    The gaping stars grew dim,
    My soul lay weeping in His Palm:
   _Well caught!_ I cried to Him.




PART V




   _You gave me wings to fly;
    Then took away my sky._




Fiddler’s Farewell


    Fold now the song within the songster.
    Small sturdy one,
    Roistering down the centuries,
    Drunk with the fiddlers’ fingers,
    (Never a dearth of these,
    The living crowding where the dead have been),
    Pure promiscuous dandled violin!

    Cæsar of sound, my songs in passing, cry,
   _Morituri te salutamus!_--and passing, die.

    Fold now the song away.
    Close the lid down
    Upon the gradual dismay
    Of disconcerted singing,
    Unloose the fingers’ clinging
    That has so lost its cunning,
    Turn from the faltering renown,
    Fame of the little town
    After the flag-hung city;
    Deny the ruin pity!

    Pity? Yes, for the failing song
    That like a droughty stream
    Crawls, drips
    Over an arid land,
    (Yet deep enough to drown)--
    O violin that slips
    From the relinquishing hand,
    Brown brightness hid--
    Let fall the incurious lid.

           *       *       *

    Let me find words
    With which to sing of silence,
    Better than all this blurred half-sound
    Of tattered music trailing on the ground,
    (That was a banner in the wind),
    Words
    And their pacing pride
    For the frustrated heart,
    That stoic singer in the side,
    Unviolined!

    Be not afraid,
    My songs, my full-throats,
    Be not stampeded into muffled herds,
    Mouthing and terrified--
    O fierce white music that I made,
    Proud notes,
    Chords, choirs of taut tuned strings,
    And slender strength
    Of bow that was a bough;
    Tread this last length
    Of singing, mellow and muted, staid,
    Pass unbewildered now
    With this processional of rhymed recording words.
    Be not afraid.

           *       *       *

    What is a violin?
    Who shall reveal this mystery of thin
    Vibrating wood?
    Of forest voices multi-voiced--
    Wind, rain, on many leaves,
    Bent branches moaning under
    The crash of clouds that meet,
    The cool pale hiss of snow?
    And birds?
    And pattering furry feet?
    (Young cries along the leaves!)
    All musics and all seasons
    Seeping and soaking in,
    Into the very core
    Of the green bud
    Of destined fiddle-wood--
    Long long before
    The master-mind conceives,
    The hand achieves
    The carven whole,
    The curving sides, the twisted scroll,
    Shapes it and stains it to this red russet thing
    Of expectant string,
    Names it, invests it
    With its adolescent voice,
    Fondles it, fingers it,
    Breasts it!

    How light it seems,
    Swinging between the abdicating finger and thumb,
    How frail this unbarred stronghold
    Of sweet gold--
    All fortunes and all raptures and all dreams--
    Kind horn of plenty!
    And who shall count the glittering sum?

           *       *       *

    Words for my fiddle now,
    Abundance of goodly words:
    My deft, my dear,
    My witty one
    With your brave answer ever ready,
    My box of birds,
    Crony and hearty,
    Winged hubbub,
    Tool,
    And tear--

    Fiddler, fiddle,
    To leave you lying here!

    What then?
    Stand stripped of music?
    Resolutely attain
    A dull and obdurate ear
    For the blithe hurricane?
    Shiver, and gather closer these aphonous rags
    Like a beggar’s coat;
    Shut the bland thunder out?

    Acknowledge silence--
    But what if there be none?
    What if all sound go sounding on and on
    Upon a loftier air,
    The green note and its fellow
    Roused to a greener loudness
    Forever lifting there?

    Let me declare
    That music never dies;
    That music never dies.
    Let me in potent mood create
    Of this my fantasy a faith,
    A little paradise
    Immaculate,
    True as the tested string is true,
    For all the lovely cries
    Of all the violins--
    And of mine too!

           *       *       *

    In time
    A stranger with the supple fiddler’s hand,
    And the rapt eye
    That sees the sound sublime,
    Will come,
    (Must come, I wish it so!)
    To coax these stagnant strings,
    Kindle their numb
    And awful apathy with one imperative blow
    Of the fleet accurate bow;
    Release the fiddle-cry.

    O faithless--
    Faithful only to sound,
    (That loud-lipped passer-by),
    You will forget straightway
    The player for the player;
    And both for the tune you play!

    In time I too shall turn
    To others’ music,
    Shall learn
    A niggardly delight
    In some slight
    Lord of nimble fingers
    Tossing me sops of song;
    The long
    And measured wisdom of wide symphonies
    Will find me listening;
    A singer, a child’s hand on the candid keys,
    A whistle on the wing:
    All these!

    I’ll not disdain the fine
    And effervescent draught,
    Filling the echoing cup
    (That was so full!)
    With others’ wine.
    I’ll not refuse to drink.

    But first
    I must know thirst.

    So must this violin of mine,
    I think.

           *       *       *

    How still it lies;
    An empty shell along the empty sand
    Is not more still;
    But put your hand
    To the shining thing
    As music passes!
    Do you feel the quickening
    Of the languid wood?
    Come, lay your ear
    To the shell--

    Heart, leaning near,
    So near--

    Do you hear
    The stirring and the throbbing
    Above your tuneless sobbing?

[Illustration: music]




PART VI




   _Measure me, sky!
    Tell me I reach by a song
    Nearer the stars;
    I have been little so long._

   _Weigh me, high wind!
    What will your wild scales record?
    Profit of pain,
    Joy by the weight of a word._

   _Horizon, reach out,
    Catch at my hands, stretch me taut,
    Rim of the world!
    Widen my eyes by a thought._

   _Sky, be my depth,
    Wind, be my tolerant height,
    World, my heart’s span--
    Loneliness, wings for my flight!_




Of Mountains


    ... Then I rose up
    And swept the dust of planets from my eyes,
    And wandered shouting down that shouting hour,
    Pausing to pluck a mountain like a flower
    That grew against the skies.

    All through the night I am aware
    Of hills that are not hills
    Beyond my window;
    I am aware of flight,
    High, heavy,
    Across the sky.

    Mountains--
    And over them a crumbling moon,
    A snow-flake on fire,
    Scattered from their frosty tips.

    Stone wings,
    So sure of the way!

    Lying there I can see them
    Blue hour on hour;
    And from my safe pillow I follow
    Their granite flight,
    White hills fastened to my heels!

           *       *       *

   _Morning lies prone upon the lake,
    Like a pale woman on a silver bed
    Who will not lift her head._

--I had forgotten the green of trees at dawn, and how withdrawn are
they from day. I had forgotten too how trees stray in their sleep
across deep drowsy water, until the first breeze ripples them away.--

    _Along the shore
    Are little boats that dream
    Of little journeys they will make;
    Of journeys made no more._

--Far up the slopes gleam languid patches of midsummer snow that never
go; dim flocks of snow among the rocks of a perched mountain meadow.--

    _Only the mountains are awake,
    Guarding the vague low sky;
    And a bird for its own song’s sake--
    And I!_

--Only a bird would dare to break the stillness of this hour; make of
the shattered air this cool unbroken note--O tiny master-tool within
the tiny throat!--

       *       *       *       *       *

    Mountains--high mothers--
    Storms lie in their laps,
    Thunders and lightnings play about their iron knees;
    I have seen them rock the sky to sleep.

    The mist lifts them;
    Flint and ice floating as clouds float,
    Unpeopled islands of a white unfathomed sea.

    They are like an unanswered crying turned to stone,
    And beyond
    Are stone echoes of the crying;
    Beyond--and beyond--
    Is a veiled whispering on its knees,
    On its face,
    Hushed at last on the far plains.

           *       *       *

    Out of blazing noon and into its cleft side
    I creep,
    To where the cataract,
    Silver artery of the mountain,
    Pounds through its bleak heart.

    Abashed
    I stand in that covert place,
    Silenced in the roar of the silent one!

           *       *       *

    Flowers and trees grow timid,
    Follow me no further;
    Grass runs to green safety on the lower hills.

    Under my climbing feet earth climbs
    And starves;
    Its boulders start like bones from its gaunt sides.
    Livid and alone
    It hurls itself forever upward,
    Turned to blind granite
    Beneath the glare of hostile spaces
    And of skies estranged.

           *       *       *

   _This is the hill!
    Mournful against the sky, and bare,
    Where wind and darkness meet,
    Crucified in the air._

   _And at its feet
    Hills gather there,
    Crowding, and casting lots
    For a green cloak to wear._

           *       *       *

    The way that I have come,
    Winding so cannily,
    Is a brown zig-zag serpent
    Alert along the tilting slopes,
    Ready to leap and strike.

    And looking down
    I fear its wily coils,
    Knowing that I must tread them
    To reach again the cluttered toys
    In the valley--
    Where I shall sleep to-night.

           *       *       *

    They say the sea was here;
    And it is like the sea to-day.

    Waves, waves,
    Green tides and tempests
    Closing in on me,
    Granite waters that have crashed together,
    Flooded and filled the hollows!

    What are a million years?

    These spread peaks
    Are Eternity’s stone fingers
    On which she reckons the rhythm
    Of centuries.

    And they say the jungle crawled, lush and savage,
    In this ascetic place.
    Once I saw a glacier-rock
    Lying numbered on a museum-shelf,
    And as if carved upon it,
    The drooping slender outline of a palm-leaf
    Fallen from a too hot sky.

    Count on, stone fingers!
    Fingers of ice, recount these careless wonders!

    The sea was here.
    Hidden beneath the ripples of oncoming hills
    Cattle are grazing on its grassy floor;
    The sound of bells drifts by
    Like sea-weed on the surface of the air.

    What are a million years?

           *       *       *

   _I thought: These shall endure
    Though the sky tumble!_--
   _But now, with a slow hand
    They are removed from off the summer land
    Without a cry or rumble._

   _This thing I know:
    The mist is stronger than these massive hills,
    And when it wills
    They go._

   _And I know too
    Its silence is the greater;
    It can subdue
    Their august hush to less
    Than nothingness._

   _And yet it grants to me
    Enough of path to tread;
    And one dim tree
    To keep me comforted._

           *       *       *

    But at evening
    The mountains lean from out the sky
    To lap the glossy waters of the lake.

    So came Hannibal’s elephants,
    Humped gray backs,
    Heads lowered,
    Lumbering through the passes,
    Knee-deep in the deep water.

    Snow clings to their rough flanks,
    Their shoulders heave under the red and purple blows
    Of the sun-set;
    Detached from earth and sky,
    They emerge,
    They tread mightily up the valley.

    And I watch them,
    Mild beasts wading into the lake;
    And I wonder they do not break its shining mirror.

   _The boatman glanced along its darkening side,
    From the pale water paler with the night,
    And in his face I saw a sturdy pride,
    An understanding of its strength and height,
    Its silences, its storms, its lonely ways:
    He who had lived beside it all his days._

   _He pulled upon his oar and naught he said;
    But in his eyes were hills inherited._

           *       *       *

    Under the iron wheels that lift us,
    And about the sooty scars that tunnels make,
    The mountain scatters flowers from an ample garden,
    (Fox-glove and hare-bell pirouetting on the giddy ledges),
    And we of the summer valley
    Stumble shivering along its constant snows
    On feet that never climbed.

    Our voices are thin in the thin air,
    Our little hearts thud strangely.
    We are near the nearness of its swift deaths
    On these relentless heights--
    Death, in the swerving shelves of blue bitter ice,
    Death, in the sly shrouds that hang from its sinister banks,
    Death, unconcerned!

    And we shall trickle down to life again
    Unimportantly:
    We of the summer valley.

           *       *       *

   _Dusk wanders here alone;
    No cloud or star runs at her side,
    The lit sky is her own._

   _Along her paths of snow,
    In that far fearless garden
    She walks alone;
    And from dim paths below,
    I watch her plucking crimson flowers,
    Roses in ice and stone._

           *       *       *

    And suddenly I fear these mountains!
    There is a howling in the air
    That is their intolerable voice,
    They leap the sky,
    They tear at the clouds,
    Foam drips from their steep jaws.

    They sit hunched up along the passes,
    Snarling in the gorges;
    And one, his lean head straining toward the moon,
    Howls, howls!

    Night is a clanging of loud bronze,
    And I fear these mountains;
    All the winds of the air
    Are blown from their stretched throats.

           *       *       *

    The morning wears a Gothic air,
    And Sabbath bells are carved on its blue arches.

    I am rimmed round with hills
    Upon their knees.

    So rose the first prayer to the first sky--
    A wide doxology of early earth
    The while God rested.

           *       *       *

    Summer is leaving these high places.
    With all their weight
    The mountains cannot fasten to the meadow
    One warm blade,
    Hold to the bough its truest leaf,
    Dismay or clamp upon the sky
    Any small wing that chooses flight.

    Not all the phalanx of these hills
    Piled each on each
    Can do this thing,
    Although they barricade the stars!
    Summer is leaving these high places.

           *       *       *

   _Traveler, if you would go,
    Go now:
    Follow the breathless gray-lipped stream,
    The bony finger of the bough,
    Follow the fading falling road,
    Forget the whole green episode;
    Go now._

   _Go now if you would go;
    That is a different denser snow
    Along the black cliffs of the sky,
    And down the hills
    Their harvest spills
    Its slanting squares of wheat and rye;
    But overhead
    Something is stricken
    In the air
    That will not quicken._

   _If you would not see hill-sides die,
    Stripped bare
    And brown,
    With stormy wreaths on the indomitable brow
    That wears this hour like a crown,
    Go now!_

           *       *       *

    Hills that are not hills,
    But a deliberate violent gesture of earth
    Away from earth,
    (Upward, always upward),
    What are seasons to you?
    What are arrivals or departures?

    But I,
    How shall I go?
    It is so long since I have seen the curved bar
    Of the horizon,
    Making a prison of the world!

    How shall I walk the plains again,
    Go down and down--
    Into the valley of the shadow of life?

    Only because of mountains in my heart
    For me to climb,
    Heights, my own,
    Depths, higher still;
    And I, the pioneer!

           *       *       *

    Who is the pioneer?
    He is the follower here,
    Perhaps the last
    Of all who passed.

    He does not fear nor scorn
    To tread
    The ventured path, the worn,
    Of those ahead;
    Nor shall he fail
    To blaze his own brave trail
    Along the beaten track,
    Make of the old a newer way
    Of stouter clay
    For others at his back.

    He is the pioneer who climbs,
    Who dares to climb
    His own high heart,
    Although he fall
    A thousand times;
    Who dares to crawl
    On honest hands and knees
    Along its stony ecstasies
    Up to the utmost snows:
    Nor knows
    He stands on these!

    Who is the pioneer?
    I say he is the follower here,
    Dogged and undeterred,
    Perhaps the last
    Of all who passed.

    He passes too,
    The wingless one, the heavy bird,
    Limping along--

    Ah, but his song,
    His song!

   _Let not my death be long,
    But light
    As a bird’s swinging;
    Happy decision in the height
    Of song--
    Then flight
    From off the ultimate bough!
    And let my wing be strong,
    And my last note the first
    Of another’s singing.
    See to it, Thou!_




The author wishes to thank the following magazines for permission to
reprint the contents of this book:

The _Century Magazine_, the _North American Review_, the
_Nation_, the _American Mercury_, Chicago _Poetry_,
_Voices_, the _Measure_, the _Forum_, _Contemporary
Verse_, _Rhythmus_, the _Freeman_, the Literary Supplement
of the _New York Evening Post_, the _Saturday Review_, the
_Bookman_, _Commonweal_ and the _Lyric_.

Also the Poetry Society of South Carolina, which awarded the poem
“Oberammergau” the Blindman Prize for 1923.

“Fiddler’s Farewell” was read at the College of William and Mary,
Williamsburg, Va., before the Alpha Chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa at
the author’s initiation as a member of that Society.

“The Ballad of a Lost House” was awarded the Guarantor’s Prize for 1925
by _Poetry: A Magazine of Verse_.




                               CONTENTS


            ABRIGADA                                    59

            AFFINITY                                    32

            BAGPIPE PLAYER                              79

            BALLAD OF A LOST HOUSE                      11

            BAVARIAN ROADSIDE                           77

            CANTARES                                    33

            DEEP SEA FISHING                            30

            DUET                                        21

            FIDDLER’S FAREWELL                          89

            “HARK! HARK!”                               78

            HYACINTHS                                   40

            I HEARD ...                                 49

            I’LL BE YOUR EPITAPH                        23

            I SAW THE PIPER                             67

            KING’S GARDEN                               57

            KLEPTOMANIAC                                36

            LET NOT MY DEATH ...                       115

            LITTLE LOVER                                35

            MEASURE ME, SKY!...                         99

            MIGRATION                                   54

            NAPLES                                      71

            NEW ENGLAND COTTAGE                         52

            OBERAMMERGAU                                80

            OCTOBER TREES                               51

            OF MOUNTAINS                               101

            ONE VERSION                                 82

            ONLOOKER                                    31

            PAGANINI’S VIOLINS                          76

            POMPEII                                     73

            PROTEST IN PASSING                          83

            ROME                                        75

            SAND-PIPINGS                                55

            SAUL! SAUL!                                 84

            SHE SAYS; BEING FORBIDDEN!                  34

            THERAPY                                     25

            THE STORY AS I UNDERSTAND IT                42

            THIRD FLOOR LANDING                         24

            THIS CITY WIND                              46

            TO A SONG OF SAPPHO DISCOVERED IN EGYPT     38

            TWO PASSIONATE ONES PART                    44

            WITCH                                       29

            YOU GAVE ME WINGS...                        87




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                     [Illustration: colophon]




Transcriber’s Note:


Words and phrases in italics are surrounded by underscores, _like
this_.



*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 73705 ***