He and I sought together,over the spattered table,rhymes and flowers,gifts for a name.
He said, among others,I will bring(and the phrase was just and good,but not as good as mine)"the narcissus that loves the rain."
We strove for a name,while the light of the lamps burnt thinand the outer dawn came in,a ghost, the last at the feastor the first,to sit withinwith the two that remainedto quibble in flowers and verseover a girl's name.
He said, "the rain loving,"I said, "the narcissus, drunk,drunk with the rain."
Yet I had lostfor he said,"the rose, the lover's gift,is loved of love,"he said it,"loved of love;"I waited, even as he spoke,to see the room filled with a light,as when in winterthe embers catch in a windwhen a room is dank:so it would be filled, I thought,our room with a lightwhen he said(and he said it first)"the rose, the lover's delight,is loved of love,"but the light was the same.
Then he caught,seeing the fire in my eyes,my fire, my fever, perhaps,for he leanedwith the purple winestained in his sleeve,and said this:"Did you ever thinka girl's mouthcaught in a kissis a lily that laughs?"
I had not.I saw it nowas men must see it forever afterwards;no poet could write again,"the red-lily,a girl's laugh caught in a kiss;"it was his to pour in the vatfrom which all poets dip and quaff,for poets are brothers in this.
So I saw the fire in his eyes,it was almost my fire(he was younger)I saw the face so white;my heart beat,it was almost my phrase,I said, "surprise the muses,take them by surprise;it is late,rather it is dawn-rise,those ladies sleep, the nine,our own king's mistresses."
A name to rhyme,flowers to bring to a name,what was one girl faint and shy,with eyes like the myrtle(I said: "her underlidsare rather like myrtle"),to vie with the nine?
Let him take the name,he had the rhymes,"the rose, loved of love,""the lily, a mouth that laughs,"he had the gift,"the scented crocus,the purple hyacinth,"what was one girl to the nine?
He said:"I will make her a wreath;"he said:"I will write it thus:'I will bring you the lily that laughs,I will twinewith soft narcissus, the myrtle,sweet crocus, white violet,the purple hyacinth and, last,the rose, loved of love,that these may drip on your hairthe less soft flowers,may mingle sweet with the sweetof Heliodora's locks,myrrh-curled.'"
(He wrote myrrh-curled,I think, the first.)
I said:"they sleep, the nine,"when he shouted swift and passionate:"thatfor the nine!Above the mountainsthe sun is about to wake,and to-day white violetsshine beside white liliesadrift on the mountain side;to-day the narcissus opensthat loves the rain."
I watched him to the door,catching his robeas the wine-bowl crashed to the floor,spilling a few wet lees(ah, his purple hyacinth!);I saw him out of the door,I thought:there will never be a poet,in all the centuries after this,who will dare write,after my friend's verse,"a girl's mouthis a lily kissed."
Slay with your eyes, Greek,men over the face of the earth,slay with your eyes, the host,puny, passionless, weak.
Break, as the ranks of steelbroke of the Persian host:craven, we hated them then:now we would count them Godsbeside these, spawn of the earth.
Grant us your mantle, Greek;grant us but oneto fright (as your eyes) with a sword,men, craven and weak,grant us but one to strikeone blow for you, passionate Greek.
You would have broken my wings,but the very fact that you knewI had wings, set some sealon my bitter heart, my heartbroke and fluttered and sang.
You would have snared me,and scattered the strands of my nest;but the very fact that you saw,sheltered me, claimed me,set me apart from the rest.
Of men—ofmenmade you a god,and me, claimed me, set me apartand the song in my breast, yours, yours forever—if I escape your evil heart.
I loved you:men have writ and women have saidthey loved,but as the Pythoness stands by the altar,intense and may not move;
till the fumes pass over;and may not falter nor break,till the priest has caught the wordsthat mar or makea deme or a ravaged town;
so I, though my knees tremble,my heart break,must note the rumbling,heed only the shudderingdown in the fissure beneath the rockof the temple floor;
must wait and watchand may not turn nor move,nor break from my trance to speakso slight, so sweet,so simple a word as love.
What had you donehad you been true,I can not think,I may not know.
What could we dowere I not wise,what play invent,what joy devise?
What could we doif you were great?(Yet were you lost,who were there, then,to circumventthe tricks of men?)
What can we do,for curious lieshave filled your heart,and in my eyessorrow has writthat I am wise.
If I had been a boy,I would have worshiped your grace,I would have flung my worshipbefore your feet,I would have followed apart,glad, rent with an ecstasyto watch you turnyour great head, set on the throat,thick, dark with its sinews,burned and wroughtlike the olive stalk,and the noble chinand the throat.
I would have stood,and watched and watchedand burned,and when in the night,from the many hosts, your slaves,and warriors and serving menyou had turnedto the purple couch and the flameof the woman, tall like cypress treethat flames sudden and swift and freeas with crackle of golden resinand cones and the locks flung freelike the cypress limbs,bound, caught and shaken and loosed,bound, caught and riven and boundand loosened again,as in rain of a kingly stormor wind full from a desert plain.
So, when you had risenfrom all the lethargy of love and its heat,you would have summoned me, me alone,and found my hands,beyond all the hands in the world,cold, cold, cold,intolerably cold and sweet.
It was not chastity that made me cold nor fear,only I knew that you, like myself, were sickof the puny race that crawls and quibbles and lispsof love and love and lovers and love's deceit.
It was not chastity that made me wild but fearthat my weapon, tempered in different heat,was over-matched by yours, and your handskilled to yield death-blows, might break.
With the slightest turn—no ill-will meant—my own lesser, yet still somewhat fine-wroughtfiery-tempered, delicate, over-passionate steel.
The ragged pilgrim, on the road to nowhere,Waits at the granite milestone. It grows dark.Willows lean by the water. Pleas of waterCry through the trees. And on the boles and boughsGreen water-lights make rings, already paling.Leaves speak everywhere. The willow leavesSilverly stir on the breath of moving water,Birch-leaves, beyond them, twinkle, and there on the hill,And the hills beyond again, and the highest hill,Serrated pines, in the dusk, grow almost black.By the eighth milestone on the road to nowhereHe drops his sack, and lights once more the pipeThere often lighted. In the dusk-sharpened skyA pair of night-hawks windily sweep, or fall,Booming, toward the trees. Thus had it beenLast year, and the year before, and many years:Ever the same. "Thus turns the human trackBackward upon itself, I stand once moreBy this small stream..." Now the rich sound of leaves,Turning in air to sway their heavy boughs,Burns in his heart, sings in his veins, as springFlowers in veins of trees; bringing such peaceAs comes to seamen when they dream of seas."O trees! exquisite dancers in gray twilight!Witches! fairies! elves! who wait for the moonTo thrust her golden horn, like a golden snail,Above that mountain—arch your green benedictionOnce more over my heart. Muffle the sound of bells,Mournfully human, that cries from the darkening valley;Close, with your leaves, about the sound of water:Take me among your hearts as you take the mistAmong your boughs!" ... Now by the granite milestone,On the ancient human road that winds to nowhere,The pilgrim listens, as the night air bringsThe murmured echo, perpetual, from the gorgeOf barren rock far down the valley. Now,Though twilight here, it may be starlight there;Mist makes elfin lakes in the hollow fields;The dark wood stands in the mist like a somber islandWith one red star above it.... "This I should see,Should I go on, follow the falling road,—This I have often seen.... But I shall stayHere, where the ancient milestone, like a watchman,Lifts up its figure eight, its one gray knowledge,Into the twilight; as a watchman liftsA lantern, which he does not know is out."
Now by the wall of the ancient town I leanMyself, like ancient wall and dust and sky,And the purple dusk, grown old, grown old in heart.Shadows of clouds flow inward from the sea.The mottled fields grow dark. The golden wallGrows gray again, turns stone again, the tower,No longer kindled, darkens against a cloud.Old is the world, old as the world am I;The cries of sheep rise upward from the fields,Forlorn and strange; and wake an ancient echoIn fields my heart has known, but has not seen."These fields"—an unknown voice beyond the wallMurmurs—"were once the province of the sea.Where now the sheep graze, mermaids were at play,Sea-horses galloped, and the great jeweled tortoiseWalked slowly, looking upward at the waves,Bearing upon his back a thousand barnacles,A white acropolis ..." The ancient towerSends out, above the houses and the trees,And the wide fields below the ancient walls,A measured phrase of bells. And in the silenceI hear a woman's voice make answer then:"Well, they are green, although no ship can sail them....Sky-larks rest in the grass, and start up singingBefore the girl who stoops to pick sea-poppies.Spiny, the poppies are, and oh how yellow!And the brown clay is runneled by the rain...."A moment since, the sheep that crop the grassHad long blue shadows, and the grass-tips sparkled:Now all grows old.... O voices strangely speaking,Voices of man and woman, voices of bells,Diversely making comment on our timeWhich flows and bears us with it into dusk,Repeat the things you say! Repeat them slowlyUpon this air, make them an incantationFor ancient tower, old wall, the purple twilight,This dust, and me. But all I hear is silence,And something that may be leaves or may be sea.
When the tree bares, the music of it changes:Hard and keen is the sound, long and mournful;Pale are the poplar boughs in the evening lightAbove my house, against a slate-cold cloud.When the house ages and the tenants leave it,Cricket sings in the tall grass by the threshold;Spider, by the cold mantel, hangs his web.Here, in a hundred years from that clear seasonWhen first I came here, bearing lights and music,To this old ghostly house my ghost will come,—Pause in the half-light, turn by the poplar, glideAbove tall grasses through the broken door.Who will say that he saw—or the dusk deceived him—A mist with hands of mist blow down from the treeAnd open the door and enter and close it after?Who will say that he saw, as midnight struckIts tremulous golden twelve, a light in the window,And first heard music, as of an old piano,Music remote, as if it came from the earth,Far down; and then, in the quiet, eager voices?"... Houses grow old and die, houses have ghosts—Once in a hundred years we return, old house,And live once more." ... And then the ancient answer,In a voice not human, but more like creak of boardsOr rattle of panes in the wind—"Not as the owner,But as a guest you come, to fires not litBy hands of yours.... Through these long-silent chambersMove slowly, turn, return, and bring once moreYour lights and music. It will be good to talk."
"This is the hour," she said, "of transmutation:It is the eucharist of the evening, changingAll things to beauty. Now the ancient river,That all day under the arch was polished jade,Becomes the ghost of a river, thinly gleamingUnder a silver cloud.... It is not water:It is that azure stream in which the starsBathe at the daybreak, and become immortal....""And the moon," said I—not thus to be outdone—"What of the moon? Over the dusty plane-treesWhich crouch in the dusk above their feeble lanterns,Each coldly lighted by his tiny faith;The moon, the waxen moon, now almost full,Creeps whitely up.... Westward the waves of cloud,Vermilion, crimson, violet, stream on the air,Shatter to golden flakes in the icy greenTranslucency of twilight.... And the moonDrinks up their light, and as they fade or darken,Brightens.... O monstrous miracle of the twilight,That one should live because the others die!""Strange too," she answered, "that upon this azurePale-gleaming ghostly stream, impalpable—So faint, so fine that scarcely it bears upThe petals that the lantern strews upon it,—These great black barges float like apparitions,Loom in the silver of it, beat upon it,Moving upon it as dragons move on air.""Thus always," then I answered,—looking neverToward her face, so beautiful and strangeIt grew, with feeding on the evening light,—"The gross is given, by inscrutable God,Power to beat wide wings upon the subtle.Thus we ourselves, so fleshly, fallible, mortal,Stand here, for all our foolishness, transfigured:Hung over nothing in an arch of lightWhile one more evening like a wave of silenceGathers the stars together and goes out."
Now the great wheel of darkness and low cloudsWhirs and whirls in the heavens with dipping rim;Against the ice-white wall of light in the westSkeleton trees bow down in a stream of air.Leaves, black leaves and smoke, are blown on the wind;Mount upward past my window; swoop again;In a sharp silence, loudly, loudly fallsThe first cold drop, striking a shriveled leaf....Doom and dusk for the earth! Upward I reachTo draw chill curtains and shut out the dark,Pausing an instant, with uplifted hand,To watch, between black ruined portals of cloud,One star,—the tottering portals fall and crush it.Here are a thousand books! here is the wisdomAlembicked out of dust, or out of nothing;Choose now the weightiest word, most golden page,Most somberly musicked line; hold up these lanterns,—These paltry lanterns, wisdoms, philosophies,—Above your eyes, against this wall of darkness;And you'll see—what? One hanging strand of cobweb,A window-sill a half-inch deep in dust ...Speak out, old wise-men! Now, if ever, we need you.Cry loudly, lift shrill voices like magiciansAgainst this baleful dusk, this wail of rain....But you are nothing! Your pages turn to waterUnder my fingers: cold, cold and gleaming,Arrowy in the darkness, rippling, dripping—All things are rain.... Myself, this lighted room,What are we but a murmurous pool of rain?...The slow arpeggios of it, liquid, sibilant,Thrill and thrill in the dark. World-deep I lieUnder a sky of rain. Thus lies the sea-shellUnder the rustling twilight of the sea;No gods remember it, no understandingCleaves the long darkness with a sword of light.
Heaven, you say, will be a field in April,A friendly field, a long green wave of earth,With one domed cloud above it. There you'll lieIn noon's delight, with bees to flash above you,Drown amid buttercups that blaze in the wind,Forgetting all save beauty. There you'll seeWith sun-filled eyes your one great dome of cloudAdding fantastic towers and spires of light,Ascending, like a ghost, to melt in the blue.Heaven enough, in truth, if you were there!Could I be with you I would choose your noon,Drown amid buttercups, laugh with the intimate grass,Dream there forever.... But, being older, sadder,Having not you, nor aught save thought of you,It is not spring I'll choose, but fading summer;Not noon I'll choose, but the charmed hour of dusk.Poppies? A few! And a moon almost as red....But most I'll choose that subtler dusk that comesInto the mind—into the heart, you say—When, as we look bewildered at lovely things,Striving to give their loveliness a name,They are forgotten; and other things, remembered,Flower in the heart with the fragrance we call grief.
In the long silence of the sea, the seamanStrikes twice his bell of bronze. The short note waversAnd loses itself in the blue realm of water.One sea-gull, paired with a shadow, wheels, wheels;Circles the lonely ship by wave and trough;Lets down his feet, strikes at the breaking water,Draws up his golden feet, beats wings, and risesOver the mast.... Light from a crimson cloudCrimsons the sluggishly creeping foams of waves;The seaman, poised in the bow, rises and fallsAs the deep forefoot finds a way through waves;And there below him, steadily gazing westward,Facing the wind, the sunset, the long cloud,The goddess of the ship, proud figurehead,Smiles inscrutably, plunges to crying waters,Emerges streaming, gleaming, with jewels fallingFierily from carved wings and golden breasts;Steadily glides a moment, then swoops again.Carved by the hand of man, grieved by the wind;Worn by the tumult of all the tragic seas,Yet smiling still, unchanging, smiling stillInscrutably, with calm eyes and golden brow—What is it that she sees and follows always,Beyond the molten and ruined west, beyondThe light-rimmed sea, the sky itself? What secretGives wisdom to her purpose? Now the cloudIn final conflagration pales and crumblesInto the darkening waters. Now the starsBurn softly through the dusk. The seaman strikesHis small lost bell again, watching the westAs she below him watches.... O pale goddessWhom not the darkness, even, or rain or storm,Changes; whose great wings are bright with foam,Whose breasts are cold as the sea, whose eyes foreverInscrutably take that light whereon they look—Speak to us! Make us certain, as you are,That somewhere, beyond wave and wave and wave,That dreamed-of harbor lies which we would find.
How shall we praise the magnificence of the dead,The great man humbled, the haughty brought to dust?Is there a horn we should not blow as proudlyFor the meanest of us all, who creeps his days,Guarding his heart from blows, to die obscurely?I am no king, have laid no kingdoms waste,Taken no princes captive, led no triumphsOf weeping women through long walls of trumpets;Say rather I am no one, or an atom;Say rather, two great gods in a vault of starlightPlay ponderingly at chess; and at the game's endOne of the pieces, shaken, falls to the floorAnd runs to the darkest corner; and that pieceForgotten there, left motionless, is I....Say that I have no name, no gifts, no power,Am only one of millions, mostly silent;One who came with lips and hands and a heart,Looked on beauty, and loved it, and then left it.Say that the fates of time and space obscured me,Led me a thousand ways to pain, bemused me,Wrapped me in ugliness; and like great spidersDispatched me at their leisure.... Well, what then?Should I not hear, as I lie down in dust,The horns of glory blowing above my burial?
Morning and evening opened and closed above me:Houses were built above me; trees let fallYellowing leaves upon me, hands of ghosts,Rain has showered its arrows of silver upon meSeeking my heart; winds have roared and tossed me;Music in long blue waves of sound has borne meA helpless weed to shores of unthought silence;Time, above me, within me, crashed its gongsOf terrible warning, sifting the dust of death;And here I lie. Blow now your horns of gloryHarshly over my flesh, you trees, you waters!You stars and suns, Canopus, Deneb, Rigel,Let me, as I lie down, here in this dust,Hear, far off, your whispered salutation!Roar now above my decaying flesh, you winds,Whirl out your earth-scents over this body, tell meOf ferns and stagnant pools, wild roses, hillsides!Anoint me, rain, let crash your silver arrowsOn this hard flesh! I am the one who named you,I lived in you, and now I die in you.I, your son, your daughter, treader of music,Lie broken, conquered.... Let me not fall in silence.
I, the restless one; the circler of circles;Herdsman and roper of stars, who could not captureThe secret of self; I who was tyrant to weaklings,Striker of children; destroyer of women; corrupterOf innocent dreamers, and laugher at beauty; I,Too easily brought to tears and weakness by music,Baffled and broken by love, the helpless beholderOf the war in my heart of desire with desire, the struggleOf hatred with love, terror with hunger; IWho laughed without knowing the cause of my laughter, who grewWithout wishing to grow, a servant to my own body;Loved without reason the laughter and flesh of a woman,Enduring such torments to find her! I who at lastGrow weaker, struggle more feebly, relent in my purpose,Choose for my triumph an easier end, look backwardAt earlier conquests; or, caught in the web, cry outIn a sudden and empty despair, "Tetélestai!"Pity me, now! I, who was arrogant, beg you!Tell me, as I lie down, that I was courageous.Blow horns of victory now, as I reel and am vanquished.Shatter the sky with trumpets above my grave.
... Look! this flesh how it crumbles to dust and is blown!These bones, how they grind in the granite of frost and are nothing!This skull, how it yawns for a flicker of time in the darknessYet laughs not and sees not! It is crushed by a hammer of sunlight,And the hands are destroyed.... Press down through the leaves of the jasmine,Dig through the interlaced roots—nevermore will you find me;I was no better than dust, yet you cannot replace me....Take the soft dust in your hand—does it stir: does it sing?Has it lips and a heart? Does it open its eyes to the sun?Does it run, does it dream, does it burn with a secret, or trembleIn terror of death? Or ache with tremendous decisions?...Listen!... It says: "I lean by the river. The willowsAre yellowed with bud. White clouds roar up from the southAnd darken the ripples; but they cannot darken my heart,Nor the face like a star in my heart!... Rain falls on the waterAnd pelts it, and rings it with silver. The willow trees glisten,The sparrows chirp under the eaves; but the face in my heartIs a secret of music.... I wait in the rain and am silent."Listen again!... It says: "I have worked, I am tired,The pencil dulls in my hand: I see through the windowWalls upon walls of windows with faces behind them,Smoke floating up to the sky, an ascension of seagulls.I am tired. I have struggled in vain, my decision was fruitless,Why then do I wait? with darkness, so easy, at hand!...But to-morrow, perhaps.... I will wait and endure till to-morrow!..."Or again: "It is dark. The decision is made. I am vanquishedBy terror of life. The walls mount slowly about meIn coldness. I had not the courage. I was forsaken.I cried out, was answered by silence.... Tetélestai!..."
Hear how it babbles!—Blow the dust out of your hand,With its voices and visions, tread on it, forget it, turn homewardWith dreams in your brain.... This, then, is the humble, the nameless,—The lover, the husband and father, the struggler with shadows,The one who went down under shoutings of chaos! The weaklingWho cried his "forsaken!" like Christ on the darkening hilltop!...This, then, is the one who implores, as he dwindles to silence,A fanfare of glory.... And which of us dares to deny him!
When you, that at this moment are to meDearer than words on paper, shall depart,And be no more the warder of my heart,Whereof again myself shall hold the key;And be no more, what now you seem to be,The sun, from which all excellencies startIn a round nimbus, nor a broken dartOf moonlight, even, splintered on the sea;
I shall remember only of this hour—And weep somewhat, as now you see me weep—The pathos of your love, that, like a flower,Fearful of death yet amorous of sleep,Droops for a moment and beholds, dismayed,The wind whereon its petals shall be laid.
What's this of death, from you who never will die?Think you the wrist that fashioned you in clay,The thumb that set the hollow just that wayIn your full throat and lidded the long eyeSo roundly from the forehead, will let lieBroken, forgotten, under foot some dayYour unimpeachable body, and so slayThe work he most had been remembered by?
I tell you this: whatever of dust to dustGoes down, whatever of ashes may returnTo its essential self in its own season,Loveliness such as yours will not be lost,But, cast in bronze upon his very urn,Make known him Master, and for what good reason.
I know I am but summer to your heart,And not the full four seasons of the year;And you must welcome from another partSuch noble moods as are not mine, my dear.No gracious weight of golden fruits to sellHave I, nor any wise and wintry thing;And I have loved you all too long and wellTo carry still the high sweet breast of spring.
Wherefore I say: O love, as summer goes,I must be gone, steal forth with silent drums,That you may hail anew the bird and roseWhen I come back to you, as summer comes.Else will you seek, at some not distant time,Even your summer in another clime.
Here is a wound that never will heal, I know,Being wrought not of a dearness and a deathBut of a love turned ashes and the breathGone out of beauty; never again will growThe grass on that scarred acre, though I sowYoung seed there yearly and the sky bequeathIts friendly weathers down, far underneathShall be such bitterness of an old woe.
That April should be shattered by a gust,That August should be leveled by a rain,I can endure, and that the lifted dustOf man should settle to the earth again;But that a dream can die, will be a thrustBetween my ribs forever of hot pain.
What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,I have forgotten, and what arms have lainUnder my head till morning; but the rainIs full of ghosts to-night, that tap and sighUpon the glass and listen for reply;And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain,For unremembered lads that not againWill turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:I cannot say what loves have come and gone;I only know that summer sang in meA little while, that in me sings no more.
Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare.Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace,And lay them prone upon the earth and ceaseTo ponder on themselves, the while they stareAt nothing, intricately drawn nowhereIn shapes of shifting lineage; let geeseGabble and hiss, but heroes seek releaseFrom dusty bondage into luminous air.
O blinding hour, O holy, terrible day,When first the shaft into his vision shoneOf light anatomized! Euclid aloneHas looked on Beauty bare. Fortunate theyWho, though once only and then but far away,Have heard her massive sandal set on stone.
Oh, oh, you will be sorry for that word!Give back my book and take my kiss instead.Was it my enemy or my friend I heard?—"What a big book for such a little head!"Come, I will show you now my newest hat,And you may watch me purse my mouth and prink.Oh, I shall love you still and all of that.I never again shall tell you what I think.
I shall be sweet and crafty, soft and sly;You will not catch me reading any more;I shall be called a wife to pattern by;And some day when you knock and push the door,Some sane day, not too bright and not too stormy,I shall be gone, and you may whistle for me.
Say what you will, and scratch my heart to findThe roots of last year's roses in my breast;I am as surely riper in my mindAs if the fruit stood in the stalls confessed.Laugh at the unshed leaf, say what you will,Call me in all things what I was before,A flutterer in the wind, a woman still;I tell you I am what I was and more.
My branches weigh me down, frost cleans the air,My sky is black with small birds bearing south;Say what you will, confuse me with fine care,Put by my word as but an April truth,—Autumn is no less on me that a roseHugs the brown bough and sighs before it goes.
(The following lists include poetical works only)
AMY LOWELL
ROBERT FROST
CARL SANDBURG
VACHEL LINDSAY
JAMES OPPENHEIM
ALFRED KREYMBORG
SARA TEASDALE
LOUIS UNTERMEYER
JOHN GOULD FLETCHER
JEAN STARR UNTERMEYER
H. D.
CONRAD AIKEN
EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY