The Project Gutenberg eBook ofChallengeThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: ChallengeAuthor: Louis UntermeyerRelease date: September 26, 2010 [eBook #34001]Most recently updated: January 7, 2021Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Al Haines*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHALLENGE ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: ChallengeAuthor: Louis UntermeyerRelease date: September 26, 2010 [eBook #34001]Most recently updated: January 7, 2021Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Al Haines
Title: Challenge
Author: Louis Untermeyer
Author: Louis Untermeyer
Release date: September 26, 2010 [eBook #34001]Most recently updated: January 7, 2021
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Al Haines
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHALLENGE ***
For the privilege of reprinting many of the poems included in this volume, the author thanks the editors ofThe Century, Harper's, The Forum, The Masses, The Smart Set, The Independent, The American, The Delineator, The New Age, The Poetry Journaland other magazines.
The eager night and the impetuous winds,The hints and whispers of a thousand lures,And all the swift persuasion of the SpringSurged from the stars and stones, and swept me on...The smell of honeysuckles, keen and clear,Startled and shook me, with the sudden thrillOf some well-known but half-forgotten voice.A slender stream became a naked sprite,Flashed around curious bends, and winked at meBeyond the turns, alert and mischievous.A saffron moon, dangling among the trees,Seemed like a toy balloon caught in the boughs,Flung there in sport by some too-mirthful breeze...And as it hung there, vivid and unreal,The whole world's lethargy was brushed away;The night kept tugging at my torpid moodAnd tore it into shreds. A warm air blewMy wintry slothfulness beyond the stars;And over all indifference there streamedA myriad urges in one rushing wave...Touched with the lavish miracles of earth,I felt the brave persistence of the grass;The far desire of rivulets; the keen,Unconquerable fervor of the thrush;The endless labors of the patient worm;The lichen's strength; the prowess of the ant;The constancy of flowers; the blind beliefOf ivy climbing slowly toward the sun;The eternal struggles and eternal deaths—And yet the groping faith of every root!Out of old graves arose the cry of life;Out of the dying came the deathless call.And, thrilling with a new sweet restlessness,The thing that was my boyhood woke in me—Dear, foolish fragments made me strong again;Valiant adventures, dreams of those to come,And all the vague, heroic hopes of youth,With fresh abandon, like a fearless laugh,Leaped up to face the heaven's unconcern...
And then—veil upon veil was torn aside—Stars, like a host of merry girls and boys,Danced gaily 'round me, plucking at my hand;The night, scorning its ancient mystery,Leaned down and pressed new courage in my heart;The hermit thrush, throbbing with more than Song,Sang with a happy challenge to the skies;Love, and the faces of a world of children,Swept like a conquering army through my blood—And Beauty, rising out of all its forms,Beauty, the passion of the universe,Flamed with its joy, a thing too great for tears.And, like a wine, poured itself out for meTo drink of, to be warmed with, and to goRefreshed and strengthened to the ceaseless fight;To meet with confidence the cynic years;Battling in wars that never can be won,Seeking the lost cause and the brave defeat!
God, though this life is but a wraith,Although we know not what we use,Although we grope with little faith,Give me the heart to fight—and lose.
Ever insurgent let me be,Make me more daring than devout;From sleek contentment keep me free.And fill me with a buoyant doubt.
Open my eyes to visions girtWith beauty, and with wonder lit—But let me always see the dirt,And all that spawn and die in it.
Open my ears to music; letMe thrill with Spring's first flutes and drums—But never let me dare forgetThe bitter ballads of the slums.
From compromise and things half-done,Keep me, with stern and stubborn pride;And when, at last, the fight is wonGod, keep me still unsatisfied.
Who can be dull or wrapped in unconcernKnowing a world so clamorous and keen;A world of ardent conflict, honest spleen,And healthy, hot desires too swift to turn;Vivid and vulgar—with no heart to learn...See how that drudge, a thing unkempt, unclean,Laughs with the royal laughter of a queen.Even in her the eager fires burn.
Who can be listless in these stirring hoursWhen, with athletic courage, we engageTo storm, with fierce abandon, sterner powersAnd meet indifference with a joyful rage;Thrilled with a purpose and the dream that towersOut of this arrogant and blundering age.
Lo—to the battle-ground of Life,Child, you have come, like a conquering shout,Out of a struggle—into strife;Out of a darkness—into doubt.
Girt with the fragile armor of Youth,Child, you must ride into endless wars,With the sword of protest, the buckler of truth,And a banner of love to sweep the stars.
About you the world's despair will surge;Into defeat you must plunge and grope—Be to the faltering an urge;Be to the hopeless years a hope!
Be to the darkened world a flame;Be to its unconcern a blow—For out of its pain and tumult you came,And into its tumult and pain you go.
How much of Godhood did it take—What purging epochs had to pass,Ere I was fit for leaf and lakeAnd worthy of the patient grass?
What mighty travails must have been,What ages must have moulded me,Ere I was raised and made akinTo dawn, the daisy and the sea.
In what great struggles was I felled,In what old lives I labored long,Ere I was given a world that heldA meadow, butterflies and Song?
But oh, what cleansings and what fears,What countless raisings from the dead,Ere I could see Her, touched with tears,Pillow the little weary head.
Oh, do not think me dead when IBeneath a bit of earth shall lie;Think not that aught can ever killMy arrogant and stubborn will.My buoyant strength, my eager soul,My stern desire shall keep me wholeAnd lift me from the drowsy deep...I shall not even yield to Sleep,For Death can never take from meMy warm, insatiate energy;He shall not dare to touch one partOf the gay challenge of my heart.And I shall laugh at him, and lieHappy beneath a laughing sky;For I have fought too joyouslyTo let the conqueror conquer me—I know that, after strengthening strife,Death cannot quench my love of life;Rob me of my dear self, my earsOf music or my eyes of tears ...No, Death shall come in friendlier guise;The cloths of darkness from my eyesHe shall roll back, and lo, the seaOf Silence shall not cover me.He shall make soft my final bed,Stand, like a servant, at my head;And, thrilled with all that Death may give,I shall lie down to rest—and live...
And I shall know within the earthA softer but a deeper mirth.The wind shall never troll a songBut I shall hear it borne along,And echoed long before he passesBy all the little unborn grasses.I shall be clasped by roots and rains,Feeding and fed by living grains;There shall not be a single flowerAbove my head but bears my power,And every butterfly or beeThat tastes the flower shall drink of me.Ah, we shall share a lip to lipCarousal and companionship!
The storm, like some great blustering lout,Shall play his games with me and shoutHis joy to all the country-side.Autumn, sun-tanned and April-eyed,Shall scamper by and send his hostsOf leaves, like brown and merry ghosts,To frolic over me; and stonesShall feel the dancing in their bones.And red-cheeked Winter too shall beA jovial bed-fellow for me,Setting the startled hours ringingWith boisterous tales and lusty singing.And, like a mother that has smiledFor years on every tired child,Summer shall hold me in her lap...And when the root stirs and the sapClimbs anxiously beyond the boughs,And all the friendly worms carouse,Then, oh, how proudly, we shall singBravuras for the feet of Spring!
And I shall lie forever thereLike some great king, and watch the fairYoung Spring dance on for me, and knowThat love and rosy valleys glowWhere'er her blithe feet touch the earth.And headlong joy and reckless mirthSeeing her footsteps shall pursue.Oh, I shall watch her smile and strewLaughter and life with either hand;And every quiver of the land,Shall pierce me, while a joyful waveBeats in upon my radiant grave.Aye, like a king in deathless stateI shall be throned, and contemplateThe dying of the years, the vastVague panorama of the past,The march of centuries, the surgeOf ages .... but the deathless urgeShall stir me always, and my willShall laugh to keep me living still;Thrilling with every call and cry—Too much in love with life to die.Content to touch the earth, to hearThe whisper of each waiting year,To help the stars go proudly by,To speed the timid grass; and lie,Sharing, with every movement's breath,The rich eternity of Death.
Thank God for this bright frailty of Life,The lyric briefness of its reckless Spring;Thank God for all the swift adventuring,The bold uncertainty, the rousing strife.
Thank God the world is set to such a tune,That life is such a proud and crashing wave;That none, but lifeless things, shall be Time's slave,Like the long-dead but never tiring moon;
That godlike passion strangely leaps and runs;That youth cannot grow old, nor beauty stale;That even Death is fragile and must failBefore the wind of joy that speeds the suns.
I often wish that I had been aliveEre God grew old, before His eyes were tiredOf the eternal circlings of the sun;Of the perpetual Springs; the weary yearsForever marching on an unknown quest;The yawning seasons pacing to and fro,Like stolid sentinels to guard the earth.I wish that I had been alive when HeWas still delighted with each casual thingHis mind could fashion, when His soul first thrilledWith childlike pleasure at the blooming sun;When the first dawn met His enraptured eyes,And the first prayers of men stirred in His heart.With what a glow of pride He heard the starsRush by Him singing as they bravely leapedInto the unexplored and endless skies,Bearing His beauty, like a battle-cry.Or watched the light, obedient to His will,Spring out of nothingness to answer Him,Hurling strange suns and planets in its joyOf fiery freedom from the lifeless dark.But more than all the splendid heavens He made,The elements new-tamed, the harnessed worlds;In spite of these, it must have pleased Him mostTo feel Himself branch out, let go, dare all,Give utterance to His vaguely-formed desires,And loose a flood of fancies, wild and frank.
Oh those were noble times; those gay attempts,Those vast and droll experiments that were madeWhen God was young and blithe and whimsical.When, from the infinite humor of His heart,He made the elk with such extravagant horns,The grotesque monkey-folk, the angel-fish,That make the ocean's depths a visual heaven;The animals like plants, the plants like beasts;The loud, inane hyena, and the greatImpossible giraffe, whose silly headThreatens the stars, his feet embracing earth.The paradox of the peacock, whose bright formIs like a brilliant trumpet, and his voiceA strident squawk, a cackle and a joke.The ostrich, like a snake tied to a bird,All out of sense and drawing, wilder farThan all the mad, fantastic thoughts of men.The hump-backed camel, like a lump of clay,Thumbed at for hours, and then thrown aside.The elephant, with splendid, useless tooth,And nose and arm and fingers all in one.The hippopotamus, absurd and bland—Oh, how God must have laughed when first He sawThese great jests breathe and love and walk about;And how the heavens must have echoed him...For greater than His beauty or His wrathWas God's vast mirth before His back was bentWith Time and all the troubling universe,Ere He grew dull and weary with creating...Oh, to have been alive and heard that laughThrilling the stars, convulsing all the earth,While meteors flashed from out His sparkling eyes,And even the eternal, placid NightForgot to lift reproving fingers, smiledAnd joined, indulgent, in the merriment...And, how they sang, and how the hours flewWhen God was young and blithe and whimsical.
How can the village dead remain so still...Surely they tingle with the winey air,When the skies riot and the sunsets flareAnd all the world becomes a flaming hill.Surely the driest dust must turn and thrillWhen these wild breezes sweep out all despair—And lakes are bluest, pools are starriest whereThe streaming heavens overflow and spill.
Oh, were it I that lay like any clod,Though buried under rock and gnarled tree,I would arise, and, through the clinging sod,Go struggling upward, passionate and proud;Laugh, with the winds and mountains watching me,And dance in triumph on my crumbling shroud.
All day with anxious heart and wondering earI listened to the city; heard the groundEcho with human thunder, and the soundGo reeling down the streets and disappear.The headlong hours, in their wild career,Shouted and sang until the world was drownedWith babel-voices, each one more profound...All day it surged—but nothing could I hear.
That night the country never seemed so still;The trees and grasses spoke without a wordTo stars that brushed them with their silver wings.Together with the moon I climbed the hill,And, in the very heart of Silence, heardThe speech and music of immortal things.
September—and an afternoonHeavy with languid thoughts and long;The air breathes faintly, half in swoon,Like silence trembling after Song.The mighty calmness seems to drawMy spirit through a painless birth—And now, with eyes that never saw,I see the poetry of earth.
That group of old maple-trees brooding in peace by the river,Happy with sunlight, and an oriole singing among them—Lo, what a marvel (what rapture for Him who first sung them)That here, in less space than a carpenter's workshop, the GiverHas fashioned a casual wonderGreater than dawn or the thunder.Here in a dozen of feet He has blendedMusic and motion and color and form,Each in itself a creation so splendidThat, were it the world's one beauty, 'twould warmAnd kindle all Life till it ended.
Birds and old maple-trees—Only to think of these,Only to dream of them here for an hourIs to know all the secrets of earth.For here is the world that God sang into flowerAnd bloom at its birth—Here is its magical uplift and power;Its music and mirth.
Here the sun scarcely wakes;Like a monarch it takesRest on the lordliest branches alone.Till a glad tremor shakesEvery leaf that is blown—While a zephyr advancing,Breathes gently and breaksThe light into dancingFigures, with glancingRhythms and rhymes of their own.
Yes, here in this spot, in this edge of an acreAll of the world is, the heart and the whole of it—Here is a universe; daily the MakerShows here the sweet and extravagant soul of it.For the arms of the maple have held in their coverThe earth and the sky and the stars, every one—Not the tenderest twig but has known, like a loverThe silence, the night and the sun.
Not the airiest bird but has sung, all unknowing,The joy of each minstrel that carols unheard.And Summer, green fields and a world of things growing,Are brought to this spot by the breath of a bird.And there's never a wind but brings road-sides and ranches,Forests and tales of the far-off and free—And the rush of the breeze as it sings in the branchesEchoes and answers the rush of the sea...
A group of old maple-trees brooding in peace by the river—That—and a bird, nothing else... But above and around it,The spell of the infinite beauty, half-hidden forever,Lies, like a secret of God's—and here I have found it.The hymn of the cosmic—the anthem that has for its choirStars, rivers and flowers—still rises and sweeps me along;While the cry of the oriole melts in a sunset of fireAnd the heavens, a jubilant chorus, are flushed with thefires of Song!
As long as vigorous discontentGoads us from torpid ease, or worse,I thank the power that sentStruggle, the savior of the universe.
As long as things are torn and hurledIn this implacable unrest,I shall embrace the worldWith joyful fierceness and undying zest.
I shall grow strong with every hurt;The scorn, the anger will achieveOnly a glad, alertDesire to question boldly—and believe.
My eager faith shall keep me setAgainst despair or careless hate,Knowing this smoke and sweatIs forging something violent—and great!
The rolling earth stopsAs I climb to the summit,Then like a plummetIt suddenly drops...
Down, down I go—Past rippling acres;Hillsides like breakersOver me flow.
Wildly aliveI hail the green shimmer,Fresh as a swimmerAfter the dive.
Like banners unfurledThe skies dip and flourish—The keen breezes nourish,While the bright world
Is a ribbon unrolledWith a border of grasses;And tansies are massesAnd splotches of gold.
Still I whirl on—Startled, a sparrowDarts from the yarrow,Flash—and is gone...
Faster the gleamsDie as they dazzle—And roadsides of basilTurn to pink streams.
Sharp as a knifeIs each perfume and color.To feel nothing duller—God, that were Life!
How rapt the sleeping stillness of the night—Incomparably close and vast... One mightHear the tense silence in the little streetReaching to heaven, where it swells and breaksInto moon-music and star-song that makesMy senses bend and sway, as waving wheatTrembles before the wind's majestic feet;Trembles with happy fear and numb delight.
How sharp the silence... like a sword to smiteBrittle security and iron aches;A soundless and imperative blast that wakesUndreamed of powers, terrible and sweet...While God comes down, roused to the jubilant fight;Roused from the sleepy comfort of His seat.
Come, drink the mystic wine of Night,Brimming with silence and the stars,While earth, bathed in this holy light,Is seen without its scars.Drink in the daring and the dews,The calm winds and the restless gleam—This is the draught that Beauty brews;Drink—it is the Dream.
Drink, oh my soul, and do not yield—These solitudes, this wild-rose air,Shall strengthen thee, shall be thy shield,Against a world's despair.Oh, quaff this stirrup-cup of stars,Trembling with hope and high desire—Then back into the hopeless warsWith faith and fire!
Listen, my lute, I would turn from your militant measures.Well have you answered the touch of intransigent fingers;Wildly your strings have vibrated—but have you forgottenHow to make love-songs?
Lute, you are hot to the hand; you are tense and exultant.Cease crying out—let me rest from the din and the battle.Life is not only a summoning shout and a struggle,A blow and a silence.
Is there not vigorous peace after vigorous onslaught?Beauty's a challenge as fierce and as stirring as conflict...Look—how she runs through the tremulous twilight to meet me—Do you remember?
See—it is night and she turns to my arms of a sudden;Soft as a mother and wild with the fires of April—Bashful and bold, with her passionate hair all about her;Lovely and lavish.
Lute, it was she who awoke and impelled us to singing—Ah, those first lyrics, impulsive and feeble and earnest—She who aroused us and soothed us—our passion, our pillow—Dare you forget her!
Only remember 'tis she keeps me rested and restless;Only remember my heart, like a fate in strong breezes.Leaps at the thought of her voice and her slow, searching kisses,Stabbing and healing.
I never knew the earth had so much gold—The fields run over with it, and this hillHoary and old,Is young with buoyant blooms that flame and thrill.
Such golden fires, such yellows—lo, how goodThis spendthrift world, and what a lavish God—This fringe of wood,Blazing with buttercup and goldenrod.
You too, beloved, are changed. Again I seeYour face grow mystical, as on that nightYou turned to me,And all the trembling world—and you—were white.
Aye, you are touched; your singing lips grow dumb;The fields absorb you, color you entire...And you becomeA goddess standing in a world of fire!