EARTH-BORN
No lapidary's heaven, no brazier's hell for me,
For I am made of dust and dew and stream and plant and tree;
I'm close akin to boulders, I am cousin to the mud,
And all the winds of all the skies make music in my blood.
I want a brook and pine trees, I want a storm to blow
Loud-lunged across the looming hills with rain and sleet and snow;
Don't put me off with diadems and thrones of chrysoprase,—
I want the winds of northern nights and wild March days.
My blood runs red with sunset, my body is white with rain,
And on my heart auroral skies have set their scarlet stain,
My thoughts are green with spring time, among the meadow rue
I think my very soul is growing green and gold and blue.
What will be left, I wonder, when Death has washed me clean
Of dust and dew and sundown and April's virgin green?
If there's enough to make a ghost, I'll bring it back again
To the little lovely earth that bore me, body, soul, and brain.
"WHENCE COMETH MY HELP"
Let me sleep among the shadows of the mountains when I die,
In the murmur of the pines and sliding streams,
Where the long day loiters by
Like a cloud across the sky
And the moon-drenched night is musical with dreams.
Lay me down within a canyon of the mountains, far away,
In a valley filled with dim and rosy light,
Where the flashing rivers play
Out across the golden day
And a noise of many waters brims the night.
Let me lie where glinting rivers ramble down the slanted glade
Under bending alders garrulous and cool,
Where they gather in the shade
To the dazzling, sheer cascade,
Where they plunge and sleep within the pebbled pool.
All the wisdom, all the beauty, I have lived for unaware
Came upon me by the rote of highland rills;
I have seen God walking there
In the solemn soundless air
When the morning wakened wonder in the hills.
I am what the mountains made me of their green and gold and gray,
Of the dawnlight and the moonlight and the foam.
Mighty mothers far away,
Ye who washed my soul in spray,
I am coming, mother mountains, coming home.
When I draw my dreams about me, when I leave the darkling plain
Where my soul forgets to soar and learns to plod,
I shall go back home again
To the kingdoms of the rain,
To the blue purlieus of heaven, nearer God.
Where the rose of dawn blooms earlier across the miles of mist,
Between the tides of sundown and moonrise,
I shall keep a lover's tryst
With the gold and amethyst,
With the stars for my companions in the skies.
UNITY
Where the long valley slopes away
Five miles across the dreaming day
A maple sends a scarlet prayer
Into the still autumnal air,
Three golden-smouldering hickories
Are fanned to flame beneath the breeze
And one great crimson oak tree fires
The sky-line over the Concord spires.
In worship mystically sweet
The rimy asters at my feet
And spiring gentian bells that burn
Blue incense in an azure urn
Breathe softly from the aspiring sod:
"This is our utmost. Take it, God,—
This chant of green, this prayer of blue.
This is the best thy clay can do."
*****
O lonely heart and widowed brain
Sick with philosophies that strain
Body from spirit, flesh from soul,—
Worship with asters and be whole;
Live simply as still water flows
Till soul shall border brain so close
No blade of wit can thrust between
And hearts are pure as grass is green;
Pray with the maple tree and trust
The ancient ritual of the dust.
VISTAS
As I walked through the rumorous streets
Of the wind-rustled, elm-shaded city
Where all of the houses were friends
And the trees were all lovers of her,
The spell of its old enchantment
Was woven again to subdue me
With magic of flickering shadows,
Blown branches and leafy stir.
Street after street, as I passed,
Lured me and beckoned me onward
With memories frail as the odor
Of lilac adrift on the air.
At the end of each breeze-blurred vista
She seemed to be watching and waiting,
With leaf shadows over her gown
And sunshine gilding her hair.
For there was a dream that the kind God
Withheld, while granting us many—
But surely, I think, we shall come
Sometime, at the end, she and I,
To the heaven He keeps for all tired souls,
The quiet suburban gardens
Where He Himself walks in the evening
Beneath the rose-dropping sky
And watches the balancing elm trees
Sway in the early starshine
When high in their murmurous arches
The night breeze ruffles by.
A NUN
One glance and I had lost her in the riot
Of tangled cries.
She trod the clamor with a cloistral quiet
Deep in her eyes
As though she heard the muted music only
That silence makes
Among dim mountain summits and on lonely
Deserted lakes.
There is some broken song her heart remembers
From long ago,
Some love lies buried deep, some passion's embers
Smothered in snow,
Far voices of a joy that sought and missed her
Fail now, and cease....
And this has given the deep eyes of God's sister
Their dreadful peace.
LOVE AMONG THE CLOVER
"If you dare," she said,
And oh, her breath was clover-sweet!
Clover nodded over her,
Her lips were clover red.
Blackbirds fluted down the wind,
The bobolinks were mad with joy,
The wind was playing in her hair,
And "If you dare," she said.
Clover billowed down the wind
Far across the happy fields,
Clover on the breezy hills
Leaned along the skies
And all the nodding clover heads
And little clouds with silver sails
And all the heaven's dreamy blue
Were mirrored in her eyes.
Her laughing lips were clover-red
When long ago I kissed her there
And made for one swift moment all
My heaven and earth complete.
I've loved among the roses since
And love among the lilies now,
But love among the clover...
Her breath was clover-sweet.
O wise, wise-hearted boy and girl
Who played among the clover bloom!
I think I was far wiser then
Than now I dare to be.
For I have lost that Eden now,
I cannot find my Eden now,
And even should I find it now,
I've thrown away the key.
CERTAIN AMERICAN POETS
They cowered inert before the study fire
While mighty winds were ranging wide and free,
Urging their torpid fancies to aspire
With "Euhoe! Bacchus! Have a cup of tea."
They tripped demure from church to lecture-hall,
Shunning the snare of farthingales and curls.
Woman they thought half angel and half doll,
The Muses' temple a boarding-school for girls.
Quaffing Pierian draughts from Boston pump,
They toiled to prove their homiletic art
Could match with nasal twang and pulpit thump
In maxims glib of meeting-house and mart.
Serenely their ovine admirers graze.
Apollo wears frock-coats, the Muses stays.
THE SINGER'S QUEST
I've been wandering, listening for a song,
Dreaming of a melody, all my life long...
The lilting tune that God sang to rock the tides asleep
And crooned above the cradled stars before they learned to creep.
O, there was laughter in it and many a merry chime
Before He had turned moralist, grown old before His time,
And He was happy, trolling out His great blithe-hearted tune,
Before He slung the little earth beneath the sun and moon.
But I know that somewhere that song is rolling on,
Like flutes along the midnight, like trumpets in the dawn;
It throbs across the sunset and stirs the poplar tree
And rumbles in the long low thunder of the sea.
*****
First-love sang me one note and heart-break taught me two,
A child has told me three notes, and soon I'll know it through;
And when I stand before the Throne I'll hum it low and sly,
Watching for a great light of welcome in His eye...
"Put a white raiment on him and a harp into his hand
And golden sandals on his feet and tell the saints to stand
A little farther off unless they wish to hear the truth,
For this blessed lucky sinner is going to sing about my youth!"
DEAD MAGDALEN
Cover her over with pallid white roses,
Her who had none but red roses to wear;
All that her last grim lover bestows is
Virginal white for her bosom and hair.
Cover the folds of the glimmering sheet
Clear from her eyelids weary and sweet
Down to her nevermore wayward feet.
Then They may find her fair.
Lovingly, tenderly, let us array her
Fair as a bride for the way she must go,
Leaving no lingering stain to betray her,
Letting them see we have sullied her so.
Over the curve of the fair young breast
Leave we this maidenly lily to rest
White as the snow in its snow-soft nest.
Now They will never know.
THE ADVENTURER
He came not in the red dawn
Nor in the blaze of noon,
And all the long bright highway
Lay lonely to the moon,
And nevermore, we know now,
Will he come wandering down
The breezy hollows of the hills
That gird the quiet town.
For he has heard a voice cry
A starry-faint "Ahoy!"
Far up the wind, and followed
Unquestioning after joy.
But we are long forgetting
The quiet way he went,
With looks of love and gentle scorn
So sweetly, subtly blent.
We cannot cease to wonder,
We who have loved him, how
He fares along the windy ways
His feet must travel now.
But we must draw the curtain
And fasten bolts and bars
And talk here in the firelight
Of him beneath the stars.
THE GOLDFINCH
Down from the sky on a sudden he drops
Into the mullein and juniper tops,
Flushed from his bath in the midsummer shine
Flooding the meadowland, drunk with the wine
Spilled from the urns of the blue, like a bold
Sky-buccaneer in his sable and gold.
Lightly he sways on the pendulous stem,
Vividly restless, a fluttering gem,
Then with a flash of bewildering wings
Dazzles away up and down, and he sings
Clear as a bell at each dip as he flies
Bounding along on the wave of the skies.
Sunlight and laughter, a winged desire,
Motion and melody married to fire,
Lighter than thistle-tuft borne on the wind,
Frailer than violets, how shall we find
Words that will match him, discover a name
Meet for this marvel, this lyrical flame?
How shall we fashion a rhythm to wing with him,
Find us a wonderful music to sing with him
Fine as his rapture is, free as the rollicking
Song that the harlequin drops in his frolicking
Dance through the summer sky, singing so merrily
High in the burning blue, winging so airily?
( Mount Vernon, New Hampshire)
ORIOLES
Wings in a blur of gold
High in the elm trees,
Looping like tawny flame
Through the green shadows,
Now at an airy height
Pausing a heart beat
Quite at the twig's tip,
Pendulous, bending.
Golden against the blue,
Gold in an azure cup,
Golden wine bubbling
Out of blue goblets...
Cool, smooth and reedy notes
Fly low across the noon
While through the drowsy heat
Drums the cicada.
Tropical wing and song
Bound from Bolivia...
All the blue Amazon
Sings to New England....
Flute-noted orioles,
Flame-coated orioles,
Gold-throated orioles,
Spirits of summer.
BY A MOUNTAIN STREAM
Where the rivulet swept by a sycamore root
With a turbulent voice and a hurrying foot,
I bent by the water and spoke in my dream
To the wavering, restless, unlingering stream:
"Oh, turbulent rivulet hastening past,
For what wonderful goal do you hope at the last
That never you pause in the shimmering green
Of the undulant shade where the sycamores lean
Or rest in the moss-curtained, cool dripping halls
Hidden under the veils of your musical falls
Or loiter at peace by the tremulous fern—
White wandering waters that never return?"
And I dreamed by the rivulet's wavering side
That a myriad ripple of voices replied:
"Aloft on the mountain, afar on the steep,
A voice that we knew cried aloud in our sleep,
'Come, hasten ye down to the vale and to me,
Your begetter, destroyer, preserver, the Sea!'
We must carry our feebleness down to the Strong,
We must mingle us deep in the Whole, and ere long
All the numberless host of the heaven shall ride
With the pale Lady Moon on our slumbering tide."
The voices swept out and away through the door
Of the canyon, and on to the infinite shore.
Oh, vast in thy destiny, slender of span,
Wild rivulet, how thou art like to a man!
(Cold Brook, California, 1912)
APRIL
(To Bliss Carman)
There's a murmur in the patient forest alleys,
There's an elfin echo whispering through the trees,
Lonely pipes are lifted softly in the valleys...
All the air is filled with waking melodies.
From the crucibles of Erebus and Endor,
Flame of emerald has fallen by the rills,
And it flashes up the slope and sits in splendor
In the glory of the beauty of the hills.
Now my heart will yearn again to voice its wonder
And my song must sing again between the words
With a mutter of unutterable thunder
And a twitter of inimitable birds.
(April, 1903)
A CHAPEL BY THE SEA
(To Paul Dowling)
There's a mouldering mountain chapel gazing out across the sea
From beneath the lisping shelter of a eucalyptus tree
That has drawn the ancient silence from the mountain's heart and fills
And subdues a fevered spirit with the quiet of the hills.
For silvery in the morning the chimes go dropping down
Across the vales of purple mist that gird the island town
And golden in the evening the vesper bells again
Call back the weary fishing folk along the leafy lane.
I'd like to be the father priest and call the folk to prayer
Up through the winding dewy ways that climb the morning air,
And send them down at even-song with all the silent sky
Of early starshine teaching them far deeper truth than I.
I'd like to lie at rest there beneath a mossy stone
Above the crooning sea's low distant monotone,
Lulled by the lisping whisper of the eucalyptus tree
That shades my mountain chapel gazing out across the sea.
(Avalon, Christmas Day, 1913)
EPHEMEROS
A firefly cried across the night:
"O lofty star, O streaming light,
Clear eye of heaven, immortal lamp
Set high above the dew and damp,
Thou great high-priest to heaven's King
And chief of all the choirs that sing
Their golden, endless antiphons
Of praise before the eternal thrones—
Hear thou my prayer of worship! Thine
The glory, all the dimness mine.
I am a feeble glimmering spark
Vagrant along the lower dark."
The star called down from heaven's roof
With a humble heart and mild reproof:
"The Power that made, the Breath that blew
My fire aglow has kindled you
With equal love and equal pain
And equal toil of heart and brain.
For I am only a wandering light,
Your elder comrade in the night.
We are two sisters, you and I,
And when we two burn out and die
It will be hardly known from far
Which was the firefly, which the star."
WANDERLUST
(To Willard)
The birds were beating north again with faint and starry cries
Along their ancient highway that spans the midnight skies,
And out across the rush of wings my heart went crying too,
Straight for the morning's windy walls and lakes of misted blue.
They gave me place among them, for well they understood
The magic wine of April working madness in my blood,
And we were kin in thought and dream as league by league together
We kept that pace of straining wings across the starry weather.
The dim blue tides of Fundy, green slopes of Labrador
Slid under us ... our course was set for earth's remotest shore;
But tingling through the ether and searching star by star
A lonely voice went crying that drew me down from far.
Farewell, farewell, my brothers! I see you far away
Go drifting down the sunset across the last green bay,
But I have found the haven of this lonely heart and wild—
My falconer has called me—I am prisoned by a child.
(Easter Day, 1916)
THE IDEAL
Serenely, from her mountain height sublime,
She mocks my hopeless labor as I creep
Each day a day's strength farther from the deep
And nearer to her side for which I climb.
So may she mock when for the sad last time
I fall, my face still upward, upon sleep,
With faithful hands still yearning up the steep
In patient and pathetic pantomime.
I am content, O ancient, young-eyed child
Of love and longing. Pity not our wars
Of frail-spun flesh, and keep thee undefiled
By all our strife that only breaks and mars.
But let us see from far thy footing, wild
And wayward still against the eternal stars!
THE FIRST CHRISTIAN
A little wandering wind went up the hill.
It had a lonely voice as though it knew
What it should find before it came to where
The broken body of him that had been Christ
Hung in the ruddy glow. A bowshot down
The bleak rock-shouldered hill the soldiery
Had piled a fire, and when the searching wind
Came stronger from the distant sea and dashed
The shadows and the gleam together, songs
Of battle and lust were blown along the slope
Mingled with clash of swords on cuisse and shield.
But of the women sitting by the cross
Even she whose life had been as gravely sweet
And sheltered as a lily's did not flinch.
Her face was buried in her shrouding cloak.
And she who knew too sorrowfully well
The cruelty and bitterness of life
Heard not. She sat erect, her shadowy hair
Blown back along the darkness and her eyes
That searched the distant spaces of the night
Splendid and glowing with an inward joy.
And at the darkest hour came three or four
From round the fire and would have driven them thence;
But one who knew them, gazing in their eyes,
Said: "Nay. It is his mother and his love,
The scarlet Magdalena. Let them be."
So, in the gloom beside that glimmering cross,
Beneath the broken body of him they loved,
They wept and watched—the lily and the rose.
At last the deep, low voice of Magdalen,
Toned like a distant bell, broke on the hush:
"We are so weak! What can poor women do?
So pitifully frail! God pity us!
How he did pity us! He understood...
Out of his own great strength he understood
How it might feel to be so very weak...
To be a tender lily of the field,
To be a lamb lost in the windy hills
Far from the fold and from the shepherd's voice,
To be a child with no strength, only love.
And ah, he knew, if ever a man can know,
What 't is to be a woman and to live,
Strive how she may to out-soar and overcome,
Tied to this too frail body of too fair earth!
"Oh, had I been a man to shield him then
In his great need with loving strong right arm!
One of the twelve—ha!—of that noble twelve
That ran away, and two made mock of him
Or else betrayed him ere they ran? Ah no!
And yet, a man's strength with a woman's love...
That might have served him somewhat ere the end."
Then with a weary voice the mother said:
"What can we do but only watch and weep,
Sit with weak hands and watch while strong men rend
And break and ruin, bringing all to nought
The beauty we have nearly died to make?
"It is not true to say that he was strong.
He did not claim the kingdom that was his,
He did not even seek for wealth and power,
He did not win a woman's love and get
Strong children to live after him, and all
That strong men strive for he passed heedless by.
Because that he was weak I loved him so...
For that and for his soft and gentle ways,
The tender patient calling of his voice
And that dear trick of smiling with his eyes.
Ah no! I have had dreams—a mother's dreams—
But now I cannot dream them any more.
"I sorrowed little as the happy days
Sped by and by that still the fair-haired lad
Who lay at first beside me in the stall,
The cattle stall outside Jerusalem,
Found no great throne to dazzle his mother's eye.
He was so good a workman ... axe and saw
Did surely suit him better than a sword.
I was content if only he would wed
Some village girl of little Nazareth
And get me children with his own slow smile,
Deep thoughtful eyes and golden kingly brow.
"It seems but yesterday he played among
The shavings strewn on Joseph's work-shop floor.
The sunlight of the morning slanted through
The window—'t was in springtime—and across
The bench where Joseph sat, and then it lay
In golden glory on the boy's bright hair
And on the shavings that were golden too.
I saw him through the open door. I thought,
'My little king has found his golden crown.'
But unto Joseph I said nought at all.
"But now, ah me! he won no woman's love,
Nor loved one either as most men call love,
And so he had no child and he is gone
And I am left without him and alone."
So by her son's pale broken body mourned
The mother, dreaming on departed days.
And as with one who looks into the west,
Watching the embers of the outburned day
Crumble and cool and slowly droop and fade,
And will not take the darkling eastward path
Where lies his way until the last faint glow
Has left the sky and the early stars shine forth,
So did her dream cling to the ruined past
And all the joy they had in Nazareth
Before the years of doubt and trouble came.
Then, while loud laughter sounded up the hill
Where yet that ribald crew sang o'er the wine,
She bowed her head above her cradling arms
And softly sang, as to herself, the songs
Of Israel that once had served her well
To soothe the wakeful child.
But Magdalen
Arose upon her feet and tossed her cloak
Back from the midnight of her wind-blown hair
And lifted up her eyes into the dark
As though, beyond this circle of all our woe,
To read a hidden meaning in the stars.
"Aye, it is dark," she said. "The night comes on.
He was the sunshine of our little day.
The clouds unsettled softly and we saw
Ladders of glory climbing into light
Unspeakable, with dazzling interchange
Of Majesties and Powers. But suddenly
The tides of darkness whelm us round again
And this drear dwindled earth becomes once more
What it has ever been—a core of shade
And steaming vapor spinning in the dark,
A deeper clot of blackness in the void!
"The night comes on. 'T is hard to pierce the dark.
And if to me who loved him, whom he loved—
Though well thou sayest, 'Not as most men call love'—
Far harder will it be for those who hold
In memory no gesture of his hand,
No haunting echo of his patient voice,
Nor that dear trick of smiling with his eyes.
"O ceaseless tramp of armies down the years!
O maddened cries of 'Christ' and 'Son of Mary!'
While o'er the crying screams the hurtling death....
Thou gentle shepherd of the quiet fold,
Mild man of sorrows, hast thou done this thing,
Who camest not to bring peace but a sword?
Ah no, not thou, but only our childishness,
The pitifully childish heart of man
That cannot learn and know beyond a little.
"The priests and captains and the little kings
Will tear each other at the throat and cry:
'Thus said he, lived he; swear it or thou diest!'
But these shall pass and perish in the dark
While the lorn strays and outcasts of the world,
The souls whose pain has seared their pride to dust
And burned a way for love to enter in—
These only know his meaning and shall live.
"So is it as with one whose feet have trod
The valley of the shadow, who has seen
His dearest lowered into endless night.
All music holds for him a deeper strain
Of nobler meaning, and the flush of dawn,
High wind at noonday, crumbling sunset gold,
And the dear pathetic look of children's eyes—
All beauty pierces closer to his heart.
"Yea, thou thyself, pale youth upon the cross—
The godlike strength of thee was rooted deep
In human weakness. Even she who bore thee,
Seeing the man too nearly, missed the God,
Erring as fits the mother. Some will say
In coming years, I feel it in my heart,
That thou didst face thy death a conscious God,
Knowing almighty hands were stretched to snatch
And lift thee from the greedy clutching grave.
Falsely! Forgetting dark Gethsemane,—
Not knowing, as I know, what doubt assailed
Thy human heart until the latest breath.
Ah, what a trumpery death, what mockery
And mere theatric mimicry of pain,
If thou didst surely know thou couldst not die!
Thou didst not know. And whether even now
Thy straying ghost, like some great moth of night
Blown seaward through the shadow, flies and drifts
Along dim coasts and headlands of the dark,
A homeless wanderer up and down the void,
Or whether indeed thou art enthroned above
In light and life, I know not. This I know—
That in the moment of sheer certainty
My soul will die.
"No! On thy spirit lay
All the dark weight and mystery of pain
And all our human doubt and flickering hope,
Deathless despairs and treasuries of tears,
Gropings of spirit blindfold by the flesh
And grapplings with the fiend. Else were thy death
Less like a God's than even mine may be.
"Thou broken mother who canst see in him
Only the quiet man, the needful child,
And most of all the Babe of Bethlehem,
Let it suffice thee. Thy reward is great.
Who loveth God that never hath loved man?
Who knoweth man but cometh to know God?
Thou sacred, sorrowing mother, canst thou learn—
Thou who hast gone so softly in God's sight—
Of me, the scarlet woman of old days?
Come, let us talk together, thou and I.
Apart, we see him darkly, through a glass;
Together, we shall surely see aright.
Bring thou thine innocence, thy stainless soul,
And I will bring deep lore of suffering,
My dear-bought wisdom of defeat and pain.
For out of these may come, believe it thou,
Sanctities not like thine, but fit to bear
The bitter storms and whirlwinds of this world.
Aye, out of evil often springeth good,
And sweetest honey from the lion's mouth.
And that he knew. That very thing he meant
When he withdrew me from the pits of shame.
'T is I who see God shining through the man.
I see the deity, the godlike strength
In his supreme capacity for pain.
Nor have I known the cruel love of men
These many years to err when now I say
This man loved not like men but like a God.
Thou broken mother, weep not for the child,
Mourn not the man. Acclaim the risen Christ!"
She turned and touched the other lovingly,
Then stooped and peered into her darkened face.
The mother slept, forspent and overborne
By weariness and woe too great to bear.
She gently smiled. "So it is best," she said.
Tall and elate she stood, her shadowy hair
Blown back along the darkness and her eyes
That searched the distant spaces of the night
Splendid and glowing with an inward joy.
And over that dark hill of tragedy
And triumph, victory and dull despair,
Over the sleeping Roman soldiery,
Over the three stark crosses and the two
Who loved Him most, the lily and the rose,
Shone still and clear the great compassionate stars.
THE END
NOTE
Some of these poems have been published before in The Sunset Magazine, The Smart Set, Munsey's Magazine, The Bellman, The International, The Overland Monthly, The Youth's Companion, Poetry—A Magazine of Verse, The Harvard Graduates' Magazine, The Book News Monthly, Current Opinion, The Literary Digest, The Boston Transcript, and the Anthologies of Magazine Verse for 1915 and 1916. I wish to thank the editors of those publications in which they originally appeared for permission to reprint.