Behind the Arras: A Book of the Unseen

The tall carnations down the garden walks

Bowed on their stalks.

Said Jock-a-dreams to John-a-nods,

“What are the odds

That we shall wake up here within the sun,

When time is done,

And pick up all the treasures one by one

Our hands let fall in sleep?” “You have begun

To mutter in your dreams,”

Said John-a-nods to Jock-a-dreams,

And they both slept again.

The tall carnations in the sunset glow

Burned row on row.

Said John-a-nods to Jock-a-dreams,

“To me it seems

A thousand years since last you stirred and spoke,

And I awoke.

Was that the wind then trying to provoke

His brothers in their blessed sleep?” “They choke,

Who mutter in their nods,”

Said Jock-a-dreams to John-a-nods.

And they both slept again.

The tall carnations only heard a sigh

Of dusk go by.

There paused to shut the door

A fellow called the Wind.

With mystery before,

And reticence behind,

A portal waits me too

In the glad house of spring,

One day I shall pass through

And leave you wondering.

It lies beyond the marge

Of evening or of prime,

Silent and dim and large,

The gateway of all time.

There troop by night and day

My brothers of the field;

And I shall know the way

Their woodsongs have revealed.

The dusk will hold some trace

Of all my radiant crew

Who vanished to that place,

Ephemeral as dew.

Into the twilight dun,

Blue moth and dragon-fly

Adventuring alone,—

Shall be more brave than I?

There innocents shall bloom

And the white cherry tree,

With birch and willow plume

To strew the road for me.

The wilding orioles then

Shall make the golden air

Heavy with joy again,

And the dark heart shall dare

Resume the old desire,

The exigence of spring

To be the orange fire

That tips the world’s gray wing.

And the lone wood-bird—Hark,

The whippoorwill night long

Threshing the summer dark

With his dim flail of song!—

Shall be the lyric lift,

When all my senses creep,

To bear me through the rift

In the blue range of sleep.

And so I pass beyond

The solace of your hand.

But ah, so brave and fond!

Within that morrow land,

Where deed and daring fail,

But joy forevermore

Shall tremble and prevail

Against the narrow door,

Where sorrow knocks too late,

And grief is overdue,

Beyond the granite gate

There will be thoughts of you.

“Hospes comesque corporis,

Quae nunc abitis in loca?”

Cease, Wind, to blow

And drive the peopled snow,

And move the haunted arras to and fro,

And moan of things I fear to know

Yet would rend from thee, Wind, before I go

On the blind pilgrimage.

Cease, Wind, to blow.

Thy brother too,

I leave no print of shoe

In all these vasty rooms I rummage through,

No word at threshold, and no clue

Of whence I come and whither I pursue

The search of treasures lost

When time was new.

Thou janitor

Of the dim curtained door,

Stir thy old bones along the dusty floor

Of this unlighted corridor.

Open! I have been this dark way before;

Thy hollow face shall peer

In mine no more. . . . .

Sky, the dear sky!

Ah, ghostly house, good-by!

I leave thee as the gauzy dragon-fly

Leaves the green pool to try

His vast ambition on the vaster sky,—

Such valor against death

Is deity.

What, thou too here,

Thou haunting whisperer?

Spirit of beauty immanent and sheer,

Art thou that crooked servitor,

Done with disguise, from whose malignant leer

Out of the ghostly house

I fled in fear?

O Beauty, how

I do repent me now,

Of all the doubt I ever could allow

To shake me like the aspen bough;

Nor once imagine that unsullied brow

Could wear the evil mask

And still be thou!

Bone of thy bone,

Breath of thy breath alone,

I dare resume the silence of a stone,

Or explore still the vast unknown,

Like a bright sea-bird through the morning blown,

With all his heart one joy,

From zone to zone.