Nantucket windows

I said I had tamed them all and caged them,
The myriad birds of my dream;
Called them by docile names and paged them,
With law and precept I engaged them,
And I sat with my tame birds all around me—
Sat where you others came and found me.

See, here is Ardor—his wings are clipped;
And here is Truth (with spotted breast);
Imagination, preening her plumes;
Adventure, stolid, in golden barred rooms—
My myriad birds, my wild birds of no name,
“All tame (like yours) I said—all tame now,
Tame....”

And I sat with you, friends, and was suffered of you:
“The Bird-Fancier has tamed her birds—no fears.”
And I sat with you, listening through my tears.

For there was one wild bird (one I left wild, to see
That there ever had been with me such as he)—
One wild bird, clean as the sky—and free....

There come cries sometimes—black ducks, grey gulls,
Plover, wild swan, sickle billed curlews;
There are long dotted streamers across the sky
Of freedom and quest that cannot die....
There come songs....
And I sit and smile, with my tame birds preening,
From my window leaning....

Then he flies by the casement....
A stir of wings—a shape on the stars;
My head lifted, my heart on fire....

“My soul on your wings—Wild Bird!”

SABATIA POND.

Where the soft circle of Sabatia stars
The water grasses in a sprinkled arc;
And golden ripples break on sandy bars,
And thin blue sails of dragon flies embark—

I think each year, how many sunsets weep;
That day must die; and tinted tears must fall
There where pond ripples to white clethra creep,
And where the margin’s sweet with honey-ball.

I think that where those sky-tears placid lay,
That golden evening stars have also lain;
Reflected on the rosy surface, they
Have dreamed a dream, and wandered on again.

So, where the sunset clouds in sorrow crept,
Now rosy shapes through water grasses trail;
And on that bed where gypsy starlight slept,
Is left a rose-colored star-patterned veil.

THE LOST DRYAD.

I am a lost dryad,
Wandering tranced in the lovely blossoming wood,
Following paths where the shy bright berries wait,
Entering glades where the birds have secrets and nests....
I am a lost dryad!

One came who woke me and bade me come forth,
Gladly I stepped from the tree and put out my hand;
Gladly, like children, we hurried forth to the sun,
But our play was only begun ere a bitter Will had hushed it—
I am a lost dryad!

I cannot go back to the Tree—the bark is mended and closed,
I cannot remain in the wood for the flowers are dumb and reproachful;
The birds are afraid to have my eyes on their nests,
The brooks have closed their waters like windows that gleam....
I am a lost dryad!

And so I wander in smiling pride of my state,
Purer than woodland things that will have none of my pureness;
Wiser than human things that do not reck of my wisdom;
Lost in the dream of a thing that was dimly shown me,
Bewildered, though calm, broken and proud like a princess—
I am a lost dryad!

Ye who listen in the trees, O, never come forth
Unless ye have spells to bind the Intruder unto thee.
Unless ye have spells to hold the Enchantment forever,
Stay in your tree prisons—there at least there are weavings
And pleasant sense as of home and things familiar.
I go wandering forever, alien and speechless,
Chance that broke the bark of the tree is formless and vanished;
Now the healed heart of my home no longer opens—
I am a lost dryad!

PATTRAN.

Does the Moon love best
When the trees write fortunes on the West?
When the webs are done,
All the milkweed spun,
And when brown roads up to the blue sky run?

Does the Moon love best
When the budding creeps from the sunny South
Where the crocus leaps,
And the robin cheeps,
And the earth is a-blossom with rain-wet mouth?

Does the Moon love best
The wild winds driving out of the North?
The hazel rod,
And the brown seed-pod,
And the Autumn censers swinging forth?

Oh! the Gypsy Moon,
Wandering ways so silverly!
Hers is the love of cricket-shoon,
And wigwam corn,
And the smell of morn,
And October grasses on vagrom dune!

ROOF-TREE.

Far from the highway stands the empty home,
With unhinged door and warped and shrunken stair;
Over its walls the chilly shadows roam,
Rank to its lintels huddled ivies come;
Past its blind face the startled swallows fare.

Wrapped in its memories, it stands aloof,
Strange to itself, patient in wind and rain;
No tender hearth-breath curls around its roof,
No voice within welcomes or calls reproof;
No child’s face peers behind the cobwebbed pane.

Let us not wonder why—we shame it more
With echoing voice and stir. Let us depart,
Turning in pity from the hapless door,
Closing the dumb gate in awed silence, for
This is the dead hope of a human heart.

EVENING AT FRANKLIN VALLEY FARM. 1918.

The lantern throws a wavering shadow round
The umber aisles; the cows in stanchions rowed
Turn their soft gaze, their curving horns surround
The fragrant tossing of their rustling food;
Their limpid eyes, their breathing, slow, profound,
Seem on some great unworded Theme to brood—
Some evenness of sky and solitude,
Or placid pool or hill with maples crowned.

From stall to stall the horses’ darkling eyes
And upflung heads connote our interlude;
And scenting nostrils whicker their surprise
At human forms that on this peace intrude;
The shadows smell of milk, and straw, and rude
Farm implements accent the lantern-patch;
Ringed globules tremble on the bundled thatch,
Leaping to dusky beam and rafter wood.

Past horned head and ponderous chestnut flank,
The fitful light-dance swings along the floor,
And wanders to the star-specked aqueous blank
Made by the sliding open of the door;
A snowy feather, where the pigeons soar,
Wavers adown, and odors keen and rank
Filter through darkness of a Minster-grey
Where filmy cobwebs swim along the hay.

Perhaps these beasts of burden wait once more
For Wise Men, and a Shining all around,
To see Redemption by the Manger door,
Illumined faces on the rushy ground;
Perhaps they draw their slow breath, tranced and bound,
Instinctly taught that they new forms shall wear,
Who shall some day be swift, no burdens bear,
And have their tongues made eloquent in sound.

But, if the hallowed shining does not come,
And they look through the dark with unchanged stare,
And if those great grave mouths stay always dumb,
’Twill not be ignorance but some truth they share;
Who have no doubts, no clamorings and no fears,
But faithful to the clumsy guise they wear,
Walk patient down their plodding driven years.

While we in princedoms of our God’s own form,
Wistfully pause in their oblivioned light,
Longing to stay with uncouth beasts tonight;
For that their calm would keep our spirits warm
And soothe us back to the glad human norm.
Would gladly share with them their sacred things,
Their freedom from our restless questionings,
So we won quietude from stress and storm.

Mingling our vigil with their Burden-Speech,
Their revery.
We would take of that wisdom they can teach,
Learn how this comes to be ...
That brooding in the silent darkness here,
Slaves of a labor lasting all the year,
They, and not we,
Become the Masters of Tranquility!

VISION.

I saw the Search-light, like a seraph, fly
Over the water’s moved mysterious face,
Bridging the harbor, pushing darkness by,
Pouring its flood upon a far-off place.

I thought—no gleam can travel where they wait,
No human light throws silver on their shore;
Their crystal Sea’s unmargined like the great
Love which they know, and rest in evermore.

I thought—no light can show the flowers they bear,
Their heaven-looks, the tender things they say;
No light reveals the raiment that they wear,
Nor all the bliss of their unwearied Day.

And yet, who knows? So long have yearning men
Turned to those borders searching, wistful, gaze;
What stainless light may flash upon our ken,
What glorious faces smile at our amaze?

Dim reaches wait, untrodden shores exist,
The sea of Death completes the solemn scheme;
But comes the light to sweep away the mist,
And comes the heart to rightly read the Dream.
* * * *
I see the Search-light in the years to come,
Moving anew on borders strange and far;
I see new coast lines set with lights of home,
Men’s faces turned toward a near-burning Star.

LOST BEAUTY.

Because my fathers did, I seek my bed
While winter night over my dreaming head
Opens its gorgeous book of trees and stars
Upon a world that sleeps. The Eastern bars
Are crossed by ships, all constellation shaped,
That sail the winter hills where snowy trees are draped.
So I, whose muscles and whose blood are bound
To this faint-hearted scheme of life, do pray
Those that come after me, that they shall found
Some life that does not sever night and day;
So when God’s fleet sweeps up the midnight skies,
His starry ships will hail unsleeping eyes.

THE BRANCH OF STRANGE BERRIES.

(An Old Man Tells a Story to Some Boys.)

Black tunnels grooved the sea
Into caves of night;
And the furrowed walls of foam
Were jagged chrysolite.
No star stayed to chart the way—
We shuddered, lurching on boiling spray
In piteous plight of swinging stay
And black sails torn to flapping rags,
Blowing in knots and bellying bags.

I could not sleep; I walked with the salt
Caking in rifts on my face,
And I heard my men up in the bows
Cursing our dreary case.
They ground their bitter words in their jaws
As we reeled in the furred seas’ tigress paws.

Paladin came with his eyes of omen,
His loose mouth hanging dry:
“Senor,” he said, “We men leave women—”
He turned and sneered at the sky—
“Maybe your love is the love of the ghost
That shrieks your name from a rock-cursed coast,
But we know there’s no land like the land thou dreamest—
No land like thy boyish fancy deemest....

“Man, if thou knowest the way, turn back
Over the lost and surging track.
The men are mad for the food they lack,
Two ships are lost, the water-skins sag;
Scurvy’s aboard, the torn sails drag....
St. Mary! Thou knowest there is no land
Offers food nor place for our starving band;
Thou and thy dupes our lives have hurled
White bones on the reef of a Western World.
With your jewel-bought quadrants and King-got-gold
Our homes and kith and kin ye have sold....”

Paladin whined: “Turn back, turn back
Over the lost and tossing track;
Up from this dreaming, silly and slack.”

I turned on him, I shook my head,
Through burned and bleeding lips I said:
“Sail on....” “Sail on,” I said.
(Though it seemed to me I spoke from the dead),
“Sail on—Sail on,” I said.

Then came all terrible wolves of that crew,
Staring at me—half dead, they knew;
Yet maddened because my words were few.
The blood was gone from their hanging skins,
The rags hung dank on their horny shins;
They mouthed and muttered: “His eyes roll wild,
He babbles now like a peevish child.
O shame, thou madman, thou dangerous Mind,
That dreams of a country we do not find;
While we with the blazing sea go blind....
Art minded to sail till the last one’s dead ...?”

“Sail on.... Sail on....” I said.

All night we climbed those seas that mounted,
Towering to skies that nightly counted
The empty coin of the foreign stars;
We saw foam rips on the rock-reefed bars,
The sea shuttles kept up their ghastly heaving
On looms of white their black cloth weaving,
And I thought that they wove me a winding sheet
That slowly wrapped me from head to feet....

Day after day the salt spray caked
On my sunken eyes that burned and ached,
And the curses fell as my body fell;
I lay slant like a corpse on the all-day swell,
(Were it day or night, I could not tell),
But they called for my blood—yea, their knives were keen
For the blood of a man, whose fault, I ween
Was: “He sailed for a country he had not seen.”

Day by day muttered hate; thick slime
Oozing from mouths that judged my crime,
Till they told me: “You die!” And set the time.
I crawled to the bow and looked out ahead
For the time was short and the land I dreamed
Hidden, but near, me-seemed.
And then—Jesu!—atop one foaming wave
The Miracle rode—the Carvéd Stick,
Knobby and rough, its black bark brave
Notched with rough taboo words and signs
Of living beings—strange words and lines....

And then—O Mother of God! it sailed—
The branch of strange berries, its long bough trailed
On a wave that broke where the sunlight paled.
Red toppling balls on the white sea-crest
That heaved it up from the shining West,
And bore it straight to my sobbing breast.

The Branch of Strange Berries sailed forth to me
For the sign of Land and fecundity!

Shuddering, staggering as one dead,
I heard them.... “Land.... Land.... Land....” they said.
“Land!” they shrieked and again they shrieked;
The wallowing caravel’s timbers creaked
And I sank down on the deck quite dumb,
For my answering miracle had come.
The unbelievable Land was there;
It slowly loomed on the atmosphere.
Oh, the dim, dark, strange, unspeakable shore,
Fringed out on the blue ...! Then I heard them roar,
“San Salvador.... San Salvador ...!”
They tossed up their arms, they leaped on the deck,
Black faces grinned through crusted fleck;
Bloody-bearded eye and skeleton hand
Pointed me.... “Senor.... Senor.... Land!”
Water they brought in an olive wood cup—
The last roiled drops; to my feet they crept,
And laughed and kissed me, and raved and wept,
And my fame they sang (I, who had been
Believer in things I had not seen).

Judge of me, God, that I never quailed,
But that as through hell and horror we sailed,
“Sail on.... Sail on....” I said.
Judge of me, God, who, when I cried
For sign, sent the carved stick overside,
And the Branch of Strange Berries that rode the tide.
And pardon my sins, for I was, I ween,
True to the Country I had not seen....

Then, Jesu ... judge of those whose speed
To those new fair shores was confident greed,
(Now that of courage there was no need);
Who called me “Master” and called me “Friend,”
When the bitter doubting was at an end....
Pity all men whose fate has been—
“They steer for a Country they have not seen!”

FROM A WINDOW.

On other quiet summer nights like these,
I have leaned forth where honey-suckles pressed
The twilight pane, and watched the priory West
Send forth its cowled clouds over purple seas—
Seeing, through eve-blurred glass, the waters rise
Beyond sea-lavender’s fringed traceries;
Worshipping, as I worship now, the Sign
That God and Earth are ever one Divine.

Only, the flower of lily in the green,
The scarlet feathered black-bird in the sedge;
Even the white shell by the water’s edge,
Seem to have seen God—whom I have not seen.
Yet with these wistful eyes that may not know,
Let me dare every doubt and darkness. So,
Walking blind roads, spanning all voids, I tread
Earth’s flowing Beauty to its Fountain Head.

RESPONSIBLE.

I looked over the purple fields and out to the sunlit sea
And the curve and waft of a gull’s white wing was solace enough for me;
And I had signals from tall green grass and the light of sand on the beach,
But I heard the laughter of girls together,
Young and vibrant with sunlit weather,
Laughter of skyward reach.
And hurrying by with ardent paces,
I saw anticipance on their faces ...
Wisdom no age can teach.
Youth with unconscious gleam and shining
Kept its eyes on a glad divining,
Keyed to the tall cliff reach;
I saw the bloom of these girls together,
Bloom as of grape and peach;
And they plained of the wearying wars of men,
Quivering.... “Give us our world again.
Give us the youth that shall clasp us close,
Give us the heart of the perfumed rose,
Life is our gift while the world is young;
Shall our eyes be blinded, our song unsung?
Give us our destiny of yore—
Do ye pour us all in your Hopper-of-War?”

Only the young girls down on the beach;
But out to the world their voices reach,
Voices of maidens over the dune,
Flickering back in a windy rune:
“Give us our oldtime destiny,
Our tall young mates and our babes to hold;
Is life for us a tale that is told ...
Caught in your Battle-Industry?
Shall we grow wrinkled and pale and old,
Pouring the lead and smoothing the bore
In munition moulding forevermore?
Shall our slender fingers pick lint and bands
For the shell-shocked eyes and the frozen hands?
Shall we give our youth for the killing of men,
And turn us to blood and hating again?
Give us our destinies of yore,
Give us our homes by city and shore ...
Do ye pour us all in your Hopper-of-War?”

Then I saw the sky in a passion of grey
Sweep them with fog and shut them away;
And their voices seemed to die with the years,
And the mist dripped round them with furtive tears;
And the waves, wild foaming from tidal deep,
Stiffened and blanched in their curling leap.
And a bird, mist-baffled with heavy wing,
Beat on the chill air wavering....
And I watched the young forms wistful go
Where the foggy fields stretched dun and low;
And their eyes were heavy with solemn woe.
While far up the beach and across the sea,
The voices of youth cast a curse on me;
And the ancient weed on the windblown shore
Bared me the barren breast of War.

TREE WORSHIP.

My room has great windows,
Clear water-like windows
Awash with golden sun;
My books shine green and red,
And the bed is white as milk;
The rugs flecked like a brook,
And the shelf holds a silver bowl
And a candle of honey-gold.

But I look out of the room,
Away from the wine-red books,
To one gaunt shag-bark tree
That stands playing itself
Like a swaying cloud-keyed Harp,
Or writing upon the sky,
With a myriad twig-keen pens.

My room has a cushion, soft
As sea foam on the sand;
But I look out on the tree—
It draws me, holds me, speaks,
And does not speak; is still,
Dumb, yet singing and glad.

And I know that I, in the room,
Silken and warm and soft,
Am as ignorant as the man
Who sat in a Dacian cave,
Clad in blood-soaked skins,
Gnawing at roots and nuts.

A man who looked at a tree
And feared it, and felt its spell;
And bowed him down in awe,
And sacrificed, and prayed;
And was subject to the Tree,
Thinking it might be—God!

ANOTHER CHANCE.

Spring’s first Robin perched on the apple tree;
“Hello!” said I. “Hello!” said he.
He ruffled his feathers and cocked his eye;
“We’re back,” said he. “We’re back,” said I.

He bit the cold buds cheerfully;
“I see it’s the same old you,” said he.
I looked him over, perched on high;
“I see it’s the same old you,” said I.

“What do you work for this year?” asked he;
“The same old hopes of last year,” said I.
“What do you work for this year?” asked I;
“The same old hopes of last year,” said he—

“What? After the Cat and that tragedy
Of your whole nest blown from the apple tree?
You’ve got the courage that takes you high,
If you build again after that,” said I.

“Well, what of your dreams that didn’t come true,
And the world that mocked and cheated you?
You must be brave, and I do not see
How you dare build again,” said he.

“What d’ye want this year?” asked I;
“A strong nest under a placid sky
And your brood to cherish tenderly?”
“Well, you’ve got it about right,” said he.

“What do you want this year?” asked he;
“An answer to all the Mystery?
Some haven within a faith’s clear sky?”
“Please God! Yes, Robin, dear,” said I.

“Well, Spring’s here, anyhow,” said he;
“Good luck!” and flew from the apple tree;
“Yes, what ever the hopes that die,
God gives us another Spring,” said I.