THE SECRET WAY

By
ZONA GALE

Birth
Christmas
Mothers to Men
Heart’s Kindred
Friendship Village
Neighborhood Tales
Peace in Friendship Village
When I Was a Little Girl
Friendship Village Love Stories
The Loves of Pelleas and Ettarre

[Image unavailable: portrait of the author.]

Copyrighted by E. O. Hoppé

THE SECRET WAY

BY
ZONA GALE

New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1921

All rights reserved

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Copyright, 1921,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and printed. Published September, 1921.

Press of
J. J. Little & Ives Company
New York, U. S. A.

“A great life, an entire civilization lies just outside the pale of common thought.... Such life is different from any yet imagined.... I see as clearly as the noonday that this is not all. I see other and higher conditions than existence.... The very idea that there is another Idea is something gained.”

—Richard Jeffries.

PART I (EARLY VERSE)
	PAGE
	The Secret Way	4
Terza Rima:
I	Old Talk	8
II	Magic	1
III	Night is Here	13
Ballades of Three Senses:
I	Ballade of Eyes That See	14
II	Ballade of Listening	16
III	Ballade of Old Perfumes	18
	Hokku Thoughts	20
Sonnets and Variations:
	When Did Spring Die?	22
	One Dawn She Awoke Me	23
	There Are Within Us Lives We Never Live	24
	Last Night I Dreamed I Saw My Mother Young	25
	Why Am I Silent?	26
	I Wandered Where the Wonder of the Sky—	27
	Here a Hill Field	28
	Return	29
	By My Side All Day Another Went	30
In J. P. P.’s Metre:
I		31
II		32
III	(To a Poet)	33
	Exercise in Spenserians	35
PART II
	I Know Where a Dove	51
	Prolocutor	52
	Wonder	53
	A Meeting	54
	Half Thought	55
	Epitaphs	56
	Alias	57
	In Arvia’s Room	58
	Half Thought	64
	Umbra	65
	Wraiths	66
	Half Thought	67
	Wind Song	68
	Half Thought	70
	Troth	71
	Beloved, It Is Daybreak on the Hills	72
	Credo	73
	Who Is This That Is So Near?	74
	Inmost One	75
	Stone Cell	77
	Light	78
	Half Thought	81
	Contours	82
PART III
News Notes of Portage, Wisconsin:
I	Kilbourn Road	85
II	Violin	91
III	North Star	96
Prose Notes:
	The Bureau	98
	Minuet	99
	The Dining Room	101
	Paradise and Purgatory	103
	At Least	105
	Roses	106
	Spring Evening	109
	Second Sight	111
	Does Something Wait?	113
	Doors	114
	Levitation	116
	Enchantment	118

PART I

EARLY VERSE

THE SECRET WAY

Stark on the window’s early grey
Lined out in squares by casement bars,
She saw her lily lift to take
The sinking stars.

Within the room’s delaying dark
Intimate things lay dim and still
With all their day-time friendliness
Gone false and chill.

Her hand upon the coverlet,
Her face low in the linen’s cleft,
They were as wan as water-flowers
By light bereft.

And never was bloom brought to her couch
But shed the odour of a sigh
Because she was as white as they,
And they must die.

“O Pale, lit deep within the dark
Of your young eyes, a stifled light
Leaps thin and keen as melody
And leavens night.

“It is a light that did not burn
When you were gay at mart and fair;
O Pale, what is that starry fire,
Fed unaware?”

Then softly she: “I may not tell
What other eyes behold in mine;
But I have melted night and day
In some wild wine.

“I may not read the graven cup
Exhaustless as a brimming bell
Distilling silver; but I drank
And all is well.

“One morn like this, bitter still,
I waited for the early stir
Of those who slept the while I watched
What muffled wonders were.

“I saw my lily on the sill;
I saw my mirror on the wall
Take light that was not; and I saw
My spectral taper tall.

“Why I had known these quiet things
Since I could speak. Yet suddenly
They all touched hands and in one breath
They spoke to me.

“I may not tell you what they said.
The strange part is that I must lie
And never tell you what we say——
These things and I.

“I only know that common things
Bear sudden little spirits set
Free by the rose of dawn and by
Night’s violet.

“I only know that when I hear
Clear tone, the haunted echoes bear
Legions of little winged feet
On printless air.

“And when warm colour weds my look
A word is uttered tremblingly,
With meaning fall—but I know not
What it may be.

“I only know that now I find
Abiding beauty everywhere;
Or if it bide not, that it fades
Is still more fair.

I long to question those I love
And yet I know not what to say;
I am alone as one upon
Some secret way.

“My words are barren of my bliss;
The strange part is that I must lie
And never tell you what we say—
These things and I.

“So will it be when I am not.
A little more perhaps to tell;
Yet then as now I may not say
What I know well.”

She died when all the east was red.
And we are they who know her fate
Because we love the way of life
That she had found too late.

TERZA RIMA

I: Old Talk

Old Eyelot sees what never is.
She says: “Pale lights move on the hill,
Deep in the air are treasuries.”

She says: “I never go to mill
Wood-way but something walks with me,
So go wood-way I always will.

Wood-walking, I go mad to see
What will die out just as I turn
To catch it by the crooked tree.

I pass the bush that I saw burning
With wild black flame at full of moon.
That was a sight to set one learning

What things one merely doubts at noon.
A-well, I know not what I learned.
God send that you may learn it soon.

Windows for walls, thoughts that have turned
Back into folk, gateways of horn,
And the wild hearts that men have burned,

These things I see. And ay, one morn
I saw the little people bear
Away my little child new-born.

They gave her food yielded in air,
Honey and rose-down.
I looked and she was very fair.

So when the people of the town
(Who did not know) believed her dead
And wrapped her in a cloudy gown

I did not mourn. I only said:
“She is the daughter of the Day
And with the Night she has been wed.

“I am the mother of that one
Born for two worlds. And I am she
Who sees more things than moon and sun
And little stars will ever see.”

* * *

Old Eyelot sees what never is.
She says: “Green lights move on the leas,
Deep in the air are treasuries.”
I wonder what old Eyelot sees?

II: Magic

An ancient wildwood showed its heart to me.
(O Little Wind that brought me what it said!)
I went within its great nave reverently.

There dwelt the silence ever lightly wed
With winged sound. There the persuading green
Took ancient citadels with soundless tread.

Was not the opening blue of buds between
Soft solitary leaves a lyric set
To music of the things that lift and lean?

My hands were mother-tender of the net
Of silk they found. My feet were light
To loose no dew from the least violet.

The fragile fabric of dissolved night
Seemed in the air. A million little minds
Kept concert in the very realm of sight.

O—and suddenly as sunlight finds
White towers I heard the ancient wood unfold
Its ancient secret piped by little winds.

“Behold the beauty in me. O behold
The beauty that makes utter peace, in me;
Beauty that is immeasurably old.”

The whole world like a bell heard echoingly.
Words wonderful! I found a fairy bed
And saw that which the wildwood let me see.
(O Little Wind that brought me what it said!)

III: Night Is Here

Night is here and star-rise
And demeanour of the dark.
Visioned by my closed eyes

Now I lie within an arc.
Lyric loom,
All the silence is a-hark

For a poppy bud to bloom
In some flowery harmony
Woven through this quiet room.

Prick of light and shadow take me,
Fire and stars and voices keep,
Fairy clamour will not wake me ...
... Sleep.

But that warm grave of sleep
Nothing save myself immures.
Singing light and dreaming deep
Now my spirit walks with yours.

BALLADES OF THREE SENSES

I

BALLADE OF EYES THAT SEE

Leaves loosened when there blow
No winds; long fields whose green
Dim beneath the darling bow
Of the May-moon is seen;
Robins at dawn; the keen
Sour odour of vines—these show
Frail meanings caught between
The bourne of yes and no.
Yet there is tender art
To fathom what they mean,
Deep in the heart.

I go among them. Now I lean
Where willows fret the flow
Of water that has been
For miles to glean.
And in the osiers—O
An ouphe, an elfin queen.
I did not see her—lo,
The osiers did not part,
Yet she was there I ween,
Deep in the heart.

Envoy

Spells, lay upon the screen
The things that move me so.
I ask the better part:
To see with eyes serene
What things these others know——
Deep in the heart.

II

BALLADE OF LISTENING

On summer slopes lit white
With old desire of day,
The air with pearl bedight
Prepares for gold array.
The sun-drugged stars delay
To die; the winds take fright
And question, and betray
Frail sounds for my delight.
O voice of ancient springs!
O little echo-flight!
O harp of things!

In grasses that lie bright,
In grasses that lie grey,
Up on the clouded height
Down in the zone of May
Are printless feet astray.
Airy the hands that smite
The lyre in nameless lay;
And the great gods invite
Echo of earth chantings
On quiet wing away.
O—harp of things!

Envoy

Harp, is it this that you say?
“Delicate is my might,
Quickening the voice that sings;
For I am sense grown fey.
I am word of the morn and the night.”
O harp of things!

III

BALLADE OF OLD PERFUMES

Now out of dream old springs
Flow soft with many red
And golden fluttering things.
Sweetly from underhead
All the wan air is fed
With faint rememberings
Of hours long buried.
Rose-rumours steal and stir;
They come on wind-like wings.
The old odours that were
Nard and mint and myrrh.

I think that as there clings
Colour to blossoms shed,
So love and all that sings,
So hearts that beat and bled
Were with old fragrance wed.
Now when the garden flings
On many a secret thread
Sweets to the wanderer,
Some buried witch-bell rings
The old odours that were
Nard and mint and myrrh.

Envoy

Spring, let me lay my head
Where the wild season sings
Some dead girl’s heart from her.
O young heart, ages dead,
Old odours thrill mute strings.
The old odours that were
Nard and mint and myrrh.