THE SISTERS’ TRAGEDY .
. . 9
THE LAST CÆSAR . . . 15
IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY .
. . 21
ALEC YEATON’S SON . . .
23
AT THE FUNERAL OF A
MINOR POET . . . 27
BATUSCHKA . . . 31
ACT V . . . 33
TENNYSON . . . 35
THE SHIPMAN’S TALE . .
. 37
“I VEX ME NOT WITH
BROODING ON THE YEARS” . . . 39
MONODY ON THE DEATH OF
WENDELL PHILLIPS . . . 40
ECHO-SONG . . . 47
A MOOD . . . 50
GUILIELMUS REX . . . 51
“PILLARED ARCH AND
SCULPTURED TOWER” . . . 53
THRENODY . . . 54
SESTET . . . 56
A TOUCH OF NATURE . . .
57
MEMORY . . . 58
“I’LL NOT CONFER WITH
SORROW” . . . 59
A DEDICATION . . . 60
NO SONGS IN WINTER . .
. 61
“LIKE CRUSOE, WALKING
BY THE LONELY STRAND” . . . 62
THE LETTER . . . 63
SARGENT’S PORTRAIT OF
EDWIN BOOTH AT “THE PLAYERS” . . . 65
PAULINE PAVLOVNA . . .
69
CORYDON: A PASTORAL . .
. 87
AT A READING . . . 92
THE MENU . . . 95
AN ELECTIVE COURSE . .
. 97
L’EAU DORMANTE . . .
101
THALIA . . . 103
PALINODE . . . 107
A PETITION . . . 108
A. D. 1670 AGLÆ, a widow MURIEL, her unmarried sister. IT happened once, in that brave land
that lies
For half the
twelvemonth wrapt in sombre skies,
Two sisters loved one
man. He being dead,
Grief loosed the lips
of her he had not wed,
And all the passion
that through heavy years
Had masked in smiles
unmasked itself in tears.
No purer love may
mortals know than this,
The hidden love that
guards another’s bliss.
High in a turret’s
westward-facing room,
Whose painted window
held the sunset’s bloom,
The two together
grieving, each to each
Unveiled her soul with
sobs and broken speech.
Both still were young,
in life’s rich summer yet;
And one was dark, with
tints of violet
In hair and eyes, and
one was blond as she
Who rose--a second
daybreak--from the sea,
Gold-tressed and
azure-eyed. In that lone place,
Like dusk and dawn,
they sat there face to face.
She spoke the first
whose strangely silvering hair
No wreath had worn, nor
widow’s weed might wear,
And told her blameless
love, and knew no shame--
Her holy love that,
like a vestal flame
Beside the sacred body
of some queen
Within a guarded crypt
had burned unseen
From weary year to
year. And she who heard
Smiled proudly through
her tears and said no word,
But, drawing closer, on
the troubled brow
Laid one long kiss, and
that was words enow!
MURIEL. Be still, my heart!
Grown patient with thine ache,
Thou shouldst be dumb,
yet needs must speak, or break.
The world is empty now
that he is gone.
AGLÆ. Ay, sweetheart!
MURIEL. None was like him,
no, not one.
From other men he stood
apart, alone
In honor spotless as
unfallen snow.
Nothing all evil was it
his to know;
His charity still found
some germ, some spark
Of light in natures
that seemed wholly dark.
He read men’s souls;
the lowly and the high
Moved on the self-same
level in his eye.
Gracious to all, to
none subservient,
Without offence he
spake the word he meant--
His word no trick of
tact or courtly art,
But the white flowering
of the noble heart.
Careless he was of much
the world counts gain,
Careless of self, too
simple to be vain,
Yet strung so finely
that for conscience-sake
He would have gone like
Cranmer to the stake.
I saw--how could I help
but love? And you--
AGLÆ. At this perfection
did I worship too . . .
’Twas this that stabbed
me. Heed not what I say!
I meant it not, my wits
are gone astray,
With all that is and
has been. No, I lie--
Had he been less
perfection, happier I!
MURIEL. Strange words and
wild! ’Tis the distracted mind
Breathes them, not you,
and I no meaning find.
AGLÆ. Yet ’twere as
plain as writing on a scroll
Had you but eyes to
read within my soul.--
How a grief hidden
feeds on its own mood,
Poisons the healthful
currents of the blood
With bitterness, and
turns the heart to stone!
I think, in truth, ’twere
better to make moan,
And so be done with it.
This many a year,
Sweetheart, have I
laughed lightly and made cheer,
Pierced through with
sorrow!
Then the widowed one
With sorrowfullest eyes
beneath the sun,
Faltered, irresolute,
and bending low
Her head, half
whispered,
Dear, how could you
know?
What masks are
faces!--yours, unread by me
These seven long
summers; mine, so placidly
Shielding my woe! No
tremble of the lip,
No cheek’s quick pallor
let our secret slip!
Mere players we, and
she that played the queen,
Now in her homespun,
looks how poor and mean!
How shall I say it, how
find words to tell
What thing it was for
me made earth a hell
That else had been my
heaven! ’Twould blanch your
cheek
Were I to speak it.
Nay, but I will speak,
Since like two souls at
compt we seem to stand,
Where nothing may be
hidden. Hold my hand,
But look not at me!
Noble ’twas, and meet,
To hide your heart, nor
fling it at his feet
To lie despised there.
Thus saved you our pride
And that white honor
for which earls have died.
You were not all
unhappy, loving so!
I with a difference
wore my weight of woe.
My lord was he. It was
my cruel lot,
My hell, to love
him--for he loved me not!
Then came a silence.
Suddenly like death
The truth flashed on
them, and each held her breath--
A flash of light
whereby they both were slain,
She that was loved and
she that loved in vain!
Now there was one who
came in later days
To play at Emperor: in
the dead of night
Stole crown and
sceptre, and stood forth to light
In sudden purple. The
dawn’s straggling rays
Showed Paris fettered,
murmuring in amaze,
With red hands at her
throat--a piteous sight.
Then the new Cæsar,
stricken with affright
At his own daring,
shrunk from public gaze
In the Elysée, and had
lost the day
But that around him
flocked his birds of prey,
Sharp-beaked,
voracious, hungry for the deed.
’Twixt hope and fear
behold great Cæsar hang!
Meanwhile, methinks, a
ghostly laughter rang
Through the rotunda of
the Invalides.
What if the boulevards,
at set of sun,
Reddened, but not with
sunset’s kindly glow?
What if from quai and
square the murmured woe
Swept heavenward,
pleadingly? The prize was won,
A kingling made and
Liberty undone.
No Emperor, this, like
him awhile ago,
But his Name’s shadow;
that one struck the blow
Himself, and sighted
the street-sweeping gun!
This was a man of
tortuous heart and brain,
So warped he knew not
his own point of view--
The master of a dark,
mysterious smile.
And there he plotted,
by the storied Seine
And in the fairy
gardens of St. Cloud,
The Sphinx that puzzled
Europe, for awhile.
I see him as men saw
him once--a face
Of true Napoleon
pallor; round the eyes
The wrinkled care;
mustache spread pinion-wise,
Pointing his smile with
odd sardonic grace
As wearily he turns him
in his place,
And bends before the
hoarse Parisian cries--
Then vanishes, with
glitter of gold-lace
And trumpets blaring to
the patient skies.
Not thus he vanished
later! On his path
The Furies waited for
the hour and man,
Foreknowing that they
waited not in vain.
Then fell the day, O
day of dreadful wrath!
Bow down in shame, O
crimson-girt Sedan!
Weep, fair Alsace!
weep, loveliest Lorraine!
So mused I, sitting
underneath the trees
In that old garden of
the Tuileries,
Watching the dust of
twilight sifting down
Through chestnut boughs
just toucht with autumn’s
brown--
Not twilight yet, but
that illusive bloom
Which holds before the
deep-etched shadows come;
For still the garden
stood in golden mist,
Still, like a river of
molten amethyst,
The Seine slipt through
its spans of fretted stone,
And, near the grille
that once fenced in a throne,
The fountains still
unbraided to the day
The unsubstantial
silver of their spray.
A spot to dream in,
love in, waste one’s hours!
Temples and palaces,
and gilded towers,
And fairy
terraces!--and yet, and yet
Here in her woe came
Marie Antoinette,
Came sweet Corday, Du
Barry with shrill cry,
Not learning from her
betters how to die!
Here, while the Nations
watched with bated breath,
Was held the saturnalia
of Red Death!
For where that slim
Egyptian shaft uplifts
Its point to catch the
dawn’s and sunset’s drifts
Of various gold, the
busy Headsman stood. . . .
Place de la
Concorde--no, the Place of Blood!
And all so peaceful
now! One cannot bring
Imagination to accept
the thing.
Lies, all of it! some
dreamer’s wild romance--
High-hearted, witty,
laughter-loving France!
In whose brain was it
that the legend grew
Of Mænads shrieking in
this avenue,
Of watch-fires burning,
Famine standing guard,
Of long-speared Uhlans
in that palace-yard!
What ruder sound this
soft air ever smote
Than a bird’s twitter
or a bugle’s note?
What darker crimson
ever splashed these walks
Than that of
rose-leaves dropping from the stalks?
And yet--what means
that charred and broken wall,
That sculptured marble,
splintered, like to fall,
Looming among the trees
there? . . . And you say
This happened, as it
were, but yesterday?
And here the Commune
stretched a barricade,
And there the final
desperate stand was made?
Such things have been?
How all things change and
fade!
How little lasts in
this brave world below!
Love dies; hate cools;
the Cæsars come and go;
Gaunt Hunter fattens,
and the weak grow strong.
Even Republics are not
here for long!
Ah, who can tell what
hour may bring the doom,
The lighted torch, the
tocsin’s heavy boom!
"The Southern Transept, hardly known by any other name but Poet’s
Corner."DEAN STANLEY. TREAD softly
here; the sacredest of tombs
Are those that hold
your Poets. Kings and queens
Are facile accidents of
Time and Chance.
Chance sets them on the
heights, they climb not there!
But he who from the
darkling mass of men
Is on the wing of
heavenly thought upborne
To finer ether, and
becomes a voice
For all the voiceless,
God anointed him:
His name shall be a
star, his grave a shrine.
Tread softly here, in
silent reverence tread.
Beneath those marble
cenotaphs and urns
Lies richer dust than
ever nature hid
Packed in the mountain’s
adamantine heart,
Or slyly wrapt in
unsuspected sand--
The dross men toil for,
and oft stain the soul.
How vain and all
ignoble seems that greed
To him who stands in
this dim claustral air
With these most sacred
ashes at his feet!
This dust was Chaucer,
Spenser, Dryden this--
The spark that once
illumed it lingers still.
O ever-hallowed spot of
English earth!
If the unleashed and
happy spirit of man
Have option to revisit
our dull globe,
What August Shades at
midnight here convene
In the miraculous
sessions of the moon,
When the great pulse of
London faintly throbs,
And one by one the
stars in heaven pale!
THE wind it wailed, the
wind it moaned,
And the white caps
flecked the sea;
"An’ I would to
God," the skipper groaned,
"I had not my boy
with me!"
Snug in the
stern-sheets, little John
Laughed as the scud
swept by;
But the skipper’s
sunburnt cheek grew wan
As he watched the
wicked sky.
"Would he were at
his mother’s side!"
And the skipper’s eyes
were dim.
"Good Lord in
heaven, if ill betide,
What would become of
him!
"For me--my
muscles are as steel,
For me let hap what
may;
I might make shift upon
the keel
Until the break o’ day.
"But he, he is so
weak and small,
So young, scarce
learned to stand--
O pitying Father of us
all,
I trust him in Thy
hand!
"For Thou, who
markest from on high
A sparrow’s fall--each
one!--
Surely, O Lord, thou’lt
have an eye
On Alec Yeaton’s
son!"
Then, helm hard-port;
right straight he sailed
Towards the headland
light:
The wind it moaned, the
wind it wailed,
And black, black fell
the night.
Then burst a storm to
make one quail
Though housed from
winds and waves--
They who could tell
about that gale
Must rise from watery
graves!
Sudden it came, as
sudden went;
Ere half the night was
sped,
The winds were hushed,
the waves were spent,
And the stars shone
overhead.
Now, as the morning
mist grew thin,
The folk on Gloucester
shore
Saw a little figure
floating in
Secure, on a broken
oar!
Up rose the cry,
"A wreck! a wreck!
Pull, mates, and waste
no breath!"--
They knew it, though ’twas
but a speck
Upon the edge of death!
Long did they marvel in
the town
At God his strange
decree,
That let the stalwart
skipper drown
And the little child go
free!
. . . ROOM in your
heart for him, O Mother Earth,
Who loved each flower
and leaf that made you fair,
And sang your praise in
verses manifold
And delicate, with here
and there a line
From end to end in
blossom like a bough
The May breathes on, so
rich it was. Some thought
The workmanship more
costly than the thing
Moulded or carved, as
in those ornaments
Found at Mycæne. And
yet Nature’s self
Works in this wise;
upon a blade of grass,
Or what small note she
lends the woodland thrush,
Lavishing endless
patience. He was born
Artist, not artisan,
which some few saw
And many dreamed not.
As he wrote no odes
When Crœsus wedded or Mæcenas
died,
And gave no breath to
civic feasts and shows,
He missed the glare
that gilds more facile men--
A twilight poet,
groping quite alone,
Belated, in a sphere
where every nest
Is emptied of its music
and its wings.
Not great his gift; yet
we can poorly spare
Even his slight
perfection in an age
Of limping triolets and
tame rondeaux.
He had at least ideals,
though unreached,
And heard, far off,
immortal harmonies,
Such as fall coldly on
our ear to-day.
The mighty Zolaistic
Movement now
Engrosses us--a
miasmatic breath
Blown from the slums.
We paint life as it is,
The hideous side of it,
with careful pains,
Making a god of the
dull Commonplace.
For have we not the old
gods overthrown
And set up strangest
idols? We could clip
Imagination’s wing and
kill delight,
Our sole art being to
leave nothing out
That renders art
offensive. Not for us
Madonnas leaning from
their starry thrones
Ineffable, nor any
heaven-wrought dream
Of sculptor or of poet;
we prefer
Such nightmare visions
as in morbid brains
Take shape and
substance, thoughts that taint the air
And make all life
unlovely. Will it last?
Beauty alone endures
from age to age,
From age to age
endures, handmaid of God.
Poets who walk with her
on earth go hence
Bearing a talisman. You
bury one,
With his hushed music,
in some Potter’s Field;
The snows and rains
blot out his very name,
As he from life seems
blotted: through Time’s glass
Slip the invisible and
magic sands
That mark the century,
then falls a day
The world is suddenly
conscious of a flower,
Imperishable, ever to
be prized,
Sprung from the mould
of a forgotten grave.
’Tis said the seeds
wrapt up among the balms
And hieroglyphics of
Egyptian kings
Hold strange vitality,
and, planted, grow
After the lapse of
thrice a thousand years.
Some day, perchance,
some unregarded note
Of our poor friend
here--some sweet minor chord
That failed to lure our
more accustomed ear--
May witch the fancy of
an unborn age.
Who knows, since seeds
have such tenacity?
Meanwhile he’s dead,
with scantiest laurel won
And little of our
Nineteenth Century gold.
So, take him, Earth,
and this his mortal part,
With that shrewd
alchemy thou hast, transmute
To flower and leaf in thine
unending Springs!
FROM yonder gilded
minaret
Beside the steel-blue
Neva set,
I faintly catch, from
time to time,
The sweet, aerial
midnight chime--
"God save the
Tsar!"
Above the ravelins and
the moats
Of the white citadel it
floats;
And men in dungeons far
beneath
Listen, and pray, and
gnash their teeth--
"God save the
Tsar!"
The soft reiterations
sweep
Across the horror of
their sleep,
As if some dæmon in his
glee
Were mocking at their
misery--
"God save the
Tsar!"
In his Red Palace over
there,
Wakeful, he needs must
hear the prayer.
How can it drown the
broken cries
Wrung from his children’s
agonies?--
"God save the
Tsar!"
Father they called him
from of old--
Batuschka! . . . How
his heart is cold!
Wait till a million
scourge¨d men
Rise in their awful
might, and then--
God save the Tsar!
FIRST, two white arms
that held him very close,
And ever closer as he
drew him back
Reluctantly, the loose
gold-colored hair
A thousand delicate
fibres reaching out
Still to detain him;
then some twenty steps
Of iron staircase
winding round and down,
And ending in a narrow
gallery hung
With Gobelin
tapestries--Andromeda
Rescued by Perseus, and
the sleek Diana
With her nymphs
bathing; at the farther end
A door that gave upon a
starlit grove
Of citron and clipt
palm-trees; then a path
As bleached as
moonlight, with the shadow of leaves
Stamped black upon it;
next a vine-clad length
Of solid masonry; and
last of all
A Gothic archway packed
with night, and then--
A sudden gleaming
dagger through his heart.
SHAKESPEARE and
Milton--what third blazoned name
Shall lips of
after-ages link to these?
His who, beside the
wild encircling seas,
Was England’s voice,
her voice with one acclaim,
For threescore years;
whose word of praise was fame,
Whose scorn gave pause
to man’s iniquities.
What strain was his in
that Crimean war?
A bugle-call in battle;
a low breath,
Plaintive and sweet,
above the fields of death!
So year by year the
music rolled afar,
From Euxine wastes to
flowery Kandahar,
Bearing the laurel or
the cypress wreath.
Others shall have their
little space of time,
Their proper niche and
bust, then fade away
Into the darkness,
poets of a day;
But thou, O builder of
enduring rhyme,
Thou shalt not pass!
Thy fame in every clime
On earth shall live
where Saxon speech has sway.
Waft me this verse
across the winter sea,
Through light and dark,
through mist and blinding
sleet,
O winter winds, and lay
it at his feet;
Though the poor gift
betray my poverty,
At his feet lay it: it
may chance that he
Will find no gift,
where reverence is, unmeet.
LISTEN, my masters! I
speak naught but truth.
From dawn to dawn they
drifted on and on,
Not knowing whither nor
to what dark end.
Now the North froze
them, now the hot South scorched.
Some called to God, and
found great comfort so;
Some gnashed their
teeth with curses, and some laughed
An empty laughter,
seeing they yet lived,
So sweet was breath
between their foolish lips.
Day after day the same
relentless sun,
Night after night the
same unpitying stars.
At intervals fierce
lightnings tore the clouds,
Showing vast hollow
spaces, and the sleet
Hissed, and the
torrents of the sky were loosed.
From time to time a
hand relaxed its grip,
And some pale wretch
slid down into the dark
With stifled moan, and
transient horror seized
The rest who waited,
knowing what must be.
At every turn strange
shapes reached up and clutched
The whirling wreck,
held on awhile, and then
Slipt back into that
blackness whence they came.
Ah, hapless folk, to be
so tost and torn,
So racked by hunger,
fever, fire, and wave,
And swept at last into
the nameless void--
Frail girls, strong
men, and mothers with their babes!
And was none saved?
My masters, not a soul!
O shipman, woful, woful
is thy tale!
Our hearts are heavy
and our eyes are dimmed.
What ship is this that
suffered such ill fate?
What ship, my masters?
Know ye not?--The World!
I VEX me not with
brooding on the years
That were ere I drew
breath: why should I then
Distrust the darkness
that may fall again
When life is done?
Perchance in other spheres--
Dead planets--I once
tasted mortal tears,
And walked as now among
a throng of men,
Pondering things that
lay beyond my ken,
Questioning death, and
solacing my fears.
Ofttimes indeed strange
sense have I of this,
Vague memories that
hold me with a spell,
Touches of unseen lips
upon my brow,
Breathing some
incommunicable bliss!
In years foregone, O
Soul, was all not well?
Still lovelier life
awaits thee. Fear not thou!
ONE by one they go
Into the unknown dark--
Star-lit brows of the
brave,
Voices that drew men’s
souls.
Rich is the land, O
Death!
Can give you dead like
our dead!--
Such as he from whose
hand
The magic web of
romance
Slipt, and the art was
lost!
Such as he who
erewhile--
The last of the Titan
brood--
With his thunder the
Senate shook;
Or he who, beside the
Charles,
Untoucht of envy or
hate,
Tranced the world with
his song;
Or that other, that
gray-eyed seer
Who in pastoral Concord
ways
With Plato and Hâfiz
walked.
Not of these was the
man
Whose wraith, through
the mists of night,
Through the shuddering
wintry stars,
Has passed to eternal
morn.
Fit were the moan of
the sea
And the clashing of
cloud on cloud
For the passing of that
soul!
Ever he faced the
storm!
No weaver of rare
romance,
No patient framer of
laws,
No maker of wondrous
rhyme,
No bookman wrapt in his
dream.
His was the voice that
rang
In the fight like a
bugle-call,
And yet could be tender
and low
As when, on a night in
June,
The hushed wind sobs in
the pines.
His was the eye that
flashed
With a sabre’s azure
gleam,
Pointing to heights
unwon!
Not for him were these
days
Of clerkly and sluggish
calm--
To the petrel the
swooping gale!
Austere he seemed, but
the hearts
Of all men beat in his
breast;
No fetter but galled
his wrist,
No wrong that was not
his own.
What if those eloquent
lips
Curled with the
old-time scorn?
What if in needless
hours
His quick hand closed
on the hilt?
’Twas the smoke from
the well-won fields
That clouded the
veteran’s eyes.
A fighter this to the
end!
Ah, if in coming times
Some giant evil arise,
And Honor falter and
pale,
His were a name to
conjure with!
God send his like
again!
WHO can say where Echo
dwells?
In some mountain-cave,
methinks,
Where the white owl
sits and blinks;
Or in deep sequestered
dells,
Where the foxglove
hangs its bells,
Echo dwells.
Echo!
Echo!
Phantom of the crystal
Air,
Daughter of sweet
Mystery!
Here is one has need of
thee;
Lead him to thy secret
lair,
Myrtle brings he for
thy hair--
Hear his prayer,
Echo!
Echo!
Echo, lift thy drowsy
head,
And repeat each charmëd
word
Thou must needs have
overheard
Yestere’en ere,
rosy-red,
Daphne down the valley
fled--
Words unsaid,
Echo!
Echo!
Breathe the vows she
since denies!
She hath broken every
vow;
What she would she
would not now--
Thou didst hear her
perjuries.
Whisper, whilst I shut
my eyes,
Those sweet lies,
Echo!
Echo!
A BLIGHT, a gloom, I
know not what, has crept upon my
gladness--
Some vague, remote ancestral
touch of sorrow, or of mad-
ness;
A fear that is not
fear, a pain that has not pain’s in-
sistence;
A sense of longing, or
of loss, in some foregone exist-
ence;
A subtle hurt that
never pen has writ nor tongue has
spoken--
Such hurt perchance as
Nature feels when a blossomed
bough is broken.
THE folk who lived in
Shakespeare’s day
And saw that gentle
figure pass
By London Bridge, his
frequent way--
They little knew what
man he was.
The pointed beard, the
courteous mien,
The equal port to high
and low,
All this they saw or
might have seen--
But not the light
behind the brow!
The doublet’s modest
gray or brown,
The slender sword-hilt’s
plain device,
What sign had these for
prince or clown?
Few turned, or none, to
scan him twice.
Yet ’twas the king of
England’s kings!
The rest with all their
pomps and trains
Are mouldered,
half-remembered things--
’Tis he alone that
lives and reigns!
PILLARED arch and
sculptured tower
Of Ilium have had their
hour;
The dust of many a king
is blown
On the winds from zone
to zone;
Many a warrior sleeps
unknown.
Time and Death hold
each in thrall,
Yet is Love the lord of
all;
Still does Helen’s
beauty stir
Because a poet sang of
her!
Upon your hearse this
flower I lay.
Brief be your sleep!
You shall be known
When lesser men have
had their day:
Fame blossoms where
true seed is sown,
Or soon or late, let
Time wrong what it may.
Unvext by any dream of
fame,
You smiled, and bade
the world pass by:
But I--I turned, and
saw a name
Shaping itself against
the sky--
White star that rose
amid the battle’s flame!
Brief be your sleep,
for I would see
Your laurels--ah, how
trivial now
To him must earthly
laurel be
Who wears the amaranth
on his brow!
How vain the voices of
mortality!
WOULDST know the clash
of knightly steel on steel?
Or list the throstle
singing loud and clear?
Or walk at twilight by
some haunted mere
In Surrey; or in
throbbing London feel
Life’s pulse at
highest--hark, the minster’s peal! . . .
Turn but the page, that
various world is here!
WHEN first the crocus
thrusts its point of gold
Up through the still
snow-drifted garden mould,
And folded green things
in dim woods unclose
Their crinkled spears,
a sudden tremor goes
Into my veins and makes
me kith and kin
To every wild-born
thing that thrills and blows.
Sitting beside this
crumbling sea-coal fire,
Here in the city’s
ceaseless roar and din,
Far from the brambly
paths I used to know,
Far from the rustling
brooks that slip and shine
Where the Neponset
alders take their glow,
I share the tremulous
sense of bud and briar
And inarticulate ardors
of the vine.
MY mind lets go a
thousand things,
Like dates of wars and
deaths of kings,
And yet recalls the
very hour--
’Twas noon by yonder
village tower,
And on the last blue
noon in May--
The wind came briskly
up this way,
Crisping the brook
beside the road;
Then, pausing here, set
down its load
Of pine-scents, and
shook listlessly
Two petals from that
wild-rose tree.
I’LL not confer with
Sorrow
Till to-morrow;
But Joy shall have her
way
This very day.
Ho, eglantine and
cresses
For her tresses!--
Let Care, the beggar,
wait
Outside the gate.
Tears if you will--but
after
Mirth and laughter;
Then, folded hands on
breast
And endless rest.
TAKE these rhymes into
thy grace,
Since they are of thy
begetting,
Lady, that dost make
each place
Where thou art a jewel’s
setting.
Some such glamour lend
this Book:
Let it be thy poet’s
wages
That henceforth thy
gracious look
Lies reflected on its
pages.
THE sky is gray as gray
may be,
There is no bird upon
the bough,
There is no leaf on
vine or tree.
In the Neponset marshes
now
Willow-stems, rosy in
the wind,
Shiver with hidden
sense of snow.
So too ’tis winter in
my mind,
No light-winged fancy
comes and stays:
A season churlish and
unkind.
Slow creep the hours,
slow creep the days,
The black ink crusts
upon the pen--
Just wait till
bluebirds, wrens, and jays
And golden orioles come
again!
LIKE Crusoe, walking by
the lonely strand
And seeing a human
footprint on the sand,
Have I this day been
startled, finding here,
Set in brown mould and
delicately clear,
Spring’s footprint--the
first crocus of the year!
O sweet invasion!
Farewell solitude!
Soon shall wild
creatures of the field and wood
Flock from all sides
with much ado and stir,
And make of me most
willing prisoner!
I HELD his letter in my
hand,
And even while I read
The lightning flashed
across the land
The word that he was
dead.
How strange it seemed!
His living voice
Was speaking from the
page
Those courteous
phrases, tersely choice,
Light-hearted, witty,
sage.
I wondered what it was
that died!
The man himself was
here,
His modesty, his
scholar’s pride,
His soul serene and
clear.
These neither death nor
time shall dim,
Still this sad thing
must be--
Henceforth I may not
speak to him,
Though he can speak to
me!
THAT face which no man
ever saw
And from his memory
banished quite,
With eyes in which are
Hamlet’s awe
And Cardinal Richelieu’s
subtle light,
Looks from this frame.
A master’s hand
Has set the
master-player here,
In the fair temple that
he planned
Not for himself. To us
most dear
This image of him!
"It was thus
He looked; such pallor
touched his cheek;
With that same grace he
greeted us--
Nay, ’tis the man,
could it but speak!"
Sad words that shall be
said some day--
Far fall the day! O
cruel Time,
Whose breath sweeps
mortal things away,
Spare long this image
of his prime,
That others standing in
the place
Where, save as ghosts,
we come no more,
May know what sweet
majestic face
The gentle Prince of
Players wore!
SCENE: St. Petersburg. Period: the present time. A ballroom in the
winter palace of the Prince--. The ladies in character costumes and masks. The
gentlemen in official dress and unmasked, with the exception of six tall
figures in scarlet kaftans, who are treated with marked distinction as they
move here and there among the promenaders. Quadrille music throughout the
dialogue. Count SERGIUS PAVLOVICH PANSHINE, who has just arrived, is standing
anxiously in the doorway of an antechamber with his eyes fixed upon a lady in
the costume of a maid of honor in the time of Catherine II. The lady presently
disengages herself from the crowd, and passes near Count PANSHINE, who
impulsively takes her by the hand and leads her across the threshold of the
inner apartment, which is unoccupied. HE. Pauline!
SHE. You knew me?
HE. How could I have failed?
A mask may hide your
features, not your soul.
There is an air about
you like the air
That folds a star. A
blind man knows the night,
And feels the
constellations. No coarse sense
Of eye or ear had made
you plain to me.
Through these I had not
found you; for your eyes,
As blue as violets of
our Novgorod,
Look black behind your
mask there, and your voice--
I had not known that
either. My heart said,
"Pauline Pavlovna."
SHE. Ah! Your heart said that?
You trust your heart,
then! ’Tis a serious risk!--
How is it you and
others wear no mask?
HE. The Emperor’s orders.
SHE. Is the Emperor here?
I have not seen him.
HE. He is one of the six
In scarlet kaftans and
all masked alike.
Watch--you will note
how every one bows down
Before those figures,
thinking each by chance
May be the Tsar; yet
none knows which is he.
Even his counterparts
are left in doubt.
Unhappy Russia! No serf
ever wore
Such chains as gall our
Emperor these sad days.
He dare trust no man.
SHE. All men are so false.
HE. Spare one, Pauline
Pavlovna.
SHE. No; all, all!
I think there is no
truth left in the world,
In man or woman. Once
were noble souls.--
Count Sergius, is
Nastasia here to-night?
HE. Ah! then you know! I
thought to tell you first.
Not here, beneath these
hundred curious eyes,
In all this glare of
light; but in some place
Where I could throw me
at your feet and weep.
In what shape came the
story to your ear?
Decked in the teller’s
colors, I’ll be sworn;
The truth, but in the
livery of a lie,
And so must wrong me.
Only this is true:
The Tsar, because I
risked my wretched life
To shield a life as
wretched as my own,
Bestows upon me, as
supreme reward--
O irony!--the hand of
this poor girl.
Says, Here, I have the
pearl of pearls for you,
Such as was never
plucked from out the deep
By Indian diver, for a
Sultan’s crown.
Your joy’s decreed, and
stabs me with a smile.
SHE. And she--she loves you?
HE. I know not, indeed.
Likes me, perhaps. What
matters it?--her love!
The guardian, Sidor
Yurievich, consents,
And she consents. No
love in it at all,
A mere caprice, a young
girl’s spring-tide dream.
Sick of her ear-rings,
weary of her mare,
She’ll have a
lover--something ready-made,
Or improvised between
two cups of tea--
A lover by imperial
ukase!
Fate said her word--I
chanced to be the man!
If that grenade the
crazy student threw
Had not spared me, as
well as spared the Tsar,
All this would not have
happened. I’d have been
A hero, but quite safe
from her romance.
She takes me for a
hero--think of that!
Now by our holy Lady of
Kazan,
When I have finished
pitying myself,
I’ll pity her.
SHE. Oh no; begin with her;
She needs it most.
HE. At her door lies the
blame,
Whatever falls. She,
with a single word,
With half a tear, had
stopt it at the first,
This cruel juggling
with poor human hearts.
SHE. The Tsar commanded it--you
said the Tsar.
HE. The Tsar does what she
wills--God fathoms why.
Were she his mistress,
now! but there’s no snow
Whiter within the bosom
of a cloud,
Nor colder either. She
is very haughty,
For all her fragile air
of gentleness;
With something vital in
her, like those flowers
That on our desolate
steppes outlast the year.
Resembles you in some
things. It was that
First made us friends.
I do her justice, see!
For we were friends in
that smooth surface way
We Russians have
imported out of France.
Alas! from what a blue
and tranquil heaven
This bolt fell on me!
After these two years,
My suit with Ossip
Leminoff at end,
The old wrong righted,
the estates restored,
And my promotion, with
the ink not dry!
Those fairies which
neglected me at birth
Seemed now to lavish
all good gifts on me--
Gold roubles, office,
sudden dearest friends.
The whole world smiled;
then, as I stooped to taste
The sweetest cup, freak
dashed it from my lip.
This very night--just
think, this very night--
I planned to come and
beg of you the alms
I dared not ask for in
my poverty.
I thought me poor then.
How stript am I now!
There’s not a ragged
mendicant one meets
Along the Nevski
Prospekt but has leave
To tell his love, and I
have not that right!
Pauline Pavlovna, why
do you stand there
Stark as a statue, with
no word to say?
SHE. Because this thing has
frozen up my heart.
I think that there is
something killed in me,
A dream that would have
mocked all other bliss.
What shall I say? What
would you have me say?
HE. If it be possible, the
word of words!
SHE.very slowly. Well,
then--I love you. I may tell you so
This once, . . . and
then forever hold my peace.
We cannot stay here
longer unobserved.
No--do not touch me!
but stand further off,
And seem to laugh, as
if we jested--eyes,
Eyes everywhere! Now
turn your face away . . .
I love you.
HE. With such music in my ears
I would death found me.
It were sweet to die
Listening! You love
me--prove it.
SHE. Prove it--how?
I prove it saying it.
How else?
HE. Pauline,
I have three things to
choose from; you shall choose:
This marriage, or
Siberia, or France.
The first means hell;
the second, purgatory;
The third--with
you--were nothing less than heaven!
SHE.starting. How dared you even dream
it!
HE. I was mad.
This business has
touched me in the brain.
Have patience! the
calamity’s so new.
(Pauses.)
There is a fourth way;
but that gate is shut
To brave men who hold
life a thing of God.
SHE. Yourself spoke there; the
rest was not of you.
HE. Oh, lift me to your level!
So I’m safe.
What’s to be done?
SHE. There must be some path
out.
Perhaps the Emperor--
HE. Not a ray of hope!
His mind is set on this
with that insistence
Which seems to seize on
all match-making folk.
The fancy bites them,
and they straight go mad.
SHE. Your father’s friend, the
Metropolitan--
A word from him . . .
HE. Alas, he too is bitten!
Gray-haired,
gray-hearted, worldly wise, he sees
This marriage makes me
the Tsar’s protégé,
And opens every door to
preference.
SHE. Think while I think. There
surely is some key
Unlocks the labyrinth,
could we but find it.
Nastasia!
HE. What! beg life of her? Not
I.
SHE. Beg love. She is a woman,
young, perhaps
Untouched as yet of
this too poisonous air.
Were she told all,
would she not pity us?
For if she love you, as
I think she must,
Would not some generous
impulse stir in her,
Some latent,
unsuspected spark illume?
How love thrills even
commonest girl-clay,
Ennobling it an
instant, if no more!
You said that she is
proud; then touch her pride,
And turn her into
marble with the touch.
But yet the gentler
passion is the stronger.
Go to her, tell her, in
some tenderest phrase
That will not hurt too
much--ah, but ’twill hurt!--
Just how your happiness
lies in her hand
To make or mar for all
time; hint, not say,
Your heart is gone from
you, and you may find--
HE. A casemate in St. Peter
and St. Paul
For, say, a month; then
some Siberian town.
Not this way lies
escape. At my first word
That sluggish Tartar
blood would turn to fire
In every vein.
SHE. How blindly you read her,
Or any woman! Yes, I
know. I grant
How small we often seem
in our small world
Of trivial cares and
narrow precedents--
Lacking that wide
horizon stretched for men--
Capricious, spiteful,
frightened at a mouse;
But when it comes to
suffering mortal pangs,
The weakest of us
measures pulse with you.
HE. Yes, you, not she. If she
were at your height!
But there’s no martyr
wrapt in her rose flesh.
There should have been;
for Nature gave you both
The self-same purple
for your eyes and hair,
The self-same Southern
music to your lips,
Fashioned you both, as ’twere,
in the same mould,
Yet failed to put the
soul in one of you!
I know her wilful--her
light head quite turned
In this court
atmosphere of flatteries;
A Moscow beauty, petted
and spoiled there,
And since spoiled here;
as soft as swan’s down now,
With words like honey
melting from the comb,
But being crossed,
vindictive, cruel, cold.
I fancy her, between
two rosy smiles,
Saying, "Poor
fellow, in the Nertchinsk mines!"
That is the sum of her.
SHE. You know her not.
Count Sergius
Pavlovich, you said no mask
Could hide the soul,
yet how you have mistaken
The soul these two
months--and the face to-night!
Removes her mask. HE. You!--it
was you!
SHE. Count Sergius Pavlovich,
Go find Pauline
Pavlovna--she is here--
And tell her that the
Tsar has set you free.
SCENE: A roadside in Arcady SHEPHERD. GOOD
sir, have you seen pass this way
A mischief straight
from market-day?
You’d know her at a
glance, I think;
Her eyes are blue, her
lips are pink;
She has a way of
looking back
Over her shoulder, and,
alack!
Who gets that look one
time, good sir,
Has naught to do but
follow her.
PILGRIM. I have not seen this
maid, methinks,
Though she that passed
had lips like pinks.
SHEPHERD. Or like two
strawberries made one
By some sly trick of
dew and sun.
PILGRIM. A poet!
SHEPHERD. Nay, a simple swain
That tends his flock on
yonder plain,
Naught else, I swear by
book and bell.
But she that
passed--you marked her well.
Was she not smooth as
any be
That dwell herein in
Arcady?
PILGRIM. Her skin was as the
satin bark
Of birches.
SHEPHERD. Light or dark?
PILGRIM. Quite dark.
SHEPHERD. Then ’twas not she.
PILGRIM. The peach’s side
That’s next the sun is
not so dyed
As was her cheek. Her
hair hung down
Like summer twilight
falling brown;
And when the breeze
swept by, I wist
Her face was in a
sombre mist.
SHEPHERD. No, that is not the
maid I seek.
Her hair lies gold
against the cheek;
Her yellow tresses take
the morn
Like silken tassels of
the corn.
And yet--brown locks
are far from bad.
PILGRIM. Now I bethink me,
this one had
A figure like the
willow-tree
Which, slight and
supple, wondrously
Inclines to droop with
pensive grace,
And still retains its
proper place;
A foot so arched and
very small
The marvel was she
walked at all;
Her hand--in sooth I
lack for words--
Her hand, five slender
snow-white birds.
Her voice--though she
but said "God-speed"--
Was melody blown
through a reed;
The girl Pan changed
into a pipe
Had not a note so full and
ripe.
And then her eye--my
lad, her eye!
Discreet, inviting,
candid, shy,
An outward ice, an
inward fire,
And lashes to the heart’s
desire--
Soft fringes blacker
than the sloe.
SHEPHERD. thoughtfully. Good
sir, which way did this one go?
. . . . . . . .
PILGRIM.solus. So, he is
off! The silly youth
Knoweth not Love in
sober sooth.
He loves--thus lads at
first are blind--
No woman, only
Womankind.
I needs must laugh,
for, by the Mass,
No maid at all did this
way pass!
THE spare Professor,
grave and bald,
Began his paper. It was
called,
I think, "A Brief
Historic Glance
At Russia, Germany, and
France."
A glance, but to my
best belief
’Twas almost anything
but brief--
A wide survey, in which
the earth
Was seen before mankind
had birth;
Strange monsters basked
them in the sun,
Behemoth, armored
glyptodon,
And in the dawn’s
unpractised ray
The transient dodo
winged its way;
Then, by degrees,
through silt and slough,
We reached Berlin--I
don’t know how.
The good Professor’s
monotone
Had turned me into
senseless stone
Instanter, but that
near me sat
Hypatia in her new
spring hat,
Blue-eyed, intent, with
lips whose bloom
Lighted the
heavy-curtained room.
Hypatia--ah, what
lovely things
Are fashioned out of eighteen
springs!
At first, in sums of
this amount,
The eighteen winters do
not count.
Just as my eyes were
growing dim
With heaviness, I saw
that slim,
Erect, elastic figure
there,
Like a pond-lily taking
air.
She looked so fresh, so
wise, so neat,
So altogether crisp and
sweet,
I quite forgot what
Bismarck said,
And why the Emperor
shook his head,
And how it was Von
Moltke’s frown
Cost France another
frontier town.
The only facts I took
away
From the Professor’s
theme that day
Were these: a forehead
broad and low,
Such as the antique
sculptures show;
A chin to Greek
perfection true;
Eyes of Astarte’s
tender blue;
A high complexion
without fleck
Or flaw, and curls
about her neck.
I BEG you come to-night
and dine.
A welcome waits you,
and sound wine--
The Roederer chilly to
a charm,
As Juno’s breath the
claret warm,
The sherry of an
ancient brand.
No Persian pomp, you
understand--
A soup, a fish, two
meats, and then
A salad fit for
aldermen
(When aldermen, alas,
the days!
Were really worth their
mayonnaise);
A dish of grapes whose
clusters won
Their bronze in
Carolinian sun;
Next, cheese--for you
the Neufchâtel,
A bit of Cheshire likes
me well;
Café au lait or coffee
black,
With Kirsch or Kümmel
or Cognac
(The German band in
Irving Place
By this time purple in
the face);
Cigars and pipes. These
being through,
Friends shall drop in,
a very few--
Shakespeare and Milton,
and no more.
When these are guests I
bolt the door,
With Not at Home to any
one
Excepting Alfred
Tennyson.
THE bloom that lies on
Fanny’s cheek
Is all my Latin, all my
Greek;
The only sciences I
know
Are frowns that gloom
and smiles that glow;
Siberia and Italy
Lie in her sweet
geography;
No scholarship have I
but such
As teaches me to love
her much.
Why should I strive to
read the skies,
Who know the midnight
of her eyes?
Why should I go so very
far
To learn what heavenly
bodies are!
Not Berenice’s starry
hair
With Fanny’s tresses
can compare;
Not Venus on a
cloudless night,
Enslaving Science with
her light,
Ever reveals so much as
when
She stares and droops
her lids again.
If Nature’s secrets are
forbidden
To mortals, she may
keep them hidden.
Æons and æons we
progressed
And did not let that
break our rest;
Little we cared if Mars
o’erhead
Were or were not
inhabited;
Without the aid of
Saturn’s rings
Fair girls were wived
in those far springs;
Warm lips met ours and
conquered us
Or ere thou wert,
Copernicus!
Graybeards, who seek to
bridge the chasm
’Twixt man to-day and
protoplasm,
Who theorize and probe
and gape,
And finally evolve an
ape--
Yours is a harmless
sort of cult,
If you are pleased with
the result.
Some folks admit, with
cynic grace,
That you have rather
proved your case.
These dogmatists are so
severe!
Enough for me that
Fanny’s here,
Enough that, having
long survived
Pre-Eveic forms, she
has arrived--
An illustration the
completest
Of the survival of the
sweetest.
Linnæus, avaunt! I only
care
To know what flower she
wants to wear.
I leave it to the
addle-pated
To guess how pinks
originated,
As if it mattered! The
chief thing
Is that we have them in
the Spring,
And Fanny likes them.
When they come,
I straightway send and
purchase some.
The Origin of
Plants--go to!
Their proper end I have
in view.
O loveliest book that
ever man
Looked into since the
world began
Is Woman! As I turn
those pages,
As fresh as in the
primal ages,
As day by day I scan,
perplext,
The ever subtly
changing text,
I feel that I am slowly
growing
To think no other work
worth knowing.
And in my copy--there
is none
So perfect as the one I
own--
I find no thing set
down but such
As teaches me to love
it much.
CURLED up and sitting
on her feet,
Within the window’s
deep embrasure,
Is Lydia; and across
the street,
A lad, with eyes of
roguish azure,
Watches her buried in
her book.
In vain he tries to win
a look,
And from the trellis
over there
Blows sundry kisses
through the air,
Which miss the mark,
and fall unseen,
Uncared for. Lydia is
thirteen.
My lad, if you, without
abuse,
Will take advice from
one who’s wiser,
And put his wisdom to
more use
Than ever yet did your
adviser;
If you will let, as
none will do,
Another’s heartbreak
serve for two,
You’ll have a care,
some four years hence,
How you lounge there by
yonder fence
And blow those kisses
through that screen--
For Lydia will be
seventeen.
A MIDDLE-AGED LYRICAL
POET IS SUPPOSED TO BE TAKING FINAL LEAVE OF THE MUSE OF COMEDY. SHE HAS
BROUGHT HIM HIS HAT AND GLOVES, AND IS ABSTRACTEDLY PICKING A THREAD OF GOLD
HAIR FROM HIS COAT SLEEVE AS HE BEGINS TO SPEAK:
I SAY it under the
rose--
oh, thanks!--yes, under
the laurel,
We part lovers, not
foes;
we are not going to
quarrel.
We have too long been
friends
on foot and in gilded
coaches,
Now that the whole
thing ends,
to spoil our kiss with
reproaches.
I leave you; my soul is
wrung;
I pause, look back from
the portal--
Ah, I no more am young,
and you, child, you are
immortal!
Mine is the glacier’s
way,
yours is the blossom’s
weather--
When were December and
May
known to be happy
together?
Before my kisses grow
tame,
before my moodiness
grieve you,
While yet my heart is
flame,
and I all lover, I
leave you.
So, in the coming time,
when you count the rich
years over,
Think of me in my
prime,
and not as a
white-haired lover,
Fretful, pierced with
regret,
the wraith of a dead
Desire
Thrumming a cracked
spinet
by a slowly dying fire.
When, at last, I am
cold--
years hence, if the
gods so will it--
Say, "He was true
as gold,"
and wear a rose in your
fillet!
Others, tender as I,
will come and sue for
caresses,
Woo you, win you, and
die--
mind you, a rose in
your tresses!
Some Melpomene woo,
some hold Clio the
nearest;
You, sweet Comedy--you
were ever sweetest and
dearest!
Nay, it is time to go--
when writing your
tragic sister
Say to that child of
woe
how sorry I was I
missed her.
Really, I cannot stay,
though "parting is
such sweet sorrow" . . .
Perhaps I will, on my
way
down-town, look in
to-morrow!
WHO is Lydia, pray, and
who
Is Hypatia? Softly,
dear,
Let me breathe it in
your ear--
They are you, and only
you.
And those other
nameless two
Walking in Arcadian
air--
She that was so very
fair?
She that had the
twilight hair?--
They were you, dear,
only you.
If I speak of night or
day,
Grace of fern or bloom
of grape,
Hanging cloud or
fountain spray,
Gem or star or
glistening dew,
Or of mythologic shape,
Psyche, Pyrrha, Daphne,
say--
I mean you, dear, you,
just you.
TO spring belongs the
violet, and the blown
Spice of the roses let
the summer own.
Grant me this favor,
Muse--all else withhold--
That I may not write
verse when I am old.
And yet I pray you,
Muse, delay the time!
Be not too ready to
deny me rhyme;
And when the hour
strikes, as it must, dear Muse,
I beg you very gently
break the news.