M# LUTE AND FURROW m OLIVE TILFORD IBl^lmfk ^s^ DARGAN ^^^ Rnnlf > A g k Q GojpightN"- 9ea COEXRIGHT DEPOSm BY OLIVE TILFORD DARGAN THE MORTAL GODS AND OTHER PLAYS LORDS AND LOVERS AND OTHER DRAMAS THE CYCLE'S RIM THE PATH FLOWER AND OTHER VERSE LUTE AND FURROW With Frederic Peterson THE FLUTTER OF THE GOLD LEAF AND OTHER PLAYS CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS LUTE AND FURROW LUTE AND FURROW BY OLIVE TILFORD DARGAN NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1922 3^0*^ Copyright, 1922, by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS Printed in the United States of America Published May, 1922 SEP 29 '22 ©CI.A681994 CONTENTS Lute and Furrow . . 3 "It Will Be a Hard Winter" 9 In an Alms-House Garden 12 Francesca (1904-1917) • 13 To A Texas Primrose ^3 Ballad of a Wooing 26 Evening above Saranac 28 Job 31 : I . • 29 On Clingman Dome . 30 Song 32 After the Game 2>d> Returning 35 The New Freedom . 36 The Fourth Watch . 37 Doris .... 39 My Lawyer 40 CONTENTS "Helen's Lips are Drifting Dust" PAGE 41 The Pierian Spring To-day 41 Sallys Gap 42 Twilight under Black Cap 49 Compact .... 55 Listeners .... 56 To A Young Girl 57 Italy . ... 58 Astray .... 60 Fatherland 61 Defiance . . 63 II Laughter .... . 69 On the Mountain . . 71 I Take a Walk • 72 The God .... . 76 We Creators . . 79 Attention . 79 VI CONTENTS Twilight ..... PAGE 80 When Lying on a Bank of Twin-Flowers 8o Evvie's Mother 8i Pace Tua .... 85 Snow in the Cotton Field 89 The Poem 90 August Evening 91 Advice .... 92 On Certain State Advisers and Thei] ^ Public 93 The Arctic Girl . 94 Apology .... 95 Who Shall Measure? . 96 Kartajaya • 97 Tolstoi .... . 98 Burning Bridges • 99 III In the Black Country Home vii 105 108 CONTENTS PAGE En Route ...... no The Coming ...... 113 Ballad of Trafalgar Square . . • 115 IV Innis-Loe ....... 125 Released ...... 128 The Sea Asks 133 To John Reed ..... 139 Vlll LUTE AND FURROW I The winter has grown so still I can stand at the foot of the hill Where the stream beneath the bridge Is dry as a heart after grief, And hear at the top of the ridge The wind as it lifts a leaf. At last there is time, I say; I will shut out the strife to-day; I will take up my pen and once more Meet that stranger, my soul, nor be dumb As when earth was the whirlwind's floor, And Life at her loom sat numb. Springs, many as ever have been, On sandals of moss shall slip in; There is time for the laugh we would fling, 3 LUTE AND FURROW For the wiping of dust from our stars, For a bee on his marketing wing, For the forester wind's wild wares. Comes the joy and the rushing pulse That in beauty's beginning exults; Then the weight tied fast to the heart; The doubt that deadens the dawn; And the raining sting and the smart Of invisible whips laid on. II What is this sudden gaiety that shakes the greyest boughs ? A voice is calling fieldward, 'tis time to start the ploughs ! To set the furrows rolling while all the old crows nod, And deep as life, the kernel, to cut the golden sod! The pen, let nations have it, — we'll plough awhile for God. 4 LUTE AND FURROW When half the things that must be done are greater than our art, And half the things that must be done are smaller than our heart, And poorest gifts are dear to burn on altars un- revealed. Like music comes the summons, the challenge from the weald, — "They tread immortal measure who make a mel- low field!" The planet may be pleasant, alluring in its way; But let the ploughs be idle, and none of us can stay. Here's where there is no doubting, no ghosts un- certain stalk, A-travelling with the plough beam, beneath the sailing hawk. Cutting the furrow deep and true where Destiny will walk. LUTE AND FURROW III The winter has grown so still I can pause and pluck what I will From the arms of Time as he goes. All the poems with beauty half-hid, Yet touching my haste like a rose, May fall to me now if I bid. There's the book whose pages shall read Like the hearts of old friends, who will need For its quaint flowered paths no guide, And into the late, sweet night Will smile as they lay it aside — The book that they once meant to write; And one that may haunt a strange road. Like a voice blown low from a wood. And be song to the wanderer there, Till the inn is a dark thing and cold. And the night is a roof-tree dear, And the moon his hearth of warm gold; 6 LUTE AND FURROW And that other whose music may be As a flight of birds to the sea; To the far island beaches made brave With the feet of to-morrows; where strain The lifters of stone from the grave Of the world we have dreamed us and slain. IV Reproach is dark upon me; I almost grasp the pen; When comes a laugh like daybreak, and "Winter's broke," says Len. His eye is like a highpriest's as glowingly he 'lows He saw a bat by daylight fly roun' the pigeon- house. "Ain't no time now for foolin', we got to start the ploughs." We'll set the furrows rolling, and drop the yellow corn; We'll plough along the universe that babies may be born. Ay, no more time for fooling, here's task without a bound; 7 LUTE AND FURROW It's not the tame old earth now that's spinning us around; It's Jupiter and Neptune when the plough is in the ground. How light, how light the heart grows with some- thing surely done ! When all the ploughs are going, and all the tasks are one ! Then Fame's a lass that smirks too late; the sun's a brother lout; The moon's a lantern in our hand; the stars are fieldmen stout. Oh, luck to die in ploughing time, — 'twill be just one step out ! 'IT WILL BE A HARD WINTER*' They say the blue king jays have flown From woods of Westchester; So I to Luthany shall flee, But I will make no stir; For who fair Luthany would see Must set him forth alone. In screwing winds last night the snow Creaked like an angry jinn; And two old men from up the State, Said "Bears went early in"; Half pausing by my ice-locked gate; "March will be late to blow." So I for Luthany am bound; But I will take no pack. You can not find the way, you know. With feet that leave a track; But light as blowing leaf must go; And you must hear a sound 9 'IT WILL BE A HARD WINTER'' That's like a singing strange and high Of bird youVe never seen; Then two ghosts come; like doves they move; While you must walk between; And one is Youth and one is Love, Who say "We did not die." The harp-built walls of Luthany Are builded high and strong To shelter singer, fool and seer. And glad they live and long. All others die who enter there, But they are safe, these three. The seer can warm his body through By some far fire he sees; The fool can naked dance in snow; The singer — as he please ! And which I be of these, Oh ho ! That is a guess for you. Once in a thousand years, they say, The walls are beaten down; lo IT WILL BE A HARD WINTER" And then they find a singer dead, But swift they set a crown Upon his lowly careless head, And sing his song for aye. So I to Luthany shall flee, While here the winter raves; God send I go not as one blind A-dancing upon graves; God save a madman if I find War's heel on Luthany. 1917 II IN AN ALMS-HOUSE GARDEN Here gnarled old men as stooped as trees Youth wounded, not to die, Quaver the old philosophies, And drift around the sky. Or glad, so glad, since work is done, And no man knows his grave. They sit a little in the sun. And watch the warm grass wave. 12 FRANCESCA (1904-1917) I Sweet of the dawn is she ! Sure of her garlands fair, Sure of her morning brief, With what an air She hands Eternity A bud, a leaf ! Far down a world wound-red All unappalled she looks; Where I stare barrenly She beauty plucks From an untrampled bed, Till suddenly I see. Once more a star shall break For me the crocus* mould; The full year's end sleep in A marigold; 13 FRANCESCA And firs in the snow wood shake Locks of genie and jinn. Again over earth and me Shall fall the coverlet Spread by a godmother moon, Till we forget The thin, gold irony That hid nor scar nor bone. How sweet with her to climb Youth's pilotless old trail ! Along sky ledges haste. Palms to the gale That showers song and rhyme As petals blow and waste ! And when in mothy light Of trees and listening dusk, I see her filmy go To him, her knight. What sap of bloom shall flow Into dream's silvered husk ! 14 FRANCESCA What if, at her matron knee In some yet covered year, The bardling I never bore Has sound of the hidden sea That calls till a heart, or a sphere, Is dumb no more? My wand is she that smites Open the prophet's wall; My arrow in the sun. Sped for no fall; My bird along the heights Where I shall never run ! II She sleeps now. Her hair, vaguely hooding her cheek, Fills me with strange music, Like the dark-flowing water of snow fields. Her brow, that was mere, frail porcelain, Holding a child's few treasures, Is a pale, prophetic expanse Over dreams that bide their vast venture. 15 FRANCESCA I gaze long at the face, Thinking at last I shall know her; For awake she is always hiding In ripples and pools of change. Waves of April flow round her, And she is my willow witch Weaving her web of winds Above the blue water; But she lifts her eyes. Like two hours of June, And is so nearly a rose That to-morrow the dawn will be lapping Gold from her open heart; Then a laugh like Christmas day Shuffles the seasons. And I see chrysanthemums in a Southern garden; White breasts in the dusk. But now she sleeps; no, stirs; Stirs with the covetous fever That creeps like a secret panther By the wariest watch of lovers. i6 FRANCESCA "Talk to me, Tifa, talk." "Of what, dear Beauty?" "Oh, that is it — beauty." I lose a whisper and wait. "The song — the song we heard " And I know I must tell again The story of the bird, a lowland rover That high above our mountain orchard Sang till a cadent coast Lay on the unbodied air, And all our outbound dreams put back Where his music made a shore. (Words, words! So soft that they may fall on pain And make it less ! Softer than leaves Tapping a forest sleeper; while the heart Is like a swollen glacier crowding earth.) Up he went singing; climbed a spiral chain That linked his song to heaven; And circling, swerving, rising, built 17 FRANCESCA An airy masonry of smoothest domes And jetting minarets, as though he saw From his blue height a city of the East, And in a music mirror set it fair For his high rapture. How it grew ! Slim, flowing alleys, streets that wound To temples cool as shaded lakes; Pure arches, pillars of piled notes; Cornice and frieze and pendant flung In rillets from one tiny heart As prodigal as God's ! What, dearest? When you die. You* II stop and live there? Not go on To Heaven? No; you remember Our city fell; came splintering to the grass With all its palaces and domes; Not one note on another. Where he, the breathless builder, fluttered, Happy in ruin. i8 FRANCESCA Yes, he panted so ? Tell you cool things ? (Words, words ! Running like water under leaves, That they may fall on pain And make it less !) Cool, my whisperer? Then shall we walk again Between the winter and the clifF Where green things clung? — the little venturers That feed on shade, and tug at scornful boulders Till they are gay and gentle? They were all there, lustrous and shyly brave; The fronds and tresses, fingers and baby's palm; The curling tufts, the plumelets proudly niched, And little unknown leaves That make the cold their mother; The hearts and lances and unpious spires The emerald gates to houses of the gnomes; The fairy tents that vanish at a name; Each greener than Spring's footprint when her track 19 FRANCESCA Is bright as sea- wet beryl; Yet wearing like an outer soul A breath of crystal winter. So pearled, they waited; Small subject wonderers of a land Whose king was out o* doors And would betimes go by. He came — the sun ! The swift, old marvel of the sun ! And you were still as every leaf he touched Long after his gold passing. Yes, your breath Went all away into the shining? God spoke too loud that time? Tell you — Sleep holds her. . . . But sleep comes creeping, and takes No sudden throne. If it be not sleep, But the other? . . . I sit in the folds of a dread, As in a husk that widens And swells till it strikes the sky. 20 FRANCESCA Who is it standing, a fiend Like a mountain darkening upward, Dropping and dropping and dropping The ocean into a glass? Why are the walls so near and so cold? So wavering greenish and white? Why are they rocking, and covered with shadows That mightily grasp and fade? ... I know. We are under the sea. Like a petal her face goes drifting; A white rose petal that swirls away. Far up is the water's clear surface; High up, where the sky used to be; And above it lies the good air. We must climb, my heavenliest . . . climb ! We can not breathe . . . down here. . . . Under the sea. Ill If Death had taken my orange tree, Its gold-lit boughs, and magic birds Singing for me, 21 FRANCESCA I would not bear, though bright the dead, This daunted head. If Death had taken the one whose care My fortune feeds, my roof endows, — Leaving me bare, — I'd meet the world from some kind door. Gay as before. If Death had taken my friend, the god Who walks among us masked as man. Wearing the clod To find his brother, I could live, Love and forgive. But she was Beauty; planets swing. And ages toil, that one like her May make dust sing; And I, who held her hand, must go Alone and know. 22 TO A TEXAS PRIMROSE A FLAKE of cloud was trembling cast Where April walked in dew; Earth loved the alien, made it fast; It blushed, and then was you. So light it seems you'd upward go; Then tender turn and cling, And like a maid at nod and no, Grow sweeter wavering. Still in two worlds you hold a dower; The snowdrop of the air And rose of earth, here in one flower A double beauty dare. But this thing lack you. (May it be You will not lack it long !) You've no estate in poesy; No pedigree in song. 23 TO A TEXAS PRIMROSE What lovers of the stern frontier Here halted, no less brave For wondering how you'd glowing cheer An uncompanioned grave ? Heroes, but not of those who go To conquest pen in hand. So left your loveliness to blow Unmeasured and unscanned. Your robe, though royal from old time Ere rose and daffodil. Must, for the want of broidered rhyme, Kirtle a gypsy still. So shyly glowing, meekly gay, And so for music meet, I wonder what would happen, say, If I were Herrick, sweet. Surely he'd smuggle you somehow Into the Muses' hall. And proud court flowers there should bow To a new queen lineal. 24 TO A TEXAS PRIMROSE With hint and smile he'd fix your sound Unquestioned dynasty, Sending the happy whisper round, Beauty is pedigree. And Grasmere's sage, if hereabout He found your face at dawn. Would silent sit the full day out. And dark would come too soon. Then mumbling home he'd take you too. Imprisoned in a line; No more would you need sun or dew Who there so fixed would shine. delicate barbarian, I've no immortal art To sing you as the laurelled can, But travel in my heart. And though my way be bare and brown, And miles grow long for me, 1 vow I will not set you down This side of Castaly. 25 BALLAD OF A WOOING O PROUDLY shall my lady tread ! These golden shoes I'll give her, My silver harp, my ruby red, My castles by the river. But when he met her on the hills, Down coming like a lily's flame, Her bare feet mid the daffodils. His golden shoes he hid for shame. How could he sing of castles drear, Who with the wild bee found her? His silver harp how could she hear. With all God's birds around her? And when he heard her heart beat high. And knew how it could bleed. He cast his ruby far to lie Forgot with clod and weed. 26 BALLAD OF A WOOING Then sought with fasting eyes to share The heaven in her own; And as she passed, upon the air There fell a beggar's moan. 27 EVENING ABOVE SARANAC Thou, unhorlzoned as eternity, Yet of time's rounded hour thy mirror making, Thy heart the sun, thy hand the gathering sea, Yet in a flower thine ample lodging taking; Thou who dost vein the marble and the leaf, Mak'st thought and dream shine through the jungle's scarring, Till from a scented reed, as summer brief, Man breathes the forest some dim star is wearing; These are thy shadows; here I strip me free Of myths and days; of grieving and of fearing; Tatters of fame, and love that bannered me; Here bare me as the moonlight, only hearing, As in thy music, universes flow. And even as music to thy silence go. 28 JOB 31 : 1 The prophet's lips are wan as winds Whose fury has been spent for long; His voice is faint as buried sins, Too faint to sound above a song; His hand, raised toward the starry coasts. Thins like a ghost's. The maiden's eyes are brov/n as hay, With edges burnt to tender gold; Her lips are coals where red life gay Laughs at the stars so far, so old. And Youth who has no world to lose Is asked to choose. 29 ON CLINGMAN DOME The balsam buds are bluer From leaning on the sky; With faces nearer, truer, The stars pass cousinly. And here on moss like heather, As fragrant and as deep. Safe in the tender weather. The baby angels sleep. They curl and tumble near me, Like little laughing flames; They nudge and do not fear me. And whisper me their names. When with the dawn I waken, I hear them scurrying. And stare just half mistaken Where leaves shine like a wing. 30 ON CLINGMAN DOME God's truants, but forgiven; For all day long I see A silver door in heaven Lean open coaxingly. 31 SONG The bird upon the ocean waste With straining wing, Fails not for in her breast She bears an unbuilt nest, A bough of Spring. And I who travel toward a west That has no sun. Faint not for in my breast Thy love is still my rest And harbor won. 32 AFTER THE GAME What Is it, Youth, that I regret? Master of gifts, and leaving none? Is it the feet that lightly set Their print where mountain brows were wet With dewy mirrors of the moon? Bearing a soul importunate To smite the blue sky stone that is the gods* shut gate? Or mourn I most that braver day, Imperious, and perilling My hope that flung an upward lay. From trails of vision challenging; And valiant went the gauntlet way Past flame and spear; enraptured driven To set drab tents of man fair on a ridge of heaven? When destiny, struck by desire, Rang back, a bell of magic tone? When love let no man walk alone, 33 AFTER THE GAME And every heart held altar fire, For every heart was yet my own That grew, as flames grow, round the earth With fast exultant beat of multitudinous birth ? Or dearer aches my loss when shy Ghost hours lead to an idle brook, Where pale with song's sped shaft I lie, And with eternal wonder look Upon a moth-wing's brevity, Careless against the infinite Heaven of a leaf, and tremble watching it ? Regret, O bee that comes with age From faded fields to sting again To pain's swift red the heritage That once was April light to men, When will you coldly pass me? — when Leave me to twilight and the dumb Strange gaze of stars that care not who may go or come? 34 RETURNING When I came back to my hills, The sun was red on the Great Boar's tusk. And all his children at his feet Were bonnetted in dusk. Thin little fragrances stole out, Like mist I could not see. But Twilight caught them round her throat Before they strangled me. 35 THE NEW FREEDOM Now all the ways are open, And we may ramble in; Garden and ivory temple. And the silken doors of sin. No wondering by a door-step, No latticed mystery; No gray portcullis guarding Dream's gold for you and me. By the path into the forest Where four blind windows wait, The silence has no secret, Down is the briared gate. How bare the world is grown now. Without a bar or pin ! No little doors at twilight We may not enter in. (To W. C. B. On the publication of " Standards.") 36 THE FOURTH WATCH Where shall I find thee, Joy, Who loved me long and well? What rout doth now employ Thine elfin foot and bell? Shall I who shared thy bower. From all thy fields have not one flower? Spring in her gown of leaves Is naked without thee; Summer with all her sheaves Goes starving beggarly; Music along my path In all her notes no echo hath. O Life, thy palsy lies In me, not in the leaf. O Time, thy passing dries My heart and not the sheaf. Music, thou 'It take no room In hearts that tent too near the tomb. 37 THE FOURTH WATCH O days too young for fear, O quivering bloom of sky, O lover at mine ear, Vanished so utterly ! Nay, let me die, and then Joy, thou and I shall forth again. 38 DORIS The ghost of Love walks by her, To church and to the play. With pipe and chuckle nigh her. The twilights go his way. Admire his ease in carving; His smile by candle light. He has no thought of starving, This ghost with appetite. But Love's red heart goes burning Where the wild road sings no more; And there'll be no returning; A ghost guards well his door. 39 MY LAWYER When he seeks to act He stumbles on a prison; Darkness is his fact, Though twenty suns be risen. Halting, — action's fever Caged and bound and bowed,- He is free as ever Sailed Uranian cloud. 40 "HELEN'S LIPS ARE DRIFTING DUST"* O TELL me, Helen, what is this Strange dust they say thy beauty is, When hearts who do not hold thee must Indeed be hearts of dust? THE PIERIAN SPRING TO-DAY The Muse has left the trampled brink For a deeper wood And solitude's sweet food; But still we come in hordes. With dippers, cups and gourds. And drink, and drink. * Frederic Laurence Knowles 41 SALLYS GAP From trough to tip the gap is thick with laurel, And black raccoons hide in blue granite dens; And there's a spot where, if you chance to draw well, You may, some afternoon with pad and pens, Your head in shade, your feet in sunny sorrel, Fake us a little cove in Sicily, More cool to dream in, though, alas, no sea ! You hear the bees hum skyward in the poplars. Making the sweetest honey of the year. And watch a cloud that like a tinted mop blurs A neighbor mountain's bold and green half-sphere With freakish push and start, and with a drop leers In at the cabin doors, or dares to take A roll in gardens, like a playing lake. And there's a sound so near it seems to bubble Out of your heart and tingle through your skin. 42 SALL'S GAP You creep around the lin that rises double And where a clump of forest lilies thin Themselves to three that rise with little trouble To a graceful score of feet before they droop Their spotted heads, you catch your breath and stoop; For you have found it; found the mossy parting Where a mountain rillet breaks into the light; An infant on its seaward way outstarting. You might with half your fingers dam its flight, So slenderly begins its silver darting. But how your soul would chide you if you did. Keeping such bright ambition muddied, hid ! And it is yours; here from this gay beginning This crystal rover with a singing tongue; This rebel from the hill's heart that goes winning Its way round clutching roots with growing song That will not give the veery one clear inning; Yours every drop of blue and pearl that links It, Down to the broad, brown stream that coolly drinks it. 43 SALL'S GAP I mean 'tis mine (for I'll no longer share it With you, the dear man mythical, supposed To read my verse, but can with ease forbear it); And creeping where the laurel arms are closed Above me, I go with the brook's song; mar it. No doubt, with lilting of my own that pushes Out of my heart and with the water rushes. What can I tell of that green way I wandered Save that each step seemed deeper than its brother In scented woods where vines and bushes squandered Berries of gold and sapphire with no bother Except to tell the Wind that deftly sundered Them from their hoard. If fairies saw him, sure They saw him stagger with the load he bore. And when I reached the valley my heart rumbled With ache of joy it sought to grapple fast. I was a creature with wild wings that fumbled For their lost sky; but forced to think at last That feet were good enough, I used them, humbled. So walking met a man quite unexalted. Who said the day was very hot. I halted. 44 SALL'S GAP "Sir," I began, "yon brook that meets the river. Must have a name full worthy beauty's wear; A name that like itself may sing forever In hearts that hear it. Happy be our care To find a name that melody can never. No never can forsake for anything More sweetly sounding." He stood wondering; Then spoke too loud, I thought. "Sail's branch? You'd name it? It 's got a name 'at's good enough for me." "Sail," I began, but could not quite defame it, My stream of beauty, with such mockery — "She was an Indian woman with a claim 'at Lay yonder in Sail's Gap. You see it, lady? They're both named after her." And "good-day," said he. He went ; I stayed. What was the use of mov- ing ? The world from bondage could not be delivered While men were dead to Beauty; gross, unloving To all her gifts. My body burnt and quivered. 45 SALL'S GAP YouVe felt it too, — that hot despair of proving Man worth your dream, or any light you bring; Of saving Europe, or of anything. Then came a thought that through my gloom shot brightly; A thought of him, the wise man of the hill; Tall, thin and old, and used to thinking rightly; Whose age showed fires of gentle splendor still. We'd change that name ! My step again was sprightly, As off I hastened, dropping a stern mutter; We'd change that name, — that name I could not utter ! He knew the stars, and looked like one who knew them. He knew the earth too, which was somewhat more; He knew the flowers, and as his children grew them; But best he knew the mountains and their lore. I told him all. He plucked two pinks and threw them Into the shadows by his little door; And I repeated what I'd said before. 46 SALL'S GAP My words were wrestlers In a silence spreading Until I felt it thicken through the valley; And still no sound, no answer to my pleading; But once he rose, and lengthened magically Until his face seemed in the heavens receding. "And beauty — beauty — " trailed I, overtasked, "And you would die for it?" he sudden asked. Then told the story while I listened dumbly. "For thirty years she lived there near the sky. Men sought her out, for she was gay and comely, But none could win her; so her youth went by. And when her tribe was driven forth, she humbly Begged leave to die where every wild thing knew her, And every tree and green thing nodded to her. "It was not granted. She must travel westward. She plead to stones, not to good men and true, In vain she sought to linger there sequestered. And hid and starved one long white winter through. They hunted her, and deep the rancor festered 47 SALLYS GAP Till troops went up. If she would not forsake her Wild home so strangely loved, by God, they'd make her !" His voice crept through the shadows like a ferret. "They found her cabin by the brooklet's head; Her spring you stumbled on; and standing near it. The tree where swung her body. She was dead An hour before they came. I know her spirit Has never left the mountain, — never shall. Her name was Star-in-rain; they called her Sail." His eyes were shut. I slipped away not speaking. She starved. And I, had I not somewhat yearned For supper coming down ? Trespasser peeking ! Night on my forehead was a paw that burned. Across the gap a loosened star went streaking. Sail's gap? Sail's brook? So may they ever be! I set this down for meddlers likest me. 48 TWILIGHT UNDER BLACK CAP It is the month of Spring's full star. Now Redwing makes each thicket his, And now the apple blossom is The oriole's honey jar. The road flows down with bend and whirl; (They take it who to market go;) Flows, ripples, flies and falls, as though The mountain wore a curl. Great shadows drop and darker stare. Slow nestling down like giant birds. And silent worlds with baflled words Tap at the door of air. One brown field sleeps, where row to row We laid the corn in furrow house Before the lighted dogwood boughs Might drop their stars of snow. A bullbat measures downily His wheeling watch above the wood, 49 TWILIGHT UNDER BLACK CAP And a Golden owl drifts down a rood Beyond her chestnut tree. Yon grim, unpassioned peak where wades An early star in swelling night, Can reel with berries, drunken bright, And laugh with lowland raids. And that ravine where waters sound. And hemlock trees cloud duskily. Is neither dread nor dark to me. But sweet as maying ground; For once a belted kingfisher Drew Love and me with sapphire flaunt Far up the stream, a fairy's jaunt. On moss as soft as fur. II Above the dawn I leaned in fear To see him ride the gray mist down. Safe be the road to market-town, My phantom wagoner ! 50 TWILIGHT UNDER BLACK CAP I watched until the sun set high His cedar fires on Black-cap Spur; Till far below the valley blur Shone like a tangled sky; Then to the full day, swift and meek, I turned, and not alone; For safely, softly, half unknown. Love moved at hide-and-seek. Against my apple-basket spread. The book he loved lay as I pared; And the bardic gold again we shared As goldenly he read. The spoon he carved, — brown wood inlaid With whitest holly — leaf and wren- — Whirred in my bowl and sang again The song the carver made. And dipping water from the spring, The stone-crop set in mossy cleft Held up its stars, — his woodland theft, There for my wondering. 51 TWILIGHT UNDER BLACK CAP At last a rifling hour I spent By beds in flower, with ruthless knife Where blossom clans were saucy rife, And as I silent bent Thought came of how he said "Let be The valley lilies by the door; They are the flowers that you wore The day you came to me." I rose, with strange remembering; Again my heart was high and lone; Then stood as quiet as a stone With eyes upon my ring. Let Fortune bless as Fortune can, Fame show her face nor hide again. Still is supreme the white hour when The woman goes to man. And blithe the way of thorn and furze, And royal then a rustic part. If he but bear a singing heart, And all that heart is hers. 52 TWILIGHT UNDER BLACK CAP III Now every flower Is a bride's In Twilight's hair. Soon she will sleep, And fingers of the moon will creep Along her paling sides. And up and up the flowing road A sound will greet me as I lean, Of wheels that climb and climb between The dark wings of the wood; On where the stream strives to the sea, A laughing god, in one white leap; And blossoms of the bloodroot keep Their candles milkily. On by the rhododendrons where Gay leaves will touch a cheek for me; On till the height has wrestled free And night lies blue and bare. S3 TWILIGHT UNDER BLACK CAP IV O Beauty, most you love the Night ! And now you hold her like a mate, While all her moon-swept mountains wait As altar waits the rite. As still as they, for Love grown late, Watching the road that like a curl Drops flowing down with bend and whirl, As still as they I wait. 54 COMPACT The poplar trembles on the hill Where once you stood and said "When I am down for good or ill. Make here my mountain bed. "When from my green to your white door These leaves their signal pass, I'll quiet lie and listen for Your foot upon the grass." But now the sea has made your grave, Far from your hill that grieves; And I look down in every wave To beckoning poplar leaves. 55 LISTENERS Under the moon my ears Are eager for strange sound; A distant, dropping song That can not live Touching my common ground. Upward I strain to hear The moon*s own melodies Above the meadow choir And singing wood; More strange, more sweet than these. But songless is the moon; Silent and barren she Strains palely down to hear Sound of a silvered earth, Her star of melody. 56 TO A YOUNG GIRL Come years that yet are kind With wings to sail for me ! My errands in the sky Dome dancingly, While I, ere night, unbind Sore sandals, lay them by ! For me? Fate never willed Such store to those who lack. W^ho go to gather stars Do not come back With aprons golden filled For doubters at the bars. Fair runner, fleetly go ! Upon my mornings climb. Till on thy head are dews Not of my time; And if I lose thee so, 'Tis riches so to lose. 57 ITALY (February, 1917) Thou art bleeding, Italy ! Rubies burn thy belting sea; Dripping rubies from thy heart; And afar we pale and start As we first had felt the blow. Little of our world we know, Little of her ways can read; Lies her head we know not where; Or her shifting hands and feet; But her heart we know is set (Like a song within a deed. Like a jewel all may wear,) Golden warm in Italy; And there wounded we must bleed. Bleed with thee, O Italy ! Hot the tears that blind us; we 58 ITALY See no sin of all thy sins. All we know is in our veins; Veins that burn with hurt to thee. All we know is, thou dost call — That thou in the darkness strove, And the spear is in thy side. All we know is that we love, And the blows that on thee fall Fall as blows upon a bride, Italy ! 59 ASTRAY When I have wandered in the dusty way That farthest leads from beauty's path of cool; My spirit frayed, in suit of seamy day, And wit gone bare in cheap adventure's school; A wretched captive whom the gods enjoin To store poor nothing with laborious breath; Bowing my back with burden of a coin That will not toll me through the gate of death, Nor buy one dream to aid mortality To stay the ravage of eternal dearth, And with one star array my memory To shine an hour above the faded earth; I sink as one too weak for wish or cry. Glad of oblivion's shade before I die. 60 FATHERLAND Come fingered as a friend, O Death; Unfrock me, flesh and bone. These frills of smile and moan, These laces, traces all unpin; These veins that net me in. This ever lassoing breath, Remove from me. If here is aught to free. O Earth, I shall be fleet Upon thy hills; thy child at last. Waiting no feet; Thy roads all mine, and no white gate Inevitably fast. So free, so blest. To love thee till winds ultimate Have left thee, too, undrest ! To enter where thy banquets are When storms are called to feast; And find thy hidden pantry stair When Spring with thee would guest; 6i FATHERLAND Into thine attic windows step From humbled Himalays; And round thy starry cornice creep, Waylaying deities. And this, my Earth, I know; Though for my hand Space hold out spheres like roses, and Like country lanes their orbits blow. If thou be green, and blossom still, Then I must downward go; Leave stars to keep House as they will; The winds to walk, or turn and sleep; Seas to spare or kill. Behind my back shall sunsets burn Bereft of my concern; Each wonder passed Shall feed my haste. Till I have paused as now, Beneath a bending orchard bough, — An April apple bough. Where Southern waters creep. 62 DEFIANCE Or dear or great they fall as grass; They go, and never come; And still we seek out ways to pass Beyond the tether of the breath; Still hope runs on from tomb to tomb Denying death. Set in us, Death, the fear of fears, — Some day there'll be no Spring; Tramp earth till every hill be bare, The hosts of life on mocking spheres Beyond the hills of Jupiter Will sigh and sing. You conqueror? Then a greater lot Doth he, the conquered, own; He looks into your eyes of stone, He hears you pass, an iron wing. But you, dark force, you know him not. Nor anything. 63 DEFIANCE What is the wind-flower's nod to you Whose Spring brings back no ghost? What is the harebell's shaken blue, Rocking again within my heart? What are the tulip sails high-tost Where suns depart? You nothing see when Youth, the seer. Dies proud against a wall; Blind yet when eyes of friends long true Meet in your shadow; even there Fill with a light undoing all That you can do. A sage speaks clear as bells that make A gold lake of the air; On heart and lips that dared, you set The heavy earth; but waiting where A world's two ways their parting take, Men listen yet. A poet walks; you haste to cut The breath of flame and dew, 64 DEFIANCE And doors of vision fumble shut; But words of his, as bright as tears, Have lit like birds on all the years Time holds from you. Who knows how lone the sea must flow, Is lonelier than the sea; A greater than the hills is he Who feels them pass from sand to sand; And who knows Death, to Death may go With almoner's hand. Or dear or great they fall as grass; They go, and never come; But still we seek out ways to pass Beyond the tether of the breath, And hope runs on from tomb to tomb Denying death. 6s II LAUGHTER The house of grief had no windows. The widow's tears fell like bitter acorns, And the child kept touching her strange cheek. My dead friend's face was a cold lamp That Pain had lit and deserted. I took the high ridge homeward, But I did not get above the trees. They crowded me like too many gods. What had I to do in their world? Had my friend found the right planet? Or made another mistake? If I had known which was mine, I should have made haste to go. Below me in the dark lay the roof of a cottage, And through two little holes I could see firelight dancing. 69 LAUGHTER It was queer to look on hearthfire through a roof. Three glass balls met softly in the air. It was my laughter. The trees made room for me; The jostling gods were gone; Earth was warm; I was in my own place. 70 ON THE MOUNTAIN She passed like a running flame. He did not see her, but the leaves she touched Were edged with proud fire, And the wind blew haughtily all day Above her track. A deer by a spring looked at him and said Do you think you can overtake one Who is fleeter than I? And drank and nibbled as if Autumn had not come With Winter under her apron. The deer knew that high up All the leaves were brown. And the wind whipped them sullenly, And a trail of white ashes lay in the road; But he who was only a man, ran on. 71 I TAKE A WALK I SEE that the mountain is breathing to-day. A white mist rolls upon it; And suddenly my heart is the mountain. My green trees, like children, Snatch at the climbing mist. It curls with laughter and moves on. I must wait until it is weary And creeps into a hollow of the mountain's arm. Before my heart can be only a heart again. I come to a clear spring in the woods. And stoop to see what has made the small track In the soft earth. A raccoon has been drinking here. Leaving a print like a baby's foot; Five tiny drops for toes. And a little heel watching them. My heart goes slipping through the bushes To a home in the laurel, and I wait 72 I TAKE A WALK Till the sun has gone through the highest pine-top Before I can quite get it back. Cliffs thrust themselves up, Dripping with ferns; The rocks elbowing through Like gods that could not hide themselves When the earth got too old for them. And I must stand here till my heart Has felt the ice of a million winters And the thaw of a million summers, And birds and beasts that men have never seen Come out of the fissures, and look down from the ledges. Begging for parley with a world That never relents or gives quarter At the end of a day. I come out of the woods to the sea; And my heart is away, knowing no walls; Itself the unanswered sea That inquires of all shores; Pleading with the temperate, silent sands; 73 I TAKE A WALK Tearing at the dumb, blue North, Tooth against its tooth in icy duel; Entreating down the long triangular South; A suppliant creeper, Making the fragrant ambit Of mid-world islands, Floating her crinkled moons A gift before her; Overrunning the cup of the Gulf; Hurling an upright tide. And grinding out no answer From a city tossed to driftwood. Beseeching or furious. Day and night the questioner. And I would die for want of sleep If I did not stumble away. And let my heart creep after me. Once more small and safe. I lie down on the ground; Rich, brown soil is my pillow; And a violet near my eyes is taller than Fuji. 74 I TAKE A WALK I hide under the blue mountain and rest; But I had come out to walk. Now this is my prayer, O my saints ! Stop my heart from all this, So that I can get somewhere. 75 THE GOD All day we have climbed The high wold of the winds, My lover and I. We have raced on the flinty ledges, Our shoulders like twin prows Cutting the mist; On the upward rocks Our steps rang together; Together our thoughts Pushed at the yielding horizon; And the hollows that gave us rest Caught and tossed as one breath Our laughter. But I fear the night. When sleep, the unmasker, May reveal him a god. He will lie unapproachably still. Returned to himself, 76 THE GOD Listening above my earth. Whispers will drop from the stairs of the night, Swimming the dusk leagues To the shore of his dreaming, But not for me, humble in the moonlight, Making a hyacinth wreath For the brow of my god. Night, and he sleeps. The day, like a tinted mantle, Has slipped from the smooth, white body; The day of valor and vision. When my veins were a tide for his thirst. When his heart was a lake at my lips. Heedlessly his cheek Brushes oblivion; His features lie tender as rest; As a flower from its conscious stem fallen, Unaware of wild winds. The lips curve free as a child*s; No whispers from the sky 77 THE GOD Nest and knock at the pale round of his ear; Only in me is there stir, A quiver like the faint unrest When a world is begun. I lift my hand to the wide night, Lest the dark fall upon him; With my brooding shoulders, stronger than hills, I bend back the winds; I, patient with the babble of gods; Unconcerned with the gossip on the stairs of the night; Making a cradle of the vast, dusk leagues; And my careless foot Is on the hyacinth wreath, As my kisses shatter the light on his hair, The hair of my little child. 78 WE CREATORS Let us go on with experiments; Let us dare and dream and do; Some day we may make a world With a buttercup in it, Or a swallow's wing. ATTENTION And if a daisy look at me, The wheeling world Seems then to stand Contentedly At journey's end. 79 TWILIGHT The mountains lie in curves so tender I want to lay my arm about them As God does. WHEN LYING ON A BANK OF TWIN-FLOWERS The pain of my crude body Has become fragrance, And fragrance, finer than longing, Has become my pain. 80 EVVIE'S MOTHER She took the last egg out of the basket. "I'll warm a little 'fore I go," she said; And pretending not to know That Spring had tip-toed through my window And put out my fire, She drew her chair hearthward. I glanced at the hovering shoulders That made my kitchen seem too big and com- fortable. And scoured a milk-jar the second time. She watched me through her eyelids, And sure of my sheltering indifference. Began : **Evvie an' Judd got off this mornin*. Judd hauled their thimbleful o* stuff Round by the wagon road yisterday, 8i EVVIE'S MOTHER An' they set off afoot over the mountain. Evvie was limpin', 'count o* that ketch in her back. But Judd was totin* all the bundles. He thinks he's goin' to be good to her; I'll 'low him that. "I reckon it was easy walkin* to her own home, Even a limpin'. I've kept 'em eight months now. An' Evvie wanted to get moved and shaped up 'Fore the baby come. "Ef she wasn't so little. . . . Girls used to marry at fifteen an' hold out at it. But I don't b'lieve they's as little as Evvie. "She says she'll be satisfied, 'cause it's Judd. But she don't like that lonesome creek Down there in the fork o' the mountains. It's enough to make an owl hoot in daylight. That place is; An' Evvie '11 be by herself a lot. 82 EVVIE'S MOTHER "The shack's more'n a mile from anybody. It's on northy land too, so laurelly It'd tangle a wild hog. Judd's folks live the nighest, But they've never took to Evvie. "'Tain't fair to call her spiled, But she's used to bein' made up to; Hearin' all her life how purty she was, An' her father bein' sort o* foolish about her. When she went to school an' had that wheezin' in her chest. He used to meet her, pushed as never was, An' tote her halfway home pick-a-back. "When Judd ast for her I said He was big and strong, he'd take keer of her; An' her daddy said yes, he was big as a house An' strong as an ox, An' that's what he was afraid of. "Evvie can sew an' cook. An' keep the house redd up nice, 83 EVVIE'S MOTHER But I got to say it she ain*t much in a crop. She'll drag the hoe ever' time. An' that's why Judd's folks don't like her. His mammy said Evvie'd learn something Ef she tried settin' down 'round her When the weeds was jumpin' in the corn. *Purty won't fill the meal-sack,' That's what she told Judd, an' Evvie heard her. "Judd promised he wouldn't push her Faster 'n she could go; Leastways not now; but he's got a hard eye, Blacker 'n dark o' the moon, An' I've seen him look. . . . "Limpin* now, an' got two months more. But Judd was totin' the bundles. Maybe it'll work out." 84 PACE TUA I WAKE, and look about me. I thought I had cleared everything out of my room. So that my mind, catching on nothing, Would go sailing In a clear sky For the eaves over the horizon. But there is that Corot photograph, Left me by a rambling, starving artist; Starving for Paris, — O God, Have I got to go to Paris this morning? And that bowl, like the bark of a tree, With a lizard climbing on it, — A young Indian of Yellow Hill Made it and sold it for fifty cents. He bought tobacco, and is lying under a tree Making smoke-rings and dreaming Of more bowls and tobacco. God bless him, I could think of him all day ! 8s PACE TUA That box, — yes, three chocolates left. Where are the girls that dipped them. Singing and swearing and wondering about their dates ? Shoo away, girls, before I find out that one of you Is infected with dreams and ambition; The kind that heave the world, Down under mud and stones; And get people out of bed, As far as the bath-tub anyhow. That rug, — the old woman in the next cove Dyed it with pecoon root and dogwood bark. Granny Whitt, who sheep-hunted all over these hills Till she was eighty-two, And sold wool to the women with looms and wheels. I saw her once on a rock under a pine. It was foggy morning before sun-up. And she looked like a slim, grey feather Standing upright. 86 PACE TUA She had a daughter named Zinnia; Big, like her forefathers, and lovely and silent. Made you think of Autumn, and warm rain. She married a half-breed Cherokee, straight and strong. He was jealous of a white man; Hid in the laurel, and shot him; Cut out his eyes and brought them to Zinnia. She lived two weeks, and left twins an hour old. They hung him, under a bridge. He had a felon on his finger; They tore it open dragging him to the bridge. The noose didn't work well. They hung him around dark, and at three o'clock in the morning Two tramps crossed the bridge and ran. Because they heard groans. If you ever had a felon — The twins are big enough now To climb the long hill from Granny Whitt's And play in my yard. 87 PACE TUA One day — Narrative, narrative ! Shall I slop into your easy path. And trickle on? You may drain any river And find three garnets. There's a garnet in this poem. If you go after it with a dredge. 88 SNOW IN THE COTTON FIELD The cotton stalks rattle Their dead leaves jauntily; But looks of dismay- Are cast furtively downward At a thick, white world That needs no more of their labor. THE POEM Li T*ai Po was making a poem about death. When death moved through his life like a glacier And ground away all his pretty words. And ever after when a friend would come to him saying, "I will read you my poem about death," Li T'ai Po would answer, "I can not hear you, friend; the North wind is too loud." 90 AUGUST EVENING The shadows of the mountains stretch cool on the valley, Making a shore for the scented waves From the fallen reefs of hay. A hundred white moths drift homeless Above the cropped grass, Silent as patience and wonder; But the tiny, hopping meadow-moles barb the air, Making a new Saga of the scythe that unroofed them. If I walk alone round the curve of the lake, With a step like lapping water. Till I pass the house of the beavers, And sit carved in twilight. Shall I hear a blue crane cry? 91 ADVICE The moss on your apple trees Will kill the struggling fruit, Writes my friend; and sends me a scaling knife. But I think that when I am a spirit. Who has forgotten how to eat. And come back to my trees, The struggling green moss Will be lovelier than the fruit; And I lay the knife away, Safely, where it will never hack and wound The creeping feet of Beauty. 92 ON CERTAIN STATE ADVISERS AND THEIR PUBLIC They are like my kind Serena, Who tiptoes to my bed And asks in tones with the lid cautiously on If she may do this or that. She thinks that if she whispers She can get her orders without awaking me. 93 THE ARCTIC GIRL The stranger that came from where the blue star shines Says that in his land the earth is green. There are tall sprouts that go up to the sky And birds build their huts in them And live there with their families; But the sprouts on the ground are short and thick, And kind to the feet. It must be a strange world, all green. With no white snow and blue ice. I should like to look at it once, A little at a time, with my eyes nearly shut. I will go some night the way the stranger went, Down toward the blue star. I may see a bird in the high green. Talking to his children. I will walk very carefully on the little thick sprouts; Then I shall come back to the smooth safe ice And the good white snow. 94 APOLOGY I WOULD not write a book, But I have a friend over the sea Whom I have never seen, And who does not know that he is my friend. He lives in a house of baked yellow clay, So old now that it is brown as the leaves The wind drops upon it. When he climbs the hill behind his cottage, And sits with his back to a bare oak With twisted, futile branches, And looks out on the ocean That makes far, drowned birds of his dreams, I want him to hold my book, and with returning eyes Confess to the speedwell and robins That they have a new comrade. 95 WHO SHALL MEASURE? From my highest hill I watched for Antares. Brief would be his glimmer Where the long line of mountains Duped the horizon With vague, rambling mist. And I shall never know If that was Antares* Eye on the earth-line, Or the gleam of a lantern The wild poet carried; For God who saw both Only laughs when I ask him. 96 KARTAJAYA Once in Golden Chersonese, The Yellow Land, Says the old Tamil poem. Lived Kartajaya making beauty's shoes. And one day he cried to Vishnu, "I am weary, O Life-weaver! Weary of princesses with unclad feet That never have enough of pearls and lambskin; Of beaded silk, and velvet that creeps in the night. Take a year from my days, O Life-weaver, And set me free for the work my soul loves." So Vishnu cut a year from his days And gave him the freedom of earth. For ten years he went hither and thither, Following his soul; But when the singer from far Tamil Came to Golden Chersonese, He found Kartajaya in his old place Making beauty's shoes. 97 TOLSTOI Put me a thought in the butterfly, will you? Let it garnish a thought, Or take the carcass away. I am more than eyes. 98 BURNING BRIDGES Come, friend, my soul; We are going to burn our bridges. Yes, I've been watching you, And this is the moment of courage, Of madness, of faith. We will burn them all; The shining bridges, built so carefully, Quarried from cliffs of pearl in the dawn. Where you have passed and lain untouched By the burning air of battle And the sooty drip of sweat; The iron bridges, that will bear all your trundling baggage; Stuff from your grandfather's attic; Cradles, and harps, and old books; Chests full of skulls, That are heavy only because they are so many; 99 BURNING BRIDGES The old wooden bridges, that creak and nearly drop you, Kept for sudden usage, Unconfessed in the shadows Of vines and stooping branches; The torch to them all ! Burn them quickly in your moment of fire. There are dens of twilight back there; There you are safe; Safe as a fox home from the hounds; And under cover you can get you little fox eyes, And claws that tingle for a goose Fat with corn. But you will go there no more; The bridges are burning. What is that little white thing Going up like a leaf in the smoke? Stay ! Don't leap back ! Don't dance like a dervish, trying to reach it. You thought you brought it with you? Well, you didn't, and it's gone. 100 BURNING BRIDGES Face about now ! Courage for strange clouds; Clouds with boiling green funnels Ploughing toward us; For terrors like drunken mountains Falling upon us; For conjurations making the ground tremble. Face about ! What is this, friend, my soul? A clean rain has swept the way for us; The clouds drift slowly, like puzzled sheep; Our feet fall young on the garnished path; The air is scented; We are nearing the manna fields. Behind us are no chasms, no charred wrecks. But a far plain, shimmering green and tender. Don't pause to wonder; come on; Miracles always happen, common as grass. When bridges are burnt. lOI Ill IN THE BLACK COUNTRY (Staffordshire, England) Hell hath its uses; here each mortar mouth Casts far as life some treasure dear to need; Welcome to men as ships the fruity South Sends to blown Arctic shores. These valleys bleed That others may be fair. In greener shires, Where glisten cots and byres. Manors and castles, or where farther bide Young Adam and his bride, What aching wants are banished by these despot fires ! Let Ceres bring sweet incense and blow white Yon furnace breath; for there flames leap to mould Her spears and harrows, chains and mattocks bright; There forge the gleaming blades that cut the gold 105 IN THE BLACK COUNTRY Of wide Australians fields when flow and wane Her harvest tides of grain; And shape for far, brown hands the hoe and spade To ruff some island glade, Or, chance be, turn the mellow sod in Argentine. Look to our left; bolts, rivets, girders, beams, That make our towers safe near wavering stars; Rods, pillars, shafts, that bridge unchallenged streams. Or bear a mountain's weight; unflinching bars That Time alone can bend; and fairy wire For violin and lyre, That shall from Music's heart stir her to break Dream's silence and remake That silence deeper: all are born of that white fire. And there ! Slack would the world go but for pins. Needles and button. When we lost our fur, Fishbone and threaded thorn helped us our sins To hide again, and modesty relure To walk with us. Now showering from here To every port o' the sphere, io6 IN THE BLACK COUNTRY Go, tidying the world, slim bits of pointed sun, And on the daintiest one What maid at bridal thrift shall drop a happy tear? But see where cavern windows ghostly glow, As a dead dragon's eyes yet open burn. Stripped figures like strange beasts weave to and fro! And suddenly we know how beasts must yearn Who have no way out but to pass Through fire to the green grass. These strong, who for the weak make beauty sure, How long will they endure An earth of ashes and a sky of brass? 107 HOME He came, her hero crowned. Neat as a lily trim, She put slim arms around The hell of him. The horror with no name He looked on night and day, Though it met her like a flame. Her love would slay. Her soft hands, they should cling; Her kisses, they should wean Him from the strange, dark Thing That he had seen. And when his days grew mild, And he said "You let me go; But I forgive you, child; You did not know;" io8 HOME She yet knew not her loss. His soul its shore would keep, And in no world would cross To hers asleep. 109 EN ROUTE Men of Earth, how goes our race ? Runners on a whirling ball. While the hounds of Nature chase; Tusk and fang behind us all? Reaching for the ravelled wind, And the pearls behind the rain. While oblivion's pickets bind Mouth and foot of all our slain. Not so fast we flee in time But diseases gnaw their fill; Yet do adders of the slime Slit the tendon vulnerable. Shouting dies on frozen breath; Singing fails with parching blood; And the patient watcher, Death, Ever waits his whiter food. Safety's arm must sweep the skies; Stars her belting filigree. Shall our blood-made boundaries no EN ROUTE Mark her throat and shut her eye, Till upon our blackened hearth Sets the forest foot, and lost Is the wild, escaping earth To man's shrunken, futile ghost ? Tongues of wisdom, are they dumb ? Cap and bells, not cap and gown? That two fingers give a crumb While our guns beat cities down? Science ours, we turn her blades Against our hearts, though Time yet lays For us his cosmic ambuscades. And yet shall launch his glacial days. Other hope than this we've none; Strength of all men's hands in two; Strength of all men's hearts in one, Clear of poison's ancient brew; Brew of lies more ghastly than Ever hag in midnight wood Mixed for Superstition wan. Giving her new, viler blood. Ill EN ROUTE Oh, what keys are in our power ! World in world no more may hide; We may bring the giants* hour; Hand and brain no goal denied. Browsing then in heaven's air; Stars our food and milky teat; And these salt fields of despair Gemmed and green, our laurelled seat. Though a frozen sun awaits, Dropsied with a glut of spheres. When the swallowed earth completes Cycle of her whirling years. We'll have saved eternity This greater thing, — a mind that won Its way to destiny's last play And lost the game to God alone. 112 THE COMING FAIR, free world ! For thee 1 dreamed a festal birth; Tides flowing sunnily, And Beauty nursing earth. Thine advent, like a rose On a cursed and dying tree, Should make the winds lie close. And turn Time's head to see. On all the laughing roads No lack of song and bread; No stricken, hushed abodes. No drifts of tattered dead. But oh, *tis poverty That pays thy natal cost. And the grey hag, Misery, Is she who tends thee most. 113 THE COMING And they who knew thee not, May they forbearance win From the bleeding hands that brought Thee, pallid starveling, in ! 114 BALLAD OF TRAFALGAR SQUARE I He shone, a fleshless glow That lit the coIumn^s base; A sprout of fire earth could not grow; A passion and a will Fed by a far, exhaustless grace From cruse invisible. Archbuilder of the word; But vision vain he flung Upward and outward like a bird That could not find a bough, Though knowing somewhere woods were young, Waiting the wing and vow. Vain, for the pallid crowd Motion nor motive knew. They, like the quick within a shroud. Seemed dead to all but Death, So still, so stonily they drew Their unsurrendered breath. BALLAD OF TRAFALGAR SQUARE What of the father, God? Let him still turn and sleep. He had for them but curse and rod, And they would let him be. Old father Thames who drowned so deep Cared even as much as he. There, not to measure Him With rebel thumb and nail. Thwart curse and dare His whim, But like lost leaves upcast By meddling search of some chance gale, To huddle when *twas past. II Chiselled in haze and sun. So slimly fair aloft. The towers where Mammon staked and won, Solid, square-set and sure, Held to the sky their templed, soft Invincible allure. ii6 BALLAD OF TRAFALGAR SQUARE Vainly the prophet cried; He with the voice of ten; Vainly he said those gray stones lied; Mirage they surely were, To fade would men but tread as men, Knowing a stone from air. Fool ! Bowed my heart for him. Cabled to every land. Those phantom piles that towered dim. Were founded 'neath the sea. And would in might untrembling stand Till land should cease to be. For blood of Commerce runs Bold arteried as life. Her pennoned forts, her mounted guns, Are the palms on every coast; And dreams that stir to end her strife But armor new her host. These tattered shadows, rags. What could their blows attain? 117 BALLAD OF TRAFALGAR SQUARE Soon prostrate as the thin marsh flags The strong salt runlets seek? Come, gods, and laugh again; Let's still be gay and Greek ! Ill As a mist tugs at a wood. Three sighs turned me about. Where gray as thought a woman stood, With eyes, sunk to a stare. Making a cavern of the clout That hid her brow and hair. Starved arms, yet sovereign, prest A bundled kingdom still. Was milk within that shrunken breast? I doubted till I saw A tiny hand that flashed me thrill From life's unthwarted law. A hand so slight, so white; Drift caught on shores of men; No gosling down could lie more light; ii8 BALLAD OF TRAFALGAR SQUARE How could it cling and stay? A snowflake falling on it then Had pushed it quite away. Yet mightily it held My soul in aching charm; Till I, white as itself, was stilled On mountains of surmise, Waiting with Time the high alarm For worlds to rock, and rise. A hand that yet so slight. From dreaming ooze had thrust The airward man; with unfelt might Had led from den and cave; And something made of body's dust That should not know a grave. IV No more the magic kept From my unseeing stare; Divine to faces gray it leapt, Godly transmuting them; 119 BALLAD OF TRAFALGAR SQUARE Lit was the steaming, weary square, — Dreamers' Jerusalem ! O Self, how small thou art ! How soon thou wouldst be down. Past travelling, but for the part That greater is than thee Which thou in every babe dost own, — Thyself in men to be ! With set and paling lips We gain from ground to ground. From grave to comrade grave our steps Measure the mocking wild; But who would fall till he has found A green hill for his child? Has found a homeward lane, Willow and sycamore. Blue curl of smoke and south-blown vane. The wheat ears heavy and brown. Song and an open door. And a path to Athens town? 1 20 BALLAD OF TRAFALGAR SQUARE I bowed my heart, the fool, To lift it wise as they Who knew their own; no tragic tool, But life unlocked and free; Yet strange in every eye there lay Rebuking pain for me. Then from its dark my soul Rose to that light of pain. And heard at last those high words roll; "Hunger for bread is loss; Hunger for stars is gain; We change, not lose, the cross. "More shall the man-child have Than his filled granaries. The healing oil, the body's salve. These will concern him not. When as his breath they shall be his. And as his breath forgot. 121 BALLAD OF TRAFALGAR SQUARE "Yet hungering he shall spur, Quit of the wilderness Whose leaves are spears, whose bloody stir Fainter and fainter calls. While blue from blue horizons press And skies move back their walls. "Hunger he shall to the last, Mounting the conquered years; Know rack and sweet of spirit fast, Joy of its climbing pain. Till he inherit from the spheres; And what shall stand between ? " Upward earth's tremor ran; Volcanic throbbed the hours; No fear was in the heart of man; David with lifted sling; I looked again at Mammon's towers; God, they were quivering ! 122 IV INNIS-LOE You wake slowly at Innls-Loe If the year is at early March; For Innis-Loe is near the rice lands and the sea. Slowly, not breaking the cardinal's song That began in your sleep. If you do not interrupt him, Or tilt his twig when you throw back the blind, He will not call '*wet weather!" And you want to go to the pool in the woods When the sun can go with you. Kneeling its way through the dark pines. The shadows there are thick as walls. And as you go you will want to cling To a little finger of the sun. You step through the big window, Shaking the dreams from you. But they fall about your knees and feet, And you push along slowly Through the land of Aladdin. 125 INNIS-LOE You go by the barns where the mild folk live,, The big animals with soft eyes And four helpless feet; No hands that may carry guns and bayonets At the cry of the elders. The soft eyes question, but you can not wait. You come to the proud gardens And they quiver with welcome, But they do not hold you. The violets march purpling toward you. And become meekly blue when you pass. You've only a glance for the snowdrops. Nuns with no altar, Offering themselves to your feet; Only an upward nod for the climbing jasmine, And the wistaria's hanging clouds; For what is mere beauty When the great pines swell on the horizon, A black-foamed sea Whose voice is in your heart? The jasmine's gold is fakir's gold This year that is not of our Lord; 126 INNIS-LOE There is blood on the magnolia cups That meant to be so white; When they hold out their fragrance Your nostrils shrivel with the tang of blood That dried and turned black in Tulsa, In Elaine, in Mingo, and in places Where the sun would never shine if it knew. But deep in the vine-haired forest. Behind the black wall of the pines. The pool lies like a guarded maiden, And you hear her whisper: "Do not fear, little heart! Men took a world from my wilderness, And broke it as a plaything. But it is coming back to us. The keepers of life." And the green ropes of the running bamboo Echo along their tangled miles, **Do not fear, little heart; Our cables will hold." 127 RELEASED Leaving behind us the puddling swamp-woods With their spidery vines smothering the sun, And their slim, spinsterly cypress trees That spread suddenly toward the earth Like the skirts of 1890, We came to the bare, flat Carolina land Where the lemon haze of the hot horizon Crept closer and closer, like a circling tiger. The sun was a merciless burning-glass Fixed above us; The snake of smoke leaving the engine Tried to writhe away from it; And the cinders that bit and stung through the windows Seemed mad for refuge. Six cool peaches in a white split basket Could not please me. How long should we drag our bodies over the earth ? 128 RELEASED Scrubbing them, dressing them, taking them along With the mind pinned in them like Ariel In the tree? At a little dab of a junction The train gasped motionless. And the heat piled quivering about us. The tiny, square station rose on four wooden pins As sturdy as ambitious matches And strained vainly away from the dirt. Up and down the yellow pine walls The heat ran with a smoking dazzle, Making narrow slits of our eyes. The woman came out of that toasting box And climbed on the train. She had the face that marries at seventeen Out of wonder and wistfulness, And at twenty-seven Is mothering five. The five trailed with her, their hands clinging. Making a little human chain Fastened by the youngest, leech-wise, to her breast. 129 RELEASED She was so trim and tiny That she seemed made to hold life only; So small that she looked lonely in half my seat. Though the baby spread round the compass. Six times her body, and the heat ! But triumph hung over her. And adventure became speech. "Yes'm, I've been waitin' here five hours. I got a train at Bennettsville early daybreak, And had to change here at the junction. "Yes*m, it was hot in the station, Not cool like it is with the train goin*, But I got a good rest. I had to be up at three o'clock An' that's early for childuhn. "You're right, ma'am, they're good childuhn. Annie's a bit whiny, just over the fever, But the baby don't cry hardly at all. Though his father died two months befoh he was bahn. An' that makes a cryin' baby, they say. 130 RELEASED **0h, yes'm, I'm strong. I was up five nights with Annie, an' the heat made it bad. You don't feel one night, but five make the feet heavy. An' there was the baby needin' me by day. But seein' your child whiter *n her pillow Makes you hold out. You know how that is, ma'am. "Yes'm, I'm movin' down to Sumter. My brother wrote I could get sewin' down there. An' I've got to feed the childuhn somehow. Their father was a good man. He was a carpenter, an' folks liked his work; But there was so many to buy for it kept him pushed. I didn't go in debt for the funeral though. The furniture brought enough for that. He was a good man, an' all he made went to his fam'ly. 131 RELEASED "Yes'm, it's hard when the biggest can*t more*n wash himself. It was growin* twelve when I quit last night. All the little shirts and dresses to do up. An' gettin* out at three did cut into my sleep. But I've got this far, an* I like to travel, don't you? "No'm, Fm not pinin*. "No'm, Fm not afraid I can't raise 'em. Seems to me Fve got a chance now. The baby '11 soon be out o' my lap; An' — you see — there won't be any more.'' She whispered it. But I felt the words as a shout. The wilted face gleamed; She was Deborah singing. 132 THE SEA ASKS Long have I carried The bread of the world. Now my waves, rolling into the harbors, Lap the rust on the dying ships And emptily roll back. My busy, white-rimmed runners That went so cockily into the bays of Long Island, Hurried back in dismay, whispering under the wind Of the rows of ships locked together, Dully awaiting death. They had given them my message, — Of moons that would draw them through night With a thread of silver; Of suns with high, invisible hammers Beating their masts into hold; Of winds opening like the gates Of fair, floating cities ^33 THE SEA ASKS That my architects, light and color and cloud, Build and rebuild for their lovers that sail. But the ships could only quiver and sway Against their taut chains. Then I sent my great blue-green waves To the wide harbor of the West; My waves with broad shoulders and deep, swelling flanks, — Telling them to bear out the proud masts, Score upon score. They rolled back to me. And I felt in their curling surge The strange water of tears. For they bore no idols of venture; Only drifting waste from the dying hulls. To the river-mouths of Europe I urged my eager children. And felt their far wonder As they returned unladen. Line upon line they had seen the strong ships Stretching away till the gray lid of the sky 134 THE SEA ASKS Shut upon them; ships that would never leave shore Till they dropped from their chains And bit by bit came back to my bosom. Now 1 listen to my winds, And they tell strange tales to one Who has carried to and fro the bread of the world. They tell me of a land Where a mother faltered out to the roadside, And gathered dried grass to bake with clay, That her children, white and marrowless, Might grow more numb Under the fastened tooth of Death. And a tale of another land Where the grain and corn break from the bins. And men gaze on the harvest as on a ruin. For they can not sell, and land and roof Must go to the stranger. It is not ease after toil that awaits them; Debt and Fear shadow their door; Going and coming they feel a harrying hand Creep colder and closer to the heart. ^3S THE SEA ASKS I hear of one — and another, and another, — Who looked over his fields with a last unhidden anguish, And cursing his hollow abundance Abandoned a life without hope. Why do the ships rot? Why have I nothing to do When hunger kills in the East And plenty kills in the West? It is not long since the ships Were a throng on my waters. They were carrying bright youths To slay and be slain. I ceased to count them as they sped in the service of Death. Why now are they still when Life would charter their wings? Life that cries as a child, That groans as a mother; That shields a last spark on a million brows While the death-frost gathers and the ships delay? THE SEA ASKS Once I slept and woke trembling, For I had dreamed of a rival. A voice grew in me and said That whatever I was, man was yet more. I was mystery, and he read me; Of my own salt drops he made a seer's crystal. I was terror and tempest, and he bored me through With an auger of light. My tides and deluding currents Were as his playing fingers. In me unrevealing. Nature no longer could hide her strange altars; Could not cover her defeats, And drown beyond angling query Her piled and broken gods. Now I Igiow the voice was false. Only a child would waste the sea. I have smoothed out my waves That ache for the touch of the keels; I have mated with the blue sky; 137 THE SEA ASKS My winds are feather fans half shut. O men, send me your ships ! Let me carry again The bread of the world. 138 TO JOHN REED You ought to have known better, John, Than to follow a star with the world on your toes. You thought you would find her little hand, The little hand of the world, And lead her up the mountain; But you forgot her great, stumbling toes; And that little hand was tucked away in filthy rags. She has had too many nurses; The headless nurse, with long claws. Always trying to drag her back to the cradle. And fight for her, killing all her friends; The fat, old nurse, weak in the back and eyes, Who keeps gathering up the rags the ages try to throw away, And wraps them about her; And the strong, skinny nurse. Who binds her like a mummy with ropes of words From ancient Rome and Greece and early England; 139 TO JOHN REED And with all that you thought you could find her little hand. And lead her up the mountain. But the rotten rags and ropes are falling; She hears you where you lie under her feet urging, urging; And some day she will thrust out the little hand And reach for your star, John. 140