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1924
FRONTIER
ISABEL FISKE CONANT

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43
CLASS
BOOK
81C742
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FRONTIER

FRONTIER
BY ISABEL FISKE CONANT

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MINNESOTA
LIBRARY
PORTLAND MAINE
THE MOSHER PRESS
MDCCCCXXIV
WIMMEZZON
COPYRIGHT
THE MOSHER PRESS
1924
MAY 11:50 A
81C 742
OF

FOREWORD
CONTENTS
LYRICS: FRONTIER (z. g.)
ACCOMPLISHMENT (L. W. r.)
AFTER (G. H. M.)
ANGLER (E. B. W.)
ANNE (A. K. R)
ARISTOCRAT (M. R.)
BUBBLES (A. F. w.)
BUTTERFLY (E. N.)
CHIMES (T. J. H.)
CHURN (M. B. C.)
doors (a. w. w.)
.
•
•
DREAMS (C. P. M.)
FALLEN FEATHER (M. and J. M. S.)
FOOTPRINT BEYOND (M. S.)
GARDEN (H. M.)
LOST DAUGHTER (J. a.)
MAGIC VISIT (M. R. s.)
MOON (D. F. B.
B.)
•
NAME OF A LADY (S. P. E.)
R.).
NO TRESPASS (J. C. R.)
OLD ELLEN (A. H. B.)
•
ix
2
3456
78
8
9
ΙΟ
I I
12
13
14
15
16
•
17
18
19
20
21
22
1300421
V
CONTENTS
OLD FOLK (E. K.) .
.
ON THE YOUNG GOD (V. L. T.)
23
24
PASSING SOUL (J. and J. J.)
PROFANE (V. T. M.)
QUIET PRAYER (C. G. H.)
25
27
28
RECOVERY (J. M. L.)
REWARD (M. and s. F.)
RUSSETS (G. F. B.)
SALT TIDE (F. M. L.)
SAXOPHONE (E. P. M.)
SEA ATAVISM (M. W.)
SMALL MAN (J. M. F.)
SORROW-CLOAKED (E. d.)
STAIRS (G. and c. s.)
29
30
31
32
•
33
34
35
36
37
THREE TIMES PAN (J. R. and c. s.) .
38
TRAVELER (M. S. L.)
•
40
TREE (G. W. M.)
42
UNKNOWN SOLDIER (A. G.)
43
VOYAGE (G. M. R.)
44
WILL OF THE WORLD (M. A. M.)
45
WILLOW (E. J.)
46
WORD OF BEAUTY (K. T. J.)
47
ZEPHYR (H. J. O.) .
48
CANDLE-LIGHT (E. M.)
SONNETS: THESE DREAMERS (G. H. B.)
CLUB LIBRARY (G. B. S.)
CLUB LUNCHEON (G. L. d.)
B.).
50
•
51
52
53
vi
CONTENTS
DUPLEX STUDIO (E. S. M.)
EXPERT ACCOUNTANT (M. D. C.)
GUARDIANS OF GREAT HEART (C. R. R.
54
55
HELEN (R. M. M.).
IN TIME OF NEED (C. H.
H.)
JUST FROM EARTH (B. S. W.)
R.)
•
56
57
58
59
KIND SLEEP (f. r.)
60
MOTHS (C. B. C.) . .
61
PORTRAIT (E. H. W.)
62
SUNSET PAGEANT (C. R. K.)
63
SUN-SLANT (K. L. B.)
64
THESE SEVENTY YEARS (W. S. T.)
65
THIS ROOM (M. A. J.)
66
WIDOW (H. B.)
67
•
YOUNG MANHATTAN (F. and w. G.) .
XANTHOPHYLL (M. C. F.)
68
70

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
American Poetry Magazine; Casements;
Circle; Fugitive; Lyric; Monitor; New York
Herald; New York Post; New York Sun;
New York Times; New York Tribune
(Lantern); Poetry; Psychology; Unbound
Authology; Voices.

E
FOREWORD
ACH person clings to his or her own definition of
poetry, and much discussion always ensues when
the question is asked "What is Poetry?" I have
always felt that true poetry must succeed in doing two
things for the reader. First, it must interpret a thought
or emotion or experience, or it must paint a scene or
circumstance in such wise that there could be no prose
equivalent. Poetry should pierce a veil not rent by
prose, or it can have—unlike beauty—no excuse for
being. Second, the medium through which poetry per-
forms its function must have the haunting quality. It
can take many different forms; it can make use of varied
methods, old and new, but is Poetry only if the lines
sing and haunt. Shakespeare, Milton, Browning,
Wordsworth, Shelley, Swinburne, Keats, Tennyson and
some few others have proved this fact, as endless quota-
tions could exemplify. The haunting, singing line is
nowhere more adequately portrayed than in the Ode to
a Nightingale by John Keats. In the same category
I would put parts of Tennyson's Lotus Eaters. Who
has not, at rare moments, come "into a land in which it
seemed always afternoon?" Shakespeare's stanzas in
the Merchant of Venice, beginning "On such a night,"
ix
Wordsworth's Ode, Browning's One Word More,
Shelley's exquisite I arise from dreams of Thee,
Swinburne's Forsaken Garden, Milton's Ode on the
Nativity, all are music in words, and leave one con-
vinced that, in such expressions, one has found true
poetry. And so again I say that poetry must sing and
haunt.
The author of the poems in this book can sing, and
sing in a haunting way. Three Times Pan is, I think,
the best example in this volume of what I deem the
requisites of poetry. No prose could so subtly suggest
the meaning of the writer,—no prose could paint the
sense of aloofness, of illusion and elusion, of "other-
worldliness"-nor could prose produce as haunting
lines. Quite different, but very beautiful, is Quiet
Prayer. The strength of the hills is in it. Angler
shows the same realization of the one-ness of nature and
emotional experience.
Some of the poems in this book have a different
quality, dear to me in poetry; namely, a suggestiveness,
which, by no means lacking in lucidity, leaves to the
reader the chance of rounding out the suggestion. Full
confidence in the sympathy and comprehension of the
reader is everywhere evidenced, and, so trusted, so
flattered, what reader would fail the poet, who has such
faith? Not I, for onel
CORINNE ROOSEVELT ROBINSON.
20023
LYRICS
FRONTIER
She was a star ascendant and I could not grasp her,
What of all my tumbled thoughts could I offer her?
Had I been Balthasar, Melchior, or Caspar,
I had brought her from my camels, gold, incense, myrrh.
We were in a simple room, not of much measure,
But I became a pilgrim beneath a vast sky,
Lit by a great star, traveling with treasure
Eastward into splendor, though I knew not why.
It is not too much to say that Bethlehem in Syria
Down a slant star-ray may enter any June,
Or that a terrace may become the sea-coast of Illyria
When twilight conversation silvers in the moon.
Swung in planetary space four walls changed,
Slipped into a star that deeper into azure ranged. .
•

ACCOMPLISHMENT
HAT you have long-time pondered
WHAT
Within yourself, deeply,
That thing, at last, to sunlight
Will come up steeply.
It will climb up, burdened,
Or with flashing wing;
If burdened, with a treasure;
If flying, it will sing.
3
AFTER
HE haunting thing behind words
THE
That suddenly may thrill you,
The ice beyond the sunset,
That any time may chill you,
What strange thing life has in it
That never can be said,—
I shall know the minute
After I am dead.
If I do not know it,
It will be because
When I was upon earth
I did not keep the laws,
The long laws of beauty,
But will have to go again
To learn the things behind words
Down the dark lane.
On a sphere turning,
Dark-bright-side,
I will be learning
Before I have died
Love-joy-laughter,
Petal-pear-snow,
Then I shall be ready
To come or to go.
4
I
ANGLER
GO a-fishing
With a jointed rod,
By a still river
In a field of God.
Sometimes the sinker
Is a leaden grief.
Sometimes the bait is
Joy, light as leaf.
Few the soft splashes
On a sunny day,
The circles widen mostly
When the skies are gray.
Even when returning
With no shining string,
I have watched by water
And heard the thrush sing.
5
сл
ANNE
OU were in my way, Anne;
Yo
You were not my boon.
It was the answer to my hope
That you died soon.
There was a brink between us,
Not broad but deep,-
The first thing remembered
After night's sleep.
But now, death-single,
You go, how much more near
Than when, across the chasm
You went here.
Oh, if I only knew
Where you walk to-day!
Would my pleading ghost, Anne,
Be in your way?
Would still two spirits
Canyon-distant stand?
Or is the road there wide enough
To go hand in hand?
6
ARISTOCRAT
HE was not fashioned lately,
SHE
Nor will be soon again,
She who goes stately;
In her a train
Of unforgotten ancestors—
Yet, to the last end,
You see she stands not single,
But a blend.
Each of the procession
Has given her one thing;
Small ear, proud face,
Voice that can sing;
Manufactured woman,
Self-deemed sublime,
But thought hardly human
In our time.
She is in leash of them,
Yet for all that,
She would not have been other
Than Aristocrat.
7
O
BUBBLES
NCE I saw a dreamer
Blowing bubbles bright;
In each one there trembled
A world all alight.
The next time I saw him
He was a masked clown,
Juggling with colored balls
In a small town.
Back-stage faring,
In vain with him I pled;
"But bubbles burst in air," said he,
'And a clown must have bread."
8
A
BUTTERFLY
NEW idea flies in the sun
And all the poets run
To catch the pretty fellow
Whose wings are black and yellow.
Fortunate the net
Where he will flutter yet
In a mesh of rhyme-
Butterfly of time.
9
CHIMES
AN has his moments
MAI
Of heaven's own time;
One of them is silver
With the Westminster chime.
While they are pealing
City walls retreat;
Pavements are quieted
To a better street.
They are a safe spiral,
Walled in a tower,-
Treads that go starward
Any quarter-hour.
ΙΟ
CHURN
OU that lightly utter
You
Your golden wish,
I bring you butter
In a lordly dish.
•
•
You do not know how long it was
Before I heard it swish,—
Pale cream turned golden
In an old churn.
You that for an olden
Heart's desire yearn,
I bring you butter
In a lyric urn.
II
M
DOORS
EN, for their houses,
Built walls and floors,
But a god that was in them
Decreed doors.
Then there swung portals
That let out the dark;
Folk stood in doorways
And heard the lark.
After that,
windows;
Parchment . . . bull's eye.
Mortals found crystal
To let in the sky.
Men, for their houses,
Built walls and floors,
But a god within them
Decreed doors.
12
I
DREAMS
DREAMED that my low chamber
Raftered to a dome,
Beauty entered after,
All through my home.
Daylight after sleeping,
Revealed the dream untrue,
Yet over my white ceiling
Was a strange tint of blue.
I dreamed that only roses
Mattered to my soul,
But that the petals scattered
When I touched their bowl.
Awakening, no roses
My vagrant spirit knew,
But a faintly fragrant
Breath of June blew through.
I know not where my next dream
Will clamber, but 'twill tower
As far above my chamber
As Beauty flies, that hour.
13
I
FALLEN FEATHER
FOUND a dropped word
Like feather-fluff, like fur,
One day in the street
And knew it was from her.
Uppermost, it was a quill
Of a slate-gray,
But underneath, softly red,
More than I can say.
When she went by me
And tossed me a smile,
I caught and saved it,
And kept it all this while.
She went past me sun-swift,
Yet left me a feather,
And I mourned no longer
That it was gray weather.
Now that she has vanished
I sometimes still find,
Dropped from a great height,
A feather; soft and kind.
14
I
FOOT-PRINT BEYOND
N her own chamber
My dearest waned and died,
Looking through a casement
Always thrown wide.
When it was over,
Though she lay there, still,
I looked out the window
Toward the sunset hill.
I could not find her there,
Passing low, or high,
But, fading near me,
On a path of sky,
I saw a bare foot-print
That made my heart sing,
With a soft blur beside it,
Very like a wing.
15
GARDEN
HE that went lonely
SHE
Of heart, that went wild
Had a rare comrade
When she was a child.
He was pale-cloaked in
Cheviot of light.
He came before dreams
Night after night.
They shared a playground,
Day after day;
There was no other
So earnest at play. . .
Now that lost garden
She cannot find;-
Only an empty space
Blown of the wind.
16
I
LOST DAUGHTER
HAVE three dresses now,
There's a horse for my man to mount,
So I go fine and he goes riding,
That used to scrimp and count.
That used to go afoot and plain,
But happiest in the land
With her a-dance between us
And the three hand-in-hand.
Oh, we would go hunting
Against any city weather
So we could find her
And bring her back together.
My man has a horse to ride
And my dress is trimmed with fur-
What is that to either,
In the empty place of her?
17
MAGIC VISIT
HIS morning, when I wakened,
THI
I knew it was a day
When other worlds would enter
My own, from far away.
And when I dropped a silver fork
Upon the kitchen floor,
I knew that some bright Messenger
Would knock, soon, at my door.
Yes, soon, before my window
He stopped to speak awhile,—
Oh, could I paint with any words
His gesture and his smile!
They might be told with beryl,
For ink; with jacinth pen.
Or with whatever quills are used
When seraphs write to men.
My other self remembers
His wings, with dreams a-glow,
But this pale feather in my hand
Is all I have to show.
18
I
MOON
HAVE seen, instead of it,
A round, bright ball
Tossed against heaven,
Caught on its wall.
I have seen December make it
Christ Child's balloon,
Whose small hands hold the strings
Of the earth and moon.
I have seen its orange hanging
From a tree, still;
Or, slow as a snowball
Rolled up a hill.
A silver plate to many,
A mill-wheel to some.-
But I think a Being
Beats a distant drum.
What parade it's leading
I cannot see nor hear;
But the procession sweeps the sky
Twelve times a year. . .
19
NAME OF A LADY
HE very sound of her name is like a lovely adjective,
THE
It sings of things ethereal and tells of the sea,
Just that it is her name is a magic reason
Why it means all the things that it means to me.
Her name,
. her name.. like wings for aeroplaning
Through a very starry, a very deep sky,
In and out of drifting clouds, and into moon-dazzle,
On through sunlit sky-snow, June cumuli.
Perhaps on another star her name may mean loveliness,
It may mean April-kindness, it may mean grace,
Perhaps where words are hyacinths, where they are
gladioli,
You may pluck it from the tallest stem in all that place.
Her name is a lily-garden-stem after stem,
It is a flock of wheeling doves-it is a pledged gem.
20
Μ'
NO TRESPASS
Y hermit lodge borders
The hundreds of a king;
In his forbidden forest
Strange birds sing.
I often hear faint laughter
And voices, but no words,
And see brighter plumage
Than of my garden's birds.
I dare not break through it,
That strange, steep slope;
I never try to trespass
For all my high hope.
A great king's holdings.
Surround my peasant wood.
I may not enter them
And I would not if I could.
But sometimes from those plantings
A tropic fruit falls;
I pluck it and am royal
Within my own walls.
21
OLD ELLEN
F haloed Christ still walked to-day
And made new saints again,
I'd have for mine, in bright array,
Old Ellen, down the lane. .
Low is her rose-clad cottage-thatch,
And He, I think, was tall,
But when His touch is on the latch,
How spacious is her hall!
Through her transfigured garden-land,
I well believe He goes,
In one pierced hand her wrinkled hand,
And in one hand, a rose.
Tiny and trembling by His side,
Her eyes with splendor dim,
The lover of the Crucified,
She lifts her face to Him.
Old Ellen's stained with earthly weather;
And He, with heavenly light,
But finding those old friends together
My heart leaped at the sight!
22
OLD FOLK
OUNG folk glance at you;
YOUNG
Old folk peer,
Trying to remember
Who can be here.
"It is I, gran'sir!
Must I speak again?"
"I hear ye, son, . . Go fetch the ball
That ye threw, and broke the pane,
"Go say you're sorry,
And then ye may come.
(I hear marching feet,
A bugle, and a drum).”
"That was not I, gran'sir,
It was my da'".
"I know ye, I who waved twice
A lad off to war.
"One marched south, one sailed east,
It was all the same;
Neither one came back from
Playing that game."
Young folks gaze straight,
But old folk peer,
To see if it be a lad
Or his father, here.
23
I
ON THE YOUNG GOD
STUMBLED into the iron thing
Of the strange young god that haunts our field. . .
All night I suffered the throb and sting
From the teeth that would not yield.
The moon went down and the sun arose
Over the field of corn,
And the strong young god that sings as he goes
Came, sturdy with youth and morn.
His eyes were stern; there was iron in his hand,
And I trembled, racked with fear,
As over me he came to a stand,
With death raised, hard and near.
But, Oh, his eyes grew soft and still,
We were for a moment one.
•
Then, through the corn and over the hill,
He sent me free to run.
24
PASSING SOUL
HIS form, yet warm from living,
THE
That lies on its last bed;
This wept-for, strange and lovely thing,
Not yet a moment dead,
Is less than smallest nothing
To the entranced soul
At last miraculously
Beholder of its goal.
That it has chilled and silenced
Is nothing to its own,
That lately wore this dust-coat
Along the earth-winds blown.
But those that were its dearest
For its allotted years
Are covering their faces
And changing them with tears,
While it skims other meadows,
The thinnest line away,
That stepped but now from winter
Into wistaria-day
Where Purple is to purple
What purple was to dun,
Where one can walk in solar light
Nor fear at all the sun.
25
There should be joyous laughter,
When such a thing has come,
To see the very seraphs perched
Upon the chairs of home,
Until the shabby rocker
Would make a throne seem pale .
But who could hope to see it
Through salt tears for a veil?
26
PROFANE
I
HAVE heard gentle words wounded in the street,
Like a sword-thrust in the side, the mouthed name of
Christ;
I have guessed an outcry from unseen Raphael
When a great name in an alley was foully sacrificed.
I have heard a high name mis-spoken madly
In a rich hostelry while tinkling cymbals clashed,
I have seen a lovely thing tortured, hung from chande-
liers
While down its white side its red hurt splashed.
I have dreamed Raphael with a two-edged weapon;
The alley, the restaurant filled with that sword
While still the cymbals clashed and gutter sounds were
hissing
And a mortal still dared to juggle with God's word.
I have heard a drunkard speaking, staggering, profane,
Words that are always choral on planets that are sane.
27
QUIET PRAYER
E who follows many gods
HⓇ
Must go without rest
Like the many tossing waves
Of the sea-crest.
He who loves one god,
Stays ever still
As the arrested wave
Of a distant hill.
One God, Only God,
Lift my dream high,
Set its blue mountain
Against far sky.
28
I
RECOVERY
HAD not seen my garden
Since I was a child,
But I knew that its borders
And hedges had run wild;
That its pansies, scattered,
Had turned ladies' delights;
That tall weeds stood where yuccas
Had gleamed on June nights.
Last night-the first night
That I had no pain—
I came to my garden
Once more again;
Came to the scent of box,
Saw its trim lawn;
And as I touched its pansies,
I heard one say, "He's gone!"
But after I had walked there
In my own land,
I woke without a fever,—
A pansy in my hand.
29
REWARD
ECAUSE a passing stranger
BE
Wore a dreaming look
My soul was saved from danger
And the safe turning took.
Since I'm not ungrateful
I have sent his way
A heaped, magic crateful
Of reward, to-day.
If, perchance, he need them,-
And he seemed to fast,-
May his hungers feed them
On these fruits at last.
When, surprised, he reaches
To his unexpected gift,
Pomegranates, peaches
Choosing, he will lift.
He did not know my peril
Or that my thanks came soon,
But he will feast on beryl
And the pale, gold moon.
30
F
RUSSETS
ROM an old hayloft
When the cold was still,
Winter made a sapphire
Of the distant hill.
Warm in that refuge,
Despite the window's frost,
Many a morning, long ago,
The world was well lost.
Through adventure's pages
The outlawed hours sped
To the taste of russet apples,
Sounder than the red. . .
Remembering Massachusetts,
Once in a store
I asked for russet apples
But they were sold no more.
If I had found them,
I must have read too
Some book of old stories,-
Sounder than the new.
31
SALT TIDE
ALT are sea-marshes,
SALT
And tears, a salt tide,
And a mother's grief can never ebb
For her child that early died;
For her own daughter
That went not to her kind
But to deep, salt water
For comfort, tear-blind.
Tide-water that is swaying
Like an old rune sung,
With my child softly playing,
With her who died too young;
Rocking her body gently
And singing her a rune,
A cradle-song for a sleeping child
Who grew tired too soon.
Night and day, dreaming,
I see my child lie
Softly on the water
Gazing on the sky.
I that never saw her so,
And was too quickly told,
Shall see her so forever
Until I am old.
32
SAXOPHONE
AN used to flute through me; his playing was innocent;
PAN userited
It thrilled through the bushes; rose brushed against
rose,
Lily petals trembled to his music and gave fragrance,
Heads were lifted, hoofs poised, there were startled does.
Now there whines through me the old jungle mating-cry,
Innocent for cloven hoof but not for man.-
Why did they pluck me from the river bank and meddle
With my hollow singing reed that once piped for Pan?
I hear a light sound through the wood, as if a goat-foot
fled
Hands on ears, he's run away
•
but he is not dead.
33
F
SEA ATAVISM
AINTLY I remember
Three things, no more:-
Swinging chimes, mullions,
A lantern at a door.
From an earlier cycle.
That I surely knew,
I can hear in carillons.
Older bells, too.
A low-hung, guarded lantern
Comes back to me,
And chimes heard through a mullion,
Looking on sea.
34
HE
SMALL MAN
E was always put in corners
All through his life,
By one or another,
By his mother . . . by his wife.
Some used his kindness,
And others used his gold,
But who ever shook his hand
With a friendly hold?
Not in the least book
Or smallest hall of fame
Look for any mention
Of his forgotten name.
Now it is over
And he under sod
With none to think him hero,—
Except, perhaps,-God.
35
SORROW-CLOAKED
HE goes sorrow-cloaked, blown of the wind;
SHE
Sombre are her wrappings... But where they
stream behind,
The light that falls upon them discovers hidden there
Argent and emerald, orange and vair.
A blown fold of lining may betray, a-glow,
More gleams than any armorial bearings know,
When she goes sombre-cloaked, threading long streets,
There falls a brief light on those that she meets.
I have seen her far from town, no longer city-shy,
In a meadow more like June than November sky,
No longer sorrow-cloaked, but in orange like the dawn,—
Emerald, vair, argent; and the gray shell gone.
Sorrow-cloaked, sorrow-cloaked, weave that time has
made,—
But its argent, orange, emerald, in gray masquerade.
36
I
STAIRS
HAVE climbed stairways
In many lands;
Streets of Clovelly
Up from Devon sands,
Worn stairs, hollowed
Instead of pave of streets;
And Spanish stairs, beautiful,
Past the door of Keats.
I know ancestral
Curved stairs of home,
And a narrow spiral
Up to a dome.
Avenues are mortal,
And a city's plan,
But the majesty of stairs
Was not made by man.
I believe them builded,
Tread after tread,
Not by the level quick,
But the mounting dead.
37
THREE TIMES PAN
HEN an old, old moor
WH
Tries to speak to you,
A very, very old moor
What can you do,
You whose ears are shaped like shells
And can only understand
Things that the water tells
And not the mainland?
When an old, old sea
Tries to sing to you,
You who have Puck-shaped ears,
What can you do?
You whose ears are pointed
Like a small satyr,
How can the sea tell you
What is the matter?
When the inconstant clouds
Around your white town
Try to gossip to you,
You that dress in brown,
How can they tell you
Any talk of Pan,
You whose ears are only
Shaped like a man?
38
But to you that dance through three worlds,
Three worlds in one,
Moor, sea, hills that were
Before time begun,
You that your own mother
Thinks very strange,
You that have moor, sea, hill
For your triple range,-
The moor shall whisper, thinking
That a goat-foot pressed its flanks
And the river-tide shall dapple
Your foot with silver thanks,
And the old, old mountain
With a trail worn by you
Will let you hear its secret
And see its tears of dew.
Yet I say for all of that
You will find none
Hear what you tell them.
•
When all is done,
When you tell wonders
They will marvel not; instead
One will glance at another
Tapping on his head.
39
TRAVELER
HE long road is full of folk; tramping, dusty, head-
THE
down,
Crowding one another, on level or on grade,
But now and then at cross-roads, there comes one singing
- blithely
With a branch of Traveler's Joy, making cool shade.
Such a one walks alone, always; you will see it,
Always, just around him, there is a little space,
Some have seen oval light there, some say that another
Goes to the right of him, with power on his face.
I have seen the proud cars, passing swift, unsteady,
Scatter dust and spatter mud upon him as he went,
But the dust-cloud was a glory and the mud-stain had
strange facet-glow,
And his dreaming look was Omar's at the door of his tent.
I have seen him turn aside, sometimes, from the thorough-
fare,
When his clematis was fading and he needed more,
I have never doubted that, fragrant in its season,
He would return with Traveler's Joy, gleaming as before.
Now of late, the torn road is almost impassable,
Armies on the march have worn it, turned folk aside;
Not now the road it was, it is no longer safe for all,
Now we go stumbling where once we dared stride.
40
•
Day before yesterday he disappeared again,
Long was the afternoon, yet I feared not.
But, when at nightfall, we struck tent by water
Word came . . . "He comes no more" . . . the sleep-
less night was hot.
Yesterday I would not march, I crouched by the road-
side
Waiting against knowledge for him to come again,
Traveler's Joy within his hand, to cheer the procession;
Moving in a little space. . . hoped for now in vain.
All at once, while I watched, very near despairing,
There came a little space in the onward milling throng.
I leaped to place in it, not even questioning,
Once there, I changed my time to a step more strong.
I had gone a little while, with heart strangely beating,
Feet striding onward with recovered power,
When I felt a fragrance in an empty space beside me
In my hand there was a spray of Traveler's Joy in flower.
•
4I
I
TREE
THAT would show beauty,
Why could I not be,
Blowing at the cross-roads,
Any green tree?
Why could I not have been
One of summer's birds?
I, that, instead of wings,
Have only words?
42
H'
UNKNOWN SOLDIER
IS too great fame resisting,
Beheld of heaven, he stands,
His unearned halo twisting
In shy, unhappy hands.
To heaven's, as to earth's clamors,
He makes his protest known:
"Not this for me!" he stammers,
"Those deeds were not my own."
Heaven smiles at him, and lingers,
While he sees, cheeks a-burn,
The halo that he fingers
Miraculously turn
To small, rough cap of ball-days,
Dear to remembering eyes;
Worn on that day of all days.
When first he won a prize.
The seraphs laugh and love him,
And lean to watch his soul
Leap through the Blue above him
Home-running to its goal. . .
43
VOYAGE
'HIS room is only masking.
THE
It is a ship instead,
Its square-rig canvas
To the wind spread.
This room on the East Side
Of the city looks
Through the wide windows
Of many old books.
You can find its knocker
Any time of day
But that is only camouflage
To hide its far-away.
This Persian carpet
Is a magic one,
Tread its pile softly,
Then off to the sun.
This room's candle-light
Comes from very far.
It was lighted yesterday
In another star.
44
WILL OF THE WORLD
N his room behind the Globe, at a scarred table,
He is startled back from Denmark by reason of the
noise
Hammering at his leaded panes By the theatre stable,
Cheapside's corner-gang is loud; circled men and
boys...
•
•
Will stirs, interrupted, leaves his young prince mourning,
Looks down, melancholy, on those rowdy ones
At Master Will of all the world they stare up, scorning
His mildness at the casement. So might fireflies scorn
suns.
Gentle Will Shakespere steps back, sighing,
"I would rather write for dreamers; pray, good glass,
shut out this sight.
I will hush this uproar with my metres that are crying
For deliverance," he quoth, and drew the casement tight.
Now is he the thrall of beauty; writing fast and breath-
ing deep:
We are such stuff as dreams are made of ... He has
written himself asleep.
45
WILLOW
F churlishness only
I'
Comes when words come,
God of trees, make me lonely
As a tree, as dumb.
Let me be knowing
Men as trees walking;
Poplars, birches, blowing,
But never talking.
If my touch lingers,
Beauty to profane,
Turn to leaves my fingers;
Busy them with rain,—
Make me a willow,
With no voice but a bird;
With the sky for a pillow
And the wind for a word.
46
WORD OF BEAUTY
'HE many worlds through which I go,
THE
Only one of which I know,
Like ten-times Atlas I must bear.
A burden that I may not share,
Yet it were light to any elf
A-dance in step with Beauty's self.
And were I twelve times Hercules,
One world would bring me to my knees.
I could not lift the smallest tree
Against earth's grief and gravity;
Not even blue-branched heliotrope,
Without that talisman of hope.
Yes, with the faith that is in me
I'd cast Himalayas in the sea;
And light as April violet-drift,
Blue Vega from her meadow lift.
And I could draw faith's rusted sword
From any sheath at Beauty's word.
My heart, remembering Beauty's name,--
That speech of worlds through which it came,—
On stepping-stones of asteroid
Could go unstumbling through the void. . .
Without, it must defenceless go
Through the one world it thinks to know.
47
Μ'
ZEPHYR
烯
​Y casement is her portal,
Its sheer draperies
Lift as she enters,
Cling to her knees.
More than a mortal thing,
More than wind's astir,
I have glimpsed the white shoulder,
The bent knee of her.
Where she sways and lingers
Music falls soon,
She tosses up a sunbeam
Like a bright balloon,
I almost see her fingers
Where my dreams whirl-
The white wind is in my room,
Like a slim girl...
All through the summer
May the white breeze
Drift in, dancing,
With sweet, bare knees.

SONNETS
THESE DREAMERS
These dreamers tread their mainland, but off-shore
Dim aisles are ports of call for their white clippers,
Their merchant cargoes, their enchanted lore
Of treasures heaped, not underneath the dippers,—
Recall them not to any coastwise pier
When they have loosed the rope-coils of their schooner,
Let them weigh anchor any time of year,
They will return you magic cargoes sooner.
Longshoremen weathered on the water-front,
Nol with your mullerings their ventures spoil.
It is not you who bear the storm and brunt
But these who round the Horn forever toil;
Not you, content with harbor on the mainland¸
But these, whose magic isles you call a vain land.

A
CANDLE-LIGHT
CANDLE-FLAME will change the usual room
Into its elements with light a-quiver;
Harsh carbon-glare into a magic gloom,
And conversation to a shadowed river.
It will go up a stairway to a chamber,
Revealing more than searchlights ever show,
And deeper shadows that alongside clamber,
Such treads as ladders-to-the-sky might know.
And I have seen a cot change to a manor
Or to a vast and undetermined space
With sunlight drifting through it like a banner,
Only because it held a dreaming face,
And seen its candle flicker into smoke
When the important guest reached for his cloak.
51
I
CLUB LIBRARY
T was a place rectangular and quiet,
With mock-Colonial fittings, dark and prim,
Where voice and pulses were hushed down from riot
And azure silk made mazdas candle-dim,
Until one spoke aloud and dared to shatter
The fragile silence that in fragments broke,
And sound, too panic for so small a matter,
Exorcised brutally a fragile folk.
Thin ghosts of silence, breakable and slender,
Scattered, a wailing and endangered crowd,
From the intrusion of the strange, untender
Intruder who had dared to speak aloud.
Intense bulbs flared and scared penates screamed. .
I knew how deep in refuge I had dreamed.
52
CLUB LUNCHEON
T seemed a peaceful circle, and well-ordered,
Conventionally set, with roses centered,
Sentried with silver and with carved chairs bordered,
Until humanity complexly entered,
Then suddenly composure turned to riot-
The little gods of noon their rites demand-
Nervous staccato undermined past quiet,
A dusty wind blew through an empty land.
Shrill thoughts, voiced high, rode crests of sound-waves,
dashing
On dish and dish of over-seasoned food,
Till thin and silver-crystal ghosts were clashing
On courses far too caviare and rude. ..
Together tinkled Spode and prism-glass;
"These folk are very frail, and quick to pass."
53
Ο
DUPLEX STUDIO
NLY of her the salon was aware.
You knew it in the moment that you entered,
When something seemed to stir from Windsor chair
To Sheraton, yet always in her centered.
The brooding Steinway's slanting, massive lid.
That stole the formal mantel's leaping flame,
The mirror that incalculably hid
Its folk in silver-dusk, all spoke her name.
Descendant of dim Copleys on the wall,
And hardly less detached from those about her,
She yet seemed poised creator of them all
That, animate or not, all seemed to shout her,-
And when white hands beseiged piano-keys,
What rose but her adagio from these?
54
EXPERT ACCOUNTANT
OME people are most mourned by cat, or parrot,
SOME
And some die in an alley or a cell,
And some lie young in moonlight in a garret
Whose name, too late, retarded fame will tell.
Some pass to mystery circled by their own
Who, fading from them, weep, nor ever see
Another circle round a scriptured throne
To sound of many waters' phantasy.
But none who early lost a child will care
For angels or the unoffended Christ
Until he has again his rightful share
Compounded with the interest that sufficed
To turn into the recompense of gain
His loss; to reckoned laughters, all his pain.
55
GUARDIANS OF GREAT HEART
'HEY watch him as he goes with climbing feet
THE
Nor seem to help him on his way, who might
Touch into dust this bowlder, into light
This blank, forbidding wall that he must meet.
Yet these are, least of all, indifferent
To his strained muscles and his tiptoe reach,
Who cannot make him understand by speech,
And yet to be his guardians were sent.
But suddenly, for him, the road turns straight
And level that had been a broken trail,
And all at once, no barriers avail
Longer, to hide his destined city gate.
And now men say his roads all lead to fame. . .
He smiles, remembering the way he came.
56
HELEN
'HOUGH she were child of Leda and of Zeus,
TH
s
And though whenever she once more returns
The thousandth tower, the thousandth topsail burns,
She is at loss before convention's use,
Not thoroughbred of mortal pedigree
She legendary comes, and alien,
Over-Olympian for lineal men
Who are suspicious where they cannot see.
There ever is a myth around her name,
-Though she be over-young for legend-lore-
And who can point the homestead whence she came
Or more than guess her native hill or shore?
Homeric laughter often comes from her
Who's seldom in the social register. .
57
IN TIME OF NEED
HILE races match their armaments of war,
WH
Too keen to start, too ignorant of the sequel,
Or what sun-silvered wings are destined for,
No citizen of their excited towns is equal
To some historic hermit, wise and dirty,
Or some serene-browed follower in the hills
Of that young god who died at three and thirty
By hatred crucified and warring wills.
How long must we for His returning wait,—
Till He is safe with us who have forgotten
His law, and buried deeply under hate
Our children by the law of love begotten?
We that laugh lightly as we sip an ice,
Of some starved life the famine-stricken price.
58
W¹
JUST FROM EARTH
HATEVER garb they once wore, or what walls
They raised to shut them from the stress of skies,
Whatever bird-notes, or what alley-calls
They heard in youth from bough or pave arise,
Whether they sat on chair of periods
Austere or langourous, or if they stood
Or knelt at prayer to their God or gods,
Wrought out of dream, or out of stone or wood,
If they spoke guttural, or light as foam,
If they were weathered by sun-tan, or frost,
Were tenement or palace once their home,-
You could not tell, were you to meet them, lost
Between the worlds, yourself upon the way
From bed or battlefield, up to new Day.
59
KIND SLEEP
LIP into sleep as easy as a gown
SLIP
The soft and clinging draperies of dream
The under-sea-green trail that down and down,
Sinks rhythmically with a sunless gleam,-
Then wake as gradually as lilies rise
Spreading wet, yielding petals, new to suns,
To waterless, light element of skies,
Unoceanic, and yet native ones.
Slip into death as birds drop down the side
Of rugged canyons that they never fear,
As wings upon the blue that, rising, ride,
Then waken to a better time of year.
Tossing away a far too long November,
Returning to the April you remember.
60
WE
MOTHS
E are brief moths that rest from casual flight
Upon the kindly gods who do not slay:
"Theirs is so helpless and so short a day!”
They smile to one another at our plight.
But we perceive them not across our sight,
Nor even guess the shape of them, but say:
"I had a strange adventure yesterday;
The bush I lit on burned with unknown light.”
Poor soul of man-poor moth! wings are not eyes;
How should you know a god across the sun?
How should your dusty gold make you more wise
Than any creeping thing, when all is done?
A moth upon man's hand. a man who sings
When he has brushed a god, with fragile wings.
61
A
PORTRAIT
SEIGNEUR'S daughter in an old château
Left 'broidering in her tower, the world forgot,
May morning in the wood awhile to know,-
But when they came to seek her, she was not.
Fay-of-the-air had lured her from her path,
Time stayed for what to her seemed but an hour,
But years unroofed gray walls to the winds' wrath
Till night-skies starred the ceiling of her tower.
Straying, unseen, the medieval days
Went past her on the wind, like leaves of roses,
And now she walks our milling city ways,
And passing, château-garden peace discloses. . .
Say never that no early years return
Nor dancers leave the friezes of their urn.
62
SUNSET PAGEANT
HE coming darkness and the going light
THE
Above the ocean and the meadow blend,
Timed to adagio, to the mood of night..
Who knows what up-sky audience may attend
This symphony, this masque? The theatre
Of dusk is filling for the evening scene,
This pageantry that cannot ever err
Staged on a manor-meadow-earth's demesne.
On the proscenium are calciums cast,
Tinged with Capella, Sirius and Mars.
Where aisles lead from the lobby of the past
And futures press the prologue of the stars.
There, thrall of more than it dare hear or see,
My urchin soul stares from the gallery.
63
SUN-SLANT
HO knows on what tremendous tasks they go?
WHO on what tremendous
Perhaps to earth to found another Ilium,
Only the mind released may dare to know,
Under forgotten night-dream or delirium.
Had we the eyes to see their offered hands,
Mysterious sources of our circumstances,
And if we stilled our ears for their commands,
We would not need to mourn our quick mischances.
Unwritten are the Iliads they perform;
Unpaved their sun-ray paths, their rainbow bridges;
What petals are the star-flakes of their storm?
What dreams the foothills of their mountain ridges?
Hear One, at star-rise, to Another say:
"What is to guard upon the earth to-day?"
64
THE
THESE SEVENTY YEARS
HESE seventy years' experience—or these eighty—
Indifferently sped by you and me,-
To one a casual world; to one, a weighty-
Are they a spring-board to a deeper sea?
Are they a babbling stream, in winter shallow?
September's guess at next year's violet slope?
April's, at harvest from a field now fallow?
Is all our erudition but a hope?
And do we graduate from sums prosaic,-
Short columns kept within threescore and ten-
And pass to problems new and algebraic,—
To geometric lore of supermen?
Or do we once more con arithmetic,
Surpassing those now for the first time quick?
65
THIS ROOM
F you can call this room inanimate
IF
I do not know what you could call alive,
Not any citadel or any hive,
Or any sieged and bastioned city gate,
For certainly this statue leans, aware,
And certainly there's knowledge in this rafter
And stir of draperies on this empty stair,
And here the silence is as loud as laughter.
The arras in this draughty corridor,
This tall, pale wax as wasted as the sun,
Have known a hand that we shall know no more
And thrown their shadows before flame was done.
Say we are dead or sleeping in the gloom
But not this candle-lit and watchful room.
66
H
WIDOW
E was the fastest driver on the route;
For all his speed, I think the surest, too,
My man and now his candle has blown out
That cast the clearest light I ever knew.
He seemed to me a young god gone astray
Awhile to earth. His talk. was wild and strange
And beautiful. The usual mortal way
Of life or death was not for him to range.
Rider beneath the stars, he was found dead
But with no mark upon him, and his car
Arrested at the turning curve where it sped
Without collision . . . unless from afar,
And vanished after sudden death was done,
Back into azure-sped young Phaeton.
67
YOUNG MANHATTAN
I
SUBURB OF BABYLON
TELL you that the mortar of her walls
Was mixed and carried by the ghosts of slaves
Returned to toil beneath her iron calls,
That what she once had is the thing she craves.
The interval has passed . . . If you look clear,
-No longer blank as Justice in the square-
Nor heed the camouflage of eye and ear,
Then, on the foreground here, the sky-line there,
You will behold-like cities on a screen-
How, blended of the past, these towers of trade
Merge back into the mass they once have been
The oriented fanes they first were made. . .
And, dark against the inevitable moon,
The curve and dip of triremes will pass soon.
68
II
GRADUATE OF TYRE
You call her young and eager and a maiden,
Fit for the prow of morning, poised and tall
Nor see that with maturity she's laden
Nor that her manner is memorial;
These massed towers from her avenues receding,
And rising, Oriental, are asserting
Themselves, re-incarnate, and deaf to pleading
Of captives that the lash again is hurting.
She has a look upon her of full knowledge,
Her towers are the intervals of towns,
Her way is schooled, for Babel was her college;
Tyre triumphed from her adolescent downs.
And staring seaward from the battery,
Not ferries, but what galleys she can see!
69
N°
XANTHOPHYLL
beauty I have ever seen can fade,
A violet gathered twenty years ago
Is five-fold azure yet on Alpine snow.
Or some November fog, celestial made
By spreading sunset, still with me has staid
From other worlds that once I dared to know.
Remembered Beauty,-that I cannot show
Its wonder, is its very accolade.
A gathered handful from remembered fields
Though dusty from the road, though paling fast,
Are of a better soil than what earth yields
And they will deck my garment at the last,—
Child-offering now in an ungraded school,
Next term will freshen them, to April's rule.


:

wils
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
81C742 OF
Conant, Isabella Fiske.
Frontier.
3 1951 002 091 308 A