POEMS
[Illustration: Nora May French’s signature]
POEMS
_by
Nora May French_
[Illustration: colophon]
_San Francisco
The Strange Company_
_1910_
Copyright 1910,
BY THE STRANGE COMPANY
Printed by
The Stanley-Taylor Company
San Francisco
NORA MAY FRENCH WAS BORN
AT AURORA, NEW YORK, APRIL
THE TWENTY-SIXTH, 1881, AND
DIED AT CARMEL, CALIFORNIA,
NOVEMBER THE FOURTEENTH,
1907, AGED TWENTY-SIX YEARS
CONTENTS
The Outer Gate 1
Rain 2
Best-Loved 3
The Rose 4
Between Two Rains 5
The Message 6
By the Hospital 7
Oh, Dryad Thoughts 8
Music in the Pavilion 9
Rebuke 10
In Camp 11
The Nymph 12
Vivisection 16
The Stranger 17
The Constant Ones 18
Instinct 19
San Francisco, New Year’s, 1907 20
The Poppy Field 22
You 23
Just a Dog 24
Mirage 25
Dusk 26
The Spanish Girl--Part I 29
The Spanish Girl--Part II 39
The Spanish Girl--Part III 49
The Garden of Dolores 59
Indifference 60
After-Knowledge 61
Two Spendthrift Kings 62
Growth 63
Change 64
Wistaria 65
My Nook 66
When Plaintively and Near the Cricket Sings 68
The Little Memories 69
Pass By 70
In Empty Courts 71
Down the Trail 72
“Bells from Over the Hills Sound Sweet” 74
In Town 75
Moods 76
A Misty Morning 77
Two Songs 78
Noon 79
Your Beautiful Passing 80
By Moonlight 81
One Day 82
The Mission Graves 83
Along the Track 84
A Place of Dreams 85
Think Not, O Lilias 86
To Rosy Buds 87
Yesterday 88
The Mourner 89
Ave atque Vale 90
Notes 91
THE OUTER GATE[1]
Life said: “My house is thine with all its store;
Behold, I open shining ways to thee--
Of every inner portal make thee free:
O child, I may not bar the outer door.
Go from me if thou wilt, to come no more;
But all thy pain is mine, thy flesh of me;
And must I hear thee, faint and woefully,
Call on me from the darkness and implore?”
Nay, mother, for I follow at thy will.
But oftentimes thy voice is sharp to hear,
Thy trailing fragrance heavy on the breath;
Always the outer hall is very still,
And on my face a pleasant wind and clear
Blows straitly from the narrow gate of Death.
RAIN
The rain was grey before it fell,
And through a world where light had died
There ran a mournful little wind
That shook the trees and cried.
The rain was brown upon the earth,
In turbid stream and tiny seas--
In swift and slender shafts that beat
The flowers to their knees.
The rain is mirror to the sky,
To leaning grass in image clear,
And drifting in the shining pools
The clouds are white and near.
BEST-LOVED
It was a joy whose stem I did not break--
A little thing I passed with crowded hands,
And gave a backward look for beauty’s sake.
Of all I pulled and wove and flung aside,
Was any hue preferred above the rest?
I only know they pleased me well, and died.
But this--it lives distinct in Memory’s sight,
A little thing, incurving like a pearl.
I think its heart had never seen the light.
THE ROSE[2]
Ay, pluck a jonquil when the May’s a-wing!
Or please you with a rose upon the breast,
A sweeter violet chosen from the rest,
To match your mood with blue caprice of spring--
Leave windy vines a tendril less to swing.
Why, what’s a flower? A day’s delight at best,
A perfume loved, a faded petal pressed,
A whimsey for an hour’s remembering.
But wondrous careful must he draw the rose
From jealous earth, who seeks to set anew
Deep root, young leafage, with a gardener’s art--
To plant her queen of all his garden close,
And make his varying fancy wind and dew,
Cloud, rain, and sunshine for one woman’s heart.
BETWEEN TWO RAINS
It is a silver space between two rains;
The lulling storm has given to the day
An hour of windless air and riven grey;
The world is drained of color; light remains.
Beyond the curving shore a gull complains;
Unceasing, on the bastions of the bay,
With gleam of shields and veer of vaporing spray
The long seas fall, the grey tide wars and wanes.
It is a silver space between two rains:
A mood too sweet for tears, for joy too pale--
What stress has swept or nears us, thou and I?
This hour a mist of light is on the plains,
And seaward fares again with litten sail
Our laden ship of dreams adown the sky.
THE MESSAGE[3]
So might it brush my cheek with errant wings,
So might it speak with thrilling touch and light
Of answering eyes, of dim, unuttered things--
A moth from hidden gardens of the night.
So, in a land of hills, where twilight lay,
Might come a sudden bird-call to the ear,
Across the canyons, faint and far away....
O Heart, how sweet ... half heard and wholly dear.
BY THE HOSPITAL
Who goes to meet the windy night
With unseen comrades shouting by,
Who grips a bough in swift delight
To let it dip and loose and fly;
Who runs for rest that running gives,
Runs till his throbbing muscles speak;
Who bends to feel how keenly lives
The joyous grass beneath his cheek--
With sudden tears his eyes shall fill,
With quick-drawn breath he sees them plain--
Those bodies that must lie so still,
So tired--in the House of Pain.
“OH, DRYAD THOUGHTS”
Oh, Dryad thoughts of lovely yesterday!--
You melted through a sunny wood like mist,
With here a wind of laughter, there a stray
Pleased flower, tipped and kissed.
To-day among the noises of the street,
The press of faces, sullen, gay, and wise,
I hear you calling, calling me; I meet
Your clear, untroubled eyes.
MUSIC IN THE PAVILION
Faces that throng and stare and come and go--
The air a-quiver as the voices meet;
And loud Humanity in mingled flow
Passes with jarring tread of many feet.
But over all the chatter of the crowd
(The background for its delicate relief)
Now trembling in a thread, now wild and loud,
The violin laughs and sings, and cries its grief.
Then, through it all, and round it all, the sea;
A solemn heart with never-ceasing beat,
Bearing an undertone of mystery
The harsh and lovely notes, the shrill and sweet.
Surely it is my life--of plodding days,
With one Ideal holding clear and good;
And sounding over, under, through my ways,
Something apart--and never understood.
REBUKE
The tortured river-banks, the toiling piers--
I walked thereby as older grew the day,
And sick with sorry clamor in mine ears,
Heart-weary turned my steps and went my way.
“O place full-voiced of wretchedness!” I cried.
(The sun had set, the dusk was closing in)
“O place where laboring Life goes heavy-eyed,
Compound of grime and discord, strife and sin!”
I turned me back, and lo, a miracle!
For misty violet lay along the land.
The shining river in mysterious spell
(Divinely touched by some transmuting hand).
A path of wonder was, and on it stirred,
(Black-shaped, and jeweled with a crimson spark)
A ship that slowly moved; and, faintly heard,
A cheery song rose blithely to the dark.
IN CAMP
I
As down I bent with eager lips
Above the stones and cresses cool--
The yellow tent, the little moon,
I found within my twilight pool.
The fringing trees, the floating moon,
The bubble tent--I passed them by,
And sipped a tiny, shattered star,
Deep drinking from that mirrored sky.
II
My tent is shadowed day and night
With leaves that shift in moon and sun;
Across its walls of lucent white
The lovely varied tracings run;
And black and slender, quickly sped,
I watch the little feet at dawn--
A sudden oriole overhead,
A darting linnet come and gone.
THE NYMPH
From forest paths we turned us, nymphs, new-made,
And, lifting eyes abashed with great desire
Before high Jove, the gift of souls we prayed.
Whereat he said: “O perfect as new leaves
New glossed and veined with blood of perfect days
And stirred to murmured speech in fragrant eves,
“Still ask ye souls? Behold, I give instead
Into each breast a bird with fettered wings,
A bird fast holden with a silken thread:
“To fall from trial of flight with strength swift spent,
To sing of mating and the brooding grass,
To turn thy being earthward to content.”
Within me sudden wrath and terror strove,
And, casting forth his gift I cried aloud:
“I pray thee for a soul in truth, great Jove!”
Then smiled he slowly, lifting to my look
A fabric where the rippled lustre played
And shifted like the humor of a brook--
All prism-hued, as upward eyes may see
The sun through dazzled lashes. Straight I cried:
“I know not this!” “Thy soul,” he answered me.
But when my joy had seized it, “Nay,” he said,
And cast it gleaming to the scattering wind--
Hues green and golden, blue and fervent red.
Within his hand the brightest shred of all--
The very heart and secret of the web--
That held he fast and loosed he not at all;
But to me said: “O thou who scorned the dole
That gave thee peace of days and long content,
Do now _my_ will. Go forth and find thy soul.”
To earth we went, nor knew I from that hour
My sister’s joy or pain; but on great morns
When low light slept above a world in flower,
Through drowsing noons where heat and color lie
In ever wavering tides of airy seas,
Winged by the darting ships of dragon-flies--
Through these and twilight peace I went, and rid
My steps of comrades. Lonely must I find
The silent places where my soul was hid.
In sheltered ways with summer showers sweet
I wandered on a day, and singing found
The very green I sought beneath my feet.
In leafing forests when the year was new,
And heaven ribboned in the crossing boughs,
I gathered marvelous strip on strip of blue.
When on a lonely stream the moon was bright,
A Naiad from her treasure plucked me forth
Such gold as bound my web with threads of light.
And red. Ah, love! thou knowest how I came
Unto thy fluting in the breathless eve,
And burned my heart’s pale flower to scarlet flame!...
One morn I found within a drop of dew
My very soul: a crystal world it was
Wherein the varied earth and heaven’s blue
And myself gazing glassed in perfect sphere--
But long above it was my wonder bent,
And lo! it dried more swiftly than a tear.
Now is this truth, O Jove, that I have won
And woven all the shreds thou gav’st the wind?
But how, I pray thee, can my task be done
Unless thou ope thine hand, unless thou loose
The very heart and secret of the web
Where every thread may end and know its use?
Joy hast thou not withheld, nor love denied,
Nor any beauty dimmed on earth or sky,
Yet by thy will I roam unsatisfied.
But couldst thou hear again that earliest plea,
Again my choice would flout the lesser gift,
And willing take this task thou grantest me--
To search the heart and secret of the whole,
To twine the eager hues of varied days,
And to its bright perfection weave a soul.
VIVISECTION
We saw unpitying skill
In curious hands put living flesh apart,
Till, bare and terrible, the tiny heart
Pulsed, and was still.
We saw Grief’s sudden knife
Strip through the pleasant flesh of soul-disguise--
Lay for a second’s space before our eyes
A naked life.
THE STRANGER
She sat so quiet day by day,
The sweet withdrawal of a nun,
With busy hands and downward eyes--
The shyest thing beneath the sun.
Nor knew we, tossing each to each
Our rapid speech, our careless words,
That through them, always, half-afraid,
Her thoughts had gone like seeking birds,
Plucking a twig, a shining straw,
A happy thread with silken gleams,
To carry homeward to her heart,
And weave a hidden nest of dreams.
THE CONSTANT ONES
The tossing trees had every flag unfurled
To hail their chief, but now the sun is set,
And in the sweet new quiet on the world
The king is dead, the fickle leaves forget.
A placid earth, an air serene and still;
In misty blue the gradual smoke is thinned--
Only the grasses, leaning to his will,
The grasses hold a memory of wind.
INSTINCT
To Reason with the praise of one I go
To fall back, silent, at her whispered “No.”
And always of the other says she, “Trust--
He doeth thus and thus, O thou unjust!”
Yet meet one eye to eye and queries end--
An eager hand goes out to greet a friend,
And let the other please me, soon or late
Wakes with a hiss the little snake of hate.
SAN FRANCISCO NEW YEAR’S, 1907
Said the Old Year to the New: “They will never welcome you
As they sang me in and rang me in upon my birthday night--
All above the surging crowd, bells and voices calling loud--
A throng attuned to laughter and a city all alight.
“Kind had been the years of old, drowsy-lidded, zoned with gold;
They swept their purples down the bay and sped the homeward keel;
The years of fruits and peace, smiling days and rich increase--
Too indolent with wine and sun to grasp the slaying steel.
“As my brothers so I came, panther-treading, silken, tame;
The sword was light within my hand, I kept it sheathed and still--
The jeweled city prayed me and the laughing voices stayed me--
A little while I pleased them well and gave them all their will.
“As a panther strikes to slay, so I wrenched my shuddering prey.
I lit above the panic throng my torches’ crimson flare;
For they made my coming bright and I gave them light for light--
I filled the night with flaming wings and Terror’s streaming hair.
“They were stately walls and high--as I felled them so they lie--
Lie like bodies torn and broken, lie like faces seamed with scars;
Here where Beauty dwelt and Pride, ere my torches flamed and died,
The empty arches break the night to frame the tranquil stars.
“Though of all my brothers scorned, I, betrayer, go unmourned,
It is I who tower shoulder-high above the level years;
You who come to build anew, joy will live again with you,
But mightiest I who walked with Death and taught the sting of tears!”
THE POPPY FIELD
Beyond the tangled poppies lies a lake;
And ever sings to him who muses here
The murmur of the hidden streams and clear
That flow thereto by arching fern and brake.
But never, slumber-heavy, does he wake
To heed the music calling in his ear,
Nor ever knows the water, deep and near,
Ashine with silver lilies for his sake.
And never he will heed, that love of thine;
The poppies of thy beauty drug his sleep;
Nor heedest thou that I must hear the streams,
And follow all thy crystal thought and fine,
And love at last the lilies folded deep
Within thy soul’s unknown beyond his dreams.
YOU
All elfish woodland things that Fancy broods--
The comrades of my solitary moods--
Would crouch when heavy footsteps passed them by,
And peer from shelter--freakish folk and shy.
At you they pricked their furry ears in doubt;
Then, “This one sees--he knows!” they cried.
“Come out!”
They thought to hush their piping till you passed.
“Come out!” they cried. “We dare be brave at last!”
So forth the gay procession sways and weaves;
And some are crowned with roses, some with leaves,
And all are mine, but some I never knew.
I could not wake them, but they come for you.
JUST A DOG[4]
So many times in those dark days,
Instinct with sudden hope he crept,
(When sad, infrequent hands would raise
The startled notes where sound had slept)
Seeking the voice he used to hear,
Close-crouching at his master’s knees,
Hoping to find again the dear
Familiar hand upon the keys.
In very truth there was a soul
Behind his brown and faithful eyes.
There live some mortals, on the whole
Less loving, tender, loyal, wise;
And though we give it to decay,
His poor old body, worn and scarred;
Yet He who judges soul and clay
Will give one dog his just reward.
And that would be to let him come
Toward dim-heard music, far and sweet;
Seeking with eyes rejoiced and dumb;
Seeking with swift, unerring feet,
With love supreme to guide him true,
Across the misty ways of space,--
Until he found the one he knew,
And looked into his master’s face.
MIRAGE[5]
I see upon the desert’s yellow rim,
Beyond the trodden sand and herbage white
Of level noon intolerably bright,
A purple lure of love divine and dim.
I hasten toward the fronded palm trees slim--
The fountains of the city of delight--
And stand bewildered to my heart’s despite
In empty plains where hot horizons swim.
Will I who love the vision gain at last
For very love of love the city’s gates?
I, weary, desert-wandering, knowing this:
That waiting me the golden doors are fast,
And fathom-deep in dream the Princess waits,
Her curving mouth uplifted for the kiss.
DUSK
Earth’s parchèd lips
Drink coolness once again, for daylight dies.
The young moon dips,
A threaded gleam where sunset languid lies,
And slowly twilight opens starry eyes.
Low in the West
Day’s fading embers cast a last faint glow
Behind a crest
Where curving hills on primrose paleness show
Sharp-lined in jet. Dusk stillness broods below.
A first long sigh
Stirs from the broad and dew-wet breast of night.
The leaves reply
With soft small rustling, moths take ghostly flight,
And waking crickets shrill long-drawn delight.
THE SPANISH GIRL
PART I
I
THE VINE
To screen this depth of shade that sleeps,
Beyond the garden’s shine,
On José’s careful strings there creeps
A little slender vine.
José is kind ... but age is cold:
My laughter meets his sigh.
The house is old, the garden old--
Oh, young, the vine and I!
I love the web of light it weaves
Across my half-drawn thread;
It’s speech to me of waking leaves,
While José hears his Dead.
So, ever reaching, tendril-fine,
My eager visions run;
So, as the long day passes, twine
My thoughts, shot through with sun.
II
THE CHAPEL
The vanished women of my race,
The daughters of a moldering year,
Set often in this quiet place
Their votive tapers burning clear.
The patient waxen wreaths they wove,
They hung before the Virgin’s shrine;
To them it was a work of love,
José decrees it task of mine!
They glimmer where a portrait swings--
Women as proud and white as death--
Ah, they could mold those lifeless things;
They had no blood, they had no breath.
“For holiness and meekness strive”
(José would have me pray their prayers).
Now, Mary, warm and all alive,
You shall not think me child of theirs.
So many waxen prayers you heard!
If I should heap your altar high
With boughs that knew the nesting bird,
With flowers that bloomed against the sky,
And let my wondering soul ascend
In vivid question, swift surmise--
I think your shadowy face would bend,
And look at me with startled eyes.
III
THE GARDEN
They planted lilies where they might,
A drift of Vestals slim and tall,
That lined these winding paths with white,
That filled the court from wall to wall.
They shrank from savage, splendid heat,
As from their teasing fires of Hell--
Only when morns and eves were sweet
They walked and liked their garden well.
Slow moving through a pallid mist,
Always in black, in black they came,
With busy rosary on wrist ...
And all the summer world aflame!
I planted flowers that know the sun,
I brought them in from field and stream,
I passed not by the smallest one
That pleased me with a yellow gleam;
Then in a hidden chest I found
The marvel of an old brocade--
Strange figures on an azure ground,
With threads of crimson overlaid,
And when the noon is fierce and bright,
Along the garden, fold on fold,
My silken splendor like a light
I trail between the aisles of gold.
IV
Across José’s unending drone
(Some ancient tale of arms and doom)
There came a poignant sweetness blown
From sleeping leagues of orange bloom.
And lo! the steady candles blurred
Like shining fishes in a net,
And José’s kindly voice I heard--
“But little one, thine eyes are wet.”
He vowed the tale had made me weep,
Its shadowy woes in courtly speech,
Nor knew they passed like wraiths of sleep
The heart a vagrant wind could reach.
How can I tell, whose fancy floats
As swift and passionate impulse veers,
What gust may sweep its roseleaf boats
Adown a sudden tide of tears?
V
Where man has marred and nature yields,
And never plant nor beast is free,
Along the tame and trampled fields
An old unrest has followed me.
Now walk alone the night and I
On foaming reaches curving stark,
And battling with a windy sky
The stormy moon is bright and dark.
Facing the sea with streaming hair,
My broken singing flung behind,
Whipped by the keen exultant air
Till lips must close and eyes are blind,
Loving the sharp and cruel spray,
The great waves thundering, might on might,
The pagan heart must shout and sway,
Tossed in the passion of the night.
VI
Oh, never wings the Sisters chide,
Wild upward wings that shine and blur,
Nor mourn they winds of eventide
That bid the rhythmic garden stir,
And yet this life I cannot still,
This winged and restless strength of flight,
That swings me down a singing hill
Or answers to the calling night,
They curb when I would dance, would dance!
By all the graven Saints, it seems
Most strange they make for my mischance
No grim confessional of dreams!
The flower of Heart’s Desire is sown
In fields unknown to waking sight,
Down glittering spaces, all alone
I whirl the fire of my delight--
Then, on the music’s ebb and flow,
Pause as a poising bird is hung,
With supple body swaying slow,
With parted lips and arms up-flung.
VII
Always of Heaven the Sisters tell,
Although of earth I question most--
I would I knew the world as well
As Peter and the Angel host!
José may journey, never I.
In all the lonely hours I spend
He bids me tell my beads and sigh....
I wonder if the Saints attend?
For when the moon is small and thin,
And night is fragrant on the land,
The earth and I are so akin
I think no Saint could understand.
Something within me sleeps by day;
To moon and wind its petals part....
It is not for my soul I pray;
Ah Virgin!--for my untried heart.