Where the nine Muses gossiped of the dare
Which Marsyas uttered, for the lower meadows
Of flowered Olympus whispered of the thing
In jest and quip, and knowing that her soul
Still echoed in the flute, but would anon
Fade from it as the perfume from a girdle
Tinct by the touch of Aphrodite’s hand,
Spoke to Apollo: “Grant a little time
Wherein the Satyr may improve his skill.”
To which the Muses nodded ’mid their smiles.
But yet Apollo gave assent, though teased
By reason of their chatter and the thought
Hid in Athena’s word that any respite
Granted the Satyr could prosper his success.
Meanwhile Marsyas waited for the day
Appointed of Apollo. Near Sangarius
And through the woodlands tireless with the flute:
Sometimes in imitative harmony
Mocking the sound of fluttering leaves, and now
The musical winds that blow in early spring
Around a peak of dancing asphodel
Where the sea warms them, and at other times
The little waves that patter on the sands
Of old Sangarius rich in numerous flags.
And once he strove with music’s alchemy
To turn to sound the sunlight of the morn
Which fills the senses as illuminate dew
Quickens the ovule of the tiger-flower.
Again he sang the sorrow of his youth
When a wild nymph after one day of bliss
Fled him while sleeping. And again he beat
The rhythm lying at the root of life
Which marks the whirling planets. And Apollo
Hearing betimes a note of purest tone
Fall like a star, betrayed his wonderment--
Whereat the muses vexed him with their smiles
And whisperings to each other. But Apollo
Could sense the Satyr’s waning skill, which dulled
With its employment, as Athena’s soul
Died from the flute, although the Satyr knew not
Each day of waiting doomed him:
Then at last
The day dawned for the trial of their skill,
And Marsyas came bearing the hollow flute--
For all had left it of Athena’s soul.
Then on Sangarius’ wooded banks the muses
To judge assembled, fair, majestical.
With arms entwined some close together stood,
Some half-reclined upon the flowery grass,
But all bore in their eyes the light of mirth
Suppressed, half-hidden. Then, for that Euterpe
Was mistress of the flute, since it was deemed
Fair to the Satyr that the contest be
Judged by the flute, gave signal to begin.
Whereat Apollo struck the cithara
To test the strings, and all the wood was hushed,
Awed by the magic of its harmony.
But when Marsyas blew upon the flute
A fear coursed through him as his wonder rose
Whether Apollo had bewitched its soul
To such discordance, or its utterance,
Such as he knew it, when compared with the god’s
Was so unmusical. Yet he dare not fail
The contest, so they waged it to the end,
While the sweet muses now grown pitiful
No longer smiled, but turned their heads away
In sorrow for Marsyas, for his shame
And for the fate to follow.
So at last
With one accord the muses rose and looked
With eyes significant upon Apollo,
Who angered by the Satyr’s swollen pride
And monstrous failure, had become a will
Of resolute retribution. But the muses,
Because they feel for those who trying lose,
Even as a mother for her crippled son
Whom the sound-footed distance in the race,
Hastened away lest they behold the thing
That came to pass. And flinging far the flute
Marsyas shrieked and sank upon the earth.
Whereat Apollo seized his wretched form
And lifting him up, with strips of laurel bark
Bound the poor Satyr to a rugged oak
And flayed him alive, and took the Satyr’s skin
And hung it in a cave, and turned his blood
To water, whence the river Marsyas
That from the cave flows onward to this day.
WORLDS BACK OF WORLDS
This was the world: It was a house
With a cool hallway end to end
Where buckets, pans and dippers hung,
And coats that in the breezes swung;
And eaves in which ’twas good to browse
On books stored in a musty box.
Along the walks were lilac boughs,
And by the windows hollyhocks.
And there were fields down to the hills
Which marked the earth’s far boundary;
A church-spire at the roadway’s bend,
And barns and cribs and twinkling mills,
And neighbor friends like Mrs. Gray,
And endless days of dream and play.
It was a world so guarded, safe,
So cherished by a God-watched sky
Seeing the summers come and pass,
A world so quiet it appeared
Like to the mimic world ensphered
By witchery of the old field glass
Which from an uncle’s drawer I took
Upon the distant hills to look.
You know not then that worlds not dead
Lie back of you and bide their chance
To seize your world of ignorance:
There was an opening in the ceiling
Above the kitchen where the man
Sat humming to himself at night
Amid the enshadowed candle-light,
And played on his accordion
Happy, unconscious and alone.
There full of mischief would I lie
And watch him through the ceiling’s hole,
And laugh for thought of elfish tricks,
Of whispering words or dropping sticks
To fright his well contented soul.
Sometimes I think there is an eye
Which is not God’s that spies upon us;
That other worlds may lie about us
Our fathers or our mothers lived,
Where Forces lurk and laugh and wait.
Here then was my world’s fair estate--
For so I knew it--could it be
Disturbed or wrecked? I never thought
That change or loss could come to me,
With God above the church’s spire....
But what are all these April dreams?
Less tangible the landscape seems;
The windmills, barns and houses swim
In a sphered ether, wheeling, dim.
Red cattle on green meadows pass
Across a belt of bluest sky
Like objects in the old field glass.
The chickens stalk about the yard
Like phantom things in my regard
And songs and cries and voices sound
Like muffled echoes from the ground.
Stones and dead sticks crawl and move;
And bones that through the winter lay
Something of living power betray.
I sink in all things dizzily,
Made one with nature, all I see,
Until I have no way to prove
My separate identity.
Yet death is what? Why, death is this:
Something that comes but is far off.
They worry sometimes for my cough.
I know they watch me, know they cry,
But what can wreck my earth or sky?
The doctor comes now every day
And with my father sits and talks,
Or stands about the garden walks.
One day I hear them: “It appears
Sometimes in ten or twenty years
As madness or paralysis.
Sometimes it passes, leaves a scar
And never troubles one again.
You say you had this in the war?
It’s hit your boy as phthisis,
Also I think he’s going blind.”
I saw my father trembling wind
Some plucked grass round and round his hand.
They noticed me, walked further on
And left me dreaming where I sat.
Some years since that day now are gone.
I have no world now, none but night.
My father’s world lay back of mine
And wrecked my world so guarded, safe,
So cherished by a God-watched sky
Which looked on summers rise and pass,
So like an image caught and held
By witchery of the old field glass.
THE PRINCESS’ SONG
“Blow, blow, thou wind,
Blow Conrad’s hat away,
Its rolling do not stay,
Till I have combed my hair,
And tied it up behind.”
Blow, blow, thou wind,
Blow Conrad’s love away,
My prince will come to-day.
Let him but find me fair,
And searching find.
The queen my mother grieves
For hopes that went astray.
Blow thou my grief away,
Among the April flags,
Among the dancing leaves.
Fill thou their golden wings,
And make the great clouds fly
Like swans across the sky,
Above the mountain crags
Where the young eaglet clings.
Blow--yet the mad wind dies
Among the flags and ferns.
And Conrad still returns,
Ere I have bound my hair,
Or dried my eyes.
Blow, blow, thou wind--
Blow Conrad’s love away.
But since it will not stay,
Blow thou afar my care
And make me kind.
As even, lad, thou art.
Blow, blow, thou wind, but since
Vainly I wait the prince
Come, Conrad, loose my hair,--
Thou loyal heart!
THE FURIES
I
But you must act. And therein lies the way
Of freedom from the Furies. You must burn
The substance of your being, if you stay
The impetus of life you will not learn
The simples of salvation. Go pluck off
A serpent from Alecto’s head and laugh
Exhilarate with its poison. If you scoff
You will perceive. You cannot love the staff
You have not scorned. You cannot weigh the act
You have not lived, the fear you did not prove.
Your soul was made to focus and extract
Through action every hatred, every love.
Pour out yourself if you would know release
From what the Furies do to spoil your peace.
II
Ambition that eludes, love never found
High hopes that tempt, or goodness still pursued
Have their own Furies, for this mortal ground
Breeds serpents from the blood of fortitude
And action as it does from listless fear.
You have aspired and fallen, curse the past
Till madness come! Be quiet, hide or sear
The memory of the dream, no less at last
The Sisters shall arrive! How do they come?
Your life grows round a moral governance
And you have served it. You are stricken dumb
To see it crumble spite of vigilance.
Now when you cannot think, rebuild, repair
The Sisters come and wheel your cripple’s chair.
III
You were a fennel stalk that laughed and grew
With laughter till the life in you could use
The cells no further, then the cold winds blew,
And you fell whispering of the April dews.
Grown fair or foul the rhythmic force was spent,
The summer gone, your little past achieved,
Repulsions balanced, though you might lament
So much neglected, or too much believed.
You were a dry weed when a Great Hand seized
And bore you as a carrier of fire.
The garden you had grown in had not pleased!
Was this, perhaps, the end of your desire?
You lit a heap of leaves where children came,
The Furies meditating watched the flame!
APOLLO AT PHERÆ
Zeus envied Æsculapius that he healed
The sick and brought the dead to life, and fain
Would slay him. So the Cyclops brought Zeus lightning
With which Zeus smote the healer. Then Apollo
Destroyed the Cyclops, grieving for his son.
And Clotho laughed to see the thread of fate
Slip by Atropos, woven in the cloth
Of destiny. For had she cut the thread
Shot from the spindle, then a little trace
Of scarlet, but no figures of despair
Had marked the storied tapestry. So Apollo
Was doomed for punishment to tend the flocks
Of King Admetus, lord of Pheræ. Next
Apollo met a mortal woman, daughter
Of an old soldier, servitor of the gods
And rich in land.
He, sitting on a rock
That overlooked a green Thessalian field
Where grazed the flocks, clad in a leopard’s skin,
His crook beside him, dreamed of wide Olympus:
“This hour the muses dance, the Council sits
And there is high debate, or Hera storms
For Zeus’ absence; there is life, and I
Unknown, alone, a shepherd by this field
Of pastoral pathos labor all the day.”
And then a step disturbed his revery;
And looking up he saw a slender maid
White as gardenias, jonquil-haired, with eyes
As blue as Peneus when he meets the sea.
And an old weakness crept upon the god.
For ever in his soul there shone the face
Of woman, like the face of Artemis,
His virgin sister, delicate and chaste;
And to o’ercome such whiteness and reserve
Had been Apollo’s madness from his birth.
And this Chione, daughter of the soldier,
Servitor of the gods and rich in land
At once became his passion. So he rose
And to Chione spoke, and she, to him.
And then anon she saw the unkept curls
Sun-bleached, that touched his shoulders, then his breast,
Smooth as her own, and then his arms, his hands
His shapely knees, his firm and pointed feet,
And her eyes closed as stars beneath the dawn
And dawn rose in her cheeks. And the god knew
Her inmost thought.
So all that day they played,
Amid the wind-blown light of Thessaly.
He wove her traps for crickets from the grass,
And from the willow branches made her flutes;
He caught her butterflies, and sang her runes
Of living things, and how the earth and sea
From Erebus and Love sprang into being;
And how the sun, and the bright pageant of the stars
Dance joyously to music. And Chione
Was dumb for happiness; and the day went by.
But with the dusk there came a swooning languor,
All was forgotten save the shepherd’s face
Held close to hers, and round his moving curls
The circled splendor of the sickle moon--
Nor eyes, nor lips, only a golden blur.
And rousing she beheld the enshadowed field
Flockless and silent, and the shepherd gone.
Then through the night Chione weakly walked
And found at last her home.
The light of day
Brought terror to Chione. Then she sought
And found Apollo where he sat before
And told him that her father, the old soldier,
Was favored of Admetus, and would bring
The royal power against him, if he failed
The troth of wedlock. And Apollo mused
Upon his exile from Olympus’ throne,
And Zeus’ wrath against him, that he slew
The Cyclops, and upon his shepherd state
Tending Admetus’ flocks, and how unknown
And weak he stood between these kingly hands
Of Zeus and of Admetus. And seeing her fair,
More fair in tears, he gave her his consent.
Next day Chione brought the god a robe
And sandals and a girdle. Thus arrayed
Chione took him to her father’s home
The ancient soldier, servitor of the gods,
And rich in land, and spoke of him as Acteus
A merchant from the city. Then the father
Gave thanks to Zeus and at the family board
Apollo supped, as one who would become
Chione’s husband. So it came to pass.
They walked together in the bridal train
Behind the perfumed torches.
All the while
Zeus smiled to see Apollo’s punishment.
And Hera, who with woman’s subtlety,
Knew that there shone within Apollo’s soul
A face like to the face of Artemis,
His virgin sister, delicate and chaste,
And to o’ercome such whiteness and reserve
Had been Apollo’s madness from his birth,
Laughed freely with the muses as she said:
“Thus is the masculine spirit ever caught
By its own lure, let Zeus himself take heed
Lest sometime he be snared.”
So when Olympus
Grew dull, the gods for fun looked o’er the ramparts
And spied upon Apollo at the board
With all Chione’s family; or at night
Beside Chione and the little faces
Which every year increased. Or on Apollo
About his bitter task of shepherding
To win the bread for faded Chione
And for the children.
Thus the nine years passed.
Then Zeus, avenged, sent all the muses down
To bring Apollo back, and to Olympus
Humbled and sorrowful he came again,
With wrinkles and a touch of whitened hair,
And a lack-lustre eye, which all the art
Of Aphrodite after many days
Could scarce remove.
Then Chione told her father
That Acteus was not a merchant from the city.
“Too late,” she said, “I found he had deceived me
And masked his shepherd calling.”
To which her father
The ancient soldier, servitor of the gods
And rich in land: “Yea, daughter, he deceived you.
Now he has run away, abandoned you,
May the gods note it and avenge the wrong.”
STEAM SHOVEL CUT
Steam Shovel Cut lies through a wood,
And the trestle’s at the end.
And north are the lonely Fillmore Hills,
And south the river’s bend.
It’s Christmas day and the blue on the hill
Is flapped by a flying crow.
And the steel of the railroad track is cold,
And the Cut is piled with snow.
What is that there by the trestle’s end
Where the Cut slopes down to the slough?
That’s Cora Williams lying there
In her cloak of faded blue.
Her skirt is red as a northern spy,
And her mittens blackberry black.
And under her cotton underskirt
There’s a green place on her back.
Her little gray hat is over her brow,
And covers a purple bruise.
She had white stockings for her feet
And the holes were in her shoes.
Where did you meet Croak Carless, girl?
And where did you start to booze?
They saw you once at Rigdon’s place,
And last at Sandy Hughes’.
On the night that Jesus Christ was born
You were drinking gin and beer.
They saw you sitting on Carless’ knees
As the midnight hour drew near.
They saw you two start into the night,
And the night was cold and black.
And then they found you there by the bridge
With the green bruise on your back.
Down through the dark to the Shovel Cut
The two of you walked and sang.
You were holding hands on the trestle bridge
When the bell began to clang.
’Twas back of the curve that the head-light shone
So what was the use of eyes?
The mad iron thing leaped on you there
As you ran on the trestle ties.
It rushed on you like a furious bull
That charges a scarlet flag.
The engineer looked long at the gauge
As the fireman scraped the slag.
Croak Carless jumped and fell on a stone
And the world to him was a blank.
But the iron thing struck at your back
And doubled you down on the bank.
Croak Carless woke from a sleep like death
And found you covered with blood.
He slinks to the river to wash his hands,
He runs to hide in the wood.
He steals through thickets, hides in a barn,
He cowers where the corn’s in shock.
But the posse catches Croak by noon,
And the jailer turns the lock.
Croak Carless’ wife weeps at the bars,
Croak weeps in a grated cell.
They’ve mortgaged the farm for a lawyer’s fee
To save Croak’s soul from hell.
For the Coroner has a bat-like thing
In a bottle safe in his room.
It looks like a baby devil fish--
It’s Cora Williams’ womb.
A woman’s womb is a thing of doom
And winged with a fan-like mesh.
And who was the father, they’re asking Croak,
Of this bit of jelly flesh?
And the doctors took an oath in the court
That a sharp club did the deed.
And the judge was a foe of the lawyer man
Croak Carless paid to plead.
And Croak had talked too much in jail,
And he trembled and testified
To a woeful tangle of time and place,
And the jury thought he lied.
Croak Carless’ wife sobbed out in court
As they twisted him out and in.
For they made him swear he drank with the girl,
And swear to his carnal sin.
They stood him up on the gallow’s trap
And his voice was clear and low:
If I killed Cora Williams, men,
My soul to hell should go.
They sprang the trap, Croak Carless shot
Like a wheat bag toward the floor.
And the doctors let his body hang
Till his old heart beat no more.
They let him alone to work and sweat
For a wife’s and children’s ease.
But they hung him up for a little beer
With a woman on his knees.
And he might have died in bed in a year,
For when they opened him up
They found his heart was a played out pump,
And leaked like a rusty cup.
And a man can live as the church decrees,
Or dance in the way of vice,
A woman’s womb is a thing of doom,
And life is the current price.
’Tis a vampire bat, or the leather box
From which you rattle the dice.
’Tis an altar of doom, is a woman’s womb,
And man is the sacrifice.
THE HOUSES
You wonder why I bought so many houses,
Bought and repaired, built over home on house.
The first one was to make a home for Mary,
And Frank and Bessie, for I had myself
A settled home when I was boy and man,
And knew the feeling of respect, content
Which comes of one familiar and continued
Habitation for a boy who’s growing.
The first house, then, was poor enough, God knows!
A place that smelt in all the rooms of breath
A sick man breathes into the very paper.
The rat holes in the base boards had to be
Stopped up with plaster, all the floors were loose.
Bricks lay awry upon the chimney tops.
An old well with a windlass on the porch
Made one remember typhoid all the time.
Some apple trees half-rotted, covered over
With water sprouts stood in a yard of weeds.
A barn was at the yard’s end out of shape
From leaning at an angle. All in all
The place was haunted, but it was the best
I could afford just then, and naturally
She hated it and grumbled all the time.
A few years past, it seemed scarce two or three,
And all the children married, went away.
Just then I grew more prosperous and built over
The haunted house, and built a handsome barn,
Cut out the apple trees, destroyed the weeds,
And put an iron fence around the yard.
Put bathrooms, running water in the house.
She jawed at me for doing this, and asked
Why did you wait until the children left?
Of course she knew, but blamed me just the same.
And so we had no pleasure with this house.
She wanted larger rooms, and trees in front,
A sunny dining room--there was that porch
On which ours looked, and though I closed the well
She often wondered why we had not died
Before I closed it.
And about this time
Our banker moved away and left his house
For sale at public auction. I went down
Alone, not telling her, to look at it.
Here was a house upon a stone foundation
Built of red brick, peaked roof of slate, three stories,
Brick walks about the yard with plots of flowers,
A barn of brick--it was the very place!
There now were grandchildren; and so I dreamed
How they would romp about this lovely yard,
Or play on rainy days in that wide garret.
And so I bid and got the house at auction.
But when I told her she was up in arms:
The house would hold a family of ten!
Besides the upper rooms were far too small:
What is a dining room, or huge drawing room
If you step out of bed against the wall?
Then there’s that gully just below the barn
Breeding malaria, the banker’s family
Were sick year in and out--that’s why they sold it
For anything at public sale. O fool!
Well, Mary came that summer with her children,
And my poor dream in part was realized.
But Frank and Bessie moved to California
And never saw the happiness I planned
For them and for their children. Mary’s husband
Disliked the house--his hatred was beginning.
Next summer Mary left him and divorced him,
And started out to earn her children’s bread.
She didn’t come again.
And so it was true,
We didn’t need so large a house--we sold it
And bought a cottage of six rooms; this time
She joined with me in picking out the house,
But that was nothing, for no other house
Besides this one was up for sale just then.
No sooner had we moved than she was full
Of wounded memory and a mad regret:
She saw what she had lost. These little rooms!
This front fence almost jammed against the door!
And stoves again instead of radiators!
No running water, only an old pump
Above the kitchen sink! And near the station--
The bawling bussmen bothered her at night!
The midnight train woke her unfailingly.
And now she said our first house was all right
With this, or that corrected. We had blundered
In ever selling it and taking on
Such luxury in the brick house. It had spoiled
Her taste for living in a house like this,
With just a little yard, that hideous fence,
Which one could touch while standing in the door!
She said she could not breathe because of it,
And railed against her fate so that it brought
The next step in my life of buying houses....
Dreams entered in my brain of fields and woods,
A little lake perhaps, river or stream.
There was a fad of buying farms just then.
I went to Michigan on other business,
And there I saw one, bought it on the spot.
You see I had the passion as of drink,
And knew it as I ventured once again.
But then there was the house upon the bluff!
And there below it was the river! there
Beeches and oaks down to the river’s edge!
A great white house all new, and apple trees,
A vineyard and a field of eighty acres.
Here will I sit, I said, upon my bluff
And watch the river. I will keep a man
To farm the place, and prune the vines and trees,
This is the place at last. But then I thought
What will she say? She wants a farm I know,
But will this suit her? So I sent for her.
And when she came she kissed me, she was glad,
Commended my good judgment, loved the house,
Went through the barn in rapture, stood beneath
The windmill, which was near, to watch it pump.
Strolled down the wooded bluff, threw pebbles in
The river where the swallows dipped and flew,
And gathered daisies by the river’s shore.
I sat down in the grass flushed through with joy,
Like one who finds his haven, who has solved
Laborious troubles, thinking of the rest
I should take here--a man to run the place,
And months of summer recreation here!
I told her what my plan was.
No, she said,
To own a farm is business. You should know
By this time that you have no head for business.
I think you’ve shown some wisdom in this farm,
Or better you’ve had luck in buying it.
Your other ventures buying houses were
Enough to make you have distrust of self.
Now that you’ve bought the farm to make it pay
Is what we have in hand, and you must work.
We’ll keep a man, but he cannot do all
There is to do here, I will work and you
Must work as well, the farm must pay, you know.
I want the man to live with us in the house
So I can watch him, rout him out to work
At sun-up and keep watch upon his time.
We’ll keep two rooms for our use. For the man
Must have a family, these single fellows
Are off too much at night and think too much
In working hours of what they’ll do at night.