His mane was mixed with the moonlight that silvered his snow-white
side,
For the moon sailed out of a cloud with the wake of a spectral ship.
I crouched and I crawled on my belly, my lariat coil looped wide.
Dimly and dark the mesas broke on the starry sky.
A pall covered every color of their gorgeous glory at noon.
I smelt the yucca and mesquite, and stifled my heart’s quick cry,
And wormed and crawled on my belly to where he moved against the moon!
Some Moorish barb was that mustang’s sire. His lines were beyond all
wonder.
From the prick of his ears to the flow of his tail he ached in my
throat and eyes.
Steel and velvet grace! As the prophet says, God had “clothed his neck
with thunder.”
Oh, marvelous with the drifting cloud he drifted across the skies!
And then I was near at hand—crouched, and balanced, and cast the coil;
And the moon was smothered in cloud, and the rope through my hands
with a rip!
But somehow I gripped and clung, with the blood in my brain aboil,—
With a turn round the rugged tree-stump there on the purple canyon’s
lip.
Right into the stars he reared aloft, his red eye rolling and raging.
He whirled and sunfished and lashed, and rocked the earth to thunder
and flame.
He squealed like a regular devil horse. I was haggard and spent and
aging—
Roped clean, but almost storming clear, his fury too fierce to tame.
And I cursed myself for a tenderfoot moon-dazzled to play the part,
But I was doubly desperate then, with the posse pulled out from town,
Or I’d never have tried it. I only knew I must get a mount and a start.
The filly had snapped her foreleg short. I had had to shoot her down.
So there he struggled and strangled, and I snubbed him around the tree.
Nearer, a little nearer—hoofs planted, and lolling tongue—
Till a sudden slack pitched me backward. He reared right on top of me.
Mother of God—that moment! He missed me ... and up I swung.
Somehow, gone daft completely and clawing a bunch of his mane,
As he stumbled and tripped in the lariat, there I was—up and astride
And cursing for seven counties! And the mustang? _Just insane!_
Crack-bang! went the rope; we cannoned off the tree—then—gods, that
ride!
A rocket—that’s all, a rocket! I dug with my teeth and nails.
Why, we never hit even the high spots (though I hardly remember
things),
But I heard a monstrous booming like a thunder of flapping sails
When he spread—well, _call_ me a liar!—when he spread those wings,
those wings!
So white that my eyes were blinded, thick-feathered and wide unfurled
They beat the air into billows. We sailed, and the earth was gone.
Canyon and desert and mesa withered below, with the world.
And then I knew that mustang; for I—was Bellerophon!
Yes, glad as the Greek, and mounted on a horse of the elder gods,
With never a magic bridle or a fountain-mirror nigh!
_My chaps and spurs and holster must have looked it?_ What’s the odds?
I’d a leg over lightning and thunder, careering across the sky!
And forever streaming before me, fanning my forehead cool,
Flowed a mane of molten silver; and just before my thighs
(As I gripped his velvet-muscled ribs, while I cursed myself for a
fool),
The steady pulse of those pinions—their wonderful fall and rise!
The bandanna I bought in Bowie blew loose and whipped from my neck.
My shirt was stuck to my shoulders and ribboning out behind.
The stars were dancing, wheeling and glancing, dipping with smirk and
beck.
The clouds were flowing, dusking and glowing. We rode a roaring wind.
We soared through the silver starlight to knock at the planets’ gates.
New shimmering constellations came whirling into our ken.
Red stars and green and golden swung out of the void that waits
For man’s great last adventure; the Signs took shape—and then
I knew the lines of that Centaur the moment I saw him come!
The musical-box of the heavens all around us rolled to a tune
That tinkled and chimed and trilled with silver sounds that struck you
dumb,
As if some archangel were grinding out the music of the moon.
Melody-drunk on the Milky Way, as we swept and soared hilarious,
Full in our pathway, sudden he stood—the Centaur of the Stars,
Flashing from head and hoofs and breast! I knew him for Sagittarius.
He reared, and bent and drew his bow. He crouched as a boxer spars.
Flung back on his haunches, weird he loomed—then leapt—and the dim void
lightened.
Old White Wings shied and swerved aside, and fled from the
splendor-shod.
Through a flashing welter of worlds we charged. I knew why my horse was
frightened.
He _had_ two faces—a dog’s and a man’s—that Babylonian god!
Also, he followed us real as fear. Ping! went an arrow past.
My broncho buck-jumped, humping high. We plunged ... I guess that’s
all!
I lay on the purple canyon’s lip, when I opened my eyes at last—
Stiff and sore and my head like a drum, but I broke no bones in the
fall.
So you know—and now you may string me up. Such was the way you caught
me.
Thank you for letting me tell it straight, though you never could
greatly care.
For I took a horse that wasn’t mine!... But there’s one the heavens
brought me,
And I’ll hang right happy, because I know he is waiting for me up
there.
From creamy muzzle to cannon-bone, by God, he’s a peerless wonder!
He is steel and velvet and furnace-fire, and death’s supremest prize;
And never again shall be roped on earth that neck that is “clothed with
thunder” ...
String me up, Dave! Go dig my grave! _I rode him across the skies!_
Maxwell Bodenheim
THE REAR-PORCHES OF AN APARTMENT-BUILDING
A sky that has never known sun, moon or stars,
A sky that is like a dead, kind face,
Would have the color of your eyes,
O servant-girl, singing of pear-trees in the sun,
And scraping the yellow fruit you once picked
When your lavender-white eyes were alive....
On the porch above you are two women,
Whose faces have the color of brown earth that has never felt rain.
The still wet basins of ponds that have been drained
Are their eyes.
They knit gray rosettes and nibble cakes....
And on the top-porch are three children
Gravely kissing each others’ foreheads—
And an ample nurse with a huge red fan....
The passing of the afternoon to them
Is but the lengthening of blue-black shadows on brick walls.
THE INTERNE
Oh, the agony of having too much power!
In my passive palm are hundreds of lives.
Strange alchemy!—they drain my blood:
My heart becomes iron; my brain copper; my eyes silver; my lips brass.
Merely by twitching a supple finger, I twirl lives from
me—strong-winged,
Or fluttering and broken.
They are my children, I am their mother and father.
I watch them live and die.
THE OLD JEW
No fawn-tinged hospital pajamas could cheat him of his austerity,
Which tamed even the doctors with its pure fire.
They examined him; made him bow to them:
Massive altars were they, at whose swollen feet grovelled a worshiper.
Then they laughed, half in scorn of him; and there came a miracle.
The little man was above them at a bound.
His austerity, like an irresistible sledge-hammer, drove them lower and
lower:
They dwindled while he soared.
THE MINER
Those on the top say they know you, Earth—they are liars.
You are my father, and the silence I work in is my mother.
Only the son knows his father.
We are alike—sweaty, inarticulate of soul, bending under thick
knowledge.
I drink and shout with my brothers when above you—
Like most children we soon forget the parents of our souls.
But you avidly grip us again—we pay for the little noise of life we
steal.
TO AN ENEMY
I despise my friends more than you.
I would have known myself, but they stood before the mirrors
And painted on them images of the virtues I craved.
You came with sharpest chisel, scraping away the false paint.
Then I knew and detested myself, but not you:
For glimpses of you in the glasses you uncovered
Showed me the virtues whose images you destroyed.
TO A DISCARDED STEEL RAIL
Straight strength pitched into the surliness of the ditch,
A soul you have—strength has always delicate secret reasons.
Your soul is a dull question.
I do not care for your strength, but for your stiff smile at Time—
A smile which men call rust.
Gordon Bottomley
NIGHT AND MORNING SONGS
MY MOON
My moon was lit in an hour of lilies;
The apple-trees seemed older than ever.
It rose from matted trees that sever
The oats from the meadow, and woke the fillies
That reared in dew and gleamed with dew
And ran like water and shadow, and cried.
It moistened and veiled the oats yet new,
And seemed to drip long drops of the tide,
Of the mother-sea so lately left.
Feathers of flower were each bereft
Of color and stem, and floated low;
Another lily opened then
And lost a little gold dust; but when
The lime-boughs lifted there seemed to go
Some life of the moon, like breath that moves
Or parting glances that flutter and strain—
A ghost with hands the color of doves
And feet the color of rain.
ELEGIAC MOOD
From song and dream for ever gone
Are Helen, Helen of Troy,
And Cleopatra made to look upon,
And many a daring boy—
Young Faust and Sigurd and Hippolytus:
They are twice dead and we must find
Great ladies yet unblemished by the mind,
Heroes and acts not cold for us
In amber or spirits of too many words.
Ay, these are murdered by much thinking on.
I hanker even for new shapes of swords,
More different sins, and raptures not yet done.
Yet, as I wait on marvels, such a bird
As maybe Sigurd heard—
A thrush—alighting with a little run
Out-tops the daisies as it passes
And peeps bright-eyed above the grasses.
DAWN
A thrush is tapping a stone
With a snail-shell in its beak;
A small bird hangs from a cherry
Until the stem shall break.
No waking song has begun,
And yet birds chatter and hurry
And throng in the elm’s gloom
Because an owl goes home.
Rollo Britten
BIRD OF PASSION
Leave the lovely words unsaid;
For another thought is fled
From my dream-entangled mind.
Bird of passion, unenshrined,
I can never phrase thee quite—
So I speed thee on thy flight,
Unembodied thus forever,
Floating in a mist that never
May be raised. Thou art one
Of the black-winged birds that run,
With uncomprehended flight,
Unimpeded down the night.
Rupert Brooke
RETROSPECT
In your arms was still delight,
Quiet as a street at night;
And thoughts of you, I do remember,
Were green leaves in a darkened chamber,
Were dark clouds in a moonless sky.
Love, in you, went passing by,
Penetrative, remote, and rare,
Like a bird in the wide air;
And, as the bird, it left no trace
In the heaven of your face.
In your stupidity I found
The sweet hush after a sweet sound.
All about you was the light
That dims the graying end of night;
Desire was the unrisen sun,
Joy the day not yet begun,
With tree whispering to tree,
Without wind, quietly.
Wisdom slept within your hair,
And Long-suffering was there,
And, in the flowing of your dress,
Undiscerning Tenderness.
And when you thought, it seemed to me,
Infinitely, and like a sea,
About the slight world you had known
Your vast unconsciousness was thrown....
O haven without wave or tide!
Silence, in which all songs have died!
Holy book, where hearts are still!
And home at length under the hill!
O mother quiet, breasts of peace,
Where love itself would faint and cease!
O infinite deep I never knew,
I would come back, come back to you,
Find you, as a pool unstirred,
Kneel down by you, and never a word,
Lay my head, and nothing said,
In your hands, ungarlanded;
And a long watch you would keep;
And I should sleep, and I should sleep!
NINETEEN-FOURTEEN
I—PEACE
Now, God be thanked who has matched us with his hour,
And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping!
With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power,
To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping,
Glad about a world grown old and cold and weary;
Leave the sick hearts that honor could not move,
And half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary,
And all the little emptiness of love!
Oh! we, who have known shame, we have found release there,
Where there’s no ill, no grief, but sleep has mending,
Naught broken save this body, lost but breath;
Nothing to shake the laughing heart’s long peace there,
But the only agony, and that has ending;
And the worst friend and enemy is but Death.
II—SAFETY
Dear! of all happy in the hour, most blest
He who has found our hid security,
Assured in the dark tides of the world that rest,
And heard our word, “Who is so safe as we?”
We have found safety with all things undying.
The winds, and morning, tears of men and mirth,
The deep night and birds singing, and clouds flying,
And sleep, and freedom, and the autumnal earth.
We have built a house that is not for Time’s throwing.
We have gained a peace unshaken by pain for ever.
War knows no power. Safe shall be my going,
Secretly armed against all death’s endeavor;
Safe though all safety’s lost; safe where men fall;
And if these poor limbs die, safest of all.
III—THE DEAD
Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead!
There’s none of these so lonely and poor of old,
But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold.
These laid the world away; poured out the red
Sweet wine of youth; gave up the years to be
Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene
That men call age; and those who would have been
Their sons they gave, their immortality.
Blow, bugles, blow! They brought us, for our dearth,
Holiness, lacked so long, and Love, and Pain.
Honor has come back, as a king, to earth,
And paid his subjects with a royal wage;
And Nobleness walks in our ways again;
And we have come into our heritage.
IV—THE DEAD
These hearts were woven of human joys and cares,
Washed marvellously with sorrow, swift to mirth.
The years had given them kindness. Dawn was theirs,
And sunset, and the colors of the earth.
These had seen movement, and heard music; known
Slumber and waking; loved; gone proudly friended;
Felt the quick stir of wonder; sat alone;
Touched flowers and furs, and cheeks. All this is ended.
There are waters blown by changing winds to laughter
And lit by the rich skies, all day. And after,
Frost, with a gesture, stays the waves that dance
And wandering loveliness. He leaves a white
Unbroken glory, a gathered radiance,
A width, a shining peace, under the night.
V—THE SOLDIER
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England’s, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
Witter Bynner
TO CELIA
I—CONSUMMATION
There was a strangeness on your lips,
Lips that had been so sure;
You still were mine but in eclipse,
Beside me but obscure.
There was a cloud upon your heart;
For, Celia, where you lay,
Death, come to break your life apart,
Had led your love away.
Through the cold distance of your eyes
You could no longer see.
But when you died, you heard me rise
And followed suddenly.
And close beside me, looking down
As I did on the dead,
You made of time a wedding-gown,
Of space a marriage-bed.
I took, in you, death for a wife,
You married death in me,
Singing, “There is no other life,
No other God than we!”
II—DURING A CHORALE BY CESAR FRANCK
In an old chamber softly lit
We heard the Chorale played,
And where you sat, an exquisite
Image of Life and lover of it,
Death sang a serenade.
I know now, Celia, what you heard,
And why you turned and smiled.
It was the white wings of a bird
Offering flight, and you were stirred
Like an adventurous child.
Death sang: “Oh, lie upon your bier,
Uplift your countenance!”
Death bade me be your cavalier,
Called me to march and shed no tear,
But sing to you and dance.
And when you followed, lured and led
By those mysterious wings,
And when I heard that you were dead,
I could not weep. I sang instead,
As a true lover sings.
· · · · ·
Today a room is softly lit;
I hear the Chorale played.
And where you come, an exquisite
Image of Death and lover of it,
Life sings a serenade.
III—SONGS ASCENDING
Love has been sung a thousand ways—
So let it be;
The songs ascending in your praise
Through all my days
Are three.
Your cloud-white body first I sing;
Your love was heaven’s blue,
And I, a bird, flew carolling
In ring on ring
Of you.
Your nearness is the second song;
When God began to be,
And bound you strongly, right or wrong,
With his own thong,
To me.
But oh, the song, eternal, high,
That tops these two!—
You live forever, you who die,
I am not I
But you.
GRIEVE NOT FOR BEAUTY
Grieve not for the invisible, transported brow
On which like leaves the dark hair grew,
Nor for the lips of laughter that are now
Laughing inaudibly in sun and dew,
Nor for those limbs that, fallen low
And seeming faint and slow,
Shall yet pursue
More ways of swiftness than the swallow dips
Among ... and find more winds than ever blew
The straining sails of unimpeded ships!
Mourn not!—yield only happy tears
To deeper beauty than appears!
Joseph Campbell
AT HARVEST
Earth travails,
Like a woman come to her time.
The swaying corn-haulms
In the heavy places of the field
Cry to be gathered.
Apples redden, and drop from their rods.
Out of their sheath of prickly leaves
The marrows creep, fat and white.
The blue pallor of ripeness
Comes on the fruit of the vine-branch.
Fecund and still fecund
After æons of bearing:
Not old, not dry, not wearied out;
But fresh as when the unseen Right Hand
First moved on Brí,
And the candle of day was set,
And dew fell from the stars’ feet,
And cloths of greenness covered thee.
Let me kiss thy breasts:
I am thy son and lover.
Womb-fellow am I of the sunburnt oat,
Friendly gossip of the mearings;
Womb-fellow of the dark and sweet-scented apple;
Womb-fellow of the gourd and of the grape:
Like begotten, like born.
And yet without a lover’s knowledge
Of thy secrets
I would walk the ridges of the hills,
Kindless and desolate.
What were the storm-driven moon to me,
Seed of another father?
What the overflowing
Of the well of dawn?
What the hollow,
Red with rowan fire?
What the king-fern?
What the belled heath?
What the drum of grouse’s wing,
Or glint of spar,
Caught from the pit
Of a deserted quarry?
Let me kiss thy breasts:
I am thy son and lover.
ON WAKING
Sleep, gray brother of death,
Has touched me,
And passed on.
I arise, facing the east—
Pearl-doored sanctuary
From which light,
Hand-linked with dew and fire,
Dances.
Hail, essence, hail!
Fill the windows of my soul
With beauty:
Pierce and renew my bones:
Pour knowledge into my heart
As wine.
Cualann is bright before thee.
Its rocks melt and swim:
The secret they have kept
From the ancient nights of darkness
Flies like a bird.
What mourns?
Cualann’s secret flying,
A lost voice
In endless fields.
What rejoices?
My voice lifted praising thee.
Praise! Praise! Praise!
Praise out of trumpets, whose brass
Is the unyoked strength of bulls;
Praise upon harps, whose strings
Are the light movements of birds;
Praise of leaf, praise of blossom,
Praise of the red-fibred clay;
Praise of grass,
Fire-woven veil of the temple;
Praise of the shapes of clouds;
Praise of the shadows of wells;
Praise of worms, of fetal things,
And of the things in time’s thought
Not yet begotten.
To thee, queller of sleep,
Looser of the snare of death.
THE OLD WOMAN
As a white candle
In a holy place,
So is the beauty
Of an agèd face.
As the spent radiance
Of the winter sun,
So is a woman
With her travail done.
Her brood gone from her,
And her thoughts as still
As the waters
Under a ruined mill.
Nancy Campbell
THE APPLE-TREE
I saw the archangels in my apple-tree last night,
I saw them like great birds in the starlight—
Purple and burning blue, crimson and shining white.
And each to each they tossed an apple to and fro,
And once I heard their laughter gay and low;
And yet I felt no wonder that it should be so.
But when the apple came one time to Michael’s lap
I heard him say: “The mysteries that enwrap
The earth and fill the heavens can be read here, mayhap.”
Then Gabriel spoke: “I praise the deed, the hidden thing.”
“The beauty of the blossom of the spring
I praise,” cried Raphael. Uriel: “The wise leaves I sing.”
And Michael: “I will praise the fruit, perfected, round,
Full of the love of God, herein being bound
His mercies gathered from the sun and rain and ground.”
So sang they till a small wind through the branches stirred,
And spoke of coming dawn; and at its word
Each fled away to heaven, winged like a bird.
THE MONKEY
I saw you hunched and shivering on the stones,
The bleak wind piercing to your fragile bones,
Your shabby scarlet all inadequate:
A little ape that had such human eyes
They seemed to hide behind their miseries—
Their dumb and hopeless bowing down to fate—
Some puzzled wonder. Was your monkey soul
Sickening with memories of gorgeous days,
Of tropic playfellows and forest ways,
Where, agile, you could swing from bole to bole
In an enchanted twilight with great flowers
For stars; or on a bough the long night hours
Sit out in rows, and chatter at the moon?
Shuffling you went, your tiny chilly hand
Outstretched for what you did not understand;
Your puckered mournful face begging a boon
That but enslaved you more. They who passed by
Saw nothing sorrowful; gave laugh or stare,
Unheeding that the little antic there
Played in the gutter such a tragedy.
Skipwith Cannéll
THE RED BRIDGE
The arches of the red bridge
Are stronger than ever:
The arches of the scarlet bridge
Are of rough, bleak stone.
(Why should such massive arches be the span
From cloud to tenuous cloud?)
Let us not seek omens in the guts
Of newly slain fowls;
Leaving such play to the children,
Let us pluck wild swans
From under the moon;
Or, challenging strong, terrible men,
Let us slay them and seek truth
In their smoking entrails.
Let us fling runners
Across the red bridge,
Deep-lunged runners who will return to us
With tidings of the far countries
And the strange seas!
There be many terrible men
Going out upon the bridge,
Through the little door
That is by the steps from the river.
THE KING
Seven full-paunched eunuchs came to me,
Bearing before them upon a silver shield
The secrets of my enemy.
As they crossed my threshold to stand,
With stately and hypocritical gesture
In a row before me,
One stumbled.
The dull, incurious eyes of the others
Blazed into no laughter,
Only a haggard malice
At the discomfiture
Of their companion.
Why should such _Things_ have power
Not spoken for in the rules of men?
I would not receive them.
With my head covered I motioned them
To go forth from my presence.
Where shall I find an enemy
Worthy of me as him they defaced?
As they left me,
Bearing with them
Lewd shield and scarlet crown,
One paused upon the threshold,
Insolent,
To sniff a flower.
Even him I permitted to go forth
Safely.
· · · · ·
Therefore
I have renounced my kingdom;
In a little bronze boat I have set sail
Out
Upon the sea.
There is no land, and the sea
Is black like the cypresses waiting
At midnight in the place of tombs;
Is black like the pool of ink
In the palm of a soothsayer.
My boat
Fears the white-lipped waves
That snatch at her,
Hungrily,
Furtively,
As they steal past like cats
Into the night:
And beneath me, in their hidden places,
The great fishes talk of me
In a tongue I have forgotten.
Willa Sibert Cather
THE PALATINE
_In the “Dark Ages”_
“Have you been with the King to Rome,
Brother, big brother?”
“I’ve been there and I’ve come home.
Back to your play, little brother.”
“Oh, how high is Cæsar’s house,
Brother, big brother?”
“Goats about the doorways browse;
Night-hawks nest in the burnt roof-tree.
Home of the wild bird and home of the bee,
A thousand chambers of marble lie
Wide to the sun and the wind and the sky.
Poppies we find amongst our wheat
Grow on Cæsar’s banquet seat.
Cattle crop and neat-herds drowse
On the floors of Cæsar’s house.”
“But what has become of Cæsar’s gold,
Brother, big brother?”
“The times are bad and the world is old—
Who knows the where of the Cæsar’s gold?
Night comes black o’er the Cæsar’s hill;
The wells are deep and the tales are ill;
Fireflies gleam in the damp and mold—
All that is left of the Cæsar’s gold.
Back to your play, little brother.”
“What has become of the Cæsar’s men,
Brother, big brother?”
“Dogs in the kennel and wolf in the den
Howl for the fate of the Cæsar’s men,
Slain in Asia, slain in Gaul,
By Dacian border and Persian wall.
Rhineland orchard and Danube fen
Fatten their roots on Cæsar’s men.”