Where she sat by her small fire—only her eyes.
In the little flicker I saw her feet; they were bare—
Tireless, slim brown feet.
I saw how fair her lips were—
I drew nearer to cast my log on the fire. I said:
“Maiden, I am the Hunter.
When dusk ends the chase I leave the Mighty Killing.
Far or near, where gleams some little fire,
I grope through the forest with my heavy log;
Till I find one by the fire, sitting alone without fuel.
I cast my log gladly into the fire—thus,
It grips, the flames mount, the warmth embraces.
“Almost I can see your face, Woman;
The bow of your fair lips is hot with speeded arrows,
Your strange clear eyes have darkened.
Fear not—our fire will outlast the dark.”
“Hunter, what of the cold on the bleak hillside
When the log burns gray, and the fire is ashes?”
I replied, “I have never seen this:
When the fire burns low I am asleep.”
She said: “What of me, if I sleep not, and see the ashes?”
I yawned: I said, “I know not;
I wake in the sun and go forth.”
The bow of her lips was like the moon’s cold circle.
She said, “Hunter, you have told me of Love!”
“It may be so,” I answered. I wished to sleep.
She said, “Already it is ashes.”
I looked and saw that her face was gray,
As if the wind had blown the ashes over it.
I was angry; I said, “Better you had slept.”
She said, “Yes—but I lie bleeding on the moss,
Crying this word.”
I answered, “This is so; but wherefore?” and asked, idly,
“Wherefore remember him who brought to your lone little fire
The log that now is ashes?”
She shivered in the cold dawn;
I saw that her eyes were darker than shadows.
Her fair mouth was like my perfect bow,
But I could fit no more arrows to it.
She said, “Hunter, see how gray are these rocks
Where we have sheltered our brief night.”
I looked—they were ashen.
She said: “See how they come together here—and here—
As the knees, the breast, the great brow, the forgotten eyes,
Of a woman,
Sitting, waiting, stark and still,
And always gray;
Though hunters camp each night between her knees,
And little fires are kindled and burned out in her hollows.”
It was so; the mountain was a stone woman sitting.
Kantlak said: “She remembers him who turned her fire to ashes;
She waits to know the meaning of her waiting—
Why the love that wounded her can never be cast out.”
I asked idly, “Who will tell her?”—
And laughed, for the sun was up. I reached for my arrows;
I drew my strong spear from the deep earth by her feet.
Kantlak looked up to the other gray face, and said,
“No answer is given.”
Down to the cold white endless sea-shore
Slowly she went, with bent head.
A young deer cast its leaping shadow on the pool.
I ran upon the bright path, swaying my spear.
James Stephens
WHAT TOMAS AN BUILE SAID IN A PUB
I saw God. Do you doubt it?
Do you dare to doubt it?
I saw the Almighty Man. His hand
Was resting on a mountain, and
He looked upon the World and all about it:
I saw Him plainer than you see me now,
You mustn’t doubt it.
He was not satisfied;
His look was all dissatisfied.
His beard swung on a wind far out of sight
Behind the world’s curve, and there was light
Most fearful from His forehead, and He sighed,
“That star went always wrong, and from the start
I was dissatisfied.”
He lifted up His hand—
I say He heaved a dreadful hand
Over the spinning Earth, then I said: “Stay—
You must not strike it, God; I’m in the way;
And I will never move from where I stand.”
He said, “Dear child, I feared that you were dead,”
And stayed His hand.
BESSIE BOBTAIL
As down the street she wambled slow,
She had not got a place to go:
She had not got a place to fall
And rest herself—no place at all.
She stumped along and wagged her pate
And said a thing was desperate.
Her face was screwed and wrinkled tight
Just like a nut—and, left and right,
On either side she wagged her head
And said a thing; and what she said
Was desperate as any word
That ever yet a person heard.
I walked behind her for a while
And watched the people nudge and smile.
But ever as she went she said,
As left and right she swung her head,
—“Oh, God He knows,” and “God He knows:”
And surely God Almighty knows.
HATE
My enemy came high,
And I
Stared fiercely in his face.
My lips went writhing back in a grimace,
And stern I watched him with a narrow eye.
Then, as I turned away, my enemy,
That bitter heart and savage, said to me:
“Some day, when this is past,
When all the arrows that we have are cast,
We may ask one another why we hate,
And fail to find a story to relate.
It may seem to us then a mystery
That we could hate each other.”
Thus said he,
And did not turn away,
Waiting to hear what I might have to say.
But I fled quickly, fearing if I stayed
I might have kissed him as I would a maid.
THE WASTE PLACES
I
As a naked man I go
Through the desert sore afraid,
Holding up my head although
I’m as frightened as a maid.
The couching lion there I saw
From barren rocks lift up his eye;
He parts the cactus with his paw,
He stares at me as I go by.
He would follow on my trace
If he knew I was afraid,
If he knew my hardy face
Hides the terrors of a maid.
In the night he rises and
He stretches forth, he snuffs the air;
He roars and leaps along the sand,
He creeps and watches everywhere.
His burning eyes, his eyes of bale,
Through the darkness I can see;
He lashes fiercely with his tail,
He would love to spring at me.
I am the lion in his lair;
I am the fear that frightens me;
I am the desert of despair
And the nights of agony.
Night or day, whate’er befall,
I must walk that desert land,
Until I can dare to call
The lion out to lick my hand.
II
As a naked man I tread
The gloomy forests, ring on ring,
Where the sun that’s overhead
Cannot see what’s happening.
There I go: the deepest shade,
The deepest silence pressing me;
And my heart is more afraid
Than a maiden’s heart would be.
Every day I have to run
Underneath the demon tree,
Where the ancient wrong is done
While I shrink in agony.
There the demon held a maid
In his arms, and as she, daft,
Screamed again in fear, he laid
His lips upon her lips and laughed.
And she beckoned me to run,
And she called for help to me,
And the ancient wrong was done
Which is done eternally.
I am the maiden and the fear;
I am the sunless shade, the strife;
I the demon lips, the sneer
Showing under every life.
I must tread that gloomy way
Until I shall dare to run
And bear the demon with his prey
From the forest to the sun.
HAWKS
And as we walked the grass was faintly stirred;
We did not speak—there was no need to speak.
Above our heads there flew a little bird,
A silent one who feared that we might seek
Her hard-hid nest.
Poor little frightened one!
If we had found your nest that sunny day
We would have passed it by; we would have gone
And never looked or frightened you away.
O little bird! there’s many have a nest,
A hard-found, open place, with many a foe;
And hunger and despair and little rest,
And more to fear than you can know.
Shield the nests where’er they be,
On the ground or on the tree;
Guard the poor from treachery.
DARK WINGS
Sing while you may, O bird upon the tree!
Although on high, wide-winged above the day,
Chill evening broadens to immensity,
Sing while you may.
On thee, wide-hovering too, intent to slay,
The hawk’s slant pinion buoys him terribly—
Thus near the end is of thy happy lay.
The day and thou and miserable me
Dark wings shall cover up and hide away
Where no song stirs of bird or memory:
Sing while you may.
George Sterling
A LEGEND OF THE DOVE
Soft from the linden’s bough,
Unmoved against the tranquil afternoon,
Eve’s dove laments her now:
“Ah, gone! long gone! shall not I find thee soon?”
That yearning in his voice
Told not to Paradise a sorrow’s tale:
As other birds rejoice
He sang, a brother to the nightingale.
By twilight on her breast
He saw the flower sleep, the star awake;
And calling her from rest,
Made all the dawn melodious for her sake.
And then the Tempter’s breath,
The sword of exile and the mortal chain—
The heritage of death
That gave her heart to dust, his own to pain....
In Eden desolate
The seraph heard his lonely music swoon,
As now, reiterate;
“Ah, gone! long gone! shall not I find thee soon?”
KINDRED
Musing, between the sunset and the dark,
As Twilight in unhesitating hands
Bore from the faint horizon’s underlands,
Silvern and chill, the moon’s phantasmal ark,
I heard the sea, and far away could mark
Where that unalterable waste expands
In sevenfold sapphire from the mournful sands,
And saw beyond the deep a vibrant spark.
There sank the sun Arcturus, and I thought:
Star, by an ocean on a world of thine,
May not a being, born like me to die,
Confront a little the eternal Naught
And watch our isolated sun decline—
Sad for his evanescence, even as I?
OMNIA EXEUNT IN MYSTERIUM
The stranger in my gates—lo! that am I,
And what my land of birth I do not know,
Nor yet the hidden land to which I go.
One may be lord of many ere he die,
And tell of many sorrows in one sigh,
But know himself he shall not, nor his woe,
Nor to what sea the tears of wisdom flow;
Nor why one star is taken from the sky.
An urging is upon him evermore,
And though he bide, his soul is wanderer,
Scanning the shadows with a sense of haste—
Where fade the tracks of all who went before:
A dim and solitary traveller
On ways that end in evening and the waste.
THE LAST DAYS
The russet leaves of the sycamore
Lie at last on the valley floor—
By the autumn wind swept to and fro
Like ghosts in a tale of long ago.
Shallow and clear the Carmel glides
Where the willows droop on its vine-walled sides.
The bracken-rust is red on the hill;
The pines stand brooding, somber and still;
Gray are the cliffs, and the waters gray,
Where the seagulls dip to the sea-born spray.
Sad November, lady of rain,
Sends the goose-wedge over again.
Wilder now, for the verdure’s birth,
Falls the sunlight over the earth;
Kildees call from the fields where now
The banding blackbirds follow the plow;
Rustling poplar and brittle weed
Whisper low to the river-reed.
Days departing linger and sigh:
Stars come soon to the quiet sky;
Buried voices, intimate, strange,
Cry to body and soul of change;
Beauty, eternal fugitive,
Seeks the home that we cannot give.
Wallace Stevens
PETER QUINCE AT THE CLAVIER
I
Just as my fingers on these keys
Make music, so the self-same sounds
On my spirit make a music too.
Music is feeling then, not sound;
And thus it is that what I feel,
Here in this room, desiring you,
Thinking of your blue-shadowed silk,
Is music. It is like the strain
Waked in the elders by Susanna:
Of a green evening, clear and warm,
She bathed in her still garden, while
The red-eyed elders, watching, felt
The basses of their being throb
In witching chords, and their thin blood
Pulse pizzicati of Hosanna.
II
In the green water, clear and warm,
Susanna lay.
She searched
The touch of springs,
And found
Concealed imaginings.
She sighed
For so much melody.
Upon the bank she stood
In the cool
Of spent emotions.
She felt, among the leaves,
The dew
Of old devotions.
She walked upon the grass,
Still quavering.
The winds were like her maids,
On timid feet,
Fetching her woven scarves,
Yet wavering.
A breath upon her hand
Muted the night.
She turned—
A cymbal crashed,
And roaring horns.
III
Soon, with a noise like tambourines,
Came her attendant Byzantines.
They wondered why Susanna cried
Against the elders by her side:
And as they whispered, the refrain
Was like a willow swept by rain.
Anon, their lamps’ uplifted flame
Revealed Susanna and her shame.
And then the simpering Byzantines,
Fled, with a noise like tambourines.
IV
Beauty is momentary in the mind—
The fitful tracing of a portal;
But in the flesh it is immortal.
The body dies; the body’s beauty lives.
So evenings die, in their green going,
A wave, interminably flowing.
So gardens die, their meek breath scenting
The cowl of Winter, done repenting.
So maidens die, to the auroral
Celebration of a maiden’s choral.
Susanna’s music touched the bawdy strings
Of those white elders; but, escaping,
Left only Death’s ironic scraping.
Now, in its immortality, it plays
On the clear viol of her memory,
And makes a constant sacrament of praise.
IN BATTLE
Death’s nobility again
Beautified the simplest men.
Fallen Winkle felt the pride
Of Agamemnon
When he died.
What could London’s
Work and waste
Give him—
To that salty, sacrificial taste?
What could London’s
Sorrow bring—
To that short, triumphant sting?
SUNDAY MORNING
I
Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
And the green freedom of a cockatoo
Upon a rug, mingle to dissipate
The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.
She dreams a little, and she feels the dark
Encroachment of that old catastrophe,
As a calm darkens among water-lights.
The pungent oranges and bright, green wings
Seem things in some procession of the dead,
Winding across wide water, without sound.
The day is like wide water, without sound,
Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet
Over the seas, to silent Palestine,
Dominion of the blood and sepulchre.
II
She hears, upon that water without sound,
A voice that cries: “The tomb in Palestine
Is not the porch of spirits lingering;
It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay.”
We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.
Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail
Whistle about us their spontaneous cries;
Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;
And, in the isolation of the sky,
At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darkness, on extended wings.
III
She says: “I am content when wakened birds,
Before they fly, test the reality
Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings;
But when the birds are gone, and their warm fields
Return no more, where, then, is paradise?”
There is not any haunt of prophecy,
Nor any old chimera of the grave,
Neither the golden underground, nor isle
Melodious, where spirits gat them home,
Nor visionary South, nor cloudy palm
Remote on heaven’s hill, that has endured
As April’s green endures; or will endure
Like her remembrance of awakened birds,
Or her desire for June and evening, tipped
By the consummation of the swallow’s wings.
IV
She says, “But in contentment I still feel
The need of some imperishable bliss.”
Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,
Alone, shall come fulfilment to our dreams
And our desires. Although she strews the leaves
Of sure obliteration on our paths—
The path sick sorrow took, the many paths
Where triumph rang its brassy phrase, or love
Whispered a little out of tenderness—
She makes the willow shiver in the sun
For maidens who were wont to sit and gaze
Upon the grass, relinquished to their feet.
She causes boys to bring sweet-smelling pears
And plums in ponderous piles. The maidens taste
And stray impassioned in the littering leaves.
V
Supple and turbulent, a ring of men
Shall chant in orgy on a summer morn
Their boisterous devotion to the sun—
Not as a god, but as a god might be,
Naked among them, like a savage source.
Their chant shall be a chant of paradise,
Out of their blood, returning to the sky;
And in their chant shall enter, voice by voice,
The windy lake wherein their lord delights,
The trees, like seraphim, and echoing hills,
That choir among themselves long afterward.
They shall know well the heavenly fellowship
Of men that perish and of summer morn—
And whence they came and whither they shall go,
The dew upon their feet shall manifest.
Ajan Syrian
THE SYRIAN LOVER IN EXILE REMEMBERS THEE, LIGHT OF MY LAND
Rose and amber was the sunset on the river,
Red-rose the hills about Bingariz.
High upon their brows, the black tree-branches
Spread wide across the turquoise sky.
I saw the parrots fly—
A cloud of rising green from the long green grasses,
A mist of gold and green winging fast
Into the gray shadow-silence of the tamarisks.
Pearl-white and wild was the flood below the ford.
I ran down the long hot road to thy door;
Thy door shone—a white flower in the dusk lingering to close.
The stars rose and stood above thy casement.
I cast my cloak and climbed to thee,
To thee, Makhir Subatu!
· · · · ·
Naked she stood and glistening like the stars over her—
Her hair trailed about her like clouds about the moon—
Naked as the soul seeking love,
As the soul that waits for death.
White with benediction, pendulous, unfolding from the dark
As the crystal sky of morning, she waited,
And leaned her light above the earth of my desire.
Like a world that spins from the hand of Infinity,
Up from the night I leaped—
To thee, Makhir Subatu!
· · · · ·
Pearl-bright and wild, a flood without a ford,
The River of Love flowed on.
Her eyes were gleaming sails in a storm,
Dipping, swooning, beckoning.
The dawn came and trampled over her;
Gray-arched and wide, the sanctuary of light descended.
It was the altar where I lay;
And I lifted my face at last, praying.
I saw the first glow fall about her,
Like marble pillars coming forth from the shadow.
I raised my hands, thanking the gods
That in love I had grown so tall
I could touch the two lamps in heaven,
The sun and moon hanging in the low heaven beneath her face.
How great through love had I grown
To breathe my flame into the two lamps of heaven!
O eyes of the eagle and the dove,
Eyes red-starred and white-starred,
Eyes that have too much seen, too much confessed,
Close, close, beneath my kisses!
Tell me no more, demand me no more—it is day.
I see the gold-green rain of parrot-wings
Sparkling athwart the gray and rose-gold morning.
I go from thy closed door down the long lone road
To the ricefields beyond the river,
Beyond the river that has a ford.
· · · · ·
I came to thee with hope, with desire. I have them no longer.
Sleep, sleep; I am locked in thee.
· · · · ·
_Thus the exile lover remembers thee, Makhir Subatu!_
Rabindranath Tagore
FROM “GITANJALI”
I
Thou hast made me known to friends whom I knew not. Thou hast given me
seats in homes not my own. Thou hast brought the distant near and
made a brother of the stranger. I am uneasy at heart when I have to
leave my accustomed shelter; I forgot that there abides the old in
the new, and that there also thou abidest.
Through birth and death, in this world or in others, wherever thou
leadest me it is thou, the same, the one companion of my endless life
who ever linkest my heart with bonds of joy to the unfamiliar. When
one knows thee, then alien there is none, then no door is shut. Oh,
grant me my prayer that I may never lose the bliss of the touch of
the One in the play of the many.
II
No more noisy, loud words from me, such is my master’s will. Henceforth
I deal in whispers. The speech of my heart will be carried on in
murmurings of a song.
Men hasten to the King’s market. All the buyers and sellers are there.
But I have my untimely leave in the middle of the day, in the thick
of work.
Let then the flowers come out in my garden, though it is not their time,
and let the midday bees strike up their lazy hum.
Full many an hour have I spent in the strife of the good and the evil,
but now it is the pleasure of my playmate of the empty days to draw
my heart on to him, and I know not why is this sudden call to what
useless inconsequence!
III
On the day when the lotus bloomed, alas, my mind was straying, and I
knew it not. My basket was empty and the flower remained unheeded.
Only now and again a sadness fell upon me, and I started up from my
dream and felt a sweet trace of a strange smell in the south wind.
That vague fragrance made my heart ache with longing, and it seemed to
me that it was the eager breath of the summer seeking for its
completion.
I knew not then that it was so near, that it was mine, and this perfect
sweetness had blossomed in the depth of my own heart.
IV
By all means they try to hold me secure who love me in this world. But
it is otherwise with thy love, which is greater than theirs, and thou
keepest me free. Lest I forget them they never venture to leave me
alone. But day passes by after day and thou art not seen.
If I call not thee in my prayers, if I keep not thee in my heart—thy
love for me still waits for my love.
V
I was not aware of the moment when I first crossed the threshold of this
life. What was the power that made me open out into this vast mystery
like a bud in the forest at midnight? When in the morning I looked
upon the light I felt in a moment that I was no stranger in this
world, that the inscrutable without name and form had taken me in its
arms in the form of my own mother. Even so, in death the same unknown
will appear as ever known to me. And because I love this life, I know
I shall love death as well. The child cries out when from the right
breast the mother takes it away to find in the very next moment its
consolation in the left one.
VI
Thou art the sky and thou art the nest as well. Oh, thou beautiful,
there in the nest it is thy love that encloses the soul with colors
and sounds and odors. There comes the morning with the golden basket
in her right hand bearing the wreath of beauty, silently to crown the
earth. And there comes the evening over the lonely meadows deserted
by herds, through trackless paths, carrying cool draughts of peace in
her golden pitcher from the western ocean of rest.
But there, where spreads the infinite sky for the soul to take her
flight in, reigns the stainless white radiance. There is no day nor
night, nor form nor color, and never never a word.
FROM “THE GARDENER”
I
Over the green and yellow rice fields sweep the shadows of the autumn
clouds, followed by the swift-chasing sun.
The bees forget to sip their honey; drunken with the light they
foolishly hum and hover; and the ducks in the sandy riverbank clamor
in joy for mere nothing.
None shall go back home, brothers, this morning, none shall go to work.
We will take the blue sky by storm and plunder the space as we run.
Laughters fly floating in the air like foams in the flood.
Brothers, we shall squander our morning in futile songs.
II
Keep me fully glad with nothing. Only take my hand in your hand.
In the gloom of the deepening night take up my heart and play with it as
you list. Bind me close to you with nothing.
I will spread myself out at your feet and lie still. Under this clouded
sky I will meet silence with silence. I will become one with the
night clasping the earth in my breast.
Make my life glad with nothing.
The rains sweep the sky from end to end. Jasmines in the wet untamable
wind revel in their own perfume. The cloud-hidden stars thrill in
secret. Let me fill to the full of my heart with nothing but my own
depth of joy.
III
My soul is alight with your infinitude of stars. Your world has broken
upon me like a flood. The flowers of your garden blossom in my body.
The joy of life that is everywhere burns like an incense in my heart.
And the breath of all things plays on my life as on a pipe of reeds.
IV
Leave off your works, bride. Listen, the guest has come. Do you hear, he
is gently shaking the fastening chain of the door?
Let not your anklets be loud, and your steps be too hurried to meet him.
Leave off your works, bride; the guest has come, in the evening.
No, it is not the wind, bride. Do not be frightened.
It is the full-moon night of April, shadows are pale in the courtyard,
the sky overhead is bright.
Draw your veil over your face if you must, take the lamp from your room
if you fear.
No, it is not the wind, bride; do not be frightened.
Have no word with him if you are shy, stand aside by the door when you
meet him.
If he asks you questions, lower your eyes in silence, if you wish.
Do not let your bracelets jingle, when, lamp in hand, you lead him in.
Have no word with him if you are shy.
Have you not finished your works yet, bride? Listen, the guest has come.
Have you not lit the lamp in the cowshed?
Have you not got ready the offering basket for the evening service?
Have you not put the auspicious red mark at the parting of your hair,
and done your toilet for the night?
O bride, do you hear, the guest has come?
Have you not finished your works yet?
V
Come as you are, tarry not over your toilet.
If your braiding has come loose, if the parting of your hair be not
straight, if the ribbons of your bodice be not fastened, do not mind.
Come as you are, tarry not over your toilet.
Come with quick steps over the grass.
If your feet are pale with the dew, if your anklets slacken, if pearls
drop out of your chain, do not mind.
Come with quick steps over the grass.
Do you see the clouds wrapping the sky?
Flocks of cranes fly up from the further riverbank and fitful gusts of
wind rush over the heath.
The anxious cattle run to their stalls in the village.
Do you see the clouds wrapping the sky?
In vain you light your toilet lamp; it flickers and goes out in the
wind.
Surely, who would know that with lamp-black your eyelids are not
touched? For your eyes are darker than rain clouds.
In vain you light your toilet lamp; it goes out.
Come as you are, tarry not over your toilet.
If the wreath is not woven, who cares? If the wrist-chain has not been
tied, leave it by.
The sky is overcast with clouds; it is late.
Come as you are, tarry not over your toilet.
VI