Of the little doves of clay,
And of how he sat with his mother
At the end of a summer’s day,
His head on his mother’s bosom,
His hand in his mother’s hand,
Watching the golden sun go down
Across the shadowy land,—
A moment’s life with human kind;
A moment,—nothing more;
Eternity lies broad behind,
Eternity before.
High on the Hills of Heaven,
Majestic, undefiled,
Forever and ever he lives, a God;
But once he lived, a Child!
And the child-heart leaps within him,
And the child-eyes softer grow,
When the land lies bright and sunny,
Like the land of long ago;
And the love of God is mingled
With the love of dear days gone,
When he comes to the city of his mother,
On the day her child was born!
NEW DUTY.
Once to God we owed it all,—
God alone;
Bowing in eternal thrall,
Giving, sacrificing all,
Before the Throne.
Once we owed it to the King,—
Served the crown;
Life, and love, and everything,
In allegiance to the King,
Laying down.
Now we owe it to Mankind,—
To our Race;
Fullest fruit of soul and mind,
Heart and hand and all behind,
Now in place.
Loving-service, wide and free,
From the sod
Up in varying degree,
Through me and you—through you and me—
Up to God!
SEEKING.
I went to look for Love among the roses, the roses,
The pretty wingèd boy with the arrow and the bow;
In the fair and fragrant places,
’Mid the Muses and the Graces,
At the feet of Aphrodite, with the roses all aglow.
Then I sought among the shrines where the rosy flames were leaping—
The rose and golden flames, never ceasing, never still—
For the boy so fair and slender,
The imperious, the tender,
With the whole world moving slowly to the music of his will.
Sought, and found not for my seeking, till the sweet quest led me
further,
And before me rose the temple, marble-based and gold above,
Where the long procession marches
’Neath the incense-clouded arches
In the world-compelling worship of the mighty God of Love.
Yea, I passed with bated breath to the holiest of holies,
And I lifted the great curtain from the Inmost,—the Most Fair,—
Eager for the joy of finding,
For the glory, beating, blinding,
Meeting but an empty darkness; darkness, silence—nothing there.
Where is Love? I cried in anguish, while the temple reeled and faded;
Where is Love?—for I must find him, I must know and understand!
Died the music and the laughter,
Flames and roses dying after,
And the curtain I was holding fell to ashes in my hand.
FINDING.
Out of great darkness and wide wastes of silence,
Long loneliness, and slow untasted years,
Came a slow filling of the empty places,
A slow, sweet lighting of forgotten faces,
A smiling under tears.
A light of dawn that filled the brooding heaven,
A warmth that kindled all the earth and air,
A thrilling tender music, floating, stealing,
A fragrance of unnumbered flowers revealing
A sweetness new and fair.
After the loss of love where I had sought him,
After the anguish of the empty shrine,
Came a warm joy from all the hearts around me,
A feeling that some perfect strength had found me,
Touch of the hand divine.
I followed Love to his intensest centre,
And lost him utterly when fastened there;
I let him go and ceased my selfish seeking,
Turning my heart to all earth’s voices speaking,
And found him everywhere.
Love like the rain that falls on just and unjust,
Love like the sunshine, measureless and free,
From each to all, from all to each, to live in;
And, in the world’s glad love so gladly given,
Came heart’s true love to me!
TOO MUCH.
There are who die without love, never seeing
The clear eyes shining, the bright wings fleeing.
Lonely they die, and ahungered, in bitterness knowing
They have not had their share of the good there was going.
There are who have and lose love, these most blessed,
In joy unstained which they have once possessed,
Lost while still dear, still sweet, still met by glad affection,—
An endless happiness in recollection.
And some have Love’s full cup as he doth give it—
Have it, and drink of it, and, ah,—outlive it!
Full fed by Love’s delights, o’erwearied, sated,
They die, not hungry—only suffocated.
THE CUP.
And yet, saith he, ye need but sip;
And who would die without a taste?
Just touch the goblet to the lip,
Then let the bright draught run to waste!
She set her lip to the beaker’s brim—
’Twas passing sweet! ’Twas passing mild!
She let her large eyes dwell on him,
And sipped again, and smiled.
So sweet! So mild! She scarce can tell
If she doth really drink or no;
Till the light doth fade and the shadows swell,
And the goblet lieth low.
O cup of dreams! O cup of doubt!
O cup of blinding joy and pain!
The taste that none would die without!
The draught that all the world must drain!
WHAT THEN?
Suppose you write your heart out till the world
Sobs with one voice—what then?
Small agonies that round your heart-strings curled
Strung out for choice, that men
May pick a phrase, each for his own pet pain,
And thank the voice so come,
They being dumb. What then?
You have no sympathy? O endless claim!
No one that cares? What then?
Suppose you had—the whole world knew your name
And your affairs, and men
Ached with your headache, dreamed your dreadful dreams,
And, with your heart-break due,
Their hearts broke too. What then?
You think that people do not understand?
You suffer? Die? What then?
Unhappy child, look here, on either hand,
Look low or high,—all men
Suffer and die, and keep it to themselves!
They die—they suffer sore—
You suffer more? What then?
OUR LONELINESS.
There is no deeper grief than loneliness.
Our sharpest anguish at the death of friends
Is loneliness. Our agony of heart
When love has gone from us is loneliness.
The crying of a little child at night
In the big dark is crowding loneliness.
Slow death of woman on a Kansas farm;
The ache of those who think beyond their time;
Pain unassuaged of isolated lives,—
All this is loneliness.
Oh, we who are one body of one soul!
Great soul of man born into social form!
Should we not suffer at dismemberment?
A finger torn from brotherhood; an eye
Having no cause to see when set alone.
Our separation is the agony
Of uses unfulfilled—of thwarted law;
The forces of all nature throb and push,
Crying for their accustomed avenues;
And we, alone, have no excuse to be,—
No reason for our being. We are dead
Before we die, and know it in our hearts.
Even the narrowest union has some joy,
Transient and shallow, limited and weak;
And joy of union strengthens with its strength,
Deepens and widens as the union grows.
Hence the pure light of long-enduring love,
Lives blended slowly, softly, into one.
Hence civic pride, and glory in our states,
And the fierce thrill of patriotic fire
When millions feel as one!
When we shall learn
To live together fully; when each man
And woman works in conscious interchange
With all the world,—union as wide as man,—
No human soul can ever suffer more
The devastating grief of loneliness.
THE KEEPER OF THE LIGHT.
A lighthouse keeper with a loving heart
Toiled at his service in the lonely tower,
Keeping his giant lenses clear and bright,
And feeding with pure oil the precious light
Whose power to save was as his own heart’s power.
He loved his kind, and being set alone
To help them by the means of this great light,
He poured his whole heart’s service into it,
And sent his love down the long beams that lit
The waste of broken water in the night.
He loved his kind, and joyed to see the ships
Come out of nowhere into his bright field,
And glide by safely with their living men,
Past him and out into the dark again,
To other hands their freight of joy to yield.
His work was noble and his work was done;
He kept the ships in safety and was glad;
And yet, late coming with the light’s supplies,
They found the love no longer in his eyes—
The keeper of the light had fallen mad.
IMMORTALITY.
When I was grass, perhaps I may have wept
As every year the grass-blades paled and slept;
Or shrieked in anguish impotent, beneath
The smooth impartial cropping of great teeth—
I don’t remember much what came to pass
When I was grass.
When I was monkey, I’m afraid the trees
Weren’t always havens of contented ease;
Things killed us, and we never could tell why;
No doubt we blamed the earth or sea or sky—
I have forgotten my rebellion’s shape
When I was ape.
Now I have reached the comfortable skin
This stage of living is enveloped in,
And hold the spirit of my mighty race
Self-conscious prisoner under one white face,—
I’m awfully afraid I’m going to die,
Now I am I.
So I have planned a hypothetic life
To pay me somehow for my toil and strife.
Blessed or damned, I someway must contrive
That I eternally be kept alive!
In this an endless, boundless bliss I see,—
Eternal me!
· · · · ·
When I was man, no doubt I used to care
About the little things that happened there,
And fret to see the years keep going by,
And nations, families, and persons die.
I didn’t much appreciate life’s plan
When I was man.
WASTE.
Doth any man consider what we waste
Here in God’s garden? While the sea is full,
The sunlight smiles, and all the blessed earth
Offers her wealth to our intelligence.
We waste our food, enough for half the world,
In helpless luxury among the rich,
In helpless ignorance among the poor,
In spilling what we stop to quarrel for.
We waste our wealth in failing to produce,
In robbing of each other every day
In place of making things,—our human crown.
We waste our strength, in endless effort poured
Like water on the sand, still toiling on
To make a million things we do not want.
We waste our lives, those which should still lead on
Each new one gaining on the age behind,
In doing what we all have done before.
We waste our love,—poured up into the sky,
Across the ocean, into desert lands,
Sunk in one narrow circle next ourselves,—
While these, our brothers, suffer—are alone.
Ye may not pass the near to love the far;
Ye may not love the near and stop at that.
Love spreads through man, not over or around!
Yea, grievously we waste; and all the time
Humanity is wanting,—wanting sore.
Waste not, my brothers, and ye shall not want!
WINGS.
A sense of wings—
Soft downy wings and fair—
Great wings that whistle as they sweep
Along the still gulfs—empty, deep—
Of thin blue air.
Doves’ wings that follow,
Doves’ wings that fold,
Doves’ wings that flutter down
To nestle in your hold.
Doves’ wings that settle,
Doves’ wings that rest,
Doves’ wings that brood so warm
Above the little nest.
Larks’ wings that rise and rise,
Climbing the rosy skies—
Fold and drop down
To birdlings brown.
Light wings of wood-birds, that one scarce believes
Moved in the leaves.
The quick, shy flight
Of wings that flee in fright—
A start as swift as light—
Only the shaken air
To tell that wings were there.
Broad wings that beat for many days
Above the land wastes and the water ways;
Beating steadily on and on,
Through dark and cold,
Through storms untold,
Till the far sun and summer land is won.
And wings—
Wings that unfold
With such wide sweep before your would-be hold—
Such glittering sweep of whiteness—sun on snow—
Such mighty plumes—strong-ribbed, strong-webbed—strong-knit to go
From earth to heaven!
Hear the air flow back
In their wide track!
Feel the sweet wind these wings displace
Beat on your face!
See the great arc of light like rising rockets trail
They leave in leaving—
They avail—
These wings—for flight!
THE HEART OF THE WATER.
O the ache in the heart of the water that lies
Underground in the desert, unopened, unknown,
While the seeds lie unbroken, the blossoms unblown,
And the traveller wanders—the traveller dies!
O the joy in the heart of the water that flows
From the well in the desert,—a desert no more,—
Bird-music and blossoms and harvest in store,
And the white shrine that showeth the traveller knows!
THE SHIP.
The sunlight is mine! And the sea!
And the four wild winds that blow!
The winds of heaven that whistle free—
They are but slaves to carry me
Wherever I choose to go!
Fire for a power inside!
Air for a pathway free!
I traverse the earth in conquest wide;
The sea is my servant! The sea is my bride!
And the elements wait on me!
· · · · ·
In dull green light, down-filtered sick and slow
Through miles of heavy water overhead,
With miles of heavy water yet below,
A ship lies, dead.
Shapeless and broken, swayed from side to side,
The helpless driftwood of an unknown tide.
AMONG THE GODS.
How close the air of valleys, and how close
The teeming little life that harbors there!
For me, I will climb mountains. Up and up,
Higher and higher, till I pant for breath
In that thin clearness. Still? There is no sound
Nor memory of sound upon these heights.
Ah! the great sunlight! The caressing sky,
The beauty, and the stillness, and the peace!
I see my pathway clear for miles below;
See where I fell, and set a friendly sign
To warn some other of the danger there.
The green small world is wide below me spread.
The great small world! Some things look large and fair
Which, in their midst, I could not even see;
And some look small which used to terrify.
Blessed these heights of freedom, wisdom, rest!
I will go higher yet.
A sea of cloud
Rolls soundless waves between me and the world.
This is the zone of everlasting snows,
And the sweet silence of the hills below
Is song and laughter to the silence here.
Great fields, huge peaks, long awful slopes of snow.
Alone, triumphant, man above the world,
I stand among these white eternities.
Sheer at my feet
Sink the unsounded, cloud-encumbered gulfs;
And shifting mists now veil and now reveal
The unknown fastnesses above me yet.
I am alone—above all life—sole king
Of these white wastes. How pitiful and small
Becomes the outgrown world! I reign supreme,
And in this utter stillness and wide peace
Look calmly down upon the universe.
Surely that crest has changed! That pile of cloud
That covers half the sky, waves like a robe!
That large and gentle wind
Is like the passing of a presence here!
See how yon massive mist-enshrouded peak
Is like the shape of an unmeasured foot,—
The figure with the stars!
Ah! what is this? It moves, lifts, bends, is gone!
With what a shocking sense of littleness—
A reeling universe that changes place,
And falls to new relation over me—
I feel the unseen presence of the gods!
SONGS.
I.
O world of green, all shining, shifting!
O world of blue, all living, lifting!
O world where glassy waters smoothly roll!
Fair earth, and heaven free,
Ye are but part of me—
Ye are my soul!
O woman nature, shining, shifting!
O woman creature, living, lifting!
Come soft and still to one who waits thee here!
Fair soul, both mine and free,
Ye who are part of me,
Appear! Appear!
II.
How could I choose but weep?
The poor bird lay asleep;
For lack of food, for lack of breath,
For lack of life he came to death—
How could I choose but weep?
How could I choose but smile?
There was no lack the while!
In bliss he did undo himself;
Where life was full he slew himself—
How could I choose but smile?
Would ye but understand!
Joy is on every hand!
Ye shut your eyes and call it night,
Ye grope and fall in seas of light—
Would ye but understand!
HEAVEN.
Thou bright mirage, that o’er man’s arduous way
Hast hung in the hot sky, with fountains streaming,
Cool marble domes, and palm-fronds waving, gleaming,—
Vision of rest and peace to end the day!
Now he is weariest, alone, astray,
Spent with long labor, led by thy sweet seeming,
Faint as the breath of Nature’s lightest dreaming,
Thou waverest and vanishest away!
Can Nature dream? Is God’s great sky deceiving?
Where joy like that the clouds above us show
Be sure the counterpart must lie below,
Sweeter than hope, more blessed than believing!
We lose the fair reflection of our home
Because so near its gates our feet have come!
BALLAD OF THE SUMMER SUN.
It is said that human nature needeth hardship to be strong,
That highest growth has come to man in countries white with snow;
And they tell of truth and wisdom that to northern folk belong,
And claim the brain is feeble where the south winds always blow.
They forget to read the story of the ages long ago:
The lore that built the pyramids where still the simoom veers,
The knowledge framing Tyrian ships, the greater skill that steers,
The learning of the Hindu in his volumes never done,
All the wisdom of Egyptians and the old Chaldean seers,—
Came to man in summer lands beneath a summer sun.
It is said that human nature needeth hardship to be strong,
That courage bred of meeting cold makes martial bosoms glow;
And they point to mighty generals the northern folk among,
And call mankind emasculate where southern waters flow.
They forget to look at history and see the nations grow!
The cohorts of Assyrian kings, the Pharaohs’ charioteers,
The march of Alexander, the Persians’ conquering spears,
The legions of the Romans, from Ethiop to Hun,
The power that mastered all the world and held it years on years,—
Came to man in summer lands beneath a summer sun.
It is said that human nature needeth hardship to be strong,
That only pain and suffering the power to feel bestow;
And they show us noble artists made great by loss and wrong,
And say the soul is lowered that hath pleasure without woe.
They forget the perfect monuments that pleasure’s blessings show;
The statue and the temple that no man living nears,
Song and verse and music forever in the ears,
The glory that remaineth while the sands of time shall run,
The beauty of immortal art that never disappears,—
Came to man in summer lands beneath a summer sun.
The faith of Thor and Odin, the creed of force and fears,
Cruel gods that deal in death, the icebound soul reveres,
But the Lord of Peace and Blessing was not one!
Truth and Power and Beauty—Love that endeth tears—
Came to man in summer lands beneath a summer sun.
PIONEERS.
Long have we sung our noble pioneers,
Vanguard of progress, heralds of the time,
Guardians of industry and art sublime,
Leaders of man down all the brightening years!
To them the danger, to their wives the tears,
While we sit safely in the city’s grime,
In old-world trammels of distress and crime,
Playing with words and thoughts, with doubts and fears.
Children of axe and gun! Ye take to-day
The baby steps of man’s first, feeblest age,
While we, thought-seekers of the printed page,
We lead the world down its untrodden way!
Ours the drear wastes and leagues of empty waves,
The lonely deaths, the undiscovered graves.
EXILES.
Exiled from home. The far sea rolls
Between them and the country of their birth;
The childhood-turning impulse of their souls
Pulls half across the earth.
Exiled from home. No mother to take care
That they work not too hard, grieve not too sore;
No older brother nor small sister fair;
No father any more.
Exiled from home; from all familiar things;
The low-browed roof, the grass-surrounded door;
Accustomed labors that gave daylight wings;
Loved steps on the worn floor.
Exiled from home. Young girls sent forth alone
When most their hearts need close companioning;
No love and hardly friendship may they own,
No voice of welcoming.
Blinded with homesick tears the exile stands;
To toil for alien household gods she comes;
A servant and a stranger in our lands,
Homeless within our homes.
A NEVADA DESERT.
An aching, blinding, barren, endless plain,
Corpse-colored with white mould of alkali,
Hairy with sage-brush, slimy after rain,
Burnt with the sky’s hot scorn, and still again
Sullenly burning back against the sky.
Dull green, dull brown, dull purple, and dull gray,
The hard earth white with ages of despair,
Slow-crawling, turbid streams where dead reeds sway,
Low wall of sombre mountains far away,
And sickly steam of geysers on the air.
TREE FEELINGS.
I wonder if they like it—being trees?
I suppose they do....
It must feel good to have the ground so flat,
And feel yourself stand right straight up like that—
So stiff in the middle—and then branch at ease,
Big boughs that arch, small ones that bend and blow,
And all those fringy leaves that flutter so.
You’d think they’d break off at the lower end
When the wind fills them, and their great heads bend.
But then you think of all the roots they drop,
As much at bottom as there is on top,—
A double tree, widespread in earth and air
Like a reflection in the water there.
I guess they like to stand still in the sun
And just breathe out and in, and feel the cool sap run;
And like to feel the rain run through their hair
And slide down to the roots and settle there.
But I think they like wind best. From the light touch
That lets the leaves whisper and kiss so much,
To the great swinging, tossing, flying wide,
And all the time so stiff and strong inside!
And the big winds, that pull, and make them feel
How long their roots are, and the earth how leal!
And O the blossoms! And the wild seeds lost!
And jewelled martyrdom of fiery frost!
And fruit trees. I’d forgotten. No cold gem,
But to be apples—and bow down with them!
MONOTONY.
FROM CALIFORNIA.
When ragged lines of passing days go by,
Crowding and hurried, broken-linked and slow,
Some sobbing pitifully as they pass,
Some angry-hot and fierce, some angry cold,
Some raging and some wailing, and again
The fretful days one cannot read aright,—
Then truly, when the fair days smile on us,
We feel that loveliness with sharper touch
And grieve to lose it for the next day’s chance.
And so men question—they who never know
If beauty comes or horror, pain or joy—
If we, whose sky is peace, whose hours are glad,
Find not our happiness monotonous!
But when the long procession of the days
Rolls musically down the waiting year,
Close-ranked, rich-robed, flower-garlanded and fair;
Broad brows of peace, deep eyes of soundless truth,
And lips of love,—warm, steady, changeless love;
Each one more beautiful, till we forget
Our niggard fear of losing half an hour,
And learn to count on more and ever more,—
In the remembered joy of yesterday,
In the full rapture of to-day’s delight,
And knowledge of the happiness to come,
We learn to let life pass without regret,
We learn to hold life softly and in peace,
We learn to meet life gladly, full of faith,
We learn what God is, and to trust in Him!
THE BEDS OF FLEUR-DE-LYS.
High-lying, sea-blown stretches of green turf,
Wind-bitten close, salt-colored by the sea,
Low curve on curve spread far to the cool sky,
And, curving over them as long they lie,
Beds of wild fleur-de-lys.
Wide-flowing, self-sown, stealing near and far,
Breaking the green like islands in the sea;
Great stretches at your feet, and spots that bend
Dwindling over the horizon’s end,—
Wild beds of fleur-de-lys.
The light keen wind streams on across the lifts,
Thin wind of western springtime by the sea;
The close turf smiles unmoved, but over her
Is the far-flying rustle and sweet stir
In beds of fleur-de-lys.
And here and there across the smooth, low grass
Tall maidens wander, thinking of the sea;
And bend, and bend, with light robes blown aside,
For the blue lily-flowers that bloom so wide,—
The beds of fleur-de-lys.
THE PRESIDIO, SAN FRANCISCO.
IT IS GOOD TO BE ALIVE.
It is good to be alive when the trees shine green,
And the steep red hills stand up against the sky;
Big sky, blue sky, with flying clouds between—
It is good to be alive and see the clouds drive by!
It is good to be alive when the strong winds blow,
The strong, sweet winds blowing straightly off the sea;
Great sea, green sea, with swinging ebb and flow—
It is good to be alive and see the waves roll free!
THE CHANGELESS YEAR.
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA.
Doth Autumn remind thee of sadness?
And Winter of wasting and pain?
Midsummer, of joy that was madness?
Spring, of hope that was vain?
Do the Seasons fly fast at thy laughter?
Do the Seasons lag slow if thou weep,
Till thou long’st for the land lying after
The River of Sleep?
Come here, where the West lieth golden
In the light of an infinite sun,
Where Summer doth Winter embolden
Till they reign here as one!
Here the Seasons tread soft and steal slowly;
A moment of question and doubt—
Is it Winter? Come faster!—come wholly!—
And Spring rusheth out!
We forget there are tempests and changes;
We forget there are days that are drear;
In a dream of delight, the soul ranges
Through the measureless year.
Still the land is with blossoms enfolden,
Still the sky burneth blue in its deeps;
Time noddeth, ’mid poppies all golden,
And memory sleeps.
WHERE MEMORY SLEEPS.
RONDEAU.