Over the lost and surging track.
The men are mad for the food they lack,
Two ships are lost, the water-skins sag;
Scurvy’s aboard, the torn sails drag....
St. Mary! Thou knowest there is no land
Offers food nor place for our starving band;
Thou and thy dupes our lives have hurled
White bones on the reef of a Western World.
With your jewel-bought quadrants and King-got-gold
Our homes and kith and kin ye have sold....”
Paladin whined: “Turn back, turn back
Over the lost and tossing track;
Up from this dreaming, silly and slack.”
I turned on him, I shook my head,
Through burned and bleeding lips I said:
“Sail on....” “Sail on,” I said.
(Though it seemed to me I spoke from the dead),
“Sail on--Sail on,” I said.
Then came all terrible wolves of that crew,
Staring at me--half dead, they knew;
Yet maddened because my words were few.
The blood was gone from their hanging skins,
The rags hung dank on their horny shins;
They mouthed and muttered: “His eyes roll wild,
He babbles now like a peevish child.
O shame, thou madman, thou dangerous Mind,
That dreams of a country we do not find;
While we with the blazing sea go blind....
Art minded to sail till the last one’s dead ...?”
“Sail on.... Sail on....” I said.
All night we climbed those seas that mounted,
Towering to skies that nightly counted
The empty coin of the foreign stars;
We saw foam rips on the rock-reefed bars,
The sea shuttles kept up their ghastly heaving
On looms of white their black cloth weaving,
And I thought that they wove me a winding sheet
That slowly wrapped me from head to feet....
Day after day the salt spray caked
On my sunken eyes that burned and ached,
And the curses fell as my body fell;
I lay slant like a corpse on the all-day swell,
(Were it day or night, I could not tell),
But they called for my blood--yea, their knives were keen
For the blood of a man, whose fault, I ween
Was: “He sailed for a country he had not seen.”
Day by day muttered hate; thick slime
Oozing from mouths that judged my crime,
Till they told me: “You die!” And set the time.
I crawled to the bow and looked out ahead
For the time was short and the land I dreamed
Hidden, but near, me-seemed.
And then--Jesu!--atop one foaming wave
The Miracle rode--the Carvéd Stick,
Knobby and rough, its black bark brave
Notched with rough taboo words and signs
Of living beings--strange words and lines....
And then--O Mother of God! it sailed--
_The branch of strange berries_, its long bough trailed
On a wave that broke where the sunlight paled.
Red toppling balls on the white sea-crest
That heaved it up from the shining West,
And bore it straight to my sobbing breast.
The Branch of Strange Berries sailed forth to me
For the sign of Land and fecundity!
Shuddering, staggering as one dead,
I heard them.... “Land.... Land.... Land....” they said.
“Land!” they shrieked and again they shrieked;
The wallowing caravel’s timbers creaked
And I sank down on the deck quite dumb,
For my answering miracle had come.
The unbelievable Land was there;
It slowly loomed on the atmosphere.
Oh, the dim, dark, strange, unspeakable shore,
Fringed out on the blue ...! Then I heard them roar,
“San Salvador.... San Salvador ...!”
They tossed up their arms, they leaped on the deck,
Black faces grinned through crusted fleck;
Bloody-bearded eye and skeleton hand
Pointed me.... “Senor.... Senor.... Land!”
Water they brought in an olive wood cup--
The last roiled drops; to my feet they crept,
And laughed and kissed me, and raved and wept,
And my fame they sang (I, who had been
Believer in things I had not seen).
Judge of me, God, that I never quailed,
But that as through hell and horror we sailed,
“Sail on.... Sail on....” I said.
Judge of me, God, who, when I cried
For sign, sent the carved stick overside,
And the Branch of Strange Berries that rode the tide.
And pardon my sins, for I was, I ween,
True to the Country I had not seen....
Then, Jesu ... judge of those whose speed
To those new fair shores was confident greed,
(Now that of courage there was no need);
Who called me “Master” and called me “Friend,”
When the bitter doubting was at an end....
Pity all men whose fate has been--
“They steer for a Country they have not seen!”
FROM A WINDOW.
On other quiet summer nights like these,
I have leaned forth where honey-suckles pressed
The twilight pane, and watched the priory West
Send forth its cowled clouds over purple seas--
Seeing, through eve-blurred glass, the waters rise
Beyond sea-lavender’s fringed traceries;
Worshipping, as I worship now, the Sign
That God and Earth are ever one Divine.
Only, the flower of lily in the green,
The scarlet feathered black-bird in the sedge;
Even the white shell by the water’s edge,
Seem to have seen God--whom I have not seen.
Yet with these wistful eyes that may not know,
Let me dare every doubt and darkness. So,
Walking blind roads, spanning all voids, I tread
Earth’s flowing Beauty to its Fountain Head.
RESPONSIBLE.
I looked over the purple fields and out to the sunlit sea
And the curve and waft of a gull’s white wing was
solace enough for me;
And I had signals from tall green grass and the light
of sand on the beach,
But I heard the laughter of girls together,
Young and vibrant with sunlit weather,
Laughter of skyward reach.
And hurrying by with ardent paces,
I saw anticipance on their faces ...
Wisdom no age can teach.
Youth with unconscious gleam and shining
Kept its eyes on a glad divining,
Keyed to the tall cliff reach;
I saw the bloom of these girls together,
Bloom as of grape and peach;
And they plained of the wearying wars of men,
Quivering.... “Give us our world again.
Give us the youth that shall clasp us close,
Give us the heart of the perfumed rose,
Life is our gift while the world is young;
Shall our eyes be blinded, our song unsung?
Give us our destiny of yore--
Do ye pour us all in your Hopper-of-War?”
Only the young girls down on the beach;
But out to the world their voices reach,
Voices of maidens over the dune,
Flickering back in a windy rune:
“Give us our oldtime destiny,
Our tall young mates and our babes to hold;
Is life for us a tale that is told ...
Caught in your Battle-Industry?
Shall we grow wrinkled and pale and old,
Pouring the lead and smoothing the bore
In munition moulding forevermore?
Shall our slender fingers pick lint and bands
For the shell-shocked eyes and the frozen hands?
Shall we give our youth for the killing of men,
And turn us to blood and hating again?
Give us our destinies of yore,
Give us our homes by city and shore ...
Do ye pour us all in your Hopper-of-War?”
Then I saw the sky in a passion of grey
Sweep them with fog and shut them away;
And their voices seemed to die with the years,
And the mist dripped round them with furtive tears;
And the waves, wild foaming from tidal deep,
Stiffened and blanched in their curling leap.
And a bird, mist-baffled with heavy wing,
Beat on the chill air wavering....
And I watched the young forms wistful go
Where the foggy fields stretched dun and low;
And their eyes were heavy with solemn woe.
While far up the beach and across the sea,
The voices of youth cast a curse on me;
And the ancient weed on the windblown shore
Bared me the barren breast of War.
TREE WORSHIP.
My room has great windows,
Clear water-like windows
Awash with golden sun;
My books shine green and red,
And the bed is white as milk;
The rugs flecked like a brook,
And the shelf holds a silver bowl
And a candle of honey-gold.
But I look out of the room,
Away from the wine-red books,
To one gaunt shag-bark tree
That stands playing itself
Like a swaying cloud-keyed Harp,
Or writing upon the sky,
With a myriad twig-keen pens.
My room has a cushion, soft
As sea foam on the sand;
But I look out on the tree--
It draws me, holds me, speaks,
And does not speak; is still,
Dumb, yet singing and glad.
And I know that I, in the room,
Silken and warm and soft,
Am as ignorant as the man
Who sat in a Dacian cave,
Clad in blood-soaked skins,
Gnawing at roots and nuts.
A man who looked at a tree
And feared it, and felt its spell;
And bowed him down in awe,
And sacrificed, and prayed;
And was subject to the Tree,
Thinking it might be--God!
ANOTHER CHANCE.
Spring’s first Robin perched on the apple tree;
“Hello!” said I. “Hello!” said he.
He ruffled his feathers and cocked his eye;
“We’re back,” said he. “We’re back,” said I.
He bit the cold buds cheerfully;
“I see it’s the same old you,” said he.
I looked him over, perched on high;
“I see it’s the same old you,” said I.
“What do you work for this year?” asked he;
“The same old hopes of last year,” said I.
“What do you work for this year?” asked I;
“The same old hopes of last year,” said he--
“What? After the Cat and that tragedy
Of your whole nest blown from the apple tree?
You’ve got the courage that takes you high,
If you build again after that,” said I.
“Well, what of your dreams that didn’t come true,
And the world that mocked and cheated you?
You must be brave, and I do not see
How you dare build again,” said he.
“What d’ye want this year?” asked I;
“A strong nest under a placid sky
And your brood to cherish tenderly?”
“Well, you’ve got it about right,” said he.
“What do you want this year?” asked he;
“An answer to all the Mystery?
Some haven within a faith’s clear sky?”
“Please God! Yes, Robin, dear,” said I.
“Well, Spring’s here, anyhow,” said he;
“Good luck!” and flew from the apple tree;
“Yes, what ever the hopes that die,
God gives us another Spring,” said I.
DARK MINSTRELS.
We heard the poets singing in the dark,
We saw their lovely lights toss to and fro,
The while they gathered in their golden Ark
All the bright images of after-glow....
They struck us magic chords within the wood,
Showed us fair shapes alive with naked light;
They gave us rivers where the dream trees brood
And lovers wander all the starry night.
We turned and faced each other and we said:
“The poets pour us wine--they do not give us bread.”
For these are singers of dear vanished things,
The things that once have been but may not be;
We sit with close shut lips; un-minstrelled, we;
No heart to chant to these enamored strings,
No song to chant to medieval lyre
That strikes us songs of Ninevah and Tyre.
Our lutes are tuned to dangerous unwalked ways
Where all is dense and beckoning shapes withdraw;
Where the untrodden path winds in a maze,
And lead to things no Seeker ever saw.
We sing the Mind’s high dream, the imperious will,
That makes no music out of greedy strife
But seizes silver pipes, that sharp and shrill,
Call men to leap and seize on Very Life....
While other singers tell the old dreams o’er,
We rise and take us to the outer door;
Here on the wold, where no wise singer sings,
We feel the great Hand brush across our strings!
THE PEOPLE OF TODAY TO THE CLERGY OF TODAY.
Look now about you, fix your eyes on us,
Leave too-old mystic book and restful chair;
Take up our problems, things we must discuss,
Help us to think, to understand and dare.
Leave old-world Poetry of hallowed crime
And turn you to the hunger of the time.
Laws of the God, report them to the ears
That hear confused and cosmic voices rage;
Laws of the Christ, interpret them to fears
For Christ, new-risen in a Science-Age.
Oh, take the fire your sacred hands should give
And kindle it upon our city height;
Give us a world-strong law of wrong and right;
Teach us, not how to die, but how to live!
The hymns we sing must be the song of spheres,
The prayers we pray be truths of stone and star;
We want no sacrifice of sinner’s tears,
We want to rise above this clay we are.
Our war machines, do they not teach the thing
Your maxims never taught us ...? Ah, we flee
To the Waste Places in our sorrowing....
Show us the power of true divinity!
Look now around you, free your too-white hands;
Comfort these hearts that burn. What must we do?
We have no Paul, no Moses, only you.
Then help us to be honest. From all lands,
Priests! Men! Arise! Acclaim! The new bread give;
The Bread by which we shall not die, but live!
PROTAGONIST.
The fight was unequal, bitter and always new,
I saw how my enemy gained on me and how he drew
My strength, my youth, my soul from my shivering frame;
Yet have I not been beaten--I faced him whenever he came.
When he stabbed I watched how he did it--Poison, I studied the cup,
Flayed me with whips, I girded the bleedings up;
Hunger, imprisonment--all these I wrote in my book;
I have learned all the enemy’s purpose, I know every look.
I have conned every gesture and gotten by heart all his guile,
Yet still comes the fear and the watchfulness under my smile;
For hard as I struggle to outwit his plot to betray me,
He holds that utterest thing that can utterly slay me--
Still do I turn and defy the face of him creeping;
“Now that I know thee, thou Life, thou art locked in my keeping;
Dungeoned, thou Horror, in creative cells of desire,
Ringed in the widening rings of my aspirate fire--
I, your Creator, by steady implacable strife,
Shall give men and women a lovelier thing to call ‘Life.’”
SIGNAL FIRES.
Everywhere we have sought Thee--questioned, wondered,
Everywhere marked Thy beauty and Thine hour;
Now if at last no sacrifice is brought Thee,
Dost Thou believe we doubt Thine awful Power?
Nay, we have loved, have striven, have served, obeyed Thee,
Gloried in beauty of Thine, uttered Thy love;
Given long vigils to attain and mind Thee,
Spent lives in fixing Thee below, above.
Still dost withhold Thee, canst ignore this wonder
Of men who seek Thee in the manner Thou knowest--?
Humble and longing, ignorant, who blunder,
Yet loyal to Thy will and where Thou goest?
We will not cowardly say Thou hast no feeling,
Will not believe Thou hidest back of the years;
Or hast no Word for rapturous revealing--
Art dumb like us; like us, art veiled in tears.
No. We believe; but now we work nor tire
Stirring the embers of the Cosmic Night;
Thou art the Source, we build our answering fire;
God of our Godhood, answer our Beacon Light!
MARTYR.
He waved his jests on spears of hidden grief,
Calmed by his silence all complaint and tears;
Filled hopeless hours with whimsical belief,
And laughed at fears.
He walked his bitter paths alert and bold,
No pity ever turned his steadfast eye;
If dull mouths grinned and goblin stories told,
He cared not why.
And with what end?
To end a dream of breath;
Singing his heart out to all withheld Joy,
Walking into the labyrinth of death,
Brave as a boy.
BALLAD OF THE THORN TREE.
Always, I noticed, lovers lay
Beneath a twisted tree
That grew in such a starvéd way
It seemed a mock to me.
But when I questioned them, they’d say
“Oh what is that to thee?
Bright berries grow in lavish way
Upon this bitter tree;
Small scarlet lanterns swinging, they
For lovers such as we.”
Always I noticed lovers dreamed
Beneath that furtive tree,
And so I said not how it seemed
Nor how it looked to me ...
How all along the branches ran
Sharp thorns like stabbing spears,
How when the berries dropped away
The thorns stayed through the years....
Oh, never do I speak of this
To lovers loving free;
The new fruit gleams above their kiss,
The thorns they will not see....
Mayhap after such glowing red
No thorn keeps agony,
But no fond lover ere has said
A thing like this to me.
BALLOONS ON THE BEACH.
Ball on bright ball,
On the sky glowing,
The old dreams recall
Of a child’s knowing;
Eggs laid by a flying bird,
Jellies in globed curd,
Fruits on a strange tree,
By the winds blowing.
Now as each bobbing ball
Tugs at its holder,
I, who these dreams recall,
Feel hardly older....
Drinking enchanted Cup
From Balloons, I rise up,
Swaying on sea and sky,
Color and flight am I!
Appled Balloon Tree,
Arched efflorescence,
Grow shining globes for me,
Of joyous essence;
Until bright bubbles spill
From a cup fancies fill
Brimmed iridescence!
THEY PASS.
Down the long road they go--
Elinor, Mary, Flo--
Hasting toward Something.
Daisies rank high today,
Wild roses spread the way;
Laughing, light words, they say,
Speeding toward ... Something!
Peg, on the other side,
Watches their splendid stride,
Shrinking from Something....
Jennie, with broken tread,
Where a damp sun is shed,
Black shawl around her head,
Staggers from Something!
ON THE BEACH.
She sat in her gleaming robes
With the two hard-shining globes
Of her soul-less eyes, stare-fixed,
And said: “It is mine to know
How far he may come and go;
Mine to make him dance and sing,
His heart and his money fling
Away. He is mine to take,
And play with and bend and break;
The better for him I think.
We are put here to try each other.
Is he strong? He will not sink.”
The other woman pulled
The thin shawl over her head.
“If he is strong?” she murmured
“If he is strong,” you said.
“But are we strong?” It is ours
To spare, to shield, to tend;
It is his to be hurt and broken,
To struggle and to fend.
It is equal, therefore we suffer.
(He suffers most, I think.)
We are put here to help each other.
Are we strong? He will not sink.”
SAUL’S HILLS
1
Long after all the talking people go
On the white boat that rounds the sandy point,
The silenced hollows of the Commons show
A deepening curve; and where the grasses blow,
Dried to October wraith, I see annoint
A hundred lanes and valleys splashed with glints
Of silver moss and tawny tapered mints.
2
And where the moor roads plough the tangled sand
The sky’s blue river floods these merging hills,
Pocomo Head white morning fire spills;
The deep swung ponds with sapphire sweep expand
Walled with red berries of the alder bough;
Stark monkish trees slant on the windblown space,
And gulls dip to the bay or open meadow place.
3
This is a world gone wild with wine of life,
Tossed in bright cups on frost enholied air;
Here Autumn swings the west wind’s winnowing scythe,
Or amber shod strays down the coral flare.
And on the shimmering slopes the swallows blithe
Still turn ecstatic honey-tipped wings
And dart anew on rhythmic balancings.
4
I think that he who walks this undulance
Goes like a child back to some crystal Source,
Rich in adventures of the fields’ romance,
The thistles’ aeroplane, the gold of gorse;
Or buoyant, treading silver lichen crisp
Wing-footed on the elastic sod,
Fares on the milkweed’s fanned ethereal wisp
Past semaphore of broom or goldenrod.
5
For here he finds the ineffable escape,
The clarity, the cleanness and the soul;
Here’s laying on of hands, here things reshape
Into the round equilibrated Whole.
Here all is light and line, this grey fence strings
Its silver loops in limpid meadow lights;
Or drops its bars to infinite wanderings
By glimmering swamps on brake-illumined nights.
6
So suave these moor roads that the grasses blur
Along their misty lines; their curious curves
Unwind through dusks of bay and juniper
Past where the marsh hawk flares or rabbit swerves;
Where pond on mirroring pond among the hills
Is cupped in vital blue; whose magnet draws
Spiked pickerel weed; or starred sabatia thrills
Grass threaded ripples on the sandy shores.
7
So dumb are human hearts to every sound
That Nature has! Strangely attuned--dumb still!
There is no keynote to their most profound,
No language for true passion of their will;
Yet in these valleys on these sun-pooled moors,
Where turf roads wind to fountains of the sky,
I have seen Souls freed by the out-of-doors,
To find out here, their liberate ecstasy.
8
Perhaps these gemmy berries on the slope,
Perhaps these dryads of the circling hedge
Write runes of health and happiness and hope,
Or limn new truth in sand and rippled sedge.
For those who tread these wastes of Autumn’s reach
Find dream and vision on the wind-washed lea;
Thoughts broaden, there is fire in the speech,
Minds stir beyond their wonted sophistry.
9
It is the other Self, the questing Ghost
That walks with us the bayberries’ pungent trail;
Seeing this life an empty thing, at most,
Seeing dreams die and all beliefs grow pale.
Musing on hopes and visions, scattered hosts,
Till here, beside some mossy lichen rail,
The sky seems light with truth and starving minds,
Bathed in new energy of moorland winds!
10
The rosaries here are little mealy plums
Trailing like rubies through the tufted moss,
Here a late bee to evening primrose comes.
The fields’ grey wreathéd smoky censers toss,
Where goldenrod has burned from gold to grey;
And asters smoke on an empurpled way.
11
Turfed roads that curve away to Madaket,
Dim roads that wind the valleys to Gibbs Pond,
Grass roads that dream to Polpis, we have yet
To find your subtle ends, what lies beyond!
You wind to wind the world; the simple ways
Of faith and trust and nobleness and love;
We only guess the towers beyond your haze,
We only glimpse the ends toward which you move!
12
Yet rutted roads, whose mild evasions lie
Seemingly blind or tortuous or dense,
Ye are most human in your subtlety,
Human in all your gentle evidence.
For though you pause and double, turn again
And seem to curve and hesitate, your moods
Are human moods; tired women and worn men
Follow in dream your errant solitudes.
13
They come for shriving by the hedgerow things
Where life, obedient to great moving laws
Brilliantly dies, or in birth scatterings
Writes mystical trail with myriad seeds and spores;
Where the dried weeds with hoary tresses blown
Quiver in brittle faith and stand serene,
Where in a tidal sunshine, every cone
Smells of sea-tree-branch, balsam-broomed and clean.
14
Solitude on the moors and to one’s self--!
The blessing comes in spite of torturings;
In spite of all the gods upon the shelf
And all the false gods of material things.
Here where the thistle sends its wayward floss
Or where the marsh hawk swirls for meadow-food,
Alone on cloistered roads redeem thy loss
Of Spirit, in a bay-bushed solitude!
15
Oh, Spirit of ours, whom we have so betrayed,
As round these swimming hills our footsteps dream,
We see thy fugitive shimmer on the blade
Of every spear of grass; and by the gleam
Of sea light out at Pocomo and glade
Of twisted beech by rambling Polpis farm,
Or by the reedy pool where cattle strayed
Far from the fields stir up the midgy swarm.
16
Where all the rolling hillsides soft combine
On amphitheatres spread to open clefts,
There is hypnotic soothing in the line
Merging and melting in soft grassy wefts.
The brave bright cups that grail the open mead
Pour flower-libation on some tawny stretch;
And lily grails snowy processions lead,
And sweet fern banners guide the banded vetch.
17
And what does Man? He takes a wealth like this
And breaks it on the wheel of his machine.
Tarring it with the foul metropolis.
Caging its wildness and its free desmesne;
Little they know they build but to destroy,
Little they guess what gift they take away;
The heritage of every girl and boy
To roam these stretches of the heath and bay.
18
The exquisite clear candors of these moors
Seem to their eyes as sad as empty doom;
Their trivial gaze turns from the barren shores
And blurs along the ragged hills of broom.
They pant, they say, for human nature’s food,
Yes--but they have not walked with happy Solitude!
19
Grey rain slow drifting over summer hill,
Over corn fields and through the meadow rifts,
With falling curtain calms the water till
Under its scorcery the landscape drifts;
The loomed mirage goes sailing to the sky,
The deep lines darken on the distant moors,
A placid silence lifts in mystery,
And headlands purple down to light-struck shores.
20
Then open farm a sterner grandeur takes,
The church dome glitters on fantastic North,
The wild ducks’ chain expansion suddenly breaks,
And many a wedge-shaped line of geese fares forth;
Fateful the moorland looks and tawny drear,
Then the clouds lift and all the Island’s clear.
21
_O Truth, that moves upon the water’s face!
O Truth, that cleaves the fire and cloud to be!
Help me with single eye thy form to trace,
In every form of flower and web and tree;
Help me to find thee in the cores of waves,
In every face that dreams into my ken;
Help me to see thee in the man that braves
The condemnation of his fellow men!_
_O shining Truth, sweeping across these fields,
Calm on the water’s surface, or in storm,
Help me to find thee in the harvest yields,
In cloistered rooms and in the market’s swarm!
Help me to find thee in the name of Sin,
The immortal shape of Woe that walks alone;
Help me to hear thy subtle lesson in
The negative, the dirge, the monotone!_
_Help me to know thee in the sturdy Mind
That holds its vision straight across the dark,
That dares to blaze a trail for all mankind
Yet wins no high serene nor earthly mark!
Help me to find thee behind solemn doors
Where men declare for finer, nobler codes;
Help me to find thee on the rainy moors,
And on the wanderings of these rutted roads!_
22