THE SECRET WAY
_By_
ZONA GALE
BIRTH
CHRISTMAS
MOTHERS TO MEN
HEART’S KINDRED
FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE
NEIGHBORHOOD TALES
PEACE IN FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE
WHEN I WAS A LITTLE GIRL
FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE LOVE STORIES
THE LOVES OF PELLEAS AND ETTARRE
[Illustration: portrait of the author.
Copyrighted by E. O. Hoppé]
THE SECRET WAY
BY
ZONA GALE
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1921
_All rights reserved_
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
COPYRIGHT, 1921,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and printed. Published September, 1921.
Press of
J. J. Little & Ives Company
New York, U. S. A.
“A great life, an entire civilization lies just outside the pale of
common thought.... Such life is different from any yet imagined....
I see as clearly as the noonday that this is not all. I see other
and higher conditions than existence.... The very idea that there
is another Idea is something gained.”
--RICHARD JEFFRIES.
CONTENTS
PART I
(EARLY VERSE)
PAGE
THE SECRET WAY 4
TERZA RIMA:
I OLD TALK 8
II MAGIC 1
III NIGHT IS HERE 13
BALLADES OF THREE SENSES:
I BALLADE OF EYES THAT SEE 14
II BALLADE OF LISTENING 16
III BALLADE OF OLD PERFUMES 18
HALF THOUGHTS 20
SONNETS AND VARIATIONS:
WHEN DID SPRING DIE? 22
ONE DAWN SHE AWOKE ME 23
THERE ARE WITHIN US LIVES WE NEVER LIVE 24
LAST NIGHT I DREAMED I SAW MY MOTHER YOUNG 25
WHY AM I SILENT? 26
I WANDERED WHERE THE WONDER OF THE SKY-- 27
HERE A HILL FIELD 28
RETURN 29
BY MY SIDE ALL DAY ANOTHER WENT 30
IN J. P. P.’S METRE:
I 31
II 32
III (TO A POET) 33
EXERCISE IN SPENSERIANS 35
PART II
I KNOW WHERE A DOVE 51
PROLOCUTOR 52
WONDER 53
A MEETING 54
HALF THOUGHT 55
EPITAPHS 56
ALIAS 57
IN ARVIA’S ROOM 58
HALF THOUGHT 64
UMBRA 65
WRAITHS 66
HALF THOUGHT 67
WIND SONG 68
HALF THOUGHT 70
TROTH 71
BELOVED, IT IS DAYBREAK ON THE HILLS 72
CREDO 73
WHO IS THIS THAT IS SO NEAR? 74
INMOST ONE 75
STONE CELL 77
LIGHT 78
HALF THOUGHT 81
CONTOURS 82
PART III
NEWS NOTES OF PORTAGE, WISCONSIN:
I KILBOURN ROAD 85
II VIOLIN 91
III NORTH STAR 96
PROSE NOTES:
THE BUREAU 98
MINUET 99
THE DINING ROOM 101
PARADISE AND PURGATORY 103
AT LEAST 105
ROSES 106
SPRING EVENING 109
SECOND SIGHT 109
DOES SOMETHING WAIT? 113
DOORS 114
LEVITATION 116
ENCHANTMENT 118
PART I
EARLY VERSE
THE SECRET WAY
Stark on the window’s early grey
Lined out in squares by casement bars,
She saw her lily lift to take
The sinking stars.
Within the room’s delaying dark
Intimate things lay dim and still
With all their day-time friendliness
Gone false and chill.
Her hand upon the coverlet,
Her face low in the linen’s cleft,
They were as wan as water-flowers
By light bereft.
And never was bloom brought to her couch
But shed the odour of a sigh
Because she was as white as they,
And they must die.
“O Pale, lit deep within the dark
Of your young eyes, a stifled light
Leaps thin and keen as melody
And leavens night.
“It is a light that did not burn
When you were gay at mart and fair;
O Pale, what is that starry fire,
Fed unaware?”
Then softly she: “I may not tell
What other eyes behold in mine;
But I have melted night and day
In some wild wine.
“I may not read the graven cup
Exhaustless as a brimming bell
Distilling silver; but I drank
And all is well.
“One morn like this, bitter still,
I waited for the early stir
Of those who slept the while I watched
What muffled wonders were.
“I saw my lily on the sill;
I saw my mirror on the wall
Take light that was not; and I saw
My spectral taper tall.
“Why I had known these quiet things
Since I could speak. Yet suddenly
They all touched hands and in one breath
They spoke to me.
“I may not tell you what they said.
The strange part is that I must lie
And never tell you what we say----
These things and I.
“I only know that common things
Bear sudden little spirits set
Free by the rose of dawn and by
Night’s violet.
“I only know that when I hear
Clear tone, the haunted echoes bear
Legions of little winged feet
On printless air.
“And when warm colour weds my look
A word is uttered tremblingly,
With meaning fall--but I know not
What it may be.
“I only know that now I find
Abiding beauty everywhere;
Or if it bide not, that it fades
Is still more fair.
I long to question those I love
And yet I know not what to say;
I am alone as one upon
Some secret way.
“My words are barren of my bliss;
The strange part is that I must lie
And never tell you what we say--
These things and I.
“So will it be when I am not.
A little more perhaps to tell;
Yet then as now I may not say
What I know well.”
She died when all the east was red.
And we are they who know her fate
Because we love the way of life
That she had found too late.
TERZA RIMA
I: OLD TALK
Old Eyelot sees what never is.
She says: “Pale lights move on the hill,
Deep in the air are treasuries.”
She says: “I never go to mill
Wood-way but something walks with me,
So go wood-way I always will.
Wood-walking, I go mad to see
What will die out just as I turn
To catch it by the crooked tree.
I pass the bush that I saw burning
With wild black flame at full of moon.
That was a sight to set one learning
What things one merely doubts at noon.
A-well, I know not what I learned.
God send that you may learn it soon.
Windows for walls, thoughts that have turned
Back into folk, gateways of horn,
And the wild hearts that men have burned,
These things I see. And ay, one morn
I saw the little people bear
Away my little child new-born.
They gave her food yielded in air,
Honey and rose-down.
I looked and she was very fair.
So when the people of the town
(Who did not know) believed her dead
And wrapped her in a cloudy gown
I did not mourn. I only said:
“She is the daughter of the Day
And with the Night she has been wed.
“I am the mother of that one
Born for two worlds. And I am she
Who sees more things than moon and sun
And little stars will ever see.”
* * *
Old Eyelot sees what never is.
She says: “Green lights move on the leas,
Deep in the air are treasuries.”
I wonder what old Eyelot sees?
II: MAGIC
An ancient wildwood showed its heart to me.
(O Little Wind that brought me what it said!)
I went within its great nave reverently.
There dwelt the silence ever lightly wed
With winged sound. There the persuading green
Took ancient citadels with soundless tread.
Was not the opening blue of buds between
Soft solitary leaves a lyric set
To music of the things that lift and lean?
My hands were mother-tender of the net
Of silk they found. My feet were light
To loose no dew from the least violet.
The fragile fabric of dissolved night
Seemed in the air. A million little minds
Kept concert in the very realm of sight.
O--and suddenly as sunlight finds
White towers I heard the ancient wood unfold
Its ancient secret piped by little winds.
“Behold the beauty in me. O behold
The beauty that makes utter peace, in me;
Beauty that is immeasurably old.”
The whole world like a bell heard echoingly.
Words wonderful! I found a fairy bed
And saw that which the wildwood let me see.
(O Little Wind that brought me what it said!)
III: NIGHT IS HERE
Night is here and star-rise
And demeanour of the dark.
Visioned by my closed eyes
Now I lie within an arc.
Lyric loom,
All the silence is a-hark
For a poppy bud to bloom
In some flowery harmony
Woven through this quiet room.
Prick of light and shadow take me,
Fire and stars and voices keep,
Fairy clamour will not wake me ...
... Sleep.
But that warm grave of sleep
Nothing save myself immures.
Singing light and dreaming deep
Now my spirit walks with yours.
BALLADES OF THREE SENSES
I
BALLADE OF EYES THAT SEE
Leaves loosened when there blow
No winds; long fields whose green
Dim beneath the darling bow
Of the May-moon is seen;
Robins at dawn; the keen
Sour odour of vines--these show
Frail meanings caught between
The bourne of yes and no.
Yet there is tender art
To fathom what they mean,
Deep in the heart.
I go among them. Now I lean
Where willows fret the flow
Of water that has been
For miles to glean.
And in the osiers--O
An ouphe, an elfin queen.
I did not see her--lo,
The osiers did not part,
Yet she was there I ween,
Deep in the heart.
_Envoy_
Spells, lay upon the screen
The things that move me so.
I ask the better part:
To see with eyes serene
What things these others know----
Deep in the heart.
II
BALLADE OF LISTENING
On summer slopes lit white
With old desire of day,
The air with pearl bedight
Prepares for gold array.
The sun-drugged stars delay
To die; the winds take fright
And question, and betray
Frail sounds for my delight.
O voice of ancient springs!
O little echo-flight!
O harp of things!
In grasses that lie bright,
In grasses that lie grey,
Up on the clouded height
Down in the zone of May
Are printless feet astray.
Airy the hands that smite
The lyre in nameless lay;
And the great gods invite
Echo of earth chantings
On quiet wing away.
O--harp of things!
_Envoy_
Harp, is it this that you say?
“Delicate is my might,
Quickening the voice that sings;
For I am sense grown fey.
I am word of the morn and the night.”
O harp of things!
III
BALLADE OF OLD PERFUMES
Now out of dream old springs
Flow soft with many red
And golden fluttering things.
Sweetly from underhead
All the wan air is fed
With faint rememberings
Of hours long buried.
Rose-rumours steal and stir;
They come on wind-like wings.
The old odours that were
Nard and mint and myrrh.
I think that as there clings
Colour to blossoms shed,
So love and all that sings,
So hearts that beat and bled
Were with old fragrance wed.
Now when the garden flings
On many a secret thread
Sweets to the wanderer,
Some buried witch-bell rings
The old odours that were
Nard and mint and myrrh.
_Envoy_
Spring, let me lay my head
Where the wild season sings
Some dead girl’s heart from her.
O young heart, ages dead,
Old odours thrill mute strings.
The old odours that were
Nard and mint and myrrh.
HOKKU
The way that shadow fell along the floor!
I too have waited for a shadow.
HOKKU
Two butterflies. Two birds. O the wide night of space.
Sweet, hold me close.
HOKKU
Yellow I see is my close friend.
She can create a sun.
HOKKU
I would have stayed the dawn down the dark sky.
But there were many dawns.
HOKKU
A child’s faint cry. But you and I have had
A birth since birth. Only there was no cry.
HOKKU
A candle flame. My love has put it out.
It did not know its bliss. Shall I, in death?
HOKKU
Cloths, fans, stones slumberous, colour and fancy and lilt.
No hard straight place to be. O quiet sky.
HOKKU
I made a garden. Afterward it died.
It never even knew it was a garden.
SONNETS AND VARIATIONS
WHEN DID SPRING DIE?
When did Spring die? I did not see her go
Down the bright lane she painted. All flower-still
She moved among her emblems on the hill
Touching away their burden of old snow.
Was it on some great down where long winds flow
That the wild spirit of Spring went out to fill
The eyes of Summer? Did a daffodil
Lift the pale urn remote where she lies low?
O not as other moments did she die,
That woman-season outlined like a rose.
Before the banner of Autumn’s scarlet bough
The Summer fell; and Winter with a cry
Wed with March wind. Spring did not die like those
But vaguely, as if Love had prompted: Now.
ONE DAWN SHE WOKE ME----
One dawn she woke me when the darkness lay
Faint on the Summer fields. The air
Was like a question. Green was grey
With dew distilled in delitesence where
Covert, the night-folk wrought. She said: “Dear one,
It is our holiday.” Forth we went
Finding new kindred, new bequest of sun,
Inheriting again the firmament.
Long ago ...
The old years lie upon her grave like flowers.
The alchemy of hours
Has made me someone whom she would not know.
How strangely that frail morning lives and towers
When I am other and when she lies low.
THERE ARE WITHIN US LIVES WE NEVER LIVE
There are within us lives we never live
By sense or soul, for being does not know
To tell their depth or breast their flow
Or to taste the sweetness that they give.
And now in distance, now in voices still,
In pity or in harmony, in sleep,
We lead unconscious lives, old, deep,
Upon the far slope of an unknown hill.
Is it not here that life walks wreathed at last?
Many a soul meets many a soul with this:
That muted lips and wistful eyes are passed
In silence; yet a sign there is
Burning in air, though but a shadow fall
Or some pale sunbeam steal along the wall.
LAST NIGHT I DREAMED I SAW MY MOTHER YOUNG
Last night I dreamed I saw my mother young.
I never knew her till her hair was grey;
Last night I saw the shadows lit away
And pearls about her shoulders strung.
Out from our haunts of home among
She came as if she knew them not. There lay
Old hope in her young eyes. And gay
Her speech came in some laughing tongue.
I who had watched the stolen march of days
And would not see the theft which was their sign
Moved happily to meet her, mute with praise
For this the witchery that made her fair.
But yet the pretty hand that lay in mine
Was not the one I love upon my hair.
WHY AM I SILENT?
Why am I silent? Tell me how to speak
With all the sweet familiars of the way;
Call Summer by her name; and with the Day
Walk royally companioned cheek on cheek
For that faint speech awhile withheld, that weak
Task of the Word undone is the great Nay,
The winged thunder that denies the ray.
Yet once when first I saw the hapless Greek
By present impulse of the god urged on
Seek out the shadow of the awful grove,
I felt the word. I caught it once again
In a sweet flash of arrowy sun that shone
Thickening on flowers. But when
You sorrowed, Love,
I knew it then....
I WANDERED WHERE THE WONDER OF THE SKY----
I wandered where the wonder of the sky
Was wide upon me. Isle beyond isle the east
Was signing that the Summer night had ceased
Upon the dawn. Then came a stranger by
Immersed in the magic as was I.
We stood together at the sorcerer’s feast
Saying half-words; and as the day increased
We parted with a farewell almost shy.
Something was there. There was drawn silently
Through into life some fiery, clouded thing.
O wise
For one sweet flash of time we stood to see
Death and the Inbeing
Lie dreaming in each other’s eyes.
HERE A STILL FIELD
Here a still field. I move within the green,
It lies aloof. Look where I will
The steady glory of noon on the hill
Lays its divine indifference on the scene.
I seem too far. I listen and I lean,
Yet never will the burying hours fulfill
One hope of nearness to the Far and Still,
But wound me with the sweet that they might mean.
Is there no keener speech for us than this
Old incommunicable urge to know
The speech of silence.... Yes--here a still field!
What more--what more? For here the Comrade is,
The God who waits alone and would have sealed
Our compact with glad laughter long ago.
RETURN
How they come back ... I never see retreat
Down the long beach the phalanx of bright foam
But faint across the fields that fold them home
I hear the rhythmic fall of speeding feet.
And they who loved the garden of the sea
And died, come back. I never know a land
Of cities but there come to me
Their dead to touch my hand.
Dead, who dare not let your eyes
Flower from the dusk and flame into our own,
Yet come you as hushed notes in harmonies
To ways of life that you have known:
Virgil in blowing spray round swift-prowed ships,
Dante in every cry of lips for lips.
BY MY SIDE ALL DAY ANOTHER WENT
By my side all day another went.
We breathed the cold spiced air of the Spring dark
Before the dawn; together at the hark
Of noon we listened; and we bent
To borrow from still grasses the warm scent
Of afternoon and dusk. We stood to mark
The deathless ark
Unveiled before the light was spent.
Prodigal of sweetness that old day
I passed, nor might
See how that one beside me stooped to lay
Something aside. Now in the night
The gleaner hunts me down
Bringing regret. I wear it for a crown.
IN J. P. P.’s METRE
I
Here a vine, there a voice,
Then a violin;
All the quiet is astir
Like a flute within.
Here a light, there a leaf,
Little boughs that lean;
And the people who move by
Wonder what they mean.
“Look,” they say, “there a star
Watching in a well;
Line and green and melody----”
Then they try to tell.
O why ask what they mean?
What is there to win?
Have we not the light, the leaf
And the violin?
II
All the air is liveried
In a kind of white;
It is not like the darkness
Or the light;
It is like the covenant
Of a clearer sight.
Now a sudden bud is born
Burning in the dew;
There the fog rose palely lifting
All as if it knew
The faint flowing speech
Of the friendly blue.
Oh the little hurrying wing
Like a blowing leaf;
Oh the shadows gathering in
Many a sheaf;
There a cloud is carved like some
Airy coral reef.
Like a new sense these venture
In the veins and lo,
All the blood is musical
In its beat and flow;
And we wait wondering
What new thing we know.
III
TO A POET
Woo a little choir of words,
Teach them to sing;
Let them thrill the air like birds
Love-summoning.
Thread the silence with a lute,
Sound the spiral of a flute.
... Vain, but vain. The words are mute.
Open now your own heart
Where a rose may be;
Live your love and use your art,
Make melody,
For your joy, your joy is there,
Sing the secret thing you bear!
... Only silence everywhere.
... Show the ancient pain that lies
With remembered things
Down the dark within your eyes
Where nothing sings.
Now at last there throng
Images that waited long,
And the silence flowers in song.
EXERCISE IN SPENSERIANS
The air is purged of gold and in its stead
Is poured a fire of silver on the green;
And now the moon new-risen from the dead
Of dearer nights than this finds her demesne
Lonely of stars, as they to greet their queen
Had rushed in argent riot from the blue
To spill themselves like flowers or waste unseen
In stealing perfumes that elude and woo
As now eludes now woos the wind the sweet night through.
Down from her turret when the dusk was new
The Lady Margot stepped and lured by wile
Of faint near things that croon of what they do
With wandering touch she thought to walk the while
The hours were printless on the idle dial.
Deep in a garden lamped with lily bells
Which hold the light as does some opal vial
She took her way near where a fountain wells
And wakes its rainbow ribbons into madrigals.
Fluttering she peered within the hollow gloom
That cloistered a wild wood beyond the wall;
For shapes are woven by the troubled loom
Of night; and tremulous tapestries oft fall
Across familiar paths and make them all
Astir with effigies that snarl and grin
And take strange steps along a horrid hall
Which is by day a lane of leaves within;
As if at night a holy nun should dream of sin.
At length she reached a little windless glade
Fragrant with natal April not long flown
And dreamful of the days when lips were laid
On lips that trembled as they found their own.
There where the mooned close was thickest sown
With shadows was the lady met with one
Who sat with drooping head and made soft moan.
He was a stranger knight whose armour shone
Bright as the molten golden javelins of the sun.
“What things are griefs?” the Lady Margot sighed
And moved a little nearer pityingly.
“The wonder wasteth from my days,” he cried,
“The burden of my blessings wearieth me!
Lo I have journeyed from an unoared sea
In the white north to where the winds caress
Warm sail-sown oceans murmuring round a key
Odorous with wine and fruit in fragrant dress----
And yet I passion for some little happiness.”
“Ay, now,” the lady cried, “most strangely come
Are you, Sir Knight, for I am one who longs
As never heart has longed before for some
Strange world, strange tongue tuneful with alien songs,
Strange mad old cities brooding on their wrongs,
With unfamiliar streets which smile and show
Me many a colonnade and portico
Where some unclaimed and starry hour belongs.
O you who know all that I long for--bid me go!”
No strange thing seemed her prayer unto the knight
Who knew her father’s little court by name,
And pitied her that all her beauty bright
Must fail and fade in such confined fame.
Swiftly he knelt to her and with no shame
She gave her hand the while he led her where
Within the close the moon took silvery aim
And lured a sickle bed of bloom to bear
In bloom’s sweet stead a birth of stars pearly as air.
The lady stooped and laid her little hand
Upon a dreaming lily whose faint cream
And gold, stirred at the fingers’ soft demand,
Dreamed that the white touch was their sweetest dream.
The lady rose and every opiate beam
Made lucent pillage from her unbound hair
And moths brushed lightly through the saffron stream
In quest of stars. The lady was so fair
That the dusk swooned with passion and the light with prayer.
“Nay, now, my child,” the knight said courteously,
“Would that your joy lay in your castle home,
In phantom folk who pace your broidery,
In haunted parchment of a pictured tome.
But if you are of those whose hearts must roam
Afar afield to meet the hushed advance
Of spheres and win from the blown spray and foam
What weaker some leave to impotent chance
Then, by my blade, that blade shall bring deliverance!”
A little door, covert in creeping green,
Gave from the court upon the room where lay
The aged doting nurse who wept, I ween,
At all the Lady Margot strove to say.
But when it had proved vain to weep or pray,
She rose and bade her trembling fingers light
Her taper and thereby she led the way
Through secret gates till, soberly bedight,
The three set forth together in the faery night.
O many a league for many a day they went,
And some magician kind they were aware
Delivered captive treasuries and spent
His lavish store of beauty everywhere:
Slim brazen towers that taught the sun to share
Its shining he revealed; and odorous gloom
Packing with odours the receiving air;
Flowered silken sails that set the sea abloom;
Isles spread with fabrics from the moon’s high loom.
Sometimes the lady knelt in a fleet prow
That flung the gaudy bubbles from the blue,
And joyed to hear the lean blade of the bow
Plunging the thundering sundered breakers through;
Keen swept the foam-born breaths of salt, to do
Sweet violence to her pale cheek; and all
The spirit of her fancy peopled new
The perilous sea’s impermanent citadel
That kindled into spray with the ship’s rise and fall.
Sometimes she stepped within a pillared way
Dim grey with shade and honey-bright with sun
Where all the costly stuffs for barter lay,
And she might hear how many a drowsing one,
Stretched on a pea-cock patterned skin, would run
Soft syllable along soft syllable
Praising the violet and vermilion
Of gems and cloths, right eager-tongued to tell
News musical with names to one who loved them well.
Meanwhile the stranger knight was by her side
Burning to serve and welcoming command;
And never wish of hers might be denied
For his swift sword was like a dexterous wand.
And by her side in all that alien land
The old nurse journeyed plaintive and perplexed,
Condemning what she did not understand
And with all other understanding vexed;
Palsied and muttering charms for what should tide them next.
Then it befell that as they fared the knight
Forgot his weariness and many a morn
He faced with joy the lottery of light
And walked no more apart in mood forlorn.
And now, her tremulous shyness half outworn,
The Lady Margot oft passed through a town
And saw therein but trinkets to adorn
Her little bodice and her silken gown;
And when he spoke she looked up swiftly and looked down.
O sweet it was to see the two dream on.
She wistful of the runes that he could teach
Of men and cities dreamed that in such wan
Delights lay life; and he for her sweet speech
With all its faery fancies would beseech
And dreamed that in such fancies lay delight!
And all the time the heart of each for each
Was calling with the ancient urge of night
For night what time the lotus of the dawn is white.
At length they came to a melodious marge
Where with sweet perturbation the moved sea
Crept lovingly about the land in large
Embrace and from such soft nativity
The music mounted in dissolving key
And wed with wind. There in a crescent cove
Sun-lorn and still, the eyes of each leaped free
And all the world in a wild silence strove
To bare its spirit in their breathed words of love.
“O Sweet, my Sweet,” the knight quoth reverently,
“Lo now the marvel: That I wearied sore
On such a singing earth as this to be
One whom the gods give ever one gift more!
There is no spot from shore to patient shore
That is not burdened with its waiting bliss;
O yet, dear love, how little bliss it bore
Were you not near to tremble at my kiss.
At last we know the truth: The best of life is this.”
Slow-dipped the idle sail without the bay
Sun-smitten in the drowsy afternoon;
Unimaged in the ripples’ purple play
White reefs of clouds on airy shores were strewn.
All fairly the shadows fell and soon
When gloaming was poured soft on beach and foam
The sea gave up a silver shell--the moon.
Then tenderly she turned who longed to roam
Afar and whispered: “Love, would that our way led home!”
Nearby upon a rainbow drift of weeds
The old nurse mumbled at her prayers and charms,
And now her shaking fingers felt her beads,
And now in incantation her old arms
Were raised to shadowy powers. O grim alarms
Beset the gaping ones when love appears!
And never lovers’ glance or kiss half warms
The world but that some dotard nods and leers
And all the charnel souls are tip-toe with their fears.
Now silently across the glimmering sands
Slow-paced the lady and the stranger knight,
And there were clinging lips and clinging hands
And all the uses of the hour were bright;
But when they came to where the moon was white
Upon the wet weeds, there the old dame lay
Stark on the sea-moss and the labyrinth light
Received her soul that knew it not. There may
Be heaven for such as mock at love but none can say.
Upon the sands the lady knelt and wept;
Her lover kissed away her pitying tears;
“Nay, tender soul,” he said, “we have but kept
The truce of nature with the yester-years.
Now are the old things passed away, and fears
For the new day are vain. Therefore arise.
Love vanquishes the past itself. Love hears
The siren cities chant of home. Love’s eyes
Have lit a sullen world for me to Paradise.”
Into the silver dark the lovers went,
Over the silver sea to golden isles,
Piping their songs of heavenly wonderment
And fabling the unhaunted age with smiles.
And ever with the swift melodious miles
A sterner harmony breathed through their bliss;
“The old shall be outworn. That which reviles
The gods shall perish by their ministries.
But we will walk with truth: The best of life is this.”