In the "Verses of a Familiar Tune" the poet conceives of himself as of a
wedding guest who travels far away to join the festival. The bride,
"thrice-beautiful" seems to be Earth; and the bridegroom, the Sun. The
journey to the festival is the span of mortal life. The poet, who must
travel over this path, endeavors to brighten it with dreams and shorten
his way's weary length
With sounds that like sweet longings wake in him
Old sounds familiar, low whisperings
Of women's beauties and of home-born shadows ...
The flames that burn within the heart, the kisses
That the waves squander on the sandy beach,
And the sweet birds that sing on children's lips!
The second poem of this group, "The Paralytic on the River's Bank,"
recalls the notes verging on despair which we have found in "The
Return." Again the gleaming past, appearing here as the other bank of
the river, revels
In lustful growth and endless mirth
With leafy slopes and forests glistening.
At the sight of such splendor, the poet lies palsy-stricken on this bank
of the river, the "graceless, barren, and desert bank" unable to rise
and sing. Then Life, like a merciful Fairy, takes him into the humble
hut of the present and makes him forget the other bank and nourishes him
until, at last, waking into the new world, he weaves the whole day long
with master hand all kinds of laurel crowns and pours into the
unaccustomed air a flute's soft-flown complaint. But again from his bed
he raises his eyes and sees once more the world beyond the river,
nodding luringly at him; and even there, in the midst of the new life,
he falls palsy-stricken, "the paralytic of the river bank."
This note of hopelessness is immediately counteracted by the "Simple
Song," in which Life opens again her gorgeous gardens of the past to
pluck the fairest of flowers; and when he weeps over the newly reaped
blossoms that fill his basket, Life rebukes him by facing them unmoved
"a life agleam!" With like wholesomeness he greets the early dawn that
brings him "thought, light, and sound, his sacred Trinity," and enters
the chapel's garden
To see the children beautiful,
Children that make the grassy beds a heaven
And rise like miracles among the flowers.
But on the whole, man, the wedding guest, must travel on while the winds
of uncertainty blow about him. Riddles face him everywhere; questions
stern and unanswerable spring before him; and the life of the whole
human race seems to be that of Thought likened to "an angel ever
wrestling with a strong giant flinging his hundred hands about the
angel's neck to strangle him." For who knows if a good act unknown
shines more than the most splendid monuments of marble or verse? Who
knows if vice is wiser than virtue? Is Fair Art, War's Triumphs, and
great Thoughts expressed costlier in the Temple of the Universe than the
mute Thought and Glory of the flower,
... at whose birth
The dawn rejoices and whose early death
The saddened evening silently laments?
The thoughtful sage high-rising smites the gates
Of the Infinite and questions every Sphinx;
Yet who knows if the soldier with no will,
Obeying blindly, is not nearer Truth?
O struggle vast! Who knows what power measures
The measureless and creates the great?
Is it the matchless thought of the endowed,
Or the dim soul of the multitude that bursts,
Thoughtless of reason, into life? Who knows?
We know not "whether the holy man's blessing" is the best, nor whether
there is more light of Truth in the Law, "that is all eyes," or in some
blind love. Thus entangled in the meshes of life's sphinx-like wonders,
we spend our day, little particles of the great world-struggle, wedding
guests at Life's strange festival!