In tenderness and delicacy of thought and expression, no part of _Life
Immovable_ can be compared with the smoothly flowing stanzas of "The
Palm Tree." There is no ruggedness in the meter, no violence in the
stream of images. We are led without knowing it into a modest garden. A
few flowers, a palm tree, some bushes, and the sky make our world, a
world, it seems, of things small and common and trivial. But the poet
passes by, listens to the humble flowers of dark and light blue, and
puts their talk into rhythms.
At once, the flowers become a world of beauty, life, and thought. They
are our kin, sons of the same parent Earth, and dreamers of strangely
similar dreams. The Palm tree over them becomes a great mystery of
power and grace lifting it to the realm of gods. The flowers, like
little mortals, wonder at the things they see about them. Their own
existence beneath the palm tree's shade is full of riddles, and they
face the world with questionings. In the very midst of a clear sky's
festival that succeeds a rain, the little flowers suffer the first blows
of pain, dealt by the last drops that fall from the palm leaves, and
they feel the agony of sorrow until they come to realize that even pain
brings its reward, knowledge, which makes them glory, like victors, over
death. Their being expands and they sing a song which is the essence of
the world's humanity:
Though small we are, a great world hides in us;
And in us clouds of care and dales of grief
You may descry: the sky's tranquility;
The heaving of the sea about the ships
At evenings; tears that roll not down the cheeks;
And something else inexplicable. Oh,
What prison's kin are we? Who would believe it?
One, damned and godlike, dwells in us; and she is Thought!
Thus their song continues carrying them from thought to thought, from
dream to dream, from joy to joy, and from sorrow to sorrow. Swept away
by the charms of life, they raise to their strange god a hymn of
exultation. At the sight of the thrice-fair rose, they sing a song of
love and admiration. Their experiences stimulate their minds, and they
seek to solve the dark problems that teem about them. With the eagerness
of living beings they listen to the tales of new worlds and miracles
brought to them by bees and lizards. Illness and night frighten them
with fearful images; and, at last, they pass away with a song of hope
and regret:
We shall die,
Nor will there be a monument for us
That might retain the phantom of our passing!
Only about thee will a robe of light
Adorn thee with a new and deathless gleam:
And it shall be our thought, and word, and rime!
And in the eyes of an astonished world,
Thou wilt appear like a gold-green new star;
Yet neither thou nor others will know of us!
HARVARD UNIVERSITY,
June 3, 1917.