Hermes came, and hailing his three peers,
Spoke Aphrodite’s name; whose beautiful laughter
Answered as she glistened in their midst--
No woman now, but goddess. So Hephaestus
Hove into their view, and all of the others,
Manifest together. This was where,
In tulip and oak shade, they pleased to meet,
To sit sometimes and say how the world went,
Mortal and immortal.
“You of the golden
Shoulders,” Hermes said, “bring dreams to one
Who lived in peace without them.”
“Lived in hate,
In loathing of those very limbs he fondled--
Poor, poor limbs, so lonely!” And her insolent
Laughter shook the listening green leaves.
“Yet he would have forgotten, and his only
Danger been from Ares”--who was there,
Swelling his thick chest, as Hermes spoke--
“From the two minions, old and young, of Ares.
Such danger can dissolve, for it is wind
And fury; but the damage that you do,
Arrogant bright daughter of the dolphins,
Is endless as waves are, or serpent segments
The impotent keen knife divides. Have mercy,
Goddess.” And he waited. But her lips,
Unmoving, only teased him; and tormented
Artemis.
“The man was free of longing,
And the dark maid of him,” the huntress said,
“Till this one wantoned, wooing him with dreams.
Then Ares--common soldier--fanned the fire
In those you call his minions.” Hermes nodded.
“And so our plan’s perplexed before it ripens.
Athene, Michael--tell them how we stood,
Just here, and heard the boy refuse his function.”
But it was known among them even then,
And so no witness needed. Aphrodite,
Secure in beauty’s pride, tilted her head
To hear, intending mockery of the tale.
But the wise one withheld it, and majestic
Michael only folded his broad wings
As Gabriel did, as Raphael.
Yet that last one,
Mournful of face and long, had ears for Artemis,
Nurse to all things aborning, as she mused:
“The young one when he comes--in what men call
The fall of their brief year--the roofless infant--
It was for him we planned. And still we do--”
She dared the glittering goddess--“still we seek
Safe birth for the small mother, and for him
The wailing, the unwanted.”
Crooked Hephaestus,
Clearing his mild throat, remarked in modesty:
“The man works well and silently. He loves,
In solitude, the comfort of my fire.
And so in a bowl I brought it. As for her--
He will not have her near him. I was by;
I read his thoughts of this.”
“Absurd contriver!
Artisan of the bellows! Zeus’s butt!
As ever, you know nothing.” Aphrodite
Sparkled with rage, reviling him. “You saw
By daylight, and at labor in the field
One whom that very night I made my slave.
Off to your anvil, ass!”
But Hermes calmed
Their quarrel, lifting his either hand in grace.
“Without our father’s thunder we are fools
And children. Who decides when lesser gods,
When angels disagree? Authority absent,
Silence--a silver silence--that is best.”
And like a song they heard it, and they wondered,
Measuring its notes. Until Apollo,
Lord of the muses, laughed.
“You heard me humming.
All to myself I sang it--with sealed lips.”
“What did you sing?” said Hermes.
“Nothing, nothing.
My sisters round the world--a sweet wind brought me,
Sleepily, this air.”
He hummed again,
And this time closed his eyes. “Perhaps I see,”
He said, “some silver moment coming soon--
Necessity for music. But not now.”
Nor could those other nine foresee the summer.
Already, in mid June, high long days
Hovered the world, and change, like ripening fruit,
Hung ever, ever plainer. Yet no man,
No god distinguished more in this green time
Than purposes that crossed; and ever tighter.
In Daniel’s house the woman who was resting--
Daily, in scorn, Berrien spoke the word--
Still did not spare the beautiful dream body
She sent to him by dark, when Dora too
Lived by his side and loved him: standing there
In the shed radiance of one who smiled
And smiled, and burned his reticence away.
For he would go to Dora--come July,
Said Daniel, lying afterwards and listening
As night died between him and the windows,
He would go there, he would, and say it all;
He would have Dora, small in his long arms,
Forever. Yet the sweetness of this thought
Exhausted him, and hollowed his wild eyes,
So that he never went.
And had he gone,
What Dora would have seen him come and shivered?
One whom as strong a dream--if it was a dream--
Estranged. It was of having, yet not having,
Bruce for her brave husband. For he mustn’t--
He mustn’t, she said nightly, shutting away
The vision--Bruce must never let it be.
The nurse--he mustn’t listen. Yet if he did--
And then she wept.
Darius in the morning,
Seeing her tears, thought only of his purpose.
He should conceal it better. She was afraid,
Was frantic, she might go somewhere and tell.
That boy--he was so hard to keep in anger.
He faltered, and he wilted; he was a fool.
That boy, the center of confusion’s cross,
For still he hated Daniel, still with Darius
Plotted the loud death; yet loved all day,
All night the dream of lying in clear peace
Forever, in dear confidence, with Dora;
That boy was whom the strangers in this valley
Watched while the moments went; while June decayed;
While middle summer dozed; and no leaves fell.
V
A hundred people coming to the barn dance,
The barn dance at MacPherson’s, saw the full moon.
It hung there like a lantern in the low east,
Enormous and blood red, and stationary.
Daniel came, and Berrien, with that woman--
So fair, she seemed unnatural--between them.
She must have made them bring her, someone said;
And laughed.
But no one laughed when Dora came.
She was so pitiful in her loose coat,
Concealing, healing nothing. Would she dance?
If only with Bruce Hanna, would she dance?
Too late for it, some whispered; and some blamed
The silly boy. To let her show like that!
The nurse, the doctor’s nurse, and her tall friend
The teacher--no one dreamed those two, those two--
They stood by their grand selves, and no one saw
How Bruce, how Dora lived but in their glances.
Then all the strangers. When the music started,
Who but a giant--handsome, with tow hair--
Bowed to the grand ones? And to more
Beyond them? For a pair of unknown farmers,
Lanky and cave-eyed, leaned bony shoulders
Where a great upright shaded the rude floor.
From the next valley, maybe, like this lame
Pedlar; like the soldier; like that lightfoot
Traveller, the one with pointed ears,
The one with cropped hair and a twisted staff,
Who wandered in the crowd, watching and watched.
The shepherd of the strangers? Yet no word
Between them, and no look, Darius said--
Darius, who had eyes for everything;
And ears, when music started.
“One more couple!
One more couple!” Glendy the clear-caller
Shouted while harmonicas, like locusts,
Shrilled, and while Young Gus tuned his guitar.
“One more couple!”
Here they came.
“Join hands
And circle left!”
Darius heard the words
Above him, in the corner where by Glendy
And the harmonicas he tapped the floor.
His was the curious, the musicians’ corner,
Whence he could see how Dora sat and trembled,
Wondering what next--why she was here.
“The dog!” he growled, catching on Daniel’s face,
In a far corner, hunger and indifference
Fighting. Hunger--damn him--for my child,
My child, Darius said, whom he has changed;
And smothering this, the smoke of a pretence
That nothing here was wrong, nothing at all.
The soldier had come back. Darius saw him.
Red-eyed, drinking water by a droplight,
And his own conscience hurt him. Daniel lived.
If Bruce could only raise his eyes a little--
But they were hangdog, or were fixed in fear
On those two stranger women. Why in fear?
The music, though.
“Swing your corner lady!”
Darius, rocking gently on his heels,
Was lost again in that, and in the wild
Mouth organs, going mournful overhead.
“First two gents cross over!” In his thought
He crossed; he took that partner by the hand;
He swung her, swung her, swung her, you know where.
He promenaded, proudly, and he clapped
His palms, that sweated bravely. Then the swinging
Ceased. The set was over. And he sang:
“Good boy, Gus! That was calling, old man Glendy!”
They winked at him, wiping their foreheads off;
Then soon another set. And still he listened
And watched, and still he saw how Dora sat,
Trembling, and never danced.
But once the soldier,
Slouching to her side, made mockery signs
Suggesting that she stand. Darius started
In anger; then he stopped, for Bruce was up,
Explaining--yet avoiding the brute stare;
And Daniel, in his corner, clenched both fists.
Even the strangers knew, for one came over--
The one with such a neat head on his body,
And the curled stick--as if to beat away
Wild boars escaped here. That was good, was good,
Darius said; then listened as the music
Whispered again.
Whispered.
For the tune
Had altered. Where was Glendy? Who was this
Where Glendy had been standing? And what ailed,
What softened so the clamor of the mouth harps?
“One more couple!”
Who was the intruder,
Calling in so sweet, so low a voice,
Strange orders? Yet not strange; for the hot crowd,
Heedless of any difference, swirled on,
Loving its evolutions, and no head
Turned hither.
“Take your Dora by the hand--”
Darius, looking up, saw how the silver
Light of the full moon, mature at zenith,
Fell on the singer. Through one gable window
It fell, and on no head but his, the silvery
Singer. He was slender, he was strange;
And the high moon--it burned for none but him.
“Where’s Glendy, Gus?”
“Took sick.”
The loud guitar,
Hesitating, rallied and persevered;
But modified its note to a new sweetness,
A low, a far-off sweetness, as Gus looked,
Listened, and looked again at the mysterious
Caller on whose mouth the full moon smiled.
Take your Dora by the hand,
Your little Dora, grown so large.
By another she was manned,
But she is now your loving charge.
Mercy marries you, my boy,
And mercy--oh, it is unjust.
But it was born of truth and joy,
And lives with misery if it must.
Darius, and then Daniel, comprehending,
Stared at a hundred dancers who did not.
Heedless of any change, they stamped and swung,
Those hundred, as if Glendy still were here--
Old Glendy, whose thin throat still mastered them.
Yet Daniel saw how Dora, dropping her eyes,
Sat silent, deathly silent; and how Bruce,
Guardian to her, looked only down--
Looked everywhere save at the singer, singing:
Take your Dora by the hand.
There is life within her waist.
And there is woe, unless you stand
And love with bravery is graced.
So all the world will know her wed,
And all the people call it yours--
The life within her, small and red;
And wrathful, were it none but hers.
With you beside her all is well.
She will be tended in her time.
There is more that I could tell,
But Glendy now resumes the rhyme.
“Circle four!”
Darius, and then Daniel,
Dazed, regarded Glendy once again.
The moonlit one was gone, and only these
Had seen him--these and Dora, and dumb Bruce.
And all of the nine strangers. For they too
Had listened; bending their bodies, they had weighed,
Had witnessed every word as it arrived;
Had watched the boy’s confusion; then the girl’s;
Then both together, as if woe had wed
Already the poor lovers.
“Nelly Gray!”
The hundred dancers, heedless, went right on;
And only Berrien’s boarder, the gold woman
Who stood so close by Daniel--only that one
Kindled. Then she blazed, and Daniel, blushing,
Knew she had found his thought.
So I have lost her--
This was his thought--have lost her. Then my love
Must die, and no man know it. He was true,
That singer. It is not my life she carries--
Dora, who was mine for that cold minute;
Dora, whom I never can forget.
The eyes of the theater woman burned so fiercely,
Punishing his own, that Daniel shook.
How could she guess his trouble? Only in dreams
She knew it, only in dreams, when Dora came.
Only in darkness. “Now she disapproves,
She probes me.”
But the woman looked away,
Suddenly, and signalled to the soldier;
Who, nodding, went to stand before Darius.
Daniel saw him there, gesticulating,
With his feet spread, as if he meant to spring,
To throttle someone. And Darius blinked.
But music and the distance drowned their words.
And now the tall nurse, bending over Dora,
Whispered to her and Bruce; and the boy, rising,
Reached for a small hand. The singer had said
To take it, and he took it, and pulled up
The girl who still was trying to be free,
To save him.
And the music never stopped.
“Kiss her if you dare!” cried old man Glendy.
And many a dancer did. But neither Bruce
Nor Dora, arm in arm, had present ears.
They listened still to what the other singer,
Gone now as the moon was from the window,
Sang and sang again, as if his silvery
Face never had faded. Arm in arm
They walked among the dancers to the big door;
Arm in arm, sleepwalking, they went forth,
Under the slant moon, and disappeared.