The earth, the fields, lie stretched in sleep
Like weary toilers overdone.
The valleys gape like toothless age,
Besnaggled by dead trees.
The hills, like boney jaws whose flesh hath dropped,
Stand grinning at the deathy day.
The lily, too, hath cast her shroud
And clothed her as a brown-robed nun.
The moon doth, at the even’s creep,
Reach forth her whitened hands and sooth
The wrinkled brow of earth to sleep.
Ah, whither flown the fleecy summer clouds,
To bank, and fall to earth in billowed light,
And paint the winter’s brown to spangled white?
Where, too, have flown the happy songs,
Long died away with sighing
On the shore-wave’s crest?
Will they take Echo as their Guide,
And bound from hill to hill at this,
The sleepy time of earth,
And waken forest song ’mid naked waste?
Ah, slumber, slumber, slumber on.
’Tis with a loving hand He scattereth the snow,
To nestle young spring’s offering,
That dying Earth shall live anew.
How different this from Thomson’s pessimistic,
Dread winter spreads his latest glooms
And reigns tremendous o’er the conquered year.
This poem seemed to present unusual difficulties to Patience. The words
came slowly and haltingly, and the indications of composition were more
marked than in any other of her poems. The third line was first dictated
“Like weary workmen overdone,” and then changed to “weary toilers,” and
the eighteenth line was given: “On the shore-wavelet’s breast,” and
afterwards altered to read “the shorewave’s crest.”
Possibly it was because the poet has not the same zest in painting
pictures of winter that she has in depicting scenes of kindlier seasons,
in which she is in accord with nearly all poets, and, for that matter,
with nearly all people. Her pen, if one may use the word, is speediest
and surest when she presents the beautiful, whether it be the material
or the spiritual. She expresses this feeling herself with beauty of
phrase and rhythm in this verse, which may be entitled “The Voice of
Spring.”
The streamlet under fernbanked brink
Doth laugh to feel the tickle of the waving mass;
And silver-rippled echo soundeth
Under over-hanging cliff.
The robin heareth it at morn
And steals its chatter for his song.
And oft at quiet-sleeping
Of the Spring’s bright day,
I wander me to dream along the brooklet’s bank,
And hark me to a song of her dead voice,
That lieth where the snowflakes vanish
On the molten silver of the brooklet’s breast;
And watch the stream,
Who, over-fearful lest she lose the right
To ripple to the chord of Spring’s full harmony,
Doth harden at her heart
And catch the song a prisoner to herself;
To loosen only at the wooing kiss
Of youthful Winter’s sun,
And fill the barren waste with phantom spring.
Or, passing on to autumn, consider this apostrophe to a fallen leaf:
Ah, paled and faded leaf of spring agone,
Whither goest thou? Art speeding
To another land upon the brooklet’s breast?
Or art thou sailing to the sea, to lodge
Amid a reef, and, kissed by wind and wave,
Die of too much love?
Thou’lt find a resting place amid the moss,
And, ah, who knows! The royal gem
May be thine own love’s offering.
Or wilt thou flutter as a time-yellowed page,
And mould among thy sisters, ere the sun
May peep within the pack?
Or will the robin nest with thee
At Spring’s awakening? The romping brook
Will never chide thee, but ever coax thee on.
And shouldst thou be impaled
Upon a thorny branch, what then?
Try not a flight. Thy sisters call thee.
Could crocus spring from frost,
And wilt thou let the violet shrink and die?
Nay, speed not, for God hath not
A mast for thee provided.
Autumn, too, is the theme of this:
She-e-e! She-e-e! She-e-e-e!
The soughing wind doth breathe.
The white-crest cloud hath drabbed
At season’s late. The trees drip leaf-waste
Unto the o’erloved blades aneath,
Who burned o’ love, to die.
’Tis the parting o’ the season.
Yea, and earth doth weep. The mellow moon
Stands high o’er golded grain. The cot-smoke
Curleth like to a loving arm
That reacheth up unto the sky.
The grain ears ope, to grin unto the day.
The stream hath laden with a pack o’ leaves
To bear unto the dell, where bloom
Doth hide in waiting for her pack.
The stars do glitter cold, and dance to warm them
There upon the sky’s blue carpet o’er the earth.
’Tis season’s parting.
Yea, and earth doth weep. The Winter cometh,
And he bears her jewels for the decking
Of his bride. A glittered crown
Shall fall ’pon earth, and sparkled drop
Shall stand like gem that flasheth
’Pon a nobled brow. Yea, the tears
Of earth shall freeze and drop
As pearls, the necklace o’ the earth.
’Tis season’s parting. Yea,
And earth doth weep.
’Tis Fall.
She does not confine herself to the Seasons in her tributes to the
divisions of time. There are many poems which have the day for their
subject, all expressive of delight in every aspect of the changing
hours. There is a pæan to the day in this:
The Morn awoke from off her couch of fleece,
And cast her youth-dampt breath to sweet the Earth.
The birds sent carol up to climb the vasts.
The sleep-stopped Earth awaked in murmuring.
The dark-winged Night flew past the Day
Who trod his gleaming upward way.
The fields folk musicked at the sun’s warm ray.
Web-strewn, the sod, hung o’er o’ rainbow gleam.
The brook, untiring, ever singeth on.
The Day hath broke, and busy Earth
Hath set upon the path o’ hours.
Mute Night hath spread her darksome wing
And loosed the brood of dreams,
And Day hath set the downy mites to flight.
Fling forth thy dreaming hours! Awake from dark!
And hark! And hark! The Earth doth ring in song!
’Tis Day! ’Tis Day! ’Tis Day!
The close observer will notice in all of these poems that there is
nothing hackneyed. The themes, the thoughts, the images, the phrasing,
are almost if not altogether unique. The verse which follows is, I am
inclined to believe, absolutely so:
Go to the builder of all dreams
And beg thy timbers to cast thee one.
Ah, Builder, let me wander in this land
Of softened shapes to choose. My hand doth reach
To catch the mantle cast by lilies whom the sun
Hath loved too well. And at this morrow
Saw I not a purple wing of night
To fold itself and bask in morning light?
I watched her steal straight to the sun’s
Bedazzled heart. I claim her purpled gold.
And watched I not, at twi-hours creep,
A heron’s blue wing skim across the pond,
Where gulf clouds fleeted in a fleecy herd,
Reflected fair? I claim the blue and let
My heart to gambol with the sky-herd there.
At midday did I not then find
A rod of gold, and sun’s flowers,
Bounded in by wheat’s betasseled stalks?
I claim the gold as mine, to cast my dream.
And then at stormtide did I catch the sun,
Becrimsoned in his anger; and from his height
Did he not bathe the treetops in his gore?
The red is mine. I weave my dream and find
The rainbow, and the rainbow’s end—a nothingness.
Almost equally weird is this “Birth of a Song”:
I builded me a harp,
And set asearch for strings.
Ah, and Folly set me ’pon a track
That set the music at a wail;
For I did string the harp
With silvered moon-threads;
Aye, and dead the notes did sound.
And I did string it then
With golden sun’s-threads,
And Passion killed the song.
Then did I to string it o’er—
And ’twer a jeweled string—
A chain o’ stars, and lo,
They laughed, and sorry wert the song.
And I did strip the harp and cast
The stars to merry o’er the Night;
And string anew, and set athrob a string
Abuilded of a lover’s note, and lo,
The song did sick and die,
And crumbled to a sweeted dust,
And blew unto the day.
Anew did I to string,
Astring with wail o’ babe,
And Earth loved not the song.
I felled asorrowed at the task,
And still the Harp wert mute.
So did I to pluck out my heart,
And lo, it throbbed and sung,
And at the hurt o’ loosing o’ the heart
A song wert born.
That, however, is but a pretty play of fancy upon things within our ken,
however shadowy and evanescent she may make them by her touch. But in
the poem which follows she touches on the border of a land we know not:
I’d greet thee, loves of yester’s day.
I’d call thee out from There.
I’d sup the joys of yonder realm.
I’d list unto the songs of them
Who days of me know not.
I’d call unto this hour
The lost of joys and woes.
I’d seek me out the sorries
That traced the seaming of thy cheek,
O thou of yester’s day!
I’d read the hearts astopped,
That Earth might know the price
They paid as toll.
I’d love their loves, I’d hate their hates,
I’d sup the cups of them;
Yea, I’d bathe me in the sweetness
Shed by youth of yester’s day.
Yea, of these I’d weave the Earth a cloak—
But ah, He wove afirst!
They cling like petal mold, and sweet the Earth.
Yea, the Earth lies wrapped
Within the holy of its ghost.
“’Tis but a drip o’ loving,” she said when she had finished this.
Nearly every English poet has a tribute to the Skylark, but I doubt if
there are many more exquisite than this:
I tuned my song to love and hate and pain
And scorn, and wrung from passion’s heat the flame,
And found the song a wailing waste of voice.
My song but reached the earth and echoed o’er its plains.
I sought for one who sang a wordless lay,
And up from ’mong the rushes soared a lark.
Hark to his song!
From sunlight came his gladdening note.
And ah, his trill—the raindrops’ patter!
And think ye that the thief would steal
The rustle of the leaves, or yet
The chilling chatter of the brooklet’s song?
Not claiming as his own the carol of my heart,
Or listening to my plaint, he sings amid the clouds;
And through the downward cadence I but hear
The murmurings of the day.
One naturally thinks of Shelley’s “Skylark” when reading this, and there
are some passages in that celebrated poem that show a similarity of
metaphor, such as this:
Sounds of vernal showers
On the twinkling grass;
Rain-awakened flowers;
All that ever was
Joyous and clear and fresh
Thy music doth surpass.
And there is something of the same thought in the lines of Edmund Burke:
Teach me, O lark! with thee to greatly rise,
T’ exalt my soul and lift it to the skies;
To make each worldly joy as mean appear,
Unworthy care when heavenly joys are near.
But Patience nowhere belittles earthly joys that are not evil in
themselves; nor does she teach that all earthly passions are inherently
wrong: for earthly love is the theme of many of her verses.
Her expressions of scorn are sometimes powerful in their vehemence.
This, on “War,” for example:
Ah, thinkest thou to trick?
I fain would peep beneath the visor.
A god of war, indeed! Thou liest!
A masquerading fiend,
The harlot of the universe—
War, whose lips, becrimsoned in her lover’s blood,
Smile only to his death-damped eyes!
I challenge thee to throw thy coat of mail!
Ah, God! Look thou beneath!
Behold, those arms outstretched!
That raiment over-spangled with a leaden rain!
O, Lover, trust her not!
She biddeth thee in siren song,
And clotheth in a silken rag her treachery,
To mock thee and to wreak
Her vengeance at thy hearth.
Cast up the visor’s skirt!
Thou’lt see the snakey strands.
A god of war, indeed! I brand ye as a lie!
Such outbreaks as this are rare in her poetry, but in her conversation
she occasionally gives expression to anger or scorn or contempt, though,
as stated, she seldom dignifies such emotions in verse. Love, as I have
said, is her favorite theme in numbers, the love of God first and far
foremost, and after that brother love and mother love. To the love of
man for woman, or woman for man, there is seldom a reference in her
poems, although it is the theme of some of her dramatic works. There is
an exquisite expression of mother love in the spinning wheel lullaby
already given, but for rapturous glorification of infancy, it would be
difficult to surpass this, which does not reveal its purport until the
last line:
Ah, greet the day, which, like a golden butterfly,
Hovereth ’twixt the night and morn;
And welcome her fullness—the hours
’Mid shadow and those the rose shall grace.
Hast thou among her hours thy heart’s
Desire and dearest? Name thou then of all
His beauteous gifts thy greatest treasure.
The morning, cool and damp, dark-shadowed
By the frowning sun—is this thy chosen?
The midday, flaming as a sword,
Deep-stained by noon’s becrimsoned light—
Is this thy chosen? Or misty startide,
Woven like a spinner’s web and jeweled
By the climbing moon—is this thy chosen?
Doth forest shade, or shimmering stream,
Or wild bird song, or cooing of the nesting dove,
Bespeak thy chosen? He who sendeth light
Sendeth all to thee, pledges of a bonded love.
And ye who know Him not, look ye!
From all His gifts He pilfered that which made it His
To add His fullest offering of love.
From out the morning, at the earliest tide,
He plucked two lingering stars, who tarried
Lest the dark should sorrow. And when the day was born,
The glow of sun-flush, veiled by gossamer cloud
And tinted soft by lingering night;
And rose petals, scattered by a loving breeze;
The lily’s satin cheek, and dove cooes,
And wild bird song, and Death himself
Is called to offer of himself;
And soft as willow buds may be,
He claimeth but the down to fashion this, thy gift,
The essence of His love, thine own first-born.
In brief, the babe concentrates within itself all the beauties and all
the wonders of nature. Its eyes, “two lingering stars who tarried lest
the dark should sorrow,” and in its face “the glow of sun flush veiled
by gossamer cloud,” “rose petals” and the “lily’s satin cheek”; its
voice the dove’s coo. “From all His gifts He pilfered that which made it
His”—the divine essence—“to add His fullest offering of love.” This is
the idealism of true poetry, and what mother looking at her own
firstborn will say that it is overdrawn?
So much for mother-love. Of her lines on brotherhood I have already
given example. In only a few verses, as I have said, does Patience speak
of love between man and woman. The poem which follows is perhaps the
most eloquent of these:
’Tis mine, this gift, ah, mine alone,
To paint the leaden sky to lilac-rose,
Or coax the sullen sun to flash,
Or carve from granite gray a flaming knight,
Or weave the twilight hours with garlands gay,
Or wake the morning with my soul’s glad song,
Or at my bitterest drink a sweetness cast,
Or gather from my loneliness the flower—
A dream amid a mist of tears.
Ah, treasure mine, this do I pledge to thee,
That none may peer within thy land; and only
When the moon shines white shall I disclose thee;
Lest, straying, thou should’st fade; and in the blackness
Of the midnight shall I fondle thee,
Afraid to show thee to the day.
When I shall give to Him, the giver,
All my treasure’s stores, and darkness creeps upon me,
Then will I for this return a thank,
And show thee to the world.
Blind are they to thee, but ah, the darkness
Is illumined; and lo! thy name is burned
Like flaming torch to light me on my way.
Then from thy wrapping of love I pluck
My dearest gift, the memory of my dearest love.
Ah, memory, thou painter,
Who from cloud canst fashion her dear form,
Or from a stone canst turn her smile,
Or fill my loneliness with her dear voice,
Or weave a loving garland for her hair—
Thou art my gift of God, to be my comrade here.
Next to such love as this comes friendship, and she has put an estimate
of the value of a friend in these words:
Of Earth there be this store of joys and woes.
Yea, and they do make the days o’ me.
I sit me here adream that did I hold
From out the whole, but one, my dearest gift,
What then would it to be? Doth days and nights
Of bright and dark make this my store?
Nay. Do happy hours and woes-tide, then,
Beset this day of me and make the thing I’d keep?
Nay. Doth metal store and jewelled string
Then be aworth to me? Nay. I set me here,
And dreaming, fall to reasoning for this,
That I would keep, if but one gift wert mine
Must hold the store o’ all. Yea, must hold
The dark for light, yea, and hold the light for dark,
Aye, and hold the sweet for sours, aye, and hold
The love for Hate. Yea, then, where may I to turn?
And lo, as I adreaming sat
A voice spaked out to me: What ho! What ho!
And lo, the voice of one, a friend!
This, then, shall be my treasure,
And the Earth part I shall hold
From out all gifts of Him.
Love of God, and God’s love for us, and the certainty of life after
death as a consequence of that love, are the themes of Patience’s finest
poetry, consideration of which is reserved for succeeding chapters. Yet
a taste of this devotional poetry will not be amiss at this point in the
presentation of her works, as an indication of the character of that
which is to come.
Lo, ’pon a day there bloomed a bud,
And swayed it at adance ’pon sweeted airs.
And gardens oped their greenéd breast
To shew to Earth o’ such an one.
And soft the morn did woo its bloom;
And nights wept ’pon its cheek,
And mosses crept them ’bout the stem,
That sun not scoarch where it had sprung.
And lo, the garden sprite, a maid,
Who came aseek at every day,
And kissed the bud, and cast o’ drops
To cool the warm sun’s rays.
And bud did hang it swaying there,
And love lept from the maiden’s breast.
And days wore on; and nights did wrap
The bud to wait the morn;
And maid aseeked the spot.
When, lo, there came a Stranger
To the garden’s wall,
Who knocked Him there
And bid the maiden come.
And up unto her heart she pressed her hand,
And reached it forth to stay the bud’s soft sway,
And lo, the sun hung dark,
And Stranger knocked Him there.
And ’twere the maid did step most regal to the place.
And harked, and lo, His voice aspoke.
And she looked upon His face,
And lo, ’twere sorry sore, and sad!
And soft there came His word
Of pleading unto her:
“O’ thy garden’s store do offer unto me.”
And lo, the maid did turn and seek her out the bud,
And pluck it that she bear it unto Him.
And at the garden’s ope He stood and waited her.
And forth her hand she held, therein the bud,
And lo, He took therefrom the bloom
And left the garden bare,
And maid did stand astripped
Of heart’s sun ’mid her garden’s bloom.
When lo, athin the wound there sunk
A warmpth that filled it up with love.
Yea, ’twere the smile o’ Him, the price.
But she has given another form of poem which should be presented before
this brief review of her more material verse is concluded, and it is a
form one would hardly expect from such a source. I refer to the “poem of
occasion.” A few days before Christmas, Mrs. Curran remarked as she sat
at the board: “I wonder if Patience wouldn’t give us a Christmas poem.”
And without a moment’s hesitation she did. Here it is:
I hied me to the glen and dell,
And o’er the heights, afar and near,
To find the Yule sprite’s haunt.
I dreamt me it did bide
Where mistletoe doth bead;
And found an oak whose boughs
Hung clustered with its borrowed loveliness.
Ah, could such a one as she
Abide her in this chill?
For bleakness wraps the oak about
And crackles o’er her dancing branch.
Nay, her very warmth
Would surely thaw away the icy shroud,
And mistletoe would die
Adreaming it was spring.
I hied me to the holly tree
And made me sure to find her there.
But nay,
The thorny spines would prick her tenderness.
Ah, where then doth she bide?
I asked the frost who stood
Upon the fringéd grasses ’neath the oak.
“I know her not, but I
Am ever bidden to her feast.
Ask thou the sparrow of the field.
He searcheth everywhere; perchance
He knoweth where she bides.”
“Nay, I know her not,
But at her birthday’s tide
I find full many a crumb
Cast wide upon the snow.”
I found a chubby babe,
Who toddled o’er the ice, and whispered,
Did she know the Yule sprite’s haunt?
And she but turneth solemn eyes to me
And wags her golden head.
I flitted me from house to shack,
And ever missed the rogue;
But surely she had left her sign
To bid me on to search.
And I did weary of my task
And put my hopes to rest,
And slept me on the eve afore her birth,
Full sure to search anew at morn.
And then the morning broke;
And e’er mine eyes did ope,
I fancied me a scarlet sprite,
With wings of green and scepter of a mistletoe,
Did bid me wake, and whispered me
To look me to my heart.
Soft-nestled, warm, I found her resting there.
Guard me lest I tell;
But, heart o’erfull of loving,
Thee’lt surely spill good cheer!
The following week, without request, she gave this New Year’s poem,
remarkable for the novelty of its treatment of a much worn theme:
The year hath sickened;
And dawning day doth show his withering;
And Death hath crept him closer on each hour.
The crying hemlock shaketh in its grief.
The smiling spring hath hollowed it to age,
And golden grain-stalks fallen
O’er the naked breast of earth.
The year’s own golden locks
Have fallen, too, or whitened,
Where they still do hold.
And do I sorrow me?
Nay, I do speed him on,
For precious pack he beareth
To the land of passing dreams.
I’ve bundled pain and wishing
’Round with deeds undone,
And packed the loving o’ my heart
With softness of thine own;
And plied his pack anew
With loss and gain, to add
The cup of bitter tears I shed
O’er nothings as I passed.
Old year and older years—
My friends, my comrades on the road below—
I fain would greet ye now,
And bid ye Godspeed on your ways.
I watch ye pass, and read
The aged visages of each.
I love ye well, and count ye o’er
In fearing lest I lose e’en one of you.
And here the brother of you, every one,
Lies smitten!
But as dear I’ll love him
When the winter’s moon doth sink;
And like the watery eye of age
Doth close at ending of his day.
And I shall flit me through his dreams
And cheer him with my loving;
And last within the pack shall put
A Hope and speed him thence.
And bow me to the New.
A friend mayhap, but still untried.
And true, ye say?
But ne’er hath proven so!
Old year, I love thee well,
And bid thee farewell with a sigh.
One who reads these poems with thoughtfulness must be impressed by a
number of attributes which make them notable, and, in some respects,
wholly unique. First of all is the absence of conventionality, coupled
with skill in construction, in phrasing, in the compounding of words, in
the application to old words of new or unusual but always logical
meanings, in the maintenance of rhythm without monotony. Next is the
absolute purity, with the sometimes archaic quality, of the English. It
is the language of Shakespeare, of Marlowe, of Fletcher, of Jonson and
Drayton, except that it presents Saxon words or Saxon prefixes which had
already passed out of literary use in their time, while on the other
hand it avoids nearly all the words derived directly from other
languages that were habitually used by those great writers. There is
rarely a word that is not of Anglo-Saxon or Norman birth. Nor are there
any long words. All of these compositions are in words of one, two and
three syllables, very seldom one of four—no “multitudinous seas
incarnadine.” Among the hundreds of words of Patience Worth’s in this
chapter there are only two of four syllables and less than fifty of
three syllables. Fully 95 per cent of her works are in words of one and
two syllables. In what other writing, ancient or modern, the Bible
excepted, can this simplicity be found?
But the most impressive attribute of these poems is the weirdness of
them, an intangible quality that defies definition or location, but
which envelops and permeates all of them. One may look in vain through
the works of the poets for anything with which to compare them. They are
alike in the essential features of all poetry, and yet they are unalike.
There is something in them that is not in other poetry. In the profusion
of their metaphor there is an etherealness that more closely resembles
Shelley, perhaps, than any other poet; but the beauty of Shelley’s poems
is almost wholly in their diction: there is in him no profundity of
thought. In these poems there is both beauty and depth—and something
else.
THE PROSE
“Word meeteth word, and at touch o’ me, doth
spell to thee.”—PATIENCE WORTH.