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Title: The Secret Way
Author: Zona Gale
Release Date: August 21, 2019 [EBook #60146]
Language: English
Character set encoding: UTF-8
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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
|
{i}
{ii}
Copyrighted by E. O. Hoppé
{iii}
THE SECRET WAY
BY
ZONA GALE
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1921
All rights reserved
{iv}
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.
{v}
“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.
{vi}
{vii}
CONTENTS
{1}
{2}
{3}
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{4}
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.{5}
“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.{6}
“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.{7}
“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.
{8}
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.{9}
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?
{11}
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.{12}
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!)
{13}
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.
{14}
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{15}
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.
{16}
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{17}
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!
{18}
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{19}
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.
{20}
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.
{21}
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.
{22}
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.
{23}
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.
{24}
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.
{25}
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.
{26}
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....
{27}
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.
{28}
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.
{29}
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.
{30}
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.
{31}
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?
{32}
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.{33}
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,{34}
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.
{35}
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{36}
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{37}
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{38}
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.{39}
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{40}
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{41}
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,{42}
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.{43}
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{44}
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.{45}”
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{46}
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.{47}
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.”
{49}{48}
{50}
{51}
PART II
I KNOW WHERE A DOVE——
I know where a dove sits brooding in the dark
Nested in leaves the quiet boughs among;
And when the midnight falls I lean to mark
Her home where a star is hung.
The star, it does not know the secret dove,
The dove that firefly planet may not see.
What lovelier things the night may fold from me——
The watching eye, the brooding heart, and love.
{52}
PROLOCUTOR
O for one of the stars to know me,
To say “That is she” as I say “It is there.”
O for my hills to show me
If they care.
But when I speak to them nothing hears me.
Even the bird on the near bough fears me.
The fire on my hearth does not know that it cheers me.
... Heart that waits by the fire, do you guess
All you must voice in your tenderness?
{53}
WONDER
Here are the shadows veiling green with grey
And winning all the wonder from the light;
Here phantom fragrance swells and fails like sound;
The hour distills itself to dark; the day
Dreams in its grave and lo, the dream is night.
Beloved, all the marvel of the May,
The altared dark, the petals’ solemn white,
The moments rich with farewell from the lips
Of dying moments—what are these? We lay
Our love beside them and exceed the night.
{54}
A MEETING
I hear a sound like piping and like sails
In silken talk with wind and like the speech
Of someone quiet in the blue of dawn
Upon a quiet beach.
I see a light as when the last star
Flowers faintly in the ashen morning sky
And long wings appear and disappear,
Wheeling by.
I think of moons forgotten with their tides;
I think of all the red of east and west;
I hear the secret stir of nameless dead
Conferring in my breast.
You make me long for colour and for song
And for old words on lips I did not know.
You make me dream of all I learned to dream
How long ago.
{55}
HALF THOUGHT
O Day of Wind and laughter,
A goddess born are you
Whose eyes are in the morning
Blue—blue.
The slumberous noon your body is,
Your feet are the shadows’ flight.
But the immortal soul of you
Is night.
{56}
EPITAPH
He loved to lie where Summer lay,
His roof a cloud, a bough;
There stretched full-length to dream all day.
It is so with him now.
EPITAPH
How fair a bride-groom Death must be.
He took her in his arms,
Her answering kiss now Spring is here
The valley leafage warms.
{57}
ALIAS
Between the dawn and the first breath
Of dusk there slips away
Something that partly is like death
And partly is like day.
{58}
IN ARVIA’S ROOM
For Her Cradle
I cannot tell you what you ask.
But of my life to be
You who are wise and know your speech,
Tell me.
For Her Mirror
Look in the deep of me:
What are we going to do?
If I am I, as I am,
Who in the world are you?
For a Comb of Ivory
Use me and think of soul and mind and wonder yet to be.
This is the jest: Could soul touch soul if it were not for me?
{59}
For Her Doll’s House
Girl doll would be a silken flower and look as real flowers do;
Boy doll would be a telephone and have the world speak through.
The poet doll would like to be the doorbell with a tongue
For other little dolls like bells most sensitively rung.
The paper doll would be a queen, the Dinah doll a star,
And all—how ignominious!—are only what they are.
For Her Candle-stick
Taper, winnow the world of its angles and where
Were sharp things lay softness, Night-god of the air!
For the Chimney-place
I am the causeway to the upper places
That the fire understands.
I am the link with everything unspoken.
How well I warm your hands.
{60}
For a Flower Pot
Call sweetness into being.
Let it live in me.
The seed, the soil, the sun and I
Work with authority.
For the Telephone
I the absurdity
Proving what cannot be.
Come, when you talk with me
Does it become you well
To doubt a miracle?
Along Her Book-shelf
Lay one hand on us; but keep the other free to touch far things which are not far—tenderly.
Where Boughs Touch the Glass
They lap on the indoor shore,
The waves of the leaf mere.
They say: We tell you as well as we can,
We wonder what you hear.
{61}
For Her Window
I see the stones, I see the stars,
I know not what I see.
Things always say words to themselves
And now and then to me.
But sometimes when I look between
Large stones and little stars
I almost know—but what I know
Flies through the window bars.
{62}
NON NOBIS
Find me little doors of air,
Let me in and in.
I will come and go all day....
None will miss me from my place
In the room, the porch, the lawn;
And yet I shall have a way
To enter and find quiet.
Knit me in a garment.
Weave me in a spell.
I shall look the same to them.
They will see me in the street
In the shop, the car, the hall,
And yet all the time I shall be my own,
In a place where they do not come.
Will you not, dare you not,
Is it never meet?
{63}I will never let them know——
Sweet, my Spirit, pardon me!
I had forgot that stars are new
And that it is the dawn of earth.
Doors and garments and spells I must make for myself.
Among ten thousand of us I must find silence.
{64}
HALF THOUGHT
I saw Fair Yellow in the west,
Fair Yellow in the air,
The sand, the corn, a bird’s breast,
A woman’s hair.
At night
My little room burst into light——
Fair Yellow had come there.
Fair Yellow is a being.
For when I said her name
I found a way of seeing
Her as she came.
O how
Do our dull senses fail us now
And leave us in some elemental shame!
There is so much to see and say
If we could find the way....
{65}
UMBRA
The birds of the air are about me
For I am the conjuring one;
How they dip and hover and circle
Through hyaline regions of sun.
One has a wing like a petal,
One wears a feather of flame,
Silk and snow is the breast of another
With a word like a flute for a name.
How they sing ... in the morning,
Tilting soft the light beat of their flight;
How their passionate chorales give cadence
Down the ample arcade of the night.
Yes, the songs of the air are about me
Sweet ... clear ... but they sing
Of the light of another morning
In the deep of another Spring.
{66}
WRAITHS
Who hears the answer when I cry?
O quiet hours and empty blue——
You?
But the echoful air beats back no sigh.
Who is glad of the love that I give the green?
O haunted hollow in tide of leaves,
Who weaves
Delight of mine on the flowery screen?
Who harbours that little straying ghost
Of our thought for each other before we knew
Love true?
Warm, warm in my heart and never lost.
{67}
HALF THOUGHT
Believe not Sorrow, her who brings
Confession of the folded wings,
But seek you, burning, some frail birth
That sings.
It is her spirit beating through.
Handful of earth,
It may be breath to you!
{68}
WIND SONG
Horn of the morning!
And the little night pipings fail.
The day is launched like a hollow ship
With the sun for a sail.
The way is wide and blue and lone
With all the miles inviolate,
Save for the swinging stars they’ve sown
And a thistle of cloud remote and blown.
O I passion for something nearer than these!
How shall I know that this live thing is I
With only the morning for proof and the sky?
I long for a music more dear to its keys,
For a touch that shall teach me the new sureties,
Give me some griefs and some loyalties
And a child’s mouth on my own....
Lullaby,
Babe of the world, swing high,{69}
Swing low.
I am a mother you never may know,
But oh,
And oh, how long the wind will know you,
With lullaby for the dead night through.
Babe of the earth, as I blow....
Swing high,
To touch at the sky,
And at last lie low.
Lullaby....
{70}
HALF THOUGHT
When all the leaves of Spring turn gold
And the wind has no song,
To whom then does the changeling green
Belong?
And who on what far waveless shore
Harps as Spring wind shall harp no more
In Winter’s beat and roll?
O You, who such forgotten beauties hold,
Find some faint loveliness unseen
And save it in a soul.
{71}
TROTH
To-day an odour lay upon the air
And did not fall from any mortal flower.
Deep they won their way within the hour
Who laid that odour there.
A perfume as of all that cannot give
A perfume—ivory and ore,
Colour and cloud and pearl and marl; and store
Of the wild aroma of cave and hive.
It was an inner perfume filtering
From other level than the great Midgard;
From a far and sphery home full-friendlier starred
Where marvels lift light wing.
By fragrance, fire and music do we prove
The tender contact of a lovelier day,
And these fair guarantors gently outray
From their far home—these three and also love.
{72}
BELOVED, IT IS DAYBREAK ON THE HILLS
Beloved, it is daybreak on the hills.
Dark glimmers and goes out in cloudy light.
Faint on the marge of night the watchet dawn
Lifts like a lily from a quiet water.
And that within me which is consonant
Is at its door to meet God’s infinite.
O Love, what banner shall we lift? And what
Timbrel and incense bear? How shall we greet
God’s day, his hills, his fire, and join their beauty?
Voices reply that are no voice but breath:
“Like beauty be thou nothing save his vesture.”
{73}
CREDO
O you not only worshipful but dear
Now have I learned not merely majesty
But gentleness and friendlihood to be
Your way of drawing near.
And late, upon a blue and yellow day,
Wandering alone along a hill of Spring
I caught another tender summoning,
As if you were the comrad of my play.
How strange that I have looked so lone and far
When it is you, Great Love, who lonely are.
How I have sought you in your cosmic leisure
When you are eager in my childish pleasure.
Why there is no dim doctrine to believe!
Only to feel this touching at my sleeve.
{74}
WHO IS THIS THAT IS SO NEAR?
Who is this that is so near?
Not a face and not a voice.
But a sense of someone here,
Or of something not ourselves.
At no altar, from no ark——
Is it He? O wonderful
In the day and in the dark
To behold Him by no eyes.
Is it They? Ask us not who.
As trees know when creatures pass,
We may know when Those look through
From another kind of day.
He and They within our sense.
As we hope of bird or root:
“Lo, it has intelligence!”
Hidden ones may hope of us.
{75}
INMOST ONE
Brilliant and lone she sat
Upon eternal height
And veiled her face about.
She was in fear of sin,
She was in fear of deadly night,
I saw her eyes peer out.
I saw her eyes peer out
And knew she was divine,
But oh, her stedfast, dreadful gaze
And her importunate doubt.
She did not make me word or sign
Or turn away her face.
She did not make word or sign,
But as she watched me err
Her eyes grew cold like the dark star
And her body ceased to shine.{76}
I could not breathe for the breath of her
Was frost of Winter and fire of war.
Her body ceased to shine.
I dare not let her die.
I opened my heart to the sun
And I breathed her breath for mine.
Behold, that Inmost One was I,
And I was the inmost one.
I opened my heart to the sun.
O colour and line, and birth
Of wonder and word and light!
Through love and her I have won
The earth within the earth
And the sight that is more than sight.
O colour and line and birth,
Birth of an order new,
Of a life that is more than my own ...
Birth that is your birth ...
Birth in me of you
O God, brilliant and lone!
{77}
STONE CELL
Let me not see thee, Lord God of my essential life, where thou art not.
Let me not look upon colour and pray to thee believing thee to be colour.
Let me not go in silence or in dream and dream thee to be that silence.
With the failing of the light let me not thrill at the intricate touch of that spirit
Who films light to shadow, and kneel believing ecstasy to be prayer.
From my dreams, from the siren singing and the imperious call,
From the blinding joy and the august mystery of simple beauty
Wilt not thou, compassionate, O deliver me, faint for beauty.
God! If I were praying to be delivered from thee ...
{78}
LIGHT
We do not touch the texture of the light.
But one may see with a secret eye
The things that are.
Then we divine that we need not die
To win our heritage of sight.
As well this earth as any other star.
Waking from dream there trails an alien air,
A residue of other suns than these;
We know that we have walked an inner way,
Have met familiars there
And kept our step in exquisite concord
The while we spoke some unremembered word.
And over all there lay
Light whose vibrations ran to other keys
Than those we woke upon. Light whose long play
Was dappled colour delicately kissed.{79}
Strange fires rayed from strange regions of the Lord.
Light from the sun behind the sun fell where
We went to keep our tryst.
In sleep and in the solitary dusk there come
Fine lines of light upon the lowered lids,
A flush that lets us in the heart of night
And hints dear wonders to be there at home;
As if the universal fabric bids
Its human pattern know that all is light.
In snow
Have we not seen the whiteness smitten through
With sudden rays of glory, vague with veils,
Of some beloved hue that pales
To earthly rose and violet and blue?
Oh you
Who pulse within that light—we know, we know!
Soon
From without transition night
We would come into this, our own.
Then the dim tune{80}
The which we almost hear,
The low-keyed colour and the word
We have not heard,
All these we shall be shown,
And infinitely near
To God, breathe for our breath his light.
{81}
HALF THOUGHT
I close my eyes and on the night
A face looks in at me.
It speaks a word like burning light,
I answer joyfully.
It dims away. The word is sped.
I know not what we two have said.
The old dark sparkles like a star.
And when shall we be touched with sight
To find the things that are?
{82}
CONTOURS
I am glad of the straight lines of the rain;
Of the free blowing curves of the grain;
Of the perilous swirling and curling of fire;
The sharp upthrust of a spire;
Of the ripples on the river
Where the patterns curl and quiver
And sun thrills;
Of the innumerable undulations of the hills.
But the true line is drawn from my spirit to some infinite outward place ...
That line I cannot trace.
{83}
{84}
{85}
PART III
NEWS NOTES OF PORTAGE, WISCONSIN
I
THE KILBOURN ROAD
In June the road to Kilbourn is a long green hall,
A corridor of leafage pillared white
By birches and with wild-rose patterns on the wall,
And all melodious with the fluid fall
Or lift of red-winged blackbirds fluting mating cries.
The very air
Is visible, not by the light,
Not by the shades that drift
And dip, but by an essence rhythmic with the flood
That flows
Not in the sap, not in the blood,
But otherwhere.
And of that essence grows
All men see in the air of Paradise.{86}
He lay upon a little upland slope
Deep, deep with grass.
And when I saw his head above the green
Where I must pass,
The battered hat, the squinting eyes
Blinking the westering sun, I felt a sting of fear——
Alas, that in June’s delicate demesne
A watching human face can teach one fear.
So then I spoke to him, gave him good day,
And seeing his gun said what I always say
Meeting a huntsman: “Friend, I hope
You have killed nothing here.”
He stared and grinned. And with his grin
I felt his trustiness. So when
He scrambled down the bank and followed me,
I waited for him as my kind and kin.
He was a thing of seventeen. And men
Compounded in his blood had set him here
Wizened and hump-backed. But his little face
Held something of the one he was to be{87}
In some eternity.
He talked as freely as a child. He’d shot, he said,
At a young wood-chuck. Now his gun was broke,
And it’d cost a dollar and a half
To mend it. Then I spoke
About a little kerchief made of lace
Lost on the road that day. He turned his head.
“Did it have money in it, Lady?”—with quick grace
Caught from some knightlier place.
And when I asked him what he read
He tried to rise to all my speech awoke.
“A person give me a book a while ago.
Oh, I donno
The name—the cover’s off. I got, I guess,
Two pages done. Time the stock’s fed
I get so sleepy I jump into bed.”
—And with this, for defence, a rueful laugh.
I named the town not two miles distant. No,
He hardly ever went there. Motion picture show?
His eyes lit. Several times he’d been.{88}
War pictures was the best. He liked to kill?
He hung his head. “No, but I never will
Shoot pups or kittens when they want me to.
War’s different.” School? He’d seen
Four years of that—well, four years, more or less.
Dad needed him—dad had so much to do.
So then I faced him and his need to live.
I put it plain: “But you?
What do you want to do?”
His answer lay within him, ready made.
He met my eyes with all he had to give.
“I’d like,” he said, “to learn the artist trade.”
Questioned, he told me bit by little bit.
He’d had a horse that died—he’d painted her.
He’d painted Tige, the dog. The pigeon house.
The fence that crossed the slough. The willow tree.
Would he let me see?
Oh, well—they wasn’t much. He couldn’t stir——
The paint right, and he didn’t have enough.
All that he’d done was rough.{89}
I tried to spell his dream,—to see if his face lit
At flame of it.
He only said: “Mebbe I couldn’t learn.”
And his eyes did not burn.
(“Perhaps,” I thought, “there’s nothing here at all.”)
“Dad’s going to have me paint the house,” he said.
I questioned where he led.
“Yellow and brown,” he answered. And my fancy’s fall
He must have fathomed in my face for a slow red
Mounted and swept his cheek. His eyes sought mine,
His look was piteous with a kind of light.
“I don’t like that. They picked it out,” he said. “I wanted white.”
And all his tone was shame.
The craftsman wounded in his craftsman’s right
In ways he could not name.
He took the cross-road. Where I saw him go
Wild fever-few made narrow paths of snow{90}
Through the flat fields of dying afternoon.
Bravely in tune
With every little part as with some whole
A red wing answered to an oriole
And met a cat bird’s call.
The sun! The sun! The road to Kilbourn like a long green hall!
The very air a spirit like our own
So nearly shown
That one could almost see.
The veil so thin that presence was outrayed.
But all the great blue day came facing me,
And crying from the vault and from the sod:
“Oh God, oh God.
‘I’d like,’ he said, ‘to learn the artist trade!’”
{91}
II
VIOLIN
One night on some light errand I sat beside
The cooking-stove in Johann’s sitting-room.
Within there was the cheer of lamp and fire,
The stove-draught yawning red and wide,
The table with its rosy cotton spread,
A blue chair-cover from a home-land loom,
A baby’s bed.
And in that odour of cleanliness and food
Johann, the labourer worthy of his hire
For seven days a week, twelve hours a day
At some vague toil “down in the yard.”
“Hard?
What o’ that? Look at the luck I’ve got to keep the place
And draw my pay.{92}”
He had been strong
And still his body kept its ruggedness.
Yet he was old and stiffened and he moved
As one who is wrapped round in something thick.
But O, his face,
His face was like the faces that look out
From bark and hole of trees all marred and grooved,
All laid about
With old varieties of silence and of wrong.
Such faces are locked long
In men, in stones, in wood, in earth,
Awaiting birth.
And Johann’s face was less
Expectant than the happy dead awaiting to become the quick.
His wife said much about how hard she tried.
She chattered high and shrill
About the burden and the eating ill.
His mother, little, thin, half-blind and cross,
With scarlet flannel round her throat,{93}
Put in her note,
Muttered about the cold, the draught, her side——
Small ineffectual chants of little loss,
With never a word
Of the great gossip which she had not heard:
That life had passed her by.
The little room beset me like the din
And prick of scourges. All
At once I looked upon the spattered wall
And saw a violin.
A hall
Vast, bright and breathing.
In the upper air
A chord, a flower of tone, a quiet wreathing
Along the lift and fall
Of some clear current in the blood
Now delicately understood,
Till all the hearing ones below
Are where
The voices call.
O now they know{94}
What music is. It is that which they are
Themselves. Infinite bells,
Of silence in a little sheath. Deep wells
Of being in a little cup. Star upon star
Veiled save one reaching ray.
And see! The people turn
And for a breath they look
Out into one another’s eyes
And shine and burn
Wise, wise,
With ultimate knowledge of the good
That seeks one whole.
And how
Eternity begins
And ever is beginning now
A thousand hearts learn from the violins.
“My back ain’t right. My head ain’t right. I’m almost dead.
Fill the hot water bag. I’m goin’ to bed....”
“Ten pairs of socks I’ve darned to-night. I try
To do the best I can....{95}”
I put the women by.
“Johann,” I said, “you play?” He shook his head.
“I lost it, loggin’——” he held up a stump of thumb.
“I took six lessons once,” he said.
I sat there, dumb.
From out the inner place of music there had come
Long long ago,
Some viewless one to tell him how to know
What waits upon the page
To beat the rhythm of the world. He heard; and tried
To stumble toward the door graciously wide
For other feet than his.
“I took six lessons once,” he said with pride.
This
Was all we gave him of his heritage.
{96}
III
NORTH STAR
His boy had stolen some money from a booth
At the County Fair. I found the father in his kitchen.
For years he had driven a dray and the heavy lifting
Had worn him down. So through his evenings
He slept by the kitchen stove as I found him.
The mother was crying and ironing.
I thought about the mother,
For she brought me a photograph
Taken at a street fair on her wedding day.
She was so trim and white and he so neat and alert
In the picture with their friends about them——
I saw that she wanted me to know their dignity from the first.{97}
But afterward I thought more about the father.
For as he came with me to the door I could not forbear
To say how bright and near the stars seemed.
Then he leaned and peered from beneath his low roof,
And he said:
“There used to be a star called the Nord Star.”
{98}
PROSE NOTES
I
THE BUREAU
In anger, in irritation, in argument, what happens to you and me?
Something fine weaving us round is torn open.
Something fine permeating us is drawn from the veins.
Presences waiting to understand us retreat to a farther ante-room of us.
Little cells are incommunicably sealed.
All this happened to me and some strange progress was halted until something in me could be repaired.
The whole race halted with me.
The light of the remotest star, do you imagine that it did not know?
Innumerable influences ceased to pour upon us all.
And it was because someone left the attic window open and it had rained on an old bureau.
{99}
II
MINUET
I went from Fifth avenue into the Plaza on a sunny Winter morning.
There on a little stage it was Spring. A shepherdess walked.
Beside a stream girls were tying garlands. A harp was touched.
The shepherdess and her lovers danced a minuet on the bright emerald of that shining field.
Down by Brooklyn Bridge——
Now this sharp contrast will shock you, but we must not interrupt the minuet——
I know a place down by Brooklyn Bridge where a woman
(Young, once pretty, still with tender eyes)
Carries water up five flights of stairs to do washing.{100}
I watched the minuet and I thought about that woman.
Did God create two worlds?
Or has man made a world? And can man see that his world is good?
{101}
III
THE DINING ROOM
I laid the blue dishes on the table.
The dining room was still and sunny.
Zinnias were in a brown basket,
The grape-fruit plant was glossy in a window.
Skilful fingers had wrought the border of the curtain.
My grand-mother’s blue pitcher was on the sideboard.
There were chestnut leaves in the brown rug.
Barometer and thermometer recorded miracle on the rose wall.
Dark wood paneled and beamed us in together.
As I worked these exquisite patient familiar things let me within.
They let me look with their eyes, feel with their beating pulses of hurrying molecules.{102}
I perceived how locomotion and consciousness and self-consciousness have advanced us.
By what means shall we go forward now?
Does anyone wonder at my slow patience as I wonder at the slow patience of these exquisite and familiar things?
{103}
IV
PARADISE AND PURGATORY
Do you ever go into your room and find familiar things unfamiliar.
Muslin curtains thinned by moonlight,
Open window, candle, mirror, expectant chairs,
Long smooth waiting bed—do they not bear another aspect
As if you had divined them doing their duty,
As if to be inanimate clearly involved a process,
As if they were surprised at their creeping task of going back to earth, rising in plants, quickening into beings.
That is the great work of those patient things.
That is why they look so intent.
So with all your preoccupation in dressing for to-day{104}
Your object is the same as that of these humble ones.
Only you have reached a paradise where you can hasten your way.
But these others are yet in purgatory.
{105}
V
AT LEAST ...
On that day of wild joyous wind
I filled my being with warm hurrying air.
The pouring sun was in my heart like water in a well.
I ran in the pulsing tonic currents.
And all the time, melodious in my mind,
There beat and strove the measure of a tune.
Then for a breath I understood: Glory without and flame within,
They passioned to belong to each other.
I—I was the interruption.
From that time I gave my body to be a harp:
Wind of the world without, breath of the soul within,
I will try to let you interflow.
August Presences, at least, at least may I not hinder you.
{106}
VI
ROSES
Only once have I been sure that a rose answered me.
Always the reticence of roses was the aloofness of the peak
A rose would never admit me, speak to me,
Listen to me, reply to me, do other than suffer me.
But one day after our barbarous fashion I lifted a rose to my face.
Suddenly, thrillingly, the rose replied. It, too, touched at me.
We had something to exchange.
What am I to do that this shall be true of every flower,
Every animal, every stone, every manufactured article,
Every created object—yes, even every person of the world?
{107}
VII
SPRING EVENING
I heard her at the telephone.
“Do come early,” she was saying, “while the light lasts.
The dog-wood is in blossom, the mountains are wonderful.
It is,” she said, “too heavenly. Do come, while the light lasts....”
Outside on the veranda I could see the light,
I could see the dog-wood in bloom and a mountain
And more!
What else there was I am trying to tell:
Not colour for I am no artist. Not glamour for I am not in love;
Not any more magic than I am accustomed to;
Not presence I think—though perhaps after all it was presence.{108}
But something else was there, exquisite, insistent.
When she came back I looked up to see if it met her.
But she only said: “It is too heavenly.
I hope they will come while the light lasts.”
I knew that she did not see what I saw.
But what did I see....
{109}
VIII
SECOND SIGHT
Can the world have been created for you and me to do all that fills our days:
Care of a house, lawn, shop, billion dollar business?
These are not enough for us.
Can the world have been created for the nations to do all that fills their days:
Trading, peacefully penetrating, warring,
Or when the mood changes, motoring down one another’s roads, decorating one another, bowing at one another’s courts?
These are not enough for the nations.
What is the world for?
Once in an apple orchard at mid-day
I had a moment of second sight as I watched a child at play.{110}
She shone with light like a holy child. She was pure.
She was growing. She was nothing, nothing but love.
She was all that we might be, we and the nations.
She was all that we shall be.
Come, let us face it!
{111}
IX
DOES SOMETHING WAIT?
Go and wait somewhere. Take no book, no paper, no solitaire or needle task.
Nay but forbid yourself also that you reckon the profit or plan a feast
Or discern dust on the lamp;
That you consider to whom to sell or what to wear.
Go and wait somewhere, with forgotten muscles.
Now does something wait with you, glad and welcoming that you are free to turn to it?
Then you have bread that you know not of and it is brought to you.
Or do you merely sit with an hundred fibres in you pressing to be gone?
Then you are in danger of starvation.
By this means we may almost know what we are.
{112}
X
DOORS
At the edge of consciousness is a little door.
What goes by?
Now a wing of brightness, of colour, of something out there that I love more than I am accustomed to loving.
Now fares by a delicate shadow, patterned, fleet, that I long to know more than I am accustomed to knowing.
There must be so much more to love and to know than the little loves and the little knowledge.
Then someone knocks at my door.
Thou!
The wing of brightness, the delicate shadow were but the sign.
What am I to do?
I will find my way to the edge of my consciousness,{113}
I will gain the door, I will have my freedom,
I will love and know and be all being.
Thou art the liberator. Why it is true....
“Behold, I stand at the door and knock.”
{114}
XI
LEVITATION
Three times that day came the sense of levitation.
As if court-house walk, walnut shadow, a length of sunny lawn let her go by with no tribute of her touch.
It seemed as if the wonderful would happen.
She waited, prepared for the vision.
The day flowered, ripened, mellowed, fell upon night.
No presence opened or signaled.
Then she went to embosom that which the hours had left her.
She faced her day, and her day gathered itself as a living thing with a voice and deep eyes.
It said, I was wonderful.
Yet the only thing to happen that day had been this:{115}
Old Edgerton Bascom came to the porch, selling buttons.
She bought from him, picked her dahlias for his wife.
He went away, comforted, restored to self-respect by her purchase.
Perhaps when levitation comes it will be a matter of this kind
Rather than of calculation and reckoning.
{116}
XII
ENCHANTMENT
In this house I perform all as seriously as may be required.
I accept my desk, my little tools, lamp, paper.
I write in the one language which I have been taught and about the few things with which I am familiar.
I eat the little round of food which it is said will nourish my body.
About my books I am docile and I learn from them.
I look no farther than my window permits.
When I wish to emerge I go obediently to the door as if there were conceivable no other way of exit.
At night I fall into sleep as if that were eternal purpose.{117}
I suffer from absence, I submit to distance,
I am subject to innumerable influences,
I am open to them all with a sober face.
But all the time I have knowledge that I am something other;
That all these things shall ultimately have no more power over me.
That I consent to them because of some delicate exigency in this moment of eternity.
Even now I am often free of them.
There was the day when I moved among the hills and lost every sense of difference from them.
With the crowning cloud and the far filament of the river I found myself in common.
The air was vocal with all that is identical and in that hour it offered to me my identity.
I became everything. I had no question to ask for it was I, too, who was answering.
The hour dissolved. The ultimate star was my neighbour.{118}
... Suddenly I remembered myself down in the valley moving about in a house.
And I perceived that for years I have been enchanted.
I am listening to be set free.
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