The Two Twilights
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A HOLIDAY ECLOGUE
ABOVEFirst Mason:Tink-a-link! Tink-a-link! Hear the trowels ring;Feel the merry breezes make the scaffold swing;See the skimming swallow brush us with her wing: —Go it with your hammers, boys; time us while we sing.BELOWFirst Student:See the yellow sparkle of the Neckar in the glass,And through the cedar branches sparkles blue the sea;Hear the sweet piano – hear the German lassSing Freut" euch des Lebens – Oh! "I love I love the free!"Second Student:I like the canary better;Look, how he swells his throttle!He gurgles like musical waterThat dances and sings in a bottle.ABOVESecond Mason:D'ye mind the students down in the groveDrinking their wine and beer?That's an easy life they lead.First Mason:So do we up hereWhen the weathercock points westAnd the look-off's clear.Third Mason:House-top Jim's the boy for work!First Mason:True for you, my dear.(Whistles "The Girl I Left Behind me.")BELOWFirst Student:See the Dutchmen on those settees:Isn't it like the Rhine?And the old church-tower up over the trees —Kellner! Noch ein Stein!Third Student:I'd like to work with those masons thereHalf way up the sky.The air is sweet where the pigeons build,And the world is all in their eye.Second Student:But "Love is of the valley: " the Gretchen and the KellnerHaunt the cheerful levels of the lower story.Glory in the garret – comfort in the cellar:I will keep the comfort – you may take the glory.ABOVEFirst Mason:Look up at the pointers: they 're drawing close together;'T is here we get the earliest news of sun, and moon, and weather;We can hear time's pulse a-ticking, with the whistling weathercock.Drop your mortar-boards, my lads, it's coming twelve o'clock.Third Mason:Oh! it's hungry that I am with working in the wind,But there's a shawl and bonnet – below there: do you mind?It's Molly with the dinner-pail: she's coming in the door.Faith, my belly thinks my throat is cut this half an hour and more.(The church clock strikes the noon.)A MEMORY
I came across the marsh to-night,And though the wind was cold,I stayed a moment on the bridgeTo note the paly goldThat lingered on the darkening bay;The creek which ran belowWas frozen dumb; the dreary flatsWere overspread with snow.The college bell began to ring,And as the north wind blewIts distant janglings out to sea,I thought, dear Friend, of you;And how one warm September day,While yet the woods were green,We strayed across the happy hillsAnd this wide marsh between.The hay-stacks dotted here and thereThe water-meadows wide:The even lines of sluices blackWere filling with the tide.Then this salt stream, now winter bound,Fled softly through the sedge,Retreating from the sparkling Sound;And there along its edgeWe strolled, and marked the far-off sloops,And watched the cattle graze.O'erhead the swallows rushed in troops,While bright with purple haze,West Rock looked down the winding plain —Ah! this was long ago;The summer's gone, and you are gone,As everything must go.AMOURS PASSAGÈRES
Light loves and soon forgotten hates,Heat-lightnings of the brooding summer sky —Ye too bred of the summer's heat,Ye too, like summer, fleet —Ye have gone by.Walks in the woods and whispers over gates,Gay rivalries of tennis and croquet —Gone with the summer sweet,Gone with the swallow fleetSouthward away!Breath of the rose, laughter of maidsKissed into silence by the setting moon;Wind of the morn that wakes and blows,And hastening night that goesToo soon – too soon!Meetings and partings, tokens, serenades,Tears – idle tears – and coy denials vain;Flower of the summer's rose,Say, will your leaves uncloseEver again?ON A MINIATURE
Thine old-world eyes – each one a violetBig as the baby rose that is thy mouth —Set me a dreaming. Have our eyes not metIn childhood – in a garden of the South?Thy lips are trembling with a song of France,My cousin, and thine eyes are dimly sweet;'Wildered with reading in an old romanceAll afternoon upon the garden seat.The summer wind read with thee, and the beesThat on the sunny pages loved to crawl:A skipping reader was the impatient breeze,And turned the leaves, but the slow bees read all.And now thy foot descends the terrace stair:I hear the rustle of thy silk attire;I breathe the musky odors of thy hairAnd airs that from thy painted fan respire.Idly thou pausest in the shady walk,Thine ear attentive to the fountain's fall:Thou mark'st the flower-de-luce sway on her stalk,The speckled vergalieus ripening on the wall.Thou hast the feature of my mother's race,The gilded comb she wore, her smile, her eye:The blood that flushes softly in thy faceCrawls through my veins beneath this northern sky.As one disherited, though next of kin,Who lingers at the barred ancestral gate,And sadly sees the happy heir withinStroll careless through his forfeited estate;Even so I watch thy southern eyes, Lisette,Lady of my lost paradise and heirOf summer days there were my birthright. YetBeauty like thine makes usurpation fair.IM SCHWARZWALD
The winter sunset, red upon the snow,Lights up the narrow way that I should go;Winding o'er bare white hilltops, whereon lieDark churches and the holy evening sky.That path would lead me deep into the west,Even to the feet of her I love the best.But this scarce broken track in which I standRuns east, up through the tan-wood's midnight land;Where now the newly risen moon doth throwThe shadows of long stems across the snow.This path would take me to the Jäger's TreeWhere stands the Swabian girl and waits for me.Her eyes are blacker than the woods at nightAnd witching as the moon's uncertain light;And there are tones in that low voice of hersCaught from the wind among the Schwarzwald firs,And from the Gutach's echoing waters, whenStill evening listens in the Forsthaus glen.I must – I must! Thou wilt forgive me, sweet;My heart flies west but eastward move my feet;The mad moon brightens as the sunset dies,And yonder hexie draws me with her eyes.Ruck, ruck an meine grüne Seit! she singsAnd with her arms the frozen trunk enrings,And lays upon its bark her little face.How canst thou be so dead in her embrace —So cold against her kisses, happy tree?Thou hast no love beyond the western sea.Methinks that at the lightest touch of herThy wooden trunk should tremble, thy boughs stir:But at the pressure of her tender formThy inmost pith should feel her and grow warm:The torpid sap should race along the vein;The resinous buds should swell, and once againFresh needles shoot, as though the breeze of springAlready through the woods came whispering.WAITING FOR WINTER
What honey in the year's last flowers can hide,These little yellow butterflies may know:With falling leaves they waver to and fro,Or on the swinging tops of asters ride.But I am weary of the summer's prideAnd sick September's simulated show:Why do the colder winds delay to blowAnd bring the pleasant hours that we abide;To curtained alcove and sweet household talks,Or sweeter silence by our flickering Lars,Returning late from autumn evening walksUpon the frosty hills, while reddening MarsHangs low between the withered mullein stalks,And upward throngs the host of winter stars?[Greek: Tò Pan]
The little creek which yesterday I sawOoze through the sedges, and each brackish veinThat sluiced the marsh, now filled and then againSucked dry to glut the sea's unsated maw,All ebb and flow by the same rhythmic lawThat times the beat of the Atlantic main —They also fastened to the swift moon's trainBy unseen cords that no less strongly draw.So, poet, may thy life's small tributaryThreading some bitter marsh, obscure, alone,Feel yet one pulse with the broad estuaryThat bears an emperor's fleets through half a zone:May wait upon the same high luminaryAnd pitch its voice to the same ocean's tone.THE SINGER OF ONE SONG
He sang one song and died – no more but that:A single song and carelessly complete.He would not bind and thresh his chance-grown wheat,Nor bring his wild fruit to the common vat,To store the acid rinsings, thin and flat,Squeezed from the press or trodden under feet.A few slow beads, blood-red and honey sweet,Oozed from the grape, which burst and spilled its fat.But Time, who soonest drops the heaviest thingsThat weight his pack, will carry diamonds long.So through the poet's orchestra, which weavesOne music from a thousand stops and strings,Pierces the note of that immortal song: —"High over all the lonely bugle grieves."POSTHUMOUS
Put them in print?Make one more dintIn the ages' furrowed rock? No, no!Let his name and his verses go.These idle scraps, they would but wrongHis memory, whom we honored long;And men would ask: "Is this the best —Is this the whole his life expressed?"Haply he had no care to tellTo all the thoughts which flung their spellAround us when the night grew deep,Making it seem a loss to sleep,Exalting the low, dingy roomTo some high auditorium.And when we parted homeward, stillThey followed us beyond the hill.The heaven had brought new stars to sight,Opening the map of later night;And the wide silence of the snow,And the dark whispers of the pines,And those keen fires that glittered slowAlong the zodiac's wintry signs,Seemed witnesses and near of kinTo the high dreams we held within.Yet what is leftTo us bereft,Save these remains,Which now the mothWill fret, or swifter fire consume?These inky stainsOn his table-cloth;These prints that decked his room;His throne, this ragged easy-chair;This battered pipe, his councillor.This is the sum and inventory.No son he left to tell his story,No gold, no lands, no fame, no book.Yet one of us, his heirs, who tookThe impress of his brain and heartMay gain from Heaven the lucky artHis untold meanings to impartIn words that will not soon decay.Then gratefully will such one say:"This phrase, dear friend, perhaps, is mine;The breath that gave it life was thine."HUGH LATIMER
His lips amid the flame outsentA music strong and sweet,Like some unearthly instrumentThat's played upon by heat.As spice-wood tough, laid on the coal,Sets all its perfume free,The incense of his hardy soulRose up exceedingly.To open that great flower, too coldWere sun and vernal rain;But fire has forced it to unfold,Nor will it shut again.CARÇAMON
His steed was old, his armor worn,And he was old and worn and gray:The light that lit his patient eyesIt shone from very far away.Through gay Provence he journeyed on;To one high quest his life was true,And so they called him Carçamon—The knight who seeketh the world through.A pansy blossomed on his shield;"A token 'tis," the people say,"That still across the world's wide fieldHe seeks la dame de ses pensées."For somewhere on a painted wall,Or in the city's shifting crowd,Or looking from a casement tall,Or shaped of dream or evening cloud —Forgotten when, forgotten where —Her face had filled his careless eyeA moment ere he turned and passed,Nor knew it was his destiny.But ever in his dreams it cameDivine and passionless and strong,A smile upon the imperial lipsNo lover's kiss had dared to wrong.He took his armor from the wall —Ah! gone since then was many a day —He led his steed from out the stallAnd sought la dame de ses pensées.The ladies of the TroubadoursCame riding through the chestnut grove"Sir Minstrel, string that lute of yoursAnd sing us a gay song of love.""O ladies of the Troubadours,My lute has but a single string;Sirventes fit for paramours,My heart is not in tune to sing."The flower that blooms upon my shieldIt has another soil and springThan that wherein the gaudy roseOf light Provence is blossoming."The lady of my dreams doth holdSuch royal state within my mind,No thought that comes unclad in goldTo that high court may entrance find."So through the chestnut groves he passed,And through the land and far away;Nor know I whether in the worldHe found la dame de ses pensées.Only I know that in the SouthLong to the harp his tale was told;Sweet as new wine within the mouthThe small, choice words and music old.To scorn the promise of the real;To seek and seek and not to find;Yet cherish still the fair ideal —It is thy fate, O restless Mind!ECCE IN DESERTO
The wilderness a secret keepsUpon whose guess I go:Eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard;And yet I know, I know,Some day the viewless latch will lift,The airy door swing wideTo one lost chamber of the woodWhere those shy mysteries hide, —One yet unfound, receding depth,From which the wood-thrush sings,Still luring in to darker shades,In – in to colder springs.There is no wind abroad to-day.But hark! – the pine-tops' roar,That sleep and in their dreams repeatThe music of the shore.What wisdom in their needles stirs?What song is that they sing?Those airs that search the forest's heart,What rumor do they bring?A hushed excitement fills the gloom,And, in the stillness, clearThe vireo's tell-tale warning rings:"'Tis near – 'tis near – 'tis near!"As, in the fairy-tale, more loudThe ghostly music playsWhen, toward the enchanted bower, the princeDraws closer through the maze.Nay – nay. I track a fleeter game,A wilder than ye know,To lairs beyond the inmost hauntOf thrush or vireo.This way it passed: the scent lies fresh;The ferns still lightly shake.Ever I follow hard upon,But never overtake.To other woods the trail leads on,To other worlds and new,Where they who keep the secret hereWill keep the promise too.TO IMOGEN AT THE HARP
Die Geisterwelt ist nicht verschlossen:Dein Sinn ist zu – dein Herz ist todt.Auf, bade, Schüler, unrerdrossenDie ird'sche Brust im Morgenroth!FAUST.Hast thou seen ghosts? Hast thou at midnight heardIn the wind's talking an articulate word?Or art thou in the secret of the sea,And have the twilight woods confessed to thee?So wild thy song, thy smile so faint, so farThine absent eyes from earthly vision are.Thy song is done: why art thou listening?Spent is the last vibration of the stringAlong the waves of sound. Oh, doth thine earPursue the ebbing chord in some fine sphere,Where wraiths of vanished echoes live and roam,And where thy thoughts, here strangered, find a home?Teach me the path to that uncharted land;Discovery's keel hath never notched its strand,No passport may unbar its sealed frontier, —Too far for utmost sight, for touch too near.Subtler than light, yet all opaque, the screenWhich shuts us from that world, outspread betweenThe shows of sense; like as an ether thinFills the vast microscopic space whereinThe molecules of matter lie enisled.A world whose sound our silence is; too wildIts elfin music beats, too shrill, too rare,To stir the slow pulse of our thicker air.A world whose light our darkness is; that liesWith its sharp edges turned toward mortal eyes,Like figures painted on a folded fan —The broken colors of some hidden plan.The few who but an instant's look have hadAt the spread pattern broadwise have gone mad.As in a high-walled oriental streetA sudden door flies open, and a fleetDeparting dream the thirsty traveler seesOf fountains leaping in the shade of trees,So they who once have caught the glimpse divine:They have but wet their lips with goblins' wine,And, plagued with thirst immortal, must endureThe visions of the heavenly calenture, —Of springs and dewy evening meadows rave,While hotly round them shines the tropic wave,And the false islands of mirage appear,Uplifted from some transcendental sphereFar down below the blue horizon line.And thirst like theirs is nursed by songs like thine.For thou, in some crepscular dim hour,When the weak umber moon had hardly powerTo cast a shadow, and a wind, half-spent,Creeping among the way-side bushes went,Hast seen a cobweb spun across the moon,A faint eclipse, penumbral, gone full soon,Yet marking on the planet's smoky ringA silhouette as of a living thing.Or on the beach making thy lonely range,Close upon sunset, when the light was strangeAnd the low wind had meanings, thou hast knownA presence nigh, betrayed by shadows thrownOn the red sand from bodies out of sight;Even as, by the shell of curving lightPared from the dark moon's edge, the eye can tellWhere her full circle rounds invisible.Teach me the path into that silent land.Take once again the haunted wires in hand,And pour the strain which, waking, thou hast heardWhistled when night was deep by some lone birdHid in the dark and dewy sycamore, —When thou hast risen and unbarred the doorAnd walked the garden paths till night was flown,Listening the message sent to thee alone.Ah! once again thy harp, thy voice once more,Fling back the refluent tide upon the shore.All nature grows unearthly; all things seemTo break and waver off in shapes of dream,And through the chinks of matter steals the dawnOf skies beyond the solar road withdrawn.Oh, flood my soul with that pure morning-red!It is the sense that's shut, the heart that's dead:All open still the world of spirits liesWould we but bathe us in its red sunrise.THE IDEAS OF THE PURE REASON
I saw in dreams a constellation strange,Thwarting the night; its big stars seemed to rangeNorthward across the zenith, and to keepCalm footing along heaven's ridge-pole high,While round the pole the sullen Bear did creepAnd dizzily the wheeling spheres went by.They from their watch-towers in the topmost skyLooked down upon the rest,Nor eastward swerved nor west,Though Procyon's candle dipped below the verge,And the great twins of Leda 'gan declineToward the horizon line,And prone Orion, sprawling headlong, urgeHis flight into the far Pacific surge.I heard a voice which said: "Those wonders brightAre hung not on the hinges of the night;But set to vaster harmonies, they runStraight on, and turn not with the turning sphere,Nor make an orbit about any sun.No glass can track the courses that they steer,By what dark paths they vanish and appear.The starry flocks that stillAre climbing heaven's hillWill pasture westward down its sloping lawn;But yon wild herd of planets, – who can sayThrough what far fields they stray,Around what focus their ellipse is drawn,Whose shining makes their transcendental dawn?"I told my vision to a learned man,Who said: "On no celestial globe or planCan those unset, unrisen stars be found.How might such uncomputed motions beAmong the ordered spheres? Heaven's clock is woundTo keep one time. Idle our dreams, and we,Blown by the wind, as the light familyOf leaves." But still I dream,And still those planets seemThrough heaven their high, unbending course to take;And a voice cries: "Freedom and Truth are we,And Immortality:God is our sun." And though the morning break,Across my soul still plays their shimmering wake.ON GUARD
O churl! drunk all, and left no friendly dropTo help me after. – Romeo and Juliet.He has chosen the death that is easyAnd left me the life that is hard.He has emptied the cup to the lees, heHas left me alone to keep guard.Remains not a drop in the beakerOf the bitter-sweet cordial he quaffed:The strong has forsaken his weakerAnd stolen his anodyne draught.The cause that he taught me to cherish,The weapons he trained me to wield,He has given it over to perishAnd thrown down the sword and the shield.O how shall the coward perseverWhen the hero slinks out of the fight;Or weakness keep up the endeavorAbandoned by desperate might?The hour of stern trial has found me:The sentinel fires are burnt low,And I hear in the shadows around meThe stealthy approach of the foe.Be it so then, my master, my leader:These helpless ones, dear to you, theseWill I fend while I may, though I bleed, orAm beaten with blows to my knees.Lo here, where your body lies fallen,I draw from its scabbard the swordAnd raise it – how feebly! – and call onYour spirit, my captain, my lord.The watch-fire is sunken to embers,With signals the darkness is starred.Let them come! There is one who remembers —There is one who will stand upon guard.SURSUM CORDA
Take courage, heart. Why dost thou faint and falter?Why is thy light turned darkness ere the noon?The wind blows west, no clouds the heaven alter,Night comes not yet; with night, too, comes the moon."Alas, alas! the dewy morwing weather,The tender light that on the meadows lay,When Youth and Hope and I set out together, —Light Youth, false Hope, that left me on the way!"Take courage yet; thou are not unattended:See Love and Peace keep step on either hand.How green the vales! The sky how blue! How splendidThe strong white sunshine sleeps across the land!"Alas the thrushes' song hath long had endingI heard at dawn among the pine woods cool.The brook is still, whose rocky stair descending,I drank at sunrise from each rosy pool."The noon is still; the songs of dawn are over;Yet turn not back to prove thy memories vain.The mist upon the hills canst thou recover,Or bring to eastern skies the bloom again?But courage still! Without return or swerving,Across the globe's huge shadow keep the track,Till, unperceived, the slow meridian's curving,That leads thee onward, yet shall lead thee back,To stand again with daybreak on the mountains,And, where the paths of night and morning meet,To drink once more of youth's forgotten fountains,When thou hast put the world between thy feet.LOVE, DEATH AND LIFE
The warm wind comes in rushes,The night is thick and sweet:I cannot see the bushes —The tall syringa bushesAbove the gate that meet,Whose fallen blooms she crushesUnder her heedless feet;But their heavy, rich perfumeIs round us in the gloomWhich lends its friendly coverTo bashful maid and lover:Which cheats me of her blushesBut makes her kiss complete.'Way down the village streetA lantern swings and dancesIn front of the old church porch,And throws its telltale glancesOn the puddles and the plashes,And flares in the wind like a torch,And scatters sudden flashesOn the elm leaves overhead.But you need have no dreadOf that harmless, far-off spark;For the night is thick and dark,O the dark is thick and sweet!So, closer: let the beatOf your heart encounter mine.(How you tremble – like a leaf!)O you do not need to fearAny shame or any griefWhile my arms around you twineAnd the night wind pours its wine.Come nearer, still more near;Press closer, closer yet.Your cheeks are warm and wet,Like this wind from out the south,And warm and wet your mouth;And yon lantern won't discoverThe maiden and her lover.'Tis only the sexton, nothing more —There was a funeral to-day —The sexton locking the church door,Locking it up and going away.Why should it fall on a day like this?What has death to do in a world of bliss?O passionate black night!O rush of the southern breeze,Laden with blossoms and rain,Asserter of life and its right,Cherisher, breeder of things,Swelling the sap in the trees,Swelling the blood in the vein,Filling the rivers and springs:Whisper the girl at my side,Quicken her pulse with thy breath,Teach her the way of a bride,Teach her to take and to give.What hast thou to do with us, Death?By God, we live!THE DYING PANTHEIST TO THE PRIEST
Take your ivory Christ away:No dying god shall have my knee,While live gods breathe in this wild windAnd shout from yonder dashing sea.When March brings back the Adonis flowerNo more the white processions meet,With incense to the risen lord,About the pillared temple's feet.From tusk of boar, from thrust of spearThe dead rise not. At EastertideThe same sun dances on their graves —Love's darling and the Crucified.Yet still the year's returning tideFlows greenly round each ruined plinth,Breaking on fallen shafts in foamOf crocus and of hyacinth:Tossing a spray of swallows high,To flutter lightly on the breezeAnd fleck with tiny spots of shadeThe sunshine on the broken frieze.I know the gray-green asphodelsStill sheet the dim Elysian mead,And ever by dark Lethe's wellsThe poppy sheds her ghostly seed.And once – O once! – when sunset layBlood red across the winter sea,Where on the sands we drained our flasksAnd danced and cried our Evoe!Among the tossing cakes of iceAnd spouting of the frozen spray,We saw their white limbs twist and whirl —The ancient sea-gods at their play.The gold-brown liquor burned my heart,The icy tempest stung my brow:The twanging of Apollo's lyre —I heard it as I hear it now.O no, the old gods are not dead:I think that they will never die;But, I, who lie upon this bedIn mortal anguish – what am I?A wave that rises with a breathAbove the infinite watery plain,To foam and sparkle in the sunA moment ere it sink again.The eternal undulation runs:A man, I die: perchance to be,Next life, a white-throat on the wind,A daffodil on Tempe's lea.They lied who said that Pan was dead:Life was, life is, and life shall be.So take away your crucifix —The everliving gods for me!