# The Torrent and the Night Before

​THE TORRENT AND THE NIGHT BEFORE BY EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON, GARDINER MAINE 1889-1896
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PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR MDCCCXCVI
Copyright, 1896, By EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON.
The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass. U.S.A. Printed by H. O. Houghton and Company.
This book is dedicated to any man, woman, or critic who will cut the edges of it.—I have done the top.
THE TORRENT I found a torrent falling in a glen Where the sun's light shone silvered and leaf-split; The boom, the foam, and the mad flash of it All made a magic symphony; but when I thought upon the coming of hard men To cut those patriarchal trees away, And turn to gold the silver of that spray, I shuddered. But a gladness now and then Did wake me to myself till I was glad In earnest, and was welcoming the time For screaming saws to sound above the chime Of idle waters, and for me to know The jealous visionings that I had had Were steps to the great place where trees and torrents go.
AARON STARK
Withal a meagre man was Aaron Stark— Cursed and unkempt, shrewd, shrivelled, and morose: A miser was he, with a miser's nose, And eyes like little dollars in the dark. His thin, pinched mouth was nothing but a mark; And when he spoke there came like sullen blows Through scattered fangs a few snarled words and close, As if a cur were chary of its bark.
Glad for the murmur of his hard renown, Year after year he shambled through the town,— A loveless exile moving with a staff; And oftentimes there crept into his ears A sound of alien pity, touched with tears,— And then (and only then) did Aaron laugh.
THE DEAD VILLAGE Here there is death. But even here, they say— Here where the dull sun shines this afternoon As desolate as ever the dead moon Did glimmer on dead Sardis—men were gay; And there were little children here to play, With small soft hands that once did keep in tune The string that stretch from heaven, till too soon The change came, and the music passed away.
Now there is nothing but the ghosts of things: No life, no love, no children, and no men; And over the forgotten place there clings The strange and unrememberable light That is in dreams.—The music failed, and then God frowned, and shut the village from his sight.
BALLADE OF A SHIP
Down by the flash of the restless water The dim White Ship like a white bird lay; Laughing at life and the world they sought her, And out she swung to the silvering bay. Then off they flew on their roystering way, And the keen moon fired the light foam flying Up from the flood where the faint stars play, And the bones of the brave in the wave are lying.
'Twas a king's fair son with a king's fair daughter, And full three hundred beside, they say,— Revelling on for the lone, cold slaughter So soon to seize them and hide them for aye;
Nor ever they knew of a ghoul's eye spying Their splendor a flickering phantom to stray Where the bones of the brave in the wave are lying.
Through the mist of a drunken dream they brought her (This wild white bird) for the sea-fiend's prey: The pitiless reef in his hard clutch caught her, And hurled her down where the dead men stay. A torturing silence of wan dismay— Shrieks and curses of mad souls dying— Then down they sank to slumber and sway Where the bones of the brave in the wave are lying.
Prince, do you sleep to the sound alway Of the mournful surge and the sea-birds' crying?— Or does love still shudder and steel still slay, Where the bones of the brave in the wave are lying?
DEAR FRIENDS Dear friends, reproach me not for what I do, Nor counsel me, nor pity me; nor say That I am wearing half my life away For bubble-work that only fools pursue. And if my bubbles be too small for you, Blow bigger then your own:—the games we play To fill the frittered minutes of a day, Good glasses are to read the spirit through.
And whoso reads may get him some shrewd skill; And some unprofitable scorn resign, To praise the very thing that he deplores:— So friends (dear friends), remember, if you will, The shame I win for singing is all mine, The gold I miss for dreaming is all yours.
SONNET When we can all so excellently give
The measure of love's wisdom with a blow,— Why can we not in turn receive it so,
And end this murmur for the life we live?
And when we do so frantically strive
To win strange faith, why do we shun to know
That in love's elemental over-glow
God's wholeness gleams with light superlative?
O brother men, if you have eyes at all,
Look at a branch, a bird, a child, a rose— Or anything God ever made that grows— Nor let the smallest vision of it slip
Till you can read, as on Belshazzar's wall,
The glory of eternal partnership!
HER EYES Up from the street and the crowds that went, Morning and midnight, to and fro, Still was the room where his days he spent, And the stars were bleak, and the nights were slow.
Year after year, with his dream shut fast, He suffered and strove till his eyes were dim For the love that his brushes had earned at last—
And the whole world rang with the praise of him.
But he cloaked his triumph, and searched, instead, Till his cheeks were sore and his hairs were gray,— "There are women enough, God knows," he said....
"There are stars enough—when the sun’s away."
Then he went back to the same still room That had held his dream in the long ago, When he buried his days in a nameless tomb, And the stars were bleak, and the nights were slow.
And a passionate humor seized him there— Seized him and held him, until there grew
Like life on his canvas,—glowing and fair, A perilous face—and an angel’s, too.
Angel and maiden, and all in one. All but the eyes.—They were there, but yet They seemed somehow like a soul half done;— What was the matter?—Did God forget? . . .
But he wrought them at last with a skill so sure That her eyes were the eyes of a deathless woman,— With a gleam of heaven to make them pure, And a glimmer of hell to make them human.
God never forgets.—And he worships her There in that same still room of his, For his wife, and his constant arbiter Of the world that was and the world that is.
And he wonders yet what her love could be To punish him after that strife so grim;— But the longer he lives with her eyes to see, The plainer it all comes back to him.
SONNET The master and the slave go hand in hand, Though touch be lost. The poet is a slave, And there be kings do sorrowfully crave The joyance that a scullion may command. But ah, the sonnet-slave must understand The mission of his bondage, or the grave May clasp his bones or ever he shall save The perfect word that is the poet's wand.
The sonnet is a crown, whereof the rhymes Are for Thought's purest gold the jewel-stones; But shapes and echoes that are never done Will haunt the workshop, as regret sometimes Will bring with human yearning to sad thrones The crash of battles that are never won.
ZOLA Because he puts the compromising chart Of hell before your eyes, you are afraid; Because he counts the price that you have paid For innocence, and counts it from the start, You loathe him. But he sees the human heart Of God meanwhile, and in God's hand has weighed Your squeamish and emasculate crusade Against the grim dominion of his art.
Never until we conquer the uncouth Connivings of our shamed indifference (We call it Christian faith!) are we to scan The racked and shrieking hideousness of Truth To find, in hate's polluted self-defence Throbbing, the pulse, the divine heart of man.
BALLADE In dreams I crossed a barren land, A land of ruin, far away; Around me hung on every hand A deathful stillness of decay; And silent, as in bleak dismay That song should thus forsaken be, On that forgotten ground there lay The broken flutes of Arcady.
The forest that was all so grand When pipes and tabors had their sway Stood leafless now, a ghostly band Of skeletons in cold array. A lonely surge of ancient spray Told of an unforgetful sea, But iron blows had hushed for aye The broken flutes of Arcady.
No more by summer breezes fanned, The place was desolate and gray;
But still my dream was to command New life into that shrunken clay. I tried it.—Yes, you scan to-day, With uncommiserating glee, The songs of one who strove to play The broken flutes of Arcady.
ENVOY
So, Rock, I join the common fray, To fight where Mammon may decree; And leave, to crumble as they may, The broken flutes of Arcady.
FOR SOME POEMS BY MATTHEW ARNOLD Sweeping the chords of Hellas with firm hand He wakes lost echoes from song's classic shore, And brings their crystal cadence back once more To touch the clouds and sorrows of a land Where God's truth, cramped and fettered with a band Of iron creeds, he cheers with golden lore Of heroes and the men that long before Wrought the romance of ages yet unscanned.
Still does a cry through sad Valhalla go For Balder, pierced with Lok's unhappy spray— For Balder, all but spared by Frea's charms; And still does art's imperial vista show, On the hushed sands of Oxus, far away, Young Sohrab dying in his father s arms.
GEORGE CRABBE Give him the darkest inch your shelf allows, Hide him in lonely garrets, if you will,— But his hard, human pulse is throbbing still With the sure strength that fearless truth endows:—
In spite of all fine science disavows, Of his plain excellence and stubborn skill There yet remains what fashion cannot kill, Though years have thinned the laurel from his brows.
Whether or not we read him, we can feel From time to time the vigor of his name Against us like a finger for the shame And emptiness of what our souls reveal In books that are as altars where we kneel To consecrate the flicker, not the flame.
SONNET Oh, for a poet—for a beacon bright To rift this changeless glimmer of dead gray: To spirit back the Muses, long astray, And flush Parnassus with a newer light: To put these little sonnet-men to flight Who fashion, in a shrewd mechanic way, Songs without souls that flicker for a day To vanish in irrevocable night.
What does it mean, this barren age of ours? Here are the men, the women, and the flowers,— The seasons, and the sunset, as before. What does it mean?—Shall not one bard arise To wrench one banner from the western skies, And mark it with his name for evermore?
THE ALTAR Alone, remote, nor witting where I went, I found an altar builded in a dream— A fiery place, whereof there was a gleam So swift, so searching, and so eloquent Of upward promise that love's murmur, blent With sorrow's warning, gave but a supreme Unending impulse to that human stream
Whose flood was all for the flame's fury bent.
Alas! I said,—the world is in the wrong.— But the same quenchless fever of unrest That thrilled the foremost of that martyred throng Thrilled me, and I awoke. . . and was the same Bewildered insect plunging for the flame That burns, and must burn somehow for the best.
THE HOUSE ON THE HILL They are all gone away, The House is shut and still, There is nothing more to say.
Through broken walls and gray The winds blow bleak and shrill; They are all gone away.
Nor is there one to-day To speak them good or ill: There is nothing more to say.
Why is it then we stray Around that sunken sill? They are all gone away,
And our poor fancy-play For them is wasted skill: There is nothing more to say.
There is ruin and decay In the House on the Hill: They are all gone away, There is nothing more to say.
THE WILDERNESS Come away! come away! there's a frost along the marshes, And a frozen wind that skims the shoal where it shakes the dead black water; There's a moan across the lowland and a wailing through the woodland
Of a dirge that sings to send us back to the arms of those that love us. There is nothing left but ashes now where the crimson chills of autumn Put off the summer's languor with a touch that made us glad For the glory that is gone from us, with a flight we cannot follow, To the slopes of other valleys and the sounds of other shores.
Come away! come away!—you can hear them calling, calling, Calling us to come to them, and roam no more. Over there beyond the ridges and the land that lies between us, There's an old song calling us to come!
Come away! come away!—for the scenes we leave behind us Are barren for the lights of home and a flame that’s young forever; And the lonely trees around us creak the warning of the night-wind, That love and all the dreams of love are away beyond the mountains. The songs that call for us to-night, they have called for men before us,— And the winds that blow the message, they have blown ten thousand years; But this will end our wander-time, for we know the joy that waits us In the strangeness of home-coming, and a faithful woman's eyes.
Come away! come away!—there is nothing now to cheer us— Nothing now to comfort us, but love's road home: Over there beyond the darkness there's a window gleams to greet us, And a warm hearth waits for us within.
Come away! come away!—or the roving-fiend will hold us, And make us all to dwell with him to the end of human faring: There are no men yet can leave him when his hands are clutched upon them, There are none will own his enmity, there are none will call him brother.— So we’ll be up and on the way, and the less we brag the better For the freedom that God gave us and the dread we do not know:— The frost that skips the willow-leaf will again be back to blight it, And the doom we cannot fly from is the doom we do not see.
Come away! come away! there are dead men all around us— Frozen men that mock with a wild, hard laugh That shrieks and sinks and whimpers in the shrill November rushes, And the long fall wind on the lake.
LUKE HAVERGAL Go to the western gate, Luke Havergal,— There where the vines cling crimson on the wall,— And in the twilight wait for what will come. The wind will moan, the leaver will whisper some— Whisper of her, and strike you as they fall; But go, and if you trust her she will call,— Go to the western gate, Luke Havergal,— Luke Havergal.
No, there is not a dawn in eastern skies To rift the fiery night that's in your eyes;
But there, where western glooms are gathering, The dark will end the dark, if anything:—
God slays Himself with every leaf that flies, And hell in more than half of paradise.— No, there is not a dawn in eastern skies, In eastern skies.
Out of a grave I come to tell you this,— Out of a grave I come to quench the kiss That flames upon your forehead with a glow That blinds you to the way that you must go. Yes, there is yet one way to where she is— Bitter, but one that faith can never miss.— Out of a grave I come to tell you this, To tell you this.
There is the western gate, Luke Havergal, There are the crimson leaves upon the wall. Go,—for the winds are tearing them away— Nor think to riddle the dead words they say, Nor any more to feel them as they fall; But go! and if you trust her she will call.— There is the western gate, Luke Havergal,— Luke Havergal.
THE CHORUS OF OLD MEN IN “ÆGEUS” Ye gods that have a home beyond the world, Ye that have eyes for all man's agony, Ye that have seen this woe that we have seen,— Look with a just regard, And with an even grace, Here on the shattered corpse of a shattered king, Here on a suffering world where men grow old And wander like sad shadows till, at last, Out of the flare of life, Out of the whirl of years, Into the mist they go, Into the mist of death.
O shades of you that loved him long before The cruel threads of that black sail were spun,
May loyal arms and ancient welcomings Receive him once again Who now no longer moves Here in this flickering dance of changing days Where a battle is lost and won for a withered wreath, And the black master Death is over all, To chill with his approach, To level with his touch, The reigning strength of youth, The fluttered heart of age.
Woe for the fateful day when Delphi's word was lost— Woe for the loveless prince of Æthra's line! Woe for a father's tears and the curse of a king's release— Woe for the wings of pride and the shafts of doom!— And thou the saddest wind That ever blew from Crete, Sing the fell tidings back to that thrice unhappy ship!— Sing to the western flame, Sing to the dying foam, A dirge for the sundered years and a dirge for the years to be!
Better his end had been as the end of a cloudless day, Bright, by the word of Zeus, with a golden star, Wrought of a golden fame, and flung to the central sky, To gleam on a stormless tomb for evermore:— Whether or not there fell To the touch of an alien hand The sheen of his purple robe and the shine of his diadem, Better his end had been To die as an old man dies,— But the fates are ever the fates, and a crown ever a crown.
THE MIRACLE "Dear brother, dearest friend, when I am dead,
And you shall see no more this face of mine,
Let nothing but red roses be the sign
Of the white life I lost for him," she said;
"No, do not curse him,—pity him instead;
Forgive him!—forgive me! . . . God’s anodyne
For human hate is pity; and the wine
That makes men wise, forgiveness. I have read
Love's message, in love's murder, and I die."
And so they laid her just where she would lie,— Under red roses. Red they bloomed and fell;
But when flushed autumn and the snows went by,
And spring came,—lo, from every bud's green shell
Burst a white blossom.—Can love reason why?
HORACE TO LEUCONOE I Pray you not, Leuconoe, to pore
With unpermitted eyes on what may be
Appointed by the gods for you and me,
Nor on Chaldean figures any more.
'T were infinitely better to implore
The present only:—whether Jove decree
More winters yet to come, or whether he
Make even this, whose hard, wave-eaten shore
Shatters the Tuscan seas to-day, the last— Be wise withal, and rack your wine, nor fill
Your bosom with large hopes; for while I sing,
The envious close of time is narrowing:—
So seize the day,—or ever it be past—
And let the morrow come for what it will.
THE BALLADE OF DEAD FRIENDS As we the withered ferns
By the roadway lying,
Time, the jester, spurns
All our prayers and prying,— All our tears and sighing, Sorrow, change, and woe,— All our where-and-whying For friends that come and go.
Life awakes and burns, Age and death defying, Till at last it learns All but Love is dying;— Love's the trade we're plying, God has willed it so; Shrouds are what we're buying For friends that come and go.
Man forever yearns For the thing that's flying: Everywhere he turns, Men to dust are drying— Dust that wanders, eyeing (With eyes that hardly glow) New faces, dimly spying For friends that come and go.
ENVOY
And thus we all are nighing The truth we fear to know: Death will end our crying For friends that come and go.
VILLANELLE OF CHANGE Since Persia fell at Marathon, The yellow years have gathered fast: Long centuries have come and gone.
And yet (they say) the place will don A phantom fury of the past, Since Persia fell at Marathon;
And as of old, when Helicon Trembled and swayed with rapture vast (Long centuries have come and gone),
This ancient plain, when night comes on, Shakes to a ghostly battle-blast, Since Persia fell at Marathon.—
But into soundless Acheron The glory of Greek shame was cast: Long centuries have come and gone,
The suns of Hellas have all shone, The first has fallen to the last:— Since Persia fell at Marathon, Long centuries have come and gone.
THOMAS HOOD The man who cloaked his bitterness within This winding-sheet of puns and pleasantries, God never gave to look with common eyes Upon a world of anguish and of sin:— His brother was the branded man of Lynn; And there are woven with his jollities The nameless and eternal tragedies That render hope and hopelessness akin.
We laugh, and crown him; but anon we feel A still chord sorrow swept,—a weird unrest; And thin dim shadows home to midnight steal, As if the very ghost of mirth were dead— As if the joys of time to dreams had fled, Or sailed away with Ines to the West.
FOR A BOOK BY THOMAS HARDY With searching feet, through dark circuitous ways, I plunged and stumbled; round me, far and near,
Quaint hordes of eyeless phantoms did appear, Twisting and turning in a bootless chase,— When, like an exile given by God's grace To feel once more a human atmosphere, I caught the world's first murmur, large and clear, Flung from a singing river's endless race.
Then, through a magic twilight from below, I heard its grand sad song as in a dream: Life's wild infinity of mirth and woe It sang me; and, with many a changing gleam, Across the music of its onward flow, I saw the cottage lights of Wessex beam.
SUPREMACY There is a drear and lonely tract of hell From all the common gloom removed afar: A flat, sad land it is, where shadows are Whose lorn estate my verse may never tell. I walked among them and I knew them well: Men I had slandered on life's little star For churls and sluggards; and I knew the scar Upon their brows of woe ineffable.
But as I went majestic on my way, Into the dark they vanished, one by one, Till, with a shaft of God's eternal day, The dream of all my glory was undone,— And, with a fool's importunate dismay, I heard the dead men singing in the sun.
THREE QUATRAINS
i
As long as Fame's imperious music rings Will poets mock it with crowned words august; And haggard men will clamber to be kings As long as Glory weighs itself in dust.
ii
Drink to the splendor of the unfulfilled, Nor shudder for the revels that are done:— The wines that flushed Lucullus are all spilled, The strings that Nero fingered are all gone.
iii
We cannot crown ourselves with everything, Nor can we coax the Fates for us to quarrel:— No matter what we are, or what we sing, Time finds a withered leaf in every laurel.
FOR CALDERON And now, my brother, it is time For me to tell the truth to you: To tell the story of a crime As black as Mona's eyes were blue.— Yes, here to-night, before I die, I'll speak the words that burn in me; And you may send them, bye-and-bye, To Calderon across the sea.
Now get some paper and a pen, And sit right here, beside my bed. Write every word I say, and then— And then … well, what then?—I’ll be dead!— … But here I am alive enough, And I remember all I've done … God knows what I was thinking of!— But send it home—to Calderon.
And you, Francisco, brother, say,— What is there for a man like me?— I tell you God sounds far away— As far—almost as far—as she! I killed her! … Yes, I poisoned her— So slowly that she never knew … Francisco,—I'm a murderer.— Now tell me what there is to do!
To die—of course; but after that, I wonder if I live again! And if I live again, for what?— To suffer? … Bah!—there is no pain But one; and that I know so well That I can shame the devil's eyes! … For twenty years I’ve heard in hell What Mona sings in Paradise!
Strange, that a little Northern girl Should love my brother Calderon, And set my brain so in a whirl That I was mad till she was gone! … I wonder if all men be such As I?—I wonder what love is!— I never loved her very much Until I saw that she was his;—
And then I knew that I was lost: And then—I knew that I was mad.— I reasoned what it all would cost, But that was nothing.—I was glad To feel myself so foul a thing!— And I was glad for Calderon. … My God! if he could hear her sing Just once, as I do!—There! she's done. …
No, it was only something wrong A minute—something in my head.— God, no!—she'll never stop that song As long as I'm alive or dead! As long as I am here or there, She'll sing to me, a murderer!— Well, I suppose the gods are fair. … I killed her … yes, I poisoned her!
But yon, Francisco,—you are young;— So take my hand and hear me, now:— There are no lies upon your tongue, There is no guilt upon your brow.— But there is blood upon your name?— And blood, you say, will rust the steel
That strikes for honor or for shame? …
Francisco, it is fear you feel!—
And such a miserable fear
That you, my boy, will call it pride;— But you will grope from year to year
Until at last the clouds divide,
And all at once you meet the truth,
And curse yourself, with helpless rage,
For something you have lost with youth
And found again, too late, with age.
The truth, my brother, is just this:—
Your title here is nothing more
Or less than what your courage is:
The man must put himself before
The name, and once the master stay
Forever—or forever fall.— Good-bye!—Remember what I say …
Good-bye!—Good-bye! … And that was all.
The lips were still: the man was dead.—
Francisco, with a weird surprise,
Stood like stranger by the bed,
And there were no tears in his eyes.
But in his heart there was a grief
Too strong for human tears to free,— And in his hand a written leaf
For Calderon across the sea.
JOHN EVERELDOWN
Where are you going to-night, to-night,—
Where are you going, John Evereldown?
There's never the sign of a star in sight,
Nor a lamp that's nearer than Tilbury Town.
Why do you stare as a dead man might?
Where are you pointing away from the light?
And where are you going to-night, to-night,— Where are you going, John Evereldown?
Right through the forest, where none can see, There's where I'm going to Tilbury Town. The men are asleep—or awake, may be— But the women are calling John Evereldown. Ever and ever they call for me, And while they call can a man be free?— So right through the forest, where none can see, There's where I'm going to Tilbury Town.
But why are you going so late, so late,— Why are you going, John Evereldown? Though the road be smooth and the path be straight, There are two long leagues to Tilbury Town. Come in by the fire, old man, and wait! Why do you chatter out there by the gate? And why are you going so late, so late,— Why are you going, John Evereldown?
I follow the women wherever they call,— That's why I'm going to Tilbury Town. God knows if I pray to be done with it all, But God is no friend to John Evereldown.— So the clouds may come and the rain may fall, The shadows may creep and the dead men crawl;— But I follow the women wherever they call, And that's why I'm going to Tilbury Town.
THE WORLD Some are the brothers of all humankind, And own them, whatsoever their estate; And some, for sorrow and self-scorn, are blind With enmity for man's unguarded fate.
For some there is a music all day long Like flutes in paradise, they are so glad; And there is hell's eternal under-song Of curses and the cries of men gone mad.
Some say the Scheme with love stands luminous, Some say 't were better back to chaos hurled; And so 't is what we are that makes for us The measure and the meaning of the world.
CREDO I cannot find my way: there is no star In all the shrouded heavens anywhere; And there is not a whisper in the air Of any living voice but one so far That I can hear it only as a bar Of lost, imperial music, played when fair And angel fingers wove, and unaware, Dead leaves to garlands where no roses are.
No, there is not a glimmer, nor a call, For one that welcomes, welcomes when he fears, The black and awful chaos of the night.— For through it all—above, beyond it all— I know the far-sent message of the years, I feel the coming glory of the Light!
THE CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT For those that never know the light, The darkness is a sullen thing; And they, the Children of the Night, Seem lost in Fortune's winnowing.
But some are strong and some are weak,—
And there's the story. House and home Are shut from countless hearts that seek World-refuge that will never come.
And if there be no other life, And if there be no other chance To weigh their sorrow and their strife Than in the scales of circumstance—
'T were better, ere the sun go down Upon the first day we embark,
In life's embittered sea to drown Than sail forever in the dark.
But if there be a soul on earth So blinded with its own misuse Of man's revealed, incessant worth, Or worn with anguish that it views
No light but for a mortal eye— No rest but of a mortal sleep— No God but in a prophet's lie— No faith for "honest doubt" to keep—
If there be nothing, good or bad, But chaos for a soul to trust,— God counts it for a soul gone mad, And if God be God, He is just.
And if God be God, He is Love;— And though the Dawn be still so dim, It shows us we have played enough With creeds that make a fiend of Him.
There is one creed, and only one, That glorifies God's excellence;— So cherish, that His will be done, The common creed of common sense.
It is the crimson, not the gray, That charms the twilight of all time; It is the promise of the day That makes the starry sky sublime;
It is the faith within the fear That holds us to the life we curse;— So let us in ourselves revere The Self which is the Universe!
Let us, the Children of the Night, Put off the cloak that hides the scar!— Let us be Children of the Light, And tell the ages what we are!
THE CLERKS I did not think that I should find them there When I came back again; but there they stood, As in the days they dreamed of when young blood Was in their cheeks and women called them fair. Be sure, they met me with an ancient air,— And yes, there was a shop-worn brotherhood About them; but the men were just as good, And just as human as they ever were.
And you that ache so much to be sublime, And you that feed yourselves with your descent, What comes of all your visions and your fears?— Poets and kings are but the clerks of Time, Tiering the same dull webs of discontent, Clipping the same sad aluage of the years.
A BALLADE BY THE FIRE Slowly I smoke and hug my knee, The while a witless masquerade Of things that only children see Floats in a mist of light and shade: They pass, a flimsy cavalcade, And with a weak, remindful glow, The falling embers break and fade, As one by one the phantoms go.
Then, with a melancholy glee To think where once my fancy strayed, I muse on what the years may be Whose coming tales are all unsaid, Till tongs and shovel, snugly laid Within their shadowed niches, grow By grim degrees to pick and spade, As one by one the phantoms go.
But then, what though the mystic Three Around me ply their merry trade?— And Charon soon may carry me Across the gloomy Stygian glade?— Be up, my soul! nor be afraid Of what some unborn year may show;— But mind your human debts are paid, As one by one the phantoms go.
Life is the game that must be played: This truth at least, good friend, we know.— So live and laugh, nor be dismayed As one by one the phantoms go.
ON THE NIGHT OF A FRIEND’S WEDDING If ever I am old, and all alone, I shall have killed one grief, at any rate; For then, thank God, I shall not have to wait Much longer for the sheaves that I have sown. The devil only knows what I have done, But here I am, and here are six or eight Good friends who most ingenuously prate About my songs to such and such a one.
But everything is all askew to-night,— As if the time were come, or almost come, For their untenanted mirage of me To lose itself and crumble out of sight— Like a tall ship that floats above the foam A little while, and then breaks utterly.
VERLAINE Why do you dig like long-clawed scavengers To touch the covered corpse of him that fled The uplands for the fens and rioted Like a sick satyr with doom's worshippers?— Come!—let the grass grow there; and leave his verse
To tell the story of the life he led. Let the man go: let the dead flesh be dead,
And let the worms be its biographers.
Song sloughs away the sin to find redress
In art's complete remembrance: nothing clings For long but laurel to the stricken brow That felt the Muse’s finger; nothing less Than hell's fulfilment of the end of things
Can blot the star that shines on Paris now.
THE GARDEN There is a fenceless garden overgrown
With buds and blossoms and all sorts of leaves; And once, among the roses and the sheaves,
The Gardener and I were there alone. He led me to the plot where I had thrown The fennel of my days on wasted ground, And in that riot of sad weeds I found The fruitage of a life that was my own.
My life! . . . Ah yes, there was my life, indeed! And there were all the lives of humankind;
And they were like a book that I could read,
Whose every leaf, miraculously signed, Outrolled itself from Thought's eternal seed,
Love-rooted in God's garden of the mind.
TWO SONNETS
i
Just as I wonder at the twofold screen Of twisted innocence that you would plait For eyes that uncourageously await The coming of a kingdom that has been, So do I wonder what God’s love can mean To you that all so strangely estimate The purpose and the consequent estate Of one short shuddering step to the Unseen.
No, I have not your backward faith to shrink Lone-faring from the doorway of God’s home, To find Him in the names of buried men; Nor your ingenious recreance to think We cherish, in the life that is to come, The scattered features of dead friends again.
ii
Never until our souls are strong enough To plunge into the crater of the Scheme— Triumphant in the flash there to redeem Love’s handsel and for evermore to slough, Like cerements at a played-out masque, the rough And reptile skins of us whereon we set The stigma of scared years—are we to get Where atoms and the ages are one stuff.
Nor ever shall we know the cursed waste Of life in the beneficence divine Of starlight and of sunlight and soul-shine That we have squandered in sin's frail distress, Till we have drunk, and trembled at the taste, The mead of Thought’s prophetic endlessness.
WALT WHITMAN The master-songs are ended, and the man That sang them is name. And so is God A name; and so is love, and life, and death, And everything.—But we, who are too blind To read what we have written, or what faith Has written for us, do not understand: We only blink, and wonder.
Last night it was the song that was the man, But now it is the man that is the song. We do not hear him very much to-day;— His piercing and eternal cadence rings Too pure for us—too powerfully pure,
Too lovingly triumphant, and too large; But there are some that hear him, and they know That he shall sing to-morrow for all men, And that all time shall listen.
The master-songs are ended?—Rather say No songs are ended that are ever sung, And that no names are dead names. When we write Men's letters on proud marble or on sand, We write them there forever.
KOSMOS Ah, shuddering men that falter and shrink so To look on death,—what were the days we live, Where life is half a struggle to forgive, But for the love that finds us when we go? Is God a jester?—Does he laugh and throw Poor branded wretches here to sweat and strive For some vague end that never shall arrive?— And is He not yet weary of the show?
Think of it, all ye millions that have planned, And only planned, the largess of hard youth! Think of it, all ye builders on the sand, Whose works are down!—Is love so small, forsooth? Be brave! To-morrow you will understand The doubt, the pain, the triumph, and the Truth!
AN OLD STORY Strange that I did not know him then, That friend of mine!— I did not even show him then One friendly sign;
But cursed him for the ways he had To make me see My envy of the praise he had For praising me.
I would have rid the earth of him Once, in my pride! . . . I never knew the worth of him Until he died.
A POEM FOR MAX NORDAU Dun shades quiver down the lone long fallow, And the scared night shudders at the brown owl’s cry; The bleak reeds rattle as the winds whirl by, And frayed leaves flutter through the clumped shrubs callow.
Chill dews clinging on the low cold mallow Make a steel-keen shimmer where the spent stems lie; Dun shades quiver down the lone long fallow, And the scared night shudders at the brown owl’s cry.
Pale stars peering through the clouds' curled shallow Make a thin still flicker in a foul round sky; Black damp shadows through the hushed air fly; The lewd gloom wakens to a moon-sad sallow, Dun shades quiver down the lone long fallow.
BOSTON My northern pines are good enough for me, But there's a town my memory uprears— A town that always like a friend appears, And always in the sunrise by the sea. And over it, somehow, there seems to be A downward flash of something new and fierce That ever strives to clear, but never clears The dimness of a charmed antiquity.
I know my Boston is a counterfeit,— A frameless imitation, all bereft
Of living nearness, noise, and common speech; But I am glad for every glimpse of it,— And there it is—plain as a name that’s left In letters by warm hands I cannot reach.
THE NIGHT BEFORE "As if God made him and then wondered why." Look you, Domine; look you, and listen. Look in my face, first: search every line there; Mark every feature,—chin, lip, and forehead. Look in my eyes, and tell me the lesson Yon read there;—measure my nose, and tell me Where I am wanting. A man's nose, Domine, Is often the cast of his inward spirit;— So mark mine well. . . . But why do you smile so?— Pity, or what?—Is it written all over, This face of mine, with a brute's confession?— Nothing but sin there? nothing but hell-scars?— Or is it because there is something better— A glimmer of good, maybe,—or a shadow Of something that's followed me down from childhood— Followed me all these years and kept me, Spite of my slips and sins and follies— Spite of my last red sin, my murder,— Just out of hell?—Yes?—something of that kind? And you smile for that? . . . You re a good man, Domine!— The one good man in the world who knows me— My one good friend in a world that mocks me, Here in this hard stone cage. . . . But I leave it To-morrow. . . . To-morrow!—My God! am I crying?— Are these things tears?—Tears!—What! am I frightened?— I who swore I should go to the scaffold
With big strong steps, and . . . No more,—I thank you, But no. . . . I am all right now! . . . No!—listen!
I am here to be hanged: to be hanged to-morrow— At six o'clock, when the sun is rising.— And why am I here?—Not a soul can tell you But this poor shivering thing before you— This fluttering wreck of the man God made him, For God knows what wild reason.—Hear me, And learn from my lips the truth of my story.— There’s nothing strange in what I shall tell you— Nothing mysterious, nothing unearthly,— But damnably human;—and you shall hear it. Not one of those little black lawyers were told it; The judge, with his big bald head, never knew it; And the jury (God rest their poor souls!) never dreamed it,— Once there were three in the world who could tell it,— Now there are two. There'll be two to-morrow:— You, my friend, and . . . But there's the story.
When I was a boy the world was heaven. I never knew then that the men and the women Who petted and called me a brave big fellow Were ever less happy than I; but wisdom— Which comes with the years, you know,—soon showed me The secret of all my glittering childhood— The broken key to the fairies' castle That held my life in the fresh glad season When I was the king of the earth.—Then slowly—
And yet so swiftly!—there came the knowledge That the marvelous life I had lived was my life; That the glorious world I had loved was my world;— And that every man and every woman And every child was a different being, Wrought, with a different heat and fired With passions born of a single spirit;— That the pleasure I felt was not their pleasure, Nor my sorrow—a kind of nameless pity For something, I knew not what—their sorrow. And thus was I taught my first hard lesson,— The lesson we suffer the most in learning: That a happy man is a man forgetful Of all the torturing ills around him.
When or where I first met the woman I cherished and made my wife, no matter. Enough to say that I found her and kept her Here in my heart with as pure a devotion As ever Christ felt for his brothers. Forgive me For naming his name in your patient presence; But I feel my words, and the truth I utter Is God’s own truth. I loved that woman!— Not for her face, but for something fairer— Something diviner—I thought—than beauty: I loved the spirit—the human something That seemed to chime with my own condition, And make soul-music when we were together;— And we were never apart from the moment My eyes flashed into her eyes the message That swept itself in a quivering answer Back through my strange lost being. My pulses Leapt with an aching speed; and the measure Of this great world grew small and smaller, Till it seemed the sky and the land and the ocean Closed at last in a mist all golden Around us two.—And we stood for a season
Like gods outflung from chaos, dreaming That we were the king and the queen of the fire That reddened the clouds of love that held us Blind to the new world soon to be ours— Ours to seize and sway. The passion Of that great love was a nameless passion— Bright as the blaze of the sun at noonday, Wild as the flames of hell; but, mark you, Never a whit less pure for its fervor. The baseness in me (for I was human) Burned like a worm, and perished; and nothing Was left me then but a soul that mingled Itself with hers, and swayed and shuddered In fearful triumph.—When I consider That helpless love and the cursed folly That wrecked my life for the sake of a woman, Who broke with a laugh the chains of her marriage (Whatever the word may mean) I wonder If all the woe was her sin, or whether The chains themselves were enough to lead her In love's despite to break them. . . . Sinners And saints—I say—are rocked in the cradle, But never are known till the will within them Speaks in its own good time,—So I foster Even to-night for the woman who wronged me Nothing of hate, nor of love, but a feeling Of still regret.—For the man . . . But hear me, And judge for yourself:—
For a time the seasons Changed and passed in a sweet succession That seemed to me like an endless music: Life was a rolling psalm, and the choirs Of God were glad for our love.—I fancied All this, and more than I dare to tell you To-night,—yes, more than I dare to remember;— And then . . . . well, the music stopped. There are moments In all men's lives when it stops, I fancy,—
Or seems to stop,—till it comes to cheer them Again with a larger sound. The curtain Of life just then is lifted a little To give to their sight new joys—new sorrows— Or nothing at all, sometimes.—I was watching The slow sweet scenes of a golden picture, Flushed and alive with a long delusion That made the murmur of home, when I shuddered And felt like a knife that awful silence That comes when the music goes—forever. The truth came over my life like a darkness Over a forest where one man wanders, Worse than alone. For a time I staggered And stumbled on with a weak persistence After the phantom of hope that darted And dodged like a frightened thing before me, To quit me at last, and vanish. Nothing Was left me then but the curse of living And bearing through all my days the fever And thirst of a poisoned love.—Were I stronger, Or weaker, perhaps my scorn had saved me— Given me strength to crush my sorrow With hate for her and the world that praised her— To have left her, then and there,—to have conquered That old false life with a new and a wiser;— Such things are easy in words. . . . You listen, And frown, I suppose, that I never mention That beautiful word, forgive!—I forgave her First of all; and I praised kind heaven That I was a brave clean man to do it; And then I tried to forget.—Forgiveness! . . . What does it mean when the one forgiven Shivers and weeps and clings and kisses The credulous fool that holds her, and tells him A thousand things of a good man's mercy, And then slips off with a laugh and plunges Back to the sin she has quit for a season
To tell him that hell and the world are better For her than a prophet's heaven?—Believe me, The love that dies ere its flames are wasted In search of an alien soul is better, Better by far than the lonely passion That burns back into the heart that feeds it. For I loved her still; and the more she mocked me,— Fooled with her endless pleading promise Of future faith, the more I believed her The penitent thing she seemed; and the stronger Her choking arms and her small hot kisses Bound me and burned my brain to pity, The more she grew to the heavenly creature That brightened the life I had lost forever. The truth was gone somehow for the moment; The curtain fell for a time; and I fancied We were again like gods together, Loving again with the old glad rapture.— But the scenes like these, too often repeated, Failed at last and her guile was wasted, I made an end of her shrewd caresses And told her a few straight words. She took them
Full at their worth—and the farce was over.
At first my dreams of the past upheld me, But they were a short support: the present Pushed them away, and I fell. The mission Of life (whatever it was) was blasted; My game was lost. And I met the winner Of that foul deal as a sick slave gathers His painful strength at the sight of his master; And when he was past I cursed him, fearful Of that strange chance which makes us mighty Or mean, or both.—I cursed him and hated The stones he pressed with his heel; I followed His easy march with a backward envy, And cursed myself for the beast within me.— But pride is the master of love; and the vision Of those old days grew faint and fainter:—
The counterfeit wife my mercy sheltered Was nothing now but a woman;—a woman Out of my way, and out of my nature.— My battle with blinded love was over, My battle with aching pride beginning.— If I was the loser at first, I wonder If I am the winner now! . . . I doubt it. My life is a losing game; and to-morrow . . . To-morrow! . . . Christ!—did I say to-morrow ? . . . Is your brandy good for death? . . . There;—listen:—
When love goes out, and a man is driven To shun mankind for the scars that make him A joke for all chattering tongues, he carries A double burden. The woes I suffered After that hard betrayal made me Pity, at first, all breathing creatures On this bewildered earth. I studied Their faces and made for myself the story Of all their scattered lives. Like brothers And sisters they seemed to me then; and I nourished A stranger friendship wrought in my fancy Between those people and me.—But somehow, As time went on, there came queer glances Out of their eyes; and the shame that stung me Harassed my pride with a crazed impression That every face in the surging city Was turned to me; and I saw sly whispers, Now and then, as I walked and wearied My wasted life twice over in bearing With all my sorrow the sorrows of others,— Till I found myself their fool. Then I trembled— A poor scared thing—and their prying faces Told me the ghastly truth:—they were laughing At me, and my fate. My God, I could feel it— That laughter!—And then the children caught it;
And I, like a struck dog, crept and listened. And then when I met the man who had weakened A woman's love to his own desire, It seemed to me that all hell were laughing In fiendish concert!—I was their victim— And his, and hate's. And there was the struggle!— As long as the earth we tread holds something
A tortured heart can love, the meaning
Of life is not wholly blurred; but after The last loved thing in the world has left us, We know the triumph of hate. The glory Of good goes out forever; the beacon Of sin is the light that leads us downward— Down to the fiery end. The road runs Right through hell; and the souls that follow The cursed ways where its windings lead them Suffer enough, I say, to merit All grace that a God can give.—The fashion Of our belief is to lift all beings Born for a life that knows no struggle In sin's tight snares to eternal glory— All apart from the branded millions Who carry through life their faces graven With sure brute scars that tell the story Of their foul, fated passions.—Science Has yet no salve to smooth or soften The cradle-scars of a tyrant's visage;— No drug to purge from the vital essence Of souls the sleeping venom. Virtue May flower in hell, when its roots are twisted And wound with the roots of vice; but the stronger Never is known till there comes that battle With sin to prove the victor. Perilous Things are these demons we call our passions— Slaves are we of their roving fancies, Fools of their devilish glee.—You think me, I know, in this maundering way designing To lighten the load of my guilt and cast it Half on the shoulders of God . . . But hear me!—
I’m partly a man—for all my weakness,— If weakness it were to stand and murder Before men's eyes the man who had murdered Me, and driven my burning forehead With horns for the world to laugh at . . . Trust me!— And try to believe my words but a portion Of what God's purpose made me!—The coward Within me cries for this;—and I beg you Now, as I come to the end, to remember That women and men are on earth to travel All on a different road. Hereafter The roads may meet . . . I trust in something— I know not what . . . Well, this was the way of it:— Stung with the shame and the secret fury That comes to the man who has thrown his pittance Of self at a traitor's feet, I wandered Weeks and weeks in a baffled frenzy, Till at last the devil spoke. I heard him, And laughed at the love that strove to touch me— The dead, lost love;—and I gripped the demon Close to my breast, and held him, praising The fates and the furies that gave me the courage To follow his wild command.—Forgetful Of all to come when the work was over— There came to me then no stony vision Of these three hundred days—I cherished An awful joy in my brain. I pondered And weighed the thing in my mind, and gloried In life to think that I was to conquer Death at his own dark door,—and chuckled To think of it done so cleanly.—One evening I knew that my time had come. I shuddered A little, but rather for doubt than terror, And followed him—led by the nameless devil I worshipped and called my brother.—The city Shone like a dream that night: the windows Flashed with a piercing flame, and the pavements
Pulsed and swayed with a warmth—or something That seemed so then to my feet—and thrilled me With a quick, dizzy joy; and the women And men, like marvellous things of magic, Floated and laughed and sang by my shoulder, Sent with a wizard motion. Through it And over and under it all there sounded A murmur of life, like bees; and I listened And laughed again to think of the flower That grew, blood red, for me! . . . This fellow Was one of the popular sort who flourish Unruffled where gods would fall. For a conscience He carried a snug deceit that made him The man of the time and the place, whatever The time or the place might be:—were he sounding With a genial craft that cloaked its purpose, Nigh to itself, the depth of a woman Fooled with his brainless art,—or sending The midnight home with songs and bottles,— The cad was there, and his ease forever Shone with the smooth and slippery polish That tells the snake.—That night he drifted Into an up-town haunt and ordered— Whatever it was—with a soft assurance That made me mad as I stood behind him, Gripping his death, and waited.—Coward, I think, is the name the world has given To men like me; but I'll swear I never Thought of my own disgrace when I shot him . . . Yes, in the back;—I know it. I know it Now, but what if I do? . . . As I watched him Lying there dead in the scattered sawdust, Wet with a day's blown froth, I noted That things were still:—that the walnut tables, Where men but a moment before were sitting, Were gone;—that a screen of something around me Shut them out of my sight. But the gilded
Signs of a hundred beers and whiskies Flashed from the walls above, and the mirrors And glasses behind the bar were lighted In some strange way, and into my spirit A thousand shafts of terrible fire Burned like death, and I fell.—The story Of what came then, you know.
But tell me, What does the whole thing mean?—What are we— Slaves of an awful ignorance?—puppets Pulled by a fiend?—or gods without knowing it? Do we shut from ourselves our own salvation,— Or what do we do!—I tell you, Domine, There are times in the lives of us poor devils When heaven and hell get mixed:—though conscience May come like a whisper of Christ to warn us Away from our sins, it is lost or laughed at,— And then we fall. And for all who have fallen— Even for him—I hold no malice, Nor much compassion: a mightier mercy Than mine must shrieve him.—And I,—I am going Into the light?—or into the darkness? Why do I sit through these sickening hours, And hope?—Good God! are they hours!—hours? . . . Yes!—I am done with days. And to-morrow— We two may meet! . . . To-morrow! . . . To-morrow! . . .
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1935, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 88 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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