Weeds by the Wall: Verses

THE ISLE OF VOICES

The wind blew free that morn that we,High-hearted, sailed away;Bound for Favonian islands blest,Remote within the utmost West,Beyond the golden day.There, we were told, each dream of old,Each deed and dream of youth,Each myth of life's divinest prime,And every romance, dear to time,Put on immortal truth.The love undone, the aim unwon,The hope that turned despair;The thought unborn; the dream that died;The unattained, unsatisfied,Should be accomplished there.So we believed. And, undeceived,A little crew set sail;A little crew with hearts as stoutAs any yet that faced a doubtAnd tore away its veil.And time went by; and sea and skyHad worn our masts and decks;When, lo! one morn with canvas torn,A phantom ship, we came forlornInto the Sea of Wrecks.There, day and night, the mist lay white,And pale stars shone at noon;The sea around was foam and fire,And overhead hung wan a wire,A will-o'-wisp of moon.And through the mist, all white and whist,Gaunt ships, with sea-weed wound,With rotting masts, upon whose sparsThe corposants lit spectre stars,Sailed by without a sound.And all about, – now in, now out, —Their ancient hulls was shedThe worm-like glow of green decay,That writhed and glimmered in the grayOf canvas overhead.And each that passed, in hull and mast,Seemed that wild ship that fleesBefore the tempest – seamen tell —Deep-cargoed with the curse of Hell,Through roaring night and seas.Ay! many a craft we left abaftUpon that haunted sea;But never a hulk that clewed a sail,Or waved a hand, or answered hail,And never a man saw we.At last we came where – pouring flame —In darkness and in storm,A vast volcano westward rearedAn awful summit, lava-seared,Like some terrific arm.And we could feel beneath our keelThe ocean throb and swell,As if the Earthquake there uncoiledIts monster bulk, or Titans toiledAt the red heart of Hell.Like madmen now we turned our prowNorth, towards an ocean weirdOf Northern Lights and icy blasts;And for ten moons with reeling mastsAnd leaking hold we steered.Then black as blood through streaming scudLand loomed above our boom,A land of iron gulfs and cragsAnd cataracts, like wind-tossed rags,And caverns lost in gloom.And burning white on every height,And white in every cave,A naked spirit, with a flame,Now gleamed, now vanished; went and cameAbove the whining wave.No mortal thing of foot or wingMade glad its steep and strand;But voices, voices seemingly —Vague voices of the sky and sea —Peopled the demon land.Yea, everywhere, in earth and air,A lamentation wept;That, gathering strength above, below,Now like a mighty wind of woe,Around the island swept.And in that sound, it seemed, was boundAll life's despair of art;The bitterness of joy that died;The anguish of faith's crucified;And love that broke its heart.The ghost it seemed of all we'd dreamed,Of all we had desired;That – turned a curse, an empty cry —With wailing words went trailing byIn hope's dead robes attired.And could this be the land that weHad sought for soon and late?Those Islands of the Blest, the fair,Where we had hoped to ease our careAnd end the fight with fate?O lie that lured! O pain endured!O years of toil and thirst!Where we had looked for blesséd groundThe Islands of the Damned we found,And in the end – were curst!

A. D. NINETEEN HUNDRED

War and Disaster, Famine and Pestilence,Vaunt-couriers of the Century that comes,Behold them shaking their tremendous plumesAbove the world! where all the air grows denseWith rumors of destruction and a sense,Cadaverous, of corpses and of tombsPredestined; while, – like monsters in the glooms, —Bristling with battle, shadowy and immense,The Nations rise in wild apocalypse. —Where now the boast Earth makes of civilization?Its brag of Christianity? – In vainWe seek to see them in the dread eclipseOf hell and horror, all the devastationOf Death triumphant on his hills of slain.

CAVERNS

Written of Colossal Cave, KentuckyAisles and abysses; leagues no man explores,Of rock that labyrinths and night that drips;Where everlasting silence broods, with lipsOf adamant, o'er earthquake-builded floors.Where forms, such as the Demon-World adores,Laborious water carves; whence echo shipsWild-tongued o'er pools where petrifaction stripsHer breasts of crystal from which crystal pours. —Here where primordial fear, the Gorgon, sitsStaring all life to stone in ghastly mirth,I seem to tread, with awe no tongue can tell, —Beneath vast domes, by torrent-tortured pits,'Mid wrecks terrific of the ruined Earth, —An ancient causeway of forgotten Hell.

OF THE SLUMS

Red-faced as old carousal, and with eyesA hard, hot blue; her hair a frowsy flame,Bold, dowdy-bosomed, from her widow-frameShe leans, her mouth all insult and all lies.Or slattern-slippered and in sluttish gown,With ribald mirth and words too vile to name,A new Doll Tearsheet, glorying in her shame,Armed with her Falstaff now she takes the town.The flaring lights of alley-way saloons,The reek of hideous gutters and black oathsOf drunkenness from vice-infested dens,Are to her senses what the silvery moon'sChaste splendor is, and what the blossoming growthsOf earth and bird-song are to innocence.

THE WINDS

Those hewers of the clouds, the winds, – that lairAt the four compass-points, – are out to-night;I hear their sandals trample on the height,I hear their voices trumpet through the air.Builders of Storm, God's workmen, now they bear,Up the steep stair of sky, on backs of might,Huge tempest bulks, while, – sweat that blinds their sight, —The rain is shaken from tumultuous hair:Now, sweepers of the firmament, they broom,Like gathered dust, the rolling mists alongHeaven's floors of sapphire; all the beautiful blueOf skyey corridor and aëry roomPreparing, with large laughter and loud song,For the white moon and stars to wander through.

PROTOTYPES

Whether it be that we in letters traceThe pure exactness of a woodbird's strain,And name it song; or with the brush attainThe high perfection of a wildflower's face;Or mold in difficult marble all the graceWe know as man; or from the wind and rainCatch elemental rapture of refrainAnd mark in music to due time and place:The aim of art is nature; to unfoldHer truth and beauty to the souls of menIn close suggestions; in whose forms is castNothing so new but 'tis long eons old;Nothing so old but 'tis as young as whenThe mind conceived it in the ages past.

TOUCHES

In heavens of rivered blue, that sunset dyesWith glaucous flame, deep in the west the DayStands Midas-like; or, wading on his way,Touches with splendor all the twilight skies.Each cloud that, like a stepping-stone, he triesWith rosy foot, transforms its sober grayTo burning gold; while, ray on crystal ray,Within his wake the stars like bubbles rise.So should the artist in his work accordAll things with beauty, and communicateHis soul's high magic and divinityTo all he does; and, hoping no reward,Toil onward, making darkness aureateWith light of worlds that are and worlds to be.

THE WOMAN SPEAKS

Why have you come? to see me in my shame?A thing to spit on, to despise and scorn? —And then to ask me! You, by whom was tornAnd then cast by, like some vile rag, my name!What shelter could you give me, now, that blameAnd loathing would not share? that wolves of viceWould not besiege with eyes of glaring ice?Wherein Sin sat not with her face of flame?"You love me"? – God! – If yours be love, for lustHell must invent another synonym!If yours be love, then hatred is the wayTo Heaven and God! and not with soul but dustMust burn the faces of the Cherubim, —O lie of lies, if yours be love, I say!

LOVE, THE INTERPRETER

Thou art the music that I hear in sleep,The poetry that lures me on in dreams;The magic, thou, that holds my thought with themesOf young romance in revery's mystic keep.The lily's aura, and the damask deepThat clothes the rose; the whispering soul that seemsTo haunt the wind; the rainbow light that streams,Like some wild spirit, 'thwart the cataract's leap —Are glimmerings of thee and thy loveliness,Pervading all my world; interpretingThe marvel and the wonder these disclose:For, lacking thee, to me were meaninglessLife, love and hope, the joy of every thing,And all the beauty that the wide world knows.

UNANSWERED

How long ago it is since we went Maying!Since she and I went Maying long ago!The years have left my forehead lined, I know,Have thinned my hair around the temples graying.Ah, time will change us; yea, I hear it saying, —"She, too, grows old: the face of rose and snowHas lost its freshness: in the hair's brown glowSome strands of silver sadly, too, are straying.The form you knew, whose beauty so enspelled,Has lost the litheness of its loveliness:And all the gladness that her blue eyes heldTears and the world have hardened with distress." —"True! true!" I answer, "O ye years that part!These things are changed, but is her heart, her heart?"

EARTH AND MOON

I saw the day like some great monarch die,Gold-couched, behind the clouds' rich tapestries.Then, purple-sandaled, clad in silencesOf sleep, through halls of skyey lazuli.The twilight, like a mourning queen, trailed by,Dim-paged of dreams and shadowy mysteries;And now the night, the star-robed child of these,In meditative loveliness draws nigh.Earth, – like to Romeo, – deep in dew and scent,Beneath Heaven's window, watching till a light,Like some white blossom, in its square be set, —Lifts a faint face unto the firmament,That, with the moon, grows gradually bright,Bidding him climb and clasp his Juliet.

PEARLS

Baroque, but beautiful, between the lanes,The valves of nacre of a mussel-shell,Behold, a pearl! shaped like the burnished bellOf some strange blossom that long afternoonsOf summer coax to open: all the moon'sChaste lustre in it; hues that only dwellWith purity… It takes me, like a spell,Back to a day when, whistling truant tunes,A barefoot boy I waded 'mid the rocks,Searching for shells deep in the creek's slow swirl,Unconscious of the pearls that 'round me lay:While, 'mid wild-roses, – all her tomboy locksBlond-blowing, – stood, unnoticed then, a girl,My sweetheart once, the pearl I flung away.

IN THE FOREST

One well might deem, among these miles of woods,Such were the Forests of the Holy Grail, —Broceliand and Dean; where, clothed in mail,The Knights of Arthur rode, and all the broodsOf legend laired. – And, where no sound intrudesUpon the ear, except the glimmering wailOf some far bird; or, in some flowery swale,A brook that murmurs to the solitudes,Might think he hears the laugh of VivienBlent with the moan of Merlin, muttering boundBy his own magic to one stony spot;And in the cloud, that looms above the glen, —In which the sun burns like the Table Round, —Might dream he sees the towers of Camelot.

ENCHANTMENT

The deep seclusion of this forest path, —O'er which the green boughs weave a canopy,Along which bluet and anemoneSpread a dim carpet; where the twilight hathHer dark abode; and, sweet as aftermath.Wood-fragrance breathes, – has so enchanted me,That yonder blossoming bramble seems to beSome sylvan resting, rosy from her bath:Has so enspelled me with tradition's dreams,That every foam-white stream that twinkling flows,And every bird that flutters wings of tan,Or warbles hidden, to my fancy seemsA Naiad dancing to a Faun who blowsWild woodland music on the pipes of Pan.

DUSK

Corn-colored clouds upon a sky of gold,And 'mid their sheaves, – where, like a daisy bloomLeft by the reapers to the gathering gloom,The star of twilight flames, – as Ruth, 'tis told,Dreamed homesick 'mid the harvest fields of old,The Dusk goes gleaning color and perfumeFrom Bible slopes of heaven, that illumeHer pensive beauty deep in shadows stoled.Hushed is the forest; and blue vale and hillAre still, save for the brooklet, sleepilyStumbling the stone, its foam like some white foot:Save for the note of one far whippoorwill,And in my heart her name, – like some sweet beeWithin a flow'r, – blowing a fairy flute.

THE BLUE BIRD

From morn till noon upon the window-paneThe tempest tapped with rainy finger-nails,And all the afternoon the blustering galesBeat at the door with furious feet of rain.The rose, near which the lily bloom lay slain,Like some red wound dripped by the garden rails,On which the sullen slug left slimy trails —Meseemed the sun would never shine again.Then in the drench, long, loud and full of cheer, —A skyey herald tabarded in blue, —A bluebird bugled … and at once a bowWas bent in heaven, and I seemed to hearGod's sapphire spaces crystallizing throughThe strata'd clouds in azure tremolo.

CAN SUCH THINGS BE?

Meseemed that while she played, while lightly yetHer fingers fell, as roses bloom by bloom,I listened – dead within a mighty roomOf some old palace where great casements letGaunt moonlight in, that glimpsed a parapetOf statued marble: in the arrased gloomMajestic pictures towered, dim as doom,The dreams of Titian and of Tintoret.And then, it seemed, along a corridor,A mile of oak, a stricken footstep came.Hurrying, yet slow … I thought long centuriesPassed ere she entered – she, I loved of yore,For whom I died, who wildly wailed my nameAnd bent and kissed me on the mouth and eyes.

THE PASSING GLORY

Slow sinks the sun, – a great carbuncle ballRed in the cavern of a sombre cloud, —And in her garden, where the dense weeds crowd.Among her dying asters stands the Fall,Like some lone woman in a ruined hall,Dreaming of desolation and the shroud;Or through decaying woodlands goes, down-bowed,Hugging the tatters of her gipsy shawl.The gaunt wind rises, like an angry hand,And sweeps the sprawling spider from its web,Smites frantic music in the twilight's ear;And all around, like melancholy sand,Rains dead leaves down – wild leaves, that mark the ebb,In Earth's dark hour-glass, of another year.

SEPTEMBER

The bubbled blue of morning-glory spires,Balloon-blown foam of moonflowers, and sweet snowsOf clematis, through which September goes,Song-hearted, rich in realized desires,Are flanked by hotter hues: by tawny firesOf acrid marigolds, – that light long rowsOf lamps, – and salvias, red as day's red close, —That torches seem, – by which the Month attiresBarbaric beauty; like some Asian queen,Towering imperial in her two-fold crownOf harvest and of vintage; all her formMajestic gold and purple: in her mienThe might of motherhood; her baby brown,Abundance, high on one exultant arm.

HOODOO

She mutters and stoops by the lone bayou —The little green leaves are hushed on the trees —An owl in an oak cries "Who-oh-who,"And a fox barks back where the moon slants throughThe moss that sways to a sudden breeze …Or That she sees.Whose eyes are coals in the light o' the moon —"Soon, oh, soon," hear her croon,"Woe, oh, woe to the octoroon!"She mutters and kneels and her bosom is bare —The little green leaves are stirred on the trees —A black bat brushes her unkempt hair,And the hiss of a snake glides 'round her there …Or is it the voice of the ghostly breeze,Or That she sees,Whose mouth is flame in the light o' the moon? —"Soon, oh, soon," hear her croon,"Woe, oh, woe to the octoroon!"She mutters and digs and buries it deep —The little green leaves are wild on the trees —And nearer and nearer the noises creep,That gibber and maunder and whine and weep …Or is it the wave and the weariless breeze,Or That she sees,Which hobbles away in the light o' the moon? —"Soon, oh, soon," hear her croon,"Woe, oh, woe to the octoroon!"In the hut where the other girl sits with him —The little green leaves hang limp on the trees —All on a sudden the moon grows dim …Is it the shadow of cloud or of limb,Cast in the door by the moaning breeze?Or That she sees,Which limps and leers in the light o' the moon? —"Soon, oh, soon," hear it croon,"Woe, oh, woe to the octoroon!"It has entered in at the open door —The little green leaves fall dead from the trees —And she in the cabin lies stark on the floor,And she in the woods has her lover once more …And – is it the hoot of the dying breeze?Or him who sees,Who mocks and laughs in the light o' the moon: —"Soon, oh, soon," hear him croon,"Woe, oh, woe to the octoroon!"

THE OTHER WOMAN

You have shut me out from your tears and griefOver the man laid low and hoary.Listen to me now: I am no thief! —You have shut me out from your tears and grief, —Listen to me, I will tell my story.The love of a man is transitory. —What do you know of his past? the yearsHe gave to another his manhood's glory? —The love of a man is transitory.Listen to me now: open your ears.Over the dead have done with tears!Over the man who loved to madnessMe the woman you met with sneers, —Over the dead have done with tears!Me the woman so sunk in badness.He loved me ever, and that is gladness! —There by the dead now tell her so;There by the dead where she bows in sadness. —He loved me ever, and that is gladness! —Mine the gladness and hers the woe.The best of his life was mine. Now go,Tell her this that her pride may perish,Her with his name, his wife, you know!The best of his life was mine. Now go,Tell her this so she cease to cherish.Bury him then with pomp and flourish!Bury him now without my kiss!Here is a thing for your hearts to nourish, —Bury him then with pomp and flourish!Bury him now I have told you this.

A SONG FOR LABOR

IOh, the morning meads, the dewy meads,Where he ploughs and harrows and sows the seeds,Singing a song of manly deeds,In the blossoming springtime weather;The heart in his bosom as high as the wordSaid to the sky by the mating bird,While the beat of an answering heart is heard,His heart and love's together.IIOh, the noonday heights, the sunny heights,Where he stoops to the harvest his keen scythe smites,Singing a song of the work that requites,In the ripening summer weather;The soul in his body as light as the sighOf the little cloud-breeze that cools the sky,While he bears an answering soul reply,His soul and love's together.IIIOh, the evening vales, the twilight vales,Where he labors and sweats to the thud of flails,Singing a song of the toil that avails,In the fruitful autumn weather;In heart and in soul as free from fearsAs the first white star in the sky that clears,While the music of life and of love he hears,Of life and of love together.

AFTERWORD

What vague traditions do the golden eves.What legends do the dawnsInscribe in fire on Heaven's azure leaves,The red sun colophons?What ancient Stories do the waters verse?What tales of war and loveDo winds within the Earth's vast house rehearse,God's stars stand guard above? —Would I could know them as they are expressedIn hue and melody!And say, in words, the beauties they suggest.Language their mystery!And in one song magnificently rise,The music of the spheres,That more than marble should immortalizeMy name in after years.