A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems | Page 5

on land?Flash and fade the wheeling wings
on wings of mews that plunge and scream.?Hour on hour along the line
of life and time's evasive strand?Shines and darkens, wanes and waxes,
slays and dies: and scarce they seem?More than motes that thronged and trembled
in the brief noon's breath and beam.?Some with crying and wailing, some
with notes like sound of bells that toll,?Some with sighing and laughing, some
with words that blessed and made us whole,?Passed, and left us, and we know not
what they were, nor what were we.?Would we know, being mortal? Never
breath of answering whisper stole?From the shore that hath no shore
beyond it set in all the sea.
Shadows, would we question darkness?
Ere our eyes and brows be fanned?Round with airs of twilight, washed
with dews from sleep's eternal stream,?Would we know sleep's guarded secret?
Ere the fire consume the brand,?Would it know if yet its ashes
may requicken? yet we deem?Surely man may know, or ever
night unyoke her starry team,?What the dawn shall be, or if
the dawn shall be not, yea, the scroll?Would we read of sleep's dark scripture,
pledge of peace or doom of dole.?Ah, but here man's heart leaps, yearning
toward the gloom with venturous glee,?Though his pilot eye behold
nor bay nor harbour, rock nor shoal,?From the shore that hath no shore
beyond it set in all the sea.
Friend, who knows if death indeed
have life or life have death for goal??Day nor night can tell us, nor
may seas declare nor skies unroll?What has been from everlasting,
or if aught shall always be.?Silence answering only strikes
response reverberate on the soul?From the shore that hath no shore
beyond it set in all the sea.
_A NEW-YEAR ODE_
TO VICTOR HUGO
I.
Twice twelve times have the springs of years refilled?Their fountains from the river-head of time?Since by the green sea's marge, ere autumn chilled?Waters and woods with sense of changing clime,?A great light rose upon my soul, and thrilled?My spirit of sense with sense of spheres in chime,?Sound as of song wherewith a God would build?Towers that no force of conquering war might climb.
Wind shook the glimmering sea?Even as my soul in me?Was stirred with breath of mastery more sublime,
Uplift and borne along?More thunderous tides of song,?Where wave rang back to wave more rapturous rhyme?And world on world flashed lordlier light?Than ever lit the wandering ways of ships by night.
II.
The spirit of God, whose breath of life is song,?Moved, though his word was human, on the face?Of those deep waters of the soul, too long?Dumb, dark, and cold, that waited for the grace?Wherewith day kindles heaven: and as some throng?Of quiring wings fills full some lone chill place?With sudden rush of life and joy, more strong?Than death or sorrow or all night's darkling race,
So was my heart, that heard?All heaven in each deep word,?Filled full with light of thought, and waxed apace
Itself more wide and deep,?To take that gift and keep?And cherish while my days fulfilled their space;?A record wide as earth and sea,?The Legend writ of Ages past and yet to be.
III.
As high the chant of Paradise and Hell?Rose, when the soul of Milton gave it wings;?As wide the sweep of Shakespeare's empire fell,?When life had bared for him her secret springs;?But not his various soul might range and dwell?Amid the mysteries of the founts of things;?Nor Milton's range of rule so far might swell?Across the kingdoms of forgotten kings.
Men, centuries, nations, time,?Life, death, love, trust, and crime,?Rang record through the change of smitten strings
That felt an exile's hand?Sound hope for every land?More loud than storm's cloud-sundering trumpet rings,?And bid strong death for judgment rise,?And life bow down for judgment of his awless eyes.
IV.
And death, soul-stricken in his strength, resigned?The keeping of the sepulchres to song;?And life was humbled, and his height of mind?Brought lower than lies a grave-stone fallen along;?And like a ghost and like a God mankind?Rose clad with light and darkness; weak and strong,?Clean and unclean, with eyes afire and blind,?Wounded and whole, fast bound with cord and thong,
Free; fair and foul, sin-stained,?And sinless; crowned and chained;?Fleet-limbed, and halting all his lifetime long;
Glad of deep shame, and sad?For shame's sake; wise, and mad;?Girt round with love and hate of right and wrong;?Armed and disarmed for sleep and strife;?Proud, and sore fear made havoc of his pride of life.
V.
Shadows and shapes of fable and storied sooth?Rose glorious as with gleam of gold unpriced;?Eve, clothed with heavenly nakedness and youth?That matched the morning's; Cain, self-sacrificed?On crime's first altar: legends wise as truth,?And truth in legends deep embalmed and spiced;?The stars that saw the starlike eyes of Ruth,?The grave that heard the clarion call of Christ.
And higher than sorrow and mirth?The heavenly song of earth?Sprang, in such notes as might have well sufficed
To still the storms of time?And sin's contentious clime?With peace renewed of life reparadised:?Earth, scarred not yet with temporal scars;?Goddess of gods, our mother, chosen among the stars.
VI.
Earth fair as heaven, ere