Behind the Arras | Page 2

I care for best;?This fronting west,?With the strange hills in view,?Where the great sun goes,--where I may go too,?When my lease is through,--
Or this one for the morning and the east,?Where a man may feast?His eyes on looming sails,?And be the first to catch their foreign hails?Or spy their bales.
Then the pale summer twilights towards the pole!?It thrills my soul?With wonder and delight,?When gold-green shadows walk the world at night,?So still, so bright.
There at the window many a time of year,?Strange faces peer,?Solemn though not unkind,?Their wits in search of something left behind?Time out of mind;
As if they once had lived here, and stole back?To the window crack?For a peep which seems to say,?"Good fortune, brother, in your house of clay!"?And then, "Good day!"
I hear their footsteps on the gravel walk,?Their scraps of talk,?And hurrying after, reach?Only the crazy sea-drone of the beach?In endless speech.
And often when the autumn noons are still,?By swale and hill?I see their gipsy signs,?Trespassing somewhere on my border lines;?With what designs?
I forth afoot; but when I reach the place,?Hardly a trace,?Save the soft purple haze?Of smouldering camp-fires, any hint betrays?Who went these ways.
Or tatters of pale aster blue, descried?By the roadside,?Reveal whither they fled;?Or the swamp maples, here and there a shred?Of Indian red.
But most of all, the marvellous tapestry?Engrosses me,?Where such strange things are rife,?Fancies of beasts and flowers, and love and strife,?Woven to the life;
Degraded shapes and splendid seraph forms,?And teeming swarms?Of creatures gauzy dim?That cloud the dusk, and painted fish that swim,?At the weaver's whim;
And wonderful birds that wheel and hang in the air;?And beings with hair,?And moving eyes in the face,?And white bone teeth and hideous grins, who race?From place to place;
They build great temples to their John-a-nod,?And fume and plod?To deck themselves with gold,?And paint themselves like chattels to be sold,?Then turn to mould.
Sometimes they seem almost as real as I;?I hear them sigh;?I see them bow with grief,?Or dance for joy like an aspen leaf;?But that is brief.
They have mad wars and phantom marriages;?Nor seem to guess?There are dimensions still,?Beyond thought's reach, though not beyond love's will,?For soul to fill.
And some I call my friends, and make believe?Their spirits grieve,?Brood, and rejoice with mine;?I talk to them in phrases quaint and fine?Over the wine;
I tell them all my secrets; touch their hands;?One understands?Perhaps. How hard he tries?To speak! And yet those glorious mild eyes,?His best replies!
I even have my cronies, one or two,?My cherished few.?But ah, they do not stay!?For the sun fades them and they pass away,?As I grow gray.
Yet while they last how actual they seem!?Their faces beam;?I give them all their names,?Bertram and Gilbert, Louis, Frank and James,?Each with his aims;?One thinks he is a poet, and writes verse?His friends rehearse;?Another is full of law;?A third sees pictures which his hand can draw?Without a flaw.
Strangest of all, they never rest. Day long?They shift and throng,?Moved by invisible will,?Like a great breath which puffs across my sill,?And then is still;
It shakes my lovely manikins on the wall;?Squall after squall,?Gust upon crowding gust,?It sweeps them willy nilly like blown dust?With glory or lust.
It is the world-ghost, the time-spirit, come?None knows where from,?The viewless draughty tide?And wash of being. I hear it yaw and glide,?And then subside,
Along these ghostly corridors and halls?Like faint footfalls;?The hangings stir in the air;?And when I start and challenge, "Who goes there?"?It answers, "Where?"
The wail and sob and moan of the sea's dirge,?Its plangor and surge;?The awful biting sough?Of drifted snows along some arctic bluff,?That veer and luff,
And have the vacant boding human cry,?As they go by;--?Is it a banished soul?Dredging the dark like a distracted mole?Under a knoll?
Like some invisible henchman old and gray,?Day after day?I hear it come and go,?With stealthy swift unmeaning to and fro,?Muttering low,
Ceaseless and daft and terrible and blind,?Like a lost mind.?I often chill with fear?When I bethink me, What if it should peer?At my shoulder here!
Perchance he drives the merry-go-round whose track?Is the zodiac;?His name is No-man's-friend;?And his gabbling parrot-talk has neither trend,?Beginning, nor end.
A prince of madness too, I'd cry, "A rat!"?And lunge thereat,--?Let out at one swift thrust?The cunning arch-delusion of the dust?I so mistrust,
But that I fear I should disclose a face?Wearing the trace?Of my own human guise,?Piteous, unharmful, loving, sad, and wise,?With the speaking eyes.
I would the house were rid of his grim pranks,?Moaning from banks?Of pine trees in the moon,?Startling the silence like a demoniac loon?At dead of noon,
Or whispering his fool-talk to the leaves?About my eaves.?And yet how can I know?'T is not a happy Ariel masking so?In mocking woe?
Then with a little broken laugh I say,?Snatching away?The curtain where he grinned?(My feverish sight thought) like a sin unsinned,?"Only the wind!"
Yet often too he steals so softly by,?With half a sigh,?I deem he must be mild,?Fair as a woman, gentle as