Behind the Arras | Page 3

a child,?And forest wild.
Passing the door where an old wind-harp swings,?With its five strings,?Contrived long years ago?By my first predecessor bent to show?His handcraft so,
He lays his fingers on the ?olian wire,?As a core of fire?Is laid upon the blast?To kindle and glow and fill the purple vast?Of dark at last.
Weird wise and low, piercing and keen and glad,?Or dim and sad?As a forgotten strain?Born when the broken legions of the rain?Swept through the plain--
He plays, like some dread veiled mysteriarch,?Lighting the dark,?Bidding the spring grow warm,?The gendering merge and loosing of spirit in form,?Peace out of storm.
For music is the sacrament of love;?He broods above?The virgin silence, till?She yields for rapture shuddering, yearning still?To his sweet will.
I hear him sing, "Your harp is like a mesh,?Woven of flesh?And spread within the shoal?Of life, where runs the tide-race of the soul?In my control.
"Though my wild way may ruin what it bends,?It makes amends?To the frail downy clocks,?Telling their seed a secret that unlocks?The granite rocks.
"The womb of silence to the crave sound?Is heaven unfound,?Till I, to soothe and slake?Being's most utter and imperious ache,?Bid rhythm awake.
"If with such agonies of bliss, my kin,?I enter in?Your prison house of sense,?With what a joyous freed intelligence?I shall go hence."
I need no more to guess the weaver's name,?Nor ask his aim,?Who hung each hall and room?With swarthy-tinged vermilion upon gloom;?I know that loom.
Give me a little space and time enough,?From ravelings rough?I could revive, reweave,?A fabric of beauty art might well believe?Were past retrieve.
O men and women in that rich design,?Sleep-soft, sun-fine,?Dew-tenuous and free,?A tone of the infinite wind-themes of the sea,?Borne in to me,
Reveals how you were woven to the might?Of shadow and light.?You are the dream of One?Who loves to haunt and yet appears to shun?My door in the sun;
As the white roving sea tern fleck and skim?The morning's rim;?Or the dark thrushes clear?Their flutes of music leisurely and sheer,?Then hush to hear.
I know him when the last red brands of day?Smoulder away,?And when the vernal showers?Bring back the heart to all my valley flowers?In the soft hours.
O hand of mine and brain of mine, be yours,?While time endures,?To acquiesce and learn!?For what we best may dare and drudge and yearn,?Let soul discern.
So, fellows, we shall reach the gusty gate,?Early or late,?And part without remorse,?A cadence dying down unto its source?In music's course;
You to the perfect rhythms of flowers and birds,?Colors and words,?The heart-beats of the earth,?To be remoulded always of one worth?From birth to birth;
I to the broken rhythm of thought and man,?The sweep and span?Of memory and hope?About the orbit where they still must grope?For wider scope,
To be through thousand springs restored, renewed,?With love imbrued,?With increments of will?Made strong, perceiving unattainment still?From each new skill.
Always the flawless beauty, always the chord?Of the Overword,?Dominant, pleading, sure,?No truth too small to save and make endure.?No good too poor!
And since no mortal can at last disdain?That sweet refrain,?But lets go strife and care,?Borne like a strain of bird notes on the air,?The wind knows where;
Some quiet April evening soft and strange,?When comes the change?No spirit can deplore,?I shall be one with all I was before,?In death once more.
_Fancy's Fool_
"Cornel, cornel, green and white,?Spreading on the forest floor,?Whither went my lost delight?Through the silent door?"
"Mortal, mortal, overfond,?How come you at all to know?There be any joys beyond?Blisses here and now?"
"Cornel, cornel, white and cool,?Many a mortal, I've heard tell,?Who is only Fancy's fool?Knows that secret well."
"Mortal, mortal, what would you?With that beauty once was yours??Perishable is the dew,?And the dust endures."
"Cornel, cornel, pierce me not?With your sweet, reserved disdain!?Whisper me of things forgot?That shall be again."
"Mortal, we are kinsmen, led?By a hope beyond our reach.?Know you not the word unsaid?Is the flower of speech?"
All the snowy blossoms faded,?While the scarlet berries grew;?And all summer they evaded?Anything they knew.
"Cornel, cornel, green and red?Flooring for the forest wide,?Whither down the ways of dread?Went my starry-eyed?"
"Mortal, mortal, is there found?Any fruitage half so fair?In the dim world underground?As there grows in air?"
"Wilding cornel, you can guess?Nothing of eternal pain,?Growing there in quietness?In the sun and rain."
"Mortal, where your heart would be?Not a wanderer may go,?But he shares the dark with me?Underneath the snow."
And the scarlet berries scattered?With the coming on of fall;?Not to one of them it mattered?Anything at all.
[Illustration]
_The Moondial_
Iron and granite and rust,?In a crumbling garden old,?Where the roses are paler than dust?And the lilies are green with gold,
Under the racing moon,?Inconscious of war or crime,?In a strange and ghostly noon,?It marks the oblivion of time.
The shadow steals through its arc,?Still as a frosted breath,?Fitful, gleaming, and dark?As the cold frustration of death.
But where the shadow may fall,?Whether to hurry or stay,?It matters little at all?To those who come that way.
For this is the dial of them?That have forgotten the world,?No more through the