Behind the Arras | Page 9

change to waves of color,?We must say, when eye takes place of ear?
Not a bird-song, but it has for fellow?Some-wood-flower, its speechless counterpart,?Form and color moulded to one cadence,?To voice something of the wild mute heart.
Thrushes, we'll suppose, have for their tune-mates?The gold languorous lilies of the glade;?And the whippoorwill, that plaintive dreamer,?Some dark purple flower that loves the shade.
The song-sparrow tells me what the clover?Nods about beneath the gorgeous blue;?While the snowballs tell me old love-stories?Thistle-birds half hinted as they flew.
April's faith, in robin at his vespers,?Breathes a prayer too in my lilac blooms.?What the cloudy asters told the hillside,?My lone rainbird in the dusk resumes.
Bobolink is voice for apple blossom,?Breezy, abundant, good for human joys;?Oriole has touched the burning secret?Poppies hide with their deliberate poise.
Tiny twin-flowers, what are they but fancies,?Subtler than a field-lark can express??Swallows make the low contented twitter?Lying just beyond the pansies' guess.
Yellowbird, the hot noon's warbler, pierces?Sense where tiger-lilies may not pass.?Are not crickets and all field-wise creatures?Brahmins of the universal grass?
Saffron butterflies and mute ephemera,?Doubt not, have their songs too, could we hear.?Every raindrop is a sea sonorous?As the great worlds thundering sphere to sphere.
There's no silence and no dark forever,?Clangoring suns to us are placid stars;?Swift-foot lightning with his henchman thunder?Lags behind these gnomes in Leyden jars.
Peal and flash and thrill and scent and savour?Pulse through rhythm to rapture, and control,--?Who shall say how far along or finely?--?The infinite tectonics of the soul.
Low-bred peoples, Hottentots, Basutos,?Have a taste for scarlet and brass bands.?Our friend Monet, feeling red repulsive,?Sees blue shadows in pale purple lands.
Sees not only, but instructs our seeing;?Taught by him a twelvemonth, we confess?Earth once robed in crude barbaric splendor,?Has put on a softer lovelier dress.
Feast my eyes on some old Indian fabric,?Centuries of culture went to weave,?And I grow the fine fastidious artist,?No mere shop-made textile can deceive.
Red the bass and violet the treble,?Soul may pass out where all color ends.?Ends? So we say, meaning where the eyesight?With some yet unborn perception blends.
You, Amati, never saw a sunset,--?Hear tornadoes in a spider's loom;?I, at my wits' end, may still develop?Unknown senses in life's larger room.
Superhuman is not supernatural.?How shall half-way judge of journey done??Shall this germ and protoplast of being?Rest mid-life and say his race is run?
Softly there, my Niccolo, a moment!?Shall I then discard my simpler joys??No, for look you, every sense's impulse?Is a means the master soul employs.
Test and use of all things, lowest, highest,?Are alone of import to the soul;?Joys of earth are journey-aids to heaven,?Garb of the new sainthood sane and whole.
Earth one habitat of spirit merely,?I must use as richly as I may,--?Touch environment with every sense-tip,?Drink the well and pass my wander way.
Ah, drink deep and let the parching morrow?Quench what thirst its newer need may bring!?Slake the senses now, that soul hereafter?Go not forth a starved defrauded thing.
Not for sense sake only, but for soul sake;?That when soul must shed the leaves of sense,?Sun and sap may solace and support her,?Stored in those green hours for her defence.
Shall the grub deny himself the rose-leaf?That he may be moth before his time??Shall the grasshopper repress his drumbeats?For small envy of the kingbird's chime?
Certain half-men, never touched by worship,?Soil the goodly feast they cannot use;?Others, maimed too, holding flesh a hindrance,?Vilify the bounty they refuse.
He's most man who loves the purple shadows,?Yet must love the flaring autumn too,--?Follow when the skrieling pipes bid forward,?Lie and gaze for hours into the blue.
He would have gone down with Alexander,?Quelling unknown lands beneath the sun;?Watched where Buddha in the Bo tree shadows?Saw this life's web woven and undone;
Freed his stifled heart in Shakespeare's people,?Sweet and elemental and serene;?Dared the unknown with Blake and Galileo;?Fronted death with Daulac's seventeen.
So shall mighty peace possess his spirit?Whom the noonday leads alone apart,?Through the wind-clear early Indian summer,?Where no yearning more shall move his heart.
Wise and foot-free, of the tranquil tenor,?He shall wayfare with the homeless tides;?Time enough, when life allures no longer,?To frequent the tavern death provides.
Life be neither hermitage nor revel;?Lent or carnival alone were vain;?Sin and sainthood--Help me, little brother,?With your largo finder-thought again!
Lift, uplift me, higher still and higher!?Climb and pause and tremble and plunge on,?Till I, toiling after you, come breathless?Where the mountain tops are touched with dawn!
Dark this valley world; and drenched with slumber?We have kept the centuries of night.?Cry, Amati, pierce the waiting stillness?Tremulous with forecast of the light!
Cry, Amati! Melt the twilight dirges?In "Te Deums" fit for marching men!?"Good," the days are chorusing, "shall triumph;"?Though the far-off morrows whisper, "When?"
What is good? I hear your soft string answer,?"I am that whereon the round world leans,?I am every man's poor guess at wisdom;?Evil is the soul's misuse of means.
"Up through me, with melody and meaning,?Well the floods of being or subside,?The first dim desire