Behind the Arras | Page 2

Exit Anima 100
To G. H. B.
"I shut myself in with my soul,
And the shapes come eddying forth."
[Illustration: Behind the Arras]
_Behind the Arras_
I like the old house tolerably well,
Where I must dwell
Like a
familiar gnome;
And yet I never shall feel quite at home:
I love to
roam.

Day after day I loiter and explore
From door to door;
So many
treasures lure
The curious mind. What histories obscure
They must
immure!
I hardly know which room 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