Behind the Arras | Page 3

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 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 æolian 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