Behind the Arras | Page 9

In the world's bleak house, like this
Strange lodger of mine.
His
presence is worse to miss
Than sun's best shine.
I put no thought at all
Upon the end,
If only I may call
Such a

man friend.
And a friend he is, heart light
With love for heft,
Proud as silence,
whose right
Hand ignores his left.
Yes, odd! he gives his name
As Spiritus.
But that is vague as a
flame
In the wind to us.
And then (but not a breath
Of this!) you see,
All his effects, my
faith!
Are marked D.V.
His cape-coat has a rip,
But for all that,
(Folk smile, suggest a dip

In the dyer's vat,--
Those purple aldermen
Who roll about
In coaches, drive till ten,

And die of gout),
I think he finely shows
How learning's crumbs
At least can rival
those
Of-- 'st, here he comes!
_Beyond the Gamut_
Softly, softly, Niccolo Amati!
What can put such fancies in your head?

There, go dream of your blue-skied Cremona,
While I ponder
something you have said.
Something in that last low lovely cadence
Piercing the green dusk
alone and far,
Named a new room in the house of knowledge,

Waiting unfrequented, door ajar.
While you dream then, let me unmolested
Pass in childish wonder
through that door,--
Breathless, touch and marvel at the beauties

Soon my wiser elders must explore.
Ah, my Niccolo, it's no great science
We shall ever conquer, you and
I.
Yet, when you are nestled at my shoulder,
Others guess not half

that we descry.
As all sight is but a finer hearing,
And all color but a finer sound,

Beauty, but the reach of lyric freedom,
Caught and quivering past all
music's bound;
Life, that faint sigh whispered from oblivion,
Harks and wonders if
we may not be
Five small wits to carry one great rhythmus,
The
vast theme of God's new symphony.
As fine sand spread on a disc of silver,
At some chord which bids the
motes combine,
Heeding the hidden and reverberant impulse,
Shifts
and dances into curve and line,
The round earth, too, haply, like a dust-mote,
Was set whirling her
assigned sure way,
Round this little orb of her ecliptic
To some
harmony she must obey.
Did the Master try the taut string merely,
Give a touch, and she must
throb to time?
Think you how his bow must rouse the echoes,

Quailing triumphing on, secure, sublime!
Ah, thought cannot far without the symbol!
Help me, little brother,
hold the trend.
Dear good flesh, that keeps the spirit steady,
Lest it
faint, grown dizzy at thought's end!
Waves of sound (Is this your thought, Amati?),
Climbing into treble
thin and clear,
Past the silence, 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