Children of the Night | Page 9

the sexton and the rest,?He packed a lot of things that she had made?Most mournfully away in an old chest?Of hers, and put some chopped-up cedar boughs?In with them, and tore down the slaughter-house.
The Altar
Alone, remote, nor witting where I went,?I found an altar builded in a dream --?A fiery place, whereof there was a gleam?So swift, so searching, and so eloquent?Of upward promise, that love's murmur, blent?With sorrow's warning, gave but a supreme?Unending impulse to that human stream?Whose flood was all for the flame's fury bent.
Alas! I said, -- the world is in the wrong.?But the same quenchless fever of unrest?That thrilled the foremost of that martyred throng?Thrilled me, and I awoke . . . and was the same?Bewildered insect plunging for the flame?That burns, and must burn somehow for the best.
The Tavern
Whenever I go by there nowadays?And look at the rank weeds and the strange grass,?The torn blue curtains and the broken glass,?I seem to be afraid of the old place;?And something stiffens up and down my face,?For all the world as if I saw the ghost?Of old Ham Amory, the murdered host,?With his dead eyes turned on me all aglaze.
The Tavern has a story, but no man?Can tell us what it is. We only know?That once long after midnight, years ago,?A stranger galloped up from Tilbury Town,?Who brushed, and scared, and all but overran?That skirt-crazed reprobate, John Evereldown.
Sonnet
Oh for a poet -- for a beacon bright?To rift this changeless glimmer of dead gray;?To spirit back the Muses, long astray,?And flush Parnassus with a newer light;?To put these little sonnet-men to flight?Who fashion, in a shrewd, mechanic way,?Songs without souls, that flicker for a day,?To vanish in irrevocable night.
What does it mean, this barren age of ours??Here are the men, the women, and the flowers,?The seasons, and the sunset, as before.?What does it mean? Shall not one bard arise?To wrench one banner from the western skies,?And mark it with his name forevermore?
George Crabbe
Give him the darkest inch your shelf allows,?Hide him in lonely garrets, if you will, --?But his hard, human pulse is throbbing still?With the sure strength that fearless truth endows.?In spite of all fine science disavows,?Of his plain excellence and stubborn skill?There yet remains what fashion cannot kill,?Though years have thinned the laurel from his brows.
Whether or not we read him, we can feel?From time to time the vigor of his name?Against us like a finger for the shame?And emptiness of what our souls reveal?In books that are as altars where we kneel?To consecrate the flicker, not the flame.
Credo
I cannot find my way: there is no star?In all the shrouded heavens anywhere;?And there is not a whisper in the air?Of any living voice but one so far?That I can hear it only as a bar?Of lost, imperial music, played when fair?And angel fingers wove, and unaware,?Dead leaves to garlands where no roses are.
No, there is not a glimmer, nor a call,?For one that welcomes, welcomes when he fears,?The black and awful chaos of the night;?For through it all, -- above, beyond it all, --?I know the far-sent message of the years,?I feel the coming glory of the Light!
On the Night of a Friend's Wedding
If ever I am old, and all alone,?I shall have killed one grief, at any rate;?For then, thank God, I shall not have to wait?Much longer for the sheaves that I have sown.?The devil only knows what I have done,?But here I am, and here are six or eight?Good friends, who most ingenuously prate?About my songs to such and such a one.
But everything is all askew to-night, --?As if the time were come, or almost come,?For their untenanted mirage of me?To lose itself and crumble out of sight,?Like a tall ship that floats above the foam?A little while, and then breaks utterly.
Sonnet
The master and the slave go hand in hand,?Though touch be lost. The poet is a slave,?And there be kings do sorrowfully crave?The joyance that a scullion may command.?But, ah, the sonnet-slave must understand?The mission of his bondage, or the grave?May clasp his bones, or ever he shall save?The perfect word that is the poet's wand!
The sonnet is a crown, whereof the rhymes?Are for Thought's purest gold the jewel-stones;?But shapes and echoes that are never done?Will haunt the workshop, as regret sometimes?Will bring with human yearning to sad thrones?The crash of battles that are never won.
Verlaine
Why do you dig like long-clawed scavengers?To touch the covered corpse of him that fled?The uplands for the fens, and rioted?Like a sick satyr with doom's worshippers??Come! let the grass grow there; and leave his verse?To tell the story of the life he led.?Let the man go: let the dead flesh be dead,?And let the worms be its biographers.
Song sloughs away the sin to find redress?In art's complete remembrance: nothing clings?For long but laurel to the stricken