Children of the Night | Page 7

his art.
Never until we conquer the uncouth?Connivings of our shamed indifference?(We call it Christian faith!) are we to scan?The racked and shrieking hideousness of Truth?To find, in hate's polluted self-defence?Throbbing, the pulse, the divine heart of man.
The Pity of the Leaves
Vengeful across the cold November moors,?Loud with ancestral shame there came the bleak?Sad wind that shrieked, and answered with a shriek,?Reverberant through lonely corridors.?The old man heard it; and he heard, perforce,?Words out of lips that were no more to speak --?Words of the past that shook the old man's cheek?Like dead, remembered footsteps on old floors.
And then there were the leaves that plagued him so!?The brown, thin leaves that on the stones outside?Skipped with a freezing whisper. Now and then?They stopped, and stayed there -- just to let him know?How dead they were; but if the old man cried,?They fluttered off like withered souls of men.
Aaron Stark
Withal a meagre man was Aaron Stark, --?Cursed and unkempt, shrewd, shrivelled, and morose.?A miser was he, with a miser's nose,?And eyes like little dollars in the dark.?His thin, pinched mouth was nothing but a mark;?And when he spoke there came like sullen blows?Through scattered fangs a few snarled words and close,?As if a cur were chary of its bark.
Glad for the murmur of his hard renown,?Year after year he shambled through the town, --?A loveless exile moving with a staff;?And oftentimes there crept into his ears?A sound of alien pity, touched with tears, --?And then (and only then) did Aaron laugh.
The Garden
There is a fenceless garden overgrown?With buds and blossoms and all sorts of leaves;?And once, among the roses and the sheaves,?The Gardener and I were there alone.?He led me to the plot where I had thrown?The fennel of my days on wasted ground,?And in that riot of sad weeds I found?The fruitage of a life that was my own.
My life! Ah, yes, there was my life, indeed!?And there were all the lives of humankind;?And they were like a book that I could read,?Whose every leaf, miraculously signed,?Outrolled itself from Thought's eternal seed,?Love-rooted in God's garden of the mind.
Cliff Klingenhagen
Cliff Klingenhagen had me in to dine?With him one day; and after soup and meat,?And all the other things there were to eat,?Cliff took two glasses and filled one with wine?And one with wormwood. Then, without a sign?For me to choose at all, he took the draught?Of bitterness himself, and lightly quaffed?It off, and said the other one was mine.
And when I asked him what the deuce he meant?By doing that, he only looked at me?And grinned, and said it was a way of his.?And though I know the fellow, I have spent?Long time a-wondering when I shall be?As happy as Cliff Klingenhagen is.
Charles Carville's Eyes
A melancholy face Charles Carville had,?But not so melancholy as it seemed, --?When once you knew him, -- for his mouth redeemed?His insufficient eyes, forever sad:?In them there was no life-glimpse, good or bad, --?Nor joy nor passion in them ever gleamed;?His mouth was all of him that ever beamed,?His eyes were sorry, but his mouth was glad.
He never was a fellow that said much,?And half of what he did say was not heard?By many of us: we were out of touch?With all his whims and all his theories?Till he was dead, so those blank eyes of his?Might speak them. Then we heard them, every word.
The Dead Village
Here there is death. But even here, they say, --?Here where the dull sun shines this afternoon?As desolate as ever the dead moon?Did glimmer on dead Sardis, -- men were gay;?And there were little children here to play,?With small soft hands that once did keep in tune?The strings that stretch from heaven, till too soon?The change came, and the music passed away.
Now there is nothing but the ghosts of things, --?No life, no love, no children, and no men;?And over the forgotten place there clings?The strange and unrememberable light?That is in dreams. The music failed, and then?God frowned, and shut the village from His sight.
Boston
My northern pines are good enough for me,?But there's a town my memory uprears --?A town that always like a friend appears,?And always in the sunrise by the sea.?And over it, somehow, there seems to be?A downward flash of something new and fierce,?That ever strives to clear, but never clears?The dimness of a charmed antiquity.
Two Sonnets
I
Just as I wonder at the twofold screen?Of twisted innocence that you would plait?For eyes that uncourageously await?The coming of a kingdom that has been,?So do I wonder what God's love can mean?To you that all so strangely estimate?The purpose and the consequent estate?Of one short shuddering step to the Unseen.
No, I have not your backward faith to shrink?Lone-faring from the doorway of God's home?To find Him in the names of buried men;?Nor your ingenious recreance to think?We cherish, in the life