Moments of Vision | Page 6

fingering low or higher?From your four thin threads and eff-holes came outflowing.
And, too, what merry tunes?He would bow at nights or noons?That chanced to find him bent to lute a measure,
When he made you speak his heart
As in dream,?Without book or music-chart,
On some theme?Elusive as a jack-o'-lanthorn's gleam,?And the psalm of duty shelved for trill of pleasure.
Well, you can not, alas,?The barrier overpass?That screens him in those Mournful Meads hereunder,
Where no fiddling can be heard
In the glades?Of silentness, no bird
Thrills the shades;?Where no viol is touched for songs or serenades,?No bowing wakes a congregation's wonder.
He must do without you now,?Stir you no more anyhow?To yearning concords taught you in your glory;
While, your strings a tangled wreck,
Once smart drawn,?Ten worm-wounds in your neck,
Purflings wan?With dust-hoar, here alone I sadly con?Your present dumbness, shape your olden story.
1916.
THE STATUE OF LIBERTY
This statue of Liberty, busy man,
Here erect in the city square,?I have watched while your scrubbings, this early morning,
Strangely wistful,?And half tristful,?Have turned her from foul to fair;
With your bucket of water, and mop, and brush,
Bringing her out of the grime?That has smeared her during the smokes of winter
With such glumness?In her dumbness,?And aged her before her time.
You have washed her down with motherly care -
Head, shoulders, arm, and foot,?To the very hem of the robes that drape her -
All expertly?And alertly,?Till a long stream, black with soot,
Flows over the pavement to the road,
And her shape looms pure as snow:?I read you are hired by the City guardians -
May be yearly,?Or once merely -?To treat the statues so?
"Oh, I'm not hired by the Councilmen
To cleanse the statues here.?I do this one as a self-willed duty,
Not as paid to,?Or at all made to,?But because the doing is dear."
Ah, then I hail you brother and friend!
Liberty's knight divine.?What you have done would have been my doing,
Yea, most verily,?Well, and thoroughly,?Had but your courage been mine!
"Oh I care not for Liberty's mould,
Liberty charms not me;?What's Freedom but an idler's vision,
Vain, pernicious,?Often vicious,?Of things that cannot be!
"Memory it is that brings me to this -
Of a daughter--my one sweet own.?She grew a famous carver's model,
One of the fairest?And of the rarest:-?She sat for the figure as shown.
"But alas, she died in this distant place
Before I was warned to betake?Myself to her side! . . . And in love of my darling,
In love of the fame of her,?And the good name of her,?I do this for her sake."
Answer I gave not. Of that form
The carver was I at his side;?His child, my model, held so saintly,
Grand in feature,?Gross in nature,?In the dens of vice had died.
THE BACKGROUND AND THE FIGURE?(Lover's Ditty)
I think of the slope where the rabbits fed,
Of the periwinks' rockwork lair,?Of the fuchsias ringing their bells of red -
And the something else seen there.
Between the blooms where the sod basked bright,
By the bobbing fuchsia trees,?Was another and yet more eyesome sight -
The sight that richened these.
I shall seek those beauties in the spring,
When the days are fit and fair,?But only as foils to the one more thing
That also will flower there!
THE CHANGE
Out of the past there rises a week -
Who shall read the years O! -?Out of the past there rises a week
Enringed with a purple zone.?Out of the past there rises a week?When thoughts were strung too thick to speak,?And the magic of its lineaments remains with me alone.
In that week there was heard a singing -
Who shall spell the years, the years! -?In that week there was heard a singing,
And the white owl wondered why.?In that week, yea, a voice was ringing,?And forth from the casement were candles flinging?Radiance that fell on the deodar and lit up the path thereby.
Could that song have a mocking note? -
Who shall unroll the years O! -?Could that song have a mocking note
To the white owl's sense as it fell??Could that song have a mocking note?As it trilled out warm from the singer's throat,?And who was the mocker and who the mocked when two felt all was well?
In a tedious trampling crowd yet later -
Who shall bare the years, the years! -?In a tedious trampling crowd yet later,
When silvery singings were dumb;?In a crowd uncaring what time might fate her,?Mid murks of night I stood to await her,?And the twanging of iron wheels gave out the signal that she was come.
She said with a travel-tired smile -
Who shall lift the years O! -?She said with a travel-tired smile,
Half scared by scene so strange;?She said, outworn by mile on mile,?The blurred lamps wanning her face the while,?"O Love, I am here; I am with you!" . . . Ah, that there should have come a change!
O the doom by someone spoken -
Who shall unseal the years, the years! -?O the doom that gave no token,
When nothing of bale saw we:?O the doom by someone spoken,?O the heart by someone