Ride to the Lady | Page 2

made.?Whatever his true name,?Be sure, to enter in?He has both key and claim.
The daybeams, free of fear,?Creep drowsy toward his feet;?His heart were heard to beat,?Were any there to hear;?Ah, not for ends malign,?Like wild thing crouched in lair,?Or watcher of a snare,?But with a friend's design?He lurks in shadow there!
He goes not to the gates?To welcome any other,?Nay, not Lord Life, his brother;?But still his hour awaits?Each several guest to find?Alone, yea, quite alone;?Pacing with pensive mind?The cloister's echoing stone,?Or singing, unaware,?At the turning of the stair?Tis truth, though we forget,?In Life's House enters none?Who shall that seeker shun,?Who shall not so be met.?"Is this mine hour?" each saith.?"So be it, gentle Death!"?Each has his way to end,?Encountering this friend.?Griefs die to memories mild;?Hope turns a wean��d child;?Love shines a spirit white,?With eyes of deepened light.?When many a guest has passed,?Some day 'tis Life's at last?To front the face of Death.?Then, casements closed, men say:?"Lord Life is gone away;?He went, we trust and pray,?To God, who gave him breath."?Beginning, End, He is:?Are not these sons both His??Lo, these with Him are one!?To phrase it so were best:?God's self is that first Guest,?The House of Life being done!
SILENCE
Why should I sing of earth or heaven? not rather rest,?Powerless to speak of that which hath my soul possessed,--?For full possession dumb? Yea, Silence, that were best.
And though for what it failed to sound I brake the string,?And dashed the sweet lute down, a too much fingered thing,?And found a wild new voice,--oh, still, why should I sing?
An earth-song could I make, strange as the breath of earth, Filled with the great calm joy of life and death and birth? Yet, were it less than this, the song were little worth.
For this the fields caress; brown clods tell each to each;?Sad-colored leaves have sense whereto I cannot reach;?Spiced everlasting-flowers outstrip my range of speech.
A heaven-song could I make, all fire that yet was peace,?And tenderness not lost, though glory did increase??But were it less than this, 't were well the song should cease.
For this the still west saith, with plumy flames bestrewn;?Heaven's body sapphire-clear, at stirless height of noon;?The cloud where lightnings pulse, beside the untroubled moon.
I will not sing of earth or heaven, but rather rest,?Rapt by the face of heaven, and hold on earth's warm breast. Hushed lips, a beating heart, yea, Silence, that were best.
ARRAIGNMENT
"Not ye who have stoned, not ye who have smitten us," cry?The sad, great souls, as they go out hence into dark,?"Not ye we accuse, though for you was our passion borne;?And ye we reproach not, who silently passed us by.?We forgive blind eyes and the ears that would not hark,?The careless and causeless hate and the shallow scorn.
"But ye, who have seemed to know us, have seen and heard;?Who have set us at feasts and have crowned with the costly rose; Who have spread us the purple of praises beneath our feet;?Yet guessed not the word that we spake was a living word,?Applauding the sound,--we account you as worse than foes!?We sobbed you our message; ye said, 'It is song, and sweet!'"
THE GOING OUT OF THE TIDE
The eastern heaven was all faint amethyst,?Whereon the moon hung dreaming in the mist;?To north yet drifted one long delicate plume?Of roseate cloud; like snow the ocean-spume.
Now when the first foreboding swiftly ran?Through the loud-glorying sea that it began?To lose its late gained lordship of the land,?Uprose the billow like an angered man,?And flung its prone strength far along the sand;?Almost, almost to the old bound, the dark?And taunting triumph-mark.
But no, no, no! and slow, and slow, and slow,?Like a heart losing hold, this wave must go,--?Must go, must go,--dragged heavily back, back,?Beneath the next wave plunging on its track,?Charging, with thunderous and defiant shout,?To fore-determined rout.
Again, again the unexhausted main?Renews fierce effort, drawing force unguessed?From awful deeps of its mysterious breast:?Like arms of passionate protest, tossed in vain,?The spray upflings above the billow's crest.?Again the appulse, again the backward strain--?Till ocean must have rest.
With one abandoned movement, swift and wild,--?As though bowed head and outstretched arms it laid?On the earth's lap, soft sobbing,--hushed and stayed,?The great sea quiets, like a soothed child.?Ha! what sharp memory clove the calm, and drave?This last fleet furious wave?
On, on, endures the struggle into night,?Ancient as Time, yet fresh as the fresh hour;?As oft repeated since the birth of light?As the strong agony and mortal fight?Of human souls, blind-reaching, with the Power?Aloof, unmoved, impossible to cross,?Whose law is seeming loss.
Low-sunken from the longed-for triumph-mark;?The spent sea sighs as one that grieves in sleep.?The unveiled moon along the rippling plain?Casts many a keen, cold, shifting silvery spark,?Wild as the pulses of strange joy, that leap?Even in the quick of pain.
And she compelling, she that stands for law,--?As law for Will eternal,--perfect, clear,?And uncompassionate