Rose and Roof-Tree | Page 8

many a flaw,?Meseemed a figure I beheld?Fairer than anything of eld?Fashioned from sunny marble. Here?Nature was artist with no peer.?No chisel's purpose could have caught?These lines, nor brush their secret wrought.?Not so the world weighed, busily?Pursuing drossy industry;?But, saturated with success,?Well-guarded by a soft excess?Of bodily ease, gave little heed?To him that held not by their creed,?Save o'er the beauteous youth to moan:?"A pity that he is not grown?To our good stature and heavier weight,?To bear his share of our full freight."?Meanwhile, thus to himself he spoke:?"Oh, noble is the knotted oak,?And sweet the gush of sylvan streams,?And good the great sun's gladding beams,?The blush of life upon the field,?The silent might that mountains wield.?Still more I love to mix with men,?Meeting the kindly human ken;?To feel the force of faithful friends--?The thirst for smiles that never ends.
"Yet precious more than all of these?I hold great Sorrow's mysteries,?Whereby Gehenna's sultry gale?Is made to lift the golden veil?'Twixt heaven's starry-spher��d light?Of truth and our dim, sun-blent sight.?Joy comes to ripen; but 'tis Grief?That garners in the grainy sheaf.?Time was I feared to know or feel?The spur of aught but gilded weal;?To bear aloft the victor, Fame,?Would ev'n have champed a stately shame?Of bit and bridle. But my fears?Fell off in the pure bath of tears.?And now with sinews fresh and strong?I stride, to summon with a song?The deep, invigorating truth?That makes me younger than my youth.?"O Sorrow, deathless thy delight!?Deathless it were but for our slight?Endurance! Truth like thine, too rare,?We dare but take in scantiest share."
He died: the creatures of his kind?Fared on. Not one had known his mind.
But the unnamed yearnings of the air,?The eternal sky's wide-searching stare,?The undertone of brawling floods,?And the old moaning of the woods?Grew full of memory.
The sun?Many a brave heart has shone upon?Since then, of men who walked abroad?For joy and gladness praising God.?But widowed Grief lives on alone:?She hath not chosen, of them, one.
A FACE IN THE STREET.
Poor, withered face, that yet was once so fair,?Grown ashen-old in the wild fires of lust--?Thy star-like beauty, dimm'd with earthly dust,?Yet breathing of a purer native air;--?They who whilom, cursed vultures, sought a share?Of thy dead womanhood, their greed unjust?Have satisfied, have stripped and left thee bare.?Still, like a leaf warped by the autumn gust,?And driving to the end, thou wrapp'st in flame?And perfume all thy hollow-eyed decay,?Feigning on those gray cheeks the blush that Shame?Took with her when she fled long since away.?Ah God! rain fire upon this foul-souled city?That gives such death, and spares its men,--for pity!
THE BATHER.
Standing here alone,?Let me pause awhile,?Drinking in the light?Ere, with plunge of white limbs prone,?I raise the sparkling flight?Of foam-flakes volatile.
Now, in natural guise,?I woo the deathless breeze,?Through me rushing fleet?The joy of life, in swift surprise:?I grow with growing wheat,?And burgeon with the trees.
Lo! I fetter Time,?So he cannot run;?And in Eden again--?Flash of memory sublime!--?Dwell naked, without stain,?Beneath the dazed sun.
All yields brotherhood;?Each least thing that lives,?Wrought of primal spores,?Deepens this wild sense of good?That, on these shaggy shores,?Return to nature gives.
Oh, that some solitude?Were ours, in woodlands deep,?Where, with lucent eyes,?Living lithe and limber-thewed,?Our life's shape might arise?Like mountains fresh from sleep!
To sounds of water falling,?Hosts of delicate dreams?Should lull us and allure?With a dim, enchanted calling,?Blameless to live and pure?Like these sweet springs and streams.
But in a wilderness?Alone may such life be??Why of all things framed,?In my human form confessed?Should I be ashamed,?And blush for honesty?
Rounded, strengthy limbs?That knit me to my kind--?Your glory turns to grief!?Shall I for my soul sing hymns,?Yet for my body find?No clear, divine belief?
Let me rather die,?Than by faith uphold?Dogmas weak that dare?The form that once Christ wore deny?Afraid with him to share?A purity twofold;
Yet, while sin remains?On this saddened earth,?Humbly walk my ways!?For my garments are as chains;?And I fear to praise?My frame with careless mirth.
Joy and penance go?Hand in hand, I see!?Would I could live so well,?Soul of me should never know?When my coverings fell,?Nor feel this nudity!
HELEN AT THE LOOM.
Helen, in her silent room,?Weaves upon the upright loom,?Weaves a mantle rich and dark,?Purpled over-deep. But mark?How she scatters o'er the wool?Woven shapes, till it is full?Of men that struggle close, complex;?Short-clipp'd steeds with wrinkled necks?Arching high; spear, shield, and all?The panoply that doth recall?Mighty war, such war as e'en?For Helen's sake is waged, I ween.?Purple is the groundwork: good!?All the field is stained with blood.?Blood poured out for Helen's sake;?(Thread, run on; and, shuttle, shake!)?But the shapes of men that pass?Are as ghosts within a glass,?Woven with whiteness of the swan,?Pale, sad memories, gleaming wan?From the garment's purple fold?Where Troy's tale is twined and told.?Well may Helen, as with tender?Touch of rosy fingers slender?She doth knit the story in?Of Troy's sorrow and her sin,?Feel sharp filaments of pain?Reeled off with the well-spun skein,?And