The Chinese Nightingale | Page 4

of light
I marked a giant firefly's flight.
And the lady, rosy-red,
Flourished her fan, her shimmering fan,

Stretched her hand toward Chang, and said:
"Do you remember,

Ages after,
Our palace of heart-red stone?
Do you remember
The
little doll-faced children
With their lanterns full of moon-fire,
That
came from all the empire
Honoring the throne? --
The loveliest fete
and carnival
Our world had ever known?
The sages sat about us

With their heads bowed in their beards,
With proper meditation on
the sight.
Confucius was not born;
We lived in those great days

Confucius later said were lived aright. . . .
And this gray bird, on that
day of spring,
With a bright bronze breast, and a bronze-brown wing,

Captured the world with his carolling.
Late at night his tune was
spent.

Peasants,
Sages,
Children,
Homeward went,
And then
the bronze bird sang for you and me.
We walked alone. Our hearts
were high and free.
I had a silvery name, I had a silvery name,
I had
a silvery name -- do you remember
The name you cried beside the
tumbling sea?"
Chang turned not to the lady slim --
He bent to his work, ironing

away;
But she was arch, and knowing and glowing,
And the bird on
his shoulder spoke for him.
"Darling . . . darling . . . darling . . . darling . . ."
Said the Chinese
nightingale.
The great gray joss on a rustic shelf,
Rakish and shrewd, with his
collar awry,
Sang impolitely, as though by himself,
Drowning with
his bellowing the nightingale's cry:
"Back through a hundred,
hundred years
Hear the waves as they climb the piers,
Hear the
howl of the silver seas,
Hear the thunder.
Hear the gongs of holy
China
How the waves and tunes combine
In a rhythmic clashing
wonder,
Incantation old and fine:
`Dragons, dragons, Chinese
dragons,
Red fire-crackers, and green fire-crackers,
And dragons,
dragons, Chinese dragons.'"
Then the lady, rosy-red,
Turned to her lover Chang and said:
"Dare
you forget that turquoise dawn
When we stood in our mist-hung
velvet lawn,
And worked a spell this great joss taught
Till a God of
the Dragons was charmed and caught?
From the flag high over our
palace home
He flew to our feet in rainbow-foam --
A king of
beauty and tempest and thunder
Panting to tear our sorrows asunder.

A dragon of fair adventure and wonder.
We mounted the back of
that royal slave
With thoughts of desire that were noble and grave.

We swam down the shore to the dragon-mountains,
We whirled to
the peaks and the fiery fountains.
To our secret ivory house we were
bourne.
We looked down the wonderful wing-filled regions
Where
the dragons darted in glimmering legions.
Right by my breast the
nightingale sang;
The old rhymes rang in the sunlit mist
That we
this hour regain --
Song-fire for the brain.

When my hands and my
hair and my feet you kissed,
When you cried for your heart's new
pain,
What was my name in the dragon-mist,
In the rings of
rainbowed rain?"

"Sorrow and love, glory and love,"
Said the Chinese nightingale.

"Sorrow and love, glory and love,"
Said the Chinese nightingale.
And now the joss broke in with his song:
"Dying ember, bird of
Chang,
Soul of Chang, do you remember? --
Ere you returned to the
shining harbor
There were pirates by ten thousand
Descended on
the town
In vessels mountain-high and red and brown,
Moon-ships
that climbed the storms and cut the skies.
On their prows were
painted terrible bright eyes.
But I was then a wizard and a scholar and
a priest;
I stood upon the sand;
With lifted hand I looked upon them

And sunk their vessels with my wizard eyes,
And the stately
lacquer-gate made safe again.
Deep, deep below the bay, the
sea-weed and the spray,
Embalmed in amber every pirate lies,

Embalmed in amber every pirate lies."
Then this did the noble lady say:
"Bird, do you dream of our
home-coming day
When you flew like a courier on before
From the
dragon-peak to our palace-door,
And we drove the steed in your
singing path --
The ramping dragon of laughter and wrath:
And
found our city all aglow,
And knighted this joss that decked it so?

There were golden fishes in the purple river
And silver fishes and
rainbow fishes.
There were golden junks in the laughing river,
And
silver junks and rainbow junks:
There were golden lilies by the bay
and river,
And silver lilies and tiger-lilies,
And tinkling wind-bells
in the gardens of the town
By the black-lacquer gate
Where walked
in state
The kind king Chang
And his sweet-heart mate. . . .
With
his flag-born dragon
And his crown of pearl . . . and . . . jade,
And
his nightingale reigning in the mulberry shade,
And sailors and
soldiers on the sea-sands brown,
And priests who bowed them down
to your song --
By the city called Han, the peacock town,
By the
city called Han, the nightingale town,
The nightingale town."
Then sang the bird, so strangely gay,
Fluttering, fluttering, ghostly
and gray,
A vague, unravelling, final tune,
Like a long unwinding

silk cocoon;
Sang as though for the soul of him
Who ironed away
in that bower dim: --
"I have forgotten
Your dragons great,
Merry
and mad and friendly and bold.
Dim is your proud lost palace-gate.

I vaguely know
There were heroes of old,
Troubles more than the
heart could hold,
There were wolves in the woods
Yet lambs in the