The Five Books of Youth | Page 3

that mass?Their gusts of passion on the sunlit grass,?Image of lyric hope and veiled despair,?Like them, thou shalt unutterably pass?Into the silence and the shadowed air.
POMFRET, 1919
VI - HUNTERS
A vase red-wrought in Athens long ago....?The hunter and his gay companion ride?Through the young fields of life; on every side?Frail and fantastic the tall lilies grow.?Her head thrown back, her eyes afraid and wide,?Flies like a phantom the grey spectral doe,?Her light feet scarcely bend the grass below,?Gloriously flying into eventide.
Ahead there lies the shadow, then the dark,?And safety in the thick forestial night,?But nearer still she hears the bloodhounds bark,?And horses panting in impetuous flight,?And hunters without pity for the slain,?Halloing shrilly over the windy plain.
Sombre become the skies, the winds of fall?Sing dangerously through the hissing grass;?Sunlight and clouds in slow procession pass?Over the tress, then comes an interval?Of utter calm, the air is a morass?Of humid breathlessness. A dreadful call?Rings suddenly from the onrushing squall,?And the storm closes in a whirling mass.
And still the doe eludes the raging hounds,?And still the youths press onward toward the woods,?Though the world shudders with diluvian sounds?And the rain streams in undulating floods.?Sharp lightning splits the sky; the doe is gone.?O follow! follow! if it be till dawn.
The hunted flees, the boyish hunters follow?Into the forest's dripping everglades,?The wind goes wailing through the swaying shades,?And violent rain gushes in every hollow.?The doe runs free, triumphantly evades?Those straining eyes; the ghastly shadows swallow?Her flying form; the frightened horses wallow?Deep in the mire. Then the last daylight fades.
O Youths, turn back! the year is getting late,?And autumn has no pity for the slain.?Twining like serpents, the lean arms of fate?Grope toward you through the blackness and the rain,?Then Death, and the obliterating snow....?A vase, red-wrought in Athens long ago.
Tours, 1918
VII - A WRECK
Survivor of an unknown past,?On this wild shore cast?By the sad desolate tides;?In a warm harbour long ago?They waited you, and waited long,?And guessed and feared at last,?But could not know.?Now in a language strange the waves make song,?And the flood surges round your broken sides,?And the ebb leaves you to the burning sun.?But when the voyage of my life is done,?And my soul puts forth no more,?Then may I sleep?Beneath the fathoms of the tideless deep,?And not be cast deserted on some dark alien shore.
Cape Cod, 1916
VIII - GRAVE STONES IN A FRONT YARD
Lest the swift world forget their names and pass?Unthinking, they have set this cold dead slate?Above their slumbers in the living grass?To warn all comers of impending fate;
Where friends made merry once at their behest,?Where young feet strolled about the shady lawn,?They welcome none but one unfailing guest,?And all the revellers but Death are gone.
Edgartown, 1916
IX - VIGIL
This is the hour when all substantial foes?Are exorcised and taunt the soul no more;?Now thinner grows the veil between the shore?Of vaster worlds and our calm garden close.?Through the small exit of the open door?We pass, and seem to feel the eyes of those?We knew upon us; almost we suppose?The advent of the face we tremble for.
O that through this profound serenity?Might sound the answer to the heart's deep cry;?If all those gracious presences might see?That, though we hurt them once, they shall not die?Until we also wither, we who keep?Vigil on these sweet meadows where they sleep.
Pomfret, 1919
X - WHEN THE DOOR WAS OPEN
Lonely as music from afar,?Hung the new moon and one white star,?Above the poplars black and tall?That sentineled the garden wall;?Four black poplars beyond the wall,?Two on each side of the garden gate,?In silhouette against the wide?Pale sky of the late eventide.?Close was the garden and serene.?The leaning reeds in quiet state?About the pool, merged in the green?Of misty leaves and hanging vines.?The fireflies spun their silver lines?Across the deeper atmosphere,?And through the silence came the clear?Persistent tuning of the frogs?From dank recesses of the bogs.
Beyond the garden I could see?The glimmer of uncertain meadows,?Framed by the open doorway, wreathing?Sarabands of ghostly shadows,?Slowly turning, slowly breathing,?Largely and unhastily,--?But the garden held its breath.
Peace as profound as death, if death?Be visited by stealthy dreams;?A vagrant note from soundless themes?That ring the comet-paths of space,?Seemed vibrant in the windless air?That trembled with its presence there.?Out beyond the nameless place?Where neither fields nor clouds exist,?Grey from the background of the mist,?I saw three vague forms drawing near.?My sense recoiled acute with fear;?I could not stir. As from a cage?I watched that spectral dim cortege?Moving inexorable and slow?Against the ashen afterglow.?Now caught the moon their robes in white,?Now strode they sable through the night,?Across the grass they came and grew?Whiter, statelier, as they drew?Beneath the shadow of the wall;?Then one by one the three stepped through?The garden door, and stood a while?Beside the pool, their image spread?Sombre, and menacing, and tall.?Sombre as Priam's dreadful daughter,?Menacing as a murderer's smile,?Tall as