The Singing Man

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Preston Peabody
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Title: The Singing Man
A Book of Songs and Shadows
Author: Josephine Preston Peabody
Release Date: December 30, 2004 [EBook #14531]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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SINGING MAN ***
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THE SINGING MAN
A Book of Songs and
Shadows
By JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY
[Illustration]
BOSTON_ and _NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge

1911
COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY JOSEPHINE PEABODY MARKS
Published November 1911
NOTE
Thanks are especially due to the editors of The American Magazine,
Scribner's, The Atlantic Monthly, and to Messrs. Harper and Brothers,
for their courteous permission to reprint certain of the poems included
in this volume.
FOREWORD
We make our songs as we must, from fragments of the joy and sorrow
of living. What Life itself may be, we cannot know till all men share
the chance to know.
Until the day of some more equal portion, there is no human brightness
unhaunted by this black shadow: the thought of those unnumbered who
pay all the heavier cost of life, to live and die without knowledge that
there is any Joy of Living.
No song could face such blackness, but for the will to share, and for
hope of the day of sharing.
Upon that hope and that mindfulness, the poems in this book are linked
together.
J.P.M.
4 October, 1911.
CONTENTS
THE SINGING MAN 3
THE TREES 15

O, do you remember? How it came to be? 21
RICH MAN, POOR MAN 23
But we did walk in Eden 29
THE FOUNDLING 31
Love sang to me. And I went down the stair 35
THE FEASTER 37
_Belovèd, if the moon could weep_ 43
THE GOLDEN SHOES 45
NOON AT PÆSTUM 47
VESTAL FLAME 48
The dark had left no speech save hand-in-hand 51
THE PROPHET 53
THE LONG LANE 56
_Ah but, Belovèd, men may do_ 59
ALISON'S MOTHER TO THE BROOK 61
You, Four Walls, wall not in my heart! 65
CANTICLE OF THE BABE 67
And thou, Wayfaring Woman whom I meet 73
GLADNESS 75
THE NIGHTINGALE UNHEARD 81

Envoi 87
THE SINGING MAN
AN ODE OF THE PORTION OF LABOR
'The profit of the Earth is for all.'
--ECCLESIASTES.
THE SINGING MAN
I
He sang above the vineyards of the world.
And after him the vines
with woven hands
Clambered and clung, and everywhere unfurled

Triumphing green above the barren lands;
Till high as gardens grow,
he climbed, he stood,
Sun-crowned with life and strength, and singing
toil,
And looked upon his work; and it was good:
The corn, the wine, the oil.
He sang above the noon. The topmost cleft
That grudged him footing
on the mountain scars
He planted and despaired not; till he left
His
vines soft breathing to the host of stars.
He wrought, he tilled; and
even as he sang,
The creatures of his planting laughed to scorn
The
ancient threat of deserts where there sprang
The wine, the oil, the corn!
He sang not for abundance.--Over-lords
Took of his tilth. Yet was
there still to reap,
The portion of his labor; dear rewards
Of sunlit
day, and bread, and human sleep.
He sang for strength; for glory of
the light.
He dreamed above the furrows, 'They are mine!'
When all
he wrought stood fair before his sight
With corn, and oil, and wine.
_Truly, the light is sweet
Yea, and a pleasant thing
It is to see the

Sun.
And that a man should eat
His bread that he hath won;--
(So is it sung and said),
That he
should take and keep,
After his laboring,
The portion of his labor in
his bread,
His bread that he hath won;
Yea, and in quiet sleep,

When all is done._
He sang; above the burden and the heat,
Above all seasons with their
fitful grace;
Above the chance and change that led his feet
To this
last ambush of the Market-place.
'Enough for him,' they said--and still
they say--
'A crust, with air to breathe, and sun to shine;
He asks no
more!'--Before they took away
The corn, the oil, the wine.
He sang. No more he sings now, anywhere.
Light was enough, before
he was undone.
They knew it well, who took away the air,
--Who
took away the sun;
Who took, to serve their soul-devouring greed,

Himself, his breath, his bread--the goad of toil;--
Who have and hold,
before the eyes of Need,
The corn, the wine,--the oil!
_Truly, one thing is sweet
Of things beneath the Sun;
This, that a
man should earn his bread and eat,
Rejoicing in his work which he
hath done.
What shall be sung or said
Of desolate deceit.
When others take