The Singing Man

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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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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 P?STUM 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 his bread;?His and his children's bread?--?And the laborer hath none.?This, for his portion now, of all that he hath done.
He earns; and others eat.?He starves;--they sit at meat?Who have taken away the Sun._
II
Seek him now, that singing Man.?Look for him,?Look for him?In the mills,?In the mines;?Where the very daylight pines,--?He, who once did walk the hills!?You shall find him, if you scan?Shapes all unbefitting Man,?Bodies warped, and