The Singing Man | Page 3

earth?Take all their mirth?Away with them, far off, to orchard-places,--?Nor they nor Solomon arrayed like these,--?To sun themselves at ease;?To breathe of wind-swept spaces;?To see some miracle of leafy graces;--?To catch the out-flowing rapture of the trees.?Considering the lilies.
--Yes. And when?Shall they consider Men?
(_O showering May-clad tree,?Bear yet awhile with me._)
II
For now at last, they have beheld the trees.?Lo, even these!--?The men of sounding laughter and low fears;?The women of light laughter, and no tears;?The great ones of the town.?And those, of most renown,?That once sold doves,--now grown so pennywise?To bargain with forlorner merchandise,--?They buy and sell, they buy and sell again,?The life-long toil of men.?Worn with their market strife to dispossess?The blind,--the fatherless,?They too go forth, to breathe of budding trees,?And woods with beckoning wonders new unfurled.?Yes, even these:?The money-changers and the Pharisees;?The rulers of the darkness of this world.
(_O choiring Summer tree,?Bear yet awhile with me._)
III
For now, behold their heart's desire is thrall?To simpleness.--O new delight, unguessed,?In very rest!?And precious beyond all,?A garden-place, a garden with a wall!?To the green earth! All bountiful to bless?Hearts sickening with excess.?To the green earth, whose blithe replenishments?Shall fresh the jaded sense!?To the green earth, the dust-corrupted soul?Returns to be made whole.?For now it comes indeed,?They will go forth, all they, to see a reed?So shaken by the wind.?Men are no longer blind?To aught, save human kind.
(_O mellowing August tree,?Bear yet awhile with me._)
IV
The wonder this. For some there are no trees;?Or in the trees no beauty and no mirth:--?Those dullest millions, pent?In life-long banishment?From all the gifts and creatures of the earth,?Shut in the inner darkness of the town;?Those blighted things you see,?But the Sun sees not, at its going down:--?Warped outcasts of some human forestry;?Blind victims of the blind,?Wreckt ones and dark of mind,?With the poor fruit, after their piteous kind.?And if you take some Old One to the fields,?To see what Nature yields?With fullest hands to men already free,?It well may be,?As on some indecipherable book?The Guest will look,?With eyes too old,--too old, too dim to see;?Too old, too old to learn;?Or to discern--?Before it slips away,?The joy of such a late half-holiday!?Proffer those starved eyes your belated cup:?They look not up.?Too late, too late for any sky to do?Brief kindness with its blue.?And what behold they, then??In the shamed moment, when?Old eyes bow down again?
_Down in the night and blackness of the heart,?The drowned things start.?And he recks nothing of the meadow air,?Because of what is There.?Lost things of hope and sorrow without tongue:?The human lilies, sprung?Out of the ooze, and trodden,?Even as they breathed and clung!?Lost lilies, bruised and sodden;?Lost faces, gleaming there,?Where misery blasphemes the sacred young!?Mute outcry, most, of those?Small suffering hands defrauded of their rose;?Faces the daylight shuns;?Ruinous faces of the little ones,--?Pale witness, unaware.?Starved lips, and withering blood--?O broken in the bud!--?Blank eyes, and blighted hair._
(_O golden, golden tree!?Bear yet awhile with me._)
So is it, haply, when?Dull eyes look up, and then?Dull eyes look down again.?Waste no vain holiday on such as these;?For them there is no joy in blossomed trees.
V
For them there is no joy in blossomed trees.?And with what eye-shut ease?We leave them, at the last, for company,?The Tree,?Whose two stark boughs no springtime yet unfurled,?Ever, since time began;?Nor bloom so strange to see!--?Behold, the Man,?With His two arms outstretched to fold the world.
_O, do you remember?--How it came to be??Far, golden windows gazing from the shore;?Golden ebb of daylight; heart could hold no more:?Belovèd and Belovèd, and the sea._
_Westward the sun,--low, slow and golden;?Eastward the moon climbed, honey-pale.?O do you remember? while our eyes were holden,?Close, close upon us,--the Golden Sail??Wind-swift she came,--thing of living flame,?Sea-breathing Glory, to make the heart afraid!?The ripples, fold on fold?Of coiling gold,?Trailing a thousand ways?Her golden maze,?Rocked in a golden tumult, every one,?The gondolas, the ships ..?Westward she made .....?A portent from the sky,--gone by, gone by,?To golden, far eclipse; ...?Into the Sun._
_Behold, a mystery?That shook to golden throbbing all the sea.?Oh, and what needed one more wonder be?For thee and me, Belovèd? thee and me?_
RICH MAN, POOR MAN
'_Rich man, Poor man, Beggar man, Thief,?Doctor, Lawyer, Merchant, Chief._'
I
Highway, stretched along the sun,?Highway, thronged till day is done;?Where the drifting Face replaces?Wave on wave on wave of faces,?And you count them, one by one:
'_Rich man--Poor man--Beggar man--Thief:?Doctor--Lawyer--Merchant--Chief._'?Is it soothsay?--Is it fun?
Young ones, like as wave and wave;?Old ones, like as grave and grave;?Tide on tide of human faces?With what human undertow!?Rich man, poor man, beggar-man, thief!--?Tell me of the eddying spaces,?Show me where the lost ones go;?Like and lost, as leaf and leaf.?What's your secret grim refrain?Back and forth and back again,?Once, and now, and always so??Three days since, and who was Thief??Three days more, and who'll be Chief??Oh, is that beyond belief,?Doctor, Lawyer--Merchant-Chief?
(_Down, like grass before the mowing;?On, like wind in its mad going:--?Wind