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Title: By the Aurelian Wall, and Other Elegies

Author: Bliss Carman

Release Date: September 15, 2016 [EBook #53053]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Larry B. Harrison, Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Books project.)

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ***

By the Aurelian Wall

By the Aurelian Wall

And Other Elegies

By BLISS CARMAN

Author of

Low Tide on Grand Pré, Behind the Arras,

Ballads of Lost Haven, &c.

Lamson, Wolffe and Company

Boston, New York and London

MDCCCXCVIII

Copyright, 1898,

By Lamson, Wolffe and Company.

———

All rights reserved.

Norwood Press

J. S. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith

Norwood Mass. U.S.A.

CONTENTS

BY THE AURELIAN WALL, 9

THE WHITE GULL, 15

THE COUNTRY OF HAR, 32

TO RICHARD LOVELACE, 42

A SEAMARK, 44

THE WORD OF THE WATER, 57

PHILLIPS BROOKS, 59

JOHN ELIOT BOWEN, 64

HENRY GEORGE, 67

ILICET, 70

TO RAPHAEL, 76

TO P. V., 82

A NORSE CHILD’S REQUIEM, 87

IN THE HEART OF THE HILLS, 91

AN AFTERWORD, 96

SEVEN WIND SONGS, 102

ANDREW STRATON, 112

THE GRAVE-TREE, 127

BY THE AURELIAN WALL

In Memory of John Keats

BY the Aurelian Wall,

Where the long shadows of the centuries fall

From Caius Cestius’ tomb,

A weary mortal seeking rest found room

For quiet burial,

Leaving among his friends

A book of lyrics.

Such untold amends

A traveller might make

In a strange country, bidden to partake

Before he farther wends;

Who shyly should bestow

The foreign reed-flute they had seen him blow

And finger cunningly,

On one of the dark children standing by,

Then lift his cloak and go.

The years pass. And the child

Thoughtful beyond his fellows, grave and mild,

Treasures the rough-made toy,

Until one day he blows it for clear joy,

And wakes the music wild.

His fondness makes it seem

A thing first fashioned in delirious dream,

Some god had cut and tried,

And filled with yearning passion, and cast aside

On some far woodland stream,—

After long years to be

Found by the stranger and brought over sea,

A marvel and delight

To ease the noon and pierce the dark blue night,

For children such as he.

He learns the silver strain

Wherewith the ghostly houses of gray rain

And lonely valleys ring,

When the untroubled whitethroats make the spring

A world without a stain;

Then on his river reed,

With strange and unsuspected notes that plead

Of their own wild accord

For utterances no bird’s throat could afford,

Lifts it to human need.

His comrades leave their play,

When calling and compelling far away

By river-slope and hill,

He pipes their wayward footsteps where he will,

All the long lovely day.

Even his elders come.

“Surely the child is elvish,” murmur some,

And shake the knowing head;

“Give us the good old simple things instead,

Our fathers used to hum.”

Others at the open door

Smile when they hear what they have hearkened for

These many summers now,

Believing they should live to learn somehow

Things never known before.

But he can only tell

How the flute’s whisper lures him with a spell,

Yet always just eludes

The lost perfection over which he broods;

And how he loves it well.

Till all the country-side,

Familiar with his piping far and wide,

Has taken for its own

That weird enchantment down the evening blown,—

Its glory and its pride.

And so his splendid name,

Who left the book of lyrics and small fame

Among his fellows then,

Spreads through the world like autumn—who knows when?—

Till all the hillsides flame.

Grand Pré and Margaree

Hear it upbruited from the unresting sea;

And the small Gaspareau,

Whose yellow leaves repeat it, seems to know

A new felicity.

Even the shadows tall,

Walking at sundown through the plain, recall

A mound the grasses keep,

Where once a mortal came and found long sleep

By the Aurelian Wall.

THE WHITE GULL

For the Centenary of the Birth of Shelley

I

UP by the idling reef-set bell

The tide comes in;

And to the idle heart to-day

The wind has many things to say;

The sea has many a tale to tell

His younger kin.

For we are his, bone of his bone,

Breath of his breath;

The doom tides sway us at their will;

The sky of being rounds us still;

And over us at last is blown

The wind of death.

II

A HUNDRED years ago to-day

There came a soul,

A pilgrim of the perilous light,

Treading the spheral paths of night,

On whom the word and vision lay

With dread control.

Now the pale Summer lingers near,

And talks to me

Of all her wayward journeyings,

And the old, sweet, forgotten things

She loved and lost and dreamed of here

By the blue sea.

The great cloud-navies, one by one,

Bend sails and fill

From ports below the round sea-verge;

I watch them gather and emerge,

And steer for havens of the sun

Beyond the hill.

The gray sea-horses troop and roam;

The shadows fly

Along the wind-floor at their heels;

And where the golden daylight wheels,

A white gull searches the blue dome

With keening cry.

And something, Shelley, like thy fame

Dares the wide morn

In that sea-rover’s glimmering flight,

As if the Northland and the night

Should hear thy splendid valiant name

Put scorn to scorn.

III

Thou heart of all the hearts of men,

Tameless and free,

And vague as that marsh-wandering fire,

Leading the world’s outworn desire

A night march down this ghostly fen

From sea to sea!

Through this divided camp of dream

Thy feet have passed,

As one who should set hand to rouse

His comrades from their heavy drowse;

For only their own deeds redeem

God’s sons at last.

But the dim world will dream and sleep

Beneath thy hand,

As poppies in the windy morn,

Or valleys where the standing corn

Whispers when One goes forth to reap

The weary land.

O captain of the rebel host,

Lead forth and far!

Thy toiling troopers of the night

Press on the unavailing fight;

The sombre field is not yet lost,

With thee for star.

Thy lips have set the hail and haste

Of clarions free

To bugle down the wintry verge

Of time forever, where the surge

Thunders and crumbles on a waste

And open sea.

IV

Did the cold Norns who pattern life

With haste and rest

Take thought to cheer their pilgrims on

Through trackless twilights vast and wan,

Across the failure and the strife,

From quest to quest,—

Set their last kiss upon thy face,

And let thee go

To tell the haunted whisperings

Of unimaginable things,

Which plague thy fellows with a trace

They cannot know?

So they might fashion and send forth

Their house of doom,

Through the pale splendor of the night,

In vibrant, hurled, impetuous flight,

A resonant meteor of the North

From gloom to gloom.

V

I THINK thou must have wandered far

With Spring for guide,

And heard the shy-born forest flowers

Talk to the wind among the showers,

Through sudden doorways left ajar

When the wind sighed;

Thou must have heard the marching sweep

Of blown white rain

Go volleying up the icy kills,—

And watched with Summer when the hills

Muttered of freedom in their sleep

And slept again.

Surely thou wert a lonely one,

Gentle and wild;

And the round sun delayed for thee

In the red moorlands by the sea,

When Tyrian Autumn lured thee on,

A wistful child,

To rove the tranquil, vacant year,

From dale to dale;

And the great Mother took thy face

Between her hands for one long gaze,

And bade thee follow without fear

The endless trail.

And thy clear spirit, half forlorn,

Seeking its own,

Dwelt with the nomad tents of rain,

Marched with the gold-red ranks of grain,

Or ranged the frontiers of the morn,

And was alone.

VI

One brief perturbed and glorious day!

How couldst thou learn

The quiet of the forest sun,

Where the dark, whispering rivers run

The journey that hath no delay

And no return?

And yet within thee flamed and sang

The dauntless heart,

Knowing all passion and the pain

On man’s imperious disdain,

Since God’s great part in thee gave pang

To earth’s frail part.

It held the voices of the hills

Deep in its core;

The wandering shadows of the sea

Called to it,—would not let it be;

The harvest of those barren rills

Was in its store.

Thine was a love that strives and calls

Outcast from home,

Burning to free the soul of man

With some new life. How strange, a ban

Should set thy sleep beneath the walls

Of changeless Rome!

VII

More soft, I deem, from spring to spring,

Thy sleep would be

Where this far western headland lies

With its imperial azure skies,

Under thee hearing beat and swing

The eternal sea.

Where all the livelong brooding day

And all night long,

The far sea-journeying wind should come

Down to the doorway of thy home,

To lure thee ever the old way

With the old song.

But the dim forest would so house

Thy heart so dear,

Even the low surf of the rain,

Where ghostly centuries complain,

Might beat against thy door and rouse

No heartache here.

For here the thrushes, calm, supreme,

Forever reign,

Whose gloriously kingly golden throats

Regather their forgotten notes

In keys where lurk no ruin of dream,

No tinge of pain.

And here the ruthless noisy sea,

With the tide’s will,

The strong gray wrestler, should in vain

Put forth his hand on thee again—

Lift up his voice and call to thee,

And thou be still.

For thou hast overcome at last;

And fate and fear

And strife and rumor now no more

Vex thee by any wind-vexed shore,

Down the strewn ways thy feet have passed

Far, far from here.

VIII

Up by the idling, idling bell

The tide comes in;

And to the restless heart to-day

The wind has many things to say;

The sea has many a tale to tell

His younger kin.

The gray sea-horses troop and roam;

The shadows fly

Along the wind-floor at their heels;

And where the golden daylight wheels,

A white gull searches the blue dome

With keening cry.

THE COUNTRY OF HAR

For the Centenary of Blake’s “Songs of Innocence”

ONCE a hundred years ago

There was a light in London town,

For an angel of the snow

Walked her street sides up and down.

As a visionary boy

He put forth his hand to smite

Songs of innocence and joy

From the crying chords of night,

Like a muttering of thunder

Heard beneath the polar star;

For his soul was all a-wonder

At the calling vales of Har.

He, a traveller by day

And a pilgrim of the sun,

Took his uncompanioned way

Where the journey is not done.

Where no mortal might aspire

His clear heart was set to climb,

To the uplands of desire

And the river wells of time.

Home he wandered to the valley

Where the springs of morning are,

And the sea-bright cohorts rally

On the twilit plains of Har.

There he found the Book of Thel

In the lily-garth of bliss,

Fashioned, how no man can tell,

As a white windflower is:

Like the lulling of a sigh

Uttered in the trembling grass,

When a shower is gone by,

And the sweeping shadows pass,—

Through the hyacinthine weather,

Wheel them down without a jar,—

Heaving all the dappled heather

In the streaming vales of Har.

There was manna in the rain;

And above the rills, a voice:

“Son of mine, dost thou complain?

I will make thee to rejoice.

“Thou shalt be a child to men,

With confusion on thy speech;

And the worlds within thy ken

Shall not lie within thy reach.

“But the rainbirds shall discover,

And the daffodils unbar,

Quiet waters for their lover

On the shining plains of Har.

“April rain and iron frost

Shall make flowers to thy hand;

Every field thy feet have crossed

Shall revive from death’s command.

“Hunting with a leash of wind

Through the corners of the earth,

Take the hounds of Spring to find

The forgotten trails of mirth;

“For the lone child-heart is dying

Of a love no time can mar,

Hearing not a voice replying

From the gladder vales of Har.

“Flame thy heart forth! Yet, no haste:

Have not I prepared for thee

The king’s chambers of the East

And the wind halls of the sea?

“Be a gospeller of things

Nowhere written through the wild,

With that gloaming call of Spring’s,

When old secrets haunt the child.

“Let the bugler of my going

Wake no clarion of war;

For the paper reeds are blowing

On the river plains of Har.”

Centuries of soiled renown

To the roaring dark have gone:

There is woe in London town,

And a crying for the dawn.

April frost and iron rain

Ripen the dead fruit of lust,

And the sons of God remain

The dream children of the dust,

For their heart hath in derision,

And their jeers have mocked afar,

The delirium of vision

From the holy vales of Har.

Once in Autumn came a dream;

The white Herald of the North,

Faring West to ford my stream,

Passed my lodge and bade me forth;

Glad I rose and went with him,

With my shoulder in his hand;

The auroral world grew dim,

And the idle harvest land.

Then I saw the warder lifting

From its berg the Northern bar,

And eternal snows were drifting

On the wind-bleak plains of Har.

“Listen humbly,” said my guide.

“I am drear, for I am death,”

Whispered Snow; but Wind replied,

“I outlive thee by a breath,

I am Time.” And then I heard,

Dearer than all wells of dew,

One gray golden-shafted bird

Hail the uplands; so I knew

Spring, the angel of our sorrow,

Tarrying so seeming far,

Should return with some long morrow

In the calling vales of Har.

TO RICHARD LOVELACE

AH, Lovelace, what desires have sway

In the white shadow of your heart,

Which no more measures day by day,

Nor sets the years apart?

How many seasons for your sake

Have taught men over, age by age,

“Stone walls do not a prison make,

Nor iron bars a cage!”—

Since that first April when you fared

Into the Gatehouse, well content,

Caring for nothing so you cared

For honor and for Kent.

How many, since the April rain

Beat drear and blossomless and hoar

Through London, when you left Shoe Lane,

A-marching to no war!

Till now, with April on the sea,

And sunshine in the woven year,

The rain-winds loose from reverie

A lyric and a cheer.

A SEAMARK

A Threnody for Robert Louis Stevenson

COLD, the dull cold! What ails the sun,

And takes the heart out of the day?

What makes the morning look so mean,

The Common so forlorn and gray?

The wintry city’s granite heart

Beats on in iron mockery,

And like the roaming mountain rains,

I hear the thresh of feet go by.

It is the lonely human surf

Surging through alleys chill with grime,

The muttering churning ceaseless floe

Adrift out of the North of time.

Fades, it all fades! I only see

The poster with its reds and blues

Bidding the heart stand still to take

Its desolating stab of news.

That intimate and magic name:

“Dead in Samoa.” ... Cry your cries,

O city of the golden dome,

Under the gray Atlantic skies!

But I have wander-biddings now.

Far down the latitudes of sun,

An island mountain of the sea,

Piercing the green and rosy zone,

Goes up into the wondrous day.

And there the brown-limbed island men

Are bearing up for burial,

Within the sun’s departing ken,

The master of the roving kind.

And there where time will set no mark

For his irrevocable rest,

Under the spacious melting dark,

With all the nomad tented stars

About him, they have laid him down

Above the crumbling of the sea,

Beyond the turmoil of renown.

O all you hearts about the world

In whom the truant gipsy blood,

Under the frost of this pale time,

Sleeps like the daring sap and flood

That dream of April and reprieve!

You whom the haunted vision drives,

Incredulous of home and ease,

Perfection’s lovers all your lives!

You whom the wander-spirit loves

To lead by some forgotten clue

Forever vanishing beyond

Horizon brinks forever new;

The road, unmarked, ordained, whereby

Your brothers of the field and air

Before you, faithful, blind and glad,

Emerged from chaos pair by pair;

The road whereby you too must come,

In the unvexed and fabled years

Into the country of your dream,

With all your knowledge in arrears!

You, who can never quite forget

Your glimpse of Beauty as she passed,

The well-head where her knee was pressed,

The dew wherein her foot was cast;

O you who bid the paint and clay

Be glorious when you are dead,

And fit the plangent words in rhyme

Where the dark secret lurks unsaid;

You brethren of the light-heart guild,

The mystic fellowcraft of joy,

Who tarry for the news of truth,

And listen for some vast ahoy

Blown in from sea, who crowd the wharves

With eager eyes that wait the ship

Whose foreign tongue may fill the world

With wondrous tales from lip to lip;

Our restless loved adventurer,

On secret orders come to him,

Has slipped his cable, cleared the reef,

And melted on the white sea-rim.

O granite hills, go down in blue!

And like green clouds in opal calms,

You anchored islands of the main,

Float up your loom of feathery palms!

For deep within your dales, where lies

A valiant earthling stark and dumb,

This savage undiscerning heart

Is with the silent chiefs who come

To mourn their kin and bear him gifts,—

Who kiss his hand, and take their place,

This last night he receives his friends,

The journey-wonder on his face.

He “was not born for age.” Ah no,

For everlasting youth is his!

Part of the lyric of the earth

With spring and leaf and blade he is.

’Twill nevermore be April now

But there will lurk a thought of him

At the street corners, gay with flowers

From rainy valleys purple-dim.

O chiefs, you do not mourn alone!

In that stern North where mystery broods,

Our mother grief has many sons

Bred in those iron solitudes.

It does not help them, to have laid

Their coil of lightning under seas;

They are as impotent as you

To mend the loosened wrists and knees.

And yet how many a harvest night,

When the great luminous meteors flare

Along the trenches of the dusk,

The men who dwell beneath the Bear,

Seeing those vagrants of the sky

Float through the deep beyond their hark,

Like Arabs through the wastes of air,—

A flash, a dream, from dark to dark,—

Must feel the solemn large surmise:

By a dim vast and perilous way

We sweep through undetermined time,

Illumining this quench of clay,

A moment staunched, then forth again.

Ah, not alone you climb the steep

To set your loving burden down

Against the mighty knees of sleep.

With you we hold the sombre faith

Where creeds are sown like rain at sea;

And leave the loveliest child of earth

To slumber where he longed to be.

His fathers lit the dangerous coast

To steer the daring merchant home;

His courage lights the dark’ning port

Where every sea-worn sail must come.

And since he was the type of all

That strain in us which still must fare,

The fleeting migrant of a day,

Heart-high, outbound for otherwhere,

Now therefore, where the passing ships

Hang on the edges of the noon,

And Northern liners trail their smoke

Across the rising yellow moon,

Bound for his home, with shuddering screw

That beats its strength out into speed,

Until the pacing watch descries

On the sea-line a scarlet seed

Smolder and kindle and set fire

To the dark selvedge of the night,

The deep blue tapestry of stars,

Then sheet the dome in pearly light,

There in perpetual tides of day,

Where men may praise him and deplore,

The place of his lone grave shall be

A seamark set forevermore,

High on a peak adrift with mist,

And round whose bases, far beneath

The snow-white wheeling tropic birds,

The emerald dragon breaks his teeth.

THE WORD OF THE WATER

For the Unveiling of the Stevenson Fountain in San Francisco

GOD made me simple from the first,

And good to quench your body’s thirst.

Think you he has no ministers

To glad that wayworn soul of yours?

Here by the thronging Golden Gate

For thousands and for you I wait,

Seeing adventurous sails unfurled

For the four corners of the world.

Here passed one day, nor came again,

A prince among the tribes of men.

(For man, like me, is from his birth

A vagabond upon this earth.)

Be thankful, friend, as you pass on,

And pray for Louis Stevenson,

That by whatever trail he fare

He be refreshed in God’s great care!

PHILLIPS BROOKS

THIS is the white winter day of his burial.

Time has set here of his toiling the span

Earthward, naught else. Cheer him out through the portal,

Heart-beat of Boston, our utmost in man!

Out in the broad open sun be his funeral,

Under the blue for the city to see.

Over the grieving crowd mourn for him, bugle!

Churches are narrow to hold such as he.

Here on the steps of the temple he builded,

Rest him a space, while the great city square

Throngs with his people, his thousands, his mourners;

Tears for his peace and a multitude’s prayer.

How comes it, think you, the town’s traffic pauses

Thus at high noon? Can we wealthmongers grieve?

Here in the sad surprise greatest America

Shows for a moment her heart on her sleeve.

She who is said to give life-blood for silver,

Proves, without show, she sets higher than gold

Just the straight manhood, clean, gentle, and fearless,

Made in God’s likeness once more as of old.

Once more the crude makeshift law overproven,—

Soul pent from sin will seek God in despite;

Once more the gladder way wins revelation,—

Soul bent on God forgets evil outright.

Once more the seraph voice sounding to beauty,

Once more the trumpet tongue bidding, no fear!

Once more the new, purer plan’s vindication,—

Man be God’s forecast, and Heaven is here.

Bear him to burial, Harvard, thy hero!

Not on thy shoulders alone is he borne;

They of the burden go forth on the morrow,

Heavy and slow, through a world left forlorn.

No grief for him, for ourselves the lamenting;

What giant arm to stay courage up now?

March we a thousand file up to the City,

Fellow with fellow linked, he taught us how!

Never dismayed at the dark nor the distance!

Never deployed for the steep nor the storm!

Hear him say, “Hold fast, the night wears to morning!

This God of promise is God to perform.”

Up with thee, heart of fear, high as the heaven!

Thou hast known one wore this life without stain.

What if for thee and me,—street, Yard, or Common,—

Such a white captain appear not again!

Fight on alone! Let the faltering spirit

Within thee recall how he carried a host,

Rearward and van, as Wind shoulders a dust-heap;

One Way till strife be done, strive each his most.

Take the last vesture of beauty upon thee,

Thou doubting world; and with not an eye dim

Say, when they ask if thou knowest a Saviour,

“Brooks was His brother, and we have known him.”

JOHN ELIOT BOWEN

HERE at the desk where once you sat,

Who wander now with poets dead

And summers gone, afield so far,

There sits a stranger in your stead.

Here day by day men come who knew

Your steadfast ways and loved you well;

And every comer with regret

Has some new thing of praise to tell.

The poet old, whose lyric heart

Is fresh as dew and bright as flame,

Longs for “his boy,” and finds you not,

And goes the wistful way he came.

Here where you toiled without reproach,

Builded and loved and dreamed and planned,

At every door, on every page,

Lurks the tradition of your hand.

And if to you, like reverie,

There comes a thought of how they fare

Whose footsteps go the round you went

Of noisy street and narrow stair,

Know they have learned a new desire,

Which puts unfaith and faltering by;

And triumph fills their dream because

One life was leal, one hope was high.

HENRY GEORGE

WE are only common people,

And he was a man like us.

But he loved his fellows before himself;

And he died for me and you,

To redeem the world anew

From cruelty and greed—

For love the only creed,

For honor the only law.

There once was a man of the people,

A man like you and me,

Who worked for his daily bread,

And he loved his fellows before himself.

But he died at the hands of the throng

To redeem the world from wrong,

And we call him the Son of God,

Because of the love he had.

And there was a man of the people,

Who sat in the people’s chair,

And bade the slaves go free;

For he loved his fellows before himself.

They took his life; but his word

They could not take. It was heard

Over the beautiful earth,

A thunder and whisper of love.

And there is no other way,

Since man of woman was born,

Than the way of the rebels and saints,

With loving and labor vast,

To redeem the world at last

From cruelty and greed;

For love is the only creed,

And honor the only law.

ILICET

FRIENDS, let him rest

In midnight now.

Desire has gone

On the weary quest

With aching brow;

Until the dawn,

Friends, let him rest.

With a boy’s desire

He set the cup

To his lips to drink;

The ruddy fire

Was lifted up

At day’s cool brink,

With a boy’s desire.

The heart of a boy!

He tasted life,

And the bitter sting

Of sorrow in joy,

Failure in strife,

Was pain to wring

The heart of a boy.

In a childish whim,

He spilled the wine

Upon the floor,—

In beads on the brim

Was a glitter of brine,—

Then, out at the door

In a childish whim!

Out of the storm,

In the flickering light,

A broken glass

Lies on our warm

Hearthstone to-night,

While shadows pass

Out of the storm.

Friends, let him rest

In midnight now.

Desire has gone

On the weary quest

With aching brow:

Until the dawn,

Friends, let him rest.

In sorrow and shame

For the craven heart,

In manhood’s breast

With valor’s name,

Let him depart

Unto his rest

In sorrow and shame.

In after years

God, who bestows

Or withholds the valor,

Shall wipe all tears—

Haply, who knows?—

From his face’s pallor

In after years.

He could not learn

To fight with his peers

In sturdier fashion;

Let him return

Through the night with tears,

Stung with the passion

He could not learn.

All-bountiful, calm,

Where the great stars burn,

And the spring bloom smothers

The night with balm,

Let him return

To the silent Mother’s

All-bountiful calm.

Friends, let him rest

In midnight now.

Desire has gone

On the weary quest

With aching brow:

Until the dawn,

Friends, let him rest.

TO RAPHAEL

MASTER of adored Madonnas,

What is this men say of thee?

Thou wert something less than honor’s

Most exact epitome?

Yes, they say you loved too many,

Loved too often, loved too well.

Just as if there could be any

Over-loving, Raphael!

Was it, “Sir, and how came this tress,

Long and raven? Mine are gold!”

You should have made Art your mistress,

Lived an anchorite and old!

Ah, no doubt these dear good people

On familiar terms with God,

Could devise a parish steeple

Built to heaven without a hod.

You and Solomon and Cæsar

Were three fellows of a kind;

Not a woman but to please her

You would leave your soul behind.

Those dead women with their beauty,

How they must have loved you well,—

Dared to make desire a duty,

With the heretics in hell!

And your brother, that Catullus,

What a plight he must be in,

If those silver songs that lull us

Were result of mortal sin!

If the artist were ungodly,

Prurient of mind and heart,

I must think they argue oddly

Who make shrines before his art.

Not the meanest aspiration

Ever sprung from soul depraved

Into art, but art’s elation

Was the sanctity it craved.

Oh, no doubt you had your troubles,

Devils blue that blanched your hope.

I dare say your fancy’s bubbles,

Breaking, had a taste of soap.

Did your lady-loves undo you

In some mediæval way?

Ah, my Raphael, here’s to you!

It is much the same to-day.

Did their tantalizing laughter

Make your wisdom overbold?

Were you fire at first; and after,

Did their kisses leave you cold?

Did some fine perfidious Nancy,

With the roses in her hair,

Play the marsh-fire to your fancy

Over quagmires of despair?

My poor boy, were there more flowers

In your Florence and your Rome,

Wasting through the gorgeous hours,

Than your two hands could bring home?

Be content; you have your glory;

Life was full and sleep is well.

What the end is of the story,

There’s no paragraph to tell.

TO P. V.

SO they would raise your monument,

Old vagabond of lovely earth?

Another answer without words

To Humdrum’s, “What are poets worth?”

Not much we gave you when alive,

Whom now we lavishly deplore,—

A little bread, a little wine,

A little caporal—no more.

Here in our lodging of a day

You roistered till we were appalled;

Departing, in your room we found

A string of golden verses scrawled.

The princely manor-house of art,

A vagrant artist entertains;

And when he gets him to the road,

Behold, a princely gift remains.

Abashed, we set your name above

The purse-full patrons of our board;

Remind newcomers with a nudge,

“Verlaine took once what we afford!”

The gardens of the Luxembourg,

Spreading beneath the brilliant sun,

Shall be your haunt of leisure now

When all your wander years are done.

There you shall stand, the very mien

You wore in Paris streets of old,

And ponder what a thing is life,

Or watch the chestnut blooms unfold.

There you will find, I dare surmise,

Another tolerance than ours,

The loving-kindness of the grass,

The tender patience of the flowers.

And every year, when May returns

To bring the golden age again,

And hope comes back with poetry

In your loved land across the Seine,

Some youth will come with foreign speech,

Bearing his dream from over sea,

A lover of your flawless craft,

Apprenticed to your poverty.

He will be mute before you there,

And mark those lineaments which tell

What stormy unrelenting fate

Had one who served his art so well.

And there be yours, the livelong day,

Beyond the mordant reach of pain,

The little gospel of the leaves,

The Nunc dimittis of the rain!

A NORSE CHILD’S REQUIEM

SLEEP soundly, little Thorlak,

Where all thy peers have lain,

A hero of no battle,

A saint without a stain!

Thy courage be upon thee,

Unblemished by regret,

For that adventure whither

Thy tiny march was set.

The sunshine be above thee,

With birds and winds and trees.

Thy way-fellows inherit

No better things than these.

And silence be about thee,

Turned back from this our war

To front alone the valley

Of night without a star.

The soul of love and valor,

Indifferent to fame,

Be with thee, heart of vikings,

Beyond the breath of blame.

Thy moiety of manhood

Unspent and fair, go down,

And, unabashed, encounter

Thy brothers of renown.

So modest in thy freehold

And tenure of the earth,

Thy needs, for all our meddling,

Are few and little worth.

Content thee, not with pity;

Be solaced, not with tears;

But when the whitethroats waken

Through the revolving years,

Hereafter be that peerless

And dirging cadence, child,

Thy threnody unsullied,

Melodious, and wild.

Then winter be thy housing,

Thy lullaby the rain,

Thou hero of no battle,

Thou saint without a stain.

IN THE HEART OF THE HILLS

IN the warm blue heart of the hills

My beautiful, beautiful one

Sleeps where he laid him down

Before the journey was done.

All the long summer day

The ghosts of noon draw nigh,

And the tremulous aspens hear

The footing of winds go by.

Down to the gates of the sea,

Out of the gates of the west,

Journeys the whispering river

Before the place of his rest.

The road he loved to follow

When June came by his door,

Out through the dim blue haze

Leads, but allures no more.

The trailing shadows of clouds

Steal from the slopes and are gone;

The myriad life in the grass

Stirs, but he slumbers on;

The inland wandering tern

Skreel as they forage and fly;

His loons on the lonely reach

Utter their querulous cry;

Over the floating lilies

A dragon-fly tacks and steers;

Far in the depth of the blue

A martin settles and veers;

To every roadside thistle

A gold-brown butterfly clings;

But he no more companions

All the dear vagrant things.

The strong red journeying sun,

The pale and wandering rain,

Will roam on the hills forever

And find him never again.

Then twilight falls with the touch

Of a hand that soothes and stills,

And a swamp-robin sings into light

The lone white star of the hills.

Alone in the dusk he sings,

And a burden of sorrow and wrong

Is lifted up from the earth

And carried away in his song.

Alone in the dusk he sings,

And the joy of another day

Is folded in peace and borne

On the drift of years away.

But there in the heart of the hills

My beautiful weary one

Sleeps where he laid him down;

And the large sweet night is begun.

AN AFTERWORD

To G. B. R.

BROTHER, the world above you

Is very fair to-day,

And all things seem to love you

The old accustomed way.

Here in the heavenly weather

In June’s white arms you sleep,

Where once on the hills together

Your haunts you used to keep.

The idling sun that lazes

Along the open field

And gossips to the daisies

Of secrets unrevealed;

The wind that stirs the grasses

A moment, and then stills

Their trouble as he passes

Up to the darkling hills,—

And to the breezy clover

Has many things to say

Of that unwearied rover

Who once went by this way;

The miles of elm-treed meadows;

The clouds that voyage on,

Streeling their noiseless shadows

From countries of the sun;

The tranquil river reaches

And the pale stars of dawn;

The thrushes in their beeches

For reverie withdrawn;

With all your forest fellows

In whom the blind heart calls,

For whom the green leaf yellows,

On whom the red leaf falls;

The dumb and tiny creatures

Of flower and blade and sod,

That dimly wear the features

And attributes of God;

The airy migrant comers

On gauzy wings of fire,

Those wanderers and roamers

Of indefinite desire;

The rainbirds and all dwellers

In solitude and peace,

Those lingerers and foretellers

Of infinite release;

Yea, all the dear things living

That rove or bask or swim,

Remembering and misgiving,

Have felt the day grow dim.

Even the glad things growing,

Blossom and fruit and stem,

Are poorer for your going

Because you were of them.

Yet since you loved to cherish

Their pleading beauty here,

Your heart shall not quite perish

In all the golden year;

But God’s great dream above them

Must be a tinge less pale,

Because you lived to love them

And make their joy prevail.

SEVEN WIND SONGS

Now these are the seven wind songs

For Andrew Straton’s death,

Blown through the reeds of the river,

A sigh of the world’s last breath,

Where the flickering red auroras

Out on the dark sweet hills

Follow all night through the forest

The cry of the whip-poor-wills.

For the meanings of life are many,

But the purpose of love is one,

Journeying, tarrying, lonely

As the sea wind or the sun.

I

Wind of the Northern land,

Wind of the sea,

No more his dearest hand

Comes back to me.

Wind of the Northern gloom,

Wind of the sea,

Wandering waifs of doom

Feckless are we.

Wind of the Northern land,

Wind of the sea,

I cannot understand

How these things be.

II

Wind of the low red morn

At the world’s end,

Over the standing corn

Whisper and bend.

Then through the low red morn

At the world’s end,

Far out from sorrow’s bourne,

Down glory’s trend,

Tell the last years forlorn

At the world’s end,

Of my one peerless born

Comrade and friend.

III

WIND of the April stars,

Wind of the dawn,

Whether God nears or fars,

He lived and shone.

Wind of the April night,

Wind of the dawn,

No more my heart’s delight

Bugles me on.

Wind of the April rain,

Wind of the dawn,

Lull the old world from pain

Till pain be gone.

IV

Wind of the summer noon,

Wind of the hills,

Gently the hand of June

Stays thee and stills.

Far off, untouched by tears,

Raptures or ills,

Sleeps he a thousand years

Out on the hills.

Wind of the summer noon,

Wind of the hills,

Is the land fair and boon

Whither he wills?

V

Wind of the gulfs of night,

Wind of the sea,

Where the pale streamers light

My world for me,—

Breath of the wintry Norns,

Frost-touch or sleep,—

He whom my spirit mourns

Deep beyond deep

To the last void and dim

Where ages stream—

Is there no room for him

In all this dream?

VI

Wind of the outer waste,

Threne of the outer world,

Leash of the stars unlaced,

Morning unfurled,

Somewhere at God’s great need,

I know not how,

With the old strength and speed

He is come now;

Therefore my soul is glad

With the old pride,

Tho’ this small life is sad

Here in my side.

VII

Wind of the driven snow,

Wind of the sea,

On a long trail and slow

Farers are we.

Wind of the Northern gloom,

Wind of the sea,

Shall I one day resume

His love for me?

Wind of the driven snow,

Wind of the sea,

Then shall thy vagrant know

How these things be.

These are the seven wind songs

For Andrew Straton’s rest,

From the hills of the Scarlet Hunter

And the trail of the endless quest.

The wells of the sunrise harken,

They wait for a year and a day:

Only the calm sure thrushes

Fluting the world away!

For the husk of life is sorrow;

But the kernels of joy remain,

Teeming and blind and eternal

As the hill wind or the rain.

ANDREW STRATON

ANDREW STRATON was my friend,

With his Saxon eyes and hair,

And his loyal viking spirit,

Like an islesman of the North

With his earldom on the sea.

At his birth the mighty Mother

Made of him a fondling one,

Hushed from pain within her arms,

With her seal upon his lips;

And from that day he was numbered

With the sons of consolation,

Peace and cheer were in his hands,

And her secret in his will.

Now the night has Andrew Straton

Housed from wind and storm forever

In a chamber of the gloom

Where no window fronts the morning,

Lulled to rest at last from roving

To the music of the rain.

And his sleep is in the far-off

Alien villages of the dusk,

Where there is no voice of welcome

To the country of the strangers,

Save the murmur of the pines.

And the fitful winds all day

Through the grass with restless footfalls

Haunt about his narrow door,

Muttering their vast unknown

Border balladry of time,

To the hoarse rote of the sea.

There he reassumes repose,

He who never learned unrest

Here amid our fury of toil,

Undisturbed though all about him

To the cohorts of the night

Sound the bugles of the spring;

And his slumber is not broken

When along the granite hills

Flare the torches of the dawn.

More to me than kith or kin

Was the silence of his speech;

And the quiet of his eyes,

Gathered from the lonely sweep

Of the hyacinthine hills,

Better to the failing spirit

Than a river land in June:

And to look for him at evening

Was more joy than many friends.

As the woodland brooks at noon

Were his brown and gentle hands,

And his face as the hill country

Touched with the red autumn sun

Frank and patient and untroubled

Save by the old trace of doom

In the story of the world.

So the years went brightening by.

Now a lyric wind and weather

Breaks the leaguer of the frost,

And the shining rough month March

Crumbles into sun and rain;

But the glad and murmurous year

Wheels above his rest and wakens

Not a dream for Andrew Straton.

Now the uplands hold an echo

From the meadow lands at morn;

And the marshes hear the rivers

Rouse their giant heart once more,—

Hear the crunching floe start seaward

From a thousand valley floors;

While far on amid the hills

Under stars in the clear night,

The replying, the replying,

Of the ice-cold rivulets

Plashing down the solemn gorges

In their arrowy blue speed,

Fills and frets the crisp blue twilight

With innumerable sound,—

With the whisper of the spring.

But the melting fields are empty,

Something ails the bursting year.

Ah, now helpless, O my rivers,

Are your lifted voices now!

Where is all the sweet compassion

Once your murmur held for me?

Cradled in your dells, I listened

To your crooning, learned your language,

Born your brother and your kin.

When I had the morn for revel,

You made music at my door;

Now the days go darkling on,

And I cannot guess your words.

Shall young joy have troops of neighbors,

While this grief must house alone?

O my brothers of the hills,

Who abide through stress and change,

On the borders of our sorrow,

With no part in human tears,

Lift me up your voice again

And put by this grievous thing!

Ah, my rivers, Andrew Straton

Leaves me here a vacant world!

I must hear the roar of cities

And the jargon of the schools,

With no word of that one spirit

Who was steadfast as the sun

And kept silence with the stars.

I must sit and hear the babble

Of the worldling and the fool,

Prating know-alls and reformers

Busy to improve on man,

With their chatter about God;

Nowhere, nowhere the blue eyes,

With their swift and grave regard,

Falling on me with God’s look.

I have seen and known and loved

One who was too sure for sorrow,

Too serenely wise for haste,

Too compassionate for scorn,

Fearless man and faultless comrade,

One great heart whose beat was love.

In a thousand thousand hollows

Of the hills to-day there twinkle

Icy-blue handbreadths of April,

Where the sinking snows decay

In the everlasting sun;

And a thousand tiny creatures

Stretch their heart to fill the world.

Now along the wondrous trail

Andrew Straton loved to follow

Day by day and year on year,

The awaited sure return

Of all sleeping forest things

Is reheralded abroad,

Till the places of their journey,—

Wells the frost no longer hushes,

Ways no drift can bury now,

Wood and stream and road and hillside,—

Hail their coming as of old.

But my beautiful lost comrade

Of the golden heart, whose life

Rang through April like a voice

Through some Norland saga, crying

Skoal to death, comes not again;

Time shall not revive that presence

More desired than all the flowers,

Longer wished for than the birds.

April comes, but April’s lover

Is departed and not here.

Sojourning beyond the frost,

He delays; and now no more,—

Though the goldenwings are come

With their resonant tattoo,

And along the barrier pines

Morning reddens on the hills

Where the thrushes wake before it,—

No more to the summoning flutes

Of the forest Andrew Straton

Gets him forth afoot, light-hearted,

On the unfrequented ways

With companionable Spring.

Only the old dreams return.

So I shape me here this fancy,

Foolish me! of Andrew Straton;

How the lands of that new kindred

Have detained him with allegiance,

And some far day I shall find him,

There as here my only captain,

Master of the utmost isles

In the ampler straits of sea.

Out of the blue melting distance

Of the dreamy southward range

Journey back the vagrant winds,

Sure and indolent as time;

And the trembling wakened wood-flowers

Lift their gentle tiny faces

To the sunlight; and the rainbirds

From the lonely cedar barrens

Utter their far pleading cry.

Up across the swales and burnt lands

Where the soft gray tinges purple,

Mouldering into scarlet mist,

Comes the sound as of a marching,

The low murmur of the April

In the many-rivered hills.

Then there stirs the old vague rapture,

Like a wanderer come back,

Still desiring, scathed but deathless,

From beyond the bourne of tears,

Wayworn to his vacant cabin,

To this foolish fearless heart.

Soon the large mild stars of springtime

Will resume the ancient twilight

And restore the heart of earth

To unvexed eternal poise;

For the great Will, calm and lonely,

Can no mortal grief derange,

No lost memories perturb;

And the sluices of the morning

Will be opened, and the daybreak

Well with bird-calls and with brook-notes,

Till there be no more despair

In the gold dream of the world.

THE GRAVE-TREE

LET me have a scarlet maple

For the grave-tree at my head,

With the quiet sun behind it,

In the years when I am dead.

Let me have it for a signal,

Where the long winds stream and stream,

Clear across the dim blue distance,

Like a horn blown in a dream;

Scarlet when the April vanguard

Bugles up the laggard Spring,

Scarlet when the bannered Autumn,

Marches by unwavering.

It will comfort me with honey

When the shining rifts and showers

Sweep across the purple valley

And bring back the forest flowers.

It will be my leafy cabin,

Large enough when June returns

And I hear the golden thrushes

Flute and hesitate by turns.

And in fall, some yellow morning,

When the stealthy frost has come,

Leaf by leaf it will befriend me

As with comrades going home.

Let me have the Silent Valley

And the hill that fronts the east,

So that I can watch the morning

Redden and the stars released.

Leave me in the Great Lone Country,

For I shall not be afraid

With the shy moose and the beaver

There within my scarlet shade.

I would sleep, but not too soundly,

Where the sunning partridge drums,

Till the crickets hush before him

When the Scarlet Hunter comes.

That will be in warm September,

In the stillness of the year,

When the river-blue is deepest

And the other world is near.

When the apples burn their reddest

And the corn is in the sheaves,

I shall stir and waken lightly

At a footfall in the leaves.

It will be the Scarlet Hunter

Come to tell me time is done;

On the idle hills forever

There will stand the idle sun.

There the wind will stay to whisper

Many wonders to the reeds;

But I shall not fear to follow

Where my Scarlet Hunter leads.

I shall know him in the darkling

Murmur of the river bars,

While his feet are on the mountains

Treading out the smoldering stars.

I shall know him, in the sunshine

Sleeping in my scarlet tree,

Long before he halts beside it

Stooping down to summon me.

Then fear not, my friends, to leave me

In the boding autumn vast;

There are many things to think of

When the roving days are past.

Leave me by the scarlet maple,

When the journeying shadows fail,

Waiting till the Scarlet Hunter

Pass upon the endless trail.

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Table of Contents

The Project Gutenberg eBook of By the Aurelian Wall, and Other Elegies, by Bliss Carman

CONTENTS

THE WHITE GULL For the Centenary of the Birth of Shelley

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

THE COUNTRY OF HAR For the Centenary of Blake’s “Songs of Innocence”

TO RICHARD LOVELACE

A SEAMARK A Threnody for Robert Louis Stevenson

THE WORD OF THE WATER For the Unveiling of the Stevenson Fountain in San Francisco

PHILLIPS BROOKS

JOHN ELIOT BOWEN

HENRY GEORGE

ILICET

TO RAPHAEL

TO P. V.

A NORSE CHILD’S REQUIEM

IN THE HEART OF THE HILLS

AN AFTERWORD To G. B. R.

SEVEN WIND SONGS

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

ANDREW STRATON

THE GRAVE-TREE

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE