Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

SONGS OF THE SILENT WORLD

AND OTHER POEMS

BY

ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS

BOSTON
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1885

Copyright, 1884,
BY ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS.
All rights reserved.
The Riverside Press, Cambridge:
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.

Dear! Is the distance vast? I cross it here.
The chasm fathomless? I span it thus.
The silence dread? I break it. What is fear?
When only our own hearts can sever us.

The gold and frankincense I should have given,
Envy the myrrh I lay within your hand;
Dearer to me than fame of earth or heaven
It is, to know that you will understand.

CONTENTS.

I. SONGS OF THE SILENT WORLD.

AFTERWARD.

There is no vacant chair. The loving meet—
A group unbroken—smitten, who knows how?
One sitteth silent only, in his usual seat;
We gave him once that freedom. Why not now?

Perhaps he is too weary, and needs rest;
He needed it too often, nor could we
Bestow. God gave it, knowing how to do so best.
Which of us would disturb him? Let him be.

There is no vacant chair. If he will take
The mood to listen mutely, be it done.
By his least mood we crossed, for which the heart must ache,
Plead not nor question! Let him have this one.

Death is a mood of life. It is no whim
By which life's Giver mocks a broken heart.
Death is life's reticence. Still audible to Him,
The hushed voice, happy, speaketh on, apart.

There is no vacant chair. To love is still
To have. Nearer to memory than to eye,
And dearer yet to anguish than to comfort, will
We hold him by our love, that shall not die.

For while it doth not, thus he cannot. Try!
Who can put out the motion or the smile?
The old ways of being noble all with him laid by?
Because we love, he is. Then trust awhile.

RELEASED.

Oh, joy of the dying!
At last thou art mine.
And leaping to meet thee,
Impatient to greet thee,
A rapid and rapturous, sensitive, fine
Gayety steals through my pulses to-day,
Daring and doubting like pleasure
Forbidden, or Winter looking at May.

Oh, sorrow of living!
Make way for the thrill
Of the soul that is starting—
Onlooking—departing
Across the threshold of clay.
Bend, bow to the will
Of the soul that is up and away!

THE ROOM'S WIDTH.

I think if I should cross the room,
Far as fear;
Should stand beside you like a thought—
Touch you, Dear!

Like a fancy. To your sad heart
It would seem
That my vision passed and prayed you,
Or my dream.

Then you would look with lonely eyes—
Lift your head—
And you would stir, and sigh, and say—
"She is dead."

Baffled by death and love, I lean
Through the gloom.
O Lord of life! am I forbid
To cross the room?

THE FIRST CHRISTMAS APART.

The shadows watch about the house;
Silent as they, I come.
Oh, it is true that life is deaf,
And not that death is dumb.

The Christmas thrill is on the earth,
The stars throb in the sky.
Love listens in a thousand homes,—
The Christmas bells ring by.

I cross the old familiar door
And take the dear old chair.
You look with desolated eyes
Upon me sitting there.

You gaze and see not, though the tears
In gazing burn and start.
Believe, the living are the blind,
Not that the dead depart.

A year ago some words we said
Kept sacred 'twixt us twain,
'T is you, poor Love, who answer not,
The while I speak again.

I lean above you as before,
Faithful, my arms enfold.
Oh, could you know that life is numb,
Nor think that death is cold!

Senses of earth, how weak ye are!
Joys, joys of Heaven how strong!
Loves of the earth, how short and sad,
Of Heaven how glad and long!

Heart of my heart! if earth or Heaven
Had speech or language fine
Enough, or death or life could give
Me symbol, sound, or sign

To reach you—thought, or touch, or eye,
Body or soul—I 'd die
Again, to make you understand:
My darling! This is I!

THE ANGEL JOY.

Oh, was it a death-dream not dreamed through,
That eyed her like a foe?
Or only a sorrow left over from life,
Half-finished years ago?

How long was it since she died—who told?
Or yet what was death—who knew?
She said: "I am come to Heaven at last,
And I 'll do as the blessed do."

But the custom of earth was stronger than Heaven,
And the habit of life than death,
How should an anguish as old as thought
Be healed by the end of breath?

Tissue and nerve and pulse of her soul
Had absorbed the disease of woe.
The strangest of all the angels there
Was Joy. (Oh, the wretched know!)

"I am too tired with earth," she said,
"To rest me in Paradise.
Give me a spot to creep away,
And close my heavy eyes.

"I must learn to be happy in Heaven," she said,
"As we learned to suffer below."—
"Our ways are not your ways," he said,
"And ours the ways you go."

As love, too wise for a word, puts by
All a woman's weak alarms,
Joy hushed her lips, and gathered her
Into his mighty arms.

He took her to his holy heart,
And there—for he held her fast—
The saddest spirit in the world,
Came to herself at last.

"ABSENT!"[[1]]

You do not lift your eyes to watch
Us pass the conscious door;
Your startled ear perceiveth not
Our footfall on the floor;
No eager word your lips betray
To greet us when we stand;
We throng to meet you, but you hold
To us no beckoning hand.

Faint as the years in which we breathed,
Far as the death we died,
Dim as the faded battle-smoke,
We wander at your side;
Cold as a cause outlived, or lost,
Vague as the legends told
At twilight, of a mystic band
Circling an Age of Gold.

Unseen, unheard, unfelt—and yet,
Beneath the army blue
Our heart-beats sounded real enough
When we were boys like you.
We turned us from your fabled lore,
With ancient passion rife;
No myth, our solemn laying down
Of love, and hope, and life.

No myth, the clasped and severed hands,
No dream, the last replies.
Upon the desolated home
To-day, the sunlight lies.
Take, sons of peace, your heritage—
Our loss, your legacy;
Our action be your fables fair,
Our facts, your poetry.

O ye who fall on calmer times!
The perils of the calm
Are yours—the swell, the sloth, the sleep,
The carelessness of harm,
The keel that rides the gale, to strike
Where the warm waves are still;
Ours were the surf, the stir, the shock,
The tempest and the thrill.

Comrades, be yours that vigor old,
Be yours the elected power
That fits a man, like rock to tide,
To his appointed hour;
Yours to become all that we were,
And all we might have been;
Yours the fine eye that separates
The unseen from the seen.

[[1]] Written for the Centennial Celebration at Andover Phillips Academy.

THE UNSEEN COMRADES.[[1]]

Last night I saw an armèd band, whose feet
Did take the martial step, although they trod
Soundless as waves of light upon the air.
(Silent from silent lips the bugle fell.)
The wind was wild; but the great flag they bore,
Hung motionless, and glittered like a god
Above their awful faces while they marched.
And when I saw, I understood and said—
"If these are they whom we did love, and give,
What seek they?" But one sternly answered me,—
"We seek our comrades whom we left to thee:
The weak, who were thy strength; the poor, who had
Thy pride; the faint and few who gave to thee
One supreme hour from out the day of life,
One deed majestic to their century.
These were thy trust: how fare they at thy hands?
Thy saviors then—are they thy heroes now?
Our comrades still; we keep the step with them,
Behold! As thou unto the least of them
Shalt do, so dost thou unto us. Amen."

[[1]] Written for the benefit of the Soldiers' Home at Chelsea, Massachusetts.

STRONGER THAN DEATH

Who shall tell the story
As it was?
Write it with the heart's blood?
(Pale ink, alas!)
Speak it with the soul's lips,
Or be dumb?
Tell me, singers fled, and
Song to come!

No answer; like a shell the silence curls,
And far within it leans a whisper out,
Breathless and inarticulate, and whirls
And dies as dies an ailing dread or doubt.

And I—since there is found none else than I,
No stronger, sweeter voice than mine, to tell
This tale of love that cannot stoop to die—
Were fain to be the whisper in the shell;

Were fain to lose and spend myself within
The sacred silence of one mighty heart,
And leaning from it, hidden there, to win
Some finer ear that, listening, bends apart.

"Fly for your lives!" The entrails of the earth
Trembled, resounding to the cry,
That, like a chasing ghost, around the mine
Crept ghastly: "The pit 's on fire! Fly!"

*****

The shaft, a poisoned throat whose breath was death,
Like hell itself grown sick of sin,
Hurled up the men; haggard and terrible;
Leaping upon us through the din

That all our voices made; and back we shrank
From them as from the starting dead;
Recoiling, shrieked, but knew not why we shrieked;
And cried, but knew not what we said.

And still that awful mouth did toss them up:
"The last is safe! The last is sound!"
We sobbed to see them where they sunk and crawled,
Like beaten hounds, upon the ground.

Some sat with lolling, idiot head, and laughed;
One reached to clutch the air away
His gasping lips refused; some cursed; and one
Knelt down—but he was old—to pray.

We huddled there together all that night,
Women and men from the wild Town;
I heard a shrill voice cry, "We all are up,
But some—ye have forgot—are down!"

"Who is forgot?" We stared from face to face;
But answering through the dark, she said
(It was a woman): "Eh, ye need not fret;
None is forgot except the dead.

"The buried dead asleep there in the works—
Eh, Lord! It must be hot below!
Ye 'll keep 'em waking all the livelong night,
To set the mine a-burning so!"

And all the night the mine did burn and burst,
As if the earth were but a shell
Through which a child had thrust a finger-touch,
And, peal on dreadful peal, the bell,

The miner's 'larum, wrenched the quaking air;
And through the flaring light we saw
The solid forehead of the eternal hill
Take on a human look of awe;

As if it were a living thing, that spoke
And flung some protest to the sky,
As if it were a dying thing that saw,
But could not tell, a mystery.

The bells ran ringing by us all that night.
The bells ceased jangling with the morn.
About the blackened works,—sunk, tossed, and rent,—
We gathered in the foreign dawn;

Women and men, with eyes askance and strange,
Fearing, we knew not what, to see.
Against the hollowed jaws of the torn hill,
Why creep the miners silently?

From man to man, a whisper chills: "See, see,
The sunken shaft of Thirty-one!
The earth, a traitor to her trust, has fled
And turned the dead unto the sun.

"And here—O God of life and death! Thy work,
Thine only, this!" With foreheads bare,
We knelt, and drew him, young and beautiful,
Thirty years dead, into the air.

Thus had he perished; buried from the day;
By the swift poison caught and slain;
By the kind poison unmarred, rendered fair
Back to the upper earth again—

The warm and breathing earth that knew him not;
And men and women wept to see—
For kindred had he none among us all—
How lonely even the dead may be.

We wept, I say; we wept who knew him not;
But sharp, a tearless woman sprang
From out the crowd (that quavering voice I knew),
And terrible her cry outrang:

"I pass, I pass ye all! Make way! Stand back!
Mine is the place ye yield," she said.
"He was my lover once—my own, my own;
Oh, he was mine, and he is dead!"

Women and men, we gave her royal way;
Proud as young joy the smile she had.
We knew her for a neighbor in the Town,
Unmated, solitary, sad.

Youth, hope, and love, we gave her silent way,
Calm as a sigh she swept us all;
Then swiftly, as a word leans to a thought,
We saw her lean to him, and fall

Upon the happy body of the dead—
An aged woman, poor and gray.
Bright as the day, immortal as young Love,
And glorious as life, he lay.

Her shrunken hands caressed his rounded cheek,
Her white locks on his golden hair
Fell sadly. "O love!" she cried with shriveled lips,
"O love, my love, my own, my fair!

"See, I am old, and all my heart is gray.
They say the dead are aye forgot—
There, there, my sweet! I whisper, leaning low,
That all these women hear it not.

"Deep in the darkness there, didst think on me?
High in the heavens, have ye been true?
Since I was young, and since you called me fair,
I never loved a man but you.

And here, my boy, you lie, so safe, so still"—
But there she hushed; and in the dim,
Cool morning, timid as a bride, but calm
As a glad mother, gathered him

Unto her heart. And all the people then,
Women and men, and children too,
Crept back, and back, and back, and on,
Still as the morning shadows do.

And left them in the lifting dawn—they two,
On her sad breast, his shining head
Stirred softly, as were he the living one,
And she had been the moveless dead.

And yet we crept on, back, and back, and on.
The distance widened like the sky,
Between our little restlessness,
And Love so godlike that it could not die.

II. VITTORIA.

Wise was the word the wise man spake, who said,
"Angelo was the only man to whom God gave
Four souls,"—the soul of sculpture and of song,
Of architecture and of art; these all.
For so God loved him, as if he were
His only child, and grouped about those brows
Ideals of Himself—not angels mild
As those that flit and beckon other lives,
But cherubim and seraphim; tall, strong,
Unsleeping, terrible; with wings across
Their mighty feet; and eyes—if we would look
Upon their blazing eyes, these too are hid—
Some angels are all wings! Oh, shine and fly!
Were ye not angels, ye would strike us blind.

And yet they did not, could not dazzle her—
That one sweet woman unto whom he bent
As pliant as the quarried marble turned
To life immortal in his own great hand.
Steadfast, Vittoria looked on Angelo.
She lifted lonely eyes. The years trod slow.
Fourfold the reverence which he gave to her,
Fourfold the awful tenderness, fourfold
The loyalty, the trust. And oh, fourfold
The comfort, beyond all power of comforting,
Whereby a lesser man may heal the hurt
Of widowhood!

Pescara had one soul—
A little one; and it was stained. And he—
It too, perhaps (God knows!)—was dead.
The dead are God's.

Vittoria had one heart.
The woman gave it, and the woman gives
Once. Angelo was too late. And one who dared
To shed a tear for him, has dropped it here.

NEW NEIGHBORS.

Within the window's scant recess,
Behind a pink geranium flower,
She sits and sews, and sews and sits,
From patient hour to patient hour.

As woman-like as marble is,
Or as a lovely death might be—
A marble death condemned to make
A feint at life perpetually.

Wondering, I watch to pity her;
Wandering, I go my restless ways;
Content, I think the untamed thoughts
Of free and solitary days,

Until the mournful dusk begins
To drop upon the quiet street,
Until, upon the pavement far,
There falls the sound of coming feet:

A happy, hastening, ardent sound,
Tender as kisses on the air—
Quick, as if touched by unseen lips
Blushes the little statue there;

And woman-like as young life is,
And woman-like as joy may be,
Tender with color, lithe with love,
She starts, transfigured gloriously.

Superb in one transcendent glance—
Her eyes, I see, are burning black—
My little neighbor, smiling, turns,
And throws my unasked pity back.

I wonder, is it worth the while,
To sit and sew from hour to hour—
To sit and sew with eyes of black,
Behind a pink geranium flower?

BY THE HEARTH.

You come too late;
'Tis far on in November.
The wind strikes bleak
Upon the cheek
That careth rather to keep warm,
(And where 's the harm?)
Than to abate
One jot of its calm color for your sake.
Watch! See! I stir the ember
Upon my lonely hearth and bid the fire wake.

And think you that it will?
'T is burned, I say, to ashes.
It smoulders cold
As grave-yard mould.
I wish indeed you would not blow
Upon it so!
The dead to kill.
I say, the ghosts of fires will never stir,
Nor woman lift the lashes
Of eyes wept dim, howe'er yours shine for love of her!

Ah, sweet surprise! did not think such shining
Upon the gloom
Of this cold room
Could fall. Your even, strong, calm breath
Calls life from death.
The warm light lies
At your triumphant feet, faint with desire
To reach you. See! The lining
Of violet and of silver in that sheath of fire!

If you would care—
Although it is November—
I will not say
A bitter nay
To such a gift for building fires.
And though it tires
Me to think of it—I 'll own to you
(If you can stir the ember)
It may be found at last, just warm enough for two!

TOLD IN CONFIDENCE.

Vow you 'll never, never tell him!
Freezing stars now glittering farthest, fairest on the winter sky;
If he woo me,
Not your coldest, cruel ray
Or can or may
Be found more chill and still to him than I.

Swear you 'll never, never tell him!
Warm, red roses lifting your shy faces to the summer dew;
If he win me,
Blush your sweetest in his sight
For his delight,
But I can be as warm and sweet as you.

WHAT THE VIOLINS SAID.

SONG.

"We 're all for love," the violins said.—SIDNEY LANIER.

Do I love you? Do I love you?
Ask the heavens that bend above you
To find language and to prove you
If they love the living sun.
Ask the burning, blinded meadows
If they love the falling shadows,
If they hold the happy shadows
When the fervid day is done.

Ask the blue-bells and the daisies,
Lost amid the hot field-mazes,
Lifting up their thirsty faces,
If they love the summer rains.
Ask the linnets and the plovers,
In the nest-life made for lovers,
Ask the bees and ask the clovers—
Will they tell you for your pains?

Do I, Darling, do I love you?
What, I pray, can that behoove you?
How in Love's name can I move you?
When for Love's sake I am dumb!
If I told you, if I told you,
Would that keep you, would that hold you,
Here at last where I enfold you?
If it would— Hush! Darling, come!

WON.

Oh, when I would have loved you, Dear,
The sun of winter hung more near;
Yet not so sweet, so sweet, so sweet,
The wild-rose reddening at my feet.

Your lips had learned a golden word,
You sang a song that all men heard,
Oh, love is fleet, the strain is long.
Who stays the singer from her song?

Across my path the red leaves whirled.
Dared I to kneel with all the world?
How came I, then, to clasp you, Sweet,
And find a woman at my feet?

SPENT.

Heart of iron, smile of ice,
Oh! the rock.
See him stand as dumb as death.
If you could,
Would you care to stir or shock
Him, think you, by a blow or breath,
From his mood?

Arms of velvet, lips of love,
Oh! the wave.
See her creeping to his feet
Trustfully.
None shall know the sign he gave.
Death since then, were all too sweet.
Let her die.

Lift thine eyes upon the sea,
Soul of stone.
Rather (wouldst thou breathe or move?)
I would be
A warm wave, faithful, wasted, thrown,
Spent and rent and dead with love,
Than be thee.

PARTED.

Oh, never a word he answered,
And never a word spake she!
They turned their faces each from each,
And looked upon the sea.

The hands that cannot clasp for life,
Must quickly severed be.
The love that is not large enough
To live eternally,

In true love's name, for fair love's fame,
Must die before its bloom;
For it, in all God's earth or heaven,
There is no garden-room.

Though all the wine of life be lost,
Try well the red grape's hue.
Holy the soul that cannot taste
The false love for the true.

And blessed aye the fainting heart
For such a thirst shall be—
Yet never a word they spoke, and looked
Upon the bitter sea.

AN APRIL GUST.

It shall be as it hath been.
All the world is glad and green—
Hush! Ah, hush! There cannot be
April now for you and me.

Put your finger on the lips
Of your soul; the wild rain drips;
The wind goes diving down the sea;
Tell the wind, but tell not me.

Yet if I had aught to tell,
High as heaven, or deep as hell,
Bent the fates awry or fit,
I would find a word for it.

Oh, words that neither sea nor land
Can lift their ears to understand!
Wild words, as dumb as death or fear,
I dare to die, but not to hear!

THE ANSWER.

"That we together may sail,
Just as we used to do."
Carleton's Ballads.

And what if I should be kind?
And what if you should be true?
The old love could never go on,
Just as it used to do.

The wan, white hands of the waves
That smote us swift apart,
Will never enclasp again,
And draw us heart to heart.

The cold, far feet of the tides
That trod between us two,
Can never retrace their steps,
And fall where they used to do.

Oh, well the ships must remember,
That go down to the awful sea,
No keel that chisels the current
Can cut where it used to be.

Not a throb of the gloom or the glory
That stirs in the sun or the rain,
Will ever be that gloom or glory
That dazzled or darkened—again.

Not a wave that stretches its arms,
And yearns to the breast of the shore,
Is ever the wave that came trusting,
And yearning, and loving, before.

The hope that is high as the heavens,
The joy that is keen as pain,
The faith that is free as the morning,
Can die—but can live not again.

And though I should step beside you,
And hand should reach unto hand,
We should walk mutely—stifled—
Ghosts in a breathless land.

And what if I should be kind?
And though you should be true?
The old love could never, never
Love on as it used to do.

THORNS.

As we pass by the roses,
Into your finger-tip
Bruise you the thorn.
Quick at the prick you start,
Crying, "Alas, the smart!
Farewell, my pleasant friend,
Wisely our way we wend
Out of the reach of roses."

Oh, we pass by the roses!
Where does the red drop drip?
Where is the thorn?
What though 'tis hid and pressed
Piercing into my breast?
Scathless, I stretch my hand;
Strong as their roots I stand,
And dare to trust the roses.

THE INDIAN GIRL.

A PICTURE BY WALTER SHIRLAW.

She standeth silent as a thought
Too sacred to be uttered; all
Her face unfurling like a flower
That at a breath too near will shut.
Her life a little golden clock
Whose shining hands, arrested, stay
Forever at the hour of Love.

She doubts, she dares, she dreams—of what?
I ask; she, shrinking, answers not,
She swims before me, dim, a cup
Of waste, untasted tenderness.
I drink, I dread, until I seem
(Myself unto myself) to be
He whom she chose, and charmed—and missed,
On some faint Asiatic day
Of languorous summer, ages since.

SEALED.

"Shall I pour you the wine," she said,
"The wine that is rare and red?
Sweeter the cup for the drop."—
"But why do you shrink and stop?"

"The seal of the wine
Has a sacred sign;
I am afraid," she said.

"I love and revere
You more for your fear,
Than I do for your wine," he said.

GUINEVERE.

Of Guinevere from Arthur separate,
And separate from Launcelot and the world,
And shielded in the convent with her sin,
As one draws fast a veil upon a face
That 's marred, but only holds the scar more close
Against the burning brain—I read to-day
This legend; and if other yet than I
Have read, or said, how know I? for the text
Was written in the story we have learned,
Between the ashen lines, invisible,
In hieroglyphs that blazed and leaped like light
Unto the eyes. A thousand times we read;
A thousand turn the page and understand,
And think we know the record of a life,
When lo! if we will open once again
The awful volume, hid, mysterious,
Intent, there lies the unseen alphabet—
Re-reads the tale from breath to death, and spells
A living language that we never knew.

This that I read was one short song of hers,
A fragment, I interpret, or a lost
Faint prelude to another—missing too.
She sang it (says the text) one summer night,
After the vespers, when the Abbess passed
And blessed her; when the nuns were gone, and when
She, kneeling in her drowsy cell, had said
Her prayers (poor soul!), her sorrowful prayers, in which
She had besought the Lord, for His dear sake,
And love and pity of His Only Son,
To wash her of her stain, and make her fit
On summer nights, behind the convent bars
And on stone-floors, with bruisèd lips, to pray
Away all vision but repentance from her soul.

When, kneeling as she was, her limbs
Refused to bear her, and she fell afaint
From weariness and striving to become
A holy woman, all her splendid length
Upon the ground, and groveled there, aghast
That buried nature was not dead in her,
But lived, a rebel through her fair, fierce youth;
Aghast to find that clasped hands would clench;
Aghast to feel that praying lips refused
Like saints to murmur on, but shrank
And quivered dumb. "Alas! I cannot pray!"
Cried Guinevere. "I cannot pray! I will
Not lie! God is an honest God, and I
Will be an honest sinner to his face.
Will it be wicked if I sing? Oh! let
Me sing a little, of I know not what;
Let me just sing, I know not why. For lips
Grow stiff with praying all the night.
Let me believe that I am happy, too.
A blessèd blessèd woman, who is fit
To sing because she did not sin; or else
That God forgot it for a little while
And does not mind me very much.
Dear Lord,"
(Said Guinevere), "wilt thou not listen while
I sing, as well as while I pray? I shall
Feel safer so. For I have naught to say
God should not hear. The song comes as the prayer
Doth come. Thou listenest. I sing." ...

Purple the night, and high were the skies, and higher
The eyes that leaned like the stars of my soul, to me.
Whom loveth the Queen? Him who hath right to crown her.
Who but the King is he?

Sultry the day, and gold was the hair, and golden
The mist that blinded my soul away from me.
Dethroned for a dream, for a gleam, for a glance, for a color,
How could the crownèd be?

Life goeth by like a deed, nor returneth forever.
Death cometh on, fleet-footed as pity should be.
Hush! When she waketh at last and looketh about her,
Whom will a woman see?

Thus in her cell,
Deep in the summer night, sang Guinevere—
A little, broken, blind, sweet melody—
And then she kneeled upon the convent floor,
And, peaceful, finished all her prayer and slept;
For she had naught to say God might not hear.

SUNG TO A FRIEND.

The tide is rising, rising
Out of the infinite sea;
From ripple, to wave, to billow,
Past beryl and gold and crimson,
A prism of perfect splendor;
What shall the white surf be?

The sacred tide is rising,
Rising for you and me.
Defiant across the breaker,
Wave unto wave must answer,
The sea to the shore will follow;
When shall the great flood be?

The tide must turn falling, falling
Back to the awful sea.
Thus far shalt thou go, no farther.
The color sinks to the shadow,
The pæan sobs into silence,
Where shall the ebb-line be?

By the weeds left blazing, beating
Like heart-throbs of the sea,
By the law of the land and the ocean,
By the Hand that holdeth the torrent,
I summon the tide eternal
To flow for you and me!

INCOMPLETION.

Perhaps the bud lost from the loaded tree
The sweetest blossom of the May would be;

Or wildest song that summer could have heard
Is dumb within the throat of the dead bird.

The perfect statue that all men have sought
May in some crippled hand be hid, unwrought.

Which of our dearest dead betook his flight
Into the rose-red star that fell last night?

The words forever by thy lips unsaid
Had been the crown of life upon thy head.

The splendid sun of all my days might be
The love that I shall never give to thee.

RAFE'S CHASM.

CAPE ANN, SEPTEMBER SURF. 1882.

White fire upon the gray-green waste of waves,
The low light of the breaker flares. Ah, see!
Outbursting on a sky of steel and ice,
The baffled sun stabs wildly at the gale.
The water rises like a god aglow,
Who all too long hath slept, and dreamed too sure,
And finds his goddess fled his empty arms.
Silent, the mighty cliff receives at last
That rage of elemental tenderness,
The old, omnipotent caress she knows.
Yet once the solid earth did melt for her
And, pitying, made retreat before her flight;
Would she have hidden her forever there?
Or did she, wavering, linger long enough
To let the accustomed torrent chase her down?
Over the neck of the gorge,
I cling. Lean desperately!
He who feared a chasm's edge
Were never the one to see
The torment and the triumph hid
Where the deep surges be.
I pierce the gulf; I sweep the coast
Where wide the tide swings free;
I search as never soul sought before.
There is not patience enough in all the shore,
There is not passion enough in all the sea,
To tell my love for thee.

GALATEA.

A moment's grace, Pygmalion! Let me be
A breath's space longer on this hither hand
Of fate too sweet, too sad, too mad to meet.
Whether to be thy statue or thy bride—
An instant spare me! Terrible the choice,
As no man knoweth, being only man;
Nor any, saving her who hath been stone
And loved her sculptor. Shall I dare exchange
Veins of the quarry for the throbbing pulse?
Insensate calm for a sure-aching heart?
Repose eternal for a woman's lot?
Forego God's quiet for the love of man?
To float on his uncertain tenderness,
A wave tossed up the shore of his desire,
To ebb and flow whene'er it pleaseth him;
Remembered at his leisure, and forgot,
Worshiped and worried, clasped and dropped at mood,
Or soothed or gashed at mercy of his will,
Now Paradise my portion, and now Hell;
And every single, several nerve that beats
In soul or body, like some rare vase, thrust
In fire at first, and then in frost, until
The fine, protesting fibre snaps?

Oh, who
Foreknowing, ever chose a fate like this?
What woman out of all the breathing world
Would be a woman, could her heart select,
Or love her lover, could her life prevent?
Then let me be that only, only one;
Thus let me make that sacrifice supreme,
No other ever made, or can, or shall.
Behold, the future shall stand still to ask,
What man was worth a price so isolate?
And rate thee at its value for all time.

For I am driven by an awful Law.
See! while I hesitate, it mouldeth me,
And carves me like a chisel at my heart.
'T is stronger than the woman or the man;
'T is greater than all torment or delight;
'T is mightier than the marble or the flesh.
Obedient be the sculptor and the stone!
Thine am I, thine at all the cost of all
The pangs that woman ever bore for man;
Thine I elect to be, denying them;
Thine I elect to be, defying them;
Thine, thine I dare to be, in scorn of them;
And being thine forever, bless I them!

Pygmalion! Take me from my pedestal,
And set me lower—lower, Love!—that I
May be a woman, and look up to thee;
And looking, longing, loving, give and take
The human kisses worth the worst that thou
By thine own nature shalt inflict on me.

PART OF THE PRICE.

Take back, my friend, the gifts once given.
No fairer find I this side Heaven
With which to bless thee, than thine own
Resource of blessing. Mine alone
To render what is mine to lose.
No niggard am I with it. Choose!
Lavish, I keep not any part
Of that great price within my heart.
Wilt thou the quiet comfort have?
Thine be it, daily, to the grave!
The courage, shining down from one
Whose answering eyes put out the sun?
The tenderness that touched the nerve
Like music? Oh, I bid these serve
Thee, soothe thee, watchful of thy need
While mine is unattended; feed
Thy heart while mine goes famished. Glad,
I give the dearest thing I had.
Impoverished, can I find or spare
Aught else to thee of rich or rare?
Sweet thoughts that through the soul do sing,
And deeds like loving hands that cling,
And loyal faith—a sentry—nigh,
And prayers all rose-clouds hovering high?
Nay, nay; I keep not any. Hold
The wealth I leave with fingers cold
And trembling in thine own. One thing
Alone I do deny to bring
And give again to thee. Not now,
Nor ever, Dear, shalt thou learn how
To wrest it from me. Test thy strength!
By the world's measures, height or length—
Too weak art thou, too weak to gain,
By sleight of tenderness or snatch of pain
—At thine own most or least—to take from me
Mine own ideal lost—and saved—of thee.

EURYDICE.

Listening.

A PICTURE BY BURNE JONES.

I.

As sentient as a wedding-bell,
The vibrant air throbs calling her
Whose eager body, earwise curved,
Leans listening at the heart of hell.
She is one nerve of hearing, strained
To love and suffer, hope and fear—
Thus, hearkening for her Love, she waits,
Whom no man's daring heart has gained.

II.

Oh, to be sound to such an ear!
Song, carol, vesper, comfort near,
Sweet words, at sweetest, whispered low,
Or dearer silence, happiest so.
By little languages of love
Her finer audience to prove;
A tenderness untried, to fit
To soul and sense so exquisite;
The blessed Orpheus to be
At last, to such Eurydice!

*****

III.

I listened in hell! I listened in hell!
Down in the dark I heard your soul
Singing mine out to the holy sun.
Deep in the dark I heard your feet
Ringing the way of Love in hell.
Into the flame you strode and stood.
Out of the flame you bore me well,
As I listened in hell.

IV.

I listen in hell! I listen in hell!
Who trod the fire? Where was the scorch?
Clutched, clasped, and saved, what a tale was to tell
——Heaven come down to hell!
Oh, like a spirit you strove for my sake!
Oh, like a man you looked back for your own!
Back, though you loved me heavenly well,
Back, though you lost me. The gods did decree,
And I listen in hell.

ELAINE AND ELAINE.

I.

Dead, she drifted to his feet.
Tell us, Love, is Death so sweet?

Oh! the river floweth deep.
Fathoms deeper is her sleep.

Oh! the current driveth strong.
Wilder tides drive souls along.

Drifting, though he loved her not,
To the heart of Launcelot,

Let her pass; it is her place.
Death hath given her this grace.

Let her pass; she resteth well.
What her dreams are, who can tell?

Mute the steersman; why, if he
Speaketh not a word, should we?

II.

Dead, she drifteth to his feet.
Close, her eyes keep secrets sweet.

Living, he had loved her well.
High as Heaven and deep as Hell.

Yet that voyage she stayeth not.
Wait you for her, Launcelot?

Oh! the river floweth fast.
Who is justified at last?

Locked her lips are. Hush! If she
Sayeth nothing, how should we?

III. THE POET AND THE POEM.

Upon the city called the Friends'
The light of waking spring
Fell vivid as the shadow thrown
Far from the gleaming wing
Of a great golden bird, that fled
Before us loitering.

In hours before the spring, how light
The pulse of heaviest feet!
And quick the slowest hopes to stir
To measures fine and fleet.
And warm will grow the bitterest heart
To shelter fancies sweet.

Securely looks the city down
On her own fret and toil;
She hides a heart of perfect peace
Behind her veins' turmoil—
A breathing-space removed apart
From out their stir and soil.

Our reverent feet that golden day
Stood in a quiet place,
That held repressed—I know not what
Of such a poignant grace
As falls, if dumb with life untold,
Upon a human face.

To fashion silence into words
The softest, teach me how!
I know the place is Silence caught
A-dreaming, then and now.
I only know 't was blue above,
And it was green below.

And where the deepening sunshine found
And held a holy mood,
Lowly and old, of outline quaint,
In mingled brick and wood,
Clasped in the arms of ivy vines
A nestling cottage stood:

A thing so hidden and so fair,
So pure that it would seem
Hewn out of nothing earthlier
Than a young poet's dream,
Of nothing sadder than the lights
That through the ivies gleam.

"Tell me," I said, while shrill the birds
Sang through the garden space,
To her who guided me—"tell me
The story of the place."
She lifted, in her Quaker cap,
A peaceful, puzzled face,

Surveyed me with an aged, calm,
And unpoetic eye;
And peacefully, but puzzled half,
Half tolerant, made reply:
"The people come to see that house—
Indeed, I know not why,

"Except thee know the poem there—
'T was written long since, yet
His name who wrote it, now—in fact—
I cannot seem to get—
His name who wrote that poetry
I always do forget.

"Hers was Evangeline; and here
In sound of Christ Church bells
She found her lover in this house,
Or so I 've heard folks tell.
But most I know is, that's her name,
And his was Gabriel.

"I 've heard she found him dying, in
The room behind that door,
(One of the Friends' old almshouses,
Perhaps thee 've heard before;)
Perhaps thee 've heard about her all
That I can tell, and more.

"Thee can believe she found him here,
If thee do so incline.
Folks have their fashions in belief—
That may be one of thine.
I 'm sure his name was Gabriel,
And hers Evangeline."

She turned her to her common work
And unpoetic ways,
Nor knew the rare, sweet note she struck
Resounding to your praise,
O Poet of our common nights,
And of our care-worn days!

Translator of our golden mood,
And of our leaden hour!
Immortal thus shall poet gauge
The horizon of his power.
Wear in your crown of laurel leaves,
The little ivy flower!

And happy be the singer called
To such a lofty lot!
And ever blessed be the heart
Hid in the simple spot
Where Evangeline was loved and wept,
And Longfellow forgot.

O striving soul! strive quietly,
Whate'er thou art or dost,
Sweetest the strain, when in the song
The singer has been lost;
Truest the work, when 't is the deed,
Not doer, counts for most!

The shadow of the golden wing
Grew deep where'er it fell.
The heart it brooded over will
Remember long and well
Full many a subtle thing, too sweet
Or else too sad to tell.

Forever fall the light of spring
Fair as that day it fell,
Where Evangeline, led by your voice,
O solemn Christ Church bell!
For lovers of all springs, all climes,
At last found Gabriel.

OVERTASKED.

It was a weary hour,
I looked in the lily-bell.
How holy is the flower!
It leaned like an angel against the light;
"O soul!" it said, sighing, "be white, be white!"

I stretched my arms for rest,
I turned to the evening cloud—
A vision how fair, how blest!
"Low heart," it called, softly, "arise and fly.
It were yours to reach levels as high as I."

I stooped to the hoary wave
That wept on the darkening shore.
It sobbed to me: "Oh, be brave!
Whatever you do, or dare, or will,
Like me to go striving, unresting still."

STRANDED.

O busy ships! that smile in sailing
In a glory
Like a dream,
From the colors of the harbor to the colors of the sea.
In singing words or in bewailing,
Tell the story
As you gleam,
Tell the story, guess the language of my idle hours for me.

O busy waves! so blest in bruising
Your white faces
On the shore.
So happy to be wasted with the purpose of the sea,
Content to leave with it the choosing
Of your places
Evermore,
Whisper but the far sea-meaning of my stranded life for me.

Gray the sails grow in departing
Like fleet swallows
To the South.
Stern the tide turns in its parting,
As it follows
With dumb mouth.
In the stillness and the sternness God makes answer unto me.

GLOUCESTER HARBOR.

One shadow glides from the dumb shore,
And one from every silent sail.
One cloud the averted heavens wear,
A soft mask, thin and frail.

Oh, silver is the lessening rain,
And yellow was the weary drouth.
The reef her warning finger puts
Upon the harbor's mouth.

Her thin, wan finger, stiff and stark,
She holds by night, she holds by day.
Ask, if you will. No answer makes
The sombre, guarded bay.

The fleet, with idle canvas hung,
Like a brute life, sleeps patiently.
The headlights nod across the cliff,
The fog blows out to sea.

Songs of the Silent World, and Other Poems