[PART I]
[Ballad of a Lost House]
[PART II]
[Duet]
[I’ll be your Epitaph]
[Third Floor Landing]
[Therapy]
[Witch!]
[Deep Sea Fishing]
[Onlooker]
[Affinity]
[Cantares]
[She says, being forbidden:]
[Little Lover]
[Kleptomaniac]
[To a Song of Sappho discovered in Egypt]
[Hyacinths]
[The Story as I understand It]
[Two Passionate Ones Part]
[This City Wind]
[PART III]
[October Trees]
[New England Cottage]
[Migration]
[Sand-pipings]
[King’s Garden]
[Abrigada]
[PART IV]
[ITALIAN QUATRAINS]
[Naples]
[Pompeii]
[Rome]
[Paganini’s Violins]
[Bavarian Roadside]
[“Hark! Hark!”]
[Bagpipe Player]
[Oberammergau]
[One Version]
[Protest in Passing]
[Saul! Saul!]
[PART V]
[Fiddler’s Farewell]
[PART VI]
[Of Mountains]
[CONTENTS]

FIDDLER’S FAREWELL

LEONORA SPEYER

FIDDLER’S FAREWELL

NEW YORK

ALFRED · A · KNOPF

MCMXXVI

MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

TO MY HUSBAND

“His smile, it listens well and long,

His sadness, charitable to mirth,

His silence, hospitable to song.”

No words to cover:

Soft linen, trailing silk of phrase

To deck the pampered song;

Fine feathers to the wing

For deft adventuring

Ecstatic ways

Along.

No many-colored coat of precious words!

Rather to dare

A stark undress,

Wear but a crying nakedness,

Venture the bright discomfort

Of a word that strips—

The startled candor of the heart

Bare on the vehement lips.

PART I

Ballad of a Lost House

Hungry Heart, Hungry Heart, where have you been?

I’ve been to a town where lives a queen.

Hungry Heart, Hungry Heart, what did you there?

I ran all the way to a certain Square.

Hungry Heart, say what you did that for!

To find a street and a certain door;

And there I knocked my knuckles sore.

That was a foolish thing to do,

Alone in the night the long hours through;

Gaping there like a chalky clown

At a stranger-door that had been your own.

Where was your pluck and where your pride?

They both were there, and love beside;

And suddenly the door swung wide.

I heard the sound of a violin

That seemed to bid me enter in:

For a fiddle’s a key for many a lock,

And will open a door though it’s built in rock.

III

Tell me, Hungry, what did you see?

A lighted hall where friends made free.

I trod with them a well-known stair—

How did you dare, Heart! How did you dare?

For a frowning face you may trust and like,

But who shall say when a smile will strike?

Up the oaken stair went I,

And all made way to let me by.

Some reached a hand and some looked down,

But I never saw their smile nor frown.

I never saw familiar things

That sought me with quaint beckonings:

The carven saints in postures mild,

Kind Virgins with the Heavenly Child,

Ladies and Knights in tapestries—

I never saw nor looked at these.

Only the Christ from a canvas dim,

Drooping there on His leafless Limb;

He looked at me and I looked at Him.

Where did you go, old Unafraid?

Up to a place where children played—

The happy hubbub the small three made!

Patter and prattle and toys and games,

Dolls in rows with curious names,

Voices lifted like high thin tunes,

Lively suppers with round-tipped spoons!

Where should I go but up the stair

To the welcome I knew was waiting there?

But all was dark, as only can be

A long deserted nursery;

And never a sound to succor me.

So I turned to a room where a woman slept

In a gay gold bed, and near I crept,

And lingered and listened—oh anguished morn,

Oh fluty cry of a babe new-born,

Clearer than trumpeting Gabriel’s horn!

Oh sea of Life, with Love for a chart—

On with the tale, old Hungry Heart!

VII

On with the tale and on to a door

Where a man had passed to pass no more:

A quiet man with a quiet strength,

And over the threshold his shadow’s length

Lay like an answer for Time to weigh;

And the dust from his feet spread thick and gray.

And I thought: Well shaken! Let friend or foe

Sweep up the dust an it please them so;

Let Lord and Valet tend to the room;

Lady, and House-maid, here with the broom!

Bid Town and Tattle see to it too

That the windows be washed of the mud they threw.

Dust and ashes of what has been!

Sweep the clean house. And keep it clean.

VIII

I thought to curse—but strange, a prayer

Rose to my lips as I stood there.

And this my praying: Now all good cheer

To him who sleeps where slept my dear,

For the sake of the good dreams once dreamed here.

Back to the stair and down I sped,

Passing a loud room table-spread;

Passing, but pausing, as house-wives do,

Judging the viands that came to view;

Trusting the sauce was tuned to the meat,

The wine well cooled and the pudding sweet;

Pausing, but passing—

Stay, Heart of mine,

What of the guests? For I divine

Their looks were grand and their manners fine.

A goodly company, I’ll admit,

And some had beauty and some had wit—

And some you loved?

Well, what of it?

And some loved you!

Perhaps, perhaps,

With linen napkins in their laps,

With cups that foamed and piled-up plates;

They loved me with a hundred hates!

They hated in such lovely ways,

With laughter, singing, kisses, praise—

How could I know? How could I know?

Hungry Heart, Hungry Heart, cry not so!

And as I lingered watching them,

I felt a tugging at my hem;

My little dog was cowering there,

A glassy terror in its stare;

My veins turned ice—O smacking lips,

O dainty greedy finger-tips!

’Twas bones of Hungry Heart they ate,

Broken and boiled and delicate,

Platter on platter the board along,

And as they supped they sang a song:

An ancient ardent melody

About a lady passing by

Whom they must love until they die.

XII

And as they drank I saw the wine,

It never came from ripened vine,

It never was brewed in tub or vat,

Knew web of spider or squeak of rat—

But it knows their thirst and it pours for that.

A thirsty stream that none may gauge,

That none shall slake though the stream assuage,

Of wine the very counterpart,

Out of the side of Hungry Heart.

And mixed with the toast, a violin,

Mellow and merry above the din,

Held shoulder high ’neath a woman’s chin.

XIII

Hungry Heart, come, make haste, make haste,

Out of the house of hopes laid waste,

Out of the town of teeth laid bare

Under its smiling debonair.

Wait not, weep not, get you gone,

Better the stones to rest upon,

The wind and the rain for a roof secure,

Hyssop and tares for your nouriture:

These shall endure. These shall endure.

XIV

I got me gone. On stumbling feet

I reached the stair and I reached the street;

The door slammed to with an iron scream,

And behind it lay the end of a dream;

Behind it lifted barren walls,

And I thought of a play when the curtain falls

On a comedy written of shrouds and palls.

Hungry Heart, Hungry Heart, what did you then?

I fell on my knees and I cried, Amen!

But now and again—now and again—

I come to the door in the dead of night,

I wander the rooms till the panes are white;

A landlord ghost! Aye, one who knows

His lease out-lived with the cock that crows,

A wraith content that contented goes.

Goes at the cry of the bird unseen,

Calling the friends of what has been;

And some it names lie sleeping near—

Ah, wake them not, friend Chanticleer!

XVI

Three times it calls the end of the dream,

And still I return, for still I seem

To comfort a house that lives aloof

From all who live beneath its roof.

I must return! to dispossess

Those bartered walls of loneliness:

Mortar and brick and iron and bole,

Where all may pass who pay their toll;

The husk of a house that has lost its soul.

XVII

For out of that house went its soul with me,

Leaping and crying after me,

To bear me faithful company

Over a clear and quickening sea.

PART II

Duet

(I sing with myself)

Out of my sorrow

I’ll build a stair,

And every to-morrow

Will climb to me there—

With ashes of yesterday

In its hair.

My fortune is made

Of a stab in the side,

My debts are paid

In pennies of pride—

Little red coins

In a heart I hide.

The stones that I eat

Are ripe for my needs,

My cup is complete

With the dregs of deeds—

Clear are the notes

Of my broken reeds.

I carry my pack

Of aches and stings,

Light with the lack

Of all good things—

But not on my back,

Because of my wings!

I’ll be your Epitaph

Over your dear dead heart I’ll lift

As blithely as a bough,

Saying, “Here lies the cruel song,

Cruelly quiet now.”

I’ll say, “Here lies the lying sword,

Still dripping with my truth;

Here lies the woven sheath I made,

Embroidered with my youth.”

I’ll sing, “Here lies, here lies, here lies—”

Ah, rust in peace below!

Passers will wonder at my words,

But your dark dust will know.

Third Floor Landing

A stranger knocked upon your door,

A stranger-voice cried out, “Come in!”

Beyond, a sofa, plump and red,

Crouched where a carven chest had been.

I craned to see the things I knew

Could not be there, since you were gone—

Oh twilight of the household gods,

Dishonored altars where they shone!

I saw instead a gilded glimpse

Of trivial things that seemed to shout

A trivial welcome from the wall;

The door swung to and shut me out.

Only the landing was unchanged,

The closed door donned a friendly air;

I had no quarrel with my place,

I was at home upon the stair.

Therapy

There is a way

Of healing love with love,

They say.

But I say no!

What! shall pain comfort pain,

Fever calm fever,

Woe minister to woe?

Shall tear, remembering,

Wash cool remembering tear?

Shall scar play host to scar,

Loneliness shelter loneliness;

And is forgetting here?

Poor patch-work of the heart,

This healing love with love;

Binding the wound to wound,

The smart to smart!

Grafting the dream upon the other dream

As a gardener grafts tree to tree,

And both from the same wild root

Bearing their bitter fruit:

The new dream dreaming in the old,

The old dream in the new—

And neither dreaming true.

Is there, I wonder,

A heaven above the heaven we knew?

And is there under

Our dream’s stern waking

A sterner hell?

And shall we know them too?

One thing I know:

Of an unreckoned giving that is a taking,

A wrong, a robbery!

Perhaps you so wronged me;

I so robbed you.

Therapy—therapy—

I am content to feel

This health of heart that will not heal;

I am content to think

That I am one with hunger,

Given to thirst,

And that I need not eat nor drink.

I am full-nourished so.

They say

There is a way

Of healing love with love.

But I say no!

* * *

Beyond the sands

Of all they say

I see you still,

Holding toward me those eager hands

I could not fill;

My hands still curve and close,

Deeming they hoard

The shining things you poured

That I let spill.

Over us lift the years—

Hill upon hill

Of days that wither into night,

And nights that ache to day;

Reiterated emptiness of shade and light

Crowding the empty way.

Up to this sullen therapy

Of time,

Shall we two climb?

* * *

I am too tired to climb;

Nor would I go

So far from the loved overthrow.

Climb you to healing! while I keep

Vigil in this lost place

A little while;

Weep

If I choose,

The honest abject tear,

Let the grief break and pour;

Gather the shadows comfortably near,

And sleep as children sleep.

A little little while!

To wake and smile,

Indifferent to the dark,

Holding to me my one-time joy

As children clutch an ancient battered toy

They will not have renewed;

Smile, and lie closer to a loss

That tunes itself to gain,

(Inexorable lullaby),

Lie softer, safer,

Pillowed on fortitude—

Drowsy—

Beneath my pain.

Witch!

Ashes of me,

Whirl in the fires I may not name.

Lick, lovely flame!

Will the fagot not burn?

Throw on the tired broom

Stabled still in my room.

I have ridden wide and well.

Shall I say with whom?

(Stop the town bell!)

Listen now,

Listen now if you dare:

I have lain with hope

Under the dreadful bough,

I have suckled Judas’ rope

As it swung on the air—

Go find the silver pieces in the moon.

I hid them there.

Deep Sea Fishing

Sometimes I cast my longing like a line,

Watch it sink deep and deeper in the blue

Immoderate waters that are dreams of you,

Flooding the parched land that is sleep of mine.

Impassively I float the pale hours through,

With quiet eyes upon the quivering twine,

Aware of lurking shapes that give no sign

Of rising, though they move as fishes do.

Your hands, your hands, a thousand multiplied,

Cool, slim, and wary, darting to and fro,

For every touch of yours I knew, a hand!

Then breaks the line along the failing tide,

I lean—to drown among them as they go—

Knowing I may not drown on waking sand!

Onlooker

I urged my will against my mind,

My mind shook like a rocking wall

But did not fall;

My will was like a wind-blown tree;

And neither knew the victory.

I hurled my mind against my will;

They did not break or bend or spill:

But in my heart the song grew still.

Affinity

Her mouth was shaped to happy tunes

That flying, she let fall,

But when his silence mended them

She could not sing at all.

She could not fly without her tunes,

They were her only wings,

But there were pleasant ways to walk

Among sure-footed things.

She walks content, her hand in his;

But neither of them sings.

Cantares

Sweet, my sweet!

Was I a fool to show you the sky—

Then strap my wings to your feet?

I lied—trusting you knew

I could not lie to you.

Beloved friend, I lied, and am forgiven: but I

Cannot forgive that you believed my lie!

III

Suffer the moths to singe their wings

At your proud prodigal light

All night!

But you, but you,

Singeing your flame

At their frail wings—

Ah shame!

Close not the door, dear love,—he cried—

I stand and wait; ah, throw it wide!

Wherefore,—she said—and you inside?

She says, being forbidden:

And was there not a king somewhere who said:

“Back, waves! I do command you!” I forget

His name, beloved, or his race, and yet

I know the story and am comforted.

The tides will rise, are rising—see, they spread

About your robes, your ermine will be wet,

Your velvet shoes, your dear dear feet! Ah let

Me warn you, sir, the waves will reach your head!

My king, my kingly love, how shall we stay

The bold broad lifting of this lovely sea?

What is the master word that we must say

To bring these roaring waters to the knee?

The other king went scampering away!

Will you so do? Or will you drown with me?

Little Lover

You made your little lover kind,

And quick of word and kiss and tear,

And everything a woman craves;

You could not make him big, my dear.

And so you made your great self small,

As only a great woman can,

Nor cared a jot; but ah, he knew

And cared a lot, the little man.

He knew and hated you at last.

Let me be fair! He left you then.

That one big generous thing he did:

Left you to grieve to heights again.

Kleptomaniac

She stole his eyes because they shone,

Stole the good things they looked upon;

They were no brighter than her own.

She stole his mouth—her own was fair—

She stole his words, his songs, his prayer;

His kisses too, since they were there.

She stole the journeys of his heart—

Her own, their very counterpart—

His seas and sails, his course and chart.

She stole his strength so fierce and true,

Perhaps for something brave to do;

Wept at his weakness, stole that too.

But she was caught one early morn!

She stood red-handed and forlorn,

And stole his anger and his scorn.

Upon his knee she laid her head,

Refusing to be comforted;

“Unkind—unkind—” was all she said.

Denied she stole; confessed she did;

Glad of such plunder to be rid—

Clutching the place where it was hid.

As he forgave she snatched his soul;

She did not want it, but she stole.

To a Song of Sappho discovered in Egypt

And Sappho’s flowers, so few,

But roses all.

Meleager.

Jonah wept within the whale;

But you have sung these centuries

Under the brown banks of the Nile

Within a dead dried crocodile:

So fares the learned tale.

When they embalmed the sacred beast

The Sapphic scroll was white and strong

To wrap the spices that were needed,

Its song unheard, its word unheeded

By crocodile or priest.

The song you sang on Lesbos when

Atthis was kind, or Mica sad;

The startled whale spewed Jonah wide,

From out the monster mummified

Your roses sing again.

Your roses! from the seven strands

Of the small harp whereon they grew;

The holy beast has had his pleasure,

His bellyful of Attic measure

Under the desert sands.

Along strange winds your petals blew

In singing fragments, roses all;

The air is heavy on the Nile,

The drowsy gods drowse on the while

As gods are wont to do.

Hyacinths

Leda, they say, once found an egg

Hidden under hyacinths ...

... much whiter than an egg ...

Sappho

Did she pluck it from the curly flowers;

Make a nest

Of her long light hair?

Or did she slip the white thing in her breast,

As smooth, as fair?

Lie smiling through the hours?

(Proudly aware

Of tiny flutterings,

Knowing well

What she guarded there,

Hidden within the shell!)

Did she dream of powerful white wings

That beat upon her like a milky tide—

Again—again—?

Did she swoon beneath a dream of hyacinths?

And then,

Did the shell open wide

Under her crying kiss?

I with children at my side,

Ponder so on this.

The Story as I understand It

I think that Eve first told the callow Tree of apples,

And taught the adolescent Serpent how to hiss

Its first wise word.

I think the Angel with the Flaming Sword

Followed her with hot holy eyes,

Remembering the red curve of her kiss

As she passed out of Paradise.

See, how the apple-boughs are twisted in their pain,

Weighed down with many a red-cheeked little Cain,

And how the serpent writhes away

From man to this far day.

An angel is a lovely lonely thing

Of boundless wing.

They are the banished ones that grieve;

Not Eve!

Not Eve, her body quick with coming pride,

Nor Adam walking there at her white side—

A little heavily perhaps,

Because of things scarce known,

As yet not named:

New tenderness for Eve, but not for Eve alone,

Fears not yet fears—

And out beyond, the world untamed

Of which to make

Their surer paradise of tears!

But in the Garden is a hallowed emptiness

Of laws, forgotten now,

Concerning fruit and flowers,

That none shall ever bless

Or break;

And in the Garden is the one plucked Bough

That blossoms whimpering

Through a divine monotony

Of spring on spring.

Two Passionate Ones Part

Why stamp the sovereign fires out?

They would have burned themselves away,

Finally flickered red to gray.

Had you but let them lift and roar,

Scorch and consume you, whirl and dart,

Ember on ember as heart on heart!

What had divided the fiery dust,

Ashes of you, and ashes of you?

Pity, pity, impatient two!

Now you go reeling out of love—

Look, as you stumble on alone:

This is the way you would have gone!

Why not have walked it hand in hand,

One-time lovers and all-time friends?

Love has a hundred gentle ends.

Ends—and beyonds—oh ghosts of flames

That never lived, that never died,

Bitter and lean, unsatisfied—

These are the fires shall warm you now,

Sit and dream at them, dream and sigh;

These are the dead that cannot die.

Fires are meant to leap and fade.

Who are you to rule otherwise,

Monarchs with madness in your eyes?

Who are you to challenge change?

What, would you carve love’s wings in stone?

Fling them your sky! Their course is their own!

Grieving impetuous passionate two—

Here was a feast on the white cloth spread,

Love was the wine, and liking the bread.

You drank and drank, but you ate no crumb;

Love was the wine, but ah, the bread,

Had you dipped it deep in the cup instead.

Pale-lipped lovers that taste the lees,

Dull, undrinkable, stale and flat,

How the good crust had sweetened these—

Pity you never thought of that!

This City Wind

This city wind with puny strength to crawl

The town’s wet streets, and furtively to tease

Loose doors and windows, making sport of these,

Comes bruised from battered jetty and sea-wall;

Comes as one limping from a sailor’s brawl,

Seeking the comfort of tall roofs and trees,

With tales of dying on disastrous seas—

This city wind that is not wind at all.

Because an area-door is left ajar,

Clapping its fretful word of autumn storm,

I sense these distant tumults, half-asleep,

I know ships founder where black waters are.

What of home-bodies, lying safe and warm,

Drowning in dreams as bitter and as deep?

PART III

I heard

The poet pass with a sound

Like the breaking of ground,

Like a storm, like a violent bird;

His head was a king’s,

And I noted the gay common things

Of his strange diadem;

I was blinded by them.

Crown of weeds!

For his brow debonair,

For his vagabond needs,

Crown of weeds,

Bud, berry, thistle and tare:

Yes! but who flung the far seeds?

October Trees

It seemed a cup that brimmed hot leaves,

That held all fires, all fruits;

I put the red tree to my lips

And drained it to the roots.

* * *

Beneath the smouldering trees I walk at night.

I know they burn! although they give no light.

* * *

I plucked a flame from off a tree,

Not thinking it would injure me;

It scorched my hand, it caught my hair,

It burned my heart to ashes there;

I played with fire in the wood—

No woman should, no woman should!

* * *

All day it rains—but on the hill

The dripping embers warm me still!

* * *

Hush—

Is this the burning bush

That Moses heard?

And was the voice a bird?

New England Cottage

The house is all in wooden rags,

The chimney tilts, the gable sags,

And where I pass

Are weedy flags

That my feet guess.

A horse-shoe rusts above the door,

Young roses prowl the porch’s floor,

Up in the dark

Wide sycamore

Is thrushes’ talk.

And here, a well not yet gone dry!

Lean in and meet its mellow eye,

Look deep, to where

A round of sky

Lurks with its star.

Happy old house of moldy beams,

Of cobweb rooms and loosening seams,

Besieged old walls

That guard their dreams

Like sentinels.

Old ark—slow-withering stick and stone,

Oak flesh that fades on iron bone;

And not deserted,

Just alone

And drowsy-hearted.

Migration

The dawn is dizzy with birds:

Summer’s last handful scattered wide,

Summer’s last pennies sung aside!

Jingle of birds in the dawn:

Hedges and bushes in beggared need,

Lifting brown hands with a desolate greed!

Spendthrift content in the dawn:

Squandered uncounted across the sky,

But into no purse will these winged coins fly!

The dawn is a resolute path

Of irresolute flight and dim half-tunes—

But I am a miser of hoarded Junes!

The dawn is dizzy with birds.

Sand-pipings

GULLS

Strong wings in the stormy weather—

Gray stitches that hold

The raveling fabrics of sea and sky

Forever together!

STORM’S END

As if engraved upon the dawn,

The sleek gulls stand

Along the rim of an exhausted sea

That rumbles up the sand.

Amazing birds, untired and trim of wing,

Whose round unflinching eyes

Meet like a challenge the leaden-lidded sun

About to rise.

FOR A SPRING DAY

Here is no bud, no blade,

No young green thing;

This stark earth knows a meager spring.

Gulls are the only birds,

And thin their cries,

Bleak winter in their frosty eyes.

Somewhere, are fields and boughs,

A hill, a brook;

I would not lift my head to look

From this wind-shapen dune,

This stern still place,

This sea that stares me in the face,

This unimpeded sun!—

And for my hand,

The fine unfecund yellow sand!

King’s Garden

Who was the royal Ming

That bade his tinkling musicians play

All through a wide and windy day

Of spring

To the royal flowers?

—Bliss

Of tall iris,

Discreet applause

Of cherry and almond boughs

Along the ledges

Of sun-lacquered hours;

Pursed lily-pods

Out-lipping one by one,

And sudden hush

Amid the lush

Green sedges!—

There walked the king

Beneath the quivering

Leaves,

The weary players bidden

Play on and on,

With slight, imperial nods;

And in his satin sleeves

His hands, omniscient, hidden,

As are the hands of gods.

Abrigada

I had been told

A foolish tale:

Of stone, dank, cold.

But you,

Erect to winter storm,

To clutch of frosty-fingered gale,

Are warm.

I thought that stone was silent too,

Unmoved by beauty,

Unaware of season or of mirth,

(Stern sister of quiet earth),

But I hear laughter, singing, as I lay

My face against your gray

Surely I hear a rhythm of near waves

And sense the leaping spray,

Mixed with wild-rose and honeysuckle,

Budding sassafras,

And the cool breath of pungent leafy bay?

I knew that walls were sheltering

And strong,

But you have sheltered love so long

That love is part

Of your straight towering,

Lifting you straighter still,

As heart lifts heart—

Hush—

How the Whip-poor-will

Wails from his bush,

The thrush

Is garrulous with delight,

There is a rapture in that liquid monotone:

“Bob-White! Bob-White!”

(Dear living stone!)

* * *

In the great room below,

Where arches hold the listening spaces,

Flames crackle, toss and gleam

In the red fire-places;

Memories dream—

Of other memories, perhaps,

Of other lives;

Of births

And of re-births that men deem death;

Of voices, foot-steps tapping the stone floor,

And faces—faces—

Beyond, the open door,

The meadow drowsy with the moon,

The mild outline of dune,

The lake, the silver magic in the trees:

Walls, you are one with these.

* * *

Up on the loggia-roof,

Under stars pale as they,

Two silent ones have crept away,

Seeking the deeper silence lovers know;

Into the drifting shadows of the night,

Into the aching beauty of the night

They dare to go.

The moon

Is a vast cocoon,

Spinning her wild white thread

Across the sky;

A thousand crickets croon

Their sharp-edged lullaby;

I hear a murmuring of lips on lips:

“All that I am, beloved—

All—”

(Lovers’ eternal cry!)

Hold them still closer, wall!

* * *

You stand serene.

The salt winds linger, lean

Upon your breast;

The mist

Lifts up a gray face to be kissed;

The east and west

Hang you with banners,

Flaunt their brief victories of dusk and dawn;

Seasons salute you as they pass,

Call to you and are gone.

Amid your meadow-grass,

Lush, green,

You stand serene.

* * *

Houses are like the hearts of men,

I think;

They must have life within,

(This is their meat and drink),

They must have fires and friends and kin,

Love for the day and night,

Children in strong young laps:

Then they live—then!

Houses and hearts of men,

Joyful and woeful,

Haunted perhaps;

Loving, forgetting,

Loved and forgot,

Fading at last, to die,

Crumble and rot:

But they who know you, Abrigada,

They and I

Forget you not.

* * *

Nor they who stand

On Abrigada’s roof,

(Red-tiled, aloof),

Who climb as I climb now,

Withdrawn from reach of hand,

From call of crowd,

Looking down on distance, dune and bough,

And looking up on distance, cloud and cloud.

Only not looking back!

For it is well finally to forget

The thirst, the much-lipped cup,

The plethora, the piteous lack,

The broken things, the stains, the scars—

Well to look up and up:

To dream undaunted dreams aloud

And stumble toward the stars!

* * *

This be in praise

Of Abrigada,

In all the ways

That come to me

Through the mild midsummer days.

In speech;

In rhyme and rhythm of written word—

Name it a poem, maybe!

In song:

Tuck the brown shining wood under my chin—

My bird,

My heart,

My violin!

In dream;

In prayer;

In silence, best of all,

Leaning there

On the beloved wall.

In silence like a cry,

Ardent and high;

A note of Abrigada’s silence

Sung to a quiet sky.

PART IV

I saw the Piper hanging on a tree,

Leaf-crowned

And crucified.

“Pan! Pan!” I cried.

The awful eye, still roving, fell on me,

Then sought along the ground.

I found

The pipes still lying near,

Held them like hyssop to the straining lips—

And oh, the sound, the sound,

Forever in my ear,

And in my side

The last note like a spear!

ITALIAN QUATRAINS

Naples

PALAZZO

Lordly amid the rotting houses of the street,

It lifts a marble scorn, while at its carven feet

They crowd in ancient filth. It does not look at them,

These crumbling beggars catching at its stony hem.

NEAPOLITAN WASHING

Hellene and Roman bred this race;

Unconsciously these drying rags

Make of the squalid market-place

A conqueror’s city hung with flags!

HAIR-DRESSING

There in the littered street she sits and chats with passing friends,

While a deft neighbor combs her hair, pins close the sleek black ends;

She holds her gushing nipple to the child upon her knee,

Plucks vermin from its curls and sells her oranges to me.

STREET OF STEPS

(Flower Market)

In the noon shadows milch-goats lie and doze,

The air drips musk, carnation, lilac, rose;

The gutters ooze and spill, one walks with care—

And yet Pan might come leaping down the stair!

“GABINETTO SEGRETO”

(Naples Museum)

Then came the saints, the men of grace,

(I heard the old god say),

Destroyed my shameless laughing face,

Preserved my feet of clay!

Pompeii

SHE SINGS

So let us eat and drink, to singing and guitar,

Before we pace the mournful streets where the gray houses are;

Vesuvio, the guilty, leans lazy on the sky.

The very gods are dead, my love—and we have still to die!

NEW EXCAVATIONS

A workman with a spade in half a day

Can push two thousand lagging years away.

See, how the tragic villas, one by one,

Like drowsy lizards creep into the sun.

I EXCAVATE

They let me play at digging in that place,

Scoop ash from painted walls—a girl’s Greek face

Stared from the frieze! Between her and the skies

I hid the smoking mountain from her eyes.

GREEK FRAGMENTS

These arching feet that trip their shattered dance,

This satyr’s mocking mouth, the tumbled scroll,

Straight thigh of boy, strong hand upon the lance:

If these be fragments, tell me, what is whole?

OLIVE TREE

Moonlight is always on its leaves;

At noon there is a midnight air

About its branches, that deceives

Lovers who chance to wander there.

Rome

UNDER THE DOME OF ST. PETER’S

At last they builded wide enough, O Lord!

Here is no walled confinement of Thy Heart,

No ending to the echoes of Thy Word:

This lifting dome lifts on to where Thou art.

STATUE OF THE SAINT

This shining bronze is Peter’s living toe,

Kiss upon faithful kiss have made it so.

Prayer upon prayer hold safe the Heavenly Keys.

Thou who denied! Great Saint, deny not these!

Paganini’s Violins

(Genoa)

All April’s larks in her most lavish sky

Know less of song than these. O mournful two,

Birds of Cremona, what shall rouse in you

The jocund venture of your keen-edged cry?

Like carrier-doves, dismissed, unwinged, you lie

In dusty fame, your loosened strings untrue

To any key, hang limp as grasses do

After the long long drought when meadows die.

This is no mood for lordly violins,

These mellow masters in their disarray

Fiddler's farewell

FIDDLER’S FAREWELL

TO MY HUSBAND

PART I

PART II

PART III

PART IV