diss f S 35^ Book rO , tai^htN^_ COPlTilGHT DEPOSIT. The Gates of Utterance and Other Poems BY GLADYS CROMWELL BOSTON SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY 1915 ^^'^ coptbioht, 1916 Shebmax, French &> Compant Ml 28 IQI5 TO ANNE DUNN CONTENTS PAGE The Gates of Utterance 1 The Riders 2 Compensation 3 Reality 4 The Bat 5 The Audience 7 To France 10 Approach 12 Definition 13 Emblems 14 The Poet's Thrift 15 Solicitude 16 — ?• Aspiration 17 Jov 18 Education 19 Evidence 20 Progression 21 — 'Intuition 22 Kindred 23 Resignation 24 Solace of Seasons 25 The Fountain 26 The Threshold 27 The Hermit 28 PAGE Interpretation 29 Victory 30 The Hypocrite's Reward 31 Testimony of Hands 32 The Ascetic's Vindication 33 Transmission 34 Preparation 35 Egypt 36 Dusk 37 Conflict 38 To THE Crowd 39 Autumn 40 THE GATES OF UTTERANCE AND OTHER POEMS THE GATES OF UTTERANCE There is a throng within the gates, A pressing, diverse throng; Without, a peaceful throng awaits, To which I would belong. Within the gates the varied folk Advise discordantly ; Without, the poet-crowds convoke To council harmony. Within the gates are all the heights And depths of serried powers ; But when a lyric theme invites, I reach out-lying bowers Where dwell the bards of quiet years ; I join my song to theirs; My glad, unfettered spirit hears The melody it shares. [1] THE RIDERS You look askance at me. Do you take my horse For Pegasus? Of course He steps like Poetry, But he's a quiet beast. I think I hear you say You don't like in the least His fleet-footed way. But 3^our light flitting mare Skims the meadows too. Her nimble feet pursue The stony dales, dare The sloping pastures, leap The brooks. You do the things I do in dreams, asleep — (Pegasus has wings) ! You canter wide-awake. Your mare is real ; my steed Imaginary. Need You then suspect me? Take The cloud-rack by my side ! Partners, Life and Art, Adventurers, we ride To rhythms in heaven's heart. m COMPENSATION You never told me, never, yet I know You hold a sadness in disguise, unseen Behind the days and years that intervene Since you renounced ambition long ago. Whence comes the tender love that you bestow To feed our loves? Behind your self serene There burns a golden passion,— how you screen With radiant life the flame you must forego ! Then you assume our love is ample meed. Atonement,— oh! I wonder any deed Of ours can ease your spirit's lassitude. Or lift your lonely heart ! Our stars elude Your sun that made them bright — your soli- tude. Deprived, no boon avails to fill your need. [3] REALITY What things are real? This falling, falling rain, This garden where My flowers droop again? Or simply dreams, Dreams asleep in me Until I join Their silent company? [4] THE BAT Over the river of sorrow Spread thy drab wings wide. Cool is the river. Glide Between the trees. Borrow The prudent feet of the fleeing Beast. Thy pinions blend With leaves. O thou All-Seeing, Be night's obedient friend ! To a gloomy bat, all sorrow Is cool and sombre and sweet. So no wonder thou fearest to meet The feline light of to-morrow. When out from the east a glimmer Of twilight corals thy wings, Thy vision gi*ows dimmer and dimmer, Thou dreamer of dusky things ! When morning comes out from the east, Advancing with stealthy ray. Thy wheeling wings betray Thy presence, Bird-and-Beast, Soaring to dismal bowers With smoke-like motion. Gladness, Flame-like, heaps through the hours Thine ashen sorrow and sadness. [5] Blinded by noon-day splendour, Unseeing till darkness return, Thy cinereous pinions yearn For stone-colored night. Surrender Thy spirit. Is not the sighing Monotony sweet? Maybe Creation is what we call dying, As daylight is darkness to thee. [6] THE AUDIENCE Intently leans the avid sage We name The Audience. His mood Invites a vigorous prelude Of sound, the silence to assuage, — The silence in sequestered sources Of his being. (Albeit his mind And soul and heart may be like wind- Awakened rivers in their courses.) In clear, attenuated line, The violin a theme avers. It is this theme as it recurs That forms the plenary design, — This theme, which the composer's love Could never deal with twice the same ; Submissive cellos now proclaim It ; louder clarions above Now give it wise embellishment. In unsuspected ways, all strings And pipes resume it, altering Their rhythms to be more eloquent. The strange, concurrent harmonies Provoke The Audience to pleasure, Lead by phrase and clustered measure To the peace of cadences. The Audience thinks in terms of tone ; The curious intellect pursues The flowing lines and shadowy hues Of sound, akin to sculptured stone ; Mind estimates. But in between The mind and soul an interim Is brimmed with intonations dim: The soul itself is left serene. Who can express what music is To soul ? A cloud becomes cascade And stirs a river winter-weighed With frost. The massive images Of mountains, on whose purple ground The falling water carves a line Of white, as narrow and as fine As winter floods when first unbound, Remind one of the soul Avhen sound Traverses it. Music is spring To soul, April's awakening, A freedom and a peace profound. But what is music to the heart.'' A trouble, a vicissitude, A dream no cadence will conclude. In it the surging sounds of Art [8] stay ever unresolved. They are Beginning only, origin, Inchoate symphony within A symphony of sky and star. There is no answer, thus and thus, That present players can impart To the long-listening, searching heart ; But answers multitudinous. The avid sage, The Audience, Is wrapped in his own silence dim. The mind, the soul, the heart in him Observe the circling consonance Of chords. These grow more intricate Each time they are resumed, and still One chosen theme the tones fulfill. One motion they delineate. So God reveals Himself to me. I am His audience ; I hear With mind and soul and heart. His clear, Progressive theme perpetually. [9] TO FRANCE Oh, still I dream of thee, my France ! The sun Irradiates thy meadows. Stalks of grain And aureate beams infusing them are one. There is a harmony that links thy plain To quiet skies ; that weaves a slender chain Of living vine with wavering light. Where cease Thy level spaces, hills dim clouds detain ; And in thy south, where seasons find increase. The sheaves, like kneeling women, praise thy peace. Unwilling and reluctant are my dreams. To recognize transforming destinies. I dream of thee, my France ; of mellow beams That ripen happiness ; of ample skies That frame thy far perspectives. Meadows rise To them by poplar spans. Upon thy ways I see the cross. The gentle Saviour dies With arms athwart the cloud. As heavenly rays Touch earth. His love a sense of light conveys. Is happiness no more than a disguise, A sheathing dream reality must wear? If so, away with joyful mockeries! My France, in desolation thou art fair. Thy trampled poppies and thy fields laid bare Express a beauty that prosperity [10] Concealed. Thj joys are fallen; fate would spare No ornament of peace. But I can see The strange unfolding of thy destiny. I love thee, and would know thee as indeed Thou art. No scythe, a sword embraces wheat. The poplars on thy margin seem to lieed No more the wind that made their stems throb sweet As lyre strings. The stars alone entreat. Thy vine is severed and thy grape is blood ; Thy sheaves are souls. Thy rising meadows meet The sky like surging waves of a dark flood, And shadow closes every quickening bud. My France, my France, in darkness I begin To know the light that only faith can shed Upon thy ways. As joy and beauty win Through death, so thou shalt win. Art thou not fed, Though fields are bare, with spiritual bread .? The star-strewn shadow crowns and dignifies Thy young, submissive God of the bowed head. How newly does thy sorrow harmonize With His, whose loving arms enfold the skies \ [11] APPROACH Apparelled in a mask of joy till now, I knew thee not. Asleep, I see thy face More simply. Sorrow's leisure lets me trace The nicer lines. Thy sealed lids, thy brow. Thy lasting posture, purposes avow ; In thy spent form resides a moveless grace. A pageant was thy life, and in its place I find a truth to feed and to endow My heart. Thy wonted mask of joy belied The meaning death's bare attitude makes clear. From living gesture thought went often wide. And I was poor interpreter ; but here. Where it would seem our thoughts anew divide, The steady silence draws thy spirit near. [12] DEFINITION As clouds lie in the west, My fairest pleasures rest In you, their element Of being. Loath to die, They ornament your sky. Amassed, magnificent. They shun the realms beyond. Are you not their fond, Fair dwelling by consent Of time? Why should they go And vanish quite, as though They were not all-content? My pleasures are not love. Else like the clouds above They swiftly would relent. They are mild beauty; dim, Resistless thought; and whim, And idle blandishment. Love is a wilful power, More like the wind or shower In which the cloud is spent. My pleasures only screen The space of light serene In your deep firmament. [13] EMBLEMS Where sweet ferns blow, where hemlock shad- ows lie, Where peaks of pine o'er oak-twined branches reach. In groves where bend the poplar and the beech, Where emerald willows touch the emerald sky, Thcj come to us, the Lost Ones. Far and high The winds among the trees lift muffled speech, And tell the hidden past ; we question each Entreating form those winds identify. Below the hill they huddle stone by stone. The lost ones and the loved ones we have known, Who followed, fearless, ways where beauty led ; But here upon the hilltop, winds intone The foregone past. Oh, let us think instead. The living trees are emblems of our dead. [14] THE POET'S THRIFT My landscape only need comprise low hills, For these are eminent and limitless To me. They mean more than my dreams ex- press ; They mean more than my word or deed fulfils. The slender trees, the tuneless whip-poor-wills, Impart quite ample themes to loneliness. I find enough in scant elusiveness Of springs and little brooks. My spirit thrills To beauty, unprepared for the sublime. I wonder, though, when I shall be completed Even to transcribe these hills.'' Sometime This landscape in few lines will show to me The subtle mysteries I have entreated. In the simple realm of poetry. [15] SOLICITUDE To me, your transport is a dim surmise, A vague, imagined bliss. But I will brace Myself to life ; though languid for the chase, Will gird my grief. AVhere your swift pleasure flies — Beneath whatever mirth-alluring skies — I'll follow, lest you pause in darkling space. Oh, let me gather stars, and turn your face To these, lest, meeting night, you breathe faint sighs ! Is joy illusion.? This, in sooth, is clear, — The pause of weariness ; and should I hear You drop a single sombre semi-tone From Paradise, I'd gather every star ; For I divine what it must be to mar This wonder that my breast has never known. [16] ASPIRATION Though my frail soul should never touch again The semblance of reality like this ; Through periods of time should always miss The imprint of true life ; nor find the plain, Familiar mould of being; still not vain Are those desires that frame undying bliss. The sky is not a vanishing abyss To me, but steadfast beauty, sheathing pain. I live in confidence. As planets turn About the sun, continually I yearn To God. His interpenetrating fire Is all I need. Though heaven prove mocker}^, My life ascends by dint of sheer desire, Imbued with hopes of immortality. [17] JOY How shall I make of joy discovery? For is it not an orbit that enspheres The heart? Like misty heaven, as one nears, The circuit spreads ; and like the flowing sea Whose waves evolve a scroll of mystery, Its vague development eludes the seers. It is a garment like the shrouding years, — A dusky shield, a cloudy canopy, Illumined by the soul that stands beneath. It must forever amplify, deploy. Give spirit space, — that's all I know of joy. It is a hovering defense, a sheath, In which the spirit comes to flowering, A folding and a cool enfolded wing. [18] EDUCATION I HAD lived many years when first I met What men call Sorrow. I had long conceived A semblance of it, thought I had achieved That magnitude, when side by side I set My lonely days. I knew the alphabet Of Life's experience, and I believed That when I touched another's grief, grieved ; — But when at last I was myself beset, I marveled. Little had I known. They told Me and they showed me death, but finally, Like shifting clouds no foresight can explain, I felt the changeful years envelop me. I was not loath to meet at last with pain, But oh ! to feel the youth my age could hold ! [19] EVIDENCE If there is any one device to show Me God, by which His aim is apprehended, Is it not forgiveness? You extended Zones of lovelier truth a while ago, My friend, when 3'ou considered me as though I had not been unfaithful, nor offended The deep love in which our lives are blended. Yes, by your acquittal I forego Mistrust. Your pardon is the pledge of powers By which we rise to new degrees of being. Now I read the crucifix that sealed The years. Your loving-kindness has revealed The symbol. The significance is ours. We take the step from symbol on to seeing. [20] PROGRESSION The resonance of wind and wave Is put to music by the tide ; So passion modulates to verse, And moves in rhythm's quiet stride. The bards in realms enchanted hold Familiar converse, like the birds ; Repeat emotion, improvise, Sustain the fundamental words, — Until, forsaking pastorals. They must pursue Life's ampler prose, A continuity of song The heart's experience only knows. [21] si INTUITION Rhythms of exultation flow In dusky regions far behind The formal meadows of the mind. Sighs waft syllables, as blow The winds the grasses to and fro. The shape of cloud, as thought effaces Dream, eclipses the moon's lustre. My winged stars, like swallows, cluster In the deep enchanted spaces That imagination traces. [22] KINDRED What inequality ! The apple trees and stones Are kindred. Love, the stormy aeons Have made my spirit bleak and grey. Like sun-emblazoned leaves Or blossoms in the spring, Your loveliness, o'ershadowing, A garland for my spirit weaves. [23] RESIGNATION The dark house yonder is my life ; It looms against the purple night ; The windows are my stars ; I count Them all, — each window one delight. Oh! there are many stars above, But mine in strong substantial woe Are framed ; I cannot misconstrue Life's dark intent, joy's fitful glow. [24] SOLACE OF SEASONS Cold winter finds no word of condolence. I laid my grief where pastures bright in spring Bore panacea, with young life whispering ; I laid my grief in summer by the side Of a deep sea that brought a healing tide ; When autumn came, I laid it in a cloud ; The strong wind bore it in that balmy shroud : Cold winter finds no word of condolence. When skies above are bleak, I will not care ; A flame I'll kindle for my chill despair, A flame within my heart, for condolence. [25] THE FOUNTAIN My garden fountain sings to-night, Its margin is all moist with spray, — That snow-white marble margin where A white rose dreams of drooping day. Upon the rose fall rhythmic drops, Snow-cool from the pale fountain's crest, Drops cooler than the shadows when The sun leads day-spring to the west. Unto the rose, my fountain's rim Is ample joy, while I, through tears. Can see my garden growing dim. And dream of sorrow's girding spheres. [26] THE THRESHOLD I THREADED endless aisles Of level trees, of spare, Undeviating wood; I penetrated streets Of houses parallel ; I crossed a common where My day paused sentinel ; At evenfall I stood Before the dim defiles Of dusk, where light retreats, Immured in sombre ward. The sheathed sun went down ; Opaque was heaven's froAvn ; Mountains, looming grey. Framed the threshold — yea - The portal to the Lord. [27] THE HERMIT I MARK the hermit's den, And ponder why he fled So far from other men ; Why chose to make his bed In lonely Nature's fen. For surely he must tread On yearnings even there ; And he must see — outspread The vital branches bear The burden of Christ dead. [28] INTERPRETATION My flesh aspired to soul's vitality. In mortal life's imperfect span I read the stately spirit's plan, Like scroll of cloud in heaven's immensity. Deciphering, it seemed a baneful tryst, — The flesh with radiant soul conferred Until the purport of the Word Was manifest. — The Word was even Christ. [29] VICTORY What are the friends of Jesus thinking, As they see Him crucified against the sky's Blue mystery? And Jesus, what can He be thinking On the cross? He looks upon the shadow throng Whom passions toss. They know a fervent exultation, Like day-spring Above their sorrow, and the promise Of their King. But Jesus, what can He be thinking? Crown of thorns, The memory of strife, His sovereign Soul adorns. [30] THE HYPOCRITE'S REWARD When came his final judgment, God gave him for his prize The crown, the single sceptre. He'd worn as his disguise. The crown, the single sceptre, A new, familiar shame; For when he came to judgment. He wore them in God's name. [31] TESTIMONY OF HANDS Is every day the judgment day? A thousand mortals lift on high A throng of hands that plead and pray ; Beneath a space of quiet sky, Their several gestures testify. Mh, mark the wistful hand that holds A sorrow in its upturned palm ; The gentle hand that firmly folds Across the breast to make it calm. Oh, mark the hand by which the balm Of youth was scattered, eloquent As the grey leaf upon the tree When summer's mellow joy is spent. Above that throng of hands, oh, see The Hand that plies eteraity. [32] THE ASCETIC'S VINDICATION How strange are we ! — From pale St. Francis down, Our solemn joy, our pain, Commanding, notable ; our hearts, anon Like flames no walls contain, Anon like wings that search oblivion. We make of time a pleading orison ; We pierce earth's dim domain ; We glance with eager eyes from faces wan ; We strive ; we press ; we gain ; We count not squandered strength. When life is done, Men shall affirm through us the Saviour shone. We crave adventure ; we attain. Defying death, immortal benison. " How strange you are, how vain ! " Plilegmatic minds assert in unison. [33] TRANSMISSION A SHELL expressed the verity In tones more limpid than the sea, — Distilled the sea's infinity. A mellow leaf disclosed the true In more than sun's pellucid hue, The sun was tinged in passing through. A wing revealed the sky unseen, Till motion made the air serene, — A wing — a soaring life, I mean. [34] PREPARATION A TIME will come when I shall breathe New melodies to soothe and fold, Like portions of a mellow slieath, My sorrow. While my songs withhold Their tones, I pause before the years ; I gaze on the gray world ; I strive To clear the mist of doubting tears. — My songs, what music you'll derive From silence in the time to come ! [35] EGYPT How still is Egypt, as a corpse's breast ; Her power is muffled, stone on stone ; The sinews of her kingdom lie at rest ; Her deserts wake no pulse's moan. The Nile is like an adamantine sea; Sky's cloud and star, like soundless flame; The moon in silence mourns eternity, And calls blind man with magic claim. The hushed, impenetrable fear, the peace Of wings, the palm's inwoven spray. Are like death's pause before the soul's release Into another golden day ! [36] DUSK As flowers at dusk their choicest perfumes hold, Some hearts hoard beauty when the body's old: I see an age-bent woman lead the herd To pasture, with no need of guiding word. While the dull beasts in the tall grasses browse. Inside her soul the earth's enchantments drowse ; The needles pause between her wasted hands, For light is always mellow where she stands. No motion marks her life's harmonious dream ; It is a part of Nature's quiet theme. Each day renews the uneventful past, Although her spirit nears a change at last. From the grey threshold of her silent home One night, her spirit, kin to evening's shade. Will float away from crevices life made, Like seaweed from a cliffy into white foam. [37] CONFLICT Divided by the dark, Our foils converge. A spark You kindled not, My Enemy, A spark I never drew From bitter fires that sear me through and through, Gleams fitfully. That spark, that little light. Is lit where foils unite. It lives in spite of us, My Foe ; In intervening space. This little eye that darts from place to place Sees clear, I know. Opinions are not one. And man's criterion Is not in us. Between, above. The cross that weapons frame. My Adversary, gleams a truth whose name Might still be Love. [38] TO THE CROWD When I hold a budding pleasure In my heart, can I diffuse it ? No ; you want the musk full-measure, Not the bud, — so you refuse it. When I hold an ebbing sorrow, Can I share the balm with you? No ; you want no lessening morrow, But meridian's deepest hue. Blossom of my joy completest, Zenith of my sorrow's hour, Yours. So I may keep the sweetest : Buds and lees — ambrosial power. [39] AUTUMN Capricious little poem and sapling rhyme Grew on the golden hillside of my youth. The stanzas were as crooked and uncouth As early tilings are wont to be. For time Was pressing and mid-summer's glowing prime Was ever imminent. Mysterious truth Was the warm soil thought sprouted from. Forsooth My songs were stem and filament to climb. But now, the memory of bud and fruit And flower is weariness. This present week In mid-September, wayward wild pursuit Is over; youth fulfilled. How shall they seek Beyond, unless from sunbeams in the skies These listless leaves take warmer harmonies? [40]