. 
 
. 
 
 - 
 
 , 
 
POEMS. 
 
 BY 
 
 SIDNEY LANIER. 
 
 OP- , 
 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 16 SOUTHAMPTON ST., COVENT GARDEN. 
 1877 
 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1876, by 
 
 J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., 
 In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 
 
DEDICATION. 
 
 To CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 
 
 As Love will carve dear names upon a tree, 
 Symbol of gravure on his heart to be, 
 
 So thought I thine with loving text to set 
 In the growth and substance of my canzonet ; 
 
 But, writing it, my tears begin to fall 
 
 This wild-rose stem for thy large name s too small! 
 
 Nay, still my trembling hands are fain, are fain 
 Cut the good letters though they lap again; 
 
 Perchance such folk as mark the blur and stain 
 Will say, // was the beating of the rain ; 
 
 Or, haply these o er-woundings of the stem 
 May loose some little balm, to plead for them. 
 
 1876. S. L. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CORN.rf. 9 
 
 THE SYMPHONY.. r. 20 
 
 THE PSALM OF THE WEST 39 
 
 IN ABSENCE 79 
 
 ACKNOWLEDGMENT 83 
 
 BETRAYAL 87 
 
 SPECIAL PLEADING 89 
 
 TO CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN 91 
 
 ROSE-MORALS 93 
 
 TO , WITH A ROSE 94 
 
CORN. 
 
 
 r I ^O-DAY the woods are trembling through and through 
 
 With shimmering forms, that flash before my view, 
 Then melt in green as dawn-stars melt in blue. 
 The leaves that wave against my cheek caress 
 Like women s hands ; the embracing boughs express 
 
 A subtlety of mighty tenderness ; 
 The copse-depths into little noises start, 
 That sound anon like beatings of a heart, 
 Anon like talk twixt lips not far apart. 
 
 The beech dreams balm, as a dreamer hums a song; 
 Through that vague wafture, expirations strong 
 Throb from young hickories breathing deep and long 
 
10 CORN. 
 
 With stress and urgence bold of prisoned spring 
 
 And ecstasy of burgeoning. 
 
 Now, since the dew-plashed road of morn is dry, 
 Forth venture odors of more quality 
 And heavenlier giving. Like Jove s locks awry, 
 Long muscadines 
 
 Rich-wreathe the spacious foreheads of great pines, 
 And breathe ambrosial passion from their vines. 
 I pray with mosses, ferns and flowers shy 
 That hide like gentle nuns from human eye 
 To lift adoring perfumes to the sky. 
 
 I hear faint bridal-sighs of brown and green 
 
 Dying to silent hints of kisses keen 
 
 As far lights fringe into a pleasant sheen 
 I start at fragmentary whispers, blown 
 From undertalks of leafy souls unknown, 
 Vague purports sweet, of inarticulate tone. 
 
 Dreaming of gods, men, nuns and brides, between 
 Old companies of oaks that inward lean 
 To join their radiant amplitudes of green, 
 
CORN. 1 1 
 
 I slowly move, with ranging looks that pass 
 
 Up from the matted miracles of grass 
 Into yon veined complex of space 
 Where sky and leafage interlace 
 
 So close, the heaven of blue is 
 
 Inwoven with a heaven of green. 
 
 I wander to the zigzag-cornered fence 
 
 Where sassafras, intrenched in brambles dense, 
 
 Contests with stolid vehemence 
 
 The march of culture, setting limb and thorn 
 As pikes against the army of the corn. 
 
 There, while I pause, my fieldward-faring eyes 
 Take harvests, where the stately corn-ranks rise, 
 
 Of inward dignities 
 And large benignities and insights wise, 
 
 Graces and modest majesties. 
 Thus, without theft, I reap another s field ; 
 Thus, without tilth, I house a wondrous yield, 
 Heaping my heart with quintuple crops concealed. 
 
 
1 2 CORN. 
 
 Look, out of line one tall corn-captain stands 
 
 Advanced beyond the foremost of his bands, 
 And, waves his blades upon the very edge 
 And hottest thicket of the battling hedge. 
 
 Thou lustrous stalk, that ne er mayst walk nor talk, 
 Still shalt thou type the poet-soul sublime 
 That leads the vanward of his timid time 
 And sings up cowards with commanding rhyme 
 
 Soul calm, like thee, yet fain, like thee, to grow 
 
 By double increment, above, below; 
 
 Soul homely, as thou art, yet rich in grace like thee, 
 Teaching the yeomen selfless chivalry 
 That moves in gentle curves of courtesy ; 
 
 Soul filled like thy long veins with sweetness tense, 
 By every godlike sense 
 
 Transmuted from the four wild elements. 
 
 Drawn to high plans, 
 Thou lift st more stature than a mortal man s, 
 
 Yet ever piercest downward in the mould 
 And keepest hold 
 
CORN. 1 3 
 
 Upon the reverend and steadfast earth 
 
 That gave thee birth. 
 Yea, standest smiling in thy very grave, 
 
 Serene and brave, 
 With unremitting breath 
 Inhaling life from death, 
 Thine epitaph writ fair in fruitage eloquent, 
 
 Thy living self thy monument. 
 
 As poets should, 
 
 Thou hast built up thy hardihood 
 With wondrous-varying food, 
 Drawn in select proportion fair 
 From richest mould and vagabond air; 
 From darkness of the dreadful night, 
 
 And joyful light ; 
 
 From antique ashes, whose departed flame 
 In thee has finer life and longer fame ; 
 From wounds and balms, 
 
 From storms and calms, 
 2 
 
CORN. 
 
 From potsherds and dry bones, 
 
 And ruin-stones. 
 
 So to thy vigorous substance thou hast wrought 
 Whate er the hand of Circumstance hath brought ; 
 
 Yea, into cool solacing green hast spun 
 
 White radiance hot from out the sun. 
 So thou dost mutually leaven 
 Strength of earth with grace of heaven ; 
 
 So thou dost marry new and old 
 
 Into a one of higher mould ; 
 
 So thou dost reconcile the hot and cold, 
 
 The dark and bright, 
 And many a heart-perplexing opposite, 
 And so, 
 
 Akin by blood to high and low, 
 Fitly thou playest out thy poet s part, 
 Richly expending thy much-bruised heart 
 
 In equal care to nourish lord in hall 
 Or beast in stall: 
 
 Thou took st from all that thou might st give to all. 
 
CORN. I 5 
 
 O steadfast dweller on the selfsame spot 
 Where thou wast born, that still repinest not- 
 Type of the home-fond heart, the happy lot! 
 
 Deeply thy mild content rebukes the land 
 
 Whose flimsy homes, built on the shifting sand 
 Of trade, for ever rise and fall 
 With alternation whimsical, 
 
 Enduring scarce a day, 
 
 Then swept away 
 
 By swift engulfments of incalculable tides 
 Whereon capricious Commerce rides. 
 
 Look, thou substantial spirit of content ! 
 
 Across this little vale, thy continent, 
 To where, beyond the mouldering mill, 
 Yon old deserted Georgian hill 
 
 Bares to the sun his piteous aged crest 
 
 And seamy breast, 
 
 By restless-hearted children left to lie 
 Untended there beneath the heedless sky, 
 As barbarous folk expose their old to die. 
 
CORN. 
 
 Upon that generous-rounding side, 
 
 With gullies scarified 
 Where keen Neglect his lash hath plied, 
 
 Dwelt one I knew of old, who played at toil, 
 
 And gave to coquette Cotton soul and soil. 
 Scorning the slow reward of patient grain, 
 He sowed his heart with hopes of swifter gain, 
 Then sat him down and waited for the rain. 
 
 He sailed in borrowed ships of usury 
 
 A foolish Jason on a treacherous sea, 
 
 Seeking the Fleece and finding misery. 
 
 Lulled by smooth-rippling loans, in idle trance 
 He lay, content that unthrift Circumstance 
 Should plough for him the stony field of Chance. 
 
 Yea, gathering crops whose worth no man might tell, 
 
 He staked his life on games of Buy-and-Sell, 
 
 And turned each field into a gambler s hell. 
 Aye, as each year began, 
 My farmer to the neighboring city ran ; 
 
 Passed with a mournful anxious face 
 
 Into the banker s inner place; 
 
CORN. I/ 
 
 Parleyed, excused, pleaded for longer grace; 
 
 Railed at the drought, the worm, the rust, the grass ; 
 Protested ne er again twould come to pass; 
 With many an ok and if and but alas 
 
 Parried or swallowed searching questions rude, 
 
 And kissed the dust to soften Dives s mood. 
 
 At last, small loans by pledges great renewed, 
 He issues smiling from the fatal door, 
 And buys with lavish hand his yearly store 
 Till his small borrowings will yield no more. 
 
 Aye, as each year declined, 
 
 With bitter heart and ever-brooding mind 
 
 He mourned his fate unkind. 
 
 In dust, in rain, with might and main, 
 He nursed his cotton, cursed his grain, 
 Fretted for news that made him fret again, 
 
 Snatched at each telegram of Future Sale, 
 
 And thrilled with Bulls or Bears alternate wail 
 
 In hope or fear alike for ever pale. 
 
 And thus from year to year, through hope and fear, 
 
 With many a curse and many a secret tear, 
 2* B 
 
1 8 CORN. 
 
 Striving in vain his cloud of debt to clear, 
 
 At last 
 
 He woke to find his foolish dreaming past, 
 And all his best-of-life the easy prey 
 Of squandering scamps and quacks that lined his way 
 
 With vile array, 
 
 From rascal statesman down to petty knave ; 
 Himself, at best, for all his bragging brave, 
 A gamester s catspaw and a banker s slave. 
 
 Then, worn and gray, and sick with deep unrest, 
 He fled away into the oblivious West, 
 Unmourned, unblest. 
 
 Old hill ! old hill ! thou gashed and hairy Lear 
 Whom the divine Cordelia of the year, 
 E en pitying Spring, will vainly strive to cheer 
 King, that no subject man nor beast may own, 
 Discrowned, undaughtered and alone 
 Yet shall the great God turn thy fate, 
 And bring thee back into thy monarch state 
 And majesty immaculate. 
 
CORN. 19 
 
 Lo, through hot waverings of the August morn, 
 Thou givest from thy vasty sides forlorn 
 Visions of golden treasuries of corn 
 Ripe largesse lingering for some bolder heart 
 That manfully shall take thy part, 
 And tend thee, 
 And defend thee, 
 With antique sinew and with modern art. 
 
THE SYMPHONY. 
 
 O 
 
 TRADE ! O Trade ! would thou wert dead ! 
 
 The age needs heart tis tired of head. 
 We re all for love," the violins said. 
 Of what avail the rigorous tale 
 Of coin for coin and box for bale ? 
 Grant thee, O Trade! thine uttermost hope, 
 Level red gold with blue sky-slope, 
 And base it deep as devils grope, 
 When all s done what hast thou won 
 Of the only sweet that s under the sun ? 
 Ay, canst thou buy a single sigh 
 
 Of true love s least, least ecstasy ?" 
 20 
 
THE SYMPHONY. 21 
 
 Then like a bridegroom s heart-beats trembling 
 
 All the mightier strings assembling 
 
 Ranged them on the violin s side 
 
 As when the bridegroom leads the bride, 
 
 And, heart in voice, together cried : 
 "Yea, what avail the endless tale 
 
 Of gain by cunning and plus by sale ? 
 
 Look up the land, look down the land 
 iThe poor, the poor, the poor, they stand 
 
 Wedged by the pressing of Trade s hand 
 
 Against an inward-opening door 
 
 That pressure tightens evermore : v 
 
 They sigh a monstrous foul-air sigh 
 
 For the outside leagues of liberty, 
 
 Where Art, sweet lark, translates the sky 
 
 Into a heavenly melody. 
 Each day, all day (these poor folks say), 
 1 In the same old year-long, drear-long way, 
 
 We weave in the mills and heave in the kilns, 
 
 We sieve mine-meshes under the hills, 
 
 And thieve much gold from the Devil s bank tills, 
 
22 THE SYMPHONY. 
 
 To relieve, O God, what manner of ills ? 
 Such manner of ills as brute-flesh thrills. 
 The beasts, they hunger, eat, sleep, die, 
 And so do we; our world s a sty, 
 And, fellow-swine, why nuzzle and cry? 
 Sivinehood hath never a remedy, 
 Say many men," and pass us by, 
 With nostril clamped and blinking eye. 
 Did God say once in marvelous tone, 
 Man shall not live by bread alone, 
 But all that cometh from his throne ? 
 
 Yea: God said so, 
 
 But Trade saith No, 
 
 And the kilns and the curt-tongued mills say No 
 There s plenty that can, if you can t. Go to : 
 Move out, if you think you re underpaid. 
 The poor are prolific ; we re not afraid ; 
 Business is business / a trade is a trade. 
 Over and over they have said. " 
 
 And then these passionate pretestings 
 Merged in grieving moods, until 
 
THE SYMPHONY. 23 
 
 They sank to sad requestings 
 
 And suggestings sadder still : 
 "And oh, if men might some time see 
 How piteous-false the poor decree 
 That trades just naught but trades must be ! 
 Does business mean, Die, you live, If 
 Then Trade is trade but sings a lie: 
 Tis only war grown miserly. 
 If Traffic is battle, name it so : 
 War-crimes less will shame it so, 
 And victims less will blame it so. 
 But oh, for the poor to have some part 
 In yon sweet living lands of Art, 
 Makes problem not for head, but heart. 
 Vainly might Plato s brain revolve it: 
 Plainly the heart of a child could solve it." 
 
 And then, as when from words that seem but rude 
 We pass to pain that dimly sits abrood 
 Back in our heart s great dark and solitude, 
 
24 THE SYMPHONY. 
 
 So sank the strings to gentle throbbing 
 Of long chords change-marked with sobbing 
 Motherly sobbing, not distinctlier heard 
 Than half wing-openings of the sleeping bird, 
 Some dream of danger to her young hath stirred. 
 
 arf~ 
 
 Then stirring and demurring ceased, and lo ! 
 Every least ripple of the strings song-flow 
 Died to a level with each level bow 
 And made a great chord tranquil-surfaced so, 
 As a brook beneath his curving bank doth go 
 To linger in the sacred dark and green 
 Where many boughs the still pool overlean 
 And many leaves make shadow with their sheen. 
 
 But presently 
 
 A velvet flute-note fell down pleasantly 
 Upon the bosom of that harmony, 
 And sailed and sailed incessantly, 
 As if a petal from a wild-rose blown 
 Had fluttered down upon that pool of tone 
 
THE SYMPHONY. 
 
 And boatwise dropped o* the convex side 
 And floated down the glassy tide 
 And clarified and glorified 
 The solemn spaces where the shadows bide. 
 From the warm concave of that fluted note 
 Somewhat, half song, half odor, forth did float, 
 As if a rose might somehow be a throat : 
 When Nature from her far-off glen 
 Flutes her soft messages to men, 
 The flute can say them o er again ; 
 Yea, Nature, singing sweet and lone, 
 Breathes through life s strident polyphone 
 The flute-voice in the world of tone. 
 
 Sweet friends, 
 
 Man s love ascends 
 To finer and diviner ends 
 Than man s mere thought e er comprehends. 
 
 For I, e en I, 
 
 As here I lie, 
 
 A petal on a harmony, 
 3 
 
26 THE SYMPHONY. 
 
 Demand of Science whence and why 
 Man s tender pain, man s inward cry, 
 When he doth gaze on earth and sky ? 
 I am not overbold : 
 
 I hold 
 
 Full powers from Nature manifold. 
 I speak for each no-tongued tree 
 That, spring by spring, doth nobler be, 
 And dumbly and most wistfully 
 His mighty prayerful arms outspreads 
 Above men s oft-unheeding heads, 
 And his big blessing downward sheds. 
 I speak for all-shaped blooms and leaves, 
 Lichens on stones and moss on eaves, 
 Grasses and grains in ranks and sheaves ; 
 Broad-fronded ferns and keen-leaved canes, 
 And briery mazes bounding lanes, 
 And marsh-plants, thirsty-cupped for rains, 
 And milky stems and sugary veins; 
 For every long-armed woman-vine 
 That round a piteous tree doth twine ; 
 
THE SYMPHONY. 2 7 
 
 For passionate odors, and divine 
 
 Pistils, and petals crystalline; 
 
 All purities of shady springs, 
 
 All shynesses of film-winged things 
 
 That fly from tree-trunks and bark-rings; 
 
 All modesties of mountain-fawns 
 
 That leap to covert from wild lawns, 
 
 And tremble if the day but dawns ; 
 
 All sparklings of small beady eyes 
 
 Of birds, and sidelong glances wise 
 
 Wherewith the jay hints tragedies ; 
 
 All piquancies of prickly burs, 
 
 And smoothnesses of downs and furs 
 
 Of eiders and of minevers ; 
 
 All limpid honeys that do lie 
 
 At stamen-bases, nor deny 
 
 The humming-birds fine roguery, 
 
 Bee-thighs, nor any butterfly; 
 
 All gracious curves of slender wings, 
 
 Bark-mottlings, fibre-spiralings, 
 
 Fern-wavings and leaf-flickerings ; 
 
28 THE SYMPHONY. 
 
 Each dial-marked leaf and flower-bell 
 Wherewith in every lonesome dell 
 Time to himself his hours doth tell ; 
 All tree-sounds, rustlings of pine-cones, 
 Wind-sighings, doves melodious moans, 
 And night s unearthly under-tones ; 
 All placid lakes and waveless deeps, 
 All cool reposing mountain-steeps, 
 
 Vale-calms and tranquil lotos-sleeps ; 
 
 Yea, all fair forms, and sounds, and lights, 
 
 And warmths, and mysteries, and mights, 
 
 Of Nature s utmost depths and heights, 
 
 These doth my timid tongue present, 
 
 Their mouthpiece and leal instrument 
 
 And servant, all love-eloquent. 
 
 I heard, when All for love" the violins cried: 
 
 So, Nature calls through all her system wide, 
 
 Give me thy love, O man, so long denied. 
 
 Much time is run, and mim hath changed his ways, 
 
 Since Nature, in the antique fable-days, 
 
 Was hid from man s true love by proxy fays, 
 
THE SYMPHONY. 29 
 
 False fauns and rascal gods that stole her praise. 
 The nymphs, cold creatures of man s colder brain, 
 Chilled Nature s streams till man s warm heart was fain 
 Never to lave its love in them again. 
 Later, a sweet Voice Love thy neighbor said; 
 Then first the bounds of neighborhood outspread 
 Beyond all confines of old ethnic dread. 
 Vainly the Jew might wag his covenant head : 
 All men are neigJibors? so the sweet Voice said. 
 So, when man s arms had circled all man s race, 
 The liberal compass of his warm embrace 
 Stretched bigger yet in the dark bounds of space ; 
 With hands a-grope he felt smooth Nature s grace, 
 Drew her to breast and kissed her sweetheart face : 
 His heart found neighbors in great hills and trees 
 And streams and clouds and suns and birds and bees, 
 And throbbed with neighbor-loves in loving these. 
 But oh, the poor ! the poor ! the poor ! 
 That stand by the inward-opening door 
 Trade s hand doth tighten ever more, 
 
 3* 
 
30 THE SYMPHONY. 
 
 And sigh their monstrous foul-air sigh 
 
 For the outside hills of liberty, 
 
 Where Nature spreads her wild blue sky 
 
 For Art to make into melody! 
 
 Thou Trade ! thou king of the modern days ! 
 
 Change thy ways, 
 
 Change thy ways; 
 Let the sweaty laborers file 
 
 A little while, 
 
 A little while, 
 
 Where Art and Nature sing and smile. 
 Trade ! is thy heart all dead, all dead ? 
 And hast thou nothing but a head? 
 I m all for heart," the flute-voice said, 
 And into sudden silence fled, 
 Like as a blush that while tis red 
 Dies to a still, still white instead. 
 
 Thereto a thrilling calm succeeds, 
 Till presently the silence breeds 
 
THE SYMPHONY. 
 
 A little breeze among the reeds 
 
 That seems to blow by sea-marsh weeds: 
 
 Then from the gentle stir and fret 
 
 Sings out the melting clarionet, 
 
 Like as a lady sings while yet 
 
 Her eyes with salty tears are wet. 
 "O Trade! O Trade!" the Lady said, 
 "I too will wish thee utterly dead 
 
 If all thy heart is in thy head. 
 
 For O my God ! and O my God ! 
 
 What shameful ways have women trod 
 
 At beckoning of Trade s golden rod ! 
 
 Alas when sighs are traders lies, 
 
 And heart s-ease eyes and violet eyes 
 Are merchandise ! 
 
 O purchased lips that kiss with pain ! 
 
 O cheeks coin-spotted with smirch and stain ! 
 
 O trafficked hearts that break in twain ! 
 
 And yet what wonder at my sisters crime? 
 
 So hath Trade withered up Love s sinewy prime, 
 
 Men love not women as in olden time. 
 
3 2 THE SYMPHONY. 
 
 Ah, not in these cold merchantable days 
 
 Deem men their life an opal gray, where plays 
 
 The one red Sweet of gracious ladies -praise. 
 
 Now, comes a suitor with sharp prying eye 
 
 Says, Here, you Lady, if you ll sell, I ll buy : 
 
 Come, heart for heart a trade? What! weeping? 
 
 Shame on such wooers dapper mercery ! 
 
 I would my lover kneeling at my feet 
 
 In humble manliness should cry, O sweet/ 
 
 I know not if thy heart my heart will greet : 
 
 I ask not if thy love my love can meet : 
 
 Whatever thy worshipful soft tongue shall say, 
 
 I ll kiss thine answer, be it yea or nay : 
 
 I do but know I love thee, and I pray 
 
 To be thy knight until my dying day. 
 
 Woe him that cunning trades in hearts contrives ! 
 
 Base love good women to base loving drives. 
 
 If men loved larger, larger were our lives ; 
 
 And wooed they nobler, won they nobler wives." 
 
 There thrust the bold straightforward horn 
 To battle for that lady lorn, 
 
THE SYMPHONY. 33 
 
 With heartsome voice of mellow scorn, 
 Like any knight in knighthood s morn. 
 "Now comfort thee," said he, 
 
 "Fair Lad ye. 
 
 Soon shall God right thy grievous wrong, 
 Soon shall man sing thee a true-love song, 
 Voiced in act his whole life long, 
 Yea, all thy sweet life long, 
 
 Fair Ladye. 
 
 Where s he that craftily hath said, 
 The day of chivalry is dead ? 
 I ll prove that lie upon his head, 
 Or I will die instead, 
 
 Fair Ladye. 
 
 Is Honor gone into his grave ? 
 Hath Faith become a caitiff knave, 
 And Selfhood turned into a slave 
 To work in Mammon s cave, 
 
 Fair Ladye ? 
 
 Will Truth s long blade ne er gleam again ? 
 Hath Giant Trade in dungeons slain 
 
34 THE SYMPHONY. 
 
 All great contempts of mean-got gain 
 And hates of inward stain, 
 
 Fair Ladye? 
 
 For aye shall name and fame be sold, 
 And place be hugged for the sake of gold, 
 And smirch-robed Justice feebly scold 
 At Crime all money-bold, 
 
 Fair Ladye? 
 
 Shall self-wrapt husbands aye forget 
 Kiss-pardons for the daily fret 
 Wherewith sweet wifely eyes are wet- 
 Blind to lips kiss-wise set 
 
 Fair Ladye? 
 
 Shall lovers higgle, heart for heart, 
 Till wooing grows a trading mart 
 Where much for little, and all for part, 
 Make love a cheapening art, 
 
 Fair Ladye? 
 
 Shall woman scorch for a single sin 
 That her betrayer can revel in, 
 
THE SYMPHONY. 35 
 
 And she be burnt, and he but grin 
 
 When that the flames begin, 
 
 Fair Ladye ? 
 
 Shall ne er prevail the woman s plea, 
 We maids would far, far whiter be 
 If that our eyes might sometimes see 
 
 Men maids in purity, 
 
 Fair Ladye ? 
 
 Shall Trade aye salve his conscience-aches 
 With jibes at Chivalry s old mistakes 
 The wars that o erhot knighthood makes 
 
 For Christ s and ladies sakes, 
 
 Fair Ladye? 
 
 Now by each knight that e er hath prayed 
 To fight like a man and love like a maid, 
 Since Pembroke s life, as Pembroke s blade, 
 
 I the scabbard, death, was laid, 
 
 Fair Ladye, 
 
 I dare avouch my faith is bright 
 That God doth right and God hath might, 
 
3 6 THE SYMPHONY. 
 
 Nor time hath changed His hair to white, 
 
 Nor His dear love to spite, 
 
 Fair Ladye. 
 
 I doubt no doubts : I strive, and shrive my clay, 
 And fight my fight in the patient modern way 
 For true love and for thee ah me! and pray 
 
 To be thy knight until my dying day, 
 
 Fair Ladye." 
 
 Made end that knightly horn, and spurred away 
 Into the thick of the melodious fray. 
 
 And then the hautboy played and smiled, 
 And sang like any large-eyed child, 
 Cool-hearted and all undefiled. 
 
 " Huge Trade !" he said, 
 "Would thou wouldst lift me on thy head, 
 And run where er my finger led! 
 Once said a Man and wise was He 
 Never shall thou the heavens see, 
 Save as a little child thou be" 
 
THE SYMPHONY. 37 
 
 Then o er sea-lashings of commingling tunes 
 The ancient wise bassoons, 
 
 Like weird 
 
 Gray -beard 
 Old harpers sitting on the wild sea-dunes, 
 
 Chanted runes: 
 
 1 Bright-waved gain, gray-waved loss, 
 The sea of all doth lash and toss, 
 One wave forward and one across. 
 But now twas trough, now tis crest, 
 And worst doth foam and flash to best, 
 
 And curst to blest. 
 
 4 Life ! Life ! thou sea-fugue, writ from east to west, 
 Love, Love alone can pore 
 On thy dissolving score 
 Of harsh half-phrasings, 
 
 Blotted ere writ, 
 And double erasings 
 
 Of chords most fit. 
 
THE SYMPHONY. 
 
 Yea, Love, sole music-master blest, 
 May read thy weltering palimpsest. 
 To follow Time s dying melodies through, 
 And never to lose the old in the new, 
 And ever to solve the discords true 
 
 Love alone can do. 
 
 And ever Love hears the poor-folks crying, 
 And ever Love hears the women s sighing, 
 And ever sweet knighthood s death-defying, 
 And ever wise childhood s deep implying, 
 But never a trader s glozing and lying. 
 
 And yet shall Love himself be heard, 
 Though long deferred, though long deferred : 
 O er the modern waste a dove hath whirred 
 Music is Love in search of a word." 
 
PSALM OF THE WEST. 
 
 LAND of the willful gospel, thou worst and thou best ; 
 Tall Adam of lands, new-made of the dust of the West ; 
 Thou wroughtest alone in the Garden of God, unblest 
 Till He fashioned lithe Freedom to lie for thine Eve on thy 
 
 breast 
 
 Till out of thy heart s dear neighborhood, out of thy side, 
 He fashioned an intimate Sweet one and brought thee a 
 
 Bride. 
 Cry hail ! nor bewail that the wound of her coming was 
 
 wide. 
 
 39 
 
4 PSALM OF THE WEST. 
 
 Lo, Freedom reached forth where the world as an apple 
 
 hung red; 
 
 Let us taste the whole radiant round of it, gayly she said : 
 If we die, at the worst we shall lie as the first of the dead. 
 Knowledge of Good and of 111, O Land ! she hath given thee ; 
 Perilous godhoods of choosing have rent thee and riven thee ; 
 Will s high adoring to Ill s low exploring hath driven thee 
 Freedom, thy Wife, hath uplifted thy life and clean 
 
 shriven thee ! 
 
 Her shalt thou clasp for a balm to the scars of thy breast, 
 Her shalt thou kiss for a calm to thy wars of unrest, 
 Her shalt extol in the psalm of the soul of the West. 
 For Weakness, in freedom, grows stronger than Strength 
 
 with a chain ; 
 
 And Error, in freedom, will come to lamenting his stain, 
 Till freely repenting he whiten his spirit again ; 
 And Friendship, in freedom, will blot out the bounding of 
 
 race; 
 And straight Law, in freedom, will curve to the rounding 
 
 of grace ; 
 And Fashion, in freedom, will die of the lie in her face ; 
 
PSALM OF THE WEST. 4! 
 
 And Desire flame white on the sense as a fire on a height, 
 And Sex flame white in the soul as a star in the night, 
 And Marriage plight sense unto soul as the two-colored 
 
 light 
 
 Of the fire and the star shines one with a duplicate might ; 
 And Science be known as the sense making love to the 
 
 All, 
 
 And Art be known as the soul making love to the All, 
 And Love be known as the marriage of man with the All 
 Till Science to knowing the Highest shall lovingly turn, 
 Till Art to loving the Highest shall consciously burn, 
 Till Science to Art as a man to a woman shall yearn, 
 
 Then morn ! 
 When Faith from the wedding of Knowing and Loving shall 
 
 purely be born, 
 And the Child shall smile in the West, and the West to 
 
 the East give morn, 
 
 And the Time in that ultimate Prime shall forget old re 
 gretting and scorn, 
 
 Yea, the stream of the light give off in a shimmer the 
 dream of the night forlorn. 
 
 4* 
 
4 2 PSALM OF THE WEST. 
 
 Once on a time a soul 
 Too full of his dole 
 
 In a querulous dream went crying from pole to pole 
 Went sobbing and crying 
 
 For ever a sorrowful song of living and dying, 
 How life was the dropping and death the drying 
 Of a Tear once fell in a day when God was sighing. 
 And ever Time tossed him bitterly to and fro 
 As a shuttle inlaying a perilous warp of woe 
 In the woof of things from terminal snow to snow, 
 Till, lo ! 
 Rest. 
 And he sank on the grass of the earth as a lark on its 
 
 nest, 
 And he lay in the midst of the way from the east to the 
 
 west. 
 Then the East came out from the east and the West from 
 
 the west, 
 
 And, behold! in the gravid deeps of the lower dark, 
 While above the wind was fanning the dawn as a spark, 
 The East and the West took form as the wings of a lark. 
 
PSALM OF THE WEST. 43 
 
 One wing was feathered with facts of the uttermost Past, 
 And one with the dreams of a prophet ; and both sailed fast 
 And met where the sorrowful Soul on the earth was cast. 
 Then a Voice said : Thine, if thou lovest enotigh to use ; 
 But another : To fly and to sing is pain : refuse / 
 Then the Soul said : Come, O my wings ! I cannot but 
 
 choose. 
 
 And the Soul was a-tremble like as a new-born thing, 
 Till the spark of the dawn wrought a conscience in heart 
 
 as in wing, 
 Saying, Thou art the lark of the dawn ; it is time to sing. 
 
 Then that artist began in a lark s low circling to pass ; 
 And first he sang at the height of the top of the grass 
 A song of the herds that are born and die in the mass. 
 And next he sang a celestial-passionate round 
 At the height of the lips of a woman above the ground, 
 How Love was a fair true Ladye, and Death a wild 
 
 hound, 
 
 And she called, and he licked her hand and with girdle 
 was bound. 
 
44 PSALM OF THE WEST. 
 
 And then with a universe-love he was hot in the wings, 
 And the sun stretched beams to the worlds as the shining 
 
 strings 
 
 Of the large hid harp that sounds when an all-lover sings ; 
 And the sky s blue traction prevailed o er the earth s in 
 
 might, 
 
 And the passion of flight grew mad with the glory of height. 
 And the uttering of song was like to the giving of light ; 
 And he learned that hearing and seeing wrought nothing alone, 
 And that music on earth much light upon Heaven had thrown, 
 A.nd he melted-in silvery sunshine with silvery tone ; 
 And the spirals of music e er higher and higher he wound 
 Till the luminous cinctures of melody up from the ground 
 Arose as the shaft of a tapering tower of sound 
 Arose for an unstricken full-finished Babel of sound. 
 But God was not angry, nor ever confused his tongue, 
 For not out of selfish nor impudent travail was wrung 
 The song of all men and all things that the all-lover sung. 
 Then he paused at the top of his tower of song on high, 
 And the voice of the God of the artist from far in the 
 sky 
 
PSALM OF THE WEST. 45 
 
 Said, Son, look down : I will cause that a Time gone by 
 Shall pass, and reveal his heart to thy loving eye. 
 
 (( ^/frj/ 7 * 1 
 Far spread, below, 
 
 The sea that fast hath locked in his loose flow 
 
 All secrets of Atlantis drowned woe 
 
 Lay bound about with night on every hand, 
 Save down the eastern brink a shining band 
 Of day made out a little way from land. 
 
 Then from that shore the wind upbore a cry: 
 
 Thou Sea, thou Sea of Darkness ! why, oh why 
 
 Dost waste thy West in unthrift mystery? 
 But ever the idiot sea-mouths foam and fill, 
 And never a wave doth good for man or ill, 
 And Blank is king, and Nothing hath his will; 
 
 And like as grim-beaked pelicans level file 
 
 Across the sunset toward their nightly isle 
 
 On solemn wings that wave but seldomwhile, 
 So leanly sails the day behind the day 
 To where the Past s lone Rock o erglooms the spray, 
 And down its mortal fissures sinks away. 
 
46 PSALM OF THE WEST. 
 
 Master, Master, break this ban: 
 
 The wave lacks Thee. 
 Oh, is it not to widen man 
 
 Stretches the sea? 
 Oh, must the sea-bird s idle van 
 
 Alone be free? 
 
 Into the Sea of the Dark doth creep 
 
 Bjb rne s pallid sail, 
 As the face of a walker in his sleep, 
 
 Set rigid and most pale, 
 About the night doth peer and peep 
 
 In a dream of an ancient tale. 
 
 Lo, here is made a hasty cry: 
 Land, land, iipon the west! 
 
 God save such land ! Go by, go by : 
 Here may no mortal rest, 
 
 Where this waste hell of slate doth lie 
 And grind the glacier s breast. 
 
PSALM OF THE WEST. 47 
 
 The sail goeth limp : hey, flap and strain ! 
 
 Round eastward slanteth the mast; 
 As the sleep-walker waked with pain, 
 
 White-clothed in the midnight blast, 
 Doth stare and quake, and stride again 
 
 To houseward all aghast. 
 
 Yet as, A ghost ! his household cry . 
 
 He hath followed a ghost in flight . 
 Let us see the ghost his household fly 
 
 With lamps to search the night 
 So Norsemen s sails run out and try 
 
 The Sea of the Dark with light. 
 
 Stout Are Marson, southward whirled 
 
 From out the tempest s hand, 
 Doth skip the sloping of the world 
 
 To Huitramannaland, 
 Where Georgia s oaks with moss-beards curled 
 
 Wave by the shining strand, 
 
48 PSALM OF THE WEST. 
 
 And sway in sighs from Florida s Spring 
 
 Or Carolina s Palm 
 What time the mocking-bird doth bring 
 
 The woods his artist s-balm, 
 Singing the Song of Everything 
 
 Consummate-sweet and calm 
 
 Land of large merciful-hearted skies, 
 
 Big bounties, rich increase, 
 Green rests for Trade s blood-shotten eyes, 
 
 For o er-beat brains surcease, 
 For Love the dear woods sympathies, 
 
 For Grief the wise woods peace, 
 
 For Need rich givings of hid powers 
 In hills and vales quick-won, 
 
 For Greed large exemplary flowers 
 That ne er have toiled nor spun, 
 
 For Heat fair-tempered winds and showers, 
 For Cold the neighbor sun. 
 
PSALM OF THE WEST.- 49 
 
 Land where the Spirits of June-Heat 
 
 From out their forest-maze 
 Stray forth at eve with loitering feet, 
 
 And fervent hymns upraise 
 In bland accord and passion sweet 
 
 Along the Southern ways: 
 
 O Darkness, tawny Twin whose Twin hath ceased, 
 
 Thou Odor from the day-flower s crushing born, 
 Thou visible Sigh out of the mournful East, 
 
 That cannot see her lord again till morn ! 
 O Leaves, with hollow palms uplifted high 
 
 To catch the stars most sacred rain of light ! 
 O pallid Lily-petals fain to die 
 
 Soul-stung by subtle passion of the night! 
 O short-breath d Winds beneath the gracious moon 
 
 Running mild errands for mild violets, 
 Or carrying sighs from the red lips of June 
 
 What wavering way the odor-current sets ! 
 O Stars wreathed vinewise round yon heavenly dells, 
 
 Or thrust from out the sky in curving sprays, 
 Or whorled, or looped with pendent flower-bells, 
 
 Or bramble-tangled in a brilliant maze, 
 5 D 
 
50 PSALM OF THE WEST. 
 
 Or lying like young lilies in a lake 
 
 About the great white Lily of the moon, 
 Or drifting white from where in heaven shake 
 
 Star-portraitures of apple trees in June, 
 Or lapp d as leaves of a great rose of stars, 
 
 Or shyly clambering up cloud-lattices, 
 Or trampled pale in the red path of Mars, 
 
 Or trim-set quaint in gardeners -fantasies ! 
 O long June Night-sounds crooned among the leaves, 
 
 O whispered confidence of Dark and Green, 
 O murmurs in old moss about old eaves, 
 
 O tinklings floating over water-sheen !" 
 
 Then Leif, bold son of Eric the Red, 
 
 To the South of the West doth flee- 
 Past slaty Helluland is sped, 
 
 Past Markland s woody lea, 
 Till round about fair Vinland s head, 
 Where Taunton helps the sea, 
 
PSALM OF THE WEST. 51 
 
 The Norseman calls, the anchor falls, 
 
 The mariners hurry a-strand : 
 They wassail with fore-drunken skals 
 
 Where prophet wild grapes stand; 
 They lift the Leifsbooth s hasty walls 
 
 They stride about the land 
 
 New England, thee ! whose ne er-spent wine 
 
 As blood doth stretch each vein, 
 And urge thee, sinewed like thy vine, 
 
 Through peril and all pain 
 To grasp Endeavor s towering Pine, 
 
 And, once ahold, remain 
 
 Land where the strenuous-handed Wind 
 
 With sarcasm of a friend 
 Doth smite the man would lag behind 
 
 To frontward of his end ; 
 Yea, where the taunting fall and grind 
 
 Of Nature s 111 doth send 
 
52 PSALM OF THE WEST. 
 
 Such mortal challenge of a clown 
 
 Rude-thrust upon the soul, 
 That men but smile where mountains frown 
 
 Or scowling waters roll, 
 And Nature s front of battle down 
 
 Do hurl from pole to pole. 
 
 Now long the Sea of Darkness glimmers low 
 With sails from Northland flickering to and fro 
 Thorwald, Karlsefne, and those twin heirs of woe, 
 Hellboge and Finnge, in treasonable bed 
 Slain by the ill-born child of Eric Red, 
 Freydisa false. Till, as much time is fled, 
 Once more the vacant airs with darkness fill, 
 Once more the wave doth never good nor ill, 
 And Blank is king, and Nothing works his will ; 
 And leanly sails the day behind the day 
 To where the Past s lone Rock o erglooms the spray 
 And down its mortal fissures sinks away, 
 As when the grim-beaked pelicans level file 
 Across the sunset to their seaward isle 
 On solemn wings that wave but seldomwhile. 
 
PSALM OF THE WEST, 53 
 
 Master, Master, poets sing; 
 
 The Time calls Thee; 
 Yon Sea binds hard on everything 
 
 Man longs to be : 
 Oh, shall the sea-bird s aimless wing 
 
 Alone move free ? 
 
 Santa Maria, well thou tremblest down the wave, 
 Thy Pinta far abow, thy Nina nigh astern : 
 
 Columbus stands in the night alone, and, passing grave, 
 Yearns o er the sea as tones o er under-silence yearn. 
 
 Heartens his heart as friend befriends his friend less brave, 
 Makes burn the faiths that cool, and cools the doubts 
 that burn : 
 
 Twixt this and dawn, three hours my soul will smite 
 With prickly seconds, or less tolerably 
 With dull-blade minutes flatwise slapping me. 
 Wait, Heart! Time moves. Thou lithe young Western 
 Night, 
 5* 
 
54 PSALM OF THE WEST. 
 
 Just-crowned king, slow riding to thy right, 
 Would God that I might straddle mutiny 
 Calm as thou sitt st yon never-maneged sea, 
 Balks t with his balking, fliest with his flight, 
 Giv st supple to his rearings and his falls, 
 
 Nor dropp st one coronal star about thy brow 
 
 Whilst ever dayward thou art steadfast drawn ! 
 Yea, would I rode these mad contentious brawls 
 No damage taking from their If and How, 
 Nor no result save galloping to my Dawn ! 
 
 II. 
 "My Dawn? my Dawn? How if it never break? 
 
 How if this West by other Wests is pieced, 
 And these by vacant Wests on Wests increased 
 One Pain of Space, with hollow ache on ache 
 Throbbing and ceasing not for Christ s own sake ? 
 Big perilous theorem, hard for king and priest: 
 Pursue the West but long enough, tis East ! 
 Oh, if this watery world no turning take ! 
 Oh, if for all my logic, all my dreams, 
 Provings of that which is by that which seems, 
 
PSALM OF THE WEST. 55 
 
 Fears, hopes, chills, heats, hastes, patiences, droughts, 
 tears, 
 
 Wife-grievings, slights on love, embezzled years, 
 Hates, treaties, scorns, upliftings, loss and gain, 
 This earth, no sphere, be all one sickening plane ! 
 
 in. 
 Or, haply, how if this contrarious West, 
 
 That me by turns hath starved, by turns hath fed, 
 Embraced, disgraced, beat back, solicited, 
 
 Have no fixed heart of Law within his breast, 
 
 Or with some different rhythm doth e er contest 
 
 Nature in the East? Why, tis but three weeks fled 
 I saw my Judas needle shake his head 
 
 And flout the Pole that, east, he Lord confessed! 
 God! if this West should own some other Pole, 
 And with his tangled ways perplex my soul 
 
 Until the maze grow mortal, and I die 
 
 Where distraught Nature clean hath gone astray, 
 On earth some other wit than Time s at play, 
 
 Some other God than mine above the sky ! 
 
PSALM OF THE WEST. 
 IV. 
 
 Now speaks mine other heart with cheerier seeming; 
 Ho, Admiral f o er-defalking to thy crew 
 Against thyself, thyself far overfew 
 
 To front yon multitudes of rebel scheming ? 
 
 Come, ye wild twenty years of heavenly dreaming! 
 Come, ye wild weeks since first this canvas drew 
 Out of vexed Palos ere the dawn was blue, 
 
 O er milky waves about the bows full-creaming ! 
 
 Come set me round with many faithful spears 
 Of confident remembrance how I crushed 
 Cat-lived rebellions, pitfalled treasons, hushed 
 
 Scared husbands heart-break cries on distant wives, 
 
 Made cowards blush at whining for their lives, 
 
 Watered my parching souls, and dried their tears. 
 
 v. 
 
 Ere we Gomera cleared, a coward cried, 
 Turn, turn : here be three caravels ahead, 
 From Portugal, to take us : we are dead / 
 
 Hold Westward, pilot, calmly I replied. 
 
PSALM OF THE WEST. 57 
 
 So when the last land down the horizon died, 
 
 Go back, go back ! they prayed : our hearts are lead. 
 Friends, we are bound into the West, I said. 
 
 Then past the wreck of a mast upon our side. 
 
 See (so they wept) God s Warning ! Admiral, turn / 
 Steersman, I said, hold straight into the West. 
 
 Then down the night we saw the meteor burn. 
 So do the very Heavens in fire protest : 
 
 Good Admiral, put about / O Spain, dear Spain / 
 
 Hold straight into the West, I said again. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Next drive we o er the slimy-weeded sea. 
 
 Lo ! herebeneath (another coward cries) 
 
 The cursed land of sunk Atlantis lies : 
 This slime will sitck us down turn while thotfrt free ! 
 But no ! I said, Freedom bears West for me / 
 
 Yet when the long-time stagnant winds arise, 
 
 And day by day the keel to westward flies, 
 My Good my people s 111 doth come to be: 
 
 Ever the winds into the West do blow ; 
 
 Never a ship, once turned, might homeward go ; 
 
5 8 PSALM OF THE WEST. 
 
 Meanwhile we speed into the lonesome main. 
 
 For Christ s sake, parley, Admiral ! Turn, before 
 We sail outside all bounds of help from pain ! 
 
 Our help is in the West, I said once more. 
 
 VII. 
 
 "So when there came a mighty cry of Land! 
 
 And we clomb up and saw, and shouted strong 
 Salve Regina! all the ropes along, 
 But knew at morn how that a counterfeit band 
 Of level clouds had aped a silver strand ; 
 
 So when we heard the orchard-bird s small song, 
 And all the people cried, A hellish throng 
 To tempt us onward by the Devil planned, 
 Yea, all from hell keen heron, fresh green weeds, 
 Pelican, tunny-fish, fair-tapering reeds, 
 Lie-telling lands that ever shine and die 
 In clouds of nothing round the empty sky. 
 Tired Admiral, get thee from this hell, and rest /-- 
 Steersman, I said, hold straight into the West. 
 
PSALM OF THE WEST. 59 
 
 VIII. 
 
 I marvel how mine eye, ranging the Night. 
 
 From its big circling ever absently 
 
 Returns, thou large low Star, to fix on thee. 
 Maria ! Star ? No star : a Light, a Light ! 
 Wouldst leap ashore, Heart? Yonder burns a Light. 
 
 Pedro Gutierrez, wake! come up to me. 
 
 I prithee stand and gaze about the sea: 
 What seest? Admiral, like as land a Light I 
 Well ! Sanchez of Segovia, come and try : 
 What seest ? Admiral, nought but sea and sky ! 
 
 Well ! But / saw It. Wait ! the Pinta s gun ! 
 
 Why, look, tis dawn, the land is clear : tis done ! 
 Two dawns do break at once from Time s full hand 
 God s, East mine, West: good friends, behold my Land! 
 
 Master, Master! faster fly 
 Now the hurrying seasons by; 
 Now the Sea of Darkness wide 
 Rolls in light from side to side; 
 
60 PSALM OF THE WEST. 
 
 Mark, slow drifting to the West 
 Down the trough and up the crest, 
 Yonder piteous heartsease petal 
 Many-motioned rise and settle 
 Petal cast a-sea from land 
 By the awkward-fingered Hand 
 That, mistaking Nature s course, 
 Tears the love it fain would force 
 Petal calm of heartsease flower 
 Smiling sweet on tempest sour, 
 Smiling where by crest and trough 
 Heartache Winds at heartsease scoff, 
 Breathing mild perfumes of prayer 
 Twixt the scolding sea and air. 
 
 Mayflower, piteous Heartsease Petal! 
 Suavely down the sea-troughs settle, 
 Gravely breathe perfumes of prayer 
 Twixt the scolding sea and air, 
 Bravely up the sea-hills rise 
 Sea-hills slant thee toward the skies. 
 
PSALM OF THE WEST. 
 
 Master, hold disaster off 
 From the crest and from the 
 Heartsease, on the heartache 
 God, thy God, will pilot thee. 
 
 Mayflower, Ship of Faith s best Hope! 
 Thou art sure if all men grope ; 
 Mayflower, Ship of Hope s best Faith! 
 All is true the great God saith; 
 Mayflower, Ship of Charity ! 
 Love is Lord of land and sea. 
 Oh, with love and love s best care 
 Thy large godly freightage bear- 
 Godly Hearts that, Grails of gold, 
 Still the blood of Faith do hold. 
 
 Now bold Massachusetts clear 
 Cuts the rounding of the sphere. 
 Out the anchor, sail no more, 
 Lay us by the Future s shore 
 Not the Shore we sought, tis true, 
 But the time is come to do. 
 
62 PSALM OF THE WEST. 
 
 Leap, dear Standish, leap and wade ; 
 Bradford, Hopkins, Tilley, wade: 
 Leap and wade ashore and kneel 
 God be praised that steered the keel ! 
 Home is good, and soft is rest, 
 Even in this jagged West : 
 Freedom lives, and Right shall stand ; 
 Blood of Faith is in the land. 
 
 Then in what time the primal icy years 
 Scraped slowly o er the Puritans hopes and fears, 
 Like as great glaciers built of frozen tears, 
 The Voice from far within the secret sky 
 Said, Blood of Faith ye have? So ; let us try. 
 
 And presently 
 
 The anxious-masted ships that westward fare, 
 Cargo d with trouble and a-list with care, 
 Their outraged decks hot back to England bear, 
 Then come again with stowage of worse weight, 
 Battle,, and tyrannous Tax, and Wrong, and Hate, 
 And all bad items of Death s perilous freight. 
 
PSALM OF THE WEST. 63 
 
 O er Cambridge set the yeomen s mark : 
 Climb, patriot, through the April dark. 
 O lanthorn ! kindle fast thy light, 
 Thou budding star in the April night, 
 For never a star more news hath told, 
 Or later flame in heaven shall hold. 
 Ay, lanthorn on the North Church tower, 
 When that thy church hath had her hour, 
 Still from the top of Reverence high 
 Shalt thou illume Fame s ampler sky ; 
 For, statured large o er town and tree, 
 Time s tallest Figure stands by thee, 
 And, dim as now thy wick may shine 
 The Future lights his lamp at thine. 
 
 Now haste thee while the way is clear, 
 
 Paul Revere! 
 Haste, Dawes ! but haste thou not, O Sun ! 
 
 To Lexington. 
 
 Then Devens looked and saw the light: 
 He got him forth into the night, 
 
64 PSALM OF THE WEST. 
 
 And watched alone on the river-shore, 
 And marked the British ferrying o er. 
 
 John Parker ! rub thine eyes and yawn : 
 But one o clock and yet tis Dawn! 
 Quick, rub thine eyes and draw thy hose; 
 The Morning comes ere darkness goes. 
 Have forth and call the yeomen out, 
 For somewhere, somewhere close about 
 Full soon a Thing must come to be 
 Thine honest eyes shall stare to see 
 Full soon before thy patriot eyes 
 Freedom from out of a Wound shall rise. 
 
 Then haste ye, Prescott and Revere! 
 Bring all the men of Lincoln here; 
 Let Chelmsford, Littleton, Carlisle, 
 Let Acton, Bedford, hither file 
 Oh hither file, and plainly see 
 Out of a wound leap Liberty. 
 
PSALM OF THE WEST. 65 
 
 Say, Woodman April! all in green, 
 Say, Robin April! hast thou seen 
 In all thy travel round the earth 
 Ever a morn of calmer birth? 
 But Morning s eye alone serene 
 Can gaze across yon village-green 
 To where the trooping British run 
 Through Lexington. 
 
 Good men in fustian, stand ye still ; 
 
 The men in red come o er the hill. 
 
 Lay down your arms, damned Rebels ! cry 
 
 The men in red full haughtily. 
 
 But never a grounding gun is heard; 
 
 The men in fustian stand unstirred; 
 
 Dead calm, save maybe a wise bluebird 
 
 Puts in his little heavenly word. 
 
 O men in red ! if ye but knew 
 
 The half as much as bluebirds do, 
 
 Now in this little tender calm 
 
 Each hand would out, and every palm 
 
66 PSALM OF THE WEST. 
 
 With patriot palm strike brotherhood s stroke 
 Or ere these lines of battle broke. 
 
 O men in red! if ye but knew 
 
 The least of the all that bluebirds do, 
 
 Now in this little godly calm 
 
 Yon voice might sing the Future s Psalm 
 
 The Psalm of Love with the brotherly eyes 
 
 Who pardons and is very wise 
 
 Yon voice that shouts, high -hoarse with ire, 
 
 Fire ! 
 
 The red-coats fire, the homespuns fall : 
 The homespuns anxious voices call, 
 Brother, art hurt? and Where hit, John? 
 And, Wipe this blood, and Men, come on, 
 And Neighbor, do but lift my head, 
 And Who is wounded? Who is dead? 
 Seven are killed. My God ! my God ! 
 Seven lie dead on the village sod. 
 Two Harringtons, Parker, Hadley, Brown, 
 Monroe and Porter, these are down. 
 
PSALM OF THE WEST. 67 
 
 Nay, look ! Stout Harrington, not yet dead / 
 
 He crooks his elbow, lifts his head. 
 
 He lies at the step of his own house-door; 
 
 He crawls and makes a path of gore. 
 
 The wife from the window hath seen, and rushed; 
 
 He hath reached the step, but the blood hath gushed ; 
 
 He hath crawled to the step of his own house- door, 
 
 But his head hath dropped: he will crawl no more. 
 
 Clasp, Wife, and kiss, and lift the head: 
 
 Harrington lies at his doorstep dead. 
 
 But, O ye Six that round him lay 
 
 And bloodied up that April day ! 
 
 As Harrington fell, ye likewise fell 
 
 At the door of the House wherein ye dwell; 
 
 As Harrington came, ye likewise came 
 
 And died at the door of your House of Fame. 
 
 Go by, old Field of Freedom s hopes and fears ; 
 Go by, old Field of Brothers hate and tears : 
 Behold ! yon home of Brothers Love appears 
 
PSALM OF THE WEST. 
 
 Set in the burnished silver of July, 
 On Schuylkill wrought as in old broidery 
 Clasped hands upon a shining baldric lie. 
 New Hampshire, Georgia, and the mighty ten 
 That lie between, have heard the huge-nibbed pen 
 Qfj^efferson tell the rights of man to men. 
 
 T^iey sit in the reverend Hall : Shall we declare ? 
 FJ$)ats round about the anxious-quivering air 
 Twixt narrow Schuylkill and broad Delaware. 
 Already, Land ! thou hast declared : tis done. 
 Ran ever clearer speech than that did run 
 When the sweet Seven died at Lexington ? 
 
 Canst legibler write than Concord s large-stroked Act, 
 Or when at Bunker Hill the clubbed guns cracked? 
 Hast ink more true than blood, or pen than fact? 
 Nay, as the poet mad with heavenly fires 
 Flings men his song white-hot, then back retires, 
 Cools heart, broods o er the song again, inquires, 
 Why did I this, why that? and slowly draws 
 From Art s unconscious act Art s conscious laws ; 
 So, Freedom, writ, declares her writing s cause. 
 
PSALM OF THE WEST. 69 
 
 All question vain, all chill foreboding vain. 
 
 Adams, ablaze with faith, is hot and fain; 
 
 And he, straight-fibred Soul of mighty grain, ;.v^.q 
 Deep-rooted Washington, afire, serene- 
 Tall Bush that burns, yet keeps its substance green 
 Sends daily word, of. import calm yet keen, 
 
 Warm from the front of battle, till the fire 
 
 Wraps opposition in and flames yet higher, 
 
 And Doubt s thin tissues flash where Hope s aspire; 
 And, Ay, declare, and ever strenuous Ay -.-.*.. 
 Falls from the Twelve, and Time and JNature cry 
 Consent with kindred burnings of July; 
 
 And delegate Dead from each past age and race, 
 
 Viewless to man, in large procession pace 
 
 Downward athwart -each set and steadfast face, 
 Responding Ay in many tongues ; and lo ! 
 Manhood and Faith and Self and Love and Woe 
 And Art and Brotherhood and Learning go 
 
 Rearward the files of dead r and softly say 
 
 Their saintly Ay, and softly pass away 
 
 By airy exits of that ample day. 
 
7O PSALM OF THE WEST. 
 
 Now fall the chill reactionary snows 
 Of man s defect, and every wind that blows 
 Keeps fcack the Spring of Freedom s perfect Rose. 
 Now naked feet with crimson fleck the ways, 
 And Heaven is stained with flags that mutinies raise, 
 And Arnold-spotted move the creeping days. 
 Long do the eyes that look from Heaven see 
 Time smoke, as in the spring the mulberry tree, 
 With buds of battles opening fitfully, 
 Till Yorktown s winking vapors slowly fade, 
 And Time s full top casts down a pleasant shade 
 Where Freedom lies unarmed and unafraid. 
 
 Master, ever faster fly 
 Now the vivid seasons by; 
 Now the glittering Western land 
 Twins the day-lit Eastern Strand; 
 Now white Freedom s sea-bird wing 
 Roams the Sea of Everything; 
 Now the freemen to and fro 
 Bind the tyrant sand and snow, 
 
PSALM OF THE WEST. 
 
 Snatching Death s hot bolt ere hurled, 
 Flash new Life about the world, 
 Sun the secrets of the hills, 
 Shame the gods slow-grinding mills, 
 Prison Yesterday in Print, 
 Read To-morrow s weather-hint, 
 Haste before the halting Time, 
 Try new virtue and new crime, 
 Mould new faiths, devise new creeds, 
 Run each road that frontward leads, 
 Driven by an Onward-ache, 
 Scorning souls that circles make. 
 
 Now, O Sin! O Love s lost Shame! 
 Burns the land with redder flame: 
 North in line and South in line 
 Yell the charge and spring the mine. 
 Heartstrong South would have his way, 
 Headstrong North hath said him nay: 
 O strong Heart, strong Brain, beware! 
 Hear a Song from out the air: 
 
72 PSALM OF THE WEST. 
 
 I. 
 
 " Lists all white and blue in the skies ; 
 
 And the people hurried amain 
 To the Tournament under the ladies eyes 
 Where jousted Heart and Brain. 
 
 II. 
 "Blow, herald, blow! There entered Heart, 
 
 A youth in crimson and gold. - 
 Blow, herald, blow! Brain stood apart, 
 Steel-armored, glittering, cold. 
 
 III. 
 "Heart s palfrey caracoled gayly round, 
 
 Heart tra-li-raed merrily ; 
 But Brain sat still, with never a sound 
 Full cynical-calm was he. 
 
 < IV. 
 
 "Heart s helmet-crest bore favors three 
 
 From his lady s white hand caught; 
 Brain s casque was bare as Fact not he 
 Or favor gave or sought. 
 
PSALM OF THE WEST. 73 
 
 V. 
 
 Blow, herald, blow! Heart shot a glance 
 
 To catch his lady s eye; 
 But Brain looked straight a-front, his lance 
 To aim more faithfully. 
 
 VI. 
 
 They charged, they struck ; both fell, both bled ; 
 
 Brain rose again, ungloved ; 
 Heart fainting smiled, and softly said, 
 
 My love to my Beloved" 
 
 Heart and Brain ! no more be twain; .-> <- 
 Throb and think, one flesh again ! 
 Lo! they weep, they turn, they run; 
 Lo ! they kiss : Love, thou art one ! 
 
 Now the Land, with drying tears, 
 Counts him up his flocks of years, 
 See," he says, "my substance grows; 
 Hundred-flocked my Herdsman goes, 
 
 7 
 
74 PSALM OF THE WEST. 
 
 Hundred-flocked my Herdsman stands 
 On the Past s broad meadow-lands. 
 Come from where ye mildly graze, 
 Black herds, white herds, nights and days. 
 Drive them homeward, Herdsman Time, 
 From the meadows of the Prime : 
 I will feast my house, and rest. 
 Neighbor East, come over West; 
 Pledge me in good wine and words 
 While I count my hundred herds, 
 Sum the substance of my Past 
 From the first unto the last, 
 Chanting o er the generous brim 
 Cloudy memories yet more dim, 
 Ghostly rhymes of Norsemen pale 
 Staring by old Bjorne s sail, 
 Strains more noble of that night 
 Worn Columbus saw his Light, 
 Psalms of still more heavenly tone, 
 How the Mayflower tossed alone, 
 
PSALM OF THE WEST. 75 
 
 Olden tale and later song 
 Of the Patriot s love and wrong, 
 Grandsire s ballad, nurse s hymn 
 Chanting o er the sparkling brim 
 Till I shall from first to last 
 Sum the substance of my Past." 
 
 Then called the Artist s God from in the sky: 
 This Time shall show by dream and mystery 
 The heart of all his matter to thine eye. 
 Son, study stars by looking down in streams, 
 Interpret that which is by that which seems, 
 And tell thy dreams in words which are but dreams. 
 
 I. 
 The Master with His lucent hand 
 
 Pinched up the atom hills and plains 
 
 O er all the moiety of land 
 The ocean-bounded West contains: 
 
 The dust lay dead upon the calm 
 
 And mighty middle of His palm. 
 
PSALM OF THE WEST. 
 II. 
 
 *_ ; . . >- ;._ .1 >,.. ,.j I 
 
 And lo ! He wrought full tenderly, 
 And lo ! He wrought with love and might, 
 
 And lo ! He wrought a thing to see 
 Was marvel in His people s sight: 
 
 He wrought His image dead and small, 
 
 A nothing fashioned like an All. 
 
 in. 
 Then breathed He softly on the dead: 
 
 "Live Self! thou part, yet none, of Me; 
 
 Dust for humility," He said, 
 "And my warm breath for Charity. 
 
 Behold my latest work, thou Earth! 
 
 The Self of Man is taking birth." 
 
 IV. 
 
 Then, Land, tall Adam of the West, . 
 Thou stood st upon the springy sod, 
 
 Thy large eye ranging self-possest, 
 Thy limbs the limbs of God s young god, 
 
 Thy Passion murmuring I will 
 
 Lord of the Lordship Good-and-Ill. 
 
PSALM OF THE WEST. 77 
 
 V. 
 O manful arms, of supple size 
 
 To clasp a world* or a waist as well ! 
 
 O manful eyes, to front the skies 
 Or look much pity down on hell ! 
 
 O manful tongue, to work and sing, 
 
 And soothe a child and dare a king! 
 
 VI. 
 
 O wonder ! Now thou sleep st in pain, 
 Like as some dream thy soul did grieve : 
 
 God wounds thee, heals thee whole again, 
 And calls thee trembling to thine Eve. 
 
 Wide-armed, thou dropp st on knightly knee : 
 
 Dear Love, dear freedom, go with vie ! 
 
 VII. 
 
 Then all the beasts before thee passed 
 Beast War, Oppression, Murder, Lust, 
 
 False Art, False Faith, slow skulking last 
 And out of Time s thick-rising dust 
 
 Thy Lord said, "Name them, tame them, Son; 
 
 Nor rest, nor rest, till thou hast done." 
 
PSALM OF THE WEST. 
 
 VII. 
 Ah, name thou false, or tame thou wrong, 
 
 At heart let no man fear for thee* 
 Thy Past sings ever Freedom s Song, 
 
 Thy Future s voice sounds wondrous free; 
 And Freedom is more large than Crime, 
 And Error is more small than Time. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Come, thou whole Self of Latter Man ! 
 Come o er thy realm of Good-and-Ill, 
 
 And do, thou Self that say st / can, 
 And love, thou Self that say st I will ; 
 
 And prove and know Time s worst and best, 
 
 Thou tall young. Adam of the West ! 
 
IN ABSENCE. 
 
 THHE storm that snapped our fate s one ship in twain 
 Hath blown my half o the wreck from thine apart. 
 
 Love ! O Love ! across the gray-waved main 
 
 To thee-ward strain my eyes, my arms, my heart. 
 
 1 ask my God if e en in His sweet place, 
 Where, by one waving of a wistful wing, 
 
 My soul could straightway tremble face to face 
 With thee, with thee, across the stellar ring- 
 Yea, where thine absence I could ne er bewail 
 Longer than lasts that little blank of bliss 
 
 79 
 
80 IN ABSENCE. 
 
 When lips draw back, with recent pressure pale, 
 To round and redden for another kiss 
 
 Would not my lonesome heart still sigh for thee 
 What time the drear kiss-intervals must be? 
 
 II. 
 
 So do the mottled formulas of Sense 
 
 Glide snakewise through our dreams of Aftertime ; 
 So errors breed in reeds and grasses dense 
 
 That bank our singing rivulets of rhyme. 
 By Sense rule Space and Time ; but in God s Land 
 
 Their intervals are not, save such as lie 
 Betwixt successive tones in concords bland 
 
 Whose loving distance makes the harmony. 
 Ah, There shall never come twixt me and thee 
 
 Gross dissonances of the mile, the year ; 
 But in the multichords of ecstasy 
 
 Our souls shall mingle, yet be featured clear, 
 And absence, wrought to intervals divine, 
 Shall part, yet link, thy nature s tone and mine. 
 
IN ABSENCE. 8 1 
 
 III. 
 Look down the shining peaks of all my days 
 
 Base-hidden in the valleys of deep night, 
 So shalt thou see the heights and depths of praise 
 
 My love would render unto love s delight ; 
 For I would make each day an Alp sublime 
 
 Of passionate snow, white-hot yet icy-clear, 
 One crystal of the true-loves of all time 
 
 Spiring the world s prismatic atmosphere ; 
 And I would make each night an awful vale 
 
 Deep as thy soul, obscure as modesty, 
 With every star in heaven trembling pale 
 
 O er sweet profounds where only Love can see. 
 
 Oh, runs not thus the lesson thou hast taught ? 
 When life s all love, tis life: aught else, tis naught. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Let no man say, He at his lady s feet 
 
 Lays worship that to Heaven alone belongs ; 
 Yea, swings the incense that for God is meet 
 In flippant censers of light lover s songs. 
 
82 IN ABSENCE. 
 
 Who says it, knows not God, nor love, nor thee ; 
 
 For love is large as is yon heavenly dome : 
 In love s great blue, each passion is full free 
 
 To fly his favorite flight and build his home. 
 Did e er a lark with skyward-pointing beak 
 
 Stab by mischance a level-flying dove ? 
 Wife-love flies level, his dear mate to seek : 
 
 God-love darts straight into the skies above. 
 
 Crossing, the windage of each other s wings 
 But speeds them both upon their journeyings. 
 
ACKNOWLEDGMENT. 
 
 OAGE that half believ st thou half believ st, 
 Half doubt st the substance of thine own half doubt, 
 And, half perceiving that thou half perceiv st, 
 Stand st at thy temple door, heart in, head out! 
 
 Lo ! while thy heart s within, helping the choir, 
 Without, thine eyes range up and down the time, 
 Blinking at o er-bright science, smit with desire 
 To see and not to see. Hence, crime on crime. 
 
 Yea, if the Christ (called thine) now paced yon street, 
 
84 A CKNO WLED GMENT. 
 
 Thy halfness hot with His rebuke would swell, 
 Legions of scribes would rise and run and beat 
 
 His fair intolerable Wholeness twice to hell. 
 Nay (so, dear Heart, thou whisperest in my soul), 
 Tis a half time, yet Time will make it whole. 
 
 II. 
 
 Now at thy soft recalling voice I rise 
 Where thought is lord o er Time s complete estate, 
 
 Like as a dove from out the gray sedge flies 
 To tree-tops green where coos his heavenly mate. 
 
 From these clear coverts high and cool I see 
 How every time with every time is knit, 
 
 And each to all is mortised cunningly, 
 And none is sole or whole, yet all are fit. 
 
 Thus, if this Age but as a comma show 
 Twixt weightier cla.uses of large-worded years, 
 
 My calmer soul scorns not the mark : I know 
 This crooked point Time s complex sentence clears. 
 
 Yet more I learn while, Friend ! I sit by thee : 
 
 Who sees all time, sees all eternity. 
 
A CKNO WL ED GMENT. 8 5 
 
 III. 
 
 If I do ask, How God can dumbness keep 
 While Sin creeps grinning through His house of Time, 
 
 Stabbing His saintliest children in their sleep, 
 And staining holy walls with clots of crime ? 
 
 Or, How may He whose wish but names a fact 
 Refuse what miser s-scanting of supply 
 
 Would richly glut each void where man hath lacked 
 Of grace or bread ? or, How may Power deny 
 
 Wholeness to th almost-folk that hurt our hope 
 These heart-break Hamlets who so barely fail 
 
 In life or art that but a hair s more scope 
 Had set them fair on heights they ne er may scale? 
 
 Somehow by thee, dear Love, I win content : 
 
 Thy Perfect stops th Imperfect s argument. 
 
 IV. 
 
 By the more height of thy sweet stature grown, 
 Twice-eyed with thy gray vision set in mine, 
 
 I ken far lands to wifeless men unknown, 
 I compass stars for one-sexed eyes too fine. 
 
 8 
 
86 A CKNO WLED GMENT. 
 
 No text on sea-horizons cloudily writ, 
 
 No maxim vaguely starred in fields or skies, 
 But this wise thou-in-me deciphers it: 
 
 Oh, thou rt the Height of heights, the Eye of eyes. 
 Not hardest Fortune s most unbounded stress 
 
 Can blind my soul nor hurl it from on high, 
 Possessing thee, the self of loftiness, 
 
 And very light that Light discovers by. 
 
 Howe er thou turn st, wrong Earth ! still Love s in sU;lv 
 For we are taller than the breadth of night. 
 
BETRAYAL. 
 
 r ~T^ > HE sun has kissed the violet sea, 
 And burned the violet to a rose. 
 
 O Sea! wouldst thou not better be 
 
 Mere violet still? Who knows? who knows? 
 Well hides the violet ii the wood : 
 The dead leaf wrinkles her a hood, 
 And winter s ill is violet s good ; 
 But the bold glory of the rose, 
 It quickly comes and quickly goes 
 Red petals whirling in white snows, 
 
 Ah me ! 
 
 87 
 
BETRAYAL. 
 
 The sun has burnt the rose-red sea: 
 The rose is turned to ashes gray. 
 O Sea, O Sea, mightst thou but be 
 The violet thou hast been to-day ! 
 
 The sun is brave, the sun is bright, 
 The sun is lord of love and light ; 
 But after him it cometh night. 
 Dim anguish of the lonesome dark !- 
 Once a girl s body, stiff and stark, 
 Was laid in a tomb without a mark, 
 Ah me ! 
 
SPECIAL PLEADING. 
 
 r I " IME, hurry my Love to me: 
 
 Haste, haste ! Lov st not good company ? 
 Here s but a heart-break sandy waste 
 Twixt now and Then. Why, killing haste 
 
 Were best, dear Time, for thee, for thee ! 
 
 
 Oh, would that I might divine 
 Thy name beyond the zodiac sign 
 
 Wherefrom our times-to-come descend. 
 
 He called thee Sometime. Change it, friend: 
 Now-time sounds so much more fine! 
 
 89 
 
90 SPECIAL PLEADING. 
 
 Sweet Sometime, fly fast to me : 
 Poor Now-time sits in the Lonesome-tree 
 And broods as gray as any dove, 
 And calls, When wilt thou come, O Love? 
 And pleads across the waste to thee. 
 
 Good Moment, that giv st him me, 
 Wast ever in love ? Maybe, maybe 
 Thou lt be this heavenly velvet time 
 When Day and Night as rhyme and rhyme 
 Set lip to lip dusk-modestly ; 
 
 Or haply some noon afar, 
 O life s top bud, mixt rose arid star, 
 How ever can thine utmost sweet 
 Be star-consummate, rose-complete, 
 Till thy rich reds full opened are ? 
 
 Well, be it dusk-time or noon-time, 
 I ask but one small boon, Time : 
 
 Come thou in night, come thou in day, 
 I care not, I care not : have thine own way, 
 But only, but only, come soon, Time. 
 
TO CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN. 
 
 T OOK where a three-point star shall weave his beam 
 
 * Into the slumb rous tissue of some stream, 
 
 Till his bright self o er his bright copy seem 
 
 Fulfillment dropping on a come-true dream ; 
 
 So in this night of art thy soul doth show 
 
 Her excellent double in the steadfast flow 
 
 Of wishing love that through men s hearts doth go : 
 
 At once thou shin st above and shin st below. 
 
 E en when thou strivest there within Art s sky 
 
 (Each star must o er a strenuous orbit fly), 
 
 Full calm thine image in our love doth lie, 
 
 A Motion glassed in a Tranquillity. 
 
 So triple-rayed, thou mov st, yet stay st, serene 
 
 Art s artist, Love s dear woman, Fame s good queen ! 
 
ROSE-MORALS. 
 
 I. RED. 
 
 \T 7OULD that my songs might be 
 
 What roses make by day and night 
 Distillrnents of my clod of misery 
 Into delight. 
 
 Soul, could st thou bare thy breast 
 
 As yon red rose, and dare the day, 
 All clean, and large, and calm with velvet rest ? 
 Say yea say yea ! 
 
 Ah, dear my Rose, good-bye; 
 
 The wind is up ; so ; drift away. 
 That songs from me as leaves from thee may fly, 
 
 I strive, 1 pray. 
 92 
 
ROSE-MORALS. 93 
 
 II. WHITE. 
 Soul, get thee to the heart 
 
 Of yonder tuberose : hide thee there 
 There breathe the meditations of thine art 
 Suffused with prayer. 
 
 Of spirit grave yet light, 
 
 How fervent fragrances uprise 
 Pure-born from these most rich and yet most white 
 
 Virginities ! 
 
 Mulched with unsavory death, 
 
 Grow, Soul! unto such white estate, 
 That virginal-prayerful art shall be thy breath, 
 Thy work, thy fate. 
 
TO , WITH A ROSE. 
 
 I 
 
 ASKED my heart to say 
 
 Some word whose worth my love s devoir might pa) 
 Upon my Lady s natal day. 
 
 Then said my heart to me : 
 
 Learn from the rhyme that now shall come to thee 
 What fits thy Love most lovingly. 
 
 This gift that learning shows ; 
 For, as a rhyme unto its rhyme-twin goes, 
 
 I send a rose unto a Rose. 
 94 
 
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