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THE NEW WORLD

      *      *      *      *      *

BY WITTER BYNNER

  An Ode to Harvard and Other Poems
  Tiger
  The Little King
  The New World
  Iphigenia in Tauris

      *      *      *      *      *


THE NEW WORLD

by

WITTER BYNNER







New York
Mitchell Kennerley
1918

Copyright 1915 by
Mitchell Kennerley


The greater part of this poem was delivered before the Harvard
Chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa Society in June, 1911; several
passages from it have appeared in _Poetry_, and others in _The
Bellman_, the Boston _Evening Transcript_ and the _American
Magazine_.


Printed in America




    _To
   Celia_




The New World


I

    Celia was laughing. Hopefully I said:
  "How shall this beauty that we share,
  This love, remain aware
  Beyond our happy breathing of the air?
  How shall it be fulfilled and perfected?...
  If you were dead,
  How then should I be comforted?"
    But Celia knew instead:
  "He who finds beauty here, shall find it there."
    A halo gathered round her hair.
  I looked and saw her wisdom bare
  The living bosom of the countless dead.
  ... And there
  I laid my head.

    Again when Celia laughed, I doubted her and said:
  "Life must be led
  In many ways more difficult to see
  Than this immediate way
  For you and me.
  We stand together on our lake's edge, and the mystery
  Of love has made us one, as day is made of night and night of day.
  Aware of one identity
  Within each other, we can say:
  'I shall be everything you are.'...
  We are uplifted till we touch a star.
  We know that overhead
  Is nothing more austere, more starry, or more deep to understand
  Than is our union, human hand in hand.
  .... But over our lake come strangers--a crowded launch, a lonely sailing boy.
  A mile away a train bends by. In every car
  Strangers are travelling, each with particular
  And unkind preference like ours, with privacy
  Of understanding, with especial joy
  Like ours. Celia, Celia, why should there be
  Distrust between ourselves and them, disunity?
  .... How careful we have been
  To trim this little circle that we tread,
  To set a bar
  To strangers and forbid them!--Are they not as we,
  Our very likeness and our nearest kin?
  How can we shut them out and let stars in?"
    She looked along the lake. And when I heard her speak,
  The sun fell on the boy's white sail and her white cheek.
  "I touch them all through you," she said. "I cannot know them now
  Deeply and truly as my very own, except through you,
  Except through one or two
  Interpreters.
  But not a moment stirs
  Here between us, binding and interweaving us,
  That does not bind these others to our care."
    The sunlight fell in glory on her hair....
  And then said Celia, radiant, when I held her near:
  "They who find beauty there, shall find it here."
    And on her brow,
  When I heard Celia speak,
  Cities were populous
  With peace and oceans echoed glories in her ear
  And from her risen thought
  Her lips had brought,
  As from some peak
  Down through the clouds, a mountain-air
  To guide the lonely and uplift the weak.
    "Record it all," she told me, "more than merely this,
  More than the shine of sunset on our heads, more than a kiss,
  More than our rapt agreement and delight
  Watching the mountain mingle with the night....
  Tell that the love of two incurs
  The love of multitudes, makes way
  And welcome for them, as a solitary star
  Brings on the great array.
  Go make a lovers' calendar,"
  She said, "for every day."

    And when the sun had put away
  His dazzle, over the shadowy firs
  The solitary star came out.... So on some night
  To eyes of youth shall come my light
  And hers.


II

    "Where are you bound, O solemn voyager?"
  She laughed one day and asked me in her mirth:
  "Where are you from?
  Why are you come?"
  .... The questions beat like tapping of a drum;
  And how could I be dumb,
  I who have bugles in me? Fast
  The answer blew to her,
  For all my breath was worth....
  "As a bird comes by grace of spring,
  You are my journey and my wing--
  And into your heart, O Celia,
  My heart has flown, to sing
  Solemn and long
  A most undaunted song."

  This was the song that she herself had taught me how to sing:
  .... As immigrants come toward America
  On their continual ships out of the past,
  So on my ship America have I, by birth,
  Come forth at last
  From all the bitter corners of the earth.
  And I have ears to hear the westward wind blowing
  And I have eyes to look beyond the scope Of sea
  And I have hands to touch the hands
  Of shipmates who are going
  Wherever I go and the grace of knowing
  That what for them is hope
  Is hope for me.
  I come from many times and many lands,
  I look toward life and all that it shall hold,
  Past bound and past divide.
  And I shall be consoled
  By a continent as wide
  As the round invisible sky.
  .... "The unseen shall become the seen....
  O Celia, be my Spanish Queen!
  The Genoan am I!"
    And Celia cried:
  "My jewels, they are yours,
  Yours for the journey. Use them well.
  Go find the new world, win the shores
  Of which the old books tell!
  .... Yet will they listen, poet? Will they sail with you?
  Will they not call you dreamer of a dream?
  Will they not laugh at you, because you seem
  Concerned with words that people often say
  And deeds they never do?"
    The bright sails of my caravel shook seaward in reply:
  "Though I be told
  A thousand facts to hold
  Me back, though the old boundary
  Rise up like hatred in my way,
  Though fellow-voyagers cry,
  'A lie!'--
  Here as I come with heaven at my side
  None of the weary words they say
  Remain with me,
  I am borne like a wave of the sea
  Toward worlds to be....
  And, young and bold,
  I am happier than they--
  The timid unbelievers who grow old!"

    She interceded: "How impatient, how unkind
  You are! What secret do you know
  To keep you young?
  Age comes with keen and accurate advance
  Against youth's lightly handled lance.
  Age is an ancient despot that has wrung
  All hearts."... My answer was the song forever sung:
  "This that I need to know I know--
  Onpouring and perpetual immigrants,
  We join a fellowship beyond America
  Yet in America....
  Beyond the touch of age, my Celia,
  In you, in me, in everyone, we join God's growing mind.
  For in no separate place or time, or soul, we find
  Our meaning. In one mingled soul reside
  All times and places. On a tide
  Of mist and azure air
  We journey toward that soul, through circumstance,
  Until at last we fully care and dare
  To make within ourselves divinity."

    "And what of all the others," Celia said,
  "Who ventured brave as you? What of the dead?"
    Again I saw the halo in her hair
  And said: "The dead sail forward, hid behind
  This wave that we ourselves must mount to find
  The eternal way.
  Adventurers of long ago
  Seeking a richer gain than earthy gold,
  They have left for us, half-told,
  Their guesses of the port, more numerous and blind
  Than their unnumbered and forgotten faces.
  ... And though today, as then,
  Death is a wind blowing them forward out of sight and out of mind,
  Yet in familiar and in unfamiliar places
  Inquiring by what means I may
  The destination of the wind
  Of death, I have found signs and traces
  Of the way they go
  And with a quicker heart I have beheld again
  In visions, from my ship at sea,
  The great new world confronting me,
  Where, yesterday,
  Today, tomorrow, dwell my countrymen."

    And then I looked away,
  Over the pasture and the valley, to the New Hampshire town....
  And my heart's acclaim went down,
  To Florida, Wisconsin, California,
  And brought a good report to Celia:
  "My ship America,
  This whole wide-timbered land,
  Well captained and well manned,
  Ascends the sea
  Of time, carrying me
  And many passengers.
  And every cabin stirs
  With the pulsing of its engine over the sway of time,
  Yes, every state and city, every village, every farm,
  And every heart and everyone's right arm.
  ... Celia, hold out your hand,
  Or anyone in any field or street, hold out your hand--
  And I can see it pulse the massive climb
  And dip
  Of this America,
  My ship!"

    "Why make your ship so small?
  Can your America contain them all?"
    How wisely I replied
  In the province of my pride:
  "But these are my own shipmates, these
  Who share my ship America with me!
  ... On many seas
  On other ships, even the ancient ships of Greece,
  Have other immigrants set sail for peace.
  But these are my own shipmates whom I see
  At hand--these are my company."
    "What have you said," she cried,
  "Thinking you knew?
  Whom have you called your shipmates? You were wrong!
  Your ship is strong
  With a more various crew
  Than any one man's country could provide,
  To make it ride
  So high and manifold and so complete.
  This is the engine-beat
  Of life itself, the ship of ships.
  There is no other ship among the stars than this.
  The wind of death is a bright kiss
  Upon the lips
  Of every immigrant, as upon yours and mine--
  Theirs is the stinging brine
  And sun and open sea,
  And theirs the arching sky, eternity."
    And Celia had my homage. I was wrong.
  Immigrants all, one ship we ride,
  Man and his bride
  The journey through.
  O let it be with a bridal-song!...
  "My shipmates are as many as eternity is long:
  The unborn and the living and the dead--
  And, Celia, you!"


III

    That midnight when the moon was tall
  I walked alone by the white lake--yet with a vanished race
  And with a race to come. To walk with dead men is to pray,
  To walk with men unborn--to find the way.

    I have seen many days. That night I watched them all.
  I have seen many a sign and trace
  Of beauty and of hope:
  An elm at night; an arrowy waterfall;
  The illimitable round unbroken scope
  Of life; a friend's unfrightened dying face.

    Though I have heard the cry of fear in crowded loneliness of space,
  Dead laughter from the lips of lust,
  Anger from fools, falsehood from sycophants,
  (My fear, my lips, my anger, my disgrace)
  Though I have held a golden cup and tasted rust,
  Seen cities rush to be defiled
  By the bright-fevered and consuming sin
  Of making only coin and lives to count it in,
  Yet once I watched with Celia,
  Watched on a ferry an Italian child,
  One whom America
  Had changed.
  His cheek was hardy and his mouth was frail
  For sweetness, and his eyes were opening wild
  As with wonder at an unseen figure carrying a grail.
    Perhaps he faced, as I did in his glance,
  The spirit of the living dead who, having ranged
  Through long reverses, forward without fail
  Carry deliverance
  From privilege and disinheritance,
  Until their universal soul shall prove
  The only answer to the ache of love.

    "America was wistful in that child,"
  Said Celia afterwards--and smiled
  Because all three of us were immigrants,
  Each voyaging into each.
    Over the city-roofs, the sun awoke
  Bright in the dew
  Of a marvellous morning, while she spoke
  Of the sun, the dew, the wonder, in a child:
  "He who devises tyranny," she said,
  "Denies the resurrection of the dead,
  Beneath his own degree degrades himself,
  Invades himself with ugliness and wars.
  But he who knows all men to be himself,
  Part of his own experiment and reach,
  Humbles and amplifies himself
  To build and share a tenement of stars."

    Once when we broke a loaf of bread
  And shared the honey, Celia said:
  "To share all beauty as the interchanging dust,
  To be akin and kind and to entrust
  All men to one another for their good,
  Is to have heard and understood,
  And carried to the common enemy
  In you and me,
  The ultimatum of democracy."

    "But to what goal?" I wondered. And I heard her happy speech:
  "It is my faith that God is our own dream
  Of perfect understanding of the soul.
  It is my passion that, alike through me
  And every member of eternity,
  The source of God is sending the same stream.
  It is my peace that when my life is whole,
  God's life shall be completed and supreme."

    And once when I had made complaint
  About America, she warned me: "Be not faint
  Of heart, but bold to see the soul's advance.
  The chances are not far nor few....
  Face beauty," Celia said, "then beauty faces you."

    And under all things her advice was true.
  ... Discovering what she knew,
  Not only on a mountainous place
  Or by the solving sea
  But through the world I have seen endless beauty, as the number grows
  Of those who, in a child cheated of simple joy
  Or in a wasted rose
  Or in a lover's immemorial lonely eyes
  Or in machines that quicken and destroy
  A multitude or in a mother's unregarded grace
  And broken heart, through all the skies
  And all humanity,
  Seek out the single spirit, face to face,
  Find it, become a conscious part of it
  And know that something pure and exquisite,
  Although inscrutably begun,
  Surely exalts the many into one.

    "I shall not lose, nor you,"
  I said to Celia. Over the world the morning-dew
  Moved like a hymn and sang to us: "Go now, fulfill
  Your destiny and joy;
  Each in the other, both in that Italian boy,
  And he in you, like flowers in a hill!"
  ... She was the nearness of imperfect God
  On whom in her perfection was at work.
  Lest I should shirk
  My share, I asked her for His blessing and His nod--
  And His breath was in her shining hair like the wind in golden-rod.

    "But, Celia, Celia, tell me what to be,"
  I asked, "and what to do,
  To keep your faith in me,
  To witness mine in you!"
    She answered: "Dare to see
  In every man and woman everywhere
  The making of us two.
  See none that we can spare
  From the creation of our soul.
  Swear to be whole.
  Let not your faith abate,
  But establish it in persons and exalt it in the state."


IV

    Celia has challenged me....
  Be my reply,
  Challenge to poets who, with tinkling tricks,
  Meet life and pass it by.
  "Beauty," they ask, "in politics?"
  "If you put it there," say I.

    Wide the new world had opened its bright gates.
  And a woman who had heard of the new world
  All her life long and had saved her pence
  By hard frugality, to be her competence
  In the free home, came eagerly in nineteen seven
  Into These States,
  With her little earnings furled
  In a large handkerchief--but with a heart
  Too rich to be contained, for she had done her part:
  She had come
  With faith to Heaven.
    But there was a panic that year,
  No work, no wages in These States.
  And a great fear
  Seized on the immigrant. And so she took her pence
  All of them, furled
  Safe in her handkerchief, to a government cashier--
  A clerk in the post-office. (And he relates
  Her errand as a joke, yet tenderly
  For I watched him telling me.)
  ... Not knowing English, being dumb,
  She had brought with her a thin-faced lad
  To interpret. And he made it clear,
  While she unfurled
  Her handkerchief and poured the heap of coins out of her hand,
  That 'she was giving all she had--
  To be used no matter how, you understand' ...
  Lest harm should come to the new world.

    O doubters of democracy,
  Undo your mean contemptuous art!--
  More than in all that poetry has said,
  More than in mound or marble, in the living live the dead.
  The past has done its reproductive part.
  Hear now the cry of beauty's present needs,
  Of comrades levelling a thousand creeds,
  Finding futility
  In conflict, selfishness, hardness of heart!
  For love has many poets who can see
  Ascending in the sky
  Above the shadowy passes
  The everlasting hills: humanity.
    O doubters of the time to be,
  What is this might, this mystery,
  Moving and singing through democracy,
  This music of the masses
  And of you and me--
  But purging and dynamic poetry!--
  What is this eagerness from sea to sea
  But young divinity!

    I have seen doubters, with a puny joy,
  Accept amusement for their little while
  And feed upon some nourishing employ
  But otherwise shake their wise heads and smile--
  Protesting that one man can no more move the mass
  For good or ill
  Than could the ancients kindle the sun
  By tying torches to a wheel and rolling it downhill.
    But not the wet circumference of the seas
  Can quench the living light in even these,
  These who forget,
  Eating the fruits of earth,
  That nothing ever has been done
  To spur the spirit of mankind,
  Which has not come to pass
  Forth from the heart and mind
  Of some one man, through other men birth after birth,
  In thoughts that dare
  And in deeds that share
  And in a will resolved to find
  A finer breath
  Born in the deep maternity of death.
  ... If these be ecstasies of youth,
  Yet they are news of which all time has need.
  If they be lies, tell them yourselves and heed
  How poets' twice-told lies become the truth!

  There was a poet Celia loved who, hearing all around
  The multitudinous tread
  Of common majesty,
  (A hearty immigrant was he!)
  Made of the gathering insurgent sound
  Another continent of poetry?
  His name is writ in his blood, mine and yours.
  ... "And when he celebrates
  These States,"
  She said, "how can Americans worth their salt
  But listen to the wavesong on their shores,
  The waves and Walt,
  And hear the windsong over rock and wood,
  The winds and Walt,
  And let the mansong enter at their gates
  And know that it is good!"

    Walt Whitman, by his perfect friendliness
  Has let me guess
  That into Celia, into me,
  He and unnumbered dead have come
  To be our intimates,
  To make of us their home
  Commingling earth and heaven....
  That by our true and mutual deeds
  We shall at last be shriven
  Of these hypocrisies and jealous creeds
  And petty separate fates--
  That I in every man and he in me,
  Together making God, are gradually creating whole
  The single soul.
    Somebody called Walt Whitman--
  Dead!
  He is alive instead,
  Alive as I am. When I lift my head,
  His head is lifted. When his brave mouth speaks,
  My lips contain his word. And when his rocker creaks
  Ghostly in Camden, there I sit in it and watch my hand grow old
  And take upon my constant lips the kiss of younger truth....
  It is my joy to tell and to be told
  That he, in all the world and me,
  Cannot be dead,
  That I, in all the world and him, youth after youth
  Shall lift my head.


V

    There is a vision, Celia, in your face....

  Beauty had lived in India like a mad
  And withdrawn prophetess, in Greece had set her pace
  Between a laurelled lad
  And a singing maiden, pitched her purple tents
  In Rome, leaned with a mother's fears
  In Bethlehem to nurse a son of God upon her breast
  And learned the tender loneliness of tears,
  Awhile had hid in Europe, sad
  In the shadow of magnificence,
  Brooding, finding no rest,
  And then of a sudden she had run forth from her hiding-place,
  Rejoicing, desperate, intense
  Against her enemy, a rod
  Of fire in her hand, her tresses crowned
  With liberty, her purpose bold and bound
  That every son should be a son of God.
  And then she wept for France.... But once more clad
  In stars, she beckons to America, the land
  Of hope. Behold her stand
  With her bright finger scorning armaments
  And on her lips the unconquerable common sense
  Of love calling the world to challenge and confound
  The empty idols of her enemy!
  ... Comforter of experience,
  Enlightener of old events,
  Beauty forever dares to widen and retrace
  Her way, singing the marches of democracy,
  Carrying banners of the time to be,
  Calling companions to her high command.

    There is a banner, Celia, in your hand!

    Though sons, whose fathers bled
  For freedom, struggle now instead
  With heavier weapons and with weary-waking head
  For bread;
  Though sons, whose fathers fought in other ages
  For fame, bear in their hearts today the scar
  Of entering where the laborer sleeps
  And rousing him with masterly inquiry where he keeps
  His wages:
  Though all the cunning coil of trade appear a baser thing
  Than battles are,
  O trace through time the orbit of this troubled star!
  ... See, from afar off, how the valiant few
  Of old, each with a helmet on his head,
  Practiced their inconclusive feud
  Upon no battlefield of unfeeling dew--
  But on the prostrate stillness of the multitude!
  Even their knightliest prowess they must rear,
  Tamerlane, Alexander, Arthur, every king,
  Upon the common clay from which they spring.
  For see how slaves, on whom war falls, renew
  The strength of war and disappear
  Year after year
  Into the earth--fulfilling it to form and bear
  Democracy!
    Look nearer now along the modern sky
  And watch where every man fastens the electric wing
  Upon his foot, that he may leave his little sod
  Of ignorance!
    And look where, by and by,
  Taking his high inheritance,
  He knows himself and other men as the winged self of God!

    The times are gone when only few were fit
  To view with open vision the sublime,
  When for the rest an altar-rail sufficed
  To obscure the democratic Christ....
  Perceiving now his gift, demanding it,
  The benison of common benefit,
  Men, women, all,
  Interpreters of time,
  Have found that lordly Christ apocryphal
  While Christ the comrade comes again--no wraith
  Of virtue in a far-off faith
  But a companion hearty, natural,
  Who sorrows with indomitable eyes
  For his mistreated plan
  To share with all men the upspringing sod,
  The unfolding skies--
  Not God who made Himself the Man,
  But a man who proved man's unused worth--
  And made himself the God.

    Once you had listened, Celia, to a stream
  And lain a long time, silent as a sleeper.
  And then your word arrived as from beyond
  Your body, bending with its breath the frond
  Of a fern. You whispered to the listening stream:
  "As evil is yet wider than we dream,
  So good is deeper." ...
    O how I try to bring
  Your voice to say in mine that word!--to sing
  Clear-hearted as a mountain-spring
  Of the wonders we see deepening!

    Time cannot bury what the blest have thought,
  For there is resurrection far and near.
  Often it seems as though a single day had brought
  To each bright hemisphere
  Courage to cast
  The servitude
  And blinded glory of the past
  Away and in a flash had taught
  Purpose and fortitude....
    But not so swiftly are we wrought.
  By many single days we learn to live,
  By many flashes read the vision clear
  That every heart is equal debtor
  To its own and every breast
  For the good before the better,
  The better toward the best.

    When we who hugged awhile the golden bowl
  Of greed behold it now a sieve
  Through which is drained invisibly
  A nectar we were saving for the soul,
  Then not in vain have many gone
  The empty ways of stealth
  Seeking a firmer base than honesty
  For building happiness upon....
  And by the ancient agonizing test
  We have slowly guessed
  That a just portion of the whole
  Is all there is of wealth.
    When those who labor wake
  And care ...
  And through the tingling air
  A dead man's voice, by living men renewed
  And women, dares democracy
  To self-respect: "Open the lands! Let mankind share
  The ample livelihood they bear!"--
  Then not in vain have the poor known distress,
  Teaching the rich that happiness
  Is something no man may--possess.
    Little by little we, whose fathers fought
  Impassioned, are ashamed
  Of the familiar thought
  That waste of blood is honourable feud:
  Little by little from the wondering land
  The agitation and the lie of war
  Shall pass; for in the heart disclaimed
  Murder shall be abandoned by the hand.
    And while there grows a fellowship of unshed blood
  To stop the wound and heal the scar
  Of time, with sudden glorious aptitude
  Woman assumes her part. Her pity in a flood
  Flings down the gate.
  She has been made to wait
  Too long, undreaming and untaught
  The touch and beauty of democracy.
  But, entering now the strife
  In which her saving sense is due,
  She watches and she grows aware,
  Holding a child more dear than property,
  That the many perish to empower the few,
  That homeless politics have split apart
  The common country of the human heart.
  (Your heart is beating, Celia, like a song!)
  .... For man has need
  Not merely of the lips that kiss and hands that feed
  But of the hearts that heed
  And of the minds that speed
  Like rain.
  Loving a mother or a wife,
  Let him release her tenderness, to make him strong,
  And use her beauty and receive her law:
  The very life of life.

    In temporary pain
  The age is bearing a new breed
  Of men and women, patriots of the world
  And one another. Boundaries in vain,
  Birthrights and countries, would constrain
  The old diversity of seed
  To be diversity of soul.
    O mighty patriots, maintain
  Your loyalty!--till flags unfurled
  For battle shall arraign
  The traitors who unfurled them, shall remain
  And shine over an army with no slain,
  And men from every nation shall enroll
  And women--in the hardihood of peace!
    What can my anger do but cease?
  Whom shall I fight and who shall be my enemy
  When he is I and I am he?

    Let me have done with that old God outside
  Who watched with preference and answered prayer,
  The Godhead that replied
  Now here, now there,
  Where heavy cannon were
  Or coins of gold!
  Let me receive communion with all men,
  Acknowledging our one and only soul!
    For not till then
  Can God be God, till we ourselves are whole.


VI

    Once in a smoking-car, I saw a scene
  That made my blood stand still....
  While the sun smouldered in a great ravine,
  And I, with elbow on the window-sill,
  Was watching the dim ember of the west,
  Half-heard, but poignant as a bell
  For fire, there came a moan; the voice of one in hell.
    I turned. Across the car were two young men,
  Yet hardly more than boys,
  French by their look, and brothers,
  And one was moaning on the other's breast.
  His face was hid away. I could not tell
  What words he said, half English and half French. I only knew
  Both men were suffering, not one but two.
    And then that face came into view,
  Gaunt and unshaved, with shadows and wild eyes,
  A face of madness and of desolation. And his cries,
  For all his mate could do,
  Rang out, a shrill and savage noise,
  And tears ran down the stubble of his cheek.
    The other face was younger, clean and sad
  With the manful stricken beauty of a lad
  Who had intended always to be glad.
  .... The touch of his compassion, like a mother's,
  Pitied the madman, soothed him and caressed.
  And then I heard him speak,
  In a low voice: "Mon frere, mon frere!
  Calme-toi! Right here's your place."
  And, opening his coat, he pressed
  Upon his heart the wanderer's face
  And smoothed the tangled hair.
    After a moment peaceful there,
  The maniac screamed--struck out and fell
  Across his brother's arm. Love could not quell
  His anger. Wrists together high in air
  He rose and with a yell
  Brought down his handcuffs toward his brother's face--
  But his hands were pinned below his waist,
  By a burly, silent sheriff, and some hideous thing was bound
  Around his arms and feet
  And he was laid upon the narrow seat.
  And then that sound,
  That moan
  Of one forsaken and alone!
  "Seigneur! Le createur du ciel et de la terre!
  Forgotten me! Forgotten me!"
  .... And when the voice grew weak
  The brother leaned again, embraced
  The huddled body. But a shriek
  Repulsed him: "Non! Detache-moi! I don't care
  For you. Non! Tu es l'homme qui m'a trahi!
  Non! Tu n'es pas mon frere!"

    But as often as that stricken mind would fill
  With the great anguish and the rush of hate,
  The boy, his young eyes older, older,
  Would curve his shoulder
  To the other's pain and hold that haunted face close to his face
  And say: "O wait!
  You will know me better by and by.
  Mon pauvre petit, be still!
  Right here's your place."
  .... The gleam! and then the blinded stare,
  The cry:
  "Non, tu n'es pas mon frere!"

    I saw myself, myself, as blind
  As he. And something smothers
  My reason. And I do not know my brothers....
  But every day declare:
  "Non, tu n'es pas mon frere!"

    But in the outcome, I can see....
  Closer than any brother
  Shall they be to one another
  And to me,
  Closer than mother, father, daughter, son,
  O closer than a lover shall they be,
  When madness like a storm shall roll
  Away, leaving illumination. Within everyone
  The nearness has begun
  Toward some loved life and toward the soul
  Perceived therein: the elemental ache to be made whole
  With beauty and with love.--O I have ached and longed in the embrace
  Of one I love to be undone
  Of differences, to yield and run
  Within the very blood and being of my dear,
  One body and one face,
  One spirit in all space,
  Mingled and indissoluble. And I have felt a mortal tear
  Smart on my lids, when I had been so near
  To Celia that I knew not which was I,
  Yet the day returned between us and the sky
  Held distances that were not clear
  To us and we were two again that had been almost one.

    A mother yields herself to enter
  Her child, who nestles close and sleeps
  With all his wisdom pressed
  For comfort to her breast.
  I can remember my relinquishment
  Of consciousness and care,
  Almost of life, upon my mother's heart--the great content
  Of being there.

    And then I loved a starry boy of three,
  Who looked about him, smiled and took to me,
  Held out his arms and chose me among men
  For his companion, to confide
  His smiles in and to be
  At ease with. Closely by my side
  He sat and touched the world, to see
  If it were solid and worth touching. When he died,
  I too was dead ... and yet I hear him say,
  Laughing within my heart today:
  "Lo, being you,
  And having lived your years, this will I do,
  And this, and this!"
    I have my boy again.
  I greet him nearer than a kiss.

    And so, from birth to death, out of confusion
  The secret creeps
  Across the deeps
  From its eternal centre
  In the soul.
  Communion is the cause and the conclusion
  And the unfailing sacrament
  Not only of the mystical frequenter
  Of temples, where the body of the dead
  Creates divine
  The living body through the bread
  And wine,
  But God discovers and discovers
  His beauty in all lovers.
  And, to make His beauty whole,
  Body and body, soul and soul, combine
  His one identity with yours and mine.

    I know a fellow in a steel-mill who, intent
  Upon his labours and his happiness, had meant
  In his own wisdom to be blest,
  Had made his own unaided way
  To schooling, opportunity,
  Success. And then he loved and married. And his bride,
  After a brief year, died.
  I went to him to see
  If I might comfort him. The comfort came to me.

    "David," I said, "under the temporary ache
  There is unwonted nearness with the dead."
  I felt his two hands take
  The sentence from me with a grip
  Forged in the mills. He told me that his tears were shed
  Before her breath went. After that, instead
  Of grief, she came herself. He felt her slip
  Into his being like a miracle, her lip
  Whispering on his, to slake
  His need of her.--"And in the night I wake
  With wonder and I find my bride
  And her embrace there in our bed,
  Within my very being, not outside!
  .... We have each other more, much more,"
  He said, "now than before.
  This very moment while I shake
  Your hand, my friend,
  Not only I,
  But she is touching you--and laughs with me because I cried
  For her.... People would think me crazy if I told.
  But something in what you said made me bold
  To let you meet my bride!"

    It was not madness. David's eye
  Was clear and open-seeing.
  His life
  Had faced in death and understood in his young wife,
  As I when Celia died,
  The secret of God's being.


VII

    Among good citizens, I praise
  Again a woman whom I knew and know,
  A citizen whom I have seen
  Most heartily, most patiently
  Making God's mind,
  A citizen who, dead,
  Yet shines across her white-remembered ways
  As the nearness of a light across the snow....
  My Celia, mystical, serene,
  Laughing and kind.

    And still I hear among New Hampshire trees
  Her happy speech:
  "Democracy is beauty's inmost reach."
  And still her voice announces plain
  The mystic gain
  Of friends from adversaries and of peace from pain:
  Beauty's control
  Of every soul
  Surrendering in victory.
  .... Well I recall how she explained to me
  With sunlight on her head
  When last we looked, as many times before,
  Over those hundred foothills rolling like the sea.
  "Where mountains are, door after door
  Unlocks within me, opens wide
  And leaves no difference in my heart," she said,
  "From anything outside."

    Not only Celia, speaking, taught me these
  The tenets of her beauty; but her life was such
  That I believed as by a palpable touch
  That heals and tends.
    Not better nor more learned nor more wise
  In many ways than others of my friends,
  Celia was happier.
  Their excellencies and their destinies
  Became, contributing, a part of her,
  Anointed her awhile among all men
  An eminent citizen,
  A generous arbiter.

    Not less bereaved than others of my friends,
  Celia was lovelier.
    And now, though something of her dies,
  Her heart of love assembles and transcends
  Laws, letters, personalities,
  Beginnings, passages and ends.

    Often I start and look beside me for the stir
  Of her sweet presence come again.
  I have cried out to her,
  So vivid has begun
  Some dear-remembered sentence in her voice.
    If a deluded wakeful thrush,
  Seeing a light in a window, sings to the sun,
  Yet he shall soon rejoice;
  When the great dawn of day
  Opens a thousand windows into one.

    On a path where thrushes wake--called Celia's Way--
  Time after time
  She led me high among the rills.
    And always when I pass again our chosen pine
  And feel upon my brow the fine
  Soft pressure of an unseen web and brush
  It from my face expectantly and climb
  Wide-eyed into the mountains' windy hush,
  Among the green and healing hills
  I have found Celia.
  For the morning fills
  With her and afternoon and twilight. She is always there
  As sweet within me as the intimate air.

    We are together still in the deep solitude
  Which is the essence of all companies,
  Not in its loneliness but in its brood
  Of presences, the dawn chanting with birds, the trees
  Translating unremembered memories
  Of the returning dead.
    And Celia, who has learned to die,
  Is well aware--and so through her am I--
  That, one by one interpreted,
  All hopes and pains and powers
  Are hers and mine to try
  On every star, through every age.
  .... And, still together, on this page
  We quote the sun-dial of the sage:
  "_I number none but happy hours._"
  For we remember still
  The morning-hymn we heard: "Ye shall fulfill
  Your destiny and joy,
  Each in the other, both in that Italian boy
  And he in you, like flowers in a hill."

    She said to me one day, where a hill renewed its flowers,
  "How easy it would be to live and die
  If we would only see the ultimate
  Oneness of life, quicken
  Our hearts with it and know that they who hate
  And strike become by their own blow the stricken!"...
    "A stranger might be God," the Hindus cry.
  But Celia says, importunate:
  "Everyone must be God and you and I."


VIII

    Almost the body leads the laggard soul; bidding it see
  The beauty of surrender, the tranquillity
  Of fusion with the earth. The body turns to dust
  Not only by a sudden whelming thrust,
  Or at the end of a corrupting calm,
  But oftentimes anticipates and, entering flowers and trees
  Upon a hillside or along the brink
  Of streams, encounters instances
  Of its eventual enterprise:
  Inhabits the enclosing clay,
  In rhapsody is caught away
  On a great tide
  Of beauty, to abide
  Translated through the night and day
  Of time and, by the anointing balm
  Of earth, to outgrow decay.

    Hark in the wind--the word of silent lips!
  Look where some subtle throat, that once had wakened lust,
  Lies clear and lovely now, a silver link
  Of change and peace!
  Hollows and willows and a river-bed,
  Anemones and clouds,
  Raindrops and tender distances
  Above, beneath,
  Inherit and bequeath
  Our far-begotten beauty. We are wed
  With many kindred who were seeming dead.
  Only the delicate woven shrouds
  Are vanished, beauty thrown aside
  To honor and uncover
  A deeper beauty--as the veil that slips
  Breathless away between a lover
  And his bride.

    So, by the body, may the soul surmise
  The beauty of surrender, the tranquillity
  Of fusion: when, set free
  From semblance of mortality,
  Yielding its dust the richer to endue
  A common avenue
  Of earth for other souls to journey through,
  It shall put on in purer guise
  The mutual beauty of its destiny.
    And who shall fear for his identity
  And who shall cling to the poor privacy
  Of incompleteness, when the end explains
  That what pride forfeits, beauty gains!
    Therefore, O spirit, as a runner strips
  Upon a windy afternoon,
  Be unencumbered of what troubles you--
  Arise with grace
  And greatly go!--the wind upon your face!

    Grieve not for the invisible transported brow
  On which like leaves the dark hair grew,
  Nor for the lips of laughter that are now
  Laughing inaudibly in sun and dew,
  Nor for the limbs that, fallen low
  And seeming faint and slow,
  Shall alter and renew
  Their shape and hue
  Like birches white before the moon
  Or a young apple-tree
  In spring or the round sea
  And shall pursue
  More ways of swiftness than the swallow dips
  Among ... and find more winds than ever blew
  The straining sails of unimpeded ships!

    A sudden music, Celia, through a poplar-bough,
  Where leaves are small and new,
  Comes laughing and goes hastening like you.

    Beauty is more than hands or face or eyes
  Or the long curve that lies
  Upon a bed waiting, more than the rise
  Of sun among the birds, more than the oar that plies
  Under the moon for lovers, more than a tune that buys
  Pennies from time. Vision and touch comprise
  Yesterday's promise, today's token
  Of a fulfillment that shall have no need to be perceived or spoken,
  Wherein all love is the award
  Poured upon beauty and no heart is broken
  And no grief is stored.

    For never beauty dies
  That lived. Nightly the skies
  Assemble stars, the light of hopeful eyes,
  And daily brood on the communal breath--
  Which we call death.
    Nothing is lost. Nothing I have of loveliness
  Exceeds a minute part
  Of my own loveliness when it shall be fulfilled
  With Celia's and all loveliness that lies
  In every heart.
  All that I have is but the start
  And the beginning, the bewildering guess
  Of what shall be distilled
  Out of my soul by you and you,
  Each soul of all souls, till one soul remains
  Which every beauty shall imbue
  Clean of the differences and pains....
    I shall be Celia's everlastingness.


IX

    A little hill among New Hampshire hills
  Touches more stars than any height I know.
  For there the whole earth--like a single being--fills
  And expands with heaven.
  It is the hill where Celia used to go
  To watch Monadnock and the miles that met
  In slow-ascending <DW72>s of peace.
    She said: "When I am here, I find release
  From every petty debt I owe,
  The goods I bring with me increase,
  The ills are riven
  And blown away. And there remains a single debt
  Toward all the world for me,
  A single duty and one destiny."
    "There shall be many births of God
  In this humanity,"
  She said, "and many crucifixions on the hills,
  Before we learn that where Christ trod
  We all shall tread; and as he died to give
  Himself to us, we too shall die--and live."
    "Though slowly knowledge comes, yet in the birth
  Is joy," said Celia, "joy
  As well as pain:
  The clear and clouded beauty of the earth.
  .... This I forget in cities. For cities are a great
  Impassable gate
  Of tumult. But by mountains and by seas I gain
  Path after path of peace."

    One evening Celia led me, late,
  Among the many whispers before rain,
  To touch and climb her hill again.
  I felt it rise invisible as fate,
  Not for the eye but for the soul to see.
  And when at last, among the oaks, we came
  Upon the top, a perfect voice
  Thrilled in the air like flame--
  Was it uprisen death we heard?
  Was it immortal youth,
  Out of the body, witnessing the truth,
  Attesting glory in an angel's voice?
  Blindly we listened to the singer and the single strain
  Containing joy.
  And then the voice was still and all the world and we--
  Till "Run," she said, "and bring him back to me!"
    I ran, I called ... but in the nearing rain,
  No mortal answered, nothing stirred.
  Was it uprisen death we heard?
    .... Perhaps the hills and night
  Had made a prophet of some wandering boy,
  Prompting him in that instant to rejoice
  As never in his life before.
  He must have had his own delight
  As well in silence as in song;
  For, though we waited long,
  He sang no more.

    Afterward Celia said: "That voice we heard
  Singing among the oak-leaves, and then still,
  We cannot answer how it sings or how it comes and goes....
  But only that its beauty ever grows
  Within us both, in ways no voice has told.
  .... So let me be to you. When night has drawn its fold
  Of darkness and no word
  May reach your heart from mine,
  Take then my love, my beauty! Hear me still
  When you are old
  And I am ageless as a changing hill!
  O hear me like that voice at night,
  Clearer than sound, nearer than sight,
  And let me be--as beauty is--divine!"

    There is a hill of hills
  That holds my heart on high and stills
  All other sound
  Than joy.
  Robins and thrushes, whip-poor-wills
  And morning-sparrows sing it round
  With echoes. Waterfalls abound
  And many streams convoy
  The breath of music. I have found
  A hill-path rising sudden on a city-street,
  Out of a quarrel, out of black despair,
  And climbed it with my winged feet.
  It hurries me above
  All this illusion, all these ills,
  It rises quickly to the shining air.
  .... Celia, I hear you on the hill of hills,
  Announcing love.

    And O my citizen, perhaps the few
  Whom I shall tell of you
  Will see with me your beauty who are dead,
  Will hear with me your voice and what it said!
    Let but a line of mine,
  A single one,
  Be made to shine
  With your whole-heartedness as with the sun,
  And I shall so consign
  Your touch to younger and yet younger hands,
  That they shall carry beauty through more lands
  Than ever Helen laid her touch upon.

    In your new world I see
  The immigrants arriving from the ships....
    O Celia, my democracy,
  My destiny,
  Beauty has had its answer on your lips!



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