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                         By the Aurelian Wall




                         By the Aurelian Wall
                          _And Other Elegies_

                            By BLISS CARMAN

                              _Author of_
               Low Tide on Grand Pré, Behind the Arras,
                      Ballads of Lost Haven, &c.

                       [Illustration: colophon]

                      Lamson, Wolffe and Company
                      Boston, New York and London
                              MDCCCXCVIII

                           Copyright, 1898,
                    By Lamson, Wolffe and Company.

                        _All rights reserved._

                            _Norwood Press_
                _J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith_
                        _Norwood Mass. U.S.A._




        CONTENTS


    BY THE AURELIAN WALL, 9

    THE WHITE GULL,  15

    THE COUNTRY OF HAR, 32

    TO RICHARD LOVELACE, 42

    A SEAMARK, 44

    THE WORD OF THE WATER, 57

    PHILLIPS BROOKS, 59

    JOHN ELIOT BOWEN, 64

    HENRY GEORGE, 67

    ILICET, 70

    TO RAPHAEL, 76

    TO P. V., 82

    A NORSE CHILD’S REQUIEM, 87

    IN THE HEART OF THE HILLS, 91

    AN AFTERWORD, 96

    SEVEN WIND SONGS, 102

    ANDREW STRATON, 112

    THE GRAVE-TREE, 127




        BY THE AURELIAN WALL

      _In Memory of John Keats_


    By the Aurelian Wall,
    Where the long shadows of the centuries fall
    From Caius Cestius’ tomb,
    A weary mortal seeking rest found room
    For quiet burial,

    Leaving among his friends
    A book of lyrics.
    Such untold amends
    A traveller might make
    In a strange country, bidden to partake
    Before he farther wends;

    Who shyly should bestow
    The foreign reed-flute they had seen him blow
    And finger cunningly,
    On one of the dark children standing by,
    Then lift his cloak and go.

    The years pass. And the child
    Thoughtful beyond his fellows, grave and mild,
    Treasures the rough-made toy,
    Until one day he blows it for clear joy,
    And wakes the music wild.

    His fondness makes it seem
    A thing first fashioned in delirious dream,
    Some god had cut and tried,
    And filled with yearning passion, and cast aside
    On some far woodland stream,--

    After long years to be
    Found by the stranger and brought over sea,
    A marvel and delight
    To ease the noon and pierce the dark blue night,
    For children such as he.

    He learns the silver strain
    Wherewith the ghostly houses of gray rain
    And lonely valleys ring,
    When the untroubled whitethroats make the spring
    A world without a stain;

    Then on his river reed,
    With strange and unsuspected notes that plead
    Of their own wild accord
    For utterances no bird’s throat could afford,
    Lifts it to human need.

    His comrades leave their play,
    When calling and compelling far away
    By river-<DW72> and hill,
    He pipes their wayward footsteps where he will,
    All the long lovely day.

    Even his elders come.
    “Surely the child is elvish,” murmur some,
    And shake the knowing head;
    “Give us the good old simple things instead,
    Our fathers used to hum.”

    Others at the open door
    Smile when they hear what they have hearkened for
    These many summers now,
    Believing they should live to learn somehow
    Things never known before.

    But he can only tell
    How the flute’s whisper lures him with a spell,
    Yet always just eludes
    The lost perfection over which he broods;
    And how he loves it well.

    Till all the country-side,
    Familiar with his piping far and wide,
    Has taken for its own
    That weird enchantment down the evening blown,--
    Its glory and its pride.

    And so his splendid name,
    Who left the book of lyrics and small fame
    Among his fellows then,
    Spreads through the world like autumn--who knows when?--
    Till all the hillsides flame.

    Grand Pré and Margaree
    Hear it upbruited from the unresting sea;
    And the small Gaspareau,
    Whose yellow leaves repeat it, seems to know
    A new felicity.

    Even the shadows tall,
    Walking at sundown through the plain, recall
    A mound the grasses keep,
    Where once a mortal came and found long sleep
    By the Aurelian Wall.




        THE WHITE GULL

    _For the Centenary of the Birth of Shelley_


        I

    Up by the idling reef-set bell
    The tide comes in;
    And to the idle heart to-day
    The wind has many things to say;
    The sea has many a tale to tell
    His younger kin.

    For we are his, bone of his bone,
    Breath of his breath;
    The doom tides sway us at their will;
    The sky of being rounds us still;
    And over us at last is blown
    The wind of death.


        II

    A hundred years ago to-day
    There came a soul,
    A pilgrim of the perilous light,
    Treading the spheral paths of night,
    On whom the word and vision lay
    With dread control.

    Now the pale Summer lingers near,
    And talks to me
    Of all her wayward journeyings,
    And the old, sweet, forgotten things
    She loved and lost and dreamed of here
    By the blue sea.

    The great cloud-navies, one by one,
    Bend sails and fill
    From ports below the round sea-verge;
    I watch them gather and emerge,
    And steer for havens of the sun
    Beyond the hill.

    The gray sea-horses troop and roam;
    The shadows fly
    Along the wind-floor at their heels;
    And where the golden daylight wheels,
    A white gull searches the blue dome
    With keening cry.

    And something, Shelley, like thy fame
    Dares the wide morn
    In that sea-rover’s glimmering flight,
    As if the Northland and the night
    Should hear thy splendid valiant name
    Put scorn to scorn.


        III

    Thou heart of all the hearts of men,
    Tameless and free,
    And vague as that marsh-wandering fire,
    Leading the world’s outworn desire
    A night march down this ghostly fen
    From sea to sea!

    Through this divided camp of dream
    Thy feet have passed,
    As one who should set hand to rouse
    His comrades from their heavy drowse;
    For only their own deeds redeem
    God’s sons at last.

    But the dim world will dream and sleep
    Beneath thy hand,
    As poppies in the windy morn,
    Or valleys where the standing corn
    Whispers when One goes forth to reap
    The weary land.

    O captain of the rebel host,
    Lead forth and far!
    Thy toiling troopers of the night
    Press on the unavailing fight;
    The sombre field is not yet lost,
    With thee for star.

    Thy lips have set the hail and haste
    Of clarions free
    To bugle down the wintry verge
    Of time forever, where the surge
    Thunders and crumbles on a waste
    And open sea.


        IV

    Did the cold Norns who pattern life
    With haste and rest
    Take thought to cheer their pilgrims on
    Through trackless twilights vast and wan,
    Across the failure and the strife,
    From quest to quest,--

    Set their last kiss upon thy face,
    And let thee go
    To tell the haunted whisperings
    Of unimaginable things,
    Which plague thy fellows with a trace
    They cannot know?

    So they might fashion and send forth
    Their house of doom,
    Through the pale splendor of the night,
    In vibrant, hurled, impetuous flight,
    A resonant meteor of the North
    From gloom to gloom.


        V

    I think thou must have wandered far
    With Spring for guide,
    And heard the shy-born forest flowers
    Talk to the wind among the showers,
    Through sudden doorways left ajar
    When the wind sighed;

    Thou must have heard the marching sweep
    Of blown white rain
    Go volleying up the icy kills,--
    And watched with Summer when the hills
    Muttered of freedom in their sleep
    And slept again.

    Surely thou wert a lonely one,
    Gentle and wild;
    And the round sun delayed for thee
    In the red moorlands by the sea,
    When Tyrian Autumn lured thee on,
    A wistful child,

    To rove the tranquil, vacant year,
    From dale to dale;
    And the great Mother took thy face
    Between her hands for one long gaze,
    And bade thee follow without fear
    The endless trail.

    And thy clear spirit, half forlorn,
    Seeking its own,
    Dwelt with the nomad tents of rain,
    Marched with the gold-red ranks of grain,
    Or ranged the frontiers of the morn,
    And was alone.


        VI

    One brief perturbed and glorious day!
    How couldst thou learn
    The quiet of the forest sun,
    Where the dark, whispering rivers run
    The journey that hath no delay
    And no return?

    And yet within thee flamed and sang
    The dauntless heart,
    Knowing all passion and the pain
    On man’s imperious disdain,
    Since God’s great part in thee gave pang
    To earth’s frail part.

    It held the voices of the hills
    Deep in its core;
    The wandering shadows of the sea
    Called to it,--would not let it be;
    The harvest of those barren rills
    Was in its store.

    Thine was a love that strives and calls
    Outcast from home,
    Burning to free the soul of man
    With some new life. How strange, a ban
    Should set thy sleep beneath the walls
    Of changeless Rome!


        VII

    More soft, I deem, from spring to spring,
    Thy sleep would be
    Where this far western headland lies
    With its imperial azure skies,
    Under thee hearing beat and swing
    The eternal sea.

    Where all the livelong brooding day
    And all night long,
    The far sea-journeying wind should come
    Down to the doorway of thy home,
    To lure thee ever the old way
    With the old song.

    But the dim forest would so house
    Thy heart so dear,
    Even the low surf of the rain,
    Where ghostly centuries complain,
    Might beat against thy door and rouse
    No heartache here.

    For here the thrushes, calm, supreme,
    Forever reign,
    Whose gloriously kingly golden throats
    Regather their forgotten notes
    In keys where lurk no ruin of dream,
    No tinge of pain.

    And here the ruthless noisy sea,
    With the tide’s will,
    The strong gray wrestler, should in vain
    Put forth his hand on thee again--
    Lift up his voice and call to thee,
    And thou be still.

    For thou hast overcome at last;
    And fate and fear
    And strife and rumor now no more
    Vex thee by any wind-vexed shore,
    Down the strewn ways thy feet have passed
    Far, far from here.


        VIII

    Up by the idling, idling bell
    The tide comes in;
    And to the restless heart to-day
    The wind has many things to say;
    The sea has many a tale to tell
    His younger kin.

    The gray sea-horses troop and roam;
    The shadows fly
    Along the wind-floor at their heels;
    And where the golden daylight wheels,
    A white gull searches the blue dome
    With keening cry.




        THE COUNTRY OF HAR

   _For the Centenary of Blake’s “Songs of Innocence”_


    Once a hundred years ago
    There was a light in London town,
    For an angel of the snow
    Walked her street sides up and down.

    As a visionary boy
    He put forth his hand to smite
    Songs of innocence and joy
    From the crying chords of night,
    Like a muttering of thunder
    Heard beneath the polar star;
    For his soul was all a-wonder
    At the calling vales of Har.

    He, a traveller by day
    And a pilgrim of the sun,
    Took his uncompanioned way
    Where the journey is not done.

    Where no mortal might aspire
    His clear heart was set to climb,
    To the uplands of desire
    And the river wells of time.

    Home he wandered to the valley
    Where the springs of morning are,
    And the sea-bright cohorts rally
    On the twilit plains of Har.

    There he found the Book of Thel
    In the lily-garth of bliss,
    Fashioned, how no man can tell,
    As a white windflower is:

    Like the lulling of a sigh
    Uttered in the trembling grass,
    When a shower is gone by,
    And the sweeping shadows pass,--

    Through the hyacinthine weather,
    Wheel them down without a jar,--
    Heaving all the dappled heather
    In the streaming vales of Har.

    There was manna in the rain;
    And above the rills, a voice:
    “Son of mine, dost thou complain?
    I will make thee to rejoice.

    “Thou shalt be a child to men,
    With confusion on thy speech;
    And the worlds within thy ken
    Shall not lie within thy reach.

    “But the rainbirds shall discover,
    And the daffodils unbar,
    Quiet waters for their lover
    On the shining plains of Har.

    “April rain and iron frost
    Shall make flowers to thy hand;
    Every field thy feet have crossed
    Shall revive from death’s command.

    “Hunting with a leash of wind
    Through the corners of the earth,
    Take the hounds of Spring to find
    The forgotten trails of mirth;

    “For the lone child-heart is dying
    Of a love no time can mar,
    Hearing not a voice replying
    From the gladder vales of Har.

    “Flame thy heart forth! Yet, no haste:
    Have not I prepared for thee
    The king’s chambers of the East
    And the wind halls of the sea?

    “Be a gospeller of things
    Nowhere written through the wild,
    With that gloaming call of Spring’s,
    When old secrets haunt the child.

    “Let the bugler of my going
    Wake no clarion of war;
    For the paper reeds are blowing
    On the river plains of Har.”

    Centuries of soiled renown
    To the roaring dark have gone:
    There is woe in London town,
    And a crying for the dawn.

    April frost and iron rain
    Ripen the dead fruit of lust,
    And the sons of God remain
    The dream children of the dust,

    For their heart hath in derision,
    And their jeers have mocked afar,
    The delirium of vision
    From the holy vales of Har.

    Once in Autumn came a dream;
    The white Herald of the North,
    Faring West to ford my stream,
    Passed my lodge and bade me forth;

    Glad I rose and went with him,
    With my shoulder in his hand;
    The auroral world grew dim,
    And the idle harvest land.

    Then I saw the warder lifting
    From its berg the Northern bar,
    And eternal snows were drifting
    On the wind-bleak plains of Har.

    “Listen humbly,” said my guide.
    “I am drear, for I am death,”
    Whispered Snow; but Wind replied,
    “I outlive thee by a breath,

    I am Time.” And then I heard,
    Dearer than all wells of dew,
    One gray golden-shafted bird
    Hail the uplands; so I knew

    Spring, the angel of our sorrow,
    Tarrying so seeming far,
    Should return with some long morrow
    In the calling vales of Har.




        TO RICHARD LOVELACE


    Ah, Lovelace, what desires have sway
    In the white shadow of your heart,
    Which no more measures day by day,
    Nor sets the years apart?

    How many seasons for your sake
    Have taught men over, age by age,
    “Stone walls do not a prison make,
    Nor iron bars a cage!”--

    Since that first April when you fared
    Into the Gatehouse, well content,
    Caring for nothing so you cared
    For honor and for Kent.

    How many, since the April rain
    Beat drear and blossomless and hoar
    Through London, when you left Shoe Lane,
    A-marching to no war!

    Till now, with April on the sea,
    And sunshine in the woven year,
    The rain-winds loose from reverie
    A lyric and a cheer.




        A SEAMARK

   _A Threnody for Robert Louis Stevenson_


    Cold, the dull cold! What ails the sun,
    And takes the heart out of the day?
    What makes the morning look so mean,
    The Common so forlorn and gray?

    The wintry city’s granite heart
    Beats on in iron mockery,
    And like the roaming mountain rains,
    I hear the thresh of feet go by.

    It is the lonely human surf
    Surging through alleys chill with grime,
    The muttering churning ceaseless floe
    Adrift out of the North of time.

    Fades, it all fades! I only see
    The poster with its reds and blues
    Bidding the heart stand still to take
    Its desolating stab of news.

    That intimate and magic name:
    “Dead in Samoa.” ... Cry your cries,
    O city of the golden dome,
    Under the gray Atlantic skies!

    But I have wander-biddings now.
    Far down the latitudes of sun,
    An island mountain of the sea,
    Piercing the green and rosy zone,

    Goes up into the wondrous day.
    And there the brown-limbed island men
    Are bearing up for burial,
    Within the sun’s departing ken,

    The master of the roving kind.
    And there where time will set no mark
    For his irrevocable rest,
    Under the spacious melting dark,

    With all the nomad tented stars
    About him, they have laid him down
    Above the crumbling of the sea,
    Beyond the turmoil of renown.

    O all you hearts about the world
    In whom the truant gipsy blood,
    Under the frost of this pale time,
    Sleeps like the daring sap and flood

    That dream of April and reprieve!
    You whom the haunted vision drives,
    Incredulous of home and ease,
    Perfection’s lovers all your lives!

    You whom the wander-spirit loves
    To lead by some forgotten clue
    Forever vanishing beyond
    Horizon brinks forever new;

    The road, unmarked, ordained, whereby
    Your brothers of the field and air
    Before you, faithful, blind and glad,
    Emerged from chaos pair by pair;

    The road whereby you too must come,
    In the unvexed and fabled years
    Into the country of your dream,
    With all your knowledge in arrears!

    You, who can never quite forget
    Your glimpse of Beauty as she passed,
    The well-head where her knee was pressed,
    The dew wherein her foot was cast;

    O you who bid the paint and clay
    Be glorious when you are dead,
    And fit the plangent words in rhyme
    Where the dark secret lurks unsaid;

    You brethren of the light-heart guild,
    The mystic fellowcraft of joy,
    Who tarry for the news of truth,
    And listen for some vast ahoy

    Blown in from sea, who crowd the wharves
    With eager eyes that wait the ship
    Whose foreign tongue may fill the world
    With wondrous tales from lip to lip;

    Our restless loved adventurer,
    On secret orders come to him,
    Has slipped his cable, cleared the reef,
    And melted on the white sea-rim.

    O granite hills, go down in blue!
    And like green clouds in opal calms,
    You anchored islands of the main,
    Float up your loom of feathery palms!

    For deep within your dales, where lies
    A valiant earthling stark and dumb,
    This savage undiscerning heart
    Is with the silent chiefs who come

    To mourn their kin and bear him gifts,--
    Who kiss his hand, and take their place,
    This last night he receives his friends,
    The journey-wonder on his face.

    He “was not born for age.” Ah no,
    For everlasting youth is his!
    Part of the lyric of the earth
    With spring and leaf and blade he is.

    ’Twill nevermore be April now
    But there will lurk a thought of him
    At the street corners, gay with flowers
    From rainy valleys purple-dim.

    O chiefs, you do not mourn alone!
    In that stern North where mystery broods,
    Our mother grief has many sons
    Bred in those iron solitudes.

    It does not help them, to have laid
    Their coil of lightning under seas;
    They are as impotent as you
    To mend the loosened wrists and knees.

    And yet how many a harvest night,
    When the great luminous meteors flare
    Along the trenches of the dusk,
    The men who dwell beneath the Bear,

    Seeing those vagrants of the sky
    Float through the deep beyond their hark,
    Like Arabs through the wastes of air,--
    A flash, a dream, from dark to dark,--

    Must feel the solemn large surmise:
    By a dim vast and perilous way
    We sweep through undetermined time,
    Illumining this quench of clay,

    A moment staunched, then forth again.
    Ah, not alone you climb the steep
    To set your loving burden down
    Against the mighty knees of sleep.

    With you we hold the sombre faith
    Where creeds are sown like rain at sea;
    And leave the loveliest child of earth
    To slumber where he longed to be.

    His fathers lit the dangerous coast
    To steer the daring merchant home;
    His courage lights the dark’ning port
    Where every sea-worn sail must come.

    And since he was the type of all
    That strain in us which still must fare,
    The fleeting migrant of a day,
    Heart-high, outbound for otherwhere,

    Now therefore, where the passing ships
    Hang on the edges of the noon,
    And Northern liners trail their smoke
    Across the rising yellow moon,

    Bound for his home, with shuddering screw
    That beats its strength out into speed,
    Until the pacing watch descries
    On the sea-line a scarlet seed

    Smolder and kindle and set fire
    To the dark selvedge of the night,
    The deep blue tapestry of stars,
    Then sheet the dome in pearly light,

    There in perpetual tides of day,
    Where men may praise him and deplore,
    The place of his lone grave shall be
    A seamark set forevermore,

    High on a peak adrift with mist,
    And round whose bases, far beneath
    The snow-white wheeling tropic birds,
    The emerald dragon breaks his teeth.




        THE WORD OF THE WATER

   _For the Unveiling of the Stevenson Fountain in San Francisco_


    God made me simple from the first,
    And good to quench your body’s thirst.
    Think you he has no ministers
    To glad that wayworn soul of yours?

    Here by the thronging Golden Gate
    For thousands and for you I wait,
    Seeing adventurous sails unfurled
    For the four corners of the world.

    Here passed one day, nor came again,
    A prince among the tribes of men.
    (For man, like me, is from his birth
    A vagabond upon this earth.)

    Be thankful, friend, as you pass on,
    And pray for Louis Stevenson,
    That by whatever trail he fare
    He be refreshed in God’s great care!




        PHILLIPS BROOKS


    This is the white winter day of his burial.
    Time has set here of his toiling the span
    Earthward, naught else. Cheer him out through the portal,
    Heart-beat of Boston, our utmost in man!

    Out in the broad open sun be his funeral,
    Under the blue for the city to see.
    Over the grieving crowd mourn for him, bugle!
    Churches are narrow to hold such as he.

    Here on the steps of the temple he builded,
    Rest him a space, while the great city square
    Throngs with his people, his thousands, his mourners;
    Tears for his peace and a multitude’s prayer.

    How comes it, think you, the town’s traffic pauses
    Thus at high noon? Can we wealthmongers grieve?
    Here in the sad surprise greatest America
    Shows for a moment her heart on her sleeve.

    She who is said to give life-blood for silver,
    Proves, without show, she sets higher than gold
    Just the straight manhood, clean, gentle, and fearless,
    Made in God’s likeness once more as of old.

    Once more the crude makeshift law overproven,--
    Soul pent from sin will seek God in despite;
    Once more the gladder way wins revelation,--
    Soul bent on God forgets evil outright.

    Once more the seraph voice sounding to beauty,
    Once more the trumpet tongue bidding, no fear!
    Once more the new, purer plan’s vindication,--
    Man be God’s forecast, and Heaven is here.

    Bear him to burial, Harvard, thy hero!
    Not on thy shoulders alone is he borne;
    They of the burden go forth on the morrow,
    Heavy and slow, through a world left forlorn.

    No grief for him, for ourselves the lamenting;
    What giant arm to stay courage up now?
    March we a thousand file up to the City,
    Fellow with fellow linked, he taught us how!

    Never dismayed at the dark nor the distance!
    Never deployed for the steep nor the storm!
    Hear him say, “Hold fast, the night wears to morning!
    This God of promise is God to perform.”

    Up with thee, heart of fear, high as the heaven!
    Thou hast known one wore this life without stain.
    What if for thee and me,--street, Yard, or Common,--
    Such a white captain appear not again!

    Fight on alone! Let the faltering spirit
    Within thee recall how he carried a host,
    Rearward and van, as Wind shoulders a dust-heap;
    One Way till strife be done, strive each his most.

    Take the last vesture of beauty upon thee,
    Thou doubting world; and with not an eye dim
    Say, when they ask if thou knowest a Saviour,
    “Brooks was His brother, and we have known him.”




        JOHN ELIOT BOWEN


    Here at the desk where once you sat,
    Who wander now with poets dead
    And summers gone, afield so far,
    There sits a stranger in your stead.

    Here day by day men come who knew
    Your steadfast ways and loved you well;
    And every comer with regret
    Has some new thing of praise to tell.

    The poet old, whose lyric heart
    Is fresh as dew and bright as flame,
    Longs for “his boy,” and finds you not,
    And goes the wistful way he came.

    Here where you toiled without reproach,
    Builded and loved and dreamed and planned,
    At every door, on every page,
    Lurks the tradition of your hand.

    And if to you, like reverie,
    There comes a thought of how they fare
    Whose footsteps go the round you went
    Of noisy street and narrow stair,

    Know they have learned a new desire,
    Which puts unfaith and faltering by;
    And triumph fills their dream because
    One life was leal, one hope was high.




        HENRY GEORGE


    We are only common people,
    And he was a man like us.
    But he loved his fellows before himself;
    And he died for me and you,
    To redeem the world anew
    From cruelty and greed--
    For love the only creed,
    For honor the only law.

    There once was a man of the people,
    A man like you and me,
    Who worked for his daily bread,
    And he loved his fellows before himself.
    But he died at the hands of the throng
    To redeem the world from wrong,
    And we call him the Son of God,
    Because of the love he had.

    And there was a man of the people,
    Who sat in the people’s chair,
    And bade the slaves go free;
    For he loved his fellows before himself.
    They took his life; but his word
    They could not take. It was heard
    Over the beautiful earth,
    A thunder and whisper of love.

    And there is no other way,
    Since man of woman was born,
    Than the way of the rebels and saints,
    With loving and labor vast,
    To redeem the world at last
    From cruelty and greed;
    For love is the only creed,
    And honor the only law.




        ILICET


    Friends, let him rest
    In midnight now.
    Desire has gone
    On the weary quest
    With aching brow;
    Until the dawn,
    Friends, let him rest.

    With a boy’s desire
    He set the cup
    To his lips to drink;
    The ruddy fire
    Was lifted up
    At day’s cool brink,
    With a boy’s desire.

    The heart of a boy!
    He tasted life,
    And the bitter sting
    Of sorrow in joy,
    Failure in strife,
    Was pain to wring
    The heart of a boy.

    In a childish whim,
    He spilled the wine
    Upon the floor,--
    In beads on the brim
    Was a glitter of brine,--
    Then, out at the door
    In a childish whim!

    Out of the storm,
    In the flickering light,
    A broken glass
    Lies on our warm
    Hearthstone to-night,
    While shadows pass
    Out of the storm.

    Friends, let him rest
    In midnight now.
    Desire has gone
    On the weary quest
    With aching brow:
    Until the dawn,
    Friends, let him rest.

    In sorrow and shame
    For the craven heart,
    In manhood’s breast
    With valor’s name,
    Let him depart
    Unto his rest
    In sorrow and shame.

    In after years
    God, who bestows
    Or withholds the valor,
    Shall wipe all tears--
    Haply, who knows?--
    From his face’s pallor
    In after years.

    He could not learn
    To fight with his peers
    In sturdier fashion;
    Let him return
    Through the night with tears,
    Stung with the passion
    He could not learn.

    All-bountiful, calm,
    Where the great stars burn,
    And the spring bloom smothers
    The night with balm,
    Let him return
    To the silent Mother’s
    All-bountiful calm.

    Friends, let him rest
    In midnight now.
    Desire has gone
    On the weary quest
    With aching brow:
    Until the dawn,
    Friends, let him rest.




        TO RAPHAEL


    Master of adored Madonnas,
    What is this men say of thee?
    Thou wert something less than honor’s
    Most exact epitome?

    Yes, they say you loved too many,
    Loved too often, loved too well.
    Just as if there could be any
    Over-loving, Raphael!

    Was it, “Sir, and how came this tress,
    Long and raven? Mine are gold!”
    You should have made Art your mistress,
    Lived an anchorite and old!

    Ah, no doubt these dear good people
    On familiar terms with God,
    Could devise a parish steeple
    Built to heaven without a hod.

    You and Solomon and Cæsar
    Were three fellows of a kind;
    Not a woman but to please her
    You would leave your soul behind.

    Those dead women with their beauty,
    How they must have loved you well,--
    Dared to make desire a duty,
    With the heretics in hell!

    And your brother, that Catullus,
    What a plight he must be in,
    If those silver songs that lull us
    Were result of mortal sin!

    If the artist were ungodly,
    Prurient of mind and heart,
    I must think they argue oddly
    Who make shrines before his art.

    Not the meanest aspiration
    Ever sprung from soul depraved
    Into art, but art’s elation
    Was the sanctity it craved.

    Oh, no doubt you had your troubles,
    Devils blue that blanched your hope.
    I dare say your fancy’s bubbles,
    Breaking, had a taste of soap.

    Did your lady-loves undo you
    In some mediæval way?
    Ah, my Raphael, here’s to you!
    It is much the same to-day.

    Did their tantalizing laughter
    Make your wisdom overbold?
    Were you fire at first; and after,
    Did their kisses leave you cold?

    Did some fine perfidious Nancy,
    With the roses in her hair,
    Play the marsh-fire to your fancy
    Over quagmires of despair?

    My poor boy, were there more flowers
    In your Florence and your Rome,
    Wasting through the gorgeous hours,
    Than your two hands could bring home?

    Be content; you have your glory;
    Life was full and sleep is well.
    What the end is of the story,
    There’s no paragraph to tell.




        TO P. V.


    So they would raise your monument,
    Old vagabond of lovely earth?
    Another answer without words
    To Humdrum’s, “What are poets worth?”

    Not much we gave you when alive,
    Whom now we lavishly deplore,--
    A little bread, a little wine,
    A little caporal--no more.

    Here in our lodging of a day
    You roistered till we were appalled;
    Departing, in your room we found
    A string of golden verses scrawled.

    The princely manor-house of art,
    A vagrant artist entertains;
    And when he gets him to the road,
    Behold, a princely gift remains.

    Abashed, we set your name above
    The purse-full patrons of our board;
    Remind newcomers with a nudge,
    “Verlaine took once what we afford!”

    The gardens of the Luxembourg,
    Spreading beneath the brilliant sun,
    Shall be your haunt of leisure now
    When all your wander years are done.

    There you shall stand, the very mien
    You wore in Paris streets of old,
    And ponder what a thing is life,
    Or watch the chestnut blooms unfold.

    There you will find, I dare surmise,
    Another tolerance than ours,
    The loving-kindness of the grass,
    The tender patience of the flowers.

    And every year, when May returns
    To bring the golden age again,
    And hope comes back with poetry
    In your loved land across the Seine,

    Some youth will come with foreign speech,
    Bearing his dream from over sea,
    A lover of your flawless craft,
    Apprenticed to your poverty.

    He will be mute before you there,
    And mark those lineaments which tell
    What stormy unrelenting fate
    Had one who served his art so well.

    And there be yours, the livelong day,
    Beyond the mordant reach of pain,
    The little gospel of the leaves,
    The _Nunc dimittis_ of the rain!




        A NORSE CHILD’S REQUIEM


    Sleep soundly, little Thorlak,
    Where all thy peers have lain,
    A hero of no battle,
    A saint without a stain!

    Thy courage be upon thee,
    Unblemished by regret,
    For that adventure whither
    Thy tiny march was set.

    The sunshine be above thee,
    With birds and winds and trees.
    Thy way-fellows inherit
    No better things than these.

    And silence be about thee,
    Turned back from this our war
    To front alone the valley
    Of night without a star.

    The soul of love and valor,
    Indifferent to fame,
    Be with thee, heart of vikings,
    Beyond the breath of blame.

    Thy moiety of manhood
    Unspent and fair, go down,
    And, unabashed, encounter
    Thy brothers of renown.

    So modest in thy freehold
    And tenure of the earth,
    Thy needs, for all our meddling,
    Are few and little worth.

    Content thee, not with pity;
    Be solaced, not with tears;
    But when the whitethroats waken
    Through the revolving years,

    Hereafter be that peerless
    And dirging cadence, child,
    Thy threnody unsullied,
    Melodious, and wild.

    Then winter be thy housing,
    Thy lullaby the rain,
    Thou hero of no battle,
    Thou saint without a stain.




        IN THE HEART OF THE HILLS


    In the warm blue heart of the hills
    My beautiful, beautiful one
    Sleeps where he laid him down
    Before the journey was done.

    All the long summer day
    The ghosts of noon draw nigh,
    And the tremulous aspens hear
    The footing of winds go by.

    Down to the gates of the sea,
    Out of the gates of the west,
    Journeys the whispering river
    Before the place of his rest.

    The road he loved to follow
    When June came by his door,
    Out through the dim blue haze
    Leads, but allures no more.

    The trailing shadows of clouds
    Steal from the <DW72>s and are gone;
    The myriad life in the grass
    Stirs, but he slumbers on;

    The inland wandering tern
    Skreel as they forage and fly;
    His loons on the lonely reach
    Utter their querulous cry;

    Over the floating lilies
    A dragon-fly tacks and steers;
    Far in the depth of the blue
    A martin settles and veers;

    To every roadside thistle
    A gold-brown butterfly clings;
    But he no more companions
    All the dear vagrant things.

    The strong red journeying sun,
    The pale and wandering rain,
    Will roam on the hills forever
    And find him never again.

    Then twilight falls with the touch
    Of a hand that soothes and stills,
    And a swamp-robin sings into light
    The lone white star of the hills.

    Alone in the dusk he sings,
    And a burden of sorrow and wrong
    Is lifted up from the earth
    And carried away in his song.

    Alone in the dusk he sings,
    And the joy of another day
    Is folded in peace and borne
    On the drift of years away.

    But there in the heart of the hills
    My beautiful weary one
    Sleeps where he laid him down;
    And the large sweet night is begun.




        AN AFTERWORD

       _To G. B. R._


    Brother, the world above you
    Is very fair to-day,
    And all things seem to love you
    The old accustomed way.

    Here in the heavenly weather
    In June’s white arms you sleep,
    Where once on the hills together
    Your haunts you used to keep.

    The idling sun that lazes
    Along the open field
    And gossips to the daisies
    Of secrets unrevealed;

    The wind that stirs the grasses
    A moment, and then stills
    Their trouble as he passes
    Up to the darkling hills,--

    And to the breezy clover
    Has many things to say
    Of that unwearied rover
    Who once went by this way;

    The miles of elm-treed meadows;
    The clouds that voyage on,
    Streeling their noiseless shadows
    From countries of the sun;

    The tranquil river reaches
    And the pale stars of dawn;
    The thrushes in their beeches
    For reverie withdrawn;

    With all your forest fellows
    In whom the blind heart calls,
    For whom the green leaf yellows,
    On whom the red leaf falls;

    The dumb and tiny creatures
    Of flower and blade and sod,
    That dimly wear the features
    And attributes of God;

    The airy migrant comers
    On gauzy wings of fire,
    Those wanderers and roamers
    Of indefinite desire;

    The rainbirds and all dwellers
    In solitude and peace,
    Those lingerers and foretellers
    Of infinite release;

    Yea, all the dear things living
    That rove or bask or swim,
    Remembering and misgiving,
    Have felt the day grow dim.

    Even the glad things growing,
    Blossom and fruit and stem,
    Are poorer for your going
    Because you were of them.

    Yet since you loved to cherish
    Their pleading beauty here,
    Your heart shall not quite perish
    In all the golden year;

    But God’s great dream above them
    Must be a tinge less pale,
    Because you lived to love them
    And make their joy prevail.




        SEVEN WIND SONGS


    _Now these are the seven wind songs
    For Andrew Straton’s death,
    Blown through the reeds of the river,
    A sigh of the world’s last breath,_

    _Where the flickering red auroras
    Out on the dark sweet hills
    Follow all night through the forest
    The cry of the whip-poor-wills._

    _For the meanings of life are many,
    But the purpose of love is one,
    Journeying, tarrying, lonely
    As the sea wind or the sun._


        I

    Wind of the Northern land,
    Wind of the sea,
    No more his dearest hand
    Comes back to me.

    Wind of the Northern gloom,
    Wind of the sea,
    Wandering waifs of doom
    Feckless are we.

    Wind of the Northern land,
    Wind of the sea,
    I cannot understand
    How these things be.


        II

    Wind of the low red morn
    At the world’s end,
    Over the standing corn
    Whisper and bend.

    Then through the low red morn
    At the world’s end,
    Far out from sorrow’s bourne,
    Down glory’s trend,

    Tell the last years forlorn
    At the world’s end,
    Of my one peerless born
    Comrade and friend.


        III

    Wind of the April stars,
    Wind of the dawn,
    Whether God nears or fars,
    He lived and shone.

    Wind of the April night,
    Wind of the dawn,
    No more my heart’s delight
    Bugles me on.

    Wind of the April rain,
    Wind of the dawn,
    Lull the old world from pain
    Till pain be gone.


        IV

    Wind of the summer noon,
    Wind of the hills,
    Gently the hand of June
    Stays thee and stills.

    Far off, untouched by tears,
    Raptures or ills,
    Sleeps he a thousand years
    Out on the hills.

    Wind of the summer noon,
    Wind of the hills,
    Is the land fair and boon
    Whither he wills?


        V

    Wind of the gulfs of night,
    Wind of the sea,
    Where the pale streamers light
    My world for me,--

    Breath of the wintry Norns,
    Frost-touch or sleep,--
    He whom my spirit mourns
    Deep beyond deep

    To the last void and dim
    Where ages stream--
    Is there no room for him
    In all this dream?


        VI

    Wind of the outer waste,
    Threne of the outer world,
    Leash of the stars unlaced,
    Morning unfurled,

    Somewhere at God’s great need,
    I know not how,
    With the old strength and speed
    He is come now;

    Therefore my soul is glad
    With the old pride,
    Tho’ this small life is sad
    Here in my side.


        VII

    Wind of the driven snow,
    Wind of the sea,
    On a long trail and slow
    Farers are we.

    Wind of the Northern gloom,
    Wind of the sea,
    Shall I one day resume
    His love for me?

    Wind of the driven snow,
    Wind of the sea,
    Then shall thy vagrant know
    How these things be.

    _These are the seven wind songs
    For Andrew Straton’s rest,
    From the hills of the Scarlet Hunter
    And the trail of the endless quest._

    _The wells of the sunrise harken,
    They wait for a year and a day:
    Only the calm sure thrushes
    Fluting the world away!_

    _For the husk of life is sorrow;
    But the kernels of joy remain,
    Teeming and blind and eternal
    As the hill wind or the rain._




        ANDREW STRATON


    Andrew Straton was my friend,
    With his Saxon eyes and hair,
    And his loyal viking spirit,
    Like an islesman of the North
    With his earldom on the sea.

    At his birth the mighty Mother
    Made of him a fondling one,
    Hushed from pain within her arms,
    With her seal upon his lips;

    And from that day he was numbered
    With the sons of consolation,
    Peace and cheer were in his hands,
    And her secret in his will.

    Now the night has Andrew Straton
    Housed from wind and storm forever
    In a chamber of the gloom
    Where no window fronts the morning,
    Lulled to rest at last from roving
    To the music of the rain.

    And his sleep is in the far-off
    Alien villages of the dusk,
    Where there is no voice of welcome
    To the country of the strangers,
    Save the murmur of the pines.

    And the fitful winds all day
    Through the grass with restless footfalls
    Haunt about his narrow door,
    Muttering their vast unknown
    Border balladry of time,
    To the hoarse rote of the sea.

    There he reassumes repose,
    He who never learned unrest
    Here amid our fury of toil,
    Undisturbed though all about him
    To the cohorts of the night
    Sound the bugles of the spring;
    And his slumber is not broken
    When along the granite hills
    Flare the torches of the dawn.

    More to me than kith or kin
    Was the silence of his speech;
    And the quiet of his eyes,
    Gathered from the lonely sweep
    Of the hyacinthine hills,
    Better to the failing spirit
    Than a river land in June:
    And to look for him at evening
    Was more joy than many friends.

    As the woodland brooks at noon
    Were his brown and gentle hands,
    And his face as the hill country
    Touched with the red autumn sun

    Frank and patient and untroubled
    Save by the old trace of doom
    In the story of the world.
    So the years went brightening by.

    Now a lyric wind and weather
    Breaks the leaguer of the frost,
    And the shining rough month March
    Crumbles into sun and rain;
    But the glad and murmurous year
    Wheels above his rest and wakens
    Not a dream for Andrew Straton.

    Now the uplands hold an echo
    From the meadow lands at morn;
    And the marshes hear the rivers
    Rouse their giant heart once more,--

    Hear the crunching floe start seaward
    From a thousand valley floors;
    While far on amid the hills
    Under stars in the clear night,
    The replying, the replying,
    Of the ice-cold rivulets
    Plashing down the solemn gorges
    In their arrowy blue speed,
    Fills and frets the crisp blue twilight
    With innumerable sound,--
    With the whisper of the spring.

    But the melting fields are empty,
    Something ails the bursting year.

    Ah, now helpless, O my rivers,
    Are your lifted voices now!
    Where is all the sweet compassion
    Once your murmur held for me?
    Cradled in your dells, I listened
    To your crooning, learned your language,
    Born your brother and your kin.

    When I had the morn for revel,
    You made music at my door;
    Now the days go darkling on,
    And I cannot guess your words.
    Shall young joy have troops of neighbors,
    While this grief must house alone?

    O my brothers of the hills,
    Who abide through stress and change,
    On the borders of our sorrow,
    With no part in human tears,
    Lift me up your voice again
    And put by this grievous thing!

    Ah, my rivers, Andrew Straton
    Leaves me here a vacant world!

    I must hear the roar of cities
    And the jargon of the schools,
    With no word of that one spirit
    Who was steadfast as the sun
    And kept silence with the stars.
    I must sit and hear the babble
    Of the worldling and the fool,
    Prating know-alls and reformers
    Busy to improve on man,
    With their chatter about God;
    Nowhere, nowhere the blue eyes,
    With their swift and grave regard,
    Falling on me with God’s look.

    I have seen and known and loved
    One who was too sure for sorrow,
    Too serenely wise for haste,
    Too compassionate for scorn,
    Fearless man and faultless comrade,
    One great heart whose beat was love.

    In a thousand thousand hollows
    Of the hills to-day there twinkle
    Icy-blue handbreadths of April,
    Where the sinking snows decay
    In the everlasting sun;
    And a thousand tiny creatures
    Stretch their heart to fill the world.

    Now along the wondrous trail
    Andrew Straton loved to follow
    Day by day and year on year,
    The awaited sure return
    Of all sleeping forest things
    Is reheralded abroad,
    Till the places of their journey,--
    Wells the frost no longer hushes,
    Ways no drift can bury now,
    Wood and stream and road and hillside,--
    Hail their coming as of old.

    But my beautiful lost comrade
    Of the golden heart, whose life
    Rang through April like a voice
    Through some Norland saga, crying
    _Skoal_ to death, comes not again;
    Time shall not revive that presence
    More desired than all the flowers,
    Longer wished for than the birds.

    April comes, but April’s lover
    Is departed and not here.

    Sojourning beyond the frost,
    He delays; and now no more,--
    Though the goldenwings are come
    With their resonant tattoo,
    And along the barrier pines
    Morning reddens on the hills
    Where the thrushes wake before it,--
    No more to the summoning flutes
    Of the forest Andrew Straton
    Gets him forth afoot, light-hearted,
    On the unfrequented ways
    With companionable Spring.

    Only the old dreams return.
    So I shape me here this fancy,
    Foolish me! of Andrew Straton;
    How the lands of that new kindred
    Have detained him with allegiance,
    And some far day I shall find him,
    There as here my only captain,
    Master of the utmost isles
    In the ampler straits of sea.

    Out of the blue melting distance
    Of the dreamy southward range
    Journey back the vagrant winds,
    Sure and indolent as time;
    And the trembling wakened wood-flowers
    Lift their gentle tiny faces
    To the sunlight; and the rainbirds
    From the lonely cedar barrens
    Utter their far pleading cry.

    Up across the swales and burnt lands
    Where the soft gray tinges purple,
    Mouldering into scarlet mist,
    Comes the sound as of a marching,
    The low murmur of the April
    In the many-rivered hills.

    Then there stirs the old vague rapture,
    Like a wanderer come back,
    Still desiring, scathed but deathless,
    From beyond the bourne of tears,
    Wayworn to his vacant cabin,
    To this foolish fearless heart.

    Soon the large mild stars of springtime
    Will resume the ancient twilight
    And restore the heart of earth
    To unvexed eternal poise;
    For the great Will, calm and lonely,
    Can no mortal grief derange,
    No lost memories perturb;
    And the sluices of the morning
    Will be opened, and the daybreak
    Well with bird-calls and with brook-notes,
    Till there be no more despair
    In the gold dream of the world.




        THE GRAVE-TREE


    Let me have a scarlet maple
    For the grave-tree at my head,
    With the quiet sun behind it,
    In the years when I am dead.

    Let me have it for a signal,
    Where the long winds stream and stream,
    Clear across the dim blue distance,
    Like a horn blown in a dream;

    Scarlet when the April vanguard
    Bugles up the laggard Spring,
    Scarlet when the bannered Autumn,
    Marches by unwavering.

    It will comfort me with honey
    When the shining rifts and showers
    Sweep across the purple valley
    And bring back the forest flowers.

    It will be my leafy cabin,
    Large enough when June returns
    And I hear the golden thrushes
    Flute and hesitate by turns.

    And in fall, some yellow morning,
    When the stealthy frost has come,
    Leaf by leaf it will befriend me
    As with comrades going home.

    Let me have the Silent Valley
    And the hill that fronts the east,
    So that I can watch the morning
    Redden and the stars released.

    Leave me in the Great Lone Country,
    For I shall not be afraid
    With the shy moose and the beaver
    There within my scarlet shade.

    I would sleep, but not too soundly,
    Where the sunning partridge drums,
    Till the crickets hush before him
    When the Scarlet Hunter comes.

    That will be in warm September,
    In the stillness of the year,
    When the river-blue is deepest
    And the other world is near.

    When the apples burn their reddest
    And the corn is in the sheaves,
    I shall stir and waken lightly
    At a footfall in the leaves.

    It will be the Scarlet Hunter
    Come to tell me time is done;
    On the idle hills forever
    There will stand the idle sun.

    There the wind will stay to whisper
    Many wonders to the reeds;
    But I shall not fear to follow
    Where my Scarlet Hunter leads.

    I shall know him in the darkling
    Murmur of the river bars,
    While his feet are on the mountains
    Treading out the smoldering stars.

    I shall know him, in the sunshine
    Sleeping in my scarlet tree,
    Long before he halts beside it
    Stooping down to summon me.

    Then fear not, my friends, to leave me
    In the boding autumn vast;
    There are many things to think of
    When the roving days are past.

    Leave me by the scarlet maple,
    When the journeying shadows fail,
    Waiting till the Scarlet Hunter
    Pass upon the endless trail.








End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of By the Aurelian Wall and Other Elegies, by 
Bliss Carman

*** 