Then the pale summer twilights towards the pole!

It thrills my soul

With wonder and delight,

When gold-green shadows walk the world at night,

So still, so bright.

There at the window many a time of year,

Strange faces peer,

Solemn though not unkind,

Their wits in search of something left behind

Time out of mind;

As if they once had lived here, and stole back

To the window crack

For a peep which seems to say,

“Good fortune, brother, in your house of clay!”

And then, “Good day!”

I hear their footsteps on the gravel walk,

Their scraps of talk,

And hurrying after, reach

Only the crazy sea-drone of the beach

In endless speech.

And often when the autumn noons are still,

By swale and hill

I see their gipsy signs,

Trespassing somewhere on my border lines;

With what designs?

I forth afoot; but when I reach the place,

Hardly a trace,

Save the soft purple haze

Of smouldering camp-fires, any hint betrays

Who went these ways.

Or tatters of pale aster blue, descried

By the roadside,

Reveal whither they fled;

Or the swamp maples, here and there a shred

Of Indian red.

But most of all, the marvellous tapestry

Engrosses me,

Where such strange things are rife,

Fancies of beasts and flowers, and love and strife,

Woven to the life;

Degraded shapes and splendid seraph forms,

And teeming swarms

Of creatures gauzy dim

That cloud the dusk, and painted fish that swim,

At the weaver’s whim;

And wonderful birds that wheel and hang in the air;

And beings with hair,

And moving eyes in the face,

And white bone teeth and hideous grins, who race

From place to place;

They build great temples to their John-a-nod,

And fume and plod

To deck themselves with gold,

And paint themselves like chattels to be sold,

Then turn to mould.

Sometimes they seem almost as real as I;

I hear them sigh;

I see them bow with grief,

Or dance for joy like an aspen leaf;

But that is brief.

They have mad wars and phantom marriages;

Nor seem to guess

There are dimensions still,

Beyond thought’s reach, though not beyond love’s will,

For soul to fill.

And some I call my friends, and make believe

Their spirits grieve,

Brood, and rejoice with mine;

I talk to them in phrases quaint and fine

Over the wine;

I tell them all my secrets; touch their hands;

One understands

Perhaps. How hard he tries

To speak! And yet those glorious mild eyes,

His best replies!

I even have my cronies, one or two,

My cherished few.

But ah, they do not stay!

For the sun fades them and they pass away,

As I grow gray.

Yet while they last how actual they seem!

Their faces beam;

I give them all their names,

Bertram and Gilbert, Louis, Frank and James,

Each with his aims;

One thinks he is a poet, and writes verse

His friends rehearse;

Another is full of law;

A third sees pictures which his hand can draw

Without a flaw.

Strangest of all, they never rest. Day long

They shift and throng,

Moved by invisible will,

Like a great breath which puffs across my sill,

And then is still;

It shakes my lovely manikins on the wall;

Squall after squall,

Gust upon crowding gust,

It sweeps them willy nilly like blown dust

With glory or lust.

It is the world-ghost, the time-spirit, come

None knows where from,

The viewless draughty tide

And wash of being. I hear it yaw and glide,

And then subside,

Along these ghostly corridors and halls

Like faint footfalls;

The hangings stir in the air;

And when I start and challenge, “Who goes there?”

It answers, “Where?”

The wail and sob and moan of the sea’s dirge,

Its plangor and surge;

The awful biting sough

Of drifted snows along some arctic bluff,

That veer and luff,

And have the vacant boding human cry,

As they go by;—

Is it a banished soul

Dredging the dark like a distracted mole

Under a knoll?

Like some invisible henchman old and gray,

Day after day

I hear it come and go,

With stealthy swift unmeaning to and fro,

Muttering low,

Ceaseless and daft and terrible and blind,

Like a lost mind.

I often chill with fear

When I bethink me, What if it should peer

At my shoulder here!

Perchance he drives the merry-go-round whose track

Is the zodiac;

His name is No-man’s-friend;

And his gabbling parrot-talk has neither trend,

Beginning, nor end.

A prince of madness too, I’d cry, “A rat!”

And lunge thereat,—

Let out at one swift thrust

The cunning arch-delusion of the dust

I so mistrust,

But that I fear I should disclose a face

Wearing the trace

Of my own human guise,

Piteous, unharmful, loving, sad, and wise,

With the speaking eyes.

I would the house were rid of his grim pranks,

Moaning from banks

Of pine trees in the moon,

Startling the silence like a demoniac loon

At dead of noon,

Or whispering his fool-talk to the leaves

About my eaves.

And yet how can I know

’T is not a happy Ariel masking so

In mocking woe?

Then with a little broken laugh I say,

Snatching away

The curtain where he grinned

(My feverish sight thought) like a sin unsinned,

“Only the wind!”

Yet often too he steals so softly by,

With half a sigh,

I deem he must be mild,

Fair as a woman, gentle as a child,

And forest wild.

Passing the door where an old wind-harp swings,

With its five strings,

Contrived long years ago

By my first predecessor bent to show

His handcraft so,

He lays his fingers on the Æolian wire,

As a core of fire

Is laid upon the blast

To kindle and glow and fill the purple vast

Of dark at last.

Weird wise and low, piercing and keen and glad,

Or dim and sad

As a forgotten strain

Born when the broken legions of the rain

Swept through the plain—

He plays, like some dread veiled mysteriarch,

Lighting the dark,

Bidding the spring grow warm,

The gendering merge and loosing of spirit in form,

Peace out of storm.

For music is the sacrament of love;

He broods above

The virgin silence, till

She yields for rapture shuddering, yearning still

To his sweet will.

I hear him sing, “Your harp is like a mesh,

Woven of flesh

And spread within the shoal

Of life, where runs the tide-race of the soul

In my control.

“Though my wild way may ruin what it bends,

It makes amends

To the frail downy clocks,

Telling their seed a secret that unlocks

The granite rocks.

“The womb of silence to the crave sound

Is heaven unfound,

Till I, to soothe and slake

Being’s most utter and imperious ache,

Bid rhythm awake.

“If with such agonies of bliss, my kin,

I enter in

Your prison house of sense,

With what a joyous freed intelligence

I shall go hence.”

I need no more to guess the weaver’s name,

Nor ask his aim,

Who hung each hall and room

With swarthy-tinged vermilion upon gloom;

I know that loom.

Give me a little space and time enough,

From ravelings rough

I could revive, reweave,

A fabric of beauty art might well believe

Were past retrieve.

O men and women in that rich design,

Sleep-soft, sun-fine,

Dew-tenuous and free,

A tone of the infinite wind-themes of the sea,

Borne in to me,

Reveals how you were woven to the might

Of shadow and light.

You are the dream of One

Who loves to haunt and yet appears to shun

My door in the sun;

As the white roving sea tern fleck and skim

The morning’s rim;

Or the dark thrushes clear

Their flutes of music leisurely and sheer,

Then hush to hear.

I know him when the last red brands of day

Smoulder away,

And when the vernal showers

Bring back the heart to all my valley flowers

In the soft hours.

O hand of mine and brain of mine, be yours,

While time endures,

To acquiesce and learn!

For what we best may dare and drudge and yearn,

Let soul discern.

So, fellows, we shall reach the gusty gate,

Early or late,

And part without remorse,

A cadence dying down unto its source

In music’s course;

You to the perfect rhythms of flowers and birds,

Colors and words,

The heart-beats of the earth,

To be remoulded always of one worth

From birth to birth;

I to the broken rhythm of thought and man,

The sweep and span

Of memory and hope

About the orbit where they still must grope

For wider scope,

To be through thousand springs restored, renewed,

With love imbrued,

With increments of will

Made strong, perceiving unattainment still

From each new skill.

Always the flawless beauty, always the chord

Of the Overword,

Dominant, pleading, sure,

No truth too small to save and make endure.

No good too poor!

And since no mortal can at last disdain

That sweet refrain,

But lets go strife and care,

Borne like a strain of bird notes on the air,

The wind knows where;

Some quiet April evening soft and strange,

When comes the change

No spirit can deplore,

I shall be one with all I was before,

In death once more.

Whisper me of things forgot

That shall be again.”

“Mortal, we are kinsmen, led

By a hope beyond our reach.

Know you not the word unsaid

Is the flower of speech?”

All the snowy blossoms faded,

While the scarlet berries grew;

And all summer they evaded

Anything they knew.

“Cornel, cornel, green and red

Flooring for the forest wide,

Whither down the ways of dread

Went my starry-eyed?”

“Mortal, mortal, is there found

Any fruitage half so fair

In the dim world underground

As there grows in air?”

“Wilding cornel, you can guess

Nothing of eternal pain,

Growing there in quietness

In the sun and rain.”

“Mortal, where your heart would be

Not a wanderer may go,

But he shares the dark with me

Underneath the snow.”

And the scarlet berries scattered

With the coming on of fall;

Not to one of them it mattered

Anything at all.

Fitful, gleaming, and dark

As the cold frustration of death.

But where the shadow may fall,

Whether to hurry or stay,

It matters little at all

To those who come that way.

For this is the dial of them

That have forgotten the world,

No more through the mad day-dream

Of striving and reason hurled.

Their heart as a little child

Only remembers the worth

Of beauty and love and the wild

Dark peace of the elder earth.

It registers the morrows

Of lovers and winds and streams,

And the face of a thousand sorrows

At the postern gate of dreams.

When the first low laughter smote

Through Lilith, the mother of joy,

And died and revived from the throat

Of Helen, the harpstring of Troy,

And wandering on through the years,

From the sobbing rain and the sea,

Caught sound of the world’s gray tears

Or sense of the sun’s gold glee,

Whenever the wild control

Burned out to a mortal kiss,

And the shuddering storm-swept soul

Climbed to its acme of bliss,

The green-gold light of the dead

Stood still in purple space,

And a record blind and dread

Was graved on the dial’s face.

And once in a thousand years

Some youth who loved so well

The gods had loosed him from fears

In a vision of blameless hell,

Has gone to the dial to read

Those signs in the outland tongue,

Written beyond the need

Of the simple and the young.

For immortal life, they say,

Were his who, loving so,

Could explain the writing away

As a legend written in snow.

But always his innocent eyes

Were frozen into the stone.

From that awful first surprise

His soul must return alone.

In the morning there he lay

Dead in the sun’s warm gold.

And no man knows to this day

What the dim moondial told.

“I am thy dream, them poor worn face,

And this is thy heart’s abiding place.

“Too much in the world, come back and be

Once more my dream-fellow with me,

“In the far-off untarnished years

Before thy furrows were washed with tears,

“Or ever thy serious creature eyes

Were aged with a mist of memories.

“Hast thou forgotten the long ago

In the garden where I used to flow,

“Among the hills, with the maple tree

And the roses blowing over me?—

“I who am now but a wraith of this river,

Forsaken of thee forever and ever,

“Who then was thine image fair, forecast

In the heart of the water rimpling past.

“Out in the wide of the summer zone

I lulled and allured thee apart and alone,

“The azure gleam and the golden croon

And the grass with the flaky roses strewn.

“There you would lie and lean above me,

The more you lingered the more to love me,

“Till I became, as the year grew old,

Thy fairest day-dream’s fashion and mould,

“Deep in the water twilight there,

Smiling, elusive, wonderful, fair,

“The beautiful visage of thy clear soul

Set in eternity’s limpid shoal,

“Thy spirit’s countenance, the trace

Of dawning God in the human face.

“And when yellow leaves came down

Through the silent mornings one by one

“To the frosty meadow, as they fell

Thy pondering heart said, ‘All is well;

“‘Aye, all is best, for I stake my life

Beyond the boundaries of strife,’

“And then thy feet returned no more,—

While years went over the garden floor,

“With frost and maple, with rose and dew,

In the world thy river wandered through;—

“Came never again to revive and recall

Thy youth from its water burial.

“But now thy face is battle-dark;

The strife of the world has graven a mark

“About the lips that are no more mine,

Too sweet to forget, too strong to repine.

“With the ends of the earth for thy garden now,

What solace and what reward hast thou?”

Then he of the earth’s sun-traversed side

To him of the under-world replied,

“O glad mysterious face in the stream,

My lost illusion, my summer dream,

“Thou fairer self of a fonder time,

A far imperishable clime,

“For thy dear sake I have fared alone

And fronted failure and housed with none.

“What youth was that, when the world was green,

In the lovely mythus Greek and clean,

“Was doomed with his flowery kin to bide,

A blown white star by the river side,

“And no more follow the sun, foot free,

Too long enamoured of one like thee?

“Shall God who abides in the patient flower,

The painted dust sustained by his power,

“Refuse to the wing of the dragonfly

His sanction over the open sky,—

“A frail detached and wandering thing

Torn loose from the blossomy life of spring?

“And this is man, the myriad one,

Dust’s flower and time’s ephemeron.

“And I who have followed the wander-list

For a glimpse of beauty, a wraith in the mist,

“Shall be spilt at last and return to peace,

As dust which the hands of the wind release.

“This is my solace and my reward,

Who have drained life’s dregs from a broken shard.”

Wise and grave was the water face,

A youth grown man in a little space;

While the wayworn face by the river side

Grew gentler-lipped and shadowy-eyed;

For he heard like a sea-horn summoning him

That sound from the world’s end vast and dim,

Where the river went wandering out so far

Through a gate in the mountain left ajar,

The sea birds love and the land birds flee,

The large bleak voice of the burly sea.

’Morning, shipmates! ’Drift and chartless?

Laded deep and rolling hard?

Never guessed, outworn and heartless,

There was land so close aboard?

Ice on every shroud and eyelet,

Rocking in the windy trough?

No more panic; Man’s your pilot;

Turns the flood, and we are off!

At the story of disaster,

From the continents of sleep,

I am come to be your master

And put out into the deep.

What tide current struck you hither,

Beating up the storm of years?

Where are those who stood to weather

These uncharted gulfs of tears?

Did your fellows all drive under

In the maelstrom of the sun,

While you only, for a wonder,

Rode the wash you could not shun?

We’ll crowd sail across the sea-line,—

Clear this harbor, reef and buoy,

Bowling down an open bee-line

For the latitudes of joy;

Till beyond the zones of sorrow,

Past griefs haven in the night,

Some large simpler world shall morrow

This pale region’s northern light.

Not a fear but all the sea-room,

Wherein time is but a bay,

Yet shall sparkle for our lee-room

In the vast Altrurian day.

And the dauntless seaworn spirit

Shall awake to know there are

What dominions to inherit,

Anchored off another star!

Is pale, and palpable, and cold;

I am as one grown old.

I call from room to room

Through the deserted gloom;

The echoes are all words I know,

Lost in some long ago.

I prowl from door to door,

And find no comrade more.

The wolfish fear that children feel

Is snuffing at my heel.

I hear the hollow sound

Of a great ship coming round,

The thunder of tackle and the tread

Of sailors overhead.

That stormy-blown hulloo

Has orders for me, too.

I see thee, hand at mouth, and hark,

My captain of the dark.

O wind of the great East,

By whom we are released

From this strange dusty port to sail

Beyond our fellows’ hail,

Under the stars that keep

The entry of the deep,

Thy somber voice brings up the sea’s

Forgotten melodies;

And I have no more need

Of bread, or wine, or creed,

Bound for the colonies of time

Beyond the farthest prime.

Wind of the dead men’s feet,

Blow through the empty street!

The last adventurer am I,

Then, world, good-by!

Stronger than fate, or time, or love,

And sterner than despair,

The Final Critic of the craft,

As stage tradition tells;

And yet—perhaps ’twill only be

The jester with his bells.

The scarlet maple leaves and the sweet ripe nuts,

May strew the forest glade at my door,

But my cringing cunning dwarf, with his slavered kacking laugh,

Cries “Wolf, wolf, wolf!” at my door.

The violets may come, the pale wind-flowers blow,

And tremble by the stream at my door;

But my dwarf will never cease, until his last release,

From his “Wolf, wolf, wolf!” at the door.

The long sweet April wind may woo the world from grief,

And tell the old tales at my door;

The rainbirds in the rain may plead their far refrain,

In the glad young year at my door;

And in the quiet sun, the silly partridge brood

In the red pine dust by my door;

Yet my squinting runty dwarf, with his lewd ungodly laugh,

Cries “Wolf, wolf, wolf!” at my door.

I’m his master (and his slave, with his “Wolf, wolf, wolf!”)

As he squats in the sun at my door.

There morn and noon and night, with his cuddled low delight,

He watches for the wolf at my door.

The wind may parch his hide, or freeze him to the bone,

While the wolf walks far from the door;

Still year on year he sits, with his five unholy wits,

And watches for the wolf at the door.

But the fall of the leaf and the starting of the bud

Are the seasons he loves by the door;

Then his blood begins to rouse, this Caliban I house,

And it’s “Wolf, wolf, wolf!” at the door.

In the dread lone of the night I can hear him snuff the sill;

Then it’s “Wolf, wolf, wolf!” at the door;

His damned persistent bark, like a husky’s in the dark,

His “Wolf, wolf, wolf!” at the door.

I have tried to rid the house of the misbegotten spawn;

But he skulks like a shadow at my door,

With the same uncanny glee as when he came to me

With his first cry of wolf at my door.

I curse him, and he leers; I kick him, and he whines;

But he never leaves the stone at my door.

Peep of day or set of sun, his croaking’s never done

Of the Red Wolf of Despair at my door.

But when the night is old, and the stars begin to fade,

And silence walks the path by my door,

Then is his dearest hour, his most unbridled power,

And low comes his “Wolf!” at the door.

I turn me in my sleep between the night and day,

While dreams throng the yard at my door.

In my strong soul aware of a grewsome terror there

Soon to knock with command at my door.

Is it the hollow voice of the census-taker Time

In his old idle round from door to door?

Or only the north wind, when all the leaves are thinned,

Come at last with his moan to my door?

I cannot guess nor tell; only it comes and comes,

As from a vaster world beyond my door,

From centuries of eld, the death of freedom knelled,

A host of mortal fears at my door.

Then I wake; and joy and youth and fame and love and bliss,

And all the good that ever passed my door,

Grow dim, and faint and fade, with the whole world unmade,

To perish as the summer at my door.

The crouching heart within me quails like a shuddering thing,

As I turn on my pillow to the door;

Then in the chill white dawn, when life is half withdrawn,

Comes the dream-curdling “Wolf!” at my door.

Only my yellow dwarf; (my servitor and lord!)

I hear him lift the latch of my door;

I see his wobbling chin and his unrepentant grin,

As he lets his oafship in at the door.

He is low and humped and foul, and shambles like an ape;

And stealthily he barricades the door,

Then lays his goblin head against my lonely bed,

With a “Wolf, wolf, wolf,” at the door!

I loathe him, but I feed him; I’ll tell you how it was

(Hear him now with his “Wolf!” at the door!)

That I ever took him in; he is—he is my kin,

And kin to the wolf at the door!

I loathe him, yet he lives; as God lets Satan live,

I suffer him to slumber at my door,

Till that long-looked-for time, that splendid sudden prime,

When Spring shall go in scarlet by my door.

That day I will arise, put my heel upon his throat,

And squirt his yellow blood upon the door;

Then watch him dying there, like a spider in his lair,

With a “Wolf, wolf, wolf!” at my door.

The great white morning sun shall walk the earth again,

And the children return to my door,

I shall hear their merry laugh, and forget my buried dwarf,

As a tale that is told at the door.

Far from the quiet woods the gaunt red wolf shall flee,

As a cur that is stoned from the door;

And God’s great peace come back along the lonely track,

To fill the golden year at my door.

Between a morning and a night,

Of all thy soul desired?

Fond one, who cannot understand

Even these shadows on the floor,

Yet must be dreaming of dark loves

And joys beyond my door!

But I am beautiful past all

The timid tumult of thy mood,

And thou returning not must still

Be mine in solitude.

That it should feel no jar

Of the swinging earth;

That sun and wind might bleach

But not destroy

The house that he had builded

For his joy.

“Here will I stay,” he said,

“And roam no more,

And dust when I am dead

Shall keep the door.”

There trooping dreams by night

Go by, go by.

The walls are rosy white

In the sun’s eye.

The windows are more clear

Than sky or sea;

He made them after God’s

Transparency.

It is a dearer place

Than kirk or inn;

Such joy on joy as there

Has never been.

There may my longed-for rest

And welcome be,

When Love himself unbars

The door for me!

All the while (it seems absurd!)

We hardly have

Exchanged a single word.

Mum as the grave!

Minds only his own affairs,

Goes out and in,

And keeps himself upstairs

With his violin.

Mum did I say? And yet

That talking smile

You never can forget,

Is all the while

Full of such sweet reproofs

The darkest day,

Like morning on the roofs

In flush of May.

Like autumn on the hills;

At four o’clock

The sun like a herdsman spills

For drove and flock

Peace with their provender,

And they are fed.

The day without a stir

Lies warm and red.

Ah, sir, the summer land

For me! That is

Like living in God’s hand,

Compared to this.

His smile so quiet and deep

Reminds me of it.

I see it in my sleep,

And so I love it.

An anarchist, say some;

But tush, say I,

When a man’s heart is plumb,

Can his life be awry?

Better than charity

And bigger too,

That heart. You’ve seen the sea?

Of course. To you

’T is common enough, no doubt.

But here in town,

With God’s world all shut out,

Save the leaden frown

Of the sky, a slant of rain,

And a straggling star,

Such memories remain

The wonders they are.

Once at the Isles of Shoals,

And it was June . . .

Now hear me dote! He strolls

Across my noon,

Like the sun that day, where sleeps

My soul; his gaze

Goes glimmering down my deeps

Of yesterdays,

Searching and searching, till

Its light consumes

The reluctant shapes that fill

Those purple glooms.

Let others applaud, defame,

And the noise die down;

His voice saying your name,

Is enough renown.

Too patient pitiful,

Too fierce at wrong,

To patronize the dull,

Or praise the strong.

And yet he has a soul

Of wrath, though pent

Even when that white ghoul

Comes for his rent.

The landlord? Hush! My God!

I think the walls

Take notes to help him prod

Us up. He galls

My very soul to strife,

With his death’s-head face.

He is foul too in his life,

Some hid disgrace,

Some secret thing he does,

I warrant you,

For all his cheek to us

Is shaved so blue.

He takes good care (by the shade

Of seven wives!)

That the undertaker’s trade

He lives by thrives.

Nor chick nor child has he.

So servile smug,

With that cringe in his knee,—

God curse his lug!

But him, you should have seen

Him yesterday;

The landlord’s smirk turned green

At his smile. The way

He served that bloodless fish,

Were like to freeze him.

But meeting elsewhere, pish!

He never sees him.

Yet such a gentleman,

So sure and slow.

The vilest harridan

Is not too low,

If there is pity’s need;

And no man born,

For cruelty or greed

Escapes that scorn.

Most of all things, it seems,

He loves the town.

Watching the bright-faced streams

Go up and down,

I have surprised him often

On Tremont street,

And marked the grave face soften,

The mouth grow sweet,

In a brown study over

The men and women.

An unsuspected rover

That, for our Common.

When the first jonquils come,

And spring is sold

On the street corners, some

Of the pretty gold

Is sure to find its way

Home in his hand.

And many a winter day

At some cab-stand,

He’ll watch the cabmen feed

The pigeon flocks,

Or bid some liner speed

From the icy docks.

His rooms? I much regret

You cannot see

His rooms, but they were let

With guarantee

Of his seclusion there—

Except myself.

Each morning, table, chair,

Lamp, hearth, and shelf,

I rearrange, refreshen,

Put all to rights,

Then leave him in possession.

Ah, but the nights,

The nights! Sir, if I dared

But once set eye

To keyhole, nor be scared,

From playing Paul Pry,

I doubt not I should learn

A wondrous thing

Or two; and in return

Go blind till spring.

The light under his door

Is glory enough,

It outshines any star

That I know of.

Wirrah, my lad, my lad,

’T is fearsome strange,

The hints we all have had

Passing the range

Of science, knowledge, law,

Or what you will,

Whose intangible touch of awe

Makes reason nil.

Many a night I start,

Sudden awake,

Feeling my smothered heart

Flutter and quake;

Like an aspen at dead of noon,

When not a breath

Is stirring to trouble the boon

Valley. A wraith

Or a fetch, it must be, shivers

The soul of the tree

Till every leaf of it quivers.

And so with me.

Was it the shuffle of feet

I heard go by,

With muffled drums in the street?

Was it the cry

Of a rider riding the night

Into ashes and dawn,

With news in his nostrils and fright

Where his hoof-beats had gone?

Did the pipes, at “Bonny Dundee,”

Bid regiments form?

Did a renegade’s soul get free

On a wail of the storm?

Did a flock of wild geese honk

As they cleared the hill?

Or only a bittern cronk,

Then all was still?

Was it a night stampede

Of a thousand head?

I know I shook like a reed

There on my bed.

Nameless and void and wild

Was the fear before me,

Ere I bethought me and smiled

As the truth flashed o’er me.

Of course, it was only his hand

Freeing the bass

Of his old Amati, grand

In the silence’ face.

Rummaging up and down,

From string to string,

Bidding the discords drown,

The harmonies spring,

Where tides and tide-winds rove

Far out from land,

On the ocean of music a-move

At the will of his hand.

Sobbing and grieving now,

Now glad as a bird,

Thou, thou, thou

Of the joys unheard,

Luminous radiant sea

Of the sounds and time,

Surely, surely by thee

Is eternal prime.

Holy and beautiful deep,

Spread down before

The imperial coming of sleep,

Endure, endure!

And sleep, be thou the ranger

Over it wan.

And dream, be thou no stranger

There with the dawn.

Then wings of the sun, go abroad

As a scarlet desire,

Unwearied, unwaning, unawed,

To quest and aspire,

Till the drench of the dusk you drink

In the poppy-field west;

Then veer and settle and sink

As a gull to her nest.

Wind,

Away, away!

And hurry your phantom kind

Through the gates of day,

Or ever the king’s dark cup

With its studs and spars

Be inverted, and earth look up

To the shuddering stars.

Blaring and triumphing now,

Now quailing and lone,

Thou, thou, thou

Of the joys unknown!

Unknown and wild, wild,

Where the merrymen be,

Sink to sleep, soul of a child,

Slumber, thou sea!

All this his fiddle plays,

And many a thing

As strange, when his mood so lays

The bow to the string.

Sleepless! He never sleeps

That I can find.

I marvel how he keeps

A bit of his mind.

There is neither sight nor sound

In the world of sense,

But he has fathomed and found

In the silvery tense

Keen cords on the amber wood.

As he wrings them thence,

Death smiles at his hardihood

For recompense.

Oh fair they are, so fair!

No tongue can tell

How he sets them chiming there

Clear as a bell.

An orchard of birds in June,

The winds that stream,

The cold sea-brooks that croon,

The storms that scream,

The planets that float and swing

Like buoys on the tide,

The north-going legions in spring,

The hills that abide,

The frigate-bird clouds that range,

The vagabond moon—

That wilful lover of change—

And the workaday sun,

Dying summer and fall,

Seasons and men

And herds, he has them all

In his shadowy ken.

He calls and they come, leaving strife,

Leaving discord and death,

Out of oblivion to life,

Though its span be a breath.

There they are, all the beautiful things

I loved and lost sight of

Long since in the far-away springs,

Come back for a night of

New being as good as their old,

Aye, better in fact,

For somehow he gilds their fine gold,—

Gives the one thing they lacked,

The breath, aspiration, desire,

Core, kindle, control,

Memory and rapture and fire,—

The touch of man’s soul.

How know the true master? I know

By my joys and my fears,

For my heart crumbles down like the snow

With spring rain into tears.

Now I am a precious one!

With nothing to do

But idle here in the sun

And gossip with you

Of a stranger you have not seen,

As like never will.

I would every soul had a screen,

When the wind sets ill

In the world’s bleak house, like this

Strange lodger of mine.

His presence is worse to miss

Than sun’s best shine.

I put no thought at all

Upon the end,

If only I may call

Such a man friend.

And a friend he is, heart light

With love for heft,

Proud as silence, whose right

Hand ignores his left.

Yes, odd! he gives his name

As Spiritus.

But that is vague as a flame

In the wind to us.

And then (but not a breath

Of this!) you see,

All his effects, my faith!

Are marked D.V.

His cape-coat has a rip,

But for all that,

(Folk smile, suggest a dip

In the dyer’s vat,—

Those purple aldermen

Who roll about

In coaches, drive till ten,

And die of gout),

I think he finely shows

How learning’s crumbs

At least can rival those

Of— ’st, here he comes!