Life

Still sits the school-house by the road,
A ragged beggar sleeping;
Around it still the sumachs grow,
And blackberry-vines are creeping.

Within, the master’s desk is seen,
Deep scarred by raps official;
The warping floor, the battered seats,
The jack-knife’s carved initial;

The charcoal frescos on its wall;
Its door’s worn sill, betraying
The feet that, creeping slow to school,
Went storming out to playing!

Long years ago a winter sun
Shone over it at setting;
Lit up its western window-panes,
And low eaves’ icy fretting.

It touched the tangled golden curls,
And brown eyes full of grieving,
Of one who still her steps delayed
When all the school were leaving.

For near her stood the little boy
Her childish fav...

First, there's the entrance, narrow, and so small,
The hat-stand seems to fill the tiny hall;
That staircase, too, has such an awkward bend,
The carpet rucks, and rises up on end!
Then, all the rooms are cramped and close together;
And there's a musty smell in rainy weather.
Yes, and it makes the daily work go hard
To have the only tap across a yard.
These creaking doors, these draughts, this battered paint,
Would try, I think, the temper of a saint,

How often had I railed against these things,
With envies, and with bitter murmurings
For spacious rooms, and sunny garden plots!
Until one day,
Washing the breakfast dishes, so I think,
I paused a moment in my work to pray;
And then and there
All life seemed suddenly made new and fair;
For, like th...

He sang of life, serenely sweet,
With, now and then, a deeper note.
From some high peak, nigh yet remote,
He voiced the world's absorbing beat.

He sang of love when earth was young,
And Love, itself, was in his lays.
But ah, the world, it turned to praise
A jingle in a broken tongue.

Then I asked: 'Does a firm persuasion that a thing is so, make it so?'

He replied: 'All Poets believe that it does, and in ages of imagination this firm persuasion removed mountains; but many are not capable of a firm persuasion of anything.'

Blake's 'Marriage of Heaven and Hell'.






I

At any moment love unheralded
Comes, and is king. Then as, with a fall
Of frost, the buds upon the hawthorn spread
Are withered in untimely burial,
So love, occasion gone, his crown puts by,
And as a beggar walks unfriended ways,
With but remembered beauty to defy
The frozen sorrows of unsceptred days.
Or in that later travelling he comes
Upon a bleak oblivion, and tells
Himself, again, again, forgotten tombs
Are all now that love wa...

Down into the darkness at last, Daniel, down into the darkness at last;
Laid in the lap of our Mother, Daniel, sleeping the dreamless sleep,
Sleeping the sleep of the babe unborn the pure and the perfect rest:
Aye, and is it not better than this fitful fever and pain?
Aye, and is it not better, if only the dead soul knew?

Joy was there in the spring-time and hope like a blossoming rose,
When the wine-blood of youth ran tingling and throbbing in every vein;
Chirrup of robin and blue-bird in the white-blossomed apple and pear;
Carpets of green on the meadows spangled with dandelions;
Lowing of kine in the valleys, bleating of lambs on the hills;
Babble of brooks and the prattle of fountains that flashed in the sun;
Glad, merry voices, ripples of laughter, snatches of music and son...

Where art thou, storehouse of the mind, gamer of facts and fancies, —
In what strange firmament are laid the beams of thine airy chambers?
Or art thou that small cavern, the centre of the rolling brain,
Where still one sandy morsel testifieth man's original?
Or hast thou some grand globe, some common hall of intellect,
Some spacious market-place for thought, where all do bring their wares.
And gladly rescued from the littleness, the narrow closet of a self,
The privileged soul hath large access, coming in the livery of learning?
Live we as isolated worlds, perfect in substance and spirit,
Each a sphere, with a special mind, prisoned in its shell of matter?
Or rather, as converging radiations, parts of one majestic whole.
Beams of the Sun, streams from the River, branches of the mighty...

I have no children:

But tonight a poem came
in which a small child,
my daughter, appeared at the door
of a half-lit room
where late one night I wrote
at a heavy desk.

And though interruption
was hardly welcome
I took her to myself,
just as the poem,
comforted this daughter
until she found peace.

The poems as the children
come as they will come.

We sat together at one summer's end,
That beautiful mild woman, your close friend,
And you and I, and talked of poetry.
I said, "A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
Better go down upon your marrow-bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
The martyrs call the world.'
And thereupon
That beautiful mild woman for whose sake
There's many a one shall find out all heartache
On finding that her voice is sweet and low
Replied, "To be born woman is to know --

As I ebb'd with the ocean of life,
As I wended the shores I know,
As I walk'd where the ripples continually wash you Paumanok,
Where they rustle up hoarse and sibilant,
Where the fierce old mother endlessly cries for her castaways,
I musing late in the autumn day, gazing off southward,
Held by this electric self out of the pride of which I utter poems,
Was seiz'd by the spirit that trails in the lines underfoot,
The rim, the sediment that stands for all the water and all the land of the globe.

Fascinated, my eyes reverting from the south, dropt, to follow those slender windrows,
Chaff, straw, splinters of wood, weeds, and the sea-gluten,
Scum, scales from shining rocks, leaves of salt-lettuce, left by the tide,
Miles walking, the sound of breaking waves the other side of me...

Endure what life God gives and ask no longer span;
Cease to remember the delights of youth, travel-wearied aged man;
Delight becomes death-longing if all longing else be vain.

Even from that delight memory treasures so,
Death, despair, division of families, all entanglements of mankind grow,
As that old wandering beggar and these God-hated children know.

In the long echoing street the laughing dancers throng,
The bride is catried to the bridegroom’s chamber through torchlight and tumultuous song;
I celebrate the silent kiss that ends short life or long.

Never to have lived is best, ancient writers say;
Never to have drawn the breath of life, never to have looked into the eye of day;
The second best’s a gay goodnight and quickly turn away.

Where are the Poets, unto whom belong
    The Olympian heights; whose singing shafts were sent
    Straight to the mark, and not from bows half bent,
    But with the utmost tension of the thong?
Where are the stately argosies of song,
    Whose rushing keels made music as they went
    Sailing in search of some new continent,
    With all sail set, and steady winds and strong?
Perhaps there lives some dreamy boy, untaught
    In schools, some graduate of the field or street,
    Who shall become a master of the art,
An admiral sailing the high seas of thought,
    Fearless and first and steering with his fleet
    For lands not yet laid down in any chart.

As we journey along, with a laugh and a song,
    We see, on youth's flower-decked slope,
Like a beacon of light, shining fair on the sight,
    The beautiful Station of Hope.

But the wheels of old Time roll along as we climb,
    And our youth speeds away on the years;
And with hearts that are numb with life's sorrows we come
    To the mist-covered Station of Tears.

Still onward we pass, where the milestones, alas!
    Are the tombs of our dead, to the West,
Where glitters and gleams, in the dying sunbeams,
    The sweet, silent Station of Rest.

All rest is but change, and no grave can estrange
    The soul from its Parent above;
And, scorning the rod, it soars back to its God,
    To the limitless City of Love.

As we journey along, with a laugh and a song,
    We see, on youth's flower-decked slope,
Like a beacon of light, shining fair on the sight,
    The beautiful Station of Hope.

But the wheels of old Time roll along as we climb,
    And our youth speeds away on the years;
And with hearts that are numb with life's sorrows we come
    To the mist-covered Station of Tears.

Still onward we pass, where the milestones, alas!
    Are the tombs of our dead, to the West,
Where glitters and gleams, in the dying sunbeams,
    The sweet, silent Station of Rest.

All rest is but change, and no grave can estrange
    The soul from its Parent above;
And, scorning the rod, it soars back to its God,
    To the limitless City of Love.

Why should we dream of days gone by?
    Why should we wait and wonder?
Sweet summer days have come and gone,
    The leaves are falling yonder.

The wee sweet flowers we loved the best,
    The king of frost has chosen;
And now the sun looks sadly down
    Upon his darlings frozen.

Ah! summer sun and autumn frost,
    You are at war forever;
For all the ties that one would make
    The other fain would sever.

With autumn days remembrance comes
    Of golden glories fleeting;
Of pleasures gone and sorrows come--
    Of parting and of meeting.

Oh! summer days, why haunt us still?
    Remembrance is a sorrow;
And all the dreams we dream to-day
    Will fade upon the morrow.

Each life has some sweet summer-time,

Poet, my master, come, tell me true,
    And how are your verses made?
Ah! that is the easiest thing to do: -
You take a cloud of a silvern hue,
A tender smile or a sprig of rue,
    With plenty of light and shade,

And weave them round in syllables rare,
    With a grace and skill divine;
With the earnest words of a pleading prayer,
With a cadence caught from a dulcet air,
A tale of love and a lock of hair,
    Or a bit of a trailing vine.

Or, delving deep in a mine unwrought,
    You find in the teeming earth
The golden vein of a noble thought;
The soul of a statesman still unbought,
Or a patriot's cry with anguish fraught
    For the land that gave him birth.

A brilliant youth who has lost his way
    On the winding road of l...

Come, said the Muse,
Sing me a song no poet yet has chanted,
Sing me the Universal.

In this broad Earth of ours,
Amid the measureless grossness and the slag,
Enclosed and safe within its central heart,
Nestles the seed Perfection.

By every life a share, or more or less,
None born but it is born conceal'd or unconceal'd, the seed is waiting.

Lo! keen-eyed, towering Science!
As from tall peaks the Modern overlooking,
Successive, absolute fiats issuing.

Yet again, lo! the Soul above all science;
For it, has History gather'd like a husk around the globe;
For it, the entire star-myriads roll through the sky.

In spiral roads, by long detours,
(As a much-tacking ship upon the sea,)
For it, the partial to the permanent flowing,
...

A flock of sheep that leisurely pass by,
One after one; the sound of rain, and bees
Murmuring; the fall of rivers, winds and seas,
Smooth fields, white sheets of water, and pure sky;
I have thought of all by turns, and yet do lie
Sleepless! and soon the small birds' melodies
Must hear, first uttered from my orchard trees;
And the first cuckoo's melancholy cry.
Even thus last night, and two nights more, I lay,
And could not win thee, Sleep! by any stealth:
So do not let me wear to-night away:
Without Thee what is all the morning's wealth?
Come, blessed barrier between day and day,
Dear mother of fresh thoughts and joyous health!

Ah poverties, wincings, and sulky retreats!
Ah you foes that in conflict have overcome me!
(For what is my life, or any man's life, but a conflict with foes--the old, the incessant war?)
You degradations--you tussle with passions and appetites;
You smarts from dissatisfied friendships, (ah wounds, the sharpest of all;)
You toil of painful and choked articulations--you meannesses;
You shallow tongue-talks at tables, (my tongue the shallowest of any;)
You broken resolutions, you racking angers, you smother'd ennuis;
Ah, think not you finally triumph--My real self has yet to come forth;
It shall yet march forth o'ermastering, till all lies beneath me;
It shall yet stand up the soldier of unquestion'd victory.