Fiddler's Farewell/Of Mountains

by Leonora Speyer

Of Mountains

. . . Then I rose up
And swept the dust of planets from my eyes,
And wandered shouting down that shouting hour,
Pausing to pluck a mountain like a flower
That grew against the skies.

All through the night I am aware
Of hills that are not hills
Beyond my window;
I am aware of flight,
High, heavy,
Across the sky.

Mountains—
And over them a crumbling moon,
A snow-flake on fire,
Scattered from their frosty tips.

Stone wings,
So sure of the way!

Lying there I can see them
Blue hour on hour;
And from my safe pillow I follow
Their granite flight,
White hills fastened to my heels!
***
Morning lies prone upon the lake,
Like a pale woman on a silver bed
Who will not lift her head.

—I had forgotten the green of trees at dawn, and how
withdrawn are they from day. I had forgotten too
how trees stray in their sleep across deep drowsy
water, until the first breeze ripples them away.—

Along the shore
Are little boats that dream
Of little journeys they will make;
Of journeys made no more.

—Far up the slopes gleam languid patches of mid-
summer snow that never go; dim flocks of snow among
the rocks of a perched mountain meadow.—

Only the mountains are awake,
Guarding the vague low sky;
And a bird for its own song's sake—
And I!

—Only a bird would dare to break the stillness of this
hour; make of the shattered air this cool unbroken
note—tiny master-tool within the tiny throat!—
***
Mountains—high mothers—
Storms lie in their laps,
Thunders and lightnings play about their iron knees;
I have seen them rock the sky to sleep.

The mist lifts them;
Flint and ice floating as clouds float,
Unpeopled islands of a white unfathomed sea.

They are like an unanswered crying turned to stone,
And beyond

Are stone echoes of the crying;
Beyond—and beyond—
Is a veiled whispering on its knees,
On its face,
Hushed at last on the far plains.
***
Out of blazing noon and into its cleft side
I creep,
To where the cataract,
Silver artery of the mountain,
Pounds through its bleak heart.

Abashed
I stand in that covert place,
Silenced in the roar of the silent one!
***
Flowers and trees grow timid,
Follow me no further;
Grass runs to green safety on the lower hills.

Under my climbing feet earth climbs
And starves;
Its boulders start like bones from its gaunt sides.
Livid and alone
It hurls itself forever upward,
Turned to blind granite
Beneath the glare of hostile spaces
And of skies estranged.
***
This is the hill!
Mournful against the sky, and bare,
Where wind and darkness meet,
Crucified in the air.

And at its feet
Hills gather there,
Crowding, and casting lots
For a green cloak to wear.
***
The way that I have come,
Winding so cannily,
Is a brown zig-zag serpent
Alert along the tilting slopes,
Ready to leap and strike.

And looking down
I fear its wily coils,
Knowing that I must tread them
To reach again the cluttered toys
In the valley—
Where I shall sleep to-night.
***
They say the sea was here;
And it is like the sea to-day.

Waves, waves,
Green tides and tempests
Closing in on me,
Granite waters that have crashed together,
Flooded and filled the hollows!

What are a million years?

These spread peaks
Are Eternity's stone fingers
On which she reckons the rhythm
Of centuries.

And they say the jungle crawled, lush and savage,
In this ascetic place.
Once I saw a glacier-rock
Lying numbered on a museum-shelf,
And as if carved upon it,
The drooping slender outline of a palm-leaf
Fallen from a too hot sky.

Count on, stone fingers!
Fingers of ice, recount these careless wonders!

The sea was here.
Hidden beneath the ripples of oncoming hills
Cattle are grazing on its grassy floor;
The sound of bells drifts by
Like sea-weed on the surface of the air.

What are a million years?
***
I thought: These shall endure
Though the sky tumble!—

But now, with a slow hand
They are removed from off the summer land
Without a cry or rumble.

This thing I know:
The mist is stronger than these massive hills,
And when it wills
They go.

And I know too
Its silence is the greater;
It can subdue
Their august hush to less
Than nothingness.

And yet it grants to me
Enough of path to tread;
And one dim tree
To keep me comforted.
***
But at evening
The mountains lean from out the sky
To lap the glossy waters of the lake.

So came Hannibal's elephants,
Humped gray backs,
Heads lowered,
Lumbering through the passes,
Knee-deep in the deep water.

Snow clings to their rough flanks,
Their shoulders heave under the red and purple blows
Of the sun-set;
Detached from earth and sky,
They emerge,
They tread mightily up the valley.

And I watch them,
Mild beasts wading into the lake;
And I wonder they do not break its shining mirror.
***
The boatman glanced along its darkening side,
From the pale water paler with the night,
And in his face I saw a sturdy pride,
An understanding of its strength and height,
Its silences, its storms, its lonely ways:
He who had lived beside it all his days.

He pulled upon his oar and naught he said;
But in his eyes were hills inherited.
***
Under the iron wheels that lift us,
And about the sooty scars that tunnels make,
The mountain scatters flowers from an ample garden,
(Fox-glove and hare-bell pirouetting on the giddy ledges),
And we of the summer valley
Stumble shivering along its constant snows
On feet that never climbed.

Our voices are thin in the thin air,
Our little hearts thud strangely.
We are near the nearness of its swift deaths
On these relentless heights—
Death, in the swerving shelves of blue bitter ice,
Death, in the sly shrouds that hang from its sinister banks,
Death, unconcerned!

And we shall trickle down to life again
Unimportantly:
We of the summer valley.
***
Dusk wanders here alone;
No cloud or star runs at her side,
The lit sky is her own.

Along her paths of snow,
In that far fearless garden
She walks alone;
And from dim paths below,
I watch her plucking crimson flowers,
Roses in ice and stone.
***
And suddenly I fear these mountains!
There is a howling in the air
That is their intolerable voice,
They leap the sky,
They tear at the clouds,
Foam drips from their steep jaws.

They sit hunched up along the passes,
Snarling in the gorges;
And one, his lean head straining toward the moon,
Howls, howls!

Night is a clanging of loud bronze,
And I fear these mountains;
All the winds of the air
Are blown from their stretched throats.
***
The morning wears a Gothic air,
And Sabbath bells are carved on its blue arches.

I am rimmed round with hills
Upon their knees.

So rose the first prayer to the first sky—
A wide doxology of early earth
The while God rested.
***
Summer is leaving these high places.
With all their weight
The mountains cannot fasten to the meadow
One warm blade,
Hold to the bough its truest leaf,
Dismay or clamp upon the sky
Any small wing that chooses flight.

Not all the phalanx of these hills
Piled each on each
Can do this thing,
Although they barricade the stars!
Summer is leaving these high places.
***
Traveler, if you would go,
Go now:
Follow the breathless gray-lipped stream,
The bony finger of the bough,
Follow the fading falling road,
Forget the whole green episode;
Go now.

Go now if you would go;
That is a different denser snow
Along the black cliffs of the sky,
And down the hills
Their harvest spills
Its slanting squares of wheat and rye;
But overhead
Something is stricken
In the air
That will not quicken.

If you would not see hill-sides die,
Stripped bare
And brown,
With stormy wreaths on the indomitable brow
That wears this hour like a crown,
Go now!
***
Hills that are not hills,
But a deliberate violent gesture of earth
Away from earth,
(Upward, always upward),
What are seasons to you?
What are arrivals or departures?

But I,
How shall I go?
It is so long since I have seen the curved bar
Of the horizon,
Making a prison of the world!

How shall I walk the plains again,
Go down and down—
Into the valley of the shadow of life?

Only because of mountains in my heart
For me to climb,
Heights, my own,
Depths, higher still;
And I, the pioneer!
***
Who is the pioneer?
He is the follower here,
Perhaps the last
Of all who passed.

He does not fear nor scorn
To tread
The ventured path, the worn,
Of those ahead;
Nor shall he fail
To blaze his own brave trail
Along the beaten track,
Make of the old a newer way
Of stouter clay
For others at his back.

He is the pioneer who climbs,
Who dares to climb
His own high heart,
Although he fall
A thousand times;
Who dares to crawl
On honest hands and knees
Along its stony ecstasies
Up to the utmost snows:
Nor knows
He stands on these!

Who is the pioneer?
I say he is the follower here,
Dogged and undeterred,
Perhaps the last
Of all who passed.

He passes too,
The wingless one, the heavy bird,
Limping along—

Ah, but his song,
His song!