Poems (Whitney)/Facts in verse

by Anne Whitney

FACTS IN VERSE.

Bring here thy loom; and lay the warp
All through of gold: with silken thread,
In violet, yellow, black and red,
As another, tones upon a harp,
Thou improvisest lovely shapes,
And reëmbodiest the dead.

My words I know no grace can vaunt:
 But thou, within thy magic loom,
 Wilt give them meaning, strength and bloom
And the tale I tell shall have no want,
 Pictured in fadeless sun and gloom.

A speck here, journeying to the west,
 One sees a mount with beetling top,
 The very plunge of the wave, when drop
The flashing curls from its sharp, white crest.

Soon you come to the mountain land;
 Where peak beyond peak in their cloud abodes,
 Like Titans at rest and at peace with the Gods,
The ancient, beautiful brethren stand.

So calm and sane are they, we know
 When there, no more of the babble and strife,
 The passion or emptiness of life,
We are up with them, and the world, below;

Above the belts where summer clings;
 Where silence ever wakes and broods
 Around their wild and vapory hoods,
Low rustling its enchanted wings.

We listen through their clinging mist,
 For hymns in far-off childhood heard;
 Old hymns of faith, from those that guard
The snow and the sacred amethyst.

Thou dost not feel their music cease,
 When at thy feet, some little bloom
 Smiles suddenly from covert gloom,
And minds thee of a lowlier peace.

Those threaded sunbeams of the wood,
 The wildering rivulets, merrily
 Kiss thine intruding feet and flee,
As careless of thy higher mood.

Gold green the blessed valleys lie;
 By giant shadows now embraced,
 And now with sunbeams interlaced,
And panting neath the happy sky.

If here and there the smoke upcurls,
 It witnesses of some warm hearth,
 Where nestle human loves and mirth,
Gray eld and sunny boys and girls.

Among those regions fair and dread,
 A fallen trunk's majestic beam
 Bridges a granite-walled stream,
An hundred feet above its bed.

So brief the space from ledge to ledge,
 Only the mid-day sun can send
 An arrow that its depth may rend—
And three steps on the sturdy bridge
 Will span it clear, from end to end.

A maiden, on a summer even,
 Stood there above the. torrent's flow,
 And looked into the depth below,
And up the hollow sphere of heaven,
 As if to measure some great wo.

Her birth-place, circled with soft air,
 Lay many a league away:—her kin,
 Her mother of a darker skin,
Who called, in pride of her fair hair,
 The pretty maiden, Lilian.

None knew her history—nor he
 Who loved her, guessed what phantom dread
 Mocked at her heart's young feast, and said,
Mid fragrant woodpaths, up the free,
 Bold hills, "Be evermore afraid."

Forgive her that she did not clear
 Her soul of the great weight it bore;
 And for its silence ached the more;—
The heart made weak with earthly fear,
 Love cannot teach it all its lore.

At length the ill foreshadowed came;
 And hope called home its latest beam.
 She caught one day the evil gleam
Of keen and cruel eyes—the same
 That turned to nightmare childhood's dream.

Was it strange that thoughts of death should then
 Fill all her soul?—but with calm pace
 She turned her from the trysting-place
That night; (what wonder, yet again,
 Is death the darkest thing to face?)

And wending homeward thro' the even,
 She stopped above the torrent's flow,
 And looked into the dark below,
And up the empty, silent heaven;
 And could not measure her great wo.

The waters kept a merry din;
 From peopled wastes and wilds untrod,
 And brightly over love's abode,
The perfect day shut softly in,
 The wondrous Passion-flower of God!

She said, I thought this world so wide!
 With room for every hope inwrought
 Here with the life,—Love, Freedom, aught
To lesser creatures not denied;—
 Simply,I knew not what I thought!

When the owl leaves his hollow tree,
 He ofttimes captures on the wing,
 Some poor, belated, panting thing,
A little thrush, perhaps, that free
 Fares homeward 'mid June's blossoming.

I envy, God, that little thrush!
 He is not hated of his kind;
 I envy him his free-born mind,
And last, his home foregone—the hush
 Of absence that he leaves behind.

When with my love, I sought the Fall
 But now, and over wave and bird
 His low, assuring speech I heard—
I thought that I would tell him all—
 For love is better than its word.

But no, God, no; for as I live,
 'Twere death and worse, to watch alone
 The gradual change come dark'ning down;
How tell him that I_sought to give
 To him, what never was my own?

But now if from his path, at length,
 "I glide like last night's pleasant dream,
 'Which could not wait the morning's beam,
Though memory has its bitter strength,
 The sweet too stays to comfort him.

God pardon me my selfish heart!
 But is it not best then to be
 A clear strain broke—a memory
Of good alloyed not, as thou art,
 Bird, to home watchers in the tree?

'Twere good then, when to morrow's sun
 Comes with its slow inspiring on,
 To be one sacred ray withdrawn—
A sweet want in the heart of one—
 A silence through the waking dawn.

Yonder, great heaven, men wait to bind
 These limbs with chains! the night—birds roam
 To seize the loiterer wending home!
'Tis well, they are not of my kind,
 For I am human, let them come.

******

The jubilant waters far below,
 Went harping over twig and stone,
 And roots with black moss overgrown;
One scarce had noticed in their flow
 A slightly changed and muffled tone.

One only, who forbidden still
 To follow her, said in heart-play,
 I will haste round the longer way,
And while obedient, have my will,
 And see her once again to-day.

He waited long beside her door,—
 Then said, Her foot is swift and light;
 An hour ago, if I read right,
She passed this happy threshold o'er—
 He stooped and kissed it 'neath the night.

And laughing at his vigil vain,
 And thinking, when the sun's gold edge
 Should ripple over the eastern ridge
Of clouds, they two would meet again,
 He loitered homeward by the bridge.

There listening, Is it mists of night,
 That break thy murmur to my ear,
 Or pausest thou, shuddering with some fear,
Or burthened with a new delight,
 Dear stream, thy voice is not so clear?

Perhaps through wood and rocky reach,
 A spirit of the wave, thy bride,
 Runs softly wimpling to thy side,
And thou, confused in thy speech,
 For painful joy dost talk so wide.

When love with love makes God's clear day,
 A light for every coming year,
 Each thing to hope and fancy dear,
Comes double laden, or, best say,
 Is half a joy and half a fear.

So feeble are we! and the fair,
 Sweet Presence that within us sings,
 The hour, that like concentred springs,
Comes freighted with its heavenly air,
 Cannot forego its heavenly wings.

He, musing as his pathway led,
 Met comrades from the field's late task:
 A happy lover what can mask?
Not night or silence: greetings said,
 Your Lilian, she is well? they ask.

The calm, far starlight healing fell
 On scarred trunk and broken ridge,
 And seemed to give an answering pledge,
As he replied, My love is well,
 We parted yonder at the bridge.

Nor was he mindful of love's cheats,
 Till they had passed, when, smiling gay,
 He thought, In sooth, I did not say
Amiss;—love still is near—and meets
 And parts, a thousand times a day.

So passed he homewards, weaving dear,
 Soft dreams and hopes in garlands slight;—
 What thrilling touches of strange light,
What breaths from some far atmosphere,
 World, in thy grand, old pause of Night!

Spirits that watch, do you hot pray
 In the still hours, Light come no more,
 Shine not upon life's blasted flower—
Let only us see it, who may
 See God and earth, the self-same hour!

Doubt, terror, the long agony
 Of dread suspense, sore ill to brook!—
 Until on many a fearful nook,
The sun sends in his searching eye,
 And looks there till he makes men look!

Believe that there are times so rife
 With vital blood, as many say,
 That moments ere they pass turn gray,
And fruitage on the vine of life.
 Ripens and drops in one brief day.

God keeps us:—that is something good,
 Whichever way the current run!
 When Fate its sorry worst has done,
He leads you to life's marble mood,
 Where, torpid, you await the sun.

But if, as may be, God unlock
 Despair with lightning, you shall turn
 In vain some kindly rest to earn:
The soft, south wind your pangs will mock—
 The very stars will sting and burn.

Bethink thee, if thy soul's true mate
 Should sudden from thy side be caught,
 With last eve's kisses newly fraught,
And darkness overhang his fate,
 A mystery that deadened thought;

And doubts, that first had plied their wings
 In covert of the twilight gray,
 Should wing at last the open day,
And doubts should grow to whisperings
 That you had reft that life away;—

"O God!" you say, "they left him so—
 Widowed of all men's love, to grieve
 And die"—? Nay, worse than that—believe
Time's shuttles fly; we scarcely know
 The awful pictures he may weav

They crippled first his manly strength
 With prison air and prison gloom;
 And ere mid-winter's frosty bloom,
From chains and judgment-bar, at length
 They gave him to the felon's doom.

What said he—what he thought—God knows!
 A fear, a frightful doubt, ere long
 A dread belief of some deep wrong
Done, in the minds of men arose,
 And waxed from day to day more strong.

And then there came from the south land,
 Sealed, as men say, with dying breath,
 Confession as from hell beneath,
That two, who waited near at hand,
 Had seen the wretched maiden's death.

"Gone's gone, lost, lost"! Say you, I mar
 'With sadness life's most heavenly things?
 'Tis but the air that sweeps the strings;
You cannot probe the earth-mould far,
 Ere you shall reach her tearful springs.

Dear, skilful lady, in whose loom,
 The breath of natural joy and pain
 Is woven, as nerves are in the brain,
A crimson gush wraps all our room,
 The close of Day's triumphant strain!

Is it the coming night-breath, wreathed
 With phantom dews, that all those wan
 Acacia flowerets seems to fan,
Or the living joy through nature breathed
 By the infinite hope of man?