Poems (Whitney)/Sonnets—night
SONNETS.
NIGHT.
I.
O calmly, lovingly, Night, vast and deep,Bend round the breathing world! Thou cool-browed wifeOf fiery Day—he, stirrer of old strife,Thou, soother, mother; in whose heart we keepA hiding-place to dream, to hope, to weep!Who still exhalest in the purple sky,The old star-bloom of immortality,Wreathing our momentariness and- sleepWith dignity so sweet and sovereign!Happy the earth to kiss thy broidered hem!Her weak and flagging aspirations takeNew pinions in thy shadows; thou dost makeLove deeper bliss, and even care and painAre great and worthy, since thou touchest them,
II.
Thou seem'st to solve the eternal unityThat holds us all. How far, and dim, and deep,Bathed in the separate sanctity of sleep—Lost in thy wide forgetting do we lie!O, lest that dim abyss, where MemoryBeats her disabled wing, and hope is not,Point to yet wilder deeps, unearth our thoughtIn thy far glances! Through the serene sky,When Day from the impurpled hills furls up,And heaven's white limits fail, the Infinite,Long crushed within, breathes forth its mystic pain;From vast of height, and depth, and silence, stoop,And lift with mystic faith its brow again,—Call unto peace the eternal child, dear Night!
III.
Darkness surrounds me with its phantom hosts,Till silence is enchanted speech. I feelThose half-spent airs that through the laurel reel,And Night's loud heart-beats in the tropic coasts,—And, soaring amid everlasting frosts,To super-sensual rest, as it might outweighA whole world's strife, o'er me gaunt HimalehDroops his broad wing of calm.—Those peaks, ghostsOutstaring Time, through darkness glimmering!No rush of pinion there, nor bubbling low—But death, and silence past imagining;—Only, day in and out, with endless swing,Their aged shadows move, and picture slowOne on another's unrelenting snow.
IV.
O high-born souls, such as God sends to mouldHis ages in—and you too, who have knownThe pang of strife, and are at last at oneWith nature so,—yea, all who have made boldOur timid dreams, and proffered to the holdA certain joy—come mingle in life's copeStar-fields of verity and stable hope,With these swift meteors and illusions old!I sent this summons through the deeps of june,When life surged up so warm and affluent,It wrapt the very whiteness of the moon;—No wonder many came—they came and went—And thou, who sleep'st half sad and wak'st with pain,Thou camest too and dost alone remain.
V.
So reed-like fragile, in the world's whirl nought,Beggared in earthly hope, alone and. bare,—Heart pierced, wings clipped, feet bound, but grandly there,Ay and with odds 'gainst Fate, thou standest, fraughtWith courage to know all!—Thus is thy lotWorlds deep beneath thee.—Lovest thou that keen air?Thou ask'st not hope, nor may the falsely fairApproach thy clear integrity of thought.Such power, what shall we call it? For this time,Not love, nor yet.faith; but EternityDilating the mean Day,—the spirit, freeAnd self-reliant, from its purer climeO'erruling earth, by spirit-law sublime—God cleaving for thee the remorseless sea.
VI.
Of better fortune coming, then, talk not,Thou teachest, and think not:—nay, rather dareThe utmost of the world's ill strength, despair.Take up with courage the unlovely lot,And it shall grow in thy familiar thoughtTo beauty.—Dumb sorrows that the life-strings wear,And stings—the points of broken trust, and care,And those hot, random arrows, whose keen shotMust find thine or another heart, shall allBe rounded in the sweet and ample skyOf the enfranchised soul. EternityShall come home to the hour.—Thou didst not callLight, light—heaven, heaven—till now, when not a thrall,But king thou art—yea, free, forever free.
VII.
In the still hours, a stiller strength was bornDeep in my heart.—It was no selfish dream,Nor even hope, with far and tender beam,To make me for the moment less forlorn:Nor was it child of will, before the mornTo dream itself away. With life dismayed,God help me, O God help me!—so I prayed;—A simple prayer, but winning swift return;A hand, that raised all gently from the dust,And led me childlike on, beyond the strifeOf vulgar aims, past anguish and distrust,And the pale warders of our daily life,To where God binds above our harvest sun,All fragmentary being in his one.
VIII.
Stoop low, dear Night, a little star-breeze wakesThe solemn pines.—Child-love doth come and pass,And when 'tis gone, how beautiful it wasWe know. "Thou art like this dear Night, that shakesHer long hair down, and sits star-throned in lakesAnd loving seas," he said—forgive the boy!"And you are gold-tressed Day, the sun-flower's joy,Each each pursues—but neither overtakes.""O dull astronomer, do not these twoMingle at dawn and even with lovely grace,Till one for joy dies in the long embrace?"Experimental science is sole true;And like those twilights 'mid the arctic snows,The dusk and fair blent sweet on cheeks and brows.
IX.
O night, a terrible dismay still lurksIn thy close caves. Is there another griefThan mine upon my soul, or spectral leafIn the great record of the years, where works,Not dreams, find place—a task declinedWhich the wise heavens appointed for my ownNay, or a haunting memory to strike downThe future's open hand;—then, down the windWith sadly human eyes, but fanged like wolves,The pale Erinnyes sweep. O happy, then,If I with night-long prayer may win againLost faith—faith in Eternity that solvesTime's stoniest spectres—faith in the broadSerenity of things—yes, faith in the good God!
X.
When my friend went, half-stunned, I thought,Great God, what then has fallen from me? Power to feelThe sun, after the three days' storm—to kneelBefore the sacred presence in the wood,Or by the throbbing sea—to shun the broodOf slave-besetting ills? But more, more went.I did not know, the fearful bow once bent,What arrows it could send:—still, all is good;What am I, God, to say, spare this and this?The rain-drop moulds a world. Turning, I knewThy pulse in one still, patient love, that drewMe sweetly upward ever, like a kiss;Like him, who, sinking in his lonely hour,Found heaven within the desert's single flower.
XI.
Within my life another life runs deep,To which, at blessed seasons, open wideSilent, mysterious portals. There resideThese shapes, that cautiously about me creep,This iron mask of birth, and death, and sleep,Familiar as the day and open-eyed;And there, broods endless calm. And though it glideOfttimes beyond my sight, and though I keepIts voice no more, I know the current flowsPulsing to far-off harmonies, and lightWith most unearthly heavens. The world but throwsA passing spell thereon—as winter, bright,Pale feudatory of the arctic Night,Swathes with white silence all these murmurous boughs.
XII.
Yet are there sunbeams, though the kingly sunReveal not his full eye; yet flowers, to bearMute witness of the Heart that keeps the year,Through all its wintry chill; and I have won,Where was no face nor voice, a glance, a tone,A spirit, call it, that all shapes doth wear,And brings me knowledge which I scarcely dareCall mine. Now, out of grief it sings; anon,It calls me in another's deed or word.Capricious is the sprite, and now will herdWith common things, now wing me wind-warm cheerFrom far-off times and climates happier,And when from distant fields I call the bird,A quiet chirp proclaims it nested here.
XIII.
I know this spirit bridges unknown spaceAnd half-forgotten centuries, that IMay know I am of royal family,And live to my high birth. The marble faceOf Destiny grows fluent, as I traceThese arteries of broad being. I can waitMore years than earth allots me, for my stateIs not of time: nor binds me any place,Since on and on the mazy current tends,That takes my little thread, a breath might sever,To mingle it with universal ends;—And tho' I fail and fall, yet am I stillMost strong; since every high, tho' balked endeavor,God intertwines with his eternal will.
XIV.
Alas! and yesternight I woke in terror,Crying, Great God, what awful shadows pressAround us from this dreary nothingnessOf death, and life's old, caverned glooms of error!Are we immortal, Father, are we dearerTo thee than common dust? "Thou art but oneOf this dense throng, through time still hast'ning on;Thy blood with theirs is warm," my good FamiliarSaid softly unto me,—"how canst thou slakeThy thirst when their lips parch, or rightly seeWith twilight misting round thee? Dearest, wake!Thy brethren are not saved except in thee;Nor thou, save in their health, their joy, their sight,Hast any lasting peace, or heavenly light."
XV.
O mankind's God! most silent and most lowlyIs wisdom's entrance to our hearts; with lessOf conscious power, than self-forgetfulnessAnd an enduring patience! Though most slowly,Thou winn'st us by such lovely paths to know thee,And the immortal life that from thee flows.But if thy mild lure fail, come untold woes,Doubt, pain, and learning's poor, convicted folly,To make self bitter, and compel us forth.We live not in a part; our propheciesAre infant wailings—wailing of the earth!Only the ocean matches the great skies—Only the infinite of love and ruthReceives the living infinite of truth.