Second April

The trees along this city street,

Save for the traffic and the trains,

Would make a sound as thin and sweet

As trees in country lanes.

And people standing in their shade

Out of a shower, undoubtedly

Would hear such music as is made

Upon a country tree.

Oh, little leaves that are so dumb

Against the shrieking city air,

I watch you when the wind has come,—

I know what sound is there.

     God had called us, and we came;

Our loved Earth to ashes left;

Heaven was a neighbor’s house,

Open to us, bereft.

Gay the lights of Heaven showed,

And ’twas God who walked ahead;

Yet I wept along the road,

Wanting my own house instead.

Wept unseen, unheeded cried,

“All you things my eyes have kissed,

Fare you well!  We meet no more,

Lovely, lovely tattered mist!

Weary wings that rise and fall

All day long above the fire!”—

Red with heat was every wall,

Rough with heat was every wire—

“Fare you well, you little winds

That the flying embers chase!

Fare you well, you shuddering day,

With your hands before your face!

And, ah, blackened by strange blight,

Or to a false sun unfurled,

Now forevermore goodbye,

All the gardens in the world!

On the windless hills of Heaven,

That I have no wish to see,

White, eternal lilies stand,

By a lake of ebony.

But the Earth forevermore

Is a place where nothing grows,—

Dawn will come, and no bud break;

Evening, and no blossom close.

Spring will come, and wander slow

Over an indifferent land,

Stand beside an empty creek,

Hold a dead seed in her hand.”

God had called us, and we came,

But the blessed road I trod

Was a bitter road to me,

And at heart I questioned God.

“Though in Heaven,” I said, “be all

That the heart would most desire,

Held Earth naught save souls of sinners

Worth the saving from a fire?

Withered grass,—the wasted growing!

Aimless ache of laden boughs!”

Little things God had forgotten

Called me, from my burning house.

“Though in Heaven,” I said, “be all

That the eye could ask to see,

All the things I ever knew

Are this blaze in back of me.”

“Though in Heaven,” I said, “be all

That the ear could think to lack,

All the things I ever knew

Are this roaring at my back.”

It was God who walked ahead,

Like a shepherd to the fold;

In his footsteps fared the weak,

And the weary and the old,

Glad enough of gladness over,

Ready for the peace to be,—

But a thing God had forgotten

Was the growing bones of me.

And I drew a bit apart,

And I lagged a bit behind,

And I thought on Peace Eternal,

Lest He look into my mind:

And I gazed upon the sky,

And I thought of Heavenly Rest,—

And I slipped away like water

Through the fingers of the blest!

All their eyes were fixed on Glory,

Not a glance brushed over me;

“Alleluia!  Alleluia!”

Up the road,—and I was free.

And my heart rose like a freshet,

And it swept me on before,

Giddy as a whirling stick,

Till I felt the earth once more.

All the earth was charred and black,

Fire had swept from pole to pole;

And the bottom of the sea

Was as brittle as a bowl;

And the timbered mountain-top

Was as naked as a skull,—

Nothing left, nothing left,

Of the Earth so beautiful!

“Earth,” I said, “how can I leave you?”

“You are all I have,” I said;

“What is left to take my mind up,

Living always, and you dead?”

“Speak!” I said, “Oh, tell me something!

Make a sign that I can see!

For a keepsake!  To keep always!

Quick!—before God misses me!”

And I listened for a voice;—

But my heart was all I heard;

Not a screech-owl, not a loon,

Not a tree-toad said a word.

And I waited for a sign;—

Coals and cinders, nothing more;

And a little cloud of smoke

Floating on a valley floor.

And I peered into the smoke

Till it rotted, like a fog:—

There, encompassed round by fire,

Stood a blue-flag in a bog!

Little flames came wading out,

Straining, straining towards its stem,

But it was so blue and tall

That it scorned to think of them!

Red and thirsty were their tongues,

As the tongues of wolves must be,

But it was so blue and tall—

Oh, I laughed, I cried, to see!

All my heart became a tear,

All my soul became a tower,

Never loved I anything

As I loved that tall blue flower!

It was all the little boats

That had ever sailed the sea,

It was all the little books

That had gone to school with me;

On its roots like iron claws

Rearing up so blue and tall,—

It was all the gallant Earth

With its back against a wall!

In a breath, ere I had breathed,—

Oh, I laughed, I cried, to see!—

I was kneeling at its side,

And it leaned its head on me!

Crumbling stones and sliding sand

Is the road to Heaven now;

Icy at my straining knees

Drags the awful under-tow;

Soon but stepping-stones of dust

Will the road to Heaven be,—

Father, Son and Holy Ghost,

Reach a hand and rescue me!

“There—there, my blue-flag flower;

Hush—hush—go to sleep;

That is only God you hear,

Counting up His folded sheep!

Lullabye—lullabye—

That is only God that calls,

Missing me, seeking me,

Ere the road to nothing falls!

He will set His mighty feet

Firmly on the sliding sand;

Like a little frightened bird

I will creep into His hand;

I will tell Him all my grief,

I will tell Him all my sin;

He will give me half His robe

For a cloak to wrap you in.

Lullabye—lullabye—”

Rocks the burnt-out planet free!—

Father, Son and Holy Ghost,

Reach a hand and rescue me!

Ah, the voice of love at last!

Lo, at last the face of light!

And the whole of His white robe

For a cloak against the night!

And upon my heart asleep

All the things I ever knew!—

“Holds Heaven not some cranny, Lord,

For a flower so tall and blue?”

All’s well and all’s well!

Gay the lights of Heaven show!

In some moist and Heavenly place

We will set it out to grow.

     Ah, could I lay me down in this long grass

And close my eyes, and let the quiet wind

Blow over me—I am so tired, so tired

Of passing pleasant places!  All my life,

Following Care along the dusty road,

Have I looked back at loveliness and sighed;

Yet at my hand an unrelenting hand

Tugged ever, and I passed.  All my life long

Over my shoulder have I looked at peace;

And now I fain would lie in this long grass

And close my eyes.

Yet onward!

Cat birds call

Through the long afternoon, and creeks at dusk

Are guttural.  Whip-poor-wills wake and cry,

Drawing the twilight close about their throats.

Only my heart makes answer.  Eager vines

Go up the rocks and wait; flushed apple-trees

Pause in their dance and break the ring for me;

Dim, shady wood-roads, redolent of fern

And bayberry, that through sweet bevies thread

Of round-faced roses, pink and petulant,

Look back and beckon ere they disappear.

Only my heart, only my heart responds.

Yet, ah, my path is sweet on either side

All through the dragging day,—sharp underfoot

And hot, and like dead mist the dry dust hangs—

But far, oh, far as passionate eye can reach,

And long, ah, long as rapturous eye can cling,

The world is mine: blue hill, still silver lake,

Broad field, bright flower, and the long white road

A gateless garden, and an open path:

My feet to follow, and my heart to hold.

     No matter what I say,

All that I really love

Is the rain that flattens on the bay,

And the eel-grass in the cove;

The jingle-shells that lie and bleach

At the tide-line, and the trace

Of higher tides along the beach:

Nothing in this place.

     There will be rose and rhododendron

When you are dead and under ground;

Still will be heard from white syringas

Heavy with bees, a sunny sound;

Still will the tamaracks be raining

After the rain has ceased, and still

Will there be robins in the stubble,

Brown sheep upon the warm green hill.

Spring will not ail nor autumn falter;

Nothing will know that you are gone,

Saving alone some sullen plough-land

None but yourself sets foot upon;

Saving the may-weed and the pig-weed

Nothing will know that you are dead,—

These, and perhaps a useless wagon

Standing beside some tumbled shed.

Oh, there will pass with your great passing

Little of beauty not your own,—

Only the light from common water,

Only the grace from simple stone!

     Ho, Giant!  This is I!

I have built me a bean-stalk into your sky!

La,—but it’s lovely, up so high!

This is how I came,—I put

Here my knee, there my foot,

Up and up, from shoot to shoot—

And the blessed bean-stalk thinning

Like the mischief all the time,

Till it took me rocking, spinning,

In a dizzy, sunny circle,

Making angles with the root,

Far and out above the cackle

Of the city I was born in,

Till the little dirty city

In the light so sheer and sunny

Shone as dazzling bright and pretty

As the money that you find

In a dream of finding money—

What a wind!  What a morning!—

Till the tiny, shiny city,

When I shot a glance below,

Shaken with a giddy laughter,

Sick and blissfully afraid,

Was a dew-drop on a blade,

And a pair of moments after

Was the whirling guess I made,—

And the wind was like a whip

Cracking past my icy ears,

And my hair stood out behind,

And my eyes were full of tears,

Wide-open and cold,

More tears than they could hold,

The wind was blowing so,

And my teeth were in a row,

Dry and grinning,

And I felt my foot slip,

And I scratched the wind and whined,

And I clutched the stalk and jabbered,

With my eyes shut blind,—

What a wind!  What a wind!

Your broad sky, Giant,

Is the shelf of a cupboard;

I make bean-stalks, I’m

A builder, like yourself,

But bean-stalks is my trade,

I couldn’t make a shelf,

Don’t know how they’re made,

Now, a bean-stalk is more pliant—

La, what a climb!

     White with daisies and red with sorrel

And empty, empty under the sky!—

Life is a quest and love a quarrel—

Here is a place for me to lie.

Daisies spring from damned seeds,

And this red fire that here I see

Is a worthless crop of crimson weeds,

Cursed by farmers thriftily.

But here, unhated for an hour,

The sorrel runs in ragged flame,

The daisy stands, a bastard flower,

Like flowers that bear an honest name.

And here a while, where no wind brings

The baying of a pack athirst,

May sleep the sleep of blessed things,

The blood too bright, the brow accurst.

     Death devours all lovely things;

Lesbia with her sparrow

Shares the darkness,—presently

Every bed is narrow.

Unremembered as old rain

Dries the sheer libation,

And the little petulant hand

Is an annotation.

After all, my erstwhile dear,

My no longer cherished,

Need we say it was not love,

Now that love is perished?

     If it were only still!—

With far away the shrill

Crying of a cock;

Or the shaken bell

From a cow’s throat

Moving through the bushes;

Or the soft shock

Of wizened apples falling

From an old tree

In a forgotten orchard

Upon the hilly rock!

Oh, grey hill,

Where the grazing herd

Licks the purple blossom,

Crops the spiky weed!

Oh, stony pasture,

Where the tall mullein

Stands up so sturdy

On its little seed!

     I

I had forgotten how the frogs must sound

After a year of silence, else I think

I should not so have ventured forth alone

At dusk upon this unfrequented road.

     II

I am waylaid by Beauty.  Who will walk

Between me and the crying of the frogs?

Oh, savage Beauty, suffer me to pass,

That am a timid woman, on her way

From one house to another!

     The railroad track is miles away,

And the day is loud with voices speaking,

Yet there isn’t a train goes by all day

But I hear its whistle shrieking.

All night there isn’t a train goes by,

Though the night is still for sleep and dreaming

But I see its cinders red on the sky,

And hear its engine steaming.

My heart is warm with the friends I make,

And better friends I’ll not be knowing,

Yet there isn’t a train I wouldn’t take,

No matter where it’s going.

     These wet rocks where the tide has been,

Barnacled white and weeded brown

And slimed beneath to a beautiful green,

These wet rocks where the tide went down

Will show again when the tide is high

Faint and perilous, far from shore,

No place to dream, but a place to die,—

The bottom of the sea once more.

There was a child that wandered through

A giant’s empty house all day,—

House full of wonderful things and new,

But no fit place for a child to play.

     April this year, not otherwise

Than April of a year ago,

Is full of whispers, full of sighs,

Of dazzling mud and dingy snow;

Hepaticas that pleased you so

Are here again, and butterflies.

There rings a hammering all day,

And shingles lie about the doors;

In orchards near and far away

The grey wood-pecker taps and bores;

The men are merry at their chores,

And children earnest at their play.

The larger streams run still and deep,

Noisy and swift the small brooks run

Among the mullein stalks the sheep

Go up the hillside in the sun,

Pensively,—only you are gone,

You that alone I cared to keep.

     For the sake of some things

That be now no more

I will strew rushes

On my chamber-floor,

I will plant bergamot

At my kitchen-door.

For the sake of dim things

That were once so plain

I will set a barrel

Out to catch the rain,

I will hang an iron pot

On an iron crane.

Many things be dead and gone

That were brave and gay;

For the sake of these things

I will learn to say,

“An it please you, gentle sirs,”

“Alack!” and “Well-a-day!”

     Down, you mongrel, Death!

Back into your kennel!

I have stolen breath

In a stalk of fennel!

You shall scratch and you shall whine

Many a night, and you shall worry

Many a bone, before you bury

One sweet bone of mine!

When shall I be dead?

When my flesh is withered,

And above my head

Yellow pollen gathered

All the empty afternoon?

When sweet lovers pause and wonder

Who am I that lie thereunder,

Hidden from the moon?

This my personal death?—

That lungs be failing

To inhale the breath

Others are exhaling?

This my subtle spirit’s end?—

Ah, when the thawed winter splashes

Over these chance dust and ashes,

Weep not me, my friend!

Me, by no means dead

In that hour, but surely

When this book, unread,

Rots to earth obscurely,

And no more to any breast,

Close against the clamorous swelling

Of the thing there is no telling,

Are these pages pressed!

When this book is mould,

And a book of many

Waiting to be sold

For a casual penny,

In a little open case,

In a street unclean and cluttered,

Where a heavy mud is spattered

From the passing drays,

Stranger, pause and look;

From the dust of ages

Lift this little book,

Turn the tattered pages,

Read me, do not let me die!

Search the fading letters, finding

Steadfast in the broken binding

All that once was I!

When these veins are weeds,

When these hollowed sockets

Watch the rooty seeds

Bursting down like rockets,

And surmise the spring again,

Or, remote in that black cupboard,

Watch the pink worms writhing upward

At the smell of rain,

Boys and girls that lie

Whispering in the hedges,

Do not let me die,

Mix me with your pledges;

Boys and girls that slowly walk

In the woods, and weep, and quarrel,

Staring past the pink wild laurel,

Mix me with your talk,

Do not let me die!

Farmers at your raking,

When the sun is high,

While the hay is making,

When, along the stubble strewn,

Withering on their stalks uneaten,

Strawberries turn dark and sweeten

In the lapse of noon;

Shepherds on the hills,

In the pastures, drowsing

To the tinkling bells

Of the brown sheep browsing;

Sailors crying through the storm;

Scholars at your study; hunters

Lost amid the whirling winter’s

Whiteness uniform;

Men that long for sleep;

Men that wake and revel;—

If an old song leap

To your senses’ level

At such moments, may it be

Sometimes, though a moment only,

Some forgotten, quaint and homely

Vehicle of me!

Women at your toil,

Women at your leisure

Till the kettle boil,

Snatch of me your pleasure,

Where the broom-straw marks the leaf;

Women quiet with your weeping

Lest you wake a workman sleeping,

Mix me with your grief!

Boys and girls that steal

From the shocking laughter

Of the old, to kneel

By a dripping rafter

Under the discolored eaves,

Out of trunks with hingeless covers

Lifting tales of saints and lovers,

Travelers, goblins, thieves,

Suns that shine by night,

Mountains made from valleys,—

Bear me to the light,

Flat upon your bellies

By the webby window lie,

Where the little flies are crawling,—

Read me, margin me with scrawling,

Do not let me die!

Sexton, ply your trade!

In a shower of gravel

Stamp upon your spade!

Many a rose shall ravel,

Many a metal wreath shall rust

In the rain, and I go singing

Through the lots where you are flinging

Yellow clay on dust!

     My heart is what it was before,

A house where people come and go;

But it is winter with your love,

The sashes are beset with snow.

I light the lamp and lay the cloth,

I blow the coals to blaze again;

But it is winter with your love,

The frost is thick upon the pane.

I know a winter when it comes:

The leaves are listless on the boughs;

I watched your love a little while,

And brought my plants into the house.

I water them and turn them south,

I snap the dead brown from the stem;

But it is winter with your love,—

I only tend and water them.

There was a time I stood and watched

The small, ill-natured sparrows’ fray;

I loved the beggar that I fed,

I cared for what he had to say,

I stood and watched him out of sight;

Today I reach around the door

And set a bowl upon the step;

My heart is what it was before,

But it is winter with your love;

I scatter crumbs upon the sill,

And close the window,—and the birds

May take or leave them, as they will.

     People that build their houses inland,

People that buy a plot of ground

Shaped like a house, and build a house there,

Far from the sea-board, far from the sound

Of water sucking the hollow ledges,

Tons of water striking the shore,—

What do they long for, as I long for

One salt smell of the sea once more?

People the waves have not awakened,

Spanking the boats at the harbor’s head,

What do they long for, as I long for,—

Starting up in my inland bed,

Beating the narrow walls, and finding

Neither a window nor a door,

Screaming to God for death by drowning,—

One salt taste of the sea once more?

     Minstrel, what have you to do

With this man that, after you,

Sharing not your happy fate,

Sat as England’s Laureate?

Vainly, in these iron days,

Strives the poet in your praise,

Minstrel, by whose singing side

Beauty walked, until you died.

Still, though none should hark again,

Drones the blue-fly in the pane,

Thickly crusts the blackest moss,

Blows the rose its musk across,

Floats the boat that is forgot

None the less to Camelot.

Many a bard’s untimely death

Lends unto his verses breath;

Here’s a song was never sung:

Growing old is dying young.

Minstrel, what is this to you:

That a man you never knew,

When your grave was far and green,

Sat and gossipped with a queen?

Thalia knows how rare a thing

Is it, to grow old and sing;

When a brown and tepid tide

Closes in on every side.

Who shall say if Shelley’s gold

Had withstood it to grow old?

     “Thin Rain, whom are you haunting,

That you haunt my door?”

—Surely it is not I she’s wanting;

Someone living here before—

“Nobody’s in the house but me:

You may come in if you like and see.”

Thin as thread, with exquisite fingers,—

Have you seen her, any of you?—

Grey shawl, and leaning on the wind,

And the garden showing through?

Glimmering eyes,—and silent, mostly,

Sort of a whisper, sort of a purr,

Asking something, asking it over,

If you get a sound from her.—

Ever see her, any of you?—

Strangest thing I’ve ever known,—

Every night since I moved in,

And I came to be alone.

“Thin Rain, hush with your knocking!

You may not come in!

This is I that you hear rocking;

Nobody’s with me, nor has been!”

Curious, how she tried the window,—

Odd, the way she tries the door,—

Wonder just what sort of people

Could have had this house before . . .

     I know what my heart is like

Since your love died:

It is like a hollow ledge

Holding a little pool

Left there by the tide,

A little tepid pool,

Drying inward from the edge.

     OH, come again to Astolat!

I will not ask you to be kind.

And you may go when you will go,

And I will stay behind.

I will not say how dear you are,

Or ask you if you hold me dear,

Or trouble you with things for you

The way I did last year.

So still the orchard, Lancelot,

So very still the lake shall be,

You could not guess—though you should guess—

What is become of me.

So wide shall be the garden-walk,

The garden-seat so very wide,

You needs must think—if you should think—

The lily maid had died.

Save that, a little way away,

I’d watch you for a little while,

To see you speak, the way you speak,

And smile,—if you should smile.

     Mine is a body that should die at sea!

And have for a grave, instead of a grave

Six feet deep and the length of me,

All the water that is under the wave!

And terrible fishes to seize my flesh,

Such as a living man might fear,

And eat me while I am firm and fresh,—

Not wait till I’ve been dead for a year!

     Butterflies are white and blue

In this field we wander through.

Suffer me to take your hand.

Death comes in a day or two.

All the things we ever knew

Will be ashes in that hour,

Mark the transient butterfly,

How he hangs upon the flower.

Suffer me to take your hand.

Suffer me to cherish you

Till the dawn is in the sky.

Whether I be false or true,

Death comes in a day or two.

     OH, here the air is sweet and still,

And soft’s the grass to lie on;

And far away’s the little hill

They took for Christ to die on.

And there’s a hill across the brook,

And down the brook’s another;

But, oh, the little hill they took,—

I think I am its mother!

The moon that saw Gethsemane,

I watch it rise and set:

It has so many things to see,

They help it to forget.

But little hills that sit at home

So many hundred years,

Remember Greece, remember Rome,

Remember Mary’s tears.

And far away in Palestine,

Sadder than any other,

Grieves still the hill that I call mine,—

I think I am its mother!

     Doubt no more that Oberon—

Never doubt that Pan

Lived, and played a reed, and ran

After nymphs in a dark forest,

In the merry, credulous days,—

Lived, and led a fairy band

Over the indulgent land!

Ah, for in this dourest, sorest

Age man’s eye has looked upon,

Death to fauns and death to fays,

Still the dog-wood dares to raise—

Healthy tree, with trunk and root—

Ivory bowls that bear no fruit,

And the starlings and the jays—

Birds that cannot even sing—

Dare to come again in spring!