Behind the Arras Part 1

Behind the Arras.

by Bliss Carman.

I like the old house tolerably well, Where I must dwell Like a familiar gnome; And yet I never shall feel quite at home: I love to roam.

Day after day I loiter and explore From door to door; So many treasures lure The curious mind. What histories obscure They must immure!

I hardly know which room I care for best; This fronting west, With the strange hills in view, Where the great sun goes,--where I may go too, When my lease is through,--

Or this one for the morning and the east, Where a man may feast His eyes on looming sails, And be the first to catch their foreign hails Or spy their bales.

Then the pale summer twilights towards the pole!

It thrills my soul With wonder and delight, When gold-green shadows walk the world at night, So still, so bright.

There at the window many a time of year, Strange faces peer, Solemn though not unkind, Their wits in search of something left behind Time out of mind;

As if they once had lived here, and stole back To the window crack For a peep which seems to say, "Good fortune, brother, in your house of clay!"

And then, "Good day!"

I hear their footsteps on the gravel walk, Their sc.r.a.ps of talk, And hurrying after, reach Only the crazy sea-drone of the beach In endless speech.

And often when the autumn noons are still, By swale and hill I see their gipsy signs, Trespa.s.sing somewhere on my border lines; With what designs?

I forth afoot; but when I reach the place, Hardly a trace, Save the soft purple haze Of smouldering camp-fires, any hint betrays Who went these ways.

Or tatters of pale aster blue, descried By the roadside, Reveal whither they fled; Or the swamp maples, here and there a shred Of Indian red.

But most of all, the marvellous tapestry Engrosses me, Where such strange things are rife, Fancies of beasts and flowers, and love and strife, Woven to the life;

Degraded shapes and splendid seraph forms, And teeming swarms Of creatures gauzy dim That cloud the dusk, and painted fish that swim, At the weaver's whim;

And wonderful birds that wheel and hang in the air; And beings with hair, And moving eyes in the face, And white bone teeth and hideous grins, who race From place to place;

They build great temples to their John-a-nod, And fume and plod To deck themselves with gold, And paint themselves like chattels to be sold, Then turn to mould.

Sometimes they seem almost as real as I; I hear them sigh; I see them bow with grief, Or dance for joy like an aspen leaf; But that is brief.

They have mad wars and phantom marriages; Nor seem to guess There are dimensions still, Beyond thought's reach, though not beyond love's will, For soul to fill.

And some I call my friends, and make believe Their spirits grieve, Brood, and rejoice with mine; I talk to them in phrases quaint and fine Over the wine;

I tell them all my secrets; touch their hands; One understands Perhaps. How hard he tries To speak! And yet those glorious mild eyes, His best replies!

I even have my cronies, one or two, My cherished few.

But ah, they do not stay!

For the sun fades them and they pa.s.s away, As I grow gray.

Yet while they last how actual they seem!

Their faces beam; I give them all their names, Bertram and Gilbert, Louis, Frank and James, Each with his aims; One thinks he is a poet, and writes verse His friends rehea.r.s.e; Another is full of law; A third sees pictures which his hand can draw Without a flaw.

Strangest of all, they never rest. Day long They s.h.i.+ft and throng, Moved by invisible will, Like a great breath which puffs across my sill, And then is still;

It shakes my lovely manikins on the wall; Squall after squall, Gust upon crowding gust, It sweeps them w.i.l.l.y nilly like blown dust With glory or l.u.s.t.

It is the world-ghost, the time-spirit, come None knows where from, The viewless draughty tide And wash of being. I hear it yaw and glide, And then subside,

Along these ghostly corridors and halls Like faint footfalls; The hangings stir in the air; And when I start and challenge, "Who goes there?"

It answers, "Where?"

The wail and sob and moan of the sea's dirge, Its plangor and surge; The awful biting sough Of drifted snows along some arctic bluff, That veer and luff,

And have the vacant boding human cry, As they go by;-- Is it a banished soul Dredging the dark like a distracted mole Under a knoll?

Like some invisible henchman old and gray, Day after day I hear it come and go, With stealthy swift unmeaning to and fro, Muttering low,

Ceaseless and daft and terrible and blind, Like a lost mind.

I often chill with fear When I bethink me, What if it should peer At my shoulder here!

Perchance he drives the merry-go-round whose track Is the zodiac; His name is No-man's-friend; And his gabbling parrot-talk has neither trend, Beginning, nor end.

A prince of madness too, I'd cry, "A rat!"

And lunge thereat,-- Let out at one swift thrust The cunning arch-delusion of the dust I so mistrust,

But that I fear I should disclose a face Wearing the trace Of my own human guise, Piteous, unharmful, loving, sad, and wise, With the speaking eyes.

I would the house were rid of his grim pranks, Moaning from banks Of pine trees in the moon, Startling the silence like a demoniac loon At dead of noon,

Or whispering his fool-talk to the leaves About my eaves.

And yet how can I know 'T is not a happy Ariel masking so In mocking woe?

Then with a little broken laugh I say, s.n.a.t.c.hing away The curtain where he grinned (My feverish sight thought) like a sin unsinned, "Only the wind!"

Yet often too he steals so softly by, With half a sigh, I deem he must be mild, Fair as a woman, gentle as a child, And forest wild.

Pa.s.sing the door where an old wind-harp swings, With its five strings, Contrived long years ago By my first predecessor bent to show His handcraft so,

He lays his fingers on the aeolian wire, As a core of fire Is laid upon the blast To kindle and glow and fill the purple vast Of dark at last.

Weird wise and low, piercing and keen and glad, Or dim and sad As a forgotten strain Born when the broken legions of the rain Swept through the plain--

He plays, like some dread veiled mysteriarch, Lighting the dark, Bidding the spring grow warm, The gendering merge and loosing of spirit in form, Peace out of storm.

For music is the sacrament of love; He broods above The virgin silence, till She yields for rapture shuddering, yearning still To his sweet will.

I hear him sing, "Your harp is like a mesh, Woven of flesh And spread within the shoal Of life, where runs the tide-race of the soul In my control.

"Though my wild way may ruin what it bends, It makes amends To the frail downy clocks, Telling their seed a secret that unlocks The granite rocks.