The Poems of Sidney Lanier Part 10

Look, out of line one tall corn-captain stands Advanced beyond the foremost of his bands, And waves his blades upon the very edge And hottest thicket of the battling hedge.

Thou l.u.s.trous stalk, that ne'er mayst walk nor talk, Still shalt thou type the poet-soul sublime That leads the vanward of his timid time And sings up cowards with commanding rhyme -- Soul calm, like thee, yet fain, like thee, to grow By double increment, above, below; Soul homely, as thou art, yet rich in grace like thee, Teaching the yeomen selfless chivalry That moves in gentle curves of courtesy; Soul filled like thy long veins with sweetness tense, By every G.o.dlike sense Trans.m.u.ted from the four wild elements.

Drawn to high plans, Thou lift'st more stature than a mortal man's, Yet ever piercest downward in the mould And keepest hold Upon the reverend and steadfast earth That gave thee birth; Yea, standest smiling in thy future grave, Serene and brave, With unremitting breath Inhaling life from death, Thine epitaph writ fair in fruitage eloquent, Thyself thy monument.

As poets should, Thou hast built up thy hardihood With universal food, Drawn in select proportion fair From honest mould and vagabond air; From darkness of the dreadful night, And joyful light; From antique ashes, whose departed flame In thee has finer life and longer fame; From wounds and balms, From storms and calms, From potsherds and dry bones And ruin-stones.

Into thy vigorous substance thou hast wrought Whate'er the hand of Circ.u.mstance hath brought; Yea, into cool solacing green hast spun White radiance hot from out the sun.

So thou dost mutually leaven Strength of earth with grace of heaven; So thou dost marry new and old Into a one of higher mould; So thou dost reconcile the hot and cold, The dark and bright, And many a heart-perplexing opposite, And so, Akin by blood to high and low, Fitly thou playest out thy poet's part, Richly expending thy much-bruised heart In equal care to nourish lord in hall Or beast in stall: Thou took'st from all that thou mightst give to all.

O steadfast dweller on the selfsame spot Where thou wast born, that still repinest not -- Type of the home-fond heart, the happy lot! -- Deeply thy mild content rebukes the land Whose flimsy homes, built on the s.h.i.+fting sand Of trade, for ever rise and fall With alternation whimsical, Enduring scarce a day, Then swept away By swift engulfments of incalculable tides Whereon capricious Commerce rides.

Look, thou substantial spirit of content!

Across this little vale, thy continent, To where, beyond the mouldering mill, Yon old deserted Georgian hill Bares to the sun his piteous aged crest And seamy breast, By restless-hearted children left to lie Untended there beneath the heedless sky, As barbarous folk expose their old to die.

Upon that generous-rounding side, With gullies scarified Where keen Neglect his lash hath plied, Dwelt one I knew of old, who played at toil, And gave to coquette Cotton soul and soil.

Scorning the slow reward of patient grain, He sowed his heart with hopes of swifter gain, Then sat him down and waited for the rain.

He sailed in borrowed s.h.i.+ps of usury -- A foolish Jason on a treacherous sea, Seeking the Fleece and finding misery.

Lulled by smooth-rippling loans, in idle trance He lay, content that unthrift Circ.u.mstance Should plough for him the stony field of Chance.

Yea, gathering crops whose worth no man might tell, He staked his life on games of Buy-and-Sell, And turned each field into a gambler's h.e.l.l.

Aye, as each year began, My farmer to the neighboring city ran; Pa.s.sed with a mournful anxious face Into the banker's inner place; Parleyed, excused, pleaded for longer grace; Railed at the drought, the worm, the rust, the gra.s.s; Protested ne'er again 'twould come to pa.s.s; With many an 'oh' and 'if' and 'but alas'

Parried or swallowed searching questions rude, And kissed the dust to soften Dives's mood.

At last, small loans by pledges great renewed, He issues smiling from the fatal door, And buys with lavish hand his yearly store Till his small borrowings will yield no more.

Aye, as each year declined, With bitter heart and ever-brooding mind He mourned his fate unkind.

In dust, in rain, with might and main, He nursed his cotton, cursed his grain, Fretted for news that made him fret again, s.n.a.t.c.hed at each telegram of Future Sale, And thrilled with Bulls' or Bears' alternate wail -- In hope or fear alike for ever pale.

And thus from year to year, through hope and fear, With many a curse and many a secret tear, Striving in vain his cloud of debt to clear, At last He woke to find his foolish dreaming past, And all his best-of-life the easy prey Of squandering scamps and quacks that lined his way With vile array, From rascal statesman down to petty knave; Himself, at best, for all his bragging brave, A gamester's catspaw and a banker's slave.

Then, worn and gray, and sick with deep unrest, He fled away into the oblivious West, Unmourned, unblest.

Old hill! old hill! thou gashed and hairy Lear Whom the divine Cordelia of the year, E'en pitying Spring, will vainly strive to cheer -- King, that no subject man nor beast may own, Discrowned, undaughtered and alone -- Yet shall the great G.o.d turn thy fate, And bring thee back into thy monarch state And majesty immaculate.

Lo, through hot waverings of the August morn, Thou givest from thy vasty sides forlorn Visions of golden treasuries of corn -- Ripe largesse lingering for some bolder heart That manfully shall take thy part, And tend thee, And defend thee, With antique sinew and with modern art.

____ Sunnyside, Georgia, August, 1874.

The Symphony.

"O Trade! O Trade! would thou wert dead!

The Time needs heart -- 'tis tired of head: We're all for love," the violins said.

"Of what avail the rigorous tale Of bill for coin and box for bale?

Grant thee, O Trade! thine uttermost hope: Level red gold with blue sky-slope, And base it deep as devils grope: When all's done, what hast thou won Of the only sweet that's under the sun?

Ay, canst thou buy a single sigh Of true love's least, least ecstasy?"

Then, with a bridegroom's heart-beats trembling, All the mightier strings a.s.sembling Ranged them on the violins' side As when the bridegroom leads the bride, And, heart in voice, together cried: "Yea, what avail the endless tale Of gain by cunning and plus by sale?

Look up the land, look down the land The poor, the poor, the poor, they stand Wedged by the pressing of Trade's hand Against an inward-opening door That pressure tightens evermore: They sigh a monstrous foul-air sigh For the outside leagues of liberty, Where Art, sweet lark, translates the sky Into a heavenly melody.

'Each day, all day' (these poor folks say), 'In the same old year-long, drear-long way, We weave in the mills and heave in the kilns, We sieve mine-meshes under the hills, And thieve much gold from the Devil's bank tills, To relieve, O G.o.d, what manner of ills? -- The beasts, they hunger, and eat, and die; And so do we, and the world's a sty; Hush, fellow-swine: why nuzzle and cry?

"Swinehood hath no remedy"

Say many men, and hasten by, Clamping the nose and blinking the eye.

But who said once, in the lordly tone, "Man shall not live by bread alone But all that cometh from the Throne?"

Hath G.o.d said so?

But Trade saith "No:"

And the kilns and the curt-tongued mills say "Go!

There's plenty that can, if you can't: we know.

Move out, if you think you're underpaid.

The poor are prolific; we're not afraid; Trade is trade."'"

Thereat this pa.s.sionate protesting Meekly changed, and softened till It sank to sad requesting And suggesting sadder still: "And oh, if men might some time see How piteous-false the poor decree That trade no more than trade must be!

Does business mean, 'Die, you -- live, I?'

Then 'Trade is trade' but sings a lie: 'Tis only war grown miserly.

If business is battle, name it so: War-crimes less will shame it so, And widows less will blame it so.

Alas, for the poor to have some part In yon sweet living lands of Art, Makes problem not for head, but heart.

Vainly might Plato's brain revolve it: Plainly the heart of a child could solve it."

And then, as when from words that seem but rude We pa.s.s to silent pain that sits abrood Back in our heart's great dark and solitude, So sank the strings to gentle throbbing Of long chords change-marked with sobbing -- Motherly sobbing, not distinctlier heard Than half wing-openings of the sleeping bird, Some dream of danger to her young hath stirred.

Then stirring and demurring ceased, and lo!

Every least ripple of the strings' song-flow Died to a level with each level bow And made a great chord tranquil-surfaced so, As a brook beneath his curving bank doth go To linger in the sacred dark and green Where many boughs the still pool overlean And many leaves make shadow with their sheen.

But presently A velvet flute-note fell down pleasantly Upon the bosom of that harmony, And sailed and sailed incessantly, As if a petal from a wild-rose blown Had fluttered down upon that pool of tone And boatwise dropped o' the convex side And floated down the gla.s.sy tide And clarified and glorified The solemn s.p.a.ces where the shadows bide.

From the warm concave of that fluted note Somewhat, half song, half odor, forth did float, As if a rose might somehow be a throat: "When Nature from her far-off glen Flutes her soft messages to men, The flute can say them o'er again; Yea, Nature, singing sweet and lone, Breathes through life's strident polyphone The flute-voice in the world of tone.

Sweet friends, Man's love ascends To finer and diviner ends Than man's mere thought e'er comprehends For I, e'en I, As here I lie, A petal on a harmony, Demand of Science whence and why Man's tender pain, man's inward cry, When he doth gaze on earth and sky?

I am not overbold: I hold Full powers from Nature manifold.

I speak for each no-tongued tree That, spring by spring, doth n.o.bler be, And dumbly and most wistfully His mighty prayerful arms outspreads Above men's oft-unheeding heads, And his big blessing downward sheds.

I speak for all-shaped blooms and leaves, Lichens on stones and moss on eaves, Gra.s.ses and grains in ranks and sheaves; Broad-fronded ferns and keen-leaved canes, And briery mazes bounding lanes, And marsh-plants, thirsty-cupped for rains, And milky stems and sugary veins; For every long-armed woman-vine That round a piteous tree doth twine; For pa.s.sionate odors, and divine Pistils, and petals crystalline; All purities of shady springs, All shynesses of film-winged things That fly from tree-trunks and bark-rings; All modesties of mountain-fawns That leap to covert from wild lawns, And tremble if the day but dawns; All sparklings of small beady eyes Of birds, and sidelong glances wise Wherewith the jay hints tragedies; All piquancies of p.r.i.c.kly burs, And smoothnesses of downs and furs Of eiders and of minevers; All limpid honeys that do lie At stamen-bases, nor deny The humming-birds' fine roguery, Bee-thighs, nor any b.u.t.terfly; All gracious curves of slender wings, Bark-mottlings, fibre-spiralings, Fern-wavings and leaf-flickerings; Each dial-marked leaf and flower-bell Wherewith in every lonesome dell Time to himself his hours doth tell; All tree-sounds, rustlings of pine-cones, Wind-sighings, doves' melodious moans, And night's unearthly under-tones; All placid lakes and waveless deeps, All cool reposing mountain-steeps, Vale-calms and tranquil lotos-sleeps; -- Yea, all fair forms, and sounds, and lights, And warmths, and mysteries, and mights, Of Nature's utmost depths and heights, -- These doth my timid tongue present, Their mouthpiece and leal instrument And servant, all love-eloquent.

I heard, when '"All for love"' the violins cried: So, Nature calls through all her system wide, 'Give me thy love, O man, so long denied.'

Much time is run, and man hath changed his ways, Since Nature, in the antique fable-days, Was hid from man's true love by proxy fays, False fauns and rascal G.o.ds that stole her praise.

The nymphs, cold creatures of man's colder brain, Chilled Nature's streams till man's warm heart was fain Never to lave its love in them again.

Later, a sweet Voice 'Love thy neighbor' said; Then first the bounds of neighborhood outspread Beyond all confines of old ethnic dread.

Vainly the Jew might wag his covenant head: '"All men are neighbors,"' so the sweet Voice said.

So, when man's arms had circled all man's race, The liberal compa.s.s of his warm embrace Stretched bigger yet in the dark bounds of s.p.a.ce; With hands a-grope he felt smooth Nature's grace, Drew her to breast and kissed her sweetheart face: Yea man found neighbors in great hills and trees And streams and clouds and suns and birds and bees, And throbbed with neighbor-loves in loving these.

But oh, the poor! the poor! the poor!

That stand by the inward-opening door Trade's hand doth tighten ever more, And sigh their monstrous foul-air sigh For the outside hills of liberty, Where Nature spreads her wild blue sky For Art to make into melody!

Thou Trade! thou king of the modern days!

Change thy ways, Change thy ways; Let the sweaty laborers file A little while, A little while, Where Art and Nature sing and smile.

Trade! is thy heart all dead, all dead?

And hast thou nothing but a head?

I'm all for heart," the flute-voice said, And into sudden silence fled, Like as a blush that while 'tis red Dies to a still, still white instead.

Thereto a thrilling calm succeeds, Till presently the silence breeds A little breeze among the reeds That seems to blow by sea-marsh weeds: Then from the gentle stir and fret Sings out the melting clarionet, Like as a lady sings while yet Her eyes with salty tears are wet.

"O Trade! O Trade!" the Lady said, "I too will wish thee utterly dead If all thy heart is in thy head.

For O my G.o.d! and O my G.o.d!

What shameful ways have women trod At beckoning of Trade's golden rod!

Alas when sighs are traders' lies, And heart's-ease eyes and violet eyes Are merchandise!

O purchased lips that kiss with pain!

O cheeks coin-spotted with smirch and stain!

O trafficked hearts that break in twain!

-- And yet what wonder at my sisters' crime?

So hath Trade withered up Love's sinewy prime, Men love not women as in olden time.

Ah, not in these cold merchantable days Deem men their life an opal gray, where plays The one red Sweet of gracious ladies'-praise.

Now, comes a suitor with sharp prying eye -- Says, 'Here, you Lady, if you'll sell, I'll buy: Come, heart for heart -- a trade? What! weeping? why?'

Shame on such wooers' dapper mercery!

I would my lover kneeling at my feet In humble manliness should cry, 'O sweet!

I know not if thy heart my heart will greet: I ask not if thy love my love can meet: Whate'er thy wors.h.i.+pful soft tongue shall say, I'll kiss thine answer, be it yea or nay: I do but know I love thee, and I pray To be thy knight until my dying day.'

Woe him that cunning trades in hearts contrives!

Base love good women to base loving drives.