The Poems of Sidney Lanier Part 5

Over the huge and huddling sea, Over the Caliban sea, Bring hither my brother Antonio, -- Man, -- My injurer: night breaks the ban; Brother, I pardon thee.

____ Baltimore, 1879-80.

IV. The Marshes of Glynn.

Glooms of the live-oaks, beautiful-braided and woven With intricate shades of the vines that myriad-cloven Clamber the forks of the multiform boughs, -- Emerald twilights, -- Virginal shy lights, Wrought of the leaves to allure to the whisper of vows, When lovers pace timidly down through the green colonnades Of the dim sweet woods, of the dear dark woods, Of the heavenly woods and glades, That run to the radiant marginal sand-beach within The wide sea-marshes of Glynn; --

Beautiful glooms, soft dusks in the noon-day fire, -- Wildwood privacies, closets of lone desire, Chamber from chamber parted with wavering arras of leaves, -- Cells for the pa.s.sionate pleasure of prayer to the soul that grieves, Pure with a sense of the pa.s.sing of saints through the wood, Cool for the dutiful weighing of ill with good; --

O braided dusks of the oak and woven shades of the vine, While the riotous noon-day sun of the June-day long did s.h.i.+ne Ye held me fast in your heart and I held you fast in mine; But now when the noon is no more, and riot is rest, And the sun is a-wait at the ponderous gate of the West, And the slant yellow beam down the wood-aisle doth seem Like a lane into heaven that leads from a dream, -- Ay, now, when my soul all day hath drunken the soul of the oak, And my heart is at ease from men, and the wearisome sound of the stroke Of the scythe of time and the trowel of trade is low, And belief overmasters doubt, and I know that I know, And my spirit is grown to a lordly great compa.s.s within, That the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn Will work me no fear like the fear they have wrought me of yore When length was fatigue, and when breadth was but bitterness sore, And when terror and shrinking and dreary unnamable pain Drew over me out of the merciless miles of the plain, --

Oh, now, unafraid, I am fain to face The vast sweet visage of s.p.a.ce.

To the edge of the wood I am drawn, I am drawn, Where the gray beach glimmering runs, as a belt of the dawn, For a mete and a mark To the forest-dark: -- So: Affable live-oak, leaning low, -- Thus -- with your favor -- soft, with a reverent hand, (Not lightly touching your person, Lord of the land!) Bending your beauty aside, with a step I stand On the firm-packed sand, Free By a world of marsh that borders a world of sea.

Sinuous southward and sinuous northward the s.h.i.+mmering band Of the sand-beach fastens the fringe of the marsh to the folds of the land.

Inward and outward to northward and southward the beach-lines linger and curl As a silver-wrought garment that clings to and follows the firm sweet limbs of a girl.

Vanis.h.i.+ng, swerving, evermore curving again into sight, Softly the sand-beach wavers away to a dim gray looping of light.

And what if behind me to westward the wall of the woods stands high?

The world lies east: how ample, the marsh and the sea and the sky!

A league and a league of marsh-gra.s.s, waist-high, broad in the blade, Green, and all of a height, and unflecked with a light or a shade, Stretch leisurely off, in a pleasant plain, To the terminal blue of the main.

Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea?

Somehow my soul seems suddenly free From the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin, By the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn.

Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea!

Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun, Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily won G.o.d out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain And sight out of blindness and purity out of a stain.

As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the watery sod, Behold I will build me a nest on the greatness of G.o.d: I will fly in the greatness of G.o.d as the marsh-hen flies In the freedom that fills all the s.p.a.ce 'twixt the marsh and the skies: By so many roots as the marsh-gra.s.s sends in the sod I will heartily lay me a-hold on the greatness of G.o.d: Oh, like to the greatness of G.o.d is the greatness within The range of the marshes, the liberal marshes of Glynn.

And the sea lends large, as the marsh: lo, out of his plenty the sea Pours fast: full soon the time of the flood-tide must be: Look how the grace of the sea doth go About and about through the intricate channels that flow Here and there, Everywhere, Till his waters have flooded the uttermost creeks and the low-lying lanes, And the marsh is meshed with a million veins, That like as with rosy and silvery essences flow In the rose-and-silver evening glow.

Farewell, my lord Sun!

The creeks overflow: a thousand rivulets run 'Twixt the roots of the sod; the blades of the marsh-gra.s.s stir; Pa.s.seth a hurrying sound of wings that westward whirr; Pa.s.seth, and all is still; and the currents cease to run; And the sea and the marsh are one.

How still the plains of the waters be!

The tide is in his ecstasy.

The tide is at his highest height: And it is night.

And now from the Vast of the Lord will the waters of sleep Roll in on the souls of men, But who will reveal to our waking ken The forms that swim and the shapes that creep Under the waters of sleep?

And I would I could know what swimmeth below when the tide comes in On the length and the breadth of the marvellous marshes of Glynn.

____ Baltimore, 1878.

Clover.

Inscribed to the Memory of John Keats.

Dear uplands, Chester's favorable fields, My large unjealous Loves, many yet one -- A grave good-morrow to your Graces, all, Fair tilth and fruitful seasons!

Lo, how still!

The midmorn empties you of men, save me; Speak to your lover, meadows! None can hear.

I lie as lies yon placid Brandywine, Holding the hills and heavens in my heart For contemplation.

'Tis a perfect hour.

From founts of dawn the fluent autumn day Has rippled as a brook right pleasantly Half-way to noon; but now with widening turn Makes pause, in lucent meditation locked, And rounds into a silver pool of morn, Bottom'd with clover-fields. My heart just hears Eight lingering strokes of some far village-bell, That speak the hour so inward-voiced, meseems Time's conscience has but whispered him eight hints Of revolution. Reigns that mild surcease That stills the middle of each rural morn -- When nimble noises that with sunrise ran About the farms have sunk again to rest; When Tom no more across the horse-lot calls To sleepy d.i.c.k, nor d.i.c.k husk-voiced upbraids The sway-back'd roan for stamping on his foot With sulphurous oath and kick in flank, what time The cart-chain clinks across the slanting shaft, And, kitchenward, the rattling bucket plumps Souse down the well, where quivering ducks quack loud, And Susan Cook is singing.

Up the sky The hesitating moon slow trembles on, Faint as a new-washed soul but lately up From out a buried body. Far about, A hundred slopes in hundred fantasies Most ravis.h.i.+ngly run, so smooth of curve That I but seem to see the fluent plain Rise toward a rain of clover-blooms, as lakes Pout gentle mounds of plashment up to meet Big shower-drops. Now the little winds, as bees, Bowing the blooms come wandering where I lie Mixt soul and body with the clover-tufts, Light on my spirit, give from wing and thigh Rich pollens and divine sweet irritants To every nerve, and freshly make report Of inmost Nature's secret autumn-thought Unto some soul of sense within my frame That owns each cognizance of the outlying five, And sees, hears, tastes, smells, touches, all in one.

Tell me, dear Clover (since my soul is thine, Since I am fain give study all the day, To make thy ways my ways, thy service mine, To seek me out thy G.o.d, my G.o.d to be, And die from out myself to live in thee) -- Now, Cousin Clover, tell me in mine ear: Go'st thou to market with thy pink and green?

Of what avail, this color and this grace?

Wert thou but squat of stem and brindle-brown, Still careless herds would feed. A poet, thou: What worth, what worth, the whole of all thine art?

Three-Leaves, instruct me! I am sick of price.

Framed in the arching of two clover-stems Where-through I gaze from off my hill, afar, The s.p.a.cious fields from me to Heaven take on Tremors of change and new significance To th' eye, as to the ear a simple tale Begins to hint a parable's sense beneath.

The prospect widens, cuts all bounds of blue Where horizontal limits bend, and spreads Into a curious-hill'd and curious-valley'd Vast, Endless before, behind, around; which seems Th' incalculable Up-and-Down of Time Made plain before mine eyes. The clover-stems Still cover all the s.p.a.ce; but now they bear, For clover-blooms, fair, stately heads of men With poets' faces heartsome, dear and pale -- Sweet visages of all the souls of time Whose loving service to the world has been In the artist's way expressed and bodied. Oh, In arms' reach, here be Dante, Keats, Chopin, Raphael, Lucretius, Omar, Angelo, Beethoven, Chaucer, Schubert, Shakespeare, Bach, And Buddha (sweetest masters! Let me lay These arms this once, this humble once, about Your reverend necks -- the most containing clasp, For all in all, this world e'er saw!) and there, Yet further on, bright throngs unnamable Of workers wors.h.i.+pful, n.o.bilities In the Court of Gentle Service, silent men, Dwellers in woods, brooders on helpful art, And all the press of them, the fair, the large, That wrought with beauty.

Lo, what bulk is here?

Now comes the Course-of-things, shaped like an Ox, Slow browsing, o'er my hillside, ponderously -- The huge-brawned, tame, and workful Course-of-things, That hath his gra.s.s, if earth be round or flat, And hath his gra.s.s, if empires plunge in pain Or faiths flash out. This cool, unasking Ox Comes browsing o'er my hills and vales of Time, And thrusts me out his tongue, and curls it, sharp, And sicklewise, about my poets' heads, And twists them in, all -- Dante, Keats, Chopin, Raphael, Lucretius, Omar, Angelo, Beethoven, Chaucer, Schubert, Shakespeare, Bach, And Buddha, in one sheaf -- and champs and chews, With slantly-churning jaws, and swallows down; Then slowly plants a mighty forefoot out, And makes advance to futureward, one inch.

So: they have played their part.

And to this end?

This, G.o.d? This, troublous-breeding Earth? This, Sun Of hot, quick pains? To this no-end that ends, These Masters wrought, and wept, and sweated blood, And burned, and loved, and ached with public shame, And found no friends to breathe their loves to, save Woods and wet pillows? This was all? This Ox?

"Nay," quoth a sum of voices in mine ear, "G.o.d's clover, we, and feed His Course-of-things; The pasture is G.o.d's pasture; systems strange Of food and fiberment He hath, whereby The general brawn is built for plans of His To quality precise. Kinsman, learn this: The artist's market is the heart of man; The artist's price, some little good of man.

Tease not thy vision with vain search for ends.

The End of Means is art that works by love.

The End of Ends . . . in G.o.d's Beginning's lost."

____ West Chester, Pa., Summer of 1876.

The Waving of the Corn.

Ploughman, whose gnarly hand yet kindly wheeled Thy plough to ring this solitary tree With clover, whose round plat, reserved a-field, In cool green radius twice my length may be -- Scanting the corn thy furrows else might yield, To pleasure August, bees, fair thoughts, and me, That here come oft together -- daily I, Stretched p.r.o.ne in summer's mortal ecstasy, Do stir with thanks to thee, as stirs this morn With waving of the corn.

Unseen, the farmer's boy from round the hill Whistles a s.n.a.t.c.h that seeks his soul unsought, And fills some time with tune, howbeit shrill; The cricket tells straight on his simple thought -- Nay, 'tis the cricket's way of being still; The peddler bee drones in, and gossips naught; Far down the wood, a one-desiring dove Times me the beating of the heart of love: And these be all the sounds that mix, each morn, With waving of the corn.

From here to where the louder pa.s.sions dwell, Green leagues of hilly separation roll: Trade ends where yon far clover ridges swell.

Ye terrible Towns, ne'er claim the trembling soul That, craftless all to buy or h.o.a.rd or sell, From out your deadly complex quarrel stole To company with large amiable trees, Suck honey summer with unjealous bees, And take Time's strokes as softly as this morn Takes waving of the corn.

____ West Chester, Pa., 1876.