The Poems of Sidney Lanier Part 9

A vulgar flaunt is the flaring day, The impudent, hot, unsparing day, That leaves not a stain nor a secret untold, -- Day the reporter, -- the gossip of old, -- Deformity's tease, -- man's common scold -- Poh! Shut the eyes, let the sense go numb When day down the eastern way has come.

'Tis clear as the moon (by the argument drawn From Design) that the world should retire at dawn.

Day kills. The leaf and the laborer breathe Death in the sun, the cities seethe, The mortal black marshes bubble with heat And puff up pestilence; nothing is sweet Has to do with the sun: even virtue will taint (Philosophers say) and manhood grow faint In the lands where the villainous sun has sway Through the livelong drag of the dreadful day.

What Eden but noon-light stares it tame, Shadowless, brazen, forsaken of shame?

For the sun tells lies on the landscape, -- now Reports me the 'what', unrelieved with the 'how', -- As messengers lie, with the facts alone, Delivering the word and withholding the tone.

But oh, the sweetness, and oh, the light Of the high-fastidious night!

Oh, to awake with the wise old stars -- The cultured, the careful, the Chesterfield stars, That wink at the work-a-day fact of crime And s.h.i.+ne so rich through the ruins of time That Baalbec is finer than London; oh, To sit on the bough that zigzags low By the woodland pool, And loudly laugh at man, the fool That vows to the vulgar sun; oh, rare, To wheel from the wood to the window where A day-worn sleeper is dreaming of care, And perch on the sill and straightly stare Through his visions; rare, to sail Aslant with the hill and a-curve with the vale, -- To flit down the shadow-shot-with-gleam, Betwixt hanging leaves and starlit stream, Hither, thither, to and fro, Silent, aimless, dayless, slow ('Aimless? Field-mice?' True, they're slain, But the night-philosophy hoots at pain, Grips, eats quick, and drops the bones In the water beneath the bough, nor moans At the death life feeds on). Robin, pray Come away, come away To the cultus of night. Abandon the day.

Have more to think and have less to say.

And CANNOT you walk now? Bah! don't hop!

Stop!

Look at the owl, scarce seen, scarce heard, O irritant, iterant, maddening bird!"

____ Baltimore, 1880.

A Song of the Future.

Sail fast, sail fast, Ark of my hopes, Ark of my dreams; Sweep lordly o'er the drowned Past, Fly glittering through the sun's strange beams; Sail fast, sail fast.

Breaths of new buds from off some drying lea With news about the Future scent the sea: My brain is beating like the heart of Haste: I'll loose me a bird upon this Present waste; Go, trembling song, And stay not long; oh, stay not long: Thou'rt only a gray and sober dove, But thine eye is faith and thy wing is love.

____ Baltimore, 1878.

Opposition.

Of fret, of dark, of thorn, of chill, Complain no more; for these, O heart, Direct the random of the will As rhymes direct the rage of art.

The lute's fixt fret, that runs athwart The strain and purpose of the string, For governance and nice consort Doth bar his wilful wavering.

The dark hath many dear avails; The dark distils divinest dews; The dark is rich with nightingales, With dreams, and with the heavenly Muse.

Bleeding with thorns of petty strife, I'll ease (as lovers do) my smart With sonnets to my lady Life Writ red in issues from the heart.

What grace may lie within the chill Of favor frozen fast in scorn!

When Good's a-freeze, we call it Ill!

This rosy Time is glacier-born.

Of fret, of dark, of thorn, of chill, Complain thou not, O heart; for these Bank-in the current of the will To uses, arts, and charities.

____ Baltimore, 1879-80.

Rose-Morals.

I. -- Red.

Would that my songs might be What roses make by day and night -- Distillments of my clod of misery Into delight.

Soul, could'st thou bare thy breast As yon red rose, and dare the day, All clean, and large, and calm with velvet rest?

Say yea -- say yea!

Ah, dear my Rose, good-bye; The wind is up; so; drift away.

That songs from me as leaves from thee may fly, I strive, I pray.

II. -- White.

Soul, get thee to the heart Of yonder tuberose: hide thee there -- There breathe the meditations of thine art Suffused with prayer.

Of spirit grave yet light, How fervent fragrances uprise Pure-born from these most rich and yet most white Virginities!

Mulched with unsavory death, Grow, Soul! unto such white estate, That virginal-prayerful art shall be thy breath, Thy work, thy fate.

____ Baltimore, 1875.

Corn.

To-day the woods are trembling through and through With s.h.i.+mmering forms, that flash before my view, Then melt in green as dawn-stars melt in blue.

The leaves that wave against my cheek caress Like women's hands; the embracing boughs express A subtlety of mighty tenderness; The copse-depths into little noises start, That sound anon like beatings of a heart, Anon like talk 'twixt lips not far apart.

The beech dreams balm, as a dreamer hums a song; Through that vague wafture, expirations strong Throb from young hickories breathing deep and long With stress and urgence bold of prisoned spring And ecstasy of burgeoning.

Now, since the dew-plashed road of morn is dry, Forth venture odors of more quality And heavenlier giving. Like Jove's locks awry, Long muscadines Rich-wreathe the s.p.a.cious foreheads of great pines, And breathe ambrosial pa.s.sion from their vines.

I pray with mosses, ferns and flowers shy That hide like gentle nuns from human eye To lift adoring perfumes to the sky.

I hear faint bridal-sighs of brown and green Dying to silent hints of kisses keen As far lights fringe into a pleasant sheen.

I start at fragmentary whispers, blown From undertalks of leafy souls unknown, Vague purports sweet, of inarticulate tone.

Dreaming of G.o.ds, men, nuns and brides, between Old companies of oaks that inward lean To join their radiant amplitudes of green I slowly move, with ranging looks that pa.s.s Up from the matted miracles of gra.s.s Into yon veined complex of s.p.a.ce Where sky and leaf.a.ge interlace So close, the heaven of blue is seen Inwoven with a heaven of green.

I wander to the zigzag-cornered fence Where sa.s.safras, intrenched in brambles dense, Contests with stolid vehemence The march of culture, setting limb and thorn As pikes against the army of the corn.

There, while I pause, my fieldward-faring eyes Take harvests, where the stately corn-ranks rise, Of inward dignities And large benignities and insights wise, Graces and modest majesties.

Thus, without theft, I reap another's field; Thus, without tilth, I house a wondrous yield, And heap my heart with quintuple crops concealed.