Project Gutenberg's By the Aurelian Wall and Other Elegies, by Bliss Carman This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license Title: By the Aurelian Wall and Other Elegies Author: Bliss Carman Release Date: September 15, 2016 [EBook #53053] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BY THE AURELIAN WALL *** Produced by Larry B. Harrison, Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Books project.) [Image of the book's cover unavailable.] By the Aurelian Wall By the Aurelian Wall {3} {4} {5} And Other Elegies By Bliss Carman Author of Low Tide on Grand Pré, Behind the Arras, Ballads of Lost Haven, &c. Lamson, Wolffe and Company Boston, New York and London MDCCCXCVIII Copyright, 1898, By Lamson, Wolffe and Company. ——— All rights reserved. Norwood Press J. S. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith Norwood Mass. U.S.A. CONTENTS By the Aurelian Wall, 9 The White Gull, 15 The Country of Har, 32 To Richard Lovelace, 42 A Seamark, 44 The Word of the Water, 57 Phillips Brooks, 59 John Eliot Bowen, 64 Henry George, 67 Ilicet, 70 To Raphael, 76 To P. V., 82 A Norse Child’s Requiem, 87 In the Heart of the Hills, 91 An Afterword, 96 Seven Wind Songs, 102 Andrew Straton, 112 The Grave-Tree, 127 BY THE AURELIAN WALL In Memory of John Keats BY the Aurelian Wall, {6} {7} {8} {9} BY the Aurelian Wall, Where the long shadows of the centuries fall From Caius Cestius’ tomb, A weary mortal seeking rest found room For quiet burial, Leaving among his friends A book of lyrics. Such untold amends A traveller might make In a strange country, bidden to partake Before he farther wends; Who shyly should bestow The foreign reed-flute they had seen him blow And finger cunningly, On one of the dark children standing by, Then lift his cloak and go. The years pass. And the child Thoughtful beyond his fellows, grave and mild, Treasures the rough-made toy, Until one day he blows it for clear joy, And wakes the music wild. His fondness makes it seem A thing first fashioned in delirious dream, Some god had cut and tried, And filled with yearning passion, and cast aside On some far woodland stream,— After long years to be Found by the stranger and brought over sea, A marvel and delight To ease the noon and pierce the dark blue night, For children such as he. He learns the silver strain Wherewith the ghostly houses of gray rain And lonely valleys ring, When the untroubled whitethroats make the spring A world without a stain; Then on his river reed, With strange and unsuspected notes that plead Of their own wild accord For utterances no bird’s throat could afford, Lifts it to human need. His comrades leave their play, When calling and compelling far away By river-slope and hill, He pipes their wayward footsteps where he will, All the long lovely day. Even his elders come. “Surely the child is elvish,” murmur some, And shake the knowing head; “Give us the good old simple things instead, Our fathers used to hum.” Others at the open door Smile when they hear what they have hearkened for These many summers now, Believing they should live to learn somehow Things never known before. But he can only tell How the flute’s whisper lures him with a spell, Yet always just eludes The lost perfection over which he broods; And how he loves it well. Till all the country-side, Familiar with his piping far and wide, Has taken for its own That weird enchantment down the evening blown,— Its glory and its pride. And so his splendid name, {10} {11} {12} {13} Who left the book of lyrics and small fame Among his fellows then, Spreads through the world like autumn—who knows when?— Till all the hillsides flame. Grand Pré and Margaree Hear it upbruited from the unresting sea; And the small Gaspareau, Whose yellow leaves repeat it, seems to know A new felicity. Even the shadows tall, Walking at sundown through the plain, recall A mound the grasses keep, Where once a mortal came and found long sleep By the Aurelian Wall. THE WHITE GULL For the Centenary of the Birth of Shelley I UP by the idling reef-set bell The tide comes in; And to the idle heart to-day The wind has many things to say; The sea has many a tale to tell His younger kin. For we are his, bone of his bone, Breath of his breath; The doom tides sway us at their will; The sky of being rounds us still; And over us at last is blown The wind of death. II {14} {15} {16} A HUNDRED years ago to-day There came a soul, A pilgrim of the perilous light, Treading the spheral paths of night, On whom the word and vision lay With dread control. Now the pale Summer lingers near, And talks to me Of all her wayward journeyings, And the old, sweet, forgotten things She loved and lost and dreamed of here By the blue sea. The great cloud-navies, one by one, Bend sails and fill From ports below the round sea-verge; I watch them gather and emerge, And steer for havens of the sun Beyond the hill. The gray sea-horses troop and roam; The shadows fly Along the wind-floor at their heels; And where the golden daylight wheels, A white gull searches the blue dome With keening cry. And something, Shelley, like thy fame Dares the wide morn In that sea-rover’s glimmering flight, As if the Northland and the night Should hear thy splendid valiant name Put scorn to scorn. III Thou heart of all the hearts of men, Tameless and free, And vague as that marsh-wandering fire, Leading the world’s outworn desire A night march down this ghostly fen From sea to sea! Through this divided camp of dream Thy feet have passed, As one who should set hand to rouse His comrades from their heavy drowse; For only their own deeds redeem God’s sons at last. But the dim world will dream and sleep Beneath thy hand, As poppies in the windy morn, Or valleys where the standing corn Whispers when One goes forth to reap The weary land. O captain of the rebel host, Lead forth and far! Thy toiling troopers of the night Press on the unavailing fight; The sombre field is not yet lost, With thee for star. Thy lips have set the hail and haste Of clarions free To bugle down the wintry verge Of time forever, where the surge Thunders and crumbles on a waste And open sea. IV {17} {18} {19} {20} {21} Did the cold Norns who pattern life With haste and rest Take thought to cheer their pilgrims on Through trackless twilights vast and wan, Across the failure and the strife, From quest to quest,— Set their last kiss upon thy face, And let thee go To tell the haunted whisperings Of unimaginable things, Which plague thy fellows with a trace They cannot know? So they might fashion and send forth Their house of doom, Through the pale splendor of the night, In vibrant, hurled, impetuous flight, A resonant meteor of the North From gloom to gloom. V I THINK thou must have wandered far With Spring for guide, And heard the shy-born forest flowers Talk to the wind among the showers, Through sudden doorways left ajar When the wind sighed; Thou must have heard the marching sweep Of blown white rain Go volleying up the icy kills,— And watched with Summer when the hills Muttered of freedom in their sleep And slept again. Surely thou wert a lonely one, Gentle and wild; And the round sun delayed for thee In the red moorlands by the sea, When Tyrian Autumn lured thee on, A wistful child, To rove the tranquil, vacant year, From dale to dale; And the great Mother took thy face Between her hands for one long gaze, And bade thee follow without fear The endless trail. And thy clear spirit, half forlorn, Seeking its own, Dwelt with the nomad tents of rain, Marched with the gold-red ranks of grain, Or ranged the frontiers of the morn, And was alone. VI {22} {23} {24} {25} One brief perturbed and glorious day! How couldst thou learn The quiet of the forest sun, Where the dark, whispering rivers run The journey that hath no delay And no return? And yet within thee flamed and sang The dauntless heart, Knowing all passion and the pain On man’s imperious disdain, Since God’s great part in thee gave pang To earth’s frail part. It held the voices of the hills Deep in its core; The wandering shadows of the sea Called to it,—would not let it be; The harvest of those barren rills Was in its store. Thine was a love that strives and calls Outcast from home, Burning to free the soul of man With some new life. How strange, a ban Should set thy sleep beneath the walls Of changeless Rome! VII More soft, I deem, from spring to spring, Thy sleep would be Where this far western headland lies With its imperial azure skies, Under thee hearing beat and swing The eternal sea. Where all the livelong brooding day And all night long, The far sea-journeying wind should come Down to the doorway of thy home, To lure thee ever the old way With the old song. But the dim forest would so house Thy heart so dear, Even the low surf of the rain, Where ghostly centuries complain, Might beat against thy door and rouse No heartache here. For here the thrushes, calm, supreme, Forever reign, Whose gloriously kingly golden throats Regather their forgotten notes In keys where lurk no ruin of dream, No tinge of pain. And here the ruthless noisy sea, With the tide’s will, The strong gray wrestler, should in vain Put forth his hand on thee again— Lift up his voice and call to thee, And thou be still. For thou hast overcome at last; And fate and fear And strife and rumor now no more Vex thee by any wind-vexed shore, Down the strewn ways thy feet have passed Far, far from here. VIII {26} {27} {28} {29} {30} Up by the idling, idling bell The tide comes in; And to the restless heart to-day The wind has many things to say; The sea has many a tale to tell His younger kin. The gray sea-horses troop and roam; The shadows fly Along the wind-floor at their heels; And where the golden daylight wheels, A white gull searches the blue dome With keening cry. THE COUNTRY OF HAR For the Centenary of Blake’s “Songs of Innocence” ONCE a hundred years ago There was a light in London town, For an angel of the snow Walked her street sides up and down. As a visionary boy He put forth his hand to smite Songs of innocence and joy From the crying chords of night, Like a muttering of thunder Heard beneath the polar star; For his soul was all a-wonder At the calling vales of Har. He, a traveller by day And a pilgrim of the sun, Took his uncompanioned way Where the journey is not done. Where no mortal might aspire His clear heart was set to climb, To the uplands of desire And the river wells of time. Home he wandered to the valley Where the springs of morning are, And the sea-bright cohorts rally On the twilit plains of Har. There he found the Book of Thel In the lily-garth of bliss, Fashioned, how no man can tell, As a white windflower is: Like the lulling of a sigh Uttered in the trembling grass, When a shower is gone by, And the sweeping shadows pass,— Through the hyacinthine weather, Wheel them down without a jar,— Heaving all the dappled heather In the streaming vales of Har. There was manna in the rain; And above the rills, a voice: “Son of mine, dost thou complain? I will make thee to rejoice. “Thou shalt be a child to men, With confusion on thy speech; And the worlds within thy ken Shall not lie within thy reach. “But the rainbirds shall discover, And the daffodils unbar, Quiet waters for their lover {31} {32} {33} {34} {35} {36} Quiet waters for their lover On the shining plains of Har. “April rain and iron frost Shall make flowers to thy hand; Every field thy feet have crossed Shall revive from death’s command. “Hunting with a leash of wind Through the corners of the earth, Take the hounds of Spring to find The forgotten trails of mirth; “For the lone child-heart is dying Of a love no time can mar, Hearing not a voice replying From the gladder vales of Har. “Flame thy heart forth! Yet, no haste: Have not I prepared for thee The king’s chambers of the East And the wind halls of the sea? “Be a gospeller of things Nowhere written through the wild, With that gloaming call of Spring’s, When old secrets haunt the child. “Let the bugler of my going Wake no clarion of war; For the paper reeds are blowing On the river plains of Har.” Centuries of soiled renown To the roaring dark have gone: There is woe in London town, And a crying for the dawn. April frost and iron rain Ripen the dead fruit of lust, And the sons of God remain The dream children of the dust, For their heart hath in derision, And their jeers have mocked afar, The delirium of vision From the holy vales of Har. Once in Autumn came a dream; The white Herald of the North, Faring West to ford my stream, Passed my lodge and bade me forth; Glad I rose and went with him, With my shoulder in his hand; The auroral world grew dim, And the idle harvest land. Then I saw the warder lifting From its berg the Northern bar, And eternal snows were drifting On the wind-bleak plains of Har. “Listen humbly,” said my guide. “I am drear, for I am death,” Whispered Snow; but Wind replied, “I outlive thee by a breath, I am Time.” And then I heard, Dearer than all wells of dew, One gray golden-shafted bird Hail the uplands; so I knew Spring, the angel of our sorrow, Tarrying so seeming far, Should return with some long morrow In the calling vales of Har. {37} {38} {39} {40} {41} {42} TO RICHARD LOVELACE AH, Lovelace, what desires have sway In the white shadow of your heart, Which no more measures day by day, Nor sets the years apart? How many seasons for your sake Have taught men over, age by age, “Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage!”— Since that first April when you fared Into the Gatehouse, well content, Caring for nothing so you cared For honor and for Kent. How many, since the April rain Beat drear and blossomless and hoar Through London, when you left Shoe Lane, A-marching to no war! Till now, with April on the sea, And sunshine in the woven year, The rain-winds loose from reverie A lyric and a cheer. A SEAMARK A Threnody for Robert Louis Stevenson COLD, the dull cold! What ails the sun, And takes the heart out of the day? What makes the morning look so mean, The Common so forlorn and gray? The wintry city’s granite heart Beats on in iron mockery, And like the roaming mountain rains, I hear the thresh of feet go by. It is the lonely human surf Surging through alleys chill with grime, The muttering churning ceaseless floe Adrift out of the North of time. Fades, it all fades! I only see The poster with its reds and blues Bidding the heart stand still to take Its desolating stab of news. That intimate and magic name: “Dead in Samoa.” ... Cry your cries, O city of the golden dome, Under the gray Atlantic skies! But I have wander-biddings now. Far down the latitudes of sun, An island mountain of the sea, Piercing the green and rosy zone, Goes up into the wondrous day. And there the brown-limbed island men Are bearing up for burial, Within the sun’s departing ken, The master of the roving kind. And there where time will set no mark For his irrevocable rest, Under the spacious melting dark, With all the nomad tented stars About him, they have laid him down Above the crumbling of the sea, Beyond the turmoil of renown. {43} {44} {45} {46} {47} Beyond the turmoil of renown. O all you hearts about the world In whom the truant gipsy blood, Under the frost of this pale time, Sleeps like the daring sap and flood That dream of April and reprieve! You whom the haunted vision drives, Incredulous of home and ease, Perfection’s lovers all your lives! You whom the wander-spirit loves To lead by some forgotten clue Forever vanishing beyond Horizon brinks forever new; The road, unmarked, ordained, whereby Your brothers of the field and air Before you, faithful, blind and glad, Emerged from chaos pair by pair; The road whereby you too must come, In the unvexed and fabled years Into the country of your dream, With all your knowledge in arrears! You, who can never quite forget Your glimpse of Beauty as she passed, The well-head where her knee was pressed, The dew wherein her foot was cast; O you who bid the paint and clay Be glorious when you are dead, And fit the plangent words in rhyme Where the dark secret lurks unsaid; You brethren of the light-heart guild, The mystic fellowcraft of joy, Who tarry for the news of truth, And listen for some vast ahoy Blown in from sea, who crowd the wharves With eager eyes that wait the ship Whose foreign tongue may fill the world With wondrous tales from lip to lip; Our restless loved adventurer, On secret orders come to him, Has slipped his cable, cleared the reef, And melted on the white sea-rim. O granite hills, go down in blue! And like green clouds in opal calms, You anchored islands of the main, Float up your loom of feathery palms! For deep within your dales, where lies A valiant earthling stark and dumb, This savage undiscerning heart Is with the silent chiefs who come To mourn their kin and bear him gifts,— Who kiss his hand, and take their place, This last night he receives his friends, The journey-wonder on his face. He “was not born for age.” Ah no, For everlasting youth is his! Part of the lyric of the earth With spring and leaf and blade he is. ’Twill nevermore be April now But there will lurk a thought of him At the street corners, gay with flowers From rainy valleys purple-dim. O chiefs, you do not mourn alone! In that stern North where mystery broods, Our mother grief has many sons {48} {49} {50} {51} {52} Bred in those iron solitudes. It does not help them, to have laid Their coil of lightning under seas; They are as impotent as you To mend the loosened wrists and knees. And yet how many a harvest night, When the great luminous meteors flare Along the trenches of the dusk, The men who dwell beneath the Bear, Seeing those vagrants of the sky Float through the deep beyond their hark, Like Arabs through the wastes of air,— A flash, a dream, from dark to dark,— Must feel the solemn large surmise: By a dim vast and perilous way We sweep through undetermined time, Illumining this quench of clay, A moment staunched, then forth again. Ah, not alone you climb the steep To set your loving burden down Against the mighty knees of sleep. With you we hold the sombre faith Where creeds are sown like rain at sea; And leave the loveliest child of earth To slumber where he longed to be. His fathers lit the dangerous coast To steer the daring merchant home; His courage lights the dark’ning port Where every sea-worn sail must come. And since he was the type of all That strain in us which still must fare, The fleeting migrant of a day, Heart-high, outbound for otherwhere, Now therefore, where the passing ships Hang on the edges of the noon, And Northern liners trail their smoke Across the rising yellow moon, Bound for his home, with shuddering screw That beats its strength out into speed, Until the pacing watch descries On the sea-line a scarlet seed Smolder and kindle and set fire To the dark selvedge of the night, The deep blue tapestry of stars, Then sheet the dome in pearly light, There in perpetual tides of day, Where men may praise him and deplore, The place of his lone grave shall be A seamark set forevermore, High on a peak adrift with mist, And round whose bases, far beneath The snow-white wheeling tropic birds, The emerald dragon breaks his teeth. THE WORD OF THE WATER For the Unveiling of the Stevenson Fountain in San Francisco {53} {54} {55} {56} {57} GOD made me simple from the first, And good to quench your body’s thirst. Think you he has no ministers To glad that wayworn soul of yours? Here by the thronging Golden Gate For thousands and for you I wait, Seeing adventurous sails unfurled For the four corners of the world. Here passed one day, nor came again, A prince among the tribes of men. (For man, like me, is from his birth A vagabond upon this earth.) Be thankful, friend, as you pass on, And pray for Louis Stevenson, That by whatever trail he fare He be refreshed in God’s great care! PHILLIPS BROOKS {58} {59} THIS is the white winter day of his burial. Time has set here of his toiling the span Earthward, naught else. Cheer him out through the portal, Heart-beat of Boston, our utmost in man! Out in the broad open sun be his funeral, Under the blue for the city to see. Over the grieving crowd mourn for him, bugle! Churches are narrow to hold such as he. Here on the steps of the temple he builded, Rest him a space, while the great city square Throngs with his people, his thousands, his mourners; Tears for his peace and a multitude’s prayer. How comes it, think you, the town’s traffic pauses Thus at high noon? Can we wealthmongers grieve? Here in the sad surprise greatest America Shows for a moment her heart on her sleeve. She who is said to give life-blood for silver, Proves, without show, she sets higher than gold Just the straight manhood, clean, gentle, and fearless, Made in God’s likeness once more as of old. Once more the crude makeshift law overproven,— Soul pent from sin will seek God in despite; Once more the gladder way wins revelation,— Soul bent on God forgets evil outright. Once more the seraph voice sounding to beauty, Once more the trumpet tongue bidding, no fear! Once more the new, purer plan’s vindication,— Man be God’s forecast, and Heaven is here. Bear him to burial, Harvard, thy hero! Not on thy shoulders alone is he borne; They of the burden go forth on the morrow, Heavy and slow, through a world left forlorn. No grief for him, for ourselves the lamenting; What giant arm to stay courage up now? March we a thousand file up to the City, Fellow with fellow linked, he taught us how! Never dismayed at the dark nor the distance! Never deployed for the steep nor the storm! Hear him say, “Hold fast, the night wears to morning! This God of promise is God to perform.” Up with thee, heart of fear, high as the heaven! Thou hast known one wore this life without stain. What if for thee and me,—street, Yard, or Common,— Such a white captain appear not again! Fight on alone! Let the faltering spirit Within thee recall how he carried a host, Rearward and van, as Wind shoulders a dust-heap; One Way till strife be done, strive each his most. Take the last vesture of beauty upon thee, Thou doubting world; and with not an eye dim Say, when they ask if thou knowest a Saviour, “Brooks was His brother, and we have known him.” JOHN ELIOT BOWEN {60} {61} {62} {63} {64} HERE at the desk where once you sat, Who wander now with poets dead And summers gone, afield so far, There sits a stranger in your stead. Here day by day men come who knew Your steadfast ways and loved you well; And every comer with regret Has some new thing of praise to tell. The poet old, whose lyric heart Is fresh as dew and bright as flame, Longs for “his boy,” and finds you not, And goes the wistful way he came. Here where you toiled without reproach, Builded and loved and dreamed and planned, At every door, on every page, Lurks the tradition of your hand. And if to you, like reverie, There comes a thought of how they fare Whose footsteps go the round you went Of noisy street and narrow stair, Know they have learned a new desire, Which puts unfaith and faltering by; And triumph fills their dream because One life was leal, one hope was high. HENRY GEORGE WE are only common people, And he was a man like us. But he loved his fellows before himself; And he died for me and you, To redeem the world anew From cruelty and greed— For love the only creed, For honor the only law. There once was a man of the people, A man like you and me, Who worked for his daily bread, And he loved his fellows before himself. But he died at the hands of the throng To redeem the world from wrong, And we call him the Son of God, Because of the love he had. And there was a man of the people, Who sat in the people’s chair, And bade the slaves go free; For he loved his fellows before himself. They took his life; but his word They could not take. It was heard Over the beautiful earth, A thunder and whisper of love. And there is no other way, Since man of woman was born, Than the way of the rebels and saints, With loving and labor vast, To redeem the world at last From cruelty and greed; For love is the only creed, And honor the only law. ILICET FRIENDS, let him rest In midnight now. {65} {66} {67} {68} {69} {70}