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Title: Wampum and Old Gold Author: Hervey Allen Release Date: August 24, 2021 [eBook #66133] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 Produced by: Al Haines *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WAMPUM AND OLD GOLD *** Wampum and Old Gold HERVEY ALLEN NEW HAVEN * YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON * HUMPHREY MILFORD * OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS MDCCCCXXI COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS ACKNOWLEDGMENT For permission to reprint poems appearing in this volume, thanks are due to the editors of The North American Review, The New Republic, Contemporary Verse, Life, La France, Harvey's Weekly, The Southern Review, The New York Times, The Boston Evening Transcript. TO FRANCIS FOWLER HOGAN SOLDIER POET CORPORAL FOURTH UNITED STATES INFANTRY KILLED IN ACTION IN THE ARGONNE FOREST OCTOBER SEVENTEENTH 1918 "Though my hands have not learned to model The dreams of a groping mind, Though my lips have not spoken their music And are leaving no songs behind, Think not that my life has been futile, Nor grieve for an unsaid word, For all that my lips might never sing My singing heart has heard. "I have etched the light on a willow With neither a plate nor style; I have made a song of the crescent moon And a poem of only a smile; Are they less because lips could not know them, These songs that my heart has known? Am I wholly mute who have sung with my heart And sung with my heart alone?" F. F. H. CONTENTS. POEMS WRITTEN SINCE 1918: Confession Despair Vale Aftermath Hylas Bacchus Is Gone Tiger Lilies Three Landscape Moods: Youth High Tide o' Life Old Age The Hermitage of Bells The Seasons: Spring's Pilgrimage Summer Autumn Portents Autumn Invocation Dream Fragment When Shady Avenue Was Shady Lane Triangles vs. Circles The Old Judge Bewitched The Wingless Victory POEMS WRITTEN IN FRANCE AT THE FRONT: The Blindman Hands Off Soldier-Poet Doomed White Light Beaumont Villiers Le Bel Gonnesse Dragon's Breath We POEMS WRITTEN SINCE 1918 CONFESSION. I think, by God! It is no lie; I shall go dreaming till I die! There is no love so real to me As the cold passion of the sea. There is no little, wind-swept town By harbors where the roads go down, Or headland gray that sits and sips The cup of ocean at its lips, And gazes at the far-off ships— Or tree or house or friend so real As visions and the dreams I feel. No—not the windy, vaultless arch Where all the white stars flame and march, Nor water at the river fords Like horses mad among the swords, Or oaks that lean from winter storms; These only give my vision forms. Away! White hands, I will not take! And kissing mouths that cry, "Awake!" For you I have no gramercy; So leave me by my lotus tree, To dream and gaze into the sky Where red suns wither up and die, I know! I know! I do not lie! I shall go dreaming till I die! DESPAIR. You who made me With first ecstasy When I was sown, And lovely things at night I will not write And burdened moan, While veiny labyrinths with mystery ran Till time and blood were life And I began— By holier things than God, Or any other shibboleth of man, Dead woman wan, By the thin, silver scream that winter morn In the dim, shuttered room where I was born, Be gone! Haunt me no more, Shroud Trailer, Go to bed. For the swift, golden wings I owe to you Flap in the dust like some loose, common shoe; Stay dead, stay dead! I fear your glimmering bust in utter air, The transparent eyes with shadowy stare, The sleepy, sleepy scent of flowers And the long hands— They fill me with despair. Touch me no more at night. Borrow no form for me Of sound or sight; For all my days are spent by cluttered streams, Distracted by a thousand things and faces, And all unuttered die great dreams Among the stagnant places. I am not what you gave your life to buy, And God knows what I shall be by and by! The motes of habit sift down grain by grain, Till I am what I am in heart and brain, So young—so old— Death keep you, darling, Deaf and blind and cold. VALE. I love the little vale between your breasts, But yet, farewell, for that is never still; My garden far from you will be at rest With lakes asleep beside a brooding hill And cedar swales in hollow valley lands With S-like streams between the O-shaped ponds, Where grow frail ferns with upturned Gothic hands And prayerful fronds. In gray half-lights 'twill be a lovely thing By Gypsy paths to wander at hearts-ease Near campaniles where the bell folk sing Down terraces of rustling linden trees, And two hills like your breasts will be in death, When lamps will cast their shadows silently, Will rise still blue above the yellow corn That ripples with a sleepy mystery. AFTERMATH. Under the placid surface of the days So seeming clear, Back of the habits of old ways, A quiet fear; The locked-up memories of war, Our Bluebeard's room, Where the blood creeps underneath the door. Never will come In streams of days that ring Like clean coins down the merry grooves of change, One without grief's alloy, Struck from pure gold of joy, Undimmed by unshed tears, Nor is it strange. For in the wraith-thronged brain Are private ghosts of pain, Aloof, like patient sick men in a crowd With half-veiled faces and old sorrow bowed— Ah! The free days can never come again! They passed with the far, rolling drums, Died to the moan and thunder of the guns, And the mad, glad, clear, lyric birdsong never comes. HYLAS. Theocritus, Idyll XIII. Where art thou, Hylas, Of the golden locks? Where art thou, Argive lad, That fed thy flocks In wind-swept Thessaly, Beside the sea? Alas! Alas! for thee, Hylas, Alas! I. When the Pleiads rose no more Rowed the heroes to the shore, Much in fear of winter gales, And they furled the wing-like sails, Carrying up the corded bales From the hollow, oaken Argo Till they lightened her of cargo. Then they beached her for the winter Where nor rocks nor waves could splinter There the heroes made their camp By the whispering seashore damp, But the mighty Heracles, Tired of looking at the seas, Rose and left those sounding beaches For the upland's wind-swept reaches. In a little beechwood gray Hylas fed his flock that day, Playing all alone but gayly Where he fed his lambkins daily, Singing to a five-stringed psalter By a little woodland altar, Where a shepherd's fire of oak Made a ribbon scarf of smoke, Curling highly, thinly, bluely, From the faggots cut but newly. Moving with a god-like ease, Through the gray boles of the trees, Hylas first spied Heracles, Looming vast as huge Orion, Tawny in his skin of lion; While through interspace of leaves, Through the network autumn weaves, Fell bronze sunshine and bronze leaves On the lion skin with its paws, Dangling, fringed with crescent claws. Softly all the flock were bleating As he gave the lad good greeting, Rubbing down with leaves his club, Mighty as a chariot hub— Hylas stood with golden locks, Glowing mid the lichened rocks, Laughing in the silver beeches, White as milk and tanned like peaches. Then the hero loved the lad, For his beauty made him glad, And he took him on his knees; Tender was huge Heracles, Telling him of strange journeys To the far Hesperides, Crossing oceans in a bowl, Till he won him heart and soul. So these two were friends forever, Never seen apart, together Were they all that winter weather. And the hero taught the youth How to shoot and tell the truth, How to drive a furrow straight, Plowing, plowing, very early When the frosty grass was curly— Taught him how to play the lyre, Till each wire, and wire, and wire Sang together like a choir; And at night young Hylas crept In the lion skin where he slept Where the lowing oxen team Stood beneath the smoke-browned beam, Slept beside the hero clypt By the giant, downy lipped. Centuries have fled away Since the hero came that day To the little beechwood gray Where young Hylas was at play; But I shall, as poets may, Wreathe these roses for his head, For his beauty is not dead. And a voice has sung to me Like a memory of the sea, Sung this ancient threnody, Like an autumn melody: "Alas! Alas! for thee, Hylas, Alas!" II. When the springtime came again And the shepherd to his spen Led his cloudy flock again, When the awkward lambkins bounded While the twin pipes whistling sounded, And old Charon from his glen Saw below the smoke of men Curling thinly from the trees, Then the heroes sought the seas. Then the Argo left the shore, For each eager warrior thought, When the Pleiads rose once more, Of the golden fleece he sought. Hylas went with Heracles, Dancing to the dancing seas, And he stood high in the bow, Golden by the carven prow, Or he lay within the furls With the sea damp on his curls. But at home his mother wept With her hair upon the floor, By the hearth where he had slept, For her woman's heart was sore, Saying, "He is gone from me! Gone across the sounding sea! Ai! Ai! Woe is me! Alas! Alas! for thee, Hylas, Alas!" With the soft, south wind to follow All the day the sail was hollow, While the marvelous Orpheus sang, Till the water furrows rang— Never man sang as he sang— Never man has sung the same— And the ship flew till they came Where the olive trees are gaunt By the winding Hellespont, And the Cian oxen wear Water-bright the bronze plowshare. On a fallow meadow hollow, Where the Cian cattle wallow, There they landed two by two; They the grass and rushes strew For their bed, Leaves and pointed flag stocks callow, Foot and head. And the evening coming on, Heracles and Telamon Set the supper fires upleaping And the shadows swooping, sweeping Overhead. Meanwhile, Hylas with a vase Wandered inland through the haze, Hoping there to fill his bronze, Girt about with goat-foot fauns, Polished. And around and twice around it, Where an inwrought girdle bound it, Fled the rout of chaste Diana, Goddess led. Inland in a cup-shaped vale Willow swart and galingale Grew with swallowwort and sparsely Maidenhair and blooming parsley, And the shallow's level glass Mirrored back the yellow grass Where the swallow dipped his wings, Making rings on rings in rings. There a nymph dance was afoot Where the country people put Cloth and oaten cakes and bread For the water spirits dread— Two and two and in and out, Three and two, around about, Hands around and then they vanished, Leaving Hylas there astonished. But at last he stooped to dip And the eager water slipped, Stuttering past the metal lip, Choking like a sunk bell rung— Suddenly white nymph hands clung Cold as iron around his arm Till he cried out in alarm. Gave a little silver cry And the swallow skimming nigh Darted higher in the sky, And the echo when he spoke— Awoke. Now the white hands tighter cling, Now the funneled water ring Fills and flows till in its glass Nods again the nodding grass. Alas! Alas! for thee, Hylas, Alas! Then it was that Heracles For sweet Hylas ill at ease, Left the heroes by the fire, Strung his bowstring taut as wire, Went to look for Hylas inland Past a little rocky headland, Rising higher ever higher Till he found the cup-shaped dale, Where he called without avail, Shouting loudly, "Hylas, Hylas," Echo answered back, "Alas," Echo answered very slowly, Speaking sorrowfully and lowly, When he called the lad, "Hy-las," Hollow echo said, "Alas." And he never found him more On the hill or by the shore, On the upland, on the downland, Never found him where he lay Down among the boulders gray, Limp among the watery rocks, Where the lily raised its chalice And the dread nymphs combed his locks, Pale Nycheia, April-eyed, And white Eunice and Malis. For his voice came down to these Vague as April in the trees, Filtered through the water clear Far and faint yet strangely near, Very thin— And no echo could they hear Only ripples' silver din And the dull splash of an otter; Echo cannot live in water. But that echo comes to me Down through half eternity Crying out, "Alas—Alas!" For all beauty that must pass Like a picture from a glass— When time breathes it is not there— Bony hands and coffined hair! Alas! Alas! Alas! BACCHUS IS GONE. Bacchus is gone! I saw him leave the shore Upon a moonless time, And he is gone—is gone— Forevermore. I saw the satyrs and the bacchanals— Bacchus is gone—is gone— With smoking torches as at funerals Light him across the sea at dawn. I saw the whimpering pards Where he had passed— Bacchus is gone—is gone— Sniff to the water's edge, Where purple stained, his footprints led— I heard the Goat-foot whisper in the hedge, "Bacchus is dead—is dead," And go aghast, Snapping the myrtle branches as he fled. Bacchus is gone! And with him dancing Folly— Bacchus is dead—is dead— Oh, Melancholy! No! No! He is not dead; he has but fled To kindlier lands he knew in days before Men snatched the purple roses from his head. He does but wanton by some liberal shore— Sun kissed— And wreathed with vine leaves as of old, With spotted beasts and maidens by his car, And sound of timbrels like a story told Of youth and love and blood and wine and war. TIGER LILIES. They make me think of battlefields I saw Where butterflies with wings of sulphurous gold Crawled on gray faces death had made obscene That stared with stolid dolls' eyes from the mold. They make me think of pools of wimpled slime, Where lizards bask upon the quaking crust, And crumbling walls where hairy spiders weave And snakes lie coupling in the summer dust. I think it must have been along the Nile That first these speckled membranes burst the pod, Before the boy-flat breasts of some half-cat Half-man and beryl-eyed Egyptian god. Or first they grew about forgotten tombs The apes inherit in hot jungles where Like xanthic suns through aquid shade of leaves A spotted leopard's dilate pupils stare. These were the mottled blossoms of Gomorrah, Wreathed on beast-gods by priestly Sodomites, By Baal fires when the talking timbrel's sound Fell from Astarte's groves on full moon nights. They suck a yellow venom from the sun And mid their reedy stocks there comes and goes The forked, black lightning of a serpent's tongue That hisses as his slippery body flows. Such lilies bloom beside the gates of hell And poison honey festers in their pods, Olid as tales of lust told long ago About the wanton mother of the gods. And I would plant them by the lichened tomb Of that veiled queen who died of leprosy With two red princes smothered in her womb; Their roots would feed on her in secrecy. THREE LANDSCAPE MOODS. The First: Youth. Youth is a vale afire with hollyhocks, Robbed by those greedy publicans the bees, Where cuckoos call like fairy story clocks And blue-jays holla in the apple trees. No thunderheads come up with black despair To dim its arching orchard's leafy sheen, But clouds like ivory towers pile in air And gothic woods stand, cloistered, cool and green. It is a glade where earliest flowers grow, Along the melting snowbanks in the spring, The waxen-stemmed anemones first show, And Madame Woodthrush preens her dainty wing. White hyacinths like masts with flower spars Stand in the woods and dot each bosky lawn, Like distant sails or clusters of pale stars Against an emerald sky at early dawn. Cleft in life's hills, Youth is a sheltered swale Where for a while we lie in indolence And watch time's waterfall thin as a veil That falls and hangs and smokes in long suspense, And there a fountain spouts of purest joy That feeds the fall, birds whistle on its brim, Often I lay beside it when a boy And saw the future mirrored vague and dim— Heaven was there a strangely clouded page, Two rivers on the plains met like a "Y," And blue as ghosts the mountains of old age Rolled down the western sky. The Second: High Tide o' Life. High Tide o' Life's a city by the sea, By tide rips where the flood comes shouting in, On straits that bring up ships with spicèd freights And sails as scarlet as a woman's sin. A mart where merchants chaffer on the docks For pearls and feather work and jewel'd shoon, And hurry off to feast when all the clocks Strike anvil-tongued a thousand-noted noon. High Tide o' Life's a city proudly vain, With minarets from whence men can descry, Like domes of giants' houses, chain on chain, Death's arid mountains arabesque the sky. And hoary uplands wave with tasseled corn, And long sun pencils strike the hills, afar, The walled towns smolder in the fire of morn Like embers of a sullen, fallen star. High Tide o' Life's an upland where no breath Of frost has ever crept across the grass, But days as idle as a shibboleth Like golden coins are quickly spent. They pass In hidden valleys fit for secret lust, Where strange winged-sins like griffin-hippogryphs Bask with their glittering scales in white-hot dust Along a sunstruck face of basalt cliffs. It is an isle in red, witch-haunted seas Where lovers' nights, the jade-faced moon stands still, Pouring an amber twilight through the trees, Across the copper ocean and the hill. High Tide o' Life's a plain laid easterly In realms ruled over by some fabled Djinn Where rivers blue as lapis-lazuli Rush down to meet the flood tides roaring in. The Third: Old Age. Old age is like a bleak plateau, About—around—the dead leaves blow In shouting, keening winter wind, Below life's plains lie cloud bedimmed Below. In long gray lines the dead leaves go, The stone blue shadows limn the snow, The thwacking branches creak and mutter In scarecrow desolation utter. In scarecrow Clothes the last leaves flutter And in dry hollows rasp and putter About the starved, old, carven faces, Around the ancient burial places About, around, below. The king builds a hermitage from life and passion wherein he hangs many bells. That land is very old and lonely Beneath—among—the cliffs its only Hope is kindling firelight Before the coming of the night, Before There are no travelers there Left any more to come and share The shelter from the ghost wolves' patter, The helter-skelter, bony clatter The helter-skelter And the scatter Of riven, driven souls that chatter Beneath the cliffs, while in and out Among them raves the death wolves' rout, Beneath, among, before. And ever from each waning fire Away—away—against desire The death wolves snatch their struggling toll, And snarl and harry down a soul, And snarl And harry down one other, And then another and another, To where Death sits, an idiot, That stirs all things into a pot, That stirs Till everything is nought Except the stirrer and the pot; Beside eternities midriff, Where time is bordered by a cliff, With creaking bones and dismal whoop He makes God's bitter charnel soup— "Away," he cries, "or we shall quarrel, Away, my wolves, for more and snarl Away! Away! and snarl." THE HERMITAGE OF BELLS. A Drama of Sound. Dramatis Personae. The King. The Queen. The World, The Five Bells. The Earth. Time: The Middle Ages. Place: Lusitania. I. The king has built a hermitage of bells Beyond the city walls upon a hill, Save when the bells are ringing for the king, His garden by the sea is forest still, Set on a cape curved like a hunter's horn, Rock terraced like the temples of Cathay, It overlooks the town and fields of corn And glimpses topsail-ships at break of day. Like the bells in the garden, the water speaks of peace and sleep. The world, knowing only itself, thinks the king is mad or bewitched to leave it and the love of the queen for solitude. The queen, desiring the love of her lord above all things, calls him from his garden, but is mocked by the voice of the solitude. And there a deep spring flows called Blanchefontaine That sings a deathlike monody of rest, All night the sick moon totters on its alban waters— It drips a sound like summer rain, When the sun opens up his eye, Until he stares like Cyclops from the west. It slips through oak groves with an easy motion, Twinkling like starlight from its shady source, Three times it curves before it meets the ocean Across the tide rip hoarse. Farther up The oak groves end abrupt, But down that narrow valley Like a darkened alley, The water falls and calls And seeps and leaps And speaks by waterfalls; Till the wanderer believes There are voices in the leaves, Whispering like thirsty lips, Calling like muffled bells from misty ships, Gurgling like pigeons from the eaves— It is a demon din Of subterranean voices old and thin, An elfin carillon the water rings As it sweeps on. Halfway in that night Of oak twilight, Where the stream dashes down a verge, The sound of ocean and of river merge. And it is strange to see The leaves whirl eerily, When like an icy kiss, Comes the long withering hiss Of the tormented sea. The king is melancholy mad, I guess, To dwell in such a dim and rustling place, Perhaps he has a sin beyond redress, Perhaps he sees him visions of a face. Some say it is a bell Has lured him to the garden by a spell, And that the spell is holy; Holy or not, it's melancholy! For when the queen rides to him from the town, With two maids posting, one on either side, Her face is veiled with black when she rides down— Like mourners by a hearse her two maids ride— Her face is veiled with black, The reins hang slack; Some say she weeps, But who can tell? Why should the queen weep when she hears a bell? She stops by the gate blind-walled; Mary! What called? Did something die? What answered back? Did the queen shriek behind her veil of black? Something said, "O," "O," "O" With the voice of the queen's own woe! Was it demon or echo? It had an "O"-shaped mouth And a voice like the wind in the south. It mocked her like a child, The unchanging attitude of nature makes the king fall in love with the earth. In his garden he finds a peace like death in life. In his youth the king heard a hermit's bell and in the ineffable peace of its sound realized the deepest longing of his heart. Through all his life the bell never ceases to lure him. Weak from wounds, he sees a vision of the peace of death in life in the hermit's garden Each time less loud And much more mild. The king, I guess, has lost his wits; It must be so! All day he sits Where mast-straight poplars grow, Four here, four there, foursquare, Like columns in a row, Still as the shadow on a mountain, And in the middle is a fountain, Held by two marble boys, Whence the water falls with a sleepy noise. It is a madman's choice To listen to that fountain's voice. It must be so! For never comes to that enchanted place A sound but of the water, sea, and bells; The shadows lie like tattered lace. One mood is fixed there and forever, Like a look on a dead man's face, Like a week of summer weather, I would that I might lay my head on such a bed, Where dreams make spells— So must the king think when he hears the bells. II. Once in his youth, While his new ears could yet distinguish truth, He heard a listless bell clang langorously, A liquid, languid clamor, The talking tone of iron struck by the hammer, A sound that blew like smoke across the sea, Low, slow and trembling dreamfully From the high, horn-shaped cape; For there a hermit lived And tended the wild grape, Where white, campaniform, small lilies teem, And there he died beside his cell, Lost in his dream of heaven and of hell; And the bell was the voice of that old dream. One Lusitanian summer, long ago, Upon a hot and azure afternoon, While the oars trailed And with the tide they sailed, And tenor zithers an ivory tune— Along cerulean coasts, With islands like blue ghosts, Rang the lone hermit's bell, "Alone-lin-lang-alone," Clear as a wounded angel's voice, Soft as a death spell that old women croon— The harbor gulf lay placid, And in the west there hung a half a moon. Never again in laughter or in tears, Or in titantic days of crashing shields, In triumphs with blue light upon the spears, Or when he rivaled God upon his throne Never had the bell's voice died; In all his purple, blood-bought pride on the cape. By his art the king casts four new bells that blend in perfect harmony with the hermit's. When they ring together the five bells charm all the senses. It seemed to toll for him an overtone, After the battle with his veins' blood spent, Disheartened by the metal light of day, Between the crisscross threads that made his tent, The fear of life came on him as he lay; "Outside the world is garish," thought the king, And then—and then he heard the lone bell ring And saw the peace and green light of a wood; It was a very vision of escape, A high-walled garden on the crescent cape, Fair as an evil thing but good. The cape is luniform Whereon the hermit's form Lies bony white and still Beside the chapel on the hill; The long grass waves as if he breathes At every breeze that weaves; The birds have nests among old votive wreaths And there the snake sheds in the rustling leaves. There are faint flower sounds Around, for spider hands have rung The lily with its yellow clapper tongue, All day the mists take shape And the high hawks slant drifting down the cape— By night the heavenly hunter leads his hounds, Wandering the zodiacal bounds, And all the white stars march, Flaming in the unalterable arch, While the wind swings the listless bell That rings the hermit's knell— Sleep well, sleep well! III. Three years the king has dwelt within a cell That he might dream his garden first to build it well, His ministers are black with wrath And the stone floor is hollowed to a path, But still he hears the bell, A frozen sound clear as a cold, deep well. The king is melancholy mad, I guess. At nights The tower windows flash with lights And many an artisan Comes after midnight with the garden's plan Of walls and towers And terraces and flowers, And spreads them wondering upon the floor; The queen comes seldom now and least Of all the priest; There is no priest alive That can the king's soul shrive; The dead hermit from his cell Has lured him close to heaven with his bell, A strange, a mad, a melancholy spell. The master of campanology Has cast four lovely voices for the king, Four godlike metal throats that sing In towers at the corners of the wall; And all the garden hears them call, Four miracles of tone,