A Lonely Flute Part 6

The birds were beating north again with faint and starry cries Along their ancient highway that spans the midnight skies, And out across the rush of wings my heart went crying too, Straight for the morning's windy walls and lakes of misted blue.

They gave me place among them, for well they understood The magic wine of April working madness in my blood, And we were kin in thought and dream as league by league together We kept that pace of straining wings across the starry weather.

The dim blue tides of Fundy, green slopes of Labrador Slid under us ... our course was set for earth's remotest sh.o.r.e; But tingling through the ether and searching star by star A lonely voice went crying that drew me down from far.

Farewell, farewell, my brothers! I see you far away Go drifting down the sunset across the last green bay, But I have found the haven of this lonely heart and wild-- My falconer has called me--I am prisoned by a child.

(_Easter Day_, 1916)

THE IDEAL

Serenely, from her mountain height sublime, She mocks my hopeless labor as I creep Each day a day's strength farther from the deep And nearer to her side for which I climb.

So may she mock when for the sad last time I fall, my face still upward, upon sleep, With faithful hands still yearning up the steep In patient and pathetic pantomime.

I am content, O ancient, young-eyed child Of love and longing. Pity not our wars Of frail-spun flesh, and keep thee undefiled By all our strife that only breaks and mars.

But let us see from far thy footing, wild And wayward still against the eternal stars!

THE FIRST CHRISTIAN

A little wandering wind went up the hill.

It had a lonely voice as though it knew What it should find before it came to where The broken body of him that had been Christ Hung in the ruddy glow. A bowshot down The bleak rock-shouldered hill the soldiery Had piled a fire, and when the searching wind Came stronger from the distant sea and dashed The shadows and the gleam together, songs Of battle and l.u.s.t were blown along the slope Mingled with clash of swords on cuisse and shield.

But of the women sitting by the cross Even she whose life had been as gravely sweet And sheltered as a lily's did not flinch.

Her face was buried in her shrouding cloak.

And she who knew too sorrowfully well The cruelty and bitterness of life Heard not. She sat erect, her shadowy hair Blown back along the darkness and her eyes That searched the distant s.p.a.ces of the night Splendid and glowing with an inward joy.

And at the darkest hour came three or four From round the fire and would have driven them thence; But one who knew them, gazing in their eyes, Said: "Nay. It is his mother and his love, The scarlet Magdalena. Let them be."

So, in the gloom beside that glimmering cross, Beneath the broken body of him they loved, They wept and watched--the lily and the rose.

At last the deep, low voice of Magdalen, Toned like a distant bell, broke on the hush: "We are so weak! What can poor women do?

So pitifully frail! G.o.d pity us!

How he did pity us! He understood...

Out of his own great strength he understood How it might feel to be so very weak...

To be a tender lily of the field, To be a lamb lost in the windy hills Far from the fold and from the shepherd's voice, To be a child with no strength, only love.

And ah, he knew, if ever a man can know, What 't is to be a woman and to live, Strive how she may to out-soar and overcome, Tied to this too frail body of too fair earth!

"Oh, had I been a man to shield him then In his great need with loving strong right arm!

One of the twelve--ha!--of that n.o.ble twelve That ran away, and two made mock of him Or else betrayed him ere they ran? Ah no!

And yet, a man's strength with a woman's love...

That might have served him somewhat ere the end."

Then with a weary voice the mother said: "What can we do but only watch and weep, Sit with weak hands and watch while strong men rend And break and ruin, bringing all to nought The beauty we have nearly died to make?

"It is not true to say that he was strong.

He did not claim the kingdom that was his, He did not even seek for wealth and power, He did not win a woman's love and get Strong children to live after him, and all That strong men strive for he pa.s.sed heedless by.

Because that he was weak I loved him so...

For that and for his soft and gentle ways, The tender patient calling of his voice And that dear trick of smiling with his eyes.

Ah no! I have had dreams--a mother's dreams-- But now I cannot dream them any more.

"I sorrowed little as the happy days Sped by and by that still the fair-haired lad Who lay at first beside me in the stall, The cattle stall outside Jerusalem, Found no great throne to dazzle his mother's eye.

He was so good a workman ... axe and saw Did surely suit him better than a sword.

I was content if only he would wed Some village girl of little Nazareth And get me children with his own slow smile, Deep thoughtful eyes and golden kingly brow.

"It seems but yesterday he played among The shavings strewn on Joseph's work-shop floor.

The sunlight of the morning slanted through The window--'t was in springtime--and across The bench where Joseph sat, and then it lay In golden glory on the boy's bright hair And on the shavings that were golden too.

I saw him through the open door. I thought, 'My little king has found his golden crown.'

But unto Joseph I said nought at all.

"But now, ah me! he won no woman's love, Nor loved one either as most men call love, And so he had no child and he is gone And I am left without him and alone."

So by her son's pale broken body mourned The mother, dreaming on departed days.

And as with one who looks into the west, Watching the embers of the outburned day Crumble and cool and slowly droop and fade, And will not take the darkling eastward path Where lies his way until the last faint glow Has left the sky and the early stars shine forth, So did her dream cling to the ruined past And all the joy they had in Nazareth Before the years of doubt and trouble came.

Then, while loud laughter sounded up the hill Where yet that ribald crew sang o'er the wine, She bowed her head above her cradling arms And softly sang, as to herself, the songs Of Israel that once had served her well To soothe the wakeful child.

But Magdalen Arose upon her feet and tossed her cloak Back from the midnight of her wind-blown hair And lifted up her eyes into the dark As though, beyond this circle of all our woe, To read a hidden meaning in the stars.

"Aye, it is dark," she said. "The night comes on.

He was the sunshine of our little day.

The clouds unsettled softly and we saw Ladders of glory climbing into light Unspeakable, with dazzling interchange Of Majesties and Powers. But suddenly The tides of darkness whelm us round again And this drear dwindled earth becomes once more What it has ever been--a core of shade And steaming vapor spinning in the dark, A deeper clot of blackness in the void!

"The night comes on. 'T is hard to pierce the dark.

And if to me who loved him, whom he loved-- Though well thou sayest, 'Not as most men call love'-- Far harder will it be for those who hold In memory no gesture of his hand, No haunting echo of his patient voice, Nor that dear trick of smiling with his eyes.

"O ceaseless tramp of armies down the years!

O maddened cries of 'Christ' and 'Son of Mary!'

While o'er the crying screams the hurtling death....

Thou gentle shepherd of the quiet fold, Mild man of sorrows, hast thou done this thing, Who camest not to bring peace but a sword?

Ah no, not thou, but only our childishness, The pitifully childish heart of man That cannot learn and know beyond a little.

"The priests and captains and the little kings Will tear each other at the throat and cry: 'Thus said he, lived he; swear it or thou diest!'

But these shall pa.s.s and perish in the dark While the lorn strays and outcasts of the world, The souls whose pain has seared their pride to dust And burned a way for love to enter in-- These only know his meaning and shall live.

"So is it as with one whose feet have trod The valley of the shadow, who has seen His dearest lowered into endless night.

All music holds for him a deeper strain Of n.o.bler meaning, and the flush of dawn, High wind at noonday, crumbling sunset gold, And the dear pathetic look of children's eyes-- All beauty pierces closer to his heart.

"Yea, thou thyself, pale youth upon the cross-- The G.o.dlike strength of thee was rooted deep In human weakness. Even she who bore thee, Seeing the man too nearly, missed the G.o.d, Erring as fits the mother. Some will say In coming years, I feel it in my heart, That thou didst face thy death a conscious G.o.d, Knowing almighty hands were stretched to s.n.a.t.c.h And lift thee from the greedy clutching grave.

Falsely! Forgetting dark Gethsemane,-- Not knowing, as I know, what doubt a.s.sailed Thy human heart until the latest breath.

Ah, what a trumpery death, what mockery And mere theatric mimicry of pain, If thou didst surely know thou couldst not die!

Thou didst not know. And whether even now Thy straying ghost, like some great moth of night Blown seaward through the shadow, flies and drifts Along dim coasts and headlands of the dark, A homeless wanderer up and down the void, Or whether indeed thou art enthroned above In light and life, I know not. This I know-- That in the moment of sheer certainty My soul will die.

"No! On thy spirit lay All the dark weight and mystery of pain And all our human doubt and flickering hope, Deathless despairs and treasuries of tears, Gropings of spirit blindfold by the flesh And grapplings with the fiend. Else were thy death Less like a G.o.d's than even mine may be.

"Thou broken mother who canst see in him Only the quiet man, the needful child, And most of all the Babe of Bethlehem, Let it suffice thee. Thy reward is great.

Who loveth G.o.d that never hath loved man?

Who knoweth man but cometh to know G.o.d?