Late Lyrics and Earlier, With Many Other Verses Part 6

Since every sound moves memories, How can I play you Just as I might if you raised no scene, By your ivory rows, of a form between My vision and your time-worn sheen, As when each day you Answered our fingers with ecstasy?

So it's hushed, hushed, hushed, you are for me!

And as I am doomed to counterchord Her notes no more In those old things I used to know, In a fashion, when we practised so, "Good-night!--Good-bye!" to your pleated show Of silk, now h.o.a.r, Each nodding hammer, and pedal and key, For dead, dead, dead, you are to me!

I fain would second her, strike to her stroke, As when she was by, Aye, even from the ancient clamorous "Fall Of Paris," or "Battle of Prague" withal, To the "Roving Minstrels," or "Elfin Call"

Sung soft as a sigh: But upping ghosts press achefully, And mute, mute, mute, you are for me!

Should I fling your polyphones, plaints, and quavers Afresh on the air, Too quick would the small white shapes be here Of the fellow twain of hands so dear; And a black-tressed profile, and pale smooth ear; --Then how shall I bear Such heavily-haunted harmony?

Nay: hushed, hushed, hushed you are for me!

"WHERE THREE ROADS JOINED"

Where three roads joined it was green and fair, And over a gate was the sun-glazed sea, And life laughed sweet when I halted there; Yet there I never again would be.

I am sure those branchways are brooding now, With a wistful blankness upon their face, While the few mute pa.s.sengers notice how Spectre-beridden is the place;

Which nightly sighs like a laden soul, And grieves that a pair, in bliss for a spell Not far from thence, should have let it roll Away from them down a plumbless well

While the phasm of him who fared starts up, And of her who was waiting him sobs from near, As they haunt there and drink the wormwood cup They filled for themselves when their sky was clear.

Yes, I see those roads--now rutted and bare, While over the gate is no sun-glazed sea; And though life laughed when I halted there, It is where I never again would be.

"AND THERE WAS A GREAT CALM"

(ON THE SIGNING OF THE ARMISTICE, Nov. 11, 1918)

I

There had been years of Pa.s.sion--scorching, cold, And much Despair, and Anger heaving high, Care whitely watching, Sorrows manifold, Among the young, among the weak and old, And the pensive Spirit of Pity whispered, "Why?"

II

Men had not paused to answer. Foes distraught Pierced the thinned peoples in a brute-like blindness, Philosophies that sages long had taught, And Selflessness, were as an unknown thought, And "h.e.l.l!" and "Sh.e.l.l!" were yapped at Lovingkindness.

III

The feeble folk at home had grown full-used To "dug-outs," "snipers," "Huns," from the war-adept In the mornings heard, and at evetides perused; To day--dreamt men in millions, when they mused-- To nightmare-men in millions when they slept.

IV

Waking to wish existence timeless, null, Sirius they watched above where armies fell; He seemed to check his flapping when, in the lull Of night a boom came thencewise, like the dull Plunge of a stone dropped into some deep well.

V

So, when old hopes that earth was bettering slowly Were dead and d.a.m.ned, there sounded "War is done!"

One morrow. Said the bereft, and meek, and lowly, "Will men some day be given to grace? yea, wholly, And in good sooth, as our dreams used to run?"

VI

Breathless they paused. Out there men raised their glance To where had stood those poplars lank and lopped, As they had raised it through the four years' dance Of Death in the now familiar flats of France; And murmured, "Strange, this! How? All firing stopped?"

VII

Aye; all was hushed. The about-to-fire fired not, The aimed-at moved away in trance-lipped song.

One checkless regiment slung a clinching shot And turned. The Spirit of Irony smirked out, "What?

Spoil peradventures woven of Rage and Wrong?"

VIII

Thenceforth no flying fires inflamed the gray, No hurtlings shook the dewdrop from the thorn, No moan perplexed the mute bird on the spray; Worn horses mused: "We are not whipped to-day"; No weft-winged engines blurred the moon's thin horn.

IX

Calm fell. From Heaven distilled a clemency; There was peace on earth, and silence in the sky; Some could, some could not, shake off misery: The Sinister Spirit sneered: "It had to be!"

And again the Spirit of Pity whispered, "Why?"

HAUNTING FINGERS A PHANTASY IN A MUSEUM OF MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS

"Are you awake, Comrades, this silent night?

Well 'twere if all of our glossy gluey make Lay in the damp without, and fell to fragments quite!"

"O viol, my friend, I watch, though Phosphor nears, And I fain would drowse away to its utter end This dumb dark stowage after our loud melodious years!"

And they felt past handlers clutch them, Though none was in the room, Old players' dead fingers touch them, Shrunk in the tomb.

"'Cello, good mate, You speak my mind as yours: Doomed to this voiceless, crippled, corpselike state, Who, dear to famed Amphion, trapped here, long endures?"

"Once I could thrill The populace through and through, Wake them to pa.s.sioned pulsings past their will." . . .

(A contra-ba.s.so spake so, and the rest sighed anew.)

And they felt old muscles travel Over their tense contours, And with long skill unravel Cunningest scores.

"The tender pat Of her aery finger-tips Upon me daily--I rejoiced thereat!"

(Thuswise a harpsicord, as from dampered lips.)