Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses Part 18

- He was a man I had met with somewhere before, But how or when I now could recall no more.

"The hazy mazy moonlight at one in the morning Spread out as a sea across the frozen snow, Glazed to live sparkles like the great breastplate adorning The priest of the Temple, with Urim and Thummim aglow.

"The yew-tree arms, glued hard to the stiff stark air, Hung still in the village sky as theatre-scenes When I came by the churchyard wall, and halted there At a shut-in sound of fiddles and tambourines.

"And as I stood hearkening, dulcimers, haut-boys, and shawms, And violoncellos, and a three-stringed double-ba.s.s, Joined in, and were intermixed with a singing of psalms; And I looked over at the dead men's dwelling-place.

"Through the shine of the slippery snow I now could see, As it were through a crystal roof, a great company Of the dead minueting in stately step underground To the tune of the instruments I had before heard sound.

"It was 'Eden New,' and dancing they sang in a ch.o.r.e, 'We are out of it all!--yea, in Little-Ease cramped no more!'

And their shrouded figures pacing with joy I could see As you see the stage from the gallery. And they had no heed of me.

"And I lifted my head quite dazed from the churchyard wall And I doubted not that it warned I should soon have my call.

But--" . . . Then in the ashes he emptied the dregs of his cup, And onward he went, and the darkness swallowed him up.

HE REVISITS HIS FIRST SCHOOL

I should not have shown in the flesh, I ought to have gone as a ghost; It was awkward, unseemly almost, Standing solidly there as when fresh, Pink, tiny, crisp-curled, My pinions yet furled From the winds of the world.

After waiting so many a year To wait longer, and go as a sprite From the tomb at the mid of some night Was the right, radiant way to appear; Not as one wanzing weak From life's roar and reek, His rest still to seek:

Yea, beglimpsed through the quaint quarried gla.s.s Of green moonlight, by me greener made, When they'd cry, perhaps, "There sits his shade In his olden haunt--just as he was When in Walkingame he Conned the grand Rule-of-Three With the bent of a bee."

But to show in the afternoon sun, With an aspect of hollow-eyed care, When none wished to see me come there, Was a garish thing, better undone.

Yes; wrong was the way; But yet, let me say, I may right it--some day.

"I THOUGHT, MY HEART"

I thought, my Heart, that you had healed Of those sore smartings of the past, And that the summers had oversealed All mark of them at last.

But closely scanning in the night I saw them standing crimson-bright Just as she made them: Nothing could fade them; Yea, I can swear That there they were - They still were there!

Then the Vision of her who cut them came, And looking over my shoulder said, "I am sure you deal me all the blame For those sharp smarts and red; But meet me, dearest, to-morrow night, In the churchyard at the moon's half-height, And so strange a kiss Shall be mine, I wis, That you'll cease to know If the wounds you show Be there or no!"

FRAGMENT

At last I entered a long dark gallery, Catacomb-lined; and ranged at the side Were the bodies of men from far and wide Who, motion past, were nevertheless not dead.

"The sense of waiting here strikes strong; Everyone's waiting, waiting, it seems to me; What are you waiting for so long? - What is to happen?" I said.

"O we are waiting for one called G.o.d," said they, "(Though by some the Will, or Force, or Laws; And, vaguely, by some, the Ultimate Cause;) Waiting for him to see us before we are clay.

Yes; waiting, waiting, for G.o.d TO KNOW IT" . . .

"To know what?" questioned I.

"To know how things have been going on earth and below it: It is clear he must know some day."

I thereon asked them why.

"Since he made us humble pioneers Of himself in consciousness of Life's tears, It needs no mighty prophecy To tell that what he could mindlessly show His creatures, he himself will know.

"By some still close-cowled mystery We have reached feeling faster than he, But he will overtake us anon, If the world goes on."

MIDNIGHT ON THE GREAT WESTERN

In the third-cla.s.s seat sat the journeying boy, And the roof-lamp's oily flame Played down on his listless form and face, Bewrapt past knowing to what he was going, Or whence he came.

In the band of his hat the journeying boy Had a ticket stuck; and a string Around his neck bore the key of his box, That twinkled gleams of the lamp's sad beams Like a living thing.

What past can be yours, O journeying boy Towards a world unknown, Who calmly, as if incurious quite On all at stake, can undertake This plunge alone?

Knows your soul a sphere, O journeying boy, Our rude realms far above, Whence with s.p.a.cious vision you mark and mete This region of sin that you find you in, But are not of?

HONEYMOON TIME AT AN INN

At the shiver of morning, a little before the false dawn, The moon was at the window-square, Deedily brooding in deformed decay - The curve hewn off her cheek as by an adze; At the shiver of morning a little before the false dawn So the moon looked in there.

Her speechless eyeing reached across the chamber, Where lay two souls opprest, One a white lady sighing, "Why am I sad!"

To him who sighed back, "Sad, my Love, am I!"

And speechlessly the old moon conned the chamber, And these two reft of rest.

While their large-pupilled vision swept the scene there, Nought seeming imminent, Something fell sheer, and crashed, and from the floor Lay glittering at the pair with a shattered gaze, While their large-pupilled vision swept the scene there, And the many-eyed thing outleant.

With a start they saw that it was an old-time pier-gla.s.s Which had stood on the mantel near, Its silvering blemished,--yes, as if worn away By the eyes of the countless dead who had smirked at it Ere these two ever knew that old-time pier-gla.s.s And its vague and vacant leer.

As he looked, his bride like a moth skimmed forth, and kneeling Quick, with quivering sighs, Gathered the pieces under the moon's sly ray, Unwitting as an automaton what she did; Till he entreated, hasting to where she was kneeling, Let it stay where it lies!"

"Long years of sorrow this means!" breathed the lady As they retired. "Alas!"

And she lifted one pale hand across her eyes.

"Don't trouble, Love; it's nothing," the bridegroom said.

"Long years of sorrow for us!" murmured the lady, "Or ever this evil pa.s.s!"