Perpetual Light : a memorial Part 8

Pride that died and darkness that grew!

This is the song I began to wreathe ...

Ah, but G.o.d remembered,--it is not true!

_And you--you live, you breathe!_

AFTER

(Introductory Poem)

I

On Sunday in the sunlight With brightness round her strown And murmuring beauty of the sky At last her very own, She who had loved all children And all high things and clean Turned away to silentness And bliss unseen.

Rending, blinding anguish, Is all a man can know; Yet still I kneel beside her For she would have it so, Kneel and pray beside her In light she left behind-- Light and love in silentness, Sight to the blind.

Oh living light burn through me!

Oh speak, as spoke to me Her deep sweet eyes and faithful, Voice on Calvary!

Oh light be near and shining, Nearer than I guess, And teach me that true language Of silentness!

II

If now I fall away From faith, may never day Shine as it shone With inmost sanct.i.ties Of those sun-glittering trees-- We two alone.

The darkness toils and heaves.

The Wood of Glittering Leaves You gave--you gave, Dearest in life and death, Dearest with every breath, Lamp of the brave!

You came in sunlight, still As G.o.d, with Whom your will Was always one.

You knew me, and you knew I read your presence through That sacred sun.

League upon league of light, As the train raced the night, With night on me, With pain that gripped and wrung As the cars clashed and swung,-- I yet could see

The slim trees of that wood Brighter than tears or blood, Fairy with day; That dark marsh land made bright, Veiled in miraculous light,-- Your way!

I hold it fast. I hold All that mysterious gold, All that it weaves Of Heaven to understand-- Our radiant bridal land Of glittering leaves.

III

Honest hands to help, honest eyes to see, Light that lives in G.o.d: Such our dearest was, such will ever be Under Heaven.

Nothing in this life gives to you and me Such a sunlight-shod, Sunlight-crowned delight in our memory As was given.

There was not a harm in these roaring hours That could touch Her head Perfect was Her charm borne against the powers Gnashing still.

In her heart a field laughed with golden flowers Where Her soul could tread.

Swift, serene, she pa.s.sed all that snarls and cowers, White of will.

Song can give her nothing. We who brave the night Say Her name again Raise it like a cup full of sacred light Up to Heaven.

Now we know our pain blinding, burning bright In the world of men.

Yet we know our joy, knowing now aright What was given.

IV

Base rewards and glamours, the beating tide of hours, The crying and clamors and the surge of silent powers Pa.s.s me and pa.s.s me now. Silently I go The one road, the only road I know.

Oh, bare and bright as dreams And laced with silver streams Lies the land on either hand, past the darkness and dread.

Though a man must grip his soul lest it start from all control, And must bow his head.

Where are your footprints on air that I may find them?

Where your radiant garments that I may hide behind them?

No, it is my own road, straight and black That turns not back.

I will search till the darkness sears on either hand With the drifting sparkles of some fiery brand, Of some pain that lights me nearer to the land of your endeavor.

I will search forever.

The torrent of the hours like a veil veiling heaven, The war with bitter powers--I am given.

But light that you left me--light, your own decision, Your secret and your vision.

Time? What is Time now. Standing to the thong And the dream that is pa.s.sing, time is not long.

And I shall find the valley past the mountains that defeat me, And see you come to meet me.

V

Not all the spoils you cast, not all the dark was bearing In dream across the sea, across the murmurous sea; Not beauty that has pa.s.sed or crowns the stars were wearing Or flame that fierce and fast through darkness hunted me; Not the frustrate desire, the web of memory broken, The silence where your speech dizzies through all the air; Not these elude my reach when the dark hours have spoken As does that priceless token, your soul of pa.s.sionate prayer.

Oh race that falters on, the striving and the stricken Pa.s.sing with fruits and garlands and dust upon the head; Oh burning sunset gone wherein was hope to quicken The surge of starry dawn rising above the dead; Oh clamor over shame, yoke of the little-wiser On the unwilling shoulders, clenched by the quivering hands; Patience and proof that were and are your still appriser Now veil her and disguise her, gone from the spectral lands.

The spectral lands of time, the eternal torrent pouring Of dark and light around us, who fear both dark and light; And grief that wails in rhyme, and flesh the soul abhorring, And dismal pantomine played on a stage moon-bright; Why should such things as these a.s.sail her happy meadow, Creep on the court of children, come crying through the shine?

We who are too unskilled even to taunt the shadow Groan only in the darkness and spill the precious wine!

For round us beating, beating her wings are in the mirror Of sleep, the mirror of silence built up with perilous breath.

And in our conscience meeting her smile is on the terror That chains us round with error and desperate fear of death; Kind as a child's small hands her faithfulness is round us With swift and fading gestures, wise as a child is wise; Out of the gathering clouds that curtain and confound us, Ecstasy and enchantment--sudden and swift, her eyes!

The hills shall lay away their sombreness unspoken, The seas shall hush their murmur, the saddened wind be still, When the long league of silence 'twixt earth and beast is broken When at the end of all things the stones speak on the hill.

Then Calvary shall cry with glorious joy to heaven, Aceldama be hearkened and purged by words aware,-- For that in days gone by her voice to His was given, And to the joy of heaven her soul of pa.s.sionate prayer.

VI

I listened to the wind who speaks of finding Among the litter of his blown leaves of days All rainbow gold of tears that are so blinding; And then again he says Something of glittering jewels in the haze, Incense of praise, myrtles and bays for binding The wounds that blossom blood upon his ways.

I listened to the sun who can recover Miraculous instants of an earlier time Surprise Her eyes alinger on her lover And run like rhyme On leaf and stream. He spoke of dream and clime Sacred with everlasting Spring, ahover With light more cadenced than bright bells in chime.

I listened to the earth and sea. Their voices, Too mixed with men, came sombrer and more sad.

They droned awhile of all the tangled choices That every man has had, And moaned like ancients with mere age gone mad And left me nothing that reasons or rejoices-- That seemed so reasonless in being glad.