The House of Life Part 6

INCLUSIVENESS

The changing guests, each in a different mood, Sit at the roadside table and arise: And every life among them in likewise Is a soul's board set daily with new food.

What man has bent o'er his son's sleep, to brood How that face shall watch his when cold it lies?-- Or thought, as his own mother kissed his eyes, Of what her kiss was when his father wooed?

May not this ancient room thou sit'st in dwell In separate living souls for joy or pain?

Nay, all its corners may be painted plain Where Heaven shows pictures of some life spent well; And may be stamped, a memory all in vain, Upon the sight of lidless eyes in h.e.l.l.

ARDOUR AND MEMORY

The cuckoo-throb, the heartbeat of the Spring; The rosebud's blush that leaves it as it grows Into the full-eyed fair unblushing rose; The summer clouds that visit every wing With fires of sunrise and of sunsetting; The furtive flickering streams to light re-born 'Mid airs new-fledged and valorous l.u.s.ts of morn, While all the daughters of the daybreak sing:--

These ardour loves, and memory: and when flown All joys, and through dark forest-boughs in flight The wind swoops onward brandishing the light, Even yet the rose-tree's verdure left alone Will flush all ruddy though the rose be gone; With ditties and with dirges infinite.

KNOWN IN VAIN

As two whose love, first foolish, widening scope, Knows suddenly, with music high and soft, The Holy of holies; who because they scoff'd Are now amazed with shame, nor dare to cope With the whole truth aloud, lest heaven should ope; Yet, at their meetings, laugh not as they In speech; nor speak, at length; but sitting oft Together, within hopeless sight of hope For hours are silent:--So it happeneth When Work and Will awake too late, to gaze After their life sailed by, and hold their breath.

Ah! who shall dare to search through what sad maze Thenceforth their incommunicable ways Follow the desultory feet of Death?

HEART OF THE NIGHT

From child to youth; from youth to arduous man; From lethargy to fever of the heart; From faithful life to dream-dowered days apart; From trust to doubt; from doubt to brink of ban;-- Thus much of change in one swift cycle ran Till now. Alas, the soul!--how soon must she Accept her primal immortality,-- The flesh resume its dust whence it began?

O Lord of work and peace! O Lord of life!

O Lord, the awful Lord of will! though late, Even yet renew this soul with duteous breath: That when the peace is garnered in from strife, The work retrieved, the will regenerate, This soul may see thy face, O Lord of death!

THE LANDMARK

Was _that_ the landmark? What,--the foolish well Whose wave, low down, I did not stoop to drink, But sat and flung the pebbles from its brink In sport to send its imaged skies pell-mell, (And mine own image, had I noted well!) Was that my point of turning?--I had thought The stations of my course should rise unsought, As altar-stone or ensigned citadel.

But lo! the path is missed, I must go back, And thirst to drink when next I reach the spring Which once I stained, which since may have grown black.

Yet though no light be left nor bird now sing As here I turn, I'll thank G.o.d, hastening, That the same goal is still on the same track.

A DARK DAY

The gloom that breathes upon me with these airs Is like the drops which strike the traveller's brow Who knows not, darkling, if they bring him now Fresh storm, or be old rain the covert bears.

Ah! bodes this hour some harvest of new tares, Or hath but memory of the day whose plough Sowed hunger once,--the night at length when thou, O prayer found vain, didst fall from out my prayers?

How p.r.i.c.kly were the growths which yet how smooth, Along the hedgerows of this journey shed, Lie by Time's grace till night and sleep may soothe!

Even as the thistledown from pathsides dead Gleaned by a girl in autumns of her youth, Which one new year makes soft her marriage-bed.

AUTUMN IDLENESS

This sunlight shames November where he grieves In dead red leaves, and will not let him shun The day, though bough with bough be over-run.

But with a blessing every glade receives High salutation; while from hillock-eaves The deer gaze calling, dappled white and dun, As if, being foresters of old, the sun Had marked them with the shade of forest-leaves.

Here dawn to-day unveiled her magic gla.s.s; Here noon now gives the thirst and takes the dew; Till eve bring rest when other good things pa.s.s.

And here the lost hours the lost hours renew While I still lead my shadow o'er the gra.s.s, Nor know, for longing, that which I should do.

THE HILL SUMMIT

This feast-day of the sun, his altar there In the broad west has blazed for vesper-song; And I have loitered in the vale too long And gaze now a belated worshipper.

Yet may I not forget that I was 'ware, So journeying, of his face at intervals Transfigured where the fringed horizon falls,-- A fiery bush with coruscating hair.

And now that I have climbed and won this height, I must tread downward through the sloping shade And travel the bewildered tracks till night.

Yet for this hour I still may here be stayed And see the gold air and the silver fade And the last bird fly into the last light.

THE CHOICE

I

Eat thou and drink; to-morrow thou shalt die.

Surely the earth, that's wise being very old, Needs not our help. Then loose me, love, and hold Thy sultry hair up from my face that I May pour for thee this yellow wine, brim-high, Till round the gla.s.s thy fingers glow like gold.

We'll drown all hours: thy song, while hours toil'd, Shall leap, as fountains veil the changing sky.

Now kiss, and think that there are really those, My own high-bosomed beauty, who increase Vain gold, vain lore, and yet might choose our way Through many days they toil; then comes a day They die not,--never having lived,--but cease; And round their narrow lips the mould falls close.

II

Watch thou and fear; to-morrow thou shalt die.

Or art thou sure thou shalt have time for death?

Is not the day which G.o.d's word promiseth To come man knows not when? In yonder sky, Now while we speak, the sun speeds forth: can I Or thou a.s.sure him of his goal? G.o.d's breath Even at the moment haply quickeneth The air to a flame; till spirits, always nigh Though screened and hid, shall walk the daylight here.

And dost thou prate of all that man shall do?

Canst thou, who hast but plagues, presume to be Glad in his gladness that comes after thee?

Will _his_ strength slay _thy_ worm in h.e.l.l? Go to: Cover thy countenance, and watch, and fear.

Think thou and act; to-morrow thou shalt die.

Outstretched in the sun's warmth upon the sh.o.r.e, Thou say'st: 'Man's measured path is all gone o'er: Up all his years, steeply, with strain and sigh, Man clomb* until he touched the truth; and I, Even I, am he whom it was destined for.'

How should this be? Art thou then so much more Than they who sowed, that thou shouldst reap thereby?