The Poems of Sidney Lanier Part 11

If men loved larger, larger were our lives; And wooed they n.o.bler, won they n.o.bler wives."

There thrust the bold straightforward horn To battle for that lady lorn, With heartsome voice of mellow scorn, Like any knight in knighthood's morn.

"Now comfort thee," said he, "Fair Lady.

For G.o.d shall right thy grievous wrong, And man shall sing thee a true-love song, Voiced in act his whole life long, Yea, all thy sweet life long, Fair Lady.

Where's he that craftily hath said, The day of chivalry is dead?

I'll prove that lie upon his head, Or I will die instead, Fair Lady.

Is Honor gone into his grave?

Hath Faith become a caitiff knave, And Selfhood turned into a slave To work in Mammon's cave, Fair Lady?

Will Truth's long blade ne'er gleam again?

Hath Giant Trade in dungeons slain All great contempts of mean-got gain And hates of inward stain, Fair Lady?

For aye shall name and fame be sold, And place be hugged for the sake of gold, And smirch-robed Justice feebly scold At Crime all money-bold, Fair Lady?

Shall self-wrapt husbands aye forget Kiss-pardons for the daily fret Wherewith sweet wifely eyes are wet -- Blind to lips kiss-wise set -- Fair Lady?

Shall lovers higgle, heart for heart, Till wooing grows a trading mart Where much for little, and all for part, Make love a cheapening art, Fair Lady?

Shall woman scorch for a single sin That her betrayer may revel in, And she be burnt, and he but grin When that the flames begin, Fair Lady?

Shall ne'er prevail the woman's plea, 'We maids would far, far whiter be If that our eyes might sometimes see Men maids in purity,'

Fair Lady?

Shall Trade aye salve his conscience-aches With jibes at Chivalry's old mistakes -- The wars that o'erhot knighthood makes For Christ's and ladies' sakes, Fair Lady?

Now by each knight that e'er hath prayed To fight like a man and love like a maid, Since Pembroke's life, as Pembroke's blade, I' the scabbard, death, was laid, Fair Lady, I dare avouch my faith is bright That G.o.d doth right and G.o.d hath might.

Nor time hath changed His hair to white, Nor His dear love to spite, Fair Lady.

I doubt no doubts: I strive, and shrive my clay, And fight my fight in the patient modern way For true love and for thee -- ah me! and pray To be thy knight until my dying day, Fair Lady."

Made end that knightly horn, and spurred away Into the thick of the melodious fray.

And then the hautboy played and smiled, And sang like any large-eyed child, Cool-hearted and all undefiled.

"Huge Trade!" he said, "Would thou wouldst lift me on thy head And run where'er my finger led!

Once said a Man -- and wise was He -- 'Never shalt thou the heavens see, Save as a little child thou be.'"

Then o'er sea-lashings of commingling tunes The ancient wise ba.s.soons, Like weird Gray-beard Old harpers sitting on the high sea-dunes, Chanted runes: "Bright-waved gain, gray-waved loss, The sea of all doth lash and toss, One wave forward and one across: But now 'twas trough, now 'tis crest, And worst doth foam and flash to best, And curst to blest.

Life! Life! thou sea-fugue, writ from east to west, Love, Love alone can pore On thy dissolving score Of harsh half-phrasings, Blotted ere writ, And double erasings Of chords most fit.

Yea, Love, sole music-master blest, May read thy weltering palimpsest.

To follow Time's dying melodies through, And never to lose the old in the new, And ever to solve the discords true -- Love alone can do.

And ever Love hears the poor-folks' crying, And ever Love hears the women's sighing, And ever sweet knighthood's death-defying, And ever wise childhood's deep implying, But never a trader's glozing and lying.

And yet shall Love himself be heard, Though long deferred, though long deferred: O'er the modern waste a dove hath whirred: Music is Love in search of a word."

____ Baltimore, 1875.

My Springs.

In the heart of the Hills of Life, I know Two springs that with unbroken flow Forever pour their lucent streams Into my soul's far Lake of Dreams.

Not larger than two eyes, they lie Beneath the many-changing sky And mirror all of life and time, -- Serene and dainty pantomime.

Shot through with lights of stars and dawns, And shadowed sweet by ferns and fawns, -- Thus heaven and earth together vie Their shining depths to sanctify.

Always when the large Form of Love Is hid by storms that rage above, I gaze in my two springs and see Love in his very verity.

Always when Faith with stifling stress Of grief hath died in bitterness, I gaze in my two springs and see A Faith that smiles immortally.

Always when Charity and Hope, In darkness bounden, feebly grope, I gaze in my two springs and see A Light that sets my captives free.

Always, when Art on perverse wing Flies where I cannot hear him sing, I gaze in my two springs and see A charm that brings him back to me.

When Labor faints, and Glory fails, And coy Reward in sighs exhales, I gaze in my two springs and see Attainment full and heavenly.

O Love, O Wife, thine eyes are they, -- My springs from out whose shining gray Issue the sweet celestial streams That feed my life's bright Lake of Dreams.

Oval and large and pa.s.sion-pure And gray and wise and honor-sure; Soft as a dying violet-breath Yet calmly unafraid of death;

Thronged, like two dove-cotes of gray doves, With wife's and mother's and poor-folk's loves, And home-loves and high glory-loves And science-loves and story-loves,

And loves for all that G.o.d and man In art and nature make or plan, And lady-loves for spidery lace And broideries and supple grace

And diamonds and the whole sweet round Of littles that large life compound, And loves for G.o.d and G.o.d's bare truth, And loves for Magdalen and Ruth,

Dear eyes, dear eyes and rare complete -- Being heavenly-sweet and earthly-sweet, -- I marvel that G.o.d made you mine, For when He frowns, 'tis then ye shine!

____ Baltimore, 1874.

In Absence.

I.

The storm that snapped our fate's one ship in twain Hath blown my half o' the wreck from thine apart.

O Love! O Love! across the gray-waved main To thee-ward strain my eyes, my arms, my heart.

I ask my G.o.d if e'en in His sweet place, Where, by one waving of a wistful wing, My soul could straightway tremble face to face With thee, with thee, across the stellar ring -- Yea, where thine absence I could ne'er bewail Longer than lasts that little blank of bliss When lips draw back, with recent pressure pale, To round and redden for another kiss -- Would not my lonesome heart still sigh for thee What time the drear kiss-intervals must be?

II.

So do the mottled formulas of Sense Glide snakewise through our dreams of Aftertime; So errors breed in reeds and gra.s.ses dense That bank our singing rivulets of rhyme.

By Sense rule s.p.a.ce and Time; but in G.o.d's Land Their intervals are not, save such as lie Betwixt successive tones in concords bland Whose loving distance makes the harmony.

Ah, there shall never come 'twixt me and thee Gross dissonances of the mile, the year; But in the multichords of ecstasy Our souls shall mingle, yet be featured clear, And absence, wrought to intervals divine, Shall part, yet link, thy nature's tone and mine.

III.

Look down the shining peaks of all my days Base-hidden in the valleys of deep night, So shalt thou see the heights and depths of praise My love would render unto love's delight; For I would make each day an Alp sublime Of pa.s.sionate snow, white-hot yet icy-clear, -- One crystal of the true-loves of all time Spiring the world's prismatic atmosphere; And I would make each night an awful vale Deep as thy soul, obscure as modesty, With every star in heaven trembling pale O'er sweet profounds where only Love can see.

Oh, runs not thus the lesson thou hast taught? -- When life's all love, 'tis life: aught else, 'tis naught.