The Two Twilights Part 5

Through gay Provence he journeyed on; To one high quest his life was true, And so they called him _Carcamon_-- The knight who seeketh the world through.

A pansy blossomed on his shield; "A token 'tis," the people say, "That still across the world's wide field He seeks _la dame de ses pensees_."

For somewhere on a painted wall, Or in the city's shifting crowd, Or looking from a cas.e.m.e.nt tall, Or shaped of dream or evening cloud--

Forgotten when, forgotten where-- Her face had filled his careless eye A moment ere he turned and pa.s.sed, Nor knew it was his destiny.

But ever in his dreams it came Divine and pa.s.sionless and strong, A smile upon the imperial lips No lover's kiss had dared to wrong.

He took his armor from the wall-- Ah! gone since then was many a day-- He led his steed from out the stall And sought _la dame de ses pensees_.

The ladies of the Troubadours Came riding through the chestnut grove "Sir Minstrel, string that lute of yours And sing us a gay song of love."

"O ladies of the Troubadours, My lute has but a single string; Sirventes fit for paramours, My heart is not in tune to sing.

"The flower that blooms upon my shield It has another soil and spring Than that wherein the gaudy rose Of light Provence is blossoming.

"The lady of my dreams doth hold Such royal state within my mind, No thought that comes unclad in gold To that high court may entrance find."

So through the chestnut groves he pa.s.sed, And through the land and far away; Nor know I whether in the world He found _la dame de ses pensees_.

Only I know that in the South Long to the harp his tale was told; Sweet as new wine within the mouth The small, choice words and music old.

To scorn the promise of the real; To seek and seek and not to find; Yet cherish still the fair ideal-- It is thy fate, O restless Mind!

ECCE IN DESERTO

The wilderness a secret keeps Upon whose guess I go: Eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard; And yet I know, I know,

Some day the viewless latch will lift, The airy door swing wide To one lost chamber of the wood Where those shy mysteries hide,--

One yet unfound, receding depth, From which the wood-thrush sings, Still luring in to darker shades, In--in to colder springs.

There is no wind abroad to-day.

But hark!--the pine-tops' roar, That sleep and in their dreams repeat The music of the sh.o.r.e.

What wisdom in their needles stirs?

What song is that they sing?

Those airs that search the forest's heart, What rumor do they bring?

A hushed excitement fills the gloom, And, in the stillness, clear The vireo's tell-tale warning rings: "'Tis near--'tis near--'tis near!"

As, in the fairy-tale, more loud The ghostly music plays When, toward the enchanted bower, the prince Draws closer through the maze.

Nay--nay. I track a fleeter game, A wilder than ye know, To lairs beyond the inmost haunt Of thrush or vireo.

This way it pa.s.sed: the scent lies fresh; The ferns still lightly shake.

Ever I follow hard upon, But never overtake.

To other woods the trail leads on, To other worlds and new, Where they who keep the secret here Will keep the promise too.

TO IMOGEN AT THE HARP

_Die Geisterwelt ist nicht verschlossen: Dein Sinn ist zu--dein Herz ist todt.

Auf, bade, Schuler, unrerdrossen Die ird'sche Brust im Morgenroth!_ FAUST.

Hast thou seen ghosts? Hast thou at midnight heard In the wind's talking an articulate word?

Or art thou in the secret of the sea, And have the twilight woods confessed to thee?

So wild thy song, thy smile so faint, so far Thine absent eyes from earthly vision are.

Thy song is done: why art thou listening?

Spent is the last vibration of the string Along the waves of sound. Oh, doth thine ear Pursue the ebbing chord in some fine sphere, Where wraiths of vanished echoes live and roam, And where thy thoughts, here strangered, find a home?

Teach me the path to that uncharted land; Discovery's keel hath never notched its strand, No pa.s.sport may unbar its sealed frontier,-- Too far for utmost sight, for touch too near.

Subtler than light, yet all opaque, the screen Which shuts us from that world, outspread between The shows of sense; like as an ether thin Fills the vast microscopic s.p.a.ce wherein The molecules of matter lie enisled.

A world whose sound our silence is; too wild Its elfin music beats, too shrill, too rare, To stir the slow pulse of our thicker air.

A world whose light our darkness is; that lies With its sharp edges turned toward mortal eyes, Like figures painted on a folded fan-- The broken colors of some hidden plan.

The few who but an instant's look have had At the spread pattern broadwise have gone mad.

As in a high-walled oriental street A sudden door flies open, and a fleet Departing dream the thirsty traveler sees Of fountains leaping in the shade of trees, So they who once have caught the glimpse divine: They have but wet their lips with goblins' wine, And, plagued with thirst immortal, must endure The visions of the heavenly calenture,-- Of springs and dewy evening meadows rave, While hotly round them shines the tropic wave, And the false islands of mirage appear, Uplifted from some transcendental sphere Far down below the blue horizon line.

And thirst like theirs is nursed by songs like thine.

For thou, in some crepscular dim hour, When the weak umber moon had hardly power To cast a shadow, and a wind, half-spent, Creeping among the way-side bushes went, Hast seen a cobweb spun across the moon, A faint eclipse, penumbral, gone full soon, Yet marking on the planet's smoky ring A silhouette as of a living thing.

Or on the beach making thy lonely range, Close upon sunset, when the light was strange And the low wind had meanings, thou hast known A presence nigh, betrayed by shadows thrown On the red sand from bodies out of sight; Even as, by the sh.e.l.l of curving light Pared from the dark moon's edge, the eye can tell Where her full circle rounds invisible.

Teach me the path into that silent land.

Take once again the haunted wires in hand, And pour the strain which, waking, thou hast heard Whistled when night was deep by some lone bird Hid in the dark and dewy sycamore,-- When thou hast risen and unbarred the door And walked the garden paths till night was flown, Listening the message sent to thee alone.

Ah! once again thy harp, thy voice once more, Fling back the refluent tide upon the sh.o.r.e.

All nature grows unearthly; all things seem To break and waver off in shapes of dream, And through the c.h.i.n.ks of matter steals the dawn Of skies beyond the solar road withdrawn.

Oh, flood my soul with that pure morning-red!

It is the sense that's shut, the heart that's dead: All open still the world of spirits lies Would we but bathe us in its red sunrise.

THE IDEAS OF THE PURE REASON

I saw in dreams a constellation strange, Thwarting the night; its big stars seemed to range Northward across the zenith, and to keep Calm footing along heaven's ridge-pole high, While round the pole the sullen Bear did creep And dizzily the wheeling spheres went by.

They from their watch-towers in the topmost sky Looked down upon the rest, Nor eastward swerved nor west, Though Procyon's candle dipped below the verge, And the great twins of Leda 'gan decline Toward the horizon line, And p.r.o.ne Orion, sprawling headlong, urge His flight into the far Pacific surge.

I heard a voice which said: "Those wonders bright Are hung not on the hinges of the night; But set to vaster harmonies, they run Straight on, and turn not with the turning sphere, Nor make an orbit about any sun.

No gla.s.s can track the courses that they steer, By what dark paths they vanish and appear.

The starry flocks that still Are climbing heaven's hill Will pasture westward down its sloping lawn; But yon wild herd of planets,--who can say Through what far fields they stray, Around what focus their ellipse is drawn, Whose shining makes their transcendental dawn?"

I told my vision to a learned man, Who said: "On no celestial globe or plan Can those unset, unrisen stars be found.

How might such uncomputed motions be Among the ordered spheres? Heaven's clock is wound To keep one time. Idle our dreams, and we, Blown by the wind, as the light family Of leaves." But still I dream, And still those planets seem Through heaven their high, unbending course to take; And a voice cries: "Freedom and Truth are we, And Immortality: G.o.d is our sun." And though the morning break, Across my soul still plays their shimmering wake.