Textarchiv - Richard Hovey

Two Poets

mrbot — Thu, 14 Dec 2017 21:10:02 +0000

Love's way with the thrush;
In the heart of the larches,
The deepening defiles
Where the shadows dilate,
The dim and the hush
Of dawn in the arches
Of the dark forest aisles,
Alone with his mate!
The song would die
If the crowd were by.
It is only for one love's dewdrop is glistening;
It would frighten him voiceless to find the world listening.
Sing on, glad thrush,
From your nest in the heart of the bush!
Tho' it's only the song-smoke of love upcurled
As incense to your little brown mate,
And the world hears not, and you heed not the world,
And sing but your little heartful of love,
And know not and praise not the great kind God above —
All the same you praise him,
For love and joy are his praise —
Be elate, be elate!
God hears you and knows you are happy.

Love's way with the sea-mew;
From the rocks and the beaches,
In the spume and the spray.
O wild one, the true
Sea-poet I deem you.
The vast wind-reaches
Are a trodden way
Through the storm for you.
Do you love, I wonder,
Aught but the surge and the thunder,
The gigantic delight of the clouds and the white-maned waves
And the wind that bellows and maddens and raves,
With its passionate heart-burning,
Its mighty, insatiable yearning
For the joy it will never possess, but unceasingly craves?
Sweep along!
Song is not yours, but this free sea life is a song.
There's a wild sea mate somewhere in the cliffs —
But oh, the joy and the love of the sea!
The booming reefs and the shuddering skiffs!
Love is well; but here, O sea-lover, where your bliss is,
Can you not almost feel God's kisses?
(If you but knew, O sea-bird,
The kisses are his indeed.)
Flash on, flash on and exult! There's a true hymn hid in your glee!
Never puzzle your pate with the mystery.
God sees you fulfilling His dreaming.

O sea-mew! wise indeed
Is the life you lead.
It is well no sea-dreams intrude
On the brown bird's joy of the wood.
O poets! you never were caught
In the snare of choosing
Which well to quench thirst from, when each holds cool, sweet drink.
You each voice a thought
Out of the infinite musing
Of the great, kind God; and that, I should think,
Were enough for a thrush or a sea-mew.

Richard Hovey

1908

Kronos

mrbot — Fri, 24 Nov 2017 21:10:07 +0000

As one of those huge monsters of the sky,
Fierce with the flame of fiery floating hair,
Falls from the zenith through the upper air,
Threatening the planets from their paths on high,
Jarring creation from its harmony,
Spreading on earth destruction and despair,
Affrighting men to temples and vain prayer,
So from the summit of his majesty
He falls, and heaven is shaken as flame. Zeus reigns,
Usurping; and no matter what is left —
How smooth or tangled grows his god-life's weft —
With how swift footing or how slow the years
Speed on, for him forever there remains
A thunder and a chaos in the spheres.

Richard Hovey

1908

Parting

mrbot — Sat, 28 Oct 2017 21:10:06 +0000

Gone, and I spoke no word to bid her stay!
Gone, and I sit benumbed and scarce can rise; —
Gone with the light of new love in her eyes,
The splendid promise of the fervent day.
She loves me, Ocean, loves me! And I may
Not lisp the whisper of my great surprise,
Save to the waves and pebbles and the skies
And to the sea-gulls circling in the spray.
She loves me! Till she went I did not know
Her soul. This is a mystery which no art
Can picture and no wisdom understand.
And she is gone and I beheld her go,
With so much awe at sight of her pure heart
I dared not kiss the fingers of her hand.

Richard Hovey

1908

Matthew Arnold

mrbot — Thu, 19 Oct 2017 21:10:04 +0000

There was a poet in him. But his art
Grew too faint hearted to withstand the strain
And turmoil of the age. He sought to gain
Peace only; all the passion of his heart
He slew, that, a little space apart
For quiet of his soul he might attain;
And so the poet in him fell self-slain,
Sang its own swan-song and was not. O heart!
He has found a deeper peace than he pursued
And his worn eyes at last behold the ways
That open for man's limitless up-leaping;
And God's voice softly wakes his poethood
Anew, as the Master bent of old to raise
The dust that loved him, saying: "Not dead, but sleeping."

Richard Hovey

1908

The Lady of the Cape

mrbot — Sun, 20 Aug 2017 21:10:02 +0000

Beauty in earth and sky and air!
In this thistle-down by the wind's breath whirled
Even as in night's remotest world!
Beauty, beauty everywhere!

Beauty in yonder rugged rocks,
And beauty in the weary sea,
And beauty in the burly bee
That hums among the hollyhocks.

Stern beauty in the kingly storm,
And queenly beauty in the calm!
And beauty in my sweet sea-psalm,
And beauty in thy foam-born form!

The violet sunlight on the shoal!
The dark blue where the cloud-shadows fall!
And oh, a beauty over all —
The solemn beauty of thy soul!

Richard Hovey

1908

Seaward

mrbot — Sun, 09 Apr 2017 10:00:01 +0000

The tide is in the marshes. Far away
In Nova Scotia's woods they follow me,
Marshes of distant Massachusetts Bay,
Dear marshes, where the dead once loved to be!
I see them lying yellow in the sun,
And hear the mighty tremor of the sea
Beyond the dunes where blue cloud shadows run,

I know that there the tide is coming in,
Secret and slow, for in my heart I feel
The silent swelling of a stress akin;
And in my vision, lo! blue glimpses steal
Across the yellow marsh-grass, where the flood,
Filling the empty channels, lifts the keel
Of one lone catboat bedded in the mud.

The tide is in the marshes. Kingscroft fades;
It is not Minas there across the lea;
But I am standing under pilgrim shades
Far off where Scituate lapses to the sea.
And he, my elder brother in the muse,
The poet of the Charles and Italy,
Stands by my side, Song's gentle, shy recluse.

The hermit thrush of singers, few might draw
So near his ambush in the solitude
As to be witness of the holy awe
And passionate sweetness of his singing mood
Not oft he sang, and then in ways apart,
Where foppish ignorance might not intrude
To mar the joy of his sufficing art.

Only for love of song he sang, unbid
And unexpectant of responsive praise;
But they that loved and sought him where he hid
Forbearing to profane his templed ways,
Went marveling if that clear voice they heard
Pass thrilling through the hushed religious maze
Were of a spirit singing or a bird.

Alas, he is not here, he will not sing;
The air is empty of him evermore.
Alone I watch the slow kelp-gatherers bring
Their dories full of sea-moss to the shore.
No gentle eyes look out to sea with mine,
No gentle lips are uttering quaint lore,
No hand is on my shoulder for a sign.

Far, far, so far, the crying of the surf!
Still, still, so still, the water in the grass!
Here on the knoll the crickets in the turf,
And one bold squirrel barking, seek, alas,
To bring the swarming summer back to me.
In vain — my heart is on the salt morass
Below, that stretches to the sunlit sea.

Interminable, not to be divined,
The ocean's solemn distances recede;
A gospel of glad color to the mind,
But for the soul a voice of sterner creed.
The sadness of unfathomable things
Calls from the waste and makes the heart give heed
With answering dirges, as a seashell sings.

Mother of infinite loss! Mother bereft!
Thou of the shaken hair! Far-questing Sea!
Sea of the lapsing wail of waves! O left
Of many lovers! Lone, lamenting Sea!
Desolate, proud, disheveled, lost sublime!
Unquelled and reckless! Mad, despairing Sea!
Wail, for I wait — wail, ancient dirge of Time!

No more, no more that brow to greet, no more!
Mourn, bitter heart! mourn, fool of Fate! Again
Thy lover leaves thee; from thy pleading shore
Swept far beyond the caverns of the rain,
No phantom of him lingers on the air.
Thy foamy fingers reach for his — in vain!
In vain thy salt breath searches for his hair!

Mourn gently, tranquil marshes, mourn with me!
Mourn, if acceptance so serene can mourn!
Grieve, marshes, tho' your noonday melody
Of color thrill through sorrow like a horn
Blown far in Elfland! Mourn, free-wandering dunes.
For he has left you of his voice forlorn,
Who sang your slopes full of an hundred Junes.

O viking Death, what hast thou done with him?
Sea-wolf of Fate, marauder of the shore!
Storm reveler, to what carousal grim
Hast thou compelled him? Hark, through the Sea's roar
Heroic laughter mocking us afar!
There will no answer come for evermore,
Though for his sake Song beacon to a star.

Mourn, Muse beyond the sea! Ausonian Muse!
Mourn, where thy vinelands watch the day depart!
Mourn for him, where thy sunsets interfuse,
Who loved thy beauty with no alien heart
And sang it in his not all alien line!
Muse of the passionate thought and austere art!
O Dante's Muse! lament his son and thine.

And thou, divine one of this western beach!
A double loss has left thee desolate;
Two rooms are vacant in thy House of Speech,
Two ghosts have vanished through the open gate.
The Attic spirit, epicure of light,
The Doric heart, strong, simple, passionate,
Thy priest of Beauty and thy priest of Right.

Last of the elder choir save one whose smile
Is gentler, for its memories, they rest.
Mourn, goddess, come apart and mourn awhile!
Come with thy sons, lithe Song-Queen of the West, —
The poet Friend of Poets, the great throng
Of seekers on the long elusive quest,
And the lone voice of Arizonian song.

Nor absent they, thy latest-born, O Muse,
My young companions in Art's wildwood ways;
She whose swift verse speaks words that smite and bruise
With scarlet suddenness of flaming phrase,
Virginia's hawk of Song; and he who sings
Alike his people's homely rustic lays,
And his fine spirit's high imaginings,

Far-stretching Indiana's melodist;
Quaint, humorous, full of quirks and wanton whims,
Full throated with imagination kissed;
With these two pilgrims from auroral streams.
The Greek revealer of Canadian skies,
And thy close darling, voyager of dreams,
Carman, the sweetest, strangest voice that cries.

And thou, friend of my heart, in fireside bonds
Near to the dead, not with the poet's bay
Brow-bound but eminent with kindred fronds,
Paint us some picture of the summer day
For his memorial — the distant dune,
The marshes stretching palpitant away
And blue sea fervid with the stress of noon.

For we were of the few who knew his face,
Nor only heard the rumor of his fame;
This house beside the sea the sacred place
Where first with thee to clasp his hand I came —
Art's knight of courtesy, eager to commend,
Who to my youth accorded the dear name
Of poet, and the dearer name of friend.

Ah, that last bottle of old Gascon wine
We drank together! I remember too
How carefully he placed it where the shine
Of the warm sun might pierce it through and through, —
Wise in all gentle, hospitable arts —
And there was sunshine in it when we drew
The cork and drank, and sunshine in our hearts.

O mourners by the sea, who loved him most!
I watch you where you move, I see you all;
Unmarked I glide among you like a ghost,
And on the portico, in room and hall,
Lay visionary fingers on your hair.
You do not feel their unsubstantial fall
Nor hear my silent tread, but I am there.

I would my thought had but the weakest throat,
To set the air a-vibrate with a word.
Alas! dumb, ineffectual, remote,
I murmur, but my solace is not heard;
Nor, could I reach you, would your grief abate.
What sorrow ever was with speech deterred?
What power has Song against the hand of Fate? …

Not all in vain! For with the will to serve,
Myself am served, at least. A secure calm
Soars in my soul with wings that will not swerve,
And on my brow I feel a ministering palm.
Even in the effort for another's peace
I have achieved mine own. I hear a psalm
Of angels, and the grim forebodings cease.

I see things as they are, nor longer yield
To truce and parley with the doubts of sense.
My certainty of vision goes a-field,
Wide-ranging, fearless, into the immense;
And finds no terror there, no ghost nor ghoul,
Not to be dazzled back to impotence,
Confronted with the indomitable soul.

What goblin frights us? Are we children, then,
To start at shadows? Things fantastic slay
The imperishable spirit in whose ken
Their only birth is? Blaze one solar ray
Across the grisly darkness that appals,
And where the gloom was murkiest, the bright Day
Laughs with a light of blosmy coronals.

Stretch wide, O marshes, in your golden joy!
Stretch ample, marshes, in serene delight!
Proclaiming faith past tempest to destroy,
With silent confidence of conscious might!
Glad of the blue sky, knowing nor wind nor rain
Can do your large indifference despite,
Nor lightning mar your tolerant disdain!

The fanfare of the trumpets of the sea
Assaults the air with jubilant foray;
The intolerable exigence of glee
Shouts to the sun and leaps in radiant spray;
The laughter of the breakers on the shore
Shakes like the mirth of Titans heard at play,
With thunders of tumultuous uproar.

Playmate of terrors! Intimate of Doom!
Fellow of Fate and Death! Exultant Sea!
Thou strong companion of the Sun, make room!
Let me make one with you, rough comrade Sea!
Sea of the boisterous sport of wind and spray!
Sea of the lion mirth! Sonorous Sea!
I hear thy shout, I know what thou wouldst say.

Dauntless, triumphant, reckless of alarms,
O Queen that laughest Time and Fear to scorn!
Death, like a bridegroom, tosses in thine arms.
The rapture of your fellowship is borne
Like music on the wind. I hear the blare,
The calling of the undesisting horn,
And tremors as of trumpets on the air.

Sea-Captain of whose keels the Sea is fain,
Death, Master of a thousand ships, each prow
That sets against the thunders of the main
Is lyric with thy mirth. I know thee now,
O Death, I shout back to thy hearty hail,
Thou of the great heart and cavernous brow,
Strong Seaman at whose look the north winds quail.

Poet, thou hast adventured in the roar
Of mighty seas with one that never failed
To make the havens of the further shore.
Beyond that vaster Ocean thou hast sailed
What old immortal world of beauty lies!
What land where Light for matter has prevailed!
What strange Atlantid dream of Paradise!

Down what dim bank of violets did he come,
The mild historian of the Sudbury Inn,
Welcoming thee to that long-wished-for home?
What talk of comrades old didst thou begin?
What dear inquiry lingered on his tongue
Of the Sicilian, ere he led thee in
To the eternal company of Song?

There thy co-laborers and high compeers
Hailed thee as courtly hosts some noble guest, —
Poe, disengloomed with the celestial years,
Calm Bryant, Emerson of the antique zest
And modern vision, Lowell all a-bloom
At last, unwintered of his mind's unrest,
And Whitman, with the old superb aplomb.

Not far from these Lanier, deplored so oft
From Georgian live-oaks to Acadian firs,
Walks with his friend as once at Cedarcroft.
And many more I see of speech diverse;
From whom a band aloof and separate,
Landor and Meleager in converse
And lonely Collins for thy greeting wait.

But who is this that from the mightier shades
Emerges, seeing whose sacred laureate hair
Thou startest forward trembling through the glades,
Advancing upturned palms of filial prayer?
Long hast thou served him; now, of lineament
Not stern but strenuous still, thy pious care
He comes to guerdon. Art thou not content?

Forbear, O Muse, to sing his deeper bliss,
What tenderer meetings, what more secret joys!
Lift not the veil of heavenly privacies!
Suffice it that nought unfulfilled alloys
The pure gold of the rapture of his rest,
Save that some linger where the jarring noise
Of earth afflicts, whom living he caressed.

His feet are in thy courts, O Lord; his ways
Are in the City of the Living God.
Beside the eternal sources of the days
He dwells, his thoughts with timeless lightings shod;
His hours are exaltations and desires,
The soul itself its only period
And life unmeasured save as it aspires.

Time, like a wind, blows through the lyric leaves
Above his head, and from the shaken boughs
Æonian music falls; but he receives
Its endless changes in alert repose,
Nor drifts unconscious as a dead leaf blown
On with the wind and senseless that it blows,
But hears the chords like armies marching on.

About his path the tall swift angels are,
Whose motion is like music but more sweet;
The centuries for him their gates unbar;
He hears the stars their Glorias repeat;
And in high moments when the fervid soul
Burns white with love, lo! on his gaze replete
The Vision of the Godhead shall unroll —

Trine within trine, inextricably One,
Distinct, innumerable, inseparate,
And never ending what was ne'er begun,
Within Himself his Freedom and his Fate,
All dreams, all harmonies, all Forms of light
In his Infinity intrinsecate, —
Until the soul no more can bear the sight.

Oh, secret, taciturn, disdainful Death!
Knowing all this, why hast thou held thy peace?
Master of Silence, thou wilt waste no breath
On weaklings, nor to stiffen nerveless knees
Deny strong men the conquest of one qualm; —
And they, thy dauntless comrades, are at ease
And need no speech and greet thee calm for calm.

Cast them adrift in wastes of ageless Night,
Or bid them follow into Hell, they dare;
So are they worthy of their thrones of light,
O that great, tranquil rapture they shall share!
That life compact of adamantine fire!
My soul goes out across the eastern air
To that far country with a wild desire! …

But still the marshes haunt me; still my thought
Returns upon their silence, there to brood
Till the significance of earth is brought
Back to my heart, and in a sturdier mood
I turn my eyes toward the distance dim,
And in the purple far infinitude
Watch the white ships sink under the sea-rim;

Some bound for Flemish ports or Genovese,
Some for Bermuda bound, or Baltimore;
Others, perchance, for further Orient seas,
Sumatra and the straits of Singapore,
Or antique cities of remote Cathay,
Or past Gibraltar and the Libyan shore
Through Bab-el mandeb eastward to Bombay;

And one shall signal flaming Teneriffe,
And the Great Captive's ocean-prison speak,
Then on beyond the demon-haunted cliff,
By Madagascar's palms and Mozambique.
Till in some sudden tropic dawn afar
The Sultan sees the colors at her peak
Salute the minarets of Zanzibar.

Richard Hovey

1908

The Laurel

mrbot — Sun, 09 Apr 2017 10:00:01 +0000

[str. α.]

O Lady loved of our sweet sunrise singer
Whose name Song speaks with lingering of the lips,
Our laureate of the marshes, our light-bringer
Out of the darkness of fair Love's eclipse!
Out of the jar of ways that Trade has turned
Into a mart where Love may have no place
Save it be bought and sold,
A rare fair soul like a clear lamp burned
And shot through the mirk its sudden rays
And over the smoke-pit a glimmer of gold
Flashed and a voice, like the brook-note of a flute
That in its passioning still is pure and cool,
Or the clear sharp dropping of water into a pool
When all the woods are mute,
Spake and the sound thereof
Brake through the barrier,
Keen as the silver sword of the moon;
"Woe to the warrior
Liegeman of Love
Found, when the fighting
Grows fierce for the victor's boon,
Far from the foeman!
See where the dark hosts stay for our smiting!"
O gracious, queenly, softly-smiling woman!
Thee with his light and sweetness this man dowered,
To whom the laurel leaf of right belongs.
Ah me! and how should I
Take from thy hands the branch that greened and flowered
More beautifully, tangled in his hair,
Amid the city's flowerless throngs,
Than when beside the braes of Delaware
It swayed beneath the languid sky,
Ere it was honored, honoring his songs.

[ant. α.]

Not unto me, not unto me, fair Lady —
I dare not let the sacred leaves be bound
About my brow. My song is all unready
So soon to seek so greatly to be crowned.
I would go find some sager singer — sure,
There are wise poets somewhere in the world —
And yield the wreath to him.
My song-flight yet is but insecure,
The blooms of my rose-tree scarce uncurled,
The blush of the blossoming faint and dim.
Ah, but I may not resign so the high crown
Nor to another deliver its dear weight.
Thou hast bound my brow with it, mine — crowned me in state —
Set me above Time's frown.
Not I may undo the deed
Wrought by thee royally,
Queen in thy right and the love of thy lord!
Let me then loyally
Kneel in my need
And pray that Apollo
Breathe wisdom into the word
That my lips shall deliver.
So shall my song fly swift as the swallow
To greet thee with its perfected endeavor,
Saying; "My lord that wrought me, sends me theeward,
The late fulfilment of the labor thou
Didst bind upon his youth."
As sea-gulls turn their singing flight to seaward,
I turn me to the mighty sea of song,
Guiding the glad swerve of the prow
Of my light boat of melody down long
Sea-ways of beauty, freedom, truth,
Eastward where Day shall bare his rosy brow.

[ep. α.]

I take the lyre with steady hand
But reverent, knowing well how long
And bitter are the ways of song,
How few that reach its Promised Land.
I know my weakness and my strength;
I know that the toil will task me sore;
And, though glad and proud, I am made at length
More humble of heart than I was before.
For I felt, when my song was so o'er-requited,
As a maid when she first finds love and is still,
And my soul knelt down as a thrall new-knighted,
Abashed and wondering, weak to fulfil.
For he should be strong who shall wear this crown,
Wise and great-hearted, just to king and clown,
Sweet and serene and full of grace
And pure as Daphne ere the fatal race —
Daphne, the daughter of the river god,
Whose beauty was a pearl whose worth surpassed
The cruel wealth the Cretan's touch amassed.
But she loved more the woodland paths she trod
Untrammeled, than the rule of Hymen's rod,
And pleading many times for leave to cast
Her lot with virgin Artemis, at last
Won from her father the consenting nod.
And she and her maidens withdrew from the fret and the pother
Back to the home in the heart of the sweet rough mother,
Mother of all things, the earth, and drank of the crystalline chalice
She fills for her children that love her, a cup of refreshing and peace,
Chased the roe on the rocks and hunted the hart through the valleys,
Raced in sport through the groves with gowns kilted up to the knees,
Saw through the mists of the morning the gleam of the cold dawn shining,
Ranged through many a woodland and bathed in many a stream,
Wonderful, virginal, holy, aloof from desire and repining;
And Artemis smiled on the maidens and the days went fleet as a dream.

[str. β.]

But Love, who saves and slays in a strange fashion,
Smote twain for this maid-queen of glens and glades.
Love pierced the great Apollo with keen passion,
And sent Leucippus masking with the maids.
It is an ill thing to contend with gods.
Leucippus did not long behold the light
In the leaves like sifted gold.
Lo, they have stripped him and beaten with rods,
Mocked him and cursed him and slain him quite.
But Daphne far from the strife sat cold,
Lone and unmoved, and the god came to her there,
Abashed, and lay at her feet and begged his bliss
With the lips Song sprang from, and sighed his soul for a kiss —
He, to whom kings made prayer.
So great Apollo sued;
But she, with her maiden heart
Fluttered and frayed as a bird in a snare,
Fled with fear-laden heart
Into the wood.
And Apollo up-leaping
And rent with desire and despair,
Sped after her, crying:
"Ah, leave me not, love, to lie widowed and weeping!
Oh, Daphne! Daphne!" and the sound went sighing,
"Oh, Daphne!" softlier through the echoing arches,
But the maid flees the swiftlier that the air
Shakes with that longing sound.
Swift, swift the sweet shape speeds between the larches!
Swift, swift the god pursues, and now is near
With arms outstretched to clasp! Despair
Spurs her — but love has faster feet than fear.
She hears his sandals smite the ground
And feels his breathing on her neck and hair.

[ant. β.]

And now the glad god feels the grapes of joyance
Bursting upon the palate of his soul.
A storm-like exultation, a mad buoyance
Sweeps all the cords of life from his control.
But ere his lips touch hers, she gives one shrill
Cry, and is heard; and the captor whose swift arms close
About her like the dark,
Feels the throbs subside and the limbs grow still
And the smooth breasts stiffen that fell and rose,
And the ripe mouth roughen to bitter bark
Under the pressure of lips fierce for a kiss.
"Ai, ai, me wretched!" the god mourns in his woe,
"Ah, the sweet eyes closed and the fleet limbs fettered! And oh,
The fair life gone amiss!
Ah, the beauty! the grace!
Ah, the delight of it!
The fleet light flash of her flying feet!
Never shall sight of it
Now flush my face
In near land or far land.
Yet not wholly I lose thee, my sweet!
On my brow, a dear burden,
Thy leaves shall be laid, my grief and my garland.
For loss of love I am given a barren guerdon —
An austere crown for raptures hymeneal.
And ever henceforth he whom my lovers laud,
Shall wear this sacred leaf —
The Daphne of his unattained Ideal
Imperishably laurelled in his hair.
And now I go. My feet have trod
A weary way. I see Fate does not spare
Even to the Immortals failure and grief.
I also have my duties, though a god."

[ep. β.]

Spirit of beauty, not without
A hidden sorrow at thy heart
We fable thee, — though what thou art
In truth, we cannot choose but doubt, —
For all the beauty that we know
Is pierced with a secret sense of pain,
And not till the time-floods cease to flow
Can the sad and sweet be cleft in twain.
O grand Greek god! — for I hold it true,
That strange myth blown from the Doric sea —
O bay-bound brow that so well I knew,
When faith was an easy thing to me!
Bright god of song! Strong lord of light!
Earth and the sea take beauty at thy sight;
The Python shrivels, pierced with thy lance;
And the dead rise at thy life-giving glance.
Spirit of beauty, born of the divine breath
With its first issuance into Time and Space!
Shaping the whole creation into grace
Through intimate interflux of life and death!
Lifting the transient, as it anguisheth,
To the serene wherein change hath no place!
High Son of God, that lookest on God's face!
Supremest angel that God uttereth!
Make me a flute for thy lips, a lute for thy fingers!
Take me, O lord of the lyre, — the least of thy singers,
Least of the voices that follow thee, lured from thy feet by none other,
Least of thy servants, Apollo, whose wages are sunlight and tears —
Take me to rest in thy deeps, as a child at the breast of its mother,
Give me the peace of thy kiss and strength for the strife of the years!
Bitter and sweet are thy gifts. Thou hast borne me aloft as a feather
That the wind blows hither and thither till it falls in the foam of the sea;
Thou hast given me haven and home; thou hast given me wind and rough weather;
And I lift thee my heart for a lyre, for the gifts thou hast given to me.

[str. γ.]

Behold, of him unto whom much is given,
Much is required. It is a fearful thing
To be a poet. How shall he be shriven,
If greed or fear restrain his uttering?
Oh, ill for him, whoever he may be,
Who looks upon the glory of the night
And is not glad of heart!
Behold, he hath eyes and he doth not see!
How shall his soul see the very light?
Shall he ever emerge from the mirk of the mart?
Ay, but if he whom the high gods have ordained
Their priest, speak not the truth that his eye shall see,
There shall be no spirit in hell so scourged as he —
No soul so self-disdained.
Woe to the chosen one,
Lured from his lonely way,
Bullied or bribed to abandon the shrine!
There is one only way —
None other — none.
Lady, whose bay-flowers
I wear for a fear and a sign,
If the world should beguile me
With music and masking and glitter of gay flowers,
Then I could not reply, should'st thou revile me,
Wordless and more in high contempt than ire.
Ay, even if, feeling at sight of the sweet goal
Mine own unworthiness,
I should delay to seize the seven-tongued lyre,
Lest I should do its sacred strings some wrong,
Thou might'st well leave me with small dole
And he who is the Virgil to my song,
Scorning my timorous distress,
Might well reproach the vileness of my soul.

[ant. γ.]

There is so much that I would fain be singing,
I know not if my voice may fail, my friend,
Nor if the years may ever see me bringing
My lyric labors to a tranquil end.
The new world, rising from its fiery death,
Spreads its strong, phoenix-wings for sunward flight,
Impatient of the past.
The Trade-snake belches his foul black breath
From a thousand throats and the throng takes fright.
And cowers and the sky is overcast.
Hark, but the hurry of hoof-beats in the air!
The new Bellerophon of the unborn years!
And his cry rings out like a victor's shout in our ears,
Piercing the monster's lair.
Song is the steed he rides,
Wisdom the bridle-rein.
Who shall withstand him? Who shall delay?
Not with an idle rein
Grimly he guides.
Death for the dragon!
For men, where a fen was, a way
For the footing of freemen!
Then shall the poets pour us a flagon,
Sweet as rain to the throats of ship-wrecked seamen,
And the spent world shall draw a freer breath, —
Though still may men see Faith as one astray,
And Hope with weary eyes,
And wan Love beating at the gates of Death.
Wise eyes shall pierce the darkness with sweet scorn
And wise lips clarion our way
Through ever loftier portals of the morn,
With lark-songs greatening as they rise
In the large glories of the coming day.

[ep. γ.]

For surely from the childing night
That labors in a God's birth-throes,
Shall come at last dawn's baby-rose,
The potency of perfect light.
I see the seraph of the years,
Asleep in the womb of the Lord's intent,
And the ripple of laughter in his ears
Is seen on his face as a great content.
And the wise lips smile and the grand brow flushes
For joy at the joy that his own arm brings,
Like a smile of May when the wild rose blushes.
And deep in the thicket the wood-thrush sings.
I see him at rest on the rim of Time,
Stretched on the cloud-rack, couchant and sublime,
And the swift white sword at his side, half-drawn,
Flashes a distant glimmer of the dawn.
I see, though darkly, what my spirit sought;
I see what is, beneath what comes and goes;
I see the sweet unfolding of the rose,
By changeless influence to full beauty brought;
I hear the symphony intricately wrought;
Dim meanings swell through deep adagios
And underneath the myriad chords disclose
The perfect act of God that changeth not.
Behold, He is other than earth and transcendeth its seeming;
Behold, He is one with the earth and the earth is His dreaming.
Soul of the world, say the sages; yea, sooth, but not bound in a prison,
For the soul dwelleth not in the body, but the body doth dwell in the soul.
O Holy of Holies! Inscrutable! Ageless! through Thee have we risen;
Thou art, but our being is yearning, — we are not save as parts of Thy whole.
Only by cleaving to Thee have Thy creatures the life that rejoices,
Knowing itself to be, verily; the rest is but seeming to be;
And the whole world, groaning in travail, cries out with its manifold voices,
"O Lord, in Thee have we trusted; there is no life but in Thee!"

Richard Hovey

1908