Textarchiv - Silas Weir Mitchell

Innogen

mrbot — Tue, 22 Jan 2019 21:10:09 +0000

Immortal shadow, faint and ever fair,
Dear for unspoken words that might have been,
Compelled to silent sorrow none may share,
A ghost of Shakespeare's world, unheard, unseen,
How many more like thee have voiceless stood
Uncalled upon the threshold of his mind,
The speechless children of a mighty brood
Who were and are not! Never shall they find
The happier comrades unto whom he gave
Thought, speech, and actions— they who shall not know
The end of our realities, the grave,
Nor what is sadder, life, nor any human woe.

Silas Weir Mitchell

1914

Friendship

mrbot — Thu, 17 Jan 2019 21:10:08 +0000

No wail of grief can equal answer win:
Love's faltering echo may but ill express
The grief for grief, nor more than faintly mock
The primal cry of some too vast distress.
Or is it for fair company of joy
We ask an equal echo from the heart?
A certain loneliness is ever ours,
And friendship mourns her still imperfect art

Silas Weir Mitchell

1914

Loss

mrbot — Wed, 16 Jan 2019 21:10:08 +0000

Life may moult many feathers, yet delight
To soar and circle in a heaven of joy;
The pinion robbed must learn more swift employ,
Till the thinned feathers end our eager flight.

Silas Weir Mitchell

1914

Idleness

mrbot — Tue, 15 Jan 2019 21:10:06 +0000

There is no dearer lover of lost hours
Than I.
I can be idler than the idlest flowers;
More idly lie
Than noonday lilies languidly afloat,
And water pillowed in a windless moat.
And I can be
Stiller than some gray stone
That hath no motion known.
It seems to me
That my still idleness doth make my own
All magic gifts of joy's simplicity.

Silas Weir Mitchell

1914

Egypt

mrbot — Sun, 13 Jan 2019 21:10:07 +0000

I saw two vultures, gray they were and gorged:
One on a mosque sat high, asleep he seemed,
Claw-stayed within the silver crescent's curve;
Not far away, another, gray as he,
As full content and somnolent with food,
Clutched with instinctive grip the golden cross
High on the church an alien creed had built.
Yon in the museum mighty Rameses sleeps,
For some new childhood swaddled like a babe.
Osiris and Jehovah, Allah, Christ,
This land hath known, and, in the dawn of time,
The brute-god-creature crouching in the sand,
Ere Rameses worshipped and ere Seti died.
How much of truth to each new faith He gave
Who is the very father of all creeds,
I know not now—nor shall know. Ever still
Past temple, palace, tomb; the great Nile flows,
Free and more free of bounty as men learn
To use his values. Only this I know.

Silas Weir Mitchell

1914

Dominique de Gourgues

mrbot — Sat, 12 Jan 2019 21:10:07 +0000

In his cheerful Norman orchard
Lay De Gourgues of Mont Marsan,
Gascon to the core, and merry,
Just a well-contented man,

With his pipe, that comrade constant,
Won in sorrowful Algiers,
In the slave's brief rest at evening
Left for curses and for tears.

Peacefully he pondered, gazing
Where his plough-ribbed cornfields lay,
With their touch of hopeful verdure,
Waiting patient for the May.

Joyous from the terrace o'er him
Came the voice of wife and child,
And the sunlit smoke curled upward
As the gaunt old trooper smiled.

"St. Denis," quoth the stout De Gourgues,
"Yon beehive's ever busy hum
Doth like me better than the noise
Of the musketoon and drum.

"Tough am I, though this skin of mine
By steel and bullet well is scarred,
Like those round pippins overhead
By the thrushes pecked and marred.

"Forsooth I 'm somewhat autumn-ripe,
Yet like my apples sound and red.
And life is sweet," said stout De Gourgues,
"Yea, verily sweet," he said.

"Three things there were I once did love—
One that gay jester of Navarre,
And one to sack a Spanish town,
And one the wild wrath of war.

"And two there were I hated well—
One that carrion beast, a Moor,
And one that passeth him for spite,
That 's a Spaniard, rest you sure."

Still he smoked, and musing murmured,
"There be three things well I like,
My pipe, my ease, this quiet life,
Better far than push of pike.

"And to-day there be two I love
Who lured me out of the strife,
The lad who plays with my rusty blade,
And the little Gascon wife.

"Parbleu! parbleu!" cried gray De Gourgues,
For at his side there stood
A soldier, scarred and worn and white,
In a cuirass dark with blood.

"Ventre Saint Gris! good friend, halloa!
Art sorely hurt, and how? and why?
Art Huguenot? Here's help at need:
Or Catholic? What care I!"

No motion had the white wan lips,
The mail-clad chest no breathing stirred,
Though clear as rings a vengeful blade
Fell every whispered word.

"That Jean Ribaut am I!
Who sailed for the land of flowers;
Fore God our tryst is surely set;
I wearily count the hours."

And slowly rose the steel-clad hand,
And westward pointing stayed as set:
"Thy peace is gone! No morn shall dawn
Will let thee e'er forget.

"Thy brothers, the dead, lie there,
Where only the winds complain,
And under their gallows walk
The mocking lords of Spain.

"If ever this France be dear,
And honor as life to thee,
Thy wife, thy child are naught to-day,
Thy errand 's on the sea."

"St. Denis to save!" cried stout De Gourgues,
"One may dream, it seems, by day."
The man was gone!—but where he stood
A rusted steel glove lay.

"I 've heard—yea twice—this troublous tale,
It groweth full old indeed;
But old or new, my sword is sheathed
For ghost or king or creed."

Full slow he turned and climbed the hill,
And thrice looked back to see:
"The dream! The glove!—How came it there?—
What matters a glove to me?"

But day by day as one distraught
He stood, or gazed upon the board;
Nor heard the voice of wife or boy,
Nor took of the wine they poured.

He saw his bannerol flutter forth,
As tossed by the wind of fight,
And watched his sheathed sword o'er the hearth
Leap flashing to the light.

He told her all. "Now God be praised!"
She cried, while the hot tears ran;
"She little loves who loves not more
His honor than the man?"

His lands are sold. A stranger's hand
The juice of his grapes shall strain;
Another, too, shall reap the hopes
He sowed with the winter grain.

His way was o'er the windy seas,
But, sailed he fast or sailed he slow,
He saw by day, he saw by night,
The face of Jean Ribaut.

The sun rose crimson with the morn,
Or set at eve a ghastly red,
While over blue Bahama seas
Beckoned him ever the dead.

Till spoke, sore set at last, De Gourgues
"Ho, brothers brave, and have ye sailed
For gain of gold this weary way?
Heaven's grace! but ye have failed!

"A sterner task our God hath set;
In yon wild land of flowers
Our dead await the trusty blades
Shall cleanse their fame and ours.

"Ye know the tale." Few words they said:
"We are thine for France to-day!"
By cape and beach and palmy isles
The avengers held their way.

The deed was done, the honor won,
Nor land nor gain of gold got they,
Where 'neath the broad palmetto leaves.
Their dead at evening lay.

The deed was done, the honor won,
And o'er the gibbet-loads was set
This legend grim for priests to read,
And, if they could, forget:

"Not as to Spaniards' murderers these:
Ladrones, robbers, hanged I here,
Ransom base for the costly souls
Whom God and France hold dear."

How welcomed him that brave Rochelle,
With cannon thunder and clash of bell,
What bitter fate his courage won,
Some slender annals tell.

No legend tells what signal sweet
Looked gladness from a woman's eyes,
Or how she welcomed him who brought
Alas! one only prize,—

A noble deed in honor done
And the wreck of a ruined life.
Ah, well if I knew what said the lips
Of the little Gascon wife!

Silas Weir Mitchell

1914

E. D. M.

mrbot — Fri, 11 Jan 2019 21:10:08 +0000

There is a heart I knew in other days,
Not ever far from any one day's thought;
One pure as are the purest. All the years
Of battle or of peace, of joy or grief,
Take him no further from me. Oftentimes,
When the sweet tenderness of some glad girl
Disturbs with tears, full suddenly I know
It is because one memory ever dear
Is matched a moment with its living kin.
Or when at hearing of some gallant deed
My throat fills, and I may not dare to say
The quick praise in me, then I know, alas!
'T is by this dear dead nobleness my soul is stirred.
He lived, he loved, he died. Brief epitaph!
What hour of duty in the long grim wards
Poisoned his life, I know not. Painfully
He sickened, yearning for the strife of War
That went its thunderous way unhelped of him;
And then he died. A little duty done;
A little love for many, much for me,
And that was all beneath this earthly sun.

Silas Weir Mitchell

1914

Coleridge at Chamouny

mrbot — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 21:10:06 +0000

I would I knew what ever happy stone
Of all these dateless records, gray and vast,
Keeps silent memory of that sunrise lone
When, lost to earth, the soul of Coleridge passed
From earthly time to one immortal hour:
There thought's faint stir woke echoes of the mind
That broke to thunder tones of mightier power
From depths and heights mysterious, undefined;
As when the soft snows, drifting from the rock,
Rouse the wild clamor of the avalanche shock.

Who may not envy him that awful morn
When marvelling at his risen self he trod,
And thoughts intense as pain were fiercely born,
Till rose his soul in one great psalm to God.
A man to-morrow weak as are the worst,
A man to whom all depths, all heights belong,
Now with too bitter hours of weakness cursed,
Now winged with vigor, as a giant strong
To take our groping hearts with tender hand,
And set them surely where God's angels stand.

On peaks of lofty contemplation raised,
Such as shall never see earth's common son,
High as the snowy altar which he praised,
An hour's creative ecstasy he won.
Yet, in this frenzy of the lifted soul
Mocked him the nothingness of human speech,
When through his being visions past control
Swept, strong as mountain streams.—Alas! to reach
Words equal-winged as thought to none is given,
To none of earth to speak the tongue of heaven.

The eagle-flight of genius gladness hath,
And joy is ever with its victor swoop
Through sun and storm. Companionless its path
In earthly realms, and, when its pinions droop,
Faint memories only of the heavenly sun,
Dim records of ethereal space it brings
To show how haughty was the height it won,
To prove what freedom had its airy wings.
This is the curse of genius, that earth's night
Dims the proud glory of its heavenward flight.

Silas Weir Mitchell

1914

After Ruysdael

mrbot — Tue, 11 Sep 2018 21:10:05 +0000

Though briery ways, from underneath
The far-off sadness of the gold
That fades above the sun, the waves.
Swift to our very feet are rolled.

Above, beyond, to either side,
The sombre woods bend overhead;
And underneath, the wild brown waves
Leap joyously, with lightsome tread,

From rock to rock, and laugh and sing,
Like lonely maids in woods at play;
Till in the cold, still pool below,
A-sudden checked, they stand at bay,

Like girls who, in their mood of joy,
To this more solemn woodland glide,
And with some brief, sweet terror touched,
Stand wistful, trembling, tender-eyed.

What half-felt sense of something gone,
What sadness in the moveless woods;
What sorrow haunts yon amber sky,
That over all so darkly brood!

Silas Weir Mitchell

1914

Beaver-Tail Rocks

mrbot — Mon, 10 Sep 2018 21:10:01 +0000

Fare forth my soul, fare forth, and take thine own;
The silver morning and the golden eve
Wait, as the virgins waited to receive
The bridegroom and the bride, with roses strown;
Fare forth and lift her veil,—the bride is joy alone!
To thee the friendly hours with her shall bring
The changeless trust that bird and poet sing;
Her dower to-day shall be the asters sown
On breezy uplands; hers the vigor brought
Upon the north wind's wing, and hers for thee
A stately heritage of land and sea,
And all that nature hath, and all the great have thought,
While low she whispers like a sea-born shell
Things that thy love may hear but never tell

Silas Weir Mitchell

1914