Edith Wharton

Life, like a marble block, is given to all, A blank, inchoate mass of years and days, Whence one with ardent chisel swift essays Some shape of strength or symmetry to call; One shatters it in bits to mend a wall; One in a craftier hand the chisel lays, And one, to wake the mirth in Lesbia’s gaze, Carves it apace in toys fantastical. But least is he who, with enchanted eyes Filled with high visions of fair shapes to be, Muses which god he shall immortalize In the proud Parian’s perpetuity, Till twilight warns him from the punctual skies That the night cometh wherein none shall see.

I Like Crusoe with the bootless gold we stand Upon the desert verge of death, and say: “What shall avail the woes of yesterday To buy to-morrow’s wisdom, in the land Whose currency is strange unto our hand? In life’s small market they had served to pay Some late-found rapture, could we but delay Till Time hath matched our means to our demand.” But otherwise Fate wills it, for, behold, Our gathered strength of individual pain, When Time’s long alchemy hath made it gold, Dies with us—hoarded all these years in vain, Since those that might be heir to it the mould Renew, and coin themselves new griefs again. II O Death, we come full-handed to thy gate, Rich with strange burden of the mingled years, Gains and renunciations, mirth and tears, And love’s oblivion, and remembering hate, Nor know we what compulsion laid such freight Upon our souls—and shall our hopes and fears Buy nothing of thee, Death? Behold our wares, And sell us the one joy for which we wait. Had we lived longer, like had such for sale, With the last coin of sorrow purchased cheap, But now we stand before thy shadowy pale, And all our longings lie within thy keep— Death, can it be the years shall naught avail? “Not so,” Death answered, “they shall purchase sleep.”

I Immense, august, like some Titanic bloom, The mighty choir unfolds its lithic core, Petalled with panes of azure, gules and or, Splendidly lambent in the Gothic gloom, And stamened with keen flamelets that illume The pale high-altar. On the prayer-worn floor, By worshippers innumerous thronged of yore, A few brown crones, familiars of the tomb, The stranded driftwood of Faith’s ebbing sea— For these alone the finials fret the skies, The topmost bosses shake their blossoms free, While from the triple portals, with grave eyes, Tranquil, and fixed upon eternity, The cloud of witnesses still testifies. II The crimson panes like blood-drops stigmatise The western floor. The aisles are mute and cold. A rigid fetich in her robe of gold, The Virgin of the Pillar, with blank eyes, Enthroned beneath her votive canopies, Gathers a meagre remnant to her fold. The rest is solitude; the church, grown old, Stands stark and grey beneath the burning skies. Well-nigh again its mighty framework grows To be a part of nature’s self, withdrawn From hot humanity’s impatient woes; The floor is ridged like some rude mountain lawn, And in the east one giant window shows The roseate coldness of an Alp at dawn.

La Belgique ne regrette rien Not with her ruined silver spires, Not with her cities shamed and rent, Perish the imperishable fires That shape the homestead from the tent. Wherever men are staunch and free, There shall she keep her fearless state, And homeless, to great nations be The home of all that makes them great.

I Leaguered in fire The wild black promontories of the coast extend Their savage silhouettes; The sun in universal carnage sets, And, halting higher, The motionless storm-clouds mass their sullen threats, Like an advancing mob in sword-points penned, That, balked, yet stands at bay. Mid-zenith hangs the fascinated day In wind-lustrated hollows crystalline, A wan Valkyrie whose wide pinions shine Across the ensanguined ruins of the fray, And in her hand swings high o’erhead, Above the waster of war, The silver torch-light of the evening star Wherewith to search the faces of the dead. II Lagooned in gold, Seem not those jetty promontories rather The outposts of some ancient land forlorn, Uncomforted of morn, Where old oblivions gather, The melancholy unconsoling fold Of all things that go utterly to death And mix no more, no more With life’s perpetually awakening breath? Shall Time not ferry me to such a shore, Over such sailless seas, To walk with hope’s slain importunities In miserable marriage? Nay, shall not All things be there forgot, Save the sea’s golden barrier and the black Close-crouching promontories? Dead to all shames, forgotten of all glories, Shall I not wander there, a shadow’s shade, A spectre self-destroyed, So purged of all remembrance and sucked back Into the primal void, That should we on the shore phantasmal meet I should not know the coming of your feet?