Trumbull Stickney

You say, Columbus with his argosies Who rash and greedy took the screaming main And vanished out before the hurricane Into the sunset after merchandise, Then under western palms with simple eyes Trafficked and robbed and triumphed home again: You say this is the glory of the brain And human life no other use than this? I then do answering say to you: The line Of wizards and of saviours, keeping trust In that which made them pensive and divine, Passes before us like a cloud of dust. What were they? Actors, ill and mad with wine, And all their language babble and disgust.

Tho’ lack of laurels and of wreaths not one Prove you our lives abortive, shall we yet Vaunt us our single aim, our hearts full set To win the guerdon which is never won. Witness, a purpose never is undone. And tho’ fate drain our seas of violet To gather round our lives her wide-hung net, Memories of hopes that are not shall atone. Not wholly starless is the ill-starred life, Not all is night in failure, and the shield Sometimes well grasped, tho’ shattered in the strife. And here while all the lowering heaven is ringed With our loud death-shouts echoed, on the field Stands forth our Nikè, proud, tho’ broken-winged.

Sir, say no more. Within me ’t is as if The green and climbing eyesight of a cat Crawled near my mind’s poor birds.

Chide me not, darling, that I sing Familiar thoughts and metres old: Nay, do not scold My spirit’s childish uttering. I know not why ’t is that or this I murmur to you thus or so: Only I know It throbs across my silences, It blows over my heart,—a long Infinite wind, again, again! Again! and then My life kneels down into a song.

The passions that we fought with and subdued Never quite die. In some maimed serpent’s coil They lurk, ready to spring and vindicate That power was once our torture and our lord.

By such an all-embalming summer day As sweetens now among the mountain pines Down to the cornland yonder and the vines, To where the sky and sea are mixed in gray, How do all things together take their way Harmonious to the harvest, bringing wines And bread and light and whatsoe’er combines In the large wreath to make it round and gay. To me my troubled life doth now appear Like scarce distinguishable summits hung Around the blue horizon: places where Not even a traveller purposeth to steer,— Whereof a migrant bird in passing sung, And the girl closed her window not to hear.

It’s autumn in the country I remember. How warm a wind blew here about the ways! And shadows on the hillside lay to slumber During the long sun-sweetened summer-days. It’s cold abroad the country I remember. The swallows veering skimmed the golden grain At midday with a wing aslant and limber; And yellow cattle browsed upon the plain. It’s empty down the country I remember. I had a sister lovely in my sight: Her hair was dark, her eyes were very sombre; We sang together in the woods at night. It’s lonely in the country I remember. The babble of our children fills my ears, And on our hearth I stare the perished ember To flames that show all starry thro’ my tears. It’s dark about the country I remember. There are the mountains where I lived. The path Is slushed with cattle-tracks and fallen timber, The stumps are twisted by the tempests’ wrath. But that I knew these places are my own, I’d ask how came such wretchedness to cumber The earth, and I to people it alone. It rains across the country I remember.

Live blindly and upon the hour. The Lord, Who was the Future, died full long ago. Knowledge which is the Past is folly. Go, Poor child, and be not to thyself abhorred. Around thine earth sun-wingèd winds do blow And planets roll; a meteor draws his sword; The rainbow breaks his seven-coloured chord And the long strips of river-silver flow: Awake! Give thyself to the lovely hours. Drinking their lips, catch thou the dream in flight About their fragile hairs’ aërial gold. Thou art divine, thou livest,—as of old Apollo springing naked to the light, And all his island shivered into flowers.

Leave him now quiet by the way To rest apart. I know what draws him to the dust alway And churns him in the builder’s lime: He has the fright of time. I heard it knocking in his breast A minute since; His human eyes did wince, He stubborned like the massive slaughter beast And as a thing o’erwhelmed with sound Stood bolted to the ground. Leave him, for rest alone can cure— If cure there be— This waif upon the sea. He is of those who slanted the great door And listened—wretched little lad— To what they said.

There lies a somnolent lake Under a noiseless sky, Where never the mornings break Nor the evenings die. Mad flakes of colour Whirl on its even face Iridescent and streaked with pallour; And, warding the silent place, The rocks rise sheer and gray From the sedgeless brink to the sky Dull-lit with the light of pale half-day Thro’ a void space and dry. And the hours lag dead in the air With a sense of coming eternity To the heart of the lonely boatman there: That boatman am I, I, in my lonely boat, A waif on the somnolent lake, Watching the colours creep and float With the sinuous track of a snake. Now I lean o’er the side And lazy shades in the water see, Lapped in the sweep of a sluggish tide Crawled in from the living sea; And next I fix mine eyes, So long that the heart declines, On the changeless face of the open skies Where no star shines; And now to the rocks I turn, To the rocks, around That lie like walls of a circling sun Wherein lie bound The waters that feel my powerless strength And meet my homeless oar Labouring over their ashen length Never to find a shore. But the gleam still skims At times on the somnolent lake, And a light there is that swims With the whirl of a snake; And tho’ dead be the hours i’ the air, And dayless the sky, The heart is alive of the boatman there: That boatman am I.