Rivers to the Sea Read Online

(She comes—alas, I hoped to make

Another stanza for her sake!)

NIGHT IN ARIZONA

THE moon is a charring ember

Dying into the dark;

Off in the crouching mountains

Coyotes bark.

The stars are heavy in heaven,

Too great for the sky to hold— What if they fell and shattered

The earth with gold?

No lights are over the mesa,

The wind is hard and wild, I stand at the darkened window

And cry like a child.

DUSK IN WAR TIME

A HALF-HOUR more and you will lean

To gather me close in the old sweet way— But oh, to the woman over the sea

Who will come at the close of day?

A half-hour more and I will hear

The key in the latch and the strong quick tread— But oh, the woman over the sea

Waiting at dusk for one who is dead!

SPRING IN WAR TIME

I FEEL the Spring far off, far off,

The faint far scent of bud and leaf— Oh how can Spring take heart to come

To a world in grief,

Deep grief?

The sun turns north, the days grow long,

Later the evening star grows bright— How can the daylight linger on

For men to fight,

Still fight?

The grass is waking in the ground,

Soon it will rise and blow in waves— How can it have the heart to sway

Over the graves,

New graves?

Under the boughs where lovers walked

The apple-blooms will shed their breath— But what of all the lovers now

Parted by death,

Gray Death?

WHILE I MAY

WIND and hail and veering rain,

Driven mist that veils the day, Soul’s distress and body’s pain,

I would bear you while I may.

I would love you if I might,

For so soon my life will be Buried in a lasting night,

Even pain denied to me.

DEBT

WHAT do I owe to you

Who loved me deep and long? You never gave my spirit wings

Or gave my heart a song.

But oh, to him I loved

Who loved me not at all, I owe the little open gate

That led thru heaven’s wall.

FROM THE NORTH

THE northern woods are delicately sweet,

The lake is folded softly by the shore,

But I am restless for the subway’s roar, The thunder and the hurrying of feet. I try to sleep, but still my eyelids beat

Against the image of the tower that bore

Me high aloft, as if thru heaven’s door I watched the world from God’s unshaken seat. I would go back and breathe with quickened sense

The tunnel’s strong hot breath of powdered steel; But at the ferries I should leave the tense

Dark air behind, and I should mount and be

One among many who are thrilled to feel

The first keen sea-breath from the open sea.

THE LIGHTS OF NEW YORK

THE lightning spun your garment for the night

Of silver filaments with fire shot thru,

A broidery of lamps that lit for you The steadfast splendor of enduring light. The moon drifts dimly in the heaven’s height,

Watching with wonder how the earth she knew

That lay so long wrapped deep in dark and dew, Should wear upon her breast a star so white. The festivals of Babylon were dark

With flaring flambeaux that the wind blew down; The Saturnalia were a wild boy’s lark

With rain-quenched torches dripping thru the town— But you have found a god and filched from him A fire that neither wind nor rain can dim.

SEA LONGING

A THOUSAND miles beyond this sun-steeped wall

Somewhere the waves creep cool along the sand,

The ebbing tide forsakes the listless land With the old murmur, long and musical; The windy waves mount up and curve and fall,

And round the rocks the foam blows up like snow,—

Tho’ I am inland far, I hear and know, For I was born the sea’s eternal thrall. I would that I were there and over me

The cold insistence of the tide would roll,

Quenching this burning thing men call the soul,— Then with the ebbing I should drift and be

Less than the smallest shell along the shoal, Less than the sea-gulls calling to the sea.

THE RIVER

I CAME from the sunny valleys

And sought for the open sea, For I thought in its gray expanses

My peace would come to me.

I came at last to the ocean

And found it wild and black, And I cried to the windless valleys,

“Be kind and take me back!”

But the thirsty tide ran inland,

And the salt waves drank of me, And I who was fresh as the rainfall

Am bitter as the sea.

LEAVES

ONE by one, like leaves from a tree, All my faiths have forsaken me; But the stars above my head Burn in white and delicate red, And beneath my feet the earth Brings the sturdy grass to birth. I who was content to be But a silken-singing tree, But a rustle of delight In the wistful heart of night— I have lost the leaves that knew Touch of rain and weight of dew. Blinded by a leafy crown I looked neither up nor down— But the little leaves that die Have left me room to see the sky; Now for the first time I know Stars above and earth below.

THE ANSWER

WHEN I go back to earth And all my joyous body Puts off the red and white That once had been so proud, If men should pass above With false and feeble pity, My dust will find a voice To answer them aloud:

“Be still, I am content, Take back your poor compassion, Joy was a flame in me Too steady to destroy; Lithe as a bending reed Loving the storm that sways her— I found more joy in sorrow Than you could find in joy.”

III

OVER THE ROOFS

I

OH chimes set high on the sunny tower

Ring on, ring on unendingly, Make all the hours a single hour, For when the dusk begins to flower,

The man I love will come to me! …

But no, go slowly as you will,

I should not bid you hasten so, For while I wait for love to come, Some other girl is standing dumb,

Fearing her love will go.

II

Oh white steam over the roofs, blow high!

Oh chimes in the tower ring clear and free ! Oh sun awake in the covered sky,

For the man I love, loves me I …

Oh drifting steam disperse and die,

Oh tower stand shrouded toward the south,— Fate heard afar my happy cry,

And laid her finger on my mouth.

III

The dusk was blue with blowing mist,

The lights were spangles in a veil, And from the clamor far below

Floated faint music like a wail.

It voiced what I shall never speak,

My heart was breaking all night long, But when the dawn was hard and gray,

My tears distilled into a song.

IV

I said, “I have shut my heart

As one shuts an open door, That Love may starve therein

And trouble me no more.”

But over the roofs there came

The wet new wind of May, And a tune blew up from the curb

Where the street-pianos play.

My room was white with the sun

And Love cried out in me, “I am strong, I will break your heart

Unless you set me free.”

A CRY

OH, there are eyes that he can see,

And hands to make his hands rejoice, But to my lover I must be

Only a voice.

Oh, there are breasts to bear his head,

And lips whereon his lips can lie, But I must be till I am dead

Only a cry.

CHANCE

How many times we must have met

Here on the street as strangers do, Children of chance we were, who passed

The door of heaven and never knew.

IMMORTAL

So soon my body will have gone

Beyond the sound and sight of men, And tho’ it wakes and suffers now,

Its sleep will be unbroken then; But oh, my frail immortal soul

That will not sleep forevermore, A leaf borne onward by the blast,

A wave that never finds the shore.

AFTER DEATH

Now while my lips are living

Their words must stay unsaid, And will my soul remember

To speak when I am dead?

Yet if my soul remembered

You would not heed it, dear, For now you must not listen,

And then you could not hear.

TESTAMENT

I SAID, “I will take my life

And throw it away; I who was fire and song

Will turn to clay.”

“I will lie no more in the night

With shaken breath, I will toss my heart in the air

To be caught by Death.”

But out of the night I heard,

Like the inland sound of the sea, The hushed and terrible sob

Of all humanity.

Then I said, “Oh who am I

To scorn God to his face? I will bow my head and stay

And suffer with my race.”

GIFTS

I GAVE my first love laughter,

I gave my second tears, I gave my third love silence

Thru all the years.

My first love gave me singing,

My second eyes to see, But oh, it was my third love

Who gave my soul to me.

IV

FROM THE SEA

ALL beauty calls you to me, and you seem, Past twice a thousand miles of shifting sea, To reach me. You are as the wind I breathe Here on the ship’s sun-smitten topmost deck, With only light between the heavens and me. I feel your spirit and I close my eyes, Knowing the bright hair blowing in the sun, The eager whisper and the searching eyes.

Listen, I love you. Do not turn your face Nor touch me. Only stand and watch awhile The blue unbroken circle of the sea. Look far away and let me ease my heart Of words that beat in it with broken wing. Look far away, and if I say too much, Forget that I am speaking. Only watch, How like a gull that sparkling sinks to rest, The foam-crest drifts along a happy wave Toward the bright verge, the boundary of the world.

I am so weak a thing, praise me for this, That in some strange way I was strong enough To keep my love unuttered and to stand Altho’ I longed to kneel to you that night You looked at me with ever-calling eyes. Was I not calm? And if you guessed my love You thought it something delicate and free, Soft as the sound of fir-trees in the wind, Fleeting as phosphorescent stars in foam. Yet in my heart there was a beating storm Bending my thoughts before it, and I strove To say too little lest I say too much, And from my eyes to drive love’s happy shame. Yet when I heard your name the first far time It seemed like other names to me, and I Was all unconscious, as a dreaming river That nears at last its long predestined sea; And when you spoke to me, I did not know That to my life’s high altar came its priest. But now I know between my God and me You stand forever, nearer God than I, And in your hands with faith and utter joy I would that I could lay my woman’s soul.

Oh, my love To whom I cannot come with any gift Of body or of soul, I pass and go. But sometimes when you hear blown back to you My wistful, far-off singing touched with tears, Know that I sang for you alone to hear, And that I wondered if the wind would bring To him who tuned my heart its distant song. So might a woman who in loneliness Had borne a child, dreaming of days to come, Wonder if it would please its father’s eyes. But long before I ever heard your name, Always the undertone’s unchanging note In all my singing had prefigured you, Foretold you as a spark foretells a flame. Yet I was free as an untethered cloud In the great space between the sky and sea, And might have blown before the wind of joy Like a bright banner woven by the sun. I did not know the longing in the night— You who have waked me cannot give me sleep. All things in all the world can rest, but I, Even the smooth brief respite of a wave When it gives up its broken crown of foam, Even that little rest I may not have. And yet all quiet loves of friends, all joy In all the piercing beauty of the world I would give up—go blind forevermore, Rather than have God blot from out my soul Remembrance of your voice that said my name.

For us no starlight stilled the April fields, No birds awoke in darkling trees for us, Yet where we walked the city’s street that night Felt in our feet the singing fire of spring, And in our path we left a trail of light Soft as the phosphorescence of the sea When night submerges in the vessel’s wake A heaven of unborn evanescent stars.

VIGNETTES OVERSEAS

I

Off Gibraltar

BEYOND the sleepy hills of Spain,

The sun goes down in yellow mist, The sky is fresh with dewy stars

Above a sea of amethyst.

Yet in the city of my love

High noon burns all the heavens bare— For him the happiness of light,

For me a delicate despair.

II

Off Algiers

Oh give me neither love nor tears,

Nor dreams that sear the night with fire, Go lightly on your pilgrimage

Unburdened by desire.

Forget me for a month, a year,

But, oh, beloved, think of me When unexpected beauty burns

Like sudden sunlight on the sea.

III

Naples

Nisida and Prosida are laughing in the light, Capri is a dewy flower lifting into sight, Posilipo kneels and looks in the burnished sea, Naples crowds her million roofs close as close can be; Round about the mountain’s crest a flag of smoke is hung— Oh when God made Italy he was gay and young!

IV

Capri

When beauty grows too great to bear

How shall I ease me of its ache, For beauty more than bitterness

Makes the heart break.

Now while I watch the dreaming sea

With isles like flowers against her breast, Only one voice in all the world

Could give me rest.

V

Night Song at Amalfi

I asked the heaven of stars

What I should give my love— It answered me with silence,

Silence above.

I asked the darkened sea

Down where the fishers go— It answered me with silence,

Silence below.

Oh, I could give him weeping,

Or I could give him song— But how can I give silence My whole life long?

VI

Ruins of Paestum

On lowlands where the temples lie

The marsh-grass mingles with the flowers, Only the little songs of birds

Link the unbroken hours.

So in the end, above my heart

Once like the city wild and gay, The slow white stars will pass by night,

The swift brown birds by day.

VII

Rome

Oh for the rising moon

Over the roofs of Rome, And swallows in the dusk

Circling a darkened dome!

Oh for the measured dawns

That pass with folded wings— How can I let them go

With unremembered things?

VIII

Florence

The bells ring over the Anno,

Midnight, the long, long chime; Here in the quivering darkness

I am afraid of time.

Oh, gray bells cease your tolling,

Time takes too much from me, And yet to rock and river

He gives eternity.

IX

Villa Serbelloni, Bellaggio

The fountain shivers lightly in the rain,

The laurels drip, the fading roses fall, The marble satyr plays a mournful strain

That leaves the rainy fragrance musical.

Oh dripping laurel, Phoebus sacred tree,

Would that swift Daphne’s lot might come to me, Then would I still my soul and for an hour

Change to a laurel in the glancing shower.

X

Stresa

The moon grows out of the hills

A yellow flower, The lake is a dreamy bride

Who waits her hour.

Beauty has filled my heart,

It can hold no more, It is full, as the lake is full,

From shore to shore.

XI

Hamburg

The day that I come home,

What will you find to say,— Words as light as foam

With laughter light as spray?

Yet say what words you will

The day that I come home; I shall hear the whole deep ocean

Beating under the foam.

V

SAPPHO

SAPPHO

I

MIDNIGHT, and in the darkness not a sound, So, with hushed breathing, sleeps the autumn night; Only the white immortal stars shall know, Here in the house with the low-lintelled door, How, for the last time, I have lit the lamp. I think you are not wholly careless now, Walls that have sheltered me so many an hour, Bed that has brought me ecstasy and sleep, Floors that have borne me when a gale of joy Lifted my soul and made me half a god. Farewell! Across the threshold many feet Shall pass, but never Sappho’s feet again. Girls shall come in whom love has made aware Of all their swaying beauty—they shall sing, But never Sappho’s voice, like golden fire, Shall seek for heaven thru your echoing rafters. There shall be swallows bringing back the spring Over the long blue meadows of the sea, And south-wind playing on the reeds of rain, But never Sappho’s whisper in the night, Never her love-cry when the lover comes.