Bliss Carman

“ Thronging the twilight, wraith on wraith,
Unlock the door and let me go
To thy dark rival Death!
II O Heart, dear Heart, in this fair house
Why hast thou wearied and grown tired,
45 Between a morning and a night,
Of all thy soul desired?
Fond one, who cannot understand
Even these shadows on the floor,
Yet must be dreaming of dark loves
And joys beyond my door!
But I am beautiful past all
The timid tumult of thy mood,
And thou returning not must still
Be mine in solitude. ”

“ I to the broken rhythm of thought and man,
The sweep and span
Of memory and hope
About the orbit where they still must grope
For wider scope,
To be through thousand springs restored, renewed,
With love imbrued,
With increments of will
Made strong, perceiving unattainment still
From each new skill.
Always the flawless beauty, always the chord
Of the Overword,
Dominant, pleading, sure,
No truth too small to save and make endure.
No good too poor! ”

“ The great white morning sun shall walk the earth again,
And the children return to my door,
I shall hear their merry laugh, and forget my buried dwarf,
As a tale that is told at the door.
Far from the quiet woods the gaunt red wolf shall flee,
As a cur that is stoned from the door ”

“ He plays, like some dread veiled mysteriarch,
Lighting the dark,
Bidding the spring grow warm,
The gendering merge and loosing of spirit in form,
Peace out of storm.
11 For music is the sacrament of love;
He broods above
The virgin silence, till
She yields for rapture shuddering, yearning still
To his sweet will. ”

“ I give them all their names,
6 Bertram and Gilbert, Louis, Frank and James,
Each with his aims;
One thinks he is a poet, and writes verse
His friends rehearse;
Another is full of law;
A third sees pictures which his hand can draw
Without a flaw.
Strangest of all, they never rest. Day long
They shift and throng,
Moved by invisible will,
Like a great breath which puffs across my sill,
And then is still;
It shakes my lovely manikins on the wall;
Squall after squall,
Gust upon crowding gust,
It sweeps them willy nilly like blown dust
With glory or lust. ”

“ Does it still malinger in the prism,
Falsify the crucible with shame?
Hardly. For the melody and marring,
When they put the dear oblivion on,
Are become as fresh clay for the potter,
Neither good nor bad, for use anon.
Blighted rose and perfect shall commingle
In one excellence of garden mould.
Soul transfusing comeliness or blemish
Can alone lend beauty to the old. ”

“ Come back for a night of
New being as good as their old,
Aye, better in fact,
For somehow he gilds their fine gold,—
Gives the one thing they lacked,
The breath, aspiration, desire,
Core, kindle, control,
Memory and rapture and fire,—
The touch of man’s soul. ”

“ For a glimpse of beauty, a wraith in the mist,
28 “Shall be spilt at last and return to peace,
As dust which the hands of the wind release.
“This is my solace and my reward,
Who have drained life’s dregs from a broken shard.”
Wise and grave was the water face,
A youth grown man in a little space ”

“ Life be neither hermitage nor revel;
Lent or carnival alone were vain;
Sin and sainthood—Help me, little brother,
With your largo finder-thought again!
Lift, uplift me, higher still and higher!
Climb and pause and tremble and plunge on,
Till I, toiling after you, come breathless
Where the mountain tops are touched with dawn!
Dark this valley world; and drenched with slumber
We have kept the centuries of night. ”

“ Where a man may feast
His eyes on looming sails,
And be the first to catch their foreign hails
Or spy their bales.
2 Then the pale summer twilights towards the pole!
It thrills my soul
With wonder and delight,
When gold-green shadows walk the world at night,
So still, so bright. ”

“ A wraith and a desire.
Demonish, toiling, grim,
In the ruddy furnace flare,
89 While the Driver fingers the throttle-bar,
Who stands at his elbow there?
Can it be, this thing like a shred
Of the firmament torn away,
Is a boarded train that Death and his crew
Consorted to waylay?
His wreckers, grinning and lean,
Are lurking at every curve;
But the Driver plays with the throttle-bar;
He has the iron nerve.
We are travelling safe and warm,
With our little baggage of cares;
Why tease the peril that yet would come
Unbidden and unawares?
The lonely are lonely still ”

“ The Juggler Look how he throws them up and up,
The beautiful golden balls!
They hang aloft in the purple air,
And there never is one that falls.
He sends them hot from his steady hand,
He teaches them all their curves;
And whether the reach be little or long,
There never is one that swerves.
82 Some, like the tiny red one there,
He never lets go far;
And some he has sent to the roof of the tent
To swim without a jar.
So white and still they seem to hang,
You wonder if he forgot
To reckon the time of their return
And measure their golden lot. ”

“ Pulse through rhythm to rapture, and control,—
Who shall say how far along or finely?—
The infinite tectonics of the soul.
Low-bred peoples, Hottentots, Basutos,
Have a taste for scarlet and brass bands.
Our friend Monet, feeling red repulsive,
Sees blue shadows in pale purple lands.
Sees not only, but instructs our seeing ”

“ He never varies from one pace,
And the monotony of time
Is in his face.
And some day, with more potent dust,
Brought from his home beyond the deep,
And gently scattered on our eyes,
We, too, shall sleep,—
Hearing the call we know so well
Fade softly out as it began,
“Dustman, dustman,
Dustman!”
94
The Sleepers The tall carnations down the garden walks
Bowed on their stalks.
Said Jock-a-dreams to John-a-nods,
“What are the odds
That we shall wake up here within the sun,
When time is done,
And pick up all the treasures one by one
Our hands let fall in sleep?” ”

“ With some yet unborn perception blends.
You, Amati, never saw a sunset,—
Hear tornadoes in a spider’s loom;
I, at my wits’ end, may still develop
Unknown senses in life’s larger room.
Superhuman is not supernatural. ”

“ Contents Behind the Arras 1 Fancy’s Fool 16 The Moondial 19 The Face in the Stream 23 The Cruise of the Galleon 29 A Song before Sailing 32 In the Wings 35 The Red Wolf 37 The Faithless Lover 44 The Crimson House 46 The Lodger 49 Beyond the Gamut 66 The Juggler 81 Hack and Hew 85 The Night Express 87 The Dustman 91 The Sleepers 94 At the Granite Gate 96 Exit Anima 100
To G. H. B. “I shut myself in with my soul,
And the shapes come eddying forth.” ”