Bliss Carman

“ SHAKESPEARE HIMSELF: FOR THE UNVEILING OF MR. PARTRIDGE'S STATUE OF THE POET.
The body is no prison where we lie
Shut out from our true heritage of sun;
It is the wings wherewith the soul may fly.
Save through this flesh so scorned and spat upon,
No ray of light had reached the caverned mind,
No thrill of pleasure through the life had run,
No love of nature or of humankind,
Were it but love of self, had stirred the heart
To its first deed. Such freedom as we find,
We find but through its service, not apart. ”

“ That waves in the window-pane--how can it be?
All your world yet hardly lies out of reach
Of ten little fingers and ten little toes.
You are a seed for the sky there to teach
(And the sun and the wind and the rain) as it grows.
Just a green leaf piercing up to the day,
Pale fleck of June to come, just to be seen
Through the rough crumble of rubble and clay
Lifting its loveliness, dawn-child, Karlene!
Fragile as fairycraft, dew-dream of love,--
Never a clod that has marred the slim stalk,
Never a stone but its frail fingers move,
Bent on the blue sky and nothing can balk! ”

“ Like priests that keep their sombre vigil round a shrine--
Like sombre priests that watch about a glorious shrine.
And then you stepped into the moonlight and laid bare
The wonder of your body to the night, and stood
With all the stars of heaven looking at you there,
As simply as a saint might bare her soul to God--
As simply as a saint might bathe in lakes of prayer--
Stood with the holy moonlight falling on you there
Until I thought that in a glory unaware
I had seen a soul stand forth and bare itself to God--
A saintly soul lay bare its innocence to God. ”

“ Like the plash of far-off waves in the fluid night,
The negroes, singing:
Whip-po'-will tol' me,
Tol' me in the evenin',
"Down by the bend where the cat-tails grow."
Wait there, child; I'm comin'.
Lo, the moon,
Like a galleon sailing the night;
And the wash of the moonlight over the roofs and the trees!
Oh, my bride,
Come down from yonder lattice where you bide
Like a charmed princess in a Persian song!
I look up at your yellow window-panes,
Set in the night with far-off wizardry.
Come down, come down; the night is fain of you,
The garden waits your footstep on its walks. ”

“ The wind comes into the garden,
Like a lover that fears lest he waken his love,
And his hands drip with the scent of the roses
And his locks weep with the opiate odor of honeysuckle.
Sighing, sighing
As a lover that yearns for the lips of his love,
In a torment of bliss,
In a passionate dreaming of bliss,
The wind in the trees of the garden!
How intimate are the trees,--
Rustling like the secret darkness of the soul! ”

“ Four warm lips at one love-lesson,
Learned by heart so easily.
We gained something of that knowledge
No man ever yet put by,
But his after days of sorrow
Left him nothing but to die.
Madeline went up the orchard,
Down the hurrying world went I;
Now I know love has no morrow,
Happiness no by-and-by.
Youth is gone, but whither went he?
All my wisdom, poor but plenty,
Never learned Festina lente.
It was June, and I was twenty.
IN A SILENCE.
Heart to heart!
And the stillness of night and the moonlight, like hushed breathing
Silently, stealthily moving across thy hair! ”

“ What pools of innocence, what crystal benison!
As through a riven mist that glowers in the sun,
A stretch of God's blue calm glassed in a virgin pond.
Prowler of obscene streets that riot reek along,
And aisles with incense numb and gardens mad with rose,
Monastic cells and dreams of dim brocaded lawns,
Death, which has set the calm of Time upon his song,
Surely upon his soul has kissed the same repose
In some fair heaven the Christ has set apart for Fauns. ”

“ The world the primal selfhood of its sires,
Its heroes and its lovers and its gods.
So shall Apollo flame in marble fires,
The mien of Zeus suffice before he nods,
So Gautama in ivory dream out
The calm of Time's untrammelled periods,
So Sigurd's lips be in themselves a shout.
Mould us our Shakespeare, sculptor, in the form
His comrades knew, rare Ben and all the rout
That found the taproom of the Mermaid warm
With wit and wine and fellowship, the face
Wherein the men he chummed with found a charm
To make them love him ”

“ How like a sea-bird it comes from the sea,
Out of the league-weary waters' unrest
Blown with white wings, for a token, to me!
Blown with a skriel and a flurry of plumes
(Sea-spray and flight-rapture whirled in a gleam!)
Here for a sign of the comrade that looms
Large in the mist of my love as I dream.
He with the heart of an old violin,
Vibrant at every least stir in the place,
Lyric of woods where the thrushes begin,
Wave-questing wanderer, still for a space,--
What will the child of his be (so I muse) ,
Wood-flower, sea-flower, star-flower rare? ”

“ Love, and philanderin',
Calm as a mandarin
Sipping his tea!
Under the art of you,
Parcel and part of you,
Here's to the heart of you,
Barney McGee!
You who were ever alert to befriend a man,
You who were ever the first to defend a man,
You who had always the money to lend a man,
Down on his luck and hard up for a V!
Sure, you'll be playing a harp in beatitude
(And a quare sight you will be in that attitude) --
Some day, where gratitude seems but a platitude,
You'll find your latitude, Barney McGee. ”

“ With a rapture fresh and fine
As a spring in winter!
All the hills are red and gold;
And the horns of vision
Call across the crackling air
Till we shout back to them there,
Taken captive in the hold
Of their bluff derision.
Spray-salt gusts of ocean blow
From the rocky headlands;
Overhead the wild geese fly,
Honking in the autumn sky;
Black sinister flocks of crow
Settle on the dead lands.
Three of us in love with life,
Roaming like wild cattle,
With the stinging air a-reel
As a warrior might feel
The swift orgasm of the knife
Slay him in mid-battle. ”

“ We learned love's feature
In every creature
That roves or grieves;
When winds were brawling,
Or bird-folk calling,
Or leaf-folk falling,
About our eaves.
No law must straiten
The ways they wait in,
Whose spirits greaten
And hearts aspire.
The world may dwindle,
And summer brindle,
So love but kindle
The soul to fire. ”

“ Wild as a bull-pup and all of his pluck in you,--
Let a man tread on your coat and he'll see!--
Eyes like the lakes of Killarney for clarity,
Nose that turns up without any vulgarity,
Smile like a cherub, and hair that is carroty,--
Wow, you're a rarity, Barney McGee! ”

“ And my soul is in Cathay.
There's a schooner in the offing,
With her topsails shot with fire,
And my heart has gone aboard her
For the Islands of Desire.
I must forth again to-morrow!
With the sunset I must be
Hull down on the trail of rapture
In the wonder of the sea.
SPEECH AND SILENCE.
The words that pass from lip to lip
For souls still out of reach!
A friend for that companionship
That's deeper than all speech!
SECRETS.
Three secrets that never were said:
The stir of the sap in the spring,
The desire of a man to a maid,
The urge of a poet to sing. ”

“ Showed of his love and labor just so much
Raw pigment, scarce a scrap of soul concealing!
What poet has not found his spirit kneeling
A sudden at the sound of such or such
Strange verses staring from his manuscript,
Written he knows not how, but which will sound
Like trumpets down the years? So Accident
Itself unmasks the likeness of Intent,
And ever in blind Chance's darkest crypt
The shrine-lamp of God's purposing is found.
IN A GARDEN.
Thought is a garden wide and old
For airy creatures to explore,
Where grow the great fantastic flowers
With truth for honey at the core. ”

“ Drench thee with rain-guerdons, bless thee with sky,
Till all the knowledge of earth shall be thine.
Wind from the ice-floe and wind from the palm,
Wind from the mountains and wind from the lea--
How they will sing thee of tempest and calm! ”

“ Be as a sudden insight of the soul
That makes a darkness into order start,
And lift thee up for all men, fair and whole,
Till scholar, merchant farmer, artisan,
Seeing, divine beneath the aureole
The fellow heart and know thee for a man. ”

“ Sets folk to thinking.
"Consider," says the quiet sun,
"How far I wander;
Yet when had I not time on one
More flower to squander?"
"Consider," says the restless tide,
"My endless labor;
Yet when was I content beside
My nearest neighbor?"
So wander-lust to wander-lure,
As seed to season
Must rise and wend, possessed and sure
In sweet unreason.
For doorstone and repose are good,
And kind is duty;
But joy is in the solitude
With shy-heart beauty.
And Truth is one whose ways are meek
Beyond foretelling ”

“ But the thrill ye have felt to-night
I shall keep in my heart and cherish
When the worlds have passed in night."
Give a cheer!
For the soul shall not give way.
Here's to the greater to-morrow
That is born of a great to-day!
Now shame on the craven truckler
And the puling things that mope!
We've a rapture for our buckler
That outwears the wings of hope.
Give a cheer!
For our joy shall not give way.
Here's in the teeth of to-morrow
To the glory of to-day!
THIS BOOK WAS PRINTED BY JOHN WILSON AND SON, AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS, DURING OCTOBER,
1896. ”

“ Your hair is all crinkled and curled,
I guess you'll be just like your daddy,
The dearest old soul in the world!
CONCERNING KAVIN.
When Kavin comes back from the barber,
Although he no longer is young,
One cheek is as soft as his heart,
And the other as smooth as his tongue. '
KAVIN AGAIN.
It is not anything he says,
It's just his presence and his smile,
The blarney of his silences
That cocker and beguile.
ACROSS THE TABLE. To A. L. L.
Here's to you, Arthur! ”

“ To see the frosty asters like a smoke upon the hills.
There is something in October sets the gypsy blood astir;
We must rise and follow her,
When from every hill of flame
She calls and calls each vagabond by name. ”

“ And the morrow shall be our wedding-day."--
"Will the blessing of priest give back my faith,
Or life to the child you left to death?"--
Eric of Marka holds the knife,
And turns to the mother that is no wife:
"Mary of Marka, have your will! ”

“ A-passing by his window.
He threw away his rosary,
His Paters and his Aves;
For love is stronger than the wind
That wafts a thousand navies.
The holy man went forth to war,
But not against the devil. ”

“ There is something in the autumn that is native to my blood--
Touch of manner, hint of mood;
And my heart is like a rhyme,
With the yellow and the purple and the crimson keeping time. ”

“ I would that I were a man, they are so beautiful;
Their bodies are like the bows of the Indians;
They have the spring and the grace of bows of hickory.
I know that women are beautiful, and that I am beautiful ”

“ Over the shoulders and slopes of the dune
I saw the white daisies go down to the sea,
A host in the sunshine, an army in June,
The people God sends us to set our heart free. ”