Hervey Allen

“ The fear of life came on him as he lay;
"Outside the world is garish," thought the king,
And then—and then he heard the lone bell ring
And saw the peace and green light of a wood;
It was a very vision of escape,
A high-walled garden on the crescent cape,
Fair as an evil thing but good.
The cape is luniform
Whereon the hermit's form
Lies bony white and still
Beside the chapel on the hill;
The long grass waves as if he breathes
At every breeze that weaves ”

“ Backward the shadow of the ground-hog shrinks,
The lanes creak with the laden harvest wagons,
And the fur thickens on the owl-eyed lynx,
The hunter sees cold mist about the moon,
And in the bottom lands at morn,
The print of tiny, thievish, fairy hands
Where the raccoon last night went stealing corn.
Autumn Invocation.
"The seasons wait their turn among the stars."
Come from the blinding sun fields where you are,
Come from the interspace of star and star,
Summer lies sleeping in her dusty tomb,
The owlets mourn her through the woodland's gloom
Where all the night birds are. ”

“ Some say she weeps,
But who can tell?
Why should the queen weep when she hears a bell?
The queen, desiring the love of her lord above all things, calls him from his garden, but is mocked by the voice of the solitude. ”

“ All day the mists take shape
And the high hawks slant drifting down the cape—
By night the heavenly hunter leads his hounds,
Wandering the zodiacal bounds,
And all the white stars march,
Flaming in the unalterable arch,
While the wind swings the listless bell
That rings the hermit's knell—
Sleep well, sleep well!
III.
By his art the king casts four new bells that blend in perfect harmony with the hermit's. ”

“ Each sleeps and knows not that she is so near,
Or at the most sinks deeper in his dream,
And life, and all blithe things they once held dear,
Are far and faint like voices of a stream.
Hands off our dead! For all they did forbear
To drag them from their graves to point some speech;
Less sickening was the gas reek over there,
Less deadly was the shrapnel's whirring screech;
You cannot guess the uttermost they gave;
Those martyrs did not die for chattering daws
To loot false inspiration from the grave
When mouthing fools turn ghouls to gain applause. ”

“ The wind comes fooling like an ape
And the strange boy-breasted sea things mourn.
The rock pools seep and creep,
Laugh like a mad child in a moonstruck sleep,
And then flow onward like an easy dream,
Talking among the rocks,
Into one valley stream,
That ticks and drips and strikes like distant clocks
Till with a snaky motion
It curves three times
And glides into the ocean.
Marry! The king now is a lover! ”

“ Oh! Life! Oh! Glory!
He leaps up from his seat—
Ah! Judge, the old, old story;
The blood can scarcely creep
Back to the icy feet
As the old man startles from his sleep,
The last bell hums and then—
Memento mori! ”

“ Near campaniles where the bell folk sing
Down terraces of rustling linden trees,
And two hills like your breasts will be in death,
When lamps will cast their shadows silently,
Will rise still blue above the yellow corn
That ripples with a sleepy mystery. ”

“ Where dreams make spells—
So must the king think when he hears the bells.
II.
In his youth the king heard a hermit's bell and in the ineffable peace of its sound realized the deepest longing of his heart. ”

“ And there a deep spring flows called Blanchefontaine
That sings a deathlike monody of rest,
All night the sick moon totters on its alban waters—
It drips a sound like summer rain,
When the sun opens up his eye,
Until he stares like Cyclops from the west. ”

“ Of the tormented sea.
The world, knowing only itself, thinks the king is mad or bewitched to leave it and the love of the queen for solitude.
The king is melancholy mad, I guess,
To dwell in such a dim and rustling place,
Perhaps he has a sin beyond redress,
Perhaps he sees him visions of a face.
Some say it is a bell
Has lured him to the garden by a spell,
And that the spell is holy ”

“ Circling about a peering, fat balloon.
The houses gleam too bright, their limelight glare,
Pure sunlight though it be, is filled with gloom;
They are too white, too garnished and too bare—
They are too much like walls about a tomb. ”

“ For Pierre must go.
He left her standing dumbly in the lane,
Her lips a-tremble with his parting kiss,
And had her farewell gift, a twisted shell,
Bewitched! Bewitched! With melancholy spell,
For in that shell it was that little Pierre
First heard love's secret whispered thus, "De-ssspairr."
THE WINGLESS VICTORY.
Nike of Samothrace,
Thy godlike wings
Cleft windy space
Above the ships of kings,
Fain of thy lips,
By hope made glorious,
Time kissed thy grand, Greek face
Away from us.
Our Nike has no wings;
She has not known
Clean heights, and from her lips
Comes starvèd moan. ”

“ The clouds go gadding and the winds turn mild,
And Spring is born in sunlight,
Merry child!
Her nurse is April with the misty eyes;
The birds sing round her cradle
Where she lies
In green-streaked woodlands by the mantled ponds,
Where the young ferns unfurl their snaky fronds. ”

“ Cast by no light are on the floor."
"Sir," said the blindman, "lead me round,
Lest I should tread on holy ground."
Like men they lead at dawn to doom,
We slowly climbed the stairway's gloom
And came into a sunlit room. ”

“ For permission to reprint poems appearing in this volume, thanks are due to the editors of The North American Review, The New Republic, Contemporary Verse, Life, La France, Harvey's Weekly, The Southern Review, The New York Times, The Boston Evening Transcript. ”