John Hall Wheelock

“ For all life’s moods go murmuring like strings
In a low chord, and all things sound all things,
Through alternations of the grave and glad:
Yet, in the end, all things are grave and sad.
I feel all things, but cannot comprehend;
And run, laughing and weeping, to the end
Of the dear mystery, the fated race—
And the deep darkness covers up my face.
43
IN THE DARK CITY
There is a harper plays
Through the long watches of the lonely night
When, like a cemetery,
Sleeps the dark city, with her millions, laid each in his tomb. ”

“ And all the twilight rustles, wave on wave.
O, at that smile his wondering spirit gave, 40
What new smile in all things shines back so gladly,
Grown dignified and grave!
The curtains by the window rise and flutter,
The ornaments on the mantel, row on row,
Seem touched with a melancholy of long ago—
What is it the music dreams, but cannot utter?
Schumann—we know, we know.
Ah George, what shall be said to you who feel it—
All the half-hope and passion unexpressed
When twilight heaves more gently in the breast!
Ah George, but you, when words would fain reveal it,
Smile—and divine the rest. ”

“ The sun puts forth his strength, the reaches shimmer
With inarticulate rapture, and the proud
Waters are thrilled; the fields of ocean glimmer
With shifting light and overshadowing cloud.
Noon upon noon in heaven takes up his station,
Day follows night, and night succeeds to day:
Your infinite and lonely meditation
Sinks with the sunset down the starry way.
Veiled is the Vast: the heaven of evening burning.
Reveals on the large waters of the sea
Hopelessness—hopelessness—the patient yearning
And dumb caress of the Immensity. ”

“ Whose brooding eyes have stared so many an age
Upon this theatre of lust and rage,
Of death and adoration. And a breeze
Rustles the branches of the poplar-trees.
Dear Spark, that shinest in the solitude!
One Consciousness, that in the brotherhood
Of all earth’s living creatures movest on
The shaken ramparts of Oblivion—
Whose starry cry, across the darkness hurled,
Makes music in the silence of the world!
Life, whose sole splendor in red slaughter spills 94
The blood of its own breast; in many wills
Wars on the one Will ”

“ His throne in splendor, whom, vanished now, the face
Of heaven remembers yet!
Emptiness—emptiness—the skies are bare,
And the stark earth no less
Grows vacant as a memory: everywhere
Sleeps the cold loveliness.
Old is the earth, too old; her voice is shrill
Against the end of things—
To the inevitable her bitter will
Grows humbler as she sings. ”

“ The wet, salt quivering of your lips, and all
Your being fold me in, urgent to save,
Urgent to hide the approaching loneliness,
Our bitter portion; prismed in tears, the dusk
Swam ’round with dizzy color: the nightingales,
Beauty’s disdain above the war of things,
Beauty’s high pity from her virgin heights, 68
Our meeting hearts pierced with a single pang—
Like a bright sword of sorrow through the breast
Driven, and like a bruising sword withdrawn. ”

“ From the crude hunger and the cry of things,
The hour of her peace—
When, by the inner light that floods her cell,
The spirit, even as here,
Travails, in secrecy and joy, to tell
Her passion and her fear.
Now to the listening soul in you who read
These lines, she tells it all—
How dear her day, how dark shall be, indeed,
The hour when night must fall.
25
THE UNDISSUADABLE AUSTERITY
Less than it is we would the Truth should seem:
Holy and marvellous the Actual is—
But stern her lips, and bitter is her kiss
Upon the brows of dream. ”

“ The lips that are so eager,
The lips that would deny—
When the old war is ended,
When the stern Will is done,
Meet in eternal pity
And know themselves as one!
28
TRAVAIL
Before the sacred beauty of the morn
How fade the wrangling wisdoms of the earth!
Wisdom is beauty in the womb, unborn;
Wisdom is beauty laboring for birth.
Wisdom, the ghost of Beauty, in the wide
Womb of the world lies clamoring for life,
While the white Beauty, the immortal Bride,
Sits throned upon the summits void of strife. ”

“ You, too, look up and wonder. Is it fair,
That world of yours? Are there great cities there,
Populous millions, hearts that beat as these,
Clear meadows and far mountains, shoreless seas,
Shadows of moving armies, thrones that shake?
Does the heart thrill for love there, does it break—
Tell me, are there hushed gardens, quiet tombs? ”

“ All laughing things move with delighted feet—
So all things that draw light and laughing breath
Move to the mournful waltz of life and death:
Comedy is a girl dancing in time
To the tragic pipes, sorrowful and sublime;
And ever she laughs back, and as she skips
Mimics the mournful music with her lips;
Then, for sheer anger at her own pretense,
Sobs violently at her own vehemence;
And mocks her tears. But when the pipings sleep,
She needs must cover up her face and weep.
13
OCTOBER MOONLIGHT
Heaven is like an empty room to-night ”

“ Or what enchanted wood? What valleys hold
The lily of your loveliness? What hills
Have known your weight upon them, what far shores?
Twilight comes tenderly, while evening lifts
Along the pallid rim her lonely star—
O happy heart on which your heart is laid! ”

“ The laboring beauty of the poet’s page.
So, when the veils of mystery are furled,
Earth’s wisdom blooms in heaven’s beauty above ...
Beauty is all the wisdom of the world
Uttered by the seraphic lips of love! ”

“ Mix, and are mingled, slaughter, blend, and pass
Each into other—the high poem that has
No end and no beginning, that the one
Self in all living forms beneath the sun,
And on all worlds around him and above,
Weaves on the strands of hunger, death, and love. ”

“ Weaves the one self she wears.
Now first the vast
Veil over heaven is rent, and bares the whole
Shining Reality; whereat the soul
Sickens, and is aghast! 10
Darkness reveals
The tragic truth; her will sinks hopeless wings
Before the inexorable Fact of things,
Humbling the dread she feels. ”

“ Yet solemn all and sacred, with new eyes
I saw them then, and in each face I seemed
With a new soul to read the soul beneath;
Through love and pain and sorrow having passed
Into the breast of all humanity—
Through love and sorrow. Yes, and for your sake,
Being human, all things human touched to love
This heart of mine, made holy ”

“ I
DIM WISDOMS
7
NIGHT HAS ITS FEAR
Night has its fear:
As the slow dusk advances, and the day
Fades out in fire along the starry way,
The ancient doubt draws near.
Vague shapes of dread—
Soft owl, or moth, and timid, twittering things—
Move through the growing dark; on furtive wings
The bat flits overhead.
And in the house
The death-watch ticks, the dust of time is stirred
With timorous footfalls, in the night is heard
The gnawing of the mouse.
Through the old room
What phantoms throng, what shapes that to and fro
Tremble, and lips that laughed here long ago—
Gone back into the gloom! ”

“ Beats the insistent passion that implores
The one dear breast of pity or disdain,
To be reborn, to be reborn again—
Nor perish wholly! The blind earth is thrilled
As with vague rites accomplished, dreams fulfilled,
Marriage and mystic union ”

“ By ravening lips of the ages—the sacred source of things,
That glimmered in Thrace, that shone in Rome, that swayed in Babylon,
Here moves to the vile throb of castanets and strings. 17
O through what generations have you lured, what secret ways,
Man’s fainting heart to be reborn! ”

“ Sorrows have wailed, that are not any more!
They sleep with folded hands.
They have their day:
Their cry is loud about the earth, who come
To the one end; the singing lips grow dumb
Always in the one way. ”

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