Josephine Preston Peabody

“ Save that they will not let the darkness be.
And what am I? That I alone of these
Make me most glad at noon? That I should mark
The after-glow go dark?
This hour to sing—but never have—heart's-ease!
That when the sorrowing winds fly low, and croon
Outside our happy windows their old rune,
Beautiful Mother, I must wake, and hark?
Who am I? Why for me this iron Must?
Burden the moon-white ox would never bear;
Load that he cannot share,
He, thine imperial hostage of the dust. ”

“ They may forget their wasted human bloom;
Pay the devouring days their all, unknowing.—
Reck not of life's bright going!
Sing not for lovers, side by side that hark;
Nor unto parted lovers, save they be
Parted indeed by more than makes the Sea.
Where never hope shall meet—like mounting lark—
Far Joy's uprising; and no memories
Abide to star the music-haunted dark:
To them that sit in darkness, such as these,
Pour down, pour down heart's-ease. ”

“ These city-ways of dark and din
Where greed has shut and barred them in!
And thundering, swart against the sky,
That whirlwind,—never to go by—
Of tracks and wheels, that overhead
Beat back the senses with their roar
And menace of undying war,—
War—war—for daily bread!
All things to silence! Ah, but where
Men dwell not, but must make a lair;—
And Sorrow may not sit alone,
Nor Love hear music of its own ”

“ Once my dreams were wise.
Now I nothing know;
Fasting and the dark have so put out my heart's eyes.
But thy golden breath
Burns against my cheek.
I can feel and love, and seek all the rune it saith. ”

“ Where, through the fair wet silverness of May,
A lamb shines out as sudden as a star,
Among the cloudy sheep; and green, and pale,
The may-trees reach and glimmer, near or far,
And the red may-trees wear a shining veil.
—And still, no nightingale!
The one vain longing,—through all journeyings,
The one: in every hushed and hearkening spot,—
All the soft-swarming dark where you were not,
Still longed for! Yes, for sake of dreams and wings,
And wonders, that your own must ever make
To bower you close, with all hearts' treasurings ”

“ Largess of life, but to lie waste and scorned.—
Could not such cost of pain,
Nor daily utmost of thy toil prevail?—
But they must fade, and pale,
And wither from thy desolated throne?—
And still no Summer give thee back again
Thine own?
Lady of Sorrows,—Mother,—Drudge august. Behold me in the dust.
GLADNESS Unto my Gladness then I cried:
'I will not be denied!
Answer me now; and tell me why
Thou dost not fall, as a broken star
Out of the Dark where such things are,
And where such bright things die. ”

“ To the green earth, whose blithe replenishments
Shall fresh the jaded sense!
To the green earth, the dust-corrupted soul
Returns to be made whole.
For now it comes indeed,
They will go forth, all they, to see a reed
So shaken by the wind.
Men are no longer blind
To aught, save human kind. ”

“ Down the long lane they go, and past one window, pale
With visions silver-blurred;
Stirring the heart that waits,—the eyes that fail
After a spring deferred.
Query, and hush, and Ah!—dim through a moon-lit veil,
The same one word.
Down the long lane, entwined with all the fragrance there;
The lane in flower somehow
With youth, and plighted hands, and star-strewn air,
And muted 'Thee' and 'Thou':—
All the wild bloom and reach of dreams that never were,
—Never to be, now.
So, in the throbbing dark, where ebbs the old refrain,
A starved heart hears. ”

“ These sorrows rising from the Dark
Where still they starve, and strive and die,
Who bear each heaviest penalty
Of humanhood;—nor grasp, nor guess,
The garment's hem of happiness!—
The spear-wound throbbing in my song,
It throbs more bitterly than wrong,—
It burns more wildly than despair,—
The will to share,
The will to share! ”

“ Over my heart's dark shuddering,
Unearthly lights on everything?
What dost thou see? What dost thou know?'
My Gladness said to me, bowed below,
'Gladness I am: created so.'
'And dare'st thou, in my mortal veins
Sing, with the Spring's descending rains?
While in this hour, and momently,
Forth of myself I look, and see
Torn treasure of my heart's Desire;
And human glories in the mire,
That should make glad some paradise!—
The childhood strewn in foulest place,
The girlhood, plundered of its grace ”

“ Wreckt ones and dark of mind,
With the poor fruit, after their piteous kind.
And if you take some Old One to the fields,
To see what Nature yields
With fullest hands to men already free,
It well may be,
As on some indecipherable book
The Guest will look,
With eyes too old,—too old, too dim to see;
Too old, too old to learn ”

“ What Life itself may be, we cannot know till all men share the chance to know.
Until the day of some more equal portion, there is no human brightness unhaunted by this black shadow: the thought of those unnumbered who pay all the heavier cost of life, to live and die without knowledge that there is any Joy of Living.
No song could face such blackness, but for the will to share, and for hope of the day of sharing.
Upon that hope and that mindfulness, the poems in this book are linked together.
J.P.M. 4 October, 1911.
CONTENTS THE SINGING MAN 3 THE TREES 15 O, do you remember? How it came to be? ”

“ That once sold doves,—now grown so pennywise
To bargain with forlorner merchandise,—
They buy and sell, they buy and sell again,
The life-long toil of men.
Worn with their market strife to dispossess
The blind,—the fatherless,
They too go forth, to breathe of budding trees,
And woods with beckoning wonders new unfurled. ”

“ Buys for him no human good;
Why his utmost urge of strength
Only lets Them starve at length;—
Will not let him starve alone;
He must watch, and see his own
Fade and fail, and starve, and die.
* * * * *
... Why?... Why?
* * * * *
Heart-beats, in a hammering song, Heavy as an ox may plod, Goaded—goaded—faint with wrong, Cry unto some ghost of God ... How long?... How long? .......... How long? ”

“ THE GOLDEN SHOES 45 NOON AT PÆSTUM 47 VESTAL FLAME 48 The dark had left no speech save hand-in-hand 51
THE PROPHET 53 THE LONG LANE 56 Ah but, Belovèd, men may do 59
ALISON'S MOTHER TO THE BROOK 61 You, Four Walls, wall not in my heart! 65
CANTICLE OF THE BABE 67 And thou, Wayfaring Woman whom I meet 73
GLADNESS 75 THE NIGHTINGALE UNHEARD 81 Envoi 87
THE SINGING MAN AN ODE OF THE PORTION OF LABOR 'The profit of the Earth is for all.' —ECCLESIASTES.
THE SINGING MAN I He sang above the vineyards of the world. ”