Witter Bynner

“ In which her saving sense is due,
She watches and she grows aware,
Holding a child more dear than property,
That the many perish to empower the few,
That homeless politics have split apart
The common country of the human heart.
(Your heart is beating, Celia, like a song!)
.... For man has need
Not merely of the lips that kiss and hands that feed
But of the hearts that heed
And of the minds that speed
Like rain.
Loving a mother or a wife,
Let him release her tenderness, to make him strong,
And use her beauty and receive her law:
The very life of life. ”

“ The wind of death is a bright kiss
Upon the lips
Of every immigrant, as upon yours and mine—
Theirs is the stinging brine
And sun and open sea,
And theirs the arching sky, eternity.”
And Celia had my homage. I was wrong.
Immigrants all, one ship we ride,
Man and his bride
The journey through.
O let it be with a bridal-song!...
“My shipmates are as many as eternity is long:
The unborn and the living and the dead—
And, Celia, you!” ”

“ And then said Celia, radiant, when I held her near:
“They who find beauty there, shall find it here.”
And on her brow,
When I heard Celia speak,
Cities were populous
With peace and oceans echoed glories in her ear
And from her risen thought
Her lips had brought,
As from some peak
Down through the clouds, a mountain-air
To guide the lonely and uplift the weak.
“Record it all,” she told me, “more than merely this,
More than the shine of sunset on our heads, more than a kiss,
More than our rapt agreement and delight
Watching the mountain mingle with the night.... ”

“ My Celia, mystical, serene,
Laughing and kind.
And still I hear among New Hampshire trees
Her happy speech:
“Democracy is beauty’s inmost reach.”
And still her voice announces plain
The mystic gain
Of friends from adversaries and of peace from pain:
Beauty’s control
Of every soul
Surrendering in victory.
.... Well I recall how she explained to me
With sunlight on her head
When last we looked, as many times before,
Over those hundred foothills rolling like the sea. ”

“ Together making God, are gradually creating whole
The single soul.
Somebody called Walt Whitman—
Dead!
He is alive instead,
Alive as I am. When I lift my head,
His head is lifted. When his brave mouth speaks,
My lips contain his word. And when his rocker creaks
Ghostly in Camden, there I sit in it and watch my hand grow old
And take upon my constant lips the kiss of younger truth....
It is my joy to tell and to be told
That he, in all the world and me,
Cannot be dead,
That I, in all the world and him, youth after youth
Shall lift my head.
V
There is a vision, Celia, in your face.... ”

“ There is a banner, Celia, in your hand!
Though sons, whose fathers bled
For freedom, struggle now instead
With heavier weapons and with weary-waking head
For bread;
Though sons, whose fathers fought in other ages
For fame, bear in their hearts today the scar
Of entering where the laborer sleeps
And rousing him with masterly inquiry where he keeps
His wages:
Though all the cunning coil of trade appear a baser thing
Than battles are,
O trace through time the orbit of this troubled star! ”

“ Robins and thrushes, whip-poor-wills
And morning-sparrows sing it round
With echoes. Waterfalls abound
And many streams convoy
The breath of music. I have found
A hill-path rising sudden on a city-street,
Out of a quarrel, out of black despair,
And climbed it with my winged feet.
It hurries me above
All this illusion, all these ills,
It rises quickly to the shining air.
.... Celia, I hear you on the hill of hills,
Announcing love. ”

“ We all shall tread; and as he died to give
Himself to us, we too shall die—and live.”
“Though slowly knowledge comes, yet in the birth
Is joy,” said Celia, “joy
As well as pain:
The clear and clouded beauty of the earth. ”

“ I shall be Celia’s everlastingness.
IX
A little hill among New Hampshire hills
Touches more stars than any height I know.
For there the whole earth—like a single being—fills
And expands with heaven. ”

“ Once you had listened, Celia, to a stream
And lain a long time, silent as a sleeper.
And then your word arrived as from beyond
Your body, bending with its breath the frond
Of a fern. You whispered to the listening stream:
“As evil is yet wider than we dream,
So good is deeper.” ... ”

“ A mile away a train bends by. In every car
Strangers are travelling, each with particular
And unkind preference like ours, with privacy
Of understanding, with especial joy
Like ours. Celia, Celia, why should there be
Distrust between ourselves and them, disunity?
.... How careful we have been
To trim this little circle that we tread,
To set a bar
To strangers and forbid them!—Are they not as we,
Our very likeness and our nearest kin?
How can we shut them out and let stars in?”
She looked along the lake. And when I heard her speak,
The sun fell on the boy’s white sail and her white cheek. ”

“ On a path where thrushes wake—called Celia’s Way—
Time after time
She led me high among the rills.
And always when I pass again our chosen pine
And feel upon my brow the fine
Soft pressure of an unseen web and brush
It from my face expectantly and climb
Wide-eyed into the mountains’ windy hush,
Among the green and healing hills
I have found Celia.
For the morning fills
With her and afternoon and twilight. She is always there
As sweet within me as the intimate air. ”

“ And women, dares democracy
To self-respect: “Open the lands! Let mankind share
The ample livelihood they bear!”—
Then not in vain have the poor known distress,
Teaching the rich that happiness
Is something no man may—possess. ”

“ And into your heart, O Celia,
My heart has flown, to sing
Solemn and long
A most undaunted song.”
This was the song that she herself had taught me how to sing:
.... As immigrants come toward America
On their continual ships out of the past,
So on my ship America have I, by birth,
Come forth at last
From all the bitter corners of the earth. ”

“ Safe in her handkerchief, to a government cashier—
A clerk in the post-office. (And he relates
Her errand as a joke, yet tenderly
For I watched him telling me.)
... Not knowing English, being dumb,
She had brought with her a thin-faced lad
To interpret. And he made it clear,
While she unfurled
Her handkerchief and poured the heap of coins out of her hand,
That ‘she was giving all she had—
To be used no matter how, you understand’ ...
Lest harm should come to the new world. ”

“ And strike become by their own blow the stricken!”...
“A stranger might be God,” the Hindus cry.
But Celia says, importunate:
“Everyone must be God and you and I.”
VIII
Almost the body leads the laggard soul ”