Zona Gale

“ Is at its door to meet God’s infinite.
O Love, what banner shall we lift? And what
Timbrel and incense bear? How shall we greet
God’s day, his hills, his fire, and join their beauty?
Voices reply that are no voice but breath:
“Like beauty be thou nothing save his vesture.” ”

“ The things that are.
Then we divine that we need not die
To win our heritage of sight.
As well this earth as any other star.
Waking from dream there trails an alien air,
A residue of other suns than these;
We know that we have walked an inner way,
Have met familiars there
And kept our step in exquisite concord
The while we spoke some unremembered word.
And over all there lay
Light whose vibrations ran to other keys
Than those we woke upon. Light whose long play
Was dappled colour delicately kissed.{79}
Strange fires rayed from strange regions of the Lord. ”

“ Her home where a star is hung.
The star, it does not know the secret dove,
The dove that firefly planet may not see.
What lovelier things the night may fold from me——
The watching eye, the brooding heart, and love. ”

“ O sweet it was to see the two dream on.
She wistful of the runes that he could teach
Of men and cities dreamed that in such wan
Delights lay life; and he for her sweet speech
With all its faery fancies would beseech
And dreamed that in such fancies lay delight!
And all the time the heart of each for each
Was calling with the ancient urge of night
For night what time the lotus of the dawn is white. ”

“ You make me long for colour and for song
And for old words on lips I did not know.
You make me dream of all I learned to dream
How long ago.
{55} HALF THOUGHT
O Day of Wind and laughter,
A goddess born are you
Whose eyes are in the morning
Blue—blue.
The slumberous noon your body is,
Your feet are the shadows’ flight.
But the immortal soul of you
Is night.
{56} EPITAPH
He loved to lie where Summer lay,
His roof a cloud, a bough;
There stretched full-length to dream all day.
It is so with him now.
EPITAPH
How fair a bride-groom Death must be. ”

“ To music of the things that lift and lean?
My hands were mother-tender of the net
Of silk they found. My feet were light
To loose no dew from the least violet.
The fragile fabric of dissolved night
Seemed in the air. A million little minds
Kept concert in the very realm of sight.{12}
O—and suddenly as sunlight finds
White towers I heard the ancient wood unfold
Its ancient secret piped by little winds.
“Behold the beauty in me. O behold
The beauty that makes utter peace, in me;
Beauty that is immeasurably old.”
The whole world like a bell heard echoingly. ”

“ Live your love and use your art,
Make melody,
For your joy, your joy is there,{34}
Sing the secret thing you bear!
... Only silence everywhere.
... Show the ancient pain that lies
With remembered things
Down the dark within your eyes
Where nothing sings. ”

“ With old desire of day,
The air with pearl bedight
Prepares for gold array.
The sun-drugged stars delay
To die; the winds take fright
And question, and betray
Frail sounds for my delight.
O voice of ancient springs!
O little echo-flight!
O harp of things!
In grasses that lie bright,
In grasses that lie grey,
Up on the clouded height
Down in the zone of May{17}
Are printless feet astray.
Airy the hands that smite
The lyre in nameless lay;
And the great gods invite
Echo of earth chantings
On quiet wing away.
O—harp of things!
Envoy
Harp, is it this that you say? ”

“ Legions of little winged feet
On printless air.
“And when warm colour weds my look
A word is uttered tremblingly,
With meaning fall—but I know not
What it may be.
“I only know that now I find
Abiding beauty everywhere;
Or if it bide not, that it fades
Is still more fair.
I long to question those I love
And yet I know not what to say;
I am alone as one upon
Some secret way.
“My words are barren of my bliss;
The strange part is that I must lie
And never tell you what we say—
These things and I.{7}
“So will it be when I am not. ”

“ I only said:
“She is the daughter of the Day
And with the Night she has been wed.
“I am the mother of that one
Born for two worlds. And I am she
Who sees more things than moon and sun
And little stars will ever see.”
* * *{10}
Old Eyelot sees what never is. ”

“ And now the moon new-risen from the dead
Of dearer nights than this finds her demesne
Lonely of stars, as they to greet their queen
Had rushed in argent riot from the blue
To spill themselves like flowers or waste unseen
In stealing perfumes that elude and woo
As now eludes now woos the wind the sweet night through.
Down from her turret when the dusk was new
The Lady Margot stepped and lured by wile
Of faint near things that croon of what they do
With wandering touch she thought to walk the while{36}
The hours were printless on the idle dial. ”

“ Lay one hand on us; but keep the other free to touch far things which are not far—tenderly.
Where Boughs Touch the Glass
They lap on the indoor shore,
The waves of the leaf mere.
They say: We tell you as well as we can,
We wonder what you hear.
{61} For Her Window
I see the stones, I see the stars,
I know not what I see.
Things always say words to themselves
And now and then to me. ”

“ A great life, an entire civilization lies just outside the pale of common thought.... Such life is different from any yet imagined.... I see as clearly as the noonday that this is not all. I see other and higher conditions than existence.... ”

“ Were raised to shadowy powers. O grim alarms
Beset the gaping ones when love appears!
And never lovers’ glance or kiss half warms{46}
The world but that some dotard nods and leers
And all the charnel souls are tip-toe with their fears. ”

“ Intimate things lay dim and still
With all their day-time friendliness
Gone false and chill.
Her hand upon the coverlet,
Her face low in the linen’s cleft,
They were as wan as water-flowers
By light bereft.
And never was bloom brought to her couch
But shed the odour of a sigh{4}
Because she was as white as they,
And they must die.
“O Pale, lit deep within the dark
Of your young eyes, a stifled light
Leaps thin and keen as melody
And leavens night.
“It is a light that did not burn
When you were gay at mart and fair ”

“ I am subject to innumerable influences,
I am open to them all with a sober face.
But all the time I have knowledge that I am something other;
That all these things shall ultimately have no more power over me. ”

“ The truce of nature with the yester-years.{47}
Now are the old things passed away, and fears
For the new day are vain. Therefore arise.
Love vanquishes the past itself. Love hears
The siren cities chant of home. ”

“ What things one merely doubts at noon.
A-well, I know not what I learned.
God send that you may learn it soon.{9}
Windows for walls, thoughts that have turned
Back into folk, gateways of horn,
And the wild hearts that men have burned,
These things I see. ”

“ There must be so much more to love and to know than the little loves and the little knowledge.
Then someone knocks at my door.
Thou!
The wing of brightness, the delicate shadow were but the sign.
What am I to do?
I will find my way to the edge of my consciousness,{113}
I will gain the door, I will have my freedom,
I will love and know and be all being.
Thou art the liberator. Why it is true....
“Behold, I stand at the door and knock.”
{114} XI
LEVITATION
Three times that day came the sense of levitation. ”

“ The low-keyed colour and the word
We have not heard,
All these we shall be shown,
And infinitely near
To God, breathe for our breath his light.
{81} HALF THOUGHT
I close my eyes and on the night
A face looks in at me.
It speaks a word like burning light,
I answer joyfully.
It dims away. The word is sped.
I know not what we two have said.
The old dark sparkles like a star.
And when shall we be touched with sight
To find the things that are?
{82} CONTOURS
I am glad of the straight lines of the rain ”

“ I accept my desk, my little tools, lamp, paper.
I write in the one language which I have been taught and about the few things with which I am familiar.
I eat the little round of food which it is said will nourish my body. ”

“ O harp of things!
{18} III
BALLADE OF OLD PERFUMES
Now out of dream old springs
Flow soft with many red
And golden fluttering things.
Sweetly from underhead
All the wan air is fed
With faint rememberings
Of hours long buried.
Rose-rumours steal and stir;
They come on wind-like wings.
The old odours that were
Nard and mint and myrrh.
I think that as there clings
Colour to blossoms shed,
So love and all that sings,
So hearts that beat and bled{19}
Were with old fragrance wed. ”

“ But faint across the fields that fold them home
I hear the rhythmic fall of speeding feet.
And they who loved the garden of the sea
And died, come back. I never know a land
Of cities but there come to me
Their dead to touch my hand.
Dead, who dare not let your eyes
Flower from the dusk and flame into our own,
Yet come you as hushed notes in harmonies
To ways of life that you have known:
Virgil in blowing spray round swift-prowed ships,
Dante in every cry of lips for lips.
{30} BY MY SIDE ALL DAY ANOTHER WENT
By my side all day another went. ”

“ Long smooth waiting bed—do they not bear another aspect
As if you had divined them doing their duty,
As if to be inanimate clearly involved a process,
As if they were surprised at their creeping task of going back to earth, rising in plants, quickening into beings.
That is the great work of those patient things.
That is why they look so intent.
So with all your preoccupation in dressing for to-day{104}
Your object is the same as that of these humble ones.
Only you have reached a paradise where you can hasten your way.
But these others are yet in purgatory.
{105} V
AT LEAST ... ”

“ The shepherdess and her lovers danced a minuet on the bright emerald of that shining field.
Down by Brooklyn Bridge——
Now this sharp contrast will shock you, but we must not interrupt the minuet——
I know a place down by Brooklyn Bridge where a woman
(Young, once pretty, still with tender eyes)
Carries water up five flights of stairs to do washing.{100}
I watched the minuet and I thought about that woman.
Did God create two worlds?
Or has man made a world? And can man see that his world is good?
{101} III
THE DINING ROOM
I laid the blue dishes on the table. ”