New Hampshire, a Poem with Notes and Grace Notes

Front matter

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VERMONT AND MICHIGAN

CONTENTS

A Boundless Moment

He halted in the wind, and—what was that Far in the maples, pale, but not a ghost? He stood there bringing March against his thought, And yet too ready to believe the most.

"Oh, that's the Paradise-in-bloom," I said; And truly it was fair enough for flowers Had we but in us to assume in March Such white luxuriance of May for ours.

We stood a moment so in a strange world, Myself as one his own pretense deceives): And then I said the truth (and we moved on): A young beech clinging to its last year's leaves.

A Brook in the City

The farm house lingers, though averse to square With the new city street it has to wear A number in. But what about the brook That held the house as in an elbow-crook? I ask as one who knew the brook, its strength And impulse, having dipped a finger length And made it leap my knuckle, having tossed A flower to try its currents where they crossed. The meadow grass could be cemented down From growing under pavements of a town; The apple trees be sent to hearth-stone flame. Is water wood to serve a brook the same? How else dispose of an immortal force No longer needed? Staunch it at its source With cinder loads dumped down? The brook was thrown Deep in a sewer dungeon under stone In fetid darkness still to live and run— And all for nothing it had ever done Except forget to go in fear perhaps. No one would know except for ancient maps That such a brook ran water. But I wonder If from its being kept forever under The thoughts may not have risen that so keep This new-built city from both work and sleep.

A Fountain, a Bottle, a Donkey’s Ears and Some Books

Old Davis owned a solid mica mountain In Dalton that would some day make his fortune. There'd been some Boston people out to see it: And experts said that deep down in the mountain The mica sheets were big as plate glass windows. He'd like to take me there and show it to me.

"I'll tell you what you show me. You remember You said you knew the place where once, on Kinsman, The early Mormons made a*settlement And built a stone baptismal font outdoors — But Smith, or some one, called them off the mountain To go West to a worse fight with the desert. You said you'd seen the stone baptismal font. Well, take me there."

"Some day I will."

"Today."

"Huh, that old bath-tub, what is that to see? Let's talk about it."

"Let's go see the place."

"To shut you up I'll tell you what I'll do: I'll find that fountain if it takes all summer, And both of our united strengths, to do it."

"You've lost it, then?"

"Not so but I can find it.

No doubt it's grown up some to woods around it. The mountain may have shifted since I saw it In eighty-five."

"As long ago as that?"

"If I remember rightly, it had sprung A leak and emptied then. And forty years Can do a good deal to bad masonry. You won't see any Mormon swimming in it. But you have said it, and we're off to find it. Old as I am, I'm going to let myself Be dragged by you all over everywhere—"

"I thought you were a guide."

"I am a guide,

And that's why I can't decently refuse you."

We made a day of it out of the world, Ascending to descend to reascend. The old man seriously took his bearings. And spoke his doubts in every open place.

We came out on a look-off where we faced A cliff, and on the cliff a bottle painted, Or stained by vegetation from above, A likeness to surprise the thrilly tourist.

"Well, if I haven't brought you to the fountain, At least I've brought you to the famous Bottle."

"I won't accept the substitute. It's empty."

"So's everything."

"I want my fountain."

"I guess you'd find the fountain just as empty. And anyway this tells me where I am."

"Hadn't you long suspected where you were? "

"You mean miles from that Mormon settlement? Look here, you treat your guide with due respect If you don't want to spend the night outdoors. I vow we must be near the place from where The two converging slides, the avalanches, On Marshall, look like donkey's ears. We may as well see that and save the day."

"Don't donkey's ears suggest we shake our own? "

"For God's sake, aren't you fond of viewing nature? You don't like nature. All you like is books. What signify a donkey's ears and bottle, However natural? Give you your books! Well then, right here is where I show you books. Come straight down off this mountain just as fast As we can fall and keep a-bouncing on our feet. It's hell for knees unless done hell-for-leather."

"Be ready," I thought, "for almost anything."

We struck a road I didn't recognize, But welcomed for the chance to lave my shoes In dust once more. We followed this a mile,

Perhaps, to where it ended at a house I didn't know was there. It was the kind To bring me to for broad-board panelling. I never saw so good a house deserted.

"Excuse me if I ask you in a window That happens to be broken," Davis said. "The outside doors as yet have held against us. I want to introduce you to the people Who used to live here. They were Robinsons. You must have heard of Clara Robinson, The poetess who wrote the book of verses And had it published. It was all about The posies on her inner window sill, And the birds on her outer window sill, And how she tended both, or had them tended: She never tended anything herself. She was ' shut in ' for life. She lived her whole Life long in bed, and wrote her things in bed. I'll show you how she had her sills extended To entertain the birds and hold the flowers. Our business first's up attic with her books."

We trod uncomfortably on crunching glass Through a house stripped of everything Except, it seemed, the poetess's poems. Books, I should say!—if books are what is needed. A whole edition in a packing-case, That, overflowing like a horn of plenty, Or like the poetess's heart of love, Had spilled them near the window toward the light, Where driven rain had wet and swollen them. Enough to stock a village library—

Unfortunately all of one kind, though. They had been brought home from some publisher And taken thus into the family. Boys and bad hunters had known what to do With stone and lead to unprotected glass: Shatter it inward on the unswept floors. How had the tender verse escaped their outrage? By being invisible for what it was, Or else by some remoteness that defied them To find out what to do to hurt a poem. Yet oh! the tempting flatness of a book, To send it sailing out the attic window Till it caught the wind, and, opening out its covers, Tried to improve on sailing like a tile By flying like a bird (silent in flight, But all the burden of its body song), Only to tumble like a stricken bird, And lie in stones and bushes unretrieved. Books were not thrown irreverently about. They simply lay where some one now and then, Having tried one, had dropped it at his feet I And left it lying where it fell rejected. Here were all those the poetess's life Had been too short to sell or give away.

"Take one," Old Davis bade me graciously.

"Why not take two or three? "

"Take all you want.

Good-looking books like that." He picked one fresh In virgin wrapper from deep in the box, And stroked it with a horny-handed kindness.

He read in one and I read in another, Both either looking for or finding something.

The attic wasps went missing by like bullets.

I was soon satisfied for the time being.

All the way home I kept remembering The small book in my pocket. It was there. The poetess had sighed, I knew, in heaven At having eased her heart of one more copy— Legitimately. My demand upon her, Though slight, was a demand. She felt the tug. In time she would be rid of all her books.

A Hillside Thaw

To think to know the country and not know The hillside on the day the sun lets go Ten million silver lizards out of snow! As often as I've seen it done before I can't pretend to tell the way it's done. It looks as if some magic of the sun Lifted the rug that bred them on the floor And the light breaking on them made them run. But if I thought to stop the wet stampede, And caught one silver lizard by the tail, And put my foot on one without avail, And threw myself wet-elbowed and wet-kneed In front of twenty others' wriggling speed,— In the confusion of them all aglitter, And birds that joined in the excited fun By doubling and redoubling song and twitter, I have no doubt I'd end by holding none.

It takes the moon for this. The sun's a wizard By all I tell 5 but so's the moon a witch. From the high west she makes a gentle cast And suddenly, without a jerk or twitch, She has her spell on every single lizard. I fancied when I looked at six o'clock The swarm still ran and scuttled just as fast. The moon was waiting for her chill effect. I looked at nine: the swarm was turned to rock

In every lifelike posture of the swarm, Transfixed on mountain slopes almost erect. Across each other and side by side they lay. The spell that so could hold them as they were Was wrought through trees without a breath of storm To make a leaf, if there had been one, stir. It was the moon's: she held them until day, One lizard at the end of every ray. The thought of my attempting such a stay!

A Star in a Stone-boat

(For Lincoln MacVeagh)

Never tell me that not one star of all That slip from heaven at night and softly fall Has been picked up with stones to build a wall.

Some laborer found one faded and stone cold, And saving that its weight suggested gold, And tugged it from his first too certain hold,

He noticed nothing in it to remark. He was not used to handling stars thrown dark And lifeless from an interrupted arc.

He did not recognize in that smooth coal The one thing palpable besides the soul To penetrate the air in which we roll.

He did not see how like a flying thing It brooded ant-eggs, and had one large wing, One not so large for flying in a ring,

And a long Bird of Paradise's tail, (Though these when not in use to fly and trail It drew back in its body like a snail);

Nor know that he might move it from the spot The harm was done; from having been star-shot The very nature of the soil was hot

And burning to yield flowers instead of grain, Flowers fanned and not put out by all the rain Poured on them by his prayers prayed in vain.

He moved it roughly with an iron bar, He loaded an old stone-boat with the star And not, as you might think, a flying car,

Such as even poets would admit perforce More practical than Pegasus the horse If it could put a star back in its course.

He dragged it through the ploughed ground at a pace But faintly reminiscent of the race Of jostling rock in interstellar space.

It went for building stone, and I, as though Commanded in a dream, forever go To right the wrong that this should have been so.

Yet ask where else it could have gone as well, I do not know—I cannot stop to tell: He might have left it lying where it fell.

From following walls I never lift my eye Except at night to places in the sky Where showers of charted meteors let fly.

Some may know what they seek in school and church, And why they seek it there; for what I search I must go measuring stone walls, perch on perch;

Sure that though not a star of death and birth, So not to be compared, perhaps, in worth To such resorts of life as Mars and Earth,

Though not, I say, a star of death and sin, It yet has poles, and only needs a spin To show its worldly nature and begin

To chafe and shuffle in my calloused palm And run off in strange tangents with my arm As fish do with the line in first alarm.

Such as it is, it promises the prize Of the one world complete in any size That I am like to compass, fool or wise.

An Empty Threat

I stay; But it isn't as if There wasn't always Hudson's Bay And the fur trade, A small skiff And a paddle blade.

I can just see my tent pegged, And me on the floor, Crosslegged, And a trapper looking in at the door With furs to sell.

His name's Joe, Alias John, And between what he doesn't know And won't tell About where Henry Hudson's gone, I can't say he's much help; But we get on.

The seal yelp On an ice cake. It's not men by some mistake?

No, There's not a soul For a wind-break Between me and the North Pole—

Except always John-Joe, My French Indian Esquimaux,

And he's off setting traps, In one himself perhaps.

Give a head shake Over so much bay Thrown away In snow and mist That doesn't exist, I was going to say, For God, man or beast's sake, Yet does perhaps for all three.

Don't ask Joe What it is to him. It's sometimes dim What it is to me, Unless it be It's the old captain's dark fate Who failed to find or force a strait In its two-thousand-mile coast; And his crew left him where he failed, And nothing came of all he sailed.

It's to say, "You and I" To such a ghost, "You and I Off here With the dead race of the Great Auk!" And, "Better defeat almost, If seen clear, Than life's victories of doubt That need endless talk talk To make them out."

Blue-Butterfly Day

It is blue-butterfly day here in spring, And with these sky-flakes down in flurry on flurry There is more unmixed color on the wing Than flowers will show for days unless they hurry.

But these are flowers that fly and all but sing: And now from having ridden out desire They lie closed over in the wind and cling Where wheels have freshly sliced the April mire.

Dust of Snow

The way a crow Shook down on me The dust of snow From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart A change of mood And saved some part Of a day I had rued.

Evening in a Sugar Orchard

From where I lingered in a lull in March Outside the sugar-house one night for choice, I called the fireman with a careful voice And bade him leave the pan and stoke the arch: "O fireman, give the fire another stoke, And send more sparks up chimney with the smoke." I thought a few might tangle, as they did, Among bare maple boughs, and in the rare Hill atmosphere not cease to glow, And so be added to the moon up there. The moon, though slight, was moon enough to show On every tree a bucket with a lid, And on black ground a bear-skin rug of snow. The sparks made no attempt to be the moon. They were content to figure in the trees As Leo, Orion, and the Pleiades. And that was what the boughs were full of soon.

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I’ve tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice.

For Once, Then, Something

Others taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs Always wrong to the light, so never seeing Deeper down in the well than where the water Gives me back in a shining surface picture Me myself in the summer heaven godlike Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs. Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb, I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture, Through the picture, a something white, uncertain, Something more of the depths—and then I lost it. Water came to rebuke the too clear water. One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom, Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness? Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something.

Fragmentary Blue

Why make so much of fragmentary blue In here and there a bird, or butterfly, Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye, When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue?

Since earth is earth, perhaps, not heaven (as yet)— Though some savants make earth include the sky; And blue so far above us comes so high, It only gives our wish for blue a whet.

Gathering Leaves

Spades take up leaves No better than spoons, And bags full of leaves Are light as balloons.

I make a great noise Of rustling all day Like rabbit and deer Running away.

But the mountains I raise Elude my embrace, Flowing over my arms And into my face.

I may load and unload Again and again Till I fill the whole shed, And what have I then?

Next to nothing for weight; And since they grew duller From contact with earth, Next to nothing for color.

Next to nothing for use. But a crop is a crop, And who's to say where The harvest shall stop?

Good-Bye and Keep Cold

This saying good-bye on the edge of the dark And cold to an orchard so young in the bark Reminds me of all that can happen to harm An orchard away at the end of the farm All winter, cut off by a hill from the house. I don't want it girdled by rabbit and mouse, I don't want it dreamily nibbled for browse By deer, and I don't want it budded by grouse. (If certain it wouldn't be idle to call I'd summon grouse, rabbit, and deer to the wall And warn them away with a stick for a gun.) I don't want it stirred by the heat of the sun. (We made it secure against being, I hope, By setting it out on a northerly slope.) No orchard's the worse for the wintriest storm; But one thing about it, it mustn't get warm. "How often already you've had to be told, Keep cold, young orchard. Good-bye and keep cold. Dread fifty above more than fifty below." I have to be gone for a season or so. My business awhile is with different trees, Less carefully nourished, less fruitful than these, And such as is done to their wood with an axe— Maples and birches and tamaracks. I wish I could promise to lie in the night

And think of an orchard's arboreal plight When slowly (and nobody comes with a light) Its heart sinks lower under the sod. But something has to be left to God.

I Will Sing You One-O

It was long I lay Awake that night Wishing the tower Would name the hour And tell me whether To call it day (Though not yet light) And give up sleep! The snow fell deep With the hiss of spray; Two winds would meet, One down one street. One down another. And fight in a smother Of dust and feather. I could not say, But feared the cold Had checked the pace Of the tower clock By tying together Its hands of gold Before its face.

Then came one knock! A note unruffled Of earthly weather, Though strange and muffled.

The tower said, "One!" And then a steeple. They spoke to themselves And such few people As winds might rouse From sleeping warm (But not unhouse). They left the storm That struck en masse My window glass Like a beaded fur. In that grave One They spoke of the sun And moon and stars, Saturn and Mars And Jupiter. Still more unfettered, They left the named And spoke of the lettered, The sigmas and taus Of constellations. They filled their throats With the furthest bodies To which man sends his Speculation, Beyond which God is; The cosmic motes Of yawning lenses. Their solemn peals Were not their own: They spoke for the clock With whose vast wheels Theirs interlock.

In that grave word Uttered alone The utmost star Trembled and stirred, Though set so far Its whirling frenzies Appear like standing In one self station. It has not ranged, And save for the wonder Of once expanding To be a nova, It has not changed To the eye of man On planets over Around and under It in creation Since man began To drag down man And nation nation.

In a Disused Graveyard

The living come with grassy tread To read the gravestones on the hill; The graveyard draws the living still, But never any more the dead.

The verses in it say and say: "The ones who living come today To read the stones and go away Tomorrow dead will come to stay."

So sure of death the marbles rhyme, Yet can't help marking all the time How no one dead will seem to come. What is it men are shrinking from?

It would be easy to be clever And tell the stones: Men hate to die And have stopped dying now forever. I think they would believe the lie.

Looking for a Sunset Bird in Winter

The west was getting out of gold, The breath of air had died of cold, When shoeing home across the white, I thought I saw a bird alight.

In summer when I passed the place I had to stop and lift my face; A bird with an angelic gift Was singing in it sweet and swift.

No bird was singing in it now. A single leaf was on a bough, And that was all there was to see In going twice around the tree.

From my advantage on a hill I judged that such a crystal chill Was only adding frost to snow As gilt to gold that wouldn't show.

A brush had left a crooked stroke Of what was either cloud or smoke From north to south across the blue; A piercing little star was through.

Maple

Her teacher's certainty it must be Mabel Made Maple first take notice of her name. She asked her father and he told her "Maple— Maple is right."

"But teacher told the school

There's no such name."

"Teachers don't know as much

As fathers about children, you tell teacher. You tell her that it's M-A-P-L-E. You ask her if she knows a maple tree. Well, you were named after a maple tree. Your mother named you. You and she just saw Each other in passing in the room upstairs, One coming this way into life, and one Going the other out of life—you know? So you can't have much recollection of her. She had been having a long look at you. She put her finger in your cheek so hard It must have made your dimple there, and said, 'Maple.' I said it too: 'Yes, for her name.' She nodded. So we're sure there's no mistake. I don't know what she wanted it to mean, But it seems like some word she left to bid you Be a good girl—be like a maple tree. How like a maple tree's for us to guess. Or for a little girl to guess sometime. Not now—at least I shouldn't try too hard now.

By and by I will tell you all I know About the different trees, and something, too, About your mother that perhaps may help." Dangerous self-arousing words to sow. Luckily all she wanted of her name then Was to rebuke her teacher with it next day, And give the teacher a scare as from her father. Anything further had been wasted on her, Or so he tried to think to avoid blame. She would forget it. She all but forgot it. What he sowed with her slept so long a sleep, And came so near death in the dark of years, That when it woke and came to life again The flower was different from the parent seed. It came back vaguely at the glass one day, As she stood saying her name over aloud, Striking it gently across her lowered eyes To make it go well with the way she looked. What was it about her name? Its strangeness lay In having too much meaning. Other names, As Lesley, Carol, Irma, Marjorie, Signified nothing. Rose could have a meaning, But hadn't as it went. (She knew a Rose.) This difference from other names it was Made people notice it—and notice her. (They either noticed it, or got it wrong.) Her problem was to find out what it asked In dress or manner of the girl who bore it. If she could form some notion of her mother— What she had thought was lovely, and what good. This was her mother's childhood home; The house one story high in front, three stories On the end it presented to the road.

(The arrangment made a pleasant sunny cellar.) Her mother's bedroom was her father's still, Where she could watch her mother's picture fading. Once she found for a bookmark in the Bible A maple leaf she thought must have been laid In wait for her there. She read every word Of the two pages it was pressed between As if it was her mother speaking to her. But forgot to put the leaf back in closing And lost the place never to read again. She was sure, though, there had been nothing in it.

So she looked for herself, as everyone Looks for himself, more or less outwardly. And her self-seeking, fitful though it was, May still have been what led her on to read, And think a little, and get some city schooling. She learned shorthand, whatever shorthand may Have had to do with it—she sometimes wondered. So, till she found herself in a strange place For the name Maple to have brought her to, Taking dictation on a paper pad, And in the pauses when she raised her eyes Watching out of a nineteenth story window An airship laboring with unship-like motion And a vague all-disturbing roar above the river Beyond the highest city built with hands. Someone was saying in such natural tones She almost wrote the words down on her knee, "Do you know you remind me of a tree— A maple tree?"

"Because my name is Maple?"

"Isn't it Mabel? I thought it was Mabel."

"No doubt you've heard the office call me Mabel. I have to let them call me what they like."

They were both stirred that he should have divined Without the name her personal mystery. It made it seem as if there must be something She must have missed herself. So they were married, And took the fancy home with them to live by.

They went on pilgrimage once to her father's (The house one story high in front, three stories On the side it presented to the road) To see if there was not some special tree She might have overlooked. They could find none, Not so much as a single tree for shade, Let alone grove of trees for sugar orchard. She told him of the bookmark maple leaf In the big Bible, and all she remembered Of the place marked with it—"Wave offering, Something about wave offering, it said."

"You've never asked your father outright, have you?"

"I have, and been put off sometime, I think." (This was her faded memory of the way Once long ago her father had put himself off.)

"Because no telling but it may have been Something between your father and your mother Not meant for us at all."

"Not meant for me?

Where would the fairness be in giving me A name to carry for life, and never know The secret of?"

"And then it may have been

Something a father couldn't tell a daughter As well as could a mother. And again It may have been their one lapse into fancy 'Twould be too bad to make him sorry for By bringing it up to him when he was too old. Your father feels us round him with our questing, And holds us off unnecessarily, As if he didn't know what little thing Might lead us on to a discovery. It was as personal as he could be About the way he saw it was with you To say your mother, had she lived, would be As far again as from being born to bearing."

"Just one look more with what you say in mind, And I give up"; which last look came to nothing. But, though they now gave up the search forever, They clung to what one had seen in the other By inspiration. It proved there was something. They kept their thoughts away from when the maples Stood uniform in buckets, and the steam Of sap and snow rolled off the sugar house. When they made her related to the maples, It was the tree the autumn fire ran through And swept of leathern leaves, but left the bark Unscorched, unblackened, even, by any smoke. They always took their holidays in autumn. Once they came on a maple in a glade, Standing alone with smooth arms lifted up, And every leaf of foliage she'd worn Laid scarlet and pale pink about her feet. But its age kept them from considering this one.