Songs of the Silent World and Other Poems

Front matter

SONGS OF THE SILENT WORLD

AND OTHER POEMS

BY ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS

Afterward

I.

SONGS OF THE SILENT WORLD.

AFTERWARD.

There is no vacant chair. The loving meet— A group unbroken—smitten, who knows how? One sitteth silent only, in his usual seat; We gave him once that freedom. Why not now?

Perhaps he is too weary, and needs rest; He needed it too often, nor could we Bestow. God gave it, knowing how to do so best. Which of us would disturb him? Let him be

There is no vacant chair. If he will take The mood to listen mutely, be it done. By his least mood we crossed, for which the heart must ache, Plead not nor question! Let him have this one.

Death is a mood of life. It is no whim By which life's Giver mocks a broken heart. Death is life's reticence. Still audible to Him, The hushed voice, happy, speaketh on, apart.

There is no vacant chair. To love is still To have. Nearer to memory than to eye, And dearer yet to anguish than to comfort, will We hold him by our love, that shall not die.

For while it doth not, thus he cannot. Try! Who can put out the motion or the smile?

The old ways of being noble all with him laid by? Because we love, he is. Then trust awhile.

Released

RELEASED.

Oh, joy of the dying! At last thou art mine. And leaping to meet thee, Impatient to greet thee, A rapid and rapturous, sensitive, fine Gayety steals through my pulses to-day, Daring and doubting like pleasure Forbidden, or Winter looking at May.

Oh, sorrow of living! Make way for the thrill Of the soul that is starting— Onlooking—departing Across the threshold of clay. Bend, bow to the will Of the soul that is up and away!

The Room's Width

THE ROOM'S WIDTH.

I think if I should cross the room, Far as fear; Should stand beside you like a thought— Touch you, Dear!

Like a fancy. To your sad heart It would seem That my vision passed and prayed you, Or my dream.

Then you would look with lonely eyes— Lift your head— And you would stir, and sigh, and say— "She is dead."

Baffled by death and love, I lean Through the gloom. O Lord of life! am I forbid To cross the room?

The First Christmas Apart

THE FIRST CHRISTMAS APART.

The shadows watch about the house; Silent as they, I come. Oh, it is true that life is deaf, And not that death is dumb.

The Christmas thrill is on the earth, The stars throb in the sky. Love listens in a thousand homes,— The Christmas bells ring by.

I cross the old familiar door And take the dear old chair. You look with desolated eyes Upon me sitting there.

You gaze and see not, though the tears In gazing burn and start. Believe, the living are the blind, Not that the dead depart.

A year ago some words we said Kept sacred 'twixt us twain, you, poor Love, who answer not, The while I speak again.

I lean above you as before, Faithful, my arms enfold. Oh, could you know that life is numb, Nor think that death is cold!

Senses of earth, how weak ye are! Joys, joys of Heaven how strong! Loves of the earth, how short and sad, Of Heaven how glad and long!

Heart of my heart! if earth or Heaven Had speech or language fine Enough, or death or life could give Me symbol, sound, or sign

To reach you—thought, or touch, or eye, Body or soul—I'd die Again, to make you understand: My darling! This is I!

The Angel Joy

THE ANGEL JOY.

Oh, was it a death-dream not dreamed through, That eyed her like a foe? Or only a sorrow left over from life, Half-finished years ago?

How long was it since she died—who told? Or yet what was death—who knew? She said: "I am come to Heaven at last, And I'll do as the blessèd do."

But the custom of earth was stronger than Heaven, And the habit of life than death, How should an anguish as old as thought Be healed by the end of breath?

Tissue and nerve and pulse of her soul Had absorbed the disease of woe.

The strangest of all the angels there Was Joy. (Oh, the wretched know!)

"I am too tired with earth," she said, "To rest me in Paradise. Give me a spot to creep away, And close my heavy eyes.

"I must learn to be happy in Heaven," she said, "As we learned to suffer below."— "Our ways are not your ways," he said, "And ours the ways you go."

As love, too wise for a word, puts by All a woman's weak alarms, Joy hushed her lips, and gathered her Into his mighty arms.

He took her to his holy heart, And there—for he held her fast— The saddest spirit in the world, Came to herself at last.

"Absent!"

"ABSENT!"

You do not lift your eyes to watch Us pass the conscious door; Your startled ear perceiveth not Our footfall on the floor; No eager word your lips betray To greet us when we stand; We throng to meet you, but you hold To us no beckoning hand.

Faint as the years in which we breathed, Far as the death we died, Dim as the faded battle-smoke, We wander at your side; Cold as a cause outlived, or lost, Vague as the legends told At twilight, of a mystic band Circling an Age of Gold.

Unseen, unheard, unfelt—and yet, Beneath the army blue Our heart-beats sounded real enough When we were boys like you. We turned us from your fabled lore, With ancient passion rife; No myth, our solemn laying down Of love, and hope, and life.

No myth, the clasped and severed hands, No dream, the last replies. Upon the desolated home To-day, the sunlight lies. Take, sons of peace, your heritage— Our loss, your legacy; Our action be your fables fair, Our facts, your poetry.

O ye who fall on calmer times! The perils of the calm Are yours—the swell, the sloth, the sleep, The carelessness of harm, The keel that rides the gale, to strike Where the warm waves are still;

Ours were the surf, the stir, the shock, The tempest and the thrill.

Comrades, be yours that vigor old, Be yours the elected power That fits a man, like rock to tide, To his appointed hour; Yours to become all that we were, And all we might have been; Yours the fine eye that separates The unseen from the seen.

The Unseen Comrades

THE UNSEEN COMRADES.

Last night I saw an armèd band, whose feet Did take the martial step, although they trod Soundless as waves of light upon the air. (Silent from silent lips the bugle fell.) The wind was wild; but the great flag they bore, Hung motionless, and glittered like a god Above their awful faces while they marched. And when I saw, I understood and said— "If these are they whom we did love, and give, What seek they?" But one sternly answered me,— "We seek our comrades whom we left to thee:

The weak, who were thy strength; the poor, who had Thy pride; the faint and few who gave to thee One supreme hour from out the day of life, One deed majestic to their century. These were thy trust: how fare they at thy hands? Thy saviors then—are they thy heroes now? Our comrades still; we keep the step with them, Behold! As thou unto the least of them Shalt do, so dost thou unto us. Amen."

Stronger Than Death

STRONGER THAN DEATH

Who shall tell the story As it was? Write it with the heart's blood? (Pale ink, alas!) Speak it with the soul's lips, Or be dumb? Tell me, singers fled, and Song to come!

No answer; like a shell the silence curls, And far within it leans a whisper out, Breathless and inarticulate, and whirls And dies as dies an ailing dread or doubt.

And I—since there is found none else than I, No stronger, sweeter voice than mine, to tell

This tale of love that cannot stoop to die— Were fain to be the whisper in the shell;

Were fain to lose and spend myself within The sacred silence of one mighty heart, And leaning from it, hidden there, to win Some finer ear that, listening, bends apart.

"Fly for your lives!" The entrails of the earth Trembled, resounding to the cry, That, like a chasing ghost, around the mine. Crept ghastly: "The pit's on fire! Fly!"

The shaft, a poisoned throat whose breath was death, Like hell itself grown sick of sin, Hurled up the men; haggard and terrible; Leaping upon us through the din

That all our voices made; and back we shrank From them as from the starting dead;

Recoiling, shrieked, but knew not why we shrieked; And cried, but knew not what we said.

And still that awful mouth did toss them up: "The last is safe! The last is sound!" We sobbed to see them where they sunk and crawled, Like beaten hounds, upon the ground.

Some sat with lolling, idiot head, and laughed; One reached to clutch the air away His gasping lips refused; some cursed; and one Knelt down—but he was old—to pray.

We huddled there together all that night, Women and men from the wild Town; I heard a shrill voice cry, "We all are up, But some—ye have forgot—are down!"

"Who is forgot?" We stared from face to face; But answering through the dark, she said

(It was a woman): "Eh, ye need not fret; None is forgot except the dead.

"The buried dead asleep there in the works— Eh, Lord! It must be hot below! Ye'll keep 'em waking all the livelong night, To set the mine a-burning so!"

And all the night the mine did burn and burst, As if the earth were but a shell Through which a child had thrust a finger-touch, And, peal on dreadful peal, the bell,

The miner's 'larum, wrenched the quaking air; And through the flaring light we saw The solid forehead of the eternal hill Take on a human look of awe;

As if it were a living thing, that spoke And flung some protest to the sky,

As if it were a dying thing that saw, But could not tell, a mystery.

The bells ran ringing by us all that night. The bells ceased jangling with the morn. About the blackened works,—sunk, tossed, and rent,— We gathered in the foreign dawn;

Women and men, with eyes askance and strange, Fearing, we knew not what, to see. Against the hollowed jaws of the torn hill, Why creep the miners silently?

From man to man, a whisper chills: "See, see, The sunken shaft of Thirty-one! The earth, a traitor to her trust, has fled And turned the dead unto the sun.

"And here—O God of life and death! Thy work, Thine only, this!" With foreheads bare,

We knelt, and drew him, young and beautiful, Thirty years dead, into the air.

Thus had he perished; buried from the day; By the swift poison caught and slain; By the kind poison unmarred, rendered fair Back to the upper earth again—

The warm and breathing earth that knew him not; And men and women wept to see— For kindred had he none among us all— How lonely even the dead may be.

We wept, I say; we wept who knew him not; But sharp, a tearless woman sprang From out the crowd (that quavering voice I knew), And terrible her cry outrang:

"I pass, I pass ye all! Make way! Stand back! Mine is the place ye yield," she said.

"He was my lover once—my own, my own; Oh, he was mine, and he is dead!"

Women and men, we gave her royal way; Proud as young joy the smile she had. We knew her for a neighbor in the Town, Unmated, solitary, sad.

Youth, hope, and love, we gave her silent way, Calm as a sigh she swept us all; Then swiftly, as a word leans to a thought, We saw her lean to him, and fall

Upon the happy body of the dead— An aged woman, poor and gray. Bright as the day, immortal as young Love, And glorious as life, he lay.

Her shrunken hands caressed his rounded cheek, Her white locks on his golden hair

Fell sadly. "O love!" she cried with shriveled lips, "O love, my love, my own, my fair!

"See, I am old, and all my heart is gray. They say the dead are aye forgot— There, there, my sweet! I whisper, leaning low, That all these women hear it not.

"Deep in the darkness there, didst think on me? High in the heavens, have ye been true? Since I was young, and since you called me fair, I never loved a man but you.

And here, my boy, you lie, so safe, so still"— But there she hushed; and in the dim, Cool morning, timid as a bride, but calm As a glad mother, gathered him

Unto her heart. And all the people then, Women and men, and children too,

Crept back, and back, and back, and on, Still as the morning shadows do.

And left them in the lifting dawn—they two, On her sad breast, his shining head Stirred softly, as were he the living one, And she had been the moveless dead.

And yet we crept on, back, and back, and on. The distance widened like the sky, Between our little restlessness, And Love so godlike that it could not die.

Vittoria

II.

VITTORIA.

Wise was the word the wise man spake, who said, "Angelo was the only man to whom God gave Four souls,"—the soul of sculpture and of song, Of architecture and of art; these all. For so God lovèd him, as if he were His only child, and grouped about those brows Ideals of Himself—not angels mild As those that flit and beckon other lives, But cherubim and seraphim; tall, strong, Unsleeping, terrible; with wings across Their mighty feet; and eyes—if we would look Upon their blazing eyes, these too are hid—

Some angels are all wings! Oh, shine and fly! Were ye not angels, ye would strike us blind.

And yet they did not, could not dazzle her— That one sweet woman unto whom he bent As pliant as the quarried marble turned To life immortal in his own great hand. Steadfast, Vittoria looked on Angelo. She lifted lonely eyes. The years trod slow. Fourfold the reverence which he gave to her, Fourfold the awful tenderness, fourfold The loyalty, the trust. And oh, fourfold The comfort, beyond all power of comforting, Whereby a lesser man may heal the hurt Of widowhood!

+2>Pescara had one soul— A little one; and it was stained. And he— It too, perhaps (God knows!)—was dead. The dead are God's.

Vittoria had one heart. The woman gave it, and the woman gives Once. Angelo was too late. And one who dared To shed a tear for him, has dropped it here.

New Neighbors

NEW NEIGHBORS.

Within the window's scant recess, Behind a pink geranium flower, She sits and sews, and sews and sits, From patient hour to patient hour.

As woman-like as marble is, Or as a lovely death might be— A marble death condemned to make A feint at life perpetually.

Wondering, I watch to pity her; Wandering, I go my restless ways; Content, I think the untamed thoughts Of free and solitary days,

Until the mournful dusk begins To drop upon the quiet street, Until, upon the pavement far, There falls the sound of coming feet:

A happy, hastening, ardent sound, Tender as kisses on the air— Quick, as if touched by unseen lips Blushes the little statue there;

And woman-like as young life is, And woman-like as joy may be, Tender with color, lithe with love, She starts, transfigured gloriously.

Superb in one transcendent glance— Her eyes, I see, are burning black— My little neighbor, smiling, turns, And throws my unasked pity back.

I wonder, is it worth the while, To sit and sew from hour to hour— To sit and sew with eyes of black, Behind a pink geranium flower?

By the Hearth

BY THE HEARTH.

You come too late; 'Tis far on in November. The wind strikes bleak Upon the cheek That careth rather to keep warm, (And where's the harm?) Than to abate One jot of its calm color for your sake. Watch! See! I stir the ember Upon my lonely hearth and bid the fire wake.

And think you that it will? burned, I say, to ashes. It smoulders cold As grave-yard mould. I wish indeed you would not blow Upon it so! The dead to kill. I say, the ghosts of fires will never stir,

Nor woman lift the lashes Of eyes wept dim, howe'er yours shine for love of her!

Ah, sweet surprise! did not think such shining Upon the gloom Of this cold room Could fall. Your even, strong, calm breath Calls life from death . The warm light lies At your triumphant feet, faint with desire To reach you. See! The lining Of violet and of silver in that sheath of fire!

If you would care— Although it is November— I will not say A bitter nay To such a gift for building fires. And though it tires Me to think of it—I'll own to you (If you can stir the ember) It may be found at last, just warm enough for two!

Told in Confidence

TOLD IN CONFIDENCE.

Vow you'll never, never tell him! Freezing stars now glittering farthest, fairest on the winter sky; If he woo me, Not your coldest, cruel ray Or can or may Be found more chill and still to him than I.

Swear you 'll never, never tell him! Warm, red roses lifting your shy faces to the summer dew; If he win me, Blush your sweetest in his sight For his delight, But I can be as warm and sweet as you.

What the Violins Said

WHAT THE VIOLINS SAID.

SONG.

"We're all for love," the violins said.—Sidney Lanier.

Do I love you? Do I love you? Ask the heavens that bend above you To find language and to prove you If they love the living sun. Ask the burning, blinded meadows If they love the falling shadows, If they hold the happy shadows When the fervid day is done.

Ask the blue-bells and the daisies, Lost amid the hot field-mazes, Lifting up their thirsty faces, If they love the summer rains. Ask the linnets and the plovers, In the nest-life made for lovers, Ask the bees and ask the clovers— Will they tell you for your pains?

Do I, Darling, do I love you? What, I pray, can that behoove you? How in Love's name can I move you? When for Love's sake I am dumb! If I told you, if I told you, Would that keep you, would that hold you, Here at last where I enfold you? If it would—Hush! Darling, come!

Won

WON.

Oh, when I would have loved you, Dear, The sun of winter hung more near; Yet not so sweet, so sweet, so sweet, The wild-rose reddening at my feet.

Your lips had learned a golden word, You sang a song that all men heard, Oh, love is fleet, the strain is long. Who stays the singer from her song?

Across my path the red leaves whirled. Dared I to kneel with all the world? How came I, then, to clasp you, Sweet, And find a woman at my feet?

Spent

SPENT.

Heart of iron, smile of ice, Oh! the rock. See him stand as dumb as death. If you could, Would you care to stir or shock Him, think you, by a blow or breath, From his mood?

Arms of velvet, lips of love, Oh! the wave. See her creeping to his feet Trustfully. None shall know the sign he gave. Death since then, were all too sweet. Let her die.

Lift thine eyes upon the sea, Soul of stone.

Rather (wouldst thou breathe or move?) I would be A warm wave, faithful, wasted, thrown, Spent and rent and dead with love, Than be thee.

Parted

PARTED.

Oh, never a word he answered, And never a word spake she! They turned their faces each from each, And looked upon the sea.

The hands that cannot clasp for life, Must quickly severed be. The love that is not large enough To live eternally,

In true love's name, for fair love's fame, Must die before its bloom; For it, in all God's earth or heaven, There is no garden-room.

Though all the wine of life be lost, Try well the red grape's hue. Holy the soul that cannot taste The false love for the true.

And blessed aye the fainting heart For such a thirst shall be— Yet never a word they spoke, and looked Upon the bitter sea.

An April Gust

AN APRIL GUST.

It shall be as it hath been. All the world is glad and green— Hush! Ah, hush! There cannot be April now for you and me.

Put your finger on the lips Of your soul; the wild rain drips; The wind goes diving down the sea; Tell the wind, but tell not me.

Yet if I had aught to tell, High as heaven, or deep as hell, Bent the fates awry or fit, I would find a word for it.

Oh, words that neither sea nor land Can lift their ears to understand! Wild words, as dumb as death or fear, I dare to die, but not to hear!

The Answer

THE ANSWER.

That we together may sail, Just as we used to do." >>Carleton's Ballads.

And what if I should be kind? And what if you should be true? The old love could never go on, Just as it used to do.

The wan, white hands of the waves That smote us swift apart, Will never enclasp again, And draw us heart to heart.

The cold, far feet of the tides That trod between us two, Can never retrace their steps, And fall where they used to do.

Oh, well the ships must remember, That go down to the awful sea, No keel that chisels the current Can cut where it used to be.

Not a throb of the gloom or the glory That stirs in the sun or the rain, Will ever be that gloom or glory That dazzled or darkened—again.

Not a wave that stretches its arms, And yearns to the breast of the shore, Is ever the wave that came trusting, And yearning, and loving, before.

The hope that is high as the heavens, The joy that is keen as pain, The faith that is free as the morning, Can die—but can live not again.

And though I should step beside you, And hand should reach unto hand, We should walk mutely—stifled— Ghosts in a breathless land.

And what if I should be kind? And though you should be true? The old love could never, never Love on as it used to do.

Thorns

THORNS.

As we pass by the roses, Into your finger-tip Bruise you the thorn. Quick at the prick you start, Crying, "Alas, the smart! Farewell, my pleasant friend, Wisely our way we wend Out of the reach of roses."

Oh, we pass by the roses! Where does the red drop drip? Where is the thorn? What though 'tis hid and pressed Piercing into my breast? Scathless, I stretch my hand; Strong as their roots I stand, And dare to trust the roses.

The Indian Girl

THE INDIAN GIRL.

A PICTURE BY WALTER SHIRLAW.

She standeth silent as a thought Too sacred to be uttered; all Her face unfurling like a flower That at a breath too near will shut. Her life a little golden clock Whose shining hands, arrested, stay Forever at the hour of Love.

She doubts, she dares, she dreams—of what? I ask; she, shrinking, answers not, She swims before me, dim, a cup Of waste, untasted tenderness. I drink, I dread, until I seem (Myself unto myself) to be He whom she chose, and charmed—and missed, On some faint Asiatic day Of languorous summer, ages since.

Sealed

SEALED.

Shall I pour you the wine," she said, The wine that is rare and red? Sweeter the cup for the drop."— But why do you shrink and stop?"

"The seal of the wine Has a sacred sign; I am afraid," she said.

"I love and revere You more for your fear, Than I do for your wine," he said.

Guinevere

GUINEVERE.

Of Guinevere from Arthur separate, And separate from Launcelot and the world, And shielded in the convent with her sin, As one draws fast a veil upon a face That's marred, but only holds the scar more close Against the burning brain—I read to-day This legend; and if other yet than I Have read, or said, how know I? for the text Was written in the story we have learned, Between the ashen lines, invisible, In hieroglyphs that blazed and leaped like light Unto the eyes. A thousand times we read; A thousand turn the page and understand, And think we know the record of a life, When lo! if we will open once again The awful volume, hid, mysterious,

Intent, there lies the unseen alphabet— Re-reads the tale from breath to death, and spells A living language that we never knew.

This that I read was one short song of hers, A fragment, I interpret, or a lost Faint prelude to another—missing too. She sang it (says the text) one summer night, After the vespers, when the Abbess passed And blessed her; when the nuns were gone, and when She, kneeling in her drowsy cell, had said Her prayers (poor soul!), her sorrowful prayers, in which She had besought the Lord, for His dear sake, And love and pity of His Only Son, To wash her of her stain, and make her fit On summer nights, behind the convent bars And on stone-floors, with bruisèd lips, to pray Away all vision but repentance from Her soul.

When, kneeling as she was, her limbs. Refused to bear her, and she fell afaint From weariness and striving to become A holy woman, all her splendid length Upon the ground, and groveled there, aghast That buried nature was not dead in her, But lived, a rebel through her fair, fierce youth; Aghast to find that claspèd hands would clench; Aghast to feel that praying lips refused Like saints to murmur on, but shrank And quivered dumb. "Alas! I cannot pray!" Cried Guinevere. "I cannot pray! I will Not lie! God is an honest God, and I Will be an honest sinner to his face. Will it be wicked if I sing? Oh! let Me sing a little, of I know not what; Let me just sing, I know not why. For lips Grow stiff with praying all the night. Let me believe that I am happy, too. A blessèd blessèd woman, who is fit To sing because she did not sin; or else

That God forgot it for a little while And does not mind me very much. Dear Lord," (Said Guinevere), "wilt thou not listen while I sing, as well as while I pray? I shall Feel safer so. For I have naught to say God should not hear. The song comes as the prayer Doth come. Thou listenest. I sing." …

Purple the night, and high were the skies, and higher The eyes that leaned like the stars of my soul, to me. Whom loveth the Queen? Him who hath right to crown her. Who but the King is he?

Sultry the day, and gold was the hair, and golden The mist that blinded my soul away from me. Dethroned for a dream, for a gleam, for a glance, for a color, How could the crownèd be?

Life goeth by like a deed, nor returneth forever. Death cometh on, fleet -footed as pity should be. Hush! When she waketh at last and looketh about her, Whom will a woman see?

Thus in her cell, Deep in the summer night, sang Guinevere— A little, broken, blind, sweet melody— And then she kneeled upon the convent floor, And, peaceful, finished all her prayer and slept; For she had naught to say God might not hear.

Sung to a Friend

SUNG TO A FRIEND.

The tide is rising, rising Out of the infinite sea; From ripple, to wave, to billow, Past beryl and gold and crimson, A prism of perfect splendor; What shall the white surf be?

The sacred tide is rising, Rising for you and me. Defiant across the breaker, Wave unto wave must answer, The sea to the shore will follow; When shall the great flood be?

The tide must turn falling, falling Back to the awful sea. Thus far shalt thou go, no farther. The color sinks to the shadow,

The pæan sobs into silence, Where shall the ebb-line be?

By the weeds left blazing, beating Like heart-throbs of the sea, ConfessionsWifep77By the law of the land and the ocean, By the Hand that holdeth the torrent, I summon the tide eternal To flow for you and me!

Incompletion

INCOMPLETION.

Perhaps the bud lost from the loaded tree The sweetest blossom of the May would be;

Or wildest song that summer could have heard Is dumb within the throat of the dead bird.

The perfect statue that all men have sought May in some crippled hand be hid, unwrought.

Which of our dearest dead betook his flight Into the rose-red star that fell last night?

The words forever by thy lips unsaid Had been the crown of life upon thy head.

The splendid sun of all my days might be The love that I shall never give to thee.

Rafe's Chasm

RAFE'S CHASM.

CAPE ANN, SEPTEMBER SURF. 1882.

White fire upon the gray-green waste of waves, The low light of the breaker flares. Ah, see! Outbursting on a sky of steel and ice, The baffled sun stabs wildly at the gale. The water rises like a god aglow, Who all too long hath slept, and dreamed too sure, And finds his goddess fled his empty arms. Silent, the mighty cliff receives at last That rage of elemental tenderness, The old, omnipotent caress she knows. Yet once the solid earth did melt for her And, pitying, made retreat before her flight; Would she have hidden her forever there? Or did she, wavering, linger long enough To let the accustomed torrent chase her down?