The Tree of Life by John Gould Fletcher [an electronic edition]

BOOK IV
DREAMS IN THE NIGHT

THE COMING OF NIGHT

THE night has come, and it has rolled over and over upon me, Blotting my old life out; Till sundered by walls of darkness, I stand detached and I see it Rise in dim shapes through the gloom. It is so unutterably perfect and beyond me That I am no longer part of it; It is a glory lived by some fresh passionate spirit I once saw in my dreams.

The trees spread their motionless branches, Covered from tip to tip with silent green growing leaves; Over the lawns the moonlight Walks like a woman pursuing her reluctant lover. Black shadows and green flashes, The loneliness of night and the large seas of blue air; Until the dawn I shall not ever escape you, Till the day breaks you must abide with me.

Silently and resistlessly I hear you creeping Towards the moonlight that lies thick on the layers of leaves; Silently your footstep Brushes by like a wind coming suddenly out of the darkness; Silently your eyes flash Out of the silent depths of dark blue heavens;

And the deep perfume of the grass and of the trees growing in silence, Is nothing to me but the breath of your hair outspread.

Silently out of the night, I lift my wings, I beat my wings: I am all love which is deathless, above the tomb. I am the leaf and the flower above the leaf; Again and again, We meet, we part, we come together; You stand by a bench one instant And I am holding your hand; Down there in the lake the water ripples and tosses And the banks run laughing to the water: Now together in my study Arm in arm we lean out to the night, To the song of a bird in the fresh awakening branches. Now we are still, For summer pours its heat cloud over us, And in its folds we sleep. Now when the autumn shakes her dry torch-embers Over the trees, We part with many tears, Bitter, black rain of sorrow eating into the earth. But we have met again to-night. The song is mine, the joy is mine; Lo, all the earth is weaving leaves for us; Leaves which are kisses and lives in one immortal night.

O, I am weary, and I faint at last, The web of song and dreams is broken; It spreads out over the world like a great sheet of smooth water. The moonlight has silvered its surface, But below its surface it is all blue and deathless; A sea of love that stirs not, for it is infinite. In its unutterable stillness I know we sleep safe and calm to-night; While all the world along, our love goes seeking, finding New lovers to rejoice, new sorrows to awaken, Until the dawn I shall not ever escape you; Till the day breaks you must abide with me.

THE NEW LIFE

TO-NIGHT on wings of the storm, old griefs assail me; My blooms of desire are torn, they shatter and fall. Rattling at my windows, roaring in black deafening torrents, Without there is nothing but the night's tempestuous call.

But the winds of the spring, battling against the dry leaden sky, bring to me, Flying afar from the storm, Your words, letters of love to give me comfort, To hold me to love's strength long gone.

I am all yours, and I will stretch myself out upon you, Like the wind stretching itself out on the greening earth, And out of the fierce dry sorrow of my longing New life will come.

Fever has burnt out my heart now—its last sparks are blown out to you, On the long winds leaping like greyhounds out of the seas. I lie on earth's hot breast, exhausted, panting, exultant, Breathing for ages those long dark torrents of rain Which you pour out upon me, in which I can sink at the last.

THE SKY-GARDEN

WHILE. the days are growing slowly to mid-summery days of flame, And the clouds like banks of pearl are blown into the sky, Sky of crystal, turquoise, glass; When the horse-chestnut lights a hundred candles up against its pale green leaves, And the sky is floating out to sunset with a thousandclouds of flame, Into the sky then freed from mortal weight I pass.

It is a garden. full of lazy scents where peach-trees all day long Glow amid a turquoise stretch of hyacinths ashake, Reflecting cloudless skies amid their woven green; And like a cloud they drift together; through them pours the sun, Sprinkling its light upon them where they sleep, serene.

And you are in that sky with me, a breeze-blown shape of cloud, By the side of dark blue lakes we stand and under the flaming trees We watch and wonder always that the earth is still so fair; And we see the rivers winding out to sunset, golden-prowed, And your cool body is pressed to mine, and peace is everywhere.

THE ONSET

THE trees droop their thin wiry tendril-like boughs, Printing upon the evening the serrated black of their leaves; The trees are motionless. Out over there the palaces of my dreams Are masses of fuming purple against the glowing banks of clouds Dying to faint rose in the low monotonous west. I know that I must wait—I know that you are coming, Winging your way, swifter, far swifter than light; A blue arrow threading The cold grey depths of burnt out sky.

Now the trees seem waking; one hears a low sifting and rustling, But yet the limbs do not stir; Not one leaf of the multitude displaces itself; They are printed blacker than ever against the vaguer gloom. My heart begins thumping and pounding, For I fear you, yes, unutterably I fear you: Love of the flesh is fearful; how much more that of the spirit Which knocks at my door to-night!

Now a dim orange glow burns in my still palace of dreams. And the stars come out suddenly, and strive to hide themselves

Amidst leaves which seem to fall and crash upon them With a loud clang of metal upon the pavements of darkness. Back over the roof from eastward something white must be rising, For a greyish blue smoke from the terraces Suddenly waves upward to meet it. O, for the lightning blade that will suddenly thrust at my heart, And for the flood of love that will follow upon it!

THE CRISIS

THE leaves are so close to the window, That I cannot see the sky; I can feel the thick dry air between their outstretched surfaces Pressing upon my heart; I can feel the heavy boughs shooting upwards through the darkness; Their weight almost stifles me, If I strive to shift them.

Far downwards in the crumbled earth and the rocks below, Thin nerve-like roots Writhe about reaching for water-drops and coolness. I feel them pumping thin sap up to me, Bitter sweet sap of hope; But far above where my eyes can never see them, The last loose daring leaves Wait for a wind of love that never comes.

FAILURE

YOU must be dead; you do not come. The night is cold and bleak and dumb, Except for bells which solemnly Glide down like boulders into the sea. I can hear nothing more. Night has no shore.

You must be dead; you do not pass Between the tree-tops and the grass; No glittering film from your wings has yet Brushed against those walls of jet. I can see nothing more. Night has no shore.

You must be dead. Up from the ground Warm velvet shadows rise: no sound. The deep purple light of the sky is gone, In all the world I am alone. I feel my heart distant and low Pounding out: tick, tick, tick. I know I can feel no more. Night has no shore.

DISUNION

I CAN see nothing. All around is darkness. I am at last alone. Night before last your face at the window Cried to me farewell, and the next night There was nothing but the grinding and the pounding, The roaring and soaring and rattling, Of wheels carrying me back over deserts, Out of which I came to dream of you.

Far behind me now are those green gardens In which our words were fireflies glinting above the grass: Meeting and touching and parting, Returning to the darkness. Far away in the blue distance Ragged and superb rise up the palaces of my dreams: Their windows empty and eyeless, Their furniture torn and broken, Desecrated by the tramp of muddy boots and the gaping of multitudes. The golden chain you threw to me, Out over seas, has snapt at last. And I am now alone with the cold and silent night.

Within this morbid palace, With lights and song and people regarding me coldly, I learn another dream: A dream of the man who dared to dream such dreams of joy and passion.

Who made of love an image and who worshipped it at night. And I see that man go stumbling Madly once more out to-night, Around his neck and loins the weight of a black sorrow, Living, eating in his flesh, Never to fall away from his bitter heart in death.

I can see nothing. All around is darkness. The darkness waits for me, It is as lonely as I am: All hope dissolved, abandoned, My work of faith fallen into the seas that hid it. I watch the cold expectant darkness, Indifferently, not caring If it holds death or life for me. It is the same as it was a million years ago. One life the more or less, one heart-break—what do they matter? Without, in gold and orange lamps, Goes dancing madly by the dry-lipped sleepless night.

THE NIGHT OF RENUNCIATION

THE night has come on which all my dreams are broken; The night is here and when its darkness fills me, I shall be standing at the midway of my path and I shall see about me Upon one side the light, and on the other side darkness. The trees can go no higher, Their topmost boughs have reached midsummer glory: Love is complete, and unless it alter itself and vanish, There will be no flowers to spring next year from the sheltering earth.

Night of renunciation—night on which my strange dreams perish; Night when no longer we can come to each other; Night in which we have looked into the farthest depths of our souls, And have seen only silence and darkness;. Night of completion—night on which the earth is breathless, While love sleeps on in dreamless sleep, helpless, his arrows broken; Until the dawn I must watch patiently for you, Till the day breaks you too must wait for me.

There is no wind in the silence; Only the white stars patiently, feebly, Glimmering through the veil of heat that hides the motionless earth. There is no love now unaccomplished,

No sigh from any restless soul turning backward to the darkness, Only despair that divides and contentment full-completed. The sky burns up to a sheet of flame at sunset; Hangs blue and falls As if all its force were finished. I am waiting for the dawn with its torch of autumn, To kindle the boughs and send racing the red drift of leaves.

Night of renunciations—sleepless, motionless— Night when all the world is a dead weight hanging upon me, Of which incessantly I must despoil myself, for it grows with my darkness. Night of silence—night in which I only dream of silence— Night beyond the last farewell—night in which we lie together But as two dead shapes lie in one tomb not stirring to touch each other. Night in which no syllable, look, or thought of love can help us, Night in which all time becomes a great wheel turning us captive:— Until the dawn I must watch patiently for you, Till the day breaks you too must wait for me.

Three times now, the torch of love Kindled, has burnt to ashes; Three times has the coming autumn Proclaimed itself, through the shaking midsummer leaves

At first it was my own heart breaking, Out of which the flame departed:— But the second torch, more beautiful, Caught its light from the dying embers. Then came that separation like your death, Out of which the last torch furiously Glowed and spluttered in the darkness; Now the summer full-awaking, Lacking light, can only dream: Dream of fires that have faded, Till that dream itself is lost.

Night of renunciation—night of eternal darkness— When shall we ever cross it, this great black river of silence, Which I feel rising and rising and enfolding close about us? Something in me stirs very near to death, But greater than death, greater even than love; Something beyond all hope, all joy, all passion, all sorrow, Something that silently moves me onward towards a perfect darkness: A force unknown, unnamed—the strong will of the universe That bears me helplessly forward to new life or to death. Until the dawn I must watch patiently for you, Till the day breaks you too must wait for me.

IN MEMORY OF A NIGHT

IT was an hour before the dawn, Barely a little hour before the dawn, Long ago; The moon was a full-sailed frigate in the ashen bay of the sky, Swinging low, The moon was slipping out with the cargo of my dreams. I knew not if I waked or dreamed, nor cared to live or die.

Flicker and lurch of the train, That tore me amain Out of the steep dense-clustered trees Into a valley walled with far light, Breakers of night Rising from buried seas.

It was an hour before the dawn, Barely a little hour before the dawn, That we lay clasping each other and dreamed awake at the last; Lip to eager lip and bodies pressing together, One warm shuddering caress—but now all that is past— It is the dawn and I cannot rest, The night is a dry fire gnawing through my breast.

A taxicab crashing Down long deserted streets: Files of light racing together to hurl themselves under the wheels;

The whole immense city tearing itself from me, Because in the distance I see Something that not even the city, nor seeking, nor my song reveals.

It is an hour before the dawn; One fleeting beautiful hour before the dawn— When the noise of the city and the false acclamations of men fall away from me; I stand on a cool wind-washed summit, Below me the whole green earth enkindles with ecstacy of light, The sun throws a kiss over dark chasms packed with sullen sleep-mists rolling together, And I hear the noise of far rain beating clamorous over the city, And its sound is the falling of folded centuries slowly unclosing and dropping away.

In the midst of the city I builded, Amid soft lights and smiles and rich flowers assembled, My palace of dreams:— There were feasts in my palace at evening and song and full welcome of friends, And new universes half hidden in the closing delights of a kiss; But now is an end of all this, It is vanished like an old song that no one ends.

Flicker and toss of the train, That tore me amain Back to cold darkness from the warm light; We who have laughed at the night,

Lip to eager lip and bodies pressing together, Soft warm tremulous caresses of hand and of breast, In the day's lurid pageant of gold and blue, we shall seek, but shall not find, rest.

It was an hour before the dawn, Barely a little hour before the dawn; Long ago. Long ago the sunlight kissed me—now I go as blind. Would that I could find If it was an empty dream, or was it as it seems? The moon is rising high Out of the last bay of the eastern sky, With the cargo of my dreams.

EPILOGUE

YEARS have passed over me, whirling their whiplashes of days, since last I have written these lines. Charioteers whooping, hallooing—their red wheels a flash in the dust; The screaming and the neighing of horses biting each other I did not heed, nor the dull echoes grinding and rumbling Far down the pavements of eternity. All these were nothing to me, But a shaking of torches out on the shores of the night; Hissing sparks falling into the water—wet hands struggling, falling, and a low cry Spreading out in great circles on stillness. Then the night closed down with its silence, While the years went on screaming and curling their whips, on to their dark goal overhead.

There is no vision afloat in the boat of the night; No ear ever hears Distant waves breaking sullenly upon some low craggy shore, Or tinkle of mandolines floating in harbours of dreams. Outwards the clouds stream Stretching out their dark necks and galloping, galloping forward, While adrift With the lamp long burnt out, and naught but the creak of the ropes

To mark each slow moment that gropes, Ebbing—out faintly, like afterglow's glimmer long held in the arms of the west, We drift or we rest; Youth having passed away, age slowly passing, and whither no soul of us knows: But love never shows, Through a rift in the west, Dreams of some harbour whose red lamps repose On the face of the waters, summoning our griefs to its breast.

But when the Sons of the Morning shall blow their great golden trumpets, rending the red mist asunder, And the trees with their flame-leaves of emerald and scarlet shall leap out again at the sky, All our dead passion and sorrow shall break into flame in our hearts; And the ashes thereof shall be strewn 'neath the feet of our God Who shall walk out of the firmament, taking each life to His breast; And our souls like two flames irresistibly kindled, having burnt through the last walls of space, Shall shine in a circle of fire about His all-glorious Head, Who has ordered to sorrows an ending, and that Heaven and Earth be made new.