Poems of Philip Henry Savage / Philip Henry Savage [electronic text]

SONNETS

I-XVI

I

THE flood of life that turned away In search of rarer things, the rose, The fragile flower that bursting blows, And as it blows turns to decay, Once more seeks rest along the way Of earlier days and finds repose In love of each green thing that grows, A bunch of grass, an alder spray. You common things I hold you dear And beg the comfort you can give; The faith that bears you through the year, The courage both to die and live; Believing that I too shall hear The mountains fall, and shall not grieve.

II

TEN thousand fancies flitting through the mind, An impulse here, a half-created thought Are, in the stress of fancied duty, taught To bow and pass and leave no trace behind. Or carelessness, destructive as the wind, More prodigal than nature, valuing not The store of life that pain and joy have wrought Laughs and forgets, blind leader of the blind! We are but open caskets whence are fled The choicest gifts God-given; while we retain Indifference with a blustering hardihead, And querulousness before a righteous pain; Pale pietism, when virtue's self is dead, With smug conceit impregnable and vain.

III

"MERCY! Justice! Ah, no! Heaven's gate! Heaven's gate!" Panic above the crash of trampling horse And rush of wings upright against the course, A cry of gods confounded under fate! In tumult deep and inarticulate The angelic press burst outward, of the Source Of bulk Omnipotence compelled by force — Save Lucifer, omnipotent in hate. Bright as the dying day, with one black cloud Up-marshalled from the south and crossing o'er The glory and blotting out the evening star, So for a space he stood; then silent bowed, And from the battlements outspringing far Deep into darkness all his anguish bore.

IV

I LOVE the hills but she the open shore, The shore because it lies along the sea. I would be lofty, solitary, free, Selfish at times; at times, hearing the roar Of the ocean where beneath the bending oar It does the planet service, I would be As rich in blessing, yea, as rich as she Is rich in blessing; I could not be more. I walk apart, my heart is in the sky, Yet ever yearning downward to the land; She walks where all the world is crowding by And holds a little child in either hand; I bless her service with a troubled cry Of one who would but cannot understand.

V

I CANNOT face the utterance of a prayer In innocence; I know not by what gate Egress it finds beyond the fields of air; In what vain corridor my words may wait. A mystic once, I did communicate With my own self and thought with God to share My hope and aspiration; but of late My words, like Noah's dove, returning bare, I feel the confines of my spirit's heaven. Against the limits of myself in vain They strike and bruise their wings and downward fall. Then to myself, Peace! do I cry, and call That sufferance peace which yet is perfect pain: In courage, Peace! when there is no peace given.

VI

TO catch at that which never can be caught, To yearn for what thou never shall attain (Nature's own motions moving in the brain) This is thy life and thou by her art taught. This is her gift; to thee if welcome not With all its store of passion and of pain, Thou hast the power to give it back again And break the bow before thou triest the shot. Nay rather let me live to fight the fight And die the death, when driven against the wall, That many a man has fairly fought and died. Then shall I keep the spark she gave me bright (Gigantic mirth, that gave it to deride!) And cast it at the heavens even as I fall.

VII

A MONTH ago the cloud alone was fair. None watched the leafless tree-tops, thin and dry, Hold up their slender fans against the sky Save here a poet and a dreamer there. But now the sun through the soft, golden air Requires an incense from the flowers that lie Within a thousand vales; and low and high The broad earth doth a pale green mantle wear. Now voices are where all was still before; By each green leaf there trembles a brown wing; A thousand small lives wake beside my door And each one turns to labor and to sing. At last man feels the tumult of the spring And looks upon the universe once more.

VIII

A THOUSAND flowerets of a thousand hues Born of the sunset and the early dawn, Burn in the darker forest and suffuse An unimagined brightness o'er the lawn. These are the days I give my heart in pawn To thee, O nature, and the world refuse; These are the days I feel my footsteps drawn To seek the wayward motions of the muse! I have not long enough on earth to stay To lose the joy of one bright summer day; One quiet day of peace, ah many a one! Full of the song of birds and tremulous With sunshine; let the world seek after us: The muse and I are wandering with the sun.

IX

I STOOD long time and listened to the wind That tossed the fallen foliage o'er and o'er; Long time I stood; then turned within to bind An evergreen upon the open door. When winter comes to sweep across the floor And freeze the panes perforce the huswife mind Shuts-to the autumnal door and there reclined Battens on books till summer comes once more. I cannot stop her; turning to the shelves Her idleness she feeds on other men; Takes what she finds, complaining not and delves In mines deep-sunken with the golden pen; Then weary grows and longs to see again The spirits of the sky, the woodland elves.

X

MOOSILAUKE IN DECEMBER

THE wet, brown leaves of winter on the ground Unkempt they looked or evil, one by one Called back to vision by a careless sun; He should by this have reached his southern bound Leaving December earth all straitly gowned In decent white; but here we trod upon Her bosom black, uncovered and undone, And shrank from many a wet and naked wound. The Parthian sun his arrows to the head Drew, and within the field a little rill Beneath an edge of morning ice awoke; A line down through the mat-brown grass it led White, threaded with the blue the heavens spill, And tinkled coldly past a frozen oak.

Light veils of snow the west wind bore along, White shadows, drifted through the upper air Above the valley; they were very fair And passed in music like a summer song. I stood upon a mountain; here the strong Wild-Ammonoosuc rolled in forests bare, A tumult in his hollow pathway; there Whispered through Wildwood with an icy tongue. The sunlight shone on Kinsman through the cloud And turned the little falling snow to gold Which never reached the earth, but it went back Into the chambers of the air; the loud, White shepherd west wind drove into the fold And forests waving showed his vanished track.

Standing above the Tunnel gorge, the brook Unseen, unheard below I knew laid out And trimmed its tenements for April's trout, Rested and ran from hidden nook to nook. The wintry forests in the wind had shook December from their branches; round about, The sun had aided in the season's rout To Moosilauke; and when to him I look, White snow and winter build in me a sense, Structured on beauty awful and serene, Of majesty, a pressing sense of fear. I never saw a vision more intense In awfulness than that tremendous scene — Black Moosilauke, uprising dark and near!

So very near! Far down, the Tunnel run Crept out beneath the mountain's heavy base; Buttress and bastion mounting I could trace In upright courses to the supreme One, High, distant dome where-over bits of sun Ran with the rolling clouds a windy race. But all beneath was blackness, and my face A breath as of the mountain fell upon. A whisper from the mountain came across, So dark, so strong! a breath in blackness drawn, Long drawn and deep, so near we were and high! And then it seemed a simple child might toss Against the opposèd wall a pebble-stone, Deep in the Tunnel gorge to roll and lie.

XI

THE poet stoops and plucks a little flower To tell his greatness in a simple song; He does not need through seasons to prolong A mighty work to manifest his power; Which still is simple, still the common dower If unexpressed, of many in the throng Unconscious who, with poetry along, In life's sojourn spend many a happy hour. So Burns delights us with a lowly lay, The warm expression of a simple joy; So Wordsworth, moving through each quiet day, Forgets not the quick impulse of the boy; And midst thy passion, Shelley, to destroy, Thou 'st found the truth along the lyric way.

XII

I HATE the vast array of "modern" things, Gilt and pale purple, yellow, pink, and white; Dull imitations and a thousand light And weightless books of verse and copyings. There are so many! Every season brings A thousand fashions new and with delight Proclaims them beautiful; till I take flight And turn me to the masters and the kings. And yet they will not let the masters be; I find my Walton in a showy dress; Find all the bright, old-age simplicity Bedecked and botched; the years of good Queen Bess Are made the dull philistine's property; And Burns is "popularly" sent to press.

XIII

HIGH on a sunward-mounting precipice Edged with a cloud that all before me ran, I backward gazed and pictured, span by span, How I had mounted upward from the abyss; By what a confused pathway come to this, The end of earth; and saw the future's plan Grow, "minimize the universe to man," And build a daring, nobler edifice. Ah, struggle to assume this new control And seek thy higher reaches, O my soul! Thou 'rt sure of this, thy feet are on the earth; Forget it, it remains; but let thine eyes Lead on thy heart, and find beyond the skies At least the promise of an upward birth.

XIV

HONEY of woodland wild and of the hill, The juices of the maple and the cane And all the fulness of the fallen grain; The pauses in the running of the rill, Silence of distant meadows, voices far Of unseen swallows in the upper air; The beauty of the bending bough; the rare, Soft rose, the sunbeam and the melting star — What are they all but shadows in the night To thee, where beauty burns a perfect light! I see thee standing gracefuller than grass, Naked, with one foot in the lingering stream, The sun upon thee, perfect! or alas, Is it not thee, my dryad, but a dream!

XV

THE warms moist kiss of April on the grass; The stooping sun, the wet and fragrant plain; The voice of life, low-whispered as I pass; The vision of the summer through the rain; A thousand thoughts borne outward from the mind Laughing at nature, caught and held again Close to the stirring hearts till like the grain In autumn they are scattered by the wind! And some may range along the open sky, And some may fall and live and some may die. I care not now whether the wanton air Rid me of flying chaff or sift the seed Of future promise; or if this, indeed, My present fancy lead me anywhere!

XVI

I LAID upon a rock beside the sea A spray of eglantine where all about The water rushed in torrents in and out Among the wet, black rocks tempestuously. To eastward high, a little promont'ry Up-bore the billows on his iron breast; And thence they rolled beyond him to the west Surging about my eglantine and me. And of the mightiest waves their spray that cast White and imperious far into the air, Not one but passed the sweet-briar safely by. Till, midst the churning foam and surges there That reached but could not clutch it, rising high The tide itself did take it at the last.