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

FRAGMENTS

I-V

I

IN the low-lying April afternoon The earth was hushed within a mellow mist Across the new brown meadows; the white sun Was gathered in a knot of clouds and gave No thought of an infinity beyond. Each blade of grass was conscious of its shadow; The sounds of birds and waters and the air Were stilled within the silence where I sat Beside, and as I sat I felt the least Of nature's children that around me played, And all was like a dream. I gathered up A handful of the grass and then forgot it; I felt a gentle rising of the wind And heard a sparrow whisper close at hand, With other little life beside me; but The distance faded and the nearness grew Confusèd to a fancy in the gray, The desolate gray shadow of the earth, Unreal and dimly dying from my thought Till all was nothing save the sun and me.

II

WESTWARD I walked; the sun was low; the plain, Seeming to rise before me, with the earth Revolving, rolling backward to the east, Shut out the dropping sun. I hastened on, But still the day grew darker as the west Drew in its last, white, fading fan of light, And all the world was cold; and when the land Ceased to reflect the sky, and heavy lay, And dully, by itself, I came where spread A darkling mirror, whitened half, and blue, Still cherishing a faint thought of the sky. The hour was calm, forgetful of the day, Where toward the noon the pattering rain did beat The fragrant earth; a soft green mist arose And lay across the opening fields; and then, Sweeping the huddled air around the world The silver storm scowled black; o'er all the sky It tore itself in fury and ran low Across the shuddering earth; it seized the trees, It seized the mountains in its gloomy hands And shook them; while the terror stricken streams Leaped madly on to aid the warring sea. Then in the thronging blackness of the storm

I had rejoiced, as now I smiled to see The fair, white, gentle surface of the lake And feel the air fall softly; at my feet The waters rose like coming thoughts that fall Forgotten, and my mind rose till it ran As smoothly as the yet unbroken wave.

III

THE wild-eyed, savage gull, with bow'd wing, tips The white, flat surface of the misty sea; Or, stooping in the wind-trod, hollow wave, Reels upward straight, hangs quivering, his whole self Intent, and breaks the surface like a bolt! This spirit of the mystery of the sea Sweeps by in silence on the noisy scud, Or bursts across the borders of the storm, A flash of horrid white; with beating wing Struggles in futile, royal wrath against The armed battalions of a mighty wind, And beaten, leaps aloft upon the storm To ride in fury down the conquering gale. Away, thou symbol of my own gray thoughts! Whenever from the heaven of weary hopes

The clouds run low in the palely flowing sky; Whenever from the world of the unachieved The mists mount up to meet the drooping cloud, And I between them fail, 't is thou I see, Thou dreadful emblem of my darker life! Thou art no child of sunlight, for indeed, Whether beneath some purple summer eve Thou weariest thy way into the west, Or in the winter on the frozen bay Standest erect, a white, mad, ravened king, Life-banished by the ice, thou art the same, Grim, busy with thyself, hard, gloomy, wild.

IV

AT sunset in the college close the light Falls like a benediction softly down; Here is a moving stillness in the air, Quiet, as though the now deserted east Had laid its empty hand upon the lawns And hushed the world; from out the glowing west The sunlight settles on each tender leaf, And entering in the gentle, empty cells Calls through the hollow tubes; down to the earth Trembles the peaceful summons; and the grass Drinks in the sunset light, except where lie

Dark traceries of black upon the green, Left mourning for the sun the while the tree Laughs with its selfish seizure of the light! This is the life of peace; but on the sky The city in the distance casts a light Brilliant and false, electric, publishing Confusion and false day, nature betrayed, And all the dark disguises of the town; The frantic strivings after more, that choke The holy fact of life, which single here Sits at the heart and bids the rest be still.

V

WHEN the low sun descends on Hamlet hill And this my maple throws a longer line Of lengthening shadow down across the slope, Then has a day departed, casting yet A lingering light from sidelong slopes and hills That run into the west. Much would I love One passing day to live beneath my tree, And there within its shadow on the earth Move with the moving sun a mutual course. First in the dawning is the crystal light Scarce sprinkled o'er the hill, while all the heaven Sheds seeming equal brightness on the world;

But after comes the round, revealing sun, To mark his influence and define the earth, Giving my tree its shadow on the ground. And therein would I rest and through the day Follow it lengthening downward past the noon; See the light grasses and the browsèd tufts Of pasture herbage tremble in the sun, Pale upland asters, dusty goldenrod, And all the autumn flowering of the fields; Then feel them sink to quietness within The slow advancing shadow. I should find A joy in the light liftings of the leaves, Breeze-shifted shadows trembling, little rays Of unexpected light along the ground. Then as the day advancèd to its fall And this my maple's shadow crept along Downward, I should forget the lesser life Of grass blade and of sunny pebble-stone, Feeling the great fact of the day's decline, The coming of the hour when all the hill Would cast its shadow; of the later night, The shadow of the earth. Thus would I live, And one day thus bid welcome and depart.