Behind the Arras Part 11

Resume the old desire, The exigence of spring To be the orange fire That tips the world's gray wing.

And the lone wood-bird--Hark, The whippoorwill night long Thres.h.i.+ng the summer dark With his dim flail of song!--

Shall be the lyric lift, When all my senses creep, To bear me through the rift In the blue range of sleep.

And so I pa.s.s beyond The solace of your hand.

But ah, so brave and fond!

Within that morrow land,

Where deed and daring fail, But joy forevermore Shall tremble and prevail Against the narrow door,

Where sorrow knocks too late, And grief is overdue, Beyond the granite gate There will be thoughts of you.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

_Exit Anima_

"Hospes comesque corporis, Quae nunc abitis in loca?"

Cease, Wind, to blow And drive the peopled snow, And move the haunted arras to and fro, And moan of things I fear to know Yet would rend from thee, Wind, before I go On the blind pilgrimage.

Cease, Wind, to blow.

Thy brother too, I leave no print of shoe In all these vasty rooms I rummage through, No word at threshold, and no clue Of whence I come and whither I pursue The search of treasures lost When time was new.

Thou janitor Of the dim curtained door, Stir thy old bones along the dusty floor Of this unlighted corridor.

Open! I have been this dark way before; Thy hollow face shall peer In mine no more. . . . .

Sky, the dear sky!

Ah, ghostly house, good-by!

I leave thee as the gauzy dragon-fly Leaves the green pool to try His vast ambition on the vaster sky,-- Such valor against death Is deity.

What, thou too here, Thou haunting whisperer?

Spirit of beauty immanent and sheer, Art thou that crooked servitor, Done with disguise, from whose malignant leer Out of the ghostly house I fled in fear?

O Beauty, how I do repent me now, Of all the doubt I ever could allow To shake me like the aspen bough; Nor once imagine that unsullied brow Could wear the evil mask And still be thou!

Bone of thy bone, Breath of thy breath alone, I dare resume the silence of a stone, Or explore still the vast unknown, Like a bright sea-bird through the morning blown, With all his heart one joy, From zone to zone.

Scituate, June, 1895.