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Title: A Lonely Flute

Author: Odell Shepard

Release date: November 7, 2010 [eBook #34234]

Most recently updated: January 7, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34234

Credits: Produced by Al Haines

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A LONELY FLUTE ***

A LONELY FLUTE

BY

ODELL SHEPARD

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

The Riverside Press Cambridge

1917

COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY ODELL SHEPARD

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Published April 1917

TO

M. F. S.

And now 't was like all instruments,

Now like a lonely flute;

And now it is an angel's song

That makes the Heavens be mute.

COLERIDGE.

CONTENTS

PROEM

LAUS MARIÆ

RECOLLECTION

NIGHTFALL

A BALLAD OF LOVE AND DEATH

BIRDS OF PASSAGE

WASTE

THE WATCHER IN THE SKY

HOUSEMATES

POMP AND CIRCUMSTANCE

THE HIDDEN WEAVER

VANITAS

SPENSER'S "FAËRIE QUEENE"

MORNING ROAD SONG

EVENING ROAD SONG

WINDY MORNING

THE GRAVE OF THOREAU

EARTH-BORN

"WHENCE COMETH MY HELP"

UNITY

VISTAS

A NUN

LOVE AMONG THE CLOVER

CERTAIN AMERICAN POETS

THE SINGER'S QUEST

DEAD MAGDALEN

THE ADVENTURER

THE GOLDFINCH

ORIOLES

BY A MOUNTAIN STREAM

APRIL

A CHAPEL BY THE SEA

EPHEMEROS

WANDERLUST

THE IDEAL

THE FIRST CHRISTIAN

A LONELY FLUTE

PROEM

Beyond the pearly portal,

Beyond the last dim star,

Pale, perfect, and immortal,

The eternal visions are,

That never any rapture

Of sorrow or of mirth

Of any song shall capture

To dwell with men on earth.

Many a strange and tragic

Old sorrow still is mute

And melodies of magic

Still slumber in the flute,

Many a mighty vision

Has caught my yearning eye

And swept with calm derision

In robes of splendor by.

The rushing susurration

Of some eternal wing

Beats mighty variation

Through all the song I sing;

The vague, deep-mouthed commotion

From its ancestral home

Booms like the shout of ocean

Across the crumbling foam;

And these low lyric whispers

Make answer wistfully

As sea-shells ... dreaming lispers

Beside the eternal sea.

LAUS MARIÆ

There is a name like some deep melody

Hallowed by sundown, delicate as the plash

Of lonely waves on solitary lakes

And rounded as the sudden-bursting bloom

Of bold, deep-throated notes in a midnight cloud

When shadowy belfries far away roll out

Across the dark their avalanche of sound.

It is a wild voice lost in the wail of the wind;

The silvery-twinkling plectrum of the rain

Plays in the poplar tree no other tune

And pines intone it softly as a prayer

In leafy litanies.

The name is raised

Even to God's ear from ancient arches dim

With caverned twilight and dull altar smoke

Where tapers weave athwart the azure haze

Innumerable pageantries of dusk.

Low-voiced and soft-eyed women must they live

Who bear that holy name. And now for one

Time has no other honor than to be

The meaning of an unremembered rhyme,

The breath of a forgotten singer's song.

(October, 1903)

RECOLLECTION

I must forget awhile the mellow flutes

And all the lyric wizardry of strings;

The fragile clarinet,

Tremulous over meadows rich with dawn,

Must knock against my vagrant heart

And throb and cry no more.

For I am shaken by the loveliness

And lights and laughter and beguiling song

Of all this siren world;

The regal beauty of women, round on round,

The swift, lithe slenderness of girls,

And children's loyal eyes,

Hill rivers and the lilac fringe of seas

Lazily plunging, glow of city nights

And faces in the glow—

These things have stolen my heart away, I lie

Parcelled abroad in sound and hue,

Dispersed through all I love.

I must go far away to a still place

And draw the shadows down across my eyes

And wait and listen there

For wings vibrating from beyond the stars,

Wide-ranging, swiftly winnowing wings

Bearing me back mine own.

So soon, now, I shall lie deep hidden away

From sound or sight, with hearing strangely dull

And heavy-lidded eyes,—

'T is time, O passionate soul, for me to go

Some far, hill-folded road apart

And learn the ways of peace.

NIGHTFALL

In a crumbling glory sets

The unhastening sun;

The fishers draw their shining nets;

The day is done.

Across the ruddy wine

That brims the sea

Black boats drag shoreward through the brine

Dreamily,

And dark against the glow

Firing the west,

By three and two the great gulls go

Seaward to rest.

Beneath the gradual host

Of heaven, pale

And glimmering, rides a dim sea-ghost,

A large slow sail.

Slowly she cometh on

Day's last faint breath,

Drifting across the water, wan

And gray as death.

From what far-lying land

Swimmeth thy keel,

Dim ship? And what mysterious hand

Is at thy wheel?

What far-borne news for me?

What vast release?

Quiet is in my heart, and on the sea

Peace.

(Balboa, California)

A BALLAD OF LOVE AND DEATH

She winded on the castle horn,

She clamored long and bold,

For she was way-spent and forlorn

And she was sore a-cold.

And she stood lonely in the snow.

Vague quiet filled the air....

From heaven's roof looked down aloof

The stars, with steady stare.

She heard the droning drift of snow

And the wolf-wind on the hill....

No other sound.... For leagues around

The night was very still.

She cried aloud in sudden fright,

"Open! Warder ho!

Here is a pilgrim guest to-night

Who can no farther go."

The steady beat of mailed feet

In angry answer rang

Along the floor. The castle door

Gave in with iron clang

And the warder strode into his tower

And saw her standing there

Weary, like a storm-tossed flower,

And, like an angel, fair.

"Here is no lodging for the night,

No bread and wine for thee,

No ingle bright, no warm firelight,

No cheerful company.

"Here is no inn nor any kin

Of thine to harbor guest,

Nor thee to house will any rouse

Out of his ancient rest."

Unearthly, dark, nocturnal things

With faint and furtive stir

Hovered on feather-muffled wings

Round the fair face of her

As she made answer wearily:

"Ah! open now the gate.

Though I was fleet with willing feet,

I have come very late.

"Yea, though I came through flood and flame,

Through tempest, flood, and fire,

And left the wind to trail behind

The wings of my desire,

"And though I prayed the stars for aid

And seas for wind and tide,

And though God gave me goodly pave

And ran, Himself, beside...

"Aye, though my feet have been thus fleet,

Unto one heart, I know,

Whose sleep is still beneath the hill,

My coming has been slow."

And he bent gently down above,

A soft light in his eye...

"Is not the holy name of Love

The name men call thee by?

"Ah, Love, I know thee, for thy face

Is other-worldly fair;

A great light of some heavenly place

Is on thy shining hair.

"But thou, Love, who canst tread the stars,

Whose seat is by God's throne,

Why wilt thou bend thee to the dust

And walk the dark alone?

"Thy ways are not our mortal ways.

Hast thou nought else to do

Than wander with thy dream-lit face

Our glimmering darkness through?"

But Love made answer, and her voice

Was as God's voice to him;

As tall and fair she towered there

As heavenly seraphim...

"Open the gate! for Love shall dwell

Even among the dead

And in the darkest deeps of hell!

Open! For God hath said!"

BIRDS OF PASSAGE

Dropping round and clear across the still miles,

Ringing down the midnight's marble stair,

A bird's cry is falling through the darkness,

Falling from the fields of upper air.

Through the rainy fragrance of the April night

Slow it falls, circling in the fall,

And all the sheeted lake of sleeping silences

Is troubled by the solitary call.

Each human heart awake knows the loneliness

Of that strange voice clear and far,

That lost voice searching through the midnight,

That lonely star calling to a star.

Old memories are thronging through the darkness...

Slow tears are blinding sleepless eyes...

O lonely hearts remembering in the midnight!

O dark and empty skies!

WASTE

Reluctant, groping fog crept gray and cold

Up from the fields where now the guns were still;

Far off the thundering surge of battle rolled

And darkness brooded on the quiet hill;

Clearly, across the listening night, the shrill

And rhythmic cry of a lonely cricket fell

On ears long deafened by the scream of shot and shell.

And there were two who listened wistfully

To that glad voice, that sad last voice of all,

Who on the morrow after reveille

Would make no answer to the muster call;

Others would eat their mess, others would fall

When the lines formed again into their places,

And soon their marching comrades would forget their faces.

One moaned a little and the other turned

Painfully sidewise, peering up the bare

Shell-furrowed slope. Then, while his deep wound burned,

He crawled, slow inch by weary inch, to where

The boy lay,—young, he thought, and strangely fair.

"You see, I came," he said. "It was a wrench.

I thought I'd die. Let's have a light here. What! You're French!

"No matter ... we'll be going pretty soon...

Dying 's a lonesome business at the best,

And when there's nothing but a ghastly moon

And fog for company, I lose my zest.

There's a girl somewhere ... well... you know the rest.

I'm glad I came. It's hand in hand now, brother.

I think I laid you here. I wish 't had been another.

"I never meant it, and you did n't mean

For me this ugly gash along my side.

Something has pushed us on. Our slate is clean.

And long and long after we two have died

Some learnedest of doctors will decide

What thing it was. But we ... we'll never know.

Our business now 's to help make next year's harvest grow.

"You've been at school? College de France! You know

Next year I should have heard your Bergson there,—

Greatest since Hegel. Think of Haeckel, though,

At my own Jena! Mighty men they were.

Not mighty enough for what they had to bear.

They read and wrote and taught, but you and I,

How have we profited at last? Well, here we lie.

"If I had known you by the silver Rhine,

That dreamy country where I had my birth,

The land of golden corn and golden wine

And surely, I think, the world's most lovely earth,—

I should have loved you, brother, and known your worth.

But you were born beside the racing Rhone.

Ah, yes, that made the difference. That thing alone.

"We might have fronted this world's stormy weather

Hand clasped in hand and seeing eye to eye.

What was there we could not have done together?

Who dares to say we should have feared to die,

Shoulder to shoulder standing, you and I?

But now you are slain by me, your unknown friend.

I die by your unknowing hand. This ... this is the end!

"And all the love that might have been is blown

Far off like clouds that fade across the blue;

The game is over and the night shuts down,

Blotting the little dreams of me and you

And all our hope of all we longed to do.

But courage, comrade! It's not hard to die.

It's not so lonely now. If only we know why!"

The fog-damp folded closer round the hill

And stillness deepened, but the cricket's song

Tore at the heavy hem of silence still—

One small voice left of love in a world of wrong.

A few dim stars looked down. The yelling throng

Of guns had passed beyond the mountain's brow

When once again he spoke, but slowly, faintlier now.

"Something discovered that it didn't need us—

Me in the Fatherland and you in France.

We were less worth than what it took to feed us,

And so life gave us only a little glance.

It's true to say we never had a chance.

It's like this fog, around, above, below.

Reach out your hand to me. Good-night. We'll never know."

And then they lay so still they seemed asleep,

For death was near and they had little pain.

The midnight did not hear them moan or weep

For life and love and gladness lost in vain

And faces they would never see again,—

Old friends, old lovers. All seemed at a distance.

The minutes crept and crept. They made no strong resistance.

They only lay and looked up at the stars,

Feeling they had not known how fair they were.

I think their hearts were far from those loud wars

As they lay listening to the cricket's chirr

Until it faded to a drowsy blur,

Dwindled, and died, lost in the distant roar

Of waves that plunged and broke on some eternal shore.

THE WATCHER IN THE SKY

She has grown pale and spectral with our wounds

And she is worn with memories of woe

Older than Karnak. Multitudinous feet

Of all the phantom armies of the world

Resounding down the hollow halls of time,

Have kept their far-off rumor in her ear.

For she was old when Nineveh and Tyre

And Baalbec of the waste went down in blood;

Pompey and Tamburlaine and Genghis Khan

Are dreams of only yesternight to her.

And still she keeps, chained to a loathsome thing,

Her straining, distant paces up and down

The vaulted cell, but wistful of an end

When all our swarm of shuddering life shall drop

Like some dead cooling cinder down the void,

Leaving her clean, in blessed barrenness.

(August, 1914)

HOUSEMATES

This little flickering planet

Is such a lonely spark

Among the million mighty fires

That blaze in the outer dark,

The homeless waste about us

Leaves such a narrow span

To this dim lodging for a night,

This bivouac of man,

That all the heavens wonder

In all their alien stars

To see us wreck our fellowship

In mad fraternal wars.

POMP AND CIRCUMSTANCE

With a shout of trumpets and roll of drums,

Down the road the music comes

And all my heart leaps up to greet

The steady tread of the marching feet.

Blare of bugle and shriek of fife...

This is the triumphing wine of life!

My senses reel and my glad heart sings,

My spirit soars on jubilant wings.

Fluttering banners and gonfalons

Cover with beauty the murderous guns;

'T is sweet to live, 't were great to die

With this vast music marching by.

For all my heart leaps up to greet

The steady tread of the marching feet

When down the road the music comes

With a shout of trumpets and roll of drums.

THE HIDDEN WEAVER

There where he sits in the cold, in the gloom,

Of his far-away place by his thundering loom,

He weaves on the shuttles of day and of night

The shades of our sorrow and shapes of delight.

He has wrought him a glimmering garment to fling

Over the sweet swift limbs of the Spring,

He has woven a fabric of wonder to be

For a blue and a billowy robe to the sea,

He has fashioned in sombre funereal dyes

A tissue of gold for the midnight skies.

But sudden the woof turns all to red.

Has he lost his craft? Has he snapped his thread?

Sudden the web all sanguine runs.

Does he hear the yell of the thirsting guns?

While the scarlet crimes and the crimson sins

Grow from the dizzying outs and ins

Of the shuttle that spins, does he see it and feel?

Or is he the slave of a tyrannous wheel?

Inscrutable faces, mysterious eyes,

Are watching him out of the drifting skies;

Exiles of chaos crowd through the gloom

Of the uttermost cold to that thundering room

And whisper and peer through the dusk to mark

What thing he is weaving there in the dark.

Will he leave the loom that he won from them

And rend his fabric from hem to hem?

Is he weaving with daring and skill sublime

A wonderful winding-sheet for time?

Ah, but he sits in a darkling place,

Hiding his hands, hiding his face,

Hiding his art behind the shine

Of the web that he weaves so long and fine.

Loudly the great wheel hums and rings

And we hear not even the song that he sings.

Over the whirr of the shuttles and all

The roar and the rush, does he hear when we call?

Only the colors that grow and glow

Swift as the hurrying shuttles go,

Only the figures vivid or dim

That flow from the hastening hands of him,

Only the fugitive shapes are we,

Wrought in the web of eternity.

VANITAS

Three queens of old in Yemen

Beside forgotten streams,

Three tall and stately women,

Dreamt three great stately dreams

Of love and power and pleasure and conquering quinqueremes.

They dreamt of love that squandered

All Egypt for a kiss,

They dreamt of fame and pondered

On proud Persepolis,

But most they yearned for the wild delights of pale Semiramis.

They had for lords and lovers

Dark kings of Araby,

Corsairs and wild sea-rovers

From many an alien lea,—

Black-bearded men who loved and fought and won them cruelly.

They reared a dreamlike palace

Stately and white and tall

As a lily's ivory chalice

Where every echoing hall

Was rumorous with rustling leaves and plashing water's fall.

There to the tinkling zither

And passionate guitars

They footed hence and hither

Beneath the breathless stars,

From bare round breast and shoulder waved their glimmering cymars.

Theirs was an empire's treasure

Of gems and rich attire,

Love had they beyond measure

And wine that burnt like fire;

Each stately queen in Yemen found verily her desire.

But beauty waned and smouldered,

Love languished into lust,

The centuries have mouldered

Their raven hair to rust,

The desert sand is over them, their darkling eyes are dust.

Their bosoms' pride is sunken

Beneath the purple pall,

Their smooth round limbs are shrunken,

Through clasp and anklet crawl

Lithe little snakes, upon their tombs lean lizards twitch and sprawl.

SPENSER'S "FAËRIE QUEENE"

Like some clear well of water in the waste,

Some magic well beside the weary miles,

This beauty is. I turn aside and taste

The cool Lethean drink. Suddenly smiles

A leafy world upon me,—peristyles

Of flickering shade! The hush is only stirred

Where silver runlets brighten down the aisles,

From pool to pool rehearsing one low word

Answered at drowsy intervals by a lonely bird.

Along the rustling arches and through vast

Dim caverns of green solitude are rolled

The wintry leaves of all the withered past,

One confraternity of common mould.

From summers perished, autumn's tarnished gold

Long blown to dust in many a fallen glade

Is reared this rumorous temple million-boled,

This shrine of peace, this whispering colonnade

Trembling from court to court with restless sun and shade.

And here a while may weary Fancy turn

And loiter by the rote of guttural streams.

Brushing the skirts of silence, the stirred fern

Breathes softly "hush" and "hush"—a sound that seems

Only the fluttering sigh of deepest dreams.

Here comes no sound or sight of fevered things...

No sight or sound. Green-gold the daylight beams,

And deep in the heart of dusk a far bird sings

Faint as the feathered beat of her own wavering wings.

*****

Calm singer in the chambers of the dawn,

Our hearts are weary singing in the heat

When all thy dewy matin hopes are gone

And all thy raptures, prophesyings sweet,

And fair, false dreams are flying in defeat.

O thou, the poet's poet, from thy sky

Of ancient morning look thou down and greet

Thy brothers of the noon with gentle eye.

Lift them from out the dust. Forlorn and low they lie!

Heart-easing poet, sing to us like bells

Across wide waters paven by the stains

Of sunset; like a vagrant breeze that swells

And rises lingering, fails and grows and wanes

Along a listening wood; like April rains

In which the anemones of dream are born.

And though you cannot save us from the pains

Of life,—the heat, the insensate noise, the scorn,—

Here may we find our rose, forget a while the thorn.

MORNING ROAD SONG

Let me have my fill of the wide blue air

And the emerald cup of the sea

And a wandering road blown bright and bare

And it is enough for me.

The love of a man is a goodly thing

And the love of a woman is true,

But give me a rollicking song to sing

And a love that is always new.

For I am a rover and cannot stay

And blithe at heart am I

When free and afoot on a winding way

Beneath the great blue sky.

EVENING ROAD SONG

It's a long road and a steep road

And a weary road to climb.

The air bites chill on the windy hill.

At home it is firelight time.

The sunset pales ... along the vales

The cottage candles shine

And twinkle through the early dew.

Thank God that one is mine!

And dark and late she'll watch and wait

Beyond the last long mile

For the weary beat of homing feet

With her wise and patient smile.

WINDY MORNING

Dawn with a jubilant shout

Leaps on the shivering sea

And puffs the last pale planet out

And scatters the flame-bright clouds about

Like the leaves of a frost-bitten tree.

Does a gold seed split the rosy husk?

Nay, a sword ... a shield ... a spear!

The kindler of all fires that burn

Deep in the day's cerulean urn

Rides up across the clear

And tramples down the cowering dusk

Like a strong-browed charioteer.

Blow out and far away

The dim, the dull, the dun;

Prosper the crimson, blight the gray,

And blow us clean of yesterday,

Stern morning fair begun,

Till the earth is an opal bathed in dew,

Flashing with emerald, gold, and blue,

Held where the skies wash through and through

High up against the sun.

(Catalina Island, 1913)

THE GRAVE OF THOREAU

Brown earth, blue sky, and solitude,—

Three things he loved, three things he wooed

Lifelong; and now no rhyme can tell

How ultimately all is well

With his wild heart that worshipped God's

Epiphany in crumbling sods

And like an oak brought all its worth

Back to the kindly mother earth.

But something starry, something bold,

Eludes the clutch of dark and mould,—

Something that will not wholly die

Out of the old familiar sky.

No spell in all the lore of graves

Can still the plash of Walden waves

Or wash away the azure stain

Of Concord skies from heart and brain.

Clear psalteries and faint citoles

Only recall the orioles

Fluting reveille to the morn

Across the acres of the corn

He wanders somewhere lonely still

Along a solitary hill

And sits by ever lonelier fires

Remote from heaven's bright rampires,

A hermit in the blue Beyond

Beside some dim celestial pond

With beans to hoe and wood to hew

And halcyon days to loiter through

And angel visitors, no doubt,

Who shut the air and sunlight out.

But he who scoffed at human ways

And, finding us unworthy of praise,

Sang misanthropic pæans to

The muskrat and the feverfew,

Will droop those archangelic wings

With praise of how we manage things,

Prefer his Walden tupelo

To even the Tree of Life, and grow

A little wistful looking down

Across the fields of Concord town.

EARTH-BORN

No lapidary's heaven, no brazier's hell for me,

For I am made of dust and dew and stream and plant and tree;

I'm close akin to boulders, I am cousin to the mud,

And all the winds of all the skies make music in my blood.

I want a brook and pine trees, I want a storm to blow

Loud-lunged across the looming hills with rain and sleet and snow;

Don't put me off with diadems and thrones of chrysoprase,—

I want the winds of northern nights and wild March days.

My blood runs red with sunset, my body is white with rain,

And on my heart auroral skies have set their scarlet stain,

My thoughts are green with spring time, among the meadow rue

I think my very soul is growing green and gold and blue.

What will be left, I wonder, when Death has washed me clean

Of dust and dew and sundown and April's virgin green?

If there's enough to make a ghost, I'll bring it back again

To the little lovely earth that bore me, body, soul, and brain.

"WHENCE COMETH MY HELP"

Let me sleep among the shadows of the mountains when I die,

In the murmur of the pines and sliding streams,

Where the long day loiters by

Like a cloud across the sky

And the moon-drenched night is musical with dreams.

Lay me down within a canyon of the mountains, far away,

In a valley filled with dim and rosy light,

Where the flashing rivers play

Out across the golden day

And a noise of many waters brims the night.

Let me lie where glinting rivers ramble down the slanted glade

Under bending alders garrulous and cool,

Where they gather in the shade

To the dazzling, sheer cascade,

Where they plunge and sleep within the pebbled pool.

All the wisdom, all the beauty, I have lived for unaware

Came upon me by the rote of highland rills;

I have seen God walking there

In the solemn soundless air

When the morning wakened wonder in the hills.

I am what the mountains made me of their green and gold and gray,

Of the dawnlight and the moonlight and the foam.

Mighty mothers far away,

Ye who washed my soul in spray,

I am coming, mother mountains, coming home.

When I draw my dreams about me, when I leave the darkling plain

Where my soul forgets to soar and learns to plod,

I shall go back home again

To the kingdoms of the rain,

To the blue purlieus of heaven, nearer God.

Where the rose of dawn blooms earlier across the miles of mist,

Between the tides of sundown and moonrise,

I shall keep a lover's tryst

With the gold and amethyst,

With the stars for my companions in the skies.

UNITY

Where the long valley slopes away

Five miles across the dreaming day

A maple sends a scarlet prayer

Into the still autumnal air,

Three golden-smouldering hickories

Are fanned to flame beneath the breeze

And one great crimson oak tree fires

The sky-line over the Concord spires.

In worship mystically sweet

The rimy asters at my feet

And spiring gentian bells that burn

Blue incense in an azure urn

Breathe softly from the aspiring sod:

"This is our utmost. Take it, God,—

This chant of green, this prayer of blue.

This is the best thy clay can do."

*****

O lonely heart and widowed brain

Sick with philosophies that strain

Body from spirit, flesh from soul,—

Worship with asters and be whole;

Live simply as still water flows

Till soul shall border brain so close

No blade of wit can thrust between

And hearts are pure as grass is green;

Pray with the maple tree and trust

The ancient ritual of the dust.

VISTAS

As I walked through the rumorous streets

Of the wind-rustled, elm-shaded city

Where all of the houses were friends

And the trees were all lovers of her,

The spell of its old enchantment

Was woven again to subdue me

With magic of flickering shadows,

Blown branches and leafy stir.

Street after street, as I passed,

Lured me and beckoned me onward

With memories frail as the odor

Of lilac adrift on the air.

At the end of each breeze-blurred vista

She seemed to be watching and waiting,

With leaf shadows over her gown

And sunshine gilding her hair.

For there was a dream that the kind God

Withheld, while granting us many—

But surely, I think, we shall come

Sometime, at the end, she and I,

To the heaven He keeps for all tired souls,

The quiet suburban gardens

Where He Himself walks in the evening

Beneath the rose-dropping sky

And watches the balancing elm trees

Sway in the early starshine

When high in their murmurous arches

The night breeze ruffles by.

A NUN

One glance and I had lost her in the riot

Of tangled cries.

She trod the clamor with a cloistral quiet

Deep in her eyes

As though she heard the muted music only

That silence makes

Among dim mountain summits and on lonely

Deserted lakes.

There is some broken song her heart remembers

From long ago,

Some love lies buried deep, some passion's embers

Smothered in snow,

Far voices of a joy that sought and missed her

Fail now, and cease....

And this has given the deep eyes of God's sister

Their dreadful peace.

LOVE AMONG THE CLOVER

"If you dare," she said,

And oh, her breath was clover-sweet!

Clover nodded over her,

Her lips were clover red.

Blackbirds fluted down the wind,

The bobolinks were mad with joy,

The wind was playing in her hair,

And "If you dare," she said.

Clover billowed down the wind

Far across the happy fields,

Clover on the breezy hills

Leaned along the skies

And all the nodding clover heads

And little clouds with silver sails

And all the heaven's dreamy blue

Were mirrored in her eyes.

Her laughing lips were clover-red

When long ago I kissed her there

And made for one swift moment all

My heaven and earth complete.

I've loved among the roses since

And love among the lilies now,

But love among the clover...

Her breath was clover-sweet.

O wise, wise-hearted boy and girl

Who played among the clover bloom!

I think I was far wiser then

Than now I dare to be.

For I have lost that Eden now,

I cannot find my Eden now,

And even should I find it now,

I've thrown away the key.

CERTAIN AMERICAN POETS

They cowered inert before the study fire

While mighty winds were ranging wide and free,

Urging their torpid fancies to aspire

With "Euhoe! Bacchus! Have a cup of tea."

They tripped demure from church to lecture-hall,

Shunning the snare of farthingales and curls.

Woman they thought half angel and half doll,

The Muses' temple a boarding-school for girls.

Quaffing Pierian draughts from Boston pump,

They toiled to prove their homiletic art

Could match with nasal twang and pulpit thump

In maxims glib of meeting-house and mart.

Serenely their ovine admirers graze.

Apollo wears frock-coats, the Muses stays.

THE SINGER'S QUEST

I've been wandering, listening for a song,

Dreaming of a melody, all my life long...

The lilting tune that God sang to rock the tides asleep

And crooned above the cradled stars before they learned to creep.

O, there was laughter in it and many a merry chime

Before He had turned moralist, grown old before His time,

And He was happy, trolling out His great blithe-hearted tune,

Before He slung the little earth beneath the sun and moon.

But I know that somewhere that song is rolling on,

Like flutes along the midnight, like trumpets in the dawn;

It throbs across the sunset and stirs the poplar tree

And rumbles in the long low thunder of the sea.

*****

First-love sang me one note and heart-break taught me two,

A child has told me three notes, and soon I'll know it through;

And when I stand before the Throne I'll hum it low and sly,

Watching for a great light of welcome in His eye...

"Put a white raiment on him and a harp into his hand

And golden sandals on his feet and tell the saints to stand

A little farther off unless they wish to hear the truth,

For this blessed lucky sinner is going to sing about my youth!"

DEAD MAGDALEN

Cover her over with pallid white roses,

Her who had none but red roses to wear;

All that her last grim lover bestows is

Virginal white for her bosom and hair.

Cover the folds of the glimmering sheet

Clear from her eyelids weary and sweet

Down to her nevermore wayward feet.

Then They may find her fair.

Lovingly, tenderly, let us array her

Fair as a bride for the way she must go,

Leaving no lingering stain to betray her,

Letting them see we have sullied her so.

Over the curve of the fair young breast

Leave we this maidenly lily to rest

White as the snow in its snow-soft nest.

Now They will never know.

THE ADVENTURER

He came not in the red dawn

Nor in the blaze of noon,

And all the long bright highway

Lay lonely to the moon,

And nevermore, we know now,

Will he come wandering down

The breezy hollows of the hills

That gird the quiet town.

For he has heard a voice cry

A starry-faint "Ahoy!"

Far up the wind, and followed

Unquestioning after joy.

But we are long forgetting

The quiet way he went,

With looks of love and gentle scorn

So sweetly, subtly blent.

We cannot cease to wonder,

We who have loved him, how

He fares along the windy ways

His feet must travel now.

But we must draw the curtain

And fasten bolts and bars

And talk here in the firelight

Of him beneath the stars.

THE GOLDFINCH

Down from the sky on a sudden he drops

Into the mullein and juniper tops,

Flushed from his bath in the midsummer shine

Flooding the meadowland, drunk with the wine

Spilled from the urns of the blue, like a bold

Sky-buccaneer in his sable and gold.

Lightly he sways on the pendulous stem,

Vividly restless, a fluttering gem,

Then with a flash of bewildering wings

Dazzles away up and down, and he sings

Clear as a bell at each dip as he flies

Bounding along on the wave of the skies.

Sunlight and laughter, a winged desire,

Motion and melody married to fire,

Lighter than thistle-tuft borne on the wind,

Frailer than violets, how shall we find

Words that will match him, discover a name

Meet for this marvel, this lyrical flame?

How shall we fashion a rhythm to wing with him,

Find us a wonderful music to sing with him

Fine as his rapture is, free as the rollicking

Song that the harlequin drops in his frolicking

Dance through the summer sky, singing so merrily

High in the burning blue, winging so airily?

( Mount Vernon, New Hampshire)

ORIOLES

Wings in a blur of gold

High in the elm trees,

Looping like tawny flame

Through the green shadows,

Now at an airy height

Pausing a heart beat

Quite at the twig's tip,

Pendulous, bending.

Golden against the blue,

Gold in an azure cup,

Golden wine bubbling

Out of blue goblets...

Cool, smooth and reedy notes

Fly low across the noon

While through the drowsy heat

Drums the cicada.

Tropical wing and song

Bound from Bolivia...

All the blue Amazon

Sings to New England....

Flute-noted orioles,

Flame-coated orioles,

Gold-throated orioles,

Spirits of summer.

BY A MOUNTAIN STREAM

Where the rivulet swept by a sycamore root

With a turbulent voice and a hurrying foot,

I bent by the water and spoke in my dream

To the wavering, restless, unlingering stream:

"Oh, turbulent rivulet hastening past,

For what wonderful goal do you hope at the last

That never you pause in the shimmering green

Of the undulant shade where the sycamores lean

Or rest in the moss-curtained, cool dripping halls

Hidden under the veils of your musical falls

Or loiter at peace by the tremulous fern—

White wandering waters that never return?"

And I dreamed by the rivulet's wavering side

That a myriad ripple of voices replied:

"Aloft on the mountain, afar on the steep,

A voice that we knew cried aloud in our sleep,

'Come, hasten ye down to the vale and to me,

Your begetter, destroyer, preserver, the Sea!'

We must carry our feebleness down to the Strong,

We must mingle us deep in the Whole, and ere long

All the numberless host of the heaven shall ride

With the pale Lady Moon on our slumbering tide."

The voices swept out and away through the door

Of the canyon, and on to the infinite shore.

Oh, vast in thy destiny, slender of span,

Wild rivulet, how thou art like to a man!

(Cold Brook, California, 1912)

APRIL

(To Bliss Carman)

There's a murmur in the patient forest alleys,

There's an elfin echo whispering through the trees,

Lonely pipes are lifted softly in the valleys...

All the air is filled with waking melodies.

From the crucibles of Erebus and Endor,

Flame of emerald has fallen by the rills,

And it flashes up the slope and sits in splendor

In the glory of the beauty of the hills.

Now my heart will yearn again to voice its wonder

And my song must sing again between the words

With a mutter of unutterable thunder

And a twitter of inimitable birds.

(April, 1903)

A CHAPEL BY THE SEA

(To Paul Dowling)

There's a mouldering mountain chapel gazing out across the sea

From beneath the lisping shelter of a eucalyptus tree

That has drawn the ancient silence from the mountain's heart and fills

And subdues a fevered spirit with the quiet of the hills.

For silvery in the morning the chimes go dropping down

Across the vales of purple mist that gird the island town

And golden in the evening the vesper bells again

Call back the weary fishing folk along the leafy lane.

I'd like to be the father priest and call the folk to prayer

Up through the winding dewy ways that climb the morning air,

And send them down at even-song with all the silent sky

Of early starshine teaching them far deeper truth than I.

I'd like to lie at rest there beneath a mossy stone

Above the crooning sea's low distant monotone,

Lulled by the lisping whisper of the eucalyptus tree

That shades my mountain chapel gazing out across the sea.

(Avalon, Christmas Day, 1913)

EPHEMEROS

A firefly cried across the night:

"O lofty star, O streaming light,

Clear eye of heaven, immortal lamp

Set high above the dew and damp,

Thou great high-priest to heaven's King

And chief of all the choirs that sing

Their golden, endless antiphons

Of praise before the eternal thrones—

Hear thou my prayer of worship! Thine

The glory, all the dimness mine.

I am a feeble glimmering spark

Vagrant along the lower dark."

The star called down from heaven's roof

With a humble heart and mild reproof:

"The Power that made, the Breath that blew

My fire aglow has kindled you

With equal love and equal pain

And equal toil of heart and brain.

For I am only a wandering light,

Your elder comrade in the night.

We are two sisters, you and I,

And when we two burn out and die

It will be hardly known from far

Which was the firefly, which the star."

WANDERLUST

(To Willard)

The birds were beating north again with faint and starry cries

Along their ancient highway that spans the midnight skies,

And out across the rush of wings my heart went crying too,

Straight for the morning's windy walls and lakes of misted blue.

They gave me place among them, for well they understood

The magic wine of April working madness in my blood,

And we were kin in thought and dream as league by league together

We kept that pace of straining wings across the starry weather.

The dim blue tides of Fundy, green slopes of Labrador

Slid under us ... our course was set for earth's remotest shore;

But tingling through the ether and searching star by star

A lonely voice went crying that drew me down from far.

Farewell, farewell, my brothers! I see you far away

Go drifting down the sunset across the last green bay,

But I have found the haven of this lonely heart and wild—

My falconer has called me—I am prisoned by a child.

(Easter Day, 1916)

THE IDEAL

Serenely, from her mountain height sublime,

She mocks my hopeless labor as I creep

Each day a day's strength farther from the deep

And nearer to her side for which I climb.

So may she mock when for the sad last time

I fall, my face still upward, upon sleep,

With faithful hands still yearning up the steep

In patient and pathetic pantomime.

I am content, O ancient, young-eyed child

Of love and longing. Pity not our wars

Of frail-spun flesh, and keep thee undefiled

By all our strife that only breaks and mars.

But let us see from far thy footing, wild

And wayward still against the eternal stars!

THE FIRST CHRISTIAN

A little wandering wind went up the hill.

It had a lonely voice as though it knew

What it should find before it came to where

The broken body of him that had been Christ

Hung in the ruddy glow. A bowshot down

The bleak rock-shouldered hill the soldiery

Had piled a fire, and when the searching wind

Came stronger from the distant sea and dashed

The shadows and the gleam together, songs

Of battle and lust were blown along the slope

Mingled with clash of swords on cuisse and shield.

But of the women sitting by the cross

Even she whose life had been as gravely sweet

And sheltered as a lily's did not flinch.

Her face was buried in her shrouding cloak.

And she who knew too sorrowfully well

The cruelty and bitterness of life

Heard not. She sat erect, her shadowy hair

Blown back along the darkness and her eyes

That searched the distant spaces of the night

Splendid and glowing with an inward joy.

And at the darkest hour came three or four

From round the fire and would have driven them thence;

But one who knew them, gazing in their eyes,

Said: "Nay. It is his mother and his love,

The scarlet Magdalena. Let them be."

So, in the gloom beside that glimmering cross,

Beneath the broken body of him they loved,

They wept and watched—the lily and the rose.

At last the deep, low voice of Magdalen,

Toned like a distant bell, broke on the hush:

"We are so weak! What can poor women do?

So pitifully frail! God pity us!

How he did pity us! He understood...

Out of his own great strength he understood

How it might feel to be so very weak...

To be a tender lily of the field,

To be a lamb lost in the windy hills

Far from the fold and from the shepherd's voice,

To be a child with no strength, only love.

And ah, he knew, if ever a man can know,

What 't is to be a woman and to live,

Strive how she may to out-soar and overcome,

Tied to this too frail body of too fair earth!

"Oh, had I been a man to shield him then

In his great need with loving strong right arm!

One of the twelve—ha!—of that noble twelve

That ran away, and two made mock of him

Or else betrayed him ere they ran? Ah no!

And yet, a man's strength with a woman's love...

That might have served him somewhat ere the end."

Then with a weary voice the mother said:

"What can we do but only watch and weep,

Sit with weak hands and watch while strong men rend

And break and ruin, bringing all to nought

The beauty we have nearly died to make?

"It is not true to say that he was strong.

He did not claim the kingdom that was his,

He did not even seek for wealth and power,

He did not win a woman's love and get

Strong children to live after him, and all

That strong men strive for he passed heedless by.

Because that he was weak I loved him so...

For that and for his soft and gentle ways,

The tender patient calling of his voice

And that dear trick of smiling with his eyes.

Ah no! I have had dreams—a mother's dreams—

But now I cannot dream them any more.

"I sorrowed little as the happy days

Sped by and by that still the fair-haired lad

Who lay at first beside me in the stall,

The cattle stall outside Jerusalem,

Found no great throne to dazzle his mother's eye.

He was so good a workman ... axe and saw

Did surely suit him better than a sword.

I was content if only he would wed

Some village girl of little Nazareth

And get me children with his own slow smile,

Deep thoughtful eyes and golden kingly brow.

"It seems but yesterday he played among

The shavings strewn on Joseph's work-shop floor.

The sunlight of the morning slanted through

The window—'t was in springtime—and across

The bench where Joseph sat, and then it lay

In golden glory on the boy's bright hair

And on the shavings that were golden too.

I saw him through the open door. I thought,

'My little king has found his golden crown.'

But unto Joseph I said nought at all.

"But now, ah me! he won no woman's love,

Nor loved one either as most men call love,

And so he had no child and he is gone

And I am left without him and alone."

So by her son's pale broken body mourned

The mother, dreaming on departed days.

And as with one who looks into the west,

Watching the embers of the outburned day

Crumble and cool and slowly droop and fade,

And will not take the darkling eastward path

Where lies his way until the last faint glow

Has left the sky and the early stars shine forth,

So did her dream cling to the ruined past

And all the joy they had in Nazareth

Before the years of doubt and trouble came.

Then, while loud laughter sounded up the hill

Where yet that ribald crew sang o'er the wine,

She bowed her head above her cradling arms

And softly sang, as to herself, the songs

Of Israel that once had served her well

To soothe the wakeful child.

But Magdalen

Arose upon her feet and tossed her cloak

Back from the midnight of her wind-blown hair

And lifted up her eyes into the dark

As though, beyond this circle of all our woe,

To read a hidden meaning in the stars.

"Aye, it is dark," she said. "The night comes on.

He was the sunshine of our little day.

The clouds unsettled softly and we saw

Ladders of glory climbing into light

Unspeakable, with dazzling interchange

Of Majesties and Powers. But suddenly

The tides of darkness whelm us round again

And this drear dwindled earth becomes once more

What it has ever been—a core of shade

And steaming vapor spinning in the dark,

A deeper clot of blackness in the void!

"The night comes on. 'T is hard to pierce the dark.

And if to me who loved him, whom he loved—

Though well thou sayest, 'Not as most men call love'—

Far harder will it be for those who hold

In memory no gesture of his hand,

No haunting echo of his patient voice,

Nor that dear trick of smiling with his eyes.

"O ceaseless tramp of armies down the years!

O maddened cries of 'Christ' and 'Son of Mary!'

While o'er the crying screams the hurtling death....

Thou gentle shepherd of the quiet fold,

Mild man of sorrows, hast thou done this thing,

Who camest not to bring peace but a sword?

Ah no, not thou, but only our childishness,

The pitifully childish heart of man

That cannot learn and know beyond a little.

"The priests and captains and the little kings

Will tear each other at the throat and cry:

'Thus said he, lived he; swear it or thou diest!'

But these shall pass and perish in the dark

While the lorn strays and outcasts of the world,

The souls whose pain has seared their pride to dust

And burned a way for love to enter in—

These only know his meaning and shall live.

"So is it as with one whose feet have trod

The valley of the shadow, who has seen

His dearest lowered into endless night.

All music holds for him a deeper strain

Of nobler meaning, and the flush of dawn,

High wind at noonday, crumbling sunset gold,

And the dear pathetic look of children's eyes—

All beauty pierces closer to his heart.

"Yea, thou thyself, pale youth upon the cross—

The godlike strength of thee was rooted deep

In human weakness. Even she who bore thee,

Seeing the man too nearly, missed the God,

Erring as fits the mother. Some will say

In coming years, I feel it in my heart,

That thou didst face thy death a conscious God,

Knowing almighty hands were stretched to snatch

And lift thee from the greedy clutching grave.

Falsely! Forgetting dark Gethsemane,—

Not knowing, as I know, what doubt assailed

Thy human heart until the latest breath.

Ah, what a trumpery death, what mockery

And mere theatric mimicry of pain,

If thou didst surely know thou couldst not die!

Thou didst not know. And whether even now

Thy straying ghost, like some great moth of night

Blown seaward through the shadow, flies and drifts

Along dim coasts and headlands of the dark,

A homeless wanderer up and down the void,

Or whether indeed thou art enthroned above

In light and life, I know not. This I know—

That in the moment of sheer certainty

My soul will die.

"No! On thy spirit lay

All the dark weight and mystery of pain

And all our human doubt and flickering hope,

Deathless despairs and treasuries of tears,

Gropings of spirit blindfold by the flesh

And grapplings with the fiend. Else were thy death

Less like a God's than even mine may be.

"Thou broken mother who canst see in him

Only the quiet man, the needful child,

And most of all the Babe of Bethlehem,

Let it suffice thee. Thy reward is great.

Who loveth God that never hath loved man?

Who knoweth man but cometh to know God?

Thou sacred, sorrowing mother, canst thou learn—

Thou who hast gone so softly in God's sight—

Of me, the scarlet woman of old days?

Come, let us talk together, thou and I.

Apart, we see him darkly, through a glass;

Together, we shall surely see aright.

Bring thou thine innocence, thy stainless soul,

And I will bring deep lore of suffering,

My dear-bought wisdom of defeat and pain.

For out of these may come, believe it thou,

Sanctities not like thine, but fit to bear

The bitter storms and whirlwinds of this world.

Aye, out of evil often springeth good,

And sweetest honey from the lion's mouth.

And that he knew. That very thing he meant

When he withdrew me from the pits of shame.

'T is I who see God shining through the man.

I see the deity, the godlike strength

In his supreme capacity for pain.

Nor have I known the cruel love of men

These many years to err when now I say

This man loved not like men but like a God.

Thou broken mother, weep not for the child,

Mourn not the man. Acclaim the risen Christ!"

She turned and touched the other lovingly,

Then stooped and peered into her darkened face.

The mother slept, forspent and overborne

By weariness and woe too great to bear.

She gently smiled. "So it is best," she said.

Tall and elate she stood, her shadowy hair

Blown back along the darkness and her eyes

That searched the distant spaces of the night

Splendid and glowing with an inward joy.

And over that dark hill of tragedy

And triumph, victory and dull despair,

Over the sleeping Roman soldiery,

Over the three stark crosses and the two

Who loved Him most, the lily and the rose,

Shone still and clear the great compassionate stars.

THE END

NOTE

Some of these poems have been published before in The Sunset Magazine, The Smart Set, Munsey's Magazine, The Bellman, The International, The Overland Monthly, The Youth's Companion, Poetry—A Magazine of Verse, The Harvard Graduates' Magazine, The Book News Monthly, Current Opinion, The Literary Digest, The Boston Transcript, and the Anthologies of Magazine Verse for 1915 and 1916. I wish to thank the editors of those publications in which they originally appeared for permission to reprint.

The Riverside Press

CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS

U . S . A

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Table of Contents

A LONELY FLUTE

ODELL SHEPARD

BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge 1917

TO M. F. S.

CONTENTS

A LONELY FLUTE

PROEM

LAUS MARIÆ

RECOLLECTION

NIGHTFALL

A BALLAD OF LOVE AND DEATH

BIRDS OF PASSAGE

WASTE

THE WATCHER IN THE SKY

HOUSEMATES

POMP AND CIRCUMSTANCE

THE HIDDEN WEAVER

VANITAS

SPENSER'S "FAËRIE QUEENE"

MORNING ROAD SONG

EVENING ROAD SONG

WINDY MORNING

THE GRAVE OF THOREAU

EARTH-BORN

"WHENCE COMETH MY HELP"

UNITY

VISTAS

A NUN

LOVE AMONG THE CLOVER

CERTAIN AMERICAN POETS

THE SINGER'S QUEST

DEAD MAGDALEN

THE ADVENTURER

THE GOLDFINCH

ORIOLES

APRIL

A CHAPEL BY THE SEA

EPHEMEROS

WANDERLUST

THE IDEAL

THE FIRST CHRISTIAN

NOTE

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE