Delphi Poetry Anthology: The World's Greatest Poems (Delphi Poets Series Book 50) (309 page)

VIII

 
We sit here in the Promised Land
 
That flows with Freedom’s honey and milk;
 
But ’twas they won it, sword in hand,
Making the nettle danger soft for us as silk.
 
 
235
 
We welcome back our bravest and our best; —
 
Ah me! not all! some come not with the rest,
Who went forth brave and bright as any here!
I strive to mix some gladness with my strain,
   
But the sad strings complain,
  
240
   
And will not please the ear:
I sweep them for a pæan, but they wane
   
Again and yet again
Into a dirge, and die away, in pain.
In these brave ranks I only see the gaps,
  
245
Thinking of dear ones whom the dumb turf wraps,
Dark to the triumph which they died to gain:
 
Fitlier may others greet the living,
 
For me the past is unforgiving;
   
I with uncovered head
  
250
   
Salute the sacred dead,
Who went, and who return not. — Say not so!
’Tis not the grapes of Canaan that repay,
But the high faith that failed not by the way;
Virtue treads paths that end not in the grave;
  
255
No ban of endless night exiles the brave;
   
And to the saner mind
We rather seem the dead that stayed behind.
Blow, trumpets, all your exultations blow!
For never shall their aureoled presence lack:
  
260
I see them muster in a gleaming row,
With ever-youthful brows that nobler show;
We find in our dull road their shining track;
   
In every nobler mood
We feel the orient of their spirit glow,
  
265
Part of our life’s unalterable good,
Of all our saintlier aspiration;
   
They come transfigured back,
Secure from change in their high-hearted ways,
Beautiful evermore, and with the rays
  
270
Of morn on their white Shields of Expectation!

IX

   
But is there hope to save
 
Even this ethereal essence from the grave?
 
What ever ‘scaped Oblivion’s subtle wrong
Save a few clarion names, or golden threads of song?
  
275
   
Before my musing eye
 
The mighty ones of old sweep by,
 
Disvoicèd now and insubstantial things,
 
As noisy once as we; poor ghosts of kings,
 
Shadows of empire wholly gone to dust,
  
280
 
And many races, nameless long ago,
 
To darkness driven by that imperious gust
 
Of ever-rushing Time that here doth blow:
 
O visionary world, condition strange,
 
Where naught abiding is but only Change,
  
285
Where the deep-bolted stars themselves still shift and range!
 
Shall we to more continuance make pretence?
Renown builds tombs; a life-estate is Wit;
   
And, bit by bit,
The cunning years steal all from us but woe;
  
290
 
Leaves are we, whose decays no harvest sow.
   
But, when we vanish hence,
 
Shall they lie forceless in the dark below
 
Save to make green their little length of sods,
 
Or deepen pansies for a year or two,
  
295
 
Who now to us are shining-sweet as gods?
 
Was dying all they had the skill to do?
 
That were not fruitless: but the Soul resents
 
Such short-lived service, as if blind events
 
Ruled without her, or earth could so endure;
  
300
 
She claims a more divine investiture
 
Of longer tenure than Fame’s airy rents;
 
Whate’er she touches doth her nature share;
 
Her inspiration haunts the ennobled air,
   
Gives eyes to mountains blind,
  
305
 
Ears to the deaf earth, voices to the wind,
 
And her clear trump sings succor everywhere
 
By lonely bivouacs to the wakeful mind;
 
For soul inherits all that soul could dare:
   
Yea, Manhood hath a wider span
  
310
 
And larger privilege of life than man.
 
The single deed, the private sacrifice,
 
So radiant now through proudly-hidden tears,
 
Is covered up erelong from mortal eyes
 
With thoughtless drift of the deciduous years;
  
315
 
But that high privilege that makes all men peers,
 
That leap of heart whereby a people rise
   
Up to a noble anger’s height,
And, flamed on by the Fates, not shrink, but grow more
 
That swift validity in noble veins, [bright,
  
320
 
Of choosing danger and disdaining shame,
   
Of being set on flame
 
By the pure fire that flies all contact base
But wraps its chosen with angelic might,
   
These are imperishable gains,
  
325
 
Sure as the sun, medicinal as light,
 
These hold great futures in their lusty reins
And certify to earth a new imperial race.

X

   
Who now shall sneer?
 
Who dare again to say we trace
  
330
 
Our lines to a plebeian race?
   
Roundhead and Cavalier!
Dumb are those names erewhile in battle loud;
Dream-footed as the shadow of a cloud,
 
They flit across the ear:
  
335
That is best blood that hath most iron in’t,
To edge resolve with, pouring without stint
 
For what makes manhood dear.
 
Tell us not of Plantagenets,
Hapsburgs, and Guelfs, whose thin bloods craw!
  
340
Down from some victor in a border-brawl!
 
How poor their outworn coronets,
Matched with one leaf of that plain civic wreath
Our brave for honor’s blazon shall bequeath,
 
Through whose desert a rescued Nation sets
  
345
Her heel on treason, and the trumpet hears
Shout victory, tingling Europe’s sullen ears
 
With vain resentments and more vain regrets!

XI

 
Not in anger, not in pride,
 
Pure from passion’s mixture rude
  
350
 
Ever to base earth allied,
 
But with far-heard gratitude,
 
Still with heart and voice renewed,
 
To heroes living and dear martyrs dead,
The strain should close that consecrates our brave!
  
355
 
Lift the heart and lift the head!
 
Lofty be its mood and grave,
 
Not without a martial ring,
 
Not without a prouder tread
 
And a peal of exultation:
  
360
 
Little right has he to sing
 
Through whose heart in such an hour
 
Beats no march of conscious power,
 
Sweeps no tumult of elation!
’Tis no Man we celebrate,
  
365
 
By his country’s victories great,
 
A hero half, and half the whim of Fate,
 
But the pith and marrow of a Nation
 
Drawing force from all her men,
 
Highest, humblest, weakest, all,
  
370
 
For her time of need, and then
 
Pulsing it again through them,
 
Till the basest can no longer cower,
Feeling his soul spring up divinely tall,
Touched but in passing by her mantle-hem.
  
375
Come back, then, noble pride, for ’tis her dower!
 
How could poet ever tower,
 
If his passions, hopes, and fears,
 
If his triumphs and his tears,
 
Kept not measure with his people?
 
 
380
Boom, cannon, boom to all the winds and waves!
Clash out, glad bells, from every rocking steeple!
Banners, advance with triumph, bend your staves!
 
And from every mountain-peak
 
Let beacon-fire to answering beacon speak,
  
385
 
Katahdin tell Monadnock, Whiteface he,
And so leap on in light from sea to sea,
   
Till the glad news be sent
   
Across a kindling continent,
Making earth feel more firm and air breathe braver:
  
390
‘Be proud! for she is saved, and all have helped to save her!
 
She that lifts up the manhood of the poor,
 
She of the open soul and open door,
 
With room about her hearth for all mankind!
 
The fire is dreadful in her eyes no more;
  
395
 
From her bold front the helm she doth unbind,
 
Sends all her handmaid armies back to spin,
 
And bids her navies, that so lately hurled
 
Their crashing battle, hold their thunders in,
 
Swimming like birds of calm along the unharmful shore.
  
400
 
No challenge sends she to the elder world,
 
That looked askance and hated; a light scorn
 
Plays o’er her mouth, as round her mighty knees
 
She calls her children back, and waits the morn
Of nobler day, enthroned between her subject seas.’
  
405

XII

Bow down, dear Land, for thou hast found release!
 
Thy God, in these distempered days,
 
Hath taught thee the sure wisdom of His ways,
And through thine enemies hath wrought thy peace!
 
Bow down in prayer and praise!
  
410
No poorest in thy borders but may now
Lift to the juster skies a man’s enfranchised brow.
O Beautiful! my country! ours once more!
Smoothing thy gold of war-dishevelled hair
O’er such sweet brows as never other wore,
  
415
 
And letting thy set lips,
 
Freed from wrath’s pale eclipse,
The rosy edges of their smile lay bare,
What words divine of lover or of poet
Could tell our love and make thee know it,
  
420
Among the Nations bright beyond compare?
 
What were our lives without thee?
 
What all our lives to save thee?
 
We reck not what we gave thee;
 
We will not dare to doubt thee,
  
425
But ask whatever else, and we will dare!

List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

Sidney Lanier

List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

The Marshes of Glynn

Sidney Lanier (1842–1881)

GLOOMS of the live-oaks, beautiful-braided and woven
With intricate shades of the vines that myriad-cloven
 
Clamber the forks of the multiform boughs, —
   
Emerald twilights, —
   
Virginal shy lights,
  
5
Wrought of the leaves to allure to the whisper of vows,
When lovers pace timidly down through the green colonnades
Of the dim sweet woods, of the dear dark woods,
 
Of the heavenly woods and glades,
That run to the radiant marginal sand-beach within
  
10
 
The wide sea-marshes of Glynn; —
Beautiful glooms, soft dusks in the noonday fire, —
Wildwood privacies, closets of lone desire,
Chamber from chamber parted with wavering arras of leaves, —
Cells for the passionate pleasure of prayer to the soul that grieves,
  
15
Pure with a sense of the passing of saints through the wood,
Cool for the dutiful weighing of ill with good; —

O braided dusks of the oak and woven shades of the vine,
While the riotous noon-day sun of the June day long did shine
Ye held me fast in your heart and I held you fast in mine;
  
20
But now when the noon is no more, and riot is rest,
And the sun is a-wait at the ponderous gate of the West,
And the slant yellow beam down the wood-aisle doth seem
Like a lane into heaven that leads from a dream, —
Ay, now, when my soul all day hath drunken the soul of the oak,
  
25
And my heart is at ease from men, and the wearisome sound of the stroke
 
Of the scythe of time and the trowel of trade is low,
 
And belief overmasters doubt, and I know that I know,
 
And my spirit is grown to a lordly great compass within,
That the length and the breadth and the sweep of the Marshes of Glynn
  
30
Will work me no fear like the fear they have wrought me of yore
When length was fatigue, and when breadth was but bitterness sore,
And when terror and shrinking and dreary unnamable pain
Drew over me out of the merciless miles of the plain, —

Oh, now, unafraid, I am fain to face
  
35
 
The vast sweet visage of space.
To the edge of the wood I am drawn, I am drawn,
Where the gray beach glimmering runs, as a belt of the dawn,
 
For a mete and a mark
 
To the forest-dark: —
40
  
So:
Affable live-oak, leaning low, —
Thus — with your favor — soft, with a reverent hand
(Not lightly touching your person, Lord of the land!),
Bending your beauty aside, with a step I stand
  
45
On the firm-packed sand,
  
Free

By a world of marsh that borders a world of sea.
 
Sinuous southward and sinuous northward the shimmering band
 
Of the sand-beach fastens the fringe of the marsh to the folds of the land.
  
50
Inward and outward to northward and southward the beach-lines linger and curl
As a silver-wrought garment that clings to and follows the firm sweet limbs of a girl.
Vanishing, swerving, evermore curving again into sight,
Softly the sand-beach wavers away to a dim gray looping of light.

And what if behind me to westward the wall of the woods stands high?
  
55
The world lies east: how ample, the marsh and the sea and the sky!
A league and a league of marsh-grass, waist-high, broad in the blade,
Green, and all of a height, and unflecked with a light or a shade,
Stretch leisurely off, in a pleasant plain,
To the terminal blue of the main.
  
60

Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea?
Somehow my soul seems suddenly free
From the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin,
By the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn.

Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free
  
65
Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea!
Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun,
Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily won
God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain
And sight out of blindness and purity out of a stain.
  
70

As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the watery sod,
Behold I will build me a nest on the greatness of God:
I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh-hen flies
In the freedom that fills all the space ‘twixt the marsh and the skies:
By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends in the sod
  
75
I will heartily lay me a-hold on the greatness of God:
Oh, like to the greatness of God is the greatness within
The range of the marshes, the liberal marshes of Glynn.
And the sea lends large, as the marsh: lo, out of his plenty the sea
Pours fast: full soon the time of the flood-tide must be:
  
80
Look how the grace of the sea doth go
About and about through the intricate channels that flow
 
Here and there,
   
Everywhere,
Till his waters have flooded the uttermost creeks and the low-lying lanes,
  
85
And the marsh is meshed with a million veins,
That like as with rosy and silvery essences flow
 
In the rose-and-silver evening glow.
   
Farewell, my lord Sun!
The creeks overflow: a thousand rivulets run;
  
90
‘Twixt the roots of the sod; the blades of the marsh-grass stir;
Passeth a hurrying sound of wings that westward whirr;
Passeth, and all is still; and the currents cease to run,
And the sea and the marsh are one.

How still the plains of the waters be!
  
95
The tide is in his ecstasy.
The tide is at his highest height:
   
And it is night.

And now from the Vast of the Lord will the waters of sleep
Roll in on the souls of men,
  
100
But who will reveal to our waking ken
The forms that swim and the shapes that creep
   
Under the waters of sleep?
And I would I could know what swimmeth below when the tide comes in
On the length and the breadth of the marvellous marshes of Glynn.
  
105

List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

List of Poets in Alphabetical Order