THEY'D NEVER KNOW ME NOW
Let's sit here very quiet, self-controlled,
Talk quietly, under this glorious tree,
The internes are too far away to hear.
They will stand there if we are calm.
You look
Much better than you did. And as for me,
Since I tried leaping from my window, I
Seem on the mend, sleep better, do not feel
So much like running, flying from the fears
As I did three weeks since. Here is my tale:
My first step in this world was as a soldier,
Turned seventeen and off to free the Cubans.
I landed at Matanzas, served my time.
Oh Liberty! Oh! struggles to make free
All peoples, everywhere! And when I saw
The American republic move to strike
The chains of tyranny, I said: I die
For such a cause, or live to see it won—
How glorious! My youthful mind was full
Of Byron, Shelley, Paine, and many more—
And when I saw my republic go to war,
Just as a good Samaritan, I said,
This is my hour, I'm on the pinnacle,
Life is divine at last.
But on a sudden
A north wind froze my waters, caught my stars
To points of vision which before had been
Mixed in the fluent time. We up and stole
The Philippines, spit on our sacred charter,
Turned all the thing to guts, until I heard
Their growl alone which I thought spirit voices
When we had warred for Cuba! 'Twas enough;
What was my country? Just a mass of slickers
Talking philanthropy and five per cent,
A pious, blundering booby lodged at last
In a great c?cum mouthing Destiny.
God, with a leader just an actor-man,
Clean shaven, shifty, shallow, whored upon
By mercantilists and their butcher creed.
I mean McKinley, Hanna. Write it down:
They barbarized our Grecian temple, placed
Cheap colored windows in its marble walls—
May history be their hell.
But as for me,
They talked of God so much, I said at last
I'll learn all they can teach concerning God.
This restless soldier spirit led me on,
And just because I sensed the faithless age,
Loveless and purposeless except for gold,
The adventurer in me began to crop.
Oh yes, the Cuban business started me.
And so I went to college to prepare
For the ministry, as they thought, go through the course
Called theological, saying for the first:
"They'd never know me now."
I see at last
I am not one but many minds at once,
And many personalities. As a boy
I took the color of the leaves or wall
Where I was resting, climbing. If in truth
I lived three months with an uncle, then they said
You look just like your uncle. When I worked
Under a lawyer's tutelage, they said:
How much your face resembles his. I knew
My face and voice and gestures simulated
Those I admired or lived with. But besides
I took a certain pleasure, impish, maybe,
In egging on, agreeing with, the souls
Whom I sought out; I used to tell my uncle,
A man of firmest piety, what I heard
Of blasphemy about the village, just
To hear him deprecate it, look with dark
And flashing eyes upon such sin, while I,
With serious face and earnest sympathy
With what he felt, was laughing in my sleeve.
Here is the germ then of my after life:
The faculty that harmonized my hue
Of spirit with the place, the person, while
Something in me, perhaps supremest self,
Stood quite aloof and smiled.
But, as I said,
When our Republic left its hill of vision,
Descended to the place of herding hogs,
This self of me, the adventurer, rose up
And led me forth to play with life, and first
To try theology, as I have said ...
I was a wonder bred among the crew
Of quiet, gate-toothed, crook-nosed psychopaths,
The foul-breathed, thick-lipped onanists who filled
The seminary, stared at me to see
How I learned Sanscrit, could defend and rout
The atheistic speculations. Well,
What I enjoyed most was to get a crowd
Of celibates and talk of chastity,
And get them in a glow, and say to them:
The mind is fortified by abstinence,
The spirit clarified and lifted up—
I got a thrill somehow. But all the time
I knew a girl named Ella. Oftentimes
Lying beside her I would shriek with laughter
And she would ask, what is the matter, John?
And I would say: I'm thinking of a song
I heard one time: "They'd never know me now."
And Ella said: If Dr. Simpson knew
That you were here with me, you'd take a fall
Out of the Seminary's second floor....
But I went through and didn't fall. And thought
This is a way to live, I'll preach awhile,
And see what comes. I took a church and preached,
Was known as Smith the eloquent, the earnest.
But all the time I heard a voice that said:
"They'd never know me now." When I came in
The Sunday School and little children flocked
About my knees and patient teachers looked
With white, pure faces at me, then that voice
"They'd never know me now" was in my ear....
Well, to go on, a widow in my church
Young, beautiful and rich began to beat
Her wings around my flame, and on the Sunday
I preached about the rich young man, she came,
Invited me to dinner. We commenced,
Were married in six months. And to conserve
Her properties I studied law, at last
Was spending days with brokers, business men,
Began to tell her that my health was failing,
Saw doctors frequently to play the part.
And then she said: You must resign your charge,
Your health is breaking, dear. And I resigned
To spend the time in checking mortgages,
Collecting rents:—"They'd never know me now"...
We went the round of summer places, travel,
Saw Europe, China, India and the Isles.
Near Florence had a villa for a time,
Met people of all kinds, when I was forty
I had a thousand selves, but if I had
A self in truth it was submerged or scrawled
Like a palimpsest all over and so lost.
I didn't know myself, was anything
To every one, and everything to all.
I felt the walking age come on me now:
A polar bear in a terrible rhythm swings
His body back and forth behind the bars,
And I would walk in restlessness or think
Of other skies and places, teased and stung
By memories of my other selves, by wonder
About what may be happening here or there;
What are they doing now? What is she doing?
There were a dozen shes to wonder about,
And if you think of one you wish to see,
And dream she knows delight apart from you,
You simply thrill, the wings you lost revolve,
Like thumbs, vestigial stubs—but there you sit.
Thank God the aeroplane came on to help,
And wipe out distance, for you find at last
Distance is tragedy, terrifies the soul
With space which must be mastered by the soul.
And so I bought a hydroplane. Perhaps
Would be upon my lawn at sun-down holding
These children on my knees, a lovely picture!
Then as a fish darts out of darkened water
Into a water sun-lit, there would come
A thought—we'll say of Alice—in two hours
I'd be upon her little sleeping porch
Two hundred miles away, beneath the stars
Of middle summer, having killed that space,
And found the hour I wanted—hearing too
"They'd never know me now" sung in my ears.
And I remember when we were in Florence
My tribe had gone to Milan for some weeks,
And I was quite alone, too bored to live.
One listless afternoon who should come in?
My wife's friend Constance—but to tell the truth
More friend of mine than hers, for all my life
I seemed to have these secret understandings,
And was two persons to a twain who thought
They were the bond, whereas the bond existed
Between myself and one, and to the other
Was not so much as dreamed.
And Constance brought
A certain Countess with her. In a glance
We two, the Countess and myself, beheld
A flame that joined our hands. And in a week
The Countess took me on her yacht to Capri,
And round the Mediterranean. No one knew,
Not Constance, nor my wife, for I returned
Before she came from Milan.
Oh that week!
That breeze that sung the port-holes, waters blue
And stars at night and music; and the Countess
Whose voice was like a lute of gold, who lived,
Knew life, was unafraid. She heard me say
"They'd never know me now." And softly murmured
Smiling the while: il lupo cangia
Il pelo ma non il vizio
Adding, Qual matto! Something yet remains
That makes you charming! Oh the feasts and wine,
The songs and poems, till at last too soon
We anchored in the bay of Naples. When
I saw Vesuvius, then I felt again
That sinking of the heart that I had known,
That sickness, strange, nostalgia, from a boy,
Of which a word again. But now it was
Precursive of the end, the finished idyll.
The Countess took my hand, with misty eyes—
They let me off and rowed me to the dock,
I caught the train to Florence, magically
Before I had forgotten, seemed to be
Upon the yacht still, was in truth alone
Amid the silence of my dining room,
Supping alone—"They'd never know me now!"
Later I had the fever, was delirious
And saw myself receding as if backing
Into a funnel toward the little end,
And growing smaller as the funnel narrowed
Until I was so small I held myself
Within the palm's hand of my other self,
Laughed like a devil, scared the nurse to death,
Saying "They'd never know me now—just look!"
My wife too had the fever. I awoke
Out of this illness, found that she was gone,
Had died a week before and for a week
Had been entombed while I was raving—then
If any real self of me ever was it came
Back to me then. I bowed my head and wept
And scanned my life back:
What was that in me
Which made me homesick from a boy right through
This life of mine, not for my home, for something,
Some place, some hand, some scene, which made me dread
All partings, overwhelmed me with a grief
For ended raptures, kept my brain too full
Of memories, never lost, that grew until
I lost myself, and seemed a thousand selves
Wandering through a thousand years, how restless!
Then mutterings shook our skies! Another war,
France, Germany and England, so it seemed
Best to return here to America.
I gathered up the children—all but one,
The boy eighteen escaped me, ran away
And joined the English army. Now I saw
One self of me repeated, that which went
To free the Cubans! Curse these freedom wars!
They shipped him off to India, soon he had
His fill of liberty. But I came back
And here I am. "They'd never know me now!"
For what is left of me, what ever was
To be peeled off to realest core? The soldier
Gone out of me entirely; long ago,
The dreamer of a better world; the self
That said I'm on the pinnacle, took arms
To free the Cubans; self of me that hungered
For pyramids and mountains, ancient streams,
Nile and the Ganges; self of me that turned
To be a father holding on his knees
A romping bevy; self of me that dreamed
One heart, one hand enough, oh even the self
That dreamed there is a hand a heart for me,
Who found in truth no solace in the wife
But only a teasing, torturing recollection
That I had missed the one, or missed the many.
So I was in America again,
Had fled the war and plunged into the war:—
The waves roared yonder, but the shores were here
Where wreckage, putrid monsters were thrown up,
Corpses of ancient liberties and bones
Of treasured beauty; and I saw the Land
Don every despot weapon, as it did
When I fought for the Cubans, even worse.
They shipped my boy to Africa; in spite
Of censorship I pieced the picture out,
Knew what he suffered, how they took his faith
And dimmed its flame with ordure. Then came forth
That father self of me. I brooded on
His blue eyes, gentle ways, sat terrified
And tried to trace the days through and the years
When he had slipped from just a little boy
Into a stripling, soldier finally—
While I—what was I doing? Oh, my God,
Living these other selves, oblivious
That this boy was. I'd jump from soundest sleep
Thinking of him in Africa, and seized
With dreams that I must fly to him. O years
Wherein I lost that boy. How could I live
So many lives and not lose out of some,
Some precious thing? Well, then I broke at last,
They brought me here: "They'd never know me now."
NEL MEZZO DEL CAMMIN
You call this a world! Cloud cuckoo town,
Nephelo coccygia, warp and woof,
Now at the last I write it down,
Since I no longer have the proof
To show it isn't opera bouffe,
A moving picture film and scene;
Stage world, with the glue between
The angels' feathers, the devil's hoof
Neither violent nor venene.
*****
Eheu! The middle of the way too—
Gethsemane and left in the lurch.
Storms frowning up the dying day too,
Bending a weed that was a birch.
I can step right over the tallest church.
Trumpets have shrunk to trumpet toys,
Tottle-te-toot! I hear the clocks
Ticking in paper breasts. What noise!
Gorges and towering rocks
Are just the canvas He employs,
With gelatine rivers and candy lochs,
Shored in with painted blocks.
I passed through a jungle where smoky mosses
Hung from the trees, the crocodile
Slept or clambered about the fosses;
Buzzards roosting, not very vile;
Rivers of red-ink shed for crosses.
Centaurs with arrows file on file
Drew and shouted: he seems to smile
Let's make him weep a while.
Look out for the lion! Said I, with a scowl,
Let the lion growl:
Cat-gut scraped in the painted wings.
Does the terrible tiger howl:
Tin cans and resined strings.
Do the dead gibber and does the owl
Hoot where the shroud is slipping, clings?
Who pressed the squeaky springs
In the death bird that it sings?
And you, sir! Well, one time I was sure
You carried a poisoned dart!
And now you're empty space as pure
As the sky when clouds are blown apart.
Ether! Radium! Nothing! A cure
For grit and dust which start
Grief in this Waterbury heart.
For I had trod the cobra, found
He is but calico, cotton stuffed.
The boa chased me round and round,
Hyenas tracked me, licked and snuffed,
And made my poor heart flutter and pound,
Until I saw the mirror is all,
And the wood became a rare-bit dream
With monstrous faces and figures packed.
And then you ask: Is the mirror cracked,
Or is it so bright that it casts a beam
Through all the shadow scheme?
One time I saw a river's bank
Shaved down with spades as sheer as a wall,
Wasp holes, snake holes cut in two
Brought these molds of earth to view.
I turned away where the air was blank
And here was a thing fantastical:
Space was cored like the honey comb
With forms of things that crawl and roam,
Animals, men. As I am alive
I saw the form of a horse and cow
Edged with air and hollow as space.
But a horse and cow began to thrive
In just a second, a drifting mist
Flowed into the molds before my face.
And the animals moved, I don't know how,
Out of the all surrounding mesh,
Creatures of bone and flesh!
And it was just the same with men. I vow
I saw an astral stuff poured in
Pockets of air and men became
Voices talking of good and evil,
Virtue, courage, vice and sin,
God and the devil.
For the all unfolding Air is what?
The Great Idea, if so I may say,
A sort of Ocean leaping to waves.
And what do you care if they pass away?
They sink to their source, not into graves.
Beasts may vanish, races decay,
The Ocean will always remain the same;
With new waves rising, no two alike;
Waves that are little and waves that rise
In storms and touch the skies.
R. Browning, you were a man of power,
But I don't think much of your tower.
And I see no use of blowing a horn,
The tower is merely papier-mache,
And comes no higher than to my knees.
I step right over it—pick a flower,
Purple, it may be, called heart's ease
And go with the way of the seas.
For I am an optimist better than you:
This dream is hell, but it's all to the good:
The Ocean is water in calm or flood.
There's nothing wrecked, or wrongly wrought,
There's nothing real but Thought!
THE OAK TREE
The oak in later August,
Before his leaves are strewn,
And the sky is blue as June,
Trembles from trunk to branches
For frosts that will be soon
From the valleys of the moon!
For breezes blown in August
Veer north with cold and rain;
And the oak tree sighs and shivers
For lights that shift and wane:
As a strong man sees the specters
Of age, disease and pain,
The oak flings up to heaven
His branches in the rain.
September comes, September
Spreads out a sky that chills.
The owl hoots and the cricket
Beside the roadway shrills,
And on the stricken hills.
But the oak tree, the oak tree
Still flaunts his shining leaves.
No change has come but swallows
Who fled the summer eaves!
But when October breezes,
And cold November gales
Descend upon the oak tree
What strength of him avails,
Grown naked to the tempest,
For life that sleeps and fails?
O oak tree, oak tree,
The winter snow prevails!
It cannot be your branches,
It is the wind that wails!
THE HOUSE ON THE HILL
Eagle, your broken wings are tangled
Among the mountain ferns
On a ledge of rock on high.
Below the yawning chasm turns
To blackness, but the evening planet burns
Above the gulf in a gold and purple sky!
Vultures and kites
Fly to their rookeries
In the rocks
With swift and ragged wings against the lights.
From levels and from leas
Haste the returning flocks.
Foxes have holes and serpents the grass for flight.
Eagle, arise! It is night.
The world's wanderer finds you
As he climbs the mountains
In the unending quest.
Can you spread wings across the darkening chasm
To the craggy nest,
Where the foreboding mate lies still?
Croak for the evening star,
And beat your shattered wings against your breast!
Across the gulf the wanderer sees afar
A light in the house on the hill!
WASHINGTON HOSPITAL
That's right, sponge off his face. My name? Oh, yes,
James Frothingham, a reverend, have the church
At the corner of Ayer and Knox Streets, Methodist.
As I was passing by a vile saloon
Some men were entering the back room, saying
Is he dead or drunk, and such things. I looked in,
Went in at last and saw this fellow there,
Hunched, doubled down into a chair asleep,
Mud on his face as you saw, clothes bespattered,
The smell of drink upon him. Then we took him
And brought him here, I helped, a Christian duty.
But more important, if he wakes I'm here
To bring his soul to Christ before he dies—
And he is dying. Yes, it's plain enough
The snows of death are falling. Sponge his face,
And wash his hands! I never saw such hands
Slender and beautiful! Now you have sponged
His face, look at that brow—it terrifies—
He looks now like a god—who is this man?
I'll tell you all I know: These men were talking
And this is what they said: This is the fellow
They voted yesterday from booth to booth,
They voted him twenty times, and kept him drunk
To vote him. First they found him at the station,
A little tipsy, talking of his griefs.
The conductor put him off here, being drunk.
And so these fellows for election day
Took him in hand and voted him around,
This was the talk.
Look at the curse of drink!
If he had touched no drink, he had not been
Tipsy to fall into these ruffian hands,
Who gave him drink and drink and used him thus
To violate the suffrage, lose his life
Through drink, as he will lose it. He is dying,
Death comes of Sin—what plainer truth than this?
Sin blinds, too, for that brow could comprehend
All things by using what God gave to it.
I do not know his name, with your permission
I'll search his pockets—yes, here is a letter—
No signature, looks like a draught—I'll read:
"Why have you wounded me with words like these:
'He has great genius but no moral sense,'
And written to another! Oh my love!
By this love which I bear you, by the God
Who reigns in heaven do I swear to you
My soul is like a wandering star, consumed
By its own passion, fire, and the eternal
Longing for the eternal, wandering, erring,
But flaming, loving light, aspiring to
The Light of Lights, some sun, I do not know.
It is incapable of aught but honor.
And save for follies, trifles in excess,
Which I lament, but which in men of wealth,
Or worldly power would never raise a word,
I can recall no act of mine to bring
A blush to your cheek or to mine.
My love,
My erring which has counted, by the test
Of strength or weakness for the game of life,
Has been Quixotic honor, chivalry.
And to indulge this feeling I have paid,
Though it has been my true voluptuousness,
My highest, purest pleasure. Yes, for this
I threw away a fortune, glad to throw it,
Rather than suffer wrong, though trivial,
As worldly men would count it:—for a father's
Laughter at my writing turned away
To follow voices, and defied his will
To harness me to business. So it is
To keep my spirit spotless from the world,
As I have visioned things, I came at last
By this deserted shore, alone, alone,
Now quite alone since you withdrew yourself,
Took back your hand and left me to my way,
Traveled so long that I can see the tomb
At the vista's end not very far.
Oh, love,
Why is there not a heart that loves but mine?
If you had been a Magdalen, I had pressed
Your head against my breast and kept you there—
But you—my spirit drifts with stricken wings—
But you because of gossip, crawling words
About my drinking, lies as I shall prove,
Can hold a handkerchief upon your eyes
To hide tumultuous tears, extend your hand
And say farewell forever, cut our lives
Of days or months, fragile and trivial
Asunder—when your hand, your faith, your love
Had cured me of my spirit's desolation,
My terror of this solitude in life—
Or if it cured me not, I had been eased,
And you had gained for giving—what have you
For your decision? Sorrow, if you love me,
Perhaps a conscience whisper that you failed
In justice, sacrifice; perhaps the thought
Life with me drinking, to the excess you thought,
Is better than a life where I am not.
What have you gained? In a few years we two
Will be at one with earth—before it comes
Are not sweet hours together worth the cost
Of a little drink? You who have riches, need not
My labors for your bread, but need my love,
Which you crush out. But as to drink, I swear
I do not drink."
Ahem! the fellow stirs
But will not wake, I fear. You heard that last:
He swears he does not drink. Drink and untruth
Go always hand in hand. This letter's long—
Let's see what he comes up with at the last:
"But as to drink, I swear I do not drink—
How if I drank could I produce the works
I have produced? A giant's task, when drink
Sustains me not, is not my nutriment
As hock and soda water were for Byron,
But sets me flaming wild, a little drink
Will set me flaming, poisons me, I know.
And yet I must partake of drink sometimes
For life is flying, is recession, we
Are shrinking back into ourselves, at last
The arms we shrank from close about us—death's.
And there are souls born lonely; I am one.
And gifted with the glance of looking through
The shams, the opera bouffe, and I am one.
Often after a stretch of toil when I
Come out of the trance of writing spent and wracked,
I used to walk to High Bridge, sit and muse,
(For this brain never stops and that's my curse,)
Upon this monstrous world and why it is;
And why the souls who love the beautiful,
And love it only and are doomed to speak
Its wonder and its terror are alone,
Misunderstood and hunted, fouled by falsehood,
Have crumbs upon the steps, are licked by dogs,
Or else are starved. And why it is that I
Must go about, a beggar, with my songs
Exchanging them for bread. And then it is
When this poor brain like the creative stuff,
The central purpose, whirls, as I have written,
And will not stop—drink! for oblivion,
For rest, to get away from self, back faster
From the pursuing Nothing.
Yet, my love,
Think out what causes judgments, standards, tastes;
And why it was that Southey, Wordsworth won
The organic national praise and Shelley lost,
And Byron lost it—Southey the sycophant,
Wordsworth the dull adherent, renegade—
These two against these spirits who came here
To sing of Liberty—and look at me,
A wanderer and a poor, rejected man,
While usurers, slave owners rule the land,
And the cities reek with hypocrites, who step
On Freedom and on Beauty, are rewarded,
Praised, fed and honored for it. Then behold
Your friend who loves you, hunted, buffeted,
For a little drink, when in spite of drink and even
Because of drink, who knows? I have achieved,
Written these books. And what is life beside,
Whether with drink or whether with abstinence,
Except to sing your song and die, what course
Can stave the event, the wage of life, not sin?
Oh if you knew what love I have for you!
All of my powers are not enough to tell
How all my heart is yours, how I have found
Eternal things through you, cannot surrender
Your love, your heart, without I lose some life,
Some vital part of me—and yet farewell,
For you have willed it so, and I submit.
I rise up in my loneliness, seek the sun
To shine about me in my loneliness,
Submit and say farewell."
He spoke some words!
What was it that he said? His head rolls over.
The man is dead! What was it that he said?
Something about "no more" it seemed to me.
Whom shall we notify? Go tell the police!
Here! wait, I overlooked some writing—yes,
A name is on this letter—why, look here,
It's Edgar Allan Poe!—I know that name—
He wrote a poem once about sleigh bells—
His brow looks whiter, bigger than it did.
Cover him with a sheet—I'll tell the police!
NEITHER FAITH NOR BEAUTY CAN REMAIN
Neither faith nor beauty can remain:
Change is our life from hour to hour,
Pain follows after pain,
As ruined flower lies down with ruined flower.
*****
Now you are mine. But in a day to be
Beyond the seas, in cities strange and new
To-day will be a memory
Of a day ephemerally true.
*****
Last night with cheek pressed close to cheek
Through the brief hours we slept.
It must be always so, I heard you speak,
Love found, forever must be kept.
*****
But already we were changed, even as the day
Invisibly transforms its light.
We prayed together then for dawn's delay,
Praying, praying through the night.
*****
Against the change which takes all loveliness,
The truth our desperate hearts would keep,
The memory to be, when comfortless,
Save for the memory we shall yearn for sleep;
*****
Against the sinking flame which no more lights
Our faces, neither any more desired
Through desireless days and nights,
And senses fast expiring and expired.
THE END.
Printed in the United States of America.