Behind the Arras
B >> Bliss Carman >> Behind the ArrasAnd "There!" said Hack, and "There!" thought Hew,
"We'll rest, for our toil is done."
But "Nay," the Master Workman said,
"For your toil is just begun.
"And ye who served me of old as God
Shall serve me anew as man,
Till I compass the dream that is in my heart,
And perfect the vaster plan."
And still the craftsman over his craft,
In the vague white light of dawn,
With God's calm will for his burning will,
While the mounting day comes on.
Yearning, wind-swift, indolent, wild,
Toils with those shadowy two,--
The faltering restless hand of Hack,
And the tireless hand of Hew.
[Illustration]
_The Night Express_
Out through the hills of midnight,
Hurtling and thundering on,
The night express from the outer world
Speeds for the open of dawn.
Out of the past and gloom-wrack,
Out of the dim and yore,
Freighted as train or caravan
Was never freighted before;
Built when the Sphinx's query
Was new on the lips of peace;
Hurled through the aching and hollow years
Till time shall have release;
Stealing and swift as a shadow,
Sinuous, urging, and blind,
Unpent as a joy or the flight of a bird,
With oblivion behind;
Down to the morrow country
Into the unknown land!
And the Driver grips the throttle-bar;
Our lives are in his hand.
The sleeping hills awake;
A tremor, a dread, a roar;
The terror is flying, is come, is past;
The hills can sleep once more.
A moment the silence throbs,
The dark has a pulse of fire;
And then the wonder of time is gone,
A wraith and a desire.
Demonish, toiling, grim,
In the ruddy furnace flare,
While the Driver fingers the throttle-bar,
Who stands at his elbow there?
Can it be, this thing like a shred
Of the firmament torn away,
Is a boarded train that Death and his crew
Consorted to waylay?
His wreckers, grinning and lean,
Are lurking at every curve;
But the Driver plays with the throttle-bar;
He has the iron nerve.
We are travelling safe and warm,
With our little baggage of cares;
Why tease the peril that yet would come
Unbidden and unawares?
The lonely are lonely still;
And the friend has another friend;
Only the idle heart inquires
The distance and the end.
We pant up the climbing grade,
And coast on the tangent mile,
While the Driver toys with the throttle-bar,
And gathers the track in his smile.
The dreamer weary of dreams,
The lover by love released,
Stricken and whole, and eager and sad,
Beauty and waif and priest,
All these adventure forth,
Strangers though side by side,
With the tramp of time in the roaring wheels,
And haste in their shadowy stride.
The star that races the hills
Shows yet the night is deep;
But the Driver humors the throttle-bar;
So, you and I may sleep.
For He of the sleepless hand
Will drive till the night is done--
Will watch till morning springs from the sea,
And the rails stand gold in the sun;
Then he will slow to a stop
The tread of the driving-rod,
When the night express rolls into the dawn;
For the Driver's name is God.
[Illustration]
_The Dustman_
"Dustman, dustman!"
Through the deserted square he cries,
And babies put their rosy fists
Into their eyes.
There's nothing out of No-man's-land
So drowsy since the world began,
As "Dustman, dustman,
Dustman."
He goes his village round at dusk
From door to door, from day to day;
And when the children hear his step
They stop their play.
"Dustman, dustman!"
Far up the street he is descried,
And soberly the twilight games
Are laid aside.
"Dustman, dustman!"
There, Drowsyhead, the old refrain,
"Dustman, dustman!"
It goes again.
Dustman, dustman,
Hurry by and let me sleep.
When most I wish for you to come,
You always creep.
Dustman, dustman,
And when I want to play some more,
You never then are further off
Than the next door.
"Dustman, dustman!"
He heckles down the echoing curb,
A step that neither hopes nor hates
Ever disturb.
"Dustman, dustman!"
He never varies from one pace,
And the monotony of time
Is in his face.
And some day, with more potent dust,
Brought from his home beyond the deep,
And gently scattered on our eyes,
We, too, shall sleep,--
Hearing the call we know so well
Fade softly out as it began,
"Dustman, dustman,
Dustman!"
_The Sleepers_
The tall carnations down the garden walks
Bowed on their stalks.
Said Jock-a-dreams to John-a-nods,
"What are the odds
That we shall wake up here within the sun,
When time is done,
And pick up all the treasures one by one
Our hands let fall in sleep?" "You have begun
To mutter in your dreams,"
Said John-a-nods to Jock-a-dreams,
And they both slept again.
The tall carnations in the sunset glow
Burned row on row.
Said John-a-nods to Jock-a-dreams,
"To me it seems
A thousand years since last you stirred and spoke,
And I awoke.
Was that the wind then trying to provoke
His brothers in their blessed sleep?" "They choke,
Who mutter in their nods,"
Said Jock-a-dreams to John-a-nods.
And they both slept again.
The tall carnations only heard a sigh
Of dusk go by.
[Illustration]
_At the Granite Gate_
There paused to shut the door
A fellow called the Wind.
With mystery before,
And reticence behind,
A portal waits me too
In the glad house of spring,
One day I shall pass through
And leave you wondering.
It lies beyond the marge
Of evening or of prime,
Silent and dim and large,
The gateway of all time.
There troop by night and day
My brothers of the field;
And I shall know the way
Their woodsongs have revealed.
The dusk will hold some trace
Of all my radiant crew
Who vanished to that place,
Ephemeral as dew.
Into the twilight dun,
Blue moth and dragon-fly
Adventuring alone,--
Shall be more brave than I?
There innocents shall bloom
And the white cherry tree,
With birch and willow plume
To strew the road for me.
The wilding orioles then
Shall make the golden air
Heavy with joy again,
And the dark heart shall dare
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
Threshing 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 pass 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.
[Illustration]
_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.
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Transcriber's Note:
One block of ten lines from the title poem was printed without break:
Yet while they last how actual they seem!
Their faces beam;
I give them all their names,
Bertram and Gilbert, Louis, Frank and James,
Each with his aims;
One thinks he is a poet, and writes verse
His friends rehearse;
Another is full of law;
A third sees pictures which his hand can draw
Without a flaw.
This may be a typographical error.