Complacencies of the peignoir, and
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
And the green freedom of a
Upon a rug mingle to
The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.
She dreams a little, and she feels the
Encroachment of that old catastrophe,
As a calm darkens among water-lights.
The pungent oranges and bright, green
Seem things in some procession of the dead,
Winding across wide water, without sound.
The day is like wide water, without sound.
Stilled for the passing of her dreaming
Over the seas, to silent Palestine,
Dominion of the blood and
Why should she give her bounty to the dead?
What is divinity if it can
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright green wings, or
In any balm or beauty of the earth,
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or
Elations when the forest blooms;
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains,
The bough of summer and the winter branch.
These are the measure destined for her
Jove in the clouds had his inhuman birth.
No mother suckled him, no sweet land
Large-mannered motions to his mythy mind.
He moved among us, as a muttering king,
Magnificent, would move among his hinds,
Until our blood, commingling, virginal,
With heaven, brought such requital to
The very hinds discerned it, in a star.
Shall our blood fail?
Or shall it come to
The blood of paradise?
And shall the
Seem all of paradise that we shall know?
The sky will be much friendlier then than now,
A part of labor and a part of pain,
And next in glory to enduring love,
Not this dividing and indifferent
She says, "I am content when wakened birds,
Before they fly, test the reality Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings;
But when the birds are gone, and their warm
Return no more, where, then, is paradise?"There is not any haunt of prophecy,
Nor any old chimera of the grave,
Neither the golden underground, nor
Melodious, where spirits gat them home,
Nor visionary south, nor cloudy
Remote on heaven's hill, that has
As April's green endures; or will
Like her remembrance of awakened birds,
Or her desire for June and evening,
By the consummation of the swallow's
She says, "But in contentment I still
The need of some imperishable bliss."Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,
Alone, shall come fulfillment to our
And our desires.
Although she strews the
Of sure obliteration on our paths,
The path sick sorrow took, the many
Where triumph rang its brassy phrase, or
Whispered a little out of tenderness,
She makes the willow shiver in the
For maidens who were wont to sit and
Upon the grass, relinquished to their feet.
She causes boys to pile new plums and
On disregarded plate.
The maidens
And stray impassioned in the littering
Is there no change of death in paradise?
Does ripe fruit never fall?
Or do the
Hang always heavy in that perfect sky,
Unchanging, yet so like our perishing earth,
With rivers like our own that seek for
They never find, the same receding
That never touch with inarticulate pang?
Why set pear upon those
Or spice the shores with odors of the plum?
Alas, that they should wear our colors there,
The silken weavings of our afternoons,
And pick the strings of our insipid lutes!
Death is the mother of beauty, mystical,
Within whose burning bosom we
Our earthly mothers waiting,
Supple and turbulent, a ring of
Shall chant in orgy on a summer
Their boisterous devotion to the sun,
Not as a god, but as a god might be,
Naked among them, like a savage source.
Their chant shall be a chant of paradise,
Out of their blood, returning to the sky;
And in their chant shall enter, voice by voice,
The windy lake wherein their lord delights,
The trees, like serafin, and echoing hills,
That choir among themselves long afterward.
They shall know well the heavenly
Of men that perish and of summer morn.
And whence they came and whither they shall
The dew upon their feel shall
She hears, upon that water without sound,
A voice that cries, "The tomb in
Is not the porch of spirits lingering.
It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay."We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.
Deer walk upon our mountains, and the
Whistle about us their spontaneous cries;
Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;
And, in the isolation of the sky,
At evening, casual flocks of pigeons
Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darkness, on extended wings.
