The New World Part 1

The New World.

by Witter Bynner.

I

Celia was laughing. Hopefully I said: "How shall this beauty that we share, This love, remain aware Beyond our happy breathing of the air?

How shall it be fulfilled and perfected?...

If you were dead, How then should I be comforted?"

But Celia knew instead: "He who finds beauty here, shall find it there."

A halo gathered round her hair.

I looked and saw her wisdom bare The living bosom of the countless dead.

... And there I laid my head.

Again when Celia laughed, I doubted her and said: "Life must be led In many ways more difficult to see Than this immediate way For you and me.

We stand together on our lake's edge, and the mystery Of love has made us one, as day is made of night and night of day.

Aware of one ident.i.ty Within each other, we can say: 'I shall be everything you are.'...

We are uplifted till we touch a star.

We know that overhead Is nothing more austere, more starry, or more deep to understand Than is our union, human hand in hand.

.... But over our lake come strangers--a crowded launch, a lonely sailing boy.

A mile away a train bends by. In every car Strangers are travelling, each with particular And unkind preference like ours, with privacy Of understanding, with especial joy Like ours. Celia, Celia, why should there be Distrust between ourselves and them, disunity?

.... How careful we have been To trim this little circle that we tread, To set a bar To strangers and forbid them!--Are they not as we, Our very likeness and our nearest kin?

How can we shut them out and let stars in?"

She looked along the lake. And when I heard her speak, The sun fell on the boy's white sail and her white cheek.

"I touch them all through you," she said. "I cannot know them now Deeply and truly as my very own, except through you, Except through one or two Interpreters.

But not a moment stirs Here between us, binding and interweaving us, That does not bind these others to our care."

The sunlight fell in glory on her hair....

And then said Celia, radiant, when I held her near: "They who find beauty there, shall find it here."

And on her brow, When I heard Celia speak, Cities were populous With peace and oceans echoed glories in her ear And from her risen thought Her lips had brought, As from some peak Down through the clouds, a mountain-air To guide the lonely and uplift the weak.

"Record it all," she told me, "more than merely this, More than the s.h.i.+ne of sunset on our heads, more than a kiss, More than our rapt agreement and delight Watching the mountain mingle with the night....

Tell that the love of two incurs The love of mult.i.tudes, makes way And welcome for them, as a solitary star Brings on the great array.

Go make a lovers' calendar,"

She said, "for every day."

And when the sun had put away His dazzle, over the shadowy firs The solitary star came out.... So on some night To eyes of youth shall come my light And hers.

II

"Where are you bound, O solemn voyager?"

She laughed one day and asked me in her mirth: "Where are you from?

Why are you come?"

.... The questions beat like tapping of a drum; And how could I be dumb, I who have bugles in me? Fast The answer blew to her, For all my breath was worth....

"As a bird comes by grace of spring, You are my journey and my wing-- And into your heart, O Celia, My heart has flown, to sing Solemn and long A most undaunted song."

This was the song that she herself had taught me how to sing: .... As immigrants come toward America On their continual s.h.i.+ps out of the past, So on my s.h.i.+p America have I, by birth, Come forth at last From all the bitter corners of the earth.

And I have ears to hear the westward wind blowing And I have eyes to look beyond the scope Of sea And I have hands to touch the hands Of s.h.i.+pmates who are going Wherever I go and the grace of knowing That what for them is hope Is hope for me.

I come from many times and many lands, I look toward life and all that it shall hold, Past bound and past divide.

And I shall be consoled By a continent as wide As the round invisible sky.

.... "The unseen shall become the seen....

O Celia, be my Spanish Queen!

The Genoan am I!"

And Celia cried: "My jewels, they are yours, Yours for the journey. Use them well.

Go find the new world, win the sh.o.r.es Of which the old books tell!

.... Yet will they listen, poet? Will they sail with you?

Will they not call you dreamer of a dream?

Will they not laugh at you, because you seem Concerned with words that people often say And deeds they never do?"

The bright sails of my caravel shook seaward in reply: "Though I be told A thousand facts to hold Me back, though the old boundary Rise up like hatred in my way, Though fellow-voyagers cry, 'A lie!'-- Here as I come with heaven at my side None of the weary words they say Remain with me, I am borne like a wave of the sea Toward worlds to be....

And, young and bold, I am happier than they-- The timid unbelievers who grow old!"

She interceded: "How impatient, how unkind You are! What secret do you know To keep you young?

Age comes with keen and accurate advance Against youth's lightly handled lance.

Age is an ancient despot that has wrung All hearts."... My answer was the song forever sung: "This that I need to know I know-- Onpouring and perpetual immigrants, We join a fellows.h.i.+p beyond America Yet in America....

Beyond the touch of age, my Celia, In you, in me, in everyone, we join G.o.d's growing mind.

For in no separate place or time, or soul, we find Our meaning. In one mingled soul reside All times and places. On a tide Of mist and azure air We journey toward that soul, through circ.u.mstance, Until at last we fully care and dare To make within ourselves divinity."

"And what of all the others," Celia said, "Who ventured brave as you? What of the dead?"

Again I saw the halo in her hair And said: "The dead sail forward, hid behind This wave that we ourselves must mount to find The eternal way.

Adventurers of long ago Seeking a richer gain than earthy gold, They have left for us, half-told, Their guesses of the port, more numerous and blind Than their unnumbered and forgotten faces.

... And though today, as then, Death is a wind blowing them forward out of sight and out of mind, Yet in familiar and in unfamiliar places Inquiring by what means I may The destination of the wind Of death, I have found signs and traces Of the way they go And with a quicker heart I have beheld again In visions, from my s.h.i.+p at sea, The great new world confronting me, Where, yesterday, Today, tomorrow, dwell my countrymen."

And then I looked away, Over the pasture and the valley, to the New Hamps.h.i.+re town....

And my heart's acclaim went down, To Florida, Wisconsin, California, And brought a good report to Celia: "My s.h.i.+p America, This whole wide-timbered land, Well captained and well manned, Ascends the sea Of time, carrying me And many pa.s.sengers.

And every cabin stirs With the pulsing of its engine over the sway of time, Yes, every state and city, every village, every farm, And every heart and everyone's right arm.

... Celia, hold out your hand, Or anyone in any field or street, hold out your hand-- And I can see it pulse the ma.s.sive climb And dip Of this America, My s.h.i.+p!"

"Why make your s.h.i.+p so small?

Can your America contain them all?"

How wisely I replied In the province of my pride: "But these are my own s.h.i.+pmates, these Who share my s.h.i.+p America with me!

... On many seas On other s.h.i.+ps, even the ancient s.h.i.+ps of Greece, Have other immigrants set sail for peace.

But these are my own s.h.i.+pmates whom I see At hand--these are my company."

"What have you said," she cried, "Thinking you knew?

Whom have you called your s.h.i.+pmates? You were wrong!

Your s.h.i.+p is strong With a more various crew Than any one man's country could provide, To make it ride So high and manifold and so complete.

This is the engine-beat Of life itself, the s.h.i.+p of s.h.i.+ps.

There is no other s.h.i.+p among the stars than this.

The wind of death is a bright kiss Upon the lips Of every immigrant, as upon yours and mine-- Theirs is the stinging brine And sun and open sea, And theirs the arching sky, eternity."

And Celia had my homage. I was wrong.

Immigrants all, one s.h.i.+p we ride, Man and his bride The journey through.

O let it be with a bridal-song!...

"My s.h.i.+pmates are as many as eternity is long: The unborn and the living and the dead-- And, Celia, you!"

III

That midnight when the moon was tall I walked alone by the white lake--yet with a vanished race And with a race to come. To walk with dead men is to pray, To walk with men unborn--to find the way.

I have seen many days. That night I watched them all.

I have seen many a sign and trace Of beauty and of hope: An elm at night; an arrowy waterfall; The illimitable round unbroken scope Of life; a friend's unfrightened dying face.