Songs of the Silent World, and Other Poems Part 2

About the blackened works,--sunk, tossed, and rent,-- We gathered in the foreign dawn;

Women and men, with eyes askance and strange, Fearing, we knew not what, to see.

Against the hollowed jaws of the torn hill, Why creep the miners silently?

From man to man, a whisper chills: "See, see, The sunken shaft of Thirty-one!

The earth, a traitor to her trust, has fled And turned the dead unto the sun.

"And here--O G.o.d of life and death! Thy work, Thine only, this!" With foreheads bare, We knelt, and drew him, young and beautiful, Thirty years dead, into the air.

Thus had he perished; buried from the day; By the swift poison caught and slain; By the kind poison unmarred, rendered fair Back to the upper earth again--

The warm and breathing earth that knew him not; And men and women wept to see-- For kindred had he none among us all-- How lonely even the dead may be.

We wept, I say; we wept who knew him not; But sharp, a tearless woman sprang From out the crowd (that quavering voice I knew), And terrible her cry outrang:

"I pa.s.s, I pa.s.s ye all! Make way! Stand back!

Mine is the place ye yield," she said.

"He was my lover once--my own, my own; Oh, he was mine, and he is dead!"

Women and men, we gave her royal way; Proud as young joy the smile she had.

We knew her for a neighbor in the Town, Unmated, solitary, sad.

Youth, hope, and love, we gave her silent way, Calm as a sigh she swept us all; Then swiftly, as a word leans to a thought, We saw her lean to him, and fall

Upon the happy body of the dead-- An aged woman, poor and gray.

Bright as the day, immortal as young Love, And glorious as life, he lay.

Her shrunken hands caressed his rounded cheek, Her white locks on his golden hair Fell sadly. "O love!" she cried with shriveled lips, "O love, my love, my own, my fair!

"See, I am old, and all my heart is gray.

They say the dead are aye forgot-- There, there, my sweet! I whisper, leaning low, That all these women hear it not.

"Deep in the darkness there, didst think on me?

High in the heavens, have ye been true?

Since I was young, and since you called me fair, I never loved a man but you.

And here, my boy, you lie, so safe, so still"-- But there she hushed; and in the dim, Cool morning, timid as a bride, but calm As a glad mother, gathered him

Unto her heart. And all the people then, Women and men, and children too, Crept back, and back, and back, and on, Still as the morning shadows do.

And left them in the lifting dawn--they two, On her sad breast, his s.h.i.+ning head Stirred softly, as were he the living one, And she had been the moveless dead.

And yet we crept on, back, and back, and on.

The distance widened like the sky, Between our little restlessness, And Love so G.o.dlike that it could not die.

II.

VITTORIA.

Wise was the word the wise man spake, who said, "Angelo was the only man to whom G.o.d gave Four souls,"--the soul of sculpture and of song, Of architecture and of art; these all.

For so G.o.d loved him, as if he were His only child, and grouped about those brows Ideals of Himself--not angels mild As those that flit and beckon other lives, But cherubim and seraphim; tall, strong, Unsleeping, terrible; with wings across Their mighty feet; and eyes--if we would look Upon their blazing eyes, these too are hid-- Some angels are all wings! Oh, s.h.i.+ne and fly!

Were ye not angels, ye would strike us blind.

And yet they did not, could not dazzle her-- That one sweet woman unto whom he bent As pliant as the quarried marble turned To life immortal in his own great hand.

Steadfast, Vittoria looked on Angelo.

She lifted lonely eyes. The years trod slow.

Fourfold the reverence which he gave to her, Fourfold the awful tenderness, fourfold The loyalty, the trust. And oh, fourfold The comfort, beyond all power of comforting, Whereby a lesser man may heal the hurt Of widowhood!

Pescara had one soul-- A little one; and it was stained. And he-- It too, perhaps (G.o.d knows!)--was dead.

The dead are G.o.d's.

Vittoria had one heart.

The woman gave it, and the woman gives Once. Angelo was too late. And one who dared To shed a tear for him, has dropped it here.

NEW NEIGHBORS.

Within the window's scant recess, Behind a pink geranium flower, She sits and sews, and sews and sits, From patient hour to patient hour.

As woman-like as marble is, Or as a lovely death might be-- A marble death condemned to make A feint at life perpetually.

Wondering, I watch to pity her; Wandering, I go my restless ways; Content, I think the untamed thoughts Of free and solitary days,

Until the mournful dusk begins To drop upon the quiet street, Until, upon the pavement far, There falls the sound of coming feet:

A happy, hastening, ardent sound, Tender as kisses on the air-- Quick, as if touched by unseen lips Blushes the little statue there;

And woman-like as young life is, And woman-like as joy may be, Tender with color, lithe with love, She starts, transfigured gloriously.

Superb in one transcendent glance-- Her eyes, I see, are burning black-- My little neighbor, smiling, turns, And throws my unasked pity back.

I wonder, is it worth the while, To sit and sew from hour to hour-- To sit and sew with eyes of black, Behind a pink geranium flower?

BY THE HEARTH.

You come too late; 'Tis far on in November.

The wind strikes bleak Upon the cheek That careth rather to keep warm, (And where 's the harm?) Than to abate One jot of its calm color for your sake.

Watch! See! I stir the ember Upon my lonely hearth and bid the fire wake.