Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward: Verses about Love

Tired with the little follies of the day,
A child crept, sobbing, to your arms to say
Her evening prayer; and if by God or you
Forgiven and loved, she never asked or knew.


With life's mistake and care too early old,
And spent with sorrow upon sorrow told,
She finds the father's heart the surest rest;
The earliest love shall be the last and best.

Oh, when I would have loved you, Dear,
The sun of winter hung more near;
Yet not so sweet, so sweet, so sweet,
The wild-rose reddening at my feet.


Your lips had learned a golden word,
You sang a song that all men heard,
Oh, love is fleet, the strain is long.
Who stays the singer from her song?


Across my path the red leaves whirled.
Dared I to kneel with all the world?
How came I, then, to clasp you, Sweet,
And find a woman at my feet?

I wonder will you take it, Dear,-
My blessing, from me, when you hear
For what it is you ask me?


The shrouded and averted thing,
With hidden face upon its wing,
With whose dark name you task me.


The solemn, awful, smiling thing,
With shining face upon its wing,
And shining hand to hold you.


The promise of a princely friend,
The richest gift I have to send,
With which my love could fold you.


So light to think! so hard to say!
A bitter thing to give away!
So sweet an one to borrow!


Yet still, indeed, my dreaming fond
Can never rise nor reach beyond
The blessing, Dear,-of Sorrow.

I

Dead, she drifted to his feet.
Tell us, Love, is Death so sweet?


Oh! the river floweth deep.
Fathoms deeper is her sleep.


Oh! the current driveth strong.
Wilder tides drive souls along.


Drifting, though he loved her not,
To the heart of Launcelot,


Let her pass; it is her place.
Death hath given her this grace.


Let her pass; she resteth well.
What her dreams are, who can tell?


Mute the steersman; why, if he
Speaketh not a word, should we?


II

Dead, she drifteth to his feet.
Close, her eyes keep secrets sweet.


Living, he had loved her well.
High as Heaven and deep as Hell.


Yet that voyage she stayeth not.
Wait you for her, Launcelot?


Oh! the river floweth fast.
Who is justified at last?


Locked her lips are. Hush! If she
Sayeth nothing, how should we?

At evening once, the lowly men who loved
Our Master were found desolate, and grieved
For Him whose eyes had been the glory of
Their lives. He, silent, followed them, and joined
Himself unto their sorrow; with the voice
Of love that liveth past the end, and yearns
Like empty arms across the sepulchre,
Did comfort them. They heard, and knew Him not.


At eventide, O Lord, one trod for us
The solitary way of a great Soul;
Whereof the peril, pain, and debt, alone
He knows, who marked the road.
We watched, and held
Her in our arms of prayer. We wept, and said:
Our sister hath a heavy hurt. We bow,
And cry: The crown is buried with the Queen.


At twilight, as she, groping, sought for rest,
What solemn footfall echoed down the dark?
What tenderness that would not let her go?
And patience that Love only knoweth, paced
Silent, beside her, to the last, faint step?
What scarred Hand gently caught her as she sank?
Thou being with her, though she knew Thee not.

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?

He spoke of souls that stooped and sinned,
Of hearts that turned to roam;
He spoke of human restlessness,
Of exile and of home,


Of earth's eternal vagrancies.
'O slow!' he cried, 'to start
And throw thy truant childhood back
Upon thy Father's heart.


'That life must walk uncomforted,
That leans not on His breast:
They only know that God is Love
Who learn that God is Rest.'


He spoke, and on his lifted face
The prophet's halo crept:
Like reeds within his outstretched hands,
The people bowed, and wept.


But in the chancel's solemn shade,
She saw a glamour sweet.
'Beloved!' said she, 'was it you
Fled by with flashing feet;


'Across the holy desk and book,
Beside the holy man,
Swift as a thought, and silent as
Only the vanished can;


'Passed and stood listening, poisèd there,
All in a dream of light,-
Paused to attend the sacred Word
As only a spirit might?


'As angels must, then, pity me,
So tempted and so blessed!
And teach me how, O loved and lost,
To go to Him for rest!


'Oh teach me how, when any world,
Or dark, or bright, or dim,
Containeth thee, to give my first,
My best of love to Him!'

I

As sentient as a wedding-bell,
The vibrant air throbs calling her
Whose eager body, earwise curved,
Leans listening at the heart of hell.
She is one nerve of hearing, strained
To love and suffer, hope and fear-
Thus, hearkening for her Love, she waits,
Whom no man's daring heart has gained.


II

Oh, to be sound to such an ear!
Song, carol, vesper, comfort near,
Sweet words, at sweetest, whispered low,
Or dearer silence, happiest so.
By little languages of love
Her finer audience to prove;
A tenderness untried, to fit
To soul and sense so exquisite;
The blessed Orpheus to be
At last, to such Eurydice!


III

I listened in hell! I listened in hell!
Down in the dark I heard your soul
Singing mine out to the holy sun.
Deep in the dark I heard your feet
Ringing the way of Love in hell.
Into the flame you strode and stood.
Out of the flame you bore me well,
As I listened in hell.


IV

I listen in hell! I listen in hell!
Who trod the fire? Where was the scorch?
Clutched, clasped, and saved, what a tale was to tell
-Heaven come down to hell!
Oh, like a spirit you strove for my sake!
Oh, like a man you looked back for your own!
Back, though you loved me heavenly well,
Back, though you lost me. The gods did decree,
And I listen in hell.

A moment's grace, Pygmalion! Let me be
A breath's space longer on this hither hand
Of fate too sweet, too sad, too mad to meet.
Whether to be thy statue or thy bride-
An instant spare me! Terrible the choice,
As no man knoweth, being only man;
Nor any, saving her who hath been stone
And loved her sculptor. Shall I dare exchange
Veins of the quarry for the throbbing pulse?
Insensate calm for a sure-aching heart?
Repose eternal for a woman's lot?
Forego God's quiet for the love of man?
To float on his uncertain tenderness,
A wave tossed up the shore of his desire,
To ebb and flow whene'er it pleaseth him;
Remembered at his leisure, and forgot,
Worshiped and worried, clasped and dropped at mood,
Or soothed or gashed at mercy of his will,
Now Paradise my portion, and now Hell;
And every single, several nerve that beats
In soul or body, like some rare vase, thrust
In fire at first, and then in frost, until
The fine, protesting fibre snaps?


Oh, who
Foreknowing, ever chose a fate like this?
What woman out of all the breathing world
Would be a woman, could her heart select,
Or love her lover, could her life prevent?
Then let me be that only, only one;
Thus let me make that sacrifice supreme,
No other ever made, or can, or shall.
Behold, the future shall stand still to ask,
What man was worth a price so isolate?
And rate thee at its value for all time.


For I am driven by an awful Law.
See! while I hesitate, it mouldeth me,
And carves me like a chisel at my heart.
'T is stronger than the woman or the man;
'T is greater than all torment or delight;
'T is mightier than the marble or the flesh.
Obedient be the sculptor and the stone!
Thine am I, thine at all the cost of all
The pangs that woman ever bore for man;
Thine I elect to be, denying them;
Thine I elect to be, defying them;
Thine, thine I dare to be, in scorn of them;
And being thine forever, bless I them!


Pygmalion! Take me from my pedestal,
And set me lower-lower, Love!-that I
May be a woman, and look up to thee;
And looking, longing, loving, give and take
The human kisses worth the worst that thou
By thine own nature shalt inflict on me.

Deep-hearted as an untried joy
The warm light blushes on the bay,
And placid as long happiness
The perfect sky of Florida.


Silent and swift the gulls wheel by,-
Fair silver spots seen flittingly
To sparkle like lost thoughts, and dip
And vanish in a silver sea.


And green with an immortal spring
The little lonely islands stand;
And lover-like, the winds caress
The fresh-plucked roses in my hand.


And sweet with all the scents of June,
And gentle with the breath of May,
And passionate with harvest calm,
Dawns the strange face of Christmas-day.


O vanished world of ache and chill!
If purple-cold the shadows blow
Somewhere upon the shrunken cheeks
Of wan, tormented drifts of snow;


And if, beneath the steady stare
Of a pale sunset's freezing eye,
The coming tempest, lurking, stabs
The lonely traveller hurrying by,-1


What art can make me understand?
What care I, can I care to know?
Star-like, among the tender grass,
The little white wild-flowers show!


There is no winter in the world!
There is no winter anywhere!
Earth turns her face upon her arm,
And sleeps within the golden air.


If once within the story told-
Of peace or pain, of calm or strife-
The clear revealéd sequencés
Of every finished human life,


It chanceth that the record reads:
This wanderer, something torn and tossed
By certain storms he had passed through,
And something faint and chilly, lost


Just here a little while the sense
Of winter from his heavy heart,
And felt within his life the roots
Of spring eternal stir and start;


Could not one blessed little while,
For very happiness, believe
That anywhere upon God's earth
Souls could be cold and worn and live,-


That blessed once a glory were
Enough, I think, to crown one's days.
O swift-departing days of youth,
Lend me your evanescent grace


Of fancy, while my graver years
Like happy children rise and bless
The shadow of the memory of
Love's sweet and helpless selfishness!


Ah, many, many years shall learn
To blush and bloom as young years may,
But only once the soul forget
All else but its own Florida!

That heart were something cold, I think,
That on the light of stars relied
For daily fire; and cruel is
The perfumed breath of flowers denied
The longing, lifted human hand;
And bitter to the soul, I stand
And fling your woman's fancies back
Beneath the woman's tender feet!
A woman only knoweth love
To know that it is passing sweet,
To know that all her heart is glad,
Or else to know that she is sad
Because it failed her; and forsooth,
I think she has an extra sense
To love by, granted not to man:
Love's measureless own recompense
Consists in loving: there 's her creed.
A pretty thought, in faith or deed!
A feminine fair thought, but false
To man forever! false as light
To the born blind, as painted fruit
To starving lips; or as a bright
Departing sail to drowning eyes
Arch not to me, in mild surprise,
Those glorious calm brows of yours!
Man loveth in another way!
He cannot take the less without
The more; he has a bitter way
In loving, that you know not of;
No tireless, tender, calm resolve
To take Fate's meagre crumbs when dry
From life's feast-tables overswept
And salt them with his hidden, hot,
Vain tears! Contented to be kept
As cup-bearer beside a goddess' place!
Contented so he see her face,
Her dear, denied, sweet face, and die!
O lost, my love! I tell you nay,
You do not, cannot understand;
Man loveth in another way!
He is too strong, or is too weak:
I cannot be the friend you seek!


And yet, in the incertitudes
Of some uncomforted, cold moods,


I cast my soul before you, Sweet!
My very soul beneath your feet,


And, daring and despairing, think
That could I stoop but once and drink,-


One little moment lean above
The sealed, lost fountain of your love,-


Could taste, just taste before I die,
Its sacred, sheltered mystery,-


Could call you for one hour mine!
One little, little hour mine!-


I think I could arise and go
From out your presence then, and know


Myself that possible poised man
Who, living, loving, longing, can


Yet make himself the thing he may,-
Live in the woman's nobler way,-


Love, asking Love no other gauge
Than the exceeding privilege


Of adding by some patient stress.
Of pain, unto the happiness,-


Or be it bright, or be it dim-
Of the sweet soul denied to him.

Oh, not to you, my mentor sweet,
And stern as only sweetness can,
Whose grave eyes look out steadfastly
Across my nature's plan,


And take unerring measure down
Where'er that plan is failed or foiled,
Thinking far less of purpose kept
Than of a vision spoiled.


And tender less to what I am,
Than sad for what I might have been;
And walking softly before God
For my soul's sake, I ween.


'T is not to you, my spirit leans,
O grave, true judge! When spent with strife,
And groping out of gloom for light,
And out of death for life.


Nor yet to you, who calmly weigh
And measure every grace and fault,
Whose martial nature never turns
From right to left, to halt


For any glamour of the heart,
Or any glow that ever is,
Grander than Truth's high noonday glare,
In love's sweet sunrises;


Who know me by the duller hues
Of common nights and common days,
And in their sober atmospheres
Find level blame and praise.


True hearts and dear! 't is not in you,
This fainting, warring soul of mine
Finds silver carven chalices,
To hold life's choicest wine


Unto its thirsty lips, and bid
It drink, and breathe, and battle on,
Till all its dreams are deeds at last,
And all its heights are won.


I turn to you, confiding love.
O lifted eyes! look trustfully,
Till Heaven shall lend you other light,
Like kneeling saints-on me.


And let me be to you, dear eyes,
The thing I am not, till I, too,
Shall see as I am seen, and stand
At last revealed to you.


And let me nobler than I am,
And braver still, eternally,
And finer, truer, purer, than
My finest, purest, be


To your sweet vision. There I stand
Transfigured fair in love's deceit,
And while your soul looks up to mine,
My heart lies at your feet.


Believe me better than my best,
And stronger than my strength can hold,
Until your magic faith transmute
My pebbles into gold.


I'll be the thing you hold me, Dear!-
After I'm dead, if not before-
Nor, through the climbing ages, will
I give the conflict o'er.


But if upon the Perfect Peace,
And past the thing that was, and is,
And past the lure of voices, in
A world of silences,


A pain can crawl-a little one-
A cloud upon a sunlit land;
I think in Heaven my heart must ache-
That you should understand.

Upon the city called the Friends'
The light of waking spring
Fell vivid as the shadow thrown
Far from the gleaming wing
Of a great golden bird, that fled
Before us loitering.


In hours before the spring, how light
The pulse of heaviest feet!
And quick the slowest hopes to stir
To measures fine and fleet.
And warm will grow the bitterest heart
To shelter fancies sweet.


Securely looks the city down
On her own fret and toil;
She hides a heart of perfect peace
Behind her veins' turmoil-
A breathing-space removed apart
From out their stir and soil.


Our reverent feet that golden day
Stood in a quiet place,
That held repressed-I know not what
Of such a poignant grace
As falls, if dumb with life untold,
Upon a human face.


To fashion silence into words
The softest, teach me how!
I know the place is Silence caught
A-dreaming, then and now.
I only know 't was blue above,
And it was green below.


And where the deepening sunshine found
And held a holy mood,
Lowly and old, of outline quaint,
In mingled brick and wood,
Clasped in the arms of ivy vines
A nestling cottage stood:


A thing so hidden and so fair,
So pure that it would seem
Hewn out of nothing earthlier
Than a young poet's dream,
Of nothing sadder than the lights
That through the ivies gleam.


'Tell me,' I said, while shrill the birds
Sang through the garden space,
To her who guided me-'tell me
The story of the place.'
She lifted, in her Quaker cap,
A peaceful, puzzled face,


Surveyed me with an aged, calm,
And unpoetic eye;
And peacefully, but puzzled half,
Half tolerant, made reply:
'The people come to see that house-
Indeed, I know not why,


'Except thee know the poem there-
'T was written long since, yet
His name who wrote it, now-in fact-
I cannot seem to get-
His name who wrote that poetry
I always do forget.


'Hers was Evangeline; and here
In sound of Christ Church bells
She found her lover in this house,
Or so I 've heard folks tell.
But most I know is, that 's her name,
And his was Gabriel.


'I 've heard she found him dying, in
The room behind that door,
(One of the Friends' old almshouses,
Perhaps thee 've heard before
Perhaps thee 've heard about her all
That I can tell, and more.


'Thee can believe she found him here,
If thee do so incline.
Folks have their fashions in belief-
That may be one of thine.
I'm sure his name was Gabriel,
And hers Evangeline.'


She turned her to her common work
And unpoetic ways,
Nor knew the rare, sweet note she struck
Resounding to your praise,
O Poet of our common nights,
And of our care-worn days!


Translator of our golden mood,
And of our leaden hour!
Immortal thus shall poet gauge
The horizon of his power.
Wear in your crown of laurel leaves,
The little ivy flower!


And happy be the singer called
To such a lofty lot!
And ever blessed be the heart
Hid in the simple spot
Where Evangeline was loved and wept,
And Longfellow forgot.


O striving soul! strive quietly,
Whate'er thou art or dost,
Sweetest the strain, when in the song
The singer has been lost;
Truest the work, when 't is the deed,
Not doer, counts for most!


The shadow of the golden wing
Grew deep where'er it fell.
The heart it brooded over will
Remember long and well
Full many a subtle thing, too sweet
Or else too sad to tell.


Forever fall the light of spring
Fair as that day it fell,
Where Evangeline, led by your voice,
O solemn Christ Church bell!
For lovers of all springs, all climes,
At last found Gabriel.

prologue


Who shall tell the story
As it was?
Write it with the heart's blood?
(Pale ink, alas!)
Speak it with the soul's lips,
Or be dumb?
Tell me, singers fled, and
Song to come!


No answer; like a shell the silence curls,
And far within it leans a whisper out,
Breathless and inarticulate, and whirls
And dies as dies an ailing dread or doubt.


And I-since there is found none else than I,
No stronger, sweeter voice than mine, to tell
This tale of love that cannot stoop to die-
Were fain to be the whisper in the shell;


Were fain to lose and spend myself within
The sacred silence of one mighty heart,
And leaning from it, hidden there, to win
Some finer ear that, listening, bends apart.


'Fly for your lives!' The entrails of the earth
Trembled, resounding to the cry,
That, like a chasing ghost, around the mine
Crept ghastly: 'The pit 's on fire! Fly!'


The shaft, a poisoned throat whose breath was death,
Like hell itself grown sick of sin,
Hurled up the men; haggard and terrible;
Leaping upon us through the din


That all our voices made; and back we shrank
From them as from the starting dead;
Recoiling, shrieked, but knew not why we shrieked;
And cried, but knew not what we said.


And still that awful mouth did toss them up:
'The last is safe! The last is sound!'
We sobbed to see them where they sunk and crawled,
Like beaten hounds, upon the ground.


Some sat with lolling, idiot head, and laughed;
One reached to clutch the air away
His gasping lips refused; some cursed; and one
Knelt down-but he was old-to pray.


We huddled there together all that night,
Women and men from the wild Town;
I heard a shrill voice cry, 'We all are up,
But some-ye have forgot-are down!'


'Who is forgot?' We stared from face to face;
But answering through the dark, she said
(It was a woman): 'Eh, ye need not fret;
None is forgot except the dead.


'The buried dead asleep there in the works-
Eh, Lord! It must be hot below!
Ye'll keep 'em waking all the livelong night,
To set the mine a-burning so!'


And all the night the mine did burn and burst,
As if the earth were but a shell
Through which a child had thrust a finger-touch,
And, peal on dreadful peal, the bell,


The miner's 'larum, wrenched the quaking air;
And through the flaring light we saw
The solid forehead of the eternal hill
Take on a human look of awe;


As if it were a living thing, that spoke
And flung some protest to the sky,
As if it were a dying thing that saw,
But could not tell, a mystery.


The bells ran ringing by us all that night.
The bells ceased jangling with the morn.
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 God 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 pass, I pass 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 shining 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 godlike that it could not die.