Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward: Verses about Tears

Shall we who are about to live,
Cry like a clarion on the battle-field?
Or weep before 't is fought, the fight to yield?
Thou that hast been and yet that art to be
Named by our name, that art the First and Last!
Womanhood of the future and the past!
Thee we salute, below the breath. Oh, give
To us the courage of our mystery.
… Pealing, the clock of Time
Has struck the Woman's Hour.…
We hear it on our knees. For ah, no power
Is ours to trip too lightly to the rhyme
Of idle words that fan the summer air,
Of bounding words that leap the years to come.
Ideal of ourselves! We dream and dare.
Victuræ salutamus!
Thou
art dumb.

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.

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.

Of Peter's daughter, it is said, men told,
While yet she breathed, a tale as sad as life,
As sweet as death; which, now she sleeps, has lent
The borrower Time its lighter tints, and holds
Only the shadowed outline of a grief
Before our eyes.
Thus much remains. She lived,
Yet lived not; breathed, yet stifled; ate, but starved;
The ears of life she had, but heard not; eyes,
But saw not; hands, but handled neither bud
Nor fruit of joy: for the great word of God,
In some dim crevice of eternal thought
Which he called Petronilla, had gone forth
Against her-for her-call it what we may,
And, bending to his will unerringly,
As bends the golden feather of the grain
Before the footsteps of the mailed west-wind,
Since childhood she had lain upon her bed
In peace and pain, nor had ever raised her body
Once to its young lithe length, to view the dawn
Of all her young lithe years, nor had once laid
Her little feverish feet upon the face
Of the cool, mocking, steadfast floor which laughed
When other girls, with other thinking done
Some time in Heaven about their happy names,-
Set like a song about their happy names,-
Tripped on it like a trill.
As one may see
Upon the hushed lips of a Sabbath-day
A church door sliding softly as a smile,
To let the solemn summer sunshine in
To dream upon, but neither guess nor tell
The dusky week-day secrets which the dome
Whispers the darkened niches and the nave,
Where in the purple silence which they love
The marble angels sleep, or weep, or sing,
(Who knoweth what they do on Monday mornings?)
So slides the tale on Petronilla, left
Upon a certain dull, wan day alone,
Her face turned on her pillow to the room
Wherein the wise and faithful met (for faith
With wisdom married then; none forbid the banns
Within the temple of the hearts of men),
To break their bread with Peter, and discourse
Of all the sacred, secret things; the hopes,
The fears, the solemn ecstasies, and dreams,
And deeds, which held life in the arms of death,
For the first namers of the name of Christ.
And lying there, at rest, adream, asleep,
She scarce could tell her state, so dim it was,
Such lifeless reflex of the hueless day,
A voice struck Petronilla,-Peter's voice,
Solemn and mighty as a lonely wave
Upon an untrod shore. 'O brethren, hark!
Ye know not what ye say; your minds are dark.
O ye of little faith, I show you then!
By his great power I show you. Watch with me,
For he is here. Abase your heads; he lives;
It is his will I do his will, and show
The power of God in that he once hath lived
And died, but lives to work his glory still,-
To work his wish, unargued, undisturbed,
Without resistance or appeal or blame,
Upon the creature which his hands have made.
Were it his choice to raise yon maiden now
From out the coffin of her bed, and bid
Her step,-or live; it means the same,-what then?
Is that too much for him to do? What now?
Is that too hard? Increase your faith! Behold!'


Awake, asleep, adream, or all, or none,
What ailéd Petronilla? The world spun
Like a frail spindle in a woman's hands.
And all her breath went from her, and her sight,
At the faint fancy of her father, still,
Alone, alight within the room; as solemn
And sad and glad as had a vision been
Of a choice taper set to spend itself,
And blaze and waste upon an altar's brow,
Not taught nor knowing wherefore,-burning out,
Since that 's a taper's nature, and enough.
And faint the fancy of his face, if his
It were. And faint the fancy of his voice,
Which lost its way, so Petronilla thought,
Or twice or thrice, before it bridged the bit
Of fanciful, faint sunlight which crawled in
Between his pitying, awful face and hers,
And 'Petronilla,' sighing softly, said,
And 'Petronilla!' ringing cried, 'Arise!
'Now, in the name of Christ who lived for thee,
I bid thee live, and rise, and walk!'
Erect,
Unaided, with a step of steel, she rose.
What should she do but rise? And walked; how else?
For God had said it, sent it, dropped it down,
The sweetest, faintest fancy of her life.
And fancying faintly how her feet dropped far
Below the dizzy dancing of her eyes,
Adown the listening floor; and fancying
How all the rising winds crept mutely up
The court, and put their arms around her neck
For joy; and how for joy the sun broke through
The visor which the envious day had held
Across his happy face, and kissed her hair;
And fancying faintly how those men shrank back,
And pulled their great gray beards at sight of her,
And nodded, as becometh holy men,
Approvingly, at wonders, as indeed
They 'd bade her walk themselves,-so musingly,
As she had been a fancy of herself,
She found herself live, warm and young, within
The borders of the live, warm world.
But still,
As faintly as a fancy fell the voice
Of Peter: 'Serve us, daughter, at the board.'
And dimly as a fancy served she them,
And sweetly as a fancy to and fro
Across the gold net of the lightening day
She passed and paused.
Caught in its meshes fast;
Tangled into the happy afternoon,
Tangled into the sense of life and youth,
Blind with the sense of motion, leap of health,
And wilderness of undiscovered joy,
Stood Petronilla. Down from out her hand
A little platter dropped, and down upon
Her hands her face dropped, broken like the ware
Of earth that sprinkled all the startled floor,
And down upon her knees her face and hands
Fell, clinging to each other; crouching there
At Peter's feet,-her father's feet,-she gave
One little, little longing cry,-no more;
And like the fancy of a cry,-so faint;
And like the angel of a cry,-so brave.
For Peter's face had lifted like the heavens,
Above the presence of the holy men,
Above the maiden serving in the sun,
Above-God help him!-God's own princely gift,
The pity which a father bears his child.
And far and calm as heaven is shone his smile,
And far and still as heaven is fell his voice,
Yet held a cadence like a prisoned pain,
As one twice-wrecked upon the same bare shore.
'The Lord hath chosen Petronilla. Hearken!
Whom he will choose, he chooseth: some to honor,
Some to dishonor; this to be and bear,
And that to dare and do; these bear his swords,
And these his chains. Nay, but, O man! what then?
Who art thou that shalt mould the mood of God,
Or search his meaning, or defy his will?
On Petronilla he will work his power.
O, what is Petronilla? What am I?
Nay, nay, my child, I tremble; this is wrong.
Thou moanest; that is strange, for he is here
To show his glory on thy young, bent head,
And little smile and hands. O, lift them up
Before him, while I speak the word he sent.
For, by the love of him who died for thee,
Commandment comes; and I must bid thee turn
And lay thee down upon thy patient bed
Again; for what am I, and what art thou?
So turn and lay thee down. Behold it, Lord!
'T is finished, Master! Petronilla, go.
God's hand is on thee, O my child; God's grace
Go with thee. Brethren, see! His will is done,
And shall be done upon us evermore.'
And there the wonder fell, so runs the tale;
For Petronilla turned her dumb as death,
And laid her down upon her empty bed,
Where a long sunbeam warm as life had curled;
And crept within it, white as sifted snow,
Nor ever raised her slender length again,
Nor ever dropped her foot upon the floor,
Nor ever felt the winds from up the court
Weave arms about her neck; nor ever found
Herself entangled more within the gold
Warp of the moving, merry world; nor once
Again knew even the pallid happiness
Which comes of serving holy men; nor felt
The leap of life within her shrivelled veins.
And there the legend breaks: what good or ill
Struck arms or folded wings about the heart
Of Petronilla; how fared she, prisoned
Behind the bars of that untragic woe,
The bearing of an old familiar fate
From which long use has rubbed the gilding out,
To which the wonted hours have set themselves
So sorely they can neither smile nor sigh
To think of it, but only drop the lids
Across their leaden eyes for wondering
What a glad chance an unworn grief must be;
What solemn musings marshalled in his mind
Who was the Rock on which Christ built a church
Of such as love nor son nor daughter more
Than him,-we know not; rude our guesses are,
And rough; and mar the shady, sacred hush
Which the raised fingers of the years enforce.


The story slips,-an echo like the voice
Of far-off, falling water yet unseen;
A puzzle, like our next-door neighbor's life;
A lesson which an angel on the wing
Might drop, but linger not to read to us,
Or mark the stint. Each heart steals forth alone
A little after twilight, and takes home
The leaf, the line, appointed unto it.