Guy Wetmore Carryl: Verses about Silence

Upon the shore, a mile or more
From traffic and confusion,
An oyster dwelt, because he felt
A longing for seclusion;
Said he: 'I love the stillness of
This spot. It's like a cloister.'
(These words I quote because, you note,
They rhyme so well with oyster.)

A prying rat, believing that
She needed change of diet,
In search of such disturbed this much-
To-be-desired quiet.
To say the least, this tactless beast
Was apt to rudely roister:
She tapped his shell, and called him-well,
A name that hurt the oyster.

'I see,' she cried, 'you're open wide,
And, searching for a reason,
September's here, and so it's clear
That oysters are in season.'
She smiled a smile that showed this style
Of badinage rejoiced her,
Advanced a pace with easy grace,
And
sniffed
the silent oyster.

The latter's pride was sorely tried,
He thought of what he
could
say,
Reflected what the common lot
Of vulgar molluscs
would
say;
Then caught his breath, grew pale as death,
And, as his brow turned moister,
Began to close, and nipped her nose!
Superb, dramatic oyster!

We note with joy that oi polloi,
Whom maidens bite the thumb at,
Are apt to try some weak reply
To things they should be dumb at.
THE MORAL, then, for crafty men
Is: When a maid has voiced her
Contemptuous heart, don't think you're smart,
But shut up-like the oyster.

The light of suns unseen, through depths of sea descending,
Within her street awakes the ghost of noon
To bide its little hour and die unheeded, blending
Into her night that knows nor stars nor moon.
The hurrying feet of storms that trample o'er the surges
Arouse no echo in these silent deeps;
No thunder thrills her peace, no sword of lightning scourges
The dim, dead calm where lost Atlantis sleeps.

Long leagues above her courts the stately days advancing
Kindle new dawns and see new sunsets dim;
And, white and weary-eyed, the old stars, backward glancing,
Reluctant pause upon the ocean's rim.
But she, of dawns and dusks forgotten and forgetful,
Broods in her depths with slumber-weighted eyes;
For all her splendid past unanxious, unregretful,
She waits the call that bids her wake and rise.

No mortal voice she hears. The strong young ships, full-freighted,
With hopes of men, with women's sighs and tears,
Above her blue-black walls and portals golden-gated
Sweep on unnoted through the speeding years
Until at last they come, as still in silence resting
She keeps her vigil underneath the waves,
By tempests tossed and torn, and weary of their questing,
Slow sliding downward past her to their graves.

So side by side they lie in ever gaining number,
The sunken ships, by fate or fortune led
To this, their final port, resistless sent to slumber
Until the sea shall render up her dead
Shall render up her dead to all their olden glories,
Shall render up what now so well she keeps,
The buried lives and loves, the strange, unfinished stories
Of these dim depths where lost Atlantis sleeps!

To eastward ringing, to westward winging, o'er mapless miles of sea,
On winds and tides the gospel rides that the furthermost isles are free;
And the furthermost isles make answer, harbor, and height, and hill,
Breaker and beach cry, each to each, ''Tis the Mother who calls! Be still!'
Mother! new-found, beloved, and strong to hold from harm,
Stretching to these across the seas the shield of her sovereign arm,
Who summoned the guns of her sailor sons, who bade her navies roam,
Who calls again to the leagues of main, and who calls them this time home!

And the great gray ships are silent, and the weary watchers rest;
The black cloud dies in the August skies, and deep in the golden west
Invisible hands are limning a glory of crimson bars,
And far above is the wonder of a myriad wakened stars!
Peace! As the tidings silence the strenuous cannonade,
Peace at last! is the bugle-blast the length of the long blockade;
And eyes of vigil weary are lit with the glad release,
From ship to ship and from lip to lip it is 'Peace! Thank God for peace!'

Ah, in the sweet hereafter Columbia still shall show
The sons of these who swept the seas how she bade them rise and go;
How, when the stirring summons smote on her children's ear,
South and North at the call stood forth, and the whole land answered 'Here!'
For the soul of the soldier's story and the heart of the sailor's song
Are all of those who meet their foes as right should meet with wrong,
Who fight their guns till the foeman runs, and then, on the decks they trod,
Brave faces raise, and give the praise to the grace of their country's God!

Yes, it is good to battle, and good to be strong and free,
To carry the hearts of a people to the uttermost ends of sea,
To see the day steal up the bay, where the enemy lies in wait,
To run your ship to the harbor's lip and sink her across the strait:—
But better the golden evening when the ships round heads for home,
And the long gray miles slip swiftly past in a swirl of seething foam,
And the people wait at the haven's gate to greet the men who win!
Thank God for peace! Thank God for peace, when the great gray ships come in!

Magician hands through long, laborious nights
Have made these princely palaces to loom
Whiter than are the city's legion lights,
On threads unseen stretched out across the gloom.
Reared in an hour, for one brief hour to reign,
The proud pavilions watchful hold in fee
A world's achievements, where the stately Seine
Slides slowly past her bridges to the sea.

Mute and memorial, as on either bank
She sees the marvel worked before her eyes,
Beholds as in a vision, rank on rank,
Pagoda, dome, and campanile rise,
Like to a mother scowling on a child
Sceptred and crowned to make a queen of May,
The Seine, that sorrowed not for France defiled,
Past France triumphant frowning goes her way.

Yet, dragged reluctant from these ransomed shores,
Upon her tide, that sullenly and slow
Creeps channelward, the unapparent scores
Of history's spectres disregarded go;
And as the Empress City gains the seat
Of that imperial throne to which at last
By devious ways she comes, beneath her feet
The Seine in silence blots away the past.

Blots out the warning of cathedral bells,
The night of snowy scarfs, of swords, of staves,
The muffled bass of tumbril wheels that tells
Of mortal men that dig immortal graves;
Blots out the faces, calmly unafraid,
Of prince and peasant, courtesan and queen,
When men made martyrs and were martyrs made,
When France meant Hell and God meant Guillotine!

Like pilgrims whom a holy city calls,
The peoples bring their miracles to her;
The world of peace lays down within her walls
Its gifts of gold, and frankincense, and myrrh:
The West, wide-eyed, alert, intrepid, young,
With rush of shuttles and the song of steam;
The East, that, lotus-eating, gropes among
The half-remembered fragments of her dream.

From minarets the muezzins call to prayer,
From violins the mad mazurkas rise,
And western rangers watch in wonder, where
The camel boy his listless lash applies:
And nations warring, or that late have warred,
Their feuds forgot, their battles under ban,
Proclaim above the clamor of the sword
The pæan of the mastery of man.

Man! Born to grovel in a squalid cave,
Whose hand it is that every door unbars,
Whose cables cleave three thousand miles of wave,
Whose lenses tear their secrets from the stars!
Man! Naked, dull, unarmed, barbaric, dumb,
What magic path is this that he had trod?
Through what refining furnace hath he come,
This demi-brute become a demi-god?

As some great river merges every song
Of tributary waters in its own,
To blend in turn its music in the strong
Full measure of the ocean's monotone-
So this triumphant anthem, skyward sent
Man's marvellous finale to presage,
Within its thunderous diapason blent,
The keynote holds of each succeeding age!

For her the whip-lash sings above the slaves
Who bend despairing to the galley's oars;
The hoarse hail rings, across the sunlit waves,
Of vikings bound to unexploited shores:
Here is the chant of ransomed Israel's joy,
The moan of Egypt stricken in her home,
The challenge of the Grecian host to Troy,
The shout of Huns before the gates of Rome:

The oaths of sailors on the galleon's decks,
The welcome of Columbus to the land,
The prayers upon the doomed Armada's wrecks,
The rallying cry of Braddock's final stand;
Trafalgar's cannon, and the bugle's calls
Where France's armies thread the Alpine gorge,
The Campbell's pipes heard near to Lucknow's walls,
The patriot's hymn that hallowed Valley Forge!

All, all are here! The feeble and the strong;
The spoiled beside the victors of the spoil
Of twenty centuries swell the sacred song
Of human triumph won by human toil!
Up and yet upward to the heaven's wide arch
The thunders of the great thanksgiving roll
To mark the way of that majestic march
Of mortal man toward his Maker's goal!

And while the echo of her folly dies,
As in the hills the sound of village bells,
Upward from Paris to the April skies
Her hymn of rehabilitation swells;
From dark to dawn, from weakness back to strength,
The pendulum majestically swings,
And o'er the ashes of her past at length
The phoenix of her future spreads its wings!