Henry Abbey: Verses about Tears

How mild and fair the day, dear love! and in these garden ways
The lingering dahlias to the sun their hopeless faces raise.
The buckwheat and the barley, once so bonny and so blithe,
Fall before the rhythmic labor of the cradler's gleaming scythe.

Behold the grapes and all the fruits that Autumn gives today,
As robed in red and gold, she rules, the Empress of Decay!
Out to the orchard come with me, among the apple trees;
No dragon guards the laden boughs of our Hesperides.

This golden pear, my darling, that I hold up to your mouth,
Is a hanging-nest of sweetness; but the birds are winging south.
The purses of the chestnuts, by the chilly-fingered Frost,
Were opened in his frolic, and their triple hoards are lost.

Last night you heard the tempest, love-the wind-entangled pines,
The spraying waves, the sobbing sky that lowered in gloomy lines;
The storm was like a hopeless soul, that stood beside the sea,
And wept in dismal rain and moaned for what could never be

I shall not say, our life is all in vain,
For peace may cheer the desolated hearth;
But well I know that, on this weary earth,
Round each joy-island is a sea of pain-
And the days go by.

We watch our hopes, far flickering in the night,
Once radiant torches, lighted in our youth,
To guide, through years, to some broad morn of truth;
But these go out and leave us with no light-
And the days go by.

We see the clouds of summer go and come,
And thirsty verdure praying them to give:
We cry, 'O Nature, tell us why we live!'
She smiles with beauty, but her lips are numb-
And the days go by.

Yet what are we? We breathe, we love, we cease:
Too soon our little orbits change and fall:
We are Fate's children, very tired; and all
Are homeless strangers, craving rest and peace-
And the days go by.

I only ask to drink experience deep;
And, in the sad, sweet goblet of my years,
To find love poured with all its smiles and tears,
And quaffing this, I too shall sweetly sleep-
While the days go by.

In Lyons, in the mart of that French town,
Years since, a woman, leading a fair child,
Craved a small alms of one who, walking down
The thoroughfare, caught the child's glance, and smiled
To see, behind its eyes, a noble soul.
He paused, but found he had no coin to dole.

His guardian angel warned him not to lose
This chance of pearl to do another good;
So as he waited, sorry to refuse
The asked-for penny, there aside he stood,
And with his hat held as by limb the nest
He covered his kind face, and sang his best.

The sky was blue above, and all the lane
Of commerce where the singer stood was filled,
And many paused, and, listening, paused again,
To hear the voice that through and through them thrilled.
I think the guardian angel helped along
That cry for pity woven in a song.

The singer stood between the beggars there,
Before a church, and, overhead, the spire,
A slim, perpetual finger in the air
Held toward heaven, land of the heart's desire,
As if an angel, pointing up, had said,
'Yonder a crown awaits this singer's head.'

The hat of its stamped brood was emptied soon
Into the woman's lap, who drenched with tears
Her kiss upon the hand of help: 't was noon,
And noon in her glad heart drove forth her fears.
The singer, pleased, passed on, and softly thought,
'Men will not know by whom this deed was wrought.'

But when at night he came upon the stage,
Cheer after cheer went up from that wide throng,
And flowers rained on him: naught could assuage
The tumult of the welcome, save the song
The he had sweetly sung, with covered face,
For the two beggars in the market-place.

All night I cried in agony
Of grief and bitter loss,
And wept for Him whom they had nailed
Against the shameful cross.

But in the morning, in the dark,
Before the east was gray,
I hastened to the sepulcher
Wherein the body lay.

The stone was rolled away I found;
And filled with fear and woe,
I straight to His disciples ran,
Thereof to let them know.

I said, 'The body of the Lord
Is not within the tomb;
For they have taken him away
Unnoticed in the gloom.

'Where have they laid him? who can tell?
Alas! we know not where.'
The words were slower than my tears
To utter my despair.

Then two disciples, coming forth,
With hurried footsteps sped,
Till, at the garden sepulcher,
They found as I had said.

They saw the door-stone rolled away,
The empty tomb and wide,
The linen face-cloth folded up
And grave-clothes laid aside.

The morn was cold; I heeded not,
With sorrow wrapped about;
Till both were gone to tell the rest,
I stood and wept without.

Then stooping down and looking in,
I saw two angels there,
Whose faces shone with love and joy,
And were divinely fair.

In white effulgence garmented,
That showed the hewn rock's grain,
One at the head, one at the feet,
Sat where my Lord had lain.

To look on them I was afraid,
Their splendor was so great:
They said to me, 'Why weepest thou?'
In tones compassionate.

'I weep,' I said, 'for that my Lord
Is taken hence away,
And that, alas! I do not know
Where he is laid today.'

I sadly rose, and turning back,
Beheld One standing by,
And knew the lily of the dawn
Unfolded in the sky.

But in the pale, uncertain light,
Too blind with tears to see,
I thought it was the gardener
There at the tomb with me.

It soothed me much, the day before,
To say it in my mind,
That in a garden they had laid
The Flower of all mankind.

Until Thy fragrance fell on me,
A thrall to sin was I;
O Flower of Peace! O Flower of Grace!
Thy love is liberty!

But they had taken him away,
Who is of sin the price;
I held the gift that I had brought,
Of perfume, oil, and spice.

I had not staid to braid my hair,
And, in the early breeze,
The long, black luster, damp with tears,
Down fluttered to my knees.

I dimly saw the gardener;
In grief I bowed my head;
'Why weepest thou? whom seekest thou?'
He softly, gently said.

'O sir, if thou have borne him hence,'
I eagerly replied,
'Tell me where thou hast laid my Lord,
Whom they have crucified,

'And I will take him thence away;
Oh, tell me where he lies!'
'Mary!' he said-I knew the voice,
And turned in glad surprise.

For he was not the gardener
That I advanced to greet;
I cried, 'Rabboni!' joyfully,
And knelt at Jesus' feet.

Moons on moons ago,
In the sleep, or night, of the moon,
When evil spirits have power,
The monster, Ontiora,
Came down in the dreadful gloom.
The monster came stalking abroad,
On his way to the sea for a bath,
For a bath in the salt, gray sea.

In Ontiora's breast
Was the eyrie of the winds,
Eagles of measureless wing,
Whose screeching, furious swoop
Startled the sleeping dens.
His hair was darkness unbound,
Thick, and not mooned nor starred.
His head was plumed with rays
Plucked from the sunken sun.

To him the forests of oak,
Of maple, hemlock, and pine,
Were as grass that a bear treads down.
He trod them down as he came,
As he came from his white-peak'd tent,
At whose door, ere he started abroad,
He drew a flintless arrow
Across the sky's strip'd bow,
And shot at the evening star.

He came like a frowning cloud,
That fills and blackens the west.
He was wroth at the bright-plumed sun,
And his pale-faced wife, the moon,
With their twinkling children, the stars;
But he hated the red-men all,
The Iroquois, fearless and proud,
The Mohegans, stately and brave,
And trod them down in despite,
As a storm treads down the maize.
He trod the red-men down,
Or drove them out of the land
As winter drives the birds.

When near the King of Rivers,
The river of many moods,
To Ontiora thundered
Manitou out of a cloud.
Between the fountains crystal
And the waters that reach to the sky,
Manitou, Spirit of Good,
To the man-shaped monster spoke:
'You shall not go to the sea,
But be into mountains changed,
And wail in the blast, and weep
For the red-men you have slain.
You shall lie on your giant back
While the river rises and falls,
And the tide of years on years
Flows in from a boundless sea.'

Then Ontiora replied:
'I yield to the heavy doom;
Yet what am I but a type
Of a people who are to come?
Who as with a bow will shoot
And bring the stars to their feet,
And drive the red-man forth
To the Land of the Setting Sun.'

So Ontiora wild,
By eternal silence touched,
Fell backward in a swoon,
And was changed into lofty hills,
The Mountains of the Sky.

This is the pleasant sense
Of Ontiora's name,
'The Mountains of the Sky.'
His bones are rocks and crags,
His flesh is rising ground,
His blood is the sap of trees.

On his back with one knee raised,
He lies with his face to the sky,
A monstrous human shape
In the Catskills high and grand.
And from the valley below,
Where the slow tide ebbs and flows,
You can mark his knee and breast,
His forehead beetling and vast,
His nose and retreating chin.
But his eyes, they say, are lakes,
Whose tears flow down in streams
That seam and wrinkle his cheeks,
For the fate he endures, and for shame
Of the evil he did, as he stalked
In the vanquished and hopeless moon,
Moons on moons ago.