Henry Abbey: Verses about Water

I walked beside a quiet sea,
At starlight, while the west was gray
And clear, though faint and far away;
Through the stilled water, forth me,
Voices of bells came dreamily;
No breeze more manifest than they.

Some say a thousand years ago
There throve a city on an isle
Beyond the headland, mile on mile,
Which, in a night of fear and woe,
Sank in the glassy depth below—
Sank tower and dwelling, beam and tile.

And now, when twinkling skies are clear,
Withing the sunken city there,
The sad ghosts ring their past despair
Out on the mermen’s atmosphere—
Ring loudly all, that life may hear
Dead sadness stir the ample air.

To me this city is not strange;
I feel familiar with each gate,
Each tower and street unfortunate,
And, wheresoe’er I dwell or range,
Its mem’ry-picture does not change,
Limned by its stern destroyer, Fate.

Its labarums, on roof and mast,
Swam in the light with silken arms,
No wrathful wars, nor dread alarms,
The streeted splendor overcast;
But, on a throne of gems amassed,
Sat Pleasure with Circean charma.

Yet came the hour of loss and fear.
The city sank, tower, wall, and mart,
Its brittle site was rent apart,
And all went down that once was dear;
But oft, in loneliness, I hear
Its sunken bells ring in my heart.

I beat no note of vain regret.
My hope-wrought city of To-be.
Youth seen, upon the future’s sea,
Has vanished, and its sun is set;
But broader and diviner yet,
The city of Reality.

For, though its ways be paved with stone,
And hard and rough to toiling feet,
And though, in the accustomed street,
No blazoned garniture is known,
By Fate, God’s hand, His will is shown,
And love makes humble service sweet.

Drecker, a drawbridge keeper, opened wide
The dangerous gate to let the vessel through;
His little son was standing by his side,
Above Passaic River deep and blue,
While in the distance, like a moan of pain,
Was heard the whistle of the coming train.

At once brave Drecker worked to swing it back,
The gate-like bridge that seems a gate of death;
Nearer and nearer, on the slender track,
Came the swift engine, puffing its white breath.
Then, with a shriek, the loving father saw
His darling boy fall headlong from the draw!

Either at once down in the stream to spring
And save his son, and let the living freight
Rush on to death, or to his work to cling,
And leave his boy unhelped to meet his fate-
Which should he do? Were you as he was tried,
Would not your love outweigh all else beside?

And yet the child to him was full as dear
As yours may be to you-the light of eyes,
A presence like a brighter atmosphere,
The household star that shone in love's mild skies-
Yet, side by side with duty stern and grim,
Even his child became as naught to him.

For Drecker, being great of soul and true,
Held to his work and did not aid his boy,
Who, in the deep, dark water, sank from view.
Then from the father's life went forth all joy;
But, as he fell back pallid from his pain,
Across the bridge in safety shot the train.

And yet the man was poor, and in his breast
Flowed no ancestral blood of king or lord;
True greatness needs no title and no crest
To win from men just honor and reward!
Nobility is not of rank, but mind,
And is inborn and common in our kind.

He is most noble whose humanity
Is least corrupted: to be just and good
The birthright of the lowest born may be.
Say what we can, we are one brotherhood,
And, rich or poor, or famous or unknown,
True hearts are noble, and true hearts alone.

When might made right in days of chivalry,
Hatot and Ringsdale, over claims of land,
Darkened their lives with stormy enmity,
And for their cause agreed this test to stand:
To fight steel-clad till either's blood made wet
The soil disputed; and a time was set.

But Hatot sickened when the day drew near,
And strength lay racked that once had been his boast.
Then Agnes, his fair daughter, for the fear
That in proud honor he would suffer most,
Resolved to do the battle in his name,
And leave no foothold for the tread of Shame.

She, at the gray, first coming of the day,
Shook off still sleep, and from her window gazed.
The west was curtained with night's dark delay;
A cold and waning moon in silence raised
It's bent and wasted finger o'er the vale,
And seemed sad Death that beckoned, wan and pale.

But Hope sails by the rugged coasts of Fear;
For while awakened birds sang round her eaves,
Our Agnes armed herself with knightly gear
Of rattling hauberk and of jointed greaves;
Withal she put on valor, that to feel
Does more for victory than battle-steel.

She had a sea of hair, whose odor sweet,
And golden softness, in a moonless tide
Ran rippling toward the white coast of her feet;
But as beneath a cloud the sea may hide,
Son in her visored, burnished helmet, there,
Under the cloud-like plume, was hid her hair.

Bearing the mighty lance, sharp-spiked and long,
She at the sill bestrode her restless steed.
Her kneeling soul prayed God to make her strong,
And prayer is nearest path to every need.
She clattered on the bridge, and on apace,
And met dread Ringsdale at the hour and place.

They clash in onslaught; steel to steel replies;
The champed bit foams; rider and ridden fight.
Each feels the grim and brutal instinct rise
That in forefront of havoc takes delight.
The lightning of the lances flashed and ran,
Until, at last, the maid unhorsed the man.

Then on her steed, she, bright-eyed, flushed, and glad,
Her helmet lifted in the sylvan air;
And from the iron concealment that it had,
The noiseless ocean of her languid hair
Broke in disheveled waves: the cross and heart,
Jewels that latched her vest, she drew apart.

'Lo, it is Agnes, even I!' she said,
'Who with my trusty lance have thrust thee down!
For hate of shame the fray I hazarded;
And yet, not me the victory should crown,
But God, the Merciful, who helps the right,
And lent me strength to conquer in the fight.'

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.

O Sun, toward which the earth's uneven face
Turns ever round, strong Emperor of Day,
To thee I bring my tribute of large praise;
And yet not I; but that which in me is,
The life in life, conscience, suggester, muse.

Not as to Quetzalcoatl came of old
Fane-climbing worshipers with trump and drum,
And human victims bared for sacrifice
On dizzy Aztec altars; nor, indeed,
As to Apollo of the golden hair
And fiery chariot, who darted war
Against the lords and following of Night,
Come I, O Sun, to thee.

Nor like the Gheber throngs
Who on the eastern shore of ocean bow,
Kissing the trail of thy departing robes,
Do I, to thy down-going, offer prayer.

I, worshipper no less, but not of thee,
Rising at cool-breathed, night-releasing dawn,
Thank the unseen All-Giver for thy day,
And see in thee a ray-strung instrument
Swept by His hand for harmonies of life.

Not I alone salute thy springing beam;
The mountains do thee homage first of all,
And hinder, with their bold and rocky brows,
Thy swift, protracted ray.

Thou callest up
The blooming new from out the withered old,
And givest consciousness to soulless things.
Thou sendest forth the lightning-arrowed cloud;
And the coy breeze, a wordless whisperer,
Doth interchange the breath of man and tree.
Thou dost invite the robin from the south;
Thou whitenest the harvest for our need;
Thou fillest out the youthful cheeks of fruit
With sappy wholesomeness, and dost, at last,
Print one broad sunset on autumnal woods-
In rubricated letters making known
A sad and sylvan moral of decay.

To tread where populations that are dust
Eked out their changeful lives, and left behind
Little beyond a ruin and a name,
Men trust the brief forebearance of the sea;
But thou, above, silent, immutable,
Art long familiar with the scenes they seek,
And hast beheld all times and nations fade.

Tho' like the leaves the generations die,
And tho' the ages in the past recede,
Spun by this pendulous swift wheel of earth
In its fixed orbit by thy influence,
Thou makest man endure; he ceases not;
But stands with steadfast feet upon all time;
Nor shall he cease while yet tomorrow holds
Its one remove away.

Our yesterdays
Are like a lonely and a ruined land
Wherein a breeze of recollection sighs-
A fading land to which is no return.

Uncertainly we bode the life to come,
Yet deem we stand upon the topmost height
Material; but this, that thinks and dreams-
This many-tided vaster sea within-
Baffles itself, and knows not what it is,
Save that its being is enlinked with thine.

And thou, O Sun, dost look on many worlds-
On eight-mooned Saturn with his shining rings,
On Jupiter, On Venus, pearl of dusk-
Thou dost behold thy worlds, and lay on them
Thy ray's restoring finger: they receive
Their sight, and go rejoicing on their way,
Changing, we think, thy light and heat to life.
But we, bound down, shut in on one small star,
Shall not know fully of those other spheres
Until the soul, up-drawn by rays Divine,
Out of this seed-like body blooms on high.

What pleasant dreams, what memories, rise,
When filled with care, or pricked in pride,
I wander down in solitude
And reach the beach by Hudson's tide!
The thick-boughed hemlocks mock my sigh;
The azure heaven is filled with smiles;
The water, lisping at my feet,
From weary thought my heart beguiles,
By Hudson's tide.

I watch a slow-wing'd water-fowl
Pursue her finny quest, and bear
The gasping silver of her prey
Far up th' untrodden heights of air.
In quiet depths I note the course
Of dreamy clouds against the sky,
And see a flock of wild-ducks float,
Like water-lilies nearer by,
On Hudson's tide.

The mullein lifts, along the bank,
Its velvet spires of yellow bloom;
And there a darting humming-bird
Gleams in the cedars' verdant gloom.
By basins of the brook that flings
Its dewy diamonds far below
Into the ripples' pigmy hands,
Sweet maiden-hair and cresses grow,
By Hudson's tide.

I wander on the pebbled beach,
And think of boyhood's careless hours
When, in my boat, I used to float
Along the bank and gather flowers;
Or catch the wind, and swiftly dash
Across the white-caps in their play,
And feel their wet resistance break
Against the prow in pearly spray,
On Hudson's tide.

And once, in those lost days, I lay
Becalmed with limp and drowsy sail,
And drifted where Esopus Isle
Mid-stream reclines along the vale;
He slowly rose, and stood erect,
His giant body all of stone,
And cast his eyes, as from the skies,
On me that drifted there alone
On Hudson's tide.

Only his feet were lost to view,
And cleft the current ebbing down;
His lofty headdress, plumed with trees,
Touched the blue zenith with its crown.
The river's self was but his bow
That lay neglected on the ground;
Like down, or fur, the soft leaves were,
That, as a blanket, wrapped him round,
On Hudson's tide.

I had not been surprised if he
Had mounted on some thunder-cloud
And rushed at Ontiora's knee,
With sudden war-whoop sharp and loud.
But he was mild, and blandly smiled,
And spoke with accents sweet and low.
His words with kindness glanced and fell,
And seemed like music or the flow
Of Hudson's tide.

'Enjoy the river and thy days,'
He said, 'nor heed what others say.
What matters either blame or praise,
If one in peace pursue his way?
The river heeds not; heed not thou:
Cut deep the channel of thy life.
Thou hast a fair exemplar there:
With what serene indifference rife
Is Hudson's tide!

How level lies its changeful floor,
Broad-sweeping to the distant sea!
What Titan grandeur marks the shore!
What beauty covers rock and tree!
What ample bays and branching streams,
What curves abrupt for glad surprise!
And how supreme the Artist is
Who paints it all for loving eyes
By Hudson's tide!'

I woke; and since, long years have passed;
By Hudson's tide my days go by:
Its varied beauty fills my heart.
Of fairer scenes what need have I?
And when my boat of life and thought
Shall quit the harbor of my breast,
And seek the silent, unknown sea,
I trust this dust in peace shall rest
By Hudson's tide.