Books: Perpetual Light
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William Rose Benet >> Perpetual Light
Why that white work from the crag and the hands of the sculptor
Smitten in a moment to rubble as earth heaves her breast?
Why that intangible glory, remote but God-in-us,
Golden and crumbling to pathos of dusk in the west?
Why the pure curve of the arm and the breast of a mother,
Yes, and the proud head of man held erect on the mere
Void of blue heaven,--the seas and the ships and the trumpets,
Towers and horizons, all shouting? The answer is here,
Here in thy breast, son of man, sorry son of the ages.
Death will make clear.
Lord of the mighty, as Lord of the weak and the lowly,
Lord of the sage and the madman, of clean and unclean;
Breeder of suns and of excrement, loathly and holy,
Graving the skull with the pity of all that had been,--
Death, oh thou graver of countenance knighted austerely,
Yea, on the pitiful clay, such poor flesh in its fear
Of God and the soul and the singing of stars that may teach us
Wisdom at last,--oh thou ultimate searcher and seer,
Beckon--I follow. At last on my lips set thy finger;
Thou wilt make clear!
SUNLIGHT
Sunlight is full of age.
Ah, so old!
Older than any sage
Has ever told!
The draught our Lord quaffed up
To the bloody lees;
The aching hemlock cup
Of Socrates.
It is a golden sword;
The veil of the Grail;
The unfathomable Word
That will not fail.
Along a summer street
It often lies
Shimmering to repeat
Immortal paradise.
As a mountain lake can mirror
The exalted with the near,
Heaven's wonder and terror--
Both shine here.
It says all things in nought;
And, saying them, passes
To gild like gentle thought
Trees and grasses.
It sways upon the ocean
Like a god asleep
Where the waves' wandering motion
Hides the deep.
It shafts through forest aisles
Like miracle;
It trembles and smiles
On the lip of Hell.
It has touched Greece and Rome
And Persia's might--
And stirs the vines of home
With flickering light.
It lay on Cain's hot neck
As he stooped to slay.
David's stone from the beck
Glittered its day.
Cleopatra gazed upon it
Through shadowed lids.
High halls they built to shun it
In the Pyramids.
It opens babies' hands
That crawl to snatch its beams.
Through hovels in ancient lands
Its splendor streams.
Eternal wells of light
Its largeness shows.
There shall be no more night
Its conscience knows.
It is a smiling stranger,
A fainting hour,
Love and peace and danger
And the mock of power.
Yet have I said no word
Of what it is.
Only--my heart is stirred
By its mysteries!
AND A LONG WAY OFF HE SAW FAIRYLAND
I lived once with fairies,
(And I know they're _true_ fairies!)
One lifts laughing eyes
In a way I most admire.
Truth goes by contraries,
For you don't know they're fairies
Till there isn't any firelight,
Nor song beside the fire.
One fairy's small to hold,
And her hair is fairy gold.
One's a feminine fairy
With unusual address.
One fairy's just Jim.
You just look and love him,
With his nonsense and his laugh
And his sturdy steadfastness.
And the fairy queen I knew
Has eyes that are blue,
Has moods that are decided,
And courage that denies
It is ever brave at all.
She mends them when they fall;
She tends the little fairies
In absurd, delightful wise.
They bring her thoughts like birds
And very funny words
And mountainous decisions
And things to make you cry.
But, after all, it's airy
In the house of a fairy,
With a face like that to sob to
And those arms close by.
I lived once with a fairy.
I was wild and contrary.
I'm _still_ wild and contrary.
But her heart's a heart for two.
She sees rooms of starry graces,
Kind firelight on our faces,
And a watch on sleeping fairies,
And the fairy home come true.
Once again, with gentle evening
And the dreaming trees, come true.
IN TIME OF TROUBLE
In memory of your desolate eyes I know
That words are words, with nothing to gainsay
The testimony of pain, the heavy day;
But searching in the ruins of overthrow
I gathered you this wreath that now I show;
Small and barbaric brightness on the gray,--
Glimmering irony, perhaps. I lay
It down before your eyes, and softly go.
You are a vista blundered on in Arden
Where the fool grasps his bells, that he may hark;
A sudden skyward path where cliffs are warden
Of waves that foam to reach a high tide-mark;
Whisper of blossoms in a midnight garden;
A fountain whitely flowering on the dark.
ANOMALY
Men who are fain to change, look wizenedly
Into the flowing mirror of your thought
And see on what strange reefs your joys are caught
And contemplate your vexed variety:
Grief that was hooded for eternity
Casting the stole for spangled domino,
Awe on its pinnacle jigging heel and toe.
Love laughing into hate and mockery.
What shoots the warp to patterns that reblend
And spread and fade,--and working out what end?
In time of pain why be as voluble
As one who tells an endless useless sum,
Yet simple clay, pallid and deaf and dumb
Through the one moment forging Heaven or Hell?
THE LOVER
I rooted silver stars from heaven in showers,
Rived adamant to show an azure gap,
Captured the very Psyche in my cap,
Filched from the sack of Time six diamond hours.
Hyperborean in my crown of flowers
I ran and leapt the cliff of thunderclap
Plunging through green sea-light where bronze fronds wrap
Crumbling pearl palaces and coral bowers.
Now--"Could I move, all humankind would pant
Even to think such effort! Could my songs
Cry out, dusked heaven would shudder at my wrongs!"
I moaned, and then looked flushed and palpitant
On Love's rapt face, that frenzied flagellant
Wielding with zeal the welting golden thongs.
JUDGMENT
Down the deep steps of stone through iron doors
I entered that red room and saw the rack,
And round the walls I saw them sit in black,
The immutable and urgent councillors.
My heart was clotted with an old remorse,
Despair a vulture fast upon my back.
I saw my body like an empty sack
Tossed disarticulate on grated floors.
But even a wilder wonder at this crime
Tried in the dungeon of my own grim life
Woke, as your memory awoke with tune
That crazed the very walls. I stared through Time
Like to a man who stands with smoking knife
Above his dead, and sees the rising moon.
UNFORGOTTEN
Wakening in the night, the pain that slumber
Strikes with her mace of silence dead and dumb
Loomed over me and, formless, said, "I come!
Bringing illusions lost beyond all number.
Rigid you lie, yet for a little cumber
This flaming world, where some die proudly, some
Glitter like granite, or dream millenium."
It left me toiled in mountainous clouds of umber.
I lay sustaining all the old emotion,
Numbed as beneath the blows of iron cars.
Then slowly, slowly some supreme devotion
Crept down, and drew me out of ageless wars,
Like a dear voice heard over darkened ocean
When all dim heaven is trembling into stars.
THE PALE DANCER
My heart's a still shore; all the golden sails are gone.
A pale, silver floor in the hugeness of dawn
My heart lies once more, and the little ripples beat
This small, idle tune, like the fall of elves' feet,
"Oh, come, airy dancer--come dance on us, Sweet!"
She comes like a breeze in the midnight of May.
The tumbling of the seas makes a tune far away.
She comes with closed eyes, with light footsteps she nears,
And she sings the low song that each lipping ripple hears.
"In love there is laughter, and after--come tears!"
She dances like the moonlight--light, languorous, aswoon.
Her face floats uplifted, a flower to the moon,
To the moon pale in heaven and the dawn coming slow,
And under her measure the ripples breathe low,
"The dancer, the dancer from ages ago!"
Oh, dance me no more! Witching dancer be gone!
For my heart's a still shore in the hugeness of dawn,
And some answer is thrilling, is trembling for me
In the eerie still brightness of heaven and sea,
And the little ripples whisper, "What thing can it be?"
Pale dancer, pale dancer, atread without breath,
Majestic and yearning and brooding as death,
Oh, passion of my heart, oh, enchanted despair
That glides before God like a bird from a snare,
Return, then, return to me, clothe me with care!--
But the beautiful dancer has vanished in air.
PREMONITION
(_Written in absence and unaware of her desperate condition, a few
days before her death_.)
This is the song I shall make.
Love with white wing bids it wake.
Love with dark wing bids it die.
Trailing to dimness, the flood of my passion,
Glittering to darkness, the necklace I fashion
To loop on the breast of the sky!
I have climbed high, even I,
Following a light through a rift in the blue,
Following a silence that pierced like a cry,
Following the image of you.
This is the song I will fashion for you.
Oh ragged-jawed, jagged-toothed Dragon of Time,
What will you do with the weft of my rhyme,
You who have pawed every jewel in slime--
_You!_
No, in this space between darkness and light,
Holiness gleams like a rift in the night
Here where I stand and command the full height,
All of the glory and gall ...
Wrestle and struggle and surge for the height--
And fall....
Pain, your pale hands are clenched loose in my hair.
My heaving breast to your bleakness is bare.
Each of the other as brothers aware,
Backward and forward we strain.
What is this struggle, why my despair,
Pain?
God is somewhere in the night.
Listen! The night is so still
God could be heard if he walked on the height
As a man at night will walk on a hill
Lulled by the darkness and dim.
Heaven is the hill under Him.
Is there not glimmer of light at its rim?
Pain? Ah the struggle again.
Drive then your darts in me, drive!
Pang after pang of it, Pain.
Wounds that will wake me alive.
Listen! The night is a hive
Of sound like a swarming of myriad bees.
Drive the gold darts in me, whet them and drive,
Pain! But his shadow flees.
What is this plain, whose these shapes that connive
Peace?
Peace? But your garment is smirched
With grime and the stain of blood!
Peace! When I struggled and searched,
Ah, when have I understood?
I who was broken and spent,
I who was baffled, and meant
Only to wrench my release!
Who are Those crouching behind you, so still and intent,
Peace?
Memories? Why do they haunt?
Lust and vainglory and pride?
What is it now of my victory they want?
What of you, Peace, the crucified?
This is the height. Can they scan it?
This is no space-festering planet.
This is no rack of vain tears!
Even a dream, can they cloud it and ban it,--
Fears?
Years go over me, cloud me and cover me,
Years--haunted years.
Only one thing I say over and over
Under that catafalque glooming to cover
My shame and disaster and wraith of faith.
Only one thing I say over and over,
Your name, said under my breath.
There, like a storm on the sea line, you hover,
Death!
Ripples and eddies and whirlpools of light
Swirling like veils on the face of the night.
Down from the infinite, down from the height
Stricken and whirled,
Swept like a leaf on the blast of the night
Back to the world!
Breathing beside me--your breath!
Listen! The night is so still
God could be heard if he talked with Death
As a man at night might talk on a hill
Gently and sad to a friend
Of the things we always intend ...
Night without end for Him--_night without end_...!
This is the song I have made
Of the night when I was afraid,
Of the night too breathless, too still,
When I lay like stone--alone--alone,
However near me the love we kill.
What of the love we kill?
Pride that died and darkness that grew!
This is the song I began to wreathe ...
Ah, but God remembered,--it is not true!
_And you--you live, you breathe!_
AFTER
(Introductory Poem)
I
On Sunday in the sunlight
With brightness round her strown
And murmuring beauty of the sky
At last her very own,
She who had loved all children
And all high things and clean
Turned away to silentness
And bliss unseen.
Rending, blinding anguish,
Is all a man can know;
Yet still I kneel beside her
For she would have it so,
Kneel and pray beside her
In light she left behind--
Light and love in silentness,
Sight to the blind.
Oh living light burn through me!
Oh speak, as spoke to me
Her deep sweet eyes and faithful,
Voice on Calvary!
Oh light be near and shining,
Nearer than I guess,
And teach me that true language
Of silentness!
II
If now I fall away
From faith, may never day
Shine as it shone
With inmost sanctities
Of those sun-glittering trees--
We two alone.
The darkness toils and heaves.
The Wood of Glittering Leaves
You gave--you gave,
Dearest in life and death,
Dearest with every breath,
Lamp of the brave!
You came in sunlight, still
As God, with Whom your will
Was always one.
You knew me, and you knew
I read your presence through
That sacred sun.
League upon league of light,
As the train raced the night,
With night on me,
With pain that gripped and wrung
As the cars clashed and swung,--
I yet could see
The slim trees of that wood
Brighter than tears or blood,
Fairy with day;
That dark marsh land made bright,
Veiled in miraculous light,--
Your way!
I hold it fast. I hold
All that mysterious gold,
All that it weaves
Of Heaven to understand--
Our radiant bridal land
Of glittering leaves.
III
Honest hands to help, honest eyes to see,
Light that lives in God:
Such our dearest was, such will ever be
Under Heaven.
Nothing in this life gives to you and me
Such a sunlight-shod,
Sunlight-crowned delight in our memory
As was given.
There was not a harm in these roaring hours
That could touch Her head
Perfect was Her charm borne against the powers
Gnashing still.
In her heart a field laughed with golden flowers
Where Her soul could tread.
Swift, serene, she passed all that snarls and cowers,
White of will.
Song can give her nothing. We who brave the night
Say Her name again
Raise it like a cup full of sacred light
Up to Heaven.
Now we know our pain blinding, burning bright
In the world of men.
Yet we know our joy, knowing now aright
What was given.
IV
Base rewards and glamours, the beating tide of hours,
The crying and clamors and the surge of silent powers
Pass me and pass me now. Silently I go
The one road, the only road I know.
Oh, bare and bright as dreams
And laced with silver streams
Lies the land on either hand, past the darkness and dread.
Though a man must grip his soul lest it start from all control,
And must bow his head.
Where are your footprints on air that I may find them?
Where your radiant garments that I may hide behind them?
No, it is my own road, straight and black
That turns not back.
I will search till the darkness sears on either hand
With the drifting sparkles of some fiery brand,
Of some pain that lights me nearer to the land of your endeavor.
I will search forever.
The torrent of the hours like a veil veiling heaven,
The war with bitter powers--I am given.
But light that you left me--light, your own decision,
Your secret and your vision.
Time? What is Time now. Standing to the thong
And the dream that is passing, time is not long.
And I shall find the valley past the mountains that defeat me,
And see you come to meet me.
V
Not all the spoils you cast, not all the dark was bearing
In dream across the sea, across the murmurous sea;
Not beauty that has passed or crowns the stars were wearing
Or flame that fierce and fast through darkness hunted me;
Not the frustrate desire, the web of memory broken,
The silence where your speech dizzies through all the air;
Not these elude my reach when the dark hours have spoken
As does that priceless token, your soul of passionate prayer.
Oh race that falters on, the striving and the stricken
Passing with fruits and garlands and dust upon the head;
Oh burning sunset gone wherein was hope to quicken
The surge of starry dawn rising above the dead;
Oh clamor over shame, yoke of the little-wiser
On the unwilling shoulders, clenched by the quivering hands;
Patience and proof that were and are your still appriser
Now veil her and disguise her, gone from the spectral lands.
The spectral lands of time, the eternal torrent pouring
Of dark and light around us, who fear both dark and light;
And grief that wails in rhyme, and flesh the soul abhorring,
And dismal pantomine played on a stage moon-bright;
Why should such things as these assail her happy meadow,
Creep on the court of children, come crying through the shine?
We who are too unskilled even to taunt the shadow
Groan only in the darkness and spill the precious wine!
For round us beating, beating her wings are in the mirror
Of sleep, the mirror of silence built up with perilous breath.
And in our conscience meeting her smile is on the terror
That chains us round with error and desperate fear of death;
Kind as a child's small hands her faithfulness is round us
With swift and fading gestures, wise as a child is wise;
Out of the gathering clouds that curtain and confound us,
Ecstasy and enchantment--sudden and swift, her eyes!
The hills shall lay away their sombreness unspoken,
The seas shall hush their murmur, the saddened wind be still,
When the long league of silence 'twixt earth and beast is broken
When at the end of all things the stones speak on the hill.
Then Calvary shall cry with glorious joy to heaven,
Aceldama be hearkened and purged by words aware,--
For that in days gone by her voice to His was given,
And to the joy of heaven her soul of passionate prayer.
VI
I listened to the wind who speaks of finding
Among the litter of his blown leaves of days
All rainbow gold of tears that are so blinding;
And then again he says
Something of glittering jewels in the haze,
Incense of praise, myrtles and bays for binding
The wounds that blossom blood upon his ways.
I listened to the sun who can recover
Miraculous instants of an earlier time
Surprise Her eyes alinger on her lover
And run like rhyme
On leaf and stream. He spoke of dream and clime
Sacred with everlasting Spring, ahover
With light more cadenced than bright bells in chime.
I listened to the earth and sea. Their voices,
Too mixed with men, came sombrer and more sad.
They droned awhile of all the tangled choices
That every man has had,
And moaned like ancients with mere age gone mad
And left me nothing that reasons or rejoices--
That seemed so reasonless in being glad.
I listened starward where the ghostly weaving
Of wandering lights is all of Heaven we know
And worlds are lamps and darkness comes bereaving
The world of ebb and flow,
And 'tis as if a bosom were heaving slow
With firmamental care,--ah, heaving, heaving
With an unfathomable earlier woe.
"Listener at many doors,--for what disaster?--"
Her spirit murmur crept into my ears.
"Brooder on pictures breathed on by the Master,
Listen at the heart that hears,--
Ah, listen softly, breathing low!" The years
Were not--for there She was--and, gazing past her,
I saw the Vision raised by blood and tears.
VII
For the eyes loved,
For the face lifted
In that still light,
Dark trees are groved,
The snow drifted,
And the mound white.
And the grave dug
And the words spoken
And the flowers shed--
And the eyes tearless
But the heart broken
For the brave dead.
Though a soul thrill
To the stars' fire
And a mind sing
To a keen will
Of a high desire
And a great thing,--
Ah, who listens?
Who--who hearkens
Or answer makes,--
Though the moon glistens
And the night darkens
And the heart breaks?
Lay her sword by her,
Her steel of spirit,
Her phantom blade,
Lest the loud liar
In his hell inherit
What her soul made!
Sweet sword, she came
To pierce and quicken
My heart to grace,--
Oh, white flame,
Oh, heart life-stricken,
Oh, deathless face!
VIII
Now the snow drives. The day
Goes on in whirling gray.
Still the world roars,
As if no striving flame
Had gone, as it suddenly came,
Passing blind doors;
As if no eyes, no smile,
No heart that could beguile
Evil from earth,
Had hovered just a space
To light one holy place
In the dark and the dearth.
Was it always as fierce and strange--
This blank and sudden change
Men have known ever?
This veil as hard and keen
As the blade of a guillotine
Flashing to sever?
Oh, ears that hark in the night,
Eyeballs that strain for sight,
Pulses that know
The same dull burning ache,
Though a man sleep, though he wake,--
Was it always so?
IX
True love runs wild and wildly understands.
I took the bread of Heaven once from your two hands.
And your eyes are upon me even as I sing,
Saying, "Be of comfort. Death is a little thing."
Oh, magic child and woman, who crept into my heart,
Who hold me with strong arms from all the world apart--
No, I will not say it--for your eyes grieve;
I will say you draw us all to Heaven--_your_ Heaven, by your
leave!
Lady Simplicitas, who hummed like any bee
Little quaint and olden rhymes to keep simplicity,
Lady of the downcast eyes and sudden starry mirth,
And eloquence by torchlight for the wronged of all the earth,
True love runs wild and wildly understands!
I took the wine of Heaven once from your two hands;
And when your eyes were darkened for the world's red smart
You made a violet twilight as you pressed against my heart.
For that coiled hair's brown crown, for that sweet and seemly way,
The straight thoughts, the eager words, the dazzle of your day,
Shall I turn base then and learn to whine and curse?
Not though daggers of memory flicker through this verse!
For true love runs wild and wildly understands.
I took the sacrament of love from your two hands.
So shall I cross the sunset hill and climb the pasture bars
And meet you in our porch at last, in the Village of the Stars.
X
One thing only I can say to you
Whatever be the things men do;
Let one love make May to you,
Hold one love true.
Who but hears the querulous
Sigh and the heavy groan,--
Yet stand for the one love perilous,
Though you stand alone.
Yes, and though beaten and beaten
By the ravings of the blood;
Though with dust and ashes eaten,
Be one thing understood.
The battle in the cloud overthrows you,
Your lips are dashed with foam,--
Yet the one love lives and knows you
And leads you home.
Home--ah, God!--to the slumber
At last and the waking peace,
Where wars without name or number
Give last release;
Where her whisper again is more to you
Than the angels' flaming wars,
And proud Death's hands can pour to you
The cold of the stars.
XI
The selfishness of grief! ... and yet each turning
And questing after some new brave relief
Shows other steel stretched forth and on me burning
The selfishness of grief.
Till self who was my God and love, my chief,
Even these turn from my side with footsteps spurning
As, stooping low, I lift the heavy sheaf
Of our flowered hours gathered with our yearning,
Gathered so wildly in our happy fief
And glimmering beautiful beyond belief,
With dazing fragrance, till my dim discerning
Sees them the legend dropped for my unlearning
The selfishness of grief!
THE LONG ABSENCE
I
ACCOSTED
"If you saw blue eyes that could light and darkle
With merriment or pain;
If you saw a face that was only heart--lonely
In the cities of the plain;
If you felt a kindness that was happy as the daybreak,
Patient as night,
And saw the eyes lift and--the dawn in May break,
You have seen her aright.
"Blue-cloaked archangel, rein your steed a little,
Though cities flame!
Messenger of night, though my words are brittle,
Though I know not your name,
Though your steed paw sparkles and your pinions quiver
With colors like the sea,
Tell me if you saw her, if you saw my love ever!
She is lost to me.
"That is why I walk this windy highway
And stop and hark
And peer through the moonlight--always my way!
And listen up the dark
And knuckle my forehead to remember her truly,
The very She;
And that is why I cling your rein unduly
To answer me!"
But the eyes were deep and dark, though somehow tender.
Haste was manifest
In the gauntlet, the greaves, the irid splendor
That pulsed on his breast.
He did not even gesture to the night grown holy,
But shook his rein
As his steed leapt forth; while I--turned slowly
To the cities of the plain.
II
THE HOUSE AT EVENING
Across the school-ground it would start
To light my eyes, that yellow gleam,--
The window of the flaming heart,
The chimney of the tossing dream,
The scuffed and wooden porch of Heaven,
The voice that came like a caress,
The warm kind hands that once were given
My carelessness.
It was a house you would not think
Could hold such sacraments in things
Or give the wild heart meat and drink
Or give the stormy soul high wings
Or chime small voices to such mirth
Or crown the night with stars and flowers
Or make upon this quaking earth
Such steady hours.
Yet, that in storm it stood secure,
And in the cold was warm with love,
Shall its similitude endure
Past trophies that men weary of,
When two were out of fortune's reach,
Building great empires round a name
And ushering into casual speech
Dim worlds aflame.
III
FOR THINKING EVIL
For thinking evil and planning shame
The fire licked upward--at first a name,
Then star-devouring rebellious flame.
The dread light lingered high on the sky.
It grew and reddened--a voiceless cry.
It spread and touched us, we knew not why.