Books: Perpetual Light
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William Rose Benet >> Perpetual Light
And a man sat staring out to the night,
Through tender silence, in warm lamplight,
Thinking always, "The fire at height!"
That fire blowing with growing roar
Saw us going, closing the door;
Saw us parted--who meet no more.
For thinking evil--all men drawn
Against a devil that dusked the dawn.
Each to his station. All men gone.
Some for the hilltop, fire to its brow,--
Death, long torture,--some for the plough,--
Some for the silence--that I know now.
IV
TRAVEL
You and I dreaming
Planned the far-away,
Cities and hedgerows,
Distant summer day,
When, the sun sinking,--
But oh, a distant sun!--
We would be thinking,
"Think what we have done!"
You and I whispering
Held the isles in fee
By a chain of grasses,
By your smile to me,
Visioning some clime--
But long years between--
When we should say, sometime,
"Think what we have seen!"
You and I wondering
Of our old age,
Turned a page pondering,
And turned a page ...
Now, my hands pluck ravelled
Strands I can't untie.
Yet--you always travelled
Farther than I!
V
HER WAY
You loved the hay in the meadow,
Flowers at noon,
The high cloud's long shadow,
Honey of June,
The flaming woodways tangled
With Fall on the hill,
The towering night star-spangled
And winter-still.
And you loved firelit faces,
The hearth, the home,--
Your mind on golden traces,
London or Rome,--
On quaintly-colored spaces
Where heavens glow
With his quaint saints' embraces,--
Angelico.
In cloister and highway
(Gold of God's dust!)
And many an elfin byway
You put your trust,--
A crock and a table,
Love's end of day,
And light of a storied stable
Where kings must pray.
Somewhere there is a village
For you and me,
Hay field, hearth and tillage,--
Where can it be?
Prayers when birds awake,
Daily bread,
Toil for His sunlit sake
Who raised us dead.
With this in mind you moved
Through love and pain.
Hard though the long road proved,
You turned again
With a heart that knew its trust
Not ill-bestowed.
With this you light the dust
That clouds my road.
BY THE COUNSEL OF HER HANDS
"Propter veritatem, et mansuetudinem, et justitiam: et deducet te
mirabiliter dextera tua. Alleluia."
With her clear eyes lifted,
Dreaming, lighting, swift and quelling
On all darkness drifted
From this earth, a vacant dwelling,--
With her haste flashing, flowing
Bright above all fear or scorning,--
I have seen my darling going
Up the mountains of the morning!
Oh, like harps wrung thrilling,
Like those viols that voice their answer
To the wild still willing
Of the heavens' necromancer,
From the flowers around her rises
Music--gold, more gold in glory--
First of all those pure surprises
At the ending of the story.
Through the trees she passes
Where the purple spreads in shadow,
Through the dew-bright grasses
Of that heaven-quiet meadow,
Up the way of climbing vines,
Never faltering, never failing,
Where the blue of heaven shines
Through the sun for only veiling.
Flowers and leaves together sing
Like those birds in clouds that choir.
Aching-sweet from silver string,
Purling flute and golden wire
Music flows no mortal knows
Even in April thronged with voices.
Deeper glory throbs and glows
Till the trembling air rejoices.
Sweet and deep, sweet and deep
In the heart dark and aching,
Glamorous waves across my sleep
Is that tide of splendor breaking.
Pure and high, pure and high,
Shaking every star to chiming,
Till the wonder-stricken sky
Thrills and trembles to the rhyming!
Seraphim and cherubim
On their wings' immaculate wonder
Rise in whirlwinds from the dim,
Pass through voids of rolling thunder,
Mount from lightning into light,
One great surge of praise awaking,
White and white into the height--
And the music trembling--breaking--!
But above the wood of fear,
On one white road forever,
From the darkness mounts my dear
In her still and bright endeavor,
With her kind brave eyes,
Honest hands and heart of healing,--
Lips that rapturously surmise--
Little smiles upon them stealing.
For--a violet twilight now
Spreads--as arms had cast a shadow
And the Godhead stooped to bow
Over phantom hill and meadow!
And--again--a field
Floats before her--as her choice is--
Where _her_ heaven is revealed
In those small and rippling voices.
Elfin flowers invoked alive,
Fairy clouds from hives of honey
Like no angry human hive,
Billows of brightness swift and sunny,
Pattering, chuckling, panting haste,
Rosy-shy--though never sweeter
Than the three her arms embraced--
Heaven's children flock to meet her!
There are harps in Heaven
That must fail against that splendor;
And the Sacred Seven
Bow their heads in mute surrender.
Holy Mother of God, tonight
Bend your star-bright eyes and brimming
On the sweetness of that sight
In that meadow, dusk and dimming!
For, with hands in grasp so small
Of the tumbling ones that follow,--
With her smile upon them all,
Up the hill and through the hollow,--
With that rich voice crooning, waking
Sparkling gusts of joy and laughter,--
Climbs the Light of my forsaking,
Mounts the Hope of my hereafter!
Harshest song, bow down!
Mutinous words!--to make immortal
How the heavens in starlight drown
As she enters in the Portal,
How the Heavenly City glows,
How the bells cry, "We have found her!"
As through tears and praise she goes
With the children crowding round her!
STRENGTH BEYOND STRENGTH
"If thou hast run with the footmen and they have
wearied thee, what wilt thou do with the horsemen?"
Breathless, beaten as with whips of wonder,
Scourged and naked to the flying sky,--
Yet have I heard the hoofs of thunder,
Seen the horsemen glimmering by.
Head back, teeth bared, eyes aglitter,
Questioning still the black reply,
Laboring stride and breath grown bitter--
_Phantom horsemen swerving by!_
Foot on the flint and burning, parching
Death at the throat, with gall to taste.
_Rank on rank are the footmen marching,
Wave on wave do the footmen haste!_
Past and past me toiled and slowing,
Gasping breathing and straining limb,--
_Rank on rank are the footmen going
Forward to fog and the distance dim._
Sledge on the brain and huge hands crushing
Hard on my heart that they wring at will.
_Wave on wave are the footmen rushing,
Surging in silence across the hill._
Sudden lit road they run together
Just as the cloven mist-wreaths close!
Each, each strives by a stirrup-leather
Where some glimmering horseman goes!
Iron in sinew, steel persuasion
Now of the weak and sobbing will;
Scorn that beats on the old evasion;
Limbs that move for the further hill.
Teeth clenched hard on an execration,
Chin sunk deep on a laboring chest--
Racing death with a revelation,
Dead and done with--but forging abreast,
Forging past them and past, and gaining
Once again to my hard-fought place.
Lord of Runners, requite my feigning!
Help me only to run this race!
Head-down, plunged through the roiling weather,
Flinging the sweat from a straining brow,--
_Now, I run by your stirrup-leather.
Golden Horseman, I see you now!_
QUE SAIS-JE?
If I could answer that sob of the brave little heart,
If I could answer that silence I suddenly fear,
If I could give him truth that would set this apart
From creeping question, my dear,
There would be ground for our feet, sky for our eyes,
At least, at worst. All I can whisper is dreams
And faith I hold, being doubtful of all things "wise"
And all the outrage that seems.
We are your boys to the end, that is all I know.
I the stronger as yet, but knowing no more
For all my years than I guessed at years ago
And searched through weary lore.
I thought they knew who were older and wiser than I.
I saw them confident, grave, with their answers swift.
Till I stood in turn at the edge of earth and sky
And saw the planets adrift,
And felt my heart struggling and striving for rest
And my baffled mind groping and yearning for peace
In some great answer or on some infinite breast
Of last complete release.
And now I turn his mind to fanciful things
And grip him close and hoarsely murmur my love
And pray away from him all this pain that clings
To this mind I am weary of.
Oh, I will teach him as best a man can teach
And strive to find him all knowledge of you I hold
And make you near to him even when out of reach
Of my treacherous heart and cold.
For though I cannot see there is more to be seen,
And what I cannot know is in presciences,
And all you are is as it has ever been
Between my heart and his.
EBB-TIDE
You who were never afraid of truth or doubt,
Only saying "The light in the soul is real,
The spirit of grace is true, the lamp is not put out."
I must follow forever your white ideal.
Splendor amid the smoke and the dust and vapor,
Truth through the litter of lies and rubble of dreams,
Mutable yet immutable; changed, and the shaper
Of all that light in the mind that steadily gleams!
So--words fail, and run to ironic length;
Like panting breath the phrases quiver and fade.
And the heart unthought-of throbs its appalling strength--
Tireless--till it too in the dust is laid.
But something lives--say there is something lives!
Our passion it is, all of our will to be--
Something in men like a rout of fugitives
Hurrying on the shore of a phantom sea,
Hurrying, wailing, questing, seeing the moon
Light that waste of beauty and terror and plangent sound;
Knowing the tide creeps on, and that soon, too soon,
All of the torches and all of the flowers lie drowned
Yet that that sea moves not of its movement only,
All of the dim vast force is motes that blend,
Each still striving and still secure and lonely
Unto some end, some great mysterious end.
You who were never afraid of truth or doubt--
Granted that truth we know!--oh, eyes of mine,
Eyes in my soul that will never glimmer out,--
This is my soul's ebb-tide, but I make the Sign!
COWARD
By her beauty stayed, by her love empowered,
(_Coward! Coward!_)
Take the honest light and pray for grace.
Where her lightning struck, where her pureness flowered,
(_Coward! Coward!_)
Dare to see her face.
Through the sea of lies--skies have always lowered!--
(_Coward! Coward!_)
Be she your horizon or your mist,
Make straight on, though dawn be still undowered,
(_Coward! Coward!_)
Toward the timeless tryst.
One thing now you know for truth at least,
One thing more than groan of witless beast,
One thing more than jest at mumming feast,
Pain is still increased, increased, increased
Marking life like milestones toward Love's East.
AQUILIFER
Ax and bundled rods let Cæsar's henchmen bear,
Down to the house of sods processional torchmen pass,--
When was your part with these, armed thought's aquilifer,
Turning with streaming standard where the barbarians mass!
Cæsar's screaming eagles black as Hell's vultures flew,
But birds went up our dawning splendid and wing and wing
And bright for the slaves and captives your fearless banner blew
And laughing-glad as a trumpet the faith you still could sing.
Old as the world is evil and disenchantment old.
Man's ancient heart is bitter, his hard eyes doubt of a sign.
Blown hair beneath that banner that floated in folds of gold,
In spirit I see you standing first in the battle-line.
Kind, and a girl, and little, but wiser than all their sneers;
Truer than their predictions, daring to be not base;
Daring to ride for the Captain who held through blood and tears
Life well lost for justice and love acclaimed to the race.
Still with shifting and turning, with minds and the ways of swine,
Earth is girded by Cæsar's men, life a stag in a snare,--
Yet still--your banner burning first in the battle-line,
Aye, and the trumpets blowing for dawning, Aquilifer!
THE WOMAN
You could hurt and you could heal,
You could hide and still reveal,
You were lilies, lilies and steel.
You the near and you the far
Were as lamplight and a star.
I cannot tell them what you were;
Yet, Death, you have not all of her.
No, I, the passionate nondescript,
Have wine your lips have never sipped,
Have wine of her in my heart's blood
Whom I never understood.
You were tender and benign,
Trusting--and all fire divine
And a constellation's sign.
You the far and you the near,
You heaven high and heaven here,
You the quest, and closest dear.
Ah, God, you have not all of her,
For still my cause she can prefer
Where she goes, and where You were.
You could weep and you could rise
With the Word clear in your eyes,
With a strength beyond the wise.
Girl and goddess, will and love,
Struggling, battling, winged above
Memories I have memory of!
PERVIGILIUM
Oh, not in words--for what are words to seeing;
Yet not in sight, for presence veils and hides;
Not even in sleep, though then the gates of being
Stand open to the large eternal tides;
Neither in memory, embers fading ashen;
Nor by the code, wherein the voice is dumb;
Nor wild still love, fluttered by veils of passion,
Rise summit by summit to Janiculum!
Think not to speak and tell the riddling purport;
Think not that sight of beauty caught the best;
Nor any dream furls its dim sails in her port;
Nor any memory makes her manifest;
Nor by a measure of days mete out her measure,
Nor through remembered poignance pluck her strings.
For she, like moonlight on some hidden treasure,
Steals glimmering down and renders vain these things.
Then I cried, "Love!"--but stars not even shrinking
Glittered the same and night remained the same.
Slowly I swam on dark tides of my thinking,
Yet like no moon she rose to hear her name.
I lay like sand unrimmed of sea and crisping
Under dead sunlight, parched as bleaching bone,
Till all seas shrank and dried, and the last lisping
Of beaded water vanished from the stone.
Then jagged lightning forked, the thunder shattered
Like stunning guns. Amain the trees were blown
And shrieked and writhed and whirled their branches tattered
Like patriarchs waking to some end long-known,--
All my heart's storm--assault and wild repulsion--
And hissing sand-coils swaying high and dim--
Flash blinding-bright! And through that last revulsion
I saw her passing on the desert's rim.
TIME WAS
Time was when you would enter
That door and I would be
No longer in the darkness
Upon the sea,
Sailing through lowering tempest
Of thoughts within the brain....
If that could be so
Ever again....
Time was when your slight gesture
Would bid the fairies dance
And make the world a twilight
Of woodland trance,
And wake old aching music
All honey through its pain....
If that could be so
Ever again....
Time was when I would flout you
With clever something said--
And could not live without you
When you turned your head.
With me you walked the sunlight,
With me you walked the rain....
If that could be so
Ever again....
THE MASTERS
Two with great hearts, deeply you proved them.
Laughing you loved them, childlike you said,
"Oh, but this is the part--!" Almost I reproved them
Drawing you from me, minds long dead.
Yet forever your voice, wraith that was rapture!
What great-souled spaces the while you read
Joy--pain--mirth--all I would capture,--
Dickens and Browning--your bended head ...
Heaven of lamplight I long for lonely
Where all the folk of their fancy tread;
Three small faces, and mine,--and only
Dickens and Browning--your bended head!
WHEN
It is when the trees have such radiant flowers,
Such white and rosy showers,
Such fragrant whispering,--
It is when the sun lights such mellow, yellow hours,--
_For lovers love the Spring!_
It is when the moon is so pale and drifting,
Blossoms softly sifting
From the vines that climb and cling,
That my heart will stop to hear love's laughter lifting,--
_For lovers love the Spring!_
It is when the long evenings, their haze of violet wearing,
Hold the passing voices as on music's throbbing string,
By some vague open window I shall sit long staring,--
_For lovers love the Spring!_
CHILDREN
Children, we played at games--your laughter still is round me.
Children, we called each other's names. I hid--you found me.
Children, we went in search of death, and came back often.
Children, we prayed with equal breath--_no time can soften!_
Children, I loved your pretty looks, your eyebrow lifted.
Children, we wandered story-books and star-dust sifted.
Children, we plucked amazing flowers in a walled garden.
Children, we dreamed through healing hours--_no time can harden!_
THE RETREAT
Some sunny close hung high
In depths of sky,
Vivid presentment of your old desire;
No multitudes, but peace
And the release
From days and nights that are but pitch and fire.
Some simple garden, old
Gray walls that fold
Its fragrance in, and one slow softened bell;
The waited Face, the light
And inner sight
And the good voices that you heard so well.
There may you quaintly move,--
You whom I love,--
Sometimes, even now, and make retreat at last
With the truth known and rest
Made manifest
And all the meaning of the hurried past.
And may I find you there
When the still air
Holds yet the thrilling of His evening smile,
And stand within the gate
And watch and wait,
Till, from your prayer, you turn after a while
To see me stained and torn
And travel-worn
But yet with all my love of you held fast;
And wonder "Is it he?" and know it is--
All mysteries
Being outdone by this mysterious last.
And as the evening glows
In throbbing rose
May you lift your arms then, lift your head and cry
"Come!"--and yet sleep not wake
Nor dreaming break--
But light forever fold us, you and I.
SEALED
Man has been famed
Time out of mind
For having gone lamed
Or deaf or blind
Or weighted down
With loads that bind.
And eye and ear
Now curtained are
To see or hear
Rhyme in a star
Since you, my dear,
Have gone so far.
And limbs that go
And lips that speak
Are not to know
That which they seek....
Does Time jest so
In a madman's freak?
No, Time jests not,
Nor have I guessed
What has overshot
All bitter jest
Since first Man got
Fate's manifest.
Cold eyes averse
And stony brows
And the old curse
On Adam's house
Despite, my verse
This truth allows:
A clear light hidden,
A tower of air,
A voice unbidden,
A secret stair,
And dream long-chidden
That makes aware
Thought of a time--
Who shall say how?
Oh, burnished grime,
Star-studded plough,
Common coin of rhyme
Ringing golden now!
THE END