*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 74892 *** THE RICCARDI PRESS BOOKS ¶ Of this edition of TWELVE POEMS BY EDITH WHARTON 130 copies have been printed in the Riccardi fount on handmade paper of which 100 are for sale. ¶ Copy Number 44 [Illustration: Edith Wharton] TWELVE POEMS BY EDITH WHARTON [Illustration: [Logo]] TWELVE POEMS BY EDITH WHARTON PUBLISHED BY THE MEDICI SOCIETY VII GRAFTON STREET LONDON MDCCCCXXVI CONTENTS Nightingales in Provence Page 1 Mistral in the Maquis „ 7 Les Salettes „ 11 Dieu d’Amour „ 15 Segesta „ 19 The Tryst „ 23 Battle Sleep „ 27 Elegy „ 31 With the Tide „ 35 La folle du logis „ 39 The First Year „ 45 Alternative Epitaphs „ 53 NIGHTINGALES IN PROVENCE (i) Whence come they, small and brown, Miraculous and frail, Like spring’s invisible pollen blown On the wild southern gale? From whatsoever depth of gold and blue, Far-templed sand and ringèd palms they wing, Falling like dew Upon the land, they bring Music and spring, With all things homely-sweet Exhaled beneath the feet On stony mountain-trail, Or where green slopes, through tamarisk and pine, Seaward decline— Thyme and the lavender, Where honey-bees make stir, And the green dragon-flies with silver whirr Loot the last rosemaries— The morning-glory, rosy as her name, The poppies’ leaping flame Along the kindled vines, Down barren banks the vetches spilt like lees, In watery meadows the great celandines Afloat like elfin moons, In the pale world of dunes A foam of asphodel Upon the sea’s blue swell, And, where the great rocks valley-ward are rolled, The tasselled ilex-bloom fringing dark woods with gold. Shyly the first begin— And the thrilled ear delays, Through a fresh veil of interblossomed mays Straining to win That soft sequestered note, Where the new throat, In some deep cleft of quietness remote, Its budding bliss essays. Shyly the first begin— But, as the numerous rose First to the hedgerow throws A blossom here and there, As if in hope to win The unheeding glances of the passer-by, And, never catching his dulled eye, Thinks: “But my tryst is with the Spring!” And suddenly the dusty roadside glows With scented glory, crimsoned to its close— So wing by wing, Unheeded and unheard, Bird after bird, They come; And where the woods were dumb, Dumb all the streamsides and unlistening vales, Now glory streams along the evening gales, And all the midday is a murmuring, Now they are come. (ii) I lie among the thyme: The sea is at my feet, And all the air is sweet With the capricious chime Of interwoven notes From those invisible and varying throats, As though the blossomed trees, The laden breeze, The springs within their caves, And even the sleeping waves, Had all begun to sing. Sweet, sweet, oh heavy-sweet As tropic bales undone At a Queen’s ebon feet In equatorial sun, Those myriad balmy voices Drip iterated song, And every tiny tawny throat rejoices To mix its separate rapture with the throng. For now the world is theirs, And the captivated airs Carry no other note. As from midsummer’s throat, Strong-pillared, organ-built, Pours their torrential glory. On their own waves they float, And toss from crest to crest their cockle-shell of story— And, as plumed breakers tilt Against the plangent beaches, And all the long reticulated reaches Hiss with their silver lances, And heave with their deep rustle of retreat At fall of day— So swells, and so withdraws that tidal lay As spring advances.... (iij) I lie among the thyme, The sea is at my feet, And the slow-kindling moon begins to climb To her bejewelled seat— And now, and now again, Mixed with her silver rain, Listen, a rarer strain, A tenderer fall— And all the night is white and musical, The forests hold their breath, the sky lies still On every listening hill, And far far out those straining sails, Even as they dip and turn, One moment backward yearn To the rich laughter of the nightingales. MISTRAL IN THE MAQUIS Roofed in with creaking pines we lie And see the waters burn and whiten, The wild seas race the racing sky, The tossing landscape gloom and lighten. With emerald streak and silver blotch The white wind paints the purple sea. Warm in our hollow dune we watch The honey-orchis nurse the bee. Gold to the keel the startled boats Beat in on palpitating sail, While overhead with many throats The choral forest hymns the gale. ’Neath forest-boughs the templed air Hangs hushed as when the Host is lifted, While, flanks astrain and rigging bare, The last boat to the port has drifted.... Nought left but the lost wind that grieves On darkening seas and furling sails, And the long light that Beauty leaves Upon her fallen veils.... LES SALETTES [December 1923] Let all my waning senses reach To clasp again that secret beach, Pine-roofed and rock-embrasured, turned To where the winter sunset burned Beyond a purpling dolphin-cape On charmèd seas asleep.... Let every murmur, every shape, Fanned by that breathing hour’s delight, Against the widening western deep Hold back the hour, hold back the night.... For here, across the molten sea, From golden islands lapped in gold, Come all the shapes that used to be Part of the sunset once to me, And every breaker’s emerald arch Bears closer their ethereal march, And flings its rose and lilac spray To dress their brows with scattered day. As trooping shoreward, one by one, Swift in the pathway of the sun, With lifted arms and eyes that greet, The lost years hasten to my feet. All is not pain, their eyes declare; The shoreward ripples are their voice, The sunset, streaming through their hair, Coils round me in a fiery flood, And all the sounds of that rich air Are in the beating of my blood, Crying: _Rejoice, rejoice, rejoice!_ _Rejoice, because such skies are blue, Each dawn, above a world so fair, Because such glories still renew To transient eyes the morning’s hue. Such buds on every fruit-tree smile, Such perfumes blow on every gale, Such constellated hangings veil The outer emptiness awhile; And these frail senses that were thine, Because so frail, and worn so fine, Are as a Venice glass, wherethrough Life’s last drop of evening wine Shall like a draught of morning shine._ The glories go; their footsteps fade Into an all-including shade, And isles and sea and clouds and coasts Wane to an underworld of ghosts. But as I grope with doubtful foot By myrtle branch and lentisk root Up the precipitous pine-dark way, Through fringes of the perished day Falters a star, the first alight, And threaded on that tenuous ray The age-long promise reappears, And life is Beauty, fringed with tears. DIEU D’AMOUR [A CASTLE IN CYPRUS] Beauty hath two great wings That lift me to her height, Though steep her secret dwelling clings ’Twixt earth and light. Thither my startled soul she brings In a murmur and stir of plumes, And blue air cloven, And in aerial rooms Windowed on starry springs Shows me the singing looms Whereon her worlds are woven; Then, in her awful breast, Those heights descending, Bears me, a child at rest, At the day’s ending, Till earth, familiar as a nest, Again receives me, And Beauty veiled in night, Benignly bending, Drops from the sinking west One feather of our flight, And on faint sandals leaves me. SEGESTA High in the secret places of the hills Cliff-girt it stands, in grassy solitude, No ruin but a vision unachieved. This temple is a house not made with hands But born of man’s incorrigible need For permanence and beauty in the scud And wreckage of mortality—as though Great thoughts, communing in the noise of towns With inward isolation and deep peace, And dreams gold-paven for celestial feet, Had wrought the sudden wonder; and behold, The sky, the hills, the awful colonnade, And, night-long woven through the fane’s august Intercolumniations, all the stars Processionally wheeling— Then it was That, having reared their wonder, it would seem The makers feared their God might prove less great Than man’s heart dreaming on him—and so left The shafts unroofed, untenanted the shrine. THE TRYST [1914] I said to the woman: Whence do you come, With your bundle in your hand? She said: In the North I made my home, Where slow streams fatten the fruitful loam, And the endless wheat-fields run like foam To the edge of the endless sand. I said: What look have your houses there, And the rivers that glass your sky? Do the steeples that call your people to prayer Lift fretted fronts to the silver air, And the stones of your streets, are they washed and fair When the Sunday folk go by? My house is ill to find, she said, For it has no roof but the sky; The tongue is torn from the steeple-head, The streets are foul with the slime of the dead, And all the rivers run poison-red With the bodies drifting by. I said: Is there none to come at your call In all this throng astray? They shot my husband against a wall, And my child (she said), too little to crawl, Held up its hands to catch the ball When the gun-muzzle turned its way. I said: There are countries far from here Where the friendly church-bells call, And fields where the rivers run cool and clear, And streets where the weary may walk without fear, And a quiet bed, with a green tree near, To sleep at the end of it all. She answered: Your land is too remote, And what if I chanced to roam When the bells fly back to the steeples’ throat, And the sky with banners is all afloat, And the streets of my city rock like a boat With the tramp of her men come home? I shall crouch by the door till the bolt is down, And then go in to my dead. Where my husband fell I will put a stone, And mother a child instead of my own, And stand and laugh on my bare hearth-stone When the King rides by, she said. BATTLE SLEEP [1915] Somewhere, O sun, some corner there must be Thou visitest, where down the strand Quietly, still, the waves go out to sea From the green fringes of a pastoral land. Deep in the orchard-bloom the roof-trees stand, The brown sheep graze along the bay. And through the apple-boughs above the sand The bees’ hum sounds no fainter than the spray. There through uncounted hours declines the day To the low arch of twilight’s close, And, just as night about the moon grows gray, One sail leans westward to the fading rose. Giver of dreams, O thou with scatheless wing Forever moving through the fiery hail, To flame-seared lids the cooling vision bring And let some soul go seaward with that sail. ELEGY [1918] Ah, how I pity the young dead who gave All that they were, and might become, that we With tired eyes should watch this perfect sea Reweave its patterning of silver wave Round scented cliffs of arbutus and bay. No more shall any rose along the way, The myrtled way that wanders to the shore, Nor jonquil-twinkling meadow any more, Nor the warm lavender that takes the spray, Smell only of the sea-salt and the sun, But, through recurring seasons, every one Shall speak to us with lips the darkness closes, Shall look at us with eyes that missed the roses, Clutch us with hands whose work was just begun, Laid idle now beneath the earth we tread— And always we shall walk with the young dead— Ah, how I pity the young dead, whose eyes Strain through the sod to see these perfect skies, Who feel the new wheat springing in their stead, And the lark singing for them overhead! WITH THE TIDE [6th January 1919] Somewhere I read, in an old book whose name Is gone from me, I read that when the days Of a man are counted and his business done, There comes up the shore at evening, with the tide, To the place where he sits, a boat— And in the boat, from the place where he sits, he sees Dim in the dusk, dim and yet so familiar, The faces of his friends long dead; and knows They come for him, brought in upon the tide, To take him where men go at set of day. Then, rising, with his hands in theirs, he goes Between them his last steps, that are the first Of the new life; and with the tide they pass, Their shaken sail grown small upon the moon. Often I thought of this, and pictured me How many a man that lives with throngs about him, Yet straining in the twilight for that boat Shall scarce make out one figure in the stern, And that so faint, its features shall perplex him With doubtful memories—and his heart hang back. But others, rising as they see the sail Increase upon the sunset, hasten down, Hands out and eyes elated; for they see, Head over head, crowding from bow to stern, Repeopling their long loneliness with smiles, The faces of their friends—and such go out Content upon the ebb-tide, with safe hearts. But never To worker summoned when his day was done Did mounting tide bear such a freight of friends As stole to you up the white wintry shingle That night while those that watched you thought you slept. Softly they came, and beached the boat, and stood In the still cove, under the icy stars, Your last-born and the dear loves of your heart, And with them all the friends you called by name, And all men that have loved right more than ease, And honour above honours; all who gave Free-handed of their best for other men, And thought the giving taking; they who knew Man’s natural state is effort: up and up— All these were there, so great a company Perchance you marvelled, wondering what great craft Had brought that throng unnumbered to the cove Where the boys used to beach their light canoe After old happy picnics. But these your friends and children, to whose hands Committed in the silent night you rose And took your last faint steps— These led you down, O great American, Down to the winter night and the white beach; And there you saw that the huge hull that waited Was not as are the boats of the other dead, Frail craft for a light passage; But first of a long line of towering ships, Storm-worn and Ocean-weary every one, The ships you launched, the ships you manned, the ships That now, returning from their sacred quest With the thrice-sacred burden of their dead, Lay waiting there to take you forth with them, Out on the flood-tide, to some farther quest. LA FOLLE DU LOGIS Wild wingèd thing, O brought I know not whence To beat your life out in my life’s low cage; You strange familiar, nearer than my flesh Yet distant as a star, that were at first A child with me a child, yet elfin-far, And visibly of some unearthly breed; Mirthfullest mate of all my mortal games, Yet shedding on them some evasive gleam Of Latmian loneliness—O even then Expert to lift the latch of our low door And profit by the hours when, dusked about By human misintelligence, we made Our first weak fledgling flights— Divine accomplice of those perilous-sweet Low moth-flights of the unadventured soul Above the world’s dim garden!—now we sit After what stretch of years, what stretch of wings, In the same cage together—still as near And still as strange! Only I know at last That we are fellows till the last night falls, And that I shall not miss your comrade hands Till they have closed my lids, and by them set A taper that—who knows?—may yet shine through. Sister, my comrade, I have ached for you, Sometimes, to see you curb your pace to mine, And bow your Maenad crest to the dull forms Of human usage; I have loosed your hand And whispered: “Go! Since I am tethered here”; And you have turned, and breathing for reply: “I too am pinioned, as you too are free,” Have caught me to such undreamed distances As the last planets see, when they look forth To the sentinel pacings of the outmost stars— Nor these alone, Comrade, my sister, were your gifts. More oft Has your impalpable wing-brush bared for me The heart of wonder in familiar things, Unroofed dull rooms, and hung above my head The cloudy glimpses of a vernal moon, Or all the autumn heaven ripe with stars. And you have made a secret pact with Sleep, And when she comes not, or her feet delay, Toiled in low meadows of gray asphodel Under a pale sky where no shadows fall, Then, hooded like her, to my side you steal, And the night grows like a great rumouring sea, And you a boat, and I your passenger, And the tide lifts us with an indrawn breath Out, out upon the murmurs and the scents, Through spray of splintered star-beams, or white rage Of desperate moon-drawn waters—on and on To some blue sea’s unalterable calm That ever like a slow-swung mirror rocks The balanced breasts of sea-birds.... Yet other nights, my sister, you have been The storm, and I the leaf that fled on it Terrifically down voids that never knew The pity of creation—till your touch Has drawn me back to earth, as, in the dusk, A scent of lilac from an unseen hedge Bespeaks the hidden farm, the bedded cows, And safety, and the sense of human kind.... And I have climbed with you by secret ways To meet the dews of morning, and have seen The shy gods like retreating shadows fade, Or on the thymy reaches have surprised Old Chiron sleeping, and have waked him not.... Yet farther have I fared with you, and known Love and his sacred tremors, and the rites Of his most inward temple; and beyond Have seen the long grey waste where lonely thoughts Listen and wander where a city stood. And creeping down by waterless defiles Under an iron midnight, have I kept My vigil in the waste till dawn began To walk among the ruins, and I saw A sapling rooted in a fissured plinth, And a wren’s nest in the thunder-threatening hand Of some old god of granite.... THE FIRST YEAR [ALL SOULS’ DAY] (i) Here in my darkness I lie in the depths of things, As in a black wood whereof flowers and boughs are the roots, And the moist-branching tendrils and ligaments, Woven or spiralled or spreading, the roof of my head, Blossomless, birdless, starless, skied with black earth, A ponderous heaven. But they forget, Too often forget, and too soon, who above us Brush the dead leaves from our mounds, Scrape the moss from our names, And feel safe, They forget that one day in the year our earth becomes ether, And the roots binding us loosen As Peter’s chains dropped for the Angel, In that old story they read there; Forget—do they seek to remember?— That one day in the year we are with them, Rejoin them, hear them, behold them, and walk the old ways with them— One! To-morrow.... And already I feel The harsh arms of ivy-coils loosening Like a dead man’s embrace, I feel the cool worms from my hair Rain like dew, And the soft-muzzled moles boring deeper, Down after the old dead that stir not, Or just grumble: “Don’t wake me,” and turn The nether side of their skulls to their head-slab.... While I ... I their one-year neighbour, Thrusting up like a willow in spring, From my hair Untwine the thick grass-hair carefully, Unbind the cool roots from my lids, Straining up, straining up with thin hands, Scattering the earth like a cloud, And stopping my ears from the cry, Lower down, Persistent, like a sick child’s wail, The cry of the girl just below me: “Don’t go, don’t go ...” the poor coward! (ii) How light the air is! I’m dizzy ... my feet fly up ... And this mad confusion of things topsy-turvey, With the friendly comprehensible roots all hidden, In this queer world where one can’t see how things happen, But only what they become.... Was it always so queer and inexplicable? Yes, but the fresh smell of things ... Are these apples in the wet grass, I wonder? Sweet, sweet, sweet, the smell of the living! And the far-off sky, and the stars, And the quiet spaces between, So that one can float and fly ... Why used we only to walk? This is the gate—and the latch still unmended! Yet how often I told him.... Ah, the scent of my box-border! And a late clove-pink still unfrozen. It’s what they call a “mild November” ... I knew that, below there, by the way the roots kept pushing, But I’d forgotten how tender it was on the earth ... So quickly the dead forget! And the living? I think, after all, they remember, With everything about them so unchanged, And no leaden loam on their eyes. Yes, surely, I know _he_ remembers; Whenever he touches the broken latch, He thinks: “How often she asked me, And how careless I was not to mend it!” And smiles and sighs; then recalls How we planted the box-border together, Knee to knee in the wet, one November ... And the clove-pinks— Here is the window. They’ve put the green lamp on the table, Where his books lie, heaped as of old— Ah, thank God for the old disorder! How I used to hate it, and now— Now I could kiss the dust on the mirror, the pipe-ashes Over everything—all the old mess That no strange hand interferes with ... Bless him for that! (iij) Just at first This much contents me; why should I peer Past the stripped arms of the rose, the metallic Rattle of clematis dry as my hair, There where June flushes and purples the window like sunset? I know So well the room’s other corner: the hearth Where autumn logs smoulder, The hob, The kettle, the crane, the cushion he put for my feet, And my Chair— O Chair, always mine! Do I dare? What—the room so the same, his and mine, Not a book changed, the inkstand uncleaned, The old pipe-burn scarring the table, The old rent in the rug, where I tripped And he caught me—no woman’s hand here Has mended or marred; all’s the same! Why not dare, then? Oh, but to think, If I stole to my chair, if I sat there, Feet folded, arms stretched on the arms, So quiet, And waited for night and his coming ... Oh, think, when he came And sank in the other chair, facing me, Not a line of his face would alter, Nor his hands fall like sun on my hair, Nor the old dog jump on me, grinning Yet cringing, because she half-knew I’d found out the hole in my border, And why my tallest auratum was dead— But his face would be there, unseeing, His eyes look through me; And the old dog—not pausing At her bowl for a long choking drink, Or to bite the burrs from her toes, and stretch Sideward to the fire, dreaming over their tramp in the stubble— Would creep to his feet Bristling a little ... And I, I should be there, in the old place, All the old life bubbling up in me, And to him no more felt than the sap Struggling up unseen in the clematis— Ah, then, then, then I were dead! But what _was_ I, then? Lips and hands only— Since soul cannot reach him without them? Oh, heavy grave of the flesh, Did I never once reach to him through you? I part the branches and look.... (iv) O my Chair ... But who sits in you? One like me Aflame yet invisible! Only I, with eyes death-anointed, Can see her young hair, and the happy heart riding The dancing sea of her breast! Then she too is waiting— And young as I was? Was she always there? Were her lips between all our kisses? Did her hands know the folds of his hair? Did she hear what I said when I loved him? Was the room never empty? Not once? When I leaned in that chair, which one of us two did he see? Did he feel us both on his bosom? How strange! If I spoke to her now she would hear me, She alone ... Would tell me all, through her weeping, Or rise up and curse me, perhaps— As I might her, were she living! But since she is dead, I will go— Go home, and leave them together ... I will go back to my dungeon, Go back, and never return; Lest another year, in my chair, I find one sitting, One whom he sees, and the old dog fears not, but springs on ... I will not suffer what _she_ must have suffered, but creep To my bed in the dark, And mind how the girl below called to me, Called up through the mould and the grave-slabs: “_Do not go! Do not go! Do not go!_” ALTERNATIVE EPITAPHS “—— _of heart-failure_.” (i) Death touched me where your head had lain. What other spot could he have found So tender to receive a wound, So versed in all the arts of pain? (ii) Love came, and gave me wind and sun, Love went, and left me light and air. Nor gave he anything more fair Than what I found when he was gone. HERE END THE TWELVE POEMS BY EDITH WHARTON, PRINTED IN THE RICCARDI PRESS FOUNT AT THE CHISWICK PRESS FOR THE MEDICI SOCIETY, LONDON. MDCCCCXXVI ------------------------------------------------------------------------ TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES ● Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained. ● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_. *** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 74892 ***