Behind The Arras

I like the old house tolerably well,     Where I must dwell     Like a familiar gnome;     And yet I never shall feel quite at home:     I love to roam.     Day after day I loiter and explore     From door to door;     So many treasures lure     The curious mind. What histories obscure     They must immure!     I hardly know which room I care for best;     This fronting west,     With the strange hills in view,     Where the great sun goes,--where I may go too,     When my lease is through,--     Or this one for the morning and the east,     Where a man may feast     His eyes on looming sails,     And be the first to catch their foreign hails     Or spy their bales.     Then the pale summer twilights towards the pole!     It thrills my soul     With wonder and delight,     When gold-green shadows walk the world at night,     So still, so bright.     There at the window many a time of year,     Strange faces peer,     Solemn though not unkind,     Their wits in search of something left behind     Time out of mind;     As if they once had lived here, and stole back     To the window crack     For a peep which seems to say,     "Good fortune, brother, in your house of clay!"     And then, "Good day!"     I hear their footsteps on the gravel walk,     Their scraps of talk,     And hurrying after, reach     Only the crazy sea-drone of the beach     In endless speech.     And often when the autumn noons are still,     By swale and hill     I see their gipsy signs,     Trespassing somewhere on my border lines;     With what designs?     I forth afoot; but when I reach the place,     Hardly a trace,     Save the soft purple haze     Of smouldering camp-fires, any hint betrays     Who went these ways.     Or tatters of pale aster blue, descried     By the roadside,     Reveal whither they fled;     Or the swamp maples, here and there a shred     Of Indian red.     But most of all, the marvellous tapestry     Engrosses me,     Where such strange things are rife,     Fancies of beasts and flowers, and love and strife,     Woven to the life;     Degraded shapes and splendid seraph forms,     And teeming swarms     Of creatures gauzy dim     That cloud the dusk, and painted fish that swim,     At the weaver's whim;     And wonderful birds that wheel and hang in the air;     And beings with hair,     And moving eyes in the face,     And white bone teeth and hideous grins, who race     From place to place;     They build great temples to their John-a-nod,     And fume and plod     To deck themselves with gold,     And paint themselves like chattels to be sold,     Then turn to mould.     Sometimes they seem almost as real as I;     I hear them sigh;     I see them bow with grief,     Or dance for joy like an aspen leaf;     But that is brief.     They have mad wars and phantom marriages;     Nor seem to guess     There are dimensions still,     Beyond thought's reach, though not beyond love's will,     For soul to fill.     And some I call my friends, and make believe     Their spirits grieve,     Brood, and rejoice with mine;     I talk to them in phrases quaint and fine     Over the wine;     I tell them all my secrets; touch their hands;     One understands     Perhaps. How hard he tries     To speak! And yet those glorious mild eyes,     His best replies!     I even have my cronies, one or two,     My cherished few.     But ah, they do not stay!     For the sun fades them and they pass away,     As I grow gray.     Yet while they last how actual they seem!     Their faces beam;     I give them all their names,     Bertram and Gilbert, Louis, Frank and James,     Each with his aims;     One thinks he is a poet, and writes verse     His friends rehearse;     Another is full of law;     A third sees pictures which his hand can draw     Without a flaw.     Strangest of all, they never rest. Day long     They shift and throng,     Moved by invisible will,     Like a great breath which puffs across my sill,     And then is still;     It shakes my lovely manikins on the wall;     Squall after squall,     Gust upon crowding gust,     It sweeps them willy nilly like blown dust     With glory or lust.     It is the world-ghost, the time-spirit, come     None knows where from,     The viewless draughty tide     And wash of being. I hear it yaw and glide,     And then subside,     Along these ghostly corridors and halls     Like faint footfalls;     The hangings stir in the air;     And when I start and challenge, "Who goes there?"     It answers, "Where?"     The wail and sob and moan of the sea's dirge,     Its plangor and surge;     The awful biting sough     Of drifted snows along some arctic bluff,     That veer and luff,     And have the vacant boding human cry,     As they go by;--     Is it a banished soul     Dredging the dark like a distracted mole     Under a knoll?     Like some invisible henchman old and gray,     Day after day     I hear it come and go,     With stealthy swift unmeaning to and fro,     Muttering low,     Ceaseless and daft and terrible and blind,     Like a lost mind.     I often chill with fear     When I bethink me, What if it should peer     At my shoulder here!     Perchance he drives the merry-go-round whose track     Is the zodiac;     His name is No-man's-friend;     And his gabbling parrot-talk has neither trend,     Beginning, nor end.     A prince of madness too, I'd cry, "A rat!"     And lunge thereat,--     Let out at one swift thrust     The cunning arch-delusion of the dust     I so mistrust,     But that I fear I should disclose a face     Wearing the trace     Of my own human guise,     Piteous, unharmful, loving, sad, and wise,     With the speaking eyes.     I would the house were rid of his grim pranks,     Moaning from banks     Of pine trees in the moon,     Startling the silence like a demoniac loon     At dead of noon,     Or whispering his fool-talk to the leaves     About my eaves.     And yet how can I know     'T is not a happy Ariel masking so     In mocking woe?     Then with a little broken laugh I say,     Snatching away     The curtain where he grinned     (My feverish sight thought) like a sin unsinned,     "Only the wind!"     Yet often too he steals so softly by,     With half a sigh,     I deem he must be mild,     Fair as a woman, gentle as a child,     And forest wild.     Passing the door where an old wind-harp swings,     With its five strings,     Contrived long years ago     By my first predecessor bent to show     His handcraft so,     He lays his fingers on the olian wire,     As a core of fire     Is laid upon the blast     To kindle and glow and fill the purple vast     Of dark at last.     Weird wise and low, piercing and keen and glad,     Or dim and sad     As a forgotten strain     Born when the broken legions of the rain     Swept through the plain--     He plays, like some dread veiled mysteriarch,     Lighting the dark,     Bidding the spring grow warm,     The gendering merge and loosing of spirit in form,     Peace out of storm.     For music is the sacrament of love;     He broods above     The virgin silence, till     She yields for rapture shuddering, yearning still     To his sweet will.     I hear him sing, "Your harp is like a mesh,     Woven of flesh     And spread within the shoal     Of life, where runs the tide-race of the soul     In my control.     "Though my wild way may ruin what it bends,     It makes amends     To the frail downy clocks,     Telling their seed a secret that unlocks     The granite rocks.     "The womb of silence to the crave sound     Is heaven unfound,     Till I, to soothe and slake     Being's most utter and imperious ache,     Bid rhythm awake.     "If with such agonies of bliss, my kin,     I enter in     Your prison house of sense,     With what a joyous freed intelligence     I shall go hence."     I need no more to guess the weaver's name,     Nor ask his aim,     Who hung each hall and room     With swarthy-tinged vermilion upon gloom;     I know that loom.     Give me a little space and time enough,     From ravelings rough     I could revive, reweave,     A fabric of beauty art might well believe     Were past retrieve.     O men and women in that rich design,     Sleep-soft, sun-fine,     Dew-tenuous and free,     A tone of the infinite wind-themes of the sea,     Borne in to me,     Reveals how you were woven to the might     Of shadow and light.     You are the dream of One     Who loves to haunt and yet appears to shun     My door in the sun;     As the white roving sea tern fleck and skim     The morning's rim;     Or the dark thrushes clear     Their flutes of music leisurely and sheer,     Then hush to hear.     I know him when the last red brands of day     Smoulder away,     And when the vernal showers     Bring back the heart to all my valley flowers     In the soft hours.     O hand of mine and brain of mine, be yours,     While time endures,     To acquiesce and learn!     For what we best may dare and drudge and yearn,     Let soul discern.     So, fellows, we shall reach the gusty gate,     Early or late,     And part without remorse,     A cadence dying down unto its source     In music's course;     You to the perfect rhythms of flowers and birds,     Colors and words,     The heart-beats of the earth,     To be remoulded always of one worth     From birth to birth;     I to the broken rhythm of thought and man,     The sweep and span     Of memory and hope     About the orbit where they still must grope     For wider scope,     To be through thousand springs restored, renewed,     With love imbrued,     With increments of will     Made strong, perceiving unattainment still     From each new skill.     Always the flawless beauty, always the chord     Of the Overword,     Dominant, pleading, sure,     No truth too small to save and make endure.     No good too poor!     And since no mortal can at last disdain     That sweet refrain,     But lets go strife and care,     Borne like a strain of bird notes on the air,     The wind knows where;     Some quiet April evening soft and strange,     When comes the change     No spirit can deplore,     I shall be one with all I was before,     In death once more.