=* A Distributed Proofreaders Canada eBook *= This eBook is made available at no cost and with very few restrictions. These restrictions apply only if (1) you make a change in the eBook (other than alteration for different display devices), or (2) you are making commercial use of the eBook. If either of these conditions applies, please contact a https://www.fadedpage.com administrator before proceeding. Thousands more FREE eBooks are available at https://www.fadedpage.com. This work is in the Canadian public domain, but may be under copyright in some countries. If you live outside Canada, check your country's copyright laws. IF THE BOOK IS UNDER COPYRIGHT IN YOUR COUNTRY, DO NOT DOWNLOAD OR REDISTRIBUTE THIS FILE. _Title:_ The Buck in the Snow _Date of first publication:_ 1928 _Author:_ Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) _Date first posted:_ July 5, 2020 _Date last updated:_ July 5, 2020 Faded Page eBook #20200710 This eBook was produced by: Al Haines, Cindy Beyer & the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at https://www.pgdpcanada.net [Cover Illustration] OTHER BOOKS BY EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY ——— The Lamp and the Bell Second April Three Plays Renascence A Few Figs from Thistles The Harp-Weaver Aria Da Capo The King’s Henchman ——— _Harper & Brothers_ _Publishers_ =_The_= =BUCK IN THE SNOW= =_& Other Poems by_= =EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY= =[Illustration]= =Harper & Brothers _Publishers_= =New York _and_ London= =MCMXXVIII= THE BUCK IN THE SNOW AND OTHER POEMS COPYRIGHT, 1928, BY EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES C O N T E N T S Part One PAGE MORITURUS 3 SONG 10 TO THE WIFE OF A SICK FRIEND 11 THE BOBOLINK 12 THE HAWKWEED 14 TO A FRIEND ESTRANGED FROM ME 15 THE ROAD TO AVRILLÉ 17 FOR PAO-CHIN 18 NORTHERN APRIL 19 THERE AT DUSK I FOUND YOU 20 BEING YOUNG AND GREEN 22 MIST IN THE VALLEY 23 THE HARDY GARDEN 25 THE PIGEONS 26 THE BUCK IN THE SNOW 28 Part Two THE ANGUISH 31 JUSTICE DENIED IN MASSACHUSETTS 32 HANGMAN’S OAK 34 WINE FROM THESE GRAPES 35 TO THOSE WITHOUT PITY 36 Part Three DAWN 39 TO A YOUNG GIRL 41 EVENING ON LESBOS 42 DIRGE WITHOUT MUSIC 43 MEMORY OF CASSIS 45 PORTRAIT 46 WINTER NIGHT 48 THE CAMEO 49 COUNTING-OUT RHYME 50 THE PLUM GATHERER 51 WEST COUNTRY SONG 52 PUEBLO POT 53 WHEN CAESAR FELL 55 LETHE 56 ON FIRST HAVING HEARD THE SKYLARK 57 TO A MUSICIAN 59 Part Four SONNET 63 SONNET 64 SONNET TO GATH 65 THE PIONEER 66 TO JESUS ON HIS BIRTHDAY 67 SONNET 68 ON HEARING A SYMPHONY OF BEETHOVEN 69 _PART ONE_ MORITURUS If I could have Two things in one: The peace of the grave, And the light of the sun; My hands across My thin breast-bone, But aware of the moss Invading the stone, Aware of the flight Of the golden flicker With his wing to the light; To hear him nicker And drum with his bill On the rotted willow; Snug and still On a grey pillow Deep in the clay Where digging is hard, Out of the way,— The blue shard Of a broken platter— If I might be Insensate matter With sensate me Sitting within, Harking and prying, I might begin To dicker with dying. For the body at best Is a bundle of aches, Longing for rest; It cries when it wakes “Alas, ’tis light!” At set of sun “Alas, ’tis night, And nothing done!” Death, however, Is a spongy wall, Is a sticky river, Is nothing at all. Summon the weeper, Wail and sing; Call him Reaper, Angel, King; Call him Evil Drunk to the lees, Monster, Devil,— He is less than these. Call him Thief, The Maggot in the Cheese, The Canker in the Leaf,— He is less than these. Dusk without sound, Where the spirit by pain Uncoiled, is wound To spring again; The mind enmeshed Laid straight in repose, And the body refreshed By feeding the rose,— These are but visions; These would be The grave’s derisions, Could the grave see. Here is the wish Of one that died Like a beached fish On the ebb of the tide: That he might wait Till the tide came back, To see if a crate, Or a bottle, or a black Boot, or an oar, Or an orange peel Be washed ashore. . . . About his heel The sand slips; The last he hears From the world’s lips Is the sand in his ears. What thing is little?— The aphis hid In a house of spittle? The hinge of the lid Of the spider’s eye At the spider’s birth? “Greater am I By the earth’s girth “Than Mighty Death!” All creatures cry That can summon breath;— And speak no lie. For He is nothing; He is less Than Echo answering “Nothingness!”— Less than the heat Of the furthest star To the ripening wheat; Less by far, When all the lipping Is said and sung, Than the sweat dripping From a dog’s tongue. This being so, And I being such, I would liever go On a cripple’s crutch, Lopped and felled; Liever be dependent On a chair propelled By a surly attendant With a foul breath, And be spooned my food, Than go with Death Where nothing good, Not even the thrust Of the summer gnat, Consoles the dust For being that. Needy, lonely, Stitched by pain, Left with only The drip of the rain Out of all I had; The books of the wise, Badly read By other eyes, Lewdly bawled At my closing ear; Hated, called A lingerer here;— Withstanding Death Till Life be gone, I shall treasure my breath, I shall linger on. I shall bolt my door With a bolt and a cable; I shall block my door With a bureau and a table; With all my might My door shall be barred. I shall put up a fight, I shall take it hard. With his hand on my mouth He shall drag me forth, Shrieking to the south And clutching at the north. SONG Gone, gone again is Summer the lovely. She that knew not where to hide, Is gone again like a jeweled fish from the hand, Is lost on every side. Mute, mute, I make my way to the garden, Thither where she last was seen; The heavy foot of the frost is on the flags there, Where her light step has been. Gone, gone again is Summer the lovely, Gone again on every side, Lost again like a shining fish from the hand Into the shadowy tide. TO THE WIFE OF A SICK FRIEND Shelter this candle from the wind. Hold it steady. In its light The cave wherein we wander lost Glitters with frosty stalactite, Blossoms with mineral rose and lotus, Sparkles with crystal moon and star, Till a man would rather be lost than found: We have forgotten where we are. Shelter this candle. Shrewdly blowing Down the cave from a secret door Enters our only foe, the wind. Hold it steady. Lest we stand, Each in a sudden, separate dark, The hot wax spattered upon your hand, The smoking wick in my nostrils strong, The inner eyelid red and green For a moment yet with moons and roses,— Then the unmitigated dark. Alone, alone, in a terrible place, In utter dark without a face, With only the dripping of the water on the stone, And the sound of your tears, and the taste of my own. THE BOBOLINK Black bird scudding Under the rainy sky, How wet your wings must be! And your small head how sleek and cold with water. Oh, Bobolink, ’tis you! Over the buffeted orchard in the summer draught, Chuckling and singing, charging the rainy cloud, A little bird gone daft, A little bird with a secret. Only the bobolink on the rainy Rhubarb blossom, Knows my heart. For whom adversity has not a word to say that can be heard Above the din of summer. The rain has taught us nothing. And the hooves of cattle, and the cat in the grass Have taught us nothing. The hawk that motionless above the hill In the pure sky Stands like a blackened planet Has taught us nothing,—seeing him shut his wings and fall Has taught us nothing at all. In the shadow of the hawk we feather our nests. Bobolink, you and I, an airy fool and an earthy, Chuckling under the rain! _I shall never be sad again._ _I shall never be sad again._ Ah, sweet, absurd, Belovèd, bedraggled bird! THE HAWKWEED Between the red-top and the rye, Between the buckwheat and the corn, The ploughman sees with sullen eye The hawkweed licking at the sky: Three level acres all forlorn, Unfertile, sour, outrun, outworn, Free as the day that they were born. Southward and northward, west and east, The sulphate and the lime are spread; Harrowed and sweetened, urged, increased, The furrow sprouts for man and beast: While of the hawkweed’s radiant head No stanchion reeks, no stock is fed. Triumphant up the taken field The tractor and the plough advance; Blest be the healthy germ concealed In the rich earth, and blest the yield: And blest be Beauty, that enchants The frail, the solitary lance. TO A FRIEND ESTRANGED FROM ME Now goes under, and I watch it go under, the sun That will not rise again. Today has seen the setting, in your eyes cold and senseless as the sea, Of friendship better than bread, and of bright charity That lifts a man a little above the beasts that run. That this could be! That I should live to see Most vulgar Pride, that stale obstreperous clown, So fitted out with purple robe and crown To stand among his betters! Face to face With outraged me in this once holy place, Where Wisdom was a favoured guest and hunted Truth was harboured out of danger, He bulks enthroned, a lewd, an insupportable stranger! I would have sworn, indeed I swore it: The hills may shift, the waters may decline, Winter may twist the stem from the twig that bore it, But never your love from me, your hand from mine. Now goes under the sun, and I watch it go under. Farewell, sweet light, great wonder! You, too, farewell,—but fare not well enough to dream You have done wisely to invite the night before the darkness came. THE ROAD TO AVRILLÉ April again in Avrillé, And the brown lark in air. And you and I a world apart, That walked together there. The cuckoo spoke from out the wood, The lark from out the sky. Embraced upon the highway stood Love-sick you and I. The rosy peasant left his bees, The carrier slowed his cart, To shout us blithe obscenities, And bless us from the heart, That long before the year was out, Under the autumn rain, Far from the road to Avrillé, Parted with little pain. FOR PAO-CHIN, A BOATMAN ON THE YELLOW SEA Where is he now, in his soiled shirt reeking of garlic, Sculling his sampan home, and night approaching fast— The red sail hanging wrinkled on the bamboo mast; Where is he now, I shall remember my whole life long With love and praise, for the sake of a small song Played on a Chinese flute? I have been sad; I have been in cities where the song was all I had,— A treasure never to be bartered by the hungry days. Where is he now, for whom I carry in my heart This love, this praise? NORTHERN APRIL O mind, beset by music never for a moment quiet,— The wind at the flue, the wind strumming the shutter; The soft, antiphonal speech of the doubled brook, never for a moment quiet; The rush of the rain against the glass, his voice in the eaves-gutter! Where shall I lay you to sleep, and the robins be quiet? Lay you to sleep—and the frogs be silent in the marsh? Crashes the sleet from the bough and the bough sighs upward, never for a moment quiet. April is upon us, pitiless and young and harsh. O April, full of blood, full of breath, have pity upon us! Pale, where the winter like a stone has been lifted away, we emerge like yellow grass. Be for a moment quiet, buffet us not, have pity upon us, Till the green come back into the vein, till the giddiness pass. THERE AT DUSK I FOUND YOU There at dusk I found you, walking and weeping Upon the broken flags, Where at dusk the dumb white nicotine awakes and utters her fragrance In a garden sleeping. Looking askance you said: Love is dead. Under our eyes without warning softly the summer afternoon let fall The rose upon the wall, And it lay there spintered. Terribly then into my heart the forgotten anguish entered. I saw the dark stone on the smallest finger of your hand, And the clean cuff above. No more, no more the dark stone on the smallest finger Of your brown and naked arm, Lifting my body in love! Worse than dead is he of the wounded wing, Who walks between us, weeping upon the cold flags, Bleeding and weeping, dragging his broken wing. He has gathered the rose into his hand and chafed her with his breath. But the rose is quiet and pale. She has forgotten us all. Even spring. Even death. As for me, I have forgotten nothing,—nor shall I ever forget— But this one thing: I have forgotten which of us it was That hurt his wing. I only know his limping flight above us in the blue air Toward the sunset cloud Is more than I can bear. You, you there, Stiff-necked and angry, holding up your head so proud, Have you not seen how pitiful lame he flies, and none to befriend him? Speak! Are you blind? Are you dead? Shall we call him back? Shall we mend him? BEING YOUNG AND GREEN Being young and green, I said in love’s despite: Never in the world will I to living wight Give over, air my mind To anyone, Hang out its ancient secrets in the strong wind To be shredded and faded. . . . Oh, me, invaded And sacked by the wind and the sun! MIST IN THE VALLEY These hills, to hurt me more, That am hurt already enough,— Having left the sea behind, Having turned suddenly and left the shore That I had loved beyond all words, even a song’s words, to convey, And built me a house on upland acres, Sweet with the pinxter, bright and rough With the rusty blackbird long before the winter’s done, But smelling never of bayberry hot in the sun, Nor ever loud with the pounding of the long white breakers,— These hills, beneath the October moon, Sit in the valley white with mist Like islands in a quiet bay, Jut out from shore into the mist, Wooded with poplar dark as pine, Like points of land into a quiet bay. (Just in that way The harbour met the bay) Stricken too sore for tears, I stand, remembering the islands and the sea’s lost sound. . . . Life at its best no longer than the sand-peep’s cry, And I two years, two years, Tilling an upland ground! THE HARDY GARDEN Now let forever the phlox and the rose be tended Here where the rain has darkened and the sun has dried So many times the terrace, yet is love unended, Love has not died. Let here no seed of a season, that the winter But once assails, take root and for a time endure; But only such as harbour at the frozen centre The germ secure. Set here the phlox and the iris, and establish Pink and valerian, and the great and lesser bells; But suffer not the sisters of the year, to publish That frost prevails. How far from home in a world of mortal burdens Is Love, that may not die, and is forever young! Set roses here: surround her only with such maidens As speak her tongue. THE PIGEONS Well I remember the pigeons in the sunny arbor Beyond your open door; How they conversed throughout the afternoon in their monotonous voices never for a moment still; Always of yesterday they spoke, and of the days before, Rustling the vine-leaves, twitching the dark shadows of the leaves on the bright sill. You said, the soft curring and droning of the pigeons in the vine Was a pretty thing enough to the passer-by, But a maddening thing to the man with his head in his hands,—“Like mine! Like mine!” You said, and ran to the door and waved them off into the sky. They did not come back. The arbor was empty of their cooing. The shadows of the leaves were still. “Whither have they flown, then?” I said, and waited for their wings, but they did not come back. If I had known then What I know now, I never would have left your door. Tall in your faded smock, with steady hand Mingling the brilliant pigments, painting your intersecting planes you stand, In a quiet room, empty of the past, of its droning and cooing, Thinking I know not what, but thinking of me no more, That left you with a light word, that loving and rueing Walk in the streets of a city you have never seen, Walk in a noise of yesterday and of the days before, Walk in a cloud of wings intolerable, shutting out the sun as if it never had been. THE BUCK IN THE SNOW White sky, over the hemlocks bowed with snow, Saw you not at the beginning of evening the antlered buck and his doe Standing in the apple-orchard? I saw them. I saw them suddenly go, Tails up, with long leaps lovely and slow, Over the stone-wall into the wood of hemlocks bowed with snow. Now lies he here, his wild blood scalding the snow. How strange a thing is death, bringing to his knees, bringing to his antlers The buck in the snow. How strange a thing,—a mile away by now, it may be, Under the heavy hemlocks that as the moments pass Shift their loads a little, letting fall a feather of snow— Life, looking out attentive from the eyes of the doe. _PART TWO_ THE ANGUISH I would to God I were quenched and fed As in my youth From the flask of song, and the good bread Of beauty richer than truth. The anguish of the world is on my tongue. My bowl is filled to the brim with it; there is more than I can eat. Happy are the toothless old and the toothless young, That cannot rend this meat. JUSTICE DENIED IN MASSACHUSETTS Let us abandon then our gardens and go home And sit in the sitting-room. Shall the larkspur blossom or the corn grow under this cloud? Sour to the fruitful seed Is the cold earth under this cloud, Fostering quack and weed, we have marched upon but cannot conquer; We have bent the blades of our hoes against the stalks of them. Let us go home, and sit in the sitting-room. Not in our day Shall the cloud go over and the sun rise as before, Beneficent upon us Out of the glittering bay, And the warm winds be blown inward from the sea Moving the blades of corn With a peaceful sound. Forlorn, forlorn, Stands the blue hay-rack by the empty mow. And the petals drop to the ground, Leaving the tree unfruited. The sun that warmed our stooping backs and withered the weed uprooted— We shall not feel it again. We shall die in darkness, and be buried in the rain. What from the splendid dead We have inherited— Furrows sweet to the grain, and the weed subdued— See now the slug and the mildew plunder. Evil does overwhelm The larkspur and the corn; We have seen them go under. Let us sit here, sit still, Here in the sitting-room until we die; At the step of Death on the walk, rise and go; Leaving to our children’s children this beautiful doorway, And this elm, And a blighted earth to till With a broken hoe. HANGMAN’S OAK Before the cock in the barnyard spoke, Before it well was day, Horror like a serpent from about the Hangman’s Oak Uncoiled and slid away. Pity and Peace were on the limb That bore such bitter fruit. Deep he lies, and the desperate blood of him Befriends the innocent root. Brother, I said to the air beneath the bough Whence he had swung, It will not be long for any of us now; We do not grow young. It will not be long for the knotter of ropes, not long For the sheriff or for me, Or for any of them that came five hundred strong To see you swing from a tree. Side by side together in the belly of Death We sit without hope, You, and I, and the mother that gave you breath, And the tree, and the rope. WINE FROM THESE GRAPES Wine from these grapes I shall be treading surely Morning and noon and night until I die. Stained with these grapes I shall lie down to die. If you would speak with me on any matter, At any time, come where these grapes are grown; And you will find me treading them to must. Lean then above me sagely, lest I spatter Drops of the wine I tread from grapes and dust. Stained with these grapes I shall lie down to die. Three women come to wash me clean Shall not erase this stain. Nor leave me lying purely, Awaiting the black lover. Death, fumbling to uncover My body in his bed, Shall know There has been one Before him. TO THOSE WITHOUT PITY Cruel of heart, lay down my song. Your reading eyes have done me wrong. Not for you was the pen bitten, And the mind wrung, and the song written. _PART THREE_ DAWN All men are lonely now. This is the hour when no man has a friend. Memory and Faith suspend From their spread wings above a cool abyss. All friendships end. He that lay awake All night For sweet love’s unregenerate sake, Sleeps in the grey light. The lover, if he dream at all, Dreams not of her whose languid hand sleeps open at his side; He is gone to another bride. And she he leaves behind Sighs not in sleep “Unkind . . . unkind . . .”; She walks in a garden of yellow quinces; Smiling, she gathers yellow quinces in a basket Of willow and laurel combined. Should I return to your door, Fresh and haggard out of the morning air, There would be darkness on the stair, And a dead close odor painfully sad, That was not there before. There would be silence. There would be heavy steps across the floor. And you would let me in, frowning with sleep Under your rumpled hair. Beautiful now upon the ear unshut by slumber The rich and varied voices of the waking day!— The mighty, mournful whistles without number Of tugs and ferries, mingling, confounding, failing, Thinning to separate notes of wailing, Making stupendous music on the misty bay. Now through the echoing street in the growing light, Intent on errands that the sun approves, Clatter unashamed the heavy wheels and hooves Before the silent houses; briskly they say: “Marshal not me among the enterprises of the night. I am the beginning of the day.” TO A YOUNG GIRL Shall I despise you that your colourless tears Made rainbows in your lashes, and you forgot to weep? Would we were half so wise, that eke a grief out By sitting in the dark, until we fall asleep. I only fear lest, being by nature sunny, By and by you will weep no more at all, And fall asleep in the light, having lost with the tears The colour in the lashes that comes as the tears fall. I would not have you darken your lids with weeping, Beautiful eyes, but I would have you weep enough To wet the fingers of the hand held over the eye-lids, And stain a little the light frock’s delicate stuff. For there came into my mind, as I watched you winking the tears down, Laughing faces, blown from the west and the east, Faces lovely and proud that I have prized and cherished; Nor were the loveliest among them those that had wept the least. EVENING ON LESBOS Twice having seen your shingled heads adorable Side by side, the onyx and the gold, I know that I have had what I could not hold. Twice have I entered the room, not knowing she was here. Two agate eyes, two eyes of malachite, Twice have been turned upon me, hard and bright. Whereby I know my loss. Oh, not restorable Sweet incense, mounting in the windless night! DIRGE WITHOUT MUSIC I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground. So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind: Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned. Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you. Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust. A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew, A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost. The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,— They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve. More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses of the world. Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind; Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave. I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned. MEMORY OF CASSIS Do you recall how we sat by the smokily-burning Twisted odorous trunk of the olive-tree, In the inn on the cliff, and skinned the ripe green figs, And heard the white sirocco driving in the sea? The thunder and the smother there where like a ship’s prow The lighthouse breasted the wave? how wanly through the wild spray Under our peering eyes the eye of the light looked out, Disheveled, but without dismay? Do you recall the sweet-alyssum over the ledges Crawling and the tall heather and the mushrooms under the pines, And the deep white dust of the broad road leading outward To a world forgotten, between the dusty almonds and the dusty vines? PORTRAIT Over and over I have heard, As now I hear it, Your voice harsh and light as the scratching of dry leaves over the hard ground, Your voice forever assailed and shaken by the wind from the island Of illustrious living and dead, that never dies down, And bending at moments under the terrible weight of the perfect word, Here in this room without fire, without comfort of any kind, Reading aloud to me immortal page after page conceived in a mortal mind. Beauty at such moments before me like a wild bright bird Has been in the room, and eyed me, and let me come near it. I could not ever nor can I to this day Acquaint you with the triumph and the sweet rest These hours have brought to me and always bring,— Rapture, coloured like the wild bird’s neck and wing, Comfort, softer than the feathers of its breast. Always, and even now, when I rise to go, Your eyes blaze out from a face gone wickedly pale; I try to tell you what I would have you know,— What peace it was; you cry me down; you scourge me with a salty flail; You will not have it so. WINTER NIGHT Pile high the hickory and the light Log of chestnut struck by the blight. Welcome-in the winter night. The day has gone in hewing and felling, Sawing and drawing wood to the dwelling For the night of talk and story-telling. These are the hours that give the edge To the blunted axe and the bent wedge, Straighten the saw and lighten the sledge. Here are question and reply, And the fire reflected in the thinking eye. So peace, and let the bob-cat cry. THE CAMEO Forever over now, forever, forever gone That day. Clear and diminished like a scene Carven in cameo, the lighthouse, and the cove between The sandy cliffs, and the boat drawn up on the beach; And the long skirt of a lady innocent and young, Her hand resting on her bosom, her head hung; And the figure of a man in earnest speech. Clear and diminished like a scene cut in cameo The lighthouse, and the boat on the beach, and the two shapes Of the woman and the man; lost like the lost day Are the words that passed, and the pain,—discarded, cut away From the stone, as from the memory the heat of the tears escapes. O troubled forms, O early love unfortunate and hard, Time has estranged you into a jewel cold and pure; From the action of the waves and from the action of sorrow forever secure, White against a ruddy cliff you stand, chalcedony on sard. COUNTING-OUT RHYME Silver bark of beech, and sallow Bark of yellow birch and yellow Twig of willow. Stripe of green in moosewood maple, Colour seen in leaf of apple, Bark of popple. Wood of popple pale as moonbeam, Wood of oak for yoke and barn-beam, Wood of hornbeam. Silver bark of beech, and hollow Stem of elder, tall and yellow Twig of willow. THE PLUM GATHERER The angry nettle and the mild Grew together under the blue-plum trees. I could not tell as a child Which was my friend of these. Always the angry nettle in the skirt of his sister Caught my wrist that reached over the ground, Where alike I gathered,—for the one was sweet and the other wore a frosty dust— The broken plum and the sound. The plum-trees are barren now and the black knot is upon them, That stood so white in the spring. I would give, to recall the sweetness and the frost of the lost blue plums, Anything, anything. I thrust my arm among the grey ambiguous nettles, and wait. But they do not sting. WEST COUNTRY SONG Sun came up, bigger than all my sorrow; Lark in air so high, and his song clean through me. Now comes night, hushing the lark in’s furrow, And the rain falls fine. What have I done with what was dearest to me? Thatch and wick, fagot, and tea on trivet,— These and more it was; it was all my cheer. Now comes night, smelling of box and privet, And the rain falls fine. Have I left it out in the rain?—It is not here. PUEBLO POT There as I bent above the broken pot from the mesa pueblo, Mournfully many times its patterned shards piecing together and laying aside, Appeared upon the house-top, two Navajos enchanted, the red-shafted flicker and his bride, And stepped with lovely stride To the pergola, flashing the wonder of their underwings; There stood, mysterious and harsh and sleek, Wrenching the indigo berry from the shedding woodbine with strong ebony beak. His head without a crest Wore the red full moon for crown; The black new moon was crescent on the breast Of each; From the bodies of both a visible heat beat down, And from the motion of their necks a shadow would fly and fall, Skimming the court and in the yellow adobe wall Cleaving a blue breach. Powerful was the beauty of these birds. It boomed like a struck bell in the silence deep and hot. I stooped above the shattered clay; passionately I cried to the beauty of these birds, “Solace the broken pot!” The beauty of these birds Opened its lips to speak; Colours were its words, The scarlet shaft on the grey cheek, The purple berry in the ebony beak. It said, “I cannot console The broken thing; I can only make it whole.” Wisdom, heretic flower, I was ever afraid Of your large, cool petals without scent! Shocked, betrayed, I turned to the comfort of grief, I bent Above the lovely shards. But their colours had faded in the fierce light of the birds. And as for the birds, they were gone. As suddenly as they had come, they went. WHEN CAESAR FELL When Caesar fell, where yellow Tiber rolls Its heavy waters muddy, Life, that was ebbing from a hundred holes In Caesar’s body, Cried with a hundred voices to the common air, The unimperial day, “Gather me up, oh, pour me into the veins of even a gilder of hair! Let me not vanish away!” The teeth of Caesar at the ignoble word Were ground together in pride; No sound came from his lips: the world has heard How Caesar died. In the Roman dust the cry of Caesar’s blood Was heard and heard without wonder Only by the fly that swam in the red flood Till his head went under. LETHE Ah, drink again This river that is the taker-away of pain, And the giver-back of beauty! In these cool waves What can be lost?— Only the sorry cost Of the lovely thing, ah, never the thing itself! The level flood that laves The hot brow And the stiff shoulder Is at our temples now. Gone is the fever, But not into the river; Melted the frozen pride, But the tranquil tide Runs never the warmer for this, Never the colder. Immerse the dream. Drench the kiss. Dip the song in the stream. ON FIRST HAVING HEARD THE SKYLARK Not knowing he rose from earth, not having seen him rise, Not knowing the fallow furrow was his home, And that high wing, untouchable, untainted, A wing of earth, with the warm loam Closely acquainted, I shuddered at his cry and caught my heart. Relentless out of heaven his sweet crying like a crystal dart Was launched against me. Scanning the empty sky I stood with thrown-back head until the world reeled. Still, still he sped his unappeasable shafts against my breast without a shield. He cried forever from his unseen throat Between me and the sun. He would not end his singing, he would not have done. “Serene and pitiless note, whence, whence are you?” I cried. “Alas, these arrows, how fast they fall! Ay, me, beset by angels in unequal fight, Alone high on the shaven down surprised, and not a tree in sight!” Even as I spoke he was revealed Above me in the bright air, A dark articulate atom in the mute enormous blue, A mortal bird, flying and singing in the morning there. Even as I spoke I spied him, and I knew, And called him by his name; “Blithe Spirit!” I cried. Transfixed by more than mortal spears I fell; I lay among the foreign daisies pink and small, And wept, staining their innocent faces with fast-flowing tears. TO A MUSICIAN Who, now, when evening darkens the water and the stream is dull, Slowly, in a delicate frock, with her leghorn hat in her hand, At your side from under the golden osiers moves, Faintly smiling, shattered by the charm of your voice? There, today, as in the days when I knew you well, The willow sheds upon the stream its narrow leaves, And the quiet flowing of the water and its faint smell Are balm to the heart that grieves. Together with the sharp discomfort of loving you, Ineffable you, so lovely and so aloof, There is laid upon the spirit the calmness of the river view: Together they fall, the pain and its reproof. Who, now, under the yellow willows at the water’s edge Closes defeated lips upon the trivial word unspoken, And lifts her soft eyes freighted with a heavy pledge To your eyes empty of pledges, even of pledges broken? _PART FOUR_ SONNET Life, were thy pains as are the pains of hell, So hardly to be borne, yet to be borne, And all thy boughs more grim with wasp and thorn Than armoured bough stood ever; too chill to spell With the warm tongue, and sharp with broken shell Thy ways, whereby in wincing haste forlorn The desperate foot must travel, blind and torn, Yet must I cry,—So be it; it is well. So fair to me thy vineyards, nor less fair Than the sweet heaven my fathers hoped to gain; So bright this earthly blossom spiked with care, This harvest hung behind the boughs of pain, Needs must I gather, guessing by the stain I bleed, but know not wherefore, know not where. SONNET Grow not too high, grow not too far from home, Green tree, whose roots are in the granite’s face! Taller than silver spire or golden dome A tree may grow above its earthy place, And taller than a cloud, but not so tall The root may not be mother to the stem, Lifting rich plenty, though the rivers fall, To the cold sunny leaves to nourish them. Have done with blossoms for a time, be bare; Split rock; plunge downward; take heroic soil; Deeper than bones—no pasture for you there; Deeper than water, deeper than gold and oil: Earth’s fiery core alone can feed the bough That blooms between Orion and the Plough. SONNET TO GATH Country of hunchbacks!—where the strong, straight spine, Jeered at by crooked children, makes his way Through by-streets at the kindest hour of day, Till he deplore his stature, and incline To measure manhood with a gibbous line; Till out of loneliness, being flawed with clay, He stoop into his neighbour’s house and say, “Your roof is low for me—the fault is mine.” Dust in an urn long since, dispersed and dead Is great Apollo; and the happier he; Since who amongst you all would lift a head At a god’s radiance on the mean door-tree, Saving to run and hide your dates and bread, And cluck your children in about your knee? THE PIONEER _On the Unveiling of a Statue to Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Washington, November eighteenth, 1923._ Upon this marble bust that is not I Lay the round, formal wreath that is not fame; But in the forum of my silenced cry Root ye the living tree whose sap is flame. I, that was proud and valiant, am no more;— Save as a dream that wanders wide and late, Save as a wind that rattles the stout door, Troubling the ashes in the sheltered grate. The stone will perish; I shall be twice dust. Only my standard on a taken hill Can cheat the mildew and the red-brown rust And make immortal my adventurous will. Even now the silk is tugging at the staff: Take up the song; forget the epitaph. TO JESUS ON HIS BIRTHDAY For this your mother sweated in the cold, For this you bled upon the bitter tree: A yard of tinsel ribbon bought and sold; A paper wreath; a day at home for me. The merry bells ring out, the people kneel; Up goes the man of God before the crowd; With voice of honey and with eyes of steel He drones your humble gospel to the proud. Nobody listens. Less than the wind that blows Are all your words to us you died to save. O Prince of Peace! O Sharon’s dewy Rose! How mute you lie within your vaulted grave. The stone the angel rolled away with tears Is back upon your mouth these thousand years. SONNET Not that it matters, not that my heart’s cry Is potent to deflect our common doom, Or bind to truce in this ambiguous room The planets of the atom as they ply; But only to record that you and I, Like thieves that scratch the jewels from a tomb, Have gathered delicate love in hardy bloom Close under Chaos,—I rise to testify. This is my testament: that we are taken; Our colours are as clouds before the wind; Yet for a moment stood the foe forsaken, Eyeing Love’s favour to our helmet pinned; Death is our master,—but his seat is shaken; He rides victorious,—but his ranks are thinned. ON HEARING A SYMPHONY OF BEETHOVEN Sweet sounds, oh, beautiful music, do not cease! Reject me not into the world again. With you alone is excellence and peace, Mankind made plausible, his purpose plain. Enchanted in your air benign and shrewd, With limbs a-sprawl and empty faces pale, The spiteful and the stingy and the rude Sleep like the scullions in the fairy-tale. This moment is the best the world can give: The tranquil blossom on the tortured stem. Reject me not, sweet sounds! oh, let me live, Till Doom espy my towers and scatter them, A city spell-bound under the aging sun, Music my rampart, and my only one. [Illustration: THE HOUSE OF HARPER New York] Publishers of BOOKS and of Harper’s Magazine — _Established 1817_ TRANSCRIBER NOTES Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple spellings occur, majority use has been employed. Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors occur. [The end of _The Buck in the Snow_ by Edna St. Vincent Millay]