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Jetsam

by William Vaughn Moody

I wonder can this be the world it was

At sunset? I remember the sky fell

Green as pale meadows, at the long street-ends,

But overhead the smoke-wrack hugged the roofs

As if to shut the city from God's eyes

Till dawn should quench the laughter and the lights.

Beneath the gas flare stolid faces passed,

Too dull for sin; old loosened lips set hard

To drain the stale lees from the cup of sense;

Or if a young face yearned from out the mist

Made by its own bright hair, the eyes were wan

With desolate fore-knowledge of the end.

My life lay waste about me: as I walked,

From the gross dark of unfrequented streets

The face of my own youth peered forth at me,

Struck white with pity at the thing I was;

And globed in ghostly fire, thrice-virginal,

With lifted face star-strong, went one who sang

Lost verses from my youth's gold canticle.

Out of the void dark came my face and hers

One vivid moment--then the street was there;

Bloat shapes and mean eyes blotted the sear dusk;

And in the curtained window of a house

Whence sin reeked on the night, a shameful head

Was silhouetted black as Satan's face

Against eternal fires. I stumbled on

Down the dark slope that reaches riverward,

Stretching blind hands to find the throat of God

And crush Him in his lies. The river lay

Coiled in its factory filth and few lean trees.

All was too hateful--I could not die there!

I whom the Spring had strained unto her breast,

Whose lips had felt the wet vague lips of dawn.

So under the thin willows' leprous shade

And through the tangled ranks of riverweed

I pushed--till lo, God heard me! I came forth

Where, 'neath the shoreless hush of region light,

Through a new world, undreamed of, undesired,

Beyond imagining of man's weary heart,

Far to the white marge of the wondering sea

This still plain widens, and this moon rains down

Insufferable ecstasy of peace.

My heart is man's heart, strong to bear this night's

Unspeakable affliction of mute love

That crazes lesser things. The rocks and clods

Dissemble, feign a busy intercourse;

The bushes deal in shadowy subterfuge,

Lurk dull, dart spiteful out, make heartless signs,

Utter awestricken purpose of no sense,--

But I walk quiet, crush aside the hands

Stretched furtively to drag me madmen's ways.

I know the thing they suffer, and the tricks

They must be at to help themselves endure.

I would not be too boastful; I am weak,

Too weak to put aside the utter ache

Of this lone splendor long enough to see

Whether the moon is still her white strange self

Or something whiter, stranger, even the face

Which by the changed face of my risen youth

Sang, globed in fire, her golden canticle.

I dare not look again; another gaze

Might drive me to the wavering coppice there,

Where bat-winged madness brushed me, the wild laugh

Of naked nature crashed across my blood.

So rank it was with earthy presences,

Faun-shapes in goatish dance, young witches' eyes

Slanting deep invitation, whinnying calls

Ambiguous, shocks and whirlwinds of wild mirth,--

They had undone me in the darkness there,

But that within me, smiting through my lids

Lowered to shut in the thick whirl of sense,

The dumb light ached and rummaged, and with out,

The soaring splendor summoned me aloud

To leave the low dank thickets of the flesh

Where man meets beast and makes his lair with him,

For spirit reaches of the strenuous vast,

Where stalwart stars reap grain to make the bread

God breaketh at his tables and is glad.

I came out in the moonlight cleansed and strong,

And gazed up at the lyric face to see

All sweetness tasted of in earthen cups

Ere it be dashed and spilled, all radiance flung

Beyond experience, every benison dream,

Treasured and mystically crescent there.

O, who will shield me from her? Who will place

A veil between me and the fierce in-throng

Of her inexorable benedicite?

See, I have loved her well and been with her!

Through tragic twilights when the stricken sea

Groveled with fear, or when she made her throne

In imminent cities built of gorgeous winds

And paved with lightnings; or when the sobering stars

Would lead her home 'mid wealth of plundered May

Along the violet slopes of evensong.

Of all the sights that starred the dreamy year,

For me one sight stood peerless and apart:

Bright rivers tacit; low hills prone and dumb;

Forests that hushed their tiniest voice to hear;

Skies for the unutterable advent robed

In purple like the opening iris buds;

And by some lone expectant pool, one tree

Whose gray boughs shivered with excess of awe,--

As with preluding gush of amber light,

And herald trumpets softly lifted through,

Across the palpitant horizon marge

Crocus-filleted came the singing moon.

Out of her changing lights I wove my youth

A place to dwell in, sweet and spiritual,

And all the bitter years of my exile

My heart has called afar off unto her.

Lo, after many days love finds its own!

The futile adorations, the waste tears,

The hymns that fluttered low in the false dawn,

She has uptreasured as a lover's gifts;

They are the mystic garment that she wears

Against the bridal, and the crocus flowers

She twined her brow with at the going forth;

They are the burden of the song she made

In coming through the quiet fields of space,

And breathe between her passion-parted lips

Calling me out along the flowering road

Which summers through the dimness of the sea.

Hark, where the deep feels round its thousand shores

To find remembered respite, and far drawn

Through weed-strewn shelves and crannies of the coast

The myriad silence yearns to myriad speech.

O sea that yearns a day, shall thy tongues be

So eloquent, and heart, shall all thy tongues

Be dumb to speak thy longing? Say I hold

Life as a broken jewel in my hand,

And fain would buy a little love with it

For comfort, say I fain would make it shine

Once in remembering eyes ere it be dust,--

Were life not worthy spent? Then what of this,

When all my spirit hungers to repay

The beauty that has drenched my soul with peace?

Once at a simple turning of the way

I met God walking; and although the dawn

Was large behind Him, and the morning stars

Circled and sang about his face as birds

About the fieldward morning cottager,

My coward heart said faintly, "Let us haste!

Day grows and it is far to market-town."

Once where I lay in darkness after fight,

Sore smitten, thrilled a little thread of song

Searching and searching at my muffled sense

Until it shook sweet pangs through all my blood,

And I beheld one globed in ghostly fire

Singing, star-strong, her golden canticle;

And her mouth sang, "The hosts of Hate roll past,

A dance of dust motes in the sliding sun;

Love's battle comes on the wide wings of storm,

From east to west one legion! Wilt thou strive?"

Then, since the splendor of her sword-bright gaze

Was heavy on me with yearning and with scorn

My sick heart muttered, "Yea, the little strife,

Yet see, the grievous wounds! I fain would sleep."

O heart, shalt thou not once be strong to go

Where all sweet throats are calling, once be brave

To slake with deed thy dumbness? Let us go

The path her singing face looms low to point,

Pendulous, blanched with longing, shedding flame

Of silver on the brown grope of the flood;

For all my spirit's soilure is put by

And all my body's soilure, lacking now

But the last lustral sacrament of death

To make me clean for those near-searching eyes

That question yonder whether all be well,

And pause a little ere they dare rejoice.

Question and be thou answered, passionate face!

For I am worthy, worthy now at last

After so long unworth; strong now at last

To give myself to beauty and be saved;

Now, being man, to give myself to thee,

As once the tumult of my boyish heart

Companioned thee with rapture through the world,

Forth from a land whereof no poet's lip

Made mention how the leas were lily-sprent,

Into a land God's eyes had looked not on

To love the tender bloom upon the hills.

To-morrow, when the fishers come at dawn

Upon that shell of me the sea has tossed

To land, as fit for earth to use again,

Men, meeting at the shops and corner streets,

Will speak a word of pity, glossing o'er

With altered accent, dubious sweep of hand,

Their virile, just contempt for one who failed.

But they can never cast my earnings up,

Who know so well my losses. Even you

Who in the mild light of the spirit walk

And hold yourselves acquainted with the truth,

Be not too swift to judge and cast me out!

You shall find other, nobler ways than mine

To work your soul's redemption,--glorious noons

Of battle 'neath the heaven-suspended sign,

And nightly refuge 'neath God's 'gis-rim;

Increase of wisdom, and acquaintance held

With the heart's austerities; still governance,

And ripening of the blood in the weekday sun

To make the full-orbed consecrated fruit

At life's end for the Sabbath supper meet.

I shall not sit beside you at that feast,

For ere a seedling of my golden tree

Pushed off its petals to get room to grow,

I stripped the boughs to make an April gaud

And wreathe a spendthrift garland for my hair.

But mine is not the failure God deplores;

For I of old am beauty's votarist,

Long recreant, often foiled and led astray,

But resolute at last to seek her there

Where most she does abide, and crave with tears

That she assoil me of my blemishment.

Low looms her singing face to point the way,

Pendulous, blanched with longing, shedding flame

Of silver on the brown grope of the flood.

The stars are for me; the horizon wakes

Its pilgrim chanting; and the little sand

Grows musical of hope beneath my feet.

The waves that leap to meet my swimming breast

Gossip sweet secrets of the light-drenched way,

And when the deep throbs of the rising surge

Pulse upward with me, and a rain of wings

Blurs round the moon's pale place, she stoops to reach

Still welcome of bright hands across the wave,

And sings low, low, globed all in ghostly fire,

Lost verses from my youth's gold canticle.