Calverly's. [Edwin Arlington

Robinson]

We go no more to Calverly's, For there the lights are few and low; And who are there to see by them, Or what they see, we do not know. Poor strangers of another tongue May now creep in from anywhere, And we, forgotten, be no more Than twilight on a ruin there.

We two, the remnant. All the rest Are cold and quiet. You nor I, Nor fiddle now, nor flagon-lid, May ring them back from where they lie. No fame delays oblivion For them, but something yet survives: A record written fair, could we But read the book of scattered lives.

There'll be a page for Leffingwell, And one for Lingard, the Moon-calf; And who knows what for Clavering, Who died because he couldn't laugh? Who knows or cares? No sign is here, No face, no voice, no memory; No Lingard with his eerie joy, No Clavering, no Calverly.

We cannot have them here with us To say where their light lives are gone, Or if they be of other stuff Than are the moons of Ilion. So, be their place of one estate With ashes, echoes, and old wars, -- Or ever we be of the night, Or we be lost among the stars.

Uriel. [Percy MacKaye]

(In memory of William Vaughn Moody)

I

Uriel, you that in the ageless sun Sit in the awful silences of light, Singing of vision hid from human sight, -- Prometheus, beautiful rebellious one! And you, Deucalion, For whose blind seed was brought the illuming spark, Are you not gathered, now his day is done, Beside the brink of that relentless dark -- The dark where your dear singer's ghost is gone?

Imagined beings, who majestic blend Your forms with beauty! -- questing, unconfined, The mind conceived you, though the quenched mind Goes down in dark where you in dawn ascend. Our songs can but suspend The ultimate silence: yet could song aspire The realms of mortal music to extend And wake a Sibyl's voice or Seraph's lyre -- How should it tell the dearness of a friend?

III

The simplest is the inexpressible; The heart of music still evades the Muse, And arts of men the heart of man suffuse, And saddest things are made of silence still. In vain the senses thrill To give our sorrows glorious relief In pyre of verse and pageants volatile, And I, in vain, to speak for him my grief Whose spirit of fire invokes my waiting will.

IV

To him the best of friendship needs must be Uttered no more; yet was he so endowed That Poetry because of him is proud And he more noble for his poetry, Wherefore infallibly I obey the strong compulsion which this verse Lays on my lips with strange austerity -- Now that his voice is silent

-- to rehearse For my own heart how he was dear to me.

V

Not by your gradual sands, elusive Time, We measure your gray sea, that never rests; The bleeding hour-glasses in our breasts Mete with quick pangs the ebbing of our prime, And drip, like sudden rime In March, that melts to runnels from a pane The south breathes on -- oblivion of sublime Crystallizations, and the ruthless wane Of glittering stars, that scarce had range to climb.

VI

Darkling those constellations of his soul Glimmered, while racks of stellar lightning shot The white, creative meteors of thought Through that last night, where -- clad in cloudy stole -- Beside his ebbing shoal Of life- blood, stood Saint Paul, blazing a theme Of living drama from a fiery scroll Across his stretched vision as in dream -- When Death, with blind dark, blotted out the whole.

VII

And yet not all: though darkly alien Those uncompleted worlds of work to be Are waned; still, touched by them, the memory Gives afterglow; and now that comes again The mellow season when Our eyes last met, his kindling currents run Quickening within me gladness and new ken Of life, that I have shared his prime with one Who wrought large-minded for the love of men.

VIII

But not alone to share that large estate Of work and interchange of communings -- The little human paths to heavenly things Were also ours: the casual, intimate Vistas, which consecrate -- With laughter and quick tears -- the dusty noon Of days, and by moist beams irradiate Our plodding minds with courage, and attune The fellowship that bites its thumb at fate.

IX

Where art thou now, mine host Guffanti? -- where The iridescence of thy motley troop! Ah, where the merry, animated group That snuggled elbows for an extra chair, When space was none to spare, To pour the votive Chianti for a toast To dramas dark and lyrics debonair, The while, to `Bella Napoli', mine host Exhaled his Parmazan, Parnassan air!

Thy Parmazan, immortal laird of ease, Can never mold, thy caviare is blest, While still our glowing Uriel greets the rest Around thy royal board of memories, Where sit, the salt of these, He of the laughter of a Hundred Lights, Blithe Eldorado of high poesies, And he -- of enigmatic gentle knights The kindly keen -- who sings of `Calverly's'.

XI

Because he never wore his sentient heart For crows and jays to peck, ofttimes to such He seemed a silent fellow, who o'ermuch Held from the general gossip-ground apart, Or tersely spoke, and tart: How should they guess what eagle tore, within, His quick of sympathy for humblest smart Of human wretchedness, or probed his spleen Of scorn against the hypocritic mart!

XII

Sometimes insufferable seemed to come That wrath of sympathy: One windy night We watched through squalid panes, forlornly white, -- Amid immense machines' incessant hum -- Frail figures, gaunt and dumb, Of overlabored girls and children, bowed Above their slavish toil: "O God! -- A bomb, A bomb!" he cried, "and with one fiery cloud Expunge the horrible Caesars of this slum!"

XIII

Another night dreams on the Cornish hills: Trembling within the low moon's pallid fires, The tall corn-tassels lift their fragrant spires; From filmy spheres, a liquid starlight fills -- Like dew of daffodils -- The fragile dark, where multitudinous The rhythmic, intermittent silence thrills, Like song, the valleys. -- "Hark!" he murmurs, "Thus May bards from crickets learn their canticles!"

XIV

Now Morning, not less lavish of her sweets, Leads us along the woodpaths -- in whose hush The quivering alchemy of the pure thrush Cools from above the balsam-dripping heats -- To find, in green retreats, 'Mid men of clay, the great, quick-hearted man Whose subtle art our human age secretes, Or him whose brush, tinct with cerulean, Blooms with soft castle-towers and cloud-capped fleets.

XV

Still to the sorcery of August skies In frilled crimson flaunt the hollyhocks, Where, lithely poised along the garden walks, His little maid enamoured blithe outvies The dipping butterflies In motion -- ah, in grace how grown the while, Since he was wont to render to her eyes His knightly court, or touch with flitting smile Her father's heart by his true flatteries!

XVI

But summer's golden pastures boast no trail So splendid as our fretted snowshoes blaze Where, sharp across the amethystine ways, Iron Ascutney looms in azure mail, And, like a frozen grail, The frore sun sets, intolerably fair; Mute, in our homebound snow-tracks, we exhale The silvery cold, and soon -- where bright logs flare -- Talk the long indoor hours, till embers fail.

XVII

Ah, with the smoke what smouldering desires Waft to the starlight up the swirling flue! -- Thoughts that may never, as the swallows do, Nest circling homeward to their native fires! Ardors the soul suspires The extinct stars drink with the dreamer's breath; The morning-song of Eden's early choirs Grows dim with Adam; close at the ear of death Relentless

angels tune our earthly lyres!

XVIII

Let it be so: More sweet it is to be A listener of love's ephemeral song, And live with beauty though it be not long, And die enamoured of eternity, Though in the apogee Of time there sit no individual Godhead of life, than to reject the plea Of passionate beauty: loveliness is all, And love is more divine than memory.