Selected Poems (Aiken)/Seven Twilights
SEVEN TWILIGHTS
I
The ragged pilgrim, on the road to nowhere,Waits at the granite milestone. It grows dark.Willows lean by the water. Pleas of waterCry through the trees. And on the boles and boughsGreen water-lights make rings, already paling.Leaves speak everywhere. The willow leavesSilverly stir on the breath of moving water,Birch-leaves, beyond them, twinkle, and there on the hill,And the hills beyond again, and the highest hill,Serrated pines, in the dusk, grow almost black.By the eighth milestone on the road to nowhereHe drops his sack and lights once more the pipeThere often lighted. In the dusk-sharpened skyA pair of night-hawks windily sweep, or fall,Booming, toward the trees. Thus had it been Last year, and the year before, and many years:Ever the same. . . . "Thus turns the human trackBackward upon itself, I stand once moreBy this small stream. . . ." Now the rich sound of leaves,Turning in air to sway their heavy boughs,Burns in his heart, sings in his veins, as springFlowers in veins of trees; bringing such peaceAs comes to seamen when they dream of seas."O trees! exquisite dancers in grey twilight!Witches! fairies! elves! who wait for the moonTo thrust her golden horn, like a golden snail,Above that mountain!—arch your green benedictionOnce more over my heart. Muffle the sound of bells,Mournfully human, that cries from the darkening valley;Close, with your leaves, about the sound of water;Take me among your hearts as you take the mistAmong your boughs!" . . . Now by the granite milestone,On the ancient human road that leads to nowhere,The pilgrim listens, as the night air bringsThe murmured echo, perpetual, from the gorgeOf barren rock far down the valley. Now,Though twilight here, it may be starlight there;Mist makes elfin lakes in the hollow fields;The dark wood stands in the mist like a sombre islandWith one red star above it. . . . "This I should see,Should I go on, follow the falling road,—This I have often seen. . . . But I shall stayHere, where the ancient milestone, like a watchman,Lifts up its figure eight, its one grey knowledge,Into the twilight; as a watchman liftsA lantern, which he does not know is out."
II
Now by the wall of the little town I leanMyself, like ancient wall and dust and sky,And the purple dusk, grown old, grown old in heart.Shadows of clouds flow inward from the sea.The mottled fields grow dark. The golden wallGrows grey again, turns stone again; the tower,No longer kindled, darkens against a cloud. Old is the world, old as the world am I;The cries of sheep rise upward from the fields,Forlorn and strange; and wake an ancient echoIn fields my blood has known, but has not seen."These fields"—(an unknown voice beyond the wallMurmurs)—"were once the province of the sea.Where now the sheep graze, mermaids were at play;Sea-horses galloped; and the great jewelled tortoiseWalked slowly, looking upward at the waves,Bearing upon his back a thousand barnacles,A white acropolis. . . ." The ancient towerSends out, above the houses and the trees,And the flat fields below the mouldered walls,A measured phrase of bells. And in the silenceI hear a woman's voice make answer then:"Well, they are green, although no ship can sail them.Sky-larks rest in the grass, and start up singingBefore the girl who stoops to pick sea-poppies.Spiny, the poppies are, and oh how yellow!And the brown clay is runnelled by the rain."A moment since, the sheep that crop the grassHad long blue shadows, and the grass-tips sparkled:Now all grows old. . . . O voices strangely speaking,Voices of man and woman, voices of bells,Diversely making comment on our timeWhich flows and bears us with it into dark,—Repeat the things you say! Repeat them slowlyUpon this air, make them an incantationFor ancient tower, old wall, the purple twilight,This dust, and me! . . . But all I hear is silence,And something that may be leaves or may be sea.
III
When the tree bares, the music of it changes:Hard and keen is the sound, long and mournful;Pale are the poplar boughs in the evening lightAbove my house, against a slate-cold cloud.When the house ages, and the tenants leave it,Cricket sings in the tall grass by the threshold;Spider, by the cold mantel, hangs his web. Here, in a hundred years from that clear seasonWhen first I came here bearing lights and music,To this old ghostly house my ghost will come,—Pause in the half-light, turn by the poplar, glideAbove tall grasses through the broken door.Who will say that he saw—or the dusk deceived him—A mist with hands of mist blow down from the treeAnd open the door and enter and close it after?Who will say that he saw, as midnight struckIts tremulous golden twelve, a light in the window,And first heard music, as of an old piano,Music remote, as if it came from the earth,Far down; and then, in the quiet, eager voices?". . . Houses grow old and die, houses have ghosts—Once in a hundred years we return, old house,And live once more." . . . And then the ancient answer,In a voice not human, but more like creak of boardsOr rattle of panes in the wind—"Not as the owner,But as a guest you come, to fires not litBy hands of yours. . . . Through these long-silent chambersMove slowly, turn, return, and bring once moreYour lights and music. It will be good to talk."
IV
"This is the hour," she said, "of transmutation:It is the eucharist of the evening, changingAll things to beauty. Now the ancient river,That all day under the arch was polished jade,Becomes the ghost of a river, thinly gleamingUnder a silver cloud. It is not water:It is that azure stream in which the starsBathe at the daybreak and become immortal.""And the moon," said I—not thus to be outdone—"What of the moon? Over the dusty plane-trees,Which crouch in the dusk above their feeble lanterns,Each coldly lighted by his tiny faith;The moon, the waxen moon, now almost full,Creeps whitely up. . . . Westward the waves of cloud,Vermilion, crimson, violet, stream on the air,Shatter to golden flakes in the icy green Translucency of twilight. And the moonDrinks up their light, and as they fade or darken,Brightens. O monstrous miracle of the twilight,That one should live because the others die!""Strange too," she answered, "that upon this azurePale-gleaming ghostly stream, impalpable—So faint, so fine, that scarcely it bears upThe petals that the lantern strews upon it,—These great black barges float like apparitions,Loom in the silver of it, beat upon it,Moving upon it as dragons move on air!""Thus always," then I answered,—looking neverToward her face, so beautiful and strangeIt grew, with feeding on the evening light,—"The gross is given, by inscrutable God,Power to beat wide wings upon the subtle.Thus we ourselves, so fleshly, fallible, mortal,Stand here, for all our foolishness, transfigured:Hung over nothing in an arch of light;While one more evening, like a wave of silence,Gathers the stars together and goes out."
V
Now the great wheel of darkness and low cloudsWhirs and whirls in heaven with dipping rim;Against the ice-white wall of light in the westSkeleton trees bow down in a stream of air.Leaves, black leaves and smoke, are blown on the wind;Mount upward past my window; swoop again;In a sharp silence, loudly, loudly fallsThe first cold drop, striking a shrivelled leaf.Doom and dusk for the earth! Upward I reachTo draw chill curtains and shut out the dark,Pausing an instant, with uplifted hand,To watch, between black ruined portals of cloud,One star,—the tottering portals fall and crush it.Here are a thousand books! here is the wisdomAlembicked out of dust, or out of nothing;Choose now the weightiest word, most golden page,Most sombrely musicked line; hold up these lanterns,— These paltry lanterns, wisdoms, philosophies,—Above your eyes, against this wall of darkness;And you'll see—what? One hanging strand of cobweb;A window-sill a half-inch deep in dust.Speak out, old wise-men! Now, if ever, we need you.Cry loudly, lift shrill voices like magiciansAgainst this baleful dusk, this wail of rain!But you are nothing. Your pages turn to waterUnder my fingers: cold, cold and gleaming,Arrowy in the darkness, rippling, dripping—All things are rain. Myself, this lighted room,What are we but a murmurous pool of rain?The slow arpeggios of it, liquid, sibilant,Thrill and thrill in the dark. World-deep I lieUnder a sky of rain. Thus lies the sea-shellUnder the rustling twilight of the sea;No gods remember it; no understandingCleaves the long darkness with a sword of light.
VI
Heaven, you say, will be a field in April,A friendly field, a long green wave of earth,With one domed cloud above it. There you'll lieIn noon's delight, with bees to flash above you,Drown amid buttercups that blaze in the wind,Forgetting all save beauty. There you'll seeWith sun-filled eyes your one great dome of cloudAdding fantastic towers and spires of light,Ascending, like a ghost, to melt in the blue.Heaven enough, in truth, if you were there!Could I be with you, I would choose your noon,Drown amid buttercups, laugh with the intimate grass,Dream there forever. . . . But, being older, sadder,Having not you, nor aught save thought of you,It is not spring I'll choose, but fading summer;Not noon I'll choose, but the charmed hour of dusk.Poppies? A few! And a moon almost as red.But most I'll choose that subtler dusk that comesInto the mind—into the heart, you say—When, as we look bewildered at lovely things, Striving to give their loveliness a name,They are forgotten; and other things remembered,Flower in the heart with the fragrance we call grief.
VII
In the long silence of the sea, the seamanStrikes twice his bell of bronze. The short note waversAnd loses itself in the blue realm of water.One sea-gull, paired with a shadow, wheels, wheels;Circles the lonely ship by wave and trough;Lets down his feet, strikes at the breaking water,Draws up his golden feet, beats wings, and risesOver the mast. Light from a crimson cloudCrimsons the sluggishly creeping foams of waves;The seaman, poised in the bow, rises, falls,As the deep forefoot finds a way through waves;And there below him, steadily gazing westward,—Facing the wind, the sunset, the long cloud,—The goddess of the ship, proud figurehead,Smiles inscrutably, plunges to crying waters,Emerges streaming, gleaming, with jewels fallingFierily from carved wings and golden breasts;Steadily glides a moment, then swoops again.Carved by the hand of man, grieved by the wind;Worn by the tumult of the tragic seas,Yet smiling still, unchanging, smiling stillInscrutably, with calm eyes and golden brow—What is it that she sees and follows always,Beyond the molten and ruined west, beyondThe light-rimmed sea, the sky itself? What secretGives wisdom to her purpose? Now the cloudIn final conflagration pales and crumblesInto the darkening water. Now the starsBurn softly through the dusk. The seaman strikesHis small lost bell again, watching the westAs she below him watches. . . . O pale goddess,Whom not the darkness, even, or rain or storm,Changes; whose great wings are bright with foam,Whose breasts are cold as the sea, whose eyes foreverInscrutably take that light whereon they look— Speak to us! Make us certain, as you are,That somewhere, beyond wave and wave and wave,That dreamed-of harbour lies which we would find.