Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  Who brought you news of my lord;

  “And he waits without the circle

  To kiss your highness’ hand;

  And he asks no gold for guerdon,

  But before he leaves the land

  “He craves of your love once proffered

  That you suffer him for reward,

  In this crowning hour of his glory,

  To look on your son, my lord.”

  Through the silken press of the courtiers

  The minstrel faltered in.

  His claspèd hands were bloodless,

  His face was white and thin;

  And he bent his knee to the lady,

  But of her love and grace

  To her heart she raised him and kissed him

  Upon his gentle face.

  Turned to her son the bridegroom,

  Turned to his high-born wife,

  “I give you here for your brother

  Who gave back my son to life.

  “For this youth brought me news from Naples

  How thou layest sick and poor,

  By true comrades kept, and forsaken

  By a false paramour.

  “Wherefore I charge you love him

  For a brother that is my son.”

  The comrades turned to the bridegroom

  In silence every one.

  But the bridegroom looked on the minstrel

  With a visage blank and changed,

  As his whom the sight of a spectre

  From his reason hath estranged;

  And the smiling courtiers near them

  On a sudden were still as death;

  And, subtly-stricken, the people

  Hearkened and held their breath

  With an awe uncomprehended

  For an unseen agony: —

  Who is this that lies a-dying,

  With her head on the prince’s knee?

  A light of anguish and wonder

  Is in the prince’s eye,

  “O, speak, sweet saint, and forgive me,

  Or I cannot let thee die!

  “For now I see thy hardness

  Was softer than mortal ruth,

  And thy heavenly guile was whiter,

  My saint, than martyr’s truth.”

  She speaks not and she moves not,

  But a blessed brightness lies

  On her lips in their silent rapture

  And her tender closèd eyes.

  Federigo, the son of the Marquis,

  He rises from his knee:

  “Aye, you have been good, my father,

  To them that were good to me.

  “You have given them honors and titles,

  But here lies one unknown —

  Ah, God reward her in heaven

  With the peace he gives his own!”

  THE FIRST CRICKET.

  Ah me! is it then true that the year has waxed unto waning,

  And that so soon must remain nothing but lapse and decay, —

  Earliest cricket, that out of the midsummer midnight complaining,

  All the faint summer in me takest with subtle dismay?

  Though thou bringest no dream of frost to the flowers that slumber,

  Though no tree for its leaves, doomed of thy voice, maketh moan,

  Yet with th’ unconscious earth’s boded evil my soul thou dost cumber,

  And in the year’s lost youth makest me still lose my own.

  Answerest thou, that when nights of December are blackest and bleakest,

  And when the fervid grate feigns me a May in my room,

  And by my hearthstone gay, as now sad in my garden, thou creakest, —

  Thou wilt again give me all, — dew and fragrance and bloom?

  Nay, little poet! full many a cricket I have that is willing,

  If I but take him down out of his place on my shelf,

  Me blither lays to sing than the blithest known to thy shrilling,

  Full of the rapture of life, May, morn, hope, and — himself:

  Leaving me only the sadder; for never one of my singers

  Lures back the bee to his feast, calls back the bird to his tree.

  Hast thou no art can make me believe, while the summer yet lingers,

  Better than bloom that has been red leaf and sere that must be?

  THE MULBERRIES.

  I.

  On the Rialto Bridge we stand;

  The street ebbs under and makes no sound;

  But, with bargains shrieked on every hand,

  The noisy market rings around.

  “Mulberries, fine mulberries, here!”

  A tuneful voice, — and light, light measure;

  Though I hardly should count these mulberries dear,

  If I paid three times the price for my pleasure.

  Brown hands splashed with mulberry blood,

  The basket wreathed with mulberry leaves

  Hiding the berries beneath them; — good!

  Let us take whatever the young rogue gives.

  For you know, old friend, I haven’t eaten

  A mulberry since the ignorant joy

  Of anything sweet in the mouth could sweeten

  All this bitter world for a boy.

  II.

  O, I mind the tree in the meadow stood

  By the road near the hill: when I clomb aloof

  On its branches, this side of the girdled wood,

  I could see the top of our cabin roof.

  And, looking westward, could sweep the shores

  Of the river where we used to swim

  Under the ghostly sycamores,

  Haunting the waters smooth and dim;

  And eastward athwart the pasture-lot

  And over the milk-white buckwheat field

  I could see the stately elm, where I shot

  The first black squirrel I ever killed.

  And southward over the bottom-land

  I could see the mellow breadths of farm

  From the river-shores to the hills expand,

  Clasped in the curving river’s arm.

  In the fields we set our guileless snares

  For rabbits and pigeons and wary quails,

  Content with the vaguest feathers and hairs

  From doubtful wings and vanished tails.

  And in the blue summer afternoon

  We used to sit in the mulberry-tree:

  The breaths of wind that remembered June

  Shook the leaves and glittering berries free;

  And while we watched the wagons go

  Across the river, along the road,

  To the mill above, or the mill below,

  With horses that stooped to the heavy load,

  We told old stories and made new plans,

  And felt our hearts gladden within us again,

  For we did not dream that this life of a man’s

  Could ever be what we know as men.

  We sat so still that the woodpeckers came

  And pillaged the berries overhead;

  From his log the chipmonk, waxen tame,

  Peered, and listened to what we said.

  III.

  One of us long ago was carried

  To his grave on the hill above the tree;

  One is a farmer there, and married;

  One has wandered over the sea.

  And, if you ask me, I hardly know

  Whether I’d be the dead or the clown, —

  The clod above or the clay below, —

  Or this listless dust by fortune blown

  To alien lands. For, however it is,

  So little we keep with us in life:

  At best we win only victories,

  Not peace, not peace, O friend, in this strife.

  But if I could turn from the long defeat

  Of the little successes once more, and be

  A boy, with the whole wide world at my feet,

  Under the shade of the mulberry-tree, —

  From the shame of the squandered chan
ces, the sleep

  Of the will that cannot itself awaken,

  From the promise the future can never keep,

  From the fitful purposes vague and shaken, —

  Then, while the grasshopper sang out shrill

  In the grass beneath the blanching thistle,

  And the afternoon air, with a tender thrill,

  Harked to the quail’s complaining whistle, —

  Ah me! should I paint the morrows again

  In quite the colors so faint to-day,

  And with the imperial mulberry’s stain

  Re-purple life’s doublet of hodden-gray?

  Know again the losses of disillusion?

  For the sake of the hope, have the old deceit? —

  In spite of the question’s bitter infusion,

  Don’t you find these mulberries over-sweet?

  All our atoms are changed, they say;

  And the taste is so different since then;

  We live, but a world has passed away

  With the years that perished to make us men.

  BEFORE THE GATE.

  They gave the whole long day to idle laughter,

  To fitful song and jest,

  To moods of soberness as idle, after,

  And silences, as idle too as the rest.

  But when at last upon their way returning,

  Taciturn, late, and loath,

  Through the broad meadow in the sunset burning,

  They reached the gate, one fine spell hindered them both.

  Her heart was troubled with a subtile anguish

  Such as but women know

  That wait, and lest love speak or speak not languish,

  And what they would, would rather they would not so;

  Till he said, — man-like nothing comprehending

  Of all the wondrous guile

  That women won win themselves with, and bending

  Eyes of relentless asking on her the while, —

  “Ah, if beyond this gate the path united

  Our steps as far as death,

  And I might open it!—” His voice, affrighted

  At its own daring, faltered under his breath.

  Then she — whom both his faith and fear enchanted

  Far beyond words to tell,

  Feeling her woman’s finest wit had wanted

  The art he had that knew to blunder so well —

  Shyly drew near, a little step, and mocking,

  “Shall we not be too late

  For tea?” she said. “I’m quite worn out with walking:

  Yes, thanks, your arm. And will you — open the gate?”

  CLEMENT.

  I.

  That time of year, you know, when the summer, beginning to sadden,

  Full-mooned and silver-misted, glides from the heart of September,

  Mourned by disconsolate crickets, and iterant grasshoppers, crying

  All the still nights long, from the ripened abundance of gardens;

  Then, ere the boughs of the maples are mantled with earliest autumn,

  But the wind of autumn breathes from the orchards at nightfall,

  Full of winy perfume and mystical yearning and languor;

  And in the noonday woods you hear the foraging squirrels,

  And the long, crashing fall of the half-eaten nut from the tree-top;

  When the robins are mute, and the yellow-birds, haunting the thistles,

  Cheep, and twitter, and flit through the dusty lanes and the loppings,

  When the pheasant booms from your stealthy foot in the cornfield,

  And the wild-pigeons feed, few and shy, in the scoke-berry bushes;

  When the weary land lies hushed, like a seer in a vision,

  And your life seems but the dream of a dream which you cannot remember, —

  Broken, bewildering, vague, an echo that answers to nothing!

  That time of year, you know. They stood by the gate in the meadow,

  Fronting the sinking sun, and the level stream of its splendor

  Crimsoned the meadow-slope and woodland with tenderest sunset,

  Made her beautiful face like the luminous face of an angel,

  Smote through the painéd gloom of his heart like a hurt to the sense, there.

  Languidly clung about by the half-fallen shawl, and with folded

  Hands, that held a few sad asters: “I sigh for this idyl

  Lived at last to an end; and, looking on to my prose-life,”

  With a smile, she said, and a subtle derision of manner,

  “Better and better I seem, when I recollect all that has happened

  Since I came here in June: the walks we have taken together

  Through these darling meadows, and dear, old, desolate woodlands;

  All our afternoon readings, and all our strolls through the moonlit

  Village, — so sweetly asleep, one scarcely could credit the scandal,

  Heartache, and trouble, and spite, that were hushed for the night, in its silence.

  Yes, I am better. I think I could even be civil to him for his kindness,

  Letting me come here without him.... But open the gate, Cousin Clement;

  Seems to me it grows chill, and I think it is healthier in-doors.

  — No, then I you need not speak, for I know well enough what is coming:

  Bitter taunts for the past, and discouraging views of the future?

  Tragedy, Cousin Clement, or comedy, — just as you like it; —

  Only not here alone, but somewhere that people can see you.

  Then I’ll take part in the play, and appear the remorseful young person

  Full of divine regrets at not having smothered a genius

  Under the feathers and silks of a foolish, extravagant woman.

  O you selfish boy! what was it, just now, about anguish?

  Bills would be your talk, Cousin Clement, if you were my husband.”

  Then, with her summer-night glory of eyes low-bending upon him,

  Dark’ning his thoughts as the pondered stars bewilder and darken,

  Tenderly, wistfully drooping toward him, she faltered in whisper, —

  All her mocking face transfigured, — with mournful effusion:

  “Clement, do not think it is you alone that remember, —

  Do not think it is you alone that have suffered. Ambition,

  Fame, and your art, — you have all these things to console you.

  I — what have I in this world? Since my child is dead — a bereavement.”

  Sad hung her eyes on his, and he felt all the anger within him

  Broken, and melting in tears. But he shrank from her touch while he answered

  (Awkwardly, being a man, and awkwardly, being a lover),

  “Yes, you know how it is done. You have cleverly fooled me beforetime,

  With a dainty scorn, and then an imploring forgiveness!

  Yes, you might play it, I think, — that rôle of remorseful young person,

  That, or the old man’s darling, or anything else you attempted.

  Even your earnest is so much like acting I fear a betrayal,

  Trusting your speech. You say that you have not forgotten. I grant you —

  Not, indeed, for your word — that is light — but I wish to believe you.

  Well, I say, since you have not forgotten, forget now, forever!

  I — I have lived and loved, and you have lived and have married.

  Only receive this bud to remember me when we have parted, —

  Thorns and splendor, no sweetness, rose of the love that I cherished!”

  There he tore from its stalk the imperial flower of the thistle,

  Tore, and gave to her, who took it with mocking obeisance,

  Twined it in her hair, and said, with her subtle derision:

  “You are a wiser man than I thought you could ever be, Clement, —

  Sensible, almost. So! I’ll try to forget and remember.”

  Lightly she took his ar
m, but on through the lane to the farm-house,

  Mutely together they moved through the lonesome, odorous twilight.

  II.

  High on the farm-house hearth, the first autumn fire was kindled;

  Scintillant hickory bark and dryest limbs of the beech-tree

  Burned, where all summer long the boughs of asparagus flourished.

  Wild were the children with mirth, and grouping and clinging together,

  Danced with the dancing flame, and lithely swayed with its humor;

  Ran to the window-panes, and peering forth into the darkness,

  Saw there another room, flame-lit, and with frolicking children.

  (Ah! by such phantom hearths, I think that we sit with our first-loves!)

  Sometimes they tossed on the floor, and sometimes they hid in the corners,

  Shouting and laughing aloud, and never resting a moment,

  In the rude delight, the boisterous gladness of childhood, —

  Cruel as summer sun and singing-birds to the heartsick.

  Clement sat in his chair unmoved in the midst of the hubbub,

  Rapt, with unseeing eyes; and unafraid in their gambols,

  By his tawny beard the children caught him, and clambered

  Over his knees, and waged a mimic warfare across them,

  Made him their battle-ground, and won and lost kingdoms upon him.

  Airily to and fro, and out of one room to another

  Passed his cousin, and busied herself with things of the household,

  Nonchalant, debonair, blithe, with bewitching housewifely importance,

  Laying the cloth for the supper, and bringing the meal from the kitchen;

  Fairer than ever she seemed, and more than ever she mocked him,

  Coming behind his chair, and clasping her fingers together

  Over his eyes in a girlish caprice, and crying, “Who is it?”

  Vexed his despair with a vision of wife and of home and of children,

  Calling his sister’s children around her, and stilling their clamor,

  Making believe they were hers. And Clement sat moody and silent,

  Blank to the wistful gaze of his mother bent on his visage

  With the tender pain, the pitiful, helpless devotion

  Of the mother that looks on the face of her son in his trouble,

  Grown beyond her consoling, and knows that she cannot befriend him.

  Then his cousin laughed, and in idleness talked with the children;

  Sometimes she turned to him, and then when the thistle was falling,

  Caught it and twined it again in her hair, and called it her keepsake,

  Smiled, and made him ashamed of his petulant gift there, before them.

  But, when the night was grown old and the two by the hearthstone together