Edith Wharton's Verse, 1879-1919, from various journals.

by Edith Wharton

The star has slipped its leash and roams the sky.

  Yet could the immemorial piles be swung

  A skyey hair’s breadth from their rooted base,

  Back to the central anchorage of space,

  Ah, then again, as when the race was young,

  Should they behold the beacon of the race!

  Of old men said: "The Truth is there: we rear

  Our faith full-centred on it. It was known

  Thus of the elders who foreran us here,

  Mapped out its circuit in the shifting sphere,

  And found it, ’mid mutation, fixed alone."

  Change laughs again, again the sky is cold,

  And down that fissure now no star-beam glides.

  Yet they whose sweep of vision grows not old

  Still at the central point of space behold

  Another pole-star: for the Truth abides.

  "Moonrise Over Tyringham." Century Magazine 76 (July 1908): 356-57.

  NOW the high holocaust of hours is done,

  And all the west empurpled with their death,

  How swift oblivion drinks the fallen sun,

  How little while the dusk remembereth!

  Though some there were, proud hours that marched in mail,

  And took the morning on auspicious crest,

  Crying to Fortune, "Back! For I prevail!"--

  Yet now they lie disfeatured with the rest;

  And some that stole so soft on Destiny

  Methought they had surprised her to a smile;

  But these fled frozen when she turned to see,

  And moaned and muttered through my heart awhile.

  But now the day is emptied of them all,

  And night absorbs their life-blood at a draught;

  And so my life lies, as the gods let fall

  An empty cup from which their lips have quaffed.

  Yet see--night is not: by translucent ways,

  Up the gray void of autumn afternoon

  Steals a mild crescent, charioted in haze,

  And all the air is merciful as June.

  The lake is a forgotten streak of day

  That trembles through the hemlocks’ darkling bars,

  And still, my heart, still some divine delay

  Upon the threshold holds the earliest stars.

  O pale equivocal hour, whose suppliant feet

  Haunt the mute reaches of the sleeping wind,

  Art thou a watcher stealing to entreat

  Prayer and sepulture for thy fallen kind?

  Poor plaintive waif of a predestined race,

  Their ruin gapes for thee. Why linger here?

  Go hence in silence. Veil thine orphaned face,

  Lest I should look on it and call it dear.

  For if I love thee thou wilt sooner die;

  Some sudden ruin will plunge upon thy head,

  Midnight will fall from the revengeful sky

  And hurl thee down among thy shuddering dead.

  Avert thine eyes. Lapse softly from my sight,

  Call not my name, nor heed if thine I crave;

  So shalt thou sink through mitigated night

  And bathe thee in the all-effacing wave.

  But upward still thy perilous footsteps fare

  Along a high-hung heaven drenched in light,

  Dilating on a tide of crystal air

  That floods the dark hills to their utmost height.

  Strange hour, is this thy waning face that leans

  Out of mid-heaven and makes my soul its glass?

  What victory is imaged there? What means

  Thy tarrying smile? Oh, veil thy lips and pass!

  Nay--pause and let me name thee! For I see,

  Oh, with what flooding ecstasy of light,

  Strange hour that wilt not loose thy hold on me,

  Thou’rt not day’s latest, but the first of night!

  And after thee the gold-foot stars come thick;

  From hand to hand they toss the flying fire,

  Till all the zenith with their dance is quick,

  About the wheeling music of the Lyre.

  Dread hour that leadst the immemorial round,

  With lifted torch revealing one by one

  The thronging splendors that the day held bound,

  And how each blue abyss enshrines its sun--

  Be thou the image of a thought that fares

  Forth from itself, and flings its ray ahead,

  Leaping the barriers of ephemeral cares,

  To where our lives are but the ages’ tread,

  And let this year be, not the last of youth,

  But first--like thee!--of some new train of hours,

  If more remote from hope yet nearer truth,

  And kin to the unfathomable powers.

  "Life." Atlantic Monthly 102 (Oct. 1908): 501-04.

  NAY, lift me to thy lips, Life, and once more

  Pour the wild music through me--

  I quivered in the reed-bed with my kind,

  Rooted in Lethe-bank, when at the dawn

  There came a groping shape of mystery

  Moving among us, that with random stroke

  Severed, and rapt me from my silent tribe,

  Pierced, fashioned, lipped me, sounding for a voice,

  Laughing on Lethe-bank--and in my throat

  I felt the wing-beat of the fledgeling notes,

  The bubble of godlike laughter in my throat.

  Such little songs she sang,

  Pursing her lips to fit the tiny pipe,

  They trickled from me like a slender spring

  That strings frail wood-growths on its crystal thread,

  Nor dreams of glassing cities, bearing ships.

  She sang, and bore me through the April world

  Matching the birds, doubling the insect-hum

  In the meadows, under the low-moving airs,

  And breathings of the scarce-articulate air

  When it makes mouths of grasses--but when the sky

  Burst into storm, and took great trees for pipes,

  She thrust me in her breast, and warm beneath

  Her cloudy vesture, on her terrible heart,

  I shook, and heard the battle.

  But more oft,

  Those early days, we moved in charmed woods,

  Where once, at dusk, she piped against a faun,

  And one warm dawn a tree became a nymph

  Listening; and trembled; and Life laughed and passed.

  And once we came to a great stream that bore

  The stars upon its bosom like a sea,

  And ships like stars; so to the sea we came.

  One wild pang through me; then refrained her hand,

  And whispered: "Hear--" and into my frail flanks,

  Into my bursting veins, the whole sea poured

  Its spaces and its thunder; and I feared.

  We came to cities, and Life piped on me

  Low calls to dreaming girls,

  In counting-house windows, through the chink of gold,

  Flung cries that fired the captive brain of youth,

  And made the heavy merchant at his desk

  Curse us for a cracked hurdy-gurdy; Life

  Mimicked the hurdy-gurdy, and we passed.

  We climbed the slopes of solitude, and there

  Life met a god, who challenged her and said:

  "Thy pipe against my lyre!" But "Wait!" she laughed,

  And in my live flank dug a finger-hole,

  And wrung new music from it. Ah, the pain!

  We climbed and climbed, and left the god behind.

  We saw the earth spread vaster than the sea,

  With infinite surge of mountains surfed with snow,

  And a silence that was louder than the deep;

  But on the utmost pinnacle Life again

  Hid me, and I heard the terror in her hair.

  Safe in new vales, I ached for the old pang,

  And clamoured "Play me against a god again!"r />
  "Poor Marsyas-mortal--he shall bleed thee yet,"

  She breathed and kissed me, stilling the dim need.

  But evermore it woke, and stabbed my flank

  With yearnings for new music and new pain.

  "Another note against another god!"

  I clamoured; and she answered: "Bide my time.

  Of every heart-wound I will make a stop.

  And drink thy life in music, pang by pang.

  But first thou must yield the notes I stored in thee

  At dawn beside the river. Take my lips."

  She kissed me like a lover, but I wept,

  Remembering that high song against the god,

  And the old songs slept in me, and I was dumb.

  We came to cavernous foul places, blind

  With harpy-wings, and sulphurous with the glare

  Of sinful furnaces--where hunger toiled,

  And pleasure gathered in a starveling prey,

  And death fed delicately on young bones.

  "Now sing!" cried Life, and set her lips to me.

  "Here are gods also. Wilt thou pipe for Dis?"

  My cry was drowned beneath the furnace roar,

  Choked by the sulphur-fumes; and beast-lipped gods

  Laughed down on me, and mouthed the flutes of hell.

  "Now sing!" said Life, reissuing to the stars;

  And wrung a new note from my wounded side.

  So came we to clear spaces, and the sea.

  And now I felt its volume in my heart,

  And my heart waxed with it, and Life played on me

  The song of the Infinite. "Now the stars," she said.

  Then from the utmost pinnacle again

  She poured me on the wild sidereal stream,

  And I grew with her great breathings, till we swept

  The interstellar spaces like new worlds

  Loosed from the fiery ruin of a star.

  Cold, cold we rested on black peaks again,

  Under black skies, under a groping wind,

  And life, grown old, hugged me to a numb breast,

  Pressing numb lips against me. Suddenly

  A blade of silver severed the black peaks

  From the black sky, and earth was born again,

  Breathing and various, under a god’s feet.

  A god! A god! I felt the heart of Life

  Leap under me, and my cold flanks shook again.

  He bore no lyre, he rang no challenge out,

  But Life warmed to him, warming me with her,

  And as he neared I felt beneath her hands

  The stab of a new wound that sucked my soul

  Forth in a new song from my throbbing throat.

  "His name--his name?" I whispered, but she poured

  The music faster, and I grew with it,

  Became a part of it, while Life and I

  Clung lip to lip, and I from her wrung song

  As she from me, one song, one ecstasy,

  In indistinguishable union blent,

  Till she became the flute and I the player.

  And lo! the song I played on her was more

  Than any she had drawn from me; it held

  The stars, the peaks, the cities, and the sea,

  The faun’s catch, the nymph’s tremor, and the heart

  Of dreaming girls, of toilers at the desk,

  Apollo’s challenge on the sunrise slope,

  And the hiss of the night-gods mouthing flutes of hell--

  All, to the dawn-wind’s whisper in the reeds,

  When Life first came, a shape of mystery,

  Moving among us, and with random stroke

  Severed, and rapt me from my silent tribe.

  All this I wrung from her in that deep hour,

  While Love stood murmuring: "Play the god, poor grass!"

  Now, by that hour, I am a mate to thee

  Forever, Life, however spent and clogged,

  And tossed back useless to my native mud!

  Yea, groping for new reeds to fashion thee

  New instruments of anguish and delight,

  Thy hand shall leap to me, thy broken reed,

  Thine ear remember me, thy bosom thrill

  With the old subjection, then when Love and I

  Held thee, and fashioned thee, and made thee dance

  Like a slave-girl to her pipers--yea, thou yet

  Shalt hear my call, and dropping all thy toys

  Thou’lt lift me to thy lips, Life, and once more

  Pour the wild music through me--

  "All Souls." Scribner’s Magazine 45 (Jan. 1909): 22-23. BY EDITH WHARTON

  A THIN moon faints in the sky o’erhead,

  And dumb in the churchyard lie the dead.

  Walk we not, Sweet, by garden ways,

  Where the late rose hangs and the phlox delays,

  But forth of the gate and down the road,

  Past the church and the yews, to their dim abode.

  For it’s turn of the year and All Souls’ night,

  When the dead can hear and the dead have sight.

  Fear not that sound like wind in the trees:

  It is only their call that comes on the breeze;

  Fear not the shudder that seems to pass:

  It is only the tread of their feet on the grass;

  Fear not the drip of the bough as you stoop:

  It is only the touch of their hands that grope--

  For the year’s on the turn, and it’s All Souls’ night,

  When the dead can yearn and the dead can smite.

  And where should a man bring his sweet to woo

  But here, where such hundreds were lovers too?

  Where lie the dead lips that thirst to kiss,

  The empty hands that their fellows miss,

  Where the maid and her lover, from sere to green,

  Sleep bed by bed, with the worm between?

  For it’s turn of the year and All Souls’ night,

  When the dead can hear and the dead have sight.

  And now that they rise and walk in the cold,

  Let us warm their blood and give youth to the old.

  Let them see us and hear us, and say: "Ah, thus

  In the prime of the year it went with us!"

  Till their lips drawn close, and so long unkist,

  Forget they are mist that mingles with mist!

  For the year’s on the turn, and it’s All Souls’ night,

  When the dead can burn and the dead can smite.

  Till they say, as they hear us--poor dead, poor dead!--

  "Just an hour of this, and our age-long bed--

  Just a thrill of the old remembered pains

  To kindle a flame in our frozen veins,

  Just a touch, and a sight, and a floating apart,

  As the chill of dawn strikes each phantom heart--

  For it’s turn of the year and All Souls’ night,

  When the dead can hear, and the dead have sight."

  And where should the living feel alive

  But here in this wan white humming hive,

  As the moon wastes down, and the dawn turns cold,

  And one by one they creep back to the fold?

  And where should a man hold his mate and say:

  "One more, one more, ere we go their way"?

  For the year’s on the turn, and it’s All Souls’ night,

  When the living can learn by the churchyard light.

  And how should we break faith who have seen

  Those dead lips plight with the mist between,

  And how forget, who have seen how soon

  They lie thus chambered and cold to the moon?

  How scorn, how hate, how strive, we too,

  Who must do so soon as those others do?

  For it’s All Souls’ night, and break of the day,

  And behold, with the light the dead are away. . . .

  "A Grave." Current Literature 46 (June 1909): 685.

  [TEXT MISSING]


  "Ogrin the Hermit." Atlantic Monthly 104 (Dec. 1909): 844-48.

  Vous qui nous jugez, savez-vous quel boivre nous avons bu sur la

  mer?

  Ogrin the Hermit in old age set forth

  This tale to them that sought him in the extreme

  Ancient grey wood where he and silence housed:

  Long years ago, when yet my sight was keen,

  My hearing knew the word of wind in bough,

  And all the low fore-runners of the storm,

  There reached me, where I sat beneath my thatch,

  A crash as of tracked quarry in the brake,

  And storm-flecked, fugitive, with straining breasts

  And backward eyes and hands inseparable,

  Tristan and Iseult, swooning at my feet,

  Sought hiding from their hunters. Here they lay.

  For pity of their great extremity,

  Their sin abhorring, yet not them with it,

  I nourished, hid, and suffered them to build

  Their branched hut in sight of this grey cross,

  That haply, falling on their guilty sleep,

  Its shadow should part them like the blade of God,

  And they should shudder at each other’s eyes.

  So dwelt they in this solitude with me,

  And daily, Tristan forth upon the chase,

  The tender Iseult sought my door and heard

  The words of holiness. Abashed she heard,

  Like one in wisdom nurtured from a child,

  Yet in whose ears an alien language dwells

  Of some far country whence the traveller brings

  Magical treasure, and still images

  Of gods forgotten, and the scent of groves

  That sleep by painted rivers. As I have seen

  Oft-times returning pilgrims with the spell

  Of these lost lands upon their lids, she moved

  Among familiar truths, accustomed sights,

  As she to them were strange, not they to her.

  And often, reasoning with her, have I felt

  Some ancient lore was in her, dimly drawn

  From springs of life beyond the four-fold stream

  That makes a silver pale to Paradise;

  For she was calm as some forsaken god

  Who knows not that his power is passed from him,

  But sees with tranced eyes rich pilgrim-trains

  In sands the desert blows about his feet.

  Abhorring first, I heard her; yet her speech

  Warred not with pity, or the contrite heart,

  Or hatred of things evil: rather seemed

  The utterance of some world where these are not,

  And the heart lives in heathen innocence

  With earth’s innocuous creatures. For she said: