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Read Ebook: The Singing Man: A Book of Songs and Shadows by Peabody Josephine Preston
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Ebook has 143 lines and 13002 words, and 3 pages
THE SINGING MAN 3
THE TREES 15
RICH MAN, POOR MAN 23
THE FOUNDLING 31
THE FEASTER 37
THE GOLDEN SHOES 45
NOON AT PAESTUM 47
VESTAL FLAME 48
THE PROPHET 53
THE LONG LANE 56
ALISON'S MOTHER TO THE BROOK 61
CANTICLE OF THE BABE 67
GLADNESS 75
THE NIGHTINGALE UNHEARD 81
THE SINGING MAN
AN ODE OF THE PORTION OF LABOR
THE SINGING MAN
He sang above the vineyards of the world. And after him the vines with woven hands Clambered and clung, and everywhere unfurled Triumphing green above the barren lands; Till high as gardens grow, he climbed, he stood, Sun-crowned with life and strength, and singing toil, And looked upon his work; and it was good: The corn, the wine, the oil.
He sang above the noon. The topmost cleft That grudged him footing on the mountain scars He planted and despaired not; till he left His vines soft breathing to the host of stars. He wrought, he tilled; and even as he sang, The creatures of his planting laughed to scorn The ancient threat of deserts where there sprang The wine, the oil, the corn!
He sang not for abundance.--Over-lords Took of his tilth. Yet was there still to reap, The portion of his labor; dear rewards Of sunlit day, and bread, and human sleep. He sang for strength; for glory of the light. He dreamed above the furrows, 'They are mine!' When all he wrought stood fair before his sight With corn, and oil, and wine.
He sang; above the burden and the heat, Above all seasons with their fitful grace; Above the chance and change that led his feet To this last ambush of the Market-place. 'Enough for him,' they said--and still they say-- 'A crust, with air to breathe, and sun to shine; He asks no more!'--Before they took away The corn, the oil, the wine.
He sang. No more he sings now, anywhere. Light was enough, before he was undone. They knew it well, who took away the air, --Who took away the sun; Who took, to serve their soul-devouring greed, Himself, his breath, his bread--the goad of toil;-- Who have and hold, before the eyes of Need, The corn, the wine,--the oil!
Search for him; Search for him; Where the crazy atoms swim Up the fiery furnace-blast. You shall find him, at the last,-- He whose forehead braved the sun,-- Wreckt and tortured and undone. Where no breath across the heat Whispers him that life was sweet; But the sparkles mock and flare, Scattering up the crooked air.
Why he labors under ban That denies him for a man. Why his utmost drop of blood Buys for him no human good; Why his utmost urge of strength Only lets Them starve at length;-- Will not let him starve alone; He must watch, and see his own Fade and fail, and starve, and die.
Seek him yet. Search for him! You shall find him, spent and grim; In the prisons, where we pen These unsightly shards of men. Sheltered fast; Housed at length; Clothed and fed, no matter how!-- Where the householders, aghast, Measure in his broken strength Nought but power for evil, now. Beast-of-burden drudgeries Could not earn him what was his: He who heard the world applaud Glories seized by force and fraud, He must break,--he must take!-- Both for hate and hunger's sake. He must seize by fraud and force; He must strike, without remorse! Seize he might; but never keep. Strike, his once!--Behold him here.
Must it be?--Must we then Render back to God again This His broken work, this thing, For His man that once did sing? Will not all our wonders do? Gifts we stored the ages through, -- Gifts the Lord requir?d not?
Would the all-but-human serve! Monsters made of stone and nerve; Towers to threaten and defy Curse or blessing of the sky; Shafts that blot the stars with smoke; Lightnings harnessed under yoke; Sea-things, air-things, wrought with steel, That may smite, and fly, and feel! Oceans calling each to each; Hostile hearts, with kindred speech. Every work that Titans can; Every marvel: save a man, Who might rule without a sword.-- Is a man more precious, Lord?
Can it be?--Must we then Render back to Thee again Million, million wasted men? Men, of flickering human breath, Only made for life and death?
Ah, but see the sovereign Few, Highly favored, that remain! These, the glorious residue, Of the cherished race of Cain. These, the magnates of the age, High above the human wage, Who have numbered and possesst All the portion of the rest!
What are all despairs and shames, What the mean, forgotten names Of the thousand more or less, For one surfeit of success?
For those dullest lives we spent, Take these Few magnificent! For that host of blotted ones, Take these glittering central suns. Few;--but how their lustre thrives On the million broken lives! Splendid, over dark and doubt, For a million souls gone out! These, the holders of our hoard,-- Wilt thou not accept them, Lord?
Oh, in the wakening thunders of the heart, --The small lost Eden, troubled through the night, Sounds there not now,--forboded and apart, Some voice and sword of light? Some voice and portent of a dawn to break?-- Searching like God, the ruinous human shard Of that lost Brother-man Himself did make, And Man himself hath marred?
It sounds!--And may the anguish of that birth Seize on the world; and may all shelters fail, Till we behold new Heaven and new Earth Through the rent Temple-vail! When the high-tides that threaten near and far To sweep away our guilt before the sky,-- Flooding the waste of this dishonored Star, Cleanse, and o'erwhelm, and cry!--
Cry, from the deep of world-accusing waves, With longing more than all since Light began, Above the nations,--underneath the graves,-- 'Give back the Singing Man!'
THE TREES
Now, in the thousandth year, When April's near, Now comes it that the great ones of the earth Take all their mirth Away with them, far off, to orchard-places,-- Nor they nor Solomon arrayed like these,-- To sun themselves at ease; To breathe of wind-swept spaces; To see some miracle of leafy graces;-- To catch the out-flowing rapture of the trees. Considering the lilies. --Yes. And when Shall they consider Men?
For now at last, they have beheld the trees. Lo, even these!-- The men of sounding laughter and low fears; The women of light laughter, and no tears; The great ones of the town. And those, of most renown, That once sold doves,--now grown so pennywise To bargain with forlorner merchandise,-- They buy and sell, they buy and sell again, The life-long toil of men. Worn with their market strife to dispossess The blind,--the fatherless, They too go forth, to breathe of budding trees, And woods with beckoning wonders new unfurled. Yes, even these: The money-changers and the Pharisees; The rulers of the darkness of this world.
For now, behold their heart's desire is thrall To simpleness.--O new delight, unguessed, In very rest! And precious beyond all, A garden-place, a garden with a wall! To the green earth! All bountiful to bless Hearts sickening with excess. To the green earth, whose blithe replenishments Shall fresh the jaded sense! To the green earth, the dust-corrupted soul Returns to be made whole. For now it comes indeed, They will go forth, all they, to see a reed So shaken by the wind. Men are no longer blind To aught, save human kind.
The wonder this. For some there are no trees; Or in the trees no beauty and no mirth:-- Those dullest millions, pent In life-long banishment From all the gifts and creatures of the earth, Shut in the inner darkness of the town; Those blighted things you see, But the Sun sees not, at its going down:-- Warped outcasts of some human forestry; Blind victims of the blind, Wreckt ones and dark of mind, With the poor fruit, after their piteous kind. And if you take some Old One to the fields, To see what Nature yields With fullest hands to men already free, It well may be, As on some indecipherable book The Guest will look, With eyes too old,--too old, too dim to see; Too old, too old to learn; Or to discern-- Before it slips away, The joy of such a late half-holiday! Proffer those starved eyes your belated cup: They look not up. Too late, too late for any sky to do Brief kindness with its blue. And what behold they, then? In the shamed moment, when Old eyes bow down again?
So is it, haply, when Dull eyes look up, and then Dull eyes look down again. Waste no vain holiday on such as these; For them there is no joy in blossomed trees.
For them there is no joy in blossomed trees. And with what eye-shut ease We leave them, at the last, for company, The Tree, Whose two stark boughs no springtime yet unfurled, Ever, since time began; Nor bloom so strange to see!-- Behold, the Man, With His two arms outstretched to fold the world.
RICH MAN, POOR MAN
Highway, shrill with murderous pride, Highway, of the swarming tide! Why should my way lead me deeper? I am not my Brother's keeper.
Byway, ambushed with the dark, Byway, where the ears may hark; Live and fierce when day is done, You, that do without the Sun:-- What's this game you bring to nought?-- Muttering like a thing distraught, Reckoning like a simpleton? Cobbled with the anguished stones That the thoroughfare disowns; Stones they gave you for your bread Of the disinherited! Where the Towers of Hunger loom, Crowding in the dregs of doom; Where the lost sky peering through Sees no more the grudging grass,-- Only this mud-mirrored blue, Like some shattered looking-glass.
Show him, Byway, if you can; Lest he end as he began, Rich and poor,--this beggar, Man.
THE FOUNDLING
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