No More Learning

You don't fulfill your early promise:
You're not the smartest
Kind of artist,
Any more than poor Blind Tom is.
Yet somehow, still,
There's meaning in your screaming bill.
What _are_ you trying to say?

Sometimes your piping is delicious,
And then again it's simply vicious;
Though on the whole the varying jangle
Weaves round me an entrancing tangle
Of memories grave or joyous:
Things to weep or laugh at;
Love that lived at a hint, or
Days so sweet, they'd cloy us;
Nights I have spent with friends;--
Glistening groves of winter,
And the sound of vanished feet
That walked by the ripening wheat;
With other things. . . . Not the half that
Your cry familiar blends
Can I name, for it is mostly
Very ghostly;--
Such mixed-up things your voice recalls,
With its peculiar quirks and falls.

Possibly, then, your meaning, plain,
Is that your harsh and broken strain
Tallies best with a world of pain.

Well, I'll admit
There's merit in a voice that's truthful:
Yours is not honey-sweet nor youthful,
But querulously fit.
And if we cannot sing, we'll say
Something to the purpose, jay!






THE STAR TO ITS LIGHT


"Go," said the star to its light:
"Follow your fathomless flight!
Into the dreams of space
Carry the joy of my face.
Go," said the star to its light:
"Tell me the tale of your flight. "

As the mandate rang
The heavens through,
Quick the ray sprang:
Unheard it flew,
Sped by the touch of an unseen spur.
It crumbled the dusk of the deep
That folds the worlds in sleep,
And shot through night with noiseless stir.

Then came the day;
And all that swift array
Of diamond-sparkles died.
And lo! the far star cried:
"My light has lost its way! "
Ages on ages passed:
The light returned, at last.

"What have you seen,
What have you heard--
O ray serene,
O flame-winged bird
I loosed on endless air?
Why do you look so faint and white? "--
Said the star to its light.

"O star," said the tremulous ray,
"Grief and struggle I found.
Horror impeded my way.
Many a star and sun
I passed and touched, on my round.
Many a life undone
I lit with a tender gleam:
I shone in the lover's eyes,
And soothed the maiden's dream.
But alas for the stifling mist of lies!
Alas, for the wrath of the battle-field
Where my glance was mixed with blood!
And woe for the hearts by hate congealed,
And the crime that rolls like a flood!
Too vast is the world for me;
Too vast for the sparkling dew
Of a force like yours to renew.