Authors: William Alexander Percy
Quiet with amber light
The pale enfolding afternoon;
In sleep the slow leaves fall;
Tranquil as misting tears or swoon,
The pendent blue that bears
No cloud except the daylight moon.
Opal, a-drowse, and vast,
The river takes its southward way;
And southwards sweep the birds,
Swift and mysterious and grey.…
Do so the gusty dead
Wing the warm air in troops to-day?
Surely this peacefulness
Of feathered fields of golden-rod,
The wistful, songless trees,
And asters clouding from the sod,
Them, homing, lure from out
The bleak infinitudes of God.
Oh, surely all the south
Our prayers and dear remembrance make
Calls from the cold, blue tides
Their wings to-day, and they forsake
Their solemn ways for us,
Remembering death and all the ache.
And thou, so lately one —
Not all the new adventuring
In starry realms can hold
Thee from return. To-day thy wing,
Pausing above my heart,
Doth courage and assurance bring.
Jesu,
If Thou wilt make
Thy peach trees bloom for me,
And fringe my bridle path both sides
With tulips, red and free,
If Thou wilt make Thy skies as blue
As ours in Sicily,
And wake the little leaves that sleep
On every bending tree —
I promise not to vexen Thee
That Thou shouldst make eternally
Heaven my home;
But right contentedly,
A singing page I’ll be
Here, in Thy springtime,
Jesu.
My heart is a bird to-night
That streams on the washed, icy air.
My heart is a bird to-night
’Twixt the stars and the branches bare.
My heart is abroad to-night
Rushed on by the fierce, crystal air.
No nest will it seek to-night
In the branches, ice-brittle and bare.
Wide-wingèd my heart to-night
With joy on the surge of the air.
What matter that spirits of night
Make shudder the trees, lean and bare!
O singer, canst thou summon up
The early blue-bird’s wing?
The pang of those uncertain days
That swoon with unborn spring?
O singer, canst thou summon up
The crimson of the rose,
The silver gloom of April dawns,
The breathless unrepose;
The yearning in the dark divine,
Deep woods, a-bloom and dumb,
The starry, tear-blurred nights of May
That bring delirium?
O singer, canst thou summon up
In music all the spring
Whose crowding incense caught my heart
So long ago? — Then sing!
Sweeter than spring, sweeter than spring,
These brown and blue and lingering
Soft days that wing
Like filmy dreams across the world,
One by one unfurled, unfurled,
Where the ripe fields slumber and glitter and swing.
Sadder than song, sadder than song,
The choral drowse with madness strong
That all day long
The locusts lift to their god the sun,
For joy of the life that is almost done —
Raptured and shrill and regretless throng.
Wilder than wings, wilder than wings,
The flight of the golden leaves when springs
The fear that flings
Them swirling and shining up from the bare
Dark branches that reach to the calm of the air
Where death is a-dream on azure wings.
I cry, I cry
Into the night.
Along the waves I gleam and fly
A haunted flight;
A cry, a cry
Into the night.
Lone, alone,
And the sea is mad.
Mourning, mourning,
Broken and strown,
It nurseth the dead,
The dead alone —
And my heart that is mad.
The moon shines now
White in the woods;
From every bough
Cometh in floods
A voice divine …
O love of mine!
The pool of jet,
Deep mirror sees
In silhouette
The willow trees
That moan and gleam …
O hour of dream!
Tender and vast,
A peacefulness
Drifts downward past
The shadowless
Star-purple night …
Hour of delight!
Thou, too, O bronze-eyed darling of the feast,
Under the deep, brown leaves and faded sky
At last wilt lie,
Forgetful of the joy thy beauty leased.
But ere that time, how many times, alas,
Wilt thou with careless hand sweep all the vain,
Taut strings of pain
That are my heart nor hear the hurt chords pass.
Almost I wish to-day that thou-didst lie
Beyond the leaves, unsummonably still —
So well, so ill
I love thy loveliness that hears no cry.
Beat, beat, wings of my heart,
Stormy and swift as you will!
Beat and break, but the walls of the world
Will hold you captive still.
Oh, the bird of the moon flies into the west
To dip in the sun’s lagoon,
And, following her, the wild geese blur
In the depths of a golden swoon.
But, heart of mine, O bird of my heart,
Tho’ they curve to the sunken stars,
You follow not with the strain of your wings,
For between — the iron bars.
Leaves and the sweet-choired blue;
And my heart set free again.
Leaves, leaves and the dew;
Free, but not free from pain.
The laughter of June is shed;
And my heart gives heed again.
But, ah, for youth that is fled,
Fled, with all but its pain.
Once more the fickle birds return
Across the sloping seas,
And strew the tender fields again
With their old melodies.
The sky is magic as the month,
Low sun, high stars between,
The icy winds have washed it clear;
But it, too, dreams of green.
The boats are breathing on the sea;
They cannot wait for men;
Some undertide has brought them word
Straight from a blue-starred fen.
Unpiloted they steal away,
No man shall see them soon,
The sea birds follow but a mile,
Then leave them to the moon.
We, too, shall steal upon the spring
With amber sails blown wide;
Shall drop, some day, behind the moon,
Borne on a star-blue tide.
Enchanted ports we, too, shall touch,
Cadiz or Cameroon;
Nor other pilot need besides
A magic wisp of moon.
Daytime? The stars quite gone?
O brother Sleep, you tripped me in my prayers,
And bound me in your scarves of colored dreams!
Pray God the brethren find me not
Flat in the dew and just awake.
Fie! fie! thou slug-a-bed!
Up! kneel to thine orisons — compose thy robe —
And get thee from this green and idle wood
Back to the world!
Alas, the summer air hath blown
Shame from my heart! Jesu, the prayers must wait —
Light-hearted day on naked feet
Runs thro’ the woods, and I must watch her here
Shaking the boughs above my head,
And winning with her rogueries the leaves’ applause.
Delicious so! …
Idler, pagan, Francis, up! Ah, well —
Prophets and patriarchs!
What company is this?
The blessed birds of God —
Silent and orderly, row on row,
Thick on the branches, scholarwise on the grass —
Sparrows and swallows, bobolinks and larks —
Tiny and big, and gay- and hempen-gowned —
Attentive all and silent; eyes on me —
Littlest children, my brothers — O birds,
Good morrow! For your presence thanks.…
And yet, may I confess —
Beseeching you will not mistake my ignorance
For lack of gentleness or knightly courtesy —
I know not quite what mission draws you here?
Only has Father Noah seen such multitudes.
Is it, perchance, with tree-top news you come
Requiring such deliverance?
Alack, I have not any roof at all,
Much less an ark.
But should your needs petition one, content yourselves;
The brethren shall be willing carpenters.
Your watchful eyes and silence, courteous and prim,
Betray I have mistook your coming’s cause.
Perhaps on your first-waking flights,
Beholding me so quiet in the grass,
You thought me dead, and came with friendly haste
To hide in leaves my obvious corruption.
Three hops and a silver chuckle —
Robin, irreverent robin, wrong again?
Ho! ho! at last the dear God sends me sense!
A sermon ’tis! Robin, I guessed!
Come nearer, darling children, close!
O lovely cloud of wings! O tiny storm of twitter!
What barren faith was ours
To pass you by these many days
Without one salutation in Christ’s name,
Or news of His impending kingdom once!
Let these poor words win your forgiveness,
And His, whose frailest ones we have o’erlooked.
Brethren! …
Ahem! —
(Saints! what text can serve!)
“In those days Jesus said:
My Father’s kingdom may be likened to
A grain of mustard seed,
Which, being sown, is smallest of all seeds,
But, growing up, is greatest of all herbs,
Till in the shadow of its branches lodge
The birds of heaven.”
Yet, no! these words He never spoke.
He knew as you or I
The idle ways of summer, and the fields
Where poppies in their silken kerchiefs crowd the wheat,
And, when the dry, quick autumn winds had stripped
their scarlet,
He, too, had seen their tiny million seeds —
Mere dust beside the mustard’s burliness.
Mark nodded or forgot, poor fisherman!
How often thus they understood Him not!
And in these far-off days their surface words we seize,
Set up, adore, and miss the gospel underneath
Forgetting they were simple men,
And He, dear God, who only aimed at simpleness.
But still He did say Heaven’s kingdom was a tree,
A mighty tree with branches’ room for all,
And sunny babblement of leaves where all
His wingèd ones might skim and shine at ease.
O little, brown minores,
Come — let’s skip the text! But after it
In any well-conducted sermon comes, you know,
The exhortation. Now I should proclaim
The evil of your lives and urge repentance!
When summer dawn is here? and only choristers?
How may it be?
What evils may I warn your hearts against?
What words of guidance give?
None come to me.… No ownership is yours,
But winds and trees and evening waters and the sun
Are yours in largesse, without counterclaim —
The eighth commandment was not meant for you!
I would not coax you from your ways of lechery;
For not your will, but God’s,
Fills all the April air with mating and the chirp
Of love. Obedient be to His good season.
I think ye do no murder, yet —
Sometimes it grieves my very soul to see
The lesser brethren fly your swift pursuit.
If God directed so you take your livelihood,
’Tis well, but spare, I pray, their tiny span of bliss
If food less petulent may serve instead;
Nor their destruction ever make your sport.
Little children, no rebuke is meant;
I only pray your gentleness.…
Indeed, indeed, He set your flight
Above the paths of sin! Advise? conjure?
I do you wrong. Rather, I think,
He put it in your hearts to come to me
Not judging I could give
Morsel of help or little twig of truth,
But that the comfort of your presence might be mine.
For sometimes, little brethren of the woods,
We, in the common world beneath your trees,
So clearly see the weakness and the sin about,
That only them we see, and we forget
The holiness that still persists, the light, yea, God, Himself!
Belike He feared for me such hour,
And in His care sent you, His seraphs of the trees.
For you, tho’ of the world, share not its taint,
Nor breathe nor know its sin.
If we lived so, the sudden curve
And anxious fanning of soft plumes
Would stir our bending heads,
And off we’d fly to — to that same mustard tree of yours!