Part 12

Look thou! Ah, look! A one Doth step adown the path! The rustle? ‘Tis the silken whisper o’ her robe. The hum? The love-note o’ her maiden dream. See thee, ah, see! She bendeth there, And branch o’ bloom doth nod and dance. Hark, the note! A robin’s cheer?

Ah, Brother, nay. ’Tis the whistle o’ her lover’s pipe. See, see, the path e’en now Doth show him, tall and dark, aside the gate.

What! What! Thou sayest ’Tis but the rustle o’ the leaves, And brooklet’s humming o’er its stony path! Then hush! Yea, hush thee! Hush and leave me here! The fairy wand hath broke, and leaves Stand still, and note hath ceased, And maiden vanished with thy word.

Thou, thou hast broke the spell, And dream hath heard thy word and fled. Yea, sunk, sunk upon the path, They o’ my dreams—slain, slain, And dead with but thy word. Ah, leave me here and go, For Earth doth hold not E’en my dreaming’s wraith.

In previous chapters I have spoken of the wit and humor of Patience Worth. In only one instance has she put humor into verse, and that I have already quoted; but at times her poetry has an airy playfulness of form that gives the effect of humor, even though the theme and the intent may be serious. Here is an example:

Whiff, sayeth the wind, And whiffing on its way, doth blow a merry tale. Where, in the fields all furrowed and rough with corn, Late harvested, close-nestled to a fibrous root, And warmed by the sun that hid from night there-neath, A wee, small, furry nest of root mice lay. Whiff, sayeth the wind.

Whiff, sayeth the wind. I found this morrow, on a slender stem, A glory of the morn, who sheltered in her wine-red throat A tiny spinning worm that wove the livelong day,— Long after the glory had put her flag to mast— And spun the thread I followed to the dell, Where, in a gnarled old oak, I found a grub, Who waited for the spinner’s strand To draw him to the light. Whiff, sayeth the wind.

Whiff, sayeth the wind! I blew a beggar’s rags, and loving Was the flapping of the cloth. And singing on I went to blow a king’s mantle ’bout his limbs, And cut me on the crusted gilt. And tainted did I stain the rose until she turned A snuffy brown and rested her poor head Upon the rail along the path. Whiff, sayeth the wind.

Whiff, sayeth the wind. I blow me ’long the coast, And steal from out the waves their roar; And yet from out the riffles do I steal The rustle of the leaves, who borrow of the riffle’s song From me at summer-tide. And then I pipe unto the sands, who dance and creep Before me in the path. I blow the dead And lifeless earth to dancing, tingling life, And slap thee to awake at morn. Whiff, sayeth the wind.

There is a vivacity in this odd conceit that in itself brings a smile, which is likely to broaden at the irony in the suggestion of the wind cutting itself on the crusted gilt of a king’s mantle. Equally spirited in movement, but vastly different in character, is the one which follows:

Hi-ho, alack-a-day, whither going? Art dawdling time away adown the primrose path And wishing golden dust to fancied value? Ah, catch the milch-dewed air, breathe deep The clover-scented breath across the field, And feed upon sweet-rooted grasses Thou hast idly plucked. Come, Brother, then let’s on together.

Hi-ho, alack-a-day, whither going? Is here thy path adown the hard-flagged pave, Where, bowed, the workers blindly shuffle on; And dumbly stand in gullies bound, The worn, bedogged, silent-suffering beast, Far driven past his due? And thou, beloved, hast thy burden worn thee weary? Come, Brother, then let’s on together.

Hi-ho, alack-a-day, whither going? Hast thou begun the tottering of age, And doth the day seem over-long to thee? Art fretting for release, and dost thou lack The power to weave anew life’s tangled skein? Come, Brother, then let’s on together.

The second line of this will at once recall Shakespeare’s “primrose path of dalliance,” and it is one of the rare instances in which Patience may be said to have borrowed a metaphor; but in the line which follows, “and wishing golden dust to fancied value,” she puts the figure to better use than he in whom it originated. Beyond this line there is nothing specially remarkable in this poem, and it is given mainly to show the versatility of the composer, and as another example of her ability to present vivid and striking pictures.

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Reference has been made to the love of nature and the knowledge of nature betrayed in these poems. Even in those of the most spiritual character nature is drawn upon for illustrations and symbols, and the lines are lavishly strewn with material metaphor and similes that open up the gates of understanding. This picture of winter, for example, brings out the landscape it describes with the vividness and reality of a stereoscope, and yet it is something more than a picture:

Snow tweaketh ’neath thy feet, And like a wandering painter stalketh Frost, Daubing leaf and lichen. Where flowed a cataract And mist-fogged stream, lies silvered sheen, Stark, dead and motionless. I hearken But to hear the she-e-e-e of warning wind, Fearful lest I waken Nature’s sleeping. Await ye! Like a falcon loosed Cometh the awakening. Then returneth Spring To nestle in the curving breast of yonder hill, And sets to rest like the falcon seeketh His lady’s outstretched arm.

And here is another picture of winter, painted with a larger brush and heavier pigment, but expressing the same thought, that life doth ever follow death:

Dead, all dead! The earth, the fields, lie stretched in sleep Like weary toilers overdone. The valleys gape like toothless age, Besnaggled by dead trees. The hills, like boney jaws whose flesh hath dropped, Stand grinning at the deathy day. The lily, too, hath cast her shroud And clothed her as a brown-robed nun. The moon doth, at the even’s creep, Reach forth her whitened hands and sooth The wrinkled brow of earth to sleep. Ah, whither flown the fleecy summer clouds, To bank, and fall to earth in billowed light, And paint the winter’s brown to spangled white? Where, too, have flown the happy songs, Long died away with sighing On the shore-wave’s crest? Will they take Echo as their Guide, And bound from hill to hill at this, The sleepy time of earth, And waken forest song ’mid naked waste? Ah, slumber, slumber, slumber on. ’Tis with a loving hand He scattereth the snow, To nestle young spring’s offering, That dying Earth shall live anew.

How different this from Thomson’s pessimistic,

Dread winter spreads his latest glooms And reigns tremendous o’er the conquered year.

This poem seemed to present unusual difficulties to Patience. The words came slowly and haltingly, and the indications of composition were more marked than in any other of her poems. The third line was first dictated “Like weary workmen overdone,” and then changed to “weary toilers,” and the eighteenth line was given: “On the shore-wavelet’s breast,” and afterwards altered to read “the shorewave’s crest.”

Possibly it was because the poet has not the same zest in painting pictures of winter that she has in depicting scenes of kindlier seasons, in which she is in accord with nearly all poets, and, for that matter, with nearly all people. Her pen, if one may use the word, is speediest and surest when she presents the beautiful, whether it be the material or the spiritual. She expresses this feeling herself with beauty of phrase and rhythm in this verse, which may be entitled “The Voice of Spring.”

The streamlet under fernbanked brink Doth laugh to feel the tickle of the waving mass; And silver-rippled echo soundeth Under over-hanging cliff. The robin heareth it at morn And steals its chatter for his song. And oft at quiet-sleeping Of the Spring’s bright day, I wander me to dream along the brooklet’s bank, And hark me to a song of her dead voice, That lieth where the snowflakes vanish On the molten silver of the brooklet’s breast; And watch the stream, Who, over-fearful lest she lose the right To ripple to the chord of Spring’s full harmony, Doth harden at her heart And catch the song a prisoner to herself; To loosen only at the wooing kiss Of youthful Winter’s sun, And fill the barren waste with phantom spring.

Or, passing on to autumn, consider this apostrophe to a fallen leaf:

Ah, paled and faded leaf of spring agone, Whither goest thou? Art speeding To another land upon the brooklet’s breast? Or art thou sailing to the sea, to lodge Amid a reef, and, kissed by wind and wave, Die of too much love? Thou’lt find a resting place amid the moss, And, ah, who knows! The royal gem May be thine own love’s offering. Or wilt thou flutter as a time-yellowed page, And mould among thy sisters, ere the sun May peep within the pack? Or will the robin nest with thee At Spring’s awakening? The romping brook Will never chide thee, but ever coax thee on. And shouldst thou be impaled Upon a thorny branch, what then? Try not a flight. Thy sisters call thee. Could crocus spring from frost, And wilt thou let the violet shrink and die? Nay, speed not, for God hath not A mast for thee provided.

Autumn, too, is the theme of this:

She-e-e! She-e-e! She-e-e-e! The soughing wind doth breathe. The white-crest cloud hath drabbed At season’s late. The trees drip leaf-waste Unto the o’erloved blades aneath, Who burned o’ love, to die.