Behind their veils of clinging mist,
Elusive as a dream,
In changing rose and amethyst
The mountains stood supreme.
Consumed as by some inward fire
Of brooding mystery,
They held the heart of his desire —
His love and poetry.
And always, ever, some dear time —
So ran his hidden hopes —
He meant to leave his task and climb
Their beckoning emerald slopes,
To scale their precipices bold,
And watch the rose-wreaths rise,
To see the gates of Heaven unrolled
Before his longing eyes.
I have known hours built like cities,
House on grey house, with streets between
That lead to straggling roads and trail off,
Forgotten in a field of green;
Hours made like mountains lifting
White crests out of the fog and rain,
And woven of forbidden music —
Hours eternal in their pain.
Life is a tapestry of hours
Forever mellowing in tone.
Where all things blend, even the longing
For hours I have never known.
From staring eyes
Of hotel windows,
From flaunting rich
And cringing poor,
From men and women
Drunken with wine, passion and money,
From tired Cook's tourists
Doing Switzerland on sixteen pounds,
From shrieking steamers
Tearing the shadow of Mount Pilatus into shreds,
From bands beating out brazen music
Under the twisted plane-trees,
From all that is poor and rich and ugly,
I lift my eyes unto the eternal hills
Which are outlined upon orange and crimson
By a Supreme Master with a brush of sunlight,
And in the after silences
Of flower-lit distances I'll be,
And who would find me travels far
In lands unsung of minstrelsy.
Strong winds shall cross my secret way,
And planet mountains hide my goal,
I shall go on from pass to pass,
By monstrous rocks, a lonely soul.
Once there was a cabin here, and once there was a man;
And something happened here before my memory began.
Time has made the two of them the fuel of one flame
And all we have of them is now a legend and a name.
All I have to say is what an old man said to me,
And that would seem to be as much as there will ever be.
"Fifty years ago it was we found it where it sat."--
And forty years ago it was old Archibald said that.
"An apple tree that's yet alive saw something, I suppose,
Of what it was that happened there, and what no mortal knows.
Some one on the mountain heard far off a master shriek,
And then there was a light that showed the way for men to seek.
In youth my wings were strong and tireless,
But I did not know the mountains.
In age I knew the mountains
But my weary wings could not follow my vision—
Genius is wisdom and youth.
The mountain peaks, a halted army,
Helmeted with gold and green;
The sea before them a veil of pink
That the moon casts away,
To wear the gold-violet robe of mist
Before entering the Shrine of night.
The night was a failure but why not--?
In the darkness
with the pale dawn seething at the window
through the black frame
I could not be free,
not free myself from the past, those others--
and our love was a confusion,
there was a horror,
you recoiled away from me.
Now, in the morning
As we sit in the sunshine on the seat by the little shrine,
And look at the mountain-walls,
Walls of blue shadow,
And see so near at our feet in the meadow
Myriads of dandelion pappus
Bubbles ravelled in the dark green grass
The listless beauty of the hour
When snow fell on the apple trees
And the wood-ash gathered in the fire
And we faced our first miseries.
Then the sweeping sunshine of noon
When the mountains like chariot cars
Were ranked to blue battle--and you and I
Counted our scars.
And then in a strange, grey hour
We lay mouth to mouth, with your face
Under mine like a star on the lake,
And I covered the earth, and all space.
The silent, drifting hours
Of morn after morn
And night drifting up to the night
Yet no pathway worn.
Out of this oubliette between the mountains
five valleys go, five passes like gates;
three of them black in shadow, two of them bright
with distant sunshine;
and sunshine fills one high valley bed,
green grass shining, and little white houses
like quartz crystals,
little, but distinct a way off.
Why don't I go?
Why do I crawl about this pot, this oubliette,
stupidly?
Why don't I go?
But where?
If I come to a pine-wood, I can't say
Now I am arrived!
What are so many straight trees to me!
You have come your way, I have come my way;
You have stepped across your people, carelessly, hurting them all;
I have stepped across my people, and hurt them in spite of my care.
But steadily, surely, and notwithstanding
We have come our ways and met at last
Here in this upper room.
Here the balcony
Overhangs the street where the bullock-wagons slowly
Go by with their loads of green and silver birch-trees
For the feast of Corpus Christi.
Here from the balcony
We look over the growing wheat, where the jade-green river
Goes between the pine-woods,
Over and beyond to where the many mountains
Stand in their blueness, flashing with snow and the morning.
HOKUSAI'S portrait of himself
Tells what his hat was like
And his arms and legs. The only faces
Are a river and a mountain
And two laughing farmers.
The smile of Hokusai is under his hat.