The moon, one tree, one star,
Still meadows far,
Enwreathed and scarfed by phantom lines of white.
November’s night
Of all her nights, I thought, and turned to see
Again that moon and star-supporting tree.
If some most quiet tune had spoken then;
Some silver thread of sound; a core within
That sea-deep silentness, I had not known
Ever such joy in peace, but sound was none--
Nor should be till birds roused to find the dawn.
From green to gold, from gold to amethyst,
Transmuted by the sun's last lingering ray,
The tranquil hills in dreaming silence lay,
Wrought to a beauty eye could not resist;
Till, folded in with veils of purple mist
That slowly wrapt them from reluctant day,
They mingled with the dusk and flowed away,
Renewing with the stars their nightly tryst.
And as the soft enchantments round us spread,
And twilight with its pensive shadows fell —
Loosed from the prison-wards of care and dread,
Lured from our selfish griefs by beauty's spell —
Along dim thoroughfares our thoughts were led
To haunts of peace where love and silence dwell.
Peace on a thousand hills and dales,
Peace in the hearts of men
While kindliness reclaims the soil
Where bitterness has been.
The night of strife is drifting past,
The storm of shell has ceased.
Disrupted is the cordon fell,
Sweet charity released.
Forth from the shadow, swift we come
Wrought in the flame together.
All men as one beneath the sun
In brotherhood forever.
Good-bye dear day of sunshine, rain
In flooding torrents pours
Its liquid footsteps on my roof,
Its fingers on my doors.
While I sit tranquilly within
And tell my beads of joy,
Holding a peace within my heart
Which nothing can destroy.
Sewanee Hills of dear delight,
Prompting my dreams that used to be,
I know you are waiting me still tonight
By the Unika Range of Tennessee.
The blinking stars in endless space,
The broad moonlight and silvery gleams,
Tonight caress your wind-swept face,
And fold you in a thousand dreams.
Your far outlines, less seen than felt,
Which wind with hill propensities.
In moonlight dreams I see you melt
Away in vague immensities.
And, far away, I still can feel
Your mystery that ever speaks
Of vanished things, as shadows steal
Across your breast and rugged peaks.
Sap stirs near me, roots stretch and seize,
Sundering stones.
And rivers waken, start in monotones
Their later tunes.
Oaks bend their knotted knees
In labor, and the full earth groans
Like women big with their increase;
While underground my body lies,
With open eyes,
In this stiff pose of peace.
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,
So, my proud soul, so you, whose shining force
Had galloped with me to eternity,
Stand now, appealing like a tired horse:
Unharness me.
O passionate world! O faces of my friends!
O half-grasped meanings, intricate and deep! —
Sudden, as with a child, the tumult ends,
Silenced by sleep.
Let us walk in the white snow
In a soundless space;
With footsteps quiet and slow,
At a tranquil pace,
Under veils of white lace.
I shall go shod in silk,
And you in wool,
White as a white cow's milk,
More beautiful
Than the breast of a gull.
We shall walk through the still town
In a windless peace;
We shall step upon white down,
Upon silver fleece,
Upon softer than these.
We shall walk in velvet shoes:
Sleep falls, with limpid drops of rain,
Upon the steep cliffs of the town.
Sleep falls; men are at peace again
Awhile the small drops fall softly down.
The bright drops ring like bells of glass
Thinned by the wind, and lightly blown;
Sleep cannot fall on peaceful grass
So softly as it falls on stone.
Peace falls unheeded on the dead
Asleep; they have had deep peace to drink;
Upon a live man's bloody head
It falls most tenderly, I think.
Before the downs in their great horse-shoes rise,
I know a village where the Adur runs,
Blown by sweet winds and by beneficent suns
Visited and made ripe beneath kind skies.
Light and delight are in the children's eyes
And there the mothers sit, the fortunate ones,
Blest in their daughters, happy in their sons,
And the old men are beautiful and wise.
There stand the downs, great, close, tall, friendly, still,
Linked up by grassy saddles, hill on hill,
And steep the village in unending peace
And to the north the plains in order lie,
Heavy with crops and woods alternately
And lively with low sounds that never cease.
Drowsy the noonday air,
Under the trees the still shadow
Like a fugitive fragment of night
Seeks shelter from the sun.
The bird has ceased singing,
The beggar unable to bear
The wealth of the sun
Spreads his torn garment,
To find peace in
The benign shadow of sleep.
Ah, lone soul like him,
I spread this rag of my song.
Under the tree of life
Over which blazes the sun of fate.
The calm of its shadow
Protects me, but where my peace?