And always when I pa.s.s again our chosen pine And feel upon my brow the fine Soft pressure of an unseen web and brush It from my face expectantly and climb Wide-eyed into the mountains" windy hush, Among the green and healing hills I have found Celia.
For the morning fills With her and afternoon and twilight. She is always there As sweet within me as the intimate air.
We are together still in the deep solitude Which is the essence of all companies, Not in its loneliness but in its brood Of presences, the dawn chanting with birds, the trees Translating unremembered memories Of the returning dead.
And Celia, who has learned to die, Is well aware--and so through her am I-- That, one by one interpreted, All hopes and pains and powers Are hers and mine to try On every star, through every age.
.... And, still together, on this page We quote the sun-dial of the sage: "_I number none but happy hours._"
For we remember still The morning-hymn we heard: "Ye shall fulfill Your destiny and joy, Each in the other, both in that Italian boy And he in you, like flowers in a hill."
She said to me one day, where a hill renewed its flowers, "How easy it would be to live and die If we would only see the ultimate Oneness of life, quicken Our hearts with it and know that they who hate And strike become by their own blow the stricken!"...
"A stranger might be G.o.d," the Hindus cry.
But Celia says, importunate: "Everyone must be G.o.d and you and I."
VIII
Almost the body leads the laggard soul; bidding it see The beauty of surrender, the tranquillity Of fusion with the earth. The body turns to dust Not only by a sudden whelming thrust, Or at the end of a corrupting calm, But oftentimes antic.i.p.ates and, entering flowers and trees Upon a hillside or along the brink Of streams, encounters instances Of its eventual enterprise: Inhabits the enclosing clay, In rhapsody is caught away On a great tide Of beauty, to abide Translated through the night and day Of time and, by the anointing balm Of earth, to outgrow decay.
Hark in the wind--the word of silent lips!
Look where some subtle throat, that once had wakened l.u.s.t, Lies clear and lovely now, a silver link Of change and peace!
Hollows and willows and a river-bed, Anemones and clouds, Raindrops and tender distances Above, beneath, Inherit and bequeath Our far-begotten beauty. We are wed With many kindred who were seeming dead.
Only the delicate woven shrouds Are vanished, beauty thrown aside To honor and uncover A deeper beauty--as the veil that slips Breathless away between a lover And his bride.
So, by the body, may the soul surmise The beauty of surrender, the tranquillity Of fusion: when, set free From semblance of mortality, Yielding its dust the richer to endue A common avenue Of earth for other souls to journey through, It shall put on in purer guise The mutual beauty of its destiny.
And who shall fear for his ident.i.ty And who shall cling to the poor privacy Of incompleteness, when the end explains That what pride forfeits, beauty gains!
Therefore, O spirit, as a runner strips Upon a windy afternoon, Be unenc.u.mbered of what troubles you-- Arise with grace And greatly go!--the wind upon your face!
Grieve not for the invisible transported brow On which like leaves the dark hair grew, Nor for the lips of laughter that are now Laughing inaudibly in sun and dew, Nor for the limbs that, fallen low And seeming faint and slow, Shall alter and renew Their shape and hue Like birches white before the moon Or a young apple-tree In spring or the round sea And shall pursue More ways of swiftness than the swallow dips Among ... and find more winds than ever blew The straining sails of unimpeded ships!
A sudden music, Celia, through a poplar-bough, Where leaves are small and new, Comes laughing and goes hastening like you.
Beauty is more than hands or face or eyes Or the long curve that lies Upon a bed waiting, more than the rise Of sun among the birds, more than the oar that plies Under the moon for lovers, more than a tune that buys Pennies from time. Vision and touch comprise Yesterday"s promise, today"s token Of a fulfillment that shall have no need to be perceived or spoken, Wherein all love is the award Poured upon beauty and no heart is broken And no grief is stored.
For never beauty dies That lived. Nightly the skies a.s.semble stars, the light of hopeful eyes, And daily brood on the communal breath-- Which we call death.
Nothing is lost. Nothing I have of loveliness Exceeds a minute part Of my own loveliness when it shall be fulfilled With Celia"s and all loveliness that lies In every heart.
All that I have is but the start And the beginning, the bewildering guess Of what shall be distilled Out of my soul by you and you, Each soul of all souls, till one soul remains Which every beauty shall imbue Clean of the differences and pains....
I shall be Celia"s everlastingness.
IX
A little hill among New Hampshire hills Touches more stars than any height I know.
For there the whole earth--like a single being--fills And expands with heaven.
It is the hill where Celia used to go To watch Monadnock and the miles that met In slow-ascending slopes of peace.
She said: "When I am here, I find release From every petty debt I owe, The goods I bring with me increase, The ills are riven And blown away. And there remains a single debt Toward all the world for me, A single duty and one destiny."
"There shall be many births of G.o.d In this humanity,"
She said, "and many crucifixions on the hills, Before we learn that where Christ trod We all shall tread; and as he died to give Himself to us, we too shall die--and live."
"Though slowly knowledge comes, yet in the birth Is joy," said Celia, "joy As well as pain: The clear and clouded beauty of the earth.
.... This I forget in cities. For cities are a great Impa.s.sable gate Of tumult. But by mountains and by seas I gain Path after path of peace."
One evening Celia led me, late, Among the many whispers before rain, To touch and climb her hill again.
I felt it rise invisible as fate, Not for the eye but for the soul to see.
And when at last, among the oaks, we came Upon the top, a perfect voice Thrilled in the air like flame-- Was it uprisen death we heard?
Was it immortal youth, Out of the body, witnessing the truth, Attesting glory in an angel"s voice?
Blindly we listened to the singer and the single strain Containing joy.
And then the voice was still and all the world and we-- Till "Run," she said, "and bring him back to me!"
I ran, I called ... but in the nearing rain, No mortal answered, nothing stirred.
Was it uprisen death we heard?
.... Perhaps the hills and night Had made a prophet of some wandering boy, Prompting him in that instant to rejoice As never in his life before.
He must have had his own delight As well in silence as in song; For, though we waited long, He sang no more.
Afterward Celia said: "That voice we heard Singing among the oak-leaves, and then still, We cannot answer how it sings or how it comes and goes....
But only that its beauty ever grows Within us both, in ways no voice has told.
.... So let me be to you. When night has drawn its fold Of darkness and no word May reach your heart from mine, Take then my love, my beauty! Hear me still When you are old And I am ageless as a changing hill!
O hear me like that voice at night, Clearer than sound, nearer than sight, And let me be--as beauty is--divine!"
There is a hill of hills That holds my heart on high and stills All other sound Than joy.
Robins and thrushes, whip-poor-wills And morning-sparrows sing it round With echoes. Waterfalls abound And many streams convoy The breath of music. I have found A hill-path rising sudden on a city-street, Out of a quarrel, out of black despair, And climbed it with my winged feet.
It hurries me above All this illusion, all these ills, It rises quickly to the shining air.
.... Celia, I hear you on the hill of hills, Announcing love.
And O my citizen, perhaps the few Whom I shall tell of you Will see with me your beauty who are dead, Will hear with me your voice and what it said!
Let but a line of mine, A single one, Be made to shine With your whole-heartedness as with the sun, And I shall so consign Your touch to younger and yet younger hands, That they shall carry beauty through more lands Than ever Helen laid her touch upon.
In your new world I see The immigrants arriving from the ships....
O Celia, my democracy, My destiny, Beauty has had its answer on your lips!