|       
|
Pine,
Rose and Fleur de Lis
by
Susie Frances Harrison
|
A
MONODY
TO
THE MEMORY OF ISABELLA VALANCY CRAWFORD.
|
|
I
weep for our dead Sappho—Sappho, who is dead,
Was ours,
and great, although her friends were few;
Let the great Greek go by, or lift in love her laurelled
head,
One of
her peers hath entered; let her view
The youngest poet-soul that darkly gropes
|
5 |
For light
and truth; let the great Greek out stretch
Warm hands
of welcome, Deity-bidden, fetch
The faint soul home with Love’s strong coilèd
ropes.
I weep for our dead Sappho—Sappho, who
was ours,
The
great Greek knew her, shame—that we did
not;
|
10 |
| Did
not her song pierce blue, light dark and break through
close- |
|
| |
branched
bowers? |
|
Yet
was an early grave her earthward lot.
Whom the gods love die young. Great Sappho, raise
Thy yearning
arms and draw her from the flood;
Cheer
thou her spirit, warm her freezing blood. |
15 |
| Lave
her faint brow, and crown it with clinging bays.
I make my moan the while. I do not weep
Because
that Death her body hath not spared;
Weep I for thoughts of bliss, of converse sweet
with meaning
|
|
| |
deep, |
|
| That,
had I known her, surely we had shared. |
20 |
I
weep for thinking much of the forest walks,
When willows
shimmer with leaf of thinnest gold,
And crumpled
green is ready to unfold,
And white show all the slender reedy stalks
Within the muddy marshes; here and there,
|
25 |
A stray
wind-flower that stars the sunny glade,
A triple-leafed trillium tall, that soon in May-time
light shall wear
Its white
flower—lovely lamp for lanes of shade.
I weep for thinking much of the purple blooms
We might
have seen together on the hills,
The while
the melting snow made rough the rills,
|
30 |
| And
from the frozen flats uprose the glooms.
I weep, and wonder much who was her friend;
Or had
she none, and so crept unconsoled
Lonely along life’s sunless shore and sadly,
bravely penned
The
lines that read so warm, that ring so bold.
|
35 |
As
water precious sediment, shining ore,
So the
clear liquid of her verse embalms,
Like amber,
flies—the fire, the flush, the palms
Of passionate tropics, pulsing, sun-bathed shore.
I make my moan the while. I weep to think
|
40 |
Such walks
were not for us, nor yet that hour
Far dearer still to friends when snow hath curtained
every chink,
And hearth-sides
blaze with welcome, though there lower
The God of Storm upon the threshold neat.
To have
sat so—close and tender; (women can—
|
45 |
Are all
to themselves, and happy, need no man,)
Alas! that we never lit on such retreat!
Such solace there was none. Great Sappho—raise
Her
drooping head and tell her one hath come,
Late though it seem, with yearning words of comfort
and of
|
|
| |
praise! |
50 |
She
does not hearken. Yet she is but dumb.
Wait but a little—she will sing again.
I wait.
I watch the trees fire, one by one,
I count
the oxen, indolent in the sun,
I see the sparkle of many a dstant vane.
|
55 |
I smooth the chestnuts shining in the grass,
I look
up when a bird is felt to whir-
These are my truest joys. O wherefore comes it thus
to pass
That these
are no more anything to her?
This day is like her—sumptuous, vivid, warm,
|
60 |
All golden
mellow, gemmed with spots of fire.
Demeter,
smiling, ’ere she slay desire
With warring winds and icy breath of storm
Hath cast upon the earth a veil of gold,
Defying
Danaë. I, too, work my spells.
|
65 |
Zeus
is not only lord. Behold the vales, the slopes behold.
The woods
of bronze, the topaz-sprinkled dells!
The myths still live. I am not shrunken yet,
Disabled,
no, nor impotent, failing, weak;
’Tis
I who crumple claw, form flower, ope beak,
|
70 |
| Knit
cobweb, paint the maples, frost-snares set.
Thus the sly Goddess. Every year she makes
The
simple Earth most beautiful for a time.
But, every year, dread mother, her revenge unguessed
she
|
|
| |
slakes, |
|
| When
green and gold are gone, with sleet and rime. |
75 |
Thus
doth she make her moan. Persephone
Dieth
once a year to life and light and air,
Howbeit
she lives afar, most strangely fair,
With eyes that in the dark have learnt to see.
Here, where the leaves are trodden inches deep,
|
80 |
What
waste of colour, symmetry, beauty, life!
There, where her soul’s rich song is hushed
in waiting, wavering |
|
| |
sleep, |
|
We
dare not figure waste. Across the strife
That strangles Hope ever high at the court of God,
That voice
at last shall be clearly, daily heard, |
85 |
That heart
with holiest striving shall be stirred,
That soul be free to soar, as lark from sod.
Yet are we mocked by cold conjecture’s
wraith!
To sigh
and grasp at what is gone for aye—
I too, Earth-mother, lose my calm, I lose my saving
faith,
|
90 |
I too,
disdain the world’s vile disarray
And would avenge its blindness, point its shame.
Kill
off for me, Demeter, thus I cry,
These
impotent—that the great, good gods defy,
These flies of men that dally with her name!
|
95 |
For her’s was no slight soul. Kind Sappho
knows—
For she
hath read those Greek-inspirèd lines,
Stanzas in which as of old the Spartan spirit steadily
glows—
Deep—as
Ægean blue through branching vines,
Strong—as the naked limbs of Spartan youth,
|
100 |
Hot—as
the suns on Æolia’s rocky plains.
Clasp
me the Helot—reach me the rich quatrains,
That throb with triumph, touched with the wand of
truth!
I make my moan the while. Dear Sappho—list!
Ask
her this, further. Was she loath to go,
|
105 |
Or
was she ready, willing, soul-enchanted since she
wist
Not fully
of her gift, nor of life below?
Nay—so calm Greek whispers—’tis
no time
To question
her. For a soul so lately riven
By Death’s
slow pains, though fully, know, forgiven,
|
110 |
| May
answer not. Ponder then in your heart your rhyme.
I wait. I watch the Autumn. Swift it passes,
Till
sallow fungi stud the dripping trees;
Brittle and brown and dry grow even the smoothest,
greenest
|
|
| |
grasses, |
|
| And
garden-plots lie naked to the breeze, |
115 |
And
rifled rigging climbeth the damp dull house,
And men
and women crouching before their fire,
Hearken
the wind as it climbeth ever higher,
Hearken the cricket, watch for the keen-eyed mouse.
Four walls hath bound them—bound me too,
the same,
|
120 |
Not
like that spirit—bursting place and age,
The mummy-like cloths of genius—that pure
fire, that golden |
|
| |
flame, |
|
Her
lambent thought, that fed each splendid page
With picturesque portraits, Greek, Italian, Spanish.
The pomp
of Rome, the clash of Capitol hate, |
125 |
La Bouquetière,
sweet victim of foul fate—
How beside these do colder visions vanish!
Four walls could not her feverish spirit fetter,
Yet
precious airs strove with her, sweet, unsought;
Often I think, that had I called her friend or
known her better,
|
130 |
I might
have steered the rich barque of her thought
To shores of our own, looming softly, freshly fair.
I might
have shown her—tawny eastern torrents,
The lonely
Gatineau, the vast St. Lawrence,
I might have said—In all this thou shalt
share:
|
135 |
Take it and make it—thou who only can’st,
Sweet
alchemist—rare singer—what thou wilt;
Distilled in thine alembic, earth-dissevered, as
thou plann’st,
Our life’s
ideal shalt on thee be built.
Had I but known her well—thus had I spoken.
|
140 |
But now
she sleeps where Sappho guards and guides,
Deaf to
the rolling in of Death’s slow tides,
And Charon’s ship on the black wave’s
crest unbroken.
There where the canyon, cut in the living rock,
Its
snow-streaked side up from the prairie lifts,
|
145 |
| Shall
not her name live long, --I think so, till Time
has ceased to |
|
| |
mock, |
|
Hath
she not conquered Death by gracious gifts?
Did she not sing the song of the pioneer,
An epic
of axe and tree, of glebe and pine,
Hath she
not—Great High Priestess of Love benign, |
150 |
| Rose-crowned,
brow-bound, from Love dissevered Fear?
I shall not cease to moan. Some day I shall catch
The
music of the voice I wait to hear,
And hearing, rapt, declare that its magic melody
doth not match
With
aught ever heard in this songless hemisphere.
|
155 |
O,
could I hope that the mantle of her song
Might
fall on me through very love of her—
Strong
Sappho! Grant it! I may not confer
High gifts her gifts alone to her God belong.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
