FRAGMENT OF A POEM.

———

BY WM. ALBERT SUTLIFFE.

———

It was the twilight, and we sat alone.

We sat alone beside the winter fire—

My friend and I—a fire that crackled well,

And sounded through the stillness as a flame

Shoots through the dark. The embers of the sun

Had died to ashes. While it sunk we talked

Of Love, of Beauty, Poetry and Hope,

Which are religion. For, is Beauty loved,

Then God is loved, and in our loving we

Do emulate his noblest attribute.

But all our words had failed to silentness,

And memories clustered in the heart’s twilight,

As shadows in a wood; and all was still.

But in the quietness there seemed to grow

A sympathetic mood, and we to look,

As through glass, into each other’s mind,

Calm reading, while our thoughts and feelings verged

In a soft sadness to one common point.

Then low I spoke:—“Were it not sweet and well

To die from out this chaos of a life

Into the waiting dark, and leave our toil

To stronger minds and hands? To spurn the clay,

And mount the crystal air in spiral gyre,

Glad-voiced, and angel-winged, like bird uncaged?

I think it sweet! or so it seemeth now,

When I look back, as down a charnel-vault,

Into the retrospect, and see it all;—

See every should-be that was never done,

And every would-be that has died its death,

And my hot dreams, and my distempered hopes,

Pictured in light and dark as on a wall.”

Then in the dusk I ceased, and so we sat,

With hearthward faces, but with upward thought.

I saw my words drop, pebble-like, down deep

Into his inmost mind, and there they lay,

While he, with careful quiet, shaped response,

And then, abstract, as to himself, replied:—

“’Tis speaking well, and yet not speaking well!

For in the web of life are golden threads—

And in the sky of life are brilliant stars—

And on the sea of life are favoring gales—

Or we should wither all as flowers in drought.

He who doth pilot the great universe,

Doth mete and parcel out the light and dark,

Strange, varicolored, like a wanderer’s dream;—

And He that made the man hath made his work.

And in the bark of life hath given the oar

At which to tug and toil until the death;

Nor yet all toil; for oft the summer sea

Ripples on bloomy shores, whence balmy winds

Bring a rich, spicy life to make one glad.

We thrid wild mazes not without a clue—

We sink again to soar as eagles do—

We deeply quaff at the rare desert founts,

And so plod on to fair oases green,

Where rustling palms nod to the welcome wind—

While with the sun of our own minds we shine

On planetary minds, and light, and cheer,

And lead then to a loftier, brighter end.

All this is well: So let the creature’s wish

Circle its scanty orbit round and round

With borrowed light from the Creator’s will.”

Then I again:—“We are but merest drops

That swell a deathward torrent, or as grains

Of sand, which make up a conglobéd sphere,

And he that is fore’er undoes the work

Of him that has been, through the whirl of time.

What profits it to weave a golden web

Which all our heirs may rend above our grave!

To pile our treasuries with yellow dust

That every reckless future wind may blow!

To think to be unthought in coming years!

To write to be the jest of fresher times!

All this is emptiness! I wish the end.”

What he had said I know not, for the wind,

Which had blown fitful since the red sun sunk,

Came in fierce gusts against the window now—

Bringing large drops that pattered chill and loud.

Then our talk changed to what might be afar—

To the rude ocean, and the mariners

Driven by windy war on unknown coasts,

To sin and sorrow in this poor, poor world,

And all those dreary themes akin to tears.

So mused we in the dusk a gentle space,

A cloudy dreamer I—my friend, that trod

The green hills of his own complacency

Like any king.