Prose Coronales

Morris Ward

To G. M. Chadwick

“I the reed was a useless plant; for out of me grow not figs nor apple nor grape-cluster; but man consecrated me in the mysteries of Helicon, piercing my frail lips and making me the channel of a narrow stream; and thenceforth whenever I sip the black drink, like one inspired I speak all words with this voiceless mouth.”—From the Greek Anthology. Anonymous.

I

The New Dawn

“You have slept long, oh heart! And you, my heart’s dear comrade, whom men call Beauty—why have you awakened me once more and made my bed no longer roses but sharp thorns?”—“Too many are yet asleep: they have slept overlong. You must awaken now and once more, in this golden dawning, sing to them and to this silence round about them out of your soul’s rich pain, out of your body’s weariness. Sing, then, sing!”—“I will, dear my heart, my Beauty, I will! But oh, the silence, this silence!”

II

At Evening

The lamp shines low in the silent room, and the lonely poet dreams of long-forgotten evenings. Putting aside the volume in my hand I caress the sumptuous fur of the cat asleep on my knees, crooning to myself the while an old old folk song. Without, stretching far away into the horizon, the fields of golden wheat sway to and fro under the moon’s full light; and on the screen of the window a single moth clings motionless, its fire-like eyes drinking long draughts of the light which it cannot reach.—Oh moth! why should you love so well the thing that seeks your death?...

III

An Invocation

You who love Beauty as the bee loves the flower, as the bird loves the air—hail! You who lie awake at night dreaming of the Beauty that is in the world yet not of the world—all hail! You whose life is like a broken song trailing through the ceaseless monotone of human things—hail and farewell!

We were not long together, but haply neither will soon forget. Almost we understood each other, and in all the world there is no word that touches life so quickly as “almost”. And on that word we parted.

Because you have not learned that Beauty never stops to kiss her chosen ones. You do not know that with her sweet, too-sweet and awful breath alone does she condemn them to journey forever from flower to flower by day, by night from star to star. Even as you journey, a frail, wondrous and ghostly being, pouring forth your pain-mad melodies, broken melodies, ceaselessly yearning toward the verge of that perfection ... ah! and you would have me leap into those chill profundities, out of the world, out of your dear remembrance, out of the bright sun’s warmth, forever!

Hear me, passionate stricken one! Hear me this once: then if you will forget me; if you can remember still.—For I have pondered on the rune of dreams and therein I have read:

That Beauty is always in the search and in the seeker; it is a wandering and not a goal; a wave and not the sea; a flame and not the candle:

It is that soul which is not man, nor woman, nor child, nor anything at all save one long shattered cry echoing down the galleries of stupendous night!

It is this cry that I now send to you, valiant and wayward one, my sister:——

This, and once more, this: “Hail and farewell.”

IV

The Lover’s Lament

Once in the waning of an autumn day, as I was reading to my beloved from a little book of verse, I came upon the lines: “They are not long, the days of wine and roses: out of a misty dream....” But suddenly a flower-like hand covered the page from my eyes and the moment of sweet gladness that was mine vanished like the saffron tints from the clouds beyond, as I felt her arms steal about my body and saw her mute poppy lips craving yet another kiss—yet another kiss.

V

Wanderers

Dreaming one night of a triumphant journey along the Milky Way, traversing the Infinite from world to world as though on flaming cushions, I was awakened by a dull shuffling noise outside my door. I listened for a moment: “Ah, it is only the old blind woman across the hall, stumbling in the darkness on the way to her room.”—And I went to sleep again, but my dream had gone forever....

VI

The Accursed

“Into the same river thou mayst not step twice!” Oh sage grim one, weaver at a sable loom, Heraclitus,—arise from your ashes and I will show you a woman so fair that looking on her you will love, and loving, nevermore plait your sombre nets of Change!—“Into the same river thou mayst not step twice!”—Not even if the river’s name is Love? Answer me, spirit of desperation, ruthless passer-by: not even Love?—Silence, only silence, and the continual hasting of waters down to the sea....

VII

Ennui

I am tired of dancing and song, of pictures and the words that men ceaselessly utter without need. And of my own dancing and song, of my own visions and unavailing speech I am more tired still.—If so it might be, I would like to have a room at the top of a tower, far above the earth: a room consecrated to silence, where only the night could enter. And there I would sit forever by the window, receiving the benedictions of the stars, and watching in the moon’s pale disc the reflections in lovers’ eyes as they drank from one another at the sorrowful fountains of illusion.

VIII

The Rose-Jar

Rose-jar, soft to the finger’s touch, rose-jar like a maiden’s breast, thou chance issue from the womb of Beauty—what coarse-mouthed potter turned thee on his wheel, shaping thee from the inert clay? And in what ancient garden bloomed the flowers now so dry within thy comely belly, now so very dry but oh so fragrant to the nostrils of the poet?—Rose-jar, soft to the finger’s touch, rose-jar like a maiden’s breast—and even thou some day will lie upon the earth and all thy loveliness and all thy perfume will return again unto the clay ... unto the clay beneath swift brutal feet....

IX

Vesperal

Clear-eyed evening, and thou, dark shadows, children of the moon, let us dance together a little while, and sing to one another antique melodies, compounded all of passion and youth and glad forgetfulness.—For soon the morning will come again out of the fateful East—the morning with all its sullen duties....