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By the Aurelian Wall and Other Elegies

{44} <h2>A SEAMARK A Threnody for Robert Louis Stevenson</h2> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> Cold, the dull cold! What ails the sun, And takes the heart out of the day? What makes the morning look so mean, The Common so forlorn and gray? </div> <div class="stanza"> The wintry city’s granite heart Beats on in iron mockery, And like the roaming mountain rains, I hear the thresh of feet go by.{45} </div> <div class="stanza"> It is the lonely human surf Surging through alleys chill with grime, The muttering churning ceaseless floe Adrift out of the North of time. </div> <div class="stanza"> Fades, it all fades! I only see The poster with its reds and blues Bidding the heart stand still to take Its desolating stab of news. </div> <div class="stanza"> That intimate and magic name: “Dead in Samoa.” ... Cry your cries, O city of the golden dome, Under the gray Atlantic skies!{46} </div> <div class="stanza"> But I have wander-biddings now. Far down the latitudes of sun, An island mountain of the sea, Piercing the green and rosy zone, </div> <div class="stanza"> Goes up into the wondrous day. And there the brown-limbed island men Are bearing up for burial, Within the sun’s departing ken, </div> <div class="stanza"> The master of the roving kind. And there where time will set no mark For his irrevocable rest, Under the spacious melting dark,{47} </div> <div class="stanza"> With all the nomad tented stars About him, they have laid him down Above the crumbling of the sea, Beyond the turmoil of renown. </div> <div class="stanza"> O all you hearts about the world In whom the truant gipsy blood, Under the frost of this pale time, Sleeps like the daring sap and flood </div> <div class="stanza"> That dream of April and reprieve! You whom the haunted vision drives, Incredulous of home and ease, Perfection’s lovers all your lives!{48} </div> <div class="stanza"> You whom the wander-spirit loves To lead by some forgotten clue Forever vanishing beyond Horizon brinks forever new; </div> <div class="stanza"> The road, unmarked, ordained, whereby Your brothers of the field and air Before you, faithful, blind and glad, Emerged from chaos pair by pair; </div> <div class="stanza"> The road whereby you too must come, In the unvexed and fabled years Into the country of your dream, With all your knowledge in arrears!{49} </div> <div class="stanza"> You, who can never quite forget Your glimpse of Beauty as she passed, The well-head where her knee was pressed, The dew wherein her foot was cast; </div> <div class="stanza"> O you who bid the paint and clay Be glorious when you are dead, And fit the plangent words in rhyme Where the dark secret lurks unsaid; </div> <div class="stanza"> You brethren of the light-heart guild, The mystic fellowcraft of joy, Who tarry for the news of truth, And listen for some vast ahoy{50} </div> <div class="stanza"> Blown in from sea, who crowd the wharves With eager eyes that wait the ship Whose foreign tongue may fill the world With wondrous tales from lip to lip; </div> <div class="stanza"> Our restless loved adventurer, On secret orders come to him, Has slipped his cable, cleared the reef, And melted on the white sea-rim. </div> <div class="stanza"> O granite hills, go down in blue! And like green clouds in opal calms, You anchored islands of the main, Float up your loom of feathery palms!{51} </div> <div class="stanza"> For deep within your dales, where lies A valiant earthling stark and dumb, This savage undiscerning heart Is with the silent chiefs who come </div> <div class="stanza"> To mourn their kin and bear him gifts,— Who kiss his hand, and take their place, This last night he receives his friends, The journey-wonder on his face. </div> <div class="stanza"> He “was not born for age.” Ah no, For everlasting youth is his! Part of the lyric of the earth With spring and leaf and blade he is.{52} </div> <div class="stanza"> ’Twill nevermore be April now But there will lurk a thought of him At the street corners, gay with flowers From rainy valleys purple-dim. </div> <div class="stanza"> O chiefs, you do not mourn alone! In that stern North where mystery broods, Our mother grief has many sons Bred in those iron solitudes. </div> <div class="stanza"> It does not help them, to have laid Their coil of lightning under seas; They are as impotent as you To mend the loosened wrists and knees.{53} </div> <div class="stanza"> And yet how many a harvest night, When the great luminous meteors flare Along the trenches of the dusk, The men who dwell beneath the Bear, </div> <div class="stanza"> Seeing those vagrants of the sky Float through the deep beyond their hark, Like Arabs through the wastes of air,— A flash, a dream, from dark to dark,— </div> <div class="stanza"> Must feel the solemn large surmise: By a dim vast and perilous way We sweep through undetermined time, Illumining this quench of clay,{54} </div> <div class="stanza"> A moment staunched, then forth again. Ah, not alone you climb the steep To set your loving burden down Against the mighty knees of sleep. </div> <div class="stanza"> With you we hold the sombre faith Where creeds are sown like rain at sea; And leave the loveliest child of earth To slumber where he longed to be. </div> <div class="stanza"> His fathers lit the dangerous coast To steer the daring merchant home; His courage lights the dark’ning port Where every sea-worn sail must come.{55} </div> <div class="stanza"> And since he was the type of all That strain in us which still must fare, The fleeting migrant of a day, Heart-high, outbound for otherwhere, </div> <div class="stanza"> Now therefore, where the passing ships Hang on the edges of the noon, And Northern liners trail their smoke Across the rising yellow moon, </div> <div class="stanza"> Bound for his home, with shuddering screw That beats its strength out into speed, Until the pacing watch descries On the sea-line a scarlet seed{56} </div> <div class="stanza"> Smolder and kindle and set fire To the dark selvedge of the night, The deep blue tapestry of stars, Then sheet the dome in pearly light, </div> <div class="stanza"> There in perpetual tides of day, Where men may praise him and deplore, The place of his lone grave shall be A seamark set forevermore, </div> <div class="stanza"> High on a peak adrift with mist, And round whose bases, far beneath The snow-white wheeling tropic birds, The emerald dragon breaks his teeth. </div> </div></div> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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