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By the Aurelian Wall and Other Elegies

{112} <h2>ANDREW STRATON</h2> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> Andrew Straton was my friend, With his Saxon eyes and hair, And his loyal viking spirit, Like an islesman of the North With his earldom on the sea. </div> <div class="stanza"> At his birth the mighty Mother Made of him a fondling one, Hushed from pain within her arms, With her seal upon his lips;{113} </div> <div class="stanza"> And from that day he was numbered With the sons of consolation, Peace and cheer were in his hands, And her secret in his will. </div> <div class="stanza"> Now the night has Andrew Straton Housed from wind and storm forever In a chamber of the gloom Where no window fronts the morning, Lulled to rest at last from roving To the music of the rain. </div> <div class="stanza"> And his sleep is in the far-off Alien villages of the dusk, Where there is no voice of welcome To the country of the strangers, Save the murmur of the pines.{114} </div> <div class="stanza"> And the fitful winds all day Through the grass with restless footfalls Haunt about his narrow door, Muttering their vast unknown Border balladry of time, To the hoarse rote of the sea. </div> <div class="stanza"> There he reassumes repose, He who never learned unrest Here amid our fury of toil, Undisturbed though all about him To the cohorts of the night Sound the bugles of the spring; And his slumber is not broken When along the granite hills Flare the torches of the dawn.{115} </div> <div class="stanza"> More to me than kith or kin Was the silence of his speech; And the quiet of his eyes, Gathered from the lonely sweep Of the hyacinthine hills, Better to the failing spirit Than a river land in June: And to look for him at evening Was more joy than many friends. </div> <div class="stanza"> As the woodland brooks at noon Were his brown and gentle hands, And his face as the hill country Touched with the red autumn sun{116} </div> <div class="stanza"> Frank and patient and untroubled Save by the old trace of doom In the story of the world. So the years went brightening by. </div> <div class="stanza"> Now a lyric wind and weather Breaks the leaguer of the frost, And the shining rough month March Crumbles into sun and rain; But the glad and murmurous year Wheels above his rest and wakens Not a dream for Andrew Straton. </div> <div class="stanza"> Now the uplands hold an echo From the meadow lands at morn; And the marshes hear the rivers Rouse their giant heart once more,—{117} </div> <div class="stanza"> Hear the crunching floe start seaward From a thousand valley floors; While far on amid the hills Under stars in the clear night, The replying, the replying, Of the ice-cold rivulets Plashing down the solemn gorges In their arrowy blue speed, Fills and frets the crisp blue twilight With innumerable sound,— With the whisper of the spring. </div> <div class="stanza"> But the melting fields are empty, Something ails the bursting year.{118} </div> <div class="stanza"> Ah, now helpless, O my rivers, Are your lifted voices now! Where is all the sweet compassion Once your murmur held for me? Cradled in your dells, I listened To your crooning, learned your language, Born your brother and your kin. </div> <div class="stanza"> When I had the morn for revel, You made music at my door; Now the days go darkling on, And I cannot guess your words. Shall young joy have troops of neighbors, While this grief must house alone?{119} </div> <div class="stanza"> O my brothers of the hills, Who abide through stress and change, On the borders of our sorrow, With no part in human tears, Lift me up your voice again And put by this grievous thing! </div> <div class="stanza"> Ah, my rivers, Andrew Straton Leaves me here a vacant world! </div> <div class="stanza"> I must hear the roar of cities And the jargon of the schools, With no word of that one spirit Who was steadfast as the sun{120} And kept silence with the stars. I must sit and hear the babble Of the worldling and the fool, Prating know-alls and reformers Busy to improve on man, With their chatter about God; Nowhere, nowhere the blue eyes, With their swift and grave regard, Falling on me with God’s look. </div> <div class="stanza"> I have seen and known and loved One who was too sure for sorrow, Too serenely wise for haste, Too compassionate for scorn, Fearless man and faultless comrade, One great heart whose beat was love.{121} </div> <div class="stanza"> In a thousand thousand hollows Of the hills to-day there twinkle Icy-blue handbreadths of April, Where the sinking snows decay In the everlasting sun; And a thousand tiny creatures Stretch their heart to fill the world. </div> <div class="stanza"> Now along the wondrous trail Andrew Straton loved to follow Day by day and year on year, The awaited sure return Of all sleeping forest things Is reheralded abroad, Till the places of their journey,—{122} Wells the frost no longer hushes, Ways no drift can bury now, Wood and stream and road and hillside,— Hail their coming as of old. </div> <div class="stanza"> But my beautiful lost comrade Of the golden heart, whose life Rang through April like a voice Through some Norland saga, crying Skoal to death, comes not again; Time shall not revive that presence More desired than all the flowers, Longer wished for than the birds. </div> <div class="stanza"> April comes, but April’s lover Is departed and not here.{123} </div> <div class="stanza"> Sojourning beyond the frost, He delays; and now no more,— Though the goldenwings are come With their resonant tattoo, And along the barrier pines Morning reddens on the hills Where the thrushes wake before it,— No more to the summoning flutes Of the forest Andrew Straton Gets him forth afoot, light-hearted, On the unfrequented ways With companionable Spring. </div> <div class="stanza"> Only the old dreams return.{124} So I shape me here this fancy, Foolish me! of Andrew Straton; How the lands of that new kindred Have detained him with allegiance, And some far day I shall find him, There as here my only captain, Master of the utmost isles In the ampler straits of sea. </div> <div class="stanza"> Out of the blue melting distance Of the dreamy southward range Journey back the vagrant winds, Sure and indolent as time; And the trembling wakened wood-flowers Lift their gentle tiny faces{125} To the sunlight; and the rainbirds From the lonely cedar barrens Utter their far pleading cry. </div> <div class="stanza"> Up across the swales and burnt lands Where the soft gray tinges purple, Mouldering into scarlet mist, Comes the sound as of a marching, The low murmur of the April In the many-rivered hills. </div> <div class="stanza"> Then there stirs the old vague rapture, Like a wanderer come back, Still desiring, scathed but deathless, From beyond the bourne of tears, Wayworn to his vacant cabin, To this foolish fearless heart.{126} </div> <div class="stanza"> Soon the large mild stars of springtime Will resume the ancient twilight And restore the heart of earth To unvexed eternal poise; For the great Will, calm and lonely, Can no mortal grief derange, No lost memories perturb; And the sluices of the morning Will be opened, and the daybreak Well with bird-calls and with brook-notes, Till there be no more despair In the gold dream of the world. </div> </div></div> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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