Renascence: A Book of Verse — The Valley of Deliverance

I

SEA-BLUE infinitude of silent hills!

That fold, like waves that crested are and smooth, The wide-spread vale that slowly eve instils With misty lakes, and all thy summits sooth.

II

In baths of amber light where melt and merge The wandering purples into green and gold, Athwart the slumbrous fields, and moorland verge O’ersailed by slow cloud-shadows softly rolled.

III

With alternations new and grateful change Of burning tones to cool in magic show, As oft the opalescent sea do range Or in the sun-built arch transfused do glow.

IV

O silent hills!

ye hold a meaning more Than speech; ye are not voiceless, O ye vales!

But eloquent of time and treasured lore Of memory, and filled with untold tales.

V

That well nigh dim my gazing eyes with tears, Whereas they follow those familiar lines;

Dear as the features shaped by hopes and fears On friendship’s face, oft read and sought for signs.

VI

For dear to me the crags—the weather-worn;

The slopes of green, the waving woodland towers Whose crested pageantry of leaves adorn The shadowed graves of faded summer hours.

VII

Full well I know the belts of larch that fringe The dark verge of the lonely moor, which seems The limit of the world, touched with the tinge Of dying light, and burned with day’s last beams.

VIII

And oft, as now, I pressed the purple bloom— The heather-plumaged breast of this high moor;

And heard, as now I hear, the wandering boom Of these winged gleaners of the honeyed store.

IX

O well loved vale!

For I am bound to thee By subtle threads of thought that memory weaves;

Yea, sitting in thy shadow, Liberty, Like dawn first knew I, opening life’s leaves;

X

E’en then, when first I tasted of the tree, And dayspring of new knowledge touched mine eyes, That erst were sealed—as other books to me, Until upon thy hills new light should rise: XI

Until my soul, new born, within this vale Should learn of Nature in her age-worn book, And strive, beyond the starry void, to scale The dim unknown, or in truth’s glass to look XII

On life, and life’s dark mystery which broods And clings, a shadow, to the sad-eyed world;

Born in the horror of primæval woods, And in death’s cloud impenetrable furled.

XIII

Beyond the gathering years since first I knew Thee, happy vale, my yearning spirit reads, Beyond night’s mist on thy horizon blue, Where glow day’s embers, ere the night succeeds— XIV

The Legends rich of unforgotten time— Azure, and white, and gray enfolded days, That long have passed away, unto the chime Of brief on lingering hours, their restful ways: XV

And, even now, clear imaged on my brain Their semblance comes again—I see them move In long procession slow, with joy or pain Enrobed, with faces hid, and eyes of doubt or love: XVI

Until the day which died with yestern sun Begins to merge in that unending line;

And soon her lingering sister will be one For on her face the light has ceased to shine.

XVII

So pass the days, with days unborn, to die, And gather them to years in time’s swift pace, But we would fain forecast futurity, Or read fate’s rune upon the sky’s calm face.

XVIII

And I could well believe that in the shade Of this still vale the secret sign lies hid— The secret that shall shape my life, unsaid, As in a casket treasured with close lid;

XIX

Mid fir-woods dark, or tumbled crags, unknown, Or in brown deeps, where swift the river flows Among tumultuous rocks, whence I have heard Vague murmurings, ofttimes, beneath the boughs.

XX

But silence with her finger locks the lips, When stand we watching at Futura’s gate;

Though eager thought would climb, and climbing slips;

While, all unwatched, each hour doth carve our fate.

[Illustration] [Illustration: THE·UNKNOWN·SHORE·] I

THERE is no voice, there is no voice, Or answer from the UNKNOWN shore: Turn!

turn again—there is no choice But Life or Death—we know no more.