The Symphony
“O Trade! O Trade! would thou wert dead!The Time needs heart—’tis tired of head:We’re all for love,” the violins said.“Of what avail the rigorous taleOf bill for coin and box for bale?Grant thee, O Trade! thine uttermost hope:Level red gold with blue sky-slope,And base it deep as devils grope:When all’s done, what hast thou wonOf the only sweet that’s under the sun?Ay, canst thou buy a single sighOf true love’s least, least ecstasy?”Then, with a bridegroom’s heart-beats trembling,All the mightier strings assemblingRanged them on the violins’ sideAs when the bridegroom leads the bride,And, heart in voice, together cried:“Yea, what avail the endless taleOf gain by cunning and plus by sale?Look up the land, look down the landThe poor, the poor, the poor, they standWedged by the pressing of Trade’s handAgainst an inward-opening doorThat pressure tightens evermore:They sigh a monstrous foul-air sighFor the outside leagues of liberty,Where Art, sweet lark, translates the skyInto a heavenly melody.`Each day, all day’ (these poor folks say),`In the same old year-long, drear-long way,We weave in the mills and heave in the kilns,We sieve mine-meshes under the hills,And thieve much gold from the Devil’s bank tills,To relieve, O God, what manner of ills?—The beasts, they hunger, and eat, and die;And so do we, and the world’s a sty;Hush, fellow-swine: why nuzzle and cry?“Swinehood hath no remedy”Say many men, and hasten by,Clamping the nose and blinking the eye.But who said once, in the lordly tone,“Man shall not live by bread aloneBut all that cometh from the Throne?”Hath God said so?But Trade saith “No:”And the kilns and the curt-tongued mills say “Go!There’s plenty that can, if you can’t: we know.Move out, if you think you’re underpaid.The poor are prolific; we’re not afraid;Trade is trade.”’”Thereat this passionate protestingMeekly changed, and softened tillIt sank to sad requestingAnd suggesting sadder still:“And oh, if men might some time seeHow piteous-false the poor decreeThat trade no more than trade must be!Does business mean, `Die, you—live, I?’Then `Trade is trade’ but sings a lie:’Tis only war grown miserly.If business is battle, name it so:War-crimes less will shame it so,And widows less will blame it so.Alas, for the poor to have some partIn yon sweet living lands of Art,Makes problem not for head, but heart.Vainly might Plato’s brain revolve it:Plainly the heart of a child could solve it.”
And then, as when from words that seem but rudeWe pass to silent pain that sits abroodBack in our heart’s great dark and solitude,So sank the strings to gentle throbbingOf long chords change-marked with sobbing—Motherly sobbing, not distinctlier heardThan half wing-openings of the sleeping bird,Some dream of danger to her young hath stirred.Then stirring and demurring ceased, and lo!Every least ripple of the strings’ song-flowDied to a level with each level bowAnd made a great chord tranquil-surfaced so,As a brook beneath his curving bank doth goTo linger in the sacred dark and greenWhere many boughs the still pool overleanAnd many leaves make shadow with their sheen.But presentlyA velvet flute-note fell down pleasantlyUpon the bosom of that harmony,And sailed and sailed incessantly,As if a petal from a wild-rose blownHad fluttered down upon that pool of toneAnd boatwise dropped o’ the convex sideAnd floated down the glassy tideAnd clarified and glorifiedThe solemn spaces where the shadows bide.From the warm concave of that fluted noteSomewhat, half song, half odor, forth did float,As if a rose might somehow be a throat:“When Nature from her far-off glenFlutes her soft messages to men,The flute can say them o’er again;Yea, Nature, singing sweet and lone,Breathes through life’s strident polyphoneThe flute-voice in the world of tone.Sweet friends,Man’s love ascendsTo finer and diviner endsThan man’s mere thought e’er comprehendsFor I, e’en I,As here I lie,A petal on a harmony,Demand of Science whence and whyMan’s tender pain, man’s inward cry,When he doth gaze on earth and sky?I am not overbold:I holdFull powers from Nature manifold.I speak for each no-tongued treeThat, spring by spring, doth nobler be,And dumbly and most wistfullyHis mighty prayerful arms outspreadsAbove men’s oft-unheeding heads,And his big blessing downward sheds.I speak for all-shaped blooms and leaves,Lichens on stones and moss on eaves,Grasses and grains in ranks and sheaves;Broad-fronded ferns and keen-leaved canes,And briery mazes bounding lanes,And marsh-plants, thirsty-cupped for rains,And milky stems and sugary veins;For every long-armed woman-vineThat round a piteous tree doth twine;For passionate odors, and divinePistils, and petals crystalline;All purities of shady springs,All shynesses of film-winged thingsThat fly from tree-trunks and bark-rings;All modesties of mountain-fawnsThat leap to covert from wild lawns,And tremble if the day but dawns;All sparklings of small beady eyesOf birds, and sidelong glances wiseWherewith the jay hints tragedies;All piquancies of prickly burs,And smoothnesses of downs and fursOf eiders and of minevers;All limpid honeys that do lieAt stamen-bases, nor denyThe humming-birds’ fine roguery,Bee-thighs, nor any butterfly;All gracious curves of slender wings,Bark-mottlings, fibre-spiralings,Fern-wavings and leaf-flickerings;Each dial-marked leaf and flower-bellWherewith in every lonesome dellTime to himself his hours doth tell;All tree-sounds, rustlings of pine-cones,Wind-sighings, doves’ melodious moans,And night’s unearthly under-tones;All placid lakes and waveless deeps,All cool reposing mountain-steeps,Vale-calms and tranquil lotos-sleeps;—Yea, all fair forms, and sounds, and lights,And warmths, and mysteries, and mights,Of Nature’s utmost depths and heights,—These doth my timid tongue present,Their mouthpiece and leal instrumentAnd servant, all love-eloquent.I heard, when `”All for love”’ the violins cried:So, Nature calls through all her system wide,`Give me thy love, O man, so long denied.’Much time is run, and man hath changed his ways,Since Nature, in the antique fable-days,Was hid from man’s true love by proxy fays,False fauns and rascal gods that stole her praise.The nymphs, cold creatures of man’s colder brain,Chilled Nature’s streams till man’s warm heart was fainNever to lave its love in them again.Later, a sweet Voice `Love thy neighbor’ said;Then first the bounds of neighborhood outspreadBeyond all confines of old ethnic dread.Vainly the Jew might wag his covenant head:`”All men are neighbors,”’ so the sweet Voice said.So, when man’s arms had circled all man’s race,The liberal compass of his warm embraceStretched bigger yet in the dark bounds of space;With hands a-grope he felt smooth Nature’s grace,Drew her to breast and kissed her sweetheart face:Yea man found neighbors in great hills and treesAnd streams and clouds and suns and birds and bees,And throbbed with neighbor-loves in loving these.But oh, the poor! the poor! the poor!That stand by the inward-opening doorTrade’s hand doth tighten ever more,And sigh their monstrous foul-air sighFor the outside hills of liberty,Where Nature spreads her wild blue skyFor Art to make into melody!Thou Trade! thou king of the modern days!Change thy ways,Change thy ways;Let the sweaty laborers fileA little while,A little while,Where Art and Nature sing and smile.Trade! is thy heart all dead, all dead?And hast thou nothing but a head?I’m all for heart,” the flute-voice said,And into sudden silence fled,Like as a blush that while ’tis redDies to a still, still white instead.
Thereto a thrilling calm succeeds,Till presently the silence breedsA little breeze among the reedsThat seems to blow by sea-marsh weeds:Then from the gentle stir and fretSings out the melting clarionet,Like as a lady sings while yetHer eyes with salty tears are wet.“O Trade! O Trade!” the Lady said,“I too will wish thee utterly deadIf all thy heart is in thy head.For O my God! and O my God!What shameful ways have women trodAt beckoning of Trade’s golden rod!Alas when sighs are traders’ lies,And heart’s-ease eyes and violet eyesAre merchandise!O purchased lips that kiss with pain!O cheeks coin-spotted with smirch and stain!O trafficked hearts that break in twain!—And yet what wonder at my sisters’ crime?So hath Trade withered up Love’s sinewy prime,Men love not women as in olden time.Ah, not in these cold merchantable daysDeem men their life an opal gray, where playsThe one red Sweet of gracious ladies’-praise.Now, comes a suitor with sharp prying eye—Says, `Here, you Lady, if you’ll sell, I’ll buy:Come, heart for heart—a trade? What! weeping? why?’Shame on such wooers’ dapper mercery!I would my lover kneeling at my feetIn humble manliness should cry, `O sweet!I know not if thy heart my heart will greet:I ask not if thy love my love can meet:Whate’er thy worshipful soft tongue shall say,I’ll kiss thine answer, be it yea or nay:I do but know I love thee, and I prayTo be thy knight until my dying day.’Woe him that cunning trades in hearts contrives!Base love good women to base loving drives.If men loved larger, larger were our lives;And wooed they nobler, won they nobler wives.”
There thrust the bold straightforward hornTo battle for that lady lorn,With heartsome voice of mellow scorn,Like any knight in knighthood’s morn.“Now comfort thee,” said he,“Fair Lady.For God shall right thy grievous wrong,And man shall sing thee a true-love song,Voiced in act his whole life long,Yea, all thy sweet life long,Fair Lady.Where’s he that craftily hath said,The day of chivalry is dead?I’ll prove that lie upon his head,Or I will die instead,Fair Lady.Is Honor gone into his grave?Hath Faith become a caitiff knave,And Selfhood turned into a slaveTo work in Mammon’s cave,Fair Lady?Will Truth’s long blade ne’er gleam again?Hath Giant Trade in dungeons slainAll great contempts of mean-got gainAnd hates of inward stain,Fair Lady?For aye shall name and fame be sold,And place be hugged for the sake of gold,And smirch-robed Justice feebly scoldAt Crime all money-bold,Fair Lady?Shall self-wrapt husbands aye forgetKiss-pardons for the daily fretWherewith sweet wifely eyes are wet—Blind to lips kiss-wise set—Fair Lady?Shall lovers higgle, heart for heart,Till wooing grows a trading martWhere much for little, and all for part,Make love a cheapening art,Fair Lady?Shall woman scorch for a single sinThat her betrayer may revel in,And she be burnt, and he but grinWhen that the flames begin,Fair Lady?Shall ne’er prevail the woman’s plea,`We maids would far, far whiter beIf that our eyes might sometimes seeMen maids in purity,’Fair Lady?Shall Trade aye salve his conscience-achesWith jibes at Chivalry’s old mistakes—The wars that o’erhot knighthood makesFor Christ’s and ladies’ sakes,Fair Lady?Now by each knight that e’er hath prayedTo fight like a man and love like a maid,Since Pembroke’s life, as Pembroke’s blade,I’ the scabbard, death, was laid,Fair Lady,I dare avouch my faith is brightThat God doth right and God hath might.Nor time hath changed His hair to white,Nor His dear love to spite,Fair Lady.I doubt no doubts: I strive, and shrive my clay,And fight my fight in the patient modern wayFor true love and for thee—ah me! and prayTo be thy knight until my dying day,Fair Lady.”Made end that knightly horn, and spurred awayInto the thick of the melodious fray.
And then the hautboy played and smiled,And sang like any large-eyed child,Cool-hearted and all undefiled.“Huge Trade!” he said,“Would thou wouldst lift me on thy headAnd run where’er my finger led!Once said a Man—and wise was He—`Never shalt thou the heavens see,Save as a little child thou be.’”Then o’er sea-lashings of commingling tunesThe ancient wise bassoons,Like weirdGray-beardOld harpers sitting on the high sea-dunes,Chanted runes:“Bright-waved gain, gray-waved loss,The sea of all doth lash and toss,One wave forward and one across:But now ’twas trough, now ’tis crest,And worst doth foam and flash to best,And curst to blest.
Life! Life! thou sea-fugue, writ from east to west,Love, Love alone can poreOn thy dissolving scoreOf harsh half-phrasings,Blotted ere writ,And double erasingsOf chords most fit.Yea, Love, sole music-master blest,May read thy weltering palimpsest.To follow Time’s dying melodies through,And never to lose the old in the new,And ever to solve the discords true—Love alone can do.And ever Love hears the poor-folks’ crying,And ever Love hears the women’s sighing,And ever sweet knighthood’s death-defying,And ever wise childhood’s deep implying,But never a trader’s glozing and lying.
And yet shall Love himself be heard,Though long deferred, though long deferred:O’er the modern waste a dove hath whirred:Music is Love in search of a word.”
Baltimore, 1875.