night

I’m pardoned out. Again the stars
Shine on me with their myriad eyes.
So long I’ve peered ‘twixt iron bars,
I’m awed by this expanse of skies.
The world is wider than I thought,
And yet ‘tis not so wide, I know,
But into its remotest spot
My tale of shame can go.

I’m pardoned out. Old Father Time
Who seemed to halt in horror, when
I strained my manhood by a crime,
With steady step moves on again,
And through the black appalling night,
That walled me in a gloom accurst,

Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in 'Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

He said to his friend, "If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the North Church tower as a signal light, --
One, if by land, and two, if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,

If thou speakest not I will fill my heart with thy silence and endure it.
I will keep still and wait like the night with starry vigil
and its head bent low with patience.

The morning will surely come, the darkness will vanish,
and thy voice pour down in golden streams breaking through the sky.

Then thy words will take wing in songs from every one of my birds' nests,
and thy melodies will break forth in flowers in all my forest groves.

“The sea is everywhere the sea.”


I

Gone—faded out of the story, the sea-faring friend I remember?
Gone for a decade, they say: never a word or a sign.
Gone with his hard red face that only his laughter could wrinkle,
Down where men go to be still, by the old way of the sea.

Never again will he come, with rings in his ears like a pirate,
Back to be living and seen, here with his roses and vines;
Here where the tenants are shadows and echoes of years uneventful,

I.

Rise, winds of night! relentless tempests, rise!
Rush from the troubled clouds, and o'er me roll!
In this chill pause a deeper horror lies,
A wilder fear appals my shudd'ring soul!--
'Twas on this day,* this hour accurst,
That Nature, starting from repose,
Heard the dire shrieks of murder burst--
From infant innocence they rose,--
And shook these solemn towers!
I shudd'ring pass that fatal room,
For ages wrapt in central gloom!--
I shudd'ring pass that iron door,

Part in peace: is day before us?
Praise His Name for life and light;
Are the shadows lengthening o’er us?
Bless His care Who guards the night.

Part in peace: with deep thanksgiving,
Rendering, as we homeward tread,
Gracious service to the living,
Tranquil memory to the dead.

Part in peace: such are the praises
God our Maker loveth best;
Such the worship that upraises
Human hearts to heavenly rest.

It is the summer bears ruled, the last summer
of pure breathlessness
when I moved unaware, taken in
by the netted branches of raspberries, held
in trance by the sweet air
of the orchards. My grandfather
died at home one night in early July
as expected, and the white clouds drifted like snow
on the face of the black lake.
Grandmother swept her porch clean, every morning
pushed grief under the railings like wisps
of an old bird's nest. Together
we watched the she-bear heave both bins

Listened but couldn't hear
the subject hissing: looked up to
pages of stuttering rain (it tastes

green), warmer while the song decays
such weather full of precedent
A body made of water

dropped from a stratus
window mists over as it falls,
all hesitating sluice and flume

*

A water-worded book, muttering
foam of nouns, matte adjectives
and artifacts: torn pieces of

the visible, divisible by threes
A lot absorbed in rubble and the day's
debris litters the nocturne

Now Morn, her rosy steps in the eastern clime
Advancing, sowed the earth with orient pearl,
When Adam waked, so customed; for his sleep
Was aery-light, from pure digestion bred,
And temperate vapours bland, which the only sound
Of leaves and fuming rills, Aurora's fan,
Lightly dispersed, and the shrill matin song
Of birds on every bough; so much the more
His wonder was to find unwakened Eve
With tresses discomposed, and glowing cheek,
As through unquiet rest: He, on his side

Day by day I float my paper boats one by one down the running
stream.
In bid black letters I write my name on them and the name of
the village where I live.
I hope that someone in some strange land will find them and
know who I am.
I load my little boats with shiuli flower from our garden, and
hope that these blooms of the dawn will be carried safely to land
in the night.
I launch my paper boats and look up into the sky and see the
little clouds setting thee white bulging sails.