Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, A SONG OF CREATION: BOOK 1, CANTO 1, by CINCINNATUS HEINE MILLER


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

A SONG OF CREATION: BOOK 1, CANTO 1, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: A yucca crowned in creamy bloom
Last Line: "saint silence never told a lie."
Alternate Author Name(s): Miller, Joaquin
Subject(s): Creation


I
A yucca crowned in creamy bloom,
A yucca freighted with perfume,
Breathed fragrance up the blossomed steep;
The warm sea winds lay half asleep,
Lay drowsing in the dreamy wold
By Saint Francisco's tawny Bay,
As if to fold, forever fold,
Worn, wearied wings and rest alway
In careless, languid Arcady.

II

Some clean, lean Eucalyptus trees,
Wind-torn and tossing to the blue,
Kept ward above the silent two
Who sat the fragrant sundown seas
Above the sounding Golden Gate
Nor questioned overmuch of fate;
For she was dowered, gold on gold,
With wealth of face and form untold!
And he was proud and passionate.

III

Ten thousand miles of mobile sea --
This sea of all seas blent as one
Wide, unbound book of mystery,
Of awe, of sibyl prophecy,
Ere yet a ghost or misty ken
Of God's far, first Beginning when
Vast darkness lay upon the deep;
As when God's spirit moved upon
Such waters cradled in such sleep
Such night as never yet knew dawn,
Such night as weird atallaph weaves
But never mortal man conceives.

IV

He looked to heaven, God; but she
Saw only his face and the sea.
He said -- his fond face leaned to hers,
The warmest of God's worshipers --
"In the beginning? Where and when,
Before the fashioning of men,
Swung first His high lamps to and fro,
To light us as we please to go?
And where the waters, dark deeps when
God spake, and said, 'Let there be light'?
They still house where they housed, as then,
Dark curtained with majestic night --
Dusk Silence, in travail of Light
That knew not man or man's, at all --
Steel battle-ship or wood-built wall.

V

"Aye, these, these were the waters when
God spake and knew His fair first-born --
That silent, new-born baby morn,
Such eons ere the noise of men.
His Southern Cross, high-built about
The deep, set in a town of stars,
Commemorates, forbids a doubt
That here first fell God's golden bars --
Red bars, with soft, white silver blent,
Broad sown from sapphire firmament.

VI

"Behold what wave-lights leap and run
Swift up the shale from out the sea
Inwove with silver, gold and sun!
Light lingers in the tawny mane
Of wild oats waving lazily
Far upon the climbing poppy plain;
Far up yon steeps of dusk and dawn --
Black night, white light, inwound as one.
But when, when fell that far, first dawn
With ways of gold to walk upon?

VII

"I know not when, but only know
That darkness lay upon yon deep,
Lay cradled, as a child asleep,
And that God's spirit moved upon
These waters ere the burst of dawn
When first His high lamps to and fro
Swung forth to guide which way to go.

VIII

"I only know that Silence keeps
High court forever still hereon,
That Silence lords alone these deeps
The silence of God's house, and keeps
Inviolate yon water's face.
As if still His abiding place,
As ere that far, first burst of dawn
Ere fretful man set sail upon.

IX

"The deeps," he mused, "are still as when
Dusk Silence kept her curtained bed
Low moaning for the birth of dawn,
When she should push black night aside,
As some ghoul nightmare most abhorred --
When she might laughing look upon
God's first-born glory, holy Light --
As when fond Eve exulting cried,
In mother-pain, with mother-pride,
'Behold the fair first-born of men!
I gat a man-child of the Lord!'"

X

As one discerning some sweet nook
Of wild oats, mantling yellow, pink,
Will pass, then turn and turn to look,
Then pass again to think and think,
Then try to not turn back again,
But try and try to quite forget
And, sighing, try and try in vain;
So you would turn and turn again
To her, her girlish woman's grace --
Full-flowered yet fond baby's face.

XI

Her wide, sweet mouth, an opened rose,
Pushed out, reached out, as if to kiss;
A mobile mouth in proud repose
This moment, then unlike to this
As storm to calm, as day to night,
As sullen darkness to swift light;
This new-made woman was, the sun
And surged sea interwound in one.

XII

Her proud and ample lips pushed out
As kissing sea-winds unaware;
And then they arched in angry pout,
As if she cared yet did not care.
Then lightning lit her great, wide eyes,
As if black thunder walled the skies,
And all things took some touch of her,
The while she stood nor deigned to stir:
The while she saw with vision dim --
Saw all things, yet saw only him.

XIII

Such eyes as compass all the skies,
That see all things yet naught have seen;
Such eyes of love or sorrow's eyes --
A martyr or a Magdalene?
How sad that all great souls are sad!
How sad that gladness is not glad --
That Love's sad sister is sweet Pain,
That only lips of beauty drain
Life's full-brimmed, glittering goblet dry,
And only drain the cup to die!

XIV

The yellow of her poppy hair
Was as red gold is, when at rest;
But when aroused was as the west
In sunset flame and then -- take care!
Her tall, free-fashioned, supple form
Was now some sudden, tropic storm
Was now some lily leaned at play.
What sea and sun, sunshine and shower,
Full flowered ere the noon of day,
Full June ere yet the morn of May,
This sun-born blossom of an hour --
Precocious Californian flower!

XV

She answered not but looked away
With brown hand arched above her brow, --
As peers a boatman from his prow, --
To where white sea-doves wheeled at play.
She watched them long, then turned and sighed
And looking in his face she cried,
While blushing prettily, "Behold,
There is no mateless dove, not one!
And see! not one unhappy dove.
Ten thousand circling in the sun,
Entangled as the mesh of fate,
Yet each remains as true as gold
And constant courts his pretty mate.
See here! See there! Behold, above --
I think each dove would die for love."
He watched the shallows spume the shore
And fleck the shelly, drifting shale,
Then far at sea his swift eyes swept
Where one tall, stately, snow-white sail
Its silent course majestic kept
And gloried in its alien mood,
As his own soul in solitude.

XVI

"The shallows murmur and complain,
The shallows turn with wind and tide,
They fringe with froth and moil the main;
They wail and will not be denied --
Poor, puny babes, unsatisfied!

XVII

"The lighthouse clings her beetling steep
Above the rock-sown, ragged shore
Where Scylla and Charybdis roar
And dangers lurk and shallows keep
Mad tumult in the house of sleep.
The shallows moan and moan alway --
The deeps have not one word to say.

XVIII

"I reckon Silence as a grace
That was ere light had name or place;
A saint enshrined ere hand was laid
To fashioning of man or maid.
For, storm or calm, or sun or shade,
Fair Silence never truth betrayed;
For, ocean deep or dappled sky,
Saint Silence never told a lie."





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