Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, BY THE WISSAHICKON, by CHARLES R. MURPHY


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

BY THE WISSAHICKON, by                    
First Line: Here in this place there shall be solitude
Last Line: Alone, with the unknown, and snow, and night.
Subject(s): Autumn; Seasons; Fall


I

Here in this place there shall be solitude
And harvesting of matter for your thought,
Beauty to see that many dawns have brought
Out of the night of earth to be this wood,
Wintered to quietness where the trees brood
On gentle buds whose waking shall be wrought
By pressure of the sun of spring and taught
A perfect flowering out of lowlihood.
Here shall the city come to honor peace
Where peace is precious with the new bird's song,
And dare forgotten loyalties to worth
Of simple, priceless things; or let it cease
Its pilgrimage, and may this place belong
To trees, and children, and the breathing earth.

II

Wherefore should any man, because no man
Now makes this place his home, here fear to stay
A little portion of his willful day
And be a little useless, with no plan
Save that of saying : that which will be, can?
For here long since has last year gone its way
With cast off leaves and not a twig, from gray,
Is green enough for hope since thaws began.
Yet in this meekness frontiers are made free
For summer's kingdom; life has reached the light
From deeps of seed and quails not to fulfill
Its mystery because a mystery
Of death and deeper planting has its night,
Passionless, in the marble on the hill.

III

O hungry minds of men, here in the shade
The summer broods and harvest shall be near;
Maybe the budding of your hope shall here
Break in the silence of a noon-hot glade;
Maybe you'll see this gentle water made
The image where eternal things appear,
Behind all moving and all rest, that wear
Time, like a flower, on their bosom laid.
Why should not tired hearts foretaste of bliss
When promise of the summer dares to keep
Such lovely troth? and tired eyes again
Have quiet meditation, or in this
Roof of the summer's kindness, gently sleep
Beneath the hallelujahs of the rain?

IV

"Awake! Awake! The summer is forlorn
With memory of how the winter came;
The harvest that you dream is but a name
To wither self-delusion up in scorn;
This house of beauty beauty shall leave, torn
And mutilated for the ready flame,
And nothing shall remain to it but shame
Of naked branches mercilessly shorn."
Because of the coming of the wind, shall we
Outrun the panic of the driven leaves?
Empty ourselves of what our eyes have seen
Because the summer's beauty left no sheaves?
For failure to find here what cannot be,
Forfeit the mercy that we know has been?

V

Autumn is wielding beauty like a sword
And lifts the torch to set her woods afire;
The splendor of her light is song borne higher
On the deep colors of an organ chord;
And sudden wonder is again the lord
Who battles once again for his empire;
And truth seems almost what we most desire
Since vision dares to be its own reward.
Shall this be but an old discarded story
Told for a little while in heart of youth,
Vanishing with a shout of "Glory, glory!"?
Because beatitude and beauty meet,
Is truth that finds its beauty less the truth,
Though it be beauty of our own defeat?

VI

Now has the autumn, like the golden head
Of childhood, vanished; and our paradise
Of beauty has become a place of sighs
Blown down the alley to the leaves' dark bed.
Yet, back of failure of a vision fled,
The unknown truth is waiting for our eyes,
And that which bade us seek and bade us rise
To meet the vision, is unwithered.
For love, that gathers wisdom as it goes
From lowlihood up to the pure in heart,
Will dare to offer to the truth's own sight
Nothing but love at last; and when the rose
Of autumn crashes, love shall play its part,
Alone, with the unknown, and snow, and night.





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