Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, MAY-TIME, by BAYARD TAYLOR


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

MAY-TIME, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Yes, it is may!
Last Line: Intimate, ever-renewed, than the circle of shallower changes.
Alternate Author Name(s): Taylor, James Bayard
Subject(s): Fate; Life; May (month); Memory; Destiny


I.

YES, it is May! though not that the young leaf pushes its velvet
Out of the sheath, that the stubbornest sprays are beginning to bourgeon,
Larks responding aloft to the mellow flute of the bluebird,
Nor that song and sunshine and odors of life are immingled
Even as wines in a cup; but that May, with her delicate philtres
Drenches the veins and the valves of the heart, -- a double possession,
Touching the sleepy sense with sweet, irresistible languor,
Piercing, in turn, the languor with flame: as the spirit, requickened
Stirred in the womb of the world, foreboding a birth and a being!

II.

Who can hide from her magic, break her insensible thraldom,
Clothing the wings of eager delight as with plumage of trouble?
Sweeter, perchance, the embryo Spring, forerunner of April,
When on banks that slope to the south the saxifrage wakens,
When, beside the dentils of frost that cornice the road-side,
Weeds are a promise, and woods betray the trailing arbutus.
Once is the sudden miracle seen, the truth and its rapture
Felt, and the pulse of the possible May is throbbing already.
Thus unto me, a boy, the clod that was warm in the sunshine,
Murmurs of thaw, and imagined hurry of growth in the herbage,
Airs from over the southern hills, -- and something within me
Catching a deeper sign from these than ever the senses, --
Came as a call: I awoke, and heard, and endeavored to answer.
Whence should fall in my lap the sweet, impossible marvel?
When would the silver fay appear from the willowy thicket?
When from the yielding rock the gnome with his basket of jewels?
"When, ah when?" I cried, on the steepest perch of the hillside
Standing with arms outspread, and waiting a wind that should bear me
Over the apple-tree tops and over the farms of the valley.

III.

He, that will, let him backward set the stream of his fancy,
So to evoke a dream from the ruined world of his boyhood!
Lo, it is easy! Yonder, lapped in the folds of the uplands,
Bickers the brook, to warmer hollows southerly creeping,
Where the veronica's eyes are blue, the buttercup brightens,
Where the anemones blush, the coils of fern are unrolling
Hour by hour, and over them flutter the sprinkles of shadow.
There shall I lie and dangle my naked feet in the water,
Watching the sleeping buds as one after one they awaken,
Seeking a lesson in each, a brookside primrose of Wordsworth? --
Lie in the lap of May, as a babe that loveth the cradle,
I, whom her eye inspires, whom the breath of her passion arouses?
Say, shall I stray with bended head to look for her posies,
When with other wings than the coveted lift of the breezes
Far I am borne, at her call: and the pearly abysses are parted
Under my flight: the glimmering edge of the planet, receding,
Rounds to the splendider sun and ripens to glory of color.
Veering at will, I view from a crest of the jungled Antilles
Sparkling, limitless billows of greenness, falling and flowing
Into fringes of palm and the foam of the blossoming coffee, --
Cratered isles in the offing, milky blurs of the coral
Keys, and vast, beyond, the purple arc of the ocean:
Or, in the fanning furnace-winds of the tenantless Pampas,
Hear the great leaves clash, the shiver and hiss of the reed-beds.
Thus for the crowded fulness of life I leave its beginnings,
Not content to feel the sting of an exquisite promise
Ever renewed and accepted, and ever freshly forgotten.

IV.

Wherefore, now, recall the pictures of memory? Wherefore
Yearn for a fairer seat of life than this I have chosen?
Ah, while my quiver of wandering years was yet unexhausted,
Treading the lands, a truant that wasted the gifts of his freedom,
Sweet was the sight of a home -- or tent, or cottage, or castle, --
Sweet unto pain; and never beheld I a Highlander's shieling,
Never a Flemish hut by a lazy canal and its pollards,
Never the snowy gleam of a porch through Apennine orchards,
Never a nest of life on the hoary hills of Judaea,
Dropped on the steppes of the Don, or hidden in valleys of Norway
But, with the fond and foolish trick of a heart that was homeless,
Each was mine, as I passed: I entered in and possessed it,
Looked, in fancy, forth, and adjusted my life to the landscape.
Easy it seemed, to shift the habit of blood as a mantle,
Fable a Past, and lightly take the form of the Future,
So that a rest were won, a hold for the filaments, floating
Loose in the winds of Life. Here, now, behold it accomplished!
Nay, but the restless Fate, the certain Nemesis follows,
As to the bird the voice that bids him prepare for his passage,
Saying: "Not this is the whole, not these, nor any, the borders
Set for thy being; this measured, slow repetition of Nature,
Painting, effacing, in turn, with hardly a variant outline,
Cannot replace for thee the Earth's magnificent frescos!
Art thou content to inhabit a simple pastoral chamber,
Leaving the endless halls of her grandeur and glory untrodden?"

V.

Man, I answer, is more: I am glutted with physical beauty
Born of the suns and rains and the plastic throes of the ages.
Man is more; but neither dwarfed like a tree of the Arctic
Vales, nor clipped into shape as a yew in the gardens of princes.
Give me to know him, here, where inherited laws and disguises
Hide him at times from himself, -- where his thought is chiefly collective,
Where, with numberless others fettered like slaves in a coffle,
Each insists he is free, inasmuch as his bondage is willing.
Who hath rent from the babe the primitive rights of his nature?
Who hath fashioned his yoke? who patterned beforehand his manhood?
Say, shall never a soul be moved to challenge its portion,
Seek for a wider heritage lost, a new disenthralment,
Sending a root to be fed from the deep original sources,
So that the fibres wax till they split the centuried granite?
Surely, starting alike at birth from the ignorant Adam,
Every type of the race were here indistinctly repeated,
Hinted in hopes and desires, and harmless divergence of habit,
Save that the law of the common mind is invisibly written
Even on our germs, and Life but warms into color the letters.

VI.

Thence, it may be, accustomed to dwell in a moving horizon,
Here, alas! the steadfast circle of things is a weary
Round of monotonous forms: I am haunted by livelier visions.
Linking men and their homes, endowing both with the language,
Sweeter than speech, the soul detects in a natural picture,
I to my varying moods the fair remembrances summon,
Glad that once and somewhere each was a perfect possession.
Two will I paint, the forms of the double passion of May-time, --
Rest and activity, indolent calm and the sweep of the senses.
One, the soft green lap of a deep Dalecarlian valley,
Sheltered by piny hills and the distant porphyry mountains;
Low and red the house, and the meadow spotted with cattle;
All things fair and clear in the light of the midsummer Sabbath,
Touching, beyond the steel-blue lake and the twinkle of birch-trees,
Houses that nestle like chicks around the motherly church-roof.
There, I know, there is innocence, ancient duty and honor,
Love that looks from the eye and truth that sits on the forehead,
Pure, sweet blood of health, and the harmless freedom of nature,
Witless of blame; for the heart is safe in inviolate childhood.
Dear is the scene, but it fades: I see, with a leap of the pulses,
Tawny under the lidless sun the sand of the Desert,
Fiery solemn hills, and the burning green of the date-trees
Belting the Nile: the tramp of the curvetting stallions is muffled;
Brilliantly stamped on the blue are the white and scarlet of turbans;
Lances prick the sky with a starry glitter; the fulness,
Joy, and delight of life are sure of the day and the morrow,
Certain the gifts of sense, and the simplest order suffices.
Breathing again, as once, the perfect air of the Desert,
Good it seems to escape from the endless menace of duty,
There, where the will is free, and wilfully plays with its freedom,
And the lack of will for the evil thing is a virtue.

VII.

Man is more, I have said: but the subject mood is a fashion
Wrought of his lighter mind and dyed with the hues of his senses.
Then to be truly more, to be verily free, to be master
As beseems to the haughty soul that is lifted by knowledge
Over the multitude's law, enforcing their own acquiescence, --
Lifted to longing and will, in its satisfied loneliness centred, --
This prohibits the cry of the nerves, the weak lamentation
Shaming my song: for I know whence cometh its languishing burden
Impotent all I have dreamed, -- and the calmer vision assures me
Such were barren, and vapid the taste of joy that is skin-deep.
Better the nest than the wandering wing, the loving possession,
Intimate, ever-renewed, than the circle of shallower changes.





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