Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, BLUE NORTHER, by ISAAC W. WADE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

BLUE NORTHER, by                    
First Line: Alone and self-imprisoned there, the town
Last Line: To make them wish they were in hammond's place.
Subject(s): Friendship; Marriage; Seasons; Towns; Weddings; Husbands; Wives


I. THE TOWN

Alone and self-imprisoned there, the town
Was jealous of its name; the circling hills
Had guarded well the square, the central noun
Of all its life. Before the lesser wills
The town was lovely in its naked pain;
The bare brown street, the houses all one way,
The cedars turning purple in the rain,
And all the drowsy commerce of the day.

And farmers in the fields were proud to see
Above the shadow-slanted hills the cross
Upon the church. They sang a trinity
Of town and farm and kin; and what the loss
Was, no one dared to say, and few could tell
Had not they lived so poorly and so well.

II. HAMMOND

Had he the will, he would have sung all night
Upon the handles of his plow, and dreamed
Of high carousal with the stars. But light
Of gossip was upon him, and it seemed

So often had he been the way to sin
He knew no peace save when he broke to own
The hills' vast silences where rain had been;
And beauty pained him and he wept alone.

The years of youth had been but little more
Than strange bewildered flames, and then the grey
And stolid years had yielded up their score
Of ashes. Yet he married, one bright day,
And women in the town were sure that she
Would calm his madness and his ecstasy!

III. HIS WIFE

Here once she came and saw the clearing made
And here returned to share his house and bed,
And beauty left her face; but sorrow stayed,
For time was plowing deeply. Hammond led
A fitful race; she gave a willing heart
To know his joys and yet she toiled to turn
His longings. Hard it was to see her part
With youth, a withered sacrifice to burn.

She shook the earth about her plow and bent
Her wearied body to the curving song
The furrows made. She was an instrument
More powerful than man, as hard and strong
As cedars after fire had passed, yet strung
With songs her weaker heritage had sung.

IV. THE TWO WHO KNEW HIS YOUTH

They had a way of sitting every day
Upon the porch to sun themselves again
And quicken up the old desires, and say
Such trival things of people; it was plain
They were as puritanic as the chairs;
Precisely as two clocks within a room.
They were the first to check the daily flares
Of Hammond and the first to set his doom.

To them he was a child they sought to make
A man by forcing on him manly things.
Beneath their fine precision he would shake
As doubtful as a pagan one who sings
A Christian song and scarce believes his ears
For feeling prey to old and hidden fears.

V. SPRING REVIVAL

The church was crowded and the preacher spoke
With all his pompous rhetoric till the room
Rang hotly with his words before they broke
Into a Heaven and a Day of Doom.
Beneath this glory Hammond kept his seat;
Disturbed and frightened by the whispered threats,
The whine of violins, and the thump of feet,
He lost, and yielded to his old regrets.

Then like a lamb they quickly led him down,
Yet she who loved him knew how very deep
The spring's mad beauty burned him; but the town
Rejoiced that he had come alone to weep;
And they who welcomed him were loud in praise
As they had been condemning, other days.

VI. THE HARVEST

The fire of summer glowed, and flared, and died;
And none among the farmers worked as much
As Hammond did; in all the countryside
There were no crops like his, no barns with such
A store of harvest when the autumn came.
But some within the town were well aware
His lantern burned as if it were the same
Desire his heart had known and hidden there.

It happened when he led the horses down
To water that he saw the sumacs burn,
And suddenly he cried; and in the town
That night they knew him by his mad return
And cursed their God who in His righteous way
Had moulded man and poet in one clay.

VII. REBELLION

The night was still and yet she heard no sound
But wind upon her temples; past the gate
Her horse's hooves beat thunder on the ground
A thundered echo to the dreaded fate
She knew was his. But where the lonely place
She found him none could tell; they only heard
She wept to see the beauty on his face
And held him tightly like some frightened bird.

Then surely as a storm the people passed
Their puritanic sentence on his head,
And even she who mothered him, at last
Was certain that the race he wildly led
Was ended; but he fied their stronger wills.
And loud that night his song rang on the hills.

VIII. BLUE NORTHER

The silver-coated legions of the wind
Went shouting through the cedars, and the town
Shrank startled; but the snow as if to end
All moving things grew hungry on the ground
And seized the river with its iron hand,
And seized with fear the hearts of those whose shame
Had made him seek a storm for peace; the land
Grew strangely silent as they called his name.

They never found him, but his kinsmen say
His flaming heart was comfort through the night;
And there are some, remembering his day,
Grow anxious for the wisdom of his sight
And know that there was something in his face
To make them wish they were in Hammond's place.





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