AMY LOWELL

 

*

Lilacs

 

Lilacs,

False blue,

White,

Purple,

Color of lilac,

Your great puffs of flowers

Are everywhere in this my New England.

Among your heart-shaped leaves

Orange orioles hop like music-box birds

and sing Their little weak soft songs;

In the crooks of your branches
The bright eyes of song sparrows sitting on spotted eggs

Peer restlessly through the light and shadow

Of all Springs.

Lilacs in dooryards

Holding quiet conversations with an early moon;

Lilacs watching a deserted house Settling sideways into the grass of an old road;

Lilacs, wind-beaten, staggering under a lopsided shock of bloom

Above a cellar dug into a hill,

You are everywhere.
You were everywhere.
You tapped the window when the preacher preached his sermon,

And ran along the road beside the boy going to school.

You stood by pasture-bars to give the cows good milking;

You persuaded the housewife that her dishpan was of silver,

And her husband an image of pure gold.

You flaunted the fragrance of your blossoms

Through the wide doors of Customhouses—

You, and sandal-wood, and tea,

Charging the noses of quill-driving clerks
When a ship was in from China.
You called to them: “Goose-quill men, goose-quill men,
May is a month for flitting,”
Until they writhed on their high stools
And wrote poetry on their letter-sheets behind the propped-up ledgers,

Paradoxical New England clerks,

Writing inventories in ledgers, reading the “Song of Solomon” at night,

So many verses before bedtime,

Because it was the Bible.

The dead fed you

Amid the slant stones of graveyards.
Pale ghosts who planted you
Came in the night-time
And let their thin hair blow through your clustered stems.

You are of the green sea,
And of the stone hills which reach a long distance.

You are of elm-shaded streets with little shops where they sell kites and marbles.

You are of great parks where everyone walks and nobody is at home.

You cover the blind sides of greenhouses,

And lean over the top to say a hurry-word through the glass

To your friends, the grapes, inside.

 

Lilacs,

False blue,

White,

Purple,

Color of lilac,

You have forgotten your Eastern origin,

The veiled women with eyes like panthers,

The swollen, aggressive turbans of jeweled Pashas;

Now you are a very decent flower,
A reticent flower,

A curiously clear-cut, candid flower,
Standing beside clean doorways,
Friendly to a house-cat and a pair of spectacles,

Making poetry out of a bit of moonlight

And a hundred or two sharp blossoms.

 

Maine knows you,

Has for years and years;

New Hampshire knows you,

And Massachusetts

And Vermont.

Cape Cod starts you along the beaches to Rhode Island;

Connecticut takes you from a river to the sea.

You are brighter than apples,

Sweeter than tulips,
You are the great flood of our souls
Bursting above the leaf-shapes of our hearts;

You are the smell of all Summers,

The love of wives and children,

The recollection of the gardens of little children;

You are State Houses and Charters

And the familiar treading of the foot to and fro on a road it knows.

May is lilac here in New England;

May is thrush singing “Sun up!” on a tip-top ash-tree;

May is white clouds behind pine-trees
Puffed out and marching upon a blue sky.
May is a green as no other;
May is much sun through small leaves;
May is soft earth,

And apple-blossoms,
And windows open to a South Wind;
May is a full light wind of lilac
From Canada to Naragansett Bay.

 

Lilacs,

False blue,
White,
Purple,
Color of lilac,

Heart-leaves of lilac all over New England,
Roots of lilac under all the soil of New England,

Lilac in me because I am New England,
Because my roots are in it,
Because my leaves are of it,
Because my flowers are for it,

Because it is my country
And I speak to it of itself
And sing of it with my own voice,
Since certainly it is mine.

 

*

Night Clouds

 

The white mares of the moon rush along the sky

Beating their golden hoofs upon the glass Heavens;

The white mares of the moon are all standing on their hind legs

Pawing at the green porcelain doors of the remote Heavens.

Fly, Mares!

Strain your utmost,

Scatter the milky dust of stars,

Or the tiger sun will leap upon you and destroy you

With one lick of his vermilion tongue.

 

*

Wind and Silver

 

Greatly shining,

The Autumn moon floats in the thin sky,

And the fish-ponds shake their backs and flash their dragon scales

As she passes over them.

 

*

Granadilla

 

I cut myself upon the thought of you

And yet I come back to it again and again.

A kind of fury makes me want to draw you out

From the dimness of the present

And set you sharply above me in a wheel of roses.

Then, going obviously to inhale their fragrance,

I touch the blade of you and cling upon it,

And only when the blood runs out across my fingers

Am I at all satisfied.

 

*

Old Snow

 

The earth is iron,

The winds are bands of steel,

The snow is a pock-marked beggar-woman

Crouching at a street corner,

Whining an old misery over and over.

They say she was white once, and a virgin.

But who remembers it?

Seeing her lie indecently huddled upon an iron earth,

Cringing under the strokes of the steel-band wind.

 

*

Meeting-House Hill

 

I must be mad, or very tired,

When the curve of a blue bay beyond a railroad track

Is shrill and sweet to me like the sudden springing of a tune,

And the sight of a white church above thin trees in a city square

Amazes my eyes as though it were the Parthenon.

Clear, reticent, superbly final,

With the pillars of its portico refined to a cautious elegance,

It dominates the weak trees,
And the shot of its spire
Is cool and candid,
Rising into an unresisting sky.
Strange meeting-house
Pausing a moment upon a squalid hill-top.
I watch the spire sweeping the sky,
I am dizzy with the movement of the sky;
I might be watching a mast
With its royals set full
Straining before a two-reef breeze.
I might be sighting a tea-clipper,
Tacking into the blue bay,
Just back from Canton

With her hold full of green and blue porcelain
And a Chinese coolie leaning over the rail
Gazing at the white spire
With dull, sea-spent eyes.

 

*

New Heavens for Old

 

I am useless.

What I do is nothing,

What I think has no savour.

There is an almanac between the windows:

It is of the year when I was born.

 

My fellows call to me to join them,

They shout for me,

Passing the house in a great wind of vermilion banners.

They are fresh and fulminant,

They are indecent and strut with the thought of it,

They laugh, and curse, and brawl,

And cheer a holocaust of “Who comes firsts!” at the iron fronts of the houses at the two edges of the street. Young men with naked hearts jeering between iron

house-fronts,

Young men with naked bodies beneath their clothes

Passionately conscious of them,

Ready to strip off their clothes,

Ready to strip off their customs, their usual routine,

Clamouring for the rawness of life,

In love with appetite,

Proclaiming it as a creed,

Worshipping youth,

Worshipping themselves.

They call for women and the women come,

They bare the whiteness of their lusts to the dead gaze of the old house-fronts,

They roar down the street like flame,

They explode upon the dead houses like new, sharp fire.

 

But I—

I arrange three roses in a Chinese vase:

A pink one,

A red one,

A yellow one.

I fuss over their arrangement.

Then I sit in a South window

And sip pale wine with a touch of hemlock in it,

And think of the Winter nights,

And field-mice crossing and re-crossing

The spot which will be my grave.

 

*

Patterns

 

I walk down the garden paths,

And all the daffodils

Are blowing, and the bright blue squills.

I walk down the patterned garden paths

In my stiff, brocaded gown.

With my powdered hair and jewelled fan,

I too am a rare

Pattern. As I wander down

The garden paths.

 

My dress is richly figured,

And the train

Makes a pink and silver stain

On the gravel, and the thrift

Of the borders.

Just a plate of current fashion,

Tripping by in high-heeled, ribboned shoes.

Not a softness anywhere about me,

Only whale-bone and brocade.

And I sink on a seat in the shade

Of a lime tree. For my passion

Wars against the stiff brocade.

The daffodils and squills

Flutter in the breeze

As they please.

And I weep;

For the lime tree is in blossom

And one small flower has dropped upon my bosom.

 

And the plashing of waterdrops

In the marble fountain

Comes down the garden paths.

The dripping never stops.

Underneath my stiffened gown

Is the softness of a woman bathing in a marble basin,

A basin in the midst of hedges grown

So thick, she cannot see her lover hiding,

But she guesses he is near,

And the sliding of the water

Seems the stroking of a dear

Hand upon her.

What is Summer in a fine brocaded gown!

I should like to see it lying in a heap upon the ground.

All the pink and silver crumpled up on the ground.

 

I would be the pink and silver as I ran along the paths,

And he would stumble after,

Bewildered by my laughter.

I should see the sun flashing from his sword hilt and the buckles on his shoes.
I would choose

To lead him in a maze along the patterned paths,
A bright and laughing maze for my heavy-booted lover,
Till he caught me in the shade,
And the buttons of his waistcoat bruised my body as he clasped me,

Aching, melting, unafraid.

With the shadows of the leaves and the sundrops,
And the plopping of the waterdrops,
All about us in the open afternoon—
I am very like to swoon
With the weight of this brocade,
For the sun shifts through the shade.

 

Underneath the fallen blossom

In my bosom,

Is a letter I have hid.

It was brought to me this morning by a rider from the Duke.

“Madam, we regret to inform you that Lord Hartwell

Died in action Thursday se’nnight.”

As I read it in the white, morning sunlight,

The letters squirmed like snakes.

“Any answer, Madam?” said my footman.

“No,” I told him.

“See that the messenger takes some refreshment.

No, no answer.”

And I walked into the garden,

Up and down the patterned paths,

In my stiff, correct brocade.

The blue and yellow flowers stood up proudly in the sun,

Each one.

I stood upright too,

Held rigid to the pattern

By the stiffness of my gown.

Up and down I walked,

Up and down.

 

In a month he would have been my husband.

In a month, here, underneath this lime,

We would have broke the pattern;

He for me, and I for him,

He as Colonel, I as Lady,

On this shady seat.

He had a whim

That sunlight carried blessing.

And I answered, “It shall be as you have said.”

Now he is dead.

 

In Summer and in Winter I shall walk

Up and down

The patterned garden paths

In my stiff, brocaded gown.

The squills and daffodils

Will give place to pillared roses, and to asters, and to snow.

I shall go

Up and down,

In my gown.

Gorgeously arrayed,

Boned and stayed.

And the softness of my body will be guarded from embrace

By each button, hook, and lace.

For the man who should loose me is dead,
Fighting with the Duke in Flanders,
In a pattern called a war.
Christ! What are patterns for?

 

*

Venus Transiens

 

Tell me,

Was Venus more beautiful
Than you are,
When she stopped
The crinkled waves,
Drifting shoreward
On her plaited shell?
Was Botticelli’s vision
Fairer than mine;
And were the painted rosebuds
He tossed his lady
Of better worth

Than the words I blow about you
To cover your too great loveliness
As with a gauze
Of misted silver?

 

For me,

You stand poised

In the blue and buoyant air,

Cinctured by bright winds,

Treading the sunlight.

And the waves which precede you

Ripple and stir

The sands at my feet.

 

*

A Lady

 

You are beautiful and faded,

Like an old opera tune

Played upon a harpsichord;

Or like the sun-flooded silks

Of an eighteenth century boudoir.

In your eyes

Smoulder the fallen roses of outlived minutes,

And the perfume of your soul

Is vague and suffusing,

With the pungence of sealed spice jars.

Your half-tones delight me,

And I grow mad with gazing

At your blent colors.

 

My vigor is a new-minted penny,
Which I cast at your feet.
Gather it up from the dust,
That its sparkle may amuse you.

 

*

Solitaire

 

When night drifts along the streets of the city,
And sifts down between the uneven roofs,
My mind begins to peek and peer.
It plays at ball in old, blue Chinese gardens,
And shakes wrought dice-cups in Pagan temples,
Amid the broken flutings of white pillars.

It dances with purple and yellow crocuses in its hair,
And its feet shine as they flutter over drenched grasses.
How light and laughing my mind is,

When all the good folk have put out their bed-room candles,
And the city is still!

 

*

A Gift

 

See! I give myself to you, Beloved!

My words are little jars

For you to take and put upon a shelf.

Their shapes are quaint and beautiful,

And they have many pleasant colors and lustres

To recommend them.

Also the scent from them fills the room

With sweetness of flowers and crushed grasses.

 

When I shall have given you the last one
You will have the whole of me,
But I shall be dead.

 

*

Apology

 

Be not angry with me that I bear
Your colors everywhere,
All through each crowded street,

And meet

The wonder-light in every eye,

As I go by.

 

Each plodding wayfarer looks up to gaze,
Blinded by rainbow-haze,
The stuff of happiness,

No less,
Which wraps me in its glad-hued folds

Of peacock golds.

 

Before my feet the dusty, rough-paved way
Flushes beneath its gray.
My steps fall ringed with light,

So bright
It seems a myriad suns are strown

About the town.

 

Around me is the sound of steepled bells,
And rich perfumed smells
Hang like a wind-forgotten cloud,

And shroud

Me from close contact with the world.

I dwell, impearled.

 

You blazon me with jewelled insignia.
A flaming nebula
Rims in my life. And yet

You set

The word upon me, unconfessed,

To go unguessed.

 

*

Thompson’s Lunch Room—Grand Central Station

Study in Whites

 

Wax-white—

Floor, ceiling, walls.

Ivory shadows

Over the pavement

Polished to cream surfaces

By constant sweeping.

The big room is coloured like the petals

Of a great magnolia,

And has a patina

Of flower bloom

Which makes it shine dimly

Under the electric lamps.

Chairs are ranged in rows

Like sepia seeds

Waiting fulfilment.

The chalk-white spot of a cook’s cap

Moves unglossily against the vaguely bright wall —

Dull chalk-white striking the retina like a blow

Through the wavering uncertainty of steam.

Vitreous-white of glasses with green reflections,

Ice-green carboys, shifting—greener, bluer—with the jar of moving water.

Jagged green-white bowls of pressed glass

Rearing snow-peaks of chipped sugar

Above the lighthouse-shaped castors

Of grey pepper and grey-white salt.

Grey-white placards: “Oyster Stew, Cornbeef Hash, Frankfurters”:

Marble slabs veined with words in meandering lines.

Dropping on the white counter like horn notes

Through a web of violins,

The flat yellow lights of oranges,

The cube-red splashes of apples,

In high plated épergnes.

The electric clock jerks every half-minute:

“Coming!—Past!”

“Three beef-steaks and a chicken-pie,”

Bawled through a slide while the clock jerks heavily.

A man carries a china mug of coffee to a distant chair.

Two rice puddings and a salmon salad

Are pushed over the counter;

The unfulfilled chairs open to receive them.

A spoon falls upon the floor with the impact of metal

striking stone, And the sound throws across the room

Sharp, invisible zigzags

Of silver.

 

*

The Taxi

 

When I go away from you

The world beats dead

Like a slackened drum.

I call out for you against the jutted stars

And shout into the ridges of the wind.

Streets coming fast,

One after the other,

Wedge you away from me,

And the lamps of the city prick my eyes

So that I can no longer see your face.

Why should I leave you,

To wound myself upon the sharp edges of the night?

 

*

The Pike

 

In the brown water,

Thick and silver-sheened in the sunshine,
Liquid and cool in the shade of the reeds,
A pike dozed.

Lost among the shadows of stems
He lay unnoticed.
Suddenly he flicked his tail,
And a green-and-copper brightness
Ran under the water.

 

Out from under the reeds
Came the olive-green light,
And orange flashed up
Through the sun-thickened water.
So the fish passed across the pool,
Green and copper,

A darkness and a gleam,

And the blurred reflections of the willows on the

opposite bank Received it.

 

*

Spring Longing

 

The South wind blows open the folds of my dress,

My feet leave wet tracks in the earth of my garden,

The willows along the canal sing

            with new leaves turned upon the wind.

 

I walk along the tow-path

Gazing at the level water.

Should I see a ribbed edge

Running upon its clearness,

I should know that this was caused

By the prow of the boat

In which you are to return.

 

*

Vernal Equinox

 

The scent of hyacinths, like a pale mist, lies between me and my book;

And the South Wind, washing through the room,

Makes the candles quiver.

My nerves sting at a spatter of rain on the shutter,

And I am uneasy with the thrusting of green shoots

Outside, in the night.

 

Why are you not here to overpower me with your tense and urgent love?

 

*

Bright Sunlight

 

The wind has blown a comer of your shawl

Into the fountain,

Where it floats and drifts

Among the lily-pads

Like a tissue of sapphires.

But you do not heed it,

Your fingers pick at the lichens
On the stone edge of the basin,
And your eyes follow the tall clouds
As they sail over the ilex-trees.

 

*

The Weather-Cock Points South

 

I put your leaves aside,
One by one:

The stiff, broad outer leaves;
The smaller ones,

Pleasant to touch, veined with purple;
The glazed inner leaves.
One by one

I parted you from your leaves,
Until you stood up like a white flower
Swaying slightly in the evening wind.

 

White flower,

Flower of wax, of jade, of unstreaked agate;

Flower with surfaces of ice,

With shadows faintly crimson.

Where in all the garden is there such a flower?

The stars crowd through the lilac leaves

To look at you.

The low moon brightens you with silver.

 

The bud is more than the calyx.

There is nothing to equal a white bud,

Of no colour, and of all,

Burnished by moonlight,

Thrust upon by a softly-swinging wind.

 

*

Shore Grass

 

The moon is cold over the sand-dunes,

And the clumps of sea-grasses flow and glitter;

The thin chime of my watch tells the quarter after midnight;

And still I hear nothing

But the windy beating of the sea.