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Title: Quest And Requital
Author: Cale Young Rice [
More Titles by Rice]
I
(Before He Comes)
Sweet under swooning blue and mellow mist
September waves of forest overflow
The hills with crimson, amaranth and gold.
Winds warm with the memory of scented hours
Dead Summer gathers in her leafy lap,
Rustle the distance with dim murmurings
That sink upon the air as soft as shades
Dropt from the overleaning clouds to earth;
While golden-rod and sedge and aster hushed
In sunny silence and the oblivion
Of life drawn from the insentient veins of Time,
Await the searing swoon of Autumn's reign.
It is a day when death must seem as birth,
And birth as death; and life--till love comes--pain.
II
(He Has Come)
These are the leafy hills and listless vales
Of iridescent Autumn--this the oak
Against whose lichened bole I leant and looked
Away the sunny hours of afternoon.
Here are the bitter-sweet and elder sprays
I fingered, dreaming to the muted flow
Of breezes overhead--and here the word
I wrote unwittingly upon the soil.
How long ago it was I cannot tell:
The loneliness of unrequited love
Lies like a blank eternity between
Those hours and these I hear slip thro my heart.
I only know all days I've ever seen
Must seem now of some other life apart!
III
(He Loves)
"Will you let any moment dip its wing
Into your heart and find no love of me
To tint with deathless Dream"--he said--"and Spring,
Its flight to the dim bourne of memory?
Will you have any grief that can forget
How grief should find forgetfulness in love?
And since your soul in my soul's zone is set
Will it sometimes ask other spheres to rove
Where touch and voice of me shall not be met?
Ah no! in all the underdeeps of Death
Or overheights of Life it still shall be
At tryst with mine thro moan or ecstasy.
In all!" ... Yet ere a year he'll draw no breath
But is another's!--Will God let it be?
IV
(Betrayed by Him)
All day I've bent my heart beneath the yoke
Of goading toil, remembering to forget,
To still upon my lips his kiss that woke
Me in elysian love one word has broke--
One stinging word of severance and regret.
All day I've blotted from my eyes his face,
But now at evening tide it comes again,
And memories into my darkened soul
Rush as the stars into high heaven's space.
As the bright stars! But, ah, tomorrow! when
Once more I must forget and see life's goal,
That was so green, with sering laurel hung.
Tomorrow and tomorrow! till is wrung
Peace from the piteous hours I strive among!
V
(Finding No Peace)
I say unto all hearts that cannot rest
For want of love, for beating loud and lonely,
Pray the great Mercy-God to give you only
Love that is passionless within the breast.
Pray that it may not be a haunting fire,
A vision that shall steal insatiably
All beauteous content, all sweet desire,
From faith and dream, star, flower, and song, and sea.
But seek that soul and soul may meet together
Knowing they have forever been but one--
Meet and be surest when ill's chartless weather
Drives blinding gales of doubt across their sun.
Pray--pray! lost love uptorn shall seem as nether
Hell-hate and rage beyond oblivion.
VI
(In After Years to Him)
You say that love then led us--you and me?
I say 'twas hate, that wore love's wanting eyes:
Hate that I could not tear away the lies
That wrapped you with their silken sorcery.
Hate that for you I could not open skies
Where beauty lives of her own loveliness;
That God would give me no omnipotence
To purge and mould anew your soul's numb sense.
Aye, hate that I could love you not tho love
Pent in me ached with passion-born distress--
While thro unfathomable dark the Prize
Seemed sinking, as my soul, from heaven above.
Love, say you? love? and hate rent us apart?
I tell you hate alone so tears the heart.
VII
(To Him After His Death)
God who can bind the stars eternally
With but a breath of spirit speech, a thought;
Who can within earth's arms lay the mad sea
Unseverably, and count it as sheer naught;
With his All-might could bind not you and me.
For tho He pressed us heart to burning heart
And set then to the passion that enthralls
His sanction, still our souls stood e'er apart,
As aliens beating fierce against the walls
Of dark unsympathy that would upstart.
Stood aliens, aye! and would tho we should meet,
Beyond the oblivion of unnumbered births,
Upon some world where Time cannot repeat
The feeblest syllable that once was earth's.
[The end]
Cale Young Rice's poem: Quest And Requital
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