Classic Poem

'T was not yet night, but night was due;
The earth had fallen chalky-dun;
Our road dipped straight as eye could run,
Between the poles, set two and two,
And poplars, one and one,

Then rose to where far roofs and spires
Etched a vague strip of Norman sky:
The sea-wind had begun to sigh
From tree to tree, and up the wires
Slid its frail, mounting cry.

All afternoon our minds had reveled
In steep, skylarking enterprise;
Our hearts had climbed a dozen skies,
And fifty frowning strongholds leveled
Of Life's old enemies.

A trifle, here and there, was spared
Till morning found us more adept;
But, broadly speaking, we had swept
Earth of her wrongs; light had been flared
Where the last Error slept!

Then, nothing said and nothing seen,
Misgiving gripped us. Treeless, bare,
The moorland country everywhere
Lay blackened; but a powdery sheen
Hung tangled in the air.

And Heaven knows what suspense and doubt
Prowled in the dusk! A peasant's door,
Where naught was visible before,
Opened, and let the lamp shine out
Across the crumpled moor.

A stone's-throw off some drowsy sheep
Took fright; across a rise of land
In shadowy scamper went the band;
Three bleating ewes held back to keep
Their coward young in hand.

And borne across the shallow vale,
Along the highway from the town,
A voice the distance could not drown
Chanted an eerie, endless tale,
Now shrill, now dropping down

To querulous, questioning minor song;
Now sweeping in a solemn gust,
As if some great dishonoured dust
Came crying its ancestral wrong,
And found no listener just.

And as the voice drew nearer toward,
It dropped through vague disastrous bars,
Heart-broken roulades, sudden jars
Of discord; then superbly soared
Into a heaven whose stars

Twinkled to some immortal jest,
And satire was the cosmic mood; —
Upon which, down the twilight road,
With stolid haste, monotonous zest,
Shuffled or limped or strode, —

Who? What? King David, crazed and free!
Hamlet, grown old, and wandering!
The ghost of Tiryns' murdered king
Clamorous by its native sea;
Or his who made to sing

The Frogs, and set the Wasps to buzz
Round plague-struck Athens; the mid-pain
Of old Laocoon; Paul Verlaine,
In high talk with the Man of Uz
Outside his prison-pane!

One moment by the darkening West
We saw the grand old grizzled head,
The stricken face, the rolling, red,
Quizzical eyeballs, the bared chest,
Hairy, Homeric, spread

And laboring with the grievous chant,
The knotted hands raised high and wrung,
As, craning through the gloom, he flung
Into our teeth that iterant
Enormous word he sung.

Then he was gone. Slow up the hill,
And faster down the other side,
The wild monotonous question died;
Again the sea-wind whispered shrill,
As if the sea replied.

I muttered, " Did you hear? " and you
Nodded. In silence half a mile
We stumbled onward: you meanwhile
Had paper out, your pencil flew
In quirk and quiddet vile.

Till in disgust I seized your hand,
And thundered, " Scratching music, clod?
Getting his tune down? Suffering God!
Have you no heart to understand? "
One more New-England nod,

And " Yes, I heard, my son, I heard.
A tune fit for the mutinous dead
To march to when, Prometheus-led,
They storm high Heaven! As for his word,
Pourquoi? was all he said! "

Pourquoi? Pourquoi? Yes, that was all!
Only the darkest cry that haunts
The corridors of tragic chance,
Couched in the sweet, satirical,
Impudent tongue of France.

Only the bitterest wail flung out
From worlds that traffic to their mart
Without a pilot or a chart;
With " What? " the body of their doubt,
And " Why? " the quaking heart.

Old bard and brother to the Sphinx!
I wonder what abysmal luck
Had left your face so planet-struck,
And driven you on such horrid brinks
To play the run-amuck.

I wonder down what road to-night
You shuffle; from what plunging star
Your gnarled old hands uplifted are,
Between moth-light and cocksnut-light,
Calling young hearts to war!