 
|
Behind
the Arras: A Book of the Unseen
by
Bliss Carman
|
Exit
Anima
"Hospes
comesque corporis,
Quae nunc abitis in loca?"
|
|
CEASE,
Wind, to blow
And drive the peopled snow,
And move the haunted arras to and fro,
And moan of things I fear to know
Yet would rend from thee, Wind, before I go |
5 |
On
the blind pilgrimage.
Cease, Wind, to blow.
Thy
brother too,
I leave no print of shoe
In all these vasty rooms I rummage through,
|
10 |
No
word at threshold, and no clue
Of whence I come and whither I pursue
The search of treasures lost
When time was new.
Thou
janitor
|
15 |
Of the
dim curtained door,
Stir thy old bones along the dusty floor
Of this unlighted corridor.
Open! I have been this dark way before;
Thy hollow face shall peer |
20 |
In
mine no more…
Sky,
the dear sky!
Ah, ghostly house, good-by!
I leave thee as the gauzy dragon-fly
Leaves the green pool to try
|
25 |
His
vast ambition on the vaster sky,—
Such valor against death
Is deity.
What,
thou too here,
Thou haunting whisperer?
|
30 |
Spirit
of beauty immanent and sheer,
Art thou that crooked servitor,
Done with disguise, from whose malignant leer
Out of the ghostly house
I fled in fear? |
35 |
|
O Beauty,
how
I do repent me now,
Of all the doubt I ever could allow
To shake me like the aspen bough;
Nor once imagine that unsullied brow
|
40 |
Could
wear the evil mask
And still be thou!
Bone
of thy bone,
Breath of thy breath alone,
I dare resume the silence of a stone,
|
45 |
Or explore
still the vast unknown,
Like a bright sea-bird through the morning blown,
With all his heart one joy,
From zone to zone. |
|
Scituate,
June, 1895. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
