THE
COUNCILLORS
(CONNECTICUT
VALLEY)
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IN the
purple heat haze
Of long midsummer days
Lay the range, peak on peak,
Till one though, “Could they speak,
Those old ones who heard
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| The
first life-bringing word!”
With the primal unrest
Locked away in their breast,
Unperturbed they await
The fulfillment of fate,
Seated there on the plain,
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Like
King Charlemagne
And his heroes who keep
The long council of sleep,
Until need and the hour
Shall recall them to power.
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Once an age the King wakes.
“Is it time?” his voice breaks
The silence. “Nay, Sire.”
Then the echoes retire,
And sleep falls again
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| Gray
and softer than rain.
Thus Mount Holyoke
Overheard, as he woke,
The yearn and the sigh,
Between Low and High,—
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Toby speaking to Tom,
“Thy distance of blue
I can hardly see through
Proclaims the old story
Of possible glory,
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The
entrancement of rapture
Our utmost may capture,
Adventuring still
Led by vision and will, —
Thou truth’s Chrysostom!
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35 |
The
beauty and glamour
Above the world’s clamor
Are aglow with a thought
Urgent, mystic, untaught
Neither Christian nor Rom,
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Of escape
and of flight
To the spirit’s lone height,
Beyond the last verge
Of soul’s strife and surge,
The dominion past dream,
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Where
accord is supreme.
Undespairing and bold,
Through what cycles untold
Of calm, storm, sun and rain,
Soared thy life to attain
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Its
transcendence serene, —
That victorious mien
Over travail’s maelstrom!”
Then Tom said to Toby,
“In the farness divine
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Each
hue, every line,
Must inblend and suspire
With the tone of desire,
Till all flaws be recast
To perfection at last.
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60 |
Whether
lofty or low be
Thy measure, what matters?
When blinding noon scatters,
And soul grows aware
Of a soul through the glare,
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65 |
Convinced
there must so be
A reach and a lift
Through the dusk’s purple rift,
To the large, fair, and new
Where ideals come true,
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70 |
With
no doubt of the end,
Let heart hold its trend.
Shall Potumcook disdain
The deep corn-bearing plain,
Through the slow-plowing years?
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Thou
art crowned with thy peers,
When over thy crest
The great sun from the West
Bids the glory and glow be.”
Then said Holyoke,
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80 |
“It
is well that you spoke
Low and High are as one,
When soul’s service is done!”
Peak on peak lay the range,
With no word to exchange,
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85 |
Not
a hint to break through
That soft stillness of blue, —
All as silent as when
God first whispered to men.
There like the great king
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With
his captains a-ring,
These councillors sleep.
Untroubled and deep
Is their rest. They abide
Heat and cold, time and tide;
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Their
supreme heritage,
To grow lovely with age.
How could they but dream true,
With their heads in the blue,
And their feet in the flow
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Of the
river where go
Mirrored stories of time?
While the world, out of chime
And unheeding, goes by,
They translate earth and sky,
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These
old mystics. Ah, theirs
Are eternal affairs!
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