Blown Seed of Song

I sat apart upon a hill,
And piped and piped against the wind,
Which drowned the notes it could not still,
Or trampled so that few might find.
The fragrance of the garden rose
No wind-swept flowers of song may own,
But like the hyssop where it grows—
Its rootlets biting on the stone—
It learns how life may best sustain
Itself, how turn each outward wrong
To inward profiting of pain,
And, living hard, may so live long.
And still, my troubled thought to cheat,
I charged my pipe with vital breath,
Till sorrow grew to something sweet,
And death was no more seen as death.
For oft as in my pipe I blew,
The sorry shows men call the "real"
Were pierced, and let the truth look through
By favour of the pure ideal.
And sometimes in the wintry spring,
I, wandering of my pipe forlorn,
Have heard some fresh uprisen thing
Proclaim itself my song new-born,
My wind-blown song at ease from toil
My thought with larger life endowed,
Upspringing in the fruitful soil
Of hearts that grief had newly ploughed.
Or sudden in the waning year,
When hope was low as winter skies,
My lated strains have rung out clear,
And made a way for hope to rise;
Or love itself, love all too fond,
Love all too tender to be tame,
To my complainings would respond,
And dare to make undying claim;
For love that scorns all shallow arts
Of solace in his darker day,
Confronts the power that makes quick hearts
The subjects of its deadly play.

I throw my pipe away, I sing,—
The tongue must speak the hearts unrest,
The heart that faint with wandering
Still scorns each bourne beneath the best.
All ye who at the breasts of Love
Were nursed, whose young unsealëd eyes
Have felt Love's quickening smile above,
And drunk the milk of paradise,
Though weary of the way ye be,
Though dazed with all the dust and bruit,
Throw back on death each falsest fee
Wherewith his servants now recruit;
Throw back the dreams wherewith men dare
To mock the finite human heart
With phantoms vast and vain as air,
And further from its life apart.
In sparks struck out by soul from soul
God's image first was seen of man,
And love that reaches toward the whole,
In nearest tenderness began;
Till in its centrifugal fire
Man's destiny arose sublime,
And love first known as blind desire,
Stood forth the conqueror of Time.
Then Love that was so lowly born,
Uprisen to immortal height,
Smiled down upon the grave in scorn,
And seemed to clasp the infinite.
Love, hold us at the point of praise,
Or leave us lowly as you found,
If you but lead by toilsome ways
To hurl the soul from higher ground!
Self-sated hearts that in the dusk
And dearth of hope decline the strife
With death, may feign in every husk
A germ which ministers to life;
But we, God's "poor," who still await
Love's further largess, may not dare,
While kneeling lowly at His gate,
To touch those gleanings of despair;
Love's nurselings, we may wander east
And west, but never can decline
From hope of some immortal feast
To crown beginning so divine!

I take my pipe again, I play,
And coldly though the wind may drive,
The breath I blow into my lay
Is that which keeps my soul alive;
And while my strains I would abet
With all that makes the player's part—
The sapient use of stop and fret—
I hold by that which baffles art:
I hold by life that builds on death,
I stand by love, the soul of song,
Its living source and vital breath,
As witnessed by the strains which throng,
The strains which flood the heart of spring,
And shake the happy woods awake,—
The love that though with folded wing,
Sings on and on for love's own sake.
My heart its best of life would share,
So sings but when its hope is high;
My heart would silence its despair,
And die alone, if it must die;
But if when blinded by the mists
I seek in vain the door of day,
My hope is still that light exists,
And purer eyes may find the way.
And if in love of earth and sea,
And love of art, my song began,
I hold it that no song can be
The poorer for the love of man;
And so throughout the lessening days
I meet the angry winds in face,
In hopes to find their castaways
Fast rooted in some silent place.
And piping thus for love alone,
No bitterest breath can do me wrong,
While haply where my notes are blown
Stray souls may gather seed of song.