Quaker Hill

Perspective never withers from their eyes;

They keep that docile edict of the Spring

That blends March with August Antarctic skies:

These are but cows that see no other thing

Than grass and snow, and their own inner being

Through the rich halo that they do not trouble

Even to cast upon the seasons fleeting

Though they should thin and die on last year’s stubble.

And they are awkward, ponderous and uncoy . . .

While we who press the cider mill, regarding them—

We, who with pledges taste the bright annoy

Of friendship’s acid wine, retarding phlegm,

Shifting reprisals (’til who shall tell us when

The jest is too sharp to be kindly?) boast

Much of our store of faith in other men

Who would, ourselves, stalk down the merriest ghost.

Above them old Mizzentop, palatial white

Hostelry—floor by floor to cinquefoil dormer

Portholes the ceilings stack their stoic height.

Long tiers of windows staring out toward former

Faces—loose panes crown the hill and gleam

At sunset with a silent, cobwebbed patience . . .

See them, like eyes that still uphold some dream

Through mapled vistas, cancelled reservations!

High from the central cupola, they say

One’s glance could cross the borders of three states;

But I have seen death’s stare in slow survey

From four horizons that no one relates . . .

Weekenders avid of their turf-won scores,

Here three hours from the semaphores, the Czars

Of golf, by twos and threes in plaid plusfours

Alight with sticks abristle and cigars.

This was the Promised Land, and still it is

To the persuasive suburban land agent

In bootleg roadhouses where the gin fizz

Bubbles in time to Hollywood’s new love-nest pageant.

Fresh from the radio in the old Meeting House

(Now the New Avalon Hotel) volcanoes roar

A welcome to highsteppers that no mouse

Who saw the Friends there ever heard before.

What cunning neighbors history has in fine!

The woodlouse mortgages the ancient deal

Table that Powitzky buys for only nine-

Ty-five at Adams’ auction,—eats the seal,

The spinster polish of antiquity . . .

Who holds the lease on time and on disgrace?

What eats the pattern with ubiquity?

Where are my kinsmen and the patriarch race?

The resigned factions of the dead preside.

Dead rangers bled their comfort on the snow;

But I must ask slain Iroquois to guide

Me farther than scalped Yankees knew to go:

Shoulder the curse of sundered parentage,

Wait for the postman driving from Birch Hill

With birthright by blackmail, the arrant page

That unfolds a new destiny to fill . . . .

So, must we from the hawk’s far stemming view,

Must we descend as worm’s eye to construe

Our love of all we touch, and take it to the Gate

As humbly as a guest who knows himself too late,

His news already told? Yes, while the heart is wrung,

Arise—yes, take this sheaf of dust upon your tongue!

In one last angelus lift throbbing throat—

Listen, transmuting silence with that stilly note

Of pain that Emily, that Isadora knew!

While high from dim elm-chancels hung with dew,

That triple-noted clause of moonlight—

Yes, whip-poor-will, unhusks the heart of fright,

Breaks us and saves, yes, breaks the heart, yet yields

That patience that is armour and that shields

Love from despair—when love forsees the end—

Leaf after autumnal leaf

break off,

descend—

descend—