Poem: “Vera” by Henry Van Dyke

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American Literature – Children Books – American Poetry – Henry Van Dyke – Poems by Henry Van Dyke
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Vera

I

A silent world,—yet full of vital joyUttered in rhythmic movements manifold,And sunbeams flashing on the face of thingsLike sudden smilings of divine delight,—A world of many sorrows too, revealedIn fading flowers and withering leaves and darkTear-laden clouds, and tearless, clinging mistsThat hung above the earth too sad to weep,—A world of fluent change, and changeless flow,And infinite suggestion of new thought,Reflected in the crystal of the heart,—A world of many meanings but no words,A silent world was Vera’s home. For herThe inner doors of sound were closely sealedThe outer portals, delicate as shellsSuffused with faintest rose of far-off morn,Like underglow of daybreak in the sea,—The ear-gates of the garden of her soul,Shaded by drooping tendrils of brown hair,—Waited in vain for messengers to pass,And thread the labyrinth with flying feet,And swiftly knock upon the inmost door,And enter in, and speak the mystic word.But through those gates no message ever came.Only with eyes did she behold and see,—With eyes as luminous and bright and brownAs waters of a woodland river,—eyesThat questioned so they almost seemed to speak,And answered so they almost seemed to hear,—Only with wondering eyes did she beholdThe silent splendour of a living world.

She saw the great wind ranging freely downInterminable archways of the wood,While tossing boughs and bending tree-tops hailedHis coming: but no sea-toned voice of pines,No roaring of the oaks, no silvery songOf poplars or of birches, followed him.He passed; they waved their arms and clapped their hands;There was no sound. The torrents from the hillsLeaped down their rocky pathways, like wild steedsBreaking the yoke and shaking manes of foam.The lowland brooks coiled smoothly through the fields,And softly spread themselves in glistening lakesWhose ripples merrily danced among the reeds.The standing waves that ever keep their placeIn the swift rapids, curled upon themselves,And seemed about to break and never broke;And all the wandering waves that fill the seaCame buffeting in along the stony shore,Or plunging in along the level sands,Or creeping in along the winding creeksAnd inlets. Yet from all the ceaseless flowAnd turmoil of the restless elementCame neither song of joy nor sob of grief;For there were many waters, but no voice.

Silent the actors all on Nature’s stagePerformed their parts before her watchful eyes,Coming and going, making war and love,Working and playing, all without a sound.The oxen drew their load with swaying necks;The cows came sauntering home along the lane;The nodding sheep were led from field to foldIn mute obedience. Down the woodland trackThe hounds with panting sides and lolling tonguesPursued their flying prey in noiseless haste.The birds, the most alive of living things,Mated, and built their nests, and reared their young,And swam the flood of air like tiny shipsRising and falling over unseen waves,And, gathering in great navies, bore awayTo North or South, without a note of song.

All these were Vera’s playmates; and she lovedTo watch them, wondering oftentimes how wellThey knew their parts, and how the drama movedSo swiftly, smoothly on from scene to sceneWithout confusion. But she sometimes dreamedThere must be something hidden in the playUnknown to her, an utterance of lifeMore clear than action and more deep than looks.And this she felt most deeply when she watchedHer human comrades and the throngs of men,Who met and parted oft with moving lipsThat had a meaning more than she could see.She saw a lover bend above a maid,With moving lips; and though he touched her notA sudden rose of joy bloomed in her face.She saw a hater stand before his foeAnd move his lips; whereat the other shrankAs if he had been smitten on the mouth.She saw the regiments of toiling menMarshalled in ranks and led by moving lips.And once she saw a sight more strange than all:A crowd of people sitting charmed and stillAround a little company of menWho touched their hands in measured, rhythmic timeTo curious instruments; a woman stoodAmong them, with bright eyes and heaving breast,And lifted up her face and moved her lips.Then Vera wondered at the idle play,But when she looked around, she saw the glowOf deep delight on every face, as ifSome visitor from a celestial worldHad brought glad tidings. But to her aloneNo angel entered, for the choir of soundWas vacant in the temple of her soul,And worship lacked her golden crown of song.

So when by vision baffled and perplexedShe saw that all the world could not be seen,And knew she could not know the whole of lifeUnless a hidden gate should be unsealed,She felt imprisoned. In her heart there grewThe bitter creeping plant of discontent,The plant that only grows in prison soil,Whose root is hunger and whose fruit is pain.The springs of still delight and tranquil joyWere drained as dry as desert dust to feedThat never-flowering vine, whose tendrils clungWith strangling touch around the bloom of lifeAnd made it wither. Vera could not restWithin the limits of her silent world;Along its dumb and desolate paths she roamedA captive, looking sadly for escape.

Now in those distant days, and in that landRemote, there lived a Master wonderful,Who knew the secret of all life, and could,With gentle touches and with potent words,Open all gates that ever had been sealed,And loose all prisoners whom Fate had bound.Obscure he dwelt, not in the wilderness,But in a hut among the throngs of men,Concealed by meekness and simplicity.And ever as he walked the city streets,Or sat in quietude beside the sea,Or trod the hillsides and the harvest fields,The multitude passed by and knew him not.But there were some who knew, and turned to himFor help; and unto all who asked, he gave.Thus Vera came, and found him in the field,And knew him by the pity in his face.She knelt to him and held him by one hand,And laid the other hand upon her lipsIn mute entreaty. Then she lifted upThe coils of hair that hung about her neck,And bared the beauty of the gates of sound,—Those virgin gates through which no voice had passed,—She made them bare before the Master’s sight,And looked into the kindness of his faceWith eyes that spoke of all her prisoned pain,And told her great desire without a word.

The Master waited long in silent thought,As one reluctant to bestow a gift,Not for the sake of holding back the thingEntreated, but because he surely knewOf something better that he fain would giveIf only she would ask it. Then he stoopedTo Vera, smiling, touched her ears and spoke:“Open, fair gates, and you, reluctant doors,Within the ivory labyrinth of the ear,Let fall the bar of silence and unfold!Enter, you voices of all living things,Enter the garden sealed,—but softly, slowly,Not with a noise confused and broken tumult,—Come in an order sweet as I command you,And bring the double gift of speech and hearing.”

Vera began to hear. At first the windBreathed a low prelude of the birth of sound,As if an organ far away were touchedBy unseen fingers; then the little streamThat hurried down the hillside, swept the harpOf music into merry, tinkling notes;And then the lark that poised above her headOn wings a-quiver, overflowed the airWith showers of song; and one by one the tonesOf all things living, in an order sweet,Without confusion and with deepening power,Entered the garden sealed. And last of allThe Master’s voice, the human voice divine,Passed through the gates and called her by her name,And Vera heard.

II

What rapture of new lifeMust come to one for whom a silent worldIs suddenly made vocal, and whose heartBy the same magic is awaked at once,Without the learner’s toil and long delay,Out of a night of dumbly moving dreams,Into a day that overflows with music!This joy was Vera’s; and to her it seemedAs if a new creative morn had risenUpon the earth, and after the full weekWhen living things unfolded silently,And after the long, quiet Sabbath day,When all was still, another day had dawned,And through the calm expectancy of heavenA secret voice had said, “Let all things speak.”The world responded with an instant joy;And all the unseen avenues of soundWere thronged with varying forms of viewless life.

To every living thing a voice was givenDistinct and personal. The forest treesWere not more varied in their shades of greenThan in their tones of speech; and every birdThat nested in their branches had a songUnknown to other birds and all his own.The waters spoke a hundred dialectsOf one great language; now with pattering fallOf raindrops on the glistening leaves, and nowWith steady roar of rivers rushing downTo meet the sea, and now with rhythmic throbAnd measured tumult of tempestuous waves,And now with lingering lisp of creeping tides,—The manifold discourse of many waters.But most of all the human voice was fullOf infinite variety, and rangedAlong the scale of life’s experienceWith changing tones, and notes both sweet and sad,All fitted to express some unseen thought,Some vital motion of the hidden heart.So Vera listened with her new-born senseTo all the messengers that passed the gates,In measureless delight and utter trust,Believing that they brought a true reportFrom every living thing of its true life,And hoping that at last they would make clearThe mystery and the meaning of the world.

But soon there came a trouble in her joy,A note discordant that dissolved the chordAnd broke the bliss of hearing into pain.Not from the harsher sounds and voices wildOf anger and of anguish, that revealThe secret strife in nature, and confessThe touch of sorrow on the heart of life,—From these her trouble came not. For in these,However sad, she felt the note of truth,And truth, though sad, is always musical.The raging of the tempest-ridden sea,The crash of thunder, and the hollow moanOf winds complaining round the mountain-crags,The shrill and quavering cry of birds of prey,The fiercer roar of conflict-loving beasts,—All these wild sounds are potent in their placeWithin life’s mighty symphony; the charmOf truth attunes them, and the hearing earFinds pleasure in their rude sincerity.Even the broken and tumultuous noiseThat rises from great cities, where the heartOf human toil is beating heavilyWith ceaseless murmurs of the labouring pulse,Is not a discord; for it speaks to lifeOf life unfeigned, and full of hopes and fears,And touched through all the trouble of its notesWith something real and therefore glorious.

One voice alone of all that sound on earth,Is hateful to the soul, and full of pain,—The voice of falsehood. So when Vera heardThis mocking voice, and knew that it was false;When first she learned that human lips can speakThe thing that is not, and betray the earOf simple trust with treachery of words;The joy of hearing withered in her heart.For now she felt that faithless messengersCould pass the open and unguarded gatesOf sound, and bring a message all untrue,Or half a truth that makes the deadliest lie,Or idle babble, neither false nor true,But hollow to the heart, and meaningless.She heard the flattering voices of deceit,That mask the hidden purposes of menWith fair attire of favourable words,And hide the evil in the guise of good:The voices vain and decorous and smooth,That fill the world with empty-hearted talk;The foolish voices, wandering and confused,That never clearly speak the thing they would,But ramble blindly round their true intentAnd tangle sense in hopeless coils of sound,—All these she heard, and with a deep mistrustBegan to doubt the value of her gift.It seemed as if the world, the living world,Sincere, and vast, and real, were still concealed,And she, within the prison of her soul,Still waiting silently to hear the voiceOf perfect knowledge and of perfect peace.

So with the burden of her discontentShe turned to seek the Master once again,And found him sitting in the market-place,Half-hidden in the shadow of a porch,Alone among the careless crowd. She spoke:“Thy gift was great, dear Master, and my heartHas thanked thee many times because I hearBut I have learned that hearing is not all;For underneath the speech of men, there flowsAnother current of their hidden thoughts;Behind the mask of language I perceiveThe eyes of things unsaid. Touch me again,O Master, with thy liberating hand,And free me from the bondage of deceit.Open another gate, and let me hearThe secret thoughts and purposes of men;For only thus my heart will be at rest,And only thus, at last, I shall perceiveThe mystery and the meaning of the world.”

The Master’s face was turned aside from her;His eyes looked far away, as if he sawSomething beyond her sight; and yet she knewThat he was listening; for her pleading voiceNo sooner ceased than he put forth his handTo touch her brow, and very gently spoke:“Thou seekest for thyself a wondrous gift,—The opening of the second gate, a giftThat many wise men have desired in vain:But some have found it,—whether well or illFor their own peace, they have attained the powerTo hear unspoken thoughts of other men.And thou hast begged this gift? Thou shalt receive,—Not knowing what thou seekest,—it is thine:The second gate is open! Thou shalt hearAll that men think and feel within their hearts:Thy prayer is granted, daughter, go thy way!But if thou findest sorrow on this path,Come back again,—there is a path to peace.”

III

Beyond our power of vision, poets say,There is another world of forms unseen,Yet visible to purer eyes than ours.And if the crystal of our sight were clear,We should behold the mountain-slopes of cloud,The moving meadows of the untilled sea,The groves of twilight and the dales of dawn,And every wide and lonely field of air,More populous than cities, crowded closeWith living creatures of all shapes and hues.But if that sight were ours, the things that nowEngage our eyes would seem but dull and dimBeside the wonders of our new-found world,And we should be amazed and overwhelmedNot knowing how to use the plenitudeOf vision. So in Vera’s soul, at first,The opening of the second gate of soundLet in confusion like a whirling flood.The murmur of a myriad-throated mob;The trampling of an army through a placeWhere echoes hide; the sudden, whistling flightOf an innumerable flock of birdsAlong the highway of the midnight sky;The many-whispered rustling of the reedsBeneath the passing feet of all the winds;The long-drawn, inarticulate, wailing cryOf million-pebbled beaches when the lashOf stormy waves is drawn across their back,—All these were less bewildering than to hearWhat now she heard at once: the tangled soundOf all that moves within the minds of men.For now there was no measured flow of wordsTo mark the time; nor any intervalOf silence to repose the listening ear.But through the dead of night, and through the calmOf weary noon-tide, through the solemn hushThat fills the temple in the pause of praise,And through the breathless awe in rooms of death,She heard the ceaseless motion and the stirOf never-silent hearts, that fill the worldWith interwoven thoughts of good and ill,With mingled music of delight and grief,With songs of love, and bitter cries of hate,With hymns of faith, and dirges of despair,And murmurs deeper and more vague than all,—Thoughts that are born and die without a name,Or rather, never die, but haunt the soul,With sad persistence, till a name is given.These Vera heard, at first with mind perplexedAnd half-benumbed by the disordered sound.But soon a clearer sense began to pierceThe cloudy turmoil with discerning power.She learned to know the tones of human thoughtAs plainly as she knew the tones of speech.She could divide the evil from the good,Interpreting the language of the mind,And tracing every feeling like a threadWithin the mystic web the passions weaveFrom heart to heart around the living world.

But when at last the Master’s second giftWas perfected within her, and she heardAnd understood the secret thoughts of men,A sadness fell upon her, and the loadOf insupportable knowledge pressed her downWith weary wishes to know more, or less.For all she knew was like a broken wordInscribed upon the fragment of a ring;And all she heard was like a broken strainPreluding music that is never played.

Then she remembered in her sad unrestThe Master’s parting word,—“a path to peace,”—And turned again to seek him with her grief.She found him in a hollow of the hills,Beside a little spring that issued forthBeneath the rocks and filled a mossy cupWith never-failing water. There he sat,With waiting looks that welcomed her afar.“I know that thou hast heard, my child,” he said,“For all the wonder of the world of soundIs written in thy face. But hast thou heard,Among the many voices, one of peace?And is thy heart that hears the secret thoughts,The hidden wishes and desires of men,Content with hearing? Art thou satisfied?”“Nay, Master,” she replied, “thou knowest wellThat I am not at rest, nor have I heardThe voice of perfect peace; but what I hearBrings me disquiet and a troubled mind.The evil voices in the souls of men,Voices of rage and cruelty and fearHave not dismayed me; for I have believedThe voices of the good, the kind, the true,Are more in number and excel in strength.There is more love than hate, more hope than fear,In the deep throbbing of the human heart.But while I listen to the troubled sound,One thing torments me, and destroys my restAnd presses me with dull, unceasing pain.For out of all the minds of all mankind,There rises evermore a questioning voiceThat asks the meaning of this mighty worldAnd finds no answer,—asks, and asks again,With patient pleading or with wild complaint,But wakens no response, except the soundOf other questions, wandering to and fro,From other souls in doubt. And so this voicePersists above all others that I hear,And binds them up together into one,Until the mingled murmur of the worldSounds through the inner temple of my heartLike an eternal question, vainly askedBy every human soul that thinks and feels.This is the heaviness that weighs me down,And this the pain that will not let me rest.Therefore, dear Master, shut the gates again,And let me live in silence as before!Or else,—and if there is indeed a gateUnopened yet, through which I might receiveAn answer in the voice of perfect peace—”

She ceased; and in her upward faltering toneThe question echoed. Then the Master said:“There is another gate, not yet unclosed.For through the outer portal of the earOnly the outer voice of things may pass;And through the middle doorway of the mindOnly the half-formed voice of human thoughts,Uncertain and perplexed with endless doubt;But through the inmost gate the spirit hearsThe voice of that great Spirit who is Life.Beneath the tones of living things He breathesA deeper tone than ever ear hath heard;And underneath the troubled thoughts of menHe thinks forever, and His thought is peace.Behold, I touch thee once again, my child:The third and last of those three hidden gatesThat closed around thy soul and shut thee in,Is open now, and thou shalt truly hear.”

Then Vera heard. The spiritual gateWas opened softly as a full-blown flowerUnfolds its heart to welcome in the dawn,And on her listening face there shone a lightOf still amazement and completed joyIn the full gift of hearing. What she heardI cannot tell; nor could she ever tellIn words; because all human words are vain.There is no speech nor language, to expressThe secret messages of God, that makePerpetual music in the hearing heart.Below the voice of waters, and aboveThe wandering voice of winds, and underneathThe song of birds, and all the varying tonesOf living things that fill the world with sound,God spoke to her, and what she heard was peace.

So when the Master questioned, “Dost thou hear?”She answered, “Yea, at last I hear.” And thenHe asked her once again, “What hearest thou?What means the voice of Life?” She answered, “Love!For love is life, and they who do not loveAre not alive. But every soul that loves,Lives in the heart of God and hears Him speak.”

1898.

< < < The Toiling of Felix
Another Chance > > >

American Literature – Children Books – American Poetry – Henry Van Dyke – Poems by Henry Van Dyke

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