The Fool's Prayer

THE royal feast was done; the King

Sought some new sport to banish care,

And to his jester cried: "Sir Fool,

Kneel now, and make for us a prayer!"

The jester doffed his cap and bells,

And stood the mocking court before;

They could not see the bitter smile

Behind the painted grin he wore.

He bowed his head, and bent his knee

Upon the monarch's silken stool;

His pleading voice arose: "O Lord,

Be merciful to me, a fool!

"No pity, Lord, could change the heart

From red with wrong to white as wool;

The rod must heal the sin; but Lord,

Be merciful to me, a fool!

" 'Tis not by guilt the onward sweep

Of truth and right, O Lord, we stay;

'Tis by our follies that so long

We hold the earth from heaven away.

"These clumsy feet, still in the mire,

Go crushing blossoms without end;

These hard, well-meaning hands we thrust

Among the heart-strings of a friend.

"The ill-timed truth we might have kept-

Who knows how sharp it pierced and stung?

The word we had not sense to say-

Who knows how grandly it had rung?

"Our faults no tenderness should ask,

The chastening stripes must cleanse them all;

But for our blunders-oh, in shame

Before the eyes of heaven we fall.

"Earth bears no balsam for mistakes;

Men crown the knave, and scourge the tool

That did his will; but Thou, O Lord,

Be merciful to me, a fool!"

The room was hushed; in silence rose

The King, and sought his gardens cool,

And walked apart, and murmured low,

"Be merciful to me, a fool!"

Edward Rowland Sill

Opportunity

THIS I beheld, or dreamed it in a dream:-

There spread a cloud of dust along a plain;

And underneath the cloud, or in it, raged

A furious battle, and men yelled, and swords

Shocked upon swords and shields. A prince's banner

Wavered, then staggered backward, hemmed by foes.

A craven hung along the battle's edge,

And thought, "Had I a sword of keener steel-

That blue blade that the king's son bears,-but this

Blunt thing-!" he snapt and flung it from his hand,

And lowering crept away and left the field.

Then came the king's son, wounded, sore bestead,

And weaponless, and saw the broken sword,

Hilt-buried in the dry and trodden sand,

And ran and snatched it, and with battle-shout

Lifted afresh he hewed his enemy down,

And saved a great cause that heroic day.

Edward Rowland Sill

The Tree of My Life

WHEN I was yet but a child, the gardener gave me a tree,

A little slim elm, to be set wherever seemed good to me

What a wonderful thing it seemed! with its lace-edged leaves uncurled,

And its span-long stem, that should grow to the grandest tree in the world!

So I searched all the garden round, and out over field and hill,

But not a spot could I find that suited my wayward will.

I would have it bowered in the grove, in a close and quiet vale;

I would rear it aloft on the height, to wrestle with the gale.

Then I said, "I will cover its roots with a little earth by the door,

And there it shall live and wait, while I search for a place once more."

But still I could never find it, the place for my wondrous tree,

And it waited and grew by the door, while years passed over me;

Till suddenly, one fine day, I saw it was grown too tall,

And its roots gone down too deep, to be ever moved at all.

So here it is growing still, by the lowly cottage door;

Never so grand and tall as I dreamed it would be of yore,

But it shelters a tired old man in its sunshine-dappled shade,

The children's pattering feet round its knotty knees have played,

Dear singing birds in a storm sometimes take refuge there,

And the stars through its silent boughs shine gloriously fair.

Edward Rowland Sill

To the Unknown Soul

O SOUL, that somewhere art my very kin,

From dusk and silence unto thee I call!

I know not where thou dwellest: if within

A palace or a hut; if great or small

Thy state and store of fortune; if thou 'rt sad

This moment, or most glad;

The lordliest monarch or the lowest thrall.

But well I know --- since thou 'rt my counterpart ---

Thou bear'st a clouded spirit; full of doubt

And old misgiving, heaviness of heart

And lonliness of mind; long wearied out

With climbing stairs that lead to nothing sure,

With chasing lights that lure,

In the thick murk that wraps us all about.

As across many instruments a flute

Breathes low, and only thrills its selfsame tone,

That wakes in music while the rest are mute,

So send thy voice to me! Then I alone

Shall hear and answer; and we two will fare

Together, and each bear

Twin burdens, lighter now than either one.

Edward Rowland Sill

From biographies on Robert Frost we know that Frost had read poems by Edward Rowland Sill (1841-1887) and that Frost was especially fond of Sill's "Truth At Last." Although it is easy to find similarities in poetic style between Sill and Frost, one of Frost's most famous short poems, "For Once, Then, Something" seems to be linked in very conception with Sill's "Truth At Last."-- John McDonnell

Truth at Last

DOES a man ever give up hope, I wonder, --

Face the grim fact, seeing it clear as day?

When Bennen saw the snow slip, heard its thunder

Low, louder, roaring round him, felt the speed

Grow swifter as the avalanche hurled downward,

Did he for just one heart-throb -- did he indeed

Know with all certainty, as they swept onward,

There was the end, where the crag dropped away?

Or did he think, even till they plunged and fell,

Some miracle would stop them? Nay, they tell

That he turned round, face forward, calm and pale,

Stretching his arms out toward his native vale

As if in mute, unspeakable farewell,

And so went down. -- 'T is something, if at last,

Though only for a flash, a man may see

Clear-eyed the future as he sees the past,

From doubt, or fear, or hope's illusion free.

Edward Rowland Sill

(text taken from The Poetical Works of Edward Rowland Sill, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1906)

Three Songs

SING me, thou Singer, a song of gold!

  Said a careworn man to me:

So I sang of the golden summer days,

And the sad, sweet autumn's yellow haze,

Till his heart grew soft, and his mellowed gaze

  Was a kindly sight to see.

Sing me, dear Singer, a song of love!

  A fair girl asked of me:

Then I sang of a love that clasps the Race,

Gives all, asks naught --- till her kindled face

Was radiant with the starry grace

  Of blessed Charity.

Sing me, O Singer, a song of life!

  Cried an eager youth to me:

And I sang of the life without alloy,

Beyond our years, till the heart of the boy

Caught the golden beauty, and love, and joy

  Of the great Eternity.

Edward Rowland Sill

The Open Window

MY tower was grimly builded,

With many a bolt and bar,

"And here," I thought, "I will keep my life

From the bitter world afar."

Dark and chill was the stony floor,

Where never a sunbeam lay,

And the mould crept up on the dreary wall,

With its ghost touch, day by day.

One morn, in my sullen musings,

A flutter and cry I heard;

And close at the rusty casement

There clung a frightened bird.

Then back I flung the shutter

That was never before undone,

And I kept till its wings were rested

The little weary one.

But in through the open window,

Which I had forgot to close,

There had burst a gush of sunshine

And a summer scent of rose.

For all the while I had burrowed

There in my dingy tower,

Lo! the birds had sung and the leaves had danced

From hour to sunny hour.

And such balm and warmth and beauty

Came drifting in since then,

That window still stands open

And shall never be shut again.

Edward Rowland Sill

Among the Redwoods

FAREWELL to such a world! Too long I press

The crowded pavement with unwilling feet.

Pity makes pride, and hate breeds hatefulness.

And both are poisons. In the forest, sweet

The shade, the peace! Immensity, that seems

To drown the human life of doubts and dreams.

Far off the massive portals of the wood,

Buttressed with shadow, misty-blue, serene,

Waited my coming. Speedily I stood

Where the dun wall rose roofed in plumy green.

Dare one go in? --- Glance backward! Dusk as night

Each column, fringed with sprays of amber light.

Let me, along this fallen bole, at rest,

Turn to the cool, dim roof my glowing face.

Delicious dark on weary eyelids prest!

Enormous solitude of silent space,

But for a low and thunderous ocean sound,

Too far to hear, felt thrilling through the ground!

No stir nor call the sacred hush profanes;

Save when from some bare treetop, far on high,

Fierce disputations of the clamorous cranes

Fall muffled, as from out the upper sky.

So still, one dreads to wake the dreaming air,

Breaks a twig softly, moves the foot with care.

The hollow dome is green with empty shade,

Struck through with slanted shafts of afternoon;

Aloft, a little rift of blue is made,

Where slips a ghost that last night was the moon;

Beside its pearl a sea-cloud stays its wing,

Beneath a tilted hawk is balancing.

The heart feels not in every time and mood

What is around it. Dull as any stone

I lay; then, like a darkening dream, the wood

Grew Karnak's temple, where I breathed alone

In the awed air strange incense, and uprose

Dim, monstrous columns in their dread repose.

The mind not always sees; but if there shine

A bit of fern-lace bending over moss,

A silky glint that rides a spider-line,

On a trefoil two shadow-spears that cross,

Three grasses that toss up their nodding heads,

With spring and curve like clustered fountain-threads, ---

Suddenly, through side windows of the eye,

Deep solitudes, where never souls have met;

Vast spaces, forest corridors that lie

In a mysterious world, unpeopled yet.

Because the outward eye elsewhere was caught,

The awfulness and wonder come unsought.

If death be but resolving back again

Into the world's deep soul, this is a kind

Of quiet, happy death, untouched by pain

Or sharp reluctance. For I feel my mind

Is interfused with all I hear and see;

As much a part of All as cloud or tree.

Listen! A deep and solemn wind on high;

The shafts of shining dust shift to and fro;

The columned trees sway imperceptibly,

And creak as mighty masts when trade-winds blow.

The cloudy sails are set; the earth-ship swings

Along the sea of space to grander things.

Edward Rowland Sill

Five Lives

FIVE mites of monads dwelt in a round drop

That twinkled on a leaf by a pool in the sun.

To the naked eye they lived invisible;

Specks, for a world of whom the empty shell

Of a mustard-seed had been a hollow sky.

One was a meditative monad, called a sage;

And, shrinking all his mind within, he thought:

"Tradition, handed down for hours and hours,

Tells that our globe, this quivering crystal world,

Is slowly dying. What if, seconds hence,

When I am very old, yon shimmering dome

Come drawing down and down, till all things end?"

Then with a weazen smirk he proudly felt

No other mote of God had ever gained

Such giant grasp of universal truth.

One was a transcendental monad; thin

And long and slim in the mind; and thus he mused:

"Oh, vast, unfathomable monad-souls!

Made in the image"--a hoarse frog croaks from the pool--

"Hark! 'twas some god, voicing his glorious thought

In thunder music! Yea, we hear their voice,

And we may guess their minds from ours, their work.

Some taste they have like ours, some tendency

To wriggle about, and munch a trace of scum."

He floated up on a pin-point bubble of gas

That burst, pricked by the air, and he was gone.

One was a barren-minded monad, called

A positivist; and he knew positively:

"There is no world beyond this certain drop.

Prove me another! Let the dreamers dream

Of their faint dreams, and noises from without,

And higher and lower; life is life enough."

Then swaggering half a hair's breadth, hungrily

He seized upon an atom of bug, and fed.

One was a tattered monad, called a poet;

And with shrill voice ecstatic thus he sang:

"Oh, the little female monad's lips!

Oh, the little female monad's eyes:

Ah, the little, little, female, female monad!"

The last was a strong-minded monadess,

Who dashed amid the infusoria,

Danced high and low, and wildly spun and dove

Till the dizzy others held their breath to see.

But while they led their wondrous little lives

Aeonian moments had gone wheeling by.

The burning drop had shrunk with fearful speed;

A glistening film--'twas gone; the leaf was dry.

The little ghost of an inaudible squeak

Was lost to the frog that goggled from his stone;

Who, at the huge, slow tread of a thoughtful ox

Coming to drink, stirred sideways fatly, plunged,

Launched backward twice, and all the pool was still.

Edward Rowland Sill

The Crickets in the Fields

ONE, or a thousand voices?--filling noon

  With such an undersong and drowsy chant

As sings in ears that waken from a swoon,

  And know not yet which world such murmurs haunt:

 &nsp;Single, then double beats, reiterant;

Far off and near; one ceaseless, changeless tune.

If bird or breeze awake the dreamy will

  We lose the song, as it had never been;

Then suddenly we find 't is singing still

  And had not ceased. So, friend of mine, within

  My thoughts one underthought, beneath the din

Of life, doth every quiet moment fill.

Thy voice is far, thy face is hid from me,

But day and night are full of dreams of thee.

Edward Rowland Sill