William Vaughn Moody

William Vaughn Moody was an American poet, dramatist, and professor born on July 8, 1869, in Spencer, Indiana. He graduated from Harvard University in 1893 and later joined its faculty teaching English literature. His notable works include the play "The Great Divide" and the poem "An Ode in Time of Hesitation." Moody was part of the Chicago literary renaissance. He passed away on October 17, 1910.

July 8, 1869

October 17, 1910

English

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A Dialogue In Purgatory

        Poi disse un altro.... "Io son Buonconte:
        Giovanna o altri non ha di me cura;
        Per ch' io vo tra costor con bassa fronte."

        Seguito il terzo spirito al secondo,
        "Ricorditi di me, che son la Pia;
        Siena mi fe, disfecemi Maremma.
        Salsi colui che inannellata pria
        Disposata m' avea colla sua gemma."

                    PURGATORIO, CANTO V.


        I

        BUONCONTE

        Sister, the sun has ceased to shine;
        By companies of twain and trine
        Stars gather; from the sea
        The moon comes momently.

        On all the roads that ring our hill
        The sighing and the hymns are still:
        It is our time to gain
    ...

William Vaughn Moody

A Grey Day

        Grey drizzling mists the moorlands drape,
        Rain whitens the dead sea,
        From headland dim to sullen cape
        Grey sails creep wearily.
        I know not how that merchantman
        Has found the heart; but 't is her plan
        Seaward her endless course to shape.

        Unreal as insects that appall
        A drunkard's peevish brain,
        O'er the grey deep the dories crawl,
        Four-legged, with rowers twain:
        Midgets and minims of the earth,
        Across old ocean's vasty girth
        Toiling--heroic, comical!

        I wonder how that merchant's crew
        Have ever found the will!
        I wonder what the fishers do
        To keep them toiling still!
        I wonder how the heart of...

William Vaughn Moody

An Ode In Time Of Hesitation

(After seeing at Boston the statue of Robert Gould Shaw, killed while storming Fort Wagner, July 18, 1863, at the head of the first enlisted negro regiment, the 54th Massachusetts.)


        I

        Before the solemn bronze Saint Gaudens made
        To thrill the heedless passer's heart with awe,
        And set here in the city's talk and trade
        To the good memory of Robert Shaw,
        This bright March morn I stand,
        And hear the distant spring come up the land;
        Knowing that what I hear is not unheard
        Of this boy soldier and his negro band,
        For all their gaze is fixed so stern ahead,
        For all the fatal rhythm of their tread.
        The land they died to save from death and shame
        Trembles and waits,...

William Vaughn Moody

Faded Pictures

        Only two patient eyes to stare
        Out of the canvas. All the rest--
        The warm green gown, the small hands pressed
        Light in the lap, the braided hair

        That must have made the sweet low brow
        So earnest, centuries ago,
        When some one saw it change and glow--
        All faded! Just the eyes burn now.

        I dare say people pass and pass
        Before the blistered little frame,
        And dingy work without a name
        Stuck in behind its square of glass.

        But I, well, I left Raphael
        Just to come drink these eyes of hers,
        To think away the stains and blurs
        And make all new again and well.

        Only, for tears my head will bow,
        Because t...

William Vaughn Moody

Gloucester Moors

        A mile behind is Gloucester town
        Where the fishing fleets put in,
        A mile ahead the land dips down
        And the woods and farms begin.
        Here, where the moors stretch free
        In the high blue afternoon,
        Are the marching sun and talking sea,
        And the racing winds that wheel and flee
        On the flying heels of June.

        Jill-o'er-the-ground is purple blue,
        Blue is the quaker-maid,
        The wild geranium holds its dew
        Long in the boulder's shade.
        Wax-red hangs the cup
        From the huckleberry boughs,
        In barberry bells the grey moths sup,
        Or where the choke-cherry lifts high up
        Sweet bowls for their carouse.

        Over the shel...

William Vaughn Moody

Good Friday Night

        At last the bird that sang so long
        In twilight circles, hushed his song:
        Above the ancient square
        The stars came here and there.

        Good Friday night! Some hearts were bowed,
        But some amid the waiting crowd
        Because of too much youth
        Felt not that mystic ruth;

        And of these hearts my heart was one:
        Nor when beneath the arch of stone
        With dirge and candle flame
        The cross of passion came,

        Did my glad spirit feel reproof,
        Though on the awful tree aloof,
        Unspiritual, dead,
        Drooped the ensanguined Head.

        To one who stood where myrtles made
        A little space of deeper shade
        (As I could half d...

William Vaughn Moody

Harmonics

        This string upon my harp was best beloved:
        I thought I knew its secrets through and through;
        Till an old man, whose young eyes lightened blue
        'Neath his white hair, bent over me and moved
        His fingers up and down, and broke the wire
        To such a laddered music, rung on rung,
        As from the patriarch's pillow skyward sprung
        Crowded with wide-flung wings and feet of fire.

        O vibrant heart! so metely tuned and strung
        That any untaught hand can draw from thee
        One clear gold note that makes the tired years young--
        What of the time when Love had whispered me
        Where slept thy nodes, and my hand pausefully
        Gave to the dim harmonics voice and tongue?

William Vaughn Moody

Heart's Wild-Flower

        To-night her lids shall lift again, slow, soft, with vague desire,
        And lay about my breast and brain their hush of spirit fire,
        And I shall take the sweet of pain as the laborer his hire.

        And though no word shall e'er be said to ease the ghostly sting,
        And though our hearts, unhoused, unfed, must still go wandering,
        My sign is set upon her head while stars do meet and sing.

        Not such a sign as women wear who make their foreheads tame
        With life's long tolerance, and bear love's sweetest, humblest name,
        Nor such as passion eateth bare with its crown of tears and flame.

        Nor such a sign as happy friend sets on his friend's dear brow
        When meadow-pipings break and blend to a key of autumn woe...

William Vaughn Moody

How The Mead-Slave Was Set Free

        Nay, move not! Sit just as you are,
        Under the carved wings of the chair.
        The hearth-glow sifting through your hair
        Turns every dim pearl to a star
        Dawn-drowned in floods of brightening air.

        I have been thinking of that night
        When all the wide hall burst to blaze
        With spears caught up, thrust fifty ways
        To find my throat, while I lay white
        And sick with joy, to think the days

        I dragged out in your hateful North--
        A slave, constrained at banquet's need
        To fill the black bull's horns with mead
        For drunken sea-thieves--were henceforth
        Cast from me as a poison weed,

        While Death thrust roses in my hands!
        But you, w...

William Vaughn Moody

Jetsam

        I wonder can this be the world it was
        At sunset? I remember the sky fell
        Green as pale meadows, at the long street-ends,
        But overhead the smoke-wrack hugged the roofs
        As if to shut the city from God's eyes
        Till dawn should quench the laughter and the lights.
        Beneath the gas flare stolid faces passed,
        Too dull for sin; old loosened lips set hard
        To drain the stale lees from the cup of sense;
        Or if a young face yearned from out the mist
        Made by its own bright hair, the eyes were wan
        With desolate fore-knowledge of the end.
        My life lay waste about me: as I walked,
        From the gross dark of unfrequented streets
        The face of my own youth peered forth at me,

William Vaughn Moody

On A Soldier Fallen In The Philippines

                Streets of the roaring town,
                Hush for him, hush, be still!
                He comes, who was stricken down
                Doing the word of our will.
                Hush! Let him have his state,
                Give him his soldier's crown.
                The grists of trade can wait
                Their grinding at the mill,
        But he cannot wait for his honor, now the trumpet has been blown.
        Wreathe pride now for his granite brow, lay love on his breast of stone.

                Toll! Let the great bells toll
                Till the clashing air is dim.
                Did we wrong this parted soul?
                We will make it up to him.
                Toll! Let him never guess
                What work...

William Vaughn Moody

On The River

        The faint stars wake and wonder,
        Fade and find heart anew;
        Above us and far under
        Sphereth the watchful blue.

        Silent she sits, outbending,
        A wild pathetic grace,
        A beauty strange, heart-rending,
        Upon her hair and face.

        O spirit cries that sever
        The cricket's level drone!
        O to give o'er endeavor
        And let love have its own!

        Within the mirrored bushes
        There wakes a little stir;
        The white-throat moves, and hushes
        Her nestlings under her.

        Beneath, the lustrous river,
        The watchful sky o'erhead.
        God, God, that Thou should'st ever
        Poison thy children's bread!

William Vaughn Moody

Road-Hymn For The Start

                Leave the early bells at chime,
                Leave the kindled hearth to blaze,
        Leave the trellised panes where children linger out the waking-time,
        Leave the forms of sons and fathers trudging through the misty ways,
        Leave the sounds of mothers taking up their sweet laborious days.

                Pass them by! even while our soul
                Yearns to them with keen distress.
        Unto them a part is given; we will strive to see the whole.
        Dear shall be the banquet table where their singing spirits press;
        Dearer be our sacred hunger, and our pilgrim loneliness.

                We have felt the ancient swaying
                Of the earth before the sun,
        On the darkened marge of midnight heard ...

William Vaughn Moody

Song-Flower And Poppy

        I

        IN NEW YORK

        He plays the deuce with my writing time,
        For the penny my sixth-floor neighbor throws;
        He finds me proud of my pondered rhyme,
        And he leaves me--well, God knows
        It takes the shine from a tunester's line
        When a little mate of the deathless Nine
        Pipes up under your nose!

        For listen, there is his voice again,
        Wistful and clear and piercing sweet.
        Where did the boy find such a strain
        To make a dead heart beat?
        And how in the name of care can he bear
        To jet such a fountain into the air
        In this gray gulch of a street?

        Tuscan slopes or the Piedmontese?
        Umbria under the Apennine?

William Vaughn Moody

The Bracelet Of Grass

        The opal heart of afternoon
        Was clouding on to throbs of storm,
        Ashen within the ardent west
        The lips of thunder muttered harm,
        And as a bubble like to break
        Hung heaven's trembling amethyst,
        When with the sedge-grass by the lake
        I braceleted her wrist.

        And when the ribbon grass was tied,
        Sad with the happiness we planned,
        Palm linked in palm we stood awhile
        And watched the raindrops dot the sand;
        Until the anger of the breeze
        Chid all the lake's bright breathing down,
        And ravished all the radiancies
        From her deep eyes of brown.

        We gazed from shelter on the storm,
        And through our hearts swept ghostly p...

William Vaughn Moody

The Brute

        Through his might men work their wills.
        They have boweled out the hills
        For food to keep him toiling in the cages they have wrought;
        And they fling him, hour by hour,
        Limbs of men to give him power;
        Brains of men to give him cunning; and for dainties to devour
        Children's souls, the little worth; hearts of women, cheaply bought:
        He takes them and he breaks them, but he gives them scanty thought.

        For about the noisy land,
        Roaring, quivering 'neath his hand,
        His thoughts brood fierce and sullen or laugh in lust of pride
        O'er the stubborn things that he,
        Breaks to dust and brings to be.
        Some he mightily establishes, some flings down utterly.
        There is...

William Vaughn Moody

The Daguerreotype

        This, then, is she,
        My mother as she looked at seventeen,
        When she first met my father. Young incredibly,
        Younger than spring, without the faintest trace
        Of disappointment, weariness, or tean
        Upon the childlike earnestness and grace
        Of the waiting face.
        These close-wound ropes of pearl
        (Or common beads made precious by their use)
        Seem heavy for so slight a throat to wear;
        But the low bodice leaves the shoulders bare
        And half the glad swell of the breast, for news
        That now the woman stirs within the girl.
        And yet,
        Even so, the loops and globes
        Of beaten gold
        And jet
        Hung, in the stately way of old,
        Fro...

William Vaughn Moody

The Departure

        I

        I sat beside the glassy evening sea,
        One foot upon the thin horn of my lyre,
        And all its strings of laughter and desire
        Crushed in the rank wet grasses heedlessly;
        Nor did my dull eyes care to question how
        The boat close by had spread its saffron sails,
        Nor what might mean the coffers and the bales,
        And streaks of new wine on the gilded prow.
        Neither was wonder in me when I saw
        Fair women step therein, though they were fair
        Even to adoration and to awe,
        And in the gracious fillets of their hair
        Were blossoms from a garden I had known,
        Sweet mornings ere the apple buds were blown.


        II

        One gazed steadfas...

William Vaughn Moody

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