SONGS FOR 
 THE 
 
 NEW AGE 
 
 JAMES OPPENHEIM
 
 
 SONGS FOR THE 
 NEW AGE
 
 BY JAMES OPPENHEIM 
 THE BOOK OF SELF 
 
 " Loftiness of thought combines with beauty of dic 
 tion in all these poems in a manner which stamps Mr. 
 Oppenheim as one of the ablest poets of today." 
 
 The Detroit News-Tribune. 
 
 " James Oppenheim is so well entrenched in the liter 
 ary hall of fame that his works now command wide 
 attention." The Boston Globe. 
 
 " A masterpiece of that frank revelation which adds 
 interpretive to confessional value." The Chicago 
 Herald. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, NEW YORK
 
 SONGS for the 
 
 NEW AGE 
 
 by JAMES OPPENHEIM 
 
 NEWYORK Vg^^Bv MCMXX 
 
 ALFRED A KNOPF
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY 
 ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC. 
 
 FEINTED IN THE TTNITED STATES OF AMERICA
 
 For arduous and absorbing help 
 
 I want to give thanks to 
 
 LEILA, HELEN AND ARTHUR GLEASON 
 
 JEAN AND Louis UNTERMEYER 
 
 For equal help and other help 
 
 I dedicate this volume to 
 
 DR. BEATRICE M. HINKLE
 
 INDEX OF TITLES 
 
 WE DEAD 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Before Starting 3 
 
 Let Nothing Bind You 5 
 
 As to Being Alone 7 
 
 Civilization 9 
 
 Sin 11 
 
 Self 13 
 
 When in the Death of Love 15 
 
 Where Love Once Was 16 
 
 Love and Marriage 17 
 
 One Who Loved 19 
 
 The Haunted Heart 20 
 
 The Clinging Arms 21 
 
 Property 22 
 
 The Morning Stars 23 
 
 The Slave 24 
 
 The Laugher 25 
 
 Patterns 26 
 
 The Paradox 28 
 
 Waiting 29 
 
 The Descending Hour 30 
 
 Sickliness 31 
 
 ^Esthetes 32
 
 ffnfcer of titles 
 
 Washington Square 115 
 
 Sky-Lover 117 
 
 The Flocks 118 
 
 The Tree 119 
 
 Jottings: 
 
 Books 120 
 
 Arrival and Departure 120 
 
 Exile 121 
 
 The Edge of the Possible 121 
 
 The Baffled One 122 
 
 Renewal 123 
 
 The Adored One I to VI 124 
 
 Friends 1 30 
 
 As to Being Made a Fool Of 131 
 
 The Writer of Many Books 132 
 
 The Mighty Hour 134 
 
 WE UNBORN 
 
 The Mother 139 
 
 Death 141 
 
 Looking Down on Earth 143 
 
 The Runner in the Skies 145 
 
 In the Theater 1 4( 
 
 The Surveyor 147 
 
 A Handful of Dust 148 
 
 Assurance 150 
 
 The Risen Ones 1 5 1 
 
 The Dreamer in Me 1 52 
 
 WE UNBORN 153 
 
 Index of first lines , 163
 
 x- 
 
 r - 
 
 I 
 
 WE DEAD
 
 BEFORE STARTING 
 
 TT WAS as if myself sat down beside me, 
 -* And at last I could speak out to my dear friend, 
 And tell him, day after day, of the things that were re 
 shaping me. 
 
 He was not afraid to hear my deepest secrets : 
 He was not shocked at my coarseness and trivialities : 
 He was prepared Jor my hours of weakness, and exal 
 tation. 
 
 Neither did he judge me "by any one moment: 
 He knew it as a fragment of the impulse that bore me for 
 ward. 
 
 Yes, these songs were for myself. 
 
 But when they were finished, other selves desired them. 
 
 Are there still others who will sit close by and listen ? 
 
 Is it you ? Are you the new friend? 
 May all be told to you ?
 
 LET NOTHING BIND YOU 
 
 LET nothing bind you: 
 If it is Duty, away with it. 
 If it is Law, disobey it. 
 If it is Opinion, go against it ... 
 
 There is only one Divinity: Yourself. 
 Only one God : You . . . 
 
 Beware that you worship no false idols: 
 
 Take no crust of manners or whimsical desires, 
 
 No surface-lusts and frailties, 
 
 For the real You hidden down beneath: 
 
 But dig ... 
 
 Dig with shovel of will and engine of love and passion, 
 
 When the lonely day drags toward the lonelier night, 
 
 When betrayal and malice trip you and throw you on 
 
 yourself, 
 Dig down to Self, and set God free . . . 
 
 Bethink yourself! 
 
 God is the Life surging forward creatively, 
 
 The swimmer in space whipping up a foam of stars: 
 
 Clear your little channel for him . . . 
 
 He is you . . .
 
 OLet IRotbino Binfc iou 
 
 Then, shall a law be greater than God, 
 Shall an opinion shrink him, 
 A duty stay him? 
 
 Forth! Let nothing bind you!
 
 w 
 
 AS TO BEING ALONE 
 
 HY did you hate to. be by yourself, 
 And why were you sick of your own company? 
 
 Such the question, and this the answer: 
 
 I feared sublimity: 
 
 I was a little afraid of God: 
 
 Silence and space terrified me, bringing the thought of 
 
 what an irritable clod I was and how soon death 
 
 would gulp me down . . . 
 
 This fear has reared cities: 
 
 The cowards flock together by the millions lest they 
 
 should be left alone for a half hour . . . 
 With church, theater and school, 
 With office, mill and motor, 
 With a thousand cunning devices, and clever calls to 
 
 each other, 
 They escape from themselves to the crowd . . . 
 
 Oh, I have loved it all: 
 
 Snug rooms, the talk, the pleasant feast, the pictures: 
 
 The warm bath of humanity in which I relaxed and 
 
 soaked myself: 
 And never, I hope, shall I be without it at times . . .
 
 Bs ZEo IBeing Hlone 
 
 But now myself calls me . . . 
 
 The skies demand me, though it is but ten in the 
 morning: 
 
 The earth has an appointment with me, not to be 
 broken . . . 
 
 I must accustom myself to the gaunt face of the Sub- 
 time . . . 
 
 I must see what I really am, and what I am for, 
 
 And what this city is for, and the Earth and the stars 
 in their hurry . . . 
 
 To turn out typewriters, 
 
 To invent a new breakfast food, 
 
 To devise a dance that was never danced until now, 
 
 To urge a new sanitation, and a swifter automobile 
 
 Have the life-surging heavens no business but this?
 
 CIVILIZATION 
 
 CIVILIZATION! 
 Everybody kind and gentle, and men giving up 
 
 their seats in the car for the women . . . 
 What an ideal! 
 How bracing! 
 
 Is this what we want? 
 
 Have so many generations lived and died for this? 
 
 There have been Crusades, persecutions, wars, and 
 
 majestic arts, 
 There have been murders and passions and horrors 
 
 since man was in the jungle . . . 
 What was this blood-toll for? 
 Just so that everybody could have a full belly and be 
 
 well-mannered ? 
 
 But let us not fool ourselves: 
 
 This civilization is mostly varnish very thinly laid 
 
 on ... 
 Take any newspaper any morning: scan through 
 
 it. . . 
 
 Rape, murder, villany, and picking and stealing: 
 The mob that tore a negro to pieces, the men that 
 
 ravished a young girl:
 
 Civilisation 
 
 The safe-blowing gang and the fat cowardly promoter 
 
 who stole people s savings . . . 
 Just scan it through: this news of civilization . . . 
 
 Away then, with soft ideals: 
 
 Brace yourself with bitterness: 
 
 A drink of that biting liquor, the Truth . . . 
 
 Let us not be afraid of ourselves, but face ourselves 
 
 and confess what we are: 
 
 Let us go backward a while that we may go forward: 
 This is an excellent age for insurrection, revolt, and 
 
 the reddest of revolutions . 
 
 10
 
 SIN 
 
 SIN! sin! sin! 
 I am sick of your ever worrying what is good 
 
 and bad, 
 What is moral and sinful . . . 
 
 Go find what you really are . . . 
 Are you a cave-man underneath your civilized crust? 
 Or a sensualist or a glutton? 
 
 Are you a prostitute deep beneath your enforced mon 
 ogamy? . . . 
 What is it really you want? 
 
 Better then to be what you are: 
 
 Better that, than to live a lie: to be a sweet conformer 
 
 on the surface, 
 
 A respectable citizen and prompt voter, 
 And yet ever wallowing in secret shame and in sense of 
 
 sinning! 
 
 The real sin is in being divided against yourself: 
 In wanting one thing and doing another: 
 For after all you are betraying yourself every moment: 
 Every moment what you really are is leaking through 
 in some detestable manner . . . 
 
 11
 
 Sin 
 
 Your desire for women becomes a smutty joke: 
 
 Your desire for power becomes bad temper to your 
 
 inferiors: 
 
 Your desire for freedom comes out in mean irrita 
 tions . . . 
 
 Perchance, though, you fear the civilized world would 
 crumble if you let yourself go? 
 
 Why, it has already crumbled so far as you are con 
 cerned . . . 
 
 Do you think that such a dark and oozing creature is 
 civilized ? 
 
 I can tell you a better way . . . 
 Be what you are . . . 
 
 Then you can take your desires and lift them and har 
 ness them . . . 
 
 (Men that can harness Niagara can harness gluttony) 
 The murderer becomes the deft-fingered surgeon: 
 The child that models smut becomes the sculptor: 
 The luster after women becomes the music-shaping 
 poet . . . 
 
 If you are really so anxious to contribute something to 
 
 civilization, 
 Go, and contribute a Man . . . 
 
 12
 
 SELF 
 
 ONCE I freed myself of my duties to tasks and 
 people and went down to the cleansing sea ... 
 The air was like wine to my spirit, 
 The sky bathed my eyes with infinity, 
 The sun followed me, casting golden snares on the tide, 
 And the ocean masses of molten surfaces, faintly 
 gray-blue sang to my heart . . . 
 
 Then I found myself, all here in body and brain, and 
 
 all there on the shore: 
 
 Content to be myself: free, and strong, and enlarged: 
 Then I knew the depths of myself were the depths of 
 
 space, 
 And all living beings were of those depths (my brothers 
 
 and sisters) 
 And that by going inward and away from duties, cities, 
 
 street-cars and greetings, 
 I was dipping behind all surfaces, piercing cities and 
 
 people, 
 And entering in and possessing them, more than a 
 
 brother, 
 The surge of all life in them and in me ... 
 
 13
 
 Self 
 
 So I swore I would be myself (there by the ocean) 
 And I swore I would cease to neglect myself, but 
 
 would take myself as my mate, 
 Solemn marriage and deep: midnights of thought to be: 
 Long mornings of sacred communion, and twilights of 
 
 talk, 
 Myself and I, long parted, clasping and married till 
 
 death. 
 
 14
 
 WHEN IN THE DEATH OF LOVE. 
 
 WHEN in the death of love, 
 The lovers part, 
 
 With saddened quiet in their eyes, 
 And brief low words, 
 
 They do not wonder at the autumn s dying, 
 Nor at the fall of leaves in the late wind, 
 Nor wooded hills in winter. 
 
 A sadness steeps the sky, 
 
 A grayness glistens in the air, 
 
 And the Earth s bosom is barren, bleak and brown 
 
 When in the death of love 
 
 The lovers part. 
 
 15
 
 WHERE LOVE ONCE WAS 
 
 WHERE love once was, let there be no hate: 
 Though they that went as one by night and day 
 Go now alone, 
 Where love once was, let there be no hate. 
 
 The seeds we planted together 
 
 Came to rich harvest, 
 
 And our hearts are as bins brimming with the golden 
 
 plenty: 
 Into our loneliness we carry granaries of old love . . . 
 
 And though the time has come when we cannot sow 
 
 our acres together 
 And our souls need diverse fields, 
 And a tilling apart, 
 
 Let us go separate ways with a blessing each for each, 
 And gentle parting, 
 And let there be no hate, 
 Where love once was. 
 
 16
 
 LOVE AND MARRIAGE 
 
 THE LOVE of man for woman and woman for man, 
 It is not often love . . . 
 
 When the married couple kiss do they drink the music 
 of each other s souls, 
 
 Are they moved to unspeakable reverence and adora 
 tion, 
 
 Would they renounce the world for the good of the 
 beloved? 
 
 No, kisses are become to them a routine and a duty: 
 They find each other s bodies at midnight as they find 
 
 breakfast in the morning: 
 And they fill the idle hours with games, shows, rides 
 
 and liquor, 
 All to escape from one another . . . 
 
 I have thoughts of a love that might be; 
 
 Of a love that is the tender caress of forehead and 
 
 cheeks with barely lingering hands: 
 Of a love that opens the skies at midnight for silent 
 
 flight, 
 Flight far, with wings, in one another s arms . . . 
 
 17
 
 %o\>e anfc flfcarriacje 
 
 These lovers shall mean as much to each other as they 
 
 mean to themselves: 
 
 Their tenderness shall melt down irritations: 
 Their passion shall surcharge tasks with meaning . . . 
 
 Not alone shall the man find God in himself, 
 But in the beloved shall he find him, and in the sight 
 of the beloved shall he adore him . 
 
 18
 
 ONE WHO LOVED 
 
 I HAVE heard of a great love: 
 Of a woman who lived behind the partition in a 
 lawyer s office: 
 
 For four years she was hidden with this married man: 
 
 She never went out, day or night: 
 
 She sat very still, lest a client might overhear her . . . 
 
 She sewed and read and translated and waited her 
 lover . . . 
 
 His foot had a running sore: tenderly she bathed it. 
 
 He was no longer young: no, she was in love with him 
 self . . . 
 
 And when he died, and she was discovered, she held 
 up her head and said to us: 
 
 "Had I to do it over again: thus would I do it." 
 
 Ah, men and women that I know, 
 
 How many of you really love each other? 
 
 19
 
 THE HAUNTED HEART 
 
 THE haunted heart beseeches me: 
 It cries to my soul: "Winter has come . . . 
 With what a withering the wind blows! 
 And the gray twilight is bleak, though the lamplighter 
 opens blossoms of white in the air ... 
 
 "Wanderer, return! 
 
 Go to where the hearth is warm and the faces crowd: 
 
 Hearken to the calling of the children!" 
 
 So the haunted heart beseeches me, 
 
 But from my heart I turn my face 
 
 And continue my lonely journey into the sombre dark. 
 
 20
 
 THE CLINGING ARMS 
 
 PUSH off the clinging arms! 
 There is only death in this strangle-hold; even 
 if we call it love . . . 
 
 The mother who cares too much for her child, 
 Or the husband for his wife, 
 
 They are keeping sheltered and confined what should 
 be free and hardy, toughened for battle! 
 
 Nay, there is no real love in this binding: 
 It is more often a sense of waste and futility, 
 And a fierce bickering and quarreling . . . 
 
 Shake free! 
 
 Know love in freedom: know love in separation: 
 
 Give the soul its own self to support it, and take off 
 
 your arms! 
 
 Do honor to the divinity of another human being 
 By trusting its power to go alone. 
 
 21
 
 PROPERTY 
 
 M 
 
 Y LIFE does not belong to me: 
 
 Neither does it belong to any other person. 
 
 Otherwise this chatter and comfort would be sufficient: 
 This ingrowing family life would be gracious and 
 
 excellent: 
 This ease of the rut would suit for a lifetime. 
 
 But no: Earth and the heavens are in growth: and the 
 
 sap is climbing through me: 
 I must go the way of the skies: 
 
 I must feel the star-tendencies and give myself to them: 
 My life belongs to creation, as a hand belongs to a 
 
 body. 
 
 If then, my day s work done, 
 
 Time is allowed for gossip and the choke of families, 
 Gladly will I take my ease, and smoke, and talk: 
 But I shall not forget the business of the stars just 
 above the roof of the room. 
 
 22
 
 THE MORNING STARS 
 
 OF OLD the psalmist said that the morning stars sing 
 together, 
 He said the rocks do sing and that the hills rejoice . . . 
 
 There be ten million ears in this little city alone . . . 
 How many have heard the rocks, the hills and the 
 
 stars ? 
 
 Not I, not I, as I hurried uptown and downtown! 
 I heard the wheels of the cars, the chatter of many 
 
 mouths, 
 I was in the opera house when it seemed almost to burst 
 
 with music, 
 I heard the laughter of children, and the venom of 
 
 mixed malicious tongues, 
 But neither the stars I heard nor the muted rocks nor 
 
 the hills! 
 
 David, of Asia, I do hear now . . . 
 
 I do hear now the music of the spheres 
 
 I have stepped one step into the desert of Loneliness, 
 
 I have turned my ear from the world to my own 
 
 self . . . 
 I have paused, stood still, listened. 
 
 23
 
 T 
 
 THE SLAVE 
 
 HEY set the slave free, striking off his chains 
 Then he was as much of a slave as ever. 
 
 He was still chained to servility, 
 
 He was still manacled to indolence and sloth, 
 
 He was still bound by fear and superstition, 
 
 By ignorance, suspicion, and savagery . . . 
 
 His slavery was not in the chains, 
 
 But in himself . . . 
 
 They can only set free men free . . . 
 And there is no need of that: 
 Free men set themselves free. 
 
 24
 
 THE LAUGHER 
 
 STUCK in the mire of many philosophies, 
 Quicksands of creeds and codes, 
 I would have come to nothing if my soul had not 
 laughed at me ... 
 
 "Stupid!" he said, 
 
 "They speak of what they want: but what do you want? 
 
 Go and question yourself! 
 
 Surely the oak does not put forth apples, 
 
 Nor the wild-rose many-eyed excellent potatoes!" 
 
 Thanks, laugher! 
 
 I m off now down the long road of myself, 
 
 The way is clear: I could shout in this wind of freedom, 
 
 Even as the sun rejoices that it sheds natural sunbeams, 
 
 And the sea that it runs down the tides. 
 
 25
 
 PATTERNS 
 
 WOULD you lay a pattern on life and say, thus 
 shall ye live? 
 
 I tell you that is a denial of life: 
 I say that thus we pour our spirits in a mould, and they 
 cake, and die ... 
 
 Thus, indeed, we become the good and the respectable: 
 Thus we neither lie nor steal, and we commit neither 
 
 murder nor adultery: 
 But truly when I look at the holy ones, the pillars of 
 
 society, 
 I am fain to go and get drunk or go talk with publicans 
 
 and sinners . . . 
 
 I want to go to the man who quickens me: 
 
 I want the gift of life; the flame of his spirit eating 
 
 along the tinder of my heart: 
 I want to feel the floodgates within flung open and the 
 
 tides pouring through me: 
 I want to take what I am and bring it to fruit. 
 
 Quicken me, and I will grow: 
 
 Touch me with flame, and the blossoms will open and 
 the fruit appear . . . 
 
 26
 
 patterns 
 
 Call forth in me a creator, and the god will an 
 swer . . . 
 
 And then if I commit what you call a sin, 
 
 Better so ... 
 
 It will not be a sin: it will be a mere breaking of your 
 patterns: 
 
 For the only sin is death, and the only virtue to be 
 altogether alive and your own authentic self. 
 
 27
 
 THE PARADOX 
 
 THE wheeling heavens, at this moment wheeling: 
 The self-absorbed crowds in the street . . . 
 Gigantic paradox! 
 
 If they saw the sublimity of which they are part 
 They would hurry and hide, like children afraid of the 
 dark. 
 
 28
 
 WAITING 
 
 WHY am I restless? 
 Why do I feel I cannot wait here ten minutes? 
 From what am I fleeing? 
 
 I think I am trying to run from myself: 
 For the moment I sit still my mind propounds ques 
 tions, 
 And presents problems . . . 
 
 What of it? 
 
 Let it ask its fiercest question: I will listen patiently. 
 
 Let it speak its worst: I can endure it. 
 
 Really, I have been fleeing from God: 
 
 For as soon as I bide with myself, I find that I am 
 
 biding with Nature: 
 I am at peace with Earth and the Night and the people 
 
 around me: 
 For all life is one: 
 And the nearest jet of it is right here in this body of 
 
 mine. 
 
 29
 
 THE DESCENDING HOUR 
 
 OMY most bitter mood, 
 O descending hour, plunge in the crater of my 
 self, 
 
 And steep decline among flames, faces, torments, dark 
 ness s . 
 
 1 had forgotten 
 
 I had forgotten the madness of life 
 
 The blood-drinker, Time, was forgotten, the love- 
 
 parter, Death, 
 And those gibbering ghosts, my ancestors. 
 
 Horror bore us: as if the gorge of Night rose, becom 
 ing worlds: 
 
 And on the inhospitable shores of the planet we were 
 born, 
 
 And driven before the elements, and whipped, falling, 
 to death . . . 
 
 We rear cities, crowding them with lights: 
 We try to forget with shows and busy toil: 
 But under it all the tide, the tide bearing us out. 
 
 30
 
 SICKLINESS 
 
 HERE is strength, here, 
 In my own breast: 
 
 If I go whining to the Earth and the stars, 
 And beseech help of a sweet invisible one in the air 
 
 about me, 
 
 Let me also go where I belong: 
 Among children and invalids. 
 
 Off with this habit of sickness! 
 
 Let me puff out my cheeks and blow away the vapors 
 of sadness and downheartedness! 
 
 The erect pride shall beget a manner of triumph: 
 
 And the bugle of that manner shall call out the regi 
 ments of my tented soul. 
 
 31
 
 AESTHETES 
 
 THE xsthetes read and wax contemptuous or en 
 thusiastic . . . 
 
 How many of them live the thing they praise, 
 And run from the thing they blame? 
 
 32
 
 THE PURE 
 
 THERE was a man called pure, 
 Because neither with hand nor tongue nor visible 
 act 
 He committed any sin. 
 
 His friend took him and peeled him like an onion, 
 Stripped off, not the clothes of the body, but the 
 
 clothes of the soul, 
 
 And came at last to the dark and secret closet . . . 
 What did he find? 
 
 He found what was in himself and in you and me: 
 For the sculptor that thumbed so patiently the clay 
 
 of earth until it was this radiant rosy flesh, 
 This eyed and tongued body of man and woman, 
 That sculptor, Life, shaped our bodies out of the 
 
 bodies of the beasts, 
 And even so he shaped our souls and hearts out of the 
 
 souls and hearts of the beasts . . . 
 Yea, the babe new-born is, in all save the open mind, 
 (That curious creator within us) 
 A little crying animal desiring milk from its 
 
 mother . . . 
 
 33
 
 TTbe pure 
 
 So the friend found in the pure one the deposit of the 
 
 dead millenniums: 
 But alive there: a jungle and swamp of ancestral 
 
 beasts and savages . . . 
 Chaos of the earth at creation: the flowing of fires and 
 
 floods, and the smokes of the craters . . . 
 Yea, the bloody black history of man was locked in 
 
 that breast. 
 
 He found even hell: the nether region of torment: 
 Hot cravings, dark lusts, the maniac and the slayer, 
 The foul breath of the ravening betrayer of women, 
 
 the steaming hand of the persecutor, 
 And all things named "carnal" . . . 
 
 And at the gate of this deep Hell he found the little 
 devil of Fear pushing back the immortal Sins, 
 
 And the little devil of Respectability shuddering that 
 the Burning Ones might escape, 
 
 And the devil of Horror barring the way to the con 
 victs . . . 
 
 So the friend said to him: 
 
 "Come, man of Purity, scourge of the adulterers! 
 A word, unblemished One! 
 
 "I see that you are good through fear, 
 And not because of your nature . . . 
 1 see that you are stainless because you want to be 
 respectable, 
 
 34
 
 TTbe pure 
 
 And because it is easier to succeed in the world if 
 people think well of you . . . 
 
 "You may have fooled the world and you may have 
 
 fooled yourself: 
 But Nature is never fooled . . . 
 She leaks through in her own mysterious way. 
 She plagues a liar until the whole spirit itches . . . 
 For what makes you so smug and dull and such a dead 
 
 weight on your friends: 
 And why do you breathe invisible corruption about 
 
 you, 
 
 And remind one of slime and dung and detestable 
 things? 
 
 Why does the hearty sinner send joy upon me, and 
 quicken my heart, 
 
 So that I throw up my hat and applaud the freshness 
 of life, 
 
 While you, O Unspotted One, eat into my day like a 
 canker of ennui? 
 
 You breed a hate of virtue and a loathing of good 
 ness . . . 
 
 "Ha, it is the hidden hell breathing through you: 
 
 It is the smothered beast radiating his foulness through 
 
 your flesh: 
 It is the adultery in the heart which is less honest and 
 
 more evil than the adultery in the act ... 
 (Did not the same truth-teller speak of the whited 
 
 sepulchre ? ) 
 
 35
 
 TTbe pure 
 
 "Come, you are not only a sinner, but a coward as well: 
 
 For the sinner of courage goes honestly and commits 
 his sin: 
 
 And so rids himself of this pus, and cleanses the air 
 for us, 
 
 And makes us glad, even as a thunderstorm that puri 
 fies a muggy day . . . 
 
 "So, a word, friend (I was never so real a friend as 
 now, flaying you alive!) 
 
 The things you damn in others are the things that are 
 really you: 
 
 Go, know yourself: turn your eyes inward: walk hum 
 bly into your hell: 
 
 Wear every scarlet stripe of those blood-red flames: 
 
 And then wait the miracle . . . 
 
 "For behold! Sin? Not so: no, but the human . . . 
 
 Thus are we all ... 
 
 Shall we say Nature is foul and corrupt? 
 
 Shall we say the receding road of a million million 
 
 years down the past 
 Was all a mistake, though it is we that emerge from 
 
 that road? 
 Shall we damn our Mother, whose nimble fingers are 
 
 ages that tenderly shaped us? 
 Shall we curse the cyclone that whirled up from the 
 
 sun and in fierce cycles begot Earth and her 
 
 children, 
 
 36
 
 Ubc pure 
 
 And now sweeps through us, crying out to us to 
 
 create? 
 Nay, under the crust of our minds lie the weltering 
 
 universes 
 Jetting up power enough to fill the skies with new 
 
 stars . . . 
 
 "But, lo, on the crust, and over the welter, 
 
 Sits a god: the creator: you: 
 
 And more than the hills and the seas give you granite 
 
 and steam 
 
 The self within offers raw powers and materials . . . 
 Take this desire of women and shape of the passion a 
 
 poem or a city, 
 Take this lusting to kill and conquer the heavens with 
 
 wings, 
 Take these hungering beasts in your breast and beget 
 
 civilizations! 
 
 What you call Hell, is merely unharnessed power! 
 And if you touch these red devils with love and hearty 
 
 good will 
 Behold as they lift their eyes, the faces of gods . . . 
 
 "Smother not the storm of Life in the soul: 
 
 But open the way, and shape it, blowing from your 
 
 hands and lips: 
 
 Be a god using the storm as your own wings . . . 
 The lifter of your spirit ! 
 
 37
 
 ZTbe pure 
 
 "Then, indeed, you will cease to condemn them who 
 have not the guidance to transform their powers, 
 
 But live as in nature, 
 
 Then, indeed, you will go sit with publicans and sin 
 ners, 
 
 And understand and enjoy them." 
 
 38
 
 ABIDE THE ADVENTURE 
 
 NEITHER from the woe, 
 Nor from the war, 
 Think ye to escape . . . 
 It helps nothing that ye shut your eyes, oh, cloistered 
 
 cowards and gilded idlers! 
 For neither shall cushion nor buffet ease the sharp 
 
 shock of life, 
 Neither shall delicate music in hushed hotels drown out 
 
 the roar of the battling streets . . . 
 Neither shall winged wheels carry you away to the 
 
 place of peace . . . 
 How can ye go from yourselves, deluded ones? 
 
 Make but a world of rest: 
 
 Swifter than striking lightning 
 
 The Aladdin of the soul builds in the heart 
 
 A world of unresting hell . . . 
 
 And, oh ye shunners of war, ye are gruelled in a war 
 of the spirit, 
 
 In a battle of nerves and blood-vessels and the ghost- 
 haunted brain, 
 
 And the death of delight . . . 
 
 39
 
 Hbtfce Ube Hfcventure 
 
 Hence, whip ye to battle: 
 Live ye to the uttermost: 
 Abide the adventure. 
 
 40
 
 TAKE PHYSIC, POMP! 
 
 I WAS as a sieve for the wind this morning: 
 I hurried to be out of it: 
 Zero weather, merciless and gray . . . 
 
 Yet there on the pave beside the park rail, 
 
 Leaning toward the brown frozen grass, 
 
 Stood one so thinly clad, 
 
 He bit on a wad of paper between his teeth to cover 
 
 his lips and nose, 
 His jacket was stuffed with newspaper, his shoes with 
 
 rags . . . 
 He was all puffy red and bleary and huddled . . . 
 
 At the same time he was throwing bits of stale bread 
 to some sparrows . . . 
 
 Curious! 
 
 Was it the extremity of his suffering made him a 
 
 brother of life? 
 Ran the pain so deep that he felt even for birds? 
 
 I think of Lear s cry: "Take physic, pomp!" 
 
 41
 
 IF IT COMES TO THIS 
 
 BITTER, bitter, 
 A night that kills with a perishing wind, 
 The cold soaks the tight houses, fighting the fires . . . 
 
 The air about the street-lamps is blue with cold, 
 The moon s a disc of ice frozen to the sky, 
 The streets are whipped clean of people: the wanderer 
 blows into the nearest doorway . . . 
 
 Yet before the concert hall 
 
 The chauffeur sat two hours in the rich woman s lim 
 ousine 
 
 While she fed her soul with delicious music indoors . . . 
 
 The policeman passing thought that he slept, and 
 shook him . . . 
 
 He did not sleep: he was dead of the eating cold . . . 
 
 And what is our Art, and our skyscraping Commerce 
 
 and Traffic, 
 
 And what our steam-heated Civilization, 
 And what this worry over our tiny Souls, 
 
 42
 
 Iff Ht Comes Uo tlbis 
 
 Yea, what this wealth pulled from the Earth by 
 
 machines and so great that we waste it, 
 If it all comes to this? 
 
 Benign Brotherhood, do we really want you? 
 
 Or are you an empty word to cover our feeble spirits? 
 
 43
 
 THE WEAK 
 VER the same this love of the weak. 
 
 The wind was so bitter that the Italian mother and 
 child were blown back at the corner . . . 
 
 The little boy cried, whimpering against the world . . . 
 
 Quickly the mother took her shabby furs from her 
 neck 
 
 And wrapped them about her son . . . 
 
 Then they went on, both of them content. 
 
 We pity ourselves when we pity the frailties of others, 
 We see ourselves in the beggar or the murderer sen 
 
 tenced to be killed; 
 And when we soothe and heal another we are merely 
 
 laying gentle hands upon our own dark trouble . . . 
 
 That which ye do for the least of these, 
 
 Ye do for me ... 
 
 Who cannot say this, loving the weak? 
 
 44
 
 THE HAG 
 
 E old hag sat on the park bench, picking her 
 teeth: 
 
 Her hat was askew over her stiffened bangs: 
 Her skirts were bunched together: her shoes broken. 
 
 What did Spring mean to her? 
 
 What meaning in the new grass blades and the cloudy 
 
 blue of the skies? 
 How did the slow-rising love-hymn of the Earth sound 
 
 in her ears? 
 What mate in the world for her? 
 
 I passed by, young and in power: 
 
 But I wished for a moment I could be inside her head, 
 
 And see what else the world means. 
 
 45
 
 PRIESTS 
 
 are in bad odour, 
 1 And yet there shall be no lack of them . . 
 The skies shall not lack a spokesman, 
 Nor the spirit of man a voice and a gesture . . , 
 
 Not garbed nor churched, 
 Yet, as of old, in loneliness and anguish, 
 They shall come eating and drinking among us, 
 With scourge, pity, and prayer. 
 
 46
 
 W 
 
 WHERE BIDES BROTHERHOOD? 
 
 HERE bides Brotherhood, 
 Where, but within? 
 
 Self is the world-container, 
 
 Pyramid of eternity whereof my body is infinitesimal 
 
 apex . . . 
 
 Whereof all bodies are the apices . . . 
 But Self is thyself just the same as myself. 
 
 So never shall charity avail me, 
 
 And never kind words nor the urging of excellent laws, 
 
 Nor warring for weighty politics, nor voting with the 
 
 oppressed . . . 
 
 Only the going to Self is a going to my brothers . . . 
 Only walking deep in to the heart of love is walking 
 
 out to the darkened cities of men . . . 
 
 What help to meet the stranger from the outside ? 
 How pierce his mask? 
 
 No, I dive under him into the stream beneath, 
 Then rise through him, and dwell in his deep heart. 
 
 47
 
 THE ROCK 
 
 E soul is an abyss, 
 1 The crowd is a rock. 
 
 Give me then the dive into the bottomless pit, 
 Thence to draw power and the strength of spacious 
 
 life . . . 
 But let me not drown in those waters where madness 
 
 lies, 
 Let me not drown like Nietzsche, scorner of mobs . , 
 
 No, risen again to the surface, 
 
 I will go set my feet upon the rock. 
 
 48
 
 ACTION 
 
 HPHERE comes a moment when to believe is not 
 1 enough, 
 
 When to go on merely feeling and thinking is inex 
 cusable . . . 
 There comes a moment when we must out and act. 
 
 For at the last 
 
 We must pass thought through matter, giving it flesh. 
 That is the act of creation, that only Life: 
 That is what the world means with its physical beauty, 
 And what our bodies mean, projected, solid . . . 
 Passion has become lips and arms, and the billowing 
 seas . . . 
 
 Many scholars have died of this malady, 
 
 Many dreamers have rotted in cloistered safety, 
 
 Much of greatness has passed, still-born . . . 
 
 49
 
 BROTHERHOOD 
 
 IF you want to find your brothers, 
 Find yourself . . . 
 You are not a person; you are a race . . . 
 
 What we see of you is a ray of light emanating from 
 
 the hidden skies within you . . . 
 In those skies humanity dwells . . . 
 Enter them; find your brothers . . . 
 
 You shall find infinite love: 
 
 You shall be all you see: 
 
 Communion with the grass and the sea-waves shall be 
 
 no harder than with human beings . . . 
 St. Francis knew this: preaching to the birds. 
 
 Not alone in division of food and comfort, 
 
 Not alone in bare Justice (long needed, the unescapa- 
 
 ble duty of our age) 
 Not in these only shall Brotherhood come . . . 
 
 No, not until you go the ancient way; 
 
 Way of Buddha, Jesus and Isaiah, 
 
 The long long journey, farther than sun from earth, 
 
 (So near, such heavens away) to your own Soul, 
 
 Shall dawn benign Brotherhood. 
 
 SO
 
 TRANSFIGURATIONS 
 
 WE SPAT on the dirt and the flesh 
 Through two thousand years of soul-sick 
 ness . . . 
 
 And so the poor have been with us, 
 And the good people have been vile lies, holy and 
 stinking . . . 
 
 Enough of this ! 
 
 Glory is dirt converted, and magic is flesh trans 
 figured . . . 
 
 Not to the heavens we pray, 
 
 And not to a white-bearded God, tottering and old: 
 
 From no far world does majesty descend. 
 
 But when we pray, 
 
 We pray to our own selves: 
 
 To no stars outward, but to one heart inward: 
 
 The dusty despicable Self on the top 
 
 To the sea-vast world-swelling Self underneath . . . 
 
 And in that Self what is not? 
 
 There yawn the seven Hells seen of Dante, 
 There rise the circling Paradises to the sun, 
 
 51
 
 ^Transfigurations 
 
 There in the brimstone of lust, and fire of greed, and 
 
 ice of stormy passion, 
 Purification goes on, and the making of all that is 
 
 high . . . 
 
 Go kneel then in the pit of your flesh, in the darkness 
 
 of the dirt: 
 
 There the wings grow and the desire for the sky, 
 And the fury creative . . . 
 
 Out of the noise of the world the musician shapes his 
 
 sun-bursts of music, 
 Out of the loathsome dirt the sculptor moulds his 
 
 shapes, shining, alive, 
 
 And out of the raw desire of man for woman arise 
 Winged love and the dream of brotherhood and cries 
 
 of the martyrs . . . 
 
 Look to the flesh: go wipe out poverty: 
 Then hell will be emptier. 
 
 52
 
 THE MILLENNIUM 
 
 ASK for no mild millennium: 
 Our world shall never be nobler than its in 
 habitants: 
 Never be nobler than you and I, blind brother. 
 
 What is this world but our secret natures opened and 
 stamped into cities? 
 
 The smoke of the mills is only the vapor of our soft- 
 coal hearts: 
 
 The slums of the poor and the drab palaces of the rich 
 are the filth of our spirits: 
 
 The curses of the world are but the unleashed beast 
 in us roaming the streets. 
 
 Here and there is one shining among us: 
 
 He is not a conqueror of tools, but a conqueror of self: 
 
 He strides like a sun in the crowds, and people are glad 
 
 of him: 
 
 He did not wait for a millennium to perfect him: 
 He did not see the need of sanitation and pure food to 
 
 help him to a soul: 
 He wrestled with the antagonist in his own breast and 
 
 emerged victorious. 
 
 53
 
 TTbe jfflMUennium 
 
 Give us a hundred million such, and a greater world is 
 
 upon us: 
 But give us only a perfect world, and it shall be a 
 
 coat that misfits us. 
 Stagnation and sin shall be there as surely as they are 
 
 deep in our hearts. 
 
 54
 
 FUNERALS 
 
 ONE would think the dead were burying the living, 
 not the living the dead, 
 The way we hold funerals . . . 
 Bah ! my heart sickens ! 
 
 Please, when I die, know that I am very well able to 
 
 care for myself, 
 
 And that the journey is mine, not yours: 
 Then take the refuse I left behind me 
 And quickly and quietly burn it up. 
 
 55
 
 AT FORTY 
 
 IT WAS you, the glowing youth that went forth 
 Conquering the world with laughter, 
 And radiantly running after visions. 
 
 Now forty years lie on you like a frost: 
 Disillusionment is in the very handshake you proffer 
 
 me: 
 And a crust of habits and troubles has overlaid you. 
 
 You call death your friend, and think he is long in 
 
 coming: 
 
 You have lost faith in life and in your own true self: 
 And the failure of your work enfeebles your ambition 
 
 and effort. 
 
 See deeper: 
 
 The real you is that glowing youth: 
 
 Pierce back to him. 
 
 56
 
 THE BLAME 
 
 YOU blame yourself: 
 You writhe with remorse because you make 
 
 trouble for your dear ones: 
 
 And the love you give them seems but the mother of 
 tears and sighs. 
 
 But are you to blame? 
 
 Or is it the human predicament? 
 
 You are unhappy yourself: who caused it? 
 
 Do you not know it is hard for people to live together? 
 
 The sun in summer by merely swimming through the 
 
 skies 
 
 Sends down a scorching heat: 
 
 Shall the sun therefore go weeping through the heavens, 
 Remorseful and miserable? 
 Is it the sun s fault that we cannot bear his rays? 
 
 57
 
 CRIME 
 
 HA! YOU count it horrible that the murder was 
 committed, 
 That the man was killed. 
 
 What ails you ? 
 
 Is it the thought of what happened to the body, 
 
 Or the imagined terror of the victim ? 
 
 And yet, much nearer home, and quite invisible, 
 With sharp knife of words, glances, and even kisses, 
 A slow still murder is proceeding; 
 And the victim has, not minutes, but years of torment. 
 Far more horrible than any murder of the body 
 Is this murder of the life. 
 
 Do you guess whom I mean? 
 Yes, it is you. 
 
 58
 
 THE CHILDREN 
 I S THAT your reason ? The children? Their future? 
 
 Tut! blow off the foam of sentimentality and piffle! 
 Look through the depths beneath. 
 
 Somehow your child had to come and take the risk of 
 
 being yours: 
 The risk was real . . . 
 
 Perhaps you were poor, and his environment dirty and 
 
 dark: 
 
 Or you were bad-tempered or lecherous: 
 Or you were the opposite of his nature and would 
 
 oppose his growth. 
 
 Now, tell me: what is his future to be? 
 Built on a father who is a lie and evasion? 
 Or strong and true? 
 
 Is that last not a risk worth taking? 
 Is it not part of the risk of his being born your son? 
 Truly, sparing him pain may be the very way of spoil 
 ing his nature: 
 
 59
 
 Gbtlfcren 
 
 Give a child credit for being as human as you are; 
 Let him share the great fight: 
 He will thank you in the end. 
 
 60
 
 H 
 
 TOO HUMAN 
 
 OW many are strong enough to reject riches? 
 Not I, not I! 
 
 And who can flee from the poisoned breath of flattery? 
 And who can escape from the friends that shield his 
 
 weakness? 
 And who can put away slothfulness and the lure of 
 
 women? 
 Not I, not I ! 
 
 We are too human, we little ones! 
 Praised be the hostile world 
 And the scourge of need. 
 
 61
 
 jottings 
 
 NEW-BORN 
 
 ~T\EA TH and birth dog us: 
 LJ I died only a few days ago: 
 Now, new-born, I send up a cry of delight at creation: 
 The world and I are so unstudied fresh . . . 
 
 LISTEN 
 
 GO A little aside from the noise of the world: 
 Go near to yourself . . . 
 Listen . . . 
 
 Ah, music, pulse-heats of Life, whispers of Death ! 
 They were there all the time like a brook that is under the 
 ground. 
 
 62
 
 THE SEA IS ITSELF 
 
 rriHE sea is itself: it does not fear to be calm or stormy, 
 
 *- gray or gold, loud or soft 
 
 Why have I feared to be like the sea myself? 
 
 THE FLAME 
 
 HA T is the tiny flame of my match that gives itself 
 so freely that soon it is consumed and vanishes ? 
 
 63
 
 THE SEA WHISPERS 
 
 r j iHE sea. whispers to me of women because I am lonely 
 
 J- for the love of -women. 
 Now I hear the luring whispers of girls in the rustling 
 
 surf- 
 Now bass of men s voices furious, urgent, and strong. 
 
 ABREAST OF EARTH 
 
 T) RE AST of earth, with all these sea-worn stones, 
 -* Tumbled together, gray, purple and brown, red and 
 
 green and white, 
 What beauty within you . . . 
 
 64
 
 T 
 
 jottings 
 
 SHH! 
 
 HE sea put a finger of foam on its lips of waves. 
 Saying, "Shb ! " saying, "Hush ! " 
 
 I that was vexed and unquiet, 
 Heard, and was soothed. 
 
 TWO FACES 
 
 SAW the unwritten face of the child 
 Reside the mother s trouble-writ face. 
 
 65
 
 MASTERS 
 
 I TAKE as my master, not you nor myself nor the 
 past: 
 But Life. 
 
 Every chain I break is for the sake of the eternal irons: 
 I snap the links that bind me to you and you: 
 I crack away from the chaining appetites of myself: 
 And surrender to the manacles of the procreant 
 Power of the world. 
 
 Then am I a careful instrument used ruthlessly: 
 Quickly may the tool break and be shattered: 
 The risk is enormous: 
 
 But better to be a brief tool in the hands of Power 
 Than be a weighty long-lived instrument rusting in 
 your hands, my human masters. 
 
 66
 
 TO THE PERILOUS OPEN 
 
 WE, THAT are the very waters of change, 
 Wearied, seek the unchanging: 
 We want a rock under our feet. 
 
 A rock of God, a rock of institutions, 
 A rock of indissoluble marriage: 
 The absolute. 
 
 And it does not matter if the rock has a nest of snakes 
 
 upon it, 
 
 And is slimy and slippery, betraying our feet . . . 
 There will we stand, there will we suffer: our Rock! 
 
 But I I will to my own, to the kin of my spirit: 
 
 I, the waters of change, will give myself to Life, that 
 sea in flux, 
 
 To the vast variety, to the perilous open, to the sting 
 ing salt: 
 
 Strength must one have to swim: and I shall grow 
 strong with the sea. 
 
 67
 
 BEREFT 
 
 WHO can measure the agony of man? 
 There seem too many of us: 
 Too many millions: too great a multitude of needy 
 
 beings: 
 
 Too myriad-hearted a need . . . 
 
 What sun, what rain shall feed this human grass of the 
 Earth ? 
 
 Alas! in the crowd I come and go, confused and 
 wandering: 
 
 1 cannot see a meaning in the tumult and disaster: 
 
 I cannot guess a triumphant purpose in this pinch of 
 man-dust on this hidden planet . . . 
 
 As the street-crowds run from my bereaved spirit, 
 
 So crowds of the stars rush past, heedless of our 
 trouble . . . 
 
 Yet it goes on: 
 
 Yet we have clothes on our back and food for our 
 mouth, 
 
 And a thousand creeds pronounce their rival revela 
 tions, 
 
 And stout-hearted we go forth to fight in the morning 
 
 And lay us down at night, spent, spent . . . 
 
 68
 
 bereft 
 
 All day they carry out the dead from the city, and all 
 
 day the cry of the new-born echoes behind the 
 
 walls . . . 
 Youth is broken on the streets and the lovers part and 
 
 the married hate and long for an ending: 
 Child against mother, son against father, the strong 
 
 at the throats of the weak: 
 And every generation the annihilator of the generation 
 
 that brought it to birth . . . 
 
 Havoc and disaster, 
 
 And a going down to graves and a last dissolution: 
 
 And the bleak winds of November blowing up from 
 
 the seas, 
 And the Earth dismantled and dying, dying . . . 
 
 I that found thee in my soul and in the radiance of the 
 
 sun, 
 
 Hide now alone, bereft: cut off: 
 A few pounds of human trouble: 
 A little wisp of darkness: 
 A fleck of shadow on immensity. 
 
 69
 
 TASTING THE EARTH 
 T N A DARK hour, tasting the Earth. 
 
 As I lay on my couch in the muffled night, and the rain 
 
 lashed my window, 
 And my forsaken heart would give me no rest, no 
 
 pause and no peace, 
 Though I turned my face far from the wailing of my 
 
 bereavement . . . 
 
 Then I said: I will eat of this sorrow to its last shred, 
 I will take it unto me utterly, 
 
 I will see if I be not strong enough to contain it ... 
 What do I fear? Discomfort? 
 How can it hurt me, this bitterness? 
 
 The miracle, then! 
 
 Turning toward it, and giving up to it, 
 
 I found it deeper than my own self . . . 
 
 O dark great mother-globe so close beneath me ... 
 
 It was she with her inexhaustible grief, 
 
 Ages of blood-drenched jungles, and the smoking of 
 
 craters, and the roar of tempests, 
 And moan of the forsaken seas, 
 
 70
 
 Ube Bartb 
 
 It was she with the hills beginning to walk in the shapes 
 
 of the dark-hearted animals, 
 It was she risen, dashing away tears and praying to 
 
 dumb skies, in the pomp-crumbling tragedy of 
 
 man . . . 
 It was she, container of all griefs, and the buried dust 
 
 of broken hearts, 
 Cry of the christs and the lovers and the child-stripped 
 
 mothers, 
 And ambition gone down to defeat, and the battle 
 
 overborne, 
 And the dreams that have no waking . . . 
 
 My heart became her ancient heart: 
 
 On the food of the strong I fed, on dark strange life 
 
 itself: 
 Wisdom-giving and sombre with the unremitting love 
 
 of ages . . . 
 
 There was dank soil in my mouth, 
 
 And bitter sea on my lips, 
 
 In a dark hour, tasting the Earth. 
 
 71
 
 RENUNCIATION 
 
 HAVE we given up thy spell, Renunciation? 
 Do we dream that we can be born without first 
 
 dying ? 
 That joy comes with no pain? 
 
 Once the world heard thy lips crying: "Renounce! 
 
 renounce!" 
 
 Oh, calm-eyed winged one that hovers near us ... 
 But now they preach of the unalloyed pleasures of 
 
 the faithful, 
 And of the gains that fly to the needy soul all effortless! 
 
 Yet do I know that desiring my dearest friend, 
 
 I did not have him till I went from him, 
 
 Lonely for his sake through a month of days . . . 
 
 Yet do I know how songs are written . . . 
 The singer moves away from faces, 
 He goes from blessed comfort to cold agony, 
 Putting away the man in him to be the poet . . . 
 
 Yet do I know of a mother (so of all mothers) 
 Who could not have the child biding in her womb 
 
 72
 
 IRenunciation 
 
 Till, shrieking, she had given him up, 
 
 And from her body the small new life was sundered 
 
 Then in her arms she held him: he was hers . 
 
 73
 
 WE DEAD 
 
 WHEN from the brooding home, 
 The silent immemorial love-house, 
 The beloved body of the mother in her travail, 
 Naked, the little one comes and wails at the world s 
 
 bleak weather, 
 We say that on Earth and to us a child has been 
 
 born . . . 
 But now we move with unhalting pace toward the 
 
 dark evening, 
 
 And toward the cold lengthening shadow, 
 And quick we avert our fearful eyes from the strange 
 
 event, 
 
 The burial and the bourne . . . 
 That leaving home: the end . . . Death . . . 
 
 Are these then birth and death? 
 
 Does the cut of a cord bring life and dust to dust 
 
 expunge it? 
 If so, what are we then, we dead? 
 
 For, in the cities, 
 
 And dark on the lonely farms, and waifs on the ocean, 
 
 As a harrying of wind, as an eddying of dust, 
 
 74
 
 We Deafc 
 
 We dead, in our soft shining bodies that are combed 
 and are kissed, 
 
 Are ghosts fleeing from the inescapable hell of our 
 selves . . . 
 
 We are even as beetles skating over the waters of our 
 
 own darkness, 
 
 Even as beetles, darting and restless, 
 But the depths dark and void . . . 
 
 We have found no peace, no peace: though our en 
 gines are crafty: 
 
 What avail wings to the flier in the skies 
 
 While his dead soul like an anchor drags on the Earth? 
 
 And what avails lightning darting a man s voice, linking 
 the cities, 
 
 While in the booth he is the same varnished clod, 
 
 And his soul flies not after? 
 
 And what avails it that the body of man has waxed 
 mammoth 
 
 Limbed with the lightning and the steam, 
 
 While his spirit remains a torment and a trifle, 
 
 And gaining the world, profits nothing? 
 
 Self-murdered, self-slain, the dead cumber the Earth . . . 
 And how did they die? 
 
 A boy was born in the pouring radiance of creative 
 
 magic: 
 And with pulses of music he was born . . . 
 
 75
 
 Tide H>ea> 
 
 Of himself he might have been shaping a song-winged 
 
 poet . . . 
 
 But he was afraid . . . 
 He feared the gaunt garret of starvation and the lonely 
 
 years in his soul s desert, 
 And he feared to be a jest and a fool before his 
 
 friends . . . 
 
 Now he clerks, the slave . . . 
 And the magic is slimed with disastrous opiates of the 
 
 Night. 
 
 A girl was bathed with the lissome beauty of the seeker 
 
 of love, 
 
 The call of the animals one to another in the Spring, 
 The desire of the captive woman in her heart, as she 
 
 ran and leaped on the hills; 
 But the imprisoned beast s cry terrified her as she 
 
 looked out over the love-quiet of the modern 
 
 world . . . 
 Yet she desired to take this man-lure and release it 
 
 into loveliness, 
 Become a dancer, lulling with witchcraft of her young 
 
 body the fevered world . . . 
 But no, her mother spied here a wickedness . . . 
 Shamefully she submitted, making a smouldering in 
 ferno of the hidden Nymph in her soul, 
 And so died. 
 
 A woman was made body and heart for the beautiful 
 love-life . . . 
 
 76
 
 ZKfle H>eat> 
 
 But of the mother-miracle, 
 
 How the cry of a troubled child whitens the red pas 
 sions, 
 
 She did not know . . . 
 
 Fear of poverty corrupted her: she chose a fool that 
 her heart hated, 
 
 And now through him no release for her native pas 
 sions, 
 
 But only a spending of her loathsome fury on adorn 
 ment and luxury . . . 
 
 Ah, dead glory! and the heart sick with betrayal! 
 
 There is no grace for the dead, save to be born again: 
 Engines shall not drag us from the grave, 
 Nor wine nor meat revive us. 
 
 For our thirst is a thirst no liquor can reach nor slake, 
 And our hunger a hunger by no bread filled . . . 
 The waters we crave bubble up from the springs of life, 
 And the bread we would break comes down from 
 invisible hands. 
 
 We dead! awake! 
 
 Kiss the beloved past goodby, 
 
 Go leave the love-house of the betrayed self, 
 
 And through the dark of birth go and enter the soul s 
 
 bleak weather . . . 
 
 And I, I will not stay dead, though the dead cling to me, 
 I will put away the kisses and the soft embraces and 
 
 the walls that encompass me, 
 
 77
 
 We 
 
 And out of this womb I will surely move to the world 
 
 of my spirit . . . 
 
 I will lose my life to find it, as of old, 
 Yea, I will turn from the life-lie I lived to the truth I 
 
 was wrought for, 
 And I will take the creator within, sower of the seed 
 
 of the race, 
 And make him a god, shaper of civilization . . . 
 
 Now on my soul s imperious surge, 
 Taking the risk, as of death, and in deepening twilight, 
 I ride on the darkening flood and go out on the waters 
 Till over the tide comes music, till over the tide the 
 
 breath 
 
 Of the song of my far-off soul is wafted and blown, 
 Murmuring commandments . . . 
 
 Storm and darkness! I am drowned in the torrent! 
 I am moving forth irrevocably from the sheltering 
 
 womb! 
 
 I am naked and little! 
 Oh, cold of the world, and lights blinding, and space 
 
 terrifying! 
 Now my cry goes up and the wailing of my helpless 
 
 soul: 
 Mother, my mother! 
 
 Lo, then, the mother eternal! 
 
 78
 
 TOle 
 
 In my opening soul the footfall of her fleeting tread, 
 And the song of her voice piercing and sweet with 
 
 love of me, 
 And the enwinding of her arms and adoring of her 
 
 breath, 
 
 And the milk of her plenty! 
 Oh, Life, of which I am part; Life, from the depths of 
 
 the heavens, 
 That ascended like a water-spring into David of Asia 
 
 on the eastern hills in the night, 
 That came like a noose of golden shadow on Joan in 
 
 the orchard, 
 That gathers all life: the binding of brothers into 
 
 sheaves: 
 
 That of old, kneelers in the dust 
 Named, glorying: Allah, Jehovah, God. 
 
 79
 
 II 
 
 WE LIVING
 
 THE MAN SPEAKS 
 
 From "The Beloved" 
 
 YOU and I in the night, spied on by stars . . . 
 You and I in the beloved night . . . 
 You and I within these walls. 
 
 A breath from the sea is kissing the housetops of the 
 
 city, 
 
 Kissing the roofs, 
 And dying into silence. 
 
 Earth and stars are in a trance, 
 
 They dream of passion, but cannot break their sleep. 
 
 They pass into us, and we are their passion, we are 
 
 their madness, 
 
 So shaped that we can kiss and clasp . . . 
 One kiss, then death, the miracle being spent. 
 
 Watchman, what of the night? 
 
 Sleep and birth! Toil and death! 
 
 Now the light of the topmost tower winks red and 
 
 ceases: 
 
 Now the lonely car echoes afar off ... 
 Helen looked over the wine-dark seas of Greece, and 
 
 she was young. 
 
 83
 
 Speafes 
 
 But not younger than we, touching each other, while 
 dawn delays . . . 
 
 Dare we betray this moment? 
 Dare we die, missing this fire? 
 Whither goes massive Earth tonight, flying with the 
 
 stars down eternity? 
 We are alive: we are for each other. 
 
 84
 
 THE WOMAN SPEAKS 
 
 From "The Beloved 1 
 
 OH, MY being, opening into the dazzle of sunrise! 
 Where are you blowing me, trumpets? 
 What blast of music am I, striding the wind? 
 
 I took the hand of my beloved, and I was satisfied. 
 I kissed his lips, and the stone of my heart became 
 
 a song. 
 I kissed his lips, and was born again. 
 
 Love, now I know thee! 
 
 I have looked into thine eyes, Splendor: 
 
 I have kissed thy lips, golden boy . . . 
 
 Bear me to the ends of the earth, 
 Drown me in oceans, 
 Crush me beneath granite mountains: 
 I give all, I render myself up, 
 
 O thou, that art the breath of life: the whisper on the 
 deeps. 
 
 85
 
 BELOVED 
 
 L3VE: 
 To approach you with the touch the sculptor 
 
 gives his clay, 
 Subdued, inspired: 
 
 To catch in the radiance of my heart the purity of yours, 
 White breathless fires: 
 To let the still sea of song in my spirit move toward its 
 
 shore, your soul, 
 With dying music: (Oh, hear me, adored one!) 
 
 Love: 
 
 To watch as one watches the face of the beloved 
 
 coming out of death, 
 Every wavering of your lashes: 
 To feel each fluctuation of your yearning and your 
 
 desire, 
 
 And meet it with caresses: 
 To enfold you gently until your whole soul slides into 
 
 mine, 
 Conquering me with submission: (Adored one, hear 
 
 me!) 
 
 Love: 
 
 To meet the dawn together and the widening light, 
 
 86
 
 3Beiov>eE> 
 
 Seas in our hearts sounding, 
 
 To take from a kiss the glory of a dawn in our spirits, 
 
 And the arousal to living: 
 
 To rise from each other s arms magnified and mighty, 
 
 Heroic and human: (Adored one, hear me!) 
 
 Such may our love be: such be our passion, beloved. 
 
 87
 
 ANNIE 
 
 IN THE fragrance of her simple heart I still bathe my 
 self: 
 
 For Annie was a girl of the people, 
 With eyes of the clearest brown, 
 And a voice low and sweet. 
 
 Her blushes were quick as her tears: 
 
 And the caress of her hand, and the "ah!" as she 
 
 sighed, 
 
 Thinking she had offended, 
 Were as echoes of moonlit waters on a far shore . . . 
 
 Something breathed from her as deep of the womanly 
 
 as the Earth itself: 
 I dreamt of hay in the barn, and slopes of daisies 
 
 beside the road, 
 And the kitchen scoured and shining, and the hearth 
 
 gleaming in the night: 
 
 Something so old and new, so common and magic: 
 For Annie was a girl of the people, 
 A darling of the Earth. 
 
 She said: "I am lonely, too . . . 
 
 I live in a room by myself and work in the day . . . 
 
 88
 
 Bnnte 
 
 Three months back my mother died, leaving me 
 lonely. . ." 
 
 "Ah," she said, "your brown eyes now!" And she 
 
 laughed, and we kissed . . . 
 
 And over her face came a glow as her eyes met mine, 
 And her deep glance pierced me . . . 
 
 "Soon as you re gone," she said, "you ll be forgetting 
 
 me: 
 
 And you ll take to the next woman you ever meet, 
 And you ll kiss her like you kiss me ... 
 But I ll not be forgetting you ever in my life: 
 And how we met, and came up the stoop, and kissed 
 
 behind the door . . ." 
 
 "So," she sighed, holding me close by the hand, 
 "Go now: what ll I think of myself letting you kiss me? 
 It s my fault, sure: I d never be blaming you . . . 
 Goodnight," she sighed, and we kissed, and she 
 watched me go. 
 
 Out of the Earth spring natural simple flowers: 
 Out of the people come simple natural women: 
 Annie, one of the sweetest. 
 
 89
 
 THE LOVE-HOUR 
 
 WHERE may she of the hall bedroom hold the 
 love-hour? 
 In what sweet privacy find her soul before the face of 
 
 the beloved? 
 
 And the kiss that lifts her from the noise of the shop, 
 And the bitter carelessness of the streets? 
 Neither is there garden nor secret parlor for her: 
 And cruel winter has spoiled the shores of the sea; 
 The benches in the park are laden with melting snow, 
 And the bedroom forbidden . . . 
 
 But ah, the love of a woman! She will not be cheated! 
 Up the stoop she went to the vestibule of the house, 
 And beckoned to me to come to that darkness of 
 
 doors: 
 Here in a crevice of the public city the love-hour was 
 
 spent . . . 
 
 Outside rumbled the cars between drifts of the gas-lit 
 
 snow, 
 
 And the footsteps fell of the wanderers in the night . . . 
 Within, the dark house slept . . . 
 
 90
 
 TTbe %o\>e*3Hour 
 
 But we, in our little cave, stood, and saw in the gleam 
 ing- dark 
 
 Shine of each other s eyes, and the flutter of wisps of 
 hair, 
 
 And our words were breathlessly sweet, and our kisses 
 silent . . . 
 
 Where is there rose-garden, 
 
 Where is there balcony among the cedars and pines, 
 Where is there moonlit clearing in the dumb wilderness, 
 Enchanted as this doorway, dark in the glare of the 
 city? 
 
 91
 
 A WOMAN FOR THE ADVENTURE 
 
 I WANT a woman for the adventure: 
 And my demands are monstrous, never to be 
 met . . . 
 
 For I want first the body that slopes like a wave of the 
 
 sea toward my senses: 
 And whose desire is for me, my least kiss fetching the 
 
 answering glow: 
 And whose face, pensive in the twilight, sends my mind 
 
 back to the legend of women, 
 And whose coming and going is as the footfall of the 
 
 wind on a summer s night, 
 And whose words drop between pauses of music gentle 
 
 and piercing, 
 And who gives herself in the wish of children. 
 
 But that is not all: oh, not more than a fragment of 
 
 what I demand: 
 
 I want her to be the mother of my hours of weakness: 
 Quick will be the intuition searching to my need and 
 
 my cry: 
 Gentle the healing of those caressing hands, breath of 
 
 that soothing voice: 
 Deep will be the love that makes me whole again. 
 
 92
 
 B Woman jfor ZIbe Hfcventure 
 
 And yet more I ask: insatiate man that I am: 
 
 I want the comrade free and supple-hearted as a man, 
 
 Who puts on her boots and her khaki and goes out 
 
 with me on the holiday morning, 
 And away we tramp on a lark, young vagrants both: 
 And she will swim, and sleep on the ground, and climb 
 
 up the mountains, 
 Yea, she will up, at a moment s notice, and be off to 
 
 strange cities, 
 And take the peril and the joy of strange lands and 
 
 strange people. 
 And she will be willing to live without me when she 
 
 sends me off on some journey. 
 
 Yet demand worst of all: and paradox quaint: 
 
 As I stand father to the children of her body, 
 
 I want the woman who stands father to the children 
 
 of my spirit: 
 Yea, she who comes to her fulfillment through my 
 
 vision and my works: 
 
 She who impregnates my soul with seed of her spirit, 
 Until there grows the life that through mighty travail 
 
 is born: 
 Our works: our child! 
 
 Ah, you will say: not a woman, but a goddess I 
 
 demand: 
 Ah, you will tell me I am monstrous, and so will not 
 
 find her: 
 
 93
 
 H Woman jf or Ube Bov>enture 
 
 Yet, out with the truth of it! Such are the cravings of 
 
 men: 
 Such the woman I want for the adventure! 
 
 94
 
 WHEN A WOMAN IS WANTED 
 
 WHEN a woman is wanted, 
 What is the printed page, that I can idle over 
 
 it, 
 And what the street, that I can wander it through? 
 
 The kiss in imagination is but whiskey . . . 
 It makes the thirst rage . . . 
 
 The dream of caresses and whispering love is but a 
 beckoner forth from the prison-cell . . . 
 
 I want, not an image, but flesh and blood, 
 
 Not words in a book, but words that come living from 
 
 human lips, 
 Not an exquisite description, but a raw sight actual 
 
 and near . . . 
 Not an aching armful of air, but a crowded armful of 
 
 resisting and surrendering woman . . . 
 Lips that my own can be pressed against in strong kisses, 
 Hair to fall down on my shoulders and tease me with 
 
 its odour of sun-warmed pine-needles, 
 Eyes that can light and dim, fluctuating to the words 
 
 and glances I send her . . . 
 Oh, one here, now, close to me, mine, as I hers.
 
 Wben a IKHoman Us Mante& 
 
 How can I conjure you up from the millions in this 
 
 city? 
 Somewhere you sit, dreaming, and empty, and sad . . . 
 
 Oh, how many thousands like myself brood in their 
 
 lonely rooms and wish? 
 Girls and youths parted by narrow walls? 
 And who shall go seeking and who shall be found 
 
 tonight? 
 
 96
 
 FOLK-HUNGER 
 
 FIERCE hunger has come upon me, 
 And neither meat nor wine can stay me . . . 
 I am starved for men and women. 
 
 I want to go where the crowd is thickest, 
 
 Where the spot-light man colors the graceful favorite 
 
 on the stage with green, then gold, then violet . . . 
 Where the audience roars at the jocose comedian and 
 
 the strong stout woman . . . 
 Where I will be accepted, not by the Earth, but by my 
 
 fellows. 
 Sinking back into rough good commonness, just a 
 
 laugher and idler myself, 
 Warming the hands and heart of my soul at the 
 
 blazing hearth of the people . . . 
 
 Tomorrow, business with the lordly Earth, 
 Sessions with my Self in aching privacy . . . 
 Tonight, crowds, lights, gayety, 
 The cockles of my heart roasted as crisp as nuts, 
 And my lung-bellows roaring in the jolly brotherhood 
 of the world. 
 
 97
 
 ON THE WAY TO HELL 
 
 I AM so happy these days 
 That beyond a doubt I shall soon be booted out of 
 heaven! 
 
 Long was the fall of Satan 
 
 And the landing dull and unpleasant. 
 
 Yet: 
 
 I lie and laugh at life: 
 
 I cannot get out of bed, for very delight: 
 
 And I say: Though you wait for me, Hell, 
 
 I shall laugh all the way to your gates. 
 
 98
 
 WHAT face lifts, so perfect in profile? 
 Who speaks to the young men at the table? 
 Is it Minerva slipped from her marble? 
 
 But what do the young men see? 
 
 One calls: "Hey! kid! butter-cakes and coffee!" 
 
 Curious, how very blind these eaters can be! 
 
 99
 
 IN TALK WITH A PROSTITUTE 
 
 I AM no sorrier for you than I am for myself: 
 We are both human beings . . . 
 Alas! both of us have come through the gates of the 
 
 dark 
 
 And thither return . . . 
 Why should we pity each other here in the night? 
 
 100
 
 THE CUP OF DEW 
 
 LATE, and lonely, and faint for sleep, 
 I yet will pause and have silence, 
 That the thirsty one, my soul, 
 May open to the night 
 And drink the dew . . . 
 
 I know that the day was wasted, many-tongued. 
 
 In noise and dust I stifled: 
 
 Over me passed a wind of words, and the world reeled. 
 
 But now I am alone . . . 
 
 Now space, and silence, and my body and I 
 
 Bathed in beloved night . . . 
 
 Dew of the stars and of the ether and earth, 
 
 Dew of my soul, 
 
 Fall into the cup of my beseeching hands, 
 
 That I may put thee to my lips 
 
 And drink the waters of great healing. 
 
 101
 
 THE LONELY CHILD 
 
 DO YOU think, my boy, that when I put my arms 
 around you, 
 To still your fears, 
 That it is I that conquer the dark and the lonely night? 
 
 My arms seem to wrap love about you, 
 As your little heart fluttering at my breast 
 Throbs love through me ... 
 
 But, dear one, it is not your father: 
 Other arms are about you, drawing you near, 
 And drawing the Earth near, and the Night near, 
 And your father near . . . 
 
 Some day you shall lie alone at nights, 
 
 As now your father lies: 
 
 And in those arms, as a leaf fallen on a tranquil stream, 
 
 Drift into dreams and healing sleep. 
 
 102
 
 NOT OVERLOOKED 
 
 THOUGH I am little as all little things, 
 Though the stars that pass over my tininess are 
 
 as the sands of the sea, 
 
 Though the garment of the night was made for a sky- 
 giant and does not fit me, 
 Though even in a city of men I am as nothing, 
 Yet at times the gift of life is almost more than 1 can 
 
 bear . . . 
 
 I laugh with joyousness: the morning is a blithe holiday: 
 And in the overrunning of my hardy bliss praise rises 
 for the very breath 1 breathe. 
 
 How soaked the universe is with life: 
 Not a cranny but is drenched: 
 Ah, not even I was overlooked! 
 
 103
 
 THE NEW BABE 
 
 THE BABE is the beautifully cunning dust that desires 
 and breathes, 
 And through the soft pink of his body sing limpid sweet 
 
 tides of life, 
 
 And at the light he is staring with wide blue eyes, 
 unquestioning. 
 
 Oh, unawakened wonder! unopened blossom! 
 
 There I leaned, even so in my marvelous flesh, 
 
 But I and this body of mine were also as a pellet of dust 
 
 Dropped into gulfs of bathing light; 
 
 I, flower, drenched in the sunlight of the spirit, 
 
 In the spacious morning of the soul . . . 
 
 Divine is the unfolding and wonderful the opening 
 
 petals 
 Of the babe in the storm and sun of the nourishing 
 
 years. 
 
 104
 
 HAD I THE WINGS 
 
 AH, HAD I the wings now, 
 Wings of the mounting condor to clear the 
 
 clouds, 
 
 Clear the heavy clouds and soar to the day-dying sun, 
 To the sun, beyond these streets, 
 To the sun, beyond this lash of the winter rains . . . 
 
 But the day lags, binding me: 
 
 The day lags and my pent-up heart beats at its bars, 
 
 At its prison-bars beats, captive and dark. 
 
 Ah, had I the fire now, had I the joy now, had I the 
 
 wings now 
 
 To clear the clouds of my rain-swept soul, 
 And soar in the heavens, sun-bathed. 
 
 105
 
 B 
 
 THE BODY 
 ODY, whence come mind and soul? 
 
 "Ah," said the Body, "from me: 
 
 I am a tree, and mind and soul are the fruit . . . 
 
 Ages of fecund weather and nourishing dark experience, 
 
 And the strong sun of love and hate, 
 
 And rain of gray adversity, 
 
 Have begotten at last, you, loved wonder immortal!" 
 
 If this be so, my body, 
 
 I shall despise you no longer: but revere you and watch 
 
 over you: 
 Flood-gate of the race: and shores of my sea of spirit. 
 
 106
 
 THE SUN-CHILDREN 
 
 FAR from the sun over the ages and the spaces of 
 the sky, 
 
 We children have come . . . 
 Far from the sun by strange spirals, and long trances 
 
 and struggles, 
 
 When we lay a seed in the mud of a steaming Earth, 
 When we swam in the waters of hushed creation, 
 When we crawled out and dwelt on the land, in the 
 
 grasses and thickets, 
 
 When we swung from the trees of the jungle, 
 When at last we arose and stepped forth on the 
 
 immense pilgrimage of man . . . 
 None may count even by millions the ages 
 Since far from the sun 
 And over the spaces and whirled in the skies, 
 We children have come. 
 
 Whence, our yearning back, 
 
 Our yearning for the sun that at dusk sinks into the 
 
 womb of the waters, 
 And at morn is born from the bath of the eastern 
 
 sea . . . 
 
 107
 
 Uhe 
 
 Our yearning for the peace and stillness of the sky 
 
 before the Earth was conceived, 
 Our yearning for the mother in the heavens and we but 
 
 a flake of her living fires. 
 
 108
 
 SUN, WITH A MILLION EYES 
 
 SUN, with a million eyes: spyer of every window 
 toward the east. 
 Sun, that scorches our faces. 
 Sun : light and fire . . . 
 
 The flame you jet begets life: 
 All has risen from sun-fire . . . 
 
 I too was sun-fire . . . 
 
 The sun is in me: I jet him forth into a new genera 
 tion: into speech, love, labor. 
 
 The sun rises and sets, and then arises again. 
 I rise and set, and my child rises again. 
 
 Thy fires in a woman and in a man draw one to the 
 
 other: 
 
 In thy radiance we behold each other, 
 Or when the moon snatches handfuls of thy glory 
 
 across the night 
 
 And spills thy stolen beams upon the city, 
 There do we see but wanly one another. 
 
 109
 
 ONE FLESH 
 
 IF MARRIAGE is to be one flesh, this twain made one, 
 Then I am married to the multitudinous world: 
 1 have passed through the hills and the sea, and they 
 
 through me: 
 Star-light and sun-light have drenched me, nestling 
 
 under my skin: 
 Yea, I have eaten of the sun when I have eaten of the 
 
 fruits of the field: 
 And I have drunk deep of the ocean . . . 
 
 All parts of my body have been elsewhere: 
 
 In other people: or in the grasses: or in the cow and 
 
 tiger: 
 Continually the stars rain their rays into the meadows 
 
 whereof I taste: 
 I am a meeting place for the tides of the waters of the 
 
 world . . . 
 
 No wonder then I feel so at home: 
 That love goes from me to all creation: 
 I am only loving myself. 
 
 110
 
 AT HOME 
 
 THE world is wild, 
 And it is a stormy world how the stars burn ! 
 How the sea rages! 
 
 Every atom is fighting for itself: in tempest and fire! 
 Tameless and wild! 
 
 But I too am wild: real child of this gypsy Mother . . . 
 And so at home, at home in the blast of the embattled 
 hours . 
 
 Ill-
 
 I COULD WRITE THE PSALMS AGAIN 
 
 I COULD write the psalms again, 
 I could raise on high a voice of thanksgiving, 
 I could pace the eastern hills and bid the gates lift, 
 Bid the gates lift that usher the dawn of the spirit . . . 
 For my joy is the joy unbidden, welling from the heart, 
 The joy of the Life that springs of itself from the 
 
 inmost recesses 
 When in still loneliness self meets with self. 
 
 112
 
 PRAISE 
 
 WHAT song shall I sing to the heavens? 
 My heart is bounding with music: 
 I want to pour out my praise to the everlasting heights: 
 For the gift of life is apparent: as with wings I am lifted: 
 And the love of my heart goes forth to the ends of the 
 
 Earth, 
 And I gather the folk in my arms, and for marvel of 
 
 life 
 Want to chant to the heavens praise for the gift and 
 
 the glory. 
 
 113
 
 DANCERS 
 
 I HAVE a notion tonight, that the Earth and I, locked 
 in each other s arms, 
 Are dancing madly through the skies 
 Overcome with the sublimity of life, 
 While those whirling dervishes, the speedy suns, 
 Pause to behold us . 
 
 114
 
 WASHINGTON SQUARE 
 
 STARLESS and still . . . 
 Who stopped this heart? 
 Who bound this city in a trance? 
 
 With open eyes the sleeping houses stare at the Park: 
 And among nude boughs the slumbering hanging 
 
 moons are gazing: 
 And somnambulant drops of melting snow glide from 
 
 the roofs and patter on the pave . . . 
 I in a dream draw the echoes of my footfall silvery 
 
 sharp . . . 
 
 Sleep-walking city! 
 
 Who are the wide-eyed prowlers in the night? 
 
 What nightmare-ridden cars move through their own 
 
 far thunder? 
 What living death of the wind rises, crackling the 
 
 drowsy twigs? 
 
 In the enchantment of the ebb of life, 
 
 In the miracle of millions stretched in their rooms 
 
 unconscious and breathing, 
 In the sleep of the broadcast people, 
 
 115
 
 lldasbittQton Square 
 
 In the multitude of dreams rising from the houses, 
 I pause, frozen in a spell. 
 
 We sleep in the eternal arms of night: 
 
 We give ourselves, in the heart of peril, 
 
 To sheer unconsciousness: 
 
 Silently sliding through space, the huge globe turns. 
 
 I cannot go: 
 
 I dream that behind a window one wakes, a woman 
 
 She is thinking of me. 
 
 116
 
 SKY-LOVER 
 
 SKY-LOVER! 
 Embracer of the hiving stars! 
 The swarms of golden bees! 
 I feel the strength of thine ancient arms 
 And the power of thy going forth through endless 
 night. 
 
 In the gross darkness thou hast spun a widening spiral 
 
 of light, 
 
 Moons, stars and glowing suns: 
 But through these thou goest forth into the unadven- 
 
 tured abysses, 
 Chaos unconquered, 
 We going with thee. 
 
 117
 
 o 
 
 THE FLOCKS 
 
 N A DOWNY feather of the dove, Earth, I lie: 
 The bird is flying down eternity. 
 
 Far out, and far under and over, the flocks of stars are 
 
 flying as in the autumn winds . . . 
 Whither are they winging? to what nests in what 
 
 radiant South? 
 
 And what echoes of their songs come to me, 
 And who is the gentle master of the homing birds? 
 
 118
 
 H 
 
 THE TREE 
 
 E SANG as if the heavens held only two things: 
 God and himself. 
 
 Was his voice heard as the roving Spirit leaned toward 
 
 the Tree of the Skies 
 And parted the leaves of the stars, 
 And peered through at the tiny green blossom, the 
 
 Earth, 
 And on Earth, the little singer, standing and praising 
 
 the Lord? 
 
 Yet here I am: the petal of earth swaying in an ocean 
 
 of far star-leaves: 
 Yet here I am, living, aware, and singing with loud full 
 
 voice. 
 
 119
 
 Settings 
 
 BOOKS 
 
 ONL Y on the days when my life has ebbed 
 Do I feel the need of books to renew me . . . 
 But on the days when I am quick and pouring with life, 
 I turn to ihe book of the -world at whatever page I happen 
 
 to open it, 
 And read what never yet was told in ink. 
 
 ARRIVAL AND DEPARTURE 
 
 hen I gel there, once I told myself, 
 The fight will be over. 
 
 But when I got there, to my amazement, 
 
 The fight was not over . . . 
 
 And I see now it will never be over, even in death. 
 
 120
 
 Jottings 
 
 EXILE 
 
 Fou cannot exile me : 
 Wherever you send me, my dear old self goes, along, 
 Carrying on his back the bag in which all the ages since 
 
 creation have thrown their winnings, 
 So that he staggers under riches . . . 
 How then can you exile me ? 
 
 THE EDGE OF THE POSSIBLE 
 
 TT ast is the city, concealing fires behind its walls, its 
 r streets and its faces : 
 
 So for the adventure I choose the spacious night, 
 And go forth marvelling at what may happen : 
 Tripping along, breathless, on the edge of the possible. 
 
 121
 
 Settings 
 
 THE BAFFLED ONE 
 
 \TOT until you find a meaning in yourself, will you 
 * find a meaning in the world. 
 That is what ails you . . . 
 
 Your inner con fusion you perceive all about you, 
 Once you get purpose into your life, and you will see it in 
 all life. 
 
 122
 
 RENEWAL 
 
 I RENEWED some forgotten friendships: 
 My old friend, the sky, and my comrade, the 
 
 open air: 
 
 My dear cronies, the hills, and my lover, the sea: 
 I went out and we had an afternoon of it together. 
 
 They gave me tokens: 
 
 You may taste the sea on my cheeks, and the fragrance 
 
 of the hills is in my hair: 
 And the tan on my face is a memento of the friendly 
 
 sky. 
 
 123
 
 THE ADORED ONE 
 I 
 
 (To Her of the Many 
 Films) 
 
 YOUR smile is very sweet: yet it baffles me: 
 Your brown eyes are large and clear: yet the 
 woman who peers through them is mys 
 terious. 
 
 Though your talk flows in melody, winged with thought, 
 Though you seem so young, yet so quaintly wise, 
 You are deep, you are subtle, girl-faced woman! 
 
 Dove and serpent, is it? 
 Much am I baffled! 
 
 124
 
 THE ADORED ONE 
 II 
 
 BE WHAT you are: all women in one: 
 Be the coarse fool, and the mean and petty 
 
 complainer! 
 
 Be the slave, be the courtesan! 
 Be the haughty ruler of hearts, and the cruel strong 
 empress! 
 
 Be also sweet, gentle, gracious: 
 The lovely child, and the wistful seeker after affection : 
 The calm woman, deep in brooding wisdom: 
 The healthy comrade, free and fleet-footed: 
 The watchful mother, with wings spread out for the 
 loved one! 
 
 All that you hide mars what you reveal : 
 
 Be what you are, sure, various, strong: 
 
 Baffle us no longer: you are only baffling yourself. 
 
 125
 
 Y 
 
 THE ADORED ONE 
 III 
 
 OU are proud and strong, lion-hearted girl; 
 But do you know what love is? 
 
 .You are quick with the colors of beauty, star-gleaming 
 
 girl: 
 But do you know what passion is? 
 
 Oh, the skies of Spring are here: 
 
 Where is a mate for the moon-warm darkness? 
 
 Crickets shall shrill in the grass as you walk alone. 
 
 What is the beauty of the lilies when no sun floods 
 
 them? 
 
 They die, adorable one, they die in the grasses! 
 Do not turn away from the splendid shining of love: 
 But take your pride and your strength and with your 
 
 two hands cast them in the dust: 
 Give up to love, as in death, to be born again: 
 You will come back radiant, you will come back bear 
 
 ing the sunrise, 
 Filling the light of the world with the light of your eyes. 
 
 126
 
 THE ADORED ONE 
 IV 
 
 YOU play the queen: 
 But I remember a simple girl singing in the dairy: 
 Men were tamed by her sweetness. 
 
 You crown your hair with paste: 
 
 Have you forgotten the radiance of your undrugged 
 
 eyes, 
 And the quickness of your smile? 
 
 I only say: Be yourself . . . 
 
 What in your play has reached down into the crater 
 
 of your human heart, 
 
 Or walked the sun-clear peaks of your spirit? 
 Be demon: be angel: oh, be woman! 
 Queenship is but a garment hiding your glory: 
 Crowns but muffle the night-dream of your hair. 
 
 127
 
 THE ADORED ONE 
 V 
 
 HAVE you kissed that kiss that draws open the 
 door of life, 
 Loosening the floods, till your body sings with strong 
 
 joy? 
 
 Do you know the tremor of the spirit that rises on a 
 
 glance and a touch 
 And braids the stars in your hair? 
 
 Do you come shining to work in the gray morning 
 Because your lips are dewy with the imprint of a kiss? 
 
 Oh, glowing one, you walk in emptiness: 
 
 You distrust and despise yourself and the world of men: 
 
 In your triumph you taste defeat: and in your glory 
 
 vanity: 
 Go and know love, the giver of victories. 
 
 128
 
 THE ADORED ONE 
 VI 
 
 WHOSE adored one is this? For her beauty walks 
 on light to the ends of the Earth: 
 The Australian and Spaniard must sigh at a glance 
 of her face. 
 
 Many bring gifts to you, kneeling in the dust before 
 
 your loveliness: 
 Must I come, too? 
 Ah, no! ah, no! 
 
 I will stand before you: my eyes a little higher than 
 
 your eyes: 
 
 I will demand tribute of you, 
 Even the tribute I bring: 
 Yourself for myself: equal and free. 
 
 If you want worshippers, take these secret thirsters 
 after your beauty . . . 
 
 The honey they bring is bitter . . . 
 
 But if you want love, you can only get what you give: 
 
 You too must adore the beloved, and kneel down your 
 self when he kneels. 
 
 129
 
 FRIENDS 
 
 NOW the day dies, and the workers trudge home 
 ward: 
 
 They pass my window: 
 I see a few lights twinkling in the tall buildings, as if the 
 
 evening star were reflected . . . 
 
 What hands are emptying the glowing urn of peace on 
 the dark-wayed city? 
 
 My friend and I sat smoking in the little room: 
 
 Lightly we took the ball of the Earth and tossed it in 
 talk to one another: 
 
 Unwitting the generation about us was held up to our 
 probing: 
 
 Our hearts and minds were glowing urns of unthink 
 able riches which we poured for each other. 
 
 Is the evening so calm and tender because it has let go 
 its full floods, giving love in its radiance? 
 
 As the evening were my friend and I: 
 
 We parted sure of each other: peace was upon us and 
 serene love. 
 
 130
 
 AS TO BEING MADE A FOOL OF 
 
 THAT bothered you, didn t it? 
 That prevented you from entering into strange 
 
 adventures, 
 Especially with women . . . 
 
 After all, however, it is not so bad: 
 
 If that be the price of experience 
 
 Then I must pay it: 
 
 For to be laughed at, and to play the fool 
 
 Is cheap, by all odds, in exchange for the gift of life. 
 
 131
 
 THE WRITER OF MANY BOOKS 
 
 THE WRITER of many books was weary: 
 "Enough of ink!" said he, "Enough of words! 
 Would I were a builder of bridges or a breaker of 
 
 stones . . . 
 Then at least something real were done . . ." 
 
 Out on a lonely farm in Montana, at the close of day, 
 The woman brooding toward insanity, 
 Lit a lamp, and looked in his book: and the tears came: 
 And the ice-pack round her heart melted down in a 
 
 torrent . . . 
 Blessed release! 
 
 Far in Texas a tubercular boy was plotting a marriage, 
 But he read the tale, and his heart broke in his 
 
 breast . . . 
 
 "I shall not send my blight on the unborn babe," 
 So he wrote the author, 
 "No: I am off to Arizona tomorrow." 
 
 In a New York hall room a girl was dreaming of suicide, 
 She read his words, and as to a call of trumpets her 
 soul rose and went forth . . .. 
 
 132
 
 TKHriter f flfcan Boofes 
 
 A seed so small that the eye misses it 
 Starts in the womb the growth of a human child . . . 
 Ye that scatter the seed of words, scorn not the sowing, 
 Nor the Master that sent ye out in the barren fields. 
 
 133
 
 THE MIGHTY HOUR 
 
 "PHESE ARE the days of immense and solitary 
 1 strength : 
 
 When to be alone is no hardship 
 And to go forth among men is a satisfying joy . . . 
 
 For I have found myself: 
 
 I have ceased to be ashamed of the things I cannot do 
 And have become proud of the things I can do: 
 I have accepted simple living and endless labor: 
 I have accepted peril and risk all around me, 
 And I have become patient with the world and with 
 my own faltering. 
 
 I live with this moment, and suck out its particular 
 
 essence, 
 Whether it be the bakery lunchroom and the shopgirls 
 
 about me, 
 Whether it be some poor dull person stuffed with rich 
 
 eating, 
 Whether it be stars over the snow and the sharp winds 
 
 of winter, 
 Or whether it be my narrow room, and unbusied 
 
 loneliness . . . 
 
 134
 
 Mour 
 
 So living, I give myself to the purpose of the Earth . . . 
 I let the Mother put forth through me as she puts forth 
 
 through the least bud on her breast, 
 I open the way for the rise of that sap and shape it for 
 
 men and women . . . 
 And so I am what I was born for: and peace comes in 
 
 so being: 
 And strength . . . 
 For so Earth herself is for me, and even the stars in 
 
 their courses . . . 
 
 Is this egotism? 
 
 Shall tomorrow break me in the dust till my cry goes up 
 
 to the heavens? 
 
 Shall a bitter cup come to my lips after this splendor? 
 Even so ... 
 
 I yet shall know what is possible in the mighty hour, 
 I yet shall know that a gaint sleeps in my heart, 
 And that after the despoiled days have gone over 
 Again I shall be myself and live in that victory. 
 
 135
 
 I II 
 
 WE UNBORN
 
 w 
 
 THE MOTHER 
 
 HAT DOES the woman sing to the love-seed 
 under her heart? 
 
 "Oh, my beloved, unborn, 
 
 Oh, lips in the darkness that yet shall be kissing my 
 
 breast: 
 
 I send my life-blood into you, 
 And great love upon you: 
 Hushed in the pool of the dark you blossom in me! 
 
 "Beloved! I make this charge upon you: 
 
 When out of my littleness you come to the sudden 
 
 vastness, 
 And faces are about you, and cities, and the winds of 
 
 the deep: 
 
 Fear nothing, baby: 
 My arms are there: my breasts: your mother meets 
 
 you!" 
 
 Thus sings the woman: this is the song of all women: 
 So sang a woman to me. 
 
 139
 
 tlbe jflDotber 
 
 Tides of the darkness ! Cave of the midnight ! 
 
 Am I still seed ? 
 
 What life-blood flows through the Earth to me: 
 
 What great love is upon me : 
 
 Who sings ? . . . What Mother ? 
 
 140
 
 T 
 
 DEATH 
 
 HIS starry world, and I in it . 
 How can I get out of it? 
 
 I go to sleep, but when I wake I am still here . . . 
 All night my blood-drops circled through my body as 
 
 the stars circle through the body of the world . . . 
 All night the flame of life burned in my breast and 
 
 brain as the stars burn in the breast and brain of 
 
 the world . . . 
 
 And what is Death? 
 
 It is a swing-door. I push through, coming out on the 
 
 other side . . . 
 But the other side is the world, just as this side is the 
 
 world . . . 
 There is no escape . . . 
 
 So I had best do my work now, lest I shall have to do it 
 
 later . . . 
 I had best be myself now, lest later I shall have to battle 
 
 with the crusts upon myself, 
 Lest later I shall have to begin again at the beginning, 
 
 unlearning all my faults . . . 
 
 141
 
 5>eatb 
 
 This was as true a hundred million years ago, 
 This will be as true a hundred million years from now, 
 As it is now, at this moment. 
 
 142
 
 LOOKING DOWN ON EARTH 
 
 LOOKING down on Earth, 
 As from some distant heaven, 
 
 And seeing body after body drop and the life fly from it, 
 All day long and all night a host of the dead arising: 
 It seemed indeed a curious life, that life: 
 It seemed indeed a curious end, that death . . . 
 
 Then, here on Earth, 
 I sitting at this desk in this small room, 
 So thrillingly alive, 
 
 Yet soon to meet that fine decisive moment, 
 Pause in strange awe to think that what these others, 
 These hosts of dead, have passed through, 
 I too shall soon experience, down to the last gray detail: 
 Darkness, with secret gleams of a rising twilight 
 beyond . . . 
 
 Not only these others (ah, that is strange enough!) 
 
 But I myself: all that 1 am, 
 
 To pass through the black process, 
 
 Turning away in agony from the sweetness of the sun 
 
 and the crowds, 
 Renouncing all, with bitter dread and loathing: 
 
 143
 
 Down n Eartb 
 
 Even as the babe in the womb, could it be conscious, 
 Would pass into the mystery of the world . . . 
 
 Ah, world, art then a womb? 
 
 Are we, the living, but the unborn children, 
 
 And is death birth? 
 
 144
 
 THE RUNNER IN THE SKIES 
 
 WHO is the runner in the skies, 
 With her blowing scarf of stars, 
 And our Earth and sun hovering like bees about her 
 
 blossoming heart? 
 
 Her feet are on the winds, where space is deep, 
 Her eyes are nebulous and veiled, 
 She hurries through the night to a far lover. 
 
 145
 
 IN THE THEATER 
 
 LAST NIGHT in the theater 
 The fleet-footed dancers bowed in the spotlight: 
 Then they clasped, and invisible hands shaped them 
 
 like waters that never spilled: 
 And at once through me rose the mists of creation: 
 And I saw that chaos, the illimitable nebula of the 
 
 universe 
 
 Had jetted forth this pair: the eternal pair: 
 Sex: the dancers: the light-footed trippers on the Earth. 
 
 146
 
 THE SURVEYOR 
 
 A FANCY teases my brain: 
 From the North Star the Surveyor drops his 
 
 plumb-line, 
 It unravels down to the Earth, and beyond the Earth 
 
 through the spacious gulfs beneath . . . 
 He measures the heights and depths of the heavens: 
 Who shall measure the width ? 
 
 147
 
 A HANDFUL OF DUST 
 
 I STOOPED to the silent Earth and lifted a handful 
 of her dust . . . 
 
 Was it a handful of humanity I held? 
 
 Was it the crumbled and blown beauty of a woman or 
 a babe? 
 
 For over the hills of Earth blows the dust of the 
 withered generations: 
 
 And not a water-drop in the sea but was once a blood- 
 drop or a tear: 
 
 And not an atom of sap in leaf or bud but was once the 
 love-sap in a human being: 
 
 And not a lump of soil but was once the rosy curve of 
 lip or breast or cheek , . . 
 
 Handful of dust, you stagger me ... 
 
 I did not dream the world was so full of the dead: 
 
 And the air 1 breathe so rich with the bewildering past: 
 
 Kiss of what girls is on the wind? 
 
 Whisper of what lips is in the cup of my hand? 
 
 Cry of what deaths is in the break of the wave tossed 
 
 by the sea? 
 
 I am enfolded in an air of rushing wings: 
 I am engulfed in clouds of love-lives gone . . . 
 
 148
 
 B IHanfcf ul of JDust 
 
 Who leans yonder? Helen of Greece? 
 
 Who walks with me? Isolde? 
 
 The trees are shaking down the blossoms from Juliet s 
 
 breast: 
 And the bee drinks honey from the lips of David . . . 
 
 Come, girl, my comrade: 
 
 Stand close, sun-tanned one, with your bright eyes 
 
 lifted: 
 
 Behold this dust . . . 
 
 This is you: this of the Earth under our feet is you: 
 Raised by what miracle? shaped by what magic? 
 Breathed into by what god? 
 
 And a hundred years hence, one like myself may come, 
 And stoop, and take a handful of the yielding Earth. 
 And never dream that in his palm 
 Lies she that laughed and ran and lived beside this sea 
 On an afternoon a hundred years before . . . 
 
 Listen to the dust in this hand: 
 Who is trying to speak to us? 
 
 149
 
 ASSURANCE 
 
 YEA, THERE are as many stars under the Earth as 
 over the Earth . . . 
 
 Plenty of room to roll around in has our planet . . . 
 And I, at the edge of the porch, 
 Hearing the crickets shrill in the star-thick armies of 
 
 grass, 
 And beholding over the spread of Earth the spread of 
 
 the heavens . . . 
 
 Drink this deep moment in my pilgrimage, 
 With a sense of how forever I have been alive, 
 With a conviction that I shall go on, ever safe, ever 
 
 growing, 
 
 The stars to be included in my travels, 
 And the future sure before me. 
 
 150
 
 THE RISEN ONES 
 
 BEGINNING millenniums back 
 We were given of the cup of the Earth to drink: 
 A cup of the blood of torment and love: 
 A cup set to our emerging and vanishing lips again and 
 
 again through a million years: 
 And we have waxed on agony: seed has become man. 
 
 But behold! now from the rivers of blood the prophets 
 
 of peace lift up, 
 
 Out of the pain rises a running and winged joy, 
 And out of the lamentation springs a laughter! 
 
 151
 
 THE DREAMER IN ME 
 
 THE DREAMER in me keeps on dreaming though 
 my lips are babbling and my eyes are watchful . . . 
 
 I may be in the railroad terminal speaking to a friend. 
 
 The dreamer is on a warm moist hill under the cloud- 
 soft skies, 
 
 He feels the Earth moving and smells the flowers down 
 to their roots, 
 
 He pierces the blue heavens with his wings. 
 
 Then I look round and think, how strange: 
 
 Stone walls: crowds: my friend and I ... 
 
 Yet all of us seen by the dreamer as a little blur in the 
 skies, 
 
 As a patter in immensity . . . 
 
 Where are we? where is Earth? where are the skies? 
 
 The dreamer shivers and laughs: 
 
 It is so miraculous, visionary and grotesque, 
 
 Such nonsense, this reality . . . 
 
 Yet my friend and I go on talking as if there were 
 nothing strange in it at all. 
 
 152
 
 WE UNBORN 
 
 I 
 
 f AWAKE: 
 
 Midnight, star-shouldered, is leaning over me. 
 
 I must to my desk, and light the lamp, and stare at the 
 
 flesh of my hands and legs: 
 Marveling to breathe and be alive. 
 
 I open the window: I lean out in the dark. 
 
 Stars! shall you answer my cry tonight? 
 
 Earth ! shall you turn to the call of your son ? 
 
 Where is the answerer? Where are the lips of the 
 
 midnight? 
 Oh, world, my belove d, whisper to me! 
 
 Surely my love for you has been welcome in the dark 
 ness of the night: 
 
 Surely, Mother, the asking child shall be taught: 
 Though I am little in the flesh, am I not large in the 
 love of my heart? 
 
 153
 
 Me ZTlnborn 
 
 ii 
 
 I sit at my desk: 
 
 I take the eye of Science and spy out the endless ether 
 
 floating with worlds, 
 But of all those stars, those numberless millions beneath 
 
 and above, 
 Only the little hasty Earth under my feet. 
 
 Millions of the sprawling bodies of men clothe like 
 
 a sea the slopes of this planet, 
 But from all that naked flesh lying on the globe, 
 Here do I rise, not one of them: but I, 
 Myself . . . 
 
 Ill 
 
 I take the wings of thought, 
 
 Up from the Earth I soar, I scale the skies quicker than 
 
 light, 
 
 And the planet whirls to a moon beneath my feet, 
 And drops through the gulfs, a stone, 
 And dwindles to a star . . . 
 Still spreads the Milky Way ages above the reach of 
 
 my fingers, 
 And all the sides of the amphitheatre of Eternity hold 
 
 tiers on tiers of the far stars, 
 And the monstrous abyss is scattered with a sowing 
 
 of stars, 
 
 154
 
 Tide TUnborn 
 
 And looping its twinkling sun, the grain of the Earth 
 is shining . . . 
 
 But there is the body I left: sitting in the narrow room: 
 
 Writing at the desk: 
 
 It pauses: the face lifts: the eyes stare in the lamp 
 light: 
 
 It questions ... it questions! 
 
 I drop: 
 
 I am back in my room: I am at this desk: 
 
 Tut! skies? A picture hanging on the immense walls 
 
 of my mind: 
 
 The Earth is a curious nugget in the palm of my hand: 
 I am the sustaining and enfolding ether of the universe! 
 
 IV 
 
 I gaze at the ash of my cigar: 
 
 I become smaller than a pin-point: I climb inside the 
 
 ash: 
 Lo, a world immense and miraculous as the star-sown 
 
 universe! 
 
 I am standing in the spinning of atom-worlds, 
 I am pausing in the rising and setting of innumerable 
 
 suns, 
 I am lost in the fleeing of dead gray moons in the 
 
 dark . . . 
 
 I laugh: I fleck off the ash: it scatters: 
 
 And lo, I am still here, face to face with Self. 
 
 155
 
 Tide IHnborn 
 
 Ah, not that one thing is more miraculous than another, 
 But that somehow, struck from this mass and motion, 
 
 not you nor the sun, 
 
 But I, I am here, in the center and thick of it: 
 This torch of a body with a brain shedding invisible 
 
 light: 
 
 This Self, this secret cave I may retire to : 
 This paradox of outer appearance and inner perception: 
 This net that catches stars and people as if they were 
 
 fish in the infinite sea: 
 This strainer wherethrough all tides of life pass, leaving 
 
 deposits: 
 This tool working on the world: this flame burning 
 
 into the beings of others: 
 This lover and hater casting light and shadow: 
 This creature: this creator: 
 This dwarf: this god: 
 This is the dumb-mouthed miracle my questions are 
 
 shattered on ! 
 
 VI 
 
 With all the heavens to choose from: 
 
 I that may have dropped once through the Milky Way, 
 
 Sky to sky falling, 
 
 How did I ever pick, not only the Earth, 
 
 Poor little brown ball, ever half-dark and half-wintry, 
 
 156
 
 TUnborn 
 
 But that infinitesimal pair, that woman and man, 
 
 In the quaint hill-house at the head of the rambling 
 
 street, 
 
 And take on I that had measured the heavens 
 This form that now is bowed at this desk, writing this 
 
 song of questionings? 
 
 VII 
 
 The room swims out on space: 
 
 And I see that the finger of greatness touches my fore 
 head: 
 And that size is nothing: experience is all. 
 
 For the kiss of my beloved shrinks night to the rift of 
 
 her lips, 
 And the death of my child darkens sun and moon in the 
 
 firmament, 
 And my heart s song turns to an echo the large music 
 
 of the spheres, 
 And my spirit s dream makes the heavens the shadow 
 
 of my gliding feet. 
 
 VIII 
 
 I am as a wave fleeing before the flood of the ages: 
 The rush of the ocean-river pushes me on: it lifts crea 
 tively through me: 
 It yet shall sweep me out into the night. 
 
 157
 
 We TUnborn 
 
 Oh, Ocean, eddying with spindrift of stars and moons, 
 Oh, Mother-Ocean, how did you beget me? 
 
 And now the voice of the Ocean rolls into song in the 
 channels of my heart: 
 
 IX 
 
 "I am the Mother: 
 
 I am the Ocean shaped of the waters of life: 
 
 My body is the spiraling torrents of Life across Eternity: 
 
 Out of the mouth of darkness I came pouring, 
 
 And down through night I descended, a child of waters, 
 
 A singing girl whose body grew hollow with the drifts 
 
 of the suns . . . 
 
 For the nebula of my childishness was shot with dreams, 
 And I eddied toward the light that opens in your mind, 
 And I shaped toward the love that lies in your heart, 
 And I groped toward division into millions of gods, 
 The one made many . . . 
 
 "In a fury I have grown: ages but the crusts I have 
 
 broken through: 
 Skies but the hollowness in the depths of my waters 
 
 wherethrough I have sent my strength. 
 Suns but pods I have burst, scattering seeds of planets : 
 Earth but a bud of mist that opened before my yearning 
 
 into hills: 
 And the hills, mating with my love, opened out into 
 
 seeds, 
 
 158
 
 We "(Unborn 
 
 And the seeds unfolded into animals, 
 
 And the vague-brained animals blossomed into man: 
 
 And still I grow: through you, I grow: 
 
 You in your little room somewhere suspended in the 
 
 sky-egg of the stars : 
 That egg, the womb of your Mother! 
 
 "Son: my beloved! 
 
 1 am the Mother: 
 
 And though your body is hidden within me, 1 lift 
 
 through you, you lift through me: 
 For I am the Ocean of life dividing into millions of 
 
 channels: 
 
 You are one of the channels: 
 Together we innumerable waters pour through the 
 
 heavens, 
 And there shall be many minglings until we grow into 
 
 gods: 
 
 Growing forever through torment, travail and love: 
 Reaching toward the deaths that are births: 
 And you are that part of me that is creative as I : 
 Your will is on the reins of the stars even as mine is 
 
 upon them: 
 Created, you have become a creator. 
 
 "Son: my beloved! 
 
 Love death, the releaser: 
 
 Give yourself grown to the outward-opening gates: 
 
 159
 
 TKHe "(Unborn 
 
 Pass from the sun-woven littleness of the heavens 
 
 To the spaces of my arms: 
 
 Be born! be born! Many and many await you!" 
 
 X 
 
 Star-shouldered midnight! Room solid about me! 
 Flesh of my hand holding the pausing pen! 
 How here, cooped in, shall I realize the vision? 
 
 Lo, I will bag the stars, clapping the far millions of 
 
 them in : 
 This scoop is the little womb of the Mother. 
 
 I will recede in phantasy a million years back 
 And stand in the sun-fire from which I sprang, 
 And swim the dark river of my life up the ages: 
 That river is the flowing blood of the Mother. 
 
 I will take a string and hold one end of it on the Earth 
 And one end touching the seven high Pleiades, 
 And I will describe a circle around the Earth: 
 This huge sphere of skies is but an egg in the body of 
 the Mother. 
 
 XI 
 
 Mother: 
 
 Oh, thou reaching me through thy body with life-blood 
 and love: 
 
 160
 
 THnt>orn 
 
 So deep within thee I bide: so thoroughly thou growest 
 
 through me: 
 
 So thoroughly I grow through thee: 
 That though the slant of infinity finds me as a mote of 
 
 flesh on the mote of a world, 
 The heavens are but feeders of my growth and the 
 
 Earth is my supper before the night of death: 
 The ages of thine agony and mine are the pains of my 
 
 growing: 
 They that love me and they that hate me are thy hands 
 
 shaping me: 
 And the streets are the running track of my soul. 
 
 Yea, these people are thyself and myself, Mother: 
 Through a million years we have been poured through 
 
 each other: 
 Through gate after gate of the human Mothers I have 
 
 come 
 
 Up the alley of the ages: often a mother myself . . . 
 Oh, generations, we have passed through each other! 
 Oh, houses of the flesh, we have dwelt in each other, 
 
 heart within heart! 
 Oh, people, it is for this I am drawn to you with such 
 
 unsearchable love! 
 This is the mass of blended life the Mother is growing 
 
 through. 
 
 XII 
 
 Mother, may I not well sing the amazing song of life? 
 
 161
 
 We "Cinborn 
 
 Oh, may I not well lift the song of my adoration? 
 This gift is too great for the heart of me so tiny and 
 
 throbbing: 
 Bear me on thy tides and pour through me into great 
 
 and unwithheld creations and love: 
 Let my lips in the darkness bear witness to thee: 
 Let my works be thy works through the toil of my 
 
 hands: 
 Let me go forth in the day dawning, dropping the stars 
 
 of thy heavens on the darkened streets: 
 I am thy son, and I would have thee take joy in me: 
 I am thy unborn, Mother, moving toward the morn 
 
 of my nativity. 
 
 162
 
 INDEX OF FIRST LINES 
 
 PAGE 
 
 A fancy teases my brain 147 
 
 Ah, had I the wings now 105 
 
 Ask for no mild millennium 53 
 
 Beginning millenniums back 151 
 
 Be what you are : all women in one 125 
 
 Bitter, bitter 42 
 
 Body, whence come mind and soul 106 
 
 Breast of Earth, with all these sea-worn stones 64 
 
 Civilization ! 
 
 Death and birth dog us 
 
 Do you think, my boy, that when I put my arms about you. 
 
 Ever the same this love of the weak 44 
 
 Far from the sun over the ages and spaces of the sky. . . . 107 
 
 Fierce hunger has come upon me 97 
 
 Go a little aside from the noise of the world 62 
 
 Have we given up thy spell, Renunciation ? 72 
 
 Have you kissed that kiss that draws open the doors of life ? 128 
 
 Ha! you count it horrible that the murder was committed. 58 
 
 Here is strength, here 31 
 
 He sang as if the heavens held only two things : God 
 
 and himself 1 19 
 
 How many are strong enough to reject riches? 61 
 
 I am no sorrier for you than I am for myself 100 
 
 I am so happy these days 98 
 
 I awake 153 
 
 I could write the psalms again 112 
 
 If marriage is to be one flesh, this twain made one no 
 
 If you want to find your brothers 50
 
 flnoei of ff irst Xines 
 
 I have a notion to-night that the Earth and I, locked in 
 
 each other s arms 114 
 
 I have heard of a great love 19 
 
 In a dark hour, tasting the Earth 70 
 
 In the fragrance of her simple heart I still bathe myself . . 88 
 
 I renewed some forgotten friendships 123 
 
 I saw the unwritten face of the child 65 
 
 Is that your reason? The Children? Their future? 59 
 
 I stooped to the silent Earth and lifted a handful of her 
 
 dust 148 
 
 I take as my master, not you nor myself nor the past 66 
 
 It was as if myself sat down beside me, 3 
 
 It was you, the glowing youth that went forth 56 
 
 I want a woman for the adventure 92 
 
 I was as a sieve for the wind this morning 41 
 
 Last night in the theater 146 
 
 Late, and lonely and faint for sleep 101 
 
 Let nothing bind you 5 
 
 Looking down on Earth 143 
 
 Love 86 
 
 My life does not belong to me. 
 
 Neither from the woe 39 
 
 Not until you find a meaning in yourself 122 
 
 Now the day dies and the workers trudge homeward 130 
 
 Of old, the psalmist said that the morning stars sing together 23 
 
 Oh, my being, opening into the dazzle of sunrise 85 
 
 O my most bitter mood 30 
 
 On a downy feather of the dove, Earth, I lie 118 
 
 Once I freed myself from my duties to tasks and people 
 
 and went down to the cleansing sea 13 
 
 One would think the dead were burying the living, not 
 
 the living the dead 55 
 
 Only on the days when my life has ebbed 120 
 
 Priests are in bad odour 46 
 
 Push off the clinging arms 21 
 
 Sin ! sin ! sin ! 1 1 
 
 Sky-lover 117
 
 Unoei of jf irst Xines 
 
 Starless and still H5 
 
 Stuck in the mire of many philosophies 25 
 
 Sun, with a million eyes 109 
 
 That bothered you, didn t it ? ;. I 3 I 
 
 The aesthetes read and wax contemptuous or enthusiastic. 32 
 The babe is the beautifully cunning dust that desires and 
 
 breathes 104 
 
 The dreamer in me keeps on dreaming 152 
 
 The haunted heart beseeches me 20 
 
 The love of man for woman and woman for man 17 
 
 The old hag sat on the park bench, picking her teeth.... 45 
 
 There comes a moment when to believe is not enough... 49 
 
 There was a man called pure 33 
 
 The sea is itself: it does not fear to be calm or stormy.. 63 
 
 The sea put a finger of foam on its lips of waves 65 
 
 These are the days of immense and solitary strength.... 134 
 
 The sea whispers to me of women 64 
 
 The soul is an abyss 48 
 
 The wheeling heavens, at this moment wheeling 28 
 
 The world is wild in 
 
 The writer of many books was weary 132 
 
 They set the slave free, striking off his chains 24 
 
 This starry world and I in it 141 
 
 Though I am little as all little things 103 
 
 Vast is this city, concealing fires behind its walls, its 
 
 streets and its faces 121 
 
 We spat on the dirt and the flesh 51 
 
 We, that are the very waters of change 67 
 
 What does the woman sing to the love-seed under her heart? 139 
 
 What face lifts, so perfect in profile ? 99 
 
 What is the tiny flame of my match 63 
 
 What song shall I sing to the heavens ? 113 
 
 When a woman is wanted 95 
 
 When from the brooding home 74 
 
 When I get there, so I told myself 120 
 
 When in the death of love 15 
 
 Where bides brotherhood 47 
 
 Where love once was, let there be no hate 16 
 
 Where may she of the hall-bedroom spend the love-hour? 90 
 
 Who can measure the agony of man ? 68 
 
 Who is the runner in the skies 145
 
 irnoei of Jffrst Xines 
 
 Whose adored one is this? For her beauty walks on light 
 
 to the ends of the Earth 129 
 
 Why am I restless ? 29 
 
 Why did you hate to be by yourself 7 
 
 Would you lay a pattern on life, and say, Thus shall ye live ? 26 
 
 Yea, there are as many stars under the Earth as over 
 
 the Earth 150 
 
 You and I in the night, spied on by stars 83 
 
 You are proud and strong, lion-hearted girl 126 
 
 You blame yourself 57 
 
 You cannot exile me 121 
 
 You play the queen 127 
 
 Your smile is very sweet: yet it baffles me 124
 
 LI BRACT
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 A 000 483 743 1