RECREATIONS
 
 RECREATIONS 
 
 BY J. T. 
 
 Verse -making was least of my virtues: I viewed with 
 
 despair 
 Wealth that never yet was but might be all that verse 
 
 making were 
 If the life would but lengthen to wish, let the mind 
 
 be laid bare. 
 So I said To do little is bad, to do nothing is 
 
 worse 
 
 And made verse." 
 (BROWNING: Ferishta s Fancies.) 
 
 But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his 
 
 separate star, 
 Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of 
 
 Things as They Are!" 
 
 (KIPLING: The Seven Seas; L Envoi.} 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 THE GORHAM PRESS 
 1915
 
 Copyright, 1915, by Richard G. Badffer 
 
 All Rights Reserved 
 
 PS 
 ?S"oo 
 
 T3 
 
 THE GORHAM PRESK, BOSTON. U. S. A.
 
 DEDICATION 
 
 Youth or maiden under the blossoming trees, 
 What may the breath of my far-off song waft 
 you? 
 
 Rather the drowsy hum of the golden bees 
 Is young and true. 
 
 Man or woman under the laden boughs, 
 
 Shall my dead words make live the thing you do? 
 
 Rather the summer s voice or your own vows 
 May comfort you. 
 
 You happiest ones under the glowing leaves. 
 
 Is mine a flame-tipt song to pierce you through? 
 
 Who knows but your children hear what echo 
 
 grieves 
 The hope in you? 
 
 Aged and Lonely under the naked limbs, 
 
 Can my last breath bring in the spring anew? 
 
 Nay, for the winter s mournful breathing dims 
 The life on you.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 A Song of Hell 9 
 
 Maidens 16 
 
 Haunted 17 
 
 The Poet 19 
 
 Found 21 
 
 Out of the Past: 
 
 Then and Now 25 
 
 Exiles 25 
 
 An Idol 27 
 
 Advice from the Gods 27 
 
 The Ivory Gate 28 
 
 In Hades 29 
 
 Psyche 31 
 
 In Egypt 32 
 
 King of Kings 35 
 
 The End 36 
 
 The Pearl Fisher 38 
 
 One Day: 
 
 A Song 52 
 
 Forever 52 
 
 Where ? 53 
 
 In the Garden 54 
 
 Tryst 55 
 
 Despair 56 
 
 Forgotten 57
 
 RECREATIONS
 
 A SONG OF HELL 
 
 Past the Cities of the Living, 
 
 Thro the Ashes of the Dead, 
 O er the Plains of Retribution 
 
 In my dying dream I fled, 
 Thro the Land of Eyeless Weeping, 
 
 Where the raging tears are fire 
 And the worm drives out all sleeping 
 
 With his torment of Desire. 
 
 In the sombre Antechamber 
 
 Of the Royal Presence Room, 
 I have hailed my haggard brothers 
 
 As they shrink before their doom; 
 And we hear a maiden singing 
 
 With a voice to buy her shame, 
 But the houri s arms are flinging 
 
 Far her gossameres of flame. 
 
 For the King is filled with sorrow, 
 
 And he bids his harem dance, 
 While he sinks in dreamy languor 
 
 Neath the anguish of their glance, 
 As their feet are gaily tripping 
 
 Through a maze of utter woe, 
 And the streaming flames are stripping 
 
 From their bodies, bare as snow; 
 
 As they dazzle him with whiteness, 
 Throwing high their tortured arms, 
 
 Singing with transmuted madness, 
 Luring him with hellish charms, 
 
 Writhing in delirious revel,
 
 Bathed in life, forever drenched 
 With the never-ending torments 
 Of Desire that s never quenched. 
 
 Who will soothe the King in sadness, 
 
 Who will share his bridal bed, 
 Who will drain the bitter gladness 
 
 Steeped in love forever dead? 
 Look, his eyes are slowly turning 
 
 To a woman s flowing hair, 
 Pale the lambent tongues are burning 
 
 Round her face so strangely fair. 
 
 Now his face is grim with passion, 
 
 Like a death his limbs are set, 
 Fast his soul is ebbing from him 
 
 What will such a love beget? 
 Sweeter swells the anguished wailing 
 
 As the semblance of the King 
 Into glowing mists is paling 
 
 Hanging in an amber ring: 
 
 Hanging in a ring of amber 
 
 Flames with flickering hearts of red, 
 Pulsing with the lust of ages 
 
 Round his bride s abhorrent head ; 
 Bright the cloud is settling slowly 
 
 Drenching her in shrouds of light, 
 She is given to him wholly 
 
 Love is born in Hell tonight. 
 
 Oh the melody of Chaos 
 
 Shouting loud with thund rous voice, 
 Like the barren winds cavernous, 
 
 When the King has made his choice; 
 10
 
 Incantations, bowlings, groanings, 
 Cursing at an outcast fate, 
 
 Shrieks of spirits, sobbings, moanings, 
 Wails of love, and prayers of hate. 
 
 Throbbing, writhing, panting, melting, 
 
 Mingled in unhallowed bliss, 
 Hear the ecstacy that s singing 
 
 In the Serpent s stinging hiss, 
 For the King is madly twining 
 
 Like an emerald of fire 
 And his jewelled coil is shining 
 
 In the furnace of desire. 
 
 But the Bride is wan with loathing 
 
 And she holds her face aside, 
 Feebly thrusting his head backward 
 
 As he tries to kiss his bride ; 
 See, the coils are crushing closely 
 
 Round her lily breasts of white, 
 And her arms are struggling vainly 
 
 She must lie with him to-night. 
 
 To a bridal couch of embers 
 
 He will drag her shrinking form, 
 To that chamber stark with terrors, 
 
 Where the outraged spirits swarm 
 Mock him with his lusts forgotten, 
 
 Call him by his hidden name, 
 Holding up the ghouls begotten 
 
 In that bed of nameless shame. 
 
 As her virgin breath is fleeting 
 
 From the tangles of her mate, 
 Back she casts a look entreating 
 II
 
 Blind with horror at her fate, 
 Looking as the bird ensnared 
 
 She had freed with her own 
 When she walked a care-free maiden, 
 
 Ere she heard the King s commands. 
 
 Oh the wildness of that seeking, 
 
 In the hell of her despair, 
 Oh the torn, dishonored beauty, 
 
 And her eyes that wildly stare ; 
 And the hopeless, pleading terror, 
 
 Streaming with dishevelled hair. 
 Meets my soul as in a mirror 
 
 Binds my soul and holds it there. 
 
 And I see my lost Oenonc 
 
 In a second s fleeting glance, 
 As my heart is stilled with Beauty, 
 
 In a muffled, beating trance, 
 Dim the Devil s Court is paling 
 
 To a blessed sea-girt land, 
 Where we walked at twilight failing, 
 
 Softly singing, hand in hand. 
 
 As the parched plains of Sorrow 
 
 Brood in purple mists away, 
 I must live again the morrow 
 
 Of that direful, bitter day. 
 When the King had sought her body 
 
 In the daylight growing dim, 
 When he lusted for her fairness 
 
 And she gave herself to him. 
 
 Oh the racking of the sobbing 
 
 When she laid her lost soul bare, 
 
 12
 
 Oh the agony of weeping 
 
 When she told me of the snare 
 
 I can hear a dead sea s silence 
 
 Round a waste of dismal shore 
 
 Silence of unuttered horror 
 She is His forevermore. 
 
 I can feel forgotten moonlight 
 
 Stealing over sea and hill, 
 I can hear her voiceless pleading 
 
 Dumb with grief that will not kill, 
 As she chants in maddened raving 
 
 Of a soul that s fled before 
 Her where is no shade of saving 
 
 From the King forevermore. 
 
 On my bosom gently rocking 
 
 That dear head of His disgrace, 
 Arms around her neck I m locking 
 
 In one dying, last embrace 
 But her spirit shrinking, fleeting, 
 
 Fleeting, and already flown, 
 Greets me with a mystic greeting, 
 
 Greets me with a Word unknown. 
 
 And the Word is past all knowing 
 
 Past all dreams of mortal ken, 
 But I know that Word remembered 
 
 Would bring back her soul again ; 
 Hark the Voice is growing clearer, 
 
 Vanished all the tortured years, 
 See her spirit hovers nearer 
 
 And my hair is wet with tears.
 
 Ah, the dews of night are falling, 
 
 Weeping as they wept of yore, 
 And her pleading voice is calling 
 
 Calling once, to call no more 
 She is speaking she is speaking 
 
 God at last the Word she spoke 
 Hovering near me will it reach me? 
 
 Oh too late! The Vision broke. 
 
 She is seeking, she is searching 
 
 As she pants in her despair 
 In an agony of hoping, 
 
 And her soul goes mad with prayer: 
 But the Word is lost forever 
 
 And all memory is cloud 
 In the splendor of Hell s passion 
 
 And the Devil s bridal shroud. 
 
 She has fallen, he is dragging 
 
 Her to chill the Seventh Hell, 
 And I shout in exultation 
 
 I am mad I loved her well 
 Loved her as my soul forgotten 
 
 In the loveless deaths I ve died, 
 Loved her in my age-long seeking 
 
 Loved her as the Devil s bride. 
 
 Swing ye fiends the crimson censers, 
 
 Dash their fire into my eyes, 
 Mock with memory remembered, 
 
 Rock my spirit as it lies 
 On the solemn billows fretful 
 
 With their sullen, stately sw T ell, 
 Till I sink in pain forgetful 
 
 Of a hell within a hell.
 
 Let me dash on thro the Ages 
 
 Battling rocks and flames and trees, 
 Let me suffer all the torments 
 
 Of thy loathsomest disease, 
 Cursed with life forever springing 
 
 From the charnel of the world, 
 Blind with memory of seeing 
 
 Her in outer darkness hurled. 
 
 O Thou God in Heaven creating 
 
 Agonies of Love and Death, 
 Breathing loving, breathing hating 
 
 In thy life-inspiring breath, 
 Look on thy forgotten plaything 
 
 Look, thou Devil-God and see 
 This thy master-piece of jesting 
 
 Laugh for all eternity !
 
 MAIDENS 
 
 Where shall I find you, maiden mine 
 Who never yet shone for me, 
 
 Under the sun of the sea s gold shine 
 There in the dream-dusk sea? 
 
 O radiant maid who never shone 
 
 On beach or sea or foam, 
 Only lead me, love my own 
 
 To Dawn s deep crystal home. 
 
 There at last I ll clasp again 
 
 One hand ne er touched by hands ; 
 
 I ll sing the Morning s calm refrain 
 No maiden understands. 
 
 16
 
 HAUNTED 
 
 Tis the island wood where you shadowy stood 
 
 On a morn but long ago, 
 Like a startled fawn awakened at dawn 
 
 When the dying night moans low; 
 And now you seem but a beautiful dream, 
 
 To lure me with yearning eyes, 
 Till the ghostly breeze in these haunted trees 
 
 Dies in remembered sighs. 
 
 Ah, many a year have I sought you here 
 
 And my sea-mates forget to sigh 
 In every zone for you alone, 
 
 So I come here to die; 
 No hope was theirs and long despairs 
 
 Billowed their briny years, 
 But I read in your eyes that hope never dies 
 
 Tho a sea may drown in tears. 
 
 Was I other than these? for the kindly breeze 
 
 Whispered "She whispers to you" 
 And the morning stir of the restless fir 
 
 Mourned "I am grieving for you," 
 Till the sundring sound of the tide swept round 
 
 In echoes of sobbing years, 
 To rise like the swell of a far-off bell 
 
 And answered "Have done with fears." 
 
 Oh, the charm and grace of your vanished face 
 Were the lure and the life of a soul, 
 
 And the surging strife of a haunted life 
 Was the dream in the restless roll 
 
 Of the sea as it read from the scroll of the dead.
 
 And in storm this word again 
 "She bids you speak, tho your soul be weak 
 Lost love is never in vain." 
 
 Where the mad ships reel on storm-bared keel 
 
 O er the ghost of a dream-locked sea. 
 The lost winds shriek their whistling "Speak! 
 
 Speak, ah speak to me!" 
 But the wild refrain of the winds in pain 
 
 Is the sea with a sorrowing plea, 
 For its restless roll is your yearning soul 
 
 Slumbering down in the sea. 
 
 With every breath we prayed for death 
 
 From cities and seas and kings, 
 But ever your eyes, where the hope never dies, 
 
 Have urged me to better things; 
 I am weary now, and your pale, wan brow 
 
 Seems weary of thought as mine. 
 Oh ease my brain from its maddening pain 
 
 Madder than maddest wine. 
 
 Are you only a dream in the fleeting gleam 
 
 Of a morn that never was real; 
 Are your yearning eyes, where the love never dies, 
 
 Still mute in their sweet appeal? 
 Is your shadowy isle but a mist to beguile 
 
 The weary ships that seek 
 To find you again and wearier men 
 
 Speak, for I cannot speak. 
 
 18
 
 THE POET 
 
 Cold, cold is the dew upon his hair, 
 
 Far, far the stars above his careless head, 
 
 And silence everywhere 
 Hushes, hushes all he would have said: 
 
 He is not dead ! 
 Lo ! There he wanders, touching first a star, 
 
 Then a lily s dewy cheek; 
 Hear a marvel! Sundered aeons afar 
 The petals frailty from yon raging Sun 
 
 He made them one 
 (This thing all lilies know,) 
 So long ago ; could she but speak 
 
 Then would she tell us so: 
 How long ago! yet this has ever been, 
 
 Before his hour it was; it is; 
 And still the word that crowned her queen 
 Of stars and flowers was only his ; 
 
 Had he not sung 
 
 The magic of the mind had never wed 
 This child of heaven and distant hell, 
 
 Man s dusty tongue 
 Denying Night her unseen diadem 
 Had said, "Be ye apart, and twain 
 
 O Star and starrier flower." 
 Only he has married them 
 Forever, his the mystic spell 
 
 Above their airy bed ; 
 Their bridal chamber is the mind 
 Of aeons, his the little hour 
 Outlasting ruined Time. It was not vain 
 
 Though he be dead 
 
 The lightning thought that struck all ages blind 
 A vivid instant, he 
 19
 
 Is writ forever on the brow of things 
 
 For years and men to see; 
 And, though no more he sings 
 Or fires a sodden clay, he is, 
 
 That flash is he; 
 
 Nor shall he perish utterly 
 Or ever, till all Time is his 
 And is no more; till Death o envhelm 
 Imagination s everlasting realm 
 
 Usurp strong Reason s throne, 
 And make the end of All his own. 
 
 2O
 
 FOUND 
 
 Where is the Kingdom of Happiness hidden, 
 Under what crags do its seven gates glow, 
 Over what breeze do its banners flow, 
 
 Down what ravine or pathway forbidden? 
 
 I asked a bride and she answered me, 
 "Our land of love is the hiding place, 
 There is all joy s abiding place; 
 
 Our valleys are bright for all to see." 
 
 "Come," I said, to the bridegroom, "hither; 
 
 Are the words of your love the voice of truth?" 
 "Our meadows are green with the waters of 
 youth, 
 
 And the Kingdom is here where no buds wither." 
 
 They saw the banners; I turned to a maid, 
 
 "What flowers are those you tenderly cherish?" 
 "Dreams I have culled lest my longing perish, 
 
 But harsh is the way and I grow afraid." 
 
 A boy by her side was smitten with wonder, 
 "A silly girl and her dreams may wilt," 
 And he shook his sword by its jewelled hilt, 
 
 "I will capture the Kingdom with all its plunder." 
 
 He was lost; so I questioned one grown rich, 
 "The Kingdom lies by a golden mountain ; 
 By a Sea whence gushes a silver fountain 
 
 I will ease my palm s and my fingers itch."
 
 No guides were these, and I sought the roses; 
 "Where, sweet friends, does the Kingdom lie?" 
 They hung their heads with a fragrant sigh, 
 
 "In our hearts, where the soul of the noon un 
 closes." 
 
 Baffled, I turned to a gem-eyed toad, 
 
 "You who blink, was the fair truth spoken?" 
 "No," he croaked, "if my head be broken 
 
 You ll see the way, a jewel-strewn road." 
 
 "Philosopher-toad I will none of your jesting, 
 But I like your cult," and I stopped a sage ; 
 "The path," said he, "is a printed page, 
 
 And the wars unwon are truth s grim wresting." 
 
 He gave me a wonderful book as guide, 
 
 Its words were tears, its letters were laughter, 
 And I read, "Thou shalt find the Kingdom here 
 after," 
 
 As I closed the book with Night at my side. 
 
 Then I felt the awe of her windy tresses, 
 
 "Are the jewels on your hair the Kingdom s 
 
 lights?" 
 "Nay," and her voice was low, "but Night s": 
 
 And she touched my brow with a dream s caresses. 
 
 Lost at dawn on the mountain-tops 
 
 I questioned a spectre, "Speak what place is 
 This where the shades hide tear-stained faces?" 
 
 "Heaven; and our tears are the small dew-drops." 
 
 "The Kingdom of Joy?" I asked another 
 
 Whose face was wet, and he answered "yea;" 
 "Let this be truth, I ll not gainsay, 
 
 But who was that other?" He said, "my brother." 
 22
 
 A lonely ghost went wandering there, 
 
 His eyes were dry but his face ungladdened ; 
 "Why, for you, is Paradise saddened?" 
 
 "I strove for happiness, earned despair." 
 
 "Come," I urged, "let us seek together; 
 These are the crags, and God s fair town 
 Is below;" as I turned to lead him down 
 
 There fell at my feet an angel s feather. 
 
 Proudly we turned our backs on the sky, 
 
 Through the day s long heat our souls gre\v 
 
 meeker ; 
 "Harsh," groaned he, "is the way of the seeker;" 
 
 "Let us wait for Night," I said, "and die." 
 
 "Let us search no more though its gates be seven, 
 I weary," he wept, "and joy would kill;" 
 So we laid us down with a ready will 
 
 Under the mystical silver of heaven. 
 
 "Lo!" he cried, " tis the seventh gate!" 
 
 As he leaped with youth at the sudden wonder, 
 For the barren crags were rent asunder, 
 
 And the Keeper smiled, "You come, though late." 
 
 My ghostly friend, his whole face shining 
 
 Brighter than morning s, cried, "How strange! 
 Your weariness glows with a wonderful change ;" 
 
 And I laughed, "O Soul, tis your own designing." 
 
 Then we roamed the meadows in calm content, 
 Where the roses bloomed, their petals unclosing 
 Over the gold of a noon reposing 
 
 Fair as a god with his youth unspent. 
 23
 
 I nudged my friend and he shook with glee, 
 For under a bush lay an old man sleeping, 
 And a toad on his head sat solemnly keeping 
 
 Watch o er a dewdrop s tiny sea. 
 
 But who walked yonder, bashfully smiling? 
 The hilt in her hand, the flowers in his hair 
 I knew, and he mourned with a mock-despair, 
 
 "Broken, alas, by a maid s beguiling." 
 
 We journeyed on through the golden gloaming 
 Slowly happy to Night s bright land ; 
 And we saw them wandering, hand in hand, 
 
 The Bride and Groom to their last long homing. 
 
 Then Night looked down from unsoundable eyes, 
 And my friend glanced backward, his face for 
 getful, 
 The sound of his voice far-off, regretful 
 
 "How sad is joy when the last grief dies: 
 
 Ah, where alas, is Happiness hidden, 
 
 Are the seven gates but the doors of a tomb 
 Over each portal the terrible doom : 
 
 To some who enter am I forbidden? "
 
 OUT OF THE PAST 
 
 THEN AND NOW 
 
 Fair flower of pagan days, 
 Who has not sung thy praise 
 Remembering thee? 
 
 Proud bloom on yonder Sea, 
 
 Where shines thy Land 
 Aflower so distantly? 
 
 Is that wide welter spanned, 
 (Could we but understand) 
 By bridge of dreams? 
 
 Afar the white cliff gleams 
 
 Still foam its base, 
 Our beach! so near it seems. 
 
 Put forth and find that Place 
 Beyond all time, all space, 
 Beyond the Sea. 
 
 EXILES 
 
 Land of the Morning!* memory s realm, 
 
 Magical vale no care may take 
 Or Grief s gray hordes o erwhelm 
 
 We are thy children still: 
 Though we wander far from the breezy brake 
 
 Under the glow of thy golden hill 
 
 *(Note: Ur of the Chaldeans; sometimes (in the 
 cuneiform writings,) The Garden of Eden.) 
 
 25
 
 (Alas that we left so soon, so soon) 
 
 We shall never forget 
 Our last cool drink from the little rill, 
 Or the rose \ve took for thine own dear sake, 
 And the few white jessamine stars, to set 
 
 Only with thy last moon. 
 
 There flowed a river slowly down, 
 
 Thyme its banks, where velvety bees 
 Tumbled from cup to crown, 
 
 Oh ! but so long ago ! 
 There was trumpet-vine on the poplar trees 
 
 Seen afar in its scarlet glow 
 (Oh whisper not that it shines no more!) 
 
 Do the bees still haunt the thyme, 
 Where are those lizards we used to know 
 Sunning themselves in lazy ease; 
 Does our wild clematis boldly climb 
 
 Those rocks it loved of yore? 
 
 Under my pillow I ll hide a rose, 
 
 (No jessamine flower or thyme grows here) 
 In the first swift sleep e er eyelids close 
 
 Undreaming, I ll see Thee again; 
 Still is the air and crystal clear, 
 
 Far away shines a silver plain 
 Land of the Morning ! glowing afar 
 
 Pure as a jewel on Time s bright brow 
 Undimmed as ever by life s dull rain, 
 We have remembered thy happiness, Dear, 
 And we shall forget thee hear our vow 
 
 Onlv with thv last star. 
 
 26
 
 AN IDOL 
 
 Prisoned in granite bonds 
 Huge stone you have waited for me 
 For a million years of years 
 That my hand might set you free. 
 
 Cursed Idol, inhumanly grim 
 You have watched the Stars and God 
 No more shall you gaze on Him 
 Or the Stars when I shatter you. 
 
 Cold in your frozen sneer, 
 Dumb as your sullen tongue, 
 You have heard the wails of men 
 And every hope they ve sung. 
 
 God and Stars, cold stone 
 Shall judge me for what I do; 
 Not you shall see them alone 
 When men sink under the earth. 
 
 So I shatter your brow to dust 
 And bury you deep in this cave ; 
 No more shall you see the Stars 
 Till your dust is mankind s grave. 
 
 ADVICE FROM THE GODS 
 
 What profits? Wine in a golden bowl, 
 Garments of grape-red flame, 
 Or flesh far sweeter than grapes 
 Enticing to daintier shame, 
 Or love in alluring shapes 
 What profits these things, our Soul? 
 27
 
 Disgust, our lust-drugged youthful fool ; 
 Passion slinks out when reason goes ; 
 That breast all yours is a marble thing, 
 That flower in her hair a rotting rose 
 And drunkard s discords those hymns you sing 
 To your harlot goddess, most truthful fool. 
 
 Passions kiss not your weakling men, 
 Infinite lust not theirs; 
 Painless kisses are only ours 
 Whose body no mortal shares; 
 Men, your vices wither as flowers, 
 Be monks, grow weeds again. 
 
 THE IVORY GATE 
 
 Over the shimmering endless plain 
 
 Stark with its rocks and sand, 
 Under a sky that weeps no rain 
 
 To bless the desert land, 
 The white-winged birds fly on with pain 
 
 In a stricken, hopeless band ; 
 When will they find their Sea again 
 
 And sweep thro the foam on the strand? 
 
 Steel is the hills inscrutable blue 
 
 In a hard and changeless guile, 
 Eternally old, and eternally new 
 
 With a smile of fathomless wile ; 
 It is guarding the vale of shadows and dew 
 
 As the birds fly on the while, 
 
 And they hail thes hills "Does your Pass 
 lead thro 
 
 To the green of our blessed isle?" 
 
 28
 
 But never an answering word as they wing 
 
 The titan passes, bound 
 For their happy isles, white-blossoming 
 
 Beyond the crashing sound 
 Of curling waves on a coraled ring, 
 
 Encircling homelands round, 
 With waving palms, where others sing 
 
 But these are homeward bound. 
 
 Droop the wearily fluttering wings 
 
 Death will come too late, 
 Down a pass a messenger brings 
 
 News of the Ivory Gate 
 Set as a bar by the Mountain Kings, 
 
 Slaves of remorseless Fate : 
 Fold the dusty, useless wings, 
 
 Brokenly desolate. 
 
 Blindly, wearily, one by one, 
 
 They beat the tracery rare, 
 Ivory carved by Fate s blind Son 
 
 Strong, and wonderfully fair, 
 Till one by one, their journey done, 
 
 They yearn in last despair 
 For all they see the sky, the sun, 
 
 The foam, and heaven s free air. 
 
 IN HADES 
 
 / Proserpine 
 
 Not I may pluck thee, vanished Rose, 
 Or cull thy dream with chilly hand, 
 
 Remembered love forever knows 
 The Borderland. 
 
 29
 
 What though I haunt the Stygian sand- 
 I may not pluck thee, vanished Rose ; 
 
 The Borderland 
 
 Is Pluto s realm; afar he throws. 
 
 His dreams to cloud with wild repose 
 
 The Borderland ; 
 Not I may pluck thee, vanished Rose 
 
 Ah, why, thy love can understand. 
 
 The Borderland 
 
 Shall pale to His eternal close; 
 Alas, I hear his dread command 
 
 I may not pluck thee, vanished Rose. 
 
 // Pluto 
 
 Alas, I hold her earthier soul, 
 Her airy love may still repine; 
 
 I reft her from the grassy knoll 
 She is not mine. 
 
 For her the air is yet divine 
 I hold, alas, her earthier soul ; 
 
 She is not mine, 
 
 Nor may hell ever make her whole ; 
 
 My sultry thunders angered, roll 
 
 She is not mine: 
 Alas, I hold her earthier soul 
 
 A crystal cup without the wine. 
 
 She is not mine; 
 
 Although I take her journey s toll, 
 Her backward glance is but the sign 
 
 I hold, alas, her earthier soul. 
 30
 
 PSYCHE 
 
 By the shimmering poplars and beeches, 
 
 Alilt to the laughing breeze, 
 Where whispers the wind on the reaches 
 
 Of wolds by the well-loved trees, 
 I caught you, my Psyche, and kissed you, 
 And then, dear spirit, I missed you 
 
 Frail Psyche, my wayward tease. 
 
 But the tears rippled low in your laughter, 
 As your wings glanced merrily on, 
 
 And your dream-eyes shadowed "hereafter"- 
 Poor butterfly, where have you gone? 
 
 Sweet friend of the summers and swallows, 
 
 Have you fluttered where no Spring follows- 
 In the Land of Thither and Yon? 
 
 Were you then all mocking and smiling, 
 
 Not a heart behind it all ? 
 Was it love, or an hour s beguiling 
 
 That bound me your \villingest thrall? 
 Yet you answered my wild entreating, 
 Dear dream, with your dances fleeting, 
 
 But now, I call, and call. 
 
 In my dreams I fondle your tresses 
 And feel your wings on my cheek 
 
 With a butterfly s dream of caresses, 
 Oh Psyche, where shall I seek? 
 
 I rise, and the meadows are dreary, 
 
 And the breeze in the beeches grow weary, 
 Ah Psvche, the wolds are bleak!
 
 Oh Psyche come back to your lover 
 Lost Psyche with the sun-kissed wings, 
 
 Come back to the beeches, and hover 
 O er hollows where summer sings 
 
 All day with the chirping of crickets 
 
 And care-free birds of the thickets 
 Come back where the blue-bell rings ! 
 
 IN EGYPT 
 /. IstS 
 
 The jackal prowls thy courts by night, the owl 
 Flits silent by; thy fountain writhes for breath 
 With strangling weeds and living things most foul, 
 And thy High Priest is sacrileged in death 
 A chattle in the hands of strawless slaves 
 To make a vandal show before the mob; 
 O anguished Outcast, rend these ghouls who rob 
 Thy ravished shrines and violated graves! 
 
 The dreamy lotus lilies lift and fall 
 Upon the slumbering waters, as when Thou 
 Wast Goddess their frail might outlasting thine; 
 But thro the whispering reeds I hear Thee call 
 My Soul my Goddess then, my Goddess now 
 I ll lay a lotus on thy broken shrine. 
 
 II. Loti 
 
 Weep! thou Nile, for we are loti, fair 
 Tho Egypt mourns ; O must we ever know 
 Thy meres and shallow places? Long ago 
 We wove a million crowns for fragrant hair 
 Of priestesses, that knew not any care 
 32
 
 Save pain of love; and now, we deck thy slow 
 Unending stream, remorseless in its flow- 
 By tombs and palaces where grim despair 
 Dreams not of love. O Isis, Horus, lone 
 In heaven s unending solitude, but hear 
 Thy purple playthings on the waters moan 
 What once was prayer, when we were thy most 
 
 dear 
 
 Fond worshippers; ah, do not now disown 
 Our pleading when the very noon is drear. 
 
 HI. Memnon 
 
 Huge pylons, stark in man-outlasting might, 
 And grim colossi stalk the sandy plain 
 Where giant Memnon, brooding still in vain 
 This ancient wrong of time, awaits the light 
 That Ra shall send to banish Egypt s night; 
 He hymns vain monotones of praise again 
 A witness to his god s eternal reign, 
 The sire of Night in Day, and Wrong in Right. 
 
 The priest, and suppliants who bow to priest, 
 Lie down in equal dust ; lo, all the throng 
 That drave the hecatomb of bulls to feast, 
 Are one with their dead cattle; then, how long 
 Shall this dead thing of stone still face the East, 
 And unmolested drone its empty song? 
 
 IV. Karnak 
 
 Egyptian suns have loomed thy wondrous walls 
 In shadowed hieroglyph of Kings decay 
 Across the waste these thousand years, and they 
 Have marched with Empire s pomp where night ap 
 pals 
 
 33
 
 Wan images of day, in vaster halls 
 Than thine : thy graven glories pass away 
 With this dead sun, and all thy hallowed sway 
 Of shaven priests, where no last prayer recalls 
 
 Thy vanished God to bless their darkened shrine. 
 O mighty in thy sculptured pride, and strong 
 With love of Gods, Time s grudging grant was 
 
 thine 
 
 To strive to conquer plundering man so long 
 As men fanatic humble things divine 
 Another s gods; this was thy shameless wrong. 
 
 V. The Pyramids 
 
 The vanity of Kings was ours, and lust 
 
 Of pride in death, upreared to mock the dead 
 
 With everlasting stone; the nameless dread 
 
 That rulers sink in age-forgotten dust 
 
 Is ours, and all the wealth of gilded trust 
 
 Queens put in us, is dross; the humbled head 
 
 Of tyrant bows to slave, his glory fled 
 
 Where gleaming spears that kinged him, rot in rust. 
 
 Sarcophagi, and chambered death are vain 
 As is the echoed boast of them that made 
 Our mighty mass, obsessing Egypt s plain 
 Of silent sand, all voiceless, undismayed 
 By pigmy threats of men : O turn again, 
 Thou child of stony death, and be afraid. 
 
 VI. The Sphynx 
 
 Eternal silence is my voice, the Sand 
 My dead dominion ; buried men and bones 
 My woman s sacrifice, and harsher stones 
 34
 
 My taunting sneer to urge my grim command: 
 "Thirst ye to know, but never understand 
 My snarling silence:" thus thy life atones 
 The ignorance my age-worn smile disowns 
 In thee, encumberers of this, my Land. 
 
 All knowledge lives within my cheating tomb, 
 Life is its sepulchre, and death thy wage, 
 I suck thee down in silent fear and gloom 
 Of sands remorseless as the simoon s rage; 
 And endless thirst this is, O Man, thy doom, 
 Athirst, athirst! assuage who would assuage. 
 
 KINGS OF KINGS 
 
 Ye reared me towers of stone, and walls of gem, 
 
 Chalcedony and topaz, emerald 
 
 And rubies, then a thorned diadem 
 
 Ye wove my brows, when sated men beheld 
 
 The vanity of gold and dust of stone: 
 
 Ye shadowed all the clouds with boast of light 
 
 To cheat thy misery, and still the moan 
 
 Ye made by day, false hoping in my night 
 
 But never dwelt I there. For I, the shade 
 
 Of all ye cannot be, creep slow across 
 
 The changing dial of minds, I changeless rise 
 
 And set, and rise again, calm, undismayed 
 
 By groping seekers lost, for Man s the loss 
 
 In dawn ; I heed not when his crying dies. 
 
 A thousand names ye gave me; worlds before 
 Ye mouthed, or carved an image gravely dumb, 
 I knew and mocked them all : for as the sower 
 Knows that weeds and ranker tares must come 
 With summer, thus 1 saw the fruitless crop 
 Of all thy prayers, ere words were sown to choke 
 Thy silence; nor can all thy tears unstop 
 35
 
 My wells of pity for thy idols broke 
 And wasted like the winds. In life they knew 
 Me not, nor ever hoped to know ; so ye 
 Have cast thy faith on death, that fickle reed 
 My mind has made to pierce thee; ye endue 
 My greater shadow, dark to shadowed thee 
 With life; pray ye to Time, he cannot heed. 
 
 Deep in a buried forest, beyond the Sea 
 Undreamed, my Temple s cloud-hewn pallor looms 
 In soundless majesty all shadowy. 
 My slumbering winds are drugged with heavy 
 
 blooms 
 
 Of deadly night-flowers, dark with age-worn light 
 From brooding blood-red moons, chill sabled thro 
 The noiseless-echoed aisles, and Giant Night 
 Stalks huge in mists of dull Lethean dew. 
 Oblivion s ocean rolls around my walls, 
 But Sleep, with sombre web, builds low the ghosts 
 Of stoneless bridges, dark and dawn-forgot, 
 That ye may cross my flood and yearn in halls 
 Of Silence, wan with gray, unnumbered hosts 
 That seek the face of Death, and find me not. 
 
 THE END 
 
 Down the meadows came one singing, 
 His hair was as wind on the skies, 
 
 Down the azure rushed one bringing 
 Light in his fast shut eyes; 
 
 Then I rose in my grave, I said 
 
 Shall a blind god wake the dead?
 
 Far by the stars a lone god wandered, 
 No wind swept night from the skies; 
 
 Lonely there an old god pondered 
 Black were his blazing eyes ; 
 
 Then I lay in my grave and said, 
 
 Can a dead god see the dead? 
 
 37
 
 THE PEARL FISHER 
 
 Winds, if ye know voices, Sea, if thou a calling, 
 Ocean, if thou aught of message hast to hail Her, 
 Let the waves and all their demon s chill enthrall 
 ing 
 
 Hind Her fleeting shadow, let no gods avail Her 
 In the mastery of death, 
 
 Let Iier choke and strangle in Her waters, fighting 
 breath. 
 
 All Her magic swells this rolling of the billows, 
 She has lured the living, land-loved rivers hither 
 From their blossomed banks and silver pollard wil 
 lows, 
 Lured them, promised that Her blooms can never 
 
 wither, 
 
 Here, where all is waving weeds, 
 Fadeless lilies, rocks and standing pools and yel 
 low reeds. 
 
 I have dwelt in sea-deep cities all these ages 
 
 Since the deeper time-forgotten day she lured me 
 
 deeper 
 
 For Her Pearls, and still above the waters rages 
 Wilderness of sorcery, and still the sleeper 
 Dreams of pearls, to find them here, 
 Sleeps and dreams, to find a Pearl than all more 
 
 baleful dear. 
 
 All the lands of Tyre and Sidon held no fairer 
 Love and face than my Sidonia s; never lover 
 Dreamed a vision like to her, nor poet rarer 
 Loveliness, and all her longing seemed to hover 
 Breathless wafted on my mouth 
 Close pressed to hers, with rapture soft as winds 
 that love the South. 
 38
 
 So when our troth was sealed, you turned with 
 
 winsome jesting 
 "Dive for pearls, for queenly pearls; bring love a 
 
 token 
 Of your love, bring me the Queen of all the Pearls, 
 
 in testing 
 
 Of your faith, to weave a chaplet; if it broken 
 Ever be, to fall before 
 My feet, so that I tread the pearls, our love shall 
 
 live no more." 
 
 I stood above the prow, and that last look you sent 
 me 
 
 From the shore was love before the Deep, then 
 poising 
 
 O er the wave, I plunged; Oh could your eyes tor 
 ment me 
 
 Down those haunted waters, where dull pulsed nois 
 ing 
 
 Throbs thro bursting ears and brain 
 
 Did they stare upon me, never to behold again ? 
 
 "Dive for Pearls" down, down to mottled glitter 
 Bright on rocks and ocean lichens far below me; 
 Slowly moved the weeds, but ever forth in bitter 
 Sway of salty flow r , there causeways glowed to show 
 
 me 
 
 Where Her amber palace lay, 
 Seemed to wave me on with slow and melancholy 
 
 sway. 
 
 Pearls I promised, My Sidonia, from the water 
 You had loved, pearls I dived for, could I find 
 
 them 
 
 Save their Queen befriended me? So I sought Her 
 39
 
 Down ocean s meadows where Her mermaids fond 
 ly twine them 
 
 Thro a slow and mazy dance 
 
 Gazing round them, twining with insinuating 
 glance. 
 
 To Her palace, vaulted high with halls of amber, 
 Soft aglow with sun and amythest, I wandered 
 To Her door of pearl where crimson sea weeds 
 
 clamber 
 
 O er the gleaming, trellised walls with riot-squan 
 dered 
 
 Wealth luxuriant of bloom 
 
 Shading opal wonders of Her domes and presence 
 room. 
 
 Slowly waved the weeds aside and gleaming tresses 
 
 Floated where I stood, till all the sea shone golden, 
 
 And I heard the infamy of soft caresses 
 
 Wafted in my ear, so knew I was beholden 
 
 In loving serfdom to the Queen 
 
 Pale in palaces of amber, jade and waters green. 
 
 O er Her crystal floor with noiseless feet I hurried 
 To a vast and shining room where She was holding 
 Court, enthroned mid mermaids beauty, hidden 
 
 buried 
 
 Deep from eyes of prying man in waters folding 
 Shroud of mystery, and all 
 Her throng seemed waiting for a man to lift the 
 
 silent pall. 
 
 Oh Sidonia, true Sidonia, She had shaken 
 All my bounden love for you; She was fairer, 
 Fair Sidonia, than the lotus buds that waken 
 Frail on dawning waters, and Her lips were rarer 
 40
 
 Red than reddest Chian wine, 
 And Her eyes were veiled as cloudy moons that 
 dimly shine. 
 
 Long the Tyrian barques and all their crews have 
 
 vanished, 
 
 Long their divers waited for the little bubbling 
 Bells of air; long, ah long have I been banished 
 Far from worlds where love with all his joyous 
 
 troubling 
 
 Flits the shore on searching wings, 
 Seeking lovers strayed on ever turnless wanderings. 
 
 Oh Sidonia, sad Sidonia, wandering lonely 
 
 Thro yon flowery waste, how I loved and loathed 
 
 Her, 
 
 Passionlessly fish, and wanton woman only 
 In Her lust, what time she hotly draped and clothed 
 
 Her 
 
 With ocean s pearls and woman s weeds 
 I loved to hear Her lure my soul to loveless, shame 
 less deeds. 
 
 "Thou a man art fair, and all thy days are num 
 bered, 
 
 Henceforth in our opalescent sheen of twilight 
 
 Here where dreams of broken loves have ever slum 
 bered, 
 
 Comforted from all the woes of brooding daylight, 
 
 Loving never one but Me 
 
 Loving not the blossomed land that mourns above 
 my Sea." 
 
 She had won the man in me, and all my baser 
 Clay, but oh Sidonia, how the God with longing 
 41
 
 Rebelled, and held your soul with sweetness to 
 
 deface Her 
 Foulest travesty of flesh, and all Her mermaids 
 
 thronging 
 Sinuously human, 
 Half a scaled fish, and half a yearning woman. 
 
 Far adown the soundless aisles of weedstrewn water 
 Seemed to steal a throb of distant, lonely weeping 
 "Oh woe is me, for my unworthy sake you sought 
 
 Her 
 
 In Her pearly caves, and Death has now your keep 
 ing 
 
 Cold in gloomy caverns ; woe, 
 Oh woe is me, I d seek for you, but w hither shall I 
 go? 
 
 Then I rose and cursed Her couch of swinish lust 
 ing, 
 
 Left Her barren as the stones and rocks that perish 
 Atom after atom barrenly ; and trusting 
 In your trust, I laggard turned again to cherish 
 Love late scorned and cast away 
 Too late, for She arose to blight me, haggard, ashen 
 gray; 
 
 Baleful in Her thwarted lust, Her words unspoken 
 Dropped like pearls of vitriol thro the seething 
 
 water: 
 "Men have loved the Queen ere this and ruthless 
 
 broken 
 Her fond, yielding heart, men have ever sought 
 
 Her, 
 
 Crushed and cast Her heart aside 
 Many so have wooed and won Her soul a willing 
 
 bride ; 
 
 42
 
 Bitter bread of love, more bitter wine of passion 
 These are Her overthrow, all Her wild despair 
 ing 
 
 Sings in siren voices, so the changeless fashion 
 Of man the mariner o er loving waters faring 
 May turn and pity Her despair 
 To turn again and curse Her that She was so foul 
 ly fair; 
 
 She will not rend or sear their bodies, souls are 
 
 sweeter 
 
 Agonies to contemplate, soft flesh may wither, 
 Lose all hues of pain, so men that turn, find love 
 
 and greet Her 
 
 Tho they long to turn again and get them thither, 
 There they may not wend anew, 
 But wander here forever, silent tortured thro and 
 
 thro : 
 
 Ever gaze they on Her Mirror, held before them 
 Where er they turn, and read the days of pale de 
 sires, 
 They see the silent tears of loves that still adore 
 
 them, 
 
 Burn their hollow flesh with slow decay of smoul 
 dering fires, 
 
 They yearn for love, and hate Her lust, 
 Man longs to leave Her, but ever shall return till 
 man is dust. 
 
 Pearls that shine thro Ocean s deepest caves are 
 
 dowered 
 Mortal, on thy earthly love, fair as gleams the 
 
 morning 
 
 Slanted thro our halls of amythest; deflowered 
 43
 
 Shall all our gardens be, to blossom her as warn 
 
 ing 
 
 Mortals who despoil the Sea, 
 She shall wear them, and wearing give thy soul to 
 
 Me. 
 
 Gaze, O man of Upper Air, on Me and wonder 
 On my loveliness that blooms down here forever, 
 Gaze, I give thy mortal pearls, and rend asunder 
 Love of her pure soul forever, thou shalt never 
 Gaze upon her flesh again 
 Gaze O mortal, for thy agony shall be in vain." 
 
 Ah Sidonia, lost Sidonia, She has lured 
 Me deeper, downward, ever deeper, and the magic 
 Oh Her mirror is a pain that cannot be endured ; 
 Silence, seeing, seeing, silence, all the tragic 
 Mystery of soundless deeds 
 
 Haunts me, holds me, mocks me thro Her livid, 
 living weeds. 
 
 Far above I heard the waves shout hoarse with 
 
 thund rous 
 
 Bellowings of wrath, like some huge monster foiled 
 Of all his rushing prey of waters, soft the won 
 drous 
 
 Hope of Upper Air was wan thro weeds despoiled 
 Of purple clustered wealth of blooms 
 Torn late away to grace Her cursed halls and brid 
 al rooms. 
 
 Forth alone I wandered, adown vast ocean avenues, 
 Ominously peaceful, and beheld before me 
 The wonder of a Mirror imaged not with Sea- 
 views, 
 
 44
 
 Round, and crystal void, its polished surface bore 
 
 me 
 
 Not in countenance or form, 
 But floated on, till suddenly, acloud with shadowed 
 
 storm 
 
 It writhed and throbbed in Nature s tortured rend 
 ing, 
 
 There I saw a sand of desert lashed in awful splen 
 dor 
 
 Of simoon-billowed shrouds and palm oasis blend 
 ing 
 
 O er my lost Sidonia, "Gods of Tyre defend her, 
 
 Oh Gods destroy her agony 
 
 For I am powerless here in thy accursed, silent sea." 
 
 O Moloch, all thy molten stones and iron were 
 cooler 
 
 Than these waters seething, moveless hell ; and 
 fairer 
 
 Thou, Medusa, than Her Mirror, when my Ruler 
 
 Makes all void: Oh! would winds and waves en 
 snare Her 
 
 In Her strangling weeds, control 
 
 Her breath unnatural, smother, stifle all Her soul. 
 
 Ever from my sight the buoyant round receded, 
 Now a pictured second s hell, and now a dreariness 
 Of empty ills imagined : how I moaned and pleaded 
 Oh, my wan Sidonia for you, till a weariness 
 O ercame my speech and froze me dumb, 
 Motionless of limbs awaiting nameless woes to 
 come. 
 
 45
 
 Death and Life, despair and joy, strove but to 
 
 master 
 
 Only you within Her Mirror, sadly drooping 
 Like a lotus wilted: Oh, might but Death outlast 
 
 Her 
 
 In the end, and could I see you gently stooping 
 Down from Heaven, with loving thought 
 To raise me, all these tortured ages were as empty 
 
 nought. 
 
 Fond Sidonia, long you mourned me, long your 
 
 weeping 
 Drops of heavenly rain woke Mirrored spring of 
 
 sympathy ; 
 
 Long you trusted, till your tears another s keeping 
 Stopped forever, with a lone and lasting misery, 
 That may not weep, but alway hide 
 A secret sadness for a loneliness that shall abide. 
 
 How I longed and strove, and vainly prayed to 
 
 warn you 
 
 Of the deadly, bitter fruit of that espousal, mocking 
 With its barrenness of earthy love to scorn you 
 Thro eternal ages, and the future rocking 
 Tearless, armlocked, of a grief 
 Forever doomed to smile, and reft of silent tears 
 
 relief. 
 
 But Her Mirror showed you roaming thro the 
 
 wildly 
 
 Calm and lovely Tyrian gardens, with another 
 Wooing lover, and you gazed on him all mildly 
 I had perished O Astarte, Tyrian mother, 
 Guide her, guide, guide her now 
 She has neither friend nor lover, only Mother, 
 
 Thou. 
 
 46
 
 Slow you turned on him a strange regard of haunted 
 Melancholy, slow you seemed to prove his pleading 
 In that leaden look: till rude arose and taunted 
 All his visioned love, and wounded memory bleed 
 ing 
 
 New, remembered love of me, 
 And I saw your semblance lorn thro coldly vast 
 eternity. 
 
 Down thro voiceless waters came the sound, ca 
 resses 
 
 Wing upon the air: tho you dreamed "Hereaf- 
 ter"- 
 
 In his loathly touch, still the head that presses 
 
 On your bosom now is his, and lover s laughter 
 
 His forever; seek, ah fair 
 
 Sidonia, not my cold soul in heaven, it cannot enter 
 there. 
 
 Oh the dreary days of Mirrored life were sadder 
 
 Far than languid song of hopeless birds grown 
 tired 
 
 By golden bars confined ; thy hidden struggles mad 
 der 
 
 Far than theirs, or e er the broken soul aspired 
 
 To beat love s hallowed air, a chain 
 
 Of hope or dreaded duty drew it bounden down 
 again. 
 
 Oft you wandered lone at night along resounding 
 Shores of many moonlight lands, sore distressed 
 Of brow and heart at Ocean s portents fell abound 
 ing 
 
 On the brooded beach, your senses rich oppressed 
 With wealth of weighty pearls, strewn 
 47
 
 Beneath your feet, the Sea Queen s gift glowing 
 with the moon. 
 
 Endless leagues across the void of stony ocean 
 Floor I followed Her mirage, and sought to greet 
 
 you 
 
 Where you stood in agony of still devotion 
 With a love that dared not words; could I meet 
 
 you 
 
 There? for I was doomed to roam 
 Unheard and lost beneath the waves white wilder 
 ness of foam. 
 
 Kind Remorse, prolong thy pangs, devouring me 
 
 forever, 
 
 Let me live those Mirrored hours again, disdain me 
 Not to suffer, and triumphant let me sever 
 Memory of him, her spouse, nor restrain me 
 In thy agony, so I 
 Forget that still he loves her, and that I can never 
 
 die. 
 
 Lost Sidonia, dead Sidonia, could he follow 
 You beyond the tomb? For I saw you thither 
 Yearn with joyful sighs; wan Sidonia, hollow 
 Grew your eyes, and lo, I saw your roses wither 
 In their loveliness; cloud 
 
 O erswept your brow; and all your bridal raiment 
 fell a shroud. 
 
 Hot as glowing coals the asphodel of Heaven 
 Burned your pilgrim feet, as ever on you sought me 
 Thro the desert meadows, up and down the seven 
 Heavens, singing softly lovers songs you taught 
 me, 
 
 48
 
 To recall my wayward soul, 
 
 Trusting, calling, hoping that your love could make 
 me whole. 
 
 Sore bewildered, baffled soul confused with aching 
 Misery, you climbed the languorous slopes immortals 
 Roamed upon, till all outwearied, hope forsaking 
 Down by sunless floods you sought the dusky por 
 tals 
 
 Of the underdeath, with fear 
 
 And hope to find me there: The Shadow Halls 
 were barren drear. 
 
 Thence thro voiceless, vast abysses where the star 
 light 
 
 Never shines to bound high solitude, cast away 
 Upon the soundless crumbling shores of Time, 
 
 where a death-blight 
 
 Brooded over dawnless chasms, soon a wild dismay 
 Seized upon your soul, to rend and tear 
 Your inmost being out, for Love had never wander 
 ed there. 
 
 Back to hated paradise you stole to wait him, 
 Your appointed mate for galling love eternal : 
 Oh that Hell would yawn and open to unmate him, 
 So that he enwound with heaven s vernal 
 Flowers should groping fall to jaws 
 Of death, to drown where fire with sullen roar of 
 flame withdraws. 
 
 Now, Sidonia, you are mourning, silent stroking 
 Back his loathed immortal hair, with writhes of 
 
 laughter, 
 
 While the Mirror still I follow, wild invoking 
 49
 
 Gods and friends to bless me blind, or kinder, waft 
 
 Her 
 
 Death on carrion wings; but She 
 Is still enthroned, and shall be all eternity. 
 
 Still the Queen enwreathes me with Her fadeless 
 
 roses, 
 
 Still She haunts my soul with melodies of dreaming 
 Lover s music, and Her luring form reposes 
 Lithe on languid lilies, fair in seeming, 
 Culled from some deep ocean dell 
 False in their perfume, ensnaring as the fumes of 
 
 hell. 
 
 Dazed I gaze in wonder, gloat Her face and beauty, 
 Strange, unnatural, till faint with loathing terror 
 I turn and flee from out Her halls of cursed duty; 
 Then Her wrath of injured lust recalls the Mirror, 
 Brings me tortured back to gaze 
 Anew upon Her awful splendor, yielding in amaze. 
 
 Granite grey are now Her eyes that once were 
 azure, 
 
 Hemlock were a sweeter draught than all the nectar 
 
 Of Her clinging kiss, and endless toils were pleas 
 ure 
 
 Dearer than Her fond embrace, when She has deck 
 ed Her 
 
 Lust in pearls and loving weeds, 
 
 To riot wild in orgy of Her shameless passion s 
 deeds. 
 
 "Dive for pearls," you said, Sidonia, "Dive," I 
 found them, 
 
 50
 
 Here, I found the Queen of All the Pearls, and 
 
 wooed Her; 
 She was kind, and gave you pearls, Herself she 
 
 wound them 
 Round your bosom ; nor have wanton I withstood 
 
 Her 
 
 In Her loving kindness; I 
 Am Hers forever, and Her chosen loves may never 
 
 die. 
 
 Winds, if ye know voices, Sea, if thou a calling, 
 Ocean, if thou aught of message to hail Her, 
 Let the waves and all their demon s grim enthrall 
 ing 
 
 Bind Her fleeting shadow : let no gods avail Her 
 In the mastery of Death, 
 
 Let Her choke and strangle in Her waters, fight 
 ing breath.
 
 ONE DAY 
 
 A SONG 
 
 Clear is the evening star 
 
 With a still, sad light, 
 
 But the eyes of my love are clearer 
 
 Than crystal spheres of night. 
 
 Compassionate from afar 
 The star is chill and drear, 
 More merciful, and nearer 
 My love alone is dear. 
 
 Sad as the evening star 
 
 With the sins and the sorrows of men 
 
 My beloved s eyes are dearer 
 
 To one who errs again. 
 
 I have worshipped my love from afar 
 With her clear kind eyes 
 No love of mine shall sear her 
 Till yonder seraph dies. 
 
 FOREVER 
 
 The Suns may wheel and madly reel 
 
 To wrack forevermore 
 So Love s white altar where \\ e kneel 
 
 Be still ours to adore; 
 The change of heavens, their ruined rush 
 
 Adown the firmament 
 Shall be an evening-song to hush 
 
 Our love to life s content.
 
 Let all the rocks and riven trees 
 
 That drank the Lightnings rage, 
 Take tongue, and testify that these 
 
 Can sear but still assuage: 
 The fires of seven heavens are one 
 
 To him who breathes and loves, 
 He knows, and would forget the Sun 
 
 For Venus and her doves. 
 
 Let all the whispering air and brooks 
 
 Forget their melody, 
 Let dusty sages and their books 
 
 Be dust eternally 
 If I forget a word of thine 
 
 A whispered word of sigh, 
 If I forget thy love is mine, 
 
 Then let me loveless die. 
 
 Afar we watch a crystal star 
 
 That throbs tonight alone, 
 It shines, to glimmer o er the bar 
 
 Where timeless oceans moan ; 
 The flaming waves it lights shall break 
 
 In utter death, ere thou 
 Shalt turn from me, and chill forsake 
 
 This drop upon thy brow. 
 
 WHERE? 
 
 Where would you be tonight, 
 Where, if the Slave were free? 
 Were the sad eyes young and bright- 
 Where would you be? 
 
 53
 
 Under the stars with him? 
 Silent as they are still? 
 Ah, but those eyes are dim, 
 And the night grows chill. 
 
 In the autumn woods with her? 
 When the breeze blows soft as her breath ? 
 Hush, the answering fir 
 Is gray in death. 
 
 Where would he be tonight, 
 Were breath on his lips again? 
 Does he watch their anguished flight 
 These birds of pain ? 
 
 Her dreams alone for you, 
 There where her lot is cast? 
 Her tears this kindly dew- 
 Is her woe passed? 
 
 Where will we go tonight? 
 To seek for a bygone day? 
 Wearied of life s delight 
 Here let us stay. 
 
 IN THE GARDEN 
 
 I wove you a wreath and plucked you a rose 
 
 A rose and a wreath for your hair, 
 And it drooped on your brow in a lorn repose, 
 
 Sighing and lingering there, 
 Till it yearningly mingled its soul with yours 
 
 In a fragrant stillness of prayer; 
 Now the whispered peace of that scent endures 
 
 Tho the rose is dead in despair. 
 54
 
 "Do you love me now will you love me then?"- 
 
 "Forevermore," you said 
 "If I wing away, I will flutter again 
 
 To you from the Garden of Death ;" 
 Was that far-off sound but the day s chill sign 
 
 Or the ghostly steps of a dread 
 Ah ever no love cannot die 
 
 Tho I turned and found you dead. 
 
 Oh the Garden then, and the wilderness now 
 
 Are fair as the garland you wore, 
 And the weary moon is pale as your brow 
 
 With the sorrowing love you bore ; 
 For if ever you saw a swallow skim, 
 
 Or ever a skylark soar, 
 You dreamed of an angel s eyes grown dim 
 
 With tears forevermore. 
 
 But the Moon has gone and Night reigns Queen, 
 
 So the roses and weeds are one, 
 While I listen in awe to the wings unseen 
 
 That whirr in the realms of the Sun ; 
 Hush! A swallow seems to cleave the air 
 
 With a freedom scarce begun, 
 And I know, my love, your rose blooms there, 
 
 And the long night watch is done. 
 
 TRYST 
 
 I see thy smile in every brook 
 That lures with dimpled light, 
 
 I feel thine eyes on every book 
 I pore the w T eary night. 
 
 55
 
 I hear thy voice in every moan 
 
 Of winter s watery wail ; 
 Oh God, my Love, art thou alone 
 
 Beyond Elysium s pale ? 
 
 Why dost thou call? I cannot hear 
 What thing thou bidst me do, 
 
 My soul is sharp with shrinking fear 
 I could not, if I knew. 
 
 Am I a ghoul to writhe with thee 
 
 In witches revelry, 
 Hell s outcast to feast with thee 
 
 In loathly devilry? 
 
 I fear thy icy, vampire breath 
 That blows across thy face; 
 
 Why dost thou wander far in death 
 From God s appointed place? 
 
 I hear thy piteous voice behind 
 My words in lonely halls, 
 
 Thy cere-clothes drape my deadened mind 
 With dankly rotting palls. 
 
 How oft that dear voice called to me 
 
 At day s declining light, 
 To call me neath our cypress tree 
 
 I ll meet thee there to-night! 
 
 DESPAIR 
 
 All day I sit enthroned in ashes; dust 
 Defiles the ragged grayness of my hair, 
 My steady eyes, with stony, lightless glare 
 56
 
 Gaze ever on thy works with grim distrust; 
 Thy will is water, Man, thy love is lust, 
 
 All yearning ends in Me, thy Queen, Despair; 
 
 Look forth for sympathy, my gaze is there ; 
 Trust not the blue of steel it rots to rust: 
 
 Build ye with stone, and I ll not overthrow, 
 But make thy palace mine, and entering in 
 Will dwell with thee. Men call me harsh; not 
 so, 
 
 I m kept, thy darling sweetness, ripe with sin; 
 Thy prophet said "Then reap ye as ye sow" 
 Begin in lust, and end as ye begin. 
 
 FORGOTTEN 
 
 If there be nought to do, 
 
 No gentler word to say, 
 Then let the kind earth cover me 
 
 I would not stay. 
 
 The Sun is a smiling fiend, 
 
 And the Moon but his paramour; 
 
 If there be nought to do, 
 I hate the day. 
 
 Then let the cold earth cover me, 
 The last wheat wisp is gleaned ; 
 
 This thing e en I may do 
 Make green the grass. 
 
 No little word to say? 
 
 Could not one hour endure? 
 
 Then let the cold earth cover me, 
 I ll hear thee pass. 
 57
 
 Here in my cosy cell 
 
 I lie and dream of her, 
 The gold wheat s waving overhead, 
 
 And all is well. 
 
 I drowse and dream the whole day long 
 
 In my narrow, hermit cell, 
 But list was that a song? 
 
 Ah, all is well. 
 
 So narrow I cannot stir, 
 
 And the rippling wheat waves over my bed, 
 But I lie and dream of her, 
 
 So all is well. 
 
 Ah yes, she is singing, I hear 
 
 Her footsteps over my head 
 Does she kneel and think by my bed 
 
 Alas, it is not well?
 
 BESIDE THE SEA 
 
 THE CALLING OF THE SEA 
 
 I heard the awful calling of the Sea, 
 
 "Come, come and be at rest with me, 
 
 Come, for I am Time, Eternity, 
 
 Come, for I have neither Isle nor Shore 
 
 Within my soul, come from sullen sod 
 
 And heavy clinging air forevermore 
 
 Come, for I am what thou namest God." 
 
 I turned and fled before the yearning waves 
 
 Far-reaching ghostly arms to draw me down 
 
 The long, green slopes of death so falsely fair ; 
 
 All hell seemed opening in a million graves, 
 
 Whose broken wails rose up with tears to drown 
 
 The wild Sea s undertone of false despair. 
 
 CHANCE 
 
 There was a Cavern by the nether Sea, 
 
 So, fretted out with tracking barren sand 
 
 And hearing tongues no man may understand, 
 
 I entered there, and flung me wearily 
 
 To utter slumber. 
 
 There hung no dreams within that restful cave, 
 I heard no tongue berate the sullen air, 
 The chilly echoes whispered everywhere, 
 And far away I heard the wavelets lave 
 Their solemn granite. 
 
 Afar the entrance gleamed, a sparkling blue, 
 A little window on the flashing deep, 
 
 59
 
 A rift upon the world through clouds of sleep, 
 There Ocean s living spirit glimmered through 
 In quick pulsations. 
 
 Twas silver noon, I felt the tides recede; 
 A caverned wind rushed past, refreshing, cool, 
 But in the Cave there stayed a shallow Pool 
 Whereon the dungeoned breezes lately freed 
 Wove wondrous patterns. 
 
 As one whose nightly eyes were not unused 
 To sphered mysteries, I watched the dancing day 
 Divide and wheeling dart in subtle play ; 
 Within the Pool were met all dreams diffused 
 Thro blue translucence. 
 
 (What opalescent wonders shed their sheen 
 On ever-changing sands of moving gold. 
 What wind-swept glades may inner eyes behold 
 In rippled tide-left pools whose silvered green 
 Is shot with sunshine.) 
 
 A momentary Presence hushed the dance, 
 The Pool shone smooth as hot obsidian glass ; 
 From rim to rim I watched a white cloud pass 
 And pondered on the triple sport of chance 
 The quiet, cloud, my vision: 
 
 How many clouds or high or low 
 
 Must tramp the vault beyond the Cavern s door 
 
 Ere one may brighten waters on its floor 
 
 Or light this Pool, no mortal mind may know,- 
 
 I saw the marvel. 
 
 60
 
 The imaged cloud became a memory, 
 
 I sank upon the sand as I would sleep; 
 
 The Cave was dreamless, thus I strove to keep 
 
 Some shadow of the cloud for reverie 
 
 In slumberlands. 
 
 A shadow dimmed the Cavern s farther wall 
 A deeper shade upon the granite s gray, 
 Twas not the semblance of the light of day, 
 Twas not the hint of evening s iron pall 
 Nor yet of slumber: 
 
 It was the seeming of an Ancient One 
 Made venerable more by thought than years, 
 The titan brow was seared, but not by fears 
 Of changeless night or any changing Sun 
 It was not temporal. 
 
 Besides the Pool I watched the Ancient brood 
 On triple chance of stillness, man, and cloud; 
 He gave no sign, altho I spoke aloud 
 The Name I deemed was His; He understood 
 But silence. 
 
 He motioned for the breeze to breathe again, 
 His eyes intent upon the Pool now dead 
 And awful as his own age-hoaried head ; 
 Tho long, he knows his waiting is not vain 
 Who hath all wisdom. 
 
 The tide returning boomed a sudden gust 
 That shook the stagnant waters; mimic strife 
 Of smitten seas endued the Pool s deep life 
 With motion s imagery, as twere the dust 
 Of nameless nations. 
 
 61
 
 Once more I saw the wondrous patterned light, 
 The myriad circles weaving mysteries 
 Profound as all the deeps of undreamed seas 
 A miracle of symmetry, a pure delight 
 Of harmony. 
 
 All wisdom waited for the circles weft, 
 The Ancient bent his brows in labored thought, 
 Here moved the riddle s answer he had sought; 
 The idle surface was a soul, of mind bereft 
 And without meaning. 
 
 Long he pondered there, a ghostly dream, 
 Majestic as the mind of Thought his gaze 
 On what to me was Chance, for him a maze 
 Of meaning, every circle s transient gleam 
 For him was ordered. 
 
 Twas night without the Cave, the waning moon 
 Cast one chill ray upon the Pool ; a breeze 
 Awoke and startled fled to living seas 
 Dismayed at luminiscent-spectered noon, 
 Fled unconsoled. 
 
 I woke, (for He had long since vanished), rose 
 And strode without the ghastly vacant Cave, 
 (Before the Ancient came twas not a grave) ; 
 I walked upon the Beach where ever flows 
 And ebbs infinity. 
 
 By night I watch the widening circles now 
 
 On riffled waters, myriad interplay 
 
 Of days uncountable, and see the gray 
 
 Of granite dimly through a furrowed Brow 
 
 A spectral Ancient s. 
 
 62
 
 Perchance I ll creep within that Master Mind ; 
 The ceaseless play of chance is ordered Law; 
 A breeze upon the waters works the awe 
 Unceasingly, could I but rise and find 
 Above my thought, a Higher. 
 
 IN THE FIELD BY THE SEA 
 
 There is brine in the crystal air, and the scythe 
 
 gleams bright 
 In the sea-girt field, where the ripe corn waiting 
 
 stands, 
 
 Or bends with a rippling smile at the kisses light 
 Of the wayward summer breeze; and the glisten 
 ing sands 
 Curve far away to the hills blue mistiness. 
 
 The day is a song in that field by the Sea, till night 
 Makes all hues one ; oh the heart is young, when 
 
 hand 
 Clasps hand in the seaward field, the hand of 
 
 might 
 
 And the trusting hand, for a romp on the moon 
 lit strand, 
 
 Or a walk thro the field s wild winter wilderness. 
 
 ******** 
 
 The scythe is lost and eaten with rust 
 For the reapers have gone to rest, 
 
 And the heart is broken and crumbled to dust 
 A ribald night- wind s jest.
 
 HOPE 
 
 Doubt, is your groan my all ; 
 
 Man, am I not with you; 
 
 Was his thirst slaked with gall, 
 
 Life, O Life? 
 
 Is every debt yet due, 
 
 Life, harsh Life? 
 
 Aye, must it ever be nay ; 
 Wrong, will there never be right; 
 Night, will it ever be day, 
 Hope, O Hope? 
 Is no noon born in night, 
 Hope, dead Hope? 
 
 Gilt has been all my gold, 
 
 Ashes my grandest feast; 
 
 My deepest seas were shoaled, 
 
 Thought, O Thought; 
 
 From hope have you never ceased, 
 
 Thought, weak Thought? 
 
 Gilt? and a silver sheen 
 
 Still shimmers the sun-proud sea? 
 
 Ashes? the grass grows green, 
 
 Thought, O Thought; 
 
 Let the weakest blade be me, 
 
 Thought, kind Thought. 
 
 Nay, it is ever an aye ; 
 Not night was made for men. 
 Why should I scorn to die, 
 Hope, O Hope? 
 Unfinished? I ll stature Then, 
 Hope, vast Hope? 
 64
 
 Doubt? for a weakling made; 
 Doubt when the flowers paint dust 
 That was flesh but last decade, 
 Life, O Life? 
 In you I ll be one, I trust, 
 Life, calm Life. 
 
 THE SOUL 
 
 At first a broken murmur, then a sigh, 
 
 A sob at parting from the sheltering deep, 
 
 And then the weary wave, content to die, 
 Ebbs back, to merge itself eternally. 
 
 HAIL 
 
 Hail vast Ocean, wide soul of me, 
 
 My tired-out brain shall at last blow free; 
 
 Down the flowerless blue of your blossoming deep 
 
 There will I sleep. 
 
 Burn my body and scatter the ash 
 Where the white waves shelter and shatter to dash 
 Their quivering brine on the spume-seethed sea 
 Green grave for me. 
 
 With you I am one, in waves would I lie; 
 I d hark to the winds in the Time-stilled sky; 
 Neath numerous stars like my atoms number 
 I d toss to slumber. 
 
 Hail vast Ocean, life s last for me, 
 Billow me, drown me Eternity; 
 Under me waters moving, not dead, 
 Stars overhead. 
 
 65
 
 GNOMES -GOLD 
 
 In the still and mossy places 
 
 Where the wings of the tired-out wind fold 
 Down on the flowers tired faces 
 
 Drowsing their dreams for the Plain, 
 Is a Mine of the moon-glimmered Gnomes -Gold. 
 
 Here in the violet chases 
 
 Where the groundling mice and the elves hold 
 Lusty revels and races 
 
 Safe from the pattering rain, 
 Glows the cave for the pollen-light Gnomes -Gold. 
 
 They said that the Lilies graces 
 
 Were pilfered from under the leafmould ; 
 
 Twas false, for a zephyr s embraces 
 (Fond as the Lily was fain), 
 
 Had dusted her anthers with Gnomes -Gold. 
 
 66
 
 EARLY SUMMER 
 
 The first mad mouse is here again, 
 The clover is his and the fresh green grain, 
 He strokes his whiskers in fat content 
 Lord of the fields and the firmament. 
 
 Rich as a Jew he will get him a wife, 
 For the life of the mouse is abundant life ; 
 He will harvest his crop and build him a nest, 
 In a palace of moss will he take his rest. 
 
 His acres are broad and his paunch is round, 
 The pipe of his children a pleasing sound; 
 He is lord of the summer, and all is peace 
 May his pink young tribe and his crops increase. 
 
 67
 
 TO A BEE 
 
 There lies your velvet body, stark and cold 
 Beside the very flowers you jesting robbed 
 Still powdered gay with all your guilty gold, 
 You haunt the silent air that gladly throbbed 
 A little hour ago. Did some cruel bird 
 This heartless wrong, to dash your happy head 
 Against a stone? But yesterday I heard 
 Your busy hum, and now you lie there dead. 
 
 Who could make war on you? The roses all 
 Forgave the tawdry dross you bandit took, 
 Ah, they would shower a thousand Springs to call 
 You back to song again ; your daisies look 
 With dewy eye upon your huddled form, 
 And plead with summer for their gayest friend, 
 Must love then die, ere spring forgets the storm 
 Of winter s death, and flit ere sorrows end ? 
 
 Alas, old plunderer! Your tiny day 
 
 Is done; but some remember you for see! 
 
 The bashful Rose you wooed across the way 
 
 Deflowers her maiden petals lovingly, 
 
 To shroud you with her tender white from eyes 
 
 Of prying ants, and ghoulish beetles, who 
 
 Creep by in death s unhallowed search, and flies, 
 
 Gray dullards come to triumph over you. 
 
 68
 
 Aye, stilled, but not forgotten is your song; 
 The loving Sun has willed his kindest ray 
 To warm your blossom dream of summers long 
 In fields where winter never woos the May, 
 That you may kiss each willing bud, and drink 
 The sweet from countless cups, or lazy roam 
 The starry thyme on some clear river s brink, 
 And dream the drowsy days away at Home! 
 
 69
 
 TO A WOOD SPRITE 
 
 The winds in the glen will find you again 
 
 In the budding soul of a rose, 
 Where our roguish thrush and our peering wren 
 
 With our mice in the leafy close 
 E en seek you still by lake and rill 
 
 Ah, seek, but they cannot find. 
 
 My wayward sprite, so aery light 
 
 That bluebells scarcely bent 
 Neath your merry chase at hush of night 
 
 When the moths were all but spent, 
 Have you flitted away from the dusty day? 
 
 Yes, the noon is heavier now. 
 
 Did a chilling grief frost up the leaf 
 That cupped your morning dew, 
 
 Or did you hide from the feathered thief 
 Who stole that grape from you ? 
 
 Let thief and frost be ever lost 
 In an azure prison field. 
 
 Did a bumble bee from over the lea 
 Then chase you away from home? 
 
 That dusty one what, was it he? 
 I ll send the policeman Gnome 
 
 And make him work like any Turk 
 To brew you honey dew. 
 
 We will find you again, the bee and I, 
 
 And feed you delectable bread 
 While a jealous mouse creeps humbly by 
 
 With sadly diminished head ; 
 We will find you here in the green glad year 
 
 Under a trilium leaf. 
 70
 
 THE MARRIAGE OF MORNING 
 
 There swelled a sound in the Vastness, 
 Dispassionate over all weeping, supreme 
 O er the silence of Time and impregnable fastness 
 Of uttermost Space; twas a voice of the lone God s 
 
 dream: 
 "Harken O Dawns, ye Mothers of Mornings who 
 
 fear me, 
 Ye Daughters of Dawns, whose feet are a fleeting 
 
 gleam 
 
 Of light on the shivering waters, revere me 
 Whose merciful might thy Mothers have known, 
 Not I have begotten thy grieving, 
 My prayer was never a moan ; 
 In the end all Dawns draw near me 
 Sighing, Thy wings are best: 
 Bold Noon is a semblance deceiving 
 Thy light from the aisles of rest ; 
 For a season insidious Noon shows larger, seems 
 
 better; 
 
 By his golden raiment my crown is as broken stone, 
 So Morn s free Daughters beholding, forget her, 
 Forsake her, and follow false Noon alone, 
 Drawn after by Love s iron fetter. 
 
 Though my wisdom mourns long, unheeded, 
 And the Days troop into green meadows to feast, 
 At last shall a calmer refrain I have pleaded 
 Above the revels, ring on when all song has ceased : 
 I sing of a vaster Meadow whose brook is a River, 
 Where days and their fallen hours float slowly, the 
 
 least 
 
 Of my ruined flowers, for I am the giver 
 To Dawn of her breeze and her sudden fire: 
 71
 
 How should my Dawn remember 
 
 Those Meads where all hopes respire, 
 
 Or the quickly shuddering quiver 
 
 Of despair washed over anew, 
 
 Or red hate s sullen ember 
 
 Quenched clean in my River s blue? 
 
 For my face is the shadow of flame, a wonder be 
 clouded 
 
 By manifold marvels of Morning s unuttered de 
 sire ; 
 
 My name is a music of mystery crowded 
 
 With meanings outnumbering the chords of lyre, 
 
 But the Player s hand is enshrouded. 
 
 Mine is the wind in the rushes, 
 
 Mine is the murmur that rustles the reed, 
 
 Trembling a music the wild Night hushes 
 
 Where she presses her head on the thyme and the 
 poppy seed; 
 
 Mine all the laughter far-echoing black-vaulted 
 thunder 
 
 As I flash through the high storm-halls, my light 
 nings freed, 
 
 Cleaving blue ether, and rending asunder 
 
 Azure domes of god s delight: 
 
 Far on unwearied pinions 
 
 With Dawn I glide all night, 
 
 And the stars glow down their wonder 
 
 On our undulous even sweep; 
 
 There, in all suns dominions, 
 
 A dream of the dusk I sleep 
 
 Till the demons who dwell in the fountains of fire 
 shall awaken
 
 Drenching the deeps with all crimson hues of their 
 
 rite 
 
 Kindling the fields by stars forsaken; 
 But the flutterless wings cleave on, pure white, 
 Glide steadily on unshaken. 
 
 Not I have delight in thy sorrow, 
 Free Daughters of Dawn, ye maidens sublime 
 On Eternity s mountains o erlooking the morrow ; 
 My kingdom is over all days, yet a vassal to Time ; 
 Though ye rest in my meadows at last, to his might 
 
 I surrender 
 What wonderful ways ye wander, the hills ye shall 
 
 climb, 
 
 To his wisdom what groping shall lacerate tender 
 Seekers for light that endures within : 
 Hear ye, and believe the story 
 O Days, of one of thy kin 
 The Morning, a maiden, and slender, 
 Fair above sisters fair, 
 Hers all their promise, their glory 
 Is shed as rain on her hair: 
 She is Time s youngest, the darling, all light her 
 
 adorning, 
 
 Found from afar as on fateful wings I win 
 Way to her slumber with life s first warning 
 Till, as leaves unfold, as dreams begin, 
 Blossoms the Marriage of Morning. 
 
 Down from those wings like a feather 
 Softly as hope I fall on the Morn; 
 She stirs in the dews where we waken together 
 Wide on a wondering world in its light new-born, 
 And the lustrous fire in her eyes is desire unspoken, 
 Love for a dawning day, for the dead night, scorn; 
 73
 
 She dreamed not wings or their sweep unbroken 
 
 Infinite over her marvellous head ; 
 
 But the wings glide on forever 
 
 Though Dawn flares full and red, 
 
 And the Morn s lips plead as a token 
 
 She longed all night for love: 
 
 Voice of the winds, shall I sever 
 
 Her life for those wings above? 
 
 Kindly calm are the sea-deep eyes of the dreamer, 
 
 Pure and wide as the eyes of a maid unwed ; 
 
 O night! is she only a seemer? 
 
 Whiter than wings with their light unshed, 
 
 Whatever the dusk may deem her. 
 
 Real ! and the Dawn s, O Maiden ; 
 
 Thine is the whisper that wakens the trees, 
 
 Shaking their branches with heavy dreams laden, 
 
 Where danker than night and bedewed with an 
 evil disease 
 
 Hang batlike, foul bodies asweat in an ichorous 
 glowing : 
 
 Thine is the smile o erstealing the flower-flecked 
 leas 
 
 Where iris takes flaunting life, her flags gaily flow 
 ing 
 
 As her braggart bees do battle, and chase 
 
 Small beetles who creep in to plunder 
 
 Her honey-cells holiest place: 
 
 Spirit of all things growing! 
 
 On the undulous nodding grass 
 
 Thine is the lissome wonder 
 
 As it waves to bid thee pass: 
 
 Child of the Dawn, her ever ineffable daughter, 
 
 Who has not gazed with awe on thy lovely face, 
 
 74
 
 Morning! whose smile is as wind on the water? 
 Of the noblest flowers her gentle race, 
 And her lore the love they taught her. 
 
 Unseen o er an infinite Ocean, 
 
 Undreamed as death in the Morn s deep eyes, 
 
 The wings wheel on in their time-free motion, 
 
 Steadily glide forever, though fire arise 
 
 Till the whole heaven glows like the heart of a 
 
 wide swung censer, 
 Though life and its wells flame up as the fierce 
 
 night dies: 
 
 What should she fear when desires in tenser 
 Kindle her crystalline eyes at mine, 
 What wings should the Dawn s free daughter 
 Bow under and know divine? 
 Though the crimson mists roll denser 
 Than ever the dead might knew, 
 Shall Morning dream who brought her 
 Love from the cloudless blue? 
 Though day flare out and impalpable shadows 
 
 thicken 
 
 As ghostly bats till their blood drips down like wine 
 Shrivelling the grass, let his name be stricken 
 From time, who slays his hope on thine, 
 O Morn, as thy pulses quicken. 
 
 Hush, for the rushes answer, 
 
 Love is the summer whose full heat slays; 
 
 Swift as the feet of a fairy dancer, 
 
 Fresher in love and its promise the young grass 
 
 sways, 
 Who shall father the unborn hours of the Morn- 
 
 ing? 
 
 And the proud red lily flaunts her a daring praise 
 75
 
 See where she crimsons at love s first warning! 
 
 Then, from the loneliest breeze on the seaward lea 
 
 Let me lift thy veil and follow 
 
 Afar so all winds may see 
 
 The lip of the Dew s adorning 
 
 Where thy breath plays warm and low ; 
 
 What spirits haunt that hollow 
 
 Is a spell all winds would know: 
 
 And farther than all, as the moan of a troubled 
 
 sleeper, 
 
 The undawned Sea takes solemn voice, Let me 
 Sink under her love forever, and deeper 
 Than any of these, O Night ; let me be 
 As her god, her tears kind keeper. 
 
 Have those darker souls conspired 
 
 That her tears and her love be a bitter thing? 
 
 Shall the Daughter of Dawn, our long desired 
 
 Hear only a distant plea in its listless ring, 
 
 Insistent as death s still knell, an echo eternal 
 
 Wherever is time, of Tides, and Death on the wing 
 
 Over smooth waters and meadows made vernal 
 
 In laughter and flowers of the living light? 
 
 As a wind-dogged mist is driven 
 
 Ashore in its clinging white, 
 
 There speeds from the sea, supernal 
 
 The Morning s mystical Mate; 
 
 And the keen clear air is riven 
 
 In tears at fear of her fate ; 
 
 For the wildness of water and the freedom of fire 
 
 are united, 
 Light wedded to Shadow in twilight s unholier 
 
 state ; 
 Tall flowers and untrampled grasses affrighted 
 
 76
 
 Cower down and shrivel in withering hate, 
 Wilt under the hatred plighted. 
 
 Who is her sullen master, 
 
 Arising unclean from the shuddering sea? 
 
 Why should the shaken waves quake as the blaster 
 
 And slayer of stars in the dawn, forsakes them to 
 flee 
 
 A blight on the sun-loved land, and light s blas 
 phemer 
 
 Whose breath is a deathly mist on valley and lea? 
 
 Who shall arise from the water supremer 
 
 Than tides heaped blue in their mountainous might, 
 
 From Ocean s green meadows who plunders 
 
 Their aureat lilies of light? 
 
 Dawn was a golden dreamer 
 
 When she visioned thy joy, O Morn 
 
 When she sowed all billows with wonders 
 
 Of an ever ungarnered corn ; 
 
 For thy terrible Lord shall harvest the billows, a 
 mowing, 
 
 A slaughter of stars on the waters his rising, his 
 blight 
 
 Is the blasting of motion, cessation of flowing 
 
 Where all things flow, till the blossoms die white 
 
 In the wildered wake of his going. 
 
 He comes, and his mists creep chiller 
 
 Than winter s to shrivel the lilied land ; 
 
 As he steals from the sea, keen shrieks pierce shriller 
 
 Than death s through the stricken air from a bird s 
 
 crushed band, 
 Where circling they wheel and fall, dead stones to 
 
 the ocean ; 
 
 First a finger, swiftly a ghostlier hand 
 77
 
 Puts forth on the grass a groper s light motion, 
 
 Morning, thy Lord is blind! 
 
 Bend, he would touch thy tresses, 
 
 Thy face would his fingers find ; 
 
 Bow down in thy humble devotion 
 
 Free spirit of Dawn grown meek 
 
 At the wonder of first caresses, 
 
 And a might all maidens seek ; 
 
 Thine own calm eyes shall be day to thy Lord, and 
 
 vision ; 
 
 His feet shall follow thy feet a way designed, 
 For his was the choosing but thine the decision ; 
 Let life make a mock of what love repined, 
 Live, though thy hope be derision. 
 
 Was Night thy ruthless betrayer, 
 
 O Morning whose wondering eyes grow dim 
 
 With unheeded desire at love s first prayer? 
 
 Dank is all dead love s passion for a curse on him 
 
 Whose destined chattle thou art in lust s high treas 
 on ; 
 
 Take faith from the withering grass where shadows 
 outlimn 
 
 A passing of wings, thy hope in a season 
 
 When misery s rain and its memory fails : 
 
 There is One who has never forsaken 
 
 Thy need when no hope avails, 
 
 Who shall comfort when impotent reason 
 
 Beats bruised at impassable bars ; 
 
 He will show thee dominions untaken 
 
 By woe, beyond the stars, 
 
 He will lead thee a queen through their valleys 
 and mountainous places, 
 
 From afar he will show thee a Sea with its mysti 
 cal sails, 
 
 78
 
 He will teach thee the fulness of love, what its grace 
 
 is, 
 
 From there shalt thou see, as the low light pales 
 Children s unborn faces. 
 
 Morning! thy marriage the saddest, 
 
 The lornest that lingering love e er knew; 
 
 Morning! thy children the merriest, maddest 
 
 Thine Hours, assuring that joy, not sorrow is true ; 
 
 Those fleet-foot Hours on the sapphire mountains, 
 dividing 
 
 Time from the lapse of time, skimming the bound 
 less blue 
 
 Over the heavens vast ranges, and gliding 
 
 Swifter than light s own wings down skies 
 
 Asheen to their twinkling dances : 
 
 ( Hours ! in whose eager eyes 
 
 The wonder of thought abiding 
 
 Is delight to thy mother s gaze, 
 
 As the swift bright flash of thy glances 
 
 Makes fire in the ether s haze:) 
 
 In happier sons is thy Lord s dull wrath confound- 
 ed, 
 
 Morning, the hope of a world is their young sur 
 prise 
 
 Awakened to life on an azure unbounded 
 
 Uncircumscribed, theirs, till the day-sun dies, 
 
 Thine, by fair sons surrounded. 
 
 Daughter of Morning, whisper 
 Thy mother s name to the timid ferns, 
 Sing of her praise till they waken and lisp her 
 Fame round the forest aisles in the love she yearns ; 
 Born of the Dawn s free child, humbler and lighter 
 Than hers is thy fairy touch where the glad earth 
 learns 
 
 79
 
 From the rippling grass thy parentage brighter 
 
 And higher than hot day s drowsy wind: 
 
 Hour of the Breeze! another s 
 
 Desire shall kindle what mind 
 
 Would make thee a sudden smiter 
 
 Of lilies abased in love; 
 
 For desire of all Earth was thy mother s, 
 
 Though her sons should conquer above ; 
 
 Fleeter of foot are thy brothers, but thou art the 
 
 fairest, 
 
 Theirs is all vision for thou art gentle and blind ; 
 Lonely Daughter of Morn, who sharest 
 Earth with thy Mother, and all things kind 
 Hers is the garland thou wearest. 
 
 Sons of the Morning! who left her 
 
 Lonely on barren meadows, forlorn 
 
 As a lily in winter, ye have bereft her 
 
 Of comfort when love and its fruit turn bitter in 
 scorn ; 
 
 Ye glorious spendthrifts who recklessly ruin and 
 squander 
 
 Light on dull wastrels that ever were alien to 
 Morn, 
 
 Foreign, afar in vain ethers ye wander, 
 
 Clouds and their vanishing halls are brighter for ye ; 
 
 Famous sons of thy mother, 
 
 Who should be prouder than she? 
 
 In her bitterest need must she ponder 
 
 Alone, and dumb as a stone, 
 
 For the wrong ye do, no other 
 
 Shall suffer, and ye shall atone: 
 
 Day shall not reign forever, the Nieht grows fret 
 ful, 
 
 Down the ways of departing shall Morn go free, 
 80
 
 Young once more, of sorrow forgetful, 
 But ye shall abide on the troubled sea 
 Dusky dreams, and regretful. 
 
 Grayer than grief is thine ageing, 
 
 Fickle, the grasses forget thy name, 
 
 Ripening under a warmer presaging 
 
 Of Summer and Noon, O Morn, than thy passion 
 less flame ; 
 
 For the Morning s desires were purer than sum 
 mer s, and sweeter 
 
 Than Noon s in their ruddy distrust of aught but 
 shame : 
 
 Might I know whose desire would defeat her 
 
 As I sped all night on those ageless wings, 
 
 Might I hint of the Noon s false glamour 
 
 Where I slept on the soul of things? 
 
 For her Daughter arising, shall meet her 
 
 There on the withering grass, 
 
 Her soft breath swelled to a clamour 
 
 That hot love come to pass: 
 
 Hour of the Breeze! thy chosen is Noon, who will 
 slay thee; 
 
 Blind as thine eyes thy young love follows and 
 clings 
 
 To him whose passionate fire will betray thee: 
 
 This, wan Morning, thine old age brings, 
 
 Love, not death, shall dismay thee. 
 
 Aged, thy wonderment changes, 
 Morning, whose children were all a delight, 
 A respite from weeping, and Noon estranges 
 The last, the loveliest, pitiful, blind as the night: 
 So let all love s dream end in thy daughter s undo 
 ing, 
 
 81
 
 Unhappy henceforth, let her linger on perishing 
 sight, 
 
 For her fate is a woe that surpasses all rueing, 
 
 Gaze up, and receive thy blessing, the last 
 
 Ere the Shadow o ertake thee 
 
 Blindness, as God moves past. 
 
 No despoiling of light, an enduing 
 
 Of vision shall bless thee blind, 
 
 No coming of night may shake thee 
 
 Agaze on thine innermost mind ; 
 
 Now shine fair wishes as memories, Morning mis- 
 mated ; 
 
 Sweep out of all Time, ye wings, wheel down from 
 the Vast, 
 
 On thy shadow lies Dawn, her flame unabated, 
 
 And asleep on Infinity s billowing blast 
 
 Is a Dream that our waking belated. 
 
 Home with the Dawn, thy Mother! 
 
 Home on the hush of those dusky wings: 
 
 Thy brief bright reign is over, another 
 
 Shall waken and welcome the unborn mother of 
 
 kings ; 
 On the wide waste way of thy going another shall 
 
 brighten, 
 
 Morning! for listen, afar where thy lost Breeze 
 
 sings 
 
 Lullabies there where her babe s eyes lighten 
 Youngest of mornings who gladden the East: 
 Home! for I have been near thee, 
 
 1 have been hope s high priest, 
 Why should my whisper frighten 
 The soul in thy darkened eyes? 
 Only the youngest fear me, 
 
 But thou, thy last hope dies: 
 82
 
 Up! on those wings with me, dream thou of my 
 
 River! 
 
 Day was of little things, thy sorrow the least : 
 Soundly sleep, for I am the giver 
 Of peace, know that all grief has ceased, 
 For never those vast wings quiver. 
 
 I am the hidden concealer, 
 
 My comfort was over thee all day long: 
 
 At night I appear, the sudden revealer 
 
 Of light and its mysteries veiling a starrier throng 
 
 Than the Day s pale wanderers: drowse on those 
 
 rushing 
 
 Wings, and dream of my River s eternal song 
 Dip but a bruised foot, a rosier flushing 
 Reneweth the Morning than Dawn e er knew: 
 Gently my presence falling 
 Steals as a healing dew 
 On anger ; all discords hushing 
 I breathed on thy terrible Lord ; 
 And thy Sons gave ear to my calling, 
 Trembling with one accord 
 
 Death? and I answered, Yea. To thy Daugh 
 ter weeping, 
 
 I am the righter of wrong the blindest do, 
 Have sight for the tears in my keeping. " 
 Silence, and only the midnight blue 
 Awing on eternal sleeping.
 
 BOOKS 
 
 1 gloat over cyphered rolls 
 
 And delve in the souls of the dead, 
 Till the students curfew tolls 
 
 A knell for the mysteries read ; 
 
 Each ghastly mind parades 
 
 Its naked life in death, 
 A shadow mid shadowless shades 
 
 Piping a feeble breath 
 
 Shrilling a voice that late 
 Smote hot in truth or lie, 
 
 To gibber a truer hate 
 That only men can die. 
 
 The jester walks with the sage 
 Twin fools in the Land of Night, 
 
 Here still the prophets rage 
 Their curse of eternal light. 
 
 Poets are here with the rest, 
 
 Divines and felons lust 
 As they did in the light but jest! 
 
 Their brains are whispered by dust ; 
 
 Their brains that started the tears 
 
 To blot a life or a page, 
 Are the sport, or remorseless jeers 
 
 Of winds that never age. 
 
 The pettiest sin shows great 
 Tho the brain-dust rots away, 
 
 For the love it bears, or hate, 
 Is eternity s child to-day. 
 84
 
 To-day this night I read 
 
 By their passionless ashes hot, 
 
 Like these I nourish a seed 
 
 That shall bloom and wither forgot.
 
 READING 
 
 Reading the Rune of the Stars, Riddle of Ages, 
 Weaving a tangled web from the Skein of Fate, 
 Hailing the Sphynx, but not with words cf the 
 
 Sages ; 
 
 Sailing an unknown Sea, and passing the Gate 
 Of the Shadow}^ Vale, treading an untrod way 
 Thro Time s inscrutable Hills; reading in stone 
 The birth of forgotten worlds on crags grown gray 
 With the lichens of aeons, but each one reading 
 
 alone : 
 
 Poring the Book of Life, but deep in the Scroll 
 Of Death ; feeling the blood of the Universe beat, 
 And watching the Systems whirl by with a lurch 
 ing roll 
 As they speak one another in passing to reel on 
 
 till they meet 
 
 On the Infinite Silence of Time; hearing the Song 
 Of the worlds; and some wail up with the low- 
 sung moan 
 Of the Lost: hearing the homeward Hymns of the 
 
 Throng 
 
 As they haste to the Tryst; but some are alone, 
 alone : 
 
 Living one life as a mote in the Infinite whole, 
 Dying one death, or the Whole were plunged in 
 
 Night, 
 
 Having no soul but a gleam of the Infinite Soul ; 
 Now an eddying tremor, bathed in light, 
 Now a shudder in ether, calling the rest 
 To life; and later the ice on that Iron Hand 
 
 86
 
 As it chills the brain of a man, to end his quest 
 For the Unseen Things outlimned on the Border 
 land. 
 
 When will the Great Book close; what will the 
 
 last 
 Word be? We have read, all Men, but a line or 
 
 two, 
 
 And must ever read on, until we have passed 
 Thro countless deaths to myriad lives anew 
 Thro every atom it charts, and every wave 
 Of the Infinite Sea it sings; thro every deed 
 Of glory or shame, must wallow in every grave 
 Undelved it foretells; for this is the Book we 
 
 read ; 
 
 Kosmos Eternal, self-existent, not hewn 
 From the brain of Man as God : Kosmos that sinks 
 The stars in the awful abyss as hoar-frost strewn 
 On the shores of the night-brooded sea ; Kosmos that 
 
 thinks, 
 And in thinking creates the Thing; Kosmos the 
 
 One, 
 Tho many; Kosmos the spark of the glow-worm * 
 
 light, 
 
 Kosmos the hell of the uttermost raging Sun ; 
 Kosmos the Father of Wrong and Wielder of Right.
 
 MEMORY REMEMBERED 
 I have stolen away from home 
 
 Stolen to read on yonder knoll, 
 
 Read a book or is it scroll 
 Legended with deeds of daring 
 
 In the days of long ago, 
 Mariners on strange seas faring, 
 Now, they drift in listless foam ; 
 
 Yes, I knew you long ago. 
 
 Noon has lulled the apple trees 
 
 Till the droning bees are still 
 
 There upon the blossomed hill, 
 I am tired of listless thinking, 
 
 I will sleep and dream awhile, 
 Deep in purple clover sinking, 
 I will sail the breezy seas 
 
 I will live with you a while. 
 
 I have sailed these brine-cut seas, 
 Know them in their wild unrest, 
 Found their isles beyond the West, 
 
 Lived and died with you, my sea-mates, 
 Sailed with you but long ago, 
 
 Sung your love-songs, died your death-fates 
 
 In the stinging hail or breeze 
 Perished with you long ago. 
 
 How we found that Western Land, 
 How we bound their men for slaves, 
 How we lay in brine-fresh graves 
 
 Thro the apple-trees is singing, 
 Was it then, or is it now? 
 
 Hark! the battle shout goes ringing 
 
 And I grasp a brother s hand 
 Farewell then, and farewell now. 
 88
 
 As I ponder o er my book 
 Low I hear the lazy bees 
 Droning thro the apple-trees; 
 
 Far away the kine are lowing 
 And a hush falls over all ; 
 
 Swift the heavens in sunset glowing 
 
 Fade in one remembered look 
 Oh my Soul when was it all ?
 
 FLAME KINGS* 
 To J. L. B., June 26, 1914 
 
 Afar she stood and saw the Flame Kings pass, 
 Between her feet and theirs a chasm yawned 
 Down whose unutterable void no star has dawned 
 She would have followed one whose wistful face 
 Was almost turned to her, but knew his glance 
 Forbade, yet hoped ; so, leaning from that Place, 
 Beneath, she saw a Sea of glowing glass, 
 And deemed the marvel not of barren Chance, 
 But some design of him, her flaming friend ; 
 Lo, mirrored aeons adown a bleak abyss 
 She saw the pageant pass, those Kings ascend 
 Unnumbered ages; dimly dreaming, guessed 
 One meaning mind has ne er expressed 
 In finite thought, or ever can ; for this, 
 Not mine, is hers ; envisioned with her mind 
 I write, who am no prophet; seek, and find. 
 
 Beating the ether on vibrant fire, 
 Steadily soaring, as dreams aspire 
 On spirit pinions with vision asheen 
 To pass the Dawn s unsurmountable hills 
 
 And gaze o er a Valley unseen 
 Float the Flame Kings, one by one. 
 Blazing their aureate way to a Sun 
 That is ultimate over all Kings 
 
 Greater than all, save Sleep, 
 
 *This is an attempt to describe a dream which J. L. 
 B. actually had. Some of the lines are from the dream 
 itself ; but. as usual in such cases, only a general mem 
 ory of the whole survives the awakening. The title 
 is a part of the dream. J. T. 
 
 90
 
 Supreme over stars and souls, 
 
 First among ordered things, 
 
 Lord of the shoreless Deep 
 
 Whose sand shines through its shoals 
 
 As a shifting glitter of stars 
 
 For a veil to all vision s reach; 
 
 Mover of ageless tides 
 
 Over those world-strewn bars 
 
 Where shattered, the systems bleach 
 
 Heaping Infinity s grave 
 
 Where the god of all dreams abides, 
 
 There denser midnight stills 
 
 All rays than throbs to their beams, 
 
 So a clamour of silence fills 
 
 Black space with the ghosts of dreams; 
 
 Up to this Sun they wave, 
 
 Flame Kings, one by one, 
 
 And the sway of their wending fills 
 The crystalline void with a choral sound, 
 So a rushing of utterance rings around 
 The listening stars in their last profound, 
 
 Sweeping an infinite lyre 
 
 With the chords of a universe, thundering songs 
 Of love begotten on blackened hate, 
 Of life on nothingness, rousing throngs 
 Of slumberous clouds to know desire 
 To look with might on unfathered space, 
 To woo the night and beget a race 
 Who shall conquer Chaos and bring forth Fate. 
 
 Eternity s semblance, cast 
 
 As a shadow of One loomed vast 
 
 On awful abysses unsunned 
 
 Down chasms no Flame may cleave, 
 
 Or its fanning reverberate 
 
 To the likeness of wonder stunned 
 91
 
 As a Dawn arisen in hell 
 
 Where somberly, oceans heave 
 
 Their sooty billows aswell 
 Under the blackness of light unborn 
 That never shall startle a dreaming Morn; 
 
 Fate, in that Sun s keen rays 
 
 Foreshadowing One on all days 
 
 Round the uttermost ether s rim 
 
 Where the shades of dreams go not, 
 
 And Flame Kings fade, forgot 
 
 In the splendour of Him. 
 
 She saw the Flame Kings down a living vision, 
 Followed one, and touched his garment s hem, 
 Flashed with him above the shoreless Deep 
 Whereon his burning brothers moved serene 
 Beyond all firmaments afire with them: 
 Starkly straight as Morning s primal ray 
 That cleaves the Eastern hills from clinging night, 
 A solitary beam shot past her sight, 
 A shaft of adamantine light, but black, 
 And sharp as two-edged death, whose upper blade 
 Shears life from man, the nether, severing 
 His mind from time; there, glancing swiftly back, 
 She saw the beam congealed to harder shade, 
 Beheld a whirling sword whose sharp decision 
 Warred upon the Flame of every King 
 Cleft their elemental fires in twain ; 
 The duller dross was shed a jewelled rain 
 Adown the empty ether, vanishing 
 In brittle tinkling dews where one uncrowned 
 His head majestical as light, unwound 
 The involuted fire that bound his zone, 
 And flung his changing robe of splendid flame 
 A shower of broken red and flawless green, 
 Of emeralds and rubies, down the night; 
 92
 
 So all, save one, who kept the dross his own, 
 Unawed by any Sun s eternal Name, 
 Acknowledging above his reign no might 
 Save time alone ; so all, save one proud hue, 
 From amethyst, and sapphires midnight blue, 
 Through sultry topazes whose sullen stain 
 Was molten gold, to that pure queen of gems 
 Unspoiled by any opalescent sheen, 
 Commingled, blazing swiftly down 
 When vassal Flame-Kings hurled their diadems 
 Upon the Deep: one King gave not his crown, 
 His Flame impure toiled on, the sword 
 An instant paused, then passed; he owned no Lord. 
 
 Unloosened all their dingy dross, 
 
 (Save only one, unblest by loss), 
 
 Ethereally lightened, leaps their pace, 
 
 Where upward rushing stream the Kings 
 
 Of Flame athwart the dusky face 
 
 Subdued by jewels, of under-space, 
 
 The deeply glowing ether, core 
 
 Aflame, though crimsonly concealed 
 
 Beneath inert unmelting hail 
 
 Of rubies, mountain-massed, the shed 
 
 Unflowing robes of soaring Kings 
 
 Who go to find a face revealed 
 
 Behind a whiter fire. No red 
 
 Yet tinct with mortal blood 
 
 May dull that flaming countenance, 
 
 Nor green of emeralds avail 
 
 To temper splendour with amaze 
 
 For eyes immortal strangely wed 
 
 To perfect light; the sapphire glows 
 
 With no deep night s refracted ray 
 
 93
 
 Before the fires of final Day 
 
 Intolerably pure and keen 
 
 Translucent as the heart of Light, 
 
 Ashamed, she shines a flawless white; 
 
 Transpierced by finer fire, the green 
 
 Of emeralds, dissolving, clears 
 
 To sheerest crystal colourless; 
 
 Thus chastened, when the Day appears 
 
 Serene above Death s wilderness 
 
 A misty veil before the face 
 
 Of that lone Sun outlasting time 
 
 Alone, no jewel s ray may change 
 
 Unshatterable excellence 
 
 To aught less unified, less pure; 
 
 As queenly rubies fell, so all; 
 
 No lesser radiances endure, 
 
 Weak princelings get them thence; 
 
 The smoke-beclouded topaz shows 
 
 No golden soil or amber stain 
 
 Invisible in light sublime 
 
 Outblazing colours ; offering vain 
 
 Their evening stillness, slowly pale 
 
 The gentle amethysts to rain 
 
 Of dewy scintillance, ashine 
 
 Their starry tenderness as His, 
 
 The Sun above all stars divine 
 
 The lonely Star who ever Is. 
 
 She followed now across the starless places, 
 Saw the wonder of their glances brighten 
 Over silent voids and windy spaces 
 Hollowed to the breath of time s elation, 
 Life; beheld their pinions slowly lighten, 
 Followed up the Dawn, and heard them pouring 
 Forth their souls in one oblation, 
 94
 
 Saw the Day-tide ever nearer rushing 
 Kindle all their eyes to light s adoring, 
 Heard a praise magnificent, and saw them 
 One by one bow down and shield their faces ; 
 Then the full Day broke, a sudden flushing 
 Drenched their bended Flames with time s last 
 
 wonder 
 
 Fire made absolute might overawe them 
 Only less divine, the Flame Kings; nearer, 
 Sterner moved the Day and smote asunder 
 Self from Flame ; the Kings arose, they hastened 
 Ever swifter on, nor glanced behind them 
 Where she panting followed; would they hear her? 
 Must that Sun s intolerance not blind them? 
 Soared the Kings unshaded, they were chastened ; 
 Face averted, still she laboured slowly 
 Up the ultimate she might not gaze upon, 
 Unfearful she, one glance had blessed her holy 
 Before that universal shrine, as ever on 
 With praise in tongues unknown the free Flames 
 
 fared, 
 
 Untranslatable to mortal words their song 
 She strove in vain to murmur; eagerly 
 She pressed to touch her friend s immortal plume 
 Or dazzling feet, would he but stay! 
 
 Had she but dared, 
 
 Who knows, she had not died, but breathed to sing 
 Unutterable things past death s remembering; 
 Alas! she feared to soil his light with earthly clay. 
 
 Had she but dared ! 
 Go, bolder soul, attune 
 Thine inner ear to Sleep, 
 Not thou shalt weep; 
 It was no tomb 
 
 95
 
 Her humble spirit shunned, 
 Unread the fatal rune 
 Inhewn on living rock: 
 
 It was no doom 
 Of truth, and so, to be, 
 That song should fall forgot 
 
 Down emptiness. 
 
 She hailed him not, 
 Her faith s great weariness 
 O ercame her eager lips 
 Withheld the finger tips 
 
 Put forth to plead; 
 Perchance he would not heed? 
 Alas! that hope despaired 
 To touch those wings unsunned 
 
 By mortal stars; 
 What though he made a mock 
 Of praying dreams, a jest 
 On fair humility, 
 A scorn for those who seek, 
 
 And finding rest, 
 
 Repine, 
 
 Then had she shone 
 (Though ever meek) 
 With Flame tw r ice great as he, 
 His seeming radiance known 
 But embers of the fire divine 
 Unbreathed upon by God, 
 His jewel a dingy stone, 
 His wings but common sod 
 And worthiness a dream. 
 But he was none of this, 
 His Flame was purified; 
 So had his spirit kiss 
 Touched fire upon her brow, 
 96
 
 Beatified 
 
 Her lowliness 
 And lit her lips with prophecy; 
 
 His mind s caress 
 Had burned her pure as he 
 Is clean above all earthiness, 
 
 Had she but dared. 
 
 Night and her reticent eyes are won! 
 
 Chaos no more is her temple s fane ; 
 
 Her dusky hair is a molten gold 
 
 Where she walks on eternal hills 
 
 Abloom with flowers of the uttermost Sun 
 
 Whose Dawn, as a coral rain 
 
 Sways over valleys, fold on fold, 
 
 Wind upon wind, awakening, fills 
 
 The azure with fire, the ether with song, 
 
 For chaos is conquered, his iron undone, 
 
 The Doors of that hidden tomb unsealed 
 
 Where Day has slumbered for aeons and aeons, 
 
 So his dreamful eyes behold the Sun 
 
 Remembered, but unrevealed 
 Through exiled ages in Death s grim Land: 
 
 Whose are the victory s paeans 
 Swelling the Morning s freshening gale 
 
 Where it sweeps along 
 Ethereal meads as a veering ship 
 Cleaving with light the crystalline main, 
 Furrowing nothingness into spray 
 Of clustering stars and worlds flung free 
 Asparkle in risen Day: 
 
 Hail ye Flame-Kings, hail ! 
 
 Thine is the song 
 Trembling Eternity s lip 
 97
 
 With Fate s ineffable, still refrain ; 
 Thine is the Dawn on that Sea 
 Where life swept dreams away 
 And the shadow of One was cast 
 As an image of all to be: 
 Kings of the Living Mind, 
 
 Thine be all praise ; 
 Eternal, though changed, ye soar 
 Over years and the tomb of Time, 
 Refined in Truth s white Fire, 
 Free of the tears we keep, 
 Free of all years, ye mount 
 Up to thy Sun sublime 
 And the Perished Dawns respire 
 In the wind of thy wonderful ways; 
 Up to that Sun ye stream, 
 Tongues of Eternity s dream 
 Heard in our transient sleep 
 Here on the echoing shore 
 Of waters remembering Dawn. 
 
 Such praise she sang down Morn s ambrosial air, 
 Her friend, with long remembrance down his eyes 
 Turned back an instant, sanctified her there, 
 A priestess of the lonely Sun supreme 
 Above all galaxies and mortal skies: 
 Where others gaze on night beholding nought 
 Save random stars or distant mistiness 
 Of hoary suns, her mind had dared to dream 
 A vaster universe unseen, yet real, 
 Within, beyond the vacant wilderness 
 Of naked space; till ever rolling thought 
 Evolving slowly shadowlike from thence, 
 Assumed corporeal form, and fire was born ; 
 As fire alone may purest fire refine, 
 98
 
 From fire there came forth flame, from flame 
 
 In ordered sequence, Kings arose divine 
 
 Above all lesser fires: her reverence 
 
 For their sublimer majesties o ercame 
 
 All fear, so she went singing down the Morn, 
 
 Their prophetess. 
 
 In final Day she stands ; 
 
 The Flame Kings pilgrimage is all but done; 
 She may no nearer go, but stays afar 
 Reluctantly her feet that seek the Sun 
 As they, her rulers: there, with idle hands 
 Enclasped, though not in hope, must she abide 
 While ever on they fare to greet their Star, 
 Their undiminished fount through flaming years 
 By heedless praise unchilled, or vainer prayer: 
 How glady had she gone, a Flame-King s bride! 
 
 There is a Sea undreamed that each must cross 
 
 On feet not made of earth, whose brackish tears 
 
 Bewail the bitterness of every loss 
 
 The clinging clay shall mourn, if he would fare 
 
 Beyond the Dawn to Day s untravelled Land 
 
 And know the Sun whose light is everywhere, 
 
 Unseen, all-seeing; here, upon the shore 
 
 Of that remembering water, awed, we wait; 
 
 The venture beckons us with airy hand, 
 
 Though Dawn delay and longed-for Night be late, 
 
 Yet some shall cross at last and mourn no more. 
 
 A priestess of the Flame Kings, earthly yet, 
 She has not trod that Sea her eyes forget 
 With mortal light; tis thus she stands alone, 
 While on they flame, without the holier zone 
 
 99
 
 Of fire celestial: let her dream, and sing 
 Through me her distant vision s lesser thing. 
 
 What Flame s empurpled arrogance has dared 
 To flicker on full clad, all unashamed, 
 His hidden heart s divinity unbared? 
 His jewelled crown shows dull as dusty glass, 
 The robe that once was fire is sooty smoke ; 
 Alone he reigns, whose boastful tongue disclaimed 
 All truth, void night his realm; he shall not rule 
 An equal kingdom with his brothers: 
 
 "Fall 
 
 Forever down to Truth, thy hell, vain fool; 
 Be quenched in fires thy lying life awoke 
 To ever fiercer flame: so perish all 
 Who desecrate with lust of gain the spark 
 Divine I gave with life: Die thou; Be Dark." 
 
 Calm as Dawn the awful doom 
 Flashes stark upon the King, 
 Sears the brow with one immortal Name 
 Rash pride would never own; 
 No word spoken ; felt alone 
 That silent severance of Flame 
 From Light omnipotent: 
 Suddenly a blinding gloom 
 Strikes the Eyes of Day to stone, 
 Stays that radiant soaring band, 
 Chills the flaming praise they sing: 
 Instantly all motion dies, 
 The Sun has hurled his final Dart 
 "Blaspheming Light, be thou apart" ; 
 Swift as fire athwart dead space, 
 Tipt with death its keen beam flies, 
 Pierces through each Flame King s heart, 
 100
 
 Changes not one living face; 
 
 Still as yesterdays they stand 
 
 Frozen into iron might 
 
 Dazzling tongues all crystal bright 
 
 As fallen dews on asphodel, 
 
 Save one, that glisters hard and black 
 
 An adamantine jewel of hell. 
 
 Then down dead night a meteor track 
 Of arrow blackness lives and lies, 
 Extinct the black, its brilliance dead : 
 The life of that false King is rendered back 
 To death who breathed and hell who bred 
 Its infamy. 
 
 This death his first: 
 The very ash of him shall die, 
 His charred-out Flame shall sink accursed, 
 Be blasted down to utter nothingness. 
 Within that Sun s relentless core: 
 No later Flame shall leap to bless 
 His memory: his name shall live no more. 
 
 For lo! sheer up the stricken Day he speeds, 
 A streak of motion where all else is still ; 
 All movement save his own holds back its breath; 
 Swifter, swifter, swifter up his flight 
 No dream of death e er sped so swift as he 
 Where stark toward the Star of Stars he streams 
 Black as death he ever blacker burns, 
 Chars to crisper cinders Daytide s wrack ; 
 Starting silently, he stirs the seeming Night 
 Whose ebon crystal stands outbrazening brass, 
 By quick degrees to whisper as if reeds 
 Were rustled in a rising breeze; shrill 
 As whistling arrows tipt with sharpened glass, 
 101
 
 That strive up wintry winds a lessening death, 
 The whisper swells to shrieks of misery 
 So keen his ever swifter flight, till screams 
 Of piercing terror startle space to learn 
 This once that Sun of Suns Immortal Name 
 He yells in death: the Star of Stars goes black, 
 Extinct its light an instant, night is drenched 
 With pent-up floods of death ; in seething flame 
 That False King s blackened travesty is quenched. 
 
 Sheer down the Sun s immortal Fire he pierced, 
 Annihilated there he found his hell. 
 
 The horror of it strikes her blind ; 
 
 She prays within: 
 
 "Immortal Mind, 
 
 Only thou art pitiless; 
 
 Grant my blindness tears to bless 
 His memory and blot his end ; 
 Who knows, he might have been my friend." 
 
 "This joy be thine; 
 Let Mercy s tender dews 
 
 Unseal thine eyes, 
 Beholding, after mortal kind 
 
 Some good in him." 
 
 Her plea is answered : human tears 
 Refreshing what was once divine 
 
 Rain down the parched years; 
 Their crystal scatters heavenly hues 
 His memory s radiance long foredone 
 
 O er many a wearied mind : 
 Immortally the final Sun 
 
 1 02
 
 Is Lord of all our fleeting skies, 
 
 Though pity s drops bedim 
 Light only less sublime than His, 
 
 Should men bewail 
 His changeless Face unseen 
 Behind our ever-varying veil 
 
 Of sorrow s rain and Him? 
 The rain shall cease;- He ever is. 
 
 Once more shines forth eternal Day, 
 With darkness passed that King away 
 A dream from unremembering life: 
 Upward throng the Flame Kings, freed 
 Their host of all discordant strife; 
 While yet his blasphemy had tongue, 
 Their praises were a lyre unstrung, 
 Their harmony a rifted reed, 
 And melodies unrythmed jars 
 Of tuneless dissonance; but now, 
 As free on rushing fire they climb, 
 Their perfect music stays the stars 
 In distant ravishment, foretells 
 Harmonious years of bright increase 
 To ever purer light, and swells 
 A pealing anthem up to Time, 
 Who pausing, smooths his rugged brow 
 And smiles in peace. 
 
 What mysteries she learned, their Prophetess! 
 Though one return from dream, his labouring mind 
 May never overtake the weariness 
 Who leads him dayward back, or following, find 
 Those magic portals his own soul designed 
 A gateway into paradise ; so she, 
 Reluctantly returning thence, may sing 
 103
 
 No rounded song of wide-eyed prophecies, 
 Nor may a mortal s hands unbidden bring 
 Celestial fire to men. 
 
 I dimly see 
 
 Through her enkindled eyes, infinities 
 Of all-containing wisdom, half-concealed 
 Through misty revelation, half-divine 
 With reason s perfect clarities ashine; 
 Gaze, her vision distantly revealed: 
 
 As dreams who have breathed the spirit of fire 
 Outspeed all light on their wonder s quest, 
 So the Kings flash on in their Sun s behest 
 Filled with the Day their Flames inspire: 
 As with life-giving wine a god might drink 
 Till his echoing laughter arouses the storms, 
 Their spirits are kindled at fire supreme 
 Over death s forever unnumbered forms: 
 Unvisioned the Flame Kings ultimate state, 
 Their Prophetess gazes beyond all years 
 Divining the Dawn from a hint of Morn, 
 Where, ages above all Night, appears 
 Ineffably calm as the face of Fate, 
 A gleaming mist of light unborn ; 
 Smiting the Deep with reverberant flame 
 Down all ages invisibly stream 
 Their changing majesties, draping our skies 
 With auroral splendors moving like Sleep 
 A drowsy wonder over the air; 
 And some shall stir in a dim surmise 
 Of the Dawn unseen, awaken, to sink 
 Beneath those Waters their hopes long passed, 
 Find the Day imagined there 
 Still and perfect, calm at last. 
 
 104
 
 Wheeling forever around their Sun, 
 Grazing its fire with their circling spheres 
 Perfected in flame, their soaring done, 
 Eternally move the Kings round ways 
 Whose orb ordained forever nears 
 The symmetries of a Fire they graze: 
 
 All Flames approximate 
 Through ever-varying form, 
 Through death and shadowed fate 
 To one unchanging norm, 
 One awe but dimly guessed, 
 One Mind e er unexpressed 
 Through thought s pervading might, 
 
 Made manifest 
 In number s symphonies 
 Where thought with being mates; 
 Though ordered aeons transform 
 Void chaos into law, 
 But Flames may feel the awe 
 Eternity creates: 
 
 Their endless orbits weave 
 For everlasting Night 
 A splendid robe of light; 
 So clothed in harmonies 
 All star and wonder-wrought, 
 Her form transcending thought 
 That Flames alone perceive, 
 Unseen of mortal minds, 
 Night looms before the Sun; 
 Her flaming splendour blinds 
 Our eyes before the Day 
 Whose Sun we shall not know: 
 Her robe alone we see, 
 105
 
 And watch its flaming flow 
 Down black infinity: 
 
 From Time s eternal loom 
 It falls forever, spun 
 With warp of aeons to be 
 And woof of ageless doom: 
 Through all its patterns run 
 The wonders of the Sun 
 The hues of hope and dread, 
 Pale hate, and love s despair 
 Meet, interwoven there, 
 The night s immensity 
 That frights the timid dead 
 Through all, the darkest thread: 
 Forever spun, it falls 
 And floats o er years to be, 
 A robe of warmth and light 
 Where systems blindly stir 
 Unborn in primal night. 
 Enshrouds all aeons that were 
 In death s chill mystery: 
 
 Its smallest part sublime, 
 No mortal s mind has read 
 That pattern s grand design ; 
 One thread of it appeals 
 The following mind to know- 
 Through fate and deeds undone; 
 Majestically slow 
 Through man-outlasting time, 
 With many a secret sign 
 Its meanings intertwine, 
 So marvels move in vain : 
 To man, who wove it not 
 1 06
 
 It seems a tangled skein, 
 Unravel it who can, 
 The single thread will show 
 The whole of God to man 
 Reveal each hidden plan 
 And make the pattern plain. 
 
 She stood afar and saw the Flame Kings weave 
 
 Unsymboled mysteries of light divine, 
 
 Sublime beyond all utterance; alas! 
 
 That she, returning thence must ever leave 
 
 The pattern unrevealed ; no feet may pass 
 
 Beyond the Borderland to us: shall we repine, 
 
 Who have her prophecy? Let us resign 
 
 Our souls to Time; the words are hers, not mine. 
 
 107
 
 NEWTON 
 
 Slowly moves wide wheel on wider wheel, 
 Grinding gradual time-outlasting grain 
 System-dust, and finer stuff for brain 
 
 Aeon-born to bid the stars reveal 
 
 Their reaping: as from light the minds congeal 
 About the transient atoms, melt again 
 Impalpable as thought in death s inane ; 
 
 Not yet is mind and matter s union real. 
 
 Incarnate springs man s archetype, the end 
 Of age on adamantine age revolved : 
 One awful thought informs the slow decay 
 
 Of heaven on heaven, till their last wonders blend 
 In Newton: motion, time s grim mill resolved 
 By him, shall never wear his light away. 
 
 1 08
 
 JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH 
 
 Inspired of Time s unuttered harmonies, 
 Deep knower of the soul unknown to men, 
 Forshadower of larger life again, 
 Unfallen, grander thro humanities 
 Beyond the clay; supreme in sound 
 And symboled mysteries, lone thou hast found 
 One hidden chord that shall attune the spheres 
 To drown their chaos thundered harsh in fears 
 With melodies subdued, to presage powers 
 Undreamed thro all man s paltry, treasured hours 
 Of moment s inspiration: seek we light 
 From thee enthroned in solitary might. 
 
 Eternal, solemn, free, thy music peals 
 
 Uncloyed by empty Beauty s languid voice 
 Ethereally false: thy fugues rejoice 
 
 In myriad prophecies, whose chant reveals 
 Responsive harmonies, till sound unfolds 
 In rolling splendor like to God who holds 
 
 A vortex universe in mind of one ; 
 
 Return they ever round thy central sun 
 Of theme grand emblems of eternity 
 Enrolling all within their tide, whilst we 
 
 But wonder at the hidden rhythm s beat 
 
 Within the rhythm, strong, all pure, all sweet. 
 
 Could Orpheus plaintive song of love endure, 
 Or would the trees and streams recall those pure 
 Delights he sang? Alas one is forgot, 
 For song and singer strayed where song is not, 
 That idle passion be forever sure 
 
 Of silence; but, let herb and flesh and stone 
 
 109
 
 Forever perish, then wilt thou alone 
 Peal out a deathless concord, bonding spheres 
 
 And systems shadowed in thy vaster scheme 
 Of death: not thine is change, till all the years 
 
 Of time s reluctant aeons read thy dream, 
 That when their sleep-forgotten dawn appears 
 
 In these remembered skies with sudden light, 
 The shattered heaven shall hear the deathless word 
 
 Thy music speaks: still voice of stiller night 
 O prophet of all things, we have but heard 
 
 Thy voice behind the sound, to comprehend 
 
 It not, until thy endless music end. 
 
 no
 
 JAMES CLERK MAXWELL 
 
 1831-1879 
 
 Maxwell ! fame to make old Scotland proud, 
 Sheer genius crystallized in Time and Space, 
 Your single mind would glorify a race 
 
 Tho Burns we lacked an a s unminted gowd ; 
 
 True Poet you, outsingin a their crowd 
 
 Wi wee sma pipin s, Nature showed her face 
 To them, but you, her Heart, and bade you 
 trace 
 
 One boundless life through lightning, fire and cloud. 
 
 Discerning Order where all seemed mad Chance, 
 You gave the clashing Atoms laws, as Fate 
 Immutable; Musician too, with might 
 You swept the Threefold Nabla, till elate 
 Through harmony, you flashed on Night one glance, 
 From smitten chaos gushed eternal Light. 
 
 Ill
 
 A KING 
 
 "I was: I loved: I am not;" only these 
 
 The words one wished for epitaph. He fought 
 His valiant fight, and fell; a friend unsought 
 
 Befouled this flawless memory: "The lees 
 
 Of bitter doubt he drained, choked off disease 
 And unbelief at last, denied he taught 
 Against our scriptures: evil thus unwrought, 
 
 He died a zealot full of psalmodies." 
 
 So perish all who strive to free their kind 
 From brainless Custom s brazen tyranny. 
 
 Fight on! devoted band, the human mind 
 
 Through truth shall yet prevail, and reason 
 
 saves : 
 Be crowned with thorny life, as even he, 
 
 Kings of men though swine defile your graves. 
 
 112
 
 WILLIAM THOMSON 
 
 LORD KELVIN 
 
 1824-1907* 
 
 High on the splendid roll of Britain s fame, 
 Fused in the very Ether s pulsing core, 
 Large as the marvels Science ever bore, 
 
 Writ in blazing letters, lives one name, 
 
 William Thomson, Intellect s white flame. 
 Out from Eternity he strode; before 
 His mind Disorder s mountains loomed no 
 more, 
 
 From unimaginable heights he came. 
 
 Into the Dark he passed, and Midnight fled 
 
 Young as the Dawn down Heaven s Milky 
 
 Ways: 
 In death, as life, still faithful to his trust 
 
 With Man he lingers, none of him is dead. 
 
 And how has Britain sung her loftiest praise? 
 His dust is mingling now with Newton s dust. 
 
 *These are the only words on his grave, where he 
 lies in Westminster Abbey, beside Newton. 
 
 113
 
 FATA MORGANA 
 
 In light of opal wonder 
 Beyond the Pleiades, 
 A spirit wanders lonely 
 With stricken face and gray; 
 She shines for dead men only 
 To haunt their haggard trees, 
 And rends all veils asunder 
 In shadowings of Day. 
 
 Her face is ever burning, 
 Unbeautifully seared 
 With furrows wrought by Godhead 
 In purposing of Time; 
 But Man is ever mislead 
 By signs his forbears feared, 
 And dreams of any turning 
 From Death alone sublime. 
 
 In void of timeless aether 
 She sails alone, unknown, 
 Uncharted o er the vastness 
 Of Silence without shore; 
 She mourns in dead outcastness, 
 A barrenness of stone 
 For heaven sunk far beneath her, 
 Unloved forevermore. 
 
 The starry heroes paeans 
 That shake eternal seas, 
 Grow dumb as waiting hill-snows, 
 When vaster than the Spheres 
 Her awful silence echoes 
 
 114
 
 Unsymboled harmonies, 
 
 Whose chords crash on for aeon?. 
 
 And beats, a thousand years. 
 
 Alone she knew the secret 
 Of every planet s love, 
 Their every fiery passion 
 Ere Hell was scarce begun; 
 But what tho Chaos crash on, 
 All cold she stands above 
 The dim, forgotten, far-set 
 Dominions of the Sun. 
 
 She casts a pale ensnaring 
 By treachery of reeds, 
 When some have seen her beckon 
 Their souls across the Dark; 
 But few may ever reck on 
 The deathful dance she leads 
 Men pay for godlike daring 
 With bodies grimly stark. 
 
 And vainly some have striven 
 To find her light again, 
 Yet only gods have known her 
 In deathlessness of youth ; 
 And they are ever sadder 
 Than all the sons of men, 
 For them the clouds are riven 
 And they beheld the Truth. 
 
 Altho the Prophets teach her 
 In creeds of Better Things, 
 And many Christs have perished 
 In babbling of her name,
 
 Yet every truth they cherished 
 Has loosed its waxen wings 
 No change can ever reach her 
 Eternally the Same. 
 
 And some have promised ages 
 In knowledge of all things, 
 And some have lied a ceasing 
 From knowing of all kind ; 
 But still a vast increasing, 
 Undying Silence rings 
 And throbs thro pulsing ages 
 A mockery of mind. 
 
 If any man has dreamed her, 
 His sleep was tinged with death: 
 Unveiled she will be never, 
 Her being none may tell : 
 In life we seek her ever, 
 And cease from weary breath 
 To know we never gleamed her 
 Who lights not heaven nor hell. 
 
 lib
 
 SEEKING 
 
 ON 
 
 Down the River of Light, 
 Swift through the meadows of Day, 
 On, in the Night s despite 
 On, and away! 
 
 Touch not a nodding grass, 
 Stay not for any flower, 
 Stealthy as winds we pass 
 Fleet as the breath of an hour. 
 
 Out to the Ocean at last, 
 Out where all winds go free; 
 Seeker, the Bar is passed, 
 The Bar and the blossoming lea. 
 
 Down the Ocean to Night, 
 Heed not the Siren s lay 
 On, in the Sun s delight, 
 On, and away! 
 
 SEEK; FIND 
 
 Despise this curious globe inwrought with gold ; 
 
 Contemn the wind s untravelled wonderland ; 
 
 Shun mazy night s consistencies unplanned ; 
 Let not our meadow s yellow flowers unfold, 
 Or rot afresh in mouths of wormy mould ; 
 
 Transmute the stubborn atoms, aye, command 
 
 New elements to glow beneath thy hand: 
 Neglect, perform, the End is yet untold. 
 
 117
 
 Not earth or dusty stars may answer thee, 
 Or grim death break thee on a living wheel ; 
 
 No fiend shall nourish hate on hope unsought: 
 One part contains the whole, alone goes free, 
 All else an idol, whose blind eyes reveal 
 
 Behind gray dreams of God thine own high 
 thought. 
 
 FLEETER THAN TIME 
 
 Who shall outspeed the flight of a year 
 
 Who is swifter than light, 
 Who will be Home when the Dawns appear 
 
 Innocent in God s sight? 
 
 Up shall they wing from East and West 
 And the mountains under the sea 
 
 They will arise from their years unrest 
 To sink in infinity. 
 
 With the speed of days shall the years suspire, 
 Who is swift as their wingless feet ? 
 
 Fleeter his wings whose soul would aspire 
 To halt the flight of the hours most fleet. 
 
 Lo! thou swifter than Godlike Light, 
 
 Hail! bright Messenger age-long sought; 
 
 Thou shalt outstrip the Day and the Night 
 Fleeter than Time, O Thought! 
 
 ASLEEP 
 
 O Men! Eternity s forgetful heirs 
 What starrier deeps unfathomed have ye known ? 
 How mournfully thy shallow oceans moan 
 An echoed thunder that was never theirs: 
 118
 
 One dull oblivion rolls by day despairs 
 Athwart the wondrous heavens, a rack of stone 
 Around unbounded waters ; these alone 
 Bar memory from Earth s unanswered prayers. 
 
 All spirit fires are in thy mortal reach; 
 A Sun once loved shall never disappear 
 From visioned skies, their dawns forever near; 
 
 Then vaster hope may humble life beseech? 
 Afar, Sleep \vakefully wandering may hear 
 Infinity o ersurge the dreaming Beach. 
 
 PURE LIGHT 
 
 Opinion s various multicoloured Glass 
 
 Between men s minds and Him, the Changeless 
 
 One 
 
 Defiles the changing light and dims the Sun 
 We gaze upon as fashions come, and pass. 
 
 Those brightened colours cheat man s pensive eye 
 Till every page of years or Nature glows 
 With more than suns; a rose no more is Rose, 
 And on her cheek rich sunsets never die: 
 
 Is all that perished ever, dead in vain, 
 
 Must Yesterday forever haunt Today 
 
 That light be never white, but gray, 
 
 Or Morning tinged with Evening s brighter stain i 
 
 We stand before the Glass, what shines Behind? 
 Who first discerns must take for thought his own, 
 Forgetting all, must he fare forth alone 
 And meet the Matchless Master Mind to Mind. 
 119
 
 THE MESSENGER 
 
 Hold the flaming torch unshaken, 
 
 Touch the years on feet of fire, 
 
 Down all aisles of dark desire 
 Let thy Dawn awaken. 
 
 Kindle space in one keen glance, 
 
 Smile, and ordered systems brighten 
 
 Round those shores where huge wrecks whiten- 
 
 Quicken with the wind of chance. 
 
 Pass those titan suns assembled 
 
 There to spoil thine ageless light; 
 
 Fire thy birthright, Time s thy might 
 Ere ever Ether trembled. 
 
 Spun of light, ablaze with dreams 
 Let thy hair stream o er the aeons, 
 Sounding stars to deathless paeans 
 
 Where the stillest cluster gleams. 
 
 Glance a moment s flight behind thee: 
 All thine aureate glories quenched, 
 Flame and hair in darkness drenched, 
 
 Let the dead Night blind thee. 
 
 THE DESIGNER 
 
 Grown old, he laboured at his task unknown, 
 No eye beheld that ageless hand outlimn 
 The firmament, and no mind compassed him 
 
 Who first imagined heaven a mystic zone 
 
 Of starry meaning; darkened ages flown 
 Down empty misery shall not bedim 
 His mind, who mocked the radiant seraphim 
 
 And made their constellated eyes his own. 
 
 120
 
 Unravel thou the woven Zodiac 
 
 Who wouldst reveal that worker s wondrous 
 dream ; 
 
 What marvels then, fine-spun as primal thought 
 May thread the ages, lead thee humbled back 
 
 To God, no wisdom tells; though death it seem 
 
 Unweave ! with life is mystery unwrought. 
 
 "ANCIENT OF DAYS" 
 
 Old beyond all count of uttered years, 
 Immovably stare those iron eyes 
 Through every idol man reveres, 
 And see the dust; to Him no altars rise. 
 
 Eternity is but a whim of man, 
 The Ancient knows, all days to Him are one; 
 No day of years since numbered days began 
 Is aught for Him but Now ; begun, tis done. 
 
 Where broods this Ancient, solitary, grim 
 In timelessness, what awful aspect His? 
 In thy unbounded mind behold thou Him, 
 A mind that ever was and shall be, is. 
 
 THE JEWEL 
 
 Flawless, calm, it glows, 
 Imperishably wrought 
 To perfect symmetries 
 
 He only knows 
 Who fashioned it serene 
 Through shaping mysteries 
 With all his soul asheen 
 
 To peerless thought. 
 
 121
 
 All rays give up their gold 
 Their swifter silver shed 
 Within those crystal deeps 
 
 Where hues unfold 
 Their woven splendor spun 
 In dreams outblazing Sleep s, 
 Their colors mingled, one 
 
 In beauty wed. 
 
 Transmuted clarities 
 Thence issue newly strange ; 
 Unequal beams unite 
 
 Disparities 
 
 In wonder s pure increase; 
 There throbs the heart of Light 
 Its maker s masterpiece 
 
 The soul of Change. 
 
 THE SEEKER 
 
 Bring no laurel branches hither, 
 
 Weave no wreath that shall not wither, 
 
 Raise no pillared pomp to him ; 
 
 He is dead: 
 
 Truth he saw with eyes grown dim, 
 Saw her lips move, strove to hear her, 
 Closer crept and saw Death near her, 
 
 Heard her speak; 
 Back he turned, his eyes a glory, 
 He would tell the Ages story 
 
 Hers the praise! 
 Little recked he then of fame, 
 Purified in life s white flame 
 He beheld her face to face, 
 
 122
 
 What were man s immortal bays? 
 Leave him lonely in this place 
 Where his light went out for aye; 
 Here were ghostly finger tips 
 Laid upon his eager lips 
 
 She passed by; 
 Halted here her Fellow grim 
 
 His the stilly hand 
 Chilling wondrous words unspoken 
 Truth had left our hope a token 
 
 Had she willed : 
 
 Scorning us she loved the Seeker, 
 Humble we, but he was meeker 
 
 Loving her alone. 
 Cover up his life all broken, 
 
 Unfulfilled ; 
 What he found is yet unknown, 
 
 Yet unsaid : 
 
 Come, let us go 
 Quit this place, as even She 
 With no remembrance ; he 
 
 Would have it so. 
 
 POSTERITY 
 
 "Let this imperfect be, 
 A Thing of Destiny 
 
 Time s younger child ; 
 Whatever good betide 
 Let this pure hope abide 
 
 All unreviled. 
 
 If this be spit upon, 
 Its crown of bays but thorn 
 When I am gone, 
 123
 
 Take then for heart a stone, 
 Depart, and dwell alone 
 Without my scorn." 
 
 Thus wrote the ancient seer. 
 They put his hope to shame 
 
 Dishonoured her. 
 
 "Take arms! and shield her fame I" 
 How bravely did they jeer! 
 
 He could not stir. 
 
 VOICES 
 
 Aeons and aeons of Voices, weary 
 Through age upon age of tears 
 Shuddering under the Night, 
 Darkening prophecies, dreary 
 As emptiness born of delight; 
 When will their sobbing cease? 
 These are the sounding Years 
 Echoing back to peace. 
 
 Crowding the ebon stillness, vaulted 
 With heavens of iron above, 
 Flitting abysmal glooms 
 Where high Death towers exalted 
 Over his vassal Dooms 
 Struggle the homeless hosts 
 Crowned with remembering love, 
 Forsakenly flutter the ghosts. 
 
 One Voice is solemnly pealing, 
 Over all moaning it rings, 
 Authority s dominance this, 
 The word of its mournful revealing ?- 
 124
 
 "Hearken, ye shadows of bliss, 
 Who wantoned on Life s hot Wine, 
 Gray spectres of slaves and Kings, 
 The Draught ye crave is mine: 
 
 For want of my Water ye languish, 
 
 The Wine was Fire, ye weep ; 
 
 Shall I cry an end to thy thirst, 
 
 Or Time put a term to thine anguish? 
 
 More deeply am I accursed, 
 
 For a drop of thy Wine I would give 
 
 The whole of Oblivion s Deep, 
 
 So changed, I might die, and live." 
 
 Unanswered as summer s thunder 
 Boasting to fright the sun, 
 Eternity s utterance dies: 
 Silence, a rarer wonder 
 Smites the adamant skies, 
 Sears a command unsaid ; 
 "When Water and Wine are one 
 Shall Death be King of the Dead." 
 
 125
 
 THE SUBLIME 
 
 Islands of stars in the infinite Deep, 
 Foam as a universe blown on the night, 
 Eddying ethers that wheel into being 
 All on one solemn majestical sweep 
 
 Of the pinions of light, 
 Gathering might in their mystical motion 
 Round the dominions of God s decreeing, 
 Float as mere spume on a fathomless ocean 
 Unsounded by space, unbounded in time : 
 The lift of those wings is a symphony rolled 
 Under stars as dust in the vibrant void, 
 And their fall is a fanning of music sublime- - 
 Beating to atoms all motes destroyed, 
 So the infinite ocean is foamless and pure 
 For ages these hushes of darkness endure, 
 
 Till the wings once more 
 An aeon from under all nothingness, lift 
 With vortex whirl on the brooded shore, 
 Islands and foam in a spinning drift ; 
 And the pause of those pinions ere they descend 
 Is eternity save to One alone, 
 For the ruined worlds round reeling suns 
 But wail an echo the waters have known, 
 And the stars are dark in their fiercest flame 
 Their wars extinct, their endings told, 
 Their harmonies only a dream-heard song 
 Forgotten with dawn, remembered with sleep 
 Ere ever they woke or time had an end : 
 Once more the fall of all motion stuns 
 The foam to dust, and the glittering throng 
 Of motes to nothingness whence all came; 
 So ever those makers of melody chime 
 Rise and fall in a timeless rhyme, 
 126
 
 Being to void, note by note, 
 
 Void to being remembering naught, 
 
 All unheard but in God s one mind 
 
 That wills all motion, that thinks each mote, 
 
 That lifts the pinions of life o er death, 
 
 That speeds all death on the wings of thought: 
 
 Change outlasted by Him alone, 
 
 The dust may dream but a note of the song 
 
 That is heard by Him forever and ever; 
 
 Though the dream of the Stars outlast the night, 
 
 And the foam remember its natal tide, 
 
 Though in seeming of more than ethereal might 
 
 The eddying atoms whirl and abide 
 
 In the infinite Deep, 
 
 Though the chorusing galaxies march along 
 The chasms of space their wars dissever 
 
 From light for sons, 
 Eternity s face is never revealed 
 Unseen neath the beat of descending wings, 
 Unheard is the song a universe sings, 
 
 Unechoed that victory s paeans 
 The red stars peal as they blacken and die: 
 From One alone is Time not concealed, 
 And only One whose wings brush by 
 
 Untouched forever and ever ; 
 One is the mystery vaster than all of them, 
 Pinions and foam, a galaxy s diadem 
 Blazing its noon in the shadow of Night, 
 These but the shape of change, One is the soul, 
 Finite the universe, One is the whole ; 
 Maker of mind and its infinite light, 
 
 Comprehensible never, 
 
 One is sublime 
 Time! 
 
 127
 
 THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW 
 
 A Valley sleeps beyond the Western Sea 
 
 And storied Isles of Dream, a glade of peace, 
 
 There Life is but a fading memory 
 
 Where hungry Death can reap no rich increase. 
 
 No sombre vale of brooding Night is this, 
 Here, azure morning ever stills the air, 
 
 No dreaming Dawn awaits the kindling kiss 
 Of some long-errant Sun to make her fair: 
 
 A pearly sheen of changing heavens instills 
 Immortal hope for larger Day, unborn 
 
 To all the Valley, save those fearless hills 
 That reach like gods above the mystic Morn 
 
 To rend out secrets from the cryptic Sky 
 
 Unstarred, deep sunk beyond those chasms 
 Night 
 
 Reveals a breathing-span, then, thundering by 
 Imperial, o erwhelms in hosts of light. 
 
 But should the giant Hills prevail o er Day 
 
 To hurl him down, or yield the Stars to Morn, 
 
 The Valley Dwellers still shall go their way, 
 For Beauty lives to put their fears to scorn: 
 
 The rolling meadows shine with daffodils, 
 And all the brooks with ruddy marigolds, 
 
 Till hyacinths, empurpling shadowy hills 
 Expire, where every tender bud enfolds 
 
 128
 
 Her petaled prayer of peace, that would not fade 
 But gently yield to noon the fragrant soul 
 
 In sighs, a breath of incense loving-strayed 
 From life s last altar, white upon the knoll. 
 
 There drowse no browsing flocks; the plaintive 
 songs 
 
 Of birds are stilled o er silent-swirling streams, 
 Swift-sinking to their tryst with billowy throngs 
 
 Where all forget their ripples broken dreams. 
 
 There wandering lanes o ergreen the meads, to lose 
 Their ways in breezy vales of rose and may, 
 
 And bower their shade where ever-early dews 
 Recall dead tears for some old yesterday. 
 
 No maiden waits her lover in those lanes, 
 Where never ecstasies of summer pale 
 
 At autumn s chill ; no rustic lute complains 
 The broken tryst with low, unhappy wail. 
 
 No lover haunts the glens with broken sighs, 
 
 Or tramples down the patient corn, with quick. 
 
 Impatient step, to greet young April s eyes 
 
 With pleading hope, by some sweet smelling rick 
 
 Of autumn s clover: there, no soaring song 
 That thrilled the Harvest Home, must break 
 
 In anguished melody with winter s long, 
 Unlovely cry for loves that can forsake. 
 
 For there, the shades of earthly love forget 
 
 Their earthiness, and fear no breath of shame 
 
 Late chill to penitence of vain regret 
 Ah, There, Dishonor is an empty name. 
 129
 
 These phantomed memories of men are not 
 Unloved, for they may never feel the keen 
 
 Unfriendliness of Death, alone, forgot 
 By loving ministry, in couches green 
 
 And white with fleeting pledge of grass and flowers, 
 Deflowered by some once loved and trusting hand 
 
 To ease the barren grief of bitter hours, 
 That love and hope, but never understand. 
 
 Not theirs the vanity in toys of life, 
 
 Or vainer crowns of death ; they hoard no wreaths 
 Of deathless bay, or pictured scroll of strife 
 
 Long fought and done; and rust is in their 
 sheaths. 
 
 No flicker false as haunts the stagnant marsh, 
 No lying spark of God s forbidden fire 
 
 Enkindles men to die, and stare the harsh 
 Awakening after death of false desire. 
 
 None seek to beggar Miser Fame, that dust 
 Of charlatan defile the dust of seer, 
 
 And no ethereal love and loveless lust 
 
 Seem one in death, desire dwells never here. 
 
 No wistful eye looks forth for sympathy, 
 
 Each wanders with himself in utter rest 
 From fearful hope and tearless misery 
 
 Forever; here the worst is as the best. 
 
 #*##**#* 
 
 And if one wandering there a day, perchance 
 A year, or grayer centuries, may sigh 
 
 In thankfulness, then with an upward glance 
 Perceive the soundless war of hills and sky: 
 130
 
 And like a wounded warrior, dream that he 
 Knew battles long ago, he yet may learn 
 
 That secret, nameless thro Eternity, 
 And leave the Valley, never to return. 
 
 Then, if he choose to cast to Earth the years 
 Of happy, thoughtless peace, athirst to drink 
 
 The lasting draught, a clouded hand appears 
 To point the hidden slope to that last brink 
 
 Where grass and lilies halt reluctantly 
 
 Before the hard, forbidding sands, curved up 
 
 Like scimitars unsheathed relentlessly, 
 To guard the secret of the Master Cup. 
 
 Who treads the hidden slope must walk alone. 
 Unmoved by sudden hope or any fear, 
 
 He may not question air, or fire, or stone, 
 
 No answer give they, and no hope dwells here. 
 
 Unmoved, calm lilies wait for all who come, 
 Unmoved, the royal Iris lifts her head, 
 
 A prophetess, aye prophetess, but dumb, 
 Her latest word of hope fore er unsaid. 
 
 There is no footprint on that barren rim, 
 
 For he who thirsts must throw all hope or dread 
 
 To Life: the subtle fire is all of him 
 
 That treads that slope, and all that wills to tread. 
 
 Thence rushingly the sweet and bitter flow 
 A mingled harmony of life and death ; 
 
 A little span of peace, and all must go 
 
 In longing there, to blow with fluttering breath
 
 Those eager ripples back : then plunging deep 
 The dusty lips, once drink, and all is done ; 
 
 Save poppied meads of dreams, or hemlock sleep; 
 Grim Starless Night, or Life s resplendent Sun. 
 
 \\2
 
 PERCHANCE 
 
 How many days of sheer content 
 
 May any mortal know; 
 Is there one moment yet unspent 
 
 To buy us aught but woe? 
 
 Uncertain all the squandered Past, 
 
 Its reckoning falls due; 
 Before a veil we pause aghast, 
 
 It hides? would God we knew. 
 
 All patterned with a gray design 
 
 Of seas and sand the veil ; 
 Put forth a hand, all hope resign, 
 
 Our trembling fingers fail. 
 
 So troubled here; Beyond, how fair! 
 
 Our fearful prayer is this 
 Perchance there rests neath earth s despair 
 
 One second s flawless bliss. 
 
 133
 
 INVITATION 
 
 Come up the little hill with me, 
 We ll take the Dawn by quick surprise, 
 We ll wake the winds all down the lea 
 
 The birds on yonder tree, 
 And rouse the dragon-flies: 
 
 The dew yet slumbers on the vine 
 And sleep is on the violet s eyes; 
 Their revels done, the moths come home 
 
 And creep beneath their leaves: 
 Our joy of life is cool, keen wine, 
 The stilly air its crystal cup; 
 Come, climb the little hill with me 
 And see the first ray tip the sheaves 
 With golden grain: awake, come up! 
 
 WAITING 
 
 Far from the town 
 
 On the spring-green lane 
 
 Where the grass waves fresh 
 
 Not young, but grown, 
 
 We ll see those Hills clear Hills our own ; 
 
 Dust of our dust and flesh of our flesh 
 
 We ll see you again when we lay us down. 
 
 What spoke the thrush, 
 A croak for the town? 
 But the Hills are out there 
 Let us watch them till dark; 
 
 Let us wait till the sunset comes down with the 
 lark 
 
 134
 
 (He sings with the Sun till day brings him down) ; 
 We ll tarry, sweet care! 
 Till the hills night-hush. 
 
 WEAVING 
 
 Irrevocably every dream 
 
 Takes wing with wakened Day; 
 Forever dies the transient gleam 
 
 Of Sleep s unearthly ray: 
 No risen Star may ever wake 
 
 Those dusky plumes 
 That night s dim Sun illumes, 
 Or stir ethereal deeps to shake 
 
 False light away. 
 
 Adown the night s forgotten tombs 
 
 Stalks one huge shape of gray, 
 A spectre Day whose shadow looms 
 
 Immense on Light s affray ; 
 Dull Ethers quell his ghostlier beam, 
 
 And Suns forsake 
 His wings as Dawns unmake 
 Sleep s mystery in wefts that seem 
 
 Time s interplay. 
 
 AT DAWN 
 
 Far, far away the silver city lay, 
 Far, so far beneath the morning hill 
 
 It was a dream, 
 
 And Dawn gazed everywhere, save there ; 
 All round the sky a Day s wide wings hung still ; 
 The lower heaven shone one azure gleam, 
 Pure as a crystal dreaming summer air, 
 
 Clear and keen as the risen day. 
 135
 
 Deep, deep beneath the Morning s gleaming brow 
 Eternal beauty glowed in godlike thought, 
 
 Unchangeably serene ; 
 
 With sudden gust the freshened wind arose, 
 Awoke, and strove to speak, yet uttered nought ; 
 Its chilly breath revealed no god unseen ; 
 The jealous dawn concealed what lone night knows 
 
 The city dreamed, and suffers now. 
 
 TO THE WIND 
 
 Come, gently healing breeze from yonder hill, 
 Forget the yearning grass a breathing spell 
 And sigh but here! forsake the lily-bell, 
 Let every nodding violet dream thee still 
 A fragrance unreturning; whisper, fill 
 The dreary air with balmy peace, and tell 
 Our drooping blooms a tale of asphodel, 
 Let them believe beneath thine airy will. 
 
 Blow once again thou ever-freshening wind ; 
 Bring hither heaven s unbounded atmosphere 
 Those azure wings of hope s eternal year : 
 Unchained of life, by death still unconfined, 
 Forever free from any chilling fear, 
 Touch thou with ghostly lips man s doubting mind. 
 
 THEN 
 
 Over the Desert and ever away 
 
 From Vales with their luring waters; 
 
 Up from the Meadows that smile, "Oh stay! 
 Rest, and be happy here!" 
 
 136
 
 Beneath and afar the Cities of Men, 
 Unreal as the walls of a vision 
 
 Vanish in Air: shall we miss them then, 
 Lonely on yonder Peak? 
 
 Starrier dews shall freshen and bless 
 Our eyes, than brighter the meadows; 
 
 Then shall Dawns walk in loveliness 
 Over the Mountain Tops. 
 
 WINGS 
 
 There was fire in that western sky, 
 And a sky-deep sheen on the sand 
 As we watched the last gulls fly 
 To the sunset s brighter land ; 
 
 Then the waves curled clear and green 
 And hue on hue paled fast, 
 Twas night, or the pause between 
 Two days when aeons rush past. 
 
 An eternity stilled each crest, 
 No thunders crashed on the beach, 
 Would not those last wings rest 
 Within ken of our vision s reach? 
 
 Then rustled small waves at our feet 
 In floods of forgotten things, 
 Shall we see where all waters meet 
 Still visions of striving wings? 
 
 137
 
 ONE PURE GIFT 
 
 Free-handed Life brought natal gifts to me, 
 Four precious things, all meet for gods, I ween : 
 A golden Casket holding Hope unseen ; 
 An Emerald, clear green as April Sea, 
 Whose light was Youth shone purely, steadily ; 
 A queenly Pearl, with softly-changing sheen, 
 Betokened Love, yea, all deep Love may mean ; 
 And last, the Crystal Sphere of Memory. 
 
 Iron-fingered Death snatched sacrifice from me; 
 His whistling breath shrilled mercilessly keen, 
 Give up three things, one mayst thou keep between 
 My tempest s wintry poverty and thee: 
 The Sphere I hid, by it all else unclean 
 And vain ; this visions all Eternity. 
 
 IN THE FIELDS 
 
 Far from those happier hills we roamed, 
 
 Deep in the Dawn beyond, 
 Under all night and sundered from day 
 
 Here let us lingering rest: 
 Far from our beach where the long tides foamed 
 
 Where white birds cleft the spray 
 Rest, they are memories faintly fond 
 
 And the sky s wide fields are best. 
 
 138
 
 Gaze in the crystalline depths of all light, 
 
 Time is a jewel now; 
 Over all waters the lost wings shine 
 
 And their mystery weaves a spell 
 That only a ghost may learn aright, 
 
 Hush, tis the voice we loved so well: 
 There flames a sun on your splendid brow 
 
 To kindle the star on mine. 
 
 139
 
 THEY AND WE 
 
 Thy pallid land is but a shade 
 
 Ye happy things of Sleep, 
 Unreal, ye never seem to weep 
 
 Or dream the day afraid 
 To banish thee. What boy or maid 
 
 Among you knows that woe 
 Is not a dream : ye cannot weep, 
 Whose only sorrow is to know 
 
 Too much of joy, and reap 
 The kindnesses pure love can sow 
 Unsparingly: tis but a shade. 
 
 But they who haunt the starry glade 
 
 Waft us this message low: 
 O men unreal, why must ye weep 
 
 Unhappy men, dismayed 
 By every changing wind, ye weep 
 
 False tears for hate to keep: 
 Though many sorrows come, they go 
 Forever, down the dusky deep 
 Unwept, if ye will have it so : 
 
 Thy land is but a pallid shade. 
 
 140
 
 CRYSTAL VISION 
 
 Full opal sheen of ten soft-orbed moons 
 Broods whitely o er yon Shadowland unknown 
 To wakefulness; beneath those clouds, lagunes 
 For salty leagues enshine the seaward dunes 
 Where splendid night, empearled in misty zone, 
 Outshines on sand the sea; one light alone, 
 One soundless harmony of sound attunes 
 One crystal world of beams to flawless tone 
 Along that beach where never sound has flown 
 Where, drowned in light the day forgotten swoons. 
 
 Behold ! within the crystalled depths, a cloud, 
 A sooty dew steals dankly o er the sea 
 The soul of dissolution rends her shroud, 
 And two moons die; foul tempests howl aloud 
 Vast rage repressed through past eternity 
 O er thundered waters, paused, as they would flee 
 Resounding hell with sky-lost crags downbowed 
 To blast the sea; the dead moons welter free 
 In grim twin wrack; black, all utterly 
 Destroyed, they mimic Death, as still, as proud. 
 
 Undimmed their splendors, eight moons glow serene, 
 All undismayed tho sad ; along the land 
 Huge shadows vaster grow, till shapes unseen 
 Ere ruin crashed, awake ; these move between 
 Quick-quaking dunes and narrow foam-blown sand, 
 Majestically move to some command 
 Unheard when light was one; immense, unclean, 
 Their forms obsess the sand, a moveless band, 
 Polluters, shadow-breeding; swart they stand, 
 Around their feet no blackened blade shall green. 
 
 141
 
 Far athwart long-calm lagunes, awake 
 The new strange breezes, lift the light, and blow 
 Seaward to wond ring waves, from salty brake 
 Of rush and reed their whispered rustlings take 
 To sigh their fresh brine breath caressing low 
 With laughs of little waves ; the breezes know 
 What crests those land-locked waters longed to 
 
 shake 
 
 In wind-wide freedom round the surging flow 
 Of all the tides ; the strange sighs wander slow 
 Across the lake they loved but to forsake. 
 
 With chilly breath a shuddered breeze creeps near 
 To pass the huddled bulks of crouching doom 
 Whose monstrous hideousness o erflows the mere 
 Between the dunes and sea ; a whistle clear 
 And sharp as death sucked in, the breeze s tomb 
 Is one vile giant s life ; he rips the womb 
 Of groaning Night, and staggering, strives to rear 
 His late-raped soul to heaven ; his eyes presume 
 Creative Might, till, glaring through the gloom 
 He burns to life a brother s huger fear. 
 
 Their titan blacknesses blot out the main, 
 
 As leaping up, the godless brothers glare 
 
 Red mutual hate; can bonded birth restrain 
 
 That crimson murder rushing through each brain? 
 
 Gigantic sinews heave as down they tear 
 
 From skies outraged two startled moons; they swear 
 
 Destruction, hurl the moons and miss: again 
 
 They drag two moons from heaven s divine despair. 
 
 And headward heaving, strike; red brains, and hair 
 
 Stream tangled down the air in ghastly rain. 
 
 142
 
 Tranquility is but an aged dream 
 
 For all the sea, where hissing, sultry shrill 
 
 The two missed spherets sinking gleam 
 
 Their rapine through the rain ; the waters teem 
 
 With writhing lives of death-begotten will 
 
 To breed and thrive ; the dunes are starkly chill 
 
 Beneath huge discord wrought by fourfold beam 
 
 The perfect harmony of ten is still 
 
 To wake no more, and murder broods his fill 
 
 Forgetful ; light may die but not redeem. 
 
 Each lonely dune shines now a whitened mound, 
 
 A desolation; all the skies loom white 
 
 Their ghostliness, and slow decays confound 
 
 Fast-aging years; lone harmony is drowned 
 
 Down seas of chaos, throbbing through the night 
 
 Dull-pulsed death; yet four moons leper-bright 
 
 As hope still tramp the heavens with dogged round 
 
 Of everlasting ancientness, till light 
 
 Outliving time, expires, and all the sight 
 
 Of God is two moons dead, his gaze refound. 
 
 Intolerably blackened glares each sphere 
 Each orb of God that erstwhile hurled the fire 
 Gainst crag and tree; now sightless, yet severe 
 The blackness withers down the new-sown year 
 To stubble, dulled all motion, stilled the choir 
 Of perfect soundlessness : may two aspire 
 Undaunted still, to hint those eyes a cheer 
 From moon-reflected dawns, will He require 
 Their light? A flash, the twain expire, 
 And down the aether blackness pierces clear.
 
 Speak! who on pinioned dreams of life would 
 
 soar, 
 
 Have His eyes known all things and all life slain ? 
 Ah, surely winds have died this night before 
 Hark ! rustling by, they whisper nevermore ; 
 Is all the fear and pomp of death in vain 
 The levelled dunes bring back the years again, 
 Their every shadow laves the dawns of yore 
 Where no bird utters now her searching plain 
 Along the cliffs and spray-forsaken main : 
 Lone everlasting night entombs the shore. 
 
 144
 
 THE TEMPLE STEPS* 
 
 There loomed a Dream at Slumber s lonelier Gate, 
 
 I live, and hold the vision of a dream 
 
 A shrine inviolate, 
 
 Unshaken through the Ages troubled thunder 
 
 No death shall rend my dream and soul asunder, 
 
 I trod where suns by hoaried millions gleam 
 
 Like starlit sand around the Shore of Space; 
 
 Here dawned my deathless dream 
 
 In regions all-transcending human wonder, 
 
 Was t but a vision, sinks that awful Place 
 
 In Time, in Space, akin to God or Fate 
 
 Or Either s unseen Face? 
 
 Eternal as the worm that dieth never, 
 
 Outflaming Milky Ways that flame forever 
 
 Through Gods it visioned forth a vaster State, 
 
 Create in Thought, who mingles all, begot 
 
 Alone, without a Mate; 
 
 No god shall ever dream and mind dissever. 
 
 Eternity was but a flowerful Plot 
 
 Whereon I knelt, the Ether, distant haze, 
 
 And Space, a vale forgot; 
 
 The pillared firmament snowed shallow-founded, 
 
 An atom circumscribed and death-surrounded ; 
 
 Unsunned, Immensity s immortal rays 
 
 Pulsed swiftly through the star-dust, throbs of Time 
 
 Whose aeons died, but days 
 
 Upon that Place no Age has ever bounded: 
 
 Twas not the Heart of Light, white fire sublime, 
 
 *(Some may be interested in knowing that this is an 
 attempt to describe a dream of extraordinary vivid 
 ness which the writer has had four times at intervals 
 separated by from one to ten years.) 
 
 H5
 
 Enkindling Chaos, twinkling clouds of suns 
 Like midnight s wintry rime; 
 Twas keener life than creeps with dull pulsation 
 Through nebulae that blind each constellation 
 It slew the sudden Dawn whose breaking stuns 
 Void darkness into Motion; through Night s veins 
 Light s life but sluggish runs 
 Inevitably crawls to slow cessation. 
 
 A swifter Day than stealthy Time attains 
 
 Broke blazing down in torrents more than light 
 
 Besprent the starry Plains, 
 
 Thus brake the Dawn that fired my living vision 
 
 A flame that mocked the Suns with proud derision; 
 
 Celestial rains ne er freshened Heaven s sight 
 
 For seraph s eyes, as leaped those Plains to Day 
 
 From dull and day-like white 
 
 Then was Night cleft from Day with keen decision ; 
 
 Before that Dawn the face of Light went gray, 
 
 Twas absolute, all days departed thence 
 
 Their false fires flamed away; 
 
 I left that Place, and lonely, sought a Higher, 
 
 (The Dayspring thundered upward, Mind, as- 
 
 pire! ) 
 
 I poised above a vaster Eminence 
 Than sheer Space rears against the cinder-wrack 
 Of ruined clusters dense 
 With blackened stars and globes of titan fire, 
 With galaxies and unborn worlds yet black, 
 I paused, until the Farther Crags unseen 
 Should hurl the Day-Tide back; 
 Alone I waited, watched, and never trembled 
 The spirit of a thought my dream resembled, 
 What hoped my soul to see, the sudden sheen 
 Of life on tombed systems, or the sum 
 146
 
 Of all gray Time hath been, 
 
 The marching of a Universe for Death assembled ? 
 
 Perchance deep Everlastingness I d plumb 
 
 Reach under perished shoals of Dawns, and sound 
 
 Infinities to come ; 
 
 No dream it seemed, else had terror taken 
 
 Wing, and left my soul by hope unshaken ; 
 
 What epoch, ere one boundless wave swept round 
 
 All vaulted heavens that gemmed the blazing Plain 
 
 Like jewels on frosty ground 
 
 What lapse awaited I, by years forsaken, 
 
 Is compassed not by any vision s brain; 
 
 The slowly numbered aeons since Time began 
 
 Delay its name in vain: 
 
 From Crags unseen I saw the Day-Tide brighten, 
 
 Flung high in riot billows, poised to frighten 
 
 Down deep Night the puny mind of man 
 
 Irrevocably drown his soul in sleep 
 
 As only light-floods can, 
 
 Down Slumber s depths no Dawn shall ever lighten. 
 
 An opal is an image of the Deep, 
 
 A sudden sea of lustrous green and blue 
 
 Where skyward billows leap 
 
 Where wizard waters welter flame encrested 
 
 O er crags and pools by demon-dreams infested, 
 
 Where ever blooms the smouldering foam anew 
 
 In multitudes of wandering moons aflame 
 
 Through clouds of crimson dew, 
 
 An opal is an Ocean fire-invested. 
 
 Twas as a Sea of seas the Day-Tide came, 
 Each drop an opalascent Ocean, vast, 
 Devouring Number s name; 
 147
 
 Should He who knows all Oceans rise, and shatter 
 
 Their mountained waters down to drops and scatter 
 
 Flame-rains of opal down the vacant Past 
 
 Then, will each drop a Sea inseparate 
 
 The Day-Tide would outlast 
 
 In fire that Universe of Light-born matter. 
 
 Should all young years who ever rose, belate 
 Their dawns to one supremest hour, should all 
 The tides one moon await 
 To flow r and roll in unisons eternal 
 A harmony of orbed flame supernal 
 O er time and shaken Time s lone fall, 
 Their mingled fires might not outflame the Tide, 
 Or their swift greens recall 
 On changing azure any field so vernal 
 As one Tide-Blossom, shimmered, opened wide 
 And calm in amethystine scintillance 
 Infinity s bright Bride ; 
 
 My vision sprang to birth, the Tide swept nearer, 
 Its cloud-he\vn beauty blazed in symbols clearer; 
 I saw Day s luminescent Armies glance 
 Through sinuous evolutions, folding spheres 
 And fires in mazy dance 
 
 Twas more than movement, Motion s Mind aus 
 terer. 
 
 O lonely Tomb that lonelier Thought uprears 
 Against colossal Night, what tongue may tell 
 Thy mystery to Dream s e er wakeful ears, 
 For in thy vaults, unborn those Lights must wan 
 der 
 
 Forever lost, unquenchably they squander 
 Time s mighty meanings o er thy blackened hell 
 Where Chaos broods his undisputed sway 
 148
 
 All desolate the swell 
 
 Of thoughts a Universal Soul might ponder; 
 
 Return, immortal- visaged Day, 
 
 Thy Tomb a Temple was, an undreamed Fane, 
 
 Outlasting quick decay 
 
 Of ageless marble myth and god-beclouded, 
 
 Whose every atom spins a richly crowded 
 
 World of memories; flow back again, 
 
 Eternal Day-Tide, ebb within my reach 
 
 On yonder deathless Plain 
 
 Where first I knelt, all sense and sleep-enshrouded, 
 
 Build up once more those Temple-Steps, Oh teach 
 
 My eager dream what feet have ever trod 
 
 Infinity s calm Beach 
 
 What Beings ever watch the Day-Tide breaking, 
 
 What Pilgrims leave the Temple-steps, forsaking 
 
 Light, to tread with holier feet unshod 
 
 Those hallowed Halls that glowed as dreams beyond 
 
 And shadowed into God, 
 
 Perfect, mystical, serene awaking. 
 
 Alas! that dreams go blind; full Day-Tide dawned; 
 The marching symbols ranged Immensities 
 As if a ghostly wand 
 Appointed all to Order, slowly bringing 
 Purpose out of Chaos, dayward flinging 
 Flocculi that ranged their opal seas 
 In level lines of clouded fire ablush 
 With Dawn s bright Mysteries; 
 Then, swift as Thought, all leaden dreams out- 
 winging 
 
 I saw the Temple Steps leap out, a rush 
 Of vision absolute from tumbled smoke 
 Aflame their crimson flush; 
 
 And down those Steps the Universe descended 
 149
 
 A moment seen, a moment comprehended ; 
 
 In soundless majesty all Time awoke 
 
 And showed One Face; the Steps of All alone 
 
 I saw; frail vision broke 
 
 I fled an End of what has never ended. 
 
 Why should my sleep be troubled with a moan 
 
 For One I saw not, life go bowed with care 
 
 For fatal hope unknown ; 
 
 I dreamed the Pulse that stunned to moving being 
 
 Stars and dust of Stars was Thought s Decreeing, 
 
 Imagining sublime of God s despair 
 
 And Beauty everywhere 
 
 Brake as the Day Unseen yet ever seeing; 
 
 So, when the Dawn at Death s last solemn Gate 
 
 Outfires all Stars and every paler dream 
 
 Shall I, disconsolate 
 
 Gaze back upon my soul with chill regretting 
 
 Curse impotently clouds of blind forgetting 
 
 Enshadowing all, save one reluctant beam 
 
 Where still those Temple Steps fling back the Day, 
 
 And Reason waits her Mate, 
 
 Calm in the risen Sun that knows not setting? 
 
 150
 
 UNDER THE TREES 
 
 Under those trees by the well-loved lake, 
 
 Under the mournful firs 
 Sweeter than mirth in their whispering sigh, 
 
 Will I wait till the midnight stirs, 
 I will watch till the owl and his moon awake 
 
 To conquer the star-proud sky. 
 
 Friends of my care-free schoolboy days 
 
 Trees I have loved so well, 
 Faithful alone is your passionless voice 
 
 In your music s mysterious swell 
 Changeless of all to the boy s fond ways 
 
 When manhood cast his choice. 
 
 Ever alone of all have I kept 
 
 Your memory stainless, clear ; 
 Men may sing and their women may weep, 
 
 Human or selfish their every tear, 
 Petty their songs with their woes unwept, 
 
 Eternal those tears you keep; 
 
 Kin of the Stars and the Milky Way 
 
 Under whose glow you shine, 
 Trees most mystical, prophesy 
 
 When shall your song be mine, 
 May I never fling back the Infinite Day 
 
 As your tops reflect the Sky?
 
 DATE DUE 
 
 GAYLORD
 
 A 000 566 347 1