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