LIBRARY 
 
 OF THK 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 C/ass 
 
 __ 
 
 
 
T 
 
 
 
POEMS 
 
 OF 
 
 PERSONALITY 
 
 REGINALD C. ROBBINS 
 
 " to speak beyond the book " 
 
 CAMBRIDGE 
 
 mteD at tlje IStbersioe 
 
 1904 
 
COPYRIGHT 1904 BY REGINALD CHAUNCEY ROBBINS 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PHARAOH 3 
 
 MOSES 6 
 
 GAUTAMA 12 
 
 CHRIST 22 
 
 PILATE 3 2 
 
 JUDAS 37 
 
 MARY 4 
 
 MOHAMMED 45 
 
 DANTE 50 
 
 COLUMBUS 59 
 
 SAVONAROLA 65 
 
 MICHELANGELO 74 
 
 MILTON 82 
 
 LEIBNIZ 89 
 
 KEATS 97 
 
 SHELLEY ioo 
 
 iii 
 
 i 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 HEGEL . . . 108 
 
 EMERSON 121 
 
 WORDSWORTH 13 
 
 THOREAU 134 
 
 BROWNING H 2 
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD 154 
 
 GORDON i59 
 
 MOHAMMED AHMED 162 
 
 TENNYSON 168 
 
 WYCKOFF i75 
 
 NANSEN l88 
 
 DREYFUS 201 
 
 TESLA 211 
 
 iv 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
{ UNIVERSITY J 
 
 PHARAOH 
 
 YEA, now at last to let this people go ! 
 Out from our cities and our fertile lands 
 To drive them to the deserts and their death ! 
 Truly a terrible revenge, to thrust 
 Them forth to sure starvation at their prayer ! 
 Yea, for I loved them as a Pharaoh may, 
 This people prating of their Most High God, 
 And pitied them and fain had cherish d them 
 To build me temples, rear me granaries 
 Even as in days of Ramses ; him, the Great. 
 Then came their sorceries of flies and frogs 
 To torment Egypt. And I still forbore 
 And bound them to me as a Pharaoh may 
 Firm for protection from the false purport 
 Of Moses and of Aaron whom I loved not. 
 Fain had I saved them, ay, and still forbore 
 For love I bore them : being myself their God, 
 Descendant of the Sun, Lord over all ! 
 
 Ha ! do they dream, if that my father, Ra, 
 Favors my favor d in this fertile land, 
 He will be other than a blistering flame 
 3 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 To scourge them through the bitter wilderness ? 
 Nay, shall He not bewilder those He blinds not 
 With fever-fancies of some towering cloud 
 By day, some phantom of His flame by night 
 To lure them madly further to their doom 
 Ever beneath His mightiness the more 
 With each day s wandering southward, till the crags 
 Of Sinai mock with laughter the last wail 
 Of them who perish miserably, seeking 
 A northern country and a shepherd clime ? 
 A terrible revenge which I, the son 
 Of Ra the mighty, wreak on Israel now ! 
 I had forborne ; but when my first-born fell, 
 My favorite child, to their foul sorceries 
 Then did the wrath of Pharaoh sneer at last : 
 Unto their God now let this people go ! 
 And they are gone. As journeying birds at morning 
 Settle upon the temples and through noon 
 Bless all the priestly place with beauty, but 
 By evening are flown wholly away ; 
 And Amen s princely home glooms desolate : 
 So are this folk from Goshen gone away 
 Themselves unto their doom : as birds in some 
 Fierce tempest of the northern ocean fall 
 4 
 
PHARAOH 
 
 Broken and beaten back throughout our coasts. 
 
 Shall I permit that those my love hath rear d 
 
 And nurtured to be builders unto Ra 
 
 Shall to the sorceries of one or two 
 
 Fall sacrifice ? Or shall I save them still ? 
 
 Shall the east sea rebuff the last of them 
 
 Struggling toward Egypt ; that they die along 
 
 His shores in hundreds, calling on my name ? 
 
 Or shall the God in me regard them still 
 
 My children, though my first-born be no more ? 
 
 As they are men, are they not men like me ? 
 As I am God, are they perchance not gods 
 % My children, godlike as mine own first-born ? 
 Was my wrath man-like, god-like ? Was my grief 
 Worthy of Pharaoh that I sought to slay 
 My people by ten-thousands ? I will still 
 Be Pharaoh, child of Ra, lord over all 
 My people, equally with them divine ! 
 
 " Call me my captains ! Hale my chariots forth 
 " And bowmen ! I will bring this people back ! " 
 
MOSES 
 
 THIS people ! Is it thus I led them forth 
 From bondage to be free ? Yea, is it thus ? 
 Doth Egypt, Egypt bind us, though these sands 
 Of God s great desert be our lodging-place 
 And fetters and their flesh-pots are no more ? 
 Yea, is it thus ? That freedom needs a law ; 
 And I, alone from out that multitude 
 Of idol-worshipers who once were slaves 
 Yet servants also of the Most High God, 
 That I alone must meet God face to face 
 In His high mountain to be messenger 
 Of uttermost authority : and now 
 Stand, fresh from God s strength, stricken of despair 
 Here statue-still upon this stark hillside ? 
 Lo ! and the tablets of the absolute Law 
 Destroy d, dropt shatter d from mine hand ; and all 
 This speechless blue and death-strewn silent crag 
 Echoing to the fragments, bit by bit, 
 That burst and, bursting, hurl down unto dust ! 
 Now shall I front this people and be dumb ? 
 I : who went forth at the command of God 
 To learn God s purpose and proclaim it to them ? 
 6 
 
MOSES 
 
 Yea, shall I front them ? Or, once more, face God s 
 Eternal patience ? . . . Are we fit for Him ? 
 
 Fain would I feel : * Because God chooseth us, 
 Are we, His people, holy and most fit 
 Unto the privilege He layeth on us ; 
 Fain would be slave unto the Most High God : 
 But shall be servant, wisely reasoning of Him 
 And of His patience, His authority, 
 And whether we be worthy. That I know 
 Before this hour of my temptation pass 
 I shall be faithful and confirm d to seek 
 Anew Jehovah, saying to Him : Lord, 
 Again give Thy commandments ; that I know me 
 For still His servant, scarce releaseth me 
 From need to prove and comprehend how God 
 Can take for His, servants who need command ; 
 Slaves who can yield no service save for task ! 
 Is God task-master and no God of Love ? 
 Then were He Pharaoh, and we further from Him 
 By every journeying in the wilderness ; 
 His pillar of fire by night, of cloud by day 
 Some false god s ; ay, this exodus a lapse 
 Unto idolatry ; as now I see it 
 7 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Below me in the plain accursedly ! 
 Then, yea, were it false that men might ever be 
 A chosen people : for the chosen of God 
 Were then His bond-slaves, strangers most from 
 Him! 
 
 Nay, God hath said : * Ye are my chosen people . 
 And He hath led us forth from Pharaoh s power 
 To be no longer bond-slaves. Wherefore God 
 Is no task-master, but a God of Love ! 
 Whence, then, this need of law unto our love ? 
 Whence this relapse and infidelity ; 
 My sacrilege, impatience ? How may we 
 Transform God to a seeming task-master 
 If fit to be the chosen of a God 
 Who hath no bond-slaves, nay ; but freeth us ? 
 Lieth the fault not in us none the less 
 While yet by wonder we are worthy still ? 
 Pray d not I once unto the Most High God 
 Dismiss Thy servant, Lord ; for what am I 
 To bear the burden of Thy high command 
 To lay on Pharaoh ? Who am I to be 
 God unto Pharaoh as Thy word hath said ? 
 6 Wherefore, I pray Thee, Lord, dismiss me now 
 
 8 
 
MOSES 
 
 And give Thy word to one more fit for Thee ! 
 Blaspheming. For Jehovah, for a sign, 
 Wither d mine hand within my bosom, turning 
 The flesh more leprous than these sands ; but then 
 Restored it whole as any flesh : to show 
 By miracle how, though He knew, as none 
 Of Israel might know, my leprousness, 
 He yet would make of me an holy thing ; 
 Laying a task on me, though God of Love ! 
 Then when at last this people lay encamp d 
 By the Red Sea ; and Pharaoh s host drew nigh 
 To threaten all with vengeance : that this folk 
 Lost heart, blaspheming how the graves of God 
 Were narrower than Egypt s ; did not He 
 Stretch a great cloud along the coasts by night 
 And part the waters with a wild east wind 
 From off the shallow places of the sea 
 To let His children pass unseen ; till God 
 Open d the eyes of Pharaoh but too late 
 And caught him with returning of the sea 
 Betwixt two waters, him and all his hosts ; 
 And saved us : meaning by the miracle 
 How though He knew our human helplessness 
 Who fail d to trust His help before the world, 
 9 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 He yet would save us to be helpmate to Him ! 
 Wherefore is God in us as we in Him : 
 Eternal miracle of trust and worth : 
 We worthy of the trust we wholly need. 
 
 By miracle ? By nature ! As we are men, 
 
 To fail from faith ; as we are God-in-us, 
 
 To be His people, leading on and on 
 
 A light unto the nations and a triumph 
 
 In each endeavor ; as the way of God 
 
 Is to be Father to His folk that fail ! 
 
 For how else were He God ? How else were 
 
 men? 
 
 Therefore need I in nothing now deny 
 Our absolute unfitness to be God s 
 Great chosen people : mine unfitness for 
 This life-long privilege of speech with God. 
 For in my sacrilege and mute despair 
 At these idolatries, I feel how God 
 Works wondrously unto the knowledge of God 
 In me and wisdom of His ways with men. 
 That freedom needs a law and is no love, 
 Shall mean in God s good time a Law of Love 
 Unto our helpfulness. Whence are we now 
 10 
 
MOSES 
 
 God s nearest, fit unto the task we find ; 
 And therefore chosen of the God of Love. 
 Wherefore, to God again ; and say : Once more, 
 * Lord, grant us Thy commands, which I destroy d. 
 
 ii 
 
GAUTAMA 
 
 THE night is solemn and the mind awake : 
 Calm, yea, and almost wholly passionless. 
 The myriad-glistering blackness of these boughs, 
 Image of insight, calleth silently 
 To contemplation whilst my limbs repose 
 Beneath their canopy and rest with them 
 The myriad glistering of the glow-fly still 
 Like thought that rests not though the body lies 
 Along earth as the limbs of those who sleep, 
 My comrades at my feet who learn of me. 
 Though these friends sleep and are at peace as 
 
 dead, 
 
 I sleep not but must muse until the dawn, 
 When time shall be that action be resumed : 
 Action, ay, nowise consonant with peace. 
 
 Nay, then, if life be passion and they be, 
 The passions, wholly evil, how prevail 
 (Being a living thing) to work aught good ? 
 If all be false whereof we are aware 
 (And only therefore meriting contempt 
 The things of sense and feelings form d of them), 
 
 12 
 
GAUTAMA 
 
 How can the truth be anywise attain d 
 Save in annihilation ? And to cease 
 Wholly hath never been mine aim to teach. 
 How might a man conceive that he should cease, 
 Save as by sleep whence even these blest awake ? 
 And how conceive continuance without sense 
 Of individual being still maintain d ? 
 There is no soul continuing through death 
 Indeed ; yet Karma haply were some soul 
 To those enlightened who perceive past births, 
 And otherwise might hardly operate 
 To yield identity to several forms. 
 Yet is the broad assertion full believed 
 (Oft have I taught it, falsely as I fear !) 
 Of depravation and delusiveness 
 Which wholly true would transcend remedy 
 By contradicting any self-felt truth, 
 Standard of good or cosmic objective. 
 And my philosophy (as men construct 
 My doctrine and require consistency 
 Of system, I as seer have ne er discern d !) 
 My form d philosophy were nothing save 
 ,A11 thought be nothingness although my thought 
 Belies the asseveration ! To assert 
 13 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Aught, should disprove my creed of nescience, 
 Of peace by contemplation wholly void. 
 Therefore am I two teachers ; and my word 
 Some duplex half-truth ; and the world I leave 
 Unto these faithful (followers of me 
 Here sleeping at my feet through the soft night), 
 A strife irreconcilable between 
 Theory and practice as the night and day! 
 Lo ! if the night s denial of the day 
 Be ultimate, then shall they never wake 
 To dawning, nor might this my musing be 
 A vigil of the truth how can be practice 
 Where theory denies ? The night still means 
 The coming morn, as sense though wholly false 
 Implieth an intelligence of sense 
 Not void but individual as I ponder. 
 I taught not truth that so shall practice be 
 Hollow pretense and theory be proved 
 Itself sham and delusion : that my creed 
 Be subtlest source of false establishment 
 In faith, as likewise in vacuity 
 Of conduct striving still toward emptiness. 
 Shall I allow that day, my noble path, 
 Shall be resumed unreconciled with aught 
 14 
 
GAUTAMA 
 
 The serious night and vigil thus profound 
 Have taught me of truth consonant with Self ? 
 
 I can conceive a rule of faith not mine 
 Yet still renunciative (still of night 
 The peace-bringer in silence!), based in truth 
 Of mutual compassion as mine own 
 Though nowise seeking thus to annihilate 
 As I all passion whence compassion comes. 
 Lo ! for, behold ! if sympathy be good 
 (If there be balm of night even in day), 
 Itself the highest good in all the world 
 (Strange contradiction of soul-turpitude !), 
 Even as my doctrine teaches, then the world 
 Is leaven d by compassion whilst, without 
 World, would the highest good whereof we know 
 Be lost for substitution of the void : 
 The vanity of sleep, in place of peace 
 By comprehension as I wait the day. 
 I cannot yield to nothingness a world 
 Of whose fate I am still compassionate 
 Valuing compassion as best cause of peace ! 
 1 with a world to save must still redeem 
 Myself by means of that virtue alone 
 5 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Of sympathy which hath been seed and source 
 Of all my ministry ! I seem to feel 
 A meaning wherein sympathy, not death, 
 Not riddance of this individual life, 
 Achieves salvation, universalizing 
 By an identity of distinctive selves 
 The lone-lost microcosm : how the day 
 Of insight, ay, in action saveth man 
 Day s creature ; not recourse unto the night 
 Of moveless contemplation. Can the world 
 Anywhere, anywise contain a man 
 Who fearlessly shall face -as I faced not 
 The loss and pain, the single loneliness ; 
 Alleviating all the sin of the world 
 Not by abandoning the concrete good 
 But suffering good in evil ? In some least 
 By my renunciation have I thrust 
 Evil upon myself and thus done good 
 As by compassion ; and have thus deserved 
 Haply not that absorption in the All 
 My heart hath pray d for, but some new re-birth 
 Even in a clime and age where I may show 
 Some practical divinity of man, 
 Some steadfastness in insight sympathizing, 
 16 
 
GAUTAMA 
 
 Yea, to the death : that I be born again ! 
 Methinks I see me, not enthroned on high 
 In endless musing aimlessly maintain d 
 For lack of any purport, but aloft 
 In suffering rear d upon a torture-throne ; 
 And then anon beneath some charnel-hole 
 Buried that I may rive and rise again 
 Re-born within all men and be as God 
 A savior and a spirit by sympathy 
 Nobly maintain d through sharing of all woes 
 In self-appreciation : that all men 
 (Not by annihilation of their woe 
 With self; scarce by escape, but acclamation !) 
 Shall feel their solidarity with God 
 Even through my ministration. And at length 
 Shall the apostles of that last god-birth 
 Enlighten these my followers of this first : 
 And be themselves enlighten d by contact 
 With rumor of this earlier mysticism. 
 For they in turn through ages shall have lost 
 The first fresh personal cognizance of God 
 Within, believing only that I died 
 (I the world-passionate of the later days) 
 To save mankind ; not that men, each, are saved 
 17 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 By personal compassion as was I. 
 Whence in the contact of the alien creeds 
 Shall haply spring regenerance of both : 
 Faith founded as my present faith is founded 
 In individual potency to be 
 (No matter how) all that we know of God ; 
 Yet form d no more in Nescience for a Way 
 Nor in denial of God-personism : 
 A faith form d as my future faith shall be 
 In passionate activity of self 
 Instating and instated of the time 
 And place for action, not (as in their faith 
 Of ages after me) declaring truth 
 To be of time and place not theirs but mine 
 Only (forgetful that my life and theirs 
 Are one in self ness and divinity). 
 Haply a third were it conclusive ? birth 
 In guise of him who not with parable 
 But with convincing logic may construct 
 The scheme of such a world of godly men ! 
 (Ah ! but the beauty of a forthright proof 
 To faith, yielding consistence, self-support 
 And system to truth arbitrary else !) 
 Haply a million births, each yielding truth 
 18 
 
GAUTAMA 
 
 In some new words but never losing grasp 
 (After the Two who spake in me half-truths 
 Two half-truths now ; two half-truths now and 
 
 then 
 
 Have once been reconciled within the Third !) 
 Of the divinity of sufferance, 
 The world-salvation of compassioning, 
 The nothingness of any life beyond 
 A world, like this, of limit and of change ! 
 Ha ! and, behold ! the glimmering of the dawn 
 Responsive to the vision of that Day, 
 The holy passion that possesses me. 
 I will awake these sleepers and proclaim 
 The new-won insight of the truth to-come ! 
 
 Nay, but, alas ! what if the limit be 
 
 (Even as this night, ere birth of day, must die 
 
 Despite their mutual interpreting) 
 
 Also a final ; and my life (man-god, 
 
 Yea, though I am) be now a final life 
 
 Fill d with its half-truth, and the nobler half 
 
 Be never mine : be his, that later Man? 
 
 How might I then announce this failure to them ? 
 
 Though self can cease not, neither be absorb d 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Unto Nirvana (an Nirvana be 
 Annihilation!) yet perchance self were 
 Complete, made total by the stint of deed 
 Perform d twixt birth and death (how, I know 
 
 not; 
 
 Lacking a logic for the fact I feel !) ? 
 Lo ! even then were my half-truth the whole 
 Of some fulfillment. (Hath not even this night, 
 That dieth ere the day, proclaim d to me 
 Day s healing nighthood?) In this world of pain 
 The pain of being finally fulfilPd 
 In self-acknowledged error ! That my name, 
 Believed-on, shall breed nescience and a creed 
 Of practical observance without rule 
 Or check to superstition ; and, so far 
 As truth is known of me, to be condemn d 
 As worst of the world s failures, who would save 
 But could not : saved himself, but not the world ! 
 The night dies back, the day advanceth, dread 
 And passionate, unwitting of the ways 
 Of insight, cruel beyond sympathy ; 
 And calling on me to maintain that creed 
 Men comprehend of peace by nescience ! 
 Did I declare the vision, I d achieve 
 20 
 
GAUTAMA 
 
 Truth to myself by sacrificing hope 
 
 To save the world. Behold ! be the world saved 
 
 Though in my heart I know my life hath fail d ! 
 
 But, then, if life be evil, how not fail ? 
 
 21 
 
CHRIST 
 
 WHAT were the purpose of a proud reply 
 
 Unto these priests ? They know not what they do. 
 
 Yet, whilst they still talk on, must I in soul 
 
 Answer * before my father , yea, for me 
 
 Their witnessing : ay, is it false or no ? 
 
 Now, while the tumult of their questioners 
 
 Is fiercest, while the insult and the shame 
 
 Shelter me with impenetrable hate 
 
 As from the love of any man of men, 
 
 May I, unwarp d of too much passioning 
 
 For pity of these people, weigh at last 
 
 Worth of my ministry, ay, estimate 
 
 Wherein this outcome I have long foreseen 
 
 Were fair and fortunate, crowning with rich 
 
 Accomplishment ; wherein t were inwardly 
 
 As openly a failure ! Let me be 
 
 Passionless as this cup is passionate ; 
 
 Yet, as no Pharisee of all, a soul 
 
 Alive with comprehension of the loves 
 
 And hates of men ; their clingings to old truths 
 
 Grown stale and false ; their yearnings still for new 
 
 They scarce may understand : hence not for them 
 
 22 
 
CHRIST 
 
 Ripe truth : I among men a man, like these 
 Not ripe to understand, cleaving to false 
 Even for the need of men s companionship 
 By ministry ; yea, for the teaching s sake 
 Which fails from truth by every stale-meant word 
 Half-wantonly meeting the times demand. 
 Nay, Caiaphas, no compromise from now ; 
 No failure more from truth by any word 
 Meant to be understanded. I have found 
 How men miscomprehend ; and still have told 
 Nothing of my best message unto men. 
 Now let my death atone ; for sins of men 
 As my sin let this crucifixion come 
 For my full meaning and companionship 
 In ministry no man need understand 
 To comprehend its purport to be true. 
 But, lo ! (how safe this uproar shuts me in 
 Out of the sight and sound of all whose ears 
 And eyes would fain have open d !) how did I 
 For zeal and pity yield a leading where 
 The light could scarcely enter. All seem d truth 
 Even as I spake it ; image seem d the fact ; 
 Figure, the message. For I loved men so. 
 Now is the figure forsworn for the fact ; 
 23 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Image, despoil d of vision, witness d forth 
 In guise of ministry. Yea, is their speech 
 False-witness? Father, or have I proved false? 
 Nay, not from now ! Only, let thought rehearse 
 The history: what was ; what should have been. 
 
 So, Caiaphas, speak thou whilst silently 
 I weigh thine accusations. Let them swear 
 Their false truths : I will take upon my life 
 Their falsehood, to attain unto their truth 
 Of inmost. self-belief even by my death; 
 Not otherwise. So, they accuse me here 
 Of sundry blasphemies. Have I blasphemed ? 
 Scarce by intention. Yet I grant them truth 
 Of plausible misinterpretations. I 
 Spake but in parable, for want of words 
 To meet their outworn ways of speech, yet speak 
 The new truth utterly. I gave them stones 
 For bread: the bread, how should they eat of it ? 
 So, I have stirr d sedition , counseling 
 No reverence for priests authority! 
 What was my word ? Blind leaders of the blind ; 
 . Wolves in sheep s clothing . Did I mean or nay ? 
 Father, mid this serenity of hate 
 24 
 
CHRIST 
 
 (Love-perspicacity of inwardness), 
 Which shields me round (concludes within my will 
 An infinite use) from any need to serve 
 Too sympathizingly the blind and wolves, 
 Find I the fact-interpretation : these 
 Blind but by plenitude of light in me, 
 Wolves but by my full innocence of harm ; 
 I still by figure of the fact, by so 
 Refusing self-responsibility 
 Of imputation, equally with them 
 Blind leader, wolf-destroyer of the fold : 
 Such for the figure. Save the new truth come 
 Despoiling old, remains old error truth; 
 Save the old error stay to be gainsaid, 
 How were the truth not-false? And I had meant: 
 I find them blind and wolves who save for me 
 Had been light-leaders, guardians of the fold : 
 I thereby blind and wolf; they, through my truth 
 Proved of their falsehood, equally with me 
 Light-leaders, shepherds. By my parable 
 I nowise speaking utterly a truth ; 
 I an authority sans self-belief : 
 Thus have I sinn d against authority. 
 And men miscomprehended but the more. 
 25 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 So, I have mock d the Sabbath-law , who heal d 
 Sick on that day and ate with unwash d hands 
 Mid sinners! Not against authority 
 These deeds but rather against forms approved 
 Of present practice ; items half belief 
 If still half sanction? Yet were sin the same: 
 A failure to confess responsible 
 For law s shortcomings me the source of such 
 Subverting practice; else a failure to 
 Admit law-conscienced deeds of mine worth faith 
 Only by virtue of denying law. 
 As of the blind authority I taught 
 For teaching s sake as though authority 
 Beyond mere man s opinion crush d theirs out 
 Meaning : my more wide-wrought opinion proved 
 In virtue of my comprehension theirs 
 Not self-sufficient, total ; so of law 
 I spake as though some source beyond all men s 
 Deliberate practice posited my deeds 
 For lawful meaning, as I now aver 
 (Yea, Caiaphas, push swift to judgment lest 
 My soul forestall thee !): sense of law in me, 
 Values of ordinance for purpose proved 
 Of conscience, show d their formal sanctionings 
 26 
 
CHRIST 
 
 Trivial, comprehensible of mine 
 Intent ; by virtue of my will, annull d ; 
 None less a lawfulness save law-deposed. 
 Such were my sin gainst sanction ; I a law 
 Without self-proclamation utterly. 
 And men miscomprehended but the more. 
 So, I have taken upon me to forgive 
 Sins ? And in so forgiving fail d to show 
 T were but my holier bearing in my faith 
 For new law beyond sanction which show d sin 
 (Otherwise righteousness concluding all, 
 Which theretofore were righteous, for some sin) 
 For sinful ; as the sinfulness alone 
 (Like previous sin proving their deeds some right) 
 Proved righteousness in my deeds : righteousness, 
 The wonder, beauty, meaning but of life 
 Conclusive utterly, self-organized, 
 So world-constructive inly. And I spake 
 As though some mercy over beyond men s 
 Sense of a mutual frailty each for each 
 Forewent the punishment meaning : mine own 
 Insight and sympathy of soul s estate 
 In me as them saw each unto himself 
 A scourge sufficient ; hence, a mercy-seat. 
 27 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 So did I sin, forgiving ; I, a peace 
 Without avow d self-conquest. Can I now 
 Assume by any grace beyond this sin s 
 Self -torment to forgive my life at last ? 
 
 Nay, t is my soul that fail d in all these things 
 Myself that spake and sinn d. I at the last 
 But learn the nature of each son of man, 
 Myself as any : so to speak and sin 
 Failing of self-responsibility ; 
 By reason of the need of minist ring, 
 Of compromise with souls not mine (nay, mine 
 By individual insight!) thereby 
 Imputing to some God beyond this world, 
 Some world beyond this soul s, the sinless lore 
 Of full accomplishment : but such would be 
 Nothing accomplish d. Lo ! it is my truth 
 This falling short of truth ; even my death 
 Were half-accomplishment, some falling-short 
 Of perfect self-possession save I be 
 Inevitably born for compromise 
 Rightly fulfill d, ay, comprehended well 
 By sheer misunderstanding. Now I see 
 No failure. Let me but seal up the sum 
 28 
 
CHRIST 
 
 Of perfect operation by one last 
 Word, one last teaching, compromise of truth 
 Supreme of self-divinity with their 
 Stale fiction of a God of Abraham ! 
 What were a God in whom no falling-short 
 Betray d truth s utmost self-sufficiency 
 By error, self-proved, constantly annull d ? 
 Such self-annulment constituting sin 
 Divine : for where were any act not God ? 
 What were a world beyond soul s world which fills 
 All birth and death with sacrifice, through strength 
 Of service, mutual ministry, each least 
 Person proved universal, absolute 
 By world-inclusive insight, soul through soul : 
 Absolving misinterpretation, yea, 
 By rich love-needing : still gainsaying hate ? 
 Let me annul this last uproar of hate 
 To one death-sanction for the love I bear 
 All men. Let me avow to this sin-world 
 Its sin s finality by being as sin 
 Still self-redeeming ; nay, no mercy-seat 
 Beyond : hence sin s forgiveness each through each, 
 Let me uphold the law s authority 
 By reason of our self-accountable 
 29 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Ultimate judgment both of false and true. 
 
 Let me declare God and my ministry 
 
 One ; scarce by dissipation of this strength 
 
 To heaven s right-hand and wonder-throne , though 
 
 still 
 
 In those sole terms their ears can understand 
 Of physical kingship and some power afar. 
 Let me affirm (if not that men may now 
 Have insight, that some hour they apprehend) 
 My manhood, conscienced personality 
 By virtue of this self-responsible 
 Accountability through every act 
 For failure as accomplishment ; my spirit 
 Divine. And there is nought beside divine 
 Save world-belief, conscience-totality ! 
 
 Hark ! For they now accuse me : Didst thou say : 
 I, God are one " ? And art thou then the great 
 Messiah ? Shall 1 give them of the bread 
 Of life, faith of my faith : still in their phrase 
 Of false-proved figure ? Shall I stand at last 
 For understanding s sake so utterly 
 Miscomprehended ? Ay, for such the full 
 Accomplishment ; that all shall comprehend 
 30 
 
CHRIST 
 
 The absoluteness, so divinity 
 
 Of failure ; the all-comprehensive truth 
 
 Of self-sufficiency even to death ! 
 
 Lo ! for the teaching s sake ! I, born to teach 
 
 Death-mastery, the overcoming of 
 
 The last infirmity : man s fear to fail ! 
 
 Here in this final failure to speak truth 
 
 ( T is inmost holiness ; t is ultimate use) 
 
 Is mine accomplishment. The hush is vast. 
 
 Man s whole life listens, waiting on the word 
 
 Which saves the world : 
 
 " Caiaphas ; thou hast said." 
 
PILATE 
 
 NOW are they hot for Herod : they, that pack 
 
 Of priestly wolves, of scribes and sects and dogs 
 
 Of jealous dogma ! Would but Cassar send 
 
 A rescript for their riddance ! Yea, some year 
 
 Shall tens of thousands Jews hang crucified 
 
 Twixt heaven and earth, I warrant them. Till then ! 
 
 Now, what of Herod ? Will the flattery 
 
 Befool him ? Will he exercise a right 
 
 Of judgment o er his subject in a seat 
 
 Not his ; and give the Roman legions cause 
 
 To rape Perasa ? Will he scent the trick, 
 
 Send Jesus unjudged back to Pilate s door 
 
 By Hebrew cunning ? Rather may he seek 
 
 A mutual flattery in pronouncing this one 
 
 Free Galilean ; in Jerusalem 
 
 Not his to hold. For Herod is astute, 
 
 Knows that I favor not their Sanhedrin 
 
 Nor law-prerogative in priests and scribes ; 
 
 But would for Cassar Cassar s. How that phrase 
 
 Of this philosopher fits well the tongue ! 
 
 32 
 
PILATE 
 
 And what of him they carry with them there 
 Cold, calm and stoic, him whose blood they seek 
 For being perchance more Caesar s friend than they ? 
 Now while they swarm at Herod s gate I 11 set 
 (Should they by evil chance hurl howling back) 
 My soul more steadfast to resist their lust 
 Of blood by musing on his meanings here. . . . 
 
 When I did question he did plain reply. . . . 
 Even as I told them I shall still maintain : 
 The man is just. I find no fault in him . - 
 
 How can I then condemn him ? For the law 
 Chastises not the proven innocent. 
 Only there are causes beyond the law 
 Why Caesar s service might enjoin for now 
 An acquiescence ? For they well might raise 
 Tumult like that at Caesarea when 
 I, being unprepared (as now !) to quell 
 By force of arms, was forced to yield a point 
 For Caesar s sake. It will not come to that. 
 Yet but I wish I had my garrison 
 Of Caesarea at Jerusalem ! - 
 No more of this. T is Caesar s, best, to sway 
 33 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 The mob by absolute justice ; not by fear 
 Of legionaries ; nor by mine own fear 
 Of being impeach d at Rome for failing please 
 The Jews a fool s chimera ! I have friends 
 High-placed for my defense. And yet 
 
 I 11 still 
 
 Deny priest- vengeance and protect the man. 
 Ay, fain would I address me to his soul 
 To learn of him. For is not wisdom wealth, 
 Power and kingship to the citizen ? 
 How much more thus shall I over this folk 
 Be governor, be Cassar s servant well 
 By being disciple ; he my master. I 
 Decree no punishment. I give to him 
 His freedom so but he converse with me, 
 Yield fair reply to questions fairly put 
 In daily intercourse. I offer him 
 No courtiership ; for he would spurn it of me. 
 He is no parasite ; is too much man 
 Of wealth, power, kingship even in himself 
 To want a Roman s favor : he, the son, 
 So credibly they tell me, of some god ? 
 Haply. At all events a man who stood 
 And nobly said : * A king am I still meaning 
 34 
 
PILATE 
 
 A wise man. For he added: But my kingdom 
 
 Is not of this world meaning, as I know, 
 
 Not kingdom like to Caesar s. T is such wisdom 
 
 I would attain ; for I am weary of 
 
 A Caesar s favor and a people s wrath. 
 
 T is some fresh Attic teaching that he speaks 
 
 And I would fain acquire ; fain to be king 
 
 As he ; and rid of this time-serving strife 
 
 Which fawns and flatters, yelps and snarls; and seeks 
 
 No well-made manhood, true self 
 
 Hark! What sounds! 
 
 So soon swung back ! And in what hot-flung haste ! 
 What fangs and wolf-yells ! I ve but twenty spears; 
 The rest at Caesarea. Will my friends 
 Stand firm at Rome ? Can any man be wise 
 Needlessly to provoke a tumult, force 
 Himself outdriven from Jerusalem 
 To Caesar s wrath and uttermost disgrace 
 Just for some stickling at the law ? I ne er 
 Let law prevent my vengeance ; shall not now 
 Be hinder d of my glut of blood for this, 
 When the time serves. But now, t is Caesar s best 
 Service to yield a point so seeming-small, 
 Injustice to one man. Scourging, perchance, 
 
 35 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 May sate them ? At the worst tis forced upon me, 
 I ll leave it to the popular voice to choose. 
 Not mine the guilt. 
 
 And see ! What fool is this 
 They mock at ? Certainly, a man who makes 
 So fine a fool-king can be no fit source 
 For Pontius instruction ! I were fool 
 To make weight of the matter. Let men bring 
 A basin that, when things go ill with him, 
 I 11 show them how I wash before all men 
 My soul from business with this King of Fools ! 
 
JUDAS 
 
 JUDAS ! The name is hateful ; yet it clings ! 
 
 Yon street-hag jeer d at * Judas ! Such a priest 
 
 Call d Judas? Judas? and I came and took 
 
 The thirty pieces which he offer d me; 
 
 And kept them with me, with me till but now ! 
 
 The Master still said : Judas, thou art he ! 
 
 Judas ! It is the name of such as I ! 
 
 It hurries desperate now, grim through noon s glare, 
 
 Judas! I thought to have flung the name beside, 
 There with the thirty pieces now I flung 
 Full in his face, the priest who call d me by it! 
 Yon street-hag I pass d headlong, cursed I her 
 For any cause save Judas ? If perchance 
 She knew not I did give the money up ? 
 Call d me the old name for the stale reproach ? 
 Would speak some other could I tell even her 
 The torment and repentance ? 
 
 None would speak 
 
 A new name : not the bearer of no name ! 
 Nor should I hear it: I can hear but one, 
 Judas! Nought else so hateful in the world 
 37 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 As cheek by jowl with me to cleave by me 
 And be my leman-life to hound me on : 
 Even as I kiss d him with a leman s kiss. 
 The hag shrank from me; but the name abides. 
 The world would let me go. Not so this Judas; 
 Which will with me and hang with me this 
 
 hour ! 
 With me : a Namelessness just by this name ! 
 
 Judas ! It was the Master called me by it. 
 
 T is so it sticks ! Not that did such a hag 
 
 Jeer * Judas ! She were such an one to deem 
 
 All creatures Judas. I but yield a name 
 
 To all men and all women ; not myself 
 
 The Judas solely. Nor that such a priest 
 
 Call d Judas ? ! When I flung the pieces back 
 
 Was Judas quite a nobler sort of man 
 
 Who does God service nor demands fair pay ; 
 
 The imputation cancePd of reproach ; 
 
 And Judas ? flattery : a name not quite 
 
 For any creature ; even I myself 
 
 Not Judas wholly ! Ah ! Were these things 
 
 so ! 
 
 Then should I hang this day with half the hope 
 38 
 
JUDAS 
 
 Men might forget Judas had such a name. 
 Nay, but the Master : * Judas, it is thou ! 
 
 Judas ! It is my name and mine alone. 
 
 Judas ! I thank thee, Master ; who speak st truth, 
 
 The right name : Judas, wholly and alone. 
 
 Judas ! I thank thee, Master ; that tis I 
 
 Who hang this hour for being but such a name. 
 
 There is no other. I fulfill the name 
 
 Utterly ; take away from all men else 
 
 And women possibility to be 
 
 As Judas ; none less evidence the world 
 
 Judas for pitiless perdition ; not 
 
 World s flattery nor menace any more. 
 
 The street-hag knew she need not fear to be 
 
 As Judas ; Judas were her saving strength 
 
 Who knew none other. Such a priest did know 
 
 Blood-guilt were no God-service. Both are saved 
 
 By my perdition through the Master s word ! 
 
 Master, I thank thee. Judas ! T is my truth. 
 
 Here is the bough where Judas for the world 
 
 Hangs that he be true Judas : and none else ! 
 
 39 
 
MARY 
 
 THOSE distant moving twain upon the hills, 
 Those will be John and James returning to me 
 Even from afar and after many days. 
 They had not faith to wait His coming , here 
 With Zebedee their father and with me ; 
 Must needs go forth and among many men 
 To preach His gospel. How could they expect 
 Men to receive the truth they scarce have held : 
 The faith of my Son s presence with all men ? 
 T was Peter s place ; t was all of truth he had, 
 To be evangel : theirs to love and wait . 
 T is the first failure. For my Son fail d not. 
 Yet used He home to me in those great days 
 And I used forth to meet Him. Let me now 
 Anticipate these prodigals who come 
 (These distant waxing twain upon the hills) 
 Even as my Son was wont to come to me, 
 In those first days of calling of the Twelve, 
 Along this footway. I will fare me forth 
 To meet them. Would there were my Son with them ! 
 
 So soon the world forgets. Forget not I ! 
 40 
 
MARY 
 
 My soul is living with the light of words, 
 Deeds, looks and breathings of the soul of Him 
 My Son, and my Son only ! No pains else 
 Did bear Him to the birth that shall not die. 
 Yet, those Hosannahs. Yet, that feast of palms 
 And people hailing Him, my Son, my Son ! 
 Where are those many faithful ? Are they then 
 Crucified as my Son, as my soul too ; 
 And may not rise again as He, my Son, 
 Hath risen and my very soul with Him ? 
 Were they so fond and are they now so faint ? 
 How sad must be their weakening. T is for them 
 The fond yet faithless that my whole heart grieves 
 Even for James and John amongst the rest ; 
 Who needs must seek complete a work, so whole 
 Already with His mission ; needs must forth 
 To supplement His teaching : and have fail d 
 Convert a world which was already His 
 In His good time ; yea, now and always now. 
 See they not : it is still the selfsame earth 
 Of Him, my Son, in which His words and deeds, 
 His looks and breathings sanctified things all, 
 Yea, resurrected God s sweet countryside 
 To an undying wonder ? Nay, the world 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Of speechless things and folk without a soul 
 Forgets not. Can men s souls alone forget ? 
 Alone forget, alone who need to know ? 
 These are the pastures and the little hills 
 Of olive ; this, the way wherein I walk, 
 Was trod by Him ; and yonder is the blue 
 Whereon He stood appearing unto them. 
 It is His earth and His unendingly ; 
 Mine earth by faith in Him, by waiting for 
 Fulfillment presently, yea, present now 
 Without completion more. Can aught forget ? 
 Yet but have James and John forgot and fail d; 
 Now home are coming, ay, to tell me of it 
 For comfort s sake. And I will comfort them, 
 Tell them anew the story for their faith. 
 
 Yea, here are John and James, who from afar 
 And after many days return to me 
 Even by this footway, whom I wandering forth 
 A little further than my daily wont 
 Now greet in coming, as they crown this hill 
 Sudden appearing. I have yearn d for them 
 In absence. And their nearness seems a new 
 Rebuke and chastening. In their mien I see 
 42 
 
MARY 
 
 No sadness for the world of humankind 
 Their brethren, brethren also of my Son. 
 No sadness for themselves ; no failure, no : 
 But a great light. The spirit of my Son 
 Transfiguring their faces to mine eyes 
 Is with them twain. And all their poise is high ; 
 And as they come they talk on mighty things 
 And bring a whole world with them. Shame, that I 
 Had deem d myself worthy to hold alone 
 (Deeming these John and James and all men faithless) 
 The sacred intercession unto men ; 
 Had deem d the work complete, though I in mine 
 Undue assumption dream d that I alone 
 Knew this His second coming evermore ! 
 I ? What have I, who weakly tread this way 
 Within this circuit of these little hills, 
 To know of God s good mercy, through my Son 
 And these, unto all multitudes beside 
 Who only need to hear, so to be saved ? 
 Nay, but who needs must hear ; else are not saved ! 
 Yea, I have sinn d, been faithless. Can I bear 
 Their holy greeting ? Will mine ears receive : 
 Mine ears that did so very near forget 
 The meaning of His sacrifice for men ? 
 
 43 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Was I His mother, who forswore His world, 
 Denied within my soul men s faith in Him ? 
 Hark to their greeting ; t is as my Son s voice : 
 
 We hail thee : Mother ! For no man forgets ! 
 * The people all receive Him with the Word ! 
 
 44 
 
MOHAMMED 
 
 AND I arise and face the flowing east 
 
 As in the days of youth, before the Creed. 
 
 Here have I sate amongst these tombs of stone 
 
 Beside Medina in the desert stark 
 
 This night-long. Till the dawn at last hath sprung ; 
 
 And, with the dawn, God s speech vouchsafed anew 
 
 Unto the worn and feeble ; as of yore 
 
 In days of strength to me on Meccan hills : 
 
 Now in the name of God, compassionate 
 
 And merciful, who speaketh by my mouth ! 
 
 For I have said : Cometh a day when no 
 1 Soul can avail aught for another soul ; 
 For the ordering on that day is with God. 
 * Yea, and the soul shall know what it hath wrought . 
 
 Thus have I said : The soul shall surely know . 
 
 Thus have I said, knowing the soul shall know ; 
 
 Knowing that God s the ordering on that day : 
 
 And therefore certain of the ways of God ; 
 
 I intimately cognizant of God 
 
 As of my being and my very soul. 
 
 Wherefore a new interpretation springs 
 
 Of this my ministry : even as the sun 
 45 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Startles to flame yon angels of the gale, 
 The storm-sands swirling just above his bed, 
 As he, the lord of heaven, awakes, starts forth 
 And burns the world to wisdom ; so my soul 
 Sees but itself in all that it hath wrought 
 And makes a day of judgment of its own ! 
 Lo ! if I intimately speak for God 
 The truths that yet spring wholly in myself 
 By my conviction and imagining ; 
 Then are not God and I even in these truths 
 One, as the truths are now intrinsic to me ; 
 My judgment and my prophecy, the same ? 
 
 Is it a dream, this hour that I have taught 
 Of future resurrection, even that day 
 To-come of judgment ; is it then a dream ? 
 Is this high-streaming sun, that bursts across 
 These shimmering-silent death-stones, God s sole 
 
 sun ; 
 
 And all these hosts of waiting dead, asleep 
 From now forever ; and no waking more ? 
 For if my lord and judge be with me one 
 And this my prophecy be judgment too 
 As now I feel it in the certainty 
 46 
 
MOHAMMED 
 
 That souls shall know ; I therefore knowing the 
 
 soul ! 
 
 What space be for the plain tautology 
 Of God beyond man ; who am in myself 
 God in so far as God hath power at all ; 
 Who am mine estimator and my judge 
 Now whilst the common dawn leaps forth to-day ? 
 If I have fix d a faith for every man 
 Even unto all-time, am not I at fault 
 To fix for future what were novel-sprung 
 To each anew, and only thereby fix d, 
 Man s birthright : judgment, conscience of himself ? 
 Shall not each man who leaps as I have leap d 
 With sunsurge to divine identity 
 (Upright nor prostrate-cringing any more !) 
 Condemn the pitiful hypocrisy, 
 The hitherto shamefacedness that led me, 
 Feeling the fire within yet to deny 
 And say : God shall be ; meaning God is now ? 
 Yea, and if God be Now, how might I fix 
 A faith to all men who must equally 
 Each in his time be God s ripe judgment-day 
 With estimate anew to suit each time 
 As perfect as is now to-day my faith ? 
 47 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 All was illusion ; both that hour to-come, 
 
 And power to fix faith to a future age ! 
 
 Lo ! in my newly-found divinity 
 
 I judge ; and judging must condemn the creed 
 
 That calPd me here, that laid these dead about me 
 
 Waiting beyond Medina for the word 
 
 Of God, in desertness enduringly ! 
 
 The word of God ! T were then idolatrousness 
 To wait the speech of the oracle, when now 
 The living God is speaking as I speak. 
 One God or many, if beyond the heart 
 Of any man, were utmost blasphemy 
 Alike, unworthy of mine absolute soul. 
 And yet, the comprehension of the crowd ! 
 Lo ! had I said : The very God behold ye ! 
 Then had they worship d me : and been betray d ! 
 Yea, had I cried : * Earth s judgment is fulfill d 
 1 Even in the judgment- reasoning of each ! 
 Then had they stolen and slaughter d, ay, straight 
 way 
 
 With obvious impunity ; and sinn d ! 
 Yea, for the folk that feel not Godhood in them, 
 No all-responsible insight of earth 
 48 
 
MOHAMMED 
 
 (And how there be such godless, yea, I know not ; 
 Though till this instant was I one of them 
 Wholly ; as now in ignorance confess d !), 
 Were judgment yet to-come and God afar ; 
 His speech unheard save still reported to them 
 Through all their days. And therefore must there be 
 Slaughter and rapine in the name of God 
 To fix faith, as I find it, unto all 
 Who feel not God. And therefore were it meet 
 That these within their graves should wait till God 
 Alive in future peoples plough their bones 
 Into some sudden garden where was waste : 
 And end earth s desolation. Though myself 
 Have had some resurrection : and am saved ! 
 
 So I incline and pray toward Meccan fanes. 
 
 49 
 
DANTE 
 
 I, DANTE, have depicted all these things 
 In imitation of mine heaven and hell 
 Within ; I, Dante, drew them as I saw them 
 To duplicate the passion of my soul : 
 Like some basilica of Christ on earth. 
 And like some lordly-hewn basilica 
 Covering earth where only naked earth 
 Alone before had been ; so have I given 
 Spiritual power of philosophy 
 Where had been brutish feud and vacant brawl. 
 All things now known beneath the heavens, beneath 
 Earth or beyond the empyrean, all 
 Have furnish d forth mine imagery, themselves 
 Acquiring passion as I spake of it. 
 And all have been a picture of my soul. 
 This Beatrice, would her own soul know 
 Herself so marvelous matured with truths 
 Till now not said of woman ? Would the child, 
 The little maid I knew, the bride-elect, 
 And lastly the frail matron recognize 
 The mouthpiece of Madonna and of Christ ? 
 This Beatrice, should I look to take 
 50 
 
DANTE 
 
 Her salutation passing in the street 
 As formerly, or should I see some wench 
 Unlike the lady of that crystalline ? 
 Shall not mankind to-come, seeing my soul 
 So strong, so tragic-passionate through this 
 The symbolism, come to ask at last : 
 Was Beatric^ woman of the flesh 
 At all ? Was Dante this world s citizen ? 
 How subtler than subtlest theology 
 This doubt and question ! In my soul to-day 
 An introversion of the accustom d orb ! 
 My life hath been iron reality 
 As spear, axe, hauberk and those towers of strength 
 Men rear d in their Firenze out of stone; 
 Stone, yea, and iron hath been my pilgrimage 
 Through years of exile ; and my tragedy 
 Hath only been so flame-hot passionate 
 With bitterness and stern relentless wrath 
 At evil Italy, that earth hath fused, 
 Grown plastic to the furnace of my spirit 
 And blown all into smoke ! Where is seen smoke 
 There towers are fallen ; where my soul hath breathed 
 Lie ruin d very real realities. 
 Where Beatric beams beatified 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Was every hour a maiden passing by. 
 But, shall conviction of a literal sense 
 Keep true the symbol ; or shall men mistake 
 Earth all and hours of iron virileness, 
 Human heart s-love and worship, for the words 
 Of otherworldliness and wanton dreams ? 
 Shall the basilica seem faith alone ? 
 
 Were not the world right yet in wrongly taking 
 The symbolism of my work and song ? 
 Hath not my method served its own defeat 
 By treachery within the very walls ? 
 Hath not my soul been exiled by my verse ? 
 For I ve but duplicated this my soul, 
 Have built about my passion a tower on earth 
 Not meant for earth to stand and fall on it, 
 But for translation to the terms of God ; 
 Have pictured, ay, described though scarce express d 
 The power of him who dwelling upon earth 
 Not imitates but vitalizes faith 
 By acts accomplish d. Hath not mine own creed 
 Dissever d church and state, awarding earth 
 To emperor, soul to the man of Christ, 
 But reconciling neither ? And if I 
 52 
 
DANTE 
 
 Portray by paradox the power of Christ 
 Through giving over His basilicas 
 To anti-Christ, shall anti-Christ be saved 
 By calling them still temples ? An there be 
 The mystic sense to all that I have sung, 
 Yet are the words the words of sensuous things ; 
 And, on the assumption of unsensuous soul, 
 Must merit men s discrediting as writ. 
 The symbolism must defeat itself. 
 The vivid emphasis on things of earth 
 Not merely cited for theodicy 
 Discredits soul itself ; unless the terms 
 Taken of earth shall stultify themselves. 
 I, Dante, have denied my birthright, making 
 Life but a replica of visioning : 
 Heaven and hell erected, excavated 
 Above, beneath no firmament of man; 
 Nor purgatory recognized for earth. 
 I, Dante, of a stone and iron age, 
 Who knew but man and woman; hated, loved 
 But man and woman and this marvelous earth; 
 Have only dream d and told men of my dream; 
 I, Dante, have discredited my world, 
 Have lived at soul mine exile in my verse 
 53 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 And left my life s reality a doubt. 
 I am the last of them that shall mistake 
 A portrait of a dream for world s real truth. 
 I am the last, who, missing upon earth 
 The realm of Christ, yet strongly feeling earth 
 Its powers and passions, hating, loving it 
 And moved to mighty speech, must spoil that speech 
 With architecture of a spire, a pit, 
 (Beyond the all-purgation of this life) 
 Exhausting all of knowledge, yet unknown. 
 I am a limitation unto men; 
 If in my strength of style impassable, 
 Yet also in the weakness of my way 
 Of giving earth expression. For no mode 
 Were less convincing of reality, 
 Were more the manner of a mind at dream 
 (Dispatriated by mere shift of the scene 
 From speech to verse though both are native tongue ) 
 Than this of emblem and this ordering 
 Of each event unto its symbolism. 
 No man shall make a poetry less real. 
 So have I fail d by sheer excess of strength, 
 Pursuing to disruption world and soul ; 
 And am but creature of my passing age : 
 54 
 
DANTE 
 
 I, Dante, lost in thought s duality 
 
 And rendering unto God no genuine things 
 
 Of God : by thus discrediting things all. 
 
 Yet am I greater than mine age in this : 
 That I would at the worst establish earth 
 Of power imperial (to Caesar things 
 Worthy at least of Caesar) and lead the way 
 By genuine emphasis of vital facts 
 To disregard of otherworldly lore, 
 Of symbolism and false-parallel, 
 Speaking the plain expression as I see 
 And feel and move about and am of earth : 
 The true Italian tongue though Italy 
 Be there Firenze, here another state ! 
 Exhaust the symbolism, disregard 
 The shadowy-doubtful necromantic myth 
 I wove of Faith and Reason ; and take of me 
 Fair purport, as I wrote experienced truth. 
 Thus were the tale no duplicate of soul, 
 But soul in some degree thirst-satisfied 
 By utterance of the matters of its wrath 
 As these affect its fact and are its life. 
 Firenze, ah ! Firenze ! how I love thee 
 55 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Who am an exile hated of thy race-! 
 
 Ravenna, how I hate thee though thou holdest 
 
 Body of mine and, with that flesh, my soul ! 
 
 These are the tragedies whereof I walk d 
 
 Incarnate poetry, by some mistake 
 
 Mask d in an oracle and mystery : 
 
 These were my soul-purgation without end ! 
 
 Ah, Beatrice, thou I mostly loved 
 
 While mated to another and thou dead ! 
 
 Thou woman : thou a dream, but that this soul 
 
 And body saw thee still and yearn d at thee 
 
 Though knowing thou wast not ! These are the things 
 
 I truly spake and felt and fully meant : 
 
 Unwilling exile in that spirit-world 
 
 Which I alone best knew for truth of earth. 
 
 The first of some new race of men am I 
 
 Who, Greek-like, Roman-wise, dwell all on earth 
 
 And live with it and love it and beget 
 
 By earth high poem-progeny not like 
 
 Barren scholastics cloister d in their lore. 
 
 The first of some new race who, Greek-like still, 
 
 Yet burst beyond the Greek in that their soul 
 
 Cleaves to no atom-struggling gainst the fates, 
 
 No refuge in atom-indifference, 
 
 56 
 
DANTE 
 
 But continence with passion-power combined 
 In this sublime sense of concluding earth 
 (Of rendering unto God God s things call d Cesar s) 
 Learn d of the symbolism. Where heaven and hell 
 Have been or seem d to be can nevermore 
 Be passive agony, but masterful 
 Appropriation of all literal truths 
 To re-create : for soul is master now. 
 If little save the chronicle of crime 
 Of Italy accursed I have spoken ; 
 Else the death-phantom of a finite love ; 
 Yet is the chronicle a novel art 
 Prophetic of a poetry wherein 
 That high philosophy call d Reasoning Faith 
 Shall sing incorporate with facts of earth 
 Not parallel d, not paradoxical, 
 But literally universalized 
 Unto world-permeant intelligence 
 By insight of soul s self-eternity 
 Twixt birth and death. I, Dante, born of earth 
 Yet wandering in the fiended forest of things 
 Call d past ; else through some void futurity 
 Of seraph-crystalline, stand born at last 
 Anew. Hell sinks ; heaven lifts. (Italian tongue 
 57 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Preserveth me from exile in the verse 
 Else native to no earth !) I humanly 
 Wake in Ravenna unto world s worth now. 
 I, Dante, have discern d a world s purgation. 
 I, Dante, have made self-contain d an earth. 
 
COLUMBUS 
 
 FROM the accomplished triumph here am I ! - 
 
 I have no triumph to report, my queen; 
 
 No mere achievement; yet a truth so strange 
 
 That Indies sink to insignificance - 
 
 Though the significance were Indies still ! 
 
 I have come through some tempests of the soul 
 
 More vast than ocean-thunders ; and have seen 
 
 In storm-burst vision of vitality 
 
 New-born to earth but by the wreck of all 
 
 Which hitherto hath held us : you, my queen, 
 
 God and our Empire all within that wrack 
 
 Concluded, victims of the visioning. 
 
 Now have I come to register my truth. 
 
 Hearken me, pr ythee, for I stand here now 
 
 With some authority for service done 
 
 Even though t were service Spain may scarce survive! 
 
 You who are under God in special place 
 Of privileged communion, need not know 
 The fear of failure ; for your thoughts are straight 
 From God. I have no privilege; did need 
 59 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Success to live : and I have found success, 
 Am proved before myself and you and God 
 Sane and assured some insight into things. 
 I am not close to God ; but I can say 
 With humblest dignity I may love close 
 My sovereign as God : I of my part 
 Sovereign, who lay new Indies at your feet. 
 Though are there moods when I would still undo 
 The great discovery, and be as one 
 Not near his sovereign nor himself a king. 
 Hark! for I fear a failure, as I fear d 
 No failure from the winds nor waves nor spheres 
 Of meteor-influence. And tis yours, my queen, 
 This doom ; not as you may be under God 
 My sovereign; nor yet as I, being man 
 Yet sovereign in myself, so make you God 
 To this my being; but as in yourself 
 You are as I no sovereign ; under God 
 A subject, so in fear of failure too, 
 Needing success to live. Nay, hearken me ! 
 The seas have heard me, and I speak their voice ! 
 Here are these Indies newly at your feet 
 Laid for the glory of your faith and mine. 
 They shall be vast and great; and on their wealth 
 60 
 
COLUMBUS 
 
 Spain s resource be upbuilded many years. 
 Yet have I breathed their breath ; and feel their life 
 A new thing and a menace to old faith. 
 There, God is otherwise than is our God ; 
 There (by the new insight which I have gain d 
 Of world and system though I want the speech 
 Of some ensuing age to give these truths 
 Words and right meaning, and must founder so 
 By paradox!) there must a sovereign 
 Be otherwise than is my sovereign ; 
 Myself be otherwise than here I stand : 
 More worldship be to God where worlds are fresh 
 And full of untold interests and faiths 
 Which mean no mere unvital imagery 
 Of truth, imply no otherworldliness, 
 But are some Godship in their life s estate, 
 More worldship; though less frail humanity! 
 More humanhood be to the sovereign, 
 More sovereignty to the meanest churl 
 (And only so some Godhood to them both), 
 Where opportunity to be one s law, 
 One s church and state and justice all in one 
 Springs of the forest and the novelty 
 Which shakes establish d custom, buffets forms 
 61 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Of prejudged failure else ordain d success 
 (Of old-world slavishness) with salt-sea foam. 
 (Had I the speech of some ensuing age!) 
 
 Nay, twere no treason. Yet myself have been 
 Convicted of a grievous blasphemy 
 Who sought a new Spain under God who gives 
 No new for old save with the death of old. 
 Yea, it is new, but it shall not be Spain, 
 Its sovereign no queen of old Castile 
 More than its God is God Granada-wise ! 
 I am an old man, yea ; but I have seen, 
 Am made anew ; and feel a sovereign-like 
 God-comprehension in my veins that mocks 
 (Save a new faith and hence a new respect 
 Self-lawfully be overt to new speech) 
 The old unreasoning obedience 
 (As ocean-tempests mock obedience) 
 To faith-prerogative. You tremble, queen ! 
 Strike if you will ! Perchance I may return 
 From yon west hemisphere one day in chains 
 To expiate what I but now have said ? 
 Nay, but I fear not. For, as under God 
 Are you my sovereign even in this place 
 62 
 
COLUMBUS 
 
 So Spain is under both ; but not New Spain : 
 
 More than am I no sovereign of myself 
 
 In those far Indies whither I once more 
 
 Depart (by leave) to learn new God, new faith, 
 
 And a new nation builded in the death 
 
 Of this ; of you, my sovereign ; of your God ! 
 
 And with the old I fall and die away 
 
 Doubtless ; but must project my soul upon 
 
 All destinies as you shall never do. 
 
 Here may the monks a thousand years to come 
 
 Wail masses for your soul ; there shall a growth 
 
 Of unborn peoples daily at their heart 
 
 Learn me, my meaning in the speech my speech 
 
 Would mean. Our wealth shall flourish and be great 
 
 By reason of these Indies for a space. 
 
 But now the faith, the Empire, falls away 
 
 Even into nothingness ; and we with it. 
 
 Yet have I seen and sought to tell to you 
 
 The insight you may ask in turn your God : 
 
 Ask God Who told me but gave scarce the speech 
 
 Of some ensuing age that you might share 
 
 The vision : none less true, filling my soul 
 
 With meaning. 
 
 I of the doom d ship have stood 
 63 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 All darkling : suddenly when the whole night 
 Opens ; and there is cloud-wrack and the wrath 
 Of myriad stricken waves ; and then the black 
 Is verberant through all the blinded void ! 
 
SAVONAROLA 
 
 FIRENZE I have served my seven years 
 
 And now am come to suffer for her sake 
 
 As men have died before me : martyrs, saints 
 
 And now. myself, mere Prior among priests, 
 
 Girolamo. Yea, t is strange that I have come 
 
 Unto such noble company. But God 
 
 Was ever gracious, ever spake to me. 
 
 When was He otherwise to any man 
 If men but would take heed ? My only claim 
 To merit in the sight of God or man 
 Were heeding then the message. Did I heed it ? 
 The query were not of my meed as man 
 Merely ; of that I were indifferent ; 
 Could take no heed for saving my mere soul, 
 Nor now, when face to face with death, accede 
 To private casuistry, were my worth 
 Alone involved in my life s estimate. 
 But I have been that leader of the blind, 
 God s humble vicar with the souls of men 
 At stake on mine. For I have had my day 
 Of power in plenitude in name of Christ, 
 65 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Of vicarage to wide effect on earth, 
 
 Though fallen so low to-day in earth s own sight. 
 
 God s wisdom be the fall ; let it not shame 
 
 The power that hath been but because the sign 
 
 I hoped from heaven hath come not nor shall come ! 
 
 Let the apostleship stand firm and fall not 
 
 With this mere faltering of the flesh of me 
 
 Before the drawn cord and the searching flame. 
 
 I will examine by full confessional 
 
 Mine own career now closed ; and let it stand 
 
 Fair yet or foul for men to know me by. 
 
 There hath been other record, false I know, 
 
 Inscribed and publish d of the inquisitors. 
 
 Let this my silent searching of myself 
 
 By God s grace permeate the minds of men 
 
 Mysteriously to let them learn the truth 
 
 Of mine example set as I shall learn it. 
 
 All sums itself in one : that I denied 
 Power of any potency of earth 
 (Putting my trust in God, not Prankish princes !) 
 To gainsay God ; making my faith the test 
 Of God or anti-God in earth s affairs. 
 May be t were that I ought not even conceive 
 66 
 
SAVONAROLA 
 
 Of anti-God establish d in the earth : 
 So be it. But there be those who under God 
 Assume the power of God to plunder men. 
 And such should be resisted would we serve 
 God wholly and directly as we may. 
 Nor, for I now confess it, spake I well 
 When claiming prophecy, the gift in me 
 By vision of the things unseen of men 
 To speak for God as other than mere man : 
 Foretelling future things by oracle 
 As pagans use. For such a prophesying, 
 Such speaking for our Lord, were beyond speech 
 Presumption on my part and on God s part 
 A supererogation. Speaks He not 
 Through every tongue of earth if men would heed ? 
 So it is true that to this least extent 
 I solemnly recant : I spake as one 
 Men call inspired indeed, but not in kind 
 A prophet different from other men 
 In all of whom faith like to mine might fill 
 The void with some afflatus. Reasoning fair 
 With knowledge of the times, with faith in right 
 Conclusive in me of the truth of things, 
 I could forefeel and did foretell indeed 
 67 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Much chastisement and mine own doom at last 
 As now is come upon me Gladius 
 Domini super t err am. The worst wretch 
 If suddenly possessed by gift of God 
 With faith in right might prophesy as well. 
 That were the only gift, the faith in right. 
 And only so have I been prophet here. 
 So be it. I man to man resisted firm 
 The oppression of the powers that claim d from God 
 Power superior to my people s power 
 Whereof from God I was the guardian. 
 The pettier tyranny, Lorenzo s rule, 
 Foul Piero s pretense, I spurn d to oppose 
 Directly nor countervail by counterplot, 
 Save as I served Firenze by my voice 
 And persevered for peace if honorable ; 
 But being irreconcilable to death 
 I but did well : the Medici deserved not. 
 But now hath been the Borgia, he who claims 
 The Keys of Peter. Did I well with him ? 
 He conquers this my flesh : by flesh I fight not 
 T is spirit that is protagonist. Yea, shall 
 He conquer then my soul who no soul hath ? 
 I stake upon the proof of simony 
 68 
 
SAVONAROLA 
 
 Mine absolute refusal to allow 
 
 Pope Alexander to be proven Pope. 
 
 Say not the scholiasts all, that place obtain d 
 
 By fraud endoweth with no authority ? 
 
 Between this Alexander and myself 
 
 There is no worthy combat. He is nought. 
 
 He burns my body ; but him my soul ignores. 
 
 What then the doubt, if there hath been no Pope 
 With whom dispute might lie ? As man to man 
 He was beneath contempt, should fill not now 
 One moment of the life remaining to me 
 Which should be wholly dedicate to God. 
 But there is world without these prison-walls, 
 Firenze still, though hostile, at my feet, 
 Example set by me unto all people, 
 And misconception of the speech of me 
 And false report ! And t is to serve God still 
 If I bewray mine hours yet left of earth 
 To silence question, free from my career 
 If possible without recant from truth 
 The imputation of revolt imbued 
 Schismatic, scandalous within God s church. 
 T were shame of this that made me oft-time yield 
 69 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Where right was mine against authority 
 (As world would misconceive !), where I by yielding 
 Endanger d self, weaken d my flock s support. 
 And it is now this rumor of schismatism 
 Moving and waxing when I am no more 
 Twere this I truly fear, deeply regret 
 In mine attempt now closed to purge God s church 
 Of rottenness. The rottenness alone 
 Might never cleave asunder what God meant 
 For one Church universal. Had I lived 
 Longer, to urge the Council and conduct 
 Myself the Cause of Christ against those crimes 
 Call d Cardinals and Popes, then had there been 
 No danger of a schism from that I wrought. 
 Their creed is my creed, could they but repent. 
 But now tis otherwise. The time was short ; 
 And I have left the purging unperform d 
 And reconciliation unattain d. 
 It were to any outward view a war 
 Twixt me and Rome, this Prior and the church : 
 A fatal heresy ! I seem to see 
 In some outlying land where Emperor 
 Is ever jealous of the pride of Rome, 
 Where fervor of the rich, symbolic creed 
 70 
 
SAVONAROLA 
 
 Is chill d by frost of some hard northern clime, 
 (Ages from now may be, yet child of this age !) 
 A stout schismatic rise and cry : From him, 
 Girolamo of Ferrara, him who bade 
 The Pope go burn in hell his thousand years, 
 From him, this martyr d Prior of San Marco, 
 1 Came the first blow of the mallet on the wedge 
 Which now I wield to thrust the structure down 
 1 Divided from itself. Savonarola 
 
 * Who first put inward grace fore outward chrism, 
 The first schismatic, first protesting priest : 
 
 * To him be honor and glory for his crime ! 
 
 So shouts the Teuton. And the accursed crime, 
 The desperate revolt from God s true church, 
 Spreads frenzied down the ages ; and the world 
 Is rift in twain ; and God is no more known 
 In mystic union of His Church on earth 
 The one and universal. There shall be 
 Rivers of fire and burnings, yea, of blood ; 
 Wars, devastations ; and my name be claim d 
 For anti-Christ s great patron by my fault 
 Of struggling now against this Borgia ! 
 Lord, if this vision be vouchsafed by Thee, 
 Forgive the error of my fight for Thee ! 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Accept the penitence for crime unguess d 
 
 But in Thine own inscrutable wisdom proven 
 
 Mine irremediable shame and sin ! 
 
 No vision need it be, then, Lord ! if Thou 
 
 Still to the last vouchsafest me no sign ? 
 
 Only mine insight into mine own deed 
 
 Its necessary consequence of shame 
 
 Despite my soul s intention insight aided 
 
 By rack d nerve, twisted sinew : my sight at last 
 
 As now longtime of many ! Here I kneel 
 
 Foregone, bewray d indeed : my contumacy 
 
 Proven gainst the unity of men s belief 
 
 In Thy Church universal ! To have set 
 
 Mere private judgment, personal unity 
 
 Of reasoning faith above Thy best bequest, 
 
 Thine instituted Body ! Of Thy Spirit 
 
 The mind knows nothing, save by outward works 
 
 As Thou, Thy Church, ordainest ! T is thus we 
 
 heed 
 
 By heeding them who hearken d long ago 
 When Thou wast upon earth authority 
 Closing the question of power ! Whom men call 
 Pope, against him can be no just recourse ? 
 Lo ! I have hitherto aloud denied 
 72 
 
SAVONAROLA 
 
 The excommunication. Before men 
 Have I been cogent in my reasoning 
 Contra authority ; whilst nought obtains 
 Of logic nor of reason to avail 
 Against the scandal I have caused thereby. 
 Even this self-searching, ay, were scandalous, 
 Unwarranted and proving nought of truth, 
 Knelt I not thus in Thy confessional ! 
 
 Lo ! when the time for absolution comes 
 
 In the last hour before the people there, 
 
 That absolution I will meekly take 
 
 Publicly to my spirit, that the church 
 
 (Perhaps therethrough my teaching may be true?) 
 
 Shall triumph through me though my teaching fail. 
 
 I must not perish excommunicate ! 
 
 73 
 
MICHELANGELO 
 
 THESE are my children : these, the Night and Day. 
 For I have wrought them with my body s power 
 Persons more of my procreation than 
 Stuff of an artistry of thought and soul. 
 T were not that slowly and with patient pain 
 Under mine hand I made them hour by hour 
 These creatures moulded of the graven rock. 
 The slow gradation toward maturity 
 Were in thus much no thwarting to mine art 
 But rather proof of reason in the whole, 
 Of sight before and after. But being made, 
 Grown to the semblance of heroic truths 
 And left (as I have left them these few years 
 Unchanged) well-nigh eternal where they lie, 
 They still are stone, an occupance of place 
 In reproduction of my form humane 
 As I am body moulded to my height 
 And breadth within this frame of universe. 
 And therefore are they creatures of my body, 
 Children in likeness of my fatherhood, 
 Unlike the sexless self -completed soul 
 That, needing nothing to perpetuate 
 74 
 
MICHELANGELO 
 
 Its self-eternity, of largess makes 
 World of itself, createth as a God. 
 Somewhat there was within me as I wrought 
 That seem d not procreative, seem d self- whole. 
 Somewhat there bides as then abode in me 
 Of self-intention in mine offspring here ; 
 Not vulgar imitation of man s frame. 
 Men will no doubt detect some spirit in them. 
 Yet is that somewhat spoilt, as I conceive, 
 By grossness of the literal contour still 
 Suggesting need that for the artist-act 
 Were prototype in earth of other-sex 
 My mate ; perversion of perpetuance 
 From proper flesh and blood to senseless stone, 
 The still-born of an heart hermaphrodite 
 Wedded to world and moulding of its marl. 
 Here before all men lieth mine heart s disgrace, 
 Who, yearning with divine creatorship 
 Internal to mine absolute insight 
 Of spiritual beauty (as God made me so 
 Beautiful in His sight), have sullied self 
 By part-performance false of natural law 
 In imitation of the God Who made 
 (Himself, above the law He made for man, 
 75 
 
OF TH 
 
 /NIVERSITY 
 
 POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Sexlessly procreative, self-supreme !), 
 
 Above His law of nature mating two, 
 
 Flesh out of fiat as I made but stone. 
 
 Man cannot make a man of flesh and blood, 
 
 The image of himself in stuff of earth, 
 
 Save by the woman-mystery. My way 
 
 Had better been to hew vacuity, 
 
 Essay no semblance from the block incised 
 
 Which still for all my labor showeth nought 
 
 Of the true man that breathes and moves and knows. 
 
 I had been better wedded to some wench ; 
 
 Well-quit of carving whilst my children grew 
 
 And flourish d and were I, body and soul, 
 
 By mystery perpetuate in the world. 
 
 Yet have I loved not, scarcely until now 
 Felt want of woman for the weal of me. 
 My works have issued from the unsex d stone 
 (Or man or woman) mere humanity, 
 Not fatherhood nor mother, male nor wife 
 If individual beyond old types 
 In all else, Titans merely, sexless gods. 
 Haply the procreation by these blocks 
 Allay d the natural longing of the male 
 76 
 
MICHELANGELO 
 
 For femininity and served the need 
 Of offspring all the while I dream d them art. 
 Haply my grim mismarr d envisagement 
 Found favor of the marble I but woo d 
 As any lover with assured success 
 Though still I fancied soul, as man hath soul 
 (The power that is beyond the body s power), 
 Created in me out of day and night 
 These and the sundry monstrance of my craft. 
 Me much mistaken ! For at last I love 
 And find no satisfaction in these stones 
 Which, being for flesh a senseless substitute 
 Whilst still no means to mount beyond the flesh, 
 Speak nothing of the passion proven in me 
 As I am artist to create., beyond 
 Material of the world I find me in, 
 Expression of the wondrous mastery 
 That fills me : to create as I am God 
 For mine own truth and love s own truth alone 
 Not imitation but perfection of 
 The utterance that wells within me now. 
 For thus should I be (as I now am man 
 To woman, yearning even whilst to woo 
 Intend I never ! to attain by her 
 77 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Body s perpetuation, yea, and soul s 
 As bodily bequeathed), be also source 
 Of self -divine formation ; yea, my thought 
 And hers united to new heaven, new earth. 
 
 The silence that is deathly in these stones, 
 Fatal and mocking to my fatherhood, 
 Were solemn-splendid in the sweet-tongued song 
 I send her, first of many that shall be : 
 Best of the hundred hitherto to art 
 And man inscribed, but not to any soul ! 
 Within the noble language as she reads 
 Shall the new world arise that s ours alone, 
 All mine, all hers, to all eternity ; 
 No self-defeat in that the voice breathes not, 
 Moves not, lives not ; for breath nor motion, life 
 Were wanted any in the brain that reads 
 And reading re-creates. No body of me 
 Is falsely fashion d in the marks I make 
 Of plume upon the parchment superscribed : 
 Nought but some symbol of the thought of sound ; 
 A thought itself an art beyond all sign. 
 The world of flesh and blood, as other men 
 May sense it, leaves me as the mists of Rome 
 78 
 
MICHELANGELO 
 
 Burn from the Tiber, or the hills above 
 
 Firenze are released out of a cloud, 
 
 And all in gleam of eye is marvel-clear, 
 
 Impenetrative of the new-won sight 
 
 This love hath lent me as the sun on high. 
 
 Only, it is my soul that, learning hers, 
 
 Is sun in heaven as yet the mists beneath ; 
 
 Is song in silence, speech within my pen 
 
 Unheard but soaring as the morning soars. 
 
 For I have come to love ; and all my need 
 
 Of procreation through this flesh of space - 
 
 Focus d, enshrined within her woman-heart 
 
 Where it is holy as the snow is white 
 
 That lieth beyond Milano (being of us both 
 
 In consonance with law and hence alive, 
 
 Breathing and moving and inform d of soul) 
 
 Sheds from the soul that mounteth more than man 
 
 And leaves a godhead in my song to her. 
 
 It is the art that struggled to be stone 
 
 And could not, but became monstrosity. 
 
 It is the art that, as it alway fail d, 
 
 Darkened my brow, furrow d my temples thwart 
 
 With hard perplexity, perturbing all 
 
 To vast unrest that I did labor on. 
 
 79 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 It is the art too late to find relea 
 Wholly, nor smooth the misery from my mask 
 Wherewith I clothe my face before the eyes 
 Of all men and all women else than her. 
 Such as I am, I am, made of mine own 
 Too long sojourning here about the world 
 A laborer to fashion flesh and blood 
 As none but God by His best mystery 
 Of woman-love unto the love of man 
 May fashion it in image of Himself. 
 I unto her may be some poet yet 
 Of terrible tenderness, of tragic peace 
 By liberation in and through her heart 
 From any need to prison under earth 
 The meaning that is beauty as I speak it 
 Well-order d to the riming of my soul. 
 But unto men must I still play my part 
 So long ago assumed ; never to end 
 Till lean senility absorb all strength ; 
 And art with power to pound or patch a clay 
 Die as I die, the struggler, sculptor still. 
 Their pigment, nay design, wherewith of late 
 I sop the Cerberus (I ve calPd it base 
 And purpose of all art !) t were slight to help 
 80 
 
MICHELANGELO 
 
 Where by device of trick illusively 
 
 Is symbol d sordid substance, substance alway. 
 
 The manual dexterity I use 
 
 Were still the undertaking ; still the form 
 
 Is space-felt, cynically aping earth 
 
 Indeed (in so far as insulting stone 
 
 With mockery of chiaroscuro and 
 
 The subtile perspective, so far success !) 
 
 Yet warrantable but by fact of stone 
 
 Not imitative, even, of true soul 
 
 Save through the obscuring body : and thus con- 
 
 demn d, 
 
 The limning with the carving. I for her 
 Am maker. For the rest I am but man. 
 
 These are my children; still-born, struggling things 
 Of every gaze that chance to glance them by : 
 Insensates of the insensate ; Day or Night ; 
 Dawn yet or David ; Twilight or the God 
 Of Wine ; Madonna with the Child, the Dead ; 
 Or Moses half-hewn still within my mind. 
 These are my children. But mine art is song 
 Sentient in love of her : for her, for me : 
 But not for any other of them all. 
 81 
 
MILTON 
 
 NOW am I left in mine old age with God 
 Alone. Blind, desolate, I still have God. 
 Princes and potentates they are not God. 
 
 How have I seen the great days of the earth 
 Like froth devour d ; and all our hopes of strength 
 Made to a mock and scorn ! But still is God. 
 How are the evil raging ; and the wrong 
 Wholly triumphant through the length and breadth 
 Of this lost England ! Yea, but still is God. 
 Yet, shall the commonweal that men have lost 
 Be commonweal regain d ? In God s good time 
 Doubtless. But here I sit at Gizeh shorn 
 And blind, a mockery. I sit; and God. 
 Even hath my sacrifice of sight brought nought 
 Save bitterness : and commune close with God. 
 Yea, in the loss of every outward thing 
 Of sight and fortune, opportunity 
 To stir foot in God s service ; still I owe 
 Rich compensation, empyrean hope 
 Of him who stands and waits : this life in God. 
 Scarce might I mean with any honest heart 
 82 
 
MILTON 
 
 (Though grief would urge it) that in just such ruin 
 
 Alone gain I the vision and the voice 
 
 To sing of Satan, Eve s and Adam s fall 
 
 Through Satan, and the splendor of God s hosts. 
 
 These seem but figure of the truth I feel 
 
 Celestial, overpowering, immense. 
 
 Scarce might I mean (though here I shrink at least 
 
 From sacrilege and stark unreverence) 
 
 How Christ I sing and man s redemption through 
 
 Him, 
 
 The second Adam t were but figure still 
 Of this best grace, this unity with God. 
 Nor might I mean that I in durance sitting 
 Sing the blind Samson, earth s most tragic man 
 Of men save Samson were my very soul 
 Named but anew ; and thus were God within him 
 The true song s spirit. These I mean not ; yet 
 Even as those orbed constellations and 
 Sun s fiery magnificence were fountain 
 Of mine imaginings of Satan s wars 
 When sight was to these eyes, so Satan s hosts 
 And God triumphant (truths of inward eye) 
 Seem but suggestion of some truth to-come 
 Beyond immediate vision, yet the more 
 83 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 My faith and hope, my very love of God. 
 Let not the spirit flag because of age ! 
 
 Somewhat it were, to search in my past faith 
 
 For signs of this awakening ; and thus 
 
 Foreshadow something of articulate truth 
 
 Reserved for later ages and a man 
 
 I know not : trace some growth, development 
 
 Of here and there some partial prophecy, 
 
 Some mutilated vision which in sum 
 
 Shall mean as I by miracle would mean. 
 
 Thus, to the task ! I cannot well recall 
 
 Even in mine adolescence such weak years 
 
 As were not, half-unconsciously, inform d 
 
 Of independent judgment in affairs. 
 
 And this I heed well, that, with riper days 
 
 And conscienced full maturity, I took 
 
 Firm attitude of non-conformity 
 
 In spiritual professions. If I vow d 
 
 No vows (when learning and the studious garb 
 
 Meant clergy ; and the laity, ignorance 
 
 And wassail), twas that something in me stirr d 
 
 Unto revolt; at best, unto a power 
 
 To deal direct with God and God with me, 
 
MILTON 
 
 Brooking no intercession from a church. 
 
 Such then the key-note, non-conformity 
 
 And right of private judgment with direct 
 
 Appeal to God in Scripture and in faith. 
 
 Confirm d in such view, I at first withdrew 
 
 For travel, study, teaching; when the times 
 
 In public life of independent thought 
 
 Demanded nought, afforded no foothold 
 
 Unto the root-and-branch reformer. Then 
 
 At the true call and in the desperate need 
 
 I labor d earnestly and honorably 
 
 Preserving independence, unenslaved 
 
 To any project or of friends or foes : 
 
 That England might be England. When the times 
 
 Fell; and I blind and desolate am left 
 
 Alone with God ; mine independence still 
 
 Is mine, my private judgment unimpeach d 
 
 And unimpair d. But markedly the appeal 
 
 To God in Scripture or to God in faith 
 
 Is of a novel nature. Let me pause. 
 
 For everything that I have deem d of God 
 His handiwork hath fail d me. Mine whole world 
 Hath sunken and is wrack. Did I mistake 
 85 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 God s will and purpose ? Did I contradict 
 The express command and set my strength against 
 Omnipotence ? Was God the God of kings 
 And tyrants ? Nay, for kings and tyrants deem 
 Earth theirs, not God s ; and therefore God s good care 
 For their good solely, and themselves in the world 
 God s vicars, hence in all equivalence 
 God upon earth. God cannot work for these. 
 Yet have I thus been guilty as I blame 
 These tyrants ; I have held God partisan 
 For this or the other good within my soul 
 Or in the world ; though all things else of the world 
 (And in my soul) no care of Providence. 
 Thus have I made these few things of my world 
 Tyrant of all else; and my soul-desires 
 God upon earth. God cannot work for these. 
 Yea, I, who brook no intercession, fain 
 Had interceded even as Church and Pope. 
 I, who have writ of Satan s tragedy 
 And heroism, had deem d God s adversary 
 No care of God and so no truth of Him ; 
 Though God were God but in the conquering, 
 And Satan very godly, who would brook 
 No intercession, but demanded right 
 86 
 
MILTON 
 
 To deal direct with God and God with him. 
 Ay, Christ were Christly not in interceding 
 Where intercession were a blasphemy, 
 But by subduing all things of His soul 
 And world to godliness and Providence; 
 And thereby making whole His universe. 
 Samson were tragic, and God s spirit in him, 
 Scarce by the warfare (less by carnal love!) 
 But by the cataclysm, involving all 
 Alike, of God s wrath on the just or unjust; 
 Self, Israel s servant, even as Dagon s hosts! 
 
 Thus the new faith of mine unflagging spirit 
 In age as in mine earliest youth is still 
 A self-dependent and unswerving zeal 
 To deal direct with God, brooking no cant 
 Of customary creeds to intercede. 
 Yet the new independence craves some fresh 
 Fashion of God, Who, equally all things 
 Of right and wrong as I must see them, yet 
 Fosters the final truth in heaven s own fall. 
 I cannot reach the reason why some things 
 Of God are right and why some earth-things else 
 Are wrong, yet equally of God the same. 
 87 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Old faith falls from me as my sight hath fallen, 
 
 Leaving me outer darkness, the dismay 
 
 Indeed of one who sits at Gizeh shorn 
 
 And sightless ; but within, a truth of God 
 
 New : how no evilest tyrant of them all 
 
 But God is with them working still for truth ; 
 
 And how I, wielding on the just and unjust 
 
 Alike the scourge and the sustainment too 
 
 Of man s great epic of the primal sin 
 
 And final godliness, the hellish power 
 
 Of Satan and the healing power of Christ, 
 
 Am left in mine old age blind, desolate 
 
 Indeed ; alone by knowing but all in God, 
 
 God but in all ; my right, their wrong : but God ! 
 
 And thus is God through me, as God through them 
 Fill d of an universal hold of earth, 
 Though the wrong triumph. Thus my aged soul 
 Hath faith and dealeth still direct with God. 
 
LEIBNIZ 
 
 WHAT uplift of the spirit in these stars ! 
 How, in the pale dawn waxing yonder wide 
 And wider with each heart- beat of this breeze, 
 Seems each to feed on holier flame, seems star 
 Or fiery influence scarce to melt away 
 As once men dream d, but to wax each in place ; 
 Remaining each a star yet each the more 
 Achieving sunship by the sphere s increase 
 Of light ! I lean from this stuff d chamber forth ; 
 Some span, may be, project my brow beyond 
 This eastward casement ; and receive the dawn 
 And all dawn s wonderful significance 
 Into my breath and being (soul and all, 
 Fatigued with toil of mathematic task 
 The night-long !) ; soul and all receive of this 
 Heart-beating, breathing movement of the wind ; 
 And am resuscitate ; as one arisen 
 Out of some sepulchre I sense the truth 
 In new strength ; am of insight into God 
 More vital than my calculus : am dawn 
 And sunship of these stars ! Let there be light 
 Even in my laboring brain to clear at last 
 89 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 The calculus, the monad-chaos from 
 
 All need of preassumption, overlord 
 
 Or arbitrary dawn of a sole sun ! 
 
 Let the new day be stars : sun, but a star 
 
 Self-like more largely luminous ; yet stars, 
 
 Each still a sun. Let the new problem be 
 
 Development inherent to each least 
 
 Of minimalities. Let God be soul, 
 
 Mine and each monad s equally ; no lord 
 
 Unmonadlike ex machina, beyond 
 
 The mutual scheme emptily superposed. 
 
 How strangely rational ! Behind me heap d 
 
 Lie year on year of labors, leading but 
 
 To subterfuge : to some absorptive dawn 
 
 Defiguring these stars, to some false-stars 
 
 Figments of fire on sun s fix d palimpsest; 
 
 Not sunlike systems each a dawn, not sun 
 
 Some very star but by earth nearlier view d. 
 
 Now these things melt away ; nay, wax and burst 
 
 Transfigured each to splendor of this sense 
 
 Of self-conclusiveness ! What uplift of 
 
 The spirit in this waxing of the stars ! 
 
 Might I devise this new-won spirit-truth 
 90 
 
LEIBNIZ 
 
 In terms at last of any calculus ? 
 
 How, within bounds of mathematic need 
 
 For static value, indicate for each 
 
 Minutest element a value earn d 
 
 Of absolute position, each in self 
 
 The very problem s full infinity ? 
 
 The problem s statement were the problem 
 
 solved ! 
 
 Yea, every part were function of all parts 
 Itself whole, yet discernibly a part 
 Whose definition must conclude all else. 
 No possibility of calculus, 
 Of simplification, interchange of place, 
 Invariant symbolism of each sign, 
 Convertibility in any guise 
 Would anywise remain ! Language must be 
 Self-absolute, communicatively 
 A mere approximation ; for no sign 
 Can bear one meaning in unlike contexts, 
 But each is all of speech ! The calculus 
 Would prove pure fluxion, still determinate ; 
 Ay, static not in any part at all 
 Save as each part is utterly the whole 
 And thus not iterable ; each, unique. 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Nor, to allege of every element 
 Fluxional worth wherewith to calculate 
 As static till, beyond the problem, by 
 Some strange arbitrament were value chosen, 
 Were to perform such operation through 
 The fluxion. Nay, the fluxion may not stand 
 For calculation-usage. Yet, save each 
 Be also all and thereby of itself 
 Intrinsically make for infinite 
 The problem and itself such all s inverse 
 Distinctively determining all quanta, 
 By its own standard constituting allness, 
 And hence incapable within the all 
 Of any subdivision (which would add 
 A multitude beyond all multitude), 
 Remains each least minute minute soe er 
 Yet capable of diminution still 
 (Because not by its definition as 
 Distinctive implicating all there is) 
 As merely static unit capable 
 Of iteration, hence analysis, 
 Interminably further ; ay, despite 
 Interminable aggregation, still 
 Quite inexhaustive, plural : yea, in no sort 
 92 
 
LEIBNIZ 
 
 Appropriate to last analysis 
 Fluxionalwise of any curvature 
 Save curves whose constancy functions as straight. 
 Even as, were God some over-monad, strange 
 To monad-ideality (yea, such 
 False God I dream d but yesterday), remain d 
 Each individuality of men 
 But yet an unit, single ; and nowise 
 An individual, but each with each 
 Still interchangeable, nowise unique ; 
 Hence capable of subdivision still : 
 Some part of me, myself ; nor any part 
 Quite minimal enough to be myself 
 Beyond dispute not that pineal gland 
 Of Gaul s geometrician small enough 
 To be the soul ! And yet the soul is all ; 
 Yet were each, individual ; each star 
 The God, the dawning also ; if beyond 
 All mathematic, then were calculus yet 
 Scarce metaphysic, scarcely adequate 
 To any wisdom : as scarce soul, the shape 
 Of atomic extent ! But soul were lift 
 And comprehension of yon atom-world 
 To morning-song, to spiritual strength 
 93 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Now more than formerly, ay, than when all 
 Stars sang together. Sing they now my soul ! 
 
 Light breaks; each star in waxing grows a world, 
 A sunship and a day-strength. And my cell 
 Of litter d scribblings where I turn my gaze 
 Is loftily illumined by these floods 
 Which fling from this near star, my person d self, 
 Over the universe. The perfect proof 
 Is mine of metaphysic spirit-scheme 
 Which needs no God for overlord, no day 
 Destroying starship : as no calculus. 
 The proof perfect in faith, not flawless quite 
 In demonstration. For this day remains 
 All seeming-starless to the sight. No touch 
 Finds godship in these limbs and aching brow ; 
 Which yearn and seek beyond world s monad- 
 scheme 
 
 The absolvent harmony I feel for false ! 
 Oh, for fresh logic, strict as all the schools 
 Yet fill d with insight which might save my work 
 From waste ; some firm, well-knit concordance of 
 The godship with the individual 
 (Which, if by mere discernibility, 
 94 
 
LEIBNIZ 
 
 Concludes distinctively all else ; is whole) 
 Wherein each proves each ; wherein even this false 
 Abstractive generality, these false 
 Exclusive iterative monad-points, 
 May stand for error, posited of truth, 
 Yea, proving truth by being exhausted, false! 
 Then might the calculus be wholly true 
 Not by approximation but by full 
 Rejection of the explicit elements 
 Transform d to absolute uniqueness each : 
 Not now my method. Then might well my soul 
 Be more than mere revolt gainst current false 
 Apotheosis of that infinite 
 Whose emptiness of all vitality 
 Is held for Godhood ! Then might I be more 
 Than Baruch s anti-Christ: who ne ertheless 
 Even in mine own despite must yet retain 
 The Spinozistic God of worldlessness 
 Beyond my monad-world. Will such a man 
 Be moulded of the times to come ? Will dawn-hour 
 Some day be hail d by one whose spirit faints not 
 Back : as my spirit faints to poring-o er 
 These differentials ? One whose harmony 
 If preestablish d yet is instant still; 
 95 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Whose apperception, if reflectively, 
 
 Yet absolutely shall conclude in each 
 
 Beyond conceivability of mere 
 
 Exclusive iteration all world else 
 
 By metaphysic beyond calculus ? 
 
 Such will there be ! who shall speak loud and clear 
 
 What now I dimly feel : what now I am 
 
 Even in my perfect failure I who now 
 
 Fulfill world-being, yea, avow my truth 
 
 Of sunship, starship by my standard set 
 
 And self-criterion truth I fatuous 
 
 Resign for figment of the fever d brain 
 
 Worn-out with much night-watching. 
 
 Hail, Lord Sun ! 
 
 Quencher of stars ! Be God beyond my soul, 
 Leaving me space in little to reflect 
 His universe ! The morning is awake 
 Without my chamber; from within I close 
 The casement, monadwise devise my world 
 Of calculi, of symbols representing 
 Type, order, law; as God will have it: dream ! 
 
KEATS 
 
 SUCH sound as ocean only, autumn ocean, 
 Makes in the mellow silences my soul 
 And fainting strength unto this autumn hour 
 Respond : a murmurous, heart-upwelling lift 
 That bursts almost, yet bursts not ; though at last 
 Someway is gone, back-lost into the void ; 
 Gone, with indrawing, gasp and sob. The drift 
 And cast things scarce are troubled ; and the voice 
 Nowhere is firm nor forceful ; yet the depth 
 And length and breadth of all, that in this hour 
 Seems vital, suffers, agonizes, yea, 
 To make respond, make feel, this stubborn shore 
 Sea s tragedy of mute omnipotence. 
 
 It is the tragedy of aging world 
 And of my young indomitable soul 
 That bursts almost in singing, sings not quite 
 The strong song of the sea when strand and wave 
 Are one white turmoil. For I fail from strength 
 By uttermost inception ; as this sea, 
 Too plastic to the impulse, yields along 
 Its length and breadth and through the depths of it 
 97 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 Unto its own compulsion ; and is lost. 
 Had I the power of rock, to sing yet feel not ! 
 Yea, when the wave beats on me, to be voice ! 
 
 For now I meditate a song of songs : 
 
 Of how the early gods in tragedy 
 
 Of mute omnipotence were all unmade 
 
 By too divine inception. And the song 
 
 Fails from denoting earth and men and Zeus 
 
 For new and nobler Saturn ; but betrays 
 
 A sad indrawing, backward sob and loss 
 
 With Saturn s downfall, leaves the old god there 
 
 Undone : for too divine inception of 
 
 His piteous destiny. Would that my soul 
 
 Might sing the song of Zeus, Saturn anew 
 
 Made godlier by community with men ! 
 
 Would that my song might be Hyperion ! 
 
 Would that my soul might burst and find its voice 
 
 Almost t is so, t is well-nigh vocal with 
 The insight of this tragedy of mute 
 Omnipotence. The year will soon be worn 
 Out of this impotence, be autumn sprung 
 Unto ripe power of winter. And this soul, 
 98 
 
KEATS 
 
 Released of too swift sensibility, 
 
 Too much of apprehension, freed and fair 
 
 From Rome be journeying with song at last 
 
 Because of utterance through death. But now 
 
 I sit by this dead northern autumn shore : 
 
 An autumn and an ocean I, a world 
 
 Of mute omnipotence. And in myself 
 
 I hear the lifting swell, the almost burst, 
 
 The sob of all-indrawing ; yea, such sound 
 
 As ocean, autumn ocean, makes among 
 
 The drift things and the cast stones of the shore, 
 
 99 
 
SHELLEY 
 
 PEACE be to mine inquietude of spirit, 
 Its fever and its fierce improvidence 
 Of utterance, and petulance of heart. 
 Peace now be unto me and let me be 
 (Alastor-like and as Prometheus end !) 
 All-permeative of this peace-fill d hour. 
 Let Islam sleep now with the sleeping Keats. 
 Let me be, with the saturating strength 
 Of this firm wind, beyond dejection fill d 
 By noon-tide and the blue, by sea and sky : 
 Stout with its streaming yet be tranquil too, 
 As o er these pine-tops, for incessant speed. 
 Let the west wind blow power and not dismay. 
 For I am as the mountains and the sea 
 A solemn purport ; if a cloud, no more 
 Of lightning nor of deluge. But I stand 
 Steep d in the breathing of this atmosphere 
 That moves and yet is mighty but by peace. 
 Yon lies the bark well-nigh prepared to cruise 
 By this sweet coast ; and warm trans-Spezian breezes 
 To bless us and refresh with blue and breath 
 Of the pristine hyaline. I 11 sit me here 
 100 
 
SHELLEY 
 
 Awhile till all is trim-set ; and renew 
 
 Conscience of this that I have lived and been. 
 
 For presage is (as yon high-toppling cloud 
 
 At sail that swells aloft in the noon light 
 
 So white and whelming, angel of this gulf s 
 
 Eternal involution sea with sky !) 
 
 For presage is of some high change in me 
 
 Which swells and waxes overweening with 
 
 My yearning to embark and be, one season, 
 
 Some firmer, wiser, holier than myself 
 
 In unimpeded and direct commune 
 
 With passion which is not rash inequity, 
 
 With irresistible force which yet is full 
 
 Of calmest beauty, sane and utterly 
 
 True to a self-containment and a quiet 
 
 Which ne er was mine. Can beauty be aught else 
 
 Than peace, whate er of outward stress enshrine 
 
 Its poise, its logic and its dignity ? 
 
 For flame-like I have tower d above the ground 
 On wing and wild song as the lark ascending 
 And seen in vision what these eyes of earth 
 Had never seen ; but to the face of earth, 
 Its comfort and its vast inspiring, been 
 101 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 As blind. Shadow and shine have swept through earth 
 And I known nought for towering sunward still. 
 (And yet, to tower and be but earth-born more 
 By every sun-pulse ! To be cloud in truth : 
 Or pine-tree yonder, rooted even as branch d !) 
 Thus, have I not transcended every hue 
 Of nature or of humankind to give 
 To each thing somewhat of a mystery, 
 Phantasm and image of its proper shape 
 Projected rainbow-wise, but no true gleam 
 Of the earth-paradise I named yet knew not ? 
 Have not I made sweet mouthings of the scents 
 And sounds beneath, above, beyond me here 
 Only to question still, and speak nowise 
 Inherent beauties, the conclusive self 
 Of each that is a conscience even in mine ? 
 I, of all earth enamor d, yet have said : 
 There is no God ; and have my god of love 
 In cloud-shadow and sunshine nowhere found, 
 For ignorance that his right form and face 
 Are in me, therefore in the least of these. 
 Him I have call d no personal deity 
 But some all-power ; and yet have furbish d forth 
 Him in the fancied Eros of an age 
 1 02 
 
SHELLEY 
 
 When all-power spake not nor was known of men, 
 
 Thus yielding some false-person and no god. 
 
 Yet if an all-power of this human soul 
 
 Be known and be my substance (as being known 
 
 Implies such self-conclusion), shall I seek 
 
 Beyond the form and function of this scene 
 
 In mine imagining of its wild peace 
 
 To prove the person of its deity 
 
 In this my person and in each of these 
 
 Who individually each may know 
 
 (By sentience and by insight occupying 
 
 Function and form of any other here) 
 
 A meaning to the name and deed of love ? 
 
 How have I lived in love and never known it ; 
 
 But sought beyond, above ; bewailing all 
 
 Which actuality might offer ; even 
 
 When most adorning these, then most denying 
 
 The personal godhead of their naked fact ! 
 
 Yet see, I stretch my touch forth but to feel 
 This staggering pine that, stalwart to the breeze, 
 Stands world-aware ; and am, by his ripe, pulse, 
 Person of pine-stuff ; I am he nowise 
 By metaphor, by no sham allegory 
 103 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 But by my conscious occupation of 
 His form and function as he holdeth mine 
 Each in his self -respective poise, one passion 
 Of cosmic intermingling. Yea, how else 
 Aver that I be poet and he pine 
 Save that I am, in true imagining 
 Of insight, pine-sap and pine-pristine strength ; 
 As he in pine-sort and in pine-degree 
 (Defined as my best science may define it) 
 In vegetative majesty likewise 
 Poet-partaker in my humanhood ? 
 That I have written in early years how all 
 Of earth s subhuman yet were human-like 
 Aware and loving, man in less degree 
 And soul-fill d somewise : such a simpler creed 
 Missing the true soul-intropermeance 
 (Which guarantees distinctive quality 
 To each partaker in the polar pact) 
 Might scarce protect from feverish petulance 
 Even one like me untamed to downright thought 
 Nor stern consistence and articulance 
 Of intellectual process. For I felt 
 The meaning ; yet was tortured, driven to mad 
 Evasion of this cosmic universe 
 104 
 
SHELLEY 
 
 Of sane interdependence fact with fact : 
 
 Felt merely ; fretted, utterly debarr d 
 
 From logic s satisfaction : found not peace 
 
 In picturing mystery beneath (an earth 
 
 Sentient anthropomorphically) and 
 
 A phantasm, overhuman though none less 
 
 Anthropomorphic, unreal, inane ! 
 
 Such still the conceit of this unquiet screed 
 
 Which, spite these firm winds and insistent 
 
 stems, 
 
 These toppling clouds of earth-inwoven weight, 
 I mid the bosom of yon Apennines- 
 Scrawl d late, of figures dark for flood of light, 
 Wan shapes in chariots hurtling through those 
 
 throngs 
 
 Of earth s unburied and unburiable 
 Ghost-things of Sheol ; and their rout was all 
 A pageantry, a symbol and I ceased 
 Still with no substance ay : What, then, is 
 
 Life ? 
 
 Such question can be answer d by no creed 
 Of fantasy and ghouls of humankind 
 Peopling no space, else peopling spaces where 
 Are other lives and nurtures still ignored. 
 105 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Such creed pursues peace of a breathless chase 
 Hot-hearted, nor knoweth how insistency 
 Of unfantastic insight, the pure touch 
 Of pine or strong wind as the pine or wind 
 Is most itself, such touch on palm or brow 
 Solves the enigma, yields a perfect peace 
 Of intropermeation still more sure 
 With every pulse of passion ! Such is Life. 
 
 Alastor lives not nor Prometheus ; 
 Keats is eternal memory, nought else. 
 Yet am I here of this eternity 
 Call d cognizance, my conscience, ay, of each 
 As each is ; cognizance in every touch 
 Strengthen d by passing ever on, and aye 
 Evolving ; which, involving all of earth 
 And ocean, sky and shadow, sun or soul, 
 Is spirit : and needs not work by witchery. 
 Such strength, being self-contain d, stays temper 
 ate too 
 
 And provident in every utterance. 
 Let this communing be my first of hymns 
 To Beauty intellectually sane 
 And worth the dedication of a life 
 106 
 
SHELLEY 
 
 In peace as was not hitherto vouchsafed : 
 A Beauty which is common deity. 
 
 They call. The bark invites me to new life. 
 Though yon cloud burst, what boots it ? It hath 
 been. 
 
 107 
 
HEGEL 
 
 IN reference to Christ, the Christian claim 
 To Godhood of a single man ? Would I 
 
 * Who speak of God as of an Absolute 
 Be acquiescent to enroll myself 
 
 * Christ-follower or no ? A subtlety 
 I fain would answer by a subtler still ! 
 
 The correspondence, friend, between us two 
 Stands dignified, ennobled by the zeal 
 With which thou seekest truth. To thee alone 
 (And this shall clarify, yea, new-define 
 What save for thee remain d in me obscure 
 And stale) I may discriminate the true 
 From false with literal judgment, feeling firm 
 Reliance in thine own discriminative 
 Interpretation. And I hold the point 
 Of best, most fruitful attitude toward Christ 
 Perchance a moot one ; still not wisely solved 
 Unless with due regard for audience, 
 For chance to be interpreted aright. 
 Thus, for the mass of those my discipline 
 Holds sway with, might there be a dangerous drift 
 Of radical, even atheistic, rant 
 1 08 
 
HEGEL 
 
 In misinterpretation of my terms ; 
 
 Else, haply, an unspiritual ipsism ; 
 
 Spake I with uttermost unbosoming. 
 
 In manuscript or volume thou wilt find, 
 
 Save this, no rigid-wrought examining 
 
 Of Christ and Christian in their present worth 
 
 As creeds for ripe truth-seeking : save in this 
 
 The which when well-digested (and, if need, 
 
 Refuted, friend) I charge thee straight destroy 
 
 Out of men s sight. The times are not yet ripe 
 
 Save only mine and thine. For, know, the scheme 
 
 Of truth develops in men s absolute mind 
 
 With grade from false toward true ; the foregone truth 
 
 Turn d false, the truth to-come not yet ripe truth 
 
 Save for those souls elaborate beyond 
 
 The mean elaboration of men s souls. 
 
 Christ s truth for Christ might well be true, if still 
 
 By logic in the sequel shown now false. 
 
 (And first, the figment of presumptuousness 
 In thee or me or Christ or any spirit 
 Needs no consideration. Where the truth 
 Is spoken, acted, lived, attains itself 
 Expression, no presumptuousness hath place 
 109 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 God or no God ; Christ, I or thou proved God ; 
 
 Were utmost reverence a becoming self- 
 
 Scrutinization of one s absolute mind : 
 
 If only proof be diligently firm 
 
 Nor words be wasted in avoiding proof.) 
 
 In brief, then, friend, thy question might be put : 
 What bearing were of Christ and Christ s God-claim 
 In Christian creed, to my well-reason d system 
 Of absolute spirit in its self-defined 
 Intrinsic involution of itself ? 
 The claim of Christ well known and well avouch d 
 Were personal divinity if not 
 Divinity of self as merely man, 
 Yet in some sort divineness of the man 
 Not obviously made for nor applied 
 To any man save Christ of all mankind. 
 Thus in a general acceptance Christ 
 Means claim to Godship of some single man 
 As man, though not of other single men. 
 Remains the choice (admitting absoluteness 
 For philosophic postulate approved) 
 Twixt this and others of that triune scheme 
 Which dominates all thought this realism 
 no 
 
HEGEL 
 
 And those the mystic and the spiritual 
 In dialectic these: divinity 
 Of general mankind and only so 
 Of any as each might be held alone 
 An instance of the Platonistic type ; 
 Or, otherwise, of every man as self 
 In absolute sense ; and therefore all mankind 
 Divine, alone by virtue of each Godhood 
 (Though these as God are utterly at one) 
 Collectively arraign d. And of this last 
 Might Christ without distortion seem to speak 
 When purged of metaphor in passages 
 Which place believers as his brethren in 
 The Father s household whereof he is chief. 
 (But more of this anon.) For mine own part 
 My teaching at first sight might seem to urge 
 Divinity of general mankind 
 (The mystic among these hypotheses) 
 Not of a special person, whether Christ 
 Or thee or me or any of them all. 
 And I have seem d, for mere conformity 
 To general prepossession, to except 
 Christ from the rule and still acknowledge him. 
 Are these two views compatible ? I scarce 
 in 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 (For teaching s sake in my timidity 
 
 Of misinterpretation nay, how strange 
 
 In most men s eyes, from the truth-champion 
 
 Such compromise-confession !) thus have sought 
 
 Exact discrimination hitherto 
 
 Between these views. Posterity will find 
 
 Choice of interpretations ; nothing shown 
 
 In any work of mine to guide the choice 
 
 Twixt general humanity, else Christ. 
 
 Now for the subtlety, the fresh-defined 
 
 Elaboration of this absolute soul 
 
 To new discrimination. Times shall be 
 
 When this must be attempted fore all men 
 
 For teaching s sake ; but times are not yet ripe 
 
 Save mine and thine. Destroy this screed ; I fear 
 
 False-witness by the general mistaking 
 
 Of that I have to offer thee alone. 
 
 For Christ the self-assertion would suffice 
 
 (If Christ be God ; and God, no person else) 
 
 Without communication to men else ; 
 
 For general assertion of mankind s 
 
 Genus and thus divinity, must one 
 
 Proclaim upon the house-tops truths no ear 
 
 (If absolute truth be not of any person) 
 
 112 
 
HEGEL 
 
 Could comprehend nor any tongue proclaim ; 
 For the new subtlety shall I and thou 
 Suffice for self, for Christ, for all mankind ! 
 T will out, in its ripe time of absolute truth ; 
 If not (as in the sequel shown) by force 
 Of general system, yet by interplay 
 Of men s mind-absolute : as mine and thine. 
 
 To criticise the current Christ-idea : 
 T is well compatible with absolutism 
 That one might claim rights of an absolute, 
 Identity with fatherhood, a sonship 
 Yet uncreate. In so far as did Christ 
 Mean Christ s own personal divinity 
 Stands the conception philosophic, proven 
 By merest spiritual rights of self. 
 And such claim were consistent equally 
 As fundamental postulate within 
 Each of these three schemes of alternative 
 Godship . Were Christ the sole God, were mankind 
 God and we functions, were each man as self 
 A Godship and conclusive each of all, 
 On either of these three hypotheses 
 Might Christ proclaim : * I and the Fatherhood 
 113 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Are one . I thus accept fully in form 
 Christ s claim to be divine. The problem lies 
 In practical interpretation : whether 
 Christ s Godship can exclude men else from God ; 
 Or if Christ s Godship merely means a right 
 As instance of a godly type which, though 
 Alleged for self-defining, scarce allows 
 Unless by metaphor that any man 
 Is wholly godly; or if Christ concludes 
 A system of divine Christ-absolutes, 
 Call d men, conclusive each of all. And so 
 Grant we the Christ-claim. Can it, then, preclude, 
 As in the popular acceptance, rights 
 Of Godship in disciples, scribes, ourselves ? 
 At first thought one would yield : In this duplex 
 Coincidence of Godship, the All-One, 
 With man, the One-of-All, must such a truth 
 Be single in each aspect; God being one, 
 Must God s coincident and antipode 
 Be likewise one. (Though opposite of one 
 Were multitude?) Such is the Christian creed, 
 Which shunning ipsism must assign to Christ 
 The single God-antipodean share 
 In universal Godship. But at once 
 114 
 
HEGEL 
 
 Asserts the paradox : If God be whole 
 
 And yet coincident with fmitude, 
 
 Then fmitude unto the all-divine 
 
 Is somewhat, is of rights; and, being not-God, 
 
 Must either oppositely-coincide 
 
 Else limit very Godship. And this last 
 
 Conceit of limitation stands debarr d 
 
 By very concept of an absolute. 
 
 Hence, if the Christ be God (and God someway 
 
 Must man-define Himself, else scarce were God 
 
 As man s world is concern d), can no man be 
 
 Excluded from such Godship as is Christ s. 
 
 The realism of the thou not I 
 
 (Of Christ, though not ourselves, for very God) 
 
 Stands utterly refuted by the truth 
 
 That God and Christ, who ne ertheless were man, 
 
 Are one. And hence suggests the mysticism, 
 
 The doctrine of a God-in-general 
 
 Wherein we share, whereof are instances 
 
 Thou, I, or Christ alike ; but neither one 
 
 Divine as person still. Will this prove truth ? 
 
 And here my teaching plausibly might be 
 Supposed to halt : Granting the Christ-divine, 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Then general humanity were God ; 
 And each were instance, none yet utterly 
 A Godhood. Yet I hold and now propound 
 A system more consistent with the truth 
 That opposite-coincidence inheres 
 Twixt God and finitude as shown (indeed 
 By utmost logic ; and for faith) by Christ. 
 For, lo ! the God, even though generalized 
 Must (else the self-defining Absolute 
 Were nought ; else Plato, ay, and Aristotle 
 Abundantly arrived at truth in holding 
 The species, the particular, related 
 To its own type and thus, though mystically 
 Identical, realistically still 
 Delimiting the universal !) must 
 The opposite-coincidence inhere 
 Of type with instances : no type conceived 
 Except of instances. Wherefore to cite 
 A general humanity must mean 
 Not a conceptually severable 
 Entity which may or may not have such 
 And such a realization, and remains 
 Itself regardless of each special case ; 
 Yet somewhat which hath definition but 
 116 
 
HEGEL 
 
 In so far as defined in cases, each 
 
 Contributing a definition, yea, 
 
 Uniquely other than such type-defined 
 
 Of any group or instances beside. 
 
 Thus a determinate * in-general 
 
 Inheres but to each instance and were else 
 
 Nothing in general because defined 
 
 By no self-instances but limited 
 
 By facts : and universalness debarr d. 
 
 Wherefore, when Christ s claim reads : Each man 
 
 of all 
 
 Is Godhood by the general intent 
 Of each to oppositely-coincide 
 With infmiteness ; shows that fmitude 
 (Which, by its single self -defining, posits 
 All men as system-members each in place 
 Distinct, unique, non-interchangeable) 
 Determinate when conceived as from the stand 
 Of each determinant ; each man of all : 
 Self-totalizing, universal, God 
 Even by finally contributing 
 Of God-the-One an unique worldlihood 
 Which were not otherwise coincident 
 With God, nor God s in any sort as world. 
 117 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Wherefore the general humanity 
 
 Is genuine, actual, definable 
 
 Only if I, thou, Christ or each alike 
 
 Is absolute Godhood : none excluding aught 
 
 From ultimate divinity ; and yet 
 
 No Godhood independently conceived 
 
 Regardless of the character and truth 
 
 Of each-and-each man as each lives and breathes ; 
 
 And God, God, but by God-proved-very-man. 
 
 Friend, is the subtlety appreciable ? 
 Note the nice demarkation. This were no 
 Plurality anthropologic of 
 Greek superhumans who are merely men 
 Made men immoderate and impossible. 
 No multiplicity of God as God 
 Inheres to true finite-coincidence. 
 For, even as the God is infinite 
 In each, and only infinite at all 
 By utterly unique discrimination 
 Of man from man, yet even this infinite 
 Of each, being total, is the same in each, 
 And, being the same, is just the unique God 
 The more discriminately by each new 
 118 
 
HEGEL 
 
 Recomplication through this universe. 
 Christ is the God, I am the God, and thou 
 And each of any, not by being alone 
 Singly some God ; nor yet by instancing 
 A general identity defined 
 In some mere mysticism quite apart 
 From actual definition in its facts ; 
 But each by being discriminately one 
 Of many unique others ( house among 
 The Father s many mansions ) only so 
 Insistently by very virtue of 
 An irreducible distinctiveness 
 Defining all else each as each and so 
 A total, universe, each in its best 
 Discrimination ; each as self thus God : 
 The God ; and there is never God beside. 
 
 Thus is the scheme of absoluteness shown 
 An actual affair of thee and me 
 Even as of Christ in Christ s good hour of life ; 
 Of each man in his hour of noblest strength. 
 Whence follow many doctrines strange to thought 
 In present days : how freedom were this sense 
 Of utter world-conclusion through each act 
 119 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 (Howe er in other view necessitated) 
 
 Firmly discriminative judgmentwise ; 
 
 Not by mere choice (delimiting the soul 
 
 Even by the rejected act-alternative) 
 
 But by will-insight thus coincident 
 
 With the compulsion : how mortality 
 
 Were by the absolute coincidence 
 
 Not stale-perpetuated day by day 
 
 Through soul-migration nor through influences 
 
 Of works and wisdom on succeeding men, 
 
 But, through the eternity of each least act 
 
 As new-defining every act of all, 
 
 Immortal to itself, beyond all death ; 
 
 Though none the less this flesh-mortality. 
 
 Thus in this brief, my supreme act of judgment 
 
 Uncompromisingly discriminant 
 
 Of multiple meanings, postulates my spirit 
 
 Unto itself an immortality, 
 
 A freedom and a Godhood. Friend, I thank thee.- 
 
 Judge if I be Christ-follower or no ! 
 
 1 20 
 
EMERSON 
 
 THIS quiet Concord to mine indolent thought 
 
 Hath long been inspiration, but to-day 
 
 Shows limitation, faileth to attain 
 
 Sufficient dignity to ape man s soul. 
 
 Nature hath been my spirit s resting-place 
 
 To pass in pleasance twixt the banks of God 
 
 The safeguard, the immutable firm truth. 
 
 I have been as this river slothfulwise 
 
 Allowing alteration toward the sea 
 
 Yet scarce conceiving doubt of the green land. 
 
 To-day t is different. I return to-day 
 
 (Here in my hand a book disquieting 
 
 Writ of one lately dead whom live I knew not) 
 
 To this my shady station o er the stream 
 
 Not still as homeward to the heart of things 
 
 But strangely, skeptic of the sweet wide scene 
 
 Its amplitude to satisfy the soul 
 
 Fit for horizons that enshrine no truth 
 
 Taboo d beyond an inmost scrutiny. 
 
 Mine is emancipation from all creed 
 
 To-day : no citizen I of earth, no scion 
 
 Of fiat, no member of multocracy ; 
 
 121 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Just by mine effort to establish truth, 
 Create world-system and autocracy 
 Yea, no disciple even of this one dead 
 Whose work I find so faith-disquieting ! 
 Whatever be there of an Over- Soul 
 Without my soul must prove its right to-day 
 To credence, must establish as my banks 
 The bounds and conduits of a private power 
 Else universal in and of myself. 
 To-day primarily I am myself : 
 If also soul, how then were soul aught else ? 
 
 The doubt were doubtless unintelligible 
 To any save myself, yea, unto me 
 In any mood save mine upon this morn : 
 Disturb d if not enlighten d, deeply stirr d 
 And troubled by the witness of this man. 
 He speaks not plainly, seems almost with me 
 To need some over-lord, yet ne ertheless 
 Attempts a system of distinctive things 
 Self-unified without amalgamance 
 Unlike the mergence in mine over-soul. 
 I have announced divinity that seem d 
 While overarching and enshrining soul 
 
 122 
 
EMERSON 
 
 To liberate, infmitize the man. 
 And so have friends interpreted the faith 
 With satisfaction. I alone demur. 
 For, lo, the liberation seems to prove 
 But novel Platonism, like the Greek s 
 A leveling to Rome s democracy : 
 A substitution of the legal right, 
 As each is man, for world-self moralism ; 
 As one is all, for all-conclusiveness 
 Of universe unto each self unique. 
 For, if an Over-Soul (which may not owe 
 Relations various, but were thus finite 
 Being incomplete in each) communeth with 
 All men alike, were every man alike 
 Equal in insight of the absolute truth ; 
 Each person (if no longer atomized 
 As in the Stoic schema ; yea, though lifted 
 To bland fatuity of the perfect State) 
 Unit equivalent, indifferent 
 (Brahmanic, if not quite Christ-like, mysticism) 
 I or the thief, yea, man even or the beast 
 Incapable all of value ; scions all 
 Of blank arbitrament, authority 
 And fiat beyond reason : worth ruled out 
 123 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 With any judgment of morality, 
 With any quality of each-not-each. 
 That yonder bird sings with a meaning made 
 Birdwise, unlike the meaning of my songs, 
 Is ultimate distinction. I may sing 
 Wood-notes, may wonderfully feel in me 
 Response unto yon woodland rhapsodizing ; 
 The ultimate discrimination may 
 Be overlaid with what one will of rich 
 Mysterious insight of the neighbor-need. 
 Yet am I still not nature ; no divine 
 Absorbent mingleth mine with other persons 
 As I here stand and saturate a world 
 (Even as this Hegel hath his hold on me) 
 With thought unthought of any other man : 
 Suggested yet nowise put forth of him. 
 The Indie myth and Maia were scarce mine own - 
 More than did Plato so intend his truth. 
 Yet Plato fail d with his high poetizing 
 To speak an unambiguous truth to mine. 
 In him lay seeds of blank indifferences 
 Which cropp d with ripening of Lucretian moods 
 To self-despair. I must assure mine own 
 Ecstatic insight of the whole divine 
 124 
 
EMERSON 
 
 Against deintegration. For the truth 
 Must hold some system of this earth to-day, 
 Of me and men and yonder murmuring stream 
 Unsame in attribute as if no God 
 Were immanent nor any whole inhered. 
 Nor will identity of generic terms 
 In attribution vouchsafe sameness to them 
 Save genus-substance be some Over-Soul ! 
 Relinquishing no truth which I have grasp d 
 Of immanence, how save the hierarchy 
 Of them and me from mergence in the mob 
 Of monad-puppets, equally of God 
 Indeed ; but, being indifferent, hence inane ? 
 The green land flows within itself ; the sea 
 Is image of the unresting alterance 
 Of all things ; even this quiet Concord shows 
 Passage but by appreciation (ay, 
 Contrast in speed or kind of passage) scarce 
 By any standard of unchanging earth. 
 How save the soul from Heraclitus flux, 
 Pure fmitude plausible to no sense 
 Of some morality : relationship 
 Responsible beyond the moment-man, 
 Inherent yet to him ? How save this shore 
 125 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Whereon I stand ; how prove within myself 
 
 Judgment of speed nor kind of passage, ay, 
 
 Assurance even of this quiet stream, 
 
 This indolent land, this sea toward which all tend 
 
 As type and image ? Were we sheer distinct, 
 
 Pure flux and passing, then were we but the more 
 
 Self-imperceptible, alike inane. 
 
 And thus would this voice in these pages prove it, 
 
 Essaying if scarce comprehensibly 
 
 A static continuity through all-time, 
 
 An immanent eternity in change. 
 
 There shall be soul though Soul may be no more 
 
 An over-world nor mere infinity. 
 
 Someway shall I perceive the stream doth move 
 
 Though Zeno, though Spinoza, though myself 
 
 Have proven a motion all impossible. 
 
 Someway the stream doth move and is by motion 
 An inspiration, still a type to-day 
 Of mine own nature-born morality. 
 The hour of this Hegel in my heart hath come 
 To beat beyond the master by some hint 
 In him contain d : no over-immanence 
 In anywise infmitizing, save 
 126 
 
EMERSON 
 
 The soul reside in, be, the moving man s 
 Irreconcilable discrimination 
 
 From each and all things else that make his world ! 
 Such were a system of this earth to-day ; 
 The intimate necessity of each 
 For definition, self-determinance, 
 Requiring every other each in place 
 And character determinate thereby. 
 For thus might I establish of myself 
 An universe, be as I boast divine. 
 Thus might I, as best insight of mine earth, 
 Admit each unto his divinity 
 Of world-establishment ; each person thus 
 Concluded of my system : thus alone 
 Conclusive each and equally divine. 
 Nor might another schema so provide 
 System sans all hiatus ; this of all, 
 Appropriately to mine otherness 
 From every item of mine earth to-day, 
 Affording godship unto each and each 
 Neither as units of plurocracy 
 Nor yet as emptiness, Brahmanic void. 
 The dialectic were superfluous 
 In pettier detail. All the soul doth need 
 127 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 For self-establishment were just the need 
 Of each for each, within its actual place 
 Thereby defined, thereby concluding all 
 In individuals each determinate : 
 Each individual determinately 
 An universe, conclusive, spiritual. 
 Or mind or matter may within the spirit 
 Be truthfulest ; but both are immanent 
 Each truth in sort : mind , as I feel my world 
 A soul-establishment, germane to self ; 
 Matter , as that same world concludeth me 
 And so hath semblance of an outward thing 
 Compulsive and beyond my private power. 
 But world is my determinative self 
 At growth, at dialectic if you will, 
 Yet absolute through all sans over-lord. 
 The problem of such time-eternal soul 
 Were manifold, a process scarce for me 
 To formulate, though hinted of him here 
 This Hegel who has work d within me now. 
 I for an hour have grasp d the great insight, 
 Have given it speech within my heart : a system 
 Of earth as earth is, spiritual, self-contain d 
 Yet nowise naked of variety : 
 128 
 
EMERSON 
 
 A system, self-containment which is beauty, 
 
 The beauty that my creed hath wholly miss d. 
 
 Thus doth my quiet Concord keep its flow 
 
 In varying, determinate contrast 
 
 With this green land. And thus are land and sky 
 
 Still fitly pictured from my station here 
 
 Whose sweet familiarity of view 
 
 Fills an horizon proven my very soul 
 
 Replete with meaning for my daily thought 
 
 Now sanction d beyond stain of indolence. 
 
 Thus am I risen through nature unto God. 
 
 129 
 
WORDSWORTH 
 
 IT is a world serenely white ; a sky, 
 
 Whence snow hath lately fallen, palest blue. 
 
 And only where some craggy fell uprears 
 
 Too steep a slope for crystal covering 
 
 Doth earth show anywhere unto the sky 
 
 Its customary face. Save for yon bluff 
 
 Of perpendicular uprise seems world 
 
 No mortal struggling ; but undying peace 
 
 Spread dedicate to God. And I, alone 
 
 Of this high-moulded summit, like some cloud, 
 
 Of which God s heaven were the home, find here 
 
 A place not unlike home, a station d rest 
 
 Unto my soul, whence earth, mine earth and God s, 
 
 Spreads patently a picture of the truth 
 
 Of life immortal. 
 
 Yet yon scrags none less 
 Are earth s, are God s; and seem eternally 
 At struggling ; mortal by their every move 
 And wasting ; as, save for this snpw-of-an-hour, 
 This covering of a momentary creed, 
 Were earth all struggling up unto the clouds 
 Which, sea-begotten, bear unto these hills 
 130 
 
WORDSWORTH 
 
 Oblivion but scarce serenity. 
 
 What were that immortality of labor 
 
 Which must be earth s ; and, being earth s, be God s 
 
 And mine; which, snowless, peaceless, yet were some 
 
 Sufficient satisfaction to the soul ? 
 
 A growth, a flowering of these grassy fells 
 
 When the high sun is quickening, and meanwhile 
 
 A waiting, patient and expectant thus 
 
 Not for this simulated peace of pure 
 
 Pale sky and sheeted snow, but for those laws 
 
 Which in the course of God s diurnal year 
 
 Make snow, as rain and sun, by wear and wash, 
 
 Frost-wrench and tempest- wrack, to quicken earth 
 
 Sea-born and struggling ? Is there any peace ? 
 
 Lo ! I have dream d of life-immortal as 
 A peace ; and came, to brood over these snows 
 As o er a world not stale and customary 
 In mystic ecstasy. But now I see 
 No mere peace here ; no immortality 
 Of form and function, yet no worker in it ; 
 Of pale Nirvana, heaven beyond a world ; 
 Rather, some heaven s-own substance, yea, sea-born 
 And struggling, fallen over earth s scarr d face 
 131 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 To soften, not conceal, suggest, not cover 
 From understanding and intelligence, 
 The peace and immortality, the presence 
 Of God within His world and each of us 
 As each is worker and his works have life : 
 Despite all momentary creed of life 
 Beyond the grave and God beyond His world ; 
 A symbol of the eternity in time, 
 Each moment, even conclusive of times all : 
 Yea, of the wonder of accustom d things. 
 Thus turn I and descend ; take up mine earth 
 Anew, cured of the mystic quietism. 
 Thus take I up the task with eye indeed 
 Uplift unto these mountains whence hath come 
 This help, ennobling .labor and the strife 
 Of serious contemplations. For each task 
 I sense for some stage of the strenuous soul s 
 Good growth in wisdom, never ceasing, not 
 One instant to be wholly overlaid 
 By any snow-oblivion ; but where rear d 
 Aloft, distinct and startling, there most meant 
 Of every cloud-wrack, every fog o the sea, 
 As even of each intervale and glen 
 Snow-sleeping. I descend ; but learn each task 
 132 
 
WORDSWORTH 
 
 Serene but by insistent earnestness ; 
 
 Eternal by an infinite influence 
 
 Essential in the task, not born of it ; 
 
 An absolute inference, divinely high, 
 
 Wide, deep and strong through all God s elsewhere 
 
 tasks 
 
 Of earth and men. And thus a task of God 
 Immortal and appropriate to peace. 
 
 133 
 
THOREAU 
 
 THOUGH scant ten furlongs here from human home, 
 
 Here are there creatures only of the wood : 
 
 Now with the coming of the fall s first frost 
 
 As not whilst man moved in the summer fields 
 
 Am I alone anthropomorphic here. 
 
 Scarce sign from any beast hath been since dusk 
 
 Closed in around. No sound from world without me 
 
 Save wash of the glimmering lonely lake with cry 
 
 Of far-off loon more lonely, or the surge 
 
 Of wind in the trees ; and constant crackle, flap 
 
 Of the camp-fire flame. The half-moon waxing 
 
 sweeps 
 
 Westward ; the stars, Orion following on, 
 Pass o er me : me alone with my fed flame. 
 For this is an espousal of the woods : 
 I and primordial fire at last alone. 
 
 Once had I desire of better bridal. But 
 T was contrary decreed. And I am wed 
 To these alone, I mateless of my kind ; 
 I fronted by the problem is it of God, 
 That mutual insight men may best name Love ? 
 134 
 
THOREAU 
 
 Of mates inanimate a divine of Nature, 
 
 But no divinity of human kind ! 
 
 I sole anthropomorphic ; and my God 
 
 Of daily human help to me denied. 
 
 The question is if God, denied to me 
 
 In social longings toward my nobler kind, 
 
 Be God, be yet divine here as of these : 
 
 Whether love s insight be of beast and branch 
 
 Admissibly as seems for me ordain d. 
 
 The question might not come upon a man 
 
 Whose marvelous desire of marriage might 
 
 Attain fulfillment : that the social strength 
 
 Might daily, hourly wed with social strength 
 
 Of insight and perception similar 
 
 And thus might learn world-sanctity of both 
 
 By individuation (heart with heart 
 
 In the union) soul from soul the humane God ! 
 
 I had built altars to the humane God, 
 
 Had ne er been stoical, aloof, remote 
 
 As now : I was not born the cynic but 
 
 Now is it come upon me by my fate 
 
 And must be met alone by me of men 
 
 (Not openly in works I make for men) 
 
 Unto myself and for the saving of 
 
 135 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 My universe by me possess d alone, 
 And of my heart which only earth may hold. 
 How feel divinity of me and mine 
 Denied the prime anthropomorphic truth 
 Of mutual insight mutually defined ? 
 I am then mated with primordial flame, 
 A creature of the woods, a beast, a branch 
 Whilst none less human. Is such life divine ? 
 
 I may not find in this primordial flame, 
 
 These dim sky-neighboring tree-tops, nor the stars 
 
 Nor painted moon, nor these ensanguined leaves 
 
 Of the flickering fire-lit circle, that intent 
 
 Of mutual recognition, divination 
 
 Which in the hold of human heart in heart 
 
 Directly meaneth God and tells of Him 
 
 Transcendent wholeness of the immediate soul. 
 
 My spirit, yea, so much more than comprehends 
 
 The pitiful simplicity of these 
 
 ( Soe er complex to mere analysis ! ), 
 
 Is still so much alone beyond their strength 
 
 Of social sympathy that I must needs 
 
 Deny of these -direct associates 
 
 The marks indicative of self-sublime 
 
THOREAU 
 
 Spirituality, of reverence 
 
 Unto my soul acclaiming them its own. 
 
 These are not-mine because they know not me 
 
 Nor feel me more than as some clod of earth, 
 
 Some miasm or some wandering holocaust, 
 
 Some dread, some danger and some death to them 
 
 Uncomprehended in the workings of 
 
 Its untoward power. Such is a man to these, 
 
 If he be aught at all ; not known as man 
 
 But as a beast, a branch (ay, mischief-working) 
 
 Resourceful over any, but not in kind 
 
 Anthropomorphic as I know my power. 
 
 Unto a life uncognizant of man 
 
 I cannot yield the title of divine - 
 
 Soe er outspread to stellar systems, though 
 
 In mine own sight of generality 
 
 I be as nought within its size and strength 
 
 As I am clod such world were godless still. 
 
 No Nature can be God. May I a man 
 
 Shorn of God-kinship sink to atheism, 
 
 Yield me unto the truth of earth and these ? 
 
 I doubt me if such godlessness be truth, 
 Or earth, as such earth-fact, be fact at all ! 
 137 
 
en 
 
 POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Earth may, as I, within and for itself 
 In each least detail mean an universe 
 Similar in a spirituality 
 Minuter merely, in a self-detail 
 Less complex in recomplication, yet 
 Entire, so whole, divine, wherein my manhood 
 Finds plain acceptance as I, being a clod, 
 Am clod-wise spiritual and enshrined of these ? 
 Yea, in the subtler scheme this difference 
 Of fact anthropomorphic from the fact 
 Vegetal, chemical (distinction final 
 And therefore perfecting, requiring all 
 Distinguish d facts for definition of 
 Each intimate essence), yea, were final proof 
 In either sort respectively of earth s 
 As even of man s conclusive personal scope 
 Of consciousness interminable, each 
 Within its absolute series qualitative 
 So guaranteed fulfill d omniscience. 
 I then am godly by my recognition 
 In sympathetic insight not alone 
 Of personalities so similar 
 As like for like for my faith to return 
 But herein and more widely, readily 
 138 
 
THOREAU 
 
 By insight of an earth whose term distinct 
 
 As otherwise than mine I yet acknowledge 
 
 A sympathy, an active interest 
 
 Creatively, which mine creator-wise 
 
 Must reconstruct to realize at all. 
 
 So either way, by bridal or by espousal 
 
 Even of the flame primordial, world and I 
 
 Detect a fundament, simplicity 
 
 Of reconciliation, self-support 
 
 In mutual antithesis reclaim d. 
 
 So I alone anthropomorphic here 
 
 Am godly though my God no more may be 
 
 Anthropomorphic ; though this earth of beast 
 
 And branch and fed fire and the stars on high 
 
 Be neither earth nor star as men have dream d 
 
 Condemning them to clodliness unsoul d 
 
 As man they fancied alone worthy God ! 
 
 Such have I learn d by biding but apart 
 A moment, some few furlongs from my kind 
 As, fate commanding, hath my spirit craved 
 Toward learning new God in default of old. 
 The Deity I learn of wilderness 
 Were scarce the deity of human home 
 
 139 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Secrete from wilderness. For man mid man 
 Associate in clanship and in creeds 
 Ecclesiastic seeth but with an eye 
 Sole to man s interest at the best, denying 
 All rights and interests of his weaker kind 
 (And thus denying much of man s own soul !) 
 Unrecognized for kith and kin through God, 
 Through contrast and through insight each in sort. 
 Lo! my desire of marriage, once fulfilPd 
 (Save she my mate anthropomorphic had 
 With me espoused the fire primordial here !) 
 Had barr d my spirit forever from the truth 
 Of God the uttermost entirety 
 (By characteristic quality absolute) 
 Of each world-system : each yet infinite 
 Because, within itself, from other selves 
 Interminably distinctive through the whole 
 Of star-stuffs, earth and beasts and branches each 
 Anthropomorphic only as my heart 
 Of man is soul beyond such lesser souls, 
 More complicate of quality, more God. 
 Yet thus are the creatures of the forest godly 
 As I ; and God, that insight best call d Love, 
 Immanent in us all, as each is nowise 
 140 
 
THOREAU 
 
 Other and thus defineth self by each. 
 I had desire of better bridal, but 
 Twas contrary decreed. And I at last 
 Acknowledge Nature and am not alone ; 
 Am cynic never, and still dedicating 
 My work to man, yea, though aloof, remote. 
 Yet, had I wedded, haply then through her 
 Some inward soul-distinction had been seen 
 More intimate : more marking me as man 
 Above not-man ; more marking Truth for God ? 
 
 141 
 
BROWNING 
 
 STRANGE, sudden, startling, that my book should 
 
 be 
 
 * Proven beloved, demonstrably held 
 At heart s core of the cultured ; popular 
 Of the public . Ay, my publishers besieged 
 For reprints . Here, these scribblings from the 
 
 post 
 
 Fervent, frenetic ; yea, as utterly 
 Super-appreciative, wide of the mark 
 Of a just estimate, as hitherto 
 In complementary infelicities 
 My critics crush d me. Had I done those things 
 Men cursed me for, this craziness had come 
 Scarce sooner. Had I left but more undone 
 The things they condescendingly approve 
 Should I adopt them mine, still had I held 
 Inviolate my private sanctity 
 Of sure self-judgment ; nor been overwhelm d 
 With this effusiveness. T is all well meant, 
 Doubtless. T is yet distressingly apart 
 From principles of poetry and strength. 
 While it was scorn, I could work dogged-wise 
 142 
 
BROWNING 
 
 In equipoise ; sad that my verse should be 
 Miscomprehended ; certain none the less 
 That nor miscomprehension, nor the laws 
 They arrogantly promulgated might 
 Alter one whit the care-felt speech of soul 
 I seriously expatiated. Now 
 That somewhat of my soul hath seriously 
 Touch d them, t is well, tis justified : but yet 
 Shakes it the equipoise. For I must see 
 Equal miscomprehension ; sense how few 
 Of all these sympathizers rightly feel 
 True trend and purport of my poems. So 
 Stand I alone ; not as before in sort 
 To champion, urge consideration for 
 A genuine intention so proceed 
 In work s assurance to redoubling work 
 But to be deprecator, advocate 
 Of sterner estimate ; to work, if work 
 At all, in self-distrust, decrial of 
 Inmost endeavoring. Now must I sit 
 Idle awhile, now that success has come 
 Half-sought, to buffet back these waves that would 
 Wash out the individual estimate 
 In general, blind, emotive, judgmentless 
 143 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Alleged community. Now must I weigh 
 As ne er before the meaning of my mind. 
 
 For I have from the first found tendency 
 In all my verse toward individualism 
 In a new manner. And t were pertinent 
 To my art-form were mine art-judgment quite 
 Apart from critical tradition, sure 
 Of self-criteria which yet should not be 
 Eccentric nor beyond most views of men 
 Unbalanced from an average estimate. 
 I have thresh d o er and o er within my brain 
 Suggestions of insanity, have sought 
 A thousand times discern incipient marks 
 Of my diseased departure from the sense 
 Of most of the cultured ; ay, when differing 
 In personal opinion have I sought 
 More keenly than best critic of them all 
 So to detect opinion which might show 
 No reasonable warrant, as to catch 
 My judgment obviously wanton ; still 
 Have by the skepticism but been led 
 Further along the same criterial paths 
 To more elaborately determinate 
 144 
 
BROWNING 
 
 Uncompromising non-conformity. 
 Though, as it may be, I, regretting still 
 Miscomprehension, have (as all men must) 
 In some sort stultified my judgment, yearn d 
 For common ground ; portray d scarce by intent 
 Deliberately acknowledged in the speech 
 And art-form of their pseudo-classic cult 
 A characterization never quite 
 The truth I d make it in a genuine art. 
 Still, despite such scarce-conscious tendency 
 To blur distinctions, seek communicancy 
 And sanity at all cost, stand I sane 
 In my firm non-conformity ; and would 
 Deprecate too much comprehension, plead 
 Mistake of fact in those who honestly 
 Now are my flatterers and fancy fate 
 Mixes men s spirits to absorbency 
 Of personal irreducible self-poise. 
 Nay, it is utterly determinate 
 This world of mine and thine I catch myself 
 Quoting my critics : they who fancied mine 
 The mysticism ! Let me calmly face 
 The paradox which leads me to maintain 
 The very phrases of the enemy 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Over against the championing of friends. 
 The paradox : How can determinism 
 Of feature, universalism still 
 Of purport, best be found in monologue 
 (As this my monologue) of personal truth ? 
 How avoid, on the one hand emptiness 
 Of mystical inconsequence a speech 
 Of sentimental egotism without 
 A world shown autovital ; on the other 
 The piecemeal profitless rehearsal of 
 My place and thine as to some chronicler 
 Such acts appear ? Lo ! for the first were such, 
 Based in immediate sensibility 
 Lawless and orderless of any soul s, 
 As these my new-made sycophants suppose 
 They prove of me, a sheer community 
 Sans dignified distinctiveness of person 
 In ultimate judgment ; and the second were 
 The classic dialogue or pluralogue 
 Which, based in some supposed eternity 
 Of ordering, dramatic poet s-truth, 
 Tells no self-judgment, neither mine nor thine ; 
 Unions no self- responsibility ; 
 Presents, depicts, permits speak each a part 
 146 
 
BROWNING 
 
 The puppets of the scene in no way mine 
 Nor any person s ? Let my monologue 
 Dialogue-wise dramatically prove 
 Its own supremacy in yielding place 
 Subordinate to just their give and take. 
 For, while I live, will yet my verses prove 
 Their fresh sincerity. When I am not, 
 Shall men arise to crush them ; and there be 
 No comprehender who can say : T is truth. 
 One shall arise, haply, obscure of name 
 But cogent, facile, who shall say of me, 
 With no one to dispute, what now no man 
 Would dare maintain. Let me now answer him 
 
 And he shall say : T were sheer vulgarity 
 Of personal opinion. This his speech 
 Of monstrous-mouth d soliloquy but sets 
 World as he sees it, as he would it were 
 Or were not ; ay, characterizes all 
 By blindest passionate unestimate, 
 Nowise by ordering of art s cosmic scheme. 
 His were a poetry of barbarism, 
 Wanting establish d canon, wanting art s 
 1 True objectivity, true beauty-speech 
 147 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Of reasoning humanity. How call 
 1 Such primitive, ay, protoplasmic rant 
 Guiltless of symmetry, propriety 
 And absolute proportion poetism 
 Of modern meaning ? Rather is the world 
 Of modern meaning but affirming more 
 And more art s classic preestablishment 
 Of real ideals, of eternal forms 
 Whereto our acts are moulded ! How shall I 
 Fully consider, entertain and test 
 This condemnation ; who would yet condemn 
 Myself for overdose conformity 
 To just those unideal abstract terms 
 Of outworn classicism he d uphold ? 
 
 For in my first flash of self-sensate power 
 I spoke, if youthfully, yet manly too 
 My self forth in a person, thought and speech, 
 Toward this Pauline, toward that Sordello ; still 
 Dramatic only by objective force 
 Of my world-unioning in point of view 
 Adaptive, recreative of the truth 
 Call d David s, Paracelsus : now mine own. 
 Thus far a fair beginning in a form 
 148 
 
BROWNING 
 
 Not altogether novel, none the less 
 Rational, genuine, believed in : my 
 Speech in so far as I were merely self 
 The lover, the narrator ; else my speech 
 As I were David, Paracelsus. But 
 Soon came the tempting of convention, soon 
 The yielding to the outworn classicism 
 Of playwright dialogue, the give and take 
 Of puppet-persons, plausibly the speech 
 Of powers not mine own which make for good 
 Or evil sans responsibility 
 Of mine for making every mouth speak truth. 
 Such were the fallacy : an order d scheme 
 Beyond the poet s authorship ; a world 
 Realistical imposed as from without 
 On a mere chronicler : the gross mistake 
 Of all mere classicism general law 
 The scapegoat for the puppets fallings-short ! 
 Such were my Strafford, Luria, my Blot 
 In the Scutcheon, Druses, Victor and King Charles ; 
 Puppet-plays : if not perfect of their kind 
 (Not mine such technic), twas because I felt 
 Fallacy : I, the author, clean escaped 
 From authorship ; my art alleged some world s ! 
 149 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 And from the first the critics took to task 
 My private personal self-poise ; alleged 
 Even my forthright drama still too germane 
 To individual bias ; branded those 
 My people of their pseudo-classic cult, 
 My Strafford, Tresham, Luria but me ; 
 
 * Mere puppets (how all tongues cleave to that word ! ) 
 Solely because too little puppet-like, 
 
 Too self-contaminate ! Too much mine own, 
 
 Alive and genuine ! And now the crowd 
 
 Of sycophants, echoing critic-cry 
 
 With counter-purport of approval, fawn, 
 
 Flatter for my supposed escape at last 
 
 From objectivity ; * pure sentiment 
 Of soul s immediate mysticism express d 
 
 In * allegory of my moods and aims , 
 1 Their moods and aims by being conceived so vague 
 
 As to fit none. Wherefore I stand appraised 
 
 For an alleged yet rightly unperform d 
 
 * Subjectivism ; and condemn myself 
 Scarce for excessive objectivity 
 
 As truth defines it, but for too close clutch 
 Of the classic outward act, the puppet-speech 
 Supposed not still mine own : the universal 
 150 
 
BROWNING 
 
 Not individual. So to the claim 
 
 Of him I parley with I say at last : 
 Mine were too much the mere conformity 
 To general abstract conservatism 
 Of cultural tradition : losing thus 
 Art s genuine objectivity of self 
 Expressive through each puppet-circumstance, 
 Determinate but universal too. 
 If the first crude essay, the youthful whim, 
 Were too much lover, not enough Pauline ; 
 Narrator, scarce Sordello ; yet the truth 
 Lies in development toward surer speech 
 1 Like David s, Paracelsus : now mine own 
 1 As their truth should be, would be, were they now 
 4 Citizens of my century in time 
 Contemporaneous at soul with us. 
 Which in a sort they were ; my ought-to-be 
 1 (Ultimate standard of all truth in art) 
 But an implied development through theirs. 
 So, to your worn-out classicism, the cult 
 Of chronicle, of puppet plausibly 
 Speaking his law-taught part, accusing fate 
 Else calling on the gods ; never at soul 
 Protagonizing : "I, responsible, 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 " Am fate, the gods ; my world of circumstances 
 
 * " Is mine alone, and mine alone the chance 
 " To right it, comprehend it and explain 
 
 * " Before all men a world intelligible 
 
 1 " Not extra-orderly, but through and through 
 " Self-comprehensive " : such is my reply : 
 
 * Sir, misinterpret not my first attempts 
 Too little worldly-wise to self-explain 
 
 A circumstance not worthy a grown soul ; 
 
 * Nor set for standard of my full-grown art 
 A pseudo-classicism never quite 
 
 * Self-felt, germane ; so not my world at all, 
 Nor any s. But accept for best at last 
 
 These new ; now press-prepared, else waxing quick 
 Beneath my pen, fledging from out my brain, 
 1 To stand or fall with me ; my soul s-own world, 
 As utmost apprehension sets it right, 
 { In circumstance and scenery to suit 
 Great situations of imagining 
 Proportion d, symphonied and symmetrized 
 By self-poise, universal, intricate 
 Yet only thereby total, infinitely 
 A self-sustaining, autovital art 
 My truliest life : my Guido, Andrea, 
 152 
 
BROWNING 
 
 Caliban, John, Giuseppi, and the Pope, 
 Lippo, Pompilia, and Balaustion ! 
 
 Who shall have set world forth as I shall speak it, 
 My world, a world by being so worldly-mine ? 
 No shrinkage to an insignificant 
 Mere sentimental maundering to catch 
 The silly sycophants ; no cowardly 
 Cord-twitching that the marionettes may dance 
 Nor show the showman him who made them so 
 Who shall be stronger, still must ease his strength 
 As I, in speaking self forth in the speech 
 Of great souls, great by self-poised circumstance, 
 Not blindly passion-warp d, but more and more 
 Personal, comprehensive of world-life ! 
 
 153 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 NOW the swift sun in heaven wins day by day 
 
 A loftier light ; earth in her laboring now 
 
 Increaseth hourly ; and all things seem 
 
 To breathe in strenuousness of taking on 
 
 New burden, new responsibility 
 
 By very virtue of aspiring lift 
 
 And spring of the year : that rest is far from all : 
 
 That yearning after dreams is a dead thing. 
 
 Yea, such were life, to wax and be inform d 
 
 Of manifold new meaning constantly, 
 
 And only so to understand content. 
 
 Lo ! what containment, what satiety, 
 
 What organ d equipoise, what peace preserved 
 
 In high endeavor endlessly renew d ! 
 
 I have endeavor d ; but have not known peace. 
 
 I have had peace in purpose, hence have miss d 
 
 it. 
 
 I have endeavor d autumnwise to be 
 A winter of some statued mould and form 
 By outworn dignity, by antique pose 
 False to a modern mission. Let me be 
 Mobile as May- world ; myriad, manifold 
 154 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 As blades and blossoms. Let me weigh now well 
 The modern meaning. Let me learn my soul. 
 
 It is the old, old word : this, Know Thyself ; 
 Stale as their Greek confusion of that self 
 With me or thee . And I have feign d some Greek, 
 Impersonated some atomic mould 
 Of private purpose ; whilst my social world 
 Was yet not of me ; in the strife of things 
 Been soul-impassible, been stoic-strong 
 By cowardly evasion ; else have been 
 But deprecator, ay, conservative 
 Of truths whose needed conservation proved 
 Their incompatibility with now, 
 Their falsity as I have sought them. Yet 
 My self, my person now must be the world 
 Of modern implication, a self-world, 
 Yea ; and a spring-world, as the soul of the year 
 Is spring, not autumn nor earth s wintering. 
 As the swift sun in heaven shall be my song 
 Of liberal assumption, taking on me 
 The burden as a blessing of all functions 
 Fallen to the now-born ! Was the song of old 
 So simple-sane, so mystic-mythical ! 
 
 155 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 A cowardly avoidance of such creed 
 
 And cult as yonder Sophocles might deem 
 
 Crux of an uttermost modernity ? 
 
 Were any work that seems so chaste, so far 
 
 From tumult of an actuality, 
 
 By any peradventure meant to be 
 
 Evasive of soul s daily intercourse 
 
 And stint of due perplexity of path ? 
 
 Could any art be whole by emptiness? 
 
 Was not the world then old, the soul as young 
 
 To grasp it, as are now my world, my soul ? 
 
 Quick both, as pictured in this passing spring ? 
 
 Never were beauty a mere contemplation, 
 Nor God a reminiscence. If I fail 
 To find in models of our modern art 
 Criterion for satisfaction, if 
 These creeds and formulas of churches stick 
 In the throat, am I then left alone of the world 
 A misplaced pagan, Phidias born too late ? 
 No man were born misplaced, none sprung too late 
 Out of the sun-lift and the lap of life 
 Which bringeth forth in season every thing ! 
 But with the still-increasing flux of earth 
 156 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 Evolve art and belief, develop form 
 And function of our loftiest intellect 
 In vastest grasp and passion. As we be 
 Now a new world that stands not satisfied 
 With God-beyond ; shall God-within-the-world 
 Be any metaphor calPd Zeus indeed ? 
 Shall God be of the world as I and these 
 Though not divinity of them nor me ? 
 Shall mine Empedocles absorb my soul 
 To atheism and contempt, that art 
 And God-creeds need renewing ? Rustum were 
 The nobler puppet, who fought out his life 
 To tragedy but not to cynicism. 
 Oh, for some theme of modern-made idea 
 Which, matching spring in inborn novelty, 
 Stands ever old, older than Zeus or men 
 By being to-day divine, some world-device 
 Of absolute soulship speaking in the mouth 
 Of me, not Rustum nor Empedocles ! 
 No Tyrian trader from the world shall hoard 
 His splendor for salvation, no dismay 
 Shall rant on flame-bursts, nor to element 
 Resign the soul ! But something of a faith 
 In understanding of a modern mood 
 157 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Shall mean God most in complications sprung 
 
 Of fluxion, spring-life and the lift of earth 
 
 Inevitable. And my theme shall be 
 
 Thus Greek, thus Phidian, ^schylus anew 
 
 By dealing in the plain, spontaneous, 
 
 Self-language of the times, most pure, least foul 
 
 With obsolete inheritance of myth s 
 
 Equivocation ; meaning that I mean. 
 
 Thus, then, shall all this frail agnostic cant 
 
 Find autumn s place ; and if the creed be worn 
 
 Be there renewal seeded of the fall. 
 
 Let the new creed afford right meaning for 
 
 The creed rejected, let the new art show 
 
 Old myth subordinant, old metaphor 
 
 But outworn fact : thus, the new fact full truth. 
 
 Now the swift sun in heaven wins all my soul 
 To spring-truth and soul-cycle of the year. 
 In creed and art, no skeptical dismay 
 More, nor withdrawal from the market-place 
 And sphere of high contention faith with faith ! 
 Here is earth s wonderful sweet market-place 
 Of blossoming contention would my soul 
 Had learn d herself so as a world of men ! 
 158 
 
GORDON 
 
 4 1 CAME, not to bring peace, but with a sword ! 
 Would that some power might bring Christ s 
 
 sword to me ! 
 
 His peace I look not for : and yet I came 
 To bring these deserts peace and not a sword. 
 
 How strangely turns our goodwill among men 
 
 Into a hate and mockery of love 
 
 A hate without and mockery within 
 
 These walls that I have built about men s homes ! 
 
 How came I hither, if with sword to show 
 
 Uncoward aspect, yet with peace at heart 
 
 Intended unto all at worst, a sword 
 
 For those without my walls ! And now at last 
 
 Here gaze I yearning toward that folk (which 
 
 did 
 So long forget past years) that they 11 but 
 
 bring 
 
 Power to rid me of my seeming friends 
 Whom I mistrust more than mine enemies. 
 Ay, treachery within and foes without 
 This leaguer d city augur some swift peace 
 159 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Indeed unto my spirit. Though I seek 
 
 No peace ; but, as the Master said, a sword. 
 
 Not for myself indeed I seek that sword. 
 
 My life were well-nigh ended, and well-spent 
 
 In serving somewhat Christ and these poor crowds 
 
 Of desert people. But that at the last 
 
 My work should end, not in some forthright breach 
 
 With those who will not love me nor my ways, 
 
 But in the simulance of fellowship, 
 
 A stab in the dark, a thrust, a sneer ; and all 
 
 Is fallen of the fabric I had rear d, 
 
 Here among Christless folk, of Christian s faith : 
 
 Fabric I fain had rear d of man to man 
 
 Open and honest if not brotherly 
 
 Such work to end as Judas ended once 
 
 A nobler ! Let it be. The comfort comes 
 
 In the meek parallel : my goal as His. 
 
 So we start forth in singleness of soul 
 To live straightforward, act and speak what best 
 Is in us honest and above regard 
 For what the world would have us speak and act 
 Save as we judge best to be understood 
 160 
 
GORDON 
 
 Aright and meet men on men s common ground. 
 
 But somewhere we must swerve. As when I came 
 
 Declaring mine a sword, though peace at heart 
 
 Was in me. Was it not also in Christ ? 
 
 Was Jesus end by treachery because 
 
 He scarce might wield a sword He would not wear 
 
 While yet proclaiming warfare to the world ? 
 
 Is mine impending doom this that it is, 
 
 Even with the night that falleth now upon 
 
 This turbulent city, but because I came 
 
 No longer open with a sword at heart, 
 
 Else peace upon my brow to match my soul ; 
 
 And so destroy d the fabric of a faith 
 
 In single purpose by my double deed ? 
 
 Christ, I accept the desperate consequence 
 As Thou acceptedst. For I too forswore 
 My singleness of spirit. Shall a man 
 Do otherwise, die otherwise : than Thou ? 
 
 161 
 
MOHAMMED AHMED 
 
 A PROPHECY. Let the scribes write it down 
 Even as I speak it. For it is my last : 
 
 God and the Prophet and myself I preach 
 In provident succession. He who comes 
 After me, Abdullahi here, shall preach 
 God and the Prophet and myself the same, 
 Who am the true Imam. And over me 
 Shall Abdullahi rear the tomb which I 
 Have founded ; and shall make it as I now 
 Declare in vision. For the length and breadth 
 By cubits shall be equal ; but the height 
 Somewhat exceeding, as the heavens are high 
 Arch d above earth s flat floor whereon we dwell. 
 And in the side-walls be there entrances 
 To signify my body still with men. 
 Only, about the whole be built a yard 
 And a well dug; for this were holy ground. 
 Finally at the centre based upon 
 Those inner arches shall be raised aloft 
 First a pure prism of six crystalline sides 
 To indicate my clarity of mind 
 162 
 
MOHAMMED AHMED 
 
 And so approach the perfect spherical 
 
 Which heavenlike is my soul ; domed, yea, and gold. 
 
 Such is the prophecy. And let the scribes 
 
 Prepare it for decree publicly read 
 
 As my last utterance from God amending 
 
 Those earlier prophecies foregone of how 
 
 Mine end were elsewhere. Ah, but even at once 
 
 Mine end approacheth. I would be alone, 
 
 Well rid of earth, with Abdullahi here 
 
 (Son of my spirit !) to confer on him, 
 
 Whilst none shall witness, my firman from God. 
 
 Are we alone ? Friend Abdullahi, thou 
 Knowest how I have longtime sought release 
 From this hypocrisy which we have made 
 My pitiful substance. But I fear d the fall, 
 First, of myself what have I now to fear 
 Who feel the worst, the bitterness of death ? - 
 Then, of this mighty empire we have rear d 
 In men s credulity. I leave to thee 
 A dangerous and a bitter task ; and yet 
 Somewise an easier. For myself have been, 
 If push d by thee yet still responsibly, 
 The main impostor. Thou needst but adore 
 
 163 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 The dome thou buildest o er me ; and the rest 
 Is plain oppression, grateful to thy soul. 
 I pity, ay, thy people more than thee ! 
 Temper the tyranny : t will longer last 
 Than if the superstition be too strain d. 
 
 The superstition ! How, oft-whiles, I think 
 Of those days when the inspiration seem d, 
 And was, from God ; then when at Abba Isle 
 I taught in absolute humility 
 Truths of my spirit, what I rightly knew 
 Concerning manhood and the way of life 
 (Oppression, Abdullahi, was my scorn !) 
 Fit for my soul, and therefore fit that men 
 Should hear it and be privileged to try 
 Whether to choose their way of life like mine. 
 God is so good, He gives the truth to each 
 So perfectly adapted to the need, 
 He makes it seem as though some truth for all 
 Alike were vouchsafed : though such is not so, 
 Mine Abdullahi. But it came to me 
 As if my ministry (thus Moslem folk 
 Are ever dreaming !) was, to every man 
 The same, a revelation ; though forsooth 
 164 
 
MOHAMMED AHMED 
 
 The lowliest Dongolawi of them all 
 
 Hath truth in some degree for him as true 
 
 As for me mine. I know this plainly now. 
 
 For, as death comes and feverish heat abates, 
 
 Are the eyes open d. Whence, this woof of lies 
 
 Which I have woven, prophecies and worse, 
 
 If not in effort I- have made that men 
 
 Believe as I believe, whether or no 
 
 Their circumstance and each intelligence 
 
 Of sense and reason may condemn my creed 
 
 Available for me but not for them ? 
 
 For thus have I forsworn my privacy 
 
 As theirs of final judgment each unique ; 
 
 And thus deprived my faith of honesty. 
 
 Whence, mine undue assumption? mine, who 
 
 preach 
 
 Humility and abstinence, yet grasp 
 A god s immunity from any law 
 Save satisfaction of my pride and lust ? 
 God are we, Abdullahi ; but not gods ! 
 
 Thou, Abdullahi, knowest even as I 
 Whereof we build our empire here on earth. 
 Nor wilt thou dream I rave. But thou wilt pray 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 With me that God be gracious, and my faults 
 
 Be visited not on them who had faith 
 
 When first I felt and taught the word of God 
 
 The woof of God, I say, though now false-warp d 
 
 From the fine fabric that my life had been ! 
 
 I leave it, then, to thee, the awful task 
 
 To save this people from the ire of God 
 
 As I have roused it. Canst thou find a way ? 
 
 Even the old hypocrisy ? T were best. 
 
 We are too far in treachery to try 
 
 New ways of singleness. The folk we fool 
 
 Were leaderless, wert thou less false than I. 
 
 Fear, save for them, shall now be flung far from 
 
 me, 
 
 Though worse for me may come than this of death ! 
 Spare but the tyranny ; t is all I ask. 
 Bear no consideration for my soul. 
 Absolve me from no sins of blasphemy 
 By ruining this empire ! Rather burn d 
 I in hell-fire a thousand years and one 
 Than earn heaven by apostasy of thine 
 When earth depends still on the perfect fraud ! 
 Therefore I tell thee that the sin is best. 
 T will save them from themselves lest they awake 
 166 
 
MOHAMMED AHMED 
 
 To learn the great deception, and go mad ! 
 
 For thee, like me, t were late : our souls are lost, 
 
 Call them to witness of my latter end. 
 
 167 
 
TENNYSON 
 
 NOW in the eve and twilight of mine age 
 I turn to see what stadia I have pass d 
 In the world s road, if any. And my year 
 Hath pass d and many seasons over me ; 
 That winter now approacheth. But my path, 
 Though beautiful in autumn retrospect, 
 Shows not so long despite the lengthening haze - 
 As I in journeying along it deem d. 
 If a straight path, yet are there backward feet, 
 T would seem, and many turnings on the road, 
 Wanderings awide and strange reluctances 
 Of yearning memory : a fear, through all, 
 Of these, those other faces , * other minds , 
 Which now close in about me. Though the school 
 Applaud and love, I, with mine old-age sight 
 Of tendencies and meanings hitherto 
 Unseen, can in nowise applaud my way. 
 A way the blind, the halt, the backward turn d 
 Might travel for its smoothness which the feet 
 Of me with many stumblings, much retread, 
 Wrought to the road where men so oft before 
 Had journey d; but no onway hewn among 
 1 68 
 
TENNYSON 
 
 The noble all-embracing lonelinesses 
 
 Of earth-uplifting solitary thought. - 
 
 I have been solitary to my shame : 
 
 Though spoil d with much laudation, yet alone 
 
 In self and spirit, strange unto a world 
 
 Which strain d beyond me ; and came back to rest 
 
 Unto my bosom but for ease and sleep, 
 
 Forgetful of day s onward dignities. 
 
 Sweet were the uses of conservancy, 
 
 Of backward-yearning and the requiem 
 
 Which autumn yields the year. Sweet the smooth path 
 
 Of verbal dalliance, wide simplicities : 
 
 The cowardice which, Platonizing still, 
 
 Apes the eternal verities outworn ! 
 
 Life were not retrospect. Yet all my life 
 
 Hath inwardly but been as retrospect. 
 
 Now let my final retrospect absolve 
 
 The blame ; mine old age be not Tithonus ! 
 
 For, lo ! my soul hath been as Tithonus , 
 
 Not as Odysseus . Let Odysseus be 
 
 My yearning now toward ocean without end. 
 
 Ah, but a truce to antique imagery ; 
 Peace, peace to the dead language ! Let my tongue 
 
 169 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Speak plain, not mouth Lucretius ; find a speech 
 Of modern manner, nor mistake mine own 
 Bewilderment and latter pessimism 
 Echo of Latin atomist despair 
 For wise modernity ! Were Galahad 
 Or Launcelot, that tale of Guinevere ; 
 Were Arthur with his old companionship 
 (Trite types whose generality would serve 
 For almost any purpose, any proof : 
 And hence are false to any in themselves !) 
 Plain speech, an earnest prophecy of world 
 Within me, truth-expression of the strong 
 Whose beauty is by self-determinate grasp 
 Of literal apprehension in the flower 
 Of the cranny, God and all ? Or were my richest, 
 Most perfect, most elaborated piece 
 Most a veiPd utterance, most overlaid 
 With mystery : a dimness ? Yea, that I 
 Did once speak plainly all the truest of me 
 Is little wonderful : when memory, 
 Regret with consolations obsolete, 
 Suggestions of an heartening in faith 
 Itself a mystery, itself most veil d 
 Were all the stuff and splendor of that song ! 
 170 
 
TENNYSON 
 
 The rest were negligeable ; though well-made, 
 Mere household saws, mere suave urbanities 
 (Men still will praise : Those fair humanities ! ) 
 Lettered, polite, taught in the academe ; 
 Not stuff of strength nor splendor of the soul. 
 For I, I was not prophet of the times. 
 There was another, one whose verse but seem d 
 Uncouth, that I despised it at my heart. 
 Yet, how he moved on past the lagging throng 
 In freedom and in grandeur of plain speech ! 
 His very manner now is at my tongue 
 As truth pleads in me to be up and heard ! 
 Beyond him I divine some statelier verse 
 (As yet unmade, if ever to be made ?) 
 Of splendid-surging insight, some new power 
 (By God-abandonment) of finding godship 
 In personal conscience of an unique world 
 Wherein no man is instance of the rest : 
 But each concludes by definition all : 
 Plain speech become beauty by absoluteness ? 
 Twere sole alternative to cynicism. 
 T were autumn, no ; nor winter, nor the spring, 
 Nor any season ; but the round of all 
 Concentred, focus d to the eternal year ! 
 171 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 His was a spring. Could some humility 
 
 In me have hail d in him my complement ! 
 
 With the fair, fine return of every autumn, 
 Of autumn in its lingering retrospect 
 When each reverted day reluctantly 
 Leaveth itself behind, have I been moved 
 Increasingly toward song : that now I sing 
 For ultimate autumn my confessional. 
 For something in the season aye hath been 
 My special inspiration. I have sung 
 If most-part of the springtime, summer s flood 
 And wintry barrenness ; yet aye the ebb 
 Of retrospection and of lingering 
 Hath been my burden, message of my word. 
 If melancholy loveliness I leave 
 To those that are bewilder d with the world 
 As I : dim richness as of Camelot 
 Seeming to them Avilion s own vale 
 (Avilion may be, but not quick earth); 
 Idalian Oenone, only dreams 
 Of modern plasticism unalive 
 A mourning yet for antique faiths outworn, 
 A living life but in the lost of things, 
 172 
 
TENNYSON 
 
 A Romanhood when Rome is not the world ! 
 I have call d halt and turn d but in my mire. 
 I see some souls which leap out of this slough 
 Of mean dismay: accepting all now proven 
 Of unity, automatism, of each 
 New subtler involution of one clay 
 From nebula to poet; yet insisting 
 The nebulous material thus proven 
 Pole but of spirit. Subtler doctrines still 
 Evolve and involve from the lost belief : 
 Involving no lost dignity to man 
 Free of a maker: Somewhat self-made still; 
 Not myrmidon of nescience as I fear d ! 
 I see some souls thus best conserving truth 
 By ever journeying on truth s new way. 
 But I, I have no motion of mine own: 
 Save if my motion be by retrogress, 
 My mild despair be still some share of light 
 Illumining reflectively the faith 
 Whence future light shall spring and be renew d : 
 My movelessness (through all that was of strength) 
 At last avow d, proving my motion now. 
 Yea, though I am not now such strength as in 
 Old days bewail d but earth and fear d for heaven, 
 173 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Such as I am, I am : knowing myself. 
 So have I gather d up all left behind 
 Like to the wholeness of the enrolling year ; 
 That there is no regret : but on ward ness. 
 
 174 
 
WYCKOFF 
 
 WEEKS, months, and years at laboring with these hands 
 Of mine untrain d to toil have well-nigh used 
 Muscles and sinews to the manual work, 
 Callous d the skin, stiffen d the horny grasp ; 
 Subdued frame, fingers, almost brain beside 
 To fitness for the nerve-mechanical 
 Brute task ; made brawn the measure of my might ; 
 Man, physic-mass ! Experiment s success ? 
 Well-nigh pure proxihood s reality? 
 Some way the day s fatigue, the listlessness 
 Of unrewarded search (though scarce despair 
 By any fear to starve) , relaxing brawn 
 Here as I stumble restward through the dusk, 
 Indeed mere outcast of the unemploy d, 
 Areek with sweat, dinn d with the city s roar, 
 Unnerves tne tense-strung sinew, frees the brain 
 Momently for the dubious questioning ; 
 Confronts soul with the skepticism ; lays bare 
 Depths of a void denial. Sole alone 
 Halt I amid the throng where by the bridge 
 Shadowy sweeps with sluggish sullenness 
 The city s sink and sewer : I, of these 
 175 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Millions of maul d humanities, one soul 
 
 Despite soul s uttermost insistency 
 
 At comradeship and merging to their mould 
 
 A solitary and a loneliness 
 
 Doom d as yon river to receive yet scarce 
 
 Assimilate ; acknowledge all the stew 
 
 And stink and crime, the sin ; assume their filth, 
 
 Take tinge and city-substance (as these hands 
 
 Harden to tint of turmoil) yet stream on 
 
 A solitary and a power alone 
 
 By weakness, by incapability 
 
 Of fixedness, adoption of the fact 
 
 Of any other; but a glimmering doubt 
 
 Sweep on and hold no permeant cognizance 
 
 Of city, shadow and flare. Even so my soul 
 
 Incapable of proxihood steals on ; 
 
 Rouses and wakes, as with a lightless depth 
 
 Of dismal fluxion, to the finite lore : 
 
 Not I, but thou, thou rank d humanity 
 
 * Of city-stricture and mechanic pain, 
 
 Suffering, pitiable ; not my soul 
 
 For any forced assumption of thy wrongs ! 
 
 Weeks, months and years ! yet labor as I may 
 
WYCKOFF 
 
 Still miss I proxihood : experiment 
 
 Fail d of perfection ! I, the flesh d and eased 
 
 In worldly circumstance, yet sensed and fill d 
 
 Of the physical sufferance of man-made-beast ; 
 
 I, scientist, philosopher, wide known 
 
 And widelier knowing, yet with ache and pang 
 
 Of the pinch d, impoverished, prevented souls 
 
 Of mass d humanity, by sympathy 
 
 Tortured, o erwhelm d ; conceiving passionately 
 
 A mission, duty to be done for these; 
 
 Desiring so, and reasoning to attain 
 
 More intimate insight of men s distress 
 
 The abler to make proselyte the world 
 
 To ways of reparation : did put off 
 
 (Even as yon river, swirl d to tortured pool, 
 
 Lamps, in default of motion, mirror-lights) 
 
 All circumstance of comfort and mine ease 
 
 Laboring brute-like with the herd. Saith not 
 
 Christ, Lift the stone and ye shall find me ? 
 
 So 
 
 Sought I to lift and stir the stone, thereby 
 Christlike for vicar to assume the soul 
 (Even as yon whirlpool by the mock-lamp d lights) 
 Of man-made-brute ; to raise by love man s least. 
 177 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Weeks, months and years : and still the soul-made- 
 brute 
 
 (Better or worse than brute, it matters not) 
 Of mankind mass d and mired is by no means 
 Mine ; nor the proxihood : experiment 
 Daily more futile, daily more remote 
 From pure adoption, adequate insight 
 Of the menial misery. At this twilight hour 
 Lonely along dull-glimmering curbs I go 
 Half-fed, unkempt, craving the primal curse 
 Of labor, longing but the natural right 
 To toil : an outcast of the unemploy d ! 
 Yet, in man s uttermost distress d estate, 
 No mere man-scum : at stand here by the brink 
 No city: river-like sensitive indeed 
 To loneliness, to love forlornness means ! 
 Failure foredoom d ! And in this hour I feel 
 Fatuity of any vicarage, 
 Insight, nay sympathy: and am at heart 
 Love s contradiction, deeming futile all 
 Approximation and all guardianship. 
 Can I, incapable of bosoming 
 Feature or fashion of the souls I d ape 
 (As lights flare but from surface of yon stream), 
 178 
 
WYCKOFF 
 
 Blind to oblivion of mine old estate 
 
 Which was mine and remains but should not 
 
 so 
 
 A standard fix d for strain d comparison 
 Warping the actualization, thwarting real 
 Appreciation (as yon river hoards 
 High mountain-outlook) of the prison pain, 
 The absoluteness of this cursed estate 
 (City but city and no gloried gorge) - 
 So false (and no criterion obtains 
 For fault s correction) to this state assumed : 
 Can I, in ignorance of the true distress 
 (Bound to the ignorance by mountain-birth), 
 In error at diagnosis of disease 
 Pander prescription, seek make proselyte 
 World to a reparation ; when redress 
 Aims at an end uncognizable, wills 
 Cure for complaint (this city stands unproved 
 By gleam nor scum) no postulate shall prove ? 
 Ay, grant their case be none so desperate 
 As sympathy conceived (the cataract s 
 Too crude anticipation), grant how brute 
 Being brute (if brute be brutish plausibly) 
 Could scarce appreciate the solitude, 
 179 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Nor man-mere-brute with mine intensity 
 
 (This stagnant city with this stream s strain d 
 
 sweep) 
 
 Confront forlornness and feel finitude ! 
 It boots not, scarce affects fatuity 
 Of proxihood and pure experiment. 
 Yield the contention ; can I possibly 
 Acquire precise criterion the more 
 Through recognizing how criterion 
 Varies, a fluxion ; mine expectancy 
 Of solitude and finiteness, apart 
 From any solitude and finiteness 
 The solitary and the finitude 
 Could comprehend nor yet belie their name ? 
 City see city seen from mountain-side ? 
 Absurdity ! Yet city stands none less 
 Beyond (beneath, above, indifferent which) 
 All possibility of stream s insight 
 Of city-scum, of city-flare as fix d 
 And irremediable, strictured. So 
 Strictured and irremediable, fix d 
 Flows lone yon river, lone between brick d banks! 
 Ay, what though case be none so desperate ? 
 T is yet the death-disease, most desperate 
 1 80 
 
WYCKOFF 
 
 Of man s society ; needs antidote 
 None less, though health be palpably at fault 
 In pitying with sheer healthiness recoil 
 (As mountain-stream froth d for the sewer s fear) 
 Fever that for the victim s feverishness 
 Seems scarce self-pitiable at the worst. 
 Craves health or illness febrifuge none less 
 (Street s putrefaction, purifying still) 
 To minister, to mouth till ease obtain. 
 For by default of worse disease, what worse 
 Extremity can be for health-redress ? 
 Miserable, or scarce miserable so much 
 As by my preconceived impulsive plot, 
 Failure none less ; no possibility 
 Of mine appreciation, real insight 
 By Christ-assumption : nor no antidote, 
 No mission and no duty through the world ! 
 Nay, yielding some least feasibility 
 That sweating, toiling ; even the memory weak 
 Of one-time independence and mine ease 
 (Yon black, oblivious of the torrent-spume) ; 
 All expectation of triumphant burst 
 (Anticipant gravitation seaward) wide 
 Abroad in proselyting of the earth ; 
 181 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 All sense of difference in real degree 
 
 Twixt mine, my soul promoting proxihood 
 
 For enterprise of ethical import 
 
 And this my mean assumed estate : destroy d 
 
 (Source both and ocean-solace damm d) ; at last 
 
 I were by stultification in all sort 
 
 Reduced to just the appropriate preconceived 
 
 Or ill-conceived brute proletariat : - 
 
 Where then the proof s experiment (what stream 
 
 For city s imaging nor purge ?) ; wherein 
 
 Were I other than him I seem and were, 
 
 No-Christ but Pharisee, the actual crude 
 
 Muscle-mass (stagnant pool, miasmic, stench d 
 
 As any) worst in want of aid indeed ; 
 
 No purge, nor comfort, vicar, nor no God ; 
 
 But just that man, that man-made-brute whose city 
 
 Loses, by gaining me, all hope through me 
 
 Of purification. By profoundest proof 
 
 Of perfect proxihood, no proof at all, 
 
 No proxihood, no vicarage. 
 
 I fail, 
 
 Avow the failure : sheer experiment 
 But truth-annihilation in so far 
 As actual approximation s gain d. 
 182 
 
WYCKOFF 
 
 And with the plausible experiment 
 
 Goes worth of any insight, power assumed 
 
 Of adequate information imaging 
 
 In my fact any other. For my fact 
 
 Is stream and shall be stream, swirl d ne er so 
 
 strait 
 
 Through city s boundaries. And all attempt 
 By eddy, whirlpool to assimilate 
 Shows but a self-denial, self-distraught 
 Admission of the ultimate nothingness, 
 Nescience, non-insight, non-criterion, 
 Denial of all duty, right and law, 
 Abandonment of world-community 
 For pure exclusion d self-identifying, 
 Indifferent alive or dead. And lest 
 The proxihood (pool clogg d and choked to the brim) 
 Get hold on me ; and my Gethsemane 
 Mark end at last of every high resolve 
 In sheer subdual to the murk I d mould : 
 Be one resolve, last, best a man may make 
 True to the primal self-identity 
 Of finite individual lapsingness, 
 The nescience and the lawless entity, 
 The lovelessness, the helplessness : one step, 
 183 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 One cast of body : and this life s soul-death 
 Is done ! Firmly I fling: and shall be done ! 
 
 One stark recoil ! Done ? Can this life-in-death 
 
 Have value, that the dismal death in the stream 
 
 Should prompt revolt, create the new resolve 
 
 By ultimate reaction, absolute 
 
 Soul-estimation of the world ? What though 
 
 This body, wash d and rotting in the tide 
 
 Disintegrate but toward and through new life, 
 
 Chemic, bacterial, vegetative, man s 
 
 Anew, or not man s, piecemeal, yet eterne 
 
 By process ? What though this self-conscious soul 
 
 Cease not, but swoon in the throes with ne er an end, 
 
 Being self-criterion of endurance (even 
 
 As yon stream, being but stream, was yet some snow, 
 
 Shall be some ocean ; though, for stream as stream, 
 
 Stream still unendingly) ? What though being-done, 
 
 By science or philosophy alike, 
 
 Stands proved impossible inanity ? 
 
 T is yet this self-endurance, each least jot 
 
 Of multiple manifold redundancy, 
 
 The wide determinism interminable 
 
 Whose each new tittle stone uplift and stirr d 
 
WYCKOFF 
 
 Has absolute value and soul-vicarage. 
 
 Ay, each least finite contrast (the swept stream 
 
 Incapable of cityship, yon town 
 
 Self-imperturbable to seawardness) 
 
 Holding at heart, subtending inmost-wise 
 
 An ultimate union through reality, 
 
 Value, omniscience infinitely whole 
 
 By being but irremediably distinct 
 
 (Stream but by city-contradiction ; town 
 
 By being no-stream) still self-identified 
 
 Each in and through all others totally. 
 
 Experiment s success ? Experiment 
 
 Was absolute, perfected, in and through 
 
 Each failure of the proxihood; this soul, 
 
 Not by inanity of mutual merge, 
 
 Purity of adoption self-denied, 
 
 But by development new day by day 
 
 Of intimate contrast, rich complexity 
 
 Of mine impossibility but through 
 
 Distinction, whence not self-abandoning 
 
 All nature, but of absolute insight 
 
 (As they through me, I through the soul of them) 
 
 Original and natural at last 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Physician, Christ-creator from the first. 
 Nescience by ultimate delusiveness ? 
 Nay, but by mediate delusiveness 
 (And mediation, imaging, yon flare 
 In the whirlpool, stands final delusion save 
 Delusion-recognized, so absolute truth) 
 Distinctively the self-world-conscience shows 
 Truth unto truth, and no bewilderment. 
 Discouragement ? This militant world-soul 
 Of mine (yon river ceaselessly at sweep) 
 But by ambition endlessly to learn 
 More intimately, more complexly proved 
 The richness and the sociology 
 Of soul-original transcendent sight, 
 Stands soul at all : and confident by doubt, 
 Constant assured by utmost skepticism, 
 Proves true the proxihood, experiment s 
 Success : and shall make proselyte my world ! 
 I, toiler best by best philosophy : 
 Vicar, Christ-guardian by love-unioning 
 In soul-experiment, stirring stones all 
 (Proving the stone self-stirr d by world-whole stir) : 
 Scarce by mere stiffening of this callous d palm, 
 Scarce by endeavor to be brute (what brute ? ) 
 1 86 
 
WYCKOFF 
 
 But by the duty, mission, right conceived 
 Of work s infinity in serving so 
 Conscience, omniscience, God-society ! 
 
 Such, for triumphant strength of twilight doubt 
 Ultimate, doubt-defeating. The strong noon 
 Shall prove again experiment s despair. 
 
NANSEN 
 
 MID ice and night onward and onward : ice, 
 
 Night unresisted heaving on and on 
 
 Though motiveless yet mightily my life 
 
 In passion of the pack ; pressing on, on 
 
 From nought through nought : no progress : passage 
 
 proved 
 
 Prison ; persistence, powerlessness : or Pole 
 Or no Pole, equal impotence ! In patience 
 My soul sees, even in impotence, fulfill d 
 The prophecy that built, equipp d, launch d forth 
 Her foresight. Yea ; this power, this thrust and stress 
 At bend and burst broad, loud below in the bleak, 
 My heart holds ; comprehends ; conclusively 
 Bursts beyond, thrusts down, down and bounds above 
 In freedom of buoyancy. My ship, my soul 
 Are motive ; are sun and strength beyond aught here ! 
 
 Passion and patience of the universe, 
 Doom d to this dead, eternal ice and night ! 
 From nought through nought and nowhere any end ; 
 No bourne to passage, strength to patience none ; 
 Motive to life nor any life save death : 
 
 188 
 
NANSEN 
 
 Moon, and these myriad stars moon-dead to-be ! 
 Yet : what of This that knows, that wills an end, 
 This God-I-Am : for whom, through whom, in whom 
 Alone are ice and night and anything : 
 This strength-of -suffering, power of life-through-death ; 
 Prophet, transcendence of the darkness here ? 
 Something, through uttermost of ice and night, 
 Will that I question fact ; unfelt before 
 Somewhat essential beyond ice or night 
 Questions the doom ; demands, if there be life 
 In me and through me, how may death persist, 
 Ice and night so entomb earth s truth to-be ? 
 World ceases not though I cease or not cease ! 
 What of world s soul that comprehends ; concludes 
 Together nought with nought ; proves passage, bourne ; 
 Chaos yet cosmos, sentient-systeming : 
 Moon-dearth but sensible by strength of sun ; 
 Strength endless, being criterion of end ? 
 What of the Self to science selflessness : 
 Spirit to substance of world s ice and night? 
 Hegel or Kelvin ? Kant with Christ or what ? 
 Lo ! in this bitterly blank night, the breeze 
 Blistering this breast to bleak frigidity ; 
 Here above bellowing ice-blocks, stark aloft 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 At masthead mid these thorn d tormenting stars, 
 
 This vinegar, this mockery of moon : 
 
 Must I alone this hour sweat through this passion 
 
 Of intellectual agony made mine ; 
 
 Wrestle, resolve (so crucified my soul 
 
 Vicar for this dumb-arctic eloquence) 
 
 World s problem of perpetuance, of power : 
 
 In truth s name how an universe can be ! 
 
 I, so be intellect for deaf and dead, 
 
 Savior for snows that scarce can think or speak, 
 
 Christ for the ice and night : to prove for these 
 
 Philosophy or science, faith or fact : 
 
 Conclusion foregone that I speak as Christ 
 
 Speaking their self best in this self of mine, 
 
 Speaking myself best in the self of these : 
 
 By sympathy a faith not selfless fact : 
 
 An intellectual-conscience, scarce machine ! 
 
 Yet, it is new, this union ; till this hour 
 Unrealized ; till this night precluded quite 
 By full acceptance of the selfless fact, 
 Sheer science : Kelvin, Huxley ! Christ or Kant 
 Left out of count now, first the formal, fair 
 Rehearsal of the fact ! 
 190 
 
NANSEN 
 
 To clutch a shroud ; 
 
 Shake with the strong wind streaming ; ramp and rock 
 With sufferance of the vessel shock d ; upheaved 
 With every blasting of the bleak below. 
 T is to be fact for facts ; be buffeted 
 As block beats block ; be wail d-on by the wind. 
 Above, the boreal auroras ; broad 
 Beyond, about, below, the bleak, blown packs 
 Sunless as senseless. To be one of these. 
 Ay : and how comes it to be one of these ? 
 Review the history, sum up the law 
 Of evolution, nebula to now : 
 The progress such and such ; geogeny, 
 Biogeny, psychogeny ; the chain 
 From nebula to now : and every new 
 Born out of old. And flesh, this organ d mass 
 Nerved, sinew d draws descent direct, distinct 
 From nebula ; is substance as the stars, 
 Substance as ice and night : and one with these. 
 Ay, though be ice, night, moon, but equally 
 With sunshine, quickening vapor metaphor 
 For death or life : their real identity 
 Nor death nor life, but force, fate : yet are these 
 The less, the more equal inanity 
 
 191 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Of fact s necessity : Self , one of these ; 
 Phenomenon of nerve-phenomena, 
 Some sheer spontaneous sentience of a world 
 Was not, nor shall be : actual world none less, 
 Indifferent, independent, nerve or nought : 
 Intelligence or non-intelligence 
 Indifferent to existence of the fact. 
 Ay, this * world-overweighting of the brain, 
 This * passionate, transcendent ponderance 
 Of soul , this critical compendiousness 
 Of mind o er matter, Christhood , vicarage , 
 This * saviorship of union d intellect 
 Its agonied redemption , were but beats 
 Of the ganglion, nerve-tissued blow on blow, 
 Shaking and surging of the plasmic cells 
 At sweat and ramp and rage of bursting blood ; 
 This God-I-Am some subtlest ice or night 
 Blow for blow, burst for burst the same in sort 
 As bellowing ice-pack and this boreal blast : 
 Nerve, native as the nebula : no-soul ! 
 Such are the facts to test and find them true ; 
 No link disjuncted : perfect in the proof. 
 And, for the logic of all law is such 
 Must man with world come to the doom at last 
 192 
 
NANSEN 
 
 Kelvin s and Huxley s with the spent machine : 
 With tendence moonward from the might of stars : 
 Space-dissipation of world s energy 
 To ice and night, no meaning. From the first 
 Even this surge from nebula to now 
 Nought but a space-dissemination, loss 
 Of energy potential kinetized 
 Toward equilibrium : equilibrium 
 But nothingness, no force, non-end inane : 
 Moon, nought save shown in sloth of swooning 
 
 sun. 
 
 And if, in such dissemination, soul 
 (Nice nerve-vibration) over and beyond 
 The grosser substance chemical gain growth 
 And power organic over and beyond 
 The less-organic ; stands the law the same : 
 Such and such from the nebula to now 
 Mere evolution of the nerve from vague 
 Chaos through energy kinetic, sun 
 And star and sphere on sphere, through molten 
 
 mass, 
 
 Rock-metal, vegetation, sinew d flesh 
 To man s brain: and from now back, back to night, 
 Cold crystalline benumbing up of nerve 
 193 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 In cosmical pulsation : now from man 
 Back to chill d coalescence organless, 
 Lifeless conglomeration : ice and night ! 
 Ha ! the stars stab ; the bellowing below 
 Mocks to the marrow ! Unto ice and night 
 Dedicate nerve s destruction! Now, to-night 
 (What of the years of the world if years yield 
 
 nought ? ) 
 
 Now, to-night end all; headlong to the doom 
 Dash on the blank pack s bosom : far below 
 Beat brain out: end the agony! In name 
 Of Kelvin, Huxley, now, to-night I leap: 
 Anticipate, make mine the doom of all ! 
 
 Mine? Mine the doom of all ! I hesitate; 
 Hold breath ; breathe deep this agony of air : 
 Make it my blood and feel it mine ! I am ! 
 Life is what means it to be one of these ! 
 Alive, I-am; nebula, nerve or night: 
 Necessitating future still as past 
 More and more, past as future, each in each ! 
 World ceases not: nor I cease. World I am! 
 And it is new, this union : yet by will 
 To end all proved, made perfect endlessly 
 194 
 
NANSEN 
 
 In intellectual action: Christ with Kant! 
 Faith for the facts ! Feel faith and find fact truth ! 
 
 This logic of life-origin, this law 
 Of link d necessity ? Can link by link 
 Interminably link d explain one life ? 
 Mere mutuality, one molecule 
 Save as the mutual mean identity : 
 My life, or molecule, an union d world ? 
 Ay ; in such sort : if just this self of mine 
 God-mechanician to their made machine, 
 Else unmechanic mere nonentity ! - 
 Hypothesized yet unexplain d remain 
 (Hardly residuum, scarce for fact beyond) 
 Still for true source, being synthesis, of these, 
 Conscience and explanation, linkage, law 
 (Sunlike to shrinkage of moon soulless else ! ) 
 Not cause, yet all-causation ; through and through 
 Immanence and intelligence of all 
 Else lawless, linkless, unionless, inane : 
 Self-ideality of each-through-each ; 
 Each for itself forselfness even as I, 
 Identified in me as selfhood all : 
 The molecule in man, man-molecule, 
 195 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Native reality : and only so 
 Real at all, molecule or man, for me : 
 Past, future, none less instant, self for self, 
 Real union, sentience each ; though yet for me 
 Polar, unmeaning save as union d now. 
 Ay ; that I am, I am : all else in me 
 (As I in them, through them, by mutual proof - 
 How else, conceived empirics-error, save 
 World s self-assertion, countervail d to mine, 
 In so far forth show Self neutrality ?) 
 Through me make mutuality of self 
 Distinct, determinate, dividual 
 Yet individual universally. 
 All that I am, I am : this world of mine ; 
 This universe : alive by saviorship, 
 (Monad or motive) Christhood-vicarage ! 
 Development proved world-dissipation proves 
 By world-retort a false criterion, 
 Half-standard contradictory : proves worth 
 Of absolute process, progress regressive 
 In pure polarity self-reconciled 
 Evolving, mind from matter, most from least. 
 Law, from the nucleus to now, but time 
 Of self s maturing : ever to mature : 
 196 
 
NANSEN 
 
 Even in the space-dissemination, time s 
 Ingathering of momentum ; human mind 
 O er mental nebula progressive still 
 In mutual internality of lore 
 Even as o er physical man the molecule 
 Nebular stood, still stands preeminent 
 In property material of force 
 Extern, displacement substantive ; alike 
 Materio-mental, least and most : one Soul 
 Erst nebular, now nebular-humane ; 
 Ubiquitous, being all-self spatialized ; 
 Eternal, being all-temporality : 
 Mine erst, mine now, mine still eternal-wise ; 
 By perpetuity through passingness 
 (This perfectness of process) nebula 
 To now, yet now by being but nebular 
 (Past and to-come but poles of permanence) : 
 Eternally my universe humane ! 
 Is it, world-mutuality may end ? 
 Yet mutual how, save well aware through each, 
 Alive each molecule that may not end, 
 Being each for self criterion of end, 
 World-mutuality in self alone ? 
 Ice and night, ice and night (man s metaphor 
 197 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 For end-unmeaning, dead) but humanly ; 
 Ice yet for ice, night yet for night, humane 
 In selfhood nebular-molecular : 
 Moon yet for moon, as sun for sun, one world 
 (Transcending metaphor) each molecule ! 
 Union d, processional unendingly 
 Soul not above, beyond ; but immanent 
 Self-reference, intelligence through all ! 
 
 Lo ! for behalf of such as scarce may speak, 
 Lo ! for life s ice and night, life laughs at loss : 
 Takes truth from lightning of the blank below : 
 Spurns space-dissemination : in despite 
 Turns law to law s impassion d intellect 
 Proved in performance of my ship, my soul 
 Their prophecy, foresighted impotence ! 
 Lo ! proved in the patience under pressure, power 
 Of passive Pole-persistency (extreme 
 Passion of logic push d to point), behold 
 Motived preeminence of manhood-plan 
 O er potency less mental ; o er the bleak 
 Ice and night I for vicar proving world 
 Processive, though pulsation d : I by proof 
 Lifting the lost to life s intelligence ; 
 198 
 
NANSEN 
 
 Fact-science to philosophy by faith. 
 What of the equilibrium, inane 
 Frosting of nerve to nothingness ? By pace 
 Equal, if opposite, above, beyond 
 The physical degeneration steps 
 The psychic subtlety : nor moon nor star 
 Shows soul-futurity, save star or moon 
 In spirit equal-born ! And I north, north 
 Push, overpower, soul-overweight their world 
 Of space-passivity ; their extreme verge 
 Of sphere yet union d Pole through Zone, yet proved 
 Axial, self-orbited being but motived more 
 Pass on the lamp of light, cramp boundaries, 
 Burst and break down the barriers (limit proved 
 Barrier but by bursting) ; limitless 
 Lead on the more than human mind to-come 
 In conquest of physic s frigidity : 
 More and more conquer d, spurn d beyond, the more 
 Frosted in deadness of new ice and night. 
 Ay ; and in conquest more and more shall world 
 (Or human or some supra-human nerve, 
 Some more than nerve) by reconciling more 
 More comprehend, include and lift to light 
 The deadness and the darkness : more and more 
 199 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Shall time to-come, immanent now, make now 
 
 An explanation and intelligence 
 
 By selfhood. As my selfhood, savior now 
 
 Springs forth in fire abroad, auroral, vast 
 
 From stiffening of this Christhood on the cross 
 
 Stark aloft ! From the vicarage complete 
 
 (Torment of stars or mockery of moon : 
 
 This intellectual agony made mine) ; 
 
 Eternal principle of every end 
 
 Christ for the ice and night, redeeming these ! 
 
 For whom alone meaning or end may be : 
 
 World-saviorship that shall not end ! 
 
 I rave ? 
 Drunk with the drench of drouth, of death ? I 
 
 freeze ? 
 
 Ha ! the skies scoff ! I still am doom d in dream : 
 Man, with the dead-eternal ice and night. 
 
 200 
 
DREYFUS 
 
 NAY, I make no revolt ; accept the doom ; 
 
 Drag on in desolate, deliberate death 
 
 The life-imprisonment. No petulance, 
 
 No desperation ; only an intent 
 
 To realize utterly this miserable 
 
 Incarceration, learn appreciate 
 
 The bondage ; leave behind me here at death 
 
 The written testimony, manuscript 
 
 Of the judgeless punishment; that world may know 
 
 As I know, once for all, so shudder at, 
 
 Assimilate and once for all forswear 
 
 (As I in pure appreciation rise, 
 
 In and through prisoning, beyond these bars 
 
 To absolute freedom of contemplating) 
 
 This horrible denial, vital void. 
 
 I have come through the whirlwind and am calm, 
 Calm as these stones and unremitting chains : 
 Shall keep calm for the purpose to speak truth . 
 I make no plaint : even mine innocence 
 Absolute of the charge preferr d upon me 
 Seems scarce to irritate, exasperate 
 201 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Since the first bitterness of fierce turmoil, 
 Nor lure to loss of sanity. I but 
 Feel the more fully, may be, more abhor 
 The manner of my condemnation. Were I 
 But guilty as I now am innocent 
 Were uttermost abhorrence mine the same 
 As justly and as innocently gainst 
 Their absolute non-justice, disregard 
 Of any innocence or guilt of mine. 
 Though for the sake of this my narrative 
 Its prima facie evidence of truth, 
 Good faith, trustworthiness, I still am glad, 
 Take pride in innocence ; yet aggravate 
 My scorn, my self-transcendence of the doom 
 No whit because they work d worse than they knew, 
 I II not suppose they thought me innocent : 
 The imputation of malignancy 
 Is supererogatory. I maintain 
 But that mine innocence nor guilt at all 
 Bore weight in the matter, influenced the course 
 Of condemnation in the least degree. 
 There lies the blame, the worse than blackest blot 
 My soul can well conceive. On them I lay 
 Bloodguiltiness of total disregard 
 202 
 
DREYFUS 
 
 For right nor wrong ; pursuance right or wrong 
 Of one hypothesized and prejudiced 
 Supposed essential policy : the case 
 Nowise in question ; the one dogma, all. 
 
 First, can prejudgment of one policy 
 To be pursued, regardless for whate er 
 Of new may yet eventuate, constitute 
 By force of supreme faith its final right 
 In the conscience of its agent and absolve 
 Agent from any blame or merit else ? 
 Not so. I hold that certainly one faith, 
 To be sure, one self-ideal of a life 
 Guides each his action, nor can be escaped 
 By any subterfuge : evasions even 
 Serving but subtlier, more pervasively 
 So to develop and define the law 
 (Covering all exceptions utterly) 
 Of being and one s ultimate self-world. 
 Yet is such over-soul, transcendent union 
 No dogma of some still-persistent end, 
 No rule of specialist activity, 
 But such immanent unity as through 
 The multiple, mutable particular rules 
 203 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Finds itself, is their universal self, 
 Intrinsic unity : nowise prejudiced 
 Hypothesis, persistent disregard 
 For new experience ; but just the ground 
 Of all experience, of new as old : 
 And else were no instant self-certainty. 
 So much for self-consistency. I claim 
 That policy a perfidy toward self, 
 Denial of the self-organic growth 
 In freedom by necessity of point 
 To point link d mutual in evolving life, 
 That policy the true self-perfidy 
 Which posits truth on strange authorization 
 And formal self-conviction once for all 
 Immutable. The self-consistency 
 (Monism of universal variance) 
 Has vital basis ; scarce excuses vain 
 Self-segregation from assimilance. 
 Whence remains question, to be tried and proved 
 In this my narrative for all the world : 
 Whether or no (sanely and quietly 
 As tranquil now) in so condemning me 
 Regard to any innocence or guilt 
 By way of evidence was properly 
 204 
 
DREYFUS 
 
 Admitted ; whether or no prejudgment of 
 
 The cause precluded right or wrong throughout 
 
 Inquiry calling for unprejudiced 
 
 Sifting of intricate procedure, which 
 
 Examination of each act by act 
 
 So far as I be not in ignorance 
 
 Unfairly, misinform d of real events 
 
 Whose true report was due my perilment, 
 
 Shall be my narrative through patient years 
 
 Here mid these walls. But need not hinder now. 
 
 Secondly, of the systems which in the world 
 Most stand for sheer prejudgment, disregard 
 Of individual initiative, 
 Persistence in one abstract policy, 
 Represent, are expression of a pure 
 Obliviousness to actuality 
 Of self-conviction ; which require the most 
 Self-perfidy by policy pursued 
 Rigidly exoteric in the rule 
 Laid down by strange authority, I claim 
 The militar bureaucracy, their system 
 Of outworn mediaeval ordering 
 Stands worst and most outrageous. Can the man 
 205 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Commission d and authoritative, else 
 Outrank d, owning allegiance, be excused 
 From charge of selling birthright, soul and all ? 
 Conceive the underling, the slave who stands 
 For puppet, prisoner of superior 
 Official and commission d overlord ; 
 Drill d, train d by sheer reiteration to 
 Come, go at bidding ; kill if need be ; scarce 
 Of independence and intelligence 
 To breathe by self-direction : in so far 
 As man may utterly renounce his worth 
 Absolved from all responsibility, 
 All moral fibre ; made a mere machine, 
 Automaton : best soldier, the worst man. 
 Nor that there are in the world men who, save slaved, 
 Were wild, obstreperous, dangerous to their kind 
 (Deserving dungeon as I merit none) 
 Makes medal d orderly nor cow d poltroon 
 Better than galley-slave : who first renounce 
 (For lust of crime or lust of pay, what care ?) 
 All further rights of new experience, 
 All possibility to profit by 
 New stimulus toward new intelligence ; to 
 Evolve as individual, universed 
 
 206 
 
DREYFUS 
 
 Man-of-a-world and actual entity. 
 Nay, that the stultification somewhat fails 
 Of innermost completeness but implies 
 Impossibility of mechanism : 
 Reflects no credit on the scheme which fails. 
 Courage with ready-reason d action comes 
 Scarce of the soldier-element : remains 
 Residuum of the man not quite crush d out. 
 And for the overlord, commissioner 
 In so far as not underling the same 
 To some outranking in authority, 
 T would seem at first sight as though most of man 
 Remain d uncrush d, just by the exercise 
 Of uttermost authority self-wilFd. 
 Yet in the superposed authority 
 Regardless of all self-initiative 
 (Save brainless flesh-instinctive ritual) 
 In the rank and file, springs real self-perfidy 
 Subtler, so more pernicious, worse abhorr d 
 Than sheer automatism. For such will 
 Were merely will, sheerly the emptiness 
 Of indeterminate and self-estranged 
 Prejudgment. Every item for such law 
 Pure overposited by fiatism, 
 207 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Purely a puppet, of generic type 
 An instance merely and no fact at all 
 To be accounted with and reconciled 
 Lacks world-reality, stands sheerly for 
 The overlord s subjectivism (these stones 
 Regardlessness of innocence) no live 
 Ideal actuality, no truth. 
 Whence are all actions of such governance 
 (Wanting reality of governed selves) 
 Actions to no end of self-actual world, 
 No whole self-realization ; but denial 
 Of self s reality, self-governance. 
 Whence the commander, despot rigidly 
 By preconceived, so unadjustable 
 And inorganic fiat, worst of all 
 Forswears the self-world-organism, is most 
 Incapable, in all that touches him 
 As soldier, of an actual manliness ; 
 Most like machine when most authoritative, 
 Most judgmentless (most like these worldless walls) 
 When dooming most,when most court-martial judge. 
 And that some humanhood remains to these 
 By failure of the system quite to quench 
 Mutual regard for men s reality 
 208 
 
DREYFUS 
 
 Of independent soul-initiative 
 
 Shall scarce excuse the system which still fails. 
 
 Whence am I righteously (no blame of theirs) 
 Doom d as by plenum of accomplish d fate 
 To destiny, deplorable enough, 
 Deserved of any man who earnestly 
 And faithfully as may be serves, supports 
 The military system ; who at last 
 By very innocence of all offense 
 Charged in indictment gainst the monstrous scheme, 
 By very militar trustworthiness 
 (As I an officer was trustworthy 
 As stones and chains are somewhat trustworthy) 
 Realizes self best by this judgmentless 
 Oblivion of responsibility 
 For right nor wrong. I had the less deserved 
 This desolateness had my manhood less 
 Been soldierly. I, realizing at last 
 Soul s absolute self-responsibility, 
 Prologuize narrative (of soul s worst wrong 
 Men e er committed) with confession full : 
 In so far as I served and did command 
 Trustworthily am I deservingly 
 209 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Victim of mine old mediaeval zeal, 
 
 My monkish segregation self from world 
 
 Imposing an imposed authority 
 
 As martinet, disciplinary chief 
 
 To the death. Confess, mine innocence of all 
 
 Charges preferr d against me for worst crime 
 
 Imputable : and shall in all I say 
 
 Damning their disregard for right nor wrong 
 
 Damn by each jot and tittle of my proof 
 
 Of innocence myself to living death, 
 
 This desolate existence : righteously. 
 
 So in the narrative I rise beyond 
 
 The degradation, realize utterly 
 
 Since that first bitterness of mad turmoil 
 
 Transfiguring, regenerating all 
 
 Absolute freedom of contemplating 
 
 The terms of this my life-imprisonment : 
 
 Teaching the world (save in their zeal the guards - 
 
 That one last loss which scarce will leave me sane ! 
 
 Obliterate this written testimony!) 
 
 Men s horrible denial, vital void; 
 
 This manlessness which is their martial law ! 
 
 210 
 
TESLA 
 
 A LIFE-TIME vow d to service of mankind ! 
 
 Here mid these marvel- working manifold 
 
 Automata, built of my brain and strength, 
 
 To labor to increase man s energy! 
 
 Ay, not to human weal alone, but all 
 
 Earth s is the service dedicate; for, though 
 
 Human activity must needs exploit 
 
 Subhuman, subhumanity none less 
 
 Gains as the world at large by every new 
 
 Economy of practice : energy 
 
 Of all earth more effective by each least 
 
 Subtler adjustment of the mechanism. 
 
 All earth a mechanism, whatsoe er 
 
 Axes or fulcra ; molecules or minds 
 
 Alike one reservoir of fluid force 
 
 Unstable, by whose instability 
 
 Is mankind measurable. I, a man, 
 
 But an automaton of vital force 
 
 Directing by mine energy supreme 
 
 Of subtlest-sure adjustments world s work all 
 
 Through the self-dedication. In despite 
 
 Of self-supposed originality, 
 
 211 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Illusive independence; just because 
 Of mechanism-leadership, most subtly 
 A full-felt world-dependence; am I most 
 Machine, axis and fulcrum in this world ! 
 
 Is this thing so ? Am I this world-machine ? 
 
 Yea, for these many years I ve swiftly work d 
 
 Of this one guide and standard to my strength : 
 
 The more machine-like, so ideally 
 
 The more myself; the more this heart and brain 
 
 Conceive and execute automata, 
 
 The more myself realizes for the world 
 
 A genuine worldship. Such the mass; and such 
 
 The swiftness, such the motion : wherefore such 
 
 The mundane energy ! Thus have I wrought, 
 
 Thus-wise believing. And, by work s success 
 
 Even in its sort, proved my philosophy 
 
 Of practical purport and sufficient thus 
 
 To truth. So have I held; and still hold so. 
 
 Yet though in this present pause from labor s stress, 
 
 In this unprecedented need to weigh 
 
 Well the world-worth of this my way of life, 
 
 Springs an enthusiasm, yea, a zeal 
 
 For just such course as hitherto pursued ; 
 
 212 
 
TESLA 
 
 Yet in excess of zeal justly demands, 
 Ay, strangely preconceives, prejudges, ay, 
 An ultimate criticism, evaluation 
 Of my belief s foundations. Face to face 
 Start forth enthusiasm, soul-profound, 
 Soul-overwhelming ; ay, and to its face 
 A sudden void of all which had seem d proof, 
 A sudden need to prove anew a scheme 
 Wherein enthusiasm, valuing, 
 Self-judgment, criticism, have their place 
 For all-important. Can the mere machine 
 Be less mechanic for a blank despair ? 
 Have or despair or faith a meaning for 
 Automata ? And yet faith and despair 
 Are fundamental. I am fill d with faith, 
 Faith which but by supreme self-confidence 
 Demands establishment. In that despair 
 Which was mine for the fiery element 
 (Resuming locally an outlived past 
 Insensate of nebular immanence ?) 
 Which in an hour did lay waste all my work 
 Of decades ; in that sudden-sprung dismay 
 (At loss of cosmic process and contact 
 Too retrograde with force unfrigerate ?) 
 213 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Was nought of energy, no moving force, 
 No force-moved mass : the dedication, ceased ; 
 Stopp d, the world-service. This automaton, 
 CalPd work, quite disestablish d ; man or mind, 
 Axis or fulcrum shatter d ; in despite 
 Of universal energy (that keen 
 Condition of the first mass-birth) despair 
 Immeasurable and immitigable 
 Of this one personal estimate did end 
 The mechanism. In that hour I sat 
 Of a smoking, ashen, soul-denuded world ; 
 Which by the very world-essential soul 
 Of me (my blank despair) proved so no world. 
 Now is the world of this self-dedicate 
 Enthusiasm reestablished ; yea, 
 Scarce by dependence upon heat or cold ; 
 Not by an automatic world-device 
 Of mechanism ; but by world-design, 
 New zeal inrushing over all the void : 
 World rehabilitate by virtue of 
 This personal estimate new-vitalized. 
 Can such a world whose being so depends 
 On faith, non-being on a mere despair, 
 Be mechanism ? Can the self be given 
 214 
 
TESLA 
 
 Wholly to mankind s service, nor thereby 
 
 But subtlier, richlier serve this personal sense 
 
 Of value, paramount and lord of all ? 
 
 Ha ! What my mere machines (analogous 
 
 With men s souls, but not thereby men !) must needs 
 
 Lack, is this manufacturing soul-self ; 
 
 Which not alone mechanically makes, 
 
 But knows : I make ; and, knowing so, transcend 
 
 All mechanism . Ha ! and this my soul 
 (Analogous with such automata, 
 But not thereby mechanic) actualizes 
 Self, both, and world-mechanics by best being 
 Not a world-dedication, but a stuff 
 Which knows : * I dedicate and by this sense 
 
 Alone am world-devoted . So shall zeal 
 Establish zeal ; insistently maintain 
 Mechanics which alone were mechanism 
 By fundamental faith. Else were despair 
 Indifferent ; world indifferent, work or nought. 
 Else were the fiery destruction, no 
 Undoing ; nor the work evaluable. 
 Else were world-service utterly inane. 
 
 So, to the reconstruction. Whilst I work 
 215 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Still at the old mechanics, to conceive 
 World for a self-world, so conceive the scheme 
 Of service as to show the work in sooth 
 Auto-energic : ay, no longer but 
 Postponement of world s sheer devitalizing. 
 For I have dream d and taught that all my work 
 Aim d at postponement of the inevitable 
 Infrigeration ; sought economy 
 Merely of dissipation with a view 
 To eking-out what energy remains 
 From the more wasteful methods. I have sought 
 Decrease destruction in opposing war 
 With war s mechanics push d to limit of 
 Conceivable effectiveness ; thereby 
 With horror of catastrophe to cow 
 The blustering militance. This have I done 
 Toward mass-economy, postponing time 
 Of final destitution. I have sought 
 By chemic subtlety to fertilize 
 Barrenness to a cropping, that mankind 
 At far less waste than of his flocks and herds 
 Might live by bread unto remoter years : 
 Postponing sure starvation. I have sought 
 Far beyond all else so to utilize 
 216 
 
TESLA 
 
 Sun s energy remaining best by forcing 
 Electric instability, to use 
 Earth for one vast elastic reservoir 
 Of fluid potency ; by setting up 
 Local disturbances at least expense, 
 To energize with practical potency 
 For warmth, food, shelter, vitality or strength 
 As needed every molecule of earth 
 Without molecular destruction : yet 
 Admitting how inevitably must 
 Practical worth of molecules (if not 
 By deepest definition matter s self ? ) 
 In the wellnigh interminable course 
 Of dissipation thus electrically 
 Set up, be slowly, fatally none less 
 Exhausted. For, howe er device may aim 
 Toward fostering inequilibrium 
 Of potencies, must every transformation 
 To energy mechanical set up 
 A kinematic equilibrium ; 
 In so far irretrievably exhaust 
 The potency. Thus in a sort my work 
 Has seem d a self-defeat; a weak attempt 
 (However by comparison immense) 
 217 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Toward mere postponement of an evil day 
 
 Inevitable ; and an end of life, 
 
 Nowise disbarr d. And in mechanic scheme 
 
 Must whatsoe er economy but be 
 
 Relative to preceding waste ; none less 
 
 Modicum of exhaustion, dissipation 
 
 Proceeding still, if temporarily 
 
 New wealth yet unexploited open up 
 
 Delusive vista ; or if, for direct 
 
 Acknowledgment of waning, earlier wants 
 
 Be strictly curtail d. Such has been my work 
 
 Acknowledging a self-defeat, devoting 
 
 Self to a general and still foredoom d 
 
 Lost cause, forlorn hope without source of hope, 
 
 Such were a mere mechanics self-destroy d. 
 
 Now but the mechanism proves to need 
 A self-establisher ; and equally 
 Possesses such. World- work is self-sustain d. 
 Devotion is of zeal and faith ; the self 
 Ever more richly realized in the work 
 World-dedicate ; and nowise in such work 
 Susceptible to any self-defeat. 
 What of this world, which, being world of self, 
 218 
 
TESLA 
 
 Mechanics auto-vital, self-sustain d, 
 Cannot, whatso the dedication, still 
 In dedication suffer self-defeat ? 
 What of a world of faith, self-consciously 
 A work and an evaluing of work ? 
 Were my works wrong ? Were there no value in 
 Civilization, ever earning more 
 By less comparative of waste ? Or were 
 Such effort valuable, reason -right, 
 Definable in any terms at all, 
 Just because over and above the work 
 Is valuation : consciousness and faith ? 
 Man cannot live by bread alone ; man s wars 
 Shall cease but for disgust at worst, dismay 
 Which enginery (putting-aside from self 
 Destructiveness) may mean : not enginery 
 (Pride in a pompous, loud ingeniousness) 
 Be war s cessation ; and t were zeal for work 
 In work s enlarged horizon which my skill 
 Shall kindle : not the work-fact, but the joy 
 In estimated process skill-sustain d. 
 Such were solution. I deny no whit 
 The perfect-proved mechanical dismay 
 Which fronts us ; from the first every least act 
 219 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Defined mechanicwise for physical 
 Equilibration of some potency 
 Has been and still shall be self-dissipant, 
 Doom d to destruction, still degenerating 
 Despite all ingenuity ; and so 
 Unthinkable for any world of faith, 
 Enthusiasm or intelligence 
 Of workmanship. So from the first has been 
 Evaluation ; which through every stroke 
 Of mass-in-motion more and more intends 
 Purposive adaptation ; more and more 
 Posits economy, by utterly 
 Forswearing standard of economism 
 For fundamental. Every motion-mass, 
 Factors of energy, were such but by 
 The estimation : I am mass and move . 
 Every dissemination, every fall 
 Of energy toward equilibrium 
 (In the cooling process of the fiery scheme) 
 Stands register d eternally, by more 
 And more recomplication through and through 
 The evaluation ; which, by every move 
 And loss mechanic, waxes in design d 
 Enthusiasm, in the psychic strength 
 220 
 
TESLA 
 
 Of comprehension, organized, concrete 
 
 Self-adaptation, self-devotion through 
 
 Rich Her a world of process, of a growth 
 
 Equal to regress ; yet by nature of 
 
 Growth by contrast with physical decay, 
 
 Infinitely, ay, qualitative-wise 
 
 Supremely of importance. Through and through 
 
 Is world a scheme of matter-motived loss : 
 
 ParalleFd, ay, in sure polarity 
 
 Of meaning, by its equal counterpart, 
 
 The psychic increase : as psychology 
 
 Means growth ; so physics, dissipance; and both, 
 
 One static process. As all energy, 
 
 Or wastefully, or by my subtlest scheme 
 
 Economized, must dissipate (the mass 
 
 CalPd man, move as a mass with less each hour 
 
 Of physic-energy in flesh and brain) 
 
 So must the zeal (if mass be possible 
 
 Even for its own defeat) of comprehension, 
 
 Enthusiastic teleology 
 
 Of ordering estimate evalue more 
 
 And more unendingly. My whole work looks 
 
 Ever toward richlier comprehending world 
 
 In self ; toward organism (fleshly still 
 
 221 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 If fleshly less preponderant) which shall be 
 
 As far beyond our present human frame 
 
 As man excels the nuclear molecule 
 
 Of star-stuff. As my world-intelligence 
 
 Sprung from the nebula ; so springs, in just 
 
 The same continuous frigeration, some 
 
 More-than-man and some more-than-heat to hold 
 
 System eternally : some less-than-heat 
 
 With heat s evanishment indifferently 
 
 To life s perpetuance. I in my purge 
 
 By fiery holocaust, I in my sense 
 
 Of world-habilitation totally 
 
 Conclude an universe ; as molecule 
 
 Of nebula concluded, still concludes 
 
 Only less man-significantly such 
 
 Eternal worldship. Every organism 
 
 Chemic or supra-physiologic each 
 
 Is perpetuity. Mine energy 
 
 Of world is inexhausting, being a faith. 
 
 What possibility of after-life ? 
 
 What meaning to expected end of all ? 
 
 What worth to cyclic rhythm, counterpoise 
 
 And energy exhausted ? These were mere 
 
 Partial interpretation of work done 
 
 222 
 
TESLA 
 
 And so defined as ended, still foredoom d ! 
 The worker were not done, still less foredoom d 
 Who is criterion of continuance ! 
 What else were spirit than this zeal to work 
 A self-salvation by my made machines 
 Serving in sort my human world ? And yet 
 More than this manifold and marvel-seeming 
 Mechanic ingenuity were this : 
 
 I make : and know ; and cannot foil my faith 
 
 Which were criterion even of despair ; 
 
 Eternity and continuity 
 
 Even of the fiery purge, ashen defeat . 
 So have I sought and found automaton ; 
 Auto-establisher through every stroke 
 Of world-dependent, man-devoted zeal. 
 Only by mass-transcendence might I mean 
 Mass, motion, energy : and I am these : 
 Original, creative, absolute 
 As any other among all mankind ! 
 
 Nay, t were insane ! Were not the fiery fact 
 Lord of despair, master of this machine, 
 Irrevocably proved, by mockery 
 Of mine illusive insight, from the first 
 223 
 
POEMS OF PERSONALITY 
 
 Creator and created ? Such defeat, 
 As by too great success at calling back 
 The obsolete incandescence, proves the world 
 Unmeaning mass ; my faith or my despair 
 Product and only thereby factor too 
 In the world-energy. I feel and will 
 (With far less vital zeal) but as a flame 
 Devours : and ashens with its food s surcease, 
 
 224 
 
(OTbe Rtoewtoe 
 
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