University of California Berkeley 
 
STAR-FLOWERS, 
 
 A POEM OF THE 
 
 WOMAN'S MYSTERY 
 
 BY 
 
 THOMAS LAKE HARRIS 
 
 AWAKE, arise ! with Morning cast 
 Brave songs for gladness on the blast. 
 Kejoice, respire! Heaven must achieve 
 Its ends on Earth, where lives retrieve. 
 
 CANTO THE SIXTH 
 
 FOUNTAINGROVE 
 
 PRIVATELY FEINTED 
 
 1887 
 
STAR-FLOWERS 
 
 CANTO THE SIXTH. 
 
 868738 
 
DEDICATION. 
 
 IN Woman's consecrated form 
 I set the verse against the storm, 
 That it may glide by joys that bless, 
 Diffusive from her loveliness. 
 
 She bore aloft on radiant arm 
 The Joy-Babe, mantling from her charm. 
 What likeness in the babe appears ? 
 That of the Child amid the spears. 
 
 She spaced her being full through mine : 
 It held the Babe displayed divine. 
 ' Faithful/ she spake, 'as we bestow, 
 The Golden Child doth by us go.' 
 
 Our Issa's name is ' Wise-to-bless ! ' 
 
 
 
 Fold in the song my Preciousness. 
 Fore-view, fore-strive, fore-love, fore-know : 
 Ope while she fashions to bestow. 
 
 So we will dedicate the page 
 
 To all who hope Love's Golden Age, 
 
 And feel it dawning into them, 
 
 As the Crowned Babe of Bethlehem. 
 
STAR-FLOWERS. 
 
 CANTO THE SIXTH. 
 
 INVOCATION. 
 I. 
 
 THOU who dost brighten earth with beams divine ; 
 
 Thou GOD, my Father, glorious, glowing, golden, 
 Making the day, for such warm pleasure-twine, 
 
 To wake irradiant in Thy ardors folden ; 
 
 Thou who wert in the Silver Age beholden, 
 All premcarnate from the solar prime; 
 
 Thou who, when man by wintry night did colden, 
 Envailed in human weeds Thy Youth sublime, 
 My heart is in Thy Heart ; Thy Word is in my rhyme. 
 
 II. 
 
 Therefore, whilst Thought, in light of morn excursive, 
 
 Lifts like a warrior armed with sun-bright spear, 
 And the dim shadows from the brain dispersive 
 
 Fade to white vapors that for rains appear, 
 
 I kindle fervidly, till songs anear 
 Like the small love-babes of the Mother-mind : 
 
 They multiply, as stars when heaven is clear 
 And Night their flowers in fire-wreaths hath untwined, 
 To breathe by living rays for quickening in mankind. 
 
6 STAR-FLO WEES* 
 
 III. 
 
 The Silver Age enrapturing did hold Thee : 
 
 Thou wert the Inspiration of its Powers : 
 Its lady-thought for preciousness did fold Thee, 
 -Bridegroom; 6 JFtei'des, in her enchanted bowers. 
 
 'Hitiu didst impre.gn'ate her immortal flowers, 
 ^iillfiht^stitjr ybsei E&tf-ft goddess-girl, 
 
 Diffusing wealth to fill the rounding hours ; 
 Weaving for infancy through woman's pearl ; 
 Leading the Word-seed forth by song and breath and whirl. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Thy flames enkindled on the mountain altars, 
 Till melody by sevenfold waves wrought flow. 
 
 Thy Song-Word opened in the plexial psalters, 
 Till men vibrated as where thunders go 
 Wrought in humanities, and trumpets blow 
 
 Shaped as bright warriors mailed in sounding fire. 
 I waken in that w T orld of long-ago, 
 
 When Thou didst clasp the People for Thy lyre, 
 
 And wreathe the bliss-fraught mind with music for attire. 
 
 V. 
 
 Truly Thou wert for them the Joyful King : 
 
 The winds, the waters, met mankind by dances ; 
 The naiad lifted from her crystal spring, 
 
 Glowing to jeweled radiance from Thy glances. 
 
 Again, again the Silver Time advances ; 
 The prehistoric years make blithe return : 
 
 O'er the pale orient rise the gleaming lances ; 
 The quickening Planet thrills, her bands to spurn : 
 Thy powers are in the winds; the waters for Thee burn. 
 
STAR-FLOWERS . 
 VI. 
 
 But now Thou comest post-incarnate, surely, 
 More glorious than in that far time before, 
 
 And they who worshiped to Thy Presence hourly 
 And in their manhood from Thee wove and wore 
 Robes of the Word's intelligence, and bore 
 
 The cross of morning in the breast and brain, 
 Flush for the brightening as new-spangled ore, 
 
 Wrought all the morning's radiance to regain. 
 
 The fires of their swift breath are mingled in my strain. 
 
 VII. . 
 
 Apollo of the Morn ! Christ-Jesus after ! 
 
 Behold me worshiping ; illuminate. 
 Be Thou unto me as the God of Laughter, 
 
 Gliding for gladness through the plexial gate, 
 
 That song a little while may antedate 
 The rapturings, and thrill the dense morass 
 
 Where Misery clasps and claims the desolate, 
 And through this darksome world of sorrow pass 
 Waves of delight that glow like seas of molten glass. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Fuse Thou the crystals of white thought ; inbreathe ; 
 
 Make bridal glories of Thy Love's bestowing, 
 Till jeweled words melodious shall wreathe. 
 
 I chant, I charm, I cheer for such bestrowing. 
 
 Song billows in me to the overflowing : 
 Imperial, godlike, Poesy is wrought 
 
 As in Apollo's manhood for the showing : 
 In Helios-Christus it is lifted, fraught 
 As when day shone by Him who erst the python fought. 
 
8 STAR-FLOWERS. 
 
 BRIDAL-MORN IN LILISTAN. 
 
 I woke by morn in Issa's violet chamber, 
 
 Clasped in the lilies of her marriage bed ; 
 While the sweet poesies began to clamber 
 
 Through full delights my bosom's life that wed. 
 
 Mine eyes, on slumbering loveliness that fed, 
 Beheld the Beauty of the Word arise, 
 
 Making for morn its gold-flowers to dispread. 
 Sure there is rest where God weaves paradise. 
 Morn through the bridal girl by joy-in-mystery plies. 
 
 X. 
 
 Lo, there were stars folding to deeps of azure. 
 
 The night was vanishing from breast to brow, 
 And like the ebbing tides that sink for pleasure, 
 
 The quietudes of sleep were passing now. 
 
 Sure of this blessedness I dare avow : 
 The wakening rose upon her with a tide 
 
 Irradiant, quivering through the bosom-snow. 
 Dear lips, they touch to mine for joys that glide. 
 ' Faithful/ she said ; then slipped into my arms, full bride. 
 
 XI. 
 
 'Now, be thou good to me and hold me still, 
 
 For I am wakening down into my feet ; 
 And in my bosom is a kissing-hill, 
 
 That rises for the day's bestowing sweet ; 
 
 And in the brain are little fires, that greet 
 The eyes to kindle for the day's advance ; 
 
 And I am quickening with the pleasure-heat, 
 By joys that in the zone make circling dance.' 
 The mirrors in her palms showed open countenance. 
 
STAR-FLOWERS. 
 XII. 
 
 There is a science of true palmistry. 
 
 Earth knows as nothing of the lady's hand. 
 Past, present, future of eternity 
 
 May open, through its mirror to expand. 
 
 'See there,' she said, 'the ancient Silver Land.' 
 The picture touched into the visual sense : 
 
 I kissed through myriad powers, a woven band : 
 By visioniiigs mysterious and immense, 
 The Silver Age that morn through ours made immanence. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 She laid her palm in the vibrating hollow 
 
 That meets the breast ; the Silver Age gave play. 
 I thought of when our Father was Apollo 
 
 And shone resplendent in the morning's ray. 
 
 Her palm kissed in the plexus as to say, 
 And her pure innocence led sweet dispense. 
 
 I sought to rise, a bridegroom golden-gay : 
 She said, ' Not so ; from raptures too intense 
 Hold me a little while, thy penny for expense.' 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Her face for merriment commenced to dimple ; 
 
 She lifted, as a little to uncover; 
 Then silver bells she made to ring, to tinkle 
 
 Out of her finger-tips, ' lover, lover, 
 
 Look through thy bride-girl to the Light above her.' 
 So through her mystery I saw the Morn, 
 
 Lord-Lady shining, and the radiance wove her 
 From inmost outwardly, thus to adorn. 
 She said, 'Now you may rise, the day is in me born.' 
 
 vi2 
 
10 STAR-FLOWERS. 
 
 1. 
 MESSAGE. 
 
 Needs but a little ease, a little rest ; 
 
 Then from its agonies my shade will hest. 
 
 But rest is hard to find and vain to keep, 
 
 Where sorrowings are twined from deep to deep* 
 
 Love me a little then, dear friends below : 
 
 Love opes the song-vein whence the numbers flow. 
 
 The social wreath that twines my shadowed rod 
 Lifts from enclustering vines the grapes of God. 
 All in Earth's arid soil play glimmering fires. 
 All where the Peoples toil hang viewless lyres, 
 Waiting but for the breath that bears God's glee, 
 To thrill the space beneath with melody. . 
 
 All on Earth's stony cliffs that rise forlorn, 
 Are sculptured hieroglyphs to meet the morn, 
 Statues of stately thought with solar eyes, 
 Till they the beams have caught from God's uprise. 
 Deep in the bowery glens where streamlets glide, 
 Robed all in silver vails the coy nymphs hide. 
 
 Hark ! 'tis the silvan horn of rustic Pan. 
 Glees in his breast are born for coming man ; 
 For now the serpent's trail, its poisoned heat, 
 That pierced till life grew faint at Sorrow's feet, 
 And made the paths accursed where lovers led, 
 Fade like a dream, dispersed from Morning's bed. 
 
STAR-FLOWERS. 11 
 
 THE EIGHTH SENSE: OCCULT NATURE. 
 
 Man is an instrument of many chords. 
 
 The sevenfold senses, in one octave playing, 
 Build the eighth sense, a grandeur that affords 
 
 Vigor to penetrate through time's delaying, 
 
 And summon from the rock, for the obeying, 
 The sprites who weave their life-work in the stone ; 
 
 They from whose fingers forms the gold by spraying ; 
 In Nature's occult realms who toil unknown ; 
 Who wreathe the crystal gems, art- work of Nature's throne. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 A Nature folds in Nature, occulted, 
 
 Wrought in pale crystal, beautiful beyond 
 Dreams that the artist's fervid thought have fed ; 
 
 Palaced, cathedraled or pavilioned ; 
 
 Quivering with life, as wakening to respond 
 Where the swift breathings of the Word-fire go. 
 
 I entered paths that ope for lady-wand 
 Through secret arch-ways far in Lilimo'. 
 A sacred Lady led, that I the way might know. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 There the rock-spirits, idealities 
 
 Who think and feel but in their art alone, 
 
 Wrought in the occult nature-play ; their eyes 
 Of calm intelligence embodied shone 
 Through hands that turn and turn, evolving stone 
 
 By its prime essence, white as snow-flakes given, 
 Or the pearled hail o'er wintry landscape sown, 
 
 On the pale wings of arctic tempests driven, 
 
 Yet strangely all diffused in silvery light of heaven. 
 
12 STAR-FLOWERS. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 SHE who was with me spake, ' Our daughter broke 
 The spell that held this nature-woman's realm. 7 
 
 She willed, its silent mystery to evoke ; 
 
 She touched a stone man then, and spake, ' Unhelm ! ' 
 But he came forth a tree in shape, an elm 
 
 Or oak or maple of the northern clime, 
 
 Loaded as when the wet snows overwhelm ; 
 
 A talking tree, that said, "Tis not yet Time/ 
 
 She breathed upon the tree warm through its frozen rime. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 Then the tree occulted for Her, till light 
 
 Of faintest emerald began to show. 
 She touched him by the will-force of Her might, 
 
 And the brown bark shaped on his limbs to grow. 
 
 'Good tree, good tree! 7 She said, as whispering low, 
 And he made ope to breathe through shining pores. 
 
 She led a vapor, wafting o'er him so, 
 And the tree walked, feeling to find the doors 
 That, maybe, open on to Earth's exterior floors. 
 
 XX. 
 
 'This,' spake the Lady, 'is a tree of good, 
 
 That should be seen in Earth's new garden-land. 
 
 Ages might pass, growing in this cold flood, 
 Ere he could shape to that material stand : 
 But She who hastens states puts forth the hand. 
 
 He will involve into an earthly tree, 
 
 And, organizing through its cells, expand 
 
 And germinate for births of forestry. 
 
 His fruit shall hold the gift of love-in-chastity.' 
 
STAR-FLOWERS. 13 
 
 XXI. 
 
 Then by a grace She touched into the ball. 
 
 I laughed to her for joy of this strange thing. 
 In the eighth sense I felt the rise and fall 
 
 Of the tree's life, springing and autumning ; 
 
 But Issa cried, 'Nuts, nuts! 7 she wove a ring 
 Of speech-fire through the pulses of the brain. 
 
 I answered, " Mother!" rising as a king: 
 My bosom lifted in a fiery pain : 
 I clasped upon the tree to hold him and to gain. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 The tree resisted me ; and then She said, 
 
 ' These nature-things all strive ere they submit: 
 
 Hold, or your space-form will drop sudden dead/ 
 The tree writhed like a serpent of the pit : 
 He coiled, he prest, with cold keen force he bit ; 
 
 Then all at once lay languid as a worm. 
 She spake, ' 'Tis all an exercise of wit. 
 
 The laughing man can hold all things in term/ 
 
 She smiled into the tree, and he stood calm and firm. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 ' There's life in all things,' said the Mother then: 
 ' Evoke his life ; life may be touched by love : 
 
 Even as trees are Earth's poor natural men.' 
 I loved the tree ; his pulse began to shove 
 And pushed to budded features, and a dove 
 
 Flew from the Mother's bosom, and it swept 
 Circling and circling by the charm enwove. 
 
 The tree sighed for the bird ; it almost wept, 
 
 Till, when the bird touched in, with quivering love it leapt. 
 
14 STAR^FLOWERS. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 "Thou son/ She spake, 'this lesson take to heart. 
 
 Earth's men are trees, in nature-time that grow. 
 They plan, they build, by Nature's occult art, 
 
 Faiths, customs, empires, all as woven snow. 
 
 There is no real in the thing they know. 
 Theirs is an art-vail, in illusion spun. 
 
 When Earth is opened as this void below, 
 Your Issa to her doing will have won : 
 Mankind, who are as trees, will blossom to the sun. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 ' In airs of Nature's atmosphere moves light, 
 Where natural fire alone makes penetration.' 
 
 I shuddered ; then grew nerved to sudden might, 
 And cried, "'Tis breath that leads illumination." 
 The Mother said, ' Yes, by an emanation : 
 
 If you can breathe from Us till air holds fire, ' 
 
 I laughed; She spake, 'Nay, hear the termination, 
 
 The nature-air itself will then respire, 
 
 And meet you in a glee, and thrill you as a lyre. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 ' So transposition works for transposition : 
 
 All things change slowly round the changing man : 
 The light will change till Heaven shines full to vision ; 
 
 Makes openings then, leads in your Lilistan. 
 
 In Us, One-Twain, hold for the service-plan, 
 Since We are in you, henceforth and for aye.' 
 
 I answered, " Mother ! " laughing so ; a fan 
 Of heavenly odors smote my breast for play. 
 I laughed again; She smiled, 'The trees shall yet obey. 
 
STAR-FLOWERS. 15 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 "Tis a poor feast where there is no rejoicing, 
 
 And a poor God who cannot spin a glee, 
 Making a bliss upon the lip for voicing, 
 
 And leading life into its melody. 
 
 'Tis a cold God who cannot melt the sea 
 Of frozen grief that holds mankind in death. 
 
 God were not God did He not hear to thee.' 
 I laughed again ; the Mother caught my breath : 
 She smiled to me ; She spake, ' Thus trouble vanisheth. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 'For We, One-Twain, move in a glee enafter. 
 
 'Thou shalt be merry,' is Our new commanding; 
 And death shall be extinguished in the laughter ; 
 
 And darkness perish from the understanding ; 
 
 And man's right heart lift for the woman's handing, 
 Till We make wedlock in the plexial glee ; 
 
 And there shall be a Word-staff for enwanding ; 
 And the great whirl shall fashion, so to be 
 As if the world were wrought in solar circles three.' 
 
 TIME-SHADOW: LAUGHTER-LIGHT. 
 
 She led me carefully, my steps returning, 
 
 For now it was high noon : She wrought a bliss : 
 I worshiped Her, the Lady of the Morning : 
 
 My lips into Her feet made praise by kiss. 
 
 Sweet was the air of Lilimo', I wis. 
 There Lily met me, ' Faithful, look not old : 
 
 You found the time-years in that dim abyss.' 
 Like as Tithonus, gray and weary-cold, 
 My lucid form had changed, all whitened from its gold. 
 
16 STAR-FLOWEKS. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 I laughed to say, " Not Father Comfort surely, 
 But Father Time a-creeping with his scythe ! " 
 
 It seemed so comical a jest, yet purely 
 Original : I touched into her hive 
 Of bosom sweets, but something was alive ; 
 
 The gold bees plumed upon my wrinkled hand. 
 I laughed to see the airy insects drive 
 
 Their multitude, all as a pleasure-wand : 
 
 I shook with laughter then, till strengths came forth to 
 stand. 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 A storm of merry music entered me, 
 
 That settled into serious sweet delight. 
 So Lily led anew T the royalty : 
 
 Old age retired, 'twas lost in manhood's might, 
 
 Though still the locks were sprinkled silver-white. 
 Then gradual youth beamed through the manly style, 
 
 And joy returned with love-gifts that requite 
 The burden-bearers : all the realm gave smile. 
 Out of an argent pool a wave-nymph rose the while, 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 Like Aphrodite from the adrian foam ; 
 
 For this was deep in Lilimo's pearled hollow. 
 The silver love-waves warbled whilst they clomb, 
 
 By kissing billows wreathing so to follow : 
 
 Some rose grotesque as tritons that might wallow : 
 What strange, fantastic elf- wives of the sea ! 
 
 She touched me ; ' Thou whose Sire was our Apollo/ 
 So came the words, 'warm this cold spray for me.' 
 My breast thrilled as a lyre ; its fires wrought melody. 
 
STAR-FLOWERS. 17 
 
 PLAYING E L E M E N T ARIES. 
 
 ' Woman is Wit: the harmless mischiefs please her,' 
 Said Lily-Sue ; 'the monkeys have a show : 
 
 A 'Little Bethel' or an 'Ebenezer' 
 
 Stands in their village, much as one below, 
 And they play earth-time in their memory-flow. 
 
 Come and see 'Zion Corners, way down east.' ' 
 A wise ape met us, all in sable. Lo ! 
 
 Saint Calvin surely, all adorned, increased, 
 
 Stood in the formal style of the uplifted beast. 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 One of the Adepts of the Silver Time 
 
 Had fashioned in his brain this theorem. 
 The monkey cried, '0 sinners of the prime, 
 
 Think not ye long shall flourish on the stem.' 
 
 I laughed, but Lily checked me. With a 'hem' 
 As Doctor Calvin might have made before, 
 
 He sniffed at me to smell Jerusalem ; 
 Then spake, 'Alas, young friend! seek Zion's door; 
 If you are one elect the faith may so restore.' 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 Then Lily formed a peppermint and gave 
 
 The sweetmeat to the animal : a groan 
 Heaved from his belly and he cried, 'Thou slave, 
 
 What paganisms fashion to thy bone ! 
 
 Know'st thou, the devil sits upon a throne, 
 Like as a splendid glorious golden man, 
 
 And many heathen worship him and tone 
 His praises in that wicked Lilistan. 
 This generation so far to perdition ran/ . 
 vi3 
 
18 STAR-FLOWERS. 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 She touched the beast, with ' Jacko, run and play/ 
 
 The ape broke loose to all-fours merrily : 
 His theorem closed in for that sweet day, 
 
 So he with nimble feet made for a tree. 
 
 Climbing far up the pillared greenery, 
 He gathered nuts and dropped them at her feet. 
 
 But Lily smiled, saying right pleasantly, 
 'The Earth below holds for a memory-seat 
 In beasts, who posture so the world-tale to repeat. 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 ' Religion, by an animal intent, 
 
 Weaves in the natural mankind its play. 
 Often the adepts wisely circumvent 
 
 Wrongs that ascend through savage faith to slay, 
 
 By means of elementaries who ray 
 From theorems.' A ram the thicket caught. 
 
 Lily made motions : joyful to obey 
 The ram uprose, a prelate's posture wrought, 
 Extended his fore-limb and for an alms besought. 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 Upon her lips she formed a sugar-plum : 
 
 He bowed with reverence to her dainty hand ; 
 
 Seemed for the courtesy quite overcome ; 
 
 Then, like a bishop fresh from Albion's land, 
 Assumed an altitude of grave command, 
 
 And wove his style in full canonicals, 
 As York or Canterbury brave and grand. 
 
 Episcopacy lives in animals, 
 
 And prebendaries, show by cattle from the stalls, 
 
STAR-FLOWERS. 19 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 But Lily touched the reverend ram : methinks 
 
 It were a goodly sight could mortals view. 
 He changed the fashion and with merry winks 
 
 Showed the arch-rabbi, every inch a jew. 
 
 A sacred knife out of his pouch he drew, 
 And made to play as those who circumcise. 
 
 Surely, the old time postures in the new, 
 Till in the harmless mimicry it dies, 
 Lost in the frolic sport that tickles to the eyes. 
 
 XL. 
 
 I laughed : a love-bird fluttered to her breast ; 
 
 She sped a joyous twinkle into me, 
 And touched the bird's bill : stirred its feathered crest : 
 
 The bird enlarged, with solemn gravity, 
 
 For the evangel of the Parrotry. 
 In a small voice such words he made escape, 
 
 ' Jewels and lace lead maids to harlotry : 
 Those who would fly perdition clothe in crape ; 
 For silk they sackcloth wear, and ribbons change for tape.' 
 
 2. 
 
 LAUGHTER SONG. 
 
 I love, I serve, I chant, I cheer : 
 I calm, I comfort, I endear. 
 I shake my songs to earth for glee, 
 In blossoms of the laughter tree. 
 
20 STAR-FLOWERS. 
 
 I beautify, I build, I bless, 
 Till hearts for joy God's Heart caress, 
 And Lilimola's violet hill 
 O'ercomes the proud conventicle. 
 
 I spring, I spray, all summer-sweet ; 
 I lead the lays by dancing feet ; 
 Then sprinkle dews of still delight, 
 O'erleaning as the summer night. 
 
 With harmless genial merriment 
 The sacred solemn theme is blent ; 
 It falls with kiss-drops in the rain, 
 To wake with bloom the arid plain. 
 
 The joy that in my being grew 
 At last made wings ; at last it flew ; 
 Then lifted in a swarm of glees, 
 To pierce mankind by ecstasies. 
 
 ' Laugh and grow fat/ saith earthly tongue. 
 Laugh and grow good ; grow kindly young 
 She whose pure throne is all a pearl, 
 Appears in heaven, GOD'S Laughing Girl. 
 
STAR-FLOWERS. 21 
 
 THE LAUGHING ANGEL: MEMORIES. 
 
 Blessed be God, blessed in merriment ! 
 
 Full service in full cheer makes overflowing. 
 Powers that for labor breathless lean o'erspent, 
 
 Rise in God's joyous breast to splendid showing. 
 
 Thou Earth distrest, thy joy is growing, growing : 
 The Laughing Angel opes thy tent forlorn : 
 
 Curtains of sackcloth gleam for gold-light glowing : 
 He wakes the dreamer with his rapturous horn ; 
 1 Tra la tra li ra la: kiss Laughter in the morn.' 
 
 XLII. 
 
 In my small youth an earthly priest revised me 
 
 To cruel postures from his hebrew god ; 
 Then in the Mohawk river he baptized me. 
 
 First through the solid ice they toiled to prod, 
 
 For winter ruled by his mosaic rod, 
 Then dipped me whilst I shivered as a ghost. 
 
 Sure my young soul, grown from Love's violet sod, 
 Shuddered in fear upon that iron-bound coast ; 
 But it was < saved from hell,' and Zion made a boast. 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 And Libbie, winsome convert, she was dipped, 
 
 A young canary feathered gold to fly, 
 And called a saintess, being fellowshiped 
 
 By the stern priest who preached, 'Why will ye die, 
 
 Ye sinners ? God is coming down the sky, 
 A locomotive engine, and his bell 
 
 Is rung by Jesus : hear his warning cry, 
 'Clear ye the track, for, if ye still rebel, 
 Jehovah's fiery wheels will grind ye down to hell.' ' 
 
22 S T A R - F LOWERS. 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 Dear Libbie, sweet, delicious, happy 'sinner'; 
 
 This god jehovah speared her on his spit, 
 All as a cyclops who would make a dinner 
 
 On such young hearts, well roasted in his pit. 
 
 Ah ! her young life was by that serpent bit ; 
 The miracle of goddesshood, in play 
 
 For piety and sentiment and wit, 
 And all the sacred virtues that array 
 The virgin soul for Heaven, chilled from that bitter day. 
 
 XLV. 
 
 1 Forbear, forget, forgive!' all these I do. 
 
 I was baptized : the life-staff well-nigh broken. 
 The ' father, son and holy ghost ' made view 
 
 To see the boy in ice-cold water soaken. 
 
 Apollo wrought a brave revenge, out-spoken, 
 For that : my voice by many a music souled, 
 
 And Faith's hypocrisies have been uncloaken : 
 For I baptize with cold, with deadly cold, 
 The Faith through Libbie's life perdition's lie that rolled. 
 
 FORE SHOWINGS. 
 
 1 Vengeance is Mine,' saith God, the God of Laughter. 
 
 Men shall stand joyful, meeting in the streets, 
 And say, 'Well, we have dropt from time's black rafter 
 
 And fall'n deep down, yet here no hell makes heats : 
 
 All womanhood holds God for mercy-seats ; 
 On every brow she gems the bridal crown ; 
 
 Through her oceanic breast we see the fleets 
 Of inspirations to our shores bear down ; 
 Whilst God walks in our midst, a Young Man without 
 frown. 
 
STAR-FLOWERS. ^o 
 
 XLVII. 
 
 ' The reverend prelates now are gospel cooks, 
 
 And they convert good grain to sacred cates, 
 And from the pages of their holy books 
 
 They teach the sense to feed on delicates, 
 
 That we may so receive as God awaits ; 
 He, the Arch Giver, being served and pleased. 
 
 Lo, God, the Poor Man, stood without the gates 
 Whilst in old time the gaudy lusts appeased ; 
 But God is now for cheer, through womanhood released. 
 
 XLVIII. 
 
 ' We thought of maids as dainty darling sinners 
 
 Whom we delighted in, though on the path 
 Wherein they flew, the charm, the rapture-bringers, 
 
 Followed Jehovah with a scourge of wrath. 
 
 We thought that she who giveth all she hath, 
 And in man's life is the most precious thing, 
 
 Might show hereafter all a blast, a scath, 
 Being unconverted to the gospeling, 
 
 And we might see her writhe, from Heaven, yet praise and 
 sing. 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 'The hardest and the cruelest of Faiths 
 
 Was that the wicked Middle Ages drew, 
 Enveloped all in red and fiery wraiths, 
 
 Begotten from the dream-world of the jew. 
 
 We dared not by our love-prayers to pursue 
 Our dear departed ; yea, our household dead. 
 
 We dared not ask God's mercies to enview 
 The bosom that imparadised our bed, 
 Or fold tHe babes that died ; babes oil her breasts that fed. 
 
24 STAR-FLOWERS. 
 
 L. 
 
 'We glimpsed to Heaven through eyes of hebrew strife ; 
 
 Bride, bride no more, and groom no more a groom ; 
 The greater, keener circumcision-knife 
 
 Cutting all manly honors in the tomb, 
 
 Making our souls as eunuchs from the womb ; 
 Cleaving from genius the essential part ; 
 
 Stripping from intellect its fruitful bloom, 
 And giving, for the earth whence men depart, 
 A life without its love, a home without its heart. 
 
 LI. 
 
 ' Now we have dropped from out old time's abyss, 
 
 To find we were made fools of, and were shorn 
 Of the great gifts we held in genesis, 
 
 And trained to grow hard stalk but hollow corn ; 
 
 Ruled by that god as by the hog-herd's horn, 
 And driven as the acorn-eating swine ; 
 
 Most miserable, desolated, torn 
 And bleeding, soul and body, like the vine 
 That the wild boars break down to spoil the coming wine. 
 
 LIL 
 
 ' Erect in form, on all-fours by the thought, 
 
 We ramped and ran, we made our merchandise. 
 Not much of God into our lives we caught ; 
 
 Yet what of God we felt we did despise, 
 
 Being imprisoned in a net of lies. 
 God was to us a concentrated jew ; 
 
 Most righteous, verily, in cruelties ; 
 Most merciful, while aye his vengeance drew 
 To an eternal flame for torments ever new. 
 
STAR-FLOWERS. 25 
 
 LIIL 
 
 'E'en the good Christ, he shone to us afar 
 
 But as the prophet of man's anguishings, 
 Holding his dreadful parent's wrath to bar, 
 
 Whilst the swift doom swept on with fiery wings. 
 
 Dear Christ ! how could we hold him in the stings ? 
 How strip the God-Word of the hebrew skin ? 
 
 Our elements were poisoned to their springs 
 By the great social, sexual, saintly sin, 
 Engendering larvous faiths, corrupting where they win. 
 
 LIV. 
 
 'There is a core of truth in christianism : 
 
 Tis base, 'tis baneful, but 'twas born of bliss. 
 'Twas a boy babe spoiled in the circumcision, 
 
 Then flung dishonored far through time's abyss, 
 
 To weave himself a robe of bitterness ; 
 To grow among the lions and the pards ; 
 
 To feel imprisoned hungers through him hiss, 
 Craving the holiness his shape discards ; 
 To thrill to vain desires in Earth's prophetic bards.' 
 
 TWILIGHT OF THE GODS: THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 Night darkens o'er Valhalla ; now draws on 
 
 The time foretold, 'the twilight of the gods.' 
 Huge Odin swoons and, like a skeleton, 
 
 Wastes the vast form, wrought all of battle-rods. 
 
 Now giant Thor, red from long slaughter, nods ; 
 The sleepy eyes drip tears instead of gore. 
 
 Balder the Beautiful lifts through the clods 
 That lords and ladies once for vestures wore : 
 The Sun makes morn again ; Balder is young once more, 
 vi 4 
 
26 STAR-FLOWERS. 
 
 LVL 
 
 Now mother Frigga, she whose blue eyes glistened 
 
 Till skies caught azure from her splendid tear ; 
 She who did grow so ancient and enwizeiied, 
 
 As hoary Time in woman to appear ; 
 
 She who sat crooning by the planet's bier, 
 Dissolves her age into the aged men 
 
 Who pierced her through her daughters by the spear. 
 With stony feet she turns the world-wheel ; then 
 The woven fate-winds ply : she finds the prime again. 
 
 LVII. 
 
 Balder the Beautiful has risen ; arisen 
 Even through human nature, and I claim 
 
 The splendors of his genius to unprison, 
 For poesies that set the world a-flame. 
 The Father said, 'Thou son, there is a game 
 
 That two can play at in this verse of thine. 
 I make a shame to overcome the shame : 
 
 I will put reason in a cup of wine, 
 
 And thou shalt drink for Me, tasting of the divine/ 
 
 LVIII. 
 
 I drank ; then passed the cup to ladygood, 
 
 Arid thence it was returned, and words were given, 
 Wherein the Beautiful wrought blossomhood. 
 
 In ancient faiths the Mother-thought found haven. 
 
 The Mother hath Her image reengraven 
 Where'er the Beautiful displayed the bow : 
 
 Unto the last she hath by Beauty striven : 
 Lovers and Poets thus the mystery show ; 
 But as a rosebud found enavalanched in snow, 
 
STAR-FLOWERS. 27 
 
 LIX. 
 
 Ever, forever, Beauty the imperial 
 
 Moves by a mystery, still to circumvent 
 The fallen faiths, sunk prone from the aerial, 
 
 Degrading manhood to a base content 
 
 With surfacings and with their foul intent. 
 Beauty, though by a village maid's advance, 
 
 May lead the youth, till he stands eminent 
 Where the war-horses of the day-king prance, 
 And the swift chariot wheels beam in the solar glance. 
 
 LX. 
 
 The Beautiful despise not ; 'tis the charm 
 
 Wherein the One-Twain weave life's universe. 
 
 The lip, the bosom and the rounded arm 
 Delight the eyes of God so to immerse 
 Full pleasantness within them, and to purse 
 
 The wish-thought of the Infinite anew. 
 God ever seeks His Love to reimburse, 
 
 For all the charm that through Her gifts He drew : 
 
 So ages in their flight by loveliness pursue. 
 
 LXI. 
 
 God loves the beautiful, for Beauty ever 
 
 Rises into His Genius, making sweet. 
 The earth of God is plenished by its river ; 
 
 So the One-Twain by full perfections meet, 
 
 And in their union build man's music-seat. 
 My thoughts are driven by a radiant whirl : 
 
 The heart of Lilistan in mine gives beat. 
 Droop thy proud banners, Earth ; they shall infurl. 
 God the Young Man comes forth, leading His Goddess Girl. 
 
28 STAR-FLOWERS. 
 
 LXIL 
 
 One spake to me, '0 king, thou art transported, 
 
 And utter things of too much stateliness.' 
 I answered, "Nay, the Truth that long I courted 
 
 Now makes to me as brides when they undress. 
 
 So the imprisoned wisdoms leave duress." 
 Responded he, 'Thou wilt be damned, no doubt, 
 
 According to the creed that folk profess 
 Who hold to faith but by a nature-sprout : 
 The antlers of the elks grow from the rabble rout.' 
 
 A DISCOURSE OF RELIGION. 
 
 They make in Heaven a jest of christianism ; 
 
 Superb superlatives of ridicule 
 Heaping upon the mighty nature-schism, 
 
 That builds for the ecclesiastic rule. 
 
 Said one, 'That christianism is a mule 
 'Twixt hebrew ass and a paganic steed : 
 
 'Tis barren, therefore : it seems pious-cool : 
 Not men, its loins they do but specters breed. 
 Beside the tree of life 'tis but a poisonous weed.' 
 
 LXIV. 
 
 I spake, " Now you are splendid and superb." 
 
 He cried, 'Nay, nay, I virtue in my stones, 
 And through my body grows full many an herb 
 
 That kings might profit by upon their thrones. 
 
 The chasteness of our God by me intones, 
 And I have thought full often that a verse 
 
 Might well be woven where the planet groans, 
 Till godly men should christianism curse, 
 As the Sweet Good, transposed to serve the worst of worse. 
 
STAR-FLOWERS* 29 
 
 LXV. 
 
 ' Look at it : Christ taught simple Communism. 
 
 They make the convert a communicant ; 
 They dip him into Christ by the baptism. 
 
 Like hungry cormorants with eyes aslant 
 
 They pierce the communists, whose bosoms pant 
 To realize : aye, never they forgive 
 
 The man who is a real hierophant ; 
 Who lives in fact as they by seemings live ; 
 To whom the Savior-will is made imperative. 
 
 LXVI. 
 
 ' We gather up the martyrs of the age ; 
 
 We shew them where it was and why they failed. 
 They but sang ballads in the prison-cage : 
 
 If Freedom smote their eyes the vision quailed : 
 
 They pierced not Superstition where it sailed, 
 The huge black vampire, vailing Heaven from sight : 
 
 They shrank into the shadowings and paled ; 
 They never dared to touch that thing aright, 
 Whereby the Living God draws man to His delight. 
 
 LXVII. 
 
 ' Now I talk pious : Wesley, that good fellow, 
 
 Planted a seed that saints call ' Methodism.' 
 'Twas first a calf, now 'tis a bull to bellow : 
 
 'Tis a huge horn, pushed through the circumcision ; 
 
 A Jewish paganism in revision : 
 It plays its fool game for the middle class ; 
 
 A gospel with a universal mission, 
 To save the world as with a looking-glass 
 Where souls to jesus gaze ere to his arms they pass. 
 
30 STAR-FLOWERS. 
 
 LXVIII. 
 
 1 How they would kick, if He his arms enfolded ! 
 
 How they would curse if He but willed his will, 
 And said to them, 'Go ye to be remolded 
 
 In righteousness, by holiness to fill 
 
 The world : 'the swine look up to Heaven for swill, 
 And it to them is but the consummation 
 
 Of the self-life whereby their instincts thrill. 
 They hope self-life, led to its coronation, 
 *And Christ held theirs by creed, but- ne'er by immination. 
 
 LXIX. 
 
 ' Eeformer Wesley, Truth adorn his brows ! 
 
 He made God-Christ a cuckold ; Church, the bride, 
 The pure, immaculate and wishful spouse, 
 
 Free to all boors of all the country side ; 
 
 Free as a mare all cavaliers might ride 
 Who wear gilt spurs, gay coats and plumed chapeaux. 
 
 Yet Methodism hath a goodness-tide ; 
 The Beauty of the Truth gives overflows, 
 Even as morning lights o'er doom or death-beds close. 
 
 LXX. 
 
 'The narrow-brained, broad-bottomed sectarist 
 
 Enjoys religion as he doth his ale. 
 ' Saved by the blood,' he ever will insist 
 
 That social righteousness is no avail. 
 
 As well might he swing pussy by the tail 
 Through heavenly gates, changed to a goddess girl. 
 
 Such faith revives the fetish old and stale. 
 'Tis Africa, arisen by its whirl : 
 'Tis but the dunghill cock, discoursing of the pearl. 
 
STAR-FLOWERS. 31 
 
 LXXI. 
 
 1 Religion is no strumpet of the streets, 
 
 For egoists to harrow at their will. 
 Is there a man who glows by lustful heats ? 
 
 She vails from his base eyes, unvisioned still. 
 
 God is revealed on woman's holy hill : 
 If man profanes there, where he should adore ; 
 
 Denying where he meets the miracle; 
 Deflowering where he should by God reflore, 
 From God he is eclipsed; the dooms are darkening o'er.' 
 
 LXXII. 
 
 The Fates are in the song : it must not tarry 
 
 Nor linger by the way-side gathering fruit ; 
 Nor seek by honied airs the truth to marry 
 
 To subterfuges that the heavens refute. 
 
 I weave, I wing, whilst death is in pursuit. 
 'Tis hard to penetrate the hammered mail ; 
 
 'Tis hard to say where ages have been mute ; 
 The song is born as if through iron hail. 
 God's Mary did bring forth : so must the verse prevail. 
 
 LXXIII. 
 
 Why should we call those myths ' but myths ' that bear 
 
 The Faiths that mightiest ages held sublime, 
 Yet shield a superstition, fierce to dare, 
 
 That locks the intellect in space and time ; 
 
 That clasps no secret of the golden prime ; 
 That bastardizes in the planet's brain ; 
 
 That, with the apathy of ill supine, 
 Deadens upon mankind, and makes profane 
 The holiness of life, and meets God by disdain ? 
 
32 STAR-FLOWERS. 
 
 LXXIV. 
 
 What was Augustine but an african 
 
 Who knew of Christ but in a superstition ? 
 What was dread Calvin but a frozen man 
 
 Holding eternity by a perdition ? 
 
 And what are they, who make their ghostly mission 
 From Augustine or Calvin to rehearse, 
 
 But scribes that multiply an evil vision, 
 And bind the live mankind within a hearse, 
 And fire upon its heart by falsehoods wrought in curse ? 
 
 LXXV. 
 
 Now Faith expires : the wisdoming hath perished. 
 
 Christ is obliterated from mankind ; 
 Save where sweet solitary souls have cherished 
 
 A courage and a virtue, to unbind 
 
 The word of His Pure Being in the mind. 
 The great gross multitude knows naught of Him : 
 
 It tosses like a cloud-wreath on the wind : 
 Its rains hold ashes, whilst the Peoples dim 
 And darken to the doom, fierce, hungry, gaunt and grim. 
 
 LXXVI. 
 
 The savageness of superstition enters 
 
 From crypts and chancels to the People's brain : 
 
 The heart grows fossil where the force concenters. 
 The age is as a mother, bowed in pain, 
 In whom God forms to bearing, but in vain. 
 
 The hungry nations on their fetters press : 
 The proud and mighty in one vast disdain 
 
 Feast, whilst mankind grown wild from bitterness, 
 
 Feels for the social tie ; feels while the faiths repress, 
 
STAR-FLOWERS. 33 
 
 LXXVIL 
 
 Men soon will know if there be God, or none. 
 
 If none there be, expires this blood-red scroll : 
 This shadowed form will find oblivion ; 
 
 Yea, like a bubble break this laboring soul, 
 
 That lifts oceanic, as by floods to roll ; 
 That seeks with bliss to permeate mankind. 
 
 The living thunders waken to ensoul : 
 God being God, His motions must unbind : 
 God shall make flesh in man. ; man live, in God enshrined. 
 
 LXXVIII 
 
 Because the time is brief the words take wing : 
 
 Because the words take wing the virtues leave 
 The shadow-form that held them wintering : 
 
 Their flight into man's bosom they achieve. 
 
 Because they find such entrance I unweave 
 Powers, in the shadow-frame that held suspense. 
 
 But now I greet the purple golden eve, 
 And, looking from this loftier eminence, 
 See that a Will-in-will is forming to condense, 
 
 LXXIX. 
 
 And hush the shadow to a still repose. 
 
 The earth-form wearies of its posturing, 
 As when the chrysalid feels sharp swift throes, 
 
 That undulate its agitating ring, 
 
 And quiver through the sheathed and folded wing, 
 And break to little vapors in its shell. 
 
 So, in that time-shape where I hold and cling, 
 The senses of a transposition tell ; 
 The sense of sense within their octave weaving well, 
 vi5 
 
34 STAR-FLOWERS. 
 
 LXXX. 
 
 A sense-mind, an aerial ball suspended, 
 
 Shapes in the one-twain hemispheres of brain, 
 Quivering with glowing lights till night is ended, 
 
 But shadowed for the day's long labor-pain. 
 
 Each little nervelet thrills with a disdain 
 And horror of corruption, and I tread 
 
 As one whose white feet leave a violet stain 
 Upon the floor-ways, and pale mists inwed 
 To rays of purpling gold over the bosom spread. 
 
 LXXXI. 
 
 The body groweth pure and delicate, 
 
 As if the flesh had tasted innocence, 
 And, firming sweet, craveth to wear such state 
 
 As gifts the organism to dispense 
 
 Virtues in virtues ; energies immense ; 
 Warm palpable delights of chastity ; 
 
 God's breath involved in its own radiance ; 
 Language made all as flying melody ; 
 Force that shall weave a whirl in all mankind to be. 
 
 LXXXII. 
 
 Frail shadow ! I do love it, yet unlove it : 
 
 'Tis more to me than all in Lilistan ; 
 Since, more than this fair Heaven that shines above it, 
 
 I love the desolated race of man, 
 
 And through that shadow see the service-plan 
 Of Bridal Ages waiting to unfold. 
 
 Time's old life died in it, the new began : 
 I seek transposively that shade to hold 
 Jgor the renewing prime, all in God's truth enscrolled. 
 
35 
 
 LXXXIII. 
 
 I wait, I watch, I weave, I will, I wing 
 
 To pure concentered virtue from the mights 
 That in this loftier life make pleasuring ; 
 
 Till harmony with harmony unites, 
 
 Shaping a flesh of mercies and delights, 
 An ichor flowing in divine desires. 
 
 I would have earthliness ; that so the nights 
 Of heaven may grow to days of human fires, 
 For gifts all sweet and strong, serving the Earthland choirs. 
 
 LXXXIV. 
 
 I would alternate thus, till worth below 
 
 Should lead a kingdom of pure bridal sweetness 
 Forth from the loftier, lordlier marriage bow, 
 
 Where Christus-Christa wreathe for rich completeness. 
 
 I would be able by a double greatness 
 To make an out stand there as here above ; 
 
 But now the hours wing on with twofold fleetness : 
 That shadowed frame, filled all by deathless love, 
 Is pausing in its flight like the overweary dove. 
 
 LXXXV. 
 
 The unknown ever waits upon the known. 
 
 Who walks with God, walks ever with surprise : 
 It is the path that one must tread alone : 
 
 At every turn some foeman strikes, but dies. 
 
 The universal anguish wakes, by cries 
 That jar the body's march, the being's peace. 
 
 Nature with a dissolving magic plies, 
 As if to say, ' depart where pains decease.' 
 I toil where secret Powers ope to me for release. 
 
36 STAR-FLOWERS. 
 
 LXXXVI. 
 
 1 Forbear ! ' I may not say it ; but the floods 
 
 Hold that which I must silent be from saying. 
 Where'er a leaf trembles within the woods, 
 
 Where'er a wind-harp for the breeze gives playing, 
 
 A something is, for an Event arraying ; 
 A something is that, if it formed a wheel, 
 
 Should wreathe the Lady of the Air for spraying, 
 Till the white vapors o'er the planet steal. 
 My life is in Her Word, to seal or to unseal. 
 
 LXXXVII. 
 
 And there are tones of tender gratulation, 
 
 Where woman's bosom shapes God's mercy-seat ; 
 And hopes that lead divine illumination, 
 
 Where banded knights in high commanderies meet. 
 
 The Holy Ghost, the Bridal Paraclete, 
 Draws nearer, dearer than was e'er before : 
 
 The People's air holds sweetness in its sweet, 
 As for some sacred joy that nears the floor, 
 To lead through Heaven for Earth the charm that shall restore. 
 
 FUTURE TIME: EARTH-VISION. 
 
 As one who stands upon a promontory 
 
 And sees, where once a proud old city stood, 
 
 The sun arisen, in solitary glory 
 
 To beam upon the waste and lonely flood ; 
 All, all gone down to nature's nothinghood, 
 
 Thrones, powers, dominions in one hour made naught ; 
 So I behold that Earth of strife and blood, 
 
 Left as the memory of extinguished thought. 
 
 The sun, the sea survive : they for the ending fought, 
 
STAR-FLOWERS. 37 
 
 LXXXIX. 
 
 The earthly planet swings in isolation, 
 
 Cut off from the communion of the skies. 
 Its thought gives fear, its touch a trepidation : 
 
 'Tis called 'the Eunuch/ ' Staff without a rise;' 
 
 Called ' Upside-down/ 'Dead-nose' and ' Broken-eyes;' 
 Called ' Impotentia/ also ' Nothing-come.' 
 
 'Tis thought to by opposing energies : 
 'Tis never spoken of as living home ; 
 A thumb-sign only made, as an inverted gnome. 
 
 XC. 
 
 Its race is looked upon as gone insane, 
 
 As crusted over with the bestial dross ; 
 From whom the Planetarians must restrain, 
 
 Nor seek by thought its boundaries to cross : 
 
 'Tis all encompassed by an occult fosse. 
 Some name it 'Woman of the evil whirl.' 
 
 Lunarian eyes behold it in a moss. 
 They say, 'There is a serpent in its pearl;' 
 But pity the sad race as for a ruined girl. 
 
 LUNARIA: EARTH. 
 
 The lunar hemisphere, to Earth that shows, 
 
 Wears a grim aspect, fragmentary, wan. 
 Its distant zone, like some great cosmic rose, 
 
 Blooms glorious golden, for a race of man 
 
 Building divinely, by an ordered plan ; 
 Making their empire one vast family. 
 
 Aye since the downfall of our orb began 
 Their atmosphere has dwindled, and their sea ; 
 The home-space gathering in, oasis-like to be. 
 
STAH-FLOWERS. 
 XCII. 
 
 Now floods have come to them, the rains returning 
 
 Since the New Life found entrance to our sphere. 
 Their globe again touches the eyes of morning. 
 
 They hold our Lord in vision pure and clear, 
 
 A Golden Man, Apollo of the spear, 
 Lovely in blossoms of the violet ray. 
 
 Then they forbode a shadow drawing near 
 To over-clipse our world : they sweetly say, 
 'The spear-touch will revive the Lost Girl to her play.' 
 
 XCIII. 
 
 Surely would be a final end of sinning, 
 
 If Earth but woke for the melodious numbers, 
 And wove the star-flowers, all for sweetness clinging, 
 
 Where now cold nature-thought the mind encumbers. 
 
 Thrilled but the Social Spirit from her slumbers 
 To loose the charm of sisterhoods divine, 
 
 Then Poesy, no more a plant that clambers 
 Through lust's depravity and murder's crime, 
 Should twine from every star to earth her flowering vine. 
 
 XCIV. 
 
 But star-flowers fall upon this generation 
 
 As music that in vacancy expires. 
 These are the times of the last tribulation : 
 
 Minds weave through fantasies while Time retires. 
 
 Time is itself but measure of desires ; 
 Space is by style but measure of delight. 
 
 Men learned but yesterday the speaking wires ; 
 To-morrow they may learn the Speechless Might, 
 And all who live draw close as wedded hearts unite. 
 
STAR-FLOWERS. 39 
 
 XCV. 
 
 J Tis a vast page, this star-page, beautiful. 
 
 Aye since my word-staff to the heavens erected 
 It hath drawn up full many a gift to cull. 
 
 Man oped to nature-self, but he neglected 
 
 The Star- Word, till he withered unprotected, 
 And broke his race to fragments of a man. 
 
 Time's awful skeleton he hath dissected, 
 To theorise amid the ruins wan. 
 He twines to meet the worm, lost in the Nature-plan. 
 
 XCVI. 
 
 Man thinks his life into an isolation ; 
 
 He has not learned to think Society : 
 He serves for Nature in his generation. 
 
 Not his the Tree of Life ; the nature-tree 
 
 Lifts in the motions of his energy. 
 Ah, but the Man who is the Tree of Life, 
 
 Made as a germ that in the ball might be, 
 Impregnates godly through the Goddess Wife ; 
 In all who shall survive He grows with virtues rife. 
 
 XCVII. 
 
 And He will form Himself one Righteousness. 
 
 I see the End approaching in the song : 
 The words hold strengths to save and sweets to bless : 
 
 The smallest of all seeds, borne by the throng 
 
 Of circling seasons in its flight along, 
 It shapes where Earth its God has most denied, 
 
 Lifting by sacred energies, that Wrong 
 Has trembled at e'en while it crucified. 
 'Tis so Christ reappears, in manhood to abide, 
 
40 STAR-FLOWERS. 
 
 XCVIII. 
 
 I set my staff, high, firm, concentered all. 
 
 As in God's loins I touch where I became. 
 There is no reason why to lift the pall 
 
 From our organic being should be shame. 
 
 I think not of the mimic nature-game ; 
 For thus it was and thus shall ever be : 
 
 Our life-sparks kindled from God's marriage-flame ; 
 They quicken in that flame eternally. 
 Time, space, earth, heaven retire : God is made all to me. 
 
 XCIX. 
 
 6 Faithful' she said, the sweet and sacred spouse, 
 
 1 'Tis bliss-time ; think no more into thy double : 
 Return the speech-form from that narrow house, 
 
 Circled by hosts that seem to me but stubble ; 
 
 Waiting aweary for the winter's trouble. 
 I will hold to that shadow for thy rest : 
 
 'Tis quivering as a human water-bubble : 
 See, my own time-form from me I divest ; 
 That will I space below, nerve-life through nerve-shape prest.' 
 
 A NEW D A Y . 
 
 When Innocence renews the Age of Gold, 
 
 Renascent Earth shall build God's passion-seat. 
 Then every bower of human bliss will fold 
 
 As in the white wings of the Paraclete. 
 
 I woke in Issa's bosom wifely sweet. 
 The crimson morn rose through her smile to glow. 
 
 The joy of Lilistan gave lips to greet, 
 Leading new powers to liberation so, 
 That in my shadow-frame diffused and wrought below. 
 
STAR-FLOWERS. 41 
 
 01. 
 
 ' This is a day of quietudes,' she said, 
 
 'And we are in devotion by our style. 
 With night the sacred loveresses fed 
 
 For a divine oblation : see, the Isle 
 
 Of Earth is touching to the solar smile : 
 Bright Helios glows through an illumined ring. 
 
 Mark how the rose-clouds gather ; how they pile 
 Upon the planet for an entering. 
 Feel to it by thy thought ; feel what the thought may bring. 
 
 OIL 
 
 ' Now, here I fold thee, blissfully inwoven, 
 
 Till the far shadow-frame is held quite still, 
 And lips that shew the pomegranate full cloven 
 
 Open the wine of melody to spill. 
 
 Far to that lingering shade I forced a will 
 That led a whirl of life to fold the brain : 
 
 The senses of the shade began to thrill : 
 It lifted through the night's long labor-pain, 
 Till morning light streamed in, kindling from vein to vein/ 
 
 GUI. 
 
 She led a touch-sense to the shadow's eyes ; 
 . They opened in a mist of violet dew. 
 Lily had woven of her mysteries 
 
 Within that slumberous shade the dim night through, 
 
 And left an image beautiful to view, 
 Implied through all its vibratory lines. 
 
 She lifted and a little while withdrew. 
 As a white snowdrift caught in summer vines, 
 The cold was melting there ; flowing as if to wines, 
 vi 6 
 
42 STAR-FLOWERS. 
 
 CIV. 
 
 * 
 
 Said Lily, 'In that shadowy subsistence, 
 
 More as it pales the more we concentrate : 
 We organise therein by a persistence : 
 
 Our wedded unities infloriate : 
 
 The senses all grow mildly delicate : 
 The brain is in a wreath of odors bound : 
 
 Our mirrored thoughts warm images create, 
 That from it rise, encircling round by round : 
 Our sensitive delights are shaping there a ground. 
 
 CV. 
 
 'Now it is time to rise. ; I sought to lift. 
 
 ' Woman is strength/ she said; 'be strong in me: 
 My raptures in thy bosom ply/ The gift 
 
 Of her sweet breath, by one full harmony, 
 
 Moving in all the frame's tranquility, 
 Enchanting and encompassing, distilled 
 
 A triple force that met the People's glee. 
 Into the People's glee it passed and willed : 
 I rose revigored so, for majesty instilled. 
 
 CVI. 
 
 Ever below I rose with Care, that rolled 
 
 Upon me with the painful morning's rise. 
 The senses wakened so to feel and hold 
 
 The weight of sorrow from the ministries. 
 
 I drew to service in the agonies. 
 The feet touched Labor, where they met the earth : 
 
 By toil I served the social pieties, 
 Pressed in by atmospheres of man's unworth, 
 That ever sought to slay the Word-thoughts in their birth, 
 
STAR-FLOWERS. 43 
 
 CVII. 
 
 Clasped in the missal of Eternity, 
 
 I rise by joys made strengths in their fruition, 
 Even as a truth that holds Divinity 
 
 Lifts from the occult page to meet the vision. 
 
 What energies of virtue in decision ! 
 The feet press in the commons of the land ; 
 
 Press for a soil that thrills to the elysian. 
 In the great People's providence I stand : 
 My house is on the rock ; Earth builds but on the sand* 
 
 CVIII. 
 
 Nine years, methinks, passed all in concentration, 
 
 Would serve to make a study of the land ; 
 Passing through all the lines of operation ; 
 
 Serving by kingliness from band to band. 
 
 All of this wisdom I would thence expand, 
 For one sweet flower of earthly perfectness ; 
 
 Then in that flower for world-wise labor stand, 
 Wreathing the shadow-frame with heavenly dress, 
 The Kingdom of the Word in Earthland to express. 
 
 CIX. 
 
 Issa laughed to me ; 'Yes,' she said, 'it is, 
 
 A nine in nine, a cycle of enwombing : 
 For Lilistan is all a bed of bliss, 
 
 Woven to outlines of the Mother's blooming. 
 
 Perfection grows by multiplied assuming ; 
 But there is more in this than you divine. 
 
 Ever you fashion through the earthly glooming, 
 And I am weaving, by the mine in thine, 
 Within that shade below, as you for splendor climb. 
 
44 STAR-FLOWERS. 
 
 ex. 
 
 'The builded concept of the kingdom's worth 
 
 By littleness forms in that frame's dimension. 
 The holiness-in-righteousness seeks birth 
 
 To ends by the organic intervention. 
 
 Our social order labors to extension, 
 Divinely shaping so its ultimate ; 
 
 Touching that frail mankind with sure intention. ; 
 By motion, still by motion, weaving state, 
 As mothers in the bell for infancy create. 
 
 CXI. 
 
 ' The kingdom in a sense is protoplastic : 
 
 It generates for Earth a protoplasm. 
 Quaint images appear, grotesque, fantastic, 
 
 In human minds : by surge and throe and spasm. 
 
 They ope, as from some dim disrupted chasm, 
 Through human thought ; they wheel, they whirl, they fly 
 
 Men rise for them to be in strife and schism 
 With the old time and with its aged sky. 
 'Tis chaos in the deep, as if the world would die. 
 
 CXII. 
 
 'Tis 'twilight of the gods;' from Nifelhiem 
 
 To Asgard, all things whirling in confusion ; 
 The form, the style, the reason and the rhyme 
 
 Of human movement tending to conclusion ; 
 
 Faith, family and state in dissolution ; 
 A general outpush from the human race 
 
 Of the Great Old it cherished ; a profusion 
 Of emanating energies that face 
 The instinct of the Old, dissolving it apace. 
 
ST Aft -FLO WEES* 45 
 
 CXIII. 
 
 'The protoplastic life in emanation 
 
 Enters mankind by one vast composite, 
 Making a universal distillation, 
 
 Impregnating and vitalising it. 
 
 The Phoenix on her egg will soon have lit 
 Softly and tenderly with brooding breast, 
 
 For the nine incubation-rounds to sit ; 
 The yolk, by the man-molecules possest, 
 Growing to shape one life, a bestness in the best. 
 
 CXIV. 
 
 'And when the Mother Bird descends through heaven 
 
 And touches so the world-egg, it will thrill, 
 Till shadowings from her peaceful bosom given 
 
 Make the great nest all drowsy, cool and still ; 
 
 But when the Father Phoenix with his bill 
 For the last penetration meets the shell, 
 
 The eyes will open, and the social will 
 Lift as for wings, and shadowings dispel : 
 Then comes the Golden Time, that prophecies foretell. 
 
 cxv. 
 
 ' See, how my thoughts verse in thee ! ' I replied, 
 
 "Small pearly eggs in microcosmic cells." 
 She answered, 'Note thee how they are supplied, 
 
 And how they open all from tiny bells. 
 
 Thoughts grow to life in protoplastic shells : 
 The Mother Bird sits brooding o'er the brain. 
 
 'Tis thus the Holy Ghost by miracles 
 Leads poesies to wing, a flying train : 
 She formeth so a Voice ; that voice the world must gain. 
 
46 STAR-FLOWERS, 
 
 CXVI. 
 
 "That Voice must find mankind incredulous. 
 
 The egg hears not if one should prophesy, 
 Saying, ' egg, all golden glorious, 
 
 Thou shalt fly forth to joy and liberty.' 
 
 Men think the thought of their captivity : 
 They hug the prison of their discontent. 
 
 They speculate of 'be or not to be,' 
 Yet vaguely feel a coming strange event. 
 They know but of the egg ; not of the egg's intent. 
 
 CXVII. 
 
 ( The wisest of them sense incipient thought, 
 
 Feeling through yolk, seeing through albumen. 
 Where 'the Unknowable' their eyes have caught 
 
 'Tis but the shell a-rounding to the ken ; 
 
 The vast white mystery enfolding then. 
 These little thinkers of the orbed sphere, 
 
 They know not how their structures fold and pen ; 
 Or how the drop, that seems a sorrow-tear, 
 Impregnates through the egg, formed in them to appear. 
 
 cxvin. 
 
 ' They say of learning, that it is increased ; 
 
 Of science, that it works a transformation ; 
 Of creed-faith, that it hath wellnigh deceased ; 
 
 Of life, that now 'tis all in fermentation ; 
 
 But know not that the Egg seeks incubation, 
 And a Man-Bird aspireth to be born. 
 
 Meanwhile the Egg is full of disputation ; 
 Its myriads hold this base estate in scorn ; 
 The shell grows porous, too, for lights that rise to morn. 
 
STAR-FLOWERS. 47 
 
 CXIX. 
 
 ' Now comes the brooding time ; the funeral 
 Of the Egg's darksome and expired condition ; 
 
 The vanishing of each concentered thrall ; 
 The liberation of each local vision, 
 Formed to new sight from earthly to elysian ; 
 
 The body structured to its liberty ; 
 
 The animates formed to their socialism ; 
 
 The birth of the divine humanity. 
 
 Old earth, old heaven dissolved, as the lost shell to be. 
 
 cxx. 
 
 ' 'Twas a wise word of ancient Socrates, 
 
 ' I do not know myself, and therefore say 
 Nothing about the unknown deities.' 
 
 Nature will in the word-seed urge her play 
 
 Till the shell breaks ; but in that self-same day 
 Light will stream in upon the mercy- wind, 
 
 And men in one humanity array, 
 From 'know thyself,' in woman's worth enshrined, 
 To know of God, One-Twain, heart's Heart and Mind of mind. 
 
 CXXI. 
 
 ' But the Great Egg is made of many small, 
 Men as eggs walking : therefore do I stand 
 
 Among these walking eggs built as a wall. 
 
 I touch by word-staff formed in pleasure-wand, 
 Saying, ' eggs, would ye possess the land 
 
 And the blue heaven, to fly therein at will? 
 
 Feel for the mercy-breath ; your thoughts enband 
 
 In sacred lines of harmony : lie still 
 
 Beneath the Shadowing Breast that comes the nest to fill/ 
 
48 STAR-FLOWERS. 
 
 CXXIL 
 
 ' Life is a sea of heaving contradictions : 
 
 The Egg is in a ferment everywhere : 
 Men drowse and dream to happy recollections, 
 
 As if they glimpsed to swan-flights in the air, 
 
 Or saw white-bosomed birds on waters fair 
 Sportive amid gold lilies of the lake, 
 
 Blithe hymeneal creatures, pair and pair : 
 Then in their close-bound shells the eggs awake, 
 Pining for hope deferred as if the heart would break.' 
 
 GRADATION: HENRY BELLOWS: OLD FRIENDS 
 
 I take my stand in Lilistan anew, 
 
 Yet think of what a worthy priest would tell. 
 
 He was a friend whose heart unto me drew, 
 And yet he named me, 'Man without a shell.' 
 Dear Henry Bellows, sagely and right well 
 
 He sought to serve among his fellow-men. 
 
 Yea, he had thoughts that touched the violet bell. 
 
 He prayed and labored for the good time when 
 
 Man shall his manhood find, and woman bloom again. 
 
 CXXIV. 
 
 ' Dear Brother Harris ! this is God-time : Channing, 
 
 'Tis William Henry, found me on the farm, 
 And, by his labor-breath my bosom fanning, 
 
 Led me with kindness of the social arm 
 
 Into the presence ; it is full of charm. 
 Bless me, I was a sad conservative ! 
 
 Did I forsake you in Time's old alarm ? 
 That visionary life I over-live. 
 Please say that you receive, I know that you forgive/ 
 
STAR-FLOWERS. 49 
 
 cxxv. 
 
 "The man without a shell receives you Sir; 
 The priest who had no parish but mankind/' 
 
 Quoth he, 'I did my thought unsepulcher 
 When I unshelled, and I was glad to find 
 That you were nearer right than I opined. 
 
 Chapin, I met him, full of wit as ever, 
 
 And he said, 'Bellows, we enjoyed the rind, 
 
 But Harris found the Lily in the river. 
 
 He is the melon-boy, slicing it up forever/ ' 
 
 CXXVI. 
 
 I answered, "Yes, you find a melon-seed." 
 
 He took my hand, he pressed it o'er and o'er. 
 His bosom quivered : did it inly bleed ? 
 
 Words came that wrung his being to the core. 
 
 1 for one year, one week, on Earth once more ! 
 0, for one day of freedom where I stood ! 
 
 Thoughts gather in me ; swell and rise and roar, 
 As if Niagara had loosed a flood. 
 
 for my flock, my flock ! the words would turn to blood. 
 
 CXXVII. 
 
 ' I knew what the religious movement meant ; 
 
 The thing we felt but never dared reveal. 
 My life, my life ! it ruined as I spent : 
 
 I held a fire, but held it to congeal. 
 
 I knew a truth, but knew it to conceal. 
 My Father's house, it was a den of thieves : 
 
 I should have scourged them forth with whip of steel, 
 And driven them flying as the autumn leaves. 
 
 1 bound the grain-thieves up and prayed upon their sheaves. 
 
 vi7 
 
50 STAR-FLOWERS. 
 
 CXXVIII. 
 
 1 1 was not following the Holy Master : 
 
 He was a Socialist from heel to hip.' 
 Spake I, "Dear Henry, rise above disaster." 
 
 .He caught my hand ; he pressed with fiery grip : 
 
 Then made as so to form a kissing lip. 
 If one of priests most liberal and sweet 
 
 Feels thus the memory of his earth-time nip, 
 How shall it be with those who from the seat 
 Of Christ the Socialist for praise god Mammon greet ? 
 
 CXXIX. 
 
 I said again, "Our friendship is immortal. 
 
 Channing, yourself and Chapin and Starr King, 
 I parted with you at the blood-wet portal, 
 
 Where I stood meekly for the world to fling 
 
 The venomed spawn of all its festering. 
 I chose that none of you should bear a shame, 
 
 And parted in a sacred silencing. 
 On no past kindness did I ever claim. 
 Ye served in your own ways, crowned with no evil name. 
 
 cxxx. 
 
 " Surely ye served, each in his generation, 
 
 And many virtues from your lives exprest. 
 The good man, rising to this elevation, 
 
 Sees where he failed, till sorrows wound the breast ; 
 
 And ye four saw, as your own sighs attest." 
 His thought grew in him to a blood-red pall. 
 
 He stood as for some papal burning drest. 
 1 Let me wear anguish,' spake he, ' once for all ; 
 If some by me arose, others by me did fall.' 
 
STAR-FLOWERS. 5l 
 
 CXXXI. 
 
 These are riot commoners of Lilistan, 
 
 But in a region that is styled < Gradation ' ; 
 Growing hy practice in the order-plan. 
 
 Much they unlearn, making a pure oblation ; 
 
 Rising to find the social elevation. 
 Though briefly they may visit us, the air 
 
 So stimulates the inward adoration 
 That it revives anew the earthly care, 
 And memories wake, as this, more than the heart can bear. 
 
 3. 
 
 EARTH-LABOR . 
 
 We call, we gather, we unite : 
 We lead the Word-birth into light. 
 For us the world renews her prime ; 
 Eternity buds forth in time. 
 Where toiled the ancient hierophant 
 But as a sage, laborious ant, 
 We arch the caverns by a glee 
 To flood them all with melody. 
 
 They whose large thought includes mankind, 
 Waiting until the shell unbind, 
 May touch by virtues that dispense 
 From center to circumference. 
 Kingdoms that base on human wrong 
 Shall disappear before the song, 
 And every grief wherein men dwell 
 Pass to oblivion with the shell. 
 
52 STAR-FLOWERS. 
 
 They who have found the under-space 
 And left a fragrance in their trace ; 
 They who have borne a joy unfurled, 
 To blossom for the under-world, 
 And led the shadowed girls to shine 
 Like the uplifted Proserpine, 
 Well may their heart be blithe and gay, 
 Though the cold floods the feet delay : 
 A splendor flushes through the pain 
 Till morning comes with mercy-rain. 
 
 Did Truth but by a song emerge ? 
 Behind the verse the chariots urge : 
 The winged steeds in swift career 
 O'er the bright East their strength uprear : 
 They sparkle in the orient sky, 
 Whilst moons recede and planets fly, 
 Till Earth unweaves its closed cocoon, 
 And lives, in lingering death that swoon, 
 Wake for delight, all social-free, 
 Wrought in the large humanity. 
 
 The babe may dream within the womb ; 
 The old man slumber to the tomb : 
 Through darkening hours and closing years 
 We shape our crucifix of spears. 
 The days are bleak, the nights are wild, 
 Yet Earth must own the Savior-Child. 
 Till days are warm and nights are sweet 
 Our sacred numbers we repeat ; 
 Until the Nine their charm have spun ; 
 Until the Fates their freedom won ; 
 Until the Bride-bird lifts to wing 
 The babe her breast is mothering. 
 
STAR-FLOWERS. 53 
 
 Eternity is made our bed ; 
 
 Infinity its mantle spread : 
 
 Heaven is our garden of delight, 
 
 But Earth is ever nigh to sight. 
 
 Ever to Earth the joys descend : 
 
 Ever in man they find their end, 
 
 And ever on their sacred way 
 
 In woman's bridal heart give play. 
 
 Upon her heart I lean my spear, 
 
 Till rays enkindle warm and clear, 
 
 And crown her, where the rays untwine, 
 
 In Issa-Lily's light to shine ; 
 
 Till Lilistan's warm lights unfold 
 
 To wreathe her all in marriage-gold. 
 
 DIVINE TEMPTATION : OUR LADY OF INNOCENCE 
 
 We love our ladies, heavenly architects, 
 
 Yet in our love we do not uxorise. 
 His own original man ne'er neglects : 
 
 He melts not vaguely in his lady's eyes. 
 
 Manhood grows mighty through the wiferies : 
 For more of woman still the more is man. 
 
 Fed by her gifts he doth the more uprise 
 In mental, social, sexual, vital plan, 
 Incentered aye more firm and girt to lordlier span. 
 
54 STAR-FLOWERS. 
 
 CXXXIIL 
 
 A Lady came to me, in vision truly, 
 
 Saying, 'Now, Faithful, take me on thy knee/ 
 I felt unto her that she asked unduly. 
 
 'Nay, but/ she spake, 'I have a gift for thee.' 
 
 I smote her by an impulse suddenly ; 
 Fearing that this might draw me to a fall. 
 
 She touched my garter, smiling pleasantly ; 
 Unvailed of the disguises one and all. 
 It was the Mother, firm and mighty as a wall. 
 
 CXXXIV. 
 
 The Mother spake, 'Child, I do tempt indeed, 
 
 Yet in the movements of My holiness. 
 He who will strike at women, when they plead 
 
 To overflow upon him, and to press 
 
 Unduly even by their strength to bless, 
 "Wounds not, but wakes the greater womangood.' 
 
 I answered, "Mother, I am in distress : 
 Two babes were offered to my fatherhood, 
 Where, in the earthly shade, so long for Thee I stood. 
 
 cxxxv. 
 
 " By all the woman-love enfired completely, 
 
 I craved those little ones ; but when I saw 
 That this might be temptation, rising sweetly, 
 
 I lifted in the righteousness of law. 
 
 And yet it touched my spirit to the raw, 
 With woundings almost till the blood escapes ; 
 
 Knowing those infants grasped within the paw 
 Of the fierce dragon who the planet rapes, 
 And their soft flesh stained through from lust's impoisoned 
 grapes : 
 
STAR-FLOWERS. 55 
 
 CXXXVI. 
 
 "Knowing indeed, that if I folded those, 
 
 As I desired, to the life-giving nest, 
 My shadow-form might perish, and the close 
 
 Of its long labor leave a work supprest. 
 
 Therefore I smote at motherhood's dear breast ; 
 Yet this I did and this will do for Thee." 
 
 The Mother spake, ' Take thou those babes, opprest 
 With deadly virus from heredity. 
 For Me thou didst reject; take them for Mine to be.' 
 
 CXXXVII. 
 
 "Great Mother," said I, "art Thou tempting still?" 
 
 'Try Me/. She spake; I cried, "I will not take, 
 Till Thou shalt round a love-force in my will, 
 
 Large to enclose them, all for Thy own sake. 
 
 Nay, till Thou openest in my breast a lake 
 That shall flow into them as this of mine. 
 
 Nay, till Thou shalt my lip, that drieth, slake 
 By overflowings of Thy social wine, 
 And nerve my frame anew for mightier social twine." 
 
 CXXXVIII. 
 
 The Mother while I spake became as seated : 
 
 My feet to hers were led unconciously 
 Until by feet divine to feet She greeted. 
 
 Thought wakened with a start, for suddenly 
 
 Her lifted foot pressed mine mysteriously : 
 She beamed forth then, Lady of Innocence, 
 
 And said, in tones that broke deliciously, 
 ' Son, women make a touch of confidence, 
 And I have touched thee so, till wisdom forms to sense, 
 
56 STAR-FLOWERS. 
 
 CXXXIX. 
 
 'Now ever I do enter by the flowing, 
 
 And aye your Father maketh for the firm. 
 
 Say, wilt thou take those little wild flowers blowing ? 
 Wilt thou be good to word-seed in the germ ?' 
 I still spake, "Nay! no, Mother, lest the worm 
 
 Enter through them to others whom I serve ; 
 Not till my service reach a rounding term, 
 
 And general toil through childhood wreathes its curve. 
 
 Mother, against Thy breast my energies do nerve. 
 
 CXL. 
 
 " My Father tempted me by giving force ; 
 
 Then saying, ' Wrestle with Me/ and I met 
 The form He shaped for that small battle's course, 
 
 Till mind and will broke to the labor-sweat. 
 
 'Twas thus He liberated powers that yet 
 Hold me to service in His vast design. 
 
 I cannot, from His immanence, forget, 
 Nor reconcile my willness into Thine." 
 She smiled ; then crossed my lips with Her red passion-sign. 
 
 CXLI. 
 
 Then spake, 'Go now, and do this thing. I ask it.' 
 
 "I know not, Mother," sadly came reply. 
 "Were I a love-wife with a baby-basket 
 
 Surely upon such errand I would fly, 
 
 For the rich weaving of the life to ply ; 
 But see, I have not tact for little things. 
 
 The great ordeal of my time draws nigh. 
 Already I enfold the shadowings." 
 She drew away ; then rose in power and lift of wings, 
 
STAR-FLOWERS. 57 
 
 CXLII. 
 
 Then by the Holy Ghost She fashioned over, 
 
 And the vast bosom of the Mother Dove 
 Drooped as with snow-white plumes to calm and cover : 
 
 Thereby Her mystery in my being wove 
 
 A father-might led through divinest love. 
 Borne upward so thought kindled, lifted free ; 
 
 Then the Voice came, ' Enter the mystery, prove: 
 All-Being bears the burdening in thee. 
 Enter those babes, as spring invades the glacial sea.' 
 
 CXLIIL 
 
 The heart of God is fond ; not over-fond, 
 
 Nor foolish-fond : 'tis failing-fond, oh never ! 
 It weaves a bloom-bell for the race beyond 
 
 Supremest visionings from thought's endeavor. 
 
 'Tis fondness that holds arrows in its quiver. 
 Made to the form of all capacities, 
 
 It penetrates the being wheresoever 
 Sleep in their shells the nobler faculties, 
 To rouse them and to raise, even by agonies. 
 
 CXLIV. 
 
 So here in Heaven, where agonies have ceased, 
 
 The mysteries of experience unfold. 
 The People's loftier being is released 
 
 Meeting resistants that are hard to hold. 
 
 The pleasure-heat is met by tempered cold : 
 The gathering blisses lead through trials on : 
 
 The battle-march in melody is rolled : 
 Still God ingerminates each daughter-son 
 For loftier attempts from lesser triumphs won, 
 vi8 
 
58 STAR-FLOWERS. 
 
 CXLV. 
 
 Heroic, stimulative, yictorising, 
 
 Rise the pure atmospheres from bosom-bliss. 
 In all the joys of the land's paradising 
 
 The arrows fly : sometimes from lips that kiss 
 
 Dart fiery flashes never sent amiss. 
 Lily awoke a chime of silver bells. 
 
 'In saviorhood,' she spake, 'thou doest this, 
 And there is joy in many violet dells, 
 For what thou dost below to charm those cradled shells.' 
 
 EARTH-CHILDREN. 
 
 I felt below the loss of energy, 
 
 And a great grief o'erswept me as a wave. 
 Entering the Earth's imperilled infancy, 
 
 Many are seen but fitted for the grave. 
 
 One in a thousand chance the Life might save, 
 Were a new order fashioned in mankind. 
 
 Begotten where the cruel lusts enslave ; 
 Formed where the womb is but the quivering rind 
 Of Love's true blossom-bell, the babes in death are twined. 
 
 CXLVII. 
 
 The multitudes should never have been born. 
 
 The few, at best part fashioned, part impure, 
 Touch with their sight but to the nature-morn ; 
 
 The senses to the nature-sense inure. 
 
 The instincts follow for the nature-lure ; 
 They gravitate to animality. 
 
 In no sense are they fitted to endure 
 The discipline that trains the germ to be 
 Wrought as a breathing shape for God's Humanity. 
 
STAR-FLOWERS. 59 
 
 CXLVIIL 
 
 Yet, looking to the ripest and the best, 
 
 In the first cells where character is wrought, 
 Rich promises as expectation rest, 
 
 For such are pregnant from the Social Thought : 
 
 Should that be to the visible outfought, 
 'Mid the fierce discords of a waiting time, 
 
 The fires wherein those infant powers are caught 
 Must rise to conflagrations, and the twine 
 Of the Avenging Powers weave by the Wrath Divine. 
 
 CXLIX. 
 
 There are young Terrors on the nursing breast, 
 
 Who, fed and trained in Nature's egoism, 
 Did time afford, John Baptists of the West, 
 
 Would light a flaming sea for Earth's baptism ; 
 
 Would open deep, to many a red abysm, 
 The hell of anarchy within the race, 
 
 Till wealth and want should be no more in schism, 
 But common desolations make embrace, 
 And the insane mankind fail, blotted out from space. 
 
 CL. 
 
 One sees but little here : Time fails indeed. 
 
 The Nature-womb, that fashioned through the vast 
 Sepulchral hollow where the life-loves bleed, 
 
 Is failing of its energy at last : 
 
 A shadow enters there : its lines o'ercast : 
 The unrealities within them weave. 
 
 The generative play is welliiigh past : 
 Woman will but of images conceive, 
 That vanish through the bell as crimson, lights of eve. 
 
60 STAR-FLOWERS. 
 
 CLI. 
 
 Thus everywhere the End is fast anearing ; 
 
 Even through babyhood the shadows ply : 
 'Tis a recession ; then a disappearing, 
 
 As when discordant sounds in silence die ; 
 
 The mortal hush from failing agony ; 
 The collapse of unworth in emptiness. 
 
 The shuttle, weaving life that long did fly, 
 Is stilled ; the woven threads that wrought the dress 
 Break from the loom whose reeds no more their form confess. 
 
 CLII. 
 
 'The child/ 'tis said, 'is father of the man;' 
 
 But souls in whom the Racial Spirit dwells 
 One-twain grow parents, to evolve the plan 
 
 Of infant kingdoms, e'en, as now foretells. 
 
 The Perfect Beauty wreathes Her blossom bells 
 To one full orb of exquisite design. 
 
 She weaveth there by many sacred spells : 
 Through manhood aye shapes infancy more fine : 
 At last a child-like race lifts to its birth divine. 
 
 CLIII. 
 
 Those of the Earth who in the great transition 
 
 Survive the close of ruining and doom, 
 Fold inwardly, seen by the future's vision, 
 
 Where that Great Future makes herself a womb. 
 
 Why do Earth's best and dearest vail in gloom, 
 Feeling ingathered by a secret might 
 
 Where holiest mysteries the mind illume, 
 Touching as star-points to the vaulted night, 
 Whilst thought and being hide from time's intrusive sight ? 
 
STAR-FLOWEES. 61 
 
 CLIV. 
 
 The Hidden Wisdom draws Her children so, 
 
 All by a process of internalising ; 
 Stilling and deepening that She may bestow 
 
 The germs that grow for Earth's new paradising. 
 
 'Tis a new world of innocence arising : 
 Man in the racial round at last hath trod 
 
 Where the Time Spirit pauses from devising : 
 Falls from his grasp the Planet's quivering rod. 
 That only holdeth firm whose form is fixed in God. 
 
 CLV. 
 
 So the New Time will dawn through infancy : 
 
 A great Child-People on the planet's verge 
 Shall smile to see its immortality 
 
 From God One-Twain by respirations urge. 
 
 The Commune so through woman shall emerge, 
 Filled from the Mother-Heart as from the sea ; 
 
 The pregnant waters through man's shore-way surge : 
 From her warm loveliness irradiate he 
 Shall clothe her commune then with full society. 
 
 CLVL 
 
 Child-woman, with child-man for gladness dwelling ! 
 
 The bestial in the human shews no more : 
 Fruition stands in place of vague Foretelling. 
 
 Into Eternity the Ages bore : 
 
 They touched till oped for man the spacial door ; 
 Forming the Word through Nature, leading forth 
 
 A music and a motion to restore 
 The ancient harmony that fled from Earth. 
 The doom-wrought End reveals Eternity in birth. 
 
62 STAR-FLOWERS. 
 
 EARTH-TRAFFIC. 
 
 Nature o'ercomes the soul's fair infancy 
 
 Through social customs that the race enchain. 
 The system of Earth's dread society 
 
 Is based and keyed in lust of private gain. 
 
 The nature-instinct, taught to unrestrain, 
 Enthralls the child to gain's impiety ; 
 
 Hardens the heart against the blessed reign 
 Of the unselfish loves : the Mother-Sea 
 Is chained in its first flow, all winter-bound to be. 
 
 CLVIII. 
 
 'Tis the pursuit of private wealth that hardens 
 
 And makes men diabolical at last ; 
 That exiles from the paradisal gardens, 
 
 And leads the being to untimely blast. 
 
 This is the frozen mill-stone, rudely cast 
 Upon the infant bosom ; this the germ 
 
 Of the huge robberies that Earth devast : 
 This leads the race to ruin for its term ; 
 Plucks from the soul its wings and leaves it all a worm. 
 
 CLIX. 
 
 To buy and sell, adventure and get gain, 
 
 To win the most and yield the least to others, 
 
 Leads an inversive whirl into the brain, 
 
 The Spirit of God's righteousness that smothers, 
 The care-worn race unsisters and unbrothers, 
 
 And makes the form of life a prostitution. 
 The tropic of the heart it aye unsummers ; 
 
 Ravels the racial wreath to dissolution : 
 
 Poisons load every vein from vileness in transfusion. 
 
STAR-FLOWERS. 63 
 
 TRAFFIC IN LILISTAN. 
 
 In Lilistan there is no Trading Class. 
 
 One said, ' king, nay, there is much of trade, 
 And many they who glorious wealth amass. 
 
 Behold them, in the private time arrayed. 
 
 Each for his specialty the knights enblade. 
 I am an artist of such implements 
 
 As serve where ladyhood is well displayed ; 
 Where lyres and violins give rich consents, 
 And music by the reed serves well for glad intents. 
 
 CLXI. 
 
 ' Truly, I make a merchandise of these ; 
 
 Or rather she of me makes merchandise. 
 The ladies traffic by the kissing knees ; 
 
 They lead a commerce where they unitise, 
 
 And for delight win many a costly prize. 
 We fashion works, then fitly they disburse. 
 
 See, as it is with thine, so 'tis with these. 
 Thou who hast won God's Penny for thy purse, 
 From land to land afar she traffics by thy verse. 
 
 CLXII. 
 
 1 Mine own one, she buys things ; she bought a bird, 
 
 And I involved it in a music-shell.' 
 An instrument anear him thrilled and stirred. 
 
 'There,' cried he, "tis awakening for the tell.' 
 
 The lines of its ascension wrought a swell 
 Of rippling melody : he touched the strings. 
 
 Ne'er Straduarius wrought such miracle. 
 The living violin, it laughs, it sings ; 
 The charm of social life leaps fluttering from its wings. 
 
64 STAR-FLOWERS. 
 
 CLXIIL 
 
 I touched the instrument ; it gave a wail 
 
 That broke into an infant's voice of grief. 
 * Ah/ cried he, ' sorrows from your heart unvail : 
 
 Tis by the music-shells hearts find relief. 
 
 They ne'er misgive ; what man hath in his sheaf 
 Shakes through them to diffuse and to reveal. 
 
 Some babe begotten in an unbelief 
 You hold below by sympathies that feel. 
 The hidden word-seed's pain stirs here to unconceal.' 
 
 CLXIV. 
 
 He took the instrument and held it high 
 
 Above my head ; then touched it for a strain : 
 
 There it discoursed a wondrous melody ; 
 Desire, delight, divinity in pain, 
 Yearning and prophecy and high disdain 
 
 Of mercenary commerce and its vice. 
 
 He pressed soft hands the music to restrain 
 
 And spake, ' Upon God's gifts we set no price : 
 
 Thou knowest, well as I, Love rules in paradise. 
 
 CLXV. 
 
 ' But Christianism ever bastardises : 
 
 It sets a price where God has bred a gift : 
 It crowns the Ignoble, that Heaven despises : 
 
 It chokes Love's commerce in a wintry drift : 
 
 It germs cupidity, a snake to lift 
 Through the babe's bosom and its lips rose-red : 
 
 To lines of strife and scorn makes outcry swift. 
 So life in disobedience is led : 
 The serpent is its guide ; the serpent chains its bed.' 
 
S T A K - F L O W E R S . 65 
 
 4. 
 
 KITCHEN MAID: DOLLY. 
 
 Warm-hearted, glowing kitchen girl, 
 
 Called for a sport-name, 'Dolly/ 
 Spun round and round : she wrought a whirl 
 
 That turned on melancholy ; 
 
 That wove into a glorious glee 
 
 With unborn blisses laden. 
 I saw, and murmured silently, 
 
 'God's blessing on the maiden.' 
 
 The feet of lady Issa flow 
 
 Into her feet for dances : 
 'Tis thus to God for morn aglow 
 
 The kitchen girl advances. 
 
 The lilies toil not, neither spin ; 
 
 They hold no private wishes ; 
 Yet for their bridal gifts they win 
 
 Gold cups and crystal dishes. 
 
 Feet that touch Issa's holy feet ; 
 
 Hands that her purpose carry ; 
 Hearts that for service but compete ; 
 
 Lips that to kindness marry ; 
 
 Ah, they have found the better part : 
 
 The Pure Ideal Beauty 
 Weaves through them by divinest art, 
 
 Whilst they are lost in duty. 
 
 vi 9 
 
STAR-FLOWERS. 
 
 Of such as these the kingdom is ; 
 
 For such the kingdom's treasure : 
 They serve the Lady of the Bliss 
 
 Who gives through food for pleasure. 
 
 5. 
 KITCHEN QUEEN: ALENA. 
 
 Her shadow-form has touched the snow : 
 Her love-life beams with God aglow. 
 Old girl, young girl, by pot and pan 
 Thou holdest up to Lilistan. 
 
 Wise woman, skilled in household cheer, 
 Strong sweetness in the kitchen-sphere, 
 Thence dates for glorious hours to thee 
 Love's charter of nobility. 
 
 Thou gavest all, but last and best 
 A heart for kitchen gifts that prest. 
 Warm hands, now in the dish-pan wet, 
 Their heavenly lusters kindle yet. 
 
 She who the labor-crown bestows 
 So in the household use foreshows. 
 Gifts that make good for daily bread 
 Lead to the household's Glorious Head ; 
 
 Lead where the bread of God reflowers 
 Heart, mind and flesh for heavenly hours ; 
 Lead where Love's morning lights unfurl 
 God's glory round the kitchen girl. 
 
STAR-FLOWERS. 
 
 TRAFFIC-CURSE. 
 
 G7 
 
 The man whose life transposes into God 
 Can hardly venture from the close retreat, 
 
 To mingle with the mortal race abroad. 
 Their greed of private gain begets a heat 
 That germs for stinging parasites, to meet 
 
 His frame that fashions for the grand eighth sense. 
 The gain-greed steams by stenches from the feet ; 
 
 The foul injections by their breaths dispense : 
 
 They stand clothed all with curse, walled in by death's intense. 
 
 CLXVII. 
 
 That curse, grown mighty, by its generals 
 
 Encompasses the cities of mankind. 
 The rich, the poor, closed in ungracious walls 
 
 Against their better being war ; they grind 
 
 Each other ; self-illumined, wordly blind : 
 They cry, 'If there be God why doth he vail?' 
 
 Their nostrils, to the kennel filth inclined, 
 Inhale but for corruption ; they enscale 
 The greed-snake round their loins, then ask, 'why virtues 
 fail?' 
 
 CLXVIII. 
 
 Were there a general dying of self-greed 
 
 The universe would ope through occult doors. 
 
 Did men but for, not on each other feed, 
 The life would crystalise to golden ores : 
 Their bodies would shine forth as tropic shores, 
 
 And they would lean to mutual helping so 
 As fruit-trees laden, lifting from the floors 
 
 Of paradise, aye bearing to bestow. 
 
 Man, made like God by gifts, would beam like God to show. 
 
68 STAR-F LOWERS, 
 
 CLXIX. 
 
 From the street gamin downward to the king ; 
 
 From the foul kennel doomward to the throne ; 
 From the thieve's conclave to the priestly ring ; 
 
 From capital's gorged flesh to labor's bone, 
 
 Earth's curse, the greed of private gain, has grown : 
 "Pis generated in the marriage bed : 
 
 It claims mankind and rules it for its own. 
 Nursed by the ages to uplifted head, 
 It dominates the race, the High One-Twain instead. 
 
 CLXX. 
 
 It whirls mankind in fevered competition. 
 
 Jewry has triumphed o'er the Nazarene : 
 If yet a lingering scripture shows to vision, 
 
 The God who is the Gospel is unseen. 
 
 Men by an hideous enchantment lean 
 Where golden serpents fashion to a wall : 
 
 'Twixt heart and heart the reptiles intervene, 
 From lip to lip they sting and spawn and coil. 
 How can man touch to God ? his touch-sense feels to spoil. 
 
 CLXXI. 
 
 Men breathe into each other's lungs and find 
 
 The pleasure of the lust, such heats distilling 
 That the fierce appetite o'erflows the mind, 
 
 Till manias rise their evil end fulfilling. 
 
 Parents infuse it through their offspring, killing 
 The nascent instinct of fraternity. 
 
 Homes, altars, courts, they redden for the spilling 
 Of Christ's warm blood that flows in babes to be. 
 Lord Murder slays by form ; that form Society. 
 
69 
 
 CLXXII. 
 
 When man arises o'er his kind victorious 
 
 And wins great riches for a self-estate, 
 The dragon in that nature-self lifts glorious. 
 
 The Power that makes the People desolate 
 
 Seems to hold all things by a sovereign fate : 
 It dazzles priests and women by its glare. 
 
 False providence shines in the fortunate-: 
 The strong gods are the gods that nations bear ; 
 These are the gods of Earth ; others but wraiths of air. 
 
 MERCY-OIL. 
 
 'Tis the heroic Truth that saveth nations : 
 
 Men tire of gods made for a Sunday show. 
 One said to me, ' king, the imprecations 
 
 Almost upon your lips begin to glow.' 
 
 I answered, "Nay, but I am in a woe." 
 He spake, 'My wife gave oil within the knee, 
 
 And I am here a mercy to bestow. 
 The occult form of thy paternity 
 Is wounded by the grief that flows from infancy.' 
 
 CLXXIV. 
 
 \ 
 
 I laughed about the oil, and whence it grew ; 
 
 But he spake grandly, ' Sure, the oil is good : 
 Out of her arm-pits this, the other, drew.' 
 
 He reached a kindness to me where I stood. 
 
 I smelled his vial ; came a pungent flood 
 Of comforts in the motherly delight ; 
 
 Precious aromas rich with ladyhood, 
 As if a band of wives in one made flight, 
 Disbursing to distil a virtue from their might. 
 
70 STAR-FLOWERS. 
 
 RICH AND POOR. 
 
 The wealth of modern years is in the minds 
 
 Of cultured and expert sagacity ; 
 Not in the unskilled plebes, rugged hinds : 
 
 They are but implements of industry. 
 
 Strong men sustain Earth's frail society, 
 And by their method serve its providence. 
 
 In them the heavens with earth seek unity, 
 Diffuse by wisdom and by worth condense : 
 Not by self-might alone do such hold eminence. 
 
 CLXXVL 
 
 In the world's feet the proletariat shows, 
 But those are in the constellated brain. 
 
 Little of toil the unskilled laborer knows 
 More than the animal, that roams the plain 
 And rests at sunset, careless, unprofane : 
 
 The mind has toiled not in the body's toil : 
 By physical repose his powers regain. 
 
 If scant the recompense yet sure the spoil ; 
 
 In Freedom's land no lack of corn and wine and oil. 
 
 CLXXVIL 
 
 Banks break but still his life-staff is unbroken : 
 Small dividends the corporations pay, 
 
 Yet the day's labor, commonly bespoken, 
 
 Still yields him more than need subserve the day : 
 His mate hath all she would for plain array : 
 
 Their babes are educated by the State : 
 He meets the rich man as a peer alway : 
 
 His civic liberties hold firm as fate 
 
 And the rewards of toil but seldom may abate. 
 
STAR-FLOWERS. 71 
 
 CLXXVIII. 
 
 The great rich men, the labor kings, are workers , 
 
 By day, by night ; their ways are lined with swords, 
 More than old paladins and grim berserkers, 
 
 While yet they seem to move o'er peaceful boards. 
 
 War, organised in them by deeds and words, 
 Leads a terrific combat through the years. 
 
 Shifting, unstable, are the gathered hoards. 
 Wealth is a golden sand that disappears : 
 Its care demands a strife, with thoughts made sharp as spears. 
 
 CLXXIX. 
 
 The few great workers win a large result ; 
 
 The many end with barely competence. 
 Yet those who win, small time do they exult ; 
 
 Cares load upon them with the opulence : 
 
 Still their best gain is the experience. 
 Riches when gathered fail to satisfy : 
 
 The stately household with its huge expense 
 Proves all but vanity of vanity. 
 Finding their golden goal, the satisfactions die. 
 
 CLXXX. 
 
 'Tis in the building, not in the possession 
 
 Of fortune, that some happiness is met ; 
 The leading forth of powers from their repression 
 
 To keenness like Von Moltke's bayonet ; 
 
 The training of abilities, to set 
 The feet upon disaster and to climb 
 
 Higher and higher, building, shaping yet 
 Systems of operation as a rhyme, 
 Subduing to man's use the new and teeming prime, 
 
TL ST AH-FLOWERS . 
 
 CLXXXI. 
 
 But when all this is done ensues a sorrow. 
 
 In the third generation rich men's heirs 
 Descend again : they toil not but they borrow : 
 
 They fall, entangled in the social snares : 
 
 Wealth has unfitted them to meet the cares 
 And bear the burdens of the common fate. 
 
 The future to the rich man ever wears 
 Disastrous colors where the babes await. 
 He sees the coming years his seed that desolate. 
 
 CLXXXII. 
 
 He views the grandson as a foolish dude, 
 
 Wasting the hard-won wealth in vain profusion ; 
 
 His name decaying in a vicious brood 
 Of paupers miring in a vile illusion : 
 His labor-epic finds this ill conclusion. 
 
 The proletary hopes his offspring's rise : 
 The gold-king fears for his foul dissolution, 
 
 Wound in the coil of evil destinies. 
 
 He won, but not for long may he transmit the prize. 
 
 CLXXXIII. 
 
 To build a fortune is to rear a throne : 
 
 To keep it, life must be wrought into walls. 
 
 The labor-lords beneath their burdens groan ; 
 Their hopes decease long ere the funerals : 
 They tread where care looms up till it appals ; 
 
 They dread the social cyclone that awaits ; 
 They sense the fiery Nemesis who calls 
 
 Through hungry myriads, scourged by evil fates : 
 
 The People's want in them a misery creates. 
 
STAR-FLOWERS. 73 
 
 CLXXXIV. 
 
 Joy dwells not splendid in the palaces ; 
 
 'Tis a free bird, that shuns the gilded cage 
 To plume her wings amid the wildnesses, 
 
 Where simple folk in lowly toil engage. 
 
 The strong rich man awearies of his age, 
 Shielding his wealth against the parasites, 
 
 Whilst heirs grow hungry for their heritage. 
 In secret dreams, in visions of the nights, 
 Strong Nature, that he served, to slay him fiercely fights. 
 
 CLXXXV. 
 
 Rich men are often better than they seem, 
 
 As poor men happier than they think or know. 
 
 Wealth is a condor and we hear her scream, 
 Gold-glittering from the cliffs above the snow : 
 That sound of triumph may be cry of woe. 
 
 There grows a savage hunger in the breast : 
 Wealth lifts a man, but isolates him so, 
 
 Till he is fain within the grave to rest 
 
 From treasures that were vain and gainings that opprest. 
 
 A RAILWAY KING. 
 
 I saw by occult modes a Millionaire : 
 
 His style was grand, his house magnificent, 
 Yet hunger in his breast had made its lair. 
 
 Great powers were his, and some had found a vent 
 
 In railwaying to serve a continent ; 
 But, formed by genius for a people's man, 
 
 Success and splendor wrought to small content. 
 Soliloquising thus his mind began, 
 Lifting a flood of thought as hungry waves that ran. 
 vilO 
 
74 STAR-FLOWERS. 
 
 CLXXXVII. 
 
 1 Here stand I like a tenpin at the head 
 
 To hold a footing on the alley's floor ; 
 Here, while the saints think I am warm abed, 
 
 And possibly with some delightful whore. 
 
 Here am I, sound and healthy to the core, 
 Keeping good order by the moral law, 
 
 Loving my neighbors. I a rich man ? poor ! 
 There's not a brakesman, if my heart he saw, 
 Would change for this good bed his bunk well filled with straw. 
 
 CLXXXVIII. 
 
 ' Cook, butler, coachman, liveried at that ; 
 
 Fat bank account, fair gardens all atrim ; 
 I live among them like a watchful rat, 
 
 While poor men think my visage, gay or grim, 
 
 Shines for the hour almost with seraphim. 
 Trades-unions howl and knights of labor curse ; 
 
 The traffic is suspended at their whim. 
 Hundreds of hungry families I nurse, 
 And still 'less hours, more pay/ as if I held God's purse. 
 
 CLXXXIX. 
 
 ' Men eye me oft as if I were a thief. 
 
 envy, envy ! Me, they envy me ! 
 What if I quaff champagne for a relief? 
 
 What if snug dinners make my luxury, 
 
 And music mingles with my reverie ? 
 What if my art-surroundings give a show ? 
 
 What if I live as rather lavishly ? 
 I can make thousands into millions grow 
 And heap a city's wealth by what I could bestow, 
 
STAB-FLOWERS. 75 
 
 cxc. 
 
 c Put care into your pipe and smoke it ! Well, 
 
 I do smoke care and Care smokes me, the joker. 
 Against the situation I rebel. 
 
 What if I spin a yarn or play at poker ? 
 
 I should grow jaundiced, colored all as ochre, 
 Until the lazy liver swamped the brain : 
 
 I might perhaps become a whiskey soaker, 
 But for these joys that ease awhile my pain. 
 Thank God my heart is sound ; my honor knows no stain. 
 
 CXCI. 
 
 ' Now I could take a thousand gentlemen 
 
 And make of them good railway engineers ; 
 Then build their town. What if I built it ? then 
 
 A growing city to my view appears, 
 
 Where a gigantic industry uprears. 
 My working people hive in palaces. 
 
 Fond visions ! there are not enow of years. 
 Had I a life to last for centuries, 
 I would begin at once for purposes like these. 
 
 CXCII. 
 
 ' But soon the worms will feed upon my skin, 
 
 As Vanderbilt, though not as rich as he. 
 Some alley ball will strike the foremost pin, 
 
 And other railway presidents agree 
 
 To show respectful sorrow in their glee. 
 Meanwhile what is God doing? does He know 
 
 That here I stand, in all sincerity, 
 If there were but a real God below, 
 To be a working-man, just on His roads to go ? 
 
76 STAJt*#LOWEflS< 
 
 CXCIIL 
 
 ' Men think of me that I am rather careless 
 
 About religion, though I pay respect. 
 Were there a Goddess, beautiful and peerless, 
 
 Proud should I be Her banners to erect. 
 
 I'd teach my lips another dialect 
 And cease to jest of purchasable charms. 
 
 Mother instilled the instinct to protect, 
 Ere 011 her breast I smiled to feel her arms. 
 Vain, vain ! the thought of it but thrills me to alarms. 
 
 CXCIV. 
 
 ' Woman needs Goddess, just as man needs God. 
 
 We stray as orphans in a lonely void, 
 Till the white worms crawl to us from the sod. 
 
 We are among ourselves but hearts destroyed : 
 
 Poor mortals have the virgin gold alloyed : 
 The stench of selfishness corrupts our sweets. 
 
 For bastardies our vigors are deployed : 
 We toil, then sicken of our carnal heats. 
 Vain, vain! my heart for death but hammers while it beats. '- 
 
 cxcv. 
 
 Such men cannot be reached by any scripture : 
 
 They need a gospel, made as they are made, 
 In human flesh and blood for architecture, 
 
 And from the Goddess-God for them portrayed 
 
 In living lines and blessedly arrayed 
 Through full divineness for the common good. 
 
 They wait till respiration's fiery blade 
 Shall ope their bosoms for the Mother's flood : 
 They wait as for blithe Spring awaits the wintry wood. 
 
STAR-FLOWERS. 77 
 
 ' 6. 
 
 GOD NINETEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 Should God show now, His name must be 
 Not 'First' but 'Nineteenth Century/ 
 To prove Divinity again 
 Amid the strong sagacious men ; 
 Must reach the practical of life 
 Through chieftains of the labor-strife, 
 And, for the efforts that disthrall, 
 In rich men store His capital ; 
 In the wise wealthy who create 
 Productive systems for the State ; 
 Who multiply the common bread, 
 Serving the Nation's laborhead. 
 
 Thus from this far estate I yearn 
 By thoughts that make a long return, 
 While from the sacred People's will 
 Rich vigors for the verse distil. 
 The hands to touch the planet fire, 
 The lungs to reach its breast respire. 
 By the full strength of social man 
 The shade-form holds from Lilistan ; 
 Till now, where I but weave a lay, 
 Airs of the Mother's breast shall play ; 
 Till where I now but touch the hearse 
 God's wealth shall open from its purse. 
 
 I see the end of all the toils : 
 Love-life ascends to charge the soils : 
 Love-light descends, from heaven aglow, 
 To penetrate through minds below, 
 Till light and life commingle so. 
 Though years of toil pass like a day, 
 Patience ! the End will not delay. 
 
78 STAR-FLOWERS. 
 
 UNIVERSALIST: BARNUM. 
 
 Take the Great Showman for a last example ; 
 
 Take Phineas Barnum ; he whose fame consists 
 In the high priesthood of the circus-temple ; 
 
 That gay, sagacious Universalist, 
 
 Whose vast placards no village may resist ; 
 "Who liveth, as would seem, but to evoke 
 
 Gold as the rain-cloud, silver as the mist, 
 From the vast hoax and the perpetual joke ; 
 Who withers like the worm yet spreadeth as the oak. 
 
 CXLVIL 
 
 He is far better known than Jesus Christ, 
 From Texan fire-blast to Canadian snow, 
 
 By the small folk he has imparadised 
 Within his vast perambulating show. 
 1 Love God : be merry. ' It was long ago 
 
 This legend on his private coach I read. 
 
 Eeligion through his spring-tide made a flow ; 
 
 He was too kind to think God wrought a bed 
 
 Of everlasting wrath whereto men's feet were led. 
 
 CXCVIII. 
 
 He illustrates a not uncommon type 
 
 Of thinkers in the small religious cell, 
 But holds a mind, sagacious, largely ripe, 
 
 Intent on worldly enterprise to dwell. 
 
 He is a fruit-tree that did never swell 
 To ope the best buds in their sheathes concealed ; 
 
 A baby giant in a stony shell ; 
 A fount from flowings by the frost congealed; 
 A man to serve in men, had Time but wrought a field. 
 
STAR-FLOWERS. 79 
 
 CXCIX. 
 
 He dwelleth there beside the Housatonic, 
 
 In the luxurious villa of his age ; 
 His face part kind, part shrewd and part sardonic. 
 
 The vast experience, that hath made him sage 
 
 In skill the battle of the world to wage, 
 Leaves little that he values in mankind : 
 
 Yet one small flower spreads on his bosom's page, 
 Perchance, though hard 'mid ranker growths to find. 
 He hopes to find God's heaven in verities enshrined. 
 
 CC. 
 
 He hopes a world of pure benevolence, 
 
 Where there is merriment in rich content ; 
 Where men fraternally God's gifts dispense, 
 
 And passions are burnt out and sorrow spent, 
 
 And happy nations by a sweet consent 
 Adore Lord Jesus for their Joyful King. 
 
 In surface-thought, though far with Plutus blent, 
 He hopes some hour from Mammon's yoke to fling ; 
 Hopes to hear Chapin preach anew and Jenny sing. 
 
 CGI. 
 
 One said to me, 'Hold there, hold there a few, ' 
 
 A sage who bore a parrot on his fist. 
 By his wise art the bird enlarged to view, 
 
 Shaped as a winged babe, spread forth a mist, 
 
 Then poised again as imaged to persist, 
 But in a small boy's voice called, 'Phineas!' 
 
 A stately woman to my vision kissed ; 
 The image to her bosom made a pass 
 And vanished in it so as shadows in a glass, 
 
80 STAR-FLOWERS. 
 
 COIL 
 
 The plain strong lady of New England stalk 
 
 Showed in her by the lines of ancestry. 
 The parrot from its cell made in her talk 
 
 A speaking voice ; yet rich and loverly 
 
 Came the bird's accents wrought for song to be, 
 Till as in some ripe fruit it closed its bill. 
 
 'Twas thus she spake, all in a reverie, 
 ' By this charmed bird I work my wifely will : 
 He whom you Phineas name was, is, my husband still. 
 
 com. 
 
 'He hates deception, though he leans to it 
 
 And lends thereto a wealthiness and style. 
 He loves to see the biters snared and bit ; 
 
 But more loves woman, loves her mile on mile; 
 
 Loves on while scorning her for worldly guile. 
 His sexuality is full and firm, 
 
 And holds into him by an artful wile : 
 There is a bud infolded in the worm, 
 A spark of one-twain life, a true and living germ. 
 
 CCIV. 
 
 1 So, if God came to him, before the eyes, 
 
 Made palpable in the Orie-Twain of Eight, 
 He would bow down with many broken sighs 
 
 And open of his life to God for sight, 
 
 Behold he loveth, for a little might 
 To clasp the knees of God in sacrifice. 
 
 If he saw Heaven descending in delight, 
 As by his thoughts that universalise, 
 Youth would push forth through age, for service to arise,' 
 
STAR-FLOWERS. 81 
 
 CCV. 
 
 Her name is Charity ; her hands are large 
 
 And strong, as those the People's gift that bring : 
 From her full bosom sacred mights emerge : 
 
 Vast are her powers that serve for comforting. 
 
 She wooed the parrot forth ; it made a ring 
 In the warm air around her ; then took flight, 
 
 Called ' Phineas, Phineas ! ' by its pleasuring 
 Transposed ; then vanished in the lower night, 
 The Showman's breast to find and warm it by delight. 
 
 CCVI. 
 
 Things of the Earth are not as they appear, 
 
 Seen from this view-point ; oft they rise and surge 
 Almost to shock the vision with a fear : 
 
 Faces of apes through prelates may emerge, 
 
 Faces that nearly touch the broken verge 
 Where culture twines to imbecility. 
 
 Through lips of laughing-breath may ply the scourge ; 
 Contempt, scorn, hate livid with cruelty. 
 Yea, men are seen heads down, back turned from God to be. 
 
 CCVII. 
 
 Enough. Let falsehood perish ! and it will. 
 
 Let Truth enforce its royalty : it must. 
 Let righteousness by holiness distil. 
 
 When immortality shall crown the just, 
 
 Many shall rise whose lines show now but dust, 
 Who yet hold gifts to serve the Mother's way. 
 
 Earth shrines a mighty revenue in trust, 
 Experienced men who know their kind to sway, 
 And they shall touch to God, and live when God makes day. 
 vill 
 
82 STAR-FLOWERS. 
 
 GRADATION: HORACE GREELEY. 
 
 There the great Journalist! beside a stream, 
 
 Down in Gradation, Horace Greeley sat, 
 As rousing from some introspective dream. 
 
 His sight touched where a small gray water-rat 
 
 Made eyes to him as glancing at a cat. 
 One said, 'The animal casts eyes on you.' 
 
 'Yes/ cried the Sage, 'hear him croak 'democrat!' 
 The damned old frog comes here, where I pursue 
 My private thoughts and holds New York before my view.' 
 
 CCIX. 
 
 With a quaint sprinkling of profanity, 
 
 Which need not be repeated, he went on, 
 'Seward and Weed both damned to hell should be.' 
 
 His thoughts to their old battle-times had gone. 
 
 But he aroused, ' New soil I tread upon ; 
 That is a rat:' his voice rang cheerily: 
 
 He felt his pockets for a benison, 
 And found a scrap of bread : well pleased was he : 
 The shy beast came and fed, tasting felicity. 
 
 OCX. 
 
 Greeley was large, but greatened with a twist : 
 
 A people's man, made for his generation ; 
 Born with the instincts of the Socialist ; 
 
 Wise and laborious in his own vocation ; 
 
 Yet his a mania for official station, 
 That on him, in him, with him, for him fed. 
 
 Vain, though with seeming lack of ostentation, 
 Shrewd parasites his feet to follies led : 
 Insanity draped all with cold his nuptial bed. 
 
STAR-FLOWERS. 83 
 
 CCXI. 
 
 No man more ignorant, yet few more wise : 
 
 No man who thought he knew himself so well : 
 No man more warm to self-idolatries : 
 
 No man more generous, fettered by a spell ; 
 
 More prone from honest counsel to rebel ; 
 To think a circle where w r as but a line ; 
 
 To spurn a fruit yet consecrate the shell : 
 He made his life an. overshadowing vine 
 Whose falling leaves he held as grapes for God's new wine. 
 
 CCXII. 
 
 He could not think beyond the commonplace, 
 
 Yet he could feel into the People's heart. 
 His greatness held a vacancy in space : 
 
 He cherished rancors with a burning smart : 
 
 Good manners held he ever as apart : 
 Of knightly courtesy he made contempt. 
 
 His ways were like his breeding, rude and swart : 
 His w r as a peasant mind, misclad, unkempt. 
 As journalist he knew ; of all beyond he dreampt. 
 
 CCXIII. 
 
 He deemed himself a miracle of brain : 
 
 His coldness he thought chastity ; his house 
 A temple that touched not to the profane. 
 
 Enough thought he the woman of his vows 
 
 To feel that she had Greeley for a spouse ; 
 And so they dwelt and played illumination ; 
 
 Their souls in spiritism led to browse, 
 Half for religion, half for recreation, 
 Till the reaction came and left a desolation. 
 
84 StAR'FLOWERS, 
 
 CCXIV. 
 
 She to the sect styled < Eoman apostolic/ 
 
 Training her babes upon the nun's cold knee ; 
 He from his comrades turning in a colic 
 
 Of harsh political morality ; 
 
 Finding a welcome in Democracy ; 
 Storming to station by the rebel yell. 
 
 Greeley the President hoped so to be. 
 Then as the bubble broke his reason fell : 
 Yet he loved God and man, not wisely oft but well. 
 
 ccxv. 
 
 Great but unordered dwells he in Gradation, 
 
 Where Chapin preaches mixed in cold and warm ; 
 
 Where Ripley thinks of social elevation ; 
 
 Where Channing finds a growing new Brook Farm, 
 And more than Paris weaves a wondrous charm 
 
 For socialistic transcendental folk ; 
 
 Where the brain-beetles in dusk twilight swarm, 
 
 And nymphs and scholars try the labor-yoke, 
 
 But half in earnest yet, and mystic powers evoke* 
 
 CCXVI. 
 
 New Boston groweth there, a vital city, 
 
 A psyche slipping slow from its cocoon : 
 Its milky breasts, cased over hard and gritty, 
 
 Yet shape to weave for ladyhood its moon. 
 
 There cultured Unitarians, part in swoon, 
 Suffer until they strive to socialise. 
 
 I saw Lord Christ ; He entered for a boon, 
 Showing a Lady for their wondering eyes, 
 Shaping from out his side, as Eve to paradise. 
 
STAR-FLOWERS* 85 
 
 CCXVII. 
 
 But Greeley when he saw Her cried, ' Be damned ! 
 
 There's Harris come again ; ' he swelled a bladder 
 Of false air in his belly : then he rammed 
 
 His head as colored persons fight ; grown madder, 
 
 He shook till from his ventrals wound an adder, 
 The worm of self-conceit. Our Mother came. 
 
 She beamed: he cried, 'I see a Jacob's ladder.' 
 ' Ha, ha ! ' he laughed, < 'tis in my breast a shame. 
 Methinks 'twas thus of old Israel saw angels flame .' 
 
 CCXVIII. 
 
 She touched him on the forehead ; then he rose : 
 
 His bestness grew upon him : he shed tears : 
 Her hand upon his breast wrought overflows, 
 
 Shaping a rosy flower of love-in-spears : 
 
 It pricked him : vigors of immortal years 
 Shot through the pain : his bowed and shambling form 
 
 Dropped like an anciejit garment ; memoried fears 
 Vanished ; sweet love-winds wrought a kissing -storm : 
 His pallid face grew bright ; its aspect blithe and warm. 
 
 NEW BOSTON: ASSOCIATION. 
 
 There grows in man a fateful energy 
 
 By the first form of pure association. 
 The hundred knights of a commandery 
 
 Are one for the celestial respiration : 
 
 Their unity admits no segregation, 
 Implexiated through each other's breasts : 
 
 Their service moves by truth-iii-adoration, 
 But Ladyhood within them moves and rests 
 And Manhood in her house of its old style divests. 
 
86 STAR-FLOWERS. 
 
 ccxx. 
 
 One said to me, ' king, New Boston flashes 
 
 A line of bloom upon its line of snow. 
 Thought there is lifting from the dust and ashes. 
 
 A small one-twainness thus begins to show. 
 
 Some to Brook Farm a-pilgrimage do go : 
 There mother Bipley has an hundred nuns, 
 
 And, when these virtuous Bostonians flow 
 By sympathies to meet the shining ones, 
 The ice of their cold thought as trickling water runs. 
 
 CCXXI. 
 
 'They have a Cupid there, one father Taylor, 
 
 For chaplain of the familistery. 
 He loved of old to christianise the sailor. 
 
 He wears our Lady's garter at his knee, 
 
 Crimson and gold and blue : he speaketh free 
 Brave words, illumined with the passion-sign : 
 
 He preacheth of the sexual mystery, 
 And how God, Lord and Lady, doth entwine 
 Through womanhood alway to w^eave the social vine.' 
 
 NEW BOSTON: THEODORE PARKER. 
 
 New Boston has a fashion of its own : 
 
 'Tis full of latent intellectual vigor, 
 Yet touches closely to the arctic zone, 
 
 Cased in the colds of individual rigor. 
 
 In belly-pinch and brain-excess they figure : 
 It is a place of pride and finicking. 
 
 One spake to me, ' Old friend, old Planet-digger, 
 This is a realm where new opinions bring 
 A Faith that owns no creed, a State that scorns a king. 
 
STAR-FLOWERS. 87 
 
 CCXXIII. 
 
 ' For every man is king by his own right 
 
 And pontiff in religious speculation. 
 There are no sins, as doth the Earth delight : 
 
 Each brain projects its own illumination : 
 
 But cold is that, mixed with an emanation 
 That smells like phosphorus : sometimes a star 
 
 Shines for us, like the day in germination, 
 With crimson colors o'er the orient bar, 
 But then the brain-lights fail for many fogs that are. 
 
 CCXXIV. 
 
 1 So every clique in its own brain-fog dwells, 
 
 And we have individualised, till there 
 Are sounds about the town like little bells, 
 
 Jangling at intervals from air to air, 
 
 To many gods a noise of common prayer. 
 The brain-fogs are at moments blown away, 
 
 And then the prophets of the ilk declare : 
 Some neigh like steeds and some as asses bray : 
 'To nothingness we rise/ a many make their say. 
 
 ccxxv. 
 
 1 ' Keep cool, keep cool.' There is a dread of heat. 
 What know you of the properties of water ? 
 
 There is beyond our streets a pleasant sheet, 
 
 And One lifts through it sometimes like the daughter 
 Of Heaven and Earth ; a goddess who hath wrought her 
 
 A wondrous mansion deep beyond the marge. 
 
 The Tran scendentalists had thought they caught her; 
 
 She sailed to meet them in a pleasure barge, 
 
 But, when she drew anigh, they felt her breaths discharge 
 
88 STAR-FLOWERS. 
 
 CCXXVI. 
 
 ' A warm and amorous air of socialism, 
 Till their pent coldnesses grew sheets of snow, 
 
 And they could see her only through the prism 
 Of icicles that hung their brows below : 
 But then she vanished in a water-glow. 
 
 We sped a speech-desire to Emerson, 
 
 And he sent back the message, ' She is Show, 
 
 A fictile image, many thoughts made one, 
 
 That shape before the eyes a floating eidolon. 
 
 CCXXVII. 
 
 ' ' Water hath bubbles like the earth. Now see ! ' ' 
 
 The wise Bostonian opened in the nose, 
 Then sniffed ; then said, ' You smell of poesy ; 
 
 You smell of logical pictorial prose ; 
 
 Of Brahma, Christ, Confucius to your toes. 
 You hold a something made like Moses' rod. 
 
 Great Buddha ! what a reminiscence grows ! 
 One god you were and I another god : 
 From the Olympian hill to Zion's hight we trod. 
 
 CCXXVIII. 
 
 ' These wan Bostonians were our children then : 
 
 We shook them from our bosoms like young larks, 
 Till they became the reasoning souls of men. 
 
 We must refire their intellectual sparks. 
 
 When I was Parker in the worldly darks 
 Boston I made my mare, but oft she shied. 
 
 Here I have found my Self, and through the parks 
 Of the Eternal Absolute I'll ride.' 
 A bubble in his brain broke, feebly then he cried, 
 
STAR-FLOWERS. 89 
 
 CCXXIX. 
 
 'They often burst in me. I am athirst 
 
 In this cold land where speculations dwell. 
 Would God I were a babe again and nursed 
 
 Upon my mother's bosom. This is hell ; 
 
 To break successively shell after shell, 
 Yet never find the being's ground and root ; 
 
 Always to dream of an enchanted well, 
 Shaded 'neath bowers that bear delicious fruit ; 
 Always to hope a good, found not by the pursuit. 
 
 ccxxx. 
 
 'Here still is Boston. Fantasy, it seems, 
 
 Is Nature's stuff. Are you objective? do 
 You cognize of me, or are we but dreams ? 
 
 Am I saint Peter ? did the cock that crew 
 
 To call him to repentance rise anew, 
 Shaped as a hermit from some distant wild, 
 
 To chide me that my thought from Christ withdrew, 
 And that the wondrous legend I defiled ? 
 My Savior is myself; 'tis not a Jewish child ; 
 
 CCXXXL 
 
 And I am saved.' Another bubble broke, 
 
 With sound of waters rushing through the ear. 
 From his right nostril puffed a breathing smoke. 
 
 He caught my hand and cried, ' Do Gods appear ? 
 
 The Mystery that I scorned pursues me here. 
 Was that a Goddess rising from the waters ? 
 
 Thought of God's Motherhood I once held dear : 
 My heart adores that which my reason slaughters. 
 Is God a Woman-Man?' 'Seek ye among the daughters.' 
 vi!2 
 
90 STAR-FLOWERS. 
 
 CCXXXII. 
 
 Thus came a Voice, breathed with the sound of sighing, 
 
 As from the dryad in her whispering tree, 
 Borne till the wood makes musical replying. 
 
 But then the daughter stood disguisedly, 
 
 Led from the Word's divine eternity, 
 Like some cool nymph arisen from her well : 
 
 She sprayed him from her hands deliciously : 
 The love-diffusing dews upon him fell 
 Till he stood forth as one freed from some darkening spell. 
 
 CCXXXIII. 
 
 He cried, 'I think, I view!' the bosom rose, 
 
 For she had imminated occultly ; 
 So he began, as with a giant's throes, 
 
 To force himself down to the praying knee, 
 
 And touch to God by thought's reality. 
 Then he sobbed forth, as lifting to relief, 
 
 'In the Incarnate Miracle I see. 
 God in the Christ-Babe bore the Planet's grief. 
 I do believe: Lord Christ, help thou mine unbelief!' 
 
 NEW BOSTON: THOMAS PAINE. 
 
 'In what Niagaras of stormy bliss 
 
 I think,' spake one known once as Thomas Paine. 
 'Stand you divining wisdom by a kiss, 
 
 As ancients by their scripture would explain ? 
 
 I was an infidel : that much is plain ; 
 I steeped my faculties in common sense ; 
 
 But common sense new senses may obtain, 
 And facts that to it gave no evidence 
 May grow into the brain by many a future tense. 
 
STAR-FLOWERS. 91 
 
 ccxxxv. 
 
 'George Washington was very good and kind, 
 
 And, though I scorned upon the Virgin Mary, 
 After I left the Earth sent forth to find 
 
 And made me for a sort of secretary. 
 
 For a milch cow in his most private dairy, 
 If you will trust my word in such a thing, 
 
 A wise and virtuous woman, blithe and airy, 
 Makes to his lips a milky offering : 
 She is a People's queen, the general is king. 
 
 CCXXXVI. 
 
 ' 111 Boston they began the Revolution, 
 
 And He-She, that is Revolution's Name, 
 
 Lives ever since by forces in transfusion, 
 
 Where the Fire-Goddess spins a robe of flame 
 O'er young Columbia, to conceal her shame. 
 
 Since then those Boston folk for many years 
 Keep up the revolution as a game : 
 
 They shape by brain-style as white musketeers : 
 
 Oft orators weave swords and priests are cannoneers. 
 
 CCXXXVII. 
 
 'But they descend by mind from Ishmael: 
 
 Against all creeds and theories they fight ; 
 But first they handle them and taste and smell, 
 
 Till they disgust upon their first delight. 
 
 Each of them is an Individualite, 
 Who spins like a wild kitten round its tail, 
 
 And thinks himself progressive to the hight 
 Where underneath his feet the stars grow pale. 
 So much of them : at last their evolutions fail. 
 
92 STAR-FLOWERS, 
 
 CCXXXVIIL 
 
 ' Because I was ' Tom Paine/ some venerate : 
 
 As a small god in Boston I have been. 
 My 'Age of Reason' long is out of date : 
 
 They pluck the fruit I shed when it was green. 
 
 If the same apple now by them were seen, 
 Ripened and full of juice and rich in meat, 
 
 They would condemn it to a quarantine ; 
 Cast it indeed down an ignoble seat, 
 And heap upon it slime, as I will not repeat. 
 
 CCXXXIX. 
 
 'They had my pillar in the 'loftier sphere,' 
 Where ' Liberal Thinkers ' haste to congregate. 
 
 I stood among the sages they revere 
 Until one day I found to imminate, 
 And through the stone to show and revelate. 
 
 Ten thousand infidels or so beheld, 
 
 And I spake to them words that had a weight, 
 
 'Christ-Christa,' said I, 'hold, though we rebelled, 
 
 Our lives in the Divine, else life had been dispelled/ 
 
 CCXL. 
 
 ' Therefore they shook my pillar from its base ; 
 
 And I was in my statue when it fell ; 
 And they beheld my pale appealing face 
 
 Look through the stone. Yes, Paine the infidel 
 
 Spake as a martyr through that stone, to tell 
 Of He-She whom he loves, the High Oiie-Twaiii ; 
 
 And, when their blows had broken up my shell, 
 It seemed they wrought a cross in their disdain : 
 They bore me down awhile, but I will not complain. 
 
STAR-FLOWERS. 93 
 
 CCXLL 
 
 ' They lashed me with the scourges of their tongues, 
 
 Called me 'a drunken scoundrel, who had sold 
 The faith of reason;' taunted me with wrongs 
 
 Beyond what Cheetham libelled me of old ; 
 
 Till women came, with kindness to uphold, 
 Good women, infidels, New England bred. 
 
 But these I made disciples, and they told 
 That Paine had given a sacramental bread, 
 Which multiplied from Christ while in His name they fed. 
 
 CCXLIL 
 
 ' So in this land, that now is named < Gradation/ 
 
 I dwell and keep a caravansary, 
 Only for infidels. 'Tis my vocation, 
 
 As they emerge from death's deep mystery, 
 
 To make them welcome at < Paine's Hostelry,' 
 And of my own experience to show. 
 
 In a small way I serve as Peter's key, 
 Opening the doors of Heaven by truth aglow, 
 And many have gone in : yea, some of them you know. ' 
 
 MYSTERY OF EVIL: THE LOST ORB. 
 
 What Power is this found in the dark of death? 
 
 No other planet in Life's universe 
 Chills for the cold of the dissolving breath ; 
 
 None other floats, made all a tear-stained hearse, 
 
 Wrapt in demoniac shades that stain and curse : 
 None other whirls through miseries apart, 
 
 From Heaven's fraternal order made inverse. 
 None other bears a woe as where thou art : 
 What poison twines thy veins ! what ruin rules thy heart ! 
 
94 STAR-BLOWERS. 
 
 CCXLIV. 
 
 I see thee, yet not seeing : thou art not, 
 
 And still thou art ; a shape that hath no soul ; 
 A generator of all evils, fraught 
 
 With misery and madness to control. 
 
 Once a gigantic mind in self did scroll 
 His being and through him his people fell. 
 
 As discords, when their surging volumes roll, 
 Shatter at last some vibrant crystal bell, 
 The anarchim destroyed the orb that did rebel. 
 
 CCXLV. 
 
 Oblivion since hath passed upon the race 
 
 Of the destroyers, but their magic set 
 An image in Earth's Nature so to trace, 
 
 And in that image, though the years forget, 
 
 All the insanities that highten yet 
 Shape for a false ideal : they array 
 
 In man their sexual fashion to beget : 
 They weave anew, through Nature's endless play. 
 From outlines of the fall Nature repeats alway. 
 
 CCXLVI. 
 
 Nature contains a falseness not her own : 
 
 'Tis in the third exterior degree ; 
 Wrought mainly through the superficial zone 
 
 Where Earth's young manhood sought humanity. 
 
 From this ensues the world's profanity : 
 The primal curse flows on through many less 
 
 To thrall the race in nature-slavery ; 
 Man to make devil, woman deviless, 
 Tainting with varying plagues their social, sexual dress. 
 
STAR-FLOWERS. 95 
 
 CCXLVII. 
 
 Thence comes the legend of a ruling fiend ; 
 
 Stories of angels from their glory lost. 
 No race is from its superstitions weaned 
 
 That worships the false god : though myths exhaust, 
 
 The false god's tracery in Nature's frost 
 Weaves for new phantoms through the racial plan : 
 
 The evil seer who hath her outline crossed 
 Draws by the brain-whirl to the Fallen Man ; 
 The image in her disc whence the decline began. 
 
 CCXLVIIL 
 
 This Image, with a brow of frosted steel, 
 Confronts me : it is nought and yet is more 
 
 Than hosts who in the storm of battle wheel. 
 My quivering shade-form seems to stand before 
 A mighty force of phantasm fiercely frore ; 
 
 An Abstract Intellect whose life is dead ; 
 
 Whose hollow form with Nature-life brims o'er 
 
 To scorn the High One-Twain's pure Goddesshead ; 
 
 A centralised Self-Lust, by the orb's vigors fed. 
 
 CCXLIX. 
 
 'Tis Thought that rules the Earth when organised. 
 
 Here is a Thought shaped in Earth's third dimension, 
 That wrought through ages all disparadised, 
 
 By all heredities led to extension. 
 
 The 'god of this world' is no fond invention, 
 The 'god of this world' who gave Christ no place. 
 
 Here was the power that made His intervention 
 A martyrdom and crowned it with disgrace. 
 This power in man resists the Bridal Word's embrace, 
 
96 STAR-FLOWERS. 
 
 CCL. 
 
 Men who strive most for God and for mankind 
 Find in all times this Vastness without name : 
 
 Through paths of all the mysteries they wind ; 
 All ills they conquer and all fears out-flame, 
 Till Nature, in the last turn of her game, 
 
 Shows the False Cross, the dread Man-Serpent's rod ; 
 The might the orb's one-twaining that o'ercame ; 
 
 Might that led forth the sex-lust where it trod 
 
 And closed' the racial lungs against the breath of God. 
 
 CCLI. 
 
 This Image, 'tis in Nature, and its place 
 The plexial wreath of her vast loveliness ; 
 
 Suppressing there the form she might entrace. 
 Words, they are vain the mystery to express. 
 Yet Issa spake, l Do thou in me confess.' 
 
 She rose upon me ; all her mights in tower ; 
 Then stripped her bosom of the extreme dress, 
 
 Saying, ' In me trace Nature's dormant flower ; 
 
 The devil's paw smote there on Nature in her bower. 
 
 CCLII. 
 
 ' See ! here my rod flames forth mysterious, showing 
 
 A flower with lights that burn and socialise. 
 This passion-flower, the deathless one, bestowing 
 
 Forces 'whereby the godlike ones arise, 
 
 Shaping the Earth to immortalities, 
 This flower Earth's Nature holdeth but in germ : 
 
 Her littleness alone through woman plies, 
 For the resistant image of the worm . 
 Is stamped into her there to conquer and unfirm. 
 
STAR-FLOWERS. 97 
 
 CCLIII. 
 
 ' Now thou hast entered Nature from on high, 
 To scan the wounding that she would not show 
 
 Whilst thou wert moving in her mystery. 
 'Twas this made Nature colden to thee so : 
 Woman is she, and woman hides her woe. 
 
 This is her shame ; the shame of shames indeed. 
 All the lost girls, of whom by thought you know, 
 
 Fall in this shame and in it sin and bleed : 
 
 Here is the devil's book by which men's lusts do read/ 
 
 CCLIV. 
 
 She flamed upon me, pale and terrible. 
 
 1 Faithful/ she spake, 'Look here! our Father bled 
 Less on the cross than in the violet dell 
 
 Where woman holds her plexial bridalhead. 
 
 Yea, here thou bleedest, till thy life is shed 
 By day and night and the worn shadow fails. 
 
 Man hath the God- Word misinterpreted : 
 The word-seed on the nature-worm impales, 
 For Nature in her breast the sexual death envails.' 
 
 CCLV. 
 
 I cried, "Yea, it is so ; but can a worm 
 
 Arrest the equinox?" She murmured, 'Yes. 
 
 When I do wing me there in Nature's form 
 Thou shalt find Issa in this lady's pless, 
 Rising through that lost organ for redress 
 
 Of many ills that nature-girl hath made. 
 Then woman unto woman will confess, 
 
 As sister-buds in God's White Flower displayed, 
 
 And the Great Sex uplift, for unity arrayed/ 
 vi!3 
 
98 STAR-FLOWERS. 
 
 CCLVI. 
 
 It was a Voice, ' Shall Nature's frame ungird ? ' 
 Far sounding through the caverns of the Night. 
 
 A sense within the senses rose and heard. 
 I stood in speechless wonder and delight, 
 For the Form Spirits by their will gave might. 
 
 Then Issa spake again, ' Behold, I go ; 
 
 And thou shalt enter with me where the blight 
 
 Spins upon Nature's breast to spoil her so : 
 
 Then we, one-twain, will pass to serve by bliss-in-woe.' 
 
 7. 
 
 PENETRATIONS. 
 
 He who has found the old of old, 
 And wrought therein for blisses bold, 
 May penetrate beyond the mold, 
 Where erst the streams of Eden rolled. 
 
 He who has met the curse of curse, 
 And aye with better faced the worse, 
 May win at last the Fates, who nurse 
 Young Edens for the universe. 
 
 He who has borne the toil of toil 
 May so enrich by spoil of spoil ; 
 From man the death-worm to uncoil, 
 And end the Planet's long turmoil. 
 
 He who has found the central power 
 That holds from bloom the woman's flower, 
 Upon his breasts may build her tower ; 
 Then lead her to God's marriage bower. 
 
S^AR-tfLOWERS. 99 
 
 I wreathe my life in Issa's bloom : 
 With her I dare the Nature-doom. 
 Our cross shall blossom in the tomb, 
 Till bridal beams the dark illume. 
 
 The sad sweet story here has caught 
 Warm splendors in the Savior-thought : 
 In loftier powers it wings enwrought, 
 Victorious where the Serpent fought. 
 
 BATTLE THROUGH INFANCY. 
 
 'A worm may overcome the equinox;' 
 
 A wreathing form of passionate desire 
 Resist the tempest that the planet shocks, 
 
 And charm to death its discords by the lyre, 
 
 Impulsing melodies that weave to fire. 
 Leap thou, my quivering heart, leap thou to song. 
 
 Thou shade-form, though but for the funeral pyre, 
 Light thy last powers serenely brave and strong : 
 Strike to Earth's plexial bands till she the strain prolong. 
 
 CCLVIII. 
 
 I held a girl babe, seated on my knee. 
 
 It had survived the nature-tie, but here 
 A grandchild came, and God's Paternity 
 
 Broke through my being ; so I claimed her dear. 
 
 But Nature through the infant thrust her spear : 
 He who would lift one child from Nature's thrall 
 
 Must stand where every cradle vails a bier, 
 And meet the false god of the planet, all 
 Found in that central sign lifted for woman's fall. 
 
100 
 
 CCLIX; 
 
 From this small word-babe through my being rolled 
 
 A wave of ecstasies in agonies. 
 I seemed to her a grandsire grey and old ; 
 
 I, youthful in the prime of paradise. 
 
 I scriptured her ; so heard through her the cries 
 Of suffering word-babes all the planet o'er ; 
 
 Then, clasping to my heart the infant prize, 
 My hope, my expectation rose ; it bore 
 Earth's infancy aloft through God for garden-door. 
 
 CCLX. 
 
 Such wealth of generous being flows and floods 
 
 In this one-twainness that no grief appals : 
 We are as wealthy as the summer woods, 
 
 Gay for a clime where God holds festivals ; 
 
 Where from each tree the heart-sweet dryad calls, 
 And every fountain vails a nymph divine. 
 
 The Mother-sea flows through for crystal walls ; 
 Her diamond grottos in the waters shine, 
 And, if the eyes find tears, the tears make joyous wine. 
 
 CCLXI. 
 
 So, touching to the word-babe, Mother's gift, 
 
 Issa upon my heart wrought overflow 
 And woman's tenderness rose strong to lift, 
 
 Yet wove a sheaf of waters in her bow. 
 
 Then compassed she, a greatness to bestow : 
 She led me through the gradual states of man, 
 
 To where the intellectual state below 
 Holds in its learning strife and scorn and ban ; 
 Where thought's intensest powers New England's culture 
 span. 
 
101 
 
 CCLXII. 
 
 The Mother blessed me by Her violet, \] 
 
 Wreathed as a heaven encompassing/t'he^ sight ^o,, 3 J 
 Infinitudes of liquid azure, set 
 
 In starry orbs of emanative light. 
 
 My songs for earthly utterance unite, 
 Shaped from the star-words, shaped as infants all, 
 
 That through the breathing bosom wing their flight. 
 The choral infants in my voice give call : 
 They pass by living clouds dim Earth's enclosing wall. 
 
 CCLXIIL 
 
 Earth is a fallen world, lost from the motion 
 
 Whereby the sister planets round and swim ; 
 Orbed in illusions for an airy ocean ; 
 
 Closed from the Word-breath into falsehoods grim ; 
 
 Closed by long evils to the choric hymn. 
 Of universal harmony ; self-lost ; 
 
 Its Peoples but as whirling motes that dim 
 In self-begotten vapors to exhaust ; 
 Its life-line girdled round by life-consuming frost. 
 
 CCLXIV. 
 
 ' 'Tis a mad world, my masters ! ' everywhere 
 
 The brute peers forth through seeming manhood's face. 
 
 The beast shapes in the human breast his lair. 
 If Christ were man, and more he was by grace 
 Of full one-twainness in divine embrace, 
 
 Then the best show but sketches of design, 
 There, where the highest, good is out of place, 
 
 Where anarchies with slaveries entwine 
 
 Insanities in man, o'erdarkening the divine. 
 
102 
 
 CCLXV. 
 
 'frbai^rtie view-point of that one small globe, 
 e is JIG* hope *of any better life : 
 ^or'mis'eries i'he growing years enrobe, 
 
 Whilst progress fashions more and complex strife. 
 Nation defends from nation by the knife. 
 Though culture gilds and spangles on the brow, 
 
 The People's body is with ulcers rife : 
 Passions that all men feel, though few avow, 
 Corrupt where they repress, corrode where they o'erflow. 
 
 CCLXVI. 
 
 In that dread Tophet of the generations 
 
 Show island points of freedom, truth and art. 
 Hope lights mankind from their illuminations 
 
 And Commerce plies for her debauching part ; 
 
 Or crowned embattled Murder thrones the mart ; 
 Or Luxury fires the passions to a storm ; 
 
 Or Superstition slaves the mind inert. 
 The multiplying ills debase, deform. 
 Man glides erect in part, then grovels like the worm. 
 
 CCLXVII. 
 
 Men seek to ope the occult world, but thence, 
 
 As from the casket on Pandora's knee, 
 Concealed illusions rise to eminence : 
 
 The race explores its own insanity : 
 
 It penetrates the Word-bound terror-sea 
 Whence superstitions breed and manias hive : 
 
 It opens to a realm of witchery 
 Whence all the ills that spell the nations drive ; 
 Opes to the lusts that burn, the anarchies that rive. 
 
STAR-FLOWERS. 103 
 
 CCLXVIIL 
 
 When the live electricities are found, 
 
 When the formed magnetisms shall unearth, 
 Then on man's couch may leap the electric hound, 
 
 Or the magnetic wolf haunt by the hearth. 
 
 There is an occult world in under-birth, 
 Creatures like those in prehistoric seas, 
 
 Serving, perchance, an end in Nature's mirth, 
 Yet leading heats that scorch and colds that freeze, 
 And withering this mankind by lightnings from their glees. 
 
 LIVING LIGHTNINGS. 
 
 The orbed Earth is vital to her core ; 
 
 Electro-vital oceans in her thrill : 
 The narrow rim man treads or couches o'er 
 
 Electric powers may open : sure they will. 
 
 Science projects by forces that instil : 
 J Tis the Aladdin who with lamp in hand 
 
 Summons the genii that have slumbered still, 
 Enchanted all in Nature's occult land ; 
 But Science has no spell to rule that awful band. 
 
 CCLXX. 
 
 Men are as motes, as insects of the ray, 
 
 Measured by those impersonals, who own 
 Allegiance only to a loftier sway: 
 
 The Woman's Word is their desire alone. 
 
 Within Her by her harmonies they tone ; 
 Unto Her breath they draw for their delights, 
 
 And She enweaves, with many a splendid zone, 
 The vital realm made glorious by their mights. 
 But now the Lightnings rise ; the song their power invites, 
 
104 STAR-FLOWERS. 
 
 CCLXXI. 
 
 That realm is wakening even now ; the probe 
 
 Of science, piercing the electric floors, 
 Thrills them as if the lungs in either lobe 
 
 Felt the swift blow or the sharp horn that gores. 
 
 The electricities have opened doors : 
 Touch men upon the last, then, sure as fate, 
 
 Embodied lightnings reach the earthly shores, 
 Harmless and kind, impervious to hate, 
 Yet kindling in the airs Earth's race to uncreate. 
 
 ccLxxri. 
 
 Science to the white magic is akin : 
 
 Yet why was magic long ago forbid ? 
 Wise ancients knew, but would not enter in : 
 
 All that was safe to do they dared and did. 
 
 The Morning Land held lights beneath its lid : 
 They show sublimely here in Lilistan ; 
 
 But men whose lore sleeps 'neath the pyramid 
 Knew that electric oceans, vast and wan, 
 Hold races whom to rouse were to extinguish man ; 
 
 CCLXXIIL 
 
 Not angels and not devils ; creatures wrought 
 
 In prior substance ; beings many-styled, 
 Unknowable by Earth's dirnensive thought. 
 
 Lord Jesus traveled 'mid them when a Child ; 
 
 On His arch-solar face they beamed and smiled, 
 Whilst He restrained them from their warlike mood, 
 
 Made to a longer quiet reconciled ; 
 For He baptised them in His Yessa's good : 
 His glowing feet that passed calmed their electric flood, 
 
STAR-FLOWERS. 105 
 
 CCLXXIV. 
 
 Yet He eneharmed them only till mankind 
 Should touch into their energies : they feel : 
 
 The circle of their quiet is untwined : 
 
 The growing cyclones in their breathings wheel, 
 And the Earth jars upon them, till they peel 
 
 The fiery garments from their snow-white limbs, 
 And listen, listen to the thoughts that steal. 
 
 Drop after drop Earth's cataract of sins 
 
 Tingles into their sense and there its meaning wins. 
 
 CCLXXV. 
 
 Mankind is living in a proud defiance 
 
 Of what good thinkers feel to be God's Right. 
 Faiths and unfaiths both nurture a reliance 
 
 On self-desire, self-service and delight. 
 
 Insanities, that in their breasts unite, 
 Lead them through life as reckless buccaneers. 
 
 The few who hold to God by secret plight, 
 In whose deep hearts the violet heaven anears, 
 
 Are whirled amid the storm, impaled upon the spears. 
 
 i 
 
 CCLXXVI. 
 
 Men say, 'As science traces, God recedes 
 
 And vails in the unknowable at last.' 
 The scientist his nature-scripture reads 
 
 Till to his thought the word-stars are downcast, 
 
 To melt in vapors of the foolish Past. 
 Gods seem projected phantoms of the brain, 
 
 And Heavens, their splendors on the soul that cast, 
 But fire-mists woven by the floating train 
 Of the fantastic dreams, empty and fond and vain. 
 vi!4 
 
106 STAR-FLOWERS. 
 
 CCLXXVII. 
 
 Now comes at last the Man on the white horse : 
 
 Now draws anigh the Woman of the wave. 
 Yea, but for Them the planet were a corse, 
 
 Its airs a winding-sheet, its dust a grave. 
 
 Thou Saviorhood, Thy name is Strong-to-save, 
 But science urges doom ; it forces open 
 
 The doors whereby the deaths their pathway pave : 
 Wellnigh it hath the orb's shekinah broken : 
 Deep in the ears of doom its boastful words are spoken. 
 
 CCLXXVIII. 
 
 Men seek the risen truths in broken shells ; 
 
 Yet on mine eyes the star-bright nereids lean, 
 Uplifting from the Mother's violet wells, 
 
 Each in the glory of Her Word serene ; 
 
 Clad all in splendors of the Bridal Queen ; 
 Sprinkling for dews of silence and repose ; 
 
 Charming the world to quiet rest between 
 The folded arms that for her slumber close, 
 Whilst music that is love from every fountain flows. 
 
 DIVINE NIGHT. 
 
 Thou NIGHT, the Beautiful ! whom I adore ; 
 
 Thou Goddess Night whom Dayaus folds for bride ; 
 Thou who dost beam, with star-flowers mantled o'er, 
 
 Through myriad heavens and earths for bliss to glide ; 
 
 Divine, all wonderful, whose mystery plied 
 In the weird numbers of this solemn lay, 
 
 In Thy Divinity let me abide : 
 Open this breast anew for breathing play : 
 Instil for loftier powers that in Thy gifts array. 
 
STAR-FLOWERS. 107 
 
 CCLXXX. 
 
 Thou Night, the All-Embraciiig, Pitiful, 
 
 Who touchest even the worm for tenderness, 
 I lift from the lone planet, dark and dull, 
 
 Bathing my life in Thee, the Sorrowless. 
 
 I fill of Thee, my shade to dispossess 
 Of care and age and frailness ; so to shed 
 
 The exquisite benignities that press 
 From the fruitions of Thy Goddesshead, 
 And sprinkle for delights this earth I make my bed. 
 
 CCLXXXI. 
 
 Weave slumberous arms through mine embracingly ; 
 
 Weave charm s-in-charms, delicious, warm as flowers 
 That open for the summer's ecstasy : 
 
 Kevive, renew, remultiply the powers. 
 
 I hunger for Thy gifts, as for the bowers 
 Of immortality the faint fair girl. 
 
 Lead me to rise above Morn's orient towers, 
 Where fiery breaths find voice and winds shape whirl : 
 Thy purities through all this visioned life impearl. 
 
 CCLXXXII. 
 
 For now Thy violet is o'er mine eyes, 
 
 Where sun-fires of the day so long have darted, 
 And thought forms newly to the woman's ways, 
 
 And Earth is but a dream of things departed. 
 
 And all my being grows by wisdom hearted, 
 Impenetrate from love in overflow. 
 
 The griefs that in Earth's infancy have smarted, 
 Charmed with Thy mother-joy, lead bliss-in-woe. 
 I strive to reach my goal in Nature's bosom so. 
 
108 STAR-FLOWERS. 
 
 CCLXXXIII. 
 
 Make Thou thy touch in mine more delicate, 
 
 More fine and firm than the arch-solar kiss 
 On virgin planets, leading through the gate 
 
 Of their young edens for the birth of bliss 
 
 In new humanities : fold thine abyss 
 Of darkness round me, closing utterly, 
 
 That I may serve thy full desire in this. 
 Thy feet I touched before, but now the knee. 
 The spell thy bosom hides forms in my verse to be. 
 
 CCLXXXIV. 
 
 So let me dare unto the last extent. 
 
 From Woman came I forth, to her I yield, 
 Drawn by desire into the last event, 
 
 All in the doing of thy will concealed. 
 
 Be Thou, Night ! my panoply and shield : 
 The gated electricities unbar : 
 
 Hold me, that I may cross the stormy field 
 Where the dread astral powers for terrors are. 
 Hold me within thy shade, as darkness vails the star 
 
 FOSSILISED PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 The cold Philosopher who thinks in stone', 
 
 And from the surface builds a reasoning pyre, 
 Lives not in man ; he 'habits but the bone : 
 
 Nature's chill minerals are his mind's attire. 
 
 Felt by the one-twain minstrel's touch of fire, 
 The cold reptilia fossil in his brain : 
 
 When to the caves of sleep his thoughts retire, 
 They make no home in human joy or pain : 
 The solitary sprites a social life disdain. 
 
STAR-FLOWERS. 109 
 
 CCLXXXVL 
 
 He lives on man, not in man : he absorbs 
 
 Vigors that grow from man's warmheartedness, 
 And so his frigid skeleton enorbs, 
 
 Making his glacial self a wilderness, 
 
 Arrayed in Time's historic loveliness : 
 His the cold eye that telescopes the stars : 
 
 His the cold hand on Nature's globes to press, 
 To vivisect through pains and wounds and scars, 
 To pierce the hidden life, to break its sheltering bars. 
 
 CCLXXXVIL 
 
 His the cold mind, from quivering human life, 
 
 Outraged but vailed beneath his glance, to scan 
 Of the Divinity's creation, rife 
 
 With sightless wonders, and misread the plan : 
 
 He finds an agony and names it 'man.' 
 He traces where the people of the heart 
 
 Built from warm raptures, greek or aryan ; 
 Explores the ruined shrine, the wasted mart ; 
 Reads men as building ants, phantoms of Nature's art. 
 
 CCLXXXVIIL 
 
 The godlike images, wherein they set 
 
 Symbols of mind that met Divinity, 
 In his cold brain no loftier thoughts beget 
 
 Than fashion from its mineralogy. 
 
 The love, the worship and the poesy 
 Are but as pebbles from some old moraine. 
 
 He builds from Time his glacial theory : 
 The prophet's ecstasy, the bardic strain, 
 For him are but as drops of prehistoric rain. 
 
110 STAR-FLOWERS. 
 
 CCLXXXIX. 
 
 For that his reasoning sight but meets illusion, 
 
 He reasons that illusion was the base, 
 Whence great Religions drew for the profusion 
 
 Of Idealities that wrought their grace 
 
 And glory for each old-time vanished race. 
 Because the sun to him is but a mass 
 
 Of fire-mist nucleating from the space, 
 He sees not that the Morn once held a glass, 
 Within whose mirrored orb God might to vision pass. 
 
 CCXC. 
 
 The mineral thought finds but the mineral 
 
 Where the Star-Spirits light their burnished thrones 
 The heavens to him are but the massive wall 
 
 Where stone-work heaps, to grow perchance to bones. 
 
 Language to him, with all its glorious tones, 
 Vibrant from fiery-hearted bards of old, 
 
 Is but a lifeless sea that heaves and moans 
 From caverns of the preexistent cold. 
 Upon his plexial orb the fossil is enscrolled. 
 
 CCXCI. 
 
 What if God Dayaus merely was the sun ? 
 
 The sun was Being to that orient nation 
 Who stood in worship, glad for morn begun, 
 
 Feeling the plexus lift for exultation. 
 
 The Father Sun they owned by adoration. 
 Did the enkindling raptures through them run ? 
 
 Their minds illumined to a coronation ; 
 Brother felt brother from the Father-One ; 
 Anthropomorphic faith in light its vesture spun. 
 
STAR-FLOWERS. Ill 
 
 CCXCIL 
 
 Were men not fossilised, not made as heaps 
 
 Massed on each other in some ruined wall, 
 This fiery faith that from the morning leaps 
 
 Would cleave once more the dead world's frozen pall, 
 
 And lift again, to show, for solar ball 
 God Helios-Christus, Lord of light and song : 
 
 Winds might bear melodies ; Apollo's call 
 Wake sweet response the plexial lyres among, 
 And age renew its youth, by Him, the Ever- Young. 
 
 CCXCIII. 
 
 The Age is like an old man in his dotage, 
 
 Who hath outlived the fire that fed his veins, 
 
 And feebly struggles for his mess of pottage, 
 And thinks but from the coldness in his reins, 
 Though once he rode with Morning o'er the plains 
 
 And wooed blithe Immortality for bride. 
 
 Therefore the Earth spurns on him with disdains : 
 
 Therefore the Heaven, yea, She, the violet-eyed, 
 
 With pity brims Her cup, ere he to ruin tide. 
 
 ISSA: SUN-SONG. 
 
 ' I am the Sun-God's glorious daughter : 
 
 I smile o'er the billows wan ; 
 O'er plains that are red from the human slaughter ; 
 
 O'er ruins and wraiths of man. 
 
 ' I touch to the veins of the weary planet ; 
 
 I touch for the fires that thrill : 
 The Bridal Word that for joy began it 
 
 Is flooding its race to fill, 
 
112 STAR-FLOWERS. 
 
 ' Cold are the tears in its orbs that glisten ; 
 
 Strained are its bosom's chords. 
 They from the solar world who listen 
 
 Hear but the strife of swords ; 
 
 ' Hear but the war-cries of the factions, 
 Brother 'gainst brother met ; 
 
 Lost to the social interactions ; 
 Dead to the violet ; 
 
 ' Kissed where the rising deaths en-anger ; 
 
 Kissed till the loves decay. 
 Only as shadows now they linger, 
 
 Shadows in stormful play. 
 
 < I am the Sun-God's glorious maiden. 
 
 List to the words I say : 
 Death I pursue, with the planet laden ; 
 
 Death I o'ertake and slay.' 
 
 9. 
 
 THE HUMAN PROPHECY. 
 
 All that a man hath he will give 
 For Life, that is so fugitive ; 
 . And yet he reaps but frozen pains 
 For harvest in his aged veins. 
 
 All that a man hath he will spend 
 For Love, with solace to attend ; 
 Yet she but withers on his breast 
 And leaves a vision of unrest. 
 
 All that man knoweth he will cast 
 Behind him, and deny the Past 
 
STAR-FLOWERS. 113 
 
 For the bright Future, that recedes, 
 Lengthening the path whereon he bleeds. 
 
 Yet Life, still Life ; not less but more 
 He claims, he craves ; her floods unshore. 
 Striving for the diviner sea, 
 He reaches from his agony. 
 
 The Solar God his passion nurst, 
 A^hen first the morn made life to burst 
 And quicken through his tiny shell, 
 Warm in the mother's blossom-bell. 
 
 There is a prophecy in him. 
 Though Time through lingering years bedim ; 
 Though Earth encold from branch to root, 
 The prophecy will not be mute. 
 
 It streams from all the zodiac's urns ; 
 It floods from spheres where noon-tide burns ; 
 It breathes, though years like stars have set, 
 From Life's immortal violet ; 
 
 The prophecy of endless hours, 
 Wreathed all with Love's undying flowers ; 
 The prophecy of God in man, 
 Young Earth reborn as Lilistan. 
 
 10. 
 GRADATION: CHAPIN. 
 
 Chapin the Universalist 
 Glanced through a cool Bostonian mist ; 
 A man of learning, worth and sense, 
 Half caution and half eloquence ; 
 Changed much from his anterior style. 
 vi 15 
 
114 STAR-FLOWERS. 
 
 ' Posterior/ he exclaimed : a smile 
 Broke through his eyes, he stood awhile, 
 Till his formed thought an outline won : 
 So to mine eyes a vision spun. 
 
 What? Rabbi Chapin? for he drew 
 
 To the round likeness of a Jew : 
 
 Chapin-Spinosa he was now, 
 
 Domed brain and corrugated brow, 
 
 Taking the aspect of the man, 
 
 The mighty scholar-artisan. 
 
 Spake Chapin, ' Do you memory when 
 
 I thought among the Boston men ? 
 
 Spinosa was the secret power 
 
 Wrought in New England's mental flower. 
 
 The Unitarian touched the Jew : 
 
 His was the charm that Alcott drew ; 
 
 The subtle vein that wove and spun 
 
 For brilliancy in Emerson.' 
 
 I answered, "Well?" His aspect grew 
 Spinosa, Charming and Ballou ; 
 Then, with a twinkle in the eye, 
 Looked for a sentence in reply. 
 "Chapin," I spake, "as he was then; 
 A man made up from three strong men : 
 He read as poets who divine ; 
 He preached, but not as parsons whine : 
 Warm-hearted student ; all a wit ; 
 Concealing but no hypocrite ; 
 His was a power, had he but known, 
 To blossom from God's rose full-blown, 
 In fragrance that might thence have led 
 Blessing as from God's bridal bed." 
 
STAR-FLOWERS. 115 
 
 He quivered, gasped, his belly smote, 
 
 Then spake, 'I fed like any shoat : 
 
 I had a belly-god, a fellow 
 
 Who when I dined grew warm and mellow ; 
 
 An adjunct, verily a ghost, 
 
 Who took me for his boiled and roast ; 
 
 Then thought, in odious mimicry, 
 
 That he was Chapin, I but he. 
 
 Sometimes I sensed, though never said, 
 
 Something uncanny haunt my bed. 
 
 Sometimes I feared, in spite of Paul, 
 
 Blue smoke and sulphur after all. 
 
 I held my cult as men persist 
 
 Who see the home-lights through a mist, 
 
 And grope their way, 'mid wind and rain, 
 
 To reach the household roof again. 
 
 I dared not trust my deeper moods : 
 
 I feared the visioned solitudes. 
 
 t The bubble, Earth, broke : then 'twas so 
 
 That back to Boston I must go. 
 
 The Jewish-Unitarian whirl 
 
 Closed round, my being to infurl. 
 
 My books revived upon the brain ; 
 
 But now by whirlwinds of a pain. 
 
 Spofford, and others such as he, 
 
 Wrought magic of the library. 
 
 I owned the books ; now books owned me : 
 
 The romance and the poetry 
 
 Had lost their charm, but thence I fed 
 
 On curious tracings of the dead ; 
 
 Not reading what men thought they said. 
 
116 STAR-FLOWERS; 
 
 1 Books are the grave-yards of the wit ; 
 Some open like a charnel pit. 
 Byron wrote often from the zest 
 Of suicide within his breast ; 
 Burns sometimes as a sacred bard, 
 Whose purities make one discard 
 Much that in Hebrew lore we find ; 
 An angel in a goat entwined. 
 Chapin, ah well ! ' 
 
 I caught his hand ; 
 
 " Brother/' I cried, "thy thoughts enwand; 
 Think not of the departed land." 
 'Yes, it is good of you/ he spoke, 
 'The mind from memories to evoke. 
 Now I am happy ; books are fled : 
 Realities enthrone instead. 
 Had I but dared/ 
 
 "Nay, harping still! 
 
 Come back, come home from Murray hill. 
 I was before you: give to me 
 Brown stone 'Divine Paternity.' ' 
 He smiled, ' Right gladly ; that I will ; 
 Some hearts dream there toward you still. 
 There lives a flower that you left ; 
 Something from the peeled rods you cleft. 
 Your works endure, while Chapin's close ; 
 Yours the young lambs, though mine the ewes.' 
 
 "Brother," I said, "though years betide, 
 The lover loves the vanished bride. 
 My feet are fashioned in the Rock, 
 Yet still I fold that memoried flock. 
 
117 
 
 " ' 0, for one hour ! ' I sometimes say, 
 'The aged form to rearray, 
 And scatter there the golden grain 
 Of wisdom from the One-in-Twain.' 
 If God leads on till powers transpose 
 There will I stand as gifts unclose." 
 
 His face illumined ; ' What a joke/ 
 
 He cried, 'yet what a master-stroke! 
 
 A reappearance from the dead ; 
 
 Life's resurrection-flower dispread, 
 
 And Wisdom justified at last, 
 
 Where Prophecy her young life cast 
 
 Upon the cold unfruitful flood 
 
 That held, as seemed, but channel mud. 
 
 The patient seer, the toiling drudge, 
 
 Confounded oft with 'medium Sludge,' ' 
 
 I spake, " No more ! let memories be ; 
 And, Brother, be you there, to see 
 Demonstrant Immortality." 
 
 POWEES THAT SERVE THE END. 
 
 Net-works of living electricities, 
 
 In each organic form of Earth's exten.se, 
 
 Pulse with a movement of slow melodies. 
 
 Through the snow-crystals they by flames condense 
 They glimmer in the human countenance. 
 
 Man dwells in splendors colored as the bow : 
 In sorrow's chill or rapture's fire intense 
 
 The varying modulations fuse and flow, 
 
 Yet all in one control the mighty currents go. 
 
118 STAR-FLOWERS. 
 
 ccxcv. 
 
 Theirs are the powers that wait to play their part ; 
 
 That even now are entering on the stage. 
 Man feels into their currents by his art ; 
 
 He enters them by thoughts that whirl and rage ; 
 
 Whilst they untwine, his structures to encage 
 And fold to wreathe mankind in full embrace. 
 
 What glorious genii for the End engage ! 
 Calm, passionless, they feel not for the race ; 
 Their sympathies but clasp the Word-will for their place. 
 
 CCXCVI. 
 
 They move like mechanisms, automatic, 
 
 Nor fear, nor hope, nor love, as men bestow. 
 Mahatmas of the occult asiatic 
 
 Mayhap divine them, touch as snow to snow. 
 
 They colden to the cold, to glow they glow. 
 'Twere easy to mistake them for the great, 
 
 The fifth-dimensioned people, who avow 
 Perchance transposed through the arch-solar gate, 
 And yet their forms are but as things that serve a Fate. 
 
 CCXCVIL 
 
 Men talk of the persistency of force ; 
 
 Here are live Forces, structured to persist, 
 And fashioned to man's likeness for a course 
 
 Of energies no planet may resist. 
 
 One showed to me by an electric wrist 
 That touched the left hand : gently the wrist fed 
 
 From out my elements, pleased as if kissed, 
 Until a current from my nerves it led, 
 Wherefrorn a crimson flood over its organ spread. 
 
STAR-FLOWERS. 119 
 
 CCXCVIIL 
 
 But then the hand, that was before unseen, 
 
 Grew visible : it touched upon my brow : 
 The august foliage fashioned there from green 
 
 To golden russet changed, it changeth now. 
 
 The Word-life doth this shadow-form endow 
 With a new Nature, twining through the cells : 
 
 There the full summer did by such avow. 
 Electric currents, passing through the shells, 
 The net-work of the leaves, their withering foretells. 
 
 (JCXCIX. 
 
 Soon the electric genius by such style 
 
 Shaped in my palm food like a crimson fruit : 
 
 I held it to the plexial orb awhile, 
 And it dissolved, newly to evolute : 
 A warm rich current reaching to the root 
 
 Passed through each nerve of the organic tree. 
 What did the genius work by such pursuit ? 
 
 As to the shade-form he enautumned me. 
 
 Summer involves the powers ; she leaves the surfacery. 
 
 CCC. 
 
 I am in Autumn whilst the august moon 
 
 O'er yonder hill-top lifts her large white shield. 
 
 Yet Spring, I feel it centered in me soon, 
 To print with kisses all my nature-field ; 
 The senses thrilled for cold, but uncongealed. 
 
 There's no sensation of the time of snow : 
 Labors by ripeness to new labors yield. 
 
 Is this the shape, a little while ago, 
 
 That shuddered for a fear as from the murderer's blow ? 
 
120 STAR-FLO WE US . 
 
 CCCI. 
 
 Such are some Powers that wait to serve the End : 
 
 Milder than are the faintest winds of even, 
 The Word-life draws them as to gift a friend : 
 
 They vanish when their services are given ; 
 
 Yet find man's frame on earth to make it heaven. 
 Silent in their swift-footed ministries, 
 
 They glide where angels all in vain have striven. 
 When they impermeate the world's disease, 
 Death shall depart the frame if Father-Mother please. 
 
 cccii: 
 
 So all the months wove music in my rhyme, 
 
 From April's prime to rich mature July, 
 Till August, entering the nature-clime, 
 
 Found their full ripeness glowing to the eye, 
 
 But, rounding in the gathered energy, 
 Brought no return. As waters leave their bed, 
 
 My life-founts lessened from their full supply : 
 The sense of dying Time upon me led : 
 I was as fruit-trees when their perfect fruit is shed. 
 
 CCCIII. 
 
 For I live fast ; live faster as time narrows : 
 
 Yea, faster still it shall be to the close. 
 If young Apollo drives the plow, the furrows 
 
 Open as passing through the water-flows. 
 
 How good is God ! toil, that a giant knows 
 To shrink from, takes me as a winged child : 
 
 The burdens almost in the sports repose, 
 And thunderous thoughts, from Heaven's aerial piled, 
 Glide from my lips wellnigh as love-winds warmly rnild. 
 
STAR-FLOWERS. 121 
 
 BOYHOOD IN LILISTAN. 
 
 < 'Tis a great sport, the play of kingdoming,' 
 
 Said a brave boy. ' I hope you have a plan 
 To let me go into the pleasuring, 
 
 And set me somewhere in the Land of Ban. 
 
 I'd like to catch a ghost, some waif of man : 
 I'd have him in a cage of kind regards. 
 
 To do a thing, first we must think we can : 
 I play in doing things my game of cards.' 
 'Faithful,' spake Issa then, 'that child for you enhards.' 
 
 CCCV. 
 
 The boy cried, 'Yes, I harden, Majesty! 
 
 I know my Lady's voice forms in your speech : 
 Her word tastes in my bosom preciously. 
 
 Now I was ripening soft as any peach, 
 
 Till thought into the Royalty gave reach. 
 You are a hard man : make me hard likewise. 
 
 A humming-bird? I'd be a sharp-billed lark, 
 And find some boy below, to bad who plies, 
 And suck his death-blood out, that so he might arise. 
 
 CCCVI. 
 
 ' I 'd play my cards into him, such as those 
 
 The reverend Cupids and their Psyches make, 
 
 Till images should in his brain repose 
 
 Of ladies who for God-time roast and bake, 
 And sacred clergy who give wine and cake. 
 
 My teacher, he is named Sir Stand-for-God : 
 Should I his picture with the others shake, 
 
 That boy, I'm sure, would need no whipping rod : 
 
 He'd ask for boots like mine, for righteous going shod, 
 vi!6 
 
122 STAR-FLOWERS. 
 
 CCCVIL 
 
 ' Our Lady Queen was named ' Chrysanthea,' 
 
 But now they call her ' Violet-Eyes' : she clocks : 
 She makes a ticking in the People's way. 
 
 The People's grain weaves double in the shocks. 
 
 New ships are coming , to the sea-side docks : 
 I heard of Jason and the golden fleece. 
 
 Past time into our present time unlocks : 
 The boys and girls are in a new release. 
 I shall be whole some day ; now I am but a piece.' 
 
 CCCVIIL 
 
 Out of the young child's wisdom many things 
 
 May be divined, yet hardly here bespoke. 
 The hours in Lilistan are shaping wings : 
 
 For Earth-work harden now our little folk : 
 
 They grow to meet mankind by stroke on stroke. 
 Toils the Arch-Genius for the coming men. 
 
 The concept of the Word doth there evoke 
 Mysterious powers to fashion them again 
 For services below ; Earth shall find God-time then. 
 
 TRUTH-TIME. 
 
 "Why were the Truths of Life so long unspoken ? 
 
 For the same reason that they open now. 
 Who scatters seed before the glebe is broken ? 
 
 Who in the ice-bound furrow sets a plow ? 
 
 Who will the treasure of his thought avow 
 Where murderers or maniacs rule the age ? 
 
 What Purity will with her charms endow 
 The gloating libertine, who seeks the stage 
 With impious eyes that burn and poisonous lusts that rage ? 
 
STAR-FLOWERS. 123 
 
 CCCX. 
 
 The spirit worlds, that shaped fictitious heaven 
 
 In false societies of Church and State, 
 Dissolved before the Life-Truths could be given. 
 
 Foul aristocracy that there made weight, 
 
 Crushing the nations by an iron fate, 
 Was broken, scattered like the flying foam. 
 
 The whirlwind, led through many a social gate, 
 O'erthrew the altar and o'erturned the throne, 
 Where Superstition ruled and Despotism shone. 
 
 CCXI. 
 
 Beneath the spirit worlds were ghostly regions, 
 
 Where souls, collective in the Anti-Good, 
 Banded their empires, warred by hostile legions, 
 
 Led in the falseness of unbrotherhood. 
 
 There from of old imperial Caesar stood ; 
 There all the arts that splendor yet debase, 
 
 The crimes that fatten full on human blood, 
 The infamies that ruin-rot the race, 
 Coiled their vast social wreaths vain myriads to embrace. 
 
 CCCXIL 
 
 There priesthoods, grown by tyrannies satanic, 
 
 Wrought the black magic from its deeper ground. 
 False gods and goddesses reared powers titanic, 
 
 By mysteries girdled and with glories crowned. 
 
 There the huge sex-lust like a serpent wound, 
 Infernal cult and custom shaping still. 
 
 Woman in man a food of poisons found ; 
 Man drew from woman impious fires to fill. 
 It seemed to angel eyes one vast eterne of 111. 
 
124 STAR-FLOWERS. 
 
 CCCXIII. 
 
 All that has perished, like the exhalation 
 From putrid marshes for the fiery sun. 
 
 God Christus-Christa through that desolation 
 By the long travail of the ages won : 
 So this New Life is fashioning there, begun. 
 
 New atmospheres draw warm for Savior-breath, 
 While streams of living waters rise and run 
 
 Where, in the lowest depths mankind beneath, 
 
 Festered the putrid sea that held the second death. 
 
 CCCXIV. 
 
 Hence comes the last, the crowning act of all ; 
 
 The opening of the drama in mankind ; 
 The play of Savior-life into its ball ; 
 
 The renovated sexual heart and mind ; 
 
 God's bridal wreath diffused upon the wind ; 
 The lifting of man's brow to meet the morn ; 
 
 The rescue of the word-seed, where they pined 
 In slaveries and poverties forlorn ; 
 Mankind in womankind for nuptial youth reborn. 
 
 cccxv. 
 
 Deep in the heart of blossomed Lilistan, 
 I lean my head upon the People's breast. 
 
 The Holy Ghost, plumed as a crimson swan, 
 Sails o'er the wide horizon : from the west, 
 Like the red sun, She vanishes in quest 
 
 Of the lost planet ; there to fold her wings 
 And overbrood mankind for quiet rest. 
 
 Joy in this bosom lifts from myriad springs. 
 
 Go forth, thou verse ! in thee the Holy Spirit sings, 
 
 END OF CANTO THE SIXTH. 
 
PS 
 
 <O 
 
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