N 
 
THE QUEST 
 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO DALLAS 
 ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED 
 
 LONOON BOMBAY CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. 
 
 TORONTO 
 
THE QUEST 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN G. NEIHARDT 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 "THE SONG OF HUGH GLASS" 
 
 Nefo go* 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 1916 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1907, 1909, AND 1912, 
 BY JOHN G. NEIHARDT. 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1916, 
 BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1916. 
 
 NorfoooU 
 
 J. S. Gushing Co. Berwick & Smith Co. 
 Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 
 
To 
 
 THE WOMEN OF MY FAMILY 
 
 "MIGHTY GIVERS, MEAGRE TAKERS, 
 MOTHER, SISTER, WIFE." 
 
 357992 
 
NOTE 
 
 IN selecting the material for this volume, chiefly from 
 my three former collections of lyrics, A Bundle of Myrrh 
 (1907), Man-Song (1909), and The Stranger at the 
 Gate (1912), it has been my intention to include only 
 those poems which, having been read widely, have won 
 approval. 
 
 The careful reader will doubtless note that the present 
 arrangement of the poems is not arbitrary, having been 
 determined in accordance with the succession of attitudes 
 toward life incident to growth out of the erotic period 
 into manhood. Such a reader, therefore, will not pass 
 judgment on the whole book according as his temperament 
 and individual experience have prepared him to like or 
 dislike any isolated section ; rather, he will be likely to 
 appraise the volume as an organic thing. 
 
 I have retained all but five poems of A Bundle of Myrrh. 
 That sequence seems to have become fixed in the con 
 sciousness of many, and its continuous appeal would seem 
 to testify to its veracity as one record of a common human 
 experience. That cycle and the subsequent group of 
 
viii NOTE 
 
 poems ending with "Nuptial Song" cover the erotic 
 period, the desires of which are justified in the normal 
 experience of parenthood celebrated in the next sequence, 
 The Stranger at the Gate. Thereupon follow poems 
 variously concerned with one man s attitude toward his 
 art, his fellow men, and Nature, together with some of 
 his hopes and guesses concerning his probable relation to 
 the cosmos. 
 
 A number of poems not hitherto collected are included 
 
 in this volume. 
 
 J. G. N. 
 1916. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 A BUNDLE OF MYRRH 
 
 PAGE 
 
 LINES IN LATE MARCH 5 
 
 THE WITLESS MUSICIAN 7 
 
 THE SOUND MY SPIRIT CALLS You .... 9 
 
 AT PARTING . .12 
 
 LONGING . . .14 
 
 SHOULD WE FORGET 16 
 
 COME BACK 17 
 
 IN AUTUMN . .18 
 
 THE SUBTLE SPIRIT 30 
 
 CHASER OF DIM VAST FIGURES 21 
 
 THE TEMPLE OF THE GREAT OUTDOORS ... 24 
 
 WHEN I AM DEAD 27 
 
 IN DEJECTION 28 
 
 A FANCY 30 
 
 RETROSPECT 31 
 
 RECOGNITION 33 
 
 CONFESSION 35 
 
 WEARY 36 
 
 IF THIS BE SIN 37 
 
 ix 
 
x CONTENTS 
 
 FACE 
 
 LET DOWN YOUR HAIR .39 
 
 THE LYRIC NIGHT .... 41 
 
 TITAN-WOMAN . . . . 43 
 
 THE MORNING GIRL 45 
 
 THE CITY OF DUST 47 
 
 THE FOOL S MOTHER . . . . . .47 
 
 LET ME LIVE OUT MY YEARS . . . . . 50 
 
 PRAYER OF AN ALIEN SOUL . . . . .51 
 
 THE ANCIENT STORY 54 
 
 THE LAST ALTAR 56 
 
 RESURRECTION 58 
 
 A VISION OF WOMAN 
 
 A VISION OF WOMAN 63 
 
 WOMAN-WINE 72 
 
 EROS .... . . . ... .75 
 
 G;EA, MOTHER GJEA ! .77 
 
 NUPTIAL-SONG . . . . . . .81 
 
 THE STRANGER AT THE GATE 
 
 THE WEAVERS , ....". .87 
 
 THE STORY . , . . . . . . .90 
 
 THE NEWS . . . ... . . . .94 
 
 IN THE NIGHT .... . . 96 
 
 BREAK OF DAY . . . . . . . 99 
 
 SONG TO THE SUN . ,. . . . 102 
 
 END OF SUMMER . 104 
 
CONTENTS xi 
 
 PAGE 
 
 HYMN BEFORE BIRTH . . . ..... 106 
 
 TRIUMPH 
 
 THE CHILD S HERITAGE HI 
 
 THE POET S TOWN 
 
 THE POET S TOWN 117 
 
 THE POET S ADVICE 126 
 
 HARK THE Music 129 
 
 APRIL THE MAIDEN 13 
 
 APRIL THEOLOGY 131 
 
 MORNING-GLORIES 134 
 
 INVITATIONS -^ 
 
 AND THE LITTLE WIND I 38 
 
 PRAIRIE STORM RUNE I 41 
 
 PRAYER FOR PAIN 146 
 
 BATTLE-CRY 148 
 
 THE LYRIC 150 
 
 LONESOME IN TOWN . . 151 
 
 MONEY 153 
 
 SONG OF THE TURBINE WHEEL 154 
 
 THE RED WIND COMES! ...* 156 
 
 CRY OF THE PEOPLE I 59 
 
 O LYRIC MASTER! I 61 
 
 KATHARSIS 163 
 
 THE FARMER S THANKSGIVING (1914) . . . .165 
 
 THE VOICE OF NEMESIS I 67 
 
 ECHO SONG 17 
 
xii CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 FOUNTAIN SONG . . . . . . 172 
 
 OUTWARD 173 
 
 THE GHOSTLY BROTHER 175 
 
 WHEN I HAVE GONE WEIRD WAYS . . . .179 
 ENVOI ...... 181 
 
A BUNDLE OF MYRRH 
 A SEQUENCE OF SONGS AND CHANTS 
 
Who is she that looketh forth as the morning. 
 
 Fair as the moon, 
 
 Clear as the sun, 
 
 And terrible as an army with banners?" 
 
PRELUDE 
 
 / would sing as the Wind ; 
 
 As the autumn Wind, big with rain and sad with pre 
 natal dread. 
 
 I would sing as the Storm ; 
 As the Storm whipped by the lightning and strong with 
 
 giant despair. 
 I would sing as the Snow ; 
 Wailing and hissing and writhing in the merciless grasp 
 
 of the Blizzard. 
 I would sing as the Prairie ; 
 As the Prairie droning in the heat, satisfied, drowsy and 
 
 mystical. 
 
 For I am a part of the Prairie, 
 Kin to the Wind and the Lightning. 
 I love as the Prairie might love; 
 As the Storm would hate, I hate. 
 I feel the despair of the Storm, 
 Rejoice with the joy of the River. 
 Even as these would sing in their differing moods, I sing ! 
 
THE QUEST 
 
 A BUNDLE OF MYRRH 
 
 I 
 LINES IN LATE MARCH 
 
 I WHISTLE ; why not ? 
 
 Have I not seen the first strips of green winding 
 
 up the sloughs ? 
 
 Have I not heard the meadow-lark ? 
 I have looked into soft blue skies and have been 
 
 uplifted ! 
 
 Where are the doubts and the dark ideas I enter 
 tained ? 
 
 What have I caught from the maple-buds that 
 changes me ? 
 
 Or was it the meadow-lark or the blue sky 
 or the strips of green ? 
 
 The green that winds up the sloughs ? 
 
 I sought the dark and found much of it. 
 Is there in truth much darkness ? 
 5 
 
6 THE QUEST 
 
 Have the meadow-larks lied to me ? 
 Have the green grass and the blue sky testified 
 falsely ? 
 
 I want to trust the sky and the grass ! 
 I want to believe the songs I hear from the fence- 
 posts ! 
 Why should a maple-bud mislead me? 
 
II 
 
 THE WITLESS MUSICIAN 
 
 SHE is my violin ! 
 
 As the violinist lays his ear to his instrument 
 
 That he may catch the low vibrations of the 
 
 deeper strings, 
 
 So I lay my ear to her breast. 
 I hear her blood singing and I am shaken with 
 
 ecstasy ; 
 For am I not the musician ? 
 
 She is my harp I play upon her. 
 
 I touch her, and she trembles as a harp with the 
 
 first chord of a revery. 
 I lay my hands upon her with that divine thrill 
 
 in my finger-tips, 
 
 That reverent nervousness of the fingers, 
 Which a harpist feels when he reaches for a 
 
 ravishing chord, 
 Elusive chord from among the labyrinthine 
 
 strings. 
 
 7 
 
8 THE QUEST 
 
 I am a musician for the first time ! 
 
 I have found an instrument to play upon ! 
 
 She is my violin she is my harp ! 
 
 A song slept in her blood. 
 
 None had found it and it slept. 
 
 Lo ! I even I who am so poor in power, 
 
 Who was a pauper in conception of harmony, 
 
 I have awakened by chance the slumbering song ! 
 
 I am lost in the spaciousness of it; 
 I am only a part of the song which I have 
 awakened mysteriously. 
 
 Lo, I, the witless musician ! 
 
 I have wrought even as Masters of Melody, 
 
 Even as Masters of Song ! 
 
Ill 
 
 THE SOUND MY SPIRIT CALLS YOU 
 
 I WOULD I knew some slow soft sound to call you : 
 Some slow soft syllable that should linger on the 
 
 UP 
 
 As loath to pass, because of its own sweetness. 
 
 I cannot shape the sound tho I have heard it ; 
 Heard it in the night-wind and the rush of the 
 
 rain ! 
 
 Heard it in the dull monotony of the dozing noon ! 
 Heard it among the leaves when Winds were 
 
 fagged at nightfall ! 
 
 Kind as the shade, this sound : 
 Kind as the dull blue shade that blade-like cuts 
 A kingdom of coolness from the cruel Noon : 
 Soft as the kiss of the Stream to the drooping 
 
 Leaf; 
 Sad as the pale Sun s smile over the Blizzard s 
 
 bier; 
 
 9 
 
io THE QUEST 
 
 Deep and resonant as distant thunder after a day 
 
 of heat ; 
 Mystic as the dream of the illimitable Prairie 
 
 under the August glare; 
 Mysterious as the blue haze in which the turbid 
 
 River dwindles to a creek ! 
 
 I cannot speak the language of the Hills. 
 
 I am unskilled to sing the notes of the June South- 
 wind. 
 
 The Noon croons not with such a tongue as mine. 
 
 Yet even tho I be dead, this sound shall call 
 you for me ! 
 
 In the still blue nights listen ! and you shall 
 hear it ! 
 
 In the burst of the storm it shall be as a whisper 
 to you ! 
 
 The Morning shall sing it for you and the Sunset 
 paint its meaning, 
 
 Even upon a background of burning gold, and 
 from the palette of the Rainbow ! 
 
 I would that my tongue could shape this sound 
 
 my spirit calls you. 
 
 It would be as a rose-leaf becoming vocal ; 
 As a honeycomb talking of sweetness ! 
 
THE SOUND MY SPIRIT CALLS YOU 11 
 
 And it would pass slowly and gloriously as a sunset 
 
 passes; 
 
 Gloriously and lingeringly it would die away, 
 Leaving upon my strangely nervous lips 
 The faint suggestion of a fragrance. 
 
IV 
 
 AT PARTING 
 
 No more from light to light, from gloom to gloom, 
 Shall you grow up about me, making bloom 
 Each individual moment like a rose. 
 From morning to the quiet evening s close, 
 From dusk unto the coming of the sun, 
 I feel the hours grow empty one by one. 
 
 And yet in spite of our diverging ways, 
 You have a place in all my nights and days. 
 The lonely dusk, enchanted by the moon, 
 Shall sing you to me with a quiet tune. 
 When skies grow soft and blue in after days, 
 Then shall I feel your pure, calm, searching gaze. 
 And ever when the Green World wakes in dew, 
 It shall be fragrant with the soul of you. 
 
 So Night shall be my servant, and the Day 
 Shall conjure back that which has passed away; 
 
 12 
 
AT PARTING 13 
 
 That ever luring and elusive thing 
 A song that I conceived, but could not sing ; 
 A dream I dreamed, but waking could not live; 
 Sweet wine for which my goblet was a sieve ! 
 
V 
 
 LONGING 
 
 OH hold no more the prize of wealth before me, 
 Nor hope of praise ; 
 
 Nor talk of things men toil for, to deplore me 
 My dream-filled days ! 
 
 Give me a fastness distant from the city, 
 The human sea 
 
 Which I would hate, were not I forced to pity, 
 Because akin to me. 
 
 There in the wilds with only you to love me 
 And none to hate, 
 
 1 could feel Something good and strong above me, 
 More kind than Fate. 
 
 The Wind would take my hand and lead me kindly 
 Through the wild ; 
 
 And teach me to believe in beauty blindly, 
 Like a child. 
 
 I could forget the aches of hope and failing, 
 That with slow fires consume 
 This fevered flesh that goes on groping, wailing 
 Toward the gloom. 
 
 14 
 
LONGING 
 
 Far from the bitter grin of human faces 
 
 I could sing : 
 
 Robed in the vast and lonesome purple spaces 
 
 Like a king. 
 
VI 
 
 SHOULD WE FORGET 
 
 I WONDER if the skies would be so blue, 
 Or grass so kindly green as twas of old, 
 Or would there be such freshness in the dew 
 When purple mornings blossom into gold : 
 I wonder would the sudden song of birds, 
 Thrilling the storm-hushed forest dripping wet 
 After a June shower, be as idle words, 
 Should we forget. 
 
 I wonder if we d feel the charm of night 
 Divinely lonesome with the changing moons ; 
 Or would we prize the intermittent light 
 Burning the zenith with its transient noons. 
 I wonder if the twilight could avail 
 To charm us, as of old when suns had set, 
 If all these many dream-sweet days should fail 
 And we forget. 
 
 16 
 
VII 
 COME BACK 
 
 COME back and bring the summer in your eyes, 
 The peace of evening in your quiet ways ; 
 Come back and lead again to Paradise 
 The errant days ! 
 
 Of old I saw the sunlight on the corn, 
 The wind-blown ripple running on the wheat ; 
 But now the ways are shabby and forlorn 
 That knew your feet. 
 
 Forget the words meant only by my lips ! 
 Could you not understand 
 The language of my fevered finger-tips 
 When last you took my hand ? 
 
 17 
 
VIII 
 IN AUTUMN 
 
 DREAR, dull autumnal rain, 
 
 Skies washed to gray ; 
 
 Winds sighing like an unfleshed ancient pain; 
 
 Uncanny day ! 
 
 A time for tears and musings on the past, 
 For vain regret ; 
 
 A time to dream of joys that could not last 
 But mock us yet. 
 
 A time to dream of winter and to mourn ; 
 To hear sad tunes ; 
 
 To yearn unto the far and shadowed bourne 
 Of perished Junes. 
 
 Yet not for me this drear autumnal mood, 
 This winter fear; 
 
 I view from no dull mental solitude 
 The aging year. 
 
 For me the memory of sun-shot days, 
 Nights kind and warm ; 
 
 Moons purpling the weird star-enchanted haze; 
 The April storm. 
 
 18 
 
IN AUTUMN 19 
 
 The rain s drone on the roof, the wind s lament 
 Among the trees ; 
 
 These make me hear through days of warm con 
 tent 
 The hum of bees. 
 
 Because I see with eyes that saw your face 
 
 As none had seen ; 
 
 And hear with ears that heard you every place 
 
 Is summer-green. 
 
 And I shall hear the robin through the fall 
 And in the snow; 
 
 Because you live and breathe and love in all, 
 Where er I go. 
 
IX 
 
 THE SUBTLE SPIRIT 
 
 I BUILT a temple for my spirit s home; 
 
 I filled it with myself and it was fair. 
 
 From its dream-pavement to its dream-reared 
 
 dome 
 
 No spirit but my own existed there. 
 About the walls I wrought with doting care 
 Huge fancies alien to the world of men, 
 Vague daubs and vast of youth and light and air. 
 Sublimely isolated in my spirit s den, 
 I lived and toiled and dreamed, and hoped and 
 
 then and then 
 
 Another spirit entered, subtle, slow, 
 
 Like summiT coming when the winter flees, 
 
 With eyes that had the soft, warm, quiet glow 
 
 Of some calm evening of a day of ease : 
 
 And that was you ! I felt, upon my knees, 
 
 A swift, mysterious spreading of the place ! 
 
 My poor walls seemed to hold infinities 
 
 Too vast for peace ! I fell upon my face 
 
 And worshipped you at last, the spirit of the 
 
 place 1 
 
 20 
 
CHASER OF DIM VAST FIGURES 
 
 CHASER of dim vast figures in the mist, 
 Drawn by far cries, an alien to content, 
 Builder of burning worlds that passed in gloom, 
 Vain architect of great sky-spaces, filled 
 With unreal suns uncurtaining the day 
 That fell again in dismal night Twas I ! 
 
 A pygmy in all else but daring dreams, 
 A grasper after monstrous shadow-shapes, 
 With stars for eyes and mass of cloud for cloak 
 And dreams for blood and winds of night for voice ; 
 I sought, they fled ; and wailing after I ! 
 
 And wailing after I : for somewhere lurked 
 The awful form of Beauty Absolute ; 
 A pagan goddess, vast of limb and thigh, 
 With burning hills for breasts, and for a face 
 Dim features dazzled with an inward sun ; 
 A form of classic curves, voluptuous slope 
 Of neck and shoulders downward to the breasts ; 
 Arms warm and languid as the soul of Love 
 And scintillant as rockets of the dawn ! 
 
 21 
 
22 THE QUEST 
 
 And at her feet I dreamed to lay my head, 
 A pygmy worshipper, who could not reach 
 Unto the ankles mountain-high, where blazed 
 Circles of jewels like chained satellites, 
 To touch which with my finger-tips were death ! 
 
 And I would guess sweet guesses how her hair 
 Made sunlight upward where my eyes saw not; 
 How sweet the thunder of her beating heart 
 And terrible ! I sought and found her not. 
 
 Yet everywhere I saw her with my soul : 
 Saw her in girlhood, strolling with the Spring; 
 And in the sultry summer sunsets saw 
 The glory of her searching woman-eyes, 
 That made me sing strange songs of sweet despair. 
 And I have watched her hair trail down in flame 
 The vapor plains and mountains of the West ! 
 Thus loving what was not, the dreamer I ! 
 
 And as I reached my eager arms to clasp 
 The prodigy that fled you filled them full, 
 And in my hair I felt your fingers move, 
 And felt your woman s lips about my face, 
 And felt your cool cheek on my fevered cheek. 
 So I have lost the wish to dream again. 
 
XI 
 
 THE TEMPLE OF THE GREAT OUT 
 DOORS 
 
 Lo ! I am the builder of a temple ! 
 Even I, who groped so long for God 
 And laughed the cackling laugh to find the dark 
 ness empty, 
 I am the builder of a temple ! 
 
 The toiling shoulders of my dream heaved up the 
 
 arch 
 
 And set the pillars of the Dawn, 
 The burning pillars of the Evening and the Dawn, 
 Under the star-sprent, sun-shot, moon-enchanted 
 
 dome of blue ! 
 
 And I, who knew no God, 
 Stood straight, unhumbled in my temple : 
 I did not fear the subtle Mystery of the Darkness, 
 And I was only glad to feel the miraculous rush of 
 sunlight in my blood ! 
 
 I did not bend the knee. 
 
 I was unafraid, unashamed, careless and defiant. 
 23 
 
24 THE QUEST 
 
 I was a laughing Ego that felt within itself the 
 
 thrill of potential godhood : 
 I stood as in the centre of the Universe and 
 
 laughed ! 
 
 And in my temple there were songs and organ 
 
 tones, 
 And there was a silent Something holier than 
 
 prayer. 
 I heard the winds and the streams and the sounds 
 
 of many birds : 
 I heard the shouting of storms and the moaning of 
 
 snows ; 
 
 I heard my heart, and it was lifted up in song. 
 The Wind passing in a gust was as though an organ 
 
 had been stricken by the hands of a capricious 
 
 Master ! 
 
 There was movement in the air, motion in the 
 leaves, a stirring in the grass, 
 
 Even as of the reverent moving about of a congre 
 gation. 
 
 Yet I stood alone in my temple ; I stood alone and 
 was not afraid. 
 
 But once a Something glided into my temple 
 And I became afraid ! 
 
THE TEMPLE OF THE GREAT OUTDOORS 25 
 
 As the Moon-Woman of the Greeks the Some 
 thing seemed, 
 
 Lithe and swift and pale, 
 
 A fitting human sheath for the keen chaste spirit 
 of a sword ! 
 
 And then it seemed my temple was too small. 
 
 The Presence filled it to the furthest nook ! 
 
 There was no lonesomeness in any cranny ! 
 
 I knelt and was afraid ! 
 
 I felt the Presence in the winds ; 
 I heard it in the streams ; 
 I saw it in the restless changing of the clouds ! 
 I tried to be as I had been, unbending, not afraid 
 godless. 
 
 Subtle as the scent of the unseen swinging censer 
 
 of the wild flowers 
 That Presence crept upon me ! 
 
 I fled from the terrible sunlight that burned the 
 
 dome of my temple ! 
 
 Childlike I hid my head in the darkness ! 
 But I am not alone. 
 
 Where I have laughed defiantly into the blind 
 emptiness, 
 
 Something moves! 
 
26 THE QUEST 
 
 I have placed my irreverent hand upon a Some 
 thing in the Shadow ! 
 
 I tremble lest the Thing shall illumine itself as the 
 Dawn; 
 
 I tremble lest at last I must see God 
 
 See God and laugh no more. 
 

 XII 
 WHEN I AM DEAD 
 
 WHEN I am dead, and nervous hands have thrust 
 
 My body downward into careless dust ; 
 
 I think the grave cannot suffice to hold 
 
 My spirit prisoned in the sunless mould ! 
 
 Some subtle memory of you shall be 
 
 A resurrection of the life of me. 
 
 Yea, I shall be, because I love you so, 
 
 The speechless spirit of all things that grow. 
 
 You shall not touch a flower but it shall be 
 
 Like a caress upon the cheek of me. 
 
 I shall be patient in the common grass 
 
 That I may feel your footfall when you pass. 
 
 I shall be kind as rain and pure as dew, 
 
 A loving spirit round the life of you. 
 
 When your soft cheeks by odorous winds are 
 
 fanned, 
 
 Twill be my kiss and you will understand. 
 But when some sultry, storm-bleared sun has 
 
 set, 
 
 / will be lightning if you dare forget! 
 27 
 
XIII 
 IN DEJECTION 
 
 THIS thing I hold so closely in my arms, 
 Feeling its heart leap strongly at my kiss, 
 Its eyes closed gently like two cloud-veiled stars, 
 Its breath like some soft night wind on my neck ; 
 What is it ? This soft thing I hold so closely ? 
 
 Ah, head, like some pale flower asleep in shade, 
 Ah, breast, at which my passionate hands have 
 
 thrilled, 
 
 O languid arms and white hands veined with blue, 
 A little while and these may be a lump 
 To make me shudder with a dismal dread ! 
 
 O precious Thing of Flesh ! 
 Let me exhaust the softness of your cheek 
 With one long desperate kiss, as one who drinks 
 The final maddening drop before the cup 
 Be shattered into dust ! O let me breathe 
 Your breath that I have made more quick and 
 warm, 
 
 28 
 
IN DEJECTION 29 
 
 As one who drowns and takes the latest gasp ! 
 The time may come when my fond touch shall fail 
 To cause your sigh, and my hot kiss be vain 
 To make your blue-veined temples throb as now. 
 
 I see your sunken eyes, your rose-like cheek 
 Burned black with agony ! And I shall be 
 So jealous of the ground that shall embrace you, 
 So jealous of the grass that grows above you, 
 So jealous of the silence that enfolds you. 
 
XIV 
 A FANCY 
 
 IF I should die, and some strong Voice should say, 
 Unto my soul lost in the vast black deep, 
 "Where wouldst thou take, O Soul, thy future 
 
 way, 
 
 Wouldst still live on in pain, or fall asleep ?" 
 It seems that I would answer : Let me creep 
 Into the roots of some rose she loves well ; 
 Grow upward with the sap of June and steep 
 The petals with this love I cannot tell ; 
 Breathe out these dreams in perfume that could 
 
 speak 
 
 My longings for her, for which words are weak ! 
 Thus grow one swift, soft summer day, then feel 
 The pang of plucking through my fibres reel ! 
 I would not then go wailing after light ; 
 I would not feel the terror of the night ; 
 I would not weary of the endless rush 
 Of mad blind cycles through the awful hush ! 
 
 30 
 
XV 
 RETROSPECT 
 
 WHEN first I looked upon your face 
 
 It seemed to me it was not new; 
 
 It seemed from some far-distant place 
 
 I but remembered you : 
 
 For some sweet subtle feeling told 
 
 That we two once had loved of old. 
 
 The clear-cut curve of lip and chin, 
 The low fond voice, the gentle way ; 
 By these I knew that we had been 
 Fond lovers in our day : 
 It seemed I heard you singing still 
 To me by some Thessalian rill ! 
 
 Perhaps I was a shepherd lad 
 
 And you a shepherd maid ; 
 
 And oh ! what kisses sweet we had 
 
 The while our two flocks strayed 
 
 Strayed off with distant bleat and bell 
 
 Along some green Achaean dell. 
 
 Perhaps I was a bard and wrought 
 Some golden martial story, 
 
32 THE QUEST 
 
 How Helen loved, how Hector fought, 
 My harp a-thrili with glory : 
 Again you bring those mystic years, 
 I hear your praise, I feel your tears. 
 
 The golden God sat in my shell 
 
 And Venus breathed in you ; 
 
 Did I not sing both wild and well ? 
 
 Did I not warmly woo ? 
 
 Perhaps we swooned to some sweet wrong 
 
 That thrilled us like a battle song ! 
 
 O let us take the ancient way, 
 The way we knew of old 
 Ere Time flew o er and made us gray, 
 Ere Death had made us cold : 
 Again the old sweet way begin ! 
 How can it lead us into sin ? * 
 
XVI 
 RECOGNITION 
 
 WHAT far-hurled cry is this what subtle shout 
 That drives the winter of my spirit out 
 With trumpets and the cymballed joy of spring ? 
 No more am I the shivering beggared thing 
 That dreamed of summer in a bed of snow ! 
 Hark how the scarlet trumpets madly blow 
 A glad, delirious riot of sweet sound ! 
 
 I have found 
 
 At last the one I lost so long ago 
 In Thessaly, where Peneus waters flow ! 
 For thou wert Lais, and of yore twas thus 
 That thou didst speak to me Hippolochus ! 
 And I have not forgot. 
 
 Still dreaming of the old impassioned spot, 
 
 1 passed through many pangful births in Time, 
 Weaving in many tongues the aching rhyme 
 That groped about and cried for thee in vain ! 
 Of many deaths I passed the gates of pain ; 
 And down to many hells the bitter ways 
 
 D 33 
 
34 THE QUEST 
 
 I trod, still seeking for the ancient days. 
 Through many lands in many women s eyes 
 I longed to overtake thee with surprise. 
 
 O the long ages that I sought for thee! 
 Hast thou kept pure the ancient drink for me ? 
 Who touched with careless lips my goblet s brim, 
 Daring to dream the vintage was for him ? 
 Half jealous of those lips of dust am I ! 
 
 O let us journey back to Thessaly, 
 And from faint echoes build the olden song ! 
 Hast thou forgotten, through these ages long, 
 The tinkle of the sheep-bells and the shrill 
 Glad oaten reeds of shepherds on the hill ? 
 Our days of sultry passion and the nights 
 That flashed the dizzy lightning of delights ? 
 
 At last I feel again thy finger-tips ! 
 
 Be as a purple grape upon my lips, 
 
 Made sweet with dew of dreams, and wholly mine ! 
 
 O let me drink the sweet forbidden wine 
 
 Crushed out with bruising kisses ! Death is near, 
 
 And I shall lose thee once again, my dear ! 
 
 The dust of ages chokes me ! Quick ! The wine ! 
 Lift up the goblet of thy lips to mine ! 
 
 The bony Terror ! Hark his muffled drums ! 
 Let us be drunken when the Victor comes I 
 
XVII 
 CONFESSION 
 
 MY love is like the snarl of haughty drums 
 And blare of trumpets, when a great one comes 
 Down some thronged breathless city thorough 
 fare: 
 
 And yours is like a song that fills the air 
 Of evening when the dew has made it sweet 
 And Peace walks through the dusk with quiet 
 feet. 
 
 My love is like the visual shout of red 
 That threads the drowsing of a poppy bed 
 In summer, when the sun makes heavy heat : 
 And yours is like the white flower, cool and sweet, 
 That fills the kind shade with a pleasant scent, 
 Unshrivelled by the sun and well content. 
 
 My dreams come robed in scarlet flame to me 
 And lead through gardens of strange phantasy 
 My fevered feet ; where heavy odors cling 
 And birds of blood-red plumage nest and sing 
 Delirious loves, mad doubts and sacred trust, 
 The pathos and the joy of human dust. 
 35 
 
XVIII 
 WEARY 
 
 MY brain is weary with the whirling day ! 
 
 Snatch me away ! 
 
 Away from cold, sane living, quiet breath ! 
 
 I ne er have seen the proof of human laws : 
 
 Only the warm vast Cause 
 
 Shall lead me to your arms, your lips, your 
 
 breast ! 
 
 Teach me to wrest 
 The sweetness out of living unto death ! 
 
 I only know I draw a fevered breath, 
 
 I only know my eyes are fagged and dim 
 
 Fill up my soul with beauty to the brim ! 
 
 I am so weary, and your mouth is red 
 Pillow my head ! 
 
XIX 
 IF THIS BE SIN 
 
 CAN this be sin ? 
 
 This ecstasy of arms and eyes and lips, 
 This thrilling of caressing finger-tips, 
 This toying with incomparable hair ? 
 (I close my dazzled eyes, you are so fair !) 
 This answer of caress to fond caress, 
 This exquisite maternal tenderness ? 
 How could so much of beauty enter in, 
 If this be sin ? 
 
 Can it be wrong ? 
 
 This cry of flesh to flesh, so like a song ? 
 This fusing of two atoms with a kiss, 
 Hurled to the black and pitiless abyss ? 
 
 Can it be crime 
 
 That we should snatch one happy hour from 
 
 Time 
 
 Time that has naught but death for you and me ? 
 (How soon, O Dearest, shall we cease to be !) 
 And could one frenzied hour of love or lust 
 Augment the final tragedy of dust ? 
 37 
 
3 8 THE QUEST 
 
 E en though we be two sinners burned with bliss, 
 Kiss me again, that warm round woman s kiss ! 
 Close up the gates of gold ! I go not in 
 If this be sin. 
 
XX 
 
 LET DOWN YOUR HAIR 
 
 UNBIND your hair, and let its masses be 
 Soft midnight on the weary eyes of me. 
 I faint before the dazzle of your breast ; 
 Make shadow with your hair that I may rest, 
 And I will cool my fevered temples there : 
 Let down your hair. 
 
 Ah so ! It falls like night upon a day 
 Too bright for peace. It is a cruel way 
 That leads to this, alas, which is but pain. 
 I am athirst your tresses fall like rain ; 
 Ah, wrap me close and bind me captive there 
 Amid your hair ! 
 
 How much my soul has given that my flesh 
 Might lie a thrall in this enchanted mesh ! 
 Something I grope for that I used to hold ; 
 Something it was bought dearly cheaply sold ; 
 Something divine was strangled unaware 
 Here in your hair ! 
 
 39 
 
4 o THE QUEST 
 
 But no I will not grieve will not complain. 
 Let your hair fall upon me like night rain 
 And shut me from myself, and make me blind ! 
 How can I deem this bondage aught but kind ? 
 And yet I cannot sleep for some dumb care 
 Here in your hair. 
 
XXI 
 THE LYRIC NIGHT 
 
 GIRL, if you could die before the dawn 
 Makes shoddy this the garment of our dream, 
 Above your shapely form of chiselled ice 
 
 1 could weep tears of gladness, seeing how 
 The bitter freeze of death had chastened you ! 
 
 But Day will come a-knocking at the blinds, 
 Flooding the secret nooks of our delight. 
 The night lamp s glow, conniving at our joy, 
 Shall struggle vainly with the virile Dawn, 
 Sending a loathsome odor from its grease; 
 And all the gaud and tinsel of this dream 
 That now seems gold, shall be a mockery ! 
 
 Oh I could smile upon you here in death, 
 For Death is chaste and wise and very kind ; 
 But my soul aches that it must see you walk 
 To-morrow in the vulgar gaze of Day, 
 Lifelike, yet dead so dead to what you were. 
 41 
 
42 THE QUEST 
 
 Kiss me again before the stars snuff out ! 
 Once more before the lyric Night be lost 
 Amid the prosy droning of the Day ! 
 
XXII 
 TITAN-WOMAN 
 
 GREAT kind Night, 
 Calm Titan- Woman Night ! 
 Broad-bosomed, motherly, a comforter of men ! 
 Reach out thy arms for me 
 
 And in thy jewelled hair 
 
 Hide thou my face and blind mine aching eyes ! 
 
 1 hate the strumpet smile 
 
 Of Day ! No peace hath she. 
 
 Draw thou me closer to thy veiled face ! 
 
 For thou art womanlike, 
 
 A lover and a mother, 
 
 And thou canst wrap me close and make me dream, 
 
 As one not cursed with light. 
 
 I shall forget my flesh, 
 
 This flesh that burns and aches 
 
 And fevers into hideous, shameless deeds ! 
 
 And in the sweet blind hours 
 I shall seek out thy lips, 
 I shall dream sweetly of thy Titan form ; 
 43 
 
44 THE QUEST 
 
 The languid majesty 
 
 Of smooth colossal limbs 
 
 At ease upon the hemisphere for couch ! 
 
 And of thy veiled face 
 
 Sweet fancies I shall fashion ; 
 
 Half lover-like I seek thee, yearning toward thee ! 
 
 For I am sick of light, 
 
 Mine eyes ache, I am weary. 
 
 O Woman, Titan-Woman ! 
 
 Though lesser ones forsake me, 
 
 Yet thou wilt share my couch when I am weary. 
 
 Thy fingers ! Ah, thy fingers ! 
 
 They touch me ! Lift me closer, 
 
 Extinguish me amid thy jewelled tresses ! 
 
 Thou wert the first great mother, 
 
 Shalt be the last fair woman :. 
 
 White breasts of flesh grow cold, soft flesh lips 
 
 wither : 
 
 O First and Ultimate, 
 O Night, thou Titan-Woman, 
 Thou wilt not fail me when these fall to dust ! 
 
 The moon upon thy forehead ! 
 
 The stars amid thy black locks ! 
 
 Extinguish me upon thy breast, amid thy tresses ! 
 
XXIII 
 THE MORNING GIRL 
 
 LISTEN ! All the world is still ; 
 One bleared hour and night is gone. 
 See yon lonely moon-washed hill 
 Lift its head to catch the dawn ! 
 
 In the east the eager light 
 Sets the curtained dusk a-sag ; 
 And all the royal robe of Night 
 Frays cheaply like a rag ! 
 
 Once I felt a lifting joy 
 When I saw the day unfurl, 
 Watching, just a laughing boy, 
 For the Morning Girl. 
 
 Oft I met her in the dew 
 Face to face, her sapphire eyes 
 Burning on me through the blue 
 Of the morning skies. 
 
 And her pure and dazzling breast 
 Made with joy my senses swoon, 
 45 
 
46 THE QUEST 
 
 As she burned from crest to crest 
 Upward toward the noon. 
 
 Now no more I seek her shrine, 
 Seek no more her golden hair 
 Sparkling in the morning shine 
 And the purple air. 
 
 Comes no more the Morning Girl, 
 Glows not now her golden head, 
 When the clouds of dawn unfurl 
 Purple, yellow, red. 
 
 Now the waning of the night 
 Means another day is near; 
 Just a haggard splotch of light, 
 A turning of the sphere ! 
 
 Would that in the coming hour 
 I might be that boy who knew 
 Fragrant import of the flower, 
 Lyric impulse of the dew ! 
 
XXIV 
 THE CITY OF DUST 
 
 BEHOLD me a shadow ! 
 
 The shadow of an ancient laughing thing ! 
 
 Fallen columns disintegrated with time ; 
 
 Sacred mounds insulted with the growth of scorn 
 ful weeds ; 
 
 Shattered arches haunted by the lizard and the 
 snake : 
 
 This is my Babylon the Babylon I built and 
 feasted in ! 
 
 O, but the wantonness of my Babylon ! 
 
 The princely prodigality of my Babylon ! 
 
 This was the throne I sat upon it. 
 
 I sat upon it and feasted mine ears with the 
 
 haughty trumpets, 
 Mine eyes with the scarlet and purple. 
 
 And once in this long fallow garden a lily grew : 
 It was my lily it grew for me. 
 Weeds grow there now they grow for me. 
 47 
 
48 THE QUEST 
 
 They grow there now and flaunt their ragged coats 
 
 in the sun 
 Ruffians and shameless ! 
 If I weep above my fallen Lily, will it grow ? 
 
 The lizard flees from me and the snake hisses, 
 And I am lonesome lonesome in my Babylon. 
 
 How shall I pile up again the kingly walls ? 
 
 I cry out : my voice is as the yell of a jackal 
 impotent. 
 
 The Wind dances with the Dust athwart my tessel 
 lated courtyards; 
 
 The Wind and the Dust their music is a thren 
 ody. 
 
 How can I rebuild my Babylon ? 
 How conjure back the magic of the olden time ? 
 How can I rebuild my dust heaps into a city 
 The City of My Ancient Dream ? 
 
 
XXV 
 
 THE FOOL S MOTHER 
 
 WHEN I the fool am dead, 
 
 There will be one to stand above my head, 
 
 Her wan lips yearning for my quiet lips 
 
 That stung her soul so oft with bitter cries. 
 
 And I shall feel forgiving finger-tips 
 
 And I shall hear her saying with her sighs : 
 
 "This fool I mothered sucked a bitter breast; 
 
 His life was fever and his soul was fire : 
 
 O burning fool, O restless fool at rest, 
 
 None other knew how high you could aspire, 
 
 None other knew how deep your soul could sink!" 
 
 And when these words above the fool are said, 
 The others ranged about the room shall think : 
 The fool is dead. 
 
 49 
 
XXVI 
 LET ME LIVE OUT MY YEARS 
 
 LET me live out my years in heat of blood ! 
 Let me die drunken with the dreamer s wine ! 
 Let me not see this soul-house built of mud 
 Go toppling to the dust a vacant shrine ! 
 
 Let me go quickly like a candle light 
 Snuffed out just at the heyday of its glow ! 
 Give me high noon and let it then be night ! 
 Thus would I go. 
 
 And grant me, when I face the grisly Thing, 
 One haughty cry to pierce the gray Perhaps ! 
 Let me be as a tune-swept fiddlestring 
 That feels the Master Melody and snaps ! 
 
XXVII 
 PRAYER OF AN ALIEN SOUL 
 
 CENTER of the Scheme, 
 
 Star-Flinger, Beauty-Builder, Shaping Dream ! 
 Now as the least in all thy space I stand 
 An alien in a strange and lonesome land. 
 
 1 lift a little voice of pigmy pain ; 
 
 I hurl it out up down and shall I cry in vain ? 
 Hear thou the prayer that struggles in this song 
 Let me not linger long ! 
 
 I crave the boon of dying into life ! 
 
 Extend a pitying knife 
 
 And let these flesh-gyves part, let me be free 1 
 
 Are we not kin ? Am I not part of thee ? 
 
 Am I not as a ripple in a cranny of thy sea ? 
 
 What part have I in sequent wretched eves, 
 
 Blear dawns, dull noons, the budding and the 
 
 falling of the leaves ? 
 
 Why must I drag about this chain of years, 
 Long rusted red with tears ? 
 Why must I crawl when I have wings to fly ? 
 Behold thy child the Winged One it is I ! 
 
52 THE QUEST 
 
 At times here in the dust 
 I lift my head, I strive to sing I must ! 
 The miracle of growing wraps me round ! 
 Light ! Sound ! 
 Form ! Motion ! Upward yearning ! Outward 
 
 reaching ! 
 
 A universal praying, dumb beseeching ! 
 I feel that I am more than flesh and futile, 
 A being ultra-carnal, super-brutal ! 
 I understand these growing green beseechers, 
 These hopeful climbers and these earnest 
 
 reachers ! 
 
 I understand their yearnings every one, 
 How each tense fibre hungers for the sun ! 
 I lay my hand upon the sturdy weed 
 Whose darkling purpose burst the prison-seed 
 And cleft the mud and took its light and dew, 
 Looked up, reached out, believed in life and 
 
 grew ! 
 
 I know that we are kin ; 
 That hope is virtue and that doubt is sin ; 
 And o er me comes a hungering for song : 
 I lift my voice I falter. Ah, the long 
 Dumb years, the aching nights and days ! 
 And yet I raise 
 
 My unavailing, immelodious cry. 
 Thine erstwhile singing child behold ! Tis I ! 
 
PRAYER OF AN ALIEN SOUL 53 
 
 In this strange wretched prison of the soul 
 
 Shall I not lose my swiftness for the Goal ? 
 
 It seems I must 
 
 At length become too much the kin of Dust. 
 
 Ah me, the fever born of Hate and Lust ! 
 
 Ah me, the senseless unmelodic din ! 
 
 Ah me, the soul-hope sick with fleshly sin ! 
 
 And in my prison ancient dreams grow up 
 
 To fill with dust my cracked and thirst-betraying 
 
 cup; 
 
 Dreams mantled in the purple of dead glory 
 That filled the aeons out of reach of human story : 
 Not always have I worn these dusty rags ! 
 
 The Purpose of my being falters, lags, 
 
 And I am sick, sick, sick to live again. 
 
 Yet not because of this poor dust-born pain 
 
 Do I cry out and grope about for thee. 
 
 I hear the far cry of my destiny 
 
 Whose meaning sings beyond the furthest sun. 
 
 I faint in these red chains, and I would rise and 
 
 run, 
 
 O Center of the Scheme, 
 Star-Flinger, Beauty-Builder, Shaping Dream ! 
 
XXVIII 
 THE ANCIENT STORY 
 
 IT is the ancient story lived anew. 
 
 Dost thou remember how the mighty Jew 
 
 Spoke at the table of the Pharisee 
 
 And puzzled all who heard Him ; tenderly 
 
 Forgiving her whose soul was red with sin 
 
 And seared with lust ? How that she entered in 
 
 Where sat the Lord, and cast her down and wept ? 
 
 How to His feet she crept 
 
 And washed them with her tears ? 
 
 Howe er that be, 
 
 I have lived out this ancient tale with thee; 
 Only I am the sinner, thou the saint. 
 With heart bowed down and limbs grown 
 
 strangely faint, 
 
 I creep unto thy feet ; cleanse off with tears 
 The stains they got that followed all these years 
 The guilty paths I made, the cruel ways 
 That led unto a blood-red night of haze. 
 They were my paths, and this for thee sufficed ! 
 54 
 
THE ANCIENT STORY 55 
 
 I gaze into thine eyes and see the Christ, 
 Calm-eyed, great-souled, the Pitier ! I see 
 How much and yet how little after me 
 Thine aching feet have followed ! see how deep 
 I grovel from the height that thou dost keep, 
 A sinner, yet unsoiled. 
 
 Lift thou me there 
 
 Unto the heaven of thy face and hair 
 That shines for me far off as summer dawn. 
 The night is gone ! 
 
 I feel the sunrise quicken in my blood ! 
 My soul leaps clean from out its lair of mud ! 
 
 With nard I do anoint thee ; at thy feet 
 I burn this myrrh of bitter and of sweet. 
 
 Lift thou me there 
 
 Unto the heaven of thy face and hair, 
 
 And make my soul complete ! 
 
XXIX 
 THE LAST ALTAR 
 
 EREWHILE beneath the lightning flare of passion 
 I saw huge visions flung athwart the gloom ; 
 I built me altars after pagan fashion 
 And of my hours I made a hecatomb. 
 
 I wrought weird gods of night-stuff and of fancy ; 
 I sought their hidden faces for my law : 
 My days and nights were filled with necromancy, 
 And an Olympian awe. 
 
 O many a night has seen my riot candles, 
 And heard the drunken revel of my feast, 
 Till Dawn walked up the blue with burning sandals 
 And made me curse the east ! 
 
 For my faith was the faith of dusk and riot, 
 The faith of fevered blood and selfish lust ; 
 Until I learned that love is cool and quiet 
 And not akin to dust. 
 
 For once, as in Apocalyptic vision, 
 Above my smoking altars I could see 
 56 
 
THE LAST ALTAR 57 
 
 My god s face, veilless, ugly with derision 
 The shameless, magnified, projected Me! 
 
 And I have left my ancient fanes to crumble, 
 And I have hurled my false gods from the sky; 
 I wish to know the joy of being humble, 
 To build great Love an altar ere I die. 
 
XXX 
 RESURRECTION 
 
 THERE close your eyes, poor eyes that wept for 
 
 me! 
 
 Pillow your weary head upon my arm. 
 You need not clutch me so, I will not flee; 
 Here am I bound by no mere carnal charm. 
 
 At last I am not blind, for I can see 
 Through your mere flesh as only spirit can ; 
 I feel at last the world-old tragedy, 
 The sacrifice of woman unto man. 
 
 In that far time when my first father sought 
 To cool the strange mad fever in his veins, 
 Seeing how fair the creature he had bought 
 With straining sinews and wild battle pains ; 
 
 Then was this moment of your anguish sown, 
 And you have reaped but do not understand. 
 How frail and thin your blue-veined hands have 
 
 grown, 
 
 How trustingly they clutch my guilty hand ! 
 58 
 
RESURRECTION 59 
 
 The story of the world is in your face ; 
 I gaze upon it, hearing through dead years 
 The wailings of the women of the race, 
 The melancholy fall of many tears. 
 
 In many a Garden of Gethsemane, 
 Sweet with strange odors, redolent of bliss, 
 Again is played the human tragedy 
 With Judas waiting in the dark to kiss. 
 
 Not only upon Calvary has died 
 
 The patient tortured Christ misunderstood ; 
 
 Over and over is He crucified 
 
 Wherever man besmirches womanhood. 
 
 I who have laughed too long at sacred things, 
 Who felt no god about me in the gloom, 
 Now hear a Something mystical that sings 
 Sweeter than love, yet terrible as doom. 
 
 In your frail face I see a glory grow 
 That smites me, guilty, like a burning rod ! 
 I kneel before you, suppliant, and know 
 That your thin hands may lead me unto God ! 
 
A VISION OF WOMAN 
 
A VISION OF WOMAN 
 
 I LOVE you. Do you smile ? Ah, well you may : 
 You who have heard the beast in many men 
 Mouth glibly that sweet spirit phrase so oft. 
 It is a word you scoff at here, I know. 
 And yet when one dreams sleepless all the 
 
 night, 
 
 Somehow a sense of the eternal things, 
 Creeps in upon him, till the old beast sleeps, 
 And spirits wise with time possess the hush. 
 
 It seems a life has passed since yestereve; 
 Twas then I met you just a night ago. 
 How little can a clock-gong measure dreams ! 
 
 You sat beneath the tawdry glare of gas 
 
 Among the weary painted woman-flowers, 
 
 Exhaling sickly scents ; while to the tune 
 
 Of shrill barbaric fiddles, squawking horns, 
 
 And that piano the mulatto played, 
 
 (Nay, smitten by the devil s dancing feet !) 
 
 The haggard creatures wreathed the dizzy dance. 
 
 Sin errant rides for heavens built of mist ; 
 But once, Oh, once Sin lead me to the goal ! 
 63 
 
64 THE QUEST 
 
 I saw you virgin-eyed and sunny haired, 
 With cheeks whereon the country s kiss remained, 
 And round you, somehow, the effluvium 
 Of green things smiling upward in the day. 
 Gazing upon you, over me there came 
 The drone of cornfields in the warm damp night ; 
 Far, far away I saw the wheat a-shimmer ; 
 The smell of fresh-turned earth was everywhere ! 
 And oh your touch flung trooping through my blood 
 Such dream-wrought throngs of maiden violets ! 
 So all my thirsty soul cried out to you, 
 The one green spot in all that arid place. 
 
 And yet I did not love you then as now. 
 The smouldering ashes of old primal lusts 
 The strident fiddles wakened, and the wine. 
 It was a thirst for rivers of delight, 
 A tiger hunger for the warm red feast. 
 And so I bought you paid the stated price 
 Washed out my scruples in a flood of wine. 
 Then all the smell of violets died out, 
 The visioned fields of happy growing things 
 Went stifling hot, oppressive with the breath 
 Of flowers that never blossomed in the day. 
 And then when I had borne you from the place 
 Of glare and noise, where painted lilies swayed 
 Unto the shrieking hell-wind of the fiddles, 
 
A VISION OF WOMAN 65 
 
 You flung aside those garish strumpet garments 
 And stood before me ! 
 
 So would April look 
 If all the lure and wonder of that time 
 Could flesh itself in woman ! And I knew 
 Twas thus of old the maiden Lais stood, 
 Fresh from the wholesome fields of Sicily, 
 Before Apelles quickened with his dream. 
 A ghost of spring crept back into the world 
 Haunting the hot, autumnal hollow of it. 
 It seemed the time when maples ooze their sap, 
 When humid winds of promise sing all night 
 Beneath the stars that run aghast through mist : 
 When rivers wake and burst their shrouds of ice 
 To boom down swollen channels. Cherry bows 
 Flung to the winds their odorous living snows, 
 And apple blossoms drifted in the breeze, 
 Pink as the buds that tipped your spotless 
 
 breasts. 
 
 Up through the spring-sweet vistas of the dream 
 Old Greece came back with all her purple bays, 
 Her ships of venture and her fighting men, 
 Her sculptors and her painters and her bards, 
 Her temples and her ever-living gods, 
 Her women whom to name must be to sing. 
 
 I touched you and twas Helen that I touched ; 
 F 
 
66 THE QUEST 
 
 And in my blood young Paris lived again ; 
 And all the grief and gloom of Ilium, 
 Her wailing wives enslaved to foreign lords, 
 Her stricken warriors and her gutted fanes, 
 Her song-built towers falling in the smoke, 
 And all the anguish of her tragic Queen, 
 Seemed naught for one round burning kiss from 
 you! 
 
 You thought it was the wine ; ah, so it was 
 The wine of woman fraught with life and death, 
 The wine of beauty and the wine of doom. 
 You laughed ; and Greece with all her purple bays, 
 Her gladness and her weeping went to dust; 
 While through the panting hollow of the world 
 A hot storm grumbled up. And we alone 
 In some tremendous lightning-riven night ! 
 
 But when the quiet came, and down the dark 
 
 The awful music or our youth died out, 
 
 And in the gloomy hollow lived no sound 
 
 Except the sullen thunder of our hearts, 
 
 Your languid kissing mouth seemed like a wound 
 
 Wet with the blood of something I had killed ! 
 
 And while you stroked my M dampened hair, and 
 
 lisped 
 
 Delirious nothings, over me there came 
 The sad still singing of the things that are. 
 
A VISION OF WOMAN 67 
 
 Close nestled in the hollow of my arm, 
 You slept like any weary little girl, 
 Unconscious of the ancient weight you bore. 
 But I lay wakeful with the ghostly years. 
 
 Above the glooming surf of yesterdays 
 The faces of all women that have been 
 Bloomed beacon-like, and lit with ghastly glare 
 The wreck-strewn coasts of the eternal sea ! 
 Faces of patient woe and wise with grief, 
 Faces from which my mother gazed at me, 
 Faces that were one face with that of Christ ! 
 And some with haggard unforgetting eyes 
 Haunted far sea-rims, gray with ships of mist ; 
 And some were drawn and white above the slain, 
 With sick lips mumbling kisses of farewell ; 
 And in them all the wistful mother-light. 
 Once more for me the Carthaginian pyre 
 Built day amid the dusk of sordid things ; 
 And that sad Queen whom all the world shall love 
 Because one man forsook her, far away 
 Followed with tearless tragic eyes the sail 
 That bellied skyward in a wind of Fate. 
 And through the night the wail of Hecuba 
 Brought back the Thracian sorrow, made it mine : 
 While in the aching hush that followed it 
 Red drop by drop I heard the Virgin s blood. 
 
68 THE QUEST 
 
 Fair Phryne came and bared her breast to me 
 With ancient sorrow pleading in her gaze, 
 And on her painted cheeks my sister s tears. 
 And one with ashen face and tiger eyes 
 Held huddled close the remnant of her brood. 
 One, pale above a loom, with nervous hands 
 Wove and unwove the shroud of each day s hope 
 The web of Woman s weaving. Hand in hand, 
 The Roman wife, the subtle Queen of Nile, 
 Walked down the night one woman at the last. 
 And haloed round with an eternal spring, 
 Rode she with whom all men have sinned ; her face 
 Foreshadowed with the doom that was to be : 
 And aged with more than years, unqueened, and 
 
 yet 
 
 Ten times the former queen, I heard her sob 
 Amid the cloistral gloom at Almesbury. 
 And oh, I saw upon a mystic sea 
 A rose-souled lily fleshed into a girl, 
 Tall as a fighting man and terrible 
 With all the keen clean beauty of a sword, 
 That one who took the luring mystic cup 
 And drank of it, and thirsted evermore. 
 From myriad graves they came, till night was day 
 Lit with the radiance of them. Queens and slaves ; 
 Sweet maidens with the life-dawn in their eyes; 
 Mothers with babes at breast, and painted harlots ; 
 
A VISION OF WOMAN 69 
 
 Unsung forgotten daughters of the ground, 
 Dumb under burdens, with dull questioning eyes 
 That stared uncomprehending upon Fate. 
 All lifted up imploring arms to me 
 And over them a wind of music went, 
 The crooning of the mothers of the Race. 
 
 The vision passed. Out in the quiet night 
 Across the huddled roofs the clock-gong tolled. 
 I raised the blind. The tremulous woman-star, 
 Like a great tear moon-smitten, watched the town, 
 And thin soft whispers prophesied the dawn. 
 
 Bathed in the pure light of the eternal stars 
 You lay asleep a chiselled Parian dream, 
 A spotless vase of sleeping sacred fire, 
 A still white awe ! No vandal hand had filched 
 The meaning from the breasts that might not 
 
 know 
 
 The sad sweet thrill of nurture. With cool lips 
 That yearned with primal worshippings, I kissed 
 
 them; 
 
 And, though you slept, the tender mother arm, 
 Wise with old memories, sought the restless babe. 
 
 God makes you mothers spite of milkless breasts ! 
 He only knows how sterile gardens dream 
 
70 THE QUEST 
 
 Of bloom flung riot : how through arid night 
 The wooing rain comes kissing like a ghost, 
 Unfruitful kisses ! 
 
 Oh that you might know 
 
 The cleansing wonder quickening in your blood, 
 The sweet dream fleshing with the passing moons, 
 The wild red pang, the first thin strangled cry 
 From world to world, the great white after-peace ! 
 
 Across the awful slumber of your face 
 
 God moved amid the star-sheen. Something pure 
 
 Wailed down the vast hushed hollows of my soul : 
 
 Oh better that this lovely vase be shattered, 
 
 Its sacred fire be spilled upon the night, 
 
 Than that another sun should look upon it 
 
 Defiled with heathen worship ! 
 
 Yet tis said 
 
 No thing of beauty ever is defiled, 
 Somehow far off discordant sounds are wed, 
 Somewhere far off the broken rays converge. 
 
 But oh, I saw you sitting in the sun 
 Before a green-girt cottage with your babes ; 
 And grapes hung purple in the afternoon, 
 And there were bees abroad and smell of fruit; 
 And up the shimmering hillside went the man 
 
A VISION OF WOMAN 71 
 
 Stamped with the kinship of the giving Earth, 
 The old Antaean wisdom in his heart 
 Glad in the flowing furrow turned for you. 
 
 See ! stealing o er the melancholy roofs 
 
 The gray light, like the aching backward creep 
 
 Of some familiar sorrow ! 
 
 Oh the grapes 
 That never sun shall purple ! 
 
 It is day. 
 
WOMAN-WINE 
 
 I 
 
 ONCE again I see it, touch it, 
 Fatal cup with many a name ; 
 Make it mine and madly clutch it, 
 Drink its blasting draught of flame ! 
 
 Cup of grief and cup of woe, 
 Cup of ancient woman-wine : 
 Fictor in mine overthrow 
 It is mine ! 
 
 Awful burning lips of Thais, 
 Kiss me back Persepolis ! 
 Break my heart I m Menelaus ! 
 Make me Paris with a kiss ! 
 
 Smiling Thing with painted heart, 
 Canker at the soul of Peace, 
 Thou hast wakened by thine art 
 All the wanton flutes of Greece ! 
 
 Lest I kill thee in my fury 
 
 Let the heaped white wonders speak 
 
 72 
 
WOMAN-WINE 73 
 
 Awe me as the ancient jury 
 Phryne, make me weak ! 
 
 Asker, Taker, Devil- Woman, 
 Hiss the hellish wish again ! 
 Death fleshed out to mask as human, 
 Dancer for the heads of men ! 
 
 Honied Wooer, Victor-Slayer, 
 Sing me drowsy, take my sword ! 
 I am paid, O sweet Betrayer 
 Awful as a battle-horde ! 
 
 Ancient wine of gloom and glory 
 Wets thy warm, red, wooing lips : 
 All the scarlet Queens of Story 
 Touch me through thy finger-tips. 
 
 II 
 
 Nay ! In gentler, sweeter fashion 
 How thy warm soul blossoms up ! 
 Martyr to the deathless Passion, 
 Quaffer of the Iseult-cup ! 
 
 Thou wert heart-sick Sappho, burning 
 Downward to the stern gray sea. 
 Thou didst soothe the Master, yearning 
 For the hills of Galilee. 
 
74 THE QUEST 
 
 Thou the hopeful heart of sorrow 
 Singing through the gloom of years ; 
 Light of every black to-morrow, 
 Wise with yesterdays of tears. 
 
 Thou the doomed eternal Maiden, 
 Wailing by the windless sea. 
 Thou art Mary, sorrow-laden 
 Pray for me ! 
 
 Pale night-weeper at the cross, 
 Death for thee hath not sufficed ; 
 Trusting through the gloom of loss, 
 Thou didst view the risen Christ. 
 
 Burden-bearer, Beauty-maker, 
 Sacred Fountain of my life ; 
 Mighty Giver, meagre Taker 
 Mother, Sister, Wife ! 
 
 Oh, at last, my heart s Desire, 
 Build the dream that shall endure I 
 Fair white Urn of Sacred Fire y 
 Burn me pure ! 
 
 Cup of sweet felicity, 
 Cup of ancient woman-wine ! 
 Vanquished in my victory 
 It is mine ! 
 
EROS 
 
 LURED as the Earth lures Summer, 
 Wooing as Sunlight the Seed 
 I am the mystical Comer, 
 I am the Will and the Deed ! 
 
 Over and over forever 
 The glad sad story is told ; 
 Fleeing, escaping me never, 
 I am your Shower of Gold. 
 
 Subtle as April creeping 
 Flower-shod out of the South, 
 I am the dream of your sleeping, 
 Fever am I at your mouth. 
 
 I am the sap-lift singing 
 The hope of a last glad birth : 
 I am the May-Fog clinging 
 You are the Earth ! 
 
 And mine are the pangful kisses 
 That waken the Dream in the Dust ; 
 Bringer of aching blisses, 
 Cruel I seem as Lust. 
 75 
 
;6 THE QUEST 
 
 I come like a wind of disaster, 
 Flinging the whips of the rain; 
 Oh, I am a pitiless Master 
 I am glorified Pain. 
 
 This is the Story of stones 
 (The Rain and the Seed and the Sod) 
 Awful with glooms and glories, 
 These are the rites of the god ! 
 
 But Oh, when the storm and its riot 
 
 Sleeps in the after-hush, 
 
 I am the dawn-filled quiet 
 
 I am the thrush. 
 
 I am the sun to cherish, 
 
 I am the dew to feed 
 
 You with your blooms that perish, 
 
 Martyrs unto the seed. 
 
 Ancient and ending never, 
 This is the Law and the Plan. 
 
 Oh, you are the Woman forever 
 / am the Man ! 
 
G.EA, MOTHER 
 
 , Mother Gaea, now at last, 
 Weaned with too much seeking, here I cast 
 My soul, my heart, my body down on thee ! 
 Dust of thy dust, canst thou not mother me ? 
 
 Not as an infant weeping do I come ; 
 These tears are tears of battle ; like a drum 
 Struck by wild fighting hands my temples throb ; 
 Sob of the breathless swordsman is my sob, 
 Cry of the charging spearman is my cry ! 
 
 Mother, not as one who craves to die 
 
 1 fall upon thee panting. Fierce as hate, 
 Strong as a tiger fighting for his mate, 
 Soul-thewed and eager for yet one more fray 
 O Gaea, Mother Gaea, thus I pray ! 
 
 Have I not battled well ? 
 
 My sword has ripped the gloom from many a hell 
 To let the sweet day kiss my anguished brow ! 
 Oh, I have begged no favors until now; 
 Have asked no pity, though I bit the dust; 
 77 
 
78 THE QUEST 
 
 For always in my blood the battle-lust 
 
 Flung awful sword-songs down my days and nights. 
 
 But now at last of all my golden fights 
 
 The greatest fight is on me and I pray. 
 
 Oh let my prayer enfold thee as the day, 
 Crush down upon thee as the murky night, 
 Rush over thee a thunder-gust, alight 
 With swift electric blades ! Nay, let it be 
 As rain flung down upon the breast of thee ! 
 With something of the old Uranian fire 
 I kiss upon thee all my deep desire. 
 
 If ever in the silence round about, 
 
 Thy scarlet blossoms smote me as a shout ; 
 
 If ever I have loved thee, pressed my face 
 
 Close to thy bosom in a lonesome place 
 
 And breathed thy breath with more than lover s 
 
 breathing ; 
 
 If ever in the spring, thy great trees, seething 
 With hopeful juices, felt my worship-kiss 
 Grant thou the prayer that struggles out of this, 
 My first blood-cry for succor in a fight ! 
 
 Alone I shouldered up the crushing night, 
 Alone I flung about me halls of day, 
 Unmated went I fighting on my way, 
 Lured on by some far-distant final good, 
 
G^EA, MOTHER G^EA! 79 
 
 Unwarmed by grudging fires of bitter wood, 
 Feeding my hunger with my tiger heart. 
 Mother of things that yearn and grow, thou art ! 
 The Titan brood sucked battle from thy paps ! 
 O Mother mine, sweet-breasted with warm saps, 
 Once more Antaeus touches thee for strength ! 
 My victories assail me ! Oh at length 
 My lawless isolation dies away ! 
 
 For Mother, giving Mother, like the day 
 Flung down from midnight, She who was to be 
 Floods all the brooding thunder-glooms of me ! 
 And in the noon-glow that her face hath wrought, 
 Stands forth the one great foe I have not fought 
 The close-ranked cohorts of my selfish heart. 
 
 Suckler of virile fighting things thou art ! 
 Breathe in me something of the tireless sea ; 
 The urge of mighty rivers breathe in me ! 
 Cloak me with purple like thy haughty peaks ; 
 Oh arm me as a wind-flung cloud that wreaks 
 Hell-furies down the midnight battle-murk ! 
 Fit me to do this utmost warrior s work 
 To face myself and conquer ! 
 
 Mother dear, 
 
 Thou seemest a woman in this silence here ; 
 And tis thy daughter who hath come to me 
 
8o THE QUEST 
 
 With all the wise, sad mother-heart of thee, 
 
 Thy luring wonder and immensity ! 
 
 For in her face strong sweet earth-passions brood : 
 
 I feel them as in some wild solitude 
 
 The love-sweet panting summer s yearning-pain. 
 
 Teach me the passion of the wooing rain ! 
 Teach me to fold her like a summer day 
 To kiss her in the great good giant way, 
 As Uranus amid the cosmic dawn ! 
 
 Oh, all the mad spring revelling is gone, 
 
 And now the wise sweet summer ! Let me be 
 
 Deep-rooted in thy goodness as a tree, 
 
 Strong in the storms with skyward blossomings ! 
 
 Teach me the virile trust of growing things, 
 
 The wisdom of slow fruiting in the sun ! 
 
 I would be joyous as the winds that run 
 Light footed on the wheatfields. Oh for her, 
 I would be gentle as the winds that stir 
 The forest in the noon hush. Lift me up ! 
 Fill all my soul with kindness as a cup 
 With cool and bubbling waters ! Mother dear, 
 Gaea, great Gaea, tis thy son Oh hear ! 
 
NUPTIAL-SONG 
 
 Lo ! the Field that slumbered, 
 Sowed and winter-sealed ; 
 Thralled and dream-encumbered ! 
 Oh the maiden Field ! 
 Never Thunder roused her, 
 Rain or yearning Fire; 
 Never Sun espoused her, 
 Virile with desire. 
 
 Yet betimes a vague thrill 
 Running in a thaw, 
 Hinted at the World-Will 
 And the Lyric Law ; 
 Made her guess at splendor 
 Bursting out of pain; 
 Feel the clutching tender 
 Fingers of the grain. 
 
 Now an end of dreaming ! 
 Lo ! the lover comes 
 Flame-wrought banners gleaming, 
 Haughty thunder drums; 
 G 81 
 
82 THE QUEST 
 
 Joy- and sorrow-laden, 
 Eager, wondershod ! 
 Sacrifice the Maiden 
 On the altar of the god ! 
 
 Though he come with terror, 
 Though he woo with pain. 
 Love is never error, 
 Kisses never vain. 
 Victress in her capture, 
 Let the Maiden know 
 All the aching rapture, 
 All the singing woe ! 
 
 Hark ! the regal Thunder ! 
 (Oh the huddled Field !) 
 Tis the Night of Wonder 
 Let the Maiden yield ! 
 Oh the quiet after 
 All the singing pain ! 
 Oh the rippling laughter 
 Of the nursing grain ! 
 
 Older and yet younger, 
 Sadder, and yet blessed, 
 With a baby-hunger 
 Tugging at her breast, 
 She shall feel the Great Law 
 
NUPTIAL-SONG 83 
 
 Love, and you shall grow. 
 Give her to the wild Awe, 
 Let the Maiden know ! 
 
 Sweeter than all other 
 Songs of lip or lyre 
 Every Maid a Mother, 
 Every Man a Sire : 
 Joy beneath the pain warm, 
 God amidst the plan ; 
 Field unto the Rainstorm, 
 Maid unto the Man ! 
 
THE STRANGER AT THE GATE 
 
 A LYRIC SEQUENCE CELEBRATING THE 
 MYSTERY OF BIRTH 
 
To Enid 
 
THE STRANGER AT THE GATE 
 
 THE WEAVERS 
 
 SUNS flash, stars drift, 
 Comes and goes the moon ; 
 Ever through the wide miles 
 Corn-fields croon 
 Patiently, hopefully, 
 A low, slow tune. 
 
 Lovingly, longingly, 
 Labors without rest 
 Every happy cornstalk, 
 Weaving at her breast 
 Such a cozy cradle 
 For the coming guest. 
 
 In the flowing pastures, 
 Where the cattle feed, 
 Such a hidden love-storm, 
 Dying into seed 
 Blue grass, slough grass, 
 Wild flower, weed ! 
 87 
 
THE QUEST 
 
 Mark the downy flower-coats 
 In the hollyhocks ! 
 Hark, the cooing Wheat-Soul 
 Weaving for her flocks ! 
 Croon-time, June-time, 
 Moon of baby frocks ! 
 
 Rocking by the window, 
 Wrapt in visionings, 
 Lo, the gentle mother 
 Sews and sings, 
 Shaping to a low song 
 Wee, soft things ! 
 
 Patiently, hopefully, 
 
 Early, late, 
 
 How the wizard fingers 
 
 Weave with Fate 
 
 For the naked youngling 
 
 Crying at the Gate ! 
 
 Sound, sight, day, night 
 Fade, flee thence; 
 Vanished is the brief, hard 
 World of sense. 
 Hark ! Is it the plump grape 
 Crooning from the fence ? 
 
THE WEAVERS 
 
 Droning of the surf where 
 Far seas boom ? 
 Chanting of the weird stars 
 Big with Doom ? 
 Humming of the god-flung 
 Shuttles of a loom ? 
 
 O er the brooding Summer 
 A green hush clings, 
 Save the sound of weaving 
 Wee, soft things : 
 Everywhere a mother 
 Weaves and sings. 
 
II 
 
 THE STORY 
 
 YEARLY thrilled the plum tree 
 With the mother-mood ; 
 Every June the rose stock 
 Bore her wonder-child : 
 Every year the wheatlands 
 Reared a golden brood : 
 World of praying Rachels, 
 Heard and reconciled ! 
 
 "Poet," said the plum tree s 
 Singing white and green, 
 "What avails your mooning, 
 Can you fashion plums ?" 
 "Dreamer," crooned the wheatland s 
 Rippling vocal sheen, 
 "See my golden children 
 Marching as with drums !" 
 
 "By a god begotten," 
 Hymned the sunning vine, 
 "In my lyric children 
 Purple music flows !" 
 90 
 
THE STORY 91 
 
 "Singer," breathed the rose bush, 
 "Are they not divine ? 
 Have you any daughters 
 Mighty as a rose ?" 
 
 Happy, happy mothers ! 
 Cruel, cruel words ! 
 Mine are ghostly children. 
 Haunting all the ways ; 
 Latent in the plum bloom, 
 Calling through the birds, 
 Romping with the wheat brood 
 In their shadow plays ! 
 
 Gotten out of star-glint, 
 Mothered of the Moon; 
 Nurtured with the rose scent, 
 Wild, elusive throng ! 
 Something of the vine s dream 
 Crept into a tune; 
 Something of the wheat-drone 
 Echoed in a song. 
 
 Once again the white fires 
 Smoked among the plums; 
 Once again the world-joy 
 Burst the crimson bud ; 
 
92 THE QUEST 
 
 Golden bannered wheat broods 
 Marched to fairy drums; 
 Once again the vineyard 
 Felt the Bacchic blood. 
 
 "Lo, he comes the dreamer " 
 Crooned the whitened boughs, 
 "Quick with vernal love-fires 
 Oh, at last he knows ! 
 See the bursting plum bloom 
 There above his brows !" 
 "Boaster!" breathed the rose bush, 
 " Tis a budding rose!" 
 
 Droned the glinting acres, 
 "In his soul, mayhap, 
 Something like a wheat-dream 
 Quickens into shape!" 
 Sang the sunning vineyard, 
 "Lo, the lyric sap 
 Sets his heart a-throbbing 
 Like a purple grape!" 
 
 Mother of the wheatlands, 
 Mother of the plums, 
 Mother of the vineyard 
 All that loves and grows 
 
THE STORY 93 
 
 Such a living glory 
 To the dreamer comes, 
 Mystic as a wheat-song, 
 Mighty as a rose! 
 
 Star-glint, moon-glow. 
 Gathered in a mesh I 
 Spring-hope -, white fire 
 By a kiss beguiled! 
 Something of the world-joy 
 Dreaming into flesh ! 
 Bird-song, vine-thrill 
 Quickened to a child! 
 
Ill 
 
 THE NEWS 
 
 LITTLE Breezes, lurking in the green-roofed covers, 
 Where the dappled gloaming keeps the cool night 
 
 dews, 
 Up, and waft the wonder of it unto countless 
 
 lovers ! 
 Set the tiger-lily bells a-tolling out the news ! 
 
 Down the eager rivers make the glory of the story 
 
 roll; 
 
 Waken joyful shivers in the green gold hush ; 
 Set it to the warble of the early morning oriole; 
 Fill it with the tender, kissing rapture of a thrush ! 
 
 Take a little sorrow from the night rain pattering, 
 Drowning in a black flood stars and moon ; 
 Take a little terror from the zigzag, shattering, 
 Blue sword-flash of a storm-struck noon ! 
 
 Breathing through the green-aisled orchard 
 
 chapels, 
 
 Learn the holy music of the world-old dream ; 
 Borrow from the still scarlet singing of the apples ; 
 Weave it in the weird tale s gloom and gleam ! 
 94 
 
THE NEWS 95 
 
 Hasten with the woven music, make the Summer 
 
 lyrical, 
 
 Sweet as with the odors of a southeast rain : 
 Set the corn a-chatter o er the glad, impending 
 
 miracle 
 A little Stranger whimpers at the Gate of Pain ! 
 
IV 
 
 IN THE NIGHT 
 
 OVER the steep cloud-crags 
 The marching Day went down 
 Bickering spears and flags, 
 Slant in a wind of Doom ! 
 Blear in the huddled shadows 
 Glimmer the lights of the town ; 
 Black pools mottle the meadows, 
 Swamped in a purple gloom. 
 
 Is it the night wind sobbing 
 Over the wheat in head ? 
 Is it the world-heart throbbing, 
 Sad with the coming years ? 
 Is it the lifeward creeping 
 Ghosts of the myriad dead, 
 Livid with wounds and weeping 
 Wild, uncleansing tears ? 
 
 Twas not a lone loon calling 
 There in the darkling sedge, 
 Still as the prone moon s falling 
 Where in the gloom it slinks ! 
 96 
 
IN THE NIGHT 97 
 
 Hark to the low intoning 
 
 There at the hushed grove s edge 
 
 Is it the pitiless, moaning 
 
 Voice of the timeless Sphinx ? 
 
 Woven of dust and quiet, 
 Winged with the dim starlight, 
 Hideous dream-sounds riot, 
 Couple and breed and grow; 
 Big with the dread to-morrow, 
 Flooding the hollow night 
 With more than a Thracian sorrow, 
 More than a Theban woe ! 
 
 Dupe of a lying pleasure, 
 Dying slave of desire ! 
 Dreading the swift erasure. 
 The swoop of the grisly Jinn, 
 Lo, you have trammelled with dust 
 A spark of the slumbering Fire, 
 Given it nerves for lust 
 And feet for the shards of sin ! 
 
 Woe to the dreamer waking, 
 When the Dream shall stalk before him, 
 With terrible thirsts for slaking 
 And hungers mad to be fed ! 
 
98 THE QUEST 
 
 Oh, he shall sicken of giving, 
 Cursing the mother that bore him 
 Earth, so lean for the living, 
 Earth, so fat with the dead ! 
 
 Cease, O sounds that smother! 
 Peace, mysterious Flouter ! 
 Lo, where the sacred mother 
 Sleeps in her starry bed, 
 Dreams of the blessed Comer, 
 A white awe flung about her, 
 Wrapped in the hopeful Summer, 
 The starlight round her head ! 
 
BREAK OF DAY 
 
 SILENT are the green looms 
 And the weavers sleep, 
 Nestled in the piled glooms, 
 Deep on deep. 
 
 Gaunt, grim trees stand, 
 Etched on space, 
 Like a mirrored woodland 
 On a purple vase. 
 
 Faithful in the dun hour, 
 Like a praying priest, 
 Eagerly the sunflower 
 Scans the East. 
 
 Corn rows, far-hurled, 
 Mist-enthralled, 
 Vanish in a star world, 
 Sapphire-walled. 
 
 Leaning out of dim space 
 Over field and town, 
 99 
 
ioo THE QUEST 
 
 Some hushed mother face 
 Peers, bends down; 
 
 Veiled in gleam-blurs, 
 Starry locked, 
 Brooding o er the dreamers 
 Dawnward rocked. 
 
 Is a spirit walking ? 
 On a sudden seem 
 All the sleepers talking 
 In a broken dream ! 
 
 All along the corn rows, 
 O er the glinting dews, 
 Hark ! A muffled horn blows 
 Some wild news ! 
 
 Listen ! From a plum-close, 
 Like a troubled soul, 
 Tremulous a voice goes 
 Tis the oriole 1 
 
 Star-lorn, staring, 
 The East goes white ! 
 Is a Terror faring 
 Up the steep of night ? 
 
 Boldly, gladly, 
 
 Through the paling hush, 
 
BREAK OF DAY 101 
 
 Wildly, madly, 
 Cries a thrush ! 
 
 Tumbled are the piled glooms 
 And the weavers stir : 
 Once again the wild looms 
 Drone and whir. 
 
 Glowing through the gray rack 
 Breaks the Day 
 Like a burning haystack 
 Twenty farms away ! 
 
VI 
 
 SONG TO THE SUN 
 
 TREADER of the blue steeps and the hollows under, 
 Day-Flinger, Hope-Singer, crowned with awful 
 
 hair; 
 Battle Lord with burning sword to cleave the 
 
 gloom asunder, 
 Plunger through the eyries of the eagles of the 
 
 Thunder, 
 Stroller up the flame-arched air! 
 
 All-Beholder, very swift and tireless your pace is : 
 Now you snuff the guttered moon above the gray 
 
 abyss, 
 Moaning with the sagging tide in shipless ocean 
 
 spaces; 
 Now you gladden windless hollows thronged with 
 
 daisy faces ; 
 Now the corn salutes the Morn that sought 
 
 Persepolis. 
 
 Searcher of the ocean and the islands and the 
 straits, 
 
 102 
 
SONG TO THE SUN 103 
 
 The mountains and the rivers and the deserts 
 
 and the dunes, 
 
 Saw you any little spirit foundling of the Fates, 
 Groping at the world-wall for the narrow gates 
 Guarded by the nine big moons ? 
 
 Numberless and endlessly the living spirit tide 
 
 rolls, 
 
 Like a serried ocean on a pleasant island hurled ! 
 Sun-lured, rain-wooed, color-haunted wild souls 
 Trooping with the love-thralled, mother-seeking 
 
 child souls, 
 Throng upon the good green world ! 
 
 Surely you have seen it in your wide sky-going 
 
 An eager little comrade of the spirits of the wheat ; 
 
 All the hymning forests and the melody of grow 
 ing, 
 
 All the ocean thunderings and all the rivers flow 
 ing, 
 
 Silenced by the music of its feet ! 
 
VII 
 END OF SUMMER 
 
 PURPLE o er the tree tops 
 Wild grapes sprawl; 
 In the golden silence 
 Few birds call; 
 Heavy-laden Summer 
 Ripens into Fall. 
 
 Weary with the seed pods 
 
 Droop the hollyhocks ; 
 
 Up and down the wide miles, 
 
 Corn in shocks ; 
 
 Silent is the Wheat Mother, 
 
 And her merry flocks 
 
 Go no more a-marching 
 Unto fairy drums. 
 Hark ! Is it the footfall 
 Of the One who comes ? 
 Silence save the dropping 
 Of the purple plums ! 
 104 
 
END OF SUMMER 105 
 
 Patient, stricken Summer 
 Feels the Odic Fires, 
 Awful in her ripe domes, 
 Mystic in her spires. 
 In a holy sadness 
 Fruit the Spring desires. 
 
 Last of all the awe-moons, 
 Three times three, 
 Glimmers down the sun-track 
 Slenderly 
 Omen of the Wonder 
 Soon to be. 
 
 Does the darkness listen 
 For a shout of Doom ? 
 Hist ! Was it a thin voice 
 Crying from a womb ? 
 Silence save a dry leaf s 
 Whisper down the gloom. 
 
VIII 
 HYMN BEFORE BIRTH 
 
 SOON shall you come as the dawn from the dumb 
 abysm of night, 
 
 Traveller birthward, Hastener earthward out of 
 the gloom ! 
 
 Soon shall you rest on a soft white breast from the 
 measureless mid-world flight; 
 
 Waken in fear at the miracle, light, in the pain- 
 hushed room. 
 
 Lovingly fondled, fearfully guarded by hands 
 
 that are tender, 
 Frail shall you seem as a dream that must fail in 
 
 the swirl of the morrow : 
 Oh, but the vast, immemorial past of ineffable 
 
 splendor, 
 Forfeited soon in the pangful surrender to Sense 
 
 and to Sorrow ! 
 
 Who shall unravel your tangle of travel, uncur 
 tain your history ? 
 
 Have you not run with the sun-gladdened feet of a 
 thaw ? 
 
 106 
 
HYMN BEFORE BIRTH 107 
 
 Lurked as a thrill in the will of the primal sea- 
 mystery, 
 
 The drift of the cloud and the lift of the moon for a 
 law ? 
 
 Lost is the tale of the gulfs you have crossed and 
 the veils you have lifted : 
 
 In many a tongue have been wrung from you out 
 cries of pain : 
 
 You have leaped with the lightning from thunder- 
 heads, hurricane-rifted, 
 
 And breathed in the whispering rain ! 
 
 Latent in juices the April sun looses from capture, 
 
 Have you not blown in the lily and grown in the 
 weed ? 
 
 Burned with the flame of the vernal erotical rap 
 ture, 
 
 And yearned with the passion for seed ? 
 
 Poured on the deeps from the steeps of the sky as a 
 chalice, 
 
 Flung through the loom that is shuttled by temp 
 ests at play, 
 
 Myriad the forms you have taken for hovel or 
 palace 
 
 Broken and cast them away ! 
 
io8 THE QUEST 
 
 You who shall cling to a love that is fearful and 
 pities, 
 
 Titans of flame were your comrades to blight and 
 consume ! 
 
 Have you not roared over song-hallowed, sword- 
 stricken cities, 
 
 And fled in the smoke of their doom ? 
 
 For, ancient and new, you are flame, you are dust, 
 
 you are spirit and dew, 
 Swirled into flesh, and the winds of the world are 
 
 your breath ! 
 The song of a thrush in the hush of the dawn is not 
 
 younger than you 
 And yet you are older than death ! 
 
IX 
 
 TRIUMPH 
 
 SEE how the blue-girt hills are spread 
 
 With regal cloth of gold ; 
 
 How, panoplied in haughty red, 
 
 The frosted maples stand ; 
 
 The golden-rod, with torch alight, 
 
 Makes glory up the wold 
 
 As though a monarch s bannered might 
 
 Were marching up the land ! 
 
 Now should ecstatic bugles fret 
 
 The hush, and drums should roll ; 
 
 The shawms of all the breezes set 
 
 The scarlet leaves a-dance ! 
 
 And now should flash in vatic rhyme 
 
 The battles of the Soul 
 
 To welcome to the realm of Time 
 
 The Vanquisher of Chance ! 
 
 For, though there rolls no gilded car 
 That spurns the shaken earth, 
 And shout no captains, flinging far 
 The law to parlous spears ; 
 109 
 
I io THE QUEST 
 
 With throbbing hearts for smitten drums, 
 Up through the Gates of Birth 
 The Victor comes ! The Victor comes ! 
 To claim the ripened years ! 
 
X 
 THE CHILD S HERITAGE 
 
 OH, there are those, a sordid clan, 
 With pride in gaud and faith in gold, 
 Who prize the sacred soul of man 
 For what his hands have sold. 
 
 And these shall deem thee humbly bred 
 They shall not hear, they shall not see 
 The kings among the lordly dead 
 Who walk and talk with thee ! 
 
 A tattered cloak may be thy dole 
 And thine the roof that Jesus had : 
 The broidered garment of the soul 
 Shall keep thee purple-clad ! 
 
 The blood of men hath dyed its brede, 
 And it was wrought by holy seers 
 With sombre dream and golden deed 
 And pearled with women s tears. 
 
 With Eld thy chain of days is one : 
 The seas are still Homeric seas ; 
 in 
 
ii2 THE QUEST 
 
 Thy sky shall glow with Pindar s sun, 
 The stars of Socrates ! 
 
 Unaged the ancient tide shall surge, 
 The old Spring burn along the bough : 
 The new and old for thee converge 
 In one eternal Now ! 
 
 I give thy feet the hopeful sod, 
 
 Thy mouth, the priceless boon of breath; 
 
 The glory of the search for God 
 
 Be thine in life and death ! 
 
 Unto thy flesh, the soothing dust ; 
 Thy soul, the gift of being free : 
 The torch my fathers gave in trust, 
 Thy father gives to thee ! 
 
XI 
 LULLABY 
 
 SUN-FLOOD, moon-gleam 
 Ebb and flow; 
 Twinkle-footed star flocks 
 Come and go : 
 Eager little Stranger, 
 Sleep and grow ! 
 
 Yearning in the moon-lift 
 Surge the seas ; 
 Southering, the sun-lured 
 Gray goose flees : 
 Eager with the same urge, 
 You and these ! 
 
 Canopied in splendor 
 Red, gold, blue 
 With the tender Autumn 
 Cooing through ; 
 Oh, the mighty cradle 
 Rocking you ! 
 
 113 
 
THE POET S TOWN 
 
THE POET S TOWN 
 
 I 
 
 Mm glad green miles of tillage 
 And fields where cattle graze, 
 A prosy little village, 
 You drowse away the days. 
 
 And yet a wakeful glory 
 Clings round you as you doze; 
 One living lyric story 
 Makes music of your prose. 
 
 Here once, returning never, 
 The feet of Song have trod ; 
 And flashed Oh, once forever ! 
 The singing Flame of God. 
 
 II 
 
 These were his fields Elysian : 
 With mystic eyes he saw 
 The sowers planting vision, 
 The reapers gleaning awe. 
 117 
 
n8 THE QUEST 
 
 Serfs to a sordid duty, 
 He saw them with his heart, 
 Priests of the Ultimate Beauty, 
 Feeding the flame of art. 
 
 The weird, untempled Makers 
 Pulsed in the things he saw; 
 The wheat through its virile acres 
 Billowed the Song of Law. 
 
 The epic roll of the furrow 
 
 Flung from the writing plow, 
 
 The dactyl phrase of the green-rowed maize 
 
 Measured the music of Now. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Sipper of ancient flagons, 
 Often the lonesome boy 
 Saw in the farmer s wagons 
 The chariots hurled at Troy. 
 
 Trundling in dust and thunder 
 They rumbled up and down, 
 Laden with princely plunder, 
 Loot of the tragic Town. 
 
 And once when the rich man s daughter 
 Smiled on the boy at play, 
 
THE POET S TOWN 119 
 
 Sword-storms, giddy with slaughter, 
 Swept back the ancient day ! 
 
 War steeds shrieked in the quiet, 
 Far and hoarse were the cries ; 
 And Oh, through the din and the riot, 
 The music of Helen s eyes ! 
 
 Stabbed with the olden Sorrow, 
 He slunk away from the play, 
 For the Past and the vast To-morrow 
 Were wedded in his To-day. 
 
 IV 
 
 Rich with the dreamer s pillage, 
 An idle and worthless lad, 
 Least in a prosy village, 
 And prince in Allahabad ; 
 
 Lover of golden apples, 
 Munching a daily crust; 
 Haunter of dream-built chapels, 
 Worshipping in the dust; 
 
 Dull to the worldly duty, 
 Less to the town he grew, 
 And more to the God of Beauty 
 Than even the grocer knew ! 
 
120 THE QUEST 
 
 Corn for the buyers, and cattle 
 But what could the dreamer sell ? 
 Echoes of cloudy battle ? 
 Music from heaven and hell ? 
 
 Spices and bales of plunder, 
 Argosied over the sea ? 
 Tapestry woven of wonder, 
 Any myrrh from Araby ? 
 
 None of your dream-stuffs, Fellow, 
 
 Looter of Samarcand ! 
 
 Gold is heavy and yellow, 
 
 And value is weighed in the hand ! 
 
 VI 
 
 And yet, when the years had humbled 
 The kings in the Realm of the Boy, 
 Song-built bastions crumbled, 
 Ash-heaps smothering Troy; 
 
 Thirsting for shattered flagons, 
 Quaffing a brackish cup, 
 With all of his chariots, wagons 
 He never could quite grow up. 
 
 The debt to the ogre, To-morrow, 
 He never could comprehend : 
 
THE POET S TOWN 121 
 
 Why should the borrowers borrow ? 
 Why should the lenders lend ? 
 
 Never an oak tree borrowed, 
 But took for its needs and gave. 
 Never an oak tree sorrowed ; 
 Debt was the mark of the slave. 
 
 Grass in the priceless weather 
 
 Sucked from the paps of the Earth, 
 
 And hills that were lean it fleshed with its green 
 
 Oh, what is a lesson worth ? 
 
 But still did the buyers barter 
 And the sellers squint at the scales ; 
 And price was the stake of the martyr, 
 And cost was the lock of the jails. 
 
 VII 
 
 Windflowers herald the Maytide, 
 Rendering worth for worth ; 
 Ragweeds gladden the wayside, 
 Biting the dugs of the Earth ; 
 
 Violets, scattering glories, 
 
 Feed from the dewy gem : 
 
 But poets are fed by the living and dead 
 
 And what is the gift from them ? 
 
122 THE QUEST 
 
 VIII 
 
 Never a stalk of the Summer 
 Dreams of its mission and doom : 
 Only to hasten the Comer 
 Martyrdom unto the Bloom. 
 
 Ever the Mighty Chooser 
 Plucks when the fruit is ripe, 
 Scorning the mass and letting it pass, 
 Keen for the cryptic type. 
 
 Greece in her growing season 
 
 Troubled the lands and seas, 
 
 Plotted and fought and suffered and wrought 
 
 Building a Sophocles ! 
 
 Only a faultless temple 
 
 Stands for the vassal s groan ; 
 
 The harlot s strife and the faith of the wife 
 
 Blend in a shapen stone. 
 
 Ne er do the stern gods cherish 
 The hope of the million lives; 
 Always the Fact shall perish 
 And only the Truth survives. 
 
 Gardens of roses wither, 
 Shaping the perfect rose; 
 
THE POET S TOWN 123 
 
 And the poet s song shall live for the long, 
 Dumb, aching years of prose. 
 
 IX 
 
 King of a Realm of Magic, 
 He was the fool of the town, 
 Hiding the ache of the tragic 
 Under the grin of the clown. 
 
 Worn with the vain endeavor 
 To fit in the sordid plan ; 
 Doomed to be poet forever, 
 He longed to be only a man ; 
 
 To be freed from the god s enthralling, 
 Back with the reeds of the stream ; 
 Deaf to the Vision calling, 
 And dead to the lash of the Dream. 
 
 But still did the Mighty Makers 
 Stir in the common sod ; 
 The corn through its awful acres 
 Trembled and thrilled with God ! 
 
 More than a man was the sower, 
 Lured by a man s desire, 
 For a triune Bride walked close at his side 
 Dew and Dust and Fire ! 
 
124 THE QUEST 
 
 More than a man was the plowman, 
 Shouting his gee and haw; 
 For a something dim kept pace with him, 
 And ever the poet saw; 
 
 Till the winds of the cosmic struggle 
 Made of his flesh a flute, 
 To echo the tune of a whirlwind rune 
 Unto the million mute. 
 
 XI 
 
 Son of the Mother of mothers, 
 The womb and the tomb of Life, 
 With Fire and Air for brothers 
 And a clinging Dream for a wife ; 
 
 Ever the soul of the dreamer 
 
 Strove with its mortal mesh, 
 
 And the lean flame grew till it fretted through 
 
 The last thin links of flesh. 
 
 Oh, rending the veil asunder, 
 He fled to mingle again 
 With the dread Orestean thunder, 
 The Lear of the driven rain ! 
 
 XII 
 
 Once in a cycle the comet 
 Doubles its lonesome track. 
 
THE POET S TOWN 125 
 
 Enriched with the tears of a thousand years, 
 ^Eschylus wanders back. 
 
 Ever inweaving, returning, 
 
 The near grows out of the far ; 
 
 And Homer shall sing once more in a swing 
 
 Of the austere Polar Star. 
 
 Then what of the lonesome dreamer 
 With the lean blue flame in his breast ? 
 And who was your clown for a day, O Town, 
 The strange, unbidden guest ? 
 
 XIII 
 
 9 Mid glad green miles of tillage 
 And fields where cattle graze, 
 A prosy little village, 
 You drowse away the days. 
 
 And yet a wakeful glory 
 Clings round you as you doze; 
 One living, lyric story 
 Makes music of your prose ! 
 
THE POET S ADVICE 
 
 I 
 
 You wish to be a poet, Little Man ? 
 More verses limping neath their big intent ? 
 Well one must be a poet if one can ! 
 But do you know the way the others went ? 
 
 Who buys of gods must pay a heavy fee. 
 The world loves not its dreamers overmuch : 
 And he who longs to drink at Castaly, 
 Must hobble there upon a broken crutch. 
 
 One sins by being different, it seems ; 
 At least so in our human commonweal. 
 Who goes to market with his minted dreams, 
 Must buy and bear the Cross of the Ideal. 
 
 Lo, tall amid the forest, blackened, grim, 
 The lightning-riven pine ! God-kissed was he. 
 How all the little beeches jeer at him, 
 Safe in their snug arrays of greenery ! 
 
 And who shall call the little beeches mad ? 
 Not I, who know how big are little acts. 
 Want what you have, and cherish, O my Lad, 
 The downright, foursquare, geometric facts ! 
 126 
 
THE POET S ADVICE 127 
 
 II 
 
 But Oh, the ancient glory in your eyes ! 
 How bursts a dazzling wonder all around ! 
 Wild tempests of ineffable surprise 
 All color, dream and sound ! 
 
 You lip the awful flagons of old time, 
 And mystic apples lure you to the bite ! 
 Blown down the dizzy winds of woven rhyme, 
 Dead women come and woo you in the night ! 
 
 You tread the myrtle woods past time and place, 
 Where shadows flit and ghostly echoes croon; 
 And through the boughs some fatal storied face 
 Breathes muted music like a Summer moon ! 
 
 I know the secret altars where you kneel. 
 I know what lips fling fever in your kiss. 
 That sorry little drab to whom you steal 
 Is Queen Semiramis ! 
 
 The Bacchanalia of the sap now reigns ! 
 Priapic fires burn yonder bough with blooms ! 
 Lo, goat-songs warbled from the vineyard fanes ! 
 Lo, Venus-nipples in the apple-glooms ! 
 
 Ah, who is older than the vernal surge, 
 And who is wiser than the sap a-thrill ? 
 
128 THE QUEST 
 
 Forever, he who feels the lyric urge 
 Shall do its will ! 
 
 Your rhymes ? Some nimbler footed have been 
 
 worse. 
 
 What broken trumpet echoes from the van 
 Where march the cohorts of Immortal Verse ! 
 Well one must be a poet if one can. 
 
HARK THE MUSIC 
 
 HARK, the music calling ! 
 From the earth it grows, 
 From the sky tis falling, 
 In the wind it blows ! 
 
 Silver-noted star-gleams 
 Through the moony glooms ; 
 Golden-noted sunbeams 
 Wooing cherry blooms ! 
 
 Flying-fingered Winds smite 
 Throbbing strings of rain ; 
 Through the misty midnight 
 Moans the Growing Pain ! 
 
 Cradle-buds are shaken 
 By a hand they know : 
 Brother, Sister, waken 
 Tis the time to grow ! 
 
 129 
 
V 
 
 APRIL THE MAIDEN 
 
 LONGINGS to grow and be vaster, 
 Sap songs under the blue; 
 Hints of the Mighty Master 
 Making his dream come true. 
 
 Sensing the northbound Wonder 
 Arrows of wild geese flee ; 
 Bursting its bonds with thunder, 
 The river yearns to the sea. 
 
 Gaunt limbs, winter-scarred, tragic, 
 Blind seeds under the mold, 
 Planning new marvels of magic 
 In scarlet and green and gold ! 
 
 Oh passionate, panting, love-laden, 
 She is coming, she sings in the South 
 The World s Bride April the Maiden - 
 With the ghost of a rose for a mouth ! 
 
 130 
 
APRIL THEOLOGY 
 
 OH to be breathing and hearing and feeling and 
 
 seeing ! 
 
 Oh the ineffably glorious privilege of being ! 
 All of the World s lovely girlhood, unfleshed and 
 
 made spirit, 
 Broods out in the sunlight this morning I see it, 
 
 I hear it ! 
 
 So read me no text, my Brothers, and preach 
 me no creeds ; 
 
 I am busy beholding the glory of God in His deeds ! 
 
 See! Everywhere buds coming out, blossoms 
 flaming, bees humming ! 
 
 Glad athletic growers up-reaching, things striv 
 ing, becoming ! 
 
 Oh, I know in my heart, in the sun-quickened, 
 
 blossoming soul of me, 
 This something called self is a part, but the world 
 
 is the whole of me ! 
 I am one with these growers, these singers, these 
 
 earnest becomers 
 Co-heirs of the summer to be and past aeons of 
 
 summers ! 
 
 131 
 
132 THE QUEST 
 
 I kneel not nor grovel; no prayer with my lips 
 
 shall I fashion. 
 Close-knit in the fabric of things, fused with one 
 
 common passion 
 To go on and become something greater we 
 
 growers are one ; 
 None more in the world than a bird and none less 
 
 than the sun ; 
 
 But all woven into the glad indivisible Scheme, 
 God fashioning out in the Finite a part of his dream ! 
 
 Out here where the world-love is flowing, un 
 fettered, unpriced, 
 
 I feel all the depth of the man-soul and girl-heart 
 of Christ ! 
 
 Mid this riot of pink and white flame in this 
 miracle weather, 
 
 Soul to soul, merged in one, God and I dream the 
 vast dream together. 
 
 We are one in the doing of things that are done 
 and to be : 
 
 I am part of my God as a raindrop is part of the 
 sea! 
 
 What ! House me my God ? Take me in where 
 
 no blossoms are blowing ? 
 Roof me in from the blue, wall me in from the 
 
 green and the wonder of growing ? 
 
APRIL THEOLOGY 133 
 
 Parcel out what is already mine, like a vender of 
 staples ? 
 
 See! Yonder my God burns revealed in the sap- 
 drunken maples! 
 
MORNING-GLORIES 
 
 DISTANT as a dream s flight 
 Lay an eerie plain, 
 Where the weary moonlight 
 Swooned into a moan ; 
 Wailing after dead seed, 
 Came the ghost of rain ; 
 There was I a wild weed 
 Growing all alone. 
 
 Like a doubted story 
 Came the thought of day; 
 God and all his glory 
 Lingered otherwhere, 
 Busy with the dawn-thrill 
 Many dreams away. 
 Could a little weed s will 
 Fling so far a prayer ? 
 
 Oh, the sudden wonder ! 
 (Is a prayer so fleet ?) 
 From the desert under, 
 Morning-glories grew ! 
 134 
 
MORNING-GLORIES 135 
 
 Twined me, bound me 
 With caressing feet ! 
 Wove song round me 
 Pink, white, blue ! 
 
 As a fog is rifted 
 By the eager breeze, 
 Darkness broke and lifted, 
 Tossing like a sea ! 
 Lo, the dawn was flowering 
 Through the maple trees ! 
 Oh and you were showering 
 Kisses over me ! 
 
INVITATIONS 
 I 
 
 OH come with me and through my gardens run, 
 And we shall pluck strange flowers that love the 
 
 sun, 
 
 Of which the sap is blood, the petals flame, 
 The sweet, forbidden blossoms of no name ! 
 Oh splendid are my gardens walled with night, 
 Dim-torched with stars and secret for delight; 
 And winds breathe there the lure of smitten 
 
 strings, 
 
 Vocal of the immensity of things ! 
 Come, Wailer out of Nothing, nowhere hurled, 
 Frustrate the bitter purpose of the World ! 
 Thou shalt drink deep of all delights that be 
 So come with me ! 
 
 II 
 
 I have a secret garden where sacred lilies lift 
 White faces kind with pardon, to hear my shrift. 
 And all blood-riot falters before those faces there ; 
 Bowed down at quiet altars, my hours are monks 
 at prayer. 
 
 136 
 
INVITATIONS 137 
 
 There through my spirit kneeling the silence 
 thrills and sings 
 
 The cosmic brother feeling of growing, hopeful 
 things : 
 
 Old soothing Earth a mother; a sire the shield 
 ing Blue; 
 
 The Sun a mighty brother and God is in the 
 dew. 
 
 Oh Garden hushed and splendid with lily, star 
 and tree ! 
 
 There all vain dreams are ended so come with 
 me! 
 
I 
 
 AND THE LITTLE WIND 
 
 SAID a rose amid the June night to a little wind 
 there walking 
 
 (And the whisper of the moonlight was no fainter 
 than its talking) : 
 
 "It is plainly providential," so remarked the 
 garden Tory, 
 
 "That the ultimate essential is the gentle rose s 
 glory. 
 
 Let the sordid delvers cavil ! Through the world- 
 fog sinking seaward 
 
 And the planetary travail God was slowly groping 
 me-ward. 
 
 Weary ages of designing, aeons of creative throes 
 
 Spent the Master in refining sullen chaos to a rose ! 
 
 Shall He robe His chosen meanly ? Look upon 
 me; am I splendid ?" 
 
 Here she stood erect and queenly, curled a lip and 
 ended. 
 
 And the little wind there walking, not desirous of 
 dissension, 
 
 In a gust of cryptic talking freely granted the con 
 tention. 
 
 138 
 
AND THE LITTLE WIND 139 
 
 Like the murmur of a far stream or a zephyr in the 
 sedges, 
 
 Scarcely louder than the star-gleam raining silver 
 on the hedges, 
 
 Came a whisper from the humus where the roots 
 were toiling blindly : 
 
 "They enslave us, they entomb us! Is it just 
 and is it kindly ? 
 
 Ours, forever ours, to nourish oh, the drear, 
 eternal duty ! 
 
 That the idle rose may flourish in aristocratic 
 beauty. 
 
 Not for us the wooing, tender moon emerges from 
 the far night ; 
 
 Not for us the morning splendor and the witchery 
 of starlight ; 
 
 Not for us the dulcet cantion of the rain to throb 
 bing lutes ; 
 
 And there s no cerulean mansion for the roots." 
 
 Now the little wind, demurely sympathetic, cogi 
 tated, 
 
 And declared the matter surely ought to be inves 
 tigated. 
 
 "Fie !" observed the fair patrician, "on their silly 
 
 martyr poses ! 
 Not content with their condition, always wanting 
 
 to be roses !" 
 
140 THE QUEST 
 
 Whereupon a theophanic, superlunar phosphor 
 escence 
 
 Flung the haughty into panic, awed the humble 
 to quiescence. 
 
 Twas the Vintner of the June-wine on his world 
 wide, endless vagrance; 
 
 And he spoke the tongue of moonshine in the 
 dialect of fragrance : 
 
 " Brother, Sister, softly, softly ! Glooming, gleam 
 ing though the way be, 
 
 Who is low and who is lofty in the scheme of what 
 you may be ? 
 
 Pride and plaint are irreligious. Root and 
 blossom, lo ! you plod 
 
 Upward to some far, prodigious rose of God !" 
 
 And the little wind, though slyly sleeping out the 
 time of talking, 
 
 Woke to praise the sermon highly, and continued 
 with his walking. 
 
PRAIRIE STORM RUNE 
 
 I 
 
 THE wild bee sips at the heat-drugged lips 
 
 Of the passionless lily a-nod ; 
 
 The sunflowers stare through the hush at the glare 
 
 Of the face of their tutelar god, and the hair 
 
 Of the gossamer glints in the listless air. 
 
 Ragged and grim on the parched hill-rim, 
 The cottonwoods sulk in gray : 
 The guiding word of the plowman is heard 
 A dream-thralled mile away half blurred, 
 Wounding the calm as a blunted sword. 
 
 Prophecy s minister, dolorous, sinister, 
 Hark to the rain crow ! Incredible story ! 
 For the clouds of fleece like banners in peace 
 Pine for the winds of glory. Cease, 
 Chanter of storm in the ancient peace ! 
 
 The sick land lies as a man ere he dies, 
 Loosing his grip in a hush profound ; 
 Save when the hidden insects scream 
 In jets of watery sound that seem 
 Taunts of thirst in a fever dream. 
 
142 THE QUEST 
 
 II 
 
 What mean yon cries where the flat world dies 
 
 In hazy rotundity 
 
 Tumult a-swoon, silence a-croon, 
 
 Lapped in profundity bane or boon 
 
 Or only the drone of a fever rune ? 
 
 No bird sings but a grasshopper s wings 
 Snap in the meadow. 
 
 On the rim of the hill the cottonwoods spill 
 Stagnant puddles of shadow; and still 
 The air is quick with a subtle thrill ! 
 
 A cool fresh pufF ! The meadows are rough, 
 The cottonwoods whiten and whisper together ! 
 The plowman at gaze, knee-deep in the maize, 
 Judges the weather. A plow horse neighs, 
 Faint and clear as a horn of the fays. 
 
 Haunting the distance with taunting insistence, 
 Fiery portents and mumblings of wonder ! 
 In gardens of gloom, walled steep with doom, 
 Strange blue buds burst in thunder, and bloom 
 Dizzily, vividly, gaudily, lividly 
 Death-flowers sown in a cannon-gloom ! 
 
 Ill 
 
 Lo, on a height hewn sheer out of night, 
 Where Mystery labors, 
 
PRAIRIE STORM RUNE 143 
 
 Through the Hadean heath from an awe beneath, 
 A sprouting of sabres lean from the sheath ! 
 And bursting the husk of the travailing dusk, 
 The world-old crop of the dragon s teeth ! 
 
 Banners of battle-might, spear-glint and sword- 
 light 
 
 Over the dream-vague, frowning battalions ! 
 
 Hark, the hoarse trumpets bray ! Sensing the 
 coming fray, 
 
 Wraith-ridden, thunder-hoofed stallions neigh 
 
 Terror into the glooming day ! 
 
 A death-hush falls. The shadow sprawls 
 Sick in the failing noon. 
 The sun flies shorn, aghast, forlorn, 
 Like a spectral moon surprised at morn. 
 Deathly green is the meadow-sheen, 
 Ghastly green the corn. 
 
 IV 
 
 Hark at last the burst of the blast 
 The roar of the charge and howls of defiance ! 
 The cottonwoods, grim on the bleared hill-rim, 
 Grapple with giants weird and dim 
 Titan torses, pedisonant horses 
 Gods and demons and seraphim ! 
 
144 THE QUEST 
 
 Bloody light from the sword-slashed night 
 Shuddering darkness after ! 
 Terrible feet trample the wheat ! 
 Olympian laughter overhead ! 
 Over the roofs rumble the hoofs, 
 Over the graves of the dead ! 
 
 And yet somewhere through the crystal air 
 A golden rain is swelling the oats, 
 And wild doves croon to the splendid noon 
 Of love too big for their throats ; and there 
 Never the beat of terrible feet 
 Somehow, somewhere. 
 
 Stark in the rain like a face of the slain 
 
 The gray land stares in the fitful light. 
 
 Is it a glimmer of some vague story 
 
 The corn s green might, the wheatfield s shimmer, 
 
 The sunflower s glory ? 
 
 The war wind fails. A gray cloud trails 
 Over the sodden plain. 
 Swift and bright, the arrowy light 
 Smites the rear of the Rain in flight ! 
 And lo, on high, spanning the sky, 
 The arch of a Victor s might ! 
 
PRAIRIE STORM RUNE 145 
 
 Nothing is heard . . . Hark ! a bird 
 Calls from a green-gloomed, dripping cover ! 
 Surely wrath rode not in the blast, 
 But some inscrutable Lover passed, 
 Aflame with the lust of the Dew for the Dust, 
 Out of the Vast into the Vast. 
 
 The wild bee slips from the housing lips 
 
 Of the lily a-nod. 
 
 Odors sweet in the humid heat ! 
 
 A glimmer of God athwart the wheat ! 
 
 Aglow with prayer, the sunflowers stare 
 
 At the face of their Paraclete. 
 
PRAYER FOR PAIN 
 
 I DO not pray for peace nor ease, 
 Nor truce from sorrow : 
 No suppliant on servile knees 
 Begs here against to-morrow ! 
 
 Lean flame against lean flame we flash, 
 O Fates that meet me fair ; 
 Blue steel against blue steel we clash 
 Lay on, and I shall dare ! 
 
 But Thou of deeps the awful Deep, 
 Thou breather in the clay, 
 Grant this my only prayer Oh keep 
 My soul from turning gray ! 
 
 For until now, whatever wrought 
 Against my sweet desires, 
 My days were smitten harps strung taut, 
 My nights were slumbrous lyres. 
 
 And howsoe er the hard blow rang 
 Upon my battered shield, 
 Some lark-like, soaring spirit sang 
 Above my battle-field ; 
 146 
 
PRAYER FOR PAIN 147 
 
 And through my soul of stormy night 
 The zigzag blue flame ran. 
 I asked no odds I fought my fight 
 Events against a man. 
 
 But now at last the gray mist chokes 
 And numbs me. Leave me pain! 
 Oh let me feel the biting strokes 
 That I may fight again I .*, 
 
BATTLE-CRY 
 
 MORE than half beaten, but fearless, 
 Facing the storm and the night; 
 Breathless and reeling, but tearless, 
 Here in the lull of the fight, 
 I who bow not but before Thee, 
 God of the fighting Clan, 
 Lifting my fists I implore Thee, 
 Give me the heart of a Man ! 
 
 What though I live with the winners 
 
 Or perish with those who fall ? 
 
 Only the cowards are sinners, 
 
 Fighting the fight is all. 
 
 Strong is my Foe he advances I 
 
 Snapt is my blade, O Lord 1 
 
 See the proud banners and lances ! 
 
 Oh spare me this stub of a sword ! 
 
 Give me no pity, nor spare me ; 
 Calm not the wrath of my Foe. 
 See where he beckons to dare me ! 
 Bleeding, half beaten I go. 
 148 
 
BATTLE-CRY 149 
 
 Not for the glory of winning, 
 Not for the fear of the night ; 
 Shunning the battle is sinning 
 Oh spare me the heart to fight ! 
 
 Red is the mist about me; 
 Deep is the wound in my side; 
 Coward thou criest to flout me ? 
 O terrible Foe, thou hast lied ! 
 Here with my battle before me, 
 God of the fighting clan, 
 Grant that the woman who bore me 
 Suffered to suckle a man ! 
 
THE LYRIC 
 
 GIVE the good gaunt horse the rein, 
 
 Sting him with the steel ! 
 
 Set his nervous thews a-strain, 
 
 Let him feel the winner s pain, 
 
 Master-hand and -heel ! 
 
 Fling him, hurl him at the wire 
 
 Though he sob and bleed ! 
 
 Play upon him as a lyre 
 
 Speed is music set on fire 
 
 Oh, the mighty steed ! 
 
 Hurl the lyric swift and true 
 
 Like a shaft of Doom ! 
 
 Like the lightning s blade of blue 
 
 Letting all the heavens through, 
 
 And shuddering back to gloom ! 
 
 Like the sudden river-thaw, 
 
 Like a sabred throng, 
 
 Give it fury clothed in awe 
 
 Speed is half the lyric law 
 
 Oh, the mighty song ! 
 
 150 
 
LONESOME IN TOWN 
 
 THE long day wanes, the fog shuts down, 
 The eave-trough spouts and sputters ; 
 The rain sighs through the huddled town 
 And mumbles in the gutters. 
 
 The emptied thoroughfares become 
 Long streams of eerie light ; 
 They issue from the mist and, dumb, 
 Flow onward out of sight. 
 
 A crowded street-car grumbles past, 
 Its snapping trolley glows ; 
 Again where yon pale light is cast 
 The hackman s horses doze. 
 
 In vain the bargain windows wink, 
 The passers-by are few : 
 The grim walls stretch away and shrink 
 In dull electric blue. 
 
 A stranger hurries down the street, 
 Hat dripping, face aglow : 
 
 happy feet, O homing feet, 
 
 1 know where mine would go ! 
 
152 THE QUEST 
 
 Far oh, far over hills and dells 
 
 The cows come up the lane, 
 
 With steaming flanks and fog-dulled bells 
 
 A-tinkle in the rain. 
 
MONEY 
 
 A SON of Adam dug beside the way. 
 "Why Brother, do you dig ?" I stopped to ask. 
 Standing at stoop and pausing in his task, 
 From dreary eyes he wiped the sweat away. 
 "I work for money." "What is money, pray ?" 
 "A foolish question, this you come to ask !" 
 Yet in that gray and worry-haunted mask 
 At hide-and-seek I saw my query play. 
 
 "It is the graven symbol of your ache," 
 
 I said, " the minted meaning of your blood ; 
 
 And he who works not, robs you when he buys ! 
 
 You are the vassal of a thing you make I" 
 
 I left him staring hard upon the mud, 
 
 The glimmer of a portent in his eyes. 
 
SONG OF THE TURBINE WHEEL 
 
 HEARKEN the bluster and brag of the Mill ! 
 
 The heart of the Mill am I, 
 
 Doomed to toil in the dark until 
 
 The springs of the world run dry; 
 
 With never a ray of sun to cheer 
 
 And never a star for lamp ! 
 
 It cries its song in the great World s ear 
 
 I toil in the dark and damp. 
 
 And ever the storm-clouds cast their showers 
 And the brook laughs loud in the sun, 
 To goad me on through the dizzy hours 
 That the will of the Mill be done ! 
 And that is why I groan at work ; 
 For deep down under the flood I lurk 
 Where the icy midnight lingers ; 
 While tinkle, tinkle the waters play 
 Through starless night and sunless day 
 All with their crystal fingers. 
 
 Oh, the waters have such a rollicking way 
 And they taunt me in my pain ; 
 " Tis thou alone art sad," they say, 
 
SONG OF THE TURBINE WHEEL 155 
 
 "Thy rusty whine is vain; 
 
 For the grass is green and the skies are blue 
 
 And a fisherman whistled, as we came through, 
 
 A careless merry tune; 
 
 And a bevy of boys were out with their noise 
 
 In our flood made warm with June !" 
 
 And, bound as I am where the darkness lingers, 
 I half forgive their careless way, 
 Such soothing, tinkling tunes they play 
 All with their icy fingers. 
 
THE RED WIND COMES! 
 
 Too long mere words have thralled us. Let us 
 
 think ! 
 
 Oh ponder, are we "free and equal" yet ? 
 That July bombast, writ with blood for ink, 
 Is blurred with floods of unavailing sweat ! 
 
 An empty sound we won from Royal George ! 
 Yea, till a greater fight be fought and won, 
 A sentimental show was Valley Forge, 
 A mawkish, tawdry farce was Lexington ! 
 
 No longer blindfold Justice reigns ; but leers 
 A barefaced, venal strumpet in her stead ! 
 The stolen harvests of a hundred years 
 Are lighter than a stolen loaf of bread ! 
 
 O pious Nation, holding God in awe, 
 Where sacred human rights are duly priced ! 
 Where men are beggared in the name of Law, 
 Where alms are given in the name of Christ ! 
 
 The Country of the Free ? O wretched lie ! 
 The Country of the Brave ? Yea, let it be ! 
 156 
 
THE RED WIND COMES! 15? 
 
 One more good fight, O Brothers, ere we die, 
 And this shall be the Country of the Free ! 
 
 What ! Are we cowards ? Are we doting fools ? 
 Who built the cities, fructified the lands ? 
 We make and use, but do we own the tools ? 
 Who robbed us of the product of our hands ? 
 
 A tiger-hearted Tyrant crowned with Law, 
 Whose flesh is custom and whose soul is greed 1 
 Ubiquitous, a nothing clothed in awe, 
 We sweat for him and bleed ! . 
 
 Daft Freedom sings the glory of his reign ; 
 Religion is a pander of his lust : 
 Surviving tyrants, he eludes the vain, 
 Tyrannicidal thrust. 
 
 Yea, and we serve this Insult to our God ! 
 Gnawing our crusts, we render Caesar toll ! 
 We labor with the back beneath his rod, 
 His shackles on the soul ! 
 
 He is a System wrought for human hogs ! 
 So long as we shall hug a hoary Lie, 
 And gulp the vocal swill of demagogues, 
 The Fat shall rule the sty ! 
 
 Behold potential plenty for us all ! 
 Behold the pauper and the plutocrat ! 
 
158 THE QUEST 
 
 Behold the signs prophetic of thy fall, 
 Dynast of the Fat ! 
 
 Lo, even now the haunting, spectral scrawl ! 
 Lo, even now the beat of hidden wings ! 
 The ghosts of millions throng thy banquet-hall, 
 O guiltiest and last of all the kings ! 
 
 Beware the Furies stirring in the gloom ! 
 
 They mutter from the mines, the mills, the 
 
 slums ! 
 
 No lie shall stay or mitigate thy doom 
 The Red Wind comes ! 
 
CRY OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 TREMBLE before thy chattels, 
 Lords of the scheme of things ! 
 Fighters of all earth s battles, 
 Ours is the might of kings ! 
 Guided by seers and sages, 
 The world s heart-beat for a drum, 
 Snapping the chains of ages, 
 Out of the night we come ! 
 
 Lend us no ear that pities ! 
 Offer no almoner s hand ! 
 Alms for the builders of cities ! 
 When will you understand ? 
 Down with your pride of birth 
 And your golden gods of trade ! 
 A man is worth to his mother, Earth, 
 All that a man has made ! 
 
 We are the workers and makers ! 
 We are no longer dumb ! 
 Tremble, O Shirkers and Takers ! 
 Sweeping the earth we come ! 
 
160 THE QUEST 
 
 Ranked in the world-wide dawn, 
 Marching into the day ! 
 The night is gone and the sword is drawn 
 And the scabbard is thrown away ! 
 
O LYRIC MASTER! 
 
 i 
 
 OUT of thy pregnant silence, brooding and latent 
 
 so long, 
 Burst on the world, O Master, sing us the great 
 
 man-song ! 
 
 Have we not piled up cities, gutted the iron hills, 
 Schooled with our dream the lightning and 
 
 steam, giving them thoughts and wills ? 
 Have we not laughed at distance, belting the 
 
 earth with rails ? 
 
 We are no herd of weaklings. Lo, we are mas 
 terful males ! 
 We are the poets of matter. Latent in steel and 
 
 stone, 
 Latent in engines and cities and ships, see how 
 
 our songs have grown ! 
 Long have we hammered and chiselled, hewn and 
 
 hoisted, until 
 Lo, neath the wondering noon of the world, the 
 
 visible Epic of Will ! 
 Breathless we halt in our labor; shout us a song 
 
 to cheer; 
 Something that s swift as a sabre, keen for the 
 
 mark as a spear; 
 
 M 161 
 
162 THE QUEST 
 
 Full of the echoes of battle souls crying up 
 
 from the dust. 
 Hungry we cried to our singers our singers 
 
 have flung us a crust ! 
 Choked with the smoke of the battle, staggering, 
 
 weary with blows, 
 We cried for a flagon of music they gave us 
 
 the dew of a rose ! 
 Gewgaw goblets they gave us, jewelled and 
 
 crystalline, 
 But filled with the tears of a weakling. Better 
 
 a gourd and wine ! 
 O immanent Lyric Master, thou who hast felt 
 
 us build, 
 Moulding the mud with our sweat and blood into 
 
 a thing we willed ; 
 Soon shall thy brooding be over, the dream shall 
 
 be ripened and then, 
 Thunderous out of thy silence, hurl us the Song 
 
 of Men ! 
 
KATHARSIS 
 
 (1914) 
 I 
 
 WHO pray for calm, abhorring flood and fire, 
 Would shun the purging and espouse the blight. 
 Lo, in the marshland where the tempest s might 
 Has raged not, how life s meaner forms aspire ! 
 How breeds and skitters in the fetid mire 
 Spawn reminiscent of the primal light ! 
 What saturnalias of the parasite 
 Where corpse-lights ape the elemental fire ! 
 
 Disaster, riding on a thunder-smoke, 
 Serpents of flame upon his forehead set, 
 Hurls the black legions of cyclonic strife ! 
 We trace his progress by the shattered oak, 
 Bewail the wasted centuries and yet, 
 The land shall quicken to a cleaner life. 
 
 II 
 
 They hasten to the ancient bath again, 
 And shall emerge unto a saner peace. 
 163 
 
164 THE QUEST 
 
 Lo, how they made a fetich of caprice, 
 
 And worshipped with aberrant brush and pen ! 
 
 What false dawns summoned by the crowing hen ! 
 
 How toiled the lean to batten the obese ! 
 
 What straying from the sanity of Greece 
 
 While yet her seers and bards were fighting-men ! 
 
 A canting generation, smug in greed, 
 With neurasthenic shudders, suavely wroth, 
 Bemoans the ruin of Icarian wings ! 
 Lo, latent in its luxury, the Mede ; 
 Potential in bland cruelties, the Goth 
 Stern teachers of the fundamental things ! 
 
\J 
 
 THE FARMER S THANKSGIVING 
 
 NOT ours to marshal, rank on rank, 
 
 The might a Kaiser wields ; 
 Not ours the harvest of the Frank 
 
 On rifle-pitted fields : 
 But we have fought, and we have won 
 
 As never wins the sword ; 
 And now that our good war is done, 
 
 We humbly thank the Lord. 
 
 Prepare the feast and let us sing 
 
 Of how the foe we slew ; 
 How on a bleak frontier of Spring 
 
 We ran our trenches true ; 
 How, trudging through the harrow smoke, 
 
 Went forth our army leaders ; 
 And how the golden volleys broke 
 
 From batteries of seeders. 
 
 The King Most High was our ally. 
 What drilling and recruiting ! 
 165 
 
i66 THE QUEST 
 
 How thronged the glades and hills with blades ! 
 
 What eagerness for shooting ! 
 And when, midmost the June campaign, 
 
 Old Drought swooped in to plunder, 
 How charged the lancers of the rain ! 
 
 What cannonade of thunder ! 
 
 Well may we boast; our wheaten host 
 
 Outnumbered all the Russians ; 
 Our plumed corn might laugh to scorn 
 
 The Uhlans of the Prussians ! 
 They seek a ghastly triumph now ; 
 
 Our victories are kinder. 
 God bless the good old twelve-inch plow 
 
 And automatic binder ! 
 
 Lo, where like stacked triumphant arms 
 
 The corn shocks dot yon rise ! 
 Let golden bombs on all the farms 
 
 Now burst in pumpkin pies ! 
 And let us sing, for we have won 
 
 As never wins the sword ; 
 And now that our good fight is done, 
 
 Be praises to the Lord 1 
 
THE VOICE OF NEMESIS 
 
 You knew me of old and feared me, 
 Dreading my face revealed ; 
 Temples and altars you reared me, 
 Wooed me with shuddering names ; 
 Masking your fear in meekness, 
 You pseaned the doom I wield, 
 Wrought me a robe of your weakness, 
 A crown of your woven shames. 
 
 ^ 
 
 Image of all earth s error, 
 Big as the bulk of its guilt, 
 Lo, I darkled with terror, 
 A demon of spite and grudge; 
 You made me a vessel of fury 
 Brimmed with the blood you spilt; 
 With devils of hell for jury, 
 You throned me a pitiless judge. 
 
 For ever the wage of sorrow 
 Paid for the lawless deed ; 
 Never the gray to-morrow 
 Paused for a pious price; 
 167 
 
i68 THE QUEST 
 
 Never by prayer and psalter 
 Perished the guilty seed ; 
 Vain was the wail at the altar,] 
 The smoke of the sacrifice. 
 
 I come like a crash of thunder ; 
 
 I come as a slow-toothed dread ; 
 
 With fire and sword to plunder 
 
 Or only with lust and sloth. 
 
 By star or sun I creep or run, 
 
 And lo, my will was sped 
 
 By the might of the Mede, the hate of the Hun, 
 
 The bleak northwind of the Goth ! 
 
 Yet, older than malice and cunning, 
 The love and the hate of your creed, 
 I smile in the blossom sunning, 
 I am hurricane lightning-shod ! 
 Revealed in a myriad dresses, 
 I am master or slave at need. 
 You grope for my face with your guesses, 
 And kneel to your guess for a god. 
 
 I am one in the fall of the pebble, 
 The call of the sea to the stream, 
 The wrath of the starving rebel, 
 The plunge of the vernal thaw : 
 
THE VOICE OF NEMESIS 169 
 
 The yearning of things to be level, 
 The stir of the deed in the dream ; 
 I am these I am angel and devil 
 I am Law ! 
 
ECHO SONG 
 
 Lo, a wandering echo I, 
 Flung afar, confused, forlorn ; 
 Yearning with a broken cry, 
 Yet of mighty music born ! 
 
 Echo from a Wonder-Horn 
 That sends the music flying far, 
 Blaring through the scarlet morn, 
 Tinkling in the spangled star! 
 
 Where in all the songs that are 
 May the echo cease to be, 
 Filling out a wondrous bar, 
 Blending with a melody ? 
 
 Like a ghost there lives in me, 
 Frustrate in my monotone, 
 Something chanted by a Sea, 
 Something out of vastness blown. 
 
 Lost, reiterant, alone, 
 I grow weary, seeking long, 
 Out of master-music blown, 
 Homesick for the Mother-Song. 
 
 170 
 
ECHO SONG 171 
 
 Yet what though the way be long ? 
 Hark the music flying far ! 
 Trumpets from the scarlet morn, 
 Lyrics from the evening star ! 
 
 Kin to all the songs that are, 
 Of a mighty singing born, 
 Sun and I and Sea and Star, 
 Echoes from a Wonder-Horn. 
 
FOUNTAIN SONG 
 
 I AM the sprite of the fountain, 
 Sprung from the gloom am I, 
 Out of the womb of the Mountain, 
 Big with the kiss of the Sky ! 
 I am the Fugitive Glory, 
 Singing the strong soul s story. 
 Twinkling, tinkling, glad to be 
 Out of the prison of Earth set free ; 
 Dancing, mad with the cosmic tune, 
 Laughing under the stars and moon 
 Back to the Ocean soon ! 
 
 Back to the Sky and back to the Sea 
 Oh I was a prisoner long ! 
 But the love of the Vast was strong in me, 
 I fed on the Dream of the Strong. 
 And Oh while the slow gloom chained the Deed, 
 I wrought my vision of silvery speed ! 
 And out of the dread hush round about, 
 I fashioned a gladsome victor-shout ! 
 Sister of Wave and Cloud am I, 
 And the world grows green as I pass by 
 Back to the Sea and Sky ! 
 172 
 
OUTWARD 
 
 WHITHER away, O Sailor, say ? 
 Under the night, under the day, 
 Yearning sail and flying spray, 
 Out of the black into the blue, 
 Where are the great Winds bearing you ? 
 
 Never port shall lift for me 
 Into the sky, out of the sea ! 
 Into the blue or into the black, 
 Onward, outward, never back ! 
 Something mighty and weird and dim 
 Calls me under the ocean rim ! 
 
 Sailor under sun and moon, 
 Tis the ocean s fatal rune. 
 Under yon far rim of sky 
 Twice ten thousand others lie. 
 Love is sweet and home is fair, 
 And your mother calls you there. 
 
 Onward, outward I must go 
 Where the mighty currents flow. 
 Home is anywhere for me 
 On this purple-tented sea. 
 173 
 
174 THE QUEST 
 
 Star and Wind and Sun my brothers. 
 Ocean one of many mothers. 
 Onward under sun and star 
 Where the weird adventures are I 
 Never port shall lift for me 
 / am Wind and Sky and Sea / 
 
THE GHOSTLY BROTHER 
 
 BROTHER, Brother, calling me 
 
 Like a distant surfy sea, 
 
 Like a wind that moans and grieves 
 
 All night long about the eaves ; 
 
 Let me rest a little span ; 
 
 Long I ve followed, followed fast ; 
 
 Now I wish to be a man, 
 
 Disconnected from the Vast ! 
 
 Let me stop a little while, 
 
 Feel this snug world s pulses beat, 
 
 Glory in a baby s smile, 
 
 Hear it prattle round my feet ; 
 
 Eat and sleep and love and live, 
 
 Thankful ever for the dawn ; 
 
 Wanting what the world can give 
 
 With the cosmic curtains drawn ! 
 
 Brother, Brother, break the gyves! 
 Burst the prison, Son of Power I 
 Product oj j or gotten lives, 
 Seedling of the final flower ! 
 I7S 
 
THE QUEST 
 
 What to you are nights and days. 
 Drifting snow or rainy flaw, 
 Love or hate or blame or praise 
 Heir unto the Outer Awe ? 
 
 I am breathless from the flight 
 Through the speed-cleft, awful night ! 
 Panting, let me rest awhile 
 In this pleasant sether-isle. 
 Here, content with transient things, 
 How the witless dweller sings ! 
 Rears his brood and steers his plow, 
 Nursing at the breasts of Now. 
 Here the meanest, yea, the slave 
 Claims the heirloom of a grave ! 
 Oh, this little world is blest 
 Brother, Brother, let me rest ! 
 
 / am you and you are I! 
 When the world is cherished most, 
 You shall hear my haunting cry, 
 See me rising like a ghost. 
 I am all that you have been, 
 Are not now, but soon shall be ! 
 Thralled awhile by dust and din 
 Brother, Brother, follow me ! 
 
 Tis a lonesome, endless quest; 
 I am weary ; I would rest. 
 
THE GHOSTLY BROTHER 177 
 
 Though I seek to fly from you, 
 Like a shadow, you pursue. 
 Do I love ? You share the kiss, 
 Leaving only half the bliss. 
 Do I conquer ? You are there, 
 Claiming half the victor s share. 
 When the night-shades fray and lift, 
 Tis your veiled face lights the rift. 
 In the sighing of the rain, 
 Your voice goads me like a pain. 
 Happy in a narrow trust, 
 Let me serve the lesser will 
 One brief hour and then, to dust ! 
 Oh, the dead are very still ! 
 
 Brother, Brother, follow hence ! 
 Ours the wild, unflagging speed! 
 Through the outer walls of sense. 
 Follow, follow where I lead ! 
 Love and hate and grief and fear 
 9 Tis the geocentric dream! 
 Only shadows linger here, 
 Cast by the eternal Gleam ! 
 Follow, follow, follow fast ! 
 Somewhere out of Time and Place, 
 You shall lift the veil at last, 
 You shall look upon my face; 
 
 N 
 
178 THE QUEST 
 
 Look upon my face and die, 
 Solver of the Mystery ! 
 I am you and you are I 
 Brother, Brother, follow me ! 
 
WHEN I HAVE GONE WEIRD WAYS 
 
 WHEN I have finished with this episode, 
 Left the hard up-hill road, 
 And gone weird ways to seek another load, 
 O Friend regret me not, nor weep for me 
 Child of Infinity ! 
 
 Nor dig a grave, nor rear for me a tomb, 
 To say with lying writ : "Here in the gloom 
 He who loved bigness takes a narrow room, 
 Content to pillow here his weary head 
 For he is dead." 
 
 But give my body to the funeral pyre, 
 And bid the laughing fire, 
 Eager and strong and swift as my desire, 
 Scatter my subtle essence into Space 
 Free me of Time and Place. 
 
 Sweep up the bitter ashes from the hearth ! 
 Fling back the dust I borrowed from the Earth 
 Unto the chemic broil of Death and Birth 
 The vast Alembic of the cryptic Scheme, 
 Warm with the Master-Dream ! 
 179 
 
i8o THE QUEST 
 
 And thus, O little House that sheltered me, 
 Dissolve again in wind and rain, to be 
 Part of the cosmic weird Economy : 
 And Oh, how oft with new life shalt thou lift 
 Out of the atom-drift ! 
 
ENVOI 
 
 OH seek me not within a tomb ; 
 Thou shalt not find me in the clay ! 
 I pierce a little wall of gloom 
 To mingle with the Day ! 
 
 I brothered with the things that pass, 
 Poor giddy Joy and puckered Grief; 
 I go to brother with the Grass 
 And with the sunning Leaf. 
 
 Not Death can sheathe me in a shroud ; 
 A joy-sword whetted keen with pain, 
 I join the armies of the Cloud, 
 The Lightning and the Rain. 
 
 Oh subtle in the sap athrill, 
 Athletic in the glad uplift, 
 A portion of the Cosmic Will, 
 I pierce the planet-drift. 
 
 My God and I shall interknit 
 As rain and Ocean, breath and Air; 
 And Oh, the luring thought of it 
 Is prayer ! 
 
 Printed in the United States of America. 
 181 
 
E following pages contain advertisements of 
 books by the same author or on kindred subjects. 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 The Song of Hugh Glass 
 
 BY JOHN G. NEIHARDT 
 
 Cloth, ismo, $1.25, also leather, $r.6o 
 
 For the first time the essentially epic period of the American fur 
 trade west of the Missouri River is celebrated in poetry. In " The 
 Song of Hugh Glass" John G. Neihardt deals with our own great 
 Northwest. His book goes a long way to disprove the statement 
 that is sometimes made that America has little or no national poetry 
 because it lacks heroic traditions upon which to build. Mr. 
 Neihardt s theme is seen to be one not incomparable in possibilities 
 with those of the great epics of literature. Its strictly national char 
 acter and its newness in poetry will commend the volume to those 
 who are following the renaissance of verse in this country. 
 
 " Of far more convincing interest than any narrative Masefield 
 has told, with the possible exception of Dauber, far more human, 
 real, and powerful than any Noyes has yet exhibited. It is a big, 
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 national life." Boston Transcript. 
 
 " It is worthy and most promising American work, and should 
 encourage other poets in the same field." The Bellman. 
 
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NEW MACMILLAN POETRY 
 
 The Great Valley 
 
 BY EDGAR LEE MASTERS 
 
 Author of " Spoon River Anthology." 
 
 This book by the author of " Spoon River Anthology " represents 
 Mr. Masters s very latest work, and while it employs the style and 
 method of its now famous predecessor it marks an advance over 
 that both in treatment and thought. Here Mr. Masters is interpret 
 ing the country and the age. Many problems are touched upon 
 with typical Masters incisiveness. Many characters are introduced, 
 each set off" with that penetrative insight into human nature that so 
 distinguished the Anthology. The result is an epic of American life, 
 a worthy successor to Mr. Masters s first volume. 
 
 Spoon River Anthology 
 
 BY EDGAR LEE MASTERS 
 
 New edition with new poems. With illustrations and 
 decorations by OLIVER HERFORD 
 
 One of the most remarkable books of many a year this is the 
 consensus of opinion on Mr. Masters s Anthology. Originality of 
 idea distinguished its construction ; skill in the handling of words 
 and lines marked the working out of this idea, while every individual 
 poem was notable for the embodiment in it of great human under 
 standing and sympathy. Mr. Masters s text is now to appear in a 
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NEW MACMILLAN POETRY 
 
 Fruit Gathering 
 
 BY RABINDRANATH TAGORE 
 
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 Perhaps of all of Tagore s poetry the most popular volume is 
 " Gitanjali." It was on this work that he was awarded the Nobel 
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 nouncement of this book, which is a sequel to that collection of 
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 to his thousands of American admirers. 
 
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 BY ROBINSON JEFFERS 
 
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 whose work is of such outstanding character that once it is read he 
 is sure of acceptance by those who have admired the writings of 
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 ton Robinson, and Thomas Walsh. Virtually all of the poems in 
 this first collection have their setting in California, most of them in 
 the Monterey peninsula, and they realize the scenery of the great 
 State with vividness and richness of detail. The author s main 
 source of inspiration has been the varying aspects of nature. 
 
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 Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 
 
NEW MACMILLAN POETRY 
 
 The New Poetry. An Anthology 
 
 EDITED BY HARRIET MONROE AND ALICE 
 CORBIN HENDERSON, Editors of Poetry 
 
 Probably few people are following as closely the poetry of to-day 
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 Poems of the Great War 
 
 BY J. W. CUNLIFFE 
 
 Here are brought together under the editorship of Dr. Cunliffe 
 some of the more notable poems which have dealt with the great 
 war. Among the writers represented are Rupert Brooke, John 
 Masefield, Lincoln Colcord, William Benet, Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, 
 Hermann Hagedorn, Alfred Noyes, Rabindranath Tagore, Walter 
 De La Mare, Vachel Lindsay and Owen Seaman. 
 
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