•t^ .;; r-f-t'^'^:- ' T. 
 
 my^u. 
 
 'V M^'^^m/i^^m^'^'^'^^ 
 
 H1E GUERDON 
 
 ;n A R R 
 

THE GUERDON 
 
 BY 
 
 HARRY LYMAN KOOPMAN 
 
 PROVIDENCE 
 
 THE PRESTON AND ROUNDS COMPANY 
 
 1922 
 
Co PYRIGHT, I 92 I 
 
 By H. L. Koopman 
 
 THE PLIMPTON PRESS 
 NORWOOD, MASS., U.S.A. 
 
TO 
 
 THE MEMORIES THAT HALLOW 
 
 MY boyhood's homeland 
 
 ^72440 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGB 
 
 In the Sachem's Seat 1 
 
 By the Winter Fire 2 
 
 At the Mouth of the River 3 
 
 Watching the Haymakers 4 
 
 At the Bowdoin Commencement 4 
 
 The Launching 5 
 
 The Dial of the Ages 6 
 
 My Maple 7 
 
 To A Little Girl 8 
 
 The Return of the Artist 9 
 
 Spirit Photographs 10 
 
 The Railway Accident 10 
 
 The Immigrant's Funeral 11 
 
 The Fulfilment 12 
 
 Life's Hero 13 
 
 The Chariot of Death 14 
 
 PAGB 
 
 God's Lamplighters of Souls . . . . 14 
 The Death and Birth of a God ... 15 
 
 Dragging the Pond 16 
 
 The Roman Flamen 16 
 
 Stronger than Life 17 
 
 Dawn or Dusk 18 
 
 Dreams of Strength in Weakness. 19 
 
 Love's Exile 20 
 
 Wading under the Bridge 20 
 
 In the Hospital 21 
 
 New-born 23 
 
 In Central Park 23 
 
 Prothalamium 24 
 
 From Far Manhattan Heights 25 
 
 Aftersong: the Holy Grail 26 
 
NOTE 
 
 The scene of the events described is chiefly 
 Freeport, Maine, on Casco Bay. The teller 
 of the story was born evidently near the 
 middle of the last century, suffered his acci- 
 dent at about twenty, and was restored to 
 health at about forty. He may now be sup- 
 posed as a man of three-score and ten to be 
 giving to the press his manuscript already a 
 generation old — a memory out of a bygone 
 world. The " dial of the ages " is the circle 
 marked by the precession of the eqvunoxes, 
 aroimd whose circumference the pole moves 
 once in 25,800 years. The present pole star 
 and Vega are nearly opposite each other, and 
 take their turns at being pole star at intervals 
 of about half this period. 
 
THE GUERDON 
 
 IN THE SACHEM'S SEAT 
 
 o at length to the top 
 Of this wide-revealing mount 
 I have dragged my helpless form, 
 The same that ages ago, 
 In another life of mine, 
 Tore me away from my rest 
 And dashed up this rocky slope 
 In its furious thirst for toil, 
 In its lust of strength for strife. 
 
 Strange that memory persists 
 Across this gulf, that I 
 Can think of myself in days 
 That are one to me with the days 
 Of the Pilgrims, the Crusades, 
 The Pyramids, yea, with the past 
 Of him who scratched on the tusk 
 Of the mammoth the shaggy form 
 Of the beast that bore it aloft. 
 All are blent into one. 
 Memory, history, trace, 
 Equally far away; 
 And yet men agree in the tale 
 That only twice has the sun 
 Quickened the earth into life 
 Since I was that embryo self. 
 
 None of my seeking it is, 
 
 My life on this side the gulf. 
 
 To live was the last thing I dreamed. 
 
 I cried when I leaped from the ice: 
 
 Here's for luck and the shore! 
 
 But that was only to hide 
 
 The reason deep in my heart 
 
 Why I took the desperate chance; 
 
 Yet the chance once taken, my strength 
 
 Put forth a will of its own, 
 
 And, battling defiant of hope. 
 
 Flung me at last on the shore. 
 
 Ten seconds before I leaped 
 
 Nothing was less in my thought. 
 
 Then it all flashed over my brain, 
 
 What before I would not admit, 
 
 That he was her love, not I. 
 
 There was life on the ice for but one; 
 
 Could I blast her life in its bud 
 
 When a leap would settle all. 
 
 The longing, the doubt, the ache. 
 
 When a leap would spare me the pain 
 
 Of seeing a joy that I willed. 
 
 Yet a joy that was wrought of my grief? 
 
 This too it did, in a way 
 
 That I could not foresee in the breath 
 
 Between the resolve of my will 
 
 And the icy clasp of the brine. 
 
 That was two winters ago, 
 
 At least as the world reckons time, 
 
 And out of that watery grave 
 
 I was born to a death in life. 
 
 Had it been best — God knows — 
 
 To have left me prone on the shore 
 
 Till my numbness hardened to frost, 
 
 And out of this earthly life 
 
 I had passed into that beyond? 
 
 Yea, but I have passed beyond, 
 
 Through the death of the body I bore, 
 
 Into the life of the soul. 
 
 In at that cavern of pain 
 
 I entered, a savage, a child, 
 
 A primal faun of the woods, 
 
 A being with hardly more thought 
 
 Than the maple that sports with the wind. 
 
 Forth from its hither door. 
 
 Wrecked in body, I come. 
 
 In spirit full-grown, and heir 
 
 To the thought of the ages foregone. 
 
 And claimant on all that shall bloom 
 
 In the infinite springtides of Mind. 
 
 This wrought Pain for me 
 
 And the breath of a quickening soul, 
 
 A great Physician's word. 
 
 To whom it was given to heal 
 
 More the spirit within 
 
 Than the body they laid at his feet. 
 
THE GUERDON 
 
 She, meanwhile, far away, 
 
 Is happy with him she loves; 
 
 And I rejoice in the joy 
 
 That she took unaware from my hand. 
 
 But her joy may I never behold! 
 
 For, after all, this is earth. 
 
 Where grief is the shadow of love. 
 
 BY THE WINTER FIRE 
 
 .^/jjrj^AS it only so, I ask, 
 
 if 11 4 My spirit could come to its own? 
 
 ^^^"^ Was my soul so deeply immured 
 
 In its prison of flesh and strength 
 
 That only through pain and wrack 
 
 It could burst its way into light? 
 
 The light had been all around. 
 
 Illuming me from my birth; 
 
 It was I that could not see. 
 
 Some knowledge this earth compels. 
 
 The knowledge of food and fire. 
 
 Of clothing and shelter and kind. 
 
 But there the grannam flags. 
 
 As if her lesson were taught, 
 
 And frets if we ask for more. 
 
 As though that more were the charge 
 
 Of a higher teacher to give. 
 
 So from the most she hides 
 
 That she owns a loftier lore, 
 
 And babbling we go through life 
 
 Who should speak as men full-grown, 
 
 And halting we lag who should press 
 
 To the bounds of mortal ken. 
 
 I lay, the past a blight. 
 
 The future a blank unthought. 
 
 And Hope long dead and cold 
 
 In the arms of murdered Love; 
 
 And I said: When I woke that morn. 
 
 Why was no warning at hand 
 
 Of the crash that should bury my life? 
 
 What is it worth to know 
 
 If all we can know is the past? 
 
 As I spoke I became aware 
 
 Of two that stood by my bed. 
 
 Said the elder: Wait, and see 
 
 How souls are bom into life, 
 In pain, as bodies are born. 
 
 Then, speaking to me, he said: 
 
 At last the keel of your thought 
 
 Has run aground on the shoal 
 
 That limits knowledge on earth. 
 
 Though his head be stuffed with lore 
 
 That was old in Babylon's prime, 
 
 Man's knowledge ends with the Now. 
 
 He knows not what is to be 
 
 At the next swift beat of his heart, 
 
 Nor indeed if again it shall beat. 
 
 So, in a myriad ways, 
 
 Even such as he cannot guess, 
 
 Man's knowledge is bounded and cramped; 
 
 And all because he is man 
 
 And can only know what his mind, 
 
 The tool of his knowledge, is gaged. 
 
 By the power that shaped it, to know. 
 
 But be sure that he whose wings 
 
 Are beating in vain and bruised 
 
 On the ultimate bound of thought. 
 
 Though he may not pass that bound, 
 
 Yet shall return in a strength 
 
 That is more than the strength of man. 
 
 As Antaeus, the son of Earth, 
 
 Sprang up renewed at the touch 
 
 Of his mother, so man becomes 
 
 Greater than man if he touch 
 
 The bound Heaven sets to his flight. 
 
 For the bound and the touch are of Heaven. 
 
 Nay, is it too much to say 
 
 That man then first becomes man 
 
 And worthy to enter in 
 
 As heir and son of God 
 
 When, bafl3ed and sick at heart, 
 
 He finds that to be man 
 
 Means to be limited? 
 
 So saying, he left me alone. 
 
 Nor waited to answer one 
 
 Of the thousand questions that leaped 
 
 To stay him. Open-eyed 
 
 On the new world of thought revealed, 
 
 I stared entranced, as one 
 
 Who has strayed unawares to the brink 
 
 Of the Canyon's measureless gulf, 
 
AT THE MOUTH OF THE RIVER 
 
 And spellbound, overwhelmed, 
 
 At the splendor unrolled beyond sight, 
 
 Wonders if what he sees 
 
 Be Heaven or its reflex, Hell. 
 
 Both has it proved to me — 
 
 Heaven in the sense of power 
 
 That comes to those who know, 
 
 And Hell in the impotence 
 
 Of knowledge confined and caged. 
 
 Again and often again 
 
 My wise physician spake — 
 
 While my body was growing wont 
 
 To its new and feebler life — 
 
 To quicken the life of my soul. 
 
 He showed me how this world 
 
 Of three dimensions, which seems 
 
 The only possible world. 
 
 With length and height and breadth 
 
 The bounds of all that is, 
 
 May be at the selfsame time 
 
 A living and busy world 
 
 Of more dimensions or less, 
 
 A myriad even at once, 
 
 And all as real as our own, 
 
 And each with its own fixt laws, 
 
 But each unknown to the rest; 
 
 How in time our dimension is one, 
 
 The future drawn out from the past 
 
 In a single unvarying line, 
 
 Not the plane of an infinite Now, 
 
 Not the cube nor a higher power. 
 
 Where time passes out of itself 
 
 Into force — who knows? — or will. 
 
 Such things my physician taught, 
 
 Leading me by the hand. 
 
 As one of prisoners twain 
 
 In the dark might lead his mate 
 
 To measure the walls of their cell. 
 
 Thoughts that I never had dreamed. 
 
 Which at first I could not grasp. 
 
 He led me on to think, 
 
 Because he found me, he said, 
 
 A soul that was ready for birth; 
 
 And he would, since never again 
 
 Might I find delight in the strength 
 
 Of my body, nor toil with my hands, 
 
 I might find a greater in thought, 
 
 And bring men gold, he said, 
 
 Who before had but quarried them stone. 
 
 AT THE MOUTH OF THE RIVER 
 
 tmj^g- AST of a worn-out race, 
 
 ^il The end of a withered branch 
 
 ^^ That has lagged behind the rest, 
 
 Stinted and stunted, in me 
 
 The men of my blood behold 
 
 A life overleft from the age 
 
 Of their grandsires, siurviving alone 
 
 From that generation outworn. 
 
 Was this the fatal defect. 
 
 The miser fault of my race. 
 
 That it hoarded for length of days 
 
 The force that should have been spent 
 
 On fulness of life? But this 
 
 I know at least, that the words 
 
 Too late! Too late! have rung 
 
 Life-long the knell of my hopes. 
 
 Too late was I born to share 
 
 In the freeing of the slave; 
 
 Too late to have welcomed death 
 
 On the field of that glorious cause 
 
 Overswept by the shining wings 
 
 Of the Choosers of the Slain. 
 
 Too late was I born for love, — 
 
 But let me not wake that chord. 
 
 Which is anguish. Let it sufl5ce 
 
 That I have outlived my race. 
 
 And look back on its course as I might 
 
 From beyond the portal of death. 
 
 I know what my counsellor said 
 
 For my comfort, and were it true 
 
 Or false, 'twas at least not feigned. 
 
 He held it the goal of a race. 
 
 Of a long succession of lives. 
 
 To produce a single soul; 
 
 And, its consummation and end 
 
 Achieved, it has served the will 
 
 Of the World-soul, and then is free 
 
 From allegiance to life on earth. 
 
 Meanwhile, below in the ooze, 
 Overstrewn by the weariless tides, 
 
THE GUERDON 
 
 Lies the gun that I flung from the ice, 
 
 Ahready crumbUng to rust, 
 
 The force locked up in its breast 
 
 Ahready dissolved and lost. 
 
 Could I then have seen myself now, 
 
 I had said it had been as well 
 
 I were stretched by my gun in the slime; 
 
 But now, from this aery of thought, 
 
 I look on that life as at one 
 
 With the life of the worm in the mud; 
 
 And not for the body's health, 
 
 For the bounding pulses of strength, 
 
 Would I sink my soul again 
 
 To the blindworm in the ooze. 
 
 WATCHING THE HAYMAKERS 
 
 ow the tough ash bends with its dome 
 Of chnging, odorous hay. 
 Uplifted to crown the load! 
 
 The pitcher from wrist to heel 
 
 Tingles with rapture of strength 
 
 As the true ash straightens back. 
 
 He, as he stands half hid. 
 
 With the fragrance canopied. 
 
 The treader aloft on the load, 
 
 The raker gleaning behind. 
 
 And even the straining team, 
 
 These are parcel and part 
 
 Of the only peaceful life 
 
 Our race has ever known 
 
 Since man became more than beast. 
 
 Is it any wonder my will 
 
 From its prison of weakness yearns 
 
 To be one with that conquering toil? 
 
 That the sweet breath of the hay 
 
 Borne from these fields and down 
 
 From immemorial fields. 
 
 Should bear away on its wings 
 
 Thought and the joy of thought? 
 
 So from his desolate isle. 
 
 Through the cloud-rifts of his pain, 
 
 Looked Philoctetes in thought. 
 
 Across the sundering deep. 
 
 To the thronging plains before Troy, 
 
 Where men, his comrades once. 
 
 Were winning immortal names 
 
 In life or more glorious death. 
 
 Two things alone he had left, 
 
 His arrows, the gift of the God, 
 
 And the knowledge that only through him 
 
 Could victory at last be won; 
 
 Though how he yet should serve, 
 
 He, the banished and scorned. 
 
 He could not conceive in his pain. 
 
 Year after year roars the fight 
 But the end shall not be from force; 
 The silent shafts of the God 
 Alone can quiet its rage. 
 This is the triumph of thought 
 Over war and the tumult of war. 
 Over din and disturbance of peace, 
 The silent shafts of the God 
 That conquer the world's new day. 
 This battle of battles now joined — 
 Mere prelude was all hitherto — 
 Shall it still have a part for me? 
 
 AT THE BOWDOIN COMMENCEMENT 
 MDCCCLXXV 
 
 >^|^ERFECTiON of Summer's morn, — 
 
 ^a The thought and the will of God 
 
 tT^ Made real to mortal sense! 
 
 Around my halting steps 
 
 The dewdrops flash like gems, 
 
 Each tiny radiance big 
 
 With pride of teUing the sun 
 
 The emerald secret of earth. 
 
 The sapphire lore of the sky. 
 
 The birds on bush and spray 
 
 Are taking Heaven with their storm 
 
 Of melodious violence. 
 
 From all its garland of days 
 
 The year has plucked this one 
 
 To lay like a rose at the feet 
 
 Of the men we honor too 
 
 How scantly with gesture and word! — 
 
 The men, whom, about to join 
 
 The Immortals, we mortals hail. 
 
 Might I have done so unblamed, 
 I had knelt and kissed the hem 
 
THE LAUNCHING 
 
 Of his garment, the singer crowned 
 With the praise of the nations afar, 
 But his home is here in our hearts. 
 O sweet, benignant face! 
 
 voice of sympathy! 
 
 That for evermore I shall see, 
 
 1 shall hear, while life endures! 
 The ground thy feet have trod 
 Is holy; the singing pines 
 Their own song murmur no more 
 But thine. If prayer has power 
 To enrich a life so blest 
 
 As thine through blessing glows, 
 
 Daily, unknown to thee. 
 
 Mine shall attend thy steps. 
 
 But not of us who gaze, 
 
 Nor of them around, the belov'd. 
 
 Are thy thoughts today; they are given 
 
 To him, thy companion in fame, 
 
 As here in study, to him. 
 
 The star-eyed, thunder-browed. 
 
 Long since immortalized, 
 
 Whom we miss today with a pang 
 
 That darkens the smile of morn. 
 
 Beneath the spires I pass 
 
 Into the roseate gloom; 
 
 But broken today is the sp)ell. 
 
 For today my thoughts are of man, 
 
 And how, though born of earth 
 
 And weighted with earth, being man, 
 
 Yet, being a son of God, 
 
 He sets his face to the stars. 
 
 And chmbing the wall of the sky, 
 
 Tramples them imder his feet. 
 
 O sacred spot of earth! 
 
 Blest be their memory 
 
 Who cleared thee, who reared thy walls, 
 
 Who lit thy sacred lamps, 
 
 And blest forevermore, 
 
 From grateful age to age. 
 
 Be they who guard thy shrine! 
 
 So one who is not of thee. 
 Who never lit his lamp 
 At learning's holy flame, 
 But out of due time was born 
 Into thy world of thought. 
 
 Prays, as beneath thy elms. 
 He follows their shadows home. 
 
 THE LAUNCHING 
 
 iwr- DIP my hand in the brine, 
 11 And, lo! my pulses thrill 
 '^ With the traffic of the world. 
 This is man's highway, this 
 The road that has no end. 
 But ever returns on itself. 
 Encircling the islands and lands, 
 And binding each to all. 
 
 Above me, huge and black. 
 
 Looms the hulk with its pennons and flags, 
 
 Clear at last of its props. 
 
 Merry the throng on its deck, 
 
 But louder they who below 
 
 With clattering mallets toil 
 
 Far under the frown of the hull. 
 
 To set their captive free. 
 
 The boys have deserted their boats. 
 
 The fishers their lines, all eyes 
 
 Even of the lovers, hand-claspt. 
 
 Are fixed on the towering bulk 
 
 That now as they gaze awakes 
 
 From lifelessness into life. 
 
 The mass is thrilled with a soul; 
 
 No longer a creature of earth, 
 
 It puts forth an ocean will, 
 
 And, spuming its mighty bands, 
 
 Like Samson rending his withes. 
 
 It plunges into the flood. 
 
 The ways are a-smoke with the speed, 
 
 A vast wave licks the strand. 
 
 Across the tide comes the roar 
 
 Of flying cables, and then 
 
 The hulk that we saw is gone. 
 
 As if earth had swallowed it up. 
 
 In its room is a bare, blank space; 
 
 But at anchor in mid-stream rides 
 
 A new creation, unkin 
 
 To aught we beheld before. 
 
 An Aphrodite, foam-born, 
 
 Uplifting out of the waves 
 
THE GUERDON 
 
 A subtler grace than their own. 
 Now a line is rowed to the wharf, 
 The capstan clinks, and ere long 
 The ship, alongside the wharf 
 Discharges its holiday load. 
 
 Ay me! what fate is in store 
 For the ship that is born today? 
 What far sea-paths shall it tread, 
 What fury of waves and wind. 
 What dangers of reef and crag 
 Of icebergs veiled in their fog. 
 Of shoal and current and calm. 
 What rage of sun shall it know, 
 What blinding assault of cold? 
 Shall it traverse the ocean ways 
 Long years for the weal of men, 
 And at last lay its wearied form 
 To rest in some tranquil creek, 
 Or suddenly over its strength 
 Shall fate no skill can ward 
 Descend, and its days be done? 
 But has not a fragment of wreck 
 Buoyed sometimes a precious freight, 
 And borne it safe to its goal? 
 But thine be a happier fate, 
 O new-born child of the sea! 
 Sail thou with kindly trades, 
 On open friendly seas. 
 And many ladings and rich 
 Bring safely home, and safe 
 Thyself in thy beauty and grace! 
 
 THE DIAL OF THE AGES 
 
 ^^■■^HE dews of the summer night 
 ilj> Are fragrant around my feet, 
 ^■^ But my eyes are turned to thee, 
 
 O Vega, maiden star, 
 
 O snowy pearl of the skies! 
 
 Thousands of years ago. 
 
 So many the spirit faints 
 
 At the awful range of time — 
 
 Four hundred men in rank, 
 
 Hand-reaching, sire to son. 
 
 Scarce bridge the monstrous gulf — 
 
 The youngest sees thee now 
 
 Thy mighty circle sweep 
 
 Through summer's midnight dome. 
 
 Till under the winter snows, 
 
 Thy kin in purity, 
 
 Thou harborest for a space. 
 
 But the eldest — if he saw — 
 
 Beheld thee in the north, 
 
 Enthroned, immovable, 
 
 While all the glittering heavens, 
 
 Round thee revolving, thee 
 
 Adored as virgin queen. 
 
 He too adored thy face. 
 
 And hailed in thee the God, 
 
 Changeless, of earthly change, 
 
 If thee indeed he saw. 
 
 But haply he saw thee not. 
 
 Too close akin to the brute 
 
 That ever his eye should mark 
 
 Thy splendor, as yet unskilled 
 
 To traverse the ocean ways 
 
 And seek a pilot star, 
 
 But finding his way on land 
 
 By scent and lowly sight. 
 
 Even as his fellow brutes. 
 
 To such a one, I ween, 
 
 Yet chill from the whelming ice. 
 
 And yet adread at the crash 
 
 Of the mammoth's trampling step. 
 
 My grasp reaches back through the night. 
 
 But the awful dial still, 
 
 Where eons count but hours, 
 
 Gleams in the mystic north; 
 
 And again thine hour shall come, 
 
 Again shalt thou reign the queen 
 
 Of the congregated stars; 
 
 And then with what regard 
 
 Shall man behold thy face? 
 
 Even in this half-hour gone 
 
 He has raised his brow from the sod, 
 
 He has learned thee what thou art. 
 
 No God, but a blazing sun, 
 
 And the fuel of thy flame, 
 
 The heart of thy mystery, 
 
 His eye hath summed it all, 
 
 Weighed and measured and proved. 
 
 And found it nothing strange, 
 
MY MAPLE 
 
 But one with the earthly clods 
 That give him footing and food. 
 
 But how shall he view thee then} 
 
 Shall his spirit then have annulled 
 
 The abysmal depths of space, 
 
 And exvilt in converse high 
 
 With the splendid spirits that joy 
 
 Unbodied, unrestrained. 
 
 In the light of thy glowing orb? 
 
 Lord of life and of death, 
 
 Freed from stains of the brute, 
 
 As far from us as we 
 
 From the slant brow sunk to the dust, 
 
 Art thou real and yet to be, 
 
 Or only the dream of an age 
 
 That is now at its highest crest 
 
 And can only retreat or decline? 
 
 Shall the brute again win sway, 
 
 And back through hate and crime, 
 
 Through darkness hugged to his heart. 
 
 Shall man sUnk back and hide 
 
 In the hairy fell of the beast. 
 
 No longer the lord of life. 
 
 But, weak and slow, the prey 
 
 Of the beasts that his lordly sires 
 
 Hunted for food or sport? 
 
 No answer thou givest or canst; 
 
 But whatever the dial shall mark 
 
 For the doom or the godhood of man. 
 
 This I know, that, as sure 
 
 As the face of the heaven shall be changed. 
 
 New stars climb to our skies 
 
 And old stars disappear. 
 
 So shall the face of man 
 
 And the heart and the life of man 
 
 Be changed from what they are, 
 
 As the Soul which is the world. 
 
 Through the changes of the earth. 
 
 Through the birth and death of stars, 
 
 Yea, through the birth and death 
 
 Of Universes, fulfils 
 
 For itself and not for man 
 
 Its lone, eternal will. 
 
 MY MAPLE 
 
 ^^•^oiST and cool is thy shade, 
 mtTlI/ -^y Maple, though all around 
 
 •' *'^*' The cricket shrills in the heat, 
 
 And the landscape is wavy and blurred 
 
 Under August's fiery breath. 
 
 A child, I planted thy shoot, 
 
 Bringing it out of the woods; 
 
 With pride I watched it grow. 
 
 Till at last it o'ertopped my head 
 
 With its lithe and upright stem. 
 
 Then a playmate, to tease me, or sheer 
 
 In wantonness, heedlessness, 
 
 Or moved by a sudden whim, 
 
 Drawing his pocket knife. 
 
 Cut thee down to thy root, 
 
 And ran off waving thy stem, 
 
 The plaything of an hour. 
 
 Had the stone I threw in my rage 
 
 Found the mark I meant. 
 
 His cries would have changed their tune. 
 
 But, rooted in strong, deep soil, 
 
 Thy life was hardly checked, 
 
 And soon thy tuft of green 
 
 Was waving again o'er my head. 
 
 Slower my growth than thine; 
 
 Yet I had attained my height 
 
 When full on thy leafy crown 
 
 Fell the awful September gale. 
 
 Thy leaves were torn in shreds 
 
 And flung afar on the wind. 
 
 But thou wert safe, I deemed. 
 
 Next morn a third of thy strength, 
 
 A mighty limb, lay prone. 
 
 And a white gash rent thy side. 
 
 But the life within thy veins 
 
 Leaped with the pulse of spring, 
 
 And ere long thy wound was healed. 
 
 Then we saw that thy grace 
 
 Had been heightened by the loss, 
 
 As thy crown, at April's touch, 
 
 To a perfect oval filled. 
 
 But that was years ago. 
 
 And now thou o'ertoppest the waHs 
 
 That sheltered thee once from the north; 
 
 And thy crest, as the breezes play, 
 
8 
 
 THE GUERDON 
 
 Lifts now to the sea's blue rim, 
 
 And now to the far blue hills, 
 
 The ancient home of thy kin. 
 
 So wilt thou mount and expand 
 
 When me and all of my age 
 
 Thou seest no more in thy sweep. 
 
 And, it may be, the hundredth year 
 
 Shall find thee towering aloft 
 
 When we have long been dust. 
 
 So let me lie at rest, 
 
 My only monvunent thou, 
 
 No stone to bear my name 
 
 Until it is only a name! 
 
 But wave thou over my head. 
 
 The grace of thy slender limbs 
 
 Etched on the wintry dawn, 
 
 Thy emerald dome a bower 
 
 Of melody, June by June, 
 
 And thyself a funeral pyre 
 
 For a god each Fall renewed. 
 
 While the hand that gave thee place 
 
 Has long been mingled with dust, 
 
 And the dust to beauty has climbed 
 
 In stem and bud and leaf. 
 
 To a life that is one with thine, 
 
 O Maple, thou joyous child 
 
 Of the love of Earth and the Sky! 
 
 TO A LITTLE GIRL 
 
 ^*^UT of a miUion stars 
 lll^ Our spirits chose this earth 
 ^■^ To be their home in time; 
 And out of a million souls. 
 All designed for love, 
 Our souls choose here and there 
 One to make all their own. 
 What such a springing vine. 
 Radiant with budding bloom, 
 As thou, should find to choose 
 In a shattered trunk like me, 
 I shall not trouble to guess, 
 Too glad to be thy choice. 
 
 O summer dawn, far flown 
 
 To gladden a wintry eve, 
 
 Sweet child, I have grown too wise 
 
 To ask how long thy love. 
 
 Like fragrance outpoured, and glad 
 
 In outpouring, shall be content 
 
 To waste its treasure on me. 
 
 Thou art untaught to live 
 
 Beyond the present, and I 
 
 Will unlearn my dangerous wont 
 
 To question the future, and leave 
 
 Sweet love in its golden hour 
 
 Assured of eternity. 
 
 So, dear, give me thy hand, 
 
 And, while we stroll through the fields. 
 
 With the eyes of a thousand flowers 
 
 Upturned for approval and thanks 
 
 For their beauty and fragrance wrought. 
 
 We twain will shape earth anew, 
 
 And people it for ourselves 
 
 With creatures after our heart, — 
 
 Fairies, giants, dwarfs. 
 
 Elves, hobgobUns, gnomes, 
 
 Brave knights and ladies fair, 
 
 Castles, enchanted woods, — 
 
 And all that happens, compel 
 
 To happen the way we want, 
 
 And just in the nick of time; 
 
 And, above all, every heart. 
 
 Though after long toil and pain. 
 
 Shall be sure to find its own. 
 
 We will leave the roses their thorns. 
 
 But will make their fragrance the more. 
 
 We will leave the sour that the sweet 
 
 May be better tasted and prized. 
 
 Indeed, we will leave the world 
 
 Much as it is, will we not? 
 
 If only we two may walk 
 
 Forever, hand in hand. 
 
 Through this daisy-sprinkled field. 
 
 Yes, dear, I believe the world 
 And all that is in it were made 
 For fairies, and surely not 
 The fairies for the world. 
 I for one am glad 
 They let me live in their world. 
 Even if they play me the trick 
 Of keeping out of sight. 
 And laughing behind my back. 
 It is much more charming so 
 
THE RETURN OF THE ARTIST 
 
 Than it would be to Kve in a world 
 
 Grown-up, where no fairies were. 
 
 I had rather have for a friend 
 
 A fairy than a king; 
 
 Because, whom the fairies love 
 
 Children love too, and though 
 
 They may grow old in years, 
 
 They never grow old at heart, 
 
 But are children unto the end. 
 
 Their foreheads never lose 
 
 The brightness from heaven brought. 
 
 But below on the earth they live 
 
 Somehow in heaven still; 
 
 And when they leave the earth, 
 
 'Tis no more than the melting of mist 
 
 In the sunbeams; it all is there, 
 
 But has only passed from our sight. 
 
 So, whatever the years may bring 
 
 Of beauty or grace or power, 
 
 Remember to keep firm grasp 
 
 On the unseen fairy gold. 
 
 Will it always bring happiness? 
 
 Better than happiness, lovel 
 
 THE RETURN OF THE ARTIST 
 
 IS father and mother we knew. 
 His brothers and sisters are here. 
 Our playmates once and now 
 Our neighbors; we know them all. 
 But him, if once we knew, 
 We know no more; he has passed 
 Out of ovir narrow sphere. 
 And returns to it stranger far 
 Than the wanderer summer brings. 
 Yet he is strange, not strange 
 The soul of the work of his hands. 
 That soul is the soul of us all, 
 Of our lives, our works and days, 
 The soul of our weakness and strength, 
 And the inmost soul of our land 
 And of all its fruits, whereof we 
 Would fain be reckoned the crown. 
 Must he needs pass out of our sphere, 
 To see our life as it is? 
 Must he needs fare oversea. 
 Study in Paris and Rome, 
 
 View the art of the world 
 In Europe's galleries hung. 
 Learn to speak strange speech, 
 Burn under Libyan suns. 
 Freeze amid Tibetan snows 
 On the roof tree of the world. 
 To understand and depict 
 The life of our little thorp? 
 
 Yet he never was truly of us. 
 And how among us he came. 
 This bird-of-Paradise 
 Fledged in our Northern croft, 
 A sheen of Tropic flame 
 Amid our dusk and dun, 
 We can only puzzle and guess. 
 But stranger still he retmns. 
 With other habits and speech. 
 With other thoughts and desires, 
 Than of old were his and ours. 
 Though he knows us to the core. 
 We cannot know him; our life 
 Is only a dot on the map 
 Of the world his life has become. 
 Yet, after all, he is ours. 
 His mighty world has grown 
 On a stem that here shot up. 
 AH he has seen and done 
 He has seen and done as the child 
 Of these vales that ope to the sea, 
 These hills that, rounded and low. 
 Remember how once, snow-crowned. 
 They saw, not a shoal green sea. 
 But the blue of the central deep. 
 
 I too am a child of these vales; 
 And I have fared farther than he. 
 I have held the world in my hand 
 And have spumed it for dizzier flights 
 Than ever Mercury dared. 
 As he from oiu: village passed. 
 So I, from our village of earth, 
 Have traversed the Universe, 
 Yea! passed beyond its bounds 
 To the Universe of Thought; 
 Have there lived citizen; 
 The speech of the dwellers there 
 Have I learned, and, returning here. 
 
lO 
 
 THE GUERDON 
 
 I am more unknown than a stray 
 From Afric or Indian wilds. 
 Peace! Peace! we are children both, 
 Trying to mirror God's world 
 Each in a dusky flake 
 Of mica chipped from the rock, 
 Seeing each his tiny glimpse 
 And fancying it the whole. 
 When all the broken glints 
 Of a myriad seers are joined, 
 Perchance we shall see the whole; — 
 But, haply the whole is more. 
 In this Universe of Soul, 
 Other and vastly more, 
 Than the sum of all its parts. 
 Their product, not their sum. 
 
 SPIRIT PHOTOGRAPHS 
 
 o he has gone to his rest, 
 My neighbor of many years. 
 The lawyer, keen of mind. 
 Sturdy of will and work, 
 And strong of soul to bear 
 The rudest buffets of fate. 
 Far from fearing death. 
 He hailed its coming with joy, 
 For with all his heart he believed. 
 With all his mind and might. 
 That it came to lead him forth 
 Where he should clasp again 
 The darling child of his youth, 
 And the wife of his youth and age. 
 
 Yet his buoyant faith was the fruit 
 Of a cheap and barefaced fraud, 
 Such as in mart or court 
 He had been first to scoff, — 
 Spirit photographs! 
 A weak and silly trap 
 For dull and ignorant minds. 
 How caught it a mind hke his? 
 But, for once, he was off his guard, 
 And his heart, enlisted, veiled 
 The piercing eyes of his mind, 
 And gave superstition rein 
 To bear him whither it would; 
 
 So a mountebank's lie 
 Bore him smiling to death. 
 
 Shall we say then, Blessed be fraud! 
 
 No, and forever, no! 
 
 Rather than trust false lights 
 
 On life's uncharted sea. 
 
 Where the mists forever shroud 
 
 Its meeting with the Beyond, 
 
 Give me — I ask no more — 
 
 The true if scanty tale 
 
 Which Reason's plummet tells. 
 
 And the log of day to day; — 
 
 Unless I may be of those. 
 
 The blest, illuminate, 
 
 Whose eyes, immortal of range. 
 
 Pierce the sable of death 
 
 Even as the azure of life. 
 
 THE RAILWAY ACCIDENT 
 
 /JH^NDER my willow I sat, 
 QB On an August afternoon, 
 
 In the shade of its whispering orb, 
 As a maple's round and dense. 
 Far off in silver flashed 
 The smoke of the coming train. 
 That should thunder over its track 
 Before me across the field. 
 But my thought was away from earth, 
 Out of space and time. 
 Clenched with the thought of him, 
 The God-intoxicate, 
 Who taught that the will of man 
 Its only freedom finds 
 In obedience to the law 
 Of its being, and has no power 
 To stray outside its bounds. 
 Not that when it goes right 
 It obeys the law, and wrong 
 When it disobeys; it moves — 
 Here the roar of the train 
 Brought back my thought to earth — 
 Even as j^onder train, 
 On its track or not at all. 
 
 Was it a prescience of thought, 
 A moment's outrunning of Time 
 
THE IMMIGRANT'S FUNERAL 
 
 II 
 
 ^ 
 
 In my soul, or only chance? 
 
 For scarce had I pictured the shock 
 
 Of the train derailed, when a thrill 
 
 Shot through its lithe, swift length, 
 
 A grinding crash smote my ears. 
 
 One car staggered out of the line 
 
 And sank aslant in the sand; 
 
 Then all the mighty mass 
 
 Shuddering, stopped awry. 
 
 Out of the hush, rose a groan, 
 
 Then screams, and forth from the cars 
 
 Came pouring their human freight. 
 
 With what poor speed I might, 
 
 I hurried across the field 
 
 To the scene that I feared was of death, 
 
 Nor far astray was my fear; 
 
 For stretched on the bloody grass. 
 
 With a crushed and bleeding leg, 
 
 Lay a brakeman, his ashen face 
 
 Distorted with pain and dread. 
 
 The crowd made way for me. 
 
 As to one who bore the mark 
 
 Of the Brotherhood of Pain. 
 
 I took the sufferer's hands, 
 
 While a surgeon, by chance on the train, 
 
 Wrought, with rough tools fetched 
 
 From a farmer's work-bench, to save 
 
 The life that was fleeting fast; 
 
 Wrought without drugs to still 
 
 The torture of knife and saw. 
 
 At last the torment ceased. 
 
 And then it was mine to do ^ 
 
 What word and touch might avail 
 
 To make the spirit supply 
 
 The body's lack of strength. 
 
 So it endured for an hour. 
 
 While the passengers made a purse 
 
 For the sufferer, be it for him 
 
 Or only for wife and child. 
 
 Then they lounged impatient about 
 
 Till another train should be sent. 
 
 At last it came, and my charge 
 
 I resigned with many fears, 
 
 That were founded only too well, 
 
 For ere he had reached the town 
 
 And the arms of help and love, 
 
 He died. 
 
 And so the flower 
 Which had struck its roots into earth 
 Suddenly burst into bloom 
 In the life beyond, and sloughed 
 The stem by which alone 
 It was known to our earthly sense. 
 But sometimes it seems to me. 
 Who have been uprooted so far 
 That I feel I draw less from earth 
 Than from ether, it seems to me 
 That the life around and above 
 Overflowing into our lives 
 Is more to us, hourly more, 
 Although unrecognized. 
 Than this of brawn and health. 
 Which boasts its scantiness 
 The universal whole. 
 
 THE IMMIGRANT'S FUNERAL 
 
 ^jm^'SLKT he ever wandered here 
 ill. From the pale skies of the North, 
 ^"^ From his ruddy Gothland kin. 
 
 Whose speech so clung to his lips, 
 
 With its music of forest bells, 
 
 That they took but haltingly ours, — 
 
 That he ever came among us, 
 
 EngUsh in name and speech. 
 
 In habit and prejudice, 
 
 As in any Midland thorp, 
 
 Here in our unknown town 
 
 On the granite coast of Maine, — 
 
 'Twas not the quest of gold. 
 
 Nor the Northman's quest of the sun, 
 
 But the quest of learning. So here, 
 
 A student in our schools. 
 
 Albeit older than most, 
 
 A laborer in our fields. 
 
 He wrought, and won our regard, 
 
 'Till his speech and ways began 
 
 To blend and be lost in ours. 
 
 But one fact he reckoned without, 
 One danger had not foreseen. 
 He had come from a colder air; 
 And something in our own, 
 Bred by oxir lustier sun, 
 
12 
 
 THE GUERDON 
 
 Sapped the rugged strength 
 
 He had drawn from Berserk sires. 
 
 We scarce had missed him from school, 
 
 When we learned with a shock of pain 
 
 That death already had set 
 
 Its mark on his cheek and brow. 
 
 The little that friendship might 
 
 It wrought with eager haste, 
 
 But all in vain; and now 
 
 A few short weeks have brought 
 
 This tolling of the bell 
 
 This gathering of young and old 
 
 To the Immigrant's funeral. 
 
 Of all illusions on earth, 
 
 The strangest is after fame. 
 
 The charm of living fame 
 
 Is easy to understand; 
 
 'Tis a man leaning over a pool 
 
 Seeing his face in its depths. 
 
 But the thought of fame after death. 
 
 To one who has missed it in life, 
 
 Is to lean o'er a muddy pool 
 
 And think: It is roily now, 
 
 But, when I am gone and it clears. 
 
 Those who come after shall see 
 
 The face it ought now to reflect. 
 
 The image to him who has gone, 
 
 Even though it were, is not; 
 
 And, if by a miracle 
 
 It abides, the wonder is oxirs. 
 
 Not his who has passed away, 
 
 And cannot know it abides. 
 
 Yet, if memory have a worth, 
 How many toil life-long 
 To win it, and gain far less 
 Than this wanderer did by chance! 
 Because he came from afar, 
 Because he was not like us, 
 Because untimely he died. 
 We therefore remember him; 
 And three-score years from now 
 Grey-haired ancients will point 
 To the hollow that marks his grave, 
 And say, I knew him in life, 
 And tell his story afresh. 
 What more do conquerors gain? 
 
 To me appeals not fame, 
 
 Living or after death. 
 
 Fame is only for them 
 
 Who live in time. As for me, 
 
 Alive in eternity, 
 
 The heaven that spans life's pool, 
 
 I need no reflex of time, — 
 
 No more than he needs now. 
 
 For whom the church bells toll — 
 
 To teach me that I live. 
 
 THE FULFILMENT 
 
 (^(jjrt/^HEN in the frosty breath 
 fl i|~| Of the interstellar abyss 
 ^^^^^ A swirl began to form, 
 Outspake the soul of the world 
 To the soul of the universe: 
 Is this my life foretold. 
 Is this the Fulfilment to be? 
 But the other answered: Wait! 
 The beginning only is this. 
 When the whirling had advanced 
 Till the whole as one huge disc 
 On its cloudy axle swung, 
 Again the question came, 
 And again the answer: Wait! 
 Then slowly the center shrank. 
 Leaving a slender rim. 
 And again it shrank, and again, 
 Till the mass revolved, not as one, 
 But in rings of cloud and void. 
 Then out of the center came 
 A wonder which was Light, 
 And the radiance touched the rings 
 Each with its dawning hue. 
 Then the world-soul cried: At last 
 The Fulfilment is at hand. 
 But the greater said: Not so! 
 Then, one after one, the rings. 
 Breaking, roUed into orbs, 
 That round the central light. 
 Where once the rings had whirled. 
 Wheeled in their circling dance. 
 Each with its flamelet crowned. 
 Then the world-soul cried: Enough! 
 My being is sated and thrilled. 
 
LIFE'S HERO 
 
 13 
 
 But the universal soul, 
 
 Smiling, answered: Wait! 
 
 Then shrank the central orb. 
 
 And the circling cressets paled. 
 
 The world-soul gazed with rue. 
 
 But the other bade it look 
 
 On the third of the lesser orbs. 
 
 Already its Ught was gone, 
 
 And forever half in night 
 
 It rollttl through the central glow. 
 
 But, lo! from pole to pole, 
 
 It was bathed in a silver flood. 
 
 It was mantled with living green. 
 
 Then the soul of the world rejoiced 
 
 And cried: I see; 'twas for this, 
 
 The crown of their long desire. 
 
 That out of the primal mist 
 
 The circling orbs were whirled. 
 
 But the other answered: Wait! 
 
 Then above the green outflashed 
 
 Wings of a mjoriad dyes. 
 
 And above their splendor, song. 
 
 Cried the world-soul: This is the end! 
 
 But the greater answered: Look! 
 
 Then mighty strengths appeared. 
 
 Lording with bulk and brawn 
 
 O'^ earth and sea and sky. 
 
 Then upon either pole 
 
 Fell a touch from the hand of frost, 
 
 And it widened and sunward spread. 
 
 The verdurous mantle shrank. 
 
 And shrank the mighty strengths. 
 
 Then the world-soul cried: Alas! 
 
 The end even now begins. 
 
 And yet the Fulfilment waits. 
 
 But its leader answered: Hark! 
 
 And up from the forest's depths, 
 
 From arms of weakness arose 
 
 Out of lips of weakness a cry. 
 
 And the soul of the universe 
 
 To the wondering world-soul spake: 
 
 Lo! the Fulfilment is here. 
 
 LIFE'S HERO 
 
 -jBTj^jTM^HO is Life's hero? He 
 if If T^ Who braves the cataract's whirl 
 At the call of weakness for help. 
 Who treads the haunts of the pest, 
 Who toils over arctic ice, 
 Who breasts an unknown sea. 
 Its demons, its gxilfs of death. 
 Who faces taunt and sHght 
 For the sake of a noble cause, — 
 Heroes all, who make Earth 
 The better that they have dared. 
 
 But a greater hero I know. 
 'Tis he, who rending away 
 All tendrils of faith and trust, 
 Fears not to set himself 
 Against God's universe. 
 To eye it, question it, 
 Test its heart by its deeds, 
 And finally decide 
 If it be worthy or not 
 For him to trust and love. 
 This is the greatest feat. 
 So great that its doer becomes 
 An antitheos, the man 
 Alone of all mankind 
 Whose love or hate can be 
 Worthy of God's regard. 
 
 No such hero am I. 
 
 If ever I could have been once, 
 
 I have lost forever the power. 
 
 Nor now regret the loss. 
 
 Mine is too deep a sense 
 
 Of the universal good 
 
 That I can impartially judge 
 
 Betwixt his maker and man. 
 
 So much God's man am I 
 
 That if I knew his good 
 
 Involved my ill, as indeed, 
 
 I believe it may, I should feel 
 
 That still it was better so, 
 
 Better even for me. 
 
 As having a larger share 
 
 In God than in myself. 
 
14 
 
 THE GUERDON 
 
 THE CHARIOT OF DEATH 
 
 TILL, though the heart accepts, 
 |The mind refuses to bow. 
 To see as well as to feel 
 It demands; and, if all is well 
 In the universe of God, 
 Then let the good stand forth 
 Solid and firm, and the ill 
 Be dearly revealed its shade. 
 Devoid of substance and strength. 
 But, look! the mind exclaims. 
 Whose is the chariot 
 That scours forever the earth. 
 Whose are the trampling steeds, 
 The grinding wheels, and the scythes 
 From the axles cruelly curved, 
 Whose, indeed, but Death's? 
 He it is wields the lash, 
 And he it is who laughs 
 At the terror that runs before 
 And the devastation behind. 
 The world is belted and bound 
 By his bloody tracks; itself 
 Is but his playground and park, 
 Its children merely his prey. 
 
 But whom bears Death behind? 
 
 Cries the heart. Behold, and say 
 
 Who sits in the chariot aloft 
 
 And gives the word of command? 
 
 You call it the chariot of Death, 
 
 But only the driver is he. 
 
 The servant, the slave, the tool, 
 
 Of him whose own it is. 
 
 And he is — Progress. The earth 
 
 Is another and nobler earth 
 
 Wherever his wheels have crushed, 
 
 Wherever his scythes have mown. 
 
 And ever out of his track 
 
 Rises a grander life; 
 
 So that the course of Death 
 
 Appears his punishment 
 
 And not his triumph. The fruit 
 
 Is his who masters death; 
 
 And he gathers it for the weal 
 
 Not of Death but of Life. 
 
 Yea, but, the mind responds, 
 
 Why should not Life himself 
 Be his own charioteer? 
 Why slay that Life may prevail? 
 Why sin that good may be born? 
 
 But seest thou not, says the hearty 
 Seest thou not that Death 
 Has power but over his kind? 
 It is only death that he slays; 
 He holds no power over life. 
 It is only the death amid life 
 That he can take to himself. 
 And again and yet again 
 The lesser death that remains. 
 Over life he has no power. 
 And when at last he has slain 
 All that belongs to death 
 By primal heritage 
 From chaos and ancient night. 
 Whence life and light were born^. 
 Then shall he slay himself. 
 And Progress, reaching its goal, 
 Shall mount its eternal throne 
 And sit revealed as God. 
 
 GOD'S LAMPLIGHTERS OF SOULS^ 
 
 OMETIMES in my weakness I think — • 
 Be it the ebb's last wave 
 Or the first of retxirning strength — 
 
 That I have in myself the power 
 
 To create, myself to dart 
 
 Winged words that shall blaze 
 
 From their very speed, nor flame 
 
 A barren wonder and show, 
 
 But, kindling the hearts of men, 
 
 Shall age to age transmit 
 
 The fire that burns in my heart, — 
 
 To be poet, to be in God's world 
 
 His lamplighter of souls. 
 
 Then my sober sense returns. 
 
 And I know that I mistook 
 
 For the poet's God-given fire 
 
 Some poet's enkindling touch. 
 
 No, let me be content 
 
 With the happier, humbler lot 
 
THE DEATH AND BIRTH OF A GOD 
 
 IS 
 
 Of tending the sacred fire, 
 Of making it live in my heart, 
 Of raying its vital warmth. 
 Unto some God gives the power 
 To create, unto some to enjoy; 
 Unto those the grander doom, 
 Unto these the more enviable. 
 So let me be content — 
 Rather let me rejoice — 
 That his love bestowed on me, 
 Not the gift to copy his work, 
 But to see it and find it good; 
 Not to rival the copyists, 
 But to see and applaud their work, 
 And rejoice in their gift divine. 
 
 Through all the portals of sense 
 Troop the heralds of God's grace; 
 Not mine to bring their report; 
 'Tis enough for me to stand by 
 And applaud the message brought. 
 For a single herald can serve 
 Hundreds of listeners; 
 And when the heralds are sent. 
 The heralds with signet and wand, 
 Other our services are, 
 Each his own, and all 
 In God's true-seeing eye, 
 Equal in honor and worth. 
 
 THE DEATH AND BIRTH OF A GOD 
 
 ^^■■^HE death and birth of an age 
 4f|v Are the death and birth of a God. 
 ^"^ The generations of men, 
 
 Like the generations of leaves, 
 
 Follow each upon each, 
 
 Seemingly without end. 
 
 But at last the tree itself 
 
 Falls, and the leaves that toss 
 
 Are burgeon of other boughs. 
 
 So the generations of men 
 
 Follow so long in line 
 
 That the memory of none 
 
 Goes backward to the time 
 
 When any faith was held. 
 Any God was adored. 
 Save only those whereof each 
 Has learned at his mother's knee. 
 
 But behind all trees and Gods 
 
 Are working growth and decay; 
 
 And a generation comes 
 
 Which in its own time sees 
 
 The passing of its God, 
 
 The advent of a new. 
 
 Then life, which had lost its hope. 
 
 And bitter and brackish had grown 
 
 In the shrinking of its tide, 
 
 That grey and sad had become 
 
 In the twilight of its faith, 
 
 Suddenly flushes with hope. 
 
 Dawns into youth, and swells 
 
 Full-flooded with sweetness and strength. 
 
 Or, it may be, between the death 
 
 Of the old God and birth of the new, 
 
 A generation or more 
 
 Must pass in the Night of the Gods. 
 
 It never knew the old. 
 
 Or only as memory, 
 
 Never as living force; 
 
 And it cannot foresee the new. 
 
 Nor know if the new shall be. 
 
 That generation is mine, 
 
 A barren rock between 
 
 Two flowering meadows, a hush, 
 
 Deathlike and dread, between 
 
 Two bursts of jubilant song. 
 
 But at least the grievous time 
 
 Holds a reward for those 
 
 Whose hearts in silence feel 
 
 The steps of the coming God 
 
 Before from his viewless cloud 
 
 He bodies himself to men. 
 
 Yea, great is their reward 
 
 Whose faith has vanquished night. 
 
 Who, meeting amid the gloom, 
 
 With sacred joy confer. 
 
 And gaze together aloft, 
 
 Wondering in what guise 
 
 And when their God shall appear. 
 
i6 
 
 THE GUERDON 
 
 DRAGGING THE POND 
 
 ^I^NE autumn afternoon 
 
 \§fy Through the village a rumor ran - 
 
 A whisper at first and at last 
 An uproar — that Imogen, 
 The loveliest of our girls, 
 Sweetest and fairest of all, 
 Shrinking, yet quick of mind, 
 The soul of purity. 
 Had drowned herself in the pond. 
 There seemed no question of chance, 
 For her steps led down to the brink, 
 Her hat was tied to a bough. 
 And on it was pinned: Good-bye! 
 Forget me; you cannot forgive. 
 Imogen. 
 
 On the shore 
 Her mother paced up and down, 
 Stretching her hands to the pond, 
 Demanding back her child. 
 And calling on us for help. 
 Hope we felt there was not; 
 But, to do what could be done. 
 What must be done before 
 The mother's cry could be stilled, 
 Four of us took a boat. 
 Two to row and one 
 To manage the dreadful drag, 
 While my part was to steer. 
 
 It was early evening now. 
 
 The light of the moon fell slant 
 
 On the emptiness of the pond. 
 
 But it gave us light enough, 
 
 More than enough for our fears. 
 
 For an hovir and another hour 
 
 We toiled; the moon went down, 
 
 And the flash of our oars gleamed white 
 
 As the face we feared to see. 
 
 At every halt of the drag 
 
 On rock or sunken log. 
 
 Our hearts within stood still. 
 
 Then a call came out of the dark: 
 
 Come ashore; she is found. 
 
 Found 1 but alive or dead? 
 We questioned, soon to know. 
 
 They told us that Imogen 
 
 Had been seen that afternoon, 
 
 In the next town, taking the train 
 
 For the city; with her went 
 
 A salesman but too well known. 
 
 Glib and persuasive of tongue. 
 
 Showily dressed, polite, 
 
 Attentive to women, and masked 
 
 With a semblance of chivalry, 
 
 To which his words before men 
 
 Gave doubly damned the lie. 
 
 Her father already had gone 
 
 To catch the flying express 
 
 In anxious pursuit; for him 
 
 There was something to do; but, at home. 
 
 The mother sat in her chair. 
 
 Older by many years. 
 
 Swaying forward and back 
 
 And moaning: Had she but died! 
 
 Would God she lay dead at my feet! 
 
 THE ROMAN FLAMEN 
 
 OME said he was marked from birth 
 For the flamen's holy task. 
 Such reverence for sacred things 
 
 He ever showed, such bent 
 
 For brooding on human life. 
 
 On death and what follows death. 
 
 And the meaning and purpose of all. 
 
 Others, the worldings, said, 
 
 Between a sneer and a sigh: 
 
 Not so! It is plain to see 
 
 He is not of us, but as plain 
 
 He is also not of you. 
 
 He is too earnest, and rates 
 
 Life at too great a worth 
 
 Either to throw it away 
 
 Or to barter it with the Gods 
 
 For a better life to come. 
 
 He thinks in his innocence 
 
 To be flamen means to have scope 
 
 To work out his heart's desire 
 
 In the welfare of other men. 
 
 He is bound to make the attempt; 
 
 The outcome will be what it shall. 
 
STRONGER THAN LIFE 
 
 17 
 
 So he took up his task 
 
 And wrought. Ten years he toiled, 
 
 Giving daily his life for men, 
 
 And questioning not the lore 
 
 That he took and taught for the truth. 
 
 Then a light appeared in the east, 
 
 And a rumor ran through the world 
 
 Of the Crucified, who had risen 
 
 From death into deathless life. 
 
 Proclaiming salvation to men 
 
 From death and the fear of death 
 
 By living as He had hved. 
 
 One with the God over all, 
 
 Whom He taught men to name 
 
 Our Father. 
 
 Most men scofifed, 
 Or laughed at the whole as a jest. 
 But the reverent called on the law 
 To stamp out the blasphemy. 
 The reverent, led by their priests, 
 All but the flamen, who, lost 
 To reverence, reason, and grace. 
 Dared to proclaim: Whom we 
 Under various forms and names 
 Have worshipped as the divine. 
 Behold this day revealed! 
 Yea, at the altar he stood 
 And published this heresy. 
 Did any believe him? Not one. 
 They tore oflF his fiamen's robe 
 And drove him with sticks and stones 
 From the altar he had profaned. 
 In vain he sought to return. 
 Pleading, defending; in vain 
 He showed the fruits of his life 
 And the fruits of his fellows' Uves, 
 Justice, temperance, love; 
 The world would have none of him. 
 
 Then his mind began to give way — 
 
 The judgment of Jove, men said — 
 
 Speech faUed his lips of fire 
 
 And the thought behind the speech. 
 
 Babbling at last, like a child. 
 
 He was led away from men's sight, 
 
 And he died already forgot 
 
 By those who had known his prime. 
 
 But the misbelieving few 
 
 Remembered him; and now, 
 
 After two thousand years. 
 
 He is worshipped as a saint, 
 
 With a day in the calendar, 
 
 And the children of those who scoffed 
 
 Are proud to bear his name. 
 
 What are the words I have said? 
 
 No Roman flamen was he — 
 
 No flamen wrought ever so, 
 
 Bore such a burden of souls — 
 
 But the friend of my youth, and he died 
 
 Only today. The rest 
 
 Is true, or will be true. 
 
 STRONGER THAN LIFE 
 
 ^ou do not love this child, 
 This little innocent, 
 Uplifting to yoiu: face 
 
 Her mother's very eyes? 
 
 No! for she stole away 
 
 My Anna from me. No! 
 
 Let me never see her again! 
 
 A purblind god is Love, 
 
 Or lazy, or mischievous; 
 
 At least, among all the pairs 
 
 That he mates on earth, how few 
 
 Image the perfect love! 
 
 But in George and Anna we saw. 
 
 With a glow at the heart, that Love 
 
 Had here wrought his perfect work. 
 
 Not merely for them but for us 
 
 The old world was new-born. 
 
 When we saw them side by side 
 
 Earth seemed no longer a place 
 
 For hate and wrong and sin. 
 
 Failure and tears, but a place 
 
 Where the rational, natural 
 
 Business of every one 
 
 Was to love and be loved in turn. 
 
THE GUERDON 
 
 It was good to be living then; 
 And one who thought could see 
 That it mattered not so much 
 On whom the blessing fell 
 As that it fell, for its glow 
 Was diffused on all around. 
 By and by their joy 
 Gave promise that ere long 
 It should receive its crown. 
 Then, while we waited all 
 In glad expectance, there feU 
 The dreadful news that the life 
 Born of their love had come 
 At the cost of the mother's life. 
 So, when they showed him his child, 
 Thinking the silent plea 
 Of its beauty and helplessness 
 Might win his heart from its grief, 
 He tmned away and refused 
 Ever to see it more. 
 
 Time, which heals all griefs, 
 
 Will heal even his, we said. 
 
 But idly, not knowing him. 
 
 One October afternoon. 
 
 When out of frost and fire 
 
 Flamed beauty by summer unguessed. 
 
 He went with a friend to hunt, 
 
 A friend who hoped that the air 
 
 And the sport might change his mood. 
 
 But the friend returned alone. 
 
 To tell the terrible tale 
 
 Of the accident that had slain 
 
 His companion. Then we knew, 
 
 Though we spoke it with bated breath. 
 
 That his love had been stronger than life. 
 
 And, when on a sudden he saw 
 
 A portal ready to ope 
 
 Into the world beyond 
 
 Whither his Anna had passed, 
 
 He had dashed it open wide. 
 
 This tale of love, when the woods, 
 Under October's gold, 
 Are red with the blood of the year. 
 Is the tale they tell to me. 
 
 DAWN OR DUSK? 
 
 mNDER a cold grey light 
 Our shivering instant we flit. 
 Poor motes! and then are gone. 
 Not long enough we abide 
 To be sure of the low-hung gleam 
 Whether it waxes or wanes. 
 Is herald of dawn or of dusk. 
 Could we compare the light 
 That our farthest sires beheld 
 With the seeming-changeless glow 
 That is light of the world we share. 
 Could we compare them and see 
 Which is more and which less. 
 We might be sure, but, alas! 
 We cannot see with their eyes. 
 And the witness they bear is twain. 
 Oh! were there only an art 
 To tell the east from the west! 
 But we know not whither we face, 
 Toward the east of a dawn delayed. 
 Toward the west of gathering dark. 
 Heaven grants us no sign, 
 And Earth, if it hearken, is dumb. 
 
 Say not that it matters not. 
 
 So short is our moment of life. 
 
 Whether the coming change 
 
 Be toward the day or the night, 
 
 That only our far-off sons 
 
 And not ourselves it concerns. 
 
 Can it be to us little care 
 
 If we are children of light 
 
 Or of darkness; whether our world 
 
 Lies in the hollowed hand 
 
 Of the Lord of Life or of Death; 
 
 That the being we transmit 
 
 Is a glorious heritage. 
 
 Or only a loss and reproach? 
 
 But, of one thing I am sure. 
 
 If our Lord be the Lord of Life, 
 
 He would never have set us a task. 
 
 Given us a problem to solve, 
 
 Beyond our powers; and my faith 
 
 Tells me that someone some day 
 
 Shall discover a mystic power 
 
 Hiding in veins of the earth, 
 
DREAMS OF STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS 
 
 19 
 
 That shall tell us east from west, 
 And settle once for all 
 Whether we face the dawn 
 As far-off ancestors 
 Of the glorious children of Day, 
 Or whether, nearing the end 
 Of a djdng race, we leave 
 To our children less and less 
 Of living light and warmth, — 
 And God is not in his world. 
 Or has left it, and in his place 
 The power that is all He is not. 
 The principle that destroys 
 Even now is ascending His throne. 
 
 But a whisper has come to me 
 That even so we can choose, 
 And even in the Devil's world 
 Need not be the Devil's men. 
 That ours is the wondrous lot, 
 The startling privilege, 
 To be, in a world of doubt. 
 Or a world of evil confessed. 
 By our own triumphant choice 
 The children of God. And so. 
 Though it matters whether our light 
 Be^of the dawn or the dusk, 
 Its import is not supreme. 
 Yea, greater worth may we win 
 Who choose in the blindness of doubt 
 That, whether the world we see 
 Be of the Light or the Dark, 
 We are the children of Light, 
 On whom the Dark has no power, 
 For whom the Night is as Day. 
 
 DREAMS OF STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS 
 
 eVER since that morn when I 
 Twenty long years ago. 
 To weakness, powerlessness, 
 My waking seK has known 
 But all too well its plight. 
 Not so my slumbering self. 
 The doer of my dreams. 
 That self is always strong. 
 And seems to take delight, 
 
 woke, 
 
 More than in years of health, 
 In deeds of daring and toil. 
 
 Again o'er winter snows, 
 
 A dozen glowing miles. 
 
 O'er wooded hills, down dales, 
 
 I chase the crafty fox; 
 
 Or over the starlit ice, 
 
 On ringing skates I fly, 
 
 Outspeeding aU my mates, 
 
 Leaving woods and hills behind. 
 
 All but the following stars; 
 
 Or at sea in a fishing smack, 
 
 Mid the equinoctial's roar, 
 
 I grasp the tiller alone. 
 
 While the waves are torn to smoke; 
 
 Or on the playground again 
 
 I drive the whirling ball 
 
 Far over the fielders' heads, 
 
 And speed round the bases home. 
 
 Such were my dreams for years; 
 
 But now they have changed their type. 
 
 1 now strain other powers 
 
 In that twilight world of sleep. 
 
 'Tis the mind I am using now, 
 
 The voice before questioning crowds. 
 
 The pen, for a million to read. 
 
 I, who can hardly stand. 
 
 Am grappling with the world, 
 
 Hammering the stubborn thought 
 
 On the anvil of the mind; 
 
 And all in the eyes of men. 
 
 And finding it nothing strange. 
 
 Here is a problem to solve: 
 
 Why should my slumbering self 
 
 Suddenly take this turn? 
 
 Is it self-assertion of powers. 
 
 That are robbed of their rightful scope, 
 
 In the one world where they can act? 
 
 Or can it be prophecy 
 
 Of deeds I am yet to do? 
 
 O veriest dream of all! 
 Dreams are true but in dreams. 
 O Philoctetes, here 
 Our fates part company; 
 Thine to take up thy life 
 
20 
 
 THE GUERDON 
 
 Even where it was broken off, 
 And carry it high and far 
 Into fields of glorious deeds, 
 Into honors and rich rewards. 
 More than thy youth foresaw. 
 But of thee the world had need, 
 Sole hope of thy land wert thou. 
 Yea, Heaven itself stooped down. 
 And healed thee by miracle 
 To do thine only work. 
 O Philoctetes, thy years 
 Of weakness were only ten; 
 Mine have been twenty. Ah! me. 
 Long since parted our fates! 
 
 LOVE'S EXILE 
 
 y^Bf^HE ground I thought so firm 
 il|.Has crvmibled beneath my feet, 
 ^"^And now I no longer go 
 
 With face upturned to the sky. 
 
 Communing with sun and stars, 
 
 But threading hollow ways. 
 
 Underground, sunless, dark. 
 
 And lighted only by pale 
 
 Phosphoric gleams, which flit, 
 
 Aimless, lost, as I. 
 
 For at last I know my life 
 
 Robbed of life's chief prize. 
 
 Its consmnmation and crown. 
 
 No love of one for all. 
 
 No love for truth or right 
 
 Or beauty can ever fill 
 
 The place of the love for one 
 
 And the love by one returned. 
 
 This my life has lost, 
 
 Be it by fate or fault. 
 
 O little mother, who died 
 
 In my boyhood, but thrice my age, 
 
 And younger than I am now. 
 
 In thy life was no room for thought, 
 
 But only for love and its deeds. 
 
 How richer far than mine 
 
 Was thy life in its scanty span! 
 
 While I have been grasping at stars 
 
 Through my fingers have slipped unmarked 
 The golden sands of love. 
 
 Had I not been born for love, 
 
 I had never felt my loss. 
 
 My cup had stood full-brimmed, 
 
 Being shallow; Love could not have poured, 
 
 Because there had been no room. 
 
 But my cup is still at ebb, 
 
 And Love has passed me by. 
 
 Whatever other worlds 
 
 May bestow, of this be sure. 
 
 They never can give what I miss. 
 
 Earthly love on this earth. 
 
 What can I do? — Endure! 
 
 It is nothing, I know, but at least 
 
 It is not to yield, not to play 
 
 A coward's part in the face 
 
 Of the myriads whose doom I share. 
 
 I can endure to the end, — 
 
 For not so long will it be — 
 
 Wondering at my doom. 
 
 And wondering if the law 
 
 Of eternal balance can reach 
 
 So deep into human fate. 
 
 As, here or anywhere. 
 
 To a heart that for love was born, ^ 
 
 To make good the loss of love. 
 
 So, in these underground ways. 
 Because it is I who grope 
 And not my fellows alone, 
 My faith has shrunk to an If! 
 But time, at least give me time! 
 Or must eternity join 
 In solving a riddle like this? 
 
 WADING UNDER THE BRIDGE 
 
 'mfg- AST night renewed the dream 
 
 ^n. That I had long years ago 
 
 ^^ When I sank in the clutch of the frost, 
 
 A-swoon on the wintry .shore. 
 
 Was it because in the day 
 
 I had wandered down to the bridge, 
 
 And peered through the chilly bore 
 
 I had traversed in daring and dread 
 
IN THE HOSPITAL 
 
 21 
 
 As a boy, and traversed again 
 
 In the icy dream of my swoon? 
 
 But this was the dream that retvirned, 
 
 Only with newer forms 
 
 And voices at its close. 
 
 I was coming home from school, 
 
 A child with books and slate; 
 
 When I came in sight of the bridge 
 
 I remembered the morning's taunt 
 
 That I durst not wade its length, 
 
 Under the granite vault 
 
 And the vast embankment above. 
 
 O'er which went thundering the trains. 
 
 Barefoot and scantily clad, 
 
 For this was in summer's heat, 
 
 I was ready on my resolve 
 
 To dare the grisly attempt. 
 
 Into the stream I stepped. 
 
 Where it entered the shadowy arch; 
 
 The chill of the wave and the air 
 
 Smote on me both at once. 
 
 Far ahead I saw. 
 
 Beyond the dark and the chill, 
 
 A narrow ring of light. 
 
 My dared and distant goal. 
 
 The walls were oozy- wet; 
 
 Here and there from the roof 
 
 Blunt, white stalactites hung. 
 
 Ghostly, corpse-like things. 
 
 That made me shudder and look 
 
 To see if my exit were free, 
 
 As if the vault were a tomb. 
 
 How the chill of the shallow stream 
 
 I was wading mid-leg deep 
 
 Shot upward to my heart! 
 
 I stole a backward glance: 
 
 The openings were equal now; 
 
 I was half-way through the bore. 
 
 Larger and brighter grew 
 
 The welcome arch in front; 
 
 And into the hollow roar 
 
 Of winds and waves in the vault. 
 
 Which seemed to my childish sense 
 
 To be gathered about my head, 
 
 There came the sweeter sound 
 
 Of laughter and merry shouts. 
 
 Which grew with the growing arch, 
 
 With the brightening of the vault. 
 
 At last from under the stones 
 
 I stepped, with a gasp of relief, 
 
 Into the golden sun — 
 
 Was it ever so golden before? — 
 
 Under the infinite dome 
 
 Of the sapphire summer sky, 
 
 And before me on the bank 
 
 My playmates, a joyous band, 
 
 Were gathered; but only those — 
 
 Yet it seemed to me not strange — 
 
 Who earlier or later had passed 
 
 Out of life and mortal ken. 
 
 How many tears they had cost! 
 
 How foolish had been the tears! 
 
 For were they not all alive, 
 
 And ninning to greet me now? 
 
 Then as I sought the shore, 
 
 I saw beyond them a group 
 
 Of their elders; among them one 
 
 Was hastening to meet me; her face, 
 
 A beaming splendor of love, — 
 
 My mother's! Forward I sprang 
 
 To meet her; but a voice 
 
 Cried: It is not yet time! 
 
 And I felt myself caught in the grasp 
 
 Of a mighty hand; and then 
 
 I was back on the other side. 
 
 And, still compelled by the hand, 
 
 I bent for my books and slate, — 
 
 And I woke. 
 
 Is it not yet time? 
 Is there something for me to do, 
 Which has waited all these years? 
 Of all the heart's restraints 
 What is so hard to bear 
 As the baffling veil that hides 
 To-morrow from to-day? 
 
 IN THE HOSPITAL 
 
 ^qyGAiN within these walls, 
 
 ^I Whereout I passed aglow, 
 
 ^"^ New-born to the life of Mind! 
 
 Long ago in years. 
 
 That hour was ages ago 
 
 In thronging harvests of thought. 
 
22 
 
 THE GUERDON 
 
 But a few short months at the most, 
 
 I said, and the fiery flame 
 
 Of the lamp of my thought will consume 
 
 The wreck that upbears its glow. 
 
 I had never dreamed to outlive 
 
 My delight in the gains of thought, 
 
 Nor indeed that it could be outlived. 
 
 Nor had I outUved it, but found 
 
 That it sated not all my soul. 
 
 That behind it upgrew a will 
 
 Hungering and struggling to do, 
 
 A will that, caged and J^ound 
 
 In weakness, I could not appease, 
 
 A will that was also to love, 
 
 Which darkened my sky till the cloud 
 
 That should have watered life's field 
 
 Seemed ready in ruin to burst. 
 
 It wrung from my lips the cry: 
 
 This golden fruit of Thought 
 
 They gave me to balance my loss, 
 
 Is only an empty rind! 
 
 Why not throw all away, 
 
 Life and Thought and Pain, 
 
 And take your chance with the Void, 
 
 Rather than live bemocked 
 
 By thought and impotence? 
 
 Was I in my world of Mind 
 
 Doomed after all to live 
 
 Cut off from life's chief end, 
 
 Which thousands of years ago 
 
 The Stoic slave declared 
 
 To be, not the loftiest Thought, 
 
 But Action, and severed no less 
 
 From life's supremest joy. 
 
 Which also can never be Thought, 
 
 But only Love? Be it so; 
 
 At least let me face the truth! 
 
 So my inward strife 
 
 Endured for weeks and months, 
 
 And still my insurgent will 
 
 Grew more imperious. 
 
 And more rebellious my heart. 
 
 Then, like a star out of noon. 
 
 Came a word from beyond the years 
 
 Of my knowledge and my pain. 
 
 'Twas my great Physician who wrote: 
 
 When I gave you back to life, 
 
 I had no power to bestow 
 
 Strength with the life restored; 
 
 Power unto life was mine, 
 
 Not unto vigor and health. 
 
 But now, so much has man 
 
 Wrested from Nature's grasp, 
 
 That I dare believe my art 
 
 Sufficient to give you at last 
 
 The strength you have missed so long. 
 
 But, should I fail, the risk 
 
 Is not your present life 
 
 With its measureless riches of thought, 
 
 But death even under the knife. 
 
 The chances are even; be yours 
 
 The choice, be mine the attempt! 
 
 Choice! My will upleaped 
 
 To embrace the danger; and now 
 
 I am lying on this bed. 
 
 And a few short hours will tell 
 
 If this be all and the end. 
 
 Or life begins here anew. 
 
 I had never dreamed that the sight 
 
 Of the city could be so fair 
 
 As it sparkled and shifted and shone, 
 
 When yestermorn my eyes. 
 
 From the stately steamer's deck. 
 
 Sought almost in vain 
 
 To discover the old I had known 
 
 Under the mountainous new. 
 
 My heart leaped up with a thrill, 
 
 As the city's empire unrolled. 
 
 That I might bear a part 
 
 In the giant tasks of its toil! 
 
 Then I thought of the knife, and a chill 
 
 Caught at my heart, but I said: 
 
 One chance in two is mine 
 
 For a part in that glorious life. 
 
 Welcome the risk! 
 
 But now, 
 When Fate seemed even of hand. 
 Came a trial unforeseen. 
 I had just renewed in mind 
 My welcome of the risk, 
 When a glow flashed through my heart, 
 Which I deemed forgotten of love, 
 And a voice above me said: 
 
NEW-BORN 
 
 23 
 
 Is there aught I can do for you? 
 
 I looked, as one caught in the sweep 
 
 Of an avalanche, might look 
 
 On a hidden treasure laid bare. 
 
 Even as I raised my eyes 
 
 A sweet new trouble dawned 
 
 In the eyes that bent over mine; 
 
 I answered: Only this, — 
 
 Come tomorrow and ask 
 
 If I am alive or dead. 
 
 Then I turned my face to the wall; 
 
 And strange tears burnt my lids. 
 
 NEW-BORN 
 
 *l^ ACK again in life, 
 l^a Which long ago I resigned; 
 " - New-born at forty years. 
 Rich in experience 
 Of thought and suffering, 
 The lore of the ages mine. 
 And the world outspread at my feet, 
 Its paths all open now. 
 But none can I ever tread 
 With the care-free step of youth. 
 Yet^ since from me through pain 
 Age took the years that were youth's 
 Perchance in these latter years 
 My youth shall find me again, 
 A youth of soberer pulse 
 And steadier eye, but strong 
 And fiery hearted to drive 
 The plowshare of manhood's will 
 Through the fallow fields of the world. 
 
 A way to the mouth of hell 
 From heaven's very gate 
 The dreamer saw long ago. 
 But roads lead either way. 
 And up from the mouth of hell 
 It must lead to heaven's gate. 
 Three roads a man may tread 
 Either to heaven or hell, — 
 Of Thought and Pain and Love. 
 Happy is he whose face. 
 When his feet on either are set, 
 Is turned the upward way 
 
 That leads him toward the Divine. 
 
 But why this lot I won, 
 
 When another, who started with me, 
 
 Worthier seeming than I, 
 
 Followed the hellward path 
 
 And is lost; that is to me 
 
 Mystery of mysteries, 
 
 All three of the roads have been mine: 
 
 From the crowded highway of Pain 
 
 I passed to the sparely trod, 
 
 Star-seeking trail of Thought, 
 
 Which now on a sudden is crossed 
 
 By the bowery, music-thronged. 
 
 Level pathway of Love. 
 
 I had no power to choose; 
 
 Ere I knew it my way was changed; 
 
 And now I wonder if Thought 
 
 In another twenty years 
 
 Had brought me so near the Divine 
 
 As Love in a single hour. 
 
 One thing I cannot tell, — 
 
 If the way of Love to the end 
 
 Shall be mine, or again I must tread 
 
 Alone the summits of Thought, 
 
 And alone I must finish my course 
 
 Mid the awful silences 
 
 Under the silent stars. 
 
 So be it! but this I know. 
 
 The very silence will ring 
 
 With the music of the soul 
 
 On this way of Love set free. 
 
 Which never more shall be stilled 
 
 In life or the sequel of life. 
 
 IN CENTRAL PARK 
 
 CAN it be possible 
 That half a hundred years 
 Have so transformed our life 
 That Webster, though in bronze, 
 Looms not a leader of men, 
 A master of eloquence. 
 But only as some vast shape. 
 Half sunk in Egyptian sands. 
 Majestic, sorrowful, 
 
24 
 
 THE GUERDON 
 
 And haunted still by strange 
 Memnonian melodies? 
 This is our world, not his, 
 Ours while we have the strength 
 To make it ours, not ours 
 To seal and stamp our own. 
 Had it not been ever so, 
 Today had been his, not ours, 
 Nay, rather, the Puritan's, 
 The cave man's, the primal ape's; 
 For, save as the present dies 
 In the act of becoming the past, 
 Alone can the future be born. 
 
 So in the leafy park. 
 
 In the fragrant summer eve, 
 
 We walked, and so we talked — 
 
 I talked — then she began: 
 
 One thing I demand to know, 
 
 Which you have never explained. 
 
 Why, when you asked me to come 
 
 Next day to inquire for you, 
 
 And when I faithfully came, 
 
 You coolly sent me away 
 
 To come again in a week! 
 
 Was that your gratitude? 
 
 And don't you confess that it showed 
 
 Forgiveness beyond your desert 
 
 When I came at the end of the week? 
 
 And overcame it: I willed 
 To hve under ether and knife 
 To win back my health, and win 
 More than life and health. 
 
 I seized her hand, and urged. 
 
 Do you understand me now? 
 
 She veiled her starry eyes. 
 
 But left her hands in mine. 
 
 Had I let you stay that morn, 
 
 I added, the step of Love 
 
 Would have shattered the House of Life, 
 
 And Love is of life not death. 
 
 But now the walls are firm, 
 
 The doors are open wide, 
 
 Shall he not enter? I gazed. 
 
 For the lips to curve into speech, 
 
 For the long-lashed eyes to lift 
 
 And look the answer I sought; 
 
 When, lo! on the lids two tears 
 
 Were welling into birth. 
 
 Only this I recall, — 
 
 Two kisses brushed them away. 
 
 And on that evening no more 
 
 We spoke of time and change; 
 
 And the stars — I can see them still — 
 
 For very gladness beamed, 
 
 As soul in soul we passed 
 
 Into the newer life. 
 
 Must I explain? I said. 
 
 Yes, I will explain — for she shrank 
 
 From something in my tone. 
 
 Would you have undone all 
 
 The good that you did? You came 
 
 Like a messenger out of the life 
 
 I was risking my life to find. 
 
 You came as a part of that life, 
 
 Sent as a pledge by fate. 
 
 To comfort me and sustain 
 
 When I entered the shadow of death; 
 
 Or was fate, which had mocked me so oft. 
 
 Mocking me unto the end? 
 
 How should I know? The doubt 
 
 Chilled like a foretaste of death. 
 
 But, at last, ere the trial came, 
 
 My spirit grappled the doubt. 
 
 PROTHALAMIUM 
 
 ^gjriijwp^HEN at last I sought my room 
 
 0lil«^ On that fateful night of nights, 
 
 ^^^^^ Her kiss yet warm on my lips, 
 
 I laughed and said: Come, Death, 
 
 Whenever thou wilt, thou shalt find 
 
 Thy battle already lost! 
 
 Mine is the victory 
 
 Over thee for evermore, 
 
 Won through my champion. Love. 
 
 I, who so long was held 
 
 Aloof from the life of men, 
 
 Seeing their loves and hates 
 
 Dimly as in a glass. 
 
 Helpless to lift a hand 
 
 In their labors or their strife, 
 
FROM FAR MANHATTAN HEIGHTS 
 
 25 
 
 Or as one marooned on an isle 
 
 Across a narrow strait, 
 
 Foaming, not to be swum, 
 
 Which bars him for evermore 
 
 From the life that his fellows live, 
 
 So I have lived apart. 
 
 And, turning my face to the stars. 
 
 Have sought the communion there 
 
 That I missed on earth; but now 
 
 Love has come down from their depths, 
 
 And, bearing me on his wings, 
 
 Has reunited my life 
 
 To the living life of the world. 
 
 The Eternal, imto whose thought 
 
 I strove to uplift my own, 
 
 And who gave me the answering sense 
 
 Of mind attuned to mind 
 
 Across the immensities, 
 
 Hath answered no less the cry 
 
 My heart upraised to the stars, 
 
 And hath sent not merely the glow 
 
 That entered into my heart, 
 
 Speaking peace to my soul. 
 
 But another life hath he sent 
 
 To bring, yea, be unto me 
 
 His breathing, living love. 
 
 Do you wonder I laughed at Death. 
 
 The shadow, whose retreat 
 
 Marks the progress of Life? 
 
 For I am no longer one. 
 
 But am bound with a living bond 
 
 To the heart of the Divine, 
 
 And am not of small concern 
 
 In the imiversal scheme. 
 
 For Infinitude in its sweep 
 
 Hath taken thought of me, 
 
 And its pledge, behold! is my Love! 
 
 FROM FAR MANHATTAN HEIGHTS 
 
 v%^YRiADS of years ago, 
 jJxTI ^^ ^^^ island, Alpine snows 
 •' Upsoared into simimer's blue. 
 
 But rain and frost and sun 
 Throughout the eons at work 
 Have worn them down almost 
 
 To the lapping of the tides. 
 Now man uprears in their room 
 His moimtains of iron and stone, — 
 Say rather, his Babel towers. 
 Warring in purpose and speech. 
 Which, instead of lifting him up 
 An equal with the gods, 
 Make him their laughing-stock, 
 Yet haply are promise and pledge 
 Of a greatness he yet shall achieve. 
 
 On the highest of these this morn. 
 
 Under a sky as blue 
 
 As ever smiled on the snows, 
 
 For an hour we have taken our stand. 
 
 Ere we go down to be one 
 
 With the insect swarm on the ground. 
 
 What shall we be down there? 
 
 Here, on this height serene, 
 
 In this angle of shining sea 
 
 And teeming land, we are. 
 
 We can be, but ourselves, — 
 
 How shall it be below? 
 
 What was the travail worth 
 
 Of ages unreckonable 
 
 That out of the primal mist 
 
 Brought forth the earth and at last 
 
 Brought forth ourselves, were it not 
 
 That we should be ourselves? 
 
 Yet, what we are moved to do. 
 
 Here on this sunny morn. 
 
 Below on a winter night, 
 
 In the rage of battle, the blast 
 
 And sudden terror of fire. 
 
 The blank of palsied wills 
 
 When ships collide in the night, 
 
 Or under svunmer's boughs 
 
 With the voices of labor stilled, — 
 
 What we are moved to do 
 
 Will vary with every scene; 
 
 And how shall it be below? 
 
 How can we ever find 
 
 In that stonning whirl of selves, 
 
 And keep, our very own? 
 
 Far hence a day may dawn 
 
 When man shall lean upon man 
 
 In love and not for help; 
 
26 
 
 THE GUERDON 
 
 But now, would we find ourselves, 
 It must be not in toil for ourselves 
 But in toil for others; so stands 
 The law of the life of the world 
 Whereinto we were born, 
 Wherein alone we can live. 
 
 Oh! not with the glorious faith 
 
 Of the sons of morn we toil; 
 
 We cannot toil as they 
 
 To make the world new-born 
 
 In the space of the toiler's life. 
 
 The utmost we can hope 
 
 Is to advance by a step 
 
 The progress of Justice on earth; 
 
 To be content if we make 
 
 A little lighter the toil 
 
 Of reaping for them who have sown, 
 
 A little harder their task 
 
 To gather who have not strown; 
 
 To think it much if we place 
 
 More of the penalty 
 
 For the ill days of the world 
 
 On those who have brought them on. 
 
 And less on the shoulders of them 
 
 Who, bent with their burden of toil. 
 
 Had neither voice nor hand 
 
 In the shaping of the ill. 
 
 And yet not all for the sake 
 
 Of such small gains, we toil. 
 
 But buoyed by hope and trust 
 
 In the day we shall not see, 
 
 And living all our lives 
 
 With faces illuminate, 
 
 Yea, roseate, in the glow 
 
 Of the vision of its dawn. 
 
 So, in this world of ours. 
 The world we see at our feet, 
 Our only possible world. 
 So alone can we be ourselves; 
 And so in my heart I believe — 
 Start not, my Love, nor shrink — 
 Shall we, though one with the race 
 Below us flaimting its hour, — 
 
 O glorious privilege, 
 O more than mortal part! — 
 Shall we, helping man to be man, 
 Even we, help God to be God. 
 
 Let us go down, my Love; 
 Life awaits us below. 
 
 AFTERSONG: THE HOLY GRAIL 
 
 ^a^'S homeward through the snow, 
 \^L My daughter's hand in mine, 
 '^'^ I wend at eventide, 
 
 My back to the sunset's flame, 
 
 House after house, as I near, 
 
 Yields not its wonted view 
 
 Of shapes that flit within. 
 
 Or faces that peer through the pane; 
 
 But each is filled, indwelt. 
 
 Yea, flooded, with crimson light. 
 
 The mystic, living glow, 
 
 Blood-red, of the Holy Grail. 
 
 My walk becomes no more 
 
 A walk, but a sacrament. 
 
 And henceforth I shall see 
 
 In every lowliest house 
 
 Not merely a dwelling of men. 
 
 But a halting-place of the Grail. 
 
 Go, little book, which my brain 
 Has built for the dwelling-place 
 Of a life long shared with my own. 
 Of a soul I would have men love. 
 And give them not alone 
 Glimpses into that life, 
 Revealings of that soul, 
 But sometimes, if thou canst, 
 Translate for men God's love. 
 Writ large on cloud and sky. 
 Into the warmth that fills 
 The beating hiunan heart. 
 Which ever was, now is. 
 And shall be evermore 
 The only Holy Grail. 
 
1^^ I J \ H '^>'^ (Mife* /^ii^v i f . s '' ' 
 
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 University of California 
 
 Berkeley 
 
PAT, JAN. 21, 1908 
 
 ''724ia 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CAUFORNIA LIBRARY