THE MAN ON THE HILLTOP 
 
BY ARTHUR DAV1SON FICKE 
 
 SONNETS OF A PORTRAIT- PAINTER 
 
 MR. FAUST 
 
 THE BREAKING OF BONDS 
 
 TWELVE JAPANESE PAINTERS 
 
 THE HAPPY PRINCESS 
 
 THE EARTH PASSION 
 
 FROM THE ISLES 
 
THE 
 
 MAN ON THE HILLTOP 
 AND OTHER POEMS 
 
 BY 
 
 ARTHUR DAVISON FICKE 
 
 NEW YORK AND LONDON 
 
 MITCHELL KENNERLEY 
 
 MCMXV 
 
COPYRIGHT, IQIS, BY 
 MITCHELL KENNERLEY 
 
 PRINTED BY VAIL-BALLOU COMPANY 
 BINGHAMTON, NEW YORK 
 
A number of the following poems are reprinted here 
 with the courteous permission of the Editors of Scrib- 
 ner s Magazine, Poetry (Chicago), The Little Review, 
 The Smart Set, The Chicago Evening Post Literary Sup 
 plement, The Poetry Journal, The Century, and The 
 Forum. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 HISTORIES 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE MAN ON THE HILLTOP 3 
 
 AT ST. STEPHANOS 15 
 
 LYRICS 
 
 THE GREY RIVER 43 
 
 TO THE HARPIES 44 
 
 TO AN OLD FRIEND 45 
 
 PORTRAIT OF AN OLD WOMAN 47 
 
 LINES FOR TWO FUTURISTS 48 
 
 IN LONELY LANDS 51 
 
 A VERY OLD SPRING SONG 52 
 
 THE JEWELS OF THE SUN 54 
 
 SNOWTIME 58 
 
 THE THREE SISTERS 59 
 
 TO A CHILD TWENTY YEARS HENCE 60 
 
 FATHERS AND SONS 61 
 
 I AM WEARY OF BEING BITTER 62 
 
 ELEVEN O CLOCK 63 
 
 THE BIRDCAGE 65 
 
 AMONG SHADOWS 66 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 LIKE HIM WHOSE SPIRIT 67 
 
 MEETING 68 
 
 A LOVE LETTER 69 
 
 THE OLD MEN S TALE 7* 
 
 CHLOROFORM 72 
 
 SWINBURNE, AN ELEGY 78 
 
 GROTESQUES 
 
 THE GENTLE READER Qi 
 WHY WOMEN HATE ARTISTS 92 
 A POETRY PARTY 93 
 PORTRAIT OF A SPIRITUALLY DISTURBED GEN 
 TLEMAN 94 
 PORTRAIT OF JOHN COWPER POWYS, ESQ. 95 
 TO AN OUTRAGEOUS PERSON 
 PORTRAIT OF A PORTRAIT PAINTER 97 
 TO ARIOSTO, A NOTABLE CRICKET 98 
 THE POLICE GAZETTE 99 
 IN A BAR ROOM 100 
 THE NEWEST BELIEVER 101 
 THE WICKET TO THE WISE 102 
 SONG OF A VERY SMALL DEVIL 103 
 THISTLES IQ 4 
 
HISTORIES 
 
THE MAN ON THE HILLTOP 
 
 SHADOWS are round him in my memory 
 Impenetrable shadows, peopling full 
 A universe where streams of heavy light 
 Reveal strange crouching forms of ominous doom. 
 As in the sun s and moon s and stars eclipse 
 I see him on that hilltop ; mighty wings 
 Flap from the sky above him and surround 
 With fierce and fluctuating winds. Alone, 
 Sleepless, he waits in his allotted place 
 Amid these howling kingdoms of the void ; 
 Defiant, sacrificed, and conquering; 
 Mad ; but a great heart, an heroic heart. 
 
 Twas thus I came upon him : 
 
 When, at end 
 
 Of college years, one winter, first I learned 
 That, if I loved this curious human life 
 To which we all with blind affection cling, 
 I must with instant haste betake myself 
 To regions far from Massachusetts coasts, 
 In hope that desert air would make me whole 
 And hearty, as in fact it well has done. 
 And so I went, not fain at all to die; 
 And for two years lived on the western plains 
 At a friend s ranch until my peril passed. 
 There first I saw the man of whom my tale 
 
 3 
 
4 THE MAN ON THE HILLTOP 
 
 Chiefly shall speak a raw-boned, flaxen-haired 
 Sheepherder; tall of brow, with sunken eyes, 
 And jaw as clean-cut as a vessel s prow: 
 One of those smouldering, intense, strange men 
 Whom no spot breeds except the northern fiords. 
 He had a name common in his own land 
 Larson : no common man, for all of that, 
 But a great heart; twisted, awry and blind, 
 Swayed by strange tyrannies, the dupe of dreams, 
 Yet a great heart, moving in mists obscure, 
 Protagonist of shadows, single-armed 
 Champion against the terrors of the night. 
 
 He had come hither from some eastern town, 
 
 Pittsburgh, I think, where his dark youth had passed 
 
 In grip of stern privations. He was born 
 
 Child of a foundry-worker, one of four, 
 
 Brought up on mill-smoke. In the earlier years 
 
 No harder was his lot than many a one 
 
 Which still, upon the whole, brings happiness 
 
 That makes life worth the living. But too soon 
 
 Poverty taught him more than any child, 
 
 Could we direct these things, should ever know. 
 
 One day, toward noontime, taking to the mill 
 
 His father s pail, he, pausing in the door, 
 
 Saw a great crucible swing overhead, 
 
 Moving along the runways of the cranes, 
 
THE MAN ON THE HILLTOP 5 
 
 And then poise, sway with rending jar, and fall, 
 
 Scattering a hail of fire, a cataract 
 
 Of white and glowing steel, that gulfed three men, 
 
 One man his father, in the awful flood. 
 
 He told me this; and without words I knew 
 
 How, like the searing touch of that fierce stream, 
 
 The sight had burned itself upon his brain, 
 
 A thing to tremble at when in the night 
 
 Those spectres rose. And unforgettingly 
 
 Had passed before his eyes the house of grief, 
 
 Where terror of the future almost numbed 
 
 The present sorrow. Then came poverty, 
 
 And vain appeals to the calm men who sat 
 
 In the mill s office with their desks and files 
 
 Of many papers; the recourse at last 
 
 To one of those grey wolves who sometimes hunt 
 
 Under the law s cloak; the unending trial 
 
 That sapped the widow s final hoard : these things, 
 
 Seen by a child who with his mother stood, 
 
 Three younger ones beside him, and looked out 
 
 Into the endless and appalling void 
 
 Of destitution, could not be forgot, 
 
 But needs must bend the corners of the mouth 
 
 And sink the eyes to sparks in their deep caves. 
 
 Before the law remediless they stood, 
 
 Smitten by chance, that untamed walks the earth ; 
 
 Yet, that being true, how little did it feed 
 
6 THE MAN ON THE HILLTOP 
 
 The hungry mouths! How utterly their fate 
 Upon them must have fallen like the blow 
 Of evil and malignant deity. 
 
 He never told me how he struggled on: 
 
 It was not hard to guess, the crumpled years 
 
 Of childhood, till at last he reached that age, 
 
 So pitifully young, at which the poor 
 
 Think children may go forth to earn their bread. 
 
 Into the mills he went: there many years 
 
 He worked among the crucibles, as worked 
 
 His father once before him. But when death 
 
 Came to his mother, and some distant kin 
 
 Took the three other children, he threw off 
 
 The hateful bondage; and went wandering forth 
 
 Westward, to newer regions where a life 
 
 Not cursed with the old curse might wait for him. 
 
 He was a silent man, who made no friends 
 
 Among his lighter comrades; though goodwill 
 
 Was not refused him. He had little talk, 
 
 And that was mostly of the needful things, 
 
 Weather, and care of horses, and the sheep. 
 
 But sometimes would a chance word start his speech 
 
 Into a burst of sombre eloquence 
 
 Or smouldering passion, all on one fixed theme, 
 
 The wrongs of laborers. Once I came on him 
 
THE MAN ON THE HILLTOP 
 
 Out in the stableyard, haranguing there, 
 
 With unaccustomed fervency, a group 
 
 Of scoffing sheepherders. I heard him say 
 
 " It is the hell-fire burning at earth s core. 
 
 Men slave like dogs to earn the right to live 
 
 Like dogs: the profit of their labor falls 
 
 From their starved fingers. All the sightless rich 
 
 Are leagued together to oppress and crush 
 
 The laborer. He cannot lift his head, 
 
 Or down into the trampled dust they fling 
 
 Him and his children. You have never seen, 
 
 As I have, the fierce hell that, in the mills 
 
 And out of them, enfolds those living men. 
 
 No one sees things as I do! . . ." 
 
 Looking back 
 
 In memory now, I think his brooding nights 
 And silent days all circled round that thought, 
 Which drew and held him with a baleful power 
 Until its image grew, towered, loomed above 
 All else, and blotted out the universe 
 With its oppressive shadow. 
 
 Once he said 
 
 " Children of sorrow cannot be released. 
 They are blind, leaderless; and if Moses led, 
 Out of the Wilderness toward the Promised Land, 
 
8 THE MAN ON THE HILLTOP 
 
 No one would follow. Now each blow that falls 
 Upon the race falls heaviest on their backs. 
 They are the buffers of misfortune." 
 
 Words 
 
 Half-biblical were his when thus he spoke, 
 As sometimes is the w T ay of simple men 
 Speaking with earnestness from crowded hearts. 
 
 One day I said " Surely it is some fault 
 
 That keeps men common laborers all their lives. 
 
 To good men comes an opportunity " 
 
 He answered " In the valley where they live 
 
 Nothing comes ever but the smoke of hell; 
 
 And their wild cries, rising, would shake the world 
 
 If it had blood, not iron, in its veins." 
 
 Much more he said, which I have long forgot, 
 
 Wild words that seethed from out some chaos shut 
 
 Close in his breast. He was a sombre man; 
 
 Sometimes absurd and sometimes terrible. 
 
 It was that Spring, that memorable Spring, 
 
 When from mysterious space the Comet came 
 
 Blazing upon us. And I well recall 
 
 How, long foretold by savants ere to sight 
 
 Of human eye its shape was visible, 
 
 It stirred, among the ignorant, dim fears 
 
THE MAN ON THE HILLTOP 
 
 And wild conjecture; so that some believed 
 It would destroy this globe, or with its train 
 Of fatal gases kill all breathing life. 
 We, like the rest, as the high day approached 
 When it should sweep most closely to the earth, 
 Made our bad jokes, and bantered to and fro 
 Talk of the hour when debts and sins should end ; 
 And planned to die in drink ; and such poor chaff. 
 " Larson," I said, " you, probably, alone 
 Will be alive on earth when it has passed 
 For you are used to breathing Pittsburgh air, 
 And nothing matters after that." 
 
 " No, no," 
 
 Another of us grinned, " Larson will crawl 
 Under his own eyebrows, and hide there safe 
 Till all is past." 
 
 And then we laughed again. 
 But Larson, who had listened to our talk 
 With an intentness grave beyond its worth, 
 Smiled not at all. He fixed on us the gaze 
 Of eyes like sparks, not angry, but possessed 
 By some more secret vision of his own 
 And far removed from us ; and while we laughed 
 He left us quietly without reply. 
 And for some days thereafter, he would walk 
 
io THE MAN ON THE HILLTOP 
 
 Much by himself, and scan the starry sky 
 Alone at night, and mutter broken words, 
 And start when spoken to. 
 
 Then came the time 
 To send a herder to relieve that one 
 Who, for a month s term, had kept lonely watch 
 Over the sheep upon the upland ranch 
 Sixty miles distant. No one loved the task; 
 Hence in recurrent order all the men 
 Served out their turn. Now in its sequence due 
 Was Larson s month at hand, a month of Spring. 
 And so we sent him out one April day, 
 Out from the noisy banter of our midst, 
 To the monotonous vigil of the heights. 
 I see him still as he rode hillward, gaunt, 
 Ungraceful on his horse, looking not back 
 With any sign of parting, but alone 
 And facing grimly forward, a gray shape 
 In the first dawnlight, growing ever less 
 Against the distant slopes. 
 
 In three days, came 
 
 Back from the hill-ranch he whose cheerless month 
 At last was over. A great boisterousness 
 And a great need of drink possessed his soul ; 
 But when the first was spent, the last assuaged, 
 He spoke of Larson : 
 
THE MAN ON THE HILLTOP 11 
 
 " What is all this talk 
 About the Comet? Is it really near? 
 Larson has told me it is sweeping on 
 A million miles an hour, toward the earth, 
 A terrible portent, coming to rain down 
 Mysterious influences of evil power 
 Upon the world, but chiefly upon those 
 Who labor in the mills. When it is past, 
 No toiler ever will draw happy breath, 
 But only choked with evil. They must die, 
 Or by the awful gases be transformed 
 Into corroded miserable beings 
 With lives of agony." 
 
 The men all laughed. 
 
 I did not laugh; for something in the strange 
 Fathomless shadow which I always felt 
 Deep within Larson s mind loomed now to me 
 Dimly foreboding. But the man went on: 
 
 " He said to me, shortly before I left, 
 
 Things like a book, or like the words I heard 
 
 Once from a pulpit. He s a curious one; 
 
 This is the way he talked : My thoughtless friend, 
 
 The evil days have come; curses shall fall 
 
 Upon men from the heavens, but most on those 
 
 Who most are cursed already. O prepare! 
 
12 THE MAN ON THE HILLTOP 
 
 For the time approaches. Go: carry to the world 
 Tidings from me that men must now atone. 
 I have thought long, and light at last has dawned 
 I, only I, know wherefore this has come 
 Toward earth, and of what evils it is sign, 
 And the one hope to save the world. Atone! 
 Atone for evil suffered and evil done, 
 Ye men of sorrow! Who shall now arise, 
 Not leader, but apart from all, to fight 
 The sole and dreadful battle for the race ? 
 Much more he said; I did not understand 
 Half that he spoke besides. At any rate, 
 The hill-ranch is a lonesome place to be 
 If one has only such thoughts on his mind." 
 
 Lonesome indeed ! And yet I did not speak 
 
 Nor act, as we so often in our lives 
 
 Refrain from speech or deed until too late 
 
 For all except regret. But when four days 
 
 Had passed, uneasiness laid hold of me. 
 
 It seemed barbaric torture, thus condemning 
 
 To banishment on solitary heights 
 
 A man pursued by demons of the soul. 
 
 So I determined on a four days tour 
 
 To see the mountains, meaning to delay 
 
 One day with Larson, with what cheer I could 
 
 Bringing some respite to his solitude. 
 
THE MAN ON THE HILLTOP 13 
 
 Therefore next morning I proceeded forth 
 
 With one good rancher. The unchanging sweep 
 
 Flowed by on either side as all day long 
 
 We traversed the monotonous sage-brush plains, 
 
 A fiery sun above us; all day long 
 
 The distant mountains slowly crept more near, 
 
 Not changing as we watched, yet every hour 
 
 More towering than the last. And just at dusk 
 
 Weary, we saw ahead the upland ranch. 
 
 I had not visited the place till now ; 
 
 And curiously I scanned it as we rode, 
 
 Saw the gray flocks grow plain upon the slopes, 
 
 And the small cabin and the stable-yard 
 
 Loftily builded. We could not descry 
 
 Larson afar, nor hear him make response 
 
 To our loud greetings. On we went, the night 
 
 Falling around us, though some silvery gleam 
 
 Still shone across the west. Ahead, the hill 
 
 Rose steep; and in that treeless land, one tree, 
 
 Shattered by wind, stood black against the sky 
 
 Above the hilltop, centring the long slopes 
 
 Toward it. And then the tree drew all my gaze 
 
 By some ambiguous strangeness in its shape 
 
 Straight, blasted, with two stumps of limbs, confused 
 
 Masses of leafage on its trunk. My thought 
 
 Forgot the man we sought as I pressed on 
 
 Toward the stiff tree; and then, suddenly cold, 
 
I 4 THE MAN ON THE HILLTOP 
 
 A weakness closed like fangs upon my heart: 
 I saw the man had crucified himself. 
 
 There on a cross of heavy beams he hung, 
 
 Nails through his feet and through one open hand, 
 
 While with the other hand he limply clutched 
 
 At the rough cross-piece. And around him clung 
 
 A dusk of agony. His sunken eyes 
 
 Opened not; but at sound of our quick steps 
 
 His lips moved feebly and he spoke: 
 
 " Have peace. 
 
 All has been done: the evils are atoned; 
 They shall go by and trouble men no more. 
 This last curse on the bowed heads shall not fall: 
 On theirs it shall not fall, but mine, mine, mine, 
 Which has received it for the whole world s sake. 
 I have been chosen, I have been sent forth 
 Up to the hill-tops and the desert places 
 There to atone, atone. All has been done. 
 Fear not; the doom is past." 
 
 And when at length 
 From that most awful eminence we bore 
 His broken form, his lips moved, but no breath 
 Came from between them. And he shortly died. 
 
 Shadows are round him in my memory. 
 Mad; but a great heart, an heroic heart. 
 
AT ST. STEPHANOS 
 
 HIGH, high above the thatched roofs of the town,- 
 An hundred times more high than lifts the tower 
 Of the Cathedral, higher than the song 
 Of nightingale ascends, or swallow s wing 
 There, where the splintered cliff dizzily drops, 
 Sheerer than headland of Gibraltar s straits, 
 In one precipitous rock-cloven wall 
 To low-lying fields, there stands an ancient House 
 Of refuge and secluded holiness. 
 
 Toward it at sunset from the plains I came, 
 Through long defiles ascending, past gaunt slopes 
 And barren gullies of the wind-swept hills 
 Tenantless as the moon. Upon the crests 
 The light still shone; though far below, the dusk 
 Covered the fields and with the fear of night 
 Amid these wilds o ertaking me, urged on 
 My climbing feet. 
 
 Suddenly on a crag 
 
 That century-beaten, gray-walled monastery 
 Against the solemn fires of the west 
 Lifted its battlements and pointed roofs 
 And faintly smoking chimneys, in the dusk 
 Bastions of grayness. My approaching step 
 Echoed upon the drawbridge, whose frail span 
 Across a narrow deeply-cloven chasm 
 Hung tremulous. Through the dim portal arch 
 
 15 
 
1 6 AT ST. STEPHANOS 
 
 And low cold passageways of mouldering stone 
 
 I passed, in wonder at these massive walls; 
 
 And stood in the gray court, as empty now 
 
 As though its vanished centuries had borne 
 
 With them away into far gulfs of Time 
 
 What life had once found place here. On three sides, 
 
 The alcoved galleries of the cloisters rose, 
 
 Half-ruined, cheerless: on the fourth, a gate 
 
 Out toward a platform opened, where the rock 
 
 Became the precipice. There spread the West 
 
 A burning flood before me, and the peaks 
 
 Of the white Pindus from it rising up 
 
 Like snow-capped islands; and far, far below, 
 
 Even at my feet, submerged beneath the tide 
 
 Of shadowy haze, the plains of Thessaly. 
 
 Then in the high still air a bell began 
 Somewhere its vesper tolling; and those sounds, 
 Blurring and blending with recurrent strokes, 
 Drifted about me, islanded aloft 
 Upon that far-seeing headland ; while below, 
 Small and remote, the villages of the plain 
 Withdrew into the mists of eventide. 
 And pausing thus, upon my spirit came 
 That nameless sense, like odour in a dream, 
 Of ending Summer and the sudden hour 
 Of the year s passing which September brings 
 
AT ST. STEPHANOS 17 
 
 To thrall the musing wanderer on the slopes. 
 Then the bell ceased ; and from the chapel doors 
 Poured St. Stephanos holy Brethren forth, 
 Dark men and bearded, clad in girdled robes, 
 The garb of those who from the general band 
 Of priesthood had themselves to single life 
 Vowed, and to poverty, not the common lot 
 For clergy of Byzantium. Forth they strode 
 With kindly faces and the greeting hands 
 That are the portion of a stranger chanced 
 From the great world unto monastic walls, 
 About whose base the seething tide of days 
 Beats with tumultuous surges, casting up 
 To this lone height rarely a drop of spray 
 Or sound articulate of the dizzy strife. 
 
 With friendly cheer, they took my pack and staff; 
 And led me to the ancient raftered hall 
 Where, round a board sufficient for the need 
 Of three-score Brethren, the remaining few, 
 Seven and the Abbot, took their daily fare. 
 Diminished now that ancient company 
 Which in the darker ages here maintained 
 A citadel of peace amid wild wars. 
 Paler, this band, and of less dominant blood, 
 Yet Brethren of great St. Stephanos still, 
 And heritors of those who once upreared 
 
1 8 AT ST. STEPHANOS 
 
 This lonely fortress for the praise of God. 
 
 Strange men, strange heritors, these my hosts to-night; 
 
 With whom I sat, and ate the evening meal 
 
 Of kid and lentils and thin acid wine 
 
 With resin steeped, scant fare, befitting priests 
 
 Vowed unto poverty in a meagre land, 
 
 Not milk and honey ; and heard the simple talk 
 
 Of the old Abbot, how the Summer closed 
 
 Early this year; and how the long ascent 
 
 Had left me weary, doubtless. And this speech 
 
 Of common things which drifted to and fro 
 
 Served but to fill me with a keener sense 
 
 Of utter strangeness. Round our casual talk 
 
 I felt great vistas opening pathless out, 
 
 Unsounded hopes and passions of these hearts, 
 
 Alien to mine. From these unfathomed eyes 
 
 Looked forth the keepers of a secret life 
 
 Upon a separate world, to me unknown. 
 
 Their gaze beheld another sun than mine; 
 
 The very breeze to them not as to me 
 
 Bore waftures of unrest or peace or pain; 
 
 Within their souls a different dream of heaven 
 
 Sustained or tortured. And that wonder grew 
 
 As down the table from grave face to face 
 
 My glances strayed; and strong my passion burned 
 
 To know what meaning filled their thoughts and days, 
 
 What boundaries and what contours marked the world 
 
AT ST. STEPHANOS 19 
 
 Which, through the strange refraction of the soul, 
 Each one surveyed, alone 
 
 Methought they seemed, 
 
 These Brethren of the Heights, kind, simple hearts, 
 Rude shepherds of rude flocks, unlettered, slow, 
 Habituated to the pious days 
 And narrow duties of the monastery. 
 Within those eyes no subtler passion leaped 
 Than dogmas of corporeal heaven and hell 
 Might teach them: and their little round of being, 
 Changeless, sufficient, circumscribed and pure, 
 Passed like the herdsman s in the lowlier plains 
 Daylight to dusk, and year to year, one course 
 Of unreflective tasks that left no trace 
 Upon the scroll of inward history. 
 
 But one among the Brethren, whom the rest 
 Called Theodorus, seemed of other mould 
 Than all his fellows. In his face the South 
 Spoke warm and radiant. Something in his gaze 
 Like hesitant intensity of fire 
 
 That flickered, clung, and died, or the full lips 
 And delicate profile, bringing to my mind 
 A poet of pale beauties, lately dead, 
 Whom now his land acclaimed, or the desire 
 Hardly concealed, which made his features glow 
 Attentively a listener as I told 
 
20 AT ST. STEPHANOS 
 
 Some curious traveller s tale, these drew my thought 
 
 Recurrently to him. And when his smile 
 
 Gleamed with a flash of eagerness for joy, 
 
 Like starlight among candles, then I felt 
 
 A sudden pang of pity. Here, methought, 
 
 Was one to whom the lusty sinful world 
 
 Was not well lost, in whom still burned the spark 
 
 Of love for all which faith calls vanity. 
 
 His face betrayed the harp vibrant within. 
 
 The call of beauty never unto him 
 
 Were cold, unmeaning. Each mysterious voice 
 
 Which from the loveliness of hill or cloud 
 
 Or dream or music calls our blood, as calls 
 
 The west wind to the waves, these things would be 
 
 For him the secret masters of his soul. 
 
 And while his Brethren mounted to Heaven s Gate 
 
 With calm unswerving steps, him must the breath 
 
 Of Maytide mornings make their quivering sport. 
 
 A bird-note could whirl chaos through his prayer. 
 
 His vowed allegiance to the Virgin Throne 
 
 Must waver at the beauty of a flower 
 
 Or the soft curve of some girl s shadowy throat 
 
 Seen in the dusk. And if at last he gained 
 
 The prophets Paradise, it needs must be 
 
 By hard-won mastery which to ruder souls 
 
 Were all unknown. Perilous lay the road, 
 
 Through chanting vales, to his celestial home. 
 
AT ST. STEPHANOS 21 
 
 At length the meal was ended ; and we passed 
 In straggling twos and threes out of the hall 
 To the rock-platform, where the stars looked down 
 Brilliantly on us, and the gulf beneath 
 Lay vague and fathomless. Beside me paced 
 Now Theodorus, as in eager talk 
 He held me from the rest; with outstretched arm 
 Pointing this place and that, towns, mountains, 
 
 streams, 
 
 All hidden in the night. And one by one 
 The Brethren left us for their evening tasks; 
 He only lingered yet. 
 
 " Tell me," he said 
 
 " How moves the world in Athens? Do they still 
 Place little tables at the cafe doors, 
 And sit all afternoon, and watch the crowds, 
 And smoke and talk? And do the soldiers drill 
 Out beyond Lycabettus as they used? 
 And the Pirasus, that bright sinful port, 
 Do the great ships still crowd the harbor s mouth, 
 And boatmen throng the wharves ? Or has the world 
 Grown quieter than in my day?" 
 
 " The world," 
 
 I answered, " is not quick to change its ways. 
 I think that you would find all things the same, 
 
22 AT ST. STEPHANOS 
 
 Even to the tables, where three days ago 
 I sat and smoked and watched the crowds go by, 
 And saw the King pass with his shining guards 
 And troops of cavalry." 
 
 His attentive eyes 
 Gleamed with the picture. 
 
 " And when did you last 
 
 See white-walled Athens?" I with idle thought 
 Questioned him. And with slow words he replied - 
 "Twelve years ago: then I became a priest." . . . 
 And spoke no more; but shortly turned away, 
 Murmuring of his tasks that must be done. 
 
 Then paced I silently the platform s bounds; 
 As, on some farthest rampart of the world, 
 Alone, at night, a spirit from the stars 
 Beyond Orion might alight and pace; 
 And looking down upon the sleeping earth 
 From that secluded outpost s icy height, 
 Marvel in silence on the pageant spread 
 Beneath his vision, with the crowded thoughts 
 Of one whose being had therein no part. 
 And for this spirit tenanting my breast 
 Wonder was dominant, labyrinthine moods, 
 And sense not of the kinship of mankind 
 But of Life s strangeness and the infinite forms 
 Of days and destinies. 
 
AT ST. STEPHANOS 23 
 
 The processional stars 
 Moved slow above me. As I tarried still, 
 Out of the cloisters Theodorus came 
 And silently rejoined me; and our steps 
 Sounded together, back and forth the rock. 
 The great hush of the hour, the shroud of dark, 
 Stifling all echoes of departed day, 
 Enfolded us. We were alone with night, 
 Night, that in such a silence seems to drop 
 The measureless beatings of gigantic wings 
 On the frail heart. With such a presence close, 
 Our deep seclusion from the sleeping world, 
 Our slow concordant footfalls, wove a sense 
 Of some strange bond between us as we strode 
 Mute and together. On that barrier-ledge, 
 Raised like an altar to the lifeless stars, 
 A magic greater than old fellowship 
 Drew me to him with whom I seemed alone 
 In the vast dusk: across the trackless seas 
 That sunder man from man, my thought reached out 
 Unto this alien, who for one strange hour 
 Seemed as a brother. 
 
 Something bade me say, 
 After long silence " I could half believe 
 That all the world lay dead beneath our feet, 
 And you and I upon this lonely rock 
 Solely remained." 
 
24 AT ST. STEPHANOS 
 
 " Sometimes not more alone " 
 He said, " than thus, is one who strays afar 
 Circled by minds that have a different birth." 
 And through the darkness his unquiet eyes 
 Seemed bent upon me. 
 
 Well I knew he spoke 
 
 With thought of me, a stranger; but to me 
 An alienage profounder than my own 
 Seemed to encircle him; and to his words 
 I answered, with his keen impassioned face 
 Vivid before my sight. 
 
 " My friend," I said, 
 " For you this pinnacle must be a tomb : 
 You need the sunlands." 
 
 And he understood, 
 
 And flushed, with changing eyes, as though my words 
 Had touched the harp-strings in his breast and waked 
 Unutterable voices. 
 
 " No," he cried, 
 "No land but life!" . . . 
 
 His speech faltered away; 
 And I could feel beneath the burdened words 
 
AT ST. STEPHANOS 25 
 
 An impulse, rare in our cold northern race, 
 
 The longing to reveal to alien eyes 
 
 Things that perhaps could never be revealed 
 
 Save to a stranger, one whose path lay far, 
 
 So far that never any later day 
 
 Of faith turned bitter could bring forth regret 
 
 That he had spoken. 
 
 But no words I said, 
 Being unwilling to invite his speech 
 Unless his heart impelled him; I but drew 
 A little closer, with attentive ear: 
 While ministry of silence told my mood 
 With greater eloquence than mortal tongue 
 Could master, doubtless; and I heard his breath, 
 And tremors seemed to shake him; and at last 
 From subterranean chambers hid from light, 
 Long sealed and voiceless, now in broken words, 
 With many a pause and space for groping thought, 
 Poured forth such speech as from no other man 
 I ever heard, nor like shall hear again. 
 
 " I think that you are one who understands. 
 When our eyes met across the board to-night 
 You looked at me with glance that well might read 
 Something of those dim travails of the mind 
 Which to the Brethren here upon the rock 
 
26 AT ST. STEPHANOS 
 
 Possess no being. Righteous men are these, 
 But peasant-priests, half-kindred to the herds, 
 Ignorant of the strange convulsive powers 
 That may inhabit us. ... 
 
 " My stranger-friend, 
 
 Things long repressed burn on my lips to-night, 
 Born of your look, your voice." . . . 
 
 Gently I said 
 
 " I will devote my heart to understand." 
 And at those words, he spoke as Winter snows 
 In the Spring floods sweep o er the thirsty lands. 
 
 " You find me here, a Brother in the halls 
 Of St. Stephanos; but my birth was far 
 In southern islands, where the Cyclades 
 Lie like a barrier westward from one isle : 
 O isle of brightness I shall not know again, 
 Mykonos, bride of sea-winds and the sea! 
 My home, amid the windmills on the heights, 
 Looked out toward Delos and the western waves 
 Wherein the sun sank down each eventide 
 With hues that were to me song poured from heaven, 
 A wild enchantment, drawing forth my soul 
 In longing for all beauty. On the hills 
 Of her, my rocky island, as a boy 
 
AT ST. STEPHANOS 27 
 
 I walked in vision; and the ancient tales 
 Of Homer, and the legends of the shrine 
 That once was crown of Delos, and the forms 
 And colors and wild odours which my dreams 
 Wove from the sunsets and the changing spray, 
 Wrought in my soul a passion, a desire 
 Past understanding, for exalted deeds 
 And life that should be beautiful, like the Gods! 
 I was a Pagan, with the bards who sang 
 Once from these isles the praises of the fair 
 Golden Apollo. From some headland rock, 
 Looking across the waves, I could have raised 
 My paean, too, of sacrificial joy 
 Unto the deities of sun and sea! 
 
 I scarce remember in what forms I dreamed ; 
 Yet well I know that dreams by night and day 
 Moved where I moved, building a world apart 
 From unregarded casual daily things. 
 I dwelt among those moments, few and crowning, 
 Which chronicle and legend garner up 
 From the lone triumphs of heroic hearts, 
 Time s precious harvest, slowly winnowed forth 
 Out of the lives of thousands who go down 
 Barren of such a radiant grain. All peaks 
 Whence man views life as lord : what Jason saw 
 With the first hope, and at the final goal; 
 
28 AT ST. STEPHANOS 
 
 What Alexander felt when the last gate 
 Of secret Eastern city fell, and kings 
 Knelt at his chariot; what Euripides 
 Knew as the multitude with bated breath 
 Quivered and was dumb to hear Electra speak : 
 Out of such marvelous fragments as these things 
 I wrought my fair mosaic, that served my faith 
 As pattern of the world and of man s life. 
 
 Ah, 1 was happy! but no more content 
 Than ever man is. My enkindled thoughts, 
 Fed upon visions, whispered that afar 
 And yet untasted lay that sunlit world 
 Whereof the pallid moon-dreams of my youth 
 Were but a shadow and a prophecy. 
 Glowing, it called me toward the richer days 
 Of which my hope breathed and the poets sung. 
 Now must the mystery, long viewed afar, 
 Life, Life itself, unbosom unto me 
 Its beautiful meaning. Wherefore did I stay, 
 Tarrying in the porch before the shrine? 
 Nay, I would enter to the inmost hall, 
 To the close presence of that deity 
 Who, though remote, with palpitant glowing touch 
 Had waked divinest madness in my breast, 
 And the dim promise of sharp loveliness, 
 And uttermost longing for the clasp of Life. 
 
AT ST. STEPHANOS 29 
 
 Therefore, obedient to that stirring call 
 Heard in lone hours, filled with exalted thought, 
 I left my rocky island and keen spray 
 Of salty winds, and unto Athens came, 
 There to abide and earn my bread and find 
 The undiscovered marvels of my fate. 
 And can you picture, you, with thoughtful eyes, 
 How in the city fared that dreaming boy, 
 Credulous still of all the golden tales 
 Which from the poets music and the light 
 Of sunset-wests he had distilled to drops 
 Of keener essence? Can your vision pierce 
 The coarse engulfing crowds of teeming men 
 Down to the last deep, where in shrinking doubt, 
 I, child and dreamer, moved, first whelmed by 
 
 power ; 
 
 Then lost, as, by some spell, the pomp and stress 
 Crumbled about me, and I stood alone 
 In a vast desert. Dust, pitiful dust 
 Lay that existence in my shrinking hand. 
 Where was the lofty doom my dreams had sung? 
 Where were the ecstasies and the hours of flame? 
 Bewildered grew the promise of my soul, 
 As the world s business, sordid oft and base, 
 Seethed by me like a nightmare: all men s thoughts 
 Seemed rapt in petty matters which like leaves 
 Floated upon the vortex of the hour 
 
30 AT ST. STEPHANOS 
 
 And then were drowned beneath the on-rushing stream, 
 
 Forgotten and unmemorable. Those hearts 
 
 In whom, methought, long intercourse of life 
 
 Had surely stored some more-revealing sense 
 
 Of what our being meant, and what was good, 
 
 And where the true goal for our striving lay, 
 
 Those, intricately netted, seemed to dwell 
 
 A thousand fathoms deep beneath the tide 
 
 Of fragmentary labors toward no end, 
 
 Like play of madmen. None, of all I saw, 
 
 Felt the great doubts that hem our mortal lot, 
 
 Or looked with wonder toward the tranquil stars 
 
 Or into the far depths of his own soul. 
 
 Unguided conflict, random ebb and flow 
 
 Of days and deeds, confusion of one force 
 
 Smiting against another in its path, 
 
 What could I make of these unreasoned things? 
 
 And to my sense, fevered with strange dismay, 
 
 Men loomed like brutes who in the forest roved, 
 
 Whose history was recorded by gnawed roots 
 
 And trampled grasses, and white bones at last. 
 
 Another race they seemed ; yet as I dwelt 
 There in the town, and labored at my trade 
 Shoulder to shoulder with them, slowly passed 
 That sense of alienage. Into my thought 
 Slowly there entered, gradual bit by bit, 
 
AT ST. STEPHANOS 31 
 
 Some consonance with theirs. By painful steps 
 
 I came to know why toiling men put by 
 
 The visions that had nurtured them in youth. 
 
 I saw the vanity of the rootless joy 
 
 Which youth and beauty foster till the hour 
 
 When weight of burdens kills the fragile bloom. 
 
 The harshness of the actual iron world 
 
 Broke in upon my spirit. I beheld 
 
 Bitter realities as the ruling force 
 
 Upon this pitiful soul of ours, which strains 
 
 Heavenward on frail wings. I saw the dream, 
 
 Woven of all the past s enchanted gold, 
 
 Shattered by those necessities which ride 
 
 With vast material dominance through the realm 
 
 Of spiritual being. I saw earth, sea, 
 
 Time, space, all yield, reluctant, to the toil 
 
 Of man who in that desperate flux and press 
 
 Battles for barely life. Until at last 
 
 I, also, cast all hope and rapture by; 
 
 Acknowledged me as servant of cruel powers, 
 
 A pigmy struggling in a tragic world 
 
 For mere existence: I, who late had thought 
 
 To choose among the destinies of the Gods 
 
 For which should best accord w T ith my desire! 
 
 Thereupon I became as other men, 
 
 Spending my heart upon each worthless task, 
 
 Incurious of the meaning; and, as they, 
 
32 AT ST. STEPHANOS 
 
 No longer scrupulous of little things 
 
 Like careless wrongs, or other lives awry 
 
 By my rough passing: I no longer set 
 
 Patterns of beauty for the weary soul ; 
 
 But as of very need, accepted quite 
 
 The creed that was my fellows , half-resigned 
 
 Unto a world of chaos ultimate. 
 
 So the years passed, as in the city s streets 
 I moved and had my life, where crowded days 
 Stifled all pause for thought. Yet in the Spring 
 Sometimes strange passions would revisit me; 
 And night-long I have lain awake to watch 
 The bright processions of my former dreams 
 Arise again and pitifully lead 
 Their ranks in holy wars to conquer back 
 The soul s lost empire from those tyrant powers 
 Which should have subject station and obey, 
 Not master, life. And lo! one April noon 
 As o er my task I labored, from lone deeps 
 Long buried in me, burst a fierce revolt 
 Against that creature which I had become. 
 I cried This life of mine, this dull, misshaped 
 And vegetable being, shall not be 
 My final sepulcher! I will arise: 
 I will go up into the lofty places 
 Apart from all man s works, and there commune 
 
AT ST. STEPHANOS 33 
 
 With God and mine own soul. I will search out 
 
 By lonely thought some meaning or accord 
 
 Or radiant sanction that may justify 
 
 The ways of life. The void and troubled world 
 
 Will I renounce, to gain in solitude 
 
 What the world gave not, sense of life s design. 
 
 Then fared I toward the mountains of the north, 
 That land behind us yonder, where the wastes 
 Of aught but God s own self are tenantless. 
 And wandering aimless, in the weary mood 
 Of one who finds the glories of the earth 
 Glamouries only, to this spot I came, 
 A far retreat whose name to me was known 
 Long as a legend. When I saw these walls 
 Which from their dizzy height looked calmly down 
 Upon the distant world, beheld the blue 
 Of tranquil heaven around these summits cling, 
 Where no sound broke the silence of the slopes, 
 Lo! this, I felt, was my abiding-place, 
 My spiritual home, where life might be 
 Once more my own and not the multitude s. 
 Thereupon, with glad zeal, I sought the gate, 
 Begging admission to the brotherhood ; 
 Though little holiness was in my soul 
 Save that which God s omniscient tender eyes 
 Might find in the wild longing that was mine 
 
34 AT ST. STEPHANOS 
 
 For something nobler than my days had found. 
 And when my rapt novitiate was past, 
 I with exultant lips assumed the vow 
 Of life-long service, and irrevocably 
 Closed the last portals of the world behind. 
 
 Peace here I sought, a little peace from life, 
 A little time that might pass gently by 
 Afar from the coarse clamors of the world 
 And purposeless confusions. I would trace 
 In silence and seclusion that fine thread 
 On which are strung, like fair or faded flowers 
 Along a garland, the successive days: 
 Which in the city s press become a heap 
 Of crushed disordered blossoms, and conceal 
 The filament that joins them. For meseemed 
 That, as a reveler by cups of wine 
 At last o ercome no longer tastes the grape 
 But madness only so where life is swift 
 And strong and tense and multitudinous 
 Of forms and deeds, there life annulls itself 
 Into confusion ; and the crowded years 
 Are filled with living till no life remains. 
 Hence with great yearning I desired to dwell 
 Apart from these things, in a place of peace 
 Where, from the visions of the sunrise hills 
 And books and musing talk and the low voice 
 
AT ST. STEPHANOS 35 
 
 Of my own soul, I might remould the world 
 Into a pattern beautiful and clear. 
 My hope was high to reconcile at last 
 The harsh disorder of the warring earth 
 With needs and verities that dwelt within. . . . 
 I try to tell you these things but I think 
 I cannot pour their meaning into words 
 Unless you too already somewhat know 
 Whereof I speak. . . . 
 
 Slow passed the tranquil days 
 Of my first years in St. Stephanos walls. 
 Prayer, and long service at the altar-place, 
 And common speech, and silence much alone, 
 Were mine as portion. But contentment dwelt 
 No more with me. Great weariness in its place 
 Became my fellow, and a sense of foiled 
 Inaction haunted me, more hard to bear 
 Than turmoil. For the visions came no more 
 Which once at Myconos had filled my soul; 
 Or if they came, of little worth they seemed 
 To one who had beheld the toiling world 
 And the great pulsing streams which in the streets 
 Of crowded cities meet and part and strain 
 In dim and purgatorial confluence. 
 Somberly I beheld, with alien eyes, 
 My brother-priests serve at the altar-cross, 
 
36 AT ST. STEPHANOS 
 
 And with untroubled worship send their souls 
 
 Straight through the incense to the blissful seat 
 
 Of God the Father. But my lagging thoughts 
 
 Tarried behind upon the strong young heads 
 
 Of the few shepherds who, amid these heights 
 
 Now wandering, knelt at mass within our gates. 
 
 Their troubled lives, their toil, their fears and hopes 
 
 Stood between me and Heaven. Their life was mine, 
 
 Their laboring days were mine. I felt arise 
 
 Like a great tide the sense of fleeting things 
 
 Tenderness, joy, labor and hope and strife, 
 
 All ours a little while, then to be gone; 
 
 But when departed, treasured in the heart 
 
 With clinging light of old remembrances. 
 
 I felt that glow, unutterably sweet, 
 
 Which makes the love of life haunt all our days 
 
 With wonder and desire. My homesick breast 
 
 Longed for the eager city and its stress 
 
 Of meeting man with man : things theirs, but now 
 
 Not mine for evermore. And then, too late, 
 
 In certitude I knew myself one born 
 
 A passionate child of life and not of dreams. 
 
 As here I dwelt through slow unchanging days, 
 This knowledge waxed in me. Gone was the hope, 
 Eternally, I think, of infinite joy 
 Awaiting in some fortunate golden land. 
 
AT ST. STEPHANOS 37 
 
 But the rude fellowship of the eager world 
 
 Called me, and calls me still. I am content 
 
 With quieter thoughts than those which once transformed 
 
 My being, as the sunlight a fair cloud 
 
 Transfuses into wonderful wreaths of gold. 
 
 No more do I desire upon the hills 
 
 To stand at even, and feel through my veins 
 
 Pour wild unutterably stirring breath 
 
 Of harmony with some transcendent lyre 
 
 Singing where sunset faded down the slopes. 
 
 For I have passed the magic of that time 
 
 And youth s unbodied visions. I have seen 
 
 The half-lights of the exquisite morning fade, 
 
 And daylight walk the land. And I have taught 
 
 The baffled spirit to forego its dreams, 
 
 Content within a less imperial space, 
 
 Amid the things that are. For now meseems 
 
 That nothing in the world is wholly fair 
 
 And nothing wholly foul ; but all are blent 
 
 Of a strange stuff, whose mingled dark and bright 
 
 I saw, and still must cherish till I die. 
 
 O youths who stand upon the singing hills, 
 Your bosoms full of singing! Well you know 
 The sacred light of vision, the unrest 
 Of pure desire for some immortal goal! 
 But you have yet to learn the common face 
 
3 8 AT ST. STEPHANOS 
 
 Of life and days and plain realities 
 
 And the slow reconcilements of the heart. 
 
 But I have learned ; and now I long to go. 
 I would return unto the city s strife, 
 And move amid the vast and thrilling crowds, 
 Those wonderful crowds of living, breathing men ; 
 And feel again the wildly stirring sense 
 That every passing form might prove to me 
 A comrade or a brother or a foe, 
 A lover or a well of fierce desire! 
 With unsolved powers each one is eloquent. 
 There in the city moves no single form 
 So mean or lofty that it may not be 
 A shuttle in the dizzying gold-shot web 
 Which, stretching out on all sides round me there, 
 Inscrutably is woven ; and creates, 
 Out of chance looks and errant turns and stops 
 And random meetings and unpurposed words, 
 The infinite woof that is my life and me. 
 That life I cry for! Here I die of dreams. 
 I perish, as a breath along the wastes." 
 
 And I, to whom the tale had been a scroll 
 In a strange language writ, which line by line 
 Revealed dim meaning, could not make reply. 
 But looking down from those monastic walls, 
 That hoary refuge of a thousand years 
 
AT ST. STEPHANOS 39 
 
 Remote upon the precipice of the rocks, 
 Once more the sense of ending Summer crept 
 Out of the night upon me: and once more 
 I seemed as one who looks from a far place 
 Upon a scene wherein he has no part. 
 I viewed, as one beholds a gathered flower, 
 Man s life, and its strange pitifulness; so sweet 
 That memory makes the heart to overflow: 
 So bitter that men turn from it, as turned 
 This soul beside me, to the world of dreams: 
 So fleeting, that the darkness hovers close 
 Even while the seeker pauses to debate 
 The better path, or turns to mourn in vain 
 A choice regretted, and the days go by 
 Bearing what still remains. . . . 
 
 With calmer words 
 Now Theodorus spoke. 
 
 " For I would have 
 A little light, leaping from eye to eye, 
 A little warmth, as hand grasps eager hand 
 In swift adventure at whose every turn 
 Some eager lure awaits: it is not much, 
 But it is everything! Tenderness, joy, 
 Labor and love and strife, all fleeting things, 
 But sweeter than the sharp sweet island wine, 
 And the one solace . . and the one solace! " 
 
40 AT ST. STEPHANOS 
 
 Then without pause for answer, he was gone 
 And the night hid him. To my troubled rest 
 Shortly I went, nor sought his side again, 
 Having no speech to answer the dim tale 
 Which he had uttered, though I think he knew 
 It was not coldness silenced me. 
 
 At dawn 
 
 I rose and forth proceeded on my way 
 Over the mountains. As I turned to look 
 Back for the last time at those gray walls 
 And weathered battlements, my final sight 
 Was Theodorus, in his following eyes 
 That strange tense wistfulness for joy and life, 
 As from the gate he waved me a farewell. 
 
LYRICS 
 
THE GREY RWER 
 
 THE swallows have departed. 
 The harvest moon has come. 
 
 rare, O lyric-hearted, 
 Why are you dumb? 
 
 Your words, that once in summer 
 Glowed like a magic wine, 
 Are frozen. Aye! and dumber 
 Than yours are mine. 
 
 The mists upon the river 
 Drift like ghosts in a dream. 
 
 1 think such greyness never 
 Has hung on the stream. 
 
 I think such greyness never 
 Has brooded over me. 
 Greyly flows the river 
 Down to the sea. 
 
 43 
 
TO THE HARPIES 
 
 YOU who with birch or laurel 
 Are swift to scourge or bless - 
 Silence your foolish quarrel 
 Before her loveliness. 
 
 What though she went a-travel 
 Down paths you do not know? 
 Your words shall not unravel 
 Webs that allured her so. 
 
 Hush now your foolish babble 
 Around her golden head. 
 Shut out the prying rabble. 
 Be happy. She is dead. 
 
 Now give one final kindness 
 That late you dreamed not of 
 Silence, to cloak your blindness 
 Peace, since you know not love. 
 
TO AN OLD FRIEND 
 
 YOU have determined all that life should be ; 
 I think it still an infinite mystery: 
 Therefore we disagree. 
 
 Go, friend, and trouble not our happy past 
 With memory of the parting here at last 
 Amid confusions vast. 
 
 Go and remember me as one astray, 
 If so you will. Aye, if you choose it, pray 
 For my misguided way. 
 
 Perhaps, who knows? from deeps I must explore 
 I shall look back regretful to the shore 
 Where we two walked before. 
 
 Or else, perhaps, across a troubled sea 
 My reckless sail shall push inflexibly 
 Till the west swallows me. 
 
 Then warnings of my doom your children tell. 
 Say that your friend, whose life was launched so well, 
 Went to eternal hell. 
 
 Or will you be more honest ? will you say 
 That in the closing of a stormy day 
 Your friend once sailed away 
 45 
 
46 TO AN OLD FRIEND 
 
 And that mid foam that deafened all replies 
 He passed beyond trie vision of your eyes 
 To luminous western skies? 
 
PORTRAIT OF AN OLD WOMAN 
 
 OHE limps with halting painful pace, 
 ^ Stops, wavers, and creeps on again, 
 Peers up with dim and questioning face 
 Void of desire or doubt or pain. 
 
 Her cheeks hang gray in waxen folds 
 Wherein there stirs no blood at all. 
 A hand like bundled cornstalks holds 
 The tatters of a faded shawl. 
 
 Where was a breast, sunk bones she clasps. 
 A knot jerks where were woman-hips. 
 A ropy throat sends writhing gasps 
 Up to the tight line of her lips. 
 
 Here strong the city s pomp is poured. . . 
 She stands, unhuman, bleak, aghast, 
 An empty temple of the Lord 
 From which the jocund Lord has passed. 
 
 He has builded him another house, 
 Whenceforth his flame, renewed and bright, 
 Shines stark upon these weathered brows 
 Abandoned to the final night. 
 
 47 
 
LINES FOR TWO FUTURISTS 
 
 WHY does all of sharp and new 
 That our modern days can brew 
 Culminate in you? 
 
 This chaotic age s wine 
 You have drunk and now decline 
 Any anodyne. 
 
 On the broken walls you stand, 
 Peering toward some stony land 
 With eye-shading hand. 
 
 Is it lonely as you peer? 
 Do you never miss, in fear, 
 Simple things and dear, 
 
 Half remembered, left behind? 
 Or are backward glances blind 
 Here where the wind 
 
 Round the outposts sweeps and cries - 
 And each distant hearthlight dies 
 To your restless eyes? . . . 
 
 I too stand where you have stood; 
 And the fever fills my blood 
 With your cruel mood. 
 
 48 
 
LINES FOR TWO FUTURISTS 49 
 
 Yet some backward longings press 
 On my heart: yea, I confess 
 My soul s heaviness. 
 
 Me a homesick tremor thrills 
 As I dream how sunlight fills 
 My familiar hills. 
 
 Me the yesterdays still hold 
 Liegeman still unto the old 
 Stories sweetly told. 
 
 Into that profound unknown 
 Where the earthquake forces strown 
 Shake each piled stone 
 
 Look I ; and exultance smites 
 Me with joy; the splintered heights 
 Call me with fierce lights. 
 
 But a piety still dwells 
 In my bones; my spirit knells 
 Solemnly farewells 
 
 To safe halls where I was born 
 To old haunts I leave forlorn 
 For this perilous morn. 
 
50 LINES FOR TWO FUTURISTS 
 
 Yet I come! I cannot stay! 
 Be it bitter night, or day 
 Glorious, your way 
 
 I must tread; and on the walls, 
 Where this flame-swept future calls 
 To fierce miracles, 
 
 Lo, I greet you here! But me 
 Mock not lightly. I come free 
 But with agony. 
 
IN LONELY LANDS 
 
 THUS straying 
 Infinitely delaying 
 
 Turning into the wastes ofttimes aside 
 Borne out to empty sea on the breast of many a tide 
 Seduced by winds of Maying, 
 O yet, beloved and beloveds, bide 
 A little, and with patience overspread 
 My shelterless head 
 
 Which, to a righteous heaven, such target stands 
 As must invite the dread 
 Judgment-pronouncing brands 
 On me, still straying. . . . 
 O you and ye, trust me a little while; 
 Love me a little, touch me with your hands ; 
 Believe a little that I still wander praying 
 In lonely lands. 
 
A VERY OLD SPRING-SONG 
 
 |T AM too old for their wisdom, that is so young. 
 Less than nothing to me are the paths they have set. 
 Shrill in my ears is the song by the Maenads sung 
 When like a storm down the hillsides their speed was 
 
 flung 
 And I am not so foolish I can forget. 
 
 Bosoms shaken and lips that are riots of June 
 Arms wild, knees wild, hair wild, tossed like the spray 
 Mocking the icy dreams of the tranced moon 
 Lifting flaunting laughter, a wanton tune 
 For the wanton winds of the night to ravish away! 
 
 Give me wine ! Give me the rout, and hands 
 Mad to meet mine, arms that are starved for me. 
 Now when Spring comes dancing over the lands, 
 Blue robe streaming slipped from its girdle-bands, 
 Am I a rock, to be blind when all must see? 
 
 Wine! Wine! Wine! and the wine of eyes 
 Lighting to mine, eager to slay me or drown 
 All their will in my deeps, a passion that flies 
 Blindingly past my vision, a tumult that cries 
 " Up to the midnight hills where the stars go down! " 
 
 I am too old for their wisdom ; aye, far too old 
 For what the greybeards mutter beside the fire. 
 
 52 
 
A VERY OLD SPRING-SONG 53 
 
 I remember that lone in the darkness cold 
 
 Earth and silence will soon my wisdom enfold. . . . 
 
 Now will I shout on the hilltops of my desire ! 
 
THE JEWELS OF THE SUN 
 
 GRAVE was your speech ; where the departing year 
 Down slopes to westward smouldered, a dim fear 
 Drew slowly near 
 
 And held you, fear not for your hopes but mine, 
 Through whom the autumn dullness poured sharp wine, 
 A passionate anodyne. 
 
 " To you fresh mysteries bring each day their lure," 
 At last you said. " Would that my heart were sure 
 They can endure! 
 
 " But I mistrust the tides of your unrest. 
 What if at last, having with rebel breast 
 Stormed up the west, 
 
 " The jewels of the setting sun you hold 
 In eager hands, to find the fires grown cold, 
 And you are old ? 
 
 " And bitterness enshrouds your heart with grey, 
 Homesick at last for that fair tranquil day 
 You cast away? " 
 
 I was too drunk with wonder to reply, 
 There where the sunset fired the shattered sky 
 And day went by. 
 
 54 
 
THE JEWELS OF THE SUN 55 
 
 But here where night enwalls my solitude 
 There comes out of the vaults wherein I brood 
 A speaking mood 
 
 And I would now have you forever know 
 I see unduped the path whereon I go 
 To heights or overthrow. 
 
 Aye, mine shall be the jewels of the sun ! 
 But when the splendour of the fight is done 
 And the race run 
 
 Think you I know not of the day to be 
 When all my world shall turn to vanity 
 And life grow black to me? 
 
 Now flight is mine, from azure peak to peak. 
 Soon, soon enough, the pinions shall grow weak 
 And the strength break. 
 
 Soon shall the noonday of my longing set; 
 Soon shall the wings, yes, even the heart, forget. 
 And yet, and yet 
 
 Begrudge me not my moment of desire 
 My fleeting hope that rises fiercely higher 
 Toward the sun s fire. 
 
56 THE JEWELS OF THE SUN 
 
 It too shall pass. Yet of such flights as these 
 Is woven the tissue of the destinies 
 Of all that man now is. 
 
 And out of such his future shall come forth 
 Flights to the sun, the west, the icy north 
 Each of so little worth. 
 
 Yet as I live, these hold my utter trust. 
 I love the one hour when from dying dust 
 Man rises in fierce lust, 
 
 And strikes athwart the sky in wild delight, 
 Athirst for regions far beyond his sight. . . . 
 Then comes the night 
 
 And downward sinks the tired wing, and slow 
 Beats the mad heart that past the sun would go 
 In fatal overthrow. 
 
 Mine too shall come! I, in some haven blest, 
 Shall also in the end sink down oppressed 
 To the predestined rest. 
 
 And other wings shall beat across the blue, 
 And other hearts shall dream their dreams come true, 
 Kindled anew. 
 
THE JEWELS OF THE SUN 57 
 
 But not in me. Life, that is lord of all, 
 Shall have passed by me, passed beyond recall 
 In that late Fall. 
 
 Doubtless my lips shall then unsay things said 
 When all the glory of living flight was shed 
 Around my head. 
 
 And I shall clasp, with weak and thankful heart, 
 Whatever faded blossom there apart 
 Can ease my smart. 
 
 Blot then my name! Divorce me from the past! 
 Mark me as one whom life has used, and cast 
 Into the dust at last! 
 
 And write above my doorway " This is one 
 Who grasped, an hour, the jewels of the sun 
 Whose tale is done," 
 
SNOW TIME 
 
 IS it Summer that you crave 
 Swallows dipping wing 
 Evening light across the wave 
 Or some remoter thing? 
 
 Some report of happier places 
 Golden times and lands 
 New and wonder-laden faces 
 New and eager hands? 
 
 Nay, you know not. . . . But I know 
 Round you cold is furled 
 Like this shroud of trampled snow 
 That smothers up the world 
 
 Where no trust in any Spring 
 Now can heal or save, 
 Nor the icy sunlight bring 
 Swallows o er the wave. 
 
THE THREE SISTERS 
 
 GONE are those three, those sisters rare 
 With wonder-lips and eyes ashine. 
 One was wise and one was fair, 
 And one was mine. 
 
 Ye mourners, weave for the sleeping hair 
 Of only two your ivy vine. 
 For one was wise and one was fair, 
 But one was mine. 
 
 59 
 
TO A CHILD TWENTY YEARS HENCE 
 
 YOU shall remember dimly, 
 Through mists of far-away, 
 Her whom, our lips set grimly, 
 We carried forth today. 
 
 But when, in days hereafter, 
 Unfolding time shall bring 
 Knowledge of love and laughter 
 And trust and triumphing, 
 
 Then from some face the fairest, 
 From some most joyous breast, 
 Garner what there is rarest 
 And happiest and best, 
 
 The youth, the light, the rapture 
 Of eager April grace, 
 And in that sweetness, capture 
 Your mother s far-off face. 
 
 And all the mists shall perish 
 That have between you moved. 
 You shall see her you cherish; 
 And love, as we have loved. 
 
 60 
 
FATHERS AND SONS 
 
 CHILD to whom my loneliness 
 Cries and cries, I know, in vain, 
 Down the years I look and bless; 
 Down the years let my hand press 
 Strong your shoulder. I am fain 
 You should reap from my sown pain 
 Flowers of joy and loveliness, 
 Child I love, and love in vain. 
 
 You will never turn to me 
 As I turn and cry to you. 
 Regions strange and visions new 
 Shall be yours to search and see. 
 Old and alien I shall be. 
 I who love you set you free. 
 Yet recall I cried to you, 
 Child I love so utterly. 
 
 61 
 
/ AM WEARY OF BEING BITTER 
 
 I AM weary of being bitter and weary of being wise, 
 And the armor and the mask of these fall from me, 
 
 after long. 
 
 I would go where the islands sleep, or where the sea- 
 dawns rise, 
 And lose my bitter wisdom in the wisdom of a song. 
 
 There are magics hid in melodies, unknown of the sages. 
 The powers of purest wonder on fragile wings go by. 
 Doubtless out of the silence of dumb preceding ages 
 Song woke the chaos-world, and light swept the sky. 
 
 All that we know is idle ; idle is all we cherish ; 
 Idle the will that takes loads that proclaim it strong. 
 For the knowledge, the strength, the burden, all shall per 
 ish. 
 One thing only endures, one thing only, song. 
 
 62 
 
ELEVEN O CLOCK 
 
 AT last after many wanderings 
 I believe in the true gospel. 
 I will write no line for any man 
 Nor for all men together. 
 For myself, as from myself, 
 Shall my songs have being, 
 As out of chaos 
 The stars and planets 
 
 Emerged, authentic lights of their own life. 
 For myself and from myself 
 Shall my words issue. 
 And if hereafter 
 Any who follows 
 
 Find in the wandering lights and scattered dust 
 Aught eloquent of sunrise or of harvest, 
 He shall be welcome to his sea-drift, 
 His random salvage. 
 
 Yet, it may be, 
 I from my icy bondage, 
 My far seclusion, 
 
 Shall in the end falter and break my vigil, 
 Drawn out to him by love that leaps the walls 
 Of perfect peace. 
 
 63 
 
64 ELEVEN O CLOCK 
 
 But this is weakness! 
 Mine is the living gospel. 
 I will write no more for any man, 
 Aye, not for all men. 
 
THE BIRDCAGE 
 
 O TRAGIC bird! whose bleeding feet, 
 Whose maddened wings dizzily beat 
 Against your cage in agony, 
 Soon, soon to win your liberty! 
 Still you believe that happiness 
 Dwells just beyond the bars you press, 
 That if a sudden miracle 
 Gave your desire, life would be well. 
 The old old dream! The old old lure! 
 The devil plays ; his stakes are sure. 
 With happiness he baits his gin 
 That still mankind shall perish in. 
 And still we trust our hearts could be 
 Blessed by the distant liberty, 
 Blind to the newer agony! . . . 
 The earth will be a frozen coal 
 Before man knows his traitor soul. 
 
 65 
 
AMONG SHADOWS 
 
 IN halls of sleep you wandered by, 
 This time so indistinguishably 
 I cannot remember aught of it 
 Save that I know last night we met. 
 I know it by the cloudy thrill 
 That in my heart is quivering still; 
 And sense of loveliness forgot 
 Teases my fancy out of thought. 
 Though with the night the vision wanes, 
 Its haunting presence still may last 
 As odour of flowers faint remains 
 In halls where Helen s shade has passed. 
 
 66 
 
LIKE HIM WHOSE SPIRIT 
 
 LIKE him whose spirit in the blaze of noon 
 Still keeps the memory of one secret star 
 That in the dusk of a remembered June 
 Thrilled the strange hour with beauty from afar 
 And perilous spells of twilight snare his heart, 
 And wistful moods his common thoughts subdue, 
 And life seethes by him utterly apart 
 Last night I dreamed, today I dream, of you. 
 Gleams downward strike; bright bubbles upward hover 
 Through the charmed air; far sea-winds cool my brow. 
 Invisible lips tell me I shall discover 
 Today a temple, a mystery, a vow. . . . 
 The cycle rounds: only the false seems true. 
 Last night I dreamed, today I dream, of you. 
 
 67 
 
MEETING 
 
 GREY-ROBED Wanderer in sleep . . . Wan 
 derer . . . 
 You, also, move among 
 Those silent halls 
 
 Dim on the shore of the unsailed deep? 
 And your footfalls, yours also, Wanderer, 
 Faint through those twilight corridors have rung? 
 
 Of late my eyes have seen. . . . Wanderer. . . . 
 Amid the shadow s gloom 
 Of that sleep-girdled place 
 
 I should have known such joy could not have been 
 To see your face ; and yet, Wanderer, 
 What hopes seem vain beneath the night in bloom? 
 
 Wearily I awake. . . . Wanderer. . . . 
 Your look of old despair 
 Like a dying star 
 
 In morning vanishes. But for all memories sake, 
 Though you are far, tonight, O Wanderer, 
 Tonight come, though in silence, to the shadows there. . . . 
 
A LOVE LETTER 
 
 NOW looking back across the twenty years, 
 Seeing once more your delicate bended head, 
 Feeling once more the sharp salt of your tears 
 Upon my lips, things that I thought were dead 
 Rise and will speak, speak of the dream we knew, 
 The white hours, the incredible hours, now done. 
 I feel again the magic winds that blew 
 Across our twilights; and I seem alone 
 With you once more, when in the lamplit glow 
 You filled the dusks with terrible melody, 
 Borne on whose flood my spirit seemed to grow 
 Into that greater which I longed to be. 
 And then I see the days that followed after, 
 The dark days, the blind days, when there rang 
 Through our old haunts a shriek of ribald laughter 
 To mock the melodies that late you sang. 
 I see the uncertain gloom, the sudden end, 
 The end of loving, and the madhouse days. 
 You said " I cannot, dare not, O my friend ! " . , 
 Little you knew the parting of our ways! 
 You went, and utterly were vanished thence. 
 I see the shadowy months that after passed 
 And then the years grey with indifference 
 When all I prayed was dying died at last. 
 Until there came an iron callous mood, 
 Scorn of mankind, a blessed icy dumb 
 Contempt for life, like poison in my blood 
 69 
 
70 A LOVE LETTER 
 
 The bitter scoffing brain I have become. 
 Oh love, tonight, led by some trick of fate, 
 Seeing the dream we cowards never proved, 
 There rises in me an immortal hate 
 For you, the only soul that I have loved. 
 
THE OLD MEN S TALE 
 
 (FROM " THE HISTORY OF THE THREE KINGDOMS" BY 
 LO KUAN CHUNG) 
 
 GREEN are the hills as in far times forgotten. 
 But past them flows a river to the eastward 
 That journeys ever, and that changes ever 
 A ceaseless current. 
 
 The gifted and the great have known its windings, 
 And drifted with them past our farthest vision. 
 And good and evil and defeat and conquest 
 
 Down that stream vanish. 
 
 We, the old men, white-haired and full of leisure, 
 Quietly tend our little isle of waters, 
 Spending our days in the calm life of fishers 
 
 With the flood round us. 
 
 We look upon the silent moon of Autumn ; 
 And feel the coolness of the Spring s light breezes; 
 And with a jar of gleeful wine between us 
 
 We meet together; 
 
 And all the past, gone down the eternal river, 
 And all the present, floating on its bosom, 
 Are to us but a pleasant tale remembered, 
 
 Told in the twilight. 
 
CHLOROFORM 
 
 (WRITTEN IN COLLABORATION WITH MARY ALOIS) 
 
 A SICKENING odour, treacherously sweet, 
 Steals through my sense heavily. 
 Above me leans an ominous shape, 
 Fearful, white-robed, hooded and masked in white. 
 The pits of his eyes 
 
 Peer like the port-holes of an armored ship, 
 Merciless, keen, inhuman, dark. 
 The hands alone are of my kindred; 
 Their slender strength, that soon shall press the knife 
 Silver and red, now lingers slowly above me, 
 
 The last link with my human world . . . 
 
 i 
 
 . . . The living daylight 
 Clouds and thickens. 
 
 Flashes of sudden clearness stream before me, and then 
 A menacing wave of darkness 
 Swallows the glow with floods of vast and indeterminate 
 
 grey. 
 
 But in the flashes 
 I see the white form towering, 
 Dim, ominous, 
 
 Like some apostate monk whose will unholy 
 Has renounced God ; and now 
 In this most awful secret laboratory 
 Would wring from matter 
 
 72 
 
CHLOROFORM 73 
 
 Its stark and appalling answer. 
 
 At the gates of a bitter hell he stands, to wrest with eagei 
 
 fierceness 
 
 More of that dark forbidden knowledge 
 Wherefrom his soul draws fervor to deny. 
 
 The clouds have grown thicker; they sway around me 
 Dizzying, terrible, gigantic, pressing in upon me 
 Like a thousand monsters of the deep with formless arms. 
 I cannot push them back, I cannot! 
 From far, far off, a voice I knew long ago 
 Sounds faintly thin and clear. 
 
 Suddenly in a desperate rebellion I strive to answer, 
 I strive to call aloud. 
 But darkness chokes and overcomes me: 
 None may hear my soundless cry. 
 A depth abyssmal opens 
 And receives, enfolds, engulfs me, 
 Wherein to sink at last seems blissful 
 Even though to deeper pain. . . . 
 
 O respite and peace of deliverance! 
 The silence 
 
 Lies over me like a benediction. 
 As in the earth s first pale creation-morn 
 Among winds and waters holy 
 I am borne as I longed to be borne. 
 
74 CHLOROFORM 
 
 I am adrift in the depths of an ocean grey 
 
 Like seaweed, desiring solely 
 
 To drift with the winds and waters; I sway 
 
 Into their vast slow movements; all the shores 
 
 Of being are laved by my tides. 
 
 I am drawn out toward spaces wonderful and holy 
 
 Where peace abides, 
 
 And into golden aeons far away. 
 
 But over me 
 Where I swing slowly 
 Bodiless in the bodiless sea, 
 Very far, 
 
 Oh very far away, 
 Glimmeringly 
 Hangs a ghostly star 
 
 Toward whose pure beam I must float resistlessly. 
 Well do I know its ray! 
 It is the light beyond the worlds of space, 
 By groping sorrowing man yet never known 
 The goal where all men s blind and yearning desire 
 Has vainly longed to go 
 And has not gone : 
 
 Where Eternity has its blue-walled dwelling-place, 
 And the crystal ether opens endlessly 
 To all the recessed corners of the world, 
 Like liquid fire 
 
CHLOROFORM 75 
 
 Pouring a flood through the dimness revealingly; 
 
 Where my soul shall behold, and in lightness of wonder 
 
 rise higher 
 
 Out of the shadow that long ago 
 Around me with mortality was furled. 
 
 I rise where have winds 
 Of the night never flown ; 
 Shaken with rapture 
 Is the vault of desire. 
 The weakness that binds 
 Like a shadow is gone. 
 The bonds of my capture 
 Are sundered with fire! 
 
 This is the hour 
 When the wonders open! 
 The lightning-winged spaces 
 Through which I fly 
 Accept me, a power 
 Whose prisons are broken 
 
 . . . But the wonder wavers 
 The light goes out. 
 
 I am in the void no more ; changes are imminent. 
 Time with a million beating wings 
 Deafens the air in migratory flight 
 
76 CHLOROFORM 
 
 Like the roar of seas and is gone . . . 
 
 And a silence 
 
 Lasts deafeningly. 
 
 In darkness and perfect silence 
 
 I wander groping in my agony, 
 
 Far from the light lost in the upper ether 
 
 Unknown, unknowable, so nearly mine. 
 
 And the ages pass by me, 
 
 Thousands each instant, yet I feel them all 
 
 To the last second of their dragging time. 
 
 Thus have I striven always 
 
 Since the world began. 
 
 And when it dies I still must struggle . . . 
 
 The voice I knew so long ago, like a muffled echo un 
 der the sea 
 Is coming nearer. 
 Strong hands. 
 Grip mine. 
 And words whose tones are warm with some forgotten 
 
 consolation, 
 
 Some unintelligible hope, 
 Drag me upward in horrible mercy; 
 And the cold once-familiar daylight glares into my eyes. 
 
 He stands there, 
 The white apostate monk, 
 
CHLOROFORM 77 
 
 Speaking low lying words to soothe me. 
 
 And I lift my voice out of its vales of agony 
 
 And laugh in his face, 
 
 Mocking him with astonishment of wonder. 
 
 For he has denied ; 
 
 And I have come so near, so near to knowing . . . 
 
 Then as his hand touches me gently, I am drawn up 
 
 from the lonely abysses, 
 
 And suffer him to lead me back into the green valleys of 
 the living. 
 
SWINBURNE, AN ELEGY 
 
 THE autumn dusk, not yearly but eternal, 
 Is haunted by thy voice. 
 
 Who turns his way far from the valleys vernal 
 And by dark choice 
 
 Disturbs those heights which from the low-lying land 
 Rise sheerly toward the heavens, with thee may stand 
 And hear thy thunders down the mountains strown. 
 But none save him who shares thy prophet-sight 
 Shall thence behold what cosmic dawning-light 
 Met thy soul s own. 
 
 II 
 
 Master of music! unmelodious singing 
 
 Must build thy praises now. 
 
 Master of vision! vainly come we, bringing 
 
 Words to endow 
 
 Thy silence, where, beyond our clouded powers, 
 
 The sun-shot glory of resplendent hours 
 
 Invests thee of the Dionysiac flame. 
 
 Yet undissuaded come we, here to make 
 
 Not thine enrichment but our own who wake 
 
 Thy echoing fame. 
 
SWINBURNE, AN ELEGY 79 
 
 111 
 
 Under some turf, I know not where, in slumber 
 Lies all thy mortal part; 
 
 And wintry rains and fallen leaves now cumber 
 That ruined heart. 
 
 Soon shall thy frame, like any common clay, 
 Transformed to wild-flowers, rise to greet the day, 
 Than those which from an oaf spring not more fair. 
 But far from where the wintry rain-drops fall, 
 In many a lighted welcoming festal hall, 
 Thy soul is there. 
 
 IV 
 
 Not o er thy dust I brood, I who have never 
 Looked in thy living eyes. 
 Nor hoarded blossom shall I come to sever 
 Where thy grave lies. 
 
 Let witlings dream, with shallow pride elate, 
 That they approach the presence of the great 
 When at the spot of birth or death they stand. 
 But hearts in whom thy heart lives, though they be 
 By oceans sundered, walk the night with thee 
 In alien land. 
 
8o SWINBURNE, AN ELEGY 
 
 For them, grief speaks not with the tidings spoken 
 That thou art of the deacL 
 No lamp extinguished when the bowl is broken, 
 No music fled 
 
 When the lute crumbles, art thou nor shalt be; 
 But as a great wave, lifted on the sea, 
 Surges triumphant toward the sleeping shore, 
 Thou fallest, in splendor of irradiant rain, 
 To sweep resurgent all the ocean plain 
 Forevermore. 
 
 VI 
 
 The seas of earth with flood-tides filled thy bosom; 
 The sea-winds to thy voice 
 
 Lent power; the Grecian with the English blossom 
 Twined, to rejoice 
 
 Upon thy brow in chaplets of new bloom; 
 And over thee the Celtic mists of doom 
 Hovered to give their magic to thy hand ; 
 And past the moon, where Music dwells alone, 
 She woke, and loved, and left her starry zone 
 At thy command. 
 
SWINBURNE, AN ELEGY 81 
 
 VII 
 
 For thee spake Beauty from the shadowy waters; 
 For thee Earth garlanded 
 
 With loveliness and light her mortal daughters; 
 Toward thee was sped 
 The arrow of swift longing, keen delight, 
 Wonder that pierces, cruel needs that smite, 
 Madness and melody and hope and tears. 
 And these with lights and loveliness illume 
 Thy pages, where rich Summer s faint perfume 
 Outlasts the years. 
 
 VIII 
 
 Outlasts, too well! For of the hearts that know thee 
 Few know or dare to stand 
 
 On thy keen chilling heights; but where below thee 
 Thy lavish hand 
 
 Has scattered brilliant jewels of summer song 
 And flowers of passionate speech, there grope the throng 
 Crying " Behold! this bauble, this is he! " 
 And of their love or hate, the foolish wars 
 Echo up faintly where amid lone stars 
 Thy soul may be. 
 
82 SWINBURNE, AN ELEGY 
 
 IX 
 
 But some, who find in thee a word exceeding 
 
 Even thy powers of speech 
 
 To whom each song, like an oak-leaf crimson, bleeding, 
 
 Fallen, can teach 
 
 Tidings of that high forest whence it came 
 
 Where the wooded mountain-slope in one vast flame 
 
 Burns as the Autumn kindles on its quest 
 
 These rapt diviners gather close to thee : 
 
 Whom now the winter holds in dateless fee 
 
 Sealed of rest. 
 
 Strings never touched before, strange accents chant 
 ing, 
 
 Strange quivering lambent words, 
 A far exalted hope serene or panting 
 Mastering the chords, 
 
 A sweetness fierce and tragic, these were thine, 
 O singing lover of dark Proserpine! 
 O spirit who lit the Maenad hills with song! 
 O Augur bearing aloft thy torch divine, 
 Whose flickering lights bewilder as they shine 
 Down on the throng! 
 
SWINBURNE, AN ELEGY 83 
 
 XI 
 
 Not thy deep glooms, but thine exceeding glory 
 Maketh men blind to thee. 
 For them thou hast no evening fireside story. 
 But to be free 
 
 But to arise, spurning all bonds that fold 
 The spirit of man in fetters forged of old 
 This was the mighty trend of thy desire; 
 Shattering the Gods, teaching the heart to mould 
 No longer idols, but aloft to hold 
 The soul s own fire. 
 
 XII 
 
 Yea, thou didst burst the final gates of capture; 
 And thy strong heart has passed 
 From youth, half-blinded by its golden rapture, 
 Into the vast 
 
 Desolate bleakness of life s iron spaces 
 And there found solace, not in faiths, or faces, 
 Or aught that must endure Time s harsh control. 
 In the wilderness, alone, when skies were cloven, 
 Thou hast thy garment and thy refuge woven 
 From thine own soul. 
 
84 SWINBURNE, AN ELEGY 
 
 XIII 
 
 The faiths and forms of yesteryear are waning, 
 Dropping, like leaves. 
 
 Through the wood sweeps a great wind of complaining 
 As Time bereaves 
 
 Pitiful hearts of all that they thought holy. 
 The icy stars look down on melancholy 
 Shelterless creatures of a pillaged day 
 A day of disillusionment and terror 
 A day that yields no solace for the error 
 It takes away. 
 
 XIV 
 
 Thee with no solace, but with bolder passion 
 The bitter day endowed. 
 
 As battling seas from the frail swimmer fashion 
 At last the proud 
 Indomitable master of their tides 
 Who with exultant power splendidly rides 
 The terrible summit of each whelming wave, 
 So didst thou reap, from fields of wreckage, gain; 
 Harvesting the wild fruit of the bitter main, 
 Strength that shall save. 
 
SWINBURNE, AN ELEGY 85 
 
 XV 
 
 Here where old barks upon new headlands shatter 
 And worlds seem torn apart, 
 Amid the creeds now vain to shield or flatter 
 The mortal heart, 
 
 Where the wild welter of strange knowledge won 
 From grave and engine and the chemic sun 
 Subdues the age to faith in dust and gold, 
 The bardic laurel thou hast dowered with youth, 
 In living witness of the spirit s truth 
 Like prophets old. 
 
 XVI 
 
 Thee shall the future time with joy inherit. 
 Hast thou not sung and said 
 " Save its own light, none leads the mortal spirit, 
 None ever led"? 
 
 Time shall bring many, even as thy steps have trod, 
 Where the soul speaks authentically of God, 
 Sustained by glories strange and strong and new. 
 Yet these most Orphic mysteries of thy heart 
 Only to kindred can thy speech impart; 
 And they are few. 
 
86 SWINBURNE, AN ELEGY 
 
 XVII 
 
 Few men shall love thee, whom fierce powers have 
 
 lifted 
 
 High beyond meed of praise. 
 But as some bark whose seeking sail has drifted 
 Through storm of days, 
 We hail thee, bearing back thy golden flowers 
 Gathered beyond the Western Isles, in bowers 
 That had not seen, till thine, a vessel s wake. 
 And looking on thee from our land-built towers 
 Know that such sea-dawn never can be ours 
 As thou sawest break. 
 
 XVIII 
 
 Now sailest thou dim-lighted, lonelier water. 
 By shores of bitter seas 
 
 Low is thy speech with Ceres ghostly daughter, 
 Whose twined lilies 
 
 Are not more pale than thou, O bard most sweet, 
 Most bitter; for whose brow sedge-crowns were mete 
 And crowns of splendid holly green and red; 
 Who passest from the dust of careless feet 
 To where the sunrise thou hast sought shall greet 
 Thy holy head. 
 
SWINBURNE, AN ELEGY 87 
 
 XIX 
 
 Thou hast followed after him whose hopes were 
 
 greatest, 
 
 That meteor-soul divine; 
 
 Near whom divine I hail thee ! Thou the latest 
 Of the bright line 
 
 Of flame-lipped masters of the spell of song, 
 Enduring in succession proud and long, 
 The banner-bearers in triumphant wars : 
 Latest, and first of that bright line to be, 
 For whom thou also, flame-lipped, spirit-free, 
 Art of the stars. 
 
GROTESQUES 
 
THE GENTLE READER 
 
 6i \T 7HY does the poet choose to sing? 
 * ^ No impulse ever stirred in me 
 The wish to make myself a thing 
 To which all mocking jibes might cling! " 
 Perhaps he sees more than you see. 
 
 " Why should this fool go crying out 
 The secrets of his soul? In steel 
 I case myself, nor care to shout 
 Those things one does not talk about." 
 Perhaps he feels more than you feel. 
 
 " If I had wisdom to impart, 
 I d say the thing, and let it go, 
 Not trifle with a foolish art 
 And make a motley of my heart ! " 
 Perhaps he knows more than you know. 
 
WHY WOMEN HATE ARTISTS 
 
 THANKS, beloved ; here s your pay. 
 Now get you quickly out of the way. 
 For there are many more things to do; 
 And all my pictures can t image you. 
 
 AND ALSO 
 
 Ladies who court me, pray court me with song; 
 I cannot be bothered with anything less. 
 Do me the honor of wearing full-dress 
 
 Trust me to say when you ve worn it too long. 
 
A POETRY PARTY 
 
 FRONTING a Dear Child and an Infamy 
 You sat ; and watched, with dusk-on-the-mountain 
 
 eyes, 
 
 The marching river of the beer go by, 
 Alert in vain for a band-crash of surprise. 
 I also! Dawn, that in respectful way 
 Entered a-liveried, could no lightnings rouse 
 For which I watched ; the calling-card of day 
 Flushed with no guilt your Hebridean brows. 
 Wherefore the Infamy and I went down 
 Into a street of windows high and blind. 
 His face, his tongue, his words, his soul, were brown. 
 But from a window lofty and left behind, 
 Like a silver trumpet over the gutter-dirt, 
 You waved! (I know not what; perhaps a shirt.) 
 
 93 
 
PORTRAIT OF A SPIRITUALLY DISTURBED 
 GENTLEMAN 
 
 O PIECE of garbage rotting on a rug, 
 To what a final ending hast thou come! 
 Art thou predestined fodder of a bug? 
 Shalt thou no more behold thy Dresden home? 
 When green disintegration works its last 
 Ruin, and all thy atoms writhe and start, 
 Shall no frilled-paper memories from the past 
 Drift spectral down the gravy of thy heart? 
 Can the cold grease from off the dirty plate 
 Make thee forget the ice-box of thy prime, 
 And soon, among the refuse-cans, thy fate 
 Blot out the gay fork-music of old time? 
 Ah well ! All music has its awkward flats 
 And after all, there are the alley-cats! 
 
 94 
 
PORTRAIT OF JOHN COPPER POfVYS, ESQ. 
 
 WHEN first the rebel hosts were hurled 
 From heaven, and as they downward sped 
 Flashed by them world on glimmering world 
 Like mileposts on that road of dread, 
 
 One ruined angel by strange chance 
 On earth lit stranded with spent wing. 
 There, when revived, he took his stance 
 In slightly battered triumphing. 
 
 And still he stands; though lightning-riven, 
 More riotous than ere he fell, 
 Upon his brow the lights of heaven 
 Mixed with a fore-gleam out of hell. 
 
 95 
 
TO AN OUTRAGEOUS PERSON 
 
 GOD forgive you, O my friend ! 
 For, be sure, men never will. 
 Their most righteous wrath shall bend 
 Toward you all the strokes of ill. 
 
 You are outcast. Who could bear, 
 Laboring dully, to behold 
 That glad carelessness you wear, 
 Dancing down the sunlight s gold? 
 
 Who, a self-discovered slave, 
 As the burdens on him press, 
 Could but curse you, arrant knave, 
 For your crime of happiness? 
 
 All the dogmas of our life 
 Are confuted by your fling 
 Taking dullness not to wife, 
 But with wonder wantoning. 
 
 All the good and great of earth, 
 Prophesying your bad end, 
 Sourly watch you dance in mirth 
 Up the rainbow, O my friend! 
 
PORTRAIT OF A PORTRAIT PAINTER 
 
 POISED like a nonchalant design 
 Of Cupid, hesitant he stands, 
 With eyes that pucker, measure, shine 
 Brush, palette juggled in his hands. 
 
 He pauses in his pleasant strut 
 Weighs brush aims and with panther-pace 
 Strides up to sweep one purple cut 
 On the blank canvas passive face. 
 
 Backward and forward aim, then leap 
 He showers long gashes on the white. 
 The wounds bleed jewels; rainbows creep 
 In livid splendor forth to light. 
 
 A savage form begins to gleam, 
 Writhing in curious vibrant strife. 
 Like forces of a madness-dream 
 Rises a shape of monstrous life 
 
 Wherein with mordant calm he limns 
 At last stripped bare of mild pretence 
 And casual dominance of his whims 
 His own immortal insolence. 
 
 97 
 
TO ARIOSTO, A NOTABLE CRICKET 
 
 COME drink a merry toast, O! 
 To little Ariosto. 
 
 All Peacocks that in pride may strut 
 The Alley are alluring but 
 A certain sweetness debonair 
 Has dwelling only where our Ar- 
 losto sings his little tunes 
 Of mad and merry mystic runes, 
 Of wine and wizardry and Spring, 
 And many another damned thing. 
 Doubtless the April winds that stir 
 Each grossly human Him or Her, 
 To Ariosto s tiny breast 
 Bear also tidings of unrest. 
 But what a curious kind of art 
 Must ease the burden of his heart ! 
 Like Mordkin, Ruth St. Denis, and 
 The whole Terpsichorean band 
 Whose skill such joyful solace brings 
 It s with his hind legs that he sings! 
 
 How short is life! He soon must hence 
 Vanish. But give him recompense. 
 O hostess kind, pray seek no more 
 To sweep the last crumb from the floor. 
 And prithee spill, my gentle host, O 
 One Bacchic drop for Ariosto. 
 98 
 
THE POLICE GAZETTE 
 
 WHERE drab along the thundering city streets 
 Straggles the crowd in somber dress and mean, 
 In a shop window often have I seen 
 A tiptoe form whose lure each passer greets 
 Some silk-limbed girl whose smile our frowning 
 
 meets 
 
 Some little half-clad comic-opera queen 
 As whitely shimmering as the Cytherene, 
 A playful goddess of the printed sheets. 
 
 Strange light that from this tinseled form pours gold 
 To follow me six footsteps on my way! 
 Strange ugly passers whom this hussy bold 
 Lures with dull lust or chills with dull dismay! 
 Strange world that has denied the gods of old 
 Who thus steal back amongst us in our day! 
 
 99 
 
IN A BAR ROOM 
 
 A CROSS the polished board, wet and ashine, 
 * * Appalling incantations late have passed. 
 For some, the mercy of dull anodyne; 
 For others, hope destined an hour to last. 
 Here has been sold courage to lift the weak 
 That they embrace a great and noble doom. 
 Here some have bought a clue they did not seek 
 Into the wastes of an engulfing gloom. 
 And amorous tears, and high indignant hate, 
 Laughter, desires, passions, and hopes, and rest, 
 The drunkard s sleep, the poet s shout to fate, 
 All from these bottles filled a human breast! 
 Magician of the apron ! Let us see 
 What is that draught you are shaking now for me? 
 
 100 
 
THE NEWEST BELIEVER 
 
 THROUGH his sick brain the shrieking bullet 
 stormed, 
 
 Wrecking the chambers of his spirit s state. 
 The gleam that brightened and the glow that warmed 
 Those arrassed halls sank quenched and desolate. 
 Out of the balefully enfolding mesh, 
 Life he would free from dominance of evil ; 
 And purpose deeper than the weak-willed flesh 
 Bade him renounce the world, the flesh, the devil. 
 And as I looked upon his shattered face 
 Hideously fronting me in that dark room, 
 I saw the Prophets of the Church take place 
 Beside him they who dared the nether gloom 
 For worlds of life or silence far away, 
 So hated they the evil of their day. 
 
 101 
 
THE WICKED TO THE WISE 
 
 " A BRILLIANT mind, gone wrong! "... 
 
 *~** O tell me, ye who throng 
 
 The beehives of the world, grow ye not ever weary of 
 this song? 
 
 " The way our fathers went "... 
 Yes, if our days were spent 
 
 Sod-deep, beside our fathers bones, wise, needless were 
 your argument. 
 
 " The wisdom of the mass "... 
 Thank God, it too shall pass 
 
 Like the breathed film hiding the face grayly within the 
 silvered glass. 
 
 " All s surely for the best!" . . . 
 Aye, so shall be confessed 
 
 By your sons sons, marking where down we smote you 
 as we onward pressed! 
 
 102 
 
SONG OF A VERY SMALL DEVIL 
 
 HE who looks in golden state 
 Down from ramparts of high heaven, 
 Knows he any turn of fate 
 It must be of evil given 
 He perhaps shall wander late 
 Downward through the luminous gate. 
 
 He who makes himself a gay 
 Dear familiar of things evil 
 In some deepest tarn astray 
 Close-companioned of the Devil, 
 He can nowhere turn his way 
 Save up brighter slopes of day. . 
 
 Plight it is, yet clear to see. 
 Hence take solace of your sinning. 
 As ye sink unfathomably, 
 Heaven grows ever easier winning. 
 Therefore ye who saved would be, 
 Come and shake a leg with me! 
 
 103 
 
THISTLES 
 
 THEY blow by the wayside, they march in the 
 wood. 
 " Tell me, for what are these vile weeds good ? " . . . 
 
 Not as a crop for your meadow-land. 
 Not to seize and crush in your hand. 
 
 Not to eat, and not to smell; 
 Nor daisy-like can they fortunes tell. 
 
 Asses may eat, and take no harm 
 Monkeys may hug them with unscathed arm 
 
 But you beware ! how you touch this thing, 
 This amethyst-emerald bloom with a sting. 
 
 And yet strange ! once did I know a man 
 Who watched all day where the thistles ran 
 
 In glorious straggling multitude 
 Out of the border of a wood. 
 
 He watched, enthralled, the whole day through. 
 Only when night hid from his view 
 
 Their purple riot of useless wars, 
 He turned, half-loath, to the kindred stars, 
 
 104 
 
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