THE BELOVED ADVENTURE JOHN HALL WHEELOCK Author of "The Human Fantasy." BOSTON SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY 1 1 i | COPYRIGHT, 1!>1 . SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY Acknowledgment should be made to Scribner s, Harper s Monthly, The Century, The Smart Set, The Forum and The American Magazine for permission to reprint many verses which first appeared in their pages. 580767 CONTENTS si: \ ALONG THE DUNES . MKM< )KIES BY THE PAVILION SLKKl LKSS NIGHT . STORMY DAY jl, MooN -DAWN . . NOON AUTUMN NIGHT . M -KNING-DKIOAM HYMN FROM THK BEACHES . . . . . 13 . . . 1} . . . if, . . . A NIGHT BY THK A SWIM AT SUNSET . AS ... X MOONLIGHT NIGHT THK BOUND OF THE SEA . . . . . . . ^ i POEMS OF PITY THB FANATIC 2 q TO ONE ASLEEP . DECLARED HH WAS ...... > t TO AN "OLD MAIL WOMAN IN Til!-: CAFI-: TO A LITTLE CHILD . SONG AT TWILIGHT . . KvSi HB ."? 1!NIN : : STAI : . : : : . ; ; I MISCELLANEOUS POETRY 4- THI-: LOST LAND JI-STIKI -ATION . Tl "- ND THI-: YOUNG GH:I OANY i"*Ai:Ni,: -- -. THE ABDUC VAMPIRJ ......... _ 51 Rirsic LETT A . M II:.\L\ ; DI8CONT] MKMI;Y ... TIM-: u .\ LI: . . NO , TO A BRIDE . ON THE TOMB OF A L 62 62 63 64 55 65 66 57 CONTENTS PACK TO THE MODERN MAN 57 REBIRTH 58 SORROW AND DAWN 60 THE INSPIRATIONS 60 MEMORIES OF FIRST LOVE 61 A LAST CRY 61 SONGS OF THE WORLDLING 63 LOVE S RESURRECTION 64 THE VOICE OF THE SPRING 65 "THE WAGES OF SIN IS DEATH" .... 66 TO THE AVERAGE MAN 67 EPITAPH 68 CREDO 68 NOW GJ* CRADLE-SONG 70 YOUTH 71 WINTER NIGHT 71 PITILESS BEAUTY ESTHER 73 LIFE 77 MOON-MIST 7S COR CORDIUM 80 A GIRL S EYES 81 A LOVE-SONG 83 APRIL IN NEW ENGLAND *3 MIDNIGHT 84 THE GREAT KINDNESS TO A YOUNG GIRL HEARD SINGING . . . I SICKNESS 91 THE SPIRIT OF LIFE ! 3 THE WAVE OF LIFE ! FOR THEM ALL 95 FIRST LOVE LOVE S LAUC.HTICK 99 FIRST RAPTURE THi: FOREST OF DREAMS 100 LOVE S SORROW 100 r.V THK SEA 1 I KKMONITION 1 AT DUSK 102 SONG 103 I-!!!-: MOON OF SONG I 1 f.oVE AND DEATH LOVE I.ISTKN TO THR OLD WORDS AGAIN 10f> EVENING-PRAYER T 05 LOVE AND THK UNIVERSE 106 BONO 1J ri:\lI/TY 10 SKA -SI ELL, ] 1 TO A WOMAN lOfi MIST I] SKI.K-SURRKNDER JJJ VISTAS 1 : ]]- KNDO 1 NA1>E 11* CONTENTS FACE DEPARTURE AT DAWN ........ 116 A CRY .............. 117 113R NIGHT .......... 118 NMIIT AND MEMORY ........ 119 TO THE EVENING STAR ....... 120 AN EMPTY HOUSE ......... l- O I UK THOUGHT OF HER ........ 122 NH\V LONGING ........... 122 A LAST LETTER .......... 123 LAST WORDS ............ 124 ACROSS THE WORLD ......... 124 SNG KFTFKNS ........... 12. . 1 HANTo.MS ............ 12. r , ILLUSION ............. 126 FAREWELL ............ 126 SONG .............. 127 EPILOGUE ............. 128 NARRATIVE AND DRAMATIC POEMS CORPUS EST DE DEO ......... 131 Till-: DESCENT OF QUEEN ISTAR INTO HADES .... ........ 134 TWILIGHT AND DAWN ........ 139 THE LAST DAYS OF KING DAVIO . . . .141 SEA-VISI .xs ............ 149 THE MOTHER ........... 154 LOVE SONGS VICTORY ............. 159 FLOWERING ............ 160 ;:i: ............. 160 1 >YF AND PAIN .......... 161 TO THE BELOVED ......... 162 !N<; ............ 163 AND THE THOUGHT OF DEATH . . 164 EMPLE <)F THK SOUL ...... K-f, i-nMl LKTION ............ 166 ECHOES .............. 167 KFI < SSKSSK >N ........... 167 LIFI-: i !-:i:suAsivi-: .......... 168 THK KF.Frci-: ........... 169 :N: IN SPRING ......... 170 \NI> PAIN ......... 1T2 SLEEPLES ! ......... 17J - ri: \YKK .......... 17:: SIM UN OW .......... 1T4 INKSS IN SPRING ........ 174 M- MKNTS ............. 17. . IN THK HA IN ......... 17. r \visn ......... ITT HANDS .......... 17* ............. \NCE ............ ISO N I VERSE AND THE BELOVED . . .180 f.TATION ........... 182 : \TF.I > SON/; . 183 CONTENTS A PORTRAIT ............ 187 A K ALLEN ANGEL .......... 188 THE ANGEL RETURNS . . 189 SONG FOR A JIG .......... 190 DISCORDS ......... .191 THE TWO SELVES .......... 192 A GLIMPSE OF HER ......... 193 THE LOST PARADISE . . 194 A DANCE WITH DEATH ....... 1U5 ON AN OLD PICTURE . .196 AN ANGEL IN HELL ......... 197 AN AUGUST NIGHT ......... 11)7 LOVE KNOCKS AT THE DOOR ..... 19!* "FLOWERS FOR LOVE OR DEATH" . . . .200 LOVE IN HELL . . 200 HEAVENWARDS ........... 200 A WOMAN S HANDS ........ 202 MEMORY S TOUCH ......... _":; PKHIND THE MASK ......... 204 T11K DEAD SELF .......... 1^05 THORNS ............. 200 LOVE S CRY ........... LOVE S ANGER ..... .... 207 A SONG .............. 209 A LAST APPEAL .......... L O .i BITTERNESS ............ I lO PARTING ON A BIRTHDAY ....... 211 THTNDKR AND LIGHTNING ...... Ill FIRST NEWS ............ 212 LAST NEWS ............ 114 AT A BEDSIDE . . .211 TO HER ............. 216 FUNERAL CHAUNT ......... 216 LIGHTNING ............ 220 TR A NSKIGr RATION ......... 220 RECOGNITION ..... ESCAPE ............. 222 TRIUMPH ............. 223 SONGS BEYOND DEATH CONFESSION WITH DRA WAI ............ 2 27 I HANTASMIA . . DESOLATION ............ 229 LAST RAPTTRI-: ........... I 1 ::!) MORNING-SLKKP .......... L Ml PHANTOMS ............ L !2 THi: NEW LOVE . . 233 SLATION ........... L ::t SPRING-PRAYER .......... 237 SAI.TTATK >N ............ L :iS TRANSFIGURATION ......... -M!) NIRVANA ............. 241 FAREWKLI .............. 241 HAIL . 242 COME to my heart, come to my song, I will give you the secret, Come, I will give it to you free as the sun or the wind ! I scatter my bounties under the feet of all men, Song was never a chooser of persons. You that have hated, you that have loved me, come I will greet you! Come, I will give you love ! Song has a bosom for all. Not I, but the Song that is over me speaks to you ringing: Think you I, of myself, have made it! Hated have you. or dearly loved, I love you and greet you. O in the buoyance of Song where is there room for hate? I whirl my hair in your face for sheer defiance; Turning thru, on the brows I kiss you. I SKA POEMS Tlir sen is wild and flecked with white, The Junes lean dumb and drear, Something familiar in the night Thrills me a moment here. The darkness and the salt sea s tang, They stab me through and through With ecstasy, the sharp, sweet pang And memory of you. ALONG THE DUNES Tin moonlight makes the dunes seem pale and gray, And the long sen-mist veils their lonely faces. Along the horizon in the clear, cold spaces Seaward, a few stars tremble in the spray Of the flung sea s embraces, And on the dunes still shimmers like a wine The daylight, where the rose of day grows tired. With starlight, and tonight, doomed and inspired, Tlu whit.- sea labors, line upon plunging line, Toward the blind goal desired And all the air is dumb with infinite sound. One house upon the dunes stands dumbly yearning With dull, dark windows toward the unreturning; The fierce, eternal waters all around Leap in the moonlight burning. SEA MEMORIES THESE dunes, these low, flat wastes and solitudes of sand, Old scraps, washed weeds and wrecks that the sea- grass grows through, :*-. . V ::: ./ . . Gai;nt .tynbers and de$d bones that strew this sterile *. : :* : . *: Uanfy-n :. .-. How they recall the dream and memory of you, The silence of your eyes, the trembling of your hand ! Northward and to the south the low clouds line the sea, The bleak and barren dunes lean forward with a pang And sudden sense of you, a flash of memory; Here is the fisher-hut, half tumbled, where you sang That dear, ridiculous song and turned and laughed at me. And all the rolling beach, where when the twilight came We wandered; this gray bluff, now bare, was overgrown With straggling weeds, the dunes reechoed to your name. Through the hot swooning night the shrill cicadas drone Shimmered, the heavy vault hung low with flame on flame. The arbor here is fallm wlu-n- once we sat and heard The chill September wind blow through the star lit roof; B I we your gesture yet, when at some foolish word Impious from my lips, you turned in stern re proof So seriously grave, so dear and so absurd. Ah those evenings vanished, those nights of long ago, Alas where are they fled ! The sea-wind moans, alas . The sad, immortal sea heaves tremulously below And the dunes answer not. The sea-birds wheel and pass. The somber and gray twilight comes solemnly and slow. How often in the night I waited for you here! All. the lifted faee with the white shawl above The sordid, little jokes the shyness and the fear, The confident, brave words and solemn talk of love When in the hollow Vast the early stars grew clear, The kisses and the prayers, O all the words we said. Vows of eternal love all the mad heart could say, The glad enthusiasm and hope of youth, all fled! As a strange man that laughs I look on them to-day My pitiful, old self, a thing apart and dead. Do you remember then one night beside the shore I vowed you all my love! With quiet h,i If -regret, Incredulous and sad, you wagered me before 4 A year had waxed and waned I wholly should forget All the words I whispered, and all the vows I swore. And suddenly the sea was dark and ominous And with you within mine arms seemed dwindled to a ghost, The sorrowful sea-wind grew lonely over us, Filled with a new vague fear I made my desperate boast, Never should this thing be, ah never, never thus ! How you laughed and mocked me, half earnest, half in jest, Challenged me by my boast, if it should really be That all the love were true which I had so confessed, To leap in as I was into the foaming sea; And how at last I did, as high as to my breast! You were not glad at all, but half-surprised I thought. You strove to keep your silence mysterious and wise ; Pity would not let you, we kissed and we forgot; But still I felt it there, deep down behind your eyes, The fear we both divined and yet acknowledged not. Beneath the shading dune we watched the far-off ships Wink friendly lights to us, and you grew grave and still, 5 Leaning against my heart in feigned sleep s eclipse Your eyelids sank, your lips were sad and mute until They curved into a laugh beneath my laughing lips. Ah do you remember that evening dark and dread ! White lightning to the east along the sea-line gleamed ; Sudden with premonition unbearable your head Sank weeping, while you told me the dream that you had dreamed Of how in a strange wood you found me cold and dead. \Veary and fearful, too, I tried my utmost art To calm you, but your fear took heart at no re- Ifef: Till in a passionate hurst we clung there heart on heart. Each with a wordless sense of some great im minent grief. A far-off moving fear, to banish us apart. And hung there heart on heart in impotent dumb pain. Hut now the thunderous wrath had darkened all the sky. ^ e part.-d ah. how often 1 ), the long white lines of rain Dreneh(d us. I wound your cloak alxuit to keep you dry. 1 ne\ ( r saw you more, nor heard your voice again. 6 Vanished, vanished, vanished, all crumbled with the years, All the promise broken and all the dream undone; Even my love of you sealed with so many tears My golden, foolish youth, alas where is it gone ! No voice within replies, no vision reappears. Lo it is autumn now and all our summer passed How many autumns gone the laughter and the flowers ! Along the immense horizon, sepulchral and vast, The roof of the world s tomb, for a few days and hours Memory beats vain wings, and perishes at last. Only the infinite Deep, whereon the sea-bird s wing Sinks wearied, the dark waste of wave on endless wave, Fresh with the boundless breath as cool and soft as Spring, The solemn fields of sea, holy and green and grave, Keep their eternal sleep, nor change in anything. The desert of the sea where no wave lifts a head. Unflecked by any sail, unfurrowed by a prow, With light and shade of cloud grows dark and deep and dread; Across the shadowy waste, half-tremulously, now From twilight far above a shimmering light is shed. Under the heaven of evening cloud beyond cloud afar, With murmurs thronged and winds, and flecked with streaks of white. 7 The somber waters move where sky and cloud-line are, The odor of all the sea is huge within the night; Within her spray hangs drenched the jeweled even ing star. Still the hand of twilight with darkness strokes and stills The somber and immense breast of the swelling sea, And the pale hand of dawn across the darkness spills Her clear and crystal cup of radiant ecstasy ; The white, immaculate waste of morning sobs and thrills! The hurtling crash of foam along her confines hurled Echoes, her voice is loud beyond the morning stream. Tin- sad robe of the sea about tin- planet curled Rustics and shines with night and light, gleam answers gleam And thunder answers thunder along the throne of the world. Autumn is in the air, the windy beach is strewed With storm-wash. (1 weeds and wrecks, and you are far away. All things arc chan-H d and vanish like a changing mood, All things are changed, and pass, and perish in a day, Except the enormous Vast and boundless Solitude. BY THE PAVILION THE beach was silent in the night, Covered with mist and gray. The sea-dunes under the moonlight night Stretched far away. From where the grotesque pavilion stood There came a clapping of hands, From where the grotesque pavilion stood Beside the sands. A tired old accordion Struck up a sudden tune The sound of a squeaky accordion Under the moon. With a gay air the player played The song "Sweet Annie Moore," The feet of the player beat, as he played, The wooden floor. And to the tawdry, pathetic tune A murmur of voices sang With dancing and laughter the panting tune Echoed and rang. A sound of glad, old memories The quiet music had Old human hopes and memories, Half gay, half sad. 9 So that, as singing the dancers danced And the thin music sighed, My IK art It aped up in my breast and danced, And my heart cried. For the pavilion and the weak song Under the starlight seemed Like something known in a dream, and the song Like a song dreamed. And by the shining September sea I heard in the squalid sound Something more great than the night or the sea Reaching around, Tlu love that links all men together, Divided by waves and wars Tin sorrow of all hearts beating together Under the stars. SLEEPLESS NIGHT OrT-ii>K the summer earth lies hot and white. Through the twin windows of the sultry room Great ( -hits of darkness and deep vistas loom, And starlit leafage in the breathless night. And always the va^ue sea along the coast Makes moan deliberately with ponderous breath. The world seems old and tired unto death, Beneath the sleepless and the starry host. 10 O now, for the first time, I feel the weight Of earth s mortality, the bitter bliss Lying against the lips of life the kiss That cloys me, and the heavy yoke of Fate. Till patient dawn along the lonely rim Glimmers up sadly, and the stars retire Veiling their eyes before the radiant Fire, And all the world grows windy, bleak and dim. The hopelessness, the utter, utter pain Of earth s dear common sorrow breaks my heart. I bow myself in reverence apart And take with tears the insatiate lips again. STORMY DAY DAY makes white the beaches, The long, flat, sandy reaches Shimmer and shine. Northward the dunes stand crowded, The sky leans cold and clouded Along the line. The sea-wind, wild and veering, Dips on the waters steering The waves that roam, His prow plunges and burrows And the immaculate furrows Break into foam. 11 From heaven to bellowing heaven The Mast of God is driven On waste and wave; The billows turning and flashing Leap upward together clashing, The waters rave. The fisher-hut here lies tumbled, Creaking and wrenched and crumbled With t!ir wind that strains. The roof of the old pavilion V ;rl>y. shines washed vermilion From the autumn rains. Nature is here in fashion Wild, and has no compassion Toward hearts that stir, Storms and sea-winds above her She knows not me, her lover Is nought to her. All of the dreams that fill me, Stir and delight and thrill me She scorns at last. All that my heart would utter. Aghast, sinks wings that flutter Before her blast. From the heaven to the heaven opposing, From the dawn to the night unclosing, From deep to height, 12 On the wide waste unbounded No horn or gong is sounded, No sail is white. Cruel and wild and shameless Flow the fierce waters tameless, The wind that streams; The sea-bird rising on their motion Screams, and the thunders of the ocean Answer his screams. MOON-DAWN ALONG the somber east the flower of Night full blown A sad and sacred perfume breathes, and the heavy Vast The huge odor of the sea fills with a sense unknown Of mystery and sleep. Dim twilight hangs aghast, With one pale trembling star, unlit from zone to zone. Bitter and sharp and sweet, stern as all things that are. - v y The odor of life is here, wet sand and rank sea weed. The waters, clear and cold, make music from afar Along the low, flat sky recede, recede, recede The unwinged wastes of wave beyond the evening star. 13 But lo from out tin- darkness now, from the clouds unfurled A sudden sword of moonlight strikes on sea and land. Odor and sound and light mingle, a breath is whirled Ecstatic through all things, that feel the vibrant hand, Holy, harmonious God upon the strings of the world! Loveliness ! O Light ! God ! O seraphic Breath ! Radiant Supreme ! For this one moment now 1 thank Thee, thank Thee, thank Thee; I bless Thee from beneath I thank Thee I cannot say I cannot tell Thee how ! O Beauty, thou atonest for all things, even death! NOON i t THK floors of the sea Purple .-UK! l>la/inr and blue to tin- eastward lir. The dune -s to the lea With pale, green grass curve close against the .sky; Ecstasy Thrills through me like a sigh ! My soul cries aloud, In tin he.-ivrn above heaven circling, steep beyond steep. The wa\-s in a crowd Shimmer and huddle drowsily, shimmer and sleep. The shadow of a cloud Moves, like a ghost, upon the Deep. 14 AUTUMN NIGHT THE sea is out of breath, her waves are wroth, Along the dunes I hear them far away ; Against the barriers of the banished day Night flutters like a vast, ungainly moth. Around my casement the slow twilight crawls. My head sinks down upon the table here One flickering, flaring candle burning near Throws shadows on the floor and on the walls, And the two windows shine out in the gloom Like clear-cut mirrors. With the August night A gradual peace subdues me, pure and white, A holy quiet brooding through the room. It is as if into a somber deep My body, drunk with death, sank drowned and lost I send my soul forth dimly, like a ghost, Down the long fields and meadows half-asleep. Autumn is old and sad, her slumberous noises Through the shrill starry hours drowse and drone, All the long evening in a monotone Up through the window creep her myriad voices. Now that the tumult and the aching pain Of earth s dear heart has dwindled into rest, I, that long ages slept within her breast, Sink wearied back into her arms again. 15 MORNING-DREAM THK moon has set behind the sail, the wind of morn ing blows, Like a perfume from the east, or like a breath upon the wave, Along the east still flowers pale the everlasting rose, And all the stars of night are drowned within their watery grave. The Deep is white and chilly like soft moonlight through a cloud. As the odor of deep music, that still dying never dies, Is the odor of your hair through which your darling head is bowed, And the morning on the waters is reflected in your ryes. Look up, sweet love, and listen to the waters as they rhyme Alas whit was that angry voice that thundered on the Deep! The voice of Death behind us where the sea-waves chime and chime, As voices sound that echo through the silences of sleep. 16 Is it a dream I dream with you of something that is passed ? O love, the shining coldness of the morning blows through me, While we penetrate, with prow that cuts the waters vague and vast, The hyacinthine odors of the fresh and dawnlit sea ! A HYMN FROM THE BEACHES BETWEEN dune and dune The sea shimmers bright With radiant noon And ponderous light. Resplendent and vast It reaches away, The waves shine aghast At the spears of day. In the flame of the firmament All has gone mad For delight of his element I am glad ! The winds and the sea, The grass and the sands I drink into me 1 reach forth my hands. 17 Al><>ve me and under I draw with each breath, Of living, the wonder, The glory of death. The waves from the plain Of the Deep, the dumb sod, Cry out for the pain Of unbearable God. God, wherever, Whoever Thou art, 1 thank Thee forever With all of my heart! For force of sheer love I fall down at Thy feet ! I feel Thee above, I bless Thee and greet! For this that I see, For all things that are, Whatrver they be, I thank Thee afar. I.ct us /ill cry in choir. While wild with delight. White hymns to Thy Fin- Bright Godhead of light! 18 Let a holy and thunderous Harmony roll Over and under us, Soul unto soul! O steadfast and In the wave and the sod ! O holy and high! O Father and God! Let all that was ever On earth or the sea Make music forever And ever to Thee ! SEPTEMBER BY THE SEA THE melancholy mood of bleak September Fills the forsaken beach here by the sea. The gray pavilion stares out wearily The old, wrenched seats and railings half remember Their summer gayety. So desolate so windy so forsaken A certain homesickness blows on the air. The flagless pole seems sorrowful and bare; The wind pierces my breast enough to awaken The memories sleeping there. 19 Before his touch the cold sea shines and shivers, The fallen arbor under which I sit Sheds all its wrinkled leafage bit by bit; Through every leaf his breath rustles and quivers, Shaking and stirring it, And dips upon the ruffled waters foaming. In all this desolate waste of dying day The sand lies bare they are all gone away, But one did woman in a blue shawl roaming Tiie beach windv and gray. No other life there is. no other motion, Only the lonely wind blows on and on, Only in a half-dream I dream upon Tlit eyes of one I loved, here by the ocean, many autumns gone, by tliese buildings, by these rolling beaches; The ghosts of many irarish summer days Seem now to haunt them, from the westward blaze Of the low sun a red beam slants and reaches The windows with its ra\ s. g t!i. in a dull liirht through the barred slmtt-rs. The bathing-ropes drift on the waves that stir When- the iriy crowds of lau^liinj; bathers \\rre. Tin- beach, listening to a tent-flap that flutters. Grows dark and drearier. 20 They are all gone, they will return ah never Summer and joy and the old love of you! The old woman there gathers her shawl of blue About her, as if she were going away forever, And I must follow, too. ECSTASY THE sea-wind wails and raves And dips upon the sea, The choral hearts of the waves Dissolve for ecstasy. And lo from deep to height Melodiousness profound, When odor, sound and light Intermingle and sound ! A flash of the beautiful strength, Holy, harmonious God Sways the waters at length, Resonant under His rod. All at His breath from above Resounds, blown through and through. O God for utter love I, too, cry out, I, too ! 21 A NIGHT BY THE SEA A SEA SONG \VHKN the low murmur of the morning s laughter, Rippling the waves, makes music in my ears I dream on vanished things and things here-after ; So near is laughter to divine, swret tears. When in the dawn the last star disappears And dream on dream withdraws following after My heart leaps up with laughter in my ears; So near is grief to sorrowful, sweet laughter. : the wind calls and the waves follow after And dune on dune shimmers and re-appears I dare not listen to voiir quiet laughter; So near is laughter to divine, sweet tears. A SWIM AT STNSET Tin: Ii- iv ii dp- us her stars, and far under the Deep Tirelessly, wave on wave, labors, where the sun I.- ft the rim burning, and the lapsing waves one bv one Subside on the hori/on, or swell along the windy surrp irlit sunset, exultant, and undulating leap Forward on the prone sea s breast. () visited of none, 22 Here beauty broods, where a God, his work being done, Has slowly withdrawn, like a sad voice fallen on sleep ! Now is my body, all feverish, thirsty for the sea. Now let my sorrow slip like a robe from my side. Stark, I run to the beauty, to the dark embrace. O hide me, cover me up, take pity on me Infinite waters ! Through the huddling of tfie waters I glide Seaward forever, nor ever turn backward my face. VISTAS WIIKX the long winds are come sorrowing with September Over the shining sea that moves in a far-off place, Over the cold sea-dunes, out of the sunlit space, Bowing the meadow-grass, I remember, I remember, All the vanished things, and all the old strange days, The piteous childhood heart, the visions long a<n>. The murmur of deep waters where the cool winds blow ; I will follow them calling, down the autumnal ways. 23 When the old years fade into the woods of September: Tin- \ ( >ice of the wind s moan, crying, "You may not go," The voice of the wave s sob, crying, "You cannot know." The childhood heart crying, "I remember, I re member!" MOONLIGHT NIGHT An, though I were a ghost, To-night I should fare forth under the host Of tin- immaculate stars To seek you. Though beyond the utmost bars Of the world s bourne you won-. Though hid beyond the Morning s flaming hair And the l>owed Twilight s head On Mich a night, though 1 were doomed and dead, I should arise, alas, And seek for you, between the dewy grass And the pale, marble moon Wandering, for sake of that remembered June. The inviolate fields of space Should know my spirit hungering for your I I lains where no leafage yields St ant shadow; though the radiant moonlit fields And meadows half-asleep 1 should go gliding, and on the starrv Deep. M\ cerements drenched with dew, With the immense, clear winds blown through and through, 24- Star beyond burning star And mile on moonlit mile of waves afar, Drift like a cloud. Perverse, Through all the impersonal and void universe Still would I seek that refuge, which is you. Ah, and when I should come To one low window where, in dreams and dumb, You leaned for a short space, Feeling the nigfatwind cool upon your face And the cold moonlight clear So human and so selfish and so dear, So careless and so strong! After all the long years and hours long Of bodiless dead things, Would not my soul yearn upward to the springs Of your sweet flesh, and all The love within me cling to you and call, Laying for the old sake Against your lips poor ghostly lips that ache And on your forehead lay A somber kiss, from one far, far away! THE SOUND OF THE SEA ALWAYS here where I sleep I hear the sound of the sea, Rolling along the dunes, along the desolate places, Full of a memory vague of dreams and remembered faces. Always here where I sleep I hear the sound of the sea. 25 So have I heard it sound for twenty summers or more, Roaring up through the meadows between the illuminate houses, Up through tin starry fields where the black herd sleepily browses. So have I heard it sound for twenty summers or more. Ever that sound it has, always, whenever I hear it. Sometimes it makes me happy, remembering days that were glad And full of the breath of June, sometimes it makes me sad l.\tr that sound it has, always, whenever I hear it. Under quivering stars and stars that were clouded and scattered, All through my moments of joy and pain, of sleep ing and dreaming, Always that quirt murmur sorrowfully was stream ing, t ndrr quivrring stars and stars that were clouded and scattered. Out of that somber voice swept on the wings of Time, Shall I not, bending down from the starrv tn His of hraven, Look on this empty room, these meadows shining and even Out of that somber voice swept on the wings of Time ! 26 "O it is still unchanged, all that I loved and knew The sound of the sea, the dunes, the house where once I lay sleeping, The room that bounded my love, my laughter and all my weeping, O it is still unchanged, all that I loved and knew." Beyond what glittering stars and in what ultimate regions Drifted along with the night, shall I look back and ponder On the forgotten sound, the earth, and the ancient wonder Beyond what glittering stars and in what ultimate regions ! II POEMS OF PITY In the morning tvith scorn I looked out from my tower of dreams on the world, At noon I went down amotn/ men. fl Jien dark n-as the trrst and the wings of the tWtUgkl "were furled I went up to mi/ tower again Ilumhli/, with holier dreams, made grave hi/ (fie pain of the world. 29 THE FANATIC You call me mad, and if I am It was a God that made me so His fiery truth within my heart Has burnt its life out long ago. You, comrade, laughing down the street, And you with wearier eyes, alas I have a message for you each I catch your garments as you pass. O listen to me let me speak! This thing I know, and truly know: Through love for one another, love We must be saved, and only so. TO ONE ASLEEP ()i T-IDK the tliund. rs of the city fade, You too at last, lapped in the great release, Lean hark shut lids; slowly all sounds decrease-. 1 In mystery of sleep makes me afraid. Are these the arms that alxnit my heart were laid, Are tlusr the lips that clung, the fingers these! So deep a division the disdainful peace Of temporal death between us two has made. 30 Even as Death, into some world above me He has called you up beyond my utmost IOM . O sweet, where are you, alas where are you fled ! Yet will I not call you back again to love me, Nor waken you from that high peace, above These little fears, these sorrows uncomforted. LOVE LOVE, plain and general as our daily bread, In all men dwells; there is no heart so dead, There is no breast so pitiless but love Has there some little dwelling, the white dove Hallows with hovering wings all hearts alive. Over all souls that sicken, or that survive, Equally over the sordid and the sublime, The starriest beauty and the loathliest crime His healing shadow falls holy and grave. All tawdry and all common human tilings Smile up bravely under the yearning wings, So tremulous and so tentative to save. There is no villain and no petty knave, There is no face so barren, or so vile. But has been glorified some little while By the clear light reflect 1 from Love s eyes And from no face that glory wholly dies: Not easily stars sink from tlirir abode Where they have whirled in the eternal skies, Nor the soul dustward that lias been with God. SI I < ) \0. 42, WHO DECLARED HE WAS THE CHRIST Now in the streets the cl-mgor and the riot l ade dimlv of} like murmurings half aloud. Through the barred windows the long shadows crowd. In the asylum alcove here deep quiet Hangs like a heavy cloud. Your h -ad. face downward, in the bed lies sunken, Your thin clenched hand shows sorrowful and white; Sad brother, in the melancholy light. Like one who has wrestled with an angel, drunken You sink into the night. Lo in the Void the irradiate eyes grow holy, Kqually over the sordid and the sublime, The starriest beauty and the loathliest crime, The healing shadow of night sinks downward slowly. The radiant planets climb, iim; an equal glory on all creatrd. l ..-ieh from his separate pain finds separate peace; you. too. now regain a lost r i the liere- rapt ire your spirit has consr.r I<<1. 1 \ en your deep disease, Of baleful days and moon-wild ri to :s \ision Seraphic suns shadows of crawling fears And that high dream even madder than your t Your unshakable faith, flawless through the derivon And mockery of your pe rs. 32 Lean back your head, sleep, let their shallow jeering Die of itself, that are too vain to weep! What know they of your mysteries dumb and deep, The inner, triumphant tongues beyond all hearing? Lean back your head and sleep. Yea, it is hard, knowing yourself the Master, Even the Christ to the new world reborn, Through the long ward to trail in robes forlorn. Yea, it is hard, knowing yourself the Master, To endure the incredulous scorn Of every gibbering mouth. The immortal Mother, Sad friend, has led you on with no fostering hand And set you in that melancholy band Whose desolate eyes speak weariness. O brother! Could you but understand With what new mystery I bend above you, Seeing you helpless, all your grief laid bare The uncrowned Christ fallen and helpless there What new, swift pity forces me to love you, I What love wild as despair! I, I at least, acknowledge you, and kneeling One moment, touch your garment s fold again Reverent, and with no sense of malice thru ; Love, in your face to me the Christ revealing, A dreamer among men. S3 TO AN "OLD MAID" LOM:. like the itftfl and flowers, That fades in season due Shall, likr the stars and flowers, Somewhere come back to you. The morning-stars that pale When the gray night grows old, Night, when the day grows pale, Gives back a thousandfold. For each last flower on earth The Spring shall bring back two, And love you lost on earth Somewhere shall come to you. THE WOMAN IN THE CAFfi WITHIN the corner of a dim cafe A painted woman sat with lips of pain. The heat and noontide of the sultry day Heat on the stone outside and glanced again. Like rays of fiery rain. H. r hand wa- at her chin, her sullen eyes Looked fixedly into the da//led street. And the shrill hum within of clustering flies Mixed with tin- weary shuttling sound of feet Outside, in the pale heat. 34 The chair of her companion for a space Stood empty, in a rapt and dreaming mood Curved the coarse lines about her mournful face, Of petty cares and questionings withstood, And murdered maidenhood. And in my heart I heard as in a dream The warning of the prophets and the priests, And ominous wrath of the outraged Supreme, Echoes from Nineveh gone down in feasts, And the struggle up from the beasts. And all the holy dreams whereby men live, And in my soul the cry of all the creeds, And the sad Gods, that perish and forgive, Rang, and a deeper cry that all exceeds Of the human heart that bleeds. O sacred heart O dauntless and alone ! How have you dragged your godhead in the dust ! O soul of Man what is this you have done ! Rise, smite with love the tragic head of lust, () somber and august ! wonderful and pitiable and sad! For the first time since first my days began 1 feel the aching pity, blind and mad, To gather to my heart to clasp and span The whole sad heart of man ! 35 Hut while thes,. voices through my spirit sped A strange transfigurat ion for a space Made lirr eyes quiet, and a sorrow spread About her lips, the pain of all the race x -de holy in her face, With a new look, half woman and half girl. So that I s -w her as a little child Komping with tangled tresses all a-curl ; And now, as one from a deep dream beguiled, Not knowing it, she smiled. Mother of many little ghosts! Dear bride Of every nann l.^s stranger! () sad lr When- many a little unborn soul lias died. U l:at joyous thought, what memory, what jest Thus stirred your deep unrest! Was it perhaps the story that some friend Told you. beneath the glances of four eyes, Some vision of the lonir day-journey s end. Pathetic joy at the near-promised prize For your sad merchandise? Poor little cheated spirit was it these, Or a new thought of some diviner goal. Some hope more splendid than the body s ease, The thunder of d.-i-p longings such as roll Through every human soul ? 36 Alas, how like we are, all men, alas Bared to the soul. O if we all but knew The kindred soul behind each face we pass, How Love would cry and run to greet it, too, Even as mine to you ! Seeing you then devoid of wile and lure, Pathetic, silent, stripped of every art; No more the careless, hollow paramour, But something half-maternal and apart, The tired woman s heart. We are not so divided as we seem, Neath petty hates, the war of "mine and thine," Broods a vast, common sorrow, the vague dream And holy pain of life, a branded sign On all men s souls divine, The soul of Man within the souls of men . For all we share the triumph and the doom, All we rose from the dust, and all again Hasten, through love and longing, to the tomb. Our lips meet in the gloom. Poor, helpless heart, bedraggled in the dust, How little have they loved you, little known. Who crucified you on the cross of Lust And made of you a horror to atone Some vileness of their own ! 87 Yrt you are human yes, and holy still; Within you. violated, still there stri\es Tin- hope of ,-ill the race. the vital will. The motht T-love (the source of all that lives,) That sorrows and forgives. Tin- will that moves the stars within the Deeps, The force In-hind the city s roar and din Within your body, like an angel, sleeps; Nor may Man mar with wantonness and sin What God has breathed therein. the tawdry and half-comic clothes, The gay cafe and garish lights appear Like tragic irony, the snowy rose Against your breast, so virginal and clear. Is like a mockery. dear. O Love, what word have you to say for this! O patient I.ove. barred round with many bars! O I.ove each day betrayed with the Judas kiss ! O to cateh up and clasp all hurts and sears, All grief under the stars! To suffer for the good of all that liv. s And in one s body feel the hitter spear, The aching palms, the spirit that forums. The thorny forehead lifted hot and sear In the starry twilight clear! 38 To be destroyed, torn down and sacrificed For the old doom that all the stars rehear To drain the somber ecstasy of a Christ O to crush out with arms of love the curse Of the vast universe! The cold indifference of man to man. The lovelessness, the war of class with class, The hatred, which has made since Time began Such creatures as yourself to come to pass, Poor heart, alas, alas ! Not in new laws and creeds we put our trust, But in the triumph and the truth of love s ok thoughts or things shall raise man from the dust, But love for one another, earthly love, Divine and common love. Now the long streets and squalid alleys seem To fade away and leave me all alone. Behind them I discern the immortal Dream, The Love that moulded car-track, street and stone 3 And in all veins makes moan. The holy pain of life, the vast desire And common human sorrow seize my heart, I rise with rapture, as on wings of fire, Into the heaven of heavens, far apart, Lifted, with singing heart, 39 Af t.-r the tireless f, et of Love, that climbing Star beyond star into the dix/iest height And loneliest marge still echo upward chiming, Star beyond star, into the infinite night, Still higher toward the light. Think not, dear sordid heart, I condescend From this high dream with you to sympathize. Nay rather from the heaven of life you bend Downward to me, through you into the skies Of love, through you, I rise. may this rapture soar like a swift prayer To the great Love that broods behind all fate, For all vain human sorrow everywhere, To crush out of the world this curse of hate That makes men desolate! 1 MI drowned out amid the eternal Wonder, Caught up and rapt into a fiery place My single self, in the great Self gone under, Falters, but through me pleads one burning space The voice of the whole race! TO A LITTLE CHILD IN the cold eastern zone The twilit stars hang low, Come little bird, my own Why wilt tliou linger so; I I- ivcn rings with the starry chime. It is the twilight time. 40 Heaven looks into the sea With all her starry eyes, Each slumbering dune and tree Pale in the starlight lies; No sound in the world is heard, Come little tired bird ! Why wilt thou turn away And hide thine eyes in fright, Art thou so fond of day ! Art thou afraid of night! The flowers hang their heads. The birds are in their beds. Night sinks upon the Deep, Upon the vasty stream., In the wide fields of sleep Are many flowers of dream; No sound in the world is heard, Come little tired bird! SONG AT TWILIGHT CLOSE to the highest, loneliest face of heaven The flaming candles of the stars are pressed, Now are you tired because the day is done. And twilight heaves more softly in your breast, Grown weary of the sun. 41 The eyelids of tin- world droop full and drowsy, But the irradiate eyes shine far above her. Tin tumult and the ancient struggles cease; The war> that Beauty wages on her lover Dwindle into a peace. Stretch out your arms along the surging twilight. Lean back your lit ad and sigh along the Deep; Here on the misty marge of life and death There is no turmoil. Silence falls asleep Between your breath and breath. The helplessness of sleep fills me with pity, Even more than death, more lovable, more dear. What eare have you for all things passed and done, Mournful or glad! Here in the twilight here They vanish and are gone. All passionate things and all things great and joyous, r.M-n they, too, must tin- and fade a\\av. the heart grows dumb and cannot weep But leaning on the ebbed and fallen day Sleeps, and is glad of sleep. For in the end all things are grave and holv, And Love, whose thought was laughter and no other, Above her lips with tears and kisses glad Shine out the eyes of the undaunted mother, Prophetical and sad. 42 TO THE MORNING-STAR THERE is a tear upon your lashes, star ! Is it for all humanity s old pain, Her sorrows and her longings vast and vnin,- O holy and seraphic morning-star, Is it for all her longings vast and vain ! Open your lids and close them once again In the immortal heavens where you are, And let it fall upon us from afar, A tear of pity from beyond all pain, O holy and seraphic morning-star ! ENVOI THE poet is one whose pity is ever new, And whose hands are wistful to mould vague beauty and make Into glad beauty all things unbeautiful too, The world-heart yearns, the woods and the waters ache. All scorned and pitiable things, all futile things Lift up their heads and look. Look up, be not sad ! His hand is out, and the scorned and the futile sings With a grave, still voice and a voice that is almost glad. Ill MISCKU.AXEOUS The old familiar Beauty Caressed by the world s dead hands, Beauty, so old and wean/, Beloved of a thousand lovers, ll orn U-///I a thousand kisses, Surprising l>ene/icent holy Comes to us all in the end. POETRY SI.KKIMNG, again I felt it The terrible Loveliness Draw near, the rhythmical body Exuberant with excess. The august and insolent beauty With splendor of regal strides Moved, the magnificent bosom Where heave the immortal tides! Upon my face I felt it Again, the gorgeous hair, The beautiful, stately stature Bown down across me there. THE LOST LAND TUMULT is in the west, and wild voiees calling, The old, barbaric voices calling that will not rest; Therefore my heart is glad, I am strong, I shout with the west And follow with tears and laughter where the leaves are falling. 46 The dun cattle roam where the wind bows down the grass, The swallows leap on the wind, and shift and follow and stray Over the long dimes to the land of the heart far away Calling: and in my veins a voice cries out where thrv pass. I remember the house the sorrow long ago In the first widening dawn of the world, the quiet face Lost ere the first sea sang, or the wind, the lonely place Beyond the white-capped sea, where the winds and waters go. Therefore I, too, am glad, I shout aloud with the earth, I am made one with her winds and waves, and in my breast The fierce elemental voices crying down the west The lust for some far land and meadows lost at birth! I will laugh on the hills, shout where the days depart ! Death cannot quench my course, or stay me with his hand; I shall spring from the dust again toward the long- lost land, As the lithe swallow springs when autumn cries in the heart. 17 :d the long gray clouds the winds walk in the it. The dun cattle pause with strained-out throats and stray, Where the swallows leap on the wind, and shift, and follow away Calling, calling. O, the voices will leave no rest! I will laugh on the hills. gird myself up for my race. Yea, thou art very fair, thou art strong, but O earth, O my mother. The cry deep in the heart not all the years can smoth.r. The old. strange pang, the voices, the lost pi a, JUSTIFICATION AHOTT me all the flickering lovelir Of life, with love and death irradiate, Tortures my heart continually to cre-itr proof thereof o ! :t of her own CXCC9B . I.r-t there be left out of my deep distress No dream to justify my desolate And beauty-haunted hours, my love and Irite. And all my spirit trembles to express. Sorrow alone is bearable through this, That I may sing its beauty as it is. And joy that is not uttered is not joy; The mournful doom of life is not to be borne, ! not shout my ringing defiance of scorn Once, ere the 1 it. s <1, tiou.r me and destroy! 48 THE POET AND THE YOUNG GIRL POET: Though you know many things, you cannot know The longing on my lips that makes them wail For earth s huge beauty when the storm-winds blow, When dawn makes the vast waters pure and pale: All Loveliness I serve with love and duty, Your beauty scorns the tenderness of Beauty. GIRL: Why will you waste the wonder of your Youth In mirrored visions of a vain delight ! I am the vision carven into truth, I am the poem that you could not write: I am the Power that you made the song for, Within me lies the secret that you long for. POET: Though all the modes and meanings of creation Within your arms grew voluble and clear, Still lurks in them a deeper revelation, Still cries a voice, "Beyond it is not here!" To life that perishes you are the portal. I am the pathway to the life immortal! FROM ANY ORLANDO TO ANY ROSALIND AH, Rosalind the boy-like clothes How futile are they and how fair The locks are short, but what red rose Lurks beneath the hidden hair? O maid-like, maid-like fair! 49 What unknown tiling is there to fear In tliis hoy-faee and boy-like tiyt\ Come close to me, look up, draw near And is it pity in them lies? O woman s, woman s eyes ! THE NEW LOVE HKFORE the morning I arose and went Over the snowy meadows clear and cold, And with the dawn a deep and new content Awoke in me. Farewell, dear love of old. that I love you, what is there to say! Who would have harmed you, what shall now be d ! The morning wind has purged it all away. Before this love all the old lusts lie dead. Tin- holier love more deep than all desire Into my spirit from the morning came, Out of the sacred and the whitening Fire It rose within me like a silent flame; And the winds blew it to me from the west, Over the sad fields of unbroken snow, Patient and pun- as your own naked breast And hopeless as our love of long ago. 50 "FOR EVERY SOUL IS ALONE" Lonely the soul is, though from east to west She fly the phantom following without rest Loneliness lurks amid the thickest crowd, A loneliness more deep than solitude, Deep loneliness at the beloved breast. TO THE FORGOTTEN DEAR tragic women of our foolish youth, Where are you now, alas, where are you gone! For all the perjured promises, the untruth, How shall we ever answer or atone? All woman, and half angel, and half fiend, Incredulous through experience, having proved O you, on whom our fledgling longing leaned In the first mystery of being loved ! O sisters, comforters patient and so wise, Dear listeners to young words of love and pain ! That kissed like a mother the sorrows from our eyes, Smiling at the brave vows, so old and vain. PARIS TO HELEN AFTER THE ABDUCTION WHY will you turn about and look so sadly ! Why arc your lips so discontent and curled! O hold me, kiss me, till this fear be gone .... 51 Tin- Mind wind rustles through the mast-head niadlv. Thr prow is anxious and tin- sail unfurled l- or tin- pale fit-Ids beyond the starlit /one, And the un furrowed sea beckons us on. O I hive dreamed of this in ages gone! O I have sought these lips across the world! Why will you give them to me now so sadly The blind wind wafts us on the waters gladlv O found at last ! O prisoned ! O my own ! THR VAMPIRE GRAY nigh^, ghost-like, waned at dawn, The pale, green sky curved like a lawn Witli stars a flower; So she lifted up her he/id And waited, bonding by the bed The stroke of the hour. Her rigid throat and temples white Showed sickly in the pallid light. Sickly and stark ; And all her mouth, for a short while Partec^ and pausing in a smile. Was \\-i t .-iixl d-irk. 52 Dawn ! In a last, mad throe of love Her red lips diaLogd hin^bending above.- The moment aftep With sudden pity x she turned, and then The gusty wind blew back again A dwindling laughter. MUSIC WHEN from beyond the far horizons of the world The first faint dawning voices of the soul proceed, I endure the pain of things primal and unknown And gird up my spirit and follow where they lead. I endure the pain of things importunate and vague, Beckoning and dim, that make the poor heart bleed. O voices beyond birth ! O lost when I was born ! I gird up my spirit and follow where you lead. LARMERETTA NOT all the sound now of the full sea s flowing Can move you to any laughter or any tears, Nor voice in the waving wood when the wind is blowing Fill you again with the old, vague fears, Nor life going, going. Because you had dour with them all and were very tired, \nd turned with large sighs toward the West, And all the hope wherewith your heart was fired I- II. and all that you knew and loved the best, And all that you desired, desired. For at the sound of your weeping, at the sound of your crying, The veiled God N)Wed out of the silent land. And drew you close to his breast, where your white breast lying Faint on the inexorable breast that cannot under stand, I. cans to him sighing, sighing. MORMM, SI I.KP oui lo\e is de-id!" a voice cried out to me When morning s dusk was deep. " my heart rang wearilv: Hut I was fain of sleep. I could not cue. Pain vanished with my dreams Into the dark withdrawn: () ill " UWC, how far away it ft ems In the pale sleep of dawn! 54 DISCONTENT As often n,r,,H<ih tin beloved eyes there glow The eyes of om In lurid /<>. / ago .j.irit and the />" A i. dilTtrtnt fares: So through tin .rorld of occnn. <rth and air I ,, ,,nd< r hntnfuirk. <i iri/*. < r, ri/irhere Reminded of dim world* and dixtnnt pfau It is not sorrow that has made me sad, Or fear wherewith the spirit s wings grow weak, Here where your lashes tremble on my cheek, And the high stars look infinite and glad, And the heart yearns to speak. It is not these, but having sought an hour, A little hour of silence and of rest, With a grave face to hide the aching west, That unassuaged a deep desire should flower Even now within my breast, And I should dream as one. that having drifted Out of some old-world star into this new, Might dream of a lost face more fair to view- And feel in the grave ryrs toward his uplifted Another s shining through. MEMORY MKMORY makes no thoughtful life rejoice, She is a siren and a dangerous voice I urin" us back along the dear, dead way, Whni we should forward march and breast the day. ii a somber and a mournful cry Out of* the waning and the sunset sky. The universe between her breath and breath Remembers some lost thing, and brings forth death; Through the dark door remembering she goes, And the dust swallows up the withered rose. THE GREAT LOVER Sin: looked in death as in the bridal-swoon: What if she were but wearied out with bliss, And death but the love-sleep on the face of Life, The bride-sleep after sonic immortal kiss! AN OLD SONG MY sMer. my spo tl a scent spring. A fountain of light under tin- brows of the morn, A garden of quiet rest; I" ruler her side the melancholy sorrowing Of ancient sadness is, and under her breast The joy of the unborn. My flowf r. my Ime. is as a shining star, As a young rose hid in tin windv grass, A shout in the land of death , :nournful beauty of all sad things that are, A passionate and unvailing breath. A soft "Ala 56 O my sister, my dove, is as a bundle of myrrh, A house of delights, a garden of pleasant length, A shady and pleasant tree; Her breast is the mansion of certain dreams that were, And her sad breast a promise of things to be, A sorrowful strength ! As a cool wood is my own, my sister, my dove, A giver of life, a gate to the land of breath, A stooping and shady cloud; As a sad secret bared for the eyes of love, A futile defiance, sorrowful and proud, Of ancient Death. TO A BRIDE WHEN in the moment of your greatest joy Your heart is drunken, and immense and free Reaches before you the wide heaven of joy, Remember me. When your heart fails you and you cannot bear The thought of all the little days to be, When in the evening you are very tired, Remember me. O in the bridal chamber in his arms, \\ In n voiir breast heaves with music like the sea, When all the world is banished and forgot, Remember me ! 57 When on your death-bed you shall lie, and all Your memory ebbs to the great Memory When on some other breast you lean at last, Ah then, remember me. ON THE TOMB OF A LOVER HUSH the ancient sea has a sound of sighing, Kissing sadly shadowy dunes and headlands, Far around the solitudes moaning, moaning, Here where his tomb is. NDw the heart is still and the eyes are heavy, Mute the mouth and empty the breast of dreaming. All the laughter out of the lips is vanished, Aye and the longing! Never, never now will he hear the rain fall Never now the beautiful arms embrace him. \Vh-n again he wearies of peace and slumber, Here by the ocean. TO THE MODERN MAN FROM mysteries of the Past The Future is prophesied. The Actual comes and goes Like shadows on a tide. 58 Realities come and go Like shadows on a pool , The leaves are for the wise man, The shadows for the fool. Out of the moment Now Rises the god To-Be, The light upon his brow Is from eternity. Leave dreaming to the fool And take things as they are; All things are in yourself, Who stand upon a star And look upon the stars, And yearn with deepening breath- All things are in yourself Love and Life and Death. REBIRTH THE soul at last Throned on the stars, Forgets the past And the old wars. Deep in the night Beyond regret, Throned on the height It can forget. 59 Till a new breast Cry out with lo\ Then vague unrest Stirs it above. Till face to face Two lovers cling; From the high place With sorrowing, With fire and thunder Dethroned and rent, For the old wonder All discontent, Height over height It burns and sighs For the old light In the old eyes And cannot rest, High in tlu- Vast, Till a new breast Beat loud and fast, Till a new womb Conceive on earth ; Tin -n. through the gloom Of a new birth. I nun its high source It runs again Tin- fiery (MM And path of pain. 60 SORROW AND DAWN ONE molten star Hangs in the web of dawn, Cloud beyond cloud withdrawn Afar. The earth, the trees Windless, wait meek and dumb The new-born day to come. O peace! O peace, O pain ! Must each new patient morrow Wake the irrevocable sorrow Again ! THE INSPIRATIONS Not dawn folds with the stars up in the skies The sleeplrit* lids of the eternal eyes. THE sleepless Beauties, like the sun and rain, Vanish, and come again ; Yet but a little bear, And though you cannot find them anywhere, Suddenly breaks the blue, The eternal rhythm glides Around, above, beneath you, on all sides, Loves shines through ! Gl MI.MORIES OF FIRST LOVE \Viii:.\ through long sorrows vainly passed Of many faces, first and last, Of women loveless proved, We turn back to the first we loved ; The dear, first face, first kissed, first held T\\i\t wondering hands all love-compelled, To the old homesickness unquelled Slowly tlu- heart is moved. A LAST CRY Tin: world is full of horror, death, and crime, And heart! in prison, or of walls, or pain; But once in all the years there was a time When we. with thrillinir souls that seemed to strain Beyond all death, had caught up not in vain The whole of life and utten d it sublime. Your laughter, the imperious demand Of fearless i yes. your beauty s tidal breath Was like a shout heard in a lonely land, A challenge, a defiance of old death. That loving we had trampled underneath With laughter; but you could not understand. I thirst for you as on,- that for fresh springs Thirsts in the deserts of Eternity, M v soul to yours across the desert rinjjs 62 Mid myriad forms to you alone I flee . O without you who hold the mystery How shall I front the mystery of things? Both we move toward the everlasting tombs And unto us the keys of life are given O lu art on heart amid the encircling glooms To challenge the eternities, yea even One soul complete strip off the veils of heaven, And lift Life s voice amid the eternal Dooms! But this shall never be, we shall depart To the great general Source from which we came, In separate lands to slumber far apart: It will all be as nothing, as a name That writhes away within the withering flame, Or an old memory in a mouldering heart. Mid sun, and moon, and meteor that careens In the immense, immortal firmament, PP . limit of aeons, womb of mio-Jit-have-beens, This cry that from my soul to yours is sent Once, ere all life and death and love are blent And lost forever ponder what it means ! And now, as when through ranks on either side The swaying weight is borne with ponderous tread, Before man s general mystery sanctified All eyes are bowed, and every sullen head Stands bared, so do you now before Love dead Bo\r down your eyes a little, without pride. 63 In sorrow laid at rest I brood above you. Tliis lovr of mine you cannot ever know. I and lips and wonder of you I In-nd. as in the days of long ajr>. I |dM you. and renounce you. and forego, Hushing myself forevermore. I love you. SONGS OF THK THE world of love is still the same In cast-land, or in west: and stars and meeting eyes And a heating Dreams at dawn and bitter fear \Yhen all the world lies dumb. Ecstasy, and ineinorit -s Through th- to come!- Though I roam the wh.le world over; Be it bad. or mad. Love is so where er I go, ( ,] id. ami very sad. t-ilfs <>f MV-n/ tr inmn /""A alike When the if in y 1 \KRY face of every woi That I ver kissed th- ey f niy f r^t lov . \Vhen we came to tryst. 04 Though her eyes were not the same, In the starry glow They were like the eyes of her I loved so long ago. Though she have another name, From east-land, or from west, When a woman s in your arms She is like the rest. And the eyelids, and the mouth, And the look she had Of the vanished, banished love, Made me glad and sad. LOVE S RESURRECTION I MURDERED Love and crucified it, Nailed and left it to its doom. I tore it down and buried it Deep in the tomb. I rolled the stone across the door, My fingers slipped, the heavy stone Crushed my hand, but never my lips Escaped a moan. I rolled the stone across the door. Singing, singing, I went away, Free of heart, free of heart, At dusk of day. 65 On the third morrow it arose And walked abroad beneath the stars, Thr brows \vrrr lovely as the Christ s And crowned with sears. Stooping at dusk from behind to kiss me, \\Yrpinir I heard a voice that said, "Lo it is I, lo it is I ! Be not afraid." I counted all its wounds thrice over, And as I wept beholding so, It comforted me, and whispered me, "I know, I know." I hung to it and clung to it And sobbed for sorrow fierce and wild. It murmured. "Was it yourself you slew, My child, my child!" THE VOICE OF THE SPRING IN May -time when the first few lilacs flower, At ni^lit. in the- lamp-lit strrrt, can I forget A girl s voice heard from a in ar leafy bower, "No, swrrthcart, not my lips, not yet, not yet !" Twas twilight and the very houses even Seemed touelied with an influence amorous and d ir; The earth, the bride of the dim, stnrry hr.-iven, Half-tremulously tluttrrcd with a vague fear. 66 O Life, even so with many a vain evasion, Pleadings and tears, unquestioningly on From cheeks, eyes, lips, you press with sweet per suasion Even to the heart, till the dear deed be done ! Not all the choirs of the Creation pleading Can stay your tireless progress bloom and bud The virginal Spring with half-shy lips conceding Surrenders all, for the sweet general good. The lilacs in the twilight were in flower And the air wild with Spring , can I forget A girl s voice heard from a near leafy bower, "No, sweetheart, not my lips, not yet, not yet!" "THE WAGES OF SIN IS DEATH" I HAVE sown tares and been the harvester Of plenteous grain with sickle and with knife; Lo, I have sinned and for my wages were Not bitter death, but everlasting life. At nij;ht, rebellious and in bitterness, With a small heart I plotted evil things. His dawn for a reproach of tenderness Lightened me with the wonder of her wings. I sought the evil and I found the good. I prayed for lust and I was given love, And when I cursed Him in a sullen mood He sent His stars upon me from above. 67 TO THE AVERAGK MAX How can you rust your flesh with ulcerous ills And wreak upon yourself a st usual wrong, Whrn lowing cattle on a thousand hills Take the dumb death to make your lx>dy strong! .Mid lurid city and in loathesome den Ft Trial spirits work for you and wake. And all the hearts of all the world of men Are laboring on together for your sake. The cloth and very garment that you w Against your heart, in distant lands afar Was wrought by hearts more aged in despair , How shall you answer them for what you are? Will you return them nothing for all tlii> For factories, wheels, and grim machineries whirled, - that plumb for you the huge Abyss. And the vast Science of the modern world. Heroes and warriors that for you have bird. Farmers tilling the stubble field and stone. : ustere host of the heroic dead Who cleared the way and wrought for you alone. Your mother bore and bred you at her breast With holy longing and with patient pain And the dawn wakes you. and tli |fc*fl u r ;\- P -t : Shall all these influences be in vain ! 68 The prophets and the poets and the sages For you have triumphed over hate and lust, And groaned for you the irrevocable ages , How dare you turn and grovel in the dust! EPITAPH Two lovers had I, Life and Death, That followed me forever Alas but Life grew out of breath. Death s footstep falters never. Fain had I turned to kiss with Life, But Death he followed faster Life is my lover and my dear, But Death, he is my master. CREDO BEFORE I pass through the eternal Portal One thing I feel is true, because I must , That Beauty for some reason is immortal, Although her face go sorrowing in the dust. Even death itself is but a crown of flowers About her brows, immortalizing death. Before I pass into the silent hours This thing I cry, and with my latest breath. 69 NOW I Ii I;K is thr place. tin- time N Now. in which to act, Tin- imagined and sublime Prove it a glowing fact! There is no bounding wall Between you and the stars, Nor anything at all That hinds you and debars. Kternitirs behind, Ktrrnities before, Thr endless cycles wind Converging at your door. Thr irrevocable ages Have set you in this place, And all thr leefl and sages Have starward turned your far.-. Thr 1:1 IK rations banished l <>r you ha\r sought thr And all thr propln Is Hut prophesied your soul. Hisr thru, thr chance is splendid, Will rightly, and !>< strong! Tin art is (jiiirkly rndrd. Hut thr !i\.d fatr is long. 70 The choirs of all Creation Echo forever still, "Your doom, or your salvation Depends on your own will." CRADLE-SONG SLEEP now the day is done The dreams within your breast Grow wearier one by one, And turn them to their rest. Sleep, like sweet honey, lies Between your parted lips And down your folded eyes Sleep draws his finger-tips. What little tremors creep About your eyelids sealed? Sweet dreams spring in your sleep Like flowers in a field ! Sweet dreams hang on your sleep Like perfumes on a flower! The little screech-owls weep. It is the lonely hour. Star upon star grows bright In the pale western zone, Trembling for sheer delight Little love-bird O my own ! 71 I love you, I cannot say, I cannot tell you how I love you all the day. And now I lovr you, now! The stirs with all their eyes Watch you through all the hours. Sleep on your eyelids lies Like starlight on the flow- YOUTH O\< r into my chamber broke a silent figure, I nil of many wounds, each a kiss of mine; Pat it-lit were the lips, it bared to me the spear-wound, Counted all its scars over, one by one. Christ-like was the fare, the eyes were like a demon s, Drrp within them burnrd all my ancient lust: Thm I km-w twas lie. my Youth that I had murdered; I it was who put the spear into his side. WINTER NIGHT AROUND me where I stood all windless lay Vast polar regions keen with snow and pale, Ami crystal, arctic regions, whrrr. like nuns. The cruel stars with t;littrrini; < v< s and cold Preached tin st.-rn doctrine of eternal law, Inexorable, inevitable to lie. 72 Strange horror felt I then amid the vast And shrill machinery of the universe, Bleak, barren voids where Space and Time are dead, And the most calm necessity of things. With all the passionate life in me I strove To storm the emptiness, but to what end ! The brain of heaven is aweless and her face The sad, set face of the immortal Fact. PITILESS BEAUTY BEAUTY will not let me rest Either night nor day, Like a voice within my breast Calling me away. When the morning, sad and vast, Rises through the stars, I am summoned forth again To the endless wars ; Evening, with hrr myriad eyes, Will not let me sleep, Sick for Beauty on my bed The long hours creep. Beauty, cruel and stupendous ! Hounded, out of breath, 1 fly you through the gloom tremendous Down the slopes of Death. 7S ESTHER You, that I gave of my youth. With you my youth is fled, The passionate purpose, the truth Of the first, fair love that is dead Tin fierce, sweet fire of youth. Win-re shall I find them at last! Roam I the city in vain, Seeking the days that are passed, The old, lost rapture again, The light of a day overcast. You were all that to greet Love found lovely and fair, Swift and heedless and sweet, Vagrant, wild as the air, Fleet as a wave that is fleet! Tyrannous, pitiless, gay, Not to be caught in Love s net: Felt I my life as it lay, Sweet, at our lips where they met Stealthily stolen away, Softly persuaded. O red, Persuasive, sharp as the Spring s Lips ! That lured to be shed, -ted (as songs that one sings), Love on your own lovt-lihead! . e 74 Ever my life and again At the soft pang of their touch Thrilled, and ever again, Sweet, of yourself overmuch Filled, gave over again. Wearied for rapture and worn, Suited and tamed to your heart, Faint between twilight and morn, Love, like a bird shut apart, Wist not where he was born. Through the long nights of regret, Longing and sorrow and love, Life, that was wilful to fret, All the old heaven above Forgot, nor was sad to forget. Glad is the heart ere it break At the dear bosom, the breath Hurried and hurt for love s sake, Sweet the surrender, the death. Sweet, at her breast that we take ! Love that must die to adore, All of itself dispossessed, At the dear bosom gives o er; Glad is the pain at her breast One with the self we adore ! Still to give all to the end To tin- most loved one away, I.itV. love and longing to spend; Self itself given away, Touch, tremble, be her, and end ! Yet even I after all. Dear, of those prisoning wiles Wearied, of words musical. Sad, sweet curving of smiles, l- .y. lid-, that flutter and fall. Scornful and pitiless so, Caring not, carelessly me, Sweet, from yourself you let go Free as a bird that is free. Little thru did I know All the wild anguish, nor how Haunts the last, lovely embrace, Pangs of remembrance I bow Here in tin- shadow my face. Never I loved you till now ! Many a 1>\,- have I known, Yet in the darkness apart Love, at all lips not your own. Kiss.-s still faithful at heart Ever the first lips alone. 76 Ah, the kind beauty, the first Lips that lured us to love ! Breast that bowed to our thirst First, from the heaven above, Heart Love trembled at first! Once on a night that is gone, Once in a twilight adored, You, in your beauty alone, Sweet, unsheathed like a sword, Slenderly trembled and shone. Once lay bared to your spell All of the heart of my pain, Bared as the earth, where it fell Soft, to the soft Spring rain, Wanton and wild and well. Reckless with love and with laughter Where are you vanished away, Loved and forsaken, and after Followed by Love all the way, All the long journey thereafter? Esther, where are you fled ! With you my youth went down. Dear delight, are you dead, Slipped the Cyprian crown, Love, from that loveliest head? 77 All tin- wild dreams that Love wove Once for temple and brow Waned, and the halo thereof ! Whom are you comforting now : Whom do you give of your love, Spoiled and despoiling? Or who Now lies meshed in those smiles, All the sweet snaring of you Caught, the old lovable wiles, Ways of your love that I knew? Dear, do you <rive them, nor spare, All the old secrets to him. Hand-touch and waft of the hair! Is he or sturdy, or slim, Dark, or ruddy and fair? Dark and dead lies tin- town. Seeking I wander astray. Lost one, my lovrd one, my own Youth with you vanished away, With you my youth went down! LIFE "CEASE, cease," cries the voice of sorrow. But still a voirr through all our pain Cries out at tin- br. -ist of tin- U loved, "Be born again, be born again ! " 78 Then at the hushed and the holy bosom, Ourselves in rapture rendering up, To the unseen lips beyond we pass it, The anguished and the immortal cup. MOON-MIST LAST evening when the dew-drenched veil Of mist and moonlight pearly pale All silver-soft and silent lay Across the country far away, Again I seemed to see you come As one that turns at twilight home Over the glimmering moonlit fields And meadows that the lowland yields. In the far hollows soft asleep The mists like flocks of trooping sheep Cloudily drifted here and there, And a low murmur all the air, Of crickets and cicadas sound, Thrilled through the meadows miles around,- A sweet susurrus half-aloud. Nearer you drifted like a cloud. Some benediction of the blessed, Some hovering pity seemed to rest On the mild country twilight-stilled. Throughout the night your presence thrilled, That haunting aura drawing near; My spirit trembled as in fear, 79 Or joy, through all that lovely dread Leeling around her silence shed Your odorous being, dark and sweet The lingering slowness of your feet. Doubtful I learned in dreamy mood. When, suddenly, before me stood Your breathing beauty drenched with dew Of dusk, and fragrant through and through With breath of the wild country ways. Cool with wet night and .shimmering haze Of gau/y twilight starry-clear. That tangible loveliness SO near, That vehement weight .and sweet e\e> M Of vour own very lovelim--. Almost I thought to reach and touch, Nor dared for longing overmuch. The twilight s trembling web of light Hung low with stars and drowsy night; Lifting an everlasting br< Swayed cloudlike with the wind s mm st That lustrous presence, and the face Was lifted upward for a space. Luminous wen- tl.- <1 gra\ e. With light and shadow like a w Shot through, the old familiar look Tint first my soul in sen iee took. And soft the solemn lips whose ease Had drunken the immortal peace 80 Beyond all sorrow; shadow-screened Against the garden gate it leaned As oft of old, nor seemed to know Whether to linger, or to go. With one low cry of longing then I would have caught it up again And all that anguish! But it laid Across the somber lips allayed A silent finger-tip, the eyes Smiled on the hurt of my surprise. The cold light of the moon, that shone Cloud-covered, quenched, and you were gone ! In that one gesture, as by chance, Your whole life s pathos at a glance I read, or seemed to read the whole Elusive secret of your soul, Her tender mystery and shy Inviolable virginity. COR CORDIIM UNKNOWN beloved that my youth is seeking, Where are you hidden from me far to-night, Amid the myriad never-ending faces. Patient and pure a lode-stir and a light! 81 Sweet allegories in the world around me, Presage and parables of you I read ; But prophecies all faces loved before you, Heralds and hints of the dear face indeed. O God s dear candle in the world-wide darkness Burning to find me and to lead me home, Dear resting-place beyond my utmost sorrow, Whither my lonely footsteps ever roam! Out of the troubled sea of human f.-i And laboring hearts of the wild world s unrest, When shall the doom-wave bear me up to meet you The most compassionate and consoling breast ! A GIRL S EYES ONCE in the crowded city street Your eyes, that minr did chance to inert One instant, for that instant took My soul in through such depthless look Of clarid innocence, as seemed Beyond all height or depth undreamed. All eloudh M ch-arness of their own To draw and drag her gmM fir down. Unveiled by subtle miracle Being s unfathomable well. One instant only. and t lie whole And sudden wonder of a soul 82 Lay bared, one instant on the brink My spirit trembled, that did sink Through you a meditative space Into the soul of all the race. A drop of the great Mother-sea, Out of your eyes looked up at me An atom of all life, the vast And ravening Ocean here upcast; Borne to me on the tide before In the great waters rage and roar We hurried by forevermore. Twas but a wild and whirling glance, And yet amid the dizzy dance Of Fate and Horror, in that look A sudden recognition took Each of the other, as it went A silent salutation sent Across the outer banishment. Passed me the moment, and the eyes Passed, on the opened paradise Rolled back the everlasting door And all the street was as before, A secret signed and sealed : and yet I saw it and shall not forget, Whether we ever meet, or when, If in ten thousand years again, Sweet, by that look shall know you then ! 83 A LOVE-SONG LOVE me for nothing Time may take away, But for my very self that must endure, Fixed as the stars along the eternal way, Strong for your strength, and for your love s sake pure. Then though this glowing force and frame decline Through gradual changes to the withered worst, Still through tin- veiled defeat you shalt divine The immortal soul that turned to you at first. APRIL IN NEW ENGLAND Tm< tender Spring-time twilight flowerless yct.- Btit hopeful; shy, upon her heart has set A single blossom simply, as might do Some little country m-iidm that a few Flowers entwines amid her folded hair. (For lack of greater largess) to make her fair And lovelier for her lover s joy, and waits Solemnly in the dusk, and hesitates With sweet, low 1-rows amid the shadows dim Her tremulous loveliness and prays for him, Patient, with starful ryes and lips all dumb. For her first lover that he soon may come. 84 MIDNIGHT Now soft slumber seals thine eyes, On thy parted lips there lies From the farthest Paradise The high word unspoken. Now With quiescence o er thy brow Slide the soothing finger-tips, And the healing Pity dips In the most serene repose All thy being. Like a rose Drooped on drowsy evenings, Round thy fragile presence clings A sweet perfume, and a breath Still on the near marge of death Murmurs of thy life. But thou, Sweet, where art thou fled, or how Shall I find thee, that but now To my longing didst lift up The immortal pity s cup And thy being gavest to share ! Shall I find them anywhere, The grave eyes and pitying hair? For the ancient terrors press Round me and the lonelim -^ : The implacable Daemon, Beauty, lays his hand upon My hot pillow sleepless now, And on the accustomed brow, The pale cave of many songs. All the sorrow in me longs 85 Sleepless for thine answering touch : Art thou vanished then so much ! It with pleading hands I knoek The barred gates, wilt thon unlock Those hushed gardens of thy soul, Take me in and make me whole? Would I, too, were folded in That soft silence, and the din Vanished of the outer host, In thy being s quiet lost. Knoek I the barred gates upon Vainly nay, for thou art gone In the end we are alone. Foolish search and folly vain; Thou art vanished in disdain. Spurned the faintly breathing shell Still of thee half audible, Spurned the prison, and the net The sad Fates for thee have set From thy feet without regret Shaken: ri-en sole and free In its native dignity The inviolable self of thee. These low haunts and hurts alxwe! All. for every soul we love But from the eternal home : saviour still doth conn Sent, a summons from on High To the ancient Verity, The pure Beauty: for a space Here, a little, fleet embrace, 86 In the night-time, the starlight, Couched beside us in the night, Sounds the soft recall, the lost Way back to the starry host! Love, that whispers the astray The forsaken homeward way, The lost secret at the heart s Portals murmurs, and departs. Now I see thee as anew The soft veil of slumber through, Purged and purified, at ease As one under dreamful seas Heaving with soft tides, and know Thee with sudden pity so. dear, fallen angel sent To console my banishment! Hast thou wounded with me, sweet, In the dust those quiet feet? For my weakness sacrificed And my fault ex-paradised, So to tread the lower way Of long sin which I do stray? Thou predestined to the quest Of my furious soul s behest, In the dark and dizzy dance 1 alien against her heart by chance! O then in remembrance All the bitter cost I told Of past evils manifold, In one brimming cup of pain To the dregs I drained it then ! 87 pure stars in solemn pose Past thy framing window rose. High Arcturus and the Seven Throned in the cerebral heaven Like sad thoughts upon thy sleep Shone; but I that could not keep All that anguish in control, Drifting a disbodied soul, I. ike a larva, on the bed Left this spectral self and sped Upward in a wild prayer borne To the Pity beyond scorn. Struggled upward, climbed and came Past the battlements of flame, Heaven s turrets ringed arow And the trembling earth below, There I left thee slumbering so. Stainful and all unforgiven Yet I passed the gates of heaven, Beating upward, made my way Past the Splendors in array; Bowed beside the silver wave, Lo, one sat serene and grave, Drooping with bowed aureole. And it was thy \ ry soul In IK T maiden paradise, But deep peace was on the eyes. 88 THE GREAT KINDNESS SORROWFUL all night and sleepless In the silent room, At my side I felt you breathing Softly through the gloom, The dim fragrance of your slumber, Till the morning; lo! Two well arms and wanton caught me Up out of my woe ! Generous and full of bounty Of supreme relief, The dear insolence of your beauty Crushing out my grief! Till through blinding tears I felt it, Through glad tears again, The kind touch of the great gladness Reach through all my pain ! TO A YOUNG GIRL HEARD SINGING I HE A u thy voice beyond the narrow wall Cheerfully rise and fall In unpremeditated mood and might Of innocent delight. O careless and inscrutable, and wise Beyond all perplexities ! Let me bow down here at thy viewless feet In adoration meet, 89 For happiness is holy, and the bliss That flows from IK arts like tlii.s, And beautiful and glad it is to live. Pity me and forgive. Pity inr whom the implacable Daemon Has set his seal upon, The obsessive seal of slakeless song and whirled Wondering across the world. Thy virgin aura in soft snares of sound Shed odorously around, The chaste attraction of thy life a-flower, Lures with insistent power. Fain would I dip into thy soul and drink, Trembling on the dim brink, Soft Lethe and oblivious uncontrol From the untroubled chalice of thy soul. V-t thee I may not reach to nor come near, To mar thee, or make less dear With grief of mine own M-lf; unlovelier, touch Thee throned beyond so much So far, above this shamefuller self below Striigglingly doomed to go With tin- lost angels evermore, and tread 11 1 lower ways of dread, Toward the lost Paradise to rage and roam Whither thou art at home, Beat at the gates in angry grief, and long Backward in contrite song. 90 Fain would I reach to thee, fain touch and drown In purity of thine own. Full peace and struggle perfect, not for me The accomplished ecstasy, Me longingly allotted to express, And forego loveliness; Nor may I wound thee with one woe of mine To make thee less divine Clear Ardour; holier than mine anguished bliss Thy natheless joyance is, That dwellest with white Beauty cheek to cheek, Whither I sigh and seek, That knowest it not, and liest in His hand, Whom I to understand Through many a shame and bitter thought have trod ! O thou asleep in God ! Thy strifelessness is more than all my strife, Thy lethe than my life ! For as by seeking the first angels fell The fault inexpiable So all we move through sorrows to the end, That strive to comprehend ; Seeking toward the old peace not anymore Are as we were before, Nor at grave eyes, nor on no loving breast Beauty allows to rest. But thou, clear Joy, if ever looking back On thine accomplished track Thou turnest, so mayest thou glimpse what la re has been And the fierce gulf between: 91 Beauty at rest arrived in faith and face, And Beauty on her race Still toiling upward, laboring toward thee And what thou art, to be ! SICKNESS ERE the first cock-crow gave the warning, I pon my sick-bed in the morning I thought of you that I gave my youth to, Her whole glad heart of passionate truth to. Alas, for a later dream I left you, And from my heart the years had reft you! Then first I knew it, then first I heeded How much I had loved you, how much I needed. Ah never before so much did I love you, The mystery and the memory of you! I hid my face in the silent pillow, The years rolled over me like a billow. () pitiless love, what have you done me, To lay tliis yoke of your beauty on me! There with bowed head I did atone you For e\ery wrong that I had done you. had I sought to forget, but ever Follows me everywhere forever A little, riotous shape and slender, My slandered Youth, serene and tender, 92 The small, sweet arms so kind to save me, The look of the woman s hands that gave me The cup of joy, a bounteous measure, The eyes that smiled upon my pleasure. In my dreams you are ever by me. I wake and the lovely phantoms fly me, Dreams and darkness and midnight terror, Which is the truth and which the error? The pale, cold clouds the moon enwreathing, I lie awake for the sound of your breathing, As in the old nights without number. I miss the fragrance of your slumber. I miss your voice in the morning calling. I wake, and the April rain is falling. Ah, much unkinder things have found me Since last your arms were laid around me ! Fled are the young, glad days of riot; The rain falls and the room is quiet. And O I need your beauty to hush it, Crowd out the pain in my heart and crush it, Stealing around my sadness slowly, To weary me out and heal me wholly ! Dusk, and the darkling rain to screen us, What sorrow could get in between us! 93 In vain I wake to the old complaining, I hear the sound of the steady raining: Out of my sickness and my sadness I long for a touch of the old, well gladness. O to be heart on heart together Here once more in the April weather; Beauty and weariness comprehended, And the pain of longing and longing ended ! THE SPIRIT OF LIFE OUT of the secrets of your eyes Looks up at me, most grave and wise And weary from long lives of strife, The ancient mystery of Life, At the old call to the old pain Forever rearisen again: Their steadfast patience still is set Against some goal far distant yet So many a love have they endured Long ages past in lives obscured; In Nineveh or Babylon A slave, or from some ancient throne Looked out like morning, in the dusk ()t ( -\ pr -vv, <l.ilc, or groves of musk, Trembled through lashrs \v t with love Up to the eager eyes abm-r. 94 When at your somber breast I lean, Her tidal ebb and flow between Still hear I, as within the shell Of the great ocean audible, The sad and inarticulate roar Of life, and ever toward the shore, The blood beloved with every breath Pour on, of void and vasty death. Yet comes an hour when, face to face, Fear dies, death fades, and pulses race Joyous and gladly to the doom; When grave your eyes amid the gloom Burn against mine, looks up anew Their dreamy lids and lashes through And blinding tears of mine, to me The old, sweet lure and mystery, The spirit of dear Life; and clings, Tugs at my heart and sways and sings The sweet Persuasion like the Spring s, The insatiate Beauty, at your breast Clamors and urges with unrest And smiting shock of lovely pain, "Be born again, be born again!" THE WAVE OF LIFE As the still moon without stir Draws the waters after her, The sad robe of all the sea Silently thou drawest me. 95 As the billows on the shore To be broken and give o er Dash themselves in dying spray, So I give myself away. To the grave pool of thine eyes Draw me down in dreamy wise, Till I tremble on the brink, Dip into thy soul, and drink Lethe soft. Ah, dark decease ! Not the wave may be at peace Till it shatter, nor Love rest Save at the beloved breast. FOR THEM ALL At night through the city in a song Like a cloud I drift along. I slip into the shop-girl s room, Soothing her eyes amid the gloom. I smooth tin- wrinkles on the check Of the white mother, worn and meek. When- the lalwrer sits at rest I pour sweet dreams into his bre-ist. The old man and the little child Bending o er the page have smiled. 96 Into the lover s heart I stream, Like the beloved in a dream. The poet and the lover, too, I drench with beauty through and through. I am Beauty s, and I move Lonely amid those I love. O, poet, lover, mother, child ! For love of you my heart is wild. Out of this very page I cry Up to your spirit: this is I! Are we together here at last? O catch me up before tis past ! O hold me close against your breast ! There alone, at last, I rest. IV FIRST LOVE O sorrowful face over which the years arc a veil! The vanished years are a deep veil over your face, And Love whose eyes icere bright for a little space, The vanished years are over his eyes like a veil. sorrowful face! O meek and sorrowful face! I ,innot lore you as once I hare lured you but see, r>< ndin<r hack with the sad lips of memory, 1 kiss a little sadness away from your face! LOVE S LAUGHTER How Love s sweet laugh derides our dusty doom Drowning the sullen monoehord of woe; But stop her lips laugh with thy kisses lo, Heyond the sky. beyond the utmost main The hollow murmur of the pipes of pain. Droning the dance adown the sounding tomb! FIRST RAPTURK O LAY your arms about me or I die ! Tin- di//v hravi-n of stars around us n elf. Far off the screech-owl gives a tremulous cry. And a sad perfume through the starlight steals. A thousand, thousand kisses on your lips, More than the stars in all the starry Vast! A thousand. thousand kisses on your lips, Dear love, for love s sake, till they ache at last! Ah. why is it that those we love \Ve wound the most, or are most apt to wound, K\< n MS the arrow in the armed host Strikes her long-lost beloved to the ground! 100 I love you, and I love you, and I love you ! Beneath the starry eyes bow down your head. The eyes of God look envious above you For very joy I would that I were dead! THE FOREST OF DREAMS WHEN I was wandering alone In the forest of silent dreams, I came on my love alone Sitting beside the still streams. I laid her heart to my heart, Sitting beside the still streams, And I heard the sound of her In art In the forest of silent dreams. LOVE S SORROW ALAS, your beauty is like a flower Doomed to be squandered in an hour; Its lover is its greatest foe, He that wills it kills it so. Alas, your beauty is like a dove, The bright eyes and the delight thereof, Prisoned behind Love s golden bars, Grow dimmer than the morning stars. 101 Had I the gift, this would I give To love you. and yet let you li\e. To have you. and yet leave you still Inviolate and invincible! BY THE SEA LOOK, on the ocean The waves are asleep, With a quieter motion The little waves weep. Night sinks on the Deep. What is it thou fearest, Looking anxiously so? What is it thou hcarest? The elves as they go Sing sadly and low. O my darling, my dearest ! Between birth and sleep This moment is ours. While wilt thou weep And drop all thy flowers, And all thy pair flow- r- ! PREMONITION MUST you become whom I have loved so long Only a vagrant song, You that mine arms have known so many a time ! Alas, I have striven to catch you in a word, Your beauty in a rhyme. Ah no and can it be ! Must you become, whose heart-beats I have heard, Only a memory ! AT DUSK LOOK, before us reaches the wide flat sea Over his sands ! Now in this moment I know Something quiet and singing lost long ago, Come back to me. Lean to me, do not laugh, bend down from above. O piteous head the days and the years shall bow ! And the glad love I love you with utterly now, All, what of love ! Ah for a little now do not laugh, or be glad ! All the years must weary and leave us gray. We shall forget all the glad words we say, Grow old and sad. O hold me, hold me do not let me forget ! Throw your arms about me closely, lean your head- Say the old words again, and when you have said, Whisper them yet! 103 SONG Yt>t K body was made for many things, O love, lor the feasting of eyes and the pleasure of many hands. And the clasping of weary arms bending above, And the delight of lovers in starlit lands, And the mouths of many children that shall cry aloud As they press, and the small, soft worm s untiring mouth, \Vh.n you are weary, when you are laid in your shroud, And have turned your back on love, and the sun. and the south. THE MOON OF SONd SWEET lest I ever forget, Look on me now with thine eyes; \Vhni the sun of my love is set The moon of my songs shall arise. Love that loves thee alone, How should he sing of thee yet! Song that is wild with regret Shall sing of thcc when thou art gone. Song that is wild with R< members the look of the eyes; Whtn the sun of my lovr is s. t The moon of my songs shall arise. 104 LOVE AND DEATH Now night is swarming about us with all her stars, Beside the sea, we two, after the pain To sit and dream, how sweet it is and sad To sit and dream again ! How great a prophet and a teacher is love That in all things images the "To be," I always hated death and the dark thought Before love came to me, And all the body temporal and faulty, And all sad, common things that feed the tomb; But in your arms I understand and pity Their sorrowful high doom. I would have cried "Let all things die, yea, all things, I only will not, I will not, only I !" Dear love, and do you also hasten deathward Under the same blind sky! Against your lips, deep from your eyes now burning Grave against mine, I draw with dizzy breath The holy pain of life, and all the splendid Glad tragedy of death ! LOVE, LISTEN TO THE OLD WORDS AGAIN I.O\K, listen to tlic old words again, Your eyelids droop so tired, Though Time and Fate and bitter pain Against us have conspired, I shall always love you as before! Yt (i-n hat is love with the years at war! In the crt-ninf/ one is tired. Now star on star ascends the Deep, Your eyelids droop so tired, O I will cry it through your sleep As if all heaven choired! Her heart replies not any more. She has heard it a thousand times before. Sleep has closed the shadowy door. In the evening one is tired. EVENING PRAYER Now through the dusk the straining eye discerns, Beyond thr clear horizon s cloudless brim, A single taper flaming white and slim, Where the pure star of holy evening burns. Big Jupiter across the silence yearns, While slowly through the darkness deep and dim Sirius climbs along the eastern rim. And the great glittering wheel of heaven turns. 106 I pray that I like these may still be found Upon love s orbit, be it day or night, Unvariable through all the years and days ; Mid lives that falter and blind worlds around, Irrevocable, unweariable and bright, Wheeling along the everlasting ways. LOVE AND THE UNIVERSE HIGH up in heaven a crystal music, ground From frost of the sweet chiming wheels that roll, Tunes star to star, as soul to answering soul, From high Arcturus to the deep Profound. Orion in the ocean of sweet sound Moves duly, every star with bright control Upon his axis rings the radiant pole, And the immortal framework wheels around. So you and I (even as the planets draw And bind each other), balance love with love In the great universe of night and day; Fixed and unchangeable, with love for law, (And both immortal) round each other move, Eternal and invariable as they. SONG ON beaches and dunes The starlight asleep Lies like a veil- Why wilt thou weep ! 107 Thou wert but so happy One moment, and yet Now thine eyes droop, Thine eyelids are wet I love thee, I love thee : Lift up thine head. O thou art beautiful! Would I were dead ! Would I might drink Of thy kisses and die, While the stars in a web Hang low in the sky! Nay thy pale tears Fall down, one by one. O my sweetheart, my darling, What have I done! The young virgin moon, On the waters asleep, Hangs like a sword Why wilt thou weep! FRAILTY I): \n love, how like a fading dream Mid the Immensities you seem! In the blind universe of things The thought of you beats weary wings, 108 Made laughable by all the stars And Time that on your beauty wars; Yet in you lies my hope, my doom, My resurrection, and my tomb. SEA-SPELL SWEET love, look up a little ere love be fled, Lift up thine eyes, sad love, undauntedly, A little while, here by the sleeping sea, Before the night-time and the dawn are dead. Lift up, sad love, the wonder of thine head; Lo it is lovely now and loved of me ! I shall not always love so perfectly. Sweet love, look up a little ere love be fled. I shall forget thee and the words we said, I shall forget thee and the love of thee Ah love, ere sunrise slant upon the sea, Sweet love, look up a little ere love be fled ! WOMAN Now you have come to me, the sea is dark and still, The dunes shut out the wind, here where we sit alone Here may we watch the stars together, and take our fill Of silence and of night and the sea s ancient moan. 109 Lo you have wandered down through all the old- world ways, Your arms are Cleopatra s, Helen s, Semiramis , Who clasped the whole wide world and heal< <! it with a kiss, And you the mother of men through all the changing da\ O with a fierce child-love, as for a mother, I cry For the sacred source of things, whence I, too, have my breath, To draw you down to my heart and feel your pity ing sigh, While myriad unborn souls call from the wastes of death ! TO A WOMAN PRESS your close face up to the glass, That is so still and pure and fine: See where the sea-mews pass and pass. The dipping sky is red like wine. The sea beats the shore in a long line. I < t it lean upward to the night s, That is so full of strange, wide things, Of steady and of starry lights, Of memories and wondrrings. Sleep leaps the west with white wings. 110 It is full of dreams that fade and fall, Love will not let it smile nor rest, The unborn children call and call. It is crowded with dumb dreams from the west: Age comes soon with a great rest. SEA-MIST THE mist is on the sea, and over the long dunes The long mist stretches blindly to the sea. Here on this bleak side beyond the gray lagoons What a childhood song creeps on the waves to me, With a low sound, with a soft, low sound of the sea ! when the heart sings with dumb, hovering tunes, How may we endure the songs beyond the sea ! All the flying light and splendor of glad Junes Hurrying with the years where no glad years be, With a low sound, with a soft, low sound of the sea ! 1 will rise and sing after the dead moons, I will rise and sing, knowing we are more free, More strong than Time or Fate; but here by the lagoons O do not sing at all, but lean, O lean to me, With a low sound, with a soft, low sound of the sea ! Ill SELF-SURRENDER Now the night Draws along, Shade, and light Shift and throng; Through the twilight steers my spirit to your spirit In a song. Ah who knows What we are, Sweet, who knows ! Very far Dwells the single soul apart from all souls, Like a star. Yet again On her quest, Drunk with pain. Toward your bread Like a seeking angel gropes all im Unexpressed. O my dove ! O my sweet ! O my love, At your t < . t Here, my spirit in my song wholly bared, Lies complete ! 112 VISTAS BEYOND the dark, wide sea lie the enchanted isles, Beyond the long horizon a music calls to me; I see it in the sadness and smiling of your eyes, I hear it in the far-off rustling of the sea. sweet lands lost at birth that we shall never find ! glad life passing by and things that cannot be! 1 see it in the sadness and smiling of your eyes, 1 hear it in the far-off rustling of the sea. VALE THE last, late swallow is fled And all the hope of the heart. The summer is over and dead. Forever and ever to part ! The summer is over and dcad,- But what of the hopeless heart ! Come, for the swallow is fled ! Come away silent heart, Silent with dreams that are dead. Come for you cannot stay Nursing your restless heart All in the dusk of the day. 113 ( dine for when all has been said What is there more to say! The summer is over and dead. The last, late swallow is fled Silent into the south But O the curve of her throat ! O the sound of her voice, Th. kisses of her mouth ! The summer is over and dead. CRESCENDO AND now the time is come and I must go. Turn from me, turn your head, and turn away, So that your ryes have not that quirt look, so Leastwise I may ^o dreaming the long way. your arms, give my heart room to pray! Ah that it should be. that the things we feel Fade, and we cannot fix in one sharp cry Their .stillness! Over the long sea-dunes steal The sea-mists, and beyond their whiteness lie !i, and old age, and loveless things that die. 114 Turn back once more O take me with all your strength ! Wound me with love, slay me until life dies ! That I may never see again, that I may never come at length To the loveless faces, the empty, weary eyes ! O cover me with your love that I may never rise ! SERENADE THE stars are out, and the heavens are silent and very deep! My heart was wakeful and wild, and hungry to be with the stars, I rose and came to thy window, but thou, my beloved, sleep. Sleep, though my heart be wild and wakeful and full of unrest; The crickets are still, and the breezes creep in at thy window, sweet: Thy right arm is under thy head, and thy left lies over thy breast. Sleep till the wind be dead and the stars swoon out of the skies, The world is full of laughter and weeping and pas sionate prayer; More soft than the night on the waters are thine eye lids over thine eyes. 1 1:> I lay in my chamber dreaming, but my heart would leave me no rest; I thought, \vhen the morrow dawns I shall never < her again And my heart grew loud in my veins, my heart grew mad in my breast. I said: "I will rise and go and sing to her in the night; She will wake from her sleep and come, and come to me where I sing, And come to ray arms where I stand, alone, in the pale starlight." But sleep, it is better, beloved, than vexing thee with my erics; The world is full of laughter, and weeping, and passionate prayer: More soft than the night on the waters are thine eve- lids over thine eyes. Old dreams, old loves, old desires, and all the old wonderings Of the piteous bygone loves wail round at thy window, swret ; Hut thou art weary, beloved, yea, weary of all these things, \Veary of all these tiling and sick of the earthly bars That sever spirit from spirit the little things of the world. O thou borne into my soul from beyond the \\<r]\t of the stars! 116 The old loves will not be hushed, they wail and weep without rest. The crickets are still, and the breezes creep in at thy window, sweet; Thy right arm is under thy head and thy left lies over thy breast. Sleep till the wind be dead and the stars swoon out of the skies: The world is full of laughter, and weeping, and passionate prayer, More soft than the night on the waters are thine eye lids over thine eyes. DEPARTURE AT DAWN Now all the east is tired of the twilight, And the world s borders blossom like a rose, And the world s tapers tremble and grow dim; Under the cloud-line, under the gray twilight, Under the pale, cold arch of heaven s rim The low white fire of the morning glows, And a clear wind is wandering in the meadows . queenly heart, never again, again Shall this thing be, or this sweet wonder be! I take my way through the unending meadows, Through the long fields Ix-sidc the sunless sea 1 take my way, I pass from your domain. 117 The awful Fire winter than the morning, The holier Hame followed through day and day Burns to a purer light the old blind love; I ndrr tin infinite arches of the morning I move with a new gladness; high above The first stars fade, and I am far away. I have found one thing more high than the old heaven, More sweet than all sad things save only one, Y -s, and more sweet than your two folded hands. Sleep and forget ; the opening gates of heaven Flood with a sudden pain the empty lands And the old wonder wakes; but I am gone. A CUV Si IK is gone forever and rver And the loathed, unloving faces Press round me and leave- me never. I am set in the lonely places. O passionate heart forever The loathed. unloNing faces! 1 wish they would leave me alone To think of her in my heart, Unseen, unnoticed, unknown. () loathed, unloving f , LeftTC me to sit apart. Apart in the lonely places! 118 I said: "I will build in my heart A paradise out of the world, And live in my world apart." I said: "I shall see her never In the body, well even so, I will live in the spirit forever." God said to me, "This cannot be. You are little more than the brute, Shall body and spirit agree!" I wish that my love would come And lay her lips to my lips And kiss me till I were dumb! I wish she would bend her head And red lips over my throat, And rise up, and leave me dead ! SUMMER NIGHT THE starlight crept in at my window through th- apple-tree branclu-s above, The wind moaned over the meadows and swayed my curtains around, And my heart grew hungry again for the face of the old, lost lovr, I could not sleep for the pain of starlight and wan dering sound. 119 The cry of tin- eriekets grew faint and waned on the shimmering air. I saw the long dim meadows sloping down to the sea. I could not sleep for the silence and the utter, blind despair, I could not rest for desire of the old love to com fort me. I rose and held out my arms alone in the pale, cold light. I prayed for the old, lost love; but beyond my window-bars I saw his proud, white form, as of one in the restless night Moving far-oil , disconsolate, under the lonely stars. NKiHT AND MF.MORY AII day I banish thee from out my heart, All day amid the unsuspecting throng I drown thy face with laughter and with song And daylight olraves us like a s\v.rd apart. Hut night with her great silence sets me free; I ll, n am I thine again at last, at last! Night eomei to me out of the hollow Vast With myriad stars and memories of thee. 120 TO THE EVENING STAR O STAR, like my own beloved s eyes brimming with tears, Deep in the forehead of the western eternity! Have you a deep compassion on me, even as she Whose beauty like yours shines steadfast over the years ! In the pale morning her pity of me falls like the dew, In the splendor of noon her love enfolds me about; Beyond the loud rabble and the innumerable rout, Her memories of me in the evening arise with you. If I fly beyond the morning s bared and immaculate breast Shall I find her at last, or over the westering wave? Her brows are broad and her eyes are steady and grave, O holy stir, like yours in the heaven of the west ! AN EMPTY HOUSE CRY not aloud against your lot- Bow not your head upon your knee. Strive not with the strength that availeth not By the long beach with the things that be, "It is vain," saith the sea. 121 This is her room, this is where she slept In the old years, here where the waves broke On the gray shore, and the little waves crept Whispering of the middle sea as they spoke; This is where she woke. She is gone, she is gone, and the waves fall In the old familiar way, the cricket s shrill Drops, and the sea makes no sound at all; Save for the cicadas on the hill. It is still, it is still. She is gone, she is gone, and there is no cause For any weeping or sorrow, there is no need For any silence; though the old dreams pause, New dreams arise as the new years speed, As the years recede. Only high up among the stars Out of the long ages roll Echoes of one striving against the bars Of Time toward some white goal. It is the "I," it is the soul. Nrvn- though the new years bring new joys to keep Shall it turn to one as in the old delight. Never in all the years again shall you sleep, Hi r. l>y the sea, by the starlight, In the niirht, in the night. 122 THE THOUGHT OF HER MY heart is like a troubled sea Where for a moment rest My thoughts, like sea-birds wearily On a white breast. They rise again and they are fled, Passed as the winds that pass, But one sits with a wearier head, Longer alas ! A long, long time he sits and dreams It is the thought of you Then, rising on the unbounded streams, Vanishes, too. NEW LONGING ALL the night in my heart The dreams of you flow deep and still as the night. When the gray morning dawns I am as sad as the morning, as faint as the light. All the long, long day I think but of you beyond the horizon s bars. When the first twilight comes The thoughts of you in my heart awake with the stars. 1*1 my love, ray love, I d it the world were rolled away between us two! Mid all the stars and the worlds 1 thirst for you alone and for only you. Would I might lose my^ It In you, become part of you in the blood and the breath, Breathe you and die of you Once, and be one with your beauty forever in death! A LAST LETTER FORGIVE me, dear, this last and vain delay, This desperate utterance and foolish boast Of all my love of you, the thought that most Now in this urgent hour I long to say; H fore in the full dawning of the day Love s twilight wane, and with the irradiate host Of stars and dreams retiring, like a ghost Down the long aisles of Time I fade away. Treasure my love and keep it ever n w I charge you, dear, as an anointing kiss I pon your spirit through the days to be; Nor grudge me this last aching cry to you. Wrung from a soul departing. After this Is the long silence of eternity. 124 LAST WORDS THINK of the love eternal as the stars, Dear heart, when the pale twilight of the day Falls like a veil between us far away, And evening broods above her dusky bars. When in high heaven the lonely planets burn, And on your quiet room you close the door Think of the love that lives forevermore, Though far from you and hopeless to return. And though the thought of joy that others had, And our eternal sorrow drown your smile, Think on this wonder for a little while I pray you, dear, and be not very sad. ACROSS THE WORLD SAD love adieu ! So far away you are, Not evening nor the wings of the morning furled About the breast of the world Shadow and light at the same time us two. Farther than the farthest star Hung on the bosom of morning, still more far Than the sea s sound you dwell; If in ten thousand years we should meet again By those eyes I should know you then. Dear love, farewell! SONG RETURNS ()i 11 \ I fly thrr. wandering far apart, But I come l>ark to thee, As weary streams tliat from the mountains start, To the eternal sea. Often I fly thce, knowing what thou art, But I come back to thee And Sonir with tired wings and tired heart To the great memory. PHANTOMS Hi luiKN thr stars and the grass What shape is seen to pass (her the starlit and over thr white lands! () it is my love, my love, with the small feet and the white hands! Her trailing garim-nts sweep The grass like a still sleep, Kndlessly ait.r her rise, and row on row Bow the white phantoms, memories of long ago. I stir and stir. Shall I go up to hrr Al in the old days? () hut it were sweet To pace again to thr tune of hrr small, sweet feet! 126 ILLUSION WHEN Spring was come over the lonely hills I thought of one who was not come with the Spring; I said I will rise and seek her, following Where the heart wills. Surely I know love is a joyous thing, Therefore will she not come to me when she wills, Dancing along the meadows, skipping upon the hills, And laugh and sing! There is nothing lying beyond the hills, No sweet, lost land or love, or anything Only the wind cries and the flowers spring Along the rills. Give me back the things that the heart wills! Give me back the land where the stars sing! I wander over the meadows murmuring, C rying beyond the hills. FAREWELL Farewell and now Upon your forehead silently I press, As from a father, with grave tenderness, A somber kiss, and on your brow. 127 And this that lit s Upon your eyelids coldly is the kiss Of the new friend -and tliis A lo you even as he dies. SONG I SHALL not love you again As in the days before, April and April s pain Return ah nevermore ! Your voice when you used to call, The little ways you had I have forgotten them all, And yet I am not sad. V. little thought of you Between my breath and breath . as memories do To veil tin- face of death. I pray d not forget (hice. in a vain despair; I cannot even n-gret Now, that I cannot care. in the waning I am not -\< n s -d : Mv heart sing* through the night, 1 1 ill sorrowful, half- glad, 128 "I shall not love you again As in the days before, April and April s pain Return ah nevermore !" EPILOGUE I HAVE sung many songs for you sadly, what shall I sing O irrevocable love, now the veiled evening falls Over my youth, and the vast and the mournful walls Of my earlier dreams crumble down slowly withering ! Night treads the heels of day, Spring follows Spring, The dark horror and the hollows of the starry halls, The cruel vastness of the universe enrages me and appalls, Wherein your dear memory falters on unavailing wing. O unnamed beloved, how have I done you this wrong! Not age, nor the dusty doom, nor generations that are strong Can crush the love, deep within me, that labors here for breath ; Higher than the orbs and the stars and the whirling wheels, The worlds of inexorable matter, my spirit reels Drunk with a defiance stronger than the tyranny of death! NARRATIVE AND DRAMATIC POEMS For all sad things and all glad things that are Mi/ grateful spirit singing makes reply, For love, for roses, for the evening-star, For sorrow and for hope, before I die. The vast race-memory of the ages gone Broods through rnc wildly with a vague regret, Helen, and Iscult, Troy, and Babylon Those ancient sorrows I remember yet. Into the somber caverns of my sleep The challenge of all Being rolls along, And my soul echoes backward from the Deep A ringing rapture and defiant song! 131 CORPUS EST DE DEO Lo say the wise, say the very wise "Only the soul is of God" say they, "She shall not perish or pass away But the flesh dies, but the fair flesh dies." Corpus est de Deo. This is the time, this is the sweet time, How that Lord Christ was risen from death, All we shall sing, all we that have breath, In a glad rhyme, in a low glad rhyme; Corpus est de Deo. One Joseph said, and good Joseph said, "That I might bear the body away And the white body in sepulchre lay. And tin- heavy head, the heavy head . " Corpus est de Deo. And to His place, to His secret place Lo one was carried sick with sleep, With huddling steps when the night was deep, With slow pace, and with slow pace. Corpus est de Deo. With myrrh and spier, with fresh myrrh and spice, And linen white, the white body they Ixmnd ; This .saw from a more removed ground M iry s eyes and the Magdalene s e\ < - Corpus est de Deo. 132 With spices sweet, with fresh spices sweet, In tomb they laid the body away, "O piteous Lord, Master !" cried they, And "the wounded feet, O the wounded feet!" Corpus est de Deo. With their own hands, with their own sad hands They closed the door with a massy stone, There none remained but the watch alone, On His wrist, bands, on His feet, grave-bands, Corpus est de Deo. Still was around, deep still was around, There was none wept with a covered face, There was none mourning about the place With a low sound, with a sad, low sound. Corpus est de Deo. Master arise, good Master arise! Nay, for a little a sleep is sweet. Desire there was not in His feet, And in His eyes no light for His eyes. Corpus esi de Deo. With sound of might, with sound of great might, The white grave-clothes \vere rent in sunder, With a terribleness and wonder, And a great light and fire of light ! Corpus est de Deo. 133 Be you all glad, be yon now all glad, Be glad in your soul for your great gladness! His spirit sprang from the night and sadness, And was not sad, lo and was not sad ! Corpus ,-st de Deo. Put by vain shame, put by your vain shame, Loosen your hair, and your lips with song! Out of the darkness that is most strong His body came, His fair body came. Corpus eft de Deo. Lo say the wise, say the very wise, "Soul is of God, the body a vain tiling." Dance with your feet, let your mouth sing! Lift up your eyes, lift up your sad eyes! Corpus est de Deo. In every plac- say they, in each place. ;! is of God, the body of shame" Out of the dust His sweet body came And blood to His face, to His sweet face. Corpus est de Deo. () wondrous thing! O most blessed thing! B(x]y and soul of one grrat birth All ye that are of dust and earth Lift up and sing, lift ye up and sing, "Corpus est <lc Deal" 154 THE DESCENT OF QUEEN ISTAR INTO HADES (Istar, slighted in her love for Idzulmr and mad with jeal ousy, seeks revenge in the abode of Allat, the realm of the god Irkhalla, the lands of Death.) To the mute, to the inexorable land Istar, daughter of Sin, inclined her head, Also her steps toward the silence directed she; To the mute, to the arid land, To the region where there is no sea, Toward the country where the stars are dead She stretched forth her hand. Ere it was finished and done, The word of Queen Istar and even her fierce word, "The houses of darkness stand open, I haste, I fly; With a triumph to the dust I am gone, Yea, even with a laughter, with a cry ! I spread my hands as a bird. I hasten, I run, 135 "Toward the darkness, toward the dread death, Toward the place whose silence is laid as a covering thick, Toward tin- land win re the sun and the moon shed no beam, When- .s] ep h-js no murmuring breath; For lo I am sick of a dream, I loathe it O I am sick! I hunger for death ! "I burn, I am maddened, I go, Neither any more do I cry, my wailing is dumb. Let the winds of the dawn sing together that I may dance ! That I may enter and go Let the gates of the darkness advance. Let the gates make open, I come. I order it so. "Make open your bolts, unbar! Mine eyes are turned toward the place where th-j is no sky, My feet are set toward the land where the sun is dead, Nor st.-irlijrht, nor moonlight are! Make open, fur I have said. I nxeil. for 10 it i, I ." Saith the Queen Istar! 136 To the first gate when she was come, The keeper struck off her crown, the sign of her head, Also her high tiara he struck with his hand, "Enter, O lady, and come, Of Allat it is the command, To the place where the stars are dead Enter and come!" At the second gate, at that gate To the vaults of darkness, the palace of rain and rust, The rings from her ears, her ear-rings, he made them free. "Enter, O lady, the gate, Of Allat it is the decree, The gate that is scattered with dust Lo this is the gate !" At the third gate, and at the third, The necklace bound on her neck, the circlet about, It broke at his hand, also it fell at his touch. "Obey, O lady, the word, The order of Allat is such, In the city that hears no shout, Where no laughter is heard!" To the fourth gate when she had pressed, The cincture of her breast, her breast-plate laid on her breast, The ornaments thereof, the jewels, at his touch they fell. 137 Make bare, O lady, thy breast Of Allat it is tlic will, In tlic land where the winds have rest, \Vhrrr tin waves have rest!" At the fifth gate, at the gate of rust, The girdle of her waist, the gems of it, row on row, In his hands he took them, he laid them across his knees. "Enter the palace of dust The word of Allat decrees, Go, for thou wiliest, go Nay, for thou must!" To the sixth gate when she was led, Her armlets, her anklets, he struck from her body sweet, "To the land whose chiefs are as birds, whose kings are as birds, Enter O lady!" he said, "They are written of Allat the words, Let the night be a snare for her feet, A shroud for her head ! " At the seventh gate, when she was there, The keeper tore from her body the covering veil; As a blast of trumpets, sudden as a cymbal s clash, Her body, splendid and bare, Dawned on the dark as a flash, Her body stately and pale Dawned suddenly there! 138 "Enter, O lady, at length The land of ruin, the country of trampled wheat!" With a shifting sound of her sandals she beat the ground, She burst the portal at length, She moved with a dancing sound, With a shifting sound of her feet And a sound of strength. Istar lifted her hands, She bit them, she beat her breast, she cried with a cry, "O desolate lands whereof Istar hath entered tin. gate, O dark and desolate lands ! Her body is choked with her hate, With her hands she smites you, and I With the hate of my hands ! "O desolate, dark and dark, For the sake of love, and a vain love, for his sake Do I seek you, the hunger of love makes hurried my breath ! My body, starving and stark, Yearns toward the fullness of death, For his sake also I make My robes of the dark. "Behold you and lo and lo! Have I mourned at all, have I made any wail as I went ! As a trodden serpent, a back-blown waste of the chaff, 139 I turn to rr-plaijiir you so. I dance to the horror, I laugh My IK ck with a laughter is bent. I go, I go!" To the mute, to the inexorable place, Istar, daughter of Sin, inclined her head, She wearied of a bitter love, she passed, she was gone. In the sad, in the empty place, With the darkness that is blind to the sun, In the country where the stars are dead She covered her face. TWILIGHT AND DAWN (TWILIGHT:) You have had your will. Now let me rest Upon your breast. O sweet, be still. ( DAWN:) Below and above you I kiss you and kill you. I thrill you and till you! I love you, I love you! 140 (TWILIGHT:) Ah give peace, Leave me at length Cease from your strength, Sweetheart, cease. (DAWN:) Yours, and not mine Is the fault: it denies me Your beauty, defies me And wakes me like wine! (TWILIGHT:) I am yours, Yet give me rest, Joyous your breast, Mine endures. (DAWN:) Nay, but once more I will have you a space To drown and embrace, Clasp and adore! (TWILIGHT:) Alas your might Breaks me again, O the pain ! O the delight! 141 (DAWN:) I have rushed, I have run to you Sweet, overthrown. O my darling, my own, What have I done to you! (TWILIGHT:) Kiss me, close Mine eyelids fast. Kill me at last. THE LAST DAYS OF KING DAVID u- Kiii^r I>a\id was old and strick.-n in years; and th -v covered him with clothes, but he got no heat. Wherefore his ser\ants said unto him, Let there be sought for my lord the king- a vomit: virgin; and let her .stand U-forr the king, and let her cherish him, and let her lie in thy hosom. that my lord the king may get heat. So they sought for a fair damsel throughout all the e<>-i-t of Israel, and found Abishag, a Shunamite, and brought her to tlie king. And the dam-el was very fair, and cherished tin king and ministered unto him: but the king knew her not. . . . So David slept with his fattors and was buried in the city of David." 1 Kings 1, v. 1-5. ! 1 Kings 2, v. 10. WITHIN the chamber of state Fronting the sunset from the city-gate, By the broidered canopy Of the king s carven bed, propped wearily 142 In his chair, on cushions blent Of gorgeous colors, wrought in the Orient By delicate hands and deft, Sat David; the clear furrows care had cleft Along his forehead, and pain, And the plastic stress of gigantic joy, each vein, Kach several little line Of his face the slanting light cut clear and fine Like a chisel, to stand out Against the background of twilight, all about His lips and shaggy brows Writ deep, like words of glory. So in his house Sat David, and toward his lands Looked westward, the thin majesty of his hands On the arm-props of the chair Reclined, hung lax. Now from the chamber there, Where the king s men counselling mused, Low murmur came of voices and sounds confused, And questioning: for the king Long days was failing, and within him the spring Of life almost run dry, So that he got no heat, and was like to die, And they feared. But in the room Sat David. Deeper around him closed the gloom And the outer darkness, save On his face light shone like hope. At each side a slave His bosom and hands in vain Chafed, to restore him heat; while in disdain, Austerely from his eyes The relinquishing life looked forth. The vast emprize 1 1.; Of his kingdoms he saw, that spread Around him beyond all eye-shot, from where the red I.a-t lire of sunset ran, Kven eastward whence over tlie wide waste Syrian From Babylonia flowed The waters of morning, when from her portals strode The young sun upward, even Northward past Syria s big and starry heaven. To his borders on the south And the Paranian desert dumb with drouth, Prankt upon Araby Balmv with odors, his cities beside the sea, Tyre, and Sidon, and all, Jerusalem and Damascus held in thrall By lordship of his will, Stately with towers, meadow, valley and hill, Blown around foaming capes Galleys bearing him peacocks, gold and apes, The lands with all their flowers, Men. birds and hearts he saw, kingdoms and powers Teeming with fruitfulness, Bowed down to the earth with the bounty of excess, Flocks on a million plains Fed fatly, and water like blood within the veins Of the land, to quicken her meads, And generation that generation succeeds As morning, morning, the joy Of God in the hearts of men. none may destroy His gift. and in all places, Scattered abroad like flowers, the populous faces That at his coming had bowed Their faces together as flowers in a crowd 144 At the wind s footfall, lo His, David s spirit, his deeds here, to and fro, All up and down the land Sown, and his songs, as by a liberal hand, From zone to ringing zone Of the people s heart imperishably sown For seeds forever ! Then On him so musing broke the voice of men From the outer room; for now The previous plan devised by the courtiers, how That a maiden featly formed, (To lie at the king s heart till it be warmed Perchance, in the old way), From the kingdoms should be chosen, on that day Fulfillment found, but some Held it a foolish thing to let her come Now to disturb his rest, Yet fair she was, comely, with a clear breast, From her forehead to her feet Filled full of youth and bounty, and most complete That hope there was in the thing: So wrangled the courtiers. But in the gloom the king, Statuelike, marble, vast, Faced toward the twilight; before his soul there passed The procession of his days And all the glory of life in her myriad ways Of living, love, battle, and song, Kingship, and commune with God, when first from the throng His locks with the sacred oil From all men else were anointed, till drunk toward the spoil, 115 With lissome body and young, About his loins the shepherd s loose girdle-cloth slung, With swift bent beauty he hurled The shivering stone, and the head of Goliath was whirled Dustward along his feet, And in Saul s tent, when with liquid glissandos and sweet Soft bubblings of sound, to his harp The boy s head leaned and his hands with ecstasies sharp Of quickening beauty had lured The sick soul backward to Beauty, the sorrow endured When, thankless, Saul on him turned, That day in the cave, O how the soul in him burned With the old love Saulward ! When Saul Seeking his life with the sword, soul, body and all Into his hands had been sent, Hut hurt him he could not, nay, with a cry that rent His lips longing to tell, He fell at his feet, at his feet he bowed, where he fell He bowed at his feet, and crept S.uilwnrd, and Saul lifted his voice up and wept, Knowing at last, till the day When over Israel s people he came into sway, With sound of a myriad lips Crying, "David, David !" The scrape of the spear that slips Through the plate, as the body careens Backward, the wail sent up from the Philistines He heard, and in the end The sound of his own psalms sent up to blend 146 With offerings from the sod, And from a thousand tongues his joy, to God Go up like fire! Then From the ante-room a murmuring again Reached him, for now was brought The damsel into the castle, and they thought To bring her to the king s room. But in his chamber silent, in the gloom Sat David, as in a dream Before his soul he felt it glitter and gleam, Like water the morning skims, Bathsheba s body washing her clear limbs When first from the starlit roof He saw her, the sin, the ecstasy, the reproof Of the little first-born slain At the hand of God, and later the thrilling pain Of Absalom hung by the hair, Beautiful, proud, and dead ; all the despair Not to be stilled ah, never ! Yet back to the thought of God turning forever His spirit closed, the peace And the covenant remembering: great release Fell on him, memories rife With blessing shot new splendors into life, That, hastening to the dead, Through love and deeds, in life at least, he had shed His spirit as one that bleeds Into new veins, through Song as well as deeds Having shed his life to the full; Till all seemed beneficent and beautiful, Yea pain even as pleasure, Life, good in all, to the last sumptuous measure 117 Drained. from the smallest things, Tin- taste of the golden date, the wine that sings ,J>y s paean through the Mood. The clash of spears, the battle s raging flood, And the arms of virgins white About the heart, up to the vast delight, The exuberance and excess Of Song and prayer closing with holiness Into God above it all Life Life! Till again at the sovereign call Of the ancient, magic word Fiercely he turned, huge longing within him stirred Not so to be bereft Of the ch-ar vigor, nor ever so to be left Banished. Hut through the calm Of the evening within the city arose a psalm, His own, on many a voice nd sound of instruments that rejoice Flooding upon him swept. So David sat. and all unseen to him. crept The spirit of Life to his side Returning.- the little damsel. and bowing cried On the name of the king, and bowed At the feet of the king, calling his name aloud. And Da\id bade her And fair she was and comely to his eyes, Flowerlike. hravr .and young. - And shy she stood in the gloom with a bashful tongue, From the country far- :-. Chosen and brought for a sacrifice to this day, its That pity filled his heart. And he took her to him : her garments she did apart And sweet, with compassion pressed Against the cold, sad weariness of his breast The bounty of her own, Generously unloosed the virgin zone, Yea, pityingly did press The quickening vigor of her loveliness Against him, and laid bare Each little grace to lure him, for she was fair. But David knew her not. And still more kindly with eager body, and hot With pity of love, she strove To draw him, banished, into the arms of Love And the old Beauty, drew His heart against her to quicken it through and through With life, above, beneath, Warmed with her own, and hid the face of Death With her sweet face awhile, To force him to love. But nothing could beguile Backward the ebbing strength. So all night long she cherished him. Then at length Toward morning the creeping fear And chill smote David. The ardent arms and dear Unloosing, thus he said, "Thy way lies lifeward, but mine unto the dead, And the will of God above, For the last time having taken leave of love And the old way: do thou K< turn then, dear, to life and leave me now." And he kissed her. And he felt Slip from his neck and from his body melt, 149 As the Spring-time from the year, With piercing regret, irrevocable and sheer, For the last time at length Slip tin- dr.-ir spirit of Life, the bounteous strength. The lore, the beauty and all, The warmth and the kindness, fading beyond recall; As the summer from the lands, Slip lingeringly the breast, the lips, the hands, And forsake him in the gloom Forever. So as a virgin she left the room, Slowly returning. There woke A babble of tongues from the inner court. Then broke The heart of the twilight in twain On the bosom of morning! Eastward day rose again. SEA-VISIONS IN his strength, and in his sad strength Out of his wide womb, loud and free, On -m strains the shore-girth s length: Over the long, vast wallowing of the sr.-i With a slow sound hurry his waves, with a strong sound to inc. ) thalassa, thalassa! 150 Not with a shout, not with a short shout, Born of fierce life for a space, Cries the sea, but turned about As when the sweeping Spirit bowed on his face, The warped waves lean in a choked race, in a curved race. thalassa, thalassa! And his thud, and his dull thud Beats on the dun sand, beaten floor With the full force of his flood, With a rustling, shuffling wash on the waste shore, In a sad tone, in a wide tone forevermore. thalassa, thalassa! Where the dunes, and where the bleak dunes Lean to the sky alone the west, Who come past the dull lagoons, Where the quick heat shakes on the dunes and has no rest, In their loose robes, in their black robes thinly dressed ! thalassa, thalassa! With slow tread, and with slow tread To the vague sound of the sea, To the deep tomb of the dead O where the last, weak waves beat at you wearily, W T ith no sound, and with no sound whom bear you to me! () fh(ilax.<m. thalassa! 151 Roses bright, red roses bright Over the black l>ier richly strown. Over the still face dead and white, Carried in measure to the deep sea s measured moan Hy a gray-head and a young son of his own! O thalassa, thalassa! \\ hat dumb sound, what dumb sound Struggles back by the wind-wet shore ! Faint, sick perfume and myrrh surround The heavy body borne to the flat sea s roar, By the might of the sea in a great sleep evermore. O thalassa, thalassa! O the sweep, and calm, large sweep Of waxen brows, O the sick grave-bands ! The hunger of white breathless sleep Laid on the thirsty mouth, O the carven hands! All swaying with their short, huddling steps over the hot sands ! thala-ssa, thalassa! In tin irleam, and in the bright gleam Flashed from the spray of the ocean flying, That fact went by me like a dream; The dear. green fields of wave lapsing and dying Loomed dark behind, with waves singing and sigh ing. O thalaxxii. thalassa! 152 With the beat, and with the strong beat Of their steps the shingle rang, With the fall of hurried feet That all the wet beach boomed with a shuddering pang. And as they went the gray-head wept, but his young son sang. O thalassa, thalassa! As they passed, and as they passed Up the long, dun sea-dune way, Beyond the bend where the sea moves vast, The huge, flat, wheedling sea, fawning to play, I heard his singing fade with the sea-wind away, away. thala-ssa, thalassa! And at his song a madness fell On me, the whole sea s force Entered my blood with sob and swell, And the splendor of life and death on their mystic course, And a full voice spoke out of the tones of the full sea s force. thalassa, thalassa! 153 "This dumb flesh and this still face, This was the body of Christ they bore; Tin v have torn Him down from the sacred place, And the writhing God they have torn from the tem ple door. The body of a man we bear Him by the sound of the flat sea s roar!" thalassa, ihalassa! And as I stood, and where I stood, Along the sky-mark tense and fine The full sea shuddered in her flood And flashed to the shore in a shower of singing brine, And the stark waters lifted and sank in a long line. () thalassa, thalassa! And the sea s self, and the sea s whole And the whole arching of the sky Seemed part of me in the body and soul, And the irrevocable murmur of the Deep, and I shouted on high, And lifted my hands and shouted, "It is I, it is I!" thalassa, thalassa! Lift your head, and cease your moan, Leave the pure flesh to flower and weed! Though Christ be dead and the old Christ gone, Our bodies shall bear a new Christ to the new world s need, With in-w strong words and new sad wounds that bleed. thalassa, thalassa! 154 Laugh look up, not a God, but a man Now, and part of the dust and the doom: What is there base since the world began! Out of the dust comes Christ and the soul from the womb, And the dust is splendid, and earth, and death, and the tomb! thalassa, thalassa! O from the sod, and glad from the sod Let us reach up from the fears that be, With body and spirit, a god to God, Knowing that all things, body and spirit, are holy and free, And Christ in the dust and the grass, and the waves of the sea! thalassa, thalassa! THE MOTHER THERE was a trampling of horses from Calvary Where the armed Romans rode from the mountain side ; Yet riding they dreamed of the soul that could rise free Out of the bruised breast and the arms nailed wide. There was a trampling of horses from Calvary, And the long spears glittered into tin- night; Yet riding they dreamed of the will that dared to be, \\ IK n the head fell and the heavens were rent with light. 155 Ti.e ryi s that closed over sleep like folded wings And the sad mouth that kissed death with the cry "Father, forgive them ," silently these things They remembered, riding down from Calvary. AIM! Joseph, wlu-n the sick body was lowered slowly, Folded it in a white cloth without seam, The indomitable brow, inflexible and holy, And the sad breast that held the immortal dream, And the feet that could not walk, and the pierced hand, And the arms that held the whole world in their embrace ; But Mary, beside the cross-tree, could not understand, Looking upon the tired, human face. VI LOVE SONGS At the sharp, sweet pang of your lips, At the touching of Beauty s knife, My song from my body slips, Like a soul released from life. 159 VICTORY . r\< n :is hr conquers US, Through lashes that tremble for starry tears, And the dear beauty over us Laughs, as the lovely moment nears. For all of ourselves that we give away In the reckless rapture of sweet unrest, For every flowrr of life we shed As a sacrifice at the immortal breast, For every joy he deflowers us of In the ecstasy and most bitter bliss, And rvrry cry that is wrung from us, Confessing us still more wholly his ; O wholly his, and more and more, His in the end, and his alone () and to frrl the whole, sweet soul Bared to his beauty and overthrown ! The pitiless and the insatiate lips, And thr kind hrart that bends from above, And thr glad eyes through brimming tears for rxultant love. 160 FLOWERING THE dear and beloved beauty, Persuasive as the Spring s, Lures life from the lips of Life, Song from the heart that sings, To be wasted across her being: From the deep heart she steals Life to the source of Life Song at her bosom reels. As roses in a garden Lured by the laughing South, Life, long numb at the heart, And Song, long dumb at the mouth, Burst, and break into blossom, And quicken with sweet unrest, Are born and shed and wasted At the beloved breast. PRAYER O TAKE me where you are Open, make open wide! Dear, draw the very veils Of your inmost life aside ! 161 Take me to the most secret Dim altar of your breast, There where your very self is, Shut out from all the rest. Drown out all other faces, Dear, with your only face, All other selves with your self There in that quiet place, There where your very soul is, Th< re where all longings cease . Open, and fold my sorrow Into your beauty s peace! LOVE AND PAIN soft veil by veil dividing. Now soft snow by snow divides Falling softly, and leaves naked The Spring s beauty, like a bride s. Clear and cold her wrt limbs sparkle Through tin- woodland drenehed in dew And warm showers: - through the window Windy buds and boughs shine through. And a bird-note from the tree-tops, Through the bn-ast here in the dawn Strikes, like a bright blade of beauty Driven, like a blade withdrawn. 162 Ah sweet, now my sleepless sorrow Moves through darkness into day, Crush with your sweet self around me The old self in me away ! Not with words, ah not words only, Hush the pain that in me lives, But with the immortal kindness Life to life forever gives ! So amid the greatest sadness Of my sorrow, shall I feel, Through blind tears, the lovely gladness Round about my spirit steal. Till my pain lies bared completely To your beauty, all my pain Bared completely, as the woodland To the kind and healing rain. TO THE BELOVED Mo HE sweet than another s pity, Dear, from your lips is pain. Ah not for the touch of pity The heart of love is fain! Pity is old and feeble, Pity has a mournful tongue j But O delight is cruel, Delight is well and young! 163 B< It. r than another s pity Drowsing the heart like dew, Pain and the tumult of pain is, So that it come from you. O better than all the gladness Of the world from fast to west, One starlit hour of pain is And weariness at your breast ! At the wild, sweet lust of your bosom, Where the young blood laughs and sings, Panting witli dear desire, And pitiless as the Spring s. LONGING As a storm with shower and lightning That sweeps the oe< an through, I would that I might hurry Now, to you, to you ! He pours his radiant fire From tin- ecstasy of his face, With tears and fiery laughter He bows to her embrace. Tin- deep, immaculate bosom. Silent, and fierce, and proud, In the most holy gladm ss Breaks, and sobs aloud. 164 O but to hurry now To you, at length, at length! Cover you with my love, And fill you with my strength, Touch hands and lips and fingers In longing pure and white, And pour my spirit through you In the radiance of delight ! LOVE AND THE THOUGHT OF DEATH SPRINGTIME is in the world, Her warm airs fill the gloom. A single ray of light Slips through the darkened room. Alas how oft I feared To render up my breath, Ere I had tasted love, Into the waste of death. But now even to my heart Her pitying heart descends, Across my very breast The sacred bounty bends, And the saving spirit of Life, Your radiant womanhood : Love lies dumb and baffled For wordless gratitude. 165 Love laughs through blinded lashes, As dimly through his tear-,. At last, at last, at last, The reverent bounty nears ! Let me lean up my thirst, Here in the Spring, and slake Life at the source of life! Lean up my lips that ache ! O all your woman s beauty. Bowed down like a laden bough Heavy with burden of bountv. Has drooped across me now ! O the whole spirit of Springtime Has caught me in embrace, April and April s kindness Have bowed across my face! O the world is full of bounty And the Springtime s starry breath! Love has conquered Life, And Life has conquered Death ! THE TIMPLE OF THE SOUL YOUR body is like a cathedral. Whose stately arches and strong Were raised to triumphant miiMe And the rhythm of reverent song. 166 In her secret and shady places, The curves of her shadow clings, Like incense under dim arches, An odor wild as the Spring s, A scent, as of sunburnt islands, O er the waters wafted afar. Through the labyrinth of your bosom Where the somber silences are, Through the hush, through the choir of your bosom, Like an organ s I hear it roll, In the thunderous anger of beauty, The pulse of the wrath of your soul. The arch of your body s endurance, The span of your beauty s strength Is a door to the mystery dread: Your body s rhythmical length, With murmurous walls all surrounded, Is the hushed and the holy abode Of a flame on the altars eternal, A flash of the beauty of God ! COMPLETION WIIKN in the arms of the beloved I lie The whole world breaks into one flower of Spring, Buds burst, stars shine, and to the nightingales Around us, all the sleepless woodlands ring. 167 . >\ moves to ecstasy with every pulse And Love toward Loveliness with every breath; Life shines completed, and the veil of fear Falls from the solemn and kind face of Death. ECHOES I LEAN at the breast beloved And hear, as in the shell, Tin- inarticulate moan, Where God is murmuring still, Some echo of the far ocean, Fading with every breath, The moan of the blood beloved Pouring on toward death. REPOSSESSION ALIEN and remote the whole day long You seem to me, and all the crowded day The outer selves and faces from my heart Crowd the sweet self and face of you away. Till the long twilight deepens into dusk And the irny evening mines, then am I yours, Then in my heart the blood-beat of your heart Through gates of memory summons me and lures. 168 Then when the myriad outer faces fade, The stress and turmoil of the long day passed, Breathless, and face to face amid the dark, then amid the silences at last, When the dim room is darkened, and the world Fades with the barring of the silent door, All other selves forever you crush out, Sweet, with yourself around me evermore! Ah then amid the darkness and the peace Around us, veiled, inviolate and vast, Even by your touch, even by your trembling, sweet, 1 know your very self again at last ! LIFE PERSUASIVE AH sweet, from my lips you steal The very life away, To be shed on the lips of the Springtime That here at my own to-day Hang close and tug insistent: Ever your beauty lures The ardent life between us To pass from my breast to yours. O the sweet, the insistent Springtime That hangs here at my heart, Drinking the very life With thirsty lips apart! 169 The urgent, embodied Springtime That lures my love to live, That hangs here at my heart Whispering, "Give Give !" THE REFUGE DEAR, the deft Nature and the Love that wrought thee Fitted thy breast with kindness to my breast, And the compassionate Tenderness that thought thee Made thee a refuge for me and a rest. Ah mid the world s innumerable faces And million arms flung open to embrace, I fly to thee; amid a myriad places I seek thee only and thine only face! For from myself thy beauty liberates me, And from all other selves, set free and lost In the one being that still recreates me And mixes me with all I love the most. Thou art the one, sweet loveliness forcvrr Farthest from all that I must ever be And still have been: wherefore my spirit ever Hastens with love and longing on to thee. The unreachable Paradise beyond my sorrow, Toward which my lonely longing ever moves, The- light that lures me on beyond To-morrow, All that my spirit labors for and loves ! 170 PARTING IN SPRING I WE shall not live to see the light of June Together, You and I, Ere the young moon, ere the young thrush s tune, Our love must die. Each breath we haste But to one hour with hearts and lips that throb, Then and the waste Widens between our bosoms with a sob. With the glad Spring All glad lives flower toward the sweet life to come, Flower and sing: Only your heart here at my heart is dumb. With the glad Spring All sweet lives blossom and burst and flower IK u- blown, Reflower and sing And shed new hope, except our love alone. Kvrn the kind stars of this month that see Our love laid breast to breast O sweet, shall see your breast laid far from me, As the East from the West! 171 II Now l>r< -aks tin first hud on the bending spray, Hut Thou and I must part. Now April leans with trembling lips at May, Thy heart, sweet, at my heart. Now dings the swallow to the hawthorne tree, But I must go from Thee. Now pours the young tulip forth her odorous love To the nightingale along, Now answers the nightingale from the boughs above With running song: Ere April s self has flowed into swrrt May I shall be far away. Now all sweet flowers quicken into birtli At the bosom kind and bright Ot the dear Spring, now all things in the earth Mingle with one delight And waken to one hope, but Tliou and I, Only our love must die ! Spring rings- and all the woodlands east and west Ring with a million songs, Life hastens to the In-loved from the loving breast, To the breast where life In-longs : l- .re Spring has ceased our love must cease to Hut wlnt of Thee and Mr I 172 LONGING AND PAIN THE call of a bird from the woodland In my body a slow, sweet pain, O my body is drenched and filled with you As the earth with the April rain! To the call of the bird in the woodland Answers a voice in my heart, Up through my aching pulses Your pulses tremble and start. O would I were yours again wholly, Flooded again and again With yourself, that am grown already So full of that slow, sweet pain ! O would I were yours again wholly, And all my sorrow again Lay bared, my pain to your beauty, As the earth to the April rain ! SLEEPLESS NIGHT NIGHTLONG full of bitter longing Slumberless I tossed and fain, But the thought of you at morning Soothed away the touch of pain. 173 The warm April rain was falling, The first bird-notes woke again, And the thought of you came falling Softly on my heart like rain. Till the rain kissed sleep aslumber, Till sleep kissed away my pain, And I dreamed that I was lying At your very breast again. LOVE S PRAYER GIVE me yourself, dear; Not the sweet hands, Eyes, or lips only Loving demands: Not the mere outward, Alien and lonely Ah not the hands, The dear beauty only ! I thirst, I thirst! Bare me your soul ; Let the sweet waves of it Crowd to me, roll In on my spirit To flood and enfold: Be kind, dear, be kind, Nothing withhold ! 174 Give me yourself, The inmost, the best One soul of all souls, Hid deep in your breast! SPRING-SORROW How often have I thrilled you With joy and the pulse thereof! Thrilled you and filled you all through, Sweet, with my living love ! How often have I felt you Tremble to my pulses, sweet, Flutter all through and tremble From the forehead even to the feet ! Ah Spring returns and the flowers, Springtime and flowers and rain, But one sweet moment forever Returns, ah never again ! WEARINESS IN SPRING ALL love-songs and the inner sense Of every song and singing word Are consummated in the cry Of any woodland bird. Alas for the blind pain of speech That struggles toward the starry heights, Language in labor, and the soul That would grasp the Infinite s! Alas for the blind pain of speech And all the strife to comprehend! The cry of any woodland bird Has said it all in the end. MOMENTS THE wind Lkl down upon the long, swert. In-riving waste That sobs beneath his beauty, all the sea Trrmblrs like a young virgin about to love A tender silence tills thr whole world around: So once have I felt you trrmble .... LOVE I!J THE RAIN ONCE my heart to your heart, dear. I. -tv bared, to your brauty my pain, Au<l litV to thr life beside it, And both to the April rain. The. warm, thr white rain was falling Across us. and swiftly our tears Han down with thr rain, and mingled, T.rr thr lonjr thirsty years. 176 O anguish and ecstasy blended, Tears and the rain and delight Mingled, and pain with beauty, And life with life in the night, For the last time forever Ere the long, thirsty years; O eagerly pain and beauty Mingled with laughter and tears ! Ah for that one fleet moment, That perfect moment again Of tears and love and the Springtime, Ecstasy, darkness and rain ! REMEMBRANCE THE twilight falls. I hear the children singing. A robin calls Through the fast-fading twilight, and the sky Deepens to ardent loveliness. But I Dream of the look of the beloved face Seen in the clasp of a last, long embrace Once, in a far-off land, mid thunder s sound And ecstasy of the nightingales around Among the dripping boughs, and lightnings bright Between the twilight and the dawning light, When all about the silence of our pain Fell the soft kindness of the soothing rain; 177 Seen once through swift and blinding tears from above, The face beloved in the moment of love, And breast like a moonlit sea without a breath, When- the rapture of love had set the peace of death! THE GREAT WISH To love you and die, sweet, that were the best! To drink of you once nor waken again To aught unkinder, but happily slain, N<> more longing and no more pain, With love at the fullest and life at the best, To sink into rest, To sink into sleep from the heaven of your breast, That were the best ! Having lived, having loved, to the full of life s power, Having had your beauty one whole sweet hour, With no space between of unlove-lit T breath, From the rapture of love to the rapture of death To be hurlrd. from your breast, from your breast bare and bright Sobbing rrrklrss along in the rage of delight, At your breast, at your breast, to the consummate night To sink through the love-sleep, and ebb into rest; That were the best! 178 Ah to sink from the noon-tide of love, when the noon Lies heavy on life, and the earth in the swoon Of the bride-sleep is hushed, when the shadowless hour Broods perfect and prone on the world, and each flower To the core with perfection s fulfillment is thrilled, And the birds in the woodland for rapture are stilled, Longing and beauty and sorrow fulfilled O drunkenly, wearily, blessedly slain ! Yours at last, yours at last, to sink into rest, Yours at last, yours at last, from the heaven of your breast To sink into rest, No more longing and no more pain, And no more pain ! GENTLE HANDS OUTSIDE I hear upon the window-pane, Half through my sleep, the soft touch of the rain Pleadingly, like the touch of gentle hands From far away. O on the borderlands, Starry and dim, ere the first quiet breatli Of sleep, as on the dim borderlands of death, The thought of the first beloved returns again, Of the dear hands, the hands that first held up Even to our lips the sacrificial cup, Bounteous and brave, the dear, the compassionate hands! I hear soft hands upon the window-pane. 179 I hear the soft sound of the rushing rain. I sec them there, the quiet, the folded hands, In the last sleep long hushed and laid away; I.et me kneel down beside you hero to pray ! Let mr kiss off* your hitter stain of blood Here, with the hot tears of my gratitude! bounteous hands! O dear, first hands that gave The immortal kindness, compassionate and brave. Dear hands, whose memory nothing may destroy Felt ever around in the Springtime of our joy! Dear, generous hands, let me kneel down and weep ! 1 feel soft hands come pleading through my sleep. SONCi ALAS you were my youth, my youth! My love ran on to greet you. Sweet, at the fall of your luring feet My life ran on to meet you. And when, with your head at my heart, you shed Wild tears for your only lover, Wild t< ars as for one already dead. And kissed me over and over, sweet, and hung at my heart and clung, For agony, so to grieve me ! 1 knew it was my youth, my vouth. Was trying then to leave me. 180 I knew it was my youth, my youth, And O when you departed My youth and I had said good-bye, And I was broken-hearted ! DEFIANCE Now let Death come when he will At the beloved breast I have leaned, I have taken my fill Of the one thing the best. Into the pitiless lands Still shall I bear with me Some touch of the lips, the hands, That kindest memory. THE UNIVERSE AND THE BELOVfeD IT is your love and not the radiant light That fills the lonely and the sunset lands, When evening o er the broad and billowing waste Hallows the silences with hovering hands. When westward o er worn sunset s wratli the Void Widens with luminous rapture calm and bright, O most serene and liberating soul, Your spirit widens there with vast delight ! Ill the huge agony of the sunset s wast. Your burning 1 ()V , is sacrificed and slain, Your Ix-ing rearises in the west, Crowning with starry peace the close of pain. as the sunrise from his single self I M the last star, lost in her light above, So from myself you liberate mys. If Lost in the widening daylight of your love. I feel you and I breathe you and I live U hen in the winnowed east the stars die out: In the augiist magnificence of noon Your golden glory folds me round about. Where suns arc and the flaming thrones of life, There is your habitation and abode, In the unwearied love that swavs the world. Among the stars, and at the heart of God. and where the huge passion of the storm Lifts, with excited laughter of delight, I. ashed lightnings: there your radiant passion reigns, And in the orbits of the Infinite! How shall I fly you, w!,, re shall I be fed? Still follows the one thought of you along, 1 ; J -ishes lik. lightning through my singing soul And shatters all the thunders of my Song. 182 EXALTATION Song here closes with worn longing In her thought from whose embrace First, broke all his fiery ardors And the circuits of his race. To the breast where he has lavished All his beauty in the past, Love with ecstasy surrenders All his life again at last. O the one face most beloved Aureoled mid a myriad faces, The one breast that bears the secret Mid Creation s myriad races! Known by heart the one dear body ! The dear lips, well worn, well known ! Faithful to one life forever, Loyal to one soul alone, Still Love bears upon his bosom Toward the stars with every breath, The dear burden that he lovrs so. His at last in life and death; Under sun and moon and starlight Lifting upward sleeplessly, Lapsing in long lines of beauty, Like the bosom of the sea: 183 With exhaustion most exalted And new longing newly born, With seraphic pain triumphant And high weariness outworn. DEFEATED SONG ALAS, at last Song s wandering wing-ways reach The Beauty that thrones triumphant beyond speech, The holiest Beauty! In the most hallowed place Forevennon he hides his holy face, Mid starriest heaven lost astray afar, And breathless for awe of Beauty, like a star. VII IBM A O lovely fallen angel Out of the hcarc n of love! That seeks in vain to recapture Her place in heaven above. lovely fallen angel! O beautiful lost star! Wandering now and errant In the u ide wastes afar. Con 1<I I hut replace you In highest heaven above, Could I only heal you With tny living love, I would fold you, as the morning Her star, when night is passed,- Into the hushed longing Of my lore at last! 187 A PORTRAIT In MA has sweet eyes and young, A strange and maiden air, Laughter lies upon her lips And sunlight on her hair. Here in her sweet, slight body once An angrl had his home Some years ago, but now, alas, His feet are forced to roam. The angel of herself he was And bore her very name Our day into the temple broke Together, Lust and Shame. At the strange sound of alien tongues He hid his face and fled, But still her Ixxly moves about As though she were not dead. And set-king still shr knows not what She wanders like a ghost, Half-gay, half-sad: she hardly knows It is hrrsrlf slir lost. Yet it OIK knocking at her heart Should serk to rntrr iii, Nothing within it will he find Kxerpt tin- worm within. 188 And if Love ever now should come To knock upon the door, Out of the hollow tomb no love Makes answer evermore. Strange is it sometimes still to hear Mid the false tongues about, With simple beauty and austere Her native self speak out. Like the grave voice of one long dead It falls upon the ear And vanishes, and then we know She is no longer here. Irma has sweet eyes and young, A strange and maiden air, Laughter lies upon her lips And sunlight on her hair. A FALLEN ANGEL THROUGH the cold brilliance of the crowded street One night-time passing, on my arm I felt The touch of one like Memory come from behind, And a beloved voice that greeted me \Vith the old name: pausing, I turned about. 189 Strange was the face, and tragical the - That met me, tin- worn smile upon the lips. The sorrowful, guy clothes, the veiled, small form, A ghost, a horror, it stood beside me there, Sinister, harsh; hardly my heart had guessed, Save for that same, familiar joke of yours. Light of my youth, alas and was it you! Not glad the laughter that you gave me then. That all that I had longed for ever the most All should possess, but I your lover alone, To hold in mockery; all that the most I loved, Lost to me only this I could forgive. But that with the old. sweet look of the eyes, how oft, >een how often in the great days before!) You sought to lure me to so much less than this. One with the rest, the vilest and the most mean; O sweet, even with those eyes, my pride, my youth, My Springtime once, and the heaven of all my prayer! A/e, who had given my love of life away To save you from tin- least touch: this broke my heart. TIIK ANGEL RETURNS AGAINST my shoulder you leaned your head. You closed the page of the silent book. itnnge, ^till twilight al>out us spr I felt your presem-e around me shrd. Your Ix-auty trembled, your body shook. - Against my shoulder I ! It your head. 190 Almost around me it seemed to steal, For one, sweet respite that little hour, The self that I longed for you to reveal, Almost about me I seemed to feel Your whole, sweet womanhood break into flower The self that I loved I seemed to feel. An angel once was sitting beside me: Till sudden I wake at those words you said, The heart that mocks and the lips that deride me Where is the face of the angel fled? O life that I loved so are you dead ! Who is this ghost that sits beside me? SONG FOR A JIG I HAD a sweet, a pretty sweet But O she did deceive me! I found her on another breast. Ah cruel t was to leave me. Alas I gave her all my youth, Nor ever had I guessed it All that I loved in all the world That all the world possessed it. "O sweet, what refugr is there left If all was known before me And is it true there was no love In all the love you bore me, 191 "And is it true that every kiss \Va.s mockery the merest And were you never really mine My darling O my dearest: "What makes your eyes so merry, dear, What makes your lips so cheery, When all the heart within is dead, And all the world is dreary !" To do as though I did not can It was my mood and pleasure: Around the room, amid the rest I danced a jolly measure. But though my feet deceive you, sweet, My heart cannot deceive you. Though Love you left forevermore, Yet I.o\e will never leave you. DISCORDS You flung the window full into the light Of sunset widening o er the golden roov. . : A sin.-l- organ jan-l d from the square Full in the radiance the hushed city lay. () then for the one time the iron mask Fell from the woman s h--irt. wMe arms you spread Of longing, with an inarticulate er\ . And a new wonder reached through all your face. 192 Each tress, each loop, each wave and line of you, Your very self, girlish and grave you stood, Defiant and mysterious to the end. Silence prevailed: but Tony looking up, Doglike, with baffled eyes into your own, Restively, with a troubled cry arose. Pity you would not. you could never bear. Then flashed the anger from your eyrs with tears Suddenly dimmed, your sweet hands clenched in rage, As agony, you spurned him with a blow. Slrirp cries of pain, ridiculous, rent the air. The organ faded, the wide light went out, Westward the beauty withered line on line. THE TWO SELVES IN the hush of the morning my heart lies dreaming Of the old self that you used to be, I feel the self of your early beauty Hciid at my bedside over mr. Of the self that I loved my heart lirs drraininir. Kurydice once came up through the darknrss. When one looked I nek-ward witli longing, and lo It ebbed from his arms the whole sweet beauty ! Remembering, I look backward so: The face beloved sinks back in the darkness. 193 Vainly, vainly I try to remember The old sweet look of the eyes and head. The self that you are comes up between us, And O, my dear, I would I were dead! The morning dawns, but I try to remember. A GLIMPSE OF HER AROUND about us the dusk city lay Before we parted. In the sunset light, Your arms filled up with flowers gathered in That afternoon from country-ways, you stood. Shy looking up, some urchin of the street lor our stray blossom begged, which stooping down You granted him, and then with suddenness Your whole sweet wealth of beauty gave away; O bounteous. O most adorable, Transfigured there in one swift act of love ! You turned to go, but from your lips escaped Some joke, too sordid and too mean for you, For vour magnanimous and gracious ways, Hurting th- In-art, too trivial, too mean. O you unwilling, you most willful our! you v.-id mystery, you riddle, you! 1 hrard your laughter dying down the street . 191 THE LOST PARADISE MY own is like a desolated house, Where Love and Faith lie dead, A garden in the Springtime of the year With all her flowers shed, Beauty and laughter in her face abide, Only the heart is dead. Love came, and weary, at the golden gate Pleaded to enter in, A mournful laughter greeted him with jeers And ghosts of subtle sin Drew him across the threshold, with a kiss Lured him to enter in. O had he only come a space before To take her by the hand ! Even yet, perhaps, even yet they might have stood Safe in the wonderland Even yet they might have entered nevermore Now, will she understand. Faintly she strove to ape a little love, But in her eyes he read Only a ghastly hint funereal, O sweet, and are you dead ! O sweet, and is your bosom but a tomb Alas, and are you fled ! 195 Fair is her face and flowerlike to \ i< \v Of roses white and red, Her eyes are full of memories to Love, Only the heart is dead, A garden, an abandoned Paradise, Whose angels all are fled. A DANCE WITH DEATH "Gooo-BY, good-by. forever!" Across your throat you drew it, The quaint, enameled curio, My carve -n Arab knife, With many a mocking gesture: When- the white throat had rested Clung OIH swert drop of life-blood \\ arm from your living In-art. Till far from you, you flung it, And danced around alxmt me. And filled the room with laughter, To mock my sober eyes. The Sunday brlls w< re ringing In through the open window, The city in the sunlight Basked, as if asleep. 196 O wanton, wild and wondrous, O tragic and most youthful, For a playtime, for a pastime, To feign a dance with death ! Still on the blade the stain lies, Your young, sweet, reckless life-blood "Good-by, good-by, forever !"- I hear your mocking voice. ON AN OLD PICTURE LOOK on this picture, Love, for this is she Whom now we serve, ere the first virgin grace Had left the earnest innocence of the face, Or shame had weighed the lips down wearily. She stands before you in pure girlish-wise, Brave, with a breast immaculate like the Spring s, Full of sweet pity and all tender things, And fronts the future with undaunted eyes Pure as the day s ere dusk has made them sad. Ah, Spring and her flowers return as once before, But this one face returns not any more: A little phantom with firm eyes and glad, Wistful, a little eager, innocent ghost That hate has robbed you of and lust has slain Forevermore ! Look on this face again, O Love, for this is she whom you have lost! 197 AN ANGEL IN HELL I SAW one drag her loveliness along Painfully through the twilight of the street, Mid wanton gibes and buffeting of men. I.aughal.le were her motions, where she went Laughter of mockery greeted her with jeers : Once through the deepening distances she turned, ng the eyes O f one that followed on; I. o -that look I had seen it once before Shine from the dearest face in all the world! Ah. the look th.-it Iure> in a woman s Meant for her lover s heart, and his alone ^gging ^om every face that hurried past ! I.au-h-.Me were her motions, where she went ier of mockery greett -d h- r with jeers Hut. O. she had the eyes of my first 1 AN AUGUST NIGHT ONC-K upon a night, a starry night in August, I.yinir on my Led. wrapt i n lonely dreams. Broke a slender figure in upon my dreaming Touched me on the eheek. tried to say good-by. 198 Like a ghost it was, yet knew I it was living, Round about its brow clung a crown of thorns And the eyes were brave but sad and very tired, Felt I it had come, then, to say good-by. Close against my heart I caught it full of longing, And it offered me, willing, weary lips As of old, upon them the bitter tears I tasted. Then I knew twas he, km w it was my Youth. At its feet I fell and begged it for forgiveness, But it only turned back into the dark: But it was too proud and weary to make answer, Only lifted up ever listless lips. Till it clung and held me as a little child might, Covered me with kisses, covered me with tears, Sobbed against my breast in passionate abandon ; And without a sound vanished in the gloom. Struggling from my dream I groped toward the window, The city in the night lay august and dead, All the sultry street was heavy with veiled odors, Suddenly you passed, Tony at your side. Soft across my face a breath of musk and perfume Swept, beneath the lamp back you turned a while Then I knew the face, the face that I had dreamec of,- Almost as one dead to mine eyes you seemed 199 For a single moment ! You passed into the darkness, Like a fallen angel groping for return, Or a little u host across the somber eitv Wandering ever on, seeking its own soul. LOVE KNOCKS AT THE DOOR IN the pain, in the loneliness of love To the heart of my sweet I fled. I knocked at the door of her living heart, "Let in let in " I said. "What seek you here?" the voices cried, "You seeker among the dead"- "Herself I seek, herself I seek, Let in let in!" I said. They opened the door .f her living heart. Hut the core thereof was dead. They opened the core of her living heart A worm at the core there fed. "Where is my sweet, where is my sweet?" "She is gone away, she is fled. I.on;r years a^o -die tied away, She will never return," tin v said. 200 "FLOWERS FOR LOVE OR DEATH" SOFT flowers, dear, I press into your hand. Sweet as your face is sweet, Shy buds and blooms the wayward Springtime sheds For a sacrifice at your feet. Your eyes look up to mimic the old way But O their light is fled It is as if into your hands I press Flowers for one long dead. LOVE IN HELL "LovES me/ and "loves me not/ with careless hands From the soft, wounded flower-face you tore The petals, falling round you one by one. Impatient, ere the last, sad, tell-tale leaf, And guessing some denial ere you knew, Into the flames you tossed it with a jest. The shuddering flower writhed amid the flare. Lo, her miscounted petals, one by one, Whispering a "loves you" from the heart of hell ! HEAVENWARDS WITH rapture of longing I lift you above To the heaven of love, With surging and thronging 201 Wide wings of my anguish StCftimd upward to save, lilt you up from the grave Where living you languish! Let my love be as dew to you, Quicken and heal: O my perished one, feel My live longing thrill through to you! Have I not thrilled you, Warmed you, and pressed Your breast to my breast, With my ecstasy filled you, Caught you up here to me Close at my cheek? Speak to me speak Some word of sweet cheer to me ! Nay tis a ghost, The horrible head On my bosom lies dead, The life that I lost. O radiant and ravishing, Lovely enough, Tis a ghost that I love! O radiant and ravishing! 202 Hushed the dim weight On the heart of my breast I bear without rest, The horror I hate. The winds follow after: Embracing I bear The lovely despair, Heaven rings with my laughter, " Tis a ghost that I love ! Tis a ghost that I love !"- On my bosom I bear it To heaven above. A WOMAN S HANDS YOUR hands are still unchanged for all of you, Tired they look and worn, but still the same The memory to me of your very self. Much have they suffered and much bitter guilt Has visited them, but left them all unstained : Still the old gracious innocence they have, Their maiden purity and mute appeal. O bounteous hands that have given their all away To lips that spurned them even as they took ! Dear, generous hands, compassionate and brave, Fashioned to hold against the lips of life The cup of the lovely kindness, wondering! 203 Dear, gentle hands of the sacrificial scars, After all shame and violence virgin yet, Inviolable, mysterious to the end, I know you still, the sacred, the woman s hands ! MEMORY S TOUCH I SAT beside you after the division Of many clouded days of fatal portent, I da red not litter to your heart that knew not The ominous hint that in my heart I bore. For I was sorrowful and very tired, The tragic twilight closed around about us: I could not love you as I once had loved you, That hitter meaning in those shameful eves. Alas, across our love a somber shadow Had cast its wings of hovering disaster, And to a dream of terror and foreboding Our life of hue irai likened from the first! Beside your phantom and your haunted body Mysrlf. a phantom, sat amid the darkness: I heard the autumn rain across the window, The twilight deepened, it was time to go. I heard the autumn rain across the window, "Ah. could I hut airain with eves of wonder Look up into that face so sweet and tin d. The guileless beauty that I lo\ed 1>< fore . " 204 Alas, my cold caresses were all loveless And cold the lips that trembled to deceive you, I pressed you like a ghost against my bosom, Half-trembling through the anguish of my tears. And to your face that strove so hard to mimic Some look of the old rapture, as I took it Returned a shadow of the old, brave beauty The eyes had shone with in the days before. Ere all their grace was turned into a pleading, And all their dear commanding to derision. O sweet, not guessing, arduous and urgent, You drew me up against your very side ! Abashed we sat and full of weary hatred: What voice was that that called so soft between us, As if to lead us back again together? The voice of Love that calls his children home, His sulky children with immortal sorrow. O, hark that pleading touch upon the window Of possibilities and poignant have-beens, Dim rain and darkness, solitude and love! BEHIND THE MASK THE music danced and laughed aloud, The music laughed and cried aloud, You stepped into the whirling dance With gay and weary eyes. 205 You laughed and san^, \ ou danced ;iud sang, The music laughed and danced and sang Your In-art upon anothrr s heart, The music laughed and cried. I see you still, I hear you still, It was not you that danced at all, I knew it all, I knew it all, Alas, my sweet, alas! THE DEAD SELF Yor show me tlir pic-tun-, tin- old dim picture, The look of your face in the earlier years, Tin- l>ra\v. bright eyes and the quiet forehead, Sudden the room swims round in tears. I see the face of the faded picture. The breath of your bosom comes harder and faster. Closer against me you sink your head, As one long dead, together we weep it, As one that is slain, as one that is fled, Your eyelids flutter, your breath comes faster. Bravely your eyes look up to meet me, Bravely, to mimic the old. sweet way: But the look is fh d and the eyes are altered, The room lies dead. Tin -re is nothing to say. Thi-re is something missed in the eyes that meet me. 206 In the April rapture, the glory of Springtime, Cheated and dumb two ghosts we lean, The face that is fled, the face that is vanished Laughs like an innocent child between. I hear a sob in the music of Springtime. THORNS \ You reached your arms out to the little child, Some tousled rascal tumbling down the street, A hopeful longing flooded all your form And the old tenderness your eager eyes. Your hands were full of roses as you stooped To take him, to your heart you caught him up, Full of sweet roses like yourself; the thorns Hurt the small body that spurned you with a cry. LOVE S CRY "O GIVE me of the bounty of your being, Your very love, your uttermost compassion ! I faint, I fail, for loneliness I perish O take me to yourself and fold me in, "Safe in the healing quiet of your bosom, Beyond the world and all her hollow hatred ! O be the sell niv Imr of you would have you, Hush with yourself my bitter doubt of you !" 207 Across my lips she laid her lips /ill lovel.-ss With bitter kisses and unmeaning laughter. With many :i lure to ape the immortal pity And elieat Love s sorrow with a little lust, To darken the wet lids of Love with laughter. "Alas, and are you one with all the others ! O love, my love, and what of all my loving! O sweet, I hate you, and I spurn you here !" LOVE S ANGER Too late it is now, dear, to love you Your body s sorrowful shame, Your loveliness all desecrated And those eyes ah, no longer the same ! The virgin self deep within you I loved, that is vanished and fled. :-t. that I once illicit have loved so! O life that I loved are you dead! Who murdered my best beloved And stole me my love away, Or ever my heart had known it, Or ever my lips could say? I knock at your breast like an angel At heaven s nnopening door No \oice of the old self within you Makes answer forevermore. 208 I beat at your breast like an angel At the portals of Paradise, And a hint of the lost, sweet girlhood Looks up at me out of your eyes : As a memory from an old picture Looks up at one full of grace. Your earnest and innocent spirit, The old, sweet look of the face. It is gone, it is vanished forever: But enough I have read there to know How much I could love M>U. my lost one, Could I have you as long ago. Ah, be what I fain would have thought you, Or I perish, I fail, I am lost! And have you no comfort to give me, But this cold smile like a ghost, No tenderness for my sorrow, No love to answer and greet! O would that I never had known you O my slain one, my sorrow, my sweet! Would that I never had known you, Would that your body, my child. Were scattered abroad to the heavens, Rescattered and undefiled ! 209 Where perished and re-arisen, Virgin again and free, A wave in the wave-ways of ocean, A star from the streams of the sea ! A SONG SWEET she is and full of fleetness, Like a flash of summer lightning, Beautiful and swift and blinding In the tragic night, That reveals the shy recesses Of some undiscovered forest, The dim coverts of her being, Odorous with dusk. Like a little mournful wild-rose, Full of lovely, luring petals, Bitter thorns and wounding beauty, Piercing-sharp, but sweet ! A LAST APPEAL T\KK these flow. rs. d< ar. and at your holy lY.-t I fall and Ix-j; you for fori:i\ nirss. Let me here a^ linst your quirt bosom Weep my heart out in a wastr of trars! 210 O could I but oner ;iu,iin awakr you! O my own, if love of you could heal you, Feel my love that trembles here to save you, Feel my living love around you, feel ! As one crazed, some voice beloved addresses, Half -remembered from old days of gladness, Even as one dead, upon your dumbness Beats my anguish like a wasted wave. Wildered the strange eyes look up to greet me, And the answer from the breast is vanished: In the poor, pale hands so mute and helpless Rest the hopeful flowers of my prayer. BITTERNESS IN the night of the city, the silence supreme, Love stands all discrowned of the beautiful dream. Love s heart cries out to the heaven above, "Give back, give back the heart that I love ! "City, give back the heart you have slain, The life that you robbed me of give me again ! And you that have murdered some heart s best beloved, What will you give me for all that I loved?" The silence around is the silence of Fate. The heart of Love sobs in the anger of hate. Love lifts the rage of his hands to the sky. The heart of Love breaks in a passionate cry. 211 PARTING ON A BIRTHDAY AI.I. happiness and love I would wish you. sweet, Now that my lift must Iravr you. on this day That brought your dr-ir fare earthward on its way And shed my love as a sacrifice at your feet. All joy and triumph I wish you ere we part, Now that the Spring blooms the whole world around, And all glnd lives and all glad loves abound, in your heart that hangs here at my heart. .Id I could give you a better gift than t! May beauty abide with you through all your days, And Spring fall ever with kindness on your face, As my hue now in tin- wild prayer of a kiss! So bending down as in the glad days before I touch you, like a spirit in passing by, F.\n as one already dead I cry, "I love you" and leave you then forevermore. THUNDEB AND LIGHTNING \\ M.KIN., through the in- idi.ws on a summer morning, From !,( slorm afar sudden breaks a gh-am Flashed of lovely lightning, reekhss and defiant. Laughing for delight, like your living self. 212 Then I thought of you, dear angel of my boyhood, I remembered then all the weary days. All the bitter sorrow and all the bitter longing, Vanished like a cloud, vanished like a dream. O dear self I love so, that I sought and longed for, In your living breast loved and sought in vain, Shall I ever meet you in your native beauty, Clasp you to my heart as you truly are! Darker grows the storm that echoes back no answer. Breaks a flash of lightning through the deeps afar, Like your very self, reckless and defiant, Laughing for delight far above it all ! FIRST NEWS SPRINGTIME was clamorous in the woodlands round And all the earth with flowers. Life at the lips Of the old rapture leaned, when first I heard The piteous tidings of you far away O foolish heart and most adorable Self-slain, alas, sweet, with your own sweet hand ! Tin n 1 remembered that last walk we had In the last Springtime: April at the world Hung like a bride, the country near and far Shone with a wistf illness most young and grave And tender, her sweet shyness thrilled the air Like a child s whisper. The first budding shoots Yearned to you dumbly where you went, the trees 21S Reached tremulous finders, .-md tin- whole, kind heart Of the young Springtime yearned to you and .sighed. Where you passed careless, alien and blind. Mid all her Children the one banished one. Lost md d. fi ant. Yea, amid the sweet Rare, virginal loveliness that lay around Some memory sad and touch of tawdry things, A breath of the dim city, your very self, You brought with you. Uaring within your breast That murdered girlhood, all those memories: The wounded Howers at your feet looked up, And a new sadness darkened all the Spring. Your young. sweet beauty filled me. but your words Shy and defiant, guarding all their woe, Some hint let slip, some secret evermore Of shameful things aeeepted carelessly. Taken for granted, all that outraged youth Following like a ghost. --O strange and sad It clung about you like a .shadow there. That murdered girlhood tawdry and unsublime! Then I. me. e\ n as the Spring, ijrew dark and drear, ILT with helph ss wings against a tomb; Faded the Ix-auty from his eyes and all II s whole irl :d ^pirit of youth was ebbed away. And all his being blinded, his heart subdued To the de-ad Loveliness, uln.sr arms about Hemmed in his he -s\ nward flight, and all his lips Tamed and submissive to the sad lips that kiss, ,1 His lips, all IOM -less, and drank the life out through. All weak and forgetful, all the high dream forgot, 214 With all his love at the most loveless bosom, At the dear tragic breast dumb as a tomb, Faint in the Spring he leaned in love with death. Sad and despoiled we leaned amid the Spring. The sunset widened, the twilight called us home. I remember still, among the cherry trees You stood, the budding branches clung to you, So frail and sweet, so tragic and so dear, One virgin flower at your breast! I seemed To hear as in your innocence they had rung Once, to some early lover, the last words (All meaningless now and empty) of your love; And carelessly I took them as they were worth. But in the twilight about I seemed to feel, Robbed of you now and all despoiled long since, The lovers of your girlhood s innocent youth That for those words had given their lives away. LAST NEWS AT the door they found you of my empty chamber, Bowed upon the ground .-ill that sacred head In the last, fierce pang of passionate defiance; Groping toward the sill both your lovely hands. How had they pursued you, hounded you, and hurt you, All those fiendish faces, hideous and abhorred ! All my whole heart s anger here goes out to smite them, All my hatred here, in one bitter cry. 215 O my own strayed angel, wilful, wild, and wayward, After all the hurt, to your home at last Turned in the great need, and beating backward vainly ; Minr. still mine at heart, mine in spite of all! AT A BEDSIDE I KNELT beside you where you lay at rest, With small, sweet desperate mouth and folded hands, Purer and much more virgin than the snow, In the cold moonlight of immortal sleep. April was in the air, but all around The laboring city s tumult, rage and lust Rolled like a sea; only within the room It seemed a part of the drar Spring lay dead, Here at your breast, calm as a moonlit wave, And the hushed heavings of her starry peace. Still the eternal riddle on your face Shone, the enigma never to be solv< <1. No answer to that secret met me there A little delicate figure without flaw, Defiant and mysterious to the end. Cleansed of all stain in the clear fount of death, -lit \ou iay, and very virginal, Hreathless and faint, triumphant and serene, And dumb with a new dignity at last. 216 Only upon the silence of your lips, Tenderly parted in an unfinished sigh, Only upon your lips there seemed to rest A thirst as if for some immortal thing: Was it for love that you had never known? TO HER Hi: ART of me, forgive me for the wrong I wrought you, Angel of my youth, hear me and forgive ! If I ever meet you in the highest heaven, I will kiss the blood from your wounded feet. FUNERAL CHAUNT As a rose that on the garden Lies untimely dead, As a swallow ere the summer You are gone and fled. Carelessly you bore your sorrow Bitter sin and shame, Carelessly, when you were weary, Blotted out your name. CHORUS As a flash of lightning, Swift and sweet and bright So your heedless spirit Vanished in the night. 217 Childlike and hut half-divining Through the world you went, Pain you found and fleeting pleasure Found, hut not content: ( rut 1 tilings you took for granted And unlovely sin, And your self-deceiving laughter Drowned the self within. CHORUS But the eternal Beauty Harbors no disdain, Spotless, to Her bosom Takes you back again. What worm was there at the bud Of your natal day, What deep hardship drove you on Down the shameful way ! Many lovrrs had you known And the pain thereof, Hut your breast had never leaned On the breast of Love. CHORUS Ah. yon n< ver knew them The inunort il eyes, And the sacred longing And the saeriliee 218 So your heedless laughter rang Down the baffling gloom Till its echoes dwindled out, Fading toward the tomb: So at morning, like a dream, Or a little ghost, In the terror of the dawn You were drowned and lost. CHORUS So your feet went blindly Down the darkness, sweet But more swiftly after Follow Memory s feet. Wherefore did you hide yourself Thus, amid the night! Wherefore thus divide yourself From the living light! Had you waited, but a space And they might have found you, But a space the saving arms Had been laid around you. CHORUS Though you turn your forehead From the living sun, We will not forget you Till our race is run. 219 Yt t within the commonness Of your tired heart Something like an angel dwelt, Virgin and apart, Something shy and fleet and rare, Holy and alone, All unguessed at by the world To yourself unknown. CHORUS Something like the morning When the light is new, Fugitive and wistful In the heart of you. Something very dumb and strange, Pure and undefiled, Dwelt within you. virginal ll | little child. CHORUS Thus alone we think you, \<>w your d iy is passed, amid the beauty Of all Lore at last : 220 LIGHTNING IN a dream I once beheld you Throned amid a throng of dancers, In your hand you held a slender Cup of foaming wine. All the room was loud with music, But without heaven s anger thundered: Lifting it you drank with laughter, "To the death of Love!" Loud and long they all applauded. To the very dregs you drained it, Drank, and dashed it down with blinding Tears : the lightning flashed ! TRANSFIGURATION AH, now your beautiful body That bore such tragical stain, Has slipped the robes of her sorrow, Cast off the robes of her pain Your bared and beautiful body! The compassionate Springtime has cleansed it And bathed it pure as the snow, Has healed it of all its fevers And washed it white of its woe, The cooling rainfall has cleansed it. -JJ1 Above your grnvr in the Springtime I saw it, reborn again, Laugh up through glad tear-drops, a flower That swayed in the wind and the rain, Drenched with the love of the Springtime. RECOGNITION STILL the starlight on the meadows Slumbered, ere the break of morning,- Far away the raging city And her tumult seemed. All around me like an ocean Shrilled the soft cicadas murmur. Far off cried a little screech-owl, Like a wandering soul. Then I felt a girlish presence Shed around me and a perfume Breathed as from a quirt bosom: Moving like a cloud, Over the still dews drew near me, Luminous, serene, and fragrant. Softly, a girl-shape in shadow, And the eyes were grave. All the sadness from tin- features, All the cruelty had vanished, And the t acr was \ ry lovely Like a little child s. 222 The clear wind of dawn had purged it Of all ecstasies and sorrows, Of all stain had wholly cleansed it And all memories. Like a cloud it drifted nearer, All around I felt the aura Of some self beloved, the garments Odorous with dusk. Then I first beheld the angel I had longed for, I had loved so, Virgin as the wind of morning. Twas your very soul. And I reached my arms to clasp it, But it laid a silent finger Soft across the lips, the eyelids Smiled upon my tears. Not a syllable it uttered, But I saw that it forgave me. Deep within the eyes I read it, All it would have said. ESCAPE IN my songs my heart is prisoned, In my songs my love lies buried, Sweet, alas, within these pages Lies my living soul, 223 Prisoned from you in these poems: And th.- self I strove to catch here Dead it lies between the letters, All that I have loved. O my slain one, my beloved, Are you lost to me forever ! Hlacker grows the storm above me Suddenly beyond, Bright across the black, a rainbow Flashes, lo, your very presence Poured, a radiance, a promise, Shining spans afar! Through the widening rifts of heaven Winging cleaves a bird, my spirit, Singing runs along to greet you, Lost amid the light! TRIUMPH TIIF native grandeur of the soul, Praise be to God f on \ r! Praise | .1. nor lust, nor crime, \or hatred, nor the hand of Time, Nor ravage of the years that roll No nor all things forever: Not ugliness, not all the whole Heaped weight of passions that control. \ >r temporal tumult unsuhlime i crush out. wholly. e\. r ! VIII s<\<;s HKYOXD DEATH In the l>lind universe of worlds and years I am drowned out, extinguished and destroyed. Only of me then- lingers in the I oid This fiery trail of memories and of tears. () all men yet to be under the ski/! O you, unborn, who yet shall read thin rhyme! Here is my voice imprisoned for all time, This, that you feel this moment, this is I. 227 CONFESSION An, all my life a shadow and a ghost Midst laughing men and weeping I have moved. Tin- human joy and pain I have not proved And e\en those whom I have lo\< <1 the most, As from afar I loved. In moments of close kinship felt no less, l ; .\en on the bosom of love still felt to be, An isolating and old mystery Falls. a deep veil of separate loneliness, Between all souls and me. And now, below this summit where I stand, The sleeping city lies austere and grav Touched with the first glamv of the widening day; O world of men. could you but understand All that I long to say! My hue of you must be my only boast, Still powerless, still standing far aside), Alas, my life has been as one that cried, "I love you," and then \ .-unshed like a ghost From the beloved side! WITHDRAWAL I m: ijray cock is crowing, The silence is pass, ,1 Lo into the Vast Tin- darkness ebbs flowing. 228 The lap of the Morning Is heaped up with flowers, White flowers and hours Her bosom adorning. Lift up your head Nay, weep me no more! Through the dark door I am vanished and fled. Beyond dreams and sleep And the stars of the dawn, With the tide I am drawn That ebbs to the Deep. PHANTASMIA THE wind of morning has blown out the stars And the pale trees stir idly in the Park, With the deep quietness ebbs out the dark Beyond the dawning and the cloudy bars, Along the gray sky-mark. O what is this dumb portmt of unquiet That creeps upon nn- with the growing day! What promised music draws my heart away! Bend closer and lean low that I may sigh it, Come close, that I may say. 229 Across the edges of the world a sinking Of dim phantasmal melodies is fled: Why will you weep and bury your sad head! Why will you make your arms so soft and clinging, l.uamored of the dead ! Beyond the windy and the widening portal Of the gray, lonely and unmeasured dawn I move, my soul is summoned and withdrawn. I fade away and I am made immortal, I pass, and I am gone. DESOLATION BY water-ways and wharves and ruined docks. Old sluggish fen-lands and abandoned ships, Poor ghost, I wander with complaining lips. By water-ways and wharves and ruined docks. Dear love, how well we knew it long ago, The shabby park beside the old. gray port, The lamplit street and the half-tumbled fort, Dear love, how well we knew it long ago. Heart-breaking love of the remembered days, You cannot know how we poor ghosts return To the old haunts with hearts and lips that burn, I 1- -:rt-brraking love of the remembered 230 In the wide horror and the waste of Time There lurks a dread more deep than you can guess. O doomed to an eternal loneliness In the wide horror and the waste of Time ! Even of myself, even of myself afraid Nay who is this beneath the starry sky That huddles past, alas and is it I, Even of myself, even of myself afraid ! O love, beyond the silence of what star, What mystery, what bourne, what bondage past, Shall I forget those memories at last O love, beyond the silence of what star! LAST RAPTURE ALAS the wings of morning are unfurled! Across the cloudy marshland, bog and fen, Far, far beyond the myriad haunts of men Here, on the desolate margins of the world The white dawn broods again. Beyond the holy and the smoldering fire, Listen beyond the heaven s utmost steep, Over the world of terror, dreams and sleep There calls a voice from the seraphic choir Into the vasty Deep. 231 N.w M-ts the tide to tin- ordained and deathless And the clear spirit to the Radiance clear. O lo\e. iii tin- Hrnk windy world s end here, () in this moment now, supreme and breathless, Desolate, wild and drear, The earnest stars fade flickering and shaking Through the cloud-woven rifts of palest blue, The wind of morning blows me through and through With a wild joy, through all my spirit waking! Is it the thought of yon ! MORNING-SLEEP CAN you not hear me now when I call you softly, Open your window, dear, I love you, I love you ! Night is deep, the heaven is starry above you. Can you not hear me when I call you softly r Open your window, dear, I weary of waiting. Do you remember the words of the love we plighted ! I must Hy when the fire of dawn is lighted. Open your window, dear, I weary of waiting. Ah. did you think that I could ever forget you! Hurry hurry! (The robin has given the warn ing). Before tin- wind has kindled the fire of morning! Ah. did you think that I could ever forget you! 232 Quiet you lie there sleeping under the starlight. O the body is passionate, strong and splendid, What care you for me whose passion is ended ! Quiet you lie there sleeping under the starlight. What do I hear hide me, cover me, hide me! Pity me, love, poor ghost from a land forsaken, Gather me close ; O do not let me be taken ! What do I hear hide me, cover me, hide me! O it is cold, it is cold, will you not hear me! These are the very meadows we loved and walked in, These are the very bowers we sat and talked in. O it is cold, it is cold, will you not hear me! O black-hearted! O deceitful O darling! O you have forgotten me altogether ! you have forgotten me altogether, PHANTOMS ALL the air is eager with the Spring, In the wet Park the first, faint crocus tips Peer up out of the ground in straggling strips And all the world leans forward quivering At April s amorous lips. 1 am so tired. What is that sound of warning? Listen it calls again Away away ! 1 must be gone with the first breath of day. One little hour is left before the morning. Cling to me make me stay ! 233 Gather in- elose. () hold in,-, draw me nearer! is my amis .-ire witln red now and weak), Kiss my lips dumb that are too sad to speak! Dear love, be kind, the terrible east grows clearer, Lean to me, check on cheek ! Lay your two quiet and strong arms around me, That am so desolate now and so dismayed, Before I must return into the shade And dreadful night, before the dawn has found me. O sweet, are you afraid ! Here in the Springtime, in the April gladness, Lay your two arms about me evermore: Here where the riotous Spring bursts April s door, Lay your two arms al*>ut me full of sadness, As in the days before. Till. \I.\V LOVE IN the silence, in the night. When at your window the stars shim- through, Under the- starlight, under the shining light, Over the fallen dew, I will come to you. O love, O sweet, Not with tin- seeking passion of yore. Not with the ea-n ,- BJCI and th<- lips that meet, Banished for-\ < rmore. O not as before! 284 Having seen, having known You, at last as you truly The divine pain of the human, sad and alone, Scattered in the deeps afar Star beyond star; A deep, a new Almost a pity fills me now, Not with the old desire I turn to you, O I cannot tell you how ! O I love you now ! Dear heart, dear face, So lovable, so absurd, so dear How can I think of you now as in the old days ! A pity, deeper and more clear, Weeps in me here. Alas, alas, Not with the seeking passion of yore, Bending down in the night I will kiss you as I pass Once, and forevermore. O not as before! TRANSLATION Now, while in heaven the sleepless planets wheeling Down the eastern slope a flashing radiance shed, As one that dreams I move with noiseless tread, Through the old haunts and aisles memorial stealing, An exile, from the dead. The avenues win re arm in ami we strolled. The In nehes in tin- Park and the long lawn Fade dimly of! into the dark withdrawn. Cupola and pagoda glimmer cold In the bleak breath of dawn. While round the world ebbs the deep silence stream ing, And the sick lamps burn luridly and flare. A lion groans from the casino there. A lonely peacock from the hillside screaming Shatters tlie crystal air. But look the arches of the east grow light And the pun brows of morning pale and dim, From flaming lips breaks the seraphic hymn, The holier fire, immaculate and white, Pants on the radiant rim, And the huge city, dumb and undivining, Toward the great tenderer Beauty seems to lean In yearning silence. in the vast, serene Flame of the splendor of the morning shining, Made laughable and obscene, With all her dull, dark streets empty and soundl -s 1 ). ir In irt. for your lake, at the thought thereof Heart breaking pity breaks my heart; above The sorrow of self my soul soars, winged and bound- Into the heaven of Love, 236 Seeing the human and holy beauty blended Touch lips to lips in the white light of morn. O lesser human brauty and laughed to scorn, I love you more ! O temporal and splendid ! dust whereof I was born ! What is this love that deeply in me waking Swells like a sob for very joy of pain, For all sad human things and all things vain ! A passionate love, unbounded and heart-breaking, Not to be felt again. To myriad pipes beyond the morning shrilling The tides of sleep ebb to the unknown sea. 1 am caught up and carried, far and free, On the wide waste of uttermost music thrilling Into Eternity. Seek me no more who am beyond all keeping, Pray me no more who am beyond all prayer, Beyond all love, all beauty and all care. Weep me no more, who am beyond all weeping High up in the starry air. I am as one whom the immortal warning Of dawn has summoned from tumultuous wars, Above earth s beauty lifted and earth s scars, Drunk with the wonder and the wind of morning, A voice among the stars. IS7 SPRING-PRAYER Now I am vanished far Into tht: empty land, Pray for me with your lips That cannot understand. Spring in a shower of joy Comes gay and rioting; Be sad a little for me Dear, in the laughing Spring. Pity me cold and gray O all the world is glad \Vitli love and Spring hut you Dear heart, do you be sad A little while, and sorrow Though all things else rejoice. Pray for me with your lips And hush your singing voice A little while. rein< mix ring How lost I am and far. B- yond the firr of morning, Star hi-yiMid paling star. Pity with your red lips, So glad and tit to sing, Mine that are hushed and eold H re. in the laughing Spring! 238 SALUTATION THE gray night lapsing from the cast has left, Beyond the ebb-tide on the twilight s bars, A few sad remnants of her splendor, stars Upon the beach of morning; now bereft Glitters with scimitars Her waste, and with the approaching spears of day. Listen, beyond the heavens deep and pure, I hear a somber music and obscure ! The flickering star of morning fades away. Seraphic voices lure. Why should I mourn so, now that I must leave All the old human pain I knew so well, The fears, the hopes, holy and laughable, So sordid so divine! Why must I grieve! Ah why I cannot tell. Never to know again the joy and sorrow, The kiss of earthly lips the fierce embrace, The arms of children, the sad, human face! Never in all the irrevocable To-morrow, In the vast voids of Space. O sad humanity, with arms how wide, How have I longed to take you to my heart! How have I longed to take you to my heart! With what fierce pity to press you to my side Against a breaking heart! 1*0 I love you with my very inmost breath The toil and triumph from tin- laboring womb, And the glad passion that defies the tomb Tin lust the laughter yea, and the splendor of death. Your holy and sullen doom. The city sleeps patient and dumb and blurred Through the low elouds of mist in square and street, (How many hearts K hind her prison beat!) A stony desert where no voice is heard, Or sob, or sound of frrt. Now more than ever the old human sadness Touches my heart with longing vast and vain. Now more tlrin ever I yearn to you again. Ah nevermore to know of grief or gladness! Ah nevermore of pain. I, too, have borne them. I am rapt above you Into the heaven of hr-m-ns keen and pale. (her my mouth falls the eternal veil. Hail all men U>rn. and yet to be, I love you! All men that have been, Hail! TRANSFIGURATION STAB l-yond star dr.-p down in the abysses Dawn floods the world with fiery light again. O darling () beloved () dear face! Think not I ha\e forgotten tin- old pain High in this lonely j> 240 Some little memories of the old earth passion Still reach me here, throned on the stars above you, Some dreams of the half-love of long ago. O now for the first tinu I really love you! darling, now I know! The infinite Vast grows white with a new splendor, Heaven with the morning flames height over height, And a deep, holier love broods in me too; A deeper dream, more pure than all delight, Drowns the old love of you, Now that I see it all. O of a sudden The dignity and the pitifulness of things, The laughable sadness of all things that live, Snaps in my soul the chord of self that sings ! Dear heart, forgive, forgive. 1 am withdrawn into the deeps of heaven, A surging love lifts me beyond your love, I am not lost to you though I am gone. The thought of you within me lifts me above Myself, upward and on. O dream which is the purpose of Creation ! O infinite pity, deeper than the soul, Wlirrrin the high and low are one at last! O love wider than heaven or the whole Sweep of the starry Vast ! 211 NIRVANA ii. I lie at heaven s high oriels, Over the stars that murmur as they go Lighting your lattice-window far below And every star some of the glory spells Whereof I know. I have forgotten you, long, long ago, I. ike the sweet, silver singing of thin bells Vanished, or music fading faint and low. Sleep on, I lie at heaven s high oriels, Who loved you so. FAREWELL Heyond the topmost star of highest heaven And murmurous motion of the wheeling spheres, I am enthroned at last alxne the years, I am caught up beyond the shining Seven. My song is ended and my singing said, I inishtd Irive I with these hut mortal things; My soul takes flight on unrememl>cring wings, Heyond the fire of morning lost and fled. Yet though no trace on earth of me belongs, Still the undying voice of me, my ghost, Pleads in the choir of the eternal Host, Still like a lin-ath she labors in these songs. 242 yet in some strange way, I know not how, With urgent pity and with aching love She yearns to touch you from her heaven above; Yea, in these lines her longing calls you now. Alas, how like we are, all men, alas! brother in the universal doom, Even from the womb, even to the conquering tomb I, too, have lived. I hail you as I pass! Now as you read these verses from afar, This very moment, from this living rhyme 1 call to you out of the wheels of Time, 1 cry to you beyond the morning-star! HAIL! UNDER the infinite tomb of heaven and night Lo I am wafted away forever afar ! Deep between cloud-line and sky-line one quiver ing star Burns, like a lamp, in the tomb of heaven and night. This, my cry to you out of the spaces afar. Once ere I vanish dissolved into motion and liu;lit. Once O peoples to be farewell and good-night! This, my cry to you out of the spaces afar. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. OCT 20 1947 ocr ** 1802*52111 DLO l? 19"CC5 REC D LD MAR 7 . 6 6. 8 P LD 21-100m-12, 46(A2012sl6)4120 580707 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY