IRLF LOOMS OF LIFE OF THE UNIVERSITY FRONTISPIECE LOOMS OF LIFE POEMS By HERMAN SCHEFFAUER Author of "Of Both Worlds," etc. New York and Washington THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY 1908 Copyright, 1908, by THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY ACKNOWLEDGMENTS are due the Fortnightly, Spectator, Macmillan s and Clarion of London, and Lippincott s, New York Times Review, the Cosmopolitan, Success and various Californian periodicals for permission to republish many of these poems. 182273 CONTENTS PAGE Proem and Dedication . . . . . 9 Man and the Mountains . . -. . . 15 The Chant of Man and Woman ... 19 The Fire Funeral . . . . . . 22 The Song of a Happy Spirit . . . . 24 The Symbol in the Cave . ... ... . 27 Atlantis . . . . . . ... 32 San Francisco Desolate . . . . . 34 O Evanescence! . . . ... 37 The Ruined Temple . . . . . 38 To the Earth-Daemon -y. :. . . . 39 The Rhapsodist . . . . , . . 41 Keats at Winter Sundown . ... 47 The Tower Garden ... . . 48 London in Snow . . . . . . 49 The Sea and the City . . . ; . 51 The Throne of the Storm . . . . 52 The Leper of London . . . . . 53 Manhattan . . . . ^ . . 55 "An Amiable Child" . 57 Beauty Trove . . . : . . . . 59 Assault of Silver . . .- . . . 62 Washington Irving . . . . . .63 The Looms of Life . ... . . 64 Hymn to the Passing Earth . . . ; 74 The Master of Magnificence . . . . 77 CONTENTS (Continued) PAGE Song of the Sundown 79 Vale, California 81 The Shadow O er the City . . 82 London ,. -. . ... . . 83 To Mimic Poets . . . . . . 84 To William Butler Yeats . . 85 Acme ! . . , . . . . ... 86 The Sculptured Indian . . . . . 87 The Peean of the Poppies ... . 88 The Sierra Snow-Plant . . . . . 90 The Californian Poppy . . . . . 91 Mary of Milrone . . ... . 93 Heights and Depths . . . ... 100 Architekton . . . . . . 100 Friedrich Nietzsche ... . . . 101 Prologue in Heaven . . . . IO2 A Dedication . . . . . . . 104 The Quest at End 104 Bianca ... . . . . .106 The Moon Damozel . . . . . 108 Russia Agonized .no Souls of Men Asunder 115 How Could Men Hate Thee, Lucifer? . 117 The Iron Virgin 123 The Land of Alabaster 126 The Forging of the Rings .... 127 The Storm-Night 135 "tKSvry) u/5* PROEM AN D DEDICATION TO E. D. When the harps of a land lie forlorn, And the lips of its minstrels are still. When the scroll of the poet lies torn, And his song wakes an echo of scorn, And the laugh of the fool seeks to kill, When the Age s grim armor enthralls Our souls in a bondage of things, When Mammon squats throned in his halls, Fenced by ramparts of ore, and his walls Ring with joy of the p (Ban he sings, When the Fathers dreams trodden in mire, And the Goddess torn into the dust, Stamp their shame like a brand of fierce fire On our brows, when the chords of the lyre Are corroded and covered with rust, LOOMS OF LIFE Then the gods from their altars withdraw, Then the tongues of the prophets of doom Are laden with dole, and the awe That once hallowed the Tablets of Law Is harried by thieves to the tomb. Then the Engine of Gutenberg pours Its baneful reflex of the Time, Then the people are smitten with sores, And the Dome of the Capitol roars With the shouts of the Caesars of Crime. Then women alone feed the name That grows dim on the altar of Art, Then do men, unashamed in their shame, Make a traffic of nation and name With the jackals and wolves of the mart. So no rapture of Music is heard Save the trivial strain of the lute Of the rhymesters. The deeps are unstirred By the storm of some wonderful word, Since the harp and the harpers are mute; 10 LOOMS OF LIFE And blind to the trend of the tides, To the light still upborne by the years, To the meaning immortal that bides Through the ominous noon of new Ides And the mystic designs of the spheres. They chant treason to Life and their Time, Chained to gods that sleep realmless and cold, And weave Dian and Phoebus in rhyme Out of fables and myths of the Prime And the legends vvhose glory is told. Yet no storm from a resonant lyre Whelms the querulous pipe and the reed, Yet no anthem uprolls like a fire From the organ-tubes thunder; no choir Hath a voice for our Age and its need. And lo! it hath come that the Stars O er the vast, indivisible States Gleam sick to the world, and the Bars Of the Standard are spotted, and scars Vex the flesh of the Eagle. The Fates ii LOOMS OF LIFE Sit stern in the murk as they weave An inscrutable glory or doom For the robe of the land, and they heave Their shuttles that murmur and grieve As they shoot the black woof through the loom. And where calls a voice to the bards To smite with the falchion of Song, The head of the hydra that guards, Under golden and ponderous wards, The god of the minions of Wrong? From the harps oceanic that round The sonorous and ultimate West, Pour a rapture of music profound From their surges of peace, to the ground The Atlantic strains unto its breast, May the thunders be mustered to burst Like the Horn of the Ram with its blast, The gilt-pillared temple accurst Where the Snake, in corruption immerst, Rears high o er his worshippers massed! 12 LOOMS OF LIFE Over Time s steep horizons, O clouds! Bare your phantoms of nations long dead; Fling the dust of strong Rome and the shrouds Of Tyre on the winds, and the crowds Of tall ships bent on Carthage the red. Lest swift on these domes by the verge Of two seas where our citadels stand. The red bolt should fall and the scourge, And in room of a warning, a dirge Be upborne from the lips of the land! Still my service and birthright I choose With the sons of the Westland, for long We stand devotees bound to the Muse, Lest our realm of the Sunset should lose Its Hesperian lustre in Song. And to thee who divinest my dreams, And share st my thought, I indite The remote and most fugitive gleams Of these songs, for thou knowest the streams Of my soul, and their source, and the light. LOOMS OF LIFE MAN AXD THE MOUNTAINS The winds of worlds upon the brow of Man, Valleys and gorges dark, Twilight, and purple banners in the van Of Night s encroaching arc. Whisper of weary seraphs, then a hush, Sighs and vast solitude; Then the slant lances of the sun where crush The mountain-masses rude. Serene they sat erect and thronged with awe, Prodigious with the sun. The salient majesties of peaks, I saw Held one mute marvel one! Their brows were red with questions of the Night ; Under the white moon s horn Their iron queries stood till they grew bright With answers of the morn. LOOMS OF LIFE Again Day s skies embraced them and they tore Its light and pierced its dome, And with enormous shoulders they upbore The gods celestial home. And when the tribulation of the rain In mist the ranges furled, Their mighty presences pulsed like a pain Whose roots seize on the world. And oft the voice of the wind, wild orator! Clamored and rang on high, And then the keen, significant stars no more Launched malice from the sky. Never mad storm, nor frost, nor summer fire, Nor rash bolts blazing blue, Moved them the everlasting ones! to ire More than the mild, sweet dew. They breathed, and lo! the avalanches sped To emerald vales profound, Or, harried by the years, some boulder fled Down tracks of thunderous sound. 16 LOOMS OF LIFE Man s race was but a murmur through the nights, A stain Day bore to view; No sacrilege of tongues upon those heights Broke the long peace they knew. Their caverned orbs saw cities on the plain A thousand domes and towers Basked sunbright and when sank their eyes again Wild grass and windward flowers. When eons waned and stars strove with their fate, Stern Demiurgos came, And throned upon their tallest crests he sate And spake one potent name. Peak leaned to solemn peak. The master stirred Their granite lips to speech; Each, in that sinister vast awe unheard, Darkly communed with each. What plots profound, what fathomless designs, Throbbed through the palsied air? What subtle secrecies oppressed the pines Or the cold moon-disc bare? LOOMS OF LIFE Through their deep, runic syllables there ran Tides of tremendous doom, And when their council closed, the realms of Man Lay dust on Time s gray loom. Eternity! thy mace s conquering blow Shall break and fell these Kings, Yet, till her face lie sunless, Earth shall know These mighty, mystic Things Whisper of weary seraphs, then a hush, Sighs and vast solitude; Then the slant lances of the sun where crush The mountain-masses rude. The wind of worlds upon the brow of Man, Valleys and gorges dark, Twilight, and purple banners in the van Of Night s encroaching arc. 18 LOOMS OF LIFE THE CHANT OF MAN AND WOMAN Earth s iron mingles with my blood, But thine with milk is blent ; My tears are of the salt-sea flood, But thine sweet springs unpent. Thy pulse a fertile river glides, But mine is urged by ocean-tides. All human, human, human, The fire of heart we fan. Thou are the Queen called Woman; I am the King called Man. Like mountain-winds o er towers, So calls my voice and rings; A fragrant breeze midst flowers Is thine that sighs and sings. A garden-sheltered plant thy form, And mine a pine within the storm. All human, human, human, Through us a tremor ran. Thou art the Queen called Woman; I am the King called Man. 19 LOOMS OF LIFE The eagle sweeps along my glance, Spanning all Earth and sky; Thy tender doves of vision chance No flight so deep, so high. My thoughts are flames on mountain heights, And thine are lakes of mystic lights. All human, human, human, The visions that we scan. Thou art the Queen called Woman; I am the King called Man. Like eager lilies drink thine ears Love s note and the infant s cry; Mine drain the thunder of the spheres And rapt as sea-shells lie On shores of Life s resounding sea And hear one voice Humanity! All human, human, human, Curst by no primal ban. Thou art the Queen called Woman; I am the King called Man. Thy cloven bosom s hill and vale, Where Love hath set his tents, Hold store of raptures ringed by pale Of spirit and of sense. 20 LOOMS OF LIFE My breast is fort and battle-field, But not to thee to thee a shield. All human, human, human, We walk in Nature s van. Thou art the Queen called Woman; I am the King called Man. Thy brow bears halos from the moon, Mine fire from out the sun, Yet through Life s morning and her noon And night they gleam as one. Linked stars are we in Nature s train, Forever one forever twain. All human, human, human, Fruit of the cosmic plan, Thou art the Queen called Woman; I am the King called Man. 21 LOOMS OF LIFE THE FIRE FUNERAL (The Cremation of Shelley s Body near Leg horn in the year 1822.) On the dolorous shore where remorseful surges cast him, Lies the poet, cold and white. Low groan the billows as their foam goes blow ing past him, And his eyes no more are bright. Blue eyes bright no more like the azure lustre o er him, Still their blue repays its blue; Down his brow s wtan splendor all his weeping curls deplore him Like frail tendrils drooped with dew. There he lies, Earth s precious sacrifice to griev ing air and ocean, Kissed by wave and wind and sun, While the invisible stars of day trail in their ghostly motion, Mourning for a darkened one. 22 LOOMS OF LIFE But stars shall not behold him more, nor Night nor Day forever, For the pyre looms on the shore, And fond arms of brother-poets lift him now with love that never Such a sweet, sad burthen bore. Flames feast upon those seraph lips eternal music moulded ; Fiery halos orb his head, While fire enfolds that body which a soul of fire enfolded, West Wind, moan! thy child is dead. Skyward rolls like censer-smoke a dark, majestic column Past the clouds that lift the morn, And his sacred heart in balsam by his comrades mute and solemn, To a northern isle is borne. Now the broken twilight smoulders and the crim son coals are dying, Winds and sands the ashes hearse, And his dust soars free where worlds and suns, on cosmic currents flying, Sow it through the Universe. 23 LOOMS OF LIFE THE SONG OF A HAPPY SPIRIT I fold my shining wings Close o er my throbbing sides; I lure the quivering lark that sings Through Ether s thrilling tides. O er mottled clouds I climb And lash the molten air, Sole Lord am I of Task and Time Over human care. What is human care? Is it the voice of bells that chime Beyond the hills? or cities grime Dark and deadly there? From dawn till dusk I float Where spear the solar rays ; On the squat, swelling moon I gloat And whirr across her ways; I thrid the tops of trees And press the mountains bare, But still the pulse within the breeze Throbs with human care. What is human care? 24 LOOMS OF LIFE The snoring winds bear o er the seas Its burthen in their litanies, Rolling to their lair. I dart, I flash, I wheel From flower unto flower; I hunt the dragon-fly and steal Through sparry mine and bower; Along the foam I skip Where blanching billows flare, And flaunt the flags of many a ship Fraight with human care. What is human care? Lives it on every mortal lip? Is it a plague, a sword, a whip? Or flame or smoke or snare? Oh! swift I dance and glide Over lake over wold! On rusted weather-vanes I ride And crosses warm with gold. Of Love and Joy I sing Or shape a happy prayer, But are those evil winds that bring Mortals human care? 25 LOOMS OF LIFE What is human care? For there is no imagining Could shape for me the thought or thing Whether foul or fair. In silences that brood Where sun-stained eagles fly Above the storms, my brotherhood Are happy! they and I Know not what lies below Our blue dominions fair,^- Below the shadows naught we know,- Naught of human care. What is human care? Some punishment men undergo? Some payment of a debt they owe, Which we cannot share? 26 LOOMS OF LIFE THE SYMBOL IN THE CAVE In a crystal cave I stood, Drop by drop the water ran O er its roof as runs the blood Through the coral veins of man. Drop by drop the water fell To the ground as tears may fall When the springs of sorrow well From some blind source mystical. Slowly from the crusted floor Rose the eager virgin cone, As its bright mate, hanging o er, Loosed the silver from its stone. Male and female so they strove Downward, upward through the dark, Peak to point, below, above, Urged by passion s goad and spark. Some stood sundered, some had met, Some were melting into one, Some built patient pillars set In splendor hidden to the sun. So they sank and so aspired, Though dead ages lay between, So Love and Yearning fired 27 LOOMS OF LIFE The unseeing and unseen. And my torch flung maddened light Through the spar-hung cavern dim, Till it seemed the grot grew bright With presences of seraphim. In my heart s red chambers surged Sudden magic wild and strong, As when parted lips are merged Like two words within a song. From my bosom rose a sigh; All its fervent vapor pearled, And from my lips a mighty cry Rang upward to the world : O Love, where art thou? where In mystery-mazed night? Unveil thy face, declare Thee to my aching sight! Oh, grows thy heart to mine Through void and voiceless years? Oh, fares my heart to thine, And lures it on with tears? Let clouds and palls be drawn, And the lodestone meet the steel ; 28 LOOMS OF LIFE Let deliverance and the dawn Soul unto soul reveal. So with stormy flame august, Love my startled spirit stirred, All the cavern, all my dust Trembled trembled trembled When the vatic force assembled, Risen round that potent word. THE STALACTITE : Adoring, I seek thee alone! The ocean-wide reaches of years I bridge with the trend of my stone And fathom this darkness with tears. O crystalline virgin, I bend Above thee, I hunger and shine. Ascend! O pale mistress, ascend To the breast that is striving for thine! THE STALAGMITE: Through cold underearthern, through nig 1 ht Thy tears have aroused me to glow With an ecstasy fixed by thy sight O Lord of my Life! see, I grow 29 LOOMS OF LIFE Neath caresses and soaring desire From beds of the nethermost gloom, And thy tears falling on me are fire That shapes, though its passion consume. THE STALACTITE: They drift, pass and die as we yearn Gray eons and darkness and cold; Our crests still live severed and burn With the pent, sundered kisses they hold. Time dies, but our hope hath no death; The dews that I garner are rains Of rapture I cast with a breath On thy head ; they are blood of my veins. THE STALAGMITE: I climb with my listening spire; To thy glistening spire I climb. Tis a star that still draweth me higher And nigher through distance and Time. What impulse exalts me and leads, O King, to thy throne on the height? 30 LOOMS OF LIFE To the heart that burns o er me and bleeds Like a torch o er a gulf in the night? THE STALACTITE: Lo! the pillars about us that stand Upholding the plains of the Earth Obedient they joined at command Of the love that has given us birth. So I sink, so thou risest to me Ere the ultimate clasp we attain And grow one in Love s crystalline tree From longing, from tears and from pain. From the ether, from the room Splendored by the raving sun, To Earth s fire-fertile womb, Great Love, thy will be done. Thy will be done, O Law Whose adamant and steel Mysteriously draw Hearts, worlds and stones to feel. Go draw my heart afar To a heart beyond my sight, So a star may reach a star Disclose! Exalt! Unite! 31 LOOMS OF LIFE ATLANTIS Westward the pillars slender Of Hercules it lay The land whose pride and splendor Once burned beneath the day. No more the sun shall warm it; No more man s footfall be In Atlantis, old Atlantis, Atlantis in the sea. Above her fanes of glory The iron vessel steamed, The city shrined in story Such as no poet dreamed. I knew the marble towers, The cold, white majesty Of Atlantis, old Atlantis, Atlantis in the sea. An hundred fathoms to mine eyes, Through molten blue and green, The sun that towered in the skies Drew up the deeps serene. 32 LOOMS OF LIFE Snow-like the roofs and temples, The streets with pearls strewn free In Atlantis, old Atlantis, Atlantis in the sea. Silence in dead Atlantis bode; Quenched lay her pride and wealth; The scarlet sea-flags streamed and flowed; The serpents slipped in stealth. Pale blooms and shells bedecked her floor, And the starred anemone In Atlantis, old Atlantis, Atlantis in the sea. An hundred fathoms to my ken Rose white with closen eyes A face so to the sight of men The lost, loved women rise. It smiled and shone and brightened With strange, wild witchery From Atlantis, old Atlantis, Atlantis in the sea. Deep down my heart lay hidden Where coral-forests bloomed; 33 LOOMS OF LIFE Deep down my arms were bidden To clasp the city doomed. There, twice a thousand years agone, O Love, I dwelt with thee In Atlantis, old Atlantis, Atlantis in the sea. Beneath the sunbeams and the ships, One hundred fathoms deep, Upon thy sea-cold eyes and lips Roll tides of endless sleep. Would that we twain were lying, With thy hair flung over me, In Atlantis, old Atlantis, Atlantis in the sea. SAN FRANCISCO DESOLATE Ruin outraced the dawn. When the ports of night were drawn, The feast of death lay spread ; The city bowed low her head, Disconsolate in the morn, 34 LOOMS OF LIFE Sitting amidst her dead Forlorn! O forlorn! Lo ! how the touch of day Rolleth in pity away Over the graves and the fires And the houses, domes and spires Abject and broken in dust. Woe on thine ashes and pyres, Young Queen, once august ! Flame had goaded the ground, And the valves of the deeps profound Broke through their riven rock; She felt the wrath of the shock And a storm upheaved her floor; Dawn saw the grace that crowned My city no more. Woe hath befallen thee, And thou wringest in misery Thy bleeding, despairing hands Over thine agonis d lands, For a great grief came to pass ; Thy beauty is prey to the brands, My city, alas ! 35 LOOMS OF LIFE Thou weepest, mother mine, For the dear dead that are thine, And the dark tide of thy tears Is one not of days but years. The ashes lie gray on thy head, And deep is thy wound, and thy biers Lie dense with the dead. Splendor of thine and pride Are departed ; the waves deride Thee and thy sisters sore, And lisp and laugh on the shore, And the sun is brave with gold, But the sun and the sea no more Know thee as of old. Remount, O Queen! resume The throne of thy hills ; through the doom And the dolor and terror that reign O er thy walls, thou shalt lift again Thy head. The sons shall restore Anew, from the wastes of thy pain, Thy glory once more. 36 LOOMS OF LIFE O EVANESCENCE! (San Francisco) I loved a work of dreams that bloomed from Art ; A town and her turrets rose As from the red heart Of the couchant sun where the west wind blows And worlds lie apart. Calm slept the sea-flats; beneath the blue dome Copper and gold and alabaster gleamed, And sea-birds came home. But I woke in a sorrowful day; The vision was scattered away. Ashes and dust lay deep on the dream that I dreamed. LOOMS OF LIFE THE RUINED TEMPLE (Grace Church, San Francisco) A Temple in a Sunset Land I saw, Rent by the throes of Earth, the storms of fire, And o er it brooded wide with spells of awe The doom that fell on Sidon and on Tyre. And many an arch and ruinous portal there Stood stored with memories of a perished time ; The stark stones yielded echoes of a prayer; The towers quivered with a ghostly chime. Faint from the shattered font an infant s cry Came forth, and soft the crumbling pillars shed The strains of nuptial music blithe and high ; The paves rolled dolorous requiems o er the dead. But when the moon smote with her wands of white The solemn wreck whence all these voices poured, I heard Time s pinions beat across the night And saw the gleam of Death s annulling sword. 38 LOOMS OF LIFE TO THE EARTH-DAEMON (An Orison sung in the Season of the Earthquake) Chorus of All Living Things: Daemon of Earth underfoot ! Source, yet solace of Ills ! Who sleepest supine at the root Of the plains and the hills, Ages lie spanned by thy breath; Thy pulse marks an eon s flow ; Thy sigh brings us harvest of death When it heaves to and fro. The Voices of Men Alone: Stir never in slumber more; Seal fast the gates of thy caves ; Fields, cities and seas roof thee o er- Our homes and our graves. 39 LOOMS OF LIFE May never the core of mid-fires Stir thee, lift thee to wrath, Where the toil of man aspires And Earth glory hath. Fair is the planet, though storms Tear and torment the air, And Horror in myriad forms Rolls now here and now there. Death conquers where storm-billows leap ; Death where the hurricanes blow; Death where flames tower and sweep Is Earth, too, our foe? O peace! O leave us the ground; Rest in thy chambers deep. In thy granite vaults profound Sleep thou so we sleep. Our race and its fruits of toil In the end thy gulf must fill ; Grant us peace of the soil ; Grant us peace and be still. 40 LOOMS OF LIFE Rage not like the hungering sea, Thou who art heir to all. What is ours shall revert to thee When Time bids it fall. Chorus of All Living Things. Daemon of Earth underfoot, Source, yet solace of Ills Who sleepest supine at the root Of the plains and the hills, Ages lie spanned by thy breath ; Thy pulse marks an eon s flow; Thy sigh brings us harvest of death When it heaves to and fro. THE RHAPSODIST The slow-unfurling flags Of Night droop in the air; The Day s supernal master drags Headlong to his lair LOOMS OF LIFE His veils of mellow fire, His shrouds of rosy mist That with a burning, yet a vain desire His rolling flight resist. Gone is the golden glamour, Gone is the vesper throng, Gone is the blithesome and melodious clamor Of birds in even-song. When the day was hard and white, When it sinks to slumber and to night, When the Earth lies strangely sad, I rejoice, I rejoice, I am glad ! A lonely sister-planet Burneth placidly; Only the sun can ban it, Or bury it for me, Or wrest its smile from me Who stand each night upon this hill, Mutely still, And watch its silver rising o er the sea. 42 LOOMS OF LIFE When all is dark (remember There is none but the star and I), On bended knee, With a litany, I adore that crystal ember; Yea, I worship it utterly! O world of light and loveliness, What thing more beautiful could bless A fragment of mortality like me? Then, as now, I bathe my brow And drench it with its beams, And my brain blooms like a garden, I vow, And all its flowers are dreams. But not with orisons alone Devotion to the star I own, For with song shall I defend it, My pen with song Shall be bold and strong As an archangelic lance! Ah, could you but know the glance Of that star you would live but to tend it With tears, you would live but to lend it Your pale, rapt countenance. 43 LOOMS OF LIFE Still at night-noon you would wait On a high hill elate And watch its silver rising o er the sea. On bended knee With a litany, You would worship it with rapture utterly. Though you crawl to it half dead For the want of little bread, You may feast off fairer food Than the glutted and the wolfish multitude That below your marble mountain, Deep beneath your dream, Struggle like a maddened stream From some black and boiling fountain Where fiery fevers gleam. Shadows here! shadows there! Moiling in the sulphur-steam, Toiling in the pale and poisoned air Forever, forever. But you, ah ! you shall never Lose your starry joys whose stealth Builds the soul s eternal wealth, Not hard and haunted gold. Though men deny you fire When the year is white and old, You shall warm your heart with a lyre 44 LOOMS OF LIFE Fallen from the holier, higher Flames upon an astral pyre, And be no more a-cold. So every night On my lone, lone height, In rapture I capture The frailest and fairest of things That the light of my soft star brings, For they flutter above me with shimmer Of their tinted, moth-like wings; They are dreams that grow dimmer and dimmer As the morn-mist brighter grows; They die, O, they die ! when the glimmer Of morn is rich with the rose. O long, long, long, May I kneel to my gentle star, And I would I might raise a song That might fly to its flame divine A song in a voice that is sweeter far Than the voice that despairs in mine. All through the tense night-hours 45 LOOMS OF LIFE My soul lifts like the ocean Lifts to the falling showers Of the moon s omnipotence, And its every mood and emotion To that vasty eloquence, Bends like a child in a loving, mild, Devoted obedience. My passionate, constant adoring Hath burthen of prayer and of plea; It is filled with an endless imploring That the beam which ineffably Blesses my lifted face, May burn each night on the soaring height Of this ancient, desolate place, Though it burn no more for me, Even here on this rock-rent hill Where, ever alone and still, On bended knee, With a litany, I watched its silver rising from the old, imperious sea. LOOMS OF LIFE KEATS AT WINTER SUNDOWN (Hampstead Heath, London) I know, worn fire, that thou wilt rise again Tomorrow and on morrows dark to me But here, here in my heart, there burns that pain Of farewell deep as trouble of the sea. It is a grief unparted from the heart As is Life s ruby fountain in its grot; O keen, inseparable pain, where art Thou not ? Where Love and Happiness are not. No less I feel it when I view the rose, For in a day shall fall its loveliness; Alas ! I know, I see it in the close Of this old, gray and dying year no less. Deep in the eyes of Beauty it reminds; It warns from every song as it is sung Yet Earth again shall know these in their kinds, But nevermore that bard who died too young. 47 LOOMS OF LIFE THE TOWER GARDEN (London) Grim granite and harsh flint the bastions rose; The battlements frowned gray; the moat was deep ; Around me rang the city in its throes, They were not like my heart s which never sleep. Here once we sat when Spring compelled the air ; The birds wove song and motion through the skies ; Dreams sat within her eyes and she was fair; Her face was strange with silence like her eyes. We saw the children play, but now no more I see them through the eyes of greater love. The winds vast globes roll haunted and their core Is molten with her voice, and memories rove. 48 LOOMS OF LIFE This is the self-same spot; the ancient Tower, Eternally unchanged beholds me come. But O! it is no more the self-same hour, Old Earth has clasped her and her lips are dumb. LONDON IN SNOW White, white they lie, smoke-smitten roofs and streets, Their yearlong black distemper blanched away; Their faces and their spaces gray in sheets Of splendor wonder-wrought are born to Day. Air-flocking armies seize the shackled town; Their tents are bright on house-tops and in fields; Their lances hang in rows, their banners drown The blinded lawns that gleam like argent shields. Clad on with ermine, lo ! the muffled limbs Of trees grow shadows mated unto night; 49 LOOMS OF LIFE The roving eye is lured along the rims Of walls that stretch victorious lines of white. The deadened fall of foot and hoof unheard Breaks not the fettered air; the wheels are dumb On smothered ways; the sullen stream unstirred Engulfs the swift, bright legions as they come. Old dome and tower, pinnacle and spire Are charmed to crusted marble gainst the clouds In which, enmeshed, the struggling round of fire Peers dim and red across the city s shrouds. There let her lie in beauty neath the hems Of mantles pure, miraculous and cold. And leaden skies. Soon toiling Town and Thames Shall hold their ancient grayness as of old. LOOMS OF LIFE THE SEA AND THE CITY When the dust of toil lies scattered And robes the setting sun ; When the town s dull day is shattered And the world s great night begun; When Even ascends her station, And Peace the throne of my heart; When the streets grow a desolation And Silence broods in the mart When over the wastes oceanic The nightly lanterns rise, And the clouds are diaphanic Like love in a young maid s eyes, Then pearls that in buoyant millions O er sighing salt-floods gleam, And stars in their blue pavilions My radiant sisters seem. LOOMS OF LIFE THE THRONE OF THE STORM Assembled in the firmamental plain, The marshalled clouds loom ominous and dire, Charged with fell thunder and the missile rain And pregnant with their burthen of rash fire. The rebel winds and armament of mists Threaten the city s peaks of carven stone; The lances of the lightnings in their lists Are couched for battle by the evening s throne. Arrayed above the sunset red they stand The crests of clouds in day s retreating light, While slow the enormous dusks on either hand Roll up the devouring barriers of the night. But soon shall fall the bolt to strew them wide In foray fierce across the colored waste Where monsters now and giant dragons dyed Rich in the edging sun, rear golden-faced. O wait ! ye lurking imminences vast, And powers abortive in your cloudy domes ; Then dart your blades from ambush, fling your blast Upon your prey this world of hearts and homes ! 52 LOOMS OF LIFE THE LEPER OF LONDON In Euston Road in London Town, I saw and felt and wrote this down. Her cheek was pale, her form was gaunt; She seemed so strangely thin, Thin as the shrouded ghosts that haunt Scenes of their earthly sin. She clutched my arm; with mordant words Assailed my quailing ear Her face was like a starved bird s ; Such speech do devils hear. Her hands were clinging claws that burned Through skin and flesh and bone, While Sorrow seared those eyes she turned Like dead stars on my own. That voice rose whirling to my brain And sought to shatter it ; I know to demons its refrain Is torment in the pit. 53 LOOMS OF LIFE She seemed of equal age with me, Yet blithe and fresh was I, And she was like some blasted tree The bolts had doomed to die. She stood enwrapped with charnel air And pestilence s breath; Harmattan winds had whipped her bare And given her to Death. It seemed his voice of doom and blight Rang round her like a dirge, And from her face, like spectral light, Gleamed forth the Great White Scourge. I looked upon a world of woes And peered through Horror s land, Then in mine eyes the waters rose, And gold fell from my hand. I shook and drew my arm away And through the night I fled From deeper night that knew no day Save of the living dead. 54 LOOMS OF LIFE I felt the curse of human things, Man, Law, the strife of Earth; I felt the thrice-curst fate that brings Woe to the babe at birth. And those remorseless rods that fall From palaces and domes On worms that perish as they crawl Athwart a nation s homes. One blessing mounted from the thought And o er my spirit fell; That figure dread had dashed to naught The realms of After-hell. MANHATTAN Atlantes of the firmament! abrupt The granite monsters of Manhattan frown, Phalanx of Titans, stark and interrupt, Their tyrannous grim bulks oppress the town. Their gonfalons and vaporous plumes at play Stream rhythmic to the city s stormy beat. Her giant pulse that goads the groaning day To pile its mortal labor at their feet. 55 LOOMS OF LIFE The stunned sea clasps the aching iron isle That holds eternal tumult in its heart, While Greed s great laugh from pile to towering pile, Leaps in relentless triumph o er the mart. Incessant roars her fevered race of lives Crushed through the sunless channels of her stone, Or flung across the paths where Mammon drives His chariot wheels o er ways of flesh and bone. What brand upon the brow of man? what mark That hounds worn spirits toward a glittering goal? Where Luxury lifts her ashen husks, and dark Earth idols force their usury from the soul. O thunder-wrought Manhattan ! shaped of gold Thy tongue, thine eyes of blind basalt, of steel Thy smothered breasts still young yet bleak and old The mountainous gray weariness they feel. Thy life is eaten by thine eagerness, And round thy doomward sandals whirlwinds roar, 56 LOOMS OF LIFE And round thy wreck-mad walls the tempest s stress Riots from adamantine shore to shore. Now Anarchs of Annihilation take Their sleep of golden torpor in the glow Of thy sky-storming summits when they wake What ruin red shall their war-trumpets blow? "AN AMIABLE CHILD" (On its Grave near Grant s Tomb, New York) Dust of a bud of Spring, Dust of a long-dead child, How deep in saintly slumber! Though myriad footsteps ring On paves by crime defiled, Where woes of men encumber These grasses wet and wild. Calm be thy sleep beside The river visions fair, 57 LOOMS OF LIFE Unstirred by that dark river Of Life whose downward tide Bears wreckage of Despair, Where lips, like wounds that quiver, Move bloody with a prayer. Oft silent pass the hosts By fever-phantoms led, Where glooms the murky city, Silent to thee as ghosts That mourn young flowers fled; Their steps weave spells of pity And memory o er thy head. High o er the morselled stone The hero s pyramid In haggard granite towers Enormous, bleak and lone, But where thy curls lie hid, Fall sun and rain and showers Warm from the full eyelid. Thy grave seems like a song Of peace in iron frays, 58 EWITVJ X^KjZ/ LOOMS OF LIFE A voice o er wastes of madness, Greed, misery and wrong, A voice that might upraise Thy bright and infant gladness To bless our loveless days. O storm-shod centuries! Here grow your sick souls well, Where this dead child is lying Neath olden stones and trees, Where one sweet word shall tell Of a tenderness undying And the heart where it did dwell. BEAUTY TROVE Beauty, where dwellest thou? Adores the unchanging sea Thy foam-white foot at dawn O er some untrodden lawn Glimmers thy starry brow Where hast thou hidden thee? In the still forest naves Do birds and beasts behold 59 LOOMS OF LIFE Thy face in shrines of green? Thy light, perchance, is seen In spar-hung crystal caves Lavish with shattered gold? Mayhap on peaks august, Mid the pure hermit-snows, Thy dance is rosy bright? Build us a morn from night In this dim world of dust Where the cold death-wind blows. We seek thee where we build Our house of happiness, And yet we find thee not. Where lies the sacred spot That with thy smile is filled? Where Life may bloom and bless? For we are blind to Life, And Change is like a veil, Let thy presaging eyes Shine from these dunnest skies, Calming the iron strife Wherein our spirits fail. 60 LOOMS OF LIFE Thou hauntest star and sun, The moon, the mortal mind; Thou art in eye and cheek, Spirit still hears thee speak From shadows, from the dun Cloud and the solemn wind. Thou bidest still with us, Though mists our vision fill, Though oft thy robes be changed, Thy face is not estranged; Thy rose miraculous Blooms by our pathway still. Raise us a fairer song, Fairer than all the Past ! Yield us thy draught divine, Blood shall grow rapt as wine, And faint eyes, waxing strong, See the new realms thou hast ! 61 LOOMS OF LIFE ASSAULT OF SILVER Eve s skies glowed red and resolute, The morn s were meek and gray; Down sank a myriad angels mute And dense their legions lay. The muffled mutiny of life Strove with the white- winged host; Dull rang the broken steps of strife ; The city grew a ghost. A ghost, a spirit robed in white, Whose stains were wiped aw ay; Pure to the slatey face of night Like a fair bride she lay. But on the highways of the town The drifts were trodden stark Where vanquished flakes sank shuddering down To ruin deep and dark. The streets grew grim with mire, but still The roofs were blest with white, And gardens and the guarded hill Lay radiant to the sight. 62 LOOMS OF LIFE To the Presence of WASHINGTON IRVING In Lindaraxa s Garden by the fountain, I see thee, gentle phantom, woo the light, Thou smilest ! as fare forth the magic mountain Old dreams of Moorish glories reft from night. Thine eyes beheld their pageant s necromancy; Thee living mid these ruins now I see. Thou didst reinhabit them with thy fancy; My fancy now reinhabits them with thee. The Alhambra, Granada, Spain. LOOMS OF LIFE THE LOOMS OF LIFE To Dr. Ernst Haeckel of Jena. In a garden, in its shade, Sheltered from the matin-glow, Once I dreamed beside a maid And longed new worlds to know. For I envied winds that blew, I, who happy lived of men, Envied all the birds that flew And was unhappy then. When the sun shone strong and fair, Rash I left the garden-close ; Left the maiden weeping there A rose beside the rose. Wildwoods were aburst with song, Purple fell their shadows all, Chanting rivers danced along, And roared the waterfall. 64 LOOMS OF LIFE From the molten, rolling sphere, Pleasant fell the sifted heat O er my heart whose red career Seemed tambour to my feet. In a forest darkly cool For a draught I bent me down O er a sky-blue painted pool; My dangling locks shone brown. Soon the noon clomb to his heights And sate sovereign o er his sun, Where the condors and the kites Enormous spirals spun. Black like demons o er the world Rushed their shadows. Low was hewn Straight the peak of Day and hurled Down slopes of Afternoon. Fallen fervor left the air; Eld oppressed the stricken light ; She wove wearinesses where The East announced the Night. 65 LOOMS OF LIFE Slow the blue and arching calms Loosed their splendor fire-orbed; Winds grew sighs and slumb rous psalms The brooding Earth absorbed. Thus was Night adown the skies An incessant rumor sped; It lay upon my heart as lies A stone upon the dead. Fell a lethargy meseemed Over me the ponderous curse Passed, and this the dream I dreamed, Lost in the Universe. Breaking, cleaving earthly bounds Hedged by undivulging sleep, Past the stellar lights and sounds I plumbed an endless deep. Nature there with stilly eyes Reft of light or living spark, Loomed upon a central rise, A flame-defended arc. 66 LOOMS OF LIFE There erect in awful state, Wrapt in cosmic gloom sublime, Towered calm, inviolate, The daughter of old Time. Substance stood beside her throne, Robed with wonders strangely wrought,- Force and Substance they alone Her ministers and Thought. They were giants beautiful Three, with pinions bright and wide, All silent in the sacred lull Where mysteries abide. Substance soared a seraph grand, Shaped of pearl and opal-stone, With a globe in either hand At basis of the throne. Force was wrought of warmer flame; In his hands the levins danced; Rapture trembled through his frame And from his plumes it glanced. 67 LOOMS OF LIFE Thought of all stood loveliest; Fulgent on his brow the beams Shook with lustre manifest To mortals but in dreams. Son was he of Energy, Fashioned of his finer fires, Tall he flamed as o er the sea Some crater s torch aspires. Then with orbs that held no more, Vapid in the sterile light, I saw the three great spectres bore Stark eyes devoid of sight. Eyes of iron or of stone, Blank as waste infinity, While Nature, sightless on her throne, \ Ruled o er the sightless three. Eyes like deserts gray and dead, Or the plains of stagnant seas, Or the parched moon overhead Their eyes seemed like to these. 68 LOOMS OF LIFE Mute their frozen lips as cliffs Where the unseen eagle clings, Yet darkly great with hieroglyphs And weird with whisperings. As a fountain s water drips Tinkling on the chilly stones, Substance with his lucid lips Spoke forth in crystal tones : "What thou hast I gave to thee; Of my being s bulk thou art, Yet shalt thou return to me And render part for part." Like the roaring of a flame, Like the breathing of the Flood, Then a rolling voice there came Tumultuous o er my blood. "Into thee my breath did pass ! Energy hath made to burn That which stirs thy living mass Yet shall to me return." 69 LOOMS OF LIFE Like some echo frail and far, Fell the silver voice of Thought, Faint as trembles from a star A ray from gulfs of Nought. "I alone have raised thy state O er the flower, bird or gem, Kingly clay, yet co-create With Earth that houses them." Then Nature s trebled voice I heard, Stirring all my smitten soul As a smitten reed is stirred By winds from off the Pole : "So they blindly wove and weave Worlds as they have woven thee : Let energy to Substance cleave And Thought crown Man for me. All I hold who silent lie, Blind at Life s illusive root ; In me all gods and ages die, All suns grow cold and mute. 70 LOOMS OF LIFE "I in Process and in Plan Am the sowing, am the seed, Am the harvest, and to Man The iron Laws of Need." Through that spell-tormented gloom, Fast with Terror s icy stress, Denser darkness fell like doom; The voice grew less and less. There within their deeps alurk, Whelmed in Chaos, wombed in Night, Laboring at their telic work, The Powers sank from sight. Then the awful dusks were drawn On the fateful potencies Blind and dead, where never dawn Smites on their mysteries. All my shattered senses swam And in vapor passed away Ere the solar oriflamb Shone in my Earthly day. LOOMS OF LIFE Shone again, although the year Stood where sighing Autumn grieves And the Earth was burning sere With storms of perished leaves. Now I felt no more the flame In my heart, nor roving rage, And I seemed as one that came From some long pilgrimage. Slow I sought the garden-close For a maiden mourning there ; Savage winds had wrecked the rose And cast it on the air. But no maiden more I found Though her blessed name I cried Through the garden s sainted ground And all the World beside. As a silent pool I passed Toward the dying of the day, To mine eyes its silver glassed My locks of ashen gray. 72 LOOMS OF LIFE Then a vision and a light Rose athwart the years I whiled In the deeps. From out the night Came the crying of a child. With my yearning hands agrope, Long I erred within the wood, Calling on the child to hope ; Methought it understood. Was it echo of my voice That within the forest rang? Still it bade the babe rejoice And once, I knew it sang. Soon a tiny hand I grasped Which my eager fingers spanned, While my other hand was clasped Warm by a woman s hand. Then I knew it was the maid As her woman s heart was prest Close to mine. We long had strayed Each on the other s quest! 73 LOOMS OF LIFE Neath the moon we trembled there ; Now the infant lips were still, And through Earth and Flesh and Air We felt great Nature s will. HYMN TO THE PASSING EARTH When the cliff crumbles and the splintered peak Feels the sharp fracture of the frost and snow ; When the fell deluge and the rivers seek To drag green continents where oceans flow; When moons are darkened and the suns lose lustre, And the worn axles of old Earth turn slow, While stars in terror round her orbit cluster To peer upon her fall and overthrow, And all Creation in an endless flowing, Is tidal toward her still and secret springs, Oblivious to his coming and his going, Must Man be numbered with her mortal things ? Bleak Time shall part the worlds on roads of thunder, Loosen and level and annul all bands, 74 LOOMS OF LIFE Strike love-linkt hearts with sudden glaive asunder And break the clasp of fond and fettered hands, Still bid the glacier s monstrous travail bear Her icebergs to their oceanic sire, And from the crater s throat convulsive flare Doom s sable flag of ashes fringed with fire. O ancient anguish of the dry sea-hollow ! And weight of patience of the withered plains, And valleys thwarted of their joy when follow The winsome blooms and emerald gift of rains ? When shall the tumult of Earth s tides and changes Lift the sea s Kraken to the sun-bleached crags ? When the massed, shelved and adamantine ranges Dethroned, nurse coral and the salt-ooze flags? Though all fair territories of the globe be riven, And weedy continents slow-heaving rise From cloven foam, and dark, strange seas be driven To shape new shores neath re-assembled skies, Though Time shall strike a silence through the ringing 75 LOOMS OF LIFE Sweet sisterhood of strings in human harps, The hands that smote them and the lips whose singing Was rapture ! blend with dust of Alpine scarps, Not these are measure for Man s deeds nor yet The lives of suns in the mutable Immense, Nor prone despair of unplumbed distance set Past baffled brains and closen shores of sense. Though Ozymandias and Rameses win No whisper of their fames where darkly hid, The desert devours the Sphinx and locks within Its breast lost Luxor and the Pyramid, Though bronze betray its trust, and scriptured glory Of great bards vanish like the sceptred kings, Must Man, on Nature s temple threshold hoary, Groan at the far futility of things ? O great gray question ! still the deeps lie shrouded With midnights round the word for which we yearn. What though across the Future s peaks unclouded Ne er sign nor answering symbol soar and burn 76 LOOMS OF LIFE In light and not in shadow fall our race! Nor shall the monster staves of Cosmos blight Man in his mundane majesty of place Nor halt his march against the evening height. THE MASTER OF MAGNIFICENCE Embattled like a phalanx tall, The sharp Sierran summits gleamed; Their frozen pyramids stood all Enchanted and their forests dreamed. Above their argent slopes the sun Hung like a golden shield on high; His joyous love fell fast upon Their crests and showered from the sky. He saw where aureate valleys sweep Their leagues of wheaten billows forth, And marked two master rivers creep To Ocean, flowing South and North. Then broke his level flight of spears Through passive airs a pathway free 77 LOOMS OF LIFE To where the toil of myriad years Had reared the deathless mammoth tree. The Earth lay pregnant rich with ore, And felt her sunless treasures play Like wonder in her veins, and bore Her metals glittering to the day. Raised not the sinuous vine her round And purple gems to charm his eye? She who drank rapture from the ground And amorous fever from the sky. The fields in adoration bent; The orange burned to match his fire, While hills aglow with flowers sent Their paeans to their lord and sire. So throned upon the stainless air, He cast his gold with royal hand Where realm on realm spread wide and fair- The peerless Californian Land! LOOMS OF LIFE SONG OF THE SUNDOWN Across the prone Pacific vast, Struck into emerald laced with white, With gold enchased, and overcast With red, the homeless sun took flight. Loth from the vantage of his gaze The fast harmonic law compelled His westward plunge to build the days Round Orient ranges citadelled. Magnificent his min stry trode, The apparelled clouds bore mountain crests, And to their lord, as down he rode, Offered their broad, emblazoned breasts. Yet golden, golden ran a lane From sun to city o er the sea; The trend of tides that swept the plain Flickered, then crossed it brokenly. Then reached the blue horizon up And seized the rondure of the rim 79 LOOMS OF LIFE Of the great globe; the ocean s cup Trembled with glory to the brim. The fervor of his passion s thirst Sank slaked within the emerald wine, While reddening vapors curled and burst Like fumes of myrrh above a shrine. So the strong sea bore down the sun, Nor any more his splendor fell Upon the city s hills, though one Rose ghostly with a dim farewell. Yet for a space two fiery lips Lay smouldering on the darkening green ; A farewell trembled to the ships, And Day was lulled in dusk serene. Slowly aloft the landward skies Now mounts the rolling, argent sphere; The pointed stars unseal their eyes Each sharpened with a gleaming tear. Then one by one the lamps awake Where loom the city s barriers dun; Her streets begin to bloom and break With points of lustre, one by one. 80 LOOMS OF LIFE The waves lap on, the breezes stray; Her stony pomp is robed in light; She that flamed golden to the Day, Now glitters silvern to the Night. VALE, CALIFORNIA Roaring to Southward rolled the train. The night Down firmamental fields to Westward bore Her arc of soft eclipse, the hills and shore Enfolding, save where sunset stormed with light The spines of gilded peaks whose Heavenward height The aspect of an earthly parting wore. Rose then, revolving Day, whose splendor more Made splendid palm and orange in my flight. Though Alps their massifs interpose, or sands Of wind-worn, dappled deserts sunder me From thee, O mother, or the floods great awe ; Not siren cities nor enchanted lands, Nor old isles stablished in their subject sea, From thee my loyalty and love shall draw! 81 LOOMS OF LIFE THE SHADOW O ER THE CITY (San Francisco) Vast hung the moon o er ruins black and prone, And where the torn, flame-stricken summits blight The heavens, there crouched all vigilant in light, Two marble lions by a palace lone Whose portals hungry weeds had overgrown, Whose mangled walls gave ingress to the Night And all her stars. There Silence sat upright, Ash-crowned, and wrought a menace round her throne. Low in the vales each litten thoroughfare Trembled, as Life, with roses tossing red, Danced in her glittering garments through the town; But high across the still, moon-fettered air, Full on the living streets I saw the dead Look darkly and inexorably down. LOOMS OF LIFE LONDON Dismay drags down the condor-plumes of Thought And holds in pause the strive of Fancy s prow Where Time s behemoth towers. Answer, thou Gray monster of the modern Chaos wrought Along the amazed meads, one flower-fraught, What voices lure the ravens round thy brow ? What leagues must feed thy sateless hunger now, Ere to the assailant seas thy bourn be brought? The island sinks beneath thee, sinks though hewn From granite of sea-ramparts, and the land Thy mordant shadows gnaw, fades like the moon By huge, eclipsing blackness struck and banned In sight of men who tremble at high noon, Fearing some terror of the night at hand. 83 LOOMS OF LIFE TO MIMIC POETS Why should the poet dwell in vanished days, Deaf to his own and blind to all their light ? Why piece old shattered gods or from their night The ghosts of weary nymphs and satyrs raise To dance to measures false in alien ways Within this modern glare and fever-blight, This blasting air ? And yet there grow as bright Now, as of old, the imperishable bays. Fair was the Past how fair ! and yet it seems Fair, too, this age of iron could be drawn, For it hath mighty glories and great dreams And powers, and a light that is as dawn To futures golden with far richer themes Than poet ever sang on Tempers lawn. LOOMS OF LIFE TO WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS Pale Orpheus of the Celt ! thy music pure Strikes flame once more to Erin s vanished light, A flame whose soaring tongues shall wreck the night That walled her shores. Shall not these notes endure ? This rapture of clear harps that thrills the stones And wakes the saddened sods of thy lorn land ? Of which thou art a bulwark, and thy tones ^Eolian breath to fire her heart and hand. AND YET Art thou not some illusive, moon-white ghost? Some exhalation from the fair, dead form Of a long-buried and Earth-banished fay Whom ne er thy lustre cold, nor querulous host Of phantoms shall revive? This Age s storm Canst thou endure, and blaze of living day? LOOMS OF LIFE ACME! Eternal speech framed by the planets tongue ! Stir me with music of the primal morn That woke the worlds when first the sun was borne Exultant past his subject spheres that hung Like ore the night imperious had wrung Living from cosmic quarries, and had worn Extinguished on her brow. Her shadow, shorn, Crumbled when Day his flaming javelin flung. Roaming I sought that light of great release, So it might loose me from the clouds that swept Westward my years of youth and brought no peace Ever to my red heart that clomb and crept Eager on Love s far quest that could not cease Till by his torch my steps stood intercept. 86 LOOMS OF LIFE THE SCULPTURED INDIAN (In the Bohemian Grove, California) Image of the vanished tribes, this tree s enormous hollow, Holds thee as thou starest West. When, O silent chieftain, shall thy phantom foot steps follow Them to Manitou and rest? Never from the dim aisles of this sombre-shad owed valley Roamest thou, O lonely one! Brave, for thee the chase is done, and done the battle-sally ; The warrior-dance is done. In thy red-shafted forest now an alien tongue is waking ; Faces strange surround the feast, But never to thy patient eyes shall dawn for thee come breaking, Since thy night fell from the East. LOOMS OF LIFE Abide, stern, steadfast sentinel, so long as in this forest, Lifts each towering tree by tree; Thou bearest gifts of grace to us for ills that smite us sorest, Ills that force us to the knee. Thy bronzen hands hold all we lost, the heritage of ages Son of Strength, we thank thee for This magic of thy woods and winds this glory of old pages From the tome of Nature s lore. THE P^L\N OF THE POPPIES Sprent from the hands of Spring, The golden seed is falling O er meadows loud with light, And hills that harvest bring When warm the winds go calling The poppies up from night, Restoring Earth her sight. LOOMS OF LIFE The mountains sway with flame Where the frail glories tremble, Fair fallen stars of fire ! The valleys green acclaim The legions that assemble In royal robe and tire. With timbrel, shawm and quire. Stained with the ruby s wine, Gilt by the sunset lustre, Swung by the sunset breeze, So do their beakers shine, So flare their crowns in clusters, So bow across the leas Like beacons o er the seas. Afar in darker lands I feel their kisses burning As sweet, uncertain lips, As faint, unhindered hands Are felt by exiles yearning On shores when tears eclipse The wan and westering ships. 89 LOOMS OF LIFE THE SIERRA SNOW-PLANT Thou growest in eternal snows As flower never grew; The sun upon thy beauty throwis No kiss the dawn no dew. Thou knowest not the love-warm marl Of Earth, but dead and white The wastes wherein thy roots ensnarl Ere thou art freed in light. Where blighted dawns, with twilight blent, Die pale, thou liftest strong, A tongue of crimson eloquent With one unceasing song. Thou glowest like an angel s thought Or like a poet s word; Thy perfect peace is stirred by naught, By naught thy dream is stirred. More deeply dark than dyes that burn The Gorgon s foaming vein, Thy calyx-bells are red that turn No leaves aloft for rain. 90 LOOMS OF LIFE Didst pierce, thou rash, ensanguined spear The Galilean s side On Golgotha, and bleedest here By penance glorified? From visions bright of worlds that lie Where fairer stars may glow, Bringst thou some secret of the sky Which man may never know? Serene thy smile, past plaint or plea, On star-surrendered heights Where alps Sierran loom o er thee And huge, companioned nights. x O Life in vasts of Death! O Flame That thrills the stark expanse; Let Love and Longing be thy name! Love and Renunciance. THE CALIFORNIAN POPPY. Thou seem st an ember from the sun, A topaz from the mine. Tell, poppy, on what looms were spun Those fragile robes of thine? 91 LOOMS OF LIFE Thy trembling torch ignites the hills To youth, then opens gold Thy grail whereinto morning spills A tear thou canst not hold. There cannot bide one lonely tear In thy red heart aglow With blood that never pales with fear Such as hearts human know. Thy sisters far in mystic lands Their dream-drowned chalice keep, And mould with dim, phantasmal hands Weird, necromantic sleep. Yet thou art fairer than their dreams, O poppy of the West, For Beauty seeks thee garbed in gleams That make her manifest. Tis meet thy foliate gold should shine Beneath these Titan trees ; Tis meet thy cup should sing with wine By these Pacific seas. 92 LOOMS OF LIFE For gold and wine and sunset dye Thy beauty s crown triune, Yet rouse the sad eternal sigh That beauty fades too soon. O more than emblem of the State Where all thy glamour springs, For thou art emblem of the fate Of Earth s most lovely things. MARY OF MILRONE (A Simple American Border Ballad of the Southwest) I shot him where the Rio flows ; I shot him when the moon arose, And where he lies the vulture knows Along the Tinto River. In schools of Eastern cities pale, My cloistered flesh began to fail; They bore me where the deserts quail To winds from out the sun. 93 LOOMS OF LIFE I looked upon the land and sky, Nor hoped to live nor feared to die, And from my hollow breast a sigh Fell o er the burning waste. But strong I grew and tall I grew ; I drank the region s balm and dew, It made me lithe in limb and thew How swift I rode and ran! How oft it was my joy to ride Over the sand-blown ocean wide, While, ever smiling, at my side Rode Mary of Milrone. A flood of horned heads before, The trampled thunder, smoke and roar Of full four thousand hoofs or more A cloud, a sea, a storm. O wonderful the desert gleamed ! Man and woman, we spoke and dreamed Of Love-in-Life till the white wastes seemed Like the Plains of Paradise. 94 LOOMS OF LIFE Her eyes with Love s great magic shone,- "Be mine, O Mary of Milrone, Thy hand, thy heart be all mine own!" Her lips made sweet response: "I love thee, yes, for thou art he Who from the East should come to me- And I have waited long !" O, we Were happy as the sun ! There came upon a hopeless quest, With hell and hatred in his breast, A stranger who his love confest To Mary long in vain. To me she spake: "O chosen mate, His eyes are terrible with fate, I fear his love, I fear his hate I fear some looming ill !" Then to the church we twain did ride ; I kissed her as she rode beside. How fair! how passing fair my bride With gold combs in her hair! 95 LOOMS OF LIFE Before the Spanish priest we stood Of San Gregorio s Brotherhood A shot rang out ! and in her blood My blue-eyed darling lay. God ! I carried her beside The Virgin s altar where she cried, Smiling upon me ere she died : "Adieu, my love, adieu!" 1 knelt before Saint Mary s shrine, And held my dead bride s hand in mine, "Vengeance," I cried, "O Lord, be Thine, But I Thy minister!" I kissed her thrice and sealed my vow, Her eyes, her sea-cold lips and brow, "Farewell! my heart is dying now, O Mary of Milrone!" Then swift upon my steed I leapt ; My streaming eyes the desert swept ; I saw the accursed where he crept Against the blood-red sun. 96 LOOMS OF LIFE I galloped straight upon his track, And nevermore my eyes looked back; The world was barred with red and black ; My heart was a flaming coal. Through the delirious twilight dim And the blank night I followed him ; Hills did we cross and rivers swim, My fleet-foot horse and I. The morn burst red, a gory wound, O er iron hills and savage ground, And there was never another sound Save the beat of my horse s hoofs. Unto the murderer s ear they said : "Thou rt of the dead ! thou rt of the dead !" Still on his stallion black he fled With death on his path behind. Fiery dust from the blasted plain Burnt like lava in every vein, But I rode on with a steady rein, Though the fierce sand-devils spun. 97 LOOMS OF LIFE Then to a sullen land we came, Whose earth was brass, whose sky was flame I made it balm with her blessed name In the Land of Mexico. With gasp and groan my poor horse fell Last of all things that loved me well! I turned my head a smoking shell Veiled me his dying throes. But fast on vengeful foot was I; His steed fell, too, and was left to die; He fled where a river s channel dry Made way to the rolling stream. Red as my rage the huge sun sank; My foe bent low on the river s bank And deep of the kindly flood he drank, While the giant stars broke forth. Then face to face and man to man, I fought him where the river ran, Where the trembling palm held up its fan And the emerald serpents lay. 98 LOOMS OF LIFE The mad, remorseless bullets broke From tongues of flame in the sulphur-smoke ;- The air was rent till the desert spoke To the echoing hills afar. Hot from his lips the curses burst; He fell! the sands were slaked of thirst; A stream in the stream ran dark at first, And the stones grew red as hearts. I shot him where the Rio flows; I shot him when the moon arose, And where he lies the vulture knows Along the Tinto River. But where she lies, to none is known, Save my poor heart and a lonely stone On which I sit and weep alone Where the cactus-stars are white. Where 7 shall lie no man shall say, The flowers all are fallen away; The desert is so drear and gray, O Mary of Milrone! 99 LOOMS OF LIFE HEIGHTS AND DEPTHS Nature once heaved her mountains heads aloft, So we, her children, might on them respire Her airs serene and pure, immune from mire Of valleys and their highways trodden soft By herds oblivious to the stars and skies And the white heights of yearning. Haughty peaks, Oh, he alone shall mount you, he who seeks, August with anger, from dark roads to rise. ARCHITEKTON Let us be Master-builders not alone Builders, but Masters let us strive to be, And raise our temples to Futurity In spirit as in everlasting stone. Creators true to mind, may still the soul Of Beauty rule us and our fanes erect ! A sovereign Artist is the Architect And Master of the Dream-inspired Whole. 100 LOOMS OF LIFE FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE Upon the peaks of his proud labor flares Not yet the light that charms the myriad eye ; Serene they pierce Time s undivulgent airs And bide their dawn from out a younger sky, Till some revealing orb shall heave its spears And loose the lips enchanted in the stone Then shall old ruins topple, and all ears Of Earth be startled with a thunder tone. The voice of Zarathustra from the crag Shall ring o er regions red with human rust: From their embattled walls his word shall drag Eidolons grim of epochs gray with dust. But now the clouds immerse the Titan hark! His iron footsteps and their echoes vast Crashing across the Age s cloistered dark And trampling down the gods that held the Past! 101 LOOMS OF LIFE PROLOGUE IN HEAVEN (A new Translation from Goethe s Faust) The Lord. The Heavenly Legions, then Mephistopheles. The Three Archangels advance. RAPHAEL: In olden wise the sun is blending With brother-spheres his rival song, And now with thunder-tread is ending His predetermined journey long. His aspect gives the angels power, Though none his secret fathom may, The mystic orbs of splendor shower Their light as on the primal day. GABRIEL: And swift with swiftness unabating, The Earth revolves her glory bright, Elysian lustre alternating With deep and terror-mantled night. 102 LOOMS OF LIFE The ocean foams in broadest surges And up the towering cliffs it rears, And cliffs and seas sweep on where urges The swift, eternal flight of spheres. MICHAEL: And tempests roaring and contending From sea to land, from land to sea, Weave, in their rage, a chain expending Afar its potent empery. The path before the thunder clearing, Now flashing desolations play, Yet here Thy servants, Lord, revering The mild mutations of Thy day. THE THREE: The vision gives the angels power, Since none Thy being fathom may, And all Thy orbs of splendor shower Their light as on the primal day. 103 LOOMS OF LIFE A DEDICATION Mundane Muse White Lady Mine! Take this tribute, wholly thine; Take this sheaf of morning song, It is all the Past can give; My fairer, richer fields belong To thee and I must live To bind their harvest wealth and lay It safe from burning and from blight, Before thy feet while it is day And day is golden in our sight ; While leaping Time still laughs with us, And young Earth blooms miraculous, And Life is watered with the spring That bids me labor still and sing. THE QUEST AT END In white light of the day-star Darting down its ardent beams,- Till the white became a gray star, I walked within my dreams. 104 LOOMS OF LIFE In haunting of the moonlight Shaking all its silver staves, I sought a ghost within the night By old forgotten graves. Neath roadways of the giant Solar zones enlaced as one, Where seed of suns and gyrant Fogs of fire teemed and spun. By pale and astral powers Calling on a spirit blest, Mid ashen tombs and towers, I wandered on my quest. By comet-flame I wandered Where it plunged with glaring shroud,- The winged years I squandered And cried a name aloud. Never Night nor her rolling, Argent lusters o er my head, Nor my thin voice, nor the tolling Of bells awoke my dead. 105 LOOMS OF LIFE Then fans of dawn-glow fired The clouds to golden spume; Mine eyes in gloom expired, In massy deeps of gloom. In the dew on a lowly Mound of grass I fell a-swoon, All my senses lulled in holy Veils with Lethe-waters strewn. I wakened when a twilight Burned along its reach of flame ; My lips lay on a flower bright And that flower bore her name. BIANCA Bianca ! Bianca ! Thine eyes are like a Sybil s eyes, For they are molten with the night , They hold a strange, sequesters light That to some golden future flies From out some golden past ; Yea, they are overcast Bianca ! With mystery and stellar sheen, Liquescent, calm and vespertine! 106 LOOMS OF LIFE Bianca ! Bianca ! Thy mouth is like a muse s mouth Of coral to a flageolet A chanting muse whose lips are wet With nectar never knowing drouth, And when, immersed in dreams, Their music stifled seems, Bianca ! They make a living lute that hoards Old memories in its silent chords. Bianca ! Bianca ! Shouldst thou unleash thy trammeled hair, And crown thee with a myrtle crown, And sable torrents rushing down, Blot ivory shoulders warm and bare, Lo ! pipes of Pan would call Thee to his festival, Bianca ! And thou wouldst dance away and leave The saddened world and me to grieve. 107 LOOMS OF LIFE THE MOON DAMOZEL The moon her silver sickle lifts As though to shear the phantom thread That binds the live world to the dead, Yvonne ! See, through the rifts Of plunging clouds she darts and drifts Yvonne! O Yvonne! She haunts and hounds us through the grove Thou lingerest, thou growest cold; Thou growest strangely still and old, Yvonne ! Thine eyeballs rove. What demon comes to plague thee, love? Yvonne! O Yvonne! Thy face grows stone like yonder sphere Of ghostly ashes, dust and death. Thy breath is not a mortal s breath, Yvonne ! Thine eyes no tear Unloose thou starest nor dost hear, Yvonne! O Yvonne! 108 LOOMS OF LIFE On the cold, blasted orb thine eyes Glare petrified with awful power: Alas ! for us this is the hour, Yvonne ! That our love dies. The living sink, the dead arise, Yvonne! O Yvonne! Go, spirit, seek thy planet dread ; The slavery of thy spells is past, The dim, sad sphere is overcast, Yvonne ! And on thy head And mine, Love s blooms droop sere and dead, Yvonne! O Yvonne! 109 LOOMS OF LIFE RUSSIA AGONISED MCMV Unhappy land! thy heavens with horrors hung, Reveal no promise of a day ; thy plains Shake in each grassy blade rebellious swords Sprung from the mad root of Revolt; thy peaks In protest cry more awful than the tongues Of seers on winds of ashen yestermorns. Thy cities scream in blood, and on their domes Of empire glares red desolating light [seas Launched from the pyres of doom. Thy stained Roll dark to Death s horizons and are thronged With hostile apparitions vast with, ruin, And Havoc riots round thy wintry walls. So fated fell, since fated long to fall, [sides Thy wave-borne armaments, though close their Compassed with flame, armored and reinforced With triple steel and round with thunders ringed, Yet futile flashed their bolts, by hands enslaved Directed on their resolute enemy. Low lie thy citadels impregnable [stones That seemed, and so had been, were all their Buttressed by freemen s hearts and not by hands Of bondmen, were not ravelins and redoubts, no LOOMS OF LIFE Or glutted guns or swords their sole defense, But Liberty s great Word that power which Of every heart a host, of every host [makes Unconquered multitudes thrice multiplied. How still on Asian wastes thine armies rest, O Russia! In those alien fields afar What sleep lies on those legions harnessed once In pomp and panoply of battle ! Spurred With warlike hauteur huge, they spread athwart The trampled leagues in fluttering shadows cast From banners burning terribly with wrath And pallid flames of swords! They seemed wide Of clashing corn, stalwart beneath the sun [fields And valiant in the shade of trees. Then sank Destruction and the air was wild with wings Of liberated lives and wet the ground With many rains of red that on Death s couch Lay heavy. Now the might of Muscovy Cumbers the richening sod whose delving worm Holds revels on its pride. And the great sun Sends salvoes of his beams athwart those plains, Saluting peace, when his recurrent morns On desolation burst. in LOOMS OF LIFE If yet with arms Resistance seek revenge, or if defeat Piled on defeat no counsel lend, if pride Clear paths for massacre, or folly throw The sanguine ports to slaughter open wide In the Manchurian lands, if in these things Declared, no wiser word for thee is carved Full on thy brow, O broken government, Then art thou wholly doomed. Doomed though the sands Of Volga were outnumbered by the lives That wait in hecatombs on sacrifice Yet minish never, doomed though Ural s peaks Turned giants and for thee bestrode those zones Thou covetest, and doubly doomed though all Thy coasts were adamant with treasure massed, And gold thy long-drawn shores. So tyranny Is weakest still in that whereon her might She bases, and the brands her vassals wield Are rushes to her foes, but steel to her. Full to thy front thy children rise, and dread And holy is the wrath that masters them, By angels urged, wrath that shall master thee, Albeit the pavements of thy capitols 112 LOOMS OF LIFE Are faint beneath their slaughtered, and the snows Of far Siberian wastes engulf thy sons. [chill, Though woeful whips and chains and dungeons Or midnights of infernal mines thine arms Remorseless be, vain is their service dire ! Though veiled and ikon-guarded shrines a-gloom With superstition and the blinding craft Of priests may over despotism cast Anointing oils divine and bless with breath Of sanctity its abhorrent head and brow, Black with a nation s woe, yet is its fall Announced in terror s thunders now unpent In yon red heavens with awful scriptures stamped. There floods of marshalled doom brim down the Enwombing ills unknown. [skies Awry thy pomp On its marmorean pillars leans, while Fear Feeds on thy palace walls and, shaking, hears Thy millions muttering on all the winds. The generation s surges take on crests And whiten, by no captaincy controlled, By age-gray wrong aroused, by misery scourged, To madness. Lo, they mount to overwhelm With wrath, the thrones of Tyranny upreared 113 LOOMS OF LIFE On bases steep with clamor and in blood Submerged and tears that only blood can quell. The sum of crescent ages hath annulled With light thy iron barriers set with hate Within Progression s path, hath raised from More humane than thy laws, the incubus [hearts Of night thy hands imposed, O riven realm. Yet bright as standards waving in thy North, Whose glory stirs the snows with vagrant fire, So yet for thee, to wisdom reconciled, The flames of torn Odessa may be dawn Of greatness that builds not on leagues of land, But always on that Liberty whose star Is safeguard of all empire. So erect Thy state upon humanity, so lay Its fundaments in Freedom, its defense In men s enfranchised hands that never foe Nor age shall gnaw its fabric into dust. From shallows and dark shoals of adverse fate, Tremendous with thy loss, may fountains spring Of good, thee not alone, but all mankind To quicken and refreshen. May that thought Which hath thy glory been if not thy guide, Still shoot new fibres through the families Of men and bind as brothers many a race 114 LOOMS OF LIFE Extended to the dwindling margins dim Of the green world. So shall thy virile veins, All inexhaustibly regenerate, Flow on till Life s defoliated tree Trembles with all its ultimate bright fruit, The seraph s heritage, the gods great dower, Unending Peace, Earth s bridal-kiss with Time. SOULS OF MEN ASUNDER Chill the poisoned winds and dank that o er the world are blowing, Shake with frost a breast that feels thy breath in all. Evermore shall friendship s singing streams be tween us flowing, Once with love and laughter golden, run with gall. Long to me shall now, alas, the grieving surge of Ocean Drone with lonely tides lamenting on this shore, Mid that wreck of hearts and dreams and shells of dead emotion, Where those pearls we gathered? gathered now no more. us LOOMS OF LIFE Fair our habitation shone, with mouths of music fluent, Pure of love created, o er the stormy coasts ; Hollow lies the house and all its melody fled truant ; Chambers hiss with adders, windows gleam with ghosts. Stars have burst while vast in thirst the reddened leagues lay parching; Realms have sunk, and torn with tears were nations eyes; Armies flamed and perished while their glory kept on marching, Yet the faith we held it died not, now it dies. Wider than the world is wearier than the floods that sunder, Fall our paths apart on Earth nor meet again. Old and cold the legend and its end is woe and wonder, Havoc s heel in hearts, and dust of Death, and Pain. 116 LOOMS OF LIFE HOW COULD MEN HATE THEE, LUCIFER? Son of the Morning, thou whose arm erects Full o er yon Orient wastes thy towering torch, A pharos guiding argosies of dawn Up through the ruins of the night, we mark Athwart the plinths of Heaven implacable, Thy seraph head unbowed! Unbowed thy form, In glimmering outline traced and phosphor glow, Beneath its burthen of damnation thrones Full on Earth s proudest peak, nor yet thy feet Worn feet! that toil o er planetary ways, Kiss of that Earth disdain, so loved by thee. How could men hate thee, Lucifer? Not thee Rash coals of wrath unquenchable impelled To huge rebellion, but solicitude And charitable intent unto man. What could deter thee from thy task benign, O Bearer of the Light, though on thy head Exile fell heaped and iron punishment, Loss of the olden bliss and sorrowful doom? Foe wast thou but to Night and Ignorance ; Thy ray rent all their palls, their curtains torn Sank cowering in collapse, and man rose free 117 LOOMS OF LIFE To shrine in temples of the intellect Th untrammeled thought. Fear lived no more When frailty fell ! Far nobler fate to err In freedom s light supreme than doubt or pray In charmed darkness. Thou, O Lucifer, Art figure less of Evil than of Sorrow, Nor bearest Light alone, but Love also, Since both, co-ordinate with good in thee, Not in their essences contend but one Are and inseparate remain. So one With thee in nature and in glory s crown, Thy mortal sons, nor less their doom decreed Than thine, those beacon-bearers through the When massy and cohorted Ignorance [glooms, Sat battlemented by dark books and turned The iron leaves with crimson fingers dipt In cores of starry lives. Victorious long, These minions of the midnight and the dusk, Ere shattered by the illuminating lance That on their numberless proud summits fell. Like thee thy sons first taught that brains could beam And spirit shine, and built of ashlars up The dawn-tipt turrets and pavilions bright Whereon burnt cresset-fires for Pioneers 118 LOOMS OF LIFE Of Light their thankless labors to illume. For thankless, thankless still, O Lucifer, The labors of the Light, with hatred paid, With pain, with persecution paved along Their dolor s path, with thorns, with hunger s teeth, With flints of shame, with death and frenzied fires Insatiably fed, with swords and gyves Laid on the limbs of pale, tormented Truth, And dungeon-dusks to overwhelm her ray That cannot die. Ever such fate hath fallen On spirits lustre-fraught, since first deposed From noons of state ineffable in Heaven, Mid acmes rapt of archangelic awe, The skies precipitous absorbed thy plunge Immense that down the empyrean lay. Calcined to ash, Heaven s zones burned bright with thee, Till in this nether dome lay terminate Thy course and whelmed the lords of dawn s domain Where thou in vast magnificence art now Throned Monarch of the Morning. 119 LOOMS OF LIFE What of him, Titan of noblest heart, of fable old, Prometheus, who on stormy Caucasus, Lies o er bleak leagues of granite, fast in chains By Hermes forged remorseless, and endures Intolerable torment and the bird Of dreadful beak? Though long the winters white Build up their emerald and crystal walls With guards of glassy spears, though skies of slate Pile snows on snows upon him, till his form Marks eminences strange along the peaks Of that wild range, or suns their malice dart Through the insufferable summers on his flesh Exposed, yet never the harsh, arid airs Lift up his plaint to Jove no wail, no plaint Ascends, the exulting tyrant to appease. But oft his agony s red couch, though big With sufferings ultimate, grows strangely soft, Then, lo, the heartless stones start into flowers Of clasping petals pure, enstarred with dew, While the exhaling rose upon his wounds Breathes balms and essences of sighs. He smiles Upon the dreams that men, his children, joy, 120 LOOMS OF LIFE Fruit of his travail consummate, though paid By him with many a pang. So mounts his thought Triumphant and his wan face wings a smile Up to the thunder s throne and looming Zeus. How could men hate thee, though the gods do hate? Remote in distance and on heights remote Dwell they who thence deliver unto man Lumens of soul, since ever Light must seek, Or ineffectual its radiance falls, The solitude of peaks exalt and chill, Where thrones aerial lift and fence their calms With silence from the Earth-enveloping winds That there may never war. Bearers of Light Immortal, even ye who higher climb The Earthen eminence than those you bless With glorious gift, none other lot await, None other meed than Lucifer s or doom Of the bold, fettered Titan. Isolate In unsurrender of your souls, immune From injury on far heights of soaring thought Piled firm, and mid incomparable climes 121 LOOMS OF LIFE Of contemplation fixed, yet may you smile Unshaken in serenity that holds Not change, nor joy, nor suffering. Yet it holds A sadness like the sea s or his who casts About him oft the mourning of the clouds With all their tears, that deeper grief to hide From which shall nevermore exempted be All dreamers and all souls whose sovereign sight Is lustre undefeated, though new dawns Drown in their cumulative floods the beams, No less eternal, of each vanward star. 122 LOOMS OF LIFE THE IRON VIRGIN (In the Five-Cornered Tower at Nuremberg) A Satire "Here," cried the Keeper s daughter, "here she stands The Iron Virgin in the dungeon-gloom ; Mark her sweet, placid smile, you see, no hands Hath she to tear her victims to their doom, But she hath handles," here she opened wide The hellish engine on its hinges old That groaned as once the wretches groaned in side, And all my leaping blood stood stricken cold. "These are the spikes that entered at the eyes Where entered light no more, this one with rust Corroded, pierced the bursting throat whose cries Soared to the sobbing angels, let us trust. And those that sank into the breast are three; (Observe they miss the heart) these four the veins Transfixed, and lest that death too sudden be, Slowly they closed the hollow shell with chains. 123 LOOMS OF LIFE When all at length was still and blood unstopt From the remorseless iron ran and wept, Sheer on great, mangling knives the body dropt And shooting streams the fragments downward swept Low to the river, and nor man nor place Knew more of them who knew the Maid s embrace." More cruel this Virgin than the Sirens three Or the devouring Sphinx whose lips were stained With lives of men, and yet it seems to me The cruelest of the cruel have remained. For we have many virgins, nor are they, Nor is their virtue formed of iron quite; They smile as sweetly and they smile alway, And they have hands a left one and a right. Yea, hands have they "how happy if we mote Into the arms of woman straightway fall Sans need to fall into her hands !" so wrote He who is greatest, wittiest of all The living wits. The Jungfrau s red caress Was terrible and yet she granted death, But these our virgins are more pitiless, With them the mangled victim keeps his breath. 124 LOOMS OF LIFE His eyes they poniard till the wretch crawls blind, Within his throat his fluttering tongue they nail, And through his breast a hundred irons grind Their way from fairest hands that never fail To strike the heart. They break it, and then tear With pearly teeth his body into bands. (True, what a blessing to poor man it were Might woman be divested of her hands. ) No river hides his tortured flesh, but he Is scourged into the world all bitter-bright, There ridicule heaps high his agony, And leaves him naked to the winds and night, To die a thousand times a thousand times This passion and this cold embrace to feel Of these automata, these iron mimes, These shells malevolent of brass or steel, These empty figures fair that know no sin And are all smiles without and cruelty within. There hung this crushing humor in the air, As from the Five-Coign ed Tower swift I fled. Peace bide with thee, my brother, O beware All virgins living, moribund or dead! 125 LOOMS OF LIFE THE LAND OF ALABASTER The sunset burned across the shackled clouds, A bar of tyrannous and angry red; The solar king, wrapped gloomily in shrouds, Drew sackcloth o er his old and humbled head. Gaunt stood the trees o er meadows paved with snow; Their shadows crept like ghosts begot of light And perished where the smouldering winter glow Made way for dense invasions of the night. So hewn in alabaster lie the hills ; The victor flakes upon the roofs and rocks Shine wonderful. Now tinkling music fills This land of snow and silence as the flocks Creep homeward o er the mute marmoreal palls Unbroken and immense that stretch and gleam ; The blue smoke towers o er the roofs, then falls The hand of Conqueror Night upon the dream. 126 LOOMS OF LIFE THE FORGING OF THE RINGS An Epithalamium Eros am I! Created things I melt, I shape with flaming wings. So steel, though stubborned stiff with fire, Trembles, glows, and feels desire; So ice upon the water s breast Roars, and rends its armored rest, And bronzen shapes of gods, or men Of marble flush to flesh as when Stones from out Deukalion s hands Sprang to young and lusty bands, New and naked in the light, Or Music reared on Theban sands Tall fanes all wondrous white. Kinglier might than kings I hold ; Creation s primal cause Lies graven in my laws, And this green, tiny world I fold Close with wings of Day and Dark I, who am Nature s Hierarch. Light was Chaos pristine smile; I was Chaos pristine song; 127 LOOMS OF LIFE Her globes liquescent quickened while I goaded them along. Oceans are but slaves to moons; Moons to worlds are vassals bound ; Worlds must follow suns around To my all-compellant tunes Spun from undeciphered runes. Flame! myriads of millions Of suns beyond the scope of suns ! Mine the power that links them, mine Their fire, and mine the splendor Of giant spheres that shine, Male in magnificence, On swooning moons whose tender Frail glow is recompense For light their virgin fields absorb From each enormous master-orb. These subject to my will I hold, Controlling who am uncontrolled Through all the hours ; Of all the powers Remaining youngest of the young, Yet oldest of the old. The myth from Hellas sprung, 128 LOOMS OF LIFE Decked me with name of Eros name That holds my earthly fame alone But not my cosmic fame, Refulgent to a farther zone. My fateful anvil throws Its ruby o er the stars ; There forge I joys and woes, And love that makes or mars. Music smitten from the steel, Floats in many a waving wheel, Which, strong and clear, Gods only hear, And mortals only feel. So speeds the forging of the rings : Love, singing, swiftly smites the gold, and smit ing, sweetly sings : Gold in beauty s glamour rolled! Light of loveliness, unfold! Small, smiling sun, yet glorious, re-risen, Delivered unto day from rock-ribbed gloom, Over what vales victorious? what prison, Gold of the gentle glow, what mountain s womb 129 LOOMS OF LIFE Of clustered spars, Or crystal bars Coffined thy rays in clasping ore? Till some sharp bolt, in thunder sent, The startled crypts in sunder rent And double day within thy cavern bore? Fair fruit of Earth, for human fate, Bright emblems of eternity Shall be fashioned out of thee. Nor curse of coin, nor csesar s crowns, nor tires of state. Let percussive hammers mould Thee to circlets twain, O gold. Impassioned, yielding metal, far too mellow, In thee a strain of iron must be bound, A silvern flux must settle as its fellow, And strength with purity as one compound. So twain and twin, The rings begin To scatter light upon the wind, And murmur forth a golden note That wizards sere and olden mote Have woven from the mystic airs of Ind To lash a seraph s heart aflame 130 LOOMS OF LIFE Once, once to taste an earthly kiss! With promised pregnancies of bliss The heavenly hoops lie done and seize a fairer name. Gleaming rings of Wedlock, great With love, with mystery, with fate! In you what hope from mortal vision hidden, Hints of long generations yet to grow From two who at Love s portal stand unbidden, Led by the fairest dream the heart can know? And though malign Or blest the sign That burns in prophet-flame above, With bliss or woe for distant days, Think but of the insistent lays From hearts athrob with pulsing harps of Love. From tabernacled lamps a ray Falls far where unborn spirits shine Beyond the years an endless line, Beyond the all-crowning kiss beyond the nup tial day. Servant cirques that Life ordains For links in its successive chains, 131 LOOMS OF LIFE Binding with bands eternal, man and woman, , So that two destinies know but one path, And all that is supernal or is human, On Earth a two-fold day and duty hath, Ye aureate rounds Ye span the bounds Twixt soul and clay, twixt hearts and hands, And purify with finer flame, And bless with a diviner name The impulse and the law that naught with stands ; Ye lay on Passion spells of Peace, And are its riches and reward Which swords of seraphim must guard From hungry Time s annulling rage that bans the world s increase. Hark ! the melody that clinks Pure from those portentous links! It darts within the elements rejoicing, It trembles in the throats of thrilling bells, Whose tongues, soon stirred to eloquence, are voicing O er flights of clouds, the happiness that wells, And rolling mounts From raptured founts 132 LOOMS OF LIFE Of wine within each leaping heart Whose floods with dyes of gladness glow Till they a noble madness know, While Fancy snares the brain with siren art. Burn, happy, happy day thy light In azure o er this hallowed pair! For two so young, for two so fair, O lend thy smile to Even, O lend thy joy to Night. But another note ye own, Rings, of harsh, repellant tone, Like iron struck to clamorous outcrying; Then both your burnished bands grow tyrant chains, Your soft ning song, your amorous deep sighing Are dumb with rusten dolors and sore pains. For cursed they Who burn away With lust or strife your mild alloy, Reverting unto mordant gyves, You gnaw their waste discordant lives And canker all the yearning rose of Joy. You fetter heart, you fetter soul, 133 LOOMS OF LIFE You fling a venom on the air, And Misery, mute in marble there, Hath Age for its ally and Ruin for its goal! O ye whose warm, responsive hands Lock with those from shadow-lands Beyond Night s moors or meadows of the morn ing, Twixt dead and unborn races intervene On litten heights your shadows, Life adorning Where noon-tide parts the seeing and unseen. A race shall rise Neath future skies From flames that bloom within your breasts ; For you who pause on Aidenn s hills A moment ere this cadence stills, And Earth once more grows gray before her guests, Are stones of Atlantean piles Advancing tribes rear over Death, Bequeathing mind and blood and breath, Where fast o er Time s destroying sea, Love lifts his shining isles. 134 LOOMS OF LIFE THE STORM-NIGHT All the moonless night the strong Hissing levins lanced the steeps, And the throats of thunder long Bellowed o er the smoking deeps Whence the shaggy crags were rent As the storm their forests bent, Like the crowns of kings in woe. Black I saw the charging cloud Fraught with fire against the peak, Saw it wrecked with tumult loud, Loosing all its bolts to wreak Vengeance on the gulfs inane, But its flashing brands in vain Plunged and blazed within the pit. Overhead with hollow roar, Rolled the mangled wastes of night, Filled with voices rude that tore Down the firmamental height To the Earth a sullen path For the waters launched in wrath And the winds. All winds were there ! LOOMS OF LIFE Yea, the winds on giant reeds Blew, and called the cliffs to come With the whirlwinds on their steeds To this Pandemonium. How their hulks heaved in the dark! Like the Flood beneath the Ark, To an organ-octave vast. Bowed my heart unto their thrill, And my lips were loosed to shout, I grew brother to the hill And the storm-shape s whirling rout. So, on tides of thunder tost, I, immersed in strife and lost, Joyed the elemental war! Then mine arms invoked profounds Where swart demons of the dark Shaped me gods from sights and sounds, Till great Peace, the Hierarch, From his throne called unto Dis Brooding o er the mad abyss, And my pagan soul grew still. Sank the winds. Each phalanx grim Of the battling clouds withdrew, 136 LOOMS OF LIFE And the cloven peaks that dim Fret the shores of pendant blue, Through the smiling world upsoared While the lingering stars adored Morn in majesty revealed. Soon the new-born ray of Dawn Burnt upon the Orient range, And my yearning soul was drawn To my brethren, mute and strange. Through the pure and vibrant air Mountant sprang the solar flare As the birds and blooms awoke. Then to lower vales of light And the homes and hearts of men, Burnt my footsteps swift and bright Down the mountain and the glen. So I left the heights above, Longing for the warmer love Lying on a woman s lips. < ^07THE J (UNIVERSITY) OF ^-CX\ iprjt 137 .i, n ^ YB I 183 182273 in .