LOVE AND LIBERATION THE SONGS OF ADSCHED OF MERU AND OTHER POEMS BY JOHN HALL WHEELOCK Author of "The Beloved Adven- ture," "The Human Fantasy," etc. BOSTON SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY 1913 COPYRIGHT, 1913 SHERMAN, FRENCH <& COMPANY "0 beauty on the darkness hurled, Be it through me you shame the world" JOHN MASEFIELD 2200526 Acknowledgment is due to Scribner's Magazine, Harper's Magazine, The American Magazine, The Forum, The Smart Set, The International, Po- etry, and The Lyric Year for kind permission to reprint many poems which first appeared in their pages. CONTENTS SONGS OP ADSCHED OF MERU PAQB THE NIGHTINGALE AND THE ROSE 1 IN THE MIDNIGHT OP THY LOCKS 13 HYMNS AND ADORATIONS 33 RADIANT NOON 57 BIRD-SONGS AND ROSES 73 THE MYSTERY AND THE MYTH 93 LIBERATION Ill REVELATION AND REST 121 TALISMANS: SECRETS AND DELIVERANCES . . .135 LOCKS OF THE WORD-BRIDE 157 OTHER POEMS RETURN TO NEW YORK 171 DUSK 172 SONG 173 TOLSTOI 174 TO THE VIRGIN 174 PALINGENESIS 175 RETURN 176 TO THE DREAMERS 178 EARLY APRIL 178 DEPARTURE 179 THE SAVIORS 180 MID-OCEAN 182 "MOTHER" 182 SEA-VOYAGE 183 "ALAS, WHERE THOU ART" 184 "MUSIC IS HIS ROBE" 184 THE ANSWER 186 THE WINDS OP MARCH 187 PAGE UNREST 187 "O MEMORY, THOSE EYES" 188 THE CLOSE OF MASS 189 TO A POET IN DESPAIR 191 BENEDICTION 191 TO MARY 191 IN THE NIGHT 192 THE KEYS 193 HYMN 195 TWILIGHT IN MID-OCEAN 195 THE TRUTH 196 TWO SAD SONGS 197 TRIO 199 REBELLION 204 WOMAN, THE MYSTICAL 204 AUTUMN 205 THE WIND OF TIME 206 THE BORDERLANDS 206 BEETHOVEN 207 TO A DEAD GIRL 207 BEAUTY TO HER LOVER 208 DUMBNESS 209 TO 209 THE FRIEND 210 SONGS OF ADSCHED OF MERU THE NIGHTINGALE AND THE ROSE "See how the roses burn! Bring wine to quench the fire." MY soul looks toward you, as toward the coming Spring Soft folded flowers look up at dawn of day, Through grateful tears toward the liberating love, As April looks through starry tears toward May. II I WOULD that I were a flower That encloses forevermore The "You" and the "Me" together, One in the deep heart's core. The lover and the beloved She bears in her breast alone, Inextricably interwoven, Deep in her breast made one. There in the being beloved The lover is rapt away; The lover, drenched through with the loved one, Laughs upward to greet the day. In the chalice and cup of her beauty Their mingled beauties unite, Their ecstasies mingled in choir Make odor of the dim light. Ah there the lover with longing, In the self beloved the most Slips into the peace of her being, In the depths of her being is lost. We strive, and fall backward from beauty, Twain from the war to be one, But the pain of their warring is ended, The race of their longing is run; In the infinite peace of her bosom Where silently bloom and blend The longing for beauty, and beauty , The origin and the end. Ill O TO be part of all I love the most, Touch you, and live you, and breathe of you, and die, Sweet, of yourself, part of your blood and breath, And pass into your beauty with a cry! IV APRIL all my bosom Was breaking and my heart, Sorrowful in the Springtime I wandered, and apart. I sought among the great, I sought among the wise; Scornful from my face They turned away their eyes. But the beloved knew, She took me to her breast, With her heart she stilled The heart of my unrest. All the life within me I was so fain to give She touched with tears of pity, She took, and bade it live. In the silence of her being, Her coverts dark and deep, The secret of her beauty, My sorrow fell asleep. Whence my life forever Has found a flowering place, In the quiet of her bosom, The peace of her embrace. O FAR beyond the sorrow of myself I move to you, as the waning Winter moves Toward the dear Spring, leaving himself behind, Lest with one touch he mar the self he loves! VI LIKE a young flower, Lovely and bare, My love spread her beauty On the dim air. Like a soft breath On the breezes blown, Her loveliness lured My life to her own. The cup of her beauty I entered within. Her beauty closed And folded me in. Now must I die At the core of her heart, Shut from the world And sundered apart, Lost in her life, In her loveliness slain; Sweet is the sorrow, Sweet is the pain. VII FROM the sorrow of my being, From the self that I must be, For the mystery of your presence, Sweet, I thirst to set me free. Would that with your very selfhood You might wipe my own away, Lost forever all my sorrow In your joy, as night in day. To be one with you forever, Nor profane with any breath Of myself the self I love so, Triumphing beyond my death ! VIII WHERE is the Spring to be found And in what hidden place! Where four lips are joined together, Where lover and lover embrace; In the call of the bird on the bough, By the crocus bursting in bloom, In the call of the voice beloved, The whispering voice in the gloom, The call of a voice through the dark When all the world lies dumb, When all the world lies sleeping, "Sweetheart, come come !" IX WOULD that into your being Myself might slip, in the cup Of the flower of your spirit Forever folded up. From all the outer terrors And the ugliness, at the core Of the chalice of your bosom, Folded f orevermore ! LOVE, alas, within your bosom Dwells the source of all my pain, Everything that I desire Most, her silent walls contain. 7 Dear, alas, within your bosom Heaves the whole Spring's starry breath, The one secret that I long for In the wastes of life and death; The one secret that I long for, The one self for which I long, The hushed choir of my singing And the source of all my song. Ah, the one soul 'mid a million Strewn like stars from east to west, The one soul that love has need of, Deep in the beloved breast. Deep within your heart it slumbers, Under life and loving deep, Like a spirit hid forever Under the dim veils of sleep. XI WOULD that I might become you, Losing myself, my sweet! So longs the dust that lies About the rose's feet. So longs the last, dim star Hung on the verge of night , She moves, she melts, she slips, She trembles into the light. XII O BELOVED, when I heard it From your lips my very name First, how like a song it sounded, Still the same, yet not the same ! To myself another meaning Then was added, and a j oy All tongues after you repeating Never wholly may destroy. XIII PRESS closer to me, dear, Ah, close and closer press Crush out with your sweet self All the blind loneliness. Press in with your sweet self And crowd away my own, Till for a space at least I am no more alone. O I thirst I run to meet it, As twilight runs to day To the dear opposite presence That floods his own away! XIV "I WILL give you pain," said Thought; "I will give you toil," said Fame; Death said, "I will destroy Utterly the fair dreams that you have wrought." O Death! But the beloved said: "Come, come to my heart, Come I will give you Joy !" XV I THIRST, I thirst! O bare the springs of your spirit! Dear, draw the veils of your inmost life aside, And take me to the most secret place of your being, Ever there to abide ! 10 XVI MY sweet has opened her heart And I have entered in ! My sweet has opened her heart And I have entered in. Her heart lies bared to my own As the fields to the trembling night, Her heart lies bared to my own, As the sea to the starry light. Her heart lies bared to my own As the earth to the April rain; My sweet has opened her heart, And I have entered again! II IN THE MIDNIGHT OF THY LOCKS "In the midnight of thy locks I renounce the day " 13 Is it the nightingale's singing That wakes my heart like wine? Or is it your heart against me That makes her singing divine? The starlight through the lattice, That bathes your bosom white, Trembles it with her song, Or the song with the starry light? And is it but a dream? Or is the dreaming true? Is this that questions, I , And this that answers, You ? Hard it is to believe , No more can we comprehend Love, when it is here, Than Death when it comes in the end. 14 II LIFT your arms to the stars And give an immortal shout, Not all the veils of darkness Can put your beauty out! You are armed with love, with love, Nor all the powers of Fate Can touch you with a spear, Nor all the hands of Hate. What of good and evil, Hell and Heaven above , Trample them with love ! Ride over them with love ! Ill WHEN side by side in the gloom Of the midnight our souls are laid, Darkness laps you about, Into a voice you fade. Vanished the day's delusions , Appearance that sunders apart, Again the darkness discovers Your very self to my heart. 15 By the sound of the breath of your words, The cry of your soul from the Vast, By the touch of your lips unseen, I know you again at last. IV 'WAKE, beloved, awake! Lift your head with the day! Morning stamps his feet And twilight is scattered away. HUSH 'tis the hour When God with his world Is in love; dew-impearled Lies His love on each flower. Now breast to bared breast In the moment of love Below and above Thrills wild with unrest, Thrills wild with unrest Overflowing, and spills Radiant rapture that fills The dark, opposite breast. 16 Now the heart full thereof Overflows into song, Flowing softly along In the rhythm of love, In the night, in the night . O listen O hark! God's love through the dark Sheds the soft, starry light. At the touch of His hand, As on murmuring strings, So tremble all things, And all understand. O love, let us blend As sweet harmonies do, With each other thrilled through/- Touch, mingle, and end! With a whispered "alas" , Inarticulate speech , Each into each Murmur and pass! VI WHEN moonlight bathes your breast, When Song at your bosom sighs, Beauty, meeting with beauty, Turns backward with glad surprise. 17 When starlight floods your face, When music speaks to you, Beauty, touching with beauty, Grows lovelier through and through. When Love at your bosom leans, When Love at your bosom dies, Beauty mingles with beauty , Fulfilled the Creation lies. VII MY soul in the midnight hour Seeks yours in fear and doubt, But the answer in your bosom The twilight has put out. Holy is the slumber Wherein you are sunken deep, And, after spent desire, The majesty of sleep. VIII THE lightning flashed and lifted The lids of heaven apart. The fiery thunder rolled you All night long through my heart. 18 From dreams of you at dawn I rose to the window-ledge, The storm had died away The lake lapped on the sedge. The lyre of heaven trembled Still with the thought of you. The twilight on the waters, And all my spirit, too. IX Now Morning rising from the arms of Twilight, Baffled and inconsolable, above The dear, worn breast and sacrificial body Widens with aching love. WHAT you have given me Night, nor day, Nor Death, nor Time Can take away. The supreme gift, All gifts above , Nought can repay, Not all my love. 19 most adored ! my delight ! The day shall hear me And the night! 1 will sound your name Through heaven and hell And the starred morning's Hollow shell! I will make this joy Upon my lips Your trumpet To the Doom's eclipse! Here with my heart 1 fall and bow Around your feet, And bless you now ! XI WHERE is the dream that filled me In the midnight with delight? And where is the angel that whispered Sweet words to me in the night? 20 Your face looks out at me laughing, (The night is dead and done.) The same, yet not the same, dear: The angel has come and gone. XII THE pavilion of heaven trembles With myriad tapers clear; The light in the swinging censer Burns low in your chamber here. Now sleeps the heart of the world, Her memories put away, Now 'wake the immortal eyelids After the rage of day. The night wails 'round your window, Heaven's beauty with bounty burns; Slow stealing into my spirit The grace of your presence returns. By some spell, inviolate, holy, I feel it lure me and draw To yourself, some force as secret And true as the starry law. 21 And I cry to you through the dark , Your breathings measure the Deep , I cry to you through your dreams, I cry to you through your sleep. XIII THINK you that your lips Were meant for kisses alone, That only Love awakes When backward your head is thrown ! Wherever you turn your head All Beauty turns and sighs, At the opening of your lips A hundred poems arise. Not children alone of the flesh, But children, too, of dream, At the challenge of your beauty Into the daylight stream. XIV MY own is like a flower No influence touches in vain, Fairer she grows for the sunlight, And lovelier for the rain. 22 XV I HEARD a voice in the morning Cry, " 'Wake for Love is here !" Up through my dreams ascending I turned, and saw you near, Close at my bosom sleeping ; Still I held your hand Reached to me in compassion Out of the silent land. Gradual, soundless, slowly, Star on star of the night Moved with harmonious motion, Melted into the light. The heart of the light dilated, Throbbing tense and clear , " 'Wake for the stars are scattered ! 'Wake for Love is here!" XVI O LOVE, at your very breast For the sheer joy to be, Sobs the quick throat of Love, The heart breaks suddenly! 23 Love laughs through blinded lashes, Hardly his eyes may bear, Sweet, at your head to see His arms for a halo there! XVII THE morning-star is twinkling Through rifted clouds withdrawn, A single, flaming taper In the bridal-chamber of Dawn. Faint are the floors with flowers And trodden blooms of day , One by one night's candles Have dwindled and died away. No sound disturbs the quiet , Silence forevermore. Drawn are the twilit curtains, Barred is the golden door. XVIII NEVER, never this night From my dreams shall pass away, Her fiery memories burn My heart out all the day. 24 Though I left you in the morning And walked among the crowd, Her nightingales followed singing Still in my heart aloud. and the gracious secret Within me, no one guessed! But I bore you within my heart, I bore you within my breast, 1 bore you within my spirit, Though hidden and far away, As the stars unseen, but burning Still in the heaven of day! XIX You have rushed to my arms, You have run to me now You cling in my arms As a bird to a bough. Dewed as the morning, Starry with tears, Up through your tresses Your face to me peers. 25 O the beauty persuasive ! The burden most dear ! Faint as I am Again from me here, Sweet as the Spring From the earth as she slips, Clinging you lure The life from my lips ! XX THE night with her myriad tapers Hung high in the heaven's height Is lit for our bridal-chamber, A chamber for our delight. Till the last torch flicker and vanish, Come, let us dwell evermore, Love-drunken, sleepless, and weary, Till daylight unbar the door ! XXI You have given me life, You have given me joy, You have given me peace No sorrow can destroy. O sweet, here at your feet, What is there left to give ! The very love you have given That lives to help you live. XXII THE swallow chirps her bridal-song Without your windows here, And the bright earth arrays herself For the bridal of the year. The Spring lies beautiful and weary Beneath her lover the sun, Weary of all the shames and beauties That in the dusk were done. Listen, almost about the earth You hear the mingled tone , The pressing and the pleading lips, The triumph and the moan! Your hair is decked with flowers, dear, And in your bosom sings The insatiate Beauty, but your eyes Are weary, like the Spring's. 27 XXIII THE world is reckless of beauty, Lavish of love as a bride: Is the flower not perfect enough, And has her perfume beside! When the earth is fulfilled of herself And the heaven starry and clear, The nightingale floods the night For excess of exuberance sheer. I, that was drunk with the j,oy Of mere earth and heaven above, You have come to me, You ; O, the waste and the bounty of love ! XXIV ALONG the mournful eastern rim Day lifts a flaming crest; Ah sweet, the night with all her love Bleeds out along the west , I would not rise with day, but die With darkness at your breast! 28 XXV / SLOWLY you sink into slumber, And one by one to my breast Crowd the white songs insistent, The voices that never rest. From the land of sleep and of silence They bring me tidings of you , I follow them seeking your spirit, I follow the long night through. O far from your bosom they bore me And out of the tumult of things ! O I followed, I floated above you ! In heaven I closed my wings. By the side of your sleep, in the silence, Sleepless the whole night long, To the sound of the breath of your slumber I measured the breath of this song. XXVI THE dawn, scattered with lilies And flowers pale and white, Is like your breast beginning The morning with delight. 29 XXVII Now Heaven and Earth Touch lips with delight; Her breast in the night To new flowers gives birth. Sweet lightning of laughter Leaps earthward and slips. They mingle their lips , The thunder sobs after. It is silent again O listen, O hark, God's love through the dark Sheds the soft, rushing rain! Each flower her cup Toward the kindness above, The clear, filling love, Lifts thirstily up. So do thou to mine, Till softly it slips, Sweet, from my lips, From my bosom to thine. 80 XXVIII DEAR, when I think how I love you, At the mere thought thereof, Brim the blind eyes with tears, Sobs the hurt throat for love. How shall I ever sing it! How shall I ever say! Love, at the very thought, Turns trembling lips away. XXIX WITH nothing of mine My soul was content; For a gift to yourself, Yourself I have sent. XXX I ROAMED in the gray evening over field and hill, Above me the pale clouds were restless wanderers, And when the day was gone and all the fields were still The thought of you, deep in my heart, was like a thousand stars! Ill HYMNS AND ADORATIONS "/* Allah's face on thee Bending with love benign! And thou not less on Allah's eye fairest, turnest thine " 33 I SING the immortality of your body, A source and a well-head of immortal things, The terror of her secret and shadowy places, And the sad fount from which all being springs, The somber center of her stately beauty, Creation's throne, and the central source of all, Bounteous with life of teeming generations , The home of love, though ages rise and fall; Immortal from generation to generation, Rearisen with every form of fleeting breath, Beloved and adored, a refuge and a salvation, The source of life amid the wastes of death. II O SWEET, how the glory of loving, The pure and the fiery flame, Burns up away between us The clouds of fear and shame! 34, O love, like a radiant sunrise, That gives itself away Wholly, freely, gladly, To perish of the day ! Ill UNDER the arch of the morning I raise the voice of my song. I sing the beloved's beauty, Her body stalwart and strong, Her bosom, holy and white, Virgin, a promise of things. 'Mid the manifold choir of all, The morning's murmuring strings, To the holy of heaven's holies I press with lips that rejoice, Under the temple of heaven I raise the song of my voice. I sing the bosom of Love, Bounteous, east and west, The sad and the sacred lips And the sacrificial breast, The arch of her body's endurance, Doomed to endure and fulfill, The patient pulse of her passion, Her splendor stately and still. 35 At the sound of my spirit's crying O'er the world the antiphonal choir Breaks forth, of the mingled delight Of the lips that endure and desire; The woven voice of their warring Made one with fierce rapture, the moan Of the love that triumphs, the triumph Of the love that is overthrown. The holy altar of heaven, Crowded with tapers dim, Trembles for rapture, and flickers At the breath of the sound of my hymn! IV THERE is no world, There is no star But I will find you Where you are. Not on Eternity's Utmost cape May you fly me To escape. O my delight, Your beauty's will Drives me on, And lures me still! 36 Tireless effort You raise me to, And years of labor, All for you. Though fain to rest In the days to be, From the opposite end Of Eternity. Heaven's length I'd run With giddy feet, To pour my spirit Through you, sweet! As a cupbearer to the side Of one who is thirsting slips, When I cried for Joy You held it to my lips. Graciously, nor denied me. as one from the desert lands, To the dregs, to the last, sweet dregs, 1 drained it from your hands. 37 I cried for Love, for Love To my lips you held it up With brave and generous hands, The sacrificial cup. VI THE musk that the morning wind Brings me to greet, Is the breath of you, sweet, And the sense of you, sweet. The flowers that bow At his coming their faces Are mirrors of you In a myriad places. And the love in me, too, And the song in me, too, Is the echo of you, And the music of you! VII THE earth, for the joy of bearing Your weight upon her breast, Laughs in a thousand flowers From the east-land to the west. 38 Against the heart to take it, The darling body and bright- To take it and to break it, She hungers day and night. Hourly toward her bosom She draws it downward close, Even till at the center In sleep it shall repose. VIII YOUR body's motion is like music, Her stride ecstatical and bright Moves to the rhythm of dumb music, The unheard music of delight. The silent splendor of the Creation Speaks through your body's stately strength, And the lithe harmony of Beauty Undulates through its lovely length. And rhythmically your bosom's arches, Alternately, with every breath Lift lifeward in long lines of beauty, And lapse along the slopes of death. 39 IX IF I catch you up to my heart Here, where the pulses ache, Almost the heart cries out, Almost the heart would break. O love, at my living side, Here where the pulses crowd !- The holy heart of longing Breaks, and sobs aloud. FROM the evening-land of twilight To the morning-land of day There is no Love like my Love, So perfect every way. O Love, how fair you are, How laughable and sweet, How terrible and strange From your forehead to your feet ! Were not your eyes enough To wound me, O my own! All your little beauties Are spears to hunt me down. 40 XI FROM the south to the north None is happy as I, I sing to the wind That goes galloping by. My lyre is heard In the desert of Time, All hearts shall beat To the heart of my rhyme. I am drunken with love, I am careless of death, I draw them in And out with my breath. O abandon yourself To an ecstasy sheer Forget how to doubt Forget how to fear! To him who has love Good and Evil are one, He has but to love, And the beauty is done. My Love is my joy From the day-spring of light, Through the flame of the noon, To the shadow of night; 41 From the hour when first The immaculate star Of evening arises To westward afar, Till his wheel in the sea White Sirius dips. She has kissed with her own This song on my lips ! XII WOULD you not have me love you Or remember any more, Stab my breast to the heart. Stab my heart to the core. Give my ghost to drink Of the cup Oblivion, "Forget, for the love of me," Write these words thereon. XIII LIKE a temple in the moonlight Shines your body's stately grace, Somber, bathed in sumptuous shadow, Filled with many a luminous space. 42 In the choir of your bosom All is hushed and laid at rest, Sleep and sleep alone possesses The dim altar of your breast. Only through her labyrinthine Arches, like far echoes, roll Whispers, memories of hushed music, Hints of the departed soul. Now the life that but so lately Clung to mine is laid at rest, Now delight and love are silent, And the answer in your breast. XIV THERE only is one hell Below, one heaven above, One for those you hate, One for those you love. love, what must I do To gain the heavenward way? 1 will kiss upon your lips A thousand prayers a day , Do penance at them daily For kisses left undone, And daily in your arms Renounce all gods but one! XV LOVE has robes of splendor, Love has cruel eyes, Love is swift and heartless Till the great sacrifice. Then fall all veils from off her, All masks of mirth, or moan, Radiant, naked, holy Love is Love alone. XVI O SWEET, are the hours thorny ! Do the hours bruise you, sweet! Lay my heart between, Lay my heart at your feet. Does it beat against them rudely! Tread it into the ground. The blood that leaps to kiss them Shall wash them of their wound. 44 XVII FEAR not the powers below, Fear not the powers above, Nor death, nor fate, nor hate More terrible is Love. The panthers and the leopards Tug meekly at his car. Love is never weary, And cometh from afar. Though you fly before the morning Till the east become the west, You shall meet him mouth to mouth, You shall meet him breast to breast. All heaven's heads bow down And all the throats of hell Cry up to him, his face Is holy and terrible. XVIII HEAVEN rings 'round with the rapture And the radiant reaches above, "Death, that from all sets free, Frees us not from Love!" 45 XIX TELL, me why I love you, Name yourself, my Heart, Every inward bounty, Every outward art: The hands, the lips, the eyes, The beauty in your breast, Your very inmost spirit Separate from the rest. When your lips have ceased, When your words have done, I will answer you, "Not for these alone." XX WEARY is age And the record thereof- O young is my love, An unwritten page! Her soul is a flower But newly begun, On her petals the sun Has shone but an hour. 46 Wild as the Spring, Ecstatic and sweet Is her body, and meet To be sung of and sing. Athletic and pure As a wave of the sea, To follow and flee, Give and endure! Splendidly moved To swift strides along, Stalwart and strong To love, and be loved ! O, as clouds from afar That mingle and move, We hasten with love, As star unto star! O, as swallows that dart Through the heaven of day, We follow as they, Touch, and depart! With four arms about, Two bosoms laid bare, Age, sorrow, and care From our world we shut out! 47 XXI WHAT shall I dare to give you, Who have but love to give, Who have but one forever, To love you and to live ! I will give you love that loves, Love with willing hands, Love that soars and sings, Love that understands. XXII WHERE is the land of You And how shall I find the way? If to that land I come Never again will I stray. A land that is yours completely, Where no other name is known; Where no other faces greet me, No voice but yours alone. There are no arms but your arms, No bosom but yours is there, Each flower in all that island Is sweet with the breath of your hair. 48 Leaf to leaf of the trees Whispers your name, your name; The roses blush with your beauty, The lilies are white for shame. To copy the veins in your temples The violets take their hue, And the sun that rises in heaven, And the moon that sets is You. XXIII WHEN no more at my bosom I lift you with each breath Breathing has lost its purpose , Each breath is a wave toward death. XXIV MY Love of you will love you When all my love is done; My Love of you will love you When I am dead and gone. I am mutable and weary, Made of dust and clay, 7 shall fade and perish, I shall pass away. 49 He is drunk and filled with joy, He is crowned with joy and shod, His eyelids never sleep , He has kissed the lips of God. He alone is holy, He alone is strong ; His lamp is in my heart, His sword is in my song. XXV FAR from your heart I wander. Twilight closes. Far from your heart I roam. Dear, in the sweet, pale west your soul arises, A star to call me home. XXVI ALL honey and gold your body is, of fashion Lovely and liberal; in a world of sadness Bearing the old and the barbaric gladness, The ruddy joy, the bounteous compassion. Her beauty's challenge, like clear trumps of warning Blown from the throne of God with royal splendor, Summons to love, the eloquent and tender Lines of her grace unfolded like the morning. 50 Ever she sounds, with royal reverberation Of ringing pulses and rhythm of grace supernal, The call to joy amid the doom eternal, The golden words of the great invitation ! XXVII IF you fly before me Into Paradise I will follow upward, Lifted by your eyes. The ecstasy of heaven You sit, serene and mute, Your shining head the angels With my own songs salute. Not strange will it seem to enter, Led upward by your eyes; So often have you led me Into Paradise. XXVIII As the twilight, for sheer love And abandoned ecstasy, For the sake of the dear dawn Dies, that dawn may come to be; 51 Dumb with adoration dies At the lovely, panting breast, For sheer rapture of sacrifice Bows his face along the west, O to perish for your sake, O, as twilight to the day, To your loveliness athirst Give my very self away ! So I know it is your love That demands it, not your hate; Love is kind, but very fain, And implacable as Fate. XXIX AGAINST your cheek, and bosom, Radiant, pure, and white, I have heard what the stars of morning Sang, singing for delight. The words the angels whispered My soul before the birth, I have heard their echoes wafted Again about the earth. 52 Lest ever I forget them, One, where the stars abide, Lays your arms about, Sets your lips beside. XXX I WOULD give you love for love, I would give you love for pain, I would give you love for hate Ten-thousandfold again. Love, not I, is master. Love is great and kind. Love runs on to love you And leaves all self behind. XXXI THROUGH the labyrinth of your bosom Like an organ's I hear it roll, In the thunderous anger of love. The pulse of the wrath of your soul ; At your bosom's barbaric splendor, Lifting with fierce delight Long lines of exuberant beauty, In the hush, in the night, in the night, 53 Lifting with vast exultation, Forever and sleeplessly, In the most reverent rhythm Of riotous ecstasy: In the radiant rhythm of rapture And the lightnings of fierce delight, In the storm of most riotous rapture, In the hush, in the night, in the night ! XXXII WHEN the earthly joy is ended And the earthly love is done, My soul, with memory drunken, To the flaming doors will run. Angelic lips shall hail me With my own songs in the Vast , The angel that I loved so Shall lift me up at last. XXXIII THE sheer, the infinite gratitude, Never to be expressed, Puts out the light, that flickers, Of Song within my breast. 54 Love to the most beloved, The dear and the bounteous soul, The giver and the beauty, The summons and the goal, Empty-handed, defeated, With all his singing shed, Returns with love forever Too holy to be said. XXXIV BURY me east or west, when you come I will rise to greet you. I will rise to greet you with love if you come where I lie in the south. If you come to my grave in the north with love I will rise to greet you, And a song on my mouth. IV RADIANT NOON "Love on thy beauty breaks a shattered wave' 57 ALMOST against your heart My beating heart has grown, Hardly your very lips Are separate from my own. To suit myself to your breast, To suit myself to your will, Is the first thought at dawn, The last at evening still. To lay aside myself And be yourself instead, Daily I give my life, And rise with Song from the dead. Yet virgin as the morning, Unconquerable and free, And strange as at the first meeting, Ever you come to me. O the lure of you and the secret, Fairer a thousandfold, Like the stars is ever new, Like the stars is ever old! 58 II UNDER the flowing robe of our folded love In the bright rhythm of riotous ecstasy, Rapt, from ourselves to the stars we reach upward, made one With the world-rhythm of all things striving to be; Trampling down death with fierce rapture, we triumph for one Magnificent moment of rapt immortality. Ill WHERE the feet beloved tread The urgent flowers throng, Light breaks, sound issues, breathless Beats the heart of Song. A vibrance fills all Beauty With motion and excess, The trodden flowers bless her, The wounded flowers bless. The old and the sacred challenge Summons and compels; Up through the breast of being The immortal wonder wells. 59 Song, that was laid at rest, Again must learn to live, Love, that has given all, Again must die to give. IV THOUGH you dwelt In the farthest West, The sun should lead me To your breast. When his light Was ebbed and gone The evening-star Should lead me on. And if that Left heaven above I would journey Led by love. I would seek you Till my heart, Wearied out, Fell apart. 60 At your door I'd lay me down , Not to wake you. O my own ! Nor sleep all night, Nor sleep all night, To hear your breathing Soft and light. O WOULD in the moment of love I might bid the stars stand still, And the wheel of the world repose, Fixed and immovable! On the starry summits of beauty Locked in a long embrace, With hair blown backward, together, Breathless, and face to face ! Ere the vision be shattered, and headlong From our dream in the heights we be hurled, From the cry of our spirits in choir, Back into the pit of the world. 61 VI OF all God's living poems Scattered from east to west, Sweet, you are the dearest That ever fell from His breast. VII WHITE morning awakes. Dawn breaks her bars. God's breath through the stars Flickers and shakes. Again to the sky Leaps the day with delight, Again turns the night To his bosom to die. With fierce passion they move, With the rapture of pain, Rearisen again From the fountains of love. In the old, weary way The old beauty is done , Like a lover, the sun Leaps to the day. 62 O and I with the rest, I, tireless, too I, unto you, I, to your breast! VIII WITH the longing of a lover To possess the once possessed, The deep need for the familiar, For the most beloved breast, For the heart the heart has grown to, The dear lips, well-worn, well-known To yourself, as to a refuge, Song turns ever from his own. As a boy's heart first surrounded, When shame first is put to rout, With the sweet, relentless hunger Of girl-arms first laid about; To yourself, still new, still wondrous, The dear, opposite, luring love, As at first Song still surrenders All the ecstasy thereof. 63 IX DAILY from breasts o'erthrown To Beauty's immortal knees The sacrifice of love Rises to appease. FOR the sheer joy Of gratitude I shed my songs Like living blood. I stab my heart With the thought of you, To kiss the blade The song pours through; To touch and thrill And fill you, sweet, With living love From head to feet ! XI WITH the sullen rhythm of rapture, As of thousand viols in throng Slow thrilling with resonant rapture, My bosom draws you along, 64 Slow lapsing with resonant rapture ; And buoyant with glad excess Lifts up the long level and follows Your own with exuberant stress. O love, as a storm from heaven With laughter of lightning that leaps, As a cloud through the darkness of heaven, As a cloud through the billowing deeps, With delight, as of thousand viols Drawn across by deep bow-strings in throng, In a holy whirlwind of rapture I whirl you and bear you along! Till the light break through it of love, Break and from sea to sea Spans, in a shining shower, The rainbow of ecstasy. XII NEVER your beauty Can satisfy me, 'Tis but as a rose Tossed into the sea. 65 Though I gazed to the doom, Till mine eyes had grown old, In the morning again I had eyes to behold. Though I died in your arms At dawn of delight, At your chamber again Should find me the night. O, as clouds to the earth In a shower of rain, I return, I return To perish again ! XIII WHEN you spread your arms to take me, When your breath comes hard and fast, Song and love of Song forsake me At the source of Song at last. Hushed and folded at your bosom Starry longing fades away, In yourself all memories of you Melt, as morning into day; 66 Till I rise, refreshed and quickened, To resume the singing race, From the oblivion of your bosom, From the death of your embrace. XIV O INSATIABLE and sweet, Loved more than I can say! Take my whole of love And cast it all away. Ask more of me and more, More than I can give Waste it at your lips It is not fit to live. Waste it in a breath, All that I have spent; Ask more of me and more, And still be discontent. Ask more of me and more, Till Love have nothing more. O insatiable and sweet, Ask more of me and more ! 67 XV NEVER can I escape you Though I roam the whole world through , If I leave you, journeying westward, From the east I come to you. XVI WITH weariness abandoned And the ecstasy of pain Love returns to love you Again and yet again. Insatiate as the sunrise, Sleepless, flushed, and bright, Returning and returning To perish of the light; Seraphically weary, As toward the twilight, day, Love to what is lovely Gives himself away. XVII O MY own, my delight, I am here at your call, Soul, body and all, In the day, in the night! 68 Not grudgingly, never Yours by decree, By rights that must be, But wholly and ever. The poets above Sing sadly of Beauty, Of Love and of Duty I give you my love. O, as waves of the sea The waves flowing after, I draw you with laughter, I follow and flee ! O, as storms in a crowd To the meadows laid bare, I rush to you there, I fade as a cloud ! Lest loving should grieve you, As joy grieves the heart, I touch you, and part, I love you, and leave you. Yet still, like a star That the daylight obscures, I return, I am yours, I return from afar. 69 XVIII To his grave within your bosom Song returns with weary wings, To the source whence first his ardors Broke with love that soars and sings, To his sunset in your bosom, Vast, seraphical, and bright, Where, as at heaven's widening wonder Dies the wild and wayward light; To his grave where in your bosom, As the twilight in the west, He must perish, he must perish , To the silence of your breast. XIX DAILY would I give All the love I have To break against your beauty Like a wasted wave. V BIRD-SONGS AND ROSES 'Would I might hide me in my song To kiss the lips from which it flows " ONCE on a starry night, Once on a starry night, Dear, I was full of you As the dawn of the young, sweet light. The rare, wild pulse of your presence Flooded me through and through; Fresh from your arms I rose, Quickened and filled with you ! Since when my heart and my body, My song and my spirit, too, Are quickened and filled with you, Quickened and filled with you! II THE air is full of dawn and Spring, Outside the room I see A swallow, like a shaft of light, Shift sideways suddenly. 74 There is no room for death at all In earth or heaven above; He never yet believed in death Who ever learned to love. Build me a tomb when I am dead, But leave a window free That I may watch the swallow's flight, And Spring come back to me. Build me a tomb of steel and stone, But leave one window free, That I may feel the Spring come back And You come back to me ! Ill WHO mixes with radiant Beauty Himself to beauty grows, Fresh with the roseleaf slips The raindrop from the rose. The cloud, that to the sunrise Stoops as to a bride, Bright from her breast returns, Quickened and glorified. 75 Touching at its source And sunrise again, the soul Back from the breast of love Quickened returns, and whole. So lovelier from your lips Each day I rise again, And stain against your breast 76 When the wild heart grows wayward Straightway within it stirs, In the blood's beat to subdue it And lead it back to hers, The pulse of the beloved That thrills it through and through. O heart-beat of my heart, How may I fly from you! 77 VI BEAUTY is contagious, It springs from age to age, From poet unto poet, Page to shining page. A little from your lips And from your eyes, my dove, Mine catch fire with Forever, Song and Love. VII THE twilight is starred, The dawn has arisen , Light breaks from the east And Song from her prison. Faint odors and sounds The west-wind discloses Of flowers and birds, Of laughter and roses. It is time to be gone, Day scatters the gloom But still at my side, But here in the room, 78 Like the angel of Life, Too kind to depart, You hang at my lips ! You hang at my heart! VIII THERE, wherever you come, A Springtime breath and bloom You bring with you of love, That floods the very room. When you are fled away Still trembles through the gloom A breath, a sense of love, That floods the very room. IX MY love has chained and humbled me That was once so heaven-free; To Beauty and the lure thereof She chained me with the chain of love. She came to me with silent feet, My heart trembled, the blood beat , Up through my life the longing welled That her loveliness compelled. 79 Life, and love, and song, and all She steals from me who am her thrall, Till my very self has grown, Through long love, into her own; Till at her breast in starry pain Surrendering, radiantly self-slain, I die to be re-born again ! To the lordship of her being And the dear heart above The loveliness beloved Bows down the heart of love. How sweet the yoke of beauty And the soft arms that chain Love's flight, from the beloved How sweet the touch of pain ! She bids all hearts be humbled, That wait for love's reward, To the laughable, lovely beauty- O love, it is not hard ! 80 XI MORE beautiful unto myself Myself through the love of you grows If the sweetness be hers, or the rose's, Hardly the west-wind knows. XII As a wind from over the flowers, Sweet from the flowers grown, Yourself I bear unto all men And think that it is my own. XIII ALTHOUGH your arms around me At morning fade away, Around me in my spirit I feel them all the day. Not all at once you leave me, But, gradually with pain Withdrawing, leave behind you A print in nerve and vein: 81 Possessive, sweet, and poignant, A May-time pang and scent, The perfume of your presence Through all my pulses sent. Within my blood a memory And sense of you, like Spring, Lingers fading, fading , And in the songs I sing. XIV 'Tis not my foes That have brought me low, Nor conquered me The arm of a foe. Two eyebrows arched, My head in the drouth Of the dust have rolled , And a laughing mouth. XV O LIPS that mine have wearied So many and many a time , O heart that mine has beat to Through all the ways of rhyme! 82 Almost into yourself My very self has grown Hardly your lips, my sweet, Are separate from my own! But again and again to have you, To be mingled more and more With the loveliness I love so, Insatiate as before With the inmost pulse of your presence To be flooded through and through, O irrevocably to be mixed With the very self of you ! My life turns back forever, How many and many a time, With ecstasy abandoned And weariness sublime! XVI MY Own is proud and cruel All other hearts above, She has chained me to her chariot With the chain of love. 83 imperious and lovely ! laughable, my Own! 1 acknowledge you and greet you, 1 bow before your throne. XVII I AM filled, I am filled, I am filled full of you, As the meadows with light, As the morning with dew ! Mine alone, of all born, Is elected the breast To be bearer of you To the East and the West. For joy all the day, For joy all the night, My love cries aloud. I laugh for delight! The beautiful burden At heart, I go forth, Drunken with song, To the South and the North. 84 O all men and women And angels, draw near Look in my heart! Look what is here ! XVIII ALL my love for my sweet I bared one day to her . Carelessly she took it And like a conqueror. She bowed the neck of my soul To fit it to her yoke, She bridled the lips of Song ; Fear within me awoke. But Love cried, "Swiftly, swiftly Bear her along the road, Beautiful is the goal And Beauty is the goad." XIX YOUR beauty fades into my circling strength, As the pale starlight into the wide day. Ah love, but when the noon of joy is passed, Fulfilled of you, filled full of you at last, Backward into your beauty ebbs my strength, As into the worn twilight the wild day ! 85 XX ONE molten star, Afar withdrawn, Winks liquid lids In the web of dawn. The web of the dew O'er the world lies spun. The choir of the birds Salutes the sun. Bird-songs and roses' Faint perfume Flood through the window Of the dim room. But you lie laughing For sweet excess In the wild hour Of loveliness, In the dear rage Of reckless love. The worn star pales In heaven above. The morning widens On the clear rim , Ah the last star Grows pale and dim! 86 O fuller and fuller Through the vast And hollow vault, At last, at last, Floods the quick flame Of influent fire! With all the tongues Of her core in choir, Bathed round in light And trembling dew, With the life beloved Thrilled through and through, The heart of the world For love that aches, Filled full, too full, Leaps up and breaks. At the bright breast Of burning day Breaks, and gives Herself away! Breaks, and at The mere touch thereof Overflows in a rapture Of welling love! 87 One with a cry, In the morning's white Serene expanse Of vast delight, One with a moan, In the holy and thrilled Dread hush at last Of all fulfilled, Through laughter and tears Re-mingling, we Crown the world-chord With ecstasy. XXI EVER from your embrace Refreshed I arise and strong, With a new song from your lips, And from your heart with a song. XXII THROUGH all my body, nerve and vein, Sweet traces linger of your own; As Winter, that at Spring's heart has lain, Almost into the Spring has grown. I am drenched with you and saturate, As the morning with the young, bright dew- As the sea-wind with the fresh, far sea I am drunken and saturate with you. Through all my spirit, dream and deed, Sweet traces linger of your own Through love of you, through love of you, Almost yourself, sweet, am I grown ! XXIII As a star that from light's prison Freed, returns to prisoning light; From your breast, dear, to your breast, dear, Measures all my freedom's flight. XXIV LIFE went forth in the strength Of the morning from his lair The first young Joy he found, He seized it by the hair. So ruthlessly your heart Against my own I pressed, And whirled against my own The radiance of your breast. 89 But clinging about my neck Your arms to a taming yoke Grew, that stilled my heart; Love within me awoke. Then at first was I sad , But the old, the rebellious strength Tore my lips apart, Turned to a song at length ! XXV SONG at the source of Song Sweet it is to confess, And loveliness to humble At the feet of Loveliness. VI THE MYSTERY AND THE MYTH "The touch, the clasp, the old, sweet earthly fashion Of love is but a lovely allegory " 93 Now in the east The old mystery of love is done again, Along the east Burns the huge rapture of her ecstatic pain: Sweet foes forever Twilight, with whom Day's fiery outlines blend Till she be lost And Light at war with Darkness till the end. In the old way Is done again the most reverent sacrifice, Twilight and Day Mingle, the breast that lives and the breast that dies. The breast that lures, And the most patient and sacrificial breast; The breast that endures And the breast that fulfills quicken with one unrest. Dear foes forever And lovers, in the old war of love and life, Opposites ever And loving opponents in the eternal strife! 94 Along the east Their bright limbs burn through the clouds that they divide, Along the east Their luminous love, like a bridegroom and a bride. Radiant they mix 4 The splendor of the bright love that longs to live, The patient shadow Of the dark love that gives, and dies to give. A sudden hush, As of bowed heads and reverence forevermore Morning arises. Radiant o'er the wide world his waters pour ! Morning arises, Hailed with a myriad songs to the living sun, Beauty completed, And the old sacrifice and mystery done. II THE WIND AND THE SEA SWEET, you tremble, Sweet, you move Like a woman In the anger of love. 95 For love of you, For love of you, My body trembles Through and through. Dear, my heart Beats laughingly To feel your beauty Under me. My body's joy, The heart you press Sobs, beneath Your loveliness. Let me have you All my own, Bared to me And overthrown! Let us mingle, You and I, Each of each Drink, and die ! Let me fill you With my strength! Pour my love Through all your length! 96 the glad love That bids me live! 1 lift my lips. Give give ! Ill NIGHT looked forth from the tower of morning Over the flowery lands, She took the young and the sickle moon For a scimitar in her hands, And drove the stars along the sky Like little wanton foes She saw not 'twas her lover the sun Who slew them as he rose. He rushed to meet her, she let fall Her flowers and hid her face; He drowned her in his arms all day In the light of his embrace. And died for love of her. At dusk She left him where he lay, And rose with silent laughter up Along the starry way. 97 IV O THE challenge that burns In a laughing girl's eyes ! The boy's heart that turns, The heart that replies ! The joy that fulfills, And the love that endures , The heart that follows, The heart that lures ! In the old, fierce war Of woman and man, Their secret battle Since life began, Dear foes forever And opposites still; Fulfillers forever Of one deep will ! V WITH the foam-white arms of virgins In choral flocks afar The thronging billows rustle And race across the bar. 98 They follow the god with longing Along the sunlit way, With silver footsteps thronging, And laughter up the bay, With little, delicate bodies Poised dancing; the sun's flame Pierces them all the water Quivers for love and shame. VI You are the bright, curved shore. And I the waves that destroy On her beauty their strength With joy, with joy. The meadow you, I, the storm That dies to shed from above On her flowers his life, With love, with love. I am the bird that follows, And you the hills of the south. The loving mouth, And the laughing mouth. 99 O love, I, the arrow that speeds Hungrily to its mark, And you, the breast That sinks in the dark! The hurrying heart that follows, The hushed, sweet heart that flies, The heart that exults, The heart that sighs ! Ever, forever, the spirit That seeks, and the spirit that lures, The love that fulfills, The love that endures! VII TOWARD the girl the boy's face turning Flashes with keen love's delight, For her beauty ever draws him Nearer with ecstatic might. And she reads the wordless challenge, And most swiftly she replies, Darting scorn in ardent challenge From the heaven of her eyes. 100 Each in each through veils of terror Recognizes, dimly known Through dim beauty, the dear beauty That makes war upon his own. Yet she has the woman's pity For her lover, she arrays For his joy her body's beauty Secretly in many ways. And to bathe amid the aura Of her being, draw more near To her maidhood (is his longing), Dewy-fresh and morning-clear; To be spilt across her beauty All his ardor, to destroy On her love the clear and crystal Radiance of his running joy. Till they rush and flow together, Interpenetrate and blend, Weaving into one another With white rapture at the end. Till the soft yoke of her beauty Tame, and all subdue the stress Of his wild and veering ardor, Humbled in her loveliness ! 101 VIII THE sea-wind seizes the sea-wave And breaks her beauty in two ; She sobs, she sinks, she flutters, She trembles all through and through, "Sweet, I die, I die, Of you, at least of you !" IX THE lover's radiant longing in the calm Reality of the self beloved dies, The mother in her children, the brave Spring Of the insatiate Summer's young, sweet eyes. The soft, unselfish darknesses but roll Around the stars to make them be more bright. Death suffers to be unlovely that more clear Shine out the lovely face of Life's delight. Honor the young and the rejoicing Dawn For whose dear sake the Twilight dies away, Nor quite forget the sacrificial part The tender and self-renouncing shadows play. 102 X RECKLESS and free, In his arms with delight, Like a bride bare and bright, The Wind seizes the Sea. The Wind seizes the Sea That his longing denies And opposes, and sighs, And strains to be free. They wrestle and close In the long, foaming fields, Till her loveliness yields And lies down in repose. She lies down like a bride To accept of his will, And the waters are still, The wave-ways subside. He bows her waves over, Her strength overthrown Lies bared to his own, As lover to lover. O with rhythmical stress She sobs softly under The weight of that wonder, That wild loveliness! 103 She flutters and moves, O to feel, overthrown, Triumph over her own The life that she loves! Her body that sighs Leans upward to crave O wave on sweet wave Foams upward, and dies ! At the touch of his strength ; Till all of her love To the lover above Lies subject at length. Ere his life draw away, And bride-like she lies, Panting soft with closed eyes, In disheveled array, With quick heaving breast Where his beauty was borne, Seraphic and worn, And weary, and blessed. XI ON the breast of the Morning The Twilight again Love-drunken leans, Ere she be slain. 104 The heart of the Morning Is kind, but his eyes Are sleepless with love Drinking she dies. On the beautiful bosom, Bright with disdain, Breaks the dear heart Of the Twilight in twain. XII MY longing, like the rain-wind. Whose sorrow bends above The young and folded flower, Came swinging to my love. I told her all my secret, I told her all my pain. She opened all her beauty To the sad and sighing rain. She opened all her beauty, Like a young, virgin rose, Tenderly, whose petals First toward the rain unclose. 105 Her eyes were full of pity For my sorrow's sake, She lifted up her lips. Her beauty whispered, "Take " And all her joy she gave me, And bounteously she gave The young joy of her beauty With wondering lips and brave. The sad and the silent secret Of her being she laid bare O eagerly I hurried, I rushed to meet it there ! And all her beauty's flower Fell wasted leaf by leaf, The young and the virgin wonder And left me to my grief. XIII DAY TO SUNRISE 'You must perish as I kindle, You must darken that mine eyes May be brightened as yours dwindle, You must wane that I may rise. 106 "You must die to feed my living, From your death my beauty lives/' Life said to the joy of living, Love that takes to love that gives, The Girl-morning to the Sunrise, The beloved to her own, "You and you alone must perish At my heart and mine alone. "All your ardor to my longing You must render up, and waste On my beauty all your being O beloved, let us haste!" SUNRISE TO DAY Cried the Sunrise to the Morning, "Let me render up and spend On your beauty all my ardor, Love and longing to the end. "O most radiantly lovely, Life for love is light to give, Better in the self beloved Than ourselves it is to live ! 107 "O dear self to follow after, All the life within me throngs From my breast to the beloved's, To the breast where life belongs! "To your bosom I confide it, All the longing, the delight That must die to love you wholly." Eastward all the day grew bright. VII LIBERATION "Thy love sets free my spirit To the fields of Love afar, As the dawn sets free the morning, The dusk, the evening-star/' Ill As the morning-star ecstatic, Lost, into the morning moves ; So my spirit fades forever Into the dear self she loves. As wild rivers pour and perish, Fall and flow into the sea; So my self runs on with longing Toward the self I long to be. There at last I know my spirit Radiantly self-slain, self -lost, One with the great self of Beauty, Part of all I love the most. II WHEN in your arms I hear it, The laboring of your heart, All little thoughts desert me, All little dreams depart. 112 On the dear, baffled bosom Love leans with bated breath, To hear the life beloved Pouring on toward death. All that all life would utter Out of the lonely Vast, Fugitive, fierce, and holy, Speaks to me there at last. Ill O BUT to have you entire, To rush, to run to your face, All thoughts of myself to extinguish Forever in your embrace! To abandon myself completely ! At last of myself to be free! Drenched with you, filled with you, full of you; Till drunken and giddily, Dreaming into your beauty, Through vein and spirit I feel Thrill upward, completely possessive, Your spirit steadily steal! 113 IV WHEN the lightning of desire From our limbs has taken flight Faint they tremble, as their longing Ebbs and mingles in the night. As the radiant storms of Beauty Ever far and farther roll, Worn they leave them, the ebbed wonder Worn and weary leaves the soul; Yet seraphic and exalted, As drenched fields the evening-star Shines upon when heaven's lyre Moans with memories afar. LET me open to the beauty Of your being all my breast, Life and longing, soul and body, Arms, lips, eyes, and all the rest ! Drink deep draughts in all around me Of your beauty, drink and drain Deep draughts of yourself around me, Love and loveliness and pain! 114 Give myself to you completely, Wholly and beyond recall < Joy and sorrow, soul and body, Life, and love, and song, and all ! VI WHEN our two hearts Rhyme in the dawn, Beyond all Life I am withdrawn. Beyond all Evil And all Good With you, in a White solitude. Urging beyond them Breath on breath, Faint follow the feet Of Life and Death. VII FAINT and weary, as from Lethe, Drowned my memories and my pain, From the oblivion of your bosom, From your arms I rise again. 115 Strange and cool breathes on my forehead The first twilight's starry breath; Beauty lies fulfilled and perfect, And fulfilled are life and death. From the opiate arms of darkness, From the beautiful embrace, Lovely, faint, and satiated, Morning lifts a dreamless face. VIII As rivers rush in tumult And crumble in the sea, I am lost, I am slain in you, I am drowned eternally. Yet back in a cloud of joy, In a shower of living rain, To his heights among the hills You pour love back again. O to the being beloved, To perish and be reborn, The strange and luring presence Refreshing as the morn, 116 Love runs on forever As rivers to the sea; From myself you set me free ! From myself you set me free! IX NIGHT and day my youth is longing For your loveliness That must tame the fiery ardors Of his wild excess; For your beauty to subdue his Radiant rage, that dies, Drunken down the grave and solemn Thirsting of your eyes. Ah, all pain and longing ended, Wearied out, to rest Once again at the oblivious Lethe of your breast. See, my youth is all in flower (The dread shape draws near) That no love but yours may gather- And you are not here. 117 Ah the kindness, once to feel them The dear lips, that crave Through our pain, of the great bounty, Well, and wild to save. O once more to meet together, Ere the Fates destroy, For the rhythmical abandon, The barbaric joy! IF to me you prove faithless, And to this heart that sings, I will stoop and seek your image In the universe of things. Think you within you only You have your dwelling place ! From field and hill and flower Looks out at me your face ; From flowers and from music, And from my living song There will I love you still, There will I love you long. 118 XI WHEN have I lost myself wholly! When at last am I free From the barriers of division That separate you and me ! When radiant, fierce, and holy, With heartbeats running in song, To the core of the burning beauty From the ends of the world we throng. In the hush, in the holiness of love, In the moment when the mystery is done, From the agony of division We rise to the j oy of one ! XII MY harbor is gained and the goal of my Song at last, The toil and the tumult cease; Song steers with sea-dripping wings into silence at last And the haven of peace. VIII REVELATION AND REST 'To bring you the secret of beauty The beloved comes from afar " 121 DAY scatters, but the night brings home, She gathers in the west The everlasting stars, and me To the beloved breast. II DEAR, you are peace , All my wild longings and my sorrows vain Faint at your heart, All of desire's dim and starry train; Self-sacrificed at last, Love at your breast sinks radiantly self-slain. You are the beauty Into which longing slowly climbs toward peace Through starry pain, the beauty Wherein all longing finds supreme release, The still and steady beauty Within whose calm all love and longing cease. 122 The grave of pain And all desire's never-wearying length, The shore where love Breaks like a wasted wave his radiant strength, The grave of Song And of all singing and all life at length ! My thoughts of you Rise with the stars at dusk of every day, Till, like the dawn, Coming you drown all thoughts of you away; Lost in the light of love At last, all starry longings fade away. Ill AT the breast beloved All things in the end Speak to us a language We can comprehend. At last the pain and terror Of life and longing cease, The evil and the error Dwindle into peace. 123 All the joy of living, The mystery of breath, Stoop to us like angels And the face of Death. IV WHEN flushed and disheveled in your arms I lie In the hush of death, as once in the hush of love, No pity my lips would crave of yours as they die Give me the old, sweet, wanton touch of their love! ALL your life's adventure Joy and hate and love, Are but moving shadows, Hints of the Above. But as signs to guide you Onward toward the goal, All the outer actions Whirled before the soul. All that you have suffered, All that you have gained, Are as symbols sent you From the Unattained. 124 Friend, and foe, and lover Lying at your heart, Speak to you the message, Greet you, and depart. Still the Never-changing, Still the most Supreme Sends you them as prophets, Voices in a dream. VI I HAVE found peace at last, Not in the desert wide, Nor on the hills of dream With Ecstasy to bride. But peace within your arms, When all is said and done, When Beauty's hands are folded And the race of Joy is run. VII FROM the most beloved All things take their worth, Sun and moon, and flowers In the fields of earth, 125 The morning and the evening, And the starry way; That they both may have her Night gives place to day. She is all the freshness That makes the morning young, She, herself, the poem is That back to her is sung, She, herself, the bounty That dies for her and lives: She is the beloved, She, the love that gives ! VIII As a fallen angel, banished From some paradise, might yearn For return, ah, most beloved, To yourself I seek return ! To the woman's heart forever, Where we all at first had rest, Love leads back the soul forever Through the most beloved breast. UN IX LIKS a forest is your being, Virginal, and vast within, Through the secrets of her shadow Difficult it is to win. To the inmost core of silence, Beautiful and undented. Inarticulate with mystery, Most elusire, shy, and wild. To the stranger on her borders The deep hush by night and day Is a terror to repel him; But who once has found the way, Wholly of all else forgetful In the arches of her knre, Only hears the great winds moaning Erer through the houghs above. As natural as breathing It is to love you, sweet, Familiar as tike morning, Or tike flowers at our feet 127 a* the air, forever Drawn in and oat with pain, 1 let you go forever To take you back again! XI WHEK for the last time at jour breast My heart has lain, When the days of the great delight are orer, The days of pain, When the old rapture, like the Spring, For the last time Has left as, the wild will and wanton joy Of hearts that rhyme; Ah though no more, as in nights before With the stars above, Our hearts may meet with the old beat Of life and love, I will torn to yon, as the long light that From the sunset with a sigh! O most beloved, as the long light that tarns Homeward, before he die! 128 XII THE lips you lean to in loving, And the heart you bend above, Are but as symbols sent you Of the eternal Love. XIII O WHEN at last in the silence, Breathless, and face to face, When our two pulses kindle Along the fiery race Fear, ignorance, and sorrow Fall like a veil away; Again life's infinite kindness Dawns on me like the day ! Glorious, actual, holy, Of all mean fears bereaved, And simple as the sunlight But hard to be believed ! XIV STILL the most beloved Comes from the Unknown With a higher message Than herself alone. 129 From Beyond they sent her To your heart, to tell Something of the secret, She, a parable. In the midnight silence Of the summer night When the world is sleeping And the stars are bright, For a little hour At your heart alone She repeats the message Greets you, and is gone. XV EVER again we turn, Like banished men and banned, Back to the land of love Back to the mother land. XVI To live, to breathe, to love, Is a miracle strange and good, Familiar as the sunlight, But not to be understood. 130 I cannot understand it, Though I touch your hand, Though at your heart I lie I cannot understand. XVII IN the moment of death, as in a dream, Bow down your heart upon me from above, Your lips as you used to do ; That the moment of death may seem To come, even as once the moment of love, From you, dear, at least from you ! XVIII To bring you the secret of beauty The beloved comes from afar, Her love falls into your heart Like the light of the evening-star. More than herself she brings you, A symbol, a breath from beyond, A message heard of the secret That broods in the most Profound. 131 O in the night, in the night, Lying without a word Heart against silent heart, How many a time is it heard ! XIX MANIFOLD is my love Beyond all other souls, The immortal flame she wakes, The weariness controls; Like Music she arouses, Like Silence she consoles. XX IN the self beloved Song and speech at last Close with tired longing, All their sorrows passed. Weariness seraphic Of supreme release Folds them into silence And eternal peace. 132 Gained the utmost harbor And the farthest goal, Life and death and duty Dawn upon the soul, As on seas at sunset, Stormed from shore to shore, The effortless, high Beauties Rise forevermore. IX TALISMANS: SECRETS AND DELIVERANCES "/ am a kind of parrot what the Eternal says, I, stammering, say again." 135 LIFE burns us up like fire And Song goes up in flame. The body returns in ashes To the ashes whence it came. Out of things it rises, And laughs, and loves, and sings; Backward it subsides Into the char of things. Yet soars a voice above it Love is holy and strong The best of us forever Escapes in Love and Song! II DAY with stormy love assails the heart of the Night, So the loving heart storms the beloved heart; But at dusk he surrenders patiently all his pain, So to the loved one at last love gives his longing away. 136 III WHY do I lift my voice Drunken as though with wine? Because I have discovered That everything is divine. What we seek, we find Seem it or near, or far: Because I have discovered That what we seek, we are. Joy and Beauty and Love Never the heart may fly, Whether it would, or no, Whether it live, or die. Though Beauty I follow all day, Vainly, in fugitive gleams ; Relaxed at night and at rest, I sink to Beauty in dreams. Though seeking Love we lose it And inwardly wound the breast ; Defeated at last and dumb On the bosom of Love we rest. The high, the effortless Beauties Are over us and beneath, We rise to them through life, Or sink to them through death. 137 IV Now the immortal peacock Above our dreaming heads The star-eyed, veering train Of sumptuous darkness spreads. Now a foamed wake in heaven The sun's keel leaves behind Of stars, and phosphorous splendors, And memories in the mind. WHAT birth with slow labor Makes way in the breast Of the ominous sunset, The wrath of the west! On the borders of twilight, The cloud-wrack afar, Black hangs the storm; Breathless, a star Released slips aloft: O a soul through the veil Newly passed, a new soul Hail! Hail! 138 VI THE insolent lips of the East, Luxuriant and proud, Leaned over the shroud of Song Song arose from his shroud, Lured by the lithe and laughing Sweet mouth that o'er him bent, The insolent and seductive Lips of the Orient. VII SUNRISE cries out to Day and Morning murmurs to Noon, "O to be wearied out at the beloved lips !" "Blessed from her is the pain, and the weariness from her Dearer than all glad things," Twilight whispers to Night. VIII THE beloved about herself Creates new loveliness, Her being overflows Into beauty for sheer excess. 139 As a flower her delicate perfume, Her loveliness sets free All loveliness around her Through the gates of ecstasy. Song and life and courage, And all glad things that are, Kindle about her beauty, As the light about a star. IX ALL your love is a prophet Of what you yet shall be, A hint to your spirit, a summons Out of Eternity. "WHERE is the heart of hell? What is heaven, and where?' He who loves in hell Already heaven is there. "Yet God I cannot love ! Weak are the eyes and dim- Love whatever you will And you are loving Him. 140 XI As a pool repeats in shadow The bright shapes upon the shore For sheer love, as rhyme forever The sweet rhyme that went before; As a mother in her children Memories of her lover's face Echoes, for sheer love, the beauty, Mingled, of their first embrace; Look, and in my song reflected See yourself forevermore, In my soul's first child the traces Of the life your beauty bore ! XII WHEREVER the spirit moves, Or sorrowful, or strong, Through the cycles of life and death, The myriad years along, A foaming wake she leaves Behind her of bright Song. 141 XIII LONGING is beauty unattained, Beauty that strains and strives to be, Slowly she climbs through starry pain To Beauty's calm serenity. The lover through the beloved self, The flower that bursts toward the light above, Toward Beauty through dim sorrow grope, Through loving, and the ways of love. Carven in stone, or veiled in sound, The one deep longing of the soul, Or flowering slowly into speech, Moves ever upward toward one goal. There where all love is laid at rest, There where all songs and ardors cease, Longing is lost in the beloved, And beauty's thirst in Beauty's peace. XIV LIFE banishes me from Beauty A little here beneath, A little, but not long: I return through Love, 142 I return through Death, Backward with each breath I return through Song. XV Two splendors are there the meanest soul May never escape, or love, or loth Love that is holy and Death that is holy: Thank God on your knees for both. The beauties supreme are inevitable; Not Death may you fly on the farthest star, Nor Love, though you wander the universe, World by dim world, afar. XVI DARKNESS that dies that Day may live, and Daylight that slowly, Tenderly, dies away at the dear touch of Dusk, Lovers insatiable, each at the breast of the other Ever again is slain, ever again reborn. 143 XVII As far as heaven from earth, As far as the east from the west, So far is the breast that loves From the beloved breast. For to be loved is well, But blessed it is to love; Earth it is that receives, Heaven showers it from above. XVIII IN the universe about us, Around us on each side, Into Beauty we step, Whichever way we stride. At the extreme of sorrow Brood her ecstasies, And at the heart of rapture The thrilling sorrow lies. Whatever direction you follow, Pursued to the end, at last To the marge you come of the boundless Encircling Beauty and vast. 144 Through love, or wine, or music, Flung wide for a flash the door, By the ecstasy you are blinded That is 'round you evermore. It is in you and about you, Dig downwards, or ascend, Before you at the beginning, And after you at the end. XIX LOVE, like an aura, clings about the beloved, Love, like a cloud, arises from the beloved, And sheds herself back on her source in song, Back on her source in a shower of singing rain. XX DEATH cleanses us from life And bathes the single soul White of her separate self, Drenched in the quickening Whole. Then, generous at last, We lose ourselves for the sake Of lending life to all , In others we awake. 145 And yet as here, so there In the realms beyond the eye, In what we have wholly loved We live, and cannot die. Though yourself be destroyed, As much as you loved so much Your self shall be again: Beauty has need of such. XXI THE world would prison us in : only the heart beloved, Liberal, glad, and well, opens the arms of joy. XXII BEAUTY, so old and familiar, Comes still with a vast surprise; Strange seem ever the roses And you to the sight of mine eyes. XXIII IT is ever Spring among the stars That flower always in soft heaven, Nor winter folds up with the flowers The wide eyes of the starry Seven. 146 Yet even them the quiet hand Of day folds up in heaven above; But death, nor winter, night, nor day, The strange and starry eyes of Love. XXIV LIVE your life to the full, The cup of existence drain Deep to the very dregs, Joy and sorrow and pain ! And shed your spirit freely Through love and song and deeds,- So, bounteous, gladly giving, Deathward the spirit bleeds. XXV WHEN the primitive bounty And kindness enfold it, When the lips of Love touch, And the arms of Love hold it, The soul knows at last What the ages have told it. 147 XXVI MAN'S desire for Beauty, The beautiful body and face, Is the longing of Life to be born Again from some beautiful place. Beauty is vital and holy, By secret and steady laws Unto herself the future Life of the world she draws. The eternal and uncreated Progressive Vigors to-be Cluster about her being To quicken and set them free. And therefore the challenge of Love Is incontrovertible still, Who bears in her rhythmical body The forward and vigorous will. XXVII "THE light is so beautiful let her go naked," said God. But the earth in terror bound her, And, afraid of her naked loveliness, the robe Of colors laid around her. 148 XXVIII LOVE and Beauty encompass you 'Round about forevermore, Life is but their dwelling-place, And death to them is but the door. Nor can you escape them though you would, Yea be your spirit ever so fleet, Though through the darkest door she run, More swiftly after follow the feet. Though from Love you turn away, To the ends of the earth will follow Love, Though from Beauty you hide your eyes, She bends to lift you from above. Just, or unjust, to them you sink At night in dreams upon your bed, Over you with the stars they rise, And reach beneath you where you tread. XXIX THINK you that any Fire Is lost with the ebbing flame ! To the choral, clustering Radiance It ebbs, from whence it came. 149 Part you are of the Beauty No single death may smother, Put out in one place, You leap up in another. XXX A CHILD is a living love-song, The poem, ecstatic and bright, Of the rapture of man and woman, The memory of their delight: The voice of their blended longing, In his loveliness laid at rest, Made one at last in his bosom, And slain in the peace of his breast. XXXI WHENEVER two lovers meet A new star in heaven is lit Heaven is the banner of love, And night the memory of it. The joyous embrace of love Calls a new soul from its sphere; At the music of two hearts beating God leans down to hear. 150 XXXII You must find an angel To enter Paradise: Heaven is only seen Through another's eyes. 'Tis another bosom Holds the key thereof. Through the hearts that love us Alone we enter Love. XXXIII THOUGH the source of life and the secret Be found at last at her lips, Not wholly the star of longing The beloved brows eclipse. Even against her bosom, Even at the heart most dear, There cries a voice in the midnight, "Beyond , it is not here !" O the veil that sunders spirits, The secret not to be known ! Lonely at her breast, Even in the end alone, 151 Breast to breast to the stars, Breast to breast in the dawn, Baffled returns the soul Into herself withdrawn. XXXIV LIQUID is the west, Cold, crossed with cloudy veins, Widened, lucid with light , Where the clear sunset wanes. So, too, the spirit widens When the long day makes end Of love; a myriad stars And memories reascend. XXXV "SWEET, I love you," the Dawn cries to the heart of Dusk. Noon with, "I love you, I love you," kisses Morning away. Wearily Dusk to Darkness whispers, "I love, I love," Till with a cry, "O, I love you!" Twilight flows into Night. 152 XXXVI PRESS through joy and pain, Press with every breath To new forms beyond. Press through life and death ! Onward, ever on, New life, new love to find Perish, and become, And leave the corpse behind ! XXXVII BEAUTY alone of all Is effortless, free from toil, If starry she rise in heaven, Or flowering from the soil. No labor of yours may attain her, Be it so dutiful; Trusting to the Spring, The roses are beautiful. XXXVIII ALL things make way for the soul To clear her flight through the Vast, And fall from her naked joy, Even the body at last. 153 XXXIX PAST wood and waste and valley, Over mountain and wave, Song returns to your breast, His cradle and his grave. Run the completed circuit, The orbit of Beauty run, Fulfilled the perfect circle Through the many back to one, To his sunset in your bosom Backward his voices throng, To the wellhead of all Beauty, The sunrise of all Song. XL EVEN as Day to Sunrise, even as Dusk to Darkness Runs to kiss it with love and jubilation of joy, Sweet, at the touch of your lips, vehemently affirming So my love to your love runs, answering "Yes !" XLI IN the west of the heaven's rim The sunset flowers bright , The reflection of all men's love Makes there a glowing light. 154 O Life and Death are joyous! Life and Death are high ! Let me love and live , Let me love and die: But to new service of you, New love in the worlds afar, Death sets free the soul, As dusk the evening-star. X LOCKS OF THE WORD-BRIDE "No one has unveiled thoughts like Hafiz, since the locks of the Word-bride were first curled." HAFIZ. 157 MY soul released from my body And the panic of things that are, In my song, my very spirit, Mounts heavenward like a star. II BECAUSE in the hour of the morning-star I needs must lie awake, I take the hour of the morning-star To sing in, for her sake. Then, when the brows of the dawn are pale And the mouth of the morning meek, The young day-star hangs sweetly there, Like the mole upon her cheek. In the half-light, 'twixt night and light, These dreams of her I make, Ere all the heaven of all the light Kiss all my love awake. 158 III OF one attire about the Bride, The white, veiled Bride of Song, Sweet rhymes come clustering side by side, Like virgins in a throng. IV SONG but catches in glimpses What fain she would understand A wink of the eyelids of Beauty, A flash of the wave of her hand. V YOUR soul was like a big and heavy cloud, Radiant with lightnings of extreme delight, That died to shed itself on us in song, Falling like healing rain from heaven's height. Your soul was like a big and brimming cloud, Radiant with lightnings, dark with unshed showers, That died to shed itself in healing song, Soft as soft rain, upon love's fading flowers. 159 Out of the cloud of your strength you shed your song With lifted lightnings of extreme delight, Like healing rain upon us, that at dusk Falls soft and silently from heaven's height. VI LOVE is a fallen angel That seeks to atone for his wrong, And storm his original heaven, Your heart , in a shower of song. VII IN my song my love is prisoned As a bird within a cage. Your lips only may unlock him From the prison of the page. If you hear within his singing, With your lips you may unbar The gold gate that shines between you, As the twilight frees her star That the day but reimprisons: He will seek another cage, In your heart, dear, in your breast, dear, Fluttering upward from the page. 160 VIII LIKE a bridal-chamber darkened In the noon-tide blaze of day, My mind, where the white dreams mingle, Shuts the whole world away. IX NOT with my body shall I die, But to new fields withdrawn Of love and singing, lost I move Beyond the fields of dawn, Beyond the borderland of twilight, Beyond the sunset's breath The violet reach from heaven to heaven, In the sweet sea of death. Look >from the evening's lucid forehead, The wide, clear wastes afar, I rise, I shine, I beam upon you, Seraphical, a star ! X IN the cold, white sleep of Beauty Frozen, your thought must stand Would it escape Corruption And the dim Hunger's hand. 161 XI LOOK in my songs and you shall find her, Though from my lips a name so dear Be uttered never, lost forever , Lean with your heart, and listen here. For words too sweet, for speech too holy Lean to my song and listen well; Here as the heart's blood in the heart-beat, Here as the sea's self in the shell, Though from my loving vanished, vanished, Deep in my song it slumbers, deep, Like the one thought, all day close-guarded, Betrayed by passionate lips in sleep. XII My love to me is a parable On earth, of heavenly things And unto her in parables My mouth in the morning sings. XIII As a chemist, by the inward Motion of some thought's endeavor, Frees the outer force that carries All men on with it forever; 162 In your song set free some secret Of the soul, whose liberation Shoots wide rays of love around it, Vibrant through the whole Creation. In a single word dynamic Lurks more strength than all earth's horses Lashed, to bear all men together On to the eternal Sources. XIV To the source of all singing My memories throng, My lips to your lips To fetch a new song. XV IF too freely of Love Free songs I have sung you say- Will you contemn it a fault And turn your face away? Will you contemn it a fault And hold the singing a sin? Not as I would I sang, But as the Angel within. 163 Holy is he, but words Are weak for his loveliness: Then the singer you may reprove, But the singing you cannot repress. But if the Angel himself You darken and despise, He will stab you dead with love And the sweetness of his eyes ! XVI LEAN with your spirit, and listen To my spirit here moving along , The forward step of her rapture In the stride of ecstatical Song! XVII AH beloved, the songs that flourished Flowerlike, when plucked and pressed Close against your breathing bosom, Faint, and perish like the rest. Though your tears of tender pity Fall upon them like the dew, At the source of love Love trembles, Fainting like the flowers, too. 164 XVIII ON the dim border-lands of speech And silence melting each in each Life sinks with shuddering breath O Already about the heart there steals The inarticulacy that seals The hush of love and death. In the rapture of Beauty beyond reach, The immortal silence beyond speech, Song, at the burning core Of the heart of Love where love is dumb, At the source of Song where no songs come, Closes forevermore. XIX ON the last marge of Love's advance In this song I dance a dance ! Fulfilled of the last ecstasy, Love at last has set me free. Love lures me on along the wind, Life and death I leave behind. I press into the core of things Beyond the sunset's folded wings. 165 I whirl my hair in the sunset cloud. I clap my hands ! I shout aloud ! the last rapture baffles speech, It bears me on beyond your reach ! 1 love you, and I greet you here. I whirl! I fade! I disappear! XX O ALL sweet women the whole world over, Listen and lean to the songs I sing Of the woman I love ! Let every lover The whole world over answer and sing ! XXI LET me press into the utmost Marge of mysteries that bound me Make wide spaces clear for breathing In the universe around me. More as knowledge is made way for, Wide the way for light and clearer Love and courage wake forever As the Actual draws nearer. 166 As a horseman in the midnight Phantoms 'tis we fear behind us ; Truth reveals forever beauty , And the Actual shall unbind us. Till I slip the robe of matter, Naked, buoyant, up the ocean Of clear beauty I am lifted, Without magic, without motion; Till I float amid the regions Of the Endless, till I follow Upward with harmonious motion Through the heights and heavens hollow. O the ecstasy, the rapture Baffles speech! I float above you Lost; I whirl, I fade, I flicker, Showering back a last, "I love you !" XXII I SHAKE my hair in the wind of morning For the joy within me that knows no bounds, I echo backward the vibrant beauty Wherewith heaven's hollow lute resounds. 167 I shed my song on the feet of all men, On the feet of all shed out like wine, On the whole and the hurt I shed my bounty, The beauty within me that is not mine. Turn not away from my song, nor scorn me, Who bear the secret that holds the sky And the stars together, but know within me There speaks another more wise than I. Nor spurn me here from your heart, to hate me ! Yet hate me here if you will not so Myself you hate, but the Love within me That loves you, whether you would or no. Here love returns with love to the lover, And beauty unto the heart thereof, And hatred unto the heart of the hater, Whether he would or no, with love ! OTHER POEMS 171 RETURN TO NEW YORK FAR and free o'er the lifting sea, the lapsing wastes and the waves that roam, Hour by hour with sleepless power the keel has fur- rowed the soft, sad foam ; Slowly now, with steadier prow, she steals through the dim gray fog-banks home. Faint and far from across the bar the first lines burn of the cloudy day, From whistle and horn in the twilit morn low mur- murs are wafted across the bay. The fleet, sweet swing of the sea-bird's wing beats down the darkness and dies away. Dawn, and lo, as the drifted snow that melts from the sun on a mountain height, As the veils from a bride that fall and divide, the fog- veils sunder and leave in sight, Like Venice, dim on the water's rim, the city, my mother, bared and bright. 172 In the first hours her stately towers and clustered summits show faint and fair: Mother, mother, to thee and none other the heart cries out in the morning there! Solemnly, slowly, the white mists wholly fade, and the whole, sweet form lies bare. Hail, all hail, with the dawn for veil, the sea for throne, and the stars for crown ! Mother, thy son, his journeying done, triumphantly here at thine heart bows down; Love that sings, on the sea-wind's wings runs on to greet thee his very own. DUSK Now from the sea-deep, cloudless rifts of blue, Like big, reproachful eyes brimming with tears, The liquid stars of heaven peering through Blink drowsily into the gulf of years. Under the shimmering reaches waste and wide The dizzy soul reels dreamingly along, A somber breath blows through the heavy Void Twilight and stars and drunkenness of song. Above the peacock-colored twilight's green, Cloud beyond cloud, the immortal Beauty broods Amid the radiant rapture and serene Of the ethereal, starry solitudes. 173 Child; lift thy voice to Her, and let thine heart Pour its desire before Her shining throne, Where in the holy heaven She sits apart Above the dust and din of worlds unknown. Sing fill thy bosom with the starry wine, Forget thyself in the huge self of Night; So shall Her voice descending into thine Make thee afraid of thine own vast delight. Till thou art drunk with the divine and deathless And swallowed up amid the radiant throng And all the choirs of heaven within thee breathless Shall drown thee in the depths of thine own song ! SONG OUT of my sorrow I have made this song, To comfort whom it will : She whom I love answered my love with hate, But love she could not kill. And now I know, I sing it ten times over; Though to be loved be well, More gladness than looks down with Hate from heaven Looks up with Love from hell ! 174 TOLSTOI As water unto water calls and cries Over the wide wastes and the fields of sea, As the long lapsing floors that tremulously From land-line unto land-line fall and rise, So the dark ocean of thought's eternities Rolls round the soul, that ever longs to see Beyond the circle of flat Immensity, From star to opposite star of the dumb skies. No sound of horn, or gong, or whistle crying On the untrodden spaces sounds afar, Around all men the immeasurate waters roll; Yet there be some who wind and wave defying, Battling the brine, toward the new worlds that are Jut forth like crags, the headlands of the soul. TO THE VIRGIN O THOU fairest of women, thou loveliest among earth's daughters ! Thy hair lies simple and low Over thy sad brows and lowly, Thy mouth is pallid for pride, yea, and thine eyes are holy: Over their shadows move The wings of the spirit of Love, 175 As the spirit of God first brooded over the face of the waters, Solemnly, long ago. O thou fairest of women, thou loveliest among earth's daughters ! PALINGENESIS WHEN the galley of my soul went out on the unknown seas I revisited in a dream all the old things I had known, Moving on the moving waters that moved about me alone With a motion other than about the Orkneys or the Hebrides, With a sound of the silence of the moving seas. And out of the tangle of old loves, old dreams, and old faces, And old pangs, out of the earthly days that had been, Some faint memories stirred me calling from within, And the sound of the rustling sea beating upon the old places, With a softly shifting sound over the deep spaces. And the sound of the moving of the waters was un- broken by any tears, Neither was there any laughter within the Void, 176 But the cold heavens lay above me, starry and wide; And I remembered the passionate eyes and arms of the old years, And the fierce subtlety of their pains and their fears. And I revisited the sunset islands that I had lost at birth And the strange face that had lured me beyond the seas; And when I had seen I set sail with a favoring breeze. I turned. Body and spirit kissed. I shouted with mirth, "I am part of thee, I am part of thee, O earth!" RETURN 'TWAS May; a cock from the warm hill-side crowing Shattered the morning like a crystal glass, A soft, wet wind bowed down the meadow-grass, Bearing faint sounds of toil and distant lowing, When I, beside the river's swollen flowing, With feet for two long weary years alas Through these dear, homely haunts unwont to pass, Over the lonely meadow-lands was going. 177 O mother-land ! When once again I trod Thy fields and felt thy warm winds over me, First strode I forward buoyant as a god, Drunken with thee and passionate love of thee; Then sank I down humiliate to the sod, Remembering all I had been and failed to be. II Much had I wasted many fated hours, Homesick and heavy homeward I returned, About me all the regardless beauty burned Of May-time in the blossoms and the bowers; The mother-land with all her towns and towers Recked not of me, nor greeted me, nor spurned, Not the compassionate heart of Spring-time yearned Downward to me with all her roots and flowers. While silent in a fierce and hopeless mood I hid my warm face in the fallow earth, Regardless Nature all about me stood, Tremendous with her passion and her birth; And from the meadow and the windy wood Came sounds of mating and of singing mirth. 178 TO THE DREAMERS WHO from the noon-tide flame of living flies To music and to poetry, which are Moonlight reflected from the sun of life The beautiful, pale moonlight that makes fair All the sad ugliness and blaze of day ; Let him take heed, lest in the sweet illusion His will grow weak, and the cold loveliness, Sleeping upon his forehead, make him mad. EARLY APRIL WITH memories and odors The wind is warm and mild. The earth is like a mother Where leaps the unborn child. The grackles flock returning Like rain-clouds from the south, And all the world lies yearning Toward summer, mouth to mouth. How soft the hills and hazy Look through the open door. The crocus shines, a virgin, White from the grassy floor. 179 The children whirl around in a ring And laugh and sing, and dance and sing; But the blackbird whistles clear, O clear, "The spring, the spring!" DEPARTURE Now your eyes are closed, your lips Parted as in an indrawn breath, The rapture of love upon your face Has set the triumphant peace of death. So shall you lie at last before Ever again we two embrace; I shall not look on you again, Not even in death upon your face. So shall you lie at last, at last, When I am far away and fled One moment, and forever we part , Already I seem to see you dead. Your bosom is like a moonlit sea, So calm the heaving of your breath; The rapture of love upon your face Has set the triumphant peace of death. 180 THE SAVIORS WHEN from long wanderings in sensual joys, Satiate, weary, we return, and fain, How beam the high beauties of eternal Thought To take us back again ! Music and Song, with sweet disdain, To the faithless and undeserving, Equally to the good and the evil soul Their regardless bounties roll: Nor from the most obscene Beethoven and Shelley hold back their splendors, unswerving From the high goal Which ever they move upwards toward serene, From the pinnacles beyond lust Showering their glad indifference on the dust. O the saviors ! That from the pang of the flesh Set free the soul, from the mesh Of the ugly and the mean, From the littleness of things and low behaviors; How beautiful they are, Irresistible to be loved ! And the vast heart of the Sensual how obscene, Cruel, not to be moved, Wounding the soul with many a galling scar! 181 Back to the sacred rest Of the Beautiful we fly; O why did we leave her! Till lifted upward slowly, The beloved voices call: Pierced with her faithlessness, like a sword to cleave her, With a shower of blinding tears the soul awakes, And virgin after all Sobs the soiled heart, and breaks With passionate sorrow on the terrific breast. Ah, though a thousand times we should betray them, No sin of ours may stay them, Our saviors, from their love; Forward following their feet we move: The blinding light of Beauty Breaks dazzling on the soul but newly risen Out of the sensual prison, Weak, faint, and worn. Love and the infinite sea of Joy and Duty Opens before our eyes, An ocean flooding to the eternities, Inviolable and soundless, Fresh as the Springtime, vigorous as the morn And boundless: Never satiating, never cloying, never Weakening the soul, but still to new endeavor Luring her onward out toward the Unknown forever. 182 MID-OCEAN HEAVEN'S ardent scope over the midnight sea Bowed down with reverent stars from rim to rim, Bowed slowly down with weight of solemn stars From the crowded core to where the last, low wave Washes her flames ! The while my soul within Sits like a star, the central flame of All. "MOTHER" WHEN at your side a little child looks up, Remembering whence it came, Half-baffled and not knowing what it seeks, It whispers the old name. Not yet it guesses the more radiant joy Whither its forces roll, The later rapture and more breathless bliss Of the united soul. Yet homesick, banished from the sacred Source, Some little memory Moves on its spirit some ecstatic hint Of the return to be. The man shall seek it at another breast; Still is the voice the same, Love, Love O with what hearts we turn, Remembering whence we came ! 183 SEA-VOYAGE IN the embrace of Dawn, exuberant, fierce, and free, The vast and virgin Deep sobs out for sheer delight. Noon treads with ponderous strides on the Immensity. Darkness from her throne leans down the lips of night To glut the sullen sadness of the immortal sea. And like a mournful queen, with homage of the throng All unappeased, engirdled with jewels row on row, She sways, sceptered and robed, saluted with dim song, Upon her rhythmic throne sullenly to and fro, Cruel and discontent, disconsolate and strong. Deep between the vistas of evening's twilit Deep The forehead of dim heaven with many stars is crowned, The headland of the morning with cloud on cloud hangs steep ; The stately, somber waters flow silently around, From morning into morning moving, from sleep to sleep. From morning into morning, far as the eye may scan, The hungry, herded waves crowd the unending rim. Under the huge arch of the infinite heaven's span The sea-bird's weary flight beats down the darkness dim. Somberly on the Waste cries out the spirit of Man. 184 Till the harbor entered and the long peace begun, Quiet falls from heaven with the old calm at last. The silence flows away in pulses one by one, And the unmoving mainland looms shadowy and vast, The ceaseless clamor ended and the long journey done. "ALAS, WHERE THOU ART" ALAS, where thou art only there is love, And where thou goest love with longing goes, As moonlight with the moon in heaven above, The perfume with the rose. As murmuring boughs unto the wind that blows, And moonlight to the moon that moves above, As the sweet odor to the blowing rose, So unto thee is love. Come with thine eyes like stars in heaven above, Come with thy face cool as the wind that blows, Come to me with the perfume of sweet love, O love, my moon, my rose! "MUSIC IS HIS ROBE" THE rhythm of the eternal silence, the voices Intangibly interwoven together of all things Lapsing and lifting, the oceanic Beauty Whose silent waters fold forever flowing 185 Our world of tumult, the voice of encircling Silence, Music, for a fleet space, with ardor follows, With friction of resonant strife sonorous forcing From the deep bosom and heart with holy fingers (That grasp into the sullen core of Silence) Her rolling voice; with ardor of vibrant friction, Till almost before the soul it shine and sparkle Glistening hues. But the heart fails, the hand wearies, Backward ebbs the stream to the boundless ocean, And the continuous ecstasy to hold longer Baffles the soul; radiance melts into darkness Unto our eyes, and harmony into silence Unto our ears : but underneath is radiance Interminably proceeding, underneath Music, Ere the first note it was, and forever after Proceeds, when the last note has ceased to speak it , Eternal Music, whereof each audible portion Is but as the crest of a wave that foams for a moment Upon the bosom of the unbounded ocean, Or a remembered dream in a sleep enduring. 'Tis but a visible spot on the robe invisible Of intervolvular harmonies, choral colors Blended and multi-woven, dyed deep in purple, Stained with the night and sumptuous with profusion Of shadow and light , the very cloth and tissue Which was, and is, and shall be 'round about us, Within us and above us and beneath us The breathing robe of Beauty worn by Creation. 186 It is the magnificent garment of the Eternal, Which, somberly and with undulous motion trailing, Billows gigantically behind his footstep Heard as of thunder, with ponderous stride and stately Following as He draws it sadly sweeping Ever around the dumb, waste capes of being, With a vast sough and whisper oceanic, Withdrawing, and withdrawing, and withdrawing. The gorgeous hollow thereof is drenched with darkness, Tragic with twilight, peacock-colored, spattered, Solemn with vast excesses of waste shadow And mournful grandeur of irridescent progressions, Starriest tints, and cloudy courts of color, Intricately coordinate. So veering After the footfall of the high Eternal, Slow pacing with pomp of terrifical rhythm forward, Moves the starred train and canopy with a motion Disconsolate, inconsolable with beauty, Vastly disdainful through the Voids forever. THE ANSWER To all the questions of the sages, "What must we do to live?" that cry, With groan and travail of the ages Creation makes but one reply: "He that is brave alone may live." This answer all the ages give. 187 THE WINDS OF MARCH MARCH is come with the firstling of joyous days All in the strength of his heart, and the snows are sad. The slow, wet winds come warm from the meadow- ways Here, where the Spring is glad. There was an hour for murmurs and for replies, A little hour for sweet love to have his will, A little hour there was for songs and sighs; But here it is so still. Ah that she would but come to me now for a space, Ah that she would but come to me, now I am sad, With the old, careless smile of her pale, pale face, Here, where the Spring is glad ! UNREST I BEAR within me all the pain of earth, And all the melancholy of her plains, And all the longing of her lonely hills, Sad songs and dreams that drift about the world All these I bear, and ever my own mind And the wide waste of uncreated thought Spreads out before me like the universe, Dark and chaotic, strewn with many stars. 188 "O MEMORY, THOSE EYES" O MEMORY, those eyes That shine so gravely sad, Across the irrevocable sea of things Luring me home, Little they may avail Heart-breaking and austere To lure my bark into the sunset waste Of the dead Past! That childhood-music blown Along the horizon's rim, Cloud beyond cloud and wave on wave afar, Little avails. Gone, gone, forever gone ! O in the blind, immense Universe, loud with warring worlds, thy voice O Love, how frail! So poignant and so dear, Lovable above all, Breaking the heart for utter helplessness, Breaking the heart! 189 Yet even here I feel A cry fierce and divine Wrung from the heart of man, a bitter cry Shaking the stars. THE CLOSE OF MASS THE holy candles fade and flare, Where the slow priest with swaying tread Moves, and the organ shudders there And the dumb people bow the head: The body of Christ is dead. Through the long aisles and vaulted gloom Groans the mute common heart of men, Sullen and holy with its doom: On every cross and wall again A Christ is crowned of men. The jewels and the tiara's rim His carven forehead clasp and span, But they have cramped and humbled Him Into a God, who was a man , The first since Time began. His hands hang bleeding on the wall; O the white loin-cloth streaked with red ! O the pale body stripped and tall ! Yet though you wail these words you said, The body of Christ is dead. 190 Weep and moan, weep and moan, Body and soul are both of God. Can you keep the soul when the flesh is gone? Shall not the body through flower and clod Strive sunward through the sod! O common world, O world of men, Have you no answer, are you dumb! Who bore us Christ, and shall again Bear us a Christ when the time is come, Where is your voice, are you dumb ! They crucified Him when He cried And mocked Him standing underneath; Shall they tear the son from the mother's side! Shall they call Him God with profane breath ! Shall they rob a man of death ! They have crowned Him with a fire of light, With all the heavens for His seat, They have made Him awful with might of might: Where are the man's eyes still and sweet? Where are the tired feet? The silence aches, but through the reeds Of the organ, through choir and arches dim, The echoing world grows loud, and pleads With rough, hard hands and thorny diadem, "Where is my Christ, what have you done to Him?" 191 SING first, and after break the heavy chain- What once we sing we afterwards attain, Nor seek without you for the inner light Within you lies the fire and the might; Rebuild it in yourself with fierce endeavor, Build up a refuge in yourself forever ! By the outer terrors baffled, but still glorious, Into herself the soul returns victorious. Baffled and wounded on the road she trod, Up through herself the soul returns to God. BENEDICTION THE wave of morning rolling o'er the world, Dawn, touching the lids of men awake, Purge you, and pierce you daily with the will To live and love and labor for their sake. TO MARY WITH a multitudinous sound of strings And a flame of light, With a clashing of spears and fierce unbearable things He should have come in His might, 192 With the uncrowning of many kings : O watcher beside a manger, bow down thy face, cover thy face in the night ! There was none with Him, there was none like Him, there was none before Him That was so sweet; They shall mock Him, they shall crucify Him, they shall abhor Him, They shall wound His feet. They shall tear Him down, they shall call Him God, they shall adore Him: O mother beside a dead son, bow down thy face, cover thy face in His winding-sheet ! IN THE NIGHT NEW loves and new faces Have taken your place. The years have veiled The look of your face. They lure me and draw me Along the new way, Glad faces and lovelier, Laughing and gay. 193 Till twilight descends And the faces depart: I lie alone With the ghost at my heart. In the night, in the night, On my bosom I bear The dear weary beauty, The sleepless despair; Here on my heart, Here on my breast . O my sorrow, my own, I love you the best! THE KEYS IN the wide hollows of the east the light And darkness are embracing. Sound is dead. No leaf is stirred. Vast quietness is here, The silence of the bridal-chamber, the peace, When all the world is banished and forgot, After long sorrow, after long disdain, In the still mingling of two silent souls. Around us lies the world of love and death, Of bridal joy in the dim-lighted room Weary of love, of white and breathless sleep 194 In other chambers sickened with the air Of flowers and one ever-patient form Triumphing in repose , chambers of birth And mingling cries and groanings . Even now Strange men are weaving dreams of love or woe, (On sea- washed islands and strange lands afar, On distant capes and headlands of the world), Music, or song, or colored memories, Reflected moonlight from the sun of life; And all mankind reechoes but one chord Of love and birth and death: while spirits grave In lonely meditation brood thereon, And answering heads arise in every land, Christs and Mohammeds, Buddhas "names that shine. But at the core of All lurks one old pain, The world-old hungering of woman and man, The inevitable attraction old as Time And stronger than all ages, even now, Amid the horror of huge cities set, They meet and sink, dragging each other down, 'Mid reeling sorrows to the dark abyss. O look at me, we hold the ancient keys Of love and life and death, we are the source Of all of these; since first Creation dawned, Since the first morning of the world, we two Have longed to rush together and crush out The pain of all within each other's arms ! 195 HYMN O GLORIOUS Splendor and seraphic Might ! How shall I praise Thee, or how worship Thee! High God of dreadful holiness, Thy light And breath are on the waters of the sea. The brain of heaven with her nights and days And thunders is for motions of Thy thought, Wheeling along the everlasting ways I cry to Thee, but Thou repliest not. Oft have I covered Thee with bitter hate And felt Thy lash upon me from above; But anger fades before the face of Fate, And holier than to hate it is to love. And I shall love Thee with my very soul, Forever, always, even to the tomb, Yea, even though across my body roll The whirl-wind of the chariot-wheels of Doom. TWILIGHT IN MID-OCEAN I HEARD the sailors sing at twilight on the Deep, Far forward in the dusk. Through the dark, clouded dome Westward, a few, faint stars awoke like eyes from sleep, 196 And a dim phosphorescence of fire lined the foam, Driven along the Waste like flocks of herded sheep. And ground-swell upon ground-swell echoed with tread on tread The sob all 'round the world of the despondent sea. In the half-light I almost awaited, as in dread, The monster of the Vast, old as eternity, Along the implacable rim should lift a snaky head. I thought of all the ships that with white sail un- furled Across the somber Waste had sought the immortal dream, And the adventurous breast prophetic of a world, Islands of promised peace beyond the morning- stream, Visions, before whose breath the barks of old were whirled. The sailors' voices sounded far-off as if in sleep; Along the vast and scornful surface of the sea A multitudinous breath of laughter seemed to creep, And like a long-drawn sigh died fitfully away. An oceanic odor arose upon the Deep. THE TRUTH THOUGH the prophets accept their doom and the mar- tyrs sigh for it, It is better to live for the Truth than it is to die for it. 197 TWO SAD SONGS As the still lamplight of the street At noon of night I crossed, Afar I saw it wandering And like a little ghost A little, lonely will-o'-the-wisp, Mechanically gay, That mimicked some immortal thing Along the somber way. The ghost of some sad love it seemed In a forgotten Spring, That ever the old gestures made As it went wandering. The secret of the old, lost joy Still haunted it and stirred, Repeating yet to every face The old, familiar word; And the kind loveliness, that once Had bowed to grant such grace, Now the immortal bounty begged From every passing face. 198 Nearer it hurried, as in quest Of some obsessive goal Beyond it ever, or as if In search of its own soul, And nearer drew until the eyes Begged up to mine, and moved By me and O it once had been Somebody's best beloved! ii Where is he, the cheated one, That the world has robbed of you, His beloved ere he came, And the love he never knew! The dear secret of your breast Meant for him and him alone, All that tender loveliness Plundered now of everyone! In the desert of the world His sweet spring of life is sealed, And the bosom meant for his, And the breast that might have healed. 199 Glimpses of your girlhood's self, Beautiful and fugitive, Show us what consoling grace Once your beauty had to give. Dear, each gesture, each caress, Ways of loving, every whim Of wild pity, every kiss, Meant for him and only him ! Still about your presence clings, Wistful, sorrowful, and wise, Ever that reproachful ghost And the haunting of his eyes. TRIO DEATH. Now ebbs the twilight from the melting land, The tremulous light runs low Along the rim of the world. Give me your hand. Come, for it must be so. LIFE. Weary I am, Yet let me still abide A little while Here, in the eventide. LOVE [wnseen] O sweet, on my breast Come once again 200 Here, as of old ! Sweet is the pain. O come as of old ! Sweet is the rest DEATH. No more. Eternal darkness covers up the west. Come to me as before, Ere into tumult and distraction's pit Your wandering feet were sent Out of the quiet door; Ere you were sent out of the mother-breast. LOVE, [nearer] I give you my lips, t Here at my side Abide, abide, Here at my lips ! At the breast that bore you, Though born unto pain! Love and forgive ! Love leans above you Give life and live Once, once again ! O I love you, I love you! LIFE. I am fain But mine eyes darken Whither? 201 DEATH. Nay, turn to me who am the rest, Nor heed the siren voice that singing lures, Give heed, nor hearken. Only in me the immortal peace endures. LOVE [still nearer] I am the sunrise, I am the light. Death is the night. Drink of mine eyes! Turn to the light! Though you be weary, Wearier yet You shall grow, nor regret; Here on my bosom Reborn, rearise To new life and new living. Sweet is the pain, Sweet to be slain In the old way again, Living and giving Can you forget ! LIFE. O Love LOVE [very near] Warm are my lips And fresh for your tasting, Cold is your body And shadow-wards hasting. Why will you turn thus 202 From all you desired ! Can you not love me! Sweet, are you tired? Then though to come to me You be too weary, You will I draw to me Though you be weary ! Here at the heart-side Clasp and en-arm you, With my own body Kindle and warm you, O my own banished one Here, till again Clean from my clasping, Vigorous, nourished, Strong, you may drink again Ecstasy's pain ! You shall, you shall ! Though you had perished, Fresh from my lips you should drink it again LIFE [turning fiercely about]. O the pain Lying against your breast! O let me catch you to my side again Here, nor have ever rest! Here at the heart-side wear you, Love you and bear you, 203 Weariless spending Joy never-ending At the dear bosom DEATH [advancing] Nay, 'tis passed forever. Come, for the twilight covers up the west. LIFE [hesitates and goes to Death Darkness] Forever ? What silence seems to darken o'er the land ! How may I bear it ! Let me upon your bosom lean a little, Give me your hand. LOVE [the voice recedes] Sweet, are you weary? CHORUS OF DESTINIES. Faint on the irrevocable breast Lean, on the somber bosom that cannot understand. Sleep, and have rest. LOVE [from afar] I am the sunrise, I am the light, Death is the night Till the new dawn rise. Though you have left me, Love will not leave you; Love will receive you, 204 Love will retrieve you In the new sunrise ! Sleep, and have rest. REBELLION BEYOND the sea lies another, and yet beyond, I know the sea is not bound by a measured space, I will reach out my arms over the sea, I will run, I will run, till I come to the perfect place. When I hear a dancing on the dim sands beyond the moon, And the fawning waves cry out, I grow fierce and wild I remember something I have lost shining and strange, And beat against the patient gods like a little child. WOMAN, THE MYSTICAL WHERE is She and who is She Whom across the wavering world Like a beacon-light I see? In the words that shine and move Down some poet's woven page I have felt Her hate and love. 205 When the vampire in the night Wets her lips with sleepy blood, On Her lips the blood is bright. The cold angel at God's throne, Blowing trumps of molten gold, Speaks of Her and Her alone. The poor harlot in the street When the gaudy arc-lights flare There Her pulses burn and beat. Turning vile things to the Human, To the Human, the Divine Angel, anti-Christ, and Woman ! AUTUMN LET the tired sea go down with a hurt sound, It cannot reach us here where the gray dunes are still; The cold wind sweeps the bushes on the hill, The white sand whirls across the barren ground, And the sea moans as in my childhood. When the wind is on the dunes where the long dunes roll Seaward, the old summers come back to me in song, I have seen these reaches and sandy ways so long 206 They are almost grown a part of the breathing of my soul: And the sea moans as in my childhood. I love to sit and watch you when the sea is sad, And when you look and smile the mother smiles in you, But when you turn with love it is something strange and new, Tired and wonderful, that almost makes me glad ; And the sea moans as in my childhood. THE WIND OF TIME THE winds blow out of the stars and trample and pass, The night grows black and silent deep in my heart, Here where I roam between the stars and the grass. O piteous love, the years have conquered, alas ! The winds rise up and blow you out of my heart. The winds blow out of the stars and trample and pass. THE BORDERLANDS IN extreme sorrow, on the border-lands of death (As extreme joy, on the border-lands of death), On the utter marge of being and end of all, At the last pang there lurks an ecstasy. 207 An abandoned beauty so thrilling, fierce, and sheer, So regal is her splendor and gorgeous grief And all the rhythm of reverent agony; That toward the face, ineffable and austere, Disdainful, august, and perfect beyond all Time, Swiftly we turn, and scornful of all else, Rapturous, shuddering, on the magnificent breast Lean as forever, never to depart! Then draws the spirit nearer to her Source, At the one extreme as at the other extreme Ecstasy agony for both are one And lead us back into the home of things Forever holy and forever new. BEETHOVEN BEAUTY here is seen at rest in the peace thereof, Love that bending down looks back on the pain of Love, Sorrow smiling on herself from the heights above. TO A DEAD GIRL ALTHOUGH your feet gone deeply in the dust Wounded the breasts of Beauty with dull pain, Although your spirit bore the outer stain Of things unlovely, and the inner rust; 208 Beyond all anger, and beyond all lust, The eternal Beauty harbors no disdain, Sorrowful to her bosom's peace again She takes them back, the just and the unjust. Nay, even as a star that from the red Ruin of sunset rises pure and bright Into the holy host of heaven's dome, So, too, your soul, arising from the dead, Pants upward with her own immaculate light, Virgin returns to the eternal home. BEAUTY TO HER LOVER ART thou hungry, O my child, O my child, art thou fain for beauty, For sad beauty that passes like a gleam ! Is thy life barred about with duty and barren duty, Art thou as one crying out of the maze of things that seem In a half-dream, between a dream and a dream! Have a care, have a care to thy voice, have a care to thy crying, Lest I draw thee back into the web of things ; Lest I smite thy mouth with sleep, that it should be sighing, Lest I fold thee against my heart where the blood sings, After thy wanderings, after thy long wanderings ! 209 DUMBNESS WITHIN my heart, half little child, half angel, A spirit sat and sang for sheer delight, When darkness lapped my spirit 'round his rapture Rose in me radiant, like a star at night. Angel of Song my master and mine only, The little child long loved and followed long, How have I strangled with this alien sadness The virgin voice within me of your song ! TO IN the somber night of hope, under the trees Of the fruitless years where yet no flowers have been born, All in the first twilight of hope when the dawn Is a promised thing, quietly a prophetic breeze Has stirred murmurously the intertwined branches of these, Under the boughs of Time where I sit, nor mourn, Save always a little, for the many stars shall be withdrawn When the first breath of morning comes over the seas. O solemn first breath of Life blown out upon the air ! With a faint crying of my heart I strive to give breath 210 To the innumerable dreams it awakens lying under- neath ; But you by the tree of your life more green and more fair, Shall I not sing them to you, listening to them there, The dreams that shall blow in my heart until the twilight of death. THE FRIEND AFAR the fresh sea shimmers, The sea-birds wheel and pass. I lie alone in the twilight Here, by the thin sea-grass. A molten radiance slowly Wells through the sunset dim, The thought of you that tenderly Trembles along the rim, A golden, a luminous rapture; Heaven glows on either hand. What liberal thought and lovely Widens on sea and land? Makes spacious the Void around me For breathing-spaces? See, My soul, too, widens exultant: Large-hearted, fresh, and free, 211 Drinks in deep draughts around her, To the deep core shot through ! Your great and gracious presence, The generous thought of you, Of those great days together, Your golden and royal ways, Lifts me like golden music Out of the little days. S^L LIBRARY FACILITY A 000126994 3