PS 3515 .U38 R4 1909 Copy 1 Class ^5 I 5 Book_Jill_ T? Copyright ]^^ COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT Reveries and Other Poems By Gottfried Hult G. P. Putnam's Sons New York and London Ube IcnlcftcrbocFier press 1909 Copyright, iqoq BY GOTTFRIED HULT Ubc Iftnfclietbocher Ipcew. tUw 1B«* CI.A:e53553 MY WIFE A number of the poems of this collection have appeared in the Century. The author is indebted to the editor of this magazine for the privilege of republishing. CONTENTS REVERIES I Sought Me Symbols qf Eternity . If Swart Death Be a Gypsy The Myth-Maker Maternal Healing Revery As Couched amid the Waves The House Beautiful . Song: "Rich Night, Luscious Night Change . Prometheus . Growth As One Who Turns a Hungry Ear to List foundlinghood Indwelling . Agnostic As Phantom Frost Tumbleweeds Send Me Abroad Was It for This Help Thou My Unbelief I 2 3 4 5 6 7 9 lO 12 13 16 17 19 20 21 22 23 24 26 Vlll CONTENTS PAGE If God Be God 28 Dark Is the Pilot-House ..... 29 Trust ......... 30 Prayer ........ 31 OTHER POEMS Prescience ........ 32 April ..... 33 Again ..... 34 I Watched a Storm 37 Storm in the Advent 38 By the Pacific 39 I Saw a Hoary Surf-Outjutting Rock . 40 In Ear-Shot of the Shore's Ingatherin( 41 Gulls ...... 42 Moods ..... • 43 I Would I Were a Little Wave 44 Prairies .... . 46 Indian Summer 52 Retrospect .... • S3 Afterglow .... • 57 First Snow .... • 58 A Weed .... 59 To F. B. H 60 Thy Soul .... 61 Like Birds of Passage . 62 Revery .... 63 CONTENTS IX PAGE TO-NIGHT 64 Thou 66 Love in the Sea ...... 68 Unpremeditated Art ..... 70 Song: "Let Lightnings Lasso the Forest" . 71 Song: "Dear One, Near One" 73 In Absentia . . '. . . . . 74 Any Husband to Any Wife .... 76 She Floods with Gold My Evening Mood 78 Articulate ....... 79 'TwiXT Sun-Decline and Star-Ascent . 80 To THE Little One ..... 81 The Poet 83 Not that above His Grave the World may Heed 84 Chatterton ....... 86 Keats ........ 98 Decameron ....... 99 Symbolism ....... 100 Homer ........ lOI Xenophon ....... 102 After Reading .^schylus .... 103 Casella ....... 104 On the Prairies ...... 105 Lucifer ....... 106 In Laleham Churchyard .... 107 In Memoriam: Henry Martyn Simmons . 115 CONTENTS PAGE Gazing across the Storied Martian Field ii6 In the Sistine Chapel 117 Italy 118 The Age of Reason 119 The Future . 120 Renaissance 121 The Foundry 123 The Night Express 124 Success 125 Sans Everything . 127 Class Reunion 128 Intimations . 132 My Heart Is a Murmuring Shell . 134 Toward Love, toward Death 136 Reefs ...... 140 Disillusion ..... 141 In Lassitude 'neath Heights Unwon 142 Singing Robes .... 143 Incognito ..... 144 Song: "My Life is but a Little Moss" 145 Sift Me, O Death .... 146 Unfulfilment .... 147 Waiting 148 Reveries and Other Poems I SOUGHT ME SYMBOLS OF ETERNITY T SOUGHT me symbols of Eternity: * And vasty deeps of heaven yielded glooms And barren space, no furthest star illumes, — Darkness! I sought mid mighty things that be Uncomprehended within bounds : the sea, Plumbless, unshored; aloft the westering light, That plenary stillness, antedating night; And day's long ebb in after- vacancy. Yet even in these no perfect glass I saw For imaging the mystery unblurred; Nor entered into realms of ultimate awe, Till drifting, drifting, wheresoever led In aimless tides of revery I heard Lear's fivefold "Never" o'er Cordelia dead. IF SWART DEATH BE A GYPSY AND if swart Death be a gypsy, And Spirit a little child, Whereof he reaves the mothering Earth, Some night when the wind is wild, — Crouched in the smouldering star-glow, Or stretched before dawns ablaze, Resting the vagrant feet, will it dream Of the ancient ways and days? THE MYTH-MAKER TAKING the alien world into his soul To pour it forth again in molten thought, With his own throbbing self instinct and fraught- Dryad and nymph, Zeus in the thunder's roll — Man made his heart at home. The inert whole Surrendering to his passionate assault Of spirit, he could feel the star-sown vault Domestically roof his joy and dole. Cold, adamantine, foreign to the will, The infinite we gaze into responds With no wild thrill of kinship as of yore: Would the projected human self were still Religion, so its passion but once more Linked earth and sky in matrimonial bonds! MATERNAL HEALING A LITTLE child, Stung by a clover- jostling bee, Flees with its ache To waiting mother-arms; And mother-hands, Beautiful heal-all mother-hands take loam, A little cool moist loam, and therewith leech The throbbing pain. And I who pause, Noting the tenderling's relief, Wonder if so Earth deal with us, her children Of the tortured fate-stung heart; If thus the cool loam-poultice in her soft Mothering hand will ease the inward ache, — The inward ache! REVERY SOMETIMES in autumn nights I sit and list, When a little wind sufficeth to make known How dry the leaves, and catch the undertone Of dateless pain, the trivial day dismissed. Then have I heard, when most the world is whist, A far-off sea of anguish making moan Into the ear of darkness, and alone With a dead Strand bewailing lips it kissed. And in that endless solitude of thought. All things, to be and gone, became as one, — That multitudinous sleep the past hath wrought, And the encircling world that throbs and heaves : And Life that drank so many a westering sun, I heard as the sere exodus of leaves. AS COUCHED AMID THE WAVES AS couched amid the waves a bather lying — Vacillant like the mariner's needle held Beneath the crystal — sees within the deep The white vague of his body, so I glimpse The glinting image of the self I am, Afloat in Time. — O liquid leisure ! Fate No more I heed than doth a stellar ray, Which, travelling some millenniums, reaches earth In the full blaze of noon. Mid plumbless years Aswim with upturned face, I feel at last The halcyon infinitudes of death ; — Bubbles, and haply I am I no more! THE HOUSE BEAUTIFUL NIGHT, open thou the door! I lift imploring hands. A lost and fainting wayfarer before The ebon portal stands. I came a flinty way, And I have wounds to nurse; Shoot back the bolt : thou hast a salve, they say. Might heal the Universe. Thy tenants would not bar For me the twilight gate: Once long ago of Hush and Dew and Star Was I the spirit mate. Beneath the moon I trod As one who doth betake Himself into a silent fane unshod: Thy slumberers will not wake. 7 THE HOUSE BEAUTIFUL Long vigils I have kept Amid the winds and rain: Ere Birth had summoned, in thy halls I slept; There I would sleep again. For I have learned that quest But unattainment brings: Here, here alone. Peace glows not distant, Rest Has not elusive wings. Aweary of the noise, The strife for fame and bread, I would drop life's remaining years like toys. — Hast thou a dreamless bed? The ancient couch that held My limbs? the ancient room? And canst thou spare me now, as once of eld, Somewhat of curtaining gloom ? And disenthrall from need Of ever waking more ? All-pitying Samaritan, I plead. Night, open thou the door! SONG RICH night, luscious night, Born of the sunk white moon! Like fruit on a tangled blackberry briar From the perished blooms of June. Rich dream, luscious dream, Born of the white Long Ago ! O wistful fruitage of memoried years, Ripe among thorns of woe ! CHANGE I SEARCHED for the Law Elemental, Reality's marrow and pith, And found but the things that shrivel all halcyon dreams into myth: Birth and death, the morrow, moon-wane, laughter and tears, — No coign of the universe fluxless, unsnared the mer- curial years. The hills everlasting are fickle, and melt like moment- aged tones; And graves with the sleepers beneath them suck down the memorial stones; Fens are born of the lake-blue, the lands familiar wax strange ; And deserts where once flowed the ocean are burning footprints of Change. My brethren have imaged them heavens, suffused with a stagnant bliss, And yearned for a sea of crystal mid the hurtling billows of this. lO CHANGE 11 I would it were so! I am weary of surf-beat, an- hungered for Goal: But Change is the master of matter, and Change is the tyrant of soul. Beloved one, of whom I am tender as fleece of the jewel it wraps, Could I cling to thee, sing to thee ever, as the ages rise and lapse ! But vain, my beloved, our longing, though paired through ether we range. Or soon or late we must perish, the broken-winged victims of Change. PROMETHEUS OH, better far to filch the spark of fire From heaven and suffer the Promethean doom Than scathless to exist as one in whom A spirit dwells content with dust and mire! Oh, better struggle for a high desire, Too star-like high for winning, than assume Low ease- won ends; yea, better far the tomb Than barren life unlearning to aspire! God purge me of inertness as of sin, And let existence into life be thrilled; Pour tempest on the stagnant soul within, And let the sails of thought with storm be filled; Grant mountain peaks of earthquake origin. Whereon ideals their eagle-nests may build. 12 I GROWTH PAUSED a moment, paused and mused, aweary of husbandry, Weeding the soul of What Is, and planting What Ought To Be: Matted with tares the acres — the myriad-rooted to-day For an atom seed, to-morrow, plucked up and flung to the way. In the toil- won tilth of spirit, the glebe too tardily broke, What fens of passion undrained, charred trunks of desire that smoke; Boulders of ancient habit, drifts that the glacial .vast Trundled o'er continents of life, ancestral asons past! 13 14 GROWTH With the blood that shouted at morning stagnant at noon like ooze, Crushed with the unavailment of duties I did not choose, I dallied with dreams of cities, where pleasure is drunk to the lees, In the amphitheatres of sense and hanging gardens of ease. A moment! and loathing griped me, loathing with swift recoil To the flung-by spade and mattock, to the blessed- ness of toil: Yet scarce renewed was Purpose ere the heart again was aware That toward it groped the waneless, the ever-crescent Despair. — A clay-moulded beaker is matter, that breaking anni- hilates quite; But spirit is seed, millennial seed, fecund to rain and light. Abolished and reabolished, since the vernal summons of Birth, Yet Time outsummered, lo, what sheaves for the primal dearth! GROWTH 15 This is the cup of strength for who toils and moils in the field; This, the partaken-of bread, and guerdon of wheaten yield. For scarce-glimpsed Ends we immolate Self, our sacrificial Lamb, Yet I thank thee, God, thank thee with tears, as Man I am not that I am ! AS ONE WHO TURNS A HUNGRY EAR TO LIST AS one who turns a hungry ear to list, And catch the heart-throb in a dying breast; And holds a mirror to the lips to test Whether a faintest breath reveal its mist; And trembling feels about the pulseless wrist, And scans the eyes o'er which the lids should rest, Nor realises how in vain the quest, And kissing clay still dreams the friend is kissed; — I bend me o'er this wondrous world of mine, This beauteous universe, and hark to win Some evidence, some faintest hint or sign Of God-pulsation going on within; And still I watch and wait with bated breath, Hoping, despairing, hoping, — life or death? i6 FOUNDLINGHOOD OH, but a foundling child am I, With foster-mother Earth; Not knowing whence I came or why, Or whom I owe my birth! I long the mystic veil to lift, To know my natal clime; To know who set my life adrift Upon this Nile of Time. Earth found me in my little ark, And gently hushed my cry ; All day she nursed me, and at dark She crooned my lullaby. But I outgrew her nursery, Its joys and innocent trust, And learned from sunset, sky, and sea, I was no child of dust. 17 1 8 FOUNDLINGHOOD Oft quivering like a leaf-stripped bough, I woke — the Vision gone ; A Hand at evening touched my brow With world-oblivion. A Face, when night was in its noon, Looked down upon my tears, As 'twixt two clouds the melting moon Looks down — and disappears. Oh, pondering what things have been, I seem to glimpse a Goal! The universe is but an inn Unto my vagrant soul. — I must be gone with staff and scrip Wherever leads the way, With dreams my only fellowship, — My dreams by night and day. INDWELLING THE bowlings of a freezing pariah dog, Crouched mid the too scant straw that chance had left From the stuffed bed I lay on, came and reft My sleep: and looking up I saw the fog Of frore breath; and despite the smouldering log, Reddening through with ripeness of old fire, The casement rimily powdered: cold was dire. And night without like loam at heart of bog. Too importuned by the brute wail I rose, And whistling the dead midnight half astir, Enhoused the limp disturber of repose. In the long after- hush, not to have known God moaned and suffered in the unkennelled cur. Had gorgonized the universe to stone. T9 AGNOSTIC LIKE one who through long hours of darkness strode, And having reached a bolted portal turns Perplexed and dazed, wondering why still burns The white light not that cheered him on the road; And to the window steals where once it glowed, Or seemed to glow, and breathing on its ferns Of frost peers eagerly within, nor learns If Life be tenant of that murk abode; — So after winding journeyings by night, Darkling before the World I stand, with eyes That gaze bewildered, since there shone a light Somewhence around me and lit up the skies. For Living Soul I strain with aching sight, And utter darkness from within replies. AS PHANTOM FROST AS phantom frost that silvers bush and tree, When sifted by the wind to nether snow, Becomes a dance of crystal-slippered glee, The evanescent ages come and go. Their Time-glass — ceaseless and yet ne'er reversed, Nor emptied here to be replenished there — No reckoning doth keep Of years, or any human last or first: Our wake seems that of birds that wing the air, And the one thing abiding — is it Sleep ? 21 TUMBLEWEEDS AFIELD I watch on autumnal days The scurry of tumbleweeds ; Snapped from their hold of roots in the mould, Wind-trundled, they scatter their seeds. Textured to catch every breeze that strays, They roll and roll in a hundred ways, Wherever the mad wind speeds. Afield I muse on our tumbleweed lives, Caught up within fate's control; Rootless they range through mazes of change, Adown stubbled years, without goal. Yet when the ultimate Stillness arrives, Time may be sown with seed that survives, Through the flights of fugitive Soul. 33 SEND ME ABROAD SEND me abroad that I may love the earth; Pour round me loneliness in desert space, Lest the society I lose for aye Of things I love and dwell with face to face. We see not Beauty, seeing her alway; And the stars' nightly birth Is beautiful through intervening day: Unseal mine eyes with dearth : Send me abroad that I may love the earth ! Send me abroad, O God, even from Thee, Could so the inner vision be made keen To sense the Presence: for so frail is sight, Being too much the All, Thou art unseen. If that aloofness wherein broods the night My element could be, Perchance the heart might worship Thee aright, And so remerge with Thee, A spirit wave within a spirit sea. 23 WAS IT FOR THIS WAS it for this, We touched at shores of marvel, isled in dream, Where things that are flower into things that seem. To wake to brine and shoreless distances — Was it for this ? Was it for this. We dredged the turbid universe for truth, To learn that inexperience and youth But missed what being mortal is to miss — Was it for this ? Was it for this, W^e travelled the strange road that winds from birth Up the sheer steep of years whose crown is Worth, Beyond to brink a fathomless abyss — Was it for this? 24 WAS IT FOR THIS 25 Was it for this, We sought from goal to goal, to find that thus Life hardened to a toil of Sisyphus, A Tantalus thirst for fruit and waves of Dis — Was it, was it for this? HELP THOU MY UNBELIEF THROUGH seeming farce and contradiction, The very pressure and the shock, Almost surmise becomes conviction, Like clay compacted into rock, That for some mighty End the spirit Must wage the strife of right and wrong; That in the noise, could we but hear it. There is an undertone of Song. And whatsoever Time reveal us. This truth remaineth truth no less: More consciousness alone can heal us Of all the ills of consciousness. Time's twilight is the dawn eternal, And sorrows are unripened joys ; And Death is but the Love maternal That from her darling takes the toys; 26 HELP THOU MY UNBELIEF 2*J And from the clothes its limbs releases, And wipes the foolish eyes that weep, And tenderly its thirst appeases, And croons the little one asleep. IF GOD BE GOD THOUGH vainly I should waft my prayers for light Toward sable skies and leaden ; though the mind That sails the chartless mystery should find No token of a haven, hid from sight; Though life be wholly sealed and recondite, My being with this faith is intertwined: The Infinite Mother will not leave mankind. Her babe, on Death's cold door-step in the night. If God be God, what though the nightly glow Of worlds but told of mighty sepulchres? A blessing will burst forth on wings of snow From every rifted chrysalis of curse; And\ Spirit will outlive the stars that flow Within the time-glass of the universe. 38 DARK IS THE PILOT-HOUSE FERRIED across the bay at night, I cannot see who stands Before the wheel and guides aright Our course 'twixt sundered strands, — 'Twixt traffickings of sister prows: Dark is the pilot-house. Our earth-ship which hath seas aboard, And soul more vast than seas, Think you it saileth space unshored, Plunged forward rudderless? When clashed night's million starry prows ?- Dark is the pilot-house. 29 TRUST F^EEM not the looms of dawn become worn '■— ^ Weaving the roseate garments of Morn; Dread not lest ever the punctual blue Fail to send twilight the stars that are due; Doubt not that still from the wind-shattered main Will speed the white-panoplied legions of rain Overland, far as the heavens are broad; Nor fear that Time can undeify God! 30 PRAYER NOT supplication but communion, And love, the shrine; Not telling beads, but childlike union With the Divine. 'T is feeling what no words can capture, Though music-shod; It is the spirit's holy rapture That God is God. 31 PRESCIENCE DANK fields, no faintest glint of green hath broke The drear of; skies' dull gray uninterspersed With the white surprise from thunder-clouds aburst; No hint of wimpling leafage on the oak : And yet I see abroad the robin folk, Tripping with pensive interludes of pause; And yestereve I watched mid icy flaws The northward wild geese like a film of smoke. A little space, and all that now delays Inert in wombs of loam will come to light : Weed ardors, and the mighty lusts of bogs, — Feigned stagnancy but mantling fecund ways; Brief space, and lovers loitering of a night Will hearken, suddenly aware: "The frogs!" 32 APRIL WHAT time the prairie still lay bleak and frore, I sauntered forth: like some old palimpsest That waits new writing for the old suppressed, — Such seemed the dreary fields I wandered o'er. A worn age-yellowed parchment, little more! Fragments of words whose thought could not be guessed ; And not a single spear of grass to attest That here would yet be lavished a new lore. To-day upon the selfsame fields I stroll. The selfsame? Nay; the mighty vellum hath been Illuminated with its summer green. As long as spring is spring and soul is soul, I ask not why earth, sky, and all between, Have not been tossed aside, a crumpled scroll. 33 AGAIN AGAIN! ... The resurrected Thunder, — God's whisper from the lips of vernal rain; The passion and the wonder Of earth's rekindled emerald fires; Wild fowls' mercurial flight In sinuous wedges cleaving day and night; Arbutus, and the pallid flower whereunder The bloodroot spires, Wrapt in its solitary leaf; Rathe catkins, downy as forgotten grief; The prairies, windowed with a thousand pools; Loam's multitudinous dark Titanically pregnant with the Wheat; Up quivering subtle heat, And dew already when the evening cools; Robin and meadow-lark, Everywhere, every when, Again! 34 AGAIN 35 I will go forth! I will festoon my soul with all this joy! Doff the man, put on the boy, And make this conflagration of the nerves to cease. I too will hie me north, Putting the great sky spaces Betwixt my yesterday and my to-day, — At one for a sweet breathing- spell of peace. Enough of this drear tutelage of books ! Now give me brooks, Now give me May, Wilding graces. Laughter of winds, sun-mottled forest places, Highways and byways, mead and morass, — Lowly birth- house of the grass. Too long, all too long, I have been one of the pavement throng! Custom-driven, the sumpter of pelf, Pack-saddled with mode, And stalled in the self, When night released from the curb and the goad, — All for a little keep. Musty mouthfuls, and sleep. That the morrow might find me again at the load. Lord's or week-day, I must away. 36 AGAIN Somewhither, somehow, Now! now! now! Trees have sent for me: sap 's in the bud, And there 's gallop still in my blood. This hibernating Is obsolete when the birds are mating. A wild goose on high Makes irrelevant everything but the sky. The flower in the wild Is there to resuscitate in me the child. Therefore sweet rains are fashioning things To out-Solomon kings, Lest I linger here, Afar from the revelling-house of the year. Therefore the web- foot has entered in, Therefore the wave is fain of each fin, To rebuke my being abroad. It 's the homing season : I want to go home To the great savannas of mother loam, To the billow, the star, the dew, and the sod! Again, again. Everywhere, everywhen, God! I WATCHED A STORM I WATCHED a storm, unkennelled from a cloud. Startle a forest; and trees, high and low, Leapt like a herd of antlered deer that know Death is unleashed. A single Oak unbowed Still bore his foliage heavenward; met uncowed With shield of green the Tempest's thrust and blow; Impassionately shocked they, foe with foe, Yet towered that sylvan gladiator proud. Fierce roots, that felt the throe and understood, Encoiled bed-rock, — a new Laocoon group! And the black whirlwind with a mighty swoop Of dragon-wings departed from the wood; And once more silence fell upon the lands : I heard the big-limbed Hills, clapping their hands. 37 STORM IN THE ADVENT STORM in the advent: the sky gradually Empurpled into dusk autumnal grape; With now and then a far-off liquid lightning Jetted, as bruised an unseen Hand ripe fruit, All meek to yield its pulp to watering lips. Nearer and nearer, Thunder! Oh, the first Wild spurt from the wine-press! Oh, the fierce white rain, Flasked, vaulted, by the glad old vintner. Earth! 38 BY THE PACIFIC TEN thousand years the same old grist of sand, The Sea hath ground ; yet never came to him Sense of defeat, or, numbing brain and limb, Sense of futility. Wherever land Launches forth shore out of itself to stand A barrier to the sea, the upheaval grim Of waters from unsounded depths and dim Makes an eternal treadmill of the strand. — The Soul, more elemental and more vast! Yet shored about with shifting flesh that meets And hurls it back on Self eternally: But for such Faith as animates the Sea, What record of its broken frustrate past? The self-dictated epitaph of Keats. 39 I SAW A HOARY SURF-OUTJUTTING ROCK I SAW a hoary surf-outjutting rock Give back a tumbling breaker to the sea In mimic waterfalls, that sang with glee, As if they danced from watering a flock Within a vale, or plunging made a mock Of barriers; nay, more wild and silvery Than brooks called forth out of the hills could be, This reef that streamed beneath the tidal shock. And I bethought me there beside the main : What if I so could weave me singing robes Out of the flux and fluency of things ; Out of a passion mightier than the globe's Massed waters, and up hurled with mightier pain? So must he shape his fate whoever sings ! 40 IN EAR-SHOT OF THE SHORE'S INGATHERING IN ear-shot of the shore's ingathering Of breakers from a thousand leagues of sea, There comes a sense of Fate's austerity, That softens not to any Orphean string. Nor seems it of much moment if to sing And soar aloft be mine perpetually, As fain I would ; or if at times it be That I must trail instead a broken wing. Here to dismiss identity a while Seems not so difficult; nor, when dismissed, With its child's babble betwixt tear and smile, Could aught so fill with thought and render sane, As that large utterance whereto I list. The shore's perpetual Selah to the main. 41 GULLS AFTER a week's infinitude of sea, White gulls are dear, anticipant of shore, The English chalk-cliffs, with perennial roar Of breakers, and the world beyond of tree, And winding hedgerow, hamlet spire, and lea; They, harbingers of these, sweep on before, And circle back, or caring not to soar. Garland the haven's waters with their glee. And I, who stood all eager to tread land, Of that strange other Voyage muse whereto This present seems but mimicry and play: Shall we be ushered in by wings that day, Meeting us out at sea, and will the Strand Rise white and glittering thus from surfy blue? 42 MOODS nPHE day begot moods in my summering heart, ^ And some caught the rapture of things, Like impulsive beetles that hurtle and dart, Achant with the fresh boon of wings. And some, as the hours of the day winged on. Hung white as its fleck of new moon; And some were emotion shot over with sun And opaline afternoon. But rarest of moods that a day awakes Is the mood of the Waning Light: Forests that stand the dim sentries of lakes Sentinel feeling to-night. 43 I WOULD I WERE A LITTLE WAVE 1 WOULD I were a little wave, Some brooklet's in the valley, The lush and lusty grass to lave And with the flowers to dally. To madly waltz o'er deep and shoal With endless song and laughter; To feel the same wild thrill of soul Before the ball and after. To gladden as the morning sun The darkest of abysses; To put a diadem upon The humblest weed it kisses. To lead a life of frisk and whirl, Like some unbridled filly; To die by breaking into pearl Against a water-lily. — 44 I WOULD I WERE A LITTLE WAVE 45 Ah, would I were a little wave, Some brooklet's in the valley, The lush and lusty grass to lave, And with the flowers to dally! PRAIRIES NO drear Cimmerian waste, Birth-marked with bleakness in the womb of things, — Not such, ye Prairies, paced Full oft with dreams and high imaginings. The far horizon here uncoils dread rings. Nor yet finds bound More than above seas' measureless profound; And utter stillness brims the hour, Like that which brooded o'er primeval space, Ere yet a world had orbed into its place Or morning stars had hymned Creative Power. Mountains and forests hence have fled. Like trivial things, and lodged instead In lands that cannot dim Their rugged majesty of form and limb With too prodigious breasts, with too vast head. 46 PRAIRIES 47 Yet of thee, prostrate Titan woman, I Am lover: thy weird laughter and strange tears, And large, unearthly, superhuman sigh, Move me and thrill with inarticulate fears. And passion, thine eyes only can assuage. Beholding thee, I viewed Survivals of the earth's heroic age, Incarnating her primal Dorian mood. Green endlessness of visionary brow, Once filleted with glacier from the North, In ages of old elemental wars. Nor less majestic now! Theatre for the sun's white coming forth. And ocean floor for night with scudding stars 1 'T was not that I have seen thee oft as hewn White marble 'neath the splendor of the moon; Or witnessed that terrestrial eclipse, Thy loam-expanse that darks Fields yesterday so luminous with wheat; Or invocated by glad meadow-larks Through all the waiting spring, that thou wert sweet; Or splashed with clouds through depths of summer heat, That thou wert as the sea with sudden ships, 48 PRAIRIES And in thy night- wind's roar as leonine — Not these my heart made integral with thine : But more thy being to me An invitation into mystery; A furlough from the self, a dream's release Through opened doors of revery into peace; That here I felt resting upon me oft Eyes of the Human, soft And sad — O soft and sad ineffably! That I could here rehearse That loneliness which is the universe, And that more utter loneliness, the soul : Therefore thy touch ofttimes hath made me whole, Sweet kingdom of the Whist, And soothed into that Quiet which reveals. How more than ever wine or eucharist, Thy evening sky and ecstasy of mist Authenticated Presence ! How to dream Attested, when as here the heart but feels, Reality Supreme! Beholding new-created Prairiehood, God saw that it was good : I too have heard And seen the flesh-made Word, — Pondered and read and somewhat understood. — PRAIRIES A dwindling petrel of this vastness, I, Into its darkness winging, and alone With the wind's night-long monotone Of wailing and unfathomable sigh ! What sorrow is at heart of this weird cry ? Can it be, here, here too, The Spirit hibernates in flesh, As within me, fain to renew Its youth, and quicken into life afresh ? Is it not Soul I list, — That Soul whereof all being doth consist, Here darkling making piteous moan o'er Change, With its so poignant forfeitures, and strange Loan of frail senses and a little breath. Repaid with such grim usury in death ? Angel of the Fan, 1 feel, I feel, in this thy winnowing swirl, How much of chaff the major part of man ! I feel in these fierce flaws How we are carded by relentless laws To make our fleecy contribution, each. To the spindle that so tirelessly doth twirl, And the shears that seem to teach With severance the no-purpose of it all. — • If will were not a weed whose sap is milk. 49 50 PRAIRIES And the heart within as silk; If grasp were not all lag of reach; If every day at end did not recall Petty disloyalties that inked the soul; If mind were not a barren womb that cries Like Rachel for the mother agonies; If through the murky drift Glimmered one faintest Certainty of Goal — Then Reason were less tragical a gift In a universe of death. ... I break my staff, Thinking how vainly through the years I wooed The beauteous Ideal, which unpursued, Soul were as near to. — Introspective eyes. That make the hours of night Gethsemane, Gaze no more lest I be Sucked down the vortex of a demon laugh O'er failure which yet purposed high emprise! — Ascetic Prairies! ye so world- withdrawn, And healing! I am back 'neath your still dawn, That ushers in from half -evanished night The pathless and interminable plain. Sobered, once more your sovereignty I own, And reattune my strain To that dumb resignation lying prone PRAIRIES 51 About me in the quiet morning light. All-pensive I behold The lands ploughed black with upturned mould. More sable for the gold Which caravans of reapers in long file Reaped endlessly, mile after golden mile. Soon storm will come, the fierce iconoclast, To shatter with wild blast Your Indian summer, and blot out with rain Sun and the sky, till shivering thought mourns Beneath November, wan and gray as Noms. Anon your acres bivouac under snows. And yesterday's voluptuous swaying of grain Will have become to-morrow's white repose. — Unto a larger meter than man knows The choric dance of Destiny is trod, — The incalculable rhythm which is God! INDIAN SUMMER WHEN some fond mother thinks of her dead child, Entrusted to the Virgin Mother's heart, And glimpses, a brief moment eased of smart, Its face as in a sea of wings enisled, — At truce with tears, her eyes grow wondrous mild; Soft radiance overflows each vigil trace; With folded hands she dreams a little space, As if to Fate her life were reconciled. No other than such mother's respite here In field and woodland, that, enhaloed so, Lie rapt in the year's tender evening light; Nor other than her doom,— the all too near Awakening, and for surrendered glow, Darkness, and the disintegrating night. S3 RETROSPECT IN retrospect toward days that were all rest, From days to be all labor, I would turn, Lest in its dearth too much the spirit yearn, And change too bitter prove, being unexpressed. I who in surging crowds am loneliest, Adread of noonday glare as shyest fern. Therefore no less with ardent pulses burn, And mourn the day that reddens down the West. As one whom quiet worship hath ensouled, Beneath the sanctity of temple towers, Hears the recessional, and fain the hour's Peace would prolong, ere the world bleak and cold — Didst thou not feel, when Summer Days, white-stoled, Had chanted their rich liturgy of flowers, Too brief the perfect Service which was ours, Sweet worshipper, whom the same spell did hold? 53 54 RETROSPECT With legionry of leaves, the tree disbands, Here every forest nook is being strewed; Thou art with Beauty, every morn renewed, And still beneath thine eye the sea expands. There I remember how we crossed the lands The upward winding road to solitude. And climbed and climbed, till, when at gaze we stood, God laid the whole sweet world between our hands. A single bird, though mateless as I now, Sang in the amphitheatre of hills The risen morn's oblivion of ills, And faith in things, no heart could disavow. O softer than the hand upon a brow Whose touch is Sabbath to the pulse it stills, We felt the hour, — as if nor sundered wills, Nor change had been or e'er could be, somehow! My harp of life is many-stringed the more For every hour upon the heights with thee; For pensive afternoons beside the sea, Where tides had sculptured stair and corridor Out of the rocks, and hewn us caves whose floor Strewed with his handiwork, Infinity: Oh, thence must come my spirit minstrelsy, Or I be dumb, — dumb as in days before! RETROSPECT 55 Was it not sweet, disburdened of the Me, To sit where the great wheeling sea-birds winged ! Was it not inspiration to feel ringed About with the same sky immensity Of mantling splendor! There we have breathed free! There made the attuned universe a stringed Instrument of our feeling, — queened and kinged By the all-wonderfulness of the Sea! Lest the mean things of life o'ergrow and smother The finer nature, sometimes we must sing; Sometimes a picture the relief will bring ; Sometimes a quiet moment with another, Eyes gazing into eyes — friend, wife, or brother: But always this makes life a sacred thing. To feel the warm and tender cherishing. Crooned o'er and rocked by Nature, the All-Mother. We wist not whence the joy, but we were blessed; We asked not how or why, but breath was good Each morn anew. It seemed that what we would, An Ariel wrought at Prospero's behest. And Fate was right. Age, Death, somehow seemed best. When, after our brimmed outdoor day, we stood. Hand clasped in hand, in meditative mood Before the sun declining in the West. 56 RETROSPECT Three revolutions of the moon ! — and how The nine, not borrowing light from them, were drear, Emptied of purpose, with insistent fear O'erclouded, lest some ill betide! — but now Even Fate should find me with enhaloed brow, As hath this twilight found me, sitting here In dreams alone, — yet not alone, since near. The warm hovering Presence which is Thou ! AFTERGLOW AND so the Bedouin Sun hath stolen away. Among the clouds that stretch like desert sands His camp-fire smolders, and before it stands The lonely figure of abandoned Day. A moment since, her hair, already gray, Flowed sunset gold ; the rose it wore, her hands Convulsive crush and scatter on the brands. Just dying in a final flickering ray. Earth hears once more long-hushed (Enone's groans, Upshivering through the gloom, for Paris fled; The Wind remembers how he fanned with moans Dead Dido's pyre, and soft the cold lips kissed. . . . The nomad Moon hath struck her tent of mist, Star caravans begin to move o'erhead. 57 FIRST SNOW AGAIN the strange impromptu v/orld of white: A pallid Cloud hath given birth to snow, And like a foundling it was left below On Nature's door-step in the dead of night. Lawns, avenues, — the town hath taken flight, As if had spoken here and it was so The Spirit which makes all things New: and oh. What thoughts awoke within me at the sight ! For while I viewed the scene, upon me stole. Like snow from out the skies of memory, The sweet remembrance of a stainless soul; And purity, suggesting Purity, Made thought to soar beyond the furthest star To the White Throne where God and Mother are. 58 A WEED 1CAME to view the sacred mound Beneath which Mother slept; No grass had healed the wounded ground, No flowers above her wept: But shedding dewdrops, bead on bead, There stood a poor uncomely weed. I scattered lilies till her tomb With snowy beauty teemed; But lovelier than any bloom, And far more fragrant seemed The weed that unsolicited Stood shedding dewdrops o'er her bed. 59 TO F. B. H. LIKE a white hand that shields a little light For which a wind comes hungering through the night, Thou art unto the hope that burns within me; I owe it thee if darkness shall not win me, And overwhelm within my heart the fire Of high desire. If through the murk of time shall steal its rays Of ecstasy and longing, thine the praise. If to the full of some allotted splendor It shine abroad till the fierce dark grow tender, And unmooned night wax beautiful with flame, Thine, thine the fame! 60 THY SOUL WHAT shall I liken thy soul to, Beautiful One whom I love? Music the starry worlds roll to, Nightly through azure above? Flowers when newly in blossom, — Wreath for the Summer, soft-browed? Snow when still clasped to the bosom Of some fond moon- wedded Cloud? Not in sphere-music or garland Or snow I hear thee and see : Oh, what on earth or in star-land, Love, shall I liken to thee! 6i LIKE BIRDS OF PASSAGE WE are like birds of passage, Love, that stole Adown some shining river to its mouth; Winging, winging, toward what warm spirit South, What spring-abandoned nesting haunts of soul ? Beneath our flight mystical waters roll Singing, to tryst with what expectant bar? Above, the ageless moon and stars; afar Our still unglimpsed but dream-conjectured goal. If we shall come at last into our own, Effulgent with the morn of that new Prime, Be but our advent wing to wing as now; And with us, o'er the gulfs of darkness flown, This memory: we met, and dear wert thou, In leafless forests of the northern clime. 62 REVERY IF, slumbering, I could bid with a breath My Love appear, As dreaming Autumn whispereth Till silkweeds hear. And glide and glimmer o'er the trance Of dell and lake; If I could bid — but no ; perchance I might awake! 63 TO-NIGHT THE lonely tree-top tosses on high A star from the azure to sweep ; The pearl-fisher dives for treasures that lie In the heart of the mystic deep: And something is plucking my garment's hem, And something is luring to flight. O Love, more precious than star or gem, Your Lover is coming to-night ! For one shy wavelet's foamy embrace The sea-bird all others doth spurn; For one little woman's beautiful face Regardless of others I yearn : And that one bird-kissed wave of the sea Will ripple and gleam with delight; But yours, my Love, will be ecstasy: Your Lover is coming to-night. 64 TO-NIGHT 65 The winds are carding the clouds of snow, And spinning the silvery showers ; And earth is busily weaving below The grass and the many-hued flowers: And into the warp and woof of my life Shall I weave your spirit of white. O soul of my soul, my darling and wife, Your Lover is coming to-night! THOU IF all the rapture of outlingered winter Could find a lovelier utterance than spring; If pearly rifts of azure that but hint her Were not the moon's divinest compassing — Then, dearest heart, I might have wished thee other than thou art; Then to me now Thou couldst be more melodiously Thou. If evening were not beautiful when feeling The glimmer of a firstling star begun ; If stillness were not mild, and beauty, healing, As to a flower, the mantle of the sun — Then, dearest heart, I might have wished thee other than thou art; Then to me now Thou couldst be more melodiously Thou. 66 THOU 67 If the soul resting under weeping willows Of banishment pined not for the return; If absent, tossed and lost on alien billows, The mariner for haven did not yearn — Then, dearest heart, I might have wished thee other than thou art; Then to me now Thou couldst be more melodiously Thou. LOVE IN THE SEA OUT of the waters that smothered fleets, And took the winds with a roar, Welters the tortuous surf till it meets With the gleaming sickle of shore. Wading into the deep, We front the turmoil and din: glee of clasped hands and the leap Where the breakers come in ! High overhead a wild fowl or two, Winging still wet from the sea; Out of the blue and into the blue To the tidal rhythms, we. Dash they in foamier race, Or strain more wildly to win, 1 'm roots to this lily-frail grace, Where the breakers come in. 68 LOVE IN THE SEA 69 Beautiful one of the sea-drenched hair, Whose girlish laughter outbraves The fierce white spray that frenzies the air, And the smiting splendor of waves, — I'd stay her so in a strife Where mightier wrecks have been, — On the shore, surf-tormented, of Life, Where the breakers come in! UNPREMEDITATED ART DANTE in absence of his Beatrice, In revery immersed, some hour of dew. Unconsciously an angel's likeness drew Upon the canvas scroll, — not meant for this, Perchance, but murk imagining of Dis, Some record of the sighs of Charon's crew: But Love to that sweet converse urged anew With her, the dawn-white citizen of Bliss. And often, very often, at the feast Of quiet, day succeeding, when some theme Of awe I meant should hold thrilled thought in fee, Thy spirit wings o'ercanopied my dream : The soul's rose window shotten through with East, I sang of thee, Loved One, I sang of thee. 70 SONG LET lightnings lasso the forest, And moonbeams enmesh the sea: But I would capture a wild, wild heart. Forever in flight from me. There are toils for the filmiest wonders, For dew-sheen and firefly gleams: But where's the snare for an outlaw grace. And charms too panic for dreams ? Oh, midnight 's the hush of surrender Of infinite blue to the stars : For feet that have sped, feet with thistle-down tread, I could pluck down horizons like bars ! Oh, the tempest's a Bedouin courser. That paws a village like dust: But here 'twere vain, though I flung him the rein, And the spur to his flank should thrust! 71 72 SONG Oh, the pulse of Time is madness, And the breath of Change is fire : Yet frenzy and flame, how more easy to tame Than a fresh young life's desire ! Ah, lightnings lasso the forest. And moonbeams enmesh the sea: But I would capture a wild, wild heart, Forever in flight from me! SONG DEAR one, near one, I have called to Dream To flow around thee singing, As round an isle, a stream. Fair one, rare one. Thou art unto me Like water's intermittent blue. When breezes crisp the sea. Lonely one, only one, Could I hear thy voice. Though stars from heaven withered, I should still rejoice. 73 IN ABSENTIA AND what, I asked, of resultant boon, From the summer-tide that hath flown apace, Will be to my coming life as a moon The dawn is impotent to efface ? 'T will not be the minstrelsy of birds, The liquid parabola of song Of the meadow-lark; nor the lowing of herds, When the pastoral sunset lingered long ; Nor that I stood where mountains await In a bridal softness of silver gray The sun's white forthcoming in royal state, And a shiver of ecstasy meets the day; Nor the unsurrendered midsummer snow, Climbed to through sighing of pines and trod; Nor all that laughter of landscape below; Nor the sea, the swaying bluebell of God. 74 IN ABSENTIA Not these, not these ! but that I could be Still in thy heart, Beloved One, supreme : This was the soul of summer to me ; This, its boon I rehearse in my dream! 75 ANY HUSBAND TO ANY WIFE OH, ranging up and down the years, all evident becomes The very best thing God provides is being wedded chums ! Win whosoever will their wage for living from the mart, In emoluments of place, in ecstasies of art: But it 's loved, wife, it 's loved, it 's loved I want to be ! We have n't gold, we have n't fame — what odds to you and me! For the things that have wings live not all in bush and tree : Some nest and trill in hearts of such as we. Undone in Good endeavored by a Better unattained, Unravelling but to find within that more of snarl remained, All effort comes to naught, as when the waking babe at dawn Interpolates a little sleep for every drowsy yawn. 76 ANY HUSBAND TO ANY WIFE 77 But it 's loved, wife, it 's loved, it 's loved I want to be! We have n't bodied forth our dreams — what odds to you and me! For the things that have wings live not all in bush and tree: Some nest and trill in hearts of such as we. Some men are born to hard lots, with brows all afrown, And some take Time as gently as the air a thistle-down ; And these are very sure a grave's the womb for some new Birth, And those, as sure the hither side is all there is to earth. But it 's loved, wife, it 's loved, it 's loved I want to be! We have n't fathomed Fate nor shall — what odds to you and me! For the things that have wings live not all in bush and tree: Some nest and trill in hearts of such as we. SHE FLOODS WITH GOLD MY EVENING MOOD SHE floods with gold my evening mood, And twinkles in my twilight dream; About me floats her virginhood Like silvery mists above a stream. The clouds divorce not moon and sea, Nor space, the needle and its pole: And exiled from her though I be, Love finds its way 'twixt soul and soul. 78 w ARTICULATE E walked as lovers: and affection's power Too great for speech, she handed me a flower. Before my sweet dead Love was borne away, Voiceless, I handed her a bloom to-day. 79 'TWIXT SUN-DECLINE AND STAR-ASCENT TWIXT sun-decline and star-ascent, The gamut of the afterglow! Oh, long the day, already spent, Doth linger ere it go ! If Beauty had been thus prolonged, Whereof I dream in re very, Less widowed were the heart and wronged, That it hath ceased to be. If Love could take the changing hues Of sunset, in its downward flight, There were not shed such bitter dews In darkness now, and night. 'Twixt sun-decline and star-ascent. The gamut of the afterglow! O Beauty, Love,- — already spent, Had ye but lingered so ! 80 TO THE LITTLE ONE THERE 'S a theme left unsung, Though the lyre has been strung For its music full oft in days gone ; 'T is thy life's faery dole, 'T is thy white-tenting soul. Should have touched me to song, little one. Were I throated as spring's Gladdest warbler that sings All the rapture of summer begun, I had long been thy lyrist In tones thou nor hearest Nor ever shalt hear, little one. Dost thou know that to me Thou art dew-ecstasy, Caught in meshes, of gossamer spun? That less radiant and pure Is a star's vestiture In the hyaline blue, little one? 6 8i 82 TO THE LITTLE ONE I would fain have thee say- Why thou sailest this way, Elfin pinnace, where skies are so dun; Where the breakers are sateless. And wrecks lie in dateless Oblivion below, little one. If the waves could imprint Lasting pearl where they glint On the shingle all gold in the sun, I 'd implore them with tears To be jewel thy years With their scintillant bliss, little one. The culled pebbles of speech That I fling from the beach, A few moments ere tides overrun, All precipitate sink And a few bubbles wink Filmy lids where they plunge, little one. But were language a crown Of most soft thistle-down, And my fancy a goldfinch thereon. It would set words afloat That might waft to remote Other ages thy name, little one. THE POET AY, he 's the unhoused Man; he sleeps afield, Mingling his human breathings with the sighs Of winds and grass-laired creatures, lover-wise, What time the nightly splendors burn revealed; The elemental Man who needs no shield, But couches 'neath the everlasting skies; And wheresoe'er on Nature's breast he lies, The spousals of the universe are sealed. A Spirit like the untabernacled moon, Co-dwelling with the starry host that forms The immemorial tenantry of space; One with the summer Sea in midnight swoon, Who, victor o'er the ages' legioned storms, Lies pillowed on some isle with upturned face. 83 NOT THAT ABOVE HIS GRAVE THE WORLD MAY HEED NOT that above his grave the world may heed What dust is mingled with insensate things* And lingering ask, "Was he a poet — indeed?" The singer sings. His mystery of spirit, who can know? The soul is like a cave upon the strand Where the great sea records its ebb and flow On a little sand. Because a mist hung o'er the mountainside. Making the earth and sky a moment kin, His spirit took unto itself the Bride, And entered in. The sacrament of things he birthed in words, Glimpsing a bird that taught its young to fly; Or drinking rest from ruminating herds With thirsty eye. — 84 NOT THAT THE WORLD MAY HEED 85 There is no other dower of Time than sleep; What Is was never winnowed of What Seems : And yet his slumber being the less deep, The dreamer dreams CHATTERTON A DRAMATIC POEM ' ' Chatterton Rose pale, his solemn agony had not Yet faded from him." — Shelley. ALONE! World-banished to this garret. London sleeps Her myriad-lidded multitudinous sleep, A monster Argus. Midnight, Hermes-like, With fluting charm, has brought the eyeless moment: I 'm lo who escape. . . . From what? I '11 sit On the dizzy verge a moment and survey My inky years below — less than a score; Puny, yet sharp of tooth as any stream Of three-score-ten to saw so sheer a plunge Out of the hills. What chaos of wild rock For full moon to make ghastly with ! What caves For Echo, shuddering back, afraid of darkness! Of darkness? Me hath terrorized the light, Arrowing, piercing, starless, moonless light, 86 CHATTERTON 87 And the sun's fierce autocracy of power. Majestic ! yet how pitiless compared With Night, the all-forgiving, all-maternal, Who visits even the dead, and so blots out Corruption! . . . My congenial element Were oozy blackness wherein lie sunk ships — I, too, a wreck! And why should I not share That couch of peace, that no-to-morrow? Grant By buffeting the waves I still could reach Haven, what then? What 's human fame? A sky Lightning hath gashed, yet instantly it heals. And what 's the vaunted privilege of breath? The tilth of fields repeated a score times Or two, and drudging for precarious fruit; A little potter's cunning to shape clay, Oi poet's cunning to shape stubborn words, For niggard wage. For wage? Hath poet wage? Stand we not idle in the market-place All day, for none hath hired us. Lord, forsooth? I '11 barter away death on no such terms; I 'm stayed for with the dead! [He reaches for the poison, when his eyes jail on the , manuscripts lying on the table before him. Ha, telltale songs. That eavesdrop the heart's wild soliloquies 88 CHATTERTON 'Gainst tyrannous Fate, lest your spy's tongue should babble I '11 pluck it out! I *11 rend you limb from limb, Lest ye unlock my citadel of death To peeping after-times. . . . Yet here 's an ode That beats with borrowed pulses — wriggling bait To catch the gudgeon, fame! Into the sea! I 'm done with angling! . . . Ah, that lyric strain! A little private ecstasy, a dew That fell too noiseless for the night to hear — Would it might share my cup and sleep! Ah me, I strew the floor with all my singer's past, Flake it with these white songs that so my tread. Departing, be more muffled! — Pray, why muffled? Why should I slip forth mutely out of life, With a robber's wool-shod exit? It were right I shook the accursed dust from off my shoes On city which hath spurned me forth; hurled back From this safe height my hate, my agony. My laughter of despair, and my death's triumph! And yet what boots to thunder at the gates Of ears that hear not, eyes that see not? Should One dead arise, they'd yawn — and resume sleep. . . . If with a swan-song I could pave the way For delicate feet of poets, yet to be. Who so might travel home to the world's heart, CHATTERTON 89 To the world's love, if but a little less Bleeding, I'd make even this fatal moment Melodious with singing. . . . Ha. what 's this! A song I meant should elbow aside guards, And standing in some royal audience hall Plead me our cause.— No, no, it would not do! There 's too much wild Cassandra in the strain For doomed incredulous Troy. I should have mixed More Sappho with my singing: her despair, Fiery with love, left a perpetual trail Where meteor-like she plunged into the sea, Ages agone. . . . How vast that bridged abyss! How wondrous the longevity of Song! Her song ! — but what of mine ? Am I indeed Her late-born brother? Who believes in me? Believe I in myself? That doubt alone Makes me in love with death! Too late-born, we; For earlier singers of the world's rich prime Exhausted immortality for song. To us, the starveling moment! Better tear To shreds, and so anticipate oblivion. A sorry business! — but I '11 medicine Myself with the same desperate remedy Soon! — Ah, poor panic things, each one of you The petalled incarnation of a mood — 90 CHATTERTON This dewy one, and this, and — no, not yet I 11 crimson my Medea hand with this ! [After a pause, he reads the poem aloud. Break, break, my suitor's rod, for I have sued Vainly, all vainly for her lips and hand; Fulfilment blooms upon another's wand: My staff flung down becomes a serpent brood. " Come down to the well, my souVs Rebecca, come, The pitcher poised upon thine Orient head, " / sang — and hearkened for the answering tread: The stillness of the noonday air was dumb. One whispered word to meet the souVs desire Had flashed like sudden lamps through vistaed night; Had oped blind eyes to the Mount's hidden might, Soldiered and charioted around with fire. — Break, break, my suitor's rod, — and break, my heart ! For not to you the ecstasy and bloom. But dearth instead, and endlessness of gloom, W hereunto fain forthwith I would depart. CHATTERTON 91 [A long pause, during which Chatterton remains sunk in thought. He then takes the paper, and, while slowly tearing it, speafss as follows: How the little shell reiterates the sea! One passion! Only shattered into bits Will it unlearn the iris-throated murmur. So be it! . . . I am quit, then, of the past. And quit of Song? Almost the barbed thought Would grapple me to life, — to hunger, thirst. Rags, and this garret — ay, yet worse than these, To what men make of Man. — Impossible! Their gadfly gossip shall pursue no more, And lay its eggs; nor will I be a wave Of this wild factional welter, nor consent To the stop-gap existence of the crowd. They deemed me liar, those men ot little wit And much misjudgment, — a ventriloquist Of poesy, because I dared to speak In borrowed accents, and forged Esau's touch To filch the imperilled birthright — poets' wont The wide world over! Pure unleavened speech Is bread for no man's ear these latter days. Indifference slays poets. I 'd be heard! . . . Could I have steeped the spirit in sheer beauty, All fame had seemed redundant. I had asked 92 CHATTERTON No more than soaring larks or woodland nooks For eyes to grow self-conscious by. Too late I see it! [After a pause. Life with world-averted eyes — Were 't possible, I'd make me of this night A turn in the road, and not a precipice. . . . We 're yoke-mates with the world, would we or no ! None wholly liveth unto Song! At best The beautiful is windowed us through chinks In a prison-house. What soul is out-of-doors ! We 're made like unto galley-slaves who sit Borne down with drowse from oaring a brute bulk, While all transfixed with splendor the tranced sea Receives in his nether course the lordly Sun. [After an interval of revery, Chatterton goes to the window, opens it, and stands meditatively look- ing out. Thereupon he speaks in a subdued voice. O the ecstasy of stillness which is night ! How the world grows confederate through sleep And death, sweet dual agency of peace ! CHATTERTON 93 The furlough, sleep — how all too brief! and death, The mustering out of service which returns us Home! ... I have kept one loyalty intact, Recreant to whatever other cause. Have fought and bled, ay, perish for it: Song! Some rare enchanted potion of culled herbs, Drunk with the mother's milk, made me her lover Eternally. I strove to conserve pure Knighthood of soul for her, nor quailed at heart In a land sown with dragon seed. — Oh, not To the all-sweet religion of her eyes Am I apostate! but as one who dwells With aliens, yet performs the gaped-at rites Of his native worship, I have kept the Faith. I have tasted, too, its bliss, as now its doom, — Have tasted and found good: that men ignored, Or made of me their sport, — like folk at sea, Who watch from the idle deck some porpoise leap Out of the infinite in which it swims — What mattered, so I somehow broke through life's Glassy monotony of days, and showed What underlying depth existence hath! What mattered whence the impulse came to song, — A woman's hand, softly caressing back In place her tress of hair that streamed in the wind, Or darkling wonder of yon world of suns — 94 CHATTERTON When every least, most trivial thing to me Was symbol of divinity and life! Then dreamed I, nor awoke to scorn as dream, That songs like souls are preexistent things, Which, summoned from their inmost heaven of heavens , Submit to birth. No more than night the stars, Doth poet create Song. Each frailest lyric Comes into being singing God's " I Am!" [The poet is silent for a feiju moments with intense feeling. Then as if seized with sudden frenzy he exclaims: What hours were those, so drenched in ecstasy, I feel their glistening after-showers even yet Fall quickening! . . . What if now I should essay Song! and again taste rapture of the poet's Audacities of flight! — Ay, ay, she's forth, My queen bee : soar, and die the nuptial death ! [He seats himself at the table, and composes as if in a trance, writing at intervals rapidly. After some time, he hurriedly gathers together his papers, and reads aloud the following lines: CHATTERTON 95 Ere the last breath suspire, Thee, kindler of all fire, Thee, darter of all splendor which hath been And is; thee, soul of loveliness in flowers. Moon's passion, and the white oncoming showers, Exultant rainbows, dew and morning sheen; Thee, subtiler than wine, And vaster than the world-enclasping sea; Thee, more than all in earth or heaven divine: — Let me, Song, while there 's breath to sing, sing thee! I hailed the clouds that rose To tread unfooted snows Of mountains, and more distant azure fields; Who glide in tranquil queenliness through space, Or run again Atalantd's virgin race, Or smother the fierce sun 'neath flashing shields: " Ye radiant ones who roam The inflnite, nor otherwhere are free, O goddesses, white-limbed and born of foam. There '5 a yet swifter, statelier One than ye T* I travelled thee as a bird Travelleth air, and heard Unspeakable things that tongue cannot recall. 96 CHATTERTON When East and West were not, nor any bourne, I groped for thee as darkness gropes for morn, And stayed where but the shadow of thee might fall. If banished from thy sight, The soul were as an outcast without kin. — O thou the utter depth, the utter height ! And thou the bride, and bridegroom entering in ! Not if all choirs were merged. Not if all lips were purged With fire from the altar, might their breath praise thee. Words graze upon a thousand hills of speech, And yet to thee who dwellest beyond reach Of sacrifice what hecatombs can be! What voice of smitten string. Or festal ode that ever crowned the strong, Or poean unto thee were offering: They are but songs, and thou alone art Song! [He crumples the papers, and, quickly seizing the cup of poison, goes to the open window. After a few moments of silence, he speaks as follows: The first faint gray in the East! Oh, beautiful To be the waning morning star of dawn! The night outlingered, yet not forced to wade CHATTERTON 97 The gulfs of noon ! . . . Oh, soft and beautiful, My golden vesper on the hither side! [He drains the cup, with a rapt expression on his face. KEATS WHAT time a nether cloud in radiance stoled Took on effulgence of a finer weave, — As must who elevates the Host receive Most special robe — the while faint vespers tolled, Amber crescendo deepening into gold, Earth knelt beneath the solar eucharist; Then mystic shadows, visionary mist, And saintliness of Sunset, growing old: — That hour I thought of Keats, high celebrant Of Beauty beneath vaulted Song sublime. Gone down into the gloom; and questioned why Nature, lavish of manna thus, should scant Such lips the food they craved. . . . How gladly I Would have shared with him my sparse crust of Time ! 98 DECAMERON IN that gay garden of Boccaccio's youth, Bandying tales and playing at king and queen, Each for a day, so to beguile with sheen Of surface mirth and laughter the grim truth Of possible engulfing fate, and ruth For those engulfed; — in that rare Tuscan scene, — From whence even teeming Chaucer deigned to glean Suggestion for the Pilgrim Tales, — in sooth, Methinks we poets are pictured, we who sit Withdrawn within our garden nook as they, To feast on dreams and breathe Lethean air; Choosing us king or queen — but for a day; Bandying tales and interchanging wit. Against the background of the world's despair. 99 SYMBOLISM IT is not Song's acropolis of dream, With all its wealth of mould and carven frieze, And column-shouldering caryatides, And lordly pillars of the Parian gleam; Nor temples with their statued gods supreme, And goddesses, limbed whiter than the sea's Projected foam; and wild- winged Victories; And heroes, ancient bards' undying theme — It is not these lend Poesy the spell That thralls earth's generations: it were long With many a beauteous thing beneath the sod Crumbled and sunk, — Art's very citadel, Unless in Song, of all the world in Song, We built an altar to the Unknown God. HOMER OF that brimmed cup whence Hellas drank ere she Her destiny's rich promise might fulfil, Day by day I have sipped: and hours, else chill And lone, have been society and glee. Nor knew I till these hours of poesy, Time pours me thus with hands that never spill. What sweet allegro mood old tomes distil, In unprecocious wines what virtues be. — Homer, neglecting thee, ourselves we wrong, Or scanning with too fierce dissecting gaze, Thy mighty Then so thinking to make Now! Midmost thy wondrous temple of rich Song, I stood in ever deepening amaze: — Civilization's first Apostle, Thou! XENOPHON " AoKe? fxoL KaraKavaai ras afid^as, iva fxi] to. ^e6yr] tj/jlQv