NORTHWESTERN
UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY
EVANSTON
ILLINOIS
THE FALCONER OF GOD
THE FALCONER OF GOD
AND OTHER POEMS
By
WILLIAM ROSE BENET
NEW HAVEN : YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON : HUMPHREY MILFORD
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
MDCCCCXIV
iUN 24 1920 ¡I
\ ^ _ y
!•>
110-^7
2> '\
Copyright, 1914
By Yale University Press
First printed June, 1914. 1000 copies
Copyright, 1909, by The. Pacific Monthly {Sunset Magazine)
Copyright, 1911, by The A merican Magazine
Copyright, 1913, by The Outlook
Copyright, 1913, by Poet-Lore
Copyright, 1913, 1914, by Harper's Weekly
Copyright, 1913, 1914, by The Masses
Copyright, 1913, by The Bookman
Copyright, 1914, by Poetry Review
Copyright, 1914, by A inslee's
Copyright, 1914, by The Century Magazine
Copyright, 1914, by LippincotVs Magazine
Copyright, 1914, by Scribner's Magazine
Copyright, 1914, by The North A merican Review
Copyright, 1914, by Poetry
The author makes grateful acknowledgment to Scrib-
ner's Magazine, The Century Magazine, The North
American Review, The American Magazine, Lippin-
cott's Magazine, The Outlook, Ainslee's Magazine, Har¬
per's Weekly, Sunset, The Pacißc Monthly, The Book¬
man, The Masses, "Poetry," Poet-Lore, and The Poetry
Review (England), for permission to reprint here such
poems as have already appeared in their pages.
To
My Mother and my Father
with deep appreciation of
the debts i can never pay
TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Falconer of God ..... 1
The World's Desire ..... 3
No-More-Fear ...... 4
Love in the Dawn ..... 7
May Celebrants ...... 8
Brother . . . . . . . 11
The Land of the Giants . . . . 12
The Mad Sculptor . . . . . 16
The Ford of Transfiguration . . . 18
The Schoolroom of Poets . . . . 19
"All the Morning" ..... 24
The Messenger ...... 26
Café Tortoni ('81) ..... 27
The Thinker's Vision . . . . . 32
The Powerful ...... 34
How the Winning Four Went Home . . 35
In the Gallery ...... 38
Wings ....... 40
People ....... 41
The Racing Cars ..... 43
Imagination ...... 45
Northern California Night .... 46
The Vivandière ('70) ..... 48
Reprisals ....... 53
On Grace Church Corner . . . . 54
[ix]
CONTENTS
The Flowering Faggots . . . . 55
"Had I a Claim to Fame?" . . . . 58
On Hans Andersen's "Snow Queen" . , 59
Integrity ....... 61
The Secret of the Waterfall .... 62
"Le Baiser" ...... 67
The Laughing Woman . . . . . 68
The Arcieri of Michelangelo .... 70
The Sorceress of the Moon . . . . 71
The Bright Assassin . . . . . 73
On the Waterfront . . . . . 75
The Street Lamp . . . . . 79
Agnostic to Mystic ..... 80
Rebel Faith ...... 81
The Feast of the Gods ..... 83
The Successor ...... 85
The Carpers (An Aspect) .... 87
A Street Mother . . . . . . 88
His Worst Enemy ..... 89
"Poor Girl" 91
The Snob ....... 92
The Cats of Cobblestone Street ... 93
The Foreign Sailor ..... 96
Mid-Ocean ...... 99
Success ....... 100
The Stallion of Night . . . . . 102
The Intrepid Mariner . . . . . 105
Winter ....... 107
The Sea Dream ...... 109
Recalled . . . • • • • HI
[X]
CONTENTS
The One . . . . . . . 112
The Summons . . . . . . 113
The Pearl Diver . . . . . . 115
The Man . . . . . . . 116
The Good Counsel . . . . . 119
[»i]
THE FALCONER OF GOD
THE FALCONER OF GOD
I flung my soul to the air like a falcon flying.
I said, "Wait on, wait on, while I ride below !
I shall start a heron soon
In the marsh beneath the moon—
A strange white heron rising with silver on its wings.
Rising and crying
Wordless, wondrous things;
The secret of the stars, of the world's heart-strings
The answer to their woe.
Then stoop thou upon him, and grip and hold him so !"
My wild soul waited on as falcons hover.
I beat the reedy fens as I trampled past.
I heard the mournful loon
In the marsh beneath the moon.
And then—with feathery thunder—the bird of my desire
Broke from the cover
Flashing silver fire.
High up among the stars I saw his pinions spire.
The pale clouds gazed aghast
As my falcon stoopt upon him, and gript and held him
fast.
My soul dropt through the air—with heavenly plun¬
der }—
Gripping the dazzling bird my dreaming knew?
Nay! but a piteous freight,
A dark and heavy weight
[i]
THE FALCONER OF GOD
Despoiled of silver plumage, its voice forever stilled,—
All of the wonder
Gone that ever filled
Its guise with glory. Oh, bird that I have killed.
How brilliantly you flew
Across my rapturous vision when first I dreamed of you !
Yet I fling my soul on high with new endeavor,
And I ride the world below with a joyful mind.
I shall start a heron soon
In the marsh beneath the moon—
A wondrous silver heron its inner darkness fledges!
I beat forever
The fens and the sedges.
The pledge is still the same—for all disastrous
pledges.
All hopes resigned!
My soul still flies above me for the quarry it shall find.
[S]
THE WORLD'S DESIRE
Pain of too poignant beauty fills the heart
Seeing rich dreams through some rare sunset drift,
Or when on lawns the summer shadows shift
In soft designs beyond Man's clumsy art
To emulate. Quick tears may almost start
When the anointed stars to heaven uplift
Their voiceless adoration, and a rift
Seems shining in the night where pale clouds part.
In hours like these what vast benevolence
Breathes through the world ! O God beyond illusion,
Then we divine thou knowest our dark confusion.
With fervent answers soothing every sense;
And yet we feel—what pain—in the intense
Desire for thee to end thy long seclusion !
[3]
NO-MORE-FEAR
I came to the mountains of sleep.
I came to the hills.
The rivers that run and weep,
The sun that burns and thrills
As the Master wills.
All were gathered there in a flood that came and went
Fathomless and reverberant
Round about the hills.
Over and under the hills.
There speechless stands a grove.
There roofless a temple stands.
Its columns are lost above.
Its hall is quiet with love.
The final work of His hands.
The ultimate from His hands.
Majestic and calm it stands.
There are no doorways here.
There are no halls but one.
Wide to the mystic flood.
Harped upon by the flood.
Dizzied through with the flood.
With the flood in unison
In the temple of No-More-Fear.
No forms that one may see
Move in the lightening hall,
[4]
NO-MORE-FEAR
But voices everywhere.
But voices constantly
Echo from wall to wall,
Speaking of unity.
Singing of things most fair—
Voices of purityj-
Of light and solemnity
Ring goldenly everywhere.
"They are souls asleep," He said.
Bending above my head.
"They are mine," the Master said,
"As this is my temple, so
These are mine, who sleep below
Whence thou comest, or ever flow
Here for permanence—those ye know
In your puny spheres as your Dead,
As your storied and gloried Dead."
"They are mine," the Master said.
His voice like a thrilled lute string.
"So in your sleep I take you—
So in your sleep I wake you
To gradual communing
That ye be prepared in soul
To win to this final speech
When every soul to each
Shall speak free, confess, extoll;
In this windy, silent hall
One choir forevermore—
Purging your spirits, purging
[^1
THE FALCONER OF GOD
Your souls without my urging,
Evermore in a golden speech,
Till ye bloom in a radiance whole
And the Plan wakes like light on all."
"Every night ye come, though ye know it not,"
said the Master.
"Then worlds are dumb.
And the figments of my fancy—
Death, and Fate, and Disaster—
Dissolve from their necromancy.
And up to my Truth ye come;
From the crucible where I weld you
The courage that justifies
All the tests by which I try you.
For the daylight I have held you
'Neath my sun, my fire, and my desire
To temper you to mine eyes.
But now—I purify you !"
And He spake then with words like flame
Of cosmos and creation.
Of Truth and divination—
While the voices sang his name.
While the flood of souls and voices
Rejoiced as a dawn rejoices
In the sun's first kiss—^yet I
Nothing have brought away!
Nothing but great content
And some broken words, that went
Back with me to the porch of Day.
[6]
LOVE IN THE DAWN
Dawn, with hallowed flame, seemed to sing your name
Through our open window as the golden glory came.
Ardor thrilled me through ; Dawn again—with you !
"Up and at the world again ! The world is made anew !"
Newly on my sight flashed the lovely light.
All the ringing roads of fame glittered broad and bright.
On again ! with new visions to pursue ;
And dawn again, dawn again, dawn again—with you!
Other dawns may keep joy as pure and deep?
Dawns of greater splendor may awaken me from sleep?
Nay! they never can bless a stubborn man
Like the dawn, the wonder-dawn, with which this day
began !
Oh, my deeds must take triumph for its sake!
Loud my heart shall sing it while the mind remains
awake :
Words I never knew could so thrill me through—
Dawn again, dawn again, dawn again—with you!
[7]
MAY CELEBRANTS
Winter, the dotard, with snow-splashed hollies
Wry-wreathed on his sleety streaming hair.
Has fled from the rout of the April follies.
Pelted with petals, to scorn stripped bare;
Snowy smother and sleety glare
Washed by the showers to swell the sea.
The scattering streams are on their way.
'Tis triumph for every bud and wing!
The doublets of all the trees are gay.
The burdened branches flutter and fling
Spikenard odors to scent this May
With sweetness for every heart today.
Then up and away—away—away—
Away down the magic ways of spring!
Rivers of ripple-dream, rivers roiling,—
Aisles of the forest, whose carpets deep
Blue firstlings broider with fairy patterns
Where mouldy Fall leaves once slept,—the slatterns !
Purge us and shower a soul's assoiling !
Oh, sweeten our souls as we breathe yours deep!
Shower us round with your flash and light.
Wonder immortal and infinite!
Here and there and everywhere.
As a hare from its form, as a bird from cover.
The ecstatic soul starts forth, aware
[^1
MAY CELEBRANTS
Of the winds of spring and their rapturous wine,—
Starts passionate pilgrim and thirsting lover
To new spells of distance and views made over
Where freshly vestitured vistas shine.
We are one with the impulse of the sod.
With the flower's dream and the flower's God,
With the burning bronze of the patriarch trees.
With the burst of sky in the open glade,—
Uplifted, Olympic, and unafraid !
We are beauty's bondmen on trembling knees.
And aspen leaves at an aspen's nod.
Oh, tell us, river so deep to gaze in.
Diaphane that the sunlight, the elflight plays in.
Where tossing tresses of brown and green
Ripple and run crystal whorls between.
Where the little wimpled wavelets dance.
Toss fingers, and flicker a roguish glance,—
Oh, tell us, is not your dream to be
In the cherishing arms of your lover the sea.
Welcomed and soothed on the breast of the sea.
That you hasten onward so joyfully?
Here at the high cliff's foot, its thunder.
Shocking reverberance of its might.
The great athlete sea, of majestic light
And furious breakers, and sound rolled under;
With hiss and sparkle and seethe; deep-hued
With stains that some sea-god's death imbrued!
[^1
THE FALCONER OF GOD
Here to sonorous litany
Squadron on squadron the breakers flee,
Dash and wrestle and clasp and drown.
And afar we know, though we may not see.
Old Triton, dripping and gurgled deep.
With his trident, is loosing the gulls alea;
Marshalling his host, green steep on steep.
For assault where the drifted dune-banks sleep!
Into the woods I—for a light foot spurns
Its marge, where the violets kiss the ferns.
Into the woods !—for a goddess flees
Rosy and laughing between the trees.
Yet ever her draperies, streaming free.
Elude us, this daylight, to grasp and hold.
A bird is her breast, and her veins run light.
She is not for us in her madcap flight.
She is far too shy—she is far too bold !
So night draws on. Till presently
With gem-like lustres the stars' soft fire
Jewels the boughs of that darkest tree
Whither gleams our goddess. One gesture bright
And—symbol of rapture and rich desire—
Through the rough, brown bark she fades from sight
[10]
BROTHER
I could not tell you though I were crucified
The depth of my love for you. Well, they call it "pride" !
But—come and walk with me !
Hold your peace or talk with me,—
All that matters now to me is—^you are at my side.
Do I remember! You bring the Age of Gold.
Wonder-dreams we wove once your words, your ways
unfold.
(Deep in the heart of me
This !) You are part of me.
Far the finer part of me—as it was of old.
So—I debate you o'er all the things we share.
Folk might think I hate you, for all I seem to care.
You will understand it, though.
Men with men have planned it so.
I am so afraid you might catch me unaware
Gazing—yes, gazing, as any woman might
Fondly in your face, at your eyes' quick laughing light.
Fondly,—^meet for scorning!
Brother of our morning!
Aye, and when my need was, brother through the night!
[11]
THE LAND OF THE GIANTS
The land of the giants is an old and dark and cold land.
Aye, still it frowns around us, as of old we read and
knew.
'Tis a cruel Do-your-worst and a gloating All-for-gold
land.
Far truer than the fairy-tales. Would God it were not
true !
The land of the giants ! Like a thunder-cloud it
cumbers
The skies of song and dream ; and afar its shadow falls ;
And still we hear the breathing of the giants in their
slumbers
As they loom on high above us. Yet a song my heart
recalls
Saith,—"Louder still and shriller whistled Jack the
giant-killer.
With his darning-needle sword flashing dauntless as it
whirled.
And he strode with defiance through the land of the
giants.
His heart aflame with valor for the righting of the
world."
'Twas a day gray as this when he balanced on the bean¬
stalk
And climbed to their kingdom through the mirk that
hangs abhorred
[12]
THE LAND OF THE GIANTS
Like a shroud above our cities, like a pall of heavy
pities.
And he'd just his heart for buckler, and a darning-
needle sword.
Though that land than death was stiller, whistled Jack
the giant-killer,
"I've a charm for all harm! I am little, but I'm bold!"
So he mustered self-reliance, in the land of the giants,
And he marched on their mountains with a shrug against
the cold.
The land of the giants ! In their valley lay they
sleeping.
Supine colossal shadows; and the bones of men of
might,—
Of sages, and reformers, and of champions, were
heaping
The ruined waste around them, thickly strewn and
ghastly white.
The hills behind were covered with their castles* walls
and towers
That crouched like shackled gryphons in the yellow-
vapored gloom;
And a bell among the mountains dinged and donged the
dragon hours
With a deep sonorous clangor like the tocsin-bell of
doom.
[13]
THE FALCONER OF GOD
The darning-needle sword caught a shaft of light, and
glinted
Like love beneath oppression, as our Jack, with catlike
tread
Came swiftly round the rocks 'mid the sleepers; and he
squinted
With watchful, narrowed eyes at each huge and snoring
head.
Then he pricked, now here, now there. Then he leaped.
The giants blundered
With bellowing to their feet. Loud they questioned each
of each.
Then they grappled each the other, and their fighting
roared and thundered
Re-echoing to the mountains; Jack just dancing out of
reach !
So—ah, the tale is old!—as they roared and raged and
rumbled.
Jack's sword-pricks still beset them; till, with sudden
earthquake sound.
At last in mortal agony each monstrous giant tumbled
Disastrous from the heavens, and lay gasping on the
ground !
And far away the mountain bell went tolling their
disaster.
While Jack just wiped his darning-needle sword, and
winked an eye.
[U]
THE LAND OF THE GIANTS
"Ha! ha!" he said. "Ho! ho!" he said. "The Httle
man's your master!
You only had to meet with me to know the reason why !"
And louder yet, and shriller, whistled Jack the giant-
killer.
And sheathed his sword, and faced about, and marched
him back again.
With a strut of proud defiance, through the land of the
giants.
And he left their heavy corpses lying prone upon the
plain !
• « • • •
When too high seems the sky, and God's justice long
withholden ;
When too dark seems the night, and the day too gross
with pride;
When the hulking giants loom o'er our world as in the
olden
Days of fairy-legends,—^may Jack Dauntless be our
guide !
For, "Louder still and shriller whistled Jack the giant-
hiller.
With his darning-needle sword waving dauntlessly before.
And he strode with defiance through the land of the
giants;
In his might he laid about him; and—the giants were no
more!"
[15]
THE MAD SCULPTOR
Far up in the quarry
I hewed a stone for pure delight,—
Far up in the quarry that's gashed in the mountainside.
I chipped the stone and the flakes flew white.
I thought a wonder dazzling bright.
I caught my dream in a grasp of might
And wrought it wild with pride.
Sun blazed o'er the quarry.
The sweat was on my shoulders wet.
Over me hung the forest that manes the mountainside.
I flung my strength on the stubborn stone.
I wrung at length from the stubborn stone
A strong king on a granite throne
Clung by his glorious bride.
His face shone in the quarry.
Above her grace, a granite face,—
Rock of the rocky quarry—a king on the mountainside.
I carved her drapery every fold.
I scarved her shoulders, struck to gold,
I starved for her face till Time grew old
And faltered in its tide.
The light failed in the quarry.
And in my breast the passion ceased.
The light failed in the quarry; it failed from the moun¬
tainside.
[16]
THE MAD SCULPTOR
But I at length had wrought alone
Beauty and strength so wed in stone—
My eyes went blind. I stumbled prone^
And cared not if I died !
Far up in the quarry
Night and the stars are over me !
Far up in the quarry my glimmering sculpture stands.
Though I be dead, yet verily
The sculptor of Eternity
Stands in the starlight over me
And reaches me his hands !
[17]
THE FORD OF TRANSFIGURATION
O dreamful Jason, at the roaring ford
Of life's Anaurus, now she pleads with thee.
The crouching beldame, grim Reality.
Uplift her bravely, trusting in thy Lord !
Howsoe'er wearisome, howe'er deplored.
Dare 'neath her weight the dark profundity
Of midnight waters, with thy spirit free
And resolute for truth, thy soul a sword !
Her weight increases still? Yet struggling on
Thy feet shall win the misty farther shore.
And there the truth that wreathes an older story
Greet thee with splendors of a sudden dawn,—
The heavy hag thy dauntless shoulders bore
Flash on thine eyes as queen of heaven's glory !
[18]
THE SCHOOLROOM OF POETS
An Autumn dusk darkened my window-panes . . .
I saw a jewelled lamp with silver chains
Glow 'gainst my wall—^the lamp of Poetry^
Wreathing me 'round with mists of memory
Breathing rich names. And then—a voice it was—
"Where left you Chrononhotonthologos,
A Ideborontiphoscophornio ?"
The battering syllables came tense and low.
Stirring to laughter with their quaint bombast.
And then I saw that I had somehow passed
Into an ancient schoolroom, raftered low
And dusk and dim, save for a firelight glow
Making the walls with grotesque shadows dance.
There, near the fire, some huddled boys by chance
Were tracing pothooks, whispering, sharpening pens;
And the strange words I heard had come from thence.
The bluecoat boy who spoke them turned his head.
"Digne Mastre Canynge," was the next he said.
"Your arcublastries and your asenglaves
Be wycheneref to brayde emmertleynge staves !
The fetive baubles of the song I reap
Toss like emblazoned banners in a keep.
Besprent with comets is my brigandine ;
Damoiselle Poesie my daised queen.
Brystowans, kneel! In fiery meteors dight
With ye, dull Saracens, I join the fight
[19]
THE FALCONER OF GOD
Like to King Richard, lyoncelle of war !...
Above St. Mary's hangs a blazing star.
This parchment—this—!"
And in the firelit gloom.
As in the Church's ancient charter-room.
The child large-headed knelt beside a chest.
Oblivious to the converse of the rest.
Scanning the documents whence he would draw
That work that Walpole set without the law,—
That fifteenth-century hoax that echoes still
Even to the crest of steep Parnassus hill.
Quaint, elfish knight of Bristol and of London,—
Swordsman of satire, Holborn soon saw undone
When Want as an armed man stood by your side,—
Midget of genius and imperious pride.
You and your Rowley shine at last enskied!
And then another voice withdrew my gaze
From the child-fashioner of archaic lays,—
Another poet.^ His vivacious eyes
Glittered with dreams. A Latin exercise
Fluttered from off his knee. And then he bent
His tossed brown curls upon his book intent.
Tooke's "Pantheon" or Marmontel's "Peru,"
Which held him breathlessly I never knew,—
Whether the old Athenians passed him there
Wearing the golden tettix in their hair,
[SO]
THE SCHOOLROOM OF POETS
In the broad agora mingling their himations
For arguments^ rejoicings, protestations
O'er laws,—or the alacritous hyaline
Parted to show the god Apollo shine
Bending his ivory bow,—or if, again,
Keats climbed the Andes with Pizarro's men.
Their steel cuirasses glittering 'neath the snows
Where Cuzco's fate would soon be Mexico's
And Atahuallpa's dungeon shine in state
With golden goblets and with golden plate
Piled for his ransom—and his mortal loss
To cruel cavaliers, who bore the Cross.
The room seemed vibrant with great song that calls
The ages slave, as once on Carian walls
Apollo laid his lyre, and all the stones
Resounded in harmonic undertones.
Round that brown head that housed no thoughts of fame
Flickered the bright, authentic, Tullian flame!
I roused at last.
A homely, pock-marked face.
With kindly eyes, met mine, as from his place
Young, wise, erratic Goldsmith smiled,—^the boy
Whom the old quartermaster near Lissoy
First taught of ghosts, banshees, and leprechauns,
(To rival young John's satyrs, nymphs, and fauns).
And stirred with tales of the Allies in Spain,
Of Port Mahon, and Barcelona ta'en.
Of Stanhope at Brihuega lost to hope.
Of freakish Mordaunt, friend of Swift and Pope,—
[êl]
THE FALCONER OF GOD
Battles and heroes, camp and counterscarp.
And, through it all, the sad, sweet Irish harp
Keening CuchuUain.
Of the Fortunate Isles
You knew^ who knew "the daggers in men's smiles";
Fluting the fops to rustic heydeguys.
Sweet missel-thrush that sang 'neath lowering skies !
You lifted golden landfalls on Despair's
Dark sea ! O Lydian touchstone of sweet airs !
Nor you forgot your Axe-yard beggary
When Newberry's counting-house paid forth your fee,—
In purple smallclothes, scarlet roquelaure.
And fine lace neckcloth, standing by the door
To dispense bounty,—and thence merrily
To the "Turk's Head," or to the Thrales for tea.
Where Burke and Reynolds with—^not at—^you laughed.
And Boswell raged at many a quiet shaft.
"Inopem copia fecit!" ghosts must say
Who mocked your small-talk in their Georgian day.
Here you sat dreaming with a whimsied mirth.
Toasting your toes before the fires of Earth!
Then I perceived that in that schoolroom warm
"Brown Silks" sat by "Mad Shelley" on one form.
Their arms entwined, while Shelley, fair and slight.
With gleaming hair and round blue eyes alight.
Told of the dragon in Saint Leonard's wood,
Or of the alchemist none understood
Who lived in Field Place attic.
THE SCHOOLROOM OF POETS
And the child
Of splendid churchly visions bobbed and smiled.
Shy with his words, but near as elf to elf.
Quoting some bit of Shakspere to himself
Or Latin tag, with luminous eyes of awe.
As in the dormitories of Ushaw.
So faded that old schoolroom, as its fire
Died, and the shadows gulfed the seats entire;
And, as I woke, sharp on my window-pane
Came the quick rattle of the falling rain.
Far more than in their verse, than in their prime,
I love my poets in their seeding time.
What words could match that close and vivid charm,
Boy-dreamers by the fireside, arm on arm !
[23]
"ALL THE MORNING"
"We have all this morning !" And she turned
In the quiet sunshine of the room
Toward one window open on the gay
Full-tide frolic of that summer day.
Trellised leaves that danced to see her dress,
All the flowers that blew, all light that burned
Seemed that instant schooled and mannered things
Miming Joy with antic caperings,—
Artful shows beside an artlessness
I discerned.
Yes, the day had bloom.
Laughing sun and emerald scintillance,
Birds that warbled all their jubilance
Past demur;
Yet delight was only real in her.
Ah, delight, delight.
Young delight that knows no reason wherefore,—
Living joy, o'erflooding thoughts of Night
With that laughter Pain's parched lips would drink of,—
Speech that breaks to song and flight on flight
Of that sparkling mirth God made the air for,—
Feet forever dancing forth to see
Days of miracle and imagery,—
Ah, delight, delight.
Tiring not from early dawn to night,—
See! Upon the brink of
Old abysses, our deformed despair
Harks among steep fastnesses to hear
[^4]
"ALL THE MORNING"
Your triumphant music on the air^
Drawing near;
And his twisted lips and haggard eyes
Doubt his own surmise,
Till the bitter gray
Of his Self-palled day
Suddenly rends around him, and discloses
All Earth's best in flower.
Every dreaded hour
Bright with hopes and garlanded with roses !
"We have all this morning !" And the view
Opens wide anew,
0 my sweet, whose heart held nought but morning;
Spirit of the sun.
Bright immaculate one,—
All these hours for Life's and Love's adorning! . . .
1 hear again those simple words you said
Wheresoe'er I tread,
From still cloud and sky and hill and river;
For Nature had no voice till you bade "Rejoice!"
And your human voice lives on forever.
"We have all this morning!" Flower and tree.
Can ye say it as her memory saith.
Ye whose joy her joy declared dissembling?
Nay! But virginal humanity
Holds delight's true key.
Perfect utterance giving
F or her moment to the bliss of living.
Though bound heir to tears and wrong and death
And the cup of trembling !
[^5]
THE MESSENGER
In a wild merriment of wind and bird
God's gusty laughter swept me by but now
Upon my desperate errand, wondering how
Her heart would bear the truth^ who ne'er had heard
Death's sudden and irrevocable word.
Yet all was light upon the upland brow.
Rich golden acres, fruitful from the plough.
Languished in light. The great sun smiled unstirred.
Then my heart raged against such cruel mirth
And to my lips there sprang a bitter cry,
"Would I were Samson, O thou mocking sky.
To bring thee ruining to this careless earth !
O proud and callous Beauty, flaimting by
Blind to our agonies of death and birth!"
[^e]
CAFÉ TORTONI ('81)
Édouard Manet (solus) :
The Rue Guyot . . . how long ago !
Êmile! . . . A bock! . . . TooldBelot!
That foolish Salon loved him so.
And well I loved him in those days
At the Café Guerbois. Ah, well,
Stevens, Zola, Astruc, Cladel,
Before the Second Empire fell
What theories set our brains ablaze !
Across the board we'd views to spare
On chiaroscuro and plein air.
Juries were damned. 'Twas rare to swear
At ateliers. But then the flame
Of envy that our Emperor nursed—
Fanned by the Hohenzollern—^burst
To conflagration doubly curst.
Across the Rhine the Germans came.
The tap of drum, the clank of sword,—
How soon the Red Republic roared.
When Fabian Trochu dared afford
To shift and gloss and squirm in vain.
While Garibaldi crouched afar
Watching my country's crimson star
Ride o'er the ranks of raving War
With Art chained captive in her train !
[27]
THE FALCONER OF GOD
Then, Monsieur Thiers, you saved the soul
Of France. But fate is very droll.
We few, "École aux BatignoUes,"—
Pouf !—^like the dust dispersed and fled.
England or Holland, art or fame.
Gentle distaste, or fear of—shame —
Dissolved us. Mine no martial name.
Though I took arms. Bazille—is dead.
Yet, is such scuffling truly war
Compared with striving for one star
"To be oneself".^ Why then we are
Outcasts, pariahs, what you will.
Of this some Mantz shrieks "Patchwork!"—this,
"Grand Art degraded !" How they hiss
When two bright colors meet and kiss !
Who knows but they are hissing still.
And still the independents surged
To victory! The Jury's purged.
Gervex has told me how they urged
More votes to make my medal sure.
And here I sit as proud and pale
As some David of fairy-tale
In one stiff style grown old and stale !
I pinch myself—but facts endure.
My God, what did the critics know
At first of Courbet or Corot,—
The vital world, the to-and-fro.
Or light, true light ! Black death they died.
[28]
CAFÉ TORTONI ('81)
Their models—struck an attitude.
"The proper function of the nude !"
I—I was mad, and I was "crude."
But it was life for which I cried.
Monsieur Couture, dear fool sublime,
Am I the "Daumier of my time" ?
(Though it were praise so high to climb I)
Or did your veins run blood—or paint}
Yet, I was young (and youth is crass)
To cite Giorgione to each ass
Who slimed my "Luncheon on the grass,"
When every critic showed his taint.
Thank God young art still breathes and dares !
Hail to these younger men from Gleyre's !
The colored shadows that are theirs
(That violet of my "Pertuiset")
Show—'mid the ancients though they sought her—
How only truth claims art as daughter.
Mark that new Raphael of water.
My multiflowering Claude Monet !
Still they will mock my jeux d'esprit.
Cat, parrot, bright green balcony.
My palette takes the higher key
Perforce,—for radiant nature cries
From field and tree and form and face
Of richness hid, of vibrant grace.
Of vivid light, and life I trace
Through all, because—I have my eyes I
[29]
THE FALCONER OF GOD
Yet, Berthe, you—ah, need I say?
One of the greatest of my day !
Grant me a Stéphane Mallarmé
For right inflection of your praise !
The Louvre, do you recall it yet?
'Twas Tintoretto when we met.
Then you talked Corot. Ne'er forget
Those your art's first. Arcadian days !
Where is that furious Pierre Baudelaire,
Swashbuckler of the green-dyed hair?
He loved my Spaniards. "Ah, but rare !"
O'er my Lola I heard him rave,—
In my first "Chanteur Espagnol"
Swift to forecast my chosen goal.
And Êmile Zola ! Each a soul I
Then life was turbulent, youth was brave.
Under the awnings of Madrid
(No dishes viler 'neath a lid!)
I would that I had longer hid
Though their cuisine had furred my mouth.
Some sorcery breathes through Spain, I swear.
But I—am Paris. WTiy despair?
My boyhood once breathed foreign air . . .
Painting Dutch cheeses . . . sailing South !
The Spanish food . . . what food is fit?
I condescend to fathom it.
Now these raw oysters . . . Wait a bit !
Such nacre it is all poets cry,
[SO]
CAFÉ TORTONI ('81)
And once its soul did I evoke,—
Still-life that knew my master-stroke.
Immortal oysters—^tsch!—I choke.
And I have lived to paint them—I!
In the next Salon, something new.
Grant that my cunning hear me through,
111 hang a Bar-room then ! There too
Like glory lurks, if once unfurled.
Let this ataxia cramp my hand,—
Some day, perhaps, they'll understand.
Though Hors Concours, that, as I planned,
I left them—well—a living world !
[Sil
THE THINKER'S VISION
Those aërial osier bridges
Swung from Cordilleran ridges.
O'er a gulf of dizzy blue.
That the native of Peru
Treads so nimbly, where most querulous
Souls would balk the passage perilous—
Like to them our reason is.
Swung across a wild abyss.
Daring spirits grasp its strands
With their immaterial hands.
All save recreants know its urge.
Venturing from the hither verge.
Only spirits crystal pure
Find their footing quite secure.
Souls clear-gold, burnt clean of dross.
Rapturous-swift may only cross.
For mere armament of mind
Plunges from it to the blind
Mists below, and mere emotion
Reels to plumb the selfsame ocean.
Frail its subtle silver cords
Woven of a million words ;
Frailer yet its guardian ghosts.
Pale in multitudinous hosts !
[S2]
THE THINKER'S VISION
Tenuous, beauty-curved, and bright.
So it sways across our night.
Clouded height to clouded height.
So I see it glorious
For the single soul and mind
And the heart victorious
With the passion of mankind.
Every strand is finer gold
Than a thousand tomes have told.
Faiths and fears, delight, despair.
Wove it out of thinnest air.
Brain and heart and spirit breath
Breathed it o'er the gulfs of death.
As a spider's web is spun.
Glistering through floods of sun.
Glimmering through wracks of cloud
To a cliiF how brightly browed.
How supièrb a citadel.
Scarcely any thought can tell.
Oh, the challenge, splendidly
Ringing from Eternity
O'er the gulf's profundity!
Love, dare thou the gulf with me !
[SS]
THE POWERFUL
When baffled days seem each to drag a chain,
Dead hopes are laid in mortuary of Fate,
And our small hearts lament the wide estate
God gave them for vast dreams that bring no gain.
Remains the soft, hushed power of snow and rain.
Of little flowers, that sunder rocks too great
For Thor to cleave. Mark how this frost of late
With glazier's emeril works upon the pane !
Know you the silent force of growing grain,—
How the winged pine-seed drifts to recreate ?
With tedious hydraulics, seeming vain.
The tiny ant might undermine a state.
Or tell me, how was mighty Baldur slain.
Shy mistletoe, plucked by Valhalla's gate?
[S4]
HOW THE WINNING FOUR WENT HOME
Superb in pride we strained upon the golden ehariot-pole.
Around our neeks were garlands gay, and garlands
decked the wheels that day.
Down from the temple thronged the crowd. "Since
Pegasus was foal
Never such mighty steeds were bred as these of Rome!"
the sages said.
But, sneering, that Ardelian swine cried, "Though thou
hast the race.
Valerian, I yet deny thy fat and pampered steeds can
fly!"
Our master turned. "This afternoon had proved it to
thy face
Did they allow such slinking shames as thou to view the
public games !"
Yet in our master's cheek a flame flickered. We pawed
anew.
" 'Tis sixty stadia to my home. I drive. I drive full
speed from Rome,
Now,—^when my steeds have won a race that strained
their every thew!
I drive full speed to Love's abode. Set thy swift runners
on my road!"
THE FALCONER OF GOD
Braced in the footholds forward leaned our master with
the word.
Forward we surged and struck our stride with eyes afire
and nostrils wide.
Forth through the streets with thundering hoofs! And
far behind we heard
A thousand people roar acclaim, shouting o'er all our
master's name.
We flashed upon the seaward way swifter than shafts of
fate.
Likened indeed to leaping flames, as once at the Circen-
sian games
Some praetor praised us. Fair before the thin white
road lay straight.
And swifter still we heaved and sprang till the strong
chariot rocked and rang.
Oh, often from the splendid Hill the sounding march
has wound
To cross the forum cheering us on to the Circus Maximus
Where seven times through din and dust the goals we
girdled round,—
But now indeed more glory shone on the white road we
took alone!
"A little villa hid in vines ! A face I fain would see !"
So clear above our galloping we heard our master gaily
sing.
[S6]
HOW THE WINNING FOUR WENT HOME
"Claudia, Claudia, kind and grave, thine was the victory !
Thy kiss, thy trustful smile and calm more than all
Idumsean palm!"
How often from our alcoves loosed we four have ramped
superb.
The purple napkin for a sign fluttering down to launch
our line
To sudden thunder of swift hoofs in fury none could
curb;
Yet now—our master's happy song urged us as might no
triple thong !
So soon, with Rome a dream behind, we snuffed and
glimpsed the Sea.
Through dust of gold we swerved and slowed our pace
along the farmstead road
Under the rosy afterglow. 'Twixt darkening tree and
tree
Her villa showed a square of light, yellow in welcome,
low and bright !
And now we champ sweet grain indeed with thyme and
clover strewn.
Fragrant Massilian is poured our master by his One
Adored—
Yet were her voice the finer choice! And—yonder sails
the moon!
Though slumber takes us—still they talk low-whispering
in the ilex walk !
[37]
IN THE GALLERY
Fields of Argenteuil,
Where the summer day
Dreams of Claude Monet;
Poplars black and stern^
Grasses where we learn
Vivid poppies burn;
Loveliness repressed.
Reticence and zest
Subtly manifest;
Strength and tenderness
Like the sky's caress.
Shades that heal and bless !
Ah, to gaze and gaze
Where through purest grays
Poppy flamelets blaze.
And black trees that brood
Consummate our mood
To beatitude!
So from frame to frame
Bearing each his name
Back at last I came;
[38]
IN THE GALLERY
And the elflike child
From the picture smiled.
Or—was I beguiled?
Time shall cast away
Crowns—yet you shall stay,
Fields of Argenteuil!
Though his brush could pass
Over trees and grass
Often to surpass,—
Tints of trembling light
Exquisite and bright
Shimmering on the sight,—
Leave me this small thing
For my glorying.
For my hid well-spring;
Fields of Argenteuil J
Where the summer day
Dreams of Claude Monet!
[39]
WINGS
The bay was bronzed with sunset, and so light
The ripples idled on the gentle tide
That we who swam in silence side by side
Paused; shifted poise; and, floating, lost our sight
In a vast well of blue, benign and bright.
Just ere it faded and the clouds were dyed
Saflfron and crimson. With one gasp we cried,
"Thus eagles floaty through heavens of pure delight !"
Then, with the splendor of a falling star.
Great wings swept down ; a muffled engine whirred ;
And, iridescent as a humming-bird,
A biplane swooped upon us, veered, and fled
Chanting Man's realized dream. . . .Yet higher far
We soared, upbuoyed on waters sunset-red !
[P]
PEOPLE
I was painting dolphins on a silver sea
When a genial, j awful upstart came to me.
"Poof !" he cried. "A rum thing !
I foretell your fate.
Give the people something
They'll appreciate!
People want the vital. People love the real.
Hence—^your just requital! You are too ideal.
No one does as you do. Wise they grow—and rich !"
• • • • •
All I crooned was "Who do? Who do which?"
While my clarion shattered dawn's resplendent gold.
Hobbled up a tattered grandsire, glum and old.
Cackling "Lawksadaisy !"
Stood awhile, and spat.
Then he said "You're crazy!
What's the good of that?
People want the mellorv. People prize the mild.
You are but a yellow journal's jaundiced child.
Fervor for the few does. Wiser heads say *Tut!' "
• • • • •
All I smiled was "Who does? Who does what?"
Where my purple vastures know not days or hours.
In celestial pastures picking stars for flowers,
[41]
THE FALCONER OF GOD
Midway through my revel, of his own accord.
Popped a little devil up through heavenly sward.
"Lord! Is this your fashion? How you're wasting time!
People pine for passion mixed with their sublime.
People are romantic. People love to pry. ..."
Then I froze that antic devil with my eye.
Then I pounced upon him. Then I hurled him high
Crimsonly careering down the whirling sky.
Sputtering "You—^you—you will hear from me again!"
• • • • •
"Whoo-oop !" I bellowed. "Who will? Who will?
WHEN?"
[42]
THE RACING CARS
The great cars careening come roaring round the curve,
The dust clouds screening their onslaught as they swerve.
The dense crowd watching exhales a thrilling sigh,
Their quick breath catching as the cars boom by.
Speed on the straightaway—speed is what they need !
Speed down the level—at the banked curves, speed!
Their sharp staccato thunder awakes the hills to wonder
At the grimed, masked devils that drive the dragon breed.
I closed my eyes gazing, and saw them in my mind
Up the far hills blazing, and roaring up the wind.
On the star-roads leaping, black bulks that shoot and
sway,—
Their fierce pace keeping on the fearful Milky Way.
Speed across the heavens—speed was their need I
Speed, with the meteors,—^to Doom's gate, speed !
Their sharp staccato thunder shook sun and moon with
wonder.
And the stars whirled wildly before the dragon breed.
The great cars careening went roaring round the world
With madness for their meaning 'mid wild dust swirled;
And faster still, and faster, their engines ripped and
raced
While man who was their master must drive in haste.
[4S]
THE FALCONER OF GOD
Speed across the cities—speed was their need !
Speed down the valleys—up the high hills, speed!
Until, a dying wonder, their sharp staccato thunder
Throbbed away through chaos that claimed the dragon
breed !
[ H ]
IMAGINATION
Rich raptures, you say^ our dreams assume,
Slaking the heart's immortal thirst?
Only the old we reillume;
But think—to have dreamed the flowers first!
Think,—to have dreamed the first blue sea ;
Imaged every illustrious hue
Of the earliest sunset's tapestry;
And the snow,—and the birds, when their songs were
new!
Think,—from the blue of highest heaven
To have sown all the stars, to have whispered "Light!"—
Hung a moon in a prismy even.
Spun a world on its splendid flight!
To have first conceived of boundless Space;
To have thought so small as to garb the trees;
All planet years in your mind's embrace,—
And the midge's life, for all of these !
And Man still boasts of his brain's weak best
In dream or invention; from first to last
Blunders 'mid wonders barely guessed.
And fondly believes that his thoughts are "vast" !
[45]
NORTHERN CALIFORNIA NIGHT
(Straits of Carquinez)
Like miraculous shining electrum
This wide amber Rght.
As a lyre that is plucked by a plectrum
The wind in the firs on the height.
The wind with its resonant breath!
And the shrillness of birds, as we hear it
Caught forth from this stillness like death.
Amazes and dazes the spirit!
Does a murdered man drift in the marshes
With wide, staring eyes ?
For his blood stains the tules; and harsh is
The voice of his vengeance that cries
Through those streaked reds swift-shimmering to bronze,
As the tule-reeds rustle and shiver
Where the tall eucalyptus responds
Red and silver, agleam o'er the river.
Then the west dulls to lead, and a sally
Of blackbirds goes by
Whistling far o'er the mist-brimming valley.
Sombre streamers that fade on the sky
Through the duskiness shredding away;
And the night a black panther comes leaping
From the hills that are over the bay.
From his lair to the homes of the sleeping.
[ 1
NORTHERN CALIFORNIA NIGHT
For the night seems a beast sudden-savage,
A terror to men,
A stealthy beast stalking to ravage ;
And we long for the firelight again
And the mingling of voices grown dear.
For vast Voices are vibrant around us.
Pointing sharp to our shadowy sphere.
See ! A thousand star-fingers have found us !
Then the moon like a delicate carvel
With shrouds of bright gauze
Mounts from silver cloud surf. At the marvel
Our hearts throb with prescience—and pause.
Distant planets crowd close. Through a mist.
From blue night's holy eileton lifting.
Some ineffable far eucharist
Hushes heaven, whence radiance is drifting !
[47]
THE VIVANDIÈRE ('70)
O Yvonne,
How you dazzled in the dance!
How you shone
With the love you bore for France!
Slow our tread.
Heads are bowed—each head is bare—
For our dead—
(Brave in life; in death how rare!)
For our dead Death has wed to our glory and
despair,
For Yvonne the Vivandière!
Soft you sped
With the evening from our lines
Through the dread
Coming night, 'mid clinging vines;
And the Germans caught and bound you
As you spied,—and thronged around you
Haled with laughter through the village to their
feast so like the swine's.
In the court
Of the Inn of Good Accord
You made sport
For a drunken foe abhorred.
As they rolled upon their benches
Roaring songs of wine and wenches.
And a radiance shone around you like the glory of
the Lord!
[48]
THE VIVANDIÈRE ('70)
Pale past tears,
Coarse and hostile jest and boast
Stunned your ears;
Yet—a gallant little ghost—
Swift, to shouts of "Dance ! Some dancing !"
Flashed your bare feet, twinkling, glancing;
And your eyes flamed deep with splendor like the
lifting of the Host !
Was it known
Where your comrade soldiers lay
Nigh the town.
Outposts lurking, close at bay.
Creeping nearer? Nay! These drunken
German swine knew naught! Your shrunken
Red-striped skirt was kilted round you, but your
face went deeper gray.
Then it flushed.
As you glanced from man to man
And there rushed
Through your brain a mighty plan.
Swift and swifter whirled the dance
To "À moi!"—"Victoire!"—"La France!"
Murmured first—then sung—then shouted, while
the Teutons clinked the can.
Would the scorned
Skies of night not right our wrong.
As you warned—
While they thought you sang a song?
[ 1
THE FALCONER OF GOD
Would the winds of night not bear us
Some least echo to prepare us?
Swift you whirled. Shrill, far you shouted; till
you stirred the drunken throng.
But they thought
That the drink had made you gay.
They forgot
In our ambush where we lay.
And, if Heaven had meant to save us.
What a Heaven-sent chance you gave us.
Yet we heard not and we knew not, all as dull and
dense as they!
Yet till Death,
Girl, you failed not in your dance.
Your last breath
Shrieked "La France! La France! La France!"
And our Emperor's heart-beats heightened
As the far East faintly lightened.
But we slept—and had not heard you. Battle
dawned—and died our chance !
Then despair
Gripped your heart in icy hold.
You fell there.
Suddenly—stiff, dumb, and cold.
Heart dead-stopped to voice and dancing;
With the battle-dawn advancing
Where the first wild clouds of sunrise o'er the
kindling mountains rolled!
[SO]
THE VIVANDIÈRE ('70)
Through all France
In a week the rumor ran
Of your dance
In the dawn before Sedan.
And the gloom a little lightened
As your glad deed grew and brightened,
Though our Empire crashed to chaos to the
Teuton's rataplan.
Valor more
Than that Captain's foully slain
At the door
Of the staircase toward the Seine
Where Eugénie fled by night
And he covered long her flight
'Gainst a cursing, raging rabble with red murder
in its brain!
Not the glow
Of the Little Corporal's fame
Thrills us so,—
Not MacMahon's noble name,—
As that fearless girl swift-glancing
Into last despairing dancing
For one hope—that France might waken ere the
destined burst of flame.
0 Yvonne,
How you dazzled in the dance!
How you shone
With the love you hore for France!
[51]
THE FALCONER OF GOD
Slow our tread.
Heads are bowed—each head is hare—
For our dead—
(Brave in life; in death how rare!)
For our dead Death has wed to our glory and
despair.
For Yvonne the Vivandière!
[52]
REPRISALS
Our words were spoken^ and our hate found tongue;
But^ through the great bright flame of Anger, broke
Livid and serpentine
Flickerings of malice. Like to snakes they stung.
Where righteous wrath had burned us pure, we spoke
Instead the little things—small things and mean.
Oh, strike out from the shoulder, or forget !
That is the man's way ; but this blackening bile,—
That rots the heart of right
Though right be thine,—keeps wounds forever wet
And festering, with distilments mixed by guile.
Till a man's soul turns reptile in its spite.
Frankly affront offense, or grant "Forgiven!"
God, for how many an issue we implore
Just lightnings ! Then it breaks—
The culminating storm-cloud—shaming Heaven,
Not with the lion's bold and forthright roar.
But with the hissing of a thousand snakes !
[5S]
ON GRACE CHURCH CORNER
Beneath the stone-flowered, lozenged steeple
In the close-shuttered tower
Mellow-tongued church-bells charm the people
Thronging the hot noon hour.
Above the trucks and clanging cars,
Ambulance, van, and dray.
They chime their slow and certain bars
Ringing our wrongs away.
Here, down at Tenth and Broadway, loom
Dull walls. But liquid notes
Still dream and rhyme and roam and boom
From the bells' iron throats.
And Broadway stretches ever South,
Steep-cliflfed, with crawling crowds;
The white dream-tower that blocks its mouth
Climbing against the clouds.
And Thought still stretches like the street
'Twixt obdurate walls and high;
Till, where drear fact and mystery meet,
A white Dream cleaves the sky !
[54]
THE FLOWERING FAGGOTS
There was a field called Floridus, east of small Bethlehem
town.
There first the roses that we know found strength to
bloom^ took root to grow.
So runs the legend, even so,—a legend handed down
From other ages, yet abloom with those first roses' rare
perfume !
Learn then how bloomed our roses first. They bloomed
to succor wrong.
For a sweet maiden without blame they paled with wrath
and blushed with shame.
And none recall that maiden's name, but some recall her
song,
"This is my sole and one offense; that I have lived in
innocence !"
She walked in early summer dawn beyond the city wall.
And found a young man left for slain, and bent her
down to ease his pain^
And helped him thence, and nursed him, fain to squander
of her all
That life come back into his cheek, and his eyes ope, and
his lips speak.
In her own house this tender girl brought life unto the
dead.
Her old blind father tending too, lonely she lived, and
little knew
[55]
THE FALCONER OF GOD
Of men, save blind with strife they grew and slew. So
days were sped
She hiding him in secret still lest his fierce foemen find
and kill.
Then oped his eyes, his strength returned. He gave
rough thanks. He strode
Forth of her house,—and met the eyes of three con¬
spirators in lies
Who knew his wife and spread surmise with leers, and
eyes that glowed
With evil light. Meantime had he, with wife and chil¬
dren, ta'en the sea.
So, bursting on the innocent, they haled her forth to die.
And piled the firewood in a field, with no one nigh her
fame to shield.
White-faced upon her pyre she kneeled without a moan
or cry.
Only she sang her single song, till their blood blenched
who wrought the wrong.
What faggots kindled, high they writhed a myriad
tongues blood-red.
Yet some were all too green to blaze. Their smoke
around her wrought a haze.
She crossed her hands as one who prays. And suddenly,
instead
Of every faggot, in that hour a rosebush bloomed in
lovely flower!
[56]
THE FLOWERING FAGGOTS
The kindled faggots, roses red ; the unburned, roses
white !
God of his grace, and for her prayer, had bloomed them
out of fire and air
That innocence no more despair and justice fall aright.
And all the field about was spread with roses white and
roses red!
Some say the red had thorns like spears to prick the foul
pretense
Of those conspirators in lies, who gasped with awful,
dumb surprise
And fled ; and others yet surmise the white meant
Innocence.
Howbeit, the tale is handed down, and the field lies near
Bethlehem town.
[57]
SONG
Had I a claim to fame?
Little to honor ;
Save when I spoke her name.
Gazing upon her.
Then was I crowned of men.
More than my seeming.
Youth's glorious hope again
Bannered my dreaming.
So, when our day is past;
When we lie stilly
Under the earth at last.
Clod by white lily.
Give me neither tear nor sigh;
Breathe but this in passing by
Where empearled with morning dew
The high grass above her
Waves, and above me too,—
"He was her lover !"
[58]
ON HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN'S
"SNOW QUEEN"
Yellow catkins on the sallows
In the osiered river-shallows.
But the sunshine and the swallows
Doubt the death of little Kay.
As they counsel, Gerda follows
On a gray March day.
Where the reeds grow tall and rank
On the pebbly river-bank,
Gerda flings her small red shoes
To the river for its news.
Have you seen my little comrade?
But the river floweth fleet^
And her shoes return on ripples
To the pebbles at her feet.
Withholding still their oracle.
The chuckling ripples chide.
But see, a fisher's coracle
Is rocking on the tide !
Gerda seeks it. Yet once more
To the tide her shoes she flings.
And they float in widening rings;
But the waves withhold their lore
From the wee one as before.
Then she turns in sudden terror.
She is drifting from the shore!
{59]
THE FALCONER OF GOD
Oh, the garden_, little Gerda, where the flower-tales were
told.
The princess, and the ravens, and the magic sleepinghall.
The royal guards in silver lace, the lackeys all in gold—
You foresee them not at all;
Nor, further to befall.
The robber-maiden's reindeer, nor the chill enchanted
sights
In the Snow Queen's frozen palace of a thousand north¬
ern lights;
But Kay shall yet be rescued from her cold and cruel
thrall.
Shining angels of your innocence your childish steps
attend
To disperse the white snow-goblins. And the mirror-
fragments dance
To spell the word Eternity, and free your little friend.
Through the magic of your tears for him, your warm,
love-brimming glance.
In the realm of true romance
Can your perfume ever fail
To float like rose-leaves round us from the old, old fairy¬
tale?
For this trusting child and small, Hans of Denmark,
be thou blest.
Who could talk to children all, north or south or east
or west.
And discern their purest sweetness; and can draw our
smiles and tears
After all these many years !
[60]
INTEGRITY
Nine days they wailed dead Hector, the betrayed
Of cold Minerva to the Pelian spear.
A false Deïphobus she personed here.
Yet, might the true have seen a coward made?
Might not the glorious and heroic shade
That soared from Hector's fire-englutted bier
Down darkest Styx have wailed then, "Brother dear.
Better thy scorn, my recreance to have stayed!"
For Love hath strength or weakness in his hands.
Friends may prove foes, foes the best friends at need.
Keep then eternal vigil, Man ! Advise
Thine heart, until its turmoil understands.
There is no choice save thine own soul's indeed
In the last trench, while still thy pennon flies !
[61]
THE SECRET OF THE WATERFALL
Silver waters smoothly slip
In an overarching flood
From the great crag's rough-hewn lip
Where deep wood to deeper wood
Thrusts across, so nearly wed
Save for the broad, deep river-bed
That bears its riotous torrent past,
Gambolling glad, to leap at last
Sheer from the rocks, where boughs of pine
And fir sweep low. Its raptured wave
Gleams with those nacreous tints that shine
In a wide shell's curved concave.
Far, far it falls. Its surface spray
In plumes and skeins is blown away
Evanescent, shimmering white.
Shifting, drifting, wreathing, trailing.
And perpetually veiling
The flexuous power of its delight.
^Twixt its arch and the rough clifl'-face
Wet twilight fills the interspace.
As if the broad bejewelled pinion
Of some seraph, drooping deep.
Shaded so a dim dominion,
A crypt, a silver shrine for sleep.
Ever haunted, day and night.
With a curious emerald light.
[6£]
THE SECRET OF THE WATERFALL
Soj where it plunges to th' abysm
With thunder-tones, and hissing seethes
In a vast pool, the torrent's prism
Shuts in a secret shrine, that breathes
Purer breaths of rarer beauty
Than fills our world of painful duty.
On either side the waterfall
The rock face spreads abrupt and tall
And rims the pool, that, at the base
Of the encirquing rocky face.
Through devious channels, worn crevasses,
Is freed upon the mountain passes.
Now on a day of diz25y heat
A young man, bronzed but city-bred,
Climbing through the clover sweet.
Saw crested waters glitter far.
Surged through thick trees, and stood o'erhead
Above that pool where wonders are.
Cliff-poised and opposite the fall
He stood, and heard its waters call.
And won with effort to the base
Of its perilous rocky face.
And found it difficult to trace
The circuit round; but in the end
On slippery stones, with gasping breath.
Stood where eternal waters pour.
Wet with their mist, and with their roar
Deafened, and within grasp of death;
Yet saw beneath their glimmering curve
That twilight space, that crypt green-lit,
[6S]
THE FALCONER OF GOD
That cloister of divine content;
And throbbed and thrilled through every nerve ;
Leaped then^ and burst the mist of it.
And stood enraptured, drenched, forespent.
Where but beneath the flowing fall
That spread its curtain closely round—
A splendid curtain, silver-sewn.
Spangled like hammochrysos stone—
Stood in a crypt that dripped delight.
His ear-drums pulsing with that sound
The sheeted waters in their might
Flung to the crags, to mock their thrall.
Ever the curving curtain of light
Flickered before him, swam on his sight.
Turning he saw how the cliflf-face gleamed
With deep-cut niches, or,—Nay! Had he dreamed?
The dripping boulders, beaded with frost.
Crowded the twilight, heavily mossed.
High in the clifl'-face, nigh to his head
Niches glimmered with—Clamps for the dead?
There 'neath the silver cataract screen.
In the glimmering twilight eerily green.
Three niches shone with three statues bright.
Slender in silver,—each with a light!
Bronzed hands reached them, though blue eyes
feared.
Eyes that were narrowed with fear as they peered.
[64]
THE SECRET OF THE WATERFALL
The man's hands grasped them, and set them all
At his feet, 'mid the boulders, under the fall.
Worn were the features. Scarce could he trace
Christ's or the Virgin's or Joseph's face.
Yet on every image, gleaming and bright.
Phosphorous fungus glowed for a light.
Worn was the silver, scoured and scored.
(Steadily roaring the waterfall poured.)
Lost in wonder, his wide eyes ashine.
Stood the bronzed young man in that sea-green shrine.
"Now I remember! Before I was born
Were these waters, they say, from their channel torn.
Then the pool was a quarry. Here at the base
Italians hacked at the cliiF's hard face.
"A loss—and abandoned—sunk out of mind,—
But their heartening faith they have left behind.
Here in this silver, here at my feet,—
Their leaven of love making labour sweet!
"Jesus and Mary and Joseph mild.
The same that my mother taught to her child !
Ah, now in the world you would grieve, you would
grieve !
Here in your purity, live and believe !
"Here in your niches I set you in line.
In your dripping crypt, in your secret shrine.
The world's erosion wears you not here,—
Only white waters, pure and clear.
[65]
THE FALCONER OF GOD
"Only the waters, seeping through clay.
For long years longer shall wear you away,—
Out of the world's light, here in the sweet
Emerald light of your pure retreat !"
Swiftly he set them shining on high;
Stood with bowed head ; and turned with a sigh ;
Burst to the light ; clung the cliff's rough face.
With thew and sinew his path to retrace.
Still from the crag the water curves
And pours its sheets of glittering light
To the great pool from off the height.
Nor from its splendid purpose swerves.
And still the mountain valleys drink
The glory leaping from its brink
When, through a thousand streams distilled.
It finds the pastures men have tilled.
And its sweet legend travels still
From lip to lip and hill to hill
Through all that rugged mountain land.
In many a cabin mountaineers
Still hand it down through sons and daughters.
Told with rough mirth or told with tears.
They say it sweetens all the waters
That ever leaped the waterfall.
And some say, "Folly! That is all."
And few there are who understand.
[66]
"LE BAISER" BY RODIN
Molded of snow-white marble, her arm draws down his
head.
Over them both hath genius a mystic stillness spread.
Curved of the purest beauty, her face and her bosom rise.
Tender his touch upon her, reverent, strong, and wise.
And their kiss creates a rapture wherein all discord dims.
Miraculous with harmonics as the music of their limbs;
Poignant as utmost anguish, of utmost bliss the flower;
Immaculate and immortal in love's most tremulous hour !
[67]
THE LAUGHING WOMAN
Once I heard a woman laughing—
Not like laughter of the women you have heard;
Syllables whose beauty blinds you^ and reminds you
Of a brook in sunlight, or a sweet, leaf-hidden bird.
There is laughter that is human
Though shot through with notes of pain—
And then there is that laughter of an old, old, evil woman.
Raising red and burning mists within the brain.
In the mad, gin-reeking dance-hall.
Through the brainless oaths and shrieks, above the smoke
Of stale tobacco, burning to man's yearning
For the swinish, acrid incense—high and shrill her
babbling broke.
There is laughter that is human
Though its poignance starts our tears—
And then there is a laughter like the laughter of that
woman.
Freezing hearts, and ringing raucous in our ears.
There were mingled in her laughter
Girlish love-words, wittold curses, jests obscene.
And the dancers swarmed around her, sunk profounder
In their beastly, battening stupor—^love grown loathly
and unclean.
There is laughter—^bitter-human
Though it sears us hot and deep—
And then there is a laughter like the laughter of that
woman.
Worse than all the ghastly nightmares known to sleep.
THE LAUGHING WOMAN
Old gray hair, that had been honored
In a life less foul than this, less mad with lust—
Gray hair, defiled, polluted_, the refuted
Boast of Man, the world's white banner dragged and
trampled in the dust!
There is laughter that is human.
Though the painfullest, the harshest—yes—and
then—
And then there is the laughter of that old, old, evil
woman.
And life still crawls with maggots—that were men I
[69]
THE ARCIERI OF MICHELANGELO
Ye with your phantom bows, and sinews straining
Toward Life's mute priestess hid behind her shield.
Base loves have puffed the fire wherethrough ye wield
Beauty to loose the shafts that should be raining
Thick on her targe, and to a furious feigning
Is the proud passion of your blood congealed.
Like frustrate flames ye poise, and hold the field
Through love's long sleep, of life no conquest gaining.
There, in your rearward. Age contorted tries
At last to bend true beauty to his power,
Lacking the arrows of his youth's bright dower
Who might have loosed them on an high emprise.
Here, by base uses of your noblest hour
Transfixed, ye strain, and still no arrow flies !
[70]
THE SORCERESS OF THE MOON
Its gates are grifEn-guarded gates.
Its towers of yellow marble hewn.
Resplendent glints each sparkling stud
Of rubies red as pigeon's blood,
Of pearls as white as the swan's neck.
Of diamonds without flaw or fleck
That crust its towers, and glitter thence
Along its cloudy battlements.
And far within its portals waits
The sorceress of the moon!
This palace I have seen afar
When crimson, gold, and purple cloud
Made all the west a blaze of flame.
Ere twilight from her cloisters came
To walk the heavens with nunlike pace
And downcast eyes and wistful face.
Then all its wonder crumbling lies
In splendid wreckage on the skies.
But now—ah, seel Its raptures rise
Impossible and proud.
So fling a bridle of delight
Upon the wildest dream of all.
And, as Mahomet 'strode the back
Of the white beast called Alborac,
We too shall thunder up the west
With rich caparison and crest,
[71]
THE FALCONER OF GOD
Wind horn before those marvelous gates,
Daring their guard, and find who waits
Withdrawn in splendor infinite
In that vast presence-hall !
Her brows would make the calla gray.
Her hair is soft and dark as night.
Her purple dais canopy
Bears stars in golden broidery.
She wields a slight and silvern wand
To summon spirits from beyond.
And all the wandering winds in tune
Sing to the sorceress of the moon
With airiest music, and alway
Swoon in her haze of light.
Yet hers are griffin-guarded gates!
Minds in her presence madden soon!
Her gaze is strange : and to sustain
Her glamorous eyes means joy and pain
Mixed in such wise, the soul is caught
Spellbound, bewildered passing thought.
Oh, glance not long, but shun her sight
While still thy heart desires delight.
Where, deep within the sunset, waits
The sorceress of the moon!
[7£]
THE BRIGHT ASSASSIN
I closed with pain. I slew distress.
And I am slain by happiness !
• • • • •
Fear and despair no longer lurk
On thought's night-road, my woe to work.
Since last cold steel our claims discussed
Their broken daggers gather rust.
Their dark cloaks shroud them for a blot.
They lie face downward, moving not.
I looked and marked my work well done.
And took the turning toward the sun.
Into new morning I had wrought
I laid the journey of my thought.
And straight I stumbled on the boy
In green and gold, whose name is Joy.
Into his songs I stumbled straight
And hailed him for my proper mate.
Then the horizon shook with mirth
And dizzy sunshine thralled the earth.
And chargers rich-caparisoned
We spurred to ride to bliss beyond.
[731
THE FALCONER OF GOD
This side or that we turned our way.
City and countryside made gay.
And on my pillion rode the love
My heart is never weary of ;
Her soft cheek pressed to mine aglow.
Our laughing murmurs very low.
Oh, then I boasted of my slain.
And Joy drew poniard like to pain;
Pierced me with pangs that ache and ache
Until I think my heart will break.
My heart for fulness yearns for drouth.
Words for my joy choke up my mouth.
I writhe upon a rack of bliss.
And Joy my fell Procrustes is.
Strange seems such wisdom to confess:
Yet,—thwart thou pain, and slay distress,—
Thou shalt be slain by happiness !
[74]
ON THE WATERFRONT
LoUin' on a dock-pile, pip^ a-draggin' slow,
Squintin' at the little tugs puffin' to an' fro,—
All the shippin' in the sunlight busy with their sails.
Winches rarin', 'ands a-swearin', cargo-'ooks an' bales;
Mist'ry o' the dirty water lappin' down below,
Lappin' an' a-lippin', "Aint ye goin' to go ?"
Gawd, my 'eart is full this mornin' ! Aint it swellin',
though !
All the ships upon the sea, an' all the things I know !
Damn ol' wind-bag, strainin' at yer anchor,
(Aint ye goin' to go? Aint ye goin' to go?)
Dirty drab ol' 'nil, from yer fore-truck to yer spanker,
Fo'c'sle-'ead to starn, I know ye so!
Take me out, take me out, take me out along o' ye !
'Eave yer sloppy deck agin underneath my feet ;
Lemme bunk wi' frowsy Swedes an' them 'eathen Dago
breeds.
An' we'll start the 'ell a-goin' where the sea an' 'arbor
meet I
Damn ol' storm-sow, wallerin' through 'urricanes,
Shakin' like a wet dorg—^tryin' to shake us orf I
Scuppers runnin' like the Yarrow whar it runs so muddy
narrow.
Dark a night as nights in Lunnon when the fawg is thick
an' sof I
[75]
THE FALCONER OF GOD
Sweepin' sea, leapin' sea, shakin' us an' blindin' us.
Still our lights are swingin' through the rarin', tearin'
storm.
Fightin'-glad we're fightin' on! 'Oo says that Gawd's
a-mindin' us?
(Shiverin'—I'm shiverin'! An' aint this sunlight warm?)
Pa'my isles—ba'my isles—glidin' on a sea o' glass I
Sunset's on the 'arbor like a taste o' Kingdom Come.
Gels are langhin' far an' faintly, an' the music tinkles
gently.
'Oo'll git lef ashore tonight, long o' gels an' rum?
Clouds that 'ang forever on volcano-tops a-slumberin'.
Music ever tinklin', an' the moonlight paths we know I
'Oo'll git lef ashore tonight ? Hours, 'oo's a-numberin' ?
(Aint ye goin', aint ye goin', aint ye goin' to go?)
Frizzlin' days, sizzlin' days, shrivelin' all the pent of 'er!
We're wearin' wot Gawd gave us, an' a-spoilin' fer a
fight.
'Aulin' 'ere, 'aulin' thar,—Mate so mad 'e's dumb to swar !
Oh, the cool, cool stars a-swingin' when the wind comes
on 'th night !
Slum smells in the galley! The closeness an' the stink
of it !
'Ell upon the 'ot decks ; f o'c'sle 'ot as 'eU ;
Quorlin' all along the bunks. Sleep? Don't wanter
think of it !
(Say! Put up that knife, you—! Aie, thar goes eight
bell!)
[76]
ON THE WATERFRONT
Swingin* lamps, battered fices plannin' some new devil¬
ment;
Stinkin' raw terbaccy smoke, oursin' somethin' sweet,—
Then, the sea's ol' roar again, an' the work that scraps
'th men.
Drowned voices in the boxin' wind, an' suddint death to
meet !
Voices on the sea-wind, voices on the shore-breeze!
Wall-eye Fred, an' little Red, an' Butcher John, an'
Bo,—
Cooky Black, an' Hackensack! Mateys? All my old
uns.
(Aint ye goin', aint ye goin', aint ye goin' to go.^)
Fair wind—foul wind! 'Ow I useter think of it!
Lyin' in the 'eadland grass, wishin' I would be
Some day, just as I 'ave been, workin' ships that I 'ave
seen,
A sailorman, a sailorman on any ship at sea !
Starin' in the sunsets, wonderin' an' wonderin',
Watchin' all the sails beat 'ome. . . . Oh, knowin' wot I
know.
Was that black-eyed Susie right, when we 'ad our little
fight?
The flashin', snappin' eyes of 'er, that said I shouldn't
go?
Loafin' on a string-piece, hours a-crawlin' slow,
Dreamin' on the waterways where the big ships go,—
[77]
THE FALCONER OF GOD
All the busy 'arbor shippin', all the glintin' sails^
Tramps a-coalin', smoke a-rollin', winches histin' bales,—
Wot a myst'ry in the water lappin' down below!
Lappin' an' a-lippin', "Aint ye goin' to go?"
In my 'eart the sea is swellin'. Aint it swellin', though!
All the ships upon the sea, an' all the things I know !
[78]
THE STREET LAMP
Homes stand in slumber. Sleep broods shadowingly
In this deserted street's far-vista'd nighty
Save only where a little mortal light
Sheds on the pave its careful boundary
And shines a kindly host to each degree
Of city wraith, where wan street shadows plight
Strange troths. Lost footsteps echo and unite
In a refrain that seems a threnody.
The sweet low laughter of a girl's first tryst.
The sob of homeless poverty, faint cries
Struck dumb,—^loud Folly, Mirth the satirist!—
In silence once again Fate's byway lies.
Brave little star, dawn pales, and through the mist
Sadly you wane. How sad, and oh, how wise !
[79}
AGNOSTIC TO MYSTIC
Why does it matter to you whether Heaven or God
Are wraiths or realities ? We—^we can never be told.
Why do you sigh so, and stare like a stricken thing
Out of the boundaries of earth, as if earth were a wilder¬
ness trod.
The sky and the sod
Thrilling no j oy to you save through His presence ? The
old
Beat of the ardent wing.
Way of the warm to the cold.^
Yet, am I cold.? Is not rather the coldness with you.
Dim groper in cloud, discontent with the fulness of
earth ?
What but phrase do you draw in your net from the ocean
of dreams.?
Be you content with sure glories, with moonlight and
sunlight and dew.
With golden and blue!
Yet, in deep passionate hours on the hills—by the sea—
Nigh to the gates of birth,—
Sometimes, oh, sometimes it seems—I
[80]
REBEL FAITH
Ere dawn I was gone.
What my four walls told me
I dwell not on.
For they could not hold me.
Oh, the lamp's warm light,
F aces fond—dear laughter !
Warmth and light—^last night !
And this comes after !
Yet in storm I am warm.
And the mirk's mine ingle,—
In the thresh of the storm
Where one's wet cheeks tingle.
Black boughs—black roads.
And the fog to fold me,—
And a hurt that goads
So no home may hold me !
No road can tire.
And no fear can break me.
Though I flounder in mire
And the stars forsake me ;
The house so small?
If, as they told me.
Its wise rule were All,
Yet it could not hold me!
[81]
THE FALCONER OF GOD
I must joy to grieve.
Easy bliss refusing.
I must love but to leave,
And to find in losing.
Warmth and light—last night—
Of a sweet, wise order;
Yet afar I fight
Toward the utmost border
Of the hurricane
And the lightning levin.
And the rushing rain
From a pitchblack heaven.
For some marshlight star
That I clapped wild eyes on
Do I post afar
O'er the grim horizon.^
Nay! Near Truth will blur;
So the far seas over
I must haste from her
To return and love her.
Round the world the light
That I seek—that shall find me
Was a lamp last night
In my home behind me !
[8ê]
THE FEAST OF THE GODS
From a high tower I gazed at night
On a great city hazed with light
And humming like a dynamo life's various^ vibrant,
human strain.
Domed by the blue and star-bright skies,
The crowds beneath my peering eyes
Seemed vast, dark shuttles, to and fro plying the threads
of joy and pain.
Of j oy and pain, of death and birth !
The whole refrain of this our Earth
Thrilled me as though my nerves were wires tuned to the
universal theme.
And the great light below increased
As if the gods were all at feast! . . .
A thousand multicolored fires swam on the glamour of
my dream,—
For veils fell slowly from my sight.
I stood beneath a Roman night
Within a torchlit, templed square. (God, and how long,
how long ago !)
In the square's midst were tables spread.
A great proud awning flapped o'erhead.
And all the gods were feasting there, with servers
hasting to and fro.
[83]
THE FALCONER OF GOD
As from the ground_, and all around.
There swelled a solemn chanting sound.
Yet all untouched their banquet lay. The gods moved
not. Their feast grew cold.
Stranger their utter stillness grew.
Till piercingly I gazed—and knew
What powers had swayed that ancient day,—blank
images of bronze and gold!
And still that solemn chanting sound
Swelled on the air and wrapped me round.
Till shudderingly the vision passed. Once more my city
sprang to light.
Its crowds like shuttles plied again
The multitudinous fates of men.
And ponderously I felt its vast and diverse pulses shake
the night.
Despite the poet, sage, and priest.
There the old gods sat all at feast!
There in that haze of light below, oflPered the best all
men can give !
Blank images of gold and stone.
Hearing this whirling world intone
One psalter. . . . Will we never know these gods are
dead, and cannot live ?
[84]
THE SUCCESSOR
I closed the door behind me.
"Now, she needs you. Come!"
Said my rasping voice. "So! You find me!"
Said his great eyes, glaring dumb. . . .
"She has said it. If you but reach to her
One reluctant hand
She is yours !" . . . "Then, take this speech to her—
And understand!"
"I have found this life no garden,"
Said his voice in the gloom.
"Taunts that scar and hates that harden;
Not a whit of sun or bloom.
Why then should I go back to her
For love long dead?
Though she chirrup all hearts in a pack to her—
Not mine!" he said.
"Young man, young man so froward
With your easy pity.
Think you that I turned the coward
When her whimsies took the city?
But, when twisting that or this to her
Approved design.
Could I ogle and blow a kiss to her,
With love like mine ?
[85]
THE FALCONER OF GOD
"Now a selfish and pleasant liver,
Am I that—If
Love's a deep eternal river
Or the shallows soon run dry.
Though dreams maunder, though flesh burn to her.
For her own soul's sake
There is no way to return to her
After our mistake!
"Now at ease do I drift and dawdle.
Quaff* life free and glad.^
But love's wine as a sick heart's caudle—
There's the draught that drives men mad !
And my whims, and what were they to her ?
Like as I thought hers
No doubt ! . . . So I bade good-day to her.
Call them off, the curs!"
That was all. The bitter cry of it !
As I left at last
I pondered, "These great hearts die of it,
Man or woman, so miscast."
Yet—his chance—and 'twas naught he sought of her;
So my heart sang free
To the yearning, burning thought of her.
Where she waited—^me !
[86]
THE CARPERS
(An Aspect)
Always the worm in the bud, the fly in the amber,
Something your delicate soul
Snifli^s at and turns from, while men in raw multitudes
clamber
Upward from famine and fear and oppression and pain
Led by red beacons and white and great dreams of a goal,
Through anguish again and again!
Always the finicking touch, the too-critical spasm.
The highly superior sneer,—
Here, in a world that is cleft by black chasm on chasm.
Here, where emotions alone give the courage to sweep
Wrong from its stronghold, and triumph o'er baseness
and fear,—
Emotions you speak of as "cheap" !
You will be posed and correct in the ultimate Sheol,
Cynical, shallow, and vain.
Far too well-groomed and well-taught to be touched by
the real.
Bragging your sense of "adjustment," deploring the
rage.
Unrest, and despair and new faith of us, "coarser of
grain,"—
"Carpers" at odds with our age !
[87]
A STREET MOTHER
My eyes were staring high
Aloft for dreams of rapture and of awe,
And she—she passed me by
Before I saw!
A roaring gulch of fire
The street,—and brilliant stars possessed its skies.
But purer with their passionate desire.
Her dauntless eyes I
The profile calm and strong.
Yet wistful with the hint of alien race . . .
Oh, like a battle-song
Her thrilling face !
The coarse, dark hair above the tawdry shawl.
The mothering bosom where her baby clung,—
And all the burden of her life, with all
Her blood so young!
Her face uplifted in the blue arc-light,
She moved with that high courage none would mark,—
Turned at the corner, wonderful and bright
Against the dark,—
And, as her grave lips parted, and her eyes
Sought her child's eyes with whispers soft and sweet.
All the proud stars, the vast imperial skies
Swooned at her feet!
[88]
HIS WORST ENEMY
He^ who had a sword to swing.
Ever went ablundering
Into cul-de-sacs.
Found the way was black, and then
Had, perforce, to hack again
(With small sword-room !) back again
To the beaten tracks.
All the knaves beset him there ;
Yet they could not fret him there
When his sword was drawn.
He himself must beat himself.
He alone defeat himself.
Lord, how he could cheat himself
When the mood was on!
So they gave him rope enough;
Dodging him, with hope enough
He would pull the noose.
None but feared the thrust of him
When they roused the lust of him;
Yet—there lies the dust of him,—
Played with—fast and loose!
Let the grave absorb it quite !
What a blazing orbit might
Not his sword have whirled;
[89]
THE FALCONER OF GOD
Carving out a name for him,
Purple robes and fame for him.
Plaudits and acclaim for him,
Fearing not the World!
But some foible nursed in him
Spread disaster cursed in him.
Like a flame it ran
Withering every branch for him,—
Wounds that none could staunch for him!
Nor might ships re-launch for him
When the end began!
So to vile sterility
Sank his possibility,—
Dust upon the shelf!
He alone could cheat himself.
So at last he beat himself
Striving to defeat himself
Through his other self!
[90]
"POOR GIRL"
There was an earthquake in my heart—and I
Have been what I have been.
Now, there's the long street, and this bitter sky.
Crying "Unclean! Unclean!"
But you're more swine—you—^you who have withstood,—•
So smug, so self-sufficed!
Oh, there's a thing called "frenzy" in my blood
Snarls at your frock-coat Christ!
"Seduction," "the starvation wage"? Not me!
I seemed to flower in flame.
And so my "soul is lost eternally,"
You say. You "view my shame."
Oh, can that guflf ! If I'm no startled hare,
I'm caught. I know your traps.
I took my chance. You've got me in the snare,
"Society,"—perhaps !
Call me "poor girl," and psalm-sing through your nose.
The harlot—she gets hers.
'Think I should fawn on God then, I suppose?
Y ou whited sepulchres !
Some poet will even put me in a song
And sell it, just "to live."
People buy books to read why I "go wrong."
I gave^—and I forgive.
[91]
THE SNOB
He said not even nothing very welL
After you spoke he reached, and slammed a door
Within his mind . . . and ponderous silence fell.
There were few things his sneer could not ignore.
His talk was obvious and trite enough.
None missed it then, and no one ever will.
But it must puzzle God to "call his bluff"—
That horrible, complacent "keeping still" !
[9t]
THE CATS OF COBBLESTONE STREET
Close the high-stooped houses stood
In that quiet neighborhood.
Undisturbed by trucks or vans.
Pushcarts with their fruit and pans.
Scavengers with sticks and bags.
Or the junk-man crying "Rags!"—
No, not even gutter-brats.
But, at night, it swarmed with cats !
Slinking cats and blinking cats.
Cats to chase and cats to clamber,
(Eyes like topaz, eyes like amber).
Round about each garbage can.
In and out of areas ran,—
Scrawny cats, with deep aversion
To the Maltese or the Persian
(Soft and sleek that purr and mew
Where the wealthy avenue
Boasts its brownstone "No-admittance !"
To all ragged stranger kittens.)
Here, as street-lamps sparked and sputtered
O'er the cobbled street unguttered.
Shade to glare and glare to shade
Moved the feline promenade,—
Brindled, blacker than the Devil,
Toms and tabbies in a revel.
Like famUiars known to witches.
Like the mouser brought such riches
[9S]
THE FALCONER OF GOD
To Dick Whittington in history.
Like Egyptian cats of mystery.
Crouching, scampering, stalking, squawling.
Spitting fire or caterwauling.
Licking sores, rampant or sleeping,—
'Faith, it set my skin to creeping
As I viewed them, perched on high
In my window next the sky !
Every window blankly glistened.
And the dark street slept—and listened.
Clap-clap-clap! A footfall faint.
Then the Elevated's plaint.
Grinding on the curve afar.
Then a distant surface-car
Jarring past; a "cop's" night-stick
Rapping quickly on the brick;
Meanwhile—cats—in swirling mazes,
'Mid the harbor-fog's night hazes
That came seeping from the river
Setting dainty dreams ashiver
To the long lugubrious moaning
Of the river-craft intoning,—
Cats that overflowed each curbing
With an aimlessness disturbing.
Prowling, yowling,—yowling^ prowling.
With such grinning, and such scowling !
Cat LucuUuses that sought,
'Mid much refuse, feasts unbought ;
Cats that wooed and cats that fought!
[94]
THE CATS OF COBBLESTONE STREET
Oh^ for some black plague of rats
That would rid my street of cats !
They would slither 'twixt your feet.
Coming home along the street.
As you fumbled for your keys
They would stalk by twos and threes
Like fierce bandits at your back.
Wildly whiskered, cloaked in black.
They would haunt the steps thereafter
Spreading scandal, faint with laughter
Of a still, demoniac kind
That was never to my mind.
And their cries ! So strangely human,—
Gasping child—heart-broken woman!
So one's dreams (each dawn upbraided)
With gigantic cats paraded;
Cats that walked the moonlit sill
In a pageant never still.
Cats that, writhing, seemed to rise
From the street and fill the skies
Like a locust-cloud by day.
Like a feline Milky Way,
Where the moon, great puss of space.
With one cloud-paw washed its face.
Licked its lips and grinned again
Down on scampering mice and men I
[95]
THE FOREIGN SAILOR
This is what I heard from a foreign sailor,
A foreign sailor looking out to sea.
Sitting on a string-pieee where the wharves were
crowded.
Crowded with the cargoes of an hundred lands.
Golden were his earrings, and his eyes were clouded.
Clouded with the memories he shared with me.
This is what I heard from a foreign sailor
Whispering, and gesturing with lean, dark hands.
"Beirut and Alexandria, Port Said and Zanzibar !
The Straits of Bonifacio stretch dim behind and far.
Across the blue Tyrrhenian Sea, Messina's Straits will
make you free.
With spices heavy-laden.
Of the glaring Gulf of Aden,
Of Hongkong, or Tokio, or wheresoe'er you'd be!
"With amber and tobacco bars according to your needs.
Bright calico for petticoats, or gaudy-colored beads,
Adown the coast of Senegal (if you are bound to see it
all),
I know the nights and days of it,—
Can show you all the ways of it
By sunrise and moonrise and tides that rise and fall,
[96]
THE FOREIGN SAILOR
"This is a land called Africa, a land that I have seen.
Palavering with black alkaids, with kafir and bushreen.
Where striped hyaenas howl at dark, haunting the land
of Mungo Park,
And the sun's as hot as Tophet,
And Mohammed is their prophet
In slave-marts and villages with houses built of bark.
"Well, 'La illah el allah—(as the good disciple saith)
Mahomet rasowl allahi!' (for evidence of faith!)
Long since I sickened to behold the coasts of ivory and
gold;
And the things that I have seen in
The bight of bloody Benin,
Like hot sun and black plague they change and make you
old.
"But—I was born in far Cathay when this bright world
was new.
In the kingdom Kesmacoran, or the city Kanbalu!
Red sandalwood I traded thence,—white Abyssian frank¬
incense,
Camelopards from overseas
And Madagascar ambergris
And roc's eggs and ivory, amid the Tartar tents.
"And how they hunt the foxes and martens from a sledge
In the region of great darkness at the world's remotest
edge
I know, and how they meet the rains and snows on
gloomy Scythian plains !
[97]
THE FALCONER OF GOD
Their yelling hordes have led me.
And their mares'-milk often fed me
In strange dreams—in true dreams—in legend-rich
domains !
"Beirut and Alexandria, Port Said and Zanzibar!
And at their names the centuries slip dim behind and
far.
And, through this sunset's gaudy gleams, what seems is
true,—the truth but seems !
So, lay your world's embargo
On my mind's fantastic cargo,—
But while seas run and ships ply our life's the stuff of
dreams !"
That was what I heard from a foreign sailor,
A foreign sailor looking out to sea.
Loafing by a bollard where the quays were crowded.
Crowded with the cargoes of an hundred lands.
Brilliant was the scarf he wore. His eyes were clouded.
Clouded with the memories he gave to me.
That was what I heard from a foreign sailor
Whispering, and gesturing with lean, dark hands !
[98]
MID-OCEAN
Leaning on the rail^ looking at the lead.
There was blue water under us, astern and ahead,
A million miles behind us and a million miles before
Water blue as indigo, that never knew a shore!
Where was the skyline, that shining silver thread?
Blue with blue was blended. Sea and sky were wed.
Pulsing through that blue abyss Time and Thought were
dead.
Steam? We buzzed suspended in Infinity instead.
Throbbed the silly engines. Joked the silly crew.
"Sails," with palm and needle, swore—as sailors do.
"Chips" said^ "Well, we've crossed it! We're coastin'
down the hill !"
Liar ! In that azure vault we hung stock-still.
Never was I so at peace, never so afraid.
Like the timeless time it was before the world was made.
Blue oblivion, largely lit, smiled and smiled at me,—
Atom in the void, on the Western Sea !
[99]
SUCCESS
Did you know ?
Through all the call and clamor^ did you know it would
be so?
When the thickening night was round us, and the surg¬
ing, roaring press.
And the final grapple found us on an utter loneliness—
Yes, pinnacled, enskied,—but, like mountains in their
pride.
Aloof in aching longing with the whole world to deride.
To rise and hurl us under dumb and desperate. I wonder
In the tumult, at the onslaught, if you knew you
prophesied ?
"Hold you fast!" , . .
When they fell on our defenses, when the walls were
sapped at last.
When it seemed as if disaster took the chill of death for
mate,
Ajid that lies at last were master and the issue thrown to
Fate,
When the gold, and guilty gems, of their glittering
diadems
Flashed above us, and the helots of that triumph kissed
the hems
Of the prideful robes they flaunted—^then your cry
came—quick, undaunted—
As the waves of wrath assailed you like the seas a galley
stems.
[100]
SUCCESS
But I gave—
I gave back before the battle like a poltroon and a slave,
And the bribe bit deep to scar me, and the end was sick
to see
When they triumphed like an army round a trophy on a
tree.
And I stood in my disgrace where your dead and daunt¬
less face
Beneath me smiled immortal. And I wished me in your
place.
While they pressed the flagons on me—and the chains
my choice had won me !
Then they chaired me high, and crowned me, and they
cheered me for a space.
Now I know!
Yes, and ever since that moment I have known it would
be so.
As I crackle all the vine-leaves and they sift to drifting
dust
(Since but bitter lees the wine leaves,—all the gold
o'ercrept with rust)
And hoarse voices, rasping through all my dreams where
kingdoms grew.
Jeer with triumph, plot and wrangle of the thing they
mean to do,—
And this poison, that would end it, cannot mend it,
cannot mend it.
Never mend it. Christ! I know it. And I know you
knew it too !
[101]
THE STALLION OF NIGHT
When the soft, gray-breasted Even like a carrier-dove
goes freed,
Cloaking the world with her wings as she floats from the
hand of God,
Then sunset o'erstreameth heaven like the mane of a
galloping steed.
And Man's soul is absorbed into Silence like as water
that seeps through the sod.
So with eyes on that wild horizon where all of my dreams
redeemed
Glow and take form with the colors of cloud and of
changing light,
I beheld the splendor that flies on the race that all poets
have dreamed.
Ere my ears were athrob to his hoofbeats, I looked on the
stallion of night!
His mane was the flickering golden flare of the sun as it
sank.
Black of withers and breast and haunches he loomed on
the violet West.
And the pride of his lineage was told in the strength of
each heaving flank.
And the star of the evening sparkled full-rayed on his
noble crest.
\10^\
THE STALLION OF NIGHT
He gathered and reached to his running where clouds
were the drifting smoke
Of his hooves that spurned the mountains, struck sparks
where the stars outshone,—
And dark on the skyline, stunning the hills whence
echoes broke
Hard on his drumming gallop, he surged and he thun¬
dered on !
The soul that could bestride him were heir to a heavy
helm
But prince of the farthest planets that circle about their
sun.
For only the angels may guide him, who ride for no idle
realm,—
And one poet who sang white daisies on the downs of
Storrington !
Oh, sweet and swift immortal heart "of honey and wild
fire"
That clung'st Earth's cross of Passion till thine arms
had Heaven in girth.
Archangel cohorts cleave apart for this steed of my
strong desire
To hear the new song thy stars sing as they answer thine
Anthem of Earth!
Phantasmal—a vision—^to vanish dislimned as a film
from the sight ?
Aye, dazed by such star-bright Heavens I must turn from
their splendor soon.
[lOS]
THE FALCONER OF GOD
Yet my heart may never banish this dream of the stallion
of night
Who stamps at the fords of the starlight, and neighs at
the gates of the moon!
[104]
THE INTREPID MARINER
Shelley speaks:
Beyond Helvetius' dim beginning dawn
And Rousseau's rationalistic premises
And even Godwin's "Justice" I can soar.
Yet sometimes through my empyrean borne
Comes the far throbbing of great lonely wings.
And then their nearer thunder, as they take
Form, and the vast ghost of a muffled God
Sinks through the aether pass me with a wail
As from a thousand throats of Humankind
Dirging his dark descendence.
Does it mean
A bound to Man's perfectibility.
Meting my vision with unvarying Law?
Ah, is it possible to wing too high
Till Being chills in the intense inane,—
Until the veins of this rich, human heart
Congeal with ichor not for veins of Man,
Icy with godlike passion? (Theirs was ice
Despite the amorous heat of elder days.)
Yet—"every heart contains perfection's germ."
When have I aught but travailed for the world?
How comes this hateful film across my life
Freezing each mortal impulse, turning Right
To guise of Wrong? They hate me who should love.
I toil like Sisyphus against the stone.
And still their hearts are stone,—and still I toil,—
[105]
THE FALCONER OF GOD
And their hearts break and rain their blood on me.
And arms cling round me, crying, "Cold as death !
Cold! Coldr
If I am constant to my star,
I only, and the others quail and fail.
Can I humiliate mvself to them
Who bear the signal of that brighter morn
Waiting the human day? I have been proud.
I have been weak. And ever have been strange.
But say I have been constant ! Harriet ! Harriet I
Say that I have been constant! I protest
Against the dark indictment of your eyes.
If I have done you wrong would not my soul
Render its verdict now.?—my reason scream
Out on such self-deception? But I find
Only Creation's sneering iteration
"For an ideal of love, an ideal of love.
An ideal of love !" . . . It recks not. . . .
How this gray
Blank sea-fog thickens ! There's the thunder-squall,
Charles Vivian ! Williams, do you feel the drops ?
Scarce out from Leghorn, and the "Ariel" . . . Hark !
There !... on our quarter . . . God, they'll run us
down!
[106]
WINTER
Pointed icicles hung on my porch in the moonlight
Glittering bright.
Crusted snow on the lawn^ mounded snow in the road¬
way,—
Silence and night!
Crouched little houses, where windows were blank, and
the sleepers
Breathed or lay still!
Into my heart stole the silent fruition of winter,—
Warmth in the chill.
Often and often my heart too hath known its deep winter
Of pride white and cold.
Drifted with bitterness, clogged with its vanities,
smothered
With Self, from of old.
Not a withdrawing in chill for a nobler fruition
As this of the Earth;
Only for sensitive whim, or a pose superficial,
A cynical mirth !
Now, of the hearts that are mine, that are sleeping above
me.
Lord, let me learn.
Ere to thy splendor of stars, thine ineffable moonlight,
I must return !
[107]
THE FALCONER OF GOD
Lest in my Spring I have put on the armor of Winter,
Following a wraith,—
Lest a deep cold hath benumbed me forever and ever
In my unfaith!
[108]
THE SEA DREAM
To-night the loud waters, the loud and crying waters,
the wild and silvered waters of the sea are in my
mind.
Their booming and their thundering on sands the waves
are plundering, the high foaming combers in
charging ranks aligned.
I strip on the shingle and I race to the kiss of them, the
cold beryl welter of wave on swelling wave.
The desperate rush and hiss of them, the drenching,
blinding bliss of them, the kingly, roaring waters,
so strong my soul to save !
Oh, high along the sands, where nods not any flower,
the silver, crumbling moon lights the silver webs
they spread !
With passion, with power she sways their splendid hour,
and a man's heart leaps to meet them, as quickened
from the dead.
I slough the gray, ungracious and soiled and tattered
seeming of the might that was my mind. Now,
oh, better far to be
At dawn afloat and dreaming where the sea-birds waken
screaming on the green-gleaming rollers far out,
far out at sea !
For there is deep silence from all the wrangling voices,
and there is clean rapture undaunted by desire,
Where the world swings and poises, and the flashing blue
rejoices, and, misty on the sea-line, some foreland
glints with fire,—
{109 ]
THE FALCONER OF GOD
With fire aripple round me, as the magic sun and blinding
sweeps high through mists of rose, and the smell
of dawn grows keen.
Time's mills, for their grinding, must wait upon my find¬
ing, ere I return to cities to sing what I have seen !
To sing of the faces that meet the midnight swimmer who
breasts the billow strongly through silver sequins
bright,
Tül moonbeams filter dimmer, and white the faces
glimmer of mermen and mermaids around him in
the night.
With conch-shells spumy-blowing and moonshine tresses
flowing, and green eyes, and gray eyes, and lips
like coral wet.
All gleaming and glowing, and seines phantasmal throw¬
ing to maze the breathing human in many a
ghostly net;
To sing of that spirit who brings the breeze ere dawning ;
a cloud-enfolded angel, a flash of j ewelled wings ;
Who clears night's sable awning from waves that shudder
fawning to heel, like hounds that scuflBe about the
feet of kings;
To sing of haunted waters, of sacred, moon-drenched
waters, the gold of morning waters,—that fade
away in light. . . .
For walls are still around me. The dawn hath only
found me a thrall to iron cities, sea-dreaming
through the night !
[110]
RECALLED
Sing of love, and what sing I ?
That the burnished marshes lie
Yonder 'neath a poppied sky;
That the eldritch wind makes free
With the wayward soul of me;
That yon gnarled and crookback tree
Points the way to visions new
Past the luring sea's keen blue,—
That the sunset thrills me through !
Sing of love^ and what sing I ?
To the dusk's soft symphony
I would be in brother tone.
Love can leave no man alone!
Forth fare I, companioned now
By each swayed, harmonic bough,
By each prescient star aflame.
Yet, with twilight, how she came
Whispering in each breeze, and bowed
From each battlement of cloud.
"You would shut me out, content
With a barren firmament?
See, I call you softly !"
Lo,
Thus I heard her—and I go.
Sing of love, and so sing I !
What worth earth or sea or sky
If her little mortal word
So could still them, and be heard ?
[Ill]
THE ONE
You are that belovèd thing
Which, through all my seeking
In silence or in speaking,
I would find, and finding sing!
You are that belovèd air
Which, o'er all the chiming
Of music or of rhyming.
Reconciles my long despair.
You are that belovèd sight
Which, beyond life's fairest
Or rich beauty's rarest.
Fills my heart with true delight.
You are that belovèd place
Where, past all the portals
To the pomp of mortals.
Love perceives the courts of grace.
And what splendors more,—ah, well!
Though I often fashion
Songs of praise and passion.
Now—I look—^but cannot tell !
[112]
THE SUMMONS
I
To-day the dreamy distances
Of grape-stained, purple hills
Spun out thin, hazy mists that ran
To greet far plains where streams began
World-faring from their rills.
And, oh, my heart was singing, dear !
The wood, the wind, the sun
With age-old scents my nostrils thrilled.
With fierce, young strength my being filled.
The hills and I were one!
For, follow—follow—follow!
The sweet wind calls to me.
Hill-rim to misty hollow
'Tis follow—follow—follow!
And oh, the far hill crest that hails
The first gust of the sea !
II
To-day a pagan wreath wear I
Of goldenrod and corn.
To-day the russet world is clad
In Bacchic mirth to make me glad.
The joy of souls reborn.
[113]
THE FALCONER OF GOD
Oh^ glad my heart is faring, dear,
Through wood and wind and sun !
The oils that flame yon western sky
Are not more brave—more brave than I.
The hills and I are one !
For, follow—follow—follow!
The leaf-crisp highway calls.
Hill-rim to misty hollow
'Tis follow—follow—follow!
The drunken wind's mad vagrant I
Beyond the city's walls !
Ill
To-day to cloud-blown sky above
My reckless gage is flung.
To-day a creaking highroad tree,
A bonfire's blaze shall frantic me
To ecstasies unsung.
For, oh, my heart is singing, dear.
With wood and sun and wind!
Ho, bark-brown dryads of the trees—
Ho, nereids of the cresting seas !
The world is left behind.
'Tis follow—follow—follow
The sword-flame of the sky !
Hill-rim to misty hollow
The cry goes, Follow—follow!
And vagabond—thrice vagabond—
Oh, vagabond am I !
[114]
THE PEARL DIVER
I had an image of the bright^ bare Day
Like a tall diver poised above the surge
Of ebon nighty where its vast, fluctuant verge
Lapped against heaven's ramparts broad and gray.
Flickering with ghostly fires, beneath him lay
That gulf where light must drown that light emerge.
His nimbused radiance stooped to dare its gurge.
Plunged, and flashed deep through showers of starry
spray.
Swift his transfigured contours clove the dark,
SuflTusing fathom on fathom of night aswirl
With tints of rose, all tremoring into one.
Till from cloud floors he plucked a filmy pearl
And held it high for earth and heaven to mark,—
The cold globe of the winter-shrunken sun.
[T15]
THE MAN
All our light mockeries
Have ever paled before Thy white desire.
Oh, keeper of the keys
Of earth and water, air and fire.
Render of all the world's vain panoplies
To find beneath the true heart in the liar!
Consorter with the base.
The outcast, thieves and harlots, fools and knaves,—
»
Pure well of mighty grace
And mercy on the sinners and the slaves,—
Strong warrior and strong runner of the race.
Challenging even Death among his graves !
Thy creeds outwear their zest.
Now it is dogma and not love they mete.
All we can do is jest
And toss Thy name for cursing in the street.
And all Thy nations shudder in unrest.
And Thy wild truth fares far with blood-stained feet.
Smug speech of Thee is heard.
As "This is He!" or "Nay! This likelier one."
But not Thy word—Thy word—
Thy vast example, that too blinding sun.
Whereby these nineteen centuries are stirred
Darkly and deep with knowledge just begun.
[116]
THE MAN
Thy patience still is great.
Who stirredst the waters never to be stilled.
Through Thee we recreate
This world, until those things so strongly willed
In Thy vast heart bring forth the true estate
Of heart and soul, with all Thine hopes fulfilled.
And if men say "How prove
That life, that self, through all of history's lies ?"
Supreme Idea of Love
And Service, where before did Man devise
Such clean, clear courage, half a world to move.
Brooding no metaphysic Paradise ?
Gautama, Socrates,
All the "seditious" leaders of all ages
Pale by Thy side. All these
Are gathered and transfigured in Thy pages.
Read in the spirit and the mind agrees
In awe and light and vision that presages.
Twist Thee and turn they will
To all interpretations weak or base.
Thy metaphors are still
Nests of sharp swords for fools in every place.
And Thine interpreters are quick to kill
Thy truth, that binds the depths and heights of Space.
This—^with a vision dim,—
Eyes that can arrogate no mystic chrism,—
This do I think of Him,
[117]
THE FALCONER OF GOD
The valiant spirit's one and sure baptism.
The white light of the world wherein there swim
All the strange hues refracted from Life's prism.
So far the boundaries gleam
Of Space—or Heaven—where Man shall overtake
Him,
And this stupendous dream
Engulf Man's thought and into glory wake him,
I cease, lest I blaspheme
A power Man knows not, that doth rend and shake
him !
[118]
THE GOOD COUNSEL
Ride thou for the crest.
Beauty to thy breast.
Life's alert unrest
Tugging at the bridle-rein !
Now by nothing cowed
Lift above the crowd
Kinder sight than proud.
Humor beating down disdain.
Silvern to thine ear.
Heavenly bells to hear
Ring and ripple clear
Through the clouds of thine ascent.
On this narrow edge
Where but eagles fledge.
Though the thunder's sledge
Crack the lowering firmament.
Pine and mountain-ash
Splintered in that flash
Bid thine heart abash
Not one whit—nor do thou swerve.
Though beset by wrath.
On the tortuous path
From one fear it hath!
All is planned to test thy nerve.
[119]
THE FALCONER OF GOD
Is it hard to hold.
Through the numbing cold.
Onward, blithe and bold.
Relishing the thrills of pain.
And with sigh nor groan
Upward to no throne.
For the light alone
In thy soul—that seems to wane?
Yet, what would'st thou here.
On this swarming sphere.
Save to feed one clear
Light within, as best thou may'st?
Save each day again.
Fresh with strength for ten.
To achieve with men
Through the trials God hath graced?
Holding not aloof.
In thy light's behoof
Daring, showing proof
That good heart is thine and will;
Littleness abhorred;
Wary of reward;
Bidding light afford
Farther light beyond thee still.
Thus, with love for one
And her love alone
More than lip may own,
{m ]
THE GOOD COUNSEL
Raising her who raiseth thee^
Strive nor apprehend!
Make thy heart thy friend!
Look beyond the end
For that beauty yet to be!
[ m J