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 AND OTHER POEMS 
 
 BY 
 
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THE STAR-TREADER 
 AND OTHER POEMS 
 
THE STAR-TREADER 
 AND OTHER POEMS 
 
 BY 
 
 CLARK ASHTON SMITH 
 
 A. M. ROBERTSON 
 
 STOCKTON STREET AT UNION SQUARE 
 SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA 
 
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 COPYRIGHT. 19U 
 
 BY 
 A. M. ROBERTSON 
 
 Gin from 
 the Estate of Miss Ruth Futnam 
 Sept.l4,lS31 
 
 "Jlbllopolu "Press 
 
 San 7ranctico 
 
^ TO MY MOTHER 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 NERO I 
 
 CHANT TO SIRIUS 5 
 
 THE STAR-TREADER 6 
 
 THE MORNING POOL II 
 
 THE NIGHT FOREST 12 
 
 THE MAD WIND I4 
 
 SONG TO OBLIVION 1 5 
 
 MEDUSA 16 
 
 ODE TO THE ABYSS 18 
 
 THE SOUL OF THE SEA 21 
 
 THE BUTTERFLY 22 
 
 THE PRICE 26 
 
 THE MYSTIC MEANING 27 
 
 ODE TO MUSIC 28 
 
 THE LAST NIGHT 3 1 
 
 ODE ON IMAGINATION 32 
 
 THE WIND AND THE MOON 35 
 
 LAMENT OF THE STARS 36 
 
 THE MAZE OF SLEEP 39 
 
 THE WINDS 40 
 
 THE MASK OF FORSAKEN GODS .... 42 
 
 A SUNSET 49 
 
 THE CLOUD-ISLANDS 50 
 
 THE SNOW-BLOSSOMS 52 
 
 THE SUMMER MOON 53 
 
 THE RETURN OF HYPERION 54 
 
 LETHE 55 
 
 ATLANTIS 56 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE UNREVEALED 57 
 
 THE ELDRITCH DARK 58 
 
 THE CHERRY-SNOWS 59 
 
 FAIRY LANTERNS 60 
 
 NIRVANA 61 
 
 THE NEMESIS OF SUNS 62 
 
 WHITE DEATH 63 
 
 RETROSPECT AND FORECAST 64 
 
 SHADOW OF NIGHTMARE 65 
 
 THE SONG OF A COMET 66 
 
 THE RETRIBUTION 69 
 
 TO THE DARKNESS 7© 
 
 A DREAM OF BEAUTY 72 
 
 THE DREAM BRIDGE 73 
 
 A LIVE-OAK LEAF 74 
 
 PINE NEEDLES 75 
 
 TO THE SUN 76 
 
 THE FUGITIVES 78 
 
 AVERTED MALEFICE 79 
 
 THE MEDUSA OF THE SKIES 80 
 
 A DEAD CITY 81 
 
 THE SONG OF THE STARS 82 
 
 COPAN 85 
 
 A SONG OF DREAMS 86 
 
 THE BALANCE 88 
 
 SATURN 89 
 
 FINIS 99 
 
NERO 
 
 This Rome, that was the toil of many men, 
 The consummation of laborious years — 
 Fulfilment's crown to visions of the dead, 
 And image of the wicle desire of kings — 
 Is made my darkling dream's effulgency, 
 Fuel of vision, brief embodiment 
 Of wandering will, and wastage of the strong 
 Fierce ecstacy of one tremendous hour, 
 When ages piled on ages were a flame 
 To all the years behind, and years to be. 
 
 Yet any sunset were as much as this, 
 Save for the music forced by hands of fire 
 From out the hard strait silences which bind 
 Dull Matter's tongueless mouth — a music pierced 
 With the tense voice of Life, more quick to cry 
 Its agony — and save that I believed 
 The radiance redder for the blood of men. 
 Destruction hastens and intensifies 
 The process that is Beauty, manifests 
 Ranges of form unknown before, and gives 
 Motion and voice and hue where otherwise 
 Bleak inexpressiveness had leveled all. 
 
NERO 
 
 If one create, there is the lengthy toil; 
 
 The laboured years and days league tow'rd an end 
 
 Less than the measure of desire, mayhap, 
 
 After the sure consuming of all strength. 
 
 And strain of faculties that otherwhere 
 
 Were loosed upon enjoyment; and at last 
 
 Remains to one capacity nor power 
 
 For pleasure in the thing that he hath made. 
 
 But on destruction hangs but little use 
 
 Of time or faculty, but all is turned 
 
 To the one purpose, unobstructed, pure, 
 
 Of sensuous rapture and observant joy; 
 
 And from the intensities of death and ruin. 
 
 One draws a heightened and completer life. 
 
 And both extends and vindicates himself. 
 
 I would I were a god, with all the scope 
 
 Of attributes that are the essential core 
 
 Of godhead, and its visibility. 
 
 I am but emperor, and hold awhile 
 
 The power to hasten Death upon his way, 
 
 And cry a halt to worn and lagging Life 
 
 For others, but for mine own self may not 
 
 Delay the one, nor bid the other speed. 
 
 There have been many kings, and they are dead. 
 
 And have no power in death save what the wind 
 
 Confers upon their blown and brainless dust 
 
 To vex the eyeballs of posterity. 
 
 But were I god, I would be overlord 
 
 Of many kings, and were as breath to guide 
 
NERO 
 
 Their dust of destiny. And were I god, 
 Exempt from this mortality which clogs 
 Perception, and clear exercise of will. 
 What rapture it would be, if but to watch 
 Destruction crouching at the back of Time, 
 The tongueless dooms which dog the travelling 
 
 suns; 
 The vampire Silence at the breast of worlds. 
 Fire without light that gnaws the base of things. 
 And Lethe's mounting tide, that rots the stone 
 Of fundamental spheres. This were enough 
 Till such time as the dazzled wings of will 
 Came up with power's accession, scarcely felt 
 For very suddenness. Then would I urge 
 The strong contention and conflicting might 
 Of chaos and creation, matching them, 
 Those immemorial powers inimical. 
 And all their stars and gulfs subservient — 
 Dynasts of Time, and anarchs of the dark — 
 In closer war reverseless; and would set 
 New discord at the universal core, 
 A Samson-principle to bring it down 
 In one magnificence of ruin. Yea, 
 The monster Chaos wTre mine unleashed hound. 
 And all my power Destruction's own right arm ! 
 
 I would exult to mark the smouldering stars 
 Renew beneath my breath their elder fire, 
 And feed upon themselves to nothingness. 
 The might of suns, slow-paced with swinging weight 
 
NERO 
 
 Of myriad worlds, were made at my desire 
 
 One long rapidity of roaring light, 
 
 Through which the voice of Life were audible, 
 
 And singing of the immemorial dead 
 
 Whose dust is loosened into vaporous wings 
 
 With soaring wrack of systems ruinous. 
 
 And were I weary of the glare of these, 
 
 I would tear out the eyes of light, and stand 
 
 Above a chaos of extinguished suns. 
 
 That crowd, and grind, and shiver thunderously, 
 
 Lending vast voice and motion, but no ray 
 
 To the stretched silence of the blinded gulfs. 
 
 Thus would I give my godhead space and speech 
 
 For its assertion, and thus pleasure it. 
 
 Hastening the feet of Time with casts of worlds 
 
 Like careless pebbles, or with shattered suns 
 
 Brightening the aspect of Eternity. 
 
CHANT TO SIRIUS 
 
 CHANT TO SIRIUS 
 
 What nights retard thee, O Sirius ! 
 
 Thy hght is as a spear, 
 
 And thou penetratest them 
 
 As a warrior that stabbeth his foe 
 
 Even to the center of his Hfe. 
 
 Thy rays reach farther than the gulfs; 
 
 They form a bridge thereover, 
 
 That shall endure till the links of the universe 
 
 Are unfastened, and drop apart, 
 
 And all the gulfs are one. 
 
 Dissevered by suns no longer. 
 
 How strong art thou in thy place ! 
 
 Thou stridest thine orbit. 
 
 And the darkness shakes beneath thee, 
 
 As a road that is trodden by an army. 
 
 Thou art a god. 
 
 In thy temple that is hollowed with light 
 
 In the night of infinitude. 
 
 And whose floor is the lower void ; 
 
 Thy worlds are as priests and ministers therein. 
 
 Thou furrowest space. 
 
 Even as an husbandman. 
 
 And sowest it with alien seed ; 
 
 It beareth alien fruits. 
 
 And these are thy testimony. 
 
 Even as the crops of his fields 
 
 Are the testimony of an husbandman. 
 
THE STAR-TREADER 
 
 THE STAR-TREADER 
 
 A voice cried to me in a dawn of dreams, 
 
 Saying, "Make haste: the webs of death and birth 
 
 Are brushed away, and all the threads of earth 
 
 Wear to the breaking; spaceward gleams 
 
 Thine ancient pathway of the suns, 
 
 Whose flame is part of thee; 
 
 And deeps outreach immutably 
 
 Whose largeness runs 
 
 Through all thy spirit's mystery. 
 
 Go forth, and tread unharmed the blaze 
 
 Of stars where through thou camest in old days; 
 
 Pierce without fear each vast 
 
 Whose hugeness crushed thee not within the past. 
 
 A hand strikes off the chains of Time, 
 
 A hand swings back the door of years; 
 
 Now fall earth's bonds of gladness and of tears. 
 
 And opens the strait dream to space sublime." 
 
 II 
 
 Who rides a dream, what hand shall stay ! 
 What eye shall note or measure mete 
 His passage on a purpose fleet, 
 The thread and weaving of his way ! 
 
THE STAR-TREADER 
 
 It caught me from the clasping world, 
 
 And swept beyond the brink of Sense, 
 
 My soul was flung, and poised, and whirled, 
 
 Like to a planet chained and hurled 
 
 With solar lightning strong and tense. 
 
 Swift as communicated rays 
 
 That leap from severed suns a gloom 
 
 Within whose waste no suns illume. 
 
 The winged dream fulfilled its ways. 
 
 Through years reversed and lit again 
 
 I followed that unending chain 
 
 Wherein the suns are Hnks of light; 
 
 Retraced through lineal, ordered spheres 
 
 The twisting of the threads of years 
 
 In weavings wrought of noon and night ; 
 
 Through stars and deeps I watched the dream 
 
 unroll, 
 Those folds that form the raiment of the soul. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Enkindling dawns of memory. 
 Each sun had radiance to relume 
 A sealed, disused, and darkened room 
 Within the soul's immensity. 
 Their alien ciphers shown and lit, 
 I understood what each had writ 
 Upon my spirit's scroll; 
 Again I wore mine ancient lives, 
 And knew the freedom and the gyves 
 That formed and marked my soul. 
 
THE STAR-TREADER 
 
 IV 
 
 I delved in each forgotten mind, 
 The units that had builded me, 
 Whose deepnesses before were bhnd 
 And formless as infinity — 
 Knowing again each former world — 
 From planet unto planet whirled 
 Through gulfs that mightily divide 
 Like to an intervital sleep. 
 One world I found, where souls abide 
 Like winds that rest upon a rose ; 
 Thereto they creep 
 To loose all burden of old woes. 
 And one I knew, where warp of pain 
 Is woven in the soul's attire; 
 And one, where with new loveliness 
 Is strengthened Beauty's olden chain- 
 Soft as a sound, and keen as fire — 
 In fight no darkness may depress. 
 
 Where no terrestrial dreams had trod 
 
 My vision entered undismayed. 
 
 And Life her hidden realms displayed 
 
 To me as to a curious god. 
 
 Where colored suns of systems triplicate 
 
 Bestow on planets weird, ineffable. 
 
 Green light that orbs them like an outer sea, 
 
 And large auroral noons that alternate 
 
THE STAR-TREADER 
 
 With skies like sunset held without abate, 
 
 Life's touch renewed incomprehensibly 
 
 The strains of mirth and grief's harmonious spell. 
 
 Dead passions like to stars relit 
 
 Shone in the gloom of ways forgot; 
 
 Where crownless gods in darkness sit 
 
 The day was full on altars hot. 
 
 I heard — once more a part of it — 
 
 The central music of the Pleiades, 
 
 And to Alcyone my soul 
 
 Swayed with the stars that own her song's control. 
 
 Unchallenged, glad I trod, a revenant 
 
 In worlds Edenic longly lost ; 
 
 Or walked in spheres that sing to these. 
 
 O'er space no light has crossed, 
 
 Diverse as Hell's mad antiphone uptossed 
 
 To Heaven's angelic chant. 
 
 VI 
 
 What vasts the dream went out to find ! 
 I seemed beyond the world's recall 
 In gulfs where darkness is a wall 
 To render strong Antares blind ! 
 In unimagined spheres I found 
 The sequence of my being's round — 
 Some life where firstling meed of Song, 
 The strange imperishable leaf. 
 Was placed on brows that starry Grief 
 Had crowned, and Pain anointed long; 
 
THE STAR-TREADER 
 
 Some avatar where Love 
 
 Sang like the last great star at morn 
 
 Ere Death filled all its skv; 
 
 Some life in fresher years unworn 
 
 Upon a world whereof 
 
 Peace was a robe like to the calms that lie 
 
 On pools aglow with latter spring: 
 
 There Life's pellucid surface took 
 
 Clear image of all things, nor shook 
 
 Till touch of Death's obscuring wing; 
 
 Some earlier awakening 
 
 In pristine years, when giant strife 
 
 Of forces darkly whirled 
 
 First forged the thing called Life — 
 
 Hot from the furnace of the suns — 
 
 Upon the anvil of a world. 
 
 VII 
 
 Thus knew I those anterior ones 
 Whose lives in mine were blent; 
 Till, lo! my dream, that held a night 
 Where Rigel sends no word of might, 
 Was emptied of the trodden stars. 
 And dwindled to the sun's extent — 
 The brain's familiar prison-bars, 
 And raiment of the sorrow and the mirth 
 Wrought by the shuttles intricate of earth. 
 
 lO 
 
THE MORNING POOL 
 
 THE MORNING POOL 
 
 All night the pool held mysteries, 
 
 Vague depths of night that lay in dream, 
 
 Where phantoms of the pale-white stars 
 Wandered, with darkness-tangled gleam. 
 
 And now it holds the limpid light 
 And shadeless azure of the skies. 
 
 Wherein, like some enclasped gem. 
 The morning's golden glamour lies. 
 
 II 
 
THE NIGHT FOREST 
 
 THE NIGHT FOREST 
 
 Incumbent seemingly 
 
 On the jagged points of peaks 
 
 That end the visible west, 
 
 The rounded moon yet floods 
 
 The valleys hitherward 
 
 With fall of torrential light, 
 
 Ere from the overmost 
 
 Aggressive mountain-cusp. 
 
 She slip to the lower dark. 
 
 But here, on an eastward slope 
 
 Pointed and thick with its pine. 
 
 The forest scarcely remembers 
 
 Her light that is gone as a vision 
 
 Or ecstasy too poignant 
 
 And perilous for duration. 
 
 Withdrawn in what darker web 
 
 Or dimension of dream I know not. 
 
 In silence pre-occupied 
 
 And solemnest rectitude 
 
 The pines uprear, and no sigh 
 
 For the rapture of moonlight past, 
 
 Comes from their bosom of boughs. 
 
 Far in their secrecy 
 
 I stand, and the burden of dusk 
 
 Dull, but at times made keen 
 
 12 
 
THE NIGHT FOREST 
 
 With tingle of fragrances. 
 
 Falls on me as a veil 
 
 Between my soul and the world. 
 
 What veil of trance, O pines, 
 Divides you from my soul. 
 That I feel but enter not 
 Your distances of dream ? 
 Ah! strange, imperative sense 
 Of world-deep mystery 
 That shakes from out your boughs- 
 A fragrance yet more keen, 
 Pressing upon the mind. 
 
 The wind shall question you 
 Of the dream I may not gain, 
 And all its sombreness 
 And depth immeasurable, 
 Shall tremble away in sound 
 Of speech not understood 
 That my heart must break to hear. 
 
 13 
 
THE MAD WIND 
 
 THE MAD WIND 
 
 What hast thou seen, O wind, 
 
 Of beauty or of terror 
 
 Surpassing, denied to us. 
 
 That with precipitate wings, 
 
 Mad and ecstatical, 
 
 Thou spurnest the hollows and trees 
 
 That offer thee refuge of peace, 
 
 And findest within the sky 
 
 No safety nor respite 
 
 From the memory of thy vision ? 
 
 14 
 
SONG TO OBLIVION 
 
 SONG TO OBLIVION 
 
 Art thou more fair 
 
 For all the beauty gathered up in thee, 
 
 As gold and gems within some lightless sea ? 
 
 For light of flowers, and bloom of tinted air. 
 
 Art thou more fair? 
 
 Art thou more strong 
 
 For powers that turn to thee as unto sleep ? 
 
 For world and star that find thy ways more deep 
 
 Than light may tread, too wearisome for song. 
 
 Art thou more strong? 
 
 Nay ! thou art bare 
 
 For power and beauty on thine impotence 
 Bestowed by fruitful Time's magnificence; 
 For fruit of all things strong, and bloom of fair, 
 Thou still art bare. 
 
 15 
 
MEDUSA 
 
 MEDUSA 
 
 As drear and barren as the glooms of Death, 
 It lies, a windless land of livid dawns. 
 Nude to a desolate firmament, with hills 
 That seem the fleshless earth's outjutting ribs. 
 And plains whose face is crossed and rivelled deep 
 With gullies twisting like a serpent's track. 
 The leprous touch of Death is on its stones, 
 Where for his token visible, the Head 
 Is throned upon a heap of monstrous rocks, 
 Grotesque in everlasting ugliness, 
 Within a hill-ravine, that splits athwart 
 Like some old, hideous and unhealing scar. 
 Her lethal beauty crowned with twining snakes 
 That mingle with her hair, the Gorgon reigns. 
 Her eyes are clouds wherein Death's lightnings 
 
 lurk. 
 Yet, even as men that seek the glance of Life, 
 The gazers come, where, coiled and serpent-swift. 
 Those levins wait. As 'round an altar- base 
 Her victims lie, distorted, blackened forms 
 Of postured horror smitten into stone, — 
 Time caught in meshes of Eternity — 
 Drawn back from dust and ruin of the years. 
 And given to all the future of the world. 
 The land is claimed of Death: the daylight comes 
 
 i6 
 
MEDUSA 
 
 Half-strangled in the changing webs of cloud 
 That unseen spiders of bewildered winds 
 Weave and unweave across the lurid sun 
 In upper air. Below, no zephyr comes 
 To break with life the circling spell of death. 
 Long vapor-serpents twist about the moon, 
 And in the windy murkness of the sky. 
 The guttering stars are wild as candle-flames 
 That near the socket. 
 
 Thus the land shall be, 
 And Death shall wait, throned in Medusa's eyes. 
 Till, in the irremeable webs of night 
 The sun is snared, and the corroded moon 
 A dust upon the gulfs, and all the stars 
 Rotted and fall'n like rivets from the sky, 
 Letting the darkness down upon all things. 
 
 17 
 
ODE TO THE ABYSS 
 
 ODE TO THE ABYSS 
 
 O many-gulfed, unalterable one, 
 
 Whose deep sustains 
 
 Far-drifting world and sun, 
 
 Thou wast ere ever star put out on thee; 
 
 And thou shalt be 
 
 When never world remains; 
 
 When all the suns' triumphant strength and pride 
 
 Is sunk in voidness absolute, 
 
 And their majestic music wide 
 
 In vaster silence rendered mute. 
 
 And though God's will were night to dusk the blue, 
 
 And law to cancel and disperse 
 
 The tangled tissues of the universe, 
 
 And mould the suns anew, 
 
 His might were impotent to conquer thee, 
 
 O invisible infinity ! 
 
 Thy darks subdue 
 
 All light that treads thee down a space. 
 
 Exulting o'er thy deeps. 
 
 The cycles die, and lo ! thy darkness reaps 
 
 The flame of mightiest stars; 
 
 In aeon-implicating wars 
 
 Thou tearest planets from their place; 
 
 Worlds granite-spined 
 
 To thine erodents yield 
 
ODE TO THE ABYSS 
 
 Their treasures centrally confined 
 
 In crypts by continental pillars sealed. 
 
 What suns and worlds have been thy prey 
 
 Through unhorizoned stretches of the Past ! 
 
 What spheres that now essay 
 
 Time's undimensioned vast, 
 
 Shall plunge forgotten to thy gloom at length, 
 
 With life that cried its query of the Night 
 
 To ears with silence filled ! 
 
 What worlds unborn shall dare thy strength, 
 
 Girt by a sun's unwearied might, 
 
 And dip to darkness when the sun is stilled ! 
 
 O incontestable Abyss, 
 
 What light in thine embrace of darkness sleeps- 
 
 What blaze of a sidereal multitude 
 
 No peopled world is left to miss ! 
 
 What motion is at rest within thy deeps — 
 
 What gyres of planets long become thy food — 
 
 Worlds unconstrainable. 
 
 That plunged therein to peace, 
 
 Like tempest-worn and crew-forsaken ships; 
 
 And suns that fell 
 
 To huge and ultimate eclipse. 
 
 And lasting gyre-release ! 
 
 What sound thy gulfs of silence hold ! 
 
 Stupendous thunder of the meeting stars. 
 
 And crash of orbits that diverged. 
 
 With Life's thin song are merged ; 
 
 Thy quietudes enfold 
 
 19 
 
ODE TO THE ABYSS 
 
 Paean and threnody as one, 
 
 And battle-blare of unremembered wars 
 
 With festal songs 
 
 Sung in the Romes of ruined spheres, 
 
 And music that belongs 
 
 To younger, undiscoverable years 
 
 With words of yesterday. 
 
 Ah, who may stay 
 
 Thy soundless world-devouring tide ? 
 
 O thou whose hands pluck out the light of stars, 
 
 Are worlds grown but as fruit for thee ? 
 
 May no sufficient bars, 
 
 Nor marks inveterate abide 
 
 To baffle thy persistency? 
 
 Still and unstriving now. 
 
 What plottest thou. 
 
 Within thy universe-ulterior deeps. 
 
 Dark as the final lull of suns ? 
 
 What new advancement of the night 
 
 On citadels of stars around whose might 
 
 Thy slow encroachment runs, 
 
 And crouching silence, thunder-potent, sleeps? ' 
 
 20 
 
THE SOUL OF THE SEA 
 
 THE SOUL OF THE SEA 
 
 A wind comes in from the sea, 
 And rolls through the hollow dark 
 Like loud, tempestuous waters. 
 As the swift recurrent tide. 
 It pours adown the sky, 
 And rears at the cliffs of night 
 Uppiled against the vast. 
 
 Like the soul of the sea — 
 
 Hungry, unsatisfied 
 
 With ravin of shores and of ships — 
 
 Come forth on the land to seek 
 
 New prey of tideless coasts. 
 
 It raves, made hoarse with desire, 
 
 And the sounds of the night are dumb 
 
 With the sound of its passing. 
 
 21 
 
THE BUTTERFLY 
 
 THE BUTTERFLY 
 
 O wonderful and winged flow'r, 
 That hoverest in the garden-close, 
 Finding in mazes of the rose, 
 
 The beauty of a Summer hour ! 
 
 O symbol of Impermanence, 
 Thou art a word of Beauty's tongue, 
 A word that in her song is sung, 
 
 Appealing to the inner sense ! 
 
 Of that great mystic harmony, 
 All lovely things are notes and words — 
 The trees, the flow'rs, the songful birds, 
 
 The flame-white stars, the surging sea. 
 
 The aureate light of sudden dawn. 
 The sunset's crimson afterglow, 
 The summer clouds, the dazzling snow. 
 
 The brooks, the moonlight chaste and wan. 
 
 Lacking (who knows?) a cloud, a tree, 
 A streamlet's purl, the ocean's roar 
 From Nature's multitudinous store — 
 
 Imperfect were the melody ! 
 
 22 
 
THE BUTTERFLY 
 
 II 
 
 O Beauty, why so sad my heart ? 
 
 Why stirs in me a nameless pain 
 
 Which seems Hke some remembered strain, 
 As on this product of thine art 
 
 Enraptured, marvelling I gaze. 
 And note how airily 'tis wrought — 
 A winged dream, a bodied thought, 
 
 The spirit of the summer days ? 
 
 Thy beauty opes, O Butterfly, 
 
 The doors of being, with subtle sense 
 Of Beauty's frail impermanence. 
 
 And grief of knowing it must die. 
 
 Again I seem to know the tears 
 Of other lives, the woe and pain 
 Of days that died ; resurgent wane 
 
 The moons of countless bygone years. 
 
 Ill 
 
 On other worlds, on other stars. 
 
 To us but tiny points of light. 
 
 Or lost in distances of night 
 Beyond our system's farthest bars, 
 
 A priest to Beauty's service sworn, 
 I sought and served her all my days, 
 With music and with hymns of praise. 
 
 In sunset and the fires of morn, 
 
 23 
 
THE BUTTERFLY 
 
 With thrilling heart her form I knew, 
 And in the stars she whitely gleamed, 
 And all the face of Nature seemed 
 
 Expression of her shape and hue. 
 
 I grieved to watch the summers pass 
 
 With all their gorgeous shows of bloom, 
 And sterner autumn months assume 
 
 Their realm with withered leaves and grass. 
 
 Mine was the grief of Change and Death, 
 Of fair things gone beyond recall. 
 The paling light of dawns, and all 
 
 The flowers' vanished hues and breath. 
 
 IV 
 
 From out the web of former lives, 
 The ancient catenated chain 
 Of joy and sorrow, loss and gain. 
 
 One certain truth my heart derives: — 
 
 Though Beauty passes, this I know. 
 From Change and Death, this verity: 
 Her spirit lives eternally — 
 
 'Tis but her forms that come and go. 
 
 24 
 
THE BUTTERFLY 
 
 Lo ! I am Beauty's constant thrall, 
 Must ever on her voice await, 
 And follow through the maze of Fate 
 
 Her luring, strange and mystical. 
 
 Obedient to her summonings, 
 Forever must my soul aspire, 
 And seek, on wings of lyric fire. 
 
 To penetrate the Heart of Things, 
 
 Wherein she sits, augustly throned. 
 In loveHness that renders dumb— 
 The Essence and the final Sum— 
 
 With peril and with wonder zoned 
 
 What though I fail, my duller sense 
 Baffled as by a wall of stone ? 
 The high desire, the search alone 
 
 Are their own prize and recompense. 
 
 25 
 
THE PRICE 
 
 THE PRICE 
 
 Behind each thing a shadow lies; 
 
 Beauty hath e'er its cost: 
 Within the moonlight-flooded skies 
 
 How many stars are lost ! 
 
THE MYSTIC MEANING 
 
 THE MYSTIC MEANING 
 
 Alas ! that we are deaf and blind 
 To meanings all about us hid ! 
 What secrets lurk the woods amid ? 
 
 What prophecies are on the wind ? 
 
 What tidings do the billows bring 
 And cry in vain upon the strand ? 
 If we might only understand 
 
 The brooklet's cryptic murmuring! 
 
 The tongues of earth and air are strange. 
 And yet (who knows?) one little word 
 Learned from the language of the bird 
 
 Might make us lords of Fate and Change ! 
 
 27 
 
ODE TO MUSIC 
 
 ODE TO MUSIC 
 
 O woven fabric and bright web of sound, 
 
 Whose threads are magical. 
 
 And with swift weaving thrall 
 
 And hold the spirit bound ! 
 
 We may not know whence thv strange sorceries 
 
 fall— 
 Whether they be Earth's voices wild and strong, 
 Her high and perfect song, 
 Or broken dreams of higher worlds unfound. 
 For, lo, thou art as dreams, 
 And to thy realm all hidden things belong — 
 All fugitive and evanescent gleams 
 The soul hath vainly sought; 
 All mystic immanence; 
 All visions of ungrasped magnificence. 
 And great ideals pinnacled in thought; 
 All paths with marvel fraught 
 That lead to lands obscure: 
 For, lo, upon thy road of sound we pass, 
 Seeking thy magic lure. 
 To vales mist-implicated and unsure, 
 Where all seems strange as visions in a glass; 
 And wonder-haunted hills. 
 Where Beauty is an echo and a dream 
 In sighing pines, and rills 
 
 28 
 
ODE TO AIUSIC 
 
 Clouded and deep with imaged tree and sky; 
 
 And where bright rivers gleam 
 
 Past cities towering high, 
 
 Each wonderful as some cloud-fantasy. 
 
 Thou loosenest the bondage of the years, 
 
 Making the spirit free 
 
 Of all sublunar joys and fears. 
 
 Who mounts on thine imperious wings shall see 
 
 The ways of life as threads of day and night; 
 
 Serene above their change, 
 
 His eyes shall know but far transcendent things, 
 
 His ears shall hark but voices free and strange ; 
 
 Vast seas of outer light 
 
 Shall beat upon his sight. 
 
 Eternal winds shall touch him with their wings; 
 
 His heart shall thrill 
 
 To larger, purer joy, and grief more deep 
 
 Than earth may know; 
 
 And e'en as dews of morning fill 
 
 The opened flower, into his soul shall flow 
 
 High melodies, like tears that angels weep. 
 
 Then shall he penetrate 
 
 The veils and outer barriers of sound, 
 
 And near the soul of melody. 
 
 Where, rapt in aural splendors ultimate, 
 
 His soul shall see 
 
 The marvel and the glory that surround 
 
 Eternal Beauty's shrine; 
 
 And catch afar the glint divine 
 
 29 
 
ODE TO MUSIC 
 
 Of her moon -colored robe, or haply hear, 
 
 With world-oblivious ear, 
 
 Some echo of her voice's mystery. 
 
 Thou hast Love's power to find 
 
 The soul's most secret chords, that else were still, 
 
 And stir'st them till they thrill 
 
 Disclosed to least, faint movements of thy wind. 
 
 Thine aural sorcery 
 
 O'erwhelms the heart as sunset storms the sight, 
 
 For thou art Beauty bodied forth in sound — 
 
 Her colors bright 
 
 And diverse forms expressed in harmony: 
 
 Within thy bound, 
 
 The flare of morning is become a song. 
 
 And tree and flower a music sweet and long. 
 
 And in thy speech 
 
 The power and majesty that swing 
 
 Planet and sun, and each 
 
 Dim atom of the system manifest, 
 
 Become articulate, expressed 
 
 Like ocean in the brooklet's whispering. 
 
 Beyond the woof of finite things, 
 
 Thy threads of wonder deep-entangled lie — 
 
 Time's intertexturings 
 
 Within Eternity — 
 
 With Song, mayhap, to be his memories; 
 
 For Beauty borders nigh 
 
 The ultimate, eternal Verities. 
 
 30 
 
THE LAST NIGHT 
 
 THE LAST NIGHT 
 
 I dreamed a dream: I stood upon a height, 
 A mountain's utmost eminence of snow, 
 Whence I beheld the plain outstretched below 
 
 To a far sea-horizon, dim and white. 
 
 Beneath the sun's expiring, ghastly light, 
 The dead world lay, phantasmally aglow ; 
 Its last fear- weighted voice, a wind, came low; 
 
 The distant sea lay hushed, as with affright. 
 
 I watched, and lo ! the pale and flickering sun, 
 In agony and fierce despair, flamed high, 
 
 And shadow-slain, went out upon the gloom. 
 Then Night, that grim, gigantic struggle won. 
 Impended for a breath on wings of doom, 
 And through the air fell like a falling sky. 
 
 31 
 
ODE ON IMAGINATION 
 
 ODE ON IMAGINATION 
 
 Imagination's eyes 
 
 Outreach and distance far 
 
 The vision of the greatest star 
 
 That measures instantaneously — 
 
 Enisled therein as in a sea — 
 
 Its cincture of the system-laden skies. 
 
 Abysses closed about with night 
 
 A tribute yield 
 
 To her retardless sight ; 
 
 And Matter's gates disclose the candent ores 
 
 Rock-held in furnaces of planet-cores. 
 
 She penetrates the sun's transplendent shield, 
 
 And through the obstruction of his vestment dire, 
 
 Pierces the centermost sublimity 
 
 Of his terrific heart, whose gurge of fire 
 
 Heaves upward like a monstrous sea, 
 
 And inly riven by Titanic throes. 
 
 Fills all his frame with outward cataract 
 
 Of separate and immingling torrent streams. 
 
 Her eyes exact 
 
 From the Moon-Sphinx that wanes and grows 
 
 In wastes celestial, alien dreams 
 
 Brought down on wings of fleetest beams. 
 
 Adown the clefts of under-space 
 
 She rides, her steed a falling star, 
 
 32 
 
ODE ON IMAGINATION 
 
 To seek, where void and vagueness are, 
 
 Some mark or certainty of place. 
 
 Upon their heavenly precipice 
 
 The gathered suns shrink back aghast 
 
 From that interminate abyss, 
 
 And threat of sightless anarchs vast. 
 
 She stands endued 
 
 With supermundane crown, and vestitures 
 
 Of emperies that include 
 
 All under-worlds and over-worlds of dream — 
 
 Kingdoms o'ercast, and eminent heights extreme 
 
 Where moon-transcending light endures. 
 
 She wanders in fantastic lands, where grow 
 
 In scarce-discerned fields and closes blind. 
 
 Vague blossoms stirred by wings of eidolons; 
 
 Or roves in forests where all sound is low: 
 
 Each voice that shuns 
 
 The noiseful day, and enters there to find 
 
 Twilight that naught exalts nor grieves. 
 
 Is quickly tuned to the susurrous leaves. 
 
 Upon some supcrsensual eminence 
 
 She hears the fragments of a thunder loud, 
 
 Where lightnings of ulterior Truth intense 
 
 Flame through the walls of hollow cloud. 
 
 But these she may not wholly grasp 
 
 With incomplete terrestrial clasp. 
 
 Her eyes inevitably see, 
 
 'Neath rounds and changes of exterior things, 
 
 33 
 
ODE ON IMAGINATION 
 
 The movements of Essentiality — 
 
 Of ageless principles — that alter not 
 
 To temporal alterings — 
 
 Unswerved by shattered worlds upbuilt once more. 
 
 And stars no longer hot ; 
 
 Or broken constellations strewn 
 
 Like coals about the heavenly floor, 
 
 And rush of night upon the noon 
 
 Of their lost worlds, unsphered restorelessly 
 
 In icy deserts of the sky. 
 
 From the beginning of the spheres, 
 
 When systems nebulous out-thrown 
 
 Drove back the brinks 
 
 Of nullity with limitary marks, 
 
 Till end of suns, and sunless death of years, 
 
 To her are known 
 
 The unevident inseparable links 
 
 That bind all deeps, all suns, all days and darks. 
 
 34 
 
THE WIND AND THE MOON 
 
 THE WIND AND THE MOON 
 
 Oh, list to the wind of the night, oh, hark, 
 
 How it shrieks as it goes on its hurrying quest ! 
 
 Forever its voice is a voice of the dark, 
 
 Forever its voice is a voice of unrest. 
 
 Oh, hst to the pines as they shiver and sway 
 
 'Neath the ceaseless beat of its myriad wings — 
 
 How they moan and they sob like living things 
 
 That cry in the darkness for light and day ! 
 
 Now bend they low as the wind mounts higher, 
 
 And its eerie voice comes piercingly, 
 
 Like the plaint of humanity's misery, 
 
 And its burden of vain desire. 
 
 Now to a sad, tense whisper it fails, 
 
 Then wildly and madly it raves and it wails. 
 
 Oh, the night is filled with its sob and its shriek, 
 
 Its weird and its restless, yearning cry. 
 
 As it races adown the darkened sky. 
 
 With scurry of broken clouds that seek, 
 
 Borne on the wings of the hastening wind, 
 
 A place of rest that they never can find. 
 
 And around the face of the moon they cling. 
 
 Its fugitive face to veil they aspire; 
 
 But ever and ever it peereth out. 
 
 Rending the cloud-ranks that hem it about; 
 
 And it seemeth a lost and phantom thing, 
 
 Like a phantom of dead desire. 
 
 35 
 
LAMENT OF THE STARS 
 
 LAMENT OF THE STARS 
 
 One tone is mute within the starry singing, 
 
 The unison fulfilled, complete before; 
 
 One chord within the music sounds no more, 
 
 And from the stir of flames forever winging 
 
 The pinions of our sister, motionless 
 
 In pits of indefinable duress, 
 
 Are fallen beyond all recovery 
 
 By exultation of the flying dance. 
 
 Or rhythms holding as with sleep or trance 
 
 The maze of stars that only death may free — 
 
 Flung through the void's expanse. 
 
 In gulfs depressed nor in the gulfs exalted 
 
 Shall shade nor lightening of her flame be found; 
 
 In space that litten orbits gird around. 
 
 Nor in the bottomless abyss unvaulted 
 
 Of unenvironcd, all-outlying night. 
 
 Allotted gyre nor lawless comet-flight 
 
 Shall find, and with its venturous ray return 
 
 From gloom of undiscoverable scope, 
 
 One ray of her to gladden into hope 
 
 The doubtful eyes denied that truthward yearn, 
 
 The faltering feet that grope. 
 
 36 
 
LAMENT OF THE STARS 
 
 Beyond restrainless boundary-nights surpassing 
 
 All luminous horizons limited, 
 
 The substance and the light of her have fed 
 
 Ruin and silence of the night's amassing: 
 
 Abandoned worlds forever morningless; 
 
 Suns without worlds, in frory beamlessness 
 
 Girt for the longer gyre funereal; 
 
 Inviolate silence, earless, unawaking 
 
 That once was sound, and level calm unbreaking 
 
 Where motion's many ways in oneness fall 
 
 Of sleep beyond forsaking. 
 
 Circled with limitation unexceeded 
 
 Our eyes behold exterior mysteries 
 
 And gods unascertainable as these — 
 
 Shadows and shapes irresolubly heeded ; 
 
 Phantoms that tower, and substance scarcely known. 
 
 Our sister knows all mysteries one alone. 
 
 One shape, one shadow, crowding out the skies; 
 
 Whose eyeless head and lipless face debar 
 
 All others nameless or familiar. 
 
 Filling with night all former lips and eyes 
 
 Of god, and ghost, and star: 
 
 For her all shapes have fed the shape of night ; 
 All darker forms, and dubious forms, or pallid. 
 Are met and reconciled where none is valid. 
 But unto us solution nor respite 
 Of mystery's multiform incessancy 
 From unexplored or system-trodden sky 
 
 37 
 
LAMENT OF THE STARS 
 
 Shall come; but as a load importunate, 
 Enigma past and mystery foreseen 
 Weigh mightily upon us, and between 
 Our sorrow deepens, and our songs abate 
 In cadences of threne. 
 
 A gloom that gathers silence looms more closely, 
 
 And quiet centering darkness at its heart; 
 
 But from the certitude of night depart 
 
 Uncertain god nor eidolon less ghostly; 
 
 But stronger grown with strength obtained from 
 
 light 
 That failed, and power lent by the stronger night. 
 Perplex us with new mystery, and doubt 
 If these our flames, that deathward toss and fall 
 Be festal lights or lights funereal 
 For mightier gods within the gulfs without, 
 Phantoms more cryptical. 
 
 New shadows from the wings of Time unfolding 
 Across the depth and eminence of years, 
 Fall deeplier with the broadening gloom of fears. 
 Prophetic-eyed, with planet-hosts beholding 
 The night take form upon the face of suns. 
 We see (thus grief's vaticination runs — 
 Presageful sorrow for our sister slain) 
 A night wherein all sorrow shall be past. 
 One with night's single mystery at last; 
 Nor vocal sun nor singing world remain 
 As Time's elegiast. 
 
 38 
 
THE MAZE OF SLEEP 
 
 THE MAZE OF SLEEP 
 
 Sleep is a pathless labyrinth, 
 
 Dark to the gaze of moons and suns, 
 
 Through which the colored clue of dreams, 
 A gossamer thread, obscurely runs. 
 
 39 
 
THE WINDS 
 
 THE WINDS 
 
 To me the winds that die and start, 
 And strive in wars that never cease, 
 Are dearer than the level peace 
 
 That lies unstirred at summer's heart; 
 
 More dear to me the shadowed wold, 
 Where, with report of tempest rife, 
 The air intensifies with life. 
 
 Than quiet fields of summer's gold. 
 
 I am the winds' admitted friend: 
 They seal our linked fellowships 
 With speech of warm or icy lips. 
 
 With touch of west and east that blend. 
 
 And when my spirit listless stands, 
 With folded wings that do not live, 
 Their own assuageless wings they give 
 
 To lift her from the stirless lands. 
 
 Within the place unmanifest 
 
 Where central Truth is immanent, 
 Lies there a vast, entire content 
 
 Of sound and movement one in rest ? 
 
 40 
 
THE WINDS 
 
 I know not this. Yet in my heart, 
 I feel that where all truths concur, 
 The shrine is peaceless with the stir 
 
 Of winds that enter and depart. 
 
 41 
 
THE MASQUE OF FORSAKEN GODS 
 
 THE MASQUE OF FORSAKEN GODS 
 Scene: A moonlit glade on a summer midnight 
 
 THE poet 
 
 What consummation of the toiling moon 
 O'ercomes the midnight blue with violet, 
 Wherein the stars turn grey ! The summer's green, 
 EdgM and strong by day, is dull and faint 
 Beneath the moon's all-dominating mood. 
 That in this absence of the impassioned sun, 
 Sways to a sleep of sound and calm of color 
 The live and vivid aspect of the world — 
 Subdued as with the great expectancy 
 Which blurs beginning features of a dream, 
 Things and events lost 'neath an omening 
 Of central and oppressive bulk to come. 
 Here were the theatre of a miracle, 
 If such, within a world long alienate 
 From its first dreams, and shut with skeptic years, 
 Might now befall. 
 
 the philosopher 
 
 The Huntress rides no more 
 
 Across the upturned faces of the stars : 
 
 42 
 
THE MASQUE OF FORSAKEN GODS 
 
 'Tis but the dead shell of a frozen world, 
 Glittering with desolation. Earth's old gods — 
 The gods that haunt like dreams each planet's 
 
 youth — 
 Are fled from years incredulous, and tired 
 With penetrating of successive masks. 
 That give but emptiness they served to hide. 
 Remains not faith enough to bring them back — 
 Pan to his wood, Diana to her moon, 
 And all the visions that made populous 
 An eager world where Time grows weary now. 
 Yet Youth, that lives, might for a Httle claim 
 The pantheon of dream, on such a night. 
 When 'neath the growing marvel of the moon 
 The films of time wear perilously thin, 
 And thought looks backward to the simpler years, 
 Till all the vision seems but just beyond. 
 If one have faith, it may be that he shall 
 Behold the gods — once only, and no more, 
 Because of Time's inhospitality. 
 For which they may not stay. 
 
 THE POET 
 
 Within the marvel of the light, what flower 
 Of active wonder from quiescence springs ! 
 Is it a throng of luminous white clouds. 
 Phantoms of some old storm's death-driven Titans, 
 That float beneath the moon, and speak with voices 
 Like the last echoes of a thunder spent ? 
 
 43 
 
THE MASQUE OF FORSAKEN GODS 
 
 'Tis the forsaken gods, that win a foothold 
 
 About the magic circle which the moon 
 
 Draws like some old enchantress round the glade. 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHER 
 
 I see them not : the vision is addressed 
 Only to thine acute and eager youth. 
 
 JOVE 
 
 All heaven and earth were once my throne ; 
 
 Now I have but the wind alone 
 
 For shifting judgment-seat. 
 
 The pillared world supported me: 
 
 Yet man's old incredulity 
 
 Left nothing for my feet. 
 
 PAN 
 
 Man hath forgotten me: 
 Yet seems it that my memory 
 Saddens the wistful voices of the wood ; 
 Within each erst-frequented spot 
 Echo forgets my music not, 
 
 Nor Earth my tread where trampling years have 
 stood. 
 
 44 
 
THE MASQUE OF FORSAKEN GODS 
 
 ARTEMIS 
 
 Time hath grown cold 
 
 Toward beauty loved of old. 
 
 The gods must quake 
 
 When dreams and hopes forsake 
 
 The heart of man, 
 
 And disillusion's ban 
 
 More chill than stone, 
 
 Rears till the former throne 
 
 Of loveliness 
 
 Is dark and tenantless. 
 
 Now must I weep — 
 
 Homeless within the deep 
 
 Where once of old 
 
 Mine orbed chariot rolled, — 
 
 And mourn in vain 
 
 Man's immemorial pain 
 
 Uncomforted 
 
 Of light and beauty fled. 
 
 APOLLO 
 
 Time wearied of my song — 
 A satiate and capricious king 
 Who for his pleasure bade me sing. 
 First of his minstrel throng. 
 Till, cloyed with melody, 
 His ear grew faint to voice and lyre; 
 Forgotten then of Time's desire, 
 His thought was void of me. 
 
 45 
 
THE MASQUE OF FORSAKEN GODS 
 APHRODITE 
 
 I, bom of sound and foam, 
 
 Child of the sea and wind, 
 
 Was fire upon mankind — 
 
 Fuelled with Syria, and with Greece and Rome. 
 
 Time fanned me with his breath; 
 
 Love found new warmth in me, 
 
 And Life its ecstasy, 
 
 Till I grew deadly with the wind of death. 
 
 A NYMPH 
 
 How can the world be still so beautiful 
 When beauty's self is fled ? Tis like the mute 
 And marble loveliness of some dead girl; 
 And we that hover here, are as the spirit 
 Of former voice and motion, and live color 
 In that which shall not stir nor speak again. 
 
 ANOTHER NYMPH 
 
 Nay, rather say this lovely, lifeless world 
 
 Is but a rigid semblance, counterfeiting 
 
 The world which was. Nor have the gods retained 
 
 Such power as once informed and rendered vital 
 
 The cryptic irresponsiveness of stone, — 
 
 That statue which Pygmalion made and loved. 
 
 46 
 
THE MASQUE OF FORSAKEN GODS 
 
 ATE 
 
 I, who was discord among men, 
 Alone of all Time's hierarchy 
 Find that Time hath no need of me, 
 No lack that I might fill again. 
 
 THE POET 
 
 Tell me, O gods, are ye forever doomed 
 To fall and flutter among spacial winds, 
 Finding release nor foothold anywhere — 
 Debarred from doors of all the suns, Hke spirits 
 Whose names are blotted from the lists of Time, 
 Though they themselves yet wander undestroyed ? 
 
 THE GODS TOGETHER 
 
 Throneless, discrowned, and impotent, 
 
 In man's sad disillusionment. 
 
 We passed with Earth's returnless youth, 
 
 Who were the semblances of truth, 
 
 The veils that hid the vacantness 
 
 Infinite, naked, meaningless. 
 
 The blank and universal Sphinx 
 
 Each world beholds at last — and sinks. 
 
 New gods protect awhile the gaze 
 
 Of man — each one a veil that stays — 
 
 Till the new gods, discredited. 
 
 Like mist that melts with noon, are fled — 
 
 47 
 
THE MASQUE OF FORSAKEN GODS 
 
 That power oppressive, limitless, 
 
 The tyranny of nothingness. 
 
 Our power is dead upon the earth 
 
 With the first dews and dawns of Time; 
 
 But in the far and younger clime 
 
 Of other worlds, it hath re-birth. 
 
 Yea, though we find not entrance here — 
 
 Astray like feathers on the wind, 
 
 To neither earth nor heaven consigned — 
 
 Fresh altars in a distant sphere 
 
 Are keen with fragrance, bright with fire. 
 
 New hearths to warm us from the night, 
 
 Till, banished thence, we pass in flight 
 
 While all the flames of dream expire. 
 
 48 
 
A SUNSET 
 
 A SUNSET 
 
 As blood from some enormous hurt 
 The sanguine sunset leapt; 
 
 Across it, like a dabbled skirt, 
 The hurrying tempest swept. 
 
 49 
 
THE CLOUD ISLANDS 
 
 THE CLOUD-ISLANDS 
 
 What islands marvellous are these, 
 That gem the sunset's tides of light — 
 
 Opals aglow in saffron seas ? 
 
 How beautiful they lie, and bright, 
 
 Like some new-found Hesperides ! 
 
 What varied, changing magic hues 
 Tint gorgeously each shore and hill ! 
 
 What blazing, vivid golds and blues 
 Their seaward winding valleys fill ! 
 
 What amethysts their peaks suffuse! 
 
 Close held by curving arms of land 
 That out within the ocean reach, 
 
 I mark a faery city stand, 
 
 Set high upon a sloping beach 
 
 That burns with fire of shimmering sand. 
 
 Of sunset-light is formed each wall; 
 
 Each dome a rainbow-bubble seems; 
 And every spire that towers tall 
 
 A ray of golden moonlight gleams; 
 Of opal-flame is every hall. 
 
 50 
 
THE CLOUD ISLANDS 
 
 Alas ! how quickly dims their glow ! 
 
 What veils their dreamy splendours mar ! 
 Like broken dreams the islands go, 
 
 As down from strands of cloud and star, 
 The sinking tides of daylight flow. 
 
 51 
 
THE SNOW-BLOSSOMS 
 
 THE SNOW- BLOSSOMS 
 
 But yestereve the winter trees 
 
 Reared leafless, blackly bare, 
 Their twigs and branches poignant-marked 
 
 Upon the sunset-flare. 
 
 White-petaled, opens now the dawn, 
 
 And in its pallid glow. 
 Revealed, each leaf-lorn, barren tree 
 
 Stands white with flowers of snow. 
 
 52 
 
THE SUMMER MOON 
 
 THE SUMMER MOON 
 
 How is it, O moon, that melting, 
 
 Unstintedly, prodigally. 
 
 On the peaks' hard majesty, 
 
 Till they seem diaphanous 
 
 And fluctuant as a veil, 
 
 And pouring thy rapturous light 
 
 Through pine, and oak, and laurel, 
 
 Till the summer-sharpened green, 
 
 Softening and tremulous, 
 
 Is a lustrous miracle — 
 
 How is it that I find, 
 
 When I turn again to thee. 
 
 That thy lost and wasted light 
 
 Is regained in one magic breath ? 
 
 53 
 
THE RETURN OF HYPERION 
 
 THE RETURN OF HYPERION 
 
 The dungeon-clefts of Tartarus 
 Are just beyond yon mountain-girdle, 
 Whose mass is bound around the bulk 
 Of the dark, unstirred, unmoving East. 
 Alike on the mountains and the plain, 
 The night is as some terrific dream. 
 That closes the soul in a crj^t of dread 
 Apart from touch or sense of earth, 
 As in the space of Eternity. 
 
 What light unseen perturbs the darkness ? 
 Behold ! it stirs and fluctuates 
 Between the mountains and the stars 
 That are set as guards above the prison 
 Of the captive Titan-god. I know 
 That in the deeps beneath, Hyperion 
 Divides the pillared vault of dark. 
 And stands a space upon its ruin. 
 Then light is laid upon the peaks, 
 As the hand of one who climbs beyond; 
 And, lo! the Sun! The sentinel stars 
 Are dead with overpotent flame, 
 And in their place Hyperion stands. 
 The night is loosened from the land. 
 As a dream from the mind of the dreamer. 
 A great wind blows across the dawn, 
 Like the wind of the motion of the world. 
 
 54 
 
LETHE 
 
 LETHE 
 
 I flow beneath the columns that upbear 
 
 The world, and all the tracts of heaven and hell; 
 Foamless I sweep, where sounds nor glimmers 
 tell 
 
 My motion nadir- ward ; no moment's flare 
 
 Gives each to each the shapes that, unaware. 
 Commingle at my verge, to test the spell 
 Of waves intense with night, whose deeps com- 
 pel 
 
 One face from pain, and rapture, and despair. 
 
 The fruitless earth's denied and cheated sons 
 Meet here, where fruitful and unfruitful cease. 
 
 And when their lords, the mightier, hidden Ones, 
 Have drained all worlds till being's wine is low, 
 Shall they not come, and from the oblivious flow 
 Drink at one draught a universe of peace ? 
 
 55 
 
ATLANTIS 
 
 ATLANTIS 
 
 Above its domes the gulfs accumulate 
 
 To where the sea-winds trumpet forth their 
 
 screed ; 
 But here the buried waters take no heed — 
 
 Deaf, and w^ith closed lips from press of weight 
 
 Imposed by ocean. Dim, inanimate, 
 On temples of an unremembered creed 
 Involved in long, slow tentacles of weed. 
 
 The dead tide lies immovable as Fate. 
 
 From out the ponderous-vaulted ocean-dome, 
 A clouded light is questionably shed 
 
 On altars of a goddess garlanded 
 With blossoms of some weird and hueless vine; 
 
 And winged, fleet, through skies beneath the foam. 
 Like silent birds the sea-things dart and shine. 
 
 56 
 
THE UNREVEALED 
 
 THE UNREVEALED 
 
 How dense the glooms of Death, impervious 
 To aught of old memorial light ! How strait 
 The sunless road, suspended, separate, 
 
 That leads to later birth ! Untremulous 
 
 With any secret morn of stars, to us 
 
 The Past is closed as with division great 
 Of planet-girdling seas — unknown its gate. 
 
 Beyond the mouths of shadows cavernous. 
 
 Oh ! may it be that Death in kindness strips 
 The soul of memory's raiment, rendering blind 
 
 Our vision, lest surmounted deeps appal. 
 As when on mountain peaks a glance behind 
 Betrays with knowledge, and the climber slips 
 Down gulfs of fear to some enormous fall ? 
 
 57 
 
THE ELDRITCH DARK 
 
 THE ELDRITCH DARK 
 
 Now as the twilight's doubtful interval 
 Closes with night's accomplished certainty, 
 A wizard wind goes crying eerily; 
 
 And in the glade unsteady shadows crawl, 
 
 Timed to the trees, whose voices rear and fall 
 As with some dreadful witches' ecstasy. 
 Flung upward to the dark, whence glitters free 
 
 The crooked moon, impendent over all. 
 
 Twin veils of covering cloud and silence thrown 
 Across the movement and the sound of things, 
 Make blank the night, till in the broken west 
 The moon's ensanguined blade awhile is shown . . . 
 The night grows whole again . . . The shadows 
 rest, 
 Gathered beneath a greater shadow's wings. 
 
 58 
 
THE CHERRY-SNOWS 
 
 THE CHERRY-SNOWS 
 
 The cherry-snows are falling now; 
 
 Down from the blossom-clouded sky 
 Of zephyr- troubled twig and bough, 
 
 In widely settling whirls they fly. 
 
 The orchard earth, unclothed and brown, 
 Is wintry-hued with petals bright; 
 
 E'en as the snow they glimmer down ; 
 Brief as the snow's their stainless white. 
 
 59 
 
FAIRY LANTERNS 
 
 FAIRY LANTERNS 
 
 'Tis said these blossom-lanterns light 
 The elves upon their midnight way; 
 That fairy toil and elfin play 
 
 Receive their beams of magic white. 
 
 I marvel not if it be true; 
 
 I know this flower has lighted me 
 Nearer to Beauty's mystery, 
 
 And past the veils of secrets new. 
 
 60 
 
NIRVANA 
 
 NIRVANA 
 
 Poised as a god whose lone, detachM post, 
 An eyrie, pends between the boundary-marks 
 Of finite years, and those unvaried darks 
 
 That veil Eternity, I saw the host 
 
 Of worlds and suns, swept from the furthermost 
 Of night — confusion as of dust with sparks — 
 Whirl tow'rd the opposing brink; as one who 
 harks 
 
 Some warning trumpet, Time, a withered ghost, 
 
 Fled with them; disunited orbs that late 
 Were atoms of the universal frame, 
 
 They passed to some eternal fragment-heap. 
 
 And, lo, the gods, from space discorporate, 
 Who were its hfe and vital spirit, came, 
 
 Drawn outward by the vampire-lips of Sleep ! 
 
 6i 
 
THE NEMESIS OF SUNS 
 
 THE NEMESIS OF SUNS 
 
 Lo, what are these, the gyres of sun and world, 
 Fulfilled with daylight by each toiling sun — 
 Lo, what are these but webs of radiance spun 
 
 Beneath the roof of Night, and torn or furled 
 
 By Night at will ? All opposite powers upwhirled 
 Are less than chaff to this imperious one — 
 As wind-tossed chaff, until its sport be done, 
 
 Scattered, and lifted up, and downward hurled. 
 
 All gyres are held within the path unspanned 
 Of Night's aeonian compass — loosely pent 
 As with the embrace of lethal-tightening 
 weight ; 
 All suns are grasped within the hollow hand 
 Of Night, the godhead sole, omnipotent. 
 Whose other names are Nemesis and Fate. 
 
WHITE DEATH 
 
 WHITE DEATH 
 
 Methought the world was bound with final frost; 
 The sun, made hueless as with fear and awe, 
 Illumined yet the lands it could not thaw. 
 
 Then on my road, with instant evening crost, 
 
 Death stood, and in its shadowy films enwound, 
 Mine eyes forgot the light, until I came 
 Where poured the inseparate, unshadowed flame 
 
 Of phantom suns in self-irradiance drowned. 
 
 Death lay revealed in all its haggardness — 
 Immitigable wastes horizonless; 
 
 Profundities that held nor bar nor veil; 
 All hues wherewith the suns and worlds were dyed 
 In light invariable nullified ; 
 
 All darkness rendered shelterless and pale. 
 
 63 
 
RETROSPECT AND FORECAST 
 
 RETROSPECT AND FORECAST 
 
 Turn round, O Life, and know with eyes aghast 
 
 The breast that fed thee — Death, disguiseless, 
 stern ; 
 
 Even nowjwithin thy mouth, from tomb and urn, 
 The dust is sweet. All nurture that thou hast 
 Was once as thou, and fed with lips made fast 
 
 On Death, whose sateless mouth it fed in turn. 
 
 Kingdoms debased, and thrones that starward 
 yearn. 
 All are but ghouls that batten on the past. 
 
 Monstrous and dread, must it fore'er abide. 
 This unescapable alternity? 
 
 Must loveliness find root within decay, 
 And night devour its flaming hues alway? 
 Sickening, will Life not turn eventually. 
 Or ravenous Death at last be satisfied ? 
 
 64 
 
SHADOW OF NIGHTMARE 
 
 SHADOW OF NIGHTMARE 
 
 What hand is this, that unresisted grips 
 
 My spirit as with chains, and from the sound 
 And light of dreams, compels me to the bound 
 
 X^Hiere darkness waits with wide, expectant hps ? 
 
 Albeit thereat my footing holds, nor slips. 
 The threats of that Omnipotence confound 
 All days and hours of gladness, girt around 
 
 With sense of near, unswervable eclipse. 
 
 So lies a land whose noon is plagued with whirr 
 Of bats, than their own shadows swarthier. 
 
 Whose flight is traced on roofs of white abodes, 
 Wherein from court to court, from room to room. 
 In hieroglyphics of abhorrent doom, 
 
 Is slowly trailed the slime of crawling toads. 
 
 65 
 
THE SONG OF A COMET 
 
 THE SONG OF A COMET 
 
 A plummet of the changing universe, 
 
 Far-cast, I flare 
 
 Through gulfs the sun's uncharted orbits bind, 
 
 And spaces bare 
 
 That intermediate darks immerse 
 
 By road of sun nor world confined. 
 
 Upon my star-undominated gyre 
 
 I mark the systems vanish one by one; 
 
 Among the swarming worlds I lunge. 
 
 And sudden plunge 
 
 Close to the zones of solar fire; 
 
 Or 'mid the mighty wrack of stars undone, 
 
 Flash, and with momentary rays 
 
 Compel the dark to yield 
 
 Their aimless forms, whose once far-potent blaze 
 
 In ashes chill is now inurned. 
 
 A space revealed, 
 
 I see their planets turned, 
 
 Where holders of the heritage of breath 
 
 Exultant rose, and sank to barren death 
 
 Beneath the stars' unheeding eyes. 
 
 Adown contiguous skies 
 
 I pass the thickening brume 
 
 Of systems yet unshaped, that hang immense 
 
 66 
 
THE SONG OF A COMET 
 
 Along mysterious shores of gloom; 
 Or see — unimplicated in their doom — 
 The final and disastrous gyre 
 Of blinded suns that meet, 
 And from their mingled heat, 
 And battle-clouds intense, 
 O'erspread the deep with fire. 
 
 Through stellar labyrinths I thrid 
 
 Mine orbit placed amid 
 
 The multiple and irised stars, or hid. 
 
 Unsolved and intricate. 
 
 In many a planet-swinging sun's estate. 
 
 Ofttimes I steal in solitary flight 
 
 Along the rim of the exterior night 
 
 That grips the universe ; 
 
 And then return, 
 
 Past outer footholds of sidereal light, 
 
 To where the systems gather and disperse ; 
 
 And dip again into the web of things, 
 
 To watch it shift and burn. 
 
 Hearted with stars. On peaceless wings 
 
 I pierce, where deep-outstripping all surmise, 
 
 The nether heavens drop unsunned, 
 
 By stars and planets shunned. 
 
 And then I rise 
 
 Through vaulting gloom, to watch the dark 
 
 Snatch at the flame of failing suns; 
 
 Or mark 
 
 The heavy-dusked and silent skies, 
 
 67 
 
THE SONG OF A COMET 
 
 Strewn thick with wrecked and broken stars, 
 
 Where many a fated orbit runs. 
 
 An arrow sped from some eternal bow, 
 
 Through change of firmaments and systems sent, 
 
 And finding bourn nor bars, 
 
 I flee, nor know 
 
 For what eternal mark my flight is meant. 
 
 68 
 
THE RETRIBUTION 
 
 THE RETRIBUTION 
 
 Old Egypt's gods, Osiris, Ammon, Thoth, 
 Came on my dream in thunder, and their feet 
 Revealed, were as the levin's fire and heat. 
 
 The hosts of Rome, the Arab and the Goth 
 
 Have left their altars dark, yet stem and wroth 
 In olden power they stood, whose wings were 
 
 fleet, 
 And mighty as with strength of storms that 
 meet 
 
 In mingled foam of clouds and ocean-froth. 
 
 Above my dream, with arch of dreaded wings, 
 In judgement and in sentence of what crime 
 I knew not, sate the gods outcast of time. 
 They passed, and lo, a plague of darkness fell, 
 Unsleeping, and accurst with nameless things, 
 And dreams that stood the ministers of Hell ! 
 
 69 
 
TO THE DARKNESS 
 
 TO THE DARKNESS 
 
 Thou hast taken the light of many suns, 
 
 And they are sealed in the prison-house of gloom. 
 
 Even as candle-flames 
 
 Hast thou taken the souls of men, 
 
 With winds from out a hollow place; 
 
 They are hid in the abyss as in a sea, 
 
 And the gulfs are over them 
 
 As the weight of many peaks. 
 
 As the depth of many seas; 
 
 Thy shields are between them and the light; 
 
 They are past its burden and bitterness; 
 
 The spears of the day shall not touch them, 
 
 The chains of the sun shall not hale them forth. 
 
 Many men there were, 
 
 In the days that are now of thy realm, 
 
 That thou hast sealed with the seal of many deeps; 
 
 Their feet were as eagles' wings in the quest of 
 
 Truth- 
 Aye, mightily they desired her face, 
 Hunting her through the lands of hfe, 
 As men in the blankness of the waste 
 That seek for a buried treasure-house of kings. 
 But against them were the veils 
 That hands may not rend nor sabers pierce ; 
 
 70 
 
TO THE DARKNESS 
 
 And Truth was withheld from them, 
 
 As a water that is seen afar at dawn, 
 
 And at noon is lost in the sand 
 
 Before the feet of the traveller. 
 
 The world was a barrenness, 
 
 And the gardens were as the waste. 
 
 And they turned them to the adventure of the dark, 
 
 To the travelling of the land without roads. 
 
 To the sailing of the sea that hath no beacons. 
 
 Why have they not returned ? 
 
 Their quest hath found end in thee. 
 
 Or surely they had fared 
 
 Once more to the place whence they came. 
 
 As men that have travelled to a fruitless land. 
 
 They have looked on thy face. 
 
 And to them it is the countenance of Truth. 
 
 Thy silence is sweeter to them than the voice of 
 
 love, 
 Thine embrace more dear than the clasp of the 
 
 beloved. 
 They are fed with the emptiness past the veil, 
 And their hunger is filled ; 
 They have found the waters of peace. 
 And are athirst no more. 
 They know a rest that is deeper than the gulfs. 
 And whose seal is unbreakable as the seal of the 
 
 void; 
 They sleep the sleep of the suns. 
 And the vast is a garment unto them. 
 
 71 
 
A DREAM OF BEAUTY 
 
 A DREAM OF BEAUTY 
 
 I dreamed that each most lovely, perfect thing 
 That Nature hath, of sound, and form, and 
 
 hue — 
 The winds, the grass, the light-concentering 
 dew, 
 The gleam and swiftness of the sea-bird's wing; 
 Blueness of sea and sky, and gold of storm 
 Transmuted by the sunset, and the flame 
 Of autumn-colored leaves, before me came, 
 And, meeting, merged to one diviner form. 
 
 Incarnate Beauty 'twas, whose spirit thrills 
 Through glaucous ocean and the greener hills, 
 And in the cloud-bewildered peaks is pent. 
 
 Like some descended star she hovered o'er, 
 But as I gazed, in doubt and wonderment, 
 Mine eyes were dazzled, and I saw no more. 
 
 72 
 
THE DREAM-BRIDGE 
 
 THE DREAM-BRIDGE 
 
 All drear and barren seemed the hours, 
 
 That passed rain-swept and tempest-blown. 
 
 The dead leaves fell like brownish notes 
 Within the rain's grey monotone. 
 
 There came a lapse between the showers; 
 
 The clouds grew rich with sunset gleams; 
 Then o'er the sky a rainbow sprang — 
 
 A bridge unto the Land of Dreams. 
 
 73 
 
A LIVE-OAK LEAF 
 
 A LIVE-OAK LEAF 
 
 How marvellous this bit of green 
 I hold, and soon shall throw away! 
 
 Its subtile veins, its vivid sheen, 
 Seem fragment of a god's array. 
 
 In all the hidden toil of earth, 
 Which is the more laborious part — 
 
 To rear the oak's enormous girth, 
 
 Or shape its leaves with poignant art? 
 
 74 
 
PINE NEEDLES 
 
 PINE NEEDLES 
 
 O little lances, dipped in grey, 
 And set in order straight and clean, 
 How delicately clear and keen 
 
 Your points against the sapphire day ! 
 
 Attesting Nature's perfect art 
 Ye fringe the limpid firmament, 
 O httle lances, keenly sent 
 
 To pierce with beauty to the heart ! 
 
 75 
 
TO THE SUN 
 
 TO THE SUN 
 
 Thy light is as an eminence unto thee, 
 
 And thou are upheld by the pillars of thy strength. 
 
 Thy power is a foundation for the worlds ; 
 
 They are builded thereon as upon a lofty rock 
 
 Whereto no enemy hath access. 
 
 Thou puttest forth thy rays, and they hold the sky 
 
 As in the hollow of an immense hand. 
 
 Thou erectest thy light as four walls. 
 
 And a roof with many beams and pillars. 
 
 Thy flame is a stronghold based as a mountain ; 
 
 Its bastions are tall, and firm like stone. 
 
 The worlds are bound with the ropes of thy will; 
 
 Like steeds are they stayed and contrained 
 
 By the reins of invisible lightnings. 
 
 With bands that are stouter than iron manifold, 
 
 And stronger than the cords of the gulfs, 
 
 Thou withholdcst them from the brink 
 
 Of outward and perilous deeps, 
 
 Lest they perish in the desolations of the night. 
 
 Or be stricken of strange suns; 
 
 Lest they be caught in the pitfalls of the abyss, 
 
 Or fall into the furnace of Arcturus. 
 
 Thy law is as a shore unto them, 
 
 And they are restrained thereby as the sea. 
 
 76 
 
TO THE SUN 
 
 Thou art food and drink to the worlds; 
 
 Yea, by thy toil are they sustained, 
 
 That they fail not upon the road of space, 
 
 Whose goal is Hercules. 
 
 When thy pillars of force are withdrawn, 
 
 And the walls of thy light fall inward. 
 
 Borne down by the sundering night. 
 
 And thy head is covered wn'th the Shadow, 
 
 The worlds shall wander as men bewildered 
 
 In the sterile and lifeless waste. 
 
 Athirst and unfed shall thev be, 
 
 When the springs of thy strength are dust. 
 
 And thy fields of light are black with dearth. 
 
 They shall perish from the ways 
 
 That thou showest no longer. 
 
 And emptiness shall close above them. 
 
 77 
 
THE FUGITIVES 
 
 THE FUGITIVES 
 
 O fugitive fragrances 
 
 That tremble heavenward 
 
 Unceasing, or if ye linger, 
 
 Halt but as memories 
 
 On the verge of forgetfulness, 
 
 Why must ye pass so fleetly 
 
 On wings that are less than wind, 
 
 To a death unknowable ? 
 
 Soon ye are gone, and the air 
 
 Forgets your faint unrest 
 
 In the garden's breathlessness, 
 
 Where fall the snows of silence. 
 
 78 
 
AVERTED MALEFICE 
 
 AVERTED MALEFICE 
 
 Where mandrakes, crying from the moonless fen, 
 Told how a witch, with gaze of owl or bat 
 Found, and each root malevolently fat 
 
 Pulled for her waiting cauldron, on my ken 
 
 Upstole, escaping to the world of men, 
 A vapor as of some infernal vat ; 
 Against the stars it clomb, and caught thereat 
 
 As if their bright regard to veil again. 
 
 Despite the web, methought they saw, appalled. 
 The stealthier weft in which all sound was still . . . 
 Then sprang, as if the night found breath anew, 
 A wind whereby the stars were disenthralled . . . 
 Far off, I heard the cry of frustrate ill — 
 A witch that wailed above her curdled brew. 
 
 79 
 
THE MEDUSA OF THE SKIES 
 
 THE MEDUSA OF THE SKIES 
 
 Haggard as if resurgent from a tomb, 
 
 The moon uprears her ghastly, shrunken head, 
 Crowned with such Hght as flares upon the dead 
 
 From palhd skies more death-hke than the gloom. 
 
 Now fall her beams till slope and plain assume 
 The whiteness of a land whence life is fled; 
 And shadows that a sepulcher might shed 
 
 Move livid as the stealthy hands of doom. 
 
 O'er rigid hills and valleys locked and mute, 
 
 A pallor steals as of a world made still 
 When Death, that erst had crept, stands absolute — 
 An earth now frozen fast by power of eyes 
 That malefice and purposed silence fill, 
 The gaze of that Medusa of the skies. 
 
 80 
 
A DEAD CITY 
 
 A DEAD CITY 
 
 The twilight reigns above the fallen noon 
 Within an ancient land, whose after-time 
 Lies like a shadow o'er its ruined prime. 
 
 Like rising mist the night increases soon 
 
 Round shattered palaces, ere yet the moon 
 On mute, unsentried walls and turrets climb, 
 And touch with whiteness of sepulchral rime 
 
 The desert where a city's bones are strewn. 
 
 She comes at last; unburied, thick, they show 
 In all the hoary nakedness of stone. 
 
 From out a shadow like the lips of Death 
 Issues a wind, that through the stillness blown, 
 Cries like a prophet's ghost with waihng 
 breath 
 The weirds of finished and forgotten woe. 
 
 8i 
 
THE SONG OF THE STARS 
 
 THE SONG OF THE STARS 
 
 From the final reach of the upper night 
 
 To the nether darks where the comets die, 
 
 From the outmost bourn of the reigns of light 
 
 To the central gloom of the midmost sky, 
 
 In our mazeful gyres we fly. 
 
 And our flight is a choral chant of flame, 
 
 That ceaseless fares to the outer void, 
 
 With the undersong of the peopled spheres. 
 
 The voices of comet and asteroid, 
 
 And the wail of the spheres destroyed. 
 
 Forever we sing to a god unseen — 
 
 In the dark shall our voices fail ? 
 
 The void is his robe inviolate. 
 
 The night is his awful veil — 
 
 How our fires grow dim and pale ! 
 
 From the ordered gyres goes ever afar 
 Our song of flame o'er the void unknown. 
 Where circles nor world, nor comet, nor star. 
 Shall it die ere it reach His throne ? 
 
 On the shoreless deeps of the seas of gloom 
 Sailing, we venture afar and wide. 
 Where ever await the tempests of doom. 
 Where the silent maelstroms lurk and hide, 
 
 82 
 
THE SONG OF THE STARS 
 
 And the darkling reefs abide. 
 
 And the change and ruin of stars is a song 
 
 That rises and ebbs in a tide of fire — 
 
 A music whose notes are of dreadful flame, 
 
 Whose harmonies ever leap high'r 
 
 Where the suns and the worlds expire. 
 
 Is such music not fit for a god ? 
 
 Yet ever the deep is a dark, 
 
 And ever the night is a void, 
 
 Nor brightens a word nor a mark 
 
 To show if our God may hark. 
 
 From the gyres of change goes ever afar 
 Our flaming chant o'er the deep unknown, 
 The song of the death of planet and star. 
 Shall it die ere it reach His throne? 
 
 In our shadows of light the planets sweep, 
 And endure for the span of our prime — 
 Globed atoms that hazard the termless deep 
 With races that bow to the law of Time, 
 And yet cherish a dream sublime. 
 And they cry to the god behind the veil. 
 Yet how should their voices pass the night. 
 The silence that waits in the rayless void. 
 If he hear not our music of light, 
 And the thundrous song of our might ? 
 And they strive in the gloom for truth — 
 
 83 
 
THE SONG OF THE STARS 
 
 Yet how should they pierce the veil, 
 When we, with our splendors of flame. 
 In the darkness faint and fail, 
 Our fires how feeble and pale ! 
 
 From the ordered gyres goes ever afar 
 Our song of flame o'er the void unknown, 
 Where circles nor world, nor comet, nor star, 
 Shall it die ere it reach His throne ? 
 
 84 
 
COPAN 
 
 COPAN 
 
 Around its walls the forests of the west 
 Gloom, as about some mystery's final pale 
 Might he its multifold exterior veil. 
 
 Sculptured with signs and meanings unconfessed, 
 
 Its lordly fanes and palaces attest 
 
 A past before whose wall of darkness fail 
 Reason and fancy, finding not the tale 
 
 Erased by time from history's palimpsest. 
 
 Within this place, that from the gloom of Eld 
 Still meets the light, a people came and went 
 Like whirls of dust between its columns 
 blown — 
 An alien race, whose record, shadow-held, 
 Is sealed with those of others long forespent 
 That died in sunless planets lost and lone. 
 
 85 
 
A SONG OF DREAMS 
 
 A SONG OF DREAMS 
 
 A voice came to me from the night, and said, 
 
 What profit hast thou in thy dreaming 
 
 Of the years that are set 
 
 And the years yet unrisen ? 
 
 Hast thou found them tillable lands ? 
 
 Is there fruit that thou canst pluck therein, 
 
 Or any harvest to be mown ? 
 
 Shalt thou dig aught of gold from the mines of the 
 
 past, 
 Or trade for merchandise 
 In the years vi^here all is rotten ? 
 Are they a sea that will bring thee to any shore. 
 Or a desert that vergcth upon aught but the waste ? 
 Shalt thou drink from the springs that are emptied, 
 Or find sustenance in shadows ? 
 What value hath the future given thee ? 
 Is there aught in the days yet dark 
 That thou canst hold with thy hands? 
 Are they a fortress 
 That will afford thee protection 
 Against the swords of the world ? 
 Is there justice in them 
 To balance the world's inequity, 
 Or benefit to outweigh its loss? 
 
 Then spake I in answer, saying. 
 Of my dreams I have made a road, 
 
 86 
 
A SONG OF DREAMS 
 
 And my soul goeth out thereon 
 
 To that unto which no eye hath opened, 
 
 Nor ear become keen to hearken — 
 
 To the glories that are shut past all access 
 
 Of the keys of sense ; 
 
 Whose walls are hidden by the air, 
 
 And whose doors are concealed with clarity. 
 
 And the road is travelled of secret things, 
 
 Coming to me from far — 
 
 Of bodiless powers. 
 
 And beauties without colour or form 
 
 Holden by any loveliness seen of earth. 
 
 And of my dreams have I builded an inn 
 
 Wherein these are as guests. 
 
 And unto it come the dead 
 
 For a little rest and refuge 
 
 From the hollowness of the unharvestable wind, 
 
 And the burden of too great space. 
 
 The fields of the past are not void to me, 
 
 Who harvest with the scythe of thought; 
 
 Nor the orchards of future years unfruitful 
 
 To the hands of visionings. 
 
 I have retrieved from the darkness 
 
 The years and the things that were lost. 
 
 And they are held in the light of my dreams. 
 
 With the spirits of years unborn, 
 
 And of things yet bodiless. 
 
 As in an hospitable house. 
 
 They shall live while the dreams abide. 
 
 87 
 
THE BALANCE 
 
 THE BALANCE 
 
 The world upheld their pillars for awhile — 
 Now, where imperial On and Memphis stood, 
 The hot wind sifts across the solitude 
 
 The sand that once was wall and peristyle, 
 
 Or furrows like the main each desert mile, 
 Where ocean-deep above its ancient food 
 Of cities fame-forgot, the waste is nude, 
 
 Traceless as billows of each sunken pile. 
 
 Lo ! for that wrong shall vengeance come at last, 
 When the devouring earth, in ruin one 
 With royal walls and palaces undone, 
 And sunk within the desolated past. 
 Shall drift, and winds that wrangle through the 
 vast 
 Immingle it with ashes of the sun. 
 
SATURN 
 
 SATURN 
 
 Now were the Titans gathered round their king, 
 In a waste region shpping tow'rd the verge 
 Of drear extremities that clasp the w^orld — 
 A land half-moulded by the hasty gods, 
 And left beneath the bright scorn of the stars. 
 Grotesque, misfeatured, blackly gnarled with stone; 
 Or worn and marred from conflict with the deep 
 Conterminate, of Chaos. Here they stood. 
 Old Saturn midmost, like a central peak 
 Among the lesser hills that guard its base. 
 Defeat, that gloamcd within each countenance 
 Like the first tinge of death, upon a sun 
 Gathering like some dusk vapor, found them cold, 
 Clumsy of limb, and halting as with weight 
 Of threatened worlds and trembling firmaments. 
 A wind cried round them like a trumpet-voice 
 Of phantom hosts — hurried, importunate, 
 And intermittent with a tightening fear. 
 Far off the sunset leapt, and the hard clouds, 
 Molten among the peaks, seemed furnaces 
 In which to make the fetters of the world. 
 
 Seared by the lightning of the younger gods. 
 They saw, beyond the grim and crouching hills. 
 Those levins thmst like spears into the heart 
 Of swollen clouds, or tearing through the sky 
 
 89 
 
SATURN 
 
 Like severing swords. Then, as the Titans watched, 
 The night rose hkc a black, enormous mist 
 Around them, wherein naught was visible 
 Save the sharp levin leaping in the north ; 
 And no sound came, except of seas remote, 
 That seemed like Chaos ravening past the verge 
 Of all the world, fed with the crumbling coasts 
 Of Matter. 
 
 Till the moon, discovering 
 That harsh swart wilderness of sand and stone 
 Tissued and twisted in chaotic weld, 
 Lit with illusory fire each Titan's form, 
 They sate in silence, mute as stranded orbs — 
 The wrack of Time, upcast on ruinous coasts, 
 And in the slow withdrawal of the tide 
 Safe for awhile. Small solace did they take 
 From that frore radiance glistering on the dull 
 Black desert gripped in iron silences. 
 Like a false triumph o'er contestless fates, 
 Or a mirage of life in wastes of Death. 
 Yet were they moved to speak, and Saturn's voice 
 Seeming the soul of that tremendous land 
 Set free in sound, startled the haughty stars. 
 
 "O Titans, gods, sustainers of the world, 
 
 Is this the end? INIust Earth go down to Chaos, 
 
 Lacking our strength, beneath the unpracticed 
 
 sway 
 Of godlings vain, precipitate with youth, 
 
 go 
 
SATURN 
 
 Who think, unrecking of disastrous chance, 
 
 To bind their will as reins upon the sun. 
 
 Or stand as columns to the ponderous heavens ? 
 
 Must we behold, with eyes of impotence 
 
 That universal wrack, even though it whelm 
 
 These our usurpers in impartial doom 
 
 Beneath the shards and fragments of the world ? 
 
 Were it not preferable to return. 
 
 And meeting them in fight unswervable. 
 
 Drag down the earth, ourselves, and these our foes, 
 
 One sacrifice unto the gods of Chaos? 
 
 Why should we stay, and live the tragedy 
 
 Of power that survives its use?" 
 
 Now spake 
 Enceladus, when that the echoings 
 Of Saturn's voice had fled remote, and seemed 
 Dead thunders caught and flung from star to star; 
 "Wouldst hurl thy kingdom down the nightward 
 
 Like to a stone a curious child might cast 
 To test the fall of some dark precipice? 
 Patience and caution should we take as mail. 
 Not rashness for a weapon — too keen sword 
 That cuts the strained knot of destiny, 
 Ne'er to be tied again. Were it not best 
 To watch the slow procedure of the days. 
 That we may grasp a time more opportune. 
 When desperation is not all our strength. 
 Nor the foe newly filled with victory? 
 
 91 
 
SATURN 
 
 Then may we hope to conquer back thy realm 
 For thee, not for the gods of nothingness." 
 
 He ceased, and after him no lesser god 
 
 Gave voice upon the shaken silences, 
 
 None venturing to risk comparison. 
 
 Inevitable then, of eloquence 
 
 With his; but silence hke the ambiguousness 
 
 Of signal and of lesser stars o'ercast 
 
 And merged in one confusion by the moon. 
 
 Possessed that multitude, till Saturn rose. 
 
 Around his form the light intensified. 
 
 And strengthened with addition wild and strange. 
 
 Investing him as with a phantom robe, 
 
 And gathering like a crown about his brow. 
 
 His sword, whereon the shadows lay like rust 
 
 He took, and dipping it within the moon, 
 
 Made clean its length of blade, and from it cast 
 
 Swift flickerings at the stars. And then his voice 
 
 Came like a torrent, and from out his eyes 
 
 Streamed wilder power that mingled with the sound. 
 
 And his resurgent power, in glance and word, 
 Poured through the Titans' souls, and was become 
 The fountains of their own, and at his flame 
 Their fires were lit once more, whose restlessness 
 Leapt and aspired against the steadfast stars. 
 And now they turned, majestic with resolve, 
 
 92 
 
SATURN 
 
 Where, red upon the forefront of the north, 
 Arcturus was a beacon to the winds. 
 And with the flickering winds, that Hghtly struck 
 The desert dust, then sprang again in air, 
 They passed athwart the foreland of the north. 
 
 Against their march they saw the shrunken waste, 
 A rivelled region hke a world grown old 
 Whose sterile breast knew not the lips of Life 
 In all its epoch ; or a world that was 
 The nurse of infant Death, ere he became 
 Too large, too strong for its restraining arms. 
 And towered athwart the suns. 
 
 And there they crossed 
 Metallic slopes that rang like monstrous shields, 
 But gave not to their tread, and clanging plains 
 Like body-mail of greater, vaster gods. 
 Where hills made gibbous shadows in the moon, 
 They heard the eldritch laughters of the wind. 
 Seeming the mirth of death; and 'neath their gaze 
 Gaunt valleys deepened like an old despair. 
 Yet strode they on, through the moon's fantasies, 
 Bold with resolve, across a land like doubt. 
 
 And now they passed among huge mountain-bulks. 
 Themselves like peaks detached, and moving slow 
 'Mid fettered brethren, adding weight and gloom 
 To that mute conclave great against the stars. 
 
 93 
 
SATURN 
 
 Emerging thence, the Titans marched where still 
 Their own portentous shadows went before 
 Like night that fled but shrunk not, dusking all 
 That desert way. 
 
 And thus they came where Sleep, 
 The sleep of weary victory, had seized 
 The younger gods as captives, borne beyond 
 All flight of mounting battle-ecstasies 
 In that high triumph of forgetfulness. 
 And on that sleep the striding Titans broke, 
 Vague and immense at first like forming dreams 
 To those disturbed gods, in mist of drowse 
 Purblind and doubtful yet, though soon they knew 
 Their erst-defcated foes, and rising stood 
 In silent ranks expectant, that appeared 
 To move, with shaking of astonished fires 
 That bristled forth, or were displayed like plumes 
 Late folded close, now trembling terribly. 
 Pending between the desert and the stars. 
 Then, sudden as the waking from a dream. 
 The battle leapt, where striving shapes of gods 
 Moved brightly through the whirled and stricken air, 
 Sweeping it to a froth of fire; and all 
 That ancient, deep-established desert rocked, 
 Shaken as by an onset of the gulfs 
 Of gathered and impatient Chaos, while, 
 Above the place where central battle burned 
 The stars drew back in fright or dazzlement. 
 Paling to more secluded distances. 
 
 94 
 
SATURN 
 
 Lo, where the moon had wrought illusive dreams 
 
 That clothed the wild in doubt and fantasy, 
 
 Hiding its hidcousness with bright mirage, 
 
 Or deepening it with gulfs and glooms of Hell, 
 
 Mightier confusion, chaos absolute 
 
 Upon the imperilled sky and trembling world, 
 
 Now made a certainty within itself, 
 
 The one thing sure in shaken sky or world. 
 
 Maelstroms of battle caught in storms of fire, 
 
 Torn and involved by weaponry of gods — 
 
 Crescented blades that met with rounds of shields ; 
 
 Grappling of shapes, seen through the riven blaze 
 
 An instant, then once more obscure, and known 
 
 Only by giant heavings of that war 
 
 Of furious gods and roused elements, 
 
 Divided, leagued, contending evermore 
 
 Along the desert — these, augmentative 
 
 Round one thick center, stunned the faltering night. 
 
 So huge that chaos, complicate within 
 
 With movements of gigantic legionry. 
 
 Antagonistic streams, impetuous-hurled 
 
 Where Jove and Saturn thunder-crested, led 
 
 In fight unswervablc — so wide the strife 
 
 Of differing impulse, that Decision found 
 
 No foothold, till that first confusion should 
 
 In ordered conflict re-arrange, and stand 
 
 With its true forces known. This seemed remote, 
 
 With that wide struggle pending terribly, 
 
 As if all- various, colored Time had made 
 
 Q5 
 
SATURN 
 
 A truce with white Eternity, and both 
 Stood watching from afar. 
 
 Through drifts of haze 
 The broadening moon, made ominous with red, 
 Glared from the westering night. And now that 
 
 war 
 Built for itself, far up, a cope of cloud. 
 And drew it down, far ofi", upon all sides, 
 Impervious to the moon and sworded stars. 
 And by their own wild light the gods fought on 
 'Neath that stupendous concave like a sky 
 Filled and illumed with glare of bursting suns. 
 And cast by their own light, upon that sky 
 The gods' own shadows moved like shapen gloom, 
 Phantasmagoric, changed and amplified, 
 A shifting frieze that flickered dreadfully 
 In spectral battle indecisive. Then, 
 Swift, as it had begun, the contest turned. 
 And on the heaving Titans' massive front 
 It seemed that all the motion and the strength 
 Self-thwarting and confounded, of that strife, 
 Was flung in centered impact terrible, 
 With rush of all that fire, tempestuous-blown 
 As if before some wind of further space. 
 Striking the earth. Lo, all the Titans' flame 
 Bent back upon themselves, and they were hurled 
 In vaster disarray, with vanguard piled 
 On rear and center. Saturn could not stem 
 The loosened torrents of long-pent defeat; 
 
 96 
 
SATURN 
 
 He, with his host, was but as drift thereon, 
 
 Borne wildly down the whelmed and reeling world. 
 
 Hurling like slanted rain, the lurid levin 
 
 Fell o'er that flight of Titans, and behind, 
 
 In striding menace, all-victorious Jove 
 
 Loomed like some craggy cloud with thunders 
 
 crowned 
 And footed with the winds. In that defeat, 
 With Jove's pursuit involved and manifold. 
 Few found escape unscathed, and some went down 
 Like senile suns that grapple with the dark, 
 And reel in flame tremendous, and are still. 
 
 Ebbing, the battle left those elder gods 
 Upcast once more on coasts of black defeat — 
 Gripped in despair, a vaster Tartarus. 
 The victor gods, their storms and thunders spent. 
 Went dwindling northward like embattled clouds, 
 And where the lingering haze of fight dissolved. 
 The pallor of the dawn began to spread 
 On darkness purple like the pain of Death. 
 Ringed with that desolation, Saturn stood 
 Mute, and the Titans answered unto him 
 With brother silence. Motionless, they seemed 
 Some peristyle or range of columns great, 
 Alone enduring of a fallen fane 
 In deserts of some vaster world whence Life 
 And Faith have vanished long, that vaguely slips 
 To an immemoried end. And twilight slow 
 
 97 
 
SATURN 
 
 Crept round those lofty shapes august, and seemed 
 Such as might be the faltering ghostly noon 
 Of mightier suns that totter down to death. 
 
 Then turned they, passing from that dismal place 
 Blasted anew with battle, ere the swift 
 Striding of light athwart stupendous chasms 
 And wasteful plains, should overtake them there, 
 Bowed with too heavy a burden of defeat. 
 Slowly they turned, and passed upon the west 
 Where, like a weariness immovable 
 In menace huge, the plain its monstrous bulk, 
 The peaks its hydra heads, the whole world 
 
 crouched 
 Against their march with the diminished stars. 
 
 98 
 
FINIS 
 
 FINIS 
 
 It seemed that from the west 
 
 The live red flame of sunset, 
 
 Eating the dead blue sky 
 
 And cold insensate peaks, 
 
 Was loosened slowly, and fell. 
 
 Above it, a few red stars 
 
 Burned down like low candle-flames 
 
 Into the gaunt black sockets 
 
 Of the chill insensible mountains. 
 
 But in the ascendant skies 
 
 (Cloudless, like some vast corpse 
 
 Unfeatured, cerementless) 
 
 Succeeded nor star nor planet. 
 
 It may have been that black. 
 
 Pulseless, dead stars arose 
 
 And crossed as of old the heavens. 
 
 But came no living orb. 
 
 Nor comet seeming the ghost. 
 
 Homeless, of an outcast world, 
 
 Seeking its former place 
 
 That is no more nor shall be 
 
 In all the Cosmos again. 
 
 Null, blank, and meaningless 
 
 As a burnt scroll that blackens 
 
 With the passing of the fire, 
 
 Lay the dead infinite sky. 
 
 99 
 
FINIS 
 
 Lo ! in the halls of Time, 
 
 I thought, the torches are out — 
 
 The revelry of the gods, 
 
 Or lamentation of demons 
 
 For which their flames were lit, 
 
 Over and quiet at last 
 
 With the closing peace of night, 
 
 Whose dumb, dead, passionless skies 
 
 Enfold the living world 
 
 As the sea a sinking pebble. 
 
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