LIBRARY OF^CONGRESS. 
 
 Chap...r..... Copyright No. 
 
 Shelf„_-C5iU5 
 
 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 
THE 
 
 LIGHT-BEAEER 
 
 OF 
 
 LIBERTY. 
 
 BY 
 
 J. W. SCHOLL. 
 
 • • • 
 
 What the brain has thought, and the hands have 
 wrought, 
 And the soul has dreamed could be. 
 Is the only worth in the whole wide earth, 
 And the measure of life, for me ! 
 
 — The Author, 
 
 BOSTON : 
 
 EASTERN PUBLISHING COMPANY, 
 
 6l COURT STREET. 
 
 1 
 

 Copyrighted 1899, 
 
 By 
 J. W. SCROLL. 
 
 All Rights Reserved. 
 
 TWO COPIES RECEIVED. 
 
 SeCONU COPY, 
 
 
,. Ipdex 
 
 ^ PAGE. 
 
 Preface. 
 
 Author's Announcement. 
 
 The Light-Bearer Of Liberty i 
 
 The Spectral Visitant 45 
 
 Jesus Of Nazareth. 79 
 
 My Creed 99 
 
 My Dust 113 
 
 Fragment From UupuBLisHED Masque. . . .117 
 
 A CORDON OF SONNETS. 
 
 Christus 123 
 
 Truth, The Redemptor 124 
 
 Faith 125 
 
 Atonement 126 
 
 Resurrection . . 127 
 
 The Everlasting Life 128 
 
 Transfiguration 129 
 
 Immortality 130 
 
 Calvary 131 
 
 Ekklesia 132 
 
 Gethsemane 133 
 
 Olivet 134 
 
 The Paraklete 135 
 
 Hypatia 136 
 
 To a Serpent 137 
 
 • • • 
 
 The Birth Of A God . 139 
 
 Agnosticism 140 
 
 Thoughts 143 
 
 My Pious Comforters 145 
 
. . preface . . 
 
 ¥¥ 
 
 The human heart and the human brain 
 
 Are guides and sanctions enough for me, 
 
 For your blessed bibles and creeds are vain, 
 To the man that pants for liberty. 
 
 ¥¥ 
 
 HE raison d'etre of this little 
 volume is found in the dic- 
 tum of the Rev. Homer 
 Wilber; ''Men do not 
 make poetry, it is made 
 out of them!* It is the 
 incarnation of the rare 
 moments in the poet's life, when the mind is 
 at white heat and his heart beats like a trip- 
 hammer. There is something inevitable 
 about it. 
 
 The several poems, contained herein, 
 will, the author trusts, speak for themselves. 
 Some will make enemies ; some, friends. 
 Friends among those who find that the rags 
 and patches of a theological system, though 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 once considered royal purple woven in with 
 threads of gold, leave them naked in the face 
 of the universe, and who are striving to weave 
 themselves a new garment whole and with- 
 out a seam. Enemies among those conserva- 
 tives, who constantly witness their own de- 
 feat but anathematize the victors ;who cling 
 to the old sinking,barnacle-covered ship when 
 all their fellow-passengers have taken to the 
 life-boats ; who would die with the "faith of the 
 fathers" rather than acknowledge that a new 
 world of thought has arisen, with a new faith 
 that leaves the greater mysteries as myster- 
 ies still, but gives full leash to reason. 
 
 It is not too much to hold, that any 
 man who has kept abreast of Truth ; who has 
 in his mental possession the chief facts of 
 biblical criticism, of archaeology, of history 
 and especially the history of thought-systems, 
 of astronomy, geology and psychology ; who 
 has not stultified his mind by long indulgence 
 of prejudices, must assent to the following 
 propositions : 
 
 (i) That the Bible is not a single book, 
 but a Literature, containing many myths 
 and legends and crude early views of the 
 world, that it is not entirely consistent 
 throughout, nor chronologically arranged, 
 and that it is to be studied by the 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 same methods and judged by the same 
 standards which are applied to all other 
 ancient literary remains. 
 
 (2) That the two-fold story of the crea- 
 tion in Genesis is inconsistent in itself, 
 and cannot in either form be harmonized 
 with the facts of geology and must be 
 considered a myth incorporated into 
 Hebrew tradition from extra-Hebrew 
 sources still older. 
 
 (3) That the story of Adam and Kve 
 and the Fall is simply a myth. 
 
 (4) That man has been proven to have 
 existed on the earth, in Egypt, in France, 
 in Denmark, in England, in Switzerland, 
 and in America, for long ages before 
 the biblical date of the creation of Adam 
 and Eve. 
 
 (5) That the Deluge of Noah is a myth, 
 and the preservation of all species of 
 animals in the ark an impossibility. 
 
 (6) That the rainbow has existed 
 wherever sunlight fell on falling rain and 
 has refracted into a human eye, and that 
 its first appearance at the subsidence of 
 the Deluge is mythical. 
 
 Ill 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 (7) That the story of the confusion of 
 tongues at Babel is mythical, and con- 
 trary to all known facts of philology. 
 
 (8) That Satan has no real existence. 
 
 (9) That there is no real hell of fire 
 and brimstone. 
 
 (10) That there is no unimpeachable 
 evidence of the existence of angelic 
 orders of cherubim and seraphim and 
 the lesser servants of Jehovah, but that 
 these were the necessary complements 
 of a rude anthropomorphic god, who 
 could not be everywhere at all times. 
 
 (11) That "witch-craft" and "demoniac 
 possession" are and always have been 
 delusions or misnomers of diseased con- 
 ditions. 
 
 (12) That drought, pestilence, storms, 
 earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions, are 
 never "divine visitations" or "satanic 
 machinations", but always natural phe- 
 nomena. 
 
 (13) That prophecy was never specif- 
 ically predictive. 
 
 (14) That no part of the Bible claims 
 for itself divine inspiration or inerrancy. 
 
 IV 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 (15) That no miracles now take place, 
 (using miracle in its accepted sense of a 
 temporary annulment, change or rever- 
 sal of the ordinary processes of nature.) 
 
 (16) That the evidence of miracles in 
 the past, (such as raising the dead, 
 turning the shadow back on the dial- 
 plate, making a metallic axe swim, feed- 
 ing the multitude on the loaves and 
 fishes, turning water into wine, etc.) is 
 not sufficient to be convincing. 
 
 (17) That there is no evidence for the 
 efficacy of prayer in changing the course 
 of nature, except in a limited perfectly 
 natural way by its effect upon the per- 
 son praying and upon the hearers, and 
 this ought not be counted an exception. 
 
 (18) That the idea of God is a natural 
 human conception, and as men have 
 become better, their notions of God 
 have become better. 
 
 (19) That the human race as a whole 
 has steadily risen, and that any people's 
 religion is a human product, largely an 
 unconscious growth, that measures its 
 elevation, and is never a revelation from 
 without. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 (20) That the whole Universe was not 
 originated and fitted up especially for 
 the use and delia-ht of man. 
 
 "&' 
 
 It is possible to hold these views, and 
 yet be a factor in the best social, civil, eth- 
 ical and religious life possible among men. 
 Not one of the views negatived in these 
 propositions is worth a fig to humanity, but 
 the belief of all or most of them would make 
 a mad-house of the human brain, and fill life 
 with delirium. The moral health of man- 
 kind demands a clearing of the atmosphere, 
 even though a storm may be the only means 
 of clearing it. 
 
 The author has not been betrayed into 
 wholesale libel of humanity. He leaves that 
 to the Calvinist. He believes that men are 
 generally honest, that their notions are wont 
 to be honest, even when most absurdly 
 untrue. They are to be pitied and helped 
 to a better thought, not berated as fools and 
 hypocrites. They need culture, but culture 
 requires complete destruction of the untrue, 
 and gives a negative cast to the labors of 
 almost all liberals. Every move forward 
 involves iconoclasm. But we are constantly 
 confronted with the question, "What do you 
 give us in place of what you take away ?" 
 We give but little, and are likely to give but 
 
 VI 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 little more. You have enough, good brother 
 man, to guide you through all the lives you 
 will ever have to live, if only you can be 
 unfettered. You need nothing given you. 
 You need rather have much taken away, 
 much that encumbers you. You are a living 
 thing, a bundle of instincts adapted more or 
 less nearly to your environment by the long 
 inheritance of the ages. These inborn in- 
 stincts, guided by enlightened reason, are a 
 thousandfold better guide to the high con- 
 duct of your life than all the parchments and 
 papyri of the past. 
 
 The constructive or affirmative side of 
 liberal thought can not be so distinctly 
 religious, as that term is commonly under- 
 stood, for most of what passes for religious, 
 will not stand the test of clear thinking. 
 But ethics, applied to public and private life, 
 is re-enforced and made supreme. It may 
 not be out of place to quote here the conclud- 
 ing paragraphs of an article published by the 
 author several years since : 
 
 Man owes : 
 
 " To the Universe, a willing submission 
 to all laws, physical, mental, and moral, and 
 an active, not merely passive, existence, 
 
 " To himself, self-preservation, culture, 
 happiness, and self-perpetuation. 
 
 VII 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 "To wife, chaste, exclusive love, personal 
 liberty, and equal opportunities of life and 
 development. 
 
 "To children, pure healthy bodies and 
 minds, proper care and development in 
 infancy, fullest preparation for an entrance 
 upon all the rights and privileges of mature 
 life, and wise counsel in all things. 
 
 "To fellow-men, unabridged rights to 
 life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, 
 and co-operation in securing mutual benefits. 
 
 "To the State, good citizenship, active 
 effort in forming and executing just and 
 equal laws, and conformity to all laws until 
 by reformatory education public thought 
 shall alter them. 
 
 **To the Past, a cherishing of all that is 
 good in the social fabric, in philosophical, 
 ethical, religious, political, and economic 
 thought, and a rejection of all that is useless 
 or evil. 
 
 "To the Future, all the progress of 
 which he is capable. He should bequeath 
 more than the legacy of the Past. 
 
 " To the race, everything. He owes self- 
 culture, a full active life, a strong pure man- 
 hood, and a broad, catholic spirit in all things, 
 that he may be a factor in the evolution of a 
 crowning order of life." 
 
 VIII 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 These constitute an ever-present au- 
 thoritative code to the developed man. 
 
 But what of Faith, Worship, Prayer.? 
 Where have you placed these ? They are 
 but attitudes of the human spirit toward the 
 great Unknown, the Infinite, the Universe. 
 
 And what of immortality } If there be 
 no future of reward and retribution, what 
 power will ethical law have over us ? "Eat, 
 drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die !" 
 This is but another form of the old question 
 of sanctions. Belief in immortality has noth- 
 ing necessarily to do with the moral acts of 
 men. If there is a future state, it must be a 
 complement to this state. A full complete 
 earth-life must insure a fitting entrance upon 
 the spirit-life. Our duties and opportunities 
 all lie here. Our motives and sanctions are 
 all here. If immortality is true, (and most 
 of us believe it in some form) we will enter 
 upon it prepared for all its opportunities and 
 enjoyments. If it is but a beautiful dream of 
 the ages, we shall go down to the dust, our 
 bodies dissolving into the elements, our lives 
 breathing out into nothing. We shall go to 
 nothing dreadful. The mission of our life 
 will be ended. 
 
 This of course will not seem a fair 
 return for taking away the creeds and some 
 
 IX 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 of the unfounded or too slightly founded 
 hopes of certain men, but let them remember 
 that this is not done in a spirit of robbery or 
 wanton cruelty. Most liberals have been 
 driven to their position by the force of unde- 
 niable facts, reluctantly enough many times, 
 but they have accepted the situation, with all 
 its obloquy, with all the pains inflicted upon 
 dearest friends, rather than stand before the 
 world convicted of publicly fostering a sys- 
 tem of thought which they privately believe 
 false and pernicious. They are thoroughly 
 honest, and leave to the pulpit the monopoly 
 of indulging an advanced esoteric thought, 
 yet teaching publicly a lower system adapted 
 (forsooth) to less cultured minds. But mean- 
 while population and learning both are 
 increasing faster than the pews are filling. 
 And no wonder ! 
 
 Why can not the pulpit escape the bond- 
 age of tradition, and resume its place in the 
 van of human thought, a place usurped by 
 the press, and now too often used in truck- 
 ling to popular demands } 
 
 It must stand for living thought, free 
 inquiry, and cease maligning the honest 
 worker and thinker. Until that time it must 
 remain a decaying member of the social body, 
 and become a menace and curse instead of 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 a wholesome conservator and propagator of 
 the best traditions of men. Let the church 
 heed the many-voiced warnings of the last 
 century. 
 
 The title-poem of this volume was writ- 
 ten under the inspiration of the lectures of 
 Col. Robert G. IngersoU, and is offered as a 
 tribute to him, whom many delight to recog- 
 nize as the manly and eloquent friend of 
 man, woman, and child, the champion of the 
 oppressed, the titanic foe of superstition, the 
 torch-bearer of intellectual liberty. 
 
 The other poems are a humble contribu- 
 tion to the cause for which the best blood 
 has been spilled, in all ages, and for which 
 obloquy and hissing are borne now. 
 
 J. W. SCHOLL. 
 
 XI 
 
*• The Light-Bearer of Liberty " is what it 
 claims to be, — a tribute to the living. While these 
 sheets are in the printer's hands, comes the sad 
 news that the eloquent voice is silenced forever. 
 
 This poem was written in August, 1898, A 
 copy was forwarded with a personal letter to Col. 
 Ingersoll, the September following. On October 
 eleventh, the author received an autograph letter in 
 response, which is now one of his choicest treasures. 
 
 ¥ W 
 
 COPT OF LETTER FROM COL. ROBERT G. INGERSOLL TO J. W. SCHOLL. 
 
 WALSTON, DOBBS' FERRY-ON-HUDSON, 
 
 Oct. 8, 1898. 
 My Dear Mr. Scholl, 
 
 I have read with the greatest delight your beautiful poem, — a 
 poem that covers the whole ground, that has in it the very heart of 
 history. 
 
 I do not deserve a hundredth part of your generous praise, and yet 
 with all my heart I thank you for thinking that I do. I have done but 
 little, and yet my pride is that that little has been done for the liberty 
 of men. To have gained such a friend as you are, is to succeed. 
 
 Are you going to have the poem published? It is a great plea, 
 a grand argument for freedom. Leaving all out regarding myself, the 
 verses are wonderful, dramatic, filled with the real flame. 
 
 Thanking you and congratulating you and with love to you and 
 yours, 
 
 I remain yours always, 
 
 (Signed,) R. G. Ingersoll. 
 XII 
 
Jl^e [\(^f)t-Bearer of Ijberty. 
 
 TT TITAN with a torch in hand 
 
 Is moving in the midst of men, 
 And some are cursing the sharp glare 
 Fecause their blind eyes cannot bear 
 The splendor of its clear white light 
 Athwart the dusks of ancient Night, 
 
 And some — a censer-swinging band — 
 Housed in their sacred robber's-den 
 Loud rattle old Saint Peter's keys. 
 Turn bellowing bulls loose from their sees 
 To fright the timid from the rays 
 That pierce their dark and hidden ways, 
 I 
 
THE LIGHT-BEARER OF LIBERTY. 
 
 And some, who dare not understand 
 
 The breadth and height of human ken, 
 Clasp to their eyes a holy book 
 And, thus defended, calmly look 
 Upon the flaming torch, and swear 
 There is no torch nor lightnings there. 
 
 ^ 
 
 II. 
 
 •^^HE Titan has a voice as clear 
 
 As the light he bears in his strong 
 right hand. 
 An urgent voice that men must hear 
 Or die unwept in a stagnant land. 
 
 A voice of laughter for hours of mirth, 
 A voice of tears for the time of grief, 
 
 A voice of joy for the flowers of earth» 
 A voice for every golden sheaf, 
 
 2 
 
THE LIGHT-BEARER OF LIBERTY. 
 
 A voice for every honest doubt, 
 A voice for every manly trust, 
 
 A voice of cheer when the soul is stout, 
 
 A voice of praise when the deed is just. 
 
 A voice of scorn for the outgrown creed, 
 A voice of scathe for the hypocrite, 
 
 A voice of help for human need. 
 
 When souls in rayless dungeons sit. 
 
 A voice for sculpture and painting and song 
 A voice for the freedom of human 
 thought, 
 A voice for the conquest over wrong, 
 
 A voice for the soul that was never 
 bought. 
 
THE LIGHT-BEARER OF LIBERTY. 
 
 A voice to parry the tyrant's blow, 
 A voice to lift the victim up, 
 
 A voice to smite the priesthood low, 
 
 And dash from their hands the poisoned 
 cup. 
 
 A voice to set the bondmen free 
 
 From chains of body and fetters of soul. 
 A voice of battle and victory, 
 
 A voice of striving to reach the goal. 
 
 A voice of faith in the far event 
 
 And the deathlessness of noble deeds. 
 
 And hope whose iris-bow is bent 
 
 O'er the path that ever onward leads. 
 
THE LIGHT-BEARER OF LIBERTY. 
 
 f 
 
 in. 
 
 -T^HE earth hears the Voice, 
 ^^ And stands aghast ! 
 O Earth, rejoice ! 
 The Iconoclast 
 
 Is clearing the ground 
 
 For a Pantheon ! 
 List ! Hear the sound ! 
 
 How the work goes on ! 
 
 There lies a god 
 
 Broken in twain, 
 Here a Holy Rood 
 
 With its god's-blood stain. 
 
 5 
 
THE LIGHT-BEARER OF LIBERTY. 
 
 There a book with a seal, 
 And a signet ring, 
 
 Here the print of a heel 
 On some holy thing. 
 
 There a boot and a screw. 
 And a strong-box rent, 
 
 Here indulgences new 
 
 To the four winds sent. 
 
 There beads are strewn, 
 And a book of prayer, 
 
 Here an image unknown. 
 And a surplice rare. 
 
THE LIGHT-BEARER OF LIBERTY. 
 
 There the bones of a saint 
 Tossed out in the mire, 
 
 Here a rag with the taint 
 Of martyrdom's fire. 
 
 There an iron bed 
 
 Is crushed at a blow, 
 Here a bishop's head 
 
 And a king's below. 
 
 There the nails of a cross, 
 And a shirt of Treves. 
 
 O Earth ! what a loss ! 
 For the Titan leaves 
 
THE LIGHT-BEARER OF LIBERTY. 
 
 But the barren ground 
 For a Pantheon ! 
 
 List ! Hear the sound ! 
 
 How the work goes on ! 
 
 
 '^y 
 
THE LIGHT-BEARER OF LIBERTY. 
 
 Hi 
 
 IV. 
 
 ^y ISE, true men, 
 Build it again, 
 
 Build it anew ! 
 Out of the dust 
 Build it more just, 
 
 Build it more true ! 
 
 Build it to last, 
 Build it more vast, 
 
 Grand as the soul ! 
 Build without flaw. 
 Base it on law, 
 
 Perfect and whole ! 
 9 
 
THE LIGHT-BEARER OF LIBERTY. 
 
 » 
 
 ZTIHAT does the Voice cry ? 
 ^^* There is no hell. 
 There is no god of blight and blood, 
 Of pestilence and fire and flood. 
 
 No Adam fell. 
 No child is damned. 
 
 No chosen sect. 
 No heaven crammed 
 
 With God's elect. 
 
 No miracle ! 
 
THE LIGHT-BEARER OF LIBERTY. 
 
 No One in Three, 
 No Three in One, 
 No world undone ! 
 
 Of mystery 
 No priest or prophet ! 
 
 No purchase-blood 
 To save from Tophet ! 
 
 No tithes of food 
 
 God*s leeches to fee ! 
 This is the Titan's cry. 
 
 mn 
 
THE LIGHT-BEARER OF LIBERTY. 
 
 K 
 
 VI. 
 
 '^^HE Voice cries out again : 
 ^"^ Strike the bonds from the limbs of men ! 
 Strike the chains from the minds of men ! 
 Strike the hate from the hearts of men ! 
 Strike the lusts from the flesh of men ! 
 Strike the lie from the lips of men ! 
 Strike the creeds from the souls of men ! 
 Let in the Light and the Love again ! 
 
 12 
 
THE LIGHT-BEARER OF LIBERTY. 
 
 VII. 
 
 <> EST Goddess of a noble throng, 
 
 *^ O Liberty, desired so long. 
 
 Thy latest Torch-bearer we hail ! 
 
 Long be it ere his strength shall fail ! 
 
 Long may the Titan's stalwart hand 
 
 Hurl thy swift lightnings through the land ! 
 
 Long may the Titan's potent word 
 
 In thine all-conquering cause be heard ! 
 
 And when his lingering hour shall come, 
 
 Lift thou the Light ! O be not dumb ! 
 
 Sustain and cheer, uphold us yet, 
 
 Lest we forget, lest we forget ! 
 
 ^''^ 
 
 13 
 
THE LIGHT-BEARER OF LIBERTY. 
 
 ^ 
 
 VIII. 
 
 TTND must we wait till a great man dies, 
 ' And honor him with a pile of stone 
 
 And a statue carved with a brave "here lies," 
 To keep his fame and virtues known ? 
 
 Such posthumous praise is too long deferred, 
 When the dead fare well, where the liv- 
 ing fared worse ! 
 
 The man who speaks an immortal word 
 Better beseems an immortal verse 
 
 Flung out to the winds of the listening Earth, 
 Or a living wreath for his living head. 
 
 Take then this wreath ! It is little worth. 
 But I would not wait till thou art dead. 
 14 
 
THE LIGHT-BEARER OF LIBERTY. 
 
 ¥ 
 
 IX. 
 
 <> E still, proud bells ! 
 
 Hush your dissonant clamors ! 
 
 Stay your pendent hammers ! 
 Be still, proud bells ! 
 
 This fete is not for you 
 
 High up in your gothic towers, 
 A gala day for the few 
 
 Who defy tyrannic powers. 
 
 A sacrament day to me, 
 
 With wine and wafers of love, 
 
 For the Master abides with me 
 
 And throbs through me with his love. 
 
 IS 
 
THE LIGHT-BEARER OF LIBERTY. 
 
 And the world has a hope today, 
 And the burden is lifted quite, 
 
 And the future stretches away 
 
 O'erarched with a bow of light. 
 
 Be still, proud bells ! 
 
 If we mourned him dead, 
 You would laugh over head ! 
 
 Be still, proud bells ! 
 
 i6 
 
THE LIGHT-BEARER OF LIBERTY. 
 
 -O ING out, glad bells ! 
 
 Swing your pendent hammers ! 
 
 Loose your dissonant clamors ! 
 Ring out, glad bells ! 
 
 The joy of this day is for all, 
 
 For you in your gothic towers, 
 
 Ring out sweet Liberty's call. 
 
 And startle the tyrant powers ! 
 
 Leap up to the regions of light. 
 
 Give it tongue and never cease, 
 
 Leap out of your ghostly night. 
 
 And utter his message of peace ! 
 17 
 
THE LIGHT-BEARER OF LIBERTY* 
 
 For the best you know today, 
 
 You owe to the stalwart hand 
 
 That threw your idols away 
 
 And tore faith's blinding band ! 
 
 Ring out, glad bells ! 
 
 If you knew him, when dead, 
 You would sob overhead ! 
 
 Ring out, sad bells ! 
 
 #^ 
 
 i8 
 
THE LIGHT-BEARER OF LIBERTY. 
 
 XL 
 
 ^g^E Kings of the Earth, 
 ^ The Smiter's hand is at your thrones, 
 An eagle-pinioned Age disowns 
 Your right of birth ! 
 
 Your first born prince 
 
 May be but a worthless driveling fool, 
 A hare-brained rake, or an easy tool 
 
 Of intrigue or chance. 
 
 And the heavens, methinks, 
 
 Are tired of the red incessant flood, 
 For strewn with gore and sodden with 
 blood 
 The whole earth stinks. 
 19 
 
THE LIGHT-BEARER OF LIBERTY. 
 
 Because, forsooth, 
 
 Two knaves of royal birth would reign, 
 One knave and half his realm is slain 
 
 With no more ruth 
 
 Than a spider feels, 
 
 When caught in his web with tangled 
 wings 
 
 A. swarm of blue-mailed insects clings 
 In the knitted wheels, 
 
 For common blood 
 
 Is only fit to manure the ground, 
 
 Or tempt the vultures to wheel around 
 
 Their wonted food ! 
 
 20 
 
THE LIGHT-BEARER OF LIBERTY. 
 
 Quail ! Kings of the Earth ! 
 
 For the Smiter's hand is at your thrones 
 And the eagle-pinioned Age disowns 
 
 Your right of birth ! 
 
 Hark ! Hear the cry ! 
 
 Freedom, Equality, Brotherhood ! 
 
 Risen from one baptism of blood 
 Where thousands lie, 
 
 They offer peace — 
 
 An olive branch with a stain of blood — 
 O take it, and spare the rich red flood 
 
 That shall not cease 
 
 21 
 
THE LIGHT-BEARER OF LIBERTY. 
 
 Till Earth is free, 
 
 And every kingdom is overthrown, 
 And crowns and scepters are bawbles 
 grown 
 
 For Democracy ! 
 
 It comes ! It comes ! 
 
 Let it be peace or let it be war ! 
 
 Choose, ye Nations ! I hear it afar 
 With trumpets and drums ! 
 
 Ye Freemen, choose ! 
 
 Surge, surge and emerge from royalty's 
 
 ban. 
 Try the loss of a king and the gain of 
 man ! 
 Ye cannot lose ! 
 
 22 
 
THE LIGHT-BEARER OF LIBERTY. 
 
 Fall ! Kings of the Earth ! 
 
 The Smiter's hand is at your thrones, 
 And the eagle-pinioned Age disowns 
 
 Your right of birth. 
 
 23 
 
THE LIGHT-BEARER OF LIBERTY. 
 
 XII. 
 
 ^^E Deums sing, 
 ^^ Most noble King 
 
 Of rich Brazil ! 
 You left the throne, 
 Now reigns alone 
 
 The People's will ! 
 
 Long sit serene 
 Brittania's Queen, 
 
 Hoar figure-head ! 
 The day has dawned ! 
 Your crown is pawned. 
 
 Your office dead ! 
 
 But Dies irae — 
 Ordeals fiery — 
 
 For a]l the others, 
 Till the will of one 
 Is a law to none 
 
 And men are brothers ! 
 24 
 
THE LIGHT-BEARER OF LIBERTY 
 
 18 
 
 XIII. 
 
 ^^OME, O Woman, noble Queen, 
 Crowning Masterpiece of Time, 
 Evolution's work sublime, 
 
 Choicest creature ever seen ! 
 
 Crown your great Deliverer ! 
 
 Bring the conqueror's meed of oak ! 
 
 He your galling bondage broke. 
 His the mightiest thunders were. 
 
 You were slaves of slaves at first — 
 
 Old Saint Paul had made you so — 
 Abject, suffering, full of woe — 
 
 Saints despised you, Jahveh cursed — 
 25 
 
THE LIGHT-BEARER OF LIBERTY. 
 
 Silent, serving tyrant man, 
 
 Doll or mistress, chattel, ward, 
 Man your lord as Christ his lord, 
 
 Blot on fair creation's plan ! 
 
 Necessary evils, you ! 
 
 How could man be born, in truth ? 
 
 Man, creation's lord, forsooth ! 
 Any ape, meseems, would do ! 
 
 So your wings were early clipped, 
 
 Bearing children half your sphere, 
 Other half a husband's fear, 
 
 Love-buds frosty curses nipped. 
 
 26 
 
THE LIGHT-BEARER OF LIBERTY. 
 
 Priests were slaves to self-made ghosts, 
 Men were slaves to wily priests, 
 Women slaves to both the beasts, 
 
 So it pleased the Lord of Hosts ! 
 
 So it stands in holy writ, — 
 
 Holy bugbear for the race ; — 
 Woman meekly took her place. 
 
 And the ages hallowed it. 
 
 Rise, O Woman, noble Queen, 
 
 Crowning Masterpiece of Time, 
 Evolution's work sublime. 
 
 Choicest creature ever seen ! 
 
 27 
 
THE LIGHT-BEARER OF LIBERTY. 
 
 Voices came from out the deeps, 
 
 Thoughts that battled hard and long, 
 Manacled by priestly wrong ; 
 
 Freedom burst her donjon-keeps ; 
 
 Skulls grew larger, senses finer, 
 Justice snatched the balances, 
 Love climbed up through swift degrees, 
 
 Human life became diviner ; 
 
 Ghosts and priests have slowly sunk, 
 Men and women slowly climb, 
 Woman yet shall rise sublime, 
 
 Ghosts be lower than a monk ! 
 
THE LIGHT-BEAKER OF LIBERTY. 
 
 She shall own her intellect, 
 
 Own her head and heart and hand, 
 Every door shall open stand 
 
 Wheresoe'er her brain elect ! 
 
 She shall own her flesh and blood. 
 
 Marriage vows shall make no slaves. 
 
 Legal vice shall dig no graves 
 For polluted motherhood ! 
 
 And the Man shall honors do, 
 
 Girdle her with service sweet. 
 Find his heaven at her feet, 
 
 Noble, generous, manly, true ! 
 
 29 
 
THE LIGHT-BEARER OF LIBERTY. 
 
 Come, O Woman, noble Queen, 
 
 Crowning Masterpiece of Time, 
 Evolution's work sublime, 
 
 Choicest creature ever seen ! 
 
 Crown your strong Deliverer ! 
 
 Bring the civic wreath of oak ! 
 
 Hail, O Lifter of the yoke ! 
 Hail, O mighty Thunderer ! 
 
 wm 
 
 30 
 
THE LIGHT-BEARER OF LIBERTY. 
 
 f 
 
 XIV. 
 
 "I^IMPLED babies, pink and white, — 
 ^^^ Heaven's own embodied light, — 
 Lent for balm to mortal sight ! 
 
 Who would dare to look within 
 Souls like yours, to heaven akin, 
 Swearing they are stuffed with sin ? 
 
 Lips that touched a mother's breast, 
 Hands that mothers' hands have pressed, 
 Cheeks that mothers' cheeks caressed, 
 
 Need no priestly rites baptismal, 
 Need no shelter from the abysmal 
 Gulf of Hades dark and dismal. 
 31 
 
THE LIGHT-BEARER OF LIBERTY. 
 
 Were you, priests, but half so pure. 
 Though the earth should not endure, 
 You might hope to sit secure ! 
 
 Gooing babies, helpless pygmies. 
 Who shall solve your Fate's enigmas ? 
 Who shall save you from Earth's stigmas ? 
 
 Who shall keep your bodies sweet ? 
 
 Who shall guide uncertain feet ? 
 
 Who shall choose when pathways meet ? 
 
 Who shall wield the potent charm 
 Timely wise to sound the alarm 
 To forefend approaching harm ? 
 
 32 
 
THE LIGHT-BEARER OF LIBERTY. 
 
 Who unveil to questioning eyes 
 All the shadowy world that lies 
 Back of life's realities ? 
 
 Who shall lift Deception's masks ? 
 Fathers, mothers, these your tasks ! 
 Higher, nobler, no one asks ! 
 
 Unconsulted little wights, 
 Subject to ten thousand slights. 
 You have most undoubted rights, 
 
 Right to birth by choice, not chance, 
 Full fruition, slow advance, 
 Taintless flesh, intelligence. 
 
 33 
 
THE LIGHT-BEARER OF LIBERTY. 
 
 Perfect function, faultless form, 
 
 Appetite and senses warm, 
 
 Sex and love for passion's storm. 
 
 Who would bring you into light 
 
 Out of Being's primal night 
 
 And make void one single right, . 
 
 Should be cursed with childlessness. 
 Never know Love's sweet embrace, 
 Never feel a child's caress ! 
 
 Irresponsible for being, 
 
 Not dissenting nor agreeing, 
 
 Neither seeking life nor fleeing, 
 
 34 
 
THE LIGHT-BEARER OF LIBERTY. 
 
 Fated as the scattered wheat 
 Basking in autumnal heat 
 Underneath the sower's feet, 
 
 Flowers of sweet humanity, 
 Shall the promised harvest be 
 Absolutest property ? 
 
 Shall the father own the soul ? 
 Play the slaver's hated role ? 
 Body, brain and life control ? 
 
 Muse of Liberty, protest ! 
 
 Do sweet childhood's one behest 
 
 Till its wrongs are all redressed ! 
 
 35 
 
THE LIGHT-BEARER OF LIBERTY. 
 
 Dimpled babies, pink and white, — 
 Heaven's own embodied light, — 
 Lent for balm to mortal sight ! 
 
 Hopes that shine like radiant stars, 
 Loves indrifting across the bars, — 
 Soul's incessant avatars ! 
 
 Leaders of each new crusade 
 'Gainst the realms of darkness made, 
 We will send you willing aid ! 
 
 We, the elders, see the light. 
 Breaking at the close of night, 
 You are standing in the white 
 
 Radiance of a fairer dawn ! 
 Shout " God speed !" and cheer them on, 
 Till the night is wholly gone ! 
 36 
 
THE LIGHT-BEARER OF LIBERTY. 
 
 » 
 
 XV, 
 
 TT CRY of Humanity : 
 
 O voice of a thousand streams unpent, 
 Down leaping from rock to rock dashing to 
 
 spray ! 
 O roar of tempest and wrestle of mighty 
 
 whirlwind, 
 Unrestrained and mad, yet not lawless ! 
 O types of true men, mighty, unfettered ! 
 Cry and utter adown the blast : 
 lo pasan ! An endless shout. 
 Blast of trumpets and lusty throats ! 
 Hosanna ! and Gloria in excelsis ! 
 Honor and laud for the mighty rescue ! 
 
 37 
 
THE LIGHT-BEARER OF LIBERTY. 
 
 The new blood surges in fetterless limbs, 
 The new blood surges in quivering brains, 
 And thoughts flash out like sparks from an 
 
 anvil ! 
 The whole world is kindling. 
 A new aeon is born, and the new Phoenix 
 
 arises 
 From cold ashes of slavish death 
 And sweeps on majestic wing toward the 
 
 flaming East ! 
 Gather, O mighty men, and behold ! 
 O magnificent mothers, and gaze on it ! 
 And your children shall shine and burn with 
 
 the flame of it, 
 And the great Law shall be written no more 
 
 in books, 
 Nor be graven on stone. 
 But the brain and heart shall be law enough, 
 And even young blood shall be law enough i 
 
 38 
 
THE LIGHT-BEARER OF LIBERTY. 
 
 Not by fear shall the Right bear rule, 
 But by love, and he that loves best 
 
 Shall be the Exemplar and bear the scepter. 
 
 Yet he shall not bear rule ! 
 
 Each man shall be king of himself ! 
 
 Each woman queen of herself ! 
 
 Each child the lord of itself, reverend, 
 
 Reverenced above the Kings and Queens of 
 the Earth, 
 
 For the child-soul is the budding of a mil- 
 lion generations. 
 
 And grander by implication of a million new 
 generations, 
 
 The harvest and seeding at once of the 
 infinite Past and the Future ! 
 
 Shout aloud! Let joy be unbounded as 
 life is unbounded ! 
 
 The new Order be a monument to him 
 
 And to every Titan that broke a bond 
 
 Or struck a blow for the rescue ! 
 39 
 
THE LIGHT-BEARER OF LIBERTY. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 ^^PIRITS, goblins, gods and ghosts, 
 
 Marshall your aerial hosts, 
 Spread your gauze or leathern wings 
 And descend in narrowing rings ! 
 
 Squeak or gibber, shriek or thunder, 
 Cleave the cloudless sky asunder, 
 Show your forms to mortal sight, 
 Wheel around us and alight ! 
 
 Silence ! What ? Ye will not come ? 
 Earth is speechless ! Heaven dumb ! 
 Gods and ghosts and goblins gone. 
 Frightened from the glowing dawn ! 
 
 0^ 
 
 40 
 
THE LIGHT-BEARER OF LIBERTY. 
 
 ^ 
 
 XVII. 
 
 7TWHAT is the end and meaning of a life ? 
 
 Is it to feel the tides of spirit surge 
 Through every fiber of the heart and brain 
 And seal the lips forever ? To know a truth 
 And choke and smother it within the soul, 
 Lest the quick eye and tell-tale earnest face 
 Should half reveal it to a struggling brother ? 
 O agony of silence ! Must it be 
 That, standing in the surging throngs of men 
 Whose dullard senses feel nor see nor hear 
 The world that lies within them and above, 
 
 41 
 
THE LIGHT-BEARER OF LIBERTY. 
 
 My tongue is silent ? Must I feel and see 
 The shame and degradation of a world 
 And hear the clanking chains that shackle 
 
 thought, 
 And yet not speak ? Nay, I will speak, jnust 
 
 speak, 
 Though I should stand alone and scorned of 
 
 men, 
 For, in full consecration to my task, 
 I'd rather be called infidel by man 
 Than live unfaithful to my highest thought ! 
 
 I 
 
 ■^.^ 
 
 42 
 
THE LIGHT-BEARER OF LIBERTY. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 'J^ITANIC Herald of the whitening dawn, 
 Maligned and hated, cursed, misunder- 
 stood, 
 Yet dreaded by the Night's misgotten 
 brood, — 
 Tithe-mongering hypocrites that lick and 
 
 fawn 
 The hand of power, but rudely trample on 
 The helpless weakling and despoil his 
 
 good, 
 And shoddy saints with villainy indued 
 In purple robes, and Superstition's spawn 
 That fill the cushioned pews and take their 
 
 ease 
 While reverend Dulness drones the liturgies, 
 Or bustling Mediocrity displays 
 The curious gleanings of his college days ! — 
 The heathen rage, but thou art still serene, 
 Olympian, gazing on the troubled scene. 
 43 
 
THE LIGHT-BEARER OF LIBERTY. 
 
 But here and there a soul is kindled new 
 
 With fire asbestous^ and all human creeds 
 
 And schemes born of imperious human 
 
 needs 
 
 Are tested in the crucible anew, 
 
 The false burnt out, and radiant left the true. 
 
 His constant fire the cunning chemist 
 
 feeds 
 And fans to flame the smouldering fur- 
 nace gleeds, 
 Till all is tested or Life's day is through ! 
 These build Earth's consecrated Brother- 
 hood, 
 Sworn foes of evil, friends of every good. 
 Thou, Titan, art the clear white light of it. 
 Long years among us deign, revered, to sit, 
 And we will wreathe an amaranthine crown 
 To match the deathlessness of thy renown ! 
 
 44 
 
Jl?e Spectral l/isitapt. 
 
 ¥ looked up from the mighty book. 
 
 My hands with toil-worn palsy shook, 
 And sight my sleepless orbs forsook, 
 
 Or seemed a moment to forsake. 
 Then out of darkness seemed to make 
 A specter that all hues would take, — 
 
 A form inconstant as a dream's, 
 
 Shot through and through with living 
 
 beams, — 
 A tissue strange of dusks and gleams. 
 
 And then with preternatural sight 
 I saw — O vision of affright ! — 
 Myself, that hollow ghost of Night ! 
 45 
 
THE SPECTRAL VISITANT. 
 
 And in its haggard lineaments read 
 The marble lips of one long dead 
 That moved as if they something said. 
 
 I heard within my midnight room 
 
 A sigh as when a sense of doom 
 
 Strikes through grim Death's abysmal gloom, 
 
 And two cold eyes abashed my own. 
 
 I shivered and I felt alone 
 
 With hope and courage well-nigh gone, 
 
 Whereat the lips of spectral mould 
 Made bold to taunt me ; "Thou art old ! 
 Thy blood with sleepless toil grows cold ! 
 
 46 
 
THE SPECTRAL VISITANT. 
 
 Consider well thy little span — 
 
 How swift thy youthful decades ran — 
 
 How swifter flies the age of man ! 
 
 There is no harvest in the years, 
 But ever seed-time full of tears 
 Beguiled by hope that harvest nears ! '* 
 
 He saw my eyes with misery fill, 
 Whereat he smote with bolder skill, 
 With purpose to dethrone my will ; 
 
 " O earthy Earth, that wert not meant 
 To conquer the environment 
 That Mother Nature kindly lent. 
 
 47 
 
THE SPECTRAL VISITANT. 
 
 'Tis but a fever of the blood 
 
 That tells thee of unconquered good 
 
 Beyond thy fated humanhood ! 
 
 Were it not best to sit content 
 
 Within thy humble element, 
 
 Nor strive for dubious betterment ?" 
 
 Whereat I rallied and replied ; 
 
 " Who said that Hope had ever lied ? 
 
 For Time is long, the World is wide !" 
 
 A cold smile beamed across his face ; 
 **Art thou coaeval with the race ? 
 Or fillest but some sorry space 
 
 48 
 
THE SPECTRAL VISITANT. 
 
 Of three score years and ten, or less, 
 With long-complaining weariness, * 
 
 Scarce heard amid Earth's storm and stress ? 
 
 Is Earth a furlong wide to thee 
 Who never traversed land or sea, 
 Save in this musty library ?" 
 
 I dared not answer what I meant, 
 Lest Hope's best shafts as idly spent 
 Leave me devoid of armament. 
 
 Taking my silence for defeat, 
 
 He bent his questioning orbs to meet 
 
 The great book fallen at my feet. 
 
 49 
 
THE SPECTRAL VISITANT. 
 
 I said : "The Masters lived and wrought, 
 They moulded worlds to fit their thought, 
 By them the great Soul must be taught." 
 
 "And if he try his hand untaught, 
 What frightful wrongs are oft inwrought 
 In every deed," he said ; "and thought ! 
 
 And if he wait till all is learned. 
 And Life's dim lamp is wholly burned, 
 What is the fruit his toil has earned ? 
 
 Hast thou the genial medium found 
 Where thoughts and deeds alike abound, 
 Where thoughts and deeds alike are sound ? 
 
 so 
 
THE SPECTRAL VISITANT. 
 
 Confess, poor Toiler on the shore 
 Of ancient wreckage, that thy lore 
 Is less than theirs who went before ! 
 
 And yet beyond a vague perchance, 
 Thou wilt the Scholar's toil enhance, 
 Thy books impeding all advance !" 
 
 Before my startled eyes he stept. 
 
 To where my garnered treasures slepped, 
 
 And clutched my precious manuscript, 
 
 And, with a mocking glance, elate, 
 
 Tossed it into the blazing grate, 
 
 My heart's blood froze, — grown cold of late,- 
 
 5» 
 
THE SPECTRAL VISITANT. 
 
 To see the pages smoke and curl, 
 
 And flamelets dance and leap and whirl, 
 
 I thought of each Rialto pearl 
 
 There garnered, worth a kingdom's price. 
 Destroyed like kingdoms in a trice. 
 When coldly questioned that hard voice ; 
 
 "Will any frugal meal taste worse. 
 Or any dawn grow dark with curse 
 For wanting of thy lost discourse ? 
 
 And see, thou hast a sprightlier fire 
 To flicker like thy heart's desire 
 A moment, and with it expire ! " 
 
 52 
 
THE SPECTRAL VISITANT. 
 
 I could not speak but only weep 
 
 To watch the flame-tongues slowly creep, 
 
 When from its dead lethargic sleep 
 
 My soul awoke and whispered near : 
 " O heavy Heart, be of good cheer, 
 Thy pearls and gold are garnered here ! 
 
 Thou art the sum of three score years, 
 The ripened fruit of toil and tears, 
 Thyself the harvest of whitened ears ! " 
 
 Whereat I felt a kindly hope 
 Dawn swiftly up the Eastern slope 
 And gleam beyond the heavens' cope. 
 
 S3 
 
THE SPECTRAL VISITANT. 
 
 Which swift divining from my face, 
 Wherein no tear had left its trace 
 The Soul's clear morning to deface ; 
 
 " No seed of all that harvest sown, 
 
 It profits little to have grown," 
 
 He said : " when thou and thine art gone. 
 
 What comfort is it now to thee 
 The sum of three score years to be, 
 Yet not of Time's infinity ? 
 
 Thou hast but garnered a few seeds, 
 Immixed with chaff and noxious weeds, 
 Fit only for the furnace gleeds, 
 
 54 
 
THE SPECTRAL VISITANT. 
 
 Which each has garnered in his turn, 
 And others many yet shall learn 
 To boast, ere they to dust return. 
 
 But in the cycle of the years, 
 
 Is there a gain to match their tears, 
 
 Or circle all in like careers } 
 
 What boots it to be learned, and die ? 
 The unlettered laughs as merrily, 
 And both at length shall equal lie. 
 
 What books it to be rich and great .? 
 The plowman on thy broad estate. 
 Gets sunshine at as cheap a rate. 
 
 55 
 
THE SPECTRAL VISITANT. 
 
 Wilt thou grow overbold by hopes 
 That seem to dawn on golden slopes ? 
 Thy face betrays how thy heart gropes, 
 
 And new springs of unbidden tears 
 But show how desert are thy years, 
 Thou puny last of many peers ! 
 
 Surely 'twere best to sit content 
 
 Within thy humble element 
 
 Nor strive for dubious betterment !" 
 
 At length, my sorrows partly spent, 
 A little cry of hope found vent 
 That to my spirit courage lent ; 
 
 56 
 
THE SPECTRAL VISITANT. 
 
 ** Each age grows better than the last, 
 The Present richer than the Past, 
 By Futures still to be surpassed ! " 
 
 " How wilt thou prove it ? " spake the ghost; 
 " The Past is gone, and wholly lost. 
 And all thou knowest is, at most, 
 
 What men have dreamed the Past should be 
 And built with various phantasy 
 Out of the wrecks of History ! 
 
 The Future is an unseen bourn 
 
 That fond hearts call the Land of Morn 
 
 Where all millenniums are born. 
 
 57 
 
THE SPECTRAL VISITANT. 
 
 Each Age is different, 'tis true, 
 By growing into something new, 
 Whereof the earlier dreamed nor knew, 
 
 But every gain has recompense 
 By equal loss of parts or sense 
 Grown useless in Time's consequence ; 
 
 And even progress is but change 
 
 To undreamed somethings wild or strange, 
 
 But never unto wider range ! 
 
 But thou, list to the endless wail 
 Of Sorrow, brooding o'er each vale ! 
 See Care sit silent, deadly pale, 
 
 S8 
 
THE SPECTRAL VISITANT. 
 
 Half-dreaming of Saturnian reigns, 
 And Edens lost, that none regains ! 
 What say to thee these endless threnes ? 
 
 Do they not mock thy golden dreams 
 And clip the Future of his beams ?" 
 The firelight fell, and dimmed its gleams. 
 
 The shriveled parchment in the grate 
 Lay black and dead, and I, of late 
 So strong, felt all my strength abate, 
 
 As if the fires of Life had burned 
 Till all my soul to cinders turned. 
 But inward heat all undiscerned 
 
 59 
 
THE SPECTRAL VISITANT. 
 
 Leaped forth to flame. *'Grim ghost !" I said : 
 ^'Though beaten back, I am not dead, 
 Against thee shall my soul make head ! 
 
 For man at least sometimes is meant 
 
 To overleap environment 
 
 And send a thrill of glad content 
 
 Through all the old world's dullard nerves ! 
 The great Soul comes, the old world swerves 
 And leaps in new and undreamed curves ! 
 
 Is it not worth some strife to be 
 A Soul of such compelling, free, 
 Exerting world-wide potency ?'* 
 
 60 
 
THE SPECTRAL VISITANT. 
 
 " If true, small comfort, seems to me ! 
 Oh! Ay ! " he said so mockingly ; 
 "Thou art that Soul of potency? 
 
 Once in a century is born 
 
 A great Soul flashing like the morn 
 
 From out the Void's unmeasured bourn, 
 
 But myriads, while that age flits by, 
 Leap into life with one faint cry. 
 Creep out of life with one faint sigh. 
 
 And round life's dull monotony 
 With so much toil and penury, 
 And so much care and misery. 
 
 6i 
 
THE SPECTRAL VISITANT. 
 
 What boots it if great souls are sent 
 Across a fair world's firmament, 
 If thou art wretched, uncontent, 
 
 Among the myriads that were meant 
 To yield to stern environment 
 That Mother Earth so kindly lent? 
 
 Besides, no Soul heroic drew 
 From husks of books the living dew. 
 But shared fair Nature as she grew!" 
 
 " Though hard, O Spectral Visitant, 
 Thy words, and of soft soothing scant, 
 Thou hast thyself Ihe weapon lent 
 
 62 
 
THE SPECTRAL VISITANT. 
 
 Wherewith I conquer," thus I said ; 
 " I close these books that seem so dead, 
 I choose the Living Book instead ! " 
 
 To which repHed the mocking Voice ; 
 " I wish thee joy of thy new choice ! 
 How must thy shriveled soul rejoice, 
 
 To count the petals of the rose, 
 
 To note the wind that, veering, blows, 
 
 To mark the dawn that roseate glows. 
 
 To dig huge fossils, dip the seas. 
 Out-quarry mountains, fell great trees. 
 Or watch in curious towers, at ease. 
 
 63 
 
THE SPECTRAL VISITANT. 
 
 The planets in their orbits swing, 
 Or, lighting on some nearer thing, 
 Note how the hived bees lose their sting, 
 
 Or how the busy ants entwine 
 Their deft antennae long and fine. 
 And talk like humans infantine. 
 
 The task were scarce a thousandth done 
 
 When one poor mortal life is run! 
 
 Thou hadst, perchance, some respite won 
 
 From moldering care and misery, 
 But all thy learning dies with thee! 
 What profits that to thee or me?" 
 
 64 
 
THE SPECTRAL VISITANT. 
 
 He said. I answered cheerily; 
 " Is respite won from misery 
 So little worth to thee and me ? " 
 
 '* And death is respite equally ! 
 Does this make hemlock taste to thee 
 Like nectar ? " answered sneeringly 
 
 The Voice. And all my members shook 
 With palsy, at his darkened look, 
 And warmth my pallid cheeks forsook. 
 
 He raised aloft in his right hand, 
 As light as fairy lifts her wand, 
 A gleaming two-edged battle-brand, 
 
 65 
 
THE SPECTRAL VISITANT. 
 
 And Azrael grew his form apace. 
 I shrunk, and fell upon my face, 
 And prayed him for a little space ; 
 
 Whereat he laughed : '*A little life, 
 Though old and sere and full of strife, 
 Is sweeter than this spectral knife 
 
 That would bring respite? Man, arise, 
 Confess that striving toward the skies. 
 Is cause of all thy miseries! " 
 
 A voice within refused assent, 
 
 I would not rot in ease, content 
 
 To take what gifts the earth-gods sent, 
 
 66 
 
THE SPECTRAL VISITANT. 
 
 But, humbled, I arose and stood. 
 And questioned every human good, 
 To find the crown of humanhood. 
 
 Long balancing with bated breath, 
 The nice accounts of Life and Death, 
 I held with him who nobly saith. 
 
 That Life is ever lord of Death. 
 
 I chose wild pulse-beats, panting breath, 
 
 And stirrings of the inward wraith 
 
 That makes a tumult in the veins. 
 And feels the worth of joys and pains, 
 And lords it over dust, and reigns, 
 
 ^1 
 
THE SPECTRAL VISITANT. 
 
 Albeit for a sorry space! 
 
 At length, I lifted up my face, 
 
 As one who overlives disgrace, 
 
 And said : ** Death's respite is decay, 
 
 But Life's rest is the subtle play 
 
 Of nerves that feel the touch of May." 
 
 *' The dead feel naught. The living feel. 
 I lately saw thee, stricken, kneel. 
 And cold white lids with thy lips seal, 
 
 And thine own lids deep purple grew. 
 And grief rained through them bitter dew, 
 Who suffered most, the dead or you ? " 
 
 68 
 
THE SPECTRAL VISITANT. 
 
 He smote me with a grief so near, 
 So dear, I could not choose but hear: 
 I saw again her pall and bier — 
 
 The funeral pomp of coach and hearse 
 I saw the black train slow disperse, 
 And I was left alone, to nurse 
 
 The wound of Azrael's fatal knife, 
 For she that was the life of life — 
 My lily bride, now sainted wife, — 
 
 Had withered. Ere I spake, he said : 
 ** I saw thee clinging to the dead, 
 I saw thee pillow her cold head 
 
 69 
 
THE SPECTRAL VISITANT. 
 
 Upon thy breast, I saw thee lay 
 Thy hand upon her hands, and pray 
 That Death might snatch ye both away, 
 
 Nor leave one back to pine and weep, 
 And love's sad vigils vainly keep ! 
 Hast thou forgotten that sweet sleep ? " 
 
 I answered slow with stifled breath : 
 " I prayed, but not alone for death, 
 I prayed in anguish-wakened faith 
 
 That death is but the open door 
 That leads to life forevermore 
 With her upon some fairer shore." 
 
 70 
 
THE SPECTRAL VISITANT. 
 
 "A cheat," he answered ; "who can tell? 
 Perchance it is for mortals well 
 That faith and hope have such a spell 
 
 To rob the grave of half its sting! 
 But why not at a single spring, 
 Make proof of an uncertain thing? 
 
 Here's hemlock, here's distilled blood 
 
 Of slumberous poppies, that have stood, 
 
 A gloomy Stygian sisterhood. 
 
 Drink, and make proof of the unseen! 
 
 Thou art a scientist, I ween, 
 
 And many a curious thing hast seen, 
 
 71 
 
THE SPECTRAL VISITANT. 
 
 But one thou hast not, it is Death. 
 O'erleap the chasm! Prove thy faith, 
 If it be truly what it saith ! 
 
 Clasp thy loved Mrife within thine arms ! 
 Ha ! Faith is weak ! Immortal charms 
 Woo not thy soul from Earth's alarms ! 
 
 Thou hast no mighty faith to hold 
 Thy sinking spirits from the cold 
 Dark dread of rotting into mold ! 
 
 Cheat not thyself and me with words. 
 Faith's idle blandishment affords 
 No lasting comfort, nor accords 
 
 72 
 
THE SPECTRAL VISITANT. 
 
 The grave one luring attribute ! 
 Speak not of life beyond ! Be mute 
 Till man is somewhat more than brute ! 
 
 If life have some excuse to be, 
 'Tis here thou findest it, for see, 
 Thy last gasp is the end of thee !" 
 
 Not wholly robbed of faith, I cried : 
 " I cannot know what may betide, 
 When life drifts to the other side ; 
 
 I only know that Love dreams on, 
 And clasps the spirit that is gone. 
 I cannot doubt the morrow's dawn, 
 
 73 
 
THE SPECTRAL VISITANT. 
 
 Though life's dark night had not a star; 
 But waiving faith that dreams afar 
 Beyond Earth's latest sunset bar, 
 
 I'll meet thee in thy chosen list, 
 And crush thee, gloomy agonist, 
 Though that best armor I have missed: 
 
 If Death were lord of Life instead. 
 This Earth were wholly dark and dead, 
 A huge, wild, granite earthquake-bed, 
 
 Storm-beaten, ocean-lashed, and bare. 
 
 With arid zones of parching air, 
 
 And ice-fields in the moon's cold glare. 
 
 H 
 
THE SPECTRAL VISITANT. 
 
 With ne'er a leaf, and ne'er a wing, 
 To mark the dawning of the spring, 
 And fill green woods with twittering ! " 
 
 "Ay ! Life is destined, if you will, 
 
 But may be either good or ill," 
 
 He urged. I answered warmlier still, 
 
 The hot blood beating in my breast : 
 " Of good or ill, what is the test? 
 Is pleasure evermore the best? 
 
 To be at-one with the world's life, 
 A-striving with the general strife. 
 Though every hour with pain were rife. 
 
 75 
 
THE SPECTRAL VISITANT. 
 
 Is best ! I dare not break the vase 
 God fashioned with such subtle grace, 
 Till he remove it from its place. 
 
 My answer, Ghost, is not complete 
 With logic, but each strong pulse-beat 
 Of dawning life makes thee retreat, 
 
 And though my lips were wholly dumb. 
 Though nerves and brain were cold and numb. 
 An answer from the heart would come ! " 
 
 " Live on and suffer ! I have done. 
 The heart by logic ne*er was won. 
 Hug life as when it first begun. 
 
 76 
 
THE SPECTRAL VISITANT. 
 
 But cease from striving, iearn to drift 
 
 As life's low surges sink and lift, 
 
 As time's light breezes change and shift ! 
 
 He said. " Not thus I bid adieu ! 
 The Heart's still voice is not less true 
 Than logic's ergo. Hear me through ! 
 
 Instinct is more than knowledge still, 
 And feeling is the birth of will : 
 I'll reck its rede through good or ill. 
 
 It whispers 'till my pulses dance ; 
 Life is not dullard sufferance, 
 But daily struggling to advance. 
 
 77 
 
THE SPECTRAL VISITANT. 
 
 Life and more life it seems to me 
 
 The whole world sings. The symphony 
 
 Dispels my self-wrought misery. 
 
 Strife and more strife, it seems to sing, 
 
 For life is striving, Everything, 
 
 By striving, bursts to leaf and wing ! " 
 
 Athwart my windows beat the dawn. 
 I saw her foot-prints on the lawn, — 
 My Spectral Visitant was gone ! 
 
 78 
 
Jesus of flazaretl?. 
 
 'I'^HOU Warder of forgotten histories, 
 
 Oblivion, bring forth thy hidden scrolls* 
 Restore to Memory thy treasured lore. 
 The record of his birth and life and death. 
 Else shall we miss the golden grains of truth 
 While winnowing the chaff of fables vain. 
 Ye crude Evangels, told from lip to lip, 
 Repeated oft by ignorant peasantry 
 Who lifted marvel into miracle 
 Till crystallized into Grecian rolls 
 Obscure, — a century's gathered wreck and 
 
 drift,— 
 Though full of error, yet with nascent faith 
 Illumed, creep from monastic dust and death, 
 Proclaim your faithlessness, and undeceive 
 The myriads that rest their faith in myth 
 Rather than trust the great strong soul of manl 
 79 
 
JESUS OF NAZARETH. 
 
 Ye hills by pilgrims of the mighty West 
 Long sought, restore the impress of his feet 
 That we may thread his mazed ministries, 
 Nor heed the tales of credulous fabulists 
 Or fond traditions of evangelists ! 
 Call from sepulchral dust the multitudes 
 That followed the great Thaumaturge's steps, 
 Content to eat his bread and drink his wine 
 For the small pain of hearkening his words ! 
 Call forth the lazar throngs, the halt, the blind, 
 The congregate deformities of Earth, — 
 Whose misereres sought him in the fields 
 And by the gates, and thronged porticoes 
 Of synagogues and temples, — careless all 
 For piety, if but their ills were cured ! 
 Restore his world, that flagging human faith 
 Be tasked no farther with those marvels old 
 Than with the spirit of our own vast age 
 Where sense and reason — wonted guides — 
 are hers ! 
 
 80 
 
JESUS OF NAZARETH. 
 
 Might we but share his serving, we would list 
 His words and wonders with the toil-worn 
 
 Twelve, 
 Now tarrying at Cana's nuptial feast, 
 And now by Sychar's ancient well athirst 
 Where he for one cool draught of that deep 
 
 font 
 Gave her that drew it, — though of hated 
 
 race, — 
 The priceless draught of living water, Hope ; 
 Now wandering by fair Genessarett, — 
 His refuge from the Doctors' murderous 
 
 hate 
 When thrust with menace from the syna- 
 gogue,— 
 Or plucking ears from the white harvest 
 
 fields 
 Amid the taunts of Sabbatarian priests 
 Whose Pharisaic pride loved much to boast 
 Of righteous zeal for the Mosaic texts ; 
 8i 
 
JESUS OF NAZARETH. 
 
 Now entering the temple — newly purged 
 Of sacrificial markets — where he taught 
 Unwelcome truth, — by men called heresy 
 When winged first from some high search- 
 ing mind, — 
 Defying openly the hierarchs, 
 But winning empire with the weak oppressed : 
 Now seeking peace in far Zidonia 
 From priestly machinations born of hate. 
 Then turning back to his unfinished task 
 That grew to tragedy with each swift day. 
 From olive-branched triumph and acclaim. 
 Through dark Gethsemane and broken faith, 
 To the great consummation, guiltless death! 
 
 And thus sojourning long, O Paraklete, 
 O spirit of mighty Manhood, thou Unknown, 
 From whom our loftiest aims and hopes are 
 
 drawn, 
 To whom we stretch our thought-creating 
 souls, 
 
 82 
 
JESUS OF NAZARETH. 
 
 When yearning for ideal Grace and Truth, 
 We fain would beg of thee — nor beg in vain — 
 A mind to apprehend his manly mind, 
 A soul to apprehend his passionate soul, 
 To know and feel what he must know 
 
 and feel 
 Amid the halt and blind and ignorant 
 And blinder guilds of death and cults of sin I 
 
 Oh for one impulse of divinest love 
 To deify one instant of this life 
 And lift our dullard souls to newer heights ! 
 Or, if thy gifts, denied to meaner souls. 
 Are only won by asking lavishly. 
 Grant us ecstatic days of deity 
 And whole triumphant years of perfectness ! 
 
 Three years of such a life, though scorned 
 of men 
 And shut within the bounds of one weak state, 
 Today could pierce the bubble of the creeds, 
 And drive the daily lie from pious lips, 
 83 
 
JESUS OF NAZARETH. 
 
 And strike the chains from man's all-con- 
 quering mind 
 Till life and love and truth were all in all, 
 And forward through the ages urge the tide 
 Of larger manhood till the frailest child 
 Of toil and sorrow should excel the gods 
 That our poor thoughts have fashioned and 
 
 enshrined. 
 Then marvel not that Judah's carpenter 
 So builded in the souls of lesser men 
 That twice ten centuries called him very God. 
 Yet was he man, and son of man, nor 
 dared 
 In all his royal vision overstep 
 His heritage of mortal flesh or claim 
 One item of pure deity. He felt 
 As man must feel, in life's strait circum- 
 stance 
 Of daily need and toil and toil's reward 
 With pain secured. He knew temptation's lure 
 84 
 
JESUS OF NAZARETH. 
 
 Disguised as gilded good, and virtue's bane 
 To be misunderstood, and bitter grief, 
 And over all compassion and strong faith. 
 No God with heaven-descended vital thought 
 Could reach the human soul through sympa- 
 thies 
 As he, the Man among co-equal men. 
 Living their life and teaching them to live 
 With daily reverence for the highest Good 
 And daily struggles for the Perfectness. 
 
 And if at times in mystic mood he chose 
 The loftier title, Son of God, he claimed 
 But loftier right, for he was son of God 
 By right of manhood's dignity and height, 
 Not deity by unigeniture 
 Of Infinite God, with whom can be no need 
 Of geniture — Mortality's fair gift 
 For conquering death, in bearing newer forms 
 In endless swift succession, and, in joy. 
 Snatching immortal life from out the dust ; — 
 
JESUS OF NAZARETH. 
 
 Nor with ambitious majesty and pride 
 He chose exalted names, but that all men 
 Through living blameless in the strength of 
 
 truth 
 And virtue, faithful through extremest woe, 
 Might share his heritage and dignities, 
 All sons of God, all equal, and none Lord. 
 
 He was a mystic and enthusiast 
 Whose words, if misinterpreted, could make 
 A bigot's iron creed and stifle thought 
 By chaining reason, or could nourish fat 
 The dreaded monsters of fanatic zeal 
 And self-complacent jesulatria; 
 Whose life, if emulated, would reread 
 His words in generous faith and comprehend 
 The vital truth within the letter's death. 
 
 He was unlettered in an age unlearned. 
 
 He never weighed the sun with curious zeal. 
 
 Nor traced the planets in their mighty orbs 
 
 Disclosing secrets with the prism and lens, 
 
 86 
 
JESUS OF NAZARETH. 
 
 Nor read the message of the buried rocks 
 
 In relics of archaic life exhumed, 
 
 Nor sought the gelid seas for either pole 
 
 Or routes to India or far Cathay, 
 
 Nor pierced the tropic jungles hot and dank, 
 
 For unknown forms of insect, bird and beast; 
 
 Nor climbed the mountains to their snowy 
 
 crests 
 To pluck rare plants from out their frozen 
 
 home, 
 Nor, housed within commodious academes. 
 Traced geometric angles, points and curves, 
 Or played with numbers or with foreign 
 
 tongues. 
 Careless to tread through all the curious maze 
 That men must pass to knowledge. He but 
 
 sought 
 Essential knowledge which is knowing Self, 
 Nor needed letters for the Father's task ; 
 For whoso, sentient-souled, by inward search, 
 87 
 
JESUS OF NAZARETH. 
 
 Attends its passions and perpetual dreams, 
 In solitude and in society, 
 In lowliest circumstance of poverty 
 O'er-roofed with rudest thatch or roofless all. 
 In highest station and luxurious ease 
 Immured in palaces on stable thrones, 
 Hath largest wisdom though unlettered still, 
 Andofttimes largest knowledge deigns to 
 
 dwell 
 With open minds that read, not scrolls, but 
 
 men. 
 Well might he say that greatest truths are hid 
 From bookish saintliness but shown to babes. 
 
 And, knowing Self, he knew the dignity 
 Of Soul, and loved it wheresoe'er it dwelt, 
 With more of honor where it sat enthroned 
 And swayed a regal scepter o'er the man, 
 With more of pity where it pined for life 
 Amid the ruins of its fallen fanes, — 
 Imbruted man, — man's worst antithesis. 
 8S 
 
JESUS OF NAZARETH. 
 
 He loved, nor can the fabled burning heart 
 Tell how he loved. No household loves 
 
 were his 
 To weave Arachne's webs about his feet 
 And take him in the snare of prattling 
 
 tongues 
 And childish sweet embracings. No caress 
 Dearer than Mary's earliest kiss he knew, 
 Forsaking lesser for the larger love, 
 Not as in scorn of woman's loveliness. 
 Not in ascetic fear to touch her lips 
 As if with serpent's venom overspread. 
 Rut, consecrated to a martyr's task 
 Thi ee summers long, ease and soft nuptial joys 
 Though pure as Heaven or the thoughts of 
 
 God, 
 Less charmed him than the road to Golgotha. 
 But woman's priceless love was not withheld. 
 Behold her sitting at his feet, devout, 
 Or low, anointing them with spikenard rare. 
 
JESUS OF NAZARETH. 
 
 He loved, and Love allied with Truth is 
 
 power. 
 And thus he spake the mightiest burning 
 
 words — 
 Words winged like seraphs with beatitudes, 
 But each beatitude the recompense 
 Of highest living — Life's supremest good. 
 From that thalassian mountain-side obscure, 
 Where the astonished multitude sat down. 
 Hearken the echo of the sweetest words 
 That through the ages fell on human ear. 
 And, in their Benedictus, lose thyself 
 To find a selfhood incorrupt and high 
 Whose every throb may say to thy strong 
 
 soul ; 
 "Blessed, thrice blessed, art thou, son of 
 
 God ! " 
 No human heart that beats has grown so 
 
 weak. 
 No human soul that feels is sunk so low, 
 90 
 
JESUS OF NAZARETH. 
 
 But may with hope sublime and during faith 
 Prove worthy sonship with the living God. 
 " Love God, Love man ! " This was his 
 
 message clear. 
 What more he taught is but particular. 
 For this he suffered. Can the Roman 
 cross 
 With all its imagery of agony 
 Tell how he suffered > His too sensitive heart 
 That wept for Salem in her desolate walls 
 As for a friend departed, that moaned out 
 Its anguish at the tomb of love, that sank 
 Crushed to Gethsemane's lone midnight earth 
 With passion heavier than death, betrayed 
 By one he trusted, O to wear the purple 
 And crown acanthus and be struck with hands 
 And mocked with taunting words and spit 
 
 upon ! 
 What need of Roman arms to break such 
 
 hearts } 
 
 91 
 
JESUS OF NAZARETH. 
 
 Betrayal deadlier than Roman arms 
 Extinguished in foul marks of guilt and shame 
 The sweetest human life of all that age, 
 Its task half finished or yet unconceived. 
 And yet, to die and leave the unfinished 
 
 scheme 
 To men who fled from Roman spears a-nd 
 
 staves. 
 Was easier than to yield convictions strong. 
 He chose to die, Truth's protomartyr grand, 
 Loved, hated, wept for, cursed, but ne'er 
 
 forgot. 
 He died, and loving hands pressed down 
 those lids 
 To hide the lusterless dead eyes that once 
 Beamed love divinely sweet ; strong, faithful 
 
 arms 
 Bore the deep wounded corse from the dread 
 
 cross, 
 And laid it gently in its sepulcher ; 
 92 
 
JESUS OF NAZARETH. 
 
 And when the stone that sealed its narrow cell 
 Closed o'er his dust, Despair and Anguish 
 
 cried ; 
 " Never ! Never ! Never ! " Even Hope, 
 
 the while, 
 Her song of immortality forgot. 
 And Faith forgot that God is over all. 
 A generation died, and with it died 
 The comrades of his toils and thoughts and 
 
 loves. 
 Alone survived the legends of his life. 
 Grown as the legend grows in human mouths 
 That glorify by myth and wondrous tale 
 Those whose broad minds, sweet souls and 
 
 simple loves 
 Uptower above the level of their age — 
 The Thaumaturges — the Misunderstood — 
 The Deified, because misunderstood ! 
 What Hero was of human mould ? For lo ! 
 A virgin sweet immaculate, whom God 
 93 
 
JESUS OF NAZARETH. 
 
 Impregned, hath born a God. So runs the 
 
 tale. 
 He lives and dies a God. The sepulcher 
 Despite rock-ribbed eternal silences 
 Bursts open at his touch divine. Behold 
 " Surrexit " graven deep on every tomb 
 Of hero dust ! The Empyrean courts, 
 By right divine, are his. And circling clouds — 
 A gorgeous chariot — bear him to his throne. 
 
 Pause, blind enthusiast ! on mortal man, 
 On vital dust heap not mistaken praise ! 
 Is truth incredible from human lips } 
 Is man so sunk that gods alone can live 
 Exalted lives and die heroic deaths ? 
 Can apotheoses exalt the soul 
 That death between the thieves could never 
 
 shame ? 
 Thank God devoutly this was but a man 
 And what once man hath done man yet can do! 
 Take noble courage from a simple life 
 94 
 
JESUS OF NAZARETH. 
 
 Beset with hatred, yet grown rich in love. 
 Learn this high thought : so high as mind 
 
 can aim, 
 So high as soul her grand ideal marks, 
 Thus high can human deeds at length ascend, 
 Thus much can human hands and lips achieve. 
 O Zeal ! why wert thou in this old blind 
 
 world 
 Enkindled — brand of Hell — to devastate 
 The beautiful and lovely with the sweep 
 Of thy wild besom ? Zeal, the bigot's plea, 
 Occasion and excuse of many crimes ! 
 Alas ! that zeal such fatal blunders made ! 
 Else were the tale of Christian centuries 
 An epos of sublimest deeds and thoughts 
 And not the lurid history of fiends, 
 Who lurked behind the sacred cross, or, 
 
 gowned 
 And stoled, swung censers, or with tedious 
 
 pomp 
 
 95 
 
JESUS OF NAZARETH. 
 
 Droned through their fixed sonorous rituals. 
 
 But ages fled. The young Ekklesia, 
 A timid band by Rome's hard hand oppressed, 
 Grew by oppression till she lorded Rome 
 And ruled. With what a sacrifice ! She lost 
 All that Mount Olivet and Calvary 
 Bequeathed of love and faith and tenderness 
 And manly courage to defend the truth. 
 She won imperialism and heathen rites 
 And heathen dogma and philosophy. 
 Jesus, the Brother and familiar Friend 
 The Helper meek, and sweet Didaskalos, 
 Was thrust idolatrously in a niche 
 And named a God. A million souls forgot 
 The mighty God unseen who rules the world 
 And played with riddles of triunity. 
 Seal, Clio, fast within thine awful scroll 
 This tale, lest men all unawares should learn 
 How grew this jesulatrian fetichism, 
 This spirit-dwarfing tyrannous creed-curse, 
 96 
 
Jesus of nazareth. 
 
 And, undeceived, in their hot wrath should 
 
 tear 
 Their fetters, and in freedom's new-found 
 
 strength 
 Iconoclastic, smite the idol down! 
 
 Great God, have mercy on this old blind 
 
 world ! 
 And Thou, sweet Soul of Galilee, if Thou 
 In some serene blue sphere of heaven be- 
 
 holdest 
 The millions bending to thy imaged wounds. 
 And hearest the passionate prayers sent up 
 
 to Thee, 
 And the full-throated Allelujas flung 
 From wine-kissed lips to honor Thee as God, 
 How must Thy brow and cheeks in anger 
 
 burn 
 To hear the endless roll of blasphemy! 
 To know Thy ministry all, all in vain, 
 How must thy heart with indignation swell 
 97 
 
JESUS OF NAZARETH. 
 
 And every pulse throb out its bitter wrath ! 
 Nay, that were less than human. Thou 
 
 wouldst look 
 With tears of pity and compassion mild 
 From this, Thy daily crucifixion, up 
 To the Eternal G'od, and cry again 
 Pathetic sweet Thy latest prayer ; *' Father, 
 Forgive them, for they know not what they 
 
 do!" 
 
 
 98 
 
/r\y Qreed. 
 f 
 
 T^TTY creed ? my creed, you ask.? And is a 
 / creed 
 
 The living bread wherewith to stay the plague 
 Of hunger in a man ? I have no creed, — 
 For havings must be less than havers are ! — 
 I am my creed, — and when the last pulse-beat 
 Makes period to the struggle of my life, 
 Behold the best confession in the deed ! 
 A sketch, a skeleton, but still the best, 
 For words are clanging empty earthen jars 
 That take in wine or poison as you will. 
 I am my creed, — naught less than my whole 
 
 self, — 
 My strivings, had they fair fruition borne, 
 My dreams for others' weal, had all come true, 
 
 99 
 
MY CREED. 
 
 My hopes for after times, were all fulfilled, 
 My aspirations looking from the top 
 Of mounts unclimbed by living men, all these 
 My creed, and yet not half the creed I mean ? 
 
 Credo ! credo ■ ! fill in the rest, 
 
 O Priest, 
 And damn or save by answered nay or yea. 
 And I'm your slave, and run at your behest, 
 A fair deserving ass, but not a man: 
 But let me fill the blanks with deeds, not 
 
 words, — 
 There never stood akinglier man of men. 
 None larger-hearted in the battle's brunt ! 
 
 My hands into the hoary sea I dip 
 To clutch a handful of its mystery. 
 In vain ! The brine slips back into the deep ! 
 So words are only wet with mystery 
 And hold no part of the eternal Truth. 
 
 A form of words ? A fossil in the drift, 
 A shell commodious for a slender life, 
 
 lOO 
 
MY CREED. 
 
 Dead words dug up ? And living words so 
 
 vain ? 
 Go, leave me, Priest, a lie from heedless lips 
 Can damn as swiftly as the truth can save. 
 I know too little to affirm so much. 
 
 Close up the Book, and clasp its ponderous 
 lids! 
 'Tis all too dead ! Go, lay it in a crypt ! 
 Conceal it from the eyes of living men, 
 Lest its too human gods be proven false, 
 And its too little heavens be burst in twain, 
 And its too withered earth grow green 
 with hope, 
 And its too brutal man be found more kind, 
 And its too trivial law be all outgrown. 
 The oak heeds not the burr that once "en- 
 cased 
 The germ of root and trunk and myriad leaf. 
 So I can not re-enter that cramped cell 
 That housed and fed the hopes of ages gone. 
 
 lOI 
 
MY CREED. 
 
 I bask in sunshine of a larger world 
 And wrestle with the storms of times un- 
 born ! 
 
 I am the touchstone of the living Truth, 
 And patriarch and prophet are to me 
 But phantoms and elohifn of the dead. 
 No man stands vicar twixt the world and me, 
 Though scores of centuries have rolled be- 
 tween 
 And hung a nimbus round his rugged brow. 
 
 The Soul is little, but the greatest thing 
 That had its birth in cosmic throes. I stand 
 With open avenues of sense, insphered. 
 Encircled by the ranked infinities 
 Of Time and Space, of Matter, Force and 
 
 Law, 
 And ranked infinitesimals beneath 
 My ken as far as infinite transcends. 
 Conceivable to inconceivable 
 With swift ascent from the soul's radiant 
 1 02 
 
MY CREED. 
 
 Flies thought and finds no resting-place secure. 
 Can Faith set pillars on the Absolute 
 And rear aloft their mighty capitals 
 Into the Relative ? The Mystery 
 O'er-topples them into the void abyss 
 Unsearchable, and Faith lights nearer home 
 On symbols, dreaming that her pillars stand. 
 Is there a guide of stronger wing ? I fly 
 On equal wing with him who dares the most, 
 And yield not in the illimitable Vast ! 
 
 Bring me the Book, O Priest ! Unclasp the 
 lids, 
 And I will test it. Look you ! here is gold, — 
 A grain or two half hid in bulky dross, — 
 A gem that sparkles in a waste of sand, — 
 A flower blooming in a wide morass, — 
 A crumb of bread lost in a stinking slime, — • 
 A little wine to scent the lingering dregs, — 
 A human thing, not worse than other books. 
 Nor better than the age that gave it birth. 
 103 
 
MY CREED. 
 
 I take the good and cast aside the dross 
 Eclectic ! Bring the baskets ! Gather up 
 The gods and devils, the cosmogonies, 
 The myths and tales of wonder-mongering 
 
 scribes, 
 The dullard chronicles of priests and kings, 
 The men of God's own heart ungibbeted, 
 The axes red and wet with sacrifice, 
 The stars, the crosses, and the sepulchers ! 
 Preserve the fragments of my meager feast 
 To feed your starveling followers withal, 
 Whose taste for living Truth is not so nice ! 
 Believe in God ! Not one that I can think. 
 Nor one that w^ords of thine can name me. 
 
 Priest ; 
 Much less a petty tyrant of the skies 
 Born in the shallow brains of one rude clan 
 And throned above the godlings of the rest 
 By brutal slaughter. Men have made their gods 
 In their own image, mingled best and worst. 
 104 
 
MY CREED. 
 
 You cut the garment of the Universe 
 Too small, too antic, for a masquerade 
 More fit ! But make it whole, without a seam: 
 I'll wear it, wrap it round my little life. 
 Nor ask it purple, broidered round with gold! 
 
 The All is not negation. Infinite Yea, 
 Than utter which unworthily, I'll pluck 
 My tongue away, and be forever mute, — 
 A boundless Affirmation, thou and I 
 But words, O Priest, and meaningless until 
 The last is uttered. Shall we guess the rest, 
 And swear our little guess is all in all } — • 
 A Harmony whereof the simplest theme 
 Is yet unsung, and thou and I, O Priest, 
 But notes at random flung, discordant^ harsh. 
 And shall we guess the burden of the theme, 
 And swear that we have learned the sym- 
 phony, 
 Rehearsed it through and through ? Love all 
 thou canst, 
 
 105 
 
MY CREED. 
 
 Dream all thou canst, strive all thou canst, 
 
 O Man, 
 And when the heart and brain and soul are 
 
 full 
 Of thoughts unutterable, name it God, 
 If names can tangle in a mesh of sound 
 The soul of that transcendent hour ! For me, 
 Be nameless, thou illimitable All ! 
 
 Accept God's word ? A very cunning God, 
 To make a Book, whose every trivial text 
 Can damn a heretic or save a saint, 
 And yet, chameleon-like, take on the shade 
 Of each brand-new expounder ! Noble work ! 
 The sheltering rock of every error known ! 
 Curved mirror of the world without a focus I 
 What boots it if a god inspire the tale, 
 If truth must filter through the human brains 
 Of barbarous men, whose world was flat and 
 
 square, 
 Poured round by four huge rivers, like a sea, 
 1 06 
 
MY CREED. 
 
 Roofed o'er with crystal, set on pillars four, 
 With sun and moon and stars hung out for 
 
 signs, 
 A huge World-tabernacle built for man. 
 And filled with demons, a brute helpless realm 
 Devoid of order, where a whim was law 
 And cause confounded with supreme caprice ? 
 But cleanse the filters, Priest ! Make sweet 
 
 and clean 
 The vessel that contains the Water of Life ! 
 Distil and redistil with chemic skill 
 Its living spirit, lest it still be crude ! 
 
 Poor groping groveling herd, that bring 
 their gifts 
 To gorge thee. Priest, with fatness and with 
 
 wine. 
 To clothe thee, not in hodden grey, like 
 
 theirs. 
 But purple and gold, for thy poor recom- 
 pense 
 
 107 
 
MY CREED. 
 
 Of prayer and wrestling with a changeless god, 
 Who never heard a prayer in all the ages ! 
 I pity them, so blind they spurn my pity 
 And hug their blessed chains and slavery, 
 But from the deepest springs of being flows 
 My pity, gilded Fraud, for thee, whose brain 
 Can catch the glimmer of the whitening 
 
 dawn. 
 Who know the Truth, thou Whited Sepul- 
 
 cher. 
 Yet feed upon their misery, and grind 
 Their lives between the mill-stones of thy 
 
 gods ! 
 What name can measure thy stupidity. 
 Poor dumb vice-gerent of a helpless Ghost ! 
 Or else, what name can sum the enormity 
 Of thy huge crime, thou Vampire of the 
 
 Night, 
 Sucking the life-blood from their nerveless 
 
 limbs, 
 
 1 08 
 
MY CREED. 
 
 While fanning them to sleep with hopes of 
 heaven ! 
 O Nous ! O mighty Mind ! O Reason 
 strong ! 
 When shall we see thy glorious avatar ? 
 When shall thy light illumine this dark world 
 And beam resplendent from each upturned 
 
 face 
 That spurns its serfdom and adores thy star ? 
 Yet a few years ! The patient Age toils on, 
 And men and nations pass into decay, 
 But Nous keeps record of his constant gains, 
 And broods above his mighty victories 
 Imperishable ! Then at length shall come 
 A noble race, large-brained, warm-hearted, 
 
 free. 
 Whose heritage is Truth ! Thus age by age 
 The bible of our race is slowly writ. 
 Its texts inscribed in flame and blood and 
 tears, 
 
 109 
 
MY CREED. 
 
 Each age inscribes its noblest word and dies. 
 The next outgrows it and lets fall a tear 
 On each mistake and blots it from the page. 
 God's word ? Man's rather ! Conquests of 
 his mind ! 
 What tricks the thaumaturgic fancy plays 
 Within the madhouse of the mystic's brain ! 
 O Priest, the image of thy risen Lord 
 Is but the Ideal of expanding Soul 
 That struggles to emancipate from pain 
 The writhing, torturing Real. And thy 
 
 boast 
 That he is lord of this last mighty age, 
 And Lord of lords for ages yet to be, 
 Is but an epitaph, — a fiction kind, — 
 The baseless tribute of a blinded zeal 
 That loves to gape in wonder at plain things, 
 And wrap them in a shroud of mystery ! 
 Historic Jesus, good, forgotten man. 
 Whose ashes rest in peace in Galilee, 
 no 
 
MY CREED. 
 
 (O fortunate misfortune ! ) lowly born, 
 Obscurely living, mild-eyed Dreamer, mad 
 With thy celestial vision, fed with hopes 
 Of hopeless conquest, rise from out the 
 
 obscure. 
 And open those blind eyes which see not 
 
 thee ! 
 Nay, rise not from obscure and dusty sleep 
 To wake them from their gilded dream ! 
 
 For lo ! 
 Thy slender genius is begodded now ! 
 Thy name enthroned above the loftiest, 
 And millions worship their late-formed Ideal, 
 And name it thee ! O manifold vast Life, 
 Expansive Soul of man, why worship names 
 Whose bearers' best was but a slender brook 
 To our broad Niles of harvest-bearing thought? 
 
 O Man, thou mighty Herakles, awake, 
 Tear from thy quivering flesh the Nessus 
 
 shirt 
 
 III 
 
MY CREED. 
 
 Whose venom poisons thee at every pore ! 
 Hew down the deadly Hydra of misfaith, 
 And in his blood baptize thy wounded limbs 
 Till they are sheathed in horn, a firm defense 
 Against the shafts of scorn and strokes of 
 
 hate 
 Aimed by the blind old giant, Prejudice ! 
 Go, leave me, Priest, thy proffered bread 
 and wine 
 Is bitterness of gall upon my tongue 
 And stench within my nostrils, as of blood 
 On sodden fields of death, — too small a price 
 To pay for kneeling to the lifted Host ! 
 I am a living god ; my words are Life, 
 And Life abundant in the age to come 
 Will cast the burden of thy corpse-like 
 
 weight 
 From off the manly shoulders of our race 
 And free it from the pother of thy Gods ! 
 
 112 
 

 When Life's subtle chemistry 
 
 Loses its power, 
 And in Death's triumph 
 My dust is but dust 
 
 What destiny ? 
 
 ^^HALL it feed a magnificent pine 
 
 In centennial woods, 
 Striving upward from gloom and darkness, 
 Mounting straight to the clear blue skies, 
 
 But pining and sighing 
 For heights it can never reach ? 
 I have been like a pine 
 
 In forest gloom, 
 Pining and sighing for far blue skies 
 And the unattainable heights. 
 
 Yet this is Life ! 
 
 113 
 
MY DUST, 
 
 Shall it feed a giant oak 
 
 And stand alone, 
 Struggling with Summer's stormwind 
 And grappling the thunderbolt, 
 
 Or gnarled and bare 
 Burdened with Winter's snow ? 
 I have been like an oak, 
 
 I have stood alone 
 With the stormwind and thunderbolt 
 And the cold cold snows. 
 
 And this is Life ! 
 
 114 
 
MY DUST. 
 
 y 
 
 Shall it feed the maize and the wheat 
 
 Through bounteous moons, 
 Waving green in the summer breezes, 
 Waving gold in the autumn sun, 
 
 Yielding bread 
 To be eaten in thanklessness ? 
 I have been like the grain 
 
 With its green and its gold, 
 Growing and ripening till Autumn's sun 
 That a hungering world might eat. 
 
 But this is Life ! 
 
 115 
 
MY DUST. 
 
 Shall it feed a perfect flower, 
 
 And peep from the grass, 
 Basking in Summer's sunshine. 
 Drinking the cool sweet dew, 
 
 And be plucked by Love 
 To lie. on her bosom fair? 
 I have been like a flower 
 
 Low hid in the grass. 
 I have blossomed in sunshine and dew, 
 And lain on the bosom of Love. 
 
 And this is Life ! 
 
 O Death, where is thy sting ! 
 Though we die and are dust, 
 We shall live again, 
 Somehow, somewhere. 
 
 There is no death ! 
 
 «^ 
 
 ii6 
 
fra(^[T\2T)t from Uppublisl^ed 
 f[\as^ue. 
 
 V'yiE say " Thank God ! " and close the 
 ^^^ ranked pearls 
 Behind our lips, lest echoes sound within 
 And wake the slumberer. Oh that the words 
 Were truly meant ! In intellectual cold 
 We know ourselves a part of cosmic law 
 And view entranced the individual yield 
 His good, his being, that the whole may 
 
 thrive, 
 And cry with keen approval, like a god, 
 " Whatever is, is right ! " But when the flood 
 Bursts from the hills and lays our fields ni 
 
 ruin. 
 When earth-quake whelms our city with its 
 
 stroke, 
 
 117 
 
FRAGMENT FROM UNPUBLISHED MASQUE. 
 
 When pestilence robs us of friends we loved 
 Or blights our comeliness with hateful scars, 
 We straight complain, and curse the wof ul day 
 That gave us being. Are we then so great 
 That God must be a fellow in our play 
 And stop his spinning worlds to humor us ? 
 
 Shines yonder star but to dispel my dark? 
 Beams yonder orb with pale reflected light 
 But to compel my thoughts to love and 
 
 peace ? 
 Stands this firm rock but to support my feet ? 
 Roars yonder Ocean in his bellowing caves 
 But to delight with song my greedy ear ? 
 Though it were written in ten thousand books 
 And graven deep on tables of hewn stone 
 That all this world of worlds was built for man, 
 I'd hold it still a fable born of pride. 
 The stars are bawbles. Earth*s a bawble. All 
 Are gilded bawbles. Man's a bawble too. 
 And why make bawbles for a bawble's sport.? 
 ii8 
 
FRAGMENT FROM UNPUBLISHED MASQUE, 
 
 I know, if purpose be a law of things, 
 We move to some far-off diviner goal 
 Than seers have dreamed. Men are but 
 
 incidents, 
 But dust disturbed a moment in the march 
 Of the Omnipotent, — then dust again. 
 If Thy divine intent doth traverse mine, 
 I thank Thee, knowing all is right with Thee. 
 I know? What can I know ? What is it 
 to know? 
 To comprehend a thing and fix its bounds ? 
 Whose limits can I fix but mine own soul's ? 
 I think. I am. So much, no more, I know. 
 And he who claims a larger ken, presumes, 
 Transmutes his fancies into truth ! O Faith, 
 O truest Truth, but hair's-breadth wide of 
 
 knowledge. 
 Thou art not knowledge, but the life of 
 
 life! 
 Anrl yet the seed of error lies in thee 
 119 
 
FRAGMENT FROM UNPUBLISHED MASQUE. 
 
 That springs and spreads its poisonous Upas 
 
 shade 
 Above Earth's loveliest ! O life ! O blight ! 
 We live by faith. Then faith must build her 
 
 eyrie 
 On juts of granite truth lit by the sun. 
 O Thou, the Many-named, matchless Un- 
 known, 
 What Thy pure essence is none knows save 
 
 Thee. 
 To me, Thou art but me idealized, 
 But me grown mighty, stripped of Space and 
 
 Time, 
 I made Thee in my image glorified ! 
 And Thou unending Cosmos — world of 
 
 worlds — 
 Art me, transformed, unstripped of Space 
 
 and Time, 
 I made Thee what thou art by thinking Thee ! 
 And when Night calleth unto Night sublime, 
 1 20 
 
FRAGMENT FROM UNPUBLISHED MASQUE. 
 
 And Day doth utter knowledge unto Day, 
 And all proclaim Thy glorious handiwork 
 My soul, not they, is speaking ! Thunder- 
 bolts 
 That rive thy ancient cedars, Lebanon, 
 And bellow thousand-echoed on thy hills 
 Are voiceless till I give them human speech ! 
 Thy flood, old Nilus, is but fated silt 
 Till I have named thee the Beneficent, 
 The Harvest-bearer ! All the varied speech 
 Of visible Nature, sung by bards of Old, 
 All revelations of the Infinite Will, 
 Are monologues of Soul, that hears en- 
 tranced 
 Her own pure melody resound from all. 
 Aye thus have sprung the sweetest flowers 
 of faith, 
 Half choked with noxious weeds, indigenous 
 To this same fruitful valley. Weeds and 
 flowers ! 
 
 121 
 
FRAGMENT FROM UNPUBLISHED MASQUE. 
 
 The task of ages is to purge Maremma 
 
 Of foulness, and choke out the thrift of 
 
 weeds 
 That hide the lily's whiteness and perfume ! 
 I am Thy Gardener, O God, self -set, 
 To trim Thy valley's wild luxuriance ! 
 
 122 
 
f\ Qordo9 of Soppets. 
 
 Christus. 
 
 ^^HE pure heart is the Christus. Not alone 
 To the star-heralded Judean came 
 The Ineffable Presence, from the common 
 shame 
 Of low ideals into baseness grown 
 Lifting to boundless faith and selflessness. 
 It comes, the immanent God, to every soul 
 That struggles upward to the perfect goal 
 Where love is all and self is nothingness. 
 With time the old faith broadens to the new. 
 
 The Christus is not one alone, but all 
 Who dare in loving trust to struggle through 
 To deep soul-peace, true to the inward call, 
 Though bearing crosses and sharp crowns of 
 
 thorn. 
 In such as these the Lord Christ is reborn. 
 123 
 
A CORDON OF SONNETS. 
 
 US 
 
 Truth, The Redemptor. 
 
 ^^'RUTH is the soul's redemptor. Human 
 
 ^ blood 
 
 Out gushing on ten thousand Calvaries 
 From very gods in deathless agonies, 
 
 Can not atone by its empurpling flood 
 
 For one weak fault of thine. Evil and Good,- 
 Intrinsic deeds, intrinsic purposes, — 
 Are not vicarious things. Purpurea! seas 
 
 Can not, though fed from streams on Holy 
 Rood, 
 
 Wash white another's sin, make evil good, 
 Or purchase back to men lost purity. 
 
 O Man, be true to thine own soul's self-hood, 
 And the great purchase-price is paid for 
 thee ! 
 
 The bitter wine-press of all wrath is trod, 
 
 And thou art free to stand before thy God. 
 124 
 
A CORDON OF SONNETS. 
 
 Faith. 
 
 ^^HE eyes of God ! O fond idolater, 
 ^"^ For thee and me his eyes are thine and 
 mine ! 
 The God we glibly talk of and define, 
 We chiseled out. The great Consolator 
 Who thrones in cloud above Earth's misery, 
 For aught we know, is grand but empty 
 
 fiction 
 Of souls that struggle on through deep 
 affliction. 
 And hope till faith believes the revery ! 
 We grope in night, and all we know is feeling. 
 Yet, Soul, dream on, and build me gods 
 
 and shrines 
 And hopes that warm heart's-blood incar- 
 nadines ! 
 Such things are faith to live by, full of healing. 
 And toil by daily in the direst need. 
 But not to swear by in an iron creed. 
 125 
 
A CORDON OF SONNETS. 
 
 Atonement. 
 
 "TfTONEMENT is the perfect self-sur- 
 render 
 Of man's finiteness to the Infinite, 
 No passive task, but manhood's choicest 
 right, 
 In consecrated thought and toil to render 
 Each day its fulness of glad services, 
 
 And with diviner instincts move the will, 
 Instilling it with larger ends, until 
 Its meanest purpose with His thought agrees. 
 How mean the fiction of the Most High God 
 In his lone wrathful majesty enthroned. 
 Demanding justice of a race disowned, 
 At length appeased by the bleeding feet that 
 trod. 
 Spotless of guilt, to death on Calvary ! 
 Just God, forgive the age-long blasphemy ! 
 126 
 
A CORDON OF SONNETS. 
 
 n 
 
 Resurrection. 
 
 yyVHEN soul is prisoned in an ancient 
 ^** thought 
 
 As in a tower no broader than the age 
 That fashioned it, when, purblind, every sage 
 Looks back for truth, and counts the future 
 
 naught, 
 When scholars pore for years o'er musty 
 books 
 To find the fashion and the form of truth, 
 Fire-eyed, majestic, in his purple youth. 
 The new Age thunders godlike, " Fi'a^ Luxl " 
 The star-winged Bard takes up the trumpet 
 blast ; — 
 " Beat down the towers, crumble stone 
 
 from stone. 
 Look forward, cast aside the ancient scroll, 
 No creed, no word is e'er the best and last ! " 
 Within the walls the emancipating tone 
 I hear, and then 'tis Easter in my soul ! 
 127 
 
A CORDON OF SONNETS. 
 
 * 
 
 The Everlasting Life. 
 
 *T KNOW no Blessed Isles beyond the main, 
 "^ Nor Island Valley of Avilion, 
 
 Where disembodied spirits still live on, 
 Nor change nor die nor suffer any pain ! 
 I only know the throbbings of my brain 
 
 Are deathless as Apollo's beams of Dawn. 
 
 And so I toil till his light is withdrawn, 
 Though winds of Fate blow keen with hail 
 
 and rain. 
 I am a part of Cosmic Force, and come 
 From Everlasting, swayed by brazen Doom. 
 In moulding worlds some godlike part I bear. 
 I know not wherefore, yet cannot despair, 
 Somehow, somewhere, in deathless cycles 
 
 drawn, 
 This Life that lives in me shall still live on. 
 
 128 
 
A CORDON OF SONNETS. 
 
 ^ 
 
 Transfiguration. 
 
 -T^HE spirit grows by action. Each new 
 ^■^ thought, 
 
 Each purpose held in reason's firm control, 
 Each deed by persevering nobly wrought, 
 
 By cumulative force upbuilds the soul. 
 Daily the gradual transformation grows 
 
 Out of dead self to living selflessness. 
 Divesting soul of her deceptive shows, 
 
 And clothing her in simple perfectness. 
 And thus ascending to the summit grand, 
 
 Old comradeships that charmed are back- 
 ward cast, 
 Forsaken as the higher life unfolds, 
 And as great thoughts and purposes expand. 
 
 In purple sunset glow, the soul, at last. 
 Herself, transfigured as a god, beholds. 
 
 129 
 
A CORDON OF SONNETS. 
 
 % 
 
 Immortality. 
 
 *¥" SAID that Life is but the tissue's change, 
 And thought but subtle chemistry of 
 brain, 
 That learned doctors' ponderous tomes 
 make plain, 
 Our life is but the amoeba's narrow range 
 From death through life to death again. At 
 length 
 I paused before an open grave, the goal 
 Of funeral pomp for my dead love. My soul, 
 Wringing from anguish keen exultant 
 
 strength, 
 Cried ; "Vain are all man's cold philosophies, 
 His ponderous tomes are monstrous cruel lies! 
 Surreit Amorf'' Aye beside the tomb 
 The flower of Immortality doth bloom ! 
 Yet would my soul could once for all decide, 
 if Reason faltered, or Affection lied ! 
 130 
 
A CORDON OF SONNETS. 
 
 Calvary. 
 
 T^O truth is won save on the tragic crest 
 /Of new-climbed Calvaries, where the 
 bawling mob, 
 Whose wildered hearts with nameless ter- 
 ror throb. 
 Pursue with clubs and staves who dared divest 
 Their world of one more shadow, fearing lest 
 The unwonted light should make the uni- 
 verse 
 Too luminous to hold a God, or worse, 
 Should fill men's souls with generous unrest 
 Until at length their fathers' ancient faiths 
 Grew all uncouth though builded on " God- 
 
 saiths." 
 For each new syllable of Truth we learn 
 
 A prophet dies, and all along the line 
 Of its triumphant course, the martyrs burn, 
 But Truth is God's Light, quenchless and 
 divine. 
 
 131 
 
A CORDON OF SONNETS. 
 
 ••• 
 
 • 
 
 Ekklesia. 
 
 TT GOTHIC sheep-fold, and a well-fed flock, 
 
 God snugly housed and hedged all round 
 
 about. 
 
 And all the ragged waifs of Earth pent out 
 
 Lest their rude cries of sin and shame should 
 
 mock 
 The long-aisled sanctity, and lo ! a Church ! 
 Do gothic windows shut in God, or keep 
 In cushioned Sabbath ease his chosen 
 sheep ? 
 Go rather to the wilderness and search ! 
 God is as wide and deep as heaven and earth, 
 
 His sheep-fold is the teeming universe. 
 His priests and prophets those high souls of 
 worth 
 That lift from toiling millions their hard 
 curse 
 Of penury and sin. When understood 
 The Church is joyous human brotherhood. 
 132 
 
A CORDON OF SONNETS. 
 
 Qethsemane. 
 
 npO watch the tragedy of life, that moves 
 * Upon this stage, from each new curtain- 
 lift, 
 Through all the hurrying scenes that 
 change and shift 
 With harrow and alack of wounded loves, 
 And silken culture jostled with the droves 
 Of unkempt helplessness, as fall the dice 
 Of Fate, Good throttled in the clutch of 
 Vice, — 
 Cold adders coiling round the nests of 
 
 doves, — 
 Till the curtain falls upon an empty stage, 
 And the vain show is done, — to sit and 
 
 watch, 
 A helpless spectator of misery 
 All throbbing with divine will to assuage 
 The endless agony, — to wait and watch, — 
 This is thy midnight hour, Gethsemane ! 
 133 
 
A CORDON OF SONNETS. 
 
 » 
 
 Olivet. 
 
 'T^HE Truth shines outward and not in. 
 The whole 
 
 Wide vasty space of star-sown heavens 
 can. wake 
 
 No thought, no sense, nor new ideal make 
 Whose germ lay not potential in the soul. 
 The souF is but infolded Truth, its goal 
 
 The long unfolding for its own high sake, 
 
 And life's rude conflict crowned with pain 
 and ache 
 The unclasping of the folds as they unroll ! 
 Thus, age by age, the light grows more serene 
 And white, as each new prophet's torch is seen 
 On higher Olivets, and the firm soul. 
 With radiant face, points upward to the goal, 
 Excelsior ! Ring out the vanward call 
 Till, beatific, Truth is all in all ! 
 
 134 
 
A CORDON OF SONNETS. 
 
 The Parak!ete. 
 
 yjjPTHEN dark Despair, in some lone scep- 
 ^^^ tic hour, 
 
 Breathes on the Soul his noxious atmo- 
 sphere, 
 
 And gulfs of night are yawning deep and 
 
 near. 
 And storm-clouds of black Death and Doom 
 
 do lower, 
 And all the lights of heaven feel the power 
 Of bUght and pestilence, and all men hear 
 The croak of ravens ominous and clear, 
 And life is withered ere it come to flower, 
 O mighty Soul of Manhood, Spirit strong, 
 
 O Paraklete, O Light unquenchable. 
 Faith, Hope and Love, triumphant over 
 wrong, 
 O Graces most serene, of life most full, 
 O triune Strength of Soul, to cheer and bless, 
 Thou wilt not leave us wholly comfortless ! 
 135 
 
A CORDON OF SONNETS. 
 
 ^ 
 
 Hypatla. 
 
 "LJYPATIA, spotless virgin, vestal-pure, 
 Stripped of her chaste Ionic robe of 
 snow, 
 Struck down by monks of Nitria, below 
 The image of the pitying Christ ! Adjure 
 The host to spare her, young Philammon ! 
 Vain ! 
 The black mob surge upon the altar rail 
 To glut her blood ! One wild despairing 
 wail 
 Parts her white lips. Philosophy is slain ! 
 Orestes, lo ! thy work and Cyril's ! Thou 
 With unchaste purpose and perfidious vow 
 Hast lured the Teacher from her Academe, 
 To grace the ruin of thy fatal dream 
 Of power. Cyril has made his sacrifice 
 Of heathen blood. O God, was this 
 thy price ? 
 
 136 
 
A CORDON OF SONNETS. 
 
 1« 
 
 To a Serpent. 
 
 I. 
 
 POOR timid creature gliding through the 
 grass, 
 A tortuous beam of purple-mailed light, 
 Fleeing from man thy old arch-slanderer's 
 sight 
 To seek asylum till his foot shall pass ! 
 I hate thee not, poor harmless friend, like men 
 That pause in serious toil to mangle thee. 
 For thou hast still some slight divinity, 
 Though lurking in the slime of this dark fen, 
 Unwinged and songless, in perpetual dew 
 Of foulness, and mayhap in life's great plan 
 Thou hast as fair a use as they that span 
 Bright wings and hover in etherial blue, 
 Pulsating clouds of vocal deity 
 To burst in floods of rapturous melody, 
 137 
 
A CORDON OF SONNETS. 
 
 II. 
 
 Nor will I charge thee with the floods of sin 
 That welter round the tangled lives of men 
 With poisonous airs from Death's wide 
 stagnant fen, 
 Until I learn where Good and 111 begin. 
 And yet, poor hapless wight, thou art to 
 me — 
 Since the world-hoary myth hath made 
 
 thee so — 
 The symbol of innumerable woe 
 And deep immeasurable misery ! 
 I hate old Envy's poisoned fangs that kill 
 Content, and Slander's red and odious 
 
 tongue. 
 And dark Suspicion writhing swift among 
 Fair names, besliming noble hearts, but still, 
 I hate thee not. Away, unharmed and 
 
 free, 
 And may my serpent thoughts escape 
 with thee ! 
 
 138 
 
Jl^e Birtt; of a (Jod 
 
 'TpHOU mighty Silence in the roar of 
 
 worlds, 
 Majestic, moveless in the drift of Time, 
 Fixed End and Altitude of things, with Thee 
 The soul is calm. To Thee^ with choice sub- 
 lime, 
 Through deathless conquest of appearances, 
 And gentle march athwart chaotic Night 
 And leaden headlong-hurling Institutes, 
 Through frozen palaces of formal ice, 
 Mid world-old constitutions, codes and 
 
 creeds, — 
 The serpent-slough of ancient yesterdays, — 
 She mounts, star-eyed for primal Truth and 
 
 Light, 
 Star-pinioned strong for heaven-scaling flight 
 Beyond the dark obscure, star-shod to climb 
 139 
 
THE BIRTH OF A GOD. 
 
 From world abysses o'er the crags of Time •' 
 Impelled by kinship with the primal Good, 
 She sweeps magnetic from her nether orb, 
 Far-mounting unto Thee, at one with Thee, 
 In Thy repose, cloud-girdled! Having touched 
 The midmost Sun of the celestial fires. 
 As once Prometheus, she at length shall 
 
 stand 
 Embodied Fire, — a portent to the Age, — 
 A wild rock Pharos lit by Titan hands. 
 Wide flashing through the void Immensities 
 Of Space and Time, from its firm-centred 
 
 rest, — 
 Foreboding swift convulsion and wide wreck 
 And palingenesis to nobler life ! 
 Thus, one by one, on missions of uplift. 
 Great Souls are born, and, with compulsion 
 
 strong. 
 Bring Order out of Chaos, and behold ! 
 The Chaos owns a Hero and a God ! 
 140 
 
|^^i)ostieism. 
 
 T KNOW not if there be, 
 "^ Following invisibly, 
 Angels protecting me, 
 Nor would I care, 
 Though cohorts of celestial spies 
 With Argus eyes 
 Should wheel about me in the cool sweet air ! 
 
 I know not if there be. 
 Ruling almightily, 
 A Judge approving me, 
 Nor would I care, 
 Though from his cloud-engirdled throne 
 In thunder tone 
 He hurled me curses through the vibrant air I 
 
 41 
 
AGNOSTICISM. 
 
 I only know there be 
 Things that my soul should flee 
 To live exaltedly, 
 And these I dare, 
 Though God and his hosts celestial 
 Desert me all, 
 To loathe and shun like pestilential air ! 
 
 I only know there be 
 Voices that speak to me 
 Out of Life's mystery. 
 And these I dare 
 To hear, though heaven's high tribunal 
 Proclaim them all 
 The lying hiss of demons in God's pure air! 
 
 ¥ 
 
 142 
 
Jl70U(5[7ts, 
 
 I. 
 
 "T^HAT the dead are dead and the living 
 are here 
 Is the obvious stern reality, 
 However we dream of fair realms beyond 
 And chatter of immortality ! 
 1 1. 
 What is the prophet's dream to me ? 
 
 What is the stroke of the psalmist's lyre ? 
 When the bosom of love has ceased to heave 
 And the broken eyes have lost their fire ? 
 III. 
 The parting is over, — the keenest pang, — 
 
 We meet no more till the close of day, 
 And then if we're left to moulder alone. 
 
 What more can be suffered ? 'Tis over 
 for aye ! 
 
 143 
 
THOUGHTS. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The sense of living is stronger than thought, 
 The sense of loss is stronger than dreams, 
 
 And the visions that float through a mist of 
 tears 
 Are cold and chill as the Stygian stream's. 
 
 v. 
 Dearer to me is the simple creed 
 
 That the all of living is to be just, 
 Whether the end be gates of pearl 
 
 Or only a handful of worthless dust. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Despite the best words ever sung, 
 
 The grave has a smell of dust and mould, 
 
 And the heart that is beating fast and warm 
 Shrinks from the everlasting cold. 
 
 144 
 
/T\y pious Qofnforters. 
 
 TOU wish I could think like you ? It would 
 comfort me in my grief 
 To rest in the arms of Faith, and learn God's 
 
 sweet relief? 
 For Death is a door, you say, and not an 
 
 impa&sable wall, 
 And the ears of Faith can hear, from beyond, 
 
 the immortals' call ? 
 Dear soul, you may mean it well ! It will 
 
 do, perchance, for you, 
 But I'd scream and rend my hair, if I thought 
 
 your dream were true ! 
 A door ? Aye, an open door, and I know 
 
 not what beyond. 
 But my head is all too clear, and my heart is 
 
 all too fond. 
 To divide that realm, like you, into fields of 
 
 glory and blight, 
 Where the saved look down on the lost, with 
 
 a burst of wild delight. 
 145 
 
MY PIOUS COMFORTERS. 
 
 Could I look on that dear dead face turned 
 
 tenderly to me 
 With the lips just parting the whiskers, those 
 
 lips that seemed to be 
 Made for all kindness and kissing, and think 
 
 about Death, like you ? 
 For I know how he lived and toiled, and what 
 
 he had striven to do. 
 He wasn't quite sure, himself, that priest 
 
 and bishop knew 
 Each nook and corner of heaven and the 
 
 narrow way thereto. 
 You'd say, he blasphemed at times, and 
 
 laughed at holy things, — 
 At the pious fudge of the world, in its infant's 
 
 leading-strings, — 
 And his brain was clear and strong, and his 
 
 heart was brave and warm, 
 And he basked in the sun of life, and braved 
 
 its wildest storm, 
 For he saw that the best of living is living 
 
 here and now. 
 Whether a fillet of gold, or a thorn-crown, 
 
 pressed the brow. 
 146 
 
MY PIOUS COMFORTERS. 
 
 If I thought like you, I would know, that his 
 
 soul this very night 
 Had entered that— Father, sweet Father! 
 
 I kneel in the failing light. 
 By thy side, poor broken Eyes, and swear 
 
 that wherever thou art, 
 I will follow thee, where thou art, and bear 
 
 of thy fate my part, 
 And love thee, and serve thee, and shield 
 
 thee, a dutiful daughter and true. 
 To the last and forever and ever!— Is that 
 
 any comfort to you 
 To drive a daughter to madness ? The faith 
 
 of my father is best, 
 For heaven were turned into hell, for me, 
 
 without all the rest 
 Of the loved ones that founded the home 
 
 and nourished its altar fires 
 With quenchless love and trust and devotion 
 
 that never tires. 
 Agnostic ? And do I not dread the future ? 
 
 So unprepared ? 
 Shall I dread the sweet sleep of that Sleeper? 
 The sleep my mother has shared ? 
 147 
 
MY PIOUS COMFORTERS. 
 
 For she rests under the ferns, and the 
 
 myrtle creeps through the grass 
 As sweetly to-day as if priests had hallowed 
 
 it with their mass. 
 Two unbaptized babes are sleeping beside 
 
 her there, 
 All doomed, if I thought like you, beyond a 
 
 hope or a prayer. 
 If I dreamed for a moment to-day that I were 
 
 going to heaven, — 
 Your heaven, — and all my faults and failings 
 
 would be forgiven, 
 And I knew that far away in those dungeons 
 
 of despair 
 My father and mother were tortured, beyond 
 
 my love and care, 
 I would do some horrible deed, some daring 
 
 and dreadful thing, 
 And slay myself, and fly to them both on 
 
 swiftest wing, 
 And descend to abysmal gloom, with the 
 
 vision of heaven above, 
 And glory in winning hell, for the sake of 
 
 the ones I love ! 
 
 148 
 
OCT 11 1899