EARTH AND 
 NEW EARTH 
 
 Cale Young Rice 
 
Class. 
 
 Book 
 
 GopyrigM 
 
 
 COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT; 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 
EARTH AND 
 NEW EARTH 
 
 BY 
 
 CALE YOUNG RICE 
 
 AUTHOR OF "PORZIA," "AT THE WORLD'S HEART," "FAR 
 
 QUESTS," "YOLANDA OF CYPRUS," "COLLECTED 
 
 PLAYS AND POEMS," etc. 
 
 Garden City New York 
 
 DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
 
 MCMXVI 
 
T^V 
 
 V># 
 
 All rights reserved, including that t 
 
 translation into foreign languages, 
 
 including the Scandinavian 
 
 Copyright, 1916, by 
 Cale Young Rice 
 
 «*><>' 
 
 JAN 19I9IU 
 
 ©CLA420400 
 
 1*o /, 
 
To 
 PRESIDENT WOODROW WILSON 
 
 WHOSE WISDOM AND PATIENCE HAVE 
 SO NOBLY SERVED THE IDEALS OF 
 HUMANITY AND WORLD-CITIZENSHIP 
 

 V* 
 
 k 
 
 /l // WgA/s reserved, including that of 
 
 translation into foreign languages, 
 
 including the Scamlinavian 
 
 Copyright, 1916, by 
 Cale Young Rice 
 
 *xi 
 
 JAN 19191b 
 ©CLA420400 
 
 fa /, 
 
To 
 PRESIDENT WOODROW WILSON 
 
 WHOSE WISDOM AND PATIENCE HAVE 
 SO NOBLY SERVED THE IDEALS OF 
 HUMANITY AND WORLD-CITIZENSHIP 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The first poem in this volume is permitted 
 to stand as it appeared in the Century Magazine 
 soon after the outbreak of the War. The second 
 but re-expresses such sympathies as must pave 
 the way to any prospect of world-citizenship. 
 The third, a drama in one act, has Militarism — 
 here " early " Prussian — as its abhorrence. 
 
 Other poems touching on the War have been 
 placed elsewhere in the volume — which needs no 
 further comment, unless I may express a hope 
 that English poetry, so often hospitable to alien 
 verse-forms, may also adopt that of the Japanese 
 hokkai — the spirit and method of which I have 
 sought to reveal, in examples of my own, under 
 " Poetic Epigrams." For the art value of the 
 hokkai — its antagonism to the obvious — is a quality 
 which all true literature must increasing seek. 
 
 Cale Young Rice. 
 Louisville, Ky., Dec, 191 5. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Preface vii 
 
 Princip 3 
 
 Earth and New Earth 8 
 
 Gerhard of Ryle 15 
 
 The Shore's Song to the Sea 37 - 
 
 The Runaway 37 ~ 
 
 The Version of Simon the Sadducee 43 - 
 
 The Faun Repents 49 
 
 In the Deep Mddnight 52 
 
 Church Bells Heard in the Country 57 
 
 Songs to A. H. R.: 
 
 1. Shelter 61 ' 
 
 2. Dominions 62 ' 
 
 3. Assuagement 63 
 
 4. Secresies 64 ' 
 
 5. On the Beach 65 
 
 6. At the Ebb-hour 66 
 
 7. The Edge of the Hill 67 
 
 8. All 68^ 
 
 King Solomon Sings of Women 69 
 
 The Immortal 74 
 
 Vita Mlrabilis 75 
 
 As the Tide Comes in 78 
 
 ix 
 
x CONTEXTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Inquest 80 
 
 Poetic Epigrams (After the fashion of the Japanese.) 
 
 1. The First Rats 82 
 
 2. Mists 82 
 
 3. Seed-baixs 83 
 
 4. Li a Cemetery at Night 83 
 
 5. Kindred 83 
 
 6. The Lightning 84 
 
 7. Faith 84 
 
 8. The Autumn Moon 84 
 
 9. Drippings 85 
 
 10. The Marble Christ 85 
 
 11. Script 85 
 
 12. At Night 86 
 
 13. November Leaves 86 
 
 14. The Crows 86 
 
 15. By One Just Dead 87 
 
 16. The Frost 87 
 
 17. Lost 87 
 
 Winds of War: 
 
 1. To the Masters op Europe 88 
 
 2. Ln the Toils 91 
 
 3. The Dead 93 
 
 4. The Prayers op the Warring Nations 95 — 
 
 5. God or Chaos 99— 
 
 Father Meran 105— 
 
 The New Patriot 107 
 
 The Song op the Homesick Gael 108 
 
 A Devon Ride no 
 
 A Sidmouth Lad in 
 
 Widowed 112 
 
 The Larger Loss "3 
 
 Re-reckoning "4 
 
 Last Ltnes op the Poet op Suma "7 
 
CONTENTS xi 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Origins 119 
 
 The Bride of Oita 120 
 
 The Immanent God 121 
 
 Ocean of Night 126 
 
 Hongkong City at Night 127 
 
 A Wife 129 
 
 Beacons 131 
 
 The Living Buddha 132 
 
 From a Northern Beach 135 
 
 Trees and Gr\ss 138 
 
 Zebi 140 
 
 During a Long Calm 142 
 
 Evening Waters 144 
 
 In a Park Pavilion 145 
 
 The Fishlng 148 
 
 Abeyance 149 
 
 Old Age and Autumn 150 
 
 A Lover, Rejected 152 
 
 A Litany for Latter-day Mystics 153 
 
 God, to Men 155 
 
 Ultlmates 157 
 
 Arms 158 •> 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 
PRINCIP 
 
 {The assassin of the Archduke Ferdinand) 
 
 Look at him there, a lad of nineteen years, 
 Slipping along the street with Slavic tread: 
 A moment, and from out his pistol's mouth 
 Shall leap the spark to set a world in flames. 
 For with the red death of a royal duke 
 The infinite tangle of a continent 
 Of immemorially warring peoples 
 Is kindled, and thro millions of calm breasts 
 The old race hatred runs. Austria reft, 
 Knowing the shot was at her feudal heart, 
 Flashes from out her molten indignation 
 A word that wakes the wild Caucasian urgence 
 Of Slavdom, ever swelling toward the West. 
 And Evolution's endless tragedies — 
 The friction fostered by uncounted kings, 
 The ancient war-cries that ring still in the blood 
 3 
 
4 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 
 With timeless memories of rape and slaughter, 
 
 Inheritances, bred deep in the bone, 
 
 Of battling tongues and creeds and cruelties, 
 
 Of ruined homes, wrecked loves, and razed delights, 
 
 These and a thousand scorns and dark contempts 
 
 And hatreds, heirlooms of long ignorance, 
 
 Flare up into one frenzied thirst for war! 
 
 Princip, Princip, lad of the nineteen years, 
 
 Was it the finger of God that pulled your trigger 
 
 And loosed the avalanches of destruction 
 
 With a blind bullet of predestination? 
 
 Was it of God, who found His upward way 
 
 To some world-aim thwarted by all the mesh 
 
 And fever of impenetrable passions? 
 
 A hundred times within one haunted week 
 
 The scales of Destiny hung even: 
 
 Who weighed them down to War? was it our God? 
 
 Who spoke into the Teuton veins a faith 
 
 That the inexorable hour had rung 
 
 To face the Russian horror, and, at last, 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 5 
 
 By letting their own blood, relieve their hearts 
 Of the long warward strain that pride and fear 
 And pent world-hunger kept so peril-taut? 
 Who used the living enmity of France, 
 Bidding her stretch an oath of dark allegiance 
 Across Germanic borders to the Slav, 
 And plight a fearful or revengeful troth 
 To the wild Muscovite, in whose vast breast 
 A consciousness, perchance, of low estate 
 Is the dim whip that drives him west to freedom? 
 And England, with her greed, for good or ill 
 Girdled about the globe, and with her pride 
 And dominance of empire thundering 
 From ships on every sea, who flung her heart, 
 A-quest for peace, yet with a secret sense 
 That now her dreaded foe might be struck down — 
 Who flung her heart upon the bloody fields? 
 Princip, with nineteen years, can you not tell? 
 
 Is God in this? or was His Immanence 
 Overwhelmed by atavistic Nature's surge 
 
6 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 
 Up from the core of earth? Are East and West, 
 
 From Asia to young Yukon, swept by winds 
 
 Of war into this crucible of time, 
 
 To emerge after long fumes of pain and horror 
 
 More nearly fused to one humanity? 
 
 Or has void Chance, on which was builded up 
 
 The babel of our boasted civilization, 
 
 Betrayed us as we grasped toward the stars? 
 
 Can He, the Alchemist of the Universe, 
 
 Pour blood and burning tears and misery 
 
 And waste and famine out upon the earth, 
 
 Yet in a year, or in a yoke of years, 
 
 Transmute them into human betterment? 
 
 Or does intemperable fatality 
 
 Strain now the heart-strings of a continent 
 
 To breaking, and its mind to mad unfaith? 
 
 Princip, God's tool or Hell's, can you not tell? 
 
 "Autocracies shall go and Armaments 
 
 And that peace-murdering trade, Diplomacy!" 
 
 Such the cry is, Princip. And shall your blow, 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 7 
 
 Your petty, obsessed, patriotistic blow, 
 The last of the innumerable that ages 
 Have struck against the ancient iron gates 
 Of Tyranny — shall yours avail at last? 
 Or shall steel yet intrench the happiness 
 Of nations, not far mightier common-weal? 
 And since men seize at last, with wan clairvoyance, 
 The vision of a World-State shaping dim 
 Upon the horizon of their misery, 
 Is it mirage, desert delusion, dream, 
 Born not of possibility but pain? 
 Or does in truth the misty dome arise, 
 Already shadowed forth by their desire, 
 Of a World-Parliament's protecting peace, 
 And in it the one universal right 
 Of HUMAN WELFARE graven high, to guide 
 Their vast deliberations — and to link 
 At last with brave and noble assent to Law 
 The nations bruted now by bloody Might? 
 Princip, with nineteen years, can you not tell? 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 
 Before the winds of War awoke 
 
 And broke with raving strife 
 Over a world that lay at rest 
 
 Under a calm peace-life, 
 I sat beside a shimmering sea 
 
 Whose tides around me rang, 
 And, gloriously, to Memory, 
 
 My fair soul-mistress sang: 
 
 So much of the earth I have loved, dear God, so much of 
 
 the wondrous earth, 
 That when I lie beneath its sod I shall not feel a dearth 
 Of beauty there, or of joy there, of marvellous delights, 
 Since I shall bring unto its breast a million rapture 
 
 sights. 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 9 
 
 For I have gathered its glories up, from my own low 
 
 hearth-side 
 To where Himalayas, high above belief, to heaven ride. 
 There's not a sea but has lent to me sunset, moonrise, or 
 
 dawn, 
 And oh, the cities of men that thro my ardent eyes have 
 
 gone. 
 
 The cities of men I— fair Honolulu, by her irised reefs, 
 Where younger West meets older East in dimly blent 
 
 beliefs, 
 Till each can read, with a strange heed, the vaster 
 
 mysteries, 
 That out of human hopes have sprung, o'er continents 
 
 and seas. 
 
 Or Yokohama, with Fuji to the southward, like a throne 
 Some Buddha has deserted for a shrine less high and lone, 
 And where a folk, long under the yoke of isolation's 
 
 dream, 
 Rise up and scatter the centuries, at a new vision's 
 
 gleam. 
 
io EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 
 Or, thro pagoda-towering gates of secret vague Pekin, 
 .":;• SUM old China drifting out, neve China surging :>:. 
 Stern men of state I have watched await at a Republic's 
 
 womb 
 To learn if Freedom yet may forth be brought, to lift 
 
 their doom. 
 
 Then India, it: her mystic trance of deities so strange 
 And immemorial, I have seen half-tremble, as if change 
 Almost had come, like a dim drum that beat across her 
 
 sea 
 Of resignation to this life's sad unreality. 
 
 Oh, running flame of a new desire! Beside the pyramids 
 I have beheld it sweep the eyes of men who lift their lids 
 To Mecca or to Jerusalem, or to no shrine beyond 
 That of a hope Some Help will bind all hearts with a 
 sure bond. 
 
 Thro Europe I have beheld it run, a little lonely flame 
 Of brotherhood — or wild unrest, with many an anarch 
 name. 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH n 
 
 '' Let us be one, life's every son, not lord" — it said — 
 
 "nor slave ; 
 But men with an equal share in earth, our mother, 
 
 which God gave I" 
 
 "Let us be one /" And ever the land I love above all 
 
 lands 
 Has swiftly heard the immortal word, and reached her 
 
 bounteous hands 
 To every man, tho, with a ban, from shores accurst he 
 
 came, 
 And on his brow has stamped anew humanity's great 
 
 name. 
 
 So much of earth I have loved, dear God, so much of the 
 
 valiant sphere 
 That bears us to our destiny, on wings we cannot hear, 
 So much of earth and the radiant birth upon it of new 
 
 dreams, 
 That sometimes as the living heart within Your Breast 
 
 it seems. 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 
 Thus did I sing, with winds a-ring 
 
 Around me. Then there came 
 Wild-footed War, running amuck 
 
 With madness none could tame, 
 Among the nations that so long 
 
 Had sought for brotherhood, 
 And that now in their frenzy saw 
 
 No safety save in blood. 
 
 Then sudden the spirit of all love 
 
 Was lost, all hope went down; 
 Within a wild red flood of hate 
 
 I saw the world's soul drown. 
 And, in the frothing element, 
 
 There swam, instead, the beast 
 Man was and is and shall be till 
 
 He takes Law for his priest. 
 
 All in a madness was it done ! 
 
 And memory — there slain — 
 Within me rotted like a corpse 
 
 That in the sun has lain. 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 13 
 
 Till where beauty had been there swarmed 
 
 The maggot of despair, 
 Sending its stench of uselessness 
 
 Into my soul's sick air. 
 
 But only a little while 'twas so, 
 
 For faith — I know not why — 
 Faith — tho enfouled by crimes of fate — 
 
 Comes back into the sky. 
 Yes, comes again, and did — to heal 
 
 With its immortal wind 
 This darkest wrong that man has borne, 
 
 Or deed that he has sinned. 
 
 And so I sing again, dear God: So much of the 
 
 wondrous earth 
 I've loved that when I lie in it I shall not feel a dearth 
 Of beauty there, or of joy there, of marvellous delights, 
 Or of Thy deep divine desire to set all grief to rights. 
 
GERHARD OF RYLE 
 
Saint Francis, Saint Lutgarde, 
 
 And sweet Saint Margaret, 
 Saint Gertrude, and Ludwine, 
 
 And gentle Saint Colette, 
 They never shed the heart-blood 
 
 Of bird, man, or beast; 
 And a warrior, tho great on earth, 
 
 In heaven shall be least. 
 
CHARACTERS 
 
 Conrad . . . Militant Archbishop of Cologne 
 Gerhard of Ryle . Architect of the great Cathedral 
 
 Gerda His wife 
 
 Ursula A girl, their servant 
 
 Rupert . . . A Knight in Conrad's Council 
 Soldiers of Conrad 
 
GERHARD OF RYLE 
 
 Time.— Circa 1295 A. D. 
 
 Scene. — The chief room in the house of Gerhard, 
 •with a door and windows opening directly on the 
 place of the unfinished Cathedral. Its walls and 
 ceiling are of plaster and of stained oaken beams, 
 which are grotesquely carved about a massive smoul- 
 dering fireplace, right. 
 
 On a tall rest to the left and back is a drawing of 
 the Church's sublime facade: before which is a table 
 with architectural implements together with an old 
 sword. Chairs and chests also are visible; and 
 right or left, doors leading to the kitchen and to the 
 bed-chambers. Through the windows a portion of the 
 Cathedral's lofty choir stands magical in the moon- 
 light. 
 
20 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 
 Gerhard, in dishevelled dress, is yearningly ab- 
 sorbed in his drawings by the rest. Gerda sits to 
 the front centre, a book fallen from her, and with sup- 
 pressed hatred of her surroundings written on her 
 face. Ursula enters, as if habitually, and goes 
 down to her. 
 
 Ursula. I have set wine and herrings on the table 
 That he may eat — the master — when he will. 
 The candles, too, are ready and the bread 
 And water against the morning. — Is there more? 
 Gerda (rising). There is no more. 
 
 [Ursula goes. 
 But ever is it thus! 
 Up with the dawn 
 For this housewifery 
 Of ordering a wan wench to and fro, 
 And then of bidding her to bed, where she 
 May still dream of her kettles and her kitchen, 
 Of broth and stew and pottage, in her sleep. 
 
 [Gerhard turns, she continues. 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 21 
 
 A woman is a hare shut in a warren, 
 A linnet in a cage— when she is wed so. 
 
 [He rises. 
 Night after night this dull and heavy house 
 In which you toil and I sit tortured by. 
 
 Gerhard (comes down). But Gerda 
 
 Gerda. In a nunnery 
 
 were better. 
 Your tools scrape ever there upon the paper 
 From dusk to midnight, 
 And from dawn to dusk 
 You are away amid unwitted workmen 
 Gazing with love on every stone they lay. 
 But I bide here — bide — 
 In want, aye in want, tho nobly born, 
 Of the one thing— the merest that befits me. 
 Gerhard (gently). Yet well do you know why. 
 It is because 
 You ask me, Gerda, what I cannot give. 
 
 Gerda. And what, in giving not, are less a man. 
 
 [He flushes. 
 
22 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 
 Yes, less than are these larded monks about us, 
 
 Who dare take arms, tho sworn to crucifixes. 
 
 [He controls himself and goes silently back to 
 work. A pause. 
 
 Gerda. Well, some there are who 
 
 Gerhard. Yes, many who find 
 
 In bloody battles all their heart's desire. 
 
 Gerda. And what but battles saves our Father- 
 land? 
 Gerhard. Peace, Gerda, might. 
 Gerda. And weaklings without swords? 
 
 [When he does not answer. 
 Am I to live . . . so . . . when there are 
 
 those 
 With whom might be an end of low-born dull- 
 ness? 
 
 [He only sighs. 
 Would Rupert leave me to this weariness — 
 Rupert I might have wedded save for you? 
 Am I a burgher's daughter, chosen but 
 To spin the flax 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 23 
 
 And potter mid the pails, 
 That I am dealt with thus? 
 
 Gerhard {simply). You are my wife. 
 
 Gerda. The wife of master Gerhard, builder, of 
 Ryle! 
 Who left a castle and her father's care, 
 A banquet-board 
 Where in the evening glow 
 The minnesingers sang contending of love, 
 To wed a paltry dreamer! and who soon 
 No doubt will come contently to beguile 
 Her days — while he is wrapped away or lost 
 In his cathedral longings; aye, or gone 
 With mall and measure to the quarry-fields— 
 In driving geese to market ! 
 
 Gerhard {rising again). Can you speak so? 
 
 [Coming down and pleading tenderly. 
 I ask not anything of you at all — 
 Save that you be to me, 
 As first you seemed, 
 The sainted inspiration of my soul, 
 
24 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 
 That seeks now to eternalize in stone, 
 
 In arches that shall spring like seraph-pinions 
 
 And spires piercing to sunward, as a song, 
 
 This church — a very mitre of Christ on earth! 
 
 I am not born of barons, like your father, 
 
 Or of a race 
 
 Of prelates like this bloody 
 
 And proud Archbishop who commands my 
 
 toil. 
 Why to your scutcheoned gates I one day came 
 I know not — I ennobled but by dreams. 
 And what led you to abjure the difference 
 Between our births and love me is yet darker; 
 While darkest is it what drew you to follow 
 My steps to this humility and loss. 
 But it is done, Gerda, and we are wed, 
 And if your love now finds 
 No valour-heights in the great shrine I build 
 To hold the bones of the Three Holy Kings 
 Drawn starrily to Christ in Bethlehem, 
 One thing abides — the love I gave you then. 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 25 
 
 Gerda. In name, but not in truth and life and 
 passion. 
 
 Gerhard. Because you will it so. 
 
 Gerda {implacably). Because the serf 
 Who is my husband shuns to take the sword 
 Of knighthood which my father would gird on him 
 And turn from doltish tools. 
 
 Gerhard. To daily murder? 
 
 And plunder, like these lords who ply the Rhine? 
 
 [/Is she turns on him. 
 No, no, I mean it not — of him, your father. 
 
 [More impassionedly. 
 But I am not as they! and what I here 
 Am building is a greater thing to God, 
 Wherein all that I am must be transfused 
 Without blood-guilt 
 Or any sinfulness. 
 And you can aid this immortality, 
 This shrine soaring to touch infinitude — 
 And thro whose doors, with saints and martyrs set, 
 The millions of this German land shall move, 
 
20 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 
 Fast jewelled windows where fair Paradise 
 Shall be set forth in colours spread supernal, 
 To mass and vespers which shall purge their sin. 
 You. Gerda. you so beautiful, can aid. 
 
 Gerda. Yes. as may any stone with which you 
 build: 
 A sacrifice 
 
 Set in a selfish vision. 
 
 But I will not. My own way will I choose, 
 And it shall be — away from here. 
 
 Gerhard ( '•'.?)• Away? 
 
 Gerda {seeing him torn at last). 
 With one who knows the sword's nobility. 
 And who will build me love, not stony churches; 
 One knowing a woman is flesh as well as spirit, 
 And that beauty is earth's as well as heaven's. 
 
 Gerhard. And he . . . that you will go 
 with . . . will be Rupert? 
 
 Gerda. He will be one at least who is aware 
 How vainly I am made ... a mere midwife 
 [With a final thrust. 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 27 
 
 Unto a vision that is moon-begotten, 
 A fancy that but bats and owls shall finish — 
 And keep to worship in. 
 Gerhard {soul- struck). By which . . . you 
 mean . . . 
 That to my shrine 
 Some evil-veering wind 
 Has risen . . . which, hearing, you have kept 
 
 from me? 
 Some breath, perchance, 
 Of Rupert's poison tongue? 
 Rupert, who would strike God out of this land? 
 
 [A knock without. 
 Gerda. Your answer stands there waiting at 
 the door. 
 [Goes rigidly off as he moves to draw the latch. 
 But a knock of more violence comes, and, 
 shuddering back, he takes up the sword as if 
 fearing treachery. Then quickly opening the 
 door he finds Conrad — with several cloaked 
 forms that slip back into the shadow. 
 
28 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 
 Conrad (with amazed irony on seeing Gerhard's 
 sword). 
 By every nail of the Cross, what mood is this? 
 
 [Enters. 
 My holy builder bent on shedding blood 
 Like any baron of us? My believer 
 In peace without a sword set upon murder? 
 His tender tools forsook, and traceries? 
 
 [Laughs. 
 It is not ill, not ill! . . . no; as I live! 
 Who has two trades need never lack employ- 
 ment. 
 
 [Comes down. 
 And, sanctus, I am minded ! ... It will lighten 
 The purpose I have brought. 
 
 Gerhard (forebodingly). Christ save my soul. 
 
 [Drops the sword with an abhorrence that causes 
 Conrad to flush. 
 Conrad (whom a pause is not able to restrain). 
 I do not like aversions, Master Gerhard. 
 Within this land I am priest-militant: 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 29 
 
 Is my sword-bearing, too, an infamy? 
 
 [Finding vantage in this. 
 So is it with these peace-fed artisans. 
 It sickens me; 
 Till, to the guts, I weary 
 Of this unslaked church-building. 
 For . . . wherefore 
 Should I, but for a dead man in his coffin, 
 Tho he was called my father 
 And laid on me 
 
 The pledge to build this fane up to the stars, 
 Spend all the guilders this arch-diocese 
 Can gather — I, engirt by fools and foes? 
 Rupert is right! 
 
 Gerhard (trembling). Rupert? 
 
 Conrad. I will cease. 
 
 And if the Kings who rode to Bethlehem 
 Want for their bones a shrine, then let them send 
 To my electorate peace, 
 Or to my coffers 
 Mammon enough to quell my enemies. 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 Gerhard (whom a deadly pallor has stricken still). 
 You have come here to say the mighty fane 
 Which I am toiling for and which is vet 
 
 Not half to heaven 
 
 Conrad. Must, by heaven, stay so; 
 
 [Prepares to go. 
 Tho to the land a Devil's Easter come. 
 
 J: '-.j 'j And it is Rupert who persuades you 
 to it. 
 
 So there may be more money to shed blood? 
 
 Too deep were such a shame. 
 
 Conrad (ajlare). Master Gerhard! 
 
 Gerhard. Master am I of naught, save of my 
 h:_re. 
 High over me is your authority 
 And over all the thousands of this land. 
 
 [With solemn faith. 
 
 But this, if you should do 
 
 Conrad {in uratii). Dragons of Hell! 
 
 Am I to drink fool's breath? Is this a Pope 
 Of very Rome to question my decrees! 
 
EARTH AND XEW EARTH 31 
 
 Gerhard. Xo, but, my lord, I am the living voice 
 
 Of those unfinished arches that arise 
 
 Out of my •window, 
 
 Under the pale moon, 
 
 To point toward eternity and light. 
 
 And even you 
 
 Who have compelled this city 
 
 And all the land about beneath your yoke, 
 
 Will dare not do this. 
 Conrad. Dare! . . . dare! . . . not 
 
 dare! 
 
 [Chokes. 
 
 This from a tool-bred hireling! . . . Soul of God! 
 
 Gerhard. It is God's soul, that cries into your ears, 
 
 [With profound faith. 
 
 And will not hush for mitre or for crown 
 
 Until it tells you 
 
 Who have ground the poor 
 
 And gathered widows' mites to waste on war — 
 
 Heavily on the people hanging chains 
 
 Which strangle past enduring — that if now 
 
32 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 
 Conrad (ragingly). May I go down to Hell and 
 there be set 
 The task of flaming damnefcl souls with lust — 
 As one has flamed your wife, upstarting peasant — 
 
 [Gerhard cries out. 
 If you vent more of this. (Calls.) Rupert! In! 
 [As the door opens, to Rupert, entering. 
 This knave has spoken words of spotted treasor. ! 
 Of treason! And his blood — if in so pale 
 A thing blood be — shall cool in prison for it. 
 
 [With worse thoughts, as Gerda enters. 
 Or no ! The worm, the wan church-chaffing coward, 
 Shall see scorn of him even from his wife. 
 To — to her! Take her in your avid arms, 
 Unto your breast! With all the power I am 
 I give her you, and shrive the adultery. 
 Rupert. (Starts toward her). Gerda! 
 Gerhard. Oh! What am I driven to! 
 
 Rupert (who pauses, laughing, as Gerda stands 
 motionless.) 
 To seeing now what love and passion are! 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 33 
 
 Appeaseless passion — 
 Not for a carven saint, 
 Or for a painted angel without lips 
 And limbs and breasts where happy kisses hive, 
 But for a woman full of sweet response. 
 
 [Again starts toward her. 
 Gerhard (uncontrollably). Not Christ upon the 
 very Cross bore this. 
 
 [He springs wildly at Rupert and seizes his 
 dagger. A struggle, a fall, a stab ensue; then 
 silence. Then slowly he rises with horror and 
 staggers back, till his hand striking the church- 
 plan tears it across.] 
 Conrad (who runs to the door, now with redoubled 
 wrath). 
 In, in! Ho, in! Murder! murder! 
 
 Enter Soldiers alarmed. 
 
 Murder! 
 A Soldier (dazed). My lord, who? (Looks 
 around.) How? Sir Rupert dead? Here? 
 
34 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 
 Conrad. Take him, I tell you. 
 Soldier {confused). Who, my lord? and 
 
 where? 
 Conrad. The murderer there of Ryle. 
 Soldier {amazed). Gerhard of Ryle? 
 
 [Gerhard stands staring at his deed. 
 Conrad. He who will shed no blood! who will 
 not fight 
 In battles, but who dips his soul in murder! 
 
 [The soldiers prepare fetters. 
 Gerhard {stricken, aghast, with his eyes still fixed 
 on Rupert). 
 The curse of Cain! the crimson curse of Cain! 
 In spite of all — at last! Its guilt upon 
 
 The glory I was dreaming . . . O upon 
 
 [Sees the torn plan. 
 
 My shrine {Moans.) 
 
 Soldier. What shall be done with him, my 
 
 lord? 
 Gerhard. Each stone that I should lift would 
 now cry out 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 35 
 
 And every column crumble with wet blood. 
 
 [Bewildered. 
 Yet I was set apart from violence 
 By such a vision as no man e'er had. 
 
 [Again, after moans, with the weariness of one 
 lost. 
 Accursed be my hand and shrivelled up, 
 Accursed all the weapons of the world 
 And all the hate 
 Whose cruelty has shaped 
 The guilty tools of rage and lust and ruin 
 That from the gates of Eden to this hour 
 Have smitten humankind with grief and death. . . . 
 And oh, accursed be, lord of Cologne, 
 You, in whose desecrated heart the Dove 
 Of the Holy Spirit 
 Ne 'er has beat its wings. 
 
 [They fetter him. 
 Do with me now according to your will. 
 Conrad (in whose stark face the soldiers seek 
 orders). 
 
36 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 
 Bear him up to a scaffold of his church 
 
 And let him — happen over. If he lives 
 
 The Devil's in him. If he dies it shall 
 
 Be held the Devil's doing — and not mine. 
 
 I do not think his tainted task will now 
 
 Be hurried to a feverous finishment. 
 
 [They lead Gerhard out, Gerda still standing 
 motionless. Conrad with a glance of in- 
 difference at her follows. Then a shudder 
 passes over Gerda, whose eyes are on the door; 
 and as one against her will she slowly moves 
 toward it. When there she trembles, listens, 
 and then, looking up, falls back, stricken, from 
 the sight, with a cry of horror. At the same 
 time Ursula enters but stops frozen. 
 
 CURTAIN 
 
THE SHORE'S SONG TO THE SEA 
 
 Out on the rocks primeval, 
 
 The grey Maine rocks that slant and break to the 
 
 sea, 
 With the bay and juniper round them, 
 And the leagues on leagues before them, 
 And the terns and gulls wheeling and. crying, wheel- 
 ing and crying over, 
 I sat heart-still and listened. 
 
 And first I could only hear the wind in my ears, 
 And the foam trying to fill the high rock-shallows. 
 And then, over the wind, over the whitely blossom- 
 ing foam, 
 Low, low, like a lover's song beginning, 
 I heard the nuptial pleading of the old shore, 
 A pleading ever occultly growing louder: 
 37 
 
38 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 
 sea, glad bride of me 1 
 Bom of the bright ether and given to wed me, 
 Given to glance, ever, for me, and gleam and dance in 
 
 the sun, 
 Come to my arms, come to my reaching arms, 
 That seem so still and unavailing to take you, and hold 
 
 you, 
 Yet never forget, 
 Never by day or night, 
 The hymeneal delights of your embracings. 
 
 Come, for the moon, my rival, shall not have you; 
 No, for tho twice daily afar he beckons and you go, 
 You, my bride, a little way back to meet him, 
 As if he once had been your lover, he, too, and again 
 
 enspelled you, 
 Soon, soon, I know it is only feigning ! 
 For turning, playfully turning, tidally turning, 
 You rushfoamingly, swiftly back to my arms I 
 
 And so would I have you rush; so rush now ! 
 
 Come from the sands where you have stayed o'erlong, 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 39 
 
 Come from the reefs where you have wandered silent, 
 For ebbings are good, the restful ebbings of love, 
 But, oh, the bridal flowings of it are better ! 
 And now I would have you loose again my tresses, 
 My locks rough and weedy, rough and brown and 
 
 brinily tangled, 
 But, oh, again as a bridegroom's, when your tide, 
 
 whispering in, 
 Lifts them up, pulsingly up with kisses I 
 
 Come with your veil thrown back, breaking to spray I 
 
 And oh, with plangent passion I 
 
 Come with your naked sweetness, salt and wholesome, to 
 my bosom, 
 
 Let not a cave or crevice of me miss you, or cranny, 
 
 For, oh, the nuptial joy you float into me, 
 
 The cooling ambient clasp of you, I have waited over- 
 long, 
 
 And I need to know again its marriage meaning ! 
 
 For I think it is not alone to bring forth life, that I mate 
 you; 
 
4 o EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 
 More than life is the beauty of life with love I 
 Plentiful are the children tltat you bear to me, the 
 
 blossoms, 
 The fruits and all the creatures at your breast dewtty 
 
 fed, 
 But mating is troubled with a far higher meaning— 
 A hint of a consummation for all things. 
 Come utterly tfien, 
 Utterly to me come, 
 And let us surge together, clasped close, in infinite 
 
 union, 
 Until we reach a transcendence of all birth, and all 
 
 dying, 
 A n ecstasy holding the universe blended — 
 Such ecstasy as is its ultimate Aim ! 
 
 So sang the shore, the long bay-scented shore, 
 Broken by many an isle, many an inlet bird-em- 
 bosomed, 
 And the sea gave answer, bridally, tidally turning, 
 And leapt, radiant, into his rocky arms! 
 
THE RUNAWAY 
 
 What are you doing, little day-moon, 
 
 Over the April hill? 
 What are you doing, up so soon, 
 Climbing the sky with silver shoon? 
 What are you doing at half-past noon, 
 
 Slipping along so still? 
 
 Are you so eager, the heights unwon, 
 
 That you cannot wait, 
 But, unheeding of wind and sun, 
 Out of your nest of night must run, 
 Up where the day is far from done, 
 
 Shy little shadow-mate? 
 41 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 Up and away then — with young mists 
 
 Tripping, along the blue! 
 Dance and dally and promise trysts 
 Unto each that around you lists; 
 For, little moon, not a one but wists 
 
 April's the time to woo! 
 
THE VERSION OF SIMON THE SADDUCEE 
 
 Scribes and priests, hearken to me, 
 
 Simon am I, the Sadducee, 
 
 And, in spite of what I tell 
 
 Of a dead man made whole and well, 
 
 I say there is neither Heaven nor Hell. 
 
 Thus did it chance — and only so. 
 I was coming from Jericho, 
 And, when anear to Bethany, 
 Had crept under an olive tree, 
 Wear\- of heat and the Dead Sea. 
 
 And as I rested, nigh asleep, 
 
 I heard a sudden moan sweep, 
 
 And looking out from the olive-gloom 
 
 Bespread over a near hill tomb, 
 
 I saw a surging throng loom. 
 
 43 
 
44 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 
 And out of the throng I heard a cry, 
 "Master, why did you let him die!" 
 From a lone woman's grief it came — 
 One of two that called his name — 
 And seemed to smite his heart as flame. 
 
 For tears were started in his breast, 
 Like waters from a fountain prest. 
 And lo, come to the tomb, he said, 
 In words that with sore yearning bled, 
 " Roll the stone away from the dead." 
 
 And swift they rolled its weight away, 
 As you have heard his people say. 
 And then he cried — I swear, thus — 
 In a voice flung as wind thro us, 
 "I bid you to come forth, Lazarus." 
 
 And slowly out of the grave there came, 
 Bound about — like one who's lame — 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 45 
 
 With clothes at the feet, and face, too, 
 This Lazarus — a mere Jew — 
 Who had been dead. . . . whole days thro ! 
 
 And as he came a great awe fell — 
 Seeming to fold the earth as well. 
 Yet if the hill shook, I know not: 
 Tho such a strength, there begot, 
 Nigh left me as the wife of Lot. 
 
 But soon the throng cried out, "He lives!" 
 At which a little shiver he gives — 
 Then falls down at the Master's feet. 
 And the women running, glad and fleet, 
 Took from him the winding-sheet. 
 
 Then was rejoicing, far and near, 
 And thronging about, his tale to hear. 
 Yet, by the rod of Moses, all 
 Of moment still was to befall ! 
 For he but stood there in his pall. 
 
46 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 
 Till some at last cried, "Master, bid 
 Him tell us what in death he did. 
 For we would know of the Abyss — 
 Of Sheol coming after this — 
 Whether it be a pain or bliss! " 
 
 And the throng pressed closer, closer still, 
 When Lazarus shook, as if his will 
 Had scarcely yet from death come back. 
 And then he stood there, all a-lack, 
 Looking as one upon the rack. 
 
 But still the throng cried, "Bid him speak!' 
 Till He who raised the dead grew weak, 
 And a sweat broke out upon his brow — 
 A sweat of faltering, all allow, 
 Whether to bid the dead avow. 
 
 Yet, louder still, "Yea, let us know 
 What Heaven is, if there we go; 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 47 
 
 For we will believe what man hath seen." 
 They cried again: and he, grown lean, 
 Turned at last with a granting mien. 
 
 But then did Lazarus loose his lips, 
 As one whom a great loving grips, 
 And said, "Nay, Lord, send them away; 
 To you alone will I first say 
 What I have seen of Heaven this day." 
 
 So He unto them said, "Stand off: 
 Have I not shewn ye signs enough? " 
 And they obeyed, tho lothfully, 
 Murmuring backward from the tree, 
 Where those two stood alone with me. 
 
 Then was it that this Healer said, 
 "Speak!" and hope to his word was wed; 
 Such hope as never hung before 
 At the tomb's unrevealing door. 
 The very sun stood eager o'er. 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 And Lazarus stammered forth, "Dear Lord, 
 Shall I so pierce you with a sword? 
 In the four days of my death-gloom 
 I have but lain as in a womb: 
 Emptiness only has the tomb ! " 
 
 And he, their "Lord" and "Master" called, 
 Paled to his heart, as if appalled. 
 But only a space, then beauty spread, 
 Strange as the power that raised the dead, 
 Over his limbs and lit his head. 
 
 And then He gently turned away 
 And to the throng I heard him say, 
 "Look on my face and search ye out 
 Whether of Heaven ye should doubt!" 
 And all cried "Nay, Lord," with a shout. 
 
 So I, Simon, the Sadducee, 
 Say still that Heaven nor Hell may be. 
 And yet if thus the dead arise 
 Who is there in his heart denies 
 That in this man a Prophet cries? 
 
THE FAUN REPENTS 
 
 Spring seized me in the wood, 
 
 Made of me a satyr: 
 Feet hoofed with hardihood, 
 
 Heart a passion-crater. 
 Spring seized me in the wood — 
 
 Oh, how I hate her! 
 For the nymph I love came by, 
 With a green wreath at her thigh. 
 "Were she Dian's self," said I, 
 
 "Now would I mate her!" 
 
 So, lustily, I sprang 
 
 Thro the leaves and took her; 
 Swept her with kisses, sang, 
 
 No least word would brook her. 
 49 
 
SO EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 
 And, when, within the shade, 
 
 All but bliss forsook her, 
 Up with a remorseful cry, 
 Up she rose, with wreathen thigh, 
 Anger-pale, and fled: then I 
 Knew I had mistook her. 
 
 Now, loveless, do I go, 
 
 Loveless— and unmated. 
 Shamed by all nymphs I know, 
 
 By her shunned and hated. 
 Dance they amid the brake? 
 
 My arms go unsated! 
 Never sylvan-girded thigh 
 
 Swift against me glimmers by. 
 Evoe ! how sad am I, 
 
 So befooled and fated ! 
 
 Spring, Spring it was did this, 
 Spring the mad exalter! 
 
 Spring, with her wanton kiss, 
 Fire on the heart's altar. 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 51 
 
 Had I my nymph again 
 
 I would never palter 
 With such passion: no, not I, 
 Tho with wanting I should die ! 
 But, sufficed, would let no sigh 
 
 For her from me falter. 
 
IN THE DEEP MIDNIGHT 
 
 Clanging, ever clanging: 
 
 Clanging in the deep midnight, train-bells clanging! 
 
 Over the city sleeping, 
 
 Over the silent huddle of roofs and shadows, 
 
 Over the hearts of thousands, lying enchambered, 
 
 breathing evenly, 
 Or breathing and tossing, to and fro, on torn seas of 
 
 insomnia, 
 Clanging over the streets, restless clanging — 
 Over husht streets, with blue electric lights lone- 
 
 somely burning, 
 Over the steepled churches, 
 The shrines dark and empty save for the voiceless 
 
 souls of Bibles, 
 
 52 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 53 
 
 Over the wan Hospital, the wards where the sick lie 
 
 waking a little, 
 And where they moan a little, not knowing why, 
 Over the Jail where the guilty, too, wake and stir in 
 
 their ward, 
 And where they start, with waging blood, and moan 
 
 and beat at their bars, 
 Because for them there is neither home nor high- 
 way, 
 Over that other prison, where the dead lie, 
 But wake not at all, nor struggle, nor beat at their 
 
 bars! 
 Ever, ever cLanging! 
 
 O voiceful restlessness! 
 
 Vibrant soul of the world's coming and going, 
 
 Resonant want of it, restive vent of it, and of desire, 
 
 desire — 
 Desire to wander back to the peace of the known, 
 Or out and away to the anywhere of deliverance— 
 
54 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 
 How many, a-dream, are caught in the net of your 
 
 ringing! 
 How many turn in their sleep and are caught away 
 
 to the sea's roaring, 
 Are caught away . . . over corn tossing, and 
 
 woods waving, and rivers, 
 Past the red-lit or the green-lit stations, clanging, 
 Away to the dark of the East or the dark of the West! 
 How many remember, far from mother or wife, 
 And wonder if there is waking, if there is waiting, 
 If there are tears falling for them in the darkness! 
 How many, under your quaver, under your clamor 
 
 and evocation, 
 See sudden again the far-a-ways of childhood, 
 Brought forth from the shadowy bournes of years 
 
 and grief and blind forgetting, 
 To merge again in the mists of sleep's immuning! 
 How many, under your riot, under your plangence, 
 
 under your passion, 
 Ride again over cattle-wilds, again over buttes 
 
 and mesas, 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 55 
 
 Unlassoed still by Life, lords of its spaces, of its 
 
 pastures! 
 How many, mated with sin, disease and stagnance, 
 In dens, moonless and loveless, where the free sweet 
 
 winds would sicken, 
 Feel, as they hear, the nails of their souls' coffin, 
 Driven, driven, driven, driven in! 
 
 in 
 
 It passes, as all passes; there is silence. 
 
 The huddled roofs dream again in the shadows, 
 
 With the blue electric lights lonesomely burning, the 
 
 streets unbroken, 
 Night's immemorial opiate rules all. 
 And the stars come closer, beaten off no more by the 
 
 sound's urgence, 
 Intimate now, and ready with revelations, with 
 
 Teachings, 
 For the sky has become the confessional of God, 
 
S 6 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 
 And, Priest of the Universe, He hears its need — and 
 
 shrives it — 
 Till all the crying that was, now is comfort, 
 All want that was is peace . . . all clanging rest! 
 
CHURCH BELLS HEARD IN THE COUNTRY 
 
 Soft to my ear 
 The Sunday bells 
 Come on the wind 
 Like whilom spells 
 That long have lost 
 Their pristine charm 
 To do my spirit help or harm. 
 
 And yet they haunt me 
 With a thought 
 Of years when faith 
 Came all unsought; 
 When youth was truth — 
 And nothing more 
 Did I demand, God to adore. 
 57 
 
A 
 
 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 
 No marvel more. 
 For what had I 
 To do with doubt, 
 Having the sky. 
 Or why once pause 
 To ask or think, 
 ving the whole wide world to drink: 
 
 The world within 
 Whose cup was love — 
 A quaff of which 
 All things could prove; 
 Or make all questions 
 Of no worth, 
 Letting them never come to birth. 
 
 Yes, in the sound, 
 Then, of the bells 
 Xo world-wide woes 
 I heard, or knells. 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 Infinitudes 
 Of grief and wrong 
 Were yet dissolved within their song. 
 
 For Spring and love 
 And a girl's face 
 Can give God being 
 Thro all space. 
 Spring, love, and joy 
 In a lad's soul 
 Can make all rifts in heaven whole. 
 
 And yet the years 
 That broke the spell 
 Of Deity 
 Within a bell, 
 And made me ask, 
 Thro storms of thought, 
 Whether the world is God-en wrought; 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 That made me probe 
 Sin and despair 
 To see if faith 
 Can find Him there; 
 Are years yet nobler, 
 For, truth now 
 Is more than youth — is Life, somehow. 
 
SONGS TO A. H. R. 
 
 SHELTER 
 
 I have been out where the winds are, 
 
 And tossing tops of trees, 
 And clouds that sweep from rim to rim 
 Of blue infinities. 
 And all was a sound and sway there, a surging of 
 
 unrest: 
 So now I am wanting silence, and the heart I love 
 best. 
 
 Yes, and a quiet book, too, 
 
 Of pensive poetry, 
 In which to let the lines lapse 
 Away, unlessonedly. 
 For I shall gather, somehow, from the soft fire's glow, 
 And from the eyes I love best, all I need to know. 
 61 
 
62 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 
 And hours shall slip to embers, 
 
 And on the hearth lie; 
 And ever}- wind that blew me, 
 And every want, die. 
 Then I shall take the hand I love best, and turn to 
 
 sleep. 
 And, if God wills, at dawn wake, again, to laugh or 
 weep. 
 
 DOMINIONS 
 
 Death is as strong as the sea is, 
 
 But when I lift my eyes 
 To yours I know there is born there 
 
 A light to outlive the skies. 
 Death is as wide as the sea is, 
 
 Yet at your least love-call 
 I know that death's vastity is 
 Not all. 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 63 
 
 Death is as dark as the tide is, 
 
 But when I see you move 
 I know that the highmost star there 
 
 Is guided in its groove. 
 Death is as dread as the tide is, 
 
 But while your heart is in mine 
 I'll trust that all else beside is 
 Divine. 
 
 ni 
 
 ASSUAGEMENT 
 
 How close to-night the whippoorwill 
 
 Calls, as the stars come out; 
 And then how like a far echo — shrill 
 
 No more, but a dream-shout. 
 How softly there does the Infinite 
 
 Lift up the silver moon, 
 And then how silently He sets 
 
 Our care-sick hearts in tune. 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 How soothingly does the night-wind sigh, 
 
 And ease the earth to sleep. 
 How fugitive is the cricket's cry, 
 
 But, oh, with life how deep. 
 How vastly stretches the universe, 
 
 How lone and how aloof, 
 Until our hands touch — then it seems 
 
 But love's star-builded roof. 
 
 IV 
 
 SECRESIES 
 
 What is between my heart and the moon 
 
 To you alone I tell, 
 In words soft as the trembling tone 
 
 That comes from the far buoy-bell. 
 What is between my heart and the sea 
 
 Can ne'er be told, or writ, 
 Because, like this my love for you, 
 
 Its strength seems infinite. 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 65 
 
 What is between my heart and the stars 
 
 You need but ask to learn, 
 For all my clustered thoughts of you 
 
 Like them with beauty burn. 
 What is between my heart and the deeps 
 
 Of death could be confessed 
 Only when I have clasped you there 
 
 Again unto my breast. 
 
 ON THE BEACH 
 
 The long coast curves and the cliffs rise up, 
 
 Red and white and green, 
 The surf slips in with a sucking din 
 
 Of shingle-wash between. 
 The light gulls float with their crimson bills 
 
 Set seaward — not one cries : 
 And we are alone, alone with them, 
 
 Under the aimless skies. 
 
66 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 
 The tide slips in, of the moon released, 
 
 Its rhythm gives us rest, 
 And in its pause there are hid sweet awes 
 
 That sink into the breast 
 With silent soothing — till the coast 
 
 Is lost in mystic gloam, 
 And till deep in my dreams I hear 
 
 Your voice that calls me home. 
 
 VI 
 
 AT THE EBB-HOUR 
 
 As I hear, thro the midnight sighing, 
 The low ebb-tide withdrawn, 
 
 And gulls on the dark cliff crying 
 For far discernless dawn, 
 
 It seems that all life is lying 
 Within your every breath, 
 
 Yet I can not believe in dying, 
 Or death. 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 67 
 
 As I hear, from the gray church tower, 
 
 The bell's unfailing sound 
 Peal forth hour after hour 
 
 To night's lone reaches round, 
 It seems as if Time's wan power 
 Would sear all things apace — 
 All, save in my heart one flower, 
 Your face. 
 
 vn 
 
 THE EDGE OF THE HILL 
 
 If we walked over the edge of the hill 
 
 And on, should we reach the moon? 
 Silver it lies in the twilit skies 
 
 Just over the trees that croon 
 With the trembling breeze and the softened pleas 
 
 Of the whippoorwill's lone cry. 
 If we walked over the edge of the hill 
 And reached the moon, would the wefts of ill 
 
 Fade there, from love, and die? 
 
! EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 
 If we walked over the edge of the hill 
 
 And on, should we reach the stars? 
 And God at the end, our final friend 
 
 In all time's troublous wars? 
 And then, at last, with the world far past, 
 
 Should we be satisfied? 
 Or long again for the edge of the hill 
 And love, so frailly human still, 
 
 And hopes that ne'er abide? 
 
 vin 
 
 All of Spring in a bird's song, 
 Of Summer in a rose, 
 
 Of Autumn in one fallen leaf: 
 So the world goes. 
 
 So forever it goes, dear, 
 And so within one breast 
 
 I find my all of earth-joy, 
 And ease for unrest. 
 
KING SOLOMON SINGS OF WOMEN 
 
 I have been lord and spouse to many women, 
 And sipped the honey of their lips and hair, 
 And found that in the end distaste was there, 
 
 Whether their beauty was of Jah or Rimmon. 
 
 Queens have I taken out of Set or Sheba, 
 And little handmaids with awestricken breath, 
 And breasted priestesses of Ashtoreth 
 
 Prouder than daughters of the kings of Reba. 
 
 And with them I have walked amid the vineyards, 
 And plucked the grape and poured the purple wine, 
 And listened as they swore their hearts were mine; 
 
 And knew their hearts were wanton weedy sin-yards. 
 69 
 
?o EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 
 Or I have dallied with them in the palace, 
 
 To plash of fountains in the pallid night. 
 
 Framed have I ever found them for delight, 
 But the souls of them dark as lairs of malice. 
 
 A thousand have I led in fair betrothal, 
 
 Berobed and ankleted and lapped in myrrh. 
 Yet not unsoothly have the priests of Hur 
 
 Assailed mv house as but a bridal brothel. 
 
 For love is the anointing oil of passion, 
 And no king can a thousand times be crowned. 
 So in false oils have I too oft been drowned; 
 
 Or, loving not, have sinned, too, in my fashion. 
 
 Better it were that I had found one maiden 
 Clothed in a thousand veils of chastity 
 Than maids a thousand that all eyes could see 
 
 Were ready with my king's lust to be laden. 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 Better it were that I had sought for beauty 
 
 Wedded to wisdom in one breast and face. 
 
 For man, with such, can find a dwelling-place: 
 'Twixt many all his soul is tossed as booty. 
 
 For there is cavil ever at his curtain 
 And flesh-temptation ever in his sight. 
 By harlotry his strength is shorn each night. 
 
 Of but remorseful morrows is he certain. 
 
 Better it were some Ruth had crept all fearless 
 Into the threshing-floor of this, my heart- — 
 Where chaff and grain seem never kept apart. 
 
 Had it been so, my pillow now were tearless. 
 
 And such an one, among the luring many, 
 I can remember, tall and straight and calm, 
 As rich in promised fruitage as the palm, 
 
 One to compare in wisdom- ways with any. 
 
72 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 
 But to my chamber never with enticing 
 
 Came she — and should I call her, I, the King? 
 
 On such a wisp of vanity we swing 
 Away all that is sure for life's sufficing. 
 
 Now she is gone: nor know I how or whither. 
 
 But oft till day breaks and the shadows flee 
 
 I long to have her gaze again at me, 
 Like the young roe upon the mounts of Bether. 
 
 And thro the harem aimlessly I wander, 
 
 With loathing sense and soul no beauties please. 
 
 Better a hive of stinging sterile bees, 
 Or a housetop on which alone to ponder. 
 
 For e'er the childless and the childed clamour 
 Each after gifts, up to the kingdom's crown. 
 And Pharaoh's daughter hears — wherefore the 
 frown 
 
 Of Egypt from her brow must I enamour. 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 73 
 
 Sick am I of their glances and embraces, 
 
 Sad am I of their bickerings and strife. 
 
 A thousand wives have I — and yet no wife, 
 A thousand hills, yet no heart-sheltered places. 
 
 Wherefore I say, Women are as pomegranates, 
 Tempting our taste that we may spread their seed 
 Over the earth: as at creation's need 
 
 God scattered o'er the sky His teeming planets. 
 
 Or that as aloes are they, fair and fragrant 
 At first, but ah, how bitter at the end. 
 Adam would be in Eden, and God's friend, 
 
 Had Eve not, at the Serpent's touch, turned vagrant. 
 
 There is a spreading tree that men call elah. 
 Would I could he beneath it with that one 
 Whose heart would be as moon after the sun. 
 
 Instead comes night— and Pharaoh's daughter. Selah. 
 
THE IMMORTAL 
 
 Spring has come up from the South again, 
 
 With soft mists in her hair, 
 And a warm wind in her mouth again, 
 
 And budding everywhere. 
 Spring has come up from the South again, 
 
 And her skies are azure fire, 
 And around her is the awakening 
 
 Of all the world's desire. 
 
 Spring has come up from the South again, 
 
 And dreams are in her eyes, 
 And music is in her mouth again 
 
 Of love, the never-wise. 
 Spring has come up from the South again, 
 
 And bird and flower and bee 
 Know that she is their life and joy — 
 
 And immortality! 
 
 74 
 
VITA MIRABILIS 
 
 I watched a little pulse beat in my wrist, 
 A slender throb almost invisible, 
 And said : This thin small tide is richly full 
 Of all the world, and while it so keeps tryst 
 I shall not want for earth and sea and stars, 
 For the wide wonders of the infinite; 
 I can look thro a glass at atom-wars, 
 Or to far worlds in the faint ether lit. 
 I can list woodland litany of brooks, 
 See Spring bring up the flowers magicly 
 And fill them, in the long sun-scented hours, 
 With all the honeyed business of the bee. 
 I can see on the hot horizon's rim 
 Clouds built by genii of the coming storm 
 From whose high bright sierras, far and dim, 
 Fall the swift floods for summer's help or harm. 
 And, out with Autumn and the flying leaves, 
 75 
 
76 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 
 Or with gray winds of winter icy-tressed, 
 I can behold how earth when weary weaves 
 The raiment of her sleep and lies to rest. 
 
 Yes, while this little tide shall ebb and flow, 
 
 From heart of me to heart of me again, 
 
 I can hear all the wild seas tell their woe 
 
 To all the wilder swaying souls of men. 
 
 Waves that have wintered in gray polar zones, 
 
 Or waves that lap palm-f ronded tropic isles, 
 
 Where lotos beauty soon, how soon, atones 
 
 For all the dearth of hope's sad-stricken smiles, 
 
 I can descry; and oh, what marvels more, 
 
 Of mountains in their snowy mitres rising, 
 
 Of cities in niist-surplices set o'er 
 
 Pale sacred banks of rivers — or surprising 
 
 The sky with their high-stabbing strength and pride. 
 
 And deserts I can gaze on, stretching wide 
 
 With prescience of earth's universal death — 
 
 Deserts whereon no living thing draws breath — 
 
 Dun deserts; and how many things besidej 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 77 
 
 How many, ah! while beating, beating, beating, 
 Along my wrist this little stream is sent. 
 How many things swift-taken from the fleeting 
 Of day and night, and in its red vein pent. 
 The restive generations of the world 
 That rise and pass, the tragedies of nations, 
 To-day at peace, to-morrow blindly hurled 
 Into war-hurricanes and conflagrations; 
 The bravery of millions deathward bound, 
 The sorrowing of millions who survive; 
 The music of humanity near drowned, 
 Yet by faith's ceaseless fingers kept alive: 
 These, and how many more, of fear or love, 
 Amid life's fury or afar from it! 
 How many that must wound great God above, 
 Ere they are flung into oblivion's pit. 
 These can be mine, to thrill me or to grieve 
 Until a day when in my wasted wrist 
 This little tide shall fail to keep its tryst, 
 And, ebbing, but the worm and mystery leave. 
 
AS THE TIDE COMES IN 
 
 The long-winged terns dart wild and dive, 
 
 As the tide comes tumbling in. 
 The calm rock-pools grow all alive, 
 
 With the tide tumbling in. 
 The crab that under the brown weed creeps, 
 And the snail who lies in his house and sleeps, 
 Awake and stir, as the plunging sweeps 
 
 Of the tide come tumbling in. 
 
 The driftwood swishes along the sand, 
 As the tide comes tumbling in. 
 
 With wreck and wrack from many a land, 
 On the tide, tumbling in. 
 78 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH , 79 
 
 About my feet are a broken spar, 
 A pale anemone's torn sea-star 
 And scattered scum of the waves' old war, 
 As the tide comes tumbling in. 
 
 And, oh, there is a stir at the heart of me, 
 
 As the tide comes tumbling in. 
 All life once more is a part of me, 
 
 As the tide tumbles in. 
 New hopes awaken beneath despair 
 And thoughts slip free of the sloth of care, 
 While beauty and love are everywhere — 
 As the tide comes tumbling in. 
 
THE INQUEST 
 
 {As a Lover sees it) 
 
 Up with her, do, out of her bed, 
 Let her not rest, tho she is dead. 
 Dig and pick at her, spade and shovel, 
 Till you have reached her coffin-hovel: 
 Then with prying and probe and test 
 Hold your foul long-faced inquest. 
 
 See if she died of a hole in her skull 
 Or of a brain flushed overfull 
 Of fetid days; till she was weary 
 Of bearing breath grown mortal dreary. 
 See if her murderer was Life — 
 Or her own hand, sick of the strife. 
 80 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 81 
 
 Of her own hand, I say; or, fools! 
 Mine, if it be your itch so rules. 
 See if forsooth a blow did shatter 
 Her world — where nothing more could matter — 
 Or if it's meet to set the crime 
 Down once more to the score of Time. 
 
 See — see to it! strip her of rest, 
 Even within the cold earth's breast. 
 Then, at last, when query is sated, 
 Sit for a smoke, an hour belated; 
 For there is naught you need regret — 
 You . . . with your live women, yet. 
 
POETIC EPIGRAMS 
 
 (After the fashion of the Japanese) 
 i 
 
 THE FIRST RAIN 
 
 The first rain on the grave 
 Of him I loved . . . 
 Soon the first grass will wave. 
 
 The mists enfold the trees, 
 Lest the new buds 
 
 That came last night should freeze. 
 82 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 83 
 
 3 
 
 SEED-BALLS 
 
 From each pale sycamore 
 
 Seed-balls are flung — 
 
 To shade how many a door. 
 
 
 IN A CEMETERY AT NIGHT 
 
 Is it ghost-dreams that rise 
 Up from each grave — 
 Or only the fire-flies? 
 
 The butterfly and flower 
 
 Surely were made 
 
 By earth in the same hour. 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 
 
 
 THE LIGHTNING 
 
 The lightning seems a tongue, 
 
 Mad with the heat, 
 
 The summer has outflung. 
 
 7 
 
 FAITH 
 
 When in the wind they shake, 
 
 The flower-bells, 
 
 All hearts to worship wake. 
 
 8 
 
 THE AUTUMN MOON 
 
 Long since the moon has found 
 
 Nirvana's calm, 
 
 In her desireless round. 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 
 9 
 
 DRIPPINGS 
 
 The gutter drips and drips 
 
 As thro my heart 
 
 An age of sadness slips. 
 
 THE MARBLE CHRIST 
 
 That Christ upon a tomb, 
 
 How lonely there 
 
 He looks in the night-gloom. 
 
 SCRIPT 
 
 No word the wild geese cry, 
 
 But only write 
 
 In silence on the sky. 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 
 AT NIGHT 
 
 The wind seems like a prayer 
 Of earth to God, 
 Unanswered everywhere. 
 
 NOVEMBER LEAVES 
 
 In the least leaf of all 
 Death takes, I hear 
 The universes fall. 
 
 14 
 
 THE CROWS 
 
 All day the prescient crows 
 Have picked the fields . . 
 And now how fast it snows ! 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 87 
 
 15 
 BY ONE JUST DEAD 
 
 Tho but an hour has sped 
 
 He is as dumb 
 
 As one ten aeons dead. 
 
 16 / 
 
 THE FROST 
 
 How flowerlike the frost! 
 
 Can winter be 
 
 Creative Summer's ghost? 
 
 18 
 
 LOST 
 
 The wild duck finds her way 
 
 Even at night: 
 
 Yet I cannot by day. 
 
WINDS OF WAR 
 
 (England, July and August, 19 14) 
 
 1 
 
 TO THE MASTERS OF EUROPE 
 
 (When the first war-clouds arose) 
 
 I 
 
 To you, O rulers, who in this mad hour 
 
 Still cling unto Alliance or Entente, 
 
 And urged by ghastly "Honour" soon will daunt 
 Innocent millions with death's awful power; 
 To you, high masters, who will not betray 
 
 Your oaths that are a crime against the world, 
 
 Though now you see the flag of Hell unfurled 
 In the wild hands of War, to you I say: 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 89 
 
 Who gave you right to pledge your people's blood, 
 
 Or pawn their souls to serve an Ally's sin? 
 
 Or having pledged peace down to let rush in 
 From land to stricken land red slaughter's flood? 
 
 Who gave it, who? Your god of Self-Defence? 
 
 A lie ! Pride is your lord, and Insolence ! 
 
 You have built ships and armies with the bread 
 That should have driven hunger from the land; 
 You have mined seas and armed the mountains — 
 grand 
 
 In all; till lo, pausing to gaze ahead, 
 
 And seeing there the equal legions ride 
 Of foes who, too, are forward for defence, 
 Fear seizes you, a sudden terror's sense 
 
 Of dwelling calm such awful might beside. 
 
 So in a panic moment "War!" you cry, 
 And cataclysmic war almost is come ; 
 There's heard the beating of destruction's drum— 
 
qo EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 
 Which you alone may stay, who sit on high. 
 So rise and break the treaties you have sworn, 
 Lest faithful you may bring all faith to scorn. 
 
 Arise and break them, then count naught a crime 
 Or cowardice but holding all dispute, 
 Of peril to the millions whom you loot, 
 
 From arbitration's fiat for all time. 
 
 For no more by the bloody lips of War 
 Is justice spoken; nor from starving lands 
 Is true gain gotten by its ghoulish hands, 
 
 Or manhood by its desolating mar. 
 
 But training thus your dark death-dealing hate, 
 Foe against foe, with awful enginry, 
 Shall slay the angel of humanity, 
 
 Whose wings at last were leaning to earth's gate. 
 So rise, or you shall ever be accurst 
 As of all godless murderers the worst. 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 91 
 
 IN THE TOILS 
 
 {London during the Crisis) 
 
 1 
 
 THE FUSE 
 
 A Murder, an Ultimatum, 
 
 A Question, a Reply: 
 The murmur of rising Russia — 
 
 Then peace struck down to die. 
 
 For Slav and Frank and Teuton 
 Are kindled; and the fuse 
 
 Is laid to the heart of England: 
 Can she to quench it choose? 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 
 The great clock in Westminster 
 Beats on or muffled chimes, 
 
 As it has done in war or peace 
 Before, unnumbered times. 
 
 The moon, behind its tower, 
 That rose ere England was, 
 
 Knows not the bloody die is cast, 
 But only Nature's laws. 
 
 3 
 
 MOBILIZATION 
 
 All night there come the cries 
 Acclaiming new recruits; 
 
 All night the turgid tramp 
 Of battle-shodden boots. 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 93 
 
 And well, ah, well we know 
 
 That ere the year shall pass 
 Their restless lips and restless feet 
 
 Shall rest — beneath the grass. 
 
 in 
 
 THE DEAD 
 
 {On the Battlefields) 
 
 Shovel them under the earth, 
 
 The innumerable dead, 
 And then on with the mirth 
 
 Of singing, stinging lead. 
 
 Shovel them under the earth, 
 Their hearts that held the stars 
 
 Shall wage now with the witless worm 
 No unappeasable wars. 
 
94 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 
 Shovel them under the earth: 
 Aye, tho they might have borne 
 
 If left to home and peace and toil 
 Humanity's new morn. 
 
 Shovel them under the earth, 
 And with them the great wage 
 
 Of vast achievement that is lost. 
 Our children's heritage. 
 
 For here were curious brains, 
 
 Thro which accursed lead 
 Struck wantonly — on dreams that held 
 
 The future — left them dead. 
 
 Or, furiously and blind, 
 
 Against a forehead hurled 
 Put out in silence what had been 
 
 Great music for the world. 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 95 
 
 Great music — now but dust. 
 
 Oh, here is such a waste 
 As not the hiving centuries 
 
 May hope to see replaced. 
 
 So shovel them under the earth, 
 
 Within a sodden trench. 
 Our children now shall have of them 
 
 But this — a little stench. 
 
 rv 
 
 THE PRAYERS OF THE WARRING NATIONS 
 
 . . . "neither shall there be war any more." 
 
 Now, God in Heaven, you surely hear 
 
 Your noble Christian nations? 
 Two thousand years they have held you dear 
 
 And poured you out libations. 
 
9 6 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 
 Your shrines have run with ruddy Crusades 
 
 And Inquisition-brine, 
 But now there is poured for your delight 
 
 A redder spilth of wine. 
 
 That first small voice is Servia's, pushed 
 
 To front by mother Russia, 
 Who kneels — on a million peasants crushed- 
 
 To keep your ear from Prussia: 
 "Dear God ," it says, as a good Slav should, 
 
 "/ made brave war last year: 
 I slaughtered the Turk, a Christian work, 
 
 So now I pray you hear; 
 
 "My sister Austria sits on a throne 
 
 That's bitten from my borders. 
 A thief is she, a dog with a bone 
 
 That's mine, by Xature's orders. 
 I pray you then, by the Cross you love, 
 
 Of Petrograd, not Rome, 
 Join with us to rend her, root and stem, 
 
 To raze her, heart and home 1 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 97 
 
 "Join with us to rend her!" ... Ay God, grant 
 
 A prayer so high of beauty! 
 Yet not till Austria there shall pant 
 
 One equal in Christ-duty. 
 "I have been patient, Lord" it comes, 
 
 With Servia's jealousy. 
 Now let me lash her peoples till 
 
 They learn thou lovesl me I 
 
 "Now let me lash them!" . . . God of men! . . . 
 
 Yet stay: there's Russia's murmur, 
 "If Servia's lashed, Lord, why then 
 
 My right must be the firmer. 
 For A ustria prays with Teuton tongue, 
 
 Whose purpose is to seize 
 The little peoples whom Thou hast set 
 
 To cushion my poor knees. 
 
 "So, Lord, for the worshipping and praise 
 
 That to you I have given, 
 Beseech you tear the Teuton, craze 
 
 His land, let it be riven I 
 
9 8 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 
 Use for this glorious deed my horde 
 
 Of Cossacks, from the wild, 
 Till stands naught Prussian to the sun, 
 
 No man to maid or child! " 
 
 Aye Lord, "naught Prussian," for your fane 
 
 Of earth will then ring rapture, 
 As rivers of blood and tears and pain 
 
 Your altars quickly capture. 
 But what? the Teuton is near, to seize 
 
 Your heart with Rhenish prayer? 
 To flame in its stead another up 
 
 Into your heaven's air? 
 
 And France is loud, and England, too, 
 
 Your holy aid beseeching? 
 Unnumbered millions, all Christ-true, 
 
 Their hands to heaven upreaching? 
 And craving, each, that their enemies 
 
 May fall by fire and sword, 
 By famine and fate and pestilence 
 
 And all hell's murder-horde? 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 99 
 
 O God in Heaven, you surely hear 
 
 Your noble righteous nations? 
 Two thousand years they have held you dear, 
 
 And now they pour libations 
 Of blood, with the tears of wife and babe, 
 
 And on your altars burn 
 All civilization's frankincense: 
 
 Lord, lean to each in turn. 
 
 GOD OR CHAOS 
 
 (Westminster Abbey, during the siege of Liege, August, 
 1914) 
 
 To-day all music 
 And worship are vain, 
 The vast holy beauty 
 Around me, pain. 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 The high worn windows, 
 The arches that rise, 
 The great dead at rest here 
 Draw tears to my eyes. 
 
 For is it not useless, 
 The race men run? 
 The Hell-blood of battle 
 And that of God's Son? 
 
 Are poets and prophets 
 Who die for high dreams 
 Not dupes of a Being 
 That soullessly streams? 
 
 Or, unto its Purpose, 
 If purpose there be, 
 Are men as amoebae 
 To that of the sea? 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 Swarm they thro the ages, 
 Like vermin, to die? 
 Have they no true reason 
 For living soul-high? 
 
 None? even to better 
 Their kind, till a day 
 When life for the living 
 Shall seem good alway? 
 
 When earth shall be heaven?- 
 Alas, there is death, 
 Whose certain impending 
 Can poison all breath ! 
 
 Whose silence and shadow — 
 And opening tomb — 
 Shall ever surround us 
 With anguish and gloom! . 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 So, life, all-enduring — 
 Not such as we know, 
 But such as we dream of 
 Must succour our woe! 
 
 A life that grows upward 
 And outward and on, 
 That opens forever 
 Upon a new dawn. 
 
 That sees without ceasing 
 Or blindness or break 
 A vaster horizon 
 Before it awake. 
 
 For this were an anguish 
 Surpassing appal, 
 To strive thro the ages 
 For No Soul at all: 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 103 
 
 To suffer our years out, 
 Then utterly die, 
 Of use unto no one — 
 Ourselves or the Sky. 
 
 To No One ! but living 
 And dying in pain, 
 To find ourselves quickly 
 Refashioned again. 
 
 Refashioned forever: 
 No hope in the grave! 
 Oblivion nowhere 
 To silence and save. 
 
 Death useless as living !- 
 O God, thou must bide, 
 Or nought can avail us, 
 Not world-suicide. 
 
ich EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 
 And if the earth rages. 
 Immense in its crime. 
 And bleeds as if blotting 
 Thy Face from all time, 
 
 Yet must we unshaken 
 Remember Thou art, 
 Not fear that blind chaos 
 Is lord of life's heart. 
 
FATHER MERAN 
 
 (During the Belgian war-famine) 
 
 They come at night, the thoughts I hide, 
 And pluck like ghouls at my dead faith, 
 Crying that God, who lets war be, 
 Is but a phantom, but a wraith. 
 They come, as do uncounted faces 
 Out of the cold and corpse-strewn places , 
 Till I arise and by the pyx 
 Lay off my peaceless crucifix. 
 
 For in the church have I to sleep. 
 Elsewhere too many starving lips 
 Strain at me — strain, until it seems 
 My soul will madden to eclipse. 
 105 
 
io6 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 
 But in the church the Virgin only 
 Has her one Babe to nourish, lonely: 
 And with the crucifix laid by 
 I can escape their hunger-cry. 
 
 Escape, unless, ere I he down 
 A knock comes at the chantry door 
 To bid me out and shrive the souls 
 Of shattered men — a thousand more. 
 Shrive, with a faith that's dead, the dying; 
 To them of Christ and Heaven lying; 
 Holding to each a tortured Cross 
 Against his soul's eternal loss. 
 
 that I could believe again! 
 
 1 would go down to Hell for just 
 A year of faith that earth and sky 
 
 Are more than blood and death — and dust. 
 
 In its abyss of fire and moaning 
 
 Willingly would I lie atoning 
 Even for those who struck Christ's Star 
 From heaven with this Demon war. 
 
THE NEW PATRIOT 
 
 Within his heart East shall be one 
 With West, and his effaceless thought 
 
 Shall be that earth was made for all 
 Its driven millions sore-distraught. 
 
 For he at last shall look and see 
 
 Through all the creeds about him hurled, 
 His nation is humanity, 
 
 His country is the world. 
 
 107 
 
THE SONG OF THE HOMESICK GAEL 
 tfntht 
 
 A: . -or GinWB g - MB] 
 
 To see tfcf 
 The winds of Kamasalg: 
 
 upon. 
 
 g >ea-spaces where 
 
 '.' . . - . . 
 Si . : .. „ . r - t ep it with unrest, 
 
 ::e hunger-cries that sound 
 
 Ar.. ; . 
 Si i :or the moaning hunger in my breast. 
 
EAKIB AND NEW EARTH Mf 
 
 For grayness is the hue of all 
 
 In life that is not lies. 
 A thousand year I of tcm are in my heart, 
 And only in their mystery 
 
 Can I be truly wise: 
 From light and laughter follies only start. 
 
 I long to see the mists again 
 
 Above the tumbling tide 
 Of Ailsa, at the coming of the night 
 There's weariness and emptiness 
 
 And soul unsatisfied 
 Forever in the places of delight. 
 
A DEVON RIDE 
 
 I sped like the wind over Woodbury Common, 
 The heath spread purple, the hills hung clear, 
 
 The sky was a-swim with silver and salmon, 
 The sea shouted up to me salty cheer. 
 
 I sped like the wind, for joy was upon me, 
 The glory of being, the sting of great earth, 
 
 The throb that has ever divinely drawn me 
 To think the whole world is a smile of mirth. 
 
 I sped like the wind. How green was the bracken! 
 
 The lift of it, drift of it, swing of it, sway! 
 O sunnily glad could I feel God slacken 
 
 His heart-strings, too, in a tide of play! 
 
A SIDMOUTH LAD 
 
 Salcombe Hill and four hills more 
 Lie to leftward of this shore. 
 On the right Peak Hill arises 
 Ever rises, sick'ning, o'er. 
 
 Two score rotting years I've seen 
 Sidmouth sit those hills between: 
 Only Sidmouth — and twice over 
 Must I bide it, as I've been. 
 
 Then a churchyard hole for me, 
 By the dull voice of the sea. 
 Rotting, still in Sidmouth rotting, 
 Rotting to eternity. 
 
WIDOWED 
 
 One wild gull on a wilder storm, 
 Winging to keep her lone heart warm. 
 One wild gull by the surf — and I, 
 Beaten by wind and rain and sky. 
 
 One wild gull in the offing lost, 
 Wilder heart in my bosom tost. 
 One wild gull — O why but one! 
 Two, dear God, should there be — or none! 
 
THE LARGER LOSS 
 
 Far up to a moor above the sea 
 
 I climbed — and took one thought with me. 
 
 But gazing thence, over sea and moor, 
 I flung thought off as a thing impure. 
 
 For God loves moor and sea and wind, 
 
 But thought is a shift of men who've sinned. 
 
 And who no more with the sea and sky 
 Can live, but they must question Why. 
 
 Must ever question till the earth 
 Has lost the wild joy of its worth. 
 
 And that is loss all loss above — 
 In Reason to forget to love. 
 "3 
 
RE-RECKONING 
 
 Two years have gone, and again I stand 
 
 On the bow of a mighty ship 
 That pushes her way 'twixt sea and stars 
 
 With soft and dreamy dip. 
 Two years of labouring, heart and hand, 
 
 Of waging spirit-wars, 
 Of wondering ever what life is — 
 
 And if death heals its scars. 
 
 Two years; and again the mast-bell sounds 
 
 Above me — with a low voice, 
 As ghostly as the white phosphor-foam 
 
 That breaks with the old noise 
 Of waters that have washed all bounds 
 
 Of earth, that is man's home — 
 His ark — on the wide ether flung, 
 
 Unrestingly to roam. 
 114 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 115 
 
 For, even as we, is this our earth 
 
 An endless wanderer 
 Far down a universe with vast 
 
 Strange voyagings astir; 
 And where time ever brings to birth 
 
 A craving, never past, 
 To fare from where we are, to where 
 
 No anchor e'er was cast. 
 
 A craving — in the mote, the man, 
 
 The mollusc and the star; 
 A yearning on — life ! O lif e ! 
 
 How far leads it, how far? 
 All unbelievably began 
 
 Thy voyage, mid a strange strife — 
 That, meaningless, yet seems to mean 
 
 It is with Wisdom rife. 
 
 But if it is not, shall we say, 
 
 "Let man scuttle his ship, 
 And drown in universal death 
 
 The griefs that at him grip? " 
 
n6 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 
 No; for no surety rests therein 
 
 To certain end of breath. 
 He can but let hope set the course 
 
 His soul foretokeneth. 
 
LAST LINES OF THE POET OF SUMA 
 
 {Japan) 
 
 A broken bell 
 
 Under a rent thatch tower 
 
 Beside a ruined temple 
 
 Of Suma Mountain. 
 
 To it each hour 
 
 The mist comes like a priest 
 
 But cannot sound it. 
 
 Ever anear I dwell. 
 
 For so my heart, 
 Broken by age and sadness 
 And twined about with ruin 
 And death is hanging. 
 117 
 
n8 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 
 And if dim gladness 
 Comes like a silent wraith 
 And seeks to sound it, 
 Only the tears start. 
 
ORIGINS 
 
 Such beauty cannot be by chance, 
 The mere chance of an atom-dance. 
 
 The fair shape of yon soft sea-moon 
 Was never by mere hazard hewn. 
 
 That star which beams its lovely way 
 Into my heart has more to say 
 
 Than ever by Fortuity 
 
 Was lent to moon or star or sea. 
 
 So if moons bide, or pass away, 
 If not a star in heaven shall stay, 
 
 If like all things I, too, am spent, 
 It will not be by accident. 
 
 119 
 
THE BRIDE OF OITA 
 
 (Japan) 
 
 A single sampan sail: one sail, beating there, on the 
 blind sea: means more than the eight million gods 
 and Buddhas can to me! 
 
 For it is bringing home my lord, out of the storm ! 
 . . . To the gods I kneel . . . Namu . . . ! 
 . . . But love, and love alone, my heart can 
 warm! 
 
 A single sampan sail! . . . Will it soon fold to 
 rest its weary wing? . . . How wide then, ah, 
 how wide, my shoji door will swing! 
 
THE IMMANENT GOD 
 
 (As a Sceptic sees Him) 
 
 See your God in the jelly-fish, 
 
 Sucking salty food. 
 
 See Him drift in the gulf-weed, 
 
 In shark-bellies brood. 
 
 See Him feed with the gull there, 
 
 In a gray ship's wake. 
 
 Feel Him afresh 
 
 In your own hot flesh 
 
 When into lust you break. 
 
 Hear His wrath in the hurricane, 
 Hushing a hundred lives. 
 Hist His heave in the earthquake, 
 In volcano hives. 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 Hark His stride in the plague- wind, 
 Over a sterile shore. 
 Down in a mine, 
 Behold what wine 
 Of coal-damp He will pour. 
 
 Aye, and there in the ribaldry 
 
 Of a night-wench's song 
 
 Hear Him — or on a child's lips 
 
 Cursing a slum-mate's wrong. 
 
 Stark He starves in the street there, 
 
 Or, full-fed, will go: 
 
 He, your God, 
 
 In every clod 
 
 Or clot of human woe. 
 
 And — in every infamy 
 Loathed by you with shame. 
 Clear of the saddest soul-stench 
 None can keep His name. 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 123 
 
 Man's, you may say, all crime is, 
 But Who gave man birth? 
 Spawn of the years 
 Is he — with tears 
 And strife to give him worth. 
 
 Spawn of the Universes, 
 God's great flesh and bone. 
 Stars are the cells that float there, 
 Thro lymph-ether strown. 
 Dying, living, and dead there, 
 Coming again to birth 
 Out of a Womb 
 That was their Tomb 
 Are they — and is out earth. 
 
 Such is your Immanent God — yea, 
 Evil as well as good, 
 Vileness even as beauty 
 Holds His strange Godhood. 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 Great He seems in the sea's surge, 
 Fair in a woman's face, 
 Yet with the worm 
 He feeds a term 
 On every goodly grace. 
 
 Spirit, then, you may hold Him, 
 
 High of plan and hope. 
 
 But world-flesh does He strive with, 
 
 Yearn like us — and grope; 
 
 So must ever and oft seem 
 
 Avid to escape 
 
 From the hid yeast 
 
 That moulds the least 
 
 Of all things to His shape. 
 
 Spirit, may be — or haply 
 We had known no growth, 
 But in a slime primeval 
 Still would dwell in sloth. 
 
EARTH AND NEW; EARTH 125 
 
 Yet if such is His Being, 
 Finite is His need. 
 To the same ends 
 As earth He wends 
 And journeying must bleed. 
 
OCEAN OF NIGHT 
 
 Wash me again, ocean of night, 
 
 Clean of the cares of day. 
 For I am soiled, in heart and sight, 
 
 By the fume and fret and fray 
 Of the griefs of men and the wrongs of men 
 
 And the sins of men who stray. 
 Bathe me, night, and lift and lave me — 
 
 Let no assoiling stay. 
 
 Wash me again, cleanser of care, 
 
 Then let the winds of sleep 
 Over me blow, with opiate air, 
 
 And all my spirit steep. 
 From the heart of earth and the heart of space 
 
 And the heart of God let sweep 
 Healing, night — a strong tide, stealing 
 
 Into my soul's last deep. 
 126 
 
HONGKONG CITY AT NIGHT 
 
 Across the harbour, shining gray, you gleam, a 
 myriad lights, 
 As if fond heaven had emptied all its stars, 
 To fill your lap, and on your brow and mountain 
 breast the spray 
 To spread, O city of enchanted nights! 
 
 Dim ships at anchor round you, too, have caught the 
 sliimmering shower, 
 And cast long meteor gleams across the tide — 
 Where dark-winged junks, that flit about, like 
 strange sea-bats, but strew 
 Your beauty with a more mysterious power. 
 127 
 
128 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 
 I sail away; and wanly do you vanish from my eyes, 
 
 But in the magic voids of memory 
 You are enchantress still, a starry city from the skies, 
 
 Upon the phosphor fringes of the sea. 
 
A WIFE 
 
 In holy wedlock — maid and man — 
 We stood; then yearningly I ran 
 Into his arms — and hell began. 
 
 He kissed me for a week, caresst 
 
 My body, throat and brow and breast: 
 
 Then of his weariness confest. 
 
 And turned to others who had been 
 Old partners of his passion's sin — 
 Or whom it were mere boast to win. 
 
 For women are to him but flesh 
 To serve and satisfy afresh 
 The lusts that thro him throb and thresh. 
 129 
 
130 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 
 And I am but one of them — who 
 Am bound to him a whole life thro: 
 One whom he scarce has need to woo. 
 
 For well he knows that till I die 
 
 I must be at his bidding by. . . . 
 
 What wanton is so low as I? 
 
BEACONS 
 
 Like a spirit spark from the heart of God 
 The coast-light flashes over the sea, 
 
 Then leaves it wandering, wild and dark — 
 As if light never more could be. 
 
 And so it is with the spark of faith 
 In every sad and wandering heart. 
 
 It goes — as if forever: then 
 All deathless up again will start. 
 
 131 
 
THE LIVING BUDDHA 
 
 (Peking) 
 
 I saw the living Buddha come, 
 Not to the beat of gong or drum, 
 Not to the breath of hymn or hum 
 
 Of prayers, 
 But in a yellow Mongol cart, 
 Drawn by the oxen set apart 
 For such perfection, thro long art 
 
 And cares. 
 
 Around him yellow lamas sat, 
 Ivory lean or sleek and fat, 
 Each on a silken broidered mat, 
 Unheeding. 
 
 132 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 133 
 
 And he amid them rode as calm 
 As if it were Nirvana, from 
 Whose peace he heard a mystic "Om" 
 Proceeding. 
 
 "What," said I, "this is Buddhahood? 
 
 All the world's evil and its good 
 
 This thick-lipped youth has understood — 
 
 None better? 
 Knows he the only way that peace 
 May come to us, and full release 
 From all Desire's futilities 
 
 That fetter? 
 
 "Yea, and that Time is but a Stream 
 Got of Illusion's lustful dream? 
 That worth and glory do but seem, 
 
 To sages? 
 O can it be that throngs — a third 
 Of earth's all hold that fatal word? 
 Have by it to retreat been stirred 
 
 Forages?" 
 
i 3 4 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 
 The thought struck sudden thro my heart- 
 As an assuageless pity-dart. 
 I closed my eyes to crowd and cart 
 
 And pondered 
 How long such nations must have lain 
 Numb with despair and heavy pain 
 Ere to this creed, with life-trust slain, 
 
 They wandered. 
 
FROM A NORTHERN BEACH 
 
 Is it because for a million years 
 
 The tide has entered here 
 
 From cold north seas 
 
 Where ice-floes freeze 
 
 That ever unto my ear 
 
 Primordial loneness in its voice 
 
 Comes telling of that time 
 When life was not, upon the earth, 
 But only glacier-rime? 
 
 Is it because these granite rocks 
 I share with weed and scurf 
 Were held so long 
 By the ice-throng 
 135 
 
136 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 
 That now they take the surf 
 
 So selflessly and soullessly 
 As if God's Immanence 
 
 Had been pressed from them, never more 
 To enter, with sweet sense? 
 
 And is it because I, too, evolved 
 From ice and sea and shore, 
 Can understand 
 How life has spanned 
 The lifeless ages o'er, 
 That as I sit here, suddenly 
 
 The tide again seems stilled 
 And earth beneath a great white pall 
 Again lies changed and chilled? 
 
 So it must be — ah, so; for soft 
 Within my muted brain 
 
 The heritage 
 
 Of age on age 
 Reverberates again. 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 137 
 
 Wherefore when glacial Silence comes 
 
 With Death I shall emerge 
 From that as from the frozen Past, 
 
 Under Life's endless urge. 
 
TREES AND GRASS 
 
 Whoever will may have the flowers, 
 
 Mine are the trees and grass! 
 Scent there may be in the blossom-bowers, 
 
 But, oh, when the breezes pass 
 Thro purling leafy tops of the trees 
 
 That ripple against the sky, 
 Their murmuring makes it good to live, 
 To take whatever life has to give; 
 
 And good, at last, to die. 
 
 Whoever will may have the flowers — 
 
 Lily or wilding rose. 
 Common the grass may seem in hours 
 
 Enspelled by love of those. 
 138 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 139 
 
 But, oh, the flowers are little of earth, 
 
 The green grass covers it all — 
 A couch to be for my head to-day, 
 And, when to-morrow I'm gone away, 
 
 A cool clean winding-pall. 
 
 Whoever will may have the flowers, 
 
 Mine are the trees and grass. 
 Beautiful care on the one earth dowers, 
 
 But, oh, what peace can pass 
 Thro the blood and breath and heart and mind— 
 
 And into the soul of me, 
 When I lie down with the grass and trees, 
 And know God never needs strive for these, 
 
 But merely lets them be! 
 
ZEBI 
 
 She asked — and I gave her — a "lira." 
 The name that she bore was Zebi. 
 
 Her eyes, of a Raphael's era, 
 Found bliss in a fondled baby. 
 
 She said she had worn the city 
 In search of her lover, Gian! 
 
 Stabbing my heart with pity, 
 So little she was and wan. 
 
 He had gone, she said, "And, Signore, 
 
 Baby was yet to come!" 
 The immemorial story — 
 
 Of woman's fate the sum! 
 140 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 141 
 
 Pitiless there he had left her 
 
 To struggle, or starve, for bread. 
 But she loved him, tho he bereft her — 
 
 And should, till he was dead. 
 
 "And he went with a signorina? "— 
 "At the merest wave of a glove! 
 
 They called her ' la Scarlattina,' 
 She burned men so with love." 
 
 "And why," I muttered to Heaven, 
 "Does God make such as he! 
 
 Slaves unto lust, and the leaven 
 Of lust, their cruelty!" 
 
 At which with a wise vainglory 
 She said, this sad little ZSbi, 
 
 "I think I can tell, signore: 
 God made him to give me baby!" 
 
DURING A LONG CALM 
 
 Great God, is this the tameless sea, that oft 
 Has plunged with foamy hoofs along the shore 
 And stamped the streaming sands with such a roar 
 
 As made the startled cliffs stand stark aloft? 
 
 Is this the reinless sea, that when it will 
 
 Can paw all things that ride it down to death, 
 
 And breathe into the air a blinding chill 
 Of fog in which they sense destruction's breath? 
 
 Why, like a calmly pasturing thing it creeps 
 With softly lapping tongue along the beach, 
 And soundless to its farthest shining reach 
 
 It lies, in sunny idleness, and sleeps. 
 142 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 Is this — is this the sea, so sleekly bared, 
 
 So passionless, so pallid, and so null? 
 Then never has my heart that I have dared 
 
 To liken to it lain in sloth so dull. 
 
EVENING WATERS 
 
 Evening waters softly gleaming 
 
 Where the far sun is gone to rest, 
 Gray and gold around me streaming, 
 
 Like a tidal palimpsest 
 On which God is ever writing 
 
 Thro the night and thro the day 
 Mysteries no heart can fathom — 
 
 Words that fade in wind away; 
 
 Evening waters, softly flowing, 
 
 In a little while the stars 
 Will He bosom, faintly glowing, 
 
 In your deeps, like avatars 
 Of His thoughts that first were scattered 
 
 Fulgent thro infinity — 
 Whose profundity eternal 
 
 Somehow tells us it is He. 
 144 
 
IN A PARK PAVILION 
 
 Yesterday, where I am sitting, 
 
 A young girl sat and said, 
 "Naught am I to the living, 
 
 I will go to the dead." 
 Wind and bird around were flitting, 
 
 April thro the air 
 Flung the buds a million kisses — 
 From the sky's blue sweet abysses: 
 But she, numb to all its blisses, 
 
 Blew her brains out there. 
 
 All the world's wide-springing beauty, 
 
 All the wood's glad dew, 
 Hung about her heavy 
 
 With despair's sick hue. 
 H5 
 
i 4 6 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 
 Dregs, to her, but dregs, was duty; 
 
 Past and future hung 
 Like blind curtains that her craving 
 Could not pierce, to any saving: 
 Useless seemed it to be braving 
 
 Breath so sorrow- wrung. 
 
 So she pressed a fated finger — 
 
 And the earth went out; 
 Swept from her forever 
 
 By a bullet's flout. 
 For she cared not still to linger 
 
 In its April song; 
 But, thro clotted blood, her spirit 
 Sent to God, and bade Him fear it — 
 If He had not sought to hear it, 
 
 And annul its wrong. 
 
 There is much space in the heavens, 
 
 Space to lose God in, 
 If we hold as guilty 
 
 The sinner, not the sin. 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 Every crime has many leavens 
 
 Causing it to rise 
 From the deeps of human passion- 
 Where she felt the long years fashion 
 Fate for her— she who now ashen 
 
 And self -ended lies. 
 
 Yet, 'tis certain that creation 
 
 Has its Freedom, too, 
 Welling up forever 
 
 Thro life's fate, and thro; 
 That despair and degradation, 
 
 Unto such as she, 
 Cannot disavow the springing 
 Of new inner strength e'er bringing 
 Aid to us, despite fate's wringing. 
 
 Peace, and let her be. 
 
THE FISHING 
 
 I baited my hook with a thought of God 
 
 And cast it out on the tides of Space 
 And said I will catch life's mystery, 
 
 Where the great star-wonders race. 
 It sank like a plummet, past the deeps 
 
 Of Vega and vast Aldebaran; 
 But ever the mystery I caught 
 
 Was shaped as the heart of man. 
 
 Then, "Lo," said I, "there is law in this!" 
 
 And, baiting my hook with a thought of men, 
 I cast it out on the infinite 
 
 Of star-foamed space again, 
 And soon there was strain at the hither end, 
 
 A thrill of things beyond earth's clod, 
 And swift there came to the heart of me 
 
 The mystery of God. 
 148 
 
ABEYANCE 
 
 I heard the Autumn leaves drop thro the moonlight 
 
 And sink upon the ground. 
 I heard the wind flit by, a cricket cry, 
 
 And then no sound. 
 But even in the pale sheen of the distance 
 
 Hung the year's death. 
 Earth's heart at last had lost all sweet insistence 
 
 On breath. 
 
 I wondered at the wan ways of the planets, 
 
 At moon and misty star, 
 At the fair feet of Spring now wandering 
 
 Somewhere afar; 
 And vain was all belief that she, with tidal 
 
 Remembrance rife, 
 Could turn again, to bring earth, wintry-idle, 
 
 New life. 
 
 149 1 
 
OLD AGE AND AUTUMN 
 
 Drifting leaves 
 
 And searing sheaves 
 In a world of silence and solitudes; 
 
 A world grown weak 
 
 And Autumn-meek, 
 Thro the wide-garnered fields and woods; 
 A world where the spider silent weaves 
 A shroud for seeds that have fallen low. 
 
 Drifting leaves 
 
 And searing sheaves, 
 And the caw of a crow. 
 
 Drifting leaves 
 And searing sheaves, 
 And a heart forgetful overmuch; 
 A heart grown old 
 To wind and wold, 
 15° 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 151 
 
 No longer thrilled with Nature's touch; 
 A heart so weary that torpor weaves 
 Its shroud — for so all things must go; 
 Drifting leaves . . . 
 And searing sheaves . . . 
 And the caw of a crow. 
 
A LOVER, REJECTED 
 
 Some day you will love: 
 
 Then there will be no more for you 
 
 Sun, moon, earth, star, 
 
 Or any certain thing; 
 But only one want, 
 Like mine, without shore, for you — 
 
 Infinite, vast and aching, 
 
 Dread yet divine. 
 
 Yes, you will love, 
 
 And yearning then will shake, for you, 
 
 Pride, hope, tranquillity, 
 
 And all you counted dear. 
 For this law stands — 
 Its chain shall never break for you: 
 
 Who laughs at love lightly 
 
 Lives to love with pain. 
 152 
 
A LITANY FOR LATTER-DAY MYSTICS 
 
 Out of the Vastness that is God 
 
 I summon the power to heal me. 
 It comes, with peace ineffable 
 
 And patience, to anneal me. 
 Ajar I set my soul-doors 
 
 Toward unbounded Life 
 And let the infinitudes of it 
 
 Flow thro me, vigour-rife. 
 
 Out of the Vastness that is God 
 I summon the power to still me. 
 
 It comes from inner deeps, divine 
 With destinies that thrill me. 
 i53 
 
154 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 
 It follows the hush of every wrong; 
 
 And every vain unrest 
 It banishes; and leaves a bliss 
 
 Before all unpossest. 
 
 Out of the Vastness that is God 
 
 I summon the strength to keep me, 
 And from all fleshly fears that fret 
 
 With spirit-winds to sweep me. 
 I summon the faith that puts to flight 
 
 All impotence and ills, 
 And that, thro the wide universe, 
 
 Well-being's breath distills. 
 
GOD, TO MEN 
 
 When I compass earth with winds, 
 
 Or array its loins with cloud, 
 When I draw its tides to the moon, 
 
 Or cover it with night's shroud, 
 When I tether it to the sun, 
 
 And the sun to a million more, 
 Do you think I have done as much as I do 
 
 When I open a least soul-door? 
 
 When I bid wild comets spring 
 Thro uttermost space, at play, 
 
 Or gather the nebulae up 
 And fashion the Milky Way, 
 i5S 
 
i 5 6 EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 
 When I call, from the Never-seen, 
 Spring's mystery thro the sod, 
 Do you think I rejoice as much as I do 
 At your murmur, "It is God"? 
 
 Nay! — So, when I win, at last, 
 
 To an Immanence complete, 
 And thro star-world or soul 
 
 Can assert my least heart-beat, 
 Do you think that a terror still 
 
 Shall astringe your liberty? 
 Not so; you shall share, thro the Universe, 
 
 Full masterdom with Me. 
 
ULTIMATES 
 
 If Autumn came to the universe 
 
 And the worlds like dead leaves fell, 
 If Time lay dumb in the boundless hearse 
 
 Of Space — an ended spell; 
 If this had chanced— as chance it may — 
 
 We still should be a part 
 Of all that dwells in the Abyss, 
 
 Or dreams within God's heart. 
 
 Of dust or dreams: till circling Life 
 
 Again should re-create 
 Sun, moon, and star with the old strife 
 
 Of their accustomed fate. 
 And, in a new birth, doubtless we, 
 
 Once more a-quest, should cry 
 For beauty all too rarely breathed, 
 
 And love less prone to die. 
 157 
 
ARMS 
 
 Two weapons only has the universe 
 
 Against un vanquished man: 
 Fate, whose foreorderings none may rehearse, 
 
 Fear, that attacks his heart whene'er it can. 
 
 Two weapons has Godlike and dauntless man 
 
 Against the universe: 
 Laughter, that limits evil to a span, 
 
 And dreams, the widest doom-will to submerse. 
 
The Collected 
 Plays and Poems 
 
 OF 
 
 CALE YOUNG RICE 
 
 The great quality of Cale Young Rice's 
 work is that, amid all the distractions and 
 changes of contemporary taste, it remains 
 true to the central drift of great poetry. His 
 interests are very wide . . . and his books 
 open up a most varied world of emotion and 
 romance. — Gilbert Murray. 
 
 These volumes are an anthology wrought 
 by a master hand and endowed with perennial 
 vitality. . . . This writer is the most 
 distinguished master of lyric utterance in the 
 new world . . . and he has contributed 
 much to the scanty stock of American literary 
 fame. Fashions in poetry come and go, and 
 minor lights twinkle fitfully as they pass in 
 tumultuous review. But these volumes are 
 of the things that are eternal in poetic expres- 
 sion. . . . They embody the hopes and 
 impulses of universal humanity. — The Phila- 
 delphia North- American. 
 
 Mr. Rice has been hailed by too many 
 critics as the poet of his country, if not of his 
 
generation, not to create a demand for a full 
 edition of his works. — The Hartford {Conn.) 
 Courant. 
 
 This gathering of his forces stamps Mr. Rice 
 as one of the world's true poets, remarkable 
 alike for strength, versatility and beauty of 
 expression. — The Chicago Herald {Ethel M. 
 Colton). 
 
 Any one familiar with "Cloister Lays," 
 "The Mystic," etc., does not need to be told 
 that they rank with the very best poetry. 
 And Mr. Rice's dramas are not equaled by 
 any other American author's. . . . The 
 admirable characteristic of his work is the 
 understanding of life. . . . And when 
 those who are loyal to poetic traditions cher- 
 ished through the whole history of our language 
 contemplate the anemia and artificiality of 
 contemporaries, they can but assert that Mr. 
 Rice has the grasp and sweep, the rhythm, 
 imagery and pulsating sympathy, which in 
 wondering admiration are ascribed to genius. 
 — The Los Angeles Times. 
 
 Mr. Rice's poetic dramas have won him 
 highest praise. But the universality of his 
 genius is nowhere more apparent than in his 
 lyrics. Their charm is derived both from the 
 strength and beauty of their thought and 
 from the multitudinous felicities of their 
 Utterance. For sheer grace and loveliness 
 
some of these lyrics are unsurpassed in modern 
 poetry. — The N. E. Homestead {Springfield, 
 Mass.). 
 
 It is with no undue repetition that we 
 speak of the very great range and very great 
 variety of Mr. Rice's subject, inspiration, and 
 mode of expression. . . . The passage of 
 his spirit is truly from deep to deep. — Mar- 
 garet S. Anderson {The Louisville Evening 
 Post). 
 
 In Mr. Rice we have a voice such as America 
 has rarely known before. — The Rochester {N. 
 Y.) Post Express. 
 
 It is good to find such sincere and beautiful 
 work as is in these two volumes. . . . Here 
 is a writer with no wish to purchase fame at 
 the price of eccentricity of either form or 
 subject. He lives up to his theory that the 
 path of American literature lies not in dis- 
 tinctly local lines, but will become more and 
 more cosmopolitan since America is built of 
 all civilizations. — The Independent. 
 
 Mr. Rice's style is that of the masters. 
 
 . . . Yet it is one that is distinctively 
 American. ... He will live with our 
 great poets. — Louisville Herald {J. J. Cole). 
 
 Mr. Rice is an American by birth, but he 
 is not merely an American poet. Over exist- 
 
ence and the whole world his vision extends. 
 He is a poet of human life and his range is 
 uncircumscribed. — The Baltimore Evening 
 News. 
 
 Viewing Mr. Rice's plays as a whole, I 
 should say that his prime virtue is fecundity 
 or affluence, the power to conceive and com- 
 bine events resourcefully, and an abundance 
 of pointed phrases which recalls and half re- 
 stores the great Elisabethans. His aptitude for 
 structure is great. — The Nation (O. W. Fir- 
 kins). 
 
 Mr. Rice has fairly won his singing robes 
 and has a right to be ranked with the first 
 of living poets. One must read the volumes 
 to get an idea of their cosmopolitan breadth 
 and fresh abiding charm. . . . The dra- 
 mas, taken as a whole, represent the most 
 important work of the kind that has been 
 done by any living writer; . . This work 
 belongs to that great world where the mightiest 
 spiritual and intellectual forces are forever 
 contending; to that deeper life which calls 
 for the rarest gifts of poetic expression. — The 
 Book News Monthly {Albert S. Henry). 
 
 2 Vol. $3.00 net 
 Doubleday Page & Co. 
 
AT THE WORLD'S HEART 
 
 By CALE YOUNG RICE 
 
 Another collection of lyrics by an American 
 poet and dramatist whose reputation is de- 
 served. — The London Times. 
 
 It is the best that is offered on this side the 
 Atlantic . . . nearly always the vital, 
 gleaming, burning thought is there, pulsating 
 with keen human sympathy and in a dominant 
 masterful key ... of convincing sin- 
 cerity. — The Philadelphia North American. 
 
 This new book of Cale Young Rice is a pil- 
 grim scrip for the world wanderer. . . . 
 His songs are touched with the passion and 
 emotion of which poetry is made. . . . 
 Those to A. H. R. are so perfectly spontaneous 
 that art has no share in them, or their art is 
 subtle and fine enough to make them seem 
 wholly spontaneous. — The London Bookman. 
 
 Every fresh publication lifts Cale Young 
 Rice a little higher and "At The World's 
 Heart " is an appreciable advance. From first 
 to last the poems are universal in appeal, and 
 all are distinguished by a fine balance of eager 
 emotion and technical finish. — The Chicago 
 Record-Herald. 
 
 A poet whose sympathies are as broad as 
 the earth and cling close to it, is Cale Young 
 
Rice. . . . He has long been recognized as 
 a master of lyrical technique. . . . There 
 is (in this volume) scarcely a superfluous line, 
 as there is not a superfluous poem. — The 
 Louisville Courier- Journal' 
 
 Cale Young Rice is highly esteemed by 
 readers wherever English is the native speech. 
 — The Manchester {England) Guardian. 
 
 This book justifies the more than trans- 
 atlantic reputation of its author. — The Sheffield 
 {England) Daily Telegraph. 
 
 Mr. Rice is not merely the vision- seeing 
 dreamer — though to be sure he can weave 
 dreams of beauty and enchantment — but he 
 is the observer of life. . . . Any little 
 chance encounter . . . illumined by his 
 fancy resolves itself into poignant unforget- 
 table drama. . . . One renews acquaint- 
 ance with the spiritual fervor and with a fine 
 rich imagery — which is the gift of only the 
 truly inspired poet. — The Springfield {Mass.) 
 Homestead. 
 
 Americans of to-day are proud of Cale 
 Young Rice's poems, and lovers of poetry else- 
 where must admire their free play of imagina- 
 tion and their many felicities of lyrical form. — 
 The Scotsman {Edinburgh). 
 
 Critics on the other side of the Atlantic have 
 always been lavish in their praises of Mr. 
 
Rice's work, both for its inherent charm and 
 universality of thought. ..." Submarine 
 Mountains" is a gem of purest ray, and almost 
 all the other poems are equally good. — The 
 San Francisco Chronicle. 
 
 Mr. Rice has given us nothing more worth 
 while than this splendid expression of his 
 genius. — The Buffalo (N. Y.) Courier. 
 
 "At The World's Heart" will ably sustain 
 Mr. Rice's reputation. . . . It is a worthy 
 successor of his former works. — The Boston 
 Times. 
 
 Mr. Rice has no metred praise for — sensual- 
 ity, quackery, pretence. ... He seeks 
 the ideas that are eternal and expresses them 
 in faultless language. — The Argonaut (San 
 Francisco). 
 
 Mr. Rice's freedom and force remain un- 
 abated. . . . Nothing is alien to him. 
 . . . His verse ranges all lands. — The Hart- 
 ford (Conn.) Courant. 
 
 Mr. Rice's genius and temperament are 
 cosmic and cosmopolitan. — The Rochester (A 7 . 
 Y.) Post-Express. 
 
 Cale Young Rice has indeed the sympathetic 
 imagination and not infrequently a touch of 
 the sublime — rare in poets of any tongue. 
 Such poems as [several mentioned] cannot 
 
easily be matched in English poetry, old or new. 
 — Vogue. 
 
 Cale Young Rice has captivated the most 
 severe critics of Great Britain as well as in his 
 own land. . . . He is a poet of whom 
 America may well be proud. — Portland (Ore.) 
 Evening Telegram. 
 
 Some poets can sing of their own land only; 
 others have been content to immortalize a 
 little corner of the wide earth; and a few have 
 been able to wing their way from clime to 
 clime and feel equally at home in the present 
 or the past. In this last mentioned class Mr. 
 Rice naturally finds a place. . . . We dis- 
 cover in him a variety of theme and treatment 
 such as few poets can offer. . . . His 
 verse is as bracing as the sea of which he sings 
 with such fervor and understanding. — The 
 Book News Monthly (Albert S. Henry). 
 
 Elsewhere Mr. Henry ranks Mr. Rice first 
 of all living poetic dramatists. 
 
I 
 
 PORZIA 
 
 By 
 
 CALE YOUNG RICE 
 
 T PRESENTS a last phase of the Renais- 
 sance with great effect." Sir Sydney Lee. 
 
 " 'Porzia ' is a very romantic and beauti- 
 ful thing. After a third reading I enjoy and 
 admire it still more." Gilbert Murray. 
 
 "There are certain lyrical qualities in the 
 dramas of Cale Young Rice and certain dra- 
 matic qualities in many of his finest lyrics 
 that make it very difficult for the critic to 
 resolve whether he is highest as singer or 
 dramatist. ' Porzia ' is a poetic play in which 
 these two gifts blend with subtle and powerful 
 effectiveness. It is not written in stereotyped 
 heroic verse, but in sensitive metrical lines 
 that vary in beat and measure with the 
 strength, the tenderness, the anguish, bitter- 
 ness and passion of love or hate they have to 
 express. The bizarre and poignant central 
 incident on which the action of ' Porzia ' turns 
 is such as would have appealed irresistibly 
 to the imagination and dramatic instincts 
 of the great Elizabethan dramatists, and Mr. 
 Rice has developed it with a force and imagina- 
 tive beauty that they alone could have 
 equaled and with a restraint and delicacy of 
 touch which makes pitiful and beautiful a 
 
story they would have clothed in horror. 
 . . . He turns what might have been a 
 tragic close to something that is loftier and 
 more moving. ... It matters little that 
 we hesitate between ranking Mr. Rice highest 
 as dramatist or lyrist; what matters is that 
 he has the faculty divine beyond any living 
 poet of America; his inspiration is true, and 
 his poetry is the real thing." The London 
 Bookman. 
 
 "'Porzia' has the swift human movement 
 which Mr. Rice puts into his dramas, and 
 technique of a very high order. . . . The 
 dramatic form is the most difficult to sustain 
 harmoniously and this Mr. Rice always 
 achieves." The Baltimore News. 
 
 "To the making of 'Porzia' Mr. Rice has 
 summoned all the resources of his dramatic 
 skill. On the constructive side it is particu- 
 larly strong. . . . The opening scene is 
 certainly one of the happiest Mr. Rice has 
 written, while the climaxing third act is a 
 brilliant piece of character study .... 
 The play is rich in poetry; . . in it Mr. 
 Rice has scored another success ... in 
 a field where work of permanent value is 
 rarely achieved." Albert S. Henry (The 
 Book News Monthly). 
 
 "Mr. Rice apes neither the high-flown style 
 of the Elizabethans, nor the turgid and cryptic 
 
style of Browning . . . 'Porzia' should 
 attract the praise of all who wish to see real 
 literature written in this country again." 
 The Covington (Ky.) Post. 
 
 "The complete mastery of technique, the 
 dignity and dramatic force of the characters, 
 the beauty of the language and clear directness 
 of the style together with the vivid imagina- 
 tion needed to portray so strikingly the 
 renaissance spirit and atmosphere, make the 
 work one that should last." The Springfield 
 (Mass.) Homestead. 
 
 "It is not unjust to say that Cale Young 
 Rice holds in America the position that 
 Stephen Phillips holds in England." The 
 Scotsman (Edinburgh). 
 
 "Had no other poetic drama than this been 
 written in America, there would be hope for 
 the future of poetry on the stage." John G. 
 Neihardt (The Minneapolis Journal). 
 
 " ' Porzia ' is a very beautiful play. The 
 spiritual uplift at the end thrilled me deeply." 
 Minnie Maddern Fiske. 
 
 Net, $1.25 (postage 12c.) 
 
FAR QUESTS 
 
 CALE YOUNG RICE 
 
 THE countrymen of Cale Young Rice 
 apparently regard him as the equal of 
 the great American poets .of the past. 
 Far Quests is good unquestionably. It 
 shows a wide range of thought, and sympathy, 
 and real skill in workmanship, while occasion- 
 ally it rises to heights of simplicity and truth, 
 that suggest such inspiration as should mean 
 lasting fame. — The Daily Telegraph {London). 
 
 "Mr. Rice's lyrics are deeply impressive. 
 A large number are complete and full-blooded 
 works of art." — Prof. Wm. Lyon Phelps {Yale 
 
 University). 
 
 "Far Quests contains much beautiful work — 
 the work of a real poet in imagination and 
 achievement." — Prof. J. W. Mackail {Oxford 
 University). 
 
 "Mr. Rice is determined to get away from 
 local or national limitations and be at what- 
 ever cost universal. . . . These poems 
 are always animated by a force and freshness 
 of feeling rare in work of such high virtu- 
 osity." — The Scotsman {Edinburgh). 
 
 "Mr. Cale Young Rice is acknowledged by 
 his countrymen to be one of their great poets. 
 
There is great charm in his nature songs (of 
 this volume) and in his songs of the East. 
 Mr. Rice writes with great simplicity and 
 beauty." — The Sphere (London). 
 
 Mr. Rice's forte is poetic drama. Yet in 
 the act of saying this the critic is confronted 
 by such poems as The Mystic . . . These 
 are the poems of a thinker, a man of large 
 horizons, an optimist profoundly impressed 
 with the pathos of man's quest for happiness 
 in all lands." — The Chicago Record-Herald. 
 
 " Mr. Rice's latest volume shows no diminu- 
 ition of poetic power. Fecundity is a mark 
 of the genuine poet, and a glance through 
 these pages will demonstrate how rich Mr. 
 Rice is in vitality and variety of thought 
 
 . . There is too, the unmistakable qual- 
 ity of style. It is spontaneous, flexible, and 
 strong with the strength of simplicity — a style 
 of rare distinction. —Albert S. Henry, (The 
 Book News Monthly, Philadelphia). 
 
 Net. $1.25 (postage 12c.) 
 
THE IMMORTAL LURE 
 
 CALE YOUNG RICE 
 
 It is great art — with great vitality. 
 
 James Lane Allen. 
 
 In the midst of the Spring rush there arrives one 
 book for which all else is pushed aside . . . We 
 have been educated to the belief that a man must be 
 long dead before he can be enrolled with the great 
 ones. Let us forget this cruel teaching . . . This 
 volume contains four poetic dramas all different in 
 setting, and all so beautiful that we cannot choose 
 one more perfect than another. . . . Too extra- 
 vagant praise cannot be given Mr. Rice. 
 
 The San Francisco Call. 
 
 Four brief dramas, different from Paola & Francesca, 
 but excelling it — or any other of Mr. Phillips's work, it 
 is safe to say — in a vivid presentment of a supreme 
 moment in the lives of the characters . . . They 
 form excellent examples of the range of Mr. Rice's 
 genius in this field. The New York Times Review- 
 Mr. Rice is quite the most ambitious, and most 
 distinguished of contemporary poetic dramatists in 
 America. The Boston Transcript (W. S. Braithwaite.) 
 
 The vigor and originality of Mr. Rice's work never 
 outweigh that first qualification, beauty . . . No 
 American writer has so enriched the body of our poetic 
 literature in the past few years. 
 
 The New Orleans Picayune. 
 
 Mr. Rice is beyond doubt the most distinguished 
 poetic dramatist America has yet produced. 
 
 The Detroit Free Press. 
 
 That in Cale Young Rice a new American poet 
 of great power and originality has arisen cannot be 
 denied. He has somehow discovered the secret 
 of the mystery, wonder and spirituality of human 
 
existence, which has been all but lost in our commer- 
 cial civilization. May he succeed in awakening our 
 people from sordid dreams of gain. 
 
 Rochester (N. Y. ) Post Express. 
 
 No writer in England or America holds himself to 
 higher ideals (than Mr. Rice) and everything he does 
 bears the imprint of exquisite taste and the finest 
 poetic instinct. The Portland Oregonian. 
 
 In simplicity of art form and sheer mystery of 
 romanticism these poetic dramas embody the new 
 century artistry that is remaking current imaginative 
 literature. The Philadelphia North American. 
 
 Cale Young Rice is justly regarded as the leading 
 master of the difficult form of poetic drama. 
 
 Portland {Me.) Press. 
 
 Mr. Rice has outlived the prophesy that he would 
 one day rival Stephen Phillips in the poetic drama. 
 As dexterous in the mechanism of his art, the young 
 American is the Englishman's superior in that unforced 
 quality which bespeaks true inspiration, and in a wider 
 variety of manner and theme. 
 
 San Francisco Chronicle. 
 
 Mr. Rice's work has often been compared to Stephen 
 Phillips's and there is great resemblance in their ex- 
 pression of high vision. Mr. Rice's technique is sure 
 . . . his knowledge of his settings impeccable, and 
 one feels sincerely the passion, power and sensuous 
 beauty of the whole. "Arduin"(one of the plays) 
 is perfect tragedy; as rounded as a sphere, as terrible 
 as death. Review of Reviews. 
 
 The Immortal Lure is a very beautiful work. 
 
 The Springfield (Mass.) Republican. 
 
 The action in Mr. Rice's dramas is invariably 
 compact and powerful, his writing remarkably forcible 
 and clear, with a rare grasp of form. The plays are 
 brief and classic. Baltimore News. 
 
These four dramas, each a separate unit perfect 
 in itself and differing widely in treatment, are yet 
 vitally related by reason of the one central theme, 
 wrought out with rich imagery and with compelling 
 dramatic power. The Louisville Times (U. S.) 
 
 The literary and poetical merit of these dramas is 
 undeniable, and they are charged with the emotional 
 life and human interest that should, but do not, al- 
 ways go along with those other high gifts. 
 
 The (London) Bookman. 
 
 Mr. Rice never [like Stephen Phillips] mistakes 
 strenuous phrase for strong thought. He makes his 
 blank verse his servant, and it has the stage merit of 
 possessing the freedom of prose while retaining the 
 impassioned movement of poetry. 
 
 The Glasgow (Scotland) Herald. 
 
 These firm and vivid pieces of work are truly wel- 
 come as examples of poetic force that succeeds with- 
 out the help of poetic license. 
 
 The Literary World (London.) 
 
 We do not possess a living American poet whose 
 utterance is so clear, so felicitous, so free from the 
 inane and meretricious folly of sugared lines. . . . 
 No one has a better understanding of the development 
 of dramatic action than Mr. Rice. 
 
 The Book News Monthly (Albert S. Henry.) 
 
 Net, $1.25 (postage 12c.) 
 
 Cohntrtxhe (( 51 TheWohu>'sWohk 
 
 IN AMERICA \g/ 
 
 DOUBLED AY, PAGE & CO., GARDEN CITY. N. Y. 
 
MANY GODS 
 
 By 
 
 CALE YOUNG RICE 
 
 THESE poems are flashingly, glowingly 
 full of the East. . . . What I 
 am sure of in Mr. Rice is that here 
 we have an American poet whom we may 
 claim as ours." The North American Review 
 {William Dean Howells). 
 
 "Mr. Rice has the gift of leadership. . 
 and he is a force with whom we must reckon." 
 The Boston Transcript. 
 
 . . . "We find here a poet who strives 
 to reach the goal which marks the best that 
 can be done in poetry." The Book News 
 Monthly (A. S. Henry). 
 
 "When you hear the pessimists bewailing 
 the good old time when real poets were abroad 
 in the land ... do not fail to quote 
 them almost anything by Cale Young Rice, 
 a real poet writing to-day. ... He has 
 done so much splendid work one can scarcely 
 praise him too highly." The San Francisco 
 Call. 
 
 "'In Many Gods' the scenes are those of 
 the East, and while it is not the East of 
 Loti, Arnold or Hearn, it is still a place of 
 
brooding, majesty, mystery and subtle fasci- 
 nation. There is a temptation to quote 
 such verses for their melody, dignity of form, 
 beauty of imagery and height of inspiration." 
 The Chicago Journal. 
 
 "'Love's Cynic' (a long poem in the vol- 
 ume) might be by Browning at his best." 
 Pittsburg Gazette-Times. 
 
 "This is a serious, and from any standpoint, 
 a successful piece of work ... in it 
 are poems that will become classic." Passaic 
 (New Jersey) News. 
 
 "Mr. Rice must be hailed as one among 
 living masters of his art, one to whom we may 
 look for yet greater things." Presbyterian 
 Advance. 
 
 "This book is in many respects a remark- 
 able work. The poems are indeed poems." 
 The Nashville Banner. 
 
 "Mr. Rice's poetical plays reach a high 
 level of achievement. . . . But these 
 poems show a higher vision and surer mastery 
 of expression than ever before." The London 
 Bookman. 
 
 Net, $1.25 {postage 12c.) 
 
NIRVANA DAYS 
 
 Poem* by 
 
 CALE YOUNG RICE 
 
 MR. RICE has the technical cunning 
 that makes up almost the entire 
 equipment of many poets nowadays, 
 but human nature is more to him always 
 . . . and he has the feeling and imagina- 
 tive sympathy without which all poetry is 
 but an empty and vain thing." The London 
 Bookman. 
 
 "Mr. Rice's note is a clarion call, and of his 
 two poems, 'The Strong Man to His Sires' and 
 'The Young to the Old,' the former will send 
 a thrill to the heart of every man who has the 
 instinct of race in his blood, while the latter 
 should be printed above the desk of every 
 minor poet and pessimist. . . . The son- 
 nets of the sequence, 'Quest and Requital,' 
 have the elements of great poetry in them." 
 The Glasgow {Scotland) Herald. 
 
 "Mr. Rice's poems are singularly free from 
 affectation, and he seems to have written be- 
 cause of the sincere need of expressing some- 
 thing that had to take art form." The Sun 
 (New York). 
 
 "The ability to write verse that scans is 
 quite common. . . . But the inspired 
 thought behind the lines is a different 
 
thing; and it is this thought untrammeled 
 — the clear vision searching into the deeps 
 of human emotion — which gives the verse 
 of Mr. Rice weight and potency. ... In 
 the range of his metrical skill he easily stands 
 with the best of living craftsmen . . . 
 and we have in him ... a poet whose 
 dramas and lyrics will endure." The Book 
 News Monthly (A. S. Henry). 
 
 "These poems are marked by a breadth 
 of outlook, individuality and beauty of 
 thought. The author reveals deep, sincere 
 feeling on topics which do not readily lend 
 themselves to artistic expression and which 
 he makes eminently worth while." The 
 Buffalo (N. Y.) Courier. 
 
 "We get throughout the idea of a vast 
 universe and of the soul merging itself in the 
 infinite. . . . The great poem of the 
 volume, however, is 'The Strong Man to His 
 Sires.'" The Louisville Post {Margaret S. 
 Anderson). 
 
 "The poems possess much music . . . 
 and even in the height of intensified feeling 
 the clearness of Mr. Rice's ideas is not dimmed 
 by the obscure haze that too often goes with 
 the divine fire." The Boston Globe. 
 
 Paper boards. Net, $1.25 (postage 12c.) 
 
A NIGHT IN AVIGNON 
 
 By 
 
 CALE YOUNG RICE 
 
 Successfully produced by Donald Robertson 
 
 IT IS as vivid as a page from Browning. 
 Mr. Rice has the dramatic pulse." 
 James Huneker. 
 
 "It embraces in small compass all the 
 essentials of the drama. New York Saturday 
 Times Review {Jessie B. Rittenhouse) . 
 
 "It presents one of the most striking 
 situations in dramatic literature and its 
 climax could not be improved." The San 
 Francisco Call. 
 
 "It has undeniable power, and is a very 
 decided poetic achievement." The Boston 
 Transcript. 
 
 "It leaves an enduring impression of a 
 soul tragedy. ' ' The Churchman. 
 
 "Since the publication of his 'Charles di 
 Tocca' and other dramas, Cale Young Rice 
 has justly been regarded as a leading Ameri- 
 can master of that difficult form, and many 
 critics have ranked him above Stephen 
 Phillips, at least on the dramatic side of his 
 art. And this judgment is further confirmed 
 by 'A Night in Avignon.' It is almost in- 
 credible that in less than 500 lines Mr. Rice 
 should have been able to create so perfect a 
 
play with so powerful a dramatic effect." The 
 Chicago Record-Herald (Edwin S. Shuman) 
 
 "There is poetic richness in this brilliant 
 composition; a beauty of sentiment and 
 grace in every line. It is impressive, metri- 
 cally pleasing and dramatically powerful." 
 The Philadelphia Record. 
 
 "It offers one of the most striking situa- 
 tions in dramatic literature." The Louisville 
 Courier- Journal. 
 
 "The publication of a poetic drama of the 
 quality of Mr. Rice's is an important event 
 in the present tendency of American litera- 
 ture. He is a leader in this most significant 
 movement, and 'A Night in Avignon' is 
 marked, like his other plays, by dramatic 
 directness, high poetic fervor, clarity of 
 poetic diction, and felicity of phrasing." 
 The Chicago Journal. 
 
 "It is a dramatically told episode, and the 
 metre is most effectively handled, making 
 a welcome change for blank verse, and greatly 
 enhancing the interest." Sydney Lee. 
 
 "Many critics, on hearing Mr. Bryce's 
 prediction that America will one day have a 
 poet, would be tempted to remind him of 
 Mr. Rice." The Hartford (Conn.) C our ant. 
 Net 50c. (postage 5c.) 
 
I 
 
 YOLANDA OF CYPRUS 
 
 A Poetic Drama by 
 
 CALE YOUNG RICE 
 
 T HAS real life and drama, not merely- 
 beautiful words, and so differs from the 
 great mass of poetic plays. 
 
 Prof. Gilbert Murray. 
 
 Minnie Maddern Fisk says: "No one can 
 doubt that it is superior poetically and 
 dramatically to Stephen Phillips's work," 
 and that Mr. Rice ranks with Mr. Phillips 
 at his best has often been reaffirmed. 
 
 "It is encouraging to the hope of a native 
 
 drama to know that an American has written 
 
 a play which is at the same time of decided 
 
 poetic merit and of decided dramatic power. " 
 
 The New York Times. 
 
 "The most remarkable quality of the play 
 is its sustained dramatic strength. Poetically 
 it is frequently of great beauty. It is also 
 lofty in conception, lucid and felicitous in 
 style, and the dramatic pulse throbs in every 
 line." The Chicago Record-Herald. 
 
 "The characters are drawn with force and 
 the play is dignified and powerful," and adds 
 that if it does not succeed on the stage it 
 will be "because of its excellence. " 
 
 The Springfield Republican. 
 
"Mr. Rice is one of the few present-day 
 poets who have the steadiness and weight for 
 a well-sustained drama." 
 
 The Louisville Post {Margaret Anderson). 
 
 "It has equal command of imagination, 
 dramatic utterance, picturesque effectiveness 
 and metrical harmony. " 
 
 The London (England) Bookman. 
 
 T. P.'s Weekly says: "It might well stand 
 the difficult test of production and will be 
 welcomed by all who care for serious verse." 
 
 The Glasgow (Scotland) Herald says: "Yo- 
 landa of Cyprus is finely constructed; the 
 irregular blank verse admirably adapted for 
 the exigencies of intense emotion; the char- 
 acters firmly drawn; and the climax serves 
 the purpose of good stagecraft and poetic 
 justice. " 
 
 "It is well constructed and instinct with 
 dramatic power." Sydney Lee. 
 
 "It is as readable as a novel. " 
 
 The Pittsburg Post. 
 
 "Here and there an almost Shakespearean 
 note is struck. In makeup, arrangement, 
 and poetic intensity it ranks with Stephen 
 Phillips's work. " The Book News Monthly. 
 Net, $1.25 (postage 10c.) 
 
 COtTNTBTtlW fW\ The-WoEID'S-WOEK fwf\ trnGAXOTK 
 INAMEH1CA \£/ ^^/ MACAZIK* 
 
 DOUBLEDAY. PAGE & CO., GARDEN CITY, N. Y. 
 
DAVID 
 
 A Poetic Drama by 
 
 CALE YOUNG RICE 
 
 I WAS greatly impressed with it and de- 
 rived a sense of personal encouragement 
 from the evidence of so fine and lofty 
 a product for the stage." Richard Mansfield. 
 
 "It is a powerful piece of dramatic por- 
 traiture in which Cale Young Rice has again 
 demonstrated his insight and power. What 
 he did before in 'Charles di Tocca' he has 
 repeated and improved upon. . . . Not 
 a few instances of his strength might be 
 cited as of almost Shakespearean force. 
 Indeed the strictly literary merit of the tragedy 
 is altogether extraordinary. It is a con- 
 tribution to the drama full of charm and 
 power." The Chicago Tribune. 
 
 "From the standpoint of poetry, dignity 
 of conception, spiritual elevation and finish 
 and beauty of line, Mr. Rice's 'David' is, 
 perhaps, superior to his 'Yolanda of Cyprus,' 
 but the two can scarcely be compared." 
 The New York Times (Jessie B. Rittenhouse). 
 
 "Never before has the theme received treat- 
 ment in a manner so worthy of it." The 
 St. Louis Globe-Democrat. 
 
"It needs but a word, for it has been passed 
 upon and approved by critics all over the 
 country." Book News Monthly. And again: 
 "But few recent writers seem to have found 
 the secret of dramatic blank verse; and of 
 that small number, Mr. Rice is, if not first, 
 at least without superior." 
 
 "With instinctive dramatic and poetic 
 power, Mr. Rice combines a knowledge of 
 the exigencies of the stage." Harper's 
 Weekly. 
 
 "It is safe to say that were Mr. Rice an 
 Englishman or a Frenchman, his reputation 
 as his country's most distinguished poetic 
 dramatist would have been assured by a 
 more universal sign of recognition. The 
 Baltimore News {writing of all Mr. Rice's 
 plays) . 
 
 Net, $1.25 {postage 12c.) 
 
CHARLES DI TOCCA 
 
 By 
 
 CALE YOUNG RICE 
 
 I TAKE off my hat to Mr. Rice. His 
 play is full of poetry, and the pitch and 
 dignity of the whole are remarkable." 
 James Lane Allen. 
 
 "It is a dramatic poem one reads with a 
 heightened sense of its fine quality through- 
 out. It is sincere, strong, finished and noble, 
 and sustains its distinction of manner to the 
 end. . . . The character of Helena is 
 not unworthy of any of the great masters of 
 dramatic utterance." The Chicago Tribune. 
 
 "The drama is one of the best of the kind 
 ever written by an American author. Its 
 whole tone is masterful, and it must be classed 
 as one of the really literary works of the 
 season." (1903). The Milwaukee Sentinel. 
 
 "It shows a remarkable sense of dramatic 
 construction as well as poetic power and 
 strong characterization." James Mac Arthur, 
 in Harper's Weekly. 
 
 "This play has many elements of perfection. 
 Its plot is developed with ease and with a large 
 dramatic force; its characters are drawn with 
 sympathy and decision; and its thoughts 
 
rise to a very real beauty. By reason of it 
 the writer has gained an assured place among 
 playwrights who seek to give literary as well 
 as dramatic worth to their plays." The 
 Richmond (Va.) News-Leader. 
 
 "The action of the play is admirably com- 
 pact and coherent, and it contains tragic 
 situations which will afford pleasure not only 
 to the student, but to the technical reader." 
 The Nation. 
 
 "It is the most powerful, vital, and truly 
 tragical drama written by an American for 
 some years. There is genuine pathos, mighty 
 yet never repellent passion, great sincerity 
 and penetration, and great elevation and 
 beauty of language." The Chicago Post. 
 
 "Mr. Rice ranks among America's choicest 
 poets on account of his power to turn music 
 into words, his virility, and of the fact that he 
 has something of his own to say." The Boston 
 Globe. 
 
 "The whole play breathes forth the inde- 
 finable spirit of the Italian renaissance. In 
 poetic style and dramatic treatment it is 
 a work of art." The Baltimore Sun. 
 
 Paper boards. Net, $1.25 {postage, gc.) 
 
SONG-SURF 
 
 (Being the Lyrics of Plays and Lyrics) by 
 
 CALE YOUNG RICE 
 
 MR. RICE'S work betrays wide sym- 
 pathies with nature and life, and a 
 welcome originality of sentiment and 
 metrical harmony." Sydney Lee. 
 
 "In his lyrics Mr. Rice's imagination works 
 most successfully. He is an optimist — and 
 in these days an optimist is irresistible — 
 and he can touch delicately things too holy 
 for a rough or violent pathos." The London 
 Star {James Douglas). 
 
 "Mr. Rice's highest gift is essentially 
 lyrical. His lyrics have a charm and grace 
 of melody distinctively their own." The 
 London Bookman. 
 
 "Mr. Rice is keenly responsive to the 
 loveliness of the outside world, and he re- 
 veals this beauty in words that sing them- 
 selves." The Boston Transcript. 
 
 "Mr. Rice's work is everywhere marked 
 by true imaginative power and elevation of 
 feeling." The Scotsman. 
 
 "Mr. Rice's work would seem to rank with 
 the best of our American poets of to-day." 
 The Atlanta Constitution. 
 
"Mr. Rice's poems are touched with the 
 magic of the muse. They have inspiration, 
 grace and true lyric quality." The Book 
 News Monthly. 
 
 "Mr. Rice's poetry as a whole is both 
 strongly and delicately spiritual. Many of 
 these lyrics have the true romantic mystery 
 and charm. ... To write thus is no 
 indifferent matter. It indicates not only long 
 work but long brooding on the beauty and 
 mystery of life." The Louisville Post. 
 
 " Mr. Rice is indisputably one of the greatest 
 poets who have lived in America. . . . 
 And some of these (earlier) poems are truly 
 beautiful. The Times-Union (Albany, N. Y.) 
 
 Net, $1.25 (postage 12c.) 
 

 THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS 
 GARDEN CITY, N. Y.