PS 3529 .P6 S55 1919 n, BookJ?i2_S-^^ GopightN 10 A44. CDEffilGHT DEPOSm THE SOLITARY BY JAMES OPPENHEIM THE BELOVED (Huebsch) SONGS FOR THE NEW AGE (Century) WAR AND LAUGHTER (Century) THE BOOK OF SELF (Knopf) THE SOLITARY J A M E S OPPENHEIM i4 NEW YORK B. W. HUEBSCH MCMXIX COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY B. W. HUEBSCH NOV 17 1919 PBINTBD IN THE TNITED STATES OT AMERICA ©CI.A535732 ACKNOWLEDGMENT Several of the poems in this volume appeared in The Seven Arts. " For Randolph Bourne " was published in The Dial. " Night " was performed by the Provincetown Players. CONTENTS For Randolph Bourne, 3 The Sea, 9 Songs Out of Solitude The Ship of Skies, 45 Mist, 46 Silence, 50 Rain-Song, 51 Summer Night, 52 Nocturne, 57 Gray Evening, 63 Morning Song, 65 The Rainbow, 67 Shadow, 72 Hymn to Death, 76 Sunset, 79 Songs Out of Multitude Europa, 87 Folk-Soul, 94 The Fires of Pittsburgh, 96 The Song of the Uprising, 103 The Ironic Spirit, 114 Debs, 117 Memories of Whitman and Lincoln, 118 My Land, 123 Night, 127 FOR RANDOLPH BOURNE FOR RANDOLPH BOURNE (Died December 22, 1918) fVe wind wreaths of holly For Randolph Bourne, We hang hitter-sweet for remembrance ^ We make a song of wind in pines . . . Wind in pines Is winters song, anthem of death. And winter s child Is gathered in the green hemlock arms And sung to rest . . . Sung to rest . . . Waif of the storm And world-bruised wanderer . • • Sung to rest . . . Sung to rest in our living hearts. We receive him. Winding our wreaths of holly For Randolph Bourne. [ 3] Winter lasts long And Death is our midnight sun Rayless and red , . . Peoples are dying, and the world Crumbles grayly . . . Autumn of civilization Gorgeous with fruit Dissolves in storm . . . And we. Our dead about us. Know the great darkening of the sun And the frozen months. Sounding our hemlock anthem. Hanging our bitter-sweet . . . We walk in ruined woods And among graves: Earth is a burying ground , . . Nations go down, and dreams And myths of peoples And the forlorn hopes Make one burial . . , And we Came from the darkness, never to see A Shakespeare's England, A Sophocles' Athens, But to live in the world's latter days. In the great Age of Death, Sons of Doomsday . • . t4l He also came. And walked this crooked world j Its image, 3 In him the world's winter. Ruined boughs and disheveled cornfields. And the hunchback rocks Gray on the hills. Passed down our streets. ... Passed and is gone; and for him and the dying world Our dirge sounds . . . Yet suddenly the wind catches up with glory Our anthem, and peals wild hope. Blowing of scattered bugles . . . And the wind cries: Look, Pierce to the soul of the cripple Where, immortal. The spirit of youth goes on. Which dies never, but shall be The green and the garland of the Spring. And the wind cries: Down To the dissolution of the grave The crippled body of the world must go And die utterly. That the seed may take April's rain And bring Earth's blooming back, [5 ] Bitter-sweetj and a northwest wind To sing his requiem. Who was Our Age, And who becomes An imperishable symbol of our ongoing. For in hi?nself He rose above his body and came among us Prophetic of the race. The great hater Of the dark human deformity Which is our dying world. The great lover Of the spirit of youth Which is our future's seed . . • In forced blooming we saw Glimpses of awaited Spring. 6 And so, lifting our eyes, we hang Bitter-sweet for remembrance Of Randolph Bourne. And winter s child Is gathered in the green hemlock arms And sung to rest . . . Sung to rest in our living he arts ^ We receive the rejected. Weaving a wreath of triumph For Randolph Bourne. [6] THE SEA THE SEA My song begins with the song of the sea, For the song of the sea is the song eternal. ... The forests shout and are still: no leaf stirs: The winds sleep. ... The rocks are the keeps of silence . . . But the sea sings unendingly on the shores of the human world, And no prow puts out but is rippled with music . . • Restlessness and rest are in that song, Varying measures, and snatches of tune, and thin whispers and braying trumpets, And solo singing and chorals of multitude . . . Restlessness and rest . . . The toilers on the shore know that the brine is bitter and that the briny song is bitter. . . . And the seafarer hears under the full moon the mother lull- aby along the ship . . . This song is the cradle-song and the voyage-song and the grave-song of humanity . . . The land, born of the ocean, is eaten away by this hungry mother, [9] The inland pines long to go back and they remember the sea-songs of old time, And in the ears of a man this song never ceases . . . One song, as the planet flies, rises unendingly from its lips, And in that song the planet-children are enfolded, and never go free of it, And never desire to go free of it, The unborn are astir in water. The elfin-faint song of the mother enfolds them And the born hear that song again on the shores, And the deep roots, yea, the sea-bottom roots of the soul tremble with that music. And drink the miracle drink . . . For that song is the song that the sea of creation sings and and sings, Rolling with breakers and foaming billows and white-caps of stars. Restlessness and rest. Incessant, ceaseless on the shores of night, On the shores of life . . . All-permeating sea-song, Music of the fluid blood and the moving spirit, life that is never silent. Energy rolling in rhythms, triumphant, despairing, soli- tary, multitudinous. Ascending descending song, the impetuous storm-brine, the soothing moon-sheen, The icy waters that burn, the balm of the equatorial baths. Wails of the stricken, moans of the dying, shouts of the strugglers, [ lO] Dirge and lullaby, bells of the bridal and the burial, — All within myself, all on the shores of my own body, The unending song of the planet of my own flesh . . . The Mother forever near me . . . The great Mother singing to her child . . . Cities have also a deep sea music that ebbs in the darkness and flows in the morning, Unending, unsilent . . . A solitary from the hills Hearing that song, is aware of a cruel sea, A sea whose singing is in antiphonies of yes and no. Choruses that battle in hoarse conflict, A surging of storm-music, untriumphant, discordant . . . A song that is noise with but overtones of concord . , . The city dweller never is amazed at the song in which he himself is a bleeding chord. How could he be amazed, knowing the hearts of men, The anguish, ambition, defeat? I have heard the songs of great cities, The dim bellowing of bare ebb-tides an hour or two after midnight, The washing lull of the dead hours, The tremulous footsteps of sleep-walkers. The rumble of the tide turning and the fresh cold wind that whips the gutters from the East, The clash and growl of the first foam of the flood. The flood itself, roaring tumultuously and with urgent power through the streets, [11] The white-caps and choppy waters of high noon, Bustle, gossip and chatter of the slow sun, The mighty out-rolling and resistless pull of the shouting ebb-tide, The last sweet babble, the whispers, kisses, delicious teasing of the moon-white ebb. The silvery low-singing tunes of first sleep . . . Day after day, night after night this song . . . Great, terrible and magical in London, Manhattan, and Paris . . . Foam of brief lovers in the gardens of the Tuileries, Foam of the waifs of London at blue-lit crossings near Pic- cadilly Circus, Foam of the sleepers on benches and the dry hot grass of parks in midsummer Manhattan . . . Foam and sparkle, and the clean blue sweep of waters, and the stormy crests of crowds, bursting billows of gnash- ing mobs, spumy moon-bursts of revolutionists. . . . The election crowds on Broadway, the torchlight crowds, the concert crowds in the Mall . . . Day after day, and night after night, this song . . . The sea, black in the winter cloud-light, Swinging rough squares of sheeted water, laced with white foam, And spouting spume through the wind's mouth, and slash- ing into blue about jutting rocks. Hard, broken, like jostling steel, out to the sky-rim. Heaves with a merciless menace, with a monstrous strength . . . [ 12] There is no pity in the sea, And nothing human. . . . Indoors we may build a fire of faggots, And read of lovers and of saviors . . . In human warmth we may open our hearts . . . But the wild light of November dusk glances along the win- dows, The darkening room has a smile of fire, Our backs shadow out through the walls to the shadow- shaking skies, Backwardly we are hurled in the fight and fury of winds and waters, The brutal ocean unleashed vents a venomous hatred, Now the ship is clapped together, and fisted out of the flood, and pulled by talons under, And the sea's song is a bellowing and uproar out of iced hell . . . Softly the human voice goes on intoning the tale of gentle lovers. The sad sweet savior story . . . " All is love," the voice sings, " God is love . . ." Dimly in the smile of the fire we strive to create a circle and spot of love . . . But we are shadows in the light, and our life is swirling out over the rocking sea. The house-walls fall apart, we stride clouds. We ride the tempest like witches . . • And the human being whose soft voice remembers love for us, We know is a demon with a strange mask. [ 13 ] Was it not yesterday that the sea was as gentle as a girl Who after the restlessness of longing Is with her lover again, in a secret place, And he is caressing her? Was it so long ago when the sea was as plaintive as a wounded child moaning for its mother, Forsaken on the shore, hidden from the face of the moon ? Or so long ago when the sea, striding like heroic youth in the morning sunshine, Shouted courage to the toilers on the shore, And his laughter echoed among the rocks? Or when the sea like a god, some ancient and understanding mother. Laid soothing and healing hands of song on the hearts of men? Sea of battles, sea of matings, sea mournful over the graves of the unremembered, Rhapsodic on summer mornings with the flush of youth, Sultry with passions, fogged with gropings, starry with un- measured majesty, Serene, furious, meditative, cold and hot, bitter and sweet, Guised in all ages, the helpless child, the youth, the mature, the mother and father. Brutal and delicate, divine, demonic. What are you, sea ? what are you, like something in my own depths ? Like something of humanity, yet not human? [14] I see the great race surging, I see the great race rolling, I hear the war-guns thunder and the clear-voiced choirs singing . . . I step in a house where a tired mother croons to her sleepy child, I walk along the shore, in the gleaming summer night, and hear the babble of lovers. . . . The murderer walks side by side with the saint. The reactionist and the revolutionist hate one another. The judge is judged by the convict, the sick are healing the doctors, The waves break one through another, the waves appear only as tools and slaves of the resistless tides. The tides interlink, the undertow pulls against the flood, The sea storms, is calm, is diluted with rain and resalted out of its depths, Mercy, anguish, tribulation and sleep . . . the weather changes . . . We help the delivery of the new-born, and shovel earth on the dead . . . Mare teternis! Out of the bowels of chaos, you sea of life, Seething, divine, merciful and fiendish humanity, Flood of ages, flood forever old, forever new. Laced with the foam of thinking, with white-caps of ideal- ism, Silvered with moonlight dream, golden with the broken-up sun, each sun-splinter a hero and a savior, [ '5] Changeless through incessant changing, A sea with every wave striving to leap clear of the deeps and be a soul, With every wave longing to walk self-contained on the hard bright shore, Rolling yearningly toward the shore, and helplessly dragged back. Sea in which each wave is only water swinging with the ebb and flow of the flood. Sea that dreams of transcending itself because the sun sucks it up into shining vapor-drops, But the rain falls, the sea drinks back the rain, and after the storm the sea is the same as before . . . Mare a terms! Circle of life turning viciously in on itself, Serpent with its tail in its mouth, revolving like a wheel. Dreams of millennium when the charmed circle is broken, [When the tail is torn from the mouth. Dreams of education, of justice, of democracy, of religion When at last there is freedom from the wash and backwash, the tide and undertow. The mad multitude-passions, the helpless riding of storms, the helter-skelter of weather, the groping in the fog, When at last the sea rises above itself Out of demonic depths to clean divine peaks . . . The storm of revolution rides the sea. Crying " We bring freedom, we bring peace "... And revolution, like reaction, brings a new slavery, a new war . . . For how shall the sea change its nature and how shall the sea be anything but the sea ? [ i6] Beautiful over Russia shines the star of revolution ... And beautiful in the manger of the Soviets again the Christ- child is born on Earth, A divine song is in the air . . . And irresistibly, as of old, the Christ shall be crucified by his own people . . . For the sea has not changed because a golden light falls through the storm on the bitter waters . . . The sea of the people is the same sea that the tyrants rode, " Whoever is not for us, is against us," sang the tyrants, And the people sing: " Because our cause is holy and a lib- eration. Whoever is not for us, is against us." It is ever in the name of holiness and through divine sanc- tion that man crucifies man, The holier the cause, the more horrible the sacrifice . . . For so long as man is of the sea, like the sea he must sing all songs, God-songs and devil-songs, music of mercy, music of bru- tality . . . So long as man is of the sea, all weathers shall sway him, And out of the divine shall leap the demonic . . . A friend comes to the solitary and says to him : " But surely out of pity you are for the people, Surely you are with the oppressed, the despised and the hungry . . . Surely you cannot stand by and see children suffer ..." And the solitary answers: What shall I do? [ 17 ] ** You shall become one of us," says the friend, " For whoever is not for us, Is against us . . »" And the solitary ponders and answers: " But if I become one of you, I become one of the op- pressors . . . For what you believe in is of God, and what your enemies believe in is of the devil . . . Oppression begins when God hurls Satan out of heaven . . ." " Yet," says the friend, " are we not more right than our enemies?" And the solitary answers: ** What is newest is most right . . . For the new desires things of glory, even as the old, when it was new, desired things of glory . . . But answer me: wherein do you and your fellows differ from those of old? " ** Our aims, our ideals, our purposes are different," says the friend . . . And the solitary answers: *' The sea of man is littered all over with the spindrift of ideals . . . Great dreams and ideas go washing over the waves . . . Wreckages of divine civilizations mock the great flood . . . But so long as man is of the sea, so long will the sea use him in its eternal way . . . Man's world is what man is, not what he dreams . . ." " But this is hopelessness," says the friend. And the solitary answers : " This is but life . . , [ i8] And when men seek to transcend themselves, they shall break the wheel, They shall come out of the sea . . . Only when a man becomes human does he cease to be a herd, an energy, a sea, a thing of nature, And is healed of the mighty opposites . . . It is because of the sea in himself from which he has never emerged. It is because of nature in himself, the flux, the tides, storms, visions and furies. That he remains a primitive masked in a dream of di- vinity . . . " Let him start a revolution in his own soul, and free the slaves in his own spirit, And conquer the tyrants in his own breast, And harness the beast in his blood. And put away the temptation to be a supreme god. And the equal temptation to be a powerful demon . . . Then perhaps he shall step up on the shore of a new world. And find what all are seeking . . . " It is weakness to seek freedom for self by slaughtering others ... Equality, liberty, brotherhood are of the soul, and are of the self . . . The easy way is out and over, the hard way is in and through . . . It is man's soul that needs a millennium and not man's world . . .'* So the solitary spoke, and of course his words were a riddle, they were not understood . . . And these two could be friends no longer . , , [ 19 ] II / sinff the battle of the soul: At moon-wane, in furious foam-flecked seas, eddies and spouts and spirals, The dreaming soul, a wave of flesh, whipped, wandering, tossing on hilly waters. Becomes aware of itself ... The bellbuoys clang longings for freedom. And the sea like innumerable bells takes up the song, and goes pealing with it, And the waking soul rolls like a bell clanging for libera- tion . • . " I am a child," sings the soul, " I am a child and a slave ..." , " I am a child of two mothers ..." ' For the soul finds now a sea within the sea, It finds the surface sea of the waves of flesh clashing and shouting around it, It finds the under sea profound, the depths, deep and sound- less . . . Outer sea and inner sea, And only a wall of flesh like a strip of sand between the waters . . . Only a wall of flesh between the two engulfing mothers . . . [ao] And the soul, whipped, wandering, tossing on hilly waters, Water itself gliding through water, Sport of the monstrous currents, the divine-demonic tides, Takes soundings in the depths and learns its law. . . . The song of the outer sea is a loud song. But the song of the inner sea is a still small song . . , And the inner sea sings : " All seas conquer their slaves. But to the conqueror of seas all seas bring gifts . . . Shoreward, O soul, shoreward, be free . . ." Now there is a wrestler in the sea: He wrestles with the deep sea and the sea of waves: He sinks: he rises: he puts out strokes toward the shore: he is sucked back: Giddily he whirls, spitting the brine from his mouth, and laughs wildly, and is water slapping to and f ro . . . And there comes upon him languor, and hate of the clashing waves, and disgust of motion, and weariness of effort, He is tired of small-sized devils and gods, Fatigued with crowds . . . And into his ears now the deep still sea intones a siren song . . . *' In," it sings, "under . . . come down, my child . . . Out of restlessness, rest. Out of pain, peace . . . There are memories with gentle ghosts, beloved shapes for- gotten, in the depths; Mother is there when the child comes home, She shall croon to you : she shall take you to her bosom . . . And deeper than memory is Eden, [21 ] And Mother Eve and your Father God walking on the grass when the lilacs blossom . . , And beneath God, the float of eternal peace . . .'* The soul listens, and sinks . . . Sinks into the arms of the Mother . . , Sinks through a layer of terror, through the terrible creeds and prohibiting bans of life . . . Breaks the law of being, which is struggle, And finds peace and enfolding death. ... And the soul must now choose: life or death, Reality or Nirvana . . . I sing not of those who, in living death, are sealed in them- selves. But I sing the battle of the soul, iWhich dashes away from its lips the much-loved cup of dream, And with birth-throes breaks open the Mother and floun- ders out on the swirling floods, And, strong with the depths, strikes shoreward again . . . Many Satans entangle this swimmer and wrestler . . . And a sunset song and a sunrise song ring in his ears and allure him . . . " Power, Power, Power," the sunrise song repeats, *' Love, Love, Love," comes singing from the sunset . • • Out of the sunrise, mirage of conquerors . . . ** Be the highest wave," is the shout . . . '' For about the highest wave the cry of fame goes circling, And the highest wave that rises over the shoulders of the lesser waves, [ 22 ] That goes up by trampling down, Shall be as a rider of the sea, stern with the joy of mas- tery . . . Get above the sea, by climbing over it," is the song of the visionary conquerors . . . Old song and terrible . . . The soul essays the task, and his height is only a slippery pushing of the lesser waves about him. And his is the serfdom and the slavery of height . . • Who can stay high, who refuses to obey the low? But out of the sunset the song of love comes alluring. Over the crimson and melting tide the beautiful waves come trooping, White hands, white hands are stretched to the wanderer, Faces glide out of shadow and back, Golden breasts are soft in sunset, Youth sings to youth . . . There is a song of little children in the song of love, There is a song of fireside and the nest sheltered from the blast, A song of mother and father and home . . . ** Why do you wander," it sings, '' and why do you strive for the unattainable? What use is there in icy, lonely freedom? What comfort on the peak? Power is bitterness: solitude is madness: Give yourself to the common ways, the homely ways, the folk ways: Come into this cove of the ocean, sheltered from time and tumult . . . [23] Forget the depths and the heights — but while there is yet life, live, Live on from day to day, with many soft arms around you . . ." This song is the most subtle temptation of the soul, This sunset song . . . But I sing the battle of the soul Which wrestles with the weakness of love, which is self-love, And the meshes of melting pity, which is self-pity . . . Now the soul comes to a knowledge of itself. And finds, in horror, that all the evils of the world, Yes, all the evils of the two seas. Are of itself, tangled with itself, That the public evil of the outer sea And the cosmic evil of the inner sea Are woven like threads into itself . . . So it ceases now to wrestle with other souls, And begins to wrestle with its own soul . . . In itself to push out the slave and the tyrant, the beast and the saint, the devil and god . . . Yea, it goes up even against its beautiful gods. Its adored Jesus, pure-browed Mary, and revered Jehovah, And trembling with superstitious fear, breaks their images . . . And the soul cries : " I have been water in water. What I thought was self was my mingling in others. Imitation of Christ, imitation of heroes, imitation of this teacher, that; But now I will put all out of me though I am stripped and husked like an ear of corn [ 24 ] And find in the end, mildew and withered kernels . . . I shall win myself though myself is the thinnest of shadows, The tiniest of seeds . . . I will become lonely, in order to be born . . ." Bitter are the waters of November, Bleak is the cold snow-pitted air that whirls over the barren sea, And the gray clouds that massively fold black shadows, while the sea's song is a dirge, a threnody, And there is no life on the deep, but the mechanical sloping of breakers . . . Barren, endless, and bitter the sea rides, A few gulls wheel, the air is a flight of shadows . . . loneliness, who has sung your song, who has known your dark music? Only the stripped soul knows you, only the naked self has tasted your salt . . . As by a miracle the soul, wrestling only with itself, draws to the shore. And that gray day breaks when it stands shivering and naked on the sand. And looking about, sees that it is alone. And that the sea is warmer than the winter air, And that comfort is only in the sea . . . Like a child, the soul weeps . . . " I am separated from all things," it whimpers, " I am sundered from all fires, and aloof from comfort . . . 1 am naked, and have become little ... [25] O the unbearableness of littleness, the pain of being only human and little . . ." And now comes the temptation of the return . . , But I sing the battle of the soul Which, lonely as in death, straightens up in all nakedness, Takes the North wind and the terrible view of emptiness, And the dying of all old ways of comfort and mightiness, And the being cut off from the face of Man and the face of God . . . 1 sing of the soul that has won self out of the clutch of the seas, Self, but a bitter little fruit to win, But conquered and kept . . . The day dies, the night is still . . , In a few dark hours a long season passes. And in the darkness before dawn on the land the song of meadowlarks is heard, And the smell of lilacs comes down to mix with the sea- smell . . . A new song is on the sea, A softer and clearer song, a music of the south and the homing bluebirds. And in the heart, a new song . . . " Spring has come . . . What grass blades pierce the loam of the spirit? What leaves open their crumpled baby hands? And where is loneliness now with sea and earth and the shining cities of men [ 36 ] Singing about me? And where is bitterness now and barrenness, with the golden light Shallowing along the uneven sea and dropping from the blue heavens ? And what is this in my being that bubbles upward unhin- dered and free, Is it understanding? Has love come? " Now the soul chants the chant of freedom And the miracle of separation . . . Now it glories in being human, and is glad of littleness . . . Now the soul resists the depths no longer, and wrestles no longer with gods and demons. For, behold, it is at one with the depths . . . Soul and sea sing the song of reconciliation . . . For he who is engulfed in the sea is a slave of the sea, But to the conqueror of the sea, the sea brings gifts . . . Yea, the monster sea now becomes the comrade of the soul, And sea and soul move as married . . • The soul sings : " Because I am myself and not the sea, nor in it, Now I can work with the sea . . . The sea has mighty currents and tides of destiny. And I, born of the sea, must give myself to my doom, Accept the destiny the depths allot me. The destiny I make my own through my own need, my own willingness . . . And working with the sea, I shall work out my life . . ." [27] Dreams, phantasies, imaginings . . . Bubbling of the depths, the risen visionary billows of the sea of the spirit. In the night breaking on the shores of consciousness And the soul resisting like sand and rock, and so writing crooked lines of dream, Yea, the soul and the sea between them writing crooked lines of dream ... On the shore at the break of day the soul walks And examines the crooked lines, and deciphers this writing, And learns its law ... the law of the marriage of sea and soul . . . And obeying this law, is free . . . Not inland the soul goes, not seaward . . . But along its jagged shore — its own fate, given by self and the sea . . . There is a mystery here, inexpressible: And however the books describe it, Only he who has won himself may understand . . . Only the lover knows love, only the sorrower sorrow, Only the free soul freedom. ... / sinff the battle of the soul Which even when free longs back at times for bondage. And often is lured by the white hands under And swallowed again in the sea. And again he battles, and again he must win his free- dom . . . 1 28] Ill Mare aternis! In the night, flashes of lightning illumining your moving acres, Sky-thunder answering sea-thunder, Sky and sea wrestling in a broken blackness . . . The whistling of the wind in the teeth of the night . . . Slash of the rain and the crackling of the broom and grass on the sand-dunes . . . All life seeks cover: the bird to his nest, the nestling to the brooding wing, And inland beasts to their lairs . . . 'Mare aternisf Intolerable power, Trampling destructiveness. Shattering energy . . . Between such forces who can stand and w^alk? Who can survive between such a sea and such a sky? Yet I see a lantern on the shore, I see staggering yellow light on oilskin, the double motion of legs. Flap of a coat about a button, a halo of slanting rain around the swinging lantern . . . It is the solitary walking by the sea, [ 29] It is the solitary stooping now and then to study the crooked tide-lines, the debris and driftage when a billow pulls back, It is the solitary battling against the risen outstretched com- bers and their devouring mouths, Battling against the loosed skies and the lightning, wading his way through a double thunder . . . Seaward the lightning reveals a swirling quadrangle of the deep, And the solitary looking, feels his heart tighten and become a knot. . . . Are those human heads and slippery naked human bodies struggling among the white-caps? Is the sea-water blood, reddening round them? Is it their own blood reddens the sea? Look, with sharp blades they are stabbing and hacking at each other . . . The sheeted lightning fails, burying the melee in black- ness . . . " Humanity! humanity! " cries the solitary . . . " O you, my flesh, flesh of the adoration and the dream of brotherhood and of love, Flesh of the infinite clear and quiet reason, Flesh of the music of the isles of Greece, Flesh of the coming of the Christ, Flesh dedicated to divine vision, Are you madness and murder and ravening bestiality? What is in the heart of man, what is in his soul? What sky-terror? what sea-horror? What snake's venom does a man spit? and what dragon's fire? [ 30] You sons of God, Is your mother the earthquake and the avalanche ? " Mare aternis! I know now what song your storm is sing- ing; What hymn of hate yells in the gale and the roaring swale and the thundering sky . . . I know now your love of the suffering and anguish of others, Your tiger-love of enemies. You who knew how to Invent racks and cannons and vapors of dense poison and spirts of body-smothering flame . . ." And as the solitary cried out a mob In a breaker broke about him, And with loud shouts they ringed him toward the sea . . . He did not fight them: he fought a beast that suddenly reared out of his own depths, And the billow fell away ... But one shouted from the sea-fringe . . . " Who are you, traitor, who stand aside from the battle ? '* " What have I to do with the battle ? " asked the soli- tary . . . " If you are not with us," cried the other, *' you are with the enemy ! " " Neither with the enemy, nor with you," the solitary answered . . . [ 31 ] " Are you not a human being? " the other cried. " And are you not of our nation? And is not the voice of the people the voice of God? " *' Yes," answered the solitary, " the voice of the people is the voice of God, And it is also the voice of the Devil ..." The night dragged away the questioner: but the solitary was troubled . . . He stooped and read the crooked writing in the sand . . • And he read : ** Obey the law of your being . . . Obey the law of sea and self in your own soul . . . Accept your destiny . . . Neither resist them nor obey them: they know not what they do . . . Evade, and go on . . ." Under the cover of the storm, the solitary, muffling his lantern, picked his way . . . And he mused: " When shall the voice of the people be voices ^ and these voices, neither God nor devil, but human? When shall the cause cease to be a sacred cause, and one's friends cease to be saints and one's enemies Satans? When shall humanity cease to be a sea, an energy of nature, a clash of opposites, and become human? When shall a man cease to walk in the steps of his gods and half-gods And walk in his own steps? [32] When shall men cease from violence against others and turn the battle against the evil in themselves? Do they not know that the evil they bayonet is an evil • within them? And when shall they cease from demanding that the free return to their bondage?" " Yea," mused the solitary, " The deep sea and I are in league. How then can I obey the surface sea of humanity which is but the froth, toy and slave of the deep sea? Whom have I harmed? whom have I opposed? Why are they jealous of me? why do they destroy the strong and those who refuse to be bound with their bondage ? What do they fear at the hands of free men? Are they not shouting for freedom all the time? They cry : '' We must be free " ; but if anyone becomes free, they put him in chains and thrust him in jail . . . Not freedom they seek: but power . . . The sea wants power and sensual sultry nights, And noise, and motion, and bondage, and abandon . . . The sea loves the taste of many things But loves nothing so much as the taste of human blood . . . ** The solitary went plunging through the night, And the great storm reeled about him. By lightning-illumination he saw terrible sights. Visions of the deep that wrung his heart and blinded him with angry tears . . . He saw a crumbling acre of skinny wretches, a toss of be- seeching hands, and heard the animal cry of hunger, Starving children floated dying on the sliding foam, [ 33 ] iWailing mothers crouched over babies and the waves washed them apart, The cruel lightning slashed down among them, the tide boiled with blood . . . And darkness carried their sorrow afar . . . And he saw an acre of wild gayety, a dance of Dionysian fury in the sea. Eerie phosphorescence over the combers' crests, and the naked passion of men and women. And a laughter more horrible than the wail of hunger in that sea of blood . . . And he saw at one place two lovers quarreling, And each was trying to win back the soul he had lost in the other, For their love was a living each of the other's life, And now each hated the other because he had lost his own freedom. And since each soul was in the other each stab they gave stabbed only themselves . . . Their hate was perfect, for their love was great . . . And in that scene the solitary seemed to see the whole struggle of humanity . . . And he saw many other sights, and some of surpassing beauty. Sudden glimpses so tenderly beautiful that pity softened him . . . The friend who took his friend's place in guilt and died for him . . . The worn mother smiling with devout joy over the triumph of her son, [ 34] The unspoiled magic of first love, a boy and a girl shy and reverent before each other . . . The lonely scientist giving up all things to cure a malign disease . . . Joyous singers, innocent children, teachers patient with the young . . . Much of wonder, pity and sweetness . . . moon-glimpses in a thunderstorm . . . And the solitary thought : " Surely I cannot walk apart from all this . . . Surely I am flesh of this flesh . . . How can I go on in loneliness on the shore when the deep is a cry and a question and a beseeching of hands? My folk is caught in the sea-nets, struggling, blind and in darkness . . . Their terror and ecstasy are here — not on some distant planet — And I am here . . . What can I do ? what is my portion of the guilt and glory? " He held his lantern to the crooked tide-lines, And he read: " The fruit ripens, and when it is ripened it falls, And the animals eat of it . . . Green fruit is no gift to hungry mouths — but only the ripened and mellow fruit . . ." Walking on, he pondered the riddle . . . " Can it mean," he mused, '* that when I am ripe, I too shall be a gift? It is true I have nothing to give to mankind but myself . . . Myself through my works . . . [ 35 ] Must I let my Works ripen in me, and when they are ripe, let them drop? I live through the gifts of the sea — I should die this instant if humanity withheld its service, its dreams, its com- radeship . . . Then I must give back all of myself . . . give back love and understanding and comradeship and the day's work. Yea, and the life-work ... ** And I understand," he cried at last . . . " To ripen, I must grow by my own law, Even as an apple grows by its own law . . , Hence, I go against others only when they demand that I follow their law; I must resist such violence, and hold to my way . . . Only thus may I become a gift to the folk , . . But if I join with this group and that, if I enter their set wars, and their sea of passions. Then growth is warped by that which is beyond the human. Then again I am only water in water, a helpless wave of the sea . . . The free soul must give himself But himself can only emerge and be born when he comes out of other selves, [When he obeys, not others, but himself . . .'* [36] IV Wonderful as a bird in the float of the sunrise in the moun- tains Is the sharp littleness, the sun-drinking solitude of the redeemed soul . . . Where there are rocks, and a shoulder of grassy Earth, The solitary stands in the mountain morning, Wind-kissed, facing the dawn . . . Here the sea-song is a forest-song And here what flowed is solid . . . The solitary sings the song of deliverance . , . I drink the sun, who drank only bitter waters . . I see hill, sky and grass, clear and chiselled out real by the strokes of the sun-rays . . . And I that tossed in floundering seas Have earth and rock underfoot ... Everything is solid as a stone And my soul is solid as a stone ... Littleness is a strong house to liye in . • . It is a stone . . . [37] A stone that no waters may wear away . . , From the mountains the seas have departed For seas are at home only in abysses . . . Out of the seas of the Earth the mountains rise up Shouting the song of freedom . . . I that was a sailor and a swimmer have become a moun- taineer. Gulf of heaven, blue pocket of the abyss, Enveloping sun-arched sky whose impalpable dome melts in the twilight. By dusk melted like a dusty blue cobweb, And when the cobweb vanishes, a symbol of Eternity appears, A star, and then a bridge of stars suspended between the piers of the universe. And upward into the abyss man looks. Standing on two legs against the turning lump of Earth With upraised face against the wheeling of the worlds in unsheltered night . . . I, a man, stand as self-contained and solid in my littleness, As you in your vastness . . • I am human. You are Cosmos, I would not change places with you: I would not be else- where: I dream of no past or future: I accept the present moment, the present place and what I am . . . Standing on a hurried lump in the abyss, [ 38] I claim myself ... This is the sea-fruit the ocean seeks ever to deliver from its w^omb . . . This is the child the mother yearned to bear . . . For w^herefore the stormy passion of the whipped deep? Wherefore the freedom-hunger in humanity? What is the urge toward redemption? what is this terrible age-long cry for a savior? Why does the sea deliver the hills out of itself? Why do they stand up, these rocks? What is the meaning of the dry land and the peaks? As the hills from the sea; so man from the sea . . . The sea rises up into rain, and the rain falls down again . . . But if the rain fall into the sea It is only water falling on water . . . But the hills laugh as they take the rain in their faces, And out of the hills come blossoms, grasses, flowers and fruit, And nibbling wet mouths are glad of fresh Earth . . . The mountains are great Because the sea does not come to them like a devouring monster But comes to them only in the mercy of rain ; This is a gift of the sea to all that is delivered out of the sea . . . And so when the soul is delivered The great sea sends spring rain over the soul ... What was sea-water to the soul when it too was a wave of the sea? [ 39] But now It IS of the mountains and when the sea comes to it on the wings of the clouds and dissolves upon it in rain Like moist soil it drinks this mercy and feels the roots be- ginning to stir, And the grass blades piercing, and the blossoms beginning to open . . . Now it knows the joy and copious loving motherhood of the sea Which gives its free children the rain of plenty . . . And the soul in the distance beholds the blue sea among its capes, And in the forest and in the grass and echoing far over the morning air It hears the song eternal, the song of the sea . . . My song ends with the song of the sea . . . The song the sea sings untiringly on the shores of the world . . . One song, as the planet flies, rises unendingly from its lips, And in that song the planet children are enfolded, and never go free of it, And never desire to go free of it . . . For the soul hearing this song, trembles with music to its roots And drinks the miracle drink. . . . It is the song of the Mother forever near. It is the song of the great Mother singing to her child • • • [ 40 ] *' O song," sings the soul, " which first I heard in the neigh- boring heart-beats and blood pulses of my mother, Song that shaped in my own brain which was a bay of the silver-clashing sea of the past, Immemorial music that slips through the mother in the body of the child at the hour of birth. And he carries it into the world, and he hears it in tne world. In the bodies of men and women, in the motions of nature, In nations, and sky, and Earth, and ocean . . , Eternal song, eternal voice of the Mother . . . Malformed Mother, become beautiful and straight when the child finds freedom . . . Mother who loves the free . . . Mother who scourges slaves but walks like a comrade with the emancipated. . . . Your song, Mother, sounds in my ears forever . . . And by your song and the song of my soul married like treble and bass, one strain, I live and I labor. And out of your timeless wisdom I find my light, And out of your power, my flame ..." Cradle-song — voyage-song — grave-song of humanity . . . Song whose refrain is a promise, a new vision, a new symbol . . . Symbol of the complete human being Whose coming in us all is the hope of the universe . . . [41 ] SONGS OUT OF SOLITUDE THE SHIP OF SKIES The ship of skies Foundered in the west And its blazing prow Sank off some thundering shore beyond the silence And dark green of the world. Or like ten rivers The thin-spread clouds ran Converging with vermilion and purple waters On the western ledge And pouring in flame over the world's edge ... In those bright regions Sails were blown beyond our trouble And some great action Moved like song . . , But here on tired Earth The heavy mist filled the green runnels of valleys ; The weary air Grew dark around the thrush's aching throat; The house Gloomed itself silent and black . . . The day Drowsed off to sleep. [45 ] MIST I I In mist Monday Looms, A world groping its way on a soundless, Sightless sea: Breaking the mist like a ship Stopped by bells . . . No ripples: No rain-patter: No hum of engines: A dead ship On the dead sea . . . But on deck voices Clear, querulous, human. In the becalmed air of these hills A strayed flicker pipes, A frog grunts, Footsteps sound on gravel: [46] But the mountain-garden Lies at the bottom of a motionless ocean, And Earth is an underworld. The forest has given itself to the arms of whiteness, And the hills wander like sheep. In mist Monday Looms, A giant ship stopped on a soundless, Sightless sea. II In mist the soul Plaintively whispers ... " There are tears too many," it whispers, "And fears too many; I am weary of the ever-striving, I am tired of tears . . . I am weary of the groping and the stumbling On the gray graves of the years ... " There is memory of girls like moths in the twilight On the old city ways, Memory of the gray twilight of the old days: Memory of the hands of children clutching, clutching, Beloved faces, dead, appear . . . Beloved arms are round my drooping head And her song is in my ear." [47] Ill In mist the world Forsakenly sings . . . " Oh, for the old dead days of peace," it sings, " The old sweet ways of peace . . . There were cities that ran with the sunrise of wild youth, Our children were alive, All over again the Golden Fleece was to win And honey to gain for the hive . . . " All over again there was love's wild sweetness to win, And the tale of the home retold, The golden breakers lured to a launching of ships In the years of old . . . The aged of Earth could vanish away like the night Before the sun of the young. The human song that has risen with every spring Was now to be resung ... " But the youth of the world lies dead, The young blood is spilled, We shall live for a long winter Among the graves of the killed . . . We shall live for a long winter Remembering ways of peace. Recalling the days of peace; We shall grow old in the knowledge We were better dead with these." [48] IVi In mist Monday Looms, A world groping its way on a soundless, Sightless sea: Breaking the mist like a ship Stopped by bells . . . [49] SILENCE And now I know how quiet a thing And calm Is freedom . , . It cannot raise its voice nor break The rhythm of its breathing . . . It is, — Needing no song, No trumpets . . . It does not cry nor laugh But is silent . . . To give it voice Silence should have to turn to song. But what is song? . . . . Silence broken. t 50j RAIN-SONG I hear the window, It is splashed, lashed: I hear the forest, There is rain in the gesticulating branches: I hear the thrush, There is rain in his tawny throat ; I hear my mother in the kitchen singing as she peels peaches : There is rain in her dark heart. [51] SUMMER NIGHT Down South *s singing: " Darkies, Roll dem cotton bales ..." " Tennessee's ketching de Memphis blues ..." . . . And a moon on the Mississippi Is as sheer love-mad As a moon on Lake Michigan . . . Lincoln Park is silver-washed with lake ripples: Every dark spot is a nest for two cool aching bodies • • (I remember you, Chicago girl, And the blue electric light on your blue eyes, Kisses with the taste of soft coal smoke in them. Gossip with railroad yards in the rear.) Telephone bells, those rasping telephone bells, Why are they ringing in the moonlight When folks should be loving and singing? There are too many people in New York City: There are miles of roofs all cluttered with legs and arms and faces: There are chimney stacks all black in the moon like silver tarnished . . . I see a boy of five on a chimney-top Nude against the moon Urinating silver on the city . . • The moon smiles . . . [52] A ferry boat carries yellow waters about her, Pier bells clang . . . Beside a heap of pigiron on the dock the 'longshoreman's daughter Is honeying the captain's son . . • " Yes," says the salesman, fresh from the Lackawanna Lim- ited, His hands on the steel of the ferry gates, " Say what you want, there's nothing like her . . . Good old Girl . . . She's the skyline all right, all right . . . O that Golden Woolworth Tower! Out of five and ten cent pieces he pulled a skyscraper Biggest on Earth . . . De-mocracy, I tell yer . . . '* They eat in the Childs' Restaurants at two in the morning: Buckwheat cakes with corn syrup, Mugs of coffee on marble slabs ... In New Orleans, Deadwood, Key West and Council Bluffs, In Portland, Oregon, and Portland, Maine, A young woman has so multiplied her image That while she sits in the flesh sipping a lemonade in Los Angeles, The movie millions laugh and cry, watching her loveliness in rags in the Rockies . . . "Ain't Mary Pickford a darling?" The Baltimore trolley cars go jammed with summer fluff and straw hats [ 53 ] Out to Electric City, Blazing, booming, shrieking . . . And come back crowded down silent avenues . . . (Trolleys along the Atlantic Coast, Trolleys in the Alleghanies, Trolleys making the loop in soot-soft Pittsburgh, Trolleys in the dark streaking a flare through moon-lit countryside.) Coney Island skims golden platters along the edge of the Atlantic Ocean . . . Ten young dolphin women sport in the heaving breakers, They shriek and scatter as the lifeboat swings among them . . . Down beside the cottonfields A line of shanties: Mammy sings: "Deep River," With a dark child at her bosom . . . Pickaninny cries like white trash for the moon . . . The young negroes are singing Banjo-tunes . . . On door-steps in Denver The white shimmering girls Laugh lightly while the spick-and-span boys Try to be men in love . . . Above the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, A little out of St. Paul, Not far fromi Clevaland, In the swaying cushioned Pullmans under yellow bulbs The porters are making up the berths . . . [ 54] All the commercial American hotels Have electric lights, individual bathrooms, valet service, and are fireproof skyscrapers . . . Conventions are breaking up their meetings in the ball- rooms . . . Out in the streets the cars clash, the boys shout <( Atlanta is sweltering tonight, But Minneapolis is cool . . . New York is full of the sea, lazy warm and moon- drunk . . . It's odd to think that the hospitals, the almshouses, and the Morgues Are crowded with wrecks and corpses ... It's odd to think of suicides in hall bedrooms, or down by the dreaming sea, or along the Ohio . . . It's odd to think of an East-Side room in gaslight And a greasy father with a grand passion Tearing his hair like Othello because his daughter is ruined . . . Killing, thieving, quarreling, hunger — America is like a bloated body swelling with baulked desire . . . The air grows hotter, the din louder, Glasses are snapped, the wine spills over, the carousel whirls, The moon pours madness. The moon has turned our brains, and the wild demon is loosed. . . [55] Yet where the garden Glories over the rocks of the mountain, Larkspur and rose look faded in the brilliant moon; They die into the dew-touched air, And in the quiet Two lovers sigh, content . . . Their world, a circle of hills, A moon, a bed, themselves . . . All night long the Pittsburgh foundries flare: You can't turn off the furnaces, you can't put out the fires; The United States with electric lights Sparkles all night long . . . £56] NOCTURNE I Moonlight and Autumn: floods of silver, A waterfall, Pour over cliffs of space On crouching hills and camel-backed forests and crowded gardens. I, too, a moon reflect The essence of sunlight of old days And in the silver of memory Relive youth The city holds up her chimneys like rain-barrels to catch moonlight, The ocean drinks silver To bathe in a pale tinge of green her ships and fishes, A woman leans from a window And is a silver shower On my heart beneath. [ 57 ] Wash after dying wash The sea, low-singing, spans the illimitable shadow of the shore With silver bridges . . . One pine has moon-soaked needles That faintly rustle when the night breathes . . . Silence Throbs in the ear-drums, as if in the highest skies A music of stars Were played behind walls of glass, and I could not hear . . , A child looks up through the window from his bed And the face of the moon is the countenance of his first god ; His eyes stained silver Are round with awe. Now, years later, I ow, years later, mercilessly stare through changed vision t a dead olanet. At a dead planet A boy is kissing a girl In the shadow of a doorway . . . the long street Sounds empty beside them, vacantly gray in the moon Her hair is soft in his hand, Her lips Are trembling hotly at his . . . [ 58 ] A passion of old cities Pours a thrill through their hearts, An old passion of desperate love Binds them with warm arms . . . The watchman is trying the doors, and stalks by, smiling . . . A ripple of sea-wind, singing a silver moon-song, trips up the street . . . But this passes in fire From lips to lips, to the beloved woman, And what was, is, Old love, a gift to new. II ' I Night grows vaster With simulation of intense death . . . At one o'clock The mountain-farm sleeps In coop and stable, barn and house; The forest slumbers Like an eagle spread-wing on her brood Nests are a rhythm of faint dream, Gardens are graves . . . [59] Like the last soul alive on a dead planet I sit with my candle, Unmoved by the majestic march of silence My open window Is a chute for moon-beams; Transfigured, the floor receives them . . . In intense, vast death My brain burns, Burns like the candle: We are two flames ... We two are awake and burning into the night . . . My brain burns: Vivid reaches of battleground, heaped with young bodies Streets of secret windows: Faces remembered . . . Silence marches with invisible ranks from sky to sky, From coast to coast; My blood-drops move in their courses As the planets in theirs . . , The moon like a prow Plows the ocean of ether . . . And my soul is a moon [60] Catching the light of my lost sun And sieving it through silver For a spread over seas and dunes, over cities and hills, To behold the perishing living through the immortal dead. Ill I Who loves the night When light Is of other worlds and of other times? Who shrinks from seeing faces as they are, And dust. And glaring streets of noon, And garbage? Whose soul sheds on the vrorlJ Silvery beams Of time-transfigured memories. Blurring the angles with twilight, Burying the ugly in shadow? The meadow-lark drops His sunny dew of song On meadow-grass . . . Robin is in the garden Wetting his wings among the roses: [ 6i ] A myriad of lives Take away the lonely nocturne of my heart. Harvests to gather, apples to crate, Grapes for the crushing . . . Squirrels and farmer are afoot . • . The woods jet scarlet. Such a fire in the skies is the sun My moon pales, and whitens, dying . . . The strength of fire Quenches my stars and shuts through my boundless soul A narrow sky of day . . . My blood sets toward the task, my spirit is whittled To a blade of deeds. . . . The hidden is revealed, The revealed is hidde [ 62] GRAY EVENING In the loved melancholy of gray evening We smoke and are still . . . In the loved melancholy of gray evening Mountains rimming the world in a misty ring Circle our hill of dark green timber, and wild garden, and rose-pillared house. Roll, you clouds, from east to west. You smokes from the pipe of the coming Night . . . Glistening he comes, the shaggy wanderer, Brooding on the dark hard Earth. Round us the trees are singing A reminiscence from the dawn of time When their tops peeped from the floods And the song of the sea was heard . . . Like surf, they sing . . . In the loved melancholy of gray evening This sound has the joy of strong dark things. [ 63 ] Roll, you smokes, from east to west, The gray old Chief puffs his pipe of Peace . . , His cold rain-air shall be lead on our eyelids And deep sleep draw us down . . . We smoke and are still : The heart is vague with strong dark things, with roots and Earth, With age like rocks; Its throb is warm with the dark human. But we are still, But we are very still, In the loved melancholy of gray evening, O hushed, remote and still. In the loved melancholy of gray evening. [64] MORNING SONG Morning is my time. I must have the early sun shine through this song. I love the sky cloudless, a radiance of quivering blue, The sun not too high up : The month May or October: A blithe hardiness in the w^ind, and the budding or harvest of flowers: The earliest or latest birds: The city streets golden with a spring morning and gay with toilers, Or brilliant with autumn and the more zestful air . . . Happy is the man who wakes up fresh from sound sleep, A song in his heart, vigorously rising and bathing himself, Ardent with thirst for vivid life, Laughing that his eyes do not open on some other planet. But they open here, and he finds himself at home in the old Earth, And meets again the people he knows. The woman he loves, his children, his enterprises, And goes to his work throbbing with the news of the world, And loves his work — the machinery, the puzzling prob- lems — And comes home at night for his silence among books. Or his vibrant speech among familiar friends, Or the mystery of union with the woman . . . [ 65 ] Happier is this man if he is an in-goer as well as an out-goer, If he is a traveler and explorer in the interior life of man, At home with all visions, the processions of the stars and of the ages, The daring and defiant intuitions of the soul . . . I have been doubting and drooping . . . I am one of those who are born with a stoop-shouldered spirit — I am a night-soul, son of the darkness ... No wonder I love the morning and the unclouded dazzle of the sun, And the unselfconscious joy of birds. And am drawn mightily to women who sparkle, sport and laugh, And adventurous men of action . . . But in myself, I am only too ready to lean to my own be- loved darkness, The temptation of sorrow and lament. The baying of the hounds of hate and suspicion, Jealousy, distrust and suffering: I am only too ready to give myself to the tide of blackness, Voluptuary of despair . . . Stand up, my soul : this is a good morning for a fresh start, The snow lies on the sills, and is thick on the pavements. The air is keen, the city at work . . . Is not this the darkest year of the Earth ? So much more the need of courage, boldness, battle, faith! [ 66] THE RAINBOW The storm dies . . . Clouds, Their black anger spent, Soften into creamy gauze, and float apart, and heaven Bathed, breaks blue . . . West The low sun pours fire Through a white well, East A rainbow Trembles . . • Round us the Earth Laughs rainily . . . The wet garden sparkles, The wet robin sings . . . The hard rain flailed Fragrance from grass and dust and mint and rose And the air Is perfume . . . [67 ] We drink, As if the body were a mouth, The seen world of brilliant hills Sunned and rainbowed, The tasted world, fresh, cool, and odorous, The heard world of wind-dapple, bird-song, human voices . • . And the felt world Of heavenly peace. The rainbow arches From soul to soul, Our dark clouds whiten. Floating like reveries of song, Blue of heaven breaks Through the heart's fire . . . Together we laugh low, At peace. Here is peace . . . But that black storm. That whirlwind storm. Thunders through the human world, Stripping the forest of a generation Of blossoms and young leaves . . . Millions, Upgazing, Wait for the divine arch whereunder Armies shall march with evening song Of heavenly peace, [ 68 ] ■ And the perfumed winds Blow off the sulphurous vapors And the sky's blue Break through the battle-smoke . • • They wait, dying; And it comes too late For the world's youth, And it comes never For doomed humanity ... For this is a storm Which has raged since the dawn of time, This is a storm Between the demons and gods in the human soul, This is a storm Under every roof of man, And in every body of flesh . . . But this generation Has gathered each souFs tempest into one black heaven Of rolling lightning-riven storm, And the deep horror of humanity Is nakedly revealed In one great Doomsday ... in Shall peace be peace? It shall not be Save along the path of the ascension, The path no eyes have seen, No feet have felt . . . [ 693 Above man lies peace, Among the evening hills Where the late robin Sings in the sparkling garden, Where the rainbow Trembles in the east, Where the sinking sun Pours splendor through a well of cloud • • « Above man And his un regenerate desires, His power-hunger, primal lust, Above man In a world which the race inhabits with hills and animals, With sun and storm, A world vaster Than cities and empires, A world where the gods Envelop and transcend the marketplace, A world whose prizes Are not fame or power or wealth, But that blest harmony Which pays itself ... Among those hills ascended The spirit stands alone, and says, *' I am," And to God, '' Thou art," And to Nature, " Thou, too, art," And to man, " Thou art. But what thou seekest, I seek not, In this ascension." I 70 ] When man overcomes man Then peace dawns, The storm dies . . . And in the west The low sun pours fire Through a white well, • And in the east A rainbow Trembles . . • [71 ] SHADOW Sundown tonight Is not like something out in the world, But like a memory Seen in vague pictures of the mind . . . Ashes of sunset, And mournful remembrances in gray In some west beyond the west. And the sickle moon Like the sun's ghost remaining behind, Tinted with the transient colors of the changing dusk. And Earth Mourning, not really, but in echoes Through the windy darkness of phantom trees And night Closing cold on the heart . . . Closing cold On the chill tomb of the shrouded memories . . . No moon-memories Of beautiful dancers bathed by moonlight, Wild loves by wilder seas, And youth singing on the gleaming housetops, But the damp cellar-ghosts. The ugly insane spirits. Death's-head revellers . . . [72] Evil IS evil, throbs the heart, Evil is evil . . • From their gigantic graves in man The titanic powers Break, and with steps of earthquake, stalk. Proclaiming war . . . The multitudes of the Earth are gathered in a jungle, The torches flare under the new moon, In the phantom forest the naked millions Hold orgy, Calling on Mumbo-Jumbo and Satan, Breaking the taboo of blood, And in dionysian fury Doing massive murder . . . Let not the murderer call His trade by a noble name. But let us look on the dead And see the naked evil . . . For Doomsday is upon us, and this is the great harvesting of human evil. Now we reveal what we are Though we say what we are is the enemy. We lay bare the buried, Ourselves the harvesters and the harvest, We are cut down in our ripe evil And are done to death, self-slaughtered . . • No God overlooks the battle, There are no Valkyries to bear the heroes to bliss, [ 73 ] No Jove and no Jehovah Blend this vengeance with pity, No Jesus walks through the mangled corn of No Man's Land . . . We that have slain our gods Gaze at empty skies, But robed with their unslayable power We would-be gods are demons . . . It is madness That dooms the world, For we have been far too sane to behold The irrational glory beyond our powers. Far too sane To conquer our machinery With senseless pity and love. Far too sane For meditation and self-conquest . . • But the heart has a power in it Which becomes a devastation If it is not released in splendor. And the universe Is forever unconquerable and its majesty Forever awful . . . Dreaming we have slain mystery We are toys of a mysterious doom, And dreaming that we are gods of intelligence. Look, we are slaves of murderous passion . . . We aimed at a garden And wrought a shambles. We dreamed of a Golden City And made a Land of Graves . . . [ 74] The midnight passes But the madness does not pass . . . It burns itself out like a conflagration, And in the wild light The orgy continues, And shall continue Till the ashes of a civilization Become the tomb of a race. t7S] HYMN TO DEATH I would raise a slow and majestic hymn to Death, I would sing over the dust . . . The ages open, and they are bins of dust. They are bins of the dust of the once-dreaming clay, They are valleys mounded over With dust of our unremembereJ, our fathers and moth- ers .. . And we shall bring As gifts our bodies and all of our troubled splendor To crumble with them, to be silent with them . . . We have come through the dark entry to this life, We have lived a little while with love and longing, Now in the end we go To cool quiet. Now in the end There is a laying down of what has risen up . . . We have had youth and desire. We have not been troubled by ghosts; Yoked with a god we fought for the glory of fame, And the crown of power; We ate the bread, we drank the wine, flesh lay with flesh; But the bats of the summer dusk are weaving Cobweb vestures for the dead. And in the brown air ghosts Crowd through the gates of the ages. [ 76] Before we were born we were indentured to the dark Master, And we carry a bond in our hearts that must be sealed When the Master calls, we turn, stricken, and go Naked and queerly alone to the dark exit, And none is beside us, and the last clasp is unloosened, And silence and darkness take us. We but experience What all have known: We but endure What every living soul has alone suffered : Eager or reluctant we too travel a road more worn With human feet than all others . . . We that have sung, are silent. And we that have fought, are princes of peace . . . We make our bivouac with an unending night And even dreams are done. Yet are we lovers Of all-erasing Death: Life was a restless bride we ravished But never won, We lay with her in the midst of battle and our kisses were vain : Our love grew feverish, baulked, Our tears dropped round our laughter . . . All that we snatched from her, was a flame that passed, And all that we gave, turned ashes . . . It was then we heard Another love-call in our hearts, A longing after some healing, old and forgotten ; It was then the calm beloved face of Death appeared [ 77 ] Far in the backward mist of our depths; It was then that silence became our treasure, And sleep grew sweet . . . Then we found we were Shelterless and unmothered multitudes, Then we drew again Great wings of love over our skies, Dark wings of one who broods Aod gives solace and silence ... I would raise a slow and majestic hymn to Death, I would sing over the dust . . . I would set aflutter the starry veil of Night That she wears, sitting in the Beep ; I would lift the veil, and see the shadows of her arms. And her beautiful dark face, I would see in her eternal arms the races of men Resting forever; I would see her grave and understanding eyes that look upon man; I would know the other love, which is cool and calm; And I would praise Death, the secret bride. [78] SUNSET z Now is sunset, The nightfall lightens Over the funeral pyre of the day . . . On a balcony we Sweep the round world whose rim Is edged with fire ... Unstirring cumulus cloud Is purple and scarlet . . . bearded cloud of the west Is incandescent . . . Beyond and below Our planet is a fire, and the flaming Makes our sky a glory over the dark green Earth . . A painted glory; No wind breathes: No tree stirs: The world of life for a breathless moment Is ordered and is art : But we live . . . Pit. [79] Inarticulate, stripped of desire, Motionless, We yet live . . . Our lifted faces are lighted, Our bodies are torches touched to the fixed fire of sunset And kindled with the unburning flame of dream . . . We see the little cottage Painted among the painted trees : We see the clover fields, lush green, The w^estern hills, dark blue, The wild, windless garden, Gray stones . . . Daring to tap and crack this glass of silence A robin tweets . . . Earth never seemed capable of this: Her beautiful hours Sweet with orchards or rough with rain-storm Or grave with stars Came with the ease of familiar things Woven of the weather of the human heart: But this Is not of the Earth we know : And our eyes see A life or a death beyond and behind, within and without Our life . • • [80] We live, but neither memory Nor yet vision Warms the naked moment . . • We merely breathe, gaze and wonder • . • We only know That the world of human life is a capsule Floating in vaster existences, And that the melting of it Would be no death But an emergence . . . II I Earth, over her rims, Is a fire . . . The human world, builded by hands. Ivied by ages, The human soul, born out of nature, And in splendor of superstition And tear-bought wisdom Grown rich and weary, Are at end of Day, In sunset . . . The magic capsule Glowing inside with cathedrals and colliseums, Sounding with an endless song. Lighted with heroes and with gods. With dreams swaying crowds, Is melting . . . The world begun by Egypt and Babylonia, Built temple-high by Greece, [8i ] And pinnacled by Europe, Dissolves . . . We did not know That the accustomed, the fixed eternal, Could become a phantom And fade in dying light of its own sun No dream of Doomsday Could forbode the doom . . . But it is here, with the whole planet Raimented in flame . . . The whole planet On its funeral pyre . . . And the sun sets That rose on Pharaoh, And the day ends That dawned with Homer . . . It ends, yet the spared live; They live, But neither memory nor vision Warms the naked moment; They merely breathe, gaze and wonder And the doom falls On silence . • • [83] Ill They live and gazing In tnis visionary hour They see a trace of the world outside The dissolving world . . . And they know That world has been slowly dawning And the light of its growing dawn Mingles with this sunset And gives it this breathless splendor . . . That dawn rose In brains like Galileo*s, Its light gathered In spirits like Darwin's; Its kindled sun Burnt out the old sun, And the dying creatures of that sun Sink in the beams of the new human fire-god . . • 2 Those beams shall break On the young green of a new spring, With the nations gathered in a single song And the bright intelligence Of a new youth raying through the human spirit . . • With a new self For each soul that wins it, orbed like a fresh-born planet, And swinging in harmony with all other planets; With a new sky [83] Storm-cleansed of old demons and gods, With a new earth For new adventures . . . Those beams shall break On the second Day of Man: But in this hour Of awful sunset We do not know that Day: We only know Our dissolving world floats in a vaster existence, And this dissolution Is no death, But an emergence. [84] SONGS OUT OF MULTITUDE EUROPA EUROPA The dark years, the dreadful years are upon me . . . THE VOICE OF EGYPT Whither goest thou, Europa, whither goest thou dusty and grown aged and withering at the breasts? Thou hast not crouched in the desert, mouthing the sand- storm, Remembering thy Ptolemies, and she that floated golden down the Nile and so Down the stream of the ages of the memories of man . . . EUROPA But the dark years, and the days of bleak old age are upon me . . . Once my rosy nipples were lipped by nations and a great people drank of them . . . A great people with kings on horseback, and a multitude of banners went down the breeze, and their bards Gathered them in nations . . . THE VOICE OF PERSIA What hag is this, that against the black rifts of the storm, and blown by the tempest Stalks crazily, mumbling? Is it thou, Europa? [87] Thou hast not seen great Babylon fallen, gone down with Marduk, Nor thine empire with such great kings as mine in Susa and in Ninevah Struck to the Earth by a sudden Alexander . . . Thou art not merely an Asian breath from beyond the desert and the ancient rivers Strange with Assyrian song and Arabian rumor . . . EUROPA I wither in a great noise : I shrink and grow dry and barren in a splendid thunder: I am stripped of the glory of the presence of God, and the grace of my children's Father : My song is stopped, and my vision has crumbled with the drooping of my breasts . . . THE VOICE OF GREECE What chariots roll by, horseless, smoking and spitting flame like the dragon? 'My smokes curled from the bivouac-fires on the shores. And from the kindly hearth where the housewife, spinner of golden yarns. Sat in purple shadows, weaving . . . But what smokes are these, stormy and black, that go up out of the disemboweled Earth, Dreadful, and as a vapor herself, this old woman wanders? Is it thou, Europa, conqueress of antiquity? Is it thou, wailing? EUROPA Greece, they have despoiled me! Mine enemy comes, the merciless scalpel-user, he, cunning with tools, [ 88 ] Glass-eyed Science, whose sapless children have songless names — Industrialism, pah ! and Democracy ! They that care nothing for man's glory, but stoop low- Probing in entrails, spewing their filth out of mills, Slaying my Gods, and my prophets, and the grandeur of heroes, For a base business of comfort and a littleness of deeds and of people . . . I wither, my heart like a dried flower-pod: the heavens are empty. THE VOICE OF ROME What is this iron on the seas, and what is this beating of a heart of steel? Loud bells clamor, and there are glaring cities smothered in the fume of their own mouths! Where goest thou, Europa? And why art thou as one scared by lions in the arena? Thou hast no Rome to mourn, and the imperial eagles Screaming in death-throes before the tramplings of the Huns! EUROPA Rome, thine agony to mine, is as a child's to the woe of a woman whose love is slain in her heart. For thy death was my birth, but my dying is the dying of the race of man. The proud white conqueror dies in me . . . Man, white in his glory, in pomp against the heavens, Armed with his God, is gone . . . THE VOICE OF SYRIA Who art thou, great old woman, fallen down on the banks of darkness, [89] And writhing as if a serpent coiled in thy womb? Did I not send thee Asia for a stafE and a vision against the North? Did I not send thee the love of the young man, Jesus, who died so early, And in that love wert thou not young and more beautiful than antiquity Building with thy fingers spired churches and sending men up spiral stairways Into the ante-chambers of the Lord ? Art thou not healed in Christ? EUROPA O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that stonest the prophets, Jesus is slain a second time, and I am the Cross . . . For the people are very busy with their engines and with their formulas. Soft in their comforts, stinking in their poverty, they stir, Scrambling, forgetting, far from me . . . (Silence) THE VOICE OF ANTIQUITY With what swellest thou, Europa, and with what quickenest thou So tnat thou bowest with the burden of all women? EUROPA God, what stirring is this, what ancient stirring? My flesh quivers, and a piercing pain is in my body. Can these bones shelter a child, can these sagging breasts ripen again with milk? [ 90 ] Can the blasted pine on the heath blossom and break forth in a new Spring? Who mocks me with a death-bringing birth? AMERICA Europa, Old Wife, why do you lie there trembling and whispering? EUROPA Thou hast wrought something upon me: Thou hast pierced me with thy terrible spear of gold . . . thou, the trampler on all old love, slayer of Gods, young Midas of the West, Thou gross machine, thou money-changer in my temple, Thou harsh youth using me as a brothel-woman is used on a summer's night . . . Thou, reeking with thy greed, but mouthing thy rhetoric of Democracy, Thou hast begotten upon me a vile thing in mine old age . . . My people are bought by thee, and my children are become as thou art . . . And now thou smitest me down with unwelcome progeny. AMERICA Old Woman, why do you begin to cry and roll around in agony And cover your continent with broken cities and with blood ? EUROPA Hear me. Heavens, I chant the chant of death, the roll of armies, 1 burn in the fires of the Earth, the ancient fires that go smoking [91 ] With agony blurring the bright sun — O Man, the sorrow- ful! voices of a great lamentation ! AMERICA What is this sorrow of great peoples, and this lamentation of multitudes, Ships go down, and cities topple, and the world crumbles! Are you not dying. Old Woman? Are these not death-throes? EUROPA 1 am dying, America ... I am dying! Save me and help me! AMERICA Why do you clutch me, Old Woman, why do you drag me into your withered arms. Why do you wail in my ears? EUROPA The doom falls and now death Drinks down greedily the glory of my two thousand years . . . AMERICA She lies still . . . she lies spent and still . . . But what is this beside her? THE VOICE OF ANTIQUITY Yea, what is this beside her? AMERICA What opens in my heart? What little song begins to sing so purely in my heart? [ 92 ] What wonder and what miracle is this? What child is this, so poor and helpless, lying in the arms of the spent mother? EUROPA Babe, my babe . . . O my breasts rise to meet thy tiny lips, My breasts rise, and a faint new life runs down my blood, And I am glorified, glorified . . . Drink, little stranger, drink from the mother. [93] FOLK-SOUL I heard someone singing about Russia A freemen's song, And I heard the old song of the boatmen of Mother Volga . . . Dark sad songs . . . A folk-soul changes but slowly . . . I thought of the wind of freedom that blows on the steppes . . . And I thought of you, Gorky, The dark young years. Your strange little Grandmother . . . Deeper than poverty and riches, Deeper than oppression and tyranny, Deeper than ignorance. Deep as life is the folk-soul, and it changes but slowly . . • I heard someone singing of America A Cabaret song, And I heard the old song of Mother dear, come bathe my forehead . . . [94] Sweet thin songs . . . A herd-spirit deepens but slowly . . • I thought of the land of the free where the emigrants settle . . . Are they free? I asked, are they free? And I thought of the public schools, And broadcast bathtubs, And movies and newspapers . . . Czar-scourged Russia: free America . . . Gorky's Grandmother: George M. Cohen . , . Who shall refuse to be of the party of bread and liberation? Work for all : light for all : power for all ? Who shall set himself against the tides whose phantom moon is Freedom? And who shall forget old Tolstoi's wisdom: that freedom is of the spirit ? I heard someone singing about Russia A freeman's song, And I heard the old song of the boatmen of Mother Volga . . . Dark sad songs , . . A folk-soul changes but slowly. [95] THE FIRES OF PITTSBURGH Fires — Fires out of the dark — (Coal-barges swing on the Ohio)' Fires, fires of Steel — (Ore floats the ripple of the slow Monongahela) Fires, fires of Pittsburgh — Lo, lightnings lifting her sky of smoke, and dropping it, Lo, the young American city, On her heights, in the fork of her rivers, And ringed with mills Guarding her tracks and tonnage Laboring day and night. She is the womb of the Modern, Strong young mother of cities and ships. • • • She weaves the world with rails. And webs the Earth with wires. . . •. Pittsburgh is Labor, Pittsburgh is Wealth, Pittsburgh is Power. From these smokes, a nation, From these fires, America. O fires of Pittsburgh! Is it only the Steel that shrieks as you twist and shape it? [96] Is this the howling of your hammers, the anguish of your cranes, the revolt of your engines? Do I hear only this hell's music of mills? Or is this the slaves' song of your lonely wrestlers with ele- mental flame and ore, — The slaves' song, The slaves' groaning and wailing in the dark, The song of mastered men. The sullen satanic music of lost and despairing human- ity? I will go lightly By the lonely shanties clinging to the barren slopes. . . . I will go softly Where no birds sing, Where the gas-lamps burn grey in the flimsy sodden mill- town, And from the lighted kitchens The tired workmen throng the streets, tramping, tramping, Tramping over the railroad bridge. Tramping through the switch-yards. For the Giant has blown his whistle And the night-shift is on. . . . Madly the night swirls Lunging with engines — The flames burst the roofs and shower golden snow, The shrill-whistling yard-engines bump across the switches. Switchmen swing lanterns, green, green, red. The sudden headlights dazzle round the silhouettes of work- men, This mill and that looms roaring, roaring, Bells beat, whistles blow, shouts rise, and heaven [ 97] Rolls with unresting smokes, Glares with livid lightning. . . . Speed! The young god speed ! The young god speed is at the wheel, Whipping the engines, Pacing the workers, The mills roar their terrible triumph over time. The great machines snatch at the hands of men, And drag them in, and drag in the arms, And drag at every muscle of the body. . . . Speed! speed! American speed! Set the fires roaring, Swing the blooms in faster. Pile up the tonnage for a record-breaker, Pile up the tonnage. . . . Strain, strain, you toilers! Give us every ounce of your tireless energy. . . . Work, till you crack, work till you are slag: Work, till you age with fever and exhaustion, Work, till we fling you out upon the rusty scrap-heap. Open slides the floor-door: the soaking pit is dazzling. Down comes the crane-hand and dips into the fire: It's the ten-ton ingot she is lifting up, It's the ten-ton ingot, white-hot and sizzling. . . . It's a lost soul shrieking snatched from out the burning. Clank, clank, clatter, the bloom runs down the rollers, Crash! it hits the wringers! Whong! the sparks are flying! [98] Klong-al, klong-al, it howls like a lioness, Giving up its soul as it flattens to a sheet. . , , Noise, soot, chaos. . . . I wander, finding men. Half-naked men with wet shining bodies, Men with forks, and men at the levers. Men on cars, and men behind the engines, Fire-glaring men with shovels at the furnaces. . , Men, men. . . . I watch, and I am silent. . . . (O dance of death! Dance of the fires of death! Fires, fires of Pittsburgh!) There are hills, beloved, with mountain-gardens,- There we grow roses, useless beautiful roses For the delight of our souls. . . \ There is a room, beloved, on the city-square, — There we make songs, useless beautiful songs As gifts to each other's hearts. We have known how the body, like a bud, Opens beyond Earth, and beyond riches, Into vision, song, love. . . . We have known the mystery of each other, Clinging in the mystery of the Night, Wi^'h stars and long silence. . . . [ 99 ] There is a fire beyond fire. . . . There is a fire in love There is a fire in song. . . . O Man, thou flame! Thou who hast in thee this vague vision, this power of desire, Hast thou traversed a planet with trade and speech. Steel swimmers of the sea, steel cities capped with cloud, Steel cannonades of destruction, Steel strength of Civilization, And yet, art thou darkness? Psychic Giant! Thou apparition appearing on a planet teeming with little animals. Emerging strong from the twilight of storm-lost creatures. Thou envisager of distances and ages, Thou binder of elemental powers. Thou tameless fighting god of Earth! Art thou this, builder of Pittsburgh? Why then this sighing in the abyss? Why from thy grimy lips this slaves' song, this slaves* song in the fires, This slaves' wailing and groaning. This sullen satanic music of despair and death? Art thou caught in thine own creation? Giant, art thou locked in the arms of this Giant of thine own making. This brainless Giant? Are the two of you eternally wrestling, [ lOO ] Thou of the shanties clinging to the barren hills, Thou of the tawdry mill-town Wrestling with Steel, struggling with Tonnage, fighting with Time? There is no glory in the w^orld that coops thee here. Giant of Labor, There is no joy. . . . There is no delight in the gaudy Heaven lit by the fires of this Hell, No delight among the masters ever speeding, No delight for the pilers-up of Power, There is no joy in America. . . . There can come no song for fine ears out of the sweating of the multitude, There can come no splendor of the soul out of the grinding of the slaves. . . . But there comes madness, There comes the rising whirlwind of riches. There comes the hurricane-fury of lust to be great. There comes a wind smiting nation against nation, There comes confusion of tongues, and storm. Storm whirling the towers, toppling the cities, blasting the countryside. Storm shattering Civilization — the Abyss Opens, a world goes down. And thou, Labor, Art sucked into the cyclone — It is thy blood that must redden the fields of France, It is thy breast and thy face that must stop the shells. . . • Fires, Fires out of the dark [ 101 1 (Coal barges swing on the Ohio) Fires, fires of Steel — (Ore floats the ripple of the slow Monongahela) Fires, fires of Pittsburgh — From these smokes, a nation, From these fires, America. . . . But that morning shall break When the Sleeper in thy fires awakens, But that morning shall break When thy giant Slave rises and dpals with thee. . . . With a shrug of his shoulders, those flies, his masters, shall drop, With a stroke of his terrible fist he shall clean out the mills, He shall seize the machines, bestriding the engines that rode him. . . . When that morning breaks The Sun of Labor in splendor Shall illume a new world. When that morning breaks This Giant shall call to the Giants And the Nations be one. . . . When that morning of glory breaks The Earth's hosts arisen Shall be streaming with light. . . . Song shall burst from their lips. And flame out of darkness. . . . Song shall leap from their lips. And the glory Be given to Man for his marring, his making, his death or his life, [ 102 ] THE SONG OF THE UPRISING I — Joy Joy wings his way, — (O bells of heaven!) Joy wings his irresistible way, — (O winds, O sun!) Joy wings his irresistible, his radiant, his ineluctable way, — (Morning! morning of the winds. Morning strong with song!) Joy wings, wings, wings his way And now the wild great song of dawn Mounts heaven on beams of light Scattering the dew in the path of the veering bee, And from the house the girl and boy bare-headed Come fresh from sleep And lift young voices toward blue skies . . . Lift young voices toward blue skies Meeting the young god, Joy. Joy is the carrier of news . . . He laughs over the battlefields . . . Joy is the sun . . . He shines on the democracies . . . Joy is exultant with tidings . . . [ 103 ] He flings on the Earth in the road of the hosts the luminous flame of the future . . . the Earth, it is bled, It is black, clawed with death, But victory, but victory, but irrepressible victory Shouts from the lips of Joy Who shall raise up the dead. 1 will make a prophecy To your swelling heart, That the heavens open Presently with Peace . . . I will make a prophecy of glory To your dark-swelling heart . . . The peoples shall be one. The Earth shall be our home, The children shall lead us forth with a scattering of roses, And the heavens in all their splendor of stars shall sing; " One people, one planet." O my heart! How wonderful is the age we dwell in . . . We are climbing up on the new tableland of man, Beyond cedars of sorrow, beyond hemlocks of lamentation, There where the grass blows wild, There where the oak and the maple sway in the wind. There where the festival is held, and the sun gleams on the steel of the workshops . . . Gleams on the steel and on the miraculous flesh of men's faces . . . [ 104 ] (Hear, O softly, O faintly, sweetly, Hear the cooing murmur of the mothers, The lisp of laughing babes, The bird-like love-notes, the lark-like mate-calls Of passionate girls and boys, And hear, hear. Voices of men together in workshops where work is glory.) Truly triumphant from the massive enginery of destruction and battle Where great guns leveled Louvain and rifled Europe of grandeur. Truly triumphant the saved shall stand and march with a blowing of the trump And march with a throbbing of the drum Heroic and renewed to the lands of the new age . . . They shall march ! — (O Joy, thou news-bringer!) They shall march ! — (O Joy, thou sun in the windy heavens!) They shall march ! — (O Joy, thou art approaching beamed with the glory of the free!) They shall march, they shall sing, they shall swing with ra- diant ranks, Down the fields, down the streets, down the continental roads, They shall march, they shall ship, they shall fly on the planes of rejoicing, They shall be one mass of triumph in the peace that crown- eth all. I 105 ] // — Darkness Death darkens, darkens . . . — (O cry of breakers!) Death darkens, darkens on the deeps . . . — (O rocks, O sea!) Death darkens, darkens on the moving, the interminable deeps ... — (Midnight! midnight of no stars! Midnight bowed with cloud!) Death darkens, darkens, darkens. And the wild blown dirges of the sea Break into lamentation. Break into anguish on the rocks, on the sands, on the dunes, Wail along the dunes, weep along the dunes, And the sea cries. And the wind skims the sea-tides with an empty moaning. And the clouds crowd together dropping their tears upon the war-bled world . . . O the black midnight ! Winds howl and sand blows, The broom wails and snaps and the breakers burst writh- ing. . . O the blackness of this midnight ... Must I walk these shores lost in grief? Must I walk these stormy shores at the salt fringes of the tragic sea In a vision of the human Earth I tread, In a vision of an Earth of men and womea Stripped and maimed, [ io6 ] Trapped and slain, — Must I walk these naked shores, dreadfully, slowly, stricken in my heart? Unbearable sorrow! Fiendish anguish! Among the old that line the streets, among the faded and the war-worn. Radiant miles of youth glow by, laughing with the bugles, Radiant rivers of youth flow by, Flow into the trenches . . . I see the Hell they have entered with its pitiless flame- fledged skies, With its mud and stenchent carrion, with the murderer and the murdered . . . I see the Hell they have entered and the radiance gone out . . . my heart . . . How terrible is the age we dwell in . . ^ None . . . none . . . none Shall assuage great grief . . . None . . . none . . . none Shall restore the lost to us. . . . Roll, mufl^ed drums, you heart-beats of despair, Boom, O you brass, for the burial of our boys. 1 have mounted midnight To gaze in the abyss. In the midst of heaven Hangs a red, red heart . . . I have mounted mournful midnight To gaze in the abyss, [ 107 ] And I have seen that red heart Dripping drops of blood . . . That heart is the Earth, In the darkness it hangs red, In the darkness it bleeds red with human grief and an- guish . . . But is not the Earth as a husk of beauties and glories and powers Which stripped, reveals the kernel, the naked body of man? Is not man her consummate miracle? Is he not strong with engines and strong with soaring song? Can he be this beast of the jungle? Can he be this darkness-maker? Has his great past opened only in this? Sea of the interminable tides. Sea, of dirges and of moving deeps, and of darkened song, I will turn from you, I will call the beloved of my heart . . . Turn and call her, that in her face I may read of youth's betrayal, And the treason of the strong . . . They have betrayed us . . . (Silence, you false seas!) They have betrayed us . . , (Silence, you lying dirge-singing seas!) They have betrayed us . . . (Silence, you seas awash with ignoble anguish!) They have betrayed us, they have sold us, they have carried off our youth To the slaughter, to the murder, to the deepest pits of Hell, [ io8] They have betrayed us, they are traitors, we shall rise against their power, We shall shake the Earth with tumult and the thunders of Revolt. Ill --The Call Whither goest thou, beautiful and beloved, O Earth, Whither goest thou? Dawn is not yet: We sit in a cranny of the eastward rocks of the mountain- top; Among shapes of the wind, shadows of the stars, and the Earth darker than the skies. O my beloved, Your hands are warm in my own, your hair blows against my cheek: You are glimmering beside me, your eyes bright with the wild animal: We are of the darkness of Earth dipped in the eddying gleam of the heavens: We taste the freshness of wind-blown pines. Vastness . . . ten stars are gone . . . Grayness . . . the Earth sighs . . , Twilight ... the East twinkles . . . O rise, my beloved, rise, for the runners of the sun Appear with their bugles upon the mountains and blow long blasts of light Swelling and shattering Night . . . [ 109 ] Rise, we must meet the miracle . . . Dawn's joy swells: Stirring, Earth tosses her covers of the dark aside, Laughing, leaps from her bed: naked, bathes in the dew . . . Look, where the peeping chimney smokes, look, the gray lake. Listen . . . the waking! Birds are fluttering, brooks are babbling, leaves are danc- ing, wood folk scurry . . . The color of the dawn Scattered, drowns in blue . . . We are blown on the topmost rock. We cannot be still . . . Your hair, my beloved, is a golden gale, Yours lips are cold . . . Look to the East, behold . . . Look — gold . . . Pure gold, flame gold, growing, emboldening gold! Mark! The sons of light — The sons of light charge heaven on golden gallopers, And struck out of fire, with song. The morning star is born — The morning star is born — the sun, the sun — Day/ (A shadow crosses the sun . . . The Earth grows gray below us . . . We are hushed of a sudden, and chilled . . . Doubt . . . dread.) Whither goest thou, darkened and solemn, O Earth, Whither goest thou? [ "O] Is there then, beloved, no forgetting of sorrow? Must there be pausing for lamentation? Is there an hour for cedars? Shall the drums roll for the lost and the bugles blow for the dead? I heard a voice say: None, None shall heal empty arms. I heard a voice say: None, None shall assuage great grief ... For he is dead, whose young lips She kissed in the intervals of song ... — In the intervals of song . . . Death darkens, darkens, (O cry of breakers!) Death darkens, darkens on the deeps, (O rocks, O sea!) Death steals into the ecstasy of life, Steals in, snatches the loved ones, and leaves bereaved hearts . . . Beloved, beloved. How can we abide on the mountain of our joy Where even touched with sunrise we quiver through in- visible nerves to the ends of Earth, And the agony of man darkens our dawn . . . We must descend into the pit of a thousand million out- stretched, imploring hands, The pit of bloody faces, and wailing lips . . • Down to the sorrow of Earth, The anguish of Man. [ lU ] For Earth, like a staring maniac, bearing a firebrand, Goes shrieking down the skies, Shrieking *' Famine," shrieking '' Pestilence," shrieking " War "... That orb of destruction burns balefully in the august mag- nificence of night . . . The mad world runs amuck . . . Is Man ending himself ? Is the miracle of that mind and passion which dreamed and built Asia and Europe Stopped in suicidal madness? Beloved, were we born to see this, and to live this? Are we among the doomed ? (Yet — what song is in my heart? O has the mother heard the stir of life in her side? Is there the faint, the tremulous stir of the unborn?) Lift up your heads, O ye gates, And be ye uplift, you everlasting doors ... The glory of the Lord is risen upon us . . . We shall not bend before the storm: we shall not bow be- fore great death : We put the darkness from us with a loud shout: We put the temptation of despair away with resolution : We arise : we arise clothed in courage : We arise: we are that which has refused darkness: we are MAN . . . ' Man, the fire-b ringer, Man, the Creator. [[112] We call mountain to mountain . . • We raise a torch of Revolution . . . We bring forth the peoples out of their darkness And the nations out of their wrath . . . We behold the Earth in parturition . . . We see the Mother in birth-throes . . . We greet the child with calls of welcome and the sound of cities of joy . . . O, blow you bugles, with triumph, O, shout, you peoples, with victory . . . Hurl down the mighty from their seats, And raise yourselves to freedom . . . Raise up yourselves, ye slaves and chained ones, Raise up yourselves, ye toiling peoples . . . Be upraised, ye sorrowers and ye spent ones, Get up on the peaks of the morning and proclaim the tri- umph of Man, The victory of Man, Get up on the peaks of the morning and greet the child, the New Age, On tablelands of democracy. On heights of man, the creator, Get ye up, get ye up, get ye up, ye triumphing peoples . . . New Man is born from the Old: Joy shall leap laughing from Sorrow. I "3 ] THE IRONIC SPIRIT We have drunk deep — This generation — We have drunk deep of evil . . . The ironic spirit Was our wet-nurse, And we milked her in the soft latitudes of the equator of dreams . . . In zones of comfort We sipped the milk of peace; Not without a bitter taste in the mouth, The taste of trade and of toil, But the sweet savor of sinlessness, Of the excellence of human nature. For when the gods died The legion of devils withered, And when the blaze of the seraphs was put out Hell's darkness also vanished . . . So we grew up In the cotton of an all-human world, Sheltered in the sane cubicle of intelligence: There were no storms, but those of the winds and the clouds, No passions among the polite, No evils that were not error . . . [114] We were a good race, in spite of the quagmire of poverty, And when at last that should be abolished Then in goodness, the reign of kindliness should tri- umph . . . We pitied the past Lost as it was in the magic mists of superstition. The demon Past drinking hot blood from a skull, The Past of pestilence and battle, The tragic ignorant Past . . . We seemed free Because we thought freely, And because we could telegraph instead of travel, And of all the generations of men We were the least tragic . . . It was as if the ironic spirit Had made our content complete To deepen the horror of what lay in wait for us . . . The generation that seemed born to suffer least Has suffered as no generation before it, And we that were so good Are black with evil beyond our ancestors . . . Our kindliness has shaped a fiend's devastation of hate. And our milk of humanity has turned to vapors of venom . . . Out of our supersanity has come a universal madness, And from our antiseptic safeties a devil's disregard for pain and death . . . On the corpse of our Brotherhood of Man We have erected a monument of slaughter, [ 115 ] And with the science that was to make us intelligent We have taught cruelty new cunning . . . The ironic spirit smiles with a bitter satisfaction As it gives us to drink deep, Deep of all evil. [ ii6J DEBS Four great lovers rose in America . . . One was hung: One was shot: One lived in solitude : And one was jailed ... The prairies, the valleys and the mountains of the ages are remembered because of great lovers who were there . . . Drums and flags lay the caesars to rest, But the muffled drums roll by, dying, and we let them die . . . When the great lover dies, in silence. His grave becomes the fragrant mouth of an ever-swelling song: These are the songs by which we live. These are the suns that shine on us, stars and moons that sprinkle our nights. Winds of reviving May, rains of dry summer . . . Gene Debs, this fragment song for you. Living great lover through whom America lives. [ 117] MEMORIES OF WHITMAN AND LINCOLN " When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd " — W. W. Lilacs shall bloom for Walt Whitman And lilacs for Abraham Lincoln. Spring hangs in the dew of the dooryards These memories — these memories — They hang in the dew for the bard who fetched A sprig of them once for his brother When he lay cold and dead. . . . And forever now when America leans in the dooryard And over the hills Spring dances, Smell of lilacs and sight of lilacs shall bring to her heart these brothers. . . . Lilacs shall bloom for Walt Whitman And lilacs for Abraham Lincoln. Who are the shadow-forms crowding the night? What shadows of men? The stilled star-night is high with these brooding spirits — Their shoulders rise on the Earth-rim, and they are great presences in heaven — They move through the stars like outlined winds in young- leaved maples. [ "8] Lilacs bloom for Walt Whitman And lilacs for Abraham Lincoln. Deeply the nation throbs with a world's anguish — But it sleeps, and I on the housetops Commune with souls long dead who guard our land at mid- night, A strength in each hushed heart — I seem to hear the Atlantic moaning on our shores with the plaint of the dying And rolling on our shores with the rumble of battle. . . . I seem to see my country growing golden toward California, And, as fields of daisies, a people, with slumbering upturned faces Leaned over by Two Brothers, And the greatness that is gone. Lilacs bloom for Walt Whitman And lilacs for Abraham Lincoln. Spring runs over the land, A young girl, light-footed, eager. . . . For I hear a song that is faint and sweet with first love, Out of the West, fresh with the grass and the timber. But dreamily soothing the sleepers. . . . I listen: I drink it deep Softly the Spring sings. Softly and clearly: "^ / open lilacs for the beloved. Lilacs for the lost, the dead. And, see, for the living, I bring sweet strawberry blos- soms, [ 119 1 And I bring buttercups, and I bring to the woods anemones and blue bells . . . / open lilacs for the beloved. And when my fluttering garment drifts through dusty cities. And blows on hills, and brushes the inland sea. Over you, sleepers, over you, tired sleepers, A fragrant memory falls . . . / open love in the shut heart, I open lilacs for the beloved/* Lilacs bloom for Walt Whitman And lilacs for Abraham Lincoln. Was that the Spring that sang, opening locked hearts, And is remembrance mine? For I know these two great shadows in the spacious night, Shadows folding America close between them, Close to the heart. . . . And I know how my own lost youth grew up blessedly in their spirit. And how the morning song of the mighty native bard Sent me out from my dreams to the living America, To the chanting seas, to the piney hills, down the railroad vistas, Out into the streets of Manhattan when the whistles blew at seven, Down to the mills of Pittsburgh and the rude faces of labor . . . And I know how the grave great music of that other, Music in which lost armies sang requiems. And the vision of that gaunt, that great and solemn figure, And the graven face, the deep eyes, the mouth, [ I20 ] O human-hearted brother, Dedicated anew my undevoted heart To America, my land. Lilacs bloom for Walt Whitman And lilacs for Abraham Lincoln. Now in this hour I was suppliant to these two brothers, And I said: Your land has need: Half-awakened and blindly we grope in the great world. . . . What strength may we take from our Past, what promise hold for our Future? And the one brother leaned and whispered: " I put my strength in a book. And in that book my love. . . . This, with my love, I give to America ..." And the other brother leaned and murmured: " I put my strength in a life, And in that life my love, This, with my love, I give to America." Lilacs bloom for Walt Whitman And lilacs for Abraham Lincoln. Then my heart sang out: This strength shall be our strength : Yea, when the great hour comes, and the sleepers wake and are hurled back, And creep down into themselves There they shall find Walt Whitman And there, Abraham Lincoln. [ 121 ] O Spring, go over this land with much singing And open the lilacs everywhere, Open them out with the old-time fragrance Making a people remember that something has been for- gotten, Something is hidden deep — strange memories — strange memories — Of him that brought a sprig of the purple cluster To him that was mourned of all . . . And so they are linked together While yet America lives . . . While yet America lives, my heart, Lilacs shall bloom for Walt Whitman And lilacs for Abraham Lincoln. [ 122 ] MY LAND Not for long can I be angry with the most beautiful — I look out of my vengefulness, and see her so young, so vastly young, Wandering her fields beside Huron, Or peering over Mt. Rainier. Is she in daisies up to her knees? Do I see that fresh white smile of hers in the morning- shadowed city? Is this she clinging to the headlight of the locomotive that roars between the pine-lone mountains? Are her ankles in the wash of sea-weed beside the sea-bat- tered rocks? Ah ! never the curve of a hill but she has just gone beyond it, And the prairies are as sweet with her as with clover and sage. . . . Her young breasts are soft against willow-leaves, Her hands are quicker than birds in the vagueness of the forest. Whether it is a dream that I have honey-gathered from the years of my days, Whether it is so, and no dream, I cannot help the love that goes out of me to these plains and hills. These coasts, these cities, and these seas. [ 123 ] NIGHT Copyright, 1918, by Egmont Arens NIGHT A Priest, A Poet, A Scientist, Hilltop, in October; the stars shining, [The Priest kneels; the Scientist looks at the heavens through a telescope; the Poet writes in a little note-book.^ THE PRIEST When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained; What is man, that Thou art mindful of him. And the son of man, that Thou visitest him? THE SCIENTIST Algol which is dim, becomes again a star of the second mag- nitude. THE POET My beloved is far from this hilltop, where the firs breathe heavily, and the needles fall; But from the middle of the sea She, too, gazes on the lustrous stars of calm October, and in her heart She stands with me beneath these heavens — daintily blows Breath of the sighing pines, and from the loaded and bowed- down orchards and from the fields With smokes of the valley, peace steps up on this hill. [ 127 ] THE PRIEST Thou art the Shepherd that strides down the Milky Way; Thou art the Lord, our God; glorified be Thy name and Thy works. I see Thee with Thy staff driving the star-sheep to the fold of dawn. THE SCIENTIST The Spiral Nebula in Ursa Major, that forever turns Slowly like a flaming pin-wheel . . . thus are worlds born; Thus was the sun and all the planets a handful of million years ago. THE POET She is far from me . . . but in the cradle of the sea Sleepless she rocks, calling her beloved : he heeds her call : On this hilltop he picks the North Star for his beacon . . . For by that star the sailors steer, and beneath that star She and I are one in the gaze of the heavens. THE PRIEST [Slowly rising and turning to the others.'i Let us glorify the Creator of this magnificence of infinite Night, His footstool is the Earth, and we are but the sheep of this Shepherd. THE SCIENTIST Thus shall we only glorify ourselves, That of this energy that rolls and drives in suns and planets Are but the split-off forces with cunning brains. And questioning consciousness . . . Pray if you must — Only your own ears hear you, and only the heart in your breast [ 128] Responds to the grandiose emotion . . . See yonder star? That is the great Aldebaron, great in the night, Needing a whole sky, as a vat and a reservoir, which he fills with his flame . . . But no astronomer with his eye to his lenses Has seen ears on the monster. THE PRIEST Thou that hast never seen an atom, nor the ether thou pratest of, Thou that hast never seen the consciousness of man, What knowcst thou of the invisible arms about this sky, And the Father that leans above us ? THE POET We need know nothing of any Father When the grasses themselves, withering in October, stand up and sing their own dirges in the great west wind, And every pine is like a winter lodging house where the nee- dles may remember the greenness of the world, And the great shadow is jagged at its top with stars. And the heart of man is as a wanderer looking for the light in a window. And the kiss and warm joy of his beloved. THE PRIEST Man of Song and Man of Science, Truly you are as people on the outside of a house. And one of you only sees that it is made of stone, and its windows of glass, and that fire burns in the hearth, And the other of you sees that the house is beautiful and very human, But I have gone inside the house, [ 129 ] And I live with the host in that house And have broken bread with him, and drunk his wine, And seen the transfiguration that love and awe make in the brain . . . For that house is the world, and the Lord is my host and my father : It is my father's house. THE SCIENTIST He that has gone mad and insane may call himself a king, And behold himself in a king's palace, with feasting, and dancing women, and with captains, And none can convince him that he is mad, Slave of hallucination . . . We that weigh the atom and weigh a world in the night, and we Who probe down into the brain, and see how desire discolors reality. And we that see how chemical energy changes and trans- forms the molecule. So that one thing and another changes and so man arises — With neither microscope, nor telescope, nor spectroscope, nor finest violet ray Have we found any Father lurking in the intricate unrea- sonable drive of things And the strange chances of nature. THE POET O Priest, is it not enough that the world and a Woman are very beautiful. And that the works and tragic lives of men are terribly glorious ? [ 130] There is a dance of miracles, of miracles holding hands in a chain around the Earth and out through space to the moon, and to the stars, and beyond the stars. And to behold this dance is enough; So much laughter, and secret looking, and glimpses of won- der, and dreams of terror . . . It is enough ! it is enough ! THE PRIEST Enough? I see what is enough! Machinery is enough for a Scientist, And Beauty is enough for a Poet; But in the hearts of men and women, and in the thirsty hearts of little children There is a hunger, and there is an unappeasable longing, For a Father and for the love of a Father . . . For the root of a soul is mystery, And the Night is mystery, And in that mystery men would open inward into Eternity, And know love, the Lord. Blessed be his works, and his angels, and his sons crowned with his glory! \_J pause. The Woman with a burden in her arms comes in slowly.} THE WOMAN Who has the secret of life among you? THE PRIEST I, woman, have that secret: I have learned it from the book of the revelations of God, And I have learned it from life, bitterly, And from my heart, holily. [131] THE SCIENTIST Be not deceived, woman: There is only one book of reality — the book of Nature. THE WOMAN Who has read in that book? THE SCIENTIST I have read a little: No man has read much. THE POET They lead you nowhere, woman; You are the secret of life, and your glory is in seeking the secret, But finding it never. THE WOMAN I have climbed this hill and found three watchers of the night — Three star-gazers perched above the placid October harvests Where they lie golden and crimson along the valley, and high on the slopes The scarlet maples flame — You are a priest : and you speak of God. I am nothing but need : for I carry a burden that is heavier than the Earth, and is heavier Than the flesh of woman can bear: I break Down under it : and a hard hate Against my birth is steel in my heart — I curse God, if there be a God — Love, if there ever was love — Life, that is empty ravings, And the hour when I was born. [ 132] THE PRIEST Peace! Peace! Thou standest in the presence of the Night Shadowy with grace and benediction — the mercy Of the Lord falls like the dew on the soft brow of thy af- fliction ! THE POET [Softly] She is very beautiful and dark with her stern cursing, Standing there like an enemy of great Jehovah, A demon-woman satanic — she is very beautiful, With her arms full of her burden, and the stars Seeming to retreat before her. THE SCIENTIST What burden is that you carry? THE WOMAN That which is worth nothing, And worth more than these stars you gaze at, THE PRIEST Put thy burden upon the Lord, and thy trust in His loving kindness. THE WOMAN I will not part with my burden, though it is worth noth- ing .. . For what are a few pounds of dead flesh worth when the life has left it? THE PRIEST Then you carry the dead at your breast? [ 133 ] THE WOMAN I carry the dead . . . THE PRIEST Flesh of your flesh and bone of your bone . . . THE WOMAN My breasts are still heavy with unsucked milk . . . THE PRIEST Your child has died . . . THE WOMAN My baby is dead . . . THE PRIEST The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away ; Blessed be the name of the Lord. THE WOMAN Nine long months I ripp led with the human seed, and like a goodly tree that is green Stooped with sheltering boughs above the swelling fruit . . . Song rang sweetly in my blood . . . I tasted the silent life as a spring hillside where the furrows are run So holds its bated breath against the pressing of the grass- blades That birds coming that way catch the held-down glory under the furrows And scatter ecstatic golden notes in the morning light . . . [ 134 ] Until the trumpets blasted, as if the opening heavens of a sunrise Were battalions of bright trumpeters blowing news of dawn . . . Sank I then into darkness, Sank I then into terror, Till I was healed of pain by the new-born, my child . . . And now, behold in my arms The life of my life : All that I was went out in him : my life was now outside me. THE PRIEST Unto thee a son was born ! THE WOMAN I ran to tend him with glad feet, and with laughter . . , For my life was now outside of me, And I was seeking my life. THE PRIEST You praised the Lord ? I loved my child . . And God forgotten? That child was holy He was but flesh . . THE WOMAN THE PRIEST THE WOMAN THE PRIEST [ 135 ] THE WOMAN Just SO was Christ . . . THE PRIEST A Son of God ... THE WOMAN My child was such ... THE PRIEST So in the corrupt new generations of men They forget God, and love but the flesh, And the corruptible flesh decays after its kind And in their bereavement they have nothing . . . then in their sorrow They curse the true and the good. THE WOMAN The flesh, you say? Here is the flesh: But was it the flesh when his blue eyes opened and gazed with great hunger, Was it the flesh that wailed, the flesh that warmed against my naked breasts, the flesh That went a secret way, and I after, I after, seeking through embraces To catch my son back, hold him. . . . But, oh, he was gone. He was gone, leaving this. Priest, is this all you have for the bereaved? THE PRIEST That which is gone is now with God. THE WOMAN / was his God, for to me the beautiful bright life raised its hands, [ 136] Suppliant, full of faith . . . He wailed for enfolding love : I gave it For daily bread: I gave it For healing and shelter: I gave it. Out of me he came, but away from me he has gone, And if he has found out some other mother, I curse her in my jealousy! THE PRIEST So you blaspheme the holiness of the Omnipotent ! THE WOMAN So I curse the thief who stole my treasure away. THE PRIEST Alas ! Who may speak to a sacrilegious generation ? THE WOMAN Speak if you can, and tell me in a few words What is the secret of life? THE PRIEST Life is a mysterious preparation for immortality . . . We are sons and daughters of God, who shall later be angels, and in heaven Know bliss beyond all dream. THE WOMAN * [Uncovering her child's face.^ My son ... You and I lately pulsed with one pulse, and sang together one song: For you the flaming pain, for you the terror of birth . . . [ 137 ] And this priest's God let you suffer, in a glorious prepara- tion, And let you die . . . [Kisses him.] Cold! Cold! My heart tightens hard, nxy blood is chilled . . . [In a loud cry.] Hellish heaven! Devilish God! [Silence. The Poet advances and covers the face.] THE POET You are very wonderful and very noble in your satanic anger, Your curses are cleansing, for it is a mighty thing for man to confront creation Greater even than this vast Night, to stand in his transiency And his pitiful helplessness, and in the grasp of his doom, and against death, Darkness, and mysterious powers, alone of all life Godlike, downing the universe with defiance! O godlike Are you ; and you are God ! THE WOMAN [Gazing at him.] Who are you, with these words? THE POET Seer and singer, one who glories in life, and through vision Creates his own worlds. THE WOMAN Has your mother ever wept for you? [ 138 ] THE POET All mothers weep . . . THE WOMAN Have you ever had a child ? THE POET No child of my own : but I know the love of children. THE WOMAN Can I trust you with a great trust? THE POET I think of you as a holy thing. THE WOMAN Then — take this a moment, And feel how light a heavy burden may be. [She carefully places the child in his arms,^ THE POET How strangely light ! THE WOMAN You tremble. Why? THE POET There is something so real in the stiff posture of these tiny legs, These crooked arms, this little body, This hanging head ... [ 139 ] ' THE WOMAK Can you see him? THE POET [Looking close. ^ O tiniest budding mouth, O dark deep fringes of eyelids, pallid cheeks . . . THE WOMAN And the little tuft of hair — you see it ? THE POET Take him ! My heart is in despair ! THE WOMAN No one will have my burden ; for my burden is heavier Than any save a mother can bear . . . O Earth, hard Earth, 1 shall not go mad: I hold back: I shut the doors on the Furies: I stand straight and stiff! I hold against my heart with words ! [^Silence. '\ So, poet, you are hushed ! Life is too much for you ! Go — live in your dreams and let the reality of experience Flow over you, untasted . . . You are wise: it is better! [Silence.'] What? All silent? My star-gazers brought to a pause? You, too? THE SCIENTIST [Grimly.'] Who would listen to me must be hard and strong. [ 140 ] THE WOMAN" Am I soft and weak? THE SCIENTIST You have the strength of revolt, but not the greater strength of acceptance. THE WOMAN What shall I accept? THE SCIENTIST The inexorable facts of life. THE WOMAN" And what are those facts ? THE SCIENTIST That man is no more than the grasses, and that man is no more, Though his dreams are grandiose, than the pine on this hill, or the bright star Burning blue out yonder — strangely the chemicals mix, and the forces interplay, And out of it consciousness rises, an energy harnessed by en- ergies, And a little while it burns, then flickers, then vanishes out, And is no more than the October wind and the smell of dried hay. THE WOMAN These are the facts? THE SCIENTIST These are the facts. [ 141 ] THE WOMAN And my child was nothing but energy, gathered and scat- tered ? THE SCIENTIST These are the facts . . . THE WOMAN He was only a cunning engine and a curious machine ? THE SCIENTIST Thus are we all . . . THE WOMAN Not all . . . thus are you . . . But this child was mine, he was my baby and he was my son. And I was his life-giver, and his lover, and his mother . . . And I knew the glory of this child, for I lived with it, And I know the marvel and mystery of motherhood, for I lived it . . . I lived it, who now live the death of a treasured being, And who know now that the light of the world is out, and only death May heal me of anguish, and only death's long sleep Shall bury my bereavement in peace . . . O mouthers of words, Dreamers who do not live, I go back to the valley, And there I shall put this babe in the Earth where the seeds of Autumn are sinking. And there I shall slay myself, knowing that no one knows, And no one helps, and life is a madness and a horror, And to be dead is better than to suffer. [They say nothing. The Priest silently prays. The I 142 ] Woman turns, and starts slowly out. But as she goes a Man enters, searchingly,'\ THE MAN Beloved! O where have you fled from me? THE WOMAN Go back — I hate you for bringing this being into life, Whose loss has ruined life, life itself: and I had better never loved you. For love brings children to the mother. THE MAN It is my child, too ... I too have lost him. THE WOMAN You have lost a plaything and the promise of a man, And you have lost a trouble and a burden: But I have lost my love, and I have lost the life of my life. THE MAN You are cruel in your sorrow beyond all women . . . THE WOMAN Then leave me, and seek comfort elsewhere. There are many women. THE MAN You are desperate, and there is a hardness in you that makes me afraid. Where are you going? [143] THE WOMAN I follow this child. THE MAN Then I lose my child . . . even as you lost yours. THE WOMAN Your child? Ha! I am gone! [Tries to pass htm; he seizes her."] THE MAN You shall not go, for you are mine. O beloved, hear me! THE WOMAN Take away your hands, for every moment that you make me stay Deepens my hate of you. THE MAN You would break my life in bits? THE WOMAN Your life is not so easily broken . . . You are a man . . . Come 1 I shall do some terrible thing — THE MAN Then I too shall follow ... THE WOMAN Follow? Where? THE MAN Wherever you go. ' ■ I 144 I THE WOMAN Down into death?, THE MAN Even into death. [A pause; she draws back a little.'] THE WOMAN Are you crying? Are there tears on your cheeks? Why do you heave so? Your love has died Are you so weak? But I need you so . THE MAN THE WOMAN THE MAN THE WOMAN [In a changed voice.'] You need me! THE MAN Look! If I do not need you, who am alone, uncomforted. With no place on Earth, no life, no light, if you are gone ... / THE WOMAN You need me? j ^ { \ THE MAN I need you ... [Silence.] i 145 3 THE WOMAN This man is my child ... [Silence.^ THE MAN ID rawing her tenderly close. ^ Our dead child between us, O my beloved, is there not a future? May no more children issue from us, no more children Lovely, golden, vv^aking with laughter, and clothed as w» ^ dawn With the memory of the dead? Come, my beloved, Down to the Valley, down to the living, down to the toilers. Come, my beloved ! I am your child and your father, Your husband and your lover ! Come, let us go ! THE WOMAN [fFeepinff.'\ my heart ! Something has broken in me, and the flood flows through my being! 1 come! I come! [They go out together, the Man with his arm around the fVoman.^ THE PRIEST Forgive these children, Lord God! THE SCIENTIST Ignorance is indeed bliss! [ 146 ] THE POET The secret of life ? He gives it to her, she gives it to him . . . But v^^ho shall tell of it? Who shall know^ it 3 [ 147 ] 018 378 042 6 ^^