roiijji!ti';}ii)fi!i^iiijn3r««nw lnm!niiitiimiiiiiuniii«l|i|iii^^ Class I^PS^Si^ Book -O) ^^o7 COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. Through PaintedJPanes And Other Poems NOTE Most of the poems in this collection have been taken from "The Dead Calypso," "Beyond the Requiems," " Cloistral Strains," and " From Crypt and Choir." All the unsold copies and plates of these books were destroyed by the great fire. Several long poems, and some sonnets, rondeaus, and Other minor forms, appear here lor the first time. /pf^ Through Painted Panes And Other Poems By Louis Alexander Robertson A. M. Robertson San Francisco 1907 >:: w J .0/? LIBRARY of CONGRESS Two Copies Received MAY t 1907 *- Copyrteht Entry CLASS r\A xxc, n6. 'copy b. ^• Copyright by Louis Alexander Robertson igor TO James Duval Phelan AN ABLE MAN AND LOYAL CITIZEN I INSCRIBE THIS BOOK WITH THE FOLLOWING LINES RESURGAM {CHANT ROYAL) The cataclysmal force to which we owe Our glorious Gate of Gold, through which the sea Rushed in to clasp these shores long, long ago, Came once again to crown our destiny With such a grandeur that in sequent years This period of pain which now appears Pregnant with doubt, shall vanish as zvhen day Drives the foreboding dreams of night away. Born of the womb of Woe, where Sorrow sighs, Fostered by Faith, undaunted by Dismay, Earth's fairest City shall from ashes rise. RESURGAM Portentous of her lasting overthrow, Scarce forty fateful seconds seemed to be; And when the stars had faded in the glow Of the bright baleful after-blaze, though she Shed for some harrowing hours the tristful tears Which showed her heart was torn, the Soul that cheers And drives Despair forth from the creature clay. Glowed in her breast and did to her display Great stately structures soaring to the skies; If from our cosmic creed we do not stray, Earth's fairest City shall from ashes rise. Garbed with chaste Grecian beauty she shall grow; Her white hand holds Fortuna's fate-forged key To where a world's ships, speeding to and fro, Shall pause and pay a rich restoring fee; Corruption, greed, and everything that bears A semblance to them, every thought that sears The heart and seeks the conscience to betray, Should die ere born, lest later on Decay Destroy the fabric seen with Fancy's eyes. If we our crime-condemning laws obey. Earth's fairest City shall from ashes rise. When first her burning tears began to flow, Her sapphire surges sobbed with sympathy; The hosts of heaven heard their wail of woe And chanted a responding threnody; 4 RESURGAM The weeping waves, the mystic midnight spheres Dispelled her doubts and drove away her fears Of doomful dawns. Almighty God, are they Not Baal's blind and blatant priests who say The seismic curse was Thine? Thy Voice replies, " Heed not the heresy they preach and pray, Earth's fairest City shall from ashes rise." Ofttimes from Shasta's cloud-kissed crest of snow. Soul-winged, I sail o'er river, grove, and lea To where I hear old Triton's trumpet blow, — Where from the tide the wave-wombed Deity Rises resplendent; zvith enraptured ears The Goatfoot's pure prophetic pipes she hears; Bacchus awaits her from the sparkling spray. His vine-bound brow on her white breast to lay; In one great hymn their voices harmotiize. This message doth the melody convey, — Earth's fairest City shall from ashes rise. ENVOY Thou demon Fate, that erstwhile sought to flay And scourge us to the death, thou canst not slay The faith that every future blow defies; Though we thy stealthy steps can never stay, Earth's fairest City shall from ashes rise. CONTENTS PAGE THROUGH PAINTED PANES II THE SONNET 12 THE SHRINE OF SONG I3 EURYDICE 14 ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE IS PROSERPINA 24 THERE 'S NOTHING LIKE THE OLD BALLADE 2$ ART 28 PHRYNE : A DREAM 29 BY WESTERN SHORES 34 THE M^NAD 35 HELEN 36 PROTEAN ZEUS 37 IN ABSENCE 38 THE THUNDER TUNE 39 THE CALIFORNIAN REDWOODS 47 BEYOND THE REQUIEMS 48 THE MAN IS NOTHING, THE WORK IS ALL 58 HOVE-TO 61 WHEN VIOLETS BLOOM 62 THE UNKNOWN LOVE 63 THE ROSE 64 LET 'S KISS A KISS 67 7 CONTENTS EVOLUTION 68 REMEMBER THEE ! 76 THE TELLTALE MARKS ^^ THE DEVOTEE 78 THE TEMPTRESS 80 VACILLATION 8l THE DEAD CALYPSO 82 GIVE ME THY LIPS QO THE DREAM pi THE KING IS DEAD. LONG LIVE THE KING ! 92 THE CRIMSONED GIFT 94 ADIEU d'amour 95 englamoured 96 happy days 97 lust's tiger teeth 98 what ghosts are these ? 99 the swoon 100 victor love 102 with cap and bells io4 singer of the seven seas ! io5 the tearful troth i08 i love thee still 110 WAIFS Ill TO A TREE 1X2 GIVE A BEGGAR A HORSE AND HE 'lL GALLOP TO HELL II4 THE CRUST OF CONTENT II6 8 CONTENTS FROM CRYPT AND CHOIR 1 17 WE MUST SIT SILENT WHEN THE DEVIL DRIVES I18 JOB 120 THE HIDDEN HAND 121 LOVE ME ONCE MORE 122 THE PROMISED PEACE I24 TEARS 129 JUBILATE DEO I3O WEARY 138 TO THE UNKNOWN GOD I40 THE CROSS-CROWNED CAIRN I44 CONSOLATION I46 THE CAVERN OF GLOOM 147 THE VANISHED VINTAGE 151 ATAXIA 152 THE LOOM 159 THROUGH PAINTED PANES Through painted panes a glory flows And over aisle and altar throws Soft floods of crimson, blue, and gold. Till silent forms, in sculpture stoled, Seem waking from a long repose. Ah, how the tinted marble glows! For every cheek now wears a rose, And each white face seems aureoled Through painted panes. These weird word-weavers who disclose Strange things to us in rhyme or prose. Who conjure up the dead and cold, Or Life's great varied page unfold, Their art is but a light that shows Through painted panes. II THE SONNET As often in some grand and ancient fane A devotee will kneel him down to pray At one familiar shrine day after day, And to his guardian saint his woes complain; There, while his fingers tell the beaded chain, His soul in ecstasy drifts far away, Till back returning with the vesper strain, It enters once again its home of clay. So in the cloistered corridors of Song There is one altar where I love to kneel ; Tho' humblest of the worshipers who throng Its narrow space, yet there I often steal, And in the Sonnet's sacred chalice pour My tears and prayers until I weep no more. 12 THE SHRINE OF SONG In mute amazement oft I pause before The portals of Song's shrine and list to those Whose music from its classic cloisters flows Adown the tide of Time forevermore. I see the place that no man may explore, Save him whose Art its life to Genius owes. On whose rapt lips the sacred cinder glows That teaches Song's sweet shibboleth and lore. Ah, it were heaven to enter in and kneel In some dim aisle, unnoticed and apart. With thirsting soul to drink the psalms that shame My songs to silence; then to rise and feel That my untutored lips had learnt the art That seats the singer in the House of Fame. 13 EURYDICE How Orpheus must have thrilled thy captive soul, When, facing Dis, thy freedom to obtain, He struck the classic chords, the master strain That made rocks reel and rivers backward roll! Hell's tortured heroes heard his harp extol Thy matchless worth, till they forgot their pain, And turned, one glimpse of thy fair face to gain, As after him they saw thee earthward stroll. Persephone sat silent while he played. Then whispered to her lord to set thee free; Dis nodded, and the heavy gates of Hell Swung swift and wide, while Cerberus obeyed The taming tune; then Orpheus turned to see If thou wert safe, and heard thee cry ''Farewell I" M ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE The lyre she loved to hear on Earth rang through the halls of Hell, The gloom became a golden dawn, the streams of Sorrow turned To rippling silver as she dropped Death's fading asphodel. Then in her tear-wet pallid cheeks Love's crimson roses burned. 'Twas the harp of her husband she heard in the distance, 'Twas the lute he had waked as a lover to woo her. And it called through the shades with the searching insistence Of a rapturing, rescuing summons that drew her Through the dark to where Acheron's waters were sobbing. But their sob seemed a psalm to the souls that were greeting, IS ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE And a hymn to the hearts that together were throbbing, Till they rose and went onward, his lute- strings entreating Mighty Dis for the guerdon that none had been granted, Save his Queen, who sat by him, Demeter's sad daughter; How her soul with the cry of those chords was enchanted! What a vision of Earth and of Enna they brought her! Nearer and clearer and louder and prouder echoed his strains, till the cries and the clamor Made by the hapless were hushed into silence, lost in the silver-tongued tones that re- sounded, — That rang to the roof of that palace infernal, till through the gloom that had grown to a glamour, i6 ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE Throned 'neath a blazing and bright borealis, Dis he beheld with his subjects sur- rounded. He paused before the throne; His hand fell from the strings, Still trembling with the tone, The spell that Music flings Over the hardest heart; Yea, though it be of stone. The tears of Grief will start, If it Love's lips hath known And lost them as he lost Those of Eurydice, When Aristaeus crossed Her path upon the lea; When from his arms she sprang. Her loyal lips to save. But felt the serpent's fang And faced the wailing wave. No need had he to speak a single word, They knew his story well; 17 ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE The throb within the harpings they had heard Told more than tongue could tell; But all as deaf as to the clamoring hordes, Who gathered near, Was Dis unto the pure and peerless chords Zeus loved to hear, Until his Queen Did closer lean And whisper in his ear: — "By all the pledges thou hast given me. Give Orpheus back his bride, Eurydice." He looked on her and said, "Yea, for thy sake I'll yield me now." And thus to Orpheus spake :- "If thou hast in thy soul The courage to control The love that led thee hither, listen well ; Thy bride may follow thee Back to thine Arcady, But till both pass the lordly gates of Hell, Give not one backward glance To her, but still advance, i8 ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE Guide her to where your glowing roses bloom; But if thou disobey My mandate, she shall stray Back to the home that waits her in the gloom." Clear as the fluted notes that Philomel Flymns to the midnight moon, Sweet as the low wave-whisper in a shell, Such was the silver tune That Orpheus conjured from his chords at first, To thank the Lord of Hell; Then from his waked, exulting lyre there burst An antiphonic swell Of melody that thro' those sunless regions rolled, Ere to earth's fragrant fields he and his loved one strolled. Dis listened with derision to the strain That thrilled his captive Queen, Persephone; For her it made the sombre shadows wane, — Charmed by its weird soul-waking witchery, She heard the murmur of Sicilian streams. And saw the sacred meadow of her dreams. 19 ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE The song that spirit unto spirit sings Then mingled with the music of the strings That Orpheus struck, Eurydice to guide Forth from the gloom to where her virgin vows were sighed. Sweet as the croon of the doves of Dodona, cooing and wooing, his harmonies called her, Moving like one in a dream she obeyed them, light seemed the cold lethal links that enthralled her; Far in the azure the lark whistled to her, borne on the breeze came the fragrance of flowers, Soon with her lover she'll couch in the clover, dreaming through Passion's sweet sen- suous hours. His harp sang of the bees. And of the warbling birds That nested in the trees Above the sleeping herds; 20 ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE Then one clear conjuring cadence crowned his lyre, And Arcady seemed near, home of her heart's desire. Lulled by his lute-strings, Hell's mighty immor- tals paused to behold her as onward she wended; Cerberus leaped like a lamb from his kennel, fawned on the lily-white hand she ex- tended; Followed her on, as she followed her lover, led by the lute that had ne'er known denial. Till Orpheus drew near the ponderous portals, looked on the sunlight, and then came the trial. Oh, how his triumphing harp-strings then trembled! Fair were the streams and the meadows that faced him. Where, in the first fervid faith of her girlhood, glowing Eurydice's white arms embraced him. 21 ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE Oh, what a breath of ambrosial sweetness fanned her fair cheek! What a halo of splendor Shone through the gloom on her golden corym- bus! How those clear chords compelled all things to render Homage to her, as when Dis was persuaded to give her again to the arms of her lover, If he could lead her, and never look backward, out of the gloom to their couch in the clover! The gates of Hell he gained, A single step remained To set his loved one free; But ere that port was passed, A glance he backward cast And saw Eurydice, With outstretched hands, into the darkness fade; Oh, what a price for that last look was paid! Sun, that shinest in the bluest skies that over Earth e'er bended. And ye mystic stars of midnight, and thou wanton, wandering moon! ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE Ye were watchers, ye were list'ners, when his quest for her was ended, Whisper to us through the ages, tell us if some tristful tune Sobbed within the strings to soothe him, or if — like a peal of thunder — Some swift harmony revengeful 'gainst the gates of Hell he poured? Was it pride, or was it passion, that impelled him to the blunder. When her heart, with love responding, broke to hear the crowning chord? as PROSERPINA Daughter of Ceres, throned within the shade Of Hell's black arches, ever gazing through The gloom to where, wet with the morning dew, The violet greets the sun in Enna's glade; Year after year it flourishes to fade, But thro' the mists of time thy face we view, As fair as when great Pluto paused to woo, When at thy side his foaming steeds were stayed. The fragrant fields of sea-girt Sicily, That bloomed beneath thy feet, have barren grown, And all the music of her streams is still ; The birds sit mute on every withered tree. With thistles now that velvet sward is sown. The winds that wantoned with thy hair are chill. 24 THERE'S NOTHING LIKE THE OLD BALLADE Of all the tangled tropes that tell Of love, or hate, or joy, or pain, In sonnet, rondeau, villanelle, Or ode, or epic, or quatrain. Or any other kind of strain, Or light, or heavy, gay, or sad. To bring a boon, or balk a bane. There 's nothing like the old ballade. Its single cymbal suits me well. But when I sound the clanging twain, Then Pegasus begins to smell The battle, and he shakes his mane; No need of spur, I give him rein; Think ye that he 's a patient pad? To make him gallop for his grain There 's nothing like the old ballade. 25 there's nothing like the old ballade Did not rash Villon in his cell, Hard by the sobbing waves of Seine, Deaf to the dooming, dismal bell. And all unmindful of his chain, There carol forth a rare refrain That comes to us with glory clad? If rhyme could rid him of his stain. There 's nothing like the old ballade. For from his reckless lips there fell Such glowing gems, that Glory's fane. Wherein the world's immortals dwell. Doth many a less than he contain. The prude may treat him with disdain. She neither can detract nor add, For beauty did a champion gain; There 's nothing like the old ballade. The high-born maiden's heart will swell. And think the whispered vow inane Sweet as the voice of Philomel, When Poesy hath made it plain; 26 there's nothing like the old ballade See yonder awkward stammering swain! His simple song makes Chloe glad; When tongues are tied, and vows are vain, There 's nothing like the old ballade. The tune that Triton taught the shell, Sung by the surge and hurricane; The lute of Orpheus, 'neath whose spell We, like the Grecians, long have lain; Pan's pipes that filled the shepherd's brain With melody that made him mad, All live, so why should Villon wane? There 's nothing like the old ballade. ENVOY Prince! though this tantalizing skein Of rhyme hath less of good than bad, A cup to Villon let us drain, There 's nothing like the old ballade. a? ART Thou breathest on the cold insensate stone, And lo! it throbs with immortality; The canvas, with thy conjuring pigments strown, Glows with a beauty that will never die ; The deepest fountains of the heart run dry When o'er the trembling strings thy hand is thrown. And when we hear thy tongue's rich sorcery, We know not why we laugh, or weep, or moan. We know not why, nor do we care to know Where rise the waters of that mystic stream Which bears the spirit onward in its flow. Till, all unconscious of the clay, we seem To feel the breath of an ambrosial breeze, And drift with it o'er dreamy sapphire seas. PHRYNE A DREAM When thou wert with me in the waking hours Of those delirious but degrading days Now gone forever; or when on my breast, Pillowed in slumber, thy fair cheek was laid. Whether it was that each enchanted sense Was drugged so deeply with thy sorcery. Or whether thy warm lips in whispers low, Unheard by me, murmured unto my heart, "Why dream of me when I am by thy side?" I cannot say; but through those after hours — The sequent drowsy intervals when Love Languished a little ere it waked again — I never saw thy face come to console. Or mock me in my sleep as now, when I Turn in the dark with dream-deluded lips To kiss the pillow pressed by thee no more. 29 PHRYNE Sometimes as fair as Eos, when she flings The somhre curtains of the night apart To beam in beauty on a sleeping world, Dost thou appear to me; yea, I have felt The pressure and the passion of thy lips. And even heard them whisper as of old. One night I dreamt that I was one among A multitude of people gathered in The city Cecrops founded; I beheld A spacious place, circled with shrines and fanes, Ornate with chiseled treasures that were brought From classic shades to crown a pagan rite With a reflected glory of the day That dawned when Aphrodite trod the seas. In the mute language that the dreamer speaks, I questioned one who stood near me to learn The meaning of the mighty concourse there; He pointed to an empty pedestal Standing between two sculptured effigies Of wave-wombed Cytherea; one revealed A carved conceit of unimpassioned Love, 30 PHRYNE The other was a marble dream of Lust. Upon the right the chaste Ourania sat, A milk-white dove upon her whiter breast, And on her brow the sacred myrtle leaves. Upon the left Euploea stood, as when The Cnidian youth stole to her in the dark. And stained her snowy bosom with the blood Of lips that crushed her marble mouth in vain. Then mystic hymns, such as are only heard In the domain of an englamouring dream. Rolled from the opening portals of a fane In which a throng of priestesses appeared, Led by a priest; a woman with them walked, Hooded and masked, garbed in a purple robe That swept the shining tiles on which she trod With slow and stately step, until she came And paused in silence at the vacant plinth. Then did the priest proclaim that she was one In whom the best and basest elements Mingled together in a breast on which E'en Zeus himself had been content to rest. 31 PHRYNE He also told that listening host that she Possessed the cestus Cytherea wore, — The conquering charm that no man may resist; He said it was a flavor of the flesh Found only in a few, and only when Some face, some form, and, it may be, some voice Combine with it to kindle in the blood The rabies of a desperate desire. He said, as well, she loved to worship in Pandemos' shrine, then wander forth to give The sailormen of Salamis her lips. Then turning from that eager throng to her, And pointing to the plinth, he said, "Ascend, Let us behold the breathing beauty which In after ages man shall turn to see. But through the dim deluding mists of time. For thou art one of those who have the power To prompt the chisel and the brush and pen, And gain an undeserved but deathless fame." Still masked and robed, she in an instant scaled The waiting pedestal, where she remained 32 PHRYNE A mystery for a moment, but no more; For, at a sign, the robe fell from her form, The hood dropped ofY, the mask was flung aside. And Phryne stood in faultless beauty there. The marble miracle of Phidias, The chaste Ourania, seemed to shrink away; The people cried with an applauding voice, — "Euploea! O Euplcea!" For they saw In Phryne's form the living counterpart Of one whose Parian beauty never paled, Until it met its breathing prototype. The matchless mistress of Praxiteles. Then silence followed; as I looked on her, Methought I saw a likeness unto thee. And cried thy name aloud; a thousand tongues Chorused my cry and claimed thee as their own ; Then in the clamor I awoke to find The dream as fleeting as thy faithless love. 33 BY WESTERN SHORES By Western Shores oft Triton blows His sounding shell, and she who rose All wet and wanton from the deep, To make man's pulse with passion leap. Here on the wave in beauty glows. A herd upon the hillside lows, And where yon stream in music flows. There Pan is piping to his sheep, By Western Shores. Here vine-crown'd Bacchus doth repose. And nymphs and satyrs, like to those Of Tempe, from the copses peep. Why for the fabled Lotus weep. When near the Poppy we may doze By Western Shores? 34 THE MiENAD Why call this fiction in thy face a blush, When that pure protest faded years ago? This is the fervid and precursive flush That makes the Maenad's cheek with crimson glow,— The rosy herald Passion sends to show That I the ripe grapes of thy lips may crush. Till thro' my veins more rapturing transports rush, Than from the richest sun-kissed clusters flow. Love's chalice, garlanded with myrtle leaves, Is sweet to sip, but when Desire hath grown Drunk with the purple poppy-seeded wine Thy passion offers, then thy sorcery weaves The spell by Circe o'er Ulysses thrown, The charm that changed his comrades into swine. 35 HELEN These are the eyes in which proud Paris gazed, When fast across the dark iEgean sea He fled with Helen on the night when she Left Sparta's shore, and Menelaus raised The rescuing cry; then War's red beacon blazed, While Greece with all her glorious chivalry Dashed 'gainst the dauntless Dardan hosts to free The fair and faithless woman Homer praised. Virtue hath rarely worn Fame's glittering crown ; Where are the women of the past who reigned In spotless robes? Penelope, Lucrece, — Ah, God! how few! But Helen's glorious gown Defies the dust of ages, and though stained With Passion's grapes, gives glamour unto Greece. PROTEAN ZEUS Into a Satyr did the God degrade Himself to clasp Antiope an hour; Then, as a Bull he figured, to deflower Europa, deemed Phoenicia's fairest maid. Amphitryon's part he with Alcmena played; To Danae he seemed a Golden Shower; In Dian's form Callisto he betrayed, And as a Flame entered ^gina's bower. Once where Eurotas' murmuring waters flow, A frightened Swan sought Leda's sheltering breast; In his warm plumage, whiter than the snow, The crimson roses of her cheeks she pressed; From that immortal mingling Helen came, Whose beauty set the Trojan towers aflame. 37 IN ABSENCE I SIT with Pan beneath Arcadian trees And see the satyr and the nymph and faun ; I look on dazzling Aphrodite drawn fiy dolphins over shining sapphire seas; I hear the tune of Triton in the breeze, Sad Philomel at night, the lark at dawn, But little power have they to appease My passion and my pain when thou art gone. Yea, e'en the paths of Poesy seem bare Of all their beauty, for I fail to find In them the flowers whose fragrance once could fling A spell around me that defied despair. That made me deaf to Love, to Passion blind, But little consolation now they bring. 38 THE THUNDER TUNE There was music mingling with the thunder when the lightnings o'er Olympus flashed, And the gods who slumbered 'round their Master waked and heard the harmony that crashed From the clouds that later hung o'er Ilion, and the dirge of her destruction roared, When her thronging hosts with those of Hellas for the beauty of a woman warred. There was music mingling with the thunder, but it was the music of a dream, And, perchance, had passed away in silence, lost forever, but by Meles' stream There was born a child around whose cradle all the Muses met, to whom they brought From Latona's son a silver-chorded harp to which in after years he taught 39 THE THUNDER TUNE The melodious and majestic measure, which a world with rapture ever hears, For the dreaming soul of sightless Homer saw the vision that to few appears. Heard the music mingling with the thunder, and the paean of the cloud-throned choir, Caught the meaning of the clamoring chorus, taught it to his ever-living lyre. Few, as he, controlled the chords that summon back again the dust-dimmed days of old; Few e'er decked the dead in richer raiment, turned their faded garments into gold. Then within the clouds the music slumbered, near a thousand years it silent slept. Till the graceful melodist of Mantua waked and struck the strings that Homer swept. Then again we saw the calm iEgean ripple into rapture as his lyre Sent its silver strains across the waters, crim- soned with the red reflected fire 40 THE THUNDER TUNE Of the flaming falling towers of Ilion, ere ^neas unto Carthage came, Where for him the love-defeated Dido gave her faultless body to the flame. Then there came a seeming endless silence, gleamings of the lightning, but no more, Till the lean-lipped melancholy Tuscan, wan- dering exiled by an alien shore. Dreaming of old Portanari's daughter, saw the levin leap across the skies. Heard the deafening thunder tune that followed, saw the Mantuan's guiding shade arise; Trod with him the circling scenes of Torture, heard Hell's captives curse in frost and flame, Garbed the spectres with a ghastly glory, shrined them in an everlasting fame. Then the sleeping thunder-freighted fleeces drifted North and over Stratford's stream. Hovered there in silence for a season, ere they flashed the great prophetic gleam 41 THE THUNDER TUNE That foretold a measure more melodic than the dirge that Dante heard in Hell, Or the verse that Virgil made iEneas, or the hymn that Homer sang so well. Little had he of the graceful Latin, less, or nothing, of the grander Greek, But his soul had listened to the sermons that the stones, the brooks, the breezes speak; Nature's mystic voice for him grew vibrant, in its tones her mother tongue he heard, Then she gave him his unclouded crystals, made him master of the wizard word. Through his clear uncompromising lenses Life is seen denuded, undisguised; In the glowing spectrum of his genius all its tints and tones are analyzed. Pictured on his panoramic pages, strange im- perishable scenes appear; Through the gamut of his glorious music, won- drous cries and cadences we hear. 42 THE THUNDER TUNE In his songs the shrieking Saxon saga mingles with the matin of the lark, And the midnight plaint of Philomela lends a golden glory to the dark. 'Neath didactic Touchstone's masking motley, 'neath the 'guising garb of Rosalind, All the lore of Life and Love is hidden, all their foibles and their faiths we find; Never had a King a better kingdom than the banished Duke in Arden found; Little mourned he for his stolen sceptre, when he heard those leafy lanes resound With the voices of his comrades chanting that Fate's quiver holds no hurtling dart That may not be blunted, bent, and broken 'gainst the shield of a contented heart. Hark! here comes the prince of pot-house heroes; watch the vine-born valor, wit, and craft Rise and break like bubbles on the surface of the seas of sack which he has quaffed; 43 THE THUNDER TUNE O'er that tide he sailed with well-trimmed canvas, every breeze that blew was fair for him, And, with Hamlet, Shylock, and Othello, Fal- staff hath a fame Time cannot dim. Hear the protest 'gainst the quick quietus, when the demon whispered to the Dane, And then listen to the larger logic of the fervent phrases that contain Such a creed, that Death's loud sudden sum- mons, or his faint procrastinated call. Wakes no fear in those who face the darkness with the words "The readiness is all!" Woven with the figments of his fancy, 'mongst the many fibres there is one Which a woman's white ambitious fingers to a cord of cruel crimson spun; This she threaded to Fate's flying shuttle, where it blent with paler woofs and warps, Till upon the loom the longed-for fabric faded to the graveclothes of a corpse. 44 THE THUNDER TUNE She had hoped to wear the royal raiment, as the witches' wizened lips had vowed, But Revenge and swift-winged Retribution changed the promised purple to a shroud. For the phantom dagger found the fingers of the faithless Lord of Dunsinane, And the Wood of Birnam proved its portent when the King was murdered by the Thane. Hear the lonely lips of Mariana sigh for those that sweetly were forsworn, Listen to her lute-strings as they tremble, learn the deathless lyric that was born Of a love that faced the darkling distance, as a Rose a lofty Star will woo, Till it falls into her fragrant bosom, mirrored in a drop of midnight dew. All his airy nothings are eternal ; when, in after ages, naught remains Of Earth's proudest piles and fairest fabrics, not a vestige of her vanished fanes, — 45 THE THUNDER TUNE When her sacred moss-grown shrines surrender unto Time, who ever on them glowers, Man shall see Titania in the moonlight, crown the Weaver with unfading flowers. 46 THE CALIFORNIAN REDWOODS Ere over Nilus' waking wave the strain Of Memnon's morning melody was blown; Ere Cheops from his quarries clove the stone And piled his pyramid on Egypt's plain; And later, ere the God-projected fane Of Solomon had into grandeur grown; Before the glory of the Greek was known, Or Romulus the she-wolf's dugs did drain: — We stood in youth where now in age we stand, Colossal types of life that closer climb To clasp the stars than any living thing. Ye cherish crumbling temples that were planned In Dian's day, yet deem it not a crime Our older glory in the dust to fling. 47 BEYOND THE REQUIEMS Not in cataclysmal chaos, earthquake, fire, or flood, or blast, Waits the world to hear the summons calling her to death at last. Oft she hears a muttered menace, sees the ghastly lightnings gleam. And the slumbering volcano vomit forth its lethal stream; Oft she sees the wind-whipped waters leaping to the sullen skies, And the foaming tidal terror in its deadly might arise; But still deaf to all the dirges that have rolled above her dead. And the songs that stir the living, she has ever onward sped, BEYOND THE REQUIEMS As when first, a vagrant vapor, thrown from off the glowing breast Of her mighty parent planet, up the shining path she pressed, Lifeless, nebulous, and naked, save the vesture that was drawn 'Round her like a misty mantle, as she speeded to the dawn. Who can guess the force that flung her out upon the star-strewn deep Clasped her cloudy cincture 'round her, taught her how her course to keep Through the vast uncharted regions, orbed her, shaped her, 'round her flung Icy bands and frozen fetters that for aeons to her clung? Long she drifted through the darkness, but at last the Word was heard, And the cold, insensate sleeper to the waken- ing message stirred; 49 BEYOND THE REQUIEMS Felt the quickening breath that melted frozen field and moor and main, Drank the draught of saving sunlight, lost the winter-woven chain; Grew in grandeur and in beauty, soaring to the noonday height, Till the mighty Hand that hurled her out upon the cosmic night Draws her back to death and darkness, shrouds her in her ice once more. Stripped of all her garnered glory, all her Science, Song, and Lore. There shall be no eye to see it. Life shall long have left the earth. When she reels, a dying planet, to the breast that gave her birth. All our knowledge is as nothing; clear-eyed Reason stands aghast, For she sees the light that led us through the dark and distant past 50 BEYOND THE REQUIEMS Lost within the larger lustre Science sheds upon Earth's doom, Is it better than the glow-worm that we fol- lowed in the gloom? While Earth speeds to where unnumbered sister stars are frozen spheres, Faith, before her falling altars, lifts her fear- less face and hears Every cherished creed derided, but still mum- bles to her beads, Dreaming that beyond the requiems deathless life to death succeeds. Hope's pale star still smiles to soothe us, dis- tant, indistinct, and cold. As the primal moth beheld it, do we now its beams behold? Are we nearer than the nascent life that slum- bered in the slime. When the protoplasmic moner scanned the steeps that it must climb? 51 BEYOND THE REQUIEMS Or the microcosmic atom, ere its fetters left it free? Or the blind bathybius sleeping at the bottom of the sea? Yea, the germ, primordial, potent, saw the goal that it must gain, Found a hovel in man's body, built a palace in his brain. And the selfsame seeds that wakened with it in Earth's virgin womb Fill the fields with fragrant blossoms, or in poisoned petals bloom; Make the wilderness grow vocal with the voice of bird and brute, Send the great Sequoia skyward, gnaw in cankers at its root; Never swerving from the settled purpose of the primal plan. Save when planted in the passions and the burning brain of man; 52 BEYOND THE REQUIEMS There, oft glorious, often ghastly, oft de- graded, oft divine. Sometimes soaring to the stars, and sometimes wallowing with the swine ; Always out of tune with Nature; is the human brute the best, Fated to the thralling thirst that burns for- ever in his breast. Which hath ever urged us onward o'er Life's sterile sands, till we, Rich in knowledge, rich in wisdom, panting forward, ever see Silent and untrodden regions, over which the mirage beams. But its tempting trees and waters murmur only in our dreams? They have murmured unto myriads and be- guiled them in the past, They will call through coming ages, long as life on earth shall last, S3 BEYOND THE REQUIEMS When she hurries through the spaces on to where the peril hides, As some bark on her own bosom sails through tranquil tropic tides, Freighted full with costly treasures, till some stealthy stream or breeze Woos her from the summer waters into dark and winter seas, Where the icy currents clasp her, and the frozen vapors turn Into cerements of silver, shrouding her from stem to stern. Galley slaves were ne'er chained closer than her captive crew, whose doom Is to drift to death through darkness, fettered to their floating tomb; Crouching in the cold and shrinking from their dreaded end they gaze On ffome spectre sail that mocks them as it passes in the haze. 54 BEYOND THE REQUIEMS So the life that lingers latest on this planet still will yearn For the peace the world denies it, yea, though it again return To the lowest type that sheltered in its breast Hope's latent spark. And then fanned it to the fatuous flame that lures us through the dark. All our philosophic pedants, all our sons of Science know Not a whit more than that dullard dreamed unnumbered years ago, As to where the spirit wanders when the body sinks in death, For beyond the grave's black portals never man has breathed one breath. We have probed the past and hunted in its deepest, darkest cells, But the secret still eludes us, never by one whisper tells 55 BEYOND THE REQUIEMS Where Life felt its first faint tremor, for it was not born of naught, Never seed spontaneous blossoms till the quickening breath be brought. As we know not the beginning, so we may not know the end, But as life from life first started, back, through death, to life 'twill wend. Now and then some guide arises who would turn us from our path With sweet promises that please us, or with threats of future wrath. We have listened to His lessons, heard the Nazarene's behest, "Follow Me, my way-worn children, I alone can give ye rest." We have wondered as we hearkened unto Buddha's pleading voice. If to find the peace men long for, they could make a wiser choice. s6 BEYOND THE REQUIEMS We have seen the swarthy Arab step athwart our path and say, "Ye shall drink the living waters, if my pre- cepts ye obey." We have searched the stars above us for the secret, but no beam Lights our darkened path to guide us to the goal of which we dream. Little hope or help is hidden in the garners of the past, All its poets, priests, and sages, all the wisdom which they massed, AH its fables, faiths, and fictions, all its tem- ples, triumphs, tomes Tell us nothing of the region where the flesh- freed spirit roams. 57 THE MAN IS NOTHING, THE WORK IS ALL This world is but a noisy show, A mighty, motley masquerade, Where countless actors come and go, A tragedy and gasconade, Where many puzzling parts are played; Till curtained with Death's dusty pall. And in Time's testing balance weighed, The man is nothing, the work is all. Forward they press, both high and low. And rich and poor, and gay and staid; Some climb where Fame's fair mountains glow, While others grovel in the glade; But when at last the sexton's spade Hath built the bed to which they crawl. When requiems roll and prayers are prayed. The man is nothing, the work is all. s8 THE MAN IS NOTHING, THE WORK IS ALL Though rivers red as crimson flow Beneath the shot-torn barricade; Though on the clay of fallen foe Thrones have been reared with reeking blade, Yet when some tyrant hath betrayed His trust, our freedom to enthrall. War's waking cry should be obeyed, The man is nothing, the work is all. Fate's shuttle flashes to and fro, And many curious webs are made; Oft Fortune doth her smile bestow To light some dullard through the shade; While Genius, jilted by the jade, Hears in the gloom Fame's clarion call, "Toil on! toil on! be not afraid, — The man is nothing, the work is all." Through scenes of sin and ways of woe Some reckless sons of Song have strayed. Villon and Burns, Verlaine and Poe, And Wilde, her latest renegade, 59 THE MAN IS NOTHING, THE WORK IS ALL With others whom the Fates have flayed, Who to the dregs drained Sorrow's gall, Wear the fair leaves that never fade; The man is nothing, the work is all. To some misleading guides we owe Lights that have made us retrograde; While others up Time's ramparts throw For us a shining escalade, By which we may at last invade Truth's glorious and eternal hall ; Or fair, or foul, in Life's crusade, The man is nothing, the work is all. ENVOY Whene'er we glory or upbraid The good or bad, the great or small. This maxim may our judgment aid, The man is nothing, the work is all. 60 HOVE -TO Baffled^ but bravely, like a stag at bay, She faced the driving gale and angry sea; Under short canvas and with helm a-lee, Hove-to, upon the starboard tack she lay And looked into the wind's wild eye that day. Over the great green rolling billows she Rode like a storm-bird, and did seem to be A mist-born phantom rising from the spray. Her tightened weather-shrouds rang like a lyre. Struck by the furious Storm-king as he passed; Wild ocean wraiths wailed in the thundering choir, A thousand demons shrieked in every blast; Yet better thus to battle with the gale. Than drift o'er sleeping seas with listless sail. 6i WHEN VIOLETS BLOOM When violets bloom, 't is when the year Wakes from her winter dream to hear Spring's cradle-song crooned by the gale O'er meadow, mountain, moor, and dale, That these pure purples first appear. Then Summer's daughters come, who wear More gorgeous robes, but they are mere Maids to the modest Queen we hail When violets bloom. Then hosts of fragrant followers rear Their sun-kissed crests of beauty ere The frosts of Winter fall, but fail To make these virgins of the vale Forgotten by the hearts they cheer When violets bloom. 62 THE UNKNOWN LOVE As in the City of the Violet Crown An altar to the Unknown God was raised Midst shrines of beauty that a world amazed, And even now in crumbling grandeur frown; For well the fine Hellenic hand could gown The stone with glory; but while strangers praised The peerless piles, the Greek upon them gazed Unmoved by all their beauty and renown. For every sense was sated, and he yearned For more than soulless marble could contain, Then did his vague idolatry disown; So I on Passion's altars long have burned The incense of my soul, but all in vain, — The love I dream of I have never known. 63 THE ROSE When to my lips this rose I pressed, Life with new beauty seemed to glow. A love that slumbered in my breast, When to my lips this rose I pressed. Leaped back to life, and I confessed The pledge I gave thee long ago. When to my lips this rose I pressed. Life with new beauty seemed to glow. When first our fervid troth was told, I gave it to thee with a vow. Shall I forget that night of old, When first our fervid troth was told, And when I swore that it should hold Me true to thee? It holds me now. When first our fervid troth was told, I gave it to thee with a vow. 64 THE ROSE And now it comes in after years, Its scent and color gone with age, Wet with Faith's timid, trustful tears. And now it comes in after years. And cries aloud to Love that hears And hastens to redeem the gage. And now it comes in after years. Its scent and color gone with age. And back to where I met thee first This faded flower my memory bears; All doubts of thee it hath dispersed. And back to where I met thee first I speed with every sense athirst, My soul the sacred summons hears, And back to where I met thee first This faded flower my memory bears. I see the love-light in thine eyes, I listen to thy murmurs low, I drink the rapture of thy sighs; I see the love-light in thine eyes, 65 THE ROSE And oh! I see the tears that rise, And curse the fate that made them flow. I see the love-light in thine eyes, And listen to thy murmurs low. The lips I loved may now be pale, But what is that, dear one, to me? Time's touch will make the fairest fail. The lips I loved may now be pale. But through the gloom I hear them wail. And haste across the years to thee. The lips I loved may now be pale. But what is that, dear one, to me? 66 LET'S KISS A KISS Let 's kiss a kiss and vow a vow And lightly laugh at far-off years; Ere yet beneath their weight we bow, Let 's kiss a kiss and vow a vow That age shall find us then as now, Linked by a love that never fears. Let 's kiss a kiss and vow a vow And lightly laugh at far-off years. 67 EVOLUTION Mystical Dream of Creation! Problem of Dark Evolution! Tell us the world's early story, Life's hidden secret unfold. Vain is each wild speculation, Groping in gloom for solution, Enough that from darkness sprang glory, Sunrise in crimson and gold. Mounting the stream of the ages, Up to its sources of mystery, Threading its channels uncertain. What after all have we won? Blank were the world's early pages, Buried in myth was its history. Long after Earth's misty curtain Glowed with the light of the sun. 68 EVOLUTION Still in the quarried tradition, Still in the ice-graven story, Still in the rock-written fable. Linger the throes of thy birth; Marking thy growth and transition, Back in the centuries hoary, Legends that teach and enable Thy children to know thee, O Earth! Nebulous waif of obscurity. On through immensity stealing. Wandering child of the forces. Dropped from the matrix of night! Fashioning thyself to maturity. Sphering and fusing, annealing. Through the dark centuries' courses Drifting along to the light. Chaos all order confounding. Yet ever silently speeding On with instinctive elusion, Steadily holding thy way; 69 EVOLUTION Darkness primeval abounding, Down through the aeons unheeding, Ever mid murky confusion Blundering on to the day. Thundered a mandate through heaven, "Let there be light!" and the vapors, Losing themselves in the ocean. Mingled again with the deep. Then followed morning and even, Night lit her pale distant tapers, Order was born of commotion, Earth was awakened from sleep. Laboring in primal gestation. Life in its forms multifarious, Eager to meet the sun's kisses. Leaped in her womb with delight; Weary of long nidulation. Up from their wallows lutarious. Up from their darksome abysses Swarmed the strange brood of the night. 70 EVOLUTION Life in fantastic variety, Breeding and battling and dying, Struggling for very existence. Rending with fang and with nail; Death, never gorged with satiety, Over the massacre flying. Blind to the light in the distance. Deaf to the song in the gale. Type against type for survival Through the long ages contending, All for supremacy striving, Man as the master they own; Brute of the brutes without rival, Up from the conflict ascending. Scheming, coercing, contriving. Building the steps to his throne. Fatuous child of mortality, Swaddled in dark superstition, Groping thy way through obscurity, Stumbling, but stumbling to rise; 71 EVOLUTION Casting aside animality, Girding thyself with ambition, Fearlessly facing futurity, Scaling the steeps of the skies. Race against race for dominion, Creed against creed for conviction. Throne against throne for subversion, Moving like puppets at play; Battling to force an opinion, Bleeding to follow a fiction, Dying, with instant reversion. To mingle again in the fray. Many a crimson libation, Poured on barbarian altars, Freer and faster than water, Purples thy triumph with shame; Many a lurid oblation. Smoking to priest-prated psalters, Many a monster of slaughter Fiddling a kingdom to flame. 12 EVOLUTION Many a Moloch of cruelty, Many a Tophet infernal, Hope, after gory baptism. Flung to the funeral pyre; But with death-scorning credulity, Pluming its pinions eternal. Up from the murderous abysm Springing, like phoenix, from fire. Dross of the brute disappearing. Lost in the burning purgation. Leaving the spirit less weighted. Less overburdened with clay; On to the light ever faring, Toiling in endless gradation. Lower to higher translated. Rising from darkness to day. Many a sacred Thermopylae Hurling defiance at slavery, Many a crucified martyr Dying for love of his kind. 73 EVOLUTION Tyranny, kingcraft, monopoly, Yielding to justice and bravery; Liberty's blood-blazoned charter Many a despot hath signed. Many a conquest of Science, Shaming the warrior's sabre; Many a triumph of morals, Wisdom and Mercy and Love. Many a blade of defiance Forged to the ploughshare of Labor; Many a chaplet of laurels Wreathed with the olive above. Height after height hast thou taken, Yet there are others remaining, Far in the pure empyrean Truth's shining battlements rise; Scale them with courage unshaken. Death and disaster disdaining. Storm them with jubilant paean, Capture the gates of the skies. 74 EVOLUTION Then shall all ills of mortality Unto thy wisdom surrender; Knowledge supreme and supernal, Leaving no summit to scale. Truth, in her white-robed reality. Opening her portals of splendor, Yielding her treasures eternal. Lifting Obscurity's veil. 7S REMEMBER THEEl Remember thee! The earliest morning beam That breaks my slumber brings thee back to me. Then through the long and lonely day I see Thy haunting beauty, and my soul doth dream Of blissful bygone raptures that redeem These tristful moods and keep me true to thee. Then, in the dark, I kneel and pray to be Blessed with thy passion, peerless and supreme. Remember thee! Recall the midnight hours — The glorious gloom — in which we found the way. Thro' sensuous shades, to where our spirits met And breathed the fragrance of the purple flowers Which Passion gives his favored ones who stray Where we have strolled, then ask if I forget. 76 THE TELLTALE MARKS I DREAMT one night that I beheld thee dead; The Spoiler scarce had stolen thy breath away, When I bent over thy beloved clay, Speechless and tearless, with a nameless dread. For all thy pallid flesh, from heel to head. Passion's empurpled lip-prints did display; Unnumbered ghosts of bygone loves were they; Thy pale lips moved, and this is what they said: — "Thou didst believe me true, but my false heart Was traitor to thee, and I did conceal My shame for many years; but now my art Availeth not; these telltale marks reveal. Each one, a guilty love — " *'No morel" I cried. And woke to find thee sleeping at my side. 77 THE DEVOTEE Thou art no saint, but when I feel Thy blessed lips on mine, In adoration I could kneel And own thee half divine. A glory crowns thy golden hair, And lights thy loving eyes. Daughter of Earth! thou art as fair As those who tread the skies. And when in my enraptured ears Thy murmuring accents flow, I think some spirit of the spheres Hath wandered here below. For angel lips alone could move In melody so sweet; Child of the Skies! behold thy love A suppliant at thy feet. 78 THE DEVOTEE Time's rude, unsparing hand will chase Thy loveliness away; But there 's a nobler, loftier grace That triumphs o'er decay; The heart that never once betrayed, That changing years have tried. When all thy other beauties fade, Shall draw me to thy side. 79 THE TEMPTRESS Belike thou art a temptress come from hell, The devil often dons a fair disguise; And yet I like the laughter in thine eyes, And for thy lips, — I love them wondrous w^ell; They oft remind me of an ocean shell, With all its murmuring melody of sighs, Till I forget, when captive to their spell, The whispered music may be naught but lies. Nay, nay I I do thee wrong; have I not felt The rosy rebels into sweetness melt, And seen thee swoon within my close caress? What matter if thy lips the word withhold, — In the mute music of thy pulses bold Thy love grows voluble and doth confess. 80 VACILLATION The blessing and the curse alternate rise; One day I swear that thou art fairer far Than the chaste beauty of yon silver star That nightly hangs her lamp in western skies. The next I look on thee with other eyes, Thy beauty hath all vanished and thou art Foul as a leper, and thy traitor heart Seems but a sink of craftiness and lies. One day, with many a passion-prompted vow, I braid Love's votive blossoms in thy hair; The next I tear the tribute from thy brow And crown thee with the curses of Despair. Swayed by the changing moon, tides ebb and flow, So to thy fickle heart these moods I owe. 8i THE DEAD CALYPSO Where be thy witcheries now, woman of won- derful beauty? Priestess of pleasure and love, thy lotus hath withered at last. Sweet was the soul-searing cult taught by thy liberal kisses. Sweeter the chalice of love formed by thy sensuous mouth. Ripe as the rapturing grape, rich as the rose in its redness. But unto them that did drink fatal as waters of death. Left unto thee are the dregs, bitter and biting as wormwood, Freezing the blood in thy veins, leaving thee rigid and cold. Strange that these lust-loving lips, prodigal once with such passion, 82 THE DEAD CALYPSO Wreathe themselves into a smile chaste as a maiden's in sleep! Ah, how they 've changed since I first crushed their voluptuous vintage I Shrunk is their soft silken skin, as when the tropical sun Drinking the life of the grape, leaves it aban- doned and shriveled. Gibbeted on its own vine, swinging like felon forgot. Mute is thy murmuring voice, silent its pas- sionate pleading, Which, like a song of the sea heard in a whispering shell. Called me so softly to where, rising through ravishing roses, Love's longed-for heaven appeared, fair as a rhapsodist's dream; Misted with halos of gold, yet but a vanishing splendor Miraged in exquisite grace over a desert of death. 83 THE DEAD CALYPSO But when the pulses of youth throb with their eager insistence, When the white snows of the heart melt with the breath of the spring, Then when the currents of life leap with ineffable joyaunce. Where is the hand that can point whither their waters will wend. Whether through vistas of peace, on to Love's infinite ocean, Or through dark devious ways, seeking the silt of the sewer. Dead is the light in thine eyes, yet Recollection beholds them, Beaming with beauty like stars mirrored in slumbering seas; Where through the darkness they dream, till the warm kiss of the morning. Or the wild breath of the gale, drowns them in wave-woven foam. 84 THE DEAD CALYPSO ^ Thus when the Roses of Love blushed with the Poppies of Passion, Crowning our cup of Desire, hid in the draught was a charm, Which when thy lips fell from mine, sighing and sated, would soothe thee Into a deep, dreamless swoon where the bright violet beams Faded away from thine eyes, which in the sensuous slumber Shone 'neath their uplifted lids white as the lilies of Death. Moistened with ecstasy's tears were the rapt azures when turning Into thy love-laden brain, there Passion's secret to find; Blind were their opaline orbs, on which I looked with amazement, Till my lips, clinging to thine, coaxed the lost irises back. Now under curtains of wax, lustreless crescents of whiteness, 85 THE DEAD CALYPSO Cold as the frost on the pane, hint of those rapturous hours; Where is their luminous gleam, which like the treacherous beacons Lighted by wreckers to lure mariners on to their doom, O'er Life's unpiloted sea shone with a bale and a beauty, Till the poor credulous bark dashed on the rock of thy heart? Springtide of Life when the Soul, hearing Love's wakening whisper. Glows in the flame that Desire lights in the blood to betray! Summer that seethes in the veins, purpling Lust's grapes for the crushing. Which, in a wine-press of Pain, leave the black dregs of Despair! This I was taught when thy heart, drunk with delirious passion, 86 ,/ THE DEAD CALYPSO Changed to a charnel where lurked ghosts of thy deep-buried past, Which from their sepulchre stole once in a still starless midnight, Bearing a chalice, rose-wreathed, drugged with the lees of dead loves. Draining the perilous draught, swift through my pulses the purple Rushed while our wet mingling mouths crushed the rich raptures that curse; Then learned I Lust's lurid lore, whispered by thee, whom I worshiped, Whom I had deemed half divine, shrined as a saint in my heart. Oh, how it leaped when thy lips, voicing thy vows meretricious. Sighed like a girl's whose pure love murmurs with virginal bliss! Ah, how it bled when they turned, babbling in sleep that betrayed them, Seeking mine own in the dark, breathing some lost lover's name! 87 THE DEAD CALYPSO Swiftly the meshes of silk spun into steel, but I lingered, Fondling the fetters I feared, fearing to fling them away; Lost to the lips I had loved, yet with the thirst of a drunkard Draining the draught that enslaved e'en while the spirit recoiled. Day after day, as the scales fell from mine eyes, I beheld thee Garbed in the glamour of Lust, rise from the ashes of Love. Night after night, though my fears, lulled by thy lips, fled like phantoms. Soon every sigh that I heard seemed but a hiss from the grass ; Even thy sob of farewell stifled a laugh when I left thee Coming at last, dear, to lay Love's chrismal lips on thy brow. Long, long ago in the past, God's proud and white-pinioned angels 88 THE DEAD CALYPSO Found in the daughters of Earth all that their souls could desire; Why should I wonder that thou, fairest and frailest of women, Didst with thy sorceries snare the souls and the bodies of men? Where are thy worshipers now, they who did pant to embrace thee? Where is the homage they breathed deep in these death-deafened ears? Where are the gems and the gold, offered with love, that could make thee Faithless to him whose cold lips whisper of passionless peace? 89 GIVE ME THY LIPS Give me thy lips, and let me feel That they forgiveness grant For much that these poor rhymes reveal. Give me thy lips, and let me feel The raptures that once made me reel, That through these verses pant. Give me thy lips, and let me feel That they forgiveness grant. go THE DREAM On thy white breast that mocks the snow Once in a dreaming hour I leaned; I felt thy placid pulses glow, As from thy modest mouth I gleaned The rosy raptures that eclipse The joys that waking wooers know, And then I laid my fervid lips On thy white breast that mocks the snow. Oh, how thy heart responsive beat With new-born passion's blinding bliss That calmed the conscience that would cheat And chide me from that glowing kiss! O clinging limbs! O yielding breast! O lips unlessoned! yet replete With passion, yearning to be pressed; Oh, how thy heart responsive beat! 91 THE KING IS DEAD, LONG LIVE THE KING! When Villon sang the melted snows, The white shroud of a buried year, Say, did the traitor winds disclose Their hiding-place, or tell him where Were laid the dead, the debonair Lost women whom he loved to sing? No, but they sighed, then answered clear, The King is dead, long live the King! Why weep the love-surrendered Rose? Is faded beauty worth a tear? On yonder stem another grows, In fresher fragrance hanging there; While in the waking breeze we hear The love-song of the joyous Spring Shouting above old Winter's bier, The King is dead, long live the King I 92 THE KING IS DEAD, LONG LIVE THE KING! And thus the cycling measure goes; One day fond lips allegiance swear; The next the fickle wanton throws Her eyes on some new cavalier, Who for a season short may wear Her favors, in his turn to fling Them to the winds for one more fair; The King is dead, long live the King! ENVOY Prince, when you listen to the cheer Which through your crowded courts shall ring, Remember, thus they '11 hail your heir. The King is dead, long live the King! 93 THE CRIMSONED GIFT ■, If I thy naked spirit could behold, As oft thy classic comeliness I've seen, Garbed only in its beauty, and I ween That Fate to few e'er gave a fairer mould, I wonder what the vision would unfold! Thy flesh, tho' fair, enshrines a soul whose sheen Is radiant too, and though by Love controlled, 1 Love is divine if it no malice mean. Or if thy heart within my hand were laid, Brought bleeding to me from thy white wan breast. And every ruddy drop were voluble To answer me; with faith, all unafraid, I'd kiss the crimsoned gift, though it confessed That which in life it lacked the strength to tell. 94 ADIEU D'AMOUR Faithful in every fibre of thy heart, And all as beautiful as thou art true, Yet if it be thy wish that we should part Let 's unkiss all our vows and say Adieu. The love that glowed so warmly in thy breast Is dying slowly, — shall we let it die? — Yea, if the flickering flame brings thee unrest, My tears shall drown it as I weep Good-by. Good-by ? Ah, no I We cannot break the chain ; The fetters fused in Passion's crucible Are hard to sever; so we must remain Bound to each other, though we sigh Farewell. 95 ENGLAMOURED There's a love that every other love excelleth, And its glamour doth outglow the noonday sun; 'T is the faith that with suspicion never dwelleth, — 'Tis the rapture that is reckless to outrun The fond hope that every compassed joy sur- passes, That but lives to realize thy blest embrace; They may bid me look on thee through Doubt's dark glasses, , .But I only see the beauty of thy face. 96 HAPPY DAYS There is no music like the merry clink Of glasses when some fair one's health we drink; There is no toast more fitting than the phrase My mistress murmurs: it is, "Happy Days I" Wet with the wine, her red lips part to show Pearls that are whiter than the winter snow; The amber beads that glitter in the glass Blush crimson as her rose-leaf lips they pass. The mirth, the music, and the wit and wine With whispered word and kindling kiss combine To fan within my heart the flame that lights The way from happy days to heavenly nights. O Heavenly Nights! An Arctic winter were Too short to linger by the side of her. Whose lips would make it seem a night in June, On whose brief bliss the dawn would break too soon. 97 LUST'S TIGER TEETH But till thy heart is mine and mine is thine, All passion will be pale 'twixt thee and me. Compare it now with what it then would be, That were to liken water unto wine. If thou wert fair as she before whose shrine A world doth kneel — the foam-born deity — And I a god, did not our souls combine, Our passion-prompted vows were perjury. The brute within the blood may ramp and rave, Or fawn and fondle, till the tender tone Of Love's soft sigh is counterfeited well; But 't is the flesh that for the flesh doth crave, Lust's tiger teeth that tear us to the bone, To leave us at the last in living hell. ^ WHAT GHOSTS ARE THESE? How thy blood-kindling kisses answer mine When locked in thy voluptuous limbs I lie! How heart to heart and pulse to pulse reply And bring the blushes that incarnadine Thy velvet cheeks ! How those wet lips of thine Murmur to me the soft surrendering sigh, That means the moment of our bliss is nigh, In which the currents of our love combine! Delirious dream! What ghosts are these that stalk Into the breathless after-pause to freeze The blood that burned and clamored for thy charms? Dark demons they, who come thy vows to mock, And wake imagination till it sees Thy beauty panting in another's arms. LOFa 99 THE SWOON I HAVE swooned near to death in those white arms of thine, Till the trance that enthralled me hath grown To a dream where the glories of heaven were mine, Then have waked on thy bosom to own That the seraphs who stroll through the regions above Never know the rare bliss that I feel When I wander with thee where the labyrinths of Love Their most exquisite raptures reveal. I have looked on the stars till my listening ears Have been filled with the strains of the blest; But my soul a more eloquent harmony hears In the dreams that I dream on thy breast; 'Tis the low blissful beat of a heart that replies With a passionate love unto mine; 'Tis the melody heard in thy murmuring sighs When my being is blending with thine. 100 THE SWOON I have walked where the demons of Sorrow and Pain Mock the memories of happier days; I have drunk the dark dregs of Despair that remain In the cup of the Love that betrays; But thy lips, like the breath of a spring that has fled, In my heart have awakened once more All the glorious dreams of the days that are dead, And their peace and their passion restore. lOI VICTOR LOVE Tender, melting lips, distilling Love's rich vintage, sweet and rare; Trusting, pleading eyes, now filling With the bright reproachful tear, A sob so sweet, so softly low, A breath of heaven, a knell of woe. Ah, the murmuring and the sighing. And the tumult in each breast! Heart to heart is now replying, Victor Love is crowned and blest; The tyrant sits in Reason's throne. And claims the kingdom for his own. How he scatters all his treasures On his subjects, you and me. Golden showers of Passion's pleasures; Godlike mortals now are we! What care we for the sword of flame That bars the gate through which we came! 102 VICTOR LOVE What, beloved, art thou sobbing, Weeping that there 's no return ? How thy timid heart is throbbing I How thy cheeks with crimson burn My kiss shall teach thee to forget, And love shall triumph o'er regret. 103 WITH CAP AND BELLS ! With cap and bells, day after day, The jester's jolly part I play. Yes, "Motley is the only wear," The only fabric that will bear Time's touch or turn Fate's frown away. The wisest in the world are they. Earth's laughter-loving ones, who stray Along through life from year to year, With cap and bells. A laugh our sorrow can allay, A sigh our merriment can slay; Give me the jest that 's not a jeer. Give me the smile that 's not a sneer. And you may crown me till I 'm gray With cap and bells. 104 O SINGER OF THE SEVEN SEAS I (To Rudyard Kipling) When Triton's thrilling trumpet tone Sang first across the restless blue, From East to West, from zone to zone, Such witchery o'er the waves he threw, That Orpheus from his lute ne'er drew Such music for the rocks and trees, As that which o'er the billows flew, O Singer of the Seven Seas! That sounding shell was shoreward thrown To thee by Amphitrite, who Now hears across her surges blown The wave-worn ballads that she knew Long, long ago; but there were few She loved to listen to like these Which from thy lips come clear and true, O Singer of the Seven Seas! 105 SINGER OF THE SEVEN SEAS! These broad blue tides we call our own, Methinks should have another hue, For in their deadly deeps is sown The flesh of many a fearless crew. Though for our Admiralty we strew To shore and shark the fullest fees, Still, ''Give us more!" the surges sue, O Singer of the Seven Seas! Not for the "Meteor Flag" alone Dost thou all other song eschew; We hear the Liner's engines groan. We feel the Freighter's "bucking screw"; The Derelict drifts past our view, Scoffed by the surge, mocked by the breeze. Storm-driven, battered and perdu, O Singer of the Seven Seas! Yet not alone old Ocean's moan Thy many measures doth imbue; To sing the soldier thou art prone, Thy ringing rhymes are a tattoo; io6 SINGER OF THE SEVEN SEAS! When Tommy Atkins walks askew, Or stands at anything but ease, He gets from thee the proper cue, O Singer of the Seven Seas! Familiar forms again are shown, Nor would we from this verse taboo The "Rag and Hank of Hair and Bone," We knew her well, the shallow shrew. And wonder how we came to woo And swear our love on bended knees. But long ago we said adieu, O Singer of the Seven Seas! ENVOY This somewhat sorry ambigu Smacks of the ballade's strict decrees; Our Muse dislikes the stern gooroo, O Singer of the Seven Seas! 107 THE TEARFUL TROTH It is a tale that has been often told, The story of a love that leaps to life And blooms in beauty, though a dark distrust Lurks ever near to menace and destroy. It is the legend of the love that lives Through doubting days and through the har- rowing hours Of long and lonely nights; the love that dreams Of unforgettable and feverish things That burn v^ithin the blood and bring again The memory of the murmured midnight vow, When mutual melting lips were wont to tell The thrilling and — perhaps — the tearful troth. Ah, fond and fair, low-voiced and lovely-limbed, Made of the classic clay that wakens men To valorous deeds, or drugs them with desire, Until they dream that lust and love arc one — io8 THE TEARFUL TROTH From dawn to dark I see thy faultless face, And through the night it haunts me, till I feel That I could gladly give my life to live One brief but blissful hour on thy vv^hite breast. The memories of the past cannot outweigh My world of present woe; I feel as one Who, worn and wearied in a wilderness, Wherein no fountain springs or food is found, Dreams of the glorious days that once were his,- The feast, the flagon, and the flowers and fruit. And hears again the mocking melody Of one familiar, unforgotten voice. So in my dreams I sometimes feel the lips That kissed away my cares and chained my soul Within a charm that Time can never break. Then wake to wonder if I ever steal Into thy thoughts as thou dost into mine. 109 I LOVE THEE STILL I LOVE thee still ; there 's not a day That drags its dreary length away, From dark December unto June, Or winter night, or summer noon, But unto thee my fancies stray. Poor heralds of my heart are they Who would to thee my love convey And woo thee with the wearying tune, I love thee still. Ah, but to feel thy pulses play. And once again my head to lay On thy white breast! For such a boon. Though thou art fickle as the moon. My lips would cling to thee and say I love thee still. 110 WAIFS Love's kindest kiss oft to a flame hath fanned A latent passion and consumed the best. One morn a girl's pure lips to mine were pressed, And Ruin's dreaded gulf was rainbow-spanned, O'er which we passed into a pleasant land. But when that night she wept upon my breast, She seemed a love-lost angel on the strand Of some strange star, wing-wearied and unblest. Not all unhappy, still we drift along, Down the wild waters of Love's waif-strewn sea; And closer do we cling when others tell Of that dark whirlpool in whose eddies strong, Frail passion-freighted lovers, such as we. Are dragged by undercurrents down to hell. Ill TO A TREE Oft hast thou bent before the gale, And heard the tempests 'round thee roar; Oft hast thou found their fury fail, As down on thee the demons bore; They wounded thee in many a war, But still thou standest unsubdued. To battle with them as before, Mute type of Patient Fortitude. Though vainly they thy strength assail, Of scars they gave thee many a score; Though thou art armored with the mail That fiercer onslaughts may ignore; Still many a limb from thee they tore And on the plain their plunder strewed, Trophies that Time cannot restore, Mute type of Patient Fortitude. 112 TO A TREE The pleasant pathways of the dale Let sighing Strephon still explore; Yea, he may have the flowery vale And fair-faced Phyllis there adore. Thy silent shade to me means more. There oft, in melancholy mood, I stroll to learn thy saving lore, Mute type of Patient Fortitude. ENVOY To calm blue skies I see thee soar. Forgetful of the Borean brood Harked on by thunder-throated Thor, Mute type of Patient Fortitude. "3 GIVE A BEGGAR A HORSE AND HE'LL GALLOP TO HELL Give a pauper a purse that is bursting with gold, And the meats and the music, the women and wine You will soon in a profligate pageant behold, For he cannot to luxury's limits confine The ambition that burns in his blood to out- shine Even lavish Lucullus, whom none could excel ; There is truth in the phrase, there is lore in the line, — Give a beggar a horse and he '11 gallop to hell. He may rot in his rags, he may freeze in the cold. He may snore in the sewer, or crib with the kine, He may crunch the hard crust that is charity- doled. He may share, like the prodigal, husks with the swine, All of poverty's curses may in him combine, Till the dogs that licked Lazarus 'gainst him rebel. But I say it again, tho' the saying's not mine. Give a beggar a horse and he '11 gallop to hell. 114 GIVE A BEGGAR A HORSE Ah, what pictures the portals of Pluto unfold! What diversions the devil delights to design, When the clattering hoofs of the courser con- trolled By the pauper are heard on the easy incline! Then Beelzebub doesn't take long to divine Who is riding so hard, for he knows the pace well, And awaits with a welcome most warm and condign; Give a beggar a horse and he '11 gallop to hell. ENVOY You must pardon me. Prince, if this envoy enshrine The sad lady whom Pluto took with him to dwell ; But to fry in the flame near the fair Proserpine, Give a beggar a horse and he '11 gallop to hell. "5 THE CRUST OF CONTENT. He who for some great aim hath never sought More than Life's stern demands to satisfy Climbs closer to the gods, whose needs are naught, Than he whose sordid soul doth multiply The millions which he vainly dreams will buy The calm content that gold hath never bought; Crcesus to Solon this confessed when brought, Bankrupt and conquered, to the stake to die. The crust that balks the wolf may sometimes be Sweet as the manna in the wilderness; 'Tis when the soul forgets the flesh to stray Where, in the realm of some harmonious dream, It listens to the whispered words that bless, And learns the charm that chides the world away. Ii6 FROM CRYPT AND CHOIR From crypt and choir these rhymes are penned. For grief and gladness in them blend; There is a cell beneath Song's fane, Where many a prisoner of pain Hath found the Muse his closest friend. Above his couch she comes to bend, She teaches him to make and mend The psalm he sues her to obtain From Crypt and Choir. She makes the organ's thunder rend His raftered roof; the tones descend And flood the dungeon with their strain; But unto her he turns to gain The calmer chords she loves to lend From Crypt and Choir. "7 WE MUST SIT SILENT WHEN THE DEVIL DRIVES Of all the sayings and the saws we hear, The precepts and the proverbs, new or old, While many fall like folly on the ear, A few are weighted well with Wisdom's gold. And oft some philosophic treasure hold; Their little homilies guide many lives; When over smooth or rocky roadways rolled. We must sit silent when the devil drives. When through the gloom the lights of home appear. To welcome us across the wind-swept wold; When 'round the blazing hearth we gather near, Safe-shielded from the tempest and the cold; Then, while some song is sung or story told. Fate, from the freezing world without, arrives And like a wolf glares on the sheltered fold; We must sit silent when the devil drives. ii8 WE MUST SIT SILENT WHEN THE DEVIL DRIVES The future may be faced without a fear; If through the past we have not blindly strolled, It often lends a light to lead us where, Havened in peace, our hearts may be con- soled; Though Destiny by Fate is oft controlled, Yet when the heart upholds the hand that strives. Fortune and Fame o'er Failure may be scrolled, Though we sit silent when the devil drives. ENVOY Prince, many a man for years has been cajoled And buffeted by Fate, yet still survives; But till we slumber softly in the mould. We must sit silent when the devil drives. 119 JOB Majestic Mourner! When thy spirit moaned Itself to music on thy matchless page, When thy great sorrowing soul in anguish groaned, And when Fate flung to thee her galling gage, Oh, what a soul-sustaining heritage Was hidden in the fortitude that owned How vain and weak it were a war to wage With Him, the Lord, who sits in heaven enthroned. Thy flesh was fed to foulness. Sorrow clad Thy soul with sackcloth, and thy forehead frowned With the black ashes of a heart consumed. But through it all, O Man of Uz, thy sad But sure philosophy thy trials crowned With perfect peace that out of patience bloomed. 120 THE HIDDEN HAND The hidden hand that strikes the mystic chords Which wake Love's rapturous and responsive thrill In kindred hearts, oft sweeps the sobbing strings Of Sorrow, till soul whispers unto soul The symphony that chides our tears away And turns Grief's midnight to a golden dawn. 121 LOVE ME ONCE MORE Love me once more. Ah, what have I to do With love, or what has love to do with me? And yet thy face by day and night I see, And with this prayer my soul doth thine pursue. Love me once more. Love me once more, and it will teach the pen, That pleads so feebly to thee on this page, To tell lorn lovers, in some after age. That love, though dead, may leap to life again. Love me once more; for as the hart doth pant To drink the water-brooks, I thirst for thee; Here, in the waste of life, I bend the knee And murmur like a famished mendicant, Love me once more. 122 LOVE ME ONCE MORE Love me once more; and these poor rhymes I write In thrilling trumpet tones shall sound thy name, Till it shall echo where the Peaks of Fame Are bathed forever in ambrosial light. Love me once more. Dost thou no longer heed That which had once been life's supremest prize? And wilt thou now the proffered gift despise And turn away to mock me as I plead Love me once more? 123 THE PROMISED PEACE It is the season when we turn again The pages of the past and pause to read Of One who gave unto the sons of men, Long years ago, the best and purest creed That ever proved its word in worth and deed; And though the tidings to the shepherds told Are unfulfilled, again we hear and heed The hymn the hosts of heaven sang of old. What time from star to star their hallelujahs rolled. Now tho' we look with reverence on the past, And with fond faith its sacred story tell, Yet have the mists of Mammon o'er us cast The bane of unbelief, until we dwell Within the dark indifference of a spell Which Christ himself should come again to break; 124 THE PROMISED PEACE That bard were base as he whose cold kiss fell Upon the Saviour's cheek, did he forsake The truth for fictioned phrase, or with false fingers take From out the treasured past one grain of gold To gild with flattering pen a present pride; And for the future, — no man may behold And chart the crafty currents of that tide Down which it is our destiny to glide To where, across Time's trackless waters, roll The black and baffling mists of Death that hide The unknown bourne, which to man's dream- ing soul Shines ever through the gloom, a hope-created goal. The promised peace to earth has never come, And never will, as long as man shall hear The blaring bugle and the muttering drum Call him from kith and country on to where 125 THE PROMISED PEACE The hosts of Greed and Glory skyward rear Their crimson-colored banners to his gaze; The while the lusts of loot and empire sear His soul to selfish ends and sordid ways That mock the Star of Peace that did o'er Beth- lehem blaze. Or worse than War's shrill clarion that wakes The sleeping thunder for some foreign foe, Is the soul-slaying thirst for gold that slakes Its craving where far better blood doth flow. No Roman triumph in the past could show Captives chained closer to the chariot wheel, - Than Mammon's modern conquerors, who know No creed but gold, whose hearts can never feel The peace that passeth all their vaunted vaults reveal. The flesh is more than raiment, and the life Is more than meat; yet we the truth disdain. And struggle blindly in a ceaseless strife, For what, when won, to ashes oft doth wane. 126 THE PROMISED PEACE We labor on with hand and heart and brain, But at the best we build upon the sand; The peace we long for ever doth remain Beyond the aching heart and outstretched hand, And seems a myth that man may never understand. Beneath the burden of the primal curse We toil and sweat, but could more bravely bend And bear the galling yoke, yea, were it worse, If we but knew what waits us in the end ; Or if we could back through the ages wend And hear Pan's reeds, Apollo's peerless lyre, See Cytherea from the foam ascend. And Hera's eyes blaze with a jealous ire; Ah, glorious golden days, what more could man desire? The gods and myths of Greece have never flown From field and mountain and from grove and stream; 127 THE PROMISED PEACE They ever live, but we ourselves have grown Blind to the beauty of the splendid dream That thralled man's senses ere the searching beam. Of Science shone with rapture-wrecking ray, Before the din of dynamo and steam Moaned Fancy's dirge and drove us forth to stray Far from the pictured night into the dreamless day. Now, though the fountain of our faith be dry, And in Life's waste no cooling stream ap- pears, Hark! to the chorus rolling through the sky! It calls across the desert of the years And chides our pagan dreams and skeptic sneers. For from the lesson of His love we learn The faith that falters not, the hope that cheers Life's darkest hours, and through Him we may turn Into the path that leads to that for which we yearn. 128 TEARS Could I but crystallize these midnight tears And gather from their beaded bitterness A rosary for burning lips to press, Some pain-born token of these joyless years To teach the faith that saves, the hope that cheers, Then would I bid these fountains of distress Flow fast and free, if their sad floods could bless, Or murmur peace in some poor sufferer's ears. Have I not known, O God! — have I not felt The benediction of another's verse Steal o'er me in the dark and lonely hour? Hath it not made my stubborn heart to melt. And turned to prayer the deep rebellious curse, And soothed my soul to rest with saving power? 129 JUBILATE DEO (A. D. i8q7) Righteous Ruler, Royal Lady, throned in majesty and splendor. Thou, before whose matchless prestige all the past and present pale, Hear the world-encircling chorus which thy many millions render, Hear our mighty Jubilate, Sovereign-Queen and Empress, Hail! While thy white-walled island shaketh with the message that is pouring From thy thunder-throated warders as they tell it to the deep ; While the heaven-storming anthem now above the clouds is soaring. While the bounding heart of Britain doth with exultation leap, 130 JUBILATE DEO All along the seas the echo rolleth till Earth's corners listen, Mighty marts and commerce-crowded ports and rivers hear it swell; Lonely islands of the ocean, set in tropic tides that glisten Into gladness, speed it onward, and the tale of triumph tell. Where the dawn of new dominion into splendid noon is glowing, And the bright prophetic legend over Afric skies is scrolled; Where thy sons the seeds of empire with ambi- tious hands are sowing, There they think of thee and England, and their song is skyward rolled. Hark! while India's dusky myriads in their many tongues proclaim thee; Mighty Empress of the East, three hundred millions to thee call; 131 JUBILATE DEO There from Scinde to far Sadiya, now again we hear them name thee, Now again their mingling voices ring from Gilgit down to Galle. Where in unfamiliar beauty Night's bright lamps are hung in heaven, While the starry crux is dying in the dawn of Austral skies, There the cannonading chorus flashes forth from lips of levin, And o'er sunny seas of sapphire on from isle to island flies. Drowned to-day the mighty music of Niagara's falling river. Lost in pure Pacific paeans mingling with Atlantic's roar; Mountain, field, and lake are listening, into life the forests quiver. For they hear Vancouver calling unto lonely Labrador. 132 JUBILATE DEO Many a bivouac and barrack hear the reveille rejoicing, Many a citadel and fortress frowning over foreign foam, Know the music of that bugle, and with tongues of thunder voicing Forth a great lo Triumphe, roll an answer- ing message home. Where the sheltering flag of England over land and sea is streaming, Where beneath a foreign banner British hearts beat quick with pride, Where across the trackless waters England's ships are swiftly steaming. Where her barks with tempests battle, or at anchor safely ride, There thy liegemen now salute thee, for wher- ever they may wander, 'Neath that flag is always England, but to-day it is a shrine 133 JUBILATE DEO Where they kneel and on her thousand years of matchless glory ponder, Rising never to forget the brightest of them all are thine. Where the home and hearth are sacred, yea, wherever women glory In the virtue that men value, where in every land they dwell For long years they've learnt to love and linger o'er thy stainless story. And a world of women's voices of another empire tell. Golden mists of sixty summers melt and we again behold thee. Maiden-monarch, sceptred, symboled, throned and crowned as England's Queen; There the promise of the present with its glory aureoled thee. While the ancient Abbey's arches never bent o'er grander scene. 134 JUBILATE DEO Then we see thee wife and mother, tranquil days of joy whose fleetness Grandeur, glory, power, and prestige could not for a moment stay; Days that dawned in peace and compassed every rare domestic sweetness. Till a life-enshrouding shadow fell across thy cloudless way. From thy lips the lurking Spoiler dashed the cup of all thy gladness, — O ye Mountains of Gilboa! tears were then your dews and rain; Then from Dan to Beersheba all the land was filled with sadness. For our grief with thine was mingled when thy lofty mate was slain. Ah, we miss thy minstrel Merlin, who with swift unfaltering fingers Taught the sounding Harp of England Honor's hymn and Sorrow's tale; 135 JUBILATE DEO Over many a song immortal, sung to thee, how Memory lingers, Till we almost hear his voice and see the guid- ing Gleam and Grail! Nay, the Gleam is ever with us ; thou for sixty years hast worn it, 'T is the guiding light of England, Glory's star and Honor's ray; On thy forehead now it resteth, Truth and Righteousness adorn it. And it still shall lead us onward, as it lights our path to-day. Now tho' Court and Camp and Cloister, Art and Song around thee cluster, Till the glory that enfolds thee seemeth more of heaven than earth. Yet it cannot for one moment blind us to the brighter lustre Of the the faith that never faltered, of the woman's splendid worth. 136 JUBILATE DEO Though with triumph and with pageant and with paean we extol thee, As we lift thee and enthrone thee on the height of England's fame, Yet thy three-times-twenty years of blameless womanhood enroll thee With a halo that outshineth all thy gemmed tiara's flame. Now unto the King of Kings, the Lord of Hosts, the God of Nations, On whose Truth for strength and wisdom thou with fearless faith dost lean. While the prayer and psalm are mingling with an Empire's acclamations. Unto Him we do commend thee, Sovereign Lady, Empress, Queen! 137 WEARY Not as a means of grace And hope of glory, — No. But could I see Thy face And hear the blessing flow, As when Thy living lips the promise poured, Then would I kneel and wait for mercy, Lord. Ye weary, come to me And I will give ye rest. Have I not bent the knee And all my soul confessed? Art thou a myth, O God, or am I blind, Groping in gloom for peace I cannot find. Oh, shed one beam of light. And when my flesh is wrung Through agony's long night. When all my life is hung 138 WEARY On Retrospection's cross, and when the spear Of Conscience strikes my soul, then be Thou near. Whisper one word of hope, That my faint heart may know How with these fears to cope, And respite gain from woe ; Bind up my wounds and breathe the healing balm Of one kind word, to comfort and to calm. Not for a heaven unearned. Nor to escape a hell. My lips have often burned To drink of Mercy's well; Yearning in that sweet flood themselves to steep, And drift away from life in dreamless sleep. 139 TO THE UNKNOWN GOD Supreme Unknown, whom yet we trace But dimly through a darkened glass, When shall the mists that hide Thee pass, And we behold thee face to face? For countless ages we have trod The lower trails that lead to Thee, Now on the distant heights we see The banners of the hosts of God. A thousand gods have we confessed. And warped our worship age by age, Creed blotting creed from off the page. An ever-changing palimpsest. Long through the gloom Thy skies we scanned; We cried to Thee, but Thou wert dumb; Yet Faith oft heard a whispered "Come," And Fancy felt a guiding hand. 140 TO THE UNKNOWN GOD Confirming our audacious guess, Thy lightnings clove the clouds and seemed To write amen to all we dreamed, Thy crashing thunders answered "Yes." Altars and fanes to Thee we raised, Built on one vague but constant hope That taught us through the gloom to grope, While on the silent stars we gazed. For Thee we searched the skies, then turned The glass upon the atom, till We saw the life within it thrill To clasp the mightiest star that burned. Life yearning unto life, the spark Within the seed that bursts the sod Claims kindred with the unknown God, But never leaps the bridgeless dark. Hope crying in the gloom, a child Amid strange lights and shadows lost, 'Twixt doubt and fear perplexed and tossed, By any whispered word beguiled. 141 TO THE UNKNOWN GOD Unfaltering faith may seek to tear And sweep the baffling veil aside; We know not if the dead deride Her efforts, but the living hear Death laughing ever at her creed, Blighting each promise ere it bloom. Till all the past seems but a tomb. And every hope a broken reed. A tomb! a broken reed I Ah no! We die, but dying leave behind That which may teach us yet to find Where Life's immortal waters flow. A thousand ages yet unborn, Pregnant with promises that cast Their beams before, may bring at last The birth-blaze of the coming morn. Within the growing light we fade With all the things of yesterday That swift-paced Progress flings away, Or Science scoffs into the shade. 142 TO THE UNKNOWN GOD Or as the scattered fragments fly Beneath the Builder's hand, so we Fall from the fabric that shall be A temple lifted to the sky. Or is it Babel that we build Age after age upon our dead? And is our faith a fiction fed On dreams as vain as those that filled The sons of Noah when they toiled And piled the tower on Shinar's plain? Oh! is the hope we cherish vain, And at the last shall we be foiled ? Nay, when far future years have passed, Our lives shall not have been for naught, For out of bleak oblivion brought, We shall behold Thy face at last. 143 THE CROSS - CROWNED CAIRN A WHISPERED prayer, a stone with reverent hand Laid near a cross that on a cairn doth stand, This and no more ; no fragrant buds to wreathe A garland for the silent dead beneath; No requiem rolling on the desert air To guide us to the lonely sleeper there; No rudely written legend to proclaim His birth, his death, his country, age or name. Yet never vault, from dark Machpelah's cave, Where Israel's primal patriarch found a grave; Nor yet the dome that Artemisia raised O'er Caria's king, at which a world amazed In wonder stood; nor Ghizeh's gloomy pile, Housing the haughtiest Pharaoh by the Nile, Nor sacred shrine, nor quiet cloistered fane. Whose gloomy crypts Earth's proudest dust contain, E'er sent a softer slumber than these stones Which shelter from the sun a wanderer's bones. 144 THE CROSS-CROWNED CAIRN The prayers we pray, our dirges of distress, 'Neath carven arch, or in the wilderness, What are they to the dead ? Oh, who can say Where the dread Spoiler pauses, if the clay Alone surrenders to his blighting breath, Or, whether down the sombre stream of Death, The spirit, drifting into darkness, dies As did this flesh beneath these scorching skies? It is not so; the Symbol that doth keep Its lonely vigil on yon stony heap Is eloquent, and tells of Him who first Through Death's unbroken barriers did burst. Of Him on whom a world has learnt to lean, And from the darkest hours of grief to glean The Hope that helps when other comforts fail, The Faith that falters not before the veil, The Love that prays in every Christian land, When in the presence of the dead we stand, That though the dreamless dust may never wake. The soul may somewhere see the morning break. 145 CONSOLATION A SOB of sorrow sounding through the strings As Recollection ponders on the past; Is this the only solace Memory brings To soothe a soul that shivers in the blast? How soon the feast was followed by the fast! How quick the fruits and flowers turned to dust! How swift the waters sped on which I cast The bread of life, that cometh back a crust! A crust? Ah, no! Though barren is the shore Of that once tempting tide whose waters hold The dreams of youth that in their depths were drowned, ' Not fruitless is the flood; its waves restore What Folly flung to them a thousand-fold. When on the strand some pearl of song is found. 146 THE CAVERN OF GLOOM Come, throw those white arms of thine, dear, around me, pillow thy fair fervid cheek on my breast, Listen again to a story of sorrow, learn how the loneliest heart may be blest. Welcome awaits thee whenever thou comest, morning or eventide, midnight or noon, Or when the tempests of winter are wailing, or when the faint fragrant breezes of June Murmur their vesper o'er verdurous meadows, soothing to slumber the birds and the flowers. Then, when the gloom gathers deeper and darker, hearken to me through the harrow- ing hours. Once so familiar, but now all forgotten, faded and lost in a Faith that defies All that Despair in the dark ever dreaded, all that Grief glared at with slumberless eyes 147 THE CAVERN OF GLOOM Aching for day that but dawned to deride me, longing for night ere to noon it had grown, Thus, through the years and their varying seasons, reaping the whirlwind, I lingered alone. Vain as the vanishing fabrics that Fancy builds in a waterless waste to betray, So in Life's desert the phantoms I followed, mirage-like, mocked me, then faded away; Onward I went till the bird-song was silent, dry ever}?^ fountain and dead every bloom, Footsore and weary, for peace ever panting, came I at last to the Cavern of Gloom. Cold as a charnel and black as Cimmerian midnight the goal of my destiny seemed. Little I thought that its sombre surroundings meant the dark durance that 's never re- deemed. 148 THE CAVERN OF GLOOM Meant what the strongest would shrink to encounter, — yea, what the bravest would fly from in fear, Should the curse come like a bolt that 's death- freighted, thundering from skies that are silent and clear; But the grim harvest that Grief weeps to garner. Fate whispered warningly to me when Life Leaps in the pulses and laughs at the future, strolling where Hebe's red roses are rife. Fancy oft smiled through the shades of my prison, breathing the words that were sweet to my soul ; Oft through the darkness, all weaponed to wound me. Pain with his merciless myr- midons stole; Racked me and flayed me and tore me with torture, till near the last this great lesson I learned, — 149 THE CAVERN OF GLOOM Misery's midnight may glow with a glory, flooding the Cavern of Gloom till it's turned Into a temple that soars to the heavens, reaching a region of infinite calm. Where sacred strains of ineffable sweetness roll from an organ and blend with a psalm Crooned as a slumber-song soothing to sorrow, sung as a blessed placebo to pain By the clear voices of white-pinioned seraphs sent through the shadows my soul to sustain. ISO THE VANISHED VINTAGE. When the hopes that we cherish, the dreams that we dream, And the joys that defraud us are dead; When the Past only mocks us and never a beam From the close-curtained Future is shed; When we falter and fall, as we grope in the gloom, And our feet with the thistles are torn, When the cankers of Conscience begin to consume. Do we over our misery mourn? Yea, we weep as we think of the vintage we crushed From the rich ruddy grapes of the Past; And we dream in the dark of the faces that flushed With a beauty that mocked at the blast; Through the long lonely night and the desolate day, When our folly and fate we deplore. Oft the ghosts of dead pleasures stalk by us and say, If you could you would do as before? isi ATAXIA My world has shrunk at last to this small room, Where like a prisoner I must now remain. I'd rather be a captive in the gloom Of some deep dungeon, tearing at my chain, For then, perchance, my freedom I might gain. Ah God! to think that I must languish here. Shackled by sickness and subdued by pain. To die a living death from year to year, Joy banished from my breast and Sorrow brooding there ! Yet these familiar walls do sometimes fade. Then my faint eyes on fair horizons rest; By Memory's distant lights I am betrayed. And Hope a moment flutters in my breast. Till I forget that I am all unblest. 152 ATAXIA Unfettered fancy wanders far away To where the lips I loved and often pressed Seem mine once more, and make my pulses play Anew with youth's wild heat and half revive this clay. I often think how once these stumbling feet, That now can scarcely bear me to my bed, Were swift to follow, as the wind is fleet. The baleful beam that to destruction led; Nor paused I till the lurid light had fled. Till on mine ears there broke the dismal roar Of that black stream whose waters wail the dead; Dumb with despair I stood, and from that shore Saw Charon's ghostly craft and heard his doleful oar. Thou domineering power, or Love, or Lust, Or Passion, or whatever else thou art. Though thy red roses now are naught but dust, 153 ATAXIA What splendid spectres from their ashes start! What hunger they awaken in the heart! What fever in the blood! And in the brain What dreams they build when day's dull hours depart, And Slumber drives away the demon Pain, And loosens from my limbs this curst ataxic chain! Then Memory wakes and through the dark- ness flies Afar to where the golden past appears, And lingers there to listen to the sighs A boy is breathing in a wanton's ears. Her lips taught his the burning kiss that sears The heart 'gainst love, but lights the lust that leaves, Or soon or late, an aftermath of tears. When, in the waste of life, the sower grieves To gather from the gale his dead and withered sheaves. 154 ATAXIA I shrined her as a saint within the heart, 'Gainst which her own had leaped a thou- sand times; But Fate stepped in and tore our lips apart, And drove me in despair to distant climes. Long years have passed since then, but could these rhymes Bring back that leman and those dreamed-of days. Their strains should soar to where celestial chimes Blend with seraphic hymns of ceaseless praise. And from the dead, cold past that matchless minion raise. Had Time but halted for us as the sun Stood still on Gibeon while Joshua strove! Ah no, the silver moon of Ajalon Would have looked kindlier on those nights of lovel Little cared we for sun or moon above. Or for the gems upon the black-browed night, 155 ATAXIA We may have seen them through the heavens move, But recked not, thought not of their wheeling flight. Blinded, poor love-sick fools, by Passion's daz- zling light. Oft in that light's fast-fading afterglow Her visioned presence unto me appears; And as I first beheld her long ago. The same alluring loveliness she wears; Oft in the midnight Recollection hears A sweeter plaint than Pandion's daughter's strain Murmured by lips that kiss away my tears, While in my dreams I clasp her form again. Then wake with outstretched arms, to find the vision vain. Amongst a legion of lost loves her face, Through Memory's mists, seems fairest of them all. 156 ATAXIA Though heaven was mine when locked in her embrace, Yet there were others, whom I oft recall. Who wove Lust's purple threads through this dark pall Long years ago in Passion's panting loom, Before Life's honeyed cup had turned to gall, Or yet the day had deepened to the gloom That wraps me like a shroud within this living tomb. O Marah! Marah! as thy bitter stream Was turned to sweetness by the magic tree, So the dark current of my years doth seem To flow at times in murmuring melody; 'T is when, dear Lyric Maid, I turn to thee; Then the light laughing loves of other days Hide their false faces, or like shadows flee; Oft had I fallen in these cheerless ways, But heard thy whispered words that rescue and upraise. 157 ATAXIA Now tho' these limbs are cold and almost dead, And torture runs through every sluggish vein, Yet is endurance out of suffering bred. And fortitude to triumph over pain; The wasted body shrinks, but still the brain Urges the palsied hand along the sheet, On which, alas! tears sometimes fall like rain; But Fancy even Misery can cheat, And in the pain-born rhyme oft find a refuge sweet But even there, the Spoiler with his scythe Torments the wasted sheaf he waits to reap ; His torturing reminders make me writhe, Till, mad with pain, I beg the final sweep That surely soon must come to give me sleep Still one retreat is left, to which I flee; 1 Dear dreamy draught! in which I often steep " Senses and soul, I turn again to thee. And drift down Lethe's stream out on Oblivion's sea i IS8 THE LOOM A WEARIED weaver at the loom, I gaze On that which I have woven till mine eyes Grow dim to see the fabric it displays, — The warp of all my work seems woofed with sighs. No more for me Life's shuttle swiftly flies, But falters feebly through the fibred maze. As thread on thread it slowly multiplies. Weaving, alas! a weft of dreary days. For in the woven meshes there appears The sombre shade of Sorrow. Do I weave But sackcloth for my soul ? And am I now But one who gloats upon the garb he wears. Who in the shadow sits apart to grieve. The ashes of his life upon his brow? 159 SOME PRESS NOTICES OF POEMS BY LOUIS ALEXANDER ROBERTSON. Could I but make explanation of the term sufficiently comprehen- sible, I would readily elect to call Robertson the poet a Greek. By so denominating him, I would aim to express in a word the dominant note of sensuous classicism that pervades his singing. There is in it a throbbing vitality, a fearless exaltation of the body urged through the very adoration of the mystery of creation. A handling less purely classic would put such verses beyond the pale. In all his work exalted spirit and suspension of the clear note from beginning to end make beauty in the lines. Robertson's mechanics of verse structure are of such high order of perfection as to induce the effect of spontaneity. No ticking of the metrical rote machine interferes to mar the harmony between thought and sound. — San Francisco Call. Louis A. Robertson's book, "The Dead Calypso," made him a singer of national note. — New York World. A notable feature of the work of this poet is the near approach to perfection of his poetry. — Buffalo Courier. Some of Robertson's sonnets are equal to the best in the English language. — San Francisco Bulletin. The collection throughout shows the hand of a master, and is sure to be welcomed as a real contribution to the poetic literature of our country. — Trenton Times. The melody of the verse is as notable as the warmth of its fancy. — New York Times. His work has fire and grit in it; it has also much tenderness and sadness. It runs the gamut from the most spiritual aspiration to the rage of desire defeated in satiety. In the matter of form all the verses are exquisitely done; in the matter of feeling the intensity is poignant; always the song has color to it, — has blood and bone and flesh woven through it. — St. Louis Mirror. There are poems in this volume of noble range. Robertson is cer- tainly a purist, and has a thorough knowledge of the technique of poetry. He is never guilty of a false quantity, nor does he ever lower the tone from its original setting. He is one of the few poets of the day whose work can be read more than once. — San Francisco Post. Robertson's lines reveal the faculty of making the old mythology real. Like Keats, he fuses his thought into an imaginative glow that makes the fables of Greece and Rome live again for us of these prosaic days. Those who feel the sway of his passion will recognize the hand of a master. — San Francisco Chronicle. MAY 1 1907 LIBRARY OF