TRAILS 
 SUNWARD 
 
 Cale Young Rice 
 
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TRAILS SUNWARD 
 
TRAILS SUNWARD 
 
 BY 
 
 CALE YOUNG RICE 
 
 AUTHOR OF "earth AND NEW EARTH," 
 
 "collected plays and poems," etc. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THE CENTURY CO. 
 
 1917 
 

 Copyright, 1917, by 
 The Century Co. 
 
 Published, March, 1917 
 
 V^ 
 
 APR -4 1917 
 
 S)Ci.A457792 \ 
 
 1*11 
 
AFFECTIONATELY 
 
 TO 
 W. PETT RIDGER 
 
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•Mi^M^i^i^ftriali 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Never has poetry tried so hard to be prose as 
 at the present time in America. Weary of being 
 banned to the limbo of the inconspicuous, it has 
 adopted, via Paris, some illegitimate offspring of 
 Whitman's ideas, and thus " ismed " and calling 
 itself the " new poetry," it whacks all that has hith- 
 erto been held as making for the poetic. 
 
 To the experienced these new " isms " are but 
 aspects of a general and unrestrained reaction to- 
 ward realism. Even in form this is so. Their 
 broken prose rhythms, suitable perhaps to the un- 
 accented French tongue, but lacking the deep mu- 
 sic of such true free verse as Whitman has immor- 
 talized, makes us aware of the fact that " free verse 
 realism " is the name which is perhaps most appro- 
 priate to them all. 
 
viii PREFACE 
 
 Yet the purpose of these realists, when it has 
 been sincere, has been useful: for every poet of ex- 
 perience knows that he must constantly revert to 
 free verse and realism in order to avoid tightness 
 of technique or academicism. When, however, they 
 have been insincere, when they have been aware of 
 palming off broken prose, or when their impulse has 
 been merely symptomatic of a desire to do some- 
 thing new, startling, or " American," in order to 
 keep their heads above the flood of books poured 
 in from abroad, the result has been deplorable. 
 
 For a wave of interest in poetry, such as a dozen 
 years of achievement has brought into existence at 
 the present time, can easily be dissipated. No po- 
 etic public will long give attention to a realism 
 which makes the mistake, common to all shallow 
 realism, of neglecting passion, imagination, charm 
 and nearly all the permanent qualities of any true 
 poetry. " Prose syntax " and " natural speech " 
 are good — and many of us, remembering Words- 
 worth, have never forgotten to use them. But in 
 
 iitt 
 
PREFACE ix 
 
 the hands of these realists they become strangely 
 self-conscious and artificial. 
 
 Nor can the criticism of these realists, each of 
 whom writes up the other's work from some point of 
 vantage in various newspapers or magazines, prove 
 less deleterious. For one of the troubles with poetry 
 in America is that it is too often reviewed by poets 
 — who cannot in one case out of a hundred be 
 trusted with that task. 
 
 Neither this excessive realism nor the exploita- 
 tion of it will suffice to relieve our situation. Our 
 difficulties are deeper. We must have a truer and 
 greater freedom than can be given by any change 
 of verse form. We must exact a profounder grasp 
 of life than any rude extemalism permits. We 
 must ask a finer sincerity than that to fact. In 
 truth the solution for us lies in a thorough absorp- 
 tion of all great art values, and in a maturer and 
 less restless living of our poetic life generally. 
 
 Cale Young Rice. 
 
 Louisville, Ky. 
 
^MMMI 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Trail from the Sea 3 
 
 A Mother's Cry to Her Kind 8 
 
 New Dreams for Old 12 
 
 An Indian's Prayer 14 
 
 The Mad Philosopher 19 
 
 The Chant of the Colorado 23 
 
 Mountains in the Grand Canyon 26 
 
 A Dancer 28 
 
 A Worker — Out of Work 30 
 
 The Plainsman 32 
 
 The Sacrilege of Sylvette 34 
 
 In a Canyon of the Santa Inez 46 
 
 Wraiths of Destiny 48 
 
 I The Foreseers 48 
 
 II The Outcasts 54 
 
 III The Restorers 61 
 
 Hafiz at Forty 69 
 
 Cecily 73 
 
 Valhalla 75 
 
 Fair Fight 77 
 
 A Wind-mill 79 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 To My Sister C. R. S 81 
 
 Old Wants 85 
 
 Transmutations 87 
 
 Poetic Epigrams 90 
 
 Hope 90 
 
 The Young Moon 90 
 
 The Faithless 91 
 
 Ghostliness 91 
 
 Autumn Sadness 91 
 
 Pilgrims 91 
 
 Holy Orders 92 
 
 Love Letters Returned in Spring 92 
 
 Age and Death 92 
 
 The Dead Thinker 92 
 
 Spring Had Lost Her Way 93 
 
 The Sale 95 
 
 The Idealist Explains 98 
 
 In a Gorge of the Sierras 100 
 
 The Salvation Army 102 
 
 The Grapes of God 104 
 
 A Painter — Of His Dead Rival 105 
 
 A Wife, Unloved 107 
 
 Songs to A. H. R. . . 109 
 
 Swallows 109 
 
 In a Dark Hour Ill 
 
 Twilight Content 112 
 
 Together 113 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Song of Muezzin Abou 114 
 
 TiDALS 116 
 
 A Child Again 117 
 
 Santa Barbara 119 
 
 The House of Lonely Love 121 
 
 In the Shrine of All 123 
 
 A Timeless Refrain 125 
 
 Migration . 126 
 
 A Maid, Dying 128 
 
 On the Camino Reale 130 
 
 The Wives of England 132 
 
 The Tilling 134 
 
 A Lover, to Death 136 
 
 Metaphysical Sonnets 137 
 
 Space 137 
 
 Time 138 
 
 Earth 139 
 
 Mind 140 
 
 Ergo 141 
 
 To THE Masters of Europe 142 
 
 The Threshing Floor 143 
 
 A Litany 144 
 
TRAILS SUNWARD 
 
mt^mm 
 
THE TRAIL FROM THE SEA 
 
 I took the trail to the wooded canyon, 
 
 The trail from the sea: 
 
 For I heard a calling in me, 
 
 A landward calling irresistible in me: 
 
 Have done with things of the sea — things of the 
 soul; 
 
 Have done with waters that slip away from under 
 you. 
 
 Have done with things faithless, things unfathom- 
 able and vain; 
 
 With the vast deeps of Time and the Hereafter. 
 
 Have done with the fog-breather, the fog-beguiler; 
 With the foam of the never-resting. 
 3 
 
4 THE TRAIL FROM THE SEA 
 
 Have done with tides and passions, tides and mys- 
 teries for a season. 
 
 Have done with infinite yearnings cast adrift on 
 infinite vagueness — 
 
 With never a certain sail, never a rudder sure for 
 guidance. 
 
 With never a compass-needle free of desire. 
 
 For the ways of earth are good, as well as sea-ways. 
 
 The peaks of it as well as ports unknown. 
 
 Not only perils matter, stormy perils, over the 
 
 pathless. 
 Not only the shoals that sink your ship of dreams. 
 Not only the phantom lure of far horizons. 
 Not only the windy guess at the goals of God. 
 
 But morning matters, and dew upon the rose. 
 And noon, shadowless noon, and simple sheep on 
 the pastures straying. 
 
THE TRAIL FROM THE SEA 5 
 
 And toil matters, amid the accustomed corn. 
 And peace matters, the valley-spirit of peace, un- 
 
 prone to wander, 
 Unprone to pierce to the world's end — and past it. 
 And zephyrs matter, that never lift up a sail. 
 Save that of the thistle voyaging over the meadow. 
 And the lark — oh — the sunny lark — as well as 
 
 the songless petrel. 
 Who cries the foamy length of a thousand leagues. 
 And silence matters, silence free of all surging, 
 Silence, the spirit of happiness and home. 
 
 And oh how much the laugh of a child mat- 
 ters: 
 
 More than the green of an island suddenly lit by 
 sun at dawn. 
 
 And friends, the greetings of friends, how they 
 matter: 
 
 More than ships that meet and fling a wild ahoy and 
 pass. 
 
 On any alien tides however enchanted. 
 
6 THE TRAIL FROM THE SEA 
 
 And the face of love, the evening face of love, at a 
 
 window waiting. 
 Shall ever a kindled Light on any long-unlifting 
 
 shore, 
 Shall ever a Harbor Light like that light matter? 
 
 Ah no! so enough of the sea and the soul for a 
 
 season. 
 Too long followed they leave life as a dream. 
 Reality as a mirage when port is made. 
 "Ever in sight of the human,'* is the helm-word of 
 
 the wisest, 
 For earth is not earth to one upon the flood of 
 
 infinity; 
 To the eye, then, it is but an atom-star, adrift, and 
 
 oh. 
 No longer warm with the beating of countless hearts. 
 
 No longer warm with the human throb — the simple 
 
 breath of to-day. 
 With yester-hours or the near dreams of to-morrow. 
 
THE TRAIL FROM THE SEA 7 
 
 No longer rich with the little innumerous blooms 
 
 of brief delights, 
 Nor all divinely drenched with sympathy. 
 No longer green with the humble grass of duties 
 
 that must grow, 
 To clothe it against desert aridity. 
 No longer zoned with the air of hope, no longer 
 
 large with faith — 
 No longer heaven enough — if Heaven fails us I 
 
A MOTHER'S CRY TO HER KIND 
 
 At a hovel window hot and bare, 
 
 A baby on her breast, 
 And hungry others fretting the air 
 
 That fetid scents obsessed, 
 A mother bitter and bent with want 
 
 Stared at a squalid street, 
 And said to herself — and to her kind — 
 
 With sickening repeat: 
 
 " Don't ever have a child. 
 
 If you are married poor. 
 Don't ever have a little child 
 
 And make your misery sure. 
 For two will come, and three, and four, 
 
 To*eat one crust of bread: 
 8 
 
A MOTHER'S CRY TO HER KIND 
 And grind as you will in poverty mill 
 You'll wish that you were dead. 
 
 " Don't ever have a child, 
 
 If you must cook and scrub 
 And wash your soul, all day long. 
 
 Into the clothes you rub. 
 For the sight of children bred in want. 
 
 The cry of their distress. 
 Will make you long to be but a beast 
 
 Out in the wilderness. 
 
 " Don't ever have a child. 
 
 In winter there is cold, 
 In summer there is fever and death — 
 
 And a face laid in the mold. 
 And then another — coming to fill 
 
 Its sallow hungry place, 
 And suck at your breast and drain the life 
 
 And hope out of your face. 
 
10 A MOTHER'S CRY TO HER KIND 
 
 " Don't ever have a child. 
 
 Your husband, down and dumb, 
 Will take to drink, and, out of work, 
 
 Win you a beggar's crumb. 
 Or beat you — till a cancer grows 
 
 Where once you had a breast, 
 And your days will be a bitterness, 
 
 And your nights will be unrest. 
 
 " Don't ever have a child. 
 
 Leave children to the rich. 
 And eat your lonely bread for strength 
 
 To rise out of the ditch. 
 For do not think the proud and strong 
 
 Believe you grovel there 
 For any reason than that worth 
 
 Has justice everywhere. 
 
 " Don't ever have a child. 
 Don't set God's image on 
 
A MOTHER'S CRY TO HER KIND 11 
 
 A wizened sickly face that death 
 
 Or crime shall hold in pawn. 
 For almshouse door and prison cell 
 
 Are made for children who 
 Are born — in beds of poverty — 
 
 Of such as me and you." 
 
NEW DREAMS FOR OLD 
 
 Is there no voice in the world to come crying, 
 
 " New dreams for old! 
 
 New for old!"? 
 Many have long in my heart been lying, 
 
 Faded, weary, and cold. 
 All of them, all, would I give for a new one. 
 
 (Is there no seeker 
 
 Of dreams that were?) 
 Nor would I ask if the new were a true one; 
 
 Only for new dreams ! 
 
 New for old! 
 
 For I am here, half way of my journey, 
 Here with the old! 
 All so old! 
 
 12 
 
NEW DREAMS FOR OLD 13 
 
 And the best heart with death is at tourney, 
 
 If naught new it is told. 
 Will there no voice, then, come — or a vision — 
 Come with the beauty 
 That ever blows 
 Out of the lands that are called Elysian? 
 I must have new dreams ! 
 New for old! 
 
 ft u '!!» l iP !l » »»!»■■» '* ■ ■■■ ' w i'«i« 
 
AN INDIAN'S PRAYER 
 (At the Grand Canyon) 
 
 Gulf of the Great Sun-Spirit, 
 
 Within whose deeps mountain-pueblos rise, 
 
 Or mountain-tepees vast for His abiding; 
 
 Gulf which the Colorado's quivering arrow-water 
 
 pierces, * 
 
 Deeper and deeper pierces, from its mountain-might 
 
 shot forth, 
 Hear the cry of your people who are passing ! 
 
 The Pale-face came in his prows across the ocean. 
 The Pale- face came with his plows across the plains. 
 He swept the primitive years back, as a herd is swept 
 by fire, 
 
 14 
 
AN INDIAN'S PRAYER IS 
 
 The Indian years away, into the sunset, 
 And now they are dying from the world forever. 
 
 For the master of earth was he — and we as children ! 
 The trails he has run across it are of steel, strong 
 
 and enduring; 
 And a giant bison, the monster locomotive, draws his 
 
 burden — 
 Snorting across the prairies and the mountains. 
 And he feeds it rock from the earth — out of the 
 
 earth he calls up water. 
 To quench its thirst when river and lake are spent. 
 
 And he builds him lodges — mighty and hung with 
 
 trophies ! 
 They are of stone, and tower, O Gulf, sunward. 
 Like these of yours that were not made by hands. 
 And he brings the stars down out of the heavens to 
 
 light them. 
 And snares invisible powers to work their will. 
 
 jMmmumJ alBmtmem 
 
16 AN INDIAN'S PRAYER 
 
 For the master of earth is he — and we papooses ! 
 Our voice, on the war-path, dies at a sough of wind, 
 But his is whispered across the storms and wars of a 
 
 continent ! 
 For the air is his, too; and he makes him wings to 
 
 soar upon it. 
 To rise and scorn the eagle far beneath him. 
 
 Yet hear O Gulf, and hear. Great Spirit in it, 
 
 Thy people, who are coyotes now, that hunger be- 
 yond the campfires. 
 
 And know they can never take their place beside 
 them! 
 
 Who feed on the bones the Pale-face leaves when 
 he hews new trails before him. 
 
 Feed — and ever are fewer upon the pastures! 
 
 Hear, ere we pass away to other Hunting, and 
 
 Hoping, 
 Ere you shall take our memory to your silence; 
 
AN INDIAN'S PRAYER 17 
 
 Hear, hear, and raise from among us one last 
 
 Chieftain, 
 Great as a Pale-face, in his arts and speakings, 
 To utter our race's reason to the years. 
 
 For we would not die from the wild lands of our 
 
 fathers : 
 Our long home — ere the Pale one with his homes 
 
 made us homeless: 
 And be forgot as a smoke of yesterday. 
 We would not die, O Spirit, not fade from it. 
 Ere a supreme one, with race-wisdom girdled, arise 
 
 to us, 
 And reveal how we have passed into our Conqueror. 
 
 For wildness have we taught him such as the deer 
 
 feels. 
 And primitive freedom to his freedom added; 
 And our silentness, from the Indian years gathered. 
 
18 AN INDIAN'S PRAYER 
 
 Under no wigwam, save of the moon or sun, 
 We have lent him, O deep Gulf of the Great Sun- 
 Spirit, 
 And mightier made him for his destinies. 
 
THE MAD PHILOSOPHER 
 
 They let him wander as he will 
 By wood and river, vale and hill, 
 Tho snapped by madness are the strings 
 Of his wan mind's imaginings. 
 
 And often his sad spirit's breath 
 
 Will chant of life and love and death. 
 
 Twanging upon the broken ends 
 
 Of strings that some chance moment mends. 
 
 " The harlot moon still clings to earth,'^ 
 He croons, " tho love's of little worth. 
 Cold as the spirit of a star 
 Her lips and eyes and bosom are. . . . 
 19 
 
20 THE MAD PHILOSOPHER 
 
 " Within some sky beyond the sky 
 There is a whisper Why, Why, Why? 
 If I could climb the wind to it, 
 Of frenzy earth should soon be quit. . . . 
 
 " A person lives that men call God. 
 I caught him once within a clod. 
 He is not really God at all, 
 But only atoms that can crawl. . . . 
 
 " Hey diddle, many sorrows be 
 Within the womb of destiny. 
 That 's why the thrush will chant all day 
 To keep from hearing men who pray. , . 
 
 " The sweet sweet herb of happiness 
 Grows ever less and less and less. 
 I 'm sure it is because men look 
 At their own image in the brook. . . . 
 
 " A bride is such a lily thing; 
 She lets you bind her with a ring. 
 
THE MAD PHILOSOPHER 21 
 
 I see Queen Gwin and Lancelot — 
 But Arthur's face is all a blot. . . . 
 
 "Lean down and I will tell you why 
 
 The stars are lighted in the sky. 
 
 They are for tapers on the bier 
 
 Of — hush ! don't say it : He is near. . . , 
 
 " The owl is hooting what o'clock 
 The Judgment Day at last shall knock. 
 But time who whips us to the grave 
 Is the one savior who can save. . . . 
 
 " I '11 vow it, tho to Hell I 'm sunk: 
 God with the whole world's tears is drunk. 
 That 's why He is not God at all 
 But only atoms that can crawl. . . . 
 
 " Ay, doubt ! But when the lightning's knout 
 Splits the sky's skull do Brains fall out? 
 There 's sun and moon and sky and sea 
 And worm and ape — and you and me. . . . 
 
22 THE MAD PHILOSOPHER 
 
 " Yet if you love a maid then all 
 The atoms do not seem to crawl 
 So heartlessly: tho why it is 
 Can be no business of His." . . . 
 
 So sings he in the little whiles 
 That health again half on him smiles, 
 Twanging the sadly broken strings 
 Of his poor mind's imaginings. 
 
THE CHANT OF THE COLORADO 
 
 (At the Grand Canyon) 
 
 My brother, man, shapes him a plan 
 
 And builds him a house in a day, 
 But I have toiled through a million years 
 
 For a home to last alway. 
 I have flooded the sands and washed them down, 
 
 I have cut through gneiss and granite. 
 No toiler of earth has wrought as I, 
 
 Since God's first breath began it. 
 High mountain-buttes I have chiselled, to shade 
 
 My wanderings to the sea. 
 With the wind's aid, and the cloud's aid, 
 Unweary and mighty and unafraid, 
 
 I have bodied eternity. 
 
 23 
 
24 THE CHANT OF THE COLORADO 
 
 My brother, man, builds for a span: 
 
 His life is a moment's breath. 
 But I have hewn for a million years, 
 
 Nor a moment dreamt of death. 
 By moons and stars I have measured my task 
 
 And some from the skies have perished: 
 But ever I cut and flashed and foamed, 
 
 As ever my aim I cherished: 
 My aim to quarry the heart of earth. 
 
 Till, in the rock's red rise. 
 Its age and birth, through an awful girth 
 Of strata, should show the wonder-worth 
 
 Of patience to all eyes. 
 
 My brother, man, builds as he can, 
 And beauty he adds for his joy. 
 
 But all the hues of sublimity 
 My pinnacled walls employ. 
 
 Slow shadows iris them all day long, 
 And silvery veils, soul-stilling. 
 
THE CHANT OF THE COLORADO 25 
 
 The moon drops down their precipices, 
 
 Soft with a spectral thrilling. 
 For all immutable dreams that sway 
 
 With beauty the earth and air, 
 Are ever at play, by night and day, 
 My house of eternity to array 
 
 In visions ever fair. 
 
MOUNTAINS IN THE GRAND CANYON 
 
 Each a primeval vastness, shaped by hands 
 
 Whose cosmic strength carved idly then forgot, 
 In half-created awfulness here stands, 
 
 For sun and wind and cloud and rain to rot. 
 No chaos do they seem, but as the work 
 
 Of a lone God, or one to purpose blind — 
 Who could not his creative urgence shirk. 
 
 Yet without love or hope has wrought his mind. 
 
 And man was not, when first their mythic shapes 
 Emerged phantasmal in the Great Gulf's terror; 
 
 Nor shall man be when the last silence drapes 
 Their desolation's drear and deathless error. 
 
 For supra-human, supra-mundane, sunk 
 26 
 
MOUNTAINS IN THE GRAND CANYON 27 
 In dread indifference, they heedless sit — 
 Abortive rock from whence all soul has shrunk, 
 Abandoned quarry of The Infinite. 
 
A DANCER 
 
 Beautiful as a wave before it breaks, 
 
 ' And troubling as a wave when it has broken, 
 
 You are as one whose luring spirit wakes 
 
 Desire so deep it never can be spoken. 
 You are as one to whom men sing a paean 
 
 Of praise, then long to strangle with wild throes, 
 For the body of you is as a thing Circean, 
 
 Your heart a mystery that no man knows. 
 
 Beautiful as a gull that breasts the waters 
 Then goes upon swift wings across the sea, 
 
 You are as one of Time's eternal daughters 
 Who never give desire satiety. 
 
 Your feet go through the hearts of men, and flowers 
 
A DANCER 29 
 
 Of passion spring, to haunt them till they die; 
 For you were framed by those elusive powers 
 That made Eve for more bliss than Eden sigh. 
 
A WORKER — OUT OF WORK 
 
 Jesus Christ was a laboring man — and a willing 
 
 one, may be, 
 
 Who did not seek a fair day's shift to shirk. 
 
 But Jesus Christ with a wife and children never 
 
 tramped like me 
 
 The streets all day and night in search of work. 
 
 Jesus Christ was a laboring man, and he said, " To 
 
 Caesar give 
 
 All 's due " : but he never heard his children cry 
 
 Because of want of an alms of work to get them 
 
 bread to live — 
 
 Mere bread that a million drones have but to buy! 
 
 30 
 
A WORKER — OUT OF WORK 31 
 
 Jesus Christ was a laboring man — who dwelt 
 among the poor, 
 And taught them God, the Father: but I say 
 That now he would teach that man, the father, never 
 should endure 
 A workless destitution day by day. 
 
 Jesus Christ was a laboring man — and he cursed 
 the rich and proud. 
 And flung the money-changers out in the sun. 
 But if he had waked in the night and heard his wife 
 moaning aloud 
 With a starved babe at her breast, what would he 
 have done? 
 
 Jesus Christ was a laboring man — and it may be 
 that he saw 
 How many sweat till the soul is numb and dead. 
 But were he the Christ to-day, the lords of the world 
 would quake with awe 
 When a strong man wanting work is starved for 
 bread. 
 
THE PLAINSMAN 
 
 I 'm out again in the great spaces, 
 Far from men and the little places, 
 I 'm out again where the heart faces 
 
 The lone plains and the skies. 
 I 'm out with the wind no hand can saddle; 
 Out and away from wants that raddle; 
 Out where the striding sun can straddle 
 
 The world. 
 And oh I 'm full of scornful pities 
 For dwellers in streets and narrow cities; 
 For the trade-songs, and trade-ditties. 
 
 They chant. 
 And I wish I could smite out of creation 
 The lie they call their civilization, — 
 A lie that is but soul-dissipation, 
 
 Soul-deceit and cant. 
 
 Z2 
 
 >-.^^ 3c-ti:.-.;2t:;;:u^:^,^;,.>. --A- 
 
THE PLAINSMAN 33 
 
 I 'm out again in the great spaces, 
 Far from men and the little places, 
 I 'm out again where the heart faces 
 
 The lone night and the stars. 
 And I wish I knew how to untether 
 All pent lives to the wide world-weather, 
 And say, " Come, come, let us ride together 
 
 Away." 
 For one hour's sense of the infinite prairie 
 Is better than all the years men bury 
 In crowded walls, sad, mad, or merry 
 
 Or vain. 
 And one star's light has more of Heaven, 
 Has more in it of the great God-leaven, 
 Than the seventy myriad lights and seven, 
 
 Cities beget, for gain. 
 
THE SACRILEGE OF SYLVETTE 
 {Martinique, 1902) 
 
 April on Martinique; 
 Day's end, and the moon, 
 Trimming her slender bows to ride 
 The soft clouds scarlet-strewn. 
 Two in a tropic shade 
 Above Saint Pierre's sickle 
 That reaps the breakers at their feet. 
 White breakers, Caribbean and sweet 
 With the foam's plunge and trickle. 
 
 Two in a tropic shade; 
 Sylvette, " the Nightingale," 
 And Raymond dark with the sea's tan, 
 34 
 
THE SACRILEGE OF SYLVETTE 35 
 
 But both with love pale. 
 Sylvette, the Nightingale, 
 And he born to the sea 
 On the other side of Mont Pelee 
 Whose jungled slopes gave that day 
 No gleam of destiny. 
 
 For long had the fair isle 
 
 Been held in a deep trance, 
 
 As if the sea clasping it round 
 
 Had found at last romance — 
 
 A mystic blue romance 
 
 So dear, in the embrace — 
 
 That like the yearning lovers there 
 
 It seemed no more to be aware 
 
 Of Pelee's scarry face. 
 
 And so, as the moon dipt 
 
 And rose and dipt again; 
 
 As all the odorous dusk 
 
 Swept through the clinging twain; 
 
36 THE SACRILEGE OF SYLVETTE 
 
 As all the tropic stir 
 Of passion trembling grew — 
 Sylvette lay in her lover's arms 
 And both were speechless with the charms 
 That night around them threw. 
 
 Until, " Sylvette," fell low 
 
 From Raymond's parted lips, 
 
 " My ship to-morrow, with the dawn. 
 
 Out of the roadstead slips." 
 
 He said no more, but gazed 
 
 Into her Creole eyes. 
 
 A pensive palm above them waved 
 
 One plume against the skies. 
 
 The want between them was the want 
 
 That ever in love lies. 
 
 So deep she gave it back, 
 His look of want, of passion. 
 Until a sudden terror shook 
 Her lips, that grew ashen. 
 
THE SACRILEGE OF SYLVETTE 37 
 
 And, " Non, Raymond," she said, 
 Loosing his hand that pressed 
 Too close around her tenderness, 
 Too near unto her breast, 
 " Non, non, ami ! I love you, but — " 
 Her throat refused the rest. 
 
 But his low voice went on, 
 "To-night! give me to-night! 
 Your mother sleeps, oh my petite. 
 Grant me this one delight. 
 Come with me through the hedge 
 Of husht hibiscus flowers 
 To the little hidden chapel there 
 Amid deserted bowers — 
 Hidden and waiting for our love, 
 Nestled in the night hours." 
 
 His words were Nature's own, 
 Pleading with deep desire. 
 Yet she looking at Mont Pelee 
 
38 THE SACRILEGE OF SYLVETTE 
 
 Beheld it grow dire, — 
 Though no sign from it fell, 
 Above the city's sickle, 
 That lay studded with lights below: 
 So strength out of her seemed to flow 
 And fate within to trickle. 
 
 Till soon her full heart felt 
 
 That rather than refuse 
 
 Her lover love she would all life 
 
 And Life Eternal lose. 
 
 And how else could she choose? 
 
 For was not the wide night 
 
 One vast sweet mystery to make 
 
 All things that love does right? 
 
 She kissed him yieldingly, and went — 
 
 In dumb Mont Pelee's sight. 
 
 Yet scarcely had they slipt 
 Under the scented shade 
 
THE SACRILEGE OF SYLVETTE 39 
 
 To where the little chapel-roof 
 A blot of purple made; 
 Scarce had they trembled in, 
 Where none now ever came, 
 Than Pelee, long extinct, sent up 
 From a slow heart of flame 
 A slender omen-puff of smoke — 
 The first in a dread game. 
 
 The hours pass, it is dawn. 
 And on the sea's fairway 
 Sylvette is watching a silver ship 
 Through dark smoke drift away. 
 Sylvette at her window-sill. 
 With rose and jessamine sick — 
 Her soul tangled in the shame mesh 
 Of her remorseful guilty flesh, 
 Her brain with fears thick. 
 
40 THE SACRILEGE OF SYLVETTE 
 
 The hot sun finds her so. 
 And spent now is the spell. 
 Dread seems the little chapel-roof, 
 And dread the matin-bell. 
 For as the sweet sound quivers 
 Within her, resonant, 
 The earth beneath her faintly shivers 
 And out of Pelee dark smoke-rivers 
 Sudden begin to pant. 
 
 And somewhere under her 
 She hears a Creole-cry. 
 Then a fear-murmur from the streets 
 That down below her lie. 
 And many an anxious eye 
 She sees turn to the North 
 Where Pelee writes upon the sky 
 A warning to the gazing throng 
 To fly, fly, fly! 
 
THE SACRILEGE OF SYLVETTE 41 
 
 A warning brief — and then 
 Seeming to pass away, 
 Though still a little dust falls 
 Volcanic day by day. 
 A pallid sift of dust 
 That turns the green to gray, 
 And that upon Sylvette's sick cheek 
 As on her heart, remorse-weak, 
 A terror seems to lay. 
 
 But still the city's sickle 
 
 Reaps the white breakers in. 
 
 And many mocking at all fear 
 
 Lift up a lavish din. 
 
 And these Sylvette passing 
 
 One day cries out against. 
 
 As a Cassandra sudden cries, 
 
 Out of her guilt's harassing, 
 
 " You know not what you do ! Fly ! 
 
 Or soon — be recompenst ! 
 
42 THE SACRILEGE OF SYLVETTE 
 
 " For I "— she meant to tell 
 Her sin there in the chapel, 
 Since it was seeming now to her 
 As Eve's, after the Apple. 
 But their hot laughing lips 
 Hushed her, and as she went 
 They cried " Old Pelee at his worst 
 Can only add dust to our thirst! " 
 And so they drank unspent. 
 
 But she, the night through, tossed 
 
 Upon her torrid bed. 
 
 For there had come into her heart 
 
 A thought, horror-fed. 
 
 A thought that she had sinned 
 
 Against the Holy Ghost — 
 
 There in the Shrine had taken love 
 
 Where men had sought the Host. 
 
 And she was strangled in the stain 
 
 As in a sea almost. 
 
THE SACRILEGE OF SYLVETTE 43 
 
 So when dawn rose again — 
 Dawn stifled with wan dust 
 Poured out of Pelee's poison throat 
 Whence lightnings now were thrust, 
 She cried, " I will ! I must I 
 For Wrath on them is coming. 
 Because of this hot sin of mine 
 The hordes of Hell are humming. 
 To the people I will tell my shame, 
 Its awful guilt summing." 
 
 So out of doors she ran. 
 
 Half-clothed, her white breasts bare. 
 
 Snatching the dust of Pelee up 
 
 To strew her brow and hair, 
 
 And crazedly chanting, crying — 
 
 She, once the Nightingale — 
 
 "Hear me, oh people, hear! and fly! 
 
 Or soon you will be dying, 
 
 For I have sinned the sin of sins. 
 
 On the altar of Christ lying ! 
 
44 THE SACRILEGE OF SYLVETTE 
 
 " On the altar of Christ and Mary 
 Taking my love and lust! 
 And God shall destroy the world for it, 
 See now His burning dust." 
 And they about her listened 
 And some with fear were gray 
 As her frenzied eyes glistened — 
 And some to Mont Pelee 
 Looked up as if to heed her word 
 And haste from there away. 
 
 But doom comes of delaying. 
 
 And doom came now — so swift 
 
 That with a groaning angry heave 
 
 The whole isle seemed to lift, 
 
 And from the side of Pelee 
 
 A hurricane tongue burst, 
 
 A hurricane tongue of singeing gas — 
 
 A fiery wind, accurst — 
 
 That swept them — and the city — 
 
 Ere they could moan " alas "! 
 
THE SACRILEGE OF SYLVETTE 45 
 
 And it took Sylvette and strangled 
 Her little crying throat, 
 And all the thousands with her 
 And the few that heard her note 
 Of piteous mad repentance, 
 For in all Saint Pierre 
 But one was left to tell Raymond 
 What thing had happened there — 
 To tell him, when he staggered back, 
 Of Pelee's awful flare. . . . 
 
 And now when April comes 
 
 And day's end and the moon. 
 
 Trimming her slender bows to ride 
 
 The soft clouds scarlet-strewn, 
 
 You may behold him wander 
 
 Amid the ruined maze; 
 
 But no word has he for you — 
 
 Only a ruined gaze; 
 
 For he is seeking his Sylvette — 
 
 And so will seek, always. 
 
IN A CANYON OF THE SANTA INEZ 
 
 (California) 
 
 Swift mountain- water purling far below me, 
 Stupendous granite piercing high above, 
 The sea spread out in lucent gray behind me, 
 Framed by the live-oaks gnarled and mossy round 
 
 me. 
 Upon it Santa Cruz's shadowy summits. 
 Islanded by the mists as by the waves; 
 Another world's they seem, miraged a moment, 
 Another world's — and vanished as I gaze. 
 
 The sunlight casting mile-long purple shadows. 
 That drench the chaparral with cooling gloom. 
 46 
 
IN A CANYON OF THE SANTA INEZ 47 
 
 The shimmery peaks pine-edged against the bright- 
 ness, 
 The canyoncitos for the eagle's eyrie. 
 Down, down, far down, the wet-lipped waters calling, 
 Giving a voice to rugged solitudes. 
 To granite cliffs as moveless as dead ages 
 And mighty with repressed omnipotence. 
 
 Omnipotence? Ah yes, for every shoulder 
 Of the high range holds off the infinite, 
 The blue-pressed infinite in which are hidden 
 Star-weight and moon-weight and God-weight to- 
 gether. 
 The precipices shudder with such steepness 
 As strikes the heart beholding deathly still. 
 Within their dark crevasses creeps the eternal 
 And chaos yet exerts its primal will. 
 
WRAITHS OF DESTINY 
 
 {A Phantasy, in Three Revelations) 
 
 I 
 
 THE FORESEERS 
 
 {June, 1914) 
 
 [A chamber — or the vast apparition of a chamber 
 — extending under the whole of Europe — whose 
 outlines, country by country, are spectrally visi- 
 ble on its overarching cavity. What appears to 
 be light pervades it; and it is thronged with the 
 phantoms of all who have ever died for humanity. 
 The eyes of these phantoms are turned anxiously 
 to the rear where a rock-like incline seems to 
 lead up toward earth, and where there is a mys- 
 terious tripod on which is enthroned Life, the 
 48 
 
WRAITHS OF DESTINY 49 
 
 pythia of the Immanent God, swept through by 
 innumerable forces. Around her are her ministers 
 Heredity — preternaturally human; Chance — 
 awed from perpetual oscillation between evil and 
 good; and Death, darkly incarnate. Premoni- 
 tion and awe seem to dominate all alike, in spite 
 of their different natures, and Heredity is speak- 
 ing. 
 
 Heredity. Let there be answer, O Immortal One, 
 To me your lawful minister! 
 
 Chance [starting]. Or me! 
 
 Lawless in all things! 
 
 Death [slowly]. Or to dreaded me! 
 
 [The throng sways.] 
 
 Heredity. For ages I have woven as you willed, 
 Meshing the hearts of the vast myriads, 
 Who people all this continent above us, 
 With peace, hope and hate and greed and love. 
 And many were the evils of my task 
 
50 WRAITHS OF DESTINY 
 
 Of threading the generations to your thought, 
 But still I toiled, trusting the fair intent 
 Of all your deeds would dawn for humankind. 
 Yet now — 
 Chance. Now — 
 Death. Now — 
 
 Heredity. Shall this thing he? 
 
 {The throng quivers.'] 
 Chance {still immovable]. 
 
 Yea, shall it be? this horror that now looms 
 So wide that even I, the all-unheeding, 
 Who bring to millions fortune, millions fate, — 
 / faint to know? 
 Death: {hollowly]. And I — who minister 
 And master for you when none other can? 
 Yet who am now astounded: Shall it be? 
 
 [Lite gives no answer.] 
 Heredity {drawing nearer]. Still you are tongue- 
 less and your emanations 
 Float on as ever to unwitting earth! 
 And yet I ask again shall all the warp 
 
WRAITHS "OF DESTINY 51 
 
 And woof of yearning ages be undone? 
 All the great dream of progress that has clothed 
 The nakedness of bestiality 
 In man, your highest creature? All the hope 
 Of human brotherhood, the one divine 
 And sacred vision none shall ever mar, 
 Save with remorse, thro the arrestless years? 
 Speak ! 
 
 Death. Yea ! for I am due again on earth, 
 Where I must whisper it among the nations. 
 Shall there he Peace or War! 
 
 The Throng [with a vast murmur] . Still, Peace ? 
 or War? 
 
 [Life sits as before.] 
 
 Heredity [with disquiet that is now unendurable]. 
 Break silence, O Unfathomable One! 
 Yea! or I cry you heedless — or of good 
 Or ill; and serve no longer — minister 
 No more to your immitigable mind. 
 
 Chance. And I! For worse than my wild-strik- 
 ing ways 
 
52 WRAITHS OF DESTINY 
 
 Is this void apathetic voicelessness. 
 Death [rising strangely]. And I! . . . Yet stay! 
 stay ! 
 I scent, at last, 
 Some intimation, mute, impalpable, 
 Coming from whence I know not, that the hour 
 Of revelation is at hand. . . . Yet where? 
 
 [The throng is shaken.] 
 Chance. Yea, where? . . . where? 
 Heredity. O Life, at last speak! where? 
 
 Life [whose lips for the first time open]. 
 Ye importuners! seekers to foreknowledge 
 Of this most treasonable tragedy 
 That ever has befallen to earth's years, 
 Hush and look up, for the To-Be begins. 
 And, lo, its passion which shall stain all things 
 Sweeps even now above our haunted heads. 
 
 [They look: a shadow is sweeping 
 Austria and Servia.] 
 Now are ye answered? 
 Chance [in terror]. Yea! 
 
WRAITHS OF DESTINY 53 
 
 Death [starting]. War! ... It is War! 
 
 [A shot rings down through the vastness]. 
 And I must up — to ride the battlefields ! 
 
 [The shadow turns crimson.] 
 Lite. Ai, go ! For I who am the maker of men 
 No longer am their master — as ofttimes 
 I 've seemed. But Devastation, like a ghoul 
 Of the Universe, will glut now with despair 
 And grief and murder and all misery 
 Its mystic and illimitable maw. 
 O man, wild thorn within the flesh of God! 
 
 [As her words die out Death is speeding 
 away toward earth. Then the chamber, 
 grown dim, suddenly melts in phantasmal 
 darkness. After which there is nothing- 
 ness.] 
 
THE OUTCASTS 
 
 (June, 1915) 
 
 [A hollow, high up in what resemble the mountains 
 of Alpine Europe, where never a human foot has 
 fallen. It is crepuscular with night, sadness, 
 mystery and fear — a place supernatural, where 
 the semblance of earth and air exist, or seem to 
 exist from time to time, but as constantly vanish 
 in a whirl of blinding invisibility. 
 
 Through it, after a long trembling as of unseen 
 forces, a wail comes which seems to cause a wider 
 lifting of the obscurity. Then huddled together 
 in the rocky center, where a tree overhangs a lake 
 of phantom water, are seen a Naiad, a Faun, a 
 54 
 
THE OUTCASTS 55 
 
 Gnome, a Sylph, a Peri, and two veiled Figures: 
 one with a broken Cross on its breast, the other 
 with a quenched torch. They are swaying to and 
 fro, and as they do so the spirit of the place, which 
 is that of Solitude, seems to rise up questioningly 
 behind them, and after a little to speak. 
 Solitude. Who are ye? speak! who are ye, one 
 and all, 
 Here in this emptiness unbreathed before? 
 The Naiad [with a moan]. I am a Nymph I 
 The Faun. And I a Faun! 
 
 The Sylph. I, Air! 
 
 [Swooning away.] 
 
 If still I be at all! 
 Solitude [to the Peri]. And who are you? 
 The Peri [quailing]. A stranger, but a friend! 
 Drive me not back! 
 For I am terrified! 
 The Gnome [wildly]. And I! ... I! 
 
 [Has risen, but again sinks back.] 
 
56 THE OUTCASTS 
 
 Solitude. Of whom? I do not understand ? [To 
 
 the veiled Ones.] Whom fear ye? 
 He-with-the-Cross. I have no thing to say, save 
 that I too 
 Am one driven like these from out my place. 
 He-with-the-Torch. Nor I! For I am 
 quenched upon the earth, 
 The nations have forsaken me! 
 Solitude. The nations? 
 
 [The night dissolves them.] 
 The Faun [as they reappear]. O yea, we have 
 been driven from our haunts 
 Of sea and air and forest — and men's souls — 
 By a blind tide — of blood ! 
 The Naiad. That sweeps the world! 
 
 [Her hair falls over her.] 
 Solitude. Of blood? 
 
 The Naiad. Wild blood! It stained my 
 
 wells and rivers, 
 Till they could purl only of grief and death! 
 The Faun. My trees were crimson with its cruelty, 
 
THE OUTCASTS 57 
 
 My brakes pestilent with its plashing pain ! 
 The Sylph. Yea, and my sky was fetid with its 
 mist, 
 I could not wing through it . . . but sank and 
 fell! 
 
 [The Three moan.] 
 The Peri. And I whose task it was to build the 
 dawns 
 And call the stars out was so blinded by it, 
 That letting go all mystery and beauty 
 I fled from my far ways to safety here! 
 Solitude [as all again dissolve, then reappear]. 
 
 But who has shed his blood? and why? 
 The Gnome [springing up again]. Who? 
 who? 
 
 [Laughs madly.] 
 And sent it trickling down to rot on me? 
 Even on me who hoped by toil at last 
 To rise out of the earth as fair as these? 
 Who ? Man ! the ruiner of all things ! Man ! 
 [He raves. . . . A Silence.] 
 
58 THE OUTCASTS 
 
 Solitude. But know ye what ye say? Has God 
 not globed 
 
 The earth for man? and sent him His own Son? 
 The Figure- with-the-Cross. Alas! 
 Solitude [quickly] . Why do you say alas ? 
 
 The Figure [lifting its veil], I am 
 
 That Son! 
 Solitude. The Christ! it cannot be! not He! 
 
 These might be driven by blood-flow away, 
 
 But never He ! 
 The Figure-with-the-Torch. Yet even Him it 
 hath! 
 
 [Now lifts its veil.] 
 
 For I am Truth, who outcast, too, attest it. 
 
 He could not stay, but like to these fair dreams 
 
 Quivering here — distenanted of all — 
 
 Is driven forth! 
 The Faun. Woe, woe! 
 The Naiad. Ai, woe ! 
 
 The Sylph [Uke an echo]. ... Woe! . . . 
 Solitude [as all sway — through a long silence]. 
 
THE OUTCASTS 59 
 
 And what now will ye do, so homeless here ? 
 
 [They breathe no reply.] 
 What will ye do? 
 
 The Figure-with-the-Cross. I answer for us all. 
 We shall await — until the tide has ebbed. 
 
 Solitude. And then return? 
 
 The Sylph. Never! 
 
 The Naiad. Never! 
 
 The Faun. Never! 
 
 [Their cries flutter up.] 
 
 He-with-the-Cross. Children of Beauty, yes! 
 [Their cries wane]. For other place 
 In all the universe is not prepared 
 To us, save upon earth and in men's hearts. 
 For we are healers, cleansers and uplifters, 
 Hierophants of Love and Hope and Joy, 
 Or we are naught. And when the tide has ebbed 
 There will be more of misery and guilt 
 To wipe away into oblivion 
 Than ever again shall cling to humankind 
 Through all the flooding vastity of time. 
 
60 THE OUTCASTS 
 
 The Faun [yielding, at length, to these words, 
 though hopelessly]. 
 E'en be it then! ... 
 The Naiad. E'en so! . . . 
 
 The Sylph. Ai! 
 
 He-with-the-Torch [relieved]. Even so! 
 
 [All huddle again and the darkness begins to 
 thicken. But before it falls the Cross glows 
 a moment, then the Torch. Then invisibility 
 vast and benumbing again resumes all,] 
 
in 
 
 THE RESTORERS 
 (June, 19 — ) 
 
 [A verdant hillside that seems to rise, as if by en- 
 chantment, somewhere in the heart of Europe. 
 It is lit by a radiance more miraculously joyful 
 and tender than can ever visit earth, and is cov- 
 ered with flowers and trees whose fragrance floats 
 over it like the essence of dreams. 
 
 Down to its open center come trooping, from a glade 
 behind, all lovely creatures that men have ever 
 imagined. In their midst is the spirit- form of 
 Life, now infinitely a-quiver with new hope; of 
 the Christ, with a new Cross; of Truth, with a 
 fresh torch; of Heredity with the flax of a new 
 6i 
 
62 THE RESTORERS 
 
 humanity in her hands; and, with them, a multi- 
 tude of Nymphs, Fauns, Sylphs, Gnomes, and 
 other visions. All are singing with an immor* 
 tal desire to help restore a continent ravished as 
 no continent has ever been before. 
 Life [gloriously^. 
 
 The last shot is fired, 
 The last blood shed! 
 Death has retired — 
 Christ. The world is new led ! 
 Heredity. Everywhere, everywhere, 
 Men are returning 
 Back from red slaughter 
 And rapine and burning! 
 So with new flax 
 I weave a new race! 
 Christ. And I a new God 
 
 In the old God's place! 
 Truth [ecstatically]. 
 
 And I — whose torch 
 Flame has rekindled — 
 
THE RESTORERS 63 
 
 Will bum away error 
 
 And fog and lies! 
 
 For Peace, brave Peace, 
 
 Their passion has dwindled, 
 
 And now a new light 
 
 Shall fill men's eyes! 
 The Nymphs [dancing forth]. 
 
 Ai, ai! So give us 
 
 A million flowers 
 And let us scatter them over the vales! 
 
 And grain ! — 
 
 For the slain, 
 Who lie in the earth, 
 Who died, died for their fatherlands, 
 
 Yearn now to push up. 
 
 Into harvest-birth, 
 Blossoms that spring for their children-bands. 
 The Fauns [in turn]. 
 
 And give us the planting 
 
 Of fruitful trees, 
 Whose shady limbs, from the noontide sun. 
 
64 THE RESTORERS 
 
 Shall shelter the shepherd 
 
 And gently ease 
 The toil of the peasant, never done. 
 The Sylphs [in the air]. 
 
 And give us the cooling 
 
 Of winds in the South! 
 
 And give us the warming 
 
 Of winds in the North! 
 
 Let us be master 
 
 Of chill and drouth, 
 Of cloud and tempest and heat, henceforth! 
 The Gnomes [in humble joy] . 
 
 And we, who are glad 
 
 To feel, no more, 
 
 Warm blood trickling 
 
 Beneath the ground, 
 
 Ask but to whisper 
 
 To men the place 
 Where riches in veins of the earth are found ! 
 For wealth will be needed — 
 The Nymphs. And flowers! and grain! 
 
THE RESTORERS 65 
 
 The Fauns. And shade — 
 The Gnomes. To give men 
 
 New courage again! 
 All. Ai, ai, to give men new courage again! 
 Life [all radiant now]. 
 
 Yea, children of Beauty, 
 They shall be given! 
 For now you are more than creatures of joy. 
 You help the world on — 
 And that is heaven: 
 Immortal is such divine employ. 
 Christ. Yea so ! it is so ! 
 And now I shall win 
 The world from its misery way at last. 
 For these are ready — 
 And Truth joins in — 
 The Nymphs. To serve, serve, 
 
 Till the need is past ! 
 Christ. And so my new Cross 
 Shall blossom with roses, 
 And never a thorn of it grow to prick 
 
66 THE RESTORERS 
 
 The brow of my lovers, 
 
 Till Time closes — 
 Heredity. Or till all poverty, wrong and shame 
 
 Shall be as a grief-remembered name! 
 All [exalted]. As soon they shall be! 
 
 For now we are one 
 So let us spread over earth, fleetly, 
 And enter the hearts of men completely. 
 
 Till red wars are done! 
 
 Let us break cannon. 
 
 Let us melt hate — 
 And mold them into a higher might! 
 
 Let us disarm 
 
 Wild Fear — and mate 
 Its courage to faith in immortal Right! 
 
 Then let us gather 
 The wisest of earth 
 
THE RESTORERS 67 
 
 Into a Council, for humankind; 
 
 Where not a word 
 
 Shall be held of worth, 
 Save it be spoken world-weal to find ! 
 
 Save it be uttered 
 
 To give the poor 
 And backward and barbarous right to Life — 
 
 Right to be ruled 
 
 By a Law, made sure 
 Through world-consent, against greed and strife! 
 
 Right to be fed, 
 
 And right to rejoice; 
 Right to be clothed : and right to love 
 
 The raiment of earth — 
 
 Each fairy voice 
 Of all its spirits below or above! 
 
68 THE RESTORERS 
 
 Come then, let us 
 Away, fleetly! 
 Much has been done, much is to do; 
 Let us go sing 
 Of our task so sweetly 
 That the old world, sick of its crime. 
 Shall give its heart for a new! 
 [They cease and band by band go streaming 
 away, melting at last in the valleys under the 
 sun. And with them the hillside melts and 
 all the enchantment.] 
 
HAFIZ AT FORTY 
 
 (From his seat by the Caravansary) 
 
 I Ve slipped into the years betwixt the green of 
 
 youth and age, 
 Betwixt the dawn and the sunset, upon life's pil- 
 grimage. 
 And well do I love the green yet, though turned to- 
 ward the gray: 
 But I do not cry for the flowers of it. 
 The April-tripping hours of it. 
 And all the singing bowers of it, 
 As on I take my way. 
 
 At twenty I had nor scrip nor staff, my limbs were 
 lightly clad; 
 
 69 
 
70 HAFIZ AT FORTY 
 
 My food was space — and a girl's face — from 
 
 Yazd to Allahabad! 
 And each, then, did I love — and each is still my 
 houri-one : 
 Though I am not sad for the lips of them, 
 The clinging finger-tips of them, 
 Nor for the moonlit sips of them 
 I took, in benison. 
 
 And every road at twenty led me to my Mecca, Joy; 
 Where Allah might be, or not be: that was not my 
 
 employ ! 
 For earth was made, and that was enough: I 
 walked a Paradise: 
 Yet not to sigh for the sun of it, 
 The Sufi visions spun of it; 
 Or — now — with soul undone of it. 
 Refuse to pay the price! 
 
 For if I was Infidel, as Doctors avow — or worse, 
 mad; 
 
HAFIZ AT FORTY 71 
 
 And if the only Koran I read was the strong heart 
 
 I had; 
 I want no other or better bliss than such insanity I 
 Though I will not sue for the day of it, 
 The long wild passion sway of it, 
 The wine and minstrel way of it, 
 To come again to me. 
 
 For Forty is good as Twenty — to him who loves 
 
 the earth. 
 The bulbul sings a different song, but one as sweet 
 
 of worth. 
 
 A face is not so fair, then, though fairer is the soul : 
 
 So here, by the Caravansary, 
 
 Where I may every dancer see, 
 
 A quiet seat will answer me 
 
 As well, upon the whole. 
 
 As well ! and youth may laugh at age — for age can 
 laugh at youth. 
 
72 ITAFT7. AT TOR TV 
 
 And not a sunnier lauu;htiT lra[>s ivou\ Joy, than out 
 
 of Truth. 
 Nor boots it zchat our years may he, if huightor is 
 our friend, 
 So though, now, it is clear I store 
 Along my thinning brow two-score, 
 This will I keep — if nothing more — 
 A triad heart to the end! 
 
CECILY 
 
 She had a laugh 
 That took Joy hy the hand 
 And made it dance tip-toe. 
 And her eyes danced 
 Till laughter out of Grief 
 Would overflow. 
 
 Wild as a spot of sun 
 Upon a windy day 
 Her heart was, . . . 
 Ever at play I 
 
 Was, did I say? 
 Well. . . . 
 
 73 
 
74 CECILY 
 
 In a padded cell, 
 Three hundred sixty-three, 
 She picks the sunbeams now 
 From off her knee. 
 
 And flings them from her and cries, 
 "Vile — they 're vile!" 
 
VALHALLA 
 
 (At a Wagner Concert) 
 
 They ride, ride, 
 
 The Walklire ride. 
 
 On the shriek of the wind. 
 
 Wild they stride. 
 
 Hoofing the clouds 
 
 And striking out lightnings. 
 
 I am thrilled, fain 
 
 For the next high strain 
 
 Of supernal exultance: 
 
 Till sudden a pain 
 Strikes from the sky 
 The rout and shout of them. 
 75 
 
76 VALHALLA 
 
 For under earth 
 I am seeing instead 
 A million dead. 
 
 And never a face — 
 In that place — 
 Praises Valhalla. 
 
FAIR FIGHT 
 
 Let me strike my foe down, 
 
 If stricken he should be, 
 Face to face in any place 
 
 Of battle-bravery. 
 Let our arms be equal. 
 
 And never let me use 
 Petty vantage-place or power 
 To smite him from, in a dark hour; 
 
 Rather let me lose. 
 
 Or, if chance comes to me 
 
 To shut his worth away 
 Year by year, from the world's ear, 
 
 With silence or word-sway, 
 17 
 
78 FAIR FIGHT 
 
 Let me fling it from me, 
 
 Ashamed of coward odds, 
 And then, avengeless, to him wend 
 And make of him instead a friend — 
 
 Or leave him to the Gods. 
 
A WIND-MILL 
 
 A wind-mill in Belgium, its sails all torn, 
 
 And long since stilled 
 
 Of their ancient toil, 
 Keeps coming to my heart, through scenes war-worn : 
 
 And I wonder if it stands 
 
 In the green low lands 
 
 Where the cows come home 
 At evening? 
 
 I wonder if the peasant, who reaped the green grain, 
 
 Shadowed in the cool 
 
 Of the old gray canal. 
 Is gone with the Reaper, whose name is Pain, 
 
 To the fields of sleep 
 
 No sentinels keep — 
 79 
 
80 A WIND-MILL 
 
 Since the enemy too 
 Lies loth there? 
 
 I wonder if carillons, with centuried chime, 
 Swing out on the winds 
 From the distant town. 
 
 And if they are sad — as they tell the time 
 To the stranger hosts 
 Who slay the sweet ghosts 
 Of the land's old peace: 
 I wonder? 
 
 Yet little use it is! For the world is changed. 
 
 And if the mill stands 
 
 Or the bells still ring, 
 They voice across the fields a desire estranged: 
 
 And the peasant who hears 
 
 In the after years 
 
 Will never hear the song 
 They once sang! 
 
TO MY SISTER C. R. S. 
 
 (Who died December 7th, 1915) 
 
 Through the night darkness, thick as throbbing pain, 
 
 Little sister, I come to you again, 
 
 Along the same aggrieving iron track 
 
 Borne strickenly, under the gray stars, back, 
 
 To that long-watched and long foreboding bed — 
 
 Where now you lie, dead — 
 
 With all your dark hair hushed about your head. 
 
 Two nights ago it was I left your side, 
 Where suffering had swept your veins so long. 
 Your hands were tossing and your eyes wide. . . * 
 Harder than death that hurt is to forgive. 
 There, as I leant, you asked me, " Shall I live ? " 
 8i 
 
82 TO MY SISTER C. R. S. 
 
 And oh, I lied, lied! 
 
 Hoping to save you some last torture's wrong. 
 
 I lied and made you laugh with gentle jests, 
 Though oft your hands were wandering to your lips 
 Where the words broke, because the blind blood 
 
 wrung 
 The brain, and left the unavailing tongue, 
 So sure at love's behests. 
 With each sweet-uttered syllable unstrung. 
 Starkly the grief of it now at me grips. 
 
 I left you — though with scarce a trembling hope 
 
 To fight the pity of the pale distress 
 
 That I beheld ravage your loveliness: 
 
 And now that pity never can depart! 
 
 But my premonished heart 
 
 Henceforth will cast a fateful horoscope 
 
 Over each starry faith at which I grope. 
 
 I left: then came the sudden sworded word. 
 Scarce was I wakened ere it ran me through. 
 
TO MY SISTER C. R. S. 83 
 
 Who voiced it to the vibrant night-wire — who? 
 Sending electric anguish to arrest 
 My fluttering prescient heart, that like a bird 
 Fell strangled in my breast? — 
 " Died suddenly," I heard. . . . God seemed dead 
 too. 
 
 Oh little sister — " little " still to me. 
 
 Though womanhood with all its ways was yours; 
 
 Though death in all his icy majesty 
 
 Has set you far beyond me, and immures 
 
 Your lips that gave to mine so lovingly 
 
 A last forgetless kiss — 
 
 Is there requital anywhere for this? 
 
 Forgive the moan. We live and love and die, 
 A moment tread earth, then the starry sky 
 Is pulled above us — an eternal pall. 
 Yet prooflessly we know that is not all! 
 So when I bend above ycur coffin there 
 
84 TO MY SISTER C. R. S. 
 
 My slain faith shall not fall 
 
 Into the dust with you, but rise more fair. 
 
 Wherefore the sacredness of this my grief 
 
 I give in part to such imperfect song: 
 
 That I may not life's cruel seeming wrong 
 
 Too much, and rend God, out of disbelief. 
 
 A little truth we know, but not enough 
 
 Faith's mystic flame to snuff. 
 
 For hope then, not despair, must we be strong. 
 
OLD WANTS 
 
 The lightning^s tide in the west surges, 
 
 Foams, far, through the clouds, and dies. 
 The dim hill- wood in its wake emerges — 
 
 Then in darkness lies. 
 The wind in the leaves and one lone cricket 
 
 Leaven the sullen night with sound. 
 And slowly, slowly the East urges 
 
 The moon to her pale round. 
 And I wish I knew, as the stars know, I wish I 
 knew where peace is found. 
 
 The valley lights with homely burning 
 Sadden the gloom, and numb far rays 
 
 Of a wan train are wanly turning 
 Toward unreckoned ways. 
 8s 
 
86 OLD WANTS 
 
 The windy fire-fly constellations 
 
 Beaten to earth lie wet and still. 
 And a sudden meteor, heaven-spurning, 
 Seems its life to spill. 
 And I wish I knew, as the dead know, I wish I 
 knew God's utter will. 
 
TRANSMUTATIONS 
 
 A clock struck in the night. 
 
 I followed its soft vibrations through the darkness, 
 
 Through the earth's shadow that gives the earth rest, 
 
 And out, on the ether of interstellar mystery, to a 
 star, 
 
 So wistful, and so human, in its effulgence, 
 
 That the light of it seemed music. 
 
 Sinking mutely harmonic into the soul, 
 
 With vibrance incommunicably sweet! 
 
 And I wondered what strange waft of things, hid- 
 den and unassayed. 
 
 Dear things I know not even how to dream of. 
 
 Was drifting to me from its planet-deeps. . . . 
 
 But not for long wondered, for there was answer — 
 A sudden swift flooding of revelations: 
 87 
 
88 TRANSMUTATIONS 
 
 The reason of all beauty coming to me, 
 
 And of that strangeness which is beauty's soul. 
 
 And the answer was — in words softly illuming : 
 
 Starlight is not indeed starlight alone, 
 
 Its every beam is resonant of the reaching out of 
 
 beings, 
 Whose thought or deed transmuted in its ray 
 
 trembles to you: 
 And the moon — though but an ash — has memories. 
 Out of the flowers around you in the darkness 
 Comes scent — but more: immortal fragrances. 
 Blown somehow from afar across infinitudes. 
 To tell you through the voiceless lips of blossoms, 
 That sw^^ souls flower in worlds beyond your world. 
 Out of the river's flowing sibilance, 
 Its watery wistfulness. 
 
 Cool floats to you — but in it there is more : 
 A distillation of distant passions ended, 
 Passions of thither space — that were akin to those 
 
 of yours. 
 'And the dim beat of Time — 
 
TRANSMUTATIONS 89 
 
 Which is but numberless wings -flitting backward, 
 Invisibly backward through you, bearing word of 
 
 you to God — 
 Leaves in its wake the breath of the Universe — 
 Which ever astream they cross — 
 The warm immanent touch of The Eternal. 
 
 This I heard — as a clock struck in the night. 
 
POETIC EPIGRAMS 
 
 (After the fashion of the Japanese) 
 
 HOPE 
 Up from the lake the crane 
 Lifts lonely wings — 
 Like hope reborn again. 
 
 THE YOUNG MOON 
 The young moon is so shy 
 She slips away 
 Ere stars half fill the sky. 
 go 
 
POETIC EPIGRAMS 91 
 
 3 
 THE FAITHLESS 
 A church-bell in the dawn : 
 But, like the dead, 
 I too — alas ! — sleep on. 
 
 4 
 
 GHOSTLINESS 
 Whose touch, ancestral, far, 
 Flits through me now, 
 Like light from a dead star? 
 
 5 
 AUTUMN SADNESS 
 From griefs no hope could numb — 
 All the world's grief — 
 Does Autumn sadness come. 
 
 6 
 
 PILGRIMS 
 
 My soul wears like the snail 
 
 Its body-house: 
 
 And fares with pace as frail. 
 
92 POETIC EPIGRAMS 
 
 . 7 
 HOLY ORDERS 
 Clear rosaries of dew 
 Night strings upon 
 Each priestly praying yew. 
 
 8 
 LOVE LETTERS RETURNED IN SPRING 
 How many petals fall! 
 Yet in my heart 
 They once were growing, all ! 
 
 9 
 
 AGE AND DEATH 
 My fire has burnt so low 
 That he who knocks 
 Is not a guest, I trow ! 
 
 10 
 
 THE DEAD THINKER 
 In the slow silent hearse 
 He takes his way 
 Home to the Universe. 
 
SPRING HAD LOST HER WAY 
 
 On the hills a want hung, Spring had lost her way, 
 
 All the buds were saying it, day after day. 
 
 All the buds were saying it, sheathed to the mouth, 
 
 That April, April, 
 
 Fickle heedless April, 
 
 Wayward wanton April 
 
 Was lost in the South! 
 
 All the buds were saying it, " Spring has lost her 
 
 way. 
 And leaves us to the North Wind, day after day! 
 Leaves us to the North Wind : naught can we do — 
 Till April, April, 
 Cruel careless April, 
 93 
 
94 SPRING HAD LOST HER WAY 
 
 Fickle heedless April 
 Shall find her way through ! " 
 
 Hourly did they say it. But now through the leaves 
 Violets are purpling up, as earth's heart heaves. 
 Violets are purpling up, by the happy rills — 
 
 For April, April, 
 
 Fairy-footed April, 
 
 Leafy laughing April 
 
 Has come, along the hills! 
 
THE SALE 
 
 (In Samurai days, Kyoto) 
 
 Please to come in. That is my daughter, 
 With blue sleeve's embroidered mon. 
 " Pretty " ? . . . We of the guest breathe praises 
 In Japan — not of our own. 
 
 So should I speak of the lotos-blossom, 
 Or of the cherry, she would blush. 
 It is immodest to praise beauty 
 In our children: so I hush. 
 
 Yet I will sell her — you are thinking ? — 
 To a stranger? for a year? 
 Please to have tea. In this my country 
 Many things like that are . . . queer? 
 95 
 
96 THE SALE 
 
 It is perhaps so. Please to drink still 
 My unworthy tea. — The price ? 
 Will you not have her dance and play first? 
 Koto music you find nice? 
 
 After you buy her? — Then, three hundred, 
 For one year — three hundred yen. 
 Here is the ink, to sign agreement: 
 You shall read it once again. 
 
 No ? — Then I sign it : and the money 
 You will give now to my hand. 
 She is my daughter: as the willow 
 May be swayed, at your command. 
 
 And with the money I buy pleasure? 
 On your tongue that is the word? 
 In Japan . . . revenge is sweeter: 
 We spend first upon the sword. 
 
THE SALE 97 
 
 That I will buy: and then, to-morrow, 
 Secret entrance to my foe: 
 And in his entrails. ... It is different 
 In your country. — Do you go? 
 
THE IDEALIST EXPLAINS 
 
 Half way up the mountain, let me turn and look 
 again, 
 Yonder is the village, in the valley's peace, 
 With its simple spire of faith — now almost mis- 
 took again 
 For a place to bide in, through a life of ease. 
 
 Why have I gone climbing, over pass and precipice, 
 Up into the cloud-chill, over snows defied? 
 
 Must I reach the utter height? Is my striving less 
 a piece 
 Of immortal passion, than of mortal pride? 
 
 That I can not fathom: I have only dared to scale 
 
 Brink and barren glacier, toward the very stars; 
 
 98 
 
THE IDEALIST EXPLAINS 99 
 
 And it shall not matter much, whether I have fared 
 to fail, 
 Whether vision, from so high, its own beauty 
 mars. 
 
 For I shall have reached it — reached the proudest 
 
 verge of all, 
 And if there I perish, bringing nothing back. 
 Say of me at least that I obeyed the noblest urge 
 
 of all: 
 Climbed and did not cower, sought and did not 
 
 slack. 
 
IN A GORGE OF THE SIERRAS 
 
 No myths have ever kept this place; 
 Too wild it is even for Pan; 
 And for a nymph's or oread's grace 
 It was not wooded — nor for man. 
 
 The fiercest of the maenad rout 
 Would here be hushed by the strong spell 
 Of primal solitude; their shout 
 To silentness it soon would quell. 
 
 For towered ages shall be born, 
 Decay and fall and be forgot, 
 Ere feral terror shall be torn 
 By any power from this spot. 
 
 100 
 
IN A GORGE OF THE SIERRAS 101 
 
 Earthquake and avalanche alone 
 Could tame it: but the Immanent 
 Forbids — and keeps it for a zone 
 Of refuge when His Soul is spent. 
 
THE SALVATION ARMY 
 
 {An impression) 
 
 The whirr and hum of the city scene, 
 The sudden drum and the tambourine, 
 The shrill hymn, to clapping of hands. 
 And faces grim with the dark demands 
 That HelFs despair be shunned. 
 
 The solemn crowd — curious, wild; 
 The bloated rowd, and the vendor's child ; 
 The lone boy from his homeland hill 
 And the shop-girl, toy of Desire's will — 
 All gazing, silent, on. 
 
 The loud-pitched prayer, the frenzied appeal 
 To hearts that stare at the pleader's zeal. 
 
 102 
 
THE SALVATION ARMY 103 
 
 And then — then — God help His world ! — 
 Onward into the night they 're whirled. . . . 
 Unto what separate end ? 
 
THE GRAPES OF GOD 
 
 The vines of God grow over the world, 
 The grapes of God are slowly ripened, 
 Pity and Hope and Truth they are, 
 And Beauty, His sole dream of stipend. 
 The vines of God grow up through the years. 
 Into the countless hearts of men. 
 And the wines of Beauty, Hope and Truth 
 Are poured again and again. 
 For Truth must give to the world its way. 
 And Hope must give to the world its strength, 
 And Beauty must be the world's delight, 
 And Pity must prove, at length, 
 That aware of our misery and need, 
 God means to grow, immortally. 
 Over the fields of the Universe, 
 Soul-fruits to set us free. 
 104 
 
A PAINTER — OF HIS DEAD RIVAL 
 
 Could I spit upon his tomb 
 And wash his fame out, I would do it. 
 Could I then his flesh exhume 
 And add more worms to burrow through it, 
 
 I would do it. 
 
 Could I get at every heart 
 
 That holds love of him, I would break it. 
 
 I would find some murder dart 
 
 Of mockery to pierce and shake it, 
 
 Then would break it. 
 
 Could I then be made to cry 
 Reasons for it, all I 'd say is, 
 105 
 
106 A PAINTER — OF HIS DEAD RIVAL 
 
 " Fools ! he was sublime, and I 
 Was to him as night to day is — 
 
 That my say is ! " 
 
A WIFE, UNLOVED 
 
 All that a man should be, you say, 
 
 To her, the wife he chooses. 
 My husband is: all — with his grace 
 
 And unforgetting care. 
 Yet could you know the pangs of one 
 
 Who weds for love — and loses ! 
 And how, then, jealousy but finds 
 
 Betrayal everywhere! 
 
 For, does he touch another's hand? 
 
 Unfaithful to me is he! 
 Or does he glance at a fair face? 
 
 At once my tortures start! 
 And I am anguished lest his thoughts 
 
 With many such are busy; 
 107 
 
108 A WIFE, UNLOVED 
 
 Or lest, concealed from me, he keeps 
 A harem in his heart. 
 
 A harem where a hundred pass 
 
 And leave their beauty to him 
 As dreams that glide with lovely limbs 
 
 Behind his screened desire; 
 For so did I pass once — and so 
 
 All women may pass through him 
 Whose glance or word is exquisite 
 
 With passion's subtle fire. 
 
 Such is my fortune — such the fate 
 
 You envy: for I wedded 
 Ere I had won him, so have been 
 
 But as a concubine 
 Like any. Ah God, who hast made 
 
 The heart and there embedded 
 The mysteries of love, I pray 
 
 That he may yet be mine. 
 
SONGS TO A. H. R. 
 
 SWALLOWS 
 In a room that we love, 
 Under a lamp, 
 
 Whose soft glow falls around, 
 We sit each night and you read to me, 
 Through the silence soul-profound. 
 And black on the yellow frieze of the walls 
 The swallows fly unchanging; 
 Round, round, — yet never around. 
 Ranging, — yet never ranging. 
 
 We sit and you read, your face aglow. 
 While amid dreams that start 
 109 
 
no SONGS TO A. H. R. 
 
 I watch the swallows 
 
 As each follows 
 
 The other, swift, apart. 
 
 Till oft it seems that your words are birds 
 
 Flying into my heart, 
 
 And singing there, and bringing there, 
 
 Love's more than artless art. 
 
 So never, in lands however far, 
 
 Or seas that wash them round, 
 
 Shall I see wings along the sky 
 
 But instantly the sound 
 
 Of your voice shall come. 
 
 And the sky, changing, 
 
 Shall be the room we love. 
 
 With its lamp-glow — and time-flow — 
 
 And happy swallows ranging. 
 
SONGS TO A. H. R. Ill 
 
 II 
 
 IN A DARK HOUR 
 You are not with me — only the moon, 
 The sea and the gulls' cry, out of tune; 
 The myriad cry of the gulls still strewn 
 On the sands where the tide will enter soon. 
 
 You are not with me, only the breath 
 Of the wind — and then the wind's death. 
 A shrouding silence then that saith, 
 " Even as wind love vanisheth." 
 
 You are not with me — only fear, 
 As old as earth's first frenzied bier 
 That severed two whose hearts were near, 
 And left one with all Life unclear. 
 
112 SONGS TO A. H. R. 
 
 Ill 
 TWILIGHT CONTENT 
 Is it the wind in trees or waters falling? 
 Is it the canyon-shadows rushing down 
 The ridgy slopes that seem so to be calling 
 My heart in twilit tenderness to drown? 
 
 Is it the canyon-wren's diminuendo 
 That slips down a soft scale of minor peace? 
 Is it the spell of night's lone wide crescendo 
 Of mountain rest upon me — is it these? 
 
 Or but some sense of you I cannot measure? 
 Some memory of a wind of love that blew 
 Out of your heart to mine ? Some darkling pleasure 
 In the first shades of grief I shared with you? 
 
SONGS TO. A. H. R. 113 
 
 I cannot tell. I only know how surely 
 In you — and the world's beauty — I rejoice. 
 The wren is still : gone to her rest demurely. 
 The night has come — yet silence is your voice. 
 
 IV 
 
 TOGETHER 
 Around us is the sea's dance, 
 
 And the glad, swinging flight 
 Of wild windy gulls whose joy 
 
 Is never to alight! 
 
 Above us is the June sun. 
 And higher still the Blue — 
 
 And God, like a dream, dear, 
 The whole world through! 
 
THE SONG OF MUEZZIN ABOU 
 
 I wake at dawn and fling sleep from my eyes. 
 The shade of Allah still is on His skies. 
 Ere He shall lift it and let forth the sun 
 My feet up the steep minaret have run. 
 Allahu akbar! 'llah il Allah! Allah! 
 
 And there, leaning expectant toward the East, 
 I watch the first rays like a holy yeast 
 Shoot through the heavy sleeping loaf of earth 
 And quicken it again to a new birth. 
 
 And me they quicken to an ecstasy, 
 Till heaven like a mighty Mosque I see, 
 And Allah in it, the most high Imam, 
 114 
 
THE SONG OF MUEZZIN ABOU 115 
 
 Whose word has made me all I was and am. 
 
 Allahu akbar! Allah! 'llah it Allah! 
 
 And so at noon, and so again at night 
 I mount with all the soul of me alight, 
 And His Perfection to the four winds cry — 
 And so would do, so only, till I die! 
 
 And after death! for there, in Paradise, 
 Let others have pale houris as the price 
 Of their devotion to the Prophet's fame: 
 A minaret for me — and Allah's Name! 
 Allahu akbar! 'llah il Allah! Allah! 
 
TIDALS 
 
 Low along the sea, low along the sea, 
 The gray gulls are flying, and one sail swings; 
 The tide is foaming in; the soft wind sighing; 
 The brown kelp is stretching, to the surf, harp- 
 strings. 
 
 Low along the sea, low along the sea, 
 The gray gulls are flying, and one sail fades; 
 The tide is foaming out; the soft wind dying; 
 And white stars are peeping from the night's pale 
 shades. 
 
 ii6 
 
A CHILD AGAIN 
 
 (In the country) 
 
 When winds grieve in the willow 
 And fireflies flit about, 
 When the owl forsakes her pillow 
 In the dead tree and wings out, 
 To hoot, hoot, and halloo, 
 At the watch-dog in his kennel, 
 When the beetle beats at the window, 
 And frogs croak in the fennel, — 
 I become a child once more, 
 Forgetting the years between, 
 And ancient cares drop from me, 
 Gray ghosts of griefs I have seen. 
 And instead comes mystery to me, 
 As in the long-agoes : 
 117 
 
118 A CHILD AGAIN 
 
 And I only lie and listen — 
 And know what a child knows. 
 
 Know what a child foresenses 
 
 Of life and death and God, 
 
 When his young heart commences 
 
 To gaze, first, from the sod 
 
 At moon and star and planet 
 
 In the dark deeps above him. 
 
 In the night that seems too silent 
 
 And aloof from him to love him. 
 
 That seems so vast and vaulted 
 
 And eternal to his soul. 
 
 That a trembling prayer slips from him 
 
 A first immortal toll 
 
 The Infinite takes from him 
 
 To ease his unborn pain. 
 
 When winds grieve in the willow 
 
 I am that child again. 
 
SANTA BARBARA 
 
 Santa Barbara by the sea, 
 
 You can give me bliss of senses, 
 Balm of heart and euphrasy, 
 
 Peace of mind in all its tenses. 
 You can give me palm and pine, 
 
 Side by side in sweet consentment, 
 Air can pour to me, like wine. 
 
 From your sky-cup of contentment. 
 You can give me every flower 
 
 Eye has thrilled to; every scent 
 Magic sun and soil and dew 
 
 For delight have meant. 
 You can give me these, and more. 
 
 In one swift enchanted whole, 
 
 119 
 
120 SANTA BARBARA 
 
 But you cannot give to me 
 What I need — my soul. 
 
 For your mountains blue and dim 
 
 Do not know the touch of sorrow. 
 From your sea-horizon's rim 
 
 Fear of storm I can not borrow. 
 And when twilight shadows fall 
 
 Softly down your sloping canyons, 
 Even then I do not call 
 
 Moon and star for my companions. 
 For no loneliness I feel, 
 
 And no thought of death can come. 
 In a land Spring never leaves, 
 
 Where no bird grows dumb. 
 You can give me life — yea, too, 
 
 Lethe, that may be life's goal, 
 But you cannot give to me 
 
 What I seek ^ my soul. 
 
THE HOUSE OF LONELY LOVE 
 
 There are three pines about the door, 
 No bird will light in save the crow, 
 Or the chill-hearted monkish owl, 
 Whose eyes peer out beneath his cowl. 
 
 Ascetic through the silent night 
 
 He keeps it; while the scornful crow 
 
 Its desolation keeps by day — 
 
 Its gloom . . . where passion once held sway. 
 
 And blood-guilt is the cause men give 
 Of its forsakenness and rack: 
 Love here once cut its own white throat; 
 And Nature thus has taken note, 
 
 121 
 
122 THE HOUSE OF LONELY LOVE 
 
 And yet for no unfaithfulness 
 
 Or perj&dy did the two die. 
 
 But so dull were they, each preferred 
 
 Murder at last to make a third. 
 
 For all was solitude — with naught 
 To save love from its own sick self. 
 Fearful was either of a friend — 
 Lest ennui for but one should end. 
 
 So the deed fell : and the lone house 
 Seems now by one sole caution stirred 
 " Two cannot love who love no third, 
 Or live on love's one sating word." 
 
IN THE SHRINE OF ALL 
 
 The shadows make their evening bed 
 
 To eastward of the hill, 
 And sleepily and silently lie down. 
 The vespers of the wind are said, 
 
 And all the leaves are still: 
 High stars begin the nave of night to crown. 
 
 The frogs take up their vigil — like 
 
 Young acolytes whose voice 
 Is yet untrained to holy harmonies. 
 Their chants across the darkness strike, 
 
 As strangely they rejoice 
 Under the stillness of precentor trees. 
 123 
 
124 IN THE SHRINE OF ALL 
 
 Cathedral of the Immanent 
 
 Seems the night-earth: and we 
 As High Priests of a Beauty naught can quell. 
 Nor shall our faith in it be spent 
 
 Till we no more can see 
 With soul, as well as sight, its starry spell. 
 
A TIMELESS REFRAIN 
 
 So little there is to remember — 
 
 And so much to forget! 
 We come to the earth and go to the earth, 
 
 Paying the primal debt. 
 
 And why we have come we know not, 
 
 Where go, none can decide. 
 For the door of Birth and the door of Death 
 
 Are dark on the outer side. 
 
 So little there is to remember — 
 And cling with longing to — 
 
 That not unwilling are we, at Death, 
 To pass, with nothing, through. 
 125 
 
MIGRATION 
 
 With frozen feet the wild geese 
 Take their way at dawn, 
 So cold has been the night lake, 
 So shelterless the shore. 
 They honk against the sky, 
 In the dim gray withdrawn. 
 I wonder if they know why 
 Their wings are driven on. 
 
 I watch them as they vanish; 
 I watch them in my heart 
 Long after — and their plaints, 
 That fall, thin and far, 
 Seem echoes of the sighs 
 126 
 
MIGRATION 127 
 
 Of souls bid to start 
 Across wan chill skies 
 For Death set apart. 
 
A MAID, DYING 
 
 Bury me by the light of the moon, 
 
 The sun would be too strong. 
 Bury me by the light of the moon, 
 
 And let me sleep long. 
 For since as the moon's my life has been, 
 
 A semblance of the day, 
 By the pale lonely light of the moon 
 
 I should be laid away. 
 
 Bury me by the light of the moon — 
 
 And with no rose above, 
 But only the lily: for my heart 
 
 Has never known love. 
 128 
 
A MAID, DYING 129 
 
 And a flower of death the lily is, 
 
 Of death — and chastity: 
 So by the lily light of the moon 
 
 Should my last shrouding be. 
 
 » 
 
ON THE CAMINO REALE 
 
 (California) 
 
 Here are the sea and the mountains, 
 Floating clouds and gull-pinions; 
 
 Here the far ships pass 
 
 Upon their mystic way. 
 
 Here the winds hold mass 
 With all their myriad wave-minions, 
 
 Surging along the shore 
 
 With loud intoning sway. 
 
 Here are the sea and the mountains, 
 Shriving palms and sun-gladness; 
 Here, like acolytes, 
 Sweet incense-flowers fill 
 The sky's blue nave; and nights, 
 130 
 
ON THE CAMINO REALE 131 
 
 Like days, are free of soul-sadness; 
 
 For all earth is aware 
 Of Nature's wide good-will. 
 
THE WIVES OF ENGLAND 
 
 Like running waters flow our hearts 
 
 In sorrow now away, 
 Though all the hills together 
 Are shining in the dew, 
 For they who walked with us last year 
 
 Now lie beneath the clay, 
 And April joy shall come no more 
 
 To gladden us- — or May: 
 But grief, now, and gloom, with every weather. 
 
 Like running water flow our hearts 
 
 In hungering and pain, 
 Though bonny lambs are bleating 
 And little birds are loud, 
 For none have we to share with us 
 132 
 
THE WIVES OF ENGLAND 133 
 
 The sun — that shines in vain ! 
 That falls upon the heather as 
 
 A lone and sterile stain — 
 To sicken us with heartache and defeating. 
 
 Like running waters flow our hearts, 
 
 Toward a bitter sea. — 
 O what is old as sorrow, 
 But joy that sorrow slays; 
 But life that cannot keep from death 
 
 Its own, with any plea, 
 Or save — from the grave — all 
 
 That gives it verity; 
 Or find true content in hope's to-morrow! 
 
THE TILLING 
 
 The dull ox, Sorrow, treads my heart, 
 
 Dragging the harrow, Pain, 
 And turning the old year's tillage 
 
 Under the soil again. 
 So, well do I know the Tiller 
 
 Will bring once more the grain: 
 For grief comes never to the strong — 
 Nor dull despair's benumbing wrong — 
 But from them spring a hidden throng 
 
 Of seeds, for new life fain. 
 
 So heavily do I let the hoofs 
 
 Trample the deeps of me; 
 For only thus is spirit 
 
 Brought to fecundity. 
 134 
 
THE TILLING 135 
 
 But when the ox is stabled 
 
 And the harrow set aside, 
 With calm I watch a new world grow, 
 Sweetly green, up out of woe. 
 And, glad of the Tiller, then, I know 
 
 He too is satisfied. 
 
A LOVER, TO DEATH 
 
 You have torn from me, Death, mother and father, 
 
 sister and brother and friend. 
 The earth opened, the earth closed: grass grew — 
 
 and that was the end. 
 For still in the voids you left did sun and moon 
 
 their rays disperse. 
 But one there is you could take from me — and 
 
 leave no Universe. 
 
 136 
 
METAPHYSICAL SONNETS 
 
 1 
 
 SPACE 
 " Space is not real," say the terrified, 
 Who face the awful and unfathomed skies 
 That seem our finitude so to deride 
 With a great overwhelming, " Space is lies! 
 Yea, it is lies, and so shall not abide : 
 For God Himself its deeps could not endure 
 Stretching beyond Him, infinite, unsure. 
 Beyond Him and beyond on every side! " 
 
 And yet they know Space could not pass away 
 Space and the constellated Universe. 
 To think it is no more to be averse 
 To waiving any truth that life may say; 
 137 
 
138 METAPHYSICAL SONNETS 
 
 Yea, is no more to trust that sense, within, 
 Which tells us God is and has ever been. 
 
 2 
 TIME 
 " Time is not real," say they who would flee 
 The fear that Time immeasurable streams 
 Forever through the Universe — a sea 
 "Which flows from past to future, *' Time but seems! 
 Yea, it but seems, and cannot truly be, 
 Else far without the Mind of God its tide 
 Would He behold sweeping beyond Him, wide — 
 And that assertion with absurdness teems." 
 
 Again folly! Time is the mate of Change, 
 Wedded to it wherever aught may be. 
 And who denies it true reality 
 Denies not only all events that range 
 Atom and Universe — but to God's Mind 
 Itself, movement or life of any kind. 
 
METAPHYSICAL SONNETS 139 
 
 3 
 EARTH 
 " Earth is not real," say they who revolt 
 From Matter as the mindless source of all, 
 " Earth — and the stars that through the vast void 
 
 bolt, 
 But which, were there no seeing eye, would fall 
 To non-existence like such dreams as moult 
 Their pinions and wane into nothingness: 
 For Earth is but Mind-stuff, nor would be less 
 Than Mind did Matter vanish past recall." 
 
 Folly once more! For Mind is never known 
 Unknit to Matter — nor conceivable; 
 The Universe God never can annul 
 And change to immaterial Mind alone. 
 Seen and Unseen are they, and so must be — 
 Fulfilling their primordial Destiny. 
 
140 METAPHYSICAL SONNETS 
 
 4 
 
 MIND 
 " Mind is not real," say the science-bound, 
 " Not immanent in the material whirls 
 Of suns, dead and unborn, that ether round 
 Itself forever infinitely unfurls. 
 Mind is not real, but is foam that Chance 
 Has flung up, phantom-like, out of the Force 
 Which gives the Universe its aimless course — 
 Its weltering through vain seas of circumstance." 
 
 Once more untrue. For Mind eternally 
 
 Has been wherever Matter found a place. 
 
 To but one atom fix it in all space 
 
 And you have fixed it to infinity. 
 
 For past imagination's pale it lies, 
 
 That skies are and not God within the skies. 
 
METAPHYSICAL. SONNETS 141 
 
 5 
 ERGO 
 Therefore Existence ever is fourfold, 
 Nor can be otherwise to man or God 
 Than Mind and Matter inseparably unrolled 
 Through Space and Time : — for all Change so is 
 
 shod 
 That no event can tread in Space untimed, 
 In Time unspaced, in Mind or Matter alone; 
 And all that ever was or shall be known 
 Has chanced in these — has through and through 
 
 them trod. 
 
 No more then, in Philosophy, of those 
 
 Who dream of spaceless immaterial Mind, 
 
 Or mindless Space and Matter — -both are blind 
 
 And to the truth of life untrusty foes. 
 
 For body and soul are we, and so shall be. 
 
 Like God and Universe, eternally. 
 
TO THE MASTERS OF EUROPE 
 
 Heart-deep in blood, and wading deeper still, 
 Hear this, O ministers and lords and kings! 
 They are not mad with vain imaginings 
 Who warn that you must soon prepare to will 
 World-peace in some all-sovereign Parliament — 
 Sceptered with every land's divine consent — 
 Or rip the Future's entrails with such wars 
 As very Vengeance utterly abhors. 
 
 Choose then: A High Court of Humanity, 
 Where all forego that all may gain their right, 
 Or still this Feudal-Hell's Insanity, 
 That shall leave life no worth for which to fight. 
 Choose! for the ways have led you now to this: 
 Brave Reason — or blind Anarchy's abyss. 
 142 
 
THE THRESHING FLOOR 
 
 What is life but a threshing-floor, 
 The flails of Fate and God pass o 'er? 
 Flails of Fate, crushing the grain 
 Too often with their bloody beat, 
 And the flails of God, passing again 
 And yet again amid the wheat. 
 To sever it from the chaff and cheat? 
 What is life but a threshing-floor? 
 What is death but life made o'er? 
 
 143 
 
A LITANY 
 
 I call Thee not Infinite Love, 
 
 For unbeloved vast millions go; 
 Nor Infinite, Eternal Truth, 
 
 Since half our faiths of falsehood flow. 
 I call Thee not Omnipotence, 
 
 Who still let degradation be; 
 Nor yet Omniscience — else thine eyes 
 
 Most vainly see! 
 I call Thee not Divine — if so 
 
 I must bow down to Thee in awe; 
 Nor unrelenting Fate — nor more 
 
 Relentless Law. 
 I call Thee but the World's Great Life, 
 Who art myself, and fight with me 
 The spirit-ward, immortal strife 
 
 For what should be. 
 144 
 
EARTH AND NEW EARTH 
 
 By 
 
 CALE YOUNG RICE 
 
 Cale Young Rice — like Alfred Noyes — may be ex- 
 celled by a contemporary here and there in one 
 requirement of his art, but both poets excel in 
 comprehensiveness of view and both are geniuses 
 of the robust order — voluminous producers. 
 Given quality, sustained and wide ranging com- 
 position is a fair test of poetic power. — The New 
 York Sun. 
 
 Glancing thru the reviews quoted at the end of 
 "Earth and New Earth" we note that we have 
 said some very enthusiastic things in praise of the 
 poetry of Cale Young Rice, and yet there is not 
 an adjective we would withdraw. On the con- 
 trary each new volume only confirms the expecta- 
 tion of the better work this writer was to pro- 
 duce. — The San Francisco Chronicle, 
 
 This is a volume of verse rich in dramatic quality 
 and beauty of conception . . . Every poem is 
 quotable and the collection must appeal to all whd 
 can appreciate the highest forms of modern verse. 
 — The Bookseller (New York). 
 
 Any one familiar with "Cloister Lays," "The 
 Mystic," etc., does not need to be told that they 
 rank with the very best poetry. And Mr, Rice's 
 dramas are not equaled by any other American 
 author's. . . . And when those who are loyal to 
 poetic traditions cherished through the whole his- 
 tory of our language contemplate the anemia and 
 artificiality of contemporaries, they can but assert 
 that Mr. Rice has the grasp and sweep, the 
 rhythm, imagery and pulsating sympathy, which 
 in wondering admiration are ascribed to genius. 
 — The Los Angeles Times. 
 
Earth and New Earth 
 
 This latest collection shows no diminution in Mr. 
 Rice's versatility or power of expression. Its 
 poems are serious, keen, distinctively free and 
 vitally spiritual in thought. — The Continent {Chi- 
 cago). 
 
 Mr. Rice is concerned with thoughts that are 
 more than timely; they represent a large vision of 
 the world events now transpiring . . . and his 
 affirmation of the spiritual in such an hour estab- 
 lishes him in the immemorial office of the poet- 
 prophet. . . . The volume is a worthy addition to 
 the large amount of his work. — Anna L. Hopper 
 in The Louisville Courier- Journal. 
 
 Cale Young Rice is the greatest living American 
 poet. — D. F. Hannigan, Lit. Ed. The Rochester 
 Post Express. 
 
 The indefinable spirit of swift imaginative sug- 
 gestion is never lacking. The problems of fate 
 are still big with mystery and propounded with 
 tense elemental dramatism. — The Philadelphia 
 North- American. 
 
 The work of Cale Young Rice emerges clearly as 
 the most distinguished offering of this country to 
 the combined arts of poetry and the drama. 
 *'Earth and New Earth" strikes a ringing new 
 note of the earth which shall be after the War. — 
 The Memphis Commercial-Appeal. 
 
 12 moy 158 pages f $1.25 net 
 At all bookstores. 
 
 Published by 
 
 THE CENTURY CO. 
 
 353 Fotirth Avenue New York City 
 
The Collected 
 Plays and Poems 
 
 OF 
 
 CALE YOUNG RICE 
 
 The great quaKty of Cale Young Rice's 
 work is that, amid all the distractions and 
 changes of contemporary taste, it remains 
 true to the central drift of great poetry. His 
 interests are very wide , . , and his books 
 open up a most varied world of emotion and 
 romance. — Gilbert Murray, 
 
 These volumes are an anthology wrought 
 by a master hand and endowed with perennial 
 vitality. . , . This writer is the most 
 distinguished master of lyric utterance in the 
 new world . . . and he has contributed 
 much to the scanty stock of American Hterary 
 fame. Fashions in poetry come and go, and 
 minor lights twinkle fitfully as they pass in 
 tumultuous review. But these volumes are 
 of the things that are eternal in poetic expres- 
 sion. . . . They embody the hopes and 
 impulses of universal humanity. — The Phila- 
 delphia North- American, 
 
 Mr. Rice has been hailed by too many 
 critics as the poet of his country, if not of his 
 
generation, not to create a demand for a full 
 edition of his works. — The Hartford {Conn.) 
 Courant. 
 
 This gathering of his forces stamps Mr. Rice 
 as one of the world's true poets, remarkable 
 alike for strength, versatility and beauty of 
 expression. — The Chicago Herald {Ethel M. 
 CoUon), 
 
 Any one familiar with "Cloister Lays," 
 "The Mystic," etc., does not need to be told 
 that they rank with the very best poetry. 
 And Mr. Rice's dramas are not equaled by 
 any other American author's. . . . The 
 admirable characteristic of his work is the 
 understanding of Ufe. . . . And when 
 those who are loyal to poetic traditions cher- 
 ished through the whole history of our language 
 contemplate the anemia and artificiality of 
 contemporaries, they can but assert that Mr. 
 Rice has the grasp and sweep, the rhythm, 
 imagery and pulsating sympathy, which in 
 wondering admiration are ascribed to genius. 
 — The Los Angeles Times, 
 
 Mr. Rice's poetic dramas have won him 
 highest praise. But the universality of his 
 genius is nowhere more apparent than in his 
 lyrics. Their charm is derived both from the 
 strength and beauty of their ithought and 
 from the multitudinous felicities of their 
 utterance. For sheer grace and loveliness 
 
some of these lyrics are unsurpassed in modem 
 poetry. — The N, E, Homestead {Springfield^ 
 Mass.), 
 
 It is with no undue repetition that we 
 speak of the very great range and very great 
 variety of Mr. Rice's subject, inspiration, and 
 mode of expression. » . , The passage of 
 his spirit is truly from deep to deep. — Mar- 
 garet So Anderson {The Louisville Evening 
 Post). 
 
 In Mr. Rice we have a voice such as America 
 has rarely known before. — The Rochester {N. 
 Y.) Post Express, 
 
 It is good to find such sincere and beautiful 
 work as is in these two volumes. . . . Here 
 is a writer with no wish to purchase fame at 
 the price of eccentricity of either form or 
 subject. He lives up to his theory that the 
 path of American literature Hes not in dis- 
 tinctly local lines, but will become more and 
 more cosmopoUtan since America is built of 
 all civiHzations. — The Independent, 
 
 Mr. Rice's style is that of the masters. 
 
 . . . Yet it is one that is distinctively 
 American. ... He will Uve with our 
 great ipoets.— Louisville Herald {J, J. Cole). 
 
 Mr. Rice is an American by birth, but he 
 is not merely an American poet. Over exist- 
 
ence and the whole world his vision extends. 
 He is a poet of human life and his range is 
 uncircumscribed. — The Baltimore Evening 
 News, 
 
 Viewing Mr. Rice's plays as a whole, I 
 should say that his prime virtue is fecundity 
 or affluence, the power to conceive and com- 
 bine events resourcefully, and an abundance 
 of pointed phrases which recalls and half re- 
 stores the great Elisabe thans . His aptitude for 
 structure is great. — The Nation (0. W. Fir- 
 kins), 
 
 Mr. Rice has fairly won his [singing robes 
 and has a right to be ranked with the first 
 of living poets. One must read the volumes 
 to get an idea of their cosmopoHtan breadth 
 and fresh abiding charm. . . . The dra- 
 mas, taken as a whole, represent the most 
 important work of the kind that has been 
 done by any living writer; . . This work 
 belongs to that great world where the mightiest 
 spiritual and intellectual forces are forever 
 contending; to that deeper life which calls 
 for the rarest gifts of poetic expression. — The 
 Book News Monthly {Albert S, Henry), 
 
 2 Vol. $3.00 net 
 The Century Co. 
 
TTHE following volumes are now 
 included in the author's "Collected 
 Plays and Poems/' and are not ob- 
 tainable elsewhere : 
 
 At the World's Heart 
 
 Cale Young Rice is highly esteemed by readers 
 wherever English is the native speech. — The Man- 
 Chester {England) Guardian, 
 
 Porzia; A Play 
 
 It matters little that we hesitate between ranking 
 Mr. Rice highest as dramatist or lyrist ; what mat- 
 ters is that he has the faculty divine beyond any 
 living poet of America ; his inspiration is true, 
 and his poetry is the real thing. — The London 
 Bookman. 
 
 Far Quests 
 
 It shows a wide range of thought, and sympathy, 
 and real skill in workmanship, while occasionally 
 it rises to heights of simplicity and truth, that 
 suggest such inspiration as should mean lasting 
 fame. — The Daily Telegraph (London). 
 
 The Immortal Lare; Four Plays 
 
 It Is great art — with great vitality. — James Lane 
 Allen. 
 
 Different from Paola and Francesca, but excelling 
 it — or any of Stephen Phillips's work — in a vivid 
 presentment of a supreme moment in the lives of 
 the characters. — The New York Times. 
 
Many Gods 
 
 These poems are flashingly, glowingly full of the 
 East . . . What I am sure of in Mr. Rice is that 
 here we have an American poet whom we may 
 claim as ours. — William Dean HowellSj in The 
 North American Review. 
 
 Nirvana Days 
 
 Mr. Rice has the technical cunning that makes up 
 almost the entire equipment of many poets now- 
 adays, but human nature is more to him always 
 . . . and he has the feeling and imaginative sym- 
 pathy without which all poetry is but an empty 
 and vain thing. — The London Bookman. 
 
 A Night in Avignon; A Play 
 
 It is as vivid as a page from Browning, Mr. Rice 
 has the dramatic pulse. — James Huneker. 
 
 Yolanda of Cyprus; A Play 
 
 It has real life and drama, not merely beautiful 
 words, and so differs from the great mass of 
 poetic plays. — Prof. Gilbert Murray. 
 
 David; A Play 
 
 It is safe to say that were Mr. Rice an English- 
 man or a Frenchman, his reputation as his coun- 
 try's most distinguished poetic dramatist would 
 have been assured by a more universal sign of 
 recognition. — The Baltimore News. 
 Charles Di Tocca; A Play 
 It is the most powerful, vital, and truly tragical 
 drama written by an American for some years. 
 There is genuine pathos, mighty yet never repel- 
 lant passion, great sincerity and penetration, and 
 great elevation and beauty of language. — The 
 Chicago Post. 
 
 Song-Surf 
 
 Mr. Rice's work betrays wide sympathies with 
 nature and life, and a welcome originality of sen- 
 timent and metrical harmony. — Sydney Lee. 
 
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