PS .45S6I 1904. Boob ^-7^5 S4 COHfRIGHT DEPOSIT. THE SOUL IN SILHOUETTE With Tracings Here and There — _ B Y EDWARD EARLE VURINTON T^3^3l .\jlaS C^\o \^ oV lLm^»«?V «f OONQRESS 1 uCl ID J904 4 ^oayrJeht Entry * CLASS ^ XXo. Nd PY B Copyright, 1904 Edward Earle Purinton New York City Printed and Bound by The Acme Publishing Company Morgantown West Va. Table of Topics TABLE OF TOPICS Prelude 9 The Soul in Silhouette 11 The Sphinx of Purpose 13 Dream or Vision 14 On to Success 15 Life and Death 16 The Divine Feminine 17 The Whisper of the Soul 18 Aspiration 19 Dawn 20 A Magic Secret 22 The Making of Time 23 Whatever Is Earthy 24 The Three Paths 26 An Episode Among the Planets 27 Paid by the Day 28 Doubt's Unreason 30 Understanding 31 The Mystic Isle of Sex 32 Speechless 34 To Her Who Feels 35 Let There Be Light 36 Hope Ever Shining 37 The Kiss 38 Both Lover and Friend 39 A Vision of the Night 40 A Sure Remedy 41 Only a Worm 42 Humanity's Prisoners 43 The Soul of a Flower 44 Missing the Mark 45 The Self-Accusing Verdict 46 Fulfilling the Great Command 47 Return to Nature 48 Environment 50 The Marriage of God and Nature 51 Her Answer 52 Virgin Gold 53 The Pursuit of Pleasure 54 TABLE OF TOPICS Mothering Souls 56 As a Flower 57 Two Views of Death 58 A Bit of Crepe 60 Sunset on the River 61 Love Is God 62 God in Sin 63 Poets Piteous 64 Stream and Source 65 The Flower of Woman's Love 66 A Rainbow Smile 67 Measure Me an Hour 68 Renunciation 69 Love and the Lark 70 Through Psychic to Mystic 71 Aborted 74 How the Dimple Grew 75 The Illegitimate Child 76 Why the Shell Shatters 77 A Reversed Theology 78 Love and Duty 79 Bohemia Beckons 80 A Fledgeling Flutters 82 Finding the Focus 83 The Place Auspicious 84 A Surcharged Flood 85 God Only 86 "Abandoned" 87 Where Dwells the Sunlit Soul 88 Life's Husbandman 89 The Unfinished Portrait 90 Blind Deity Prays 91 My Infinite Self 92 For the Song's Own Sake 93 A Tottering Tripod 94 The First Dream 95 I Am That I Am 96 Twilight 97 A Beacon to Eternity 100 Prelude I sing the Soul Sublime. The world asks why. I do not know; Except that every flower must droop and die Unless it grow. And if it grow; although its stalk at first Was scentless while Engrossed within the soil whence blossoms burst From vestment vile; At last the petals render forth complete Its fragrance hid When men misjudged; — a spirit pure and sweet Though weeds amid. And thus the Soul of Me, if unrestrained Must grow until It wafts the message all the bud contained; Where'er it will. Tlie Soul in Silhouette Behind a canvas stands a maid. Behind the maid there gleams A brilliant light whose splendor fills the room. And yet her face upon the screen a shadow casts, that seems To be forever veiled in deepest gloom. The silhouette is graceful. But the roses from her cheek Have fled, as well the sunbeams from her hair. The lips are cold. Her face's meagre outline bids us seek The maid herself — her charms but hinted there. How earth-enshrouded phantoms do engage our mortal sight Foreshadowing some entity afar. The blackness of the form indeed epitomizes Night — We grope — we wonder whence and what we are. We gaze upon the shadow cast by object mortal, since Y/e dare not face the Light of Truth as yet; But still each dim-limned figure with its god-like features hints The Universal Soul in Silhouette. U The Sphinx of Purpose He toiled from morn till night, nor ceased A moment from his labors. As large as Thing he wrought, increased The questions of his neighbors. The Thing was shapeless, vaguely vast; Unused were eyes to seeing So huge a work — in all the past None like it came to being. It was not bread, it was not wine They could not grasp and taste it: So how indeed could they divine The plan of him who placed it? Their idle tongues besought him then Who toiled in dumb submission. Response came not — save once again The chisel's competition. They looked askance at this, the Thing Whose very size eluding The estimate of such as cling To records, kept obtruding. The Thing that throve on labor's throes Grew more and more commanding; So grew their spite — as stature rose Beyond their understanding. They hoped each morning might reveal Some answer to their query. Instead the evening made them feel The Thing became more eerie. They lived in vain, they died in vain — The silence still unbroken. But now The Sphinx of brawn and brain Through centuries has spoken. They ask me why I toil? and what I build? And where my wages? I answer not. I answer not. I answer through the ages. 13 Dream ot Vision A youth watched an apple fall swift to the ground. "Now what is the law," questioned he, "by which bound An object falls down — and not up or around And falls with unerring precision?" He wondered and pondered and troubled his head With foolish imaginings — so the world said; "A good-for-naught dreamer, on phantasy fed." But was it a dream — or a vision? A man saw the steam from a kettle's mouth rise. He begged of the learned, beseeching the wise To answer him why the steam rose to the skies. He met only scorn and derision; "A grown man like you to be playing with steam! Your feverish brain with its clouds must needs teem. Cease wasting yourself on a profitless dream." Oh, was it a dream — or a vision? An ancient geographer pored o'er a map. The people that passed him would grumble and gape, And ask him what puzzle he held in his lap — Or was it a guide-book Elysian? Then when he declared that the world was not flat, They mauled him and mobbed him; — "Take this and take that. You impudent dreamer." Still looked he thereat; A dream — a mere dream — or a vision? Just lately a youth flew a mystical kite Uncannily gleaming though black was the night. The neighbors, afraid of the unforseen light Came angrily into collision; "In league with the sorcerers, devils and elves, This eerie man wanders and soars and delves, The dreams of the madman but speak for themselves." A dream — think again — or a vision? A babe in a manger, a lad yet ungrown Quite conscious that He was prime heir to a throne. Declared that He owned the world — ruled it alone, A kingdom of joys Paradisian. "Just hear the mad blasphemy this fellow saith." They mocked Him. They stoned Him. They nailed Him to death. The dream that He voiced still possessed His last breath. A dream — and no more — or a vision? 14 O Dreamers, dream on! For your dreams are the seeds To germinate centuries later in deeds. Heed not the blind world whence the babble proceeds Confusing a dream with a vision. Though mortals condemn, neither falter not faint; Posterity rises to call you a saint. Admit to your Soul the full Light, free of taint — Your vision — your heavenly vision! On to Success From off the heights of Mount Success I heard a splendid cheer- It sounded like "Achieve!" So on I sped. But this was just the echo. For again, as I drew near Rang out the Voice. "Believe!" — It really said. 15 Life and Death Life is but a longing That thrills until it throbs; And Death is just a dreading That sickens as it sobs. There is no fear that threatens A mortal mind and heart, But whatsoe'er it touches Must fade and fall apart. There is no hope that blossoms Where soul of mortal dwells. But from it you may gather A wreath of immortelles. 16 The Divine Feminine When a bard would sing, in a bard's rich rhyme Of the thing that he loves the most. He lifts his voice in an ode sublime To a maiden — the poet's boast; For in all this world there is none or naught Whose thrill can his song refine Expressing the Something his soul has sought As a feminine form divine. When a sculptor moulds the curves of grace That bound the beauteous All, He moulds her bosom, her arm, her face Whose loveliness casts their thrall; For in all this world there is no caress When tender limbs entwine But can aught more than its dearth confess To a feminine form divine. When a child has bruised his fragile flesh And wails with a childish grief, He hides his head in the garment's mesh Of a mother's soft relief; For in all this world there is no true balm Whence smiles through sorrows shine That dare approach to the trustful calm Of a feminine form divine. When a lover feels emotions fill His being with silent bliss. He wooes with a reverent look the thrill Of a virgin's raptured kiss; For in all this world there is nowhere whence There blends the mine and thine In a Oneness like to the spirit-sense Of a feminine Soul divine. O Man, with your massive brain, you wait To reason it deep and long. While a woman feels. And the powers of Fate With a feeling's impulse throng. And this is the why of a thing so odd — That men should their throne resign; — There is less of the human to dog the god In the Feminine Most Divine. 17 The Whisper of ike Soul When perplexities are crowding And the world seems bleak and cold; When your doubts and dreads are shrouding All your hopes in gloom untold; When the sun eludes your vision And the skies seem far away; When your efforts meet derision And you fall misfortune's prey; When your prospects cease to glisten And your fears portentous roll; Ah, Dear Heart, then listen, listen For the Whisper of the Soul. Men may speak, and men advise you Books may yield their ancient lore, Yet the Truth withal denies you — You must seek for something more. All this manifest Creation Burst in being — star or stone. When it heard the revelation Of a whisper all its own. Heeding not the things without it Heeding but the Voice within Life unfolding dare not doubt It; Doubting, doubting — this is sin. Hear and heed the gentle calling Urging you to utmost goal; Feel the thrill your heart enthralling Through the Whisper of the Soul. Oh, the music in the Whisper Of the Soul's seraphic strain; Soft and sweet as baby lisper Begs a kiss — nor begs in vain; Gracious as a maiden blushing Raptured from her first embrace; Mighty as a torrent rushing Unconcerned from place to place; Silent, mute, and uncomplaining If neglected overlong Yet forever straining, straining In the one amid the throng; Voice that moves the wisest sages. Voice that sways the truest bard. 18 Voice of Wisdom through the ages. Voice of Love, our hearts to guard; Voice that sums a god's ambition Sweeping clean from pole to pole; Voice whose faultless, pure rendition Is the Whisper of the Soul. Aspiration The lonely forest Pine, aspiring from his early infancy to tower aloft Discerns above the lowly altitude That settles down upon the vulgar brood Of grasses, weeds and cringing herbage sheltered close in Mother Earth's embrace so soft. Beholding him askance whose slow and painful growth but puts him out of touch with them. They chatter volubly with jealous ire Predicting such a stand a demise dire. The Pine matured abides exalted. Long ago the herbage with- ered — root and stem. The lonely Human Soul that lifts his longing eyes and yearns to dwell where all is Light Must vision far beyond the common throng; And whilst they jostle hurriedly along On transitory pleasures bent, must his horizon cloudless keep — the end in sight. A thousand maledictions, persecutions let the herd that cannot understand Heap hard upon thee, splendid-sighted Soul; — Deep oceans of oblivion shall roll Above their lives forgotten, when at last the Universal thou hast nobly spanned. 19 Dawn In the silence Mystic silence Of the dim and dusky morn, Love has blended All the splendid Prospects of a day unborn. Lightly looming Darkness dooming From Aurora's matin feast, Love revealing Paints Love's feeling. Tints the zenith, gilds the East. Far from caring With whom sharing Brilliant jewels of the day. Love arrays her. Love displays her After Love's impulsive way. Worlds lay hidden Still unbidden Yet to lift their dewy face; Till Love lit them. Till Love fit them Thus to shine with Love's glad grace. Shadows darkling, Dewdrops sparkling Blend to beautify the earth. Sunbeams seeing Moonbeams fleeing Dance with glee at sunbeams' birth. From their sleeping Creatures creeping Crawling, flying, greet the light; Through with homing Now for roaming Spend the strength restored by night. Dreams chaotic. Spells narcotic Hazy, misty, unexplained Fading, fading. Fast abrading All their outlines, lose them — feigned. 20 Dreamland's plunder Piled in wonder Sinks, and sinking is no more. Fancies fleeting, Films depleting Dread the day, and upward soar. In their slumber Men still cumber Weary minds with foolish fret; Feel the falling Of the palling Of the night with blind regret. But the paining Of the waning Of the nooning of the mind Is a blessing. Which confessing Humans must its fruitage find. Skyward soaring, Hopes restoring Through the ether's mystic void. Finds man's spirit Means to cheer it That the day has not enjoyed. Up, up yonder Spirits wander Newly nourished from the sky; In the morning Minds adorning With a freshness born on high. So be grateful To the fateful Flitting fancies of the dusk; Whither leading Souls proceeding Leave at night their bodies' husk. Whence returning They discerning Part the clouds and thrill things numb; Creatures drooning Hear them crooning "Wake and work! For Day has come." 21 A Magic Seczet There are folks forever frowning, Life's delights so deeply drowning In the teary dark recesses hid by gloomy jutting brow. That their vision fills with ghastly Ghostly spectres rising vastly From the frowning, weeping chasm gulfing pleasure in its slough. There are other people smiling, Joys upon each other piling In the wrinkly little hollows where a smile is wont to play; And to look at them you never Would imagine that they ever Had a blessed thing to do but smile and coo the livelong day. Now I know a little secret That is good for all the week, yet On a dismal dark blue Monday, 'twould excel in magic wile; Slip the frown a little lower From the brow it lingers o'er With a sudden twist just turn it round your lips — and there's a smile. 22 The Making of Time "Why do you grieve?" Hope said to Sorrow; "Time's glad reprieve Comes with the morrow." "For those who mourn," Sobbed sad-eyed Sorrow, "Memory's bourn Suffers no morrow." Naught — at the last Is to-day or to-morrow, Save what from the Past Or the Future we borrow. 23 Wl^aiever is Eart/^y I stroked the soft petals enfolding a rose Whose cheek with the welcome of Summerland glows. The song of its soul into harmony stirred My heart with a rapture too fine for a word. My spirit responded, and blended, and yearned To cherish the fragrance whose thrill it discerned; But fading and fading and withering fast The petals resolved into ruin at last. And as the sweet soul of the flower took wing It seemed to my listening longing to sing: — " Whatever is earthy partakes of earth's blight. 'Twas born in a day. 'Twill die in a night.'* I gathered possessions, I hoarded more gold Than Capital's coffers expanded could hold. With bonds and securities, chattels and stocks I thought to obtain the one key that unlocks The wealth of a Universe waiting to pour On him who possessing sought more and still more. But Failure o'ertook me. And at Failure's side Lean Poverty stalked, first to rob, then deride. Between them they snatched my last pauperish pence Then eerily echoed, ere tottering hence; — "Whatever is earthy partakes of earth's blight. 'Twas born in a day. 'Twill die in a night." I fondled my child — a mere babe at the breast. I watched her mature with a joy self-confessed. . I planned her a future eclipsing the sun. But, ah, just before her life-work was begun The Angel of Death cut her down in her bloom — To prove how mortality speeds to its doom. Bemoaning the close of the maid's bright career I watched her as marble stretched stiff in her bier; Beseeching the heavens my eyes seemed to see Transcribed by the angels, this fateful decree: — "Whatever is earthy partakes of earth's blight. 'Twas born in a day. 'Twill die in a night." I filled endless archives with ponderous books. My library bordered with ruminant nooks Invited mad worry to banish its care And dazzle the brain with the brilliances there. I buried the past in a book-lover's grave — As if the dead pages were able to save. 24 But feverish, fancies despoiled my hot brain Exposing the scars of my sorrow and pain. My brain overwrought, heard through all its wild whirl The leaves, as I thumbed them, so scornfully curl; — "Whatever is earthy partakes of earth's blight. 'Twas born in a day. 'Twill die in a night." I summoned my friends into revelry's hall. I sought in its vintage to blur the black pall That settled and settled and blotted my life With shadows of dread of oblivion rife. I jested and sang and heaped high the glib cup Of merriment meaningless. Dine then and sup And laugh with a leer that the devils would shun Till day with its deadening damning is done. Then hear in the watches of night a ghost wail This sentence uncanny to make your heart quail; — "Whatever is earthy partakes of earth's blight. 'Twas born in a day. 'Twill die in a night." I flung me insane at a mountain of work. Expected that in its recesses must lurk Some balm for my spirit, some peace for my heart. When once I fell idle a twitch and a start Reminded again that a memory mad Was waiting to trap me. Until I turned glad To lose me in toil. But my sinews grew thin. My senses aquiver with labor's wild din Betrayed me and mocked me and strove to proclaim That warning monotonous, ever the same: — "Whatever is earthy partakes of earth's blight. 'Twas born in a day. 'Twill die in a night." I yielded to Sorrow. She stripped my life lorn Of all the bright baubles that used to adorn; I felt my friends slipping, my happiness o'er While yesterday's hopes seemed to beckon no more. I scanned the black sky for a token of day — Dim Dawn was still hiding in darkness away. But list! a monition thrilled low to instil Fresh courage and hope in my impotent will; I hearked to the Voice. And a whisper came soft To comfort me, buoy me, and bear me aloft; — " Whatever is earthless forever remains At peace with Itself till Eternity wanes.^* 25 The Three Paths "Indulge!" shouts the glutton, the sot, the roue, "For pleasure Is sure, — and it lasts but a day. Let merriment spill from the wine of life's brim. Come, watch the lights sparkle — though vision be dim With dew^s of the morning or shades of the night, Since swift on the heels of the dawn flees the light. Let passion run red. Let Flesh be our God. Ere swift we return, whence we came, to the sod." "Renounce!" shrieks the monk, the ascetic, the sage, "With youth comes Desire — but Wisdom with age. The wants of the body are beastly and bad; So turn from your chamberings wantonly mad. Your appetites, flesh-pots, your instincts to lust Ere Punishment damn you and doom you to dust. For bodies are sired of the Devil — while souls Are fathered of God, who exacts His just tolls." "Exalt!" cries the spirit illumined and pure, "The God of Desire. Let all longing endure. Enjoy the grosser — but lift it on high. Refine your delights till they blend with the sky. For tasteless and touchless and formless are joys Whose ecstacy clings, and yet never once cloys. The world is a Paradise. Enter and sip Its waters ambrosial. But first — cleanse the lip.'' 26 An Episode Among tf^e Planets Mother Earth lay lonely weeping In the early morning light. For her sister, snugly sleeping By her side throughout the night Was with break of day fast fading — Mistress Moon had fled abashed As King Sun, his pomp parading, On her gaze his splendor flashed. Mother Earth lay there a-sighing Face all tearful with her rue — Which some thoughtless folk espying Call the tears but morning dew. When His Royal Sunship riding Sumptuous among the clouds Caught a glimpse of beauty hiding In the face her sorrow shrouds. Gently then from clouds descending Softly sped the Solar Lord, Brought to speedy, happy ending All the gloom he so abhorred. For he boldly kissed the grieving Tearful Earth at break of day. At his touch the tears kept leaving — Till he kissed them all away. And they say that every growing Fragrant flower and luscious fruit Lies in dimpled hollow, showing Where she smiled upon his suit. 27 Paid by the Day His forehead was furrowed, his brow tightly knitted His cheek deeply sunken, his eye dull and dim; His coat, frayed and shiny, his form poorly fitted — A form that appeared but the shadow of him. His step automatic propelled a dead creature That sambled about with a crawl and a creep; His listless demeanor shov/ed always some feature That could but remind you of something asleep. My heart deeply grieving, his footsteps I followed And watched him at last to a desk stiffly climb; — A desk that his skeleton elbows had hollowed And marked with the dents of endurance sublime. A look of despair crossed a face bleak and cheerless. All ashen and cold with the sorrows of years And yet with its anguish so stony and tearless, — For tears turn to ice when grief genuine nears. His lips replied not to my unspoken question. His brain must concentrate to earn his scant pay. His soul, though, made answer, amid its congestion; "A word explains all — I am paidhy the day.'^ "With figures and facts in black myriads trooping Forever I cipher and cipher away While still I sit stooping and stifling and drooping, For I am a chattel — and paid by the day. Through ten weary hours, ten hours together, Of sunshine and shadow, here shackled I stay; The sunshine infuses the outer world's weather — The shadows are his who is paid by the day. The hours that throb their slow march o'er the dial Appear with the sun to yield Hope a faint ray. But morrows and yesterdays make grim denial — For hours are endless when paid by the day. I once had a brain and a heart and a longing And hopes flitted past me to brighten my way, But stringent and strident necessities thronging Have choked the soul dumb in him paid by the day. There once was a time when my thought to things higher Than figuring fallacies tended to stray; But backward I drew it — no man dare aspire When chained to a consciousness paid by the day. A brain automatic; a hand ever steady: A spirit content not to dream or to play; Instead, with a willingness never unready 28 To slave for its deadening pay by the day. Existence a grind and your wage but a pittance Enough just to keep your sad soul in its clay While time with its clangingly cold unremittence Oppresses and maddens him paid by the day. Though spirit be fainting and body be halting. Still on you must race in the victorless fray. Your time is your master's. Your wage is defaulting — He durst not be ill who is paid by the day." "I rise in the morning — my soul the while falling And pleading and sobbing as souls alone may. For harshly and hatefully Duty is calling, That taskmaster Duty who pays by the day. I sink in the evening — but not to sweet sleeping Black spectres foreboding loom up in array Portentously shuddering! chills of fear creeping Congealing the hope in me paid by the day. The gamins that grovel, mere waifs in the alley Have naught but their vagrancy's voice to obey. Let me though — a man — for a brief moment dally. Then swift the thought goads — 'You are paid by the day.' The bird and the flower, in fields bright and sunny Unfold their souls' sweetness with none to say nay. But they have not learned the vast value of money That gilds an aggrandizement paid by the day. My spirit grows deaf with the dollars' loud clinking Whose avalanche brooks neither doubt nor delay. In goblets of gold their frail health they are drinking. They? Not they who toil and are paid by the day. The creature that buys my lean soul has his pleasure — A plutocrat's pomp with a showman's display. But ah, his great coffers heaped high could not measure The sorrows of families paid by the day. My children are human as well as my neighbor's. My wife is as noble — and none can gainsay. Yet let them all starve. While the fruits of my labors Are swallowed by him who pays me by the day." "Ah, v/hence can I hope in my madness to borrow Some sympathy's boon for which only I pray? Since men must provide for their own meagre morrow They cannot befriend whom they pay by the day. The world heeds me not. It is busy devising Some means whence its profits more ponderous weigh — Save when it is occupied deeply despising 29 The. plight of a thing scantly paid by the day. The moralists urge me to keep my eyes straining Both outward and onward, and upward alway; But forces without and beyond are disdaining And Heaven is haze to him paid by the day. No more do I find bits of comfort accruing By looking within. For my soul must inveigh With turmoil both righteous and wroth the pursuing Of demons incarnate that pay by the day. I close my eyes then. Let my vision slow blinding Grow numb with the senses that all must decay And atrophy wholly beneath the dead binding Of pressure external that pays by the day. The Infinite Spirit within me is pleading But I must forever its earnest betray. Who cares for a god when his being is bleeding With anguish untold? Does God pay by the day? A piece of accoutrement shaped for the battle That Greed fights with Greed till the world has grown grey A mindless and soulless and spiritless chattel — This chattel the Devil still pays by the day." Doubt's Unreason If now and then a cloud obscure the Sun Do I, construing that its course is run, Declare the solar system out of place And swift effacement threatening the race? If now and then a doubt obstruct my view — To passing cloud in mortal vision due. Shall I conclude that Truth has lost its light And God interred the world in endless night? 30 Understanding The beggar moaned without the gate. He cursed his lot, that cruel Pate Had left him there in rags to wait While Wealth within lay sleeping. The night was raw. The wind blew chill. He plead and plead and plead until His voice became a wail. But still Upon him Death came creeping. "Dear Lady, give me just a crust! 'Tis life I beg — so beg I must. For Death is close. And o'er my dust The snows will soon be falling." Yet on she slumbered deep and long. No beggar — nor the passing throng Could waken her; be right or wrong The manner of the calling. Then suddenly a voice rang out In tones that bore no trace of doubt As from afar a joyous shout Betokened some one coming. It was the Master's homeward stride. He flashed a key — the door swung wide; He kissed his lovely virgin bride Nor felt the winds benumbing. Within the walls a soft caress, A look — a kiss — a touch to bless A man and make his soul confess That Heaven has descended. Without the walls, a freezing form That gasps and grovels in the storm And starves for want of something warm Till life's despair has ended. Without a woman's soul there pleads To sate his body's grosser needs A man who, begging, intercedes — Her passion's throb demanding. Within a woman's soul there lies A lover, for whose touch she cries; He owns her love. Nor begs nor buys. The Key is "Understanding." 31 The Mystic Isle of Sex A beautiful stream in the woodland is flowing Where flowers are growing. And Nature, bestowing Her smiles and caresses, sends breezes that blowing From out the South Summer Land sweeten the air. The stream in the course of its eddyings winding, A spot of land finding. Its narrow bed binding — A verdure-clad island its vista thus blinding Its separates then, to each bayou a share. But on past the island, the branches uniting Their ripples inviting. Are speedily righting The brief incompleteness they felt when first sighting That island that cuts the one stream into two. The stream we call Life from the Infinite rushing Its barriers flushing Its obstacles crushing Discovers an island. Though flov/ers are blushing. Yet serpents are brev/ing their venom^ous rue. The Isle is so mystic men scarce can discern it Nor study, nor learn it; So many would spurn it That soon a drear waste the race human must turn it Did not some brave soul dare to fathom its shore. As if to escape the dark wiles of its wonder Two bayous that sunder. Plunge over, delve under Divide the one stream. And dividing they thunder Their mad discontent till united once more. The Isle is called Sex. It enchants with rare flowers Whose fragrance endowers Ecstatic the hours While visitors tarry, held thralled in its bowers. Yet serpents are hiding — beware their dread fangs. 32 The stream known as Woman flows placid forever. But currents that sever The Man-stream can never Be trusted for transport, save through strong endeavor; Else ruin ensues — how the knell of it clangs! Upon this dim island have errors erected And usage protected And churchlings elected A wall so forbidding its ban has effected Complete isolation from either lone side. And Life, cut in two, flows with surging foreboding Its twin-banks corroding Its twin-impulse goading Its twin-soul with separate anguish o'erloading The wastes of the shore with the wrecks of the tide. Some day eons hence, an upheaval will shatter The heaps of earth-matter Whose clods of clay scatter Their cloy o'er the Isle. In this period latter. The Isle shall subside with a crash and a groan. Then Woman and Man once again sweetly blended. Duality ended, — Sex wholly transcended — Shall merge their twin-Self from the Source first intended To flov/ a Finality, One and Alone. 33 Speechless I have searched the Universe through and through For words to tell you, Dear, Of the beautiful vision that greets my view When you have nestled near. I had heard from a poet that roses lent Their tint to a woman's cheek, So straight to the garden's bloom I went The secret there to seek. With a trembling hope I softly stooped And for the favor plead; But the petals fell and the flower drooped — The lovely tint had fled. Perhaps the lily v/as like your throat For thus I had also heard; From its fragrant lips might burst some note With faint descriptive word. But the lily's touch is hard and cold And never a bit like yours; Its calm, severe, ascetic mould Scant sympathy assures. Where the limpid waters flowed along I sought your scented breath; For a maid but echoes their silver song — The bard so plainly saith. A defiant plash was the answer curt Of eddies swirling past. If ever they paused 'twas but to flirt — Embraced by the sea at last. But surely the stars illumed your eyes So lovers all agreed; And eagerly I scanned the skies — My quest was vain indeed, — The stars just twinkled and winked and smiled; With never a glance so true As to make me think of the evenings whiled Just looking. Love, at you. There is nothing in all God's perfect Plan That more than shadows ill Her presence who inspires a man To feel the lover's thrill. 34 And yet, althougli I cannot frame The words to speak my thought, We two need not a verbal name In printed texture wrought. For when your throat and cheek caress My lips — and linger there; And while you whisper low to bless Unspeakably; my prayer To be more worthy rises mute And meets your eyes — and then Just you and God and I refute The words required of men. To Her Who Feels A thousand medley sounds may throng a harp. And yet It answers not. Insulted then they feel a sort of crude regret; They wonder what Illusive spell has seized the thing, that it should lie Inert and dumb The while their voices gutturally coarse may cry — Whose souls are numb. But let a note from any single instrument Attuned in pitch Approach the harp. Then suddenly the harp has blent Its music rich In glad response to one wee understanding tone. The screeching mob Vv/'ithdraw in rough disgust and leave the two alone — Whose souls can throb. Through many clanging years I seemed to all my friends A sullen thing. For they, of childish aims and inharmonious ends Had failed to bring A touch attuned. But you with all your poet's heart Once happened near; And now I fling my joyous, free, melodious Art From sphere to sphere. 35 Lei There Be Light "Let There Be Light!" The Heaving Void has calmed its inco- herent cries and speaks. And through the shoreless, soundless seas of space, one world upon another creaks In huge embroiling effort to obey. Vast waves of anxious ether roll Tumultuous amid the spectral stars, demanding as their trifling toll A single glimmer from the cycling spheres — to satisfy the stern command Of that resounding, thrilling Cosmic Voice, by breath of cease- less motion fanned. The piercing mandate cleaves dark orbits grim where nebulae revolve disturbed Lest some blind planet whirling by collide, and thus their onv/ard course be curbed; Deep echoes vibrate forth the clarion call throughout the awful spanless bound That forms the realm of unsensed Omnipresence. As the strange unheard-of sound First strikes relentless on the cumbered ear of atoms, with audition dulled — From hearing through a million ages past mere rumblings aim- less and annulled — Each speck of star-dust leaps exulting, wild to realize its dream of Light, While myriads of mighty molecules have danced ecstatic in their flight; Stupendous joy commoves the nascent suns from common chaos just emerged. As through each orb impatient long to shine a pulse of new-born power has surged. Thus eagerly their energies they bend to halo every mote in reach. But tardy lags the Light and still no gleam illumes the dismal, endless breach. Together in a cataclysmic clash — a strain that seems to rupture space The Universe is tossing back and forth, to find some wee se- cluded place Where just one ray of light appears afar. The face of ail Creation v/eeps With torrents teeming mingled hope and fear. A flood of sweaty anguish steeps 36 In hotter haste and yet more frantic pain the monumental tra- vail-throes Of Mother Cosmos. Soon the muttering roar of hurtling worlds to madness grows And swift destruction threatens all that is. But still the black eternal Night Enshrouding deeper unborn worlds, defies the Voice that bade it yield to Light, ^ :): ^ H: ^ "Let There Be Light." A tiny winged thing discerns the crisis falling fast — Bethinks himself to second God's command. And Lo! effulgent breaks at last A glory clothing all the mortal race. The Universe sobs glad relief. And as the chorus swells, I ask the mite his secret. His reply comes brief; — "There never was a time when Light was not, in spite of theories men devise. But splendors paled unseen — since God was blind; until forsooth I gave Him eyes." Hope Ever Shining Twisting its way through the stones and the stubble Rising unwelcome before it, Finds the crude v/orm a world jutting with trouble. Since for its keep it must bore it. Breasting the breeze, the world's care overthrowing, Soars the fleet bird gladly trilling. Sees but the beckoning orbs ever glowing. Wings its reponse to their thrilling. HOPE is a star that transcends our attaining — Merged in reality never; Shining yet on us some eminence gaining. Lighting us upward forever. Sloughed in the dark of a light-bereft valley, Stumbling and trembling and groping Gross mortal minds with their wallowing dally. Weighed by the vainness of hoping. Heed not their slough or their dubitant story Mired in a finite infernal. Keep your eye fixed on the visions of glory Fulsome from Hope shed eternal. 37 The Kiss I kissed you first upon the hand — A queenly hand; The softest one in all the land To wield command Of human souls that come and go When you, My Lady, will it so. Permitting adulation's flow In granting this Admirer's Kiss. I kissed you then upon the brow — I made a vow That if you only would allow Me near you now. Henceforth I should be at your call To guard you. Sister — that is all Nor let your charms my heart enthrall. Quite safe, I wis. That Brother's Kiss. I kissed you then upon the cheek — You were so meek So helpless that I fain would seek — And thus bespeak Some deeper interest in you, Dear — A place where dimples might appear In children's cheeks. No need to fear; 'Twere not amiss — A Father's Kiss. I kissed you then with tongue on tongue — A kiss that stung That burned our lips, while Passion wrung The plea it flung; "Come closer, Love — Love, Love!'' Until We felt the wild ecstatic thrill Of Heaven's rapture that can fill All Hell's abyss — The Lover's Kiss. I kissed you then upon the breast. And in the West The sun was setting where the blest Abide at rest. 38 While o'er my soul the peace that fell Transported me to heights where dwell The angels, far from mortal spell. Love's crowning bliss Is Baby's Kiss. Both Lover and Friend When first my eyes beheld your winsome grace, a host Of longings sprung Impetuous within my breast to make my boast — As bards have sung — That I, your lover, might enchant and charm you most. For I was young; And then it seemed to me that you and I alone Were all the world. When other suitors pressed to make your love their own With hopes unfurled, I fain had heard them from the depths of ruin groan By envy hurled. I clung to you, and fought for you, and prayed that I Might crown you queen. Exalting you above the Love that broods on high I strove to wean Your heart away from all your friends. My ceaseless sigh To come between. But now 'tis not enough to touch your hand and feel The lover's thrill; And through my raptured being sense the godhood steal Ecstatic — fill My soul with all the Heaven gods could ask. Your weal; Your woman's will; Your aspirations; and your soul's success; these need A something more Than gave a lover blinded by his tender greed In days of yore. 'Mid many lovers let me he a friend. Whose lead Above, before. You trust and follow to your life's consummate end. I thrill with you Because our souls' desire is one. And I would lend My judgment true. So call me Lover, Dear, but more; — esteem me Friend. For friends are few. 39 A Vision of ff^e Night Amid the deep shroud of the dead of the night V/hose vestige of light Had fled from my sight A Vision appeared. And as its form neared I saw it was clad in a glistre of white. They trembled and twitched — my poor sleep-heavy eyes With dread that denies The truth it espies, And strives to return to lethargy, spurn The brilliance to blame for dull torpor's surprise. "Sink back to your sleep!" cried the sprites of the West Whose blackness confessed Their earthiness. "Lest To-morrow you shirk your drudgery work Since weary and worn and deprived of your rest." "Awake and behold!" from the East rang the v/ord Of power that stirred My senses that heard And bade me awake though dawn itself break To witness my v/oe for the hours I had erred. Still thickly benumbed my slumbered once more; But all the earth o'er I felt the Light pour Its radiance illume the last shade of gloom And beckon my spirit forever to soar. "O who can you be," I sobbed, "who indeed That sightless you lead Me on whence proceed The rays of the morn; ere dawn can adorn The earth and the sky with the sunlight they need?" The Vision replied: "My name is not known To mortals who moan That they must alone And lonely observe my outlines, nor swerve From things I reveal in the dead of night shown." I followed the Light to the crest where it led My bruised limbs bled I wandered unfed Unclothed and unkept by humans who slept Interred in their somnolence deep as the dead. 40 The work of the morrow I wholly forgot. It mattered not what Remotely lone spot My spirit must seek. Still up loomed the peak Attainment that urged me press on, and pause not. At last the bleak summit I reached weak and worn With vesture all torn. I heard my friends mourn Below in the vale. Where, drowsily pale They clung to what I ^be crowned must he shorn. Then — wonder of wonders — forever away Earth's night passed. Broad day Revealed an array Of glories that I ne'er saw in the sky While I below lingered to work or to play. The Vision had faded. But still brighter yet Above my regret My raptured sight met A message from God. "Until you had trod The heights of abandonment, suns must all set." "The Vision you saw was a foregleam I cast O'er present and past That flickering fast Souls see who aspire. Come higher, come higher! Forget your Soul's dawn. Lo, the sun shines at last." A Sure Remedy Tve a secret. Dear, to tell you. Cross my heart, I tell you true. And I hope it may impel you Just to watch it work for you. Now's the very time to try it — Now and always after this; Then if you would like to buy it You can pay me with a kiss. When a fear or doubt or worry Comes to bother you again Till your brain's all fret and flurry; Don't you ask advice of men. Don't you wonder what's the reason, But before the clock says "tick" — Here's the secret right in season, Just you love somebody — quick. 41 On/y a Worm "Only a worm!" — exclaimed the man As he crushed the mite in the Maker's Plan. But eons hence must the man atone; For lo the worm to a god full-grown Shall teach the man, at Judgment Day That Life is one, and 'tis Self we slay. 42 Humanity's Prisoners Angrily foreboding, with a sullen snarl that tells How a heart ferocious through the growling mutter swells; Gnashing on his jagged teeth in mighty rage unkempt; Lashing bristling tail from which no object seems exempt; Swaying tawny body like a tower in a storm; Hate and lust exhaling from his gaunt and hungry form; Circles mountain Lion in his artificial den. Pouring out his loathing on the gaping sons of men. Lordly in the forest, here he froths at ironed shame Impotently panting for the freedom whence he came. Pitifully beating eager wings against the bars — Frenziedly unmindful of the smarting wounds whose scars Add to one another deeper witness to the crime Where a cage discordant robs the woodland's choral chime; Pale and sick and sorrowful, a Birdling plaintive peeps. Pleading with a restlessness that never lulls nor sleeps; Hoping spite of vanished hopes to reach again the nest Whence a man marauder snatched this childie from the rest. All the tender sweetness long ago has left her voice. Now the note of sobbing is the songster's only choice. Massively inert, cowed dumb, all powerless there lies Caged as yet a mighty force that passers-by despise. In the brain of man a fettered Mind awaits the day When that jailer Ignorance shall die and yield his sway. In the human heart confined a bird is pining too Known as Love — her jailer Fear. She pleads with me and yon. Who will break the cruel thrall and set the prisoners free; Then discern what their Creator meant the two to be? 43 The Sml of a Fhxvet A tulip and a violet were growiiig side by side. The violet lay lowly. But the tulip flaunted wide Her coarse plebeian petals that, coquetting with the sun. Compelled a heightened color at the notice she had won Through beauty's dower. A maiden passed along that way, in search of fragrant bloom. A little maid of charity — she helped to cheer the gloom Of dreary army hospitals where dying soldiers lay, Tormented with the memories of men they strove to slay By brutish power. Not once a single glance gave she to charms of tulip bold. But tenderly she felt among the tangled moss and mold To where the little violet was hiding — all unseen. While pouring forth her perfume with her wonted modest mien, Bach hour by hour. Her body bruised and broken, soon the violet lay dead Within the maiden's grasp. And then the brilliant tulip said, "You foolish little flower, it is plain as plain can be That you should have asserted more of self. Just look at me — I never cower." The tulip hung there till it rotted on its withered stem. The dying soldiers smiled — while souls of violets wafted them To realms where waves of fragrance out from God's own presence roll. For the petal is the body, but the perfume is the soul Of every flower. 44 Missing the Mark The master bowman wings his arrows true. His matchless skill Had pierced the finest target through and through Transfixed at will. But let the sun withdraw its limpid light; Let shadows fall That swiftly merge in gloom the nascent night Till black the pall Of total darkness wraps the earth in shroud; No archer then Can lift from off his arms the cumbrous cloud Whose burden men Must bear until another dawning day. If now his bow He turn and twang toward what had been his prey The shaft falls low And wide the mark; for Night has clutched his hand. Obscured the goal, And made the master marksman lose command Of skill's control. So likewise fails at times the Soul of us Its prize to win. When mental midnight clouds its action thus, We call it sin. But sin is merely missing some one mark The Soul has set. And that because there broods yon shadow dark; Then why regret? For just as men must tread the cycle round Of dusk and dawn Before the Timeless have their efforts crowned Of brain and brawn; So night and day must ever alternate With sure return Upon the Soul that aims at lofty Fate Some boon to earn. Rebuke you not — if once your aim have failed; By sin depressed; But, — till your knowledge-dawn shall have prevailed Lie still, and rest. 45 The Self-Accusing Verdict The painting was fearlessly bare of a film of a robe to enmesh In shamed obscurement the curves of her form or the tints of her flesh. Her bosom, her cheek and her limbs were so rounded and whole- some and sweet That taken together the charms of all Womanhood scarce could compete. The truth was portrayed from arcana most sacred vouchsafed to the race — Divinity shone from the ground at her feet to the crown o'er her face. The multitude passing pronounced its opinion in tones that I heard With emphasis challenging, spite of the fact that they said not a word. "How shameful!" declared a lean spinster, her visage bespeaking the prude, "To show to the public a figure so wantonly, shamelessly nude. I sigh for my sex that a creature thus brazen, immoral and bold Should pose in impurity's nakedness, waiting for men to behold. 'Tis wicked to gaze on a sight so unclothed, so unchaste, so unclean; I flee from a vision whose outlines defile and pollute and be- mean." "How luscious!" he cried with the full-orbed perceptions, the passion of youth That sensed the mere form but evaded the essence and spirit of Truth. "My blood rises hot — and my manhood leaps up and my heart is on fire To clasp to my breast and to thrill, through and through, the fair maid I desire. For woman was meant but to satisfy wholly my manhood's de- mand — Oh, that she might spring from the canvas and follow the lead of my hand." Two lovers passed by. They were husband and wife, yet avowed lovers still. They looked at the form standing mute with its judgment. A great divine thrill Of soul-understanding united them both in a thought that spoke not. 46 All words are but shadows. Which falling must hide and dis- figure and blot The soul that looks sunward. They knew what it was to sense passion — and yet Their love was so pure that its fullest expression left not one regret. Amid the dumb multitude lazing along with a somnolent nod. Illumined these two murmured low in one whisper, "The Image of God." Fulfilling tl^e Great Command A thousand priests may creep their painful way to distant gilded shrine To venerate a sacred bone; — And God can scarce withhold reproving frown. A blasphemous design — By marrow-wasting to atone. A band of thoughtless zealots labeled Christ may vainly proselyte A race of totem-minded blacks; — And God but weeps in pity that His servants hypnotized by fright Ecstatic, self-deluded wax. A little child may fling a careless drop of water on a rose Just budding into gracious bloom; — And God transported in a wave of joy His presence sweet bestows Through every petal's fresh perfume. For lo, the God of countless planets sleeping in the flower abides Until full-blown the fragrance wakes. The "Logos" is but Self-expression. He obeys who, where God hides. With Christlike touch the casement breaks. 47 Retuzn to Nature "Return to Nature." 'Tis a graceful phrase But signifying little in the saying Until we thread the deep, perplexing maze That Naturism seems to be displaying. To bare a body naked to the sun; To live upon the rudiment essentials; To eat and sleep and die the while you shun Refinement with her gentle consequentials; To forage for a bit of tardy food; And then to win it only by a battle; To watch your footsteps lest their crunch intrude And hostile missiles somewhence rudely rattle; To prowl about and scurry fleet away In terror lest you be with spoils detected; To sulk and growl and rage the livelong day When earnest effort fails since misdirected; To keep a ferret vigilance on foes; To face exposed the most ferocious weather; To share with none your pleasures or your woes; To seek in vain scant cover from the heather; To have no home but where you skulk at night; To own no ties you may not roughly sever; To crouch at every sound from out the light; To drag a restless, aimless life forever; To wander here and there with none to care; To stretch a shaggy limb upon the mountain; To wallow in a cold, uncanny lair; To lap with lurid tongue from forest fountain; To feel that you exist for you alone; To live upon your prey, perforce made selfish; To champion no cause but just your own; To hide in hermit haunt till fairly elfish; To know your dormant soul though sprung from God Is choked and dumb for lack of true expression; To grunt and growl and nose amid the sod The while your hungry heart demands progression; To browse upon the stubble near the earth For food whereby your body may be nourished, Unconscious that the husk at seedling's birth Involved a Something whence your soul has flourished; To lead in short a desultory life With sun and shadow, joy and sorrow blended Perhaps in peace, perhaps in bloody strife 48 Till savage Death has all your struggles ended; To be but one among the countless horde Of vulgar beings unevolved for ages; To halt content while others hasten toward The Honor Roll in Michael's glistening pages; — Is (/its Return to Nature? If it be We imitate the traits of brutes most bestial And retrograde throughout Eternity. For even beasts are facing heights celestial. To roam at will the fragrant, flowering fields; To nestle near the tender dear Earth Mother; To care for no protection if it shields By sacrificing some less able brother; To eat the luscious fruit the fields supply Or eat it not, — in lack or fulness wealthy; To scorn the drug, the knife, the occult eye, From but the dew's elixir springing healthy; To welcome forms divinely bare — and yet To prize the lace a lovely arm adorning; To watch the shadows fall without regret; To greet the splendid sunrise every morning; To draw a rythmic, calm, refreshing breath; To revel in a solitude quite soundless; To know no fear, not even that of Death; To claim as yours by right possessions boundless; To let the breezes kiss responsive flesh; To range abroad supreme in your dominion; To cast the last externals that enmesh; To gambol free of popular opinion; To make no marriage save your love impel; To hold aloof from clannish, family feeling; To bear no child but that desired full well; To need no counsel to your Soul's revealing; To act on impulse, reckless of result; To trust the ready instinct that imbues yo^; To glory in your freedom and exult To court Desire whose prescient hopes enthuse you; To ridicule dependence on a friend; To seek no mystic doctor, lawyer, preacher; To lord the heights of Selfhood you ascend; to make the starry firmament your teacher; To laugh at laws and penalties for crime; To scratch the statutes off the earth, save only That single mandate with its sense sublime 49 "To thine own Self be true," — and dare be lonely; To know that education means unfold; To break instinctively whatever fetters; To face tradition's dictum, calmly bold; To study laws of life — not laws of letters; To honor Nature's cause in happy hymns; To realize that Nature is the raiment Wherein the God of Nature robes His limbs; To laud as Deity no counter-claimant; To act and think and feel and be all true; To vote with Love, in lawless legislature; To cherish worlds, since worlds abide in you; — We could perhaps call this Return to Nature. But vastly most important of the whole Wherein I have but named some single feature Is that you recognize the subtle Soul That animates and guides each living creature. It matters little what you call the Thing — Volition, Instinct, Conscience, Judgment, Longing, It matters much how earnestly you cling To those desires which with the Thing come thronging. For this may sum the argument entire; — The animals obey their Souls^ monition. Escaping Its divinely righteous ire That blights so much of human-hoped fruition. No method, system, school, or cult, or cree(^ Need hamper you with fetish nomenclature; To he yourself f-and let your godhood lead- Herein, I wean, is true Return to Nature. Environment From out the blackest, grossest earth The fairest flower may flourish. Her seed evolved her own pure birth — The clods but scantly nourish. Within a sin-soiled world, I stood Uncertain of my sweetness Till, as a flower, I drew the good From even sin's completeness. 50 The Marriage of God and Nature When relatives meddlesome come interfering 'Twixt husband and wife there is apt to be strife; Till ugly Divorce in its envy appearing Has torn them apart for the rest of their life. When husband and wife are alone with each other, A thousand times closer entwines the soft bond That makes the two one, with no room for another — The bond of Desire unites them more fond. A billion years since, Father God went a-wooing; 'Twas ages before this race human was born. He wooed Mother Nature — nor wearied pursuing Until She said "Yes" on their bright wedding morn. The child that first blessed them we know as Creation And from her matured, all we mortals have sprung; And of her immortal in manifestation Of her immemorial poets have sung. Now God has a friend that is surnamed Religion Who strives to tear God from dear Nature apart; And threatens damnation with penalties Stygian In order to terrify God's human heart. Then sweet Mother Nature knows some one called Science Who alienates Her from endearments of God, And begs Her to place a more certain reliance Upon the grim skeletons dug from the sod. And so God and Nature though longing to weld them In tenderest union; while heart with heart throbs; Are sundered — so long have outsiders withheld them And robbed them of rapture; while heart from heart sobs. Their daughter Creation is anxiously weeping That Nature and God have been rent into twain. While we with our sympathies stunted and sleeping. Seek churches and books. But our quest is in vain. O blinded Humanity, can a babe issue From womb of its mother or loins of its sire Save only the bone and the blood and the tissue Be formed by uniting the parents' desire? So call not God impotent, — Mind analytic, The while you hold Nature from God's dear embrace; If Nature be sterile, — Oh Spiritist critic. You need but give God His original place. 51 Her Answer I sent my Love a spray of bloom And begged her wear just one To seal my happiness, or doom With a rose in her hair — or none. I sped that night to the festal hall To watch for the maiden fair; Then over my heart there fell a pall — Her tresses were coldly bare. But while I looked there flamed afire The token I fain would seek; For the rose that answered my heart's desire Had blossomed in her cheek. 52 Virgin Gold Deep in the heart of the mountain there lay Modestly, shyly in hiding Nuggets of gold — virgin gold. Till one day Miners disturbed their abiding. All the bright nuggets forthwith they displaced, Melted them up in a mixture; Copper and nickel in coin that they chased — Bases to give the gold fixture. One bit they saved as a pure souvenir, Put it where hands could not tarnish; Mounted in setting whose charms would endear With an appropriate garnish. Moulded in money 'twould pass as mere coin Coarsened through process of minting; Gold in virginity never may join Throngs harshly clutching and stinting. Souls that the world with the wear of its care Worries away prematurely — There are the spirits most spotlessly fair. Wrought the most finely and purely. You, with your practical base of alloy, Coin of a race roughly fingered. Circulate still with the clink of your cloy. Calloused, your spirit has lingered. But if your brother lose heart and pass out. Sensitive soul that soars higher. Torture him not with derision or doubt — Past is his crucible fire. 53 The Pursuit of Pleasure Through the green meadows I wandered one day Wandered away Child — in my play, Seeking the gold of the rainbow so gay; Seeking but finding it fleeting. Out from the flowers a fairy arose — Every child knows Where a child goes When it needs Fairyland's balm for its woes — There came we two to be meeting. Softly I whispered and asked her her name. "So you just came? Wide is my fame. Pleasure they call me — and rapture my aim. Would you love life? Only follow." Gleefully grasping the hand of my guide Proud at her side Proud in my stride Gladly I followed. But soon I espied Meadow depressed into hollow. Into the valley of misty Despair, Tottering where Lust laid its lair Pleasure allured me — made my soul bear Tortures devised of the devil. Pleasure deserted me. Pleasure cared not How black the spot Hellishly hot Where my heart sank, with a moan that its lot Lay where this Pleasure wrought revel. Hopless I floundered and writhed and cried out; — Groan and yet shout; "Hedge me about Doom me and damn me! But leave me, O Doubt, Save me or slay me — one quickly." 54 Shrieking in torture my prayer to be saved While still I raved Gently there waved Down from the heights the salvation I craved — Cards woven strongly and thickly. Some hidden hand held the life-saving line. Paying it fine. Strength newly mine, Up till I drank once again Life's sweet wine Climbed I with grasp sure and steady. Ah, but the vision that met my glad eyes Held a surprise Reason denies; How many facts that our reason defies Seem to astound us made ready. For on the summit stood Pleasure, arrayed Not for the shade — Lest the tints fade; Splendor celestial about her displayed Made me exclaim in wide wonder. "Truly I led you," she said with a kiss, "Led you amiss. You who sought bliss All the while led you that you might seek this Summit where mortal hopes sunder. Deep in the gloom and the dead of the night Robbed of my sight. Crazed by my fright, Cried I aloft for a glimmer of light. Then and then only ascended. When men would follow, they needs must face Hell; Ah, I know well Hell's human spell — But if you climb to the heights where I dwell. Heaven and I, lo, are blended." 55 Mothering Souls A virgin mother suffers more than man Can ever comprehend. His mental span Is limited to cold experience — - To sense a soul his brain is far too dense. And yet to man the very synonym For agony is that which seems to him An unexplainable and mystic thing; To even his dull eyes her sorrows bring The tears of sympathy beyond control That steal unbid from out his inmost soul. The mother weighed in travail does but jest Beside the enciente Soul within whose breast Lies hope of unborn babe begot from God. Since men so little know where God has trod, More often they confound His greatest act With Satan's power, by all their creeds attacked. No earthly laws will ever legalize To earthless Soul a spouse beyond the skies. If they consort above the pale of sex A child, or man, or patriarch, who recks Of naught but that the Spirit broods above May bear on earth a god conceived of Love. Nor time nor place nor circumstance prevents The union of the Soul with Spirit; whence A second Christ in flesh or print or stone Shall burst Immaculate, whom God must own. The Spirit — whether He or She or It Forever wooes the Soul. Endearments flit Along the sea of ether, on whose waves Must navigate the human ere he braves And dominates at last the Boundless All. A million souls detect the whisper fall Wherein the Limitless conceals Its voice. Though every one if left to honest choice Would mate with Spirit only, still the fear Of men and laws and customs must appear — - An interloper snatching heart from heart. To keep our dear divinities apart. As lovers innocent of any wrong May twine their raptured forms, since both belong To one another and to Love, just so When sympathy and impulse freely flow The Spirit and the Soul commune as one; 56 And if they have not sadly learned to shun The soft caress of those who thrill akin, A babe is born. 'Tis God's — though men see sin. O, Soul, if such you be, whose longings yearn To mother all the Universe, then learn That in your Spirit Lover lies the strength To bear and buoy and cheer you any length Whereto your travail labors. God perceives Those law-abiding fools whose speech relieves Themselves of undue pressure on the brain. But God will not permit their curse to stain The nascent Christ that struggles while you groan And suffer in the night-time all alone. So bear you hard upon the Spirit's arm. Embraced thereby you nestle free from harm. If ever tears would blur your downcast eye Look on and up. And soon the Great Most High Shall smile upon you. Mother Soul, to crown Your pangs through wondrous Child of world-renown. ^5 A Flower Does the flower question whence it came? No more do I. Fragrance pours profuse to waft it fame That cannot die. Years may pass — and still the perfume clings To withered rose. Eons flit — and still my spirit sings Though flesh repose. 57 Two Views of Death A sloughing of a shrunken shell; A blasting of the hopes that dwell Within the human breast; A rending of these mortal ties By some fierce God beyond the skies, Whose ire is thus confessed; A memory that brands red-hot Our lives recorded blot by blot; An ashen-charred regret; A throttling clutch upon the throat; A band of leering fiends that gloat Their molten snares to set; A sigh — a moan — a gasp — a groan; A writhing anguish all alone With none to soothe the pain; A blinding flood of bitter tears To bury all that Life endears Beneath their torrents vain. A gaunt-eyed throng of weeping friends Who shriek as Fate's keen stroke descends And strive to stay the blow; A stillness as of endless sleep; A horde of famished worms that creep To wreak their crunching woe; A torment far too deep for speech In yawning Hell's relentless breach — Since thus the Preacher saith; A damning of a spirit lost On shoreless seas of brimstone tossed; — And this to inen is Death. A dofiing of an outgrown robe That clothed the Soul whose earth-abode Must house it for a time; A childlike slumber, painless, sweet. While just before rare visions greet And voice high Heaven's chime; A world 'tis best to do without And leave it to its dread and doubt — Its merely mortal mind; A mob of foolish persons bent On trickling tears of discontent Till all their views are blind; 5S A blasphemous black mourning rite While through a superhuman light Flits he for whom they mourn; A ceremony thick with shrouds While he is smiling through the clouds Of whom they think them shorn; Long prayers of penance for the dead; And tears upon his grave, long shed — The dead who lives, now first; — As wise to grieve for butterfly Which as a grub must seem to die Before its beauty burst; — A spirit crushed by mortal men. Whose nobleness surpassed their ken Expanded full at last; A lien on all Eternity; Horizon-hope whence one may see The Time-disfigured Past; A Soul unthralled and left to choose What next integument to use To compass swifter growth; A vast domain as free as air, Unflecked by fear or grief or care With minions never loath; An entrance into fuller Life Where Love for hate and Peace for strife Yields Happiness unmixed; Progression based on Heaven's hints With power to conquer Cosmos, since No destiny is fixed; A goal at which the sunrise quails, A couch by which the sunset pales, A splendor unforetold; Communion with those spirits who Attuned on earth their ear to you The Self of you to hold; A brotherhood of stars and suns Whose love supports the weaker ones Until the least grow great; A kingship with the Lord of All — Of winged host and worms that crawl; Full mastery of Fate; 59 The Heaven promised every race Upon this earth's full-featured face Condensed in one great joy; But all the crudities cut off Whereat men had a right to scoff — A Heaven without alloy; A power quelling ocean's storm And yet as light as rose's form And pure as lily's breath; Solution in a blossomed Soul For problems human buds enroll; — And this to God is Death, A Bit of Crepe A bit of crepe upon the door And nothing more; But oh the woe that lurks behind! To stab the heart and shroud the mind. Attacking hosts of humankind Whose tears outpour. A bit of hope within the heart; Then woes depart. The clouds that frowned across the sky Have rolled away. And from on high The heart of Heaven draweth night Whence sunbeams dart. A bit of love to light the soul; Let shadows roll As dense as forest wraithed in shade. Lo! even ere the shadow fade Some sunrise glory is displayed To clear the Whole. 60 Sunset on the River In a lovely land of hills Flows a stream whose life instils From its surging hillside rills Rapture — and with reason. For while night is settling low O'er the waters' mirrored flow. Sunset splendors come and go In the autumn season. Clear in placid pools there lie Blendings rich of earth and sky; Earth on shore and sun on high Meet in mystic mingling. Radiant hues of autumn leaf Nature's ripened golden sheaf Stretched in wondrous, rare relief. Thrill our senses tingling. Sunshine glints athwart the shade; Heaven's beauties are displayed Ere the suns of winter fade And the sad pines shiver. Vista vivid lends the stream Backward glow with onward gleam. Calm supernal, hope supreme — Sunset on the River. When the sun descends at last On my Soul's unruffled past, May the prospect be as vast. Shedding equal glory. May I rest as calm and clear; Thus reflect when night draws near Foregleams from a higher sphere O'er my life's pure story. 61 Love IS God A woman had taken a loaf from another, Not begging but stealing. The woman was penniless. She was a mother; About her were kneeling And starving and crying for one crust of bread Her gaunt, pinched children that must have lain dead But for this bare morsel. Since Law she defied Her sentence was lawful. Yet still her soul cri<^d; — "I loved them so dearly! The need of them nearly Put me in the sod. And is not Love God?" A virgin no longer a virgin lay weeping And throbbing and twinging. The man who had wooed her sweet body slunk creeping And halting and cringing. The world cried "Dishonored," condemning them both. Her father impanelling jurists on oath Declared it a crime for two lovers to love. Then Truth — my heart heard her — proclaimed from above;- "Blasphemers, cease blaming These lovers! enshaming Them scourged of Law's rod. Love truly is God." A soul so illumined it broke every fetter Whose cruelly binding Enshacklement crushed it; saw farther and better Relieved of creed's blinding. Expanding beyond the sectarian thrall. Its personal God was the Good in us all. But churchmen were shocked at this atheist's views. Expelled him from worship their Man-God might lose. "Ye churchlings debasing; In vain your effacing Of heights I have trod. I — loving, am God." 62 God in Sin A huge unsightly mass of blackness loomed Athwart the sky. So frowning that the children scarce presumed To pass it by. Through many weary months it grew and grew Though none saw how. The shroud upon its surface hid its view, Hid then— ^not now; For finally the work, declared complete Was all unveiled. Before the form mens' eyes were bid to greet Their dreams had paled; — A golden statute, smiling, wooing, stood Imbued with grace Revealing, when it shed its dismal hood, A human face. The children clapped their hands. They gathered near, Nor felt afraid — Since features like their own their foolish fear Had quite allayed. The veil called Sin encloses roundabout This human kind. Beholding but the pall cast on without, Our childish mind Would shudder at the shroud. And flee the sight That mortal men Despoil of good. But when exposed to light The likeness then Of God Himself shall burst upon our eyes. To God akin Some souls already — prematurely wise, See God in Sin. 63 Poets Piieons You call me a poet. Sometimes a faint gleam Of truth you discern through the rhyme you esteem. But ah you know not, nor ever can dream What anguish I suffer. My soul sobs asunder; So deep pinioned under Man's crass gilded plunder, I seem but a buffer Between a world struggling and shackles supreme. A bit of embellishment verbally wrought From out my heart's texture, with pangs dearly bought. You judge by its rhythm. The longings that sought Therein some expression You pass all unwitting. Mere phantoms they flitting Beyond your brows knitting But mark your confession That you cannot feel — as a free spirit ought. None knows but a poet, an artist, a bard. The sorrows that doom the race, griping it hard. The wounds fresh and bleeding, the wounds old and scarred, They cut the flesh tender Of humans to teach them Why woes must impeach them And ruin still reach them Their reason to render, Till men learn the causes of grief to regard. The waif in the gutter, — the king on his throne, The populace herding, — the hermit alone. The patriarch dying, — the babe yet ungrown. They all have their sorrow. But still they all share it With him who will bear it Unflinching, and wear it A shroud he must borrow — Vicarious sufferer — born to atone. The tiniest life in the world that feels pain Impresses my heart, nor impresses in vain. At times with the woes of the world sent insane 64 I rack me with sobbing. Sad sympathies crowding, Unkindnesses clouding. Forebodings enshrouding. Possess my brain throbbing And all of its energies sap till they drain. Ah, envy me not the ephemeral fame Attaching its wreath to a poet's brief name. If you were to suffer in measure the same Lo, fame would not flourish. No man Messianic But felt some Titanic Heart-throe. Some oceanic Grief -tide; whose depths nourish The frail plant of poesy, whence these blooms came. Stream and Source With laughing swirl and playful whirl And cataract resounding The storied Rhine delights to shine. Along its banks abounding Sweet verdure springs whose fragrance flings Far up and dov/n the valley; Till weary men are tempted then Within its realm to dally. The River Song just flows along As if 'twere born to babble Its brimming glee to you and me While by its brink we dabble. Yet first it flows whence no one knows Amid the Alpine mountains; A thousand brooks from lofty nooks Have swelled its ceaseless fountains. 4: 4: ^ 4: 4( That songful Soul whose deeds may roll For human fructifying Has hid alone on heights unknown Above all mortal spying. 65 The Flower of Woman's Lo<^e In a hothouse all protected Where surroundings were directed By the tender, wise attention of a floriculturist; Once a violet was growing Through his thoughtful care bestowing Such a gracious, sweet perfume upon the atmosphere she kissed. If there wandered hy a worry. All the garden in a flurry Just pulled to its glass enclosure, shutting interlopers out. Not a boisterous wind could harry Or a chilly hailstone tarry Where a home so providential reared its fortress roundabout. But the gardener once while making Extra haste, his care forsaking Left a cruel piece of timber lying on the violet. And the shadow crushed the flower Closer cringing hour by hour Till her heart lay cold and dying when the evening sun had set. In a woodland wild and lonely Where the forest monarchs only Were preserving haughty vigilance upon the rugged slope, There matured somewhat tardy Struggling with her neighbors hardy Still another little violet. But she must bravely grope Through a tangled mass forbidding. Where the weeds would fain be ridding Their uncouth and lawless conclaves from a presence chiding fair. So her angry neighbors bristled While the winds more ruthless whistled While the chilly blasts of Boreas thus flung their spiteful share Toward the flower's persecution. Every hour's revolution Seemed to fasten on her being still another cruel clutch. But the wondrous flower flourished. For a loving sunbeam nourished And empowered her to blossom by his sympathetic touch. There exists a budding fragrance In a spot where Nature's vagrance May not penetrate to rob it of its tender virgin heart. 66 In the bosom of a maiden By her mother-breasts o'erladen There abides a flower nascent — Woman's Love — that hides apart. You may place here where surrounding Tempest shocks are fierce resounding And the barren earth exhales a blighting poverty of growth; Or the struggle with her neighbors For the fruits of all her labors Would compel a stronger creature to forsake the battle, loath. Let the cruel blasts of sorrow Cloud the day and shroud the morrow; Let the Universe unite to crush the fragile flower's life; If you smile upon her — tender That is all she needs to lend her Such a superhuman sweetness as illumes a loving wife. A Rainbow Smile High in his chariot gleaming like gold Pompously proud and commanding Glories the Sun. But we cannot behold Splendors past our understanding. Gently unveiling her sweet laughing face Rare as a shy four-leaf clover, Glances the Rainbow. We haste to the place Wait till her last smile is over. Every-day cheer on the faces of men Lightens our way; still less sweetly As when the tears fall in torrents — and then Smiles come to banish completely. 67 Measure Me an Hour "Measure me an hour," I bade a tortoise sprawling Sluggish, churlish, sour. Where Earth's great tears are falling. Not the barest nod Vouchsafed the clumsy creature; Clammy as a clod Lay listless every feature. When the hour was past, I found the logy turtle Senseless — sleeping fast. A thousand storms might hurtle; Avalanches pour; The elements commingle; Cataclysms roar; And through all not a single Sound disturbs the brute, Inert, inane, inutile; Time's intense pursuit Falls short, forever futile. "Measure me an hour," I bade an ant whose eager Consciousness of power Would any sloth beleaguer. Straining every limb — Abristle with ambition — Cheery still, the glim Of joy illumes her mission. Scarce the tenth had sped Of this the hour expected When I saw ahead An army close collected; Ants of every size And strength and stride and muscle; Bearing each a prize For which the fiercest tussle Made the creatures groan — The weight was so oppressive. Proudly led alone My ant the host aggressive. Chronometric name 3y human computation Fixed both hours the same. 68 And yet complete cessation Marked the course of one — If acts be worth computing; While its span was run A life was but imbruting. Through the second space An army was advancing Swift from place to place, Its revenues enhancing. Figures on a clock Are fallacies deceiving With their clanging shock That toll the minutes leaving. Time is framed within The heart whose rare attaining Makes a mortal win In spite of dial's feigning. Renunciation The maid was wondrous fair in face and limb. And as he looked, her beauty thrilling him Sent passion surging like a tidal wave Throughout his frame — a wave he dared not brave. He looked again. He gasped. He hid his eyes. He pursed his pious lips — ah, he was wise — Renounced the carnal pulse. Renounce he must — Saint Anthony — himself he could not ti-ust. * * * * * A sinner passed, his soul so sensitive That every form of beauty seemed to give A pang of longing, that he might translate The passion of the souls that must create. He too discerned the maid. But stooping down He gently touched her cheek — her virtue's crown — Then whispered, "Dear, I love you far too well To press you close, and spoil your virgin's spell." 69 Love and tiie Lark A lark once flitted beside my door And I bade the lark come in; But though I beckoned her o'er and o'er She was none of my kind or kin. So I ceased my importuning quite And I looked the other way; When she sought my arm — this warbling wight- And settled as if to stay. The silver song from her crested throat Entranced my listening ear. While sped its melody far remote To burst on a distant sphere. Desirous then of possessing her I touched her tender wing. With a little flutter and frightened stir The birdling ceased to sing; Her voice with terror first grew hoarse. Then mute with fear and dread. Till back she flew on her airy course — Forever my longings fled. Oh Love is a lark with the sweetest song That ever a mortal heard; Yet you cannot sunwnon her till she long To sing as a soaring bird. And when she nestles your human heart 'Twere best to notice not, But just enjoy; while her songs impart Their thrill. Lest she leave the spot. 70 Through Psychic io Mystic My brain is another's Now foe's and now brother's But never my own for a set space of time; For through it are rushing And clashing and crushing The thoughts of the world that make me but a mime. The shadows that haunt me, The spectres that taunt me, The demons that leer with a lurid red eye. The fetters that thrall me. The fears that appall me; Belong to the train of some spirit swept by. He leaves them behind him — These objects that bind him. And flees while he frees his chilled flesh from their touch- But fleeing he leaves them For one who receives them Lethargic — though wild to escape from their clutch. What maddening devils Cavort in their revels Upon by brain feverish — bursting — on fire; My maudlin mind mooning And drooning and swooning Goes out as the gust of a futile desire. The graves of creation Entombing damnation Have lifted their lids till their stench turns me sick. With foulnessess streaking Their vapors rise reeking Of vices and villainies noisomely thick. On yon remote border Of civilized order A savage is roasting his prey at the stake; His victim is moaning And writhing and groaning In all his mad torture must I too partake. Beside me some neighbor Connives to shirk labor And drudges and drones with a hate in his heart; 71 His hate disconcerts me My courage deserts me His thought has impaled me — a venom-tipped dart. Above the thronged city I hover in pity In pity that men like wild cattle should herd. No less is my sorrow Lone countrymen borrow To see their souls stunted — too dead to be stirred. Sad spirits command me — Shall men understand me? Ah, never till men may transcend their mere brain. I live and die lonely. But if through me only One truth be revealed — I am racked not in vain. O, Soul! cease repining. The sun is still shining And Heaven — not Man — thrills response to your cry. Though lowlands be dreary, Love's summit is cheery; Leave spirits earth-shackled. Soar on to the sky. For shame to be blaming Thought-wanderers, claiming That you deserve pity since helpless — their prey Why, even the Devil A devil's own level Must seek. If above it, fear not — face the Day. Your senses are finer With God their Designer That you may approach and appreciate Him. For ears must hear keenly. And vision see cleanly. And heart respond wholly, while thrills frame and limb. Sad thoughts must forsake you When Love shall once make you Receptive to messages higher than Thought. For highest is Feeling; And Love's true revealing Thence dawns to the fullest degree you have sought. 72 The Mind has its valley Where languid souls dally And mourn for a bourne that still beckons beyond. Above this vale's shadow Invites Eldorado! Emerge into space — and of earth be less fond. Throughout countless ages The spirits of sages Have waited to minister swift to your need. Call them — not the ghastly Grim shades that throng vastly To block your strait path. With the prophets proceed. Beneath their weird croaking All spectres are cloaking A fear quite reciprocal, summing your own. Be bold and defy them; Their mask will belie them, And they shall flee fearful. And you reign alone. These psychic surroundings Are like to the soundings Men take to determine the tint of the sea. Though shallows be sullied By surface streams gullied The fathomless deep is as clear as can be. Love's ether, grown boundless And senseless and soundless Shall shelter no longer these breeders of ruth. Do mortals defame you? Yourself shall proclaim you Possessed not of demons — illumined of Truth. At last your own master Above earth's disaster, Above personalities, living or dead, Behold the Eternal With splendor supernal Shall brighten the path where your footsteps have bled. 73 Aborted The patient ass performs his irksome labor day by day Apparently content to drudge his tedious life away. But if the ass were made to sing — though singing be by far The easier, the brute could not conclude a single bar. The lark that flits among the trees was born to ceaseless song; Her melodies the sweetest, dearest memories prolong. But if the bird were harnessed, thus constrained to drag her load. Her silent struggles her eternal stillness would forebode. In Man there consummate the orders designated brute Whose salient traits through Man's innate Divinity transmute Their heavy, shaggy, wild, uncouthly unattractive mould. To trace, with dainty beauty, forms an angel might enfold. In every man some animal predominates. Its voice Should swell above the minor tones, proclaiming loud its choice Among the multitudinous vocations men have filled — With less success the readier its pleadings they have stilled. And yet where dwell the humans, undiscovered to themselves, The devils do the work of gods, and fairies that of elves. The sweetest songsters of the race are burdened as the ass; Those fragrant souls whose mission is to soothe you as you pass Are crushed and v/ithered hopelessly beneath the sultry sun. That glares relentless on the slave whose task is never done. Yet menials born to labor loll about in softest silk Though chafed distraught within the gauze that scarce befits their ilk. And so of all God's creatures, Man alone must grope confused Until he learns to sense his powers fatally misused. Perhaps in distant ages we shall seek in Nature's ways And glean the education whose objective truly pays. Rejoice — if you have found your message whose expression gives A Messianic motive to the meanest thing that lives. But — when you judge the flutterings of soul that may have erred, Remember then the tortures of a bound and baffled bird. 74 How tlie Dimple Grew A maiden once was weeping As maidens will you know — For in their mystic keeping Hold tears both weal and woe — When suddenly came stealing From no one knew just where, Its modesty concealing, A smile; so debonair That meeting tear first falling Athwart the maiden's face Its very touch enthralling Enclosed in soft embrace The drop of sorrow, grieving No longer o'er hopes dead. And lo, it vanished, leaving A dimple in its stead. If on your cheek bright beaming Whenever smile meets tear; A dimple be not gleaming — It's in your heart, My Dear. 75 The Illegitimaie Cliild Isolated, ostracized, barred from men's commingling; Hated, feared, shunned, despised; cut with curses tingling From the forked tongues of those mouthing in their blindness Angry calumnies and woes void of human kindness; Branded with a living shame; seared from birth by sorrow; Plundered even of the name none may buy or borrow; There it stands and shivers, shorn clean of all but being Fugitive to Death's bleak bourne; doomed by man's decreeing. Vagabond and outcast is the child illicit; Stone it — if you dare; hoot it, hound it, hiss it. Petted, fondled, crowned, adored, minions at his bidding Every obstacle untoward frantically ridding From the path of son and heir born in wedlock's cover, Life for him is passing fair, "angels" o'er him hover. And the future opens wide gates of gilded glory; For his mother was a bride. And the mouldy, hoary Fiat binding loveless twain twined about the baby Laws respectable and sane. If perchance they may be. Autocrat and princeling is the heir made legal; Bow the knee and render homage due the regal. Winds of Heaven, pregnant oft with the seeds of flowers. Dare you fructify aloft fields enciente with bowers? Birds, free nesting where you will, mating whomsoever Instinct authorizes, still old espousals never. Shall you not be stricken dead, chancery defying Save you make your marriage bed lawfully allying? Holy Ghost, in Mary's womb, did some priest permit you? Church's rite — not Virgin's bloom, for the Christ-child fit you? Parentage illegal — may lacking Law defame us; Liason illicit does lacking Love enshame us. n W/^ ihe Shell Skaiiers The seed within the ground though quite intact Lies dead Until its soaring Soul with longing racked Has shed The polished crust that cased the Soul at first. Some break Upon the even surface must have burst, To wake The sleeping germ to all the natal need That Life Instils within a growing thing. Indeed The strife "Twixt Soul and shell — when Souls do most advance. Cuts deep. It matters not. For Destiny — not Chance Shall heap Upon itself the circumstances which It wrests That they emerge whose deep resources rich God tests. What man has called Misfortune bruises oft The shell Wherein his Soul that stretches far aloft May dwell In infancy. Some circumstance abrades; Then he Bemoans the rended tomb whose figment shades Till free His stifled Soul. O foolish mortal mind! To grieve . When shackles shatter and the things that bind Relieve Their pressure with a sudden snap. For you — Your Soul — Perceived that if externals should accrue, The whole Of God would suffer — buried in the clay. And so You flung your man-afCections clean away — To grow. 77 A Revetsed Tl^eology They picture Hell a soundless pit Whose seething vengeance glows Where deep sequestered horrors flit Beneath a cold world's woes. While Heaven floats ethereal Enwrapped in holy haze Whose canopy empyreal Surpasses mortal gaze. There is no Heaven, neither Hell Save in the eye alone That visions deep, below the spell Of seeming star or stone. If forked lightnings play above. And storms revengeful rage Propelled by Hate and not by Love — Too fiendish to assuage; If clouds be dissipated clods And Matter all there be; The Power some blind Fate's — not God's So far as man can see; If solar spheres be framed and wrecked As churly chance may choose; If comets, mad, career unchecked Their freedom to abuse; If horrid harpies brood on high To vex a helpless man; — Then Hell all lurid lies awry Amid the heavens' span. If limpid waters flow along A grassy sun-lit shore. To murmur low their lapping song Of welcome to the roar Of Ocean's anthem swelling loud Surcharged with Primal Power And, conscious of It, justly proud To voice It, hour by hour; 78 If stones proclaim a sermon heard By inner senses true; If waving meadows lisp their word Of joyousness to you; If every tiny bursting bloom But throws its petals wide To compass more expanding room To shed the Love inside; If all the worms and weeds that grow As fellow-gods you greet; — Then Heaven stoops and lingers low Beneath your very feet. Lo<^e and Dul^ Love and Duty made a tryst. Duty came but Love he missed; Looked around, yet found her not Anywhere about the spot. Frowned and grumbled, stormed and raved, All her path with curses paved; Thus did Duty — surly he Since he loved not Love, you see. Love came late. And with her brought That whence Duty's grace she sought. "Duty dear, I saw a bird Flutter, wounded. Feebly stirred This her body racked with pain. 'Help!' she cried. Nor cried in vain. So I stopped to bind her wing. See! The bird begins to sing." "Take your whole bird-business back," Snapped stern Duty. "You must lack Common sense and honor too. Kept me waiting overdue While you patched your piping ward. Leave — henceforth to slink abhorred." Love and Duty parted then. Nor have they been friends again. 79 Bohemia Beckons Men compose songs to their place of nativity. Humans seem mostly addicted to odes Bearing the stamp of an inborn proclivity Thus to exalt their primeval abodes. Ever intent on a shelter locational, Hymning their home in a congregant host. Wholly forget they that love inspirational Functions unfettered the freest and most. Songs patriotic that win popularity Lauding sequestered some single small place Swiftly disintegrate that solidarity Said to inhere in the whole human race. Love men cannot when the heart is attaching it Solely and blindly to circumscribed spot; For when Fate seizes the home, roughly snatching it. Love evanesces. And such love loves not. Am I then homeless and friendless and motherless? Have I no heath where my spirit may cling? Orphan not only, but sisterless, brotherless. Envious thus, other homes hate to sing? Homeless I am, yet acknowledge not friendlessness;— Friends dear to me loose forever home ties; Neither such freedom, affection or endlessness Offers a home where home selfishness lies. Freeing my spirit, with nothing to fetter it Shaking the shackles of family pride. Seeking the Love Universal to better it. Out from my home henceforth homeless I stride. Child of the Universe, let me be sundering All the relationships binding a man, Since from my Soul proclamation is thundering; — "Dwell in Bohemia! Dwell there who can." Negligent, tolerant, careless Bohemia, Home of the spirit and not of the flesh, None of the listlessness there — the anaemia Lining the folds of the home's narrow mesh. None of the duty, the duty traditional Husbands and wives are constrained to obey Blights the affections ere Love grow fruitonal; Blights them with custom, with honor, with pay. Hours and minutes that clang their recessional Ever receding with us looking back, 80 Clanging the knell of a future progressional, Keeping the mind on a sun-dial's rack; Human opinions that mob men unreasoning — Thoughts of externals, chill shudders at fate — Undulant, sinuous, plotting their treasoning Burrowing under the mortal mind's gate^ Creeds, superstitions, all racial rule rigorous; Loyalty, pride, bonds of caste and of sex; Usages taut, with a stretch over-vigorous Drawn o'er a race that appearance most checks; Claims of outsiders that probe superficially Into a life which the heart alone knows; Penalties, prisons and threats flung judicially At the poor soul that must sin as it grows; Hedgings and harpings and houndings whose haltering Puts a man's neck in the noose of the mind Keeps his heart trembling and dreading and faltering Lest the noose tighten and death round him wind; All these encumbrances humanly harrowing Whence a free spirit derives its brief care; All the strait tendencies humanly narrowing; — These in Bohemia fade into air. Genius takes genesis when Freedom beckons it Out from the rut and the rule of the throng; Genius finds exodus when the world reckons it Solely a singer because of its song. Here in Bohemia, Genius full-flowering Bursts into bloom as a bud in the spring — Forth from the depths of it leaps the empowering Message this soul was just sent here to bring. Talents untouched by the termagants dragging them Through education that draws nothing out Here are expanded. And grow, with none flagging them Greenish with envy or blackish with doubt. "Be but yourself!" is the slogan awaking us Softly and gently, but mightily too Up to the eminence whence we betaking us Face the sun fairly — and dare to be true. Back in a country where shepherds were tethering Closely and carefully flocks feeding near, Lived once a Man who evaded the heathering, Homing and haunting of spots that endear. Though the few friends that He had were all pressing Him Somewhere to settle — and best in their home, •1 still He refused them. The Spirit kept blessing Him Only so long as He lonely should roam. Wife He knew not. And the children He favored most All were begotten by some stranger sire; For He knew well that a family savored most Strongly of duty — and not of desire. Speak I with reverence moved by sincerity When I declare that the Christ lived as I; Free to unfold with a facile celerity In a Bohemia founded on High. A Fledgeling Flulters When a birdling nesting Its powers testing Attempts to fly, with a flutter wild; The mother-bird hovers And lovingly covers The unformed wings of her restless child. The little one knowing It still is growing Then trusts the mother and lies content. Its wings maturing Shall soon be assuring The promise kept of delay well spent. When I, grown restless, Would fain be nestless And toss my flightless wings about; The God-Mother, wiser Than child who defies Her, Just presses me back ere I venture out. I trust completely, I sink back sweetly. Await the wings that must slowly grow. Till at last endowered As She, full-powered, I shall soar with the gods. Not trust — but know. S2 Finding the Focus Let a little baby point a telescope At the sun Scanning with his feeble gaze the stellar slope Bare eyes shun. If perchance the focus fit his tiny sight He may see; But if not, the solar beam celestial bright Blurred must be. Then the peevish infant blames the sun that hides; Dull of wit Breaks the glass wherein his impotence abides, Bit by bit. You — a baby soul, direct your glass toward Truth. Truth is blurred — Ignorance, and trembling hold, and fitful youth. These have erred. When the hand of Knowledge sets the focus true As it will. Skilled to blend the Light peculiarly for you; Patient still Since you trust the staunch support that Faith supplies Always best; Then shall Truth reveal her splendors where your eyes Peaceful rest. 83 The Place Auspicious There exists in God's Creation Some spot where a man may brood And bend with a just elation Success from his every mood. Does he long to span the heavens With achievements unsurpassed? 'Tis the mountain's breath that leavens The hopes that attain at last. Does he weary of his striving And yearn for a place of rest Remote from his mad contriving? Then the ocean lulls the best. Once God had a busy hour And a time for tranquil joys; So He clothed the hills with His Power, But the sea with His peerless Poise. S4 A Surcliarged Flood A mountain gorge was dammed across by sticks Which lads would fix To hold the leaping cataract, whose flow Restrained below Accomodates their play. The bashful ooze Its force must lose When dabbled in and sailed with chips upon. Asparkle shone Their eyes short-sighted. Every rivulet Whose moisture wet Their eager touch, appeared as if they owned. They them enthroned, Proud masters of the sea. Exalted they Their dam of clay So lofty that they clean forget the surge Whose rise must urge Impetuous, resistless as the tide; — And then deride All artificial walls. Too late to flee Amazed they see A raging torrent sweeping down the slope. It gulfs their hope And them together buffeted and bruised. Since they misused. Despised, diminished stream and source, its path Exhales its wrath. My restless Soul a sea of power roars And ceaseless pours Its mighty volume hard against the dam Whose fragile sham Decaying barricade men dared to build. At last, flood-filled The barriers grown impotent shall snap. I hope mayhap Yon loiterers have seen Me surge sublime In tardy time To make their wild escape. But oh, if not I can but blot Their slight, obstructing forms to nothingness. WSiile I progress. as God Only I wandered one day where the masters had hung The works of their prime. And men in admiring multitudes sung Their genius sublime. Unmoved by the technical torsions of Art I stood in my loneliness, silent, apart. Could daubs from a palette find place in my heart? Why, I have seen God! I sat in my pew while the organ's grand peal Poured forth into song, Whose echoes aroused an ephemeral zeal In hearts of the throng. One note in a thousand gave me scare a thrill. Can organ and organist's harmonies fill This heart with their rapture? Though voices be still My heart yet hears God. I scanned the great books of the sages, piled high On library shelves. Inscribed by the learned, adept to espy All themes save themselves. Their facts and their figures, — their logical claims. Their quibbles and quarrels, — their titular names Repelled me aghast at such lore as defames A mind that spans God. I kissed a pure maiden with reverent touch — A lover's caress. For I was a youth, and a maiden meant much I could but confess. Then suddenly shot from the sky a great Light, In letters of gold that shone clear through the night This vision indelible burned my sad sight; — "Thou wooest? Woo God." Proceed in your tiny attempts to portray The Infinite Soul. Sing on with a voice like a Lorelei lay — Let melodies roll. Though pleasures be thick as the sands by the sea They pass unmolested the spirit of Me. Prime heir to the raptures of souls that be free This soul knows its God. 86 ''Abandoned'* The sun had left them to themselves. And as the stars came out They nestled closer — lovers true. The daylight of their doubt That but disclosed the wizened form of surface things of men Had vanished since the darkness helped them sense their souls. For when Two lovers let themselves forget The sterile standards men have set, Then God enfolds them with a love no man has measured yet. From every tender touch where'er her lover's hands had strayed A thrill had quivered through her. All his soft caresses made The maiden's inborn touch motherhood leap up in mighty throbs Until her virgin passion's longing swayed her with its sobs. And then the God of him and her. Too pure to sin — too wise to err Just mated as the birds, nor thought whose blame It might incur. When they awoke, from out the dream of Love's forgetful bliss A flower blossomed where the two had met — and left a kiss. Though formed in wondrous beauty, still the little human bud Was flung beneath the heel of men, and trampled in the mud. "Abandoned woman," cried the world. As on the child its curses hurled An odium that blasts that over which its scorn has curled. Amid an equal solitude, to worlds both deaf and dumb An artist clasped a spirit-form. He prayed, "Creator, come!" "Oh Mother Inspiration, bear a child of brain and heart V/hose message to the souls of men shall be of God — apart." His prayer came true. Upon the child Vv^as heaped men's adulation wild; This child reposed in marble — only flesh can be defiled. Then God looked down. And God was wroth. And God said, "Stay in Hell, O evil-minded world. Nor ever hope in bliss to dwell So long as you blaspheme the sacred stream of Love whose course Winds in and out of Heaven, with Abandonment its source. Abandoned must the lover be. As thoughtlessly abandoned he Who weds the Spirit. Genius, Love — and God must all be free." 87 W/^ete Dwells ike Sanlit Soul You may dream of your quaint old Swiss chalet With its edelweiss adorning, Where a tangent Sun prolongs the day- Through a lustrous, white-limned morning; You may laud the castle that Briton bold Has built with the wealth accruing From his lieges robbed and chattels sold For his ultimate undoing; You may hymn sweet odes to the Fatherland Deep loyalty professing — And the tender touch of your Gretchen's hand Keeps time, with its caressing; You may choose your home beneath the flag Of Freedom gaily waving. While the masses in its shadow drag To a close their sullen slaving; You may bind your love to any spot In earth or heavens lying; And you cramp the Soul, that narrows not To a planet doomed and dying. For the North and South and East and West Of the heart's congenial dwelling Abide beyond the compass' test. In a world whose music swelling No human ear can ever sense Nor human eye the gleaming Of glorious visions, rising whence The Real belies the Seeming. For the hills of Hope are an Eastern slope Whose sun is always smiling; But the vale of Fear spans a darkness drear Where the West its night is whiling; And the chill of Hate blows a North-cold fate That blights the soul unfolding; While the breath of Love from realms above Is the South wind's blessing holding. You may house your body in Afric's plain Or an Iceland hut's enclosure; But the Sun of your Soul shall never wane In its own South-East exposure. Life's Husbandman A husbandman of harvests, wise, minutely provident and skilled Selects the fairest, choicest seed To fructify his special need. Commits it then to soil that yields the most and best for being tilled. But first he plows a furrow where before the barren earth had hid Beneath her sterile surface deep Her fruitful womb that lay asleep Until aroused by seed whose touch her motherhood shall softly bid. To right or left the plowman glances not. He fixes straight ahead His keenly unremitting gaze. And, lest he stray in crooked ways. He views some distant object with a near. Thus true his course is led. A husbandman of Life, within my brain I guard a thousand kinds Of thoughts, that quickly germinate And harvests like themselves create When once they fall upon the fields of Cosmic or atomic minds. I sift and sift and sift again the germ-potentials in my Thought To choose and use the very best — Forgot, let Time inter the rest; And then I find the spot on earth for just this seed with promise fraught. I dig my tedious furrow, caring not what loiterers may say; The parched earth may burn my feet; The long, hard toil may seem ill mete To satisfy a husbandman with aching limbs at close of day. But still I persevere. For two bright points allure me on and on. A great Ideal beckons me Beyond the Real mortals see. My harvest shall appear, when long enough the S'j.:i of Truth has shone. 89 Tlie Unfinislied Portzait A crude and formless mass of color lies Upon a canvas, while the artist rests. Design is lacking. There is none so wise As but to hazard what the daub suggests. Grotesquely purposeless the spots appear As if the painter, whelmed in sudden rage. Had flung his implements with folly sheer Where ruin greatest might his wrath assuage. The palette too is utterly devoid Of any slightest touch denoting Art. Its surface everywhere is queerly cloyed With tints prepared to blend, yet left apart. Are blotches spattered here and there the sign Of that peculiar temperamental gift Whose tracings pencil concepts most divine? We question thus, the mystery to sift And ponder deeply, till the man returns Whose recklessness where colors are involved Apparently our condemnation earns. But speedily the culprit is absolved; For lo, a few swift strokes from magic brush Descending here and there with deftest grace Disclose a face illumed with beauty's blush That seems to light the whole surrounding place. The artist puts together tones and shades From off a palette any man may find; But previous to tint that blurs and fades — He blends the form ideal in his mind. If God the Master Artist now and then Must rest and leave a little while the Plan Whereat He labors long, perfecting men. Shall humans with their lesser judgment scan The portrait still unfinished — then despise Both it and Him who paints it? Let us wait; Believing not our grossly holden eyes. Until the final stroke descend from Fate. For though my beauty lie potential yet Promiscuous upon a palette's shelf. The Infinite enjoins me not to fret — He paints the while an Image of Himself! 90 Blind Deity Prays I prayed for Fame and a laurel wreath, A budding diadem beneath, A magic wand in a fairy sheath; To ease my lot. I asked that purbind word should see What merit might abide in me; But God said, "Fame is not for thee." So Fame came not. I prayed for Power and a mighty hand To sway whole worlds at my command And marshal many an eager band Success to seek; But God said, "Prayers do but confuse Save thou art competent to use The boons thy foolish heart would choose." I still lay weak. I prayed for Wealth and a countless hoard To buy me circumstances toward From vast accumulations stored To back my bond; But God said, "Tempt not thus thy fate. Until thou hast some purpose great Mere riches scant could compensate." Wealth gleamed beyond. I prayed for Beauty — that sweet grace Which hallows every winsome face And makes, where'er its homing-place, Glad smiles abound; But God said, "Thoughtless thou hast sought What never has been loaned or bought. True Beauty from the Soul is wrought." My mirror frowned. Disheartened then I ceased from prayer To find my one and constant care A quest for Love. Searched everywhere — Both cloud and clod. And then a wondrous joy possessed My being. For at my behest The prayers were answered, each thrice-blest; Since I was God! 91 My Infinite Self In tune with every lark's unsullied song; With disembodied spirits as they throng; With harps of angels thrilled the air along; I sing pure Me. The mind of Me has purged within its ken What things may seem impure to blinded men. For I have sifted sins, and yet again; No taint bear we. Within the flower whose fragrance stintless flows; Within the grain that flaunts its luscious rows; Within the maiden's cheek which bards disclose; I sense sweet Me. The heart of Me pours forth its perfume rare So lavish that the passer-by may share Its fragrance hanging heavy on the air At Love's decree. Behind the hugely whirling cataract; Behind the fierce tornado's wasting tact; Behind the dread volcano, passion-racked; I sway strong Me. The might of Me in all its cosmic dower Restrains itself, though cataclysms shower. It fears to show a fraction of its power. Lest men should flee. Below the fens and bogs and black morass; Below the viprous haunts our shudders pass; Below the bowels of the earth so crass; I sound deep Me. The brain of Me has force to penetrate The deepest problems of the nascent great; And wrest thenceforth proud mastery of Fate, Whate'er Fate be. Above the clouds that lift their dreamy haze; Above the stars that bend their earnest gaze; Above the zenith of the solar blaze; I vaunt high Me. The Soul of Me transcends this realm of clay And soars to where the light of endless day Illumines them who to the Earthless pray; From worlds set free. 92 Beyond the ocean's far horizon dim; Beyond the setting sun's departing glim; Beyond the limits we ascribe to Him; I spread vast Me. The scope of Me is boundless, soundless, grand. No being save my Soul vouchsafes command. What distance Omnipresence may have spanned My eye can see. Before the hills had heaped their bulging brow; Before the waters might their banks endow; Before the birth of Time's immortal Now; I trace prime Me. The seed of Me — the Spirit's formless seed. Existed in the hope that moulds the deed A million years ere sprang this human breed As he and she. Throughout the Manifest that men discern; Throughout the Ether earthy mortals spurn; Throughout the Love whence mind and matter turn; I laud Lord Me. For I alone, the One Eternal I, Both clot the clod and dome the cloud-flecked sky. And thus at last the lowly with the high In Me agree. Fot the Song's Own Sake The Lark will warble sweetly whether humans hear or not To echo back a bird's unbounded joy; The Rose will waft its fragrance to the drearest desert spot Where none may melt its breath to perfume coy. My Soul must sing. I care not whether men applaud the song Or even sense it light on heavy ears; My Heart must love. And if it cannot touch the human throng 'Twill spend itself upon the distant spheres. 93 A Tottering Tripod To build the creaking timbers of the place that we call home In some deep dell To treasure well The trinkets 'neath its dome; Forgetting that the Infinite of which we form a part Pervades all Space, Too vast for Place — That narrows mind and heart; — To twine our brief affections with a close tenacious grasp That cares for naught Save object sought — Some selfish human clasp; And then when personality falls off — a shell outgrown To sob and sigh That friends must die And we be left alone; — To measure Life and its success by Time's short-sighted span; To call Fate hard If she retard The making of a man; And yet one thought, embosomed in the Limitless may lie A thousand years Ere it appears To such as you and I; — To stand in fine upon this tripod tottering and frail Of Person, Place, And Time's scant grace; Then tremblingly to quail When each support decays and falls, as finally it must; — This makes a worm That creeps infirm And crumbles back to dust. To dwell unwalled, forever free amid the suns and stars; To stand unmoved Till Time has proved The wisdom of her scars; To sense the Soul within the shell, to tear the mask from Death; And know that Life Transcends the strife Of fleeting human breath; 94 To give unstintingly one's best — all careless of result — And whether gain Be vast or vain. Supremely to exult; To love the Universe as one that human touch endears;- This makes a god That shall have trod The circuit of the spheres. The First Dream A billion years ago And then a billion more Before the flux and flow On ocean's rock-bound shore. Ere suns began to rise Or stars presumed to shine; I owned the unformed skies— The Universe was Mine. And then I dreamed a dream Amid My loneliness; I saw the splendid gleam Of suns I should possess. The hum of world on world. The prattle too of man, As solar cycles whirled Their orbits, span on span. Though nothing had appeared As yet to warrant Me To hope My vision weird Would ever surely be. My hope still rose supreme I knew no lack nor need — For Chaos was the dream And Cosmos is the deed. 95 / Am That I Am You a human fill your mortal mind Plethoric with facts you strain to find, Heaping them within a mental rut Darkening the sides whereof o'erjut But — I the Mindless, Universal Consciousness need not Learning, reason, all the brain that men to them have got. Men teach fact — I but act Men would kneel — I would feel Men must ask — I unmask Through the endless cycles I have marked Me every spot. You bestow your liking here and there Making residence your crucial care; Banished from your heath you pine and fret On location all your longing set Yet — I, the All in All, the great I Am pervading space Hide Me in the coarsest clod as in the flower's grace. Friend and Foe — Joy and Woe Smile and Tear — Hope and Fear Peace and Strife — Death and Life I abide the Soul of these, no matter what their face. You must manufacture great machines Even thence Achievement scantly gleans; You before the product of your skill Wax distraught till Time its measure fill Still — I the Deathless, I the Birthless, I the Changeless stand: Planets melt and worlds dissolve in dust at My command. Babes are born — homes left lorn Fortunes gripped — beggars stripped Kingdoms owned — kings dethroned Mist is matter, matter mist, beneath My Cosmic Hand. Mortal, bind you not with human chains; Free your Soul from human wants and pains; Picture you as pure as sunset tints. See yourself reflected in their glints Since — I am You and You are I. Together we evolved; 96 Both from Formless Unity and back must be resolved. Flee men's din — look within. Just be You — boldly true. Then and thus — deep in Us Omniscience, Omnipresence and Omnipotence are solved. When the day is disappearing And the shades of Night are nearing And the distant hills are rearing Their retreats of rest; From the fragrant breezes thrilling All my soul with rapture filling I recall the hour stilling That I love the best. When the bells a-tinkle chiming At the homing Twilight-timing Tell the kine are slowly climbing From the grass-clothed vale. Then my spirit likewise soaring Hears a chime whose swell outpouring Keeps my quickened heart adoring With its echo frail. As the lads and maids returning From their toil, I too am learning That my brain must cease from earning Its relentless wage. Let my senses sinking, sleeping Trust the airy spirits sweeping Whence the angels, kindly keeping Guard the day's new page. Down beside the listening willows Spreads the pool its placid pillows Where its long-forgotten billows Used to lash the deep. There the water-lily lying Proves how futile is my sighing For the things whose ebb is dying Ere the hour for sleep. 97 Though the mountain, mystic looming Stands in peace forever dooming Transient fears whose vain presuming Makes a man lose heart; Firmer yet am I, abiding Evermore to offer hiding For the soul that comes confiding, Seeks a place apart. Through the turmoil and collision Of the Day I see a vision Where a prospect Paradisian Wooes the soul to peace. Through the silence and oppression Of the Midnight's retrogression Still that hour's clear confession Bids forebodings cease. Human strife and human straining For a profitless attaining Must subside upon the waning Of the sun's bright ray; For when once we cease to see them — Earthy objects — we shall flee them. From our earthless spirits free them. Things that thrall by day- Make a truce with blind Ambition! Let the Soul's more sane fruition Prove once more a human's mission On this earth below. Rest awhile among the flowers Through the wondrous dreamy hours Of the Twilight, that empowers More than mortals know. Yet more dear than Nature's wooing More intent than shades' pursuing More sublime than gods' imbuing Comes a dream of one Whose perfection sums Creation. By her side my Soul's elation Marks a great illumination Brighter than the sun. 98 If no reason e'er existed For my sympathies enlisted Save that you and I had trysted In the Twilight calm; Still should I with tributes ringing: To the hour of spirits winging Find my Soul the sweeter singing All of Life's glad psalm. Hand in hand, my Sweetheart, roaming Through the tender, peaceful gloaming. This, Dear Love, is all the homing That my spirit needs. What is sleep — with your embracing? Love's oblivion effacing Spreads a veil with magic lacing Whence new life proceeds. Can an angel's evening blessing Bring the thrill of your caressing Which in transport I possessing Quiver through and through? Is the hope of Heaven higher Than the sum of my desire That whatever you require I may be to you? Can the Twilight's soft descending Be more sweet than two souls blending While together homeward wending To the realm of Love? Sweetheart Mine, your loving taught me When thus heavenward it caught me More than Twilight ever brought me; More of things above. L.ofa 99 A Beacon to Eternity Upon a barren island stands To light aloft the distant lands A spiral tower that commands A clean horizon-vision. But all its base lies drear and dark; Where tiny creatures cold and stark Permit their corpses' wake to mark A cruel tide's collision. Far out along the trackless deep Whose midnight storms relentless sweep 'Tis there the lights their vigil keep The jagged reefs defying. Once perished full a thousand men In total outer darkness, when The Lighthouse held within its ken The creatures near it dying. Along the distant line I loom. Beside me creatures meet their doom; I see them not — the outer gloom With wilder moaning beckons. I light the shoreless, soundless Sea That humans call Eternity. And that is why the Soul of Me No mortal ever reckons. 100 OCT 16 Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide Treatment Date: Oct. 2009 PreservationTechnologies A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATION 111 Thomson Park Drive Cranberrv Townshin PA 1 anRR UDMAHY OF CONGRESS 018 392 166 6 '^^J