(toss ~PS35~Q / 
 
 Book .1 ,418 (EH 
 
 Copyright^ L__ 
 
 COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 
 
ODES ON THE 
 GENERATIONS OF MAN 
 
ODES ON THE 
 GENERATIONS OF MAN 
 
 BY 
 
 HARTLEY BURR ALEXANDER 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 "Poetry and The Individual" and 
 " The Mid-Earth Life." 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY 
 
 MCMX 
 

 Wo 
 
 Copyright, 1910, by 
 THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY 
 
 Published, January, 1910 
 
 THE PREMIER PRESS 
 NEW YORK 
 
 (gGLA256 
 
TO HUBERT GRIGGS ALEXANDER 
 BORN DECEMBER 8, 1909, HIS 
 FATHER INSCRIBES THESE ODES 
 
PUBLISHERS' NOTE 
 
 The publishers beg to acknowledge the 
 courtesy of Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons for 
 permission to reprint the lines from "Tiamat" 
 to be found on page 107, and also of Messrs. 
 Longmans, Green & Co. for permission to re- 
 print the lines on page no from Gilbert 
 Murray's translation of " The Choral Prayer " 
 from Euripides. 
 
OF THE POEM: 
 
 A poem, like a musical composition, is sus- 
 ceptible of varying interpretations according to 
 the tempo and expression in which it is ren- 
 dered. For the more regular poetic structures 
 the rendering that answers to the author's 
 mood may be expected to be obvious; but for 
 a complex and varied poem, especially the ode 
 in irregular strophes, the effective reading is 
 often to be obtained only as a result of study. 
 It has seemed, therefore, worth while (follow- 
 ing worthy precedent) to aid the interpretation 
 of the present composition by giving, for each 
 division, indications of tempo and expression 
 such as are customary in music. 
 
 Of the poem's nine divisions the first and the 
 last are Prelude and Postlude, — the purpose of 
 the former being to establish the perspective of 
 the composition, of the latter to return to this 
 perspective with the enhanced insight gained 
 from the intervening themes. The Odes fall 
 into three groups, broken by two Interludes. 
 
 [9] 
 
OF THE POEM 
 
 In the first group, the Prelude leads into Ode 
 I, which, moving with a marked crescendo to 
 an abrupt retard, is an interpretation of man's 
 evolutional genesis, while Ode II, slow and 
 poignant, interprets his ideal evolution. The 
 Interlude which follows is an antiphony of 
 voices, with a certain skyey note, as it were on 
 a plane above, less moved and more reflective 
 than the Odes and having something of the 
 broad perspective of the Prelude. In the sec- 
 ond group, Ode III resumes the material devel- 
 opment of man, sinking, through three changes, 
 from the rapid history of the inaugural almost 
 to quiescence in the final theme, — a quiescence 
 preparing for the slowest movement of all, the 
 vision of Ode IV. On the pause that should 
 follow, the Dithyrambic Interlude breaks im- 
 petuously with a sharp iteration of the ideal 
 values of life, and again as from a plane re- 
 moved. The third group is formed of the last 
 of the Odes, deliberate, reflective, and for the 
 most part elegiac in tone, gathering reminis- 
 cently broken motifs of the preceding divisions, 
 but in its final strophe prophetic of the en- 
 hanced insight of the immediate Postlude. 
 
SYNOPSIS 
 
 I 
 Prelude : Largo 
 
 Earth! 'Twixt sky and sky wide spun. 
 
 II 
 
 Ode I: Andante fiorito 
 
 In strange tropic forests he awoke. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Ode II: Adagio pugnente 
 
 Strange prayers ascending up to God. 
 
 IV 
 
 Antiphonal Interlude: Allegretto misterioso 
 
 O'er quiet prairies swept tumultuous winds. 
 
 V 
 
 Ode III: Andante maestoso 
 
 Of blood and dreams are built the towns of men. 
 
 [13] 
 
SYNOPSIS 
 
 VI 
 
 Ode IV: Grave 
 
 I had a vision of the King of Pain. 
 
 VII 
 
 Dithyrambic Interlude I Allegro appassionato 
 
 Awake! For the white-pillared porches 
 Of dawn are flung open to day! 
 
 VIII 
 Ode V: Adagio elegiaco 
 
 There comes a kind of quieting with years. 
 
 IX 
 Postlude : Largo 
 
 Earth ! Thou wert his Mother. 
 
 [14] 
 
PRELUDE 
 
 Earth! 'Twixt sky and sky wide spun 
 
I 
 
 Largo 
 
 Earth! 
 'Twixt sky and sky wide spun, 
 The blue sky of the sun, 
 The black abyss 
 Of night and silence blent 
 Where to their slow extinguishment 
 Fall fated stars and the still years miss 
 All measurement : 
 
 Earth! 
 Ancient of our days, 
 
 Our life's great mother and of our mortal ways 
 High matriarch, 
 What destiny shall be 
 Beyond thy bournes — or visionry 
 Glad in phantasmic splendors or a stark 
 And wakeless rest 
 Sconced in thy stony breast, — 
 What dooming makes or mars 
 [17] 
 
ODES 
 
 Beyond mortality, 
 
 Is given us to see 
 
 But as we read aright 
 
 Writ in our mid-earth life the mighty geste 
 
 Of Nature, but as we guess the plan 
 
 That wrought the mind of man 
 
 And gave him sight 
 
 Potent to gauge the pathways of the stars! 
 
 [18] 
 
ODE I 
 
 In strange tropic forests he awoke 
 
II 
 
 Andante fiorito 
 In strange tropic forests he awoke 
 From the long brute dream : 
 In strange tropic forests that did teem 
 With golden insects and bright-plumaged birds, 
 With gliding serpents and the myriad herds 
 Of eldritch things that crawl within the dusk: 
 All odorous the air of myrrh and musk, 
 And cloying honeys, camphors, fennels dense, 
 Prickle and pungence mingling with incense 
 Of opiate decay: 
 While all the throbbing day 
 The warm forestways did thrill 
 With singing sound — with murmurous hum 
 Of bees, and buzz and drone and drum 
 Of slim metallic wings insatiate, 
 Flutings of locusts and soft-throated trill 
 Of slow reptilians calling mate to mate: 
 Aloft, scarce quivered by the torpid breeze, 
 [21] 
 
ODES 
 
 Swung leafy banners, and mightily the trees 
 Were girt with climbing seekers of the sun : 
 Below, the speckling shadows spun 
 Their lazy meshes, and drowsily did play 
 O'er a sleek panther crouched to stalk the prey 
 That timorously advanced that fatal way. 
 
 In strange tropic forests, he, the Brute, 
 
 Dreaming became the Dreamer. . . From their 
 
 ease 
 He stirred his mighty limbs, roused him from 
 
 rest, 
 Reared upright in his leafy crest, 
 
 And long and mute 
 
 He gazed afar where his troubled vision caught 
 
 Glint of the wide sea luring through the trees. 
 
 Was it a touch unseen 
 
 Of the Moulder's hand that swift and keen 
 
 Struck to the misty depths of his forming mind 
 
 Vague premonition of a human kind 
 
 To spring from his being? Growth 
 
 [22] 
 
ODES 
 
 In its pang of promise rousing him from sloth 
 
 Of brute life? Sudden thrill 
 
 Of an age-old blood working its final will? 
 
 From his lips there broke 
 
 A man-like cry. 
 
 The startled echo sought 
 
 New answer and new answer spoke; 
 
 And all the myriad listeners in their lairs 
 
 Stood guard, and their myriad pairs 
 
 Of gleaming eyes kept vigil, while bodingly 
 
 The high heart beat with a fear untaught. 
 
 Then the swift wings brushed 
 Through sibilant leafage, and with sudden stir 
 From reedy depths rose angry hiss and burr, 
 And far and near began 
 A hasting of the forest-dwellers' clan 
 And rustling flight, as if portentous word 
 The hidden hosts impulsively had stirred 
 With direful message ominous of Man. 
 [23] 
 
ODES 
 
 The strutting cock drooped low his spreading 
 plumes 
 
 And babbled plaintive warning to his mate; 
 
 The parrakeets slunk silent where the glooms 
 
 Of tropic fronds might hide their burnished 
 state ; 
 
 The chattering monkeys scampered far aloft 
 
 Swinging in panic huddle tree to tree, 
 
 And demonlike from out his hidden croft 
 
 The vampire dashed in blinded errancy; 
 
 White-bearded lemurs, furtive in their nests, 
 
 Betrayed their spectral faces to the day; 
 
 And sluggish serpents reared their glittering 
 crests 
 
 Up from the humid mold with sinuous sway — 
 
 Hiss reechoing hiss as all their evil kind 
 
 Startled to dim forewarning of its foe 
 
 Fanged fierce defiance to the conquering Mind, 
 
 God-demon to the beasts that crawl below. 
 
 God-demon to the beasts from whence he 
 sprung 
 
 [2 4 ] 
 
ODES 
 
 Into the life of Dreamer dreaming free 
 Out of the Old the New — bright worlds to be 
 From every world created, deep among 
 The farther stars yet farther burning clear, 
 High sun outshining sun in every sky, — 
 Till glamour flashes glamour on his eye, 
 And summons rouses summons in his ear, 
 And purpose waking purpose breeds the skill 
 To find the ways of Nature and to bend 
 Her laws to his design, to his her end, 
 And Destinies are humbled to his Will! 
 
 He swung 
 
 Balanced with muscled ease — 
 Courser of the spaceways of the trees — 
 Tawn against the sky, insouciant 
 To all his nether realm's monstrosity 
 Of nutrient decay and fruitful leprosy: 
 Fat livid growths and starvelings gaunt 
 Mingling the breath 
 Of noisome life with murk of death 
 [25] 
 
ODES 
 
 In the black loins of forest, — whence upflung 
 The great sun-seeking pillars of his world! 
 Huge girths, with writhing parasites encurled, 
 And heavy hung 
 
 With bearded mosses, whilst pale orchis-ghosts, 
 Clinging with desperate tendrils to their hosts, 
 Glimmered like stars the dusky fronds among. 
 
 So he swung 
 
 Midway 'twixt Earth and Heaven, mute, 
 His straining eyes 
 Smitten with visioned destinies: 
 With vague surmise 
 Of glories yet to spring 
 In some dim way from his disquieting, 
 Of mighty beings that should make their own 
 The snowy splendors of the peaks that shone 
 Beyond the luring seas — 
 Races Titanic and the battling broods 
 Of Northern giants for whose monstrous toil 
 Flame should be servant and the granite earth 
 [26] 
 
ODES 
 
 A plastic minister, — till the full spoil 
 At length be won to some high birth, 
 Conqueror and King 
 Of those far-shining altitudes! 
 
 And the dreaming Brute 
 
 Dimly foredreamt the plan 
 
 And image of Divinity; and at last 
 
 Were far desire and aspiration vast 
 
 Wakened to living spirit; and in Man 
 
 Creation was at fruit. 
 
 [27] 
 
ODE II 
 
 Strange prayers ascending up to God 
 
Ill 
 
 Adagio pugnente 
 Strange prayers ascending up to God 
 Through all the aching aeons, year on year; 
 Strange tongues uplifting from the sod 
 The old antiphony of hope and fear: 
 Strange if He should not hear! 
 
 There was the primal hunter, where he stood 
 Manlike, not man, lone in the darkening wood 
 When fell the storm: 
 From hill to hill it leaped, snuffed light and 
 
 form, 
 Licked up the wild, 
 
 And him — lost hunter! — him left isled 
 Mid desolation. Bogey-wise 
 Down the tempestuous trail 
 Gaunt Terrors sprang with shrill wolfish wail 
 And windy Deaths flew by with peering eyes . . . 
 Then in the dread and dark 
 To the dumb trembler staring stark, 
 [3i] 
 
ODES 
 
 Just for the moment, beaconlike there came 
 
 The Ineffable, the Name ! . . . 
 
 Oh, wildered was the dull brain's grope 
 
 With anguish of a desperate dear hope 
 
 Escaping ! . . . 'Twas a Name 
 
 Not his to frame 
 
 Whose clouded eye, tongue inarticulate, 
 
 Thought's measure and thought's music yet 
 
 await : 
 Not his the Name. . .but such the hunter's cry 
 As souls do utter, that must die ! 
 
 There was the bronze-hued youth who knelt in 
 
 awe 
 Within a shrine of cypress and of fern 
 Dewed with baptismal spray 
 From the granite urn 
 
 Of the down-plunging cataract, giant-wrought. 
 Night and day 
 
 With yearning eyes he sought 
 The vision that the waters' sprite should give 
 [32] 
 
ODES 
 
 To be his totem, — signing his right to live 
 
 And die the warrior, soul secure 
 
 That with him stood 
 
 The invisible brood 
 
 Of valiant powers peopling his solitude. 
 
 Against the gleaming blue 
 
 From the bald crag there flew 
 
 The Eagle of his dreams, and far and clear 
 
 Above the choric waters, to his ear: 
 " I am the Wakan of the Middle Sky, 1 
 " Dwelling the Shining Quiet nigh, — 
 "Come follow, follow, follow! Glory is on 
 high!" 
 
 Oh, light to endure 
 
 Is ache of fast and vigil, be the cure 
 
 This right with eagle gaze deep worlds to span ! 
 
 So strode he to his tribesmen a warrior and a 
 man. 
 
 There was the savage mother : she who gave 
 Her child, her first-born, wailing into the hand 
 [33] 
 
ODES 
 
 Of the black priest, upright at the prow. . . 
 The glistening bodies rhythmicly did bow, 
 And from the rushy strand 
 Broad paddles drave 
 The sacrificial craft with gauds bedecked. 
 He held it high — 
 With mummery and mow 
 The fetish priest held high 
 The offering, — then stilled its cry 
 Beneath the torpid wave. . . 
 Sudden the pool was flecked 
 With scaly muzzle, yellow saurian eye, 
 And here a fount of crimson bubbling nigh ! . . . 
 Shout came answering shout 
 From all the horde 
 That round about 
 
 Waited the sign of fetish god adored, 
 Waited the sign with lust of blood implored ! . . .' 
 But she — the mother, — in her eyes there shone 
 A dazzle of calm waters, and her heart's flood 
 Was dried, and bone of her bone 
 [34] 
 
ODES 
 
 Burned in her, and she stood 
 Like to an image terrible in stone. 
 
 Aye, men have prayed 
 
 Strangely to God: 
 Through thousand ages, under thousand skies, 
 Unto His thousand strange theophanies, 
 Men have prayed. . . 
 With rite fantastic and with sacrifice 
 Of human treasure, scourged with the heavy rod 
 Of their own souls' torment, men have prayed 
 
 Strangely to God. . . 
 East, North, South, West, 
 The quartered Globe, 
 
 Like a prone and naked suppliant whose breast 
 A myriad stinging memories improbe — 
 Hurt of old faiths, 
 And the living scars 
 
 Of dead men's anguish, slow-dissolvent wraiths 
 Of long-gone yearnings, and delirious dream 
 Of sacrificial pomp and pageant stream: 
 [35] 
 
ODES 
 
 Gods of the nations and their avatars ! — ■ 
 East, North, South, West, 
 The suppliant Globe 
 
 Abides the judgment of the changeless stars, — 
 Abides the judgment and the answering aid 
 Of Heaven to the prayers that men have prayed 
 Strangely to God. . . 
 
 Out of the living Past, 
 Children of the dragon's teeth, they spring 
 Full-panoplied — the idols vast 
 That man has wrought of man's imagining 
 For man's salvation . . . 
 Isle and continent, continent and isle, 
 Lifting grim forms unto his adoration 
 In tireless variation 
 Of style uncouth with style, 
 Until the bulky girth 
 Of the round zoned Earth 
 Is blazoned o'er 
 
 As with a zodiac of monsters, each dread lore 
 [36] 
 
ODES 
 
 In turn begetting dreadful lore. 
 
 The gods of Aztlan : 2 Huitzil, gorge agape, 
 His threatening barb 
 Uplifted, body girt chain upon chain 
 With jewels in the shape 
 Of human hearts, — Huitzil, and he, 
 The lord of winged winds and the lord of rain, 
 Quetzal, gorgeous in his garb 
 Of tropic plumage ; and a deity 
 Than these more awful — the subtile one 
 Whose form to sight is glass and to the touch 
 Is thinnest air, — 
 
 Tezcatlipoca, joying to make his couch 
 Deep in the thoughts of men, and there, 
 Behind the screen of sense, 
 Invisible, impalpable, immense, 
 Begetting wrathful war. . . 
 Stair after wretched stair 
 The captive mounts the teocalli's height, 
 Where wait the ministers of the bloody rite 
 [37] 
 
ODES 
 
 Mid murk of smoking altars. Scarce the prayer 
 Escapes his parched lips, ere the throbbing 
 
 heart 
 Is raised to Tonatiuh, to the Sun, — 
 And blare of conches and the shrill upstart 
 Of pipes proclaim the blood-bought benison : 
 How God at last with man is wholly one 
 Beneath the burning mansions of the Sun ! 
 
 They arise 
 
 From the dark burials of the nations : 
 
 From plain and mountain, from desert and 
 from field, 
 
 Like ghostly monarchs from a tomb long 
 sealed, 
 
 They arise — 
 
 These living dead, mid echoing sound 
 
 Of olden supplications: 
 
 Isis, and her lord Osiris bound 
 
 In mummying cerements; 
 
 Thoth, of the hawklike head, 
 
 Bearing the mystic Book that read 
 
 [38] 
 
ODES 
 
 Unto the living the secrets of the dead; 
 
 And out of the Orient, the azure queen, 
 
 Astarte of the Skies, serene 
 
 Above her horned altars, with the sweet 
 
 Of myrrh and frankincense 
 
 And the multitudinous bleat 
 
 Of bullocks honored ; she of Ind, 
 
 Kali, the black, passing like a wind 
 
 With blight and pestilence; 
 
 And the giant ape, red Hanuman, her 
 
 mate 
 In might immortal and immortal hate; 
 Ormazd and Ahriman warring light with 
 
 night ; 3 
 And Mithras, the Conqueror, who gave 
 The blood baptism of the cave 
 Men's souls to save; 
 
 And nigh these, the lordly ones and bright 
 Who in their godly right 
 Of beauty ruled and feasted on Olympus' 
 
 height. 
 
 [39] 
 
ODES 
 
 From the dark burials of the nations 
 Mid echoing supplications 
 
 They arise . . . 
 Mid echoing supplications: 
 Prayers and cries 
 
 Of men in strait of battle, ecstasies 
 Of saints, and the deep-toned call 
 Of prophets prophesying over all 
 The devastation of a kingdom's fall . . . 
 The ruins of the temple still resound 
 With women weeping Tammuz' yearly wound; 
 And still from out the vale 
 Do ghostly voices lift the ancient wail 
 Of those who gashed their bodies, crying 
 
 "Baal! Baal!" 
 When Baal was gone ahunting. Still Mahound 
 Leads desert hordes to battle: 
 " Allah ! Ya Allah ! Ya Allah ilah Allah ! " 
 And Paradise is found 
 In arch of flashing cimetars. Still go 
 In nightly revelry through field and town 
 [40] 
 
ODES 
 
 Curete, Bacchant and wild Corybant, 4 
 Rapt Maenad by the god intoxicant, 
 And the swift-dancing rout 
 Of frenzied Galli raising olden shout 
 To Attis and to Cybele : 
 " Io Hymenaee Hymen Io ! 
 " Io Hymen Hymenaee! "... 
 While adown 
 
 The vanished centuries endure 
 
 The chanting of dead Incas: " Make me pure, 
 
 " O Vira Cocha, make me ever pure ! " . . . 
 
 — There, in the blackness of Gethseman's grove, 
 One anguisht night He strove 
 Mightily with God. . . 
 Hour by hour there passed 
 Athwart the gloom 
 
 A huge ensanguined image, like a shadow cast 
 By outstretched arms, and overspread 
 The living and the dead 
 Throughout the wide worlds room. . ., 
 [41] 
 
ODES 
 
 And so His prayer was said, 
 And answered. 
 
 Oh, up to God 
 
 Through all the aching aeons, year on year, 
 
 Men's prayers ascend, 
 
 In hope and fear 
 
 Striving to bend 
 
 His pity and His wrath forefend. . . 
 
 Strange if He should not hear! 
 
 [42] 
 
ANTIPHONAL INTERLUDE 
 O'er quiet prairies swept tumultuous winds 
 
IV 
 
 'First voice: 
 O'er quiet prairies swept tumultuous winds 
 Through the wide-pasturing skies their bil- 
 lowy flocks aherding; 
 While poised on the marge of day the lingering 
 sun 
 The circle of the earth with zones of flame 
 
 was girding. . . 
 And, oh, the heart of man beat high with 
 hope past wording! 
 
 Second voice: 
 
 Summons of the western sea, 
 
 Lure of the sunset gold, 
 Tales of the things to be 
 By the mighty ones of old, 
 Into his spirit borne with a poignancy untold. 
 
 [45] 
 
ODES 
 
 First voice: 
 
 From the mummying East he came, a wanderer, 
 At last the tropic thrall of her lotos-dream 
 outstriven, 
 From her whispering embraces at last re- 
 leased, — 
 As into an alien world from their sweet Eden 
 
 driven, 
 In mournful quest of peace wander souls un- 
 shriven. 
 
 Second voice: 
 
 Forth of the ancient East 
 Into the glowing West, 
 (Dream of a richer feast 
 Filling his aching breast 
 With an ever new desire, with an ever old 
 unrest. 
 
 [46] 
 
ODES 
 
 First voice: 
 
 Oh, far it is to the hills whose climbing peaks 
 
 Ensentinel the plain like armored wardens 
 
 shining; 
 
 And far it is where the stars their watches 
 
 keep, 
 
 Above the dark abyss in spacious courses 
 
 twining. . . 
 And far to the final haven foreseen of the 
 heart's divining. 
 
 Second voice: 
 
 Out of the level plain, 
 Into the silent skies, 
 Rises the glittering chain 
 Like a coast of Paradise, 
 And the spirit of man is big with yearning of 
 high emprize. 
 
 [47] 
 
ODES 
 
 First voice: 
 
 The spirit of man ever burns for the things 
 
 unseen, 
 
 When strong in moody will the valiant soul 
 
 rejoices, — 
 
 But only the Sages of Pain can reckon the toil, 
 
 And only the Choosers can tell the cost and 
 
 the gain of their choices. . . 
 Far down the aisles of Time echo their ring- 
 ing voices: 
 
 Second voice: 
 
 1 Who conquereth through pain, 
 
 His be the eagle's share! 
 He shall ride the hurricane, 
 
 He shall nest in the thunder's lair, 
 And the solitudes of Heaven by the might of 
 his pinions dare! " 
 
 [48] 
 
ODES 
 
 First voice: 
 
 Men walk in ways untrod, seeking the goal 
 In mystic oracles by the archons of life fore- 
 spoken, 
 And the pace is ever slow and the step is halt, 
 And many there be are lost, and many there 
 
 be are broken, 
 And whoso is strong in the race his brow 
 bears a terrible token. 
 
 Second voice: 
 
 Token it is of thought 
 
 That hath easelessly inbled, 
 
 Sight that his eyes have caught — > 
 
 Like a seeing by the dead — 
 
 Of the far alluring plains his feet may never 
 
 tread. 
 
 [49] 
 
ODES 
 
 First voice: 
 
 From the ancient East he came into the West 
 In the dawn of his human life, in the days of 
 
 his soul's unbinding, 
 And out of the West to the East with the cir- 
 cling years, 
 
 And out of a blinded Past into a Future 
 blinding. . . 
 
 For the course of his star is set to ways be- 
 yond his finding. 
 
 [50] 
 
ODE III 
 
 Of blood and dreams are built the towns of men 
 
Andante maestoso 
 Of blood and dreams are built the towns of 
 
 men: 
 
 Of bitter blood and lustful dreams of power, 
 
 And of men's black endeavor and the tears 
 
 Of pallid women weeping through the years. 
 
 The slow-unwinding scroll 
 
 Measures the centuries . . . and at her hour, 
 
 Answering the summons, comes 
 
 Each city, — as after battle, to the roll 
 
 March broken regiments 
 
 With throb of sullen drums . . . 
 
 Each city comes, rising avast 
 
 From out sepulchral cerements, 
 
 And then, 
 
 Like a dissolvent spectre, sinks again 
 
 Into her buried past. 
 
 [53] 
 
ODES 
 
 Memphis is gone 
 
 And Thebes of an hundred gates, — 
 
 But still the Sphinx unblinkingly awaits 
 
 The reader of her riddle, and still 
 
 With each recurrent dawn 
 
 The disked sun 
 
 Smites singing Memnon. 
 
 Where now, where now, are those 
 
 Whose pageantries did fill 
 
 The cities of the living? They are led 
 
 In bonds, with veiled head, 
 
 Into still chambers — and the light and laughter 
 
 Of their feasts hath followed after . . . 
 
 Oh, wiselier skilled, 
 
 The dark twy-crowned Pharaohs 
 
 Wiselier did build 
 
 Their desert cities of the dead! 
 
 Whose burning granite sears 
 
 Their kingly names into the passing years. 
 
 [54] 
 
ODES 
 
 As in a dream I saw the aching myriads 
 
 Toiling the toil 
 
 Stupendous of the pyramids. . . 
 
 Athwart the soil 
 
 They dragged the monolithic stones, 
 
 And far and near did flash 
 
 The whipster's ruddy lash : 
 
 I heard the groans 
 
 Of men that labored dying, 
 
 And I heard the sound 
 
 Of little children crying. . .crying. . . 
 
 Then my dream vanished; and I saw instead 
 
 A silent desert, and mound with mound 
 
 The crumbling habitations of the dead. 
 
 Memphis and Thebes are gone, 
 
 And mighty Babylon! 
 
 She that league on league was girt 
 
 With brazen-gated walls, whilst the spires 
 
 Of her thousand temples shone with the fires 
 
 Of a thousand altars: Babylon! 
 
 [55] 
 
ODES 
 
 Doughty to keep or hurt, 
 
 Mightiest thou wert 
 
 In all the plain of Shinar! — 
 
 Wide Shinar, where anciently was sung 
 
 In Accad's perished tongue, 
 
 The war of Light and Chaos: 5 how, flashing 
 
 leven, 
 Lordly Marduk strave 
 
 With cloudy Tiamat, and from her body clave 
 Earth and high Heaven. . . 
 While jubilant 
 The dancing stars their morning joy did chant. 
 
 E'en from the voiceless days 
 
 Of man's beginnings, within her ample halls, 
 
 The powerful and the wise have held their 
 
 state : 
 Priest-kings that sate 
 In judgment by the temple gate; 
 Monarchs loud in the praise 
 Of long-forgotten gods; the patient seers 
 [56] 
 
ODES 
 
 Who through uncounted years 
 
 Charted the nightly heavens; conquerors 
 
 In unrecorded wars ; 
 
 And contrite builders, paying holy debt 
 
 Of symbol'd towers, that yet 
 
 Were but memorials of memorials. 
 
 Wise Hammurabi, he who set 
 On graven tables men's first laws; 
 Sargon, with bonds of stubborn clay 
 Binding the free Euphrates; and that queen, 
 Glorious in strength, terrible in spleen, 
 Whose name still awes 
 The centuries, — Semiramis! Yea, 
 And after these, the form — 
 Shadowy and colossal as the desert Jinn — 
 Of him who like a whirling storm 
 On Judah fell, 
 And for her impious sin 
 Carried her wailing to captivity, — 
 Nebuchadrezzar, mighty under Bel ! . . . 
 [57] 
 
ODES 
 
 And Cyrus came, and the Great King 
 
 Darius, and o'er Asia furled 
 
 The Persian wing. 
 
 And after, out of Macedon came he, 
 
 The splendid Greek, who won 
 
 Domain of the level world, 
 
 And died in Babylon. 
 
 So she that was the Seat of Life, 
 She is become a mound 
 Of sunken ruin, compassed round 
 With silence. Her palaces begot 
 In the emulous strife 
 Of dynasties, her temples crowned 
 Each with its golden ziggurat — 
 Labor of captive nations long ago, 
 Whose final course was run 
 Beneath a pestilential sun 
 For kingly pleasure and for kingly show,- 
 They are become but heaps 
 Of rotting bricks, where stealthily creeps 
 [58] 
 
ODES 
 
 Down the forgotten stair 
 
 The gaunt cat of the desert to his lair. 
 
 Who reckoneth the roll 
 Of perished cities?. . . 
 Lost Nineveh 
 
 O'erwrit with boast of carnage, and the strewn 
 Boulders of Persepolis, and far Pasargadae, — 
 Oh, big in pomp and pride were they, 
 And lean in pities!. . . 
 
 And Petra, from the living rock strange-hewn; 
 And athwart the desert way, 
 Palmyra of the Pillars taking toll 
 Of laden caravans; gray Sidon by the Sea, 
 And siege-strong Tyre; Sardis rich in gold 
 And in lust richer ; and Priam's town, 
 Ilion, of old 
 For war high-armed ! 
 Yea, and lovely in abandonment 
 As a charmed princess in a castle charmed, 
 The marble tent of Mogul Akbar 6 . . . 
 [59] 
 
ODES 
 
 And the great exemplar, 
 
 She that was ground unremittingly 
 
 Betwixt the upper and the nether mill, — 
 
 In dreadful alternation bent 
 
 Beneath the supple claws 
 
 Of the lithe Egyptian, or stricken down 
 
 By the muscled bull, Assyria, — 
 
 Zion, builded on a hill ! . . . 
 
 And last, giver of their laws 
 
 Unto the nations, Imperial Rome, — 
 
 Like some vast volcanic dome 
 
 That falling into ashes stars 
 
 The waste with lurid splendors. 
 
 They pass 
 Like dreams of glory, and their names 
 Become as sounding brass, 
 And their lordly vaunt 
 Is in men's mouths a byword and a taunt 
 As cities shall pass, — or in the flames 
 Of swift disaster, or in the rust 
 
 [60] 
 
ODES 
 
 Of years, — each to its due extinguishment 
 
 Under the sun . . . 
 
 Until to the lingering one — 
 
 Some far broad-domed Bokhara falling into 
 
 dust — 
 The planet stays her nutrient yield, 
 
 And the desert gates are sealed 
 
 On the last oasis of a dying continent. 
 
 Ah, shall there be ere then 
 The Perfect City?... 
 The city wistfully forethought 
 By men whom men count wise: 
 As in a stately dream 
 To Plato came in marble Academe 
 His vision of the City of the Blest — i 
 A vision in her dim unrest 
 By the imagination pearled 
 To harmonize an inharmonic world, — 
 A place of marvel, more to the soul's emprize 
 Than Cibola's golden seven, 7 — Utopia, wrought 
 Of strength and beauty ! . . . 
 [61] 
 
ODES 
 
 Her spacious plan 
 
 Is broad to house the nations, her citizen 
 
 Is such a Man 
 
 As was designed 
 
 By the Archetypal Mind 
 
 When in shadowy seas began the strife 
 
 Of life begetting and destroying life — 
 
 A Man destined to reign 
 
 High Overlord of Fear 
 
 And King of Nature, holding as his domain 
 
 The charted sphere ! . . . 
 
 Ah, shall there yet be 
 
 This Earthly (Paradise? 
 
 This habitation of felicity 
 
 Foretokening the City of the Skies? 
 
 This seat of mortal bliss 
 
 Whose image renders 
 
 Unto the spiritual eye 
 
 Forevision of that vast metropolis 
 
 Of the immortals, 
 
 [62] 
 
ODES 
 
 Which to the soul lays ope 
 
 Eternal portals?. . . 
 
 Altitude o'er altitude lifting high 
 
 Its emulous splendors — 
 
 Whereof the culmen is the Cosmic Hope ! . . . 
 
 To-day the cities that we build 
 Possess a monstrous beauty, — as if material 
 Dug in some quarry of old thought, 
 Some castle ruinous of mind, some burial 
 Of dead desire, 
 
 Mossed block by mossed block were drawn 
 And carven to an airy vision caught 
 From the large magnificence of the mellow 
 
 dawn . . . 
 Till with dome and pinnacle and spire 
 Each in its own resplendancy afire 
 Appears the City, many-hilled 
 And glorious, — summoning on and on 
 In iterance majestical 
 Like ringing prophecies long unfulfilled. 
 [63] 
 
ODES 
 
 Oh, we have heard 
 
 The summoning of the City from afar ! 
 
 Calling with a blurred 
 
 And multitudinous voice, like the voice resolvent 
 
 Of the waves upon a distant bar; 
 
 And her echoing word, 
 
 Sovereign and solvent, 
 
 Has drawn us as a spell 
 
 Living and irresistible: 
 
 "I am the City. . . 
 " The secret thing ye seek 
 " My lips, my lips, my myriad lips alone 
 " Are wise to speak: 
 
 "I am the City. . . 
 " The life that ye would live 
 " My life, my life, my manifold life alone 
 " Is strong to give: 
 
 "lam the City..." 
 We have heard, — and for a day, 
 As in some dusty caravanserai 
 Cosmopolite with pilgrims, we have sate 
 [64] 
 
ODES 
 
 Within her gates, disconsolate 
 
 For the still and starry zone 
 
 Of night and the sea's resurgent monotone. 
 
 From the low flood, murky as the Styx, 
 
 That soughs and licks 
 
 Along her massy and tenebrous base 
 
 With* changeful treachery of calm and race, 
 
 The city's skyline rises, jagged, black, 
 
 Against the lightening east, — funnel and stack 
 
 Each with its waft of sullen fume 
 
 Outwavering, like a fetid plume 
 
 Flaunted in the face 
 
 Of morning purity, — 
 
 Until the city seems to be 
 
 Some grim volcanic chain 
 
 Upheaved athwart the sombre plain, 
 
 Yet dully quaking, 
 
 Of a continent in the making. 
 
 And she is the house of life 
 And the palace of desire, 
 
 [6 5 ] 
 
ODES 
 
 And all her ways are thronged with hurrying 
 
 feet, 
 And all her stately edifice is rife 
 With seekers for a hidden sweet. . . 
 And she is the house of death 
 And a charnel of perished hope, 
 And all her dark foundations are bestead 
 Mid bones of men that for her hire 
 Inbreathed her pestilent breath . . . 
 And in her noisome alleys grope 
 Wan mothers grieving for their tiny dead. . . 
 
 She hath twain souls: 
 Whereof the one 
 
 Is metal'd o'er with armor, plate on plate 
 Of gold and shining silver conflagrate 
 And steel of curious enginry, 
 Till like the molten sun 
 He is — Mammon, who takes his tolls 
 Of women's love and of the strength of men, 
 And of youth's hot blood and aching visionry, 
 [66] 
 
ODES 
 
 Eking a senile and decrepit joy 
 
 From the ranger fancy of the boy 
 
 Caught by the glitter of his shrewd decoy. . . 
 
 Mammon is the one. His mate 
 
 Is nameless, a spirit sovereign 
 
 And dark, whose stern far-seeing gaze 
 
 Searches the hidden ways 
 
 Of life, and reads the regnant fate 
 
 That measures weal to come 
 
 Against her present hecatomb. 
 
 High on a swinging beam — 
 
 The collar of a tower, taut 
 
 With steely rib and tendon, building nigher 
 
 To heaven than e'en Babel did aspire, — 
 
 Stood forth the Man, the Maker, caught 
 
 Up into the skies . . . 
 
 He gazed below 
 
 Into the street — a microscopic show 
 
 Aswarm with skurrying atomies; 
 
 Then raised his eyes 
 
 [671 
 
ODES 
 
 O'er plain and river and far-shimmering seas, 
 
 Unto the quiet blue. . . 
 
 And his spirit grew 
 
 Glad in eternal majesties, 
 
 And the works of men did seem 
 
 But frail and wind-blown tenements 
 
 Marking the slow ascents 
 
 Unto the splendors of his ancient dream. 
 
 Of blood and dreams are built the towns of 
 
 men: 
 Of bitter blood and lustful dreams of power, 
 And dreams of beauty. . . 
 Throughout the years 
 
 Meted by men's endeavor and women's tears, 
 Like regiments to duty, 
 They come, answering the roll — 
 City on city and nation after nation . . . 
 And throughout the years 
 On far horizons aye appears 
 The City of the Spirit, biding the hour 
 [68] 
 
ODES 
 
 Of advent and of consecration . . . 
 Yea, throughout the years 
 Man's aspiration finds its changeless goal 
 In aspiration. 
 
 [69] 
 
ODE IV 
 
 / had a vision of the King of Pain 
 
VI 
 
 Grave 
 I had a vision of the King of Pain 
 In awful crucifixion high enthroned 
 Within the hollow of a universe 
 Emptied of light and substance: there was 
 
 night 
 inimitably deep, whose galaxies 
 Were shrunk to puny and ineffectual stars 
 And brought to naught mid spacious desolation. 
 
 I saw a ghostly glamour spun afar 
 Athwart the surface of the black abyss 
 In nebulous perturbation, and I heard 
 A sound like to a smothered turbulence 
 Of distant and distressful multitudes 
 Whose myriad voices were molten to one cry 
 As metals in a furnace to one heat. 
 [73] 
 
ODES 
 
 They were the souls of human agonies, 
 The countless spirits of the hurts that men 
 Have suffered for the making of the world: 
 Harsh pangs of birth and grievings for the 
 
 dead 
 And smarts of passion, and strain of them that 
 
 strove 
 Till broken on the rack of their endeavor, 
 And the wound of them that sought with sight- 
 less eyes. 
 
 Out of the nether night, a spectral train, 
 They came, mounting her gloomy altitudes 
 In a huge crescendic flame of living torments ; 
 And they bore faces, faces fixed and terrible 
 Like to the faces of men dead in anguish ; 
 And they uplifted pleading arms— yea, myriads 
 Of pleading arms they raised emptily on high. 
 
 They were the souls of human agonies 
 Caught up into a vast and eddying throe 
 [74] 
 
ODES 
 
 Of wraths and woes and tears, and far outspun 
 By the great whorl of changeless destinies; 
 They were the souls of human agonies 
 Offered upon the altar of the world 
 In expiation of the cosmic sin. 
 
 Out of the night they came tumultuously 
 Upsurging through the void until they rose 
 Unto the awful station of the Throne 
 Of suffering, whereof th' ensanguined light— 
 Like to the searching rays with which the sun 
 Metes out the millions of the comet's miles — 
 O'er that dread train shot sanguine revelation. 
 
 And all their clamorous and woeful cry 
 Was blended to a deep threnodic prayer 
 For pity, that did beat, as shattered waves 
 Upon a rock, desirous and despairing, 
 High on the cosmic Calvary, where his Rood 
 Did mightily upbear the thorn-crowned King 
 Above the abysmic center of the world. 
 [75] 
 
ODES 
 
 I had a^vision of the King of Pain 
 Uplifted o'er the souls of human hurts 
 In terrible Atonement; and his eyes, 
 Anguisht and compassionate, were on them 
 
 turned 
 Everlastingly, and everlastingly 
 His palms, nail-riven to the Cross, were spread 
 In awful benediction o'er their woe. 
 
 Yea, I beheld the Lordship of the World 
 Midmost of the circling universe enthroned 
 In high and kingly beauty; and I knew 
 The sovereign cost of life, and again I knew 
 The sovereign redemption; and I saw 
 How through the aching aeons still is paid 
 The price of beauty in a price of pain. 
 
 [76] 
 
DITHYRAMBIC INTERLUDE 
 
 Awake! For the white-pillared porches 
 Of dawn are flung open to day! 
 
VII 
 
 Allegro appassionato 
 
 Awake! For the white-pillared porches 
 
 Of dawn are flung open to day! 
 And the jubilant voices of morning 
 With laughter and boisterous warning 
 On, on through the azuring arches 
 Summon away! 
 
 Awake! They are dead who are sleeping! 
 
 Awake ! They who drowse are unborn ! 
 'Tis the voice of the summoning spirit, 
 And they who delay when they hear it 
 Are the lame and the halt and the creeping 
 
 Creatures of scorn! 
 
 [79] 
 
ODES 
 
 'Tis a radiant damsel arraying 
 
 Her beauties with ruby and pearl, — 
 Tis the scarlet and gold and the glamour 
 Where mid clashing of arms and mid clamor 
 Of trumpets and war-horses neighing 
 Banners outfurl, — 
 
 'Tis the leap and the swing of the dancers, 
 Where the torches are circling on high, 
 Who call on strange gods in their madness 
 To stay them, to stay them of gladness, — 
 'Tis the pitiless charge of the lancers 
 That smite hip and thigh, — 
 
 'Tis the rush of the blood in its prisons, 
 
 'Tis the beat of the blood in the ears, 
 'Tis the shock of the heart and the shiver 
 Of the soul when the red living river 
 Is let and the strength of man wizens 
 Under white fears! 
 
 [80] 
 
ODES 
 
 Oh, swifter than the wings of the eagle 
 
 And stronger than he is Desire — 
 And she grippeth the soul unreleasing, 
 And she troubleth the soul without ceasing, 
 And she fareth afar on her regal 
 Pinions of fire. 
 
 And nearer than sight is or hearing, 
 And keener than pain is or bliss, 
 Are her light and her sound and her passion 
 Where she patiently layeth her lash on 
 And striketh the soul with endearing 
 And terrible kiss : 
 
 And deeper than sleep is or death is, 
 And shrewder than life is or love 
 Are the surge and the sweep of endeavor, 
 Like a turbulent wind, like the fever 
 Of a burning tornado whose breath is 
 Whirled from above: 
 
 [81] 
 
ODES 
 
 Oh, the glittering things ye call real things, 
 
 And the glittering thoughts ye call truth, 
 They are trinkets and baubles and apings 
 For children and impotent shapings 
 Of the cowardly hearts that conceal things 
 Burdened with ruth. 
 
 They are weaves out of dream and illusion, 
 
 They are fabricks of mockery and cheat, 
 And their show is but shamming of graces, 
 And they stead ye in ruinous places, 
 And their work is a work of confusion 
 Compact in deceit. 
 
 Yea, the glittering things ye call real things, 
 They are bauble and toy, they are dream,- 
 But the world that is real is another 
 Than this where we swelter and smother 
 And in tawdry and tinsel conceal things 
 Meant to redeem. 
 
 [82] 
 
ODES 
 
 And the heart of the man that is fearless, 
 
 And the vision of him that is wise, 
 They are strong unto Nature's revealing, 
 And he bursteth the seals of her sealing, 
 And layeth her beauteous and peerless 
 Prone to his eyes. 
 
 Till the edge of the world is upblazing 
 With pillars of thunderous flame, 
 
 And the breadth of the world is resplendant 
 
 With scintillant glories ascendant 
 
 From nadir to zenith upraising 
 Tempestuous brame. 
 
 Oh, nearer than seeing or touch is, 
 And keener than bliss is or pain, 
 Are the quiver and thrill of her haunting 
 And the tug of her Tantalus taunting, 
 Till the life that we nourish and clutch is 
 A thing of disdain. 
 
 [83] 
 
ODES 
 
 Awake! For as dead are the sleeping! 
 
 Awake ! As unborn he who nods ! 
 But the summoning voice of the spirit, 
 It shall rouse, it shall rouse them that hear it 
 From the ranks of the lame and the creeping 
 
 Up to the conquering gods! 
 
 [84] 
 
ODE V 
 
 There comes a kind of quieting with years 
 
VIII 
 
 Adagio elegiac o 
 There comes a kind of quieting with years 
 
 Which soothes our griefs and stills the turbu- 
 lent fears 
 That threat and sting the youth 
 Of man, — whose heritage is ruth 
 Of ancient deed, and flicker of old thought 
 Deep smouldering, and dead love's heavy dole, 
 And taunt of buried passions in the soul, — 
 The saintliness and sin of sires forgot. 
 
 Yes, there is quiet as our elder days 
 Give us in thrall to the accustomed ways 
 Which our tamed wearied feet 
 Impassively repeat. . . 
 A quiet and a peace 
 Sabbatical and solemn, 
 Like to the still and sunny mood 
 [87] 
 
ODES 
 
 That falls to bless 
 
 With strange and delicate loveliness 
 
 Some antique column 
 
 Standing amid its solitude 
 
 Of vine and ruin, — until the smart 
 
 Of olden passion fain would heal, 
 
 And a cool and balmy ease 
 
 Suffuses the tired limbs, and reveries steal 
 
 With ministering gentleness 
 
 Upon the stilling heart. 
 
 There comes a quieting, and the strength to 
 
 view 
 With even contemplation 
 
 The full narration 
 
 Of men's ways, and to sever false from true. 
 
 And the high court of the ages 
 
 Marshals her witnessing years and sits 
 
 In patient judgment, while her graybeard sages 
 
 With thoughtful and compassionate eyes 
 
 Decipher the dark writs 
 
 Of human deed. . . 
 
 [88] 
 
ODES 
 
 Outmeasuring life's meed 
 
 Of joy against its costly sacrifice, 
 
 And laying bare 
 
 Unto the foolish and the wise 
 
 The ways that men must fare. 
 
 Across the glass of time 
 Darkling as in a shadowy mime 
 Slow flit the images of those 
 Who blindly sought and chose 
 With zealous blindness, — each 
 Unto the led multitude 
 Striving to teach 
 His vision of the good. 
 
 Came he who walked with feet unshod 
 The burning wilderness, content to eat 
 Locusts and wild honey for his meat 
 And brother with the beasts that slink 
 In silence to their brackish nightly drink, 
 So he might find his solitary God: 
 [89] 
 
ODES 
 
 And he who taught 
 
 In flowing vestments with rich broidery 
 
 wrought, 
 Mid pleasant gardens voluptuous with the 
 
 sweet 
 Of roses, joying in the lissome line 
 Of maiden youth, and finding the divine 
 In gracious flagons of empurpled wine : 
 
 And he who sat 
 
 Beneath the spreading tree 
 
 Of contemplation, impassively 
 
 To Arhat and to Bodhisat 8 
 
 Pointing the Fourfold Way unto surcease 
 
 Of human ill and ire 
 
 In the nerveless soul's release 
 
 From soul's desire: 
 
 He in whose trumpeted tones resound 
 The thunderings of battle, 
 Calling his crescent squadrons, — till in red pall 
 [9o] 
 
ODES 
 
 Of flame and blood the sickened world is wound, 
 And wide around 
 
 Is shrieking and shouting and the grisly rattle 
 Of death at the throats of men, and crash 
 Of hurtling charges, where the nations flee and 
 
 fall 
 Like driven cattle 
 Under the blizzard's lash: 
 
 And He who gave . . . gave all 
 
 The sweetness of His life to piteous pain 
 
 That men might gain 
 
 A strange and distant and redeeming grace 
 
 Which in the Kingdom's day should fall 
 
 Like a sacred halo o'er the face 
 
 Of the anguisht Universe, 
 
 Healing its hidden curse. 
 
 Yea, these be they 
 
 Whom men have followed. . . But who shall 
 say, 
 
 [9i] 
 
ODES 
 Who then shall say what life is wise?. . . 
 There were ten virgins, and of them five 
 Were foolish virgins, walking in sorrow, 
 Nor light nor wisdom might they borrow, 
 Nor might they wistfully arrive 
 To greet the bridegrom, save by aid 
 Of their own groping hands and blinded eyes 
 So to their folly was their love betrayed. 
 
 Through all the years 
 
 Of human laughter and of human tears 
 
 Sages and jesters, turn by turn 
 
 Essay the riddle . . . And the teachers learn 
 
 And the learners teach 
 
 While the slow centuries slow upreach 
 
 Where the world's elusive Wisdom broods 
 
 In cloudy majesty o'er hidden altitudes. . . 
 
 There comes a kind of quieting with years 
 And with the years there comes 
 A high and eerie peace, — 
 
 [92] 
 
ODES 
 
 As the homing spirit nears 
 
 The sought release 
 
 From her too mortal sense. . ., 
 
 And as in a swound 
 
 Supernal she is enwound 
 
 Within a pulse of melody, and in her ear, 
 
 Nearer than sound is near, 
 
 A suave voice hums 
 
 A sky-born music, and all the world is tense 
 
 With loveliness. . . And the leaven 
 
 Of beauty within the spirit burning 
 
 Summons her ever higher, — 
 
 Yea, as the stars inspire 
 
 The plangent waves that leap with ceaseless 
 
 yearning 
 Sonorously to heaven. 
 
 [93] 
 
POSTLUDE 
 
 Earth! Thou wert his Mother 
 
IX 
 
 Largo 
 
 Earth! 
 Thou wert his Mother, 
 Who was conceived within thy fiery womb 
 Ere time began 
 
 And by the laboring years brought forth 
 Unto the stalwart stature of a Man, — 
 Thou wert his body's Mother, 
 As thou shalt be his dread 
 And desert tomb 
 When all thy myriad life is gone, 
 And on and on 
 Thou still dost keep 
 
 An even pace, an even pace, though dead, 
 With thy far-shining sisters of the Deep: 
 
 Earth! 
 Thou wert his Mother, 
 But his high sire — 
 
 [97] 
 
ODES 
 
 First of the deathless gods — was of another 
 
 And a lordlier line: 
 
 Eros, of the glowing wings, 9 
 
 Eros, dartler of desire, 
 
 Bright son of Beauty, in whose blood divine 
 
 There is immortal fever 
 
 And such a quickening fire 
 
 As glorifieth aye the tears of things 
 
 And fresheneth Love forever. 
 
 [98] 
 
NOTES 
 
NOTES 
 
 A theme of the scope of that here undertaken must 
 naturally be supported by a body of allusions drawn 
 from diverse sources and representing diverse cultures. 
 It is inevitable, in such case, that the thinking of any 
 one man will light upon illustrations of unequal general 
 familiarity. Doubtless all of the allusions in the pres- 
 ent work will be familiar to many readers ; but it seems 
 much to expect that all will be familiar to all readers. 
 Accordingly the author deems it worth while to add the 
 following notes explanatory of those passages which 
 refer to facts that, upon reflection, seem most accidental 
 to our general store of knowledge. 
 
 1 The Wakan of the Middle Sky: 
 
 Wakan, or Wakanda, is the Siouan term for the 
 powers that control and animate Nature. With the 
 Plains Indians generally the heavens were regarded as 
 comprising more than one region, the upper heaven, 
 the Shining Quiet, the abode of the Great Father 
 Spirit, and the Middle Region occupied by the medi- 
 ators between the Deity above and Man below; among 
 these mediators the Eagle was naturally prominent. 
 The strophe deals with the widely prevalent Indian 
 custom of sending a youth, on the verge of manhood, 
 [IOI] 
 
ODES 
 
 to fast and keep vigil in the wilderness until the 
 spiritual powers of Nature reveal to him the tutelary 
 who is to be his guide and guardian in the career of life. 
 
 2 The Gods of Aztlan: 
 
 Aztlan was the traditional home, in the far North- 
 west, whence the Aztec nation set forth, under the 
 guidance of its gods, on the march of conquest which 
 was to make it the dominant power of pre-Spanish 
 Mexico. " A less lovely set of Olympians than the 
 Aztec gods it is difficult to conceive," says Andrew 
 Lang, and the briefest perusal of Fray Bernardino de 
 Sahagun's description of this pantheon of monsters will 
 amply confirm Lang's judgment. Foremost, at least 
 in monstrosity, stands the great warrior deity, Huitzih- 
 pochtli. Prescott describes his image as the Spaniards 
 first beheld it: " His countenance was distorted into 
 hideous lineaments of symbolical import. In his right 
 hand he wielded a bow, and in his left a bunch of 
 golden arrows, which a mystic legend had connected 
 with the victories of his people. The huge folds of a 
 serpent, consisting of pearls and precious stones, were 
 coiled round his waist, and the same rich materials 
 were profusely sprinkled over his person. On his left 
 foot were the delicate feathers of the humming-bird, 
 which, singularly enough, gave its name to the dread 
 deity. The most conspicuous ornament was a chain of 
 gold and silver hearts alternate, suspended round his 
 [ 102] 
 
ODES 
 
 neck, emblematical of the sacrifice in which he most 
 delighted. A more unequivocal evidence of this was 
 afforded by three human hearts smoking and almost 
 palpitating, as if recently torn from the victims, and 
 now lying on the altar before him ! " An incredible 
 tradition had it that more than seventy thousand victims 
 were sacrificed at the dedication of his great teocalli 
 (temple pyramid) in the Aztec capital. 
 
 Less repulsive is the god Quetzalcoatl, who seems to 
 have been supreme among the Toltec predecessors of 
 the Aztecs. It was his, says Fray Bernardino, to dust 
 the roads for the rain spirits, because " before the un- 
 chaining of the waters come great winds and clouds of 
 dust." The beautiful green tail feathers of the quetzal 
 bird (Pharomacrus mocinno) formed the panache of 
 this divinity. 
 
 The mythic foeman of Quetzalcoatl was Tezcatli- 
 poca ("the gleaming mirror"), regarded, according 
 to the Fray, as " a god true and invisible, who pene- 
 trates all places in heaven and earth and hell." As he 
 wanders about the earth he raises wars, enmities, dis- 
 sensions, turning man against man, until he earns the 
 epithet " Sower of Discord." Tezcatlipoca is the 
 ruler of the world, whose " sight and hearing penetrate 
 wood and stone " and from whose whim, for good or 
 for ill, is no escape. " Lord of Battles, Emperor of all, 
 invisible and impalpable/' he is addressed; and in the 
 world-weary mood of the Aztec suppliant, " We men, 
 [ 103] 
 
ODES 
 
 we are but a spectacle before you, your theatre serving 
 for your laughter and diversion." 
 
 3 Ormazd and Ahriman warring light with night; 
 And Mithras, the Conqueror, who gave 
 The blood baptism of the cave: 
 
 The Persian god Mithras was the mythic incarna- 
 tion of the conquering light of heaven which puts to 
 flight the powers of darkness, led by the evil Ahriman. 
 Symbolically he is the god of courage and righteousness 
 and wisdom and honor, and again he is intercessor for 
 man with Ormazd and the lesser spirits of heaven. 
 The worship of Mithras passed into the Western 
 world, with many other Oriental cults, in the declin- 
 ing days of paganism, and before it was finally van- 
 quished became the chief rival of Christianity. Its 
 rites were celebrated in underground chapels ; and con- 
 spicuous among these rites was the taurobolium, the 
 sacrifice of the bull — symbolic of the cosmic bull con- 
 quered by the god — whose blood was allowed to drip 
 upon the naked mystic in a crypt beneath the latticed 
 place of sacrifice. This baptism of blood, says Cumont, 
 was regarded as a renovation of the human soul. 
 Mithraism was to a great extent the religion of the 
 Roman legionaries, by whom it was carried all over the 
 Empire, and who, naturally enough, stressed the mili- 
 tary virtues and prowess of their divinity, his oft-ap- 
 [ 104] 
 
ODES 
 
 plied epithets being Invictus, Insuperabilis: he was the 
 Conquering Light, through courage and prowess and 
 through his sympathy for suffering humanity, a 
 Saviour of Men. 
 
 4 Curete, Bacchant and wild Corybant, 
 Rapt Maenad by the god intoxicant, 
 And the swift-dancing rout 
 Of frenzied Galli raising olden shout 
 To Attis and to Cybele: 
 
 The orgiastic religions, taking their rise mainly in 
 Asia Minor, which from time to time swept the Classic 
 peoples with passions of intemperance, centered their 
 appeal in the personalities of two great Nature deities, 
 — the Mothering Earth and her ever-dying and ever- 
 reviving lover, the divine spirit of vegetation. Charac- 
 teristic of the worship was the rout of wild torch-bear- 
 ing dancers attendant upon the mother Goddess. Such 
 were the Curetes of Crete, such the Corybants of 
 Phrygia. The typical form of the goddess was Cybele, 
 " the Great Mother of the Gods," whose worship, with 
 that of her lover-god Attis, was introduced into Rome 
 about 200 b. c. Her priests were the emasculate Galli, 
 who celebrated the union of the goddess and her lover 
 with wild cries to Hymen, god of marriage: " Io 
 Hymen Hymenaee ! " Very similar, and perhaps of a 
 like origin, were the revelries in honor of Dionysus, 
 
 [105] 
 
ODES 
 
 spirit of wine, — Bacchant and Maenad following their 
 deity in a delirium of intoxication which seemed to 
 them veritable possession by the spirit of divinity. The 
 Semitic parallel to Cybele and Attis came to the Classic 
 peoples in the myth of " Venus and Adonis/' Adonis 
 being the Phoenician form of the vegetation god else- 
 where in the Semitic world known as Tammuz. It is 
 the lamentation for this yearly-dying deity that is men- 
 tioned in Ezekiel 8, 14: "Then he brought me to 
 the door of the gate of the Lord's house which was 
 toward the north ; and, behold, there sat women weep- 
 ing for Tammuz." 
 
 5 The War of Light and Chaos: 
 
 In the well-nigh universal Cosmogonic myth, varied 
 as its details may be, primeval Chaos, conceived as a 
 gloom-loving monster, is overcome by a hero-god of 
 light, who fashions the orderly universe from the body 
 of the slain monster. Perhaps the oldest version we 
 possess of this myth is that given in the " Creation 
 Epic " of the Babylonians, itself based upon more 
 ancient Accadian sources. In this poem Tiamat, the 
 Raging Deep, personates Chaos and leads the hosts of 
 Darkness against the gods of Light. The hero-god is 
 the great sun-tutelary of Babylon, Bel-Marduk, who 
 proceeds against the monsters with lightning in front 
 of him and his body filled with living fire. So terrible 
 is he that of all the nether demons only Tiamat ven- 
 
 [106] 
 
ODES 
 
 tures to withstand his attack. The combat is thus de- 
 scribed (following Professor Jastrow's translation) : 
 
 Tiamat shrieked with piercing cries, 
 
 She trembled and shook to her very foundations. 
 
 She pronounced an incantation, she uttered her spell, 
 
 And the gods of the battle took to their weapons. 
 
 Then Tiamat and Marduk, the leader of the gods, 
 
 stood up, 
 They advanced to the fray, drew nigh to the fight. 
 The lord spread out his net and caught her, 
 The evil wind behind him he let loose in her face. 
 As Tiamat opened her mouth to its full extent, 
 He drove in the evil wind before she closed her lips. 
 The mighty winds filled her stomach, 
 Her heart failed her, and she opened wide her mouth; 
 He seized the spear and pierced her stomach, 
 He cut through her organs and slit open her heart. 
 He bound her and cut off her life. 
 He cast down her carcass and stood upon it. 
 
 As one cuts " a flattened fish " Bel-Marduk shears into 
 halves the body of Tiamat, fashioning from one of the 
 halves " the dam of Heaven " which protects the uni- 
 verse beneath from the all-enveloping cosmic waters. 
 Herein he sets the stations of the stars and the heavenly 
 bodies, while below he fashions " the mountain of 
 Earth " as the habitation of man. 
 
 6 The marble tent of Mogul Akbar: 
 Futtehpore Sikhri was founded by Akbar, the great- 
 [107] 
 
ODES 
 
 est and wisest of the Mogul rulers of India and one 
 of the greatest men of human history, about 1570. It 
 was adorned by its builder with structures which rank 
 among the architectural masterpieces of all time, and 
 the town as a whole is doubtless the most beautiful 
 creation of the Oriental builders' art. Within a gen- 
 eration of Akbar's death, however, it was abandoned, 
 probably because of scarcity of water; and it has since 
 been maintained by the rulers of India rather as a 
 monument than as a place of residence. 
 
 7 Cibola s golden seven: 
 
 The " Seven Golden Cities of Cibola " were the ob- 
 ject of Spanish quests north from Mexico in the 
 Seventeenth Century, the notable expedition being that 
 of 1640, led by Coronado, which penetrated probably 
 as far north as the valley of the Platte. The seven 
 cities are presumed to have been the pueblos of the In- 
 dians of New Mexico and Arizona, the fable of their 
 riches being the color which Spanish desire gave to 
 vague accounts of Indian cities in the far North. 
 
 8 To Arhat and to Bodhisat 
 Pointing the Four-fold Way: 
 
 Arhat and Bodhisat are the names, in Southern and 
 Northern Buddhism, for one who has acquired the 
 highest degree of saintship and may expect in the next 
 
 [108] 
 
ODES 
 
 incarnation to appear as a buddha. Gautama Buddha 
 is traditionally said to have taught beneath the sacred 
 bo tree at Buddh Gaya in Bengal, where the light of 
 revelation first came to him. Fundamental in his 
 teaching is the doctrine that Nirvana, the blessed state 
 of those freed from the fateful chain of incarnate lives, 
 is to be won through knowledge of the " Four Truths," 
 — that life is sorrow, that reincarnation comes of desire, 
 that escape is through annihilation of desire, and that 
 the way to this escape is righteousness in belief and 
 resolve, in word and deed, in life and endeavor, in 
 thought and meditation. 
 
 9 Eros, of the glowing wings: 
 
 Perhaps the most penetrating conception which 
 Greek religious thought has given us is that of the role 
 of Love, the god Eros, in the creation of the world. 
 In the very substance of primeval Chaos is Love, a 
 procreant essence; Love is first of the Immortals to 
 assume form, and throughout the cosmic course Love 
 is the lording spirit in the body of Being. So already 
 with Hesiod : " First Chaos was, and then broad- 
 bosomed Earth, and after, Love, most beautiful of the 
 deathless gods." And the Eleatic Parmenides tells 
 how Hestia, the central fire of the Universe, " fore- 
 most of the gods, yea, foremost of all the gods, gave 
 birth to Love." More poetically Aristophanes: From 
 the cosmic egg in the bosom of Erebos, sprang forth 
 [ 109] 
 
ODES 
 
 " Eros, the longed-for," the wind-swift Eros, " gleam- 
 ing with golden wings." With a touch of mystic 
 pantheism, Plato makes Love the spirit of communion 
 between god and man ; while a keener feeling both for 
 its mortal poignancy and its immortal promise is in 
 Euripides' wonderful choral prayer, so finely trans- 
 lated by Gilbert Murray: 
 
 Eros, Eros, who blindest, tear by tear, 
 
 Men's eyes with hunger; thou swift Foe that pliest 
 Deep in our hearts joy like an edged spear; 
 Come not to me with Evil haunting near, 
 Wrath on the wind, nor jarring of the clear 
 
 Wing's music as thou fliest! 
 There is no shaft that burneth, not in fire, 
 Not in wild stars, far off and flinging fear, 
 As in thine hands the shaft of All Desire, 
 
 Eros, Child of the Highest! 
 
 [no] 
 
JAN 31 5910 
 
One copy del. to Cat. Div. 
 
 
LIBRARY OF 
 
 CONGRESS 
 
 015 799 327 6 
 
 III