- -7 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. Chap.'^5^=>rcopyright No. [m^ UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. THE SONG OF THE WAVE AND OTHER POEMS THE SONG OF THE WAVE AND OTHER POEMS BY GEORGE CABOT LODGE 'Mais nous, twus, consutnis cTune impossible envie. En proie au nial de croire et d' aimer sans retour, R^pondez, jours rwuveaux nous rendrcz-vous la vie ? Diies, o jours anciens, nous rendrez-z'ous I'amour? " —Leconte de Lisle NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1898 V ^'i 2200 Copyright, 1898, by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS ^y^ COPIES RECSIVEI^. TROW DIRECTORY PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY NEW YORK TO THE POET GIACOMO LEOPARD! CONTENTS 4 7 II 13 17 PAGB Exordium i A First Word . The Ocean Sings The Song of the Wave The East Wind . The Norsemen . ** Was hat man dir, du armes kind, gethan' The Song of the Sword Prelude .18 Invocation 21 The Song 22 After-Word 25 Ballad 30 Dawn 33 CONTENTS FACE Sunset . . . 35 The Gates of Life 36 Mothers of Men 44 Love in Age 47 A Memory 51 Age 53 Evening 56 To a Woman . , 57 The End 59 Neant 62 Youth 64 Serenade 65 Song 66 Song .......... 68 " Or poserai per sempre, stanco mio cor " jo They 72 To a Bust of the Mater Dolorosa • • • 75 CONTENTS PAGE To Psyche 77 The Will 80 tuckanuck 1. Sonnet 83 2. Sonnet 84 3. Stanzas 85 4. Wind of Twilight 87 Pastoral 88 Fall , . 90 SONNETS I. To Silence . 95 II. To the Earth . . 96 III. Essex.— I • 97 IV. Essex.— 2 . . 98 V. Sonnet • 99 VI. Fog at Sea ..... 100 VII. Nirvana.— I . lOI CONTENTS PAGE VIII. Nirvana. — 2 102 IX. Passing Days 103 X. On an ^olian Harp 104 XI. The Sphinx I OS XII. 106 XIII. To THE Memory of W. H. P. . 107 XIV. Insomnia 108 XV. Sonnet 109 XVI. Sonnet no XVII. The Gate of Dreams .... III XVIII. To GiACOMO Leopardi .... 112 XIX. To J. T. S. — (After Reading "Amis ei Amile") 113 XX. To THE Children of the Muse . 114 XXI. L'Enfant du Siecle .... • "5 XXII. AUX MODERNES.— I .... . 116 XXIII. AUX MODERNES.— 2 .... . 117 XXIV. Sonnet . 118 CONTENTS XXV. To A Statue 119 XXVI. A Dream XXVII. "Eli! Eli! Lama Sabacthani ! " XXVIII. Dante XXIX. Love.— I . XXX. L0VE.~2 . XXXI. Sonnet XXXII. Sonnet XXXIII. Sonnet XXXIV. Sonnet XXXV. Sonnet XXXVI. Sonnet Without Rhymes XXXVII. Too Soon .... XXXVIII. Too Late .... XXXIX. The Night-Wind . XL. Sonnet .... 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 132 ^33 134 A Last Word 135 EXORDIUM Speak ! said my soul, be stern and adequate ; The sunset falls from Heaven, the year is late, Love waits with fallen tresses at thy gate And mourns for perished days. Speak ! in the rigor of thy fate and mine, Ere these scant, dying days, bright-lipped with wine, All one by one depart, resigned, divine. Through desert, autumn ways. Speak ! thou art lonely in thy chilly mind, With all this desperate solitude of wind, The solitude of tears that make thee blind. Of wild and causeless tears. Speak ! thou hast need of me, heart, hand and head, Speak, if it be an echo of thy dread, A dirge of hope, of young illusions dead — Perchance God hears ! A FIRST WORD " Come," said the Ocean, " I have songs to sing, And need thine utterance, as Apollo's self Needed his lyre to perfume the world With chants of soul and body, both divine. ' * " Come," said the Ocean, " if thy soul is fit To bear my mastery, thy words shall flow Simple and adequate as human tears, And all thy discord fall in great accords." " Come," said the Ocean : and I answered : " Lord Of song and silence, I have heard thy voice. And loved as may a man the heart divine; But still my soul is tremulous and mute." A FIRST WORD " Come," said the Ocean, " Oh, my tired child. My lips are delicate with whisper, sad With endless yesterdays, and marvellous With myriad legends since the birth of Time. ' ' " Come," said the Ocean, soft; and I, "Beloved, Alone upon thy breast I heard and knew And marvelled and was dumb. ' ' And then the sea : "Speak!" And I said, "By what?" and She, "By Love." THE OCEAN SINGS I HAVE glorified God in my descant, I have praised him in tempest and calm, I have mirrored his proper refulgence As I slept in the infinite palm. I have sung till the night was ecstatic, Till my lyrics woke flame in the moon, I have sung to the morning's desire And sheathed in the metal of noon. When my forehead was furrowed with silver, When my bosom swelled softly as sleep. When I wounded the sands in my passion, When I lisped through the sea-weed at neap. THE OCEAN SINGS Through the piteous wail of the siren, Through the bell-buoy's comfortless moan, Through the silence that stirs to a sea-bird That moves in my vastness alone, I have sung; through the ranges of music I have frightened and comforted man, I have praised the strong life that compels me As what voice in the universe can. I have sung the great lyric of sorrow, The splendour of life and the pain, I have pitied the spirit's endeavour. The doubt and despair in the brain. My passion is never senescent. My sorrow is balm to the soul. My voice is divine with remembrance, With peace and commiserate dole. THE OCEAN SINGS I have lavished my largess of comfort, Taken earth in mine arms like a child, Taught the children of life of its splendour. Brought their eyes to the light unbeguiled. I have laboured and none shall reward me, I have lavished and none shall repay. If the earth that I serve be ungrateful My bounty shall never decay. Could the stars be repaid for their brilliance, They would fall through precipitous air Day and night from the summit of heaven, Leave the universe blackened and bare. Take my beauty — God's image is mirrored, Take my pity for Fate's sure control, Take my song, it is Life's evanescence. Take my silence, the strength of the Soul ! 6 THE SONG OF THE WAVE I This is the song of the wave ! The mighty one ! Child of the soul of silence, beating the air to sound : White as a live terror, as a drawn sword. This is the wave. II This is the song of the wave, the white-maned steed of the Tempest Whose veins are swollen with life. In whose flanks abide the four winds. This is the wave. Ill This is the song of the wave ! The dawn leaped out of the sea And the waters lay smooth as a silver shield, 7 THE SONG OF THE WAVE And the sun-rays smote on the waters like a golden sword. Then a wind blew out of the morning And the waters rustled And the wave was born! IV This is the song of the wave ! The wind blew out of the noon, And the white sea-birds like driven foam Winged in from the ocean that lay beyond the sky And the face of the waters was barred with white, For the wave had many brothers, And the wave was strong ! V This is the song of the wave ! The wind blew out of the sunset And the west was lurid as Hell. The black clouds closed like a tomb, for the sun was dead. 8 THE SONG OF THE WAVE Then the wind smote full as the breath of God, And the wave called to its brothers, "This is the crest of life ! " VI This is the song of the wave, that rises to fall, Rises a sheer green wall like a barrier of glass That has caught the soul of the moonlight, Caught and prisoned the moon-beams ; Its edge is frittered to foam. This is the wave ! VII This is the song of the wave, of the wave that falls — Wild as a burst of day-gold blown through the colours of morning It shivers to infinite atoms up the rumbling steep of sand. This is the wave. 9 THE SONG OF THE WAVE VIII This is the song of the wave, that died in the fulness of life. The prodigal this, that lavished its largess of strength In the lust of attainment. Aiming at things for Heaven too high, Sure in the pride of life, in the richness of strength. So tried it the impossible height, till the end was found : Where ends the soul that yearns for the fillet of morning stars, The soul in the toils of the journeying worlds. Whose eye is filled with the Image of God, And the end is Death ! THE EAST WIND It came ! Breaking across the giant gates of gold It cleaved the veils of morning fold on fold, A fluent sword aslant the early flame. The sea Shivered, as waking from impassioned sleep A naked girl might feel her senses creep Beneath the winter of reality. The dawn Fell haggard and dishevelled from the skies, The shoreless ocean filled with whispered cries And through the smothered twilight reared its spawn. THE EAST WIND And now A splash of chilly wind forsook the air And caught the ocean by its tangled hair, Bent it, and bit the stigma in its brow. Alone The wind of ruin walked from sky to sky — As when Sertorius put forth to die. It swayed the void beyond the gates of stone. And then It grew almighty and the ocean roared ; The living slime wherewith the world is floored Hearkened, as in their ships despairing men. To me The whisper came, the voice and then the call Of wanton power, and then, o'erwhelming all, The passion of mine own infinity. THE NORSEMEN These are the men ! The North has given them name, The children of God who dare, From the field and the growing tree. Come down through the crystalline air Where the sky is a fleece of flame, And the breaker's crest is as hair Blown back from the brows of the sea ; These are the men ! These are the men ! Where midnight abides in the land, Where the sun walks round the earth, Where the fields of God are benumbed. There the shadow did give them birth, 13 THE NORSEMEN Where the waves are tawny with sand And the miserly ground breeds dearth And the harps of the air are thrummed, These are the men ! These are the men ! Oh Merciful what for them ? For thy children with frozen lips ? Then the Lord spake, " I am the Life; Go down to the sea in ships Beloved and dwell in the hem Of my robe though the tempest rips Like a sword, for I give ye Strife ! " These are the men ! These are the men ! For they stand in the dawn of things Full-armed from the ocean's womb; With their dower of wild great joy In the pouring sun, in the boom 14 THE NORSEMEN Of the wave as the storm-flail sings, Till the waters pulse and ploy And gape like a snow-fringed tomb ; These are the men ! These are the men ! In the strength of the primal song As the increate world turned white They descended and dwelt with the sea, Like a flower dawn bloomed on the night. And they knew that their lives were strong. That life was and should ever be — Then the sun ! — and a pulse of light — These are the men ! These are the men ! In their youth without memory They were glad, for they might not see The lies that the world has wrought On this parchment of God. The tree 15 THE NORSEMEN Yielded them ships and the sky Flamed as the waters fought ; But they knew that death was a lie, That the life of man was as nought, And they dwelt in the truth of the sea These are the men ! i6 "WAS HAT MAN DIR, DU ARMES KIND, GETHAN ? " Weep nevermore again ! The wind's wild footstep thrills the leaves with pain ; Then desert silence, then the scattered cries Of frail-voiced children, then within thy heart A sense of falling leaves through gray linked rain. Of perished youth with grave prophetic eyes And strange scant visions of a hopeless past ; A sense of life no older than thou art. And in thy soul, of bright tears falling fast — Hush! tired child, weep nevermore again. 17 THE SONG OF THE SWORD PRELUDE In the ineffable da}'s when from the summits of morning, Through the extravagant noon, down to the murmurous eve. Lands of the plenteous vine lay in their vernal adorning, Robed in immutable calm, God's everlasting reprieve. Lands of imperial sun, lands of enduring fruition, Lands where abundant the wine perfumed the madness of youth. Lands where the women and men flamed in the vernal ig- nition. Gained through the shadows of sense rays from the ulti- mate truth. i8 THE SONG OF THE SWORD Where on the tenanted seas flashed the flushed feet of the moon-rise And stirred the dumb heart with its touch — silent, alone, unconfined ; Where, as to promiseful dawn, scattered the natural tune dies, Women's bare feet in the dew, women's wild hair in the wind. Where — O immaculate dream — Hope that endureth for- ever, Beauty and adequate peace opened wide gates for the soul. Where the low lyric of love welded so nought could dis- sever. Where there was marble and song, where death was divine and its dole. There in impossible times, lands of the amorous turtle, Still, on a porphyry shrine lay the memorial sword, Sheathed in reverberate gold, consecrate laurel and myrtle. Cold in the plenty and peace, waiting the hand of the Lord. 19 THE SONG OF THE SWORD Passionate, passive and proud, stark on the porphyry altar, Menacing, waiting the years, serving an absolute need. Ever the sword is at hand, lest, when the hearts of men falter. Rise from the satiate peace sons of degenerate seed. So there may come to the need, filled with enormous de- sire, One from the mire of men bearing the resonant word. Then shall the slumber dissolve, shattered as crystal by fire. He alone voids the gold sheath, chaunting the song of the sword. Then shall the spirits of men wake to a novel refulgence, Over the marginal sea break an irradiate star. Flame shall arise in the heart, desire demanding indul- gence. Lust of the greatness of earth, lust of dominion and war. INVOCATION God of the hand and loin and burning heart, God of the whelming ecstasy and lust, God of the fretful youth and lifeless dust, God that art travailed with a vital smart ! God of the earlier races, limbed like Mars, Epic as Odin echoing bell-voiced forth, God of the sun-gilt South and iron North, Symbol of life's impulsion — God of Wars ! Thine, in thy powerful hand, before mankind Sprang from the womb of nature, blazed the sword, Forged in the vital heat creation poured, White from its core and tempered in the wind, That walked through chaos down the cold expanse Of lucent solitude from sun to sun ! O sign of life when life was unbegun, This life of earth where death is circumstance ! THE SONG When the vortex of Heaven was blind The sword Was framed from a primal desire That shook thro' the void like a wind ; Then it rose as a shivering fire And crimsoned God's vision of peace; Then sank, like the trail of a star, Down the frail twilight of space And stood over hell like a scar Furrowed deep in the forehead of night, Till the universe called, " There is light, And life and the promise of war. ' ' Lamping the limitless gloom, The sword Glowed in the saffron of Hell, As might in a tenanted tomb 22 THE SONG Some strenuous memory swell Over death and illume the dead eyes. Then — O wonder ! — ere ever it fell, A hand gat the sword in its grasp, And while earth and sea uttered their spawn. Far-flung on the ocean of skies, It lay like the welter of dawn In the giant immutable clasp. Then white as the darkness of death The sword Sang like a boreal breath Blown thro' the idyll of dawn, Cadenced as steel that is drawn Tense thro' the crest of a storm. It exalted the choir of earth. Singing deep where the heart-blood is warm, And pervaded the resonant sky Like the solemn and sorrowful mirth Of Hfe that is living to die. f '3 THE SONG And down thro' the legended years The sword, Sonorous with laughter and tears, Has sung its old epic to man ; And the earlier glory awakes As when life in its anguish began, Till, whenever the noon-brilliance shakes Down the scabbardless steel, joy and woe. All is blended to passion that has Neither laughter, nor weeping, nor name, But love and the lusting for fame, Even death in its agony, grow Into life that is, shall be and was — Life the ichor of earth, the spring-throe, Ever manifold, ever the same. 24 AFTER-WORD Is it this, Beloved, this the secret ? — Life, the earth life, thee and nie compelling, Life and only life ? — Where flowers have withered. Lavished perfume on the impartial breezes. Fed the bee and crowned the bush with beauty, Then, the summer spent, the petals perish. Then, the spring returned, the sap returning, Novel buds that ripen to perfection, — Flowers may fade but never so the impulse. Shift the scenes the play goes on forever? — Is it this. Beloved, this the secret ? Oh, consider ! — Sure that life endureth — Do I kiss thy lips, thine adolescent Breast of marble, do my fingers even 25 AFTER-WORD Touch thy hand, the perfume of thy tresses Fall upon my sense, thy voice's cadence Turn concordant all my soul's confusion — Do I these, or look upon thee even. Comes a certainty of life's persistence. Life that speaks in thee, in me, in nature, Life demanding choate form and substance, Life pervasive, deathless and enduring. Is it this, Beloved, this the secret ? This I sing to, since the word suffices. This thou hearest ? — I strove to sing the man's song, Sing the earth's song. Life, the strength and splendour ! Thou did'st lean and hark and comprehend me : — Life abideth, thou must know — a lover ! — Thou did'st know and then, and then — I, pausing. Hear you question, "Is it this, the secret ?" Hear you ask, ' ' Is life the spirits answer ? Shall the inward voice be stilled in living ? ' ' Hear you wonder, "What's the good of life, then? 26 AFTER-WORD Why endure the pain and natural anguish, Wherefore draw the furrow, sweat the year-long, When the winter shuts its jaws of crystal, Kills the generous spring, refuses fruitage — This the secret ? What's the good of life then ? " Ah, there's still a song — men strive to sing it. Sing their striving, reach their goal, are silent. What's the song? — No utterance can confine it Only silence great enough to bear it. I who cannot praise thee, thee my woman, Singing life, as dim as life my verses, Could I call the winds and waves to wuness, Could I pull the stars down from their courses. Were I lion-voiced as old Jehovah, Then my words could be but shadowy symbols ; None may phrase the spirit's simple knowledge. And the secret and the revelation Of what is not, where the mind of mortal Turns to ashes and where life is tacit. 27 AFTER-WORD Oh, my Well-Beloved forget the psean ! Let the sword-blade and the gold and glory Warp no longer thine eternal vision. Seek thy soul, and, finding, cease from struggle ; Cease, forget the song of life and living ; That's the world's way — Life and more and endless, Copious earth-life in its rich completion, Life and death and after, Life eternal, Sapphire pavements and the domes of opal, Life of blended music fair and fancied : Only life — what life might be — a vision ! Then the Soul's way : lapse from sound to silence, Merge oblivious in entire ceasing In thy nativeness, the matrix ocean. Thou a spray-drop hung on slippery verges ; Ah ! the world's way — thine to be no longer ; Thine the soul's way, thou hast seen and known it ! Like an empty tale the worlds shall vanish. Frail as dream, and life be quite forgotten. 28 AFTER-WORD What of life-songs then, and what of death-songs ? Sound and fury down the babbling ages, They shall cease, the echoes pass and perish ; On the void the 'stablishment eternal Bides alone — the Soul's gigantic silence. 29 BALLAD She died and lay in her grave of stone, Alone in her shroud with open eyes, And an angel came from the awful throne To lead her soul through the seven skies. He stood at her coffin in solemn mirth And called her spirit to leave its sleep. But her soul replied from the frozen earth, " It is not for God that I wait and weep ! " He sought her hand in her silver shroud But her soul looked out from her sunken eyes, And the angel turned with his forehead bowed And rose alone through the seven skies. 30 BALLAD And she lay alone in her hearse of stone And her spirit watched like a sleepless flame, And her lover arose from a dream of moan And came to her tomb and spake her name. He whispered, " I come from the world of sin ; My heart desires, my soul is proud ; Shall I open thy coffin and come within. Or lead thee forth in thy silver shroud ? " And the Lady rose in her awful pride, For her soul was strong with the wine of Love, And she said, " I have waited to be thy bride. Though God desired me there above." And he whispered, " Love, I have come and found ! I have died with thee, for my life was thine, And our bridal bed is the frozen ground, — If heaven is lost thou art wholly mine. 31 BALLAD " The love of our lives can bear the frown Of God Himself, though our lives are gone. ' ' And he drew her close while they laid them down Lip to lip in the tomb of stone. 32 DAWN The swoon of night's delicate whisper, the tense wide still- ness of birth, The holy awaiting of sound in the soul of the slumberous earth, The peace compelling our tears for the shame of the agon- ized flesh. Ere creation has riven its grave-clothes and come on the world afresh. The dawn that doth come like a song aflame on the lips of the world, The grasses' hymn to the dew, and the resonant wave that is hurled From the reticent soul of the waters, and about the death- bed of night Resurrection pulsating like music, and the heavens enor- mous with light. 33 DAWN Dear God ! how the pulses beat faster, as, lo ! with the rush of a wind, From the labyrinth caves of our slumber we feel we have brought forth a mind ; And the shock as the shock of battle, when our vision rends the veil As the sun swims in blood on the waters; — 'tis the Life of our life doth prevail ! The exquisite fabric of morning, too pure for the spoken word, From the cedar-tree woven with twilight has uttered the song of a bird, 'Tis the wild, pure paean of pity, ever new since the world began, 'Tis the sadness fragrant with promise — a day that is given to Man ! 34 SUNSET The sea a great vague mistiness of blue, A thread of murmur drawn about the shore, The journeying of wind across the moor Even and slow and delicate with dew. The peace of ancient sorrow come anew. The resignation of a great despair And failing of all struggle into prayer; — The promise of a day is proved untrue. The choired sweetness of home-gathered birds, The tall gaunt shadows and the mellow light. The tired leaves that fold against the tree ; Within the heart unutterable words, The pure compassion of the toward night — A day that dies and never more shall be. 35 THE GATES OF LIFE Held in the bosom of night, large to the limits of wonder, Close where the refluent seas wrinkle the wandering sands, Where, with a tenderness torn from the secrets of sorrow, and under The pale pure spaces of night felt like ineffable hands, The weak strange pressure of winds moved with the mov- ing of waters. Vast with their solitude, sad with their silences, strange with their sound, Comes like a sigh from the sleep of the realmless Olympian daughters. Widowed of worship by time, at the feet of their father uncrowned. Held in the bosom of night, with the wind in my face, and the ocean Stirred thro' its tremulous deeps with the unfulfilled dawn- ing of moon, 36 THE GATES OF LIFE As involved in the power of life and ashake with the pulse of emotion It waited, when slow thro' the void came the primitive promise of noon. Filled with the open avowals of nature, the choral that falters Only to swell thro' the channels of song like an affluent stream, Pure with old faiths of the heart that have died in the horns of their altars, Leaving their beauty to live like the memories kept of a dream. Like the fragments of immanent silence, like the dew of immense resurrection Falls the night on mine eyes, in the curve of my lips the fresh tears of the sea, And like rifts in the texture of life, like the soul in empiric reflection, 37 THE GATES OF LIFE Come the tacit and lingering lapses where the phantoms of Heaven are free. There is peace in the winds, the invisible pinions of dark, there is patience enduring In the native and motionless outlines of headland and for- est and stone. There is love in the perfumes essential of earth, the old impulse maturing To fruitage, and calm in the star-scattered chasms where night is alone. I am drenched with the night, I am drunk with the wine she prepares for the spirit, I am bathed in her solitudes, filled with her proper im- mensities, mad With the perilous visions of realms that my soul, is it strong, may inherit, With the simple and adequate bounty of natural things : — I am sad 38 THE GATES OF LIFE With the solemn completeness of joy that abides in the centres of sorrow, The sadness of Ufe understood in its prophecy, loved in its pain, I am alien to yesterday, held on the heart-beat of time, tho' to-morrow Return and its temperance fall on my zenith like colourless rain. I am urged with the germinal ichor whose functional vigour increases, Subsides and suspires and fashions the world to its purpose again — For the sands shall be fluent with sea when life's tremulous episode ceases. And winds from the regions of sunset blow warm with the perfume of rain. The darkness shall furnish its delicate silence, the destitute spaces 39 THE GATES OF LIFE August with disseminate suns shall be heritage still for the soul, And old memories warm from the heart shall inhabit earth's intimate places, When the cool, kind fingers of death loose our bonds and we leap to the goal. Tho' life shall return to me, sadden me cinctured with sin and besotten With heartless immoderate voices, and stale with perversion of truth, I have tasted the lips of the night, the caress of its wind, and forgotten, Alone on the bosom of nature, the days that shall wither my youth ; I have felt with the manifold ocean, with the blind, blank, lustreless shining Of starlight, and tasted intensely the crude cold smells of the earth, 40 THE GATES OF LIFE I have put my weak hands in the large hands of nature that caught me declining Thro' colourless ashes of thought in the fear of perpetual birth. She found me and nourished me, nourished mine eyes that were thirsty for shadow, My heart that desired her blindly, my senses diseased in the rife, Blurred phases of mortal desire, my soul that replied to her sad, slow Power, her promise of ultimate peace thro' the strength of her life ; Her life that is lost in its bigness and big with the prim- itive glories, Can it save from the life that is cramped in the dust-stifled highways of men, Can it open the gates of the soul where the vital com- mencement and core is, And the soul leave the centres of life and be merged into nothing again ? 41 THE GATES OF LIFE Can life save from itself? Oh, Beloved ! thine eyes over- come me, and longer Than flesh can endure is the kiss on the dew of thy lips and the flame, And the old safe landmarks of life are lost in its volume, while stronger It widens till sorrow and happiness, virtue and sin, are the same ! For love is coeval with life and what were divided are one now, As we leap in the night, as we plunge in the well-spring of nature, and then The world grows coherent with music — Oh, haste ! shall our Heaven be won now. And the manna of earth changed to food for the ultimate soul-wants of men ? Shall life turn to death in the living ? Shall we pass from the heart-shaken centres Of nature, the pinnacled crisis and powerful matrix of life, 42 THE GATES OF LIFE That project thro' the cosmical fabric, where the sea- meadows pulse, where the scent stirs In flowers that feed the faint breezes, the eternal progenital strife ? Can we pass to the perfect cessation where life is a dream unrecurring ? — Earth's divisionless ecstasy fills me, till my body is rent with the strain, — Oh, Heart ! — could the flesh but endure the full splendour of life and enduring Dissolve in the quiet perfection of death, without hope, without pain ! 43 MOTHERS OF MEN Weep, mothers of men ! Out of pain ye have peopled the earth, And the pain of hfe is the pain of birth, With its sordid lust and its evil mirth. And yet ye have borne and must bear again — Weep, mothers of men ! Weep, mothers of men ! The toil of body and ache of brain, The sweat of life at the end proves vain ; Your children leave you to dare the strain. Your children return to you alien — Weep, mothers of men ! 44 MOTHERS OF MEN Weep, mothers of men ! The hands of the world are strong to take The lives ye bear for the world's sole sake, To try their souls till they bend or break : Your children vanish from out your ken — Weep, mothers of men ! Weep, mothers of men ! For a woman's lips, for the lust of gold. Your children's honour is bought and sold, Your children die in the dark and cold. Your children never shall come again — Weep, mothers of men ! Weep, mothers of men ! The human heart is the proper sheath For the dagger of life ; ye have blown the breath Of life in the world and it ends in death ; Your children live and die, and then ? — Weep, mothers of men ! 45 MOTHERS OF MEN Weep, mothers of men ! Weep and pray to the God whose scorn Has given ye life that men may be born : Hearts to suffer and eyes to mourn, For the crown of love is a crown of thorn. And your children return to you alien, Perish and never return again — Weep, mothers of men ! 46 LOVE IN AGE It was never more than a face, An impression merely ; a bit Of failing landscape — her grace Just caught as the rain-cloud split And the air grew warm a space. And now it is many years, And I, with my thin hair gray, Face wrinkled — perhaps by tears ! — 'Tis strange how my yesterday Of dead youth reappears. I wonder if after all I've any right to complain ! As the shadows weave on the wall, And we feel the wash of rain Through the light grown thin and small ; 47 LOVE IN AGE As we sit and cherish the hearth, While the dead come one by one And mime their long-quenched mirth, I feel I have grown alone And cold on a living earth. Well, one of the dear mute things That climb up out of the dark Is this face, this moment that clings To life and me, like a spark That all the dead sunlight flings. Just rain-starred, blowing grass, The scent of the fluent air, Her profile — eyes like glass That kept a jewel, hair All mystery — I thought to pass And sh« turned — one look to me Carelessly, then away 43 LOVE IN AGE Out over the flat gray sea Where the white squall fled away And the light broke scatteredly. And then I knew that her face Was all in my blood ; half-blind, I paused, eyes closed, a space — And after ? — naught but wind And the clouds blown fine as lace. And there — the story's told ; And hardly worth, you'll say — Perhaps to yourself: " He's old And wanders" — yet far av/ay I know that the days were gold As the past says * ' I shall repay. ' ' And the memory, three parts grief, Is exquisite and real With a joy unlived ; but chief, 49 LOVE IN AGE As the warm drops heartward steal, With a present strange belief That all we have been and done And lived and suffered and loved Come back as we sit alone In the old years, sure and proved, And give us the crown we won. And say, "The living was worth; The little laugh, much tears. The fight ye fought on earth, All come in the latter years More real in a richer birth." Ah ! there's the old, old pain — I stand in the sultry air And think I see again, Dimly, her wind-blown hair Through the drift of seaward rain. 50 A MEMORY " Quel labbro, ond' alto Par, come d'urna piena, Traboccare il piacer. " — Leopardi. I REMEMBER but half-aright, Through the wine, a cloud of hair, And her breast's dishevelled white ; While a perfume touched the air, And her eyes grew cold with light. I remember the colour's play In the carmine wine, and round The hush of an infant day The viol's silver sound Burn up and sob away. 51 A MEMORY Behold she comes to me now And I kiss her naked hand, For her sin of the Hps and brow And love — I can understand And praise for the good I know. Your virtue is sterile as drouth And vain as your chilly words : This woman is all my youth Of wine, and the clash of swords, And a kiss on the open mouth. So give me her lips again. For I care not if heaven condemn, I have set on the brows of pain Her desire for diadem — And life has been so much gain ! 52 AGE Art thou not cold ? Brother, alone to-night on God's great earth ; Art thou not cold ? In years of old The simple, tender, rude, Strong love of men was thine, the fire-bright hearth Where now is silence of long solitude. Art thou not old ? Withered and white in these uncounted days ; Art thou not old ? Thy tale is told. And quite forgot as thou. To whom the world flung out a moment's praise, Then tore the laurel from thy bleeding brow. 53 AGE Art thou not sad ? Dost thou not feel the welling of great tears ? Art thou not sad ? How grave and glad They rest, the quiet dead j And thou — how dost thou live in these dim years? — Thy heart has begged from God and starved for bread. Shalt thou not die, Brother? the chill is fearful on thy life. Shalt thou not die ? Is this a lie. This threadbare hope — of death ? A lie like God, and human love, and strife For pride and fame — this soiled and withered wreath? Art thou not cold ? Brother, alone on God's great earth to-night ; Art thou not cold ? 54 AGE Art thou not old And dying and forlorn? Art thou not choking in the last stern fight While in divine indifference glows the morn ? 55 EVENING The strangled breath Of life and death Fails to a lost complaint and dies, And softer than sleep a tawny light Furrows with fire the dawn of night As the moon swells soft o'er the ocean's white Like love through the desert centuries. And the long-linked years Bring their large arrears Of sorrow and passion and great surmise, And I know with a sense of familiar pain That the dead hopes never can come again, That the lust and struggle and tears are vain, While ever the future smiles and lies. 56 TO A WOMAN How shall it seem to thee when thou art old? When this, the dust in which I wrote my name, And I in memory's twilight lost and cold Have grown too unremembered to defame ? Perchance that when thine eyes are dull with drouth, Thy beauty haggard, thou shalt think on me And cry, " His name is ashes in the mouth ! His name I speak in dying misery." Perchance thy rage shall sob its full despair : " He was more masterful than Time and fell, Weak in the world, to lie despised and bare — In death a chord, in life a broken bell." 57 TO A WOMAN Or shall thy pride be mightier and say : " He fought and failed and — Peace ! the scorn was best! With his forgotten deeds the years are gray, And now his brow I crowned is fallen to rest. ' ' My heart instructs me it shall seem to thee In no such wise; thy lips may praise or blame And leave the heart its loving — thou to me, Thy cheek that withers, my forgotten name. 58 THE END II sempre sospirar nulla rileva. — Il Petrarca. I SAID, " Since Life is old with pain, Since words are cold and tears are dead, And nothing now is left unsaid, And all the strain of thought is vain ; " Since joy by joy the dreadful past Is paid in agony of soul, Since held in life's severe control, Our shaken hearts are mute at last " Since echoless and unrevealed. Beyond, the sad impending days Shall take us both in several ways, Thro' worlds of windy rain concealed • 59 THE END " Since we have stood alone and proud And paid for every joy in full, And living touched the flames of Hell And given life the tears we owed : ' ' We who have felt the wild lament, The voids of darkness, cold and pain, That base the life we hold in vain, That vainly come is vainly spent, '' May watch alone the myriads pass Their low and level twilight way, Where never falls the splendid sway Of primal truth that is and was. "The balance only lifts to fall. The hemlock almost seems divine To us, whose lips have touched the wine That makes God's lips grow musical. 60 THE END " And they, who neither know nor feel, Are strange to us nor understand — I lay my lips upon thy hand And joy and pain grow tense as steel." 6i NEANT Et toi, divine Mort, ou tout rentre et s'efface, Accueille tes enfants dans ton sein etoile ; Affranchis-nous du temps, du nombre et de I'espace, Et rends nous le repos que la vie a troublee ! " — Leconte de Lisle. I TELL you this — each lapse of light That glares the world from roof to floor, Shall leave, as days that died before, This envelope of antient night. O Heart ! this wash of fluent air, The ocean's calm sonorous stir. That floods the huge horizon's blur, Dissolves in silence, like a prayer 62 NEANT That threads the still cathedral's peace, A rhythmic pathway thro' the grave, Eternal twilight of the nave, Whose silences shall never cease. The fret of youth, the sword and wreath, The flush of fame, the vernal smart, The human tears that flood the heart Are sparkles on the void of death. For every life returns to this — We are and are not, one by one, As zones and systems, sun by sun. Burn out — the darkness ever is. Yea, life and light, the sea and star, Upon the warp of things sublime, Seem only — Never touched by time Old night and death and silence are. 63 YOUTH If I must die, The earth is inarticulate to sing The dirge I crave : The sorrow of the murmur-laden wave, The sea-born wind complaining 'neath the sky, And round my head the waters' silver ring. If I must live, And feel the ashes of oblivion About my soul, Let life be fearful, let me feel the whole, Despair, and face the sunrise — if I grieve Let it but be the tarrying of the sun. 54 SERENADE Sleep ! for the silver dawn is folded still Within the sea ; Sleep ! for the trees are slumberous on the hill, The lark is tuneless and the crickets thrill — To wake is misery. Sleep ! for the heart of God has slept to dream A better world ; Sleep ! for the day is sadder than we deem : Perchance thy soul shall lapse along the stream The lotus flower impearled. Sleep ! Oh, my Love, for I am open-eyed Upon the sun ; Sleep ! for I would the heavens were yet more wide, The stars more limpid, and that I had died Ere yet the night was done. 65 SONG My Love, thine eyes have been to me Like to a bird that singeth in the night To one who waits the coming of the light Through the enormous solitude of sea. Thy beauty fell upon my mind Like song to one within a darkling land Who, with fear on him like a bloodless hand, Hears the large, hurrying whisper of the wind. My Love, thy heart is like a prayer To one who, dying at the gates of morn, Stirless, in splendid effort and great scorn, Sends forth his soul to meet the last despair. 66 SONG And oh, thy Love is as a road To one who waits in deserts of the soul, And sees through Life, whose waves of fever roll, The waking Sorrow in the breast of God. 67 SONG Out of one heart the birds and I together, Earth hushed in twilight, Low through the live-oaks hung heavy with silver, Gemmed with the sky-light. Under the great wet star Shaking with hght, we jar Lute-voiced the silence with intervalled music. While under the margined world the slow sun lingers, Flaming earth's portal, Over the lilac dusk spreads his great fingers — Earth is immortal ! While the frail beauty dies. Dream in the dreamer's eyes. All the good gladness turns praise for the singers. 68 SONG Hark, 'tis the breath of Hfe ! Hiish ! and I need it ; Northern, gigantic, — Questing the silences, herding the sudden foam Down the Atlantic ; Leaves from the autumn's store Shrill at my desert door, They and I out of one heart that is grieving. 69 " Or poserai per sempre, Stanco mio cor. " — Leopardi. Silent, alone ! Around the wrinkled earth My lips can feel the final heart-throb creep, While autumn fills the world with solemn mirth That freights the vine and gilds the ripened sheaves That summer promised ; and upon my sleep The guardian oak shall drop its pride of leaves. Silent, alone ! Beneath the sleepless stars This cloven peak shall stand against the moon In windy solitude, the whispered wars Of waters writhed in silver at my feet Shall hush the verges of the world and croon A sure compassion for my sure defeat. 70 Silent, alone ! The river seeks the sea, The dew-drop on the rose desires its sun ! Oh, prisoned Soul, shalt thou alone be free ? Shalt thou escape the curse of death and birth And merge thy sorrows in oblivion ? Thou, thou alone of all the living earth ? Silent, alone ! I know when next the dawn Shall cast its vision through the desert sea And find me not, the sword that I have drawn Shall flash between the twilights, and a word Shall praise what I was not but strove to be. Saying : " Behold the mercy of the Lord." 71 THEY " Oh sprich mir nicht von jener bunten Menge, Bei deren Anblick uns der Geist entflieht ! " — Goethe. Their voices die and calmly leave This interlude of running rain, This solitude of heart and brain, This solemn pause and brief reprieve. And as their voices they shall die. Dim darkened spirits dulled with sound ; The truth they never sought nor found Shall give their little lives the lie. They live for life, their needs are filled. And in their false and narrow scope They mock at dream and jeer at hope; Their foolish noise shall soon be stilled. 72 THEY They live and laugh and cease to be, They fade and fall and rise again, Their scorn is false, their praise is vain, They live and die unceasingly. They are as writings on the snow. That pass and leave no trace behind ; They mocked the sun, for they were blind. The Truth, because they could not know. Have patience ! Yet a little while. Thou, too, shalt pass beyond their ken ; The stupid scorn of vulgar men May madden, but cannot defile. If on the fire-forged nether springs Thy hands shall base the work they do, What matter if the pure and true Be bought and sold for meaner things ? 73 THEY For if thro' thee, whate'er the cost, Pure light may shine in word or deed, Thy work shall live ; thou art the seed Of what can never quite be lost. So take no heed of all the loud, Persistent folly, scorn and sin. But, where the light has entered in. Look steadfast, unafraid and proud. They pass like winds that chafe the sea- Strive on unvexed with fear or hate. For calm abides and consummate The Peace that was, is and shall be. 74 TO A BUST OF THE MATER DOLOROSA " . . . et sur DOS croix d'ebene Ton cadavre celeste en poussiere est tombe! " — De Musset. Oh, Dolorous Mother with the silver tears, That in the withered day of Jesus' pain Received the flame of heaven-inspired prayers Upon thy pale, ascetic lips in vain ! Thou, Israel's daughter, with white arms apart On Death's dishevelled midnight, felt despair Weep tears of blood upon thy broken heart And tears of silver through thy solemn hair. In vain thine agony grew almost sweet With pity at His death, and vainly there The Magdalen lavished on His wounded feet Her lips' caress, her opulence of hair. 75 TO A BUST OF THE MATER DOLOROSA In vain thy Son raised Lazarus from the dust, In vain He brake the bread and shared the wine, In vain they wore His sign, the meek and just, In vain He was a symbol and a shrine ! In vain ! Thine image crumbles and is gone. Thine hallowed altar is an empty sign, And these mine unbelieving lips are stone That kiss thy dust amid those tears of thine ! 76 TO PSYCHE FoRESPENT I sat at the morning's gate And Psyche beside with drooping wings, And I moaned, " We have come in a world of hate Where the song-bird songless wings." And she : " Thou hast lived in the fierce hot light Till thy mind is gray with remembered things. But between the stars the air is bright With a song no singer sings. " I have waited ; mine eyes are liquid for thee, For thou who wert lost in the elder years; I have come, and thy passions throbbing sea Is salt with tears. 77 TO PSYCHE " Too long have we dwelt apart, alone, I in the shadow, thou in the sun ; Oh, bare thy breast that I build my throne. For the storm is run. " Through the violet lustre of my hair Let a sleep steal over my golden eyes And I shall forget the tireless air And the cruel skies. "■ Sleep, sleep, and never to wake again, But ever to lapse from dream to dream And taste the joy that is near to pain, Where the worlds not are but seem. ** I am thy soul, God's child am I, And the day when thy mighty mind turns small In the simple nearness of the sky, I shall wake and hear thee call. 78 TO PSYCHE '' Mine eyes shall unfold in a world of morn, Through the gates of night by music blown We shall watch dissolve the world's great scorn- On the breast of God, alone." 79 THE WILL " Was jeder im innersten Will, das muss er sein und was jeder ist, das Will er eben." — Schopenhauer. It sprang from the brows of a star And it lives with the life of the world, It appeared like the lightning of God Through the dust of Eternity hurled. And much as a luminous thought May shine through the dusk of a dream, It awoke in the childhood of light And crimsoned the twilight with gleam. It arose in the first blade of grass That brake the stone mountains apart, And it budded and blossomed and bloomed Till it stirred in the human heart. So THE WILL And the centuries freighted with life Have trembled at touch of its flame, And lips where its lyric was warm Have laboured to give it a name. It inspires the voices of birds, The dcedalian tremor of earth, When the passion of increate spring Moves the heart to ineffable mirth. It suspires in scent from the rose And in midsummer's satiate rest ; It is rich through the veins of the world, Like milk in a woman's deep breast. It burdens thy murmurous lips When love in thy spirit is warm — My lover the sea, it is thou As it thrones in thy splendour of storm. 8i THE WILL *Tis the pride of the arm and the loin That thrives in the sinews of war, And puts forth in the whiteness of death Like life in the dawn of a star. And though life is grown tired and old, And the treasures of heart and of soul Are sold for a handful of coin, It stirs with a vital control In man and in woman and earth. As on Sappho's lips haunted with flame. Or as under the hand of the Christ It burned — it is ever the same. And while ever the sunrise returns It shall still be ihe power that can Make the heart to grow pallid with love Or a man die the death of a man. 82 TUCKANUCK I AM content to live the patient day : The wind sea-laden loiters to the land And on the glittering gold of naked sand The eternity of blue sea pales to spray. In such a world we have no need to pray ; The holy voices of the sea and air Are sacramental, like a mighty prayer In which the earth has dreamed its tears away. We row across the waters' fluent gold And age seems blessed, for the world is old. Softly we take from Nature's open palm The dower of the sunset and the sky, And dream an Eastern dream, starred by the cry Of sea-birds homing through the mighty calm. 83 TUCKANUCK II Thou art the dwelling of unshadowed sun That spills its metal on the furrowed tide And vivid grasses when the winds have died In threads of murmur round the noontide spun. The cerements of flesh are like a rose Caressed with light, whose petals, one by one Unfolding, loose the soul to die upon The ocean of the air that ebbs and flows. Perchance the truth is nearer than we deem, That after grievous pilgrimage and dearth The soul shall wake and find it close beside ; And see, as visioned in a perfect dream, The pitiful grave spirit of the earth, A patient presence sitting at God's side. 84 TUCKANUCK III I know it never shall come again, This present peace of the great grave sea And the land that laughs in its sheen of rain, This friendship of nature to you and me, While Autumn smiles on us, big and sane. It never shall come though our love abide, And this very whisper stirs the grass, While clear and far on the tortured tide As now, the sea-birds cry and pass In years that shall come when our day has died. It never shall come — must we praise or blame If every day moulds the world anew ? Better perhaps, but never the same ; If this that we cherish and hold for true Shall wither and fade to an empty name ? 85 TUCKANUCK 'Tis the woe o' the world ! As the moments fly I war with time in a great despair, While the first shy star in the purple sky Steals through the dead day's golden hair That I love so much though it comes to die. 86 IV WIND OF TWILIGHT " Cuando besa a la pradera La brisa que entre las ramas Pasa con voz lastimera. " — M. Garcia Merou. Gone the red reaches of repining sea, Thou, thro' forgotten twilights, and thy pain, Wind of immortal longing, fresh as rain, Wonderful, fresh and faint, O mystery! Give me again the languorous touch of thee Lost in the purple shadows, while the main, Intervalled, lifts its choral, and again Sorrow divine and calm thro' thee to me. Give me the steady silence : sea, sky, shore. Earth and her simple idylls ! — All is gone ! All shall return, but be the same no more. Give me, O wonder ! still thy dim dark kiss. Cool on my temples, while I bide alone And cling to youth and linger pale for this. 87 PASTORAL Slopes of the sun and vine, and thou dark stream, Thou minstrel of the forest-gloom, whose roll Is like the passing of a natural dream Through depths of patient sleep To lend endurance to the taxed soul. The cruel life beneath the cruel noon, Where men are quenched like dewdrops in the sun. Where haggard women reach to God and weep. Never corrodes thy silent solitude ; But where thy sheer, green shadows shoreward creep Through the slow afternoon, The battle lost, the poem half-begun, Are chaplets that the hymning dawn-stars keep To grace the splendid hope our youth imbued. PASTORAL The twilight flowers close And down the shadow falls a timid star; Afar The sigh and silence of a changing wind, The perfume of a dying rose — Beyond the senses and beyond the mind Dimly we hear a graver music grow, — Peace ! Peace ! the world is tuneful of her woes : With man's despair the richer chord impearled Is infinite of grief; we in the world Hear scattered discord, nor the broad full flow Of song until, waxed greater than the whole, Wide, from their slumber's mystery, unclose The vision-laden eyelids of the soul. FALL Nay, be content — our door that opens wide On whitened fields this autumn dawn, all furred With silver imagery, the sudden bird That soothes the crystal air, the windless tide Of light across the world from roof to floor — Thy heart can ask no more. The fringed horizon of the pines Is delicate with frore, And holds our world within its shadow shore, Our world where beauty fresh with dewy wines Sits naked at our door. Thine eyes in mine ! The vineyard's dusky bloom. The garnered grain, are gifts of autumn's mirth ; And now, while softly through the forest gloom The warm awakening of the good wet earth 90 FALL Suspires through the dawn, we need not fear The ceaseless pageantry of death and birth, The swallow's passing with the changing year. Our souls could say, " Perfection was and is ; Death comes like slumber," — if to-morrow's sun Should find us fallen with the summer's rose. This moment stolen from the centuries, This foretaste of the soul's oblivion We hold and cherish, and because of this Are life and death made perfect, and thy woes Turn lyric through the glory we have won. The morning flower that drew its petals close And slept the cold night through is now unfurled To catch the breathless moment ; big and sane Our autumn day forsakes the gates of rose, And like a lion shakes its golden mane And leaps upon the world. Qi SONNETS TO SILENCE Lord of the deserts 'twixt a million spheres, Child of the moon-dawn and the naked moon, Close comrade of the whispered afternoon, Angel of mercy, whose absolving tears Erase the discord of our human fears : Thy lap is freighted with the dawn, thy heart Is warm about the sunset, for thou art The woof and fabric of eternal years. Thy hand is soft upon the troubled eyes. And, in the palace of thy sister Sleep, Thy peace remains when Life's last echo dies. Thou art more tender than the raptured breath That rounds a virgin's breast, and thou dost keep Thy kiss to lay upon the brows of Death. 95 II TO THE EARTH The heart can understand, oh, Mother Earth ! Thy tides and winds and seasons whisper, " Fate Has held us dumb through centuries of hate, And tears, and blood for things of little worth." The heart can understand, since Lilith's mirth Shivered the early echoes, half in scorn. The world-wide leap of light from every dawn. Day's dying pomp around thy blood-drenched girth. Across thy theatre pageants come and pass : The power and pride of man, a scenic thing, Frames forth his glory in enduring brass ; And through his dust I hear the whispering Of lifted waters, and a blade of grass Breaking the murmur-laden breast of Spring. 96 Ill ESSEX I Thy hills are kneeling in the tardy spring, And wait, in supplication's gentleness, The certain resurrection that shall bring A robe of verdure for their nakedness. Thy perfumed valleys where the twilights dwell, Thy fields within the sunlight's living coil, Now promise, while the veins of nature swell, Eternal recompense to human toil. And when the sunset's final shades depart The aspiration to completed birth Is sweet and silent ; as the soft tears start, We know how wanton and how little worth Are all the passions of our bleeding heart That vex the awful patience of the earth. 97 V ESSEX II Thine are the large winds and the splendid sun Glutting the spread of heaven to the floor Of waters rhythmic from far shore to shore, And thine the stars, revealing one by one. Thine the grave, lucent night's oblivion, The tawny moon that waits below the skies, — Strange as the dawn that smote their blistered eyes Who watched from Calvary when the Deed was done. And thine the good brown earth that bares its breast To thy benign October, thine the trees Lusty with fruitage in the late year's rest ; And thine the men whose blood has glorified Thy name with Liberty's divine decrees — The men who loved thy soil and fought and died. 98 V Toward thine Eastern window when the morn Steals through the silver mesh of silent stars, I come unlaurelled from the strenuous wars Where men have fought and wept and died forlorn. But here, across these early fields of corn. The living silence dwelleth, and the gray Sweet earth-mist, while afar the lisp of spray Breathes from the ocean like a Triton's horn. Open thy lattice, for the gage is won For which this earth has journeyed through the dust Of shattered systems, cold about the sun ; And proved by sin, by mighty lives impearled, A voice cries through the sunrise : '^ Time is just! "- And falls like dew God's pity on the world. 99 VI FOG AT SEA Gray grisly tides that choke the master sun Who domes the caves of sullen fog with pearl, While round and still the sick white eddies swirl Between the smothered vistas one by one; Like ghosts the frail hysteric breezes run Aslant the ashen world, and strive to furl The slow drenched air in one enormous whirl And free the ocean's breast it weighs upon. The world is dying for a draught of air, Great autumn air that like a hoarded stream Floods the gigantic openness of dawn ; And, like the whispering of hopeless prayer, The white world's voices, as if drowsed with dream, Sigh through the muffled stillness and are gone. 100 VII NIRVANA I And shall we find thee ? Shall the tired soul Toiling in gross dull clay, doomed to abide In blurred oblivion, condemned to hide Its eager wings impatient of control, And God-lit eyes that yearn to view the whole Of that divinest splendour glorified In earth's rare visions — shall it feel the tide Of thy calm love in endless pity roll ? Oh, let the inward vision drink the light Of thine effulgent countenance ! Then might This immaterial dream of Thee and Me Dissolve away like moon-mists in the morn. And we could lapse in silence from the scorn Of Destiny to thy great unity. lOI VIII NIRVANA II Woof of the scenic sense, large monotone Where life's diverse inceptions, death and birth, Where all the gaudy overflow of earth, Merge — they the manifold and thou the One. In create, complete — when the stars are gone In cinders down the void, when yesterday No longer spurs desire starvation-gray. When God grows mortal in men's hearts of stone,- As each pulsation of the Heart Divine Peoples the chaos, or with falling breath Beggars creation, still the soul is thine ! And still untortured by the world's increase, Thy wide, harmonic silences of death ; And last — thy white uncovered breast of peace. I02 IX PASSING DAYS They walk across my life with great, grave eyes That greet my questioning hands with silent scorn And blossoms break upon their crowns of thorn, While garlands wither that their children prize. I kiss their lips and grow a little wise, A little patient, while my strength is worn Beneath the spur of each succeeding morn That dowers its evening with a fresh surmise. Their message dies with them, an empty word ; But memory garners, in a wild regret, Their silent beauty that the heart preferred. And in the fire of hopeless love they seem So real with sorrow, that I half forget My soul shall wake and find the days a dream. 103 ON AN yEOLIAN HARP Lure of the night's daedalian sea-born breath, Wild as the heart's uncomprehended dole, Strange as the grieving of a mighty soul Touched with the lyric woe of life and death. Phraser of world-wide monotones that toll Like far enormous bells from sky to sky, Voice of the vaster solitudes that lie With life's solution past the mind's control. The golden eyes of long-forgotten days, The dolorous memory of simple things, Sadden thy lapsing chords : — the present pays The past's arrears of sorrow, and they seem To wake a sense, among thy weeping strings, Of other lives, like some unceasing dream. 104 XI THE SPHINX Oblivion like perfume from the wings Of dim Osiris, and the calm of one High soul, who thy remorseless lips of stone Chiselled to mock the resonance of kings. Thy proper silence, ripe with legend, clings To thine inert omnipotence, endures Though Gods and empires agonize, and lures Strange lapses from life's echoing, brazen strings. Thou seest new stars swing downward through the gloom, While on her dust, who smiled and ravished Rome, Decays the graven marble of her tomb. The fruitful Nile, the desert in thine eyes — Dead laughter, and dead tears — How much to come ? — Death, death, and fragile life that weeps and dies. 105 XII Whiles were, I almost seemed to understand ; I watched the flooding waters with their fleece Of sudden foam, and felt the ripening peace And joy of increase that the earth had planned. Then the great shadow fell across the land, And in the harsh monotony of wind I felt the past like Death about my mind, And mild with grief put forth mine idle hand. There was the question : each day should I be What yesterday I was not, and for me Of my dead self but memory remain ? And when upon my nakedness the snow Had spread its silence, should I wake and know, Or sleeping, dream another life as vain ? io6 XIII TO THE MEMORY OF W. H. P. Life may not perish though the winds of death Whine shrilly through the world, where we alone Crouch in the trodden dust, and feel the moan Of ancient sorrow burthening our breath. The blade endureth, though it break the sheath ; Life springs and ceases in oblivion, Gathered and scattered by the master sun Like rain upon the waters calm beneath. We wait like corpses in a charnel-house. And singly, as the shrouded years return. They loose the cere-cloth on our furrowed brows ; And one departs in splendour through the tomb, We hear the voice of Cherubim, and turn Weeping like children in the intenser gloom. 107 XIV INSOMNIA To wake upon the shrouded budding sky And sudden silence — wake and lie alone In the gigantic solitude, and groan To feel the sting of light upon the eye. To wake and wait until the senses cry — Knowing the sun shall smite upon the sea, And rouse the tragic day that is to be, Grief-haunted by the days that have gone by. To wake, and wait, and lie alone, and know That through the mist of grim familiar pain The world is perfect music even now ; To strive and catch the master-hand that pearled The night with song, and feel, across the rain, A sadness as the sadness of the world. io8 XV I STOOD upon the old Earth's breast and gazed To where the seaward sand was gray with brine, And heard a song-bird weeping in a pine, Beneath the iron heaven, bent and crazed. The sea was like an eye that death had glazed ; Amid gray light blown round the ragged marge The fallen sun hung lustreless and large And one thin trace of lifeless waters blazed. I strove to feel God's pity for His men. As, in the Galilean dawn, the love Of Jesu widened on the human ken : — In vain ! I watched my fated evening go Heart-broken beyond tears and round me move The strength and sorrow of the life I know. log XVI Our lips are laughing while our eyes are wet ; The happiness we hope, the grief we fear, The stress and anguish that our moments bear, Are trivial shadows that our lives forget. The day's despairing toil and passion's fret Evanish utterly like empty words; What was has never been ; the past affords Only a heritage of divine regret. But whiles the sorrow of a sleeping face Awakes a deeper pity not our own, Or Avhen the soul in Beauty's large embrace Forsakes its margined slumber, we may grow To greater moments, when we stand alone And feel that life is sadder than we know. XVII THE GATE OF DREAMS The Gate of Dreams, where, time and time again, Through sleep transfigured with a nameless light, Fearful, upon the tired end of night, I come as might a devote to his fane. The Gate of Dreams, of melancholy pain, Flooding the drowsy labyrinthine soul With faces of despair or patient dole — The tragic children of a weary brain. The Gate of Dreams, where throbs a ghostly wail, As it were of sobbing strings and wild accords. Where life is scenic in the smile of fate ; Where faces, shrouded in an iron veil. Pass outward in a woe too great for words. Or weep in haggard terror, weep and wait. XVIII TO GIACOMO LEOPARDl Despair is musical, the wings of pain Are stirred in rhythm of large winds that bear A mute divinity of human prayer And human sorrow that the prayer is vain. The tears of speech that wet thy lips profane No Muse with discord, for the world's control Had never blurred the windows of thy soul Nor bound the beating of thy heart with chain. But we have piled the gates of sun with dust, And in the jangling darkness of the earth, With muffled hearts, exist because we must. Our times are blasphemous : no tears, no shame. But heaven insulted with an evil mirth And greed exalted with a sacred name. 112 XIX To J. T. S. After reading "Amis et Amile." And were they friends as thou and I are friends That take the wind of sorrow open-eyed, And, striving sunward though the storms divide, Stand, speak and break amid the press that bends? We ache to life and bear the dower it sends Of Godless temples and of rusted sword, With ashes of the heart the heavens scored. Arched o'er a world unholy in its ends. Was their love more than ours, being impearled With sacrifice of blood and wife and child? Ah ! they, who walked the sunshine of the world And heard grave angels speaking through a dream, Had never their unlaurelled brows defiled, Nor strove to stem the world's enormous stream. 113 XX TO THE CHILDREN OF THE MUSE "Nel secol tetro e in questo aer nefando." — L. None shall put forth a hand and twist the brass That galls the neck of Liberty, none dare Avert the iron stigma of despair And show our eyes how good the battle was. Yet now for you who, 'mid the blowing grass That hides the grave of honour, sit and stare In the great muteness of forgotten prayer — The vengeance of the Lord has come to pass ! They fester in their cities who have scarred The face of earth until her skeleton Is naked, and her breasts are dry and hard ; Say, shall ye tear the world's dishevelled robe And lay her ulcers open to the sun. Or murmur soft, " Thy will be done ! " like Job? "4 XXI L'ENFANT DU SIECLE Dim dying child be still and taste thy pain, Poor hands be mild, for no new God appears, And patient on thy pinnacle of years, Dark soul forego thy Godlike task and chain Thy longings; Faith has died and they are vain, And thou hast lost the power of natural tears, And memories that thy dateless childhood bears Have blurred thy Hving days like sterile rain. The soul's sweet choristers that once did toll Thro' God's immensity are fallen dumb; As when the accorded harps and martial drum. Thro' some vast palace where a kingly soul Has passed away, are hushed ; and thou shalt come Tliro' life a mourner, mute and pitiful. "5 XXII AUX MODERNES " Dispera L'ultima volta." — Leopardi. I Only an empty platitude for God, Only for poetry a jangling nerve, Only for life the baser lusts to serve, Only a fashion where the function stood. Only a shadow stealing span on span Over the unmeasured whiteness of the soul ; Darkness around the God -established goal That blazed before the innocence of man. And when the flame of adolescence breaks On some wild heart the world has overthrown, He stares as one who waits alone and wakes, Cheated of love and faith, his vision drawn Haggard and hopeless from his death-bed down The hard, gray, tacit distances of dawn. ii6 XXIII AUX MODERNES II When I have learned the accents of your speech, The splendid grief of silence ; when I know Your acrid laughter and your tearless woe, And learn the shame of life — what you can teach ; When dust returns to dust, and mutely each Grows haggard thro' the fard — then I shall say, " Your foolish lips have lied from day to day, And life has reached the goal that life must reach." And then a hush — and then a mighty thought Shall move upon the fabric of your lives As thro' a tavern window looms the dawn ; And in your tarnished tinsel, in the scorn Of guttered candles, all your lives have sought And you shall fade and finish — Truth survives ! "7 XXIV Of this that I have written none is mine, Save only as my clouded sense has heard And blurred with ineifectual rhyme the Word Whose virgin silence was and is divine. The veins of God are filled with golden wine Perturbed with splendour, and this world we dream Around our tinsel lives endows a theme Of music — Hearken ! for its voice is thine ! The Youth and Beauty of the earlier earth Have never died, but on the breast of song They lie like flowers — 'tis we that agonize ! And in the gray senescence of our birth Erase the soul whose voice condemns the wrong, And move our fingers through the dust we prize. Ii8 XXV TO A STATUE Deep Soul that may not hold the brazen mould, Spirit whose silence bideth to the moon, Thou Goddess of the closing afternoon, Who gazeth where the tidal air is cold — Thine eyes have watched beyond the stars grown gold, That polar silence where the shrouded spheres Stir slightly through the mist of little years. For thou wert never born, nor young, nor old. Goddess without a shrine to bear the prayer Of thy few faithful, whose despair has won A mourning fillet for thy solemn hair: The soul shall hear thee sigh beyond the cry Of Time, and fallen headlong from the sun, Shall find thy pity in the vaster sky. 119 XXVI A DREAM I DREAMED the world of noon was stricken blind : A sun, so haggard that it starved the air, Scarcely sufficed to light the stark despair Of tearless millions shrieking to the wind. Then, leering on the world, a hellish mind Drawn in a hearse, raved silently of pain ; The voices died and silence laid the strain Of unforgotten anguish on mankind. Upon their bones the flesh of men grew gray, All nature withered in a wild regret. And maddened whispers scared the ashy sun : ' ' No more ' ' they moaned ' ' men's hearts, like drops of spray. Shall touch their ocean, mingle and forget — This is the burial of oblivion ! ' ' XXVII "ELI! ELI! LAMA SABACTHANI!" The glare of Hell it was, the haggard light, And tragic to His ears, from Galilee, Like wailing children sobbed His native sea : Then on the cruel nails He strained upright With sinews drawn as steel, and cast His sight Over the blackness, but He might not see — Even He the Christ. He plucked against the tree With piteous hands, and called across the night Thrice upon God the Father — none replied ! The Heavens were void ; ecstatic voices cried, " Despair ! Despair I in death ye may not die ! " He heard : the great sweat beaded on His face. The vital sob urged outward, and a space Rose through dissolving faith the Eternal Lie ! 121 XXVIII DANTE Thy voice — all its least tones, the strain and stir Measured and ardent, and the mighty trend Outward upon a light-pervaded end, Gained through the fields of flame and hideous blur. Thou art sonorous as the shuddering fir Thwarting the tempest, nor thy metres bend Under their splendid freight, when thou dost blend Power and light and love to speak of Her. Inward thy flame arose and strong with strife Shone in thy words — thou art to me as life. Beaten, renewed with hope, and undestroyed. Thy voice comes pure to me as waters falling. Swells till it seems I hear the Seraph calling Through open spaces of the dayless void. XXIX LOVE I Sadder and more divine than human tears Born on the eyes to utter what is dumb, This simple silence when the heart grows numb Among the dead desires of perished years. Such silence quivers with the song it bears, Unsung within a fabric of old pain, Till in the dust of tired passions, plain Through wreaths of light, the naked truth appears. Then poised upon the moment thou canst lay Thy brow upon the Heart of Hearts, and feel The tide that ebbs and waxes through us all ; Till from the silence, through the world's decay, A voice shall speak to thee like beaten steel, Lest on thy sea of sun the shadows fall. 123 XXX 11 It flows thro' all of time from heart to heart, This solemn wonder fresh with naked strength, This source of life where every mouth at length Must drink and feel the old impulsions start. It is the whole that moves through every part, The aspiration dim of things unborn, The prophecy of life's essential dawn, That tears the everlasting night apart. And we who are, and were the splendid spur For wasted generations, we must bear For human sake the same gigantic stir Of breathless longing, and the great command Of life to life, and leave our spirits bare To feel the truth they cannot understand. 124 XXXI I DREAMED of Thee, O Wonder, with the sheen Amid thy temples of a sanguine gem. And warm, between thy garment's purple hem, The languid passions of that Persian Queen Who sate with she-slaves in her quiet gloom. And felt the sob of fountains and the keen Perfume of lotus, and the murmurous lean Of windy flowers, and life's impending doom. O dream of dazzled senses and the pain Of conscious happiness ! I woke beneath The dark maturing dawn, while earth again Renewed its patient toil for human sake. And felt the tender calm of such a death As thine, O Wonder, dream whose death it was to wake. 125 XXXII She came once only in a dream of death And touched my face with wise, unhurried hand, And " Man," her silence said, "I understand — The end is now, and quiet now, and faith.' And lotos-like and moved with tender breath. Her breast was calm as night and pale and bare. And, watching thro' the gloom of burnished hair, Her solemn eyes were deep, and tears beneath. And tears were on the lips that kissed her mouth, And only tears could speak to her, and tears Fell burning on her breast — the tears of youth. And life, and evermore its weariness Was dim forgotten pain, the iterate years Were ceased, the roar of time was echoless. T26 XXXIII The low moon quivers on the hyacinth sky, And lays upon the ocean's glooming frown Its frail caress ; like silence tenderly The shadow falls immeasurably down. A smouldering flame perturbs the heaven's girth, As might, in some great moment, silently, A sudden vision of the tragic earth Blazon the brows of God with mystery. And thou shalt come as the great shadow falls, Like the slow single star, and lay thy last Ethereal kiss upon my tired eyes ; And I shall answer thee as one who calls Through the dumb places of the haunted past. Drinking its fulness ere the moment dies. 127 XXXIV Tell me again, and then lift up to me Those frail white arms of thine and touch my face, And wrap me wholly in thine eyes' embrace. Till God's sure hand run fire round me and thee. Tell me again, and let thy speaking be A faint phrased echo, delicate as lace. Of seas sonorous through the void of space, The low, lost rhythm of immensity. Tell me again, and where thy breasts divide Pillow my weariness — the breath of fall Shall blow crisp crimson leaves upon thy hair ; Thy presence is as where a song has died, And left its memory grieving over all This vital solitude of autumn air. 128 XXXV Give me thy pitiful, soft-moulded hand, And we will bide in silence. Thou and I ; Within the choired poem of the sky Thine is the voice I cannot understand. Give me thy hand and let the heart command : My mind is blurred, and yet I seem to know Darkly what men have spoken of, and now The Word itself their lips have never spanned, Nor I shall ever speak it, nor shall they That illustrate to-morrow with their birth ; The tongue is tethered — we can just obey; And from the gates of sunrise issue dumb, Illumined — while the spirit of the earth Reveals her secret, knowing we have come. I2g XXXVI If I have touched thy heart, as Solomon, When seemed the world dissolving in a kiss, Upon the pages wonder-white with prayer With lyric fingers laid his rose of song ; And if the most I am is just — a man, Why yet. Beloved, in that I am thine, I must not ask forgiveness ; this I write Is all and more than I can say I am ; Like veiled music through the threadbare words Thy heart is beating even now, for I Have seen the morning quicken through its sleep In cycles of dim song. Thou canst not say What I have given is deserving scorn. For I have naught to give that is not Thine. 130 XXXVII TOO SOON His wordless voice was like a toiling dream ; I waited, stupid in my wasted hope, And felt the winds, beneath the heavens cope, Stir like the pulse of some vast gradual stream. This was the end. I heard again his scream Of perfect fear, and felt about me furled The naked hate of all the living world : — God's eyes looked into mine nor were supreme ! The crawling fear had thrust his jaws apart And fixed his lidless eyes against the wall, And Death held back the tides within his heart; I cried " For Pity, tell me if she lied ! " Then came the hideous simper, and a small Mute whisper writhed upon his lips and died. 131 XXXVIII TOO LATE While over all the sullen embers gloat, Silence, forgetfulness, and only now The twilight of your hair across my brow, And soft my kiss upon your marble throat. Be still — great visions through the quiet float, And while the wind is wailing at our door, And day retires in gloom across the moor, Time shall forget an hour and grow remote And — Hush ! The fire is dull between your hair: My tear upon your breast your curtained eyes Have answered — it is all the heart can bear! Peace ! Peace ! there's pity in the soul of pain, And now our lives fulfil their destinies — Hark ! the despairing whisper of the rain. 132 XXXIX THE NlGHT-WlND EcHOLESS voice of few sufficing chords, Soft as the memory of a vaster rest, Secret as sorrow held within the breast Of one whose silence never stoops to words. Harp of waste waters by thy hands caressed, Chalice of music — prayer and song and strife — Filled with that wine that drowns the ills of life When the last vineyards of the soul are pressed. Prophet of final calm where life shall cease. Cease and a kind forgetfulness of soul Fall like a balm upon the wounds of peace — Thy voice shall soothe the last and sternest fight, Threading the dark dim solitudes of night. Like life without a prelude or a goal. 133 XL And they shall say to thee, " He died distraught ; His mind was crazed by dreaming on things past, And so he grew in madness till the last Sheer height of scorn he tottered from to naught. His hands were weak and idle and ne'er caught With strength of purpose at the busy world ; Forlorn and proud he stood — Time onward whirled And left the ruins of the things he sought." But thou shalt understand what they despise, Cherish what they reject, and count the few Poor virtues dearer than the things they prize. And weighing all the evil they have said, Thy heart shall say, "■ What, then, if this be true? Be Silent ! for he loved me and is dead." 134 A LAST WORD Thine be the last thought and the best, and thine These few, poor, fluttering words, and thine the whole Of life, that in the quiet of the soul, Stirs through the muteness of the Heart Divine. And in its silence, overwrought with song, Where, through the curtained chambers of the mind, The soul of thought, in solitude enshrined, Unutterable dwells, and pure and strong, Thy royal heart shall cross the wide-eyed dawn Alone, and find the unspoken thing I am Waiting for none but thee behind the sham Of rhymed words where the poem's self is born. 135 ULii J.: