Class Book 3do3 Ai>:AS^ «"_ y ■If ^ / COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. THE BOOK OF LOVE Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from The Library of Congress http://www.archive.org/details/bookofloveOObark THE BOOK OF LOVE BY ELSA BARKER Author of *' The Frozen Grail and Other Poems,^ '* The Son of Mary BetheV NEW YORK DUFFIELD & COMPANY 191^ Copyright, 1912 Br DUFFIELD AND COMPANY vj €CI,A312246 '/ ^ I" CONTENTS ^ When I am Dead and Sister to the Dust I. THE GARDEN #F ROSE AND RUE. A Quatrain Sequence 1. The Rose 1 2. The Rue 8 II. LYRICS AND SONNETS page The Bride of the Overman 21 ,,-- I Know o . 22 The Messenger 22 Out of the Past 25 Mate 27 The Symbol ......... 27 A Maiden 28 ^^A'Year Ago , ... 29 Haunted . 29 Song of Krishna 30 You 31 The Verge . 32 ^j-svSometime , .... 33 "^"^ He Who Knows Love 34 Love's Paradox 34 In a Woman's Eyes 35 The Wisdom of the Rose 36 A Hidden Chord ....... 37 The Parting Guest 37 V PAGE Petit Amour .., . 38 The Spectre 38 Sisterhood . . ., . . .... 39 The Beggar .......... 39 L'Academiste ., .. ,.. 40 The StaiF 40 At Midnight 41 Love's Fear 41 Requiescat in Pace 42 Love's Tragedy and Comedy .... 42 Without the Temple 43 When Love Cometh Not 43 Even as You and I 44 The Murderer 44 Rose of Shiraz 45 The Song of the Wandering Woman . . 45 Many Advisers 46 In the Dawnlight . 46 Twin-Souls 48 The Bungler 50 Spring-Song of the Minstrel .... 50 The Love of Woman 51 The Slumberer 52 The Violin ......... 52 By the Sea 54 Good-Bye 55 In the Soul's House 56 The Coming of Love 57 Song of the Mortal Sun-Bride .... 58 Under the Stars ....:.,... 60 The Man-Child . . .. . . . , . 61 Sapphics .......... 62 Outside 63 An Epistle 63 The Angel ......... 66 To the Unknown Love 68 vi PAGE The Lonely Quest ... ,1 ,., r.i i. 69 Salutation to the Lord of Love ..... 70 The Way .. ,., ., . .. ,. ,.. ., ,.. 72 III. AZELON. Azelon . . . ., ,., . . .., . ,., 75 — — Far Away . . . . . ,. ., .. . 76 In May 77 Pervasion .... . i.. ..... 77 Shadcw-Love . ., ,.,..... 78 - Old Songs 79 Love-Glance 79 The Substance and the Shadow . . .80 The Beckoner ,. . . 81 The Gate . 81 " The Secret Jewels 82 When We are Old 83 Sic Transit Gloria Mundi 83 Passion Seeds 84 The Stillborn 87 The Intervener 89 IV. THE HUMAN MIRROR. A Rhapsody . 93 V. THE SPIRIT AND THE BRIDE. A Sonnet ' Sequence. The Guerdon of Desire 117 The Mystic Hill 117 The Bridegroom 118 The Mystic Messenger 119 Out of the Maze 119 Recognition 120 The Spell 121 Alter Ego 121 -The Horoscope 122 The Dream 123 The Avowal 123 vii PAGE Consummation 124 Love's Fearlessness 125 The Winds of Fate 125 The Moon Path 126 The Fog 127 The Gift of Pain 127 The Theft 128 The Questioner 129 The Answer 129 Love Madness 130 The Voyage 131 The Moment 131 Love's Hour of Silence 132 Plenitude 133 The Inscription 133 Consecrated 134 Duality 135 The Miracle 135 In Love's Eyes 136 The Thrush 137 A Vision .......... 137 The Mystic Rose 138 Indirection 139 Aurora Borealis 139 The Body 140 Asleep 141 The Indwelling Mystery 141 At the Summit 142 The Guest 143 The Watcher 143 In the Dawn Chamber , 144 Why 145 The Gentle One 145 Caresses 146 Fulfilment 147 The Storm-Lord 147 viii PAGE The Cup 148 The Sanctuary 149 Love's Avatars 149 Creation 150 Love's Infinity 151 The Seal 151 Realisation 152 The Price of Love 153 Love's Mystic Jewel 153 Confession 154 The Past 155 The Covenanters 155 Love-Sleep 156 The Menace 157 The Hand 157 Sisters 158 I Love You 159 The Candle 159 Exorcism 160 Tears 161 The Ideal ......... 161 The Dual Vision 162 Genesis 163 The Triangle 163 Love-Wraith 164 The Silence of Love 165 Summer- Absence 165 The Clock 166 The Sea of Love 167 Nature-Longing 167 Love's Lyceum 168 Ephemera 169 The Oak 169 Under the Sky 170 The Virgin Shrine 171 The Child 171 ix PAGE Words ............ 172 The Veil . 173 Truth .... ,. ,., .... 173 The Cruel Word .. . . ... . ., . 174 Joy of Love 175 Isolation 175 Absorption ...... ,., i. . 176 Opulence ,.-.,,.,. .177 As a Thousand Years . . . . . .177 Parted , ,., . . . ,178 Autumn 179 Faith .,.,... 179 The Letter 180 Love's Wasted Days' . . . . . .181 Separate . . .181 Absence . . . . . r. . . . .182 Waiting 183 After Long Absence . . . . . .183 The Abysm 184 Insatiate 185 Beyondness . 185 Microprosopos . . ., >.) i. ,, . .186 The Tower .... ., ,., ,., . .187 Acme 187 The Sacrament of Love 188 When I Shall Lie in Death . . . .189 The Unspoken 189 Hidden Beauty . . . .... . .190 The Pervader .... ,., .. . . 191 Recompense . . ., ,.. , ,.. . . . 191 The Man 192 Illumination 193 The Song and the Singer . . . . .193 The Eagles 194 The Tabernacle . . . ., .... 195 Love's Humbleness .. .., ,., ,. ., . 195 X PAGE Love's Baptism .196 The Icy Path 197 A Question 197 The Rhythmic Heart 198 The Presence 199 The Sphere of Love 199 The Touch of Beauty 200 The Unassuagable 201 At Love's Feet 201 From the Void 202 Love-Light 203 The River 203 At the Supreme Hour 204 The Oasis .205 The Thought of Thee 205 Love's Immortality 206 Beyond the Dragon's Gate 207 The Tides 207 Attainment 208 Tipherath 209 The Entity . 209 The Iiispirer 210 When You are Sad 211 The Lyric Seed 211 In the Stillness 212 The Revelation 213 A Dream of Death 213 The Abiding Peace 214 The Sower 215 Master 215 The Unrecorded 216 The Clue 217 The Supreme Gift 217 Love's Day and Night 218 The Hidden One 219 Spirit of Beauty 219 xi PAGE The Einblem .... . . ,. . . 220 The Guardian of the Temple ., . „ . 221 Woman- Love . ... ,„ „ . .221 The Inner Light . .^ ...... 222 The Paradigm 223 Looking Upward .223 The Broken Prayer . . ..... 224 The Opener ......... 225 The Sacrifice 225 The Valley of Dismay 226 The Great Dark 227 The Titan 227 The Well of Tears 228 Within Love's Veil 229 Withdrawn 229 The Empty Room 230 The Love-Singer 231 Xll THE GARDEN OF ROSE AND RUE A QUATRAIN SEQUENCE When I am dead and sister to the dust; When no more avidly I drink the wine Of human love; when the pale Proserpine Has covered me with poppies, and cold rust Has cut my lyre-strings, and the sun has thrust Me underground to nourish the world-vine. Men shall discover these old songs of mine. And say: This woman lived — as poets must! This woman lived and wore life as a sword To conquer wisdom; this dead woman read In the sealed Book of Love and underscored The meanings. Then the sails of faith she spread. And faring out for regions unexplored, Went singing down the River of the Dead. THE GARDEN OF ROSE AND RUE THE ROSE When I entreated Life to make me wise. It drew aside Love's broidered veil of lies; And perilous Beauty, undivined before, Beckoned me from the mazes of his eyes. I do not care for gold, it is too cheap; Nor fame, whose field oblivion shall reap. But I would sing, and linger in the sun. And love — as only poets can — and sleep. The poorest lives some little blossoms bring To deck Love's altar in the days of spring. Save for the perfume of their vernal bloom, The pain of birth would seem too stern a thing. Only the poet looks Love in the eyes: He knows the meaning of the mystic sighs. The rapturous tears, the pain, the mad desire That starves upon the lips it satisfies. And after all our toils and dreams and prayers, 'Tis only Love for which the future cares; Labour and fame are steps along Love's way, And art is but the garment that he wears. 1 Love, let us steal away into the night — Into the luring wonder of the night. Impassioned earth breathes through the lonely grove The cool delirious fragrance of the night. Yea, thou didst make me captive with a glance — An arrow shot across the gulfs of chance; Its gleam appeared to my enchanted eyes The light of immemorial romance. Thy body is a living shrine for me. Thy deep embrace the bread and wine for me; Thy fervid kisses are the prayers of faith. Thine eyes the altar lights that shine for me. The moon sheds no such glamour anywhere As on the nimbus of thy mystic hair; Each separate thread is an aspiring ray — An emanation luminous with prayer. Time's hidden ways thine eyes reveal to me: Deep in their vision broods the memory Of all the myriad lives thy soul has known. Thou passionate pilgrim of eternity! Thy voice is thrilling with an overtone That haunts the memory, like a whisper blown Upon the wind from somewhere in the dark: Maybe some ancient world our sires have known. 2 There is a sweeter sound than seraph hears: The rhythm that moves the ever-pulsing years Holds less of lure and wonder to the soul — The music of thy heart-beats to my ears. Thy breath is like the breath of orient nights. Whose brooding glamour fragrantly invites The fainting fancy to a couch where wait The trembling dreams of wild, mysterious rites. I touch the breathing marvel of thy flesh, ., Like throbbing rose-leaves, and as dewy-fresh. How sprang this blossom from the common soil - World dust, that holds thy spirit in its mesh.'^ The immortal Breath blows o'er us where we lie * Beneath the star-leaved branches of the sky. Whispering a cosmic benedicite — O listen. Love, before the Word goes by! The lure of suns is but the lure of Love, Their all-creative warmth — the warmth of Love ; And symbol of the passion of the cross — The shadowy rood upon the breast of Love. In these unquenchable desires we feel The thirsty future's dominant appeal; And through the fire of our impassioned dust A thousand ancestors their loves reveal. 3 There is a dream that often comes to me In the grey dawn, and eyes me wistfully; 'Tis little as the child in Mary's arms And all as lovely — and it looks like thee ! Lest Love should grow too earthly to aspire/ The wise gods blinded him with vague desire; They nourished him on dreams and ecstasies, Tempered his arrows in the sacred fire. They say thou art an idler, lover mine, Drunken with fancies, poetry and wine. What cares the nightingale for envious crows? Thy very faults are lovely — being thine. For me the cosmic aeons lie complete, O Love, between thy forehead and thy feet ! Here the untrammelled hours of day and night — Here dust and soul inalienably meet. My spirit is an emanated flame That burns the rose-leaves of its earthly frame, — Too vision-rapt to heed the rose's tears. Unmindful of her glory or her shame. Thy love is like deep waters all around — Warm pulsing waters, in whose brooding sound The lone wail of my heart is lulled with dreams, And the far clamour of the world is drowned. 4 Why do the vine and oak together dwell? Why does the sun the listening stars compel? Why does the moon allure the sighing sea? I am so wise with love that I could tell. Lover mine, I pray thee, do not weep ! The very earth is damp with tears — grave-deep ; Without thy bitter tribute, the brave sun Can never dry them ere Time calls to sleep. The joy of Love is better than Love's tears, So kiss me and forget thy foolish fears. Soon, soon the clammy dark lips of the grave In one cold kiss will hold us years on years ! How swift the merry sand runs in the glass ! The midnight daughters glide along the grass. Veiling their faces in their purple hair. Draw nearer — this enchanted hour will pass. The stars have chosen thee to be my king, To tune my lyre of life and make me sing; The pressure of thy rose-leaf lips on mine Is more inspiring than the breath of Spring. 1 am the sun that warms thee with its heat, I am the dream that makes thy slumber sweet, I am the moon that watches thee all night, I am the sandals underneath thy feet. Draw close the mystic curtain of Love's bed: Here the dim Future and the Past are wed, And brooding Isis veils her mysteries — To whelm the world when thou and I are dead. In my life's soil thy life is planted deep. Never to be uprooted; and I keep The lyric seeds thy love has sown in me For a rare harvest all the world shall reap. Thou art the dream between Love's day and night. In thy strange being Love's extremes unite: The trance-like prayer that purifies the soul, The throbbing senses in their fierce delight. Thy dear white feet are moistened with my tears. Oh, what rose-shrouded thorns, what spectral fears Lurk for their toilsome passing in the dark Along the tragic pathway of the years ! The lily petals of thy hand are light As vagrant dreams. I feel them in the night — Soft as the lotus of some lunar lake That drowses on the waves in vague delight. Love dreams and murmurs something in his sleep. With what strange secret do I vigil keep? Maybe some slumbering passion of dead days! I veil my face in Love's long hair and weep. Love wakes and leans above me in the dark, Half dazed with dreams that thrill the teeming dark; His warm soft lips feel blindly for my lips In the delirious wonder of the dark. Love ineffable! When fused we lie, Life piercing life, through flesh and breath and eye, I know not if this fiery luminous form — This river of lyric flame be thou or I ! The muses whisper to me from thy hair; Thy languorous look is perfume on the air. Thy breath a bridal veil that covers me. Thy touch a wild insatiable prayer. 1 lay my spirit in thine open hands; Between thy fingers the ecstatic sands Of my life tremble. This unearthly dream Only the poet ever understands! The birds are singing, and my lover sleeps. The rosy light of morning slowly creeps Over the moveless beauty of his face: Who knows this hour knows Love's sublimest deeps. So still is Love he hears the farthest sound: The footfall of the seasons in their round. The soft etheric swish of the rushing spheres. The murmur of the mute things underground. II THE RUE The night I learned that Love was false to me. Beside my bed the stars watched pitilessly, — Old midwives, muttering at each moan of pain: " The birth-pangs of a soul are good to see ! " little hour of Love, so wild and sweet! i I gave the world, thy honey-dew to eat; And now the tear-sown pathway of the dead Echoes the patter of thy flying feet. 1 can no longer bear thy burning eyes — They brand me, blind me; and thy smothered sighs Of passion are as poison to my soul. That drinks its fill of death with avid cries. Love, my Love, thou art so bitter-sweet! 1 would that from thy forehead to thy feet Thou wert some deadly flower, that I might pluck And crush thy petals for my soul to eat. Sometimes I love thee so I wish thee dead. I would devour thy being as my bread; Would drain thy hidden veins dry, as of wine, Red drop by drop, for all my heart has bled! Oh ! I have bought in lonely, endless nights My fill of thee who art all strange delights — 8 The thrill of roses^ and the viol's cry. The pang of the earth-passion's awful rites. And I am jealous of the very light That bares thy beauty from the veil of night: Deep in the dungeon of my sombre soul Thy body I would bury out of sight. Oh, kill me with thy kisses! Drain me dry Of pain and life, nor leave me breath to sigh; Yea, feed my spirit, starving at thy lips, Thy sweet perfidious poison ere I die! Bury me deep beyond all isolate pains In the dim shadows of thy thralling veins; That nevermore may there be sound of me, Or colour of me in all the earth contains. I then shall have no being save in thine: My love shall mingle with thy blood as wine Mingles with water, and thy wanton soul Shall never know a life apart from mine. Give me to drink the poison of thy breast — Dark cruel wine from grapes of passion pressed — Till I am drunk beyond delirium's dream In that dim utter deep where men may rest. There is a crevice in Love's garden wall Where mandrakes thrive, with lilies rank and tall; Where stealthy Death peers through a purple veil In madmen's eyes, and strange worms crawl and crawl. 9 I gave my lover tears and sacrifice, My soul's white prayer, my dreams of paradise. The vision of my guardian angel's face: He laughed and turned away his weary eyes. I gave my lover kisses bitter-sweet, Strange deadly blossoms for his soul's defeat. The purple paths of hell I lured him on: His lips burn fiercely on my tear-stained feet. The thorny rose of Love has one last sting Tipped with a poison strange and maddening. Who grasps it close shuns not the touch of Death; To love and loathe the self-same lovely thing. My lover whispers lies into my ear; My listening soul laughs silently to hear, — The still, ironic laughter of the tomb, Of merry skulls that grin from ear to ear. She wore a lily in her golden hair — That Azra — on the day Love found her fair. Oh ! I shall dread the lilies till I die, And tremble at their perfume on the air. I hang upon Love's shoulder worship-wise, Lost in the dreamy glamour of his eyes; With far-off meditative gaze he asks — If I have seen how blue are Azra's eyes! 10 I lie alone under the mocking sky. The midnight hours indifferently walk by. O wanton Moon ! You turn your back on me, To gaze and smile where Love and Azra lie ! For we must laugh if we would hold our place In Nature's pitiless, capricious grace. He who desires to dally with the moon Must never come with tears upon his face. No desert waste is lonelier than I. The arid pain of Love has burned me dry. But passion's prayers turn backward on my lips — I will not be Love's beggar though I die! My false Love may seek pleasure where he will. While I my separate destiny fulfil — Grinding my soul against the adamant Of self, whose dust obscures my vision still. But of tliis Azra nothing shall remain More than of last year's lilies or its rain, Except her strange name echoing through my song- Immortal with the laurels of my pain. My lover left me — and I shed no tears ! Across the world I wonder if he hears The laughter of my soul at her own grief, , , Low pallid laughter — sadder than all tears! 11 We have a bitter power who laugh at pain, Who laugh and laugh — for tears are shed in vain. They weary lovers and amuse the gods: tender thought to soothe the reeling brain! 1 felt thine essence quivering like wine Through all my veins, that leaped to answer thine — Our spirits fusing in a flash of flame — The day I bought thy soul and blood with mine. When thou art false, my Love, I know full well There is no truth — this side the gate of hell. No little lily soul unstained by lies. No sphere of beauty not an empty shell. Is there no anodyne despair may buy, No draught of dreamless sleep for such as I? Discordant singer in the choir of Love, Who neither cares to live nor dares to die. How many minutes are there in a day? Love's restless watchers know, and only they: The clock ticks, and the quivering nerves are strained For sound of steps — that never come their way. If women really die and burn in hell, They do not burn with fire — the prophet's hell. No ! But they wait, and wait, and wait, and wait. For one who never comes — the woman's hell. 12 Thy vacant room is an enchanted place; Thy wraith pervades the air that I embrace; The perfume of thy presence lingers still About the pillow where I lay my face. I touch thy garments lightly, half afraid, So ghostly are they in the teeming shade. The candle flickers, like a frightened soul, Before the little altar where we prayed. The stars are not so lonely as my heart! Though I should scale the cruel cliff's of Art And cut my name into their granite face — Love's way and mine would lie as far apart. The pain of Love has poisoned all the day. Pitiless Love, that lures but to betray! And pitiless the whisper of the soul: Like songs and worlds, this too shall pass away. Life plays us mortals many a strange jest: Dead leaves and grave-dew crown our aching quest. And when Love comes to cheer us by the way — Always the one we love not, loves us best. Only the Lord of Change has endless sway. The vanished Love of our dead yesterday Now wanders wailing down the woods of dream. And mocking shadows beckon where we lay. 13 The world's poor travesty of Love stalks by, Linked arm in arm with Death — a smiling lie ! Its empty words and empty laughter bring The tears of pity to the lover's eye. Deep Love is slow of speech and void of art; Silence and timid tears reveal his heart. But shallow Love is ever eloquent To mouth his meagre passion — and depart. Ye who would know how sweet a thing is Love, Go ask the souls outside the pale of Love — The pallid priest, the love-mocked Magdalen — They also know how bitter a thing is Love. O silent watcher of the mystic fire ! When to your hidden temple I retire To still my soul, between your eyes and mine Falls like a veil the shadow of Desire. And oh, the pity of that piercing, vain Delight, that fills again and yet again The hollow world with little yearning souls — Swelling the awful sum of mortal pain! Pale passion and red hatred strove with me. And dark pride strove, pain, and gaunt jealousy; Strove till they all lay dead one stormy day. My soul, surprised, awoke to find her free! 14 But I am weary and I long to sleep. The hungry flame of Love has burned so deep Into the tender substance of my life, I care no more either to laugh or weep. How heavy is the earth's heart as it hears Ever the dropping, dropping of Love's tears! Must not those bitter, murmuring waters drown The choral harmonies of kindred spheres? The cool white flower of peace must bloom for me Somewhere between the mountain and the sea: The sea in whose wide bed I may not rest. The mountain whose austerities I flee. Oh, for .the pure oblivion of sleep! In those vast waters I would sink me deep Beyond where both desire and dream lie dead, And passion and despair forget to weep. Death hides no hell that could awake my fear, For I have heard the sound that madmen hear, Heard the far wail of a crushed, tortured thing — My own strayed soul, and seen it disappear! Who dares to love unloved the cord unties In whose close coils the fettered spirit lies; The jealous gods blush and evade his glance. And joy and pain are equally his prize. 15 He loves me not, and all the world is grey. ^ But I am wiser now than yesterday! If he had laid life's roses in my lap — I never should have known the world was grey. The sun has dried the tear-drops in my eyes, The sturdy wind has blown away my sighs. While the sun laughs, I am ashamed to weep; And the wind is old and knows all sorrow dies. Now will I sing my song, that not in vain Shall be my passage through the fiery rain, — A song of light, for the world's heart would break If I should sing the story of my pain. The distillation from Love's bleeding heart Is the rose-attar of the lyric mart; And Pain and Passion are the sentinels That double-guard the jealous doors of Art. Poor lover, writhing in the lonely night. Thy vale of hell leads to a solemn height: Who dares the fire, and gains the farther side, Walks with the sons of God in the great light. Ye who would know Love's highest reach of bliss — The still, white peaks of peace — remember this : \ Before a soul can face that steady light It must have plumbed pain's nethermost abyss. 16 I sought my soul in joy — she was not there. Vainly I sought her too in toil and prayer. At last I found her with illumined eyes Walking the rainbow of my Love's despair. 17 II LYRICS AND SONNETS THE BRIDE OF THE OVERMAN Oh, do not remember these womanly tears That I shed on your wondering face! They are drops from the wells of unspeakable fears That lurk in the cavernous dusk of, dead years Awaiting a time and a place, — i Fears of old memories clamouring still For a glance of my soul or a sign; And they mock at the feeble and passionate will That would render immortal the touch and the thrill Of a man's clinging lips upon mine. Swearing fidelity far beyond death. The presumptuous children of clay Would make love's ideal a loud shibboleth, When everything under the law of the Breath May claim but the hour and the day. . O lover as wise as the magi of old ! You have given me rapture more vast Than God's dream of creation; and yet we are told That the mightiest passion must some day lie cold In the bottomless gulf of the past. And our love — nay Beloved, regard not the tears. Or kiss them away if you will — Our love shall be wide as the sweep of the spheres, And free as the music the Overman hears In his cave on the crown of the hill. 21 But sometimes, I know, at the terror night brings In this land without pathway or mark, I shall cling to your hand as a little child clings, Lest your candle go out in the wind from God's wings, And leave me alone with the shadowless things In the emptiness under the dark. / KNOW Oh ! I know why the alder trees Lean over the reflecting stream; And I know what the wandering bees Heard in the woods of dream. I know how the uneasy tide Answers the signal of the moon. And why the morning-glories hide Their eyes in the forenoon. And I know all the wild delight That quivers in the sea-bird's wings, For in one little hour last night Love told me all these things. THE MESSENGER O PALE pressed flower That has crossed the world-wide sea From my Orient-wandering Love With words for me! 22 Frail messenger Of a dream that does not die, Though all the threads of life Be drawn awry! Your Asian stem Drew from that storied earth The essences that gave The pale Christ birth. Beauty and faith, And a something all unknown, On your sweet and subtle breath To me are blown. Give you, he says. Soft kisses and send you back To his tent where the world's way joins The pilgrim's track. O flower! tell him These messages for me: Tell him there lies the old haze Over the sea. Tell him the path To the little house and lawn Is overgrown with grass Now he is gone. Tell him the vine On the arbour is bare of leaves; Now it has nothing to hide It pines and grieves. Tell him the star That recorded our bridal vow In the book of the summer dark Is shining now. Tell him the crows In the pine-tree still arise To challenge the wraith of dawn With warning cries. Tell him the glass That used to mirror the sea And our twined forms now mirrors Only the sea. Give him these tears. And tell him the golden heart Of the rose of life grows grey When lovers part. 24 OUT OF THE PAST Somewhere, Love, in the far-off, time-veiled days of the great past. Thou and I and the beautiful Love-god danced in the sunshine. Somewhere, too, as the night dew lay on the leaves of the jungle. Thou didst whisper me softly the unknown mystical Word. Under thy languorous eyelids, dark as the doors of the future. Strange dreams, wild dreams, beckon my rapt soul. Oh, to allay my Fever and longing there in the midnight pools of the lotus. Losing myself and the world in the brooding embrace of thine eyes! Thy dark hair is a veil of the Mystery. Under the shadows — Purple with Orient heat, deep sultriness — something is hidden. Something my lone soul needs. Though it yield to the touch of my fingers. Still it eludes my sight while maddening me to the quest. 25 Thy touch. Love, is the sun*s touch, pure as the breath of the morning; Thy touch. Love, is the bite of the fire — unassuagable passion ; Under thy hand or thy hot lips — aye, in the cling of thy garments — Ecstasy waits, pain hides, power quivers to move me to life. Through thine eyes I am one with the deathless One of the ages. Thy strong hold is the life-hold, firm with the urge of creation. Under thy spell Time listens and stirs not; there the immortal Silence pauses to drink of the rushing river of joy. Where did I lose thee? Where in the garden of devi- ous byways. Love, did we loosen our hands? Oh, hold me close and forever ! So the celestial Gardener may not distinguish between us. So we appear to His eyes one rose on the tree of the world. 26 MATE There is a wistful prayer That often comes to me, And lays its face against my face In utter ecstasy — That all the lovers in the world Might be as near as we! THE SYMBOL Thy love is a symbol, a mystical sign *^ Of vast, unuttered things; The bread and the sacramental wine Of my faith I receive at Love's veiled shrine In all thy ministerings. Thy love is my dream in the mortal night, A web by the earth-moth spun, A veil for the unendurable Light; It softens the blaze for my frail sight Of the immanent unseen Sun. Thy love is realisation's hour. High noon on the disc of life; The sands of its time are the sands of power In the glass of Fate, round whose watch-tower The cosmic winds are at strife. 27 Thy love is the promise of keener bliss \ Than earth-dazed beings feel; The rush of its blood is the flaming kiss Of stars on the edge of the great abyss Where form and spirit reel. Thy love is a danger beyond all fear, A rift in the fathomless void; From its perilous deep strange faces peer. And pale hands beckon to some far sphere Where self shall be destroyed. Thy love is the peace of eternity, The rest that follows birth; The fold of thine arms is the fold of the sea, And they hold and soothe and cradle me As the ocean holds the earth. A MAIDEN " Give me Love, O Life," I cried, ** Give me Love, though naught beside ! I would know the way he wanders. For the world is wide." Then I found him at my side. For my prayer was not denied; And the narrow world has nowhere For my heart to hide ! 28 A YEAR AGO How strange it seems that one brief year ago Indifferently I watched you passing by, Nor dreamed that in your half-averted eye Love's universe was mirrored! Even so Bloom lilies by the stream whose overflow Shall sweep them from their moorings, and untie Theii' roots from the home soil. A bee may fly To windward of a rose-bush and not know. With all his hidden wisdom. Love is blind! You were the messenger of Destiny That paused before my dwelling undivined. A year ago your spirit was for me The pearl a diver risks his life to find — And passes in the darkness of the sea. HAUNTED What is that sound on the wind, my Love, That little wail of fright? Is it the cry of a lone lost dove Somewhere up in the boughs above Our window this wild night .^ What is that shadow along the wall That wavers and is still .^ It is very faint and very small To fill my soul with this weird appal, This weight of unknown ill. 29 O Love, there are fingers upon my hair. And yours are fast in mine! Is it a breath of the midnight air That blows on my forehead and lingers there? Or is it a ghostly sign? Gather me close in your strong arms, Dear, And hold me tenderly; For I dare not whisper the thing I fear. Unless I feel you near — Oh, near - — To the throbbing heart of me! It is not a shadow that wavers there. Nor a dove that moans in pain. Nor a breath of the night wind on my hair: 'Tis the pilgrim Soul from the realm of air That knocked at our door in vain! SONG OF KRISHNA I AM all things, and I lie in thine arms! Thou dost embrace in me Time and the measure of Time, The thrill of all joy, and the rush of the stars through the outermost virginal void. I am Love that binds, and I am the great Unbinder. Life has no gifts that my hands do not scatter. And darkness is the shadow of mine eyelids. 30 Beauty burns in her veil for the vision of those I em- brace. When I whisper to my Love in the stillness, Somewhere on earth a musician hears divine harmony. Somewhere a flower opens. I will not leave thee, for without me there is nothing; When thou feelest the touch of thy friend in the night- time, know I am there; When in the rush of the great waters terror comes nigh thee, know I am there. All lovers are only the promise of me,' And what are all lovers beside me? YOU ^ Through you the beauty of the world lies bare. I feel the breeze like God's breath on my face Whispering an unknown word — and everywhere I see the vision of a love-lit face. So strange it seems ! A little while ago I knew not any of these lovely things; To all my dreams the demons answered no. Darkening the daylight with their evil wings. Tell me, Beloved, for your words are wise. How do you hold all beauty in your hand. And all the host of heaven in your eyes. And in your hours the moons of fairyland? 31 You pass my threshold, and the narrow room Is peopled with the tenuous forms of air, The barren boughs of faith are all abloom. And I am mute with wonder and with prayer. THE VERGE Oh, tell me, traveller, I pray, Where my slain love lies dead! My soul has wandered up and down. By grief and terror led, But found no token save the drops Her own bruised feet have bled. Along the cypress-shaded way Strange shadows come and go; The ghosts of all love's buried hours Walk with me, pale and slow; But I would rather go alone. Because they beckon so. Further I fare along the road; But there is nothing here Save empty spaces, and the glooms Where grope weird shapes of fear — The grim, mad phantoms of the mind That stare and mock and leer. 32 Somewhere there is an awful place Where all dead things lie cold; Prayers, passions and forgotten tears. Kisses, and lies long told, Shame, soft caresses, sleep and faith, — They all lie there and mould. There love may lie. But my tired feet Will never find the way. They falter. The Lethean waves Lap round them cold and grey. In those dead waters let me rest Until the Judgment Day! SOMETIME ^ Sometime the Spring will come with softer green Than ever dared to touch the world before; Sometime the Guest my soul has never seen Will pass the threshold of my waiting door. Sometime the passion of my book of song Will face me in the eyes of Destiny; Sometime the Question I have asked so long Of the slow stars, will turn and answer me. A sail, now tossing on the sea of dreams, Sometime will rest in the broad port of waking; Sometime the Weaver, that now idle seems. Will show some splendid fabric of her making. There lies a light upon the peaks of faith That makes my heart beat faster as I climb; And wistfully before me floats a wraith — The Presence that will walk with me sometime. HE WHO KNOWS LOVE He who knows Love — becomes Love, and his eyes Behold Love in the heart of everyone, Even the loveless: as the light of the sun Is one with all it touches. He is wise With undivided wisdom, for he lies In Wisdom's arms. His wanderings are done, For he has found the Source whence all things run The guerdon of the quest, that satisfies. He who knows Love becomes Love, and he knows All beings are himself, twin-born of Love, Melted in Love's own fire, his spirit flows Into all earthly forms, below, above; He is the breath and glamour of the rose. He is the benediction of the dove. LOVE'S PARADOX The tears of hopeless love are bitter-sweet; Its cruel rocks that tear the lover's feet To him are dearer than the flower-strewn ways — The careless ways where youth and pleasure meet. 64 IN A WOMAN* S EYES Last night I walked with Love along the world, The crowded world, so strange to Love and me, The freighted sphere, that through the starry sea To some uncharted port is blindly whirled. I walked with Love, our faces luminous With that unearthly light which lovers throw Around their presence. Passing to and fro. The hurrying people paused to look at us. But in one woman's eyes there blazed red hate For me, — a little woman like a dove, Drooping and timid, who once walked with Love Up to the very entrance of Life's gate; But feared to lift its latch of destiny. And feared to tread upon the sacred ground Of that sweet grove where Love and I have found The budding rose-tree of Infinity. Her blue eyes burned down to my startled soul. Then Love and I passed on into the wide Compassionate solitude where we abide. Where Peace has conquered Pain, and crowns his goal. But through Love's eyes those sad eyes gazed in mine Till dawn, not blazing now but dim with weeping; And Love and I — a mystic vigil keeping — Watched with her spirit in its tear-lit shrine. 35 O little sister ! at your door to-day- There waits a love you would not understand; As if you were my child in some dead land To whose long memories I have lost my way. Or is it all a dream? And from Love's heart — Being so blended with him — do I gain This comprehension of an alien pain, A shadow in whose form I have no part? THE WISDOM OF THE ROSE Do not wound me or I die, O my Rose ! " I heard him cry ; *' Cover all thy thorns with soft leaves. Lest thy lover sigh." But I pressed my sharpest thorn Deep into his heart that morn; Though the pain I felt him suffer Left me, too, all torn. And he died, as he had said. Desolate, uncomforted. And the kind old earth, our Mother, Drank the drops he bled. 36 A HIDDEN CHORD A GIRL gazed long at Love in going by ; I saw the great light shining in her eye — The look Love's eyes have when they gaze at me. The quick tears wet my cheek — I wonder why ! THE PARTING GUEST The bright-winged Eros came one summer day With roses for us, and a smiling claim That we should join him in his magic game Of making golden images of clay; Until I grew aweary of his play. Weary and burdened with a secret shame For every word we uttered in his name: Now I am glad that he is flown away. Let us go up, dear, to the wind-blown hill; The air is pure there, and the strong pine-trees Laugh in the light. . . . Seems the sheer height too chill? Nay, draw thy mantle close. In hours like these The valley-dweller hears, when all is still. The far-off roar of the eternal seas. S7 PETIT AMOUR There was a little love all lily-pale, Too fair and white to breast life's bitter gale. It died, as little loves are wont to die, — A gnat's death weighed as much in the Great Scale! THE SPECTRE Out of the deep where dim-remembered years And buried loves await Time's sure intent, Rises the spectre of that far event Which taught the master-mystery of tears To my expectant heart. How strange appears That face, which my imagination lent The beauty of God, till — rapt and confident — My soul forgot her heritage of fears ! Since last I looked in those illusive eyes. My spirit in the lake of lustral flame Has been washed white of everything that dies In pain. And though this end was not an aim He laboured toward, my freed life testifies Its debt to him for power, and love, and fame. 38 SISTERHOOD Sister, the world would deem me a strange thing To love the former love of my heart's king; But jealous self bows to the mystic bond — We two have drunk deep of one sacred spring! THE BEGGAR In the dim years before I met with you i I dreamed how Love one day would come to me, A plumed knight, who on his bended knee His sovereign lady would acclaim and woo; And I should hold his homage as my due, With smiling pride elude him, nor agree Too readily to listen to his plea. Though, as I dreamed, his every word was true. Then came the night I looked into your eyes . . . O love that burns and memory that sears ! I am no longer proud, though strangely wise In the dark lore of ecstasy and tears, — A starving beggar at your knees, who cries For bread to dull the yearning of the years. 89 I L'ACADEMISTE A LEARNED fool discovcred Love one day, And sought to demonstrate his tyrant sway In dull iambics. While the muses yawned. Love laughed — and shook his wings — and flew away ! THE STAFF 'TwAs long ago, with fasting and with prayer, I cut my pilgrim staiF from the great tree Of sacrifice, and it has been with me In all my wandering. Rugged and bare. And dry as ancient stone, up the steep stair — The winding granite stair of destiny — - The staff has gone beside me steadily, Aye, urged me on under the load of care. But yesterday the beauty of the Spring Trembled through all my being, and I leaned Upon my staff — to feel it quivering; To see that its whole rigid length had greened. Had grown all tender with soft buds, that screened The eyes of Love. . . . And then I heard him sing ! 40 AT MIDNIGHT There is a nagging nettle in my bed, And wayward Sleep goes by with careless tread To-night I saw a shadow on Love's face, To haunt me for those idle words I said. LOVE'S FEAR I AM afraid, because I love thee so ! — Afraid lest the inexorable years Instruct thee in the pitiless lore of tears — Intimate lore I mastered long ago. My courage falters for thee; but I know Those secret drops the eyelids of all seers Are bitter with, before the way appears Where the wise lilies of compassion grow. Dear, I shall see thee stricken with despair, '1 And have no anodyne to ease thy pain. Nor promise of an answer to thy prayer. For we invoke the Lord of Life in vain Who plead against experience, or dare To turn aside God's arrow — though Love be slain! |l 41 REQUIESCAT IN PACE When Love is dead — ^rhy stain his lips with lies ! Love knows no rest, no honour as he dies; But goaded to feign joy and life, he wears The world's arraignment in his weary eyes. LOVE'S TRAGEDY AND COMEDY Once on a time in my untutored past, I raised an altar to Love's Tragedy And covered it with rue and rosemary; Then with sad rapture at its base I cast My soul in dedication. But at last Great Love himself came by and beckoned me With slow indulgent smile, so bold and free That Tragedy drew down her veil — aghast. Behind Love came a being robed in flowers — Love's Comedy, with summer in her glance; The laughing sister whose transforming powers Can turn life's laggard march into a dance. With Love and her so gaily go the hours, I bless them both for my deliverance. 42 WITHOUT THE TEMPLE Nay, dear, I do not love you any more! Put out the altar fire and close the door. Love's holy temple that we built for him I must profane not — now I love no more. WHEN LOVE COMETH NOT The hours are ages when Love cometh not. The very sunshine stays reservedly Outside the window, and the vigilant sea Booms with a lagging rhythm. Storm shadows blot The scroll of heaven; while the uncertain spot Of substance where my soul waits, seems to be A desert island in eternity. Washed by the tides of time, by God forgot. This cruel hour will pass, and I shall hear. Quivering, Love's eager hands upon the door . . Yet there might come a cold, inclement year When Love would not avail me as before. When I should be less lovely and less dear — A wind-blown barque upon a barren shore! '4B ! i EVEN AS YOU AND I O BROTHER mine, I hear strange dole of you From her who flatters — and takes toll of you ! She must lay off the blinding veil of Self To see the strong, true, comrade soul of you. THE MURDERER To them that murder Love, of no avail Shall be the penance of a thousand years. At every midnight to my soul appears Upon the sea of sleep a spectral sail. I see the moonlight wavering and pale On the remembered face of him that steers, Deep graven with the ghosts of many tears - The weariness of them that love and fail. And when in the dawn-twilight cold and grey I wake, despair and emptiness are mine. Though I implore, the vision will not stay; But on the purple dim horizon line There lies a deeper shadow, for a sign That in the night a soul has passed that way. 44< 1 I ROSE OF SHIRAZ My lover is a Mussulman, 'tis said. Whose loves are strung like jewels on a thread. I'd rather be the clasp that holds the string Than shine alone on any other head. THE SONG OF THE WANDERING WOMAN Thou hast broken my soul on the wheel. Thou hast drunk of my sorrow as wine, Thou hast branded my brow with thy seal. And my faith thou hast hung for a sign. Thou hast spilled all my dreams on the ground And broken the strings of my lyre. And the chords of my being are bound By memories that mock at desire. Thou has taught me the knowledge of years In a day, of despair I am wise ; Thou hast moistened thy bread with my tears, And groped in the gloom of my sighs. O Beloved, whose breath is my pain ! j] Thy shadow has darkened the world; For thy spirit is thunder and rain. And thy love is a meteor hurled. 45 But thy darkness is dearer than light. So I die, and my cry to be free Is a song of redemption to God in the night For the sins of the world and of me. MANY ADVISERS O Love, I care not whether they were right — The cold advisers, or the words they said. When in the teeming silence of the night I hear your heart throb underneath my head ! IN THE DAWNLIGHT Beloved, whose garment is life. Whose eyes are the twin wonders of light and the vision of light: Give me a glimpse behind the cosmical veil that covers Thy beauty. Make palpable to me a touch of Thine inscrutable ten- derness. I would know the self-sufficiency of Thy love. For I am weary of all Love's demands and apologies. I would be solitary as the quiet stars. Though intimate with the world as a nursing child with its mother. I would dream to-day on the orient lake with the lotus, 46 I would strive to-morrow with the northern pine in the tempest. In the morning I would wander alone looking for the lost Pleiad in the vast meadows of Taurus, I would swarm in the afternoon with the myriad bees in the clover meadows of Earth. I would mumble prayers with the pilgrims on the road to Mecca, I would laugh with the children of joy in the grov«s of Bacchus, Deep in the hearts of all the earth-kindred are secrets I hunger to learn. When I hear the call of the wild bird in the spring- time. There stirs in me the vague responsive mate-longing of the woods. The moody look in the eyes of the caged panther fills me with fear; But there is a thought in his brain that I need for a marvellous poem, And I shall never be wise till I understand its mean- ing. I have seen in the eyes of a dog I have slighted a look that shamed me. The dignity of the love that waits and questions not — transcending my own for my lover! I would be friends with the earthworm, and even the robin distrusts me; There is something known to the squirrels that books have never taught me, 47 But when I question them they always run away. And the silence that broods in the sacred aisles of the congregated pine-trees — Is gone with the sound of my footsteps ! But somewhere the transcendent Wonder awaits me — The vision of primordial and ultimate Love that is hidden in the dark of the ages before and after: It but awaits the destined hour to make me one with all things. Will the revelation come to me in the eyes of my lover? Will it come in the symbols of a dream, haloed around with the light of its own interpretation? Is it something divine that shall penetrate and possess me? Or only the boundless expansion of all that is I? TWIN-SOULS T AM thy fellow-spirit Who journeyed at thy side Before the Sphinx was builded^ Before Osiris died. I am thy soul's companion Who lost thee in the wave That rose when old Atlantis Went down to her sea-grave. 48 One greater than great Isis Joined^ with a rite sublime_, Thy soul and mine together In the far dawn of time. When to thine eyes at midnight The tears unbidden starts And vague bewildered longings Ache in thy lonely hearty, Know that my soul is calling Somewhere, and making moan Unto the laggard Future To give it back its, own. When in the ghostly twilight A shadow on the wall Sets all thy nerves aquiver — 'Tis I, who mutely call; And when the passionate springtime Renews its ancient quest, I am the vagrant wonder That trembles in thy breast. 49 THE BUNGLER I MADE a man out of my own great need. I took the body of one ready-formed In Nature's workshop, but its blood I warmed With my own fire. Half of my soul I freed To animate the form; the dream, the deed That makes man godlike, these from the great void I conjured, and my temple veil destroyed That he might see the image burn and bleed. But when I questioned this created thing. There was no voice to answer; for the breath Divine I had not given — could not give ! Confounded before God, I only bring Into creation's hall this masque of death. Which wears the mould of life but does not live. SPRING-SONG OF THE MINSTREL You who are to be my comrade Down the wide road of the world, Spring is come, with greening banners On the loving wind unfurled. Though the way ahead is rugged, Like all ways that we have trod, We will rest us every evening In the leafy tents of God. 50 We will leave behind life's luggage. We shall only need a lyre; We will robe ourselves in sunbeams. Warm us at the lyric fire. Earth's possessions are so heavy, They would hinder us, I fear; For our feet must walk the rainbow As it swerves from sphere to sphere. Hark! The dewy dawn is calling Us to take the sunward way. Forward, singing wild, free music. Let us tramp the trail of day. THE LOVE OF WOMAN ^ Dear, I will stand beside thee to the end. Thy loving mate, thy comforter, thy friend. If peace and plenitude shall bless thy ways, I will enjoy them with thee all my days. If shame and sin should be thy bitter lot. My faith will cover thee and question not. If thou art false to me, then I will say Thy spirit fell asleep that cruel day; But thou wilt wake, and need my loving care, So I will watch with fasting and with prayer, 51 THE SLUMBERER THOU mysterious One lying asleep Within the lonely chamber of my soul! Thou art my life's true goal, Thine is the only altar that I keep. Rapt in the contemplation of thy repose, 1 see in thy still face that Mystic Rose Whose perfume is my soul's imaginings, And Beauty at whose awesomeness I weep With over-plenitude of ecstasy. Thy slumber is the great world-mystery — The paradigm of all the latent things That in their destined hour Time magnifies Its emblems are the intimate hush that lies Over the moonlit lake; The wonder and the ache Of unborn love that trembles in its sleep; The hope that thrills the heavy earth With presage of becoming, and vast birth; The secret of the caverns of the deep. THE VIOLIN I HOLD between my quivering hands A violin new-strung. Wrought of a master builder's love To be the passionate tongue Of the unseen, to utter sounds Never on earth yet sung. 52 Mute though it lies and musicless, My breath across the strings, Warm with the love that bares to me The mystic soul of things, Wakens the slumbering tones and stirs Melodious murmurings. Dreamy it is with memories Of that reborn desire That in this fibre buried deep The builder's heart of fire. O Violin ! the magic bow Is all the gods require. Out of the silence of your soul To smite the rhythmic flame Of pain and rapture, and achieve The indomitable aim. Sounding through all infinity The demiurgic Name. O Violin, my violin! 'Tis fateful to command The silences to utter sound. The wise gods understand When I would lift the magic bow Why trembles so my hand. 58 BY THE SEA " Oh, turn your dreamy eyes now to the sea! Turn them a moment, dear, away from me To where the world, to our self-bounded sight. Begins to be. We two can see but such a little way! Although the sun is bright for us to-day. What lies beyond this hour's horizon rim We cannot say. Perhaps that purple speck against the blue May be the mast-head of some ship long due From destiny's dim port, with priceless pearls For me and you. Will we not melt the purest in our wine And drink the draught together, for a sign Unto the gods of being that their best Is yours and mine? Or, if the cargo prove but common dust. We will accept it, for the stars are just; And we will make a road of it, and laugh — As brave ones must. Dear heart, I have no easy words to say The many things that I have felt to-day Here by the sea, with destiny and you And life at play. 54 The sand around us, where to you and me The world's self-conscious centre seems to be. Is like that far unknown horizon rim To those at sea. And so this hour that sings itself away Was on our life's horizon yesterday. Although unknown to us as yonder ship. As seeming grey. Oh, turn your eyes from the horizon, dear! My hands are trembling as the ship draws near. Hold them and tell me — Love ! — whether it be With hope or fear. GOOD-BYE Dear, we have made Love's fleeting days Bewilderingly sweet, But now the world's long, lonely ways Yearn for your lingering feet. Why do you tarry at the door And gaze at me with tears? Is it because time holds no more Years like our vanished years? Your royal gift of self I hold. Shrined in my heart and brain; The master-secret you have told Me, I shall tell again. 55 And on that unregarded road That you will travel soon, The beauty that my love bestowed Shall be some pilgrim's boon. Justified now by the true past And trusting truth to be, I yield you to the future's vast Inscrutable decree. IN THE sours HOUSE O BRIGHT-WINGED Lovc, whose ways are mystery. Whose hours no man may reckon! I have swept And burnished my soul's house, where long I kept The body of one dead and hopelessly Gazed at the flickering candles ranged by thee Around his head and feet. But I who wept. Now weep no longer; I who sadly slept Under the pall, have burned it and stand free. And I have climbed the stairs of the high tower That looks upon the sunrise. Robed in white. My spirit, ever virgin, waits the hour When thou. Love, the dawn-wonder, veiled in light, Shalt touch the world and me with quickening power, V And drive all dead things down the nether night. 56 THE COMING OF LOVE I HAVE sought Love all my days; Down the world's long dusty ways I have listened ifor his footsteps, I have sung his praise. I have offered in his name Peace and solitude and fame On my spirit's hidden altar — But he never came. Sometimes in the tenuous night I have felt the still delight Of a presence; but it vanished With the morning light. Till I wearied of the quest. Of the yearning in my breast; And I whispered to my lone heart_, ** Let us be at rest: " Love's unsullied mystery Is not meant for thee and me; We are too deep-stained with living — It could never be ! " Then before I was aware Came a breath across my hair, While a stillness strange and reverent Held the waiting air; 57 And my spirit^ strong and sweety Rose the long-sought guest to greet, Rose — then bent to kiss the garment Round his shining feet. SONG OF THE MORTAL SUN-BRIDE Thou Supreme One, Lord of my Lord, Thou who art throned in the centre of each and every thing. The lights of whose chamber are souls that keep vigil. Be merciful unto me in this night of my wakefulness And leave me not alone with my own moon-shadow. Leave me not alone, or the Dark will lay its hands upon me ! I would be chaste of the touch of the bands of Dark- ness — I whom the Lord of Light held as a spouse this day in the high noon. While Earth lent me the veil of her own bridal. And Ocean murmured the benediction of the waters. On this night of wonder I would not be alone, O Su- preme One! For my Lord is away carrying Thy message through the regions of the Underworld, And when he returns he will bring the morning. The Dark and the fear of the Dark will flee before him, 58 And hide in the cavern of the mountains. I shall need no more to cover my head with the veil of the illusion of indiiference. For the eyes of my Lord have looked into mine in the daytime, And have found no shame therein. Thou who art throned in the centre of each and every thing. Hide me in the closure of Thy hand until the morning, For the eyes of fear are upon me. Rememberest Thou the look of my Lord in the hour of his beauty. When the power of the gods was with him.^* Uncovered he was by even a veil of vapour! I saw in the face of the western sky the desire of him. The Void opened her arms to him. Now in the houses of Thine Underworld are many dangers. And the Dragons of the Zodiac are full of malice. Oh, restore to me my Lord, my Beloved ! The belt of Orion would be laid aside at Thy bidding; Alcyone is a lily in Thy garden; The Milky Way is a veil that hides Thy beauty. And I? I am bound to the unlit side of one of Thy smaller planets, I am weak as a blade of grass, my days are drops of rain. 59 The night is far spent. Trembling I turn toward the dark closed tent of the East, The tent whose floor opens into the future. Straining my eyes for the first pale streak of dawn under the curtains, I wait. . . . Will it come like the thin white blade of a sword to slay me? Will it come like the petal of a blush rose, tremulous, pink with unspeakable promise? UNDER THE STARS Love, you have made me dizzy with your eyes ! They are as deep and star-sown as the skies; They reach above me in their bourneless blue — O high, vast, swimming firmament of You! Trembling, I clutch your hand, so sure and strong: As one who gazes on the stars too long — Till he is dizzy with their awful height And the earth's motion through the trackless night Clings to the solid ground, and hides his face, Lest he be flung into the sea of space. 60 THE MAN-CHILD O WONDERFUL Small being that my Love Made of his dreams before he dreamed of me! Trembling I bend above Your terrifying softness^ for I see Something in you that made the stars afraid Before their moons were made. Strong is my soul to dare resistant things; But with the pressure of your powerless hand My will is like a bird with broken wings, And all my words are written in the sand. And she who bore you is the sacred vase That held the wine of Love's high sacrament. The still Madonna to whose bower was sent The angel of God's grace. No other worshipper will come like me, man-child! with such offerings for your sake; For I know all the secrets of the sea. And of men's souls that ache; 1 know the mystery in women's eyes. The mute word never said. The laws that are the wonder of the wise, And why they smile so strangely who are dead. 61 SAPPHICS Aphrodite, lady of Love, O hear me! I have sung thy praises the heavy day long; Now at nightfall, sorrowing still, my heart bows Humbly before thee. Pity thou me, lonely without the garden Where the rose blooms; mad for the beauty somewhere Hidden from me, under the veil of twilight Wonder and shadow. Let me drink deep, deep of the dew that lies cool On the young flower! Give me, O Aphrodite! Dew for Love's thirst, nectar of night to ease this Fever that burns me. Give me Love's dark rose of divine caresses — Rose of deep curled petals the day has known not, Passion's own flower, woven of dream and perfume, Ardour and anguish. Thine are strange ways, pitiless Aphrodite! Lone, denied love, weeping I go with mute lips Where the night-blind, merciful waters will not Know nor deny me. 62 OUTSIDE Take me again to the house of thy heart, Beloved! Here in the outer world there is rain and thunder, Dragons of unbelief and the formless terror. Over the earth-face clings the night like a wet veil; Down from the mountain comes the wail of the wild things. Up from the ocean the scream of the wind-blown sea- mew. I am alone with the night and the rain is upon me, — Nothing to cover my head but a beggar's garment. Take me again to the house of thy heart, Beloved! AN EPISTLE You, too near me for grievance or pardon, Nearer than pride, dearer than power. Oh! could you not, while I prayed in the garden, Watch with my soul one hour? Out where the blossom of life uncloses. You and I on the path of Love Walked in his wistful moon of roses. One with the bloom thereof. You in your soul did the dream uncover, Reading the stars like a master of fate — You the indomitable lover Daring to call me mate! Never since Time for a bridal token Gave to the moon the reins of the sea, Man to woman such word has spoken, Love, as you spoke to me. How could I know that the book of sorrow, Blotted with tears by the ages shed, Charged to my score for a stern to-morrow Every word you said? I was a pilgrim, a lyric dreamer. Seeking the Grail round the sceptical earth; You were my fiery faith's redeemer. Lighting the cold grey dearth. Oh ! when the eyes of the stranger signed you. Though I had lingered so long away. Came no wraith of the past to remind you I should return some day? Never since earth's remote beginning Two moons hung in a dual sky; Never two spinners were one thread spinning But one spun awry. 64 Though the desired sun knows all places^ One line only his noon-rays mark; Only one hemisphere he faces, Leaving the other dark. Love^ when the waxing moon is rounded I and my songs in your arms will sink. Even now is the draught compounded Our two mouths shall drink. What of the veil of alien kisses, Passionate hours and dreams and sighs, — Veil of unendurable blisses Now drawn over your eyes.^ Once your eyes were wells untroubled, Calm as the infinite Question of space: Gazing deep, I beheld there doubled Only my own rapt face. Oh! shall I turn from the wells though clouded. Missing the verity hid in the wrong, — Turn with my pain and passion shrouded Under the sleeve of song.^ Nay, I will drink of the mingled waters, Bitter-sweet though the drinking be. Even as the pale wise merman's daughters Drink the salt sweet sea. 65 Then shall I know the power that humbles. Feel the compassionate touch that heals, See how the Self's thin mirror crumbles Under Life's vast wheels. Then shall I know the hidden places. Turn the great last leaves of the Book, Read the wonder in women's faces Where God dares not look. THE ANGEL God sent an angel down to me, A sweet and shining one. With deep eyes veiled in mystery And garments like the sun; And in its open hand the key No lone soul ever won. I heard it singing down the sky Before I saw its face; I listened, and I wondered why My life's familiar place Seemed new with wonder, like a high Mountain awash with space. It came and touched me with its hand, And kissed me on the brow. And told me of a fabled land Far off, and whispered now Things that I feared to understand — A message and a vow. And I was frightened by its power, And anguished with its pain; And all its beauty seemed the dower Of my bewildered brain; And I was eager for the hour The angel should be slain. But they are strong, the shining ones Who house behind the stars, And run wild races round the suns. And bend the rainbow's bars. And bring to grieve the moon's white nuns Red messages from Mars. I, too, am strong, and in affright Because it seems so fair, I find its throbbing throat, dream-white, And clutch my fingers there. And through the long, warm, moon-mad night I slay it with despair. And though it struggles in my hold. And strives to kiss the hand That strangles it, and turns me cold With tender fire — the sand Of Time falls fast, and I am bold — But do not understand. 67 For I know not — Ah, woe is me ! — Whether I do right well, And save me from the agony- No woman's lips may tell. Or if I stand a moment free — But doom my soul to hell. TO THE UNKNOWN LOVE Slowly the seasons come and go, And we are still apart! We know not each the other's face. Though deep in the lone heart Burns evermore the flame of hope — The fever and the smart. Sometimes within the nether mind Vague memories arise Of other times and other climes. Of lips and brow and eyes. Sometimes it seems the murmuring breeze Is heavy with your sighs. I hear your voice whenever a bird Pours out its wild love song. And in the moaning of the sea When nights are drear and long. My eyes look restlessly for yours Through every passing throng. 68 Somewhere you lie alone to-night. Calling me wistfully. Oh, that the earthly veil might fall And let the spirit see! It may be only yonder wall Separates you and me. THE LONELY QUEST Long did my soul interrogate the stars. For news of one remembered from a day When earth and I were younger. A great way We walked together, then the iron bars Of God divided us. I bear the scars Of lonely lives, of lonely loves; the spray Of doubt has drenched my faith, but could not stay My quest through all Time's changing calendars. And last night when I walked where angels call Softly to one another round the white Circle of heaven, I found him once again, — Found him a watcher on the Guardian Wall, A torch of sacrifice, a nameless light For the dark wilderness of mortal pain. 69 SALUTATION TO THE LORD OF LOVE Thou who art Master of Life and of Death and of Time, I salute thee! Thine are the unknown ways and the soul's hid pur- pose forever. Under thy feet is the orbit of earth, and thy rhyth- mical breathing Blows the worlds through the void and the stars on their weariless journey. Thee I salute! Thou art fairer than youth in the morn, my Beloved, — Source of the morn and youth; and the years are but motes in the sunbeam Thine eyes cast on the wind-swept ocean of Time. By thy footsteps Aeon on aeon is measured, and thine is the gauge of a moth's life. Thine is the gauge of the soul; and my song, and my love, and my love's pain Mingle as atoms of sand on the shores of the sea of thy being. Thee I salute ! I, less than obedient dust in thy service, Now am chosen, exalted high as the gods in thy favour. Why is the marvel. Beloved? How do I merit the jewel Hung by thy hand on my neck? In the night of my need I besought thee, 70 Praying the boon of the mere stones pressed by thy feet on the highway — Only the stones of the road. Thou hast flung me the stars for my wearing! Even in childhood's days I, singled out for thy blessing, Saw unveiled that Beauty which moves on the surface of all things. Saw revealed that quivering Wonder that hides in the shadow ; Aye, thou hast sounded the Word of original speech in my hearing. These were as nothing, Beloved! Only to-day have I taken Time by the hand, strong Love by the lips, great Life by his breathing; Now with Time I am one, and with Love, and with Life and the whole world. Thee I salute, O Beloved, here at the hem of thy gar- ment! Lo, as a friend I behold thee, entering the door of my dwelling Robed in thy mantle of splendour — Thou the In- spirer, the Unknown ! — Reaching to touch my soul with the torch that enkindles the ages. Lighting the fire on my altar, the yearning that knows no abatement. 71 THE WAY / It is no smooth and daisy-spangled way That my soul's feet have travelled. They that go Always upon the safe path never know The wider wisdom we who go astray Learn of the gods that guide us. We must slay Dragons at every turn; but they bestow Their powers upon their conquerors, and we grow Richer for every forfeit that we pay. I walked with Toil and Dream and Love and Hate, Who all their hidden lore to me confessed: No staff had 1, nor scrip to deal with Fate, Only the lamp of faith to light my quest; But when I stood before the goal's high gate, 'Twas opened wide, as for a royal guest. 72 Ill AZELON AZELON AzELON^ I wonder why Your smile should make the planet shake! I wonder why your voice should make The stars so dizzy in the sky. 1 wonder why until the dawn I cannot find the gate of sleep, And dreams go by like frightened sheep, Seeking the fold of Azelon. I wonder how the thought of you, Once pale as the first green of spring, Has grown to cover everything. With hopes like Mayflowers shining through. When I confer with Destiny The Moon is mj^' astrologer, Because I heard you speak to her One midnight when you walked with me. I question every daisy bed For omens — but they answer not. The very Spring is in a plot To snarl my heart's bewildered thread. The violet hints your eyes are blue. And laughs — my query to evade. 'Tis strange, you make me so afraid, I never dare to look at you! 75 Azelon^ my cheek is pale! The season's footsteps are so slow! A rose may half forget to blow In listening for the nightingale. Some day, when you are passing by, If I should dare to drop one sweet Shy pale pink rose-leaf at your feet 1 wonder would you question why! FAR AWAY If you should come and stand in yonder door And look at me, I would not feel surprise; For I have grown familiar with your eyes In dreaming of you. All day long I pore Over that volume of unwritten lore — The words you might have said, the smiles, the sighs That wild imagination prophesies When we come face to face, as heretofore. Yet if a letter came for me io-day In your strange writing, I should tremble so The very messenger, I think, would know Something my soul is yet afraid to say Even in the dark, when tossing to and fro I seek the path of sleep, and lose my way. 76 IN MAY Sometimes a fear blows cold upon my heart That we may come no nearer, after all; And then the grey November shadows fall Over the green May meadows. Many start Upon the way of Love, only to part At the first cross-roads; and the buds are small Upon Love's apple-trees — Oh, very small ! — And ripening days are distant as tliou art. But when at night on each celestial bough I watch the sweet star-blossoms one by one Unfold their shining leaves, the morrow's sun Rising at dawn seems no more sure than thou; And my soul's timid, silent orison Is answered by thy soul's unworded vow. PERVASION You are all vague and haunting things to me. The shimmer of the moonlight on the mere Is your strange being, and the brooding fear Of the black midnight. Everywhere I see A symbol of you; in the cedar tree That dreams beside my window, in the clear Eyes of the lonely stars, in the austere And melancholy ocean's mystery. 77 Never the moon beholds my secret hours But you behold me, never the grey dawn Comes without word of you on its cool breath. And will I feel you in my coffin flowers, When over Time's cold borders I am drawn By the inexorable desires of Death? SHADOW-LOVE Dear, do you wonder when I turn away Sometimes without a word? 'Tis lest you know The frightened secret I have guarded so ! When you are gentlest, then a wild dismay Blows round my soul's frail dwelling, and I stay Far from the windows. Only when you go And leave me alone with Love does the flame glow White on the midnight altar where I pray. How strange it is that I who fear your eyes Fear not your soul! for through the grove of dreams I walk with you unveiled and unafraid In spirit converse. But the dawn denies Faith to the man and woman, nor redeems One lovely pledge the daring shadows made. 78 OLD SONGS To-day I read some strange old songs of yours, Sung to another woman long ago. Love, I am glad ! for now I know. ... I know That you can love, and the wild knowledge cures My deepest pahi of all. Passion endures: A blade well tempered in the furnace glow Never grows brittle, but endures the snow. The ice, the night of boreal temperatures. I bless her, that veiled woman of the past, I pledge her beauty in my soul's red wine. She surely is less than I, for I am last. . . . Mine is the future. And her star shall shine High in my firmament, immortal, vast. . . . For I am Woman, and the songs are mine. LOVE-GLANCE Last night I saw a look in your strange eyes - A light — a something that half blinded me. So like it was to the sudden ecstasy Of waking love, which starts in sweet surprise That dawn is at the window. . . • But too wise. Too wise am I in secret tears to see The sun at midnight, or a prophecy Of joy in any star in your dark skies! 79 And yet . . . great Athon gazed at me just so. The night he made his holy vows a stair For me to climb by. . . . But my brain says no: The veriest pagan may recite a prayer To his own god before Christ's image. Go Thy lone strong way, my heart. Beware, beware ! THE SUBSTANCE AND THE SHADOW Why is your sadness sweeter than all song, And the cold clasp of your mysterious hands More warming than the fire? Ghosts of far lands And lives unnumbered at your coming throng The chambers of my house, and in the long Hours of your absence your still wraith demands More than your presence dares — and understands The weakness of my heart you deem so- strong. Until I fear some day I may mistake The substance for the shadow, and reveal All that I tremble now lest you surmise. Wary my heart must be, for pride's cold sake; And lest you be an infidel, conceal With painted screens the door of paradise. 80 THE BECKONER One day a vision came and beckoned me Out of the still grey halls where solitude Waits for the guest whose coming must elude The mocking eyes of Life and Destiny. I followed, and the vision bade me see The garden of dreams whose lilies never die, The rainbow of Love's promise in the sky, The arbour of faith whose walls are mystery. Breathless I cried, "Who art thou?" And he said, " My name is Might Have Been, I am accurst By all men, but my boons shall make thee strong Take on thy lids my chrism of tears unshed. My bitter wine of knowledge for thy thirst. And for thy breast the barren rose of song.'* THE GATE You are the gate of that walled paradise That I can never enter, and your word Is like the angel of the flaming sword That turns all ways. Beloved, I am wise — Not from the tree of knowledge, but your eyes; And sad with all the meanings underscored In God's great book of Passion. . . . Dream adored! adored ! I slay it daily, but it never dies. 81 You are the gate behind whose iron bars The rose of life is red, and in the dusk The angel walks among the waving grain. I walk outside, beneath the shivering stars; My only harvest is the empty husk. My only flower the lily of white pain. THE SECRET JEWELS Oh, little do you know how rich you are In priceless jewels! I have given you Thousands of pearls, my tears, all pure and new From the deep seas of sorrow; a great bar Of rubies for your sword — not rained afar. But my heart's blood drops; opals of strange hue My moonlight dreams that never will come true; And crowning all, my faith — a diamond star. But these rich gifts I bring you secretly. Hiding them in the dark and silent ground Beside your door; for I could never bear That you should know how you impoverish me. Could not endure that when the gems are found You gaze at me in wonder — and not care ! 82 WHEN WE ARE OLD My friend, when you and I are very old. And meet each other after many years, And sit together by the fire, that cheers Those shivering ones whose love-fires have grown cold; Then maybe I will say to you: " Behold These sweet song-flowers I watered with my tears When I was fresh as they; my woman-fears Hid them till beckoning Death had made me bold." And lying all alone in the dark night, You will remember that my mouth was red. My hand was warm, my shoulder smooth and white; Remember and weep the love you never gave. And toss till daylight on your dreamless bed. And shudder - — thinking of the lonely grave. SIC TRANSIT GLORIA MUNDI With you pass all the glories of the hills, Green with the dream and promise of the spring. The robin leaves on chill autumnal wing My budding Northland, and the hidden rills Shudder as in November. The wood stills Her breath to listen for you, who now sing No more about her chambers. Everything Beautiful passes with you, and vague ills Whisper together hoarsely just outside 83 The door of life. . . . O Love! the clouds can tell In sobbing rain their heaviness, the tide Rises with word of power; but I who dwell Between the granite walls of pain and pride. With never a tear endure the great farewell. PASSION SEEDS *Tis sweeter far to gaze in your soft eyes One little moment, without word or touch. Than any love-embrace I ever knew. Your breath the other night upon a book We read together, fluttered a loose page — And my soul shivered like a willow-leaf. What mystic counsel did your mother hold With God, ten moons ere ever you were born. That you should wear the rainbow round your head? Here is a riddle for the dual Sphinx: When you are far away — you seem so near; When you are near — you seem so far away. Until I loved you. Dear, I never knew How sad the eyes one passes in the street. How still the world an hour before the dawn. 84 If you should die and learn my guarded love, Then would I burn a lamp till the sun rose — Fearing to face your spirit in the dark! Your letters. Dear, are like the gentle winds That make the grey woods weep, on some soft day In winter when the boughs are bare of leaves. To-day I heard a wandering harp-player Under my window, and in every tone The words of love that you will never say. If I could dip my pen in your red blood. Then would I write such songs — such passion songs That even you would wonder whom I loved. The schools of all the world could not have taught So deep a knowledge as my soul has learned In the stern college of your calm regard. How strange that I, who have explored far seas. Charting new islands on the map of Love, Should steer my boat upon this jagged reef! Your lip is like a petal of that rose That blossomed in the shadow of the Cross — Red as the mystic flower of Golgotha. How many hopeless lovers must have died. Hiding in guarded shrines their sacred fire. Ere Sappho wept for Phaon in old days! 85 Maybe some lonely heart in unborn years Will bless your coldness: Had you given me love, I had made songs for you — but not these songs. Your shadow on the granite wall of pain Has shown me more of beauty than the full Sunlight in all the rose-bowers of the world. What matter though the iron doors of Fate Part us forever? Love is everywhere. And you are mine — though I am never yours. I never knew how chaste my spirit was Till I touched you: Love's scarlet flame is mild, But his crucible is whiter than blown snow. I saw a man and woman with a child, Happy together . . . and I stole away Among the shadows of the lonely woods. Your praises of my songs are like the dole Given a minstrel who in silence knows He is the secret first-born of the King. •&• I dread to see the blossoms of the spring: The violet, the white lily and the rose. Will haunt me with your eyes, your brow, your mouth. Before I saw your face, I always wondered Why the blue moonlight, and the moaning sea. And the grey davm, had filled my soul with tears. 86 y " I care no more/' I said, and lightly sang. And then I saw you passing in the street. . . . And I was very still, and sang no more. If you should ever understand and say, " Take all I have, though less than your long love," Then would I smile — but go far off from you. Only from you to me the Love Supreme Or nothing — as that rebel archangel Chose hell to standing second before God. Your boon of thorns is my immortal wreath; And save for you I never could have known How One so loved the world — that loved him not ! THE STILLBORN The burden of my love for thee has grown Intolerable; 'tis heavy as a child Under my heart, and struggles to be born. Long have I borne it in my burning womb Hidden from all; have laughed and gone my way Among the virgins. . . . But my hour is come. My mantle of indifference grows too narrow Longer to screen my secret, and I creep Into the lonely garden of confession Under the stars; no lesser eyes should see The weakness of my tears. The stars are old, 87 And some bear women's names. Surely the stars Will understand; surely they will not chide. Nor shame me with cheap pity, who am strong And ask no pity of the stars or gods. How long ago it seems, that winter night When in a sudden rapture the small seed That now has grown so mighty, fixed itself Deep in the soil of my being! I have seen Since then the snow upon the rolling fields Make way for the daisy, I have seen the rose Blossom and fade, the busy harvesters Gathering the grain. Now in a little while Shall I behold something the dews of night Will warm their liquid hearts to He upon. Let me not cry aloud, remembering All things are born in pain; remembering That every pain shall pass and be no more Even a memory. Had not yonder plain Pangs poignant as a woman's in giving birth To the blue mountain? Are not master-songs Born of the poet's travail and his tears .^^ Let me not cry aloud ! Had my own mother Never known pain, I never had known song. And the green world had never known of me. A little while and I shall understand More than Minerva, answer the great question That graved the wrinkles on the Sphinx's brow. Only a little while and I shall look 88 Love in the face — if it be not born dead. Having endured too deep prenatal grief. Shall I be frightened when I feel its breath, Knowing the woe that waits all breathing things? Much have I sung of Love in other days. When I have walked with Joy in the high hills. Careless and free. Having beheld its face, Shall I pass awed and silent down the years, Hushed with a knowledge beyond joy and song? THE INTERVENER I LEANED entranced upon a flowery gate. When a stern figure faced me in disguise. I thought it was the iron hand of Fate That turned me from that poppied paradise; But gazing up, with stifled word of hate, I saw instead — my Guardian Angel's eyes! 89 IV THE HUMAN MIRROR A Rhapsody THE HUMAN MIRROR A Rhapsody I Beloved, all the beauty and the dream That trembled into being from the dark, When God's original creative spark Went singing through the void of the Supreme^ Thou dost reflect for me In the effulgent mirror of thy form. Everywhere on thy warm And glimmering surface beckons visibly The wraith of that divine and mystic key That can unlock the double-doors of Being. Thy semblances are symbols in my sight Of that Reality beyond our seeing, Whose shadows are our glimpses of the Light. Oh, that thine eyes could see The epiphany thou art! Love's vision has unveiled the moving mirror^ And in thy clear reflection shown to me Him, thy great archetypal counterpart — Creator and Preserver and Destroyer — Whose breath brings forth the whirling universe. And whose inbreathing draws it back again. In the dark Sea of Silence to immerse The links of Time's long chain. 93 All forms lie only half-cancealed in thee; The curve that hints the circle hidden, the line Straight as an arrow from Creation's bow, The pentacle, the trine. The royal square, the demiurgic sign, — These are the symbols of thy sovereignty. Magi of Love, they will reveal to me The mysteries they know. Thy kisses are the very potency Of the immortal Breath, A whisper on the winds of ecstasy Blown from the green fields beyond life and death. My fluid soul that presses quivering The shores of Being at the touch of thee, Is one drop of that primal, spatial sea Thrilled by the vibrant touch of God to sing The passion-song whose notes are stars and prayers; And in the rush of joy my spirit dares The rhythm of that planetary music. O thou star-wanderer! Would that I knew the tenuous winding way Thou hast ascended through our terrene clay The seven stairs of Life — The toil, the unimaginable strife! Aye, or that other longer, stranger road. Whose deep declivities are gods and seons. The road of thine original descent From Him, the Immanent, The One, the Inconceivable Abode. 94 Thine every footstep seems To hint of ways whose chart He only hath; Infinite must have been thy days^ thy dreams. Thy converse on the path. Son of the Presence, The boundaries of thine inheritance Are one with thy great Sire's divine romance. Thine are the potencies of endless life. And on thy lips is that unchanging word Whose lingering cadence every age has heard. In thee are all the pictures of the past. The shadowed wraith of everything that is. The seeds of all realities to be. Unseen they lie, in silent companies. Waiting my touch that irresistibly Calls them to manifest their forms to me. Even reminders of ancestral wrong Survdve in these fond arms wherein I rest — The powers at whose behest The ages made me weak, and made thee strong; But I forgive and love like all those women Whose lives are the background of my palimpsest. And over their dead story I grave my song. Revealed in thee, bards of the unborn days — Their foreheads honoured with prophetic bays The seeds of whose home trees have yet to climb Through the cold soil of time — Urge me to give my songs to pave the ways Their unshod feet must travel. 95 II Thy body, my Beloved, is to me The alphabet of Life's deep mystery; By it my soul can falteringly spell The hidden story of humanity, And all its perilous future paths foretell. O miracle of form! O ecstasy of spiritual line, Where human sight is lost in the divine! Dizzy with adoration I have lain In the rapt stillness of the summer night. Companioned by the intimate sweet moon, Gazing at thee — until the sheer delight Of vision grew bewildered, even to pain. Losing itself in swoon. The mould wherein thy wonder-breathing flesh — Young and so flower- fresh — Was wrought but yesterday of joyous clay. Is older than the memory of thy race. It has persisted with thee, birth by birth. Since that self-confident day In the triumphant springtime of the earth. When the strong groping spirit of Man first uttered That ritual of his immortality. Varied by destiny, desire and time. Experience and clime. The shadows thine enduring form has cast Upon the mirror of mortality — Their little, gesturing, vivid hour to last — 96 Have one by one passed irretrievably Into the dark enclosing frame of the grave. But still the Uncreated waits in thee, Urging — through mazes where no mind can trace The utter diffusion of Its unity — Eager reincarnations of thy race. Ill Oh, that my questing soul could understand This mystery of Life that hides in thee ! I read no message of Infinity In the star-mirroring, stupendous sea. So potent to inspire Even as one small motion of Love*s hand. O golden life of spirit, dream and fire. Compounded in the cabinet of birth! Art thou my Love's, prisoned by his desire Within his house of sublimated earth? Or, art thou in thyself that ambushed Thing, Wliose intricacies of doom Astound the figures of man's reckoning? Maybe thou art the Master of the loom. Stronger than Time, inscrutable as Fate, — The Weaver who by devious delays Held the gold threads that are my Lover's days Suspended in the air. Until it served thy purposes to fill The tiny but inevitable square Sacred to him, his own predestined part 97 In the grand pattern of Kabalistic skill — The human fabric of thine awful art. What is that life, Beloved, that I feel Vibrant, self-conscious, in each atom of thee? By aid of Love's white magic I would steal The veil which hides that habitant from me, Baring the jealous beautiful strange face Science may not uncover — The face of Life itself, therein to trace The mystery of my Lover. — Could I unveil its wrappings, could I see That unit of untiring energy Which animates thy fervid, throbbing clay, I, though a time-bound mortal, might arouse Visions, long-slumbering, of Creation's Day; I might behold the eyes of Him whose spouse Was the great Paradigm- — Mother of Form, of Motion, and of Time — Whose memory endows The forms of earth with their bewildering beauty IV The soft rose-lining of thy human veil Is the soul-essence of that crimson hue The gods know as desire; Chastened it was in that creative fire Which left thy gleaming surface ivory-pale, Unshaded by the dust whereof it grew. Thy devious veins whose deep blue courses seem 98 Mysterious hieroglyphs all over thee. Are secret rivers of Infinity, Rolling their pulsing ways through meadows of dream Down to the mystic sea. The restless sea whose tides are life and death. Oh, that the river's flood might cover me! That I might breathe no longer my own breath In this cold isolate austerity Of life outside of thee ! Love, let me feel the divine ravishment Of thy deep veins' inviolate content. The beating of thy heart is to my ears The rhythm of the sacramental mass Sung by the vested years. As one by one with measured steps they pass In rapt procession round the reverent spheres. That superhuman music moves my soul Even as the wind's wild music moves the sea. While under and around and over me Thy heartbeats sound their mighty organ roll. Pulsing and luminous, the fringe of light Around thy form is visible to me In the dark night. In that ellipse I see The orbits of the world of pain and pleasure, That round thy heliocentric heart, my Love, Tread their melodious measure, Like to the ether-wandering worlds above. 99 What draws the glory of thine aureole I know not, save it be The fierce attraction of the cosmic Soul. Its oscillation blinds and dazes me: It rises from thee like the shimmering heat From metal in the sunlight, when the wheat Ripens, and meadow-lands exude Their second plenitude. Is this the fiery essence of thy being, That at the stations of its outward course Calls to its flaming source? These mysteries of light which beckoned so That I bound on my sandals for the quest. Challenge me now, and would my steps arrest. Raising a warning finger lest I go Even to the cave of the Unmanifest That brooks no mortal guest. Yet strange things do I see recorded here In this thy Soul's symbolic atmosphere: Outlines of lands, remembered mistily. Where I have walked with thee In lanes of love, or other paths austere. In thy far wanderings through realms unknown, When in the night alone With the wise ancient retrospective sea, Have not vague memories come and questioned thee Of bygone days with me? When thou hast heard the moon-mad nightingale's Lyrical wooing of his love, the rose, — Whose answering sweetness to his passion flows 100 In yearning fragrance through her filmy veils, — Hast thou not felt the haunting atmosphere Of something lost, yet memorably dear? Has not a deep, oppressive emptiness Cried in thy heartache for a happiness Whose lovely name even thou couldst not guess — Being the speech of some forgotten sphere? On Thought's horizon I have caught the gleam Of setting stars, through memory's twilight haze. And known them for the ghosts of other days. When thou and I together, my Beloved, Dreamed the sweet human dream: These phantoms walk with thee in all thy ways. The perfume of thy passion-shadowed hair Is heavy with the mystery and the prayer That brooded over Asia in old time. Thine eyes have the deep meditative calm Of India in her prime. Pure with the peace of the eternal Brahm. Thine eyebrow's dusky line Is hieroglyphic, an ideal sign Occult with ancient meanings, but half hid. Of Sphinx and pyramid. Every reflection on thy mirror cast Is teeming with the spectres of the past. In what dim dawn of elemental dream Did thy first vibrant image agitate The tenuous substance of the shadowland? The far events these glyphs commemorate. My dust-blind spirit may not understand. 101 VI Turn to me, Love, thy sweet, reflective eyes ! What beauty-curtained thoughts convene behind Their windows in the chamber of thy mind ? — The secret chamber to which God denies That even I should any entrance find. Hurling the atoms of Himself apart, Did our primordial Projector fear That in our gravitation back again. Proclivity might carry us too near — One to another yearning passionately — Making his purpose plain Before the destined hour of Unity? And, fearing so, did He reserve the mind. That one inviolate and lonely centre Even Love may not enter? Yet often, my Beloved, I have caught Etheric intimations of thy thought, When hands and lipsi and eyes were motionless. Guided by these, my hopes have dared to guess Some hidden entrance that would yield to me, Could I but find the key. It is a master-workshop, and a temple. That Nature-guarded chamber of thy thought. There in seclusion potent things are wrought. And potent worship offered to the Light By day and night. There as the solar periods go by. The resolute magician dares alone 102 The demon legions of the magic zone — Phantasmal forms that seek to terrify- Even the valiant ones at whose behest The veil is raised that guards the great Unknown. Thy sovereign will is that arch alchemist Whose power no spirit can utterly resist. Held in its crucible, Life's baser things Are melted into Beauty's virgin gold: 'Motives of men, their rhythms manifold, Their fierce desires, their dreams and falterings, All are transmuted by that master bold, Through Love — the universal alkahest Of the magician's quest. Lone, and besieged forever by the rout Of the unhallowed sons of Fear and Doubt, The patient worker that abides in thee — Shaping new beauties for eternity — Shall be the prophet of a purer art. Thou Poet of my heart! VII The reverent soul in me Would swing Love's sacred censer silently Before that altar where the soul in thee- Pure as a flower to heaven looking up — Burns in its golden cup. 103 Thy spirit is a lamp to light my way Through the bewildering mazes of the earth. Beyond this perilous dearth It beckons, and I go no more astray After the ignis fatuus of fame. Nor pleasure's wavering flame. That love-trimmed, faith-filled lamp burns steadily, Even in the winds of pain it flickers not. Signal divine of God, it marks for me The destined earthly spot Where for my wind-blown soul passage may be To the far calling ocean of unity. VIII These are the seven jewels the stars intrust To the rash keeping of the house of dust: Thy form, thy life, thy garment of desire. Thy veiled etheric record of the past. Thy dual mind — the dream that will not last And the immortal vision framed in fire. And IT, the golden microcosmic spark Of the one Flame whose word awoke the vast Of the original dark. This house of dust that shelters thee. Beloved, This body where thou tarriest a day. Is the hall of learning told of by the sages Of older, wiser ages. That every traveller dwells in on his way. Over the sombre walls are gaily spread 104 The fabrics of illusion, blue and red, Violet, gold, and every lovely hue The vreavers knew. The jewel of the Great Ensnarer glows Temptingly here wherever the light falls. And in the dark malevolently glows. Never while lingering within these walls Hope to enjoy repose. Yet in these chambers of illusive grace A little while I would abide with thee. Till Beauty — thy co-dweller — shows to me The wonder of his face. IX benedicite unutterable! 1 see thee in the glory of the sun — Blindingly beautiful. Even in mystic visions there is none Comparable with thee when that sovereign light Reveals thee so to my interior sight. The petals of the rose are not so fresh As the blossom of thy flesh. Nor is the marble of Pentelicus To be compared with thee for gleaming splendour, Thou culmination of the marvellous! When first I saw thee in the light of the sun, A film undreamed of fell from off my eyes; Then I beheld what Beauty meant to Him Who made it, as His own primeval bride — 105 Made it and veiled it even from the wise — From all save those whom love had purified. But though I had the voice of the seraphim, I could not make the blind world realise The vision in my eyes. Beloved, where the lights and shadows meet Along thy sun-illumined form, I see Glory liquescent, quivering mystery. O wonder from thy forehead to thy feet — Wonder of Beauty, by whose ravishment Spirit and mind are blent! Dazed with infinitude, I lay my face In the warm intimate shelter of thy breast; But even here the vision finds no rest. Here the fond relic of a lost embrace — A union riven in some forgotten storm — Whispers imagination of a time When we were one, even in outer form; And this sweet useless remnant yet survives To explain the yearning of our separate lives. I hold thy lovely head between my hands. With fingers buried in thy clinging hair. — O maze, whose mystery is my despair! Symbol whose meaning no man understands! Art thou an emanation and a glory Of the indwelling spiritual fire, A million-threaded lyre 106 iMusical with the immemorial story Of bodiless desire ? — The whisper of thy locks across my face Is like the quick embrace Of a passing spirit in the startled air, Potent as faith and passionate as prayer. XI O benedictive hands, that hold for me Divine response to all my orisons ! Ye are the same that down the past I see Wildly uplifted to the deity Of prehistoric suns. The lonely dream whose destiny was man. Yearning to reach and take The blessed something of his dumb desire. Performed the miracle — and so began Beautiful hands, like these of Love's, that make Such complicated music on the lyre Of my imagination. Wonderful are these nails, the boundary Of thine extension in the outer vast: Curled rose leaves, that some danger of the past, Some ancient cruelty. Petrified in their fragrant loveliness?. But mindful of the garden of delight Where first they bloomed, they spring as readily To the clutch of Love's invincible caress. As to the sterner fierceness of the fight. J107 XII I gaze into the dark dream of thine eyes, Deep and bewildering as etheric space — The night-veil of the skies Wherein God hides His unendurable beauty. Only revealing in the points of light Glimpses of His inviolable grace Subdued for human sight. O visual spheres_, to whose formation went The very essence and the potency Shrined in each element ! In you the dust of earth is most divine. And the uncertain substance of the sea Held for a vast design So marvellous that man might almost fear it: The revelation to the prisoned one — The lonely, earth-bound spirit — Of that material, cosmic tapestry Woven of stars and earth and air and sea. For this the patient watchman of the Sun, Sleepless through ages in Time's wilderness. Has burned his mighty lamp that men might guess. Seeing the web, the purpose of the Weaver. Through the occult dark centres of thine eyes God looks at me. O gaze that terrifies ! O loving, brooding Dweller that is God! In those impenetrable deeps I see The clear, transcendent Question looking out 108 Into this world of Doubt; A separate Something, dwelling there alone. Guarding a hidden purpose of its own. Through what long changes in the forms of things Hast thou, indwelling Wonder, found thy way- Triumphing through the ever-lightening rings. From thy first blind desire to the outer day? iEons have passed thee, stumbling in the dark! Thy passage left a mark In the soft substance of eternity That only God could see. How lonely and bewildered was thy going! The whole blind length of solitude thy way Led, and the width of pain. The height and depth of yearning and dismay. Then in a dream thy vision, lightning-taught. Leaped through unknown dimensions of the brain. And the miracle was wrought. All this I read. Beloved, in the wise Deep volume of thine eyes. XIII Last night I whispered in the noiseless dark A message from my spirit unto thine; Then in a rush of wonder did I hark Thine unseen spirit's answer. And the sign Of nearness made me dizzy, as with wine From the blue bowl of the great Mysteriarch. I touched thee not, beheld thee not; the world — 109 For all that I might see — Rounded her shoulder between thee and me. And then my whisper and thine answer, clear As Venus questions Mars across the still Blue solar chamber, with the same heart-thrill As mine, and makes him hear; And the two planets counsel in the night — Maybe about the birth Of a spirit on the intervening earth, Whose natal hour makes him their neophyte. O wonder-gift of speech ! Ethereal medium on whose vibrant wings Thy brain's imaginings Cross the great circles of the Void, and reach My brain, that yearns to thine even as my mouth Yearns to thine eager mouth. Thy voice to me is that high Emanation Out of whose glories came The ordered hierarchies of creation — Spouse of the unimaginable Name! Between thy lips there comes to signal me The Word of the great deep, Wherein the twain — Memory and Prophecy — Their world-long council keep. Thy voice. Beloved, is the signature After the great clef of the planet Earth — The key wherein my being's overture Was written by the star that ruled my birth. 110 XIV Yea, breathe upon me, Love, that I may live With an intenser life. I would that all my being's ways were rife With the sweet certitudes thy life can give. Thy breathing has that rhythm the ocean taught The artless children of the Lunar reign, Before primeval Feeling married Thought And brought forth all their progeny of pain. How beyond all earth's meaning is the sweet Low whisper of that breath which comes to me As from the very lips of Eternity — Thou visible paraclete Out of the timeless vast Invisible ! Thy breath is a caress the bodiless Past Bestows upon me as a mystic charge. Through me to kiss the last Breath on the bodiless Future's yearning marge. So solemn the mere thought, I half forget thy wistful human sweetness, Without whose glamour all these things were naught But colourless abstractions, void of worth Here on the warm, emotion-throbbing earth. XV Sometimes the dual rhythm of thy breath. Love, and thy beating heart, 111 Bewilder me with their involved motion. In some uncomprehended way thou art One with the power of God that measureth The heart-throb of the ocean, And the wild wind's premeditated breath. XVI I feel the benediction of thy dear Soft hand upon my face. From thy caress long rays of ecstasy Stream far beyond my being's narrow sphere. Losing themselves in the blue deeps of space. How does thy lightest touch unseal in me Vials of yearning attar, that flow out- — Pouring their passionate fragrance over thee! Beneath thy hand what strains Of ethereal music cry along my veins! XVII Yea, make me one with thee! Clasp me and hold me in that unity Stronger than thought, keener than pain — The only thing intense enough to seem Real in this world of shadow and vague dream. Something we must attain Calls us, surrounds us, penetrates our lives With that unrest no mortal comprehends. The answering soul ascends Eagerly rung by rung the ladder of flame; 112 Heedless of earth, of heaven, it blindly strives Toward its supernal aim. The angels listen, poised on moveless wings. And all invisible things Rush through the void, attracted by the light That shines around us in the teeming night. The sounds of unknown seas are in our ears. Time is no more, but lost in one accord Are the moments and the years ; And seraphs waft us with their orisons The fragrance of the roses of the Lord. Grasped tight in the great Hand that hurled the suns Clear to their goals in space, we two are hurled Out in the ether, out in the abyss. Till self is lost and whirled Round and around like spirits in a storm — Out where mad chaos blazes into form. And planets, lightning-shod. Rush past us with a cry as on they race . . • Blinded, we know how Moses hid his face Because he was afraid to look on God. lis THE SPIRIT AND THE BRIDE A SONNET SEQUENCE THE GUERDON OF DESIRE O THOU unknown companion of my soul! I reach my yearning empty arms to thee Across the baffling dark. Come thou to me Now when I call, Beloved, though the whole Wide universe of suns and seasons roll Between thy world and mine. What sign shall be Our spirit seal of ultimate unity, Is graven deep on Time's unending scroll. The days are heavy-footed; but I know Thou wilt not come to me till I can say — Though dizzy with pent passion's overflow: " O God of Love, if that should be the way Thy servant needs must travel, I will go Unloved and lonely even to my death day ! " THE MYSTIC HILL Nay, friend, I am not sad, but very still. Waiting the word of Life that shall unbind The fetters of my soul. For I shall find Some day a pathway up the mystic hill AVhere Beauty walks with Love, where dawns fulfil The dreams of midnight, and the half divined Wonder unveils its face, and every wind With perfume of pure faith is all athrill. 117 And one will dwell with me in that high place Who gazes toward it from the other side, Even as I to-day, guarding the vase For the immaculate rose, whose petals hide The golden heart of mystery and grace, The promise of the Spirit and the Bride. THE BRIDEGROOM I WAIT for you. Beloved, even as they, The virgins of the Gospel, through the night Waited with lamps all trimmed and burning bright The coming of the bridegroom. For the day And hour I know not, nor by what strange way Your feet may travel. Will you bear a light Shining far off, like fame.'' And at the sight Will my small lamp respond with lengthening ray? Or will you come in silence through the dark, Unknown to all but me? The loftiest soul Shuns glory sometimes as the heavenly lark Loves not the noise of trumpets. I console My waiting heart with song — but always mark The measure of oil in my lamp's golden bowl. 118 THE MYSTIC MESSENGER Why do you come to me by night, by day, O ether wandering wraith? I would forget The vision of your haunting eyes, and yet — I dare not bid you either go or stay. For fear of Love offending! In the grey Austerity of dawn my lids are wet With tears that are not grief's, then pale regret Murmurs one warning word, and fades away. What mystic message has your soul for mine, Beyond the reach of language or of thought? What jewel from the spirit's guarded mine To crown me has your brooding presence brought? Beware, fond wraith ! The world is bold, malign. And joys to bring such lovely dreams to naught! OUT OF THE MAZE Out of the world's inextricable maze You came and stood beside me ; and I knew — After our long first look — that it was you For whom the watch-fires of my soul did blaze Their beacon through the darkness. Many days And many tears our faith must battle through. Before the orb of peace will rise in view. Blessing the union of our separate ways. 119 But in the joy of knowing that you are, My soul is strong to dare the long ascent To the great light, serene and confident That we shall reach Love's temple, though afar: That we shall take Love's mystic sacrament. And shriven stand before Life's judgment bar. RECOGNITION When we came face to face that star-set night Of miracle, my wondering spirit knew The purpose of its unity with you. Sealed by some strange, vaguely remembered rite In unrecorded ages. A white light Hid in your shadow. The caressing dew That lies upon the rose the still night through. Is less refreshing than that first quick sight To my awakened vision. I could see God's beauty shining through you, as a veil. Your voice was fraught with messages for me From the vast virgin Silence; and the frail Glass of my life trembled with ecstasy. As though it touched the rim of the Holy Grail. 120 THE SPELL The spell that draws my startled soul to thine Seems to be sounded from a secret place A million leagues above the world in space. Seems to be answered with the countersign A million leagues below. What vast design, Beyond our need to understand or trace, Brought us from dual darkness face to face In the great light, fusing thy dreams with mine? And oh, what tragic purpose of the stars Denied to us the guerdon and the faith. Giving the yearning only and the prayer, — The word we whisper through the iron bars Of absence to Love's melancholy wraith. Kissing the avid mouth that is not there! ALTER EGO In some strange way I do not understand. You seem to be another self of mine Newly discovered. At the hidden shrine Where none save me has ever made demand I found you worshipping, and hand to hand You met my challenge with the countersign. What magic weaver did our ways entwine, Inj what long dead and unremembered land ? 121 And when I sang to you my secret song^ The yearning heart-cry only known to me, At the first note you joined the melody, Bass to my treble, confident and strong, And firmly touched the one elusive key In that grand chord that I had sought so long. THE HOROSCOPE y O RADIANT angel of my ruling star! Read me the story of the horoscope That sent this lover, for I darkly grope Before the secrets of thy calendar. Thou knowest all things: Tell me, is it far, The day that wears my diadem of hope, When I shall know Love's plenitude and scope, And all his hidden wonders as they are ? How blinded are we mortals by our birth ! — How poor ! — how powerless in our j oy or sorrow The capital of Destiny to borrow. Whatever wealth our future may be worth! Though I should give the glory of the earth, I could not buy one whisper of to-morrow ! 122 THE BREAM I DREAMED last night you were a little child, A man-child that I nourished at my breast; Dreamed that your mouth — which never yet pos- sessed Even my mouth — drank of me in that wild And intimate nature-need. Divinely mild. They say of motherhood? Ah, no; but blest Beyond all peace that exquisite unrest. Drawing my life to yours, dream-child, man-child! I have been still with wonder all day long. The nameless thrill that only women feel Yearns in my bosom yet, so passion-strong Were your dream-lips, so poignant the appeal. And all my world is signed with your sweet seal, And all my veins are tremulous with song. THE AVOWAL I THINK God, when the river of live stars Flowed glittering from His fingers, must have known A joy like mine when, in your deep man-tone, You breathed the words, " I love you ! " Flaming Mars Watched in the West, and Saturn's golden bars Guarded us from the world. We two alone In that full-peopled solitude, had flown Beyond the reckoning of man's calendars, 123 And stood at time's beginning. You and I ! Why, there was nothing else between the sea And God's far footstool in the Pleiades! " I love you ! " With that strong, ecstatic cry, You opened Faith's wide temple doors for me, And brought my startled spirit to its knees. CONSUMMATION Look in mine eyes. Beloved! Is it true That you and I have found each other now? And when I smooth the dear hair from your brow. Do I touch you, and not the shadow of you That I have known in dreams the slow years through? My soul made long ago its maiden vow Before no other than its mate to bow In spiritual submission; for it knew — Beloved brother of the Inner Shrine! — That in the long procession of the years, Slow, weighted down with destiny's arrears. One laurel-crowned would bring me what was mine. Now I will melt the pearl that was my tears, And pledge you in Love's sweet and bitter wine. 124 LOVE'S FEARLESSNESS Love comes to me with nothing in his hand. And in his eyes promise of many tears. Between our yearning lives the gulf of years Yawns emptily — and never to be spanned ! Our feet are deep in the uncertain sand Of the world's ways^ its noise is in our ears; The future^ lying in wait, is big with fears And prophecies we cannot understand. Yet bravely have we pledged Love, eye to eye. Challenging Fate to do her worst with us. And though the murky clouds are ominous. Broad wing to wing, our spirits dare the sky. Seeking in faith to find that marvellous Ethereal temple where Love's jewels lie. THE WINDS OF FATE What mighty wind from Fate's unfathomed seas Has blown our flame-winged spirits to this height Outside of space and time? The blinding light Which dazzles us — whence comes it ? and this breeze Sweet with mysterious fragrance, that so frees Our souls from little rules of wrong and right. From what rose-bowers of interstellar night. Love, does it come so fraught with prophecies? 125 I guess God's purpose; but I dare not pray. Lest He should change it, as my punishment For being over-bold. So let us wait Here between earth and sky, till He shall say Loud in our ears the wonder that He meant In leaving us alone with brooding Fate. THE MOON PATH Last night the moon made over the dark sea A path of gold so real, that had I laid My hand in thine, and had not been afraid. We might have walked together, firm and free. Out of this hollow world of phantasy. And crossed the threshold of God's house, and made Our home among the angels. . . . Now, dismayed. Love, I can only stand and gaze at thee. The path is gone, the moon is gone, and I — I too shall soon be with remembered things That tear the heart with yearning. When the moon Lays next that golden pathway to the sky, I shall have hidden my tears in God's wide wings, And thou wilt hear alone the sea's sad croon. 126 THE FOG Grey as the tangled locks of haggard Fate, And wet as the midnight pillow of a^ nun Whose chaste and pallid bridegroom with the sun Vanished at evening, the disconsolate, iMad fog envelops us. The sea's long hate Is in the siren's screech, and one by one The wan waves hiss behind us, and we run With blinded eyes toward an unseen gate. God answers man by symbols. When he laid This veil of mysteries in our ship's wide way. He meant that we should read and understand. Why, even God, with his great cavalcade Of keen, detective angels, cannot say Whether our goal be Love's unbounded land! THE GIFT OF PAIN I PITY happy lovers, who have found No rocks across their pathway. They will go Down to the dust like little flowers that blow In dull domestic gardens, and Life's ground Will be no richer for them. We, soul-bound By the world's rusty chains, hurled to and fro - The playthings of the elements, we know What beauty hides in pain's last dark profound. 127 And if to-morrow this vast pyramid Of grief should crumble, and joy's tender green Sprout in our desert, could our hearts unlearn Their turned-down page of sorrow? God forbid! Should we not oft, remembering, stand and lean Together toward these flames that sear and burn? THE THEFT Between your burning body and your soul, How quick the choice that I would leap to make. Were choice demanded of me! I would take One last look in your eyes, and seek the goal Where fleshless spectres gather round Life's bowl, Invisible, intangible; would slake My thirst of passion only with love's ache. Rather than yield your spirit. When Fate stole The gem from my^ betrothal ring, she left Its pearly radiance with me, and I live Now only for the light that it can give — I who of all sad souls| am most bereft. Be sure God's justice, deep, compensative. Will pay our spirits for this body's theft. 128 THE QUESTIONER I QUESTION the cold stars that answer not; I ask of the deep sea that hugged so long Our secret to her bosom; even my song With queries have I challenged^ for my thought Burns with the passion to unsnarl this knot Wherein our lives are tangled. Pallid wrong. And right, whose beauty lies in being strong, These, too, with riddles has my soul besought. And still the answer waits. Now will I call Loud to your soul. Beloved, with my soul Across the leagues of distance. Only you Are high enough to gaze above this wall. And learned enough to read this hidden scroll Whose symbols spell the true and the untrue. THE ANSWER You are God's answer to me in the dark. Blind in the human wilderness I sought The road of my redemption, and I wrought A chain of devious footsteps. But one spark Fell from my star's cold lantern for a mark Of divination, and I doubted not. And one spring day the desert river brought A boat, whose music lured me to embark. 129 Down from the prow you came and took my hand. Drawing aside the veil that blinded me — The veil of old illusions. Now I see Clearly the land I leave, and understand Even illusion's purpose. Fearlessly I sail with you to the undiscovered land. LOVE MADNESS If this be madness, God, I would not draw Ever the curtains of weak sanity Between me and Life's face. When I am free Under the aegis of Love's ancient law. Why should I choose the shackles and the straw Of common life, or bend the subject knee To dull, plebeian wisdom? Let me be Mad with the gods awhile, mad with the awe And wonder of this magic, which has made Of one man's word the measure of all truth. Of one man's eyes the vast starred firmament; And in the closure of his hand has laid The dew-wet roses of immortal youth. And the bread and wine of Love's great sacrament. ISO THE VOYAGE Fearless of life and challenging the Fates^ With you I venture in this fragile bark To cross the waters of the perilous dark Beyond desire's attainment. What word waits For us in the great calm that separates The known from the unknown? What symbols mark The star-scroll of the great Mysteriarch As he our destined way premeditates? This voyage. Dear, eludes all prophecy, And we will whisper neither vow nor prayer As we embark. Love's promised land, maybe. Beyond the reach of pity or despair, Will be the harbour of our souls that dare The waves of this unfathomable sea. THE MOMENT Though to the gods our lives may be supreme When rounded unto death, and though some dear Remembered joy may jewel some lost year Until pure gold its very shadows seem; Yet this one moment when we grasp our dream — The spirit-fusing moment that is here. Is the reflecting surface of a sphere Complete and isolate in Time's full stream. 131 I need no future, Love, beyond this mark Upon the disc of ages, for I hold Eternity within my arms, and hark To hear Timers clock strike twelve. The word is told That I have listened for so long in the dark. And all Love's mystic parchment is unrolled. LOVE'S HOUR OF SILENCE In this the tenderest of all Love's hours, When soul to soul unquestioning we lie Against the silence, and Life's flood rolls by, Red with the petals of his ravished flowers. Stirring within my breast I feel strange powers Before unknown; and burning in thine eye I read new purposes, that amplify Into all time these little lives of ours. This is the test that lesser lovers fear — This unveiled hour when the free heart lies bare Before its brother. And our spirits dare To breathe together this high atmosphere ! Give me again thine eyes, that we may share The intimate stillness — nearer and more near. 132 PLENITUDE So long have I desired thee, and so deep My heart's hid spring, whose waters sung thy name Over and over till the restless flame Of Life stood still to listen, that I weep Now when I have thee in my arms, to keep Forever. My Beloved, I became So perfected in thee, I have no aimi Beyond thee, and no harvests more to reap! So still is all the world, I feel afraid ! Is this that mystic silence, by whose power The waiting spirits of the void are made In mortal mould? I feel my bridal bower Transcendently enlarged, myself — dismayed — A dazed intruder on God's working hour. THE INSCRIPTION Sealed with the seal of Life, thy soul and mine Are one this day, and we have graven our date Of recognition on Time's ponderous gate. Staining the letters deep with love-spilled wine. Neither the fire of death nor the strong brine Of the world's waters can obliterate That record, and the steady hand of Fate Under the words has drawn a strange design. 133 They are an incantation, justified Upon our lips by the incarnate Breath. The measure of their potency is wide As the world's orbit; for God promiseth Unto all love-inscriptions that abide. Power and dominion over life and death. CONSECRATED Since yesterday's communion when I sa"Vf Love's consecrating presence in your eyes, The world's familiar ways seem otherwise Than I have ever known them. Hushed with awe, I contemplate some common little law Of evolving life; I tremble with surprise At new, undreamed-of beauties that arise To fill the place of many an ancient flaw. And every one I meet along the way Turns round to gaze with eager questioning Into my face. Beloved, do I bring Some wordless message for the world to-day, From that love-hallowed garden where we lay One golden hour beside God's living spring.'' 1S4 DUALITY Art thou that Love who came with touch of fire But yesterday, in whose impelling eyes Smouldered the avid flame that terrifiesi The angels by its vision of desire Unutterable? To-day the seraph choir Holds not a face that worship glorifies Like to thy face. Its beauty prophesies Fulfilment to all spirits that aspire. Thou art the dual mystery of the soul, O human Love ! Standing with buried feet In the rose-dust of earth, sodden and sweet. Thou reachest yearningly to thy far goal Beyond the zenith, while thine aureole Flames gold and red where dust and spirit meet. THE MIRACLE Among the hills and valleys of the soul. Working his miracles. Love came to me And touched my blinded eyes and bade me see. I watch the water redden in the bowl, I drink the marriage wine. Upon the scroll Of Life I trace the Word of prophecy In flaming letters; my mortality Burns on this altar as a living coal. 135 Many of Love's disciples have pursued His wandering steps with worldly dreams and wishes; Many have climbed, as for a festival, The mountain where he feeds the multitude. For them the counting of the loaves and fishes, For me — the wonder of the miracle! IN LOVE'S EYES Thine eyes are magic mirrors, where I see My own reflected in some marvellous wise Beyond man's knowledge; and long thoughts arise. Questioning this familiar mystery. I feel the dual souls of thee and me Mirror each other, even as our eyes, Whose mutual, clear reflection verifies On earth our vision of Love's unity. In our souls, too, I feel the kindred souls Of all mankind reflected, by the light Of my strong racial faith. Oh, that their sight Could quicken to that dream ! For Love unrolls Wide vistas for us when our eyes unite — Seeking his unimaginable goals. 136 THE THRUSH O WAKEN^ Love, and listen to the thrush. That sings us back into the world again After our night in heaven ! How his chain Of golden notes is clasped by that brief hush — That pearl of thrilling silence, till the rush Of his own feeling spills his notes like rain Upon the breast of Dawn! This bird has lain, Like us, against Night's cheek, and feels it flush Now with the sun's warm nearness. — Love of mine, We too have found that pearl of silent peace Between two chains of joy, each like a trill Of this inspired bird. . . . Listen! 'Tis a sign From the angels left in Dreamland, to increase Our faith that they can find us when they will. A VISION Seen through the dusky foliage of my hair. Your face is shimmering with that mystic light Which bathes the spellbound earth on some rare night In summer after sunset. Spirits there Hide and reveal themselves, shyly aware Of their own beauty. Wonder and delight. Like starbeams, flit before me, and excite My vision till its ecstasy is prayer. 137 Are other mortals given in Love's arms Ethereal revelations like to mine? Surely the gods withhold not the great boon Ungenerously, nor blind with wizard charms The eyes of those on whose indifference shine The passionate stars and rapture-dazzled moon. THE MYSTIC ROSE I, Woman, am that wonder-breathing rose That blossoms in the garden of the King. In all the world there is no lovelier thing, And the learned stars no secret can disclose Deeper than mine — that almost no one knows. The perfume of my petals in the spring Is inspiration to all bards that sing Of love, the spirit's lyric unrepose. Under my veil is hid the mystery Of unaccomplished aeons, and my breath The Master-Lover's life replenisheth. The mortal garment that is worn by me The loom of Time renews continually; And when I die — the universe knows death. 188 INDIRECTION You marvel at the beauty that I see In every line and loving curve of you. As if a triumphing archangel blew On the dull coals of earth's reality, Until they blaze so high with ecstasy That God looks down and wonders. But I drew Love's veil for other reasons, and I knew The human joys through heart's intensity. They who pursue Love's pleasures only find An empty goblet at the journey's goal; But Love's grail-pilgrim, with his different aim. Opens the very door they grope behind. Because I sought the temple of Love's soul, I have become the very altar flame. AURORA BOREALIS Even as the glory of the northern lights On some still winter midnight strikes the soul Spellbound with visions, and the boreal pole Seems like a flaming ladder that unites Heaven and earth; so. Love, thy beauty smites My spirit dumb with wonder, and the whole Sky of my life burns with the aureole Of your bright being blazing on the heights. 139 Stranger is Love, more fraught with mystery Than yon weird pageant in the northern sky. 'Twas the lone midnight of my destiny When through the void you came to glorify With light the cold, dark firmament of me . . . Yea, and I know not whence you, came, nor why ! THE BODY O TALL white lily with thy dark roots held And hidden by the ministering mire! Thy petals are the luminous attire Of the indwelling Spirit, that compelled Its flame to mix with earth, and parallelled The light with darkness. Blossom of cold fire. Beautiful form, yearning with blind desire. Now to the dust, now to the stars impelled! Oh, why will man debase thee in his thought! Thou art so fair, so pure, so undefiled, — A wandering* angel from the skies exiled For thy seditious sweetness. . . . What power wrought Of dust this lily flower — unreconciled As yet with man, who understands it not} 140 ASLEEP Beyond the boundaries of dream he lies. Wrapt in the veil of immemorial Sleep. The far-off murmur of the rhythmic deep Of Being is his breath; it magnifies My soul that studies with illumined eyes This ageless mystery that mortals keep. Spellbound I watch, too quiet now to weep; My ears have caught the silence of the wise. O Sleep, pale prophet of immortal rest — Sleep that relieves the angel of the clod! Rocked on the waves of dream that manifest The Spirit to the seed within the sod. The slumberer sees the shadow of his quest. And wakens, wondering at the ways of God. THE INDWELLING MYSTERY Sometimes when you have held me to your breast, A mystic interfusion there has been Through all our woven beings. I have seen Our separate atoms on some secret quest Quiver into each other, and then rest In ecstasy of union; while between Our minds was only Life's transparent screen — The real magician's long-sought alkahest. 141 Little we know — we dull_, dust-blinded ones — The mysteries of the spirit and the clay! Along your kiss — your lightest touch — there runs The mute electric word the stars obey; And the same power that moves those whirling stins, Vibrates in every love word that you say. AT THE SUMMIT Oh, it were worth the toiling all the way Up the steep mountain on whose rocks man dies. Only to look in another being's eyes! Once, as I gaze in yours day after day! Below us in the valley all is grey; Above the deep love-river the fog lies, And through it groping spirits in disguise Peer at each other with a veiled dismay, *Twas there we met, bewildered, face to face; There we joined hands, beginning the long ascent Of that divine acclivity, whose base Is mortised in Creation's fundament, And whose unmeasured summit marks the place Of Love's last unimaginable event. 142 THE GUEST An hour ago the world was dull and grey, And my lone heart, a prisoner in my breast. Beat at the iron doors of Fate, oppresst By its own heaviness. Now the glad day Laughs at the window, and the minutes play Lightly with one another; for a guest — Great Love himself — has entered in and blest My heart's house in his own amazing way. His lovely hand laid softly on my hair Is like the Muse's touch; and looking up, I read within his eyes the long-sought word That rounds my life's great lyric. . . . Shall I dare.f* . . . Yea, in my new-found strength, I lift Love's cup. That sacred cup by God administered. THE WATCHER When I awake from Love's contented sleep. And see thee, sleepless, bending over me In mystical and brooding ecstasy. Then do I know thy love to be more deep Than all thy words have said. Then could I weep With very awe and wonderment in thee. Through the night hours, in hushed solemnity, Thy soul and Love a secret vigil keep. 143 Fearful is Love lest any step surprise The temple of his worship. He would hide The altar his white flowers have glorified From every gaze but God's. O Love, thine eyes ! Their self-abandonment has made me wise In hidden knowledge where men's souls abide. IN THE DAWN-CHAMBER Dear, you have spoiled all other men for me. And made them alien to my happiness. You have discovered an unknown recess In Love's great house of storied masonry. There from the window's wide expectancy We watch the Dawn's rose-dimpled hands caress The shadowed hills — Dawn the high priestess. That calls the rolling world continually. The other rooms in Love's house are confined To views of the valley, and the walls adorning Are mottoes of uncertainty and warning — The thousand reservations of the mind. *Tis only in this chamber that I find The outlook on the hills and on the morning. 144 WHY You ask me why my heart so fondly clings Around youj* heart of love. ... Is it because High deeds of yours have won the world's applause .^^ Is it that your inspired imaginings Have stirred to wilder flight my lyric wings? Or is it that your yearning passion draws Blindly my own, by Love's mysterious laws? Nay, Dear, not any of these perfect things. Why do I love you, then? Because of this: My soul discovered, when our days were new. That a high guest in your soul's chamber lies; And sometimes, in the rapture of your kiss. That angel sleeper — the immortal You — A moment wakes and looks me in the eyes. THE GENTLE ONE No one would ever know from your calm face How more than human-sweet you are! There lies. Maybe, a dreamy something in your eyes — A promise, like the perfume round a place Where roses bloom; and though all eyes may trace Your mouth's love-moulded lines, none would surmise The mother-tenderness that sanctifies The man's need in your soul-diffused embrace. 145 O hands, whose touch holds all the gentleness Of brooding dove-wings in the mellow night! O mouth of blood-warm rose leaves, whose caress Quivers through me in waves of vibrant light! Ye are as potent as the yearning Spring, That stirs the earth to lyric blossoming. • CARESSES The sweet caresses that I give to you Are but the perfume of the Rose of Love, The colour and the witchery thereof, And not the Rose itself. Each is a clue Merely, whereby to seek the hidden, true. Substantial blossom. Like the Jordan dove, A kiss is but a symbol from above — An emblem the Reality shines through. The Rose of Love is ever unrevealed In all its beauty, for the sight of it Were perilous to the purpose of the world. The hand of Life has cautiously concealed The pollen-chambers of the infinite Flower, and its petals only half uncurled. 146 FULFILMENT , I AM SO empty and so incomplete. Save when your lips on my lips realise For me my own fulfilment. Life denies Its own abundance save when two lives meet. Within your arms is all I know of sweet, And all I need of heaven. When I rise From your embrace, I feel a vague surprise A sundering from my forehead to my feet. You are the key of every kind event. You open all the doors of joy to me. Your being and my being, interblent As the sea and the saltness of the sea. Are one inevitable element In the great crucible of Destiny. THE STORM-LORD O SOVEREIGN of the storm ! Thy breath to me — Vivid with lightning, vibrant with the sound Of that original Word that hurled the round Of stars and suns — is intimate and free As my own soul. I care not though for thee My unripe fruit is fallen on the ground. And all my tender little leaves are drowned. Life must renew itself in death's dark sea. 147 Lover supreme! Imperious lord of storm! To be with thee my soul all fear denies. And as the ardent earth's desires turn warm To meet the lightning triumphing down the skies, So to thy passion my responding form Thrills with the flame that melts and glorifies. THE CUP The golden Jemshid, so the Persians say, Possessed a magic cup with seven rings That — filled with wine — reflected myriad things The secrets of the seven worlds that sway Between the voids, their morrow, their to-day, Their yesterday; and the imaginings Of every soul that sorrows, dreams or sings. From dim creation's dawn to the last day. Thy body, my Beloved, is for me That magic cup; my love is the red wine. In thee the wonders of the worlds are mine, The secrets of the stars and of the sea. The avid prayers of every alien shrine. All Jemshid's cup revealed, I find in thee. 148 THE SANCTUARY Our forms. Beloved, lie in faith's white bed. Lavender-fragrant linen covers them, And underneath is a robe whose broidered hem Was sewn by the great Spinner's measured thread. A red rose guards their feet, and at their head A tall white lily leans upon a stem Whose roots are in that deathless anadem Which bound Love's brows when he and Life were wed. The wavering flame of one lone candle gives Their image to the shadows; and they seem As in a midnight chapel, fugitives Before the altar light's ideal stream. Love, through this veil of Beauty all that lives In every world is softened to a dream. LOVE'S AVATARS Love, in what alcove of eternity Have thou and I this marvel found before - This glamour of desire that quivers o'er Our bodies and our souls with certainty Of the supreme attainment? Where were we Wound in this vine the ages now restore? Where did I drain the cup that evermore Will fill my veins with ecstasy in thee? 149 The shadows of thy leaf-brown hair have been The veil of many bygone dreams of mine; And thy deep eyes, that mine are mirrored in, Are filled with memories and wondershine. Ay, every door of love to which we win. We open by some ancient countersign. CREATION Hidden in thee abounding wonders lie. And wait to be made visible by me; For through the medium of our unity We touch that reservoir of world-supply Where rest the forms, for Love to magnify. Of all the houseless souls that are to be. Tenuous, waiting in eternity To live, to love, to suffer and to die. The arch-creative mission is Love's own — Moulder of substance! kindler of the mind! Call of the spirit! And while one alone May compass knowledge, in the Self enshrined, Only the lover in his joy has known Origination after his own kind. 150 LOVE'S INFINITY Though I have given all my love to thee. Abundance measureless remains behind. Freely I give, for thou wilt never find A barrier to my soul's infinity Of tenderness or passion. Canst thou see The outposts of the void, the bournes that bind The star-mote's journey and the will of the wind.^ They are no farther than the marge of me! Boundless I am as the star-dancing deep Reflected in this bubble that is I. Gaze till thine eyes are weary, and then sleep Within the bosom of the mirrored sky. Love has no limit that I need to keep. Love has no terror that I need to fly. THE SEAL The lips of my pure Love have set their seal Upon the hidden chamber of my soul. And all my being's house yields him control Even my haughty self. Yet his appeal Is to be servitor! I saw him kneel Here at my feet, as at some sacred goal; As a knight of old before that mystic bowl Whose ultimate beauty earth may not reveal. 151 I lay my soul fearlessly in his hands. O gift that in the giving glorifies Me more than the gold crowns of many lands ! Be thou to him the rose of paradise. . . . Only the rapt ecstatic understands The lore of Love_, or looks Love in the eyes. REALISATION Through all the pageant of the restless years, Peopled by many shadows, I have known One vision the world's phantoms leave alone. One dream whose beauty dries the midnight tears Of loveless desolation. It appears Ever the same — a; soul blent with my own As two harmonious lute-strings in one tone. As the earth's man-divided hemispheres. Beloved, when you came to me I knew You mine, yet — so uncertain does life seem — I did not realise that I held in you The hemisphere, the lute-string and the dream To perfect me, until we slowly grew One world, one tone, one vision of the Supreme. 152 THE PRICE OF LOVE Heavy the price that I have paid for thee, Strange Love, in whose unfathomable eyes The radiant God has veiled in thin disguise The full reflection of His majesty, That else were unendurable to me By sheer excess of light. But I am wise For every bauble that I sacrifice On the high altar of thy mystery. Nothing is had for nothing, and I know How trivial is the price that I have paid. It is a fabulous bargain I have made With the blind traders of the world; and so I set Love's jewel on my brow, and go Into the blessed stillness, unafraid. LOVE'S MYSTIC JEWEL What is the merit of our souls that we Should find this treasure all mankind have sought, And died in seeking? Other souls have brought As pure a purpose — failing utterly. Was it our faith which won for thee and me The substance that we hoped for? Sages taught Aeons ago that everything was naught Beside this jewel of strange potency. 153 Hope trembles at his shadow on the ground; The weary world labours for glittering spoils That turn to ashes, and all lovers sigh. But thou and I, Beloved, we have found In Time's wild ocean after many toils, That perfect pearl for which the world would die. CONFESSION Yea, Dear, lay bare thy lovely soul, nor fear That any wraith of shame can enter in This guarded house of faith, nor any sin Darken for me Love's mirror, crystal-clear For all thy revelations. Thou art peer Now of Love's lofty ones, whose heights begin Always in humbleness, and thou shalt win A pearl of rapture for thine every tear. My love is reverent as the virgin prayer Whose power the gate of paradise unbars; My love is tender as the ecstasy Of the young mother as she grows aware; And full of understanding as the stars That shone in wonder over Galilee. 154 THE PAST Had I the power to wipe away the past, That past replete with love and joy and pain In which thou hadst no portion; could again My Book of Life be opened, and my vast Experience be shattered by a blast Of God's great trumpet, — I would still ordain Those ways that are accomplished, and remain Myself, for good or evil, to the last. For every throb of love has been to me A promise of thy coming; every thrill Of joy a prophecy thou shalt fulfil. And every pang of pain an ecstasy Of growing knowledge. But, O Love, there still Are infinite deeps to be revealed by thee ! THE COVENANTERS I WONDER, Love, how you and I did live Before we found, each in the other's eyes. This covenant of faith that justifies Our souls' desires ! Homeless and fugitive Before those earthly ministers who give Only to common minds the master's prize. We have eluded their world-honoured lies. That have no place in our true narrative. 155 How did I live ere you revealed for me The testament of truth, the tenuous veil Of unseen beauty, and the verity Of light's clear word? Tender and human-frail You are with love, but in your eyes I see Strange visions of a new and holier grail. LOVE-SLEEP Yea, let me sleep among the murmuring leaves Of the great Tree of Love. Why should 1 wake? Even in dreams our wedded spirits make One light against the darkness. Languor weaves A veil to cover us, and Night receives Our beings as a charge for Nature's sake. Give me thy lips, Beloved, and then shake Upon my lids the dews of all Love's eves. The Tree of Love is waving to and fro Upon the winds of midnight, and the sigh Of dreaming leaves is like a lullaby Over the brooding earth. Far, far below A planet whispers, and our low reply Is lost in the dream-river's overflow. 156 THE MENACE When I remember, Love, that but for thee My homeless spirit still would wander lone, Alien in this inhospitable zone Upon the globe of Time ; when rapturously I touch the gleaming j ewel of unity — Whose dual rays are thy soul and my own — Then do I tremble lest the masked unknown Brigand of Death snatch thee away from me. All other perils we can brave together. Challenging them to part us. But beyond The shifting boundaries of the realm of breath Are many dangers and uncertain weather. Nothing can rend our Nature-woven bond Save the inexorable caprice of Death. THE HAND In some great school of magic long ago, I do believe a mighty master taught Your hand its potent spell, and you have brought The wonder back to earth. A touch — and lo ! Through all my being dreams and visions flow. Upon what immemorial loom was wrought The fabric of this feeling, strong as thought. And tenuous as the weft of the rainbow? 157 Your touch is like the benedicite Of all divine and never-ending things. Yea, and I feel in every vein of me The lyric sweetness of a thousand springs. The stirrings of innumerable wings, And the wild surge and melody of the sea. SISTERS Within your eyes the women you have known Beckon to me with long white wavering hands Across the gulfs of time. My spirit stands Before the mirror of you — not alone, But blent with strange reflections. There are blown Here shadows on the winds of many lands, Fair shapes whose garments brush the shifting sands Of desert love, where all dead seeds are sown. Others there are less tenuous, whose lips Have not forgotten the old ways of speech. "Sister," they call me, and the tones beseech; They beat upon my heart like little whips. Trembling with timid wistfulness, I reach Into the void for these weird fellowships. 158 I LOVE YOU Why do I say, " I love you " ? I have said Those words to lesser lovers long ago, Deluded lovers in the plains below This pure inviolate height where we were led For purposes prophetic. I have read Those words on youth's blank pages, seen them glow Like lanterns in life's darkness; yet I know Now they were only forms untenanted. Love, I compare the ardours of the past With our high passion, as a bard compares The music of his first songs with his last; The little songs, that were but stammered prayers, With those momentous chants whose power the vast Organ of Art in thunderous tone declares. THE CANDLE Your face, Beloved, is a pure white flame Upon the world's high altar. In your eyes The ascending spirit of the sacrifice Yearns, in its self-consuming, toward the Name Blazoned upon the temple. You reclaim The hopes of long-lost worshippers; they rise Emboldened for the sacred enterprise Whose guerdon is beyond the end of fame. 159 You are the blessed candle set above The Book and the sacrament — the light of truth, Which calls the flaming spirits to aspire. Shedding its radiance on the blood of love. O yearning soul of consecrated youth, My faith would light its taper at your fire! EXORCISM y Lonely I am to-day and full of doubt, Questioning Fate, and dallying vt^ith Fear, That vaguely whispers warning in my ear Of unknown perils, past my finding out; Until I wonder what 'tis all about — My pilgrimage on this erratic sphere, The solitary quest from year to year. My soul within and all the world without. And then I hear your footstep on the stair. And feel the clinging question of your kiss. O wizard Love! My spectres in despair, Seeing your face, have fled to the abyss. How strange it seems that I should ever care For any cause or purpose beyond this! 160 TEARS *Tis not because of any lack in thee, Beloved, that I weep, nor any pain The wisest lover ever could explain In terms of human sorrow. But I see In Love's immortal garden a dark tree Whose name I know not, and the winds complain Forever through its leaves in lone refrain; Even the birds avoid it silently. But I believe if ever I should dare To lie beneath that tree a whole night long, That in the morning I should know the song God sang when Eve was tempted, and the prayer That made the Galilean pity-strong In the night-watches when no man was there. THE IDEAL I AM as those of whom the Hindoos say, " A god has kissed them "; for Love came to me Ideal Love, that passionate verity That touches mortals in some swiftening way And startles them to faith. Aye, day by day The wonder lives with me, and fearlessly I gaze into its eyes — O ecstasy For which the waiting ages thirst and pray ! 161 Guerdon of all the soul's accomplishment! Thou art a sign for me in the dark place. Thou art the wide inviolable tent That hides me from the storm. Thy close embrace Is what the rapturous earth has always meant By the vague_, haunting beauty of her face. THE DUAL VISION Sometimes when you are one with me as brain Is one with thought while prisoned in this dust; When, blended utterly, our souls adjust Their dual vision — as the eyes though twain Are one in seeing; I can scarce restrain My tears of pity for the souls that must Go seeking Love in mazes of distrust, With dreams too unsubstantial to attain. We who have seized the great Reality, We who have ravished the aifrighted bride Of human Love — frail Faith — and made her see The bridegroom's naked beauty, have thrown wide A door into the Future, where the free Spirits of Time invisibly abide. 162 GENESIS Love, you and I were the original Cell, Locked in the silence of eternity, And in the winding arms that were to be When we should be dissevered. Then the bell Of Time sounded within us, the rapt spell Of aeons lifted, and the ecstasy Of sempiternal being, wild and free. Whirling and swirling, broke our tenuous shell. And we were flung even to the outer rim Of the expectant Dark, whose calendars Called for our coming; and we blazed on him — The latest of a thousand Avatars. Your scattered seed became the suns and stars. And I became the space wherein they swim. THE TRIANGLE Come thou, my Lover of the storied past. And thou, my Lover of the strong to-day. In each beloved hand, oh, let me lay The other's hand in brotherhood at last! In that high region where I hold you fast — Though leagues divide us — is a luminous way, Where walk those all-wise beings who survey Calmly the deeps where all Love's lies are cast. 163 Oh, love ye one another ! For we near — A little every day — that master-height Where none may venture save with unveiled sight; But where our souls must face the thing we fear, In one another's eyes without a tear Beholding Truth, and daring the great light. LOVE-WRAITH Sometimes, when I am musing all alone. Into my being flows the sense of thee In overwhelming fulness, and I see Thy secret soul's unguarded portals thrown Open for my soul's entrance to its own. In such a moment thou art nearer me Than in my presence — unreservedly I lift the veil that covers the unknown. And so I wonder if our parted hours Have not a purpose neither one perceives; If kisses and love words are not the leaves Of Love's tree, and these visions the rare flowers Fragrant and pure as the spiritual powers Our dual-self in solitude achieves. 164. THE SILENCE OF LOVE Sweet are the words of Love, but sweeter far Is Love's initiate silence. When we lie Between Life's lips. Beloved, thou and I, Our rapture-blended beings are a bar Even to lyric speech. A word might mar The visions in our spiritual sky. Where every little bird that flutters by Is some world-message flying to a star. In Love's great silence are the timid things That fear the trumpet of the lord of sound. They brush against our souls with noiseless wings. They tremble toward us from the teeming ground. Some day, in the high stillness that Love brings, Life's unimagined secret shall be found. SUMMER-ABSENCE I WONDER if the trees that beckon thee To their deep shadows in thy lone retreat Are tender as my arms; and if the sweet. Soft, yielding grass clings to thee lovingly As I in drowsy hours. The ecstasy That quivers in the ever-moving wheat Whispers of love to thee^ and the strong beat Of Nature's heart woos thee continually. 165 Love^ we are one, the moving wheat and I, And the great heart of Nature. When the trees Beckon to thee, I beckon; when the blades Of grass caress thy fingers as they lie Entangled with them, I am even in these; And I am hiding in the twilight shades. THE CLOCK Before the hour when thou wilt come to me, Oh, with what laggard and deliberate pace The minute-hand moves up the clock's white face! Even desire is powerless to foresee Its goal, meridian-pointing. Destiny May but have wound her clock within an ace Of the last notch, and by that little space Silence may enter here — instead of thee. The tick-tick is thy footsteps on the way, Heard by my listening heart; and the hour-chime Will be our old Earth-Mother's evening song, Seeing her children happy. . . . Do not stay Thy numbered steps, O Love-retarding Time! Joy is so brief, and eternity so long! 166 THE SEA OF LOVE Your love is like the ever-moving sea, That changes not and yet is always new. I bathe my spirit on the shores of you. And in your deeps divine that mystery Hid from the world's beginning. Wild and free, The tempests of your heart are those that blew Secrets to old Atlantis, and I view On your horizon lights of destiny. I would attune my being to the rhyme Of your recurrent tides. I would embrace With your soul's waves the shores of every clime. And with your surface calm reflect the face Of that illimitable Lord of Time — The vast star-shining horologue of space. NATURE-LONGING To be alone with Nature, you and I Together in some undiscovered place. Where we may look kind Silence in the face. And learn of the wise winds that wander by. The secret of their healing! Oh, to lie For hours on Time's broad bosom, with blue space Laid on us like a garment ! To embrace The motherly trees, that never will deny Comfort to their strayed children! Let us find 167 The road that beckons where the days are green. The nights a hue our eyes have never seen, And leaving the world-dissonance behind, Seek the earth-harmony. Then our dust-blind Spirits shall learn what their own longings mean. LOVE'S LYCEUM Sometimes for recreation Love and I Challenge each other to a game of thought — A battle of words and meanings, subtly fought For mutual revelation. And we vie For vantage points, striving to fortify Those visioned heights our separate roads have sought. From Logic's flint our steels have struck and caught Red, splendid sparks, too luminous to die. But ere our minds' lamps burn a steady flame. The flickering light cast on each lover's face Shows to the other some ecstatic grace. Too madly sweet for reason. Then the game Ceases, forgotten, with its brilliant aim — For we are melted in the flame's embrace. 168 EPHEMERA What are the toils and troubles of my days. But restless gnats that buzz around the ears Of my soul's musing Sphinx? She only hears Time's immemorial music, nor obeys The calls that echo from the tinsel maze Of transitory care. Pallid with fears, The mad world plunges down the weary years. Through arid and unsatisfying ways. Oh! what to me are these ephemeral things? They are forgotten when at night I rest, Love, in that warm eternity — your breast. Close, close to us the loving Silence clings. Brooding with wide, immeasurable wings. Our dream that is the treasure in her nest. THE OAK You bend above me as a loving tree Bends to the tender ivy that is wound About its mighty body; you surround My being as the tree's immensity Surrounds the ivy. Gazing up, I see. On your aspiring head, dominion crowned With arch-druidic sign, and in the ground Your potent roots guard mine perpetually. 169 Softly, O softly, do my tendrils cling About you in the breezes ! I delight Even to sway aside and measure your height. But when the storm, with awful muttering, Threatens the stillness — then I grasp you tight. Like any other frail and frightened thing. UNDER THE SKY Here with Love's languorous and abundant ease Familiar, this entrancing night we lie In rapt abandon to the naked sky — Nothing between us and the Pleiades ! Alcyone's great secret might appease The yearning of our souls, might verify Their dreams of unity. Do not deny Its message to our ears, O minstrel breeze! Love, yield thy spirit to the influence Of those unbounded spaces overhead. It was for this we made our bridal bed In Freedom's roofless mansion. Rising hence, Our passion sighs, like burning frankincense, Perfume all stars by lovers tenanted. 17Q THE VIRGIN SHRINE You pray me, Dear, to find some virgin shrine. Some sacred place that none has ever known In my heart's house, where you and I alone 'May worship one another. Bread and wine Wait on an altar where no soul save mine Has bowed before the Host, with lilies grown In God's abundant garden. I have sown Before the door the seeds of the secret vine. There time is not. To-day and yesterday Blend with to-morrow and eternity. Even as our souls will blend if there we pray. Dare you to enter now and stand with me In the white stillness? I will show the way. And in your hand place the prophetic key. THE CHILD The tyrant world denies me, little one. The joy of building you a mortal frame; Yet my great Love and I have called the flame Of your free spirit from the ardent sun Of God's creative dream. You were begun At our souls' mystic marriage; and you came Into our lives, urging your tender claim, Haxmting and tenuous as deeds undone. 171 And though we never feel your hands in ours. Nor hear the wonderful sound of your small feet Over the earth, you breathe for us in flowers; In our own hearts your tiny pulses beat; And through the long inviolable hours Of dream we hold communion high and sweet. WORDS Why do our words divide us like a wall, And only in the stillness, through the eyes Or the rapt lips, our spirits in surprise Rush flaming on each other? When you call My wraith to you afar, it brings you all My dumb lips dare not carry. We disguise The soul with veils of speech — poor soul, that tries To pour the ocean through a pipe, so small! Oh, for the courage to endure the flame Of God's tremendous silence, heart to heart. On the sheer height where weak words are forgot; Where faith is all the foothold, and the aim Only to find the soul its counterpart, In the white sphere where space and time are not! 172 THE VEIL Beloved^ let my dark hair cover thee, Veiling thy face from my long gazing eyes; For I am weary as the daylight dies Into the shadow — the uncertainty That yearns to hide the world. Be now to me The undiscovered guerdon, the far prize That waits the soul's endeavour — till I rise Eager again to solve the mystery. As I have hidden thee in my long hair, So would my passion cover thee with dream And soul-alluring glamour. Dost thou dare Always to face my spirit in supreme And blinding revelation? Oh, beware! Love's veils are more essential than they seem. TRUTH When Pilate questioned Him of Galilee With, "What is truth? " the Master, we are told. Said not a word. That story in fine gold Was graven on Time's rocks for you and me. Have we not proven truth and falsity Two faces of one coin, and candour sold To buy this purer pearl? Deep fold on fold Grows the immortal rose of verity. 173 And yet I tremble sometimes in the night When all the world is still, and in your arms I listen for the wonder of your breath. Though round your head shines truth's unwavering light, My soul this hour is filled with vague alarms. Lest we have dared that falsehood which is death. THE CRUEL WORD When I have said some cruel word to you. All the night long I feel it burn and smart Deep in the hidden softness of my heart; And if perchance I know the word was true. Then do my vindicating tears pursue Reason, till it absolves you. As in art. So even in love is light the counterpart Always of shadow. Can we blend the two? That were a twilight grey and passionless, Wherein the flowers of life would open pale. And Love grow weary of his own delight. Better the fiery noon, the fierce caress, The radiant rose — and then, as countervail. Tears and the lonely darkness of the night. 174. JOY OF LOVE Beloved, when I hear the low complaining Of little lovers in whose jealous eyes The weak tears wait, whose souls would agonise Between the breasts of Aphrodite, chaining Her freedom with their servitude, and staining The splendour of her gift with their mean sighs; When these I hear, and pity, and despise. How great you loom — the j oy of Love maintaining ! Yours is that master sight that sees the sun Blaze in the nadir on the darkest night. For you the roses bloom, the rivers run In icy winter, and the ultimate right Waits in all wrong. O god-instructed one. Wise with the wisdom of the world's delight! ISOLATION Sometimes when I am very close to you In form and feeling, suddenly a thought Of our eternal separateness makes naught Of all our vows, and I am smitten through With sense of isolation. Is it true. Beloved, that the visions we have caught Of perfect union may be phantoms wrought Of our own brains, and dyed in their own hue.'' 175 Wlien in my very arms you lie asleep, Your dreams may be a thousand miles away. I hear your words, but unknown meanings keep Vigil behind your lips,( and when we say, ** Forever, Love ! " our listening angels weep. Gazing at one another in dismay. ABSORPTION Beloved, in the still deeps of thine eyes Absorb my soul, that I may feel no more This pain of separation! I implore Thy Self to take me in, and solemnise My union with thee in some mystic wise. I would no more be I; but would explore. As thee, thy souFs dim temple, and adore Therein, as thee, with secret sacrifice. Oh, let me die to Self and find rebirth In some fair body as one breath with thee ! There are no purposes in life for me But as thy complement; nor any worth In all the fame and splendour of the earth - Unless one perfect spirit we may be. 176 OPULENCE You are the flowing of Love's opulence Over the meagre measure of my days, Whose scattered drops along the world's dry ways Shall be as wells of beauty. In their tents, The watchful nomads on life's lone immense Grey desert call them songs. Who thirsts betrays His secret need of love, and tribute pays To you, Beloved, when his soul assents. For each drop of this water is a song That but for you had never taken form Out of the vapour of silence. Prophecy Sometimes is mirrored there, and symbols long Invisible; while mystic visions swarm Across these fragile spheres of poetry. AS A THOUSAND YEARS 'Tis said that in the Lord's abiding place A single day is as a thousand years. So was that day we spent among the spheres That roam Love's interspiritual space. In vision we beheld the eternal Face; While Time, whose sands are crystallised love-tears. Sustained them, till the hours were in arrears. To guard from envious worlds our soul's embrace. 177 And now that our ecstatic interlude In Life's discordant song is passed away; Now Time's depleted hour-glass is renewed_, To measure our reunion's long delay, These thousand years of pain and solitude Shall also to that Lord be as one day! PARTED ' Love, I have wept thine absence till my eyes Are heavy with the burden of their tears. Insistently against my inner ears The hot, desirous blood knocks, and defies This cloistral quietude that crucifies The heart of Love. — O Lord of days and years ! Send back my lover, though it moves the spheres And hurls the seasons forward in the skies ! Time is my enemy. The laggard days Mock me with pallid laughter, as they ride Slowly around the earth. In shame they hide Their eyes from me, veiling the tell-tale rays They stole from Love's eyes, for their light betrays They passed him on the round world's other side. 178 AUTUMN '-^ Chill is the night and cheerless. All alone I linger here under the cedar tree, Whose deep autumnal murmur dolourously Blends with the sea's monotonous undertone. Beloved, all the summer birds are flown And all the flowers. The shifting mockery Of dead leaves covers everything, and thee — Thee too the autumn covers with her own. Wilt thou return, Beloved, with the spring. When leaves and birds and flowers come back again? Wilt thou return when mating robins sing In cedar shades their happy love-refrain? Or shall I watch each tender natural thing Return to joy — and watch for thee in vain.'' FAITB. O FRIENDLY Faith! Thy cool hands are as white As moonbeams on the waves they lull to sleep. Press down my eyelids, that I may not weep, And hold me close through all this cruel night. Stay thou with me until, over the height. The sun of Love arises from the deep — The unknown ocean of absence. I would keep Vigil with thee, O Faith ! till the daylight. 179 My Love is sealed with truth, and he is mine — Mine as my breath, blended and one with me As my own memories, as inseparably Fused with my substance as the colour of wine Is blended with its perfume. Tenderly, O angel Faith! guard Love's unlighted shrine. THE LETTER ^' Silence and separation and the ache — The restless passionate desire to see One being alone of all humanity! Why do we banish angels for the sake Of housing these dull mortals, who would make Our souls their playtoys! Love, come back to me! This world is a dream of unreality, And only in your presence am I awake. And then they bring your letter. . . . And my world Suddenly thrills, and is no more a dream, But quiveringly real. Christ never wrought Miracle greater than this missive, whirled Through space from the Hesperides — a gleam Of the ineffable Light, all wonder-fraught. 180 LOVE'S WASTED DAYS I WEARY of the burden of these days^ These heavy days when we are far apart. No empty winning in the worldly mart Can ever profit us; no idle praise Can compensate us for our love's delays. There come from Life's dark forest where thou art. Only the echoes of my crying heart — Thy lone cries borne along the barren ways. Outside the brooding fold of thine embrace, The sunbeams burn me and the shades affright. I am a wind-blown meteor in space, Robbed of the guidance of thy love's great light. My life, without the beacon of thy face, Is wasted on the ways of outer night. SEPARATE I AM so lonely and so far from thee! I clasp and importune the listening air, Whose tresses touch thy distance; but my prayer Brings only its own echo back to me. My soul is sick with the world's tyranny! What are the wills of men, that they should dare Intrude themselves between our breasts, and tear Our spirits from their shrines irreverently? 181 Defy them^ and return to me this day! For in a little while we shall be dead; And all the treasures we can take away Are memories of the love-words we have said^ Shadows of hours together, and the grey Caressing ghosts of lips that once were red. ABSENCE Thou art not here, Beloved, and the night Is void and meaningless for want of thee. There is no fragrance in the flowers for me, Nor any glamour in the wan moonlight. I hear no woodland warbler's lyric flight — Only the cricket, crying mournfully, And low sobs of the melancholy sea — Lonely as I, for all her awful might. O thou who hast all beauty where thou art! Return and bring it with thee, I implore. Bring back the world's lost meaning. From before Thy face all desolation will depart. Whenever I hear thy footsteps at the door, The bird of wonder warbles in my heart. 182 WAITING O AGONY of waiting ! I believe Life has no burden of penitence or loss So hard to carry as thy restless cross; Nor any torment mortal may conceive So powerless to attain its own reprieve. The treasures of the scheming world seem dross And emptiness ! I would not go across My garden all earth's wonders to achieve! Because, if I should venture from the door, Should wander down some path a little way, He would be sure to come this very day. Though I had waited for him weeks before. For Fate is watching, eager to betray. And I should mourn this hour forevermore. AFTER LONG ABSENCE This is the day — the hour — if all be well. When my Beloved will return to me Out of the world's malign immensity. Where lurks Disaster, the cold infidel That envies lovers. Could I but dispel My fears of some immutable decree Of the dark Fates, forbidding joy to be. That will not let Love pass their sentinel! 183 When he shall come, his presence will restore Refreshment to the water, the lost light To the wan moon, and to the restless night Repose and plenitude forevermore. Even the homing birds will pause in flight When I shall hear his footsteps at my door. THE ABYSM Dazed with a rapture long deferred, I feel Afraid to face the sheer immensity — The wild abysm of my desire for thee. My woman-heart trembles, and would conceal The measure of its wealth; but I reveal Through voice and hands and eyes the ecstasy That beats at the defenseless doors of me, Moved by thy love's unutterable appeal. O bid me go into the wilderness. Or to the desert regions of the earth. To be with thee ! There would be plenitude Of beauty for me there, if thy caress Waited in every shadow, and no dearth Beside thee in the arid solitude. 184 INSATIATE My tremulous, intense desire of thee Transcends this earthly garment that is thine. When thy love-graven dust is fused with mine As fragrance with a flower, there still for me Are luring, unknown deeps of mystery To be descended never; and I pine In mystic passion, for thy soul's dim shrine Is domed by vistas of Infinity. Oh, to behold thy spiritual face — Thy very Self, unveiled of earth's disguise! When I have wrested from involved space The only unity that satisfies, And hold thy naked soul in my embrace, I shall know God, and gaze into His eyes. BEYONDNESS Beloved, Time and veiled Eternity Reach to caress me with your vibrant hands. The gods of old salute me, and the sands Of long absorbed seas return to be The witness of our footsteps. When I see Within your eyes the lure of unknown lands And unknown lives, an ecstasy expands My being beyond Time's frail boundary. 185 The measure of the beneath and the above Is in your hand; your feet are on the ages. Over your head^ visible to the sages. Hovers the luminous immortal dove; And on your memory's unapparent pages Are written all the hidden ways of Love. MICROPROSOPOS Behind the orient darkness of thine eyes, The eyes of God interrogate my soul With whelming love. The luminous waves that roll Over thy body are His dream. It lies On thee as the moon-glamour on the skies; And all around — the yearning aureole Of His effulgent being — broods the whole Rapt universe, that our love magnifies. O thou, through whom for me Infinity Is manifest! Bitter and salt, thy tears Are the heart-water of the passionate spheres, With all their pain. I drink them thirstily! While in thy smile is realised for me The flaming joys of archangelic years. 186 THE TOWER Your love is like a mighty tower for me. When I am weary and the world is dark. From your high battlements my thoughts embark Upon the tenuous wings of poetry, Voyaging to the stars. Sovereign and free. The inter-stellar dreams' great hierarch Marshals his legions round us, as a mark In the encircling vast uncertainty. Steadfast we stand together, you and I^ Untroubled by false visions, unafraid. Though often menaced by the jagged blade Of neighbour-lightning. As the clouds go by, We watch the wraiths of old religions fade Into that faith which love shall verify. 'ACME Throned in the purple shadows of thy hair. Mystery is exalted. In thine eyes Burns the supreme desire that never dies. The demiurgic fire whose power I dare To meet and mix me with. I do not care Whether the end be gain or sacrifice, — Only to touch! the poetry that lies Behind the beauty that allures me there! 187 As wine in water, let me lose in thee The boundaries of myself. Give me to drink The cup between thy lips — I will not shrink Though it be bitter-sweet. Oh, I would be Intoxicate with love, until I sink Into the deeps — or rise to ecstasy ! THE SACRAMENT OF LOVE The ground whereon we tread is holy ground, Made sacred by the myriad slow feet Of Life's successive ministers. We meet Beside the blessed table where man found The symbols of his Maker. In the round Of unremembered suns this bread we eat Was leavened, and this wine so mortal-sweet Was crushed from grapes grown beyond Time's grey bound. This cup whereof we drink is verily The blood of the atonement, and this bread The very body of Love. These drops were bled Upon the cross of Life in ecstasy. O potent sacrament! You seal in me The link between the unborn and the dead. 188 WHEN I SHALL LIE IN DEATH When I shall lie, Beloved, some dark day In the unbending dignity of death; When in my ear Love's potent shibboleth From your own lips no message shall convey, Nor bring the well-known answer ... do not say That God with me the Void replenisheth ! Though with your breath I do not mix my breath, Be not too sure that I have gone away., Your presence will be welcome as of old Beside the stately bed where I am laid; And though for the first time you find me cold. Know 'tis from terror of the waiting spade. Comfort and warm me in your living hold. And kiss my face — and do not be afraid. THE UNSPOKEN In the rapt silences between us two Are Love's last heights ascended. Keenly dear Are your love-vibrant tones, and when I hear Your whisper in the dark there trembles through My soul the star-choir's music. Yet I do Worship the silence, though sometimes I fear The too-revealing Presence it brings near — As if the hand of God touched me and you. 189 It seems that our two souls in some still place Pause for a pulseless moment, as if we Were masters of desire and destiny — Holding the planets poised in dizzy space. Look, Love! There in the dark the shining Face! The God of Silence calls us — it is He. HIDDEN BEAUTY In thy form's magic mirror of desire Beckons that Beauty hid from mortal sight. The rhythm that marked the elemental rite Of Being marks thy heartbeat, and the lyre Of the great leader of the stellar choir Is strung with hair like thine. When in the night Between thy lids I see love's glowing light, It is for me great Uriel's vigil-fire. What art thou, to unveil my vision so ! The pangs of the great Mother gave thee birth. To be a symbol on the alien earth Of those mysterious powers that spirits know. I was a pilgrim in a land of dearth; Thy coming made the corn and lilies grow. 190 THE PERVADER Beloved Light of the celestial deep ! Art Thou not trying to commune with me Through this dear mortal who so rapturously Clings to my veil of dust? Always I keep My tryst with Thee : when up the flaming steep Of passion's dizzy pinnacle I rise free One moment from the earth's blind sovereignty; Or in the lofty solitude of sleep. Wherever I look — Thou art. Even my bowl Of wine reflects Thy symbol from the skies; And, imaged on the mirror of Love's eyes, Thy meditative eyes regard my soul, Glowing with love unspeakable — Thou goal Of this my pilgrimage in human guise! RECOMPENSE When I consider all thou givest me In these miraculous hours I value so — The vision and the wonder that I know To be the veils of that Reality Behind the dreams of earth; and when I see How with thy tending all my soul-flowers grow. In very gratitude I would bestow Some rare incomparable gift on thee. 191 But when I gaze deep in thy raptured eyes. And see my own eyes in companioning Reflection fused with thine, I realise That in this unity of lives I bring Some boon beyond my own imagining, That is thy lonely spirit's long-sought prize. THE MAN Immeasurable thy being is to me. Lord of my fulfilled life ! The beauty line Of the world's orbital ellipse is mine In one encompassing eye-sweep of thee. Thy substance holds that secret chemistry Whereby the earth-dust flames, and is divine; And woven with thy body is the sign Of primal, demiurgic mystery. Without thee is my destiny denied; Though I stand symbol of the sea of space. The boundless gestatorium, the bride Of the Supreme. Only in thine embrace My small ephemeral life is amplified. Is blent with the imperishable race. 192 ILLUMINATION When my receptive lips are fused with thine In that pure flame whose fuel is ecstasy, All of the lost, forgotten poetry Of unrecorded ages touches mine With gift of inspiration. Powers divine, Answering thine ardent summons, move in me. Measureless days, and wider days to be. Challenge my hour for the lyric countersign. Unborn religions burn me in thine eyes; The devotees of undelivered years Mirror their visions there, in thy love tears. And lure my lips to drink them. I am wise With the deep lore of disembodied seers. When God breathes over me thy passion sighs. THE SONG AND THE SINGER Life has no honour to surpass the pride Of the undaunted singer. When I feel Love's rhythmic waves, that make my being reel. Go royally and steadily as a bride In measured march of song; when I confide To all the world my secret soul's appeal — Wound round with lyric veils that half reveal — Then is my hour of living magnified. 193 Then do I hear strange voices answer me Across the waiting silence. And I know. Beloved, that our yearning dreams shall flow Into their dreams, as rivers find the sea, And unborn lovers love more tenderly Because we loved each other long ago. THE EAGLES O EAGLE mate of mine, the souls are few That scale the height where we have made our nest Above the perilous chasm ! Breast to breast We battle with, the darkness, and the clue To our far flight is written in the true Eyes of the constellations. All unguessed In the dull valley is the dizzy quest That calls us to patrol the pathless blue. The air is thin where we entice our brood Of young to measure their frail wings with Fate; But they are nourished on ethereal food. Found only on these crags inviolate. Facing the wind, the void, the solitude. We are God's pioneers, O eagle mate! 194 THE TABERNACLE When from the cloud along the mountain height The Lord decreed that thou. Love, shouldst be made, Was not the mighty architect afraid. And blinded by the vision and the light? O covenantal ark of sacred rite. Law-holding heart, with pure gold overlaid! Between thy winged cherubim, love-rayed, The Presence will commune with me this night. For I have laved me at the outer gate; Around my soul's blue robe the golden bells And pomegranates are broidered, and I wait The word of Him that in this temple dwells. The Power descends, it permeates, compels; And my soul testifies, " The Lord is great." LOVE'S HUMBLENESS I KNOW the pride of Love, the happiness Of gratified possession, wearing high Its diadem no envy can deny: I know the power of the withheld caress That leaves Love unsubdued, but weaponless; I know Love's unveiled look that blinds the eye; I know the splendid joys that magnify Poets who Love's beatitudes express. 195 But till I learned Love's humbleness, I knew Only Love's alphabet. 'Twas when I lay A beggar at Love's knees the livelong day. That I discerned this final master-clue: 'Tis better for a lover to bedew Love's feet with tears, than walk earth's royal way. LOVE'S BAPTISM From the pure baptism of my love you rise As a white saint dips in the sacred lake And comes out shining. All your soul awake Lives in your face, and would immortalise One who revealed it in art's master guise For all the world. Had life the power to make Me such a painter ! But my hand would shake. For this is what you tell me with your eyes: — I am your sea of healing, and the door Wliereby you enter God's abiding place; Your trembling hopes are hidden in my hair; I am your volume of unwritten lore; My breasts for you are cups of cosmic grace. My dreams the pillars of your house of prayer. 196 THE ICY PATH Thy soul and mine are walking warily Along a line of ice, a narrow way Between two seas of flame. The cruel day We banish by closed eyelids, for to see The cold white glitter were a mockery. Should we unveil our eyes we could not stay Upon the path; our steps would disobey; Our souls would slip into the raging sea. Love, how the warm waves woo our icy feet! Our foreheads lifted for the polar wind Are fanned by tropic airs ... we lose our aim Dizzy and drunken in the swimming heat. Swaying toward some lost wonder we must find, We fall into the pulsing sea of flame. A QUESTION ^ Is it thy body that I love — thy soul — Or some mysterious dweller beyond both? Alas, I do not know! But I am loath To reckon as mere dust this aureole My dreams have drawn about thee. Life's control Drew from the earth the substance for Love's growth. As for the lilies' ; and Desire made oath That Beauty's form should greet us at the goal. 197 But whether Love be blossom of the earth Or of the spirit — let all question cease. I only know my arid being's dearth Grew roses in thy presence; that increase Of vivid life came with our passion's birth^ And to my lips the rose-leaf lips of Peace. THE RHYTHMIC HEART With wonder-waiting breath and dream-closed eyes, I listen to the far mysterious sound Of your heart's tides, as some child who has found A convoluted shell, and verifies The story that the boundless ocean sighs Within it for his ears; though all around Are only waving trees and solid ground — A prisoned memory there that never dies. Your beating heart, Beloved, holds for me Such memories of the Ocean whence you came. Washed up on Time's cold margin like a shell Upon the earth-beach. All Eternity — Yours and the world's and God's their Law proclaim In the rhythmic ringing of this cosmic bell. 198 THE PRESENCE a- Your presence is enough for happiness, Without a word or pressure of the hand. Near you the blossoms of my soul expand Like lily buds at sunrise, that express Their joy in fragrant silence. I possess Your thought without a medium, andl demand Nothing of all Love's ministers that stand Waiting beyond this bodiless caress. Nay, do not touch me for a little while, And speak no word, even of poetry. Only the stillness of your lyric smile Shall bear the message of your soul to me. As through your misty eyes, blue mile on mile, I sail on feeling's immaterial sea. THE SPHERE OF LOVE When in the circle of my arms' embrace Close I enfold you, I encompass, Dear, The opulent earth, and whisper in its ear. I look the soul of the planet in the face. And feel against my cheek the winds of space With every breath of yours. How can I fear The need of aught? In Love's ideal sphere Are hidden all life's lines of power and grace. 199 Beyond the self's dividual boundary We touch that interspiritual goal iWhere two in one dissolve in ecstasy, Leaving a tracing on the terrene scroll Of the fourth dimension of Love's mystic sea — The metaphor, the poetry of the soul. THE TOUCH OF BEAUTY What is that magical strange quality, That gives to all the words and ways of you Something supernal? Others are as true Expressions of the inner thought, maybe; But they are prose, and you are poetry. You merely look at me — and something new Calls me to give it form; some faint, far clue Touches me from a world I cannot see. And sometimes when the beauty is not so high It overpowers me, I am moved to sing. But, O Beloved, how mere words belie The wonder of that half-embodied thing! It merely brushes me in going by. But leaves me all alive and quivering. 200 THE UNASSUAGABLE The ache of unassuagable desire! When my enraptured form is full of thee — Drenched with thy love and broken utterly - The spirit all thy power can never tire Burns steadily, an unconsuming fire. Oh, the long calling down eternity Of the prisoned self that never can be free Until its days of separateness expire! Give me again thy lips, and let me lie In listening silence on thy rhythmic heart. The measures of that great musician's art Entrance my soul — but cannot satisfy Its thirst for unity. Oh, let me die, And be of thy very self a throbbing part! AT LOVE*S FEET Here where I lie a pilgrim at Love's feet, Palm pressed to palm in pure humility. Are many wonders they may never see Whose brows challenge the morning. Strangely sweet This realm where mastery and service meet. Losing themselves in Love's immediacy. Its guarded gate reveals that mystery Reserved for those whose lesson is complete. 201 Here Pride and Passion yield their ancient power, And Faith, twin-born with Knowledge, blends with him In one clear revelation. Since man's eyes Saw first in vision Love's rare momitain flower, Some souls have sought it on the perilous rim Of Self's cold avalanche — and grasped the prize. FROM THE VOID When swimming in the sea of Love's embrace, Under the rays of the meridian sun, I hear a Voice in the void, and one by one The veils of substance fall from off the face Of my free spirit. In the urgent race Toward the white shore where being is begun In harmony supernal, I have won From ravished Life the keys of time and space. The Universe in semblance of man's form Descends upon the waters, and I hold Close to my heart the secret rarely told Before to any mortal. Human-warm And soft for me, this Presence I enfold Can walk the sea and curb the will of the storm. 202 LOVE LIGHT Beloved, in those first remembered days We smiled into Love's face, not questioning His meaning, as gay children in the spring Laugh in the face of joyous winds whose ways They are too frail to follow. But the gaze Of Love grew serious, discovering A nascent, interspiritual thing — Nameless on earth, that set our souls ablaze. Have mortals ever seen the steady light That now bums in Love's eyes? To me it seems The answer to some question asked in dreams And then forgotten. And it thrills my sight — As if the sun, with flame-compelling streams. Had hurled a new strange planet down the night. THE RIVEB Along the woods and meadows of my days The thought of thee majestically flows. Like some great river that in gladness goes Down to the ocean. All thy fertile ways Are blossom-bordered, for in Love's warm rays Each kiss of thine becomes a crimson rose And every tear a lily, pure as those White blooms that won the Galilean's praise. 203 Thou art the Nile and I am the land of Kem. River of joy^ making my arid years A garden of sweet fragrance and of song! Enriched by thee, my fields have made arrears Of all neglected harvests, and a throng Of labourers in due time shall garner them. AT THE SUPREME HOUR When comes the supreme hour for me to die; When, justified of life, I turn at last To question the pale secret of the past And to be one with it, O Love, that I May have thy clinging lips to fortify My spirit for the j ourney ! I would cast My soul upon thy kiss, as on some vast And shoreless ocean refluent with the sky. And may this dual, intimate ecstasy Be as my bark to venture the unknown. Then to whatever region I am blown By the death winds of evening, I shall be Borne upon rapture — nevermore alone — Though incorporeal, still one with thee. 204 THE OASIS If I had not the patience of the earth, That hour on hour develops the slow seed, And age on age attains each racial deed, I should despair of ever being worth The wonder of your love. In Life's grey dearth. My sun-scorched oasis bore scarce a weed. Then you reclaimed me, and my spirit freed From the arid loneness of untimely birth. Your love is like spring-water, and has made A greenness in my desert; 'tis the deep Source of my hope's tall palm-trees, that withstand Life's whirling winds and wild Saharian sand. Your love is like the placid stars that keep Vigil, that I may never be afraid. THE THOUGHT OF THEE Sometimes, Beloved, the mere thought of theel Is potent as a Kabalistic spell To conjure up thy presence. I compel^ The latent forms of air to rise and be A body for my vision, fearlessly Beckoning thy soul to enter. Then I tell That wraith such wonders that the sentinel Behind the doors of absence bends to me. 205 The thought of thee is poetry more pure Than any that I lock in measured lines. The thought of thee is lights that shall endure Into the darkness when our day declines; The thought of thee is prayer_^ that can allure Angels to aid us in our love's designs. LOVE'S IMMORTALITY c^ Among those things that make our love complete. And high beyond all others I have known^ This knowledge is not least: That we have sown Together seeds of beauty, that shall greet Strange years in blossoms which the reckless feet Of Death shall not destroy; that we have shown To blinded eyes the visions of our own. Making our blood in, others' veins to beat. Why should we yearn for immortality In some imagined heaven, when on the earth Our flowers of song perfume the dusty road. And speak to passers by of you and me.^ Enough that we have justified our birth. Ere entering the inscrutable abode. 206 BEYOND THE DRAGON'S GATE Of lesser loves I have known jealousy. But of thy love, my comrade — nay, Ah, nay ! Our separate jealous selves are one to-day. Absorbed and mingled in our unity. In the dim future should it ever be Some other love allured thee, I would say: " The brother of my life, who is away On his soul's business, will return to me. Bringing new knowledge with him: so I wait." And though with pain my lonely lips were dry. My learning soul would listen at the gate That looks along life's road, for thy far cry On the world's rim. Only we intimate Of spirit know the meaning of that tie! THE TIDES The daily hours my lover is away Are like the long recession of the sea Between the tides, but when he comes to me The surf beats on the shore. This hour the grey Sands are all dry far out, and rocks display Their sinister faces, that I never see Save when the ebb-tide's far uncertainty Of absence makes a desert of the day. 207 But in the rushing joy of his return, The menacing old rocks will bathe their faces, And all their deep, hard lines will be no more; The lonely sands of minutes that now yearn To greet him will be lost in his embraces, And loving waves will dance along the shore. ATTAINMENT To-DAY I pondered long on the rewards That beckon man's endeavour: gold, and power. And fame, and love, and pleasure's passing hour Of sweet, that but a memory accords Unto the future. And I asked the lords Of my own stars what individual flower Of consummation bloomed in my life's bower — Was it the best the jealous world affords? I thought of my songs, but their abiding worth Is yet unproven in the court of Time; Thought of the will whose sinews help me climb The cliffs of Art — that was a gift of birth. Then thought I of your love . . my one sublime Attainment in the dizzy round of earth. 208 TIPHERATH When I caress your dear face^ lyii^g so, Beauty, the great Sephira, looks at me With visible eyes; and though I cannot see The border of his garment, yet I know It sweeps the far horizon. Visions blow Across my rapt brain, as ecstatically The night winds move your hair, and poetry Too high for comprehension here below. You are, my Love, a medium in space Eternal, through whom sovereign Beauty burns To manifest. Winged with your love, I reach A sphere beyond the scope of human speech; And in the dark with you my soul discerns Dimly God's unimaginable face. THE ENTITY Love, is it I, or thou? There seems to be Only one soul here in the darkness now. Only one body. Is it I, or thou? Thy form is the extended boundary That marks the dual consciousness of me. I feel as mine the locks upon thy brow, As mine thy long white feet. Oh, tell me how Never to go outside the gates of thee! 209 Hid from the hollow world, I would remain Within this lily garden of delight; Would move not, sleep not through the long sweet night. I would forget that we were ever twain, Forget that I shall find myself again Standing alone in freedom's glaring light. THE INSPIRER When words of mine are read in after days By those unnumbered ones who slumber now In that vast sea man's latent loves endow With all-potential being, should their gaze Turn wondering along Time's buried ways To our dim day, my Love, questioning how I wove this wreath of heart-songs for the brow Of my strong mate, 'tis thou whom they should praise. If praise be due. For I am but the lyre Thy sure hand plays upon — thy master hand, Whose touch allures the silence of desire To mystic revelation, whose command Rouses the spirits of creative fire To utter speech that men may understand. 210 WHEN YOU ARE SAD When you are sad, Beloved, my soul hears The far-off sighing and unworded pain Of all earth's buried lovers; the cold rain Of all their lonely unremembered tears Falls on my heart afresh. Ancestral fears, Lurking among the shadows of my brain Like ghosts among the living, weave a chain Of immemorial omens down the years. Your joy isi of the hour, and pleasures me Like sunshine and the spring; your smiles are flowers That bloom in my life's meadows wild and sweet. But in your sadness broods eternity. Beyond the tides of aeons and of hours . . . I hear its music in your slow heartbeat. THE LYRIC SEED Love, you are full of songs and lyric seed And wild harmonic measures, and your eyes Teem with the forms my vision magnifies: There the idea trembles toward the deed As man trembles toward woman. I can read In you the pass-word of the sphere that lies Beyond us in the spiritual skies. Waiting the world's indomitable need. 211 In you are words unknown in any tongue, But potent are their meanings to inspire My soul, love-quickened. Inarticulate Ardours are there, and melodies unsung, And poem-hopes; and Love's prophetic lyre Shall give their voice authority with Fate. IN THE STILLNESS Last night thy lips. Beloved, on my face Yearned in a soul-rapt stillness more intense Than love's last passion; with such reverence I feel that tenuous spirits must embrace. Who meet each other in the shining space Beyond the bourne. A fearless conference Our souls held through the eyes, their mystic sense Revealing, like a veil, unearthly grace. To-day I wander in a world of dreams. The throbbing of the city is to me Far off and alien; and its murmur seems Merged in the sounds of stars, whose light I see At noonday, through a luminous air that teems With forms of wonder and immensity. 212 THE REVELATION Spirit whose graciousness reveals to me Thy Self as the real presence in Love's eyes ! His form is Thine inviolable disguise Of flame-wrought dust. Within that veil I see The symbols of Thine ancient alchemy; I see the hidden aim that sanctifies To immortal use Love's burden of sad sighs, And all his brief earth-born felicity. And though continually I look behind This mortal beauty for the deathless One — That Substance of whose shadow is the sun, — To Thine extended hand I had been blind. Maybe forever, had Thy love not spun This passionate web wherein I am entwined. A DREAM OF DEATH I DREAMED this midnight that my Love was dead; And when I groping found again the place Where I had left sleep's door ajar, his face Shone pallid still against the wall of dread Before me. And his voice in sorrow said: " Seek me forever in the empty space Beyond the moon, for I may not retrace The road whereon I dropped Love's golden thread." 213 I cannot find in all the ways of night One star to comfort me with promises Even though unfulfilled, nor on the wind A murmur of music. I am cold with fright, Lest in the shadows and the silences Seeking his form, I leave his soul behind. THE ABIDING PEACE Your love is like the brooding of warm wings, And all the restfulness of night for me When I am weariest; my troubles flee Away like twilight ghosts when the moon flings Her lovely glamour over earthly things. You are the firmament of poetry Above my soul, wherein continually The passion-bird of Beauty soars and sings. The shelter of your love is my release From the world sorrow. On my lips you lay The lyric spell whose word survives the day; And in your arms is that abiding peace Never to fail me should the star-dance cease, And Time, the piper, claim his cosmic pay. 214 THE SOWER Thou art a sower of that potent seed Whose vital flower shall fructify the ages. By thy strong sowing shall a thousand sages Rise into being in the days of need From the world's fertile soil. No noxious weed Shall rob the weary husbandman of wages On the fields thoa hast sown, and God's own mages Shall measure them the harvest by their meed. I am a field of thine; within my breast The seeds of power are stirring in their sleep Before the great awakening. Strange unrest Rouses me ere the dawnlight walks the deep; Then go I forth to toil, at Love's behest. Tilling my field that all the world shall reap. MASTER On my life's road there stands one shining day. Lone and exalted above everything, — The day my woman-spirit hailed you king, Humble and proud, acknowledging your sway. Though altars mark my sacrificial way Across the world, yet to the gods I bring Naught else like this: That round your knees I cling. Whispering, " Master, speak, and I obey ! " 215 In Love's rose garden is a hidden shrine, A secret temple where high spirits meet; The password is pure silence, and the sign That gains the door — humility complete. 'Tis when my spirit touches the divine, You feel my tears and kisses on your feet. THE UNRECORDED If any lover ever loved like you. He did not love a poet; for I look In vain for word of him in the slender book Of woman-song. Your tender ways are new In this untender world, and shining through The meshes of your passion are the eyes No mortal sees unveiled — the love-lit eyes That wait the spirit in the fiery bluei Beyond life's shifting rainbow. In your face The deathless Vision lures me — if I dare To follow it across the void of space. And yearning toward your beauty, unaware My soul has found the one abiding place. Beyond the goal of every lonely prayer. 216 THE CLUE When fused in your embrace my soulj is free With all mankind. Hidden away in you Are unimagined vistas, and my clue You are to that abiding Mystery Behind all men and women. When for me Your eyes are wet with Love's primeval dew, I am the dreami reflected ; and I view The vision of my self with ecstasy. Within your soul the souls of myriads reach! Toward the obscure Beyond. You are the sire — The all-potential father who shall teach The gospel of attainment and desire. Your torch shall light the future's signal fire. And through your :word the voiceless attain speech. THE SUPREME GIFT What is the dearest gift thou bringest me To prove thy love.^ Is it thy tenderness? — The grandeur of thy passion .f* — thy caress? — Thy soul that offers itself utterly? These are great gifts, but not unique in thee. Aye, though thy boons bestowed are numberless. One passes all the others: I possess Therein the life-pledge of our unity. 217 That pledge is understanding. In my eyes Is written all my weakness, all my power, And thou canst read the writing! Fear's disguise Falls from our faces in the faith-lit bower That shields our full revealing. We are wise Beyond all isolate beings in that hour. LOVE'S BAY AND NIGHT The darkness never gathers round my heart When your eyes shine upon me; for my day Is measured by your coming, and the grey Chill twilight of the hour when you depart. The sun-warmth of your smile makes love-buds start All down my tree of life; and when we say Love's litany, the winds from far away Breathe us responses with heaven's lyric art. And in the desolation of that night When thou, my sun of life, art hid from me By the dense world, I know thy loving light Blazes around my orbit; though I see Only that pallid and reflecting wight — The unsubstantial moon of memory. 218 THE HIDDEN ONE Love, in that labyrinthine house of thine, Where does thy spirit hide? Long have I sought Its door down all the corridors of thought, In every impulse, every luring line That is thy being; but the outer sign Has veiled itself in beauty. Whence was brought Thy mystic flame, wherein earth's dust was caught And fused with love, reflecting the Divine ? Thou art all mine, in answer to my prayer: Mine in thy purposes, thy faith, thy will; My dreams of unity thou dost fulfil; My secret seal is on thee everywhere. Yet when I love thee most, I am aware Of a strange something that eludes me still. SPIRIT OF BEAUTY Spirit of Beauty ! Let me worship thee. Robed in the form of my beloved one. Thy look, that flres the fierce meridian sun^ Is too tremendous in its majesty For mortal gaze to dare. Give me to see. Over the eyes of Love, thy glamour spun Of filaments of dreams that were begun Before Orion rode in Gemini. 219 Spirit of Beauty, I had never known Thy bodiless, immortal dwelling place, Save for this lovely mortal shadow thrown Upon the screen of time. And I can trace, In every line of Love's illumined face. The meaning and the wonder of thine own. THE EMBLEM In worshipping my Love I worship Thee — O Thou inscrutable Kindler of the sun! He is the emblem of all things in one; He is the medium of my unity With Thine infinitude. There is for me, Recorded in Love's eyes, all Thou hast done Of wonder since the ages were begun In sleep's undifferentiated sea. My Lover is for me the Book of Prayer; His every line is poetry profound With esoteric meanings. In his hand Are messages that Faith has written there; And in the lessons his warm lips propound Is all the wisdom I can understand. 220 THE GUARDIAN OF THE TEMPLE Gaze in my eyes, deeper and still more deep ! Behind these windows dwells the soul of me In solitude: enter thou there and be The guardian of the temple. Thou shalt keep The keys that open all the doors of sleep — The mystic portals of that unity In whose embrace I quiver with ecstasy. Beyond the bourne of those who laugh and weep. Cover* me with the shadow of thy breath. So blinding is the spiritual light Of this high place, the moon looks white as Death, And the stars hide them in the hair of Night. O Love, thy lips ! Between them quivereth The very wing of God in earthward flight! WOMAN-LOVE ^ Thou art the Unimaginable to me, The Source that sends the sunshine and the spring To bless my spirit. Gratefully I bring My golden lily of life a gift to thee — Fragrant with faith and immortality. Make me the blossom of sweet offering Upon the altar of thy ministering. Only thy bonds can set my spirit free. 221 Yea, I will do all service that is meet Unto the master from the neophyte — Trim thy soul's lamp, and keep thy vesture white. Thy mouth shall have the morsels that are sweet. My mouth the bitter; and my only right Shall be to bind the sandals on thy feet. THE INNER LIGHT Sometimes I see a light within your eyes. Not of the earth, as if the hidden sun — The vast pervading immaterial One — Shone for a moment through its own disguise Of planetary substance. Visions rise In that divine candescence, visions spun Of hoarded yearnings; 'twas their power which won From the Invisible its guarded prize. Love, in that light our guardian angels lean So close to earth, almost their wings catch fire In the upleaping flame of our desire Each to the other. And this burning screen Of mortal dust, that severs soul from soul. Is known to the stars as Love's world-aureole. 222 THE PARADIGM Now you and I indissolubly one, Find in our unity the master clue To the realm of dual spirits, all is new For us in earth and heaven. We have spun A web of dreams that reaches to the sun. Yet stronger is than steel. Our hopes pursue Even the reticent gods, that watch us through Life's window with a smiling benison. No longer can two souls that merely rhyme Seem one to us, though joined with poetry. Now we have found Love's secret paradigm Which all men feel but know not, we shall be A double mark upon the disc of time That shall attract the eye of Eternity. LOOKING UPWARD My heart is sad and tremulous to-night. Knowing my love less pure than it should be; For shadow-thoughts of self persistently Intrude between thine image and the light. If anything be dearer in thy sight Or higher than woman's love, ask it of me! Silence, or sacrifice, or ecstasy Of meditation's God-immediate height. 223 Is there some purer name than Love? If so^ It shall be thine^ even in my secret prayer: Brother, or Friend, or aught — I do not care. So it be dear as that I would forego. But I should call thee Love in dreams, I know. And bear that memory of thee everywhere. THE BROKEN PRAYER Lost in Life's maze I seek that dreadful Throne Where God's vrise children breathe, Thy will be done! But in between me and Faith's blazing sun I see Love's eyes, and hear his broken moan, " O leave me not. Beloved ! " Can I own God's fragment dearer to me than the One, Supreme, Eternal? 'Twas His hand that spun This veil between the known and the unknown. Fain would I tread that steep, immortal way — And yet the arms of Love are yearning sweet! My soul is tangled in the ropes of clay. And passion's thorns have torn my faltering feet. Unworthy am I, for I weep and say, Thy will be done, O God — hut not to-day! 224. THE OPENER Love, you have opened many doors for me To many mansions. You have held the gate Of joy ajar, and when reluctant Fate Clutched at my mantle, you have set me free. You touched the fragile portal of poetry And it sprang open, for my soul elate To enter; then you led me to the great. Stern, smiling, Janus-faced Philosophy. But now it is the gate of Purgatory You open for me; and my soul's desire Goes on before us — not with tears and cries, But gladly like the souls in Dante's story — The saved souls that with joy embrace the fire Which purges them for the heights of Paradise. THE SACRIFICE As thou wast consecrated ere we met To sacred service on this orphaned earth. And I, though loving, am of little worth Against thine austere mission to be set; I who have worn thy love an amulet About my neck, mine by our stars of birth. Now bid thee go — leaving my days a dearth ; Now pay the world my vast and sovereign debt. 225 There is a need of thee greater than mine, O thou beloved ambassador of God! With my heart's blood do thou thy vows re-sign; While I walk back alone the road we trod Together, and the trampling years, pain-shod. Pursue me down the perilous incline. THE VALLEY OF DISMAY I CAME to-night along a lonely way, Under a cold monotonous grey sky That seeks no sunrise. Fallen rocks deny *My passage backward to the fading day; Above my head the living trees decay ; And trailing passionate poison-ivies lie Along the ground, reaching thin hands to tie My footsteps in this valley of dismay. Love, where art thou who yesterday held warm My soul and body interblent with thee.^ I call thy name — but only a wild swarm Of demon echoes answer mockingly; While down the gulf rides the dishevelled storm. With some dumb awful message meant for me. 226 THE GREAT BARK Beloved, in the space that yearns between Thy breast and mine these bitter separate days, Are measured all the tortuous dim ways Where sightless spirits wander — the dark screen That hides from mortal sight the soul's demesne. My path is lost in this bewildering maze Of many windings. Taunting spectres craze Me^ mocking the caresses that have been. Brave thou this dolorous region where I grope Among the shades, and lead me toward the light. Deny me love, but vesture me in white. And gird about my waist the knotted rope Of sacrifice. Then guide me toward some height Too lofty for this aching human hope. THE TITAN I KNOW this Titan suffering was not laid For nothing on my spirit, for I gain By growing to the stature of my pain. How else could God endure it — He who made The pact of Fatherhood with me, and weighed In His vast scales the hopes that I have slain In saying, " Thy will be done " } Without His chain Of worship round my soul, my heart, afraid. Would stumble down the mountain of despair And break upon the rocks. To little minds 227 God throws the crumbs of sorrow; but to me — Why, He has seated me in His great chair Beside the board of grief, and Himself grinds And kneads and bakes the bread of cruelty ! THE WELL OF TEARS Will you, far off, weep too in that glad hour, When I shall find the well of tears now hid Deep in the rocks of pain? Will God forbid Ever that I shall pluck the golden flower Of peace upon its margin? I would dower With all my song the meanest slave that bid My lips to drink its waters, and be rid Of this mad thirst that strangles all my power. When I shall weep, Beloved, the kind rain Must cool your burning forehead that I see Fire-circled in my dreams. I would not dare To quaff a comfort that you might not share. Though through the fierce noons of eternity I stand with you on these red cliffs of pain. 228 WITHIN LOVE'S VEIL O Thou whose hand has lifted high Thy veil One blazing moment, that my Love and I Might see Thy beauty, do not — or I die — Leave me again in darkness! Should I fail Of sovereign song; or prove too human-frail Thy seer-inspiring boon to justify, O let these tears, that choke my heart's love-cry. Weigh but a little for me in Thy scale ! For I so long abode in the earth-shade, That Thy refulgent beauty has blinded me. And I am tremulous, and half afraid. And cannot grasp the wonder that I see. But I would die should the white vision fade, Leaving me in the dark, bereft of Thee! WITHDRAWN Spirit of Wisdom, if Thy laws decree That groping in the dark I must abide. Why didst Thou draw Thy golden veil aside One blazing moment that my soul might see The splendour of Thy beauty? I would be More fully blest — or rigorously denied ! The veil has fallen and the light has died, But they have left great memories with me. 229 Spirit of Wisdoni_, are my upturned eyes Too dull with weeping to reflect Thy face? Has Love's consuming fever left a trace Too much of earth about me? All that dies With mortal breath my soul would sacrifice To feel the flame of Thy supreme embrace! THE EMPTY ROOM Alone I linger in Love's empty room Where hope, desire and dream no longer dwell; But memory stands, a pallid sentinel Between the inner and the outer gloom. The stars are weaving on Time's hidden loom No rarer wonders than these walls might tell — But will not ! Love's dismantled citadel Guards here the sacred silence of a tomb. And when my spirit shall have gone away In quest of Love where death and life confer. The silence of my empty home of clay Shall baffle every curious questioner, — Even as this room, whose walls will not betray Their knowledge of the secret things that were. S30 THE LOVE-SINGER I SING of Love, dreaming the world may know Something of that pure Beauty that I feel; I sing of passion till the senses reel With the full rhythmic volume and overflow Of my own being; and then, soft and low, I sing of mystic visions that reveal God's mirrored eyes in Love's — His visible seal Set in the dust for all who come and go. But of Love's final secret, being wise I do not sing, — Love's terrible demand To lay his jewels for a sacrifice Upon the Spirit's altar . . . Through the land Should I go singing that, with unveiled eyes. Hardly a soul would even understand! 231 NOTE Poems in this collection have appeared in Scribner's, Harper's, The Century, Ainslee's, The Cosmopolitan, Munsey's, Lippincott's, The Smart Set, The Forum, The Woman's Home Companion, The BooJcman, The Metro- politan, Everybody's, Outing, The New England, The Reader, The New Age, The Broadway, The Era, and The Craftsman. Thanks are due to the editors of these magazines for the courteous permission to reprint. i APR 3 1912 ? \^ A jLh* ^^^ /* LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 018 604 704 7