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THE BLACK PANTHER 
 
THE BLACK PANTHER 
 
 A BOOK OF POEMS 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN HALL WHEELOCK 
 
 »• I* 
 
 AUTHOR OP 
 
 ?HE HDMAM FANTASY*' "tHE BELOVKO ADVKNTUrtE" 
 
 "love ano libebation" "dust and light," etc. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 1922 
 

 Copyright, 1922, by 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
 SEP26'?2 
 
 ©CI.A6S199'6 
 
The author thanks the editors of the following, for kind 
 permission to reprint here various poems first published in 
 their pages: AlVs Well, The American Magazine, The Art 
 World, The Bellman, The Bookman, The Century Magazine, 
 Contemporary Verse, The Dial, The Forum, The Freeman, 
 Harper's Monthly, The International, The Literary Review of 
 The New York Evening Post, The Lyric, McClure's Magazine, 
 The Outlook, Poetry, The Poetry Journal, The Poetry Review, 
 Reedy' s Mirror, Scribner's Magazine, The Smart Set, The Yale 
 Review, Youth. Thanks are also due to Messrs. Harcourt, 
 Brace andCompany for permission to reprint "Sea-Horizons," 
 first published in the anthology, Enchanted Years. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAQB 
 
 The Black Panther S 
 I. Dim Wisdoms 
 
 NIGHT HAS ITS FEAR 7 
 
 THE SO'RROWFUL MASQUERADE 12 
 
 OCTOBER MOONLIGHT lo 
 
 THE FLESH AND THE DREAM 15 
 
 VAUDEVILLE 16 
 
 1914 18 
 
 THE BELOVED 10 
 
 PROUD DOOM 21 
 
 THE SECRET ONE 22 
 
 THE UNDISSUADABLE AUSTERITY 25 
 
 BLIND PLAYERS 26 
 
 TRAVAIL 28 
 
 THE POET TELLS OF HIS LOVE 29 
 
 THE BURIED DREAM SI 
 
 HAUNTED EARTH 32 
 
 vii 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 LONG AGO 34 
 
 TCHAIKOVSKY: FIFTH SYMPHONY 35 
 
 MIRROR 30 
 
 PLAINT 38 
 
 ANDANTE 39 
 
 THE DEAR MYSTERY 42 
 
 IN THE DARK CITY 43 
 
 II. Space and Solitude 
 
 IMMENSITY 47 
 
 SEA-HORIZONS 4^ 
 
 OF DAY CAME NIGHT 51 
 
 PILGRIM 53 
 
 BY THE GRAY SEA 54 
 
 THE FISH-HAWK 55 
 
 DISDAINFUL BEAUTY 57 
 
 MY LONELY ONE 58 
 
 ///. The Lost Traveller's Dream 
 
 WILD THOUGHT 63 
 
 journey's END 64 
 
 BELATED LOVE Q5 
 
 viii 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 'ACE 
 
 A LEAVE-TAKING 66 
 
 BUT LOVE — 72 
 
 ANNE '73 
 
 THE SILENCE '''4 
 
 EXULTATION '^5 
 
 SONG OF SONGS 77 
 
 SORROWFUL FREEDOM 78 
 
 STARLESS MORNING 79 
 
 PHANTOM 80 
 
 LEGEND 81 
 
 IV. The Divine Fantasy 85 
 
 The Lion-House 97 
 
 IX 
 
THE BLACK PANTHER 
 
THERE is a panther caged within my breast; 
 But what his name, there is no breast shall know 
 Save mine, nor what it is that drives him so. 
 Backward and forward, in relentless quest — 
 That silent rage, baffled but unsuppressed, 
 The soft pad of those stealthy feet that go 
 Over my body's prison to and fro, 
 Trying the walls forever without rest. 
 
 All day I feed him with my hving heart; 
 
 But when the night puts forth her dreams and stars. 
 
 The inexorable Frenzy reawakes: 
 His wrath is hurled upon the trembling bars. 
 The eternal passion stretches me apart, 
 
 And I He silent — but my body shakes. 
 
DIM WISDOMS 
 
NIGHT HAS ITS FEAR 
 
 NIGHT has its fear: 
 As the slow dusk advances, and the day 
 Fades out in fire along the starry way, 
 The ancient doubt draws near. 
 
 Vague shapes of dread — 
 Soft owl, or moth, and timid, twittering things — 
 Move through the growing dark; on furtive wings 
 
 The bat flits overhead. 
 
 And in the house 
 The death-watch ticks, the dust of time is stirred 
 With timorous footfalls, in the night is heard 
 
 The gnawing of the mouse. 
 
 Through the old room 
 What phantoms throng, what shapes that to and fro 
 Tremble, and lips that laughed here long ago — 
 
 Gone back into the gloom I 
 
 7 
 
NIGHT HAS ITS FEAR 
 
 A whip-poor-will 
 Bleakly across the baleful country cries 
 From a blurred mouth; and from the west replies 
 
 Echo — and all is still. 
 
 Now from her shell. 
 Her body's prison, with the ancient doubt 
 And terror stricken, the scared soul looks out. 
 
 Asking if all be well. 
 
 Great kings have been, 
 Poets, and mighty prophets — shapes have cried 
 About the world, or moved in mournful pride; 
 
 And are no longer seen. 
 
 From many lands 
 Their plaint was lifted; from how many a shore 
 Sorrows have wailed, that are not any more ! 
 
 They sleep with folded hands. 
 
 They have their day: 
 Their cry is loud about the earth, who come 
 To the one end; the singing lips grow dumb 
 
 Always in the one way. 
 8 
 
NIGHT HAS ITS FEAR 
 
 Though they implore, 
 Brief is the plea, inflexible the fate ! 
 Silence has the last word; and then — the great 
 
 Silence, forevermore. 
 
 Pondering these. 
 The fretful spirit in bewilderment 
 Quickens with a vague doubt, and, not content. 
 
 Broods — and is ill at ease. 
 
 Her being is 
 Throned on so frail a pulse; such fleeting breath 
 Bears up her dream across the gulf of death 
 
 And the obscure abyss. 
 
 Always she hears 
 The hurtling chariots of the hurrying blood. 
 Her shuttling breath that in the solitude 
 
 Weaves the one self she wears. 
 
 Now first the vast 
 Veil over heaven is rent, and bares the whole 
 Shining Reality; whereat the soul 
 
 Sickens, and is aghast ! 
 
NIGHT HAS ITS FEAR 
 
 Darkness reveals 
 The tragic truth; her will sinks hopeless wings 
 Before the inexorable Fact of things. 
 
 Humbling the dread she feels. 
 
 With the old Awes 
 Confronted and the flaming Mystery, 
 She may not speak; but pondering, suddenly 
 
 Grows silent, and withdraws. 
 
 She may not bear 
 That sight: the spangled heavens, from east to west, 
 Stretch out too wide the confines of the breast. 
 
 Straining in wonder there. 
 
 Upon what Brow 
 Of awful eminence — O thought that stuns ! — 
 Is laid that chaplet of a miUion suns. 
 
 Upon what Forehead now? 
 
 Who was it wrought 
 This universal glory all around. 
 Of ghttering worlds forever without bound ? — 
 
 Great Poet, what a Thought ! 
 10 
 
NIGHT HAS ITS FEAR 
 
 It is a Word 
 Unutterable that is written there; 
 The spirit, gazing, is one voiceless prayer. 
 
 Careless if it be heard. 
 
 Her thoughts ascend, 
 Star beyond star, height beyond aching height 
 Upward, in adoration infinite. 
 
 Forever, without end. 
 
 So shall it be ! 
 Till heaven yield her sceptre; till the throne 
 Of night be shaken, and the Face be known 
 
 Beyond eternity: 
 
 Till God divide 
 And rend asunder the embroidered hem 
 Of darkness; till the starry diadem 
 
 And crown be set aside ! 
 
 11 
 
THE SORROWFUL MASQUERADE 
 
 EVEN as to a music, stately and sad, 
 The young girl's feet begin to move in a dance. 
 And curiously, for joy, shift and advance; 
 So to a mournful waltz, sombre and sweet, 
 All laughing things move with delighted feet— 
 So all things that draw light and laughing breath 
 Move to the mournful waltz of life and death: 
 Comedy is a girl dancing in time 
 To the tragic pipes, sorrowful and subhme; 
 And ever she laughs back, and as she skips 
 Mimics the mournful music with her lips; 
 Then, for sheer anger at her own pretense. 
 Sobs violently at her own vehemence; 
 And mocks her tears. But when the pipings sleep, 
 She needs must cover up her face and weep. 
 
 12 
 
OCTOBER MOONLIGHT 
 
 HEAVEN is like an empty room to-night; 
 From rim to chilly rim 
 Wells the clear radiance of the cold moonhght. 
 And the earth-ways are dim. 
 
 Who has departed from this perfect place ! 
 
 What fiery one here set 
 His throne in splendor, whom, vanished now, the face 
 
 Of heaven remembers yet ! 
 
 Emptiness— emptiness— the skies are bare, 
 
 And the stark earth no less 
 Grows vacant as a memory: everywhere 
 
 Sleeps the cold loveliness. 
 
 Old is the earth, too old; her voice is shrill 
 
 Against the end of things — 
 To the inevitable her bitter will 
 
 Grows humbler as she sings. 
 13 
 
OCTOBER MOONLIGHT 
 
 Now from my breast the very soul takes flight. 
 
 Leaving her chambers bare 
 Of all save lonely memory and moonlight — 
 
 And Song is silent there. 
 
 14 
 
THE FLESH AND THE DREAM 
 
 THE baffled dreamer, the defeated Christ 
 That for your love upon the cross-tree hung — 
 O take Him to your bosom, give Him rest 
 Close at the wanton wonder of your breast, 
 O carnal World, forever well and young ! 
 
 15 
 
VAUDEVILLE 
 
 WHEN to a cheap and tawdry tune the orchestra cried 
 out. 
 Frantic, in violent syncopation, and began 
 Your holy, adorable body in mournful grace to move about 
 Through the old, devious motions, the device of man — 
 
 How suddenly then, silent magnificence, you put to shame 
 The crowded and garish theatre, the strangled cries 
 
 Of flute and trumpet ! O mortal body, bearer of our flame 
 Through the drear lands of death, flower of the eterni- 
 ties ! 
 
 Revered, reviled, wept and adored, beseeched, cried out 
 upon 
 By ravening lips of the ages — the sacred source of things, 
 That glimmered in Thrace, that shone in Rome, that swayed 
 in Babylon, 
 Here moves to the vile throb of castanets and strings. 
 
 16 
 
VAUDEVILLE 
 
 O through what generations have you lured, what secret 
 ways, 
 Man's fainting heart to be reborn ! What splendors move 
 Deep in his breast when, dolorous, your reluctant beauty 
 sways 
 In the old weary rhythms of eternal love ! 
 
 17 
 
1914 
 
 I LIFT my gaze beyond the night, and see, 
 Above the banners of Man's hate unfurled. 
 The holy figure that on Calvary 
 
 Stretched arms out wide enough for all the world. 
 
 18 
 
THE BELOVED 
 
 LIFE, Beloved, I lay my heart against Your heart, 
 ■^ Long, long I peer into the dark pool of Your eyes; 
 Never will I forsake You, O adorable One ! 
 
 I cannot comprehend You, but I love You. 
 
 In the shadow of Your locks I hide my eyes from the terrors; 
 
 But You are not greatly concerned — 
 
 Closer and closer I draw toward the dear Face. 
 
 See — I set my lips against Your lips. 
 
 But You do not answer: 
 
 Steadfast and grave beyond me Your eyes are burning. 
 
 As of one that dreams. 
 
 I am clinging here at Your heart ! 
 
 I am singing my love of You for sheer joy ! 
 
 Mother, what is it that trembles on Your lashes so soft — 
 
 And Your lips are salt as the taste of the sea? 
 
 Can it be for me Your eyes are brimming. Mother, 
 Even as they smile? 
 
 19 
 
THE BELOVED 
 
 Can they be for me, these drops on Your hps so warm ? 
 Dear One, do I understand at last ! 
 
 O holy draught, wine of the world, bewildering and bitter- 
 sweet ! 
 Sacred tears, from the depths of what wild love welling ! 
 Deeper and deeper let me drink and draw — 
 Nirvana, divine oblivion. . . . 
 
 Bitter is the taste of Your lips, Beloved ! 
 
 Though I lie in the darkness, yet often do I remember You — 
 
 and wonder — 
 And the touch of Your lips, how strange, and how sad. 
 
 20 
 
PROUD DOOM 
 
 THE crucifixion of Beauty on the cross 
 Of mortal destiny — the eternal law — 
 The thorny crown of death about her brows 
 Fills me with anger — then with sudden awe: 
 
 So dear, so lovely her adorable sorrow 
 
 Shows in the darkness, 'mid the tragic doom, 
 
 The very heart in me leaps up with laughter, 
 
 And hastens, proud and secret, toward the tomb. 
 
 21 
 
THE SECRET ONE 
 
 HERE, by this frame and network of the flesh 
 And wires of her control 
 Surrounded, central in her subtle mesh 
 And secret, sits the soul, 
 
 Urgent through all the body, while each part 
 
 Obeys, and all are one — 
 While in her dungeons labors the lone heart 
 
 To make her will be done. 
 
 She reins the forces in their wild career 
 
 That bear her, as they go, 
 Over the dark abyss; and knows how sheer 
 
 Reaches the gulf below. 
 
 How dubious her life and slenderly 
 
 Hangs, by a scarlet thread. 
 Between eternity and eternity — 
 
 She guesses, wise in dread; 
 22 
 
THE SECRET ONE 
 
 And ever watchful, ever wary, set 
 
 In the centre all alone, 
 Feels 'round her cautiously if any threat 
 
 Be made against the throne. 
 
 Sometimes along her nerves the voice of pain 
 
 Bears tidings to her hate 
 And frantic wrath, that the old foe again 
 
 Is clamorous at the gate — 
 
 She rages up and down, and to and fro 
 
 In timid anger runs: 
 If the frontiers be menaced, it is known 
 
 All over, and at once. 
 
 She hears her breast of sorrows night and day 
 
 At labor; 'round her brood 
 The old oblivions, where she sits at bay; 
 
 She hears the battling blood. 
 
 Echoes assail her from far worlds that lie 
 
 Beyond the bourne of these — 
 Contact and color and the angry cry 
 
 Of the realities 
 
 23 
 
THE SECRET ONE 
 
 Beat on the brain forever; the high dream, 
 
 By stratagem of speech. 
 Enters her portals, where she sits supreme 
 
 And silent, pondering each: 
 
 Weighing and challenging, for weal or woe, 
 
 All rumors, sending out 
 The emissaries of her will, that go 
 
 To the frontiers about. 
 
 But most she loves the hour that beauty brings. 
 
 Of rapture and release 
 From the crude hunger and the cry of things, 
 
 The hour of her peace — 
 
 When, by the inner light that floods her cell. 
 
 The spirit, even as here. 
 Travails, in secrecy and joy, to tell 
 
 Her passion and her fear. 
 
 Now to the listening soul in you who read 
 
 These lines, she tells it all — 
 How dear her day, how dark shall be, indeed. 
 
 The hour when night must fall. 
 
 24 
 
THE UNDISSUADABLE 
 AUSTERITY 
 
 LESS than it is we would the Truth should seem: 
 ' Holy and marvellous the Actual is — 
 But stern her lips, and bitter is her kiss 
 Upon the brows of dream. 
 
 25 
 
BLIND PLAYERS 
 
 jT^AY breaks, and the old drama 
 ^^ Repeats itself anew: 
 The hind wakes to be hunted, 
 The huntsman to pursue — 
 
 The lover and the beloved. 
 
 Each one doomed to his part; 
 The victor and the vanquished, 
 
 The hushed and the hurrying heart- 
 In terror and in triumph 
 
 They play it through again, 
 The old, unchanging drama 
 
 Of passion and of pain. 
 
 As the great Will has willed it, 
 That, in all forms being cast. 
 
 Wars on Itself forever. 
 
 O may they at the last — 
 
 The falcon, and the fledgling 
 He stoops to from the sky; 
 26 
 
BLIND PLAYERS 
 
 The lips that are so eager, 
 
 The lips that would deny- 
 When the old war is ended. 
 
 When the stern Will is done. 
 Meet in eternal pity 
 
 And know themselves as one ! 
 
 <m 
 
TRAVAIL 
 
 [BEFORE the sacred beauty of the morn* 
 -^-^ How fade the wranghng wisdoms of the earth ! 
 Wisdom is beauty in the womb, unborn; 
 Wisdom is beauty laboring for birth. 
 
 Wisdom, the ghost of Beauty, in the wide 
 Womb of the world lies clamoring for life, 
 
 While the white Beauty, the immortal Bride, 
 Sits throned upon the summits void of strife. 
 
 So the bright flower, bending from the soil, 
 Sums up and scorns the wisdom of the sage; 
 
 And Helen's beauty, soaring beyond toil, 
 The laboring beauty of the poet's page. 
 
 So, when the veils of mystery are furled, 
 
 Earth's wisdom blooms in heaven's beauty above . . 
 Beauty is all the wisdom of the world 
 
 Uttered by the seraphic lips of love! 
 
 28 
 
THE POET TELLS OF 
 HIS LOVE 
 
 TJOW shall I sing of Her that is 
 ^ •■• My life's long rapture and despair- 
 Sorrow eternal — Loveliness, 
 
 To whom each heart-beat is a prayer ! 
 
 Utterly, endlessly, alone 
 
 Possessing me, yet unpossessed — 
 The dark, the drear beloved One 
 
 That takes the tribute of this breast: 
 
 Daemon disconsolate, in vain, 
 
 In vain petitioned and implored — 
 
 How many a midnight of disdain 
 Darkly and dreadfully adored ! 
 
 Beauty, the virgin, evermore 
 
 Out of these arms with laughter fled — 
 Vanished — a voice by slope and shore 
 
 Haunting the world — Illusion dread — 
 
THE POET TELLS OF HIS LOVE 
 
 Most secret Siren, on whose coast, 
 
 'Mid spray of perishing song, are hurled 
 
 All desolate lovers, all the lost 
 
 Souls, and half -poets of the world: 
 
 Through sleepless nights and lonely days 
 In tears and terror served and sought — 
 
 Light beyond light — the supreme Face 
 
 That blinds the adoring eyes of thought ! 
 
 How shall I sing of Her ? Nay all, 
 All song, all sorrow, all silence of 
 
 This desperate heart that is Her thrall. 
 Trembles and tries to tell my love ! 
 
 30 
 
THE BURIED DREAM 
 
 I HID a dream amid the sands of Time, 
 And said, "Now will I go upon my way — 
 I shall be free henceforward from this time. 
 And full of laughter all the livelong day.*' 
 
 But it came following like the midnight voice 
 Of my true love behind her lattice-bars — 
 
 And it came following like the silver voice 
 
 Of my lost childhood strayed beyond the stars: 
 
 Like my dead self, so laughable, so sad. 
 So foolish and so lovable it rang — 
 
 That, for sheer laughter, I was very sad, 
 
 And took it back into my heart, and sang. 
 
 31 
 
HAUNTED EARTH 
 
 HEAVEN at last 
 Is bared, and the whole world one radiant room- 
 Black are the shadows, in great pools of gloom 
 By copse and thicket cast. 
 
 The cattle browse 
 With sound of gentle breathing, and their breath 
 Is mild in glimmering meadows, or beneath 
 
 Drooped branches, where they drowse; 
 
 While 'mongst the chill 
 Shadows, and cold, clear moonlight all about, 
 A single bat goes dipping in and out 
 
 Softly; and all is still. 
 
 Silence around — 
 Save for a cricket ! Lapped in slumb'rous peace 
 Lie hill and meadowland, the shining seas 
 
 Lap on them without sound. 
 
 It is earth's cry 
 Lifted in adoration; the old dream, 
 
 32 
 
HAUNTED EARTH 
 
 Beauty, is with her, and her hour supreme 
 That goes so swiftly by. 
 
 Too well she knows 
 The sweet Illusion, from no earthly shore 
 Visitant, the bright word that evermore 
 
 Troubles her dark repose. 
 
 Her heart lies bare — 
 Drunken, drunken, she lifts a dreamy breast; 
 Hour by hour, in rapture and unrest 
 
 Flows the unending prayer. 
 
 The path of night 
 Reaches, from rim to rim, a radiant road 
 Whereon the exalted Beauty walks abroad 
 
 In wonder and wild light. 
 
 Upon what eyes, 
 Lifted in homesickness, now falls again 
 The loveliness that haunts the world with pain- 
 Light out of Paradise ! 
 
 33 
 
LONG AGO 
 
 AH, once your quiet eyes were calm and deep 
 And wistful with much dreaming; long ago 
 Your solemn lips, so innocent of woe 
 And delicately parted, seemed to keep 
 
 A secret still unsaid, and murmured low: 
 But that was long ago. 
 
 And I, who saw and loved you from afar. 
 
 Prayed a hushed prayer, the first I ever prayed. 
 That God might keep you safe; and unafraid 
 
 I looked up through the night at my one star. 
 Moving mysteriously and bright-arrayed. 
 And silently I prayed. 
 
 While you passed singing tenderly and low. 
 
 Wandering through life's meadows with slow tread, 
 Death laid his kiss on your beloved head: 
 
 But that was long ago. 
 
 34 
 
TCHAIKOVSKY: FIFTH 
 SYMPHONY 
 
 MY heart cried out in wonder: Can it be. 
 The form, from which this thriUing passion flows 
 On tides of beauty and eternal tone 
 Audibly now before the very sense 
 Of thronging thousands, somewhere in the clay 
 Of Russia lies, with folded hands — relapsed 
 Into the Formless? 
 
 And my mind replied: 
 The longing that so labors for release 
 Not wholly in that transient form was trapped 
 Wherein we perish miserably here — 
 But has escaped into the form supreme, 
 A deathless body; and now walks abroad 
 Among the generations of mankind. 
 Trailing the robes of the immortal woe. 
 
 And still that music poured. O sacred heart 
 And secret, well-head of those streams of song — 
 Are you content ! How is it with you now, 
 O breast whose sorrows overflowed the world ! 
 
 35 
 
MIRROR 
 
 ON the wide sea of sleep 
 I launch my gliding boat: 
 Over the rhythmic Deep 
 On flowing tides I float. 
 
 The curving shore around 
 
 Fades in the pale starlight — 
 
 A slumbering, sleepy sound 
 
 Goes drifting through the night. 
 
 It is the music of dreams 
 Along the horizon blown. 
 
 It stirs the glimmering streams 
 Where the pale stars lie strown. 
 
 The stars shine in the Deep, 
 
 Reflected from afar; 
 My eyes tremble with sleep. 
 
 Reflecting sea and star. 
 
 My eyes look up at me 
 
 Out of the mirrored eyes, 
 86 
 
MIRROR 
 
 And in their depths I see 
 
 Mirrored the stars and skies. 
 
 Around — around — around 
 
 My boat whirls with the stream; 
 I feel a dizzy sound 
 
 Around me, like a dream. 
 
 Where may I moor my bark ? 
 
 How may I lift my head ? 
 What is that silence? Hark — 
 
 The sound of dreams is fled ! 
 
 The breath of slumber lies, 
 Like perfume, on the Deep: 
 
 Night with a thousand eyes 
 Stares at herself in sleep. 
 
 37 
 
PLAINT 
 
 BRIEF is Man's travail here, and transitory 
 His wTath that soon is spent — 
 Brief his lament, 
 
 Lifted in vain against the harsh decrees 
 Of the high Destinies 
 That move not for the murmur of his woe: 
 Even as snow 
 On sunny meadows, as a lover's story 
 Told in an April twilight long ago, 
 Brief is he even as these — 
 His little hour of tumult or of glory — 
 
 And to what end devised we may not guess. 
 Considering, as we go 
 Toward the same shadows, bearing the same spark. 
 
 His vanity and utter nothingness. 
 Yet in the mighty Dark 
 
 Dear is the spirit; grievously we know 
 
 Earth has one burden more, one soul the less. 
 
 38 
 
ANDANTE 
 
 T^HE evening steals like an ocean around your playing, 
 ^ Whose perfect tones move on the sombre Deep 
 
 With a grave gesture, and sigh into a sleep, 
 George, where your hands, along the piano straying. 
 
 An intricate rhythm keep. 
 
 And all the room is starry with your dreaming. 
 And limitless and vague. O the white square 
 Of the window-pane shimmers behind you there, 
 
 Framing the street, where the first hghts are gleaming. 
 Transfigured now and fair ! 
 
 Now, while the heaven of night grows vast above her, 
 The soul from her lone dream has sure release; 
 The tumult and the ancient struggles cease — 
 
 The wars that Beauty wages on her lover 
 Dwindle into a peace, 
 
 W hen Schumann speaks so firmly and so sadly. 
 And all the twihght rustles, wave on wave. 
 O, at that smile his wondering spirit gave, 
 
 39 
 
ANDANTE 
 
 What new smile in all things shines back so gladly. 
 Grown dignified and grave ! 
 
 The curtains by the window rise and flutter, 
 The ornaments on the mantel, row on row, 
 Seem touched with a melancholy of long ago — 
 
 What is it the music dreams, but cannot utter ? 
 Schumann — we know, we know. 
 
 Ah George, what shall be said to you who feel it — 
 All the half-hope and passion unexpressed 
 When twilight heaves more gently in the breast ! 
 
 Ah George, but you, when words would fain reveal it, 
 Smile — and divine the rest. 
 
 O wrap me in Beethoven's storm and thunder ! 
 My baffled spirit, with abated breath. 
 Flutters upon the verge of life and death — 
 
 And all my being, whirled along in wonder, 
 Dies between breath and breath. 
 
 Let me endure, within a single pulsing 
 
 Of the quick heart, in a storm of showering rain 
 Of sound, all joy, all grief — each breath again 
 
 40 
 
ANDANTE 
 
 Live through a Hfe complete, in one convulsing 
 Moment of rapturous pain ! 
 
 Silence — the lamplight, through the window streaming, 
 Falls on the listless keyboard, smooth and white — 
 Remembered music dreams in the dull light; 
 
 And you, too, George, sit silently and dreaming. 
 Alone, into the night. 
 
 41 
 
THE DEAR MYSTERY 
 
 JOY, and the triumph and the doom of gladness 
 Make in my breast a music sweet as sadness; 
 Shall I not sing for sorrow, and again 
 Cry out, for the sheer joyousness of pain ! 
 For all life's moods go murmuring like strings 
 In a low chord, and all things sound all things. 
 Through alternations of the grave and glad: 
 Yet, in the end, all things are grave and sad. 
 I feel all things, but cannot comprehend; 
 And run, laughing and weeping, to the end 
 Of the dear mystery, the fated race — 
 And the deep darkness covers up my face. 
 
 4^ 
 
IN THE DARK CITY 
 
 THERE is a harper plays 
 Through the long watches of the lonely night 
 When, like a cemetery. 
 
 Sleeps the dark city, with her millions, laid each in his 
 tomb. 
 
 I feel it in my dream, but when I wake — 
 Suddenly, like some secret thing not to be overheard, 
 It ceases — 
 And the gray night grows dumb 
 
 Only in memory 
 Linger those veiled adagios, fading, fading . . . 
 Till, with the morning, they are lost. 
 
 What door was opened then ? 
 
 What worlds, undreamed of, lie around us in our sleep, 
 That yet we may not know ? 
 Where is it one sat playing 
 
 Over and over, with such high and dreadful peace, 
 The passion and sorrow of the eternal doom? 
 
 43 
 
II 
 
 SPACE AND SOLITUDE 
 
IMMENSITY 
 
 AT noon I watched 
 ^ In the large hollow of eternal heaven 
 A soaring hawk climb slowly toward the sun 
 Through gyres of adoration without end. 
 His flight was a great prayer .... 
 
 47 
 
SEA-HORIZONS 
 
 THE sorrowful expanse from heaven to heaven, 
 From zone to zone, from deep to height above. 
 The mute arch of the everlasting heaven 
 Bends over me with Your unwearied love. 
 
 Immeasurable, unutterable, and soundless — 
 
 Wide as the east from the west Your love is wide; 
 
 The unfathomable distances are boundless 
 Infinite tenderness on every side. 
 
 Against the dark strength of Your huge endurance 
 My little being beats her baffled wings, 
 
 Lifts her shrill voice, and wounds the calm assurance 
 And tenderness of Your large evenings. 
 
 In the vast robes of Your serene compassion 
 
 She hides her soiled and burning face of shame — 
 
 Your solemn and inexorable passion 
 
 Lifts her blurred eyes to meet Your glance of flame. 
 
 As bread that for my daily fare is broken. 
 The eternal loveliness before me spread — 
 
 48 
 
SEA-HORIZONS 
 
 Unutterable gesture — word unspoken. 
 In the proud silences forever said ! 
 
 The sun puts forth his strength, the reaches shimmer 
 With inarticulate rapture, and the proud 
 
 Waters are thrilled; the fields of ocean glimmer 
 With shifting light and overshadowing cloud. 
 
 Noon upon noon in heaven takes up his station, 
 Day follows night, and night succeeds to day: 
 
 Your infinite and lonely meditation 
 
 Sinks with the sunset down the starry way. 
 
 Veiled is the Vast: the heaven of evening burning. 
 Reveals on the large waters of the sea 
 
 Hopelessness — hopelessness — the patient yearning 
 And dumb caress of the Immensity. 
 
 What message have You left for me, what token 
 
 Of Your lone love, whose laboring Will has wrought 
 
 The firmament over my head, and spoken 
 
 Unto my nothingness Your starry Thought ! 
 
 Sorrowful is the mighty Heart that reaches 
 
 Around this brief and scornful heart of mine — 
 
 49 
 
SEA-HORIZONS 
 
 The dim curve of the melancholy beaches, 
 And vacancies along the lone sea-line. 
 
 In the huge longing of the far sea-spaces, 
 
 The tremulous rim about the waters curled, 
 
 Waits the eternal Gentleness, and traces 
 His sad horizons 'round the fading world. 
 
 Cloud beyond cloud, the arch of heaven goes over- 
 Steep beyond steep, the patient skies descend: 
 
 The illimitable wastes and waves discover 
 Loneliness — loneliness — without an end. 
 
 Inexorable Compassion, may I never 
 
 Reach the last verge and limits of Your love ! 
 Beyond me, still beyond me melt forever 
 
 The eternal margins, fading as I move. 
 
 50 
 
OF DAY CAME NIGHT 
 
 WE lay by the sea, and knew 
 Darkness must make us one: 
 Heaven was thrilled clean through 
 
 By the trumpets of the sun, 
 The sea burned gold and blue. 
 
 The sand in the pale heat 
 
 Was parched as desert sand — 
 
 Your wrist where the veins meet, 
 The cool veins of your hand, 
 
 Made thirst seem bitter-sweet. 
 
 Never a word was said 
 
 Of what must be so soon; 
 
 In longing and in dread 
 The golden afternoon 
 
 Burned down, till dusk was shed. 
 
 It was not hope, nor fear. 
 
 Yet something of them both. 
 That held us trembling here, 
 51 
 
OF DAY CAME NIGHT 
 
 Half eager and half loath 
 For darkness, dread but dear. 
 
 Few were the words were spoken. 
 But in each other's eyes 
 
 We read the certain token 
 That sealed our destinies — 
 
 Our wings of pride were broken. 
 
 So, while the waters paled 
 Around us, and the west 
 
 Fainted, our hearts that failed. 
 In silence were confessed. 
 
 Silence at last prevailed. 
 
 And now up her clear stair 
 The evening-star began 
 
 To climb, where heaven was bare 
 A homing fish-hawk ran 
 
 Down avenues of air. 
 
 Night swallowed up the sun, 
 And darkness, like a hood, 
 
 Sank — and the sea breathed on; 
 In silence and solitude 
 
 The eternal will was done. 
 52 
 
PILGRIM 
 
 THE cold wind cries across the rolling dunes. 
 The gray sails fleck the margins of the world: 
 I watch the rolling dunes along the barren sky, 
 
 And wan, white waters by the swift wind hurled. 
 
 O where are Queen Faustina, and Babylon, and Tyre, 
 And pale Troy, lost in a silver mist of tears — 
 
 And I, O earth, your child, more old than all these others. 
 What have you done to me these many thousand years ! 
 
 5S 
 
 mamm^mmmmmm 
 
BY THE GRAY SEA 
 
 WHERE the gray sea lay sad and vast 
 You turned your head away. 
 And we sat silently at last — 
 There was no word to say: 
 
 By the thundery 
 
 By the iron thunder of the sea. 
 
 We could not speak, for the lost hope 
 
 Of the glad days before; 
 We sat beside the long sea-slope, 
 
 Watching the endless shore — 
 
 By the thunder. 
 
 By the iron thunder of the sea. 
 
 So that, as in the old despair, 
 I reached you pleading hands; 
 
 But you sat pale and helpless there. 
 Beside the barren sands: 
 
 By the thunder. 
 
 By the iron thunder of the sea I 
 54 
 
THE FISH-HAWK 
 
 ON the large highway of the awful air that flows 
 Unbounded between sea and heaven, while twilight 
 screened 
 The sorrowful distances, he moved and had repose; 
 
 On the huge wind of the Immensity he leaned 
 His steady body in long lapse of flight— and rose 
 
 Gradual, through broad gyres of ever-climbing rest, 
 Up the clear stair of the eternal sky, and stood 
 
 Throned on the summit ! Slowly, with his widening breast, 
 Widened around him the enormous Solitude, 
 
 From the gray rim of ocean to the glowing west. 
 
 Headlands and capes forlorn of the far coast, the land 
 
 Rolling her barrens toward the south, he, from his throne 
 
 Upon the gigantic wind, beheld: he hung— he fanned 
 The abyss for mighty joy, to feel beneath him strown 
 
 Pale pastures of the sea, with heaven on either hand— 
 
 The world with all her winds and waters, earth and air. 
 Fields, folds, and moving clouds. The awful and adored 
 
 55 
 
THE FISH-HAWK 
 
 Arches and endless aisles of vacancy, the fair 
 
 Void of sheer heights and hollows hailed him as her lord 
 And lover in the highest, to whom all heaven lay bare ! 
 
 Till from that tower of ecstasy, that baffled height. 
 
 Stooping, he sank; and slowly on the world's wide way 
 
 Walked, with great wing on wing, the merciless, proud Might, 
 Hunting the huddled and lone reaches for his prey 
 
 Down the dim shore — and faded in the crumbling light. 
 
 Slowly the dusk covered the land. Like a great hymn 
 The sound of moving winds and waters was; the sea 
 
 Whispered a benediction, and the west grew dim 
 
 Where evening lifted her clear candles quietly . . . 
 
 Heaven, crowded with stars, trembled from rim to rim. 
 
 56 
 
DISDAINFUL BEAUTY 
 
 ON the wide waste the web of twiHght, trembling 
 Hangs low with stars and night; 
 The dying day in the worn west, dissembling, 
 Crowns his defeat with light. 
 
 Here by the grave, gray sea my soul sinks crying. 
 
 By beauty stabbed to death — 
 "O, in the dusk of the world, let me, too, dying. 
 
 Mix with all these my breath !" 
 
 There is no answer. In the cold heavens shining, 
 
 Star trembles unto star: 
 The virgin moon in the clear west declining 
 
 Hangs, like a scimitar. 
 
 57 
 
MY LONELY ONE 
 
 EVEN as a hawk's in the large heaven's hollow 
 Are the great ways and gracious of your love: 
 No lesser flight or wearier wing may follow 
 
 In those broad gyres where you rest and move. 
 
 Most merciless, most high, most proud, most lonely — 
 In the clear space between the sky and sea 
 
 Wheel her huge orbits, where the sea-winds only 
 Wander the sun-roads of Immensity. 
 
 Yet have I known your heart and of what fashion 
 Your love, how great, how hardly to be borne — 
 
 Your tenderness, too perfect for compassion. 
 
 Your divine strength, too pure and proud for scorn. 
 
 You are most beautiful, but it is given 
 But few to find you, fewer still to keep 
 
 Your high path through the solitude of heaven. 
 My lonely one, your watch upon the Deep. 
 
 Now toward the gold glow of the sunset's splendor 
 Veer your great vans. What haven in the west 
 58 
 
MY LONELY ONE 
 
 Now draws you — while the mellowing light makes tender 
 Your dripping plumes — what islands of the blest ? 
 
 Lift me, O lift me up to you forever, 
 
 Beautiful Terror ! Let your sacred might 
 
 Stoop to me here, and save — O let me never 
 Sink from you now, to share a lesser flight ! 
 
 Even as I pray, my wings of longing fail me, 
 And my heart flags. In solitude you move 
 
 Down the night's shore: not praying shall avail me, 
 To lift me, fallen from your faultless love. 
 
 59 
 
Ill 
 
 THE LOST TRAVELLER'S DREAM 
 
WILD THOUGHT 
 
 S 
 
 URF of song upon my heart 
 Breaks forever, where thou art; 
 
 The dark ocean in my breast, 
 Of wild love, may never rest: 
 
 Still one thought upon her shore 
 Breaks in dream forevermore ! 
 
 63 
 
JOURNEY'S END 
 
 FORGIVE me, dear, if I have lost my way, 
 In coming home to you 
 
 Through storm and shadow of the gathering night; 
 If I did stray. 
 
 Still I was seeking, and I never knew 
 
 How near me burned the dear and friendly light. 
 
 Now at your door, ere the great Dark begin. 
 Alone I stand, and knock: 
 
 Say not it is too late that I have come — 
 O take me in. 
 
 For I am yours ! Darling, unlock, unlock — 
 All Time to this was but a journey home ! 
 
 64 
 
BELATED LOVE 
 
 COME home to me, are you come home to me, 
 O heart of mine — but in what dolorous guise ! 
 And the great hour, O 'twas otherwise 
 Love had imagined it in days to be ! 
 These pleading hands — these lips — How dreadfully. 
 At what strange lips and in what alien eyes 
 Have you sought mine ? Beneath what darkening skies 
 Come home to me at last, come home to me? 
 
 I would not know the reason: here upon 
 
 This breast of sorrows loose your aching breast; 
 Tell me again and yet again, and say 
 Still the eternal word, still babble on 
 
 Your voiceless tale of some unhappy quest — 
 
 How in the night and storm you lost your way. 
 
 65 
 
A LEAVE-TAKING 
 
 WELL I remember it, that night in May, 
 That last, sweet night in the Old World long ago, 
 The last ere my departure — the dark room 
 That brooded 'round us, and the drowsy breath, 
 Out of the courtyard, of the linden-trees, 
 Pungent and sad. Only your hand I felt, 
 Reached to me in the darkness; and the beat 
 All through its fingers of the unconscious blood, 
 Your life at battle, in the silence told 
 Immortally to mine its plaintive tale 
 And doom eternal — only your hand I felt. 
 Reached to me in the darkness — yet it seemed 
 In your hand's touch I touched your very self, 
 Your very presence, changeable, careless, wild — 
 But O how poignant — sharp with all delight, 
 And gracious with dear bounties to bestow. 
 How greatly granted ! Drowsily then at last. 
 In the old way, you begged me for some legend 
 Out of my boyhood's record, some romance 
 From the far world that bore me; and my voice. 
 In the sweet, alien tongue, your mother-tongue, 
 
 66 
 
A L^EAVE-TAKING 
 
 Moved through the darkness with a peace unfeigned- 
 For a grave peace was on us, and the fear 
 That thrilled the midnight, fell away. The street 
 Slumbered, save where, departing, like a ghost's. 
 Faint footfalls down the farthest distance sighed; 
 And dwindled out forever. ... So you slept. 
 
 Well I remember it, that night in May — 
 The sleep, the hushed awakenings, full of dread. 
 From haunted meres of horror and disdain. 
 From dreams of terror — and the mad return 
 Into the bounteous pity of two arms. 
 The comfort and the kindness. O the return 
 Forever and forever, wild and sad, 
 Seraphic with all weariness and pain, 
 Insatiate with all love — as if to slake 
 In one abandon all the desperate drought 
 Of the years to come ! Upon my own I felt 
 The wet, salt quivering of your lips, and all 
 Your being fold me in, urgent to save, 
 Urgent to hide the approaching loneliness. 
 Our bitter portion; prismed in tears, the dusk 
 Swam 'round with dizzy color: the nightingales, 
 Beauty's disdain above the war of things. 
 Beauty's high pity from her virgin heights, 
 
 67 
 
A LEAVE-TAKING 
 
 Our meeting hearts pierced with a single pang — 
 Like a bright sword of sorrow through the breast 
 Driven, and Uke a bruising sword withdrawn. 
 
 The sun arose — 
 Fled were the nightingales, the love, the joy — 
 And with him rose at last the relentless fear, 
 Like a harsh face never to be pushed back. 
 Between your face and mine; till all the terror, 
 The loneliness, the irrevocable fate. 
 In the dim twilight hugged me, and a cry. 
 Up from my self to your self, would have rent 
 My hesitant lips, in the great need, to you 
 Turned for the last compassion. . . . But you slept. 
 At peace you lay. Over you in the dawn 
 I leaned, and knew you truly what you were. 
 
 Then a great love 
 Triumphing over sorrow, like the light 
 Clearing the west when sunset's wrath has waned 
 Before the risen stars — a mystery — welled 
 Up through me radiant, helpless where you lay 
 In the calm pose of sleep: and above Time, 
 Our little passion, and the circumstance 
 Of temporal tumult, self to self we met; 
 
 68 
 
A LEAVE-TAKING 
 
 And sundered reverent. . . . Faintest breath of flowers 
 
 Stirred in the twihght fragrantly, and there 
 
 The pathos of our days together filled me 
 
 With a new wonder— flooding on me came 
 
 A host of memories, as to one long dead, 
 
 Lifted beyond his living; till all seemed 
 
 Marvellous and immortal and benign. 
 
 And now 
 The hour was come. Beside your quiet breast 
 I begged forgiveness for my many sins 
 Done to you, though unwitting— all the hurt- 
 In a swift prayer, and even for this last — 
 To wake you to your sorrow. And your lips 
 Forgave me — ^yes, in the silence. So I touched 
 Your lids with kisses. And you woke, and wept. 
 
 But brave to the end with a heart-breaking bravery- 
 Gallant and gracious, dear with sacred eyes, 
 You let me go. With a half-kiss we parted. 
 
 II 
 
 Along the city-ways 
 Already day's vehement tumult had begun: 
 Through street and justled alley, court and square. 
 The tireless and eternal Heart poured forth 
 
 69 
 
A LEAVE-TAKING 
 
 Its myriad human faces, grave or glad. 
 
 On the old course of toil (a choral hymn 
 
 From the lips of Life) each face a testimony 
 
 Of some prefiguring love. O the delight, 
 
 The incredible bounty and sustaining will 
 
 Of passionate longing, peopling all the earth — 
 
 And the joy of man and woman ! The laughing boys ! 
 
 The milkman clanking along in his cart, and there 
 
 Two bonneted old women, and there a thief. 
 
 Perhaps, with a night's booty sneaking home ! 
 
 Yet solemn all and sacred, with new eyes 
 
 I saw them then, and in each face I seemed 
 
 With a new soul to read the soul beneath; 
 
 Through love and pain and sorrow having passed 
 
 Into the breast of all humanity — 
 
 Through love and sorrow. Yes, and for your sake, 
 
 Being human, all things human touched to love 
 
 This heart of mine, made holy; and the thought 
 
 Of the million other hearts beyond the dawn — 
 
 The gladness, and the sadness, and the pain — 
 
 Came back upon me like a lifting music. 
 
 Beautiful, and most sorrowful, and divine. 
 
 Till a vast compassion 
 Up through the springs of all my being welled 
 
 70 
 
A LEAVE-TAKING 
 
 Intolerably! Ah, even as to myself, 
 Unfaithful, the exuberant Bounty stooped 
 With arms of pity; so I longed to do- 
 To lose myself at last in the Great Self 
 That beams upon the just and the unjust, 
 Carelessly shedding radiant hght around: 
 Compassing finite hate with infinite love. 
 With beauty, ugliness, and death with life! 
 
 So through that street of pouring souls I passed, 
 
 Torn between grief and ecstasy. But none 
 
 Guessed the immortal secret that I bore 
 
 Close at the fluttering heart— the fear— the joy— 
 
 The very beat and memory in my blood. 
 
 The exquisite sense and lingering pain of you. 
 
 71 
 
BUT LOVE — 
 
 FLOWING in the sunlight here, 
 The river shines Hke a glass, 
 Even as it did last year; 
 On the hillside the grass 
 Bows, as the breezes pass — 
 
 But my love is gone, my love is gone. 
 
 Where is she — where, and how? 
 Has she forgotten me yet? 
 
 Ah, she has forgotten me now ! 
 She is too lovely for regret: 
 W^ould that I ever could forget. 
 
 My love is gone, my love is gone ! 
 
 It is so still — so still . . . 
 
 The sound of a rumbling train 
 Rushes into the hill. 
 
 Autumn comes again 
 
 With the old wonder and pain — 
 
 But love comes never again 
 
 72 
 
B 
 
 ANNE 
 
 ELOVED— O adorable and false— 
 Whom have you taken now in the dear toils ? 
 
 By what pale margins do your footsteps stray. 
 
 Or what enchanted wood ? What valleys hold 
 
 The lily of your loveliness ? What hills 
 
 Have known your weight upon them, what far shores ? 
 
 Twilight comes tenderly, while evening lifts 
 Along the pallid rim her lonely star — 
 
 O happy heart on which your heart is laid ! 
 
 73 
 
THE SILENCE 
 
 IN the evening, in the quiet Park, we walked together 
 ^ After so many and after so many years — 
 We walked again in the evening, in the warm May weather, 
 After the partings and tears. 
 
 And under the splendor, under the starry skies. 
 
 We walked, without sound or sigh, in a calm unbroken; 
 
 As the dead walk together in a long-lost Paradise — 
 Silent, with no word spoken. 
 
 74 
 
EXULTATION 
 
 BEFORE the dawn the very thought of you, 
 That wakes me, as the morning wakes the night, 
 Floods all my heart with most exultant joy. 
 
 The thought of you that rises with the stars, 
 
 When evening wheels all glittering through the dark, 
 
 Floods all my heart with most exultant joy. 
 
 O life and joy and breath and death of me. 
 With every breath I draw you in like air ! 
 O I shall die of you, of you, of you ! 
 
 Though now you banish me forevermore. 
 Never to look upon your face again— 
 Think you that I shaU sorrow for my love? 
 
 Though I shall lie upon my bed of death 
 And know you have forgotten me forever- 
 Think you that I shall sorrow for my love? 
 
 life and joy and breath and death of me, 
 
 1 shall cry out exultant— and lie dead ! 
 O I shall die of you, of you, of you ! 
 
 75 
 
EXULTATION 
 
 love, I love you better than you know ! 
 
 1 love you as the water loves the sea. 
 
 I love you as the twilight loves the dark. 
 
 The trumpets of the morning, to my heart 
 From shining towers blow the thought of you; 
 The waves of evening flood my heart with you. 
 
 O life and joy and breath and death of me, 
 With every breath I draw you in like air ! 
 O I shall die of you, of you, of you ! 
 
 76 
 
SONG OF SONGS 
 
 ly A Y heart is like a shady grove 
 ^ " ' That harbors, for a June, 
 My thoughts, Hke song-birds mad with love 
 Under the moon. 
 
 On all the windy boughs they sit 
 
 And in the blowing grass — 
 But one bird silently enters it. 
 
 And sings, alas! 
 
 Then all the rest grow sad and still 
 
 That made a happy noise: 
 There is no sound on all the hill 
 
 But that one voice. 
 
 Faint with the memories in his breast — 
 
 It is the thought of you — 
 And when it ceases, all the rest 
 
 Are silent, too. 
 
 77 
 
SORROWFUL FREEDOM 
 
 LONG days I begged of my heart to be 
 -' Released from a love that haunted me— 
 The memory of a last embrace, 
 A tyrannous and a lovely face. 
 
 "Free me," I said, "from an old love. 
 The memory and the might thereof — 
 Free to follow and take my fill 
 Of beauty and laughter where I will." 
 
 Never a word my heart replied: 
 But on a day the old love died; 
 Vanished, never to come again, 
 All the passion and all the pain. 
 
 Come — we are free to take our fill 
 Of beauty and laughter where we will — 
 O heart, are we free forevermore 
 From the old sorrow we loved before ! 
 
 78 
 
STARLESS MORNING 
 
 nnOWARD starless morning, when deep night had bowed 
 
 -■• On slumber's pillow my unhappy head, 
 
 Through the dim room it drifted like a cloud — 
 
 And swayed in silence by my lonely bed. 
 
 What had they done to you, that dumbly so 
 
 You covered with your hands your quiet face — 
 
 Dear, out of kindness, that I might not know 
 
 What horror there had wrought its dark disgrace ! 
 
 It was those hands, too passionately, too well 
 
 Loved, that betrayed you — O most piteous guest ! 
 
 And to my heart, in the intolerable 
 
 Rage of despair, that shadow I had pressed, 
 
 Mingling in a shrill cry our grief supreme — 
 
 My sweet — my pretty ! But, as I had drawn 
 
 That anguish to my arms, they clasped a dream; 
 
 And heaven glimmered with the approaching dawn. 
 
 79 
 
PHANTOM 
 
 ALONG the edge of the great, moving sea — 
 That moaned forever on her barren bars, 
 The old, sad love came back again to me. 
 Moving quietly under the quiet stars. 
 
 O sad love, do not smile upon me so. 
 
 Nodding so gently with your little head — 
 All the old wonder of your eyes is dead, 
 
 And the sea-winds have chilled you long ago! 
 
 80 
 
LEGEND 
 
 WHERE are you hid from me, beloved one 
 That I am seeking through the lonely world 
 A wanderer, on my way home to you ? 
 
 Dark is the night and perilous the road: 
 At many a breast in longing have I leaned. 
 At many a wayside worshipped; and my heart 
 Is tired from long travelling. 
 
 Perhaps 
 In centuries to come you wait for me, 
 And are as yet an iris by the stream 
 Lifting her single blossom, or the faint 
 Tremulous haze upon the hills— and we 
 Have missed each other. 
 
 O if it be so, 
 Then may this song reach to the verge of doom— 
 Ages unborn— to find you where you are. 
 My lonely one; and like a murmuring string. 
 Faint with one music, endlessly repeat 
 81 
 
LEGEND 
 
 To you, not even knowing I was yours, 
 Her plaintive burden from the dolorous past: 
 Telling of one upon a hopeless quest — 
 How in the dark of Time he lost his way ! 
 
 8^ 
 
IV 
 
 THE DIVINE FANTASY 
 
DROTHER, from what dim world of lonely light, 
 *^ Trembling on heaven's pinnacles to-night, 
 Is lifted your sad face of love while you 
 Stare upward toward me, staring upward, too. 
 At that faint flame which is your home, between 
 The leafy branches of these poplars seen — 
 So hushed, so far ! Perhaps to-night you scan 
 Your starry heaven for the star of Man, 
 High in the trellis of eternity 
 And glittering arches hung; perhaps like me 
 You, too, look up and wonder. Is it fair. 
 That world of yours ? Are there great cities there. 
 Populous millions, hearts that beat as these. 
 Clear meadows and far mountains, shoreless seas. 
 Shadows of moving armies, thrones that shake? 
 Does the heart thrill for love there, does it break — 
 Tell me, are there hushed gardens, quiet tombs? 
 And mighty poets weaving at their looms 
 The old, dim wisdoms that outweary Time; 
 And saints, and lifted saviours, and subHme 
 Faiths and high fortitudes beyond belief? 
 — All blotted out by one small poplar leaf 
 In the light wind of languid summer stirred ! 
 
 85 
 
THE DIVINE FANTASY 
 
 Brother, what news out of the night, what word 
 
 From the frontiers of mind beyond our ken, 
 
 Of mysteries unimagined yet of men, 
 
 Compassed by travail of your spirit ? O 
 
 Could you but reach to us ! Could we but know 
 
 Across the imperturbable old Dark 
 
 Some answering glimmer of the ancient Spark 
 
 liifted — some token, tangible to sense. 
 
 Of the indomitable Intelligence 
 
 That thrones on matter — language visible — 
 
 Crying, "Eternity — and all is well! 
 
 Brother, be of good cheer; we, too, have known! 
 
 Not lonely moves, not utterly alone. 
 
 Your sad fraternity through the dark of God: 
 
 But the confederate legions are abroad, 
 
 Life's flag advances on the starry way. 
 
 And Consciousness, still battling, still at bay. 
 
 Holds the bright forts against Oblivion — " 
 
 What answering thrill would 'round the planet run ! 
 
 For we are one; all Consciousness is one, 
 Whatever form it wear, however dressed 
 In gray or glamour, in whatever breast 
 It lift its longing: glimmering it moves 
 Through the green wave; it stamps with startled hooves 
 
 86 
 
THE DIVINE FANTASY 
 
 The upland pastures of the world, and soars 
 In heaven with the eagle; on bright shores 
 It basks a sunny body, or in dread 
 Lifts from the undergrowth a snaky head 
 And darts a flickering tongue; it is most clear 
 In the lark's throat; among the grasses here. 
 That couch the ant, it turns a tiny eye 
 Around the darkness; scampers and is shy 
 In the scared rabbit; through the murmuring air 
 Wheels with the beetle, and, where heaven is bare. 
 Southward with the wild crane at summer's close. 
 Hungering, an eternal pilgrim goes 
 On quests implacable. And from the eyes 
 Of the poised panther gleam the cruelties 
 Of its stern need that roams the world, and rends 
 With tooth or talon; in the hawk descends 
 On the stunned squirrel; in the squirrel moans 
 As the hawk strikes; darkens the earth with bones 
 Of its own wreck and, hungering again. 
 Knows in its body the old spur. For when 
 Hunger, the shadow cast by death, draws near, 
 Life on her thousand thrones feels the one fear, 
 And in the lion's roar at dusk is heard 
 The unassuagable, insistent word 
 Of urgent Being, clamorous to be. 
 
 87 
 
THE DIVINE FANTASY 
 
 Wreaking and wrought upon, eternally 
 
 Mingling and mixed; inextricably blent, 
 
 Victor and vanquished, in one sacrament — 
 
 Body with body — of delight and death. 
 
 It moves in splendor; lifts the shuddering breath 
 
 Of the spent stag; and in the mind of Man 
 
 Rebels against the miserable plan — 
 
 Flings its frail web of thought across the path 
 
 Of suns in heaven, and in holy wrath. 
 
 On blood of murdered brothers nourished, still 
 
 Thunders to all the world. Thou shall not kill! 
 
 And the worm's death is in the sparrow's song. 
 
 And I have seen it in the gnats that throng 
 Old shadowy forests, in tumultuous dance; 
 Or in the little measuring-worm advance, 
 Inch by slow inch, along the swaying stem 
 Of some exalted flower; or lift the hem 
 Of the frail butterfly's embroidered cloak 
 In gentle breathings that the sun did stroke 
 Caressingly with fingers of his heat; 
 Or from the dog yearn upward, and entreat 
 With eyes of adoration or of fear 
 The great god, Man — "What message, master dear. 
 From the dim heights beyond me where you are?" 
 
 88 
 
THE DIVINE FANTASY 
 
 In the mare's tremulous whinnj^ in the far 
 Lowing of cattle from the upland sward, 
 Or wail of whip-poor-wills, at twilight poured 
 On pools of silence plaintively, or cry 
 Of the lone wolf beneath the glittering sky 
 Of soundless winter, I have heard the same 
 Splendor speak forth, and utter the one name 
 Of Life, the dreadful, the magnificent. 
 
 All afternoon the passion of heaven spent 
 On earth its fiery fury in blind, bright 
 Lightnings of dread and laughters of delight 
 Down shuddering deeps of shaken thunder, where 
 The delirious longing loosed its sorrowing hair 
 Of wind and shower and overshadowing cloud 
 Across the beloved face, in darkness bowed 
 Or glimmering light revealed; and cried aloud 
 For anger of utter ecstasy; and shed 
 The wild love of the rushing rain that sped 
 To the thrilled heart, consenting, of the dim 
 And rapturous earth, that lifted up to him 
 Drowsed lips of thirsty flowers; and the cup 
 Of every flower for joy was lifted up, 
 And drank, and swayed! So, wearied out at length. 
 Flagged the bright pulses, and the ebbing strength, 
 
 89 
 
THE DIVINE FANTASY 
 
 With muttering of remembered thunders, passed 
 Down the large shores of evening: till at last 
 The exhausted heaLven of twilight from afar 
 Shone washed of all her sorrows; and a star 
 Brooded above the fading storm, and saw 
 The winnowed reaches deepening into awe 
 Of gradual darkness, and the fields that lay 
 All drenched and wearied out at dusk of day 
 And the worn end of things; while far away 
 The receding fury moaned. 
 
 And now they lie 
 In the same peace around me, and the sky 
 Holds up her stars; now in the rain-drenched wood 
 The tree-toad drinks the rain and finds it good, 
 And trills for joy — the sliding waters grieve 
 Quietly — now the bat begins to weave 
 With intricate motion on the cloudy loom. 
 Of glamourous starlight mingled and gray gloom, 
 His dipping flight among the darkened boughs 
 And dreamy vistas; and the little mouse 
 Furtively hurries through the lane, his eye 
 Turned up in terror as the owl goes by: 
 On softest feathers of silence overhead 
 Flits the dim shadow of the ancient dread. 
 
THE DIVINE FANTASY 
 
 Hooded and vague, the cruelty of his beak 
 Bent on old lustful mysteries. — A squeak — 
 A scuffle — beating of wings — and in the lane 
 Silence — and the old wrong is done again, 
 That was ere Adam; the triumphant heart 
 And the defeated, each one doomed to his part. 
 They play it through, the old tragedy where one 
 Presence still wars and still is warred upon. 
 Slays and is slain: while fiercely all around 
 Shakes the eternal love-song in shrill sound. 
 Of grasshopper and cricket — sleepless flow 
 The immortal tides of longing to and fro 
 On waves of music; endless is the prayer 
 Of life to the beloved, everywhere 
 Lifted in adoration: on dark shores 
 Beats the insistent passion that implores 
 The one dear breast of pity or disdain. 
 To be reborn, to be reborn again — 
 Nor perish wholly ! The blind earth is thrilled 
 As with vague rites accomplished, dreams fulfilled, 
 Marriage and mystic union; all along 
 Her brimming meadows rings the bridal song 
 And chaunt ecstatic: that great heart of hers 
 Is touched now the eternal longing stirs 
 From hill to hollow and hollow to clear hill 
 
 91 
 
THE DIVINE FANTASY 
 
 In many voices mingled, or the still 
 
 Ecstasy of the firefly that trails 
 
 Among the shadows where the starlight fails, 
 
 His body's burning love. Forever flows 
 
 The dreadful drama to its stately close 
 
 And endless ending — the fierce carnival 
 
 Of death and passion, wherein each and all 
 
 Mix, and are mingled, slaughter, blend, and pass 
 
 Each into other — the high poem that has 
 
 No end and no beginning, that the one 
 
 Self in all living forms beneath the sun. 
 
 And on all worlds around him and above, 
 
 Weaves on the strands of hunger, death, and love. 
 
 I see it all, I hear it all, and lie 
 Under my swaying poplars, and the sky 
 Is fretted with frail leaves. The mortal dream 
 Is in my heart: I hear the night-hawk's scream 
 Shatter the silver silences, I hear 
 The owl's clear tremolo rise over-clear — 
 The mouse's blood along his veins has made 
 His love-note lovelier and the night afraid 
 Of beauty's dreadful secret — and I know 
 Soft shapes of stealth that in the darkness go. 
 Of furry lusts and gnawing hungers, small 
 
 92 
 
THE DIVINE FANTASY 
 
 Twittering things obscene, that flit or crawl 
 In furtive secrecy, vague mouths and blurred 
 Of the night creature or nocturnal bird — 
 Amorphous moth and bat-wing — and the earth, 
 With all her burrows, nooks and nests of birth 
 Crowded, and wreck of many a perished might. 
 By the ebbed waters of Life*s fierce delight 
 Washed up on shores of silence — spoiled and spurned 
 Altars where once the sacred fire burned — 
 Forms flowing back into the Formlessness; 
 In a supreme embrace, a long caress. 
 Mixing their bodies with the mother mould — 
 And all the heaven of stars around me rolled. 
 Whose brooding eyes have stared so many an age 
 Upon this theatre of lust and rage. 
 Of death and adoration. And a breeze 
 Rustles the branches of the poplar-trees. 
 
 Dear Spark, that shinest in the solitude ! 
 One Consciousness, that in the brotherhood 
 Of all earth's living creatures movest on 
 The shaken ramparts of Oblivion — 
 Whose starry cry, across the darkness hurled. 
 Makes music in the silence of the world ! 
 Life, whose sole splendor in red slaughter spills 
 
THE DIVINE FANTASY 
 
 The blood of its own breast; in many wills 
 Wars on the one Will; and in wrath or dread 
 Feeds on itself and, on itself being fed, 
 Shines forth in song and color; gilds the dress 
 Of the green-fly; and pours its loveHness 
 In rapture on the earth; in theatres 
 Of crowded congregation sits — nor stirs — 
 Watching itself, itself the spectacle; 
 And builds the swallow's breast, and shapes the shell 
 And all these mansions of its thought that are 
 Between the morning and the evening-star. 
 On earth, in heaven, or in the glimmering caves 
 And grottoes of the world below the waves — 
 Butchers the ox, and, gladdened by his meat, 
 In the young mother's downward smile is sweet; 
 Or, sated on his body, walks abroad 
 In symphonies, and poems, and prayers to God; 
 Sins, and has conscience and, repenting, sins; 
 And in the lowly patient spider spins 
 Its fragile web; and in these words of mine 
 Flings out its groping utterance, line by line, 
 Across the intangible abyss of thought — 
 With infinite passion, infinite patience wrought — 
 Dread Loveliness ! Be strong in me, be strong. 
 To utter forth your meaning in my song ! 
 
 94 
 
THE LION-HOUSE 
 
ALWAYS the heavy air, 
 ^ The dreadful cage, the low 
 Murmur of voices, where 
 
 Some Force goes to and fro 
 In an immense despair ! 
 
 As through a haunted brain— 
 
 With tireless footfalls 
 The Obsession moves again, 
 
 Trying the floor, the walls, 
 Forever, but in vain. 
 
 In vain, proud Force ! A might. 
 Shrewder than yours, did spin 
 
 Around your rage that bright 
 Prison of steel, wherein 
 
 You pace for my delight. 
 
 And O, my heart, what Doom, 
 What warier Will has wrought 
 
 The cage, within whose room 
 Paces your burning thought, 
 
 For the deUght of Whom? 
 97 
 
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