GIFT OF o POEMS OF PERSONALITY THIRD SERIES REGINALD C. ROBBINS " to speak beyond the book " CAMBRIDGE >rinteti at Cfje ft 1917 COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY REGINALD CHAUNCEY ROBBINS ALL RIGHTS RESERVED [ trj CONTENTS HOMER 3 JOB . . . . > 8 ISAIAH 14 DEMOCRITUS 21 VERGIL 31 JOHN THE BAPTIST 35 PHILO .38 MARCUS AURELIUS 50 PLOTINUS 58 ORIGEN 75 JULIAN 87 PELAGIUS 9* CHARLEMAGNE 96 ERIGENA ... ... 100 ABELARD 105 BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX 112 iii 492231 CONTENTS FRANCIS OF ASSISI 117 FREDERICK II, HOHENSTAUFEN . . . 123 VILLON 129 CHARLES V 137 BACH 144 FICHTE 153 SCHOPENHAUER 159 LINCOLN 178 WAGNER 182 GLADSTONE 196 BRAHMS 208 NIETZSCHE 216 ROYCE 224 POEMS OF PERSONALITY THIRD SERIES HOMER THE mighty morning wakes! Earth, heaven and ocean Leap to the touch of sweet, swift-footed light Adown yon orient atmosphere dawn-dancing, Quick-shafted from the Asian mountain-ridge Distant upon the lordly continent! And this green isle with cliffs surf-circled standeth, A gem amid the many-murmuring waters, White-ring d with the wine-wonder of the sea. And ever twixt mine isle and that far shore The shimmering wind-rows of the wave advancing Come gleaming onward at a wide approach, Feeding the eye of the mind with impulse urgent (Out of the new-born day and fountain d Ida, Out of the swift-oncoming air and ocean Or hither-streaming, sweet, quick-footed light) To sing to-day once more, as many a day I sang; as none before mine hour have sung-it In palace or in herdsman s hut, in ship On ocean beaten or the rocky place Of some high altar mountainward; to sing The strife of men and gods (sith gods impel 3 POEMS OF PERSONALITY And alway shall impel the light of morning, The sweep of the air and ocean s foamy rage Storm-stricken), to sing of ancient, mighty men Like ocean, air and earth high-powerful Yet in a strife the gods had stirr d them to Shattered and suffering, wasted through the years (Unless in suffering be best herohood!) Like as a day were wasted when no song Issues from lips upon the promontory Nor paean at the dawn-tide poureth on The hurrying impulse wine-hued of the wave! For, many a year, told I the tale of Troia And of the hero-wanderer seeking home Against Poseidon, Troia being destroy d, In Chios singing who was youthful then And hale, but now (an aged man white-hair d) Feel, by the morning-wind in northern Lesbos, The singing-hour upon me once again! Thou, Zeus, hast felt as when Homeros singeth: When from thy front full-arm d Athene sprang (Goddess of couraged foresight to the strife) Perchance at morning, when the silver shafts Of Phoibos through thine high Olympian hall Woke thee to rapture and thou borest her! 4 HOMER O Zeus, in imitation of thy glory The dawn hath call d me to create for men In mine old-age as in mine hours of youth A music of the elements, a splendor Of song-burst to be flung o er world awide In voice of the bard chanting the woven tale New combats and new triumphs and new woes Which men may sing mix d with the former chants Nor guess thereby the maker were grown old! And, though the fate be dire as is the strife Through the long day and unto Hades end, Yet all is of the morning in my mind (However aged be the race of men) Singing the hero-working though we die! Doubtless there shall be songs of evening heard; And songs of noon-tide when the heavier blue Broods o er an ocean swooning in the sun Heedless of gods or men or hero-strife, Calm, harmless as a tether d sacrifice And they be otherwise than Asia s now Of blaze and starting forth to the day s fate. And doubtless may bewilderment ensue To men not born of morning, wondering then How that Homeros sang as then they d sing not; 5 POEMS OF PERSONALITY And, finding in Homeros not their own Noon-moveless ocean of the heedless gleam Nor terrors troublous of an evening eye, Shall blame and call me blind! But am I blind, O Zeus, who stand upon my promontory In Lesbos near to Troas (where I came Yearning from Chios for the winds of Ida) With open d lips and couraged, steadfast gaze Ever to eastward at the opening day Taking thine instigation; whilst from Ida That looks upon the Trojan northward plain, Skamandros flood and shores where heroes fell Sweeps ever over the wine-faced, rustling sea Coming and coming as in foam-row borne The wind of inspiration, thine Athene (Foresighted to the tumult of the strife, Sustaining in the hero each resource) Who gives the impulse to the mounting mind And makes in me the morning yet of men? Nay, Zeus; nor are they blind who follow after With music of a lyre though earth be old, Old; and the race of men white-hair d as I ! Not blind are they who, though the noon be duird With hot oppression or the pallid glare 6 HOMER Of Hades-ominous clouds black-piled along The margin of a westward ocean bode A night too starless, find within the mind Still thine Athene, still a morning-strength Than mine the loftier that it singeth yet Though days and years of element are pass d And Troia be forgotten with my name; And men no more be striving. Yea, O Zeus, Though all were heedless of thee, or all despair d Thine orient turning, never shouldst thou fail At last (the appointed dawn-tide hour at hand) In wind of inspiration, thine Athene, As now to urge upon their voicelessness A song from out the spirit; which, suffering, Yet striveth herowise; which seeth earth As no earth were without thee though the eye Be sightless, sightless: even as mine own! JOB NOT by the Voice shall I be overcome, Not by the overbearingness of God Subdued; where power, domineering still, Disdains all justice! Shall I be reduced (And after endurance of such manifold, Unmerited agonies!) by mere rebuke In bluster of the tempest, to succumb In spirit as in body and be dust, No longer questioning, no longer Man? I grant the ways of the Lord, inscrutable ! I grant the injustice, not to be explained! Yet will not acquiesce and turn for Him A minister of monstrous wantonness Unstirr d of nobler promptings. God or Man, I still must choose between them and elect (Ah! even the dust but would be questioning!) The juster, though mine agony abide Fourfold the vengeance of the unjust Judge, Soever mighty to devour me up With wrath and whirlwind: who His wrath insult! Ah, Lord! not thus shalt Thou o erpower the man By taunt and boasting, though Behemoth too 8 JOB (However halfway mighty up to Thee!) Moan and Leviathan beweep Thy strength! If with Behemoth and Leviathan I suffer, so my steadfast sympathy For sufferance tormented of Thy hand Doubly defies Thee for the brotherhood! Lo ! dost Thou spur the Horse to rush on spears, Put madness in his nostrils at the sound Of trumpet and by battle him destroy, Him and the captains trusting in his might And Thine to aid the righteous, nor betray? Lo! the Gazel upon the sparsest weed Thou starvest, that beneath the fire at last Of desert drouth her fever may be flame And that same speed, Thou gavest her to keep her, Wither and waste before the javelin? Behemoth also he at last must fall Alone, beyond the help of any arm Than Thine and dost Thou save him with Thy strength? Or dost Thou watch him all-unpityingly Gasp out the great gasps, or Leviathan Drown in the flood that Thou hadst made for him: Drown and be carcass rotted on the strand 9 POEMS OF PERSONALITY To heaven high-stinking, when one turn or touch Of Thy least finger had sustained him? Jehovah! Thou hast against Thee many a charge Of heaviest obloquy: Who may st, but will st not; Who canst all things for good yet workest ill! And by the Voice of One all-powerful But all-unjust shall I be overcome? Ah, God ! to force me thus into defiance Most miserable to the meekness of me: The worst if last of Thine injustices, Because preventing me from reverence As Thou from pity long hast been absolved; Goading me from my posture of a patience Submissive still if questioning! That now From any more injustice I escape (And with me Thy creation, Beast and Man!) By rising up in judgment: I, at worst, A judge over my Maker, face to face! I tell Thee, Lord! t is Thou Who must be judged, If I am but Thine image, face to face, So capable of judgment even as Thou! I tell Thee, God! that I will be Thy judge 10 JOB Yet justly, very justly, lest Thy fault Repeat in me Thy creature. For Thy fault Is very grievous as I know Thee now Convicted out of Thine own voice and boast Of fashioning a world in wantonness. Thou might st have pleaded of some power above Thee Thwarting Thy will for well; Thou might st have shown me Some compensation to my misery By justice otherwhere through my great wrong. Thou pleadedst not, but boastedst of these things. I grant Thy ways were erst inscrutable Anent injustice plainly to be known: The injustice proven, not to be explained. Nor now might Thine injustice be explain d In this its worst compulsion to revolt Unless, unless high humanhood compell d Of Thy misdeed, Man s scrupulosity In fear of imaging his Maker s fault, This better-than-mere-justice speaking now Be Thy supreme achievement, pardoning all The dire arraignment drawn of Thine own lips? For, God! I even in my misery here ii POEMS OF PERSONALITY Grieve for Behemoth and Leviathan, For Horse and Doe (not to discourse of pains On other men inflicted; nor of Thee To pity Thine injustice!); I in pain Unspeakable yet speak at risk of life (A life how gladly rendered up to Thee; Save for this zeal, first to defend Thy fame By seeking explanation of my woe Against false explanation of the Friends, And now to acquit Thee in Thine own despite!), Yet argue, at the risk of death, with Thee The Omnipotent in Evil, but to prove Thy world, if half-unwittingly to Thee, A work of splendor, that Thy morning-stars Which sang together sang not wantonly! How were it, Lord! that Thou couldst make such men As judge Thee not ungenerously, though They suffer with the anguish of thine earth? Perchance Thou feelest too the fate of all; And pitiest, deserving so my pity, Most poignantly because Thou madest them To bear with Thee in patience more-than-just, To judge of Thee in generosity; 12 JOB And knowest the glory of Thy handiwork: Thyself almost as Man, to glory in it? What were my vindication beyond death, Which could not reach Thee as the Lord of Life, To this that vindicateth Thee by me? Speak to me, Thou ! declare Thou unto me, If that the secret of the universe Be Thine; and mine but counsel without knowledge! Art Thou now silent, whilst upon my tongue Trembles the explanation of Thy ways Their problem and perplexity to man : The way of pity, that Thou madest us, And feelest with the creatures Thou hast made The pangs of Thine injustice and the glory Of human generosity to Thee (Proving of Thee Thy wise creatorship, The saving immolation of Thy pride!) Beyond all meekness, as I judge Thee now? Lord! for Thy silence, I submit to Thee! ISAIAH IN God s sight and in man s the chastisement Of Ephraim beneath the conqueror s yoke Is just; fulfilment of a prophesying Long spoken, openly the hand of God: That Ephraim sweats and groans with ox and ass, Doing hard labor in an alien land As erst in Egypt. Yea, the doom is just. For Ephraim, was she not idolatrous, Allied with Syria and Damascus gods (Whether the idols be Jehovah call d Or Baal what heed, when God is not of stone?) A nation of backsliders; save a few Who, fiery-tongued and of the lips of God Inspired, spake for Him over overtly (Hosea, Amos and the mightier twain) Denouncing idols, Asshur equally With Baal though Jehovah s instrument Be Asshur to Samaria s overthrow? And, where the warning of the prophet-tongues Against reliance on the heathen strength Of Baal, Syria and Damascus cult Was no more heeded than the twitter of birds; ISAIAH And idol-priests within, without the land, In Ephraim as in Syria, mock d the more; There shall not vast Assyrian hosts destroy And rape into an exile righteously The people, so to purge by fire and spear The unclean high-places? And, though here and yon Be one or two fair sheaves amid the tares Enmesh d in field-wide ruin, shall not God By riddance root and branch prepare the ground Best for repentance and the remnant-growth If any shall remain in His good time? Ah, Judah! Judah! have I not said Woe! Woe! unto Ephraim with terrible speech Of chastisement impending and when now Their punishment approveth prophecy And mine appointment from Jehovah stands Before the tribes made plain, shall I, in this ( Mine hour of vindication from the taunts (From Ephraim or from Judah snarling out In fierce refusal to allow the truth For fear of doom or horror at the fate), In mine exoneration from the taunts 15 POEMS OF PERSONALITY Of prosperous unrighteousness, deplore The glory of the justice of our God? Their doom is just; and God is on my side Against the scoffers and shall I denounce Mine inspiration and repent of God? Ah, God ! could not Thy power have forced Thy folk, Those children of the covenant, to care For Thee and for Thy warning nor compel The realization of such prophecies? Ah, God! could not Thy servant, even I, Have suffer d, as a scapegoat unto Thee, For every sin of Ephraim; that they Thy flock, my brethren still for all their fault, Had turn d unto repentance and bewray d My speech, mine insight and my service for Thee By sheer anticipation, spoiling all Of warning by the punishment forestall d? God, I would vouch to Thee, even I, Thy clay, Would vouch to Thee for Ephraim, wouldst Thou But cancel inspiration, leave me proved Blasphemer if but yon Assyrian host Were from the waste-lands of Samaria And from their fastnesses to north and east 16 ISAIAH Cast out; and Ephraim in prosperity Returned and once more vineyarded of home! Behold! if but some fear Thou hadst vouchsafed Unto their souls (not anger at my words!) That, Syrian Damascus left alone To overthrow by those Assyrian hosts, Scorning a dalliance with the heathen gods Their feet had turn d unto Thy righteousness And so been saved by my false prophesying! Ah ! then had I been more Thy prophet, more (Though in disgrace) the worker in Thy field; Then, then, by the spectacle of downfall yielden (It dawns upon me I should serve Thee so More than by confirmation of Thy pledge!) For every high intent within my spirit, An evidence of God-nobility Beyond mere mulct and wage, example to them (Dread Lord! example haply too to Thee!) Of best desert precluded from reward, Of loftiest merit openly denied And Thy world-power frustrate seemingly Nay, frustrate, O Jehovah, veritably Unless a loftier than justice rule 17 POEMS OF PERSONALITY Thy world and generosity have shape Within Thy heart and will, as in mine own The generosity of huge regret Hath birth beside my triumph. Ah, for Judah, Where yet the Assyrian conqueror abstains, Be generous, God! oh, wreak on me Thy wrath If by mine uttermost discrediting Thy meting-out of judgment be forsworn To nobler purposes, to leading-on Not by the chastisement but, as in me By opening of the bowels of compassion, The travails of a sympathy with Thee In Thy new part of Healer, saviorhood Which needeth not the surfeit-hemorrhage To force the fruit of pity purgative! O great Jehovah! wreck but my career, Destroy this prophet-reputation with The basis of the justice-prophesying (For generosity can none foretell!); Purge and prevent Thy people ere the fact Of God-establishment by ruin of them! For am not I, Thy servant, one alone, A prophet crying in the wilderness; And are not they, Thy people, many thousands; 18 ISAIAH And wert not Thou, O Lord, the greater God For dwelling in the heart and soul and strength Of thousands glad at home (a fellowship Of prophets as the heart shall speak for Thee In confidence beyond the need of foresight!), Of thousands Thine for love; not in the fear The hate of a poor people laboring (Some remnant of them) in a stranger-land With ox and ass beneath the burden of A conqueror who knoweth not Thy name? And I, Thy servant, if Thou anywise Troublest at my discredit and disgrace, Comfort Thyself that I shall ever praise Thee, Praising Thee but the more should justice fail And generosity in Thee awake To my destruction. As Samaria now In this her ruin d silence privily Should I endure it, nor disturb Thy peace With any lamentation. For the truth That I the last, and no man after me, Should perish of Thy justice, such a truth (Thou wouldst allow the foresight finally!) Though I be sawn asunder in Thy courts (And, shouldst but Thou present the paradigm, 19 POEMS OF PERSONALITY Then in Thine image might men pardon me) The sense of such a truth as man s salvation And spirit-softening at Thy forgiveness Would lift my spirit to the mountain-tops Vocal above the valleys with Thy feet! 20 DEMOCRITUS LIKE as the myriad atoms of the sands So small, so tough that nought may cut nor crush Nor anywise effect diminishment In any of them like the desert sands Here of Aigyptos neath my wandering feet (These grains in curious shapes indeed diverse) Lieth the first material of the world, The substance of the prime necessity, As though in this hot sunshine wide and whole Declared, to reasonings illuminate. Of myriad truths composed the substance holdeth; Things real; alone in primal shape unlike; And in such sorts unlike as primal shape, Affording to sense and so to human act Derivative reality indeed, Doubtless may gender of the impact of them (Which sensuous characters Protagoras, Though scarce Leukippos, hath provided for!) As can, for seeming to a human sense, By doubtful parlance of the modern mood Be added of the mind. Though ultimately (Leukippos, scarce Protagoras, in this!) 21 POEMS OF PERSONALITY Are the atoms, so I deem them, as they are (The shaping first assumed) so wholly like In kind each unto each that utmost search (Like mine upon the face of the desert here) Might nowise set apart as other-sorted One grain of the world from other ay, save in size, Itself from absolute form derivative: As desert sands, though each as each too small For diminution, yet are size-unlike, Some smaller and some larger in themselves. That thus in size and weight (derivative From primal form, I know) may difference be Real, toward our purposes of thought To be relied upon as given to it (Though reasonable; yet alogical, Not sensuous-added of the mind!), among Things utterly substantial each from each. Nor need we any other truths assumed Than these of atomism, the tough, the small, The several indeed of shape and size But otherwise an homogeneousness. For all beside is sensuously derived, Logic-related, added of the mind 22 DEMOCRITUS As t were, and therefore not approvable; Ay, therefore not thus for first philosophy! Ah, here as I stand upon the desert plains I thus define their full reality, Sands, sands and sands, beneath diminishment Or multiplication; myriads, each too small And all too many for intrinsic change; And therefore, though no All of Elea, Yet nothing like the Dream of Ephesos! The shimmering of the sun-fire well may seem Sand-alteration; or the desert air May hang in the margin of the open heavens Tall palms and glimmering pools of phantasy. But these no more than falsehoods of the tongue Are for the physic-search of human wisdom A reasonable substance. At my feet Lie sands and sands, a multiplicity (Declared to reasoning of the high sunshine) Unwavering save to figment of the sense, And yet, unlike the All of Elea, Substantial, not in virtue overall Of vague enlargement unto boundlessness, But rather because thus utterly minute In every element-identity; 23 POEMS OF PERSONALITY Sands, sands, in truth; a waste as but by naming (Beware the stagnant void of Elea!), No stagnant void, but capable, each grain, If scarce of an ultimate alterance to sense Yet, in a truth ulterior to sense, Of motion; ay, not, as sang Parmenides, A very palm-hung pool of phantasy, A glimmering merely, but, itself instinct With potence and the making of the worlds; A source-of-all-sensation veritable, A matrix to the modelling of mind, Not unrelated to the acts of men. Yet one thing more! Behold the acts of men (Which for Parmenides were mystery; Yea, for Leukippos, dubiously described Without or source or service veritable) Themselves, as shown us of Protagoras If not of Herakleitos, motionwise And thus derivatively of the Real Resembling any act mechanical Whether of sand or atom ! I may walk Foot-firm upon these granules. I may stoop And lift, in the hand, of them a multitude 24 DEMOCRITUS Sifting the desert-substance myriadwise, To winnow them high-held above mine head Like seed from chaff. And like to chaff or seed Sandward upon the plain the sands pour down In never-ceasing impulse, every speck Seeking intent its fellows. Yet isolate Each falleth, some the swiftlier for their size; Some softlier, widely streaming on the breeze Dust-fashion: yet fitless either, whilst between them The interstice, the vacuum obtains Without which motion were not. For were world Pack d tight and full-composed and fitted well, How were a cosmos but a merest grain, Incapable of compressions, yielding not To severations, and internally Like to the desert-floor too still-compact, Inertive! Whence, betwixt the grains of the world Be equal-myriad holes permitting motion Though real! And my motion or their own Alike is thuswise valent, as I deem, By dint of the vacuum, such aperture Betwixt the atoms of the primal mode Permitting the translation. Might my feet Pursue and press-upon the firm-pack d path 25 POEMS OF PERSONALITY Further and further from the valley-green (Where sense-affection so confuseth truth!) Of Neilos and along the drifted edge Of these sand-billows (bare of feeling-claim, So reason-fostering!), save there gave to the swing Of the foot an opening in the tenuous air For entrance and for passage of my frame Parting the ghostlier presence? Might my hand Find finger-space below the surface-dust And deep within these granules, were not cranny And crevice ever betwixt grain and grain Lurking to lend fluidity? Betwixt The myriad prime-substantial particles Thus must there lurk of prime necessity, Not merely as a fiction of the mind (For ever must we deny Parmenides!) An emptiness, a failure each to fit Its neighbor grain; an absolute negative Which equally with atom (though denial And atom haply too were negative Whilst positive of cosmic import aye?) Were prime and uttermost necessity, A matrix unto substance, even as substance Were matrix to sensation-imagery; 26 DEMOCRITUS That so through vacuum, the inter-void (Even as by substance is sensation founded) The opportunity to worlds is given For inner motion and new attitude, For very difference of shape and size. O desert, art thou not as vacuum A sand-denial, yet an unity Holding in severance and thus in truth The sands of ultimate substance? For the truth Of vacuum takes hold upon the mind To admiration. And Parmenides (If in a meaning someway not the same?) His universal emptiness hath warrant. And I am of the desert stultified Who gloried in the sand-grain ! Shall my mind Be modell d as to an emptiness, an One Elean, despised and yet proved matrix to it? Or may there be, as Anaxagoras (Or new-come Sokrates) in sort hath said, A way of constitution in our thought Scarce yielding as to a name, a phantasy, Though yet ignoring not the paradox That presseth on the reason? There be sands, Atoms substantial, all-innumerable 27 POEMS OF PERSONALITY And all-alike; and there be likewise this The desert call d, the absolute nothingness, The vacuum but in which, by which, alone In virtue of whose barren breadth, the sands Are several, ultimate, atomic proven ! I question if a paradox so posed Be explicable, as with Sokrates (Nor by Protagoras the elder-born, For whom no truth were weightier than a name!), By inference merely to a property Call d desertness, a severalty-in-space, Held as in common of the atom-facts. For how might wearying distance so obtain Whereto, wherethrough, wherefrom my wandering feet May journey, were the multiplicity Itself extended as by property Of every point the same and nought between For journey? How might alterance inly be Where nought obtains of ultimate otherness Save what our thought may from all truths alike Express, extract as oil but from the fruit Of palm or olive? Though indeed, perchance, 28 DEMOCRITUS Might substance (even as wholly positive) In every part self-differently intend An inference, whether of the interstice Or neighbor-distant granule, through-and-through : Even as our mind, with truth shot through-and- through (Whatever her falsity of imagery Sensuous-sprung of overt eye and ear!), Containeth, ay, or seems so to contain Both desert and the myriad-motived sands Whilst, whatsoe er her physic-base of being, Not to herself atomic nor a name? I know not, what of Anaxagoras Might hold within a land of sensuous fruits (A cosmos-scheme of relativities!) Bewildering thus the reason, to confuse In complications of interpretance To purposes anthropomorphic-felt Truths true-distinct! But here there are no fruits (Nought save sands multiple presence unto touch In primal demonstration nay, no fruits), No facts of sensuous, secondary sights Or sounds of the mind as yonder sky-hung waters, In phantasy mayhap, may be referred 29 POEMS OF PERSONALITY (So fain I d understand Parmenides) To impacts of the atoms whilst none less Of mind contributed! But mine the problem Of reason face to face with ultimate truths, The vacuous extension, different-held In every interstice, nowise atomic And yet essential to the atoms each Their ultimate severally ! Mine the problem Of sands here in their myriads where I stoop And lift and sift them all with weight imbued, Fragments and fragments, several over the face (As wandering, ghostlier airs by chance define) Of the drifted desert which my feet press hard In passing over; passing only sands And sands still of the desert-formative. One comes to wisdom in Aigyptos here Where showeth the primal aspect of all things, World s very paradox-necessity; Baffling the reason: which remains yet wide And whole as sunshine, open, unconfused Because distinctively both elements In reasonable zeal illuminate Confronting unmistaken: neither truth Mistaken for a meaning of the mind! 30 VERGIL MUSE, from Rome s magnificence I haste me And splendors of imperial temples, toward Thine open countryside and rustic altar, To serve thee as I may and them the gods Who dwell not under the porch in city walls. For Jove is of the open heavens and spreads His mantle and the carpet of his throne Not only over the fora but about The tender and gracious circlet of a sky That cometh down along the mountain-side Purplish at noon-day or upon the plain Shimmers a green of Maius. Hereunto 1 hasten, with the sweet smells of the glebe, Of furrow and of the springing sward o er all Wafted and with the tinkle of hundred bells From hill-path and from pasture thrilling air. For restoration of Italian peace Hath brought the shepherd back and him who tills. And hither I flee, as thousands of the sons Of men for countless future generations Who seek thee, Muse, or hear thy bell and breath POEMS OF PERSONALITY Within, shall flee the fashion and the fume (Thanks, also, unto thee, Theocritus!) Of Jove s Octavian panoply, pursuing The Jove of oak-land and the oak-loved nymph With inspiration of thine utterance. For I am rustic-born and yeoman-bred: Vergilius, I, herald of field-born things. The rustic truths I sing of hind and home More glorious in the splendor of sun and moon Or stars than is the glistening pageantry Of torch on torch in painted portico And gleam of eagles in an armied Rome When some triumvir triumphs in his hour. T is not alone the armies of the sky In rank on rank of onrush (though indeed Must man Lucretianwise with flood and storm Contend, I ween) nor only through the valleys The noisier winds our trumpets far outblowing Which move me, nor the keen blazonry of beams Golden and silver of an Hesperus Or wild Aurora; but the fervent sense (Through all the generous strife and noblest toil) Of friending gods, of spirits of strength and health 32 VERGIL Everywhere round about where men and earth Conspire together to bring forth a fruit. O Muse, t was surely to the love of Maius And fervent friendship for the country gods, Scarce for a kinglier city, that they came /Eneas and his comrades voyaging; If fatefully for Rome s establishment By hero-fighting on the chosen soil, Yet longing unto loveliest Italy, Her streams and succoring favor of her shores. For was it not from ruin of citied splendor And conflict of the Trojan citadel Betray d, that they far over the guiding ocean Fled and companion d of the open heaven If weary yet with dignity endured In their swift ships and finally to Tibris Came and the Latian yeoman-home discern d? If by the fiat of the gods or fate Were cities founded and the kingly Rome Begun, ah, only with a cultured glebe Surrounded and the high labors of the seeding, he ripening and the harvest, to their hand. For without sickle and ploughshare may not men 33 POEMS OF PERSONALITY Abide on earth; nor aught imperial Arise save swathed in sweet conspiracy With Ceres and Tellurian increase-gods. O Muse, from Rome s magnificence I haste me, Hailing the splendors of imperial years, The templed glories of Octavian power Here hidden, but to the eyes of one inspired Proclaimed, beneath the heaven s best height and breadth, In earth s fecundity of oak and olive, Of barley and the blithe flock-pasturing; The vine; and all that sprouteth under the toil Of country-stalwart folk, the yeoman-breed Saturnian, from the Mother! O Muse, I tell Of empire s best foundation, as I yield me, Fervent for sweet release from urban turmoil, To scent and shimmer of this primeval spring! 34 JOHN THE BAPTIST Lo! (for the spirit whispers) cometh one Out from these many folk who throng the shore, Even to be baptized of me but now; Cometh a savior whose whole insight is Of righteousness and glory through mankind. Yet, though my ministry may mean but him, Ay, though the baptism urgeth righteousness By sign of the cleansed spirit; how might I Absolve him who hath nothing felt of sin; I, shamed and sinful, cleanse whose heart is pure? For I am full of sin and shame, the shame Even of these sinners whom I bid repent. For I am wild and of the wilderness A dweller, lest the sinfulness of men Have wholly hold of me; yet shame hath hold Of every part of me and is my soul: Because I may not see a righteousness About me, nor a glory through mankind. Sooth, I have said: The kingdom of our God Is near at hand. Prepare your deeds before Just recompense impending! And have so 35 POEMS OF PERSONALITY Fail d to attain self-conquest; am as one Aware of evil. And this sin and shame Of all men, even them I bid repent, Is mine; and nought of knowledge of the good Nor any justice and fulfilment now. Now is there one who cometh wholly pure. He steps from out the throng, he in his turn. And in his coming is mine only hope. For in the blessed contact, in the touch And sight and sound of him, I hope to see Some righteousness, a glory through mankind, A justice and full recompense on earth Now and forever in the thought and deed So wholly freed from evil, in his soul So pure and unashamed and utterly Unlike these sinners whom I bid repent, Unlike their sin and shame that is mine own. Even by the sight of him mine heavens shall Be open d and the dove of God, descending, Humanize wilderness, ay, civilize The wild and savage soul of me who spurn All known of me, and so must spurn myself To degradation. 36 JOHN THE BAPTIST Lo! he comes and speaks His will be words acclaiming power in me And righteousness and purity? For how Might one thus pure imagine such a thing As this my soul of sorrows? Ah, how come To be baptized of one deem d sinful? Nay, He speaks: "Yea, John; for I, who wholly find Mankind a glory, yet have need to be Baptized even of thee to take men s sins Upon me and be utterly their shame." 37 PHILO THE question of the embassy to Caesar; Might I assure me to take up the task? Not in the desert haply nor the caves Of rock-bound wilderness may Israel now Serve God in strength and holiness but, mid The haunts of divers men of many creeds, Walking the ways as of idolaters; Though inly praising God with psalm and prayer For insight of a revelation pour d Interpretative of philosophy By pictured presentation of a truth Which, or in Kroton or Athenai taught For rumor of a written Pentateuch, Yet, by their wisest of philosophers Hellenic-lofty, were but dimly guess d: Who miss the privilege of Moses tribes, The spirit-mightiness of Moses God. Oh, surely I dream not that in literal proof Of triumph politic the Jews at last Alone shall wield from an imperial throne A power like to Caesar s and be chosen 38 PHILO Successor to the dominance of Rome! Oh, rather should power of Scripture, working through An earnest exposition logically As, ages since, even Pythagoras Or Platon or these Stoics latterly Have still expounded in half-ignorance Scripture and only Scripture to the Greeks (With nobleness of thought and loftiest aim !) Rather, I say, should exegesis, patient, Transfuse the pagan thought, whilst pagan thought Illumine mutually to modern ends Of ethic practice in the Roman State The picture-proof of Moses if but he The perfect soothsayer, Moses everywhile, Be taken (howsoever inwardly By parable) for type of perfect truth. Yea, though the truth of Scripture changeth not, Men s ways whereunto Scripture speaketh truth, Men s ways wherein Reason hath practice-truth, Are otherwise than in Mosaic hours. And Moses, were he here amongst us still In Egypt, might not at command of God Lead from this Alexandria Israel forth To seek God in the wastes of Sinai now: 39 POEMS OF PERSONALITY When every corner of the whole wide world Were sway d by Caesar; and the Stoic cult With truths of Platon or Pythagoras Hath half-unwittingly inform d men s minds With Moses; and our ways are interfused Hellene with Hebrew to the gain of both To gain of both in spirit, though the flesh Suffer Rome s persecutions politic! Ay, though in ancient days Jehovah dwelt (And Rome, alas! would ape Jehovah now!) Doubtless in Sinai, gave commandment there And guided with the pillar of smoke by day, Of flame by night, His people through the lands Of dearth and stones where never waters are Unless by miracle, and miraculous Doubtless did Moses lead the people forth From under Pharaoh (hath not Moses said it?), To-day, this hour, such Moses might not rise To lead from under Roman Pharaoh forth Whose power hath hold of all the ends of earth Extensive as with God s and absolute. (But, ah! may our folk be spared from rendering him The rights of reverence due to God alone; Which now he claims and would by force exact, 40 PHILO And, whether or no the embassy I take, We fain would someway hinder as we may!). And therefore is the need to read anew The Exodos in guise of parable, The wandering in the wilderness, for words Of allegory to this future time; And understand the peace of promised lands (Which peace indeed did yield unceasing war!) Not for a temporal dominion, save Some Mind-Messiah, yea, for Paraclete, Logos of all the angel-daimon host, An Hebrew-Hellenist of cultured tongue, In God s good time arise to heal the wounds Of Judah s spirit decried and wisdom spurn d Of Moses from beneath the brazen heel Of Roman bigot! And until that day Of logic-wrought deliverance (which each man May hasten haply too with prayer or praise) Must he who would to Judah be a guide Interpret Scripture as a painted wall Of old word-picture, mystic, secret glyph Scarce-understanded yet a paradigm Of modern application, helpful aye For guidance from the bondage of our tribe POEMS OF PERSONALITY In latter days: the last, I trust, of earth Before the coming of the spirit s King. But so, no refuge may be from the wrath, The curses and the blows of conquerors Who hold the Holy City with the grasp Of plunder and oppression, who oppress Judah in every city of the East Or West alike with cruelty of stripes, Betraying Israel s trust where God hath said: The lands of milk and honey shall be yours Though Rome be now of Hellenism the home As Hellenism be of mundane power; And Israel waits but mind s millennium Of coalescence with Hellenic reason To earn the spirit-lordship of the world! We wait! There is no refuge upon earth! Ai, ai; there is no refuge as of yore! But now, while yet we wait the culture-hope Of coalescence with an Hellenism, Must something in relief of temporal shame Be largely undertaken, or we perish. For now, as said, no lands of vineyardage Remain unto our people, save the lash 42 PHILO Of Qesar s tax-extortion spoil the fruit Of harvest and the legions take away All profit and all honor from the homes Of husbandry and of our Law s delight, Despoiling synagogues, ay, ravishing Chest-treasure from Jehovah and defiling The temple of the body of our maids (Which should be clean, for altars of the soul) With lewdness and the bastardy of babes Which bear the enmixture of a gentile blood. That measures must be taken to prevail Against the oppression of the Roman flesh If Hellenism of Hebraic soul (So otherwise than bastardy of blood!), The mind s millennium, Logos upon earth, Be ever as expected; measures wrought In terms of temporal resistance, strength Of obstinacy, waiting, working for it Even as the Roman works who doth prevail Though not by leading-out, where refuge is not! A modern-Moses, were he with us now, What might he do for Israel, how proceed (Smiting the rock of world s unrighteousness) To turn our tribulations and escape 43 POEMS OF PERSONALITY The Roman wantonnesses? There hath been In Palestine about Jerusalem And reaching unto Alexandria Some rumor of one all-uncultured braggart, With high but impious claim like Caesar s own And history aping Moses , Jesus named, In circumstance ironical condemn d And suffering crucifixion recently Much to the satisfaction, as I deem, Both of the Roman governor and wisely Of Caiaphas as well; for anarchy Well might ensue were ignorance to rule. Nay, he could be (a carpenter) no Son Of great Jehovah Whom his claim blasphemed, No Logos-intervention in the world ! And (oh, I d fain t were otherwise, alas!) No Paraclete, Hellenic culture-type Of truths Hebraic, shall be in my time. Him I shall see not who am growing old. Yet, yet! a true second-Moses in mine age, This year, to-day, this hour indeed might strive Through influence of the holy picturing Newly illuminate with insight fresh Of wise interpretation (which my heart 44 PHILO Hath ever loved and reverenced!) to release Our folk from bondage, turning thus again Judah s captivity! Though, if this be I, This Moses and where else may he be found Than here in Egypt? how should I proceed (The call from Horeb being for me intended) Where desert wastes afford no more a rescue, And Pharaoh for a God upon the earth (Spare, Lord, Thy people from the worship of him !) Bindeth his yoke on every place thereof? Yet, grasp the riper wisdom, in default Of desert fastness for escape from Rome More wisely than the cenobite Essenes (Who, stung no less by every flesh-temptation, Flee but the conflict of the race to-come; Without, by righteous works, achieving conquest Of any Canaan beyond wilderness) Who take the letter, but ignore the truth Of fresh conditions learn and grasp, my soul, The reason-teaching, Jewry how to rescue Scarce by escape but by a courage nobler Of Daniel in the den; taking upon me This mission unto Caesar to demand First our religion, to his claim adverse 45 POEMS OF PERSONALITY Of honors superhumanly divine; First his protection promised for the cult Of great Jehovah; and, that granted us, His further admonition to the mob And to this cruel Bassus, to allow us (As pledged unto our fathers) here in peace To dwell in trade assiduously awaiting Still a Messiah to the trump of doom If so our people please (the King, I mean, Of Spirit-Culture ruling Reason s world!), But meanwhile hoarding unto politic ends The riches of achievement, merchant-power (The waters of the rock-face gushing out !) To serve well as the chosen Logos-folk Unto evangel of philosophy The purposes of kingdom when He come. For all may not be left for God to do As when His manna fed the wilderness. But He will help who first have help d themselves To turn oppression to a secret gain And, in earth s sudden clarification, rise Soldiers and heralds of the Paraclete, Possessors of the earth, knowing to use The bounty of the world stored-up unseen 46 PHILO (As practice-wisdom in the Scriptures hideth) Till opportunity with hand-of-God Display d in Him Who shall make new all minds, Discover in the people of His choice (This leaven of the universal bread That feedeth Roman, Hellenist alike) Already them who hold in fee the nations, Exacting tribute whereof Caesar s seems But idle dross. For enterprise alone, Not tyranny (more than labor isolate Essenelike), shall what trade s own toil creates Acquire and hold till God pronounce us Kings Not of a petty, temporal empire, nay, But to eternity, time s archetype In Platon s creed descried, whose thousand years Of waiting, be they tens of thousands still, Serve and shall serve best to a patient folk For aye-unending opportunity And, at the last, fullness of spirit-truth! Leave to the cenobite the literal word Of Moses and of Aaron, Pharaoh spoil d By flight unto the desert fastnesses! Learn from the lips of men and angels both 47 POEMS OF PERSONALITY The novel exegesis; upon earth (Of that same Jesus spoken, with wisdom haply) Peace among men until millennium, Not for secluded sanctity, support In mere provision by a manual toil Of unforeseeing mouth-necessity, But, labor for fruit of trade, for world-resource, Possession of a wealth among mankind Exceeding wealth of very Solomon Or Caesar and the Moses be myself To plead a peace, a privilege for toil And trade, unto the sons of Israel Unarm d, unharming; ah, but secretly Achieving conquest that our Judah s folk, Their spirit-strength in worldly prudence based, Be worth the coming of the Paraclete (The Logos-upon-earth and mutual wisdom Of Moses, Platon or Pythagoras) ; They, used to earth-possession ere He come; Ay, worth God s Choice! For friends have urged me on To voyage unto Caesar in the cause Of peace, to plead that persecutions cease In Alexandria and hate have end. 48 PHILO And I have half-demurr d, not in the fear Of Caesar s wrath (though well might he destroy Such embassy) but, heeding Aaron s way And Moses of escape into the wastes As these Essenes and lonelier anchorites Mistake the method for a literal Acceptance of example! But I see (Allowing now the soul to follow-out In contemplation every influence Making for inward mastery), I see And feel the workings of the symbol-truth, The mystic meaning to the times applied, Like picture-glyphs upon old Pharaoh s stones Still sacred though their literal intent (The leading-forth by Moses, as I mean, To any refuge: which I now forswear!) Of Pharaoh s headship, whence could be escape Unto a Canaan, be no more believed Because of Caesar. I will voyage to him, A second Moses, there to plead of peace! 49 MARCUS AURELIUS FORASMUCH as the gods have gifted me , With firmness, with a fortitude to bear The burden of this world imperial; And by perfervid sentience of mine heart Above the stupor of the cooler clod To imitate, within, the soul without Of the universe at fiery potency; Forasmuch as I feel within myself (Perceiving, as with sense which seems not sense Of stuff material, my frame beyond!) This integration of the logos-seed Resistive to attack from aught of earth And self-containedly the all-contain d Sustaining in the daily storm and stress Of strains antagonistic, reconciled In power effective of the spirit of me Controlling destinies unto mine own Of men and nations in the Roman name: How should the heart of me, made staunch and true By favor of the gods, in least complain Of duty and imperial destiny? How seek for soul s performance any path 50 MARCUS AURELIUS Sweeter than this of privilege to be Upholder to the universal Rome, Central support; by high hyperbole, Well-nigh as though some world-soul of the State; As in our doctrine of the Stoa taught Best ultimate recompense of any man Who, death beyond, incorporates with All; And dwells, imperial of the universe, At last Augustan at the flame of God? Forasmuch as the gods have made me strong, Why murmur as for weakness, why admit Weight of the world for burden, be distraught At heart with presage of a Rome foregone And universe disrupted? Am not I Able to labor yet nor be dismay d? And, while the power and honor of the State Rest in me, shall this soul of me betray The trust, the confidence wherewith the gods Appointed me to kingship? Let him seek Relief, in whom responsibility Meets and awakes no native kingliness Of prudence and of wisdom. In my heart Have the immortals planted self-control POEMS OF PERSONALITY Wherethrough alone may man control the world. Unto my vast responsibility (Keeping me thus with nature in accord) My nature makes response. Though I be worn With bodily discomfort (though the waves Beat round !) ; though Rome be wasted with the year: As I ; and these the Marcomanni knock With deathly warning at the open door Of self-destruction to our madden d State; Yet shall my soul be firm (stilling the waves Reverberative wide!) which feels within The strength to save and be (hyperbole Of rhetor whilst it seem !) soul-like for all Though elsewise be the days but vanity, But sickness and corruption unto earth; But gods gone stale who scarce may be fulfill d Save inasmuch as setting man s soul to it, Gifting him with the courage to sustain! For thus the Stoic wisdom, grasp of truth Firm and supporting in the wreck of things And Rome s bewilderment, her forfeiture Of ancient piety and god-respect. For with the forfeiture of fair respect Toward gods (the temple-stone s entablature 52 MARCUS AURELIUS Of empire) and with folly of the sects Of Christ (seditious even as impious, Fanatic, truculent and turbulent!), Of I sis or Mithraic mysteries Corrupting Rome, hath solidarity Of Rome s imperial purport pass d away And in the passing sapp d the Empire s arm Of nerve and sinew: that our legions lie Battling along the Empire s bounds alarm d, In panic-desperation though we crush These naked Marcomannic breasts anew An hundred times with bitterness of war Still never ended; whilst the Roman State Melts man by man into a common grave With these barbarians; or Danuvius takes Civic and pagan blood, mere blood alike, Down to the distant, dismal Euxine sink And there in sacrifice of Parthian hordes Lustrates at last, purifies salinely The world from Rome s dominion that a world, Innocent of our tyranny and stench, Arise that shall forget us! I, the last Of Romans (for who else to-day takes heed To Tibris?) realize the tragedy 53 POEMS OF PERSONALITY In mine own flesh, anticipate the world; And feel in me our tyranny forgot And mine imperial load not vainly laid Down at the basis of a nobler State Haply, at worst even in the womb of things Where godliness in conflagration makes Of chaos sure foundation. But the gods Meanwhile have given me strength to play my part: Feeling for mine the wholeness of the world, As runs the doctrine. Unto each new task Be the wise heart address d unto the end; Forasmuch as the gods have set man to it. Ay, no man may be (though the Cynics taught Too inaccordant with, or world-without Or, world-within the senses of a soul And some among the Stoics have believed!) Sufficient to himself, heart-unaware Of burden and responsibility By tasks beyond the momentary man. Though the soul fain were free and sweet to feel An inward emptiness in riddance of All outward obligation, yet the Soul Of All within the soul hath hold on him 54 MARCUS AURELIUS And aye impels unto the task of all And universal burden, making light Indeed the infinite imposition, teaching The way of heart s effectuality Even in the linkage soul with soul throughout The intimate extension. Nought were known Of any world, were the soul-sense, as said, Circumscribed in the conscience of the man To the mere frame of man as he appears Large though on throne of Caesar loftily/ Yet empty in an isolation felt Of passionless self-containment ! Yea, were mind A tablet razed, then might the vacancy Suffer no plenishment; and blank remain The world of any meaning in my soul, Though ne er so Antonine, unto this day! Yet have things meaning and a passion born Of strength, not emptiness. And mind were even Some fecundation of an universe, A logos-seed still individual, A God-containment (in the personal self By sense-containment) of the world without In being with me created unto earth Whilst in me and alone because within 55 POEMS OF PERSONALITY Cosmic, pneumatic, fundamental, whole: The self-control which yields control of all, The world-control which is man s hold of truth ! The man is ultimate; for God within (And only Godhood proven of the self!) Compels the God-assumption. And I strive And strike and am effectual through the world; Not evidencing soulhood cosmical Of the world as over-god, but of myself In terms of God demonstrable within me The worldhood of a soul : as after death Dream d for deliverance, so now in life Myself imperial of the universe, From first Augustan at the flame of God, Waiting not unto death (which well may prove A self-extinction of the person-God As of the person?) to create through God, As God through me, this warring world of Rome: Incorporate of all, life-recompensed, Myself by soul the fiery potency! T were thus the undying godship of man s heart (True temple-stone of all-world empire!) Alone sustains this Marcomannic war, Alone remains unbroken with the frame 56 MARCUS AUREhlUS Of self or city; godship, by this sense Of felt and passionate identity (Not in the smoulder d ashes of a corpse But in perfervid sentience rational!) Through and beyond this Roman polity. This only can enable me to bear With fortitude and equanimity The woes of the world : a wisdom of the world (Scarce of the stale, insufferable gods A gift to endure their task nor faint for it; Nor of the sheer sensation isolate, And so insensible!) which is the God. And God is of me as I labor wisely. Where God is of each wise man laboring And every wise man laboring is God, Must world have solidarity though Rome, Ebbing with blood upon Danuvius slink To wan oblivion. Though the world be rid Of all the gods held sacred, yet shall God (Men s worldhood each as soul-alive divine!) Give strength; and in Him be the gods fulfill d. 57 PLOTINUS THERE is a mighty storm upon the sea Impostumated after starless nights. And I in peril with the driven ship Through wrath of elements; though they and I (My soul, my mind but godlike more than they) Alike be emanation-borne and fill d With peace undying of eternity The fearless as the moveless! And, for now The danger and the dizziness o erwhelm Of physic-element and sensuous things, Shall I enshrine my soul within herself Contemplative above the fears impress d, By stimulation taken of the fear To search in sense for truth, to seek a sign For meanings intimate and ultimate In outward things that work upon me now, (These elements which so assert their power: To conquer outward things whilst learning in them (An haply logos in them may be found) A symbol of the all-ineffable ! The emanation of the ineffable 58 PLOT IN US Is little like this sea-wind s perilous force That shifting blows, whether from east, west, south I wot not blows now here, now there, and yields No certainty directive though through leagues Hurrying amain and hurling potency To world s remotest bounds. But like the gale In part, although inverse of operance And urging by attraction spiritual Not physic-thrust the minions of its mood, Is godliest emanation which impels With intimate insistence every soul (As every wave is driven of the wind) Unto her source with onward tendency Which needs were Godward whatsoe er the way; Whilst thereby unto seeming vacuum, The All-thing that is nothing outwardwise, Itself return d and indrawn, on itself Revolving self-contain d if overt still - As these dark clouds like sand-whirl African (I fear their gathering fury sinister!) Aswirl over the mast-head seem to show My storm-bewilder d senses, though the air Itself be black-invisible! Yet, unlike Aught atmospheric in directive truth 59 POEMS OF PERSONALITY (From God and Godward whatsoe er the way), The emanations are a constancy, However of diverseness infinite; A guide to steer by an we need to steer: As, Gordianus slain and I escaped In peace, the pilot seeks from Antioch I dare not ask him if the course be lost ! Romeward to steer the vessel. Thus the hint Of circumstance, this storm-experience Of turmoil, variance in the things that move (In aimless blustering of the baffling squall So frame-disheartening and so sickening with The giddiness and wallow of the wave; And yet withal so inly clarifying And stimulant because so beautiful In storm s symmetric power balancing By force all counter-purpose!) serves the soul With thought, with recognition of herself In outward things, searching the paradox For symbol, for the like and the unlike To spirit in this the cosmos. If at Rome (First Ostia reach d by fortune unforeseen) I needs must pedagogically prove The truths of Godhood the ineffable, 60 PLOTINUS Should sign and symbol for the paradox Be found; or words be wanting, nothing taught. And, in the weakness of the body sick And helpless to assist with any plan The steersman, half in fear if half-released The soul lies free to beauty, to perceive By likeness and unlikeness unto God Significance within the element Its all-controlling grandeur and devise, Built of the beauty, spiritual truths (Like universal air) at one with God Though given in symbol which she half-rejects Whilst half-accepting. For the truth of God (Truth not the world as sense perceiveth it) Were vortex-void in sooth, nothing of God Nor verity, unless the soul (herself Of nature mix d, matter and reason both) Conceive the spirit-paradox in calm Of very storm and sickness and so find Symbols which even in unlikeness prove Half-like and somewise are of God the truth Because of reason though material And recognised by soul as of herself. 61 POEMS OF PERSONALITY For, though God be but one (and not an one Of unit-quantity that enters thus In multiplicity) yet multiple (Both one and many as God is not one) Is God s self-emanation. And the world, Though not God, yet in beauty thus perceived Of power and eke of terror taking it Allows for life in God and ecstasy! And air affords, if scarce by fitfulness In fury yet, by cosmic continence Of all-impulsive power self-contain d (Although in thrust dynamic, not in love!) Some image haply of the ineffable. But yet the uncertain wind I would reject At heart, that showeth not an own desire (With wrath to thwart the pilot and make faint The body by a weltering; though therethrough Perchance, and to the gale unwittingly, Be soul by relaxation stimulate!) The wind that, like the barbarous and bad Of mankind, showeth not an own desire For God but seeketh blindly, gropingly, Cloudily dark the way of immanence. (The storm were at its bursting, as I judge, 62 PLOTINUS Whilst the ship staggers and the steersman shouts Hoarsely his hard commands within the gloom !) And how might ocean, vague and agitant, Yield intellect a figure? Doth the truth, However self-composed of world s dismay, In high self-contemplation irritate (Like this same sea which beats at her own breast) Its all-sufficiency with failure-stress; That agony should typify for thought The ultimate poise and uniformity? If now in misery I yet achieve A contemplation and an inwardness, Would men, save haply an Origenes Hebraic, chaotic and chimerical Would men so take an anguish for a sign When, save the Stoa with its cold content, Our order d Hellenism (self-severe, Ascetic outwardly) yet makes for joy And plaineth only when the very plaint Implies a tumult-beauty press d upon it? And as for earth (though, might a long-sought shore Loom safe, unshaken, how desirable!) Should any principle so dead as earth Which of itself would seem to speech inert, 63 POEMS OF PERSONALITY Be liken d to the inmost core of life? T is true that earth were than the air or sea More stable, safe for man and comforting And hence akin to truth s eternity. But of itself were earth not purposeful, Impellant nor directive potently. T is true, too, that in earth, as all men know, (Ai ! also in these terror-thundering skies !) Leaps fire unquenchable. And, should we gain By fortune of the tempest or by skill Right for the Scyllan straits and storm be o er, Should I behold as never hitherto (Or, by Neapolis, the tomb of towns Vesuvius might serve and Plinius tale, Vesuvius more angry latterly?) The fount of hidden fire that Sicily Hath erst despoil d. And fire might well afford Symbol of self-compulsion absolute More marvellous than storm-wind thus and yield The truth a teaching and a paradigm? And beauty, ay, be felt in fear thereof As in this fear of tempest on me now? But fire as fire were too tempestuous For teaching of transmutance crystalline PLOT IN US Its peace beyond adventuring; ah me, Too terrible, unless the fear entrance! And I, though fearful and in fear possess d Of beauty-cognisance, would not to men, Who well might miss the beauty, teach a fear! So, shall a fire which man must mainly fear (Despite a latent beauty half-perceived For imitation of a v/rath-of-soul !) Bursting, enraged and life-destructive (ai! A bolt that stings and hisses nearward!) grant The logos to our logic and be body, Filling the pedagogic need of sign, To spiritual speech and ecstasy? Though /Etna seen above the swirling seas Might seem a rescue out of all distress (The pilot haply may outride the storm And reach an haven near Messana s port), Yet fire, although the mightiest element And doubtless purest, shall not stand for God. What, then, may stand at all? I deem no stuff Nor strength of an universe at voyaging, However haply like-unlike to God Or truly of God-substance innermostly, 65 POEMS OF PERSONALITY Efficient to embody unto speech The truths of emanation utterly. And thus my thought, although but now inclined, Because of beauty, kindlier unto them, Mine inmost mind must solemnly reject For symbol each and every element (There are but four, despite new-fangled schemes!), Air, water, earth or fire, thus all alike Acceptable though unto antiquity In texts of physiographers extant Who spied no paradox but took the world Without significance intelligible For cosmos self-sustain d nor sought in soul ! The physiographers would sing but myth (Anaximandros yet knew boundlessness !) Not serious faith : their terms unfit to sponsor (Nor is mere breath the spirit, as some would hold) For symbol-figure unto spirit-speech. Wherein, at least, that nothing of the world As taken in experience of sense Sufficeth to exhibit Unity Am I at heart with old Pythagoras, To whom indeed past and to-come might well Be signified of system presently 66 PLOTINUS (Ay, wiselier than by mere Parmenides !) In Number, emanation verily Out of the womb of Unity, an One Ever-repeating in each increment, Whilst in such integration overtwise Afforded quality, a character Definable as unity despite Its serial difference from unity And so by unity substantial still! But, for Pythagoras, although in sooth He voyaged, toss d upon the tumbling seas, And should have known their spirit-loneliness And need of organon to reconcile With distant bliss the hourly dole and woe, Seems nought wherein the integrating truth, Save if by demonstration cold, remote And unappealing to the love of Love, Were power and presence to the faith of man. For Platon, there be many unities, As many as there be within the world Life-kinds or aspects, that the voyager Might at all seasons mentally partake In integration of intelligence Perchance, but never in the absolute sign 6? POEMS OF PERSONALITY Achieve, enjoy the ultimate immanence. And, though to Aristoteles a truth Static, beyond the immediate atmosphere (Nor will it aid, with Anaxagoras, To make of mind almost an element !) Stood postulate and illustrate in each And every yearning toward the God of law, What way of emanation offer d he, Of mutual intropermeance of zeal (Unless by fair example in himself!), By any kinship of the God with world Inherent unto either mutually Or symbol of enshrining sustenance? Though someway is the symbol requisite, The soul an universal voyager Akin to natural facts as unto mind And in them known, not as an alien thing To alien things created as by act Foreign in source to that it mediateth, But of herself unto herself sofar As finding beauty by their symmetries, Their balancing of forces or of fears; Akin to natural facts and needing them Although save reason-serving they were nought; 68 PLOTINUS Herself (the soul, as other than the mind And thereby making-up the natural man) Nought save demonstrable in natural things: An emptiness, a vortex-vacuum In literal troth and not herself a stade Of emanation save she reach both ways Worldward and mindward. And the Stoics cult Of physic world-soul (which should contradict Their mood-indifference), ay, despite therein An hint of intellect, I dubiously Distinguish from an antique burning-up Or burning-down of Herakleitos scheme: A sign mistook for that it signifies; And signifies, if by the proved mistake, Too darkly for the teaching of the truth ! Ah ! though I voyage and am wholly held In weakness, sickness of the sea-wide wash (And fear of the tempest, found yet beautiful!) Shall I not yield unto the easier way Whether of myth-worn element with those Of earlier days or, with the Stagirite And Platon, of a truth beyond our world, But with the mind seek still if ecstasy (A standing in the very truth of things 69 POEMS OF PERSONALITY Though living and embodied) be allow d With weakness of this weariness and fear; And vision of the final symbol come With swooning of the sorry wanderer. The speech must be embodied; else were God Without world-emanation and the soul Mute in the presence of the sensuous show Whose beauty mirrors and partakes of her! The speech must be embodied. And the mind Turns in upon herself in fear of storm Acknowledging the beauty, yea, acclaiming With high abandonment the fury of it, Will-less but sapient as for ecstasy. Around me is indeed a turmoil wild, Through fainting senses for a last time taken. The waves wax high; the laboring vessel heaves And settles with the billows weltering: Her pilot wots not whither, save a sun (Unseen yet borne within his reasoning soul) With confidence directive guide him true And yield him certainties to me unkenn d: The sun, oh ! would he conquer with his beams The blackness and with safety (which the sense Still craves in fear of death) ah! grant us light! 70 PLOTINUS Light ! Can it be that, high the mast above, An orb is struggling, swirling, straining through The hurrying murk? Or doth a phantasy In swoon possess me that I seem to sight The heart s desire whilst yet my soul is held In elements adverse? Doth ecstasy Perchance excite a vision of the good Rescue-like from this immanence of death, Vision of emanation almost as The One ineffable? These seeming beams Astream, the rent and scouring clouds, the bright Blue of the noon and bare beyond the prow A lift of the land, a mountainous upthrust To /Etna s overpowering eminence: All dream d though in the agony of death By virtue of the visioning! Ah, Light! Ah, Light! in whom alone the elements Have logos, bountiful emanation, sure, Direct, unswerving yet and penetrant (What heed, whether man s optic spirits pierce Spaceward and thence rebound upon the eye Or if sight be an urgent influence In pact corpuscular?) ay, penetrant Athwart the universal, self-evolved POEMS OF PERSONALITY Unto the confines of the universe, Whilst self-directive ever immanent In radiance that moves not, searching through Far spaces yet remaining at the source, Creative as of worlds out of itself Without expenditure of force or time, With scarce self-diminution: figure fit (I care not if, with scant significance, Thy name already hath been mouth d in vain In mysteries Mithraic or the tropes Of Platen s teaching or Apocalypse) For that which must not seem a myth beyond The reach of life; which in immediacy Of commune mystic is no mystery But apprehended of the seeing heart Light! I have found thee in mine ecstasy! Though but a swooning dream, above the noon Of fear and storm, I trust thee! O er the soul An influence of symbol, to the teaching A tongue, the very language of the mind! The sea grows strangely calm ! The sailors shout As anchors plunge in the brine! The vessel swings As t were beneath the lee of some tall rock! My faintness waxeth firm; mine eyesight cleareth. 72 PLOTINUS And light, yon subtlest, shimmering effluence Which everywhere from sun outpouring flares (The optic spirits be but light s rebound, A to-and-fro upon the Godward way!) With visible beams about the heavens and o er The face of the glittering sea and on the strand And cliffs of island coast gleams ardently; A revelation of all elements, A thing significant! Ah! not an air Wandering unwish d-for, undirective through Cloud-regions whither-whither o er the wave And vaguely landward, nor a passionate fire: But thrilling earth and saturating sea, Entrancing air, a fire without fear And beautiful by souPs-own gladness in it And poise of joyous equability! No vision, then? No ecstasy? But plain Salvation from a watery wrath with just Enough of frenzy-fear s intoxication To open to the seeking soul a beauty, Teaching her of herself within the world, Which (Gordianus slain; but kind, Philippus) Now may I teach unto the heart of Rome ! An hopeful waiting till the new north wind 73 POEMS OF PERSONALITY Hath spent itself and will allow our course; Meanwhile in safety neath a crystal sky! The baffled gale above the guardian bluff Goes wailing. And the pilot smiles serene. 74 ORIGEN WHAT mean the prosecutions and the cry Of many perishing, our testifying By blood unto the certainty of truth? What mean the prosecutions; when the truth, Darkly by pagan picture, brightlier through God s revelation, if by parable And mystic exegesis either way In mouths of men yet, as by allegory, Were equally intended at the heart (For so my Principles have plainly proved) Of every man sincere if ne er so blind (Ah! even by Celsus in his falsities!), By Platon, Zenon, Philon or by him The porter-pedagogue of whom I drew Myself a sense of truth, though disbelieved In metaphysic, literal detail Be Platonist or Gnostic or whatnot Of minor heresies? And if myself, Following Clement s or Pantaenus strength, By proof of loftier insight have opposed, Through fifty years of teachings liberal And generous to the weaklier counterproof, 75 POEMS OF PERSONALITY The lesser evidence of pagan schools And spake by splendor of a God reveal d Logos-wise to the reason and the heart In Christ His history and parable When mystically reinterpreted To anagogic wonder for such share In universal wisdom shared by all, For such a part in man s humility (Which every Christian hath) and wish to serve, Should emperors and consuls instigate These savage cruelties of city mobs Whereby among a many martyrdoms Of nobler spirits now return d to God Even my poor frame hath suffer d, that I lie In prison-durance sick and fain to death By dint of punishments unearn d of men? T is" true that man deserveth punishment By spiritual fall, but expiates Prenatal sin by putting on the flesh. T is true that death-release returns to God The enchasten d spirit with an holy joy If only in his life-time seeking truth : 76 ORIGEN A search made splendid and salvation sure By evidence of unity with God Afforded by atonement, Christ for all, The Logos in the world of life and death, Exhibiting the soul s eternity. But I am old and in abundant pain, A paradigm of misery; and needs Would understand, where understanding fails, This supererogation. Man were saved By faith and knowledge why this suffering? Ah, though mine inmost doctrine would regard The body of Christ but as a pseudonym For Logos-operation from the first, For mundane-immanent eternity, And therefore very Christ a parable Of wisdom and the world s divinity Scarce quasi-human in historic sense; Where now the cosmic mystery, where now Unto this suffering body truth more true Than Christ the Sufferer (I deign d to teach But unto catechumens!), He whose pain Sufficed unto the ages? Wherefore, Christ, I question of Thee, even as man to Man, For comfort under torture: why Thy sheep 77 POEMS OF PERSONALITY Be slaughtered, to what end the wolf allow d, When Thou for all mankind hast suffered so? I query, Christ ! not solely for myself (Nor even for my father, long in peace, Leonides who died as I may die) But as I am of many sufferers An one to whom Thy gift of tongues hath fallen In mark d degree, that I someway may hope By speech in inward disputance to find A way of understanding and a sense Of God s high Providence to future years In these His admonitions of dismay. For I am bleeding at these smarted sores And bruised with blows, that I am fain to die Like to Leonides now long in peace My father whom I loved; myself too old To bear in Caesarea far from home My pain (nay, I might linger many months, As I in exile many years endured, Though miserable) who am fain to die A testimony to their cruelties: I though without a controversial wrath (How might we hate at all who learn of Thee 73 ORIGEN The teaching of Thy suffering in this Yea, were it to kill wrath, that we should die A spectacle for pity?) I feeling all Opinions plausibly a veil of truth Each in its kind for symbol; and mine own Faith and opinion but the noblier posed And comprehensive of the pagan truths In warrant of Thy witness unto men! Unto the purpose of a truth prevailed Against the demons machinating power Thy witness was essential : how now mine In feeblest imitation though it be? How need the imitation of Thy pain Who conquer by an imitant belief? I grant that, Christ, upon Thy martyrdom (As could not be were Thy humanity But Logos-mystery and nowise man For, lo! the gnosis still must suffer with Thee!) Hang all the Law and Prophets. Yet, should men Continually corrupt as with a crime Repeated, what supreme of holy proof Anent men s long-lost unity with God Thy martyrdom provided; when alone (I speak the outward-doctrine of my pain!) 79 POEMS OF PERSONALITY Thy pledge of earth-atonement therein given And therein erst for aye offer d the world Could sanctify the stigma of the crime; And when the sacrifice of merely men, Of me or any in the theatres, On cross or reeking in the city streets Can scarce in least efface the hand s disgrace That drives the nail or strikes the lance-head through? For we, O Lord, are otherwise than Thou Despite best proofs of final unity. For we are fallen by prenatal fault In earlier lives and are not as Thou art Freshly if still eternally from God. Ay, we are but the men whom Thou didst save. (For, lo! my pain would numb the gnosis quite And leave me but the faith of youths untaught, Who many years was big with wisdom inward !) Though faith be in us and Thy truth reveal d Of Thy part ultimate and absolute Sufficing for the cure of every world, Yet on our part, save for the fact of faith (Remaining now to me, though gnosis fail And esoteric dogma for my pain!), Save for the simplest fact of some belief 80 ORIGEN And therefore of some inference of Thee, Is truth as diverse, as diversely-held As there be men: some more, some less in faith Enlighten d by Thy love-life, yet the wisest But meaning Godhead as by symbol spoken, Not by immediacy: nothing known Of ultimacy save the fact of faith With sense of tendency toward God therethrough As by Thy death provided. And of them Who heard not of Thee but desired a truth, Their Sokrates correctly puts it plain How all is of opinion; though he miss d Well-nigh the saving confidence for whom All was inquiry with no last reply. Whilst some there be (in Alexandria now Or Rome I wot not, as the years pass on) New pagan teachers who, in honest search For perfect truth though failing Christian sight, Pretend an insight by an ecstasy (Like as but God is known unto Himself), A standing out of self we cannot so! And yet in them, although the sign and proof Be overlook d and nothing be set forth For visioning, there were the saving faith. 81 POEMS OF PERSONALITY And thus, that all we feel or suffer in heart Or know of others patience still must be Mainly an evidence of saving faith But not salvation, not the perfect proof Of God-made-manhood, what were then the worth Of prosecutions and the testifying By blood and death unto the truth of Thee; Which, absolute in Thee, must yet in us Be little nobler than a pagan creed, Only by one degree beyond a truth Of Platon or of Zenon or of this Plotinos: if but this Plotinos creed, . Learning a content in the fact of Thee, Might learn humility! And if Thy love Provides a revelation absolute In essence, basic to a gnosis-scheme Of Logos-generation, as I taught The elder, sturdier of inquiring minds (Following Philon haply), yet the truth Were foster d not, unless I reason false, By prosecutions wherein men pretend Pagans to absolute authority Which in Thine own example stands denied, Christians to sufferings that atone the world! 82 ORIGEN O Christ, in this my suffering I pretend No mundane ministration I but die; Or live, maybe, in sufferance the more! Yet and by faith there is the certainty Which needeth not the gnosis, to be mine! And we of the revelation (as I wrote In Christ against a Celsus falsity) Are rightly fill d with faith as are not those Who base truth but in thought, though subtliest-cull d As Sokrates from grist of many minds Thrice-mix d and mutual-sifted woe to faith Were Sokrates the Savior; woe to truth Were Christ of men forgotten! And in Christ We hold opinion nearer unto God s By sense of parable than any man s Who seeks direct in ecstasy to take A truth devoid of earthly inference. And, ha! why might not such sheer certainty, Too proud to confess its entity for Thine Chiefly and scarce of self (as I in that Internal-doctrine of the Logos-scheme Had claim d save for a sane half-consciousness Of merit in the pagan argument 83 POEMS OF PERSONALITY So like to mine and yet so unlike still!), Why might not such a sense of certainty With hot-head wrath which never could be mine (O Christ, I dare a dying, dreadful guess Of future things!) within Thy name and God s Adopt with propagation of Thy church As the Word groweth and Thy mustard-seed (I speak Thy parable for timeless things) Supplants the very Empire undertake A persecution of the elder faiths, A cruelty upon the creeds of men Who lack but light of Thee to love with us; And blood-retaliation quite blot out For triumph of the grim-eyed demon-crew The patience now of dying in Thy name? Nay, why might not the growth of Christian power (By mine own exile I have ta en the sting Of bishop s scourge for virtue of a truth So singly-different from the synod s say!) Provoke interpretations of Thy tale Seemingly wide asunder as the creeds, Then lost from sight and lacking for a foil, Of pagan now from Christian; when the cry Of blasphemy anent a theme beloved ORIGEN Augment the indignation; and the wrath Of men be roused and prosecutions flare Church-wide because, forsooth, Origenes Hath difTer d subtly from Demetrios And held, t would seem, two doctrines plausibly And was a presbyter in Caesarea If not in Alexandrian schools at home? Anent Origines of many creeds His faithfulness or falsity to Thee, Whether his martyrdom were in Thy name Or in the name of Philon: such being held Perchance anathema to bishop-folk? And blood evoked of heresies blot out (My thought hath grasp d the worst that might ensue Because of certainty which saveth souls!) The patience of us dying as for Christ? - The patience of us dying: that is best! A testifying to the truth of Thee Who died to save the world; that thus we too (If I be now allow d to die for Thee And linger not beyond my ripening To rot in Caesarea!) thus we too By symbol and by parable of Thee Afford a content to the certainty 85 POEMS OF PERSONALITY In passion of renouncement, without wrath Exhibit truth-salvation, minister In meekness to the saving as of souls (Whose bodily hands drive home the piercing thrust Of spear and sword or bruise and break with stone) Who by example of the faith in us Better than prowess brutal of the mob May turn to Thee and seek by these my wounds A Godliest of opinions which may yield them Substance for seeming ecstasy, a Word To teach Thy parable in this of me! For I am fain to die, wounded and old In Caesarea, exiled first for truth And then maltreated by the mob, a man By friend degraded and by foe destroy d Though none the less assured that in such wrongs For men s opinions sake I yet may feel Not chaos of mis judgment but at heart Their faith; in them the certainty of truth: And yield my life s opinion; testifying. 86 JULIAN THE re-establishment of truths august And worship of the Gods Olympian, The family imperial of the skies As they are children of the Mighty Mother Cybele and the all-paternity Of Mithra, universal fount of life: These are my holy purposes, with power Of pure authority, from Jove derived And nobly in my blood to me descended (By lineage, by adoption under law Or by imperial legions legal choice Alike) from him Augustus the divine That primal, perfect instance on the earth Of God-Olympian come to dwell with men! What folly to adopt unto the State A rabble-hero, Christos of the mob For tutelary; who at best might be The offspring of a tribal god, Jew-born Though traitor unto Jewry, as I deem! What folly to adopt for tutelary A probable impostor, an apostate (Never was I with willingness baptized!) 87 POEMS OF PERSONALITY And leader of sedition : nowise worth To grace a Roman triumph of the East (I look for triumph, after Persian wars!); Not fit to grace a triumph, but deserving The felon s death he died, disgraced, obscure! Alas ! how could the imperial State be safe If built on weakness and obscurity When every Emperor himself must stand Illustrious, strong and in a father s place And power for the governance of men? What weakness, if what tyranny perchance, Hath been of the bearing of a Constantine (Worse, worse of mad Constantius murdering, Whose faith profess d of peace the more condemns him!)- Bearing of Constantine, the hypocrite, Who sought by meek adoption of the mob s Rebellion in an anarchy to soothe The time s distemper, yet drawing tight the rein And spurring sharp as opportunity Encouraged outrage! (Doth the Christian creed Make moral rulers?) Though I well believe He little reverenced the presbyters, The bishops with their quarrellings accursed 88 JULIAN And fatuous, council-seal d anathemas Because of curious heresies forsooth Of anomousian, homoiousian cants Confusing the claim d god-sprung beggary By every borrow d Gnostic quirk of talk! How could earth s Imperator truckle so To such-like schisms, ranting sophistries, Themselves without approof respectable Of any poet or philosopher Anywhere taught in church or portico Their deity Hebraic to attest? - Nay, at the best and granting Christos half-god, What culture earn d he of the schools; what art, Philosophy or nobler poetry Bequeath d for reminiscence? Just a story, A folk-tale parabolic, simply said And artless, negligible, save it bear An hidden burden analogical Someway seditious, someway blasphemous, Whereof all Christian augurs (be there such !) Make tiresome dispute interpreting The pitiful oracle! And where, I pray them (Some glutton daubings I at least have seen Of sheep and doves and fishes and a feast!), 89 POEMS OF PERSONALITY Where are the sacred statues of the cult, The evidences of a gracious presence, Austere indeed but none less favorable, Auspicious unto him who knows to burn The pious oil and in sacrifice To draw the knife athwart the victim s throat? Here have I placed upon my palace-walls And elevated in a thousand shrines The statues of Olympian deities, Mine own and many of my kingly race; With rescript that the name of God shall be Zeus-Father Mithra, no more Jahveh-Son! And one thing further, ere I crown success With Persian conquest, I shall set the Jews To building up anew Jerusalem In insult to the Christians utterly! 90 PELAGIUS HARK! to their persecution hounding me From fierce and schism-disrupted Africa At instance of Paulinus to the feet Of John, good bishop of Jerusalem; Where this Orosius, pursuing far, Hispanian though he be, in Palestine Lifts tongue of accusation: heresy The charge which I must face (Celestius At Carthage was condemn d!) even here where Christ Faced persecution for an heresy ! Almost I do believe I am in error, Holding in man a natural righteousness; When such a spectacle four hundred years Hath shown of derogation from the first Inspired acceptance of the heart and help (Four centuries long, since Christ in the Temple taught !) Which He affords. Some sin-original Even among Christ-faith-professing spirits (Prevailing now as not Christ-face to face) Must hamper the Christ-purpose in the soul If back to persecution, paganwise As we were Diocletians, savagery 91 POEMS OF PERSONALITY Of accusation and of punishment Men hark as though they all a Christ would kill Ay, witness the fury struck and took between Their Donatists and Augustinians, Too inexcusable of either part ! And now this hounding, as a dog the deer, Of me who in the Holy Land of Christ Turn to defend me at the feet of John! Yet fairly, in my turn! I need not yield To falsity but that their ways are false. I need not brand the heart of humankind For all-unrighteous, but because a few Now for the moment have their fangs in me (Oh, John is nobler than their Augustine!). Grant them, their hearts are hard, lost each his soul , Should that truth touch the speculative point, Destroy my doctrine of a clean-will d choice, An unpredestinate and native grace Of recognition of the right-in-God; And force upon the thought their grace-of-God Imposed upon a sin-original Which (freely, if at all !) must cleave to crime? What beggary of reason such would show 92 PELAGIUS Who argue of our freedom, yea or nay, By evidence of fault in me or them! For, lo! though I assert the will were free To choose God or reject God (holding Christ Man s best example of the Godhood-choice In outward life, as Christ within Himself Was Godhead: not the half-god Arian Wherein with Athanasius am I one), And that the nobler in us be to adopt The right and true, conforming to the wish Of God Who made us that we might be saved; Though I assert men s moral dignity Of voluntary righteousness in God, Should any failure here or there of men To choose God evidence, in any least, The sad compulsion to depravity (Proclaim d of every Augustinian hound) Unless God interfere by ceaseless grace To bind us to beatitude unwon? Or how were God to be supposed asleep And negligent of the furtherance by grace, Which every moment mundanely would need, In leaving to a sole historic spark (The flint-fire sole-supposed of Christ- within) 93 POEMS OF PERSONALITY However absolutely infinite In terms of God s, not man s, eternity Men s faith-upflaring to the heat of truth; A negligence demonstrable, I ween, Insoforth as of man t were provable That few have faith, that myriad multitudes Lack grace and are unchosen but in sin Live ever laxly; pleading sins supposed Of Adam for a taint inherited And blame-exemption by the lapse of God? How bears the bad example either way? Rather should that within the mind of man His impulse to discover and to prove The truth, our ever-struggling upwardness Of effort to achieve and aid and offer, In this life-education given of God, Example Christ-like unto all men else The strength and sweetness of the spirit seeking And finding in the daily tasks of earth The way of earning heaven unslavishly, The way of doing well by conscience light, Refute the poor predestinary dream: Their waiting watchful for an unsought faith By grace, while noway working day by day 94 PELAGIUS In will, in zeal toward high humanity Firm in the following, for active love, The Christ-example to be glad and free Upstanding reverent beneath the heaven Whence God hath sight of hearts and hopeth for us! Whence God need never stoop to intervene And thrust the thought of Christ by miracle (To spoil our splendor of a conscienced soul!) Beneath the cravings of our cowardice Who crouch and pray but owe no self-respect To make us worthy! I will have respect For man as also for the manful Christ. I flee no farther but will face my foes (Jerome is of them who was erst my friend) Not bitterly; but strive as best I may To wake them to that soul-nobility Which all men, even this Orosius, By dint of Adam-lineage may earn In following Christ-example, Him Who faced The persecutors not with bitterness But this alone: They know not what they do! Face accusation with an heart of proof, Knowing God made us nobler than they know! 95 CHARLEMAGNE I LIKE not that the See of Rome should set Sudden and by surprise the Empire s crown Upon me as I worshipp d unaware ! It was not as with Leo I arranged, That he should so assume to consecrate With papal benediction power and place Which I by birth and by my labors added Have earn d above the people that the people Should hail me Emperor as though because A Roman bishop s act empurpled me! T is nigh intolerable! We had agreed Election by the Romans; whereupon A coronation by the Pope of Rome Pursuant to mine independent right Of power equal to Irene s power; Not as some exarch of the See of Rome! How have I not befriended this same Leo As Adrian before him in my wars; Rescued from bodily persecution, purged him From accusations of adultery By mere acceptance of the sinner s oath! And then by solemn trick to be surprised 96 CHARLEMAGNE Unto reception of the grant assumed Where lay no power of granting, save my power Supported and sustained in every deed This pitiful vicegerent of the church! I like it not. I almost had upsprung And smote him down for his impertinence; But did refrain within the Sacred House Before the people. Yet the cunning priest Deserved the blow. For by my complaisance Hath not he fasten d on the Empire s crown A vassalage to Peter? Shall not Popes Assume and shrilly arrogate to heaven And over the wide earth a potency Temporal, based upon the paltry game? A temporal king? Not he; though Constantine Half-gave, no doubt; and Pepin liberally Gave lands in vassalage! Nay, nay! in my time Shall he be vassal for the Exarchate And all things else unto the Prankish King; Still vassal merely and no lord in least I warrant me, long as my life endure! I take the crown, my right. The Roman people At worst elect me by immediate voice As peer to any blood-stain d Byzantine 97 POEMS OF PERSONALITY And suzerain of exarchs this the point Well to put forth in public lest Irene, Bitter at failure of her marriage-plan, Attempt the insult of according me In Italy pretended vassalage, Exarchal office, to appease her priests! Yea, Rome and I must threat against the East A common front, the Latin with the Frank, Whether this Leo s heart be false or no ! Such, such for indignation at the dream (I say not t is of Leo yet I doubt me!) How spiritual power upon the earth Can of itself sustain a temporal arm To cope with sovereigns ! Such, for policy Preventing rupture! And in sooth my mind Knowing the power of spiritual place When terms, beyond the tenure of this life, Are told of recompense and punishment, Ah, anxious to show repentance ere too late For certain family deeds (nay, not the crime Of that Irene!) and have Popes to plead With God for mercy on my sinner s soul My mind is fill d with piety, with zeal ; 9 8 CHARLEMAGNE To render unto God a good account, Pleasing to Popes sofar as possible, Of this my Catholic Empire. The Lombards Who menaced Peter s very primacy Have fallen before me; and the Saxon hordes, Their Irmensaiile spoil d and carried away, Have felt the sword and scourge of Gospel strength, In baptism faith confessing, else in death Drinking the dregs of outlaw d heathenry! And we of mine own kingdom have been set To honoring God by ordering our ways In law, in learning and in righteousness. I love not Popes. But, unlike yon Irene, Repent and pray and am Christ s champion, Protector, propagator of the Word! 99 ERIGENA BOETHIUS hath indeed to us of Rome (I mean, the genus of the Latin Church And, here among the Franks, our clerkly kind) Open d a new possession spiritual In strict transference from the tortuous Greek Unto the simpler, easier-understood Vernacular of the Latin hierarchy. Yet and that learned scholiast gave alone One aspect of the ancient, pagan thought: The logic, dialectic organon Of Aristotle, him the Stagirite. T is true, how dialectic enters in To every utterance of the blessed lips Ambrose and Augustine and Gregory, Jerome, the glorious fathers. But no word Is open to the Church of any such Who in the Eastern language wrote and taught; Whether the blessed fathers or, beyond The circle of the saints, some Origen Or Alexandrian of Plotinus school, Who seems in much, if not in Christ reveal d, To speak as even Augustine hath spoken TOO ERIGENA Of Godhood and of truths intuitive. I would, the whole wide world could read as I The Oriental tongue! And here in sooth Are works of one, the Areopagite, Erstwhile deliver d from Byzantium s king (I mean no disrespect an Emperor!) As gift to Louis, him whose Palace School Under the patronage of Charles, the young, I teach and govern. Surely, too, these works Speak much of unity of man with God To the misery and madness of our times Sore needed! Like the sage Boethius (He died, no doubt, for too great honesty!) Will I unfearing overset the Greek Unto the time s vernacular of Rome; And so do service to a future time. But, whilst I serve by setting forth in speech The reasonings of an old authority, May I not seem to yield unto the times Servility of mind and grant with men The fond supremacy beyond our own Of the reasonings of the fathers: how our reason Should follow, imitate but step by step 101 POEMS OF PERSONALITY With phrase and passage out of every book The earlier opinion; that our mind Be nought unless some image of a mind Long dead and utter d unto long-lost years! With reverence I say that Augustine, Though dwelling in the Scriptures, gave to these New meaning by the glossae of his soul, Not slavishly repeating to his times A truth long-known and stagnant but, by force Of demonstration in a new-born light Anew achieving of the truth of God A mundane emanation. And shall I But copy him the Areopagite Or Augustine, or Ambrose, Gregory With what of scholarly acumen comes In earnest reverence; or, reverently Still, of the substance of the fathers truth (And so, of God s) allow new worlds of reason From earlier infinite storages to flow And self-illuminate our weariness? Why rest on old ensample, when within me I feel fresh insight, sense intuitive Of Godhood in the wilderness of world? For was not reason primal in all things 1 02 ERIGENA (Quote my Magister, my Discipulus!), Prior in nature to authority Which, though transmitted from the earliest time Yet, baseth in a secondary source, A past which was not at the first of earth? And say not, as with him the Stagirite Or those who follow him, that God above Give exhibition of authority By primal being and a truth reveal d Wheretoward our nature yearneth. For in truth The absolute God, being utterly o er-all Without division, doth not of Himself Ensample set and sheer authority But, only in the creature, as our reason Being emanation, God as self-beknown, Exhibiteth within and to itself The very absolute authority, The Godhood of the essence of the man, With Christhood of the Father. As did he Of Hippo, he the Areopagite, Plotinus even, even Origen, Shall I in governing my Palace School At all cost and at every danger dare Assert the ultimate authority 103 POEMS OF PERSONALITY Of the spirit rational, the logos in us Still world-establishing. Boethius, Who offer d to the Western world the truths Of ancient dialectic, none the less Despite the teachings of the Stagirite, Declared a modern and a Western truth, The present comfort of philosophy For guide within religion unto honor With self-respect and yielding not to pride: And suffer d of Theodoric therefor. May I offend not and be longer spared ! But, come what may, the substance of our God Reason, and ever insight logical Shall I declare: for that my mind believes ! 104 ABELARD AH, every day and every hour, dispute And accusation, nowhere any man To friend me and protect, not one in the world, Save pupils powerless, to support my plea; Admirers, yea; but none to lend me aid Through year on year of direst controversy: A history of calamities tenfold! Till at the last this sentence of confinement For teaching truth! But, at the last and worst, This sudden, unexpected refuge offer d (First instance of protection shown in life, First kindness to the oppress d from any man Whose power could make the kindness practical) In Cluny and from Peter! Still though half Incarceration, judgment of the Pope, Yet all the sting and shame absolved away; And honorable leisure for devotion, For writing (perchance, for teaching?) granted me, To end my days of sorrow! Ah, the spirit Breaks down within me, melts as ne er before With this new sense of human gratitude Calming rebellion; warm humility 105 POEMS OF PERSONALITY And meek acceptance taming arrogance! I wonder at this Peter. But a man Hath mediated twixt an hostile world And Peter Abelard. The guardian name Hath come between me and my punishment With intercession. And I render thanks: Thanks to the Saint and thanks to him of Cluny; But, save a few with powerless goodwill, Heart-thanks to no-one else the wide world through! Oh, but the arrogance yet, yet uprearing; The sense of persecution and the blame With which I all the universe upbraid Save him of Cluny and the favoring Saint: Not Christ, not Heloise excused at heart From some misjudgment oh, the blasphemy! When, when shall I be soul-regenerate And inly humble; then to see my life As Christ perchance hath seen it, or as Peter May see and disapprove and yet in pity Move him of Cluny for the baptism s sake To ward off and redeem from obloquy? And Heloise? I, in my chastities Enforced of mutilation, to her love 1 06 ABELARD Have long assumed the saintlier arrogance Of sham asceticism; when my lust It was which brought her to disgrace and dread! Not hers the lust: that lamb unto the wolf! And hers the love, who out of all mankind, Even after such betrayal, clove to me And every hour of these long sorrowful years (Small blame, to call me cold, unsympathizing!), Hath look d to me for spirit-comfortings, Advice and admonition momently In every rule, in every utterance Of counsel sent unto her fond request. And she, her woman-appetite aroused (Hath she not so, with dignity, avow d?) Once and for aye from virgin innocence, How hath she borne in spirit as in body To bide thus faithful to her pledge in God? I tremble now before such purity! But how atone, how even in sooth repent me, Where sense of men s injustice rankles yet (Of Bernard his untrain d impertinence, Who argues with a scholar though unschool d) And only from the world an one or two, A mistress-wife, an abbot-advocate, 107 POEMS OF PERSONALITY Can in my soul command my soul s respect? O blessed Peter, I was born to strife, To swift, sharp rancor and the hard retort; My truth a proud possession and my love A need of proud possession secretly! When love was known, discover d of men s eyes, Felt I indeed some pride of public conquest, The demonstration of my powers of lust (Ah, in dispute, the public power of reason Reflecteth glory on the disputant!), But yet a chillness to love s ecstacy, A weariness at such a common thing (Which fain were private, secret treasure-trove) As pass d from tongue to tongue, a ten day s wonder! How the hot joy was turn d to ashen fear For shrewd disgrace and the contempt of men Confirm d in the conclusion: treachery To match mine own and violence little worse. And then the long, long years of bitterness, Silent rebuke toward her whose beauty lured me Unto mine own destruction and whose heart Was burning-pure, a fiery-fine rebuke Though dumb, a blame enduring to mine own ! O Heloise, I now confess in Christ 1 08 ABELARD There hath not been, for all thy mind s revolt From service of the Saints, a sweeter soul For Mary than doth rule thy Paraclete To Christ s best glory. And my claim to God Must base in being, through thee, the human means Of showing thus the splendor of a faith: Even if the faith, so shrined in heart-of-Eve, Be more to me directed than to God And therefore pitiful sith I am I ! But, save by faith, I cannot help thee more. Farewell ! And may I dwell in death beside thee, If so much Cluny friend me at the end! Now and to true repentance of the mind Which wants renewal, neath authority (As hers a man s authority hath craved) In Cluny. And from Peter shall I find it (As she hath found it in my cold advice) By temperance and chastity of reason Learning toward other minds to bear respect Despite misjudgment and impertinence. This Bernard may be better than his zeal For persecution would proclaim of him. For mine was a warfare without sense within IOQ POEMS OF PERSONALITY Of any wish to win enduring peace: Fear, rather, of men s agreement, a desire To stand alone in singularity Of strange opinion and to base belief In demonstration of a paradox; In curst citation of the Sic et Nan, The disagreement, counter-statement found In writings of the fathers, ridding thus The thoughts from reverence, whilst within the heart The goal of right adjustment was no more And all was chaos in an anarchy Of self-assertion which could ne er be true; Because denying every other s truth Though yet the very man were measure of it, A Bernard even as an Abelard ! And God were nothing! If within were reason And rightfulness (I never did deny The Catholic faith !) yet all upon the tongue Was arrogant insistence and contempt Spoiling the message or the fruit of peace. But now, the new protection breaks the pride To gratitude, an homage unforeseen, A tribute of the conquer d character Too unexpected when the combat raged 1 10 ABELARD And every man s hand was against mine own. T is somewhat the surprise that breaketh through The madness of a life-time; somewhat also The suddenness of release from bodily fear When fear had kept me cruel. Right or wrong In doctrine, now the citadel of soul Hath been surprised to a surrendering Of strife, and by a generosity Disarm d where persecution had but steel d To bitterer contention! Heloise! From him of Cluny have I learn d the way I could not learn of thee; though thou hast taught it, Thou ever, whilst my soul was blind by pride To love and love s true lesson in thy soul: Thou, mistress and teacher in the path of God! HI BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX OH, fearful failure ! Everywhere the arms Of Christ defeated; and the glorious host Of soldiers of the Cross, in pitiful flight Or desperate defence, but one by one, Thousands by thousands neath the infidel Destroy d; till only sacrifice remaineth In lieu of all the splendors prophecied! And, under God, was I, the meek Bernard, High priest and prophet of the cataclysm! I shrink aghast at visions of dismay Brought home and desolatingly retold And told again, with curses on my name, Of them who hardily escaped and sped Hitherward, the mad wreckage of the rout. I fear not men s reprisals. Let them come: Some crazed, ecstatic, devastated soul Of knight or man-at-arms, to tear the cross From bosom and on bloody spear impale Bernard the sad impostor, false, forsworn! Ah, Christ, if only it were such as that, A death by martyrdom with them thus shared! Scarce, scarce should I shrink from it. For to see 112 BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX Europe appall d and stripp d of glittering knights And gleaming soldiers gone to wretched graves By rusty tens of thousands, through my fault: That is to dwell, O God, as in hell-fire On earth and aye anticipate the End! Yea, t is the spiritual pain which easeth not For that t is tongue of mine upon the earth Hath stung men to this havoc wantonly! Where, now, the sense of sustenance by Thee Provided in the preaching: outwardwise By miracle, by conversion; inwardwise By truth-assurance and the righteousness Of rescuing the Christian warrior-power Which, bruised and batter d of the infidel, Threatened collapse as come upon it now? Where, now, the human confidence, which seem d So superhuman, so inspired of Thee? Lost, lost but with the human panoplies Of power and purpose to effect the right; Gone with the hope of victory! O God, Must human faith be brave for works alone. For outward evidence to heat the hope; And pale to skepticism and blasphemy Because the expected earth-accomplishment POEMS OF PERSONALITY Hath somewise else and in another sphere Perfected prescience of Thy Providence Than in the pettier plan mine hand design d? The pettier plan! Merely to aid a power Grown evil as the veriest infidel In purlieus of the worse-than-Moorish stews Where Prankish Templar or a Flemish prince Oppress d and pander d, with disgrace to all Call d Christian, in Thy land of sepulture? Merely by tumult of a ribald crowd (Their sin-remission crass-miscomprehended), Of rough and roystering men and women lewd, To aid in riveting on the Holy Town Of Thy nativity an iron guile And craft and lust of power which no bright cross On breast or armlet could redeem in men Unless by Thine inscrutable chastisement? Ah, holy in petty purpose for the nonce By exaltation of the moment s oath The takers of the Cross; and holier now (Their sin-remission splendidly achieved) Who, sacrificed unto Thy chastisement, 114 BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX Lie dead, unburied on the parching sands Or in the rocky gorges food for kites Of these the bones are noble; for they fell Obedient to the larger call of God Transcending human purpose: and are saved! So, of the many miracles: no whit Dishonored in the infinite defeat Of that they seem d to guarantee to men! So, of the preaching: righteous to the last, O God, that I discover by Thy grace (And firm shall preach) the infinite chastisement Of them who perish d; and of us surviving Who see our homeland desolate, our knights And men-at-arms no more, and every hearth Mourning a vacancy! Oh should there come An halt, a blind, a man possess d, to ask Anew the healing miracle with faith Even as or e er thine awful punishments, Shall I but pray: and Thou wilt ope the eyes Or cure the cripple or cast out the fiend; That, when comes knight-at-arms to hew me down, The miracle-achieved shall turn his soul! And, with me openly upon his knees, POEMS OF PERSONALITY That cow d crusader, humbled utterly And saved, shall pray Thee as in brotherhood Of chastisement accepted: I and he Alike rebuked, alike to sight restored. 116 FRANCIS OF ASSISI GOD S poor; and Jesus Christ the chiefest of them, Supreme in service, if but ill-equipp d (Unless in Godship!) so to minister; I, little friend Francesco, like to Christ In poverty, if wanting Godship to it! For poverty at least, that power is mine: No stone s-weight of an impotency, born (Mock-Damiano, ever to be built!) Of the need of self-protection : burdensome, Or, by the privilege of personal stand Against aggression, arrogating pride; No vaunt of value for myself to hoard Of world s respect, precluding brotherhood With very lazar; and such brotherhood By love, my high responsibility Unburdensome, uplifting every wise! Could one but love world-riches, then, o sooth, Might service lie with such in squandering To charitable use; as, at the first, I flung the proud cloak off to clothe the back Of starving valor! Nay, but love no whit 117 POEMS OF PERSONALITY May dwell with pride: and pride is property. Ah ! little sisters of the woods and fields, Sweet flowers; or tiniest songsters unto God, Ye brother birds! with ye community Of goods and heart is mine: free from all care Of worldly profit, free so to praise Christ As joy and blessed beauty in ye praise Him; And joy in me (if scarce the wonder-gift Of beauty) praiseth ever constantly. Lo! here in the forest-hermitage I harbor (Alvernia, where kindness lets me lie) Like bird or flower by the dew of God And bounty of the heavenly hand of Christ Meekly sustain d at table of the poor, The wild, the free fraternity of joy. And with my heart and tongue I d praise the Lord, Like as the bird or blossom praiseth Him; I, fain to make laudation now aloud With thanks for every creature; most of all, Perchance, for me that I thus may ensoul Some hours of contemplation, whilst the body, My soul s dull, plodding bondman (hands and feet Scarified and world-weary), take that rest 118 FRANCIS OF ASSISI Which labor-long infirmities require Ere once again to labor it return. Ah ! pride pervert, maybe, and property This rest from labor in a private joy! How deem me poor and free from arrogance (How deem mine, love?) who have one hour mine own For contemplation of the cure of Christ And praises creature-like unto His name: When cures of earth, to saving of men s souls In freedom of devotion minist ring, Are calling, calling from the neighbor-plain Below my mountain, calling to mine heart For saving service, as to Christ s own heart The world was calling, calling: that He came? For thus this love in me, if ne er in Christ, This very love when sensed unto itself And felt for spirit-privilege (indeed As never in Christ s ministry!) becomes Itself a source of arrogance, a pride And property which, for the love of love, The heart must squander charitably alway Or leave the soul in contemplation sunk Aloof as never lay the life of Christ 119 POEMS OF PERSONALITY Aloof from sympathy of hand, of feet Forever walking over the wide world In sacrificial ministry unshod. Ah, woe! then, for mine order d Brotherhood Of souls too rich in love to salve that love By urgent sympathy of hand, of feet In missioning unto the earth s confines, Squander d to lose itself sufficingly In act, in motion-mendicant (creating Of other men alms both and love) or labor Alms-giving and alms-given to the need Of nature, frail and empty save of need In act, nor turn upon itself within In contemplation privily and proud! Ah, woe ! for power and riches spiritual (The heritage of them who follow me, By my default) ; alas, for arrogance Sprung of a human love that finitely Must turn upon itself and fail to spend Infinitely in service and be poor! What have I done, who, turning hearts to love And service, have evoked within the soul Vainglory of such service and the pride Of love-possession, though in Christ enjoy d? 120 FRANCIS OF ASSISI The Christly crucifixion (wounded hands And wounded feet world-ruptured), caused it this? The purpose of apotheosis, through Theophany, transfiguring, but wrought it That men by God-example (infinitely Spending, all-unpossessing) should be prick d To pride of service, wisdom of the tongue In praise of His creation, but no jot Impell d to service of the hands and feet In self-unsaving, perfect poverty? Are these: these marks of helplessness in man, Of dream-tied desuetude of hands and feet Self-suaging (these toil-blister d hands and feet Way-scarified which here luxuriate Taking their ease aloof from cures of men) : The outcome human and contemptible (If anything in life can earn contempt?) Of those world-wounded but unwearying Crucified hands and feet, mine ecstasy Perceives in vision through the forest-boughs Cross-like and quivering with an heavenly light, His stigmata of utter sacrifice? Down from my mountain to the humbler plain 121 POEMS OF PERSONALITY (Now at the last as when Christ call d me erst To lifting of San Damiano s stones!) I haste me; here upon my feet and hands I feel them for spur both and punishment The marks of impotence, the stigmata Envision d of Christ s perfect sacrifice. For hands and feet from now unto the end (Not flower-like, bird-like though perchance they too Feel care and failure? nor for private power Of love-possession but, with fault avow d Of failure, insufficiency to serve) Shall serve Him as at table of the Lord From Whom life all is alms, at beggary Of love, for love s sake: not for any joy In primal brotherhood with bird or flower (Save labor unto death be joy and praise Permitting song aloud an labor cease not?) Ah ! not for any joy with bird or flower Of little friend Francesco praising God. 122 FREDERICK II, HOHENSTAUFEN MAGNIFICENCE almost miraculous Of promise and performance I command: I by a word redeeming from the blame Of Paynimry this Holy Sepulchre And these waste places of Jerusalem! Not armies nor the valor of Christendom In decades hath accomplished for the Cross What sane sagacity and temperate zeal With tact of reason and a wise respect Toward honorable enemies have wrought: I treating honorably with the chief Of Paynimry, opponent of the Cross No doubt, none less a king to whom respect Is ever due from Order s champions Of faith and of right dealing in the world. King, quotha, unto whom respect is due Although in arms against the Cause of Truth! King, quotha, how much more to whom respect Had been accorded had his cause been mine: As Order s champion I of Cross and Truth! And am I treated with respect thus due To virtue and power and accomplishment 123 POEMS OF PERSONALITY (A virtue firm beyond ascetic shams, And naturally in joyance exercised!) In service of the Cross, in thereby saving, Not selfishly the soul but, for mankind The Sepulchre and sweet Jerusalem From infidel defilement? Or am I Reviled as outcast, worse-than-Saracen, Because, forsooth, my merits make alarm To him mischosen Shepherd: Roman wolf Rapacious over Christendom and hateful Of Christendom s crusading conqueror now? Templars and Hospitalers and the swarm Of sycophants pontifical, avaunt! Leave to my care the conquest ye but hinder d! Clutch with your claws no crown belonging to me By right of royal marriage as by rule Of personal possession ! By no Pope Nor Papal hirelings shall I be debarred From kingdom won by king-sagacity. Ah, nobler Sultan, rather had my rights Drawn warrant and support from thy bared sword In honest enmity to overcome Than earn establishment from Romish troth In bull embodied! Excommunicate 124 FREDERICK II, HOHENSTAUFEN (Scorning the priestly, futile interdict Which would rob Christendom of all I ve won!) I glory in the hatred of a Priest! Kameel! ah, how might thou and I allied Restore world all to order, make of East And West conjoin d a sanctuary of faith, Right dealing and respect where such is due! What matter if Mohammed or the Pope Be God s vice-tyrant, when our meeker Christ Gives unto thee or me alike, I ween, Leadership in a soul s nobility: Thy teacher second only unto him Of Mecca, as my Second-unto-None ! How were the world revived, if under us Jointly and severally controlling earth To earth s own good and joyance naturally Arose a new religion, vivified And vivifying by the soul s release Both from this internecine strife of creeds And from the incubus of priest and Pope! Now, by my vow to serve the Christ s true Cross Unservile of the Pharisee of Rome, What duty were more chivalrous than this 125 POEMS OF PERSONALITY To disestablish tyrannies of soul And set a loving liberality Of generous sympathy with humankind Toward every human enterprise and strength In stead of priest and wolfly parasite? By mine investiture as Knight-at-Arms And by this crown of Christ s Jerusalem My high inheritance, shall I not swear A reign of brotherhood and beauty born Of practice and perfection in all arts, All ways of exquisite urbanity, All understandings of the facts and laws Of mystic informations yet occult But under such prospective patronage Become the illuminating discipline Of many? Like justice, shall not poesy (With spells and power over spirits of Hell Learn d of the lyric Semite) be for boon And birth-gift of men s souls beneath my sway, United in a novel Christendom Half-Saracenic, half of ancient cults (Hellenic or Mithraic, Osirian!) Restored; yet wholly in the love of Christ And lore of His inheritance transform d? 126 FREDERICK II, HOHENSTAUFEN Kameel! ah, could thy hand but crown me now, How graciously might thou and I achieve The rebirth of the luminance of soul In disestablishment of him of Rome: Ascetic dotard, Caiaphas two-faced, Frost-blight upon our flower of chivalry! Wolf-blight, alas! upon the Christly fold, With age-worn fangs still fasten d in our flesh! Why waste I hours of proselyting here In Palestine: a land which well might lie Smiling beneath the Paynim scimitar For aught concerning Europe; and which best Might serve for stimulus of intercourse Twixt Saracen and Christian humanizing World-civilization, were our arms withdrawn? Why waste I here the hours Gregorius Doubtless improves to poison hearts at home Against mine orthodoxy, to impugn My fair faith and incite a treason in them? Why waste I for this bauble of a crown (Or publicly to prove my Christianhood Forsooth !) such moons as may from all my stars Withdraw beneficence; whilst he of Rome 127 POEMS OF PERSONALITY With subtlest machinations undermines My power of empire and ascendancy At home? Kameel, ah, never can my home Be far from Sicily; nor heart of mine Forget the boreal burg that bore my race! Let generosity relinquish here The conquest, for thy hand to seize again The governance which thy straightforward faith Hath shown thy due ay, only with the crown When once I have been king d by mine own hand. For then to Rome, to Rome (these mistresses May follow whom Kameel hath promised me) ; To Rome, and crush to earth with iron heel The serpent of the Papacy ! To Rome, Ruin and devastation in my train! That from my throne secure I lean at last The hand of brotherhood to thee, Kameel; And Christian fellowship; establishing Peace and the power of the mind of man Athwart all seas; and joyous chivalry, The rule of love, true service of the Cross! 128 VILLON A VAGABOND ? You good Samaritan! Peace to your fears of personal compromise! No Provost nor no gibbet will hang you ! You catch no foul infection of the plague On fur and velvet, ay, and glittering chain (The jewel likes me; but, hands off, I say!) Helping me here to bread and wine for once A bellyful; no vagabondage smirching Your stiff, respectable, rich smile and style, Unsmirchable by rags and tags of mine! Sir, that you seem to fear contagion, shrink From contact with the soul you stoop to save (Just lifted from the oubliette of Meung By grace of Louis whom the Saints preserve!) Puts me in mind to make demand what show, What substance in this soul of mine you d save Or rat-bit carcass that contains my soul First proved effectual in appeal ; what folly, Freak, rant and posture of the vagabond, The tavern-ruffler and the loose-of-life Fresh from an unjust Churchman s dungeoning, Drew dignity so to stoop to-purpose, lift 129 POEMS OF PERSONALITY And lave and lay mid dignified disdains Raggedness and this outcast of the ways? Friend Charles of Orleans cared not as much For the better brother-rhymester he well knew! Was it some sense that raggedness hath rights Of raggedness, a claim to the world s regard, In person of the mercer prosperous, For its custom of abhorring custom, style Of no-style, stiff decorum (call it so) Of rough contempt for your decorum s lore? Now must the plain corroboration, proof That vagabondage but accepts for due Merit of vagabondage your main zeal In sanctifying, lifting, stiffening me; Now must this recognition how your guess (Your jest?) proves intuition and I show you No spark of gratitude toward grave reform : Must such fulfilment turn your love to loathing, Sour your pity to this pitiful fear Of soul-contamination (did I say The fear of the public executioner? Far be the insinuation!) that you judge (Ah! pardon the harping on the hangman word!) 130 VILLON Your act no kind cure of a crusted soul But a succoring of the hardened gallows-rogue Quite inappropriate to the pledge you hold (A vow, mayhap, for some sin? Oh! my master, I mean no crime beyond a trick of trade Strictly absolved by sharing of the spoil!) Of Christian charity toward scarce toward me Who, hard of heart as hard of head, laugh back Your platitudes preach d by the Prior, no doubt (I heard them at the University, A pest on t!) back upon the hide-bound brain Of you who not once dream d there might be souls That chose to sin because the sin rings true And makes a brawler s ballad; chose and choose To follow a glint, such as the glint may be, To the bitterness, the brilliance, of the dust? I have an absolute pardon, sir, fire-new; And fear not Informations! Let me talk In lieu of silence these so many months. Tabary swung for too much talk; not I, With kind King Louis in my wallet here. (Unless? Unless? The girdle likes me much!) We part, then? Yet, in thanking you for succor POEMS OF PERSONALITY Such as my need imperative demands, Purseful and bellyful and brain stuffd full With pictures of the Paradise you paint (I ll put it in a rondel overnight!) For foil against the Hell I choose to choose; Yet, in acknowledging my boon of you I pray you, master, seriously for now! I acquiesce in no disparagement Personal of the beggar that I am: Who beg from the rich to give to the poor (glib cant Is parcel of mine impertinence!) my friend, Who take of you by power of abject need. For with the satisfaction of the need Goes no confession of the need s disgrace! Sir, what were your vain wealth and self-resource, Even to the sham soul of a prosperous man Bound in a vow ay, by such very test ! But for the vagabondage you abhor, Prescription, intercession, to your sins; By field for penance or by charity Best justifying riches and world-ease? I m the arch-scapegoat. For t is a life like mine, Life for life s sake, no vulgar gain in view, That yields you well-behaved and prudent men 132 VILLON Prosperity of body as of soul, Power in both sorts, through emptiness for me. And now: I have not made my way in the world - I put a euphemism as would Charles, Though with mine own mad irony beneath! So, because wealth has stoop d to succor me, 1 was supposed to wake at last to the worth Of custom and convention in the world And this the enviable that goes therewith; Avow mine error, mend; and make my ways Your ways, outstrip remorse by some reform, Accept gratuity through zeal to earn Position, independence; fain to pay Gratuity back and quit the claim? Nowise! I grasp gratuity for greed s own right An you will : nay, rather, for your soul-need of gift, Need of the unreturning charity; The worth of ingratitude, and grandest gain By the gift of good regardless of good end (Unless in salving of your private sin!) Succoring raggedness for succor s sake And the right of vagabondage to go free. Sir for hyperbole! t is you who shrink Aside through byeways from the walk of the world 133 POEMS OF PERSONALITY Even in your broider d costume of world-style: You laboring ever for an end in view Beyond work; rest and recompense and power: Ay, in this world or in a next, a goal ! You in your servile goal-dependence spurn The world s real way of life for life s sole sake (And at the last some mocking testament ! ) Life asking no reward, but just the commune In brotherhood of all else who live thus Above the fear of failure, quite beyond Your personal compromise though bishops starve And provosts hang me for the cure of crime! T is your soul starves the soul in me despite Alms; for your charity yet shames the soul. Ay, t is because of you who d work for ends, For purposes and prospects, that I fail Rescue the world and need your rescuing! Sir, did the whole world, Paris here and Blois Where Charles lies in his dotage, rotten-ripe, And Meung with its good bishop curse him! dwell As I have dwelt in wide community Giving and taking as I give and take: Because, by yielding gift of all we have, 134 VILLON A ballad or a rondel it may be, Deserve we limitless bounty, benison: Then were the wisdom of the ways of you No wisdom; stigma of the vagabond Your due; and vagabondage recognised Wisdom, the moral and the strict and right, Sanction d and custom d through new peace on earth, Needing no gibbets; nor no charity! Nay, master, for the succoring have thanks; Not thanks as for obligation due the great From humble vagabondage, yet for grant Of opportunity to loose my tongue Long-used to dungeon-silence ! Ah, one s creed Needs stating sometimes in a forthright prose To rob the rats of breakfast and exalt The beggar a little above his bread! I go Ranting, profaning if you call it still A blasphemy, what care I? Write me down For the Provost s galaxy of cunning scamps (In faith, the Provost knows me very well! And by more names than one the pardons read Of blest King Louis whom the Saints uphold!) This scamp a cunningest; who hoodwink once, 135 POEMS OF PERSONALITY Never again so long as wrath endure ! Heretic? Platonist fellow ? You d retract Half your donation? Take it, in despite Of the truth of this I ve just exhorted you Of the utter thanklessness of poethood ! What? No resentment? I will keep the gift; Count so much toward the cure of your kind soul, Respectable, prosperous, but none the less Samaritan toward graceless vagabonds! My duty to the Provost when you meet ! Nay, by your leave, the chain and jewel too! CHARLES V OH, vast, imperial and vain regret Wherewith am I tormented; this mine office (Whose woes and burdens would I fain put off For sack-cloth of the cloister of the soul) Distracted with the mad, rebellious wars, The heresies internecine sprung of him With whom, when at the Diet sore blaspheming Him held I in my doom-pronouncing power, I kept a pledge, an oath misfortunate Of too secure return unto his friends; A pledge miskept with heretics, an error Which very faith and truth from out the earth (Unless God by new servants intervene) May some day drive and utterly destroy: Witness the shameful tolerance decreed To which I yield consent in sad defeat ! Ah, woe! that I, by private troth compell d, A fancied individual honor bound, As Emperor with God s great world in charge Thus falsely and thus faithless to my trust Bare sanctity of a fealty but human Above the duty and service owed to God ! 137 POEMS OF PERSONALITY T is this which drives me now to my despair And proves me fit but unto abdication (Though still be many a task to undertake First, first to drive the French from ravished Metz!), Acknowledging by penance in abasement The ever-cumulating consequence In spiritual pestilence, alas! Born of my soul s infection when I proudly, Mistakenly to privilege of reason Clove in a knightly, upright honestness Forsooth as my misguided judgment held; Though God s imperial obligation urged me (And many a secret, sacred hint from Rome!) Unto the perjury for Christ s faith s sake! Ah, thus the Holy Father s legates prove it With closet-exhortation hour by hour My fault indubitable; whilst, too late, \ I can but now resolve my soul to save, Sobeit possible to the steward fruitless, In cloister d meditation to the end That earth shall shake under a surer sway! How miserable the frowardness of man! How pitiable, were it not so base, CHARLES V Mine insolent self-reliance, when the world Had sudden need of new obedience, The Christian need of crime unquestioning When by the Church commanded ! I was born Heritor of a thousand hard-won years Wherein the individual sanctity Of personal oath (for all the cunning tongue Of Machiavelli with the serpent-craft!) Had for a bond of troth twixt man and man Securely been establish d; that my soul With sense of high-achieving chivalry (No fealty absolving them beneath me From knightly dealing with the least below!) Was nurtured and sustain d within a world Where honor only, save a saving creed, Seem d worthy of a kingly character Too often forced by circumstance untoward To tyrannies still honorably plann d. And into such a world was I indeed Born to an universal heritage Of power well-nigh imperial; then, by gift Of God s grace and the election crown d o er-all With absolute opportunity to rule And guard the world unto the glory of Christ; 139 POEMS OF PERSONALITY And absolute responsibility In temporal things, the comings and the goings, The words and deeds (so be they honorable) For king-command subjected to my will: My wish, the heir-adopted gerentwise For overt will of God; and at my hand The Holy Father to pronounce of well Or ill within our body spiritual! What outlook had been nobler, wiselier plann d To make of man, of me the Imperial King, Paragon of a splendor rightly ruling Each rising and each setting neath the sun? What heed, the hates of Francis or his warfares? What heed, the machinations many a time Of England or the Paynim at the gates To fend, when with an all-imperial statehood And principalities earth-numberless Was I for praise and blame ripely endow d A steward to an heavenly mastership? Yet was I froward, too man-blind to see And so accept the honor-withering flame Of Christ s new dispensation as it leap d A lightning-tongue to my new age on earth; I was too knightly-proud (a Sigismund 140 CHARLES V With that Bohemian who came to nought Did better in his bitter perjury!), I was too prince-upright alway to allow Within the fox-skin of a Romish priest The real, infallible holy-fatherhood Whose guidance were unerring. Stood I forth Against desires of Clement, sack d his Rome With soldiers of the brood of Wittenberg And flung in prison his person sacrosanct (In sin begot and crown d in simony!) Or kept faith with a traitor to Christ s church: The same inestimable error made; The pride of individual kinglihood, The knight-on-oath, the manhood-chivalry Merely when every tittle of human judgment, Of self-reliance gainst authority, Had rightly in God s vice-gerent drown d away To rise above the flood of dim opinion (With fear of the shame of blushful Sigismund!) And maelstrom of the privy conscience-gleam To firmament and white, unfaltering light Of Christ-resolved perplexity, by rescript Indicted of the Pope-authority For sign of the new-born epoch upon earth 141 POEMS OF PERSONALITY (Obedience now in lieu of kinglihood) Releasing, overriding the mere troth-plight Of earthly knight and mundane Emperor! monk of Wittenberg, whose arms but now, Despite mine honor-prizing ail-too dear, Drove me from Innsbruck to a foul disgrace, How have I taken thy part; in holding back The clouds of omen d priest-craft-tyranny (So useful too in mine estates of Spain !) Brought down the deluge of a civil strife With victory to thy crime! Though thou be dead Too late to stay the damage of thy daring, Hearest thou not in Hell (where I soon with thee May for my fatal f rowardhood aye anguish !) The tramp of thy fiend-legions, I first loosed When for the right of conscience of a king 1 kept against a Pope s divine desire Mere oath and honor? I my soul had saved From everlasting torment; I the earth Preserved from everlasting sacrilege (May God through His new heirs yet intervene: My deep, dread, heartless son, my brother mighty!) Had I example set of absolute faith, 142 CHARLES V Endured disgrace, the private perjury Of burning thee in life as now thou burnest; And sacrificed my temporal fame to God: The dedication (which the times demand In their new culture of a tyranny To match rebellion) which I felt too dear Till now in vain ! O monk of Wittenberg, Whose Hellish power perchance bewitch d my spirit, A king even and an heart imperial Hath acted as by conscience-fealty, Thy motive in rebellion; and must feel (For honor lieth in God s authority!) How miserable the vast regrets of men! BACH AN earnest piety preventeth me (Dear God! but there are moments of despair, As hours of exaltation verily!) An earnest piety preventeth me, If I may meekly boast a grace of Christ, From trivial petulance. The patronage Of my respected prince enableth him Who serveth loyally the churchly muse To labor without fear of too strict want In effort toward the heights; undestitute Yielding his tongue to utterance sublime, So much as may be in the depths of him Half-inarticulate, without dismay. And can the servant of a favoring prince, Afforded with the daily provenance For family provision and the fees From funeral performance, crave of right Anything further maintenance, reward Or recognition? For, behold! I brood Not quite in irony but realizing, If scarce with snug complacence, gratefully Indeed mine ease of fortune by God s help 144 BACH Assisting mine ambition to speak amply The music in me for acknowledgment Of heaven s favor! Shall not daily dole Suffice, with something of a shrewd respect From all less courtly folk, to crown the Court s Composer and Precentor of the School? T is true that of the Bachs mine own success Is somewhat over average; that my name (In shame I smile, the fact perforce avowing!) Is gradually growing, sure I see, More widely known than any of my kin; Even as, maybe, my music richlier moveth Than music hitherto in homelier days Composed, perform d of my Thuringian clan. And is not this enough of outward show; And comparable quite to my deserts, Sufficing to permit the spirit to sing Who in herself cares nothing for these things Save as the bodily life hath need of them? Mine organ and my clavichord apart Can take in idler hours from mine hand The meaning of mine heart which moveth me So much, so almost unaccountably With seeming-holy fervor; and in my work 145 POEMS OF PERSONALITY Which busies me by grant of God and man, God giveth satisfaction. Then, what more? It is not that the pettier jealousies Of consistory or of scholars clash Too much with inspiration (an we call My yearning to compose in piety Church-themes an inspiration?) nor the cares Of many, many mouths given mine hearth For succor and support (my wife here yieldeth Help meet unto the need) cling me too close For freedom. These are things of human hate And human love, the common privilege Or burden, it may be, of all mankind Each man in sort; which, though they move me not To wrath nor wantonness, yet endlessly, As I must feel in mine especial part And privacy of pure musicianhood, Contribute to a reverential zeal In service of a Love by sacrifice Triumphant over Hate: a service couch d In sequent-harmonies canonical; Each tone, in yielding place, affording proof 146 BACH Of purport consonant, although diverse; And thereby passion pictured without pain Of self-reluctance in the yielding note; And thus a symbol of the art I d owe, Its very image and presentment, given For stimulus within the daily round Which else had been, or fain had seem d, at surd To mute mine utterance in soul s despite. That, though I picture Passion, no complaint (More than in Christ was personal complaint Though all in victory was yielded up !) Of petty cark, responsibility Nor any sort of hindrance, can arise Within my spirit whose natural pietism (I mean not any creed unorthodox!) By grace of God as I may meekly claim . Preventeth, as I ve said, all petulance Or derogation from humility; Whate er the artist-irony, despair Or exaltation which may dwell therewith. Yet sometimes are there stirrings (very Christ Appeal d unto the Father!) might not God Achieve through music something of a truth, 147 POEMS OF PERSONALITY Some more replete harmoniousness, maybe, Which pettiness and privacy alike, For all the incessant motion of the mind And aggregation of the scriven d sheaves Of the music-elemental culture-heat, Seem doom d to smother; He working for the truth (As God through Luther work d beyond the man Two centuries now since, unto all time!) In some way largelier, more to reach mankind (Haply my Mass may reach more creeds than mine !) With universal scope, than now by me; And yet I be His instrument, as now This organ is mine instrument of soul? Dear God! mine were Thy Power if so wouldst Thou Vouchsafe to me, the henchman of Thy song, A mission, universal angelhood, The masterful apostleship to lands Beyond our sunset lying or to times Franchised, enlightened far beyond these days Of niggard skepticism and the clouds Of creed-made tumult of the nations rent With bitterness of half-belief in Thee 148 BACH Its churchly, temporal establishments At variance each in jealousy! If Thou, Arrived at majesty in purports new, Wouldst let me speak when Christ were else a name As for mistake and failure; to bring back The lost of Israel from their sands of cant By music of the cosmic fructifying Of Thy sphere-motions, as the years to-come Shall learn them for the thoughts within Thy mind Who veilest in all things else Thy Heart from man Save Law and architectured Harmony! Dear God! if Thou couldst let me know this glory Within me of futurity alarged, If only while I work and rear, for Thee Alone, the uplifts of an art no man Hath yet in understanding! Oh! for, God, I feel, if humbly, that within my moods And ways of counterpoint there lurk such forms Of intricate coincidence of tone As even favoring princes would contemn For reason of a novelty inborn (A Reformation, unconservative; Iconoclastic of mere piety!); 149 POEMS OF PERSONALITY Which subtler, curious thing of symphonies And chordal canonism will scarcely come, Confounding congregations, from the hand Of native impulse wholly without help Of public exploitation, as at Worms Men s mortal opposition brought to birth The appeal from self to God. Ah, if from God Be sympathy expected, it is well. And if to God be every hour appeal As now in anguish of the splendor-spirit His bounty puts upon me, it is well. But might not God reveal such sympathy, Accept and answer outwardly the appeal (Not only with the fees of funerals Pardon the tragic irony of man ! Or birthday ode upon some paid command) In here and there insistence of a prince On better than the best, demand of men For fictions to confound a choiring throng? It sure may be that God Himself hath ways Of stimulation unperceived of him (Mine organ knoweth not the reason of it Though rendering right the urgence of my soul !) Of stimulation unperceived of him 150 BACH Who followeth the gleam and still appeals; Ways from within, yet also plausibly By help unseen without: the future age Which jealousies of churches generate, Wherewith all earth s at labor and whereto A man who loneliest strives may heart-attain And dwell with unaware? Did even he Incarcerate in Wartburg ever dream Of Germany enfranchised, celebrant As latterly, of his two hundred years? But, oh! the open conflict and the power Of emperies array d against the man! - With me, a scholar or a consistory! Nay, nay! I have spoken with God and He hath heard me Out of the mood of pietist despair And struggling exaltation ever mine! Nay, nay! There is a work unto mine hand Wherethrough a satisfaction and a sense Of universalism stimulating A soul fulfill d, man s work unto mine hand In training of my sons (wherewith my wife Were more than merely helpful) and at school POEMS OF PERSONALITY Some simpler truth to teach, passing adown The Bach tradition out of Thiiringen. The Christ, the Luther, I may celebrate And please my prince; but from myself appeal Not publicly mid hostile emperies; Yet privily: leaving the rest to God! 152 FICHTE RISE up, rise up, O Teutons, and cast off The Corsican ; from ashes of the soul Spring forth, fresh-Phoenix-like, and strike to ground The towering eagle! Be the nation born Of German folk to grasp a birthright-earth, The heritage of men ! Assert our strength And claim to place in the sun! But be there bounds To just ambition and to vaulting power A bourn of self-restraint: retrieving earth By virtue of men s mutual respect From these the shambles of the righteous strife, The terrible probation needed now. For, fellow-men, what saving were there made Of earth, if from the tyranny o erthrown, The dragon s seed but of a fiery wrath Had birth and in our throes of sacrifice But strife and strife were bodied everywhile? Leap to the freedom-carnage there is need! But hold within your hearts the brotherhood (My creed must teach it, an ye understand!) Of all who are, the stranger even as ye, Exponents of the Godhead! Feel the truth 153 POEMS OF PERSONALITY In absolute selfhood underlying each Of Gaul as Teuton ! Fight, sith fight we must, The true war, slaughtering them the despot s hordes But that for Prankish as for German youth A new-enfranchised western neighbor-state Smile at ye o er the Rhineland ! Oh, what grief, Were once this splendid fervor of our folk For freedom and for opportunity, The wide world through, that spirit and spirit-truth (Mistake not strength of law for despotism; Well-knit, enlightened rule, for arrogant will !) In each established state, self-regulate And neighbor-independent, overtly Alone should reign what desecrating shame, Were this, the spirit-of-uplift in us now, Which my poor words assist in stirring-on, Were generous patriotism made the mask For furious world-subjection ! Shall we fight Beyond the mountains of a German mark? No, never beyond the Rhineland save to serve The Frank by ruin of the despot there! Shall Germany enfranchised prove a yoke (A bitterer despotism than before) To Frank, Iberian as this crew hath been 154 FICHTE Of him call d Imperator and blood-lust Inflame us to be scourge of half the earth, A second Hunnish plague of Attila? Far be it from us! Rather had my words Been smother d in my throat, before their time Choked down ere utterance, than my battle-taunt Be taken for a cry of conquest here! Brethren and fellowmen! Your enemies Are fellows also. Let not Germany For dint of one good deed blot out in the end Heart-sense of wrong and right: as ill should be (Alas! as now I fear it of our fury!) Were sword and shot to be world s arbiters! Ah! vision of a justice beyond ours: Some overnational tribunal set (The national privacy alway preserving!), Some permanent conclave as of judges (each Race-representative, by rulers chosen) Arm d only with the solemn treaty-oath (Unsmirchable in honor to a world!), Which no necessity could bid us break, Of nation each with nations; to submit Unto such rational arbitrament The burden of dispute: that thus our shares 155 POEMS OF PERSONALITY Were beaten out of swords, and reaping-hooks Be bent of spearheads; none be need of arms Save guarding a law and order national Against the evildoer! Thus, thus, o troth, Liefer than in arbitrament of dread And death, were glory of our egohood Achieved. Ah, friends! I have through my best days (Who now by stress of tyrannies am driven To this high ranting, rousing up the land) Through my best days have urged the inmost truth, Scarce as of revolution by the mob Nor as of conquest extra-national But, of a strength of order, holding fast For health domestic as for race-respect A peace, that universal spirit-hood Which binds all hearts together, keepeth faith By honor and by generosity Where oaths are (nay, where oaths are needed not For honor) between man and man, and holds One common intuition of God-kind For basis of achievement. If our souls, Each in its kind, must personally soar To splendor of privacy, oh, not by will Inflicted on the weaker but, by love 56 FICHTE In art, in poetry the master-mind (A Goethe, Schiller, surely showeth ye!), ^ Through cultural appreciation proven Shall ease him of ambition! If our souls Leap to the armament, O men, have care Of the future culture of men s brotherhood Which heeds well frontiers, in forbearance proud, Deals fairly with our common humanhead! Were it a dream-chimera? Must we choose Or such enslavement as the Corsican Hath planted on our necks; else or commit Our children and our children s children after To bitter armament, the frantic strife, The desperate overbearing? No ! That crime, That world-crime worst against our fatherhood Be far from this the spirit-fatherland ! And if bad hearts arise who would forget Man s common birthright of the absolute-soul Alike in each, soever otherwise Be tongue from tongue; and if they conquest cry And tyranny to desolated hearths (Where, brotherhood forgot, no fatherland Can claim a sonship) then to them turn ye, O generations, not with lackeying ear! 157 POEMS OF PERSONALITY But strongly daunt them with the reason-claim Of generous furtherance I teach ye now: I who must take, in all humility, This risk, of one who rouseth in men s hearts The tempest of an hatred, that it burn Too hot to be extinguished but may lie Forever smouldering, ah, flickering up (Which faith foref end !) with breath of policy And arrogant statecraft alway ! Yet be yours The claim of aspiration spiritual, The mission of emancipation now; Carrying not desolation but relief From burden; with the liberty of truth, The freedom each to dwell in liberty With truth for helpmate! Friends, the hour is come (Now stirs the splendid Slav s new-saving strength ! The noble English, guardians of the seas, Hover with white-wing d aid!) the hour is come Of Germany s deliverance. Go ye forth; Smite once and greatly smite: and smite no more! 158 SCHOPENHAUER THE hour is bed-time; but the wine is good, Warming, yet almost wholly feverless. Yon viols sing-it soothingly, the winds Not too asseverative tame their throats To moods in mystical complacency Of contemplation whilst my limbs repose Beneath their harmony and bask with them: The melody of prelude! And my heart Outreaches, takes (upon the stimulus Of symphony within me and without Releasing from long, nerve-rack d harassment) Inceptions novel, tuned unto the taste Esthetic of the momentary lapse From tension and from irritance. I turn No petulance now upon the pageant-thoughts Which dream-like muster in the lamplit air; Relaxing, I, to suave despondency Well-suited unto genius at research; The genius at research till haply wine With music lull to luxury of sleep Sans that bourgeois banality of bed And boorish night-cap. And in open d book 159 POEMS OF PERSONALITY Which suits so well by sugar d sonneting The melody of prelude, let me prick For phrase that fits, some text unto the tune Of thought : good reading matching the good wine. Music to hear, why hear I music sadly , When all the yearning of the will of the world (The human burden-note, the nature-chord Supportant summing-up the cosmos-scheme), With scarce world s anguish d unreality Of intellect-presentment, sweetly speaks Ay, sweetly speaks, despite objective taint Still archetypal of our misery In music wholly and therein alone? Why sadly, when the will, as Will, were nought Hedonic? Were it that the intellect, Whereof perchance no auditor were purged (Oho! am I of intellect now purged, Who spur at truth-lists but in music s name?) Nor musical creator quite exempt In exposition to art s inwardness, Through some machinery of sense impinged In music as in aught else, outwardly Interprets and infuses with a tint 160 SCHOPENHAUER Of customary melancholy, taken From visual imaginations, e en These tonal harmonies? Were it that we (Whose speech is alway wondrously betwixt Vision and voice, interpreting all insight!) In no sort may escape idealism Specific, individual in fine, Howe er disguised as though beyond the self, Of the self-illusion? Though yon music make (Expressive overtly of nothing known) Appeal in uttermost not unto mind But unto will s impersonality, Warranted as by genus general, Architectonic o er Platonic types, Of pure conatus in unconsciousness, Must self with sensitivity intrude (Sense, the sheer stuff, the raw material Of ideality, as Locke hath shown) To spoil all and announce with all life else The world-delusion and delinquency? Delinquent are we that the oracle Of will-reality (cause veritable E en of curst consciousness) must yet, unreal (For so in last resort unreal is all 161 POEMS OF PERSONALITY Law-semblant definition neath the shroud Of space-and-time-form falsely causative How quaint my Kant combined with Gautama, And yet profound beyond post- Kantian creeds Of shallow solipsistic optimism!), This pseudo-oracle of truth must yet Within our fantasy denominate Only the old illusion ! How may we men Hear music to approve us feelingly, In the last freedom-effort of the heart, Of universal failure, lo! nor weep: Shamed of the sad insistence of the self; Alarm d at life s incapability From life s illusions of a last escape? Alas! allowing to efficient will Some hope of nescience though the knower live, Through art (the form Platonic brought to earth Unwill d save of the universal, felt As truth) in music have I dream d escape (Music, the meaning of Pythagoras When measure, number was declared the key!), Hailing the hint of inarticulance (Involved in mere numericality j And lack of literal allusiveness) 162 SCHOPENHAUER For will-reality, of poignancy Provided by conceptual emptiness In concentration on the immediate mood For unillusion, non-idealism Mistaken in a fond interpreting; And feel now fervently mine hope betray d, And nothing save illusion, no escape (Unless, as now, my nisus were appeased Ah! surely scarce in dreadful suicide! Ever in truth-perception geniuswise?), No escape granted to the sensuous man Wholly from unreality, allow d Anywise from the world-embodiment. For even an hint, be it hint of what you please Beyond the mind (even Fichte, fool enough, Had sight of that!), implies yet consciousness; And form of space-perception dominates (Ha! Kant would have spared from space his moralism, But could not, as my doctrine plainly proves!) Still in the very "goal" of an "escape". And I am sad while music mocks at me, Who face the universal failure with Discomfort of mistake and fair disproof! As I treat all men else, so now in turn 163 POEMS OF PERSONALITY Music makes sport of genius in my frame, Pronouncing error where was boastfulness. Fain from disproof would genius be debarr d! Fain would be proven genius in the adoption Of the very truth found so discomforting! Say, the new step be taken, from mistake Freed by the very burden of disproof, The spirit of genius saved bewilderment! Say, all is veil d, one woof of misery, One warp of mystery and no escape (Nay, not in utmost generality Hyperplatonic of the objectivism) From intellect s insistence of idea; But most-abstraction lies but most remote (As Plato s truths were still beyond the world) From world-salvation merely and from truth, Not from our falsehood and unhappiness! Say, every loophole fancied of this life (Even the Oriental necromancy Of self-abstrusion, but approximately, Not fully liberative from the thrall) Stands stopp d; and nought of any worldlessness, Abstractly counter to the pure idea, Pertaining to the will may be allow d; 164 SCHOPENHAUER And very will-reality but names A central core, an accursed fundament (No thing-itself beyond our hedonism, But equally with ideality Topic of our despair as of delight) From which might be no dream of mere escape (Save genius be beyond bewilderment Delighting in the new-won estimate Of will-presentment, yea, of heart-idea?) For Maia and our self-bewildering! Then might I hear music less moodily Which yields at least such fundamental truth (For fundamental truth someway it seems Though more, perchance, akin to Locke than Kant Far be it from the Fichtean foolery, From Schelling s charlatanry, Hegel s hoax!) In proof of irretrievable dismay: By being truth, ay, despite the truth s dismay, None less a law whereof I were behoved (Where er it lead and wheresoe er derived If not from these Teutonic solipsists!) Best to be proud in the possession, not Cast down, below mere mundane melancholy, 165 POEMS OF PERSONALITY With feelingful oppression. For if world, As proved now by this music-maundering, Even in hyperplatonism (extreme Resort of objectivity) defy Our artist-effort from self-tanglement To free the world-will, even so must be Some principle of understanding, power Call d forth in genius by the new demand Of comprehension in me that entails New explanation. Grant that music means Through utmost generality of art (Itself the hyper-art from mind remotest) In some sort most approximately will Clean of specific demarkation, world-will Without will-world s idealism, and thus (Spare me the Fichtean ego-inference!) Yields hint of plausible freedom from a thrall Of self-mistake, yet worst of all mistakes Would be to blind heart to the strength of sense So well descried of Locke and Kant alike, Which even in instance of a beauty blind, An art of tone sweetly unvisual, Envelopes if by symphony of sound With veil of miserable mystery. 166 SCHOPENHAUER And from mistake, searching the secret things For mastery, may genius be debarr d ! Music to hear, so may I hear half-gladly Roused for the nonce from suave despondency As erstwhile from the accustom d petulancies; And fearing only some misinference Too far toward Fichte in the strain d revolt So sudden from the accustom d Hinduism Of world-illusion and will-nescience! Music to hear, so may I hear half-gladly, By conscience of the hint contain d of truth Unusual, revolutionizing to My doctrine, stimulating to the brain Of one half-stagnate with entirety (As none before me with entirety Save Leibniz, stagnant in a dogmatism; Or Berkeley, haply, whom the saving salt Of sane subjectivism could not cure Of Judaism s stale theology - Ay, or Spinoza, at the best half-Jew!), The brain lethargic with entirety Of hitherto conviction. From thought s first Inception of my system sprung full-arm d 167 POEMS OF PERSONALITY From my young front (and few, I ween, so young Show d thus mature!) hath small development, Save if by confirmation and, o troth, Hath all comparison with creeds extant Of Hindu, Greek or Modern but confirm d My creed s superiority, till now My genius grasps a growth within itself Quite independent, as I stoutly swear, Unfecundate of chance resemblances To Fichte s superficiality My riper penetrations so abhor From truth s first birth hath small development Save evidential testimony ensued To titillate intellection or require Of genius exercise. T was daily but The cataloguing of more instances (As Aristotle wasted stupidly Acumen too discursive citing facts As instances of species yet unproved, For all his logic categorical !) In proof of fundamental postulates Seemingly unassailable: the Will, The World-Presentment and the Pure Idea: A balance of the Two and Tertium Quid 1 68 SCHOPENHAUER Someway arising in the brain (conceived, Though feature of idea derivative And so in need of warrant with the rest, Yet mystically warranting the world By secret union of idea and will My circulus in demonstrando brain !) ; And within World-Presentment (properly Enough if, as it seems, Presentment be Perchance all of my system that survives Proof of sense-universal) elements Of subject-self, of object-otherhood, The true-face (saving that the private self Were presence!) and the false-face of a truth Intrinsically false in virtue of The double-faced subtension. Such it was: My world-solution; and therefrom derived The mystic purpose to annihilate Unto a world-salvation self and brain, The inward and the outward privacy Of individuation. But at a gleam This music, and this moodiness aware Of doubt and new denominations to The well-worn platitudes. And I have proved Myself, maybe (as erst all thinkers else 169 POEMS OF PERSONALITY By my critique!), in error; and take delight Strange in the sudden mockery of me (Might I endure it on another s tongue?) Which music hath induced. For, of a flash, I penetrate Arcanas all unguess d Derisively, anent the vaunted theme Of flawlessness to my philosophy Establishing counter-systems in a word: I pleased thereby both for the cynicism Of mine own goals-destroy d and claims-decried And for the feel of power in the insight Of truth-perception fondly fresh-allow d (Despite this warning to my dogmatism!) For fundament incontrovertible. T is slight, the change of sight, and yet how vast The implication! Let me laugh (as might laugh Kant at those earlier dogmatisms destroy d!) At recollection of the creed foregone A moment since! Where now were vague Idea (That echo of the falser Platonism Beyond the genus-truth) or, echoing Buddh With some extravagance, the vaguer Will? The concept of sheer consciousness, o sooth, Supposed objective and sheer nescience 170 SCHOPENHAUER Supposed subjective (this the very Real, That the Ideal) conscience as of nought And nothingness unconscienced given to match Each void the other s vague inanity? With music for the password to prove both? Where now the music antinomial: Pure objectivity of nothing known, Pure nisus of a non-sense join d within Tone-harmonies alone (for visual Imaginings, even of art, were still Recognized terms of ideality Soe er generic) tones excepted from Otherwise universal rule of self (Ah! how now shirk the Fichte-Schelling Self?) The hybrid and her world sensational Of mystery in mixture? Suddenly, The assertion of the modicum of sense (The sensuous fundament, heard or unheard) In tone-creation, of the parallel Twixt voice and vision, and the paradox Melts into marvel that it e er had seem d Solution serious! Not one loophole left For any inkling of a meaning, in Experience the sole criterion, to 171 POEMS OF PERSONALITY Or selfless Will or objectless Idea; To Will pure Real, nor illusionism! But, in default of any severance, A somewhat which all theories would mean Which aim at unity and system, somewhat Perchance which others (might they be those three In chief I scoff d at?) guess d more close than I; Somewhat associant, identical With selfhood as with worldhood through and through For the true Real, where nought is beside For basis of deception, ay, for veil Of Maia I fondly featured: somewhat shown, No doubt, in some degree by all who seek Fair understanding as their genius leads: An union elemental through one system (Temporal-spatial, ay, essentially) Of subject-objecthood, of me and world Within my personal; with personal will For nexus of the worldhood-intellect; With personal intelligence providing (Not in an hyper-kind or genus-sort Conceptualwise, but primely by perception Interpreting unto self-purposes The other-selves provisional of sense) 172 SCHOPENHAUER The terms of selfhood s real assertiveness; And Person, compounded of idea and will Uniquely, for denominance of all. And, where in music thus the person takes (Scarce mythic Number of Pythagoras; Which were but time without time-consciousness!) Tone-interrelation felt discriminately Whilst cognized as of self hedonicwise By intimate mergence of these elements Of system recognized identical With world-self at expression (ay, reconstructed E en in the auditor who, too, creates If most by imitation), there finds the spirit True satisfaction, scarce as by escape From worldhood, not by nescience of the will Obliterate from ideality, But by world-realization outwardwise As inwardly opening intelligence To comprehension of the unioning, To nexus in extremes, to terminism In blind conatus; leaving nowise blind, Nowise mysterious nor illusional Nor veil d of Maia, this our beauty-life Of reconciliation, opposites POEMS OF PERSONALITY Inextricably, throughly polarized And constituting wholeness mutual. How vast the implication from this seed Of sense, this hint of solidarities (I care not though the ear hear silently, As now in momentary pause of sound; For inward speech itself is sensuous-based) Abiding even in music sense itself But worldhood least-avowed as of the person (Most strict externalized in other-selves Themselves scarce held in self s heart-sympathy), Most unlike inwardness yet none the less In rudiment systematic: the last straw My drowning disrupt snatch d at and was saved! So from mistake hath genius been debarr d, Grateful for disproof by the music-mood. Music to hear, thus hear I music gladly (E en from the mythus of my Shakespear freed!); And from the gladness by irradial gleams Discover in all experiences else The tinge of satisfaction hitherto Quite undetected: that my pessimism Seems a lost shadow, and itself alone 174 SCHOPENHAUER Unreal, illusion d. For where all is real Which to the personal will hath meaning, what Remains of old illusion yielding gloom For dint of unreality? Where life Is universal-mutual, what want Of pure Idea, to clear, as I conceived, The privy-wrought confusion; or what need For necromantic abnegation of A world proved truth organic? World and I Alike are mutual-necessary, each Essential, real with reality Identical in the inter-reference, Sufficing to criterion of an whole; And so are warrantable each by each, And thus a living music! Yet, ah! how weary The ear, now, at such stress irrelevant Of yonder loud expulsion from the brass Of booming-breath d vibration! With what snarl, Irritant to attentive petulance Startled as out of prophecies in sleep, Attest the viols their complainingness! Ha! t is a weary business, this of earth, Sans all Arcanas worth the dreaming of; A wear-and-tear without or let or cease 175 POEMS OF PERSONALITY Of each on other; sight or sound alike (Even speech-thought, of both made up in base) Only some friction of the jaded nerve! A-bas, the foolish jest of joust for truth When merely living is a strife enough! Nought without sheer sensation! Oh, there crowds In on the ruffled spirit such a storm, Outraging genius in its inwardness, Of interruptions and irrelevancies! No heart-escape! No thwarting such a will Inveigled in its cage inextricably To crowd and jar, to push and be rebuff d The livelong eons of vulgarity (Humanity and nature bourgeois both; Whether supportant or at odds, what care?) Call d cosmos! Ah! would but the courage stick, How swift I d cheat things of their sport of me, Checking their mockery with proud report Of how I dared the nobler self-escape, Destroy d out of the world my saviorhood Of wisdom scarce-appreciated: so Abandoning their world-will to its fate! Ah, well! I dare not. T is a question closed And seal d with doctrine how the true escape, 176 SCHOPENHAUER Easy enough by contrast, were not death But life s continuance in some will-less mood (Possible to the ascetic saint, no doubt) Of vacant contemplation! Well, for me Here was a will-wan mood aesthetical (Born of a chance phrase in a much-thumb d book Which now I snap-to, pocket testily) With contemplation but not vacantness; With fantasy of Fichtean folly faugh! Yon breath in the brass, yon poignance of the strings May seek and find escape, forsooth. But I, My sad limbs stiff with these unyielding stools, Surfeited now with music can but pay Their stupid reckoning. How much for bad wine? Bah! t is too dear! And so am off to bed. 177 LINCOLN THE people shall be trusted. Strong, though sad, In confidence I must announce the truth: Defeat, disruption of the nation now, The disappearance from the face of earth Of high democracy and government By the people for the people evermore, Now and forever save the people come Equally from all sorts in sacrifice Of national service to the service-line, With common blood unto the bloody front, And face in absolute democracy The time s necessity. For hitherto Have but the bravest and the best stepp d forth To strip for freedom s ringside, leaving all Of home and comfort and of life-career Because a patriotism upsprung within, A public duty felt and speaking in them Prevail d above all selfish obstacle And drove them by compulsion of the soul, By conscience to the terrible battle-front. And this, despite democracy supposed, Was worse than aristocracy; the best LINCOLN But flung in the breach. And of the best there be not Enough to stem the tides of slavery; Nor Union to posterity bequeath. Yea, can democracy and liberty never Turn to the world the trick of victory Won and the right established, save the crowd (At heart too proud to cower beneath the shield Of nobler natures) find in the fight at last Their manhood and salvation, nobly dying Where need is to make life nobler to live. The people, if to learn to find their life, Must be compeird and at the dire need Trusted to take equality of pain. Equality of pain! Is that then all? Or truly first when sacrifice is shared Springs brotherhood? Shall I, the solitary, So sorely friendless at the nation s head, So nigh-unaided in its counsellings, By Providence compell d to every task Of leadership alone (and so companion d, At worst, of Providence!), in taking on me The terrible responsibilities Now of the draft-conscription to make men 179 POEMS OF PERSONALITY Follow by sheer compulsion, not myself At last, and for the first in verity, Feel kinships and the strength of sympathies With every man within the nation s bound Who serves and learns to love beyond aught else His country, that profound community Of purpose to set freedom everywhere Above compulsion in the hearts of men? Strange, bitter-sad the purgative of God, That they and I can only thus be free And free of a common aim in sacrifice By such compulsion: I, compelling me To take upon my heart the infinite burden Prescribed to the conscience as by Providence Of forcing to the shambles brother-men; But, thereby only, winning victory And, thereby only, feeling brotherhood Complete and innocence of tyranny In the friendship of the faith that trusteth men To learn the deep disaster to our faith, To share with me the secret that there be not Of best enough to save the earth for good. O Lord, couldst Thou, with malice unto none And charity toward all, singly prevail 1 80 LINCOLN By Thy high sacrifice; yet of mankind No heart and soul prevail, soe er high-placed In men s preferment to the post of toil And power that is responsibility, No single will assume vicarious The sacrifice, unless in leading now All wills alike to yield with him their life (For high resolve how none in vain shall die Of them who, of the best, have fought and bled) In immolation to the common weal? Yet who of men did ever learn of Thee Except through sacrifice? And this I bear, This burden of compulsion over men, The nearest is and dearest at the heart, Most like religion to democracy, Most like a crucifixion in my spirit Of freedom, that it wholly rise again. - I trust the people. Though my trust compel. 181 WAGNER To them there is nothing plain till noon hath waned On the deed: they could not learn though I might teach them; For wonted things alone they can conceive. Whereas my spirit broods in the womb of dawn On things not yet brought forth. Some sword they need Of hero whom their gods have never help d (The shatter d sword which wants a forging-heat), A heart not bound in everlasting law, But fashioner of rule beyond their gods Walhalla fall n in ruin! For he alone, Heart-plunged in furnace of the welding world By stroke on stroke fresh-forged unto the times Were fit for deed which no god-kind can do, Remote, estranged from the onward strength of men: Deed which, but for the sake of gods or men, Some Siegmund must befather! But they are nought (Save only Liszt and Ludwig and a few!), Inept to understand though all my mind And heart and power of soul were flung before them In music-pearls neath hoofs of the Hagen-herd! 182 WAGNER The Hagen-herd who, hating, yet support The gods of old by hating more the hero; And, murdering him, had balk d both men and gods! Ah! Wotan! Wotan! thou at worst spak st truth, Though wrath inflamed thee with desire to break Laws of thine own devising; though thy god-spouse, Mere Fricka, frantic with the wrongs which Earth Had wrought her by concubinage with thee Change-fertile, Fricka, conservatrix still Of canon, flaunted in thy face the rule Of god-whim everlasting! But the lust-taunt Inspired thee, pluck d indeed from thy dull d eye (Clouded by that for which its mate thou pledgedst!) The wisdom of the ages and allow d Insight prophetic of futurity! For thou, O Wotan, with the swine who, for The hate that is in them to the hero, laud thee (These sycophants of canons classical) Art pass d: mightily pass d and grandly so, My soul avows; but, pass d beyond all help Save music of our humankind to-come More than re-youth thee! May the true gods of song Not fail in twilight sith tomorrow s dawn 183 POEMS OF PERSONALITY Hath gleam d to a dayburst in the speech of me: Song aye and song, though every critic flout The flame-rush of me; though my every word Deny, destroy the modes their morbid sense Craves to its slumberous soothing! Rouse and wake, Thou fire-maid of my wish ; that, greatly daring, My heart, the unfamiliar of a fear, Espouse thee and upon the morning-heights Mouth to thy glory and splendor music free And formulable but to the fashioning Of the fearless bride-pair, me and thee, high maid! And if, at end, over mine ashes roll The green and deep tumultuous-pulsing Rhine Of foam-new melodies, of harmonies Snow-born of the mountains of a thousand dawns And rhythmic passionings beyond the ken Of aught now swirling in me; need the bright sun Of this awakening heart to heart with thee, Briinnhilde, mourn thy love for wasted, lost: That thou with me my funeral pyre of hope! Perishest and thine ashes with mine own Sweep to an ocean of antiquity Where both were nigh forgotten? Shall the wind Of world-arousing in our challenge-horn 184 WAGNER Echo in vain along the streaming crags For that this magic cirque which binds us twain Sinks to the glimmering depths; and bodeth silence? Silence? Nay, love! I never swerved from thee Nor thee insulted for the draught bedrugg d Of lips -applause, success ephemeral, Fetching thee from thy fastness down to them: Despite the sorry saga. And not then When death hath stopp d my tongue (and posthumous The tone-child waxeth) not then at the last Need silence (still-birth of clangor troth-betraying, Harsh-hearted) seal our lips of concord-faith: Concord of union though the world misjudge With allegation of horn-dissonance! For, to the ages though my tongue be stopp d, Shall this our ring from out the glimmering Rhine Greenly and gloriously emit the light Of gold, pure gold: that all Rhine-seas of song, Melodious-molten in the weltering wave, Yield back unto the sun at evening as At morning (ay, as now) a power of faith Enarm d as now with shield and helm of proof Aloft upon our wonder-rock sing we: Sing we, aloft upon our morning-peak 185 POEMS OF PERSONALITY Which giveth back the sun unseen below, Laws everlasting to the realm of song Tumultuous,, mountainous of passioning, New and eternal new-eternally; Godship beyond inheritance o the gods ! But they, though I might teach them, could not learn! But, ah! dear maid! this Siegfried of thy faith (Sudden, by pause of jubilation in me For empty hearkening world s echoless void; Myself estranged from the onward strength of men And, all too soon, myself the god-apart: Still as to-day no recognition sponsors In critic-mind the mystic challenge-round!) Dear maid! alas, this Siegfried of thy faith (Disown d of the lives who bore too lonelily The man-birth by their death in parentage!) I feel, o sooth, within the rolling Rhine Of ages got of this, in ashes strewn Abroad upon oblivion, the ring: For all its unalloy, yet time-debased, Revenged of time for that I outraged eld Who stole the hoard by slaughter, scarce for grace Derived of gods by whom I seem d cast off 1 86 WAGNER Acceptive of the moulded yielden gift! - The ring, made mine of force unhallow dly (Scarce felt for an inheritance from them Whose godship came anew to godship in me) Forever hidden in the hollow d grot Of some subaqueous enchantment, lost: Maugre all purity of vaunted wonder And (lawlessness from gods obliquity! Lost out of life as out of life was lost Each dwarf or monster of the brood of earth Who erst had owed it and whom my sword displaced By brutal dispossession ! For no father Nurtured me; and my foster-nurses e en, Soe er admired o the callow forest-youth, My muse hath curtly slain. And thy loved self, Too privily debarr d inheritance Of thy warfather s world-publicity And power effective (thou, my secret heir To Walhall s domination, yet by me Unowned for god-inheritress!), thy voice, Thy desolated voice denied of men ! Alas, for the hero, mightiest music-mind And mate of inspiration though he be! Alas! for him who (though the philtre-cup 187 POEMS OF PERSONALITY Of fate excuse him !) thwarts the marriage-plan Established of an art s propriety, Of social usage and precedence given; Who, deputy but of authority To bear the mystic bride unto her king His master, yet, intoxicate with draught Of private joy in self-despairing strength Autonomous, enamoureth thereby! How Tristan-like he lieth, lingering long In agony of wanting, with the wound Of inexpressible artist-anguish tortured, The wound of the world whose wisdom he has wrong d: The wound his mad hand opens mortally! Whilst thou but in his yearning (of the sense Scarce-recognised), uncuring of the smart Mayest soothe at best, for all thy hastening hither, Only in bitterest anticipation Of parting, the frenzied pulse-beat with thy voice; And in thy coming doomest Kurwenal, Dragg st down King Mark with weight of friendship feli d: The Liszt, the Ludwig harm d by faith in me! Thou hastest, doubtless, from earth s farthest confines To be with him at the last, attest thy faith 188 WAGNER And hearten him unto death s proof-avow d Of uttermost failure! O er the genius-corpse Thy life, too late arrived in the battled bark, Thine own life, how it mourns him, with what sound Most heaven-searchingly thy high swan-song Announces from thy soul-abandonment Still greatly true, faith-dignified in death, The world-release heart-tragic absolutely In ultimate annihilation ended Of every dream d-on life-accomplishment. And where thou, pure Isolde, meltest down, An obsolescence and antiquity, Athwart the corpse of thy creative love; There he, the hero, doubly lies forgot (Lost out of thee as thou from the world art lost!); And all is as though love had never been; As though the spirit of music had not waked, Not even to the lust that wrong d the world, The flux that flouted formulas foregone And taunted sane convention! And now I come (The private passion, the secret love forsworn) To music-reconstruction, the master-singing (By dawn upon their wonted things of noon; Not night-annihilative but, resurgent!) 189 POEMS OF PERSONALITY Of critical tradition re-enthused With intimate artistry impassionate! And in the reconstruction shall I teach them " (Not as by pearls to swine but, in communion With what of godship ever was to them, As through this friendship of a Liszt, a Ludwig!) By speech still sane: that they shall understand! Yet, soft! This master-singing! Let it echo Never so nobly with the social strength Of artist-organizing, yet what depth Of paradox, of difficult dismay Unto the private spirit which creates Such enterprise entaileth ! How enthuse With intimate artistry impassionate Their music of the academic law? The very anti-art of formalism Revive in mine own person (though forsworn Be music-revolution !) unto proof Of radiant beauty undeniable? Though I abjure the fight, may I adopt (As now attempted in my comedy So close to score-completion) wantonwise The school-traditional authority 190 WAGNER As prentice still; yet turn my poetizing (Avoidantly serene, untragical Of purport as of world s reception too!) Beyond all praise or test, to breathing form Perfectly self-demonstrative by note On note of meaningful proportion, chosen Tune-spontaneity and reasoning Wonder: the song of songs and melody Of sheer melodiousness? How play the god-part Of personless creation, contentful Yet whole, emotion d yet of filial calm, Proud but in piety, though heroical; Presentative of men and women aye Responsible, humanely as though godlike And yet exempt from magic fate-commands, Self-prized yet prize-compelling: when the man Must crown the archaism he dethrones, If aught s to be achieved of fruitfulness In beauty seeded through the minds of men: Men s necessary minds, still stupidly (Save only Liszt and Ludwig of my heartstrings!) Demanding demonstration of the art In truth-terms academic, whilst decrying Art s demonstration of truth-novelty? 191 POEMS OF PERSONALITY For so the gods must prove allwise the world And Walhall-everlasting be the times Onrush; and art, of art conservative, For all its alteration: conserving but As by renunciation of the best And disavowal of the limit-goal Of fancy-freed achievement, gaining all ! Thus, thus alone, by truth-relinquishment i As truth were privily ideal, reaches (With calm of heart and vision of such end To hopes of self-achievement) the sick soul A peace beyond all peradventure, peace (Curing the wound of wanting and world-sin) Of Holy Grail descended from above On him who, thus renouncing not alone The storm and stress but therewith overtly All bourn of person d impress on the times (Unlike that Siegfried who apostatized His singleness of mission, yet was slain! Ay, Lohengrin-like; though, deeplier, Parsifal: Scarce by withdrawal but, by entering in!), Accepts the song-succession, the soft liguL Of loftier than Walhall streaming down Out of the dome of harmonies vouchsafed 192 WAGNER In solemn onward rhythmic tongue of bell. The gods of song have help d indeed the hero Who, by self-abnegation of all aim (Mayhap my Liszt, my Ludwig feel this in me Maugre my seeming-egotist despairs?) Save reverent consecution, takes the bowl Of blood beloved twixt the hands of him For consecration and for sacrifice, To bless, release and rectify the truth, Not in defiance, heart-tumultuously, Nor with the hope of life-eternal here Unless in Christ , successive in the whole Of endless presence through the temporal stream; By past-to-come absolved, resolved through prayer; Healing not as by magic but release From untoward interruption: through the grasping Of weapons hurl d transforming them to balm; Scarce by avoidance, ail-responsibly Savior by pity, sympathizing still With gods, progenitors wherefrom derived, And marvel-ways of obsolescence; so Successor-conservator militant By spirit-classicism; saint approved By generosity, yielding to art 193 POEMS OF PERSONALITY Because of reverence and self -despite A canon as by insight-innocence, By art-religion and law-mystery Now understood, unlocked with heart-key to it: Not liable to love-death nor disown d Of any seas of song horizon-broad Which bear within their wave the wonder-ring And need not waft a troth-betraying bride Too late to him who dieth of the law! For such an one as he, this Parsifal, Now waxing in me with acceptance of The mission of succession beautiful In order from the earliest, such as he (Enlighten d not by fairy speech of bird From forest-ignorance to hero-lore But, by the power of soul-significance Enfranchised through envisagement of sin!) Stands help d of the gracious gods and founding them More surely in Walhalla mountain-rear d By every humbler utterance. Come we, then, Companions of my stress and storm, Isold , Brunnhilde, maids of mine imagining (Ah! Kundry, your fallen sister, can but die; Yet dies renew d: old failures art-redeem d!); 194 WAGNER And learn how scions are we of the gods, God-help d and helping! Come ye, hand in hand! The morning is upon the lands of song Because the nights have been and ancient dawns Have touch d ere now the snow-peaks with their beams ! With reverent look and downcast tread ye soft The porch of the temple: come, and enter in! Hark ye the bell and lay ye by the horn. Heed well the wealth of marvel o er your heads; And, sinking here in prayer with me, at last Achieve, renouncing; teach, if teach ye will, By fellowship. Ah! eating of the bread Of healing sympathy, learn we the world! 195 GLADSTONE How genuine, Lord! our immaturity! With what conviction is our life begun And final purpose; though the full career Proves no conviction final and our end Yearning but onward! If the life-span stretch d E en to millennia, not the scant three-score And seven of mine hour vouchsafed by Thee E en to millennia, yet maturity Were reach d, if anywise within man s reach, < Not as a wakening from a dream of youth To ripe realities then first achieved But, mainly as a gathering-up of years Past and of prior powers effectual To the force of the moment and the purpose of it, Sans prejudice to After or Before! Yea, Lord ! how otherwise the work began In earnest conservation; and thereon How earnest ( neath Thy guidance) the reform, The reconstruction root and branch with hope Of conservation only by the more Laying the axe to the root for England s weal ! And yet how true the first sincerity, 196 GLADSTONE How genuine the early agencies Each at the need of the day; and now how strong The inward urgence, under guidance of Thee, Toward one stroke more (inglorious ease postponed) Unlike aught hitherto (save Italy, My propaganda for a freedom there, Yield hint of a beginning) and yet impell d Both by sincerity of ethic need, The thrill of a duty to denounce the Turk In his unspeakable atrocity, The thrill of moral need -which ever urged me, Quick ning in me the mood of veriest youth; Whilst, wise by retrospect of divers causes Each in its turn mine oriflamme, no longer Expecting in the work finality Nor after-conservation (England lapsing Perchance to Ottoman policy anew, Though wiselier then than if not now aroused) But claiming only for the hourly need The fair, the fitting; and a work-of-youth Brave in its passing consequence, sincere In proud-admitted immaturity! Lord! at the outset of a championing (Well-nigh unaided in a grim old-age) 197 POEMS OF PERSONALITY Which leads no man knows whither, let me lead My mind in solitude within this church Of Hawarden, whithersoever in Thy wisdom The mind of man may wander reverently! For, lo! we leave behind us not a youth Inane nor self-deluded. For our youth (Whether conservative, ay, or radical And, either way, there were good reason for it !) In all that makes for man-maturity (This surety that no wisdom were mature!) And worthiness unto the work of earth Lasts on, the only way may aught last on, In the consequence, resurgence of our power, By virtue of life s evolving moral need, Of self-conviction; if with ever more Contrast of past convictions so contained, } Even by such cumulation thus but more With genuineness of the years-outlived And prospect of a real accomplishment In stimulation of a further purport Purposed, equipp d and arsenal d. The singer Of Troy heroic, though to these our times A boy in glory of outburst, glories yet 198 GLADSTONE These problems of our boyhood s overplus (These councils of the chiefs, these kindling fires Of nation-wide uprising, as I trust - Spare Troy the poison d parallel of Turk!): Sincerity (and with vision of the whole, A sense of ethic need ennobling man!) Streaming, illuminating, from the page I oft have pored-on, in a secular mood, For uplift in the turmoil and the labor With splendor of application to our times; Although but primitively hand-to-hand The contest, crude the counsel of the clans And wanting much in high morality Their elemental gods. Ah, God, Thy Book Of patriarchal, mild simplicities (Not lacking, too, in strenuous interlude!) Were loftier, sith inspired ! Yet for me now (Who want a youth, not three-score years and seven, Wherewith to kindle England!) in Thy Homer Upwells an inspiration verily Anent the moment ! For the youth of the world (That phrase, Juventus Mundi, still it thrills me!) Is his indeed. And of the youth of the world That which was loftiest, the incitement of it, 199 POEMS OF PERSONALITY Ambition for achievement in the best And boon of brave belief must bide in us, Respond and echo from the brave-born soul Of modern man, who (bearing burdens felt For world-wide in our policies, for fraught With spirit-problems sprung of the history Of thrice-millennium since Ajax hour) Evolves, outlasts the earlier spirit-pose Ever to new conviction ! I am come (O God, the splendid pain of change at heart !) Through many an alteration of my judgment, Through many a refutation inmostly Of confident assurance. But remain Like Homer (like Ulysses of the bard Now long our laureate) unskeptic still, Believing in Thy truth and action through it Though someway the conviction may not rest But by its very operation alters The disposition of environment Which gave to faith vocation ! Ah, may not faith (Under Thy prompting, Lord, if it may be) With incident operation, based therein And so expressive of the inmost man, Itself half-poet wise create for man 200 GLADSTONE Whether for others also or oneself (Ay, who would wait to find majorities Before conviction and a founding of them?) The fresh truth-disposition; and be faith Coincident with truth from hour to hour Alone by permanent power within the faith Through function to establish ever further The whelming consequence and yearn thereto? How have I, with this Homer in my veins, Strode on from aim to aim, from youth-belief To man-belief and man-belief anew, Yet ever couraged and convinced afresh Where critics well have carp d upon the change Crying for craven act-consistency Where ever only wax d consistency Of consequence and growth to lead men on Unto the making of a new fact-form Whence newer needs and new convictions spring More warrantable mainly than the old Because by will to truth contributive! Ah, had I been the charlatan (perchance One such there were in England s councils now Predominant, imperative?), sincere In nought than shrewd time-serving, then had I 201 POEMS OF PERSONALITY Deserved the censure, where from moods without Of divers men and things alone the warrant Had for the alter d action e er accrued: No faith to gripe a growth-congruity In leading ever onward, in altering all Of truth-interpreted to fit the faith And thereupon in operation posing (Not by a passive self-subjection neath A nature s chance-selecting but, creative!) The disposition of environment To suit the new-born purpose as it may! How false, had I not youth and Homer in me! How sad, were faith not, in these things of earth, The court of last appeal; and poetry The making-over of experience In vision of a virtue not (to sense Immediate and to chronicle) its own But spirit-inward with efficiency The type of man s supreme prerogative Of founding to the image of his soul The future out of past accumulation ! For, with mine Homer in me, youth of the world Upwelling though I grew but to the grave, Were growth not merely life s compelling rule 202 GLADSTONE (So Darwin in his simpler cynicism) Enforced in blindness on reluctant clay, But life s great glory of a poetry, A demigodship of the living soul, An high Olympianism of the man, A proud impulsion spiritual within, Whether mid Senates of the mightiest realms Or stilly in self-searching privacy As now with Thee, O Lord, in Hawarden church: From within outward to make all things new (By conservation of the older things Their leading gradual, self-development) And doubt not more than need be for our sight Imperfect and our knowledge half-at-fault, Our reverence for the practice-tested past As standard of a truth time-reconciled; And basing confidence in the poet-soul, The youth which visions through maturity An immaturity, an innocence Of unfulfill d adjustment if they will, Which needs not life-eternal to achieve, Nor immemorial monuments to prove A presence now by foresight to the years 203 POEMS OF PERSONALITY In work s effect though all our works are found Imperfect to tomorrow s artistry! O God, art Thou the One that doth not change; And yet Thy works (as immanent in man s, Evidenced in the puppets of Thy power) All, all at change, based in a fact of faith Alone which changeth not through every hour? O God, art Thou then Faith and only Faith, This warrant of earth-things which changeth not, But nought beside of earthly incidence? Or rather in every operation changing Sofar as Thou in these creation-acts CalPd man s art ultimately Poet-God: An O er-Olympian ever amid men Concern d and greatly fighting the good fight? Shall men pretend that any Godliness Abides our question (ay, or should abide For, lo ! no coward skepticism here, No cheap agnosticism waiving creed !) Save as the search is answer d hourly Just in the youth, the reverent conviction, The faith-at-application constantly, The continuity of heart sincere 204 GLADSTONE Which men may labor in and be at peace? Art Thou then Youth of the World; Who, opening out Thy self-unfolding never didst enfold Until the unfolding that which seems to hide Yet hid not; Thine all-immaturity Poetic at creation evermore Genuine in the making of Thyself? And as we go into the grave dost Thou As we have known Thee also truly die Though resurrection be Thy youth-of-the-hour? These very questions Thou art answering Not every hour alike, but differingly If alway truly to each differing faith: Mine own in this brief moment of communing Startling the depths that in my thought of Thee Had hitherto in seeming slept unchanged, And truly slept unchanged till, wakening now, Their very wakening stirreth, through the past, A power at work within them dimly there To mould a world-foundation, cast a faith Which even as a faith hath not remain d A faith in faith-unchanging nor a youth Of aging unaware! For deeds of youth Were trick d with a purpose haply to endure 205 POEMS OF PERSONALITY (Though altering the hitherto-endured If but by such factitious conservation!) Unalter d in intention whatsoe er The change and chance which might ensue thereon, But now, with thanks to Thee that I have found An organon of faith pragmatical Enheartening in me my loneliness Yea, now I recognize the righteousness Of unguess d alterations; and desire Not that the impact of the hourly blow Shall echo to the ages my mere meaning, The hope for the Cause, for victory, that is mine When struggling for achievement presently; But all be fluid (even Thy Church-and-State As Turk or Balkan) with the fact of faith In the retrocession: fluid, save as this fulness , Of comprehension of a temporal scheme (Not for concealing truth but for revealing) Which understands and holds at every hour The apprehended vistas infinite; Themselves, as apprehended instantly, Not subject to retraction, to holding-on Nor ripe anticipation; and thus affording The ultimate truth-standard though at each 206 GLADSTONE Infinite instant in a truth and faith Unique unto the hourly task at hand; Themselves (in proof of such uniqueness felt Of him who labors) rectifying earth As in him lies by power of such a youth The vistas apprehended proving him An Homer, biding poetwise despite The crudity discover d, the vainglory (Yet victory still were truth s prerequisite!) Of combat hand-to-hand for victory, The spoliation, or the wantonness Of godhood more contemptible than man Because more capable in cruelty! Ah ! may such Youth of the World be in my work, Lord, as Thine inspiration though I fail; Leading this England on, far to outstrip The uttermost reforms of this mine age: A world-poetic of a Poet-God Appreciating as it proves them false These old-age ethnic liberalities: As it turns and smiles at them; and feels their power! 207 BRAHMS O BLEST conservatism of human minds; O reverence for the mighty who have been And who by splendor of the truth have told A satisfaction everlastingly! O spirit of classicism in our souls And admiration of the proven path: *j Precluding all iconoclastic zeal Within me as I set me to my song! What peace, what pure support from by-gone powers Avow d, beyond mine hour s prevision, pour d Over and through this fever of the heart Which starts the tone-blood tingling innerly! What noblest vistas of achievements past Now poised above the onlook; and within , The very music-flood of wave and wave, Of throb and throb of this so passionate voice, What deep-reflective, channell d imagery Ordering, regulating, holding wise, Articulate and rhythmic-logical The rhapsodies of elemental mood ! No loss of voice direct; with, oh, what gain Of mastery in the tone-material, 208 BRAHMS In context of the screed and history Of art s own growth to prove the truth for new: By just this solemn sense of splendid Bach, Mozart of unimpeded purity, Beethoven glorious for a canon given, A method and a tried maturity! How other than the wildness of romance Which they of the half-insanity (untaught, As t were, of all mistakes, all axioms too, Known to the humbler scholar) boldly laud; Whom instinct only guides and draweth on, Whom hatred of the past alone impels And crude contempt for masterhoods achieved - Blind leading! Ah, how otherwise than theirs j This music that is in me: and yet mine own, , Mine verily; as theirs may never be Personal, wrought of fraught experience Of world and man from boyhood upward still (Witness our folk-song ever unforgot !) In wide-eyed understanding of the moods Of men, acceptance of the fact of fate And sympathy with cosmic issuings! Ah, so; for surely spiritual more 209 POEMS OF PERSONALITY Than instinct is the sage insistency Of serious appreciation basing The onward step of apprehending soul ! (Forgive, O Muse, the seeming boastf ulness ! T is founded in an artist-piety And reverent self-subjection as I toil !) The self-control, so, as the labor-pains Of fervent parturition wax and wreak Their will upon the works of destiny! No mad, luxurious plaint at agonies (To chaos fusing all resistent lore Of logic-distance, cyclic hierarchy!) Too poignant nor within their poignancy Too sweet; but something spirit-solemnizing In large restraint (retaining inferences Multiform, order d to the farthest spheres), In large restraint remembering well the wonder Of myriad births before in minds and hearts Of human melodists triumphantly. O blessed sequence in the story aye Of every fresh-creative immanence Inherent to it as a dignity Of self-containment, be they ne er so new These figures of the present utterance! 210 BRAHMS The deep sustainment of the searching-back (Though mind fore-reach an own eternity!) Unto the uppermost and inwardmost Endoming concave of the storehouse-brain, The overarching heaven of memories! What self-protection in the presence here Imaginary of the master-six Who shadowy o er my shoulder lean and write If with my pen yet well-nigh warningly The sequence-scripture as it ought to be! So Beethoven, so Bach and Handel might (Nay, Mozart, Haydn or Schumann, as you will!) Have juxtaposed such contrapuntal schemes, Such themes melodic and such rhythmus-plans With such-like harmonies. If that they did not (Yea, if they could not, would not strictly thus A sense convinceth, these are mine alone Because sincerely of my cultured heart!), If that they did not, fairly may it seem T were but men s limitation of life-span, Their absolute position there and then (Which I, in loving them, well-nigh re-learn!) Which could preclude our common faith and form. An they had dwelt in the chamber here to-day 21 I POEMS OF PERSONALITY Their work had been mine own; or not unlike (Were they in youth and vigor) these my tones! And they in me are vocal: not myself All-unregardful, but, myself well-versed And learning-influenced, a self the more Motived by such compliance, more myself As they by me more musick d that a world Well-versed in Beethoven s, in Handel s song May understand and heartfully receive The utterance of the masters from mine hand, While generously acclaiming works of me! What service thus to keep alive the light (Adding to truth though scarce displacing it) Of former uttermost achievements, now (Where risk might be of practice-desuetude) Revivified because of utterance Fresh, new-impassion d and with wisdoms of A later world of men s veracity, Lest technic (question trivial to the soul O troth) seem stale or scarce sophisticate! What service and what privilege of mine (And classicism feeds humility!) To enter in and take traditional The virtue of the earlier music-truth, 212 i BRAHMS The absolute function of the torchbearer , Who, for his strong half-century of toil, Paceth forever in processional Of music s institution! For my heart Is Bach, is Beethoven and Handel too, Haply if but thereby in verity O er all mine own! And I, in uttering The great tradition unto acceptation Of scholar-culture, am but vitalwise Original, an idiosyncrasy Of innermost romanticism instinct Because thus native to the truth-control! Hark, ye ! who vainly after gods unknown Are wideliest erring from the strict ascent! Hark deep; and search if so, by shutting soul From memory s sustainment and the power, In terms of absolute tone-experience, Sprung of the reverence of self-restraint Within the idiom of a music-mood, Ye have not emptied from the heaven s concave The content of your tone-philosophies; And, forcing music as a concept-speech To tasks best suited of a sister-art, 213 POEMS OF PERSONALITY Yet welter in your aether as a void: A music-void, whate er your utterance Of program and of picture openly? Ye, lifting no torch; but (half-articulant In terms of absolute music-idiom yet) Cut-off as by a bedlam from the world, Disabled by the doctrine of your dream: All-vision, ay, but nought of firmament Unless, through inference of speech and scene, A firmament of earth too earthlily. And, if ye be unskilful to sustain Yourselves of the aether as an Icarus And fear that earth-fall from the music-void (The antique figure he of such romance Which makes a void where art-void none had been!), Spurn not what learning stirs, if yet half-womb d, Plume-budding, I swear ye, from the spirit of each (In memories of a youth-hour, childhood-years: The happy school of folk-song unforgot) And reverence these, for wings which fervors melt not; That loftily ye wreak, ere life be done, The music-destiny as in me now! Hark to the reminiscence, echoing 214 BRAHMS The structure of the master, him who built In centuries of contrapuntal toil An heritage, which, neath the winds of fate, Yea, as the gathering backward of the wave With lifted image of the hills and skies, Forward and forward ever bursts beyond! 215 NIETZSCHE IF by their fruits (to quote the hated creed) Shall men be known, ah, by what bitter fruit Unto the weaker peoples of the earth Shall I, the neglected and despised to-day Shall I, in saner hours the mild and kind Shall I be known and my mad name accursed! Lo! by what rumors of approaching wars Awful, o erwhelming when the mightier hosts Of Teuton like to locusts o er the earth (Our treaties torn and our most solemn oaths Forsworn for what were faith toward heretics ?) Sweep down and on and over, leaving there But fields burnt black and homes in smouldering heaps: And everywhere the overhuman cult (In cross of iron rigor-emblemized) Crushing and crucifying; that the maim d And halt and blind alone survive the stroke Of latest Hun and Vandal slaughtering them! Ha! Where the far-famed temples of their creed? Tottering, yea, tower on tower; the fallen naves Bloody beneath with crush d-out brains of men, 216 NIETZSCHE Of women and of children whom a dogma Senile and tottering drove in idol-hope To prayer; and whom mine hope-of-overman Hath stew d and charnell d on the altar-floor. Great wrath of glorious Germans! once aroused, Mine ultimate aristocrats of earth (How I mistook ye in the earlier days!), To absolute ruthlessness: how shall the shrieks Of Belgian (shook from superstition s trance), Of Gaul (no Emperor to urge them now, Nor culture comparable to our own!), Of Gaul and Briton wild with streaming hair Howl to their helpless heaven s all-vacantness: Their heavens empty; and no power to save Equal at all to man s, to overman His power to dismay and doom the world! Muscle and sinew, steel and my fierce hate Which fills the heavens of Frank and Angle, ay, Low-spirited curs of quack democracy, With soaring shells and shower of molten death, With flare and thunder and the nations end! Not one shall live to tell the fearful tale Where tongues from the roots are torn; not one awake 217 POEMS OF PERSONALITY To flash the accusing eye, where eyes are ripp d From socket; not one hand remain to write The desolate condemnation: for their hands Are flung in the reeking ditch and only stumps i Of anguish d arms implore where peace is none! So shall they wreak who take of me the truth; , So shall they slay: because am I divine! If by our fruits : these are the fruits of me! What sayest thou, Christ? Have I not crown d thee now With sharper than the thorns of ancientry? Yea, how I scorn the silly sacrifice, The brutish sufferance of the underman, The underdog in the world whereof wert thou The crucified arch-type: imposed at last On hated strangers; but from German hearts (As in arch-type mine own) now blotted out In triumph of a fitness to survive Beyond all good and ill, all counter-rights ; Of any than the chosen ego-few Thy stupid pitifulness, Christ, crush d down And trampled in the blooded, ashen mud Never to lift again out of the grave! 218 NIETZSCHE Ah ! well-nigh with the froth of some wild-beast At ravening rape upon the body of earth I rant; and curse, O Jew, the Cross and thee! - Nay, lift not, Jew! that darkening scowl at mine! Nay, strike not with that sudden, angry arm, Of recent centuries, unused and weak! Art thou, too, cured of love; and with wan hate A spectre stalking from the sepulchre By soaking wounds of men revived and hurl d (Thou wast not always otherwise than I !) Worldward anew, a spirit of ruthlessness? Art thou, then, arm d against me, to strike down (In irony I mock thine impotence!) The hand of my defence and hew it off The reeking stump which powerless hangs apart (In sport I picture it to frenzy thee) A dripping spectacle? And wouldst thou take My tongue and tear it? Wouldst thou pluck mine eyes Green from their nerve-roots? Nay, be merciful, Have pity, I implore thee mockingwise! Yet someway I would see thee as thou hast been (Yea, mainly, and when of heresies unplagued) Not as in this delirium teasingly 219 ; POEMS OF PERSONALITY I take thee for an Anti-Christ ! For thou Wast my great spoil and conquest, yielding me An universe wherethrough mine egohood (Thine, too, could persecute: ay, that I yield thee!) Savage and splendid might achieve her end. And if thou, too, enlarging on the old, Cruel hint that comes to competence in me; Yea, if thou, too, shouldst prove an over-hand, An over-sword to smite and torch to burn, Where, Lord, for thee or me alike would lie A world to spurn and desolate? I prithee, Down, down into the grave again and rot, Peaceful beneath the sod blood-saturate; And leave this world to super-savagery Set-off and gloried by thy crown of thorn! I crave thee, Lord! Nay, nay, I know the cant: How Gottlieb Fichte, rousing us to war, Yet dream d unto our Christianity An human oversoul, self-unity The same in each and every man of earth (As though our sun-space were as cramp d as thine) And held us back thereby from license (ha ! No Gottlieb staid the conquest latterly Strange, strange, I could have wished it less entire! 220 NIETZSCHE Along our Rhine and after great Sedan!); Who held us back in altruism whilst then \ Our tribe gain d freedom from the despot Gaul! I know how now my cult of superman In hearts too tender toward hypocrisy Allows to each and every man of earth The potency of private super-will And therefore fain were Christian in respect For every high ambition as mine own, To spare the weaker peoples from dismay: Thy cant of neighbor even as thyself! But I, O Jew, prefer and choose the test (Now that the Vision breaks the Reason down!), The truth, of independence; in my power Of absolute purpose with the right of might, The might beyond stale question ethical, To combat; yea, O Lord (though even thou, Forced by my fight to curse thy cant s-own creed, Rise up in arms and hew my body down Indeed, indeed, thy strength grows wonder-keen!), To struggle and oppose and hate and hew The body of my neighbor, whilst mine own I fearlessly expose to the flaming sword A mutual dependence of the strife 221 POEMS OF PERSONALITY In both alike if still the cant thou era vest: Believing in the combat, not in peace Save by oppression and the crushing down ! Thou wilt not back to the grave? Thou wilt not down? Come, then, strike hard, thou Christ ! and let me see, Whate er the issue, my creed conquering: Not thine, by any possibility; A world unchristianized in meeting so Arbitrament of war, of stroke to stroke Determining survival ah, no more World-love hypocrisies but, by thy force, My victory! Though the Fatherland should fall And I, the neglected and despised of eld, I, yea, be trampled neath thy cloven heel, Thy nature stands corrupted by mine own ! Thy nature stands ennobled by mine own! Ay, though I die, I leave thee in the deed An Anti-Christ, mine image: ruthlessly! If by their fruits : this last and best is fruit; That Christ must meet me in the over-doom ! And so, how nobly mine and mine alone The militant high compulsion! Mine the name 222 NIETZSCHE Dread with the rumor of approaching wars Awful, o er-whelming; mine the ruin-ash Choked up with charnell d corpses and the arms Uprear d in the dripping ditch where peace is none! Mine, mine the glory: glorious, ruthlessly! 223 ROYCE THE duty of a loyalty to truth Compels that truth be spoken, whatsoe er The function of a civic violence (Our nation, ceasing parley with the foes Of man, thrice-arm d against a pirate crew) Must utterance provoke! For violently Have falsehood and dishonor long laid hold With horrible outrage on the stricken land Which, calm and unoffending in the sun, Barr d but the barbarous path of savagery From plotted spoliations: that, itself Made victim to the fangs of the foil d beast, A Belgium bleeds. The appointed guardian turns To desolator; and the ravishment, All-unprevented though the half-world fight, Persists in still-increasing agony; Whilst we unmoved, unmoving stand apart And with a scared, sleek courtesy disclaim Occasion for a judgment : right or wrong, Scarce for a neutral wisdom to pronounce! O coward heart ! O curst disloyalty To our firm freedom of an upright past; 224 ROYCE Lost honor-ideal of democracy; Neglected faith of a people heretofore Fair to the weak, downtrodden, fearing nought Of overbearingness and tyrant-power! O hated policy, which ties the tongue And folds the hands with futile prayer for peace: When, of all human chronicle, the worst Outrage upon the holy spirit of man (Fiendly prepared and fiendly screen d by lies) Now wantons, riots without let or check To-day, to-morrow at our ocean-door And all-precludes peace possibility (For us, as for our fathers otherwhile) Unless within us be the conscience dead, The spirit sodden, rotted to the core! My friends, here gather d together to attest Your detestation of the Teuton crime! - My friends, there is a progress of the spirit, A process wherein the soul achieves herself In virtue of a loved community With other-souls of mutual respect; An involution of the conscience-care (Not for the narrower aims of merely me!) 225 POEMS OF PERSONALITY Toward ever more and more the whole wide world Of human hopes, of human purposes Appreciated to fulfilment through The consummations of a social good Contributed in every deed and dream, Each thought and striving of the least of us. And we, the least of us, wax holiest Best by the world-inclusion, the concluding Of every evil in the cosmic course Consciously toward a bettering not, by blinding The eyes of the heart, the ears and tongue tight- sealing Where uttermost appeal claims of the soul ! And we must choose the part of heedless sleep, Else of the high and strenuous works of love! Today, tomorrow is the call of love: Not as in sanctimonious lethargy Of waiting a millennium but, by dint Of love s best blow, to bear the brutal down, To fight the good fight where the fight hath join d Before our feet with horrid spectacle Of nations ravish d and the spoiler strong! The spoiler: heeds he the precluded hopes (Harmless and high in homely dignity) 226 ROYCE Of them he sacrifices, stands he forth With the cosmic onmarch of expanding insight, The world-redeeming spirit? Or must the fiend, Even for the glory of the greater peace, Be beaten down and caged and tamed; to learn The meaning of the earth-motive? Oh, we stand Now at the parting of the nation s ways: The peace supine, the plausible partnership In the huge injustice mask d with guise of a mind Open and judgment poised to wise suspense (So rectifying nothing, opening so Nought of a nobler future!); or at last With burst of awful, pent-up sympathies The mighty voice, the arm yet young to prove By militant consecration wrong-compell d The strength of a right cause America Recorded in resistance: that, perchance (All parley with the perjured being cut-off) At any sacrifice of common ease, At any cost in holy violence, Truth-faith and honor and the loyalty Which saveth with a savor shall not pass! 227 U. C. BERKELEY LIBRAR CDSOfiD5fl73 4222SJ