uc 
 
THE CANDLE AND THE FLAME 
 
THE CANDLE 
 
 AND THE 
 
 FLAME 
 
 POEMS BT 
 
 GEORGE STL7ESTER 
 VIERECK 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY 
 1912 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY 
 MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 All Rights Reserved 
 Published, March, 1912 
 
 THE QUINN & BODEN CO. PRESS 
 RAHWAY, N. J. 
 
TO 
 
 POPPY 
 
 .T . > 
 
" We are the Candle, Love the Flame." 
 
 THE CANDLE AND THE FLAME 
 
 " / am the flame, men s bodies are the fuel, 
 Men s souls the smoke" 
 
 THE THREE SPHINXES 
 
 (From Nineveh and Other Poems.} 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 THE CANDLE AND THE FLAME . . . 3 
 
 THE PARROT . . . ..... 7 
 
 THE PRISONING OF SONG ..... 10 
 
 GERSUIND . . . . . . . . 13 
 
 NERO IN CAPRI . . ..... 16 
 
 A BALLAD OF MONTMARTRE . .. . 19 
 
 A BALLAD OF KING DAVID .... 22 
 
 THE BALLAD OF THE GOLDEN BOY . -25 
 
 THE CYNIC S CREDO ...... 29 
 
 LIFE . ........ 32 
 
 IRON PASSION ..... " . 33 
 
 INHIBITION ...... . - 34 
 
 ON BROADWAY ....... 36 
 
 THE UNKNOWN GODDESS . . . . . 37 
 
 THE VIRGIN SPHINX . . . . "i 39 
 
 THE NUNS ...... . .4 
 
 QUEEN LILITH ..... . . 4 1 
 
 2. SAMUEL, I. 26 ...... 44 
 
 ENIGMA . ....... 45 
 
 A LITTLE MAID OF SAPPHO .... 46 
 
 CHILDREN OF LILITH . . . . * 49 
 
 LOVE S AFTERMATH ...... 51 
 
 THE SINGING VAMPIRE . . . . 53 
 
 THE MASTER KEY . . . .: . -55 
 
 THE PILGRIM . . . . . .56 
 
 vii 
 
viii CONTENTS 
 
 POEMS FROM PLAYS *AGE 
 THE PRINCESS WITH THE GOLDEN VEIL (From 
 
 " The Vampire") 61 
 
 JOAN S FAREWELL (From the German of Schiller) 63 
 CHANTECLER S ODE TO THE SUN (After the 
 
 French of Rostand) . . . . 66 
 
 THE BREEZE (After the French of Zama^ois) . 69 
 
 AVE TRIUMPHATRIX 
 
 ATTAR OF SONG .... 77 
 
 THE BURIED CITY .... 7^ 
 
 THE IDOL . . . . 79 
 TRIUMPHATRIX .... .80 
 
 AT NIGHTFALL 8l 
 
 FINALE 82 
 
 A NEW ENGLAND BALLAD .... 85 
 
 THE PLAINT OF EVE . ... 93 
 
 MARGINALIA 
 
 101 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 THE modern Muse finds herself in the same 
 position as woman : she must divorce herself 
 from sentimentalism without graduating into a 
 spectacled and hyper-cerebral old maid. She must 
 reaffirm herself intellectually, without sacrificing her 
 sensuous appeal. Phryne is preferable to a New 
 England spinster, but Aspasia is more desirable 
 than Phryne. The brain thirsts for ideas, the ear 
 thirsts for music. Both must be satisfied. Un 
 fortunately the seductions of sound in poetry often 
 distract attention from the intellectual content. 
 We are compelled to emphasize the ideational 
 values in our work if the world shall not relegate 
 lyric verse to the nursery, a plaything for children 
 and idiots. The salvation of poetry depends on 
 the recognition of its philosophical message, just 
 as the triumph of woman suffrage will not be ulti 
 mately assured until the world realizes that behind 
 the ivory of Aphrodite s forehead there may be 
 hidden a brain that could challenge Darwin and 
 Bismarck. We must rehabilitate poetry as Shaw 
 has rehabilitated the drama. We must apply 
 Shavian methods to lyric and ballad. I have found 
 myself as a poet. To help others to find me, I 
 have added a commentary. 
 
xii INTRODUCTION 
 
 My commentary, in the shape of marginal 
 notes, will be found in the back of this volume. 
 Those who wish to linger with me after reading 
 the poems may turn to my notes at their leisure. 
 Far be it from me to discourage future commen 
 tators from independent investigation. My re 
 marks are suggestive, not final. If our palace of 
 song is worth the rearing, we must build better 
 than we know, because we draw strength and mat 
 ter from our racial conscience and from world 
 memories slumbering unbeknown of us in the 
 caverns of our brain. But we may give a clue 
 now and then which can direct the mind of the 
 reader and perhaps prevent critics yet unborn 
 from wasting marvellously ingenious devices upon 
 the erection of spurious pyramids on the base of 
 a fatal misprint or a mistaken assumption. 
 Neither Goethe, nor Shakespeare, it may be urged, 
 was his own commentator. The resultant loss, 
 however, was both theirs and the world s. What 
 would we not give to-day for an authentic key 
 to " Faust II " or to Shakespeare s " Sonnets "? 
 
 II 
 
 THIS, in all likelihood, will be my last book 
 of verse. I no longer worship Beauty. Art 
 for art s sake seems a jest, literature only a sickly 
 mirage of life. My temperament is more dynamic 
 than aesthetic. Activity, as such, allures me. 
 Brooklyn Bridge seems to me a far more marvellous 
 accomplishment than the most precious of sonnets. 
 If I were not Viereck, I would gladly be Edison. 
 
INTRODUCTION xiii 
 
 I sometimes suspect that I would rather have 
 reared the Metropolitan Building than writ 
 ten my poem " Queen Lilith." The spirit of 
 America has eaten into my heart. Wall Street is 
 more interesting to me than Parnassus. The pro 
 tagonists of great industrial combinations impress 
 me more than the Knights of King Arthur s Table 
 or the vassals of Beowulf. Yet we cannot extol the 
 Standard Oil Company in blank verse nor encom 
 pass in a series of sonnets the exploits of J. Pierpont 
 Morgan. Morgan himself, so I am told, was a 
 poet before finance enthralled him. Poetry, being 
 the child of tradition, must necessarily lag behind 
 the times at least by a century. We must write of 
 the new in terms of the old, even if our work be sur 
 charged with novel ideas, because the new terms 
 have not yet acquired the connotative poetic values 
 which, like certain rare mosses, take decades for 
 their growth. The poet of the year two thousand 
 will be able to write the poetry of to-day. The 
 year three thousand may see the history of Rocke 
 feller and Morgan embedded in heroic hexameters. 
 We can press forward only so far as the limita 
 tions of lyric art and our own limitations permit. 
 Our accents, however, will ever wax in resonance 
 through the ages if we dwell on those themes which 
 cannot grow stale while the race draws breath: 
 metaphysical truths, elemental passions, and ele 
 mental satieties. In this book I pass from the 
 physics to the metaphysics of passion. Conserva 
 tive though I be in business and politics, I shall 
 never be a moralist in art. My work is uncon 
 ventional because conventions mean ever less to me 
 the more I vibrate to the heart-beats of life itself. 
 
xiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 I find it difficult, for instance, to write a play be 
 cause the basic conflicts of conventional drama have 
 ceased to interest me. My own emotions are too 
 elusive and too complex to be capable of expres 
 sion or understanding beyond where I have gone. 
 If I lived in Europe, if mine were the freedom oi 
 Wedekind and the audience that hails him and 
 goads him, I might still go on. But I realize that 
 I am too far ahead of the pageant of American 
 life to go one step further. I have reached an 
 Ultima Thule. Seated by the roadside, I shall wait 
 for America to catch up, dividing my time, per 
 chance, between love and the ticker. 
 
 America forces its poets to deny poetry or leave 
 the country! Henry James chose exile, J. Pier- 
 pont Morgan diverted his imaginative powers 
 into the channels of high finance. Stedman, at 
 tempting a compromise, was distinctly minor both 
 as a banker and as a poet. George Santayana 
 fled to the cloister of his own mind, Poe to drink, 
 Markham to book reviews. Roosevelt, the most 
 poetical personality of the modern world, turned 
 to politics, Whitman to sociology, Moody to 
 melodrama, Woodberry and Van Dyke to the 
 schoolroom, while the tentacles of the Standard 
 Oil encircled the poet s soul of J. I. C. Clarke. 
 Huneker s muse abandoned inspiration for criti 
 cism. The newspaper swallowed Bert Taylor 
 and William Marion Reedy, while Michael Mona- 
 han harks to seductive voices not Pierian. But the 
 torch of our lyric fire still burns and will continue 
 to burn when it has passed from my hands into 
 those of a younger poet. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 in 
 
 I HAVE no reason to be ungrateful to America. 
 Few poets have met with more instant recog 
 nition than I. My work, almost from the be 
 ginning, was discussed simultaneously in the most 
 conservative periodicals and in the most ultra- 
 saffron complexioned of journals. I have given 
 a new lyric impetus to my country. I have loos 
 ened the tongue of the young American poets. I 
 have been told by many of our young singers that 
 the success of Nineveh encouraged them to 
 break the harassing chains of Puritan tradition. 
 When, recently, as the first American " Exchange 
 Poet " I lectured at the University of Berlin, I 
 assured my audience that we have rebels not only 
 in politics but also in poetry. I may safely say 
 that I am one of the leaders of the lyric insur 
 gents who, inheriting the technique of Poe and 
 the social conscience of Whitman, have added the 
 new note of passion. 
 
 When my last volume of verse appeared, the 
 endorsement of Europe was written across its 
 pages. This endorsement was not repudiated by 
 the American critics. Even from the commercial 
 point of view, my book was not unsuccessful. I 
 am, perhaps, the only American poet whose book 
 of lyric verse made money for himself and his 
 publishers. Success, however, is not without 
 penalties. Only recently I vicariously overheard 
 the remark of a gifted young poet of twenty- 
 two, erstwhile one of my most enthusiastic ad 
 mirers : " Don t you think Viereck is tremendously 
 overrated? " Perhaps the truth popped forth out 
 
xvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 of the mouth of this lyric suckling. Time alone 
 can judge. But at least I have had the unique 
 sensation of thus experiencing, at twenty-seven, 
 what Ibsen experienced at seventy. Already the 
 younger generation is knocking at the gate. Let 
 the doors be swung wide open ! This book, poetic 
 youth of America, is my parting gift to you. 
 
 IV 
 
 I AM not oblivious of the adverse criticism 
 called forth by my books. I am keenly aware 
 of the enmity of the Puritans. My work neces 
 sarily arouses the prurient New England Con 
 science. The minds of certain critics dwell ex 
 clusively on the sensuous aspects of my work, just 
 as the eyes of Tartuffe were riveted to certain 
 amiable portions of a lady s anatomy. My poetic 
 interpretations of other phases of human existence 
 were absolutely ignored. I freely admit that the 
 passional note is sounded most insistently in my 
 verse. Passion is the prerogative of youth. When 
 should we be passionate, if not at twenty? The 
 erotic powerfully appeals to me, but I have never 
 made myself the champion of the vulgar. Sin 
 I respect, because it is part of the quest of the 
 human soul for the ultimate good; of vice, as such, 
 I have a physical abhorrence. The professional 
 voluptuary of either sex bores me. 
 
 To bear the aspersions of enemies was no diffi 
 cult task. I never replied to the criticism of my 
 work on the score of its unconventional quality, 
 except in one instance, when censure came from 
 
INTRODUCTION xvii 
 
 a friend. Then I spoke. The following letter, 
 my answer to Richard Watson Gilder, was printed 
 in the literary supplement of the New York 
 Times. My attitude to-day is still the same as 
 when I penned these lines my aesthetic Credo: 
 
 "In the great circle of human life, I strive 
 to express every segment, whether purple or 
 golden, sombre or bright. But in each case I 
 am concerned only with the spirit, the symbol, 
 the possible underlying philosophy. It staggers 
 me to realize what interpretation has been given 
 to some portions of my work, interpretations so 
 gross that they are utterly beyond my compre 
 hension. The two classes who have most sinned 
 against me in this respect are roues of a pro 
 nounced type and professed Puritans, men 
 against the integrity of whose private lives 
 Cato at his severest could not have breathed a 
 word of scandal. 
 
 " There are critics who have discovered in 
 Nineveh only an erotic (and possibly neu 
 rotic) note. You, fortunately, have found and 
 acknowledged that there are many poems in the 
 book that are inspired by ideals essentially 
 spiritual. But it grieves me that you also 
 should not have seen that even where my pen 
 transcribes the sombre aspects of life there is no 
 touch of anything that is gross or foul. Far be 
 it from me to exclude from the realm of art, 
 especially my art, anything, even evil. It is 
 only vulgarity that I would banish from the do 
 main of letters, not necessarily the description 
 of vulgarity, but vulgarity in the description. 
 
xviii INTRODUCTION 
 
 " I must go my way, even as you have gone 
 your way, even as Poe and Whitman, Long 
 fellow, Whittier and Baudelaire. We are all 
 instruments in the hands of the Unknown God 
 who directs our activities toward some hidden 
 and wonderful end. I love beauty as you love 
 it, albeit I may realize it in ways essentially dif 
 ferent from yours. But there is unity in all God- 
 ward endeavour, and grossness or vulgarity, 
 which has no place in your dream, has no place 
 
 in mine." 
 
 THE present volume, to reiterate, marks no 
 change of heart. Technically I am surer of 
 my instrument. Spiritually my field has expanded. 
 But, in the last analysis, personality is immutable. 
 I can clearly trace my artistic evolution along the 
 lines which I myself laid down in an early 
 pronunciamento. I have emancipated myself en 
 tirely from the conventional stanza and the con 
 ventional arrangement of rhymes. I am in poetry 
 what Strauss is in music, Rodin in sculpture, and 
 Stuck in painting, a cerebral impressionist. But 
 I am not an anarchist. I never transgress con 
 sciously artistic laws of universal validity. I 
 merely modify certain traditional forms. Such 
 modifications are not at once obvious to the eye in 
 the present volume, because I have not followed the 
 somewhat phantastic rhyme arrangement which I 
 adopted in Nineveh to differentiate between vari 
 ous groups of rhymes. For when the lines 
 sprawl across the page grotesquely like tremulous 
 
INTRODUCTION xix 
 
 spiders, the mind is diverted from the poem to the 
 form, and the artistic method defeats the artistic 
 aim. In this book I have placed lines that rhyme 
 under each other, wherever this was possible with 
 out injuring the architectonic structure. I am per 
 fectly willing to sacrifice logic to effectiveness in 
 art. Poetry has its architecture as well as its 
 music. The free stanza which I consistently em 
 ploy permits of the freedom of Whitman without 
 sacrificing the tonal advantage of Poe. My artistic 
 aim, declared years ago in the preface to Nineveh, 
 has been and still is, " to extend the borderland 
 of poetry into the realm of music on the one side, 
 into that of the intellect on the other." 
 
 GEORGE SYLVESTER VIERECK. 
 New York, 1912. 
 
THE CANDLE AND THE FLAME 
 
THE CANDLE AND THE FLAME 
 
 "T^HY hands are like cool herbs that bring 
 Balm to men s hearts, upon them laid; 
 
 Thy lovely-petalled lips are made 
 As any blossom of the spring. 
 But in thine eyes there is a thing, 
 
 O Love, that makes me half afraid. 
 
 For they are old, those eyes. . . . They gleam 
 Between the waking and the dream 
 
 With antique wisdom, like a bright 
 Lamp strangled by the temple s veil, 
 
 That beckons to the acolyte 
 Who prays with trembling lips and pale 
 
 In the long watches of the night. 
 
 They are as old as Life. They were 
 When proud Gomorrah reared its head 
 
 A new-born city. They were there 
 When in the places of the dead 
 
 Men swathed the body of the Lord. 
 They visioned Pa-Wak raise the wall 
 Of China. They saw Carthage fall 
 
 And marked the grim Hun lead his horde. 
 
4; THE CANDLE AND THE FLAME 
 
 There is no secret anywhere 
 Nor any joy or shame that lies 
 Not writ somehow in those child-eyes 
 Of thine, O Love, in some strange wise. 
 
 Thou art the lad Endymion, 
 
 And that great queen with spice and myrrh 
 
 From Araby, whom Solomon 
 Delighted, and the lust of her. 
 
 The legions marching from the sea 
 With Caesar s cohorts sang of thee, 
 
 How thy fair head was more to him 
 Than all the land of Italy. 
 Yea, in the old days thou wert she 
 
 Who lured Mark Antony from home 
 To death and Egypt, seeing he 
 
 Lost love when he lost Rome. 
 
 Thou saw st old Tubal strike the lyre, 
 Yea, first for thee the poet hurled 
 
 Defiance at God s starry choir! 
 
 Thou art the romance and the fire, 
 Thou art the pageant and the strife, 
 
 The clamour, mounting high and higher, 
 From all the lovers in the world 
 To all the lords of love and life. 
 
 Through thy slow slumberous long lashes 
 Across the languor of the face 
 
THE CANDLE AND THE FLAME 5 
 
 The gleam of primal passion flashes 
 That is as ancient as the race, 
 But we that live a little space, 
 
 Which when beholding feel in it 
 
 The horror of the Infinite . . . 
 
 Perhaps the passions of mankind 
 
 Are but the torches mystical 
 Lit by some spirit-hand to find 
 The dwelling of the Master-Mind 
 
 That knows the secret of it all, 
 In the great darkness and the wind. 
 
 We are the Candle, Love the Flame, 
 Each little life-light flickers out, 
 
 Love bides, immortally the same: 
 
 When of life s fever we shall tire 
 
 He will desert us, and the fire 
 Rekindle new in prince or lout. 
 
 Twin-born of knowledge and of lust, 
 He was before us, he shall be 
 Indifferent still of thee and me, 
 When shattered is life s golden cup, 
 When thy young limbs are shrivelled up, 
 And when my heart is turned to dust. 
 
 Nay, sweet, smile not to know at last 
 That thou and I, or knave, or fool, 
 
6 THE CANDLE AND THE FLAME 
 
 Are but the involitient tool 
 Of some world-purpose vague and vast. 
 No bar to passion s fury set, 
 
 With monstrous poppies spice the wine : 
 For only drunk are we divine, 
 And only mad shall we forget ! 
 
THE PARROT 
 
 TO ALFRED RAU 
 
 BIRD grotesque and garrulous, 
 In green and scarlet liveried, 
 Thy ceaseless prattle hides from us 
 The secret of thy dream indeed. 
 But in thine eyeball s mystic bead 
 Are mirrored clear to them that read 
 Vague, nameless longings, like the breed 
 Of some exotic incubus. 
 
 Where is thy vision? Overseas? 
 
 In some bright tropic far-off land 
 Where chiding simians in tall trees 
 
 Swing by luxurious breezes fanned, 
 While at phantastic phallic feasts 
 
 Brown women uncouth idols hail, 
 
 And through the forest sounds the wail 
 Of the fierce matings of wild beasts? 
 
 Or are thine other memories, 
 Of other lives on other trees, 
 
 Encasements in some previous flesh 
 In far-off lost existences ? 
 
8 THE PARROT 
 
 For, as the tiger leaves his spoor 
 Upon the prairie, firm and sure 
 Life writes itself upon the brain, 
 The soul keeps count of loss and gain, 
 And in the vibrant, living cells 
 Of the small parrot s brain there dwells 
 A sparkle of the flame benign 
 That makes the human mind divine. 
 
 The self-same Life-Force fashions us: 
 Its writings are the stars on high, 
 Its transient mansions thou as I. 
 
 Through Plato s mouth it speaks to us, 
 
 Through the earth s vermin even thus. 
 The heaving of a baby s breast 
 
 And the gyrations of the sun 
 
 To its omnipotence are one 
 
 And make its meaning manifest. 
 
 We both are wanderers through all time 
 
 Who, risen from the primal slime 
 When God blew life into the dust, 
 
 Press to some distant goal sublime. 
 And often through the thin soul-crust 
 
 Rush memories of an alien clime, 
 Of gorgeous revels more robust 
 Than any dream of hate or lust 
 In the gilt cage upon us thrust, 
 
 And visions strange beyond all rhyme. 
 
THE PARROT 9 
 
 The Life-Force with itself at war 
 
 Moulds and remoulds us, blood and brain, 
 Yet cannot quench us out again, 
 
 And after every change we are. 
 
 The soul-spark in all sentient things 
 Illumes the night of death and brings, 
 
 Remembered, immortality: 
 
 Time cannot take thy soul from thee ! 
 All living things are one by kind, 
 Heritors of the cosmic mind. 
 
 Thus deemed the Prophet on whose knee 
 
 The kitten slumbered peacefully, 
 
 And surely good Saint Francis, he 
 Who as his sister loved the hind. 
 
THE PRISONING OF SONG 
 
 TO EDWARD J. WHEELER 
 
 "TTVHERE lay one weeping at Apollo s feet 
 
 Whose tuneful throat was like a golden well. 
 Her tears unutterably sweet 
 Made music as they fell. 
 
 " Thee have I served, O Father, all my days, 
 Yea, ere thy hand had made the lute-string and 
 
 the lyre, 
 Out of my heart I snatched the terror and the 
 
 fire, 
 And with my body wrought thy perfect praise. 
 
 " I am the rapture of the nightingale 
 
 Heavenward winging, 
 
 The song in singing, 
 Beauty audible. 
 
 * With rumbling thunder and discordance hideous 
 The gods and stars shall tumble from the sky, 
 
 But beauty s curve enmarbled lives in Phidias, 
 And Homer s numbers cannot die. 
 
 10 
 
THE PRISONING OF SONG n 
 
 " To them that are my sisters them hast given 
 Eternity of bronze and script and stone. 
 
 I, only I, must perish, tempest-driven, 
 In the great stillness where no moan 
 Is heard, wind stirs, nor reed is blown." 
 
 Apollo wept. 
 
 " Most sweet, most delicate, 
 Death fears that he might tarry at thy gate 
 
 Too fond, too long, 
 
 And that while listening he forget the throng 
 Who call upon him with their piteous cries. 
 
 Thy sweetness, hence, in every song 
 Lives, and in each song dies." 
 
 He paused. Unlovely grief made dark 
 His shining countenance, when, mark! 
 
 There rose the proud Promethean race 
 Unto whose voice the thunders hark, 
 Who sailing in a fragile bark 
 
 Have seen the heavens face to face. 
 
 Their arms both lands and ocean span, 
 They snare the lightning in a trice. 
 Yea, by incredible device 
 
 They prison sound in curious shells, 
 
 And by these signs and miracles 
 
 Proclaim the masterhood of man. 
 
12 THE PRISONING OF SONG 
 
 O listen, all men, and rejoice, 
 For lo, Caruso s argent voice 
 
 Endures as granite, even so, 
 And Garden s song, like Plato s thought, 
 Or like a mighty structure wrought 
 
 By Michael Angelo ! 
 
 And when the land is perished, yea, 
 When life forsakes us, and the rust 
 
 Has eaten bard and roundelay, 
 Still from the silence of the dust 
 
 Shall rise the song of yesterday! 
 
GERSUIND 
 
 OOME amorous demon wrought your limbs 
 ^ Hewn out of moonwhite ivory; 
 
 Over your visage restlessly 
 Flickers the semblance of a soul, 
 
 And yet, queer wench, you are to me 
 More monstrous than the evil hymns 
 
 The black priest chants in mockery, 
 With sound obscene and eyes that roll, 
 
 Of the good Shepherd of the See. 
 
 Your voice is instant with a power, 
 
 That, like thick incense, makes men mad. 
 It is the voice the Tempter had, 
 
 Who whispered in an evil hour 
 To Judah s king and Magdalen, 
 And cried aloud in Sodom s men 
 
 For the two angels in the tower. 
 
 You smile upon me and your mouth 
 Half opens like a great red flower 
 
 Athirsting in the hot sun s drouth. 
 
 Before men s scorn you will not cower, 
 13 
 
14 GERSUIND 
 
 Your spirit quails not, neither squirms, 
 
 And yet your body is a bower 
 Where unclean wishes crawl like worms. 
 
 Black meres the eyes, beneath your lashes 
 Dream, by life s fitful tide unstirred, 
 Save when some quick priapic word 
 
 Floods them with phantom lightning flashes 
 Whereof the thunder is not heard. 
 
 A thousand years of sick desire 
 
 Crouch like a beast that snarling lies, 
 
 Stung by some taunt to mortal ire, 
 In the abysses of those eyes! 
 
 Yet when I gazed upon you, child, 
 
 All bounds from us I fain had flung, 
 And bathed with healing tears and mild, 
 
 Your head so pitifully young. 
 But you, not knowing, would have smiled 
 
 And love s white roses smirched with dust, 
 Seeing each nerve in you defiled 
 
 Is vibrant with some nameless lust. 
 
 Lo ! I have not the strength divine 
 
 Of Him whose bare feet ruled the sea, 
 To make your girl heart whole and free 
 
 And drive the devils into swine. 
 
GERSUIND 15 
 
 You must unto your dying day 
 Still walk unsolaced and alone, 
 Yea, and beyond, when to the bone 
 
 Your little breasts shall rot away. 
 
 Thus in the phosphorescent glow 
 
 Of your corruption you shall He 
 Until God s awful trumpets blow, 
 And all the sleepers, row by row, 
 
 Each with the other, two by two, 
 Rise from their coffins, and the grave 
 
 Spits forth the foulness that is you. 
 
 But in the universal spasm, 
 When the apocalyptic chasm 
 
 Engulfs the water and the land, 
 Then I shall come and comfort you, 
 
 Then I shall hold your shrunken hand 
 The grave has bitten through and through, 
 -With never nerve to twitch or goad 
 
 And then perhaps you ll understand 
 The kiss that I have not bestowed . . . 
 And ere God s hosts are marshalled bright 
 
 And the last dreaded veil withdrawn, 
 I shall be with you in the night 
 
 And pray until the doom of dawn. 
 
NERO IN CAPRI 
 
 O with the sun beyond the hill, 
 
 For you and me there is no thrill 
 In any rose of love or bud, 
 Nor any quickening of the blood. 
 Lo, from the tree of Good and 111 
 
 Each strangest fruit our hand has wrung, 
 Lust s adder was around our throat, 
 And on our lips the hissing tongue. 
 
 No wanton queen by Cupid s grace 
 
 Shall snare me in her purple mesh, 
 I take mine eyes from Helen s face, 
 
 I tear my lips from Phryne s flesh. 
 Not mine that martyr s ecstasy 
 
 Who hellward for a kiss was hurled ! 
 
 The ancient passions of the world 
 Quench not the bitter thirst of me. 
 
 The isles of Lesbos hide no dell 
 
 Where bides a rapture strange or new, 
 
 But white wan ghosts of dead sins dwell 
 In Capri s grottoes monstrous blue. 
 
 The books of Elephantis tell 
 
 Only the fortunes that befell 
 16 
 
NERO IN CAPRI 17 
 
 The son of Hermes and of her 
 Who wore the foam as vestiture, 
 
 And how young Leda s heart would stir 
 Beneath her plumed paramour. 
 
 Stale is to me the thought thereof, 
 Of this man s sin and that man s love. 
 
 Ah, that the world had but one mouth 
 
 To kiss it as a madman doth ! 
 Grant me the strength of all embraces 
 
 In the five circles of the globe ! 
 Make mine each drop of blood that races, 
 
 Clothe me with romance as a robe ! 
 Bring me the yearning of the dreams 
 
 Of all the young men amorous ! 
 Bruise me with every breast that gleams 
 
 Beneath some hell-sent incubus ! 
 
 Let madness rise in one bold gust, 
 And in the carnival of lust 
 
 Heap fire on fire, and coal on coal, 
 
 Join all things, thighs, and hips, and soul, 
 Until at last the panting earth 
 Shall tremble with conjugial mirth 
 
 Like a drunk wanton ; till desire, 
 Heedless of scorpions and of rods, 
 
 Shall toss his splendid mane of fire 
 And smite your pale, anaemic gods ! 
 
1 8 NERO IN CAPRI 
 
 Then, like a cyclopean brand 
 
 That threatening rises from the deeps, 
 My passion s embers newly fanned 
 
 Shall be a flame that sings and leaps, 
 With every bond of nature riven, 
 
 And broken every gyve that bars, 
 In the concupiscence of heaven, 
 
 And in the incest of the stars ! 
 
A BALLAD OF MONTMARTRE 
 
 WITHIN the graveyard of Montmartre 
 Where wreath on wreath is piled, 
 Where Paris huddles to her breast 
 
 Her genius like a child, 
 The ghost of Heinrich Heine met 
 The ghost of Oscar Wilde. 
 
 The wind was howling desolate, 
 
 The moon s dead face shone bright; 
 
 The ghost of Heinrich Heine hailed 
 The sad wraith with delight : 
 
 " Is it the slow worm s slimy touch 
 That makes you walk the night? 
 
 " Or rankles still the bitter jibe 
 
 Of fool and Pharisee, 
 When angels wept that England s law 
 
 Had nailed you to the Tree, 
 When from her brow she tore the rose 
 
 Of golden minstrelsy? " 
 
 Then spake the ghost of Oscar Wilde 
 
 While shrill the night hawk cried: 
 
 19 
 
20 A BALLAD OF MONTMARTRE 
 
 " Sweet singer of the race that bare 
 
 Him of the Wounded Side, 
 (I loved them not on earth, but men 
 
 Change somehow, having died). 
 
 " In Pere La Chaise my head is laid, 
 
 My coffin-bed is cool, 
 The mound above my grave defies 
 
 The scorn of knave and fool, 
 But may God s mercy save me from 
 
 The Psychopathic School 1 
 
 1 Tight though I draw my cerecloth, still 
 
 I hear the din thereof 
 When with sharp knife and argument 
 
 They pierce my soul above, 
 Because I drew from Shakespeare s heart 
 
 The secret of his love. 
 
 " Cite not Krafft-Ebing, nor his host 
 
 Of lepers in my aid, 
 I was sufficient as God s flowers 
 
 And everything He made; 
 Yea, with the harvest of my song 
 
 I face Him unafraid. 
 
 "The fruit of Life and Death is His; 
 He shapes both core and rind . . ." 
 
A BALLAD OF MONTMARTRE 21 
 
 Cracked seemed and thin the golden voice, 
 
 (The worm to none is kind), 
 While through the graveyard of Montmartre 
 
 Despairing howled the wind. 
 
A BALLAD OF KING DAVID 
 
 A S David with Bath-Sheba lay, 
 -** Both drunk with kisses long denied, 
 The King, with quaking lips and gray, 
 
 Beheld a spectre at his side 
 That said no word nor went away. 
 
 Then to his leman spake the King, 
 
 The ghostly presence challenging : 
 " Bath-Sheba, erst Uriah s wife, 
 Thy lips are as the Cup of Life 
 
 That holds the purplest wine of God, 
 
 Too sweet for any underling." 
 
 Yet," spake Bath-Sheba, sad of mien, 
 * Why from thy visage went the sheen 
 
 As though thy troubled eye had seen 
 A shadow, like a dead man s curse, 
 
 Rise threatening from the mound terrene? " 
 
 " Twas but the falling dusk, that fills 
 The palace with phantastic ills. 
 
 Uriah sleeps in alien sands 
 
 Soundly. Tis not his ghost that stands, 
 
 22 
 
A BALLAD OF KING DAVID 23 
 
 Living or dead, or anything 
 
 Twixt the King s pleasure and the King." 
 
 Bath-Sheba s glad heart rose, then fell : 
 " Where is it that thy fancies dwell? 
 Is there some maid in Israel 
 
 Broad-hipped, with blue eyes like the sea, 
 Whose mouth is like a honey-cell, 
 
 And sweeter than the mouth of me? " 
 
 " The pressure of thy lips on mine 
 Is exquisite like snow-cooled wine. 
 Over the wasteness of my life 
 
 Thy love is risen like a sun : 
 All other loves that once seemed sweet 
 
 Are seized by black oblivion." 
 
 Again upon the shadow-thing 
 He gazed in silence, questioning. 
 And lo! with quaint familiar ring 
 A spectral voice addressed the King : 
 
 " O David, David, Judah s swan! 
 Why unto me dost thou this thing? " 
 
 "Whoartthou?" 
 
 " I am Jonathan, 
 
 My heart is like a wounded fawn." 
 
 " When Saul s fierce anger, like a bull, 
 Rose, by the Evil One made blind, 
 
24 A BALLAD OF KING DAVID 
 
 My love to thee was wonderful, 
 Passing the love of womankind. 
 Hast thou forgotten everything 
 My heart aches in remembering ? 
 Is such the harvest of our spring 
 Of war and love and lute-playing? 
 
 " Oh, why, such transient love to win 
 
 Bring on thy soul this heavy sin? 
 Ah, happy they who die in grace, 
 Ere time can mar their lovely face, 
 
 And their young hearts grow hard within 
 Yea, happy they who die as I, 
 And as thine unborn child shall die. 
 
 Already at the palace gate 
 
 Stands Nathan with the word of fate ! " 
 
 Was it a ghost s voice or the wind? 
 For still Bath-Sheba, unaware, 
 
 Smiled. But King David ill in mind 
 Scarce deemed her Beauty half so fair: 
 
 " Stale is the wine this evening, 
 And sick with roses is the air! " 
 He tore the garland from his hair, 
 And left Bath-Sheba lying there 
 
 Perturbed, and vaguely wondering . . . 
 
THE BALLAD OF THE GOLDEN BOY 
 
 FOR LEONARD ABBOTT 
 
 1T\A VINCI S brow in curious lines 
 ^^^ Of contemplation deep was knit. 
 
 Fair dreams before his eyes alit 
 Like water when the moonlight shines, 
 
 Or amber bees that come and flit: 
 
 How to make rare and exquisite 
 A pageant for the Florentines. 
 
 He beckoned to his page, a lad 
 
 Whose lips were like two crimson spots, 
 Eyes had he like forget-me-nots. 
 
 Yet all his boyhood sweet and glad 
 
 In frock of homely-spun was clad. 
 
 And of his multi-colored whims 
 
 The strangest thus the master told: 
 
 " Child, I shall crown thy head with gold, 
 
 And stain with gold thy lovely limbs. 
 For once in this sad age uncouth 
 The bloom of boyhood and of youth 
 
 Shall be with splendour aureoled." 
 25 
 
26 BALLAD OF THE GOLDEN BOY 
 
 The boy s heart leaped in one great bound. 
 
 1 Thy gracious will," said he, " be done! " 
 And ere the lad was disengowned 
 
 The eager painter had begun 
 To clothe his hair with glory round 
 
 And make his visage like the sun. 
 
 Then, seven stars upon his breast, 
 And in his hands a floral horn, 
 
 Like a young king or like a guest 
 From heaven, riding on the morn, 
 Splendid and nude, the boy was borne 
 
 In triumph on the pageant s crest. 
 
 Like the sea surging on the beach, 
 Reverberant murmurs rise to greet 
 The masqueraders on the street. 
 
 But what is this? A learned leech 
 Hatless, dishevelled, runs to meet 
 
 The train. White terror halts his speech. 
 
 " Poor lad, my lad, for Heaven s pity," 
 Shakes on the air a father s cry, 
 " Strip from thy flesh this gilded lie, 
 
 Else, for the pleasure of the city, 
 A self-slain Midas, thou must die ! " 
 
 And terror smote the revelry. 
 
 The master s features white and sad 
 
BALLAD OF THE GOLDEN BOY 27 
 
 Twitched, yet no single word spake he, 
 But full and straight rose up the lad, 
 
 Upon his lips curled wistfully 
 The smile that Mona Lisa had. 
 
 " Good Sir," said he, " what mortal power 
 In all the dark-winged years and fleet, 
 
 Could me, a lowly lad, endower 
 
 With any boon more great, more sweet, 
 
 Than to have felt one epic hour 
 A city s homage at my feet? 
 
 " By the slow tooth of time uneaten, 
 And all the foul things that destroy, 
 
 From Life s mad game I rise unbeaten, 
 Drenched with the wine of youth and joy, 
 Great Leonardo s Golden Boy. 
 
 " Let this be told in song and story, 
 Until the eyes of the world grow dim, 
 
 Till the sun s rays are wan, and hoary 
 The ringlets of the cherubim, 
 
 That in my boyhood s glow and glory 
 I died for Florence and for him. 
 
 " And when the damp and dreary mould 
 Full soon my little limbs shall hold, 
 
 Let Leonardo s finger write 
 Upon my grave, in letters bold : 
 
28 BALLAD OF THE GOLDEN BOY 
 
 His life was as a splash of gold 
 
 Against the plumage of the night. " 
 
 Thus spake the lad; and onward rolled 
 
 The world s great pageant fierce and bright. 
 
THE CYNIC S CREDO 
 
 17* ROM the cloistered halls of knowledge where 
 
 * phantastic lights are shed 
 
 By a thousand twisted mirrors, and the dead en 
 tomb their dead, 
 
 Let us walk into the city where men s wounds are 
 raw and red. 
 
 Three gifts only Life, the strumpet, holds for 
 coward and for brave, 
 
 Only three, no more the belly and the phallus and 
 the gravel 
 
 When the slow disease of time writes on our face 
 its horrid scrawl, 
 
 These be good gifts, these be real, let what will 
 the rest befall, 
 
 Both the first gift and the second but the last 
 is best of all. 
 
 Faith and hope and friends desert us ere the cere 
 cloth s folds are drawn; 
 
 These remain while life remains and one remains 
 when all are gone. 
 39 
 
30 THE CYNICS CREDO 
 
 Who am I to judge the pander? Who are you to 
 
 damn the thief? 
 We are all but storm-tossed sailors stranded on the 
 
 selfsame reef. 
 Strip us of our fine-cut garments, smite us with 
 
 some primal grief, 
 Then behold us writhing naked, chain-bound to 
 
 our carcass, slave 
 To the belly and the phallus and (more kind than 
 
 God) the grave. 
 
 Why desire the stars in heaven, why ask more 
 
 when we have these? 
 Beast and bird shall be our comrades, we as they 
 
 may live in ease. 
 Not for us God s angel choir and His cosmic 
 
 silences ! 
 Say not that we, too, are gods, since no god is 
 
 strong to save 
 From the hunger of the belly and the phallus and 
 
 the grave. 
 
 Saints and sinners all are brothers, none is happy 
 
 while a trace 
 Of divine and half-forgotten distant music makes 
 
 the race 
 Dream of freedom in the trap that holds the good 
 
 man and the base. 
 
THE CYNICS CREDO 31 
 
 Like the worm that eats our substance, longing eats 
 
 our hearts : we crave 
 For a life beyond the belly and the phallus and 
 
 the grave. 
 
 Let us nurse no vain delusion ! Feast on love and 
 
 wine and meat, 
 While girls breasts blush into rosebuds and the 
 
 touch of flesh is sweet, 
 For the earth, our buxom mother, loves the sound 
 
 of dancing feet! 
 Though God cursed us with a glimmer of His 
 
 consciousness He gave 
 Still the belly and the phallus and life s final thrill 
 
 the grave! 
 
 And who knows but the Almighty in His heart may 
 
 envy us? 
 If a little draught of knowledge makes man s life 
 
 so dolorous, 
 Then the crown of His omniscience is a crown of 
 
 thorns, and thus 
 Time that ends not broods on heaven, a gigantic 
 
 incubus. 
 We at least, through evolution climbing upward 
 
 from the cave, 
 Have the belly and the phallus and God s kindest 
 
 gift, the grave. 
 
LIFE 
 
 "T" S HOU art the quick pulsation of the wine, 
 
 The laughter and the fever and the doom, 
 Skull crowned with roses, malady divine, 
 
 Dweller alike in cradle and in tomb ! 
 Thine is the clangour of the ceaseless strife, 
 
 The agony of being, and the lust; 
 But Death thy bridegroom turns thy heart, O Life, 
 
 Whence thou hast risen, to the primal dust. 
 
 As one that loves a wanton knowing well 
 That she is false, I yield me to thy spell. 
 But when my cup is foaming to the brim, 
 Yea, when I dream that I have clasped the 
 
 prize, 
 
 I see the scythe, and mark the face of him 
 That is thy lover, leering from thine eyes. 
 
IRON PASSION 
 
 T OVE S smiling countenance I know, 
 ~* But not the anger of the god, 
 For I have wandered where Boccaccio 
 And Casanova trod. 
 
 I am aweary of these pleasant things, 
 
 The gallant dalliance and the well-watched fire. 
 Give me the magic of a thousand springs 
 That shook the blood of young Assyrian kings, 
 That stirs the young monk in his cell, and stings 
 Crimson and hot! 
 
 Wearing the crown of unassuaged desire, 
 Break me or bless me only love me not ! 
 
 Corne as a wanton red with rouge and wine, 
 And I shall weave out of my song for thee 
 
 A purpler cloak than his 
 
 Who, hating, loved that Lesbia. Come to me 
 
 A saint the halo shall be thine 
 Of Beatrice. 
 
 There is no joy in tender loves or wise, 
 
 No sweet in wrong: 
 Come unto me with cruel, loveless eyes, 
 
 O iron passion of the lords of song! 
 
 33 
 
INHIBITION 
 
 TO MY PARENTS 
 
 C\ FOR the blithesomeness of birds 
 
 ^^ Whose soul floods ever to their tongue ! 
 
 But to be impotent of words 
 
 With blinding tears and heart unstrung! 
 
 Each breeze that blows from homeward 
 brings 
 
 To me who am so far away 
 The memory of tender things 
 
 I might have said and did not say. 
 
 Like spirit children, wraiths unborn 
 
 To luckless lovers long ago, 
 Shades of emotion, mute, forlorn, 
 
 Within my brain stalk to and fro. 
 
 When to my lips they rush, and call, 
 A nameless something rears its head, 
 
 Forbidding, like the spectral wall 
 Between the living and the dead. 
 
 O guardian of the nether mind 
 
 Where atavistic terrors reel 
 In dark cerebral chambers, bind 
 
 Old nightmares with thy mystic seal! 
 
 34 
 
INHIBITION 35 
 
 But bar not from the sonant gate 
 
 Of being with thy fiery sword 
 The sweetest thing we wring from fate : 
 
 Love s one imperishable word! 
 
ON BROADWAY 
 
 /^REAT jewels glitter like a wizard s rain 
 Of pearl and ruby in the women s hair. 
 And all the men each drags a golden chain, 
 As though he walked in freedom. In the 
 
 glare, 
 Luxurious-cushioned wheels a revel-train 
 
 Where kings of song with weary feet have 
 
 trod, 
 
 Where Poe, sad priest to Beauty and to Pain, 
 Bore through the night the Vision and the 
 God. 
 
 And yet, perhaps, in this assemblage vast, 
 In some poor heart sounds the enraptured 
 
 chord, 
 And staggering homeward from a hopeless 
 
 quest 
 The God-anointed touched me, meanly 
 
 dressed, 
 
 And, like a second Peter, I have passed 
 Without salute the vessel of the Lord. 
 
THE UNKNOWN GODDESS 
 
 ONE day I stopped at a bookvender s place, 
 And, as a woman fingering old lace, 
 Caressed the volumes holding daintily 
 The treasure-troves of all the world for me. 
 Though flesh clothe not their fond imaginings, 
 The dreams of poets are as living things. . . . 
 By Socrates 1 and Plato s " Soul " I found 
 " Mam selle de Maupin " in rich saffron bound. 
 And wrangling still about the old affair 
 The lad and lady of the " Sonnets " were, 
 While Laura smiled to Beatrice; when he 
 Who marshalled all this ghostly company, 
 The clerk, I say, drew me aside, and thus 
 He spake to me: " A lady beauteous 
 Your book, O Poet, deems most exquisite, 
 And asks you please to write your name in it." 
 "Who can it be?" 
 
 " That may I not reveal. 
 She lives in splendor ; dizzy motors reel 
 At her command, beside an equipage, 
 And oh ! her town-house is a queen s menage 1 " 
 I acquiesced, and in my book, my own, 
 Inscribed a greeting to the fair unknown. 
 
 37 
 
38 THE UNKNOWN GODDESS 
 
 But now I know twas magic, twas a snare ! 
 If to a witch you give a strand of hair 
 She draws you by it over land and sea 
 Thus, Unknown Lady, are you drawing me ! 
 
 The ancient Greeks for honeyed lips unkissed, 
 For far-off things still hidden in time s mist, 
 For hopes obscure, mysterious vows and odd, 
 Upreared an altar to the Unknown God ! 
 Thus in my heart I raise a shrine to you, 
 O Unknown Goddess of Fifth Avenue ! 
 No maiden fair my vagrant heart can thrill, 
 For you I know not must be fairer still . . . 
 You are my mistress, and to you belong 
 The passion and the vision and the song. 
 Both day and night I wonder who you are, 
 If you obey some far phantastic star? 
 Are your hands lilies ? Is their fragrance sweet? 
 And shall I know you when at last we meet? 
 Out of the night, O Goddess, send a sign 
 And prove to me you are indeed divine ! 
 
THE VIRGIN SPHINX 
 
 TO MURIEL RICE 
 
 T7ROM what strange tomb is thy strange knowl 
 edge blown, 
 
 Borne on the wings of what Chimaera s brood? 
 
 Thine is her secret whom the Serpent wooed, 
 And his who kindled passion in a stone. 
 Art thou her child, whom Egypt calls her own, 
 
 Her lore s gray guardian hewn in granite rude? 
 
 Has she, perchance, in a maternal mood, 
 Revealed to thee her musings vast and lone? 
 
 Indifferent of things human and the years, 
 Cerebral still and granite still, she blinks 
 
 Through half-closed lids perennially wise . . . 
 But thou, O virgin daughter of the Sphinx, 
 
 Grant God that Love may scorch thee with his 
 tears, 
 
 And kiss her ancient wisdom from thine eyes ! 
 
THE NUNS 
 
 TO DOROTHY RICE 
 {Suggested by her Painting at the Independent Artists Exhibition, iqw\ 
 
 A WOODLAND cloister rude and desolate, 
 
 Grim shapes of anguish hooded in despair: 
 Half-crazed with horror, yet enthralled, they 
 
 stare 
 
 Where, fallen hellward from his holy state, 
 The pale young priest beside the altar stands. 
 Unto the night his gibbering lips rehearse 
 A litany satanic and perverse. 
 The golden monstrance shudders in his hands . . . 
 
 They dare not call upon the Holy Name, 
 Lest, crashing as the thunder on the main, 
 
 God s anger smite them with His sword of flame. 
 
 And so they leer, eternally the same, 
 
 Called in what crevice of thy tortured brain, 
 Prodigious child, from nothingness to pain ? 
 
 40 
 
QUEEN LILITH 
 
 "T ADY of mystery, what is thy history? 
 -*-^ Where is the rose God gave to thee, 
 
 Where is thy soul s virginity? " 
 " Lord, my Lord, is thy speech a sword? 
 
 What is it thou wouldst have of me?" 
 
 " There are pleasant passes of tender grasses 
 Where the kine may browse and the wild she- 
 asses, 
 
 Between the hills and the deep salt sea, 
 But where is the spot that is branded not 
 
 With the Sign of the Beast on thy fair body? " 
 
 " Lord, my Lord, ask thy Scarlet Horde! 
 
 Who spilt my love and my life like wine? 
 
 Who threw my body as bread to swine? 
 If my sins in heaven be seventy times seven, 
 
 What between heaven and hell are thine? " 
 
 " Lady, where is it thy fancies hover, 
 
 With wolves eyes prying restlessly 
 For some naked thing that they might discover, 
 Some strange new sin or some strange new lover, 
 Beyond the lover who lies with thee? " 
 41 
 
42 QUEEN LILITH 
 
 " Lord, my Lord, who has struck the chord 
 That holds my heart in a spider s mesh? 
 
 Prince of the soul s satiety, 
 Whence springs that hunger beyond the flesh, 
 
 That only the flesh can appease in me? " 
 
 " By the love of a love that is strange as myrrh, 
 By the kiss that kills and the doom that 
 smileth, 
 
 By my cloven hoof and my fiery spur, 
 Thou art my sister, the Lady Lilith, 
 
 I am " 
 
 "My brother Lucifer!" 
 
 II I am thy lover, I am thy brother, 
 
 Time cannot prison us, space cannot smother, 
 Proudest of Jahveh s kindred we, 
 
 Whom Chaos, the terrific mother, 
 Begot from stark Eternity. 
 
 " I am the cry of the earth that beguileth 
 
 God s trembling hosts though they loathe my 
 
 name, 
 
 The dauntless foe of His loaded gamel 
 But where is the tomb that had hidden Lilith, 
 Of the Deathless Worm and the Quenchless 
 Flame ? 
 
 " I hunted thee where the Ibis nods, 
 
 From the Bracken s crag to the Upas Tree, 
 
QUEEN LILITH 43 
 
 My lonesomeness was as great as God s, 
 When He cast us out from His Holy See, 
 But now at the last thou art come to me ! 
 
 " Let Mary of Bethlehem lord it in Heaven, 
 While stringed beads her seraphs tell, 
 (How art thou fallen, Gabriel!) 
 
 Thy bridesmaids shall be the Deadly Seven, 
 And I will make thee a queen in Hell ! " 
 
2. SAMUEL, I. 26 
 
 TO T. E. H. 
 
 iron finger wrote the law 
 Upon an adamantine scroll 
 That thrilled my life with tender awe 
 When first I met you soul to soul. 
 
 Thence springs the great flame heaven-lit, 
 Predestined when the world began, 
 
 Whereby my heart to yours is knit 
 As David s was to Jonathan. 
 
 44 
 
ENIGMA 
 
 TO A. L. 
 
 A MOUTH more strange than Mona Lisa s is. 
 * Deep eyes where dreams an infinite despair 
 
 In the blue shadow of mysterious hair 
 That crowned the temples of Semiramis! 
 Thine is the smile that murders with a kiss 
 
 Of her whose body was a perfect prayer 
 To Ashtoreth, and all the mysteries 
 
 Of all the queens of all the East are there. 
 
 This age of brass has sealed thy soul with fears, 
 And prudence blights thy poppies like a pall : 
 
 Perchance thy words might move the world to 
 
 tears, 
 And thy great secret save or sear us all : 
 
 But round about thee an enchanted wall 
 The silence hovers of a thousand years. 
 
 45 
 
A LITTLE MAID OF SAPPHO 
 
 LITTLE siren of the rose-white skin, 
 Reared to strange music and to stranger sin, 
 With scornful lips that move to no man s plea 
 O little Maid of Sappho, come to me ! 
 Beneath long lashes downcast eyes and coy, 
 Yet uninitiate to no secret joy! 
 O bud burst open ere her day begun, 
 The virgin and the strumpet blent in one! 
 Come close to me ! Lay your small hand in mine, 
 And drink the music of my words like wine. 
 And let me touch your little breasts that swell 
 With joy remembered where her kisses fell . . . 
 Ah ! she whose wise caressive fingers strike 
 Your heart-strings and the cithara alike! 
 By what love-potion is your passion fanned, 
 What is the magic of that wary hand? 
 What is the secret of her strange caress, 
 Fierce, tortured kisses, or the tenderness 
 That woman gives to woman flame or snow? 
 I, too, can kiss or bruise you. You shall know 
 That love like mine is delicate as hers, 
 Or madder still, to madder passion stirs, 
 That shall consume you like some fiery sea 
 O little Maid of Sappho, come to me ! 
 
 46 
 
A LITTLE MAID OF SAPPHO 47 
 
 Or is it song that sets your blood on fire? 
 Behold in me no novice to the lyre. 
 Who is this woman Sappho? I can sing 
 Like her of Eros. Yea, each voiceless thing, 
 The very rocks of Mytilene s strand 
 Shall be made vocal at your sweet command. 
 Hers but the cooing of the Lesbian lutes, 
 Mine every passion in the heart that roots. 
 Albeit your sweetness lives in Sappho s song, 
 Her love is barren . . . and the years are long. 
 And how she sang, and how she loved and 
 
 erred, 
 
 Only by moonsick women will be heard. 
 The lyric thunder that my hand has hurled 
 Shall ring with resonant music through the world, 
 Quickening the blood in every lover s breast, 
 And then your beauty on my glory s crest 
 Shall ride, a goddess, to eternity 
 O little Maid of Sappho, come to me! 
 
 Unscathed in Love s dominion I have been, 
 And still a sceptic kissed the mouth of Sin. 
 Love seemed the dreariest of all things on earth 
 Until my passion filled your heart with mirth ! 
 Like frightened bird my cynic wisdom flies 
 Before the cruel candour of your eyes. 
 As for sweet rain a valley sick with drouth, 
 Thus thirsts my love for your indifferent mouth 1 
 
48 A LITTLE MAW OF SAPPHO 
 
 And still your thoughts are wandering to the dell 
 Where Sappho walks and where her minions 
 
 dwell . . . 
 
 Be then, of maidens most corrupt, most chaste, 
 The one delight that I shall never taste! 
 And through the dreary aeons yet unborn 
 The love of you shall rankle like a thorn ! 
 Leave one last thrill for my sad heart to crave 
 In the ennui of heaven or the grave! . . . 
 Incite my passion, my embraces flee 
 And never, never, never come to me ! 
 
 listen, listen to my heart-beat s call! 
 Aught else I say, it is not true at all. 
 
 She has her maidens whom her soft ways woo, 
 And they to her are no less dear than you. 
 For your dear sake I gladly fling aside 
 Laurels and loves ! A beggar stripped of pride, 
 
 1 only know I need you more than she 
 O little Maid of Sappho, come to me! 
 
N 
 
 CHILDREN OF LILITH 
 
 TO FRANCOIS VILLON 
 
 OW tell me, Villon, where is he, 
 
 Young Sporus, lord of Nero s lyre, 
 Who marked with languid ecstasy 
 
 The seven hills grow red with fire? 
 And he whose madness choked the hall 
 
 With roses and made night of day? 
 Rome s rulers for an interval, 
 
 Its boyish Caesars, where are they? 
 
 Where is that city by the Nile, 
 
 Reared by an emperor s bronze distress 
 When the enamoured crocodile 
 
 Clawed the Bithynian s loveliness? 
 The argent pool whose listening trees 
 
 Heard Echo s voice die far away? 
 Narcissus, Hylas, Charmides, 
 
 O brother Villon, where are they? 
 
 Say where the Young Disciple roved 
 When the Messiah s blood was spilt? 
 
 None knows : for he whom Jesus loved 
 Was not the rock on which He built. 
 
 49 
 
50 CHILDREN OF LILITH 
 
 And tell me where is Gaveston, 
 
 The second Edward s dear dismay? 
 
 And Shakespeare s love, and Jonathan, 
 O brother Villon, where are they? 
 
 Made for what end? by God s great hand, 
 
 Frail enigmatic shapes, they dwell 
 In some phantastic borderland, 
 
 But on the hitherside of hell ! 
 Children of Lilith, each a sprite, 
 
 Yet wrought like us of Adam s clay, 
 And when they haunt us in the night 
 
 What, brother Villon, shall we say? 
 
LOVE S AFTERMATH 
 
 summer afternoon 
 We strangled Love, and soon 
 There where my love had been, 
 Upon the couch, was Sin. 
 
 The face is still the same, 
 But an unholy flame 
 Gleams in her eyes that serves 
 To whip my angry nerves. 
 
 Upon affection s tomb 
 Miasmic blossoms bloom. 
 Whims monstrous and perverse 
 Those girlish lips rehearse. 
 
 Her body seems the shrine 
 Of some strange Messaline, 
 And all the lusts of men 
 That tortured Magdalen. 
 
 And when beside me stirs 
 That soft white form of hers, 
 A voice cries out to me : 
 For love s sake, set her free! 
 51 
 
52 LOPE S AFTERMATH 
 
 At last I understand 
 
 Who with untrembling hand 
 
 Destroy a lovely shell, 
 
 To save the soul from hell! 
 
THE SINGING VAMPIRE 
 
 T^HOU art no goddess risen clean 
 
 From the infatuated brine; 
 Nay, rather an exotic queen, 
 
 A dark, low-templed Messaline, 
 Dumb till some human sacrifice 
 
 Be spilt upon her monstrous shrine : 
 With tears and blood we paid the price 
 
 Of all those golden songs of thine. 
 
 Life of an hundred victims throbs 
 
 In thy enchantments fierce, uncouth, 
 And through thy rose-red passion sobs 
 
 The pallid wraith of ruined youth. 
 Within thy bosom s labyrinth 
 
 Has not the monster had his fill? 
 Why slay this stainless Hyacinth? 
 
 Are there not men to do thy will ? 
 
 And, though thy hungry eyes had rein 
 Upon his boyish throat and hips, 
 
 His sweet young self thou shalt not drain, 
 Nor bruise him with thy cruel lips. 
 53 
 
54 THE SINGING VAMPIRE 
 
 Fate s arm against thy heart shall thrust 
 The sabre of thine ancient wrong, 
 
 O man-devouring queen of lust ! 
 O scarlet mouth of tuneful song ! 
 
 And men shall shun thee as the pest 
 
 That see thy blood-red mouth and know, 
 And though thou beat thine arid breast 
 
 Yet neither milk nor song shall flow. 
 The asp of unassuaged desire 
 
 Within thy famished flanks must dwell, 
 Doomed to endure till all things tire, 
 
 In an eternal songless hell. 
 
THE MASTER KEY 
 
 TO WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 
 
 loves have I, both children of delight: 
 One is a youth, like Eros self, to whom 
 My heart unfolds, as lotus blossoms bloom 
 When her mysterious service chants the Night; 
 And one is like a poppy burning bright. 
 
 Her strong black tresses bind the hands of doom, 
 She is a wraith from some imperial tomb, 
 Of love enhungered, in the grave s despite. 
 
 Lord, though thou be, O Shakespeare, of all rhyme, 
 Life is more strong than any song of thine. 
 
 For thou wast thrall to circumstance, and Care 
 With rankling poison marred thy singing time : 
 From hell s own lees I still crush goodly wine, 
 And like a Greek, and smiling, flout despair! 
 
 55 
 
THE PILGRIM 
 
 -pHERE knocked One nightly at the harlot s 
 
 house; 
 
 Wan was His mouth as kisses without love. 
 His groping fingers followed tremulous 
 The winding of her delicate thin veins; 
 He traced the waxen contour of her breast, 
 And then, as baffled in some strange pursuit, 
 Drew her to Him in weariest embrace; 
 And, as she shuddered in His grasp, He watched, 
 Still passionless, the working of her throat. 
 The woman s cheek grew crimson as He gazed, 
 But He, a scowling and disgruntled guest, 
 Rose white and famished from her body s feast. 
 Yet one night, pausing half-way, He turned back, 
 Lured by the wraith of long-departed hope; 
 And then He asked of her a monstrous thing . . . 
 The strumpet blanched and, rising from the couch, 
 Spat in His face. 
 
 Straightway the Stranger s eye 
 Blazoned exultant with the pilgrim s joy 
 When ends the quest. He lifted up His hands 
 In quiet benediction, and a light 
 Miraculous upon His forehead shone. 
 
 56 
 
THE PILGRIM 57 
 
 But she, being blind, still cursed Him, and reviled : 
 " Albeit I sell my body for very shame 
 
 I am a woman, not a beast; but thou " 
 
 " And I," quoth he, " a Seeker after God." 
 
POEMS FROM PLAYS 
 
THE PRINCESS WITH THE GOLDEN 
 VEIL 
 
 FROM " THE VAMPIRE," BY GEORGE SYLVESTER 
 VIERECK AND EDGAR ALLAN WOOLF 
 
 FOR MARGARET EDITH HEIN 
 
 / ~T" V HUS spake the King to Marygold, 
 *" His speech was soft with many sighs : 
 " Why, Princess, may not I behold 
 
 The wonder of your star-lit eyes ? 
 Your veil, Beloved, is the cloud 
 
 Of amber that obscures the sun. 
 Strange is the vow that bids you shroud 
 
 Your sweetness like a sad-faced nun. 
 
 " Perhaps some spirit wrought with guile 
 
 Around your heart a magic spell. 
 Behind the veil you weep and smile, 
 
 Perhaps you hate me who can tell? 
 Your lips are silent as the grave, 
 
 And with strange fear my cheek is pale; 
 Have mercy on the King, your slave, 
 
 O Princess with the Golden Veil ! 
 
 ;t Thrice hallowed was the glorious hour 
 When through the veil I felt your breath, 
 
 61 
 
62 THE PRINCESS 
 
 More fragrant than a passion flower, 
 Dear as a mother s words at death. 
 
 Yet the sad thought beyond control 
 Gnaws at my heart, and eats and grips, 
 
 That I have never known your soul, 
 Or read the secret from your lips. 
 
 " And never shall I understand, 
 
 And men shall hope and strive and fail, 
 
 Until some Prince from Fairyland 
 
 Shall kiss your mouth and lift the veil. 
 
 And, though my heart be black with night, 
 My regal lips that may not quail, 
 
 Shall smile as Arthur s, when his sight 
 In guiltless hands beheld the Grail 
 O Princess with the Golden Veil ! " 
 
JOAN S FAREWELL 
 
 ENGLISHED FOR MAUDE ADAMS FROM THE GER 
 MAN OF SCHILLER 
 
 pAREWELL, ye hills, ye pastures dearly loved, 
 
 Ye quiet homely valleys, fare ye well ! 
 For Joan henceforth shall know your ways no 
 
 more, 
 
 Joan to you all must bid a long farewell ! 
 Ye meadows I have watered, and ye trees 
 That I have planted, wear your gladsome green ! 
 Farewell, ye grottoes, and ye cooling springs ! 
 Sweet Echo, thou the valley s lovely voice, 
 Oft though my heart for thy response may yearn, 
 Joan goes, and never never shall return ! 
 
 Dear tranquil scenes of all my joyful days, 
 I leave you now behind f orevermore 1 
 
 Poor, foldless lambs, go ye in unknown ways, 
 And walk unherded where the nightbirds soar! 
 
 For I am called another flock to graze 
 On fields of peril in the battle s roar. 
 
 I must obey the Spirit s high decree: 
 
 Earth-born ambition has no part in me. 
 
 63 
 
64 JOAN S FAREWELL 
 
 He that to Moses upon Horeb s height 
 Descended fiery on the bush of flame, 
 
 Commanding him to stand in Pharaoh s sight; 
 Who once to Israel s pious shepherd came, 
 
 And made the lad His champion in the fight; 
 Loves to exalt a lowly shepherd s name. 
 
 He hailed me from the branches of this tree, 
 
 " Go forth! Thou shall on earth my witness be! 
 
 " Rude brass for garment shall thy soft limbs wear, 
 In clasp of iron shall thy heart be pressed, 
 
 Ne er in thine eyes shall seem a man s face fair 
 Or light the flame of mortal love unblessed! 
 
 Never the bride-wreath shall adorn thy hair, 
 Nor lovely baby blossom at thy breast, 
 
 But thou shalt be War s sacrificial bride 
 
 Above all earthly women glorified! 
 
 " When the most brave in battle shall despair, 
 When ruin threatens, and all hope seems vain, 
 
 Thine arms aloft mine oriflamme shall bear; 
 And, as the skilful reaper fells the grain, 
 
 Thou shalt mow down our foemen everywhere, 
 And turn Fate s chariot backward by thy rein! 
 
 Unto all France shalt thou deliverance bring, 
 
 And, freeing Rheims, in triumph crown the King! " 
 
 The Heavenly Spirit promised me a sign, 
 He sends the helmet, for it comes from Him! 
 
JOAN S FAREWELL 65 
 
 Its iron thrills me with the strength divine 
 That fans the courage of the Cherubim; 
 
 And, as the raging whirlwind whips the brine, 
 It drives me forth to lead the combat grim. 
 
 The chargers rear and trembling paw the ground, 
 
 The war-cry thunders and the trumpets sound! 
 
CHANTECLER S ODE TO THE SUN 
 (AFTER THE FRENCH OF ROSTAND) 
 
 "1%/T OTHER, whose great love dries the tears 
 * Of every little weed that grows, 
 And makes a living butterfly 
 
 Of the dead petals of the rose, 
 And of the almond blossoms bright 
 
 In the fair vale of Rousillon 
 That tremble in the scented breeze 
 Blown downward from the Pyrenees, 
 
 Lo, I adore thee, Mistress Sun! 
 
 Beneath thy kiss the honey ripes, 
 
 Thy blessing is on every brow; 
 In every flower s little heart, 
 
 In every hovel, there art thou ! 
 The meanest creatures in God s world 
 
 Share in thy beneficial fire, 
 But, even as a mother s love, 
 
 Divided, thou art still entire. 
 
 With humble pride I chant thy praise, 
 My priesthood thou wilt not disdain, 
 
 66 
 
CHANTECLER S ODE 67 
 
 Hast thou not bathed thy radiant face 
 In water gathered from the rain, 
 
 Made blue with curious dye, wherein 
 Fine linen is made clean from stain? 
 
 Thy last farewell is often thrown 
 Upon a lowly window pane. 
 
 The yellow sunflower turns to thee 
 
 Her radiant countenance in prayer, 
 My brother on the steeple boasts 
 
 Of golden plumes when thou art there ; 
 And gliding through the linden tree 
 
 Thou draw st strange circles on the ground 
 Too delicate to tread upon, 
 
 Save for some sprite in silver gowned. 
 
 Thou mak st a rare enamelled thing 
 
 Of the brown pitcher cracked and old, 
 The common tools of farm and yard 
 
 Are by thy radiance aureoled. 
 And, where but now a rag was seen, 
 
 A glorious banner is unrolled, 
 The hayrick and its little mate, 
 
 The beehive, wear a hood of gold. 
 
 Glory to thee upon the fields, 
 And glory on the vineyards high ! 
 
 Thrice blessed thou art upon the door, 
 
 Thrice blessed on herb and grass and sky. 
 
68 CHANTECLER S ODE 
 
 I bless thee in the lizard s eyes, 
 And on the pinions of the swan. 
 
 Thou speak st to us in little things 
 As in the vastness of the dawn. 
 
 Thy mandate, Sun, has called to life, 
 
 The sombre sister of the light 
 Who humbly cowers at the feet 
 
 Of all things shining, all things bright. 
 For thou hast given unto them 
 
 A shadow, dancing like an elf, 
 That often seems unto the eye 
 
 More lovely than the thing itself. 
 
 I worship thee : thy holy light 
 
 Charms lilies from the crusty sod, 
 Thy presence sanctifies the brook, 
 
 In every bush thou show st us God! 
 Thy splendor makes the tree divine, 
 
 And lends new wonder to the star, 
 Save for thy love, O Mother Sun, 
 
 All things would seem but what they are 1 
 
THE BREEZE 
 
 (AFTER THE FRENCH OF ZAMACOIS) 
 
 TpHE breeze that stirs in yonder tree 
 
 And the young roses rocks to sleep, 
 Wafts to my mind the memory 
 
 Of a young Zephyr who would sweep 
 Across the land with fellows gay, 
 
 Winged with the wind like them, and bent 
 On fond adventure, who one May 
 (O wine of spring, O golden day !) 
 
 Traversed a castle s battlement, 
 And on the terrace, spinning there, 
 He found a child divinely fair, 
 (O lovely maid with sun-kissed hair!) 
 
 Swift drawing from an ivory loom 
 A thread more soft than gossamer. 
 
 Her eyes were bluer in his sight 
 Than the enchanted azure mere 
 
 Which on that morning in his flight 
 His wings had grazed, and crystal-clear. 
 
 And as he loosed a golden strand 
 From her dear head, she raised a hand 
 And looked and laughed, and brushed it 
 back 
 
 6 9 
 
?o THE BREEZE 
 
 So sweet, so chaste, so debonair, 
 
 That the young Breeze, who had no lack 
 
 Of conquests in the heights above 
 Among the damsels of the air, 
 
 And danced a pirouette with Love, 
 Felt that his heart was held for e er 
 By that sweet child divinely fair, 
 (O sea-blue eyes, O sun-kissed hair!) 
 Whose lily hands were spinning there 
 A weft more soft than gossamer. 
 
 Surely no tale beneath the sun 
 
 More dainty could or stranger be, 
 Than how that maid a lover won 
 
 Whose countenance she could not see. 
 He was content unknown to stir 
 
 About the spinner and the loom, 
 And, as he could not bring to her 
 
 The trees and flowers all abloom, 
 He wafted shoals of butterflies 
 
 With wings of silver to her room. 
 Blue, red and golden butterflies 
 
 He blew into her hair, and then 
 When she caressed them with her eyes, 
 
 In fury drove them out again. 
 The scent of new-mown hay he brought 
 
 That peasants garner in the fields, 
 And marjoram and meadow-sweet 
 
 And every fair the garden yields 
 
THE BREEZE 71 
 
 In all the pleasant realm of France: 
 
 Forget-me-nots and rosemary 
 And orange-blossoms from Provence. 
 These and full many perfumes rare 
 He ravished from the summer air 
 For his young love divinely fair, 
 (O sea-blue eyes, O sun-kissed hair!) 
 
 Smiling, and spinning at the wheel 
 The weft more soft than gossamer. 
 
 Full beakers of the sunshine gold 
 
 He dashed in winter on her cheeks ; 
 And, in the sultry summer night, 
 
 Cool snow-drifts from the mountain peaks. 
 When over courtly tale she pored 
 
 By pious monk or poet sage, 
 He stood behind the lady s chair, 
 
 Unbeckoned oft, to turn her page. 
 And, when the lovely maiden slept 
 
 Within her satin-curtained bed, 
 He would caress her honeyed locks 
 
 And call sweet blessings on her head. 
 And in the watches of the night 
 
 Once, in an ecstasy of bliss, 
 He breathed upon her dimpled mouth 
 
 The thing that mortals call a kiss. 
 Alas ! One day from Aquitaine, 
 
 Upon an ebon-colored mare, 
 
72 THE BREEZE 
 
 Rode proudly to the castle s gate 
 A gallant noble, young and fair. 
 
 And he was smitten with great love 
 (O sea-blue eyes, O sun-kissed hair!) 
 When he beheld the lady there 
 
 Spinning a bridal gown more white 
 And softer still than gossamer. 
 
 He gave her pearls her throat to grace, 
 
 And bracelets for her tender wrist; 
 How can the sweetest breeze prevail 
 
 O er ruby ring and amethyst? 
 When it was known that she would wed 
 
 The fair young lord from Aquitaine, 
 The Zephyr lashed the castle wall, 
 
 And day and night he sobbed in pain. 
 He murdered every rose there bloomed 
 
 That none might deck her bridal train. 
 When came that office most divine 
 
 He beat, in impotent despair, 
 Against the chapel s holy shrine, 
 And from the chalice drank the wine. 
 
 When for the bride divinely fair 
 
 (O sea-blue eyes, O sun-kissed hair!) 
 In rich brocade and satin shoon 
 
 And veils more soft than gossamer, 
 The bells intoned a marriage rune, 
 
 He flew into the sexton s face 
 Until they jangled out of tune. 
 
THE BREEZE 73 
 
 Then to the desert wild he sped, 
 
 Heart-broken, anguished and alone. 
 Before his rage the camels fled, 
 
 The turbaned merchants feared his moan. 
 He raced across the glacial seas 
 
 With the great cyclones of the world; 
 And, ever waxing, angrily 
 
 Both beast and bird before him whirled. 
 At last, still panting from the race, 
 Back to fair France he turned his face 
 
 To break the castle s granite tower, 
 And of its splendor leave no trace. 
 But lo ! within the creaking walls 
 
 That he had entered to destroy, 
 He found, more frail than any flower 
 
 And fairer far, a baby boy. 
 Infinities of love and trust 
 
 Within the mother s eyes he read, 
 And trembled lest he harm one hair 
 
 Upon the infant s golden head. 
 He pined away in one sweet breath, 
 Content to find both peace and death 
 
 Beside the mother still more fair, 
 
 (O sea-blue eyes, O sun-kissed hair!) 
 
 Patiently smiling, spinning there 
 
 A baby s gown of gossamer. 
 
AVE TRIUMPHATRIX 
 
AVE TRIUMPHATRIX 77 
 
 I 
 ATTAR OF SONG 
 
 T IKE Lilith, mother Lilith, I have wound 
 *^ About my heart the serpent of desire. 
 
 A purple galleon on a sea of fire 
 Has borne my footsteps to forbidden ground, 
 Where glittering with corruption all the time, 
 
 Death in its shadow, dreams the Upas tree; 
 
 But with its dew, as sugar sucks the bee, 
 I have enriched the honeycomb of rhyme. 
 
 A riot of strange roses is my life 
 Pale as Narcissus gazing wistfully, 
 And crimson red as the great Rose of Strife 
 Upon the zone of Menelaus wife, 
 Distilled by love with lyric alchemy, 
 Heart of my heart, into one song for thee. 
 
 77 
 
78 AFE TRIUMPH ATRIX 
 
 II 
 THE BURIED CITY 
 
 TV/T Y heart is like a city of the gay 
 
 ^ A Reared on the ruins of a perished one, 
 Wherein my dead loves cower from the sun, 
 
 White-swathed like kings, the Pharaohs of a day. 
 
 Within the buried city stirs no sound 
 Save for the bat, forgetful of the rod, 
 Perched on the knee of some deserted god, 
 
 And for the groan of rivers underground. 
 
 Stray not, my Love, mid the sarcophagi 
 
 Tempt not the silence ... for the fates are 
 
 deep, 
 Lest all the dreamers deeming doomsday nigh 
 
 Leap forth in terror from their haunted sleep ; 
 And, like the peal of an accursed bell, 
 .Thy voice call ghosts of dead things back from 
 hell! 
 
AVE TRIUMPHATRIX 79 
 
 in 
 THE IDOL 
 
 "IT 7HEN from thy heart the altar veil was 
 drawn 
 
 I saw an idol on a golden throne. 
 
 Upon his forehead burned a ruby stone, 
 His visage was more awful than the dawn. 
 He made the heavens a loincloth for his hips, 
 
 Within the hand he lightly held the globe, 
 
 But the design upon his mystic robe 
 Was as the Beast of the Apocalypse. 
 
 God s sons, dear heart, no longer mate with man. 
 I too, once caught in Satan s black trapan, 
 
 Bowed to an idol from an alien star, 
 But through the clouds of incense sick with 
 
 myrrh 
 Spied on his brow the sign of Lucifer: 
 
 The crimson ruby was a crimson scar! 
 
8o AVE TRWMPHATRIX 
 
 IV 
 
 TRIUMPHATRIX 
 
 A S some great monarch in triumphal train 
 * * Holds in his thrall an hundred captive kings, 
 
 Guard thou the loves of all my vanished springs 
 To wait as handmaids on thy sweet disdain. 
 And thou shalt wear their tresses like bright rings, 
 
 For their defeat perpetuates thy reign ! 
 
 With thy imperious girlhood vie in vain 
 The pallid hosts of all old poignant things. 
 
 Place on thy brow the mystic diadem 
 With women s faces cunningly embossed, 
 
 Whereon each memory glitters like a gem; 
 But mark that mine were regal loves that lost 
 And loved like queens, nor haggled for the 
 cost 
 
 And having conquered, oh be kind to them I 
 
 80 
 
AVE TRIUMPHATRIX 81 
 
 v 
 AT NIGHTFALL 
 
 WEET is the highroad when the skylarks call, 
 When we and Love go rambling through 
 
 the land. 
 
 But shall we still walk gaily hand in hand 
 At the road s turning and the twilight s fall? 
 Then darkness shall divide us like a wall, 
 And uncouth evil nightbirds flap their wings; 
 The solitude of all created things 
 Will creep upon us shuddering like a pall. 
 
 This is the knowledge I have wrung from pain : 
 We, yea, all lovers, are not one, but twain, 
 
 Each by strange wisps to strange abysses 
 
 drawn. 
 
 But through the black immensity of night 
 Love s little lantern, as a glow-worm s bright, 
 
 May lead our steps to some stupendous dawn. 
 
 81 
 
82 AFE TRIUMPHATRIX 
 
 VI 
 
 FINALE 
 
 HOW changed the house is when not Love is 
 there! 
 
 Your deep eyes vex me like some magic book 
 I cannot ponder. Nay, I will not brook 
 The weariness of your too golden hair ! 
 Hush ! Was not that the creaking of a stair? 
 Was it Love s footfall or the wind? I look 
 In vain for him in every hidden nook 
 There is no sound of laughter anywhere . . . 
 
 Ah, sweet, he has forsaken us, not base, 
 
 But heedless, boyish and the world is wide ! 
 
 He sees not now your sorrow-haunted face, 
 Nor feels the dagger that has pierced my side, 
 
 And how all joy is vanished from the place 
 As from a house in which a child has died. 
 
A NEW ENGLAND BALLAD 
 
A NEW ENGLAND BALLAD 
 
 FOR ALEXANDER HAR VEY 
 
 T TR saw the drab and dreary town 
 
 Upon the mirthless Sabbath day; 
 
 All pleasant things had crept away 
 Like serfs before the master s frown; 
 The very trees their heads hung down 
 
 Upon the mirthless Sabbath day. 
 
 Through joy-deserted streets He trod, 
 The church bells tolling mournfully. 
 There was no sound of childish glee, 
 No peal of laughter praising God 
 Hailed Him that loved the little ones 
 From Judah unto Galilee. 
 
 Barred in His name the magic bower 
 Of mimic kings and queens that seem, 
 Where still the fairy-jewels gleam, 
 And sonant for a little hour 
 From faded parchment conjured up 
 Incarnate walks the poet s dream. 
 
 But through a gate obscure and small 
 He watched a pale-faced stripling crawl 
 85 
 
86 A NEW ENGLAND BALLAD 
 
 Into a closely-shuttered place 
 Where Magdalens untouched of grace 
 Held their unlovely festival, 
 
 Wearing the hunted look, uncanny, 
 
 Of them that love not much but many. 
 
 And right across the house of guilt 
 Where sweet young lips were made all-wise 
 
 In unchaste knowledge, and the wine 
 Of glorious youth was hourly spilt 
 
 Grinning upon Him like a skull, 
 With windows bare like sightless eyes, 
 
 There rose the House Unbeautiful 
 Wherein God s holy shrine was built. 
 
 And buzzing like a swarm of bees 
 Around the church s open door, 
 
 In long frock coats and tall silk hats, 
 
 The sleek, the oily Pharisees 
 
 With the complacent smile of yore 
 
 Dear God, how He remembered these ! 
 
 Upon a cross of ebony 
 
 He saw His image painted bleak 
 With pallid lips that seemed to speak: 
 
 " My God, thou hast forsaken me ! J> 
 Such was the symbol of their faith 
 Not like a godhead, like a wraith 
 
 Convulsed with futile agony, 
 
 Wherefrom no man might solace seek. 
 
A NEW ENGLAND BALLAD 87 
 
 There was no incense in the air, 
 
 Never a sweet-faced acolyte, 
 No priest in sacrificial dress 
 
 Trailing with colors strange and bright; 
 No organ sounded paeans there, 
 
 No candelabrum shed its light. 
 No gleam of hope ... of loveliness, 
 
 Of awe ... or beauty anywhere. 
 
 Beside the tabernacle stood, 
 
 Choked with things hateful that destroy, 
 
 A weazened parson cursing Joy; 
 And in his veins there flowed no blood. 
 Upon his tongue were words of grace, 
 
 Yet every time he spake afresh 
 
 He drove a nail into His flesh, 
 And praying ... . . spat into His face! 
 
 And, while his curses poured like showers 
 
 Upon all things that men hold fair: 
 The pearls, the satin and the flowers, 
 
 Life s graces, perfumed, debonair, 
 With voice of thunder spake the Master: 
 
 " Hold, parson! Cease thy blasphemy!" 
 
 "Who art thou, stranger?" 
 
 " / am He 
 Who suffered her of Magdala 
 
 With the smooth satin of her hair 
 
 To dry His consecrated feet. 
 
88 A NEW ENGLAND BALLAD 
 
 And break for Him the alabaster 
 
 That held the spikenard rare and sweet! 1 
 
 The weazened parson deaf and blind 
 
 Proceeded of God s wrath to tell, 
 
 And of a lad, of one who fell 
 Through his hot blood and fates unkind, 
 
 Whom to the terrors of God s Hell 
 And to His vengeance he consigned. 
 
 Again the voice rose threateningly: 
 
 "Hold, parson! Cease thy blasphemy!" 
 
 "Who art thou, stranger?" 
 
 "I am He 
 Who in the wilderness forsaken, 
 
 There having felt temptation s spur, 
 Forgave one in adultery taken 
 And bade ye throw no stone at her! " 
 
 And still the parson cursed and whined, 
 And thus he spoke to womankind: 
 Vileness and sin of every shape 
 
 Lure in the ferment of the grape. 
 Seize by the root the fruit malign 
 That turns all good men into swine ! " 
 
 " Impious parson, on thy knee! 
 
 How dare ye judge your Maker? He 
 Am I who at His mother s sign, 
 
 And for her glory, turned the water 
 In the six water-pots to wine! 
 
A NEW ENGLAND BALLAD 89 
 
 " / am who through the bigot s pride 
 Of righteous fools is crucified. 
 
 All lovely things, if these be slain, 
 
 Then were My sacrifice in vain! 
 For man is not the devil s booty, 
 
 Not Mine the scorpion and the rod, 
 Not sorrow is your heavy duty, 
 And they that worship Him in beauty 
 
 And gladness . . . are most dear to God. 
 
 " Men of the New World, heed Me, bliss 
 And all God s good gifts are your gain! 
 From Old World nightmares cleanse your 
 
 brain : 
 
 Columbus has not crossed the main 
 To open up new worlds to pain! 
 
 But he and they who tell you this, 
 Good folk, betray you with a prayer 
 
 As they betrayed Me with a kiss! " 
 
 And like mysterious music died 
 His accents on the shivering air; 
 
 And through the heavens opening wide 
 
 He vanished where no man might follow. 
 Roses for thorns were in His hair, 
 And on His visage, dwelling there, 
 
 Those who beheld Him saw, enticed, 
 [The awful beauty of Apollo, 
 
90 A NEW ENGLAND BALLAD 
 
 The loving kindness which is Christ 
 But, choked with visions that destroy, 
 
 Still by the cross the parson stood, 
 A gibbering madman, cursing Joy ! 
 
THE PLAINT OF EVE 
 
THE PLAINT OF EVE 
 
 TO BLANCHE SHOEMAKER WAG STAFF 
 
 "TV/TAN S mate was I in Paradise, 
 
 *** Since of the fruit we twain did eat, 
 Through the slow toiling days his slave. 
 Because I asked for truth, God gave 
 All the world s anguish and the grave. 
 But, being merciful and wise, 
 He bade His angel bathe mine eyes 
 
 With the salt dew of sorrow. Sweet 
 Had been the dew of Paradise." 
 
 Yet through the immemorial years, 
 Has she not healed us with her tears? 
 
 " Albeit upon my lips I wore 
 
 A smile, my heart was ever sore. 
 
 Because I heard the Serpent hiss, 
 
 Therefore I suffered patiently. 
 But now I pray for bread, and ye 
 
 Give me a stone or worse a kiss." 
 
 Shall not the stone rebound on us? 
 Shall not the kiss prove venomous? 
 
 93 
 
94 THE PLAINT OF EVE 
 
 " No expiation dearly won, 
 
 Can turn the ancient loss to gain, 
 
 The Son of Man was Mary s Son . . . 
 
 Have I not borne the child in pain ? 
 My sighs were mingled with His breaths 1 
 Yet, though I died a thousand deaths, 
 
 A thousand times a thousandfold, 
 With Him, my babe, upon the Cross, 
 
 My bloody sweats are never told, 
 And still the world s gain is my loss." 
 
 Has she not suffered, has not died, 
 With every creature crucified? 
 
 " The hallowed light of Mary s eyes 
 
 Within my bosom never dies. 
 
 The learned Faust, for all his pride, 
 Was saved by Gretchen glorified 
 To God, his master, thrice denied. 
 
 Love s smallest holy offices 
 
 When have I shirked them, even these? 
 
 From the grey dawn when time began 
 
 To the Crimean battle-field, 
 By every wounded soldier s side 
 
 With cool and soothing hands I kneeled." 
 
 She is the good Samaritan 
 Upon life s every battle-field. 
 
THE PLAINT OF EVE 95 
 
 " The secret book of Beauty was 
 Unlocked through me to Phidias. 
 Petrarcha s dream and Raphael s, 
 Rossetti s blessed damozels, 
 
 And all men s visions live in me. 
 The shadow queens of Maeterlinck, 
 Clothed with my soft flesh, cross the brink 
 
 Of utter unreality. 
 Rautendelein and Juliet, 
 Who shall their wistful smile forget? 
 The leader of my boyish band 
 I rule in Neverneverland." 
 
 Hers is the sweetest voice in France, 
 And hers the sob that like a lance 
 Has pierced the heart of Italy. 
 
 " With stylus, brush and angelot, 
 I seize life s pulses, fierce and hot. 
 In Greece, a suzerain of song, 
 
 The swallow was my singing mate, 
 My lyric sisters still prolong 
 
 My strain more strange than sea or 
 
 fate. 
 
 Though Shakespeare s sonnets, sweet as wine, 
 Were not more * sugared than were mine, 
 Ye who with myrtle crown my brow, 
 Withhold the laurel even now." 
 
96 THE PLAINT OF EVE 
 
 The world s intolerable scorn 
 Still falls to every woman born. 
 
 " Strong to inspire, strong to please, 
 
 My love was unto Pericles; 
 The Corsican, the demigod 
 Whose feet upon the nations trod, 
 Shrunk from my wit as from a rod. 
 
 The number and its secret train 
 
 Eluded not my restless brain. 
 
 Beyond the ken of man I saw, 
 
 With Colon s eyes, America. 
 Into the heart of mystery, 
 Of light and earth I plunged, to me 
 
 The atom bared its perfect plot." 
 
 What gifts have we, that she has not? 
 
 " Was I not lord of life and death 
 In Egypt and in Nineveh? 
 Clothed with Saint Stephen s majesty 
 My arm dealt justice mightily. 
 
 Men that beheld me caught their breath 
 
 With awe. I was Elizabeth. 
 
 I was the Maid of God. Mine was 
 
 The sway of all the Russias. 
 
 What was my guerdon, mine to take? 
 
 A crown of slander, and the stake 1 " 
 
THE PLAINT OF EVE 97 
 
 How shall we comfort her, how ease 
 The pang of thousand centuries? 
 
 " Back from my aspiration hurled, 
 
 I was the harlot of the world. 
 
 The levelled walls of Troy confess 
 
 My devastating loveliness. 
 
 Upon my bosom burns the scar 
 
 Eternal as the sexes are. 
 
 I was Prince Borgia s concubine, 
 
 Phryne I was, and Messaline, 
 
 And Circe, who turned men to swine." 
 
 But shall they be forgotten, then, 
 Whom she has turned from swine to men? 
 
 " New creeds unto the world I gave, 
 
 But my own self I could not save. 
 For all mankind one Christ has sighed 
 
 Upon the Cross, but hourly 
 
 Is every woman crucified! 
 
 The iron stake of destiny 
 Is plunged into my living side. 
 
 To Him that died upon the Tree 
 Love held out trembling hands to lend 
 
 Its reverential ministry, 
 And then came Death, the kindest friend 
 
 Shall my long road to Calvary, 
 And man s injustice, have no end?" 
 
98 THE PLAINT OF EVE 
 
 O sons of mothers, shall the pain 
 Of all child-bearing be in vain? 
 Shall we drive nails, to wound her thus, 
 Into the hands that fondled us? 
 
MARGINALIA 
 
MARGINALIA 
 
 THE CANDLE AND THE FLAME 
 
 TPHIS poem preludes the present collection, because 
 its panoramic sweep and its progression from the 
 physical to the metaphysical strike the keynotes to which 
 my mind is attuned. To me passion is always terrifying 
 when I remember that the same fire that lights my veins 
 has burned in so many others, and will continue to flare 
 and devour when only ash shall remain of us. Thus I 
 can shudderingly see in the eyes of my paramour the 
 whole amorous pageant of the race, the strange and ter 
 rible history of love from the Queen of Sheba to Paolo 
 and Francesca, from Heliogabalus to Ludwig II. 
 
 " The legions marching from the sea 
 With Caesar s cohorts sang of thee, 
 
 How thy fair head was more to him 
 Than all the land of Italy." 
 
 Caesar seems to have delighted in the curious pastime of 
 permitting those whose realm he had subjugated to van 
 quish his heart. Caesarion bears witness to his liaison with 
 Cleopatra, while a ribald couplet sung by his soldiers 
 perpetuates his infatuation for the ruler of the sun-kissed 
 land which, in after years, was to give birth to Antinous. 
 The episode in which Nikomedes, king of Bithynia, figures 
 
 101 
 
102 MARGINALIA 
 
 has passed into history from the lips of the legions through 
 the pages of Suetonius. 
 
 " Yea, in the old days thou wast she 
 Who lured Mark Antony from- home 
 To death and Egypt ..." 
 
 Caesar loved the Egyptian with half a heart, hence he 
 escaped ; Antony gave his whole heart, and perished. 
 
 "Thou saw st old Tubal strike the lyre," etc. 
 
 Tubal was one of the few Old Testament characters who 
 made life more beautiful. He was the inventor of music. 
 He must also have been the first great lover. Song, 
 among men, as in the animal kingdom, derives its primary 
 impetus from things phallic. 
 
 " Perhaps the passions of mankind 
 
 Are but the torches mystical 
 Lit by some spirit-hand to find 
 The dwelling of the Master-Mind 
 
 That knows the secret of it all, 
 In the great darkness and the wind." 
 
 Why should not the gods, if gods there be, experiment 
 with us as we experiment with other creatures? Much 
 to my surprise I found a similar idea in a recent book by 
 an eminent ecclesiastic. 
 
 THE PARROT 
 
 11 Tf VERY English singer seems to have chosen some bird 
 symbolical of his poetical temperament. Keats the 
 nightingale, Shelley the skylark, Swinburne the sea- 
 swallow, Poe the raven. Mr. Viereck, appropriately 
 
MARGINALIA 103 
 
 enough, chooses the parrot." Lest some critic say so, I 
 prefer to make this affirmation myself. Parrots are not 
 only gorgeous birds, but very wise and very human. I 
 often think that they know far more than they care to 
 communicate, that behind their uncouth articulations 
 there are wonderful things for which they have not utter 
 ance, primeval and forest secrets inherited through a thou 
 sand years, which they may not betray. 
 
 " The soul-spark in all sentient things 
 
 Illumes the night of death and brings, 
 Remembered, immortality ..." 
 
 Matter is indestructible. In infinity, as Nietzsche saw, 
 the same combinations must inevitably reoccur. If we can 
 only bridge the chasm between two recurrent combina 
 tions, we shall have achieved immortality. If we make 
 our lives intense and gorgeously individual, we can more 
 easily draw a bridge across the abyss of years. If another 
 Jesus is born, his mind will automatically revert to the 
 Crucifixion, just as Napoleon s mind returned naturally to 
 his greatest prototypes, Alexander and Caesar. While I 
 cannot conceive of individual immortality, it is equally 
 impossible for me to conceive of the destruction of in 
 dividuality. For any being, human or otherwise, possess 
 ing a spark of individuality there can be to my mind no 
 total extinction. This view is endorsed by the great 
 religions of the world. 
 
 " Thus deemed the Prophet on whose knee 
 The kitten slumbered peacefully, 
 And surely good Saint Francis, he 
 Who as his sister loved the hind." 
 
104 MARGINALIA 
 
 Mohammed s regard for animals was proverbial. On one 
 occasion he is said to have severed the sleeve of his gar 
 ment rather than disturb the slumber of his feline fa 
 vourite. Saint Francis was wont to preach sermons to 
 the birds of the forest and the beasts of the field. There 
 is a charming reference to Saint Francis in the prayer of 
 the birds in the fourth act of " Chantecler ": 
 
 " Faites-nous souvenir de Saint Francois d Assise, 
 Et qu il faut pardonner a Thornine ses reseaux 
 Parce qu un homme a dit : Mes f reres les oiseaux ! " 
 
 THE PRISONING OF SONG 
 
 TVTACHINERY has found its singer. Why should 
 the phonograph be without honour, seeing that it 
 gives to " beauty audible " the immortality denied by 
 nature? The world would wear an altered face if the 
 graves of the Pharaohs had voices, and if the accents of 
 Jesus Himself could still be heard among men. 
 
 The vocabulary of the poem belongs to the literature 
 of the past, as poetic vocabularies always must; its spirit 
 belongs to the present. Both Kipling and Whitman have 
 given us hints as to the language of the poetry of the 
 future, but even in their best work we find some words 
 that strike us as uncouth and that may not be sanctioned 
 by time. 
 
 GERSUIND 
 
 TN his old age Charlemagne, according to legend, was 
 
 enamoured of a girl who had the body of a child and 
 
 the heart of a harlot. Hauptmann recently put this 
 
 strange creature into one of his plays, but I have met the 
 
MARGINALIA 105 
 
 reincarnation of Gersuind. Who she is I may not tell. 
 Where she is I know not. Perhaps she has returned to 
 the baronial mansions of her native land. Perhaps she 
 languishes in some exotic gaol, sunk to degradation beyond 
 speech. Perhaps she has found peace, if peace there be, 
 in the grave. 
 
 " Lo ! I have not the strength divine 
 
 Of Him whose bare feet ruled the sea ..." 
 
 This metaphor was suggested by a haunting line in 
 " Santa Teresa " by the late Catulle Mendes. 
 
 " And ere God s hosts are marshalled bright 
 
 And the last dreaded veil withdrawn ..." 
 
 Doomsday has always had for me poetically a curious 
 fascination perhaps the influence of a Puritanic environ 
 ment! 
 
 NERO IN CAPRI 
 
 TV/TY history is as good as Shakespeare s geography. 
 Nero may never have been in Capri, the haunt of 
 Tiberius and his ghastly vices, but he should have been 
 there. Nero in Capri is Nero satiated. There is in this 
 poem the despair of physical passion. Voluptuousness 
 pressed to the uttermost limit touches upon the spiritual. 
 We are ready for the cloak of the Stoic or the cross of 
 the Christian when we realize that ultimate satisfaction 
 always betrays and eludes us. 
 
 " The books of Elephantis tell 
 Only the fortunes that befell," etc. 
 
io6 MARGINALIA 
 
 The shameful books of Elephantis, as Wilde calls them, 
 favourite literary pabulum of Tiberius, were unfortunately 
 lost in the chaos of the nations that marked the fall of 
 the Roman Empire, but we may imagine that Nero read 
 them and that, like all things, they bored him. . . . 
 
 " Bring me the yearning of the dreams 
 Of all the young men amorous! " etc. 
 
 The baffled voluptuary seeks appeasement by the multipli 
 cation of stimuli. He desires to thrill with the sex vibra 
 tion of the entire universe. His search for new sensations 
 ends in a form of Pansexualism. Here Nero and Whit 
 man, the Pantheist, meet on common ground. In this 
 poem physical passion reaches its ultimate climax. 
 
 A BALLAD OF MONTMARTRE 
 
 T ONCE made the reckless remark that the three men I 
 most admired were Christ, Napoleon, and Oscar Wilde, 
 each a martyr to his creed, the ethical, the dynamic, and 
 the aesthetic. After calm reflection I cannot find three 
 men who typify more perfectly the great intellectual and 
 temperamental world-currents. Recently in Paris I visited 
 the graves of Napoleon and Oscar Wilde. As Jerusalem 
 was too far away, I paid my devotions to the founder of 
 Christianity, not at Notre Dame, but at the tomb of 
 another intellectual of the race of Christ Heinrich 
 Heine. 
 
 It seemed a pity that Wilde and Heine, his spiritual 
 progenitor, never met in the flesh. For that reason I took 
 the liberty to introduce their ghosts to each other. Wilde, 
 no less than Heine, belonged to a brilliant and down- 
 
MARGINALIA 107 
 
 trodden race. Both were outcasts from their people, both 
 died in exile in Paris. Both were Pagans, yet both had 
 comprehended the Man of Sorrows. Wilde, by the way, 
 hated the Jews, but when we are food for the worm 
 we may find food for reflection. 
 
 ("I loved them not on earth, but men 
 Change somehow, having died,") 
 
 as Oscar philosophically acknowledges in the poem. 
 
 Oscar Wilde was originally buried in Bagneux Ceme 
 tery; subsequently his remains were removed to Pere La 
 Chaise. Having been disturbed in his slumber once, we 
 can well imagine Wilde s sleepless spirit wandering in 
 search of congenial companionship to Montmartre, where 
 Heine was laid to rest. My pilgrimage to the grave of 
 Wilde was not without piquancy, for as Elsa Barker, the 
 poet, reminded me as we stood by the little mound, I 
 was the first who told in print the story of Wilde s still 
 being among the living. The canard, for such it seems to 
 be, has been revived from time to time in the Sunday 
 magazines of the daily papers. When I first wrote it, 
 wishing it to be true, my article, rejected as " too yellow " 
 by the New York World and the New York Journal, 
 was printed by Jeannette Gilder in the sedate Critic. In 
 my youth I have at times been accused of being a heavy 
 borrower from Wilde. Rendering unto Oscar what is 
 Oscar s, the protest against psychopathic inquiry into his 
 life may repay my debt. 
 
 " Because I drew from Shakespeare s heart 
 The secret of his love. ..." 
 
loS MARGINALIA 
 
 See Wilde s " Portrait of Mr. W. H."; also " De Pro- 
 fundis." " Those who have the artistic temperament go 
 into exile with Dante and learn how salt is the bread of 
 others, and how steep the stairs; they catch for a moment 
 the serenity and the calm of Goethe. . . . Out of Shake 
 speare s Sonnets they draw, to their own hurt it may be, 
 the secret of his love ..." 
 
 A BALLAD OF KING DAVID 
 
 1T\AVID, Bath-Sheba, and Jonathan make a curious 
 trio. This poem reveals an unsuspected nuance in 
 the interpretation of the emotional triangle. 
 
 THE BALLAD OF THE GOLDEN BOY 
 
 T E GALLIENNE has celebrated the Golden Girl. 
 Why should not I sing the Golden Boy ? The poem 
 was suggested to me by a well-known anecdote of Leo 
 nardo da Vinci which I discovered in a book on hygiene. 
 Da Vinci, unacquainted with the action of colour on the 
 skin, stained a lad from head to foot with gold for a 
 Florentine pageant. The poor lad died of suffocation 
 within an hour, but to me his fate seems not unenviable. 
 
 " Upon his lips curled wistfully 
 
 The smile that Mona Lisa had." 
 
 It pleases me to imagine that he may have been a brother 
 of that Mona Lisa whose curious smile has come down to 
 us through the ages. Maybe her smile darkened the lips 
 of the lad when he heard his doom . . . 
 
 " His life was as a splash of gold 
 
 Against the plumage of the night" 
 
MARGINALIA 109 
 
 Can any life be more wonderful ? Let this be my epitaph, 
 if I die before thirty. After thirty nothing matters . . . 
 
 THE CYNIC S CREDO 
 
 nPHIS poem embodies an eternally recurrent human 
 mood, not a philosophy of life as such, but a 
 philosophy of life as seen from a certain angle. There 
 certainly are times when the gift of self-analysis, the gift 
 of thought, seems a curse. God, we are told, is knowl 
 edge. We often are most unhappy when we are most like 
 God! God perhaps is not happy. . . . Hardy, Shaw, 
 Bergson, many modern poets and thinkers, have sub 
 stituted for an all-perfect, complacently Hebraic deity, a 
 world-spirit, imperfect and struggling. The modern 
 mind, more anthropomorphic than the ancient Hebrews , 
 substitutes for Jehovah a celestial Hamlet. 
 
 LIFE 
 
 T IFE is death, death is life the eternal antinomy. 
 Truth can speak only in self-contradiction. 
 Death must love life, because he destroys it, as the 
 female spider destroys and devours its mate. 
 
 IRON PASSION 
 
 " Come unto me with cruel, loveless eyes, 
 O iron passion of the lords of song! " 
 
 I A HE wish was fulfilled, for the space of a poem, by 
 the Little Maid of Sappho whose personality, per 
 verse and wistful, furnishes the substance for a poem that 
 appears on another page. 
 
 "Who, hating, loved that Lesbia ..." 
 
no MARGINALIA 
 
 ff Odi et amo " the bitter cry of Catullus. The swan 
 must die to sing his song. So the soul maybe must die 
 more deaths than one for the sake of a sonnet . . . 
 
 INHIBITION 
 
 T^REUD, the great Austrian psychologist, has taught 
 us to regard the subconscious mind as the guardian 
 posited between consciousness and the lowest strata of the 
 mind. Horrible passions, racial memories destructive to 
 modern civilization, seethe unknown to us in the mystic 
 abysses of our being. The " guardian of the nether mind " 
 bars their entry into the conscious and transforms and 
 transmutes them before they translate themselves into con 
 sciousness. This same inhibitory impulse, however, often 
 comes into play when it is not called for. Something that 
 we can hardly define frequently seals our lips when we 
 would speak of " tender things " and bare our souls to 
 those we love. Afterwards we regret the kind words we 
 left unsaid, silenced by an incomprehensible mental ma 
 chinery set in motion by levers beyond our reach. 
 
 ON BROADWAY 
 
 " Luxurious-cushioned wheels a revel-train 
 
 Where kings of song with weary feet have trod, 
 Where Poe, sad priest to Beauty and to Pain, 
 Bore through the night the Vision and the God." 
 
 for want of carfare, more than once walked the 
 long distance from lower Broadway to his home in 
 Fordham on foot. 
 
 " And yet, perhaps, in this assemblage vast, 
 
 In some poor heart sounds the enraptured chord," etc. 
 
MARGINALIA in 
 
 A poet, a human derelict, sometimes calls on me at the 
 office. His breath is drenched with whiskey and his soul 
 with music. He never has any money when he comes to 
 see me, and I never have any when he goes. I take the same 
 supercilious interest in him which Poe s more prosperous 
 contemporaries may have bestowed upon Poe himself when, 
 drunk and bedraggled, the poet invaded their luxurious 
 homes. Yet, who can tell? Perhaps this man s name 
 will ring through the ages on wings of thunder even as 
 Poe s, when we, to whom fortune has been kinder, are as 
 completely immersed in oblivion as those who snubbed 
 America s greatest poet. I am sometimes seized with the 
 fear of Baudelaire the idol heedlessly dragged to the 
 junk-heap may be the true god after all ... 
 
 THE UNKNOWN GODDESS 
 
 " Out of the night, O Goddess, send a sign 
 And prove to me you are indeed divine ! " 
 
 T"\ID she answer this prayer she remains a mystery 
 to me yet I might perish as did Semele when Jove 
 appeared to her in the guise of that golden rain. At any 
 rate, my unknown goddess, having by this time, possibly, 
 become fat as well as discriminating, may mean to save 
 me the loss of one more illusion. 
 
 I have more than one friend in the region topographic 
 ally made definite in these lines. Each has in her way 
 paved my path to ecstasy, but no thrill seems like that 
 brought me by the enduring mystery of the identity of my 
 Unknown Goddess. To think that this sort of thing is 
 all we poor moderns can hope for as a substitute for that 
 veil of Isis which so inspired the nation on the Nile! 
 
ii2 MARGINALIA 
 
 THE VIRGIN SPHINX 
 
 HPHIS was written in answer to a sonnet by Muriel 
 Rice, published originally in The Forum. 
 
 " Lord of the brimming thoughts and burning brain, 
 Proud-hearted minstrel of resounding sin, 
 Can naught allay the ecstasy within? 
 Thine eager eyes wax lurid as they strain 
 Hellward, to view the beauty of her pain. 
 Thine alchemy draws music from her din. 
 Speak, for thy demon wills it, what hath been, 
 Crime, glory, death; for everything is vain. 
 
 Torches that flare like to the bosom-heaves 
 Of sinful woman waiting tp be won; 
 And hungry men with sateless eyes that stun 
 Resistance back, till Christ in heaven grieves: 
 Yet never once the moon between the leaves 
 Nor winds that rush to meet the rising sun." 
 
 " Thine is her secret whom the Serpent wooed, 
 And his who kindled passion in a stone." 
 
 See " Before the Fall " and " Pygmalion and Galatea," 
 both in Miss Rice s " Poems." 
 
 THE NUNS 
 
 "I X 7ITH all its crudity and nudity of technique, the 
 painting by Dorothy Rice which inspired these 
 lines exercises a ghastly and weird fascination. The young 
 artist merely shows four nuns in a darkened chapel staring 
 crazily into space. What they see she has not revealed. 
 This is the picture cast upon the screen of my mind. 
 
 " Called in what crevice of thy tortured brain, 
 Prodigious child, from nothingness to pain ? " 
 
MARGINALIA 113 
 
 One wonders out of what cerebral crevices, where pre 
 natal nightmares linger, the painter, almost a child in 
 years, has tortured such figures into the pain of being ... 
 
 QUEEN LILITH 
 
 T ILITH (or Lailith), " the first wife of Adam," was 
 the sister of Lucifer. She was a goddess among the 
 Phoenicians. The Bible, however, speaks of her only once 
 as the spirit of the night. In the tangled skein of religions 
 she was lost, until rediscovered by Goethe and the English 
 Pre-Raphaelites. But even unresuscitated by the poets, 
 Lilith would have reasserted her fascination. For Lilith, 
 like Lucifer, is immortal. She lives in the heart of every 
 woman, as Lucifer lives in the heart of every man. The 
 Hebrews speak of Lucifer as " the Other." Lilith is al 
 ways " the Other Woman." One man s Eve is another 
 man s Lilith . . . 
 
 " Whence springs that hunger beyond the flesh 
 That only the flesh can appease in me? " 
 
 Lilith, like Lucifer, is a rebel. Not vice attracts her, 
 but indomitable intellectual curiosity. She transcends sex 
 even in her sex aberrations. By this sign Lucifer knows 
 her for his kindred ; by this sign she acclaims him brother. 
 
 " I hunted thee where the Ibis nods, 
 
 From the Brocken s crag to the Upas Tree ..." 
 
 We may presume that Lilith took part in strange phallic 
 rites in Egypt; in Germany she was an enchantress pay 
 ing homage to Lucifer at the Witches Sabbath; and in 
 
ii4 MARGINALIA 
 
 Java, transformed into a tree, she gave monstrous dreams 
 and death to the wayfarer. 
 
 " My lonesomeness was as great as God s, 
 
 When He cast us out from His Holy See." 
 
 Lucifer and his sister Lilith alone of all the angels were 
 the peers of God. When He had hurled brother and 
 sister to bottomless perdition, He must have been lone 
 some indeed, surrounded only by the servile throng of 
 meek submissive angels. Perhaps the reconstructed Roman 
 Catholic heaven, with the addition of the Trinity and 
 Mary, Queen of Angels, was the product of the solitude 
 of the Almighty. Unable to find a companion, He 
 trisected Himself, and, having lost Lilith, borrowed a 
 woman of human birth to reign in His kingdom. This 
 is not theology, but what may be presumed to be Lucifer s 
 interpretation of celestial evolution. 
 
 ("How art thou fallen, Gabriel!") 
 
 To Lucifer s mind it is not he that is fallen, but the 
 angels, once his mates, who humbly bow to Jehovah. 
 The idea of the Sons of Heaven telling beads and murmur 
 ing earth-made prayers in honour of a lowly Jewish maid 
 must seem the climax of humiliation and abasement to 
 this Uranian rebel. 
 
 2. SAMUEL, I. 26. 
 
 T^RIENDSHIPS, like love, are predetermined. There 
 must be some physiological and spiritual law of affec 
 tion that can be expressed and perhaps will be some day 
 in an algebraic equation. 
 
MARGINALIA 115 
 
 ENIGMA 
 
 NIGMA never spoke. The curse of Eve, the silence 
 
 E 
 
 of a thousand years, was upon her. Not every woman 
 is a Sphinx without riddle. The silence of Enigma 
 haunted me. I have always been attracted by the Sphinx. 
 Let me refer to the finale of Nineveh for a moment. 
 There I foregathered the Sphinx who cast the spell over 
 CEdipus, the Sphinx who was inscrutable to Ptolemy and 
 the Sphinx who purples Babylon. One poem resulted. 
 The ancients would have made many. But ours is an 
 age of Edisons, not of Platos. The lines I made were to 
 have been my farewell to the theme which, I find now to 
 my cost, follows me like that beggarman who forever 
 above crowds waved his lean arm at Whitman. 
 
 A LITTLE MAID OF SAPPHO 
 
 T HE Little Maid of Sappho lifts her quizzical head 
 first in a chapter entitled " Some Women " in my 
 Confessions of a Barbarian. She was a little girl I 
 met in Berlin several years ago. " Your arms," I said 
 of her, "were lilies; you were frail, childlike; but your 
 eyes peered with demoniacal passion into ancient abysses 
 glittering with putrefaction. The thought of you, little 
 girl, fills me with vague unrest. You might have been my 
 fate : you were hardly an episode. Perhaps we shall meet 
 again. But you will then be beyond salvation." We did 
 meet again. She knew my poem by heart, but somehow 
 she had ceased to impress me. 
 
 The poem may be divided artistically into four sections. 
 First, there is the appeal to the girl s passion. When this 
 is vain, the poet plays on her vanity. Being loved of 
 
n6 MARGINALIA 
 
 Sappho, she is still unmoved. The poet then exhorts her 
 feminine perversity. 
 
 " Incite my passion, my embraces flee 
 And never, never, never come to me ! " 
 
 When this avails not, he appeals to the mother in her: 
 " I only know I need you more than she ..." 
 
 That may be a psychological blunder. It is the mother 
 who first dies in those who caught " stray breaths of 
 Sapphic song that blew through Mytilene." And yet I 
 wonder if even perverted passion can entirely extirpate the 
 mother-instinct in woman? 
 
 CHILDREN OF LILITH 
 
 f I^HE division of the world into two sexes, according 
 to modern psychology, is as arbitrary as it is mis 
 leading. Male and female elements are curiously mixed 
 in the same individuals. Besides those in whom masculine 
 and feminine characteristics predominate mentally and 
 physically, there are also, to quote the noted neurologist, 
 Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld of Berlin, individuals who, spirit 
 ually at least, constitute, what may be termed, a " transi 
 tional sex." If we re-read history in the light of our new- 
 gained knowledge, we shall make startling discoveries. 
 In " Aiander " and " Aiogyne " (see Nineveh) I have 
 depicted the Eternal Man and the Eternal Woman. 
 Here I trace the third, transitional sex, through the alleys 
 of time. 
 
 As Villon has sung a ballad of dead ladies, I dedicate 
 to him this ballad of dead lads. Sporus, the mignon of 
 
MARGINALIA 117 
 
 Nero, was responsible for the burning of Rome ; Heliogab- 
 alus smothered his guests with roses; and a Gallic poet 
 tells the pitiful story of the boy-emperors of Rome, who, 
 without exception, came to a tragic and untimely end. 
 
 " Where is that city by the Nile, 
 
 Reared by an emperor s bronze distress?" 
 
 Antinoe, reared by Hadrian in commemoration of the 
 young Bithynian, Antinous, still exists, but of its former 
 splendour not a trace remains. 
 
 " . . .he whom Jesus loved 
 
 Was not the rock on which He built." 
 
 The Bible distinctly states of John that it was he " whom 
 Jesus loved," yet, with divine wisdom, the Messiah en 
 trusted His keys not to him, but to Peter. For Peter, 
 though thrice a traitor to the Lord, was made of sterner 
 stuff than the younger disciple whose romantic and un 
 stable temperament was not adamantine. 
 
 LOVE S AFTERMATH 
 
 " At last I understand 
 Who with untrembling hand 
 Destroy a lovely shell, 
 To save the soul from hell! " 
 
 E reaction of the flesh which has made murderers 
 and saints. . . . 
 
 THE SINGING VAMPIRE 
 
 INHERE is something of the vampire in every woman; 
 
 there is also something of the vampire in every 
 
 artist. When both meet in the artist-woman, then, as 
 
 Shaw enunciates in " Man and Superman," woe to the 
 
ii8 MARGINALIA 
 
 male! But when the artist-woman meets the artist-man, 
 catastrophe is inevitable. This poem exemplifies in tragic 
 verse what Shaw tells in comic prose. 
 
 "Why slay this stainless Hyacinth?" 
 
 This line has been curiously misinterpreted. Hyacinth is, 
 of course, not the character who dramatically upbraids 
 his erstwhile mistress, but a young friend of the speaker. 
 Shakespeare might have addressed these words to the Dark 
 Lady when he beheld his " better angel " in her sinister 
 toils. 
 
 THE MASTER KEY 
 
 /COMPARE Shakespeare s "Sonnets," especially 144 
 and 29. When, " in disgrace with fortune and 
 men s eyes," Shakespeare " all alone beweeps his outcast 
 state," he is least admirable. A wholesome dash of 
 authentic paganism would have rendered his heart-history 
 less tragic. We must not only return good for evil as 
 Christ taught, but we must turn evil into good, and 
 " from hell s lees still crush the goodly wine." 
 
 THE PILGRIM 
 
 TV/FAY one not save a soul by subjecting it to the 
 uttermost degradation, by hammering upon the 
 spirit until one strikes fire? If evil is as essential a part 
 of the cosmic scheme as good, may not redemption be 
 wrought through evil? The true Saviour may be Anti- 
 Christ . 
 
MARGINALIA 119 
 
 THE PRINCESS WITH THE GOLDEN VEIL 
 
 " T HE VAMPIRE," a dramatization of my novel, 
 The House of the Vampire, had a " run " in 
 New York, but, as a metropolitan journal remarked, " it 
 wasn t exactly a Marathon." Counting Chicago and 
 Saint Louis, there were in all one hundred performances 
 of the play. My collaborator in the dramatization, Edgar 
 Allan Woolf, introduced a number of distinctly human 
 features not contained in the novel. This little ballad 
 which the hero reads as the curtain falls in the first act 
 is one of my few contributions to the dramatization. My 
 friends insisted that the verses were not without merit. 
 They are reprinted here to refute their assertion. The 
 poem is indebted for whatever charm it may have possessed 
 in the play to the imaginative rendering of John E. 
 Kellerd who impersonated the Vampire. 
 
 JOAN S FAREWELL 
 
 IT^ROM my translation of Schiller s " Maid of Orleans," 
 produced June 22d, 1909, at the Harvard Stadium, 
 for the benefit of the Germanic Museum, by Maude 
 Adams. Inasmuch as I was dealing with a classic, I 
 was constrained to preserve fidelity to the text. This is 
 one of the reasons why I have not published my version 
 in book form. The translator must almost invariably be, 
 what the Italians call him, a traitor. One can rarely be 
 true to the original, and at the same time be true to the 
 essence of poetry. I was glad to be able to serve, however 
 humbly, the mission of interpreting the spirit of the land 
 of my birth to the land of my choice and adoption. This 
 
120 MARGINALIA 
 
 monologue, known to every German school-child through 
 out the world, is probably the most famous in the entire 
 play. 
 
 CHANTECLER S ODE TO THE SUN 
 
 "piHANTECLER," as a German playwright wittily 
 remarked to me, was everywhere a " successful 
 failure." This was due, not to lack of merit in the play, 
 but to the over-inflated expectations of the public through 
 an advertising campaign waged with unequalled audacity 
 for a period of several years. After-years will give to 
 Rostand s play its just recognition. His " Hymn to the 
 Sun," which I have attempted to render freely in English, 
 will be remembered for its curious mixture of optimism 
 and pessimism. The author s philosophy throughout is 
 constructive and cheerful, but the last verse, 
 
 " Save for thy love, O Mother Sun, 
 
 All things would seem but what they are! " 
 
 betrays his inherent sadness. He is an optimist without 
 illusions . . . 
 
 I have substituted iambic tetrameters for the Alex 
 andrines so dear to Gallic ears, for we cannot employ 
 the characteristic French verse form in English without 
 cramping the meaning and despoiling the music. 
 
 THE BREEZE 
 
 " The Jesters," a play by Zamagois, charm 
 ingly interpreted both by Sarah Bernhardt and Maude 
 Adams. Here, in contradistinction to my translation of 
 " Joan s Farewell," I have indulged in every imaginable 
 
MARGINALIA 121 
 
 license. I have attempted to rewrite, not to translate, the 
 French poem. 
 
 ATTAR OF SONG 
 
 " Death in its shadow, dreams the Upas tree ..." 
 
 those who dream under the Upas tree, death 
 comes over night. 
 
 "... with its dew, as sugar sucks the bee, 
 I have enriched the honeycomb of rhyme." 
 
 The evil in art needs no justification beyond this. The 
 bee may gather honey from poison flowers, the poet attar 
 of song from his own sins and loves and the sins and loves 
 of the world. The poet alone may safely dream under the 
 Upas tree . . . 
 
 THE BURIED CITY 
 
 A RE not all our lives reared on buried cities, sick with 
 ^^ the ashes of dead memories, ancestral and individual ? 
 Man is never a unit physically and spiritually; we are 
 made up of many layers, often but ill-adjusted in their 
 mutual relations. 
 
 " And like the peal of an accursed bell 
 Thy voice call ghosts of dead things back from hell ..." 
 
 Even as the peal of a bell rung by the worshippers of 
 Satan, chanting in a deserted chapel the litany of damna 
 tion, may reach the fiends of hell, so some trivial sound 
 or the voice of one we love may conjure up unexpectedly 
 from the substrata of consciousness shades of the hell 
 within us . 
 
122 MARGINALIA 
 
 THE IDOL 
 
 are all idol worshippers in our youth. I, too, 
 have worshipped strange gods in my day. There is 
 a Book of Idols in Nineveh. But the Sign of the Beast 
 is always there. 
 
 Why is it that the supernatural when it enters our 
 lives always smacks of black magic? Judging by some 
 of his stories in " The Innocence of Father Brown," Gil 
 bert K. Chesterton, who seems to be on more familiar 
 terms with the Almighty than any other living writer, 
 is actually afraid of fairies. . . . 
 
 TRIUMPHATRIX, MONADS, FINALE 
 
 PHE magic of virginity may conquer the memory and 
 the magic of Circe, but doubt is even stronger than 
 love. The soul, as Leibnitz has said, is a " monad," a 
 " house without windows." There can be no perfect 
 understanding between two beings, and happiness comes 
 to us only when we are prepared to accept life s imperfect 
 compromise. Perhaps somewhere in Infinity we may be 
 come one and perfect. Love, rather than wisdom, may 
 lead the way, though the finale may be sad disillusion. 
 Love may take wings and lose its way ere the goal be 
 reached. Besides, the goal, too, may be a figment of 
 dreams . . . 
 
 A NEW ENGLAND BALLAD 
 
 I *HIS poem embodies a Hellenic conception of Christ. 
 My Christ, like the Aryan Christ of Houston Stewart 
 Chamberlain (" The Foundations of the Nineteenth Cen 
 tury"), is a joyous figure pointing not to death, but to 
 
MARGINALIA 123 
 
 life. " Many founders of religions," declares Chamber 
 lain, " have imposed penance in respect to food upon them 
 selves and their disciples; not so Christ; He emphasizes 
 particularly that He had not fasted like John, but had so 
 lived that men called Him a glutton and a wine-bibber. 
 . . . What Buddha teaches is, so to speak, a physical 
 process; it is the actual extinction of the physical 
 and intellectual being; whoever wishes to be redeemed 
 must take the three vows of chastity, poverty, and 
 obedience. In the case of Christ we find nothing similar: 
 He attends marriages, He declares wedlock to be a holy 
 ordinance of God, and even the errors of the flesh He 
 judges so leniently that He himself has not a word 
 of condemnation for the adulteress; He indeed speaks of 
 wealth as rendering the conversion of the will more dif 
 ficult as, for example, when He says that it is more diffi 
 cult for a rich man to enter into that kingdom of God 
 which lies within us than for a camel to go through the 
 eye of a needle, but He immediately adds and this is the 
 characteristic and decisive part the things which are 
 impossible with men are possible with God. 
 
 Christ, Chamberlain might have added, suffered 
 woman to anoint His forehead with spikenard, and to 
 dry His weary feet with the caress of her hair. Jesus 
 to me is the beautiful youth who confounded the scribes 
 in the temple, not the sorrowful bearded figure of the last 
 movement. Wilde, too, in " De Profundis," dwells on 
 the Greek aspect of Christ. The synthesis of Greek and 
 Christian always has been to me a subject of fascination. 
 I can trace the growth of the idea in my own work. 
 More than seven years ago, in the final stanza of 
 
i2 4 MARGINALIA 
 
 " Hadrian " (Gedichte, 1904) this conception is clearly 
 foreshadowed. 
 
 " Where unto Beauty sacrifice is given 
 
 There let us kneel to worship and adore, 
 Whether its star transcendent rose in heaven 
 O er Grecian hill or Galilean shore." 
 
 In " Before the Cross " and " Provocatio ad Mariam " 
 (Nineveh) the pendulum swings, and my spirit turns 
 again to Golgotha. " Spring " speaks of a healthy pagan 
 reaction. I am again a denizen of Greece. But, unlike 
 Swinburne s, my paganism never blasphemes. " Prince 
 Jesus, set me free," is my prayer. A drop of blood slowly 
 drips from the wounded head. I am free. 
 
 " O sweet Lord Spring, I am free at last 
 To follow wherever thy feet have passed, 
 Over the dales and over the rills, 
 To the gladsome Grecian hills." 
 
 The pagan note pervades the last chord of Nineveh. But 
 no philosophy can emancipate us from the Nazarene. 
 " We are not," as Chamberlain remarks, " Christians be 
 cause we were brought up in this or that church, because 
 we want to be Christians; if we are Christians, it is be 
 cause we cannot help it, because neither the chaotic bustle 
 of life, nor the delirium of selfishness nor artificial train 
 ing of thought can dispel the Vision of the Man of Sor 
 row when once it has been seen." In " A New England 
 Ballad " I attempt to reconcile what is Greek and what is 
 Christian in me. I was delighted when, years after, I 
 found in Chamberlain my philosophic justification. 
 
MARGINALIA 125 
 
 " A New England Ballad " is my answer to Puritan 
 ism. Puritanism may have exhausted its force externally, 
 but the virus of intolerance still corrodes our minds. Puri 
 tanism crucified Whitman and slandered Poe; its breath 
 is deadly to art. I love Merry Old England, but for 
 New England, at least in this aspect, I have no affection. 
 I regard it as a duty to my Germanic ancestors to sup 
 ply an antidote to the poison bequeathed to us by the 
 Pilgrim Fathers. 
 
 " Barred in His name the magic bower 
 
 Of mimic kings and queens that seem," etc. 
 
 Not only in New England, but in New York, theatrical 
 presentations on the Sabbath are, at this writing, illegal. 
 
 "... through a gate obscure and small 
 
 He watched a pale-faced stripling crawl 
 
 Into a closely-shuttered place ..." 
 
 Though Shakespeare be barred on Sunday, the peripatetic 
 Venus and traffickers in vice ply their trade every day in 
 the week. 
 
 " Wearing the hunted look, uncanny, 
 Of them that love not much, but many." 
 
 " Her sins, which are many, are forgiven ; for she loved 
 much: but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth 
 little" (Saint Luke vi:47). " Quia multum amavit" 
 there is nothing more beautiful in the world, except one 
 sentence in " De Profundis " : " Where there is sorrow, 
 there is holy ground " , . . 
 
126 MARGINALIA 
 
 " The sleek, the oily Pharisees 
 
 With the complacent smile of yore 
 Dear God, how He remembered these ! " 
 
 Garments are subject to fashion, but the Pharisee of to 
 day is brother under his skin to the Pharisee of Jerusalem. 
 
 ". . . He 
 
 I am who at His mother s sign, 
 
 And for her glory, turned the water 
 In the six water-pots to wine! " 
 
 In view of the campaign waged by intolerant females, 
 in favour of Prohibition, the fact that Jesus performed 
 His first miracle, the turning of water into wine, at the 
 request of His mother (Saint John ii: i-n), assumes addi 
 tional pregnance. Christ s opinion of wine was evidently 
 as pronounced as His opinion of the Sabbath. " The Sab 
 bath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath." 
 
 " Columbus has not crossed the main 
 To open up new worlds to pain" 
 
 Small as may be the baggage of our immigrants, they bring 
 with them too often the intolerance and the prejudices of 
 the Old World. Here, as Professor Sumner remarks, 
 America has missed her great opportunity, the opportunity 
 of creating a continent entirely free from prejudice and 
 convention. 
 
 " The awful beauty of Apollo, 
 
 The loving kindness which is Christ." 
 
 Since Nietzsche, every thinker has formulated his con 
 ception of the Overman. My Overman is both Christian 
 
MARGINALIA 127 
 
 and pagan. He transcends man, but is still human. He 
 is Christ-Apollo. 
 
 THE PLAINT OF EVE 
 
 TF the preceding poem limns the Superman as I see him, 
 this poem is my tribute to the Superwoman. " The 
 Plaint of Eve " crystallizes poetically the culture-history 
 of woman from Eve to Madame Curie, from Semiramis to 
 Sarah Bernhardt. In " Aiogyne " (see Nineveh) I have 
 chronicled merely the legend of woman s passion. Woman 
 to me was primarily a creature of sex. " Aiogyne " is 
 Old Testament. " The Plaint of Eve " is of the twen 
 tieth century. This is the New Sanction. 
 
 " Man s mate was I in Paradise ..." 
 
 Woman speaks; after each stanza, like a Greek Chorus, 
 man answers. 
 
 " The Son of Man was Mary s Son ..." 
 
 Jesus was not the Son of Man, in that He had no human 
 father, but He surely was the Son of Woman. This, it 
 seems to me, is an interesting point which has never been 
 interpreted, presumably because the fathers of the Church 
 and the theologians were men. 
 
 " From the grey dawn when time began 
 To the Crimean battle-field," etc. 
 
 There were Florence Nightingales before Florence 
 Nightingale. 
 
128 MARGINALIA 
 
 " The shadow queens of Maeterlinck, 
 Clothed with my soft flesh, cross the brink 
 Of utter unreality." 
 
 Who shall ever tell how much the Belgian Shakespeare 
 is indebted to his wife, the histrionic interpreter of his 
 genius? Madame Maeterlinck is to him what the mys 
 terious Mr. W. H. was to Shakespeare. 
 
 " Rautendelein and Juliet, 
 Who shall my wistful smile forget ? " 
 
 Fraulein Eysolt the Eysolt, as she is called for short 
 meeting the spirit of Hauptmann in the mystical marriage 
 of art, endowed Rautendelein, that strange woodland 
 sprite, sister to Peter Pan, with unforgettable glamour. 
 The vitality of a great actor entering into a dramatic 
 figure may give to the creation of a poet s brain something 
 that was not there before, an indefinable charm that en 
 dures when the lips of the actor himself are food for the 
 rose and the worm. 
 
 The Juliet to whom I refer is not Mr. W. H., but 
 Julia Marlowe. 
 
 " The leader of my boyish band 
 I rule in Neverneverland." 
 
 Peter Pan owes more to Maude Adams than to Barrie 
 himself. 
 
 " Hers is the sweetest voice of France, 
 And hers the sob that like a lance 
 Has pierced the heart of Italy. 1 
 
 Woman is preeminent in the histrionic profession, which, 
 as Sarah Bernhardt remarks in her "Memoirs," is distinctly 
 
MARGINALIA 129 
 
 a feminine vocation. The golden voice of Sarah and the 
 sob of Duse have no masculine parallel. 
 
 " With stylus, brush and angelot, 
 I seize life s pulses, fierce and hot." 
 
 In sculpture, in painting, and in music woman s con 
 tribution, if small in volume, is distinctive in quality. 
 
 " In Greece, a suzerain of song ..." 
 
 The voice of Catullus himself was not sweeter than Sappho s. 
 Swinburne, by no means a feminist, reverently acclaims 
 the Lesbian the " supreme head of song." From Sappho 
 to Mrs. Browning there is a long step, yet who can doubt 
 that Mrs. Browning s " Sonnets from the Portuguese " 
 compare in quality with Shakespeare s " sugared Son 
 nets"? 
 
 " Strong to inspire, strong to please 
 My love was unto Pericles ; 
 The Corsican," etc. 
 
 Pericles without Aspasia is unthinkable. Napoleon feared 
 Madame de Stael more than the Holy Alliance. His let 
 ter and instructions with regard to this curious woman 
 point to a personal animosity which he could hardly have 
 felt for an intellectual inferior. As late as October 21, 
 1816, in Saint Helena, Napoleon paid this grudging tribute 
 to his staunchest feminine adversary : " After all is said and 
 done, Madame de Stael is a woman of great talent; very 
 distinguished, of very keen intelligence; she has won her 
 place. It might be said if, instead of carping at me, she 
 had taken my side, it would have been useful to me." 
 
130 MARGINALIA 
 
 " The number and its secret train 
 Eluded not my restless brain. 
 Beyond the ken of man I saw, 
 With Colon s eyes, America." 
 
 Isabella, almost alone among her contemporaries, male 
 and female, was endowed with sufficient insight and sym 
 pathy to grasp the immensity of Columbus and of his 
 vision. The science of abstract numbers is indebted to 
 Sonya Kovalevsky, who held the chair of mathematics at 
 Upsala. 
 
 ". . . to me 
 The atom bared its perfect plot." 
 
 The most monumental discovery of modern times, which 
 has revolutionized our conception of the structure of 
 matter, was, at least, shared by a woman. The French 
 Academy may withhold its laurels from Madame Curie ; 
 can we? 
 
 "What was my guerdon, mine to take? 
 A crown of slander, and the stake! " 
 
 From Cleopatra to Maria Theresa, from Catherine the 
 Great to Elizabeth, slander was woman s chiefest reward 
 for her stewardship of nations, while both slander and the 
 stake were the guerdon of Joan of Arc. 
 
 " Back from my aspiration hurled, 
 I was the harlot of the world," etc. 
 
 One stanza here exhausts what takes up my entire atten 
 tion in my earlier portrait of the Eternal Woman as she 
 
MARGINALIA 131 
 
 stalks through time. The point of view is completely 
 reversed. I have discovered my Social Conscience . . . 
 
 " New creeds unto the world I gave, 
 But my own self I could not save." 
 
 This seems to be the common characteristic of all Messiahs, 
 male and female, from Jesus to Mrs. Eddy. 
 
 " Shall my long road to Calvary, 
 
 And man s injustice, have no end? " 
 
 The Son of Mary died for all Mankind, not for mankind 
 alone. Must we wait for a female Christ to be nailed 
 to the Cross for the delivery of Woman? 
 
 Finis 
 
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