Love, the wild fowler, spreads his nets with care,
And deep-toned warning both our hearts have heard,
Even as the old-time low-bell held each bird
Suddenly trembling, nestling pair by pair
Dark in the covert, till a blinding glare
Of torchlight and a clamorous shouted word
Dazed their bright eyes, and terrified wings upwhirred
To baffled blundering in the close-drawn snare.
So, dear, we cower at our warning bell.
Creep close to me, where shadows gird us round.
Fear we that wild revealment? Nay, not we!
"Ah, perilous play, to cross Love's stalking-ground!"
You whisper… yet our eyes, our eyes could tell
Of hearts that leap to meet their certainty!
THWARTED UTTERANCE
Why should my clumsy speech so fall astray,
To uncouth jargon of the every-day
Turn each fit word and phrase
I treasured for your praise?
Discoveries I won to from afar,
All the rare things you are—nor know you are,—
In Orient offering
I haste to you to bring.
I think to kneel and spread on cloths of dream
The beautiful, the priceless things you seem;
Perfume and precious stone,
That you be shown your own.
Prince of my vision-palace, I would call
Your name through trumpets down its central hall,
And the rapt choral praise
Before your dais raise;
And you should see, should hear, be glad and smile
That I so love you. Ah, but all the while
I may not show nor teach
Save through my paupered speech!
Beggar in guise, who am so rich at heart
Where you have set your pure white shrine apart
And keep your cherished state
Dear and immaculate,
How should you know or hear me, when my tongue
Turns a dull rebel and doth ready wrong
To thoughts my dreams repeat?—
Perhaps too proud, too sweet!
THE SONG OF HER
Thou art my singing and my voice,
Thy life the thing that I would sing,
Perfect past words of perfect choice,
A lovely and a lasting thing.
In every deed of thine, sweetheart,
The poetry of heaven has part
Beyond the gamut of all art,
Leaving me mute and marvelling.
Thy deeds like rhymes I have by heart,
Thy happy deeds of heavenly choice,
Deeds that rise rapt and shine apart
As echoes of a perfect voice
Rise and rejoice when voices sing,
Linger and ring—linger and ring
Till heaven is of their echoing
And all the heights of heaven rejoice.
Thou art the song that I would sing,
The purest song of purest art,
Till men stand mute for marvelling,
Aye, till the singing break Man's heart
Where sorrows glory to rejoice
In perfect notes of perfect choice
And strains of One deep, tender voice
Transfigured joys from sorrows start.
In all this world I have no choice.
If I would sing a lasting thing,
Thou art my singing and my voice.
Poor rhymes that earn no welcoming,
Rhymes that are nothing learned in art,
From heaven, from her, such worlds apart,—
Creep then unto her tender heart
And from her living learn to sing!
"ALWAYS I KNOW YOU ANEW"
I press my hands on my eyes
And will that you come to me.
Your semblances shimmer and rise;
Yet 'tis never your self I see,
Never the exquisite grace
And the bright, still flame of you.
So, when I meet you face to face,
Always I know you anew!
Faint visions I saw, instead
Of your brows direct and wise,
Of the little lilt of your head
And your dark-lashed, sky-clear eyes,
Of the soft brown braids demure,
The poise as of quiet light,
The perfect profile, sweet and pure,—
Never I dream you aright!
And new in endless ways,
By your blessed heart unplanned,
It is mine to surprise each sweeter phase,
Adore you, and understand;
For through every delicious change in you
Truth burns with a clear still flame;
And, though always I know you anew,
Always I find you the same!
THE RIVAL CELESTIAL
God, wilt Thou never leave my love alone?
Thou comest when she first draws breath in sleep,
Thy cloak blue night, glittering with stars of gold.
Thou standest in her doorway to intone
The promise of Thy troth that she must keep,
The wonders of Thy heaven she shall behold.
Her little room is filled with blinding light,
And past the darkness of her window-pane
The faces of glad angels closely press,
Gesturing for her to join their host this night,
Mount with their cavalcade for Thy domain.
Then darkness… but Thy work is done no less.
For she hath looked on Thee, and when on me
Her blue eyes turn by day, they pass me by.
All offerings—even my heart—slip from her hands.
She moves in dreams of utter bliss to be,
Longs for what nought of earth may satisfy.
My heart breaks as I clutch love's breaking strands.
I clutch—they part—to the wide winds are blown.
And she stands gazing on a cloud, a star,—
Blind to earth's heart of love where heaven lies furled.
God, wilt Thou never leave my love alone?
Thou hast all powers, dominions, worlds that are;
And she is all my world—is all my world!
THE TAMER OF STEEDS
Beyond this world where skies are free from stain,
Where brilliant flowers blow in open meads,
I heard the drumming hoofs of many steeds
Raise maddening music from a grassy plain.
They passed, with snorting nostril, flying mane,
And fiery spirit; and the lad who breeds
Their mettled herd, and pastures them, and feeds,
Rode the black foremost, scorning spur or rein.
His eyes were like a seer's and like a child's.
His body shone irradiating joy.
He fought his furious mount with strength and art.
And then my mind divined the glorious boy
As Eros, tamer in the heavenly wilds
Of all the passions of the human heart.
LOVE IN ARMOR
Love scorns that Love implore you
To bind his hurts or heal;
Prays only, arm around you,
To draw on hours that hound you,
To whirl his sword before you
And fence your path with steel.
Not for the beauty of you,
The peace of all your ways,
He burns—but in your quarrel
To hold the pass of peril,
To stand at arms above you
Against embattled days.
No comfort for his blundering
He cries your heart to yield,
But that his arm enfold you,
His shield-arm shield and hold you
Safe, when the foe charge thundering,—
His sword against the field!
WARDROBE OF REMEMBRANCE
Guises your moods once wore are hung within
The closet of my mind. I take access
This moment to regard them and confess
How spare for want of you they hang, and thin.
Pity seems all their argument may win,
That fine, frail rustling of each mood's meet dress.
Yet starts a subtle incense from the press,
Crushed perfumes of the flowers your thoughts have been.
Sweeter than ever spoken do they come
Again with finer relish to my mind
Starved on your absence. False surmise is numb,
For now in these reliques of you I find
The smile you meant when rebel lips were dumb,
The kind words agitation made unkind.
THE SECOND COVENANT
I dreamt that we were lying
On a high hill afar,
Our deepest thoughts replying
To one lone star.
High from the vault of heaven
Its silver rays were shed;
And the deep peace between us
Was the peace of the dead.
Our busy lives were over,
Our day and night and day;
Of you and me your lover,
Nought more to say;
And sorrows we had vanquished
And blisses we had known
And our cares and our kisses
To the four winds were blown.
The handclasp of contrition,
The eyesight of each
Where each had recognition,
Were passed, with our speech.
Vast night declared above us,
"Now sight and semblance fade,
No heart's emotion bindeth
A shadow to a shade."
Then within me, lying near you,
A dark sadness grew
That, to cherish or to cheer you,
There was nought left to do.
Of happy daily service
Nought now remained to me—
Of good news for you and comfort
As once it used to be.
No beauty save the spirit's
Abode wide heaven's scrolls;
No charm the flesh inherits,
No strength save the soul's;
As breath upon a mirror
All recognizing sign.
Yet nearer far and dearer
Your soul spoke to mine.
For viewed not of each other,
Yet closer side by side
Than child unto his mother,
Than husband to bride,
Thought unto thought you answered.
One prayer we seemed—one breath;
And the deep love between us
Was the love after death.
DEDICATION TO A FIRST BOOK
Braver than sea-going ships with the dawn in their sails,
Than the wind before dawn more healing and fragrant and free,
Fairer than sight of a city all white from the mountain-top viewed in
the vales,
Or the silver-bright flakes of the moonlight in lakes, when the moon
rides the clouds and the forest awakes,
You are to me!
For you are to me what the bowstring is to the shaft,
Speeding my purpose aloft and aflame and afar,
Through the thick of the fight, in your eyes' steady light my soul
hath seen splendor, and laughed.
Now, however I tend betwixt foeman and friend through the riddle of
Life to Death's light at the end,
I ride for your star!
THE SHADOWED ROAD
Our shadows moved before us on the road.
The trees that watched us brooded dark and still,
Streaked by the frost with phosphorescent gray.
Chill followed sharply on a gorgeous day
Of winds, blown leaves, red bonfires. Faintly showed
The mist-ringed moon above the pasture hill.
Our shadows moved before us. By our side
New mystery, throbbing through the rhythm of life
Echoed our footsteps; and its presence grew
So real to me, I felt its power endue
An archangelic shape, whose phantom stride
Rhymed with our own who walked as man and wife.
Light fell upon us from the glimmering moon,
And light upon his face whose name is Love.
Ah, the rapt eyes, the tender, quickening gaze,
The splendor on that wild immortal face!
Then hurrying cloud possessed the heavens, and soon
I saw his shadow darken from above.
Beyond our own it stretched along the way,
The darkness of Death's cowl, more deep than night.
Gulfing our own, it blotted out the road,
The shadow of Love that brightest dreams forebode.
Yet, in my soul I found a thing to say:
"Though darkness go before, we walk in light.
"This is Love's answer!" For Death's night must move
Onward before two hearts that cast out fear,
Joined by the closest of immortal bonds.
They shall speak truth when prayer to prayer responds,
"Death but precedes us as the shadow of Love.
Light falls about us from a surer sphere!"
LOVE IN THE DAWN
Dawn, with hallowed flame, seemed to sing your name
Through our open window as the golden glory came.
Ardor thrilled me through; Dawn again—with you!
"Up and at the world again! The world is made anew!"
Newly on my sight flashed the lovely light,
All the ringing roads of fame glittered broad and bright.
On again! with new visions to pursue;
And dawn again, dawn again, dawn again—with you!
Other dawns may keep joy as pure and deep?
Dawns of greater splendor may awaken me from sleep?
Nay! they never can bless a stubborn man
Like the dawn, the wonder-dawn with which this day began!
Oh, my deeds must take triumph for its sake!
Loud my heart shall sing it while the mind remains awake:
Words I never knew could so thrill me through—
Dawn again, dawn again, dawn again—with you!
"HAD I A CLAIM TO FAME?"
Had I a claim to fame?
Little to honor;
Save when I spoke her name,
Gazing upon her.
Then was I crowned of men,
More than my seeming.
Youth's glorious hope again
Bannered my dreaming.
So, when our day is past;
When we lie stilly
Under the earth at last,
Clod by white lily.
Give me neither tear nor sigh;
Breath but this in passing by,
Where empearled with morning dew
The high grass above her
Waves, and above me too,—
"He was her lover!"
THE ONE
You are that belovÈd thing
Which, through all my seeking
In silence or in speaking,
I would find, and finding sing!
You are that belovÈd air
Which, o'er all the chiming
Of music or of rhyming,
Reconciles my long despair.
You are that belovÈd sight
Which, beyond life's fairest
Or rich beauty's rarest,
Fills my heart with true delight.
You are that belovÈd place
Where, past all the portals
To the pomp of mortals,
Love perceives the courts of grace,
And what splendors more,—ah, well!
Though I often fashion
Songs of praise and passion,
Now—I look—but cannot tell!
DREAM AND DEED
All day long I am fashioning crowns,
Crowns of great price for you!
What do I fashion them of?
Opals and pearls of the dew,
Diamonds of old renowns,
Blazing rubies of love,
And gold from the heart of the golden sun, brought down
by a sunset djinn,—
Brighter gold, purer gold than ever gleamed under
Andvari's fin!
All day long I am tempering swords,
Swords for my thought to wield!
What is the steel I true,
And how is their splendor annealed?
High dreams, to slay evil hordes,
And flaming thoughts of you
That light my dark heart from their white-hot forge—
a glory to take one's breath—
Like the dove-gray, rose-faint veils of faith you wind
round the skull of death!
But when was a sword or a crown
For praise or for honor meet,
When the truth transcends, and sees
Knighthood kneeling at your feet?
In the darkness they go down!
There is better trust in these:
Set teeth, and the furious will to strive through the dust
of the world for you;
The hardly builded house of deeds each day, that must
prove me true!
A TAPER OF INCENSE
You are a bannered balcony
Of God's heraldic house,
Waving above the dinning throng of the days
Pennants of purple and oriflammes of crimson
And cloths of gold.
Your varying device is on every shining shield
Of the brilliant row that flames beneath the eaves
Of that house whose street is cobbled with silver clouds.
The days go down that street, the troops of days
Dark and bright, tramping to tread the earth.
Ever, with trumpets and tumult, rigor or laughter,
They pass saluting, to press upon the world,
Regiment after regiment unnumbered.
Your beauty is a balcony hung with banners
To wave them on. The foremost have sent your name
Echoing rearward to hearten new battalions.
Your beauty is the sunset's streaming flag,
It is the vivid standard of the dawn
Flapping over dazed dream-voyagers
That kneel on new sun-pooled, mysterious strands.
It wasted the moon to pallor, set the sun
Pulsing with burning blood—it shattered the mind
Of heaven into stars.
The beauty of your spirit has sent the winds
Eternally sighing, and sharpened the cold ache
Of the heart-broken, incessantly-sobbing sea.
It has scattered its sparks in the hearts of silken flowers
And has raised the frozen fury of glaciers against the North
And has permeated the South with its elusive fragrance.
Auroral over East and West it dances.
You are a crystal goblet of such wine
Set in a niche of night
That when Death quaffs you he must glow to life
Flushed with eternity.
O proud Love, so humble and human,
Yet beyond the gods to exalt—
O quiet Love, couching with the curled might and majesty
Of tawny leopards!
O tamed tiger, Love, whose golden eyes
Weep for the thrift of angels!
Thou pinnacled pain of the midnight,
Rose-strewer of daylit mire,
Transfiguration of our futile lives,
Dazzler into the secret courts of heaven—
Thou whose passion is written in all men's blood and tears
And in silver letters upon the books of God—
Make me to stand erect, and walk with danger,
And strive like a flame!
For Thou and I are struck as cymbals of God's exultation
In Life, His song!
TO PURITY
God knows that you are beautiful as Death
Chanced on in some hot, sunlit forest-clearing
Where—burst from tangled thickets, with desperate breath—
My outlawed heart might gasp at him appearing
So sudden and dazzling upon my rage and fearing,—
Such pale announcement, such quietude should endue
Tall, proud, grave Death, with noble footsteps nearing!
Immortal goddess, thus beautiful are you!
God knows that you are passionate as Life,
On rhythmic curves of bosom and limb attending,—
Sweet as clear water, and acid as a knife
Thrust through fresh fruit wherewith the bough is bending,—
Yet rule the riotous blood to Man's befriending,—
Yea, hush his ghastly tears the midnight through,
To flesh of flesh your ageless mystery lending.
Ah, holy goddess, thus terrible are you!
God knows that you are hated as men hate
Only the highest and the uttermost presence,
For in your eyes is anger to break fate
And life's too blissful sweet is all your essence.
Your glory seethed the suns to incandescence,
You are flame—flame! Our creeds your orb unto
Are but thin shadowy demilunes and crescents,—
Immortal goddess, so infinite are you!
Infinite in range of life, the worm you quicken
From crashing suns…. "Let there be light!" you said.
Light was, and life,—Man rose, and Man fell stricken
By your relentless power that through him sped;
And again Man rose, halt like the walking dead,
Dragging these heavy laws you never knew
Till you recoiled from him astonishÈd,—
Ah, holy goddess, so wonderful were you!
So now Man hath smeared filth upon your altar,
And, slant-eyed and slime-lipped, wrought sins apart.
His tongue intones an abominable psalter
Hoarsely, and on his brows cold sweat-drops start,—
Nor through your oracles speaks he from his heart,
Hearing you in the porches of his ears;
His eyes are blind of you, where only smart
The sick revulsions of his ignorant tears.
No! He intones by rote a coded praise,
Unto a leering two-faced god falls prone,
And smears with lust and fear his alternate days
For monstrous imaginations to atone;
For you, most instant, most ardent,—you are flown
Like fumes to his clownish brain, and in his fear
He dreams you a eunuch carved of pallid stone
Warning, "Beware all ye who enter here!"
TO PURITY
God knows you are as clean as the sea-gust
Uproarious round those poppied headlands high
Where huge green seas beneath, in billows upthrust,
Scatter snow-amethysts to the bright sapphire sky,—
Or music on which fusillade the hoof-beats by
Of screaming valkyr-steeds, to exalted strife!
You are love's seal and love's nobility,
And the burning flame, the aching flame of Life!
Therefore, transfigurer of the flesh,—clear-shining
Redeemer of the coinage passed for base,—
Strong flawless column, round which all vipers twining
Hiss out their venom and die on their disgrace,—
Oh radiant form, oh rapt victorious face
Of our dreams of love, toward whom all brave and true
Strain upward, seeking out your holiest place,—
This praise I raise, this praise I raise to you!
ATONEMENT
Through flamelit Hades
To win a realm,
I rode with my lady's
Sleeve on my helm.
With fiends around me
And fiends before,
I rode, and found me
At an iron door.
My pulses hammered.
I clubbed my spear
And knocked. Fiends clamored.
I felt Man's fear
When mysteries awe him.
The door, with din,
Swung wide. I saw him
Who sat therein.
Oh, amaranthine
Are Love's estates,
But Rhadamanthine
The Judge awaits.
My blazon and banner
He stared them through
And said, "What manner
Of man are you?"
I stood stripped naked,
Stark to atone.
My body achÈd
Through every bone.
A blast blew through me.
I drank black gall.
I saw he knew me.
I told him all.
"The heart I stare in
Is black as night,"
He said, "but therein
There burns a light.
White hands encore it
To guard its grace,
And strangely o'er it
Bends a still face.
"Small light—great wonder!
Through all my hall
You flash asunder
The murky pall.
Walls grow unreal—
All Hell a wraith,—
Oh white, ideal
Flame of her faith!"
"Here I surrender,
White flame of trust!
Knave, strike some splendor
From this your dust.
Oh gross, weak, dumb thing,
Rise—dare a part!
For here—is something
That breaks my heart!"
THE ADORATION
Now, like withdrawing music
Where pillared aisles implore,
You are a vanished choir,
A soft-closed door.
Victorious voices blended
Fade, and I kneel still-hearted.
Sudden my life is ended.
We have parted.
Lost in the vault's vast splendor
My ghost goes rising, thinning.
Can heartbreak be an end, or
Some strange beginning?
TALISMAN
Each cup shall be broken,
Each tower shall fall,
All drink be bitter,
Bitter as gall,
The dark heart go lonely—
Save for one tower,
One cyathus only,
One wine of power!
My love's white beauty
Is this tower,
The wine of her beauty
My wine of power,
The cup of her spirit
Mine to drain
With awful knowledge
And trembling pain.
She only, she only
Stands on the stars.
Her small hands grapple
Heaven's black bars.
Only her deep love
Pays the price
Of a sight of the vistas
Of paradise.
Each goblet may shatter,
Each tower may fall,
Low livid sunset
Darken on all—
In her soul's high tower
My love pours wine,
And the glory and the power
Of the stars are mine!
RECOGNITION
Like the twilight blowing over sunset water
Under high holy hills purple-mirrored in a mere,
Quietly and smiling, my dear love brought her
Heart to my heart, and through the dusk drew near;
Drew to me near, drew my brows up to the tender
Caress of her hands. And I lifted up my eyes
To hers, and deep within them saw a silent splendor
More still, more strange than the planets' in the skies.
Each gazed on each. O what is mortal seeing
To the glory of that depth, to the glory of that height
Through veils revealed, when all the gates of being
Burst open to a torrent of such blinding light!
Yes, and here I stand warped by life's derision,
A mountebank grimacing lest at last I weep.
What man could tell that I had ever seen a vision
More wonderful than any on the steeps of sleep?
Days come, days go, as the clock ticks hours.
Years loom, years pass; the shadows rise….
Like the twilight breathing over holy flowers
Once my love drew near. And I lifted up my eyes….
TRIBUTE
Remembering one woman I have seen
And have known,
Benignant eyes, nobility of mien,
A scarf from off a perfect shoulder blown,
Solicitude, white ardor in a face,
Motions like water under the moon's grace,—
I wonder much how men can be so base,
So worse than stone.
Oh murmurings of music through the world,
Ye women born
To arduous things and angers, and upwhirled
Like tongues of flame through smoke of the world's scorn,
Crystalline lights, awful and fitful gleams
Of reconciliation with our dreams,
Through you alone the world's true spirit streams
Sounding her silver horn.
All things I wish for you that height may hold,
Who hold the race,
Oh desperate runners on the track unrolled
Over the highlands now, in the sun's face;
O swift and free, hoverers on the verge
Whence the impossible things we mocked emerge,—
O wings—wings—sliding the starry surge
And veering on the chase!
The satyr and the centaur race below
Deriding wings above.
Manful they meet and fight to overthrow
All they are wearied of,—
Manful they build, demolish, drive, are driven,—
But you are free, who have more greatly striven,
Yours is the light above their lightless heaven,
For yours is Love!
THE SILVER HIND
Through the black forest
You glance, you start,—
Through the black forest
That is my heart!
Beautiful, silver-heeled,
Swift as wind,
Topping the brake
Like a flying hind!
I have a bugle
Of ivory
The wizard of twilight
Gave to me.
I hear it winding in my heart,
In the black forest, where you start.
And I know,
Like huntsmen in gold and green,
That my thoughts spur past
Where you have been,
And, like hounds that have slipped the leash,
They race,—
Bell-tongued brachets
Upon your trace.
Through the black forest
You reach, you run,
Out of the shadow,
Into the sun.
And the hunt behind
Is lyric and loud
Where horses and hounds
And huntsmen crowd….
But you are gone—
Oh, you are gone
Out to the blaze and glory of dawn!
Leaving the print of blood-red anemones
In the mould, and echoes of ancient glees
Shaking like silver leaves on my sombre trees!
ARISTEAS RELATES HIS YOUTH
(Who, in his age, was reported a magician throughout all Greece, as it was said that his soul could leave his body at will.)
Early rose was the light
As I sought the portico
Whence her wings had fluttered in flight
And with surge and flow
Had risen to soar, and go
Out, out over the sea,
Dwindling white and soft and slow
To a memory.
Oh, grief of all years to be!
Most miserable of men!
My throat ached with my tears,
As a sword driven through my ears
Was my anguish then.
Dark were the rooms where they lay
Who loved in the flesh
(Diana's disciples they said!)
In that lupanar of the dead.
Sweet was the flesh they loved,
Graceful the limbs that moved,
Wild the passion that they
Desired afresh
In the night. Were they not of the world,
Of lust and toil and war?
And I—I too?
Yea—till that music swirled
About me, and I knew
I was visited of a star!
A star it was grew and grew
(As hot in the dark I lay,
Panting, after the feast,)
Glorious out of the east,
And a face that made my soul
A slowly uncrumpling scroll,
It glimmered so near and fey!
Her voice rippled like water
In the light gold-green
Of some mid-noon ravine.
She stooped, the moon's daughter,
With her hand underneath my head
And her lips on the lips of the dead.
I arose from my rumpled bed.
A waterfall sliding green
In a silver-mosaicked screen
We two trod under;
Then I turned where her light touch led,
Trembling but unafraid.
Across some Elysian sod,
Winged of heel, I floated—a god!—
Down and into a moon-filled glade,
A glade of wonder….
But the east grew steadily bright,
A glaring sea of light.
I throbbed to drums of dread.
And my eyes still held her flight
When she broke that dream with one kiss
Of agonizing bliss,
Stood in streaming flame by my bed,
Gestured, and fled.
Between the pillars I saw,
Beyond the pillars I heard
Wings of no mortal bird
Flare and withdraw.
And they who had feasted and passioned
Slept, finding light no bar,
Slept in their bodies' ease.
But under those rustling seas
That lapped at the water-stair
I ached to plunge my despair
And my heart, that some grim God fashioned
To be visited of a star!
MAN POSSESSED
Shaken, a thousand times shaken, with the millions that grieve,
Now at last I am overtaken. I will say I believe.
I ran with the pennons of morning astream over me.
On the precipice, scorning its warning, I ran to be free.
Still I love high winds and the great running and the steep verge,
But strength past my strength overtakes my cunning, and stars emerge
High over me, eternal, deathless, deep over deep,
And my head sways heavy as I run breathless, my eyelids droop with
sleep.
Yet it is not this has shaken my soul in me,
Not the bounds of life have overtaken my will to be free,
But scent and sound past mete and bound, and a sign—a sign
That no other eyes can recognize, that is only mine.
I hardly know what I believe or what I mean
Save there is sweetness round my heart and the world a screen
Of interwoven mystery to a world unseen.
Can one drink the air, can one seize the sea, can one grasp the fire?
Even so intangible to me the answer to my desire.
The elements we feel and see shift and drift and suspire
And we therein behind the screen, with glimmering brains that tire.
That is all! Nor can I fall now in the race.
As a second breath to a runner comes my soul takes up the pace—
For I dreamed the world ran with me in a far and starry place.
Gray as sea-mist driven were the shapes that strove
With the strength of greed and hate and the greater strength of love.
I saw their eyes like phosphorus, blue fog about them wove.
I saw the limbs glimmer and I heard the sighing come
From this side and from that, as our host ran dumb
Over a silver shining plain, to some strange end, to some—
Was it goal or heaven or city?—some agonizing gleam
That broke the heart for pity and made the eyes stream.
Above the pallor of that race our spent breath rose like steam,
Yet our red hearts pulsed within us, as we ran, in my dream.
A glow below the ghostly surf that swirled and surged and turned
Came from human hearts visible that throbbed and beat and burned,
And like sand of human ashes was the soil our feet spurned.
All the stars above us thronged the dome of space,
Poised like javeliniers, with glinting spear or mace,
Watchful of our running and to spoil our race,
And all the souls that ran, ran with drawn and lifted face.
This too was the real. I ran with dogged heart.
I parched like a desert, tortured in every part.
I knew not what city—nor why the race should start.
Then a singing touched me, and the scent of a flower,
A child's laugh, and the crying of a woman in her hour,
And a comrade's courage—and a subtle power
Not of worldly schemes and ways crept along my veins,
And my heart went ablaze and consumed its many stains,
And my lips were touched with wine and my body felt no pains.
Then it passed—and yet again it came and it passed—
Yet again and yet again, till I toiled at last
In the old ironic torture, bound fast, bound fast.
But as I looked I saw how it came and went,
That touch, that communion, almost inevident,
Through the host of these my brothers who ran nigh spent.
When it came they ran like men with life and lung
And the wind went by them like a song bravely sung,
Their hearts spread wide radiance, their limbs glowed young.
It passed, and they were phantoms with phantom arms that swung.
Here and there a true form some spirit would endue
For moments, but we mortals were but ghosts I knew.
Then a light low down before us to a distant landscape grew.
The stars from heaven crowded down. I knew our race was through.
The stars from heaven crowded down intolerably bright
With dizzying brilliance, height above armored height.
Every star upcast a spear and hurled it down to smite.
There was one strange thought in me. It echoed through my head
As some titanic corridor echoes a giant tread,
Only a little thing that my love once had said.
Common daily speech, a comforting word
Tossed to me as lightly as crumbs to a bird,
But it lived in my heart, it broke to flame and stirred
My self to a purpose at last not self could mar,
And I cried "We are delivered!" and I heard it echo far
Up to the vault of heaven past star on shrinking star.
So then I was running through poppies that I knew
Above a blue sea basking—and you—and you
Were running on the headland in the world made anew.
I know some force is mighty, some force I cannot reach.
I know that words are said to me that are not said with speech.
My heart has learned a lesson that I can never teach.
Only this I know, that I am overtaken
By a swifter runner Whose breath is never shaken,
That I follow on His pace, and that round me, as I waken,
Are the headlands of home and the blue sea swinging
And the flowers of the valleys their fresh scents flinging
And the prophets and the poets, with their singing—with their
singing!
MINIATURE
For all your gestures, for your gray-blue eyes
And Irish mouth, and hair that makes you child,
When shaken out at evening; for your mirth
And your quick pity, and your mother's breast;
For the great tenderness that you have given
And the rich dreams through purple-flowing night,
The holy lull of effort and the peace
Of a deep love; because of all these things,
Wherever I should be,—beyond what seas
Of an enchanted music, on what isles,
I know not, of a strange irradiance,
In dream or life or death,—dissatisfied
With splendor or white mystery, my heart
Would break—my heart would break—never to hear
Your tones again or feel your hair again
Beneath my lips, or see your lifted eyes
Brimming with all the secrets of the stars!
DEATH WILL MAKE CLEAR
What in the night says the clock that ticks time to eternity,
Swimmer of waves of your thought that are dark waves and deep?
What in the night says the moon, from her patient infinity,
Laying pale hands on your heart, hands of peace and of sleep?
What say the stars to her eyes, who has loosed by the window
The billow of her hair, as the dark of the trees feels her fear?
And over the cradle what whisper is breathing, is breathing.
As over the bed of the bride or the catafalqued bier,
Or over the flung and clawed earth where a soldier is dying?
"Death will make clear!"
Furious and fleet is man's soul, like a hound through the woodland,
On through the tangle of trees and the green and the gold.
Yes, for the senses are goads, but the lineage noble,
Not for the warren or hutch to be cornered and sold,
Then there is freedom and ease, and a dream that persuades one
On, till the track quakes on black whence the death-lilies peer.
So the bronzed shoulder, that sets to the crust of the boulder
Heaving it up—as the mill-wheel that turns at the weir—
Bring—? They bring silence and candles and creaking and whispers.
Death will make clear.
Why that white work from the crag and the hands of the sculptor
Smitten in a moment to rubble as earth heaves her breast?
Why that intangible glory, remote but God-in-us,
Golden and crumbling to pathos of dusk in the west?
Why the pure curve of the arm and the breast of a mother,
Yes, and the proud head of man held erect on the mere
Void of blue heaven,—the seas and the ships and the trumpets,
Towers and horizons, all shouting? The answer is here,
Here in thy breast, son of man, sorry son of the ages.
Death will make clear.
Lord of the mighty, as Lord of the weak and the lowly,
Lord of the sage and the madman, of clean and unclean;
Breeder of suns and of excrement, loathly and holy,
Graving the skull with the pity of all that had been,—
Death, oh thou graver of countenance knighted austerely,
Yea, on the pitiful clay, such poor flesh in its fear
Of God and the soul and the singing of stars that may teach us
Wisdom at last,—oh thou ultimate searcher and seer,
Beckon—I follow. At last on my lips set thy finger;
Thou wilt make clear!
SUNLIGHT
Sunlight is full of age.
Ah, so old!
Older than any sage
Has ever told!
The draught our Lord quaffed up
To the bloody lees;
The aching hemlock cup
Of Socrates.
It is a golden sword;
The veil of the Grail;
The unfathomable Word
That will not fail.
Along a summer street
It often lies
Shimmering to repeat
Immortal paradise.
As a mountain lake can mirror
The exalted with the near,
Heaven's wonder and terror—
Both shine here.
It says all things in nought;
And, saying them, passes
To gild like gentle thought
Trees and grasses.
It sways upon the ocean
Like a god asleep
Where the waves' wandering motion
Hides the deep.
It shafts through forest aisles
Like miracle;
It trembles and smiles
On the lip of Hell.
It has touched Greece and Rome
And Persia's might—
And stirs the vines of home
With flickering light.
It lay on Cain's hot neck
As he stooped to slay.
David's stone from the beck
Glittered its day.
Cleopatra gazed upon it
Through shadowed lids.
High halls they built to shun it
In the Pyramids.
It opens babies' hands
That crawl to snatch its beams.
Through hovels in ancient lands
Its splendor streams.
Eternal wells of light
Its largeness shows.
There shall be no more night
Its conscience knows.
It is a smiling stranger,
A fainting hour,
Love and peace and danger
And the mock of power.
Yet have I said no word
Of what it is.
Only—my heart is stirred
By its mysteries!
AND A LONG WAY OFF HE SAW FAIRYLAND
I lived once with fairies,
(And I know they're true fairies!)
One lifts laughing eyes
In a way I most admire.
Truth goes by contraries,
For you don't know they're fairies
Till there isn't any firelight,
Nor song beside the fire.
One fairy's small to hold,
And her hair is fairy gold.
One's a feminine fairy
With unusual address.
One fairy's just Jim.
You just look and love him,
With his nonsense and his laugh
And his sturdy steadfastness.
And the fairy queen I knew
Has eyes that are blue,
Has moods that are decided,
And courage that denies
It is ever brave at all.
She mends them when they fall;
She tends the little fairies
In absurd, delightful wise.
They bring her thoughts like birds
And very funny words
And mountainous decisions
And things to make you cry.
But, after all, it's airy
In the house of a fairy,
With a face like that to sob to
And those arms close by.
I lived once with a fairy.
I was wild and contrary.
I'm still wild and contrary.
But her heart's a heart for two.
She sees rooms of starry graces,
Kind firelight on our faces,
And a watch on sleeping fairies,
And the fairy home come true.
Once again, with gentle evening
And the dreaming trees, come true.
IN TIME OF TROUBLE
In memory of your desolate eyes I know
That words are words, with nothing to gainsay
The testimony of pain, the heavy day;
But searching in the ruins of overthrow
I gathered you this wreath that now I show;
Small and barbaric brightness on the gray,—
Glimmering irony, perhaps. I lay
It down before your eyes, and softly go.
You are a vista blundered on in Arden
Where the fool grasps his bells, that he may hark;
A sudden skyward path where cliffs are warden
Of waves that foam to reach a high tide-mark;
Whisper of blossoms in a midnight garden;
A fountain whitely flowering on the dark.
ANOMALY
Men who are fain to change, look wizenedly
Into the flowing mirror of your thought
And see on what strange reefs your joys are caught
And contemplate your vexed variety:
Grief that was hooded for eternity
Casting the stole for spangled domino,
Awe on its pinnacle jigging heel and toe.
Love laughing into hate and mockery.
What shoots the warp to patterns that reblend
And spread and fade,—and working out what end?
In time of pain why be as voluble
As one who tells an endless useless sum,
Yet simple clay, pallid and deaf and dumb
Through the one moment forging Heaven or Hell?
THE LOVER
I rooted silver stars from heaven in showers,
Rived adamant to show an azure gap,
Captured the very Psyche in my cap,
Filched from the sack of Time six diamond hours.
Hyperborean in my crown of flowers
I ran and leapt the cliff of thunderclap
Plunging through green sea-light where bronze fronds wrap
Crumbling pearl palaces and coral bowers.
Now—"Could I move, all humankind would pant
Even to think such effort! Could my songs
Cry out, dusked heaven would shudder at my wrongs!"
I moaned, and then looked flushed and palpitant
On Love's rapt face, that frenzied flagellant
Wielding with zeal the welting golden thongs.
JUDGMENT
Down the deep steps of stone through iron doors
I entered that red room and saw the rack,
And round the walls I saw them sit in black,
The immutable and urgent councillors.
My heart was clotted with an old remorse,
Despair a vulture fast upon my back.
I saw my body like an empty sack
Tossed disarticulate on grated floors.
But even a wilder wonder at this crime
Tried in the dungeon of my own grim life
Woke, as your memory awoke with tune
That crazed the very walls. I stared through Time
Like to a man who stands with smoking knife
Above his dead, and sees the rising moon.
UNFORGOTTEN
Wakening in the night, the pain that slumber
Strikes with her mace of silence dead and dumb
Loomed over me and, formless, said, "I come!
Bringing illusions lost beyond all number.
Rigid you lie, yet for a little cumber
This flaming world, where some die proudly, some
Glitter like granite, or dream millenium."
It left me toiled in mountainous clouds of umber.
