And congregated flowers are wise.
XXI Upon the Earth what hints are rife,
Of life when change hath left us still!
When death within us doth fulfil
Its end, whose part is one with life!
What hints, which tell us not alone
Immortal is the spirit, for
Flesh too,—corruption can but mar,—
The incorruptible puts on.
The blood but fills a part that’s higher
Of color, and pervades all flowers;
The brain informs the twinkling hours
With dreams of resurrected fire;
The heart performs the function of
A fragrance; and the countenance
Lends new expression to, perchance,
The face of beauty that we love.
XXII Oh, joy, to walk the way that goes
Through woods of sweet-gum and of beech!
Where, like a ruby left in reach,
The berry of the dogwood glows:
Or where the bristling hillsides mass,
’Twixt belts of tawny sassafras,
Brown shocks of corn in wigwam rows!
Where, in the hazy morning, runs
The stony branch that pools and drips,
The red-haws and the wild-rose hips
Are strewn like pebbles; and the sun’s
Own gold seems captured by the weeds;
To see, through scintillating seeds,
The hunters steal with glimmering guns!
Oh, joy, to go the path which lies
Through woodlands where the trees are tall!
Beneath the misty moon of fall,
Whose ghostly girdle prophesies
A morn wind-swept and gray with rain;
When, o’er the lonely, leafy lane,
The night-hawk, like a dead leaf, flies!
To stand within the dewy ring
Where pale death smites the boneset blooms,
And everlasting’s flowers, and plumes
Of mint, with aromatic wing!
And hear the creek,—whose sobbing seems
A wild man murmuring in his dreams,—
And insect violins that sing!
Or where the dim persimmon-tree
Rains on the path its frosty fruit,
And in the oak the owl doth hoot,
Beneath the moon and mist, to see
The outcast Year come,—Hagar-wise,—
With far-off, melancholy eyes,
And lips that thirst for sympathy!
XXIII Along my mind flies suddenly
A wildwood thought that will not die,
That makes me brother to the bee,
And cousin to the butterfly:
A thought, such as gives perfume to
The blushes of the bramble-rose,
And, fixed in quivering crystal, glows
A captive in the prismed dew.
It leads the feet no certain way,
No frequent path of human feet:
Its wild eyes follow me all day,
All day I hear its wild heart beat:
And in the night it sings and sighs
The songs the winds and waters love;
Its wild heart lying tranced above,
And tranced the wildness of its eyes.
XXIV With eyes that seem to ache with tears
I look beyond the twilight fields:
The stars swing down their shimmering shields,
And fill the phalanx of their spears.
I can not see, I only know
A flower dies beneath my feet;
The fragrance of its death is sweet
And bitter as my heart’s own woe.
With thoughts that find not what they seek
I question Earth and Heaven, and find
That they are dark and I am blind,
And in my blindness very weak.
I do not know, I only feel
Behind all death a purpose stands,
With hallowed and magnetic hands,
Beneficent and strong to heal.
XXV These, too, shall tell me what my heart,
And what my soul desireth:—
The flowers, that bloom serene for death,
The stars, that know no mortal part.
One shall inspire my heart with acts
Of life so that the death responds;
One to the soul breathe higher facts
Of death that shall annul such bonds.
Sufficient for my love these terms,
Beyond my understanding’s scope:
I merely know all life must grope
Not downward from its darkling germs.
Sufficient for my faith is such:
That, in the narrow night that binds
The seed, its life shall feel in touch
With light above it seeks and finds.
XXVI Beyond the violet-colored hill
The golden, deepening daffodil
Of dusk bloomed on heav’n’s window-sill:
And, drifting west, the crescent moon
Gleamed like a sword of Scanderoon
A khedive dropped on floors of gold;
Near which,—one loosened gem that rolled
Out of the jewelled scimitar,—
Glittered and shone the evening-star.
Behind the trees, where, darkly deep
As indigo, the shadows sleep,—
As if the Titan world would heap
A throne with purple for its god,
Whose pomp comes with vermilion shod—
The west, ’thwart which the wild-ducks fly,
Burns, richer than the orient dye
Phoenician vessels brought from Tyre,
Deep, murex-staine
">Making a memory of her charms.
LV Sometime shall Beauty hide no more
The fair conceptions she conceives
Beneath the abstract veil she weaves
Before her face the few adore;
The self-denying few, who long
Live lofty lives of art and song,
And, dying, leave the world less poor.
No more are these alone when she,
From the subjective world she rules,
Confronts the falsehood of the schools
With her high front of purity:
And on the dark and general way
Lets fall her individual ray
That low as well as high may see.
LVI The ghost of what was loveliness
Sits in the waning woods, with bare
And bleeding feet, and wintry hair,
And brows the thorns of care distress;
She makes a passion of despair
And, Rachel-like, with eyes wept red,
Refuses to be comforted.
To funeral torches for the Year,
Tree by tall tree, the forests turned;
Then, fiery coals in ashes, burned
A few last leaves among the sear;
Where, robed in purple pomp, she yearned
To die, like some sad queen, and died
Crowned with magnificence and pride.
LVII She meets us with impressive hands
And eyes of earnest emphasis
Between the known and unknown lands,
And fills our souls with untold bliss,
This spirit of the solitude
Named Meditation; thought-imbued,
On whom all beauty ministers;
Whose silent, dreaming worshipers
Lay unresisting hands in hers,
Knowing their hearts are understood.
The holy harp she holds and smites
Was tuned among concordant spheres;
The heavenly pen with which she writes
Was dipped in angel smiles and tears:
Between her eyebrows and her eyes
The starry stamp of silence lies;
Between her symboled lips and tongue,
The song the stars of morning sung:
To this her heavenly harp is strung,
In that her holy pen is wise.
LVIII Again the night is wild with rain;
Again distracted with the gale:
Upon the hills I hear a wail
Of lamentation and of pain,
As when, on some high burial-place,
Moaning among the windy graves,
The Indian squaws lament the braves,
Who fell in battle for their race.
Another day of storm shall dawn
Within the east; and, darkly lit,
Like one, with brows abstraction-knit,
Absorbed in moody thought, pass on.—
Bear not too hard, is all I ask,
Upon the hearts that toil and yearn,
O day of clouds! but swiftly turn
To sunshine all your frowning mask.
LIX No wind is this which cries forlorn
Around the hilltops and the woods!—
Earth, weary of her multitudes
Of dead, despairing of the morn,
Calls through illimitable night
The wailing words no thing may know;
Deep in her memory-haunted sight
Sleeps no remembrance of delight,
But death and everlasting woe.
No wind! a voice whose sense is form;
A form whose sense is but a sound;
That smites the constant skies around,
And shakes the steadfast hills with storm:
Adown life’s desolate deep it cries
The words death’s sterile lips must learn
From Law, the Law that never dies—
Such utterless, wild speech as sighs
In stone and cinerary urn.
LX I heard the wind, before the morn
Stretched gaunt, gray fingers ’thwart my pane,
Drive clouds down, a dark dragon train;
Its iron visor closed, a horn
Of steel from out the north it wound.—
No morn like yesterday’s! whose mouth,
A cool carnation, from the south
Breathed through a golden reed the sound
Of days that drop clear gold upon
Cerulean silver floors of dawn.
And all of yesterday is lost
And swallowed in to-day’s wild light—
The birth deformed of day and night,
The illegitimate, who cost
Its mother secret tears and sighs;
Unlovely since unloved; and chilled
With sorrows and the shame that filled
Its parents’ love; which was not wise
In passion as the night and day
That yestermorn made heaven all ray.
LXI We know not of one mood that’s hers,
Or glad or grave, which has not drawn
Its source from God’s deep universe,
As th’ hours draw the day from dawn—
Nature’s! who holds us quietly
But earnestly, as by a spell,
Whose contact with us seems to be
Actual and yet intangible.
In us she thus asserts her claims
Of kinship and divine control;
God-teacher of exalted aims,
The high consents of heart and soul:
Imperfectly man sees and feels,
Through earthly mediums of his fate,
The premonitions she reveals
For issues that shall elevate.
LXII “There, at the moated grange, resides this dejected Mariana."—Shakespeare.
class="i2">Of glimmering moonlight,—like a torch of myrrh,
Burning upon an altar of sweet vows,
Dropped from the hand of some pale worshiper:—
And there is life among the apple-blooms
Of mystic winds,—as if a god addressed
The flamen from the sanctuary glooms,
Revealing secrets which no man has guessed,
Saying: “Behold! a darkness which illumes:
A waking which is rest.”
II There is a blackness in the apple-trees
Of tempest,—like the ashes of an urn
Hurt hands have gathered upon blistered knees,
With salt of tears, out of the flames that burn:—
And there is death among the blooms, that fill
The night with breathless scent,—as when, above
The priest, the vision of his faith doth will
Forth from his soul the beautiful form thereof,
Saying: “Behold! a silence never still:
And love that’s more than love.”
ELEUSINIAN Praxitelean marbles, fairer forms
Than Phryne’s and than hers,—who loved and knew
The Attic cynic’s soul,—the rosy charms
Of lovely LaÏs, gradually grew
Before his eyelids, like a floating mist,
Out of the music of the citharist.
And there were Dryads, laughing sidewise eyes,
Among CithÆron’s ash-trees; and uncouth
Brown Satyrs, dancing ’neath Boeotian skies;
And by a fountain sat a beautiful youth,
Like some white flow’r, with dim, dejected grace,
In love with the reflection of his face.
And then a chord of soft bewitchment swept
Along his soul; and, oh! within a vale,
Like some young god, a godlike mortal slept;
And there was splendor on the heights, and pale
The presence of supernal purity,
Whose face was as a marble melody.
And now two chords, that were two hands that strewed
Innumerable memories upon
His eyelids—and his spirit understood
How, ages past, he was Endymion,—
And, lo! again the old, wild rapture of
Immortal sorrow and immortal love.
ARGONAUT His argosy spreads dawn-kissed sails,
His trireme oars the dusk,
On mythic seas whereover gales
Of summer breathe their musk.
He hears the hail of Siren bands
From headlands sunset-kissed;
The Lotus-eaters wave him hands
Pale in a land of mist.
For many a league he hears the roar
Of the Symplegades;
And through the far foam of its shore
The Isle of Circe sees.
All day he looks with hazy lids
At sea-gods cleave the deep;
All night he hears the NereÏds
Sing their wild hearts to sleep.
When heaven thunders overhead,
And hell upheaves the Vast,
Dim faces of the ocean’s dead
Gaze at him from his mast.
He but repeats the oracle
That bade him first set sail;
And cheers his soul with, “All is well!
Sail on! I will not fail!”
Behold! he sails no earthly barque,
And on no earthly sea—
Adown the years he sails the dark
Deeps of futurity.
Ideals are the ships of Greece
His purpose steers afar:
His seas, the skies, the Golden Fleece
He seeks, the farthest star.
SIC VOS NON VOBIS If on the thorns thy feet be pierced to-morrow,
And far the fierce sands glare,
Unbind thy temples! thank life for its sorrow,
Its longing and despair.
With love within, what heart shall halt and wither,
Athirst for rivered hills?
Moaning, “Mine! mine! what hate hath led me hither
Unto a sky that kills?”
Unworthy thou! if faith should sink and falter;
Blind hand and blinder eye
Bind the blind hope upon thy doubt’s old altar
And stab it till it die.
Thou canst not say thy toil and tears have never
Communed with lovely sleep!
Had night before thine eyeballs—night forever
To lead thee to the deep!
Ay! wouldst thou have thy self-love for a burden,
A fardel bound with tears,
To sweat beneath and gain at last, for guerdon,
From hands of wasted years?
To find thy stars are glow-worms, feebler, thinner
Than glimmers of the moon:
Dead stars, and all the darkness of the inner
Self’s deader plenilune.
To see at last,—beneath Death’s sterner learning,
—Through sockets sealed with frost,
The awful sunsets of Doom’s heavens burning
God’s baffling pentecost.
WITH THE TIDE Once when the morning flashed athwart the breakers,
And on the foaming sand,
In exultation, by the ocean’s acres,
Love took command.
And so we sailed, Æolian music melting
Around our silken sails;
Imperishably lovely, on the air?
Who, from the arms of Earth’s desire, flits
With eyes defiant and rebellious hair?—
Hers is the beauty that no man shall share.
He who hath seen, what shall it profit him?
He who doth love, what shall his passion gain?
When disappointment at her cup’s bright brim
Poisons the pleasure with the hemlock pain?
Hers is the passion that no man shall drain.
How long, how long since Life hath kissed her eyes,
Making their night clairvoyant! And how long
Since Love hath kissed her lips and made them wise,
Mixing their speech with prophecy and song!
Hope clad her nakedness in lovely lies,
Giving into her hands the right of wrong!
Lo! in her world she sets pale tents of thought,
Unearthly bannered; and her dreams’ wild bands
Besiege the heavens like a twilight fraught
With recollections of lost stars. She stands
Radiant as Lilith glowing from God’s hands.
The golden rose of patience at her throat
Drops fragrant petals—as a pensive tune
Drops its surrendered sweetness note by note;—
And from her hands the buds of hope are strewn,
Moon-flowers, mothered of the barren moon.
So in her flowers man seats him at her feet
In star-faced worship, knowing all of this;
And now to him to die seems very sweet,
Filled with the fire of her look and kiss;
While in his heart the blood’s tumultuous beat
Drowns, in her own, the drowsing serpent’s hiss.
He who hath dreamed but of her world shall give
All of his soul unto her restlessly:
He who hath seen but her far face shall live
No more for things we name reality:
Such is the power of her tyranny.
He, whom she wins, hath nothing ’neath the sun;
Forgetting all that she may not forget
He loves her, who still feeds his soul upon
Dreams and desires, and doubt and vain regret,—
Life’s bitter bread his heart’s fierce tears make wet.
What word of wisdom hast thou, Life, to wake
Him now! or song of magic now to dull
The dreams he lives in! or what charm to break
The spell that makes her evil beautiful!
What charm to show her beauty hides a snake,
Whose basilisk eyes burn dark behind a skull!
PROBLEMS Man’s is the learning of his books—
What is all knowledge that he knows
Beside the wit of winding brooks,
The wisdom of the summer rose!
How soil distils the scent in flowers
Baffles his science: heaven-dyed,
How, from the sunshine and the showers,
They draw their colors, hath defied.
Nor hath he solved why light is white,
Yet paints with hues the dawns and noons,
Stains all the hollow edge of night
With glory as of molten moons.
What knows he of the laws of birth
Or death, or what these are and why!
Or what it is within the earth
That helps us live and helps us die!
THE BEAUTIFUL I Of moires of placid glitter
The moon is knitter,
Under dark trees, whose branches
The blue night blanches:
Upon yon stream’s swift arrow
Lights lie, as narrow
As is the glance of some pale sorceress,
Spell-haunted, watching in a wilderness.
And I, who, dreaming, wander,
Seem to behold her yonder,
My beautiful dream, my bodiless loveliness.
II Upon this water’s glimmer
White sheets of shimmer
Glow outward, as if inner
Sea-castles,—thinner
Than peelÉd pearl,—through curlings
And water whirlings,
Let spray the light of lucid dome and spire,
The smoldering silver of an inward fire.—
Perhaps her towers, enchanted,
Are there; on mountains planted
Of crystal:—hers! the soul of my desire!
III Or there above the beeches,
On terraced reaches
Of rolling roses, towered
And moonbeam-bowered,
Is it her palace airy?—
Or dream of Fairy?—
Piled, full of melody and marble-white,
Its pointed casements lit with piercing light:
Wherein, all veiled and hidden,
She waits,—who long hath bidden
Me come to her,—her accoladed knight?
IV The blue night’s sweetness settles—
Like hyacinth petals,
Bowed by their weight of rain-drops—
Around me: pain drops
From off my heart, the sadness
Of life to gladness
Of beauty turns, that was not born to die;
That whispers in my soul and tells me why
I, too, was born—to render
Her worship: feel her splendor
Expand me like a rose beneath God’s eye.
WORLD’S ATTAINMENT A Lorelei full fair she sits
Above the Stream of Life that rolls;
And,
ass="i0">That grew from the heart of the world to light,—
I dwelt in caverns: Over me
Were mountains older than the moon;
And forests, vaster than the sea,
And gulfs, that the earthquake’s hand had hewn,
Hung under me. And late and soon
I heard the DÆmon of Change that sighed
A cosmic language of mystery;
Where I sat silent, primeval-eyed,
With the infant Spirit of Prophecy.
Gaunt stars glared down on the Titan peaks;
And the gaunter glare of the cratered streaks
Of the sunset’s ruin heard condor shrieks:
The roar of cataracts hurled in air,
And the hurricane, laying its thunders bare,
And the rush of battling beasts,—whose lair
Was the antechamber of nadir-gloom,—
Were my outworld joys. But who can tell
The awe of the depths whence rose the boom
Of the iron rivers that fashioned Hell!
THE EVANESCENT BEAUTIFUL Day after day, young with eternal beauty,
Pays flowery duty to the month and clime;
Night after night erects a vasty portal
Of stars immortal for the march of Time.
But where are now the glory and the rapture,
That once did capture me in cloud and stream?
Where now the joy, that was both speech and silence?
Where the beguilance that was fact and dream?
I know that Earth and Heaven are as golden
As they of olden made me feel and see;
Not in themselves is lacking aught of power
Through star and flower—something’s lost in me.
“Return! return!” I cry, “O visions vanished,
O voices banished, to my soul again!"—
The near Earth blossoms and the far skies glisten,
I look and listen, but, alas! in vain.
THE HIGHER BROTHERHOOD To come in touch with mysteries
Of beauty idealizing Earth,
Go seek the hills, grown green with trees,
The old hills wise with death and birth.
There you may hear the heart that beats
In streams, where music has its source;
And in wild rocks of mossed retreats
Behold the silent soul of force.
Above the love that emanates
From human passion, and reflects
The flesh, must be the love that waits
On Nature, whose high call elects
None to her secrets save the few
Who hold that facts are far less real
Than dreams, with which all facts indue
Themselves approaching the ideal.
TO A WINDFLOWER I Teach me the secret of thy loveliness,
That, being made wise, I may aspire to be
As beautiful in thought, and so express
Immortal truths to Earth’s mortality;
Though to my soul ability be less
Than ’tis to thee, O sweet anemone.
II Teach me the secret of thy innocence,
That in simplicity I may grow wise;
Asking from Art no other recompense
Than the approval of her own just eyes;
So may I rise to some fair eminence,
Though less than thine, O cousin of the skies.
III Teach me these things; through whose high knowledge, I,—
When Death hath poured oblivion through my veins,
And brought me home, as all are brought, to lie
In that vast House, common to serfs and Thanes,—
I shall not die, I shall not utterly die,
For beauty born of beauty—that remains.
MICROCOSM The memory of what we’ve lost
Is with us more than what we’ve won;
Perhaps because we count the cost
By what we could, yet have not done.
’Twixt act and purpose fate hath drawn
Invisible threads we can not break,
And puppet-like these move us on
The stage of life, and break or make.
Less than the dust from which we’re wrought,
We come and go, and still are hurled
From change to change, from naught to naught,
Heirs of oblivion and the world.
FORTUNE Within the hollowed hand of God
Blood-red they lie, the dice of Fate,
That have no time nor period,
And know no early and no late.
Postpone you can not, nor advance
Success or failure that’s to be;
All fortune, being born of chance,
Is bastard child to destiny.
Bow down your head, or hold it high,
Consent, defy—no smallest part
Of this you change, although the die
Was fashioned from your living heart.
DEATH Through some strange sense of sight or touch
I find what all have found before,—
The presence I have feared so much,
The unknown’s immaterial door.
I seek not and it comes to me:
I do not know the thing I find:
The fillet of fatality
Drops from my brows that made me blind.
(A Dream)I Starless and still and lustreless
And sombre black, it seemed to me,
The heaven hung in hideousness
Of Hell’s serenity:
Indefinite and vague and old
As nothing that is ours,
It rose turrets, dark with mould,
And dark, colossal towers.
II Infernal monsters crumbled ’mid
The trefoils of its dim faÇade,
And, hideous as murder, hid
Gnarled in the pillared shade.
And all below and overhead,
In cancerous blotches, grew
The gray gangrene of lichens dead,
And fungus, sickly blue.
III Beneath the black, impending skies,
Like Death’s dead countenance it stood,
Hollow, with cavernous window-eyes
Staring on solitude.
The grass was black, and in it, white
The tombstones rose; and gray,
Long league on league, adown the night,
Like phantoms, stretched away.
IV And I, who entered in, could hear
No organ notes resound and roll,
But silence, like an awful fear,
Made tumult in my soul.
And, lo! I saw, like Hell’s wild songs,
The vast interior carved
With shapes of stone, vague woman throngs,
Naked, obscene, and starved.
V Medusa mouths and harpy hands,
And Gorgon eyes where death abode;
Like idols, wherein heathen lands
Image the Plague’s black god.
Round mighty door and window-frame,
On floor and vault, behold,
The chiselled forms were all the same—
Gray with exuding mold.
VI And I, who entered in, in dread
Felt silence like some awful hymn—
Or was ’t the effluvia of the dead
That round me seemed to swim?
Miasms, from which had oozed its walls,
Had rotted, breath on breath,
This house, within whose haunted halls
Death sat and dreamed of death.
EIDOLONS The white moth-mullein brushed its slim
Cool, fairy flowers against his knee;
In places where the way lay dim
The branches, arching hollowly,
Made tomb-like mystery for him.
The wild-rose and the elder, drenched
With rain, made pale a misty place,—
From which, as from a ghost, he blenched;
He walking with averted face,
And lips white-closed and teeth tight-clenched.
For far within the forest,—where
Weird shadows stood like phantom men,
And where the ground-hog dug its lair,
The she-fox whelped and had her den,—
The thing kept calling, buried there.
One dead trunk, like a ruined tower,
Dark green with toppling trailers, shoved
Its wild wreck o’er the brush; one bower
Looked like a dead man, capped and gloved,
The thing that haunted him each hour.
Now at his side he heard it: thin
As echoes of a thought that speaks
In sleep: and, listening with his chin
Upon his palm, unto his cheeks
He felt the moon’s slow silver win.
And now the voice was still: and lo,
With eyes that stared on naught but night,
He looked and saw—what none shall know!
The form of one, who long from sight
Had lain, here murdered long ago?...
And men who found him,—thither led
By the she-fox,—within that place
Saw in his stony eyes, ’tis said,
The thing he met there face to face,
The thing that left him staring dead.
IDENTITIES I sat alone in the arrased room
Of Sin, wrapped pale in her winding shroud;
The night was stricken with glare and gloom,
And the wailing wind was loud.
I heard the gallop of one who rode
Like a rushing leaf on the wind that lisps;
The night with the speed of her steed was sowed
With streaming will-o’-the-wisps.
And I said to myself, “’Tis a long-lost Shame,
Who rides to my house through the night and rain!
She will blaze in the blackness a face of flame
When she opens the door again!”
I thought of the blame on her lips and brow;
And stared at the door she must enter in—
To sear my soul with her eyes and bow
My heart by the corpse of Sin.
As hushed as the mansion of death was night,
When, dark as a sob of the storm, she came—
But her face, like beautiful Sin’s, was white,
And her face and Sin’s—the same!
HALLOWE’EN It was down in the woodland on last Hallowe’en,
Where silence and darkness had built them a lair,
That I felt the dim presence of her, the unseen,
And heard her still step on the hush-haunted air.
It was last Hallowe’en in the glimmer and swoon
Of mist and of moonlight, where once we had sinned,
That I saw the gray gleam of her eyes in the moon,
And hair, like a raven, blown wild on the wind.
It was last Hallowe’en where starlight and dew
Made mystical marriage on flower and leaf,
That she led me with looks of a love, that I knew
Was dead, and the voice of a passion too brief.
It was last Hallowe’en in the forest of dreams,
Where trees are eidolons and flowers have eyes,
That I saw her pale face like the foam of far streams,
And heard, like the night-wind, her tears and her sighs.
It was last Hallowe’en, the haunted, the dread,
In the wind-tattered wood, by the storm-twisted pine,
That I, who am living, kept tryst with the dead,
And clasped her a moment who once had been mine.
ANSWERED Do you remember how that night drew on?
That night of sorrow, when the stars looked wan
As eyes that gaze, reproachful, in a dream;
Loved eyes, long dead, and sadder than the grave?
How through the heaven stole the moon’s gray gleam,
Like a nun’s ghost down a cathedral’s nave?—
Do you remember how that night drew on?
Do you remember the hard words then said?
The words of hate above my bowed-down head,
That left me dead, long, long before I died:
Those words, whose bitterness had stabbed and slain
My heart before I knew your love had lied,
Or pierced me with the dagger of disdain.—
Do you remember the hard words then said?
Do you remember?—now the night draws down,—
As on that night,—the heavens, lightnings crown
With wrecks of thunder; and the moon doth give
The clouds wild witchery,—as in a room,
Behind the sorrowful arras, still may live
The pallid secret of the haunted gloom.—
Do you remember, now the night draws down?
Do you remember, now it comes to pass
Your form is bowed as is the wind-swept grass?
And death hath won from you that confidence
Denied to life? now your sick soul rebels
Against your pride with tragic eloquence,
That self-crowned demon of the heart’s fierce hells.—
Do you remember, now it comes to pass?
Yea, you remember! Bid your soul be still!
Here passion hath surrendered unto will,
And flesh to spirit. Quiet your wild tongue
And wilder heart. Your kiss wakes naught in me.
The instrument love gave you lies unstrung,
Silent, forsaken of all melody.—
Yea, you remember! Bid your soul be still!
UNFULFILLED In my dream last night it seemed I stood
With a boy’s glad heart in my boyhood’s wood.
The beryl green and the cairngorm brown
Of the day through the deep leaves sifted down.
The rippling drip of a passing shower
Rinsed wild aroma from herb and flower.
The splash and urge of a waterfall
Spread stairwayed rocks with a crystal caul.
And I waded the strip of the creek’s dry bed
For the colored keel and the arrow-head.
And I found the cohosh coigne the same
Tossing with torches of pearly flame.
The owlet dingle of vine and brier,
That the butterfly-weed flecked fierce with fire.
The elder bosk with its warm perfume,
And the yellow stars of the daisy bloom;
The moss, the fern, and the touch-me-not
I breathed, and the mint-smell keen and hot.
And I saw the bird, that sang its best,
In the tufted sumac building its nest.
And I saw the chipmunk’s stealthy face,
And the rabbit crouched in a grassy place.
And I watched the crows, that cawed and cried,
Harrying the hawk at the forest-side;
The bees that sucked in the blossoms slim,
And the wasps that built on the lichened limb.
And felt the silence, the dusk, the dread
Of the spot where they buried the unknown dead:
The water-murmur, the insect hum,
And a far bird calling, “Come, oh, come!"—
No sweeter music can mortals make
To ease the heart of its human ache!—
And it seemed in my dream,—that was all too true,—
That I met in the woods again with you.
A sun-tanned face and brown bare knees,
And hands stained red with dewberries.
And we stopped a moment some word to tell,
And then in the woods we kissed farewell.
But once I met you; yet, lo! it seems
Again and again we meet in dreams.
And I ask my soul what it all may mean:
If this is the love that should have been.
And oft and often I wonder, Can
What Fate intends be changed by man?
DIRGE What shall her dreaming keep
Under the sun?
Here where the willows weep
And waters run;
Here where she lies asleep
And all is done.
Lights, when the tree-top swings;
Scents that are blown;
Sounds of the wood-bird’s wings;
And the bee’s drone;
These be her comfortings
Round her headstone.
What shall watch o’er her here
When day is fled?
Here when the night is near
And skies are red;
Here where she lieth dear
And young and dead.
Shadows, and winds that spill
Dew; and the rune
Of the wild whippoorwill;
And the white moon;
These be the watchers still
Round her headstone.
REST Under the brindled beech,
Deep in the mottled shade,
Where the rocks hang in reach
Flower and ferny blade,
Let him be laid.
Here will the brooks that rove
Under the mossy trees,—
Grave with the music of
Underworld melodies,—
Lap him in peace.
Here will the winds, that blow
Out of the haunted west,—
Gold with the dreams that glow
There on the heaven’s breast,—
Lull him to rest.
Here will the stars and moon,
Silent and far and deep,—
Old with the mystic rune
Of the slow years that creep,—
Charm him with sleep.
Under the ancient beech,
Deep in the quiet shade,—
Where the wood’s peace may reach
Him, as each bough is swayed,—
Let him be laid.
CLAIRVOYANCE The sunlight, that makes of the heaven
A pathway for sylphids to throng;
The wind, that makes harps of the forests
For spirits to smite into song,
Are the image and voice of a vision
That comforts the heart and makes strong.
I look in one’s face, and the shadows
Are lifted; and, lo, I can see,
Through windows of evident being,—
Filled full of eternity,—
The form of the essence of Beauty
God garments with mystery.
I hearken one’s voice, and the wrangle
Of living hath pause: and I hear,
Through doors of invisible spirit,—
Filled full of God’s light that is clear,—
The radiant raiment of Music,
In the hush of the heavens, sweep near.
THE IDEAL Nor time nor all his minions
Of sorrow and of pain,
Shall dash with vulture pinions
The cup she fills again
Within the dream-dominions
Of life where she doth reign.
Clothed on with bright desire
And hope that makes her strong,
With limbs of frost and fire,
She sits above all wrong,
Her heart a living lyre,
And love its only song.
And in the waking pauses
Of weariness and care,
And when the dark hour draws his
Black dagger of despair,
Above effects and causes
I hear her music there.
The longing’s life hath near it
Of beauty we would see;
The dreams it doth inherit
Of immortality;
Are callings of her spirit
To something yet to be.
TO ONE READING THE MORTE D’ARTHURE O daughter of our Southern sun,
Sweet sister of each flower,
Dost dream in terraced Avalon
A shadow-haunted hour?
Or stand with Guinevere upon
Some ivied Camelot tower?
Or, in the wind, dost breathe the musk
That blows Tintagel’s sea on?
Or ’mid the lists by castled Usk
Hear some wild tourney’s glee on?
Or ’neath the Merlin moons of dusk
Dost muse in old Caerleon?
Or now of Launcelot, and then
Of Arthur, ’mid the roses,
Dost speak with wily Vivien?
Or, where the shade reposes,
Dost walk with stately, armored men
In marble-fountained closes?
So speak the dreams within thy gaze,
The dreams thy spirit cages,
Would that Romance—which on thee lays
The spell of bygone ages—
Held me! a memory of those days,
A portion of those pages.
THE CROSS The cross I bear no man shall know—
No man shall see the cross I bear!—
Alas! the thorny path of woe
Up the steep hill of care!
There is no word to comfort me;
No sign to ease my cross-bowed head:
Deep night is in the heart of me,
And in my soul is dread.
To strive, it seems, that I was born,
For that which others shall obtain;
The disappointment and the scorn
Alone for me remain.
One half my life is overpast;
The other half I contemplate—
Meseems the past doth but forecast
A darker future state.
Sick to the heart of that which makes
Me hope and struggle and desire,
The aspiration here that aches
With ineffectual fire:
While inwardly I know the lack
Of thought, the paucity of power,
Each past day’s retrospect makes black
Each onward-coming hour.
Now in my youth would I could die!
Would God that I could lay me down
And pass away without a sigh,
Oblivious of renown!
NIGHTFALL O day, so sicklied o’er with night!
O dreadful fruit of fallen dusk!—
A Circe orange, golden-bright,
With horror ’neath its husk.—
And I, who gave the promise heed
That made life’s tempting surface fair,
Have I not eaten to the seed
Its ashes of despair!
O silence of the drifted grass!
And immemorial eloquence
Of stars and winds and waves that pass!
And God’s indifference!
Leave me alone with sleep that knows
Not anything that life may keep—
Not e’en the pulse that comes and goes
In germs that climb and creep.
Or if an aspiration pale
Must quicken there—oh, let the spot
Grow weeds! that dust may so prevail
Where spirit once could not!
PAUSE Thou too art sick of dreams, that stain
The aisle, along which life must pass,
With hues of mystic-colored glass,
That fills the windows of the brain.
Thou too art sick of thoughts, that carve
The house of days with arabesques
And gargoyles, where the mind grotesques
In masks of hope and faith who starve.
Come, lay thy over-weary head
Upon my bosom! Do not weep!—
“He giveth His beloved sleep."—
Heart of my heart, be comforted.
ABOVE THE VALES We went by ways of bygone days,
Up mountain heights of story,
Where, lost in vague, historic haze,
Tradition, crowned with battle-bays,
Sat ’mid her ruins hoary.
Where, wing to wing, the eagles cling
And torrents have their sources,
War rose with bugle voice to sing
Of woods of spears and swords a-swing,
And rush of men and horses.
Then deep below, where orchards show
A home here, there a steeple,
We heard a simple shepherd go,
Singing,—within the afterglow,—
A love-song of the people.
As ’mid the trees his song did cease,
With voice most sweet and holy,
Peace,—’mid the cornlands of increase
And rose-beds of love’s victories,—
Took up his music lowly.
INSOMNIA It seems that dawn will never climb
The eastern hills;
And, clad in mist and flame and rime,
Make flashing highways of the rills.
The night is as an ancient way
Through some dead land,
Whereon the ghosts of Memory
And Sorrow wander, hand in hand.
By which man’s works ignoble seem,
Unbeautiful;
And grandeur, but the ruined dream
Of some dead queen, crowned with a skull.
A way, Past-peopled, dark and old,
That stretches far—
Its only real thing, the cold
Vague light of Sleep’s one fitful star.
ENCOURAGEMENT
/> Neither in adamant nor brass
The scrutinizing eye records it:
The arm is rooted in the heart,
The heart that rules and lords it.
Be that it is and thou art all:
And what thou art so hast thou written
Thee of the lutanists of Love,
Or of the torture-smitten.
ASPIRATION God knew he strove against pale lust and vice,
Wound in the net of their voluptuous hair:
God knew that to their kisses he was ice,
Their arms around him there.
God knew against the front of fate he set
A front as stern, with lips as sternly pressed;
Raised clenched and ineffectual hands that met
The iron of her breast.
God knew what motive his sad soul inspired:
God knew the star for which he climbed and craved:
God knew, and only God, the hell that fired
His heart and in it raved.
And yet he failed! failed utterly!—No lie
Of Hell, that writhes within its simmering pit,
Sank deeper down than he, who, with the cry,
“Now shall I rest from it!”
Died; was remembered, haply, for a day;
Who hoped to rise rolled in the morning’s rose,
The flame of fame, and still lies laid away
Where no one cares or knows.
PEACE I When rose-leaves ’neath the rose-bush lie
And lilies bloom and lilacs die,
When days fall sadder than a sigh,
Lay me asleep;
Where breezes blow the rose-leaves by,
Lay me asleep.
II When to the dusty, dreary day
No lonely cloud brings cooling gray,
And languidly the tree-tops sway
And flowers there,
Come thou as silently and pray
As flowers there.
III Then pass as softly: shed no tear
Nor flaw with sighs the peace that’s here;
The pallid silence, far and near,
So weary grown;
Nor bring the world to jar the ear
So weary grown.
SIN There is a legend of an old Hartz tower
That tells of one, a noble, who had sold
His soul unto the Fiend; who grew not old
On this condition: that the Demon’s power
Cease every midnight for a single hour,
And, in that hour, his body should lie cold
With limbs up-shriveled, and with face, behold!
Shrunk to a death’s-head in the taper’s glower.—
So unto Sin Life gives his best. Her arts
Make all his outward seeming beautiful
Before the world; but in his heart of hearts
Abides an hour when her strength is null;
When he shall feel the death through all his parts
Strike, and his countenance become a skull.
THE HOUSE OF FEAR Vast are its halls, as vast the halls and lone
Where Death sits, listening to the wind and rain;
And dark the house, where I shall meet again
That long-dead Sin in some dread way unknown:
For I have dreamed of stairs of haunted stone,
And spectre footsteps I have fled in vain;
And windows glaring with a blood-red stain,
And hollow eyes, that burn me to the bone,
Within a face that looks as that black night
It looked when deep I dug for it a grave,—
The dagger wound above the brow, the thin
Blood trickling slantwise down the cheek’s dead white;—
And I have dreamed not even God can save
Me and my soul from that arisen Sin.
SATAN Still shall I stand the everlasting hate
Colossal Chaos builded ’neath thine eyes,
The symbol of all evil, that defies
Thy victory, and, vanquished, still can wait.
Scar me again with such vast flame as late
Hurled abrupt thunder and archangel cries,
’Mid fiery whirlwinds of the terrible skies,
Down the deep’s roar against Hell’s monster gate!
Thy wrath can not abolish or make less
Me, an eternal wile opposed to wrath:
Me, who to thwart thee evermore shall plan!
Behold thy Eden’s vanished loveliness!—
Why hast thou set a sword within its path,
And cursed and exiled thine own image, Man?
OSSIAN Long have I heard the noise of battle clash
Along the windy sea that roared again;
Seen helmets rise, and on the clanking plain
Barbaric chieftains meet and, howling, dash
Their mailÉd thousands down, with crash on crash,
Like crags contending with the roaring main;
Torrents of shields, like rivers of rolling rain,
I have beheld within the moon’s pale flash;
The moon, that, like a spirit, o’er the wood
Hung white as steel, glimmering the spears and swords,
That shone like ripples in the iron flood,
The streams of war, that beat in heathen hordes
About their rock-like kings, whence wave-like far,
Circled the battle, warrior on warrior.
The Love Chase On, towards the purlieus of impossible space,
From Death, enamoured, Life, capricious, flies:
Communicated sorrow of his face
Freezing her ever backward burning eyes.
II The Garden of Days Man’s days are planted as a flower-bed
With labor’s lily and the rose of folly:
Beneath grief’s cypress, pale, uncomforted,
The phantom fungus blooms of melancholy.
III Faith and Facts With starry gold Night still endorses what
Man’s soul hath written, guessing at the skies:
Day on Night’s scribble drops a fiery blot,
And ’thwart the writing scrawls, “The lie of lies.”
IV Hell and Heaven And it may be that, seamed with iron scars,
One in vast Hell oft lifts fierce eyes above,
And one, inviolate as God’s high stars,
Looks from far Heaven, sighing: “Alas, O love!”
V Alchemy Into her heart’s young crucible Life threw
Affliction first, then Faith,—by which is meant
Hope and Humility:—Love touched the two,
And, lo! the golden blessing of Content.
VI Trial As oft as Hope weighed, coaxing, on this arm,
On that Despair dashed heavily his fist:
He knew no way out of Grief’s night and storm,
Until a child, named Effort, came and kissed.
VII Nightmare Some obscene drug in her dull draught Sleep gave,
For dead I lay, yet heard a man-faced beast
Dig, dig with wolfish fingers in my grave,
With horrible laughter to a horrible feast.
VIII Clairvoyance Some few may pierce the phantom fogs, that veil
Life’s stormy seas, into futurity,
And see the Flying Dutchman’s ominous sail,
Portentous of dark things that are to be.
IX The Flying Dutchman Through hissing scud, mad mist, and roaring rain,
On thundering seas, I see her drive and drive,
Crowding wild canvas ’gainst the hurricane,
Her demon ports with glow-worm lamps alive.
X Destiny Within the volume of the universe
With worlds she writes irrevocable laws:
From everlasting unto everlasting hers
The evolutions of effect and cause.
XI Fame, the Mermaid A mirror, brilliant as a beautiful star,
She lifts and sings to her own loveliness:
Not till her light and song have lured him far
Does man behold the lie he did not guess.
XII The Hours With stars and dew and sunlight in their hair,
They come, the daughters of the Day, who saith:
“The gifts my children bring are rest and care,
Of which the last is Life, the first is Death.”
XIII Despair So sick at heart, so weary of the sun,
In her sad halls the Soul sits desolate,
Her Hope surrendered to Oblivion,
Whose coal-black charger neighs outside the gate.
XIV The Misanthrope The Hun On splendid infamies—a thousand years
Heaven tolerated—like a Word that trod
Incarnate of the Law, vast wrath and tears
In pagan eyes, behold the Scourge of God!
XVI Greece The godlike sister of all lands she stands
Before the World, to whom she gave her heart,
Still testifying with degenerate hands
Her bygone glory in enduring art.
XVII Egypt With ages weighed as with the pyramids
And Karnac wrecks, still—out of Sphinx-like eyes
Beneath the apathetic lotus-lids—
With Memnon moan her granite heart defies.
XVIII Poe Wild wandering witch-lights and, dark-wing’d above,
A raven; and, within a sculptured tomb,
Beside the corpse of Beauty and of Love,
Song’s everlasting-lamp that lights the gloom.
XIX Hawthorne Dim lands and dimmer walls, where Magic slips
A couch of velvet sleep beneath Romance:
Where Speculation, Prince-like, kneels; his lips
Fearing to break the long-unbroken trance.
XX Emerson Our New-World Chrysostom, whose golden tongue
Through Nature preached philosophy and truth:
Old intimate of loveliness he sung,
Wise and instructing with the lips of youth.
XXI Jaafer the Vizier Lutes, odorous torches, slaves and dancing girls
In gardens by a moonlit waterside,
And one whose wise lips scatter words like pearls—
Behold the true Haroun whom naught may hide!
THE PURITANS’ CHRISTMAS Their only thought religion,
What Christmas joys had they,
The stern, staunch Pilgrim Fathers who
Knew never a holiday?—
A log-church in the clearing
’Mid solitudes of snow,
The wild-beast and the wilderness,
And lurking Indian foe.
No time had they for pleasure,
Whom God had put to school;
A sermon was their Christmas cheer,
A psalm their only Yule.
They deemed it joy sufficient,—
Nor would Christ take it ill,—
That service to himself and God
Employed their spirits still.
And so through faith and prayer
Their powers were renewed,
And hearts made strong to hew a world,
And tame a solitude.
A type of revolution,
Wrought from an iron plan,
In the largest mold of liberty
God cast the Puritan.
A better land they founded,
That Freedom had for bride,
The shackles of old despotism
Struck from her limbs and side.
With faith within to guide them,
And courage to perform,
A nation, from a wilderness,
They hewed with their strong arm.
For liberty to worship,
And right to do and dare,
They faced the savage and the storm
With voices raised in prayer.
For God it was who summoned,
And God it was who led,
And God would not forsake the love
That must be clothed and fed.
Great need had they of courage!
Great need of faith had they!
And, lacking these,—how otherwise
For us had been this day!
THE NEW YEAR Lift up thy torch, O Year, and let us see
What Destiny
Hath made thee heir to, at nativity!—
Doubt, some call Faith; and ancient Wrong and Might,
Whom some name Right;
And Darkness, that the purblind world calls Light.
Despair, with Hope’s brave form; and Hate, who goes
In Friendship’s clothes;
And Joy, the smiling mask of many woes.
Neglect, whom Merit serves; Lust, to whom, see,
Love bends the knee;
And Selfishness, who preacheth charity.
Vice, in whose dungeon Virtue lies in chains;
And Cares and Pains,
That on the throne of Pleasure hold their reigns.
Corruption, known as Honesty; and Fame
That’s but a name;
And Innocence, whose other name is Shame.
And Folly men call Wisdom here, forsooth;
And, like a youth,
Fair Falsehood, whom the many take for Truth.
Abundance, who hath Famine’s house in lease;
And, high ’mid these,
War, blood-black, on the spotless shrine of Peace.
Lift up thy torch, O Year! make clear our sight!
Deep lies the night
Around us, and God grants us little light!
THE POET OF THE SIERRAS How shall I greet him—him who seems
To me the greatest of our singers?
As one who hears Sierra streams,
And, gazing under arching fingers,
Feels all the eagle feels that screams,
The savage dreams, what time he lingers?
Son of the West, out of the West
We heard thee sing,—who still allurest,—
That land where God sits manifest;
That land where man stands freest, surest;
That land, our wildest and our best,
The grandest and the purest.
Wild hast thou sung,—as some strange bird,—
Of gold and men and peaks that glistened,
Of seas and stars, and we have heard—
And one, whose soul cried out and listened,
He sends his young, unworthy word
To thee the Master’s hand hath christened
AMERICA Behold her stand, with power thunder-lipped,
And eagle-thoughts that soar above the storm
Convulsing ledges of the mountain Wrong!
Beside her Liberty, whose sword is tipped
With lightning, towering a majestic form,
Her voice like battle in a freedom song.
America, what hates may soil thy hands?
What kingdoms face with insult thy bold brow?
Oppressions brave the anger in thine eyes?—
Behind thee dies the darkness from the lands:
Before thee mounts the glory of the Now:
Around thee sit the sessions of the skies.
Thine is the land where Progress leans to heed
The lessons taught of Heaven and of God,
The golden texts of morning and of night:
The science of thy soul hath taught thee speed!
No precedent of Nations makes thee nod!
Brow-bound with bolts, thy feet are shod with light.
America, beneath thy iron heel
What Old World tyrannies, that crushed the poor,
Writhe out their lives, abolished in their ire!
Around thine arms, wrapped strong in fourfold steel,
What Old World injuries have failed to moor
Barques thou hast beaconed like a pillared fire!
Thou speakest, and Oppression’s mists divide;
And gyves of Superstition and of Lust
Fall shattered from the World; and Truth and Love
Assume their places, beautiful in pride:
And stars spring up around them from the dust,
The dust of hopes long fallen from above.
Onward thou movest: where thy steps are bent
The Earth is civilized: the desert plain
Blossoms—is citied with vast industry.—
Behold! the pagan, Violence, is spent!
His idol, Ignorance, is rent in twain
Before thy splendor that makes all men free.
“THE FATHERS OF OUR FATHERS” Written February 24, 1898, on reading the latest news concerning the battleship Maine, blown up in Havana Harbor, February fifteenth. I The fathers of our fathers, they were men!—
What are we who now stand idle while we see our seamen slain?
Who behold our flag dishonored, and still pause!
Are we blind to her duplicity, the treachery of Spain?
To the rights, she scorns, of nations and their laws?
Let us rise, a mighty people, let us wipe away the stain!
Shall we wait till she defile us for a cause?—
The fathers of our fathers, they were men!
II The fathers of our fathers, they were men!—
Had they nursed delay as we do? had they sat thus deaf and dumb,
With these cowards compromising year by year?
Never hearing what they should hear, never saying what should come,
While the courteous mask of Spain still hid a sneer!
No! such news had ’roused their natures like a rolling battle-drum—
God of Earth! and God of Battles! do we fear?—
The fathers of our fathers, they were men!
III The fathers of our fathers, they were men!—
What are we who are so cautious, never venturing too far!
Shall we, at the cost of honor, still keep peace?
While we see the thousands starving and the struggling Cuban star,
And the outraged form of Freedom on her knees!
Let our long, steel ocean-bloodhounds, adamantine dogs of war,
Sweep the yellow Spanish panther from the seas!—
The fathers of our fathers, they were men!
MENE TEKEL UPHARSIN I Behold! we have gathered together our battleships near and afar;
Their decks, they are cleared for action; their guns, they are shotted for war:
From the East to the West there is hurry; in the North and the South a peal
Of hammers in fort and shipyard, and the clamor and clang of steel;
And the roar and the rush of engines, and clanking of derrick and crane—
Thou art weighed in the Scales and found wanting! the balance of God, O Spain!
II Behold! I have stood on the mountains, and this was writ in the sky:—
“She is weighed in the Scales and found wanting! the balance God holds on high!”
The balance he once weighed Babylon, the Mother of Harlots, in:
One scale holds thy pride and thy power and empire, begotten of sin;
Heavy with woe and torture, the crimes of a thousand years,
Mortared and welded together with fire and blood and tears:
In the other, for justice and mercy, a blade with never a stain,
Is laid the Sword of Liberty, and the balance dips, O Spain!
III Summon thy vessels together! great is thy need for these!—
Cristobal Colon, Vizcaya, Oquendo, and Maria Terese—
Let them be strong and many, for a vision I had by night,
That the ancient wrongs thou hast done the world came howling to the fight:
From the New-World’s shores they gathered, Inca and Aztec slain,
To the Cuban shot but yesterday, and our own dead seamen, Spain!
IV Summon thy ships together, gather a mighty fleet!
For a strong, young Nation is arming, that never hath known defeat.
Summon thy ships together, there by thy blood-stained sands!
For a shadowy army gathers with manacled feet and hands;
A shadowy host of sorrows and shames, too black to tell,
That reach, with their horrible wounds, for thee to drag thee down to Hell:
A myriad phantoms and spectres, thou warrest against in vain—
Thou art weighed in the Scales and found wanting! the balance of God, O Spain!
May, 1898.
UNDER THE STARS AND STRIPES I High on the world did our fathers of old,
Under the Stars and Stripes,
Blazon the name that we now must uphold,
Under the Stars and Stripes.
Vast in the past they have builded an arch,
Over which Freedom has lighted her torch—
Follow it! follow it! come, let us march
Under the Stars and Stripes!
II We in whose bodies the blood of these runs,
Under the Stars and Stripes,
We will acquit us as sons of their sons,
Under the Stars and Stripes.
Ever for justice, our heel upon wrong,
We in the might of our vengeance thrice strong—
Rally together! come marching along
Under the Stars and Stripes!
III Out of our strength and a nation’s great need,
Under the Stars and Stripes,
Heroes again as of old we shall breed,
Under the Stars and Stripes.
Broad to the winds be our banner unfurled!
Straight from our guns let defiance be hurled!
God on our side, we will battle the world,
Under the Stars and Stripes!
May, 1898.
OUR CAUSE I Lord God, who mad’st Spain’s vessels melt
Before the flame our squadrons dealt,
And Santiago’s mountain belt
Rock near and far
With thunder of our ships of steel,
Keep us still humble! help us kneel
In prayer with hearts as great to heal,
As strong in war!
II When turret booms to turret; when
The steam goes up of battle, then
Lord God, we pray Thee, keep our men
Till all is o’er:
Should pride of conquest then mislead
Our House and Senate, Lord, we plead
Keep Thou our cause as clean of greed
As ’twas before.
III And when the batteries there of Spain,
From shore and headland, hurricane
Their roaring sleet and crashing rain
Of shell and shot;
When drums beat up and bugles blow,
And rank on rank we face the foe,
In life and death, in joy and woe,
Forget us not.
IV Not for ourselves we pray to Thee;
But for the cause of liberty,
Lord God!—Let old Oppression see
How o’er her coasts
Our Eagle’s fierce, majestic form
Soars through the lightning and the storm
Beneath thy all protecting arm,
Lord God of Hosts!
July 4th, 1898.
AFTERWORD The old enthusiasms
Are dead, quite dead, in me;
Dead the aspiring spasms
Of art and poesy,
That opened magic chasms,
Once, of wild mystery,
In youth’s rich Araby,
Aladdin-wondrous chasms.
The longing and the care
Are mine; and, helplessly,
The heartache and despair
For what can never be.
More than my mortal share
Of sad mortality,
It seems, God gives to me,
More than my mortal share.
O world! O time! O fate!
Remorseless trinity!
Let not your wheel abate
Its iron rotary!—
Turn round! nor make me wait,
Bound to it neck and knee,
Hope’s final agony!—
Turn round! nor make me wait.
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