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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..41e75cc --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #63622 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/63622) diff --git a/old/63622-0.txt b/old/63622-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index fe53a4c..0000000 --- a/old/63622-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,2401 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Black Panther, by John Hall Wheelock - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: The Black Panther - A book of poems - -Author: John Hall Wheelock - -Release Date: November 3, 2020 [EBook #63622] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BLACK PANTHER *** - - - - -Produced by Charlene Taylor, Charlie Howard, and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This -file was produced from images generously made available -by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) - - - - - - - - - -[Illustration] - - - - -THE BLACK PANTHER - - - - - THE BLACK PANTHER - - A BOOK OF POEMS - - - BY - JOHN HALL WHEELOCK - - AUTHOR OF - - “THE HUMAN FANTASY” “THE BELOVÈD ADVENTURE” - “LOVE AND LIBERATION” “DUST AND LIGHT,” ETC. - - - NEW YORK - CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS - 1922 - - - - - COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY - CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS - - Printed in the United States of America - - -The author thanks the editors of the following, for kind permission -to reprint here various poems first published in their pages: _All’s -Well_, _The American Magazine_, _The Art World_, _The Bellman_, _The -Bookman_, _The Century Magazine_, _Contemporary Verse_, _The Dial_, -_The Forum_, _The Freeman_, _Harper’s Monthly_, _The International_, -_The Literary Review of The New York Evening Post_, _The Lyric_, -_McClure’s Magazine_, _The Outlook_, _Poetry_, _The Poetry Journal_, -_The Poetry Review_, _Reedy’s Mirror_, _Scribner’s Magazine_, _The -Smart Set_, _The Yale Review_, _Youth_. Thanks are also due to Messrs. -Harcourt, Brace and Company for permission to reprint “Sea-Horizons,” -first published in the anthology, _Enchanted Years_. - - - - -CONTENTS - - - PAGE - _The Black Panther_ 3 - - - _I. Dim Wisdoms_ - - NIGHT HAS ITS FEAR 7 - - THE SORROWFUL MASQUERADE 12 - - OCTOBER MOONLIGHT 13 - - THE FLESH AND THE DREAM 15 - - VAUDEVILLE 16 - - 1914 18 - - THE BELOVÈD 19 - - PROUD DOOM 21 - - THE SECRET ONE 22 - - THE UNDISSUADABLE AUSTERITY 25 - - BLIND PLAYERS 26 - - TRAVAIL 28 - - THE POET TELLS OF HIS LOVE 29 - - THE BURIED DREAM 31 - - HAUNTED EARTH 32 - - LONG AGO 34 - - TCHAIKOVSKY: FIFTH SYMPHONY 35 - - MIRROR 36 - - PLAINT 38 - - ANDANTE 39 - - THE DEAR MYSTERY 42 - - IN THE DARK CITY 43 - - - _II. Space and Solitude_ - - IMMENSITY 47 - - SEA-HORIZONS 48 - - OF DAY CAME NIGHT 51 - - PILGRIM 53 - - BY THE GRAY SEA 54 - - THE FISH-HAWK 55 - - DISDAINFUL BEAUTY 57 - - MY LONELY ONE 58 - - - _III. The Lost Traveller’s Dream_ - - WILD THOUGHT 63 - - JOURNEY’S END 64 - - BELATED LOVE 65 - - A LEAVE-TAKING 66 - - BUT LOVE-- 72 - - ANNE 73 - - THE SILENCE 74 - - EXULTATION 75 - - SONG OF SONGS 77 - - SORROWFUL FREEDOM 78 - - STARLESS MORNING 79 - - PHANTOM 80 - - LEGEND 81 - - - _IV. The Divine Fantasy_ 85 - - - _The Lion-House_ 97 - - - - -THE BLACK PANTHER - - - There is a panther caged within my breast; - But what his name, there is no breast shall know - Save mine, nor what it is that drives him so, - Backward and forward, in relentless quest-- - That silent rage, baffled but unsuppressed, - The soft pad of those stealthy feet that go - Over my body’s prison to and fro, - Trying the walls forever without rest. - - All day I feed him with my living heart; - But when the night puts forth her dreams and stars, - The inexorable Frenzy reawakes: - His wrath is hurled upon the trembling bars, - The eternal passion stretches me apart, - And I lie silent--but my body shakes. - - - - -I - -DIM WISDOMS - - - - -NIGHT HAS ITS FEAR - - - Night has its fear: - As the slow dusk advances, and the day - Fades out in fire along the starry way, - The ancient doubt draws near. - - Vague shapes of dread-- - Soft owl, or moth, and timid, twittering things-- - Move through the growing dark; on furtive wings - The bat flits overhead. - - And in the house - The death-watch ticks, the dust of time is stirred - With timorous footfalls, in the night is heard - The gnawing of the mouse. - - Through the old room - What phantoms throng, what shapes that to and fro - Tremble, and lips that laughed here long ago-- - Gone back into the gloom! - - A whip-poor-will - Bleakly across the baleful country cries - From a blurred mouth; and from the west replies - Echo--and all is still. - - Now from her shell, - Her body’s prison, with the ancient doubt - And terror stricken, the scared soul looks out, - Asking if all be well. - - Great kings have been, - Poets, and mighty prophets--shapes have cried - About the world, or moved in mournful pride; - And are no longer seen. - - From many lands - Their plaint was lifted; from how many a shore - Sorrows have wailed, that are not any more! - They sleep with folded hands. - - They have their day: - Their cry is loud about the earth, who come - To the one end; the singing lips grow dumb - Always in the one way. - - Though they implore, - Brief is the plea, inflexible the fate! - Silence has the last word; and then--the great - Silence, forevermore. - - Pondering these, - The fretful spirit in bewilderment - Quickens with a vague doubt, and, not content, - Broods--and is ill at ease. - - Her being is - Throned on so frail a pulse; such fleeting breath - Bears up her dream across the gulf of death - And the obscure abyss. - - Always she hears - The hurtling chariots of the hurrying blood, - Her shuttling breath that in the solitude - Weaves the one self she wears. - - Now first the vast - Veil over heaven is rent, and bares the whole - Shining Reality; whereat the soul - Sickens, and is aghast! - - Darkness reveals - The tragic truth; her will sinks hopeless wings - Before the inexorable Fact of things, - Humbling the dread she feels. - - With the old Awes - Confronted and the flaming Mystery, - She may not speak; but pondering, suddenly - Grows silent, and withdraws. - - She may not bear - That sight: the spangled heavens, from east to west, - Stretch out too wide the confines of the breast, - Straining in wonder there. - - Upon what Brow - Of awful eminence--O thought that stuns!-- - Is laid that chaplet of a million suns, - Upon what Forehead now? - - Who was it wrought - This universal glory all around, - Of glittering worlds forever without bound?-- - Great Poet, what a Thought! - - It is a Word - Unutterable that is written there; - The spirit, gazing, is one voiceless prayer, - Careless if it be heard. - - Her thoughts ascend, - Star beyond star, height beyond aching height - Upward, in adoration infinite, - Forever, without end. - - So _shall_ it be! - Till heaven yield her sceptre; till the throne - Of night be shaken, and the Face be known - Beyond eternity: - - Till God divide - And rend asunder the embroidered hem - Of darkness; till the starry diadem - And crown be set aside! - - - - -THE SORROWFUL MASQUERADE - - - Even as to a music, stately and sad, - The young girl’s feet begin to move in a dance, - And curiously, for joy, shift and advance; - So to a mournful waltz, sombre and sweet, - All laughing things move with delighted feet-- - So all things that draw light and laughing breath - Move to the mournful waltz of life and death: - Comedy is a girl dancing in time - To the tragic pipes, sorrowful and sublime; - And ever she laughs back, and as she skips - Mimics the mournful music with her lips; - Then, for sheer anger at her own pretense, - Sobs violently at her own vehemence; - And mocks her tears. But when the pipings sleep, - She needs must cover up her face and weep. - - - - -OCTOBER MOONLIGHT - - - Heaven is like an empty room to-night; - From rim to chilly rim - Wells the clear radiance of the cold moonlight, - And the earth-ways are dim. - - Who has departed from this perfect place! - What fiery one here set - His throne in splendor, whom, vanished now, the face - Of heaven remembers yet! - - Emptiness--emptiness--the skies are bare, - And the stark earth no less - Grows vacant as a memory: everywhere - Sleeps the cold loveliness. - - Old is the earth, too old; her voice is shrill - Against the end of things-- - To the inevitable her bitter will - Grows humbler as she sings. - - Now from my breast the very soul takes flight, - Leaving her chambers bare - Of all save lonely memory and moonlight-- - And Song is silent there. - - - - -THE FLESH AND THE DREAM - - - The baffled dreamer, the defeated Christ - That for your love upon the cross-tree hung-- - O take Him to your bosom, give Him rest - Close at the wanton wonder of your breast, - O carnal World, forever well and young! - - - - -VAUDEVILLE - - - When to a cheap and tawdry tune the orchestra cried out, - Frantic, in violent syncopation, and began - Your holy, adorable body in mournful grace to move about - Through the old, devious motions, the device of man-- - - How suddenly then, silent magnificence, you put to shame - The crowded and garish theatre, the strangled cries - Of flute and trumpet! O mortal body, bearer of our flame - Through the drear lands of death, flower of the eternities! - - Revered, reviled, wept and adored, beseeched, cried out upon - By ravening lips of the ages--the sacred source of things, - That glimmered in Thrace, that shone in Rome, that swayed in Babylon, - Here moves to the vile throb of castanets and strings. - - O through what generations have you lured, what secret ways, - Man’s fainting heart to be reborn! What splendors move - Deep in his breast when, dolorous, your reluctant beauty sways - In the old weary rhythms of eternal love! - - - - -1914 - - - I lift my gaze beyond the night, and see, - Above the banners of Man’s hate unfurled, - The holy figure that on Calvary - Stretched arms out wide enough for all the world. - - - - -THE BELOVÈD - - - Life, Belovèd, I lay my heart against Your heart, - Long, long I peer into the dark pool of Your eyes; - Never will I forsake You, O adorable One! - - I cannot comprehend You, but I love You. - In the shadow of Your locks I hide my eyes from the terrors; - But You are not greatly concerned-- - Closer and closer I draw toward the dear Face. - - See--I set my lips against Your lips, - But You do not answer: - Steadfast and grave beyond me Your eyes are burning, - As of one that dreams. - - I am clinging here at Your heart! - I am singing my love of You for sheer joy! - Mother, what is it that trembles on Your lashes so soft-- - And Your lips are salt as the taste of the sea? - - Can it be for me Your eyes are brimming, Mother, - Even as they smile? - Can they be for me, these drops on Your lips so warm? - Dear One, do I understand at last! - - O holy draught, wine of the world, bewildering and bitter-sweet! - Sacred tears, from the depths of what wild love welling! - Deeper and deeper let me drink and draw-- - Nirvana, divine oblivion.... - - Bitter is the taste of Your lips, Belovèd! - - * * * * * - - Though I lie in the darkness, yet often do I remember You--and wonder-- - And the touch of Your lips, how strange, and how sad. - - - - -PROUD DOOM - - - The crucifixion of Beauty on the cross - Of mortal destiny--the eternal law-- - The thorny crown of death about her brows - Fills me with anger--then with sudden awe: - - So dear, so lovely her adorable sorrow - Shows in the darkness, ’mid the tragic doom, - The very heart in me leaps up with laughter, - And hastens, proud and secret, toward the tomb. - - - - -THE SECRET ONE - - - Here, by this frame and network of the flesh - And wires of her control - Surrounded, central in her subtle mesh - And secret, sits the soul, - - Urgent through all the body, while each part - Obeys, and all are one-- - While in her dungeons labors the lone heart - To make her will be done. - - She reins the forces in their wild career - That bear her, as they go, - Over the dark abyss; and knows how sheer - Reaches the gulf below. - - How dubious her life and slenderly - Hangs, by a scarlet thread, - Between eternity and eternity-- - She guesses, wise in dread; - - And ever watchful, ever wary, set - In the centre all alone, - Feels ’round her cautiously if any threat - Be made against the throne. - - Sometimes along her nerves the voice of pain - Bears tidings to her hate - And frantic wrath, that the old foe again - Is clamorous at the gate-- - - She rages up and down, and to and fro - In timid anger runs: - If the frontiers be menaced, it is known - All over, and at once. - - She hears her breast of sorrows night and day - At labor; ’round her brood - The old oblivions, where she sits at bay; - She hears the battling blood. - - Echoes assail her from far worlds that lie - Beyond the bourne of these-- - Contact and color and the angry cry - Of the realities - - Beat on the brain forever; the high dream, - By stratagem of speech, - Enters her portals, where she sits supreme - And silent, pondering each: - - Weighing and challenging, for weal or woe, - All rumors, sending out - The emissaries of her will, that go - To the frontiers about. - - But most she loves the hour that beauty brings, - Of rapture and release - From the crude hunger and the cry of things, - The hour of her peace-- - - When, by the inner light that floods her cell, - The spirit, even as here, - Travails, in secrecy and joy, to tell - Her passion and her fear. - - Now to the listening soul in you who read - These lines, she tells it all-- - How dear her day, how dark shall be, indeed, - The hour when night must fall. - - - - -THE UNDISSUADABLE AUSTERITY - - - Less than it is we would the Truth should seem: - Holy and marvellous the Actual is-- - But stern her lips, and bitter is her kiss - Upon the brows of dream. - - - - -BLIND PLAYERS - - - Day breaks, and the old drama - Repeats itself anew: - The hind wakes to be hunted, - The huntsman to pursue-- - - The lover and the belovèd, - Each one doomed to his part; - The victor and the vanquished, - The hushed and the hurrying heart-- - - In terror and in triumph - They play it through again, - The old, unchanging drama - Of passion and of pain, - - As the great Will has willed it, - That, in all forms being cast, - Wars on Itself forever. - O may they at the last-- - - The falcon, and the fledgling - He stoops to from the sky; - The lips that are so eager, - The lips that would deny-- - - When the old war is ended, - When the stern Will is done, - Meet in eternal pity - And know themselves as one! - - - - -TRAVAIL - - - Before the sacred beauty of the morn - How fade the wrangling wisdoms of the earth! - Wisdom is beauty in the womb, unborn; - Wisdom is beauty laboring for birth. - - Wisdom, the ghost of Beauty, in the wide - Womb of the world lies clamoring for life, - While the white Beauty, the immortal Bride, - Sits throned upon the summits void of strife. - - So the bright flower, bending from the soil, - Sums up and scorns the wisdom of the sage; - And Helen’s beauty, soaring beyond toil, - The laboring beauty of the poet’s page. - - So, when the veils of mystery are furled, - Earth’s wisdom blooms in heaven’s beauty above ... - Beauty is all the wisdom of the world - Uttered by the seraphic lips of love! - - - - -THE POET TELLS OF HIS LOVE - - - How shall I sing of Her that is - My life’s long rapture and despair-- - Sorrow eternal--Loveliness, - To whom each heart-beat is a prayer! - - Utterly, endlessly, alone - Possessing me, yet unpossessed-- - The dark, the drear belovèd One - That takes the tribute of this breast: - - Dæmon disconsolate, in vain, - In vain petitioned and implored-- - How many a midnight of disdain - Darkly and dreadfully adored! - - Beauty, the virgin, evermore - Out of these arms with laughter fled-- - Vanished--a voice by slope and shore - Haunting the world--Illusion dread-- - - Most secret Siren, on whose coast, - ’Mid spray of perishing song, are hurled - All desolate lovers, all the lost - Souls, and half-poets of the world: - - Through sleepless nights and lonely days - In tears and terror served and sought-- - Light beyond light--the supreme Face - That blinds the adoring eyes of thought! - - How shall I sing of Her? Nay all, - All song, all sorrow, all silence of - This desperate heart that is Her thrall, - Trembles and tries to tell my love! - - - - -THE BURIED DREAM - - - I hid a dream amid the sands of Time, - And said, “Now will I go upon my way-- - I shall be free henceforward from this time, - And full of laughter all the livelong day.” - - But it came following like the midnight voice - Of my true love behind her lattice-bars-- - And it came following like the silver voice - Of my lost childhood strayed beyond the stars: - - Like my dead self, so laughable, so sad, - So foolish and so lovable it rang-- - That, for sheer laughter, I was very sad, - And took it back into my heart, and sang. - - - - -HAUNTED EARTH - - - Heaven at last - Is bared, and the whole world one radiant room-- - Black are the shadows, in great pools of gloom - By copse and thicket cast. - - The cattle browse - With sound of gentle breathing, and their breath - Is mild in glimmering meadows, or beneath - Drooped branches, where they drowse; - - While ’mongst the chill - Shadows, and cold, clear moonlight all about, - A single bat goes dipping in and out - Softly; and all is still. - - Silence around-- - Save for a cricket! Lapped in slumb’rous peace - Lie hill and meadowland, the shining seas - Lap on them without sound. - - It is earth’s cry - Lifted in adoration: the old dream, - Beauty, is with her, and her hour supreme - That goes so swiftly by. - - Too well she knows - The sweet Illusion, from no earthly shore - Visitant, the bright word that evermore - Troubles her dark repose. - - Her heart lies bare-- - Drunken, drunken, she lifts a dreamy breast; - Hour by hour, in rapture and unrest - Flows the unending prayer. - - The path of night - Reaches, from rim to rim, a radiant road - Whereon the exalted Beauty walks abroad - In wonder and wild light. - - Upon what eyes, - Lifted in homesickness, now falls again - The loveliness that haunts the world with pain-- - Light out of Paradise! - - - - -LONG AGO - - - Ah, once your quiet eyes were calm and deep - And wistful with much dreaming; long ago - Your solemn lips, so innocent of woe - And delicately parted, seemed to keep - A secret still unsaid, and murmured low: - But that was long ago. - - And I, who saw and loved you from afar, - Prayed a hushed prayer, the first I ever prayed, - That God might keep you safe; and unafraid - I looked up through the night at my one star, - Moving mysteriously and bright-arrayed. - And silently I prayed. - - While you passed singing tenderly and low, - Wandering through life’s meadows with slow tread, - Death laid his kiss on your belovèd head: - But that was long ago. - - - - -TCHAIKOVSKY: FIFTH SYMPHONY - - - My heart cried out in wonder: Can it be, - The form, from which this thrilling passion flows - On tides of beauty and eternal tone - Audibly now before the very sense - Of thronging thousands, somewhere in the clay - Of Russia lies, with folded hands--relapsed - Into the Formless? - And my mind replied: - The longing that so labors for release - Not wholly in that transient form was trapped - Wherein we perish miserably here-- - But has escaped into the form supreme, - A deathless body; and now walks abroad - Among the generations of mankind, - Trailing the robes of the immortal woe. - - And still that music poured. O sacred heart - And secret, well-head of those streams of song-- - Are you content! How is it with you now, - O breast whose sorrows overflowed the world! - - - - -MIRROR - - - On the wide sea of sleep - I launch my gliding boat: - Over the rhythmic Deep - On flowing tides I float. - - The curving shore around - Fades in the pale starlight-- - A slumbering, sleepy sound - Goes drifting through the night. - - It is the music of dreams - Along the horizon blown, - It stirs the glimmering streams - Where the pale stars lie strown. - - The stars shine in the Deep, - Reflected from afar; - My eyes tremble with sleep, - Reflecting sea and star. - - My eyes look up at me - Out of the mirrored eyes, - And in their depths I see - Mirrored the stars and skies. - - Around--around--around - My boat whirls with the stream; - I feel a dizzy sound - Around me, like a dream. - - Where may I moor my bark? - How may I lift my head? - What is that silence? Hark-- - The sound of dreams is fled! - - The breath of slumber lies, - Like perfume, on the Deep: - Night with a thousand eyes - Stares at herself in sleep. - - - - -PLAINT - - - Brief is Man’s travail here, and transitory - His wrath that soon is spent-- - Brief his lament, - Lifted in vain against the harsh decrees - Of the high Destinies - That move not for the murmur of his woe: - Even as snow - On sunny meadows, as a lover’s story - Told in an April twilight long ago, - Brief is he even as these-- - His little hour of tumult or of glory-- - And to what end devised we may not guess, - Considering, as we go - Toward the same shadows, bearing the same spark, - His vanity and utter nothingness. - Yet in the mighty Dark - Dear is the spirit; grievously we know - Earth has one burden more, one soul the less. - - - - -ANDANTE - - - The evening steals like an ocean around your playing, - Whose perfect tones move on the sombre Deep - With a grave gesture, and sigh into a sleep, - George, where your hands, along the piano straying, - An intricate rhythm keep. - - And all the room is starry with your dreaming, - And limitless and vague. O the white square - Of the window-pane shimmers behind you there, - Framing the street, where the first lights are gleaming, - Transfigured now and fair! - - Now, while the heaven of night grows vast above her, - The soul from her lone dream has sure release; - The tumult and the ancient struggles cease-- - The wars that Beauty wages on her lover - Dwindle into a peace, - - When Schumann speaks so firmly and so sadly, - And all the twilight rustles, wave on wave. - O, at that smile his wondering spirit gave, - What new smile in all things shines back so gladly, - Grown dignified and grave! - - The curtains by the window rise and flutter, - The ornaments on the mantel, row on row, - Seem touched with a melancholy of long ago-- - What is it the music dreams, but cannot utter? - Schumann--we know, we know. - - Ah George, what shall be said to you who feel it-- - All the half-hope and passion unexpressed - When twilight heaves more gently in the breast! - Ah George, but you, when words would fain reveal it, - Smile--and divine the rest. - - O wrap me in Beethoven’s storm and thunder! - My baffled spirit, with abated breath, - Flutters upon the verge of life and death-- - And all my being, whirled along in wonder, - Dies between breath and breath. - - Let me endure, within a single pulsing - Of the quick heart, in a storm of showering rain - Of sound, all joy, all grief--each breath again - Live through a life complete, in one convulsing - Moment of rapturous pain! - - Silence--the lamplight, through the window streaming, - Falls on the listless keyboard, smooth and white-- - Remembered music dreams in the dull light; - And you, too, George, sit silently and dreaming, - Alone, into the night. - - - - -THE DEAR MYSTERY - - - Joy, and the triumph and the doom of gladness - Make in my breast a music sweet as sadness; - Shall I not sing for sorrow, and again - Cry out, for the sheer joyousness of pain! - For all life’s moods go murmuring like strings - In a low chord, and all things sound all things, - Through alternations of the grave and glad: - Yet, in the end, all things are grave and sad. - I feel all things, but cannot comprehend; - And run, laughing and weeping, to the end - Of the dear mystery, the fated race-- - And the deep darkness covers up my face. - - - - -IN THE DARK CITY - - - There is a harper plays - Through the long watches of the lonely night - When, like a cemetery, - Sleeps the dark city, with her millions, laid each in his tomb. - - I feel it in my dream, but when I wake-- - Suddenly, like some secret thing not to be overheard, - It ceases-- - And the gray night grows dumb - - Only in memory - Linger those veiled adagios, fading, fading ... - Till, with the morning, they are lost. - - What door was opened then? - What worlds, undreamed of, lie around us in our sleep, - That yet we may not know? - Where is it one sat playing - Over and over, with such high and dreadful peace, - The passion and sorrow of the eternal doom? - - - - -II - -SPACE AND SOLITUDE - - - - -IMMENSITY - - - At noon I watched - In the large hollow of eternal heaven - A soaring hawk climb slowly toward the sun - Through gyres of adoration without end. - His flight was a great prayer.... - - - - -SEA-HORIZONS - - - The sorrowful expanse from heaven to heaven, - From zone to zone, from deep to height above, - The mute arch of the everlasting heaven - Bends over me with Your unwearied love. - - Immeasurable, unutterable, and soundless-- - Wide as the east from the west Your love is wide; - The unfathomable distances are boundless - Infinite tenderness on every side. - - Against the dark strength of Your huge endurance - My little being beats her baffled wings, - Lifts her shrill voice, and wounds the calm assurance - And tenderness of Your large evenings. - - In the vast robes of Your serene compassion - She hides her soiled and burning face of shame-- - Your solemn and inexorable passion - Lifts her blurred eyes to meet Your glance of flame. - - As bread that for my daily fare is broken, - The eternal loveliness before me spread-- - Unutterable gesture--word unspoken, - In the proud silences forever said! - - The sun puts forth his strength, the reaches shimmer - With inarticulate rapture, and the proud - Waters are thrilled; the fields of ocean glimmer - With shifting light and overshadowing cloud. - - Noon upon noon in heaven takes up his station, - Day follows night, and night succeeds to day: - Your infinite and lonely meditation - Sinks with the sunset down the starry way. - - Veiled is the Vast: the heaven of evening burning. - Reveals on the large waters of the sea - Hopelessness--hopelessness--the patient yearning - And dumb caress of the Immensity. - - What message have You left for me, what token - Of Your lone love, whose laboring Will has wrought - The firmament over my head, and spoken - Unto my nothingness Your starry Thought! - - Sorrowful is the mighty Heart that reaches - Around this brief and scornful heart of mine-- - The dim curve of the melancholy beaches, - And vacancies along the lone sea-line. - - In the huge longing of the far sea-spaces, - The tremulous rim about the waters curled, - Waits the eternal Gentleness, and traces - His sad horizons ’round the fading world. - - Cloud beyond cloud, the arch of heaven goes over-- - Steep beyond steep, the patient skies descend: - The illimitable wastes and waves discover - Loneliness--loneliness--without an end. - - Inexorable Compassion, may I never - Reach the last verge and limits of Your love! - Beyond me, still beyond me melt forever - The eternal margins, fading as I move. - - - - -OF DAY CAME NIGHT - - - We lay by the sea, and knew - Darkness must make us one: - Heaven was thrilled clean through - By the trumpets of the sun, - The sea burned gold and blue. - - The sand in the pale heat - Was parched as desert sand-- - Your wrist where the veins meet, - The cool veins of your hand, - Made thirst seem bitter-sweet. - - Never a word was said - Of what must be so soon; - In longing and in dread - The golden afternoon - Burned down, till dusk was shed. - - It was not hope, nor fear, - Yet something of them both, - That held us trembling here, - Half eager and half loath - For darkness, dread but dear. - - Few were the words were spoken, - But in each other’s eyes - We read the certain token - That sealed our destinies-- - Our wings of pride were broken. - - So, while the waters paled - Around us, and the west - Fainted, our hearts that failed, - In silence were confessed. - Silence at last prevailed. - - And now up her clear stair - The evening-star began - To climb, where heaven was bare - A homing fish-hawk ran - Down avenues of air. - - Night swallowed up the sun, - And darkness, like a hood, - Sank--and the sea breathed on; - In silence and solitude - The eternal will was done. - - - - -PILGRIM - - - The cold wind cries across the rolling dunes, - The gray sails fleck the margins of the world: - I watch the rolling dunes along the barren sky, - And wan, white waters by the swift wind hurled. - - O where are Queen Faustina, and Babylon, and Tyre, - And pale Troy, lost in a silver mist of tears-- - And I, O earth, your child, more old than all these others, - What have you done to me these many thousand years! - - - - -BY THE GRAY SEA - - - Where the gray sea lay sad and vast - You turned your head away, - And we sat silently at last-- - There was no word to say: - - _By the thunder, - By the iron thunder of the sea._ - - We could not speak, for the lost hope - Of the glad days before; - We sat beside the long sea-slope, - Watching the endless shore-- - - _By the thunder, - By the iron thunder of the sea._ - - So that, as in the old despair, - I reached you pleading hands; - But you sat pale and helpless there, - Beside the barren sands: - - _By the thunder, - By the iron thunder of the sea!_ - - - - -THE FISH-HAWK - - - On the large highway of the awful air that flows - Unbounded between sea and heaven, while twilight screened - The sorrowful distances, he moved and had repose; - On the huge wind of the Immensity he leaned - His steady body in long lapse of flight--and rose - - Gradual, through broad gyres of ever-climbing rest, - Up the clear stair of the eternal sky, and stood - Throned on the summit! Slowly, with his widening breast, - Widened around him the enormous Solitude, - From the gray rim of ocean to the glowing west. - - Headlands and capes forlorn of the far coast, the land - Rolling her barrens toward the south, he, from his throne - Upon the gigantic wind, beheld: he hung--he fanned - The abyss for mighty joy, to feel beneath him strown - Pale pastures of the sea, with heaven on either hand-- - - The world with all her winds and waters, earth and air, - Fields, folds, and moving clouds. The awful and adored - Arches and endless aisles of vacancy, the fair - Void of sheer heights and hollows hailed him as her lord - And lover in the highest, to whom all heaven lay bare! - - Till from that tower of ecstasy, that baffled height, - Stooping, he sank; and slowly on the world’s wide way - Walked, with great wing on wing, the merciless, proud Might, - Hunting the huddled and lone reaches for his prey - Down the dim shore--and faded in the crumbling light. - - Slowly the dusk covered the land. Like a great hymn - The sound of moving winds and waters was; the sea - Whispered a benediction, and the west grew dim - Where evening lifted her clear candles quietly ... - Heaven, crowded with stars, trembled from rim to rim. - - - - -DISDAINFUL BEAUTY - - - On the wide waste the web of twilight, trembling - Hangs low with stars and night; - The dying day in the worn west, dissembling, - Crowns his defeat with light. - - Here by the grave, gray sea my soul sinks crying, - By beauty stabbed to death-- - “O, in the dusk of the world, let me, too, dying, - Mix with all these my breath!” - - There is no answer. In the cold heavens shining, - Star trembles unto star: - The virgin moon in the clear west declining - Hangs, like a scimitar. - - - - -MY LONELY ONE - - - Even as a hawk’s in the large heaven’s hollow - Are the great ways and gracious of your love: - No lesser flight or wearier wing may follow - In those broad gyres where you rest and move. - - Most merciless, most high, most proud, most lonely-- - In the clear space between the sky and sea - Wheel her huge orbits, where the sea-winds only - Wander the sun-roads of Immensity. - - Yet have I known your heart and of what fashion - Your love, how great, how hardly to be borne-- - Your tenderness, too perfect for compassion, - Your divine strength, too pure and proud for scorn. - - You are most beautiful, but it is given - But few to find you, fewer still to keep - Your high path through the solitude of heaven, - My lonely one, your watch upon the Deep. - - Now toward the gold glow of the sunset’s splendor - Veer your great vans. What haven in the west - Now draws you--while the mellowing light makes tender - Your dripping plumes--what islands of the blest? - - Lift me, O lift me up to you forever, - Beautiful Terror! Let your sacred might - Stoop to me here, and save--O let me never - Sink from you now, to share a lesser flight! - - Even as I pray, my wings of longing fail me, - And my heart flags. In solitude you move - Down the night’s shore: not praying shall avail me, - To lift me, fallen from your faultless love. - - - - -III - -THE LOST TRAVELLER’S DREAM - - - - -WILD THOUGHT - - - Surf of song upon my heart - Breaks forever, where thou art; - - The dark ocean in my breast, - Of wild love, may never rest: - - Still one thought upon her shore - Breaks in dream forevermore! - - - - -JOURNEY’S END - - - Forgive me, dear, if I have lost my way, - In coming home to you - Through storm and shadow of the gathering night; - If I did stray, - Still I was seeking, and I never knew - How near me burned the dear and friendly light. - - Now at your door, ere the great Dark begin, - Alone I stand, and knock: - Say not it is too late that I have come-- - O take me in, - For I am yours! Darling, unlock, unlock-- - All Time to this was but a journey home! - - - - -BELATED LOVE - - - Come home to me, are you come home to me, - O heart of mine--but in what dolorous guise! - And the great hour, O ’twas otherwise - Love had imagined it in days to be! - These pleading hands--these lips--How dreadfully, - At what strange lips and in what alien eyes - Have you sought mine? Beneath what darkening skies - Come home to me at last, come home to me? - - I would not know the reason: here upon - This breast of sorrows loose your aching breast; - Tell me again and yet again, and say - Still the eternal word, still babble on - Your voiceless tale of some unhappy quest-- - How in the night and storm you lost your way. - - - - -A LEAVE-TAKING - - - Well I remember it, that night in May, - That last, sweet night in the Old World long ago, - The last ere my departure--the dark room - That brooded ’round us, and the drowsy breath, - Out of the courtyard, of the linden-trees, - Pungent and sad. Only your hand I felt, - Reached to me in the darkness; and the beat - All through its fingers of the unconscious blood, - Your life at battle, in the silence told - Immortally to mine its plaintive tale - And doom eternal--only your hand I felt, - Reached to me in the darkness--yet it seemed - In your hand’s touch I touched your very self, - Your very presence, changeable, careless, wild-- - But O how poignant--sharp with all delight, - And gracious with dear bounties to bestow, - How greatly granted! Drowsily then at last, - In the old way, you begged me for some legend - Out of my boyhood’s record, some romance - From the far world that bore me; and my voice, - In the sweet, alien tongue, your mother-tongue, - Moved through the darkness with a peace unfeigned-- - For a grave peace was on us, and the fear - That thrilled the midnight, fell away. The street - Slumbered, save where, departing, like a ghost’s, - Faint footfalls down the farthest distance sighed; - And dwindled out forever.... So you slept. - - Well I remember it, that night in May-- - The sleep, the hushed awakenings, full of dread, - From haunted meres of horror and disdain, - From dreams of terror--and the mad return - Into the bounteous pity of two arms, - The comfort and the kindness. O the return - Forever and forever, wild and sad, - Seraphic with all weariness and pain, - Insatiate with all love--as if to slake - In one abandon all the desperate drought - Of the years to come! Upon my own I felt - The wet, salt quivering of your lips, and all - Your being fold me in, urgent to save, - Urgent to hide the approaching loneliness, - Our bitter portion; prismed in tears, the dusk - Swam ’round with dizzy color: the nightingales, - Beauty’s disdain above the war of things, - Beauty’s high pity from her virgin heights, - Our meeting hearts pierced with a single pang-- - Like a bright sword of sorrow through the breast - Driven, and like a bruising sword withdrawn. - - The sun arose-- - Fled were the nightingales, the love, the joy-- - And with him rose at last the relentless fear, - Like a harsh face never to be pushed back, - Between your face and mine; till all the terror, - The loneliness, the irrevocable fate, - In the dim twilight hugged me, and a cry, - Up from _my_ self to _your_ self, would have rent - My hesitant lips, in the great need, to you - Turned for the last compassion.... But you slept. - At peace you lay. Over you in the dawn - I leaned, and knew you truly what you were. - - Then a great love - Triumphing over sorrow, like the light - Clearing the west when sunset’s wrath has waned - Before the risen stars--a mystery--welled - Up through me radiant, helpless where you lay - In the calm pose of sleep: and above Time, - Our little passion, and the circumstance - Of temporal tumult, self to self we met; - And sundered reverent.... Faintest breath of flowers - Stirred in the twilight fragrantly, and there - The pathos of our days together filled me - With a new wonder--flooding on me came - A host of memories, as to one long dead, - Lifted beyond his living; till all seemed - Marvellous and immortal and benign. - - And now - The hour was come. Beside your quiet breast - I begged forgiveness for my many sins - Done to you, though unwitting--all the hurt-- - In a swift prayer, and even for this last-- - To wake you to your sorrow. And your lips - Forgave me--yes, in the silence. So I touched - Your lids with kisses. And you woke, and wept. - - But brave to the end with a heart-breaking bravery-- - Gallant and gracious, dear with sacred eyes, - You let me go. With a half-kiss we parted. - - - II - - Along the city-ways - Already day’s vehement tumult had begun: - Through street and justled alley, court and square, - The tireless and eternal Heart poured forth - Its myriad human faces, grave or glad, - On the old course of toil (a choral hymn - From the lips of Life) each face a testimony - Of some prefiguring love. O the delight, - The incredible bounty and sustaining will - Of passionate longing, peopling all the earth-- - And the joy of man and woman! The laughing boys! - The milkman clanking along in his cart, and there - Two bonneted old women, and there a thief, - Perhaps, with a night’s booty sneaking home! - Yet solemn all and sacred, with new eyes - I saw them then, and in each face I seemed - With a new soul to read the soul beneath; - Through love and pain and sorrow having passed - Into the breast of all humanity-- - Through love and sorrow. Yes, and for your sake, - Being human, all things human touched to love - This heart of mine, made holy; and the thought - Of the million other hearts beyond the dawn-- - The gladness, and the sadness, and the pain-- - Came back upon me like a lifting music, - Beautiful, and most sorrowful, and divine. - - Till a vast compassion - Up through the springs of all my being welled - Intolerably! Ah, even as to myself, - Unfaithful, the exuberant Bounty stooped - With arms of pity; so I longed to do-- - To lose myself at last in the Great Self - That beams upon the just and the unjust, - Carelessly shedding radiant light around: - Compassing finite hate with infinite love, - With beauty, ugliness, and death with life! - - So through that street of pouring souls I passed, - Torn between grief and ecstasy. But none - Guessed the immortal secret that I bore - Close at the fluttering heart--the fear--the joy-- - The very beat and memory in my blood, - The exquisite sense and lingering pain of you. - - - - -BUT LOVE-- - - - Flowing in the sunlight here, - The river shines like a glass, - Even as it did last year; - On the hillside the grass - Bows, as the breezes pass-- - But my love is gone, my love is gone. - - Where is she--where, and how? - Has she forgotten me yet? - Ah, she has forgotten me now! - She is too lovely for regret: - Would that I ever could forget, - My love is gone, my love is gone! - - It is so still--so still ... - The sound of a rumbling train - Rushes into the hill. - Autumn comes again - With the old wonder and pain-- - But love comes never again - - - - -ANNE - - - Belovèd--O adorable and false-- - Whom have you taken now in the dear toils? - - By what pale margins do your footsteps stray, - Or what enchanted wood? What valleys hold - The lily of your loveliness? What hills - Have known your weight upon them, what far shores? - - Twilight comes tenderly, while evening lifts - Along the pallid rim her lonely star-- - - O happy heart on which your heart is laid! - - - - -THE SILENCE - - - In the evening, in the quiet Park, we walked together - After so many and after so many years-- - We walked again in the evening, in the warm May weather, - After the partings and tears. - - And under the splendor, under the starry skies, - We walked, without sound or sigh, in a calm unbroken; - As the dead walk together in a long-lost Paradise-- - Silent, with no word spoken. - - - - -EXULTATION - - - Before the dawn the very thought of you, - That wakes me, as the morning wakes the night, - Floods all my heart with most exultant joy. - - The thought of you that rises with the stars, - When evening wheels all glittering through the dark, - Floods all my heart with most exultant joy. - - O life and joy and breath and death of me, - With every breath I draw you in like air! - O I shall die of you, of you, of you! - - Though now you banish me forevermore, - Never to look upon your face again-- - Think you that I shall sorrow for my love? - - Though I shall lie upon my bed of death - And know you have forgotten me forever-- - Think you that I shall sorrow for my love? - - O life and joy and breath and death of me, - I shall cry out exultant--and lie dead! - O I shall die of you, of you, of you! - - O love, I love you better than you know! - I love you as the water loves the sea. - I love you as the twilight loves the dark. - - The trumpets of the morning, to my heart - From shining towers blow the thought of you; - The waves of evening flood my heart with you. - - O life and joy and breath and death of me, - With every breath I draw you in like air! - O I shall die of you, of you, of you! - - - - -SONG OF SONGS - - - My heart is like a shady grove - That harbors, for a June, - My thoughts, like song-birds mad with love - Under the moon. - - On all the windy boughs they sit - And in the blowing grass-- - But one bird silently enters it, - And sings, alas! - - Then all the rest grow sad and still - That made a happy noise: - There is no sound on all the hill - But that one voice, - - Faint with the memories in his breast-- - It is the thought of _you_-- - And when it ceases, all the rest - Are silent, too. - - - - -SORROWFUL FREEDOM - - - Long days I begged of my heart to be - Released from a love that haunted me-- - The memory of a last embrace, - A tyrannous and a lovely face. - - “Free me,” I said, “from an old love, - The memory and the might thereof-- - Free to follow and take my fill - Of beauty and laughter where I will.” - - Never a word my heart replied: - But on a day the old love died; - Vanished, never to come again, - All the passion and all the pain. - - Come--we are free to take our fill - Of beauty and laughter where we will-- - O heart, are we free forevermore - From the old sorrow we loved before! - - - - -STARLESS MORNING - - - Toward starless morning, when deep night had bowed - On slumber’s pillow my unhappy head, - Through the dim room it drifted like a cloud-- - And swayed in silence by my lonely bed. - - What had they done to you, that dumbly so - You covered with your hands your quiet face-- - Dear, out of kindness, that I might not know - What horror there had wrought its dark disgrace! - - It was those hands, too passionately, too well - Loved, that betrayed you--O most piteous guest! - And to my heart, in the intolerable - Rage of despair, that shadow I had pressed, - - Mingling in a shrill cry our grief supreme-- - My sweet--my pretty! But, as I had drawn - That anguish to my arms, they clasped a dream; - And heaven glimmered with the approaching dawn. - - - - -PHANTOM - - - Along the edge of the great, moving sea-- - That moaned forever on her barren bars, - The old, sad love came back again to me, - Moving quietly under the quiet stars. - - O sad love, do not smile upon me so, - Nodding so gently with your little head-- - All the old wonder of your eyes is dead, - And the sea-winds have chilled you long ago! - - - - -LEGEND - - - Where are you hid from me, belovèd one - That I am seeking through the lonely world-- - A wanderer, on my way home to you? - - Dark is the night and perilous the road: - At many a breast in longing have I leaned, - At many a wayside worshipped; and my heart - Is tired from long travelling. - - Perhaps - In centuries to come you wait for me, - And are as yet an iris by the stream - Lifting her single blossom, or the faint - Tremulous haze upon the hills--and we - Have missed each other. - - O if it be so, - Then may this song reach to the verge of doom-- - Ages unborn--to find you where you are, - My lonely one; and like a murmuring string, - Faint with one music, endlessly repeat - - To you, not even knowing I was yours, - Her plaintive burden from the dolorous past: - Telling of one upon a hopeless quest-- - How in the dark of Time he lost his way! - - - - -IV - -THE DIVINE FANTASY - - - Brother, from what dim world of lonely light, - Trembling on heaven’s pinnacles to-night, - Is lifted your sad face of love while you - Stare upward toward me, staring upward, too, - At that faint flame which is your home, between - The leafy branches of these poplars seen-- - So hushed, so far! Perhaps to-night you scan - Your starry heaven for the star of Man, - High in the trellis of eternity - And glittering arches hung; perhaps like me - You, too, look up and wonder. Is it fair, - That world of yours? Are there great cities there, - Populous millions, hearts that beat as these, - Clear meadows and far mountains, shoreless seas, - Shadows of moving armies, thrones that shake? - Does the heart thrill for love there, does it break-- - Tell me, are there hushed gardens, quiet tombs? - And mighty poets weaving at their looms - The old, dim wisdoms that outweary Time; - And saints, and lifted saviours, and sublime - Faiths and high fortitudes beyond belief? - --All blotted out by one small poplar leaf - In the light wind of languid summer stirred! - - Brother, what news out of the night, what word - From the frontiers of mind beyond our ken, - Of mysteries unimagined yet of men, - Compassed by travail of your spirit? O - Could you but reach to us! Could we but know - Across the imperturbable old Dark - Some answering glimmer of the ancient Spark - Lifted--some token, tangible to sense, - Of the indomitable Intelligence - That thrones on matter--language visible-- - Crying, “Eternity--and all is well! - Brother, be of good cheer; we, too, have known! - Not lonely moves, not utterly alone, - Your sad fraternity through the dark of God: - But the confederate legions are abroad, - Life’s flag advances on the starry way, - And Consciousness, still battling, still at bay, - Holds the bright forts against Oblivion--” - What answering thrill would ’round the planet run! - - For we are one; all Consciousness is one, - Whatever form it wear, however dressed - In gray or glamour, in whatever breast - It lift its longing: glimmering it moves - Through the green wave; it stamps with startled hooves - The upland pastures of the world, and soars - In heaven with the eagle; on bright shores - It basks a sunny body, or in dread - Lifts from the undergrowth a snaky head - And darts a flickering tongue; it is most clear - In the lark’s throat; among the grasses here, - That couch the ant, it turns a tiny eye - Around the darkness; scampers and is shy - In the scared rabbit; through the murmuring air - Wheels with the beetle, and, where heaven is bare, - Southward with the wild crane at summer’s close, - Hungering, an eternal pilgrim goes - On quests implacable. And from the eyes - Of the poised panther gleam the cruelties - Of its stern need that roams the world, and rends - With tooth or talon; in the hawk descends - On the stunned squirrel; in the squirrel moans - As the hawk strikes; darkens the earth with bones - Of its own wreck and, hungering again, - Knows in its body the old spur. For when - Hunger, the shadow cast by death, draws near, - Life on her thousand thrones feels the one fear, - And in the lion’s roar at dusk is heard - The unassuagable, insistent word - Of urgent Being, clamorous to be. - - Wreaking and wrought upon, eternally - Mingling and mixed; inextricably blent, - Victor and vanquished, in one sacrament-- - Body with body--of delight and death, - It moves in splendor; lifts the shuddering breath - Of the spent stag; and in the mind of Man - Rebels against the miserable plan-- - Flings its frail web of thought across the path - Of suns in heaven, and in holy wrath, - On blood of murdered brothers nourished, still - Thunders to all the world, _Thou shall not kill_! - And the worm’s death is in the sparrow’s song. - - And I have seen it in the gnats that throng - Old shadowy forests, in tumultuous dance; - Or in the little measuring-worm advance, - Inch by slow inch, along the swaying stem - Of some exalted flower; or lift the hem - Of the frail butterfly’s embroidered cloak - In gentle breathings that the sun did stroke - Caressingly with fingers of his heat; - Or from the dog yearn upward, and entreat - With eyes of adoration or of fear - The great god, Man--“What message, master dear, - From the dim heights beyond me where you are?” - In the mare’s tremulous whinny, in the far - Lowing of cattle from the upland sward, - Or wail of whip-poor-wills, at twilight poured - On pools of silence plaintively, or cry - Of the lone wolf beneath the glittering sky - Of soundless winter, I have heard the same - Splendor speak forth, and utter the one name - Of Life, the dreadful, the magnificent. - - All afternoon the passion of heaven spent - On earth its fiery fury in blind, bright - Lightnings of dread and laughters of delight - Down shuddering deeps of shaken thunder, where - The delirious longing loosed its sorrowing hair - Of wind and shower and overshadowing cloud - Across the belovèd face, in darkness bowed - Or glimmering light revealed; and cried aloud - For anger of utter ecstasy; and shed - The wild love of the rushing rain that sped - To the thrilled heart, consenting, of the dim - And rapturous earth, that lifted up to him - Drowsed lips of thirsty flowers; and the cup - Of every flower for joy was lifted up, - And drank, and swayed! So, wearied out at length, - Flagged the bright pulses, and the ebbing strength, - With muttering of remembered thunders, passed - Down the large shores of evening: till at last - The exhausted heaven of twilight from afar - Shone washed of all her sorrows; and a star - Brooded above the fading storm, and saw - The winnowed reaches deepening into awe - Of gradual darkness, and the fields that lay - All drenched and wearied out at dusk of day - And the worn end of things; while far away - The receding fury moaned. - - And now they lie - In the same peace around me, and the sky - Holds up her stars; now in the rain-drenched wood - The tree-toad drinks the rain and finds it good, - And trills for joy--the sliding waters grieve - Quietly--now the bat begins to weave - With intricate motion on the cloudy loom, - Of glamourous starlight mingled and gray gloom, - His dipping flight among the darkened boughs - And dreamy vistas; and the little mouse - Furtively hurries through the lane, his eye - Turned up in terror as the owl goes by: - On softest feathers of silence overhead - Flits the dim shadow of the ancient dread, - Hooded and vague, the cruelty of his beak - Bent on old lustful mysteries.--A squeak-- - A scuffle--beating of wings--and in the lane - Silence--and the old wrong is done again, - That was ere Adam; the triumphant heart - And the defeated, each one doomed to his part, - They play it through, the old tragedy where one - Presence still wars and still is warred upon, - Slays and is slain: while fiercely all around - Shakes the eternal love-song in shrill sound, - Of grasshopper and cricket--sleepless flow - The immortal tides of longing to and fro - On waves of music; endless is the prayer - Of life to the belovèd, everywhere - Lifted in adoration: on dark shores - Beats the insistent passion that implores - The one dear breast of pity or disdain, - To be reborn, to be reborn again-- - Nor perish wholly! The blind earth is thrilled - As with vague rites accomplished, dreams fulfilled, - Marriage and mystic union; all along - Her brimming meadows rings the bridal song - And chaunt ecstatic: that great heart of hers - Is touched now the eternal longing stirs - From hill to hollow and hollow to clear hill - In many voices mingled, or the still - Ecstasy of the firefly that trails - Among the shadows where the starlight fails, - His body’s burning love. Forever flows - The dreadful drama to its stately close - And endless ending--the fierce carnival - Of death and passion, wherein each and all - Mix, and are mingled, slaughter, blend, and pass - Each into other--the high poem that has - No end and no beginning, that the one - Self in all living forms beneath the sun, - And on all worlds around him and above, - Weaves on the strands of hunger, death, and love. - - I see it all, I hear it all, and lie - Under my swaying poplars, and the sky - Is fretted with frail leaves. The mortal dream - Is in my heart: I hear the night-hawk’s scream - Shatter the silver silences, I hear - The owl’s clear tremolo rise over-clear-- - The mouse’s blood along his veins has made - His love-note lovelier and the night afraid - Of beauty’s dreadful secret--and I know - Soft shapes of stealth that in the darkness go, - Of furry lusts and gnawing hungers, small - Twittering things obscene, that flit or crawl - In furtive secrecy, vague mouths and blurred - Of the night creature or nocturnal bird-- - Amorphous moth and bat-wing--and the earth, - With all her burrows, nooks and nests of birth - Crowded, and wreck of many a perished might, - By the ebbed waters of Life’s fierce delight - Washed up on shores of silence--spoiled and spurned - Altars where once the sacred fire burned-- - Forms flowing back into the Formlessness; - In a supreme embrace, a long caress, - Mixing their bodies with the mother mould-- - And all the heaven of stars around me rolled, - Whose brooding eyes have stared so many an age - Upon this theatre of lust and rage, - Of death and adoration. And a breeze - Rustles the branches of the poplar-trees. - - Dear Spark, that shinest in the solitude! - One Consciousness, that in the brotherhood - Of all earth’s living creatures movest on - The shaken ramparts of Oblivion-- - Whose starry cry, across the darkness hurled, - Makes music in the silence of the world! - Life, whose sole splendor in red slaughter spills - The blood of its own breast; in many wills - Wars on the one Will; and in wrath or dread - Feeds on itself and, on itself being fed, - Shines forth in song and color; gilds the dress - Of the green-fly; and pours its loveliness - In rapture on the earth; in theatres - Of crowded congregation sits--nor stirs-- - Watching itself, itself the spectacle; - And builds the swallow’s breast, and shapes the shell - And all these mansions of its thought that are - Between the morning and the evening-star, - On earth, in heaven, or in the glimmering caves - And grottoes of the world below the waves-- - Butchers the ox, and, gladdened by his meat, - In the young mother’s downward smile is sweet; - Or, sated on his body, walks abroad - In symphonies, and poems, and prayers to God; - Sins, and has conscience and, repenting, sins; - And in the lowly patient spider spins - Its fragile web; and in these words of mine - Flings out its groping utterance, line by line, - Across the intangible abyss of thought-- - With infinite passion, infinite patience wrought-- - Dread Loveliness! Be strong in me, be strong, - To utter forth your meaning in my song! - - - - -THE LION-HOUSE - - - Always the heavy air, - The dreadful cage, the low - Murmur of voices, where - Some Force goes to and fro - In an immense despair! - - As through a haunted brain-- - With tireless footfalls - The Obsession moves again, - Trying the floor, the walls, - Forever, but in vain. - - In vain, proud Force! A might, - Shrewder than yours, did spin - Around your rage that bright - Prison of steel, wherein - You pace for my delight. - - And O, my heart, what Doom, - What warier Will has wrought - The cage, within whose room - Paces your burning thought, - For the delight of Whom? - - -[Illustration] - - - - -Transcriber’s Note: The first illustration is the cover; the last -illustration is the publisher’s logo. - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Black Panther, by John Hall Wheelock - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BLACK PANTHER *** - -***** This file should be named 63622-0.txt or 63622-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/3/6/2/63622/ - -Produced by Charlene Taylor, Charlie Howard, and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This -file was produced from images generously made available -by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: The Black Panther - A book of poems - -Author: John Hall Wheelock - -Release Date: November 3, 2020 [EBook #63622] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BLACK PANTHER *** - - - - -Produced by Charlene Taylor, Charlie Howard, and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This -file was produced from images generously made available -by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) - - - - - - -</pre> - - -<div class="figcenter" id="cover" style="max-width: 30em;"> - <img src="images/cover.jpg" alt="Cover" /> -</div> - -<h1 class="wspace">THE BLACK PANTHER</h1> - -<hr /> - -<div class="newpage p4 center wspace vspace"> -<p class="xxlarge"> -<span class="bold">THE BLACK PANTHER</span><br /> - -<span class="xsmall">A BOOK OF POEMS</span></p> - -<p class="p4"> -BY<br /> -<span class="larger">JOHN HALL WHEELOCK</span></p> - -<p class="small">AUTHOR OF<br /> - -“THE HUMAN FANTASY” <span class="in4">“THE BELOVÈD ADVENTURE”</span><br /> -“LOVE AND LIBERATION” <span class="in1">“DUST AND LIGHT,” ETC.</span></p> - -<p class="p4 larger"> -NEW YORK<br /> -CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS<br /> -1922 -</p> -</div> - -<hr /> - -<p class="newpage p4 center small vspace"> -<span class="smcap">Copyright, 1922, by</span><br /> -CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS<br /> - -Printed in the United States of America -</p> - -<hr /> -<p class="newpage p4 narrow">The author thanks the editors of the following, for kind -permission to reprint here various poems first published in -their pages: <em>All’s Well</em>, <em>The American Magazine</em>, <em>The Art -World</em>, <em>The Bellman</em>, <em>The Bookman</em>, <em>The Century Magazine</em>, -<em>Contemporary Verse</em>, <em>The Dial</em>, <em>The Forum</em>, <em>The Freeman</em>, -<em>Harper’s Monthly</em>, <em>The International</em>, <em>The Literary Review of -The New York Evening Post</em>, <em>The Lyric</em>, <em>McClure’s Magazine</em>, -<em>The Outlook</em>, <em>Poetry</em>, <em>The Poetry Journal</em>, <em>The Poetry Review</em>, -<em>Reedy’s Mirror</em>, <em>Scribner’s Magazine</em>, <em>The Smart Set</em>, <em>The Yale -Review</em>, <em>Youth</em>. Thanks are also due to Messrs. Harcourt, -Brace and Company for permission to reprint “Sea-Horizons,” -first published in the anthology, <em>Enchanted Years</em>.</p> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_vii">vii</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="CONTENTS">CONTENTS</h2> -</div> - -<table id="toc" class="narrow" summary="Contents"> -<tr class="small"> - <td class="tdl"></td> - <td class="tdr">PAGE</td> -</tr> -<tr class="sec"> - <td class="tdl"><i>The Black Panther</i></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_3">3</a></td> -</tr> -<tr class="sec"> - <td class="tdl"><i>I. Dim Wisdoms</i></td> -</tr> -<tr> - <td class="tdl">NIGHT HAS ITS FEAR</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_7">7</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> - <td class="tdl">THE SORROWFUL MASQUERADE</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_12">12</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> - <td class="tdl">OCTOBER MOONLIGHT</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_13">13</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> - <td class="tdl">THE FLESH AND THE DREAM</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_15">15</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> - <td class="tdl">VAUDEVILLE</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_16">16</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> - <td class="tdl">1914</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_18">18</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> - <td class="tdl">THE BELOVÈD</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_19">19</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> - <td class="tdl">PROUD DOOM</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_21">21</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> - <td class="tdl">THE SECRET ONE</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_22">22</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> - <td class="tdl">THE UNDISSUADABLE AUSTERITY</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_25">25</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> - <td class="tdl">BLIND PLAYERS</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_26">26</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> - <td class="tdl">TRAVAIL</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_28">28</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> - <td class="tdl">THE POET TELLS OF HIS LOVE</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_29">29</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> - <td class="tdl">THE BURIED DREAM</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_31">31</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> - <td class="tdl">HAUNTED EARTH</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_32">32</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> - <td class="tdl">LONG AGO</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_34">34</a><span class="pagenum" id="Page_viii">viii</span></td> -</tr> -<tr> - <td class="tdl">TCHAIKOVSKY: FIFTH SYMPHONY</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_35">35</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> - <td class="tdl">MIRROR</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_36">36</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> - <td class="tdl">PLAINT</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_38">38</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> - <td class="tdl">ANDANTE</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_39">39</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> - <td class="tdl">THE DEAR MYSTERY</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_42">42</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> - <td class="tdl">IN THE DARK CITY</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_43">43</a></td> -</tr> -<tr class="sec"> - <td class="tdl"><i>II. Space and Solitude</i></td> -</tr> -<tr> - <td class="tdl">IMMENSITY</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_47">47</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> - <td class="tdl">SEA-HORIZONS</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_48">48</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> - <td class="tdl">OF DAY CAME NIGHT</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_51">51</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> - <td class="tdl">PILGRIM</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_53">53</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> - <td class="tdl">BY THE GRAY SEA</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_54">54</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> - <td class="tdl">THE FISH-HAWK</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_55">55</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> - <td class="tdl">DISDAINFUL BEAUTY</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_57">57</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> - <td class="tdl">MY LONELY ONE</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_58">58</a></td> -</tr> -<tr class="sec"> - <td class="tdl"><i>III. The Lost Traveller’s Dream</i></td> -</tr> -<tr> - <td class="tdl">WILD THOUGHT</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_63">63</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> - <td class="tdl">JOURNEY’S END</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_64">64</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> - <td class="tdl">BELATED LOVE</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_65">65</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> - <td class="tdl">A LEAVE-TAKING</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_66">66</a><span class="pagenum" id="Page_ix">ix</span></td> -</tr> -<tr> - <td class="tdl">BUT LOVE—</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_72">72</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> - <td class="tdl">ANNE</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_73">73</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> - <td class="tdl">THE SILENCE</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_74">74</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> - <td class="tdl">EXULTATION</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_75">75</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> - <td class="tdl">SONG OF SONGS</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_77">77</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> - <td class="tdl">SORROWFUL FREEDOM</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_78">78</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> - <td class="tdl">STARLESS MORNING</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_79">79</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> - <td class="tdl">PHANTOM</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_80">80</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> - <td class="tdl">LEGEND</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_81">81</a></td> -</tr> -<tr class="sec"> - <td class="tdl"><i>IV. The Divine Fantasy</i></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_85">85</a></td> -</tr> -<tr class="sec"> - <td class="tdl"><i>The Lion-House</i></td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_97">97</a></td> -</tr> -</table> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">3</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_BLACK_PANTHER">THE BLACK PANTHER</h2> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0 drop-cap"><span class="firstword">There</span> is a panther caged within my breast;</div> - <div class="verse indent4">But what his name, there is no breast shall know</div> - <div class="verse indent4">Save mine, nor what it is that drives him so,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Backward and forward, in relentless quest—</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That silent rage, baffled but unsuppressed,</div> - <div class="verse indent4">The soft pad of those stealthy feet that go</div> - <div class="verse indent4">Over my body’s prison to and fro,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Trying the walls forever without rest.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">All day I feed him with my living heart;</div> - <div class="verse indent4">But when the night puts forth her dreams and stars,</div> - <div class="verse indent8">The inexorable Frenzy reawakes:</div> - <div class="verse indent4">His wrath is hurled upon the trembling bars,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The eternal passion stretches me apart,</div> - <div class="verse indent8">And I lie silent—but my body shakes.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="wide" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h2 class="nobreak larger" id="I">I<br /> -<span class="subhead">DIM WISDOMS</span></h2> -</div> - -<hr class="wide" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">7</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="NIGHT_HAS_ITS_FEAR">NIGHT HAS ITS FEAR</h2> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2 drop-cap"><span class="firstword">Night</span> has its fear:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As the slow dusk advances, and the day</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Fades out in fire along the starry way,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The ancient doubt draws near.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">Vague shapes of <span class="locked">dread—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Soft owl, or moth, and timid, twittering <span class="locked">things—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Move through the growing dark; on furtive wings</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The bat flits overhead.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">And in the house</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The death-watch ticks, the dust of time is stirred</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With timorous footfalls, in the night is heard</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The gnawing of the mouse.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">Through the old room</div> - <div class="verse indent0 padr4">What phantoms throng, what shapes that to and fro</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Tremble, and lips that laughed here long <span class="locked">ago—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent2">Gone back into the gloom!</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">8</span> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">A whip-poor-will</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Bleakly across the baleful country cries</div> - <div class="verse indent0">From a blurred mouth; and from the west replies</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Echo—and all is still.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">Now from her shell,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Her body’s prison, with the ancient doubt</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And terror stricken, the scared soul looks out,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Asking if all be well.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">Great kings have been,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Poets, and mighty prophets—shapes have cried</div> - <div class="verse indent0">About the world, or moved in mournful pride;</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And are no longer seen.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">From many lands</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Their plaint was lifted; from how many a shore</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Sorrows have wailed, that are not any more!</div> - <div class="verse indent2">They sleep with folded hands.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">They have their day:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Their cry is loud about the earth, who come</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To the one end; the singing lips grow dumb</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Always in the one way.</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">9</span> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">Though they implore,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Brief is the plea, inflexible the fate!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Silence has the last word; and then—the great</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Silence, forevermore.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">Pondering these,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The fretful spirit in bewilderment</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Quickens with a vague doubt, and, not content,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Broods—and is ill at ease.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">Her being is</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Throned on so frail a pulse; such fleeting breath</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Bears up her dream across the gulf of death</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And the obscure abyss.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">Always she hears</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The hurtling chariots of the hurrying blood,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Her shuttling breath that in the solitude</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Weaves the one self she wears.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">Now first the vast</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Veil over heaven is rent, and bares the whole</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Shining Reality; whereat the soul</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Sickens, and is aghast!</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">10</span> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">Darkness reveals</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The tragic truth; her will sinks hopeless wings</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Before the inexorable Fact of things,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Humbling the dread she feels.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">With the old Awes</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Confronted and the flaming Mystery,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">She may not speak; but pondering, suddenly</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Grows silent, and withdraws.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">She may not bear</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That sight: the spangled heavens, from east to west,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Stretch out too wide the confines of the breast,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Straining in wonder there.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">Upon what Brow</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of awful eminence—O thought that <span class="locked">stuns!—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Is laid that chaplet of a million suns,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Upon what Forehead now?</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">Who was it wrought</div> - <div class="verse indent0">This universal glory all around,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of glittering worlds forever without <span class="locked">bound?—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent2">Great Poet, what a Thought!</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">11</span> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">It is a Word</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Unutterable that is written there;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The spirit, gazing, is one voiceless prayer,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Careless if it be heard.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">Her thoughts ascend,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Star beyond star, height beyond aching height</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Upward, in adoration infinite,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Forever, without end.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">So <em>shall</em> it be!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Till heaven yield her sceptre; till the throne</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of night be shaken, and the Face be known</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Beyond eternity:</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">Till God divide</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And rend asunder the embroidered hem</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of darkness; till the starry diadem</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And crown be set aside!</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">12</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_SORROWFUL_MASQUERADE">THE SORROWFUL MASQUERADE</h2> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0 drop-cap"><span class="firstword">Even</span> as to a music, stately and sad,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The young girl’s feet begin to move in a dance,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And curiously, for joy, shift and advance;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">So to a mournful waltz, sombre and sweet,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">All laughing things move with delighted <span class="locked">feet—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">So all things that draw light and laughing breath</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Move to the mournful waltz of life and death:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Comedy is a girl dancing in time</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To the tragic pipes, sorrowful and sublime;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And ever she laughs back, and as she skips</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Mimics the mournful music with her lips;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Then, for sheer anger at her own pretense,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Sobs violently at her own vehemence;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And mocks her tears. But when the pipings sleep,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">She needs must cover up her face and weep.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">13</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="OCTOBER_MOONLIGHT">OCTOBER MOONLIGHT</h2> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0 h drop-cap"><span class="firstword">Heaven</span> is like an empty room to-night;</div> - <div class="verse indent2">From rim to chilly rim</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Wells the clear radiance of the cold moonlight,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And the earth-ways are dim.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Who has departed from this perfect place!</div> - <div class="verse indent2">What fiery one here set</div> - <div class="verse indent0">His throne in splendor, whom, vanished now, the face</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Of heaven remembers yet!</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Emptiness—emptiness—the skies are bare,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And the stark earth no less</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Grows vacant as a memory: everywhere</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Sleeps the cold loveliness.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Old is the earth, too old; her voice is shrill</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Against the end of <span class="locked">things—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">To the inevitable her bitter will</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Grows humbler as she sings.</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">14</span> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Now from my breast the very soul takes flight,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Leaving her chambers bare</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of all save lonely memory and <span class="locked">moonlight—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent2">And Song is silent there.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">15</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_FLESH_AND_THE_DREAM">THE FLESH AND THE DREAM</h2> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0 t drop-cap"><span class="firstword">The</span> baffled dreamer, the defeated Christ</div> - <div class="verse indent2">That for your love upon the cross-tree <span class="locked">hung—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">O take Him to your bosom, give Him rest</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Close at the wanton wonder of your breast,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">O carnal World, forever well and young!</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">16</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="VAUDEVILLE">VAUDEVILLE</h2> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0 w drop-cap"><span class="firstword">When</span> to a cheap and tawdry tune the orchestra cried out,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Frantic, in violent syncopation, and began</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Your holy, adorable body in mournful grace to move about</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Through the old, devious motions, the device of <span class="locked">man—</span></div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">How suddenly then, silent magnificence, you put to shame</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The crowded and garish theatre, the strangled cries</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of flute and trumpet! O mortal body, bearer of our flame</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Through the drear lands of death, flower of the eternities!</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Revered, reviled, wept and adored, beseeched, cried out upon</div> - <div class="verse indent2">By ravening lips of the ages—the sacred source of things,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That glimmered in Thrace, that shone in Rome, that swayed in Babylon,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Here moves to the vile throb of castanets and strings.</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">17</span> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">O through what generations have you lured, what secret ways,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Man’s fainting heart to be reborn! What splendors move</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Deep in his breast when, dolorous, your reluctant beauty sways</div> - <div class="verse indent2">In the old weary rhythms of eternal love!</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">18</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="Y1914">1914</h2> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0 i drop-cap"><span class="firstword">I lift</span> my gaze beyond the night, and see,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Above the banners of Man’s hate unfurled,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The holy figure that on Calvary</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Stretched arms out wide enough for all the world.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">19</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_BELOVED">THE BELOVÈD</h2> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0 l drop-cap"><span class="firstword">Life,</span> Belovèd, I lay my heart against Your heart,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Long, long I peer into the dark pool of Your eyes;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Never will I forsake You, O adorable One!</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">I cannot comprehend You, but I love You.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In the shadow of Your locks I hide my eyes from the terrors;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But You are not greatly <span class="locked">concerned—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Closer and closer I draw toward the dear Face.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">See—I set my lips against Your lips,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But You do not answer:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Steadfast and grave beyond me Your eyes are burning,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As of one that dreams.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">I am clinging here at Your heart!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I am singing my love of You for sheer joy!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Mother, what is it that trembles on Your lashes so <span class="locked">soft—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">And Your lips are salt as the taste of the sea?</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Can it be for me Your eyes are brimming, Mother,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Even as they smile?</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">20</span> - <div class="verse indent0">Can they be for me, these drops on Your lips so warm?</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Dear One, do I understand at last!</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">O holy draught, wine of the world, bewildering and bitter-sweet!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Sacred tears, from the depths of what wild love welling!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Deeper and deeper let me drink and <span class="locked">draw—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Nirvana, divine oblivion....</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Bitter is the taste of Your lips, Belovèd!</div> - </div> - <div class="tb">* * * * *</div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Though I lie in the darkness, yet often do I remember You—and <span class="locked">wonder—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">And the touch of Your lips, how strange, and how sad.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">21</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="PROUD_DOOM">PROUD DOOM</h2> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0 drop-cap"><span class="firstword">The</span> crucifixion of Beauty on the cross</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Of mortal destiny—the eternal <span class="locked">law—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">The thorny crown of death about her brows</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Fills me with anger—then with sudden awe:</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">So dear, so lovely her adorable sorrow</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Shows in the darkness, ’mid the tragic doom,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The very heart in me leaps up with laughter,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And hastens, proud and secret, toward the tomb.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">22</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_SECRET_ONE">THE SECRET ONE</h2> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0 h drop-cap"><span class="firstword">Here,</span> by this frame and network of the flesh</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And wires of her control</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Surrounded, central in her subtle mesh</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And secret, sits the soul,</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Urgent through all the body, while each part</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Obeys, and all are <span class="locked">one—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">While in her dungeons labors the lone heart</div> - <div class="verse indent2">To make her will be done.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">She reins the forces in their wild career</div> - <div class="verse indent2">That bear her, as they go,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Over the dark abyss; and knows how sheer</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Reaches the gulf below.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">How dubious her life and slenderly</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Hangs, by a scarlet thread,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Between eternity and <span class="locked">eternity—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent2">She guesses, wise in dread;</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">23</span> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">And ever watchful, ever wary, set</div> - <div class="verse indent2">In the centre all alone,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Feels ’round her cautiously if any threat</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Be made against the throne.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0 padr2">Sometimes along her nerves the voice of pain</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Bears tidings to her hate</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And frantic wrath, that the old foe again</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Is clamorous at the <span class="locked">gate—</span></div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">She rages up and down, and to and fro</div> - <div class="verse indent2">In timid anger runs:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">If the frontiers be menaced, it is known</div> - <div class="verse indent2">All over, and at once.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">She hears her breast of sorrows night and day</div> - <div class="verse indent2">At labor; ’round her brood</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The old oblivions, where she sits at bay;</div> - <div class="verse indent2">She hears the battling blood.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Echoes assail her from far worlds that lie</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Beyond the bourne of <span class="locked">these—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Contact and color and the angry cry</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Of the realities</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">24</span> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Beat on the brain forever; the high dream,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">By stratagem of speech,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Enters her portals, where she sits supreme</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And silent, pondering each:</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Weighing and challenging, for weal or woe,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">All rumors, sending out</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The emissaries of her will, that go</div> - <div class="verse indent2">To the frontiers about.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">But most she loves the hour that beauty brings,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Of rapture and release</div> - <div class="verse indent0">From the crude hunger and the cry of things,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The hour of her <span class="locked">peace—</span></div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">When, by the inner light that floods her cell,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The spirit, even as here,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Travails, in secrecy and joy, to tell</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Her passion and her fear.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Now to the listening soul in you who read</div> - <div class="verse indent2">These lines, she tells it <span class="locked">all—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">How dear her day, how dark shall be, indeed,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The hour when night must fall.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">25</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_UNDISSUADABLE_AUSTERITY">THE UNDISSUADABLE AUSTERITY</h2> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0 l drop-cap"><span class="firstword">Less</span> than it is we would the Truth should seem:</div> - <div class="verse indent2 padr6">Holy and marvellous the Actual <span class="locked">is—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent2">But stern her lips, and bitter is her kiss</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Upon the brows of dream.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">26</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="BLIND_PLAYERS">BLIND PLAYERS</h2> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0 h drop-cap"><span class="firstword">Day</span> breaks, and the old drama</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Repeats itself anew:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The hind wakes to be hunted,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The huntsman to <span class="locked">pursue—</span></div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">The lover and the belovèd,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Each one doomed to his part;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The victor and the vanquished,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The hushed and the hurrying <span class="locked">heart—</span></div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">In terror and in triumph</div> - <div class="verse indent2">They play it through again,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The old, unchanging drama</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Of passion and of pain,</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">As the great Will has willed it,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">That, in all forms being cast,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Wars on Itself forever.</div> - <div class="verse indent2">O may they at the <span class="locked">last—</span></div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">The falcon, and the fledgling</div> - <div class="verse indent2">He stoops to from the sky;</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">27</span> - <div class="verse indent0">The lips that are so eager,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The lips that would <span class="locked">deny—</span></div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">When the old war is ended,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">When the stern Will is done,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Meet in eternal pity</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And know themselves as one!</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">28</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="TRAVAIL">TRAVAIL</h2> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0 drop-cap"><span class="firstword">Before</span> the sacred beauty of the morn</div> - <div class="verse indent2">How fade the wrangling wisdoms of the earth!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Wisdom is beauty in the womb, unborn;</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Wisdom is beauty laboring for birth.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Wisdom, the ghost of Beauty, in the wide</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Womb of the world lies clamoring for life,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">While the white Beauty, the immortal Bride,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Sits throned upon the summits void of strife.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">So the bright flower, bending from the soil,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Sums up and scorns the wisdom of the sage;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And Helen’s beauty, soaring beyond toil,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The laboring beauty of the poet’s page.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">So, when the veils of mystery are furled,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Earth’s wisdom blooms in heaven’s beauty above ...</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Beauty is all the wisdom of the world</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Uttered by the seraphic lips of love!</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">29</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_POET_TELLS_OF_HIS_LOVE">THE POET TELLS OF HIS LOVE</h2> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0 h drop-cap"><span class="firstword">How</span> shall I sing of Her that is</div> - <div class="verse indent2">My life’s long rapture and <span class="locked">despair—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Sorrow eternal—Loveliness,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">To whom each heart-beat is a prayer!</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Utterly, endlessly, alone</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Possessing me, yet <span class="locked">unpossessed—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">The dark, the drear belovèd One</div> - <div class="verse indent2">That takes the tribute of this breast:</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Dæmon disconsolate, in vain,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">In vain petitioned and <span class="locked">implored—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">How many a midnight of disdain</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Darkly and dreadfully adored!</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Beauty, the virgin, evermore</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Out of these arms with laughter <span class="locked">fled—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Vanished—a voice by slope and shore</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Haunting the world—Illusion <span class="locked">dread—</span></div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">30</span> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Most secret Siren, on whose coast,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">’Mid spray of perishing song, are hurled</div> - <div class="verse indent0">All desolate lovers, all the lost</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Souls, and half-poets of the world:</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Through sleepless nights and lonely days</div> - <div class="verse indent2">In tears and terror served and <span class="locked">sought—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Light beyond light—the supreme Face</div> - <div class="verse indent2">That blinds the adoring eyes of thought!</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">How shall I sing of Her? Nay all,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">All song, all sorrow, all silence of</div> - <div class="verse indent0">This desperate heart that is Her thrall,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Trembles and tries to tell my love!</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">31</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_BURIED_DREAM">THE BURIED DREAM</h2> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0 i drop-cap"><span class="firstword">I hid</span> a dream amid the sands of Time,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And said, “Now will I go upon my <span class="locked">way—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">I shall be free henceforward from this time,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And full of laughter all the livelong day.”</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">But it came following like the midnight voice</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Of my true love behind her <span class="locked">lattice-bars—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">And it came following like the silver voice</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Of my lost childhood strayed beyond the stars:</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Like my dead self, so laughable, so sad,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">So foolish and so lovable it <span class="locked">rang—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">That, for sheer laughter, I was very sad,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And took it back into my heart, and sang.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">32</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="HAUNTED_EARTH">HAUNTED EARTH</h2> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2 drop-cap"><span class="firstword">Heaven</span> at last</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Is bared, and the whole world one radiant <span class="locked">room—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0 padr6">Black are the shadows, in great pools of gloom</div> - <div class="verse indent2">By copse and thicket cast.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">The cattle browse</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With sound of gentle breathing, and their breath</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Is mild in glimmering meadows, or beneath</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Drooped branches, where they drowse;</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">While ’mongst the chill</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Shadows, and cold, clear moonlight all about,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">A single bat goes dipping in and out</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Softly; and all is still.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">Silence <span class="locked">around—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Save for a cricket! Lapped in slumb’rous peace</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Lie hill and meadowland, the shining seas</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Lap on them without sound.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">It is earth’s cry</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Lifted in adoration: the old dream,</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">33</span> - <div class="verse indent0">Beauty, is with her, and her hour supreme</div> - <div class="verse indent2">That goes so swiftly by.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">Too well she knows</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The sweet Illusion, from no earthly shore</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Visitant, the bright word that evermore</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Troubles her dark repose.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">Her heart lies <span class="locked">bare—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Drunken, drunken, she lifts a dreamy breast;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Hour by hour, in rapture and unrest</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Flows the unending prayer.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">The path of night</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Reaches, from rim to rim, a radiant road</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Whereon the exalted Beauty walks abroad</div> - <div class="verse indent2">In wonder and wild light.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent2">Upon what eyes,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Lifted in homesickness, now falls again</div> - <div class="verse indent0 padr8">The loveliness that haunts the world with <span class="locked">pain—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent2">Light out of Paradise!</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">34</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="LONG_AGO">LONG AGO</h2> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0 a w drop-cap"><span class="firstword">Ah,</span> once your quiet eyes were calm and deep</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And wistful with much dreaming; long ago</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Your solemn lips, so innocent of woe</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And delicately parted, seemed to keep</div> - <div class="verse indent2">A secret still unsaid, and murmured low:</div> - <div class="verse indent2">But that was long ago.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">And I, who saw and loved you from afar,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Prayed a hushed prayer, the first I ever prayed,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">That God might keep you safe; and unafraid</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I looked up through the night at my one star,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Moving mysteriously and bright-arrayed.</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And silently I prayed.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">While you passed singing tenderly and low,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Wandering through life’s meadows with slow tread,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Death laid his kiss on your belovèd head:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But that was long ago.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">35</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="TCHAIKOVSKY_FIFTH_SYMPHONY">TCHAIKOVSKY: FIFTH SYMPHONY</h2> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0 w drop-cap"><span class="firstword">My</span> heart cried out in wonder: Can it be,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The form, from which this thrilling passion flows</div> - <div class="verse indent0">On tides of beauty and eternal tone</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Audibly now before the very sense</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of thronging thousands, somewhere in the clay</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of Russia lies, with folded hands—relapsed</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Into the Formless?</div> - <div class="verse indent22">And my mind replied:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The longing that so labors for release</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Not wholly in that transient form was trapped</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Wherein we perish miserably <span class="locked">here—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">But has escaped into the form supreme,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">A deathless body; and now walks abroad</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Among the generations of mankind,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Trailing the robes of the immortal woe.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">And still that music poured. O sacred heart</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And secret, well-head of those streams of <span class="locked">song—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Are you content! How is it with you now,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">O breast whose sorrows overflowed the world!</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">36</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="MIRROR">MIRROR</h2> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0 h drop-cap"><span class="firstword">On</span> the wide sea of sleep</div> - <div class="verse indent2">I launch my gliding boat:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Over the rhythmic Deep</div> - <div class="verse indent2">On flowing tides I float.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">The curving shore around</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Fades in the pale <span class="locked">starlight—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">A slumbering, sleepy sound</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Goes drifting through the night.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">It is the music of dreams</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Along the horizon blown,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">It stirs the glimmering streams</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Where the pale stars lie strown.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">The stars shine in the Deep,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Reflected from afar;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">My eyes tremble with sleep,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Reflecting sea and star.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">My eyes look up at me</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Out of the mirrored eyes,</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">37</span> - <div class="verse indent0">And in their depths I see</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Mirrored the stars and skies.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Around—around—around</div> - <div class="verse indent2">My boat whirls with the stream;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I feel a dizzy sound</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Around me, like a dream.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Where may I moor my bark?</div> - <div class="verse indent2">How may I lift my head?</div> - <div class="verse indent0">What is that silence? <span class="locked">Hark—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent2">The sound of dreams is fled!</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">The breath of slumber lies,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Like perfume, on the Deep:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Night with a thousand eyes</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Stares at herself in sleep.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">38</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="PLAINT">PLAINT</h2> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0 b drop-cap"><span class="firstword">Brief</span> is Man’s travail here, and transitory</div> - <div class="verse indent4">His wrath that soon is <span class="locked">spent—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent2">Brief his lament,</div> - <div class="verse indent4">Lifted in vain against the harsh decrees</div> - <div class="verse indent4">Of the high Destinies</div> - <div class="verse indent2">That move not for the murmur of his woe:</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Even as snow</div> - <div class="verse indent0">On sunny meadows, as a lover’s story</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Told in an April twilight long ago,</div> - <div class="verse indent4">Brief is he even as <span class="locked">these—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">His little hour of tumult or of <span class="locked">glory—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent4">And to what end devised we may not guess,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Considering, as we go</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Toward the same shadows, bearing the same spark,</div> - <div class="verse indent4">His vanity and utter nothingness.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Yet in the mighty Dark</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Dear is the spirit; grievously we know</div> - <div class="verse indent4">Earth has one burden more, one soul the less.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">39</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="ANDANTE">ANDANTE</h2> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0 drop-cap"><span class="firstword">The</span> evening steals like an ocean around your playing,</div> - <div class="verse indent4">Whose perfect tones move on the sombre Deep</div> - <div class="verse indent2">With a grave gesture, and sigh into a sleep,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">George, where your hands, along the piano straying,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">An intricate rhythm keep.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">And all the room is starry with your dreaming,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And limitless and vague. O the white square</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Of the window-pane shimmers behind you there,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Framing the street, where the first lights are gleaming,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Transfigured now and fair!</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Now, while the heaven of night grows vast above her,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The soul from her lone dream has sure release;</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The tumult and the ancient struggles <span class="locked">cease—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">The wars that Beauty wages on her lover</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Dwindle into a peace,</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">When Schumann speaks so firmly and so sadly,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And all the twilight rustles, wave on wave.</div> - <div class="verse indent2">O, at that smile his wondering spirit gave,</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">40</span> - <div class="verse indent0">What new smile in all things shines back so gladly,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Grown dignified and grave!</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">The curtains by the window rise and flutter,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The ornaments on the mantel, row on row,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Seem touched with a melancholy of long <span class="locked">ago—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">What is it the music dreams, but cannot utter?</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Schumann—we know, we know.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Ah George, what shall be said to you who feel <span class="locked">it—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent2">All the half-hope and passion unexpressed</div> - <div class="verse indent2">When twilight heaves more gently in the breast!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Ah George, but you, when words would fain reveal it,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Smile—and divine the rest.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">O wrap me in Beethoven’s storm and thunder!</div> - <div class="verse indent2">My baffled spirit, with abated breath,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Flutters upon the verge of life and <span class="locked">death—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">And all my being, whirled along in wonder,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Dies between breath and breath.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Let me endure, within a single pulsing</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Of the quick heart, in a storm of showering rain</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Of sound, all joy, all grief—each breath again</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">41</span> - <div class="verse indent0">Live through a life complete, in one convulsing</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Moment of rapturous pain!</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0 padr2">Silence—the lamplight, through the window streaming,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Falls on the listless keyboard, smooth and <span class="locked">white—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent2">Remembered music dreams in the dull light;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And you, too, George, sit silently and dreaming,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Alone, into the night.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">42</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_DEAR_MYSTERY">THE DEAR MYSTERY</h2> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0 j drop-cap"><span class="firstword">Joy,</span> and the triumph and the doom of gladness</div> - <div class="verse indent0 padr2">Make in my breast a music sweet as sadness;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Shall I not sing for sorrow, and again</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Cry out, for the sheer joyousness of pain!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">For all life’s moods go murmuring like strings</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In a low chord, and all things sound all things,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Through alternations of the grave and glad:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Yet, in the end, all things are grave and sad.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I feel all things, but cannot comprehend;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And run, laughing and weeping, to the end</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of the dear mystery, the fated <span class="locked">race—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">And the deep darkness covers up my face.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">43</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="IN_THE_DARK_CITY">IN THE DARK CITY</h2> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0 drop-cap"><span class="firstword">There</span> is a harper plays</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Through the long watches of the lonely night</div> - <div class="verse indent0">When, like a cemetery,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Sleeps the dark city, with her millions, laid each in his tomb.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">I feel it in my dream, but when I <span class="locked">wake—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Suddenly, like some secret thing not to be overheard,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">It <span class="locked">ceases—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">And the gray night grows dumb</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent40">Only in memory</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Linger those veiled adagios, fading, fading ...</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Till, with the morning, they are lost.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">What door was opened then?</div> - <div class="verse indent0">What worlds, undreamed of, lie around us in our sleep,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That yet we may not know?</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Where is it one sat playing</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Over and over, with such high and dreadful peace,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The passion and sorrow of the eternal doom?</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="wide" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h2 class="nobreak larger" id="II">II<br /> -<span class="subhead">SPACE AND SOLITUDE</span></h2> -</div> - -<hr class="wide" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">47</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="IMMENSITY">IMMENSITY</h2> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0 a w drop-cap"><span class="firstword">At</span> noon I watched</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In the large hollow of eternal heaven</div> - <div class="verse indent0">A soaring hawk climb slowly toward the sun</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Through gyres of adoration without end.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">His flight was a great prayer....</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">48</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="SEA-HORIZONS">SEA-HORIZONS</h2> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0 drop-cap"><span class="firstword">The</span> sorrowful expanse from heaven to heaven,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">From zone to zone, from deep to height above,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The mute arch of the everlasting heaven</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Bends over me with Your unwearied love.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Immeasurable, unutterable, and <span class="locked">soundless—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent2">Wide as the east from the west Your love is wide;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The unfathomable distances are boundless</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Infinite tenderness on every side.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Against the dark strength of Your huge endurance</div> - <div class="verse indent2">My little being beats her baffled wings,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Lifts her shrill voice, and wounds the calm assurance</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And tenderness of Your large evenings.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">In the vast robes of Your serene compassion</div> - <div class="verse indent2">She hides her soiled and burning face of <span class="locked">shame—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Your solemn and inexorable passion</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Lifts her blurred eyes to meet Your glance of flame.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">As bread that for my daily fare is broken,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The eternal loveliness before me <span class="locked">spread—</span></div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">49</span> - <div class="verse indent0">Unutterable gesture—word unspoken,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">In the proud silences forever said!</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">The sun puts forth his strength, the reaches shimmer</div> - <div class="verse indent2">With inarticulate rapture, and the proud</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Waters are thrilled; the fields of ocean glimmer</div> - <div class="verse indent2">With shifting light and overshadowing cloud.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Noon upon noon in heaven takes up his station,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Day follows night, and night succeeds to day:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Your infinite and lonely meditation</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Sinks with the sunset down the starry way.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Veiled is the Vast: the heaven of evening burning.</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Reveals on the large waters of the sea</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Hopelessness—hopelessness—the patient yearning</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And dumb caress of the Immensity.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">What message have You left for me, what token</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Of Your lone love, whose laboring Will has wrought</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The firmament over my head, and spoken</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Unto my nothingness Your starry Thought!</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Sorrowful is the mighty Heart that reaches</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Around this brief and scornful heart of <span class="locked">mine—</span></div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">50</span> - <div class="verse indent0">The dim curve of the melancholy beaches,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And vacancies along the lone sea-line.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">In the huge longing of the far sea-spaces,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The tremulous rim about the waters curled,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Waits the eternal Gentleness, and traces</div> - <div class="verse indent2">His sad horizons ’round the fading world.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Cloud beyond cloud, the arch of heaven goes <span class="locked">over—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent2">Steep beyond steep, the patient skies descend:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The illimitable wastes and waves discover</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Loneliness—loneliness—without an end.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Inexorable Compassion, may I never</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Reach the last verge and limits of Your love!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Beyond me, still beyond me melt forever</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The eternal margins, fading as I move.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">51</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="OF_DAY_CAME_NIGHT">OF DAY CAME NIGHT</h2> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0 w drop-cap"><span class="firstword">We</span> lay by the sea, and knew</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Darkness must make us one:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Heaven was thrilled clean through</div> - <div class="verse indent2">By the trumpets of the sun,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The sea burned gold and blue.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">The sand in the pale heat</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Was parched as desert <span class="locked">sand—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Your wrist where the veins meet,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The cool veins of your hand,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Made thirst seem bitter-sweet.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Never a word was said</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Of what must be so soon;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In longing and in dread</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The golden afternoon</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Burned down, till dusk was shed.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">It was not hope, nor fear,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Yet something of them both,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That held us trembling here,</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">52</span> - <div class="verse indent2">Half eager and half loath</div> - <div class="verse indent0">For darkness, dread but dear.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Few were the words were spoken,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">But in each other’s eyes</div> - <div class="verse indent0">We read the certain token</div> - <div class="verse indent2">That sealed our <span class="locked">destinies—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Our wings of pride were broken.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">So, while the waters paled</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Around us, and the west</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Fainted, our hearts that failed,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">In silence were confessed.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Silence at last prevailed.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">And now up her clear stair</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The evening-star began</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To climb, where heaven was bare</div> - <div class="verse indent2">A homing fish-hawk ran</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Down avenues of air.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Night swallowed up the sun,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And darkness, like a hood,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Sank—and the sea breathed on;</div> - <div class="verse indent2">In silence and solitude</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The eternal will was done.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">53</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="PILGRIM">PILGRIM</h2> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0 drop-cap"><span class="firstword">The</span> cold wind cries across the rolling dunes,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The gray sails fleck the margins of the world:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I watch the rolling dunes along the barren sky,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And wan, white waters by the swift wind hurled.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">O where are Queen Faustina, and Babylon, and Tyre,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And pale Troy, lost in a silver mist of <span class="locked">tears—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">And I, O earth, your child, more old than all these others,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">What have you done to me these many thousand years!</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">54</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="BY_THE_GRAY_SEA">BY THE GRAY SEA</h2> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0 w drop-cap"><span class="firstword">Where</span> the gray sea lay sad and vast</div> - <div class="verse indent2">You turned your head away,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And we sat silently at <span class="locked">last—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent2">There was no word to say:</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent4"><em>By the thunder,</em></div> - <div class="verse indent4"><em>By the iron thunder of the sea.</em></div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0 padr2">We could not speak, for the lost hope</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Of the glad days before;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">We sat beside the long sea-slope,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Watching the endless <span class="locked">shore—</span></div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent4"><em>By the thunder,</em></div> - <div class="verse indent4"><em>By the iron thunder of the sea.</em></div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">So that, as in the old despair,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">I reached you pleading hands;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But you sat pale and helpless there,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Beside the barren sands:</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent4"><em>By the thunder,</em></div> - <div class="verse indent4 padr4"><em>By the iron thunder of the sea!</em></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">55</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_FISH-HAWK">THE FISH-HAWK</h2> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0 h drop-cap"><span class="firstword">On</span> the large highway of the awful air that flows</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Unbounded between sea and heaven, while twilight screened</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The sorrowful distances, he moved and had repose;</div> - <div class="verse indent2">On the huge wind of the Immensity he leaned</div> - <div class="verse indent0">His steady body in long lapse of flight—and rose</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Gradual, through broad gyres of ever-climbing rest,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Up the clear stair of the eternal sky, and stood</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Throned on the summit! Slowly, with his widening breast,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Widened around him the enormous Solitude,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">From the gray rim of ocean to the glowing west.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Headlands and capes forlorn of the far coast, the land</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Rolling her barrens toward the south, he, from his throne</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Upon the gigantic wind, beheld: he hung—he fanned</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The abyss for mighty joy, to feel beneath him strown</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Pale pastures of the sea, with heaven on either <span class="locked">hand—</span></div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">The world with all her winds and waters, earth and air,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Fields, folds, and moving clouds. The awful and adored</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">56</span> - <div class="verse indent0">Arches and endless aisles of vacancy, the fair</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Void of sheer heights and hollows hailed him as her lord</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And lover in the highest, to whom all heaven lay bare!</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Till from that tower of ecstasy, that baffled height,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Stooping, he sank; and slowly on the world’s wide way</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Walked, with great wing on wing, the merciless, proud Might,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Hunting the huddled and lone reaches for his prey</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Down the dim shore—and faded in the crumbling light.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Slowly the dusk covered the land. Like a great hymn</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The sound of moving winds and waters was; the sea</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Whispered a benediction, and the west grew dim</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Where evening lifted her clear candles quietly ...</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Heaven, crowded with stars, trembled from rim to rim.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">57</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="DISDAINFUL_BEAUTY">DISDAINFUL BEAUTY</h2> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0 drop-cap"><span class="firstword">On</span> the wide waste the web of twilight, trembling</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Hangs low with stars and night;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The dying day in the worn west, dissembling,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Crowns his defeat with light.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0 padr2">Here by the grave, gray sea my soul sinks crying,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">By beauty stabbed to <span class="locked">death—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">“O, in the dusk of the world, let me, too, dying,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Mix with all these my breath!”</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">There is no answer. In the cold heavens shining,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Star trembles unto star:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The virgin moon in the clear west declining</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Hangs, like a scimitar.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">58</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="MY_LONELY_ONE">MY LONELY ONE</h2> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0 drop-cap"><span class="firstword">Even</span> as a hawk’s in the large heaven’s hollow</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Are the great ways and gracious of your love:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">No lesser flight or wearier wing may follow</div> - <div class="verse indent2">In those broad gyres where you rest and move.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Most merciless, most high, most proud, most <span class="locked">lonely—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent2">In the clear space between the sky and sea</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Wheel her huge orbits, where the sea-winds only</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Wander the sun-roads of Immensity.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Yet have I known your heart and of what fashion</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Your love, how great, how hardly to be <span class="locked">borne—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Your tenderness, too perfect for compassion,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Your divine strength, too pure and proud for scorn.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">You are most beautiful, but it is given</div> - <div class="verse indent2">But few to find you, fewer still to keep</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Your high path through the solitude of heaven,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">My lonely one, your watch upon the Deep.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Now toward the gold glow of the sunset’s splendor</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Veer your great vans. What haven in the west</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">59</span> - <div class="verse indent0">Now draws you—while the mellowing light makes tender</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Your dripping plumes—what islands of the blest?</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Lift me, O lift me up to you forever,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Beautiful Terror! Let your sacred might</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Stoop to me here, and save—O let me never</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Sink from you now, to share a lesser flight!</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Even as I pray, my wings of longing fail me,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And my heart flags. In solitude you move</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Down the night’s shore: not praying shall avail me,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">To lift me, fallen from your faultless love.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="wide" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h2 class="nobreak larger" id="III">III<br /> -<span class="subhead">THE LOST TRAVELLER’S DREAM</span></h2> -</div> - -<hr class="wide" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">63</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="WILD_THOUGHT">WILD THOUGHT</h2> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0 s drop-cap"><span class="firstword">Surf</span> of song upon my heart</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Breaks forever, where thou art;</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">The dark ocean in my breast,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of wild love, may never rest:</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Still one thought upon her shore</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Breaks in dream forevermore!</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">64</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="JOURNEYS_END">JOURNEY’S END</h2> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0 s drop-cap"><span class="firstword">Forgive</span> me, dear, if I have lost my way,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">In coming home to you</div> - <div class="verse indent4">Through storm and shadow of the gathering night;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">If I did stray,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Still I was seeking, and I never knew</div> - <div class="verse indent4">How near me burned the dear and friendly light.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Now at your door, ere the great Dark begin,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Alone I stand, and knock:</div> - <div class="verse indent4">Say not it is too late that I have <span class="locked">come—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">O take me in,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">For I am yours! Darling, unlock, <span class="locked">unlock—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent4">All Time to this was but a journey home!</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">65</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="BELATED_LOVE">BELATED LOVE</h2> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0 drop-cap"><span class="firstword">Come</span> home to me, are you come home to me,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">O heart of mine—but in what dolorous guise!</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And the great hour, O ’twas otherwise</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Love had imagined it in days to be!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">These pleading hands—these lips—How dreadfully,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">At what strange lips and in what alien eyes</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Have you sought mine? Beneath what darkening skies</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Come home to me at last, come home to me?</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">I would not know the reason: here upon</div> - <div class="verse indent2">This breast of sorrows loose your aching breast;</div> - <div class="verse indent4">Tell me again and yet again, and say</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Still the eternal word, still babble on</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Your voiceless tale of some unhappy <span class="locked">quest—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent4">How in the night and storm you lost your way.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">66</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="A_LEAVE-TAKING">A LEAVE-TAKING</h2> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0 w drop-cap"><span class="firstword">Well</span> I remember it, that night in May,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That last, sweet night in the Old World long ago,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The last ere my departure—the dark room</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That brooded ’round us, and the drowsy breath,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Out of the courtyard, of the linden-trees,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Pungent and sad. Only your hand I felt,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Reached to me in the darkness; and the beat</div> - <div class="verse indent0">All through its fingers of the unconscious blood,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Your life at battle, in the silence told</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Immortally to mine its plaintive tale</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And doom eternal—only your hand I felt,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Reached to me in the darkness—yet it seemed</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In your hand’s touch I touched your very self,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Your very presence, changeable, careless, <span class="locked">wild—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">But O how poignant—sharp with all delight,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And gracious with dear bounties to bestow,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">How greatly granted! Drowsily then at last,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In the old way, you begged me for some legend</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Out of my boyhood’s record, some romance</div> - <div class="verse indent0">From the far world that bore me; and my voice,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In the sweet, alien tongue, your mother-tongue,</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">67</span> - <div class="verse indent0">Moved through the darkness with a peace <span class="locked">unfeigned—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">For a grave peace was on us, and the fear</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That thrilled the midnight, fell away. The street</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Slumbered, save where, departing, like a ghost’s,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Faint footfalls down the farthest distance sighed;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And dwindled out forever.... So you slept.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Well I remember it, that night in <span class="locked">May—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">The sleep, the hushed awakenings, full of dread,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">From haunted meres of horror and disdain,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">From dreams of terror—and the mad return</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Into the bounteous pity of two arms,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The comfort and the kindness. O the return</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Forever and forever, wild and sad,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Seraphic with all weariness and pain,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Insatiate with all love—as if to slake</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In one abandon all the desperate drought</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of the years to come! Upon my own I felt</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The wet, salt quivering of your lips, and all</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Your being fold me in, urgent to save,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Urgent to hide the approaching loneliness,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Our bitter portion; prismed in tears, the dusk</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Swam ’round with dizzy color: the nightingales,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Beauty’s disdain above the war of things,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Beauty’s high pity from her virgin heights,</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">68</span> - <div class="verse indent0">Our meeting hearts pierced with a single <span class="locked">pang—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Like a bright sword of sorrow through the breast</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Driven, and like a bruising sword withdrawn.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent34">The sun <span class="locked">arose—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Fled were the nightingales, the love, the <span class="locked">joy—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">And with him rose at last the relentless fear,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Like a harsh face never to be pushed back,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Between your face and mine; till all the terror,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The loneliness, the irrevocable fate,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In the dim twilight hugged me, and a cry,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Up from <em>my</em> self to <em>your</em> self, would have rent</div> - <div class="verse indent0">My hesitant lips, in the great need, to you</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Turned for the last compassion.... But you slept.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">At peace you lay. Over you in the dawn</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I leaned, and knew you truly what you were.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent18">Then a great love</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Triumphing over sorrow, like the light</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Clearing the west when sunset’s wrath has waned</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Before the risen stars—a mystery—welled</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Up through me radiant, helpless where you lay</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In the calm pose of sleep: and above Time,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Our little passion, and the circumstance</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of temporal tumult, self to self we met;</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">69</span> - <div class="verse indent0">And sundered reverent.... Faintest breath of flowers</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Stirred in the twilight fragrantly, and there</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The pathos of our days together filled me</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With a new wonder—flooding on me came</div> - <div class="verse indent0">A host of memories, as to one long dead,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Lifted beyond his living; till all seemed</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Marvellous and immortal and benign.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent34">And now</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The hour was come. Beside your quiet breast</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I begged forgiveness for my many sins</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Done to you, though unwitting—all the <span class="locked">hurt—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">In a swift prayer, and even for this <span class="locked">last—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">To wake you to your sorrow. And your lips</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Forgave me—yes, in the silence. So I touched</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Your lids with kisses. And you woke, and wept.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">But brave to the end with a heart-breaking <span class="locked">bravery—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Gallant and gracious, dear with sacred eyes,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">You let me go. With a half-kiss we parted.</div> - </div> - - <h3>II</h3> - - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent22">Along the city-ways</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Already day’s vehement tumult had begun:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Through street and justled alley, court and square,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The tireless and eternal Heart poured forth</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">70</span> - <div class="verse indent0">Its myriad human faces, grave or glad,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">On the old course of toil (a choral hymn</div> - <div class="verse indent0">From the lips of Life) each face a testimony</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of some prefiguring love. O the delight,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The incredible bounty and sustaining will</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of passionate longing, peopling all the <span class="locked">earth—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">And the joy of man and woman! The laughing boys!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The milkman clanking along in his cart, and there</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Two bonneted old women, and there a thief,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Perhaps, with a night’s booty sneaking home!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Yet solemn all and sacred, with new eyes</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I saw them then, and in each face I seemed</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With a new soul to read the soul beneath;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Through love and pain and sorrow having passed</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Into the breast of all <span class="locked">humanity—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Through love and sorrow. Yes, and for your sake,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Being human, all things human touched to love</div> - <div class="verse indent0">This heart of mine, made holy; and the thought</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of the million other hearts beyond the <span class="locked">dawn—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">The gladness, and the sadness, and the <span class="locked">pain—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Came back upon me like a lifting music,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Beautiful, and most sorrowful, and divine.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent24">Till a vast compassion</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Up through the springs of all my being welled</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">71</span> - <div class="verse indent0">Intolerably! Ah, even as to myself,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Unfaithful, the exuberant Bounty stooped</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With arms of pity; so I longed to <span class="locked">do—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">To lose myself at last in the Great Self</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That beams upon the just and the unjust,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Carelessly shedding radiant light around:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Compassing finite hate with infinite love,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With beauty, ugliness, and death with life!</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">So through that street of pouring souls I passed,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Torn between grief and ecstasy. But none</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Guessed the immortal secret that I bore</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Close at the fluttering heart—the fear—the <span class="locked">joy—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">The very beat and memory in my blood,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The exquisite sense and lingering pain of you.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">72</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="BUT_LOVE">BUT LOVE—</h2> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0 drop-cap"><span class="firstword">Flowing</span> in the sunlight here,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The river shines like a glass,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Even as it did last year;</div> - <div class="verse indent2">On the hillside the grass</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Bows, as the breezes <span class="locked">pass—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent4">But my love is gone, my love is gone.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Where is she—where, and how?</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Has she forgotten me yet?</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Ah, she has forgotten me now!</div> - <div class="verse indent2">She is too lovely for regret:</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Would that I ever could forget,</div> - <div class="verse indent4">My love is gone, my love is gone!</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">It is so still—so still ...</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The sound of a rumbling train</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Rushes into the hill.</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Autumn comes again</div> - <div class="verse indent2">With the old wonder and <span class="locked">pain—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent2">But love comes never again</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">73</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="ANNE">ANNE</h2> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0 b drop-cap"><span class="firstword">Belovèd—O</span> adorable and <span class="locked">false—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Whom have you taken now in the dear toils?</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">By what pale margins do your footsteps stray,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Or what enchanted wood? What valleys hold</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The lily of your loveliness? What hills</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Have known your weight upon them, what far shores?</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Twilight comes tenderly, while evening lifts</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Along the pallid rim her lonely <span class="locked">star—</span></div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">O happy heart on which your heart is laid!</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">74</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_SILENCE">THE SILENCE</h2> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0 j drop-cap"><span class="firstword">In</span> the evening, in the quiet Park, we walked together</div> - <div class="verse indent2">After so many and after so many <span class="locked">years—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">We walked again in the evening, in the warm May weather,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">After the partings and tears.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">And under the splendor, under the starry skies,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">We walked, without sound or sigh, in a calm unbroken;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As the dead walk together in a long-lost <span class="locked">Paradise—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent2">Silent, with no word spoken.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">75</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="EXULTATION">EXULTATION</h2> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0 b drop-cap"><span class="firstword">Before</span> the dawn the very thought of you,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That wakes me, as the morning wakes the night,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Floods all my heart with most exultant joy.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">The thought of you that rises with the stars,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">When evening wheels all glittering through the dark,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Floods all my heart with most exultant joy.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">O life and joy and breath and death of me,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With every breath I draw you in like air!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">O I shall die of you, of you, of you!</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Though now you banish me forevermore,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Never to look upon your face <span class="locked">again—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Think you that I shall sorrow for my love?</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Though I shall lie upon my bed of death</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And know you have forgotten me <span class="locked">forever—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Think you that I shall sorrow for my love?</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">O life and joy and breath and death of me,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I shall cry out exultant—and lie dead!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">O I shall die of you, of you, of you!</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">76</span> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">O love, I love you better than you know!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I love you as the water loves the sea.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">I love you as the twilight loves the dark.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">The trumpets of the morning, to my heart</div> - <div class="verse indent0">From shining towers blow the thought of you;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The waves of evening flood my heart with you.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">O life and joy and breath and death of me,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With every breath I draw you in like air!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">O I shall die of you, of you, of you!</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">77</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="SONG_OF_SONGS">SONG OF SONGS</h2> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0 w drop-cap"><span class="firstword">My</span> heart is like a shady grove</div> - <div class="verse indent2">That harbors, for a June,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">My thoughts, like song-birds mad with love</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Under the moon.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">On all the windy boughs they sit</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And in the blowing <span class="locked">grass—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">But one bird silently enters it,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And sings, alas!</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Then all the rest grow sad and still</div> - <div class="verse indent2">That made a happy noise:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">There is no sound on all the hill</div> - <div class="verse indent2">But that one voice,</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Faint with the memories in his <span class="locked">breast—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent2">It is the thought of <span class="locked"><em>you</em>—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">And when it ceases, all the rest</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Are silent, too.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">78</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="SORROWFUL_FREEDOM">SORROWFUL FREEDOM</h2> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0 l drop-cap"><span class="firstword">Long</span> days I begged of my heart to be</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Released from a love that haunted <span class="locked">me—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">The memory of a last embrace,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">A tyrannous and a lovely face.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">“Free me,” I said, “from an old love,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The memory and the might <span class="locked">thereof—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Free to follow and take my fill</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of beauty and laughter where I will.”</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Never a word my heart replied:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But on a day the old love died;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Vanished, never to come again,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">All the passion and all the pain.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Come—we are free to take our fill</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of beauty and laughter where we <span class="locked">will—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">O heart, are we free forevermore</div> - <div class="verse indent0">From the old sorrow we loved before!</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">79</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="STARLESS_MORNING">STARLESS MORNING</h2> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0 drop-cap"><span class="firstword">Toward</span> starless morning, when deep night had bowed</div> - <div class="verse indent2">On slumber’s pillow my unhappy head,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Through the dim room it drifted like a <span class="locked">cloud—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent2">And swayed in silence by my lonely bed.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">What had they done to you, that dumbly so</div> - <div class="verse indent2">You covered with your hands your quiet <span class="locked">face—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Dear, out of kindness, that I might not know</div> - <div class="verse indent2">What horror there had wrought its dark disgrace!</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">It was those hands, too passionately, too well</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Loved, that betrayed you—O most piteous guest!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And to my heart, in the intolerable</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Rage of despair, that shadow I had pressed,</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Mingling in a shrill cry our grief <span class="locked">supreme—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent2">My sweet—my pretty! But, as I had drawn</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That anguish to my arms, they clasped a dream;</div> - <div class="verse indent2 padr4">And heaven glimmered with the approaching dawn.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">80</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="PHANTOM">PHANTOM</h2> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0 a w drop-cap"><span class="firstword">Along</span> the edge of the great, moving <span class="locked">sea—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent2">That moaned forever on her barren bars,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The old, sad love came back again to me,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Moving quietly under the quiet stars.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">O sad love, do not smile upon me so,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Nodding so gently with your little <span class="locked">head—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent2">All the old wonder of your eyes is dead,</div> - <div class="verse indent0 padr2">And the sea-winds have chilled you long ago!</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">81</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="LEGEND">LEGEND</h2> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0 w drop-cap"><span class="firstword">Where</span> are you hid from me, belovèd one</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That I am seeking through the lonely <span class="locked">world—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">A wanderer, on my way home to you?</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Dark is the night and perilous the road:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">At many a breast in longing have I leaned,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">At many a wayside worshipped; and my heart</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Is tired from long travelling.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent32">Perhaps</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In centuries to come you wait for me,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And are as yet an iris by the stream</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Lifting her single blossom, or the faint</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Tremulous haze upon the hills—and we</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Have missed each other.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent32">O if it be so,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Then may this song reach to the verge of <span class="locked">doom—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Ages unborn—to find you where you are,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">My lonely one; and like a murmuring string,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Faint with one music, endlessly repeat</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">82</span> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">To you, not even knowing I was yours,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Her plaintive burden from the dolorous past:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Telling of one upon a hopeless <span class="locked">quest—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">How in the dark of Time he lost his way!</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr class="wide" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">85</span></p> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="IV">IV<br /> -<span class="subhead">THE DIVINE FANTASY</span></h2> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0 b drop-cap"><span class="firstword">Brother,</span> from what dim world of lonely light,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Trembling on heaven’s pinnacles to-night,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Is lifted your sad face of love while you</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Stare upward toward me, staring upward, too,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">At that faint flame which is your home, between</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The leafy branches of these poplars <span class="locked">seen—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">So hushed, so far! Perhaps to-night you scan</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Your starry heaven for the star of Man,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">High in the trellis of eternity</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And glittering arches hung; perhaps like me</div> - <div class="verse indent0">You, too, look up and wonder. Is it fair,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That world of yours? Are there great cities there,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Populous millions, hearts that beat as these,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Clear meadows and far mountains, shoreless seas,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Shadows of moving armies, thrones that shake?</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Does the heart thrill for love there, does it <span class="locked">break—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Tell me, are there hushed gardens, quiet tombs?</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And mighty poets weaving at their looms</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The old, dim wisdoms that outweary Time;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And saints, and lifted saviours, and sublime</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Faiths and high fortitudes beyond belief?</div> - <div class="verse indent0">—All blotted out by one small poplar leaf</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In the light wind of languid summer stirred!</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">86</span> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Brother, what news out of the night, what word</div> - <div class="verse indent0">From the frontiers of mind beyond our ken,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of mysteries unimagined yet of men,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Compassed by travail of your spirit? O</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Could you but reach to us! Could we but know</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Across the imperturbable old Dark</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Some answering glimmer of the ancient Spark</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Lifted—some token, tangible to sense,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of the indomitable Intelligence</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That thrones on matter—language <span class="locked">visible—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Crying, “Eternity—and all is well!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Brother, be of good cheer; we, too, have known!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Not lonely moves, not utterly alone,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Your sad fraternity through the dark of God:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But the confederate legions are abroad,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Life’s flag advances on the starry way,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And Consciousness, still battling, still at bay,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Holds the bright forts against <span class="locked">Oblivion—”</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">What answering thrill would ’round the planet run!</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">For we are one; all Consciousness is one,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Whatever form it wear, however dressed</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In gray or glamour, in whatever breast</div> - <div class="verse indent0">It lift its longing: glimmering it moves</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Through the green wave; it stamps with startled hooves</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">87</span> - <div class="verse indent0">The upland pastures of the world, and soars</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In heaven with the eagle; on bright shores</div> - <div class="verse indent0">It basks a sunny body, or in dread</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Lifts from the undergrowth a snaky head</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And darts a flickering tongue; it is most clear</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In the lark’s throat; among the grasses here,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That couch the ant, it turns a tiny eye</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Around the darkness; scampers and is shy</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In the scared rabbit; through the murmuring air</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Wheels with the beetle, and, where heaven is bare,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Southward with the wild crane at summer’s close,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Hungering, an eternal pilgrim goes</div> - <div class="verse indent0">On quests implacable. And from the eyes</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of the poised panther gleam the cruelties</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of its stern need that roams the world, and rends</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With tooth or talon; in the hawk descends</div> - <div class="verse indent0">On the stunned squirrel; in the squirrel moans</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As the hawk strikes; darkens the earth with bones</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of its own wreck and, hungering again,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Knows in its body the old spur. For when</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Hunger, the shadow cast by death, draws near,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Life on her thousand thrones feels the one fear,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And in the lion’s roar at dusk is heard</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The unassuagable, insistent word</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of urgent Being, clamorous to be.</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">88</span> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Wreaking and wrought upon, eternally</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Mingling and mixed; inextricably blent,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Victor and vanquished, in one <span class="locked">sacrament—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Body with body—of delight and death,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">It moves in splendor; lifts the shuddering breath</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of the spent stag; and in the mind of Man</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Rebels against the miserable <span class="locked">plan—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Flings its frail web of thought across the path</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of suns in heaven, and in holy wrath,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">On blood of murdered brothers nourished, still</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Thunders to all the world, <em>Thou shall not kill</em>!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And the worm’s death is in the sparrow’s song.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">And I have seen it in the gnats that throng</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Old shadowy forests, in tumultuous dance;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Or in the little measuring-worm advance,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Inch by slow inch, along the swaying stem</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of some exalted flower; or lift the hem</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of the frail butterfly’s embroidered cloak</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In gentle breathings that the sun did stroke</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Caressingly with fingers of his heat;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Or from the dog yearn upward, and entreat</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With eyes of adoration or of fear</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The great god, Man—“What message, master dear,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">From the dim heights beyond me where you are?”</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">89</span> - <div class="verse indent0">In the mare’s tremulous whinny, in the far</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Lowing of cattle from the upland sward,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Or wail of whip-poor-wills, at twilight poured</div> - <div class="verse indent0">On pools of silence plaintively, or cry</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of the lone wolf beneath the glittering sky</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of soundless winter, I have heard the same</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Splendor speak forth, and utter the one name</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of Life, the dreadful, the magnificent.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">All afternoon the passion of heaven spent</div> - <div class="verse indent0">On earth its fiery fury in blind, bright</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Lightnings of dread and laughters of delight</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Down shuddering deeps of shaken thunder, where</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The delirious longing loosed its sorrowing hair</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of wind and shower and overshadowing cloud</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Across the belovèd face, in darkness bowed</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Or glimmering light revealed; and cried aloud</div> - <div class="verse indent0">For anger of utter ecstasy; and shed</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The wild love of the rushing rain that sped</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To the thrilled heart, consenting, of the dim</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And rapturous earth, that lifted up to him</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Drowsed lips of thirsty flowers; and the cup</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of every flower for joy was lifted up,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And drank, and swayed! So, wearied out at length,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Flagged the bright pulses, and the ebbing strength,</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">90</span> - <div class="verse indent0">With muttering of remembered thunders, passed</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Down the large shores of evening: till at last</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The exhausted heaven of twilight from afar</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Shone washed of all her sorrows; and a star</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Brooded above the fading storm, and saw</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The winnowed reaches deepening into awe</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of gradual darkness, and the fields that lay</div> - <div class="verse indent0">All drenched and wearied out at dusk of day</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And the worn end of things; while far away</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The receding fury moaned.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent22">And now they lie</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In the same peace around me, and the sky</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Holds up her stars; now in the rain-drenched wood</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The tree-toad drinks the rain and finds it good,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And trills for joy—the sliding waters grieve</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Quietly—now the bat begins to weave</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With intricate motion on the cloudy loom,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of glamourous starlight mingled and gray gloom,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">His dipping flight among the darkened boughs</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And dreamy vistas; and the little mouse</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Furtively hurries through the lane, his eye</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Turned up in terror as the owl goes by:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">On softest feathers of silence overhead</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Flits the dim shadow of the ancient dread,</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">91</span> - <div class="verse indent0">Hooded and vague, the cruelty of his beak</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Bent on old lustful mysteries.—A <span class="locked">squeak—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">A scuffle—beating of wings—and in the lane</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Silence—and the old wrong is done again,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That was ere Adam; the triumphant heart</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And the defeated, each one doomed to his part,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">They play it through, the old tragedy where one</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Presence still wars and still is warred upon,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Slays and is slain: while fiercely all around</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Shakes the eternal love-song in shrill sound,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of grasshopper and cricket—sleepless flow</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The immortal tides of longing to and fro</div> - <div class="verse indent0">On waves of music; endless is the prayer</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of life to the belovèd, everywhere</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Lifted in adoration: on dark shores</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Beats the insistent passion that implores</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The one dear breast of pity or disdain,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To be reborn, to be reborn <span class="locked">again—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Nor perish wholly! The blind earth is thrilled</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As with vague rites accomplished, dreams fulfilled,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Marriage and mystic union; all along</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Her brimming meadows rings the bridal song</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And chaunt ecstatic: that great heart of hers</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Is touched now the eternal longing stirs</div> - <div class="verse indent0">From hill to hollow and hollow to clear hill</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">92</span> - <div class="verse indent0">In many voices mingled, or the still</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Ecstasy of the firefly that trails</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Among the shadows where the starlight fails,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">His body’s burning love. Forever flows</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The dreadful drama to its stately close</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And endless ending—the fierce carnival</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of death and passion, wherein each and all</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Mix, and are mingled, slaughter, blend, and pass</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Each into other—the high poem that has</div> - <div class="verse indent0">No end and no beginning, that the one</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Self in all living forms beneath the sun,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And on all worlds around him and above,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Weaves on the strands of hunger, death, and love.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">I see it all, I hear it all, and lie</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Under my swaying poplars, and the sky</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Is fretted with frail leaves. The mortal dream</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Is in my heart: I hear the night-hawk’s scream</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Shatter the silver silences, I hear</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The owl’s clear tremolo rise <span class="locked">over-clear—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">The mouse’s blood along his veins has made</div> - <div class="verse indent0">His love-note lovelier and the night afraid</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of beauty’s dreadful secret—and I know</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Soft shapes of stealth that in the darkness go,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of furry lusts and gnawing hungers, small</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">93</span> - <div class="verse indent0">Twittering things obscene, that flit or crawl</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In furtive secrecy, vague mouths and blurred</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of the night creature or nocturnal <span class="locked">bird—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Amorphous moth and bat-wing—and the earth,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With all her burrows, nooks and nests of birth</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Crowded, and wreck of many a perished might,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">By the ebbed waters of Life’s fierce delight</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Washed up on shores of silence—spoiled and spurned</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Altars where once the sacred fire <span class="locked">burned—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Forms flowing back into the Formlessness;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In a supreme embrace, a long caress,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Mixing their bodies with the mother <span class="locked">mould—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">And all the heaven of stars around me rolled,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Whose brooding eyes have stared so many an age</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Upon this theatre of lust and rage,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of death and adoration. And a breeze</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Rustles the branches of the poplar-trees.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Dear Spark, that shinest in the solitude!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">One Consciousness, that in the brotherhood</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of all earth’s living creatures movest on</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The shaken ramparts of <span class="locked">Oblivion—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Whose starry cry, across the darkness hurled,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Makes music in the silence of the world!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Life, whose sole splendor in red slaughter spills</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">94</span> - <div class="verse indent0">The blood of its own breast; in many wills</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Wars on the one Will; and in wrath or dread</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Feeds on itself and, on itself being fed,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Shines forth in song and color; gilds the dress</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of the green-fly; and pours its loveliness</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In rapture on the earth; in theatres</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Of crowded congregation sits—nor <span class="locked">stirs—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Watching itself, itself the spectacle;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And builds the swallow’s breast, and shapes the shell</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And all these mansions of its thought that are</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Between the morning and the evening-star,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">On earth, in heaven, or in the glimmering caves</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And grottoes of the world below the <span class="locked">waves—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Butchers the ox, and, gladdened by his meat,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In the young mother’s downward smile is sweet;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Or, sated on his body, walks abroad</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In symphonies, and poems, and prayers to God;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Sins, and has conscience and, repenting, sins;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And in the lowly patient spider spins</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Its fragile web; and in these words of mine</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Flings out its groping utterance, line by line,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Across the intangible abyss of <span class="locked">thought—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">With infinite passion, infinite patience <span class="locked">wrought—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Dread Loveliness! Be strong in me, be strong,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">To utter forth your meaning in my song!</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">97</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_LION-HOUSE">THE LION-HOUSE</h2> -</div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0 a w drop-cap"><span class="firstword">Always</span> the heavy air,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">The dreadful cage, the low</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Murmur of voices, where</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Some Force goes to and fro</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In an immense despair!</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">As through a haunted <span class="locked">brain—</span></div> - <div class="verse indent2">With tireless footfalls</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The Obsession moves again,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Trying the floor, the walls,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Forever, but in vain.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">In vain, proud Force! A might,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Shrewder than yours, did spin</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Around your rage that bright</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Prison of steel, wherein</div> - <div class="verse indent0">You pace for my delight.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">And O, my heart, what Doom,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">What warier Will has wrought</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The cage, within whose room</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Paces your burning thought,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">For the delight of Whom?</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<div class="newpage p4 figcenter" id="dec" style="max-width: 6em;"> - <img src="images/dec.png" alt="publisher's logo" /> -</div> - -<div class="chapter"><div class="transnote"> -<h2 class="nobreak p1">Transcriber’s Note:</h2> - -<p class="center">The first illustration is the cover; the last -illustration is the publisher’s logo.</p></div></div> - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Black Panther, by John Hall Wheelock - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BLACK PANTHER *** - -***** This file should be named 63622-h.htm or 63622-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/3/6/2/63622/ - -Produced by Charlene Taylor, Charlie Howard, and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This -file was produced from images generously made available -by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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