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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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