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diff --git a/old/67012-0.txt b/old/67012-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 10259c6..0000000 --- a/old/67012-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,2569 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of The man with the hoe, and other poems, by -Edwin Markham - -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 -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: The man with the hoe, and other poems - -Author: Edwin Markham - -Release Date: December 25, 2021 [eBook #67012] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -Produced by: Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at - http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images - available at The Internet Archive) - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAN WITH THE HOE, AND OTHER -POEMS *** - - - - - The Man with the Hoe - - - - - TO - - EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN - - FIRST TO HAIL AND CAUTION ME - - - - - The Man with the Hoe - - AND OTHER POEMS - - _By_ - EDWIN MARKHAM - - [Illustration: colophon] - - NEW YORK - DOUBLEDAY & McCLURE COMPANY - 1899 - - - - -Prefatory Note - -Many of these poems have appeared in _Scribner’s_, _The Century_, _The -Atlantic_, and the San Francisco _Examiner_, and my thanks are due them -for permission to republish. - - EDWIN MARKHAM. - -OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA. - - - - -The Contents - - -The Man with the Hoe 15 - -A Look into the Gulf 19 - -Brotherhood 21 - -Song of the Followers of Pan 22 - -Little Brothers of the Ground 23 - -Wail of the Wandering Dead 25 - -A Prayer 28 - -The Poet 30 - -The Whirlwind Road 32 - -The Desire of Nations 33 - -The Elf Child 39 - -The Goblin Laugh 40 - -Poetry 41 - -A Meeting 42 - -Infinite Depths 43 - -A Leaf from the Devil’s Jest-Book 44 - -The Paymaster 46 - -The Last Furrow 47 - -In the Storm 49 - -After Reading Shakspere 50 - -The Hidden Valley 52 - -The Poets 53 - -Love’s Vigil 54 - -Two at a Fireside 56 - -The Butterfly 57 - -To William Watson 58 - -Keats A-Dying 59 - -Man 60 - -The Cricket 61 - -In High Sierras 62 - -The Wharf of Dreams 63 - -To Louise Michel 65 - -Shepherd Boy and Nereid 66 - -A Song at the Start 68 - -My Comrade 70 - -A Lyric of the Dawn 71 - -Joy of the Morning 80 - -Youth and Time 81 - -A Satyr Song 83 - -A Cry in the Night 84 - -Fays 85 - -In Death Valley 86 - -At Dawn 87 - -“Follow Me” 88 - -In Poppy Fields 89 - -The Joy of the Hills 90 - -The Invisible Bride 92 - -The Valley 94 - -The Climb of Life 95 - -The Tragedy 97 - -Divine Vision 98 - -Midsummer Noon 99 - -One Life, One Law 100 - -Griefs 101 - -An Old Road 102 - -The New Comers 103 - -Music 104 - -Fay Song 105 - -The Old Earth 106 - -Divine Adventure 107 - -Song Made Flesh 109 - -To High-born Poets 110 - -The Toilers 112 - -On the Gulf of Night 114 - -A Harvest Song 116 - -Two Taverns 118 - -The Man under the Stone 119 - -Song to the Divine Mother 121 - -The Flying Mist 127 - -From the Hand of a Child 129 - -At the Meeting of Seven Valleys 131 - -The Rock-Breaker 132 - -These Songs Will Perish 133 - - - - -The Man with the Hoe - - - - -The Man with the Hoe - -_Written after seeing Millet’s World-Famous Painting_ - - God made man in His own image, - in the image of God made He him.--_Genesis._ - - - Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans - Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground, - The emptiness of ages in his face, - And on his back the burden of the world. - Who made him dead to rapture and despair, - A thing that grieves not and that never hopes, - Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox? - Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw? - Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow? - Whose breath blew out the light within this brain? - - Is this the Thing the Lord God made and gave - To have dominion over sea and land; - To trace the stars and search the heavens for power; - To feel the passion of Eternity? - Is this the Dream He dreamed who shaped the suns - And pillared the blue firmament with light? - Down all the stretch of Hell to its last gulf - There is no shape more terrible than this-- - More tongued with censure of the world’s blind greed-- - More filled with signs and portents for the soul-- - More fraught with menace to the universe. - - What gulfs between him and the seraphim! - Slave of the wheel of labor, what to him - Are Plato and the swing of Pleiades? - What the long reaches of the peaks of song, - The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose? - Through this dread shape the suffering ages look; - Time’s tragedy is in that aching stoop; - Through this dread shape humanity betrayed, - Plundered, profaned and disinherited, - Cries protest to the Judges of the World, - A protest that is also prophecy. - - O masters, lords and rulers in all lands, - Is this the handiwork you give to God, - This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched? - How will you ever straighten up this shape; - Touch it again with immortality; - Give back the upward looking and the light; - Rebuild in it the music and the dream; - Make right the immemorial infamies, - Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes? - - O masters, lords and rulers in all lands, - How will the Future reckon with this Man? - How answer his brute question in that hour - When whirlwinds of rebellion shake the world? - How will it be with kingdoms and with kings-- - With those who shaped him to the thing he is-- - When this dumb Terror shall reply to God, - After the silence of the centuries? - - - - -A Look into the Gulf - - - I looked one night, and there Semiramis, - With all her mourning doves about her head, - Sat rocking on an ancient road of Hell, - Withered and eyeless, chanting to the moon - Snatches of song they sang to her of old - Upon the lighted roofs of Nineveh. - And then her voice rang out with rattling laugh: - “The bugles! they are crying back again-- - Bugles that broke the nights of Babylon, - And then went crying on through Nineveh. - - * * * * * - - Stand back, ye trembling messengers of ill! - Women, let go my hair: I am the Queen, - A whirlwind and a blaze of swords to quell - Insurgent cities. Let the iron tread - Of armies shake the earth. Look, lofty towers: - Assyria goes by upon the wind!” - And so she babbles by the ancient road, - While cities turned to dust upon the Earth - Rise through her whirling brain to live again-- - Babbles all night, and when her voice is dead - Her weary lips beat on without a sound. - - - - -Brotherhood - - - The crest and crowning of all good, - Life’s final star, is Brotherhood; - For it will bring again to Earth - Her long-lost Poesy and Mirth; - Will send new light on every face, - A kingly power upon the race. - And till it come, we men are slaves, - And travel downward to the dust of graves. - - Come, clear the way, then, clear the way: - Blind creeds and kings have had their day. - Break the dead branches from the path: - Our hope is in the aftermath-- - Our hope is in heroic men, - Star-led to build the world again. - To this Event the ages ran: - Make way for Brotherhood--make way for Man. - - - - -Song of the Followers of Pan - - - Our bursting bugles blow apart - The gates of cities as we go; - We bring the music of the heart - From secret wells in Lillimo’. - - We break in music on the morns-- - Sing of the flower to stirring roots; - Apollo’s cry is in the horns, - And Hermes’ whisper in the flutes. - - We come with laughter to the Earth, - And lightly stir the heading wheat: - Our God is Poesy and Mirth, - And loves the noise of woodland feet. - - When dancers beat the air to sound, - After the time of yellow sheaves, - He stops to watch the merry round, - His pleased face looking through the leaves. - - - - -Little Brothers of the Ground - - - Little ants in leafy wood, - Bound by gentle Brotherhood, - While ye gaily gather spoil, - Men are ground by the wheel of toil; - While ye follow Blessed Fates, - Men are shriveled up with hates; - Or they lie with sheeted Lust, - And they eat the bitter dust. - - Ye are fraters in your hall, - Gay and chainless, great and small; - All are toilers in the field, - All are sharers in the yield. - But we mortals plot and plan - How to grind the fellow-man; - Glad to find him in a pit, - If we get some gain of it. - So with us, the sons of Time, - Labor is a kind of crime, - For the toilers have the least, - While the idlers lord the feast. - Yes, our workers they are bound, - Pallid captives to the ground; - Jeered by traitors, fooled by knaves, - Till they stumble into graves. - - How appears to tiny eyes - All this wisdom of the wise? - - - - -Wail of the Wandering Dead - - - Death, too, is a chimera and betrays, - And yet they promised we should enter rest; - Death is as empty as the cup of days, - And bitter milk is in her wintry breast. - - There is no worth in any world to come, - Nor any in the world we left behind; - And what remains of all our masterdom?-- - Only a cry out of the crumbling mind. - - We played all comers at the old Gray Inn, - But played the King of Players to our cost. - We played Him fair and had no chance to win: - The dice of God were loaded and we lost. - - We wander, wander, and the nights come down - With starless darkness and the rush of rains; - We drift as phantoms by the songless town, - We drift as litter on the windy lanes. - - Hope is the fading vision of the heart, - A mocking spirit throwing up wild hands. - She led us on with music at the start, - To leave us at dead fountains in the sands. - - Now all our days are but a cry for sleep, - For we are weary of the petty strife. - Is there not somewhere in the endless deep - A place where we can lose the feel of life? - - Where we can be as senseless as the dust - The night wind blows about a dried-up well? - Where there is no more labor, no more lust, - Nor any flesh to feel the Tooth of Hell? - - Our feet are ever sliding, and we seem - As old and weary as the pyramids. - Come, God of Ages, and dispel the dream, - Fold the worn hands and close the sinking lids. - - There is no new road for the dead to take: - Wild hearts are we among the worlds astray-- - Wild hearts are we that cannot wholly break, - But linger on though life has gone away. - - We are the sons of Misery and Eld: - Come, tender Death, with all your hushing wings, - And let our broken spirits be dispelled-- - Let dead men sink into the dusk of things. - - - - -A Prayer - - - Teach me, Father, how to go - Softly as the grasses grow; - Hush my soul to meet the shock - Of the wild world as a rock; - But my spirit, propt with power, - Make as simple as a flower. - Let the dry heart fill its cup, - Like a poppy looking up; - Let life lightly wear her crown, - Like a poppy looking down, - When its heart is filled with dew, - And its life begins anew. - - Teach me, Father, how to be - Kind and patient as a tree. - Joyfully the crickets croon - Under shady oak at noon; - Beetle, on his mission bent, - Tarries in that cooling tent. - Let me, also, cheer a spot, - Hidden field or garden grot-- - Place where passing souls can rest - On the way and be their best. - - - - -The Poet - - - His home is in the heights: to him - Men wage a battle weird and dim, - Life is a mission stern as fate, - And Song a dread apostolate. - The toils of prophecy are his, - To hail the coming centuries-- - To ease the steps and lift the load - Of souls that falter on the road. - The perilous music that he hears - Falls from the vortice of the spheres. - - He presses on before the race, - And sings out of a silent place. - Like faint notes of a forest bird - On heights afar that voice is heard; - And the dim path he breaks to-day - Will some time be a trodden way. - But when the race comes toiling on - That voice of wonder will be gone-- - Be heard on higher peaks afar, - Moved upward with the morning star. - - O men of earth, that wandering voice - Still goes the upward way: rejoice! - - - - -The Whirlwind Road - - - The Muses wrapped in mysteries of light - Came in a rush of music on the night; - And I was lifted wildly on quick wings, - And borne away into the deep of things. - The dead doors of my being broke apart; - A wind of rapture blew across the heart; - The inward song of worlds rang still and clear; - I felt the Mystery the Muses fear; - Yet they went swiftening on the ways untrod, - And hurled me breathless at the feet of God. - - I felt faint touches of the Final Truth-- - Moments of trembling love, moments of youth. - A vision swept away the human wall; - Slowly I saw the meaning of it all-- - Meaning of life and time and death and birth, - But can not tell it to the men of Earth. - I only point the way, and they must go - The whirlwind road of song if they would know. - - - - -The Desire of Nations - - And the government shall be upon His shoulder: and His name shall - be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The ever-lasting - Father, The Prince of Peace.--_Isaiah._ - - - Earth will go back to her lost youth, - And life grow deep and wonderful as truth, - When the wise King out of the nearing heaven comes - To break the spell of long millenniums-- - To build with song again - The broken hope of men-- - To hush and heroize the world, - Beneath the flag of Brotherhood unfurled. - And He will come some day: - Already is His star upon the way! - He comes, O world, He comes! - But not with bugle-cry nor roll of doubling drums. - - Nay, for He comes to loosen and unbind, - To build the lofty purpose in the mind, - To stir the heart’s deep chord.... - No rude horns parleying, no shock of shields; - Nor as of old the glory of the Lord - To half-awakened shepherds in the fields, - Looking with foolish faces on the rush - Of the Great Splendor, when the pulsing hush - Came o’er the hills, came o’er the heavens afar - Where on their cliff of stars the watching seraphs are. - - Nor as of old when first the Strong One trod, - The Power of sepulchers--our Risen God! - When on that deathless morning in the dark, - He quit the Garden of the Sepulcher, - Setting the oleander boughs astir, - And pausing at the gate with backward hark.-- - Nay, nor as when the Hero-King of Heaven - Came with upbraiding to His faint eleven, - And found the world-way to His bright feet barred, - And hopeless then because men’s hearts were hard. - - Nor will He come like carnal kings of old, - With pomp of pilfered gold; - Nor like the pharisees with pride of prayer; - Nor as the stumbling foolish stewards dream - In tedious argument and fruitless creed, - But in the passion of the heart-warm deed - Will come the Man Supreme. - Yea, for He comes to lift the Public Care-- - To build on Earth the Vision hung in air. - This is the one fulfillment of His Law-- - The one Fact in the mockeries that seem. - This is the Vision that the prophets saw-- - The Comrade Kingdom builded in their dream. - - No, not as in that elder day - Comes now the King upon the human way. - He comes with power: His white unfearing face - Shines through the Social Passion of the race. - He comes to frame the freedom of the Law, - To touch these men of Earth - With feeling of life’s oneness and its worth, - A feeling of its mystery and awe. - - And when He comes into the world gone wrong, - He will rebuild her beauty with a song. - To every heart He will its own dream be: - One moon has many phantoms in the sea. - Out of the North the norns will cry to men: - “Balder the Beautiful has come again!” - The flutes of Greece will whisper from the dead: - “Apollo has unveiled his sunbright head!” - The stones of Thebes and Memphis will find voice: - “Osiris comes: O tribes of Time, rejoice!” - And social architects who build the State, - Serving the Dream at citadel and gate, - Will hail Him coming through the labor-hum. - And glad quick cries will go from man to man: - “Lo, He has come, our Christ the Artisan-- - The King who loved the lilies, He has come!” - - He will arrive, our Counselor and Chief. - And with bleak faces lighted up will come - The earth-worn mothers from their martyrdom, - To tell Him of their grief. - And glad girls caroling from field and town - Will go to meet Him with the labor-crown, - The new crown woven of the heading wheat. - And men will sit down at His sacred feet; - And He will say--the King-- - “Come, let us live the poetry we sing!” - And these, His burning words, will break the ban-- - Words that will grow to be, - On continent, on sea, - The rallying cry of man.... - - He comes to make the long injustice right-- - Comes to push back the shadow of the night, - The gray Tradition full of flint and flaw-- - Comes to wipe out the insults to the soul, - The insults of the Few against the Whole, - The insults they make righteous with a law. - - Yea, He will bear the Safety of the State, - For in his still and rhythmic steps will be - The power and music of Alcyone, - Who holds the swift heavens in their starry fate. - Yea, He will lay on souls the power of peace, - And send on kingdoms torn the sense of Home-- - More than the fire of Joy that burned on Greece, - More than the light of Law that rose on Rome. - - - - -The Elf Child - - - I am a child of the reef and the blowing spray, - And all my heart goes wildly to the sea. - I am a changeling: can you follow me - Through hill and hollow on the wind’s dim way? - Yes, at the break of a tempestuous day - They bore me to the land through starless storm, - And laid me in the pillow sweetly warm - And broken by the first one’s little stay. - - The elf kings found me on an ocean reef, - A lyric child of mystery and grief. - Then need I tell you why the trembling start-- - Why in my song the sound of ocean dwells-- - Why the quick gladness when the billow swells, - As though remembered voices called the heart? - - - - -The Goblin Laugh - - - When I behold how men and women grind - And grovel for some place of pomp or power, - To shine and circle through a crumbling hour, - Forgetting the large mansions of the mind, - That are the rest and shelter of mankind; - And when I see them come with wearied brains - Pallid and powerless to enjoy their gains, - I seem to hear a goblin laugh unwind. - - And then a memory sends upon its billow - Thoughts of a singer wise enough to play, - Who took life as a lightsome holiday: - Oft have I seen him make his arm a pillow, - Drink from his hand, and with a pipe of willow - Blow a wild music down a woodland way. - - - - -Poetry - - - She comes as hush and beauty of the night, - And sees too deep for laughter; - Her touch is a vibration and a light - From worlds before and after. - - - - -A Meeting - - - Softly she came one twilight from the dead, - And in the passionate silence of her look - Was more than man has writ in any book: - And now my thoughts are restless, and a dread - Calls them to the Dim Land discomforted; - For down the leafy ways her white feet took, - Lightly the newly broken roses shook-- - Was it the wind disturbed each rosy head? - - God! was it joy or sorrow in her face-- - That quiet face? Had it grown old or young? - Was it sweet memory or sad that stung - Her voiceless soul to wander from its place? - What do the dead find in the Silence--grace? - Or endless grief for which there is no tongue? - - - - -Infinite Depths - - - The little pool, in street or field apart, - Glasses deep heavens and the rushing storm; - And into silent depths of every heart, - The Eternal throws its awful shadow-form. - - - - -A Leaf from the Devil’s Jest-Book - - - Beside the sewing-table chained and bent, - They stitch for the lady, tyrannous and proud-- - For her a wedding-gown, for them a shroud; - They stitch and stitch, but never mend the rent - Torn in life’s golden curtains. Glad Youth went, - And left them alone with Time; and now if bowed - With burdens they should sob and cry aloud,-- - Wondering, the rich would look from their content. - - And so this glimmering life at last recedes - In unknown, endless depths beyond recall; - And what’s the worth of all our ancient creeds, - If here at the end of ages this is all-- - A white face floating in the whirling ball, - A dead face plashing in the river reeds? - - - - -The Paymaster - - - There is a sacred Something on all ways-- - Something that watches through the Universe; - One that remembers, reckons and repays, - Giving us love for love, and curse for curse. - - - - -The Last Furrow - - - The Spirit of Earth, with still restoring hands, - ’Mid ruin moves, in glimmering chasm gropes, - And mosses mantle and the bright flower opes; - But Death the Ploughman wanders in all lands, - And to the last of Earth his furrow stands. - The grave is never hidden; fearful hopes - Follow the dead upon the fading slopes, - And there wild memories meet upon the sands. - - When willows fling their banners to the plain, - When rumor of winds and sound of sudden showers - Disturb the dream of winter--all in vain - The grasses hurry to the graves, the flowers - Toss their wild torches on their windy towers; - Yet are the bleak graves lonely in the rain. - - - - -In the Storm - - - I huddled close against the mighty cliff. - A sense of safety and of brotherhood - Broke on the heart: the shelter of a rock - Is sweeter than the roofs of all the world. - - - - -After Reading Shakspere - - - Blithe Fancy lightly builds with airy hands - Or on the edges of the darkness peers, - Breathless and frightened at the Voice she hears: - Imagination (lo! the sky expands) - Travels the blue arch and Cimmerian sands,-- - Homeless on earth, the pilgrim of the spheres, - The rush of light before the hurrying years, - The Voice that cries in unfamiliar lands. - - Men weigh the moons that flood with eerie light - The dusky vales of Saturn--wood and stream; - But who shall follow on the awful sweep - Of Neptune through the dim and dreadful deep? - Onward he wanders in the unknown night, - And we are shadows moving in a dream. - - - - -The Hidden Valley - - - I stray with Ariel and Caliban: - I know the hill of windy pines--I know - Where the jay’s nest swings in the wild gorge below: - Lightly I climb where fallen cedars span - Bright rivers--climb to a valley under ban, - Where west winds set a thousand bells ablow-- - An eerie valley where in the morning glow - I hear the music of the pipes of Pan. - - Mysterious horns blow by on the still air-- - A satyr steps--a wood-god’s dewy notes - Come faintly from a vale of tossing oats.-- - But ho! what white thing in the canyon crossed? - Gods! I shall come on Dian unaware, - Look on her fearful beauty and be lost. - - - - -The Poets - - - Some cry of Sappho’s lyre, of Saadi’s flute, - Comes back across the waste of mortal things: - Men strive and die to reach the Dead Sea fruit-- - Only the poets find immortal springs. - - - - -Love’s Vigil - - - Love will outwatch the stars, and light the skies - When the last star falls, and the silent dark devours; - God’s warrior, he will watch the allotted hours, - And conquer with the look of his sad eyes: - He shakes the kingdom of darkness with his sighs, - His quiet sighs, while all the Infernal Powers - Tremble and pale upon their central towers, - Lest, haply, his bright universe arise. - - All will be well if he have strength to wait, - Till his lost Pleiad, white and silver-shod, - Regains her place to make the perfect Seven; - Then all the worlds will know that Love is Fate-- - That somehow he is greater even than Heaven-- - That in the Cosmic Council he is God. - - - - -Two at a Fireside - - - I built a chimney for a comrade old, - I did the service not for hope or hire-- - And then I traveled on in winter’s cold, - Yet all the day I glowed before the fire. - - - - -The Butterfly - - - O wingèd brother on the harebell, stay-- - Was God’s hand very pitiful, the hand - That wrought thy beauty at a dream’s demand? - - _Yea, knowing I love so well the flowery way,_ - _He did not fling me to the world astray--_ - _He did not drop me to the weary sand,_ - _But bore me gently to a leafy land:_ - _Tinting my wings, He gave me to the day._ - - Oh, chide no more my doubting, my despair! - I will go back now to the world of men. - Farewell, I leave thee to the world of air, - Yet thou hast girded up my heart again; - For He that framed the impenetrable plan, - And keeps His word with thee, will keep with man. - - - - -To William Watson - -_After reading “The Purple East.”_ - - - That hour you put the wreath of England by - To shake her guilty heart with song sublime, - The mighty Muse that watches from the sky - Laid on your head the larger wreath of Time. - - - - -Keats A-Dying - - - Often of that Last Hour I lie and think; - I see thee, Keats, nearing the Deathway dim-- - See Severn in his noiseless hurry, him - Who leaned above thee fading on the brink. - - * * * * * - - What is that wild light through the window chink? - Is it the burning feet of cherubim? - Or is it the white moon on western rim-- - Saint Agnes’ moon beginning now to sink? - - How did Death come--with sounds of water-stir? - With forms of beauty breaking at the lips? - With field pipes and the scent of blowing fir? - Or came it hurrying like a last eclipse, - Sweeping the world away like gossamer, - Blotting the moon, the mountains, and the ships? - - - - -Man - - - Out of the deep and endless universe - There came a greater Mystery, a Shape, - A Something sad, inscrutable, august-- - One to confront the worlds and question them. - - - - -The Cricket - - - The twilight is the morning of his day, - While sleep drops seaward from the fading shore, - With purpling sail and dip of silver oar, - He cheers the shadowed time with roun-delay, - Until the dark east softens into gray. - Now as the noisy hours are coming--hark! - His song dies gently--it is growing dark-- - His night, with its one star, is on its way! - - Faintly the light breaks o’er the blowing oats-- - Sleep, little brother, sleep: I am astir, - We worship Song, and servants are of her-- - I in the bright hours, thou in shadow-time; - Lead thou the starlit night with merry notes, - And I will lead the clamoring day with rhyme. - - - - -In High Sierras - - - There at a certain hour of the deep night, - A gray cliff with a demon face comes up, - Wrinkled and old, behind the peaks, and with - An anxious look peers at the Zodiac. - - - - -The Wharf of Dreams - - - Strange wares are handled on the wharves of sleep: - Shadows of shadows pass, and many a light - Flashes a signal fire across the night; - Barges depart whose voiceless steersmen keep - Their way without a star upon the deep; - And from lost ships, homing with ghostly crews, - Come cries of incommunicable news, - While cargoes pile the piers, a moon-white heap-- - - Budgets of dream-dust, merchandise of song, - Wreckage of hope and packs of ancient wrong, - Nepenthes gathered from a secret strand, - Fardels of heartache, burdens of old sins, - Luggage sent down from dim ancestral inns, - And bales of fantasy from No-Man’s Land. - - - - -To Louise Michel - - - I cannot take your road, Louise Michel, - Priestess of Pity and of Vengeance--no: - Down that amorphous gulf I cannot go-- - That gulf of Anarchy whose pit is Hell. - Yet, sister, though my first word is farewell, - Remember that I know your hidden woe; - Have felt the grief that rends you blow on blow; - Have knelt beside you in the murky cell. - - You never followed hate (let this atone) - Nor knew the wrongs of others from your own: - Wild was the road, but Love has always led, - So I am silent where I cannot praise; - And here now at the parting of the ways, - I lay a still hand lightly on your head. - - - - -Shepherd Boy and Nereid - - - Ah, once of old in some forgotten tongue, - Forgotten land, I was a shepherd boy, - And you a Nereid, a wingèd joy: - On through the dawn-bright peaks our bodies swung - And flower-soft lyrics by immortals sung - Fell from their unseen pinnacles in air: - God looked from Heaven that hour, for you were fair, - And I a poet, and the star was young. - - You’d heard my woodland pipe and left the sea-- - Your hair blown gold and all your body white-- - Had left the ocean-girls to follow me. - We joined the hill-nymphs in their joyous flight, - And you laughed lightly to the sea, and sent - Quick glances flashing through me as I went. - - - - -A Song at the Start - - - Oh, down the quick river our galley is going, - With a sound in the cordage, a beam on the sail: - The wind of the canyon our loose hair is blowing, - And the clouds of the morning are glad of the gale. - - Around the swift prow little billows are breaking, - And flinging their foam in a glory of light; - Now the shade of a rock on the river is shaking, - And a wave leaps high up growing suddenly white. - - The weight of the whole world is light as a feather, - And the peaks rise in silence and westerly flee: - Oh, the world and the poet are singing together, - And from the far cliff comes a sound of the sea. - - - - -My Comrade - - - I never build a song by night or day, - Of breaking ocean or of blowing whin, - But in some wondrous unexpected way, - Like light upon a road, my Love comes in. - - And when I go at night upon the hill, - My heart is lifted on mysterious wings: - My Love is there to strengthen and to still, - For she can take away the dread of things. - - - - -A Lyric of the Dawn - - - Alone I list - In the leafy tryst; - Silent the woodlands in their starry sleep-- - Silent the phantom wood in waters deep: - No footfall of a wind along the pass - Startles a harebell--stirs a blade of grass. - Yonder the wandering weeds, - Enchanted in the light, - Stand in the gusty hollows, still and white; - Yonder are plumy reeds, - Dusking the border of the clear lagoon; - Far off the silver clifts - Hang in ethereal light below the moon; - Far off the ocean lifts, - Tossing its billows in the misty beam, - And shore-lines whiten, silent as a dream: - I hark for the bird, and all the hushed hills harken: - This is the valley: here the branches darken - The silver-lighted stream. - - Hark-- - That rapture in the leafy dark! - Who is it shouts upon the bough aswing, - Waking the upland and the valley under? - What carols, like the blazon of a king, - Fill all the dawn with wonder? - Oh, hush, - It is the thrush, - In the deep and woody glen! - Ah, thus the gladness of the gods was sung, - When the old Earth was young; - That rapture rang, - When the first morning on the mountains sprang: - And now he shouts, and the world is young again! - - Carol, my king, - On your bough aswing - Thou art not of these evil days-- - Thou art a voice of the world’s lost youth: - Oh, tell me what is duty--what is truth-- - How to find God upon these hungry ways; - Tell of the golden prime, - When men beheld swift deities descend, - Before the race was left alone with Time, - Homesick on Earth, and homeless to the end, - When bird and beast could make a man their friend; - Before great Pan was dead, - Before the naiads fled; - When maidens white with dark eyes shy and bold, - With peals of laughter on the peaks of gold, - Startled the still dawn-- - Shone in upon the mountains and were gone, - Their voices fading silverly in depths of forests old. - - Sing of the wonders of their woodland ways, - Before the weird earth-hunger of these days, - When there was rippling mirth, - When justice was on Earth, - And light and grandeur of the Golden Age; - When never a heart was sad, - When all from king to herdsman had - A penny for a wage. - Ah, that old time has faded to a dream-- - The moon’s fair face is broken in the stream; - Yet shout and carol on, O bird, and let - The exiled race not utterly forget; - Publish thy revelation on the lawns-- - Sing ever in the dark ethereal dawns; - Sometime, in some sweet year, - These stormy souls, these men of Earth may hear. - - But hark again, - From the secret glen, - That voice of rapture and ethereal youth - Now laden with despair. - Forbear, O bird, forbear: - Is life not terrible enough forsooth? - Cease, cease the mystic song-- - No more, no more, the passion and the pain: - It wakes my life to fret against the chain; - It makes me think of all the agèd wrong-- - Of joy and the end of joy and the end of all-- - Of souls on Earth, and souls beyond recall. - Ah, ah, that voice again! - It makes me think of all these restless men, - Called into time--their progress and their goal; - And now, oh now, it sends into my soul - Dreams of a love that might have been for me-- - That might have been--and now can never be. - - Tell me no more of these-- - Tell me of trancèd trees; - (The ghosts, the memories, in pity spare) - Show me the leafy home of the wild bees; - Show me the snowy summits dim in air; - Tell me of things afar - In valleys silent under moon and star: - Dim hollows hushed with night, - The lofty cedars misty in the light, - Wild clusters of the vine, - Wild odors of the pine, - The eagle’s eyrie lifted to the moon-- - High places where on quiet afternoon - A shadow swiftens by, a thrilling scream - Startles the cliff, and dies across the woodland to a dream. - - Ha, now - He springs from the bough, - It flickers--he is lost! - Out of the copse he sprang; - This is the floating briar where he tossed: - The leaves are yet atremble where he sang. - Here a long vista opens--look! - This is the way he took, - Through the pale poplars by the pond: - Hark! he is shouting in the field beyond. - Ho, there he goes - Through the alder close! - He leaves me here behind him in his flight, - And yet my heart goes with him out of sight! - What whispered spell - Of Faëry calls me on from dell to dell? - I hear the voice--it wanders in a dream-- - Now in the grove, now on the hill, now on the fading stream. - - Lead on--you know the way-- - Lead on to Arcady, - O’er fields asleep; by river bank abrim; - Down leafy ways, dewy and cool and dim; - By dripping rocks, dark dwellings of the gnome, - Where hurrying waters dash their crests to foam. - I follow where you lead, - Down winding paths, across the flowery mead, - Down silent hollows where the woodbine blows, - Up water-courses scented by the rose. - I follow the wandering voice-- - I follow, I rejoice, - I fade away into the Age of Gold-- - We two together lost in forest old.-- - O ferny and thymy paths, O fields of Aidenn, - Canyons and cliffs by mortal feet untrod! - O souls that weary and are heavy laden, - Here is the peace of God! - - Lo! now the clamoring hours are on the way: - Faintly the pine tops redden in the ray; - From vale to vale fleet-footed rumors run, - With sudden apprehension of the sun; - A light wind stirs - The filmy tops of delicate dim firs, - And on the river border blows, - Breaking the shy bud softly to a rose. - Sing out, O throstle, sing: - I follow on, my king: - Lead me forever through the crimson dawn-- - Till the world ends, lead me on! - Ho there! he shouts again--he sways--and now, - Upspringing from the bough, - Flashing a glint of dew upon the ground, - Without a sound - He drops into a valley and is gone! - - - - -Joy of the Morning - - - I hear you, little bird, - Shouting aswing above the broken wall. - Shout louder yet: no song can tell it all. - Sing to my soul in the deep still wood: - ’Tis wonderful beyond the wildest word: - I’d tell it, too, if I could. - - Oft when the white, still dawn - Lifted the skies and pushed the hills apart, - I’ve felt it like a glory in my heart-- - (The world’s mysterious stir) - But had no throat like yours, my bird, - Nor such a listener. - - - - -Youth and Time - - - Once, I remember, the world was young; - The rills rejoiced with a silver tongue; - The field-lark sat in the wheat and sang; - The thrush’s shout in the woodland rang; - The cliffs and the perilous sands afar - Were softened to mist by the morning star; - For Youth was with me (I know it now!), - And a light shone out from his wreathèd brow. - He turned the fields to enchanted ground, - He touched the rains with a dreamy sound. - - But alas, he vanished, and Time appeared, - The Spirit of Ages, old and weird. - He crushed and scattered my beamy wings; - He dragged me forth from the court of kings; - He gave me doubt and a bloom of beard, - This Spirit of Ages, old and weird. - The wonder went from the field of corn, - The glory died on the craggy horn; - And suddenly all was strange and gray, - And the rocks came out on the trodden way. - - I hear no more the wild thrush sing: - He is silent now on the peach aswing. - Something is gone from the house of mirth-- - Something is gone from the hills of Earth. - Time hurries me on with a wizard hand; - He turns the Earth to a homeless land; - He stays my life with a stingy breath, - And darkens its depths with foreknowledge of death; - Calls memories back on their path apace; - Sends desperate thoughts to the soul’s dim place. - - Time murders our youth with his sorrow and sin, - And pushes us on to the windowless inn. - - - - -A Satyr Song - - - I know by the stir of the branches - The way she went; - And at times I can see where a stem - Of the grass is bent. - She’s the secret and light of my life, - She allures to elude; - But I follow the spell of her beauty - Whatever the mood. - - I have followed all night in the hills, - And my breath is deep, - But she flies on before like a voice - In the vale of sleep. - I follow the print of her feet - In the wild river bed, - And lo, she calls gleefully down - From a cliff overhead. - - - - -A Cry in the Night - - - Wail, wail, wail, - For the fleering world goes down: - Into the song of the poet pale - Mixes the laugh of the clown. - - Grim, grim, grim, - Is the road we go to the dead; - Yet we must on, for a Something dim - Pushes the soul ahead. - - Where, where, where, - Through the dust and shadow of things - Will the fleeing Fates with their wild manes bear - These tribes of slaves and kings? - - - - -Fays - - - One secret night, I stood where ocean pours - Eternal waters on the yellow shores, - And saw the drift of fays that Prosper saw: - (Their feet had no more sound than blowing straw.) - And little hands held light in little hands - They chased a fleeing billow down the sands, - But turned in the nick o’ time, and mad with glee - Raced back again before the swelling sea. - - - - -In Death Valley - - - There came gray stretches of volcanic plains, - Bare, lone and treeless, then a bleak lone hill, - Like to the dolorous hill that Dobell saw. - Around were heaps of ruins piled between - The Burn o’ Sorrow and the Water o’ Care; - And from the stillness of the down-crushed walls - One pillar rose up dark against the moon. - There was a nameless Presence everywhere; - In the gray soil there was a purple stain, - And the gray reticent rocks were dyed with blood-- - Blood of a vast unknown Calamity. - It was the mark of some ancestral grief-- - Grief that began before the ancient Flood. - - - - -At Dawn - - - Just then the branches lightly stirred.... - See, out o’ the apple boughs a bird - Bursts music-mad into the blue abyss: - Rothschild would give his gold for this-- - The wealth of nations, if he knew: - (And find a profit in the business, too.) - - - - -“Follow Me” - - - O friend, we never choose the better part, - Until we set the Cross up in the heart. - I know I can not live until I die-- - Till I am nailed upon it wild and high, - And sleep in the tomb for a full three days dead, - With angels at the feet and at the head. - But then in a great brightness I shall rise - To walk with stiller feet below the skies. - - - - -In Poppy Fields - - - Here the poppy hosts assemble: - How they startle, how they tremble! - All their royal hoods unpinned - Blow out lightly in the wind. - Here is gold to labor for; - Here is pillage worth a war. - - Men that in the cities grind, - Come! before the heart is blind. - - - - -The Joy of the Hills - - - I ride on the mountain tops, I ride; - I have found my life and am satisfied. - Onward I ride in the blowing oats, - Checking the field-lark’s rippling notes-- - Lightly I sweep - From steep to steep: - Over my head through the branches high - Come glimpses of a rushing sky; - The tall oats brush my horse’s flanks; - Wild poppies crowd on the sunny banks; - A bee booms out of the scented grass; - A jay laughs with me as I pass. - - I ride on the hills, I forgive, I forget - Life’s hoard of regret-- - All the terror and pain - Of the chafing chain. - - Grind on, O cities, grind: - I leave you a blur behind. - I am lifted elate--the skies expand: - Here the world’s heaped gold is a pile of sand. - Let them weary and work in their narrow walls: - I ride with the voices of waterfalls! - - I swing on as one in a dream--I swing - Down the airy hollows, I shout, I sing! - The world is gone like an empty word: - My body’s a bough in the wind, my heart a bird! - - - - -The Invisible Bride - - - The low-voiced girls that go - In gardens of the Lord, - Like flowers of the field they grow - In sisterly accord. - - Their whispering feet are white - Along the leafy ways; - They go in whirls of light - Too beautiful for praise. - - And in their band forsooth - Is one to set me free-- - The one that touched my youth-- - The one God gave to me. - - She kindles the desire - Whereby the gods survive-- - The white ideal fire - That keeps my soul alive. - - Now at the wondrous hour, - She leaves her star supreme, - And comes in the night’s still power, - To touch me with a dream. - - Sibyl of mystery - On roads beyond our ken, - Softly she comes to me, - And goes to God again. - - - - -The Valley - - - I know a valley in the summer hills, - Haunted by little winds and daffodils; - Faint footfalls and soft shadows pass at noon; - Noiseless, at night, the clouds assemble there; - And ghostly summits hang below the moon-- - Dim visions lightly swung in silent air. - - - - -The Climb of Life - - - There’s a feel of all things flowing, - And no power of Earth can bind them; - There’s a sense of all things growing, - And through all their forms a-glowing - Of the shaping souls behind them. - - And the break of beauty heightens - With the swiftening of the motion, - And the soul behind it lightens, - As a gleam of splendor whitens - From a running wave of ocean. - - See the still hand of the Shaper, - Moving in the dusk of being: - Burns at first a misty taper, - Like the moon in veil of vapor, - When the rack of night is fleeing. - - In the stone a dream is sleeping, - Just a tinge of life, a tremor; - In the tree a soul is creeping-- - Last, a rush of angels sweeping - With the skies beyond the dreamer. - - So the Lord of Life is flinging - Out a splendor that conceals Him: - And the God is softly singing - And on secret ways is winging, - Till the rush of song reveals Him. - - - - -The Tragedy - - - Oh, the fret of the brain, - And the wounds and the worry; - Oh, the thought of love and the thought of death-- - And the soul in its silent hurry. - - But the stars break above, - And the fields flower under; - And the tragical life of man goes on, - Surrounded by beauty and wonder. - - - - -Divine Vision - - - Can it be the Master knows - How the Cosmic Blossom blows? - - Yes, at times the Lord of Light - Breaks forth wonderful and white, - And He strikes a corded lyre - In a rush of whirlwind fire; - And He sees before Him pass - Souls and planets in a glass; - And within the music hears - All the motions of all spheres, - All the whispers of all feet, - Cries of triumph and retreat, - Songs of systems and of souls, - Circling to their mighty goals. - - So the Lord of Light beholds - How the Cosmic Flower unfolds. - - - - -Midsummer Noon - - - Yonder a workman, under the cool bridge, - Resting at mid-day, watches the glancing midge, - While twinkling lights and murmurs of the stream - Pass into the dim fabric of his dream. - The misty hollows and the drowsy ridge-- - How like an airy fantasy they seem. - - - - -One Life, One Law - - - What do we know--what need we know - Of the great world to which we go? - We peer into the tomb, and hark: - Its walls are dim, its doors are dark. - - Be still, O mourning heart, nor seek - To make the tongueless silence speak: - Be still, be strong, nor wish to find - Their way who leave the world behind-- - Voices and forms forever gone - Into the darkness of the dawn. - - What is their wisdom, clear and deep?-- - That as men sow they surely reap,-- - That every thought, that every deed, - Is sown into the soul for seed. - They have no word we do not know,-- - Nor yet the cherubim aglow - With God: we know that virtue saves,-- - They know no more beyond the graves. - - - - -Griefs - - - The rains of winter scourged the weald, - For days they darkened on the field: - Now, where the wings of winter beat, - The poppies ripple in the wheat. - - And pitiless griefs came thick and fast-- - Life’s bough was naked in the blast-- - Till silently amid the gloom - They blew the wintry heart to bloom. - - - - -An Old Road - - - A host of poppies, a flight of swallows; - A flurry of rain, and a wind that follows - Shepherds the leaves in the sheltered hollows, - For the forest is shaken and thinned. - - Over my head are the firs for rafter; - The crows blow south, and my heart goes after; - I kiss my hands to the world with laughter-- - Is it Aidenn or mystical Ind? - - Oh, the whirl of the fields in the windy weather! - How the barley breaks and blows together! - Oh, glad is the free bird afloat on the heather-- - Oh, the whole world is glad of the wind! - - - - -The New-Comers - - - Two swallows--each preening a long glossy feather; - Now they gossip and dart through the silvery weather; - Oh, praise to the Highest--two lovers together-- - Free, free in the fathomless world of air. - - No fate to oppose and no fortune to sunder; - Blue sky overhead--green sky breaking under; - And their home on the cliff in the midst of the wonder, - Hung high beyond fear on the gray granite stair. - - - - -Music - - - It is the last appeal to man-- - Voice crying since the world began; - The cry of the Ideal--cry - To aspirations that would die. - The last appeal! in it is heard - The pathos of the final word. - - Voice tender and heroical-- - Imperious voice that knoweth well - To wreck the reasonings of years, - To strengthen rebel hearts with tears. - - - - -Fay Song - - - My life is a dream--a dream - In the moon’s cool beam; - Some day I shall wake and desire - A touch of the infinite fire. - But now ’tis enough that I be - In the light of the sea; - Enough that I climb with the cloud - When the winds of the morning are loud; - Enough that I fade with the stars - When the door of the East unbars. - - - - -The Old Earth - - - How will it be if there we find no traces-- - There in the Golden Heaven--if we find - No memories of the old Earth left behind, - No visions of familiar forms and faces-- - Reminders of old voices and old places? - Yet could we bear it if it should remind? - - - - -Divine Adventure - - - At times a youth (so whispered legend tells), - Like Hylas, stoops to drink - By forest-hidden brink, - And fair hands draw him down to darkened wells; - Fair hands that hold him fast - With laughter at the last - Have power to draw him lightly down to be - In elfin chambers under the gray sea. - - And I, O men of Earth, I too, - When dawn was at the dew, - Was drawn as Hylas downward and beheld - Spirits of youth and eld-- - Was swung down endless caverns to the deep, - Saw fervid jewels sparkle in their sleep, - Saw glad gnomes working in the dusty light, - Saw great rocks crouching in the primal night. - I was drawn down, and after many days - Returned with stiller feet to walk the upper ways. - - - - -Song Made Flesh - - - I have no glory in these songs of mine: - If one of them can make a brother strong, - It came down from the peaks of the divine-- - I heard it in the Heaven of Lyric Song. - - The one who builds the poem into fact, - He is the rightful owner of it all: - The pale words are with God’s own power packed - When brave souls answer to their buglecall. - - And so I ask no man to praise my song, - But I would have him build it in his soul; - For that great praise would make me glad and strong, - And build the poem to a perfect whole. - - - - -To High-born Poets - - - There comes a pitiless cry from the oppressed-- - A cry from the toilers of Babylon for their rest.-- - O Poet, thou art holden with a vow: - The light of higher worlds is on thy brow, - And Freedom’s star is soaring in thy breast. - Go, be a dauntless voice, a bugle-cry - In darkening battle when the winds are high-- - A clear sane cry wherein the God is heard - To speak to men the one redeeming word. - No peace for thee, no peace, - Till blind oppression cease; - The stones cry from the walls, - Till the gray injustice falls-- - Till strong men come to build in freedom-fate - The pillars of the new Fraternal State. - - Let trifling pipe be mute, - Fling by the languid lute: - Take down the trumpet and confront the Hour, - And speak to toil-worn nations from a tower-- - Take down the horn wherein the thunders sleep, - Blow battles into men--call down the fire-- - The daring, the long purpose, the desire; - Descend with faith into the Human Deep, - And ringing to the troops of right a cheer, - Make known the Truth of Man in holy fear; - Send forth thy spirit in a storm of song, - A tempest flinging fire upon the wrong. - - - - -The Toilers - - - Their blind feet drift in the darkness, and no one is leading; - Their toil is the pasture, where hyens and harpies are feeding; - In all lands and always, the wronged, the homeless, the humbled - Till the cliff-like pride of the spoiler is shaken and crumbled, - Till the Pillars of Hell are uprooted and left to their ruin, - And a rose-garden gladdens the places no rose ever blew in, - Where now men huddle together and whisper and harken, - Or hold their bleak hands over embers that die out and darken. - The anarchies gather and thunder: few, few are the fraters, - And loud is the revel at night in the camp of the traitors. - Say, Shelley, where are you--where are you? our hearts are a-breaking! - The fight in the terrible darkness--the shame--the forsaking! - - The leaves shower down and are sport for the winds that come after; - And so are the Toilers in all lands the jest and the laughter - Of nobles--the Toilers scourged on in the furrow as cattle, - Or flung as a meat to the cannons that hunger in battle. - - - - -On the Gulf of Night - - - The world’s sad petrels dwell for evermore - On windy headland or on ocean floor, - Or pierce the violent skies with perilous flights - That fret men in their palaces o’ nights, - Breaking enchanted slumber’s easeful boat, - With shudderings of their wild and dolorous note; - They blow about the black and barren skies, - They fill the night with ineffectual cries. - - There is for them not anything before, - But sound of sea and sight of soundless shore, - Save when the darkness glimmers with a ray, - And Hope sings softly, _Soon it will be day_. - Then for a golden space the shades are thinned, - And dawn seems blowing seaward on the wind. - But soon the dark comes wilder than before, - And swift around them breaks a sullen roar; - The tempest calls to windward and to lea, - And--they are seabirds on the homeless sea. - - - - -A Harvest Song - - - The gray bulk of the granaries uploom against the sky; - The harvest moon has dwindled--they have housed the corn and rye; - And now the idle reapers lounge against the bolted doors: - Without are hungry harvesters, within enchanted stores. - - Lo, they had bread while they were out a-toiling in the sun: - Now they are strolling beggars, for the harvest work is done. - They are the gods of husbandry: they gather in the sheaves, - But when the autumn strips the wood, they’re drifting with the leaves. - They plow and sow and gather in the glory of the corn; - They know the noon, they know the pitiless rains before the morn; - They know the sweep of furrowed fields that darken in the gloom-- - A little while their hope on earth, then evermore the tomb. - - - - -Two Taverns - - - I remember how I lay - On a bank a summer day, - Peering into weed and flower: - Watched a poppy all one hour; - Watched it till the air grew chill - In the darkness of the hill; - Till I saw a wild bee dart - Out of the cold to the poppy’s heart; - Saw the petals gently spin, - And shut the little lodger in. - Then I took the quiet road - To my own secure abode. - All night long his tavern hung; - Now it rested, now it swung; - I asleep in steadfast tower, - He asleep in stirring flower; - In our hearts the same delight - In the hushes of the night; - Over us both the same dear care - As we slumbered unaware. - - - - -The Man under the Stone - - - When I see a workingman with mouths to feed, - Up, day after day, in the dark before the dawn, - And coming home, night after night, through the dusk, - Swinging forward like some fierce silent animal, - I see a man doomed to roll a huge stone up an endless steep. - He strains it onward inch by stubborn inch, - Crouched always in the shadow of the rock.... - See where he crouches, twisted, cramped, misshapen! - He lifts for their life; - The veins knot and darken-- - Blood surges into his face.... - Now he loses--now he wins-- - Now he loses--loses--(God of my soul!) - He digs his feet into the earth-- - There’s a moment of terrified effort. - Will the huge stone break his hold, - And crush him as it plunges to the gulf? - - The silent struggle goes on and on, - Like two contending in a dream. - - - - -Song to the Divine Mother[A] - - - Come, Mighty Mother, from the bright abode, - Lift the low heavens and hush the Earth again; - Come when the moon throws down a shining road - Across the sea--come back to weary men. - - But if the moon throws out across the sea - Too dim a light, too wavering a way, - Come when the sunset paves a path for Thee - Across the waters fading into gray. - - Dead nations saw Thee dimly in release-- - In Aphrodite rising from the foam: - Some glimmer of Thy beauty was on Greece, - Some trembling of Thy passion was on Rome. - - For ages Thou hast been the dim desire - That warmed the bridal chamber of the mind: - Come burning through the heavens with Holy Fire, - And spread divine contagion on mankind. - - Come down, O Mother, to the helpless land, - That we may frame our Freedom into Fate: - Come down, and on the throne of nations stand, - That we may build Thy beauty in the State. - - Come shining in upon our daily road, - Uphold the hero heart and light the mind; - Quicken the strong to lift the People’s load, - And bring back buried justice to mankind. - - Shine through the frame of nations for a light, - Move through the hearts of heroes in a song: - It is Thy beauty, wilder than the night, - That hushed the heavens and keeps the high gods strong. - - I know, Supernal Woman, Thou dost seek - No song of man, no worship and no praise; - But thou wouldst have dead lips begin to speak, - And dead feet rise to walk immortal ways. - - Yet listen, Mighty Mother, to the child - Who has no voice but song to tell his grief-- - Nothing but tears and broken numbers wild, - Nothing but woodland music for relief. - - His song is but a little broken cry, - Less than the whisper of a river reed; - Yet thou canst hear in it the souls that die-- - Feel in its pain the vastness of our need. - - I would not break the mouth of song to tell - My life’s long passion and my heart’s long grief, - But Thou canst hear the ocean in one shell, - And see the whole world’s winter in one leaf. - - So here I stand at the world’s weary feet, - And cry the sorrow of the world’s dumb years: - I cry because I hear the world’s heart beat - Weary of hope, weary of life and tears. - - For ages Thou hast breathèd upon mankind - A faint wild tenderness, a vague desire; - For ages stilled the whirlwinds of the mind, - And sent on lyric seers the rush of fire. - - And yet the world is held by wintry chain, - Dead to Thy social passion, Holy One: - The dried-up furrows need the vital rain, - The cold seeds the quick spirit of the sun. - - Some day our homeless cries will draw Thee down, - And the old brightness on the ways of men - Will send a hush upon the jangling town, - And broken hearts will learn to love again. - - Come, Bride of God, to fill the vacant Throne, - Touch the dim Earth again with sacred feet; - Come build the Holy City of white stone, - And let the whole world’s gladness be complete. - - Come with the face that hushed the heavens of old-- - Come with Thy maidens in a mist of light; - Haste for the night falls and the shadows fold, - And voices cry and wander on the height. - - - - -The Flying Mist - - - I watch afar the moving Mystery, - The wool-shod, formless terror of the sea-- - The Mystery whose lightest touch can change - The world God made to phantasy, death-strange. - Under its spell all things grow old and gray - As they will be beyond the Judgment Day. - All voices, at the lifting of some hand, - Seem calling to us from another land. - Is it the still Power of the Sepulcher - That makes all things the wraiths of things that were? - - It touches, one by one, the wayside posts, - And they are gone, a line of hurrying ghosts. - It creeps upon the towns with stealthy feet, - And men are phantoms on a phantom street. - It strikes the towers and they are shafts of air, - Above the spectres passing in the square. - The city turns to ashes, spire by spire; - The mountains perish with their peaks afire. - The fading city and the falling sky - Are swallowed in one doom without a cry. - - It tracks the traveler fleeing with the gale, - Fleeing toward home and friends without avail; - It springs upon him and he is a ghost, - A blurred shape moving on a soundless coast. - God! it pursues my love along the stream, - Swirls round her and she is forever dream. - What Hate has touched the universe with eld, - And left me only in a world dispelled? - - - - -From the Hand of a Child - - - One day a child ran after me in the street, - To give me a half-blown rose, a fire-white rose, - Its stem all warm yet from the tight-shut hand. - The little gift seemed somehow more to me - Than all men strive for in the turbid towns, - Than all they hoard up through a long wild life. - And as I breathed the heart-breath of the flower, - The Youth of Earth broke on me like a dawn, - And I was with the wide-eyed wondering things, - Back in the far forgotten buried time. - A lost world came back softly with the rose: - I saw a glad host follow with lusty cries - Diana flying with her maidens white, - Down the long reaches of the laureled hills. - Above the sea I saw a wreath of girls, - Fading to air in far-off poppy fields. - I saw a blithe youth take the open road: - His thoughts ran on before him merrily; - Sometimes he dipped his feet in stirring brooks; - At night he slept upon a bed of boughs. - - This in my soul. Then suddenly a shape, - A spectre wearing yet the mask of dust - Jostled against me as he passed, and lo! - The jarring city and the drift of feet - Surged back upon me like the grieving sea. - - - - -At the Meeting of Seven Valleys - - - At the meeting of seven valleys in the west, - I came upon a host of silent souls, - Seated beside still waters on the grass. - It was a place of memories and tears-- - Terrible tears. I rested in a wood, - And there the bird that mourns for Itys sang-- - Itys that touched the tears of all the world. - But climbing onward toward the purple peaks, - I passed, on silent feet, white multitudes, - Beyond the reach of peering memories, - Lying asleep upon the scented banks, - Their bodies burning with celestial fire. - A mighty awe came on me at the thought-- - The strangeness of the beatific sleep, - The vision of God, the mystic bread of rest. - - - - -The Rock-Breaker - - - Pausing he leans upon his sledge, and looks-- - A labor-blasted toiler; - So have I seen, on Shasta’s top, a pine - Stand silent on a cliff, - Stript of its glory of green leaves and boughs, - Its great trunk split by fire, - Its gray bark blackened by the thunder-smoke, - Its life a sacrifice - To some blind purpose of the destinies. - - - - -These Songs Will Perish - - - These songs will perish like the shapes of air-- - The singer and the songs die out forever; - But star-eyed Truth (greater than song or singer) - Sweeps hurrying on: far off she sees a gleam - Upon a peak. She cried to man of old - To build the enduring, glad Fraternal State-- - Cries yet through all the ruins of the world-- - Through Karnack, through the stones of Babylon-- - Cries for a moment through these fading songs. - - On wingèd feet, a form of fadeless youth, - She goes to meet the coming centuries, - And, hurrying, snatches up some human reed, - Blows through it once her terror-bearing note, - And breaks and throws away. It is enough - If we can be a bugle at her lips, - To scatter her contagion on mankind. - - -FOOTNOTE: - -[A] This song should be read in the light of the deep and comforting -truth that the Divine Feminine as well as the Divine Masculine -Principle is in God--that he is Father-Mother, Two-in-One. It follows -from this truth that the dignity of womanhood is grounded in the Divine -Nature itself. The fact that the Deity is Man-Woman was known to the -ancient poets and sages, and was grafted into the nobler religions of -mankind. The idea is implied in the doctrine of the Divine Father, -taught by our Lord in the Gospels; and it is declared in the first -chapter of Genesis in the words: “God said, ‘Let Us make men in Our -image, after Our likeness.’ ... So God created man in His own image, in -the image of God created He him; male and female created He them.” - - - - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAN WITH THE HOE, AND OTHER -POEMS *** - -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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