II
But Art made fierce reply, "Anathema,
On you who fill flesh but the spirit scorn.
Who give it to the unrequiting law
Of your brute soullessness and heart unborn
To aught than barter in your low bazaar—
Though Beauty die for it from star to star.
You are the god of Judas and those who
Betrayed Him unto nail and thorn and sword!
Of that relentless worm-bit Florence horde
Who drove lone Dante from them till he grew
So great in death they begged his bones to strew
Their pride and wealth and useless praise upon.
Anathema! I cry; and will, till none
Of all earth's children still shall worship you."
SEEDS
A thousand years
In a mummy's hand
A seed may lie.
Then, planted, spring
Into life again
Under sun and sky.
A thousand days
In a soul's dark ways
A word may wait.
But a touch at length
May arouse its strength
And the word proves—Fate.
WORLD-SORROW
(The Cry of the Modern)
World-sorrow have I known, like unto God.
Nothing there is of pain but echoes down
My breast with wan reverberance and pang,
And peaceless passes thro it evermore.
The struck bird's cry wounds my all-feeling blood
To pity that will not be solacèd,
Sounds on me like far pleas of the unborn
Against predestined days. A withering bud
Brews barrenness thro all the verdancy
Of Spring. And in a tear—tho anguish shape it
On the warm lid of joy—earth's Tragedy,
Whose curtain falls not for it has no end,
Comes mirrored to me as infinite Ill.
How shall I 'scape it! How, O how escape
The trooping of prayers lost upon the void,
Of hopes misborn and fading not to rest!
How shall I burn not with all vain-lit loves
That alway billow thro me their slow fire
Fed by the agony of new-broke hearts!
How loose me from too long commisery
For those whom unrequiting Time has given
To the altar of the aching world's unrest!
A grief immitigable to the Hand
Whose mystery of returning sun can heal
Winter away, seems here; a grief but calm
Of immortality can make forgiven!
For even as all the gleaming girth of stars
That wreathe the Illimitable beauteously
Quench not the vast of night, so do all joys
Life strews along her passing to the grave
Prevail not o'er the shadow of sure death.
And O Humanity, long-suffering Harp
Of passion-strings unnumbered, shall His skill
Flung thus forever o'er thy fragile rest
Build but these harmonies that seem sometimes
Unworth the misery of the trampled worm?
Would, would I were not vibrant with all strains
He strikes from thee, or else more perfect tuned!
World-sorrow have I known, like unto God.
THE SOUL'S RETURN
Let me lie here—
I care not for the distant hills today,
And the blue sphere
Of far infinity that draws away
All to its deep,
Would only sweep
Soothing the farther from me with its sway.
Let me lie here—
Gazing with vacant sadness on this weed.
The cricket near
Will utter all my heart can bear to heed.
Another voice
Would swell the noise
And surge, that ever sound in human need.
Let me lie here:
For now, so long my wasted soul has tossed
On the wide Mere
Of Mystery Hope's wing alone has crossed,
I ask no more
Than to restore
To simple things the wonder they have lost.
BIRTHRIGHT
(To A. H. R.)
My own, among the unnumbered years
God casts from that full Garner which
Is His Eternity one shall
Be ours, beyond all fate or fears.
For, ranging lone amid its thorns.
Seeking the buds that grew between,
We met and made its morning seem
New in a world grown old to morns.
And so tho He may scatter still
Many a fadeless other round,
In none, for us shall there be found
That first awakening and thrill.
But as in peace we tread Love's Land,
To which it gave us right of birth,
We shall remember that New Earth
Came when we first walked hand in hand.
ROMANCE
(To A. H. R. on North Cliff, Lynton, Devon)
White-caps hurry to meet the shore
An hundred fathoms down.
Gray sails are shimmering on the wind
Far out from Lynmouth town.
High crags above us are whispering keen,
The heather and the ling
Laugh to the sky as driven by
The wild gulls cry or cling.
And, where the far sun like a god
Scatters the mist, lies Shore.
Is it Romance's magic realm
Spring reigns forever o'er?
Romance that our morning hearts could see
Across the darkest foam?
Then do we know it well, my love,
Because it is our Home.
ON THE ATLANTIC
(To A. H. R.)
Who stood upon that schooner's driven deck
Last night as reefed and shuddering she hove
Into the twilight and all desperate drove
From wave to angrier wave that sought her wreck?
Who labored at her helm and watched the wind
Stagger the sea with all his stunning might,
Until in dimness dwindling from our sight
She vanished in the wrack that rode behind?
We know not, you and I, but our two souls
That followed as storm-petrels o'er the waves
Felt all the might of Him who sinks or saves,
And all the pity of earth's unreached goals.
Felt all—then swift returning to our love
Dwelt in its peace, uplifted safe above.
BY A SILENT STREAM
To sit by a silent stream,
Watching water-lilies dream:
While breezes winnow
The floating seeds,
And the aery minnow
Weaves his wavy web among the reeds.
Where a fallen sycamore
Whitely arches a pathway o'er,
And shadows darkle
The lambent cool,
As, softly a-sparkle.
Sunbeams arrow lightnings thro the pool.
Where the everlasting's breath
Odors mysteries of death.
Where iron-weeds, rusted
Leaf and pod,
By insects dusted,
Rustle—then in autumn sadness nod.
To sit ... till every sense
Lose thought of whither and whence;
Till earth and heaven
And faith and fate
No longer leaven
Life, with hope or fear, or love or hate.
THE GREAT BUDDHA OF KAMAKURA TO THE SPHINX
Grave brother of the burning sands,
Whose eyes enshrine forever
The desert's soul, are you not worn
Of gazing outward to dim strands
Of stars that weary never?
Infinity no answer has
For Time's untold distresses.
Its deepest maze of mystery
Is but Illusion built up as
The blind build skies—with guesses.
Nor has Eternity a place
On any starry summit.
The winds of Death are wide as Life,
And leave no world untouched—but race,
And soon with Night benumb it.
And Karma is the law of soul
And star—yea, of all Being.
And from it but one way there is.
Retreat into that trancèd Whole—
Which is not Sight nor Seeing;
Which is not Mind nor Mindlessness,
Nor Deed nor driven Doer,
Nor Want nor Wasting of Desire;
But only that which won can bless;
And of all else is pure.
Turn then your eyes from the far track
Of worlds, and gazing inward,
O brother, fare where Life has come,
Yea, into its far Whence fare back.
All other ways are sinward.
NECROMANCE
Can heedless gazing teach me more than toil?
Can swaying of sere sedge along the slope,
Or the dull lisp of oaken limbs that foil
The sun's ensheathing fervor, interfuse
My vacant being with far meanings whose
Soft airs blow from the hidden seas of Hope?
Or can the wintry sumac sably stooping
So charm and lift my heart from heartless drooping
When other healings all were asked in vain?
Yes—there are witcheries in the things of earth
That breathe with an illimitable voice
Wisdom and calm to us, and lure to birth
Dim intimations bidding us rejoice
Even in the great mystery of Pain.
LOOK NOT TO THE WEST
Look not to the west where the sun is dying
On fields of darkening clouds!
Look not to the west where the wild birds nest
And the winds are hieing
To sweep away sleep from the forest,
And tatter the shrouds of sable silence
Lit by the fire-fly's morris-dance.
Look not to the west—
'Tis best for the heart to hear not the chants
Of Evening over day's death!
Look not to the west where the sun is dying—
The sun that rose with song!
Look not to the west where the closèd quest
Of thy soul seems lying;
Where every sorrow that ever
Was wed with wrong in human breast,
From the sea of its radiance never fades!
Look not to the west—
'Tis best for the heart to see not the shades
That rise—the wrecks of the Past!
A NIKKO SHRINE
Under the sway, in old Japan,
Of silent cryptic trees,
There is a shrine the worldliest
Would near with bended knees.
Green, thro a torii, the way
Leads to it, worn, across
A rivulet whose voice intones
With mystery of moss.
A mystery that is everywhere:
The god beneath his shrine
Seems but a mossy shape—yet so
Ensheathed is more divine.
For tho Nature has muffled him
And sealed him there away,
The meaning of all faith remains—
That men will ever pray.
Aye will, as long as soul has need,
As long as earth is sod
With tombs, bow down the knee to all
That wakens in them God.
THE QUESTION
I shall lie so one day,
With lips of Silence set;
Eyes that no tear can wet
Again: a thing of Clay.
I shall lie so, and Earth
Will seize again her dust—
Though she must gnaw and rust
The coffin's iron girth.
I shall lie so—and they
Who still the Day bestride,
Will stand so by my side
And with sad yearning say:
"What is he now, this man,
Shut in a pallor there,
His spirit that could dare,
What—what now is its span?
"A withered atom's space
Within a withered brain?
Or can it from the Wain
To far Orion race?"
And, like all that have died,
I shall but answer—naught.
Yet Time this truth has taught:
The Question—will abide.
I'LL LOOK NO MORE
I'll look no more! thro timeless hours my eyes
Without intent have watched the slowing flight
Of ebon crows across quiescent skies
Till all are gone; the last, a lonely bird,
Scudding to rest thro streams of golden curd
That flow far eastward to the coming night.
And as I turn again to foiling thought
My spirit leaves me—as faint zephyrs leave
The trees at evening; tho all day they've sought
A place to hide them in and fondly grieve.
And silently the slow oil sinks beneath
The noiseless burning wick of yellow flame.
It is as if God back to him would breathe
All the world's given life, and end its Aim.
NIGHT'S OCCULTISM
Northward the twilight thro dark drifts
Of cloud-wreck lingers cold.
Southward the sated lightning sinks
Beneath the wooded wold.
Eastward immovable deep shade
Is sealed with mystery.
Westward a memory of dead gold
Wakes on a sunset sea.
Under, is earth's still orbiting;
Over, a clearing star:
In all, the spirit litany
Of life's strange avatar.
UNCROWNED
I am not other than men are, you say?
But faulty and failing? And your love can lend
No glory of illusion to o'erlay
The lack, and make me seem one in whom blend
Nobilities wherein your heart may lose
All that it feels of flaw in me, or rues?
Can it so be? Did ever woman love
Whose faith wreathed not about the brow she chose
Aureolas illumining him above
All that another thinks he is, or knows?
I ask it bravely, for the way is long,
And, haloless, should I not lead you wrong?
WRITTEN IN HELL
(By Sir Giles, whom the Witch of Urm leads to Judas Iscariot)
Against a castle moated gloomily by a bitter drain of blood,
From whose fetid wave contumely
Of all truth was reeking fumily
And infectiously, I stood;
Waiting for her sign—
A shriek repeated nine.
I shrank at every aspish quivering fear set crawling in my breast.
But betimes I felt a shivering
Shriek cut ear and brain with slivering
Stings of terror, sin, unrest—
Christ! it raised the dead
Out of the moat's black bed.
Nine times—and then across the thickening reek a rusty draw was dropped;
Thro portcullis sped a quickening
Shadow past to where with sickening
Feet, befixed by awe I stopped—
There she laughed a laugh
No devil's soul could quaff.
I swear its clamor tore the stuttering leaves from shrub and shrunken tree;
Swear no limbo e'er heard muttering
Like that spawn of echoes sputtering
Midnight with their drunken glee—
Yet, ere half were done,
I could not hear a one.
She put her finger burning eerily to my lips—I heard them lock.
Led me then a marsh-way, cheerily—
Tho the quick ooze spurted drearily
Thro root-rotten curd and rock.
Things like water-ghouls
Slid slimily in pools.
She stepped just once upon a hideous burrow, dank and haired with grass;
Fixed upon me eyes perfidious
As a fiend's are, yet insidious—
Questioned if I dared to pass.
"I will search all Hell
To find him," from me fell.
And so was drawn thro dark cadaverous with the sound of gabbling dead.
Where we heard them hoot palaverous
Drivel learned beneath unsavorous
Moulds, and saw a glutton's head
Grin to a hissing bat,
That scraped him as he spat.
Witch she was, I knew, turned shepherdess to a soul blind as a sheep's.
But I dogged her on o'er jeopardous
Steeps down which she sped with leopardess
Limbs into miasmic deeps.
"Swim," she gasped behind—
Then like a she-wolf whined.
It almost seemed to me as deadening as the sluice of dreary Styx.
Fire and foulness mixed with leadening
Slush I drank; but swam the reddening
Stuff a league with weary licks.
Up a sulphurous bank
We climbed, and there I sank.
Again she laughed that laugh—a shrivelling, ghastly, gaunt, uncanny spate.
Up I sprang and cursed my snivelling
Soul for weariness—for drivelling,
And for so forgetting Hate.
"You will find him there"
She pointed—thro her hair.
I write these words from Hell where bloodily locked with him in fight I woke.
Where we fall down caverns ruddily
Spilt with glazing gore and muddily
Dashed with stagnant night and smoke.
Yet I do not care,
For he groans by me—there.
AT THE HELM
(Nova Scotian)
Fog, and a wind that blows the sea
Blindly into my eyes.
And I know not if my soul shall be
When the day dies.
But if it be not and I lose
All that men live to gain—
I who have little known but hues
Of wind and rain—
Still I shall envy no man's lot,
For I have held this great,
Never in whines to have forgot
That Fate is Fate.
DEAD LOVE
If this should never end—
This wandering in oblivious mood
Along a rutless road that leads
From wood to deeper wood—
This crunching with unheedful foot
Acorns, I think, and withered leaves ...
Perhaps a rotten root—
If this should never end—
This seeing with insentient eyes
Something that seems like earth, and, too,
Like overbending skies;
This feeling, well—that time is space,
Space, time; and each a pallid glass
In which Life sees her face—
If it should never end—
The road, the wandering and the feel
Of dead infinities that seem
O'er our dead sense to steal,
And like seas cease above—
Would it much matter, love?
MORTAL SIN
(Song for a drama)
Much the wind
Knows of my heart,
Though he whispers in my ear
That he has seen me burn and start
When I dream of your breast, my dear.
Much the wind
Knows of my soul!
For no soul has he to lose
On a mistress who can dole
Kisses that drug as poison-dews.
SEA-MAD
(A Breton Maid)
Three waves of the sea came up on the wind to me!
One said:
"Away! he is dead!
Upon my foam I have flung his head!
Go back to your cote, you shall never wed!—
(Nor he!)"
Three waves of the sea came up on the wind to me.
Two brake.
The third with a quake
Cried loud, "O maid, I'll find for thy sake
His dead lost body: prepare his wake!"
(And back it plunged to the sea!)
Three waves of the sea came up on the wind to me.
One bore—
And swept on the shore—
His pale, pale face I shall kiss no more!
Ah, woe to women death passes o'er!
(Woe's me!)
THE DEATH-SPRITE
(A ballad for God)
A. D. 909
Three kings with naught of a care
To a hunting went;
Three kings of stirrup fair
And of yew-bow bent.
Away they rode with a song
On the summer tide;
Away from thrid and throng
By the blue lake side.
And "Ho!" they vaunted aloud
To the morning hills.
And "Ha!"—What reck the proud
For the God of Ills?
Naught! so they swagged thro the glade
Where the roe-buck rose:
She nosed the wind, affrayed
By the blod "Ho, hos!"
"Three arrows now to her heart!"
They shouted, and sped,
Each king, an evil dart
With a flinten head.
And O she staggered down—
O unpitied, slain!
But in her dreadful swoun
There was more than pain!
For Horror sprang from her blood,
A Spectre of Death!
It drew them thro the wood—
Where a Chapel saith
Masses for souls that are lost
In the wilds of sin—
There mumbled, "Ye'll pay cost
Ere to shrift ye win!"
Then led them to a bay tree
By an open grave,
Where three ghost-kings in three
Stony coffins clave.
Which spake, "Lo, we too were fair!"—
"Unto this ye'll come!"—
"Ay ye, who of naught beware!"—
So spake—and were dumb.
Then of fright and dread the kings flung
Away yew-tree bow
(The Chapel bell slow rung
With the bleak wind's blow).
And fast they fled thro the glade
To the castle hall.
But God had not been stayed—
They were lepers, all!
Woe then to kings! to the pelf
That men call pride!
Christ shrive us all from self,
From the Death-sprite hide!
WORMWOOD
(In Old England)
What is he whispering to her there
Under the hedge-row spray?
"Spring, Spring, Spring?"—Is the world so fair
To him, fool, that he has no care
As he cuckoos it all day?
Is he quite sure—quite sure the sap
Of life's not hate, but love?
If I should tell him there's no gap
Between her and a ... nameless hap,
Would he still want his "dove"?
Or would he go as blind to buds
As I am, who watch here,
While he is pouring poet floods
From his thin lips, and while his blood's
Burning for her so near?
It would be swords—swords!... And his steel
Should rip death from my breast.
But would he ever know the feel
Of Spring again, of its ribald reel,
As once I did, the best?
No! He would curse henceforward leaf
And flower and light—as I.
Spring?—It is fire, lust, ashes, grief—
All that a Hell can hold, in fief!...
He'll learn it ere he die.