SHADOWS.
FROM THE SAME.
Be still, my heart, keep silence, O my soul,
Thy fierce rebellious transports are in vain,
Oblivion’s turbid wave must o’er thee roll.
Cease the faint pulsing of the weary brain,
Fold up the remnant of thy wings at last,
And rot, beneath the inexorable chain.
Soon shalt thou be with refuse vile outcast,
Flung down the bottomless abyss that still
Yawns to the future from the darkling past.
Thy hopes are dead, broken thy lofty will,
Thy name and memory will be blotted out
Before the rattling clods thy grave refill.
No marble shaft for thee the heavens will flout,
Nor tear-drenched willow shed her graceful spray,
No lying epitaph the truth will scout,
No choir will chant, no man of God will pray,
No tears will silver the funereal pall—
Dark cloud that hides thy shame from light of day.
The felled tree strangely moves his comrades tall,
Waking the echoes of the mountain side,
But not a leaf will quiver at thy fall.
Like the mute convoy of the suicide,
Thou shalt wind down through night to find thy doom:
Thy ashes shall be scattered far and wide.
No circling rings shall break the sullen gloom
Of the dark pool that closes o’er thy head,
No widowed soul shall hover o’er thy tomb.
For the chaste secrets which thy soul hath wed,
With thee the pit shall bury them from view,
Fathoms below the deepest deep-sea lead.
Our Mother, Nature, hath her favorites too,
Like any other dame, spoiled children they;
Unwelcome waif, why should they share with you?
Upon them fall the myrtle and the bay,
E’en in the desert they would find at need
Enchanted palaces along their way.
Though for the morrow’s morn they take no heed,
Yet through their fingers filter golden sands,
And at a generous breast they freely feed.
Kneading a withered breast with famished hands
Their outcast brethren pine, or seek in vain
Some kinder bosom in relentless lands.
And if for them upon the desert plain
Illusive gardens rise, and fountains play,
They vanish like the rainbow after rain.
Or if by chance a sunbeam gone astray
Glints through the gloom that shrouds them evermore,
A chilling cloud obscures th’ unwonted ray.
The wisest plans but mock their hopes the more,
Bringing them to derision and dismay:
The sea engulfs them though they hug the shore.
The tree shall crush them, hollow with decay,
Whose grateful shade invites them to draw nigh:
The heart they lean on wins them to betray.
A turtle drops upon them from the sky;
The tower that has braved a thousand years
Falls without warning just as they pass by.
The friend who shared their youthful smiles and tears
Accuses them of treason to the crown,
Sending them to the rack with blows and jeers.
Born on the Danube, in the Seine they drown;
Poor fools, why fly so far to find the fate
That like a slimy monster sucks them down?
Why strive with Fate? no jot will he abate;
Even the brawny knees of Hercules
Must bend or break before him soon or late.
They drain a bitter cup with poisonous lees,
A life ignoble and a death of shame,
And in some potter’s field they find surcease;
Or, dying nobly, leave behind no name,
While, mounting on their bones, some brazen cheat
Reaches the very pinnacle of Fame.
Destiny mocks them from her lofty seat,
Dipping their sponge in vinegar and gall:
Want grinds them in the dust with iron feet.
Hard by the accursed sea whose waves appal,
A scape-goat lone, beneath the wingless skies,
They wander where the ashen apples fall.
Night takes for them a thousand baleful eyes,
Piercing at once their deepest hiding-place:
Straight to their heart each poisoned arrow flies.
Thrust out of camp, the scape-goat of their race,
Abhorred they live, and dead, the loathing earth
Vomits their phantom from the burial-place.
Such is thy history, O my soul, from birth;
Dark pages with decaying odors rife,
A maze of treachery, and pain, and dearth.
Yet ’tis the story of a vulgar life;
No title casts a glamour o’er its woes,
No footlights gild its unromantic strife.
Across the web the flying shuttle goes,
Weaving with common threads a homely plot,
Yet dark and sinister the pattern shows.
Why woo so long a world that loves thee not?
O soul, whence long have perished hope and faith,
Why cling to life, when death is all thy lot?
Sweeter than bridal bed the couch of death,
More restful far than sleep; the asphodel
Is sweeter than the crimson poppy’s breath.
King, queen, and harlot, priest and infidel,
Heaped up at random peacefully they rest,
Commingling in one mighty urn pell-mell.
Despairing brother, whose fast chilling breast
Nor love, nor wine may warm, descend with me,
And burst the shadowy gates an eager guest.
Abase thy head, and bend thy stubborn knee;
And like a Scythian chief in triumph led,
Welcome the agony that sets thee free.
One short, fierce agony, and all is said;
Beneath the coffin lid, sealed once for all,
Compose thy limbs as in a royal bed.
Swift as the fleeting shadow on the wall
Thy feeble footprints fall along the sand,
Nor voice, nor echo will thy song recall.
In the Corinthian brass thy feeble hand
Can write no name; thy chisel cannot bite
The marbles of Carrara pure and grand.
He who would climb Fame’s towering mountain height
Must have a double gift, a genius rare:
Unto a happy star he must unite.
Poet, alas! and lover, brethren are;
Twins of the soul, each hath his cherished dream,
Some saint ideal, worshipped from afar;
Some fount of youth, some pure Pactolian stream,
Some orb that beams with strange unearthly ray,
Some flaming vision potent to redeem.
The fount is dry, the vision fades away;
The mystic light that led them through the night
Dies in a marsh, and leaves them far astray.
O God, to tread but once by morning light
The alabaster palace of our dreams,
Counting its colonnades with waking sight;
To greet the lovely images that gleam
Athwart the gardens of our revery,
And drink the waters of its mystic stream;
To make the plunge, piercing triumphantly
The crystal vault, bring back the golden vase
Long buried with the treasures of the sea.
’Twere fine to feel the thrill of flight through space,
Adown the far empyrean to float,
Or track the eagle in his headlong chase.
To find the deed outstrip the noble thought,
To find fit words to mate our passion’s cry,
And pour the tide with its full burden fraught.
Sailing through unknown seas, to catch the sigh
Of mighty rivers, and through night’s eclipse
See new worlds heaving upward to the sky;
To feel upon the flower of our lips
The regal kiss that sometimes hovers there;
To find the glen wherein the rainbow dips;
To stop the wheel of fortune in the air;
To see before us on the glowing page
The wavering thoughts our midnight musings bear.
Such lots, alas, in this decrepit age
Are rare; Polycrates might wear his ring,
Nor fear to rouse the avenging goddess’ rage.
Seeking the upper chambers where we cling,
The cruel wave mounts upward step by step,
Mingling its murmur with our revelling,
Till slimy phocas, shapes that banish sleep,
Gnash foully at our very bedsides there,
Belched from the bowels of the nether deep.
The church is dark, the altar cold and bare,
And rending from their brows the aureole,
The saints blaspheming die in their despair.
The sun senescent, near his final goal,
Casts from his bloodshot eye one baleful glare,
Ere yet the heavens vanish like a scroll.
Each living thing shall perish foul or fair,
The flood will top the tallest mountain chain,
For vengeance cometh on and will not spare.
For twenty days and nights through wind and rain,
The raven’s midnight wing, cleaving the waste,
Seeks for a haven where to rest in vain.
Headlong she falls, famished and spent at last,
And as the widening circles mark the flood,
All Earth is but a tomb whence life has passed.
A common sepulchre for bad and good,
Upon this wave no ark of safety rides,
Bitter with tears and red with human blood.
No second patriarch his vessel guides,
A hive of life; a swelling fountain head,
To burst upon Ararat’s rugged sides.
Atlas has fallen! hark, O hark! o’erhead
The crack of doom, the supports of the world
Are snapped like reeds beneath Behemoth’s tread.
Our Mother Earth, by storms of chaos whirled,
Reels like a drunken harlot down through space,
By wanton buffets from her orbit hurled.
Unto the lips of an expiring race
The Son holds up the cup of human woes;
The Father sees with coldly sneering face.
When will our crucifixion cease? still flows
The ruddy current from our open side,
And red drops cluster on our pallid brows.
Enough of tears and blood; O turn aside
The poisoned chalice; doth not this suffice?
That Thy dear Son upon the cross has died?
He died for naught; man still must pay the price
Unless a newer Christ rise from the dead:
The Pontiff asks a fresher sacrifice.
For nigh two thousand years the Lamb hath bled;
His empty veins leave not the faintest stain
Upon the priestly knife that gleams o’erhead.
Messiah cometh not, we watch in vain;
The veil is rent, broken the altar stone,
The worshippers are slain, the church o’erthrown.
SONNET: OU VONT ILS?
FROM THE FRENCH OF SULLY PRUDHOMME.
To what strange land gather the slain of Love?
Heaven were no world for them, it hath no bliss
To match the raptures that they knew in this;
No summer night, no dark secluded grove,
Or deep ravine with sheltering boughs above;
Nor can the foul fiends of the dread abyss
So rend a soul as the fierce agonies
Of Love’s disdain, the doubts and fears thereof.
Tame were the joys of the bright sphere above
To which the saints so ardently aspire,
And vain the anguish of eternal fire
To him who knows the martyrdom of Love.
For souls consumed and dead there is no room
In heaven or hell: oblivion is their doom.