III
Thou seemest inexhaustible, O sea!
And infinite of nature; yet I know
That by divine permission could we go
Within thy sealed and silent deeps, and be
Of all thy glooms and treasuries made free,
The soul at last each marvel would outgrow,
Till each were vain as festal fires that glow
Beneath the stars’ immortal scrutiny.
And were all alien worlds and suns laid bare
Till Mystery their secret should declare,
The finite soon its utmost would impart,
And sun nor world at last have power to thrill
Man’s wayward and insatiable heart,
Which God and all His truth alone can fill.
AFTER THE STORM
O turquoise morn!
Had earth a sorrow?
The happy larks, sing they
To-day or yesterday,
Or some enchanted morrow
And winds unborn?
To slopes of green,
Only the brook can tell—
In low, elusive tones
On smooth and fluting stones—
Where flow the rains that fell
By night, unseen.
Ghost-moon, what way
Wouldst thou be riding?
On day’s blue diamond
Thou art a flaw! Beyond,
I know, the stars are hiding,
Ere dusk betray.
I would not see;
For now the day is new,
And now a yellow flow’r
Suffices to the hour—
That, and a star of dew
It hoards for me.
THE HARLOT’S WAKENING
Ere dawn a spirit took my hand,
And once again, a joyous child,
I roamed an unforgotten land
Of orchards fresh and mild.
How fair the apple-blossoms were!
How cool the long-delaying breeze!
Where, half-asleep, I heard the stir
And hum of happy bees.
Clear in the meadow ran the brook,
From pool to pool, in liquid grace,
A glass o’er which I bent to look
At my enmirrored face—
A girlish face, with placid brow
All-innocent of care and hate,—
With eyes I cannot fathom now
And lips undesecrate.
My sister’s laugh, my brother’s call—
So would the morning larks rejoice!
But nearer, dearer far than all,
I heard my mother’s voice.
Her voice? Or did a music break
Across the street’s harsh sea
Whose thunder deepens? Christ! I wake
To miserable me!
THE MIDGES
Alcon, the wood-god, wandering his realm,
Found his son Astries in the meadowland
At sunset, squatted on a fallen pine
And much intent upon a swarm of gnats.
To whom the godling: “Father, I have stayed
This hour to wonder at yon tiny folk,
Who dart, and hum, and make so much a-do,
Mad with the sunlight. What it is they seek
And whom they praise, and why, I do not know;
But as the hour grows old, and twilight hills
Put on the purple, this I see—that they
With wilder zeal do dash this way and that,
And where each in a foot of space had range,
Now flits he two, and shriller grows the cry,
Larger the host, and greater its concern.
Dost note?” Whereat brown Alcon plucked a root
And beat it on the pine, and briefly spake:
“Aye! aye! they call it ‘progress’!” And the sun
Sank on the forest, and the night was chill.
TO AMBROSE BIERCE
I saw a statue in the market-place—
The guerdon of a life of noble toil.
Austerely shone the marble that should foil
Oblivion, tho’ the desecrated base,
Round which the sullen huckster trod, bore trace
Of dogs’ defilement—transitory moil
That expiating rains would soon assoil;
But oh, the sunlight on that tranquil face!
What to the Titan were the mindless deed,
Mire-born, and swiftly with the mire made one?
No more than could the marble couldst thou heed
The mongrel, and the hate of souls uncouth—
Thou eagle who hast gazed upon the sun
And canst endure the light which is the truth!
TO HALL B. RAND
Happy the man whose age attains
Repute and rank among the best!
Whose soul no breath of rumor stains
Nor hath remorse for daily guest.
On him the years as laurels sit,
For Duty at his side hath stood;
Thro him the grateful gods permit
A living witness unto good.
Him shall the love of men surround,
And wisdom shield from darker cares,
Who virtue to the end hath found
And honor whiter than his hairs.
TO VERNON L. KELLOGG
’Tis well, that man is slow to cry “Alas!”—
That Nature’s heart seems eager to atone
For music often ending in a moan
By silence tender with the peace it has;
But ever, as on morning ways I pass,
I see the fields with hints of terror sown—
A tuft of fur, or small and bleaching bone,
Or heap of little feathers in the grass.
How fares it with the lesser wards of life?—
Always they seem so restless, so alert.
Is fear to them an unrelenting care—
The spirit of that dumb and ravenous strife
No Power will justify and none avert?
And in the deep—’tis well we see not there!
CHARLES WARREN STODDARD
O Muse! within thy western hall,
To mellow chord and crystal string,
At many harps thy chosen sing:
His was the gentlest soul of all.
He sang not as the leaping faun
By voiceless rivers cool and clear,
Nor yet as chants the visioned seer
When darkness trembles with the dawn.
A milder music held his lyre—
A wistful strain, all human-sweet,
Between the ashes at our feet
And stars that pass in alien fire.
His skies were sombre, but he lit
His garden with a lamp of gold,
Where tropic laughters left untold
The sadness buried in his wit.
Lonely, he harbored to the last
A boyish spirit, large and droll;
Tardy of flesh and swift of soul,
He walked with angels of the Past.
With tears his laurels still are wet;
But now we smile, whose hearts have known
The fault that harmed himself alone,—
The art that left a world in debt.
Of all he said, I best recall:
“He knows the sky who knows the sod,
And he who loves a flower, loves God.”
Sky, flower and sod, he loved them all.
From all he wrote (not for his day),
A sense of marvel drifts to me—
Of morning on a purple sea,
And fragrant islands far away.
THE ASHES IN THE SEA
N. M. F.
Whither, with blue and pleading eyes,—
Whither, with cheeks that held the light
Of winter’s dawn on cloudless skies,
Evadne, was thy flight?
Such as a sister’s was thy brow;
Thy hair seemed fallen from the moon—
Part of its radiance, as now
Of shifting tide and dune.
Did Autumn’s grieving lure thee hence,
Or silence ultimate beguile?
Ever our things of consequence
Awakened but thy smile.
Is it with thee that ocean takes
A stranger sorrow to its tone?
With thee the star of evening wakes
More beautiful, more lone?
For wave and hill and sky betray
A subtle tinge and touch of thee;
Thy shadow lingers in the day,
Thy voice in winds to be.
Beauty—hast thou discovered her
By deeper seas no moons control?
What stars have magic now to stir
Thy swift and wilful soul?
Or may thy heart no more forget
The grievous world that once was home,
That here, where love awaits thee yet,
Thou seemest yet to roam?
For most, far-wandering, I guess
Thy witchery on the haunted mind,
In valleys of thy loneliness,
Made clean with ocean’s wind.
And most thy presence here seems told,
A waif of elemental deeps,
When, at its vigils unconsoled,
Some night of winter weeps.
THE FORTY-THIRD CHAPTER OF JOB
1. Moreover, the Lord made question of Job, and asked,
2. To what end dost thou search Me, seeing that My wisdom is not as thine?
3. Shalt thou question My ways, or have dreams concerning My justice? Am not I the Lord?
4. Who hath strange laughter, Whose judgments are not as those of the elders;
5. Who leadeth the lamb from the den of the she-wolf, and armies to the quicksand;
6. Who slayeth the prince in his youth, and rulers at their marriage-feast, but maketh the slave to grow old in his bondage;
7. Whose rains go forth on bitter waters, tho the land thirsteth; Who delivereth thee from the javelin thou beholdest not;
8. Who maketh the king in his secret place and him that the vultures did devour to sleep the same sleep;
9. Who confoundeth the sea, but leadeth the ant to her desire.
10. Have not I sharpened the beak of the kite against the day of thy hope; the raven’s beak against the eyes of thy young men?
11. I shall bar thee from thy joy with a thread of gossamer; I shall bind thy sin to thy children’s children with ropes of adamant.
12. The rock is a bolt for My treasure-house. Thou knockest in vain upon the doors thereof.
13. Who art thou that eternity should hold parley with thee, or the pits of the sky be thy fortress?
14. Thou abidest in My sight as the smoke of a sacrifice, or as the grey moth in the conspection of the stars.
15. What hast thou if thou hast not Me? Thou takest to thee strange wine, and the kiss of the asp that it comfort thee.
16. Awake, let it be always day with thee! Know that I am the Lord,
17. Who ordaineth His truth as the mountains, and the dust as stars that conceive;
18. Who teacheth fear with an arrow, and bitter wisdom to thy young men of war;
19. Who boundeth pain by peace, and setteth a term unto love;
20. Who hath no truce with the day, and slayeth the dark with the sword of mighty mornings;
21. Who buildeth the house of life with colored beams, and the house of death without a door;
22. Who hath set harps in hell, and given pure gold for the winding sheet of kings;
23. By Whose breath are the Signs shaken; as a swarm of gnats are they troubled by the wind of His passing;
24. Who yoketh stars to His harrow, and the whirlwind to drag his plough on great waters.
25. Take counsel of Me; behold what shapes I have set as My servants.
26. The sun is a coal of My hearth, the moon an ember that I have quenched;
27. Shall not I make her a desolation, and a rock where devils worship?
28. Shall not My gulfs conceive, and Mine angels whet their scythes against the day of My reaping?
29. Be thou abased, for they are yet unborn that shall lay thee out; the worm is unhatched that shall consume thee.
30. Wilt thou hold forth to Me thy heart in thy hand; or turn for Me its leaves that thou hast writ?
31. Thy wisdom profiteth thee nothing, neither the guards within thy citadels.
32. Shall I consider for long the mighty, or the habitations of the strong?
33. Behold! blood shall be in their courts for wine, and the moaning of their concubines for the voice of the viol.
34. I shall break their temples as a shard; their high pillars shall be snapt as a bow-string.
35. My tempests shall neigh in the walled cities; My grass shall lift up her sword against them;
36. The toad shall be judge there; the jackal shall collect the tax;
37. The owl shall feed her young on their altars; the dung of lions shall be thereon for a testimony.
38. Wert thou upon the flint when I confirmed it, or upon the granite when I laid its sheets?
39. The thunder, was it thou that didst call? Was the rain the tears of thy bringing-forth?
40. Be thou bowed down, nor question the pains that I have set over thee: for each thing have I ordained its shadow.
41. My thoughts are from eternity; I change not by reason of thy dismay. Thou shalt know Me for the Lord.
42. Who setteth Capella and Achernar to be gods for a term, and a guide upon the deep to strange peoples;
43. Who maketh Altair and Rigel the captains of His host; Who leaneth His spear upon Sirius ere the trumpets call;
44. Who holdeth Vega His armor-bearer, and hangeth his buckler upon Aldebaran;
45. Who hath convoked their chariots against the lamps of Evil, and their swords against the abyss.
46. Who healeth the day with night, and thy heart’s wound with the hands of little children;
47. Even they that seek the breast in darkness, hushing the voices that were aforetime.
48. The wind cometh, the dust is troubled for a season, but hath rest when the wind departeth.