VII
Like a French poem is Life; being only perfect in structure
When with the masculine rhymes mingled the feminine are.
VIII
Down from the mountain descends the brooklet, rejoicing in
freedom;
Little it dreams of the mill hid in the valley below;
Glad with the joy of existence, the child goes singing and
laughing,
Little dreaming what toils lie in the future concealed.
IX
As the ink from our pen, so flow our thoughts and our feelings
When we begin to write, however sluggish before.
X
Like the Kingdom of Heaven, the Fountain of Youth is within us;
If we seek it elsewhere, old shall we grow in the search.
XI
If you would hit the mark, you must aim a little above it;
Every arrow that flies feels the attraction of earth.
XII
Wisely the Hebrews admit no Present tense in their language;
While we are speaking the word, it is is already the Past.
XIII
In the twilight of age all things seem strange and phantasmal,
As between daylight and dark ghost-like the landscape appears.
XIV
Great is the art of beginning, but greater the art is of ending;
Many a poem is marred by a superfluous verse.
THE CITY AND THE SEA
The panting City cried to the Sea, "I am faint with heat,—O breathe on me!"
And the Sea said, "Lo, I breathe! but my breath To some will be life, to others death!"
As to Prometheus, bringing ease In pain, come the Oceanides,
So to the City, hot with the flame Of the pitiless sun, the east wind came.
It came from the heaving breast of the deep, Silent as dreams are, and sudden as sleep.
Life-giving, death-giving, which will it be; O breath of the merciful, merciless Sea?
MEMORIES
Oft I remember those whom I have known
In other days, to whom my heart was led
As by a magnet, and who are not dead,
But absent, and their memories overgrown
With other thoughts and troubles of my own,
As graves with grasses are, and at their head
The stone with moss and lichens so o'erspread,
Nothing is legible but the name alone.
And is it so with them? After long years,
Do they remember me in the same way,
And is the memory pleasant as to me?
I fear to ask; yet wherefore are my fears?
Pleasures, like flowers, may wither and decay,
And yet the root perennial may be.
HERMES TRISMEGISTUS
As Seleucus narrates, Hermes describes the principles that rank
as wholes in two myriads of books; or, as we are informed by
Manetho, he perfectly unfolded these principles in three myriads
six thousand five hundred and twenty-five volumes. . . .
. . . Our ancestors dedicated the inventions of their wisdom to
this deity, inscribing all their own writings with the name of
Hermes.—IAMBLICUS.
Still through Egypt's desert places
Flows the lordly Nile,
From its banks the great stone faces
Gaze with patient smile.
Still the pyramids imperious
Pierce the cloudless skies,
And the Sphinx stares with mysterious,
Solemn, stony eyes.
But where are the old Egyptian
Demi-gods and kings?
Nothing left but an inscription
Graven on stones and rings.
Where are Helios and Hephæstus,
Gods of eldest eld?
Where is Hermes Trismegistus,
Who their secrets held?
Where are now the many hundred
Thousand books he wrote?
By the Thaumaturgists plundered,
Lost in lands remote;
In oblivion sunk forever,
As when o'er the land
Blows a storm-wind, in the river
Sinks the scattered sand.
Something unsubstantial, ghostly,
Seems this Theurgist,
In deep meditation mostly
Wrapped, as in a mist.
Vague, phantasmal, and unreal
To our thought he seems,
Walking in a world ideal,
In a land of dreams.
Was he one, or many, merging
Name and fame in one,
Like a stream, to which, converging
Many streamlets run?
Till, with gathered power proceeding,
Ampler sweep it takes,
Downward the sweet waters leading
From unnumbered lakes.
By the Nile I see him wandering,
Pausing now and then,
On the mystic union pondering
Between gods and men;
Half believing, wholly feeling,
With supreme delight,
How the gods, themselves concealing,
Lift men to their height.
Or in Thebes, the hundred-gated,
In the thoroughfare
Breathing, as if consecrated,
A diviner air;
And amid discordant noises,
In the jostling throng,
Hearing far, celestial voices
Of Olympian song.
Who shall call his dreams fallacious?
Who has searched or sought
All the unexplored and spacious
Universe of thought?
Who, in his own skill confiding,
Shall with rule and line
Mark the border-land dividing
Human and divine?
Trismegistus! three times greatest!
How thy name sublime
Has descended to this latest
Progeny of time!
Happy they whose written pages
Perish with their lives,
If amid the crumbling ages
Still their name survives!
Thine, O priest of Egypt, lately
Found I in the vast,
Weed-encumbered sombre, stately,
Grave-yard of the Past;
And a presence moved before me
On that gloomy shore,
As a waft of wind, that o'er me
Breathed, and was no more.
TO THE AVON
Flow on, sweet river! like his verse Who lies beneath this sculptured hearse Nor wait beside the churchyard wall For him who cannot hear thy call.
Thy playmate once; I see him now A boy with sunshine on his brow, And hear in Stratford's quiet street The patter of his little feet.
I see him by thy shallow edge Wading knee-deep amid the sedge; And lost in thought, as if thy stream Were the swift river of a dream.
He wonders whitherward it flows; And fain would follow where it goes, To the wide world, that shall erelong Be filled with his melodious song.
Flow on, fair stream! That dream is o'er; He stands upon another shore; A vaster river near him flows, And still he follows where it goes.
PRESIDENT GARFIELD
"E venni dal martirio a questa pace."
These words the poet heard in Paradise,
Uttered by one who, bravely dying here,
In the true faith was living in that sphere
Where the celestial cross of sacrifice
Spread its protecting arms athwart the skies;
And set thereon, like jewels crystal clear,
The souls magnanimous, that knew not fear,
Flashed their effulgence on his dazzled eyes.
Ah me! how dark the discipline of pain,
Were not the suffering followed by the sense
Of infinite rest and infinite release!
This is our consolation; and again
A great soul cries to us in our suspense,
"I came from martyrdom unto this peace!"
MY BOOKS
Sadly as some old mediaeval knight
Gazed at the arms he could no longer wield,
The sword two-handed and the shining shield
Suspended in the hall, and full in sight,
While secret longings for the lost delight
Of tourney or adventure in the field
Came over him, and tears but half concealed
Trembled and fell upon his beard of white,
So I behold these books upon their shelf,
My ornaments and arms of other days;
Not wholly useless, though no longer used,
For they remind me of my other self,
Younger and stronger, and the pleasant ways
In which I walked, now clouded and confused.
MAD RIVER
IN THE WHITE MOUNTAINS
TRAVELLER
Why dost thou wildly rush and roar,
Mad River, O Mad River?
Wilt thou not pause and cease to pour
Thy hurrying, headlong waters o'er
This rocky shelf forever?
What secret trouble stirs thy breast?
Why all this fret and flurry?
Dost thou not know that what is best
In this too restless world is rest
From over-work and worry?
THE RIVER
What wouldst thou in these mountains seek,
O stranger from the city?
Is it perhaps some foolish freak
Of thine, to put the words I speak
Into a plaintive ditty?
TRAVELLER
Yes; I would learn of thee thy song,
With all its flowing number;
And in a voice as fresh and strong
As thine is, sing it all day long,
And hear it in my slumbers.
THE RIVER
A brooklet nameless and unknown
Was I at first, resembling
A little child, that all alone
Comes venturing down the stairs of stone,
Irresolute and trembling.
Later, by wayward fancies led,
For the wide world I panted;
Out of the forest dark and dread
Across the open fields I fled,
Like one pursued and haunted.
I tossed my arms, I sang aloud,
My voice exultant blending
With thunder from the passing cloud,
The wind, the forest bent and bowed,
The rush of rain descending.
I heard the distant ocean call,
Imploring and entreating;
Drawn onward, o'er this rocky wall
I plunged, and the loud waterfall
Made answer to the greeting.
And now, beset with many ills,
A toilsome life I follow;
Compelled to carry from the hills
These logs to the impatient mills
Below there in the hollow.
Yet something ever cheers and charms
The rudeness of my labors;
Daily I water with these arms
The cattle of a hundred farms,
And have the birds for neighbors.
Men call me Mad, and well they may,
When, full of rage and trouble,
I burst my banks of sand and clay,
And sweep their wooden bridge away,
Like withered reeds or stubble.
Now go and write thy little rhyme,
As of thine own creating.
Thou seest the day is past its prime;
I can no longer waste my time;
The mills are tired of waiting.
POSSIBILITIES
Where are the Poets, unto whom belong
The Olympian heights; whose singing shafts were sent
Straight to the mark, and not from bows half bent,
But with the utmost tension of the thong?
Where are the stately argosies of song,
Whose rushing keels made music as they went
Sailing in search of some new continent,
With all sail set, and steady winds and strong?
Perhaps there lives some dreamy boy, untaught
In schools, some graduate of the field or street,
Who shall become a master of the art,
An admiral sailing the high seas of thought,
Fearless and first and steering with his fleet
For lands not yet laid down in any chart.
DECORATION DAY
Sleep, comrades, sleep and rest
On this Field of the Grounded Arms,
Where foes no more molest,
Nor sentry's shot alarms!
Ye have slept on the ground before,
And started to your feet
At the cannon's sudden roar,
Or the drum's redoubling beat.
But in this camp of Death
No sound your slumber breaks;
Here is no fevered breath,
No wound that bleeds and aches.
All is repose and peace,
Untrampled lies the sod;
The shouts of battle cease,
It is the Truce of God!
Rest, comrades, rest and sleep!
The thoughts of men shall be
As sentinels to keep
Your rest from danger free.
Your silent tents of green
We deck with fragrant flowers;
Yours has the suffering been,
The memory shall be ours.
A FRAGMENT
Awake! arise! the hour is late!
Angels are knocking at thy door!
They are in haste and cannot wait,
And once departed come no more.
Awake! arise! the athlete's arm
Loses its strength by too much rest;
The fallow land, the untilled farm
Produces only weeds at best.
LOSS AND GAIN
When I compare
What I have lost with what I have gained,
What I have missed with what attained,
Little room do I find for pride.
I am aware
How many days have been idly spent;
How like an arrow the good intent
Has fallen short or been turned aside.
But who shall dare
To measure loss and gain in this wise?
Defeat may be victory in disguise;
The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide.
INSCRIPTION ON THE SHANKLIN FOUNTAIN
O traveller, stay thy weary feet;
Drink of this fountain, pure and sweet;
It flows for rich and poor the same.
Then go thy way, remembering still
The wayside well beneath the hill,
The cup of water in His name.
THE BELLS OF SAN BLAS
What say the Bells of San Blas
To the ships that southward pass
From the harbor of Mazatlan?
To them it is nothing more
Than the sound of surf on the shore,—
Nothing more to master or man.
But to me, a dreamer of dreams,
To whom what is and what seems
Are often one and the same,—
The Bells of San Blas to me
Have a strange, wild melody,
And are something more than a name.
For bells are the voice of the church;
They have tones that touch and search
The hearts of young and old;
One sound to all, yet each
Lends a meaning to their speech,
And the meaning is manifold.
They are a voice of the Past,
Of an age that is fading fast,
Of a power austere and grand,
When the flag of Spain unfurled
Its folds o'er this western world,
And the Priest was lord of the land.
The chapel that once looked down
On the little seaport town
Has crumbled into the dust;
And on oaken beams below
The bells swing to and fro,
And are green with mould and rust.
"Is, then, the old faith dead,"
They say, "and in its stead
Is some new faith proclaimed,
That we are forced to remain
Naked to sun and rain,
Unsheltered and ashamed?
"Once, in our tower aloof,
We rang over wall and roof
Our warnings and our complaints;
And round about us there
The white doves filled the air,
Like the white souls of the saints.
"The saints! Ah, have they grown
Forgetful of their own?
Are they asleep, or dead,
That open to the sky
Their ruined Missions lie,
No longer tenanted?
"Oh, bring us back once more
The vanished days of yore,
When the world with faith was filled;
Bring back the fervid zeal,
The hearts of fire and steel,
The hands that believe and build.
"Then from our tower again
We will send over land and main
Our voices of command,
Like exiled kings who return
To their thrones, and the people learn
That the Priest is lord of the land!"
O Bells of San Blas in vain
Ye call back the Past again;
The Past is deaf to your prayer!
Out of the shadows of night
The world rolls into light;
It is daybreak everywhere.
FRAGMENTS
Neglected record of a mind neglected, Unto what "lets and stops" art thou subjected! The day with all its toils and occupations, The night with its reflections and sensations, The future, and the present, and the past,— All I remember, feel, and hope at last, All shapes of joy and sorrow, as they pass,— Find but a dusty image in this glass.
O faithful, indefatigable tides, That evermore upon God's errands go,— Now seaward bearing tidings of the land,— Now landward bearing tidings of the sea,— And filling every frith and estuary, Each arm of the great sea, each little creek, Each thread and filament of water-courses, Full with your ministration of delight! Under the rafters of this wooden bridge I see you come and go; sometimes in haste To reach your journey's end, which being done With feet unrested ye return again And recommence the never-ending task; Patient, whatever burdens ye may bear, And fretted only by the impeding rocks.
Soft through the silent air descend the feathery snow-flakes; White are the distant hills, white are the neighboring fields; Only the marshes are brown, and the river rolling among them Weareth the leaden hue seen in the eyes of the blind.
A lovely morning, without the glare of the sun, the sea in great commotion, chafing and foaming.
So from the bosom of darkness our days come roaring and gleaming,
Chafe and break into foam, sink into darkness again.
But on the shores of Time each leaves some trace of its passage,
Though the succeeding wave washes it out from the sand.
CHRISTUS: A MYSTERY
INTROITUS
The ANGEL bearing the PROPHET HABAKKUK through the air.
PROPHET. Why dost thou bear me aloft, O Angel of God, on thy pinions O'er realms and dominions? Softly I float as a cloud In air, for thy right hand upholds me, Thy garment enfolds me!
ANGEL. Lo! as I passed on my way In the harvest-field I beheld thee, When no man compelled thee, Bearing with thine own hands This food to the famishing reapers, A flock without keepers!
The fragrant sheaves of the wheat Made the air above them sweet; Sweeter and more divine Was the scent of the scattered grain, That the reaper's hand let fall To be gathered again By the hand of the gleaner! Sweetest, divinest of all, Was the humble deed of thine, And the meekness of thy demeanor!
PROPHET. Angel of Light, I cannot gainsay thee, I can but obey thee!
ANGEL. Beautiful was it in the lord's sight, To behold his Prophet Feeding those that toil, The tillers of the soil. But why should the reapers eat of it And not the Prophet of Zion In the den of the lion? The Prophet should feed the Prophet! Therefore I thee have uplifted, And bear thee aloft by the hair Of thy head, like a cloud that is drifted Through the vast unknown of the air! Five days hath the Prophet been lying In Babylon, in the den Of the lions, death-defying, Defying hunger and thirst; But the worst Is the mockery of men! Alas! how full of fear Is the fate of Prophet and Seer! Forevermore, forevermore, It shall be as it hath been heretofore; The age in which they live Will not forgive The splendor of the everlasting light, That makes their foreheads bright, Nor the sublime Fore-running of their time!
PROPHET. Oh tell me, for thou knowest, Wherefore and by what grace, Have I, who am least and lowest, Been chosen to this place, To this exalted part?
ANGEL. Because thou art The Struggler; and from thy youth Thy humble and patient life Hath been a strife And battle for the Truth; Nor hast thou paused nor halted, Nor ever in thy pride Turned from the poor aside, But with deed and word and pen Hast served thy fellow-men; Therefore art thou exalted!
PROPHET. By thine arrow's light Thou goest onward through the night, And by the clear Sheen of thy glittering spear! When will our journey end?
ANGEL. Lo, it is ended! Yon silver gleam Is the Euphrates' stream. Let us descend Into the city splendid, Into the City of Gold!
PROPHET. Behold! As if the stars had fallen from their places Into the firmament below, The streets, the gardens, and the vacant spaces With light are all aglow; And hark! As we draw near, What sound is it I hear Ascending through the dark?
ANGEL. The tumultuous noise of the nations, Their rejoicings and lamentations, The pleadings of their prayer, The groans of their despair, The cry of their imprecations, Their wrath, their love, their hate!
PROPHET. Surely the world doth wait The coming of its Redeemer!
ANGEL. Awake from thy sleep, O dreamer? The hour is near, though late; Awake! write the vision sublime, The vision, that is for a time, Though it tarry, wait; it is nigh; In the end it will speak and not lie.
PART ONE
THE DIVINE TRAGEDY
THE FIRST PASSOVER
I
VOX CLAMANTIS
JOHN THE BAPTIST. Repent! repent! repent! For the kingdom of God is at hand, And all the land Full of the knowledge of the Lord shall be As the waters cover the sea, And encircle the continent!
Repent! repent! repent! For lo, the hour appointed, The hour so long foretold By the Prophets of old, Of the coming of the Anointed, The Messiah, the Paraclete, The Desire of the Nations, is nigh! He shall not strive nor cry, Nor his voice be heard in the street; Nor the bruised reed shall He break, Nor quench the smoking flax; And many of them that sleep In the dust of earth shall awake, On that great and terrible day, And the wicked shall wail and weep, And be blown like a smoke away, And be melted away like wax. Repent! repent! repent!
O Priest, and Pharisee, Who hath warned you to flee From the wrath that is to be? From the coming anguish and ire? The axe is laid at the root Of the trees, and every tree That bringeth not forth good fruit Is hewn down and cast into the fire!
Ye Scribes, why come ye hither? In the hour that is uncertain, In the day of anguish and trouble, He that stretcheth the heavens as a curtain And spreadeth them out as a tent, Shall blow upon you, and ye shall wither, And the whirlwind shall take you away as stubble! Repent! repent! repent!
PRIEST. Who art thou, O man of prayer! In raiment of camel's hair, Begirt with leathern thong, That here in the wilderness, With a cry as of one in distress, Preachest unto this throng? Art thou the Christ?
JOHN. Priest of Jerusalem, In meekness and humbleness, I deny not, I confess I am not the Christ!
PRIEST. What shall we say unto them That sent us here? Reveal Thy name, and naught conceal! Art thou Elias?
JOHN.
No!
PRIEST. Art thou that Prophet, then, Of lamentation and woe, Who, as a symbol and sign Of impending wrath divine Upon unbelieving men, Shattered the vessel of clay In the Valley of Slaughter?
JOHN.
Nay.
I am not he thou namest!
PRIEST. Who art thou, and what is the word That here thou proclaimest?
JOHN. I am the voice of one Crying in the wilderness alone: Prepare ye the way of the Lord; Make his paths straight In the land that is desolate!
PRIEST. If thou be not the Christ, Nor yet Elias, nor he That, in sign of the things to be, Shattered the vessel of clay In the Valley of Slaughter, Then declare unto us, and say By what authority now Baptizest thou?
JOHN. I indeed baptize you with water Unto repentance; but He, That cometh after me, Is mightier than I and higher; The latchet of whose shoes I an not worthy to unloose; He shall baptize you with fire, And with the Holy Ghost! Whose fan is in his hand; He will purge to the uttermost His floor, and garner his wheat, But will burn the chaff in the brand And fire of unquenchable heat! Repent! repent! repent!