IV.
In a remote corner
Sits tonight
One whom I know to be a poet—
A great poet, but keyed
In a pitch that is neither the world’s
Nor that of other poets.
Once he was a keen knife of spirit
Stabbing dull hearts;
But now he is wearied out wholly
Save for the brief renascence of the midnight hour.
Across the table
A pale, flame-lipped, very exquisite girl
Looks at him with inscrutable eyes.
Then, as his lips move—
Then, as he leans forward—
I see, I divine, that he says:
“Light-foot whisperer over the dark abysses!—
Beautiful breast
Never to be forgotten!—
Evilly have you worked upon me!
Now the orange floods of afternoon
And the watery green depths of the midnight,
The vestal dawn
And the scarlet screaming dawn
Flicker with your passage!
“Glittering, gay, fantastic, unhappy child—
You seem as old as the oldest sin of the world
And as young as its newest rapture.
You are to me fresh April,
And the last days of October,—
Honey, and myrrh,—
The delicate dusk, and the stark dawn-light.
I have expected you a long time
With wonder and with terror;
And now, with your kiss upon my lips,
I await the miracle to result—
Corruption, or transfiguration.”
And she, having listened
With eyes inscrutable and lips that were motionless,
Drank the champagne in her glass,
And looked curiously into the distance;
While he went on:
“You have brought me a lost wonder
And stirred in me a romance
I had forgotten.
“Now I again see landscapes
Clothed in their rightful mystery,
And the dusk is again holy,
And food is again sweet.
“Now I am alive
Who was dead.”
Not even with a smile.
And then he said,
While the violins sang with him:
“Lovely child—on your breast
Could a head find snowy rest?
Could the dizzy pulses cease
And the madness take release?
Yes! Yes! that I know—
For I dreamed it long ago.
But, child, on what breast
Shall your head find rest?”
She turned her eyes away from him,
And her lips were as quiet as lilies ....
Red lilies of a garden in Cashmere ....
Then the dancers fluttered out
Into the pools of the spot-lights ....
And she smiled.
V.
Last night
I saw these two,
Or two like them,
In the midnight streets.
But before they came
There came an apparition.—
It was a cab, worn, withered, and blighted.
A man like a moth-eaten
Archangel Gabriel
Sat on the box of the crazy thing.
Obviously it had been through Hell;
But its inside was musty and threadbare
As though companies of faded virgins
Had ridden in it for generations.
The horse, as you looked at him from the sidewalk,
Staggered with all four legs;
But to one sitting inside the cab
He must have seemed so thin of beam
As to vanish altogether.
The Archangel Gabriel was inclined to stoutness
And wore a well-preserved Derby hat.
He drove through the night incredulously,
With vague haltings
As if ready to be struck dumb
Should passengers dare
To accept his ciceronage.
Ah, the passengers!
When they rushed
Out of a grilled doorway and across the sidewalk
Their white faces glimmered
As though they would have accepted anything
That could carry them swiftly or slowly
Away from the insupportable
Oppression of Here and Now.
They bundled into the cab,—
Four of them—
Two, whose glass throats were wound with wire and silver
Being destined for destruction
That the other two, with human throats,
Might inherit the Vita Nuova.
Then suddenly the Archangel Gabriel,
Leaving the Plaza and steering northwesterly,
Drove his precarious vehicle to the entrance of the Park
And straight down
Into the depths of the sea.
Through watery glooms
And swift gleams as of wave-light,—
Along alleys where vast forests of sea-weed
Aped the summer swaying of terrestrial foliage,
The silent cab moved on,
And the midnight ocean closed around it.
Huge branches of coral
Inky or amber
Lifted themselves in the gloom
Like processional lamp-posts;
And now and then a peering dolphin
Poised questioningly beside the path
Like a policeman.
Now they were gone beyond my sight.
Slowly I followed them;
But the sea retreated before me;
I could not enter the depths of their traversing.
And I walked as in a trance
Pursuing the receding waters
Down the avenues of lamp-posts,
Of foliage, of policemen.
Then, after hours, years, ages,
I saw my quarry returning;
And the sea drew forward with it
In a dark wave and swept over me.
There was the cab,—
And lo! of the two ghostly passengers,
One had become an undulant mermaid
And the other a surging triton—
And they swayed in hollows and foam-heights
Of the shaken water—
Knees, hair, arms
Tossed in confusion—
They were spilled out upon the deep
And the sea-birds shrieked above them.
I think that they went then
To the Sea King’s Palace;
But this is all
That I myself saw.