Cosmos

by Ernest McGaffey

TWO

I

What romance hast thy childhood known

Of God-made world in seven days?

Of woven sands and swaying grass

And bird and beast in forest ways,

Of panoramas vast unrolled

Before a stern Creator's gaze?

II

Of rivers ribboning the vales;

Of plains that stretched in smoothness down,

And unborn seasons yet to be

Spring's violet banks, and Autumn's brown;

Bright Summer, mistress of the sun,

And grey-beard Winter's boreal crown.

III

And when at length the scheme complete

Unfolded to the Maker's sight,

How He, Almighty and divine

Said in his power, "Let there be light!"

Gave sun and moon, and sowed the stars

Along the furrows of the night!

IV

Lo! every nation has its tale

And every people, how they be;

Whether where Southern zephyrs loose

The blooms from off the tamarind tree,

Or where the six-month seasons bide

Around the cloistered Polar sea.

V

And Science with unyielding scales

Weighs each and all of varied styles;

And like a Goddess molds decrees

Oblivious both to tears or smiles;

Points out the error, reads the rule

And God with Nature reconciles.

VI

But who shall sift the false and true?

What Oracle the rule enforce?

Not man-made creed, nor man-learned law

Is wise to fathom Nature's course;

No sea is deeper than its bed

No stream is higher than its source.

VII

Vain hope to solve the Infinite!

Mere words to babble, when they say

"Thus Science teaches,"—"thus our God"—

Thus this or that—what of it, pray?

The marvel overlapping all—

Go ask the Sphynx of Yesterday.

VIII

We know the All, and nothing know;

The great we ken as well as least;

But sum it all when we have said

That man is different from the beast;

And spite of all Theology

The Pagan's equal to the Priest.

IX

And globes will lapse, and suns expire;

As stars have fallen, worlds can change;

Forever shall the centuries roll

And roving planets tireless range;

And Life be masked in secrecy

With Death, as ever, passing strange.

X

And trow not, Mortal, in thy pride

That where yon beetling column stands

Rests Permanence; 'twill disappear

To sink in marsh or barren lands,

Where bitterns boom, or sunlight stares

Across the immemorial sands.

THREE

I

Of old when man to being came

He fashioned Gods of brittle bone;

Bowed down to wooden fetiches

Or worshipped idols carved from stone;

And, locked in Superstition's grasp

For sacrifice made lives atone.

II

And Fear was then the Higher Law

And fleshly joys the aftermath;

He knew no screed of Righteousness

And trod no straight and narrow path;

His Deity a terror was

A Demon winged with might and wrath.

III

And then where Nilus dipped his feet

By Egypt sands, rose temples tall

To Isis and Osiris—Ptah—

And many a God foredoomed to fall;

Where sank the shades of Pharaoh's reign?

Whence have they vanished, one and all?

IV

But whiles to other years advanced

And now by cosmic marvels won,

Men sought remote Pelagian shores

Where breeze and spray their tapestry spun,

To wait the coming of the day

And there adore the rising sun.

V

This passed; the Gods of Greece and Rome

In splendor thronged the earth and skies;

Jove, with the thunders in his hand

Apollo of the star-lit eyes,

Aurora, Priestess of the Dawn

And Pan of haunting melodies,—

VI

And countless more; their temples fair

Where reverent Pagans curved the knee,

Mid sweet, perpetual summer stood

While murmured as the murmuring bee,

The lulling sweep of listless brine

Beside the green Ægean sea.

VII

And merged in island-wooded calms

By towering groves of ancient oak,

where Triton's charging cavalry

Against the cliffs of Britain broke,

With horrid rite of human blood

The Celtic Druids moved and spoke.

VIII

Still wheeled the cycles; still did men

With new religions make them wise;

Mahomet rose magnificent

As rainbow in the eastern skies;

With Seven Heavens of Koran taught

And Houris with the sloe-black eyes.

IX

Brahm, Baal, Dagon, Moloch, Thor,

And legions more had long sufficed;

Heavens in turn with bliss diverse

And Hells with ebon glaciers iced;

And latest on celestial scrolls

The prophets wrote the name of Christ.

X

We need them not; No! each and all

Will load Tradition's dusty shelf;

As shattered Idols, put away

To lie forgot like broken delf;

Humanity is over all!

And Man's redemption in himself.

FOUR

I

The morning stars together sang

So runs the story, in that time,

When groves were loud with melody

And ripples danced to liquid rhyme;

Far in the embryonic spheres

Before the earth was in her prime.

II

Then first the feline-padded gales

Unleashed and prowling journeyed free,

To purr amid the cowering grass

Or roar in stormy jubilee,

Or, joining in with Ocean, growl

A hoarse duet of wind and sea.

III

And where by meadowy rushes dank

The yellow sunbeams thick were sown,

And brooks flowed down through April ways

O'er pebbled bar and shingly stone,

There first welled up in gurgling strain

The lisping current's monotone.

IV

And oft was heard, in forest aisles

Where rocking trees of leaves were thinned,

And drear November wandered lorn

With wild wide eyes and hair unpinned,

A wailing harp of minor chords

Struck by the strong hands of the wind.

V

And Man, through imitative art,

With clumsy tool and method crude,

Copied these echoes as he might

To soothe him in his solitude;

And when that other sound was dumb

His reed-notes quavered music rude.

VI

And as the gentler graces came

To vivify barbaric night,

So Poesy, with singing Lyre,

Descended from Parnassian height,

With constellations aureoled

Her raiment wove of flowing light.

VII

And in Man's heart a thrill leaped up;

His eye was lit by prophet gleams;

He sought the truth of When and How

He voiced the lyrics of the streams;

His beard was tossed, his locks were gray

His soul beneath the spell of dreams.

VIII

Thus numbers came; and Poets lived

To chant the glories of the Race;

Their rhyme on limp papyrus roll

Or etched on crumbling pillar's base,

Has long outlived the Kings they sung

And conquered even Time and Space.

IX

Aye! vain the vaunt of Heroes; vain

The deeds that once were thought sublime;

And vain your Monarchs, briefly staged

In tinselled royal pantomime;

Their House was builded on the sands

And they unworth a random rhyme.

X

Vain are the works of man; most vain

His bubbled Glory, Aye! or Fame;

More fragile than a last-year's leaf

Unnoticed of the sunset's flame;

And naught endures unless it stands

Linked with a deathless Poet's name.

FIVE

I

How flourished then the lesser arts

As man to manhood slowly grew?

With blackened stick from ruddy fires

That on his cave reflections threw,

He scrawled the rock which sheltered him

And thus the first rude picture drew.

II

And catching hints from Nature's lore

He squeezed his colors from the clay;

Steeped leaf and bark, and dyed the skins

That round about his dwelling lay;

And, urged by vanity, his cheeks

Were daubed with dash of pigments gay.

III

So, ever as the seasons died

His mind expanded with his will;

He saw the dry leaves touched with gold

And grass grow tawny on the hill;

Found etchings on the ruffled streams

And marked the sunset's hectic thrill.

IV

And dreaming thus, with defter skill

He fast employed his nights and days,

Spun magic webs of chequered lights

And limned October's purple haze;

While women's faces from his brush

Fired, like wine, the se'er's gaze.

V

Until at last was handed down

Beyond the treasure-trove of Greece,

Beyond the strain that Sappho sung

And reveries of the Golden Fleece,

The art of Titian, Rubens, Thal,

And Tintoretto's masterpiece.

VI

Thus, too, as man with curious eye

Had noted outline, curve, and form,

In toppling surge or lofty crag

In woman's bosom beating warm,

In cloudy shapes revealed on high

Intaglios of the wind and storm,—

VII

He modelled from the plastic loam;

On shell and boulder graved a sign;

Chiselled the stately obelisks

With hieroglyphics, line on line;

Colossal wrought his haughty Kings

Or metal-traced the clambering vine.

VIII

And many an image was his work

And many a statuette and bust;

Some that remain, but most that lie

As shards to outer darkness thrust;

These buried under coral sands

Those cloaked beneath forgotten dust.

IX

Upon the lonely washes that stretch

Where the Egyptian rivers croon,

And floats above the Pyramids

On tropic nights the lifeless moon,

The mightiest waits,—the brooding Sphynx—

Half-lion and half Daemon hewn.

X

So Sculpture, pierced in mountain sides

Or dragged from Mythologic seas,

Still holds a sway; and worlds will bow

In homage yet to such as these—

The noble bronze by Phidias wrought,

The marbles of Praxiteles.

SIX

I

To those who for their country bleed

To those who die for freedom's sake,

All Hail! for them the Immortal dawns

In waves of lilied silver break;

For them in dusky-templed night

The eternal stars a halo make.

II

In History's tome their chronicle

An ever-living page shall be;

The souls who flashed like sabers drawn

The men who died to make men free;

Their flag in every land has flown

Their sails have whitened every sea.

III

On gallows high they met their doom

Or breasted straight the serried spears

Of Tyranny; in dungeons damp

Scarred on the stones their name appears;

For them the flower of Memory

Shall blossom, watered by our tears.

IV

But Conquest, Glory, transient Fame,

What baubles these to struggle for,

When draped in sulphurous films uprise

The cannon-throated fiends of War!

What childish trumpery cheap as this—

The trophies of a Conqueror?

V

How many an army marches forth

With bugle-note or battle-hymn,

To drench the soil in human gore

And multiply Golgothas grim;

And all for what? a Ruler's pique

Religion's call, or Harlot's whim.

VI

And ghastliest far among them all

Where torn and stained the thirsty sod

With carnage reeks—where standards fly,

And horses gallop, iron-shod,

Are those remorseless mockeries

The wars they wage in name of God.

VIII

Vague, dim and vague, and noiselessly,

The Warrior's triumphs fade like haze;

And building winds have heaped the sands

O'er monuments of martial days;

While Legend throws a flickering gleam

Where the tall Trojan towers blaze.

VIII

Yea! whether sought for Woman's face

Or, Conquest-seeking, seaward poured,

Or at the beck of Holy Church

War still shall be the thing abhorred;

And they who by the sword would live

Shall surely perish by the sword.

IX

Yet whether at Thermopylæ

Where battled the intrepid Greek,

Or Waterloo—their quarry still

The red-eyed ravening vultures seek;

Where prowl the jackal and the fox

And the swart raven whets his beak.

X

And somewhere, though by Alien seas

The tide of Hate unceasing frets;

For dawn to dusk, and dusk to dawn

The red sun rises, no, nor sets,

Save where the wraith of War is seen

Above her glittering bayonets.