Cosmos

by Ernest McGaffey

SEVEN

I

How fared the body when the soul

In olden days had taken flight?

Had passed as through a shutter slips

A trembling shaft of summer light!

And all that once was Life's warm glow

Had sudden changed to dreadful night!

II

How fared the mourners; how the Priest;

How spoken his funereal theme?

What dirges for the Heroic dead

What flowers to soften death's extreme?

Was Life to them a wayside Inn

Death the beginning of a dream?

III

We cannot know; except by tales

Caught in the traveller's flying loom,

Or carven granite friezes found

Or parchment penned in convent gloom;

Or here and there, defying Time

Some long-dead Emperor's giant tomb.

IV

Where tower the steep Egyptian cones

By couriers of the storm bestrid,

Wrapped in his blackening cerements

Sahura lies in shadow hid,

While billowy sand-curves rise and dash

Like surf, against his Pyramid.

V

And on the bald Norweyan shores

When Odin for the Viking came,

A ship was launched, and on it placed

With solemn state, the Hero's frame;

The torch applied, and sent to sea,

A double burial,—wave and flame.

VI

And when the Hindu Prince lay prone—

In final consecration dire

His Hindu Princess followed on

And climbed the blazing funeral pyre,

To stand in living sacrifice

Transfigured in her robes of fire.

VII

Where the red Indian of the Plains

To the Great Spirit bowed his head,

On pole-built scaffold, Eagle-plumed,

The painted warrior laid his dead;

Beneath, the favorite charger slain

And by the Chief his weapons spread.

VIII

We clothe our dead in modish dress

Dust unto dust the Preacher saith,

The church-bells toll, the organ peals,

And mourners wait with ebbing breath;

Oh! grave, this is thy mockery,

The weird farce-comedy of Death.

IX

Nay! burn the shell with simplest rites;

Scatter its ashes to the skies;

And on the stairways of the clouds

In winding spirals let it rise;

What needs the soul of mortal garb

Whether in Hell or Paradise?

X

Aye! lost and gone; what cares the corse

When Death unfolds his sable wings,

Whether it rest in wind-swept tree

Or where the deep-sea echo rings?

Be laid to sleep in Potter's Field

Or lone Iona's cairn of Kings?

EIGHT

I

Above unsightly city roofs

Where smoky serpents trail the sky,

Broods Commerce; in her factories

A million clacking shuttles fly;

Where, choked with lint, in sickly air

The little children droop and die.

II

The rattling clash of jarring wheels

Against the windows echoing beats;

And when the pallid gas-jets flare

Where sombre night with twilight meets,

Like flotsam on the stream of Fate

The toiler's myriads crowd the streets.

III

With hiving tumult to and fro

Trade's devotees, a hurrying mass,

Through the long corridor of years

In due procession rise and pass;

To earn their wage, to seek their goal

And melt, like dew-drops on the grass.

IV

And here, within the age of Gain

Our forest-masted harbors shine

With shimmering fleets; and we go on

To climes afar of palm and vine,

And in the warp of Traffic weave

A sinister and base design,

V

Of mild and hapless Islanders

Who fall before our soldiers' aim;

Of broken faith—of sophistries—

Of sin, of blood-shed, and of shame;

Oh! Commerce, Commerce, who shall tell

The crimes committed in thy name.

VI

Turn, turn my Fancy, inland borne

Where Nature's solace shall not fail

To ease the heart; view skyey seas

Where cloud armadas, sail on sail,

Manned by the winds go warping down

Below the far horizon's trail.

VII

And as the budding willows blow

When March comes whirling past the lanes,

With bird-note wild, and fifing winds

And undertone of sibilant rains,

On slopes where Winter's garment melts

Blue as the sea are violet stains.

VIII

Where cattle seek the shaded pools

And silence folds the sun-burned lands,

Her auburn tresses backward flung

Mid-Summer, like to Ceres stands,

Beside the fields of waving grain

With harvest-apples in her hands.

IX

And stealthily through winnowing dusk

I see the curling smoke ascend,

Where lie the farms; and evermore

Where hope, and health, and manhood blend;

While stubble shorn and pastures bare

Proclaim the waning season's end.

X

And as beyond the naked hills

The chill November sunset dies,

And cloudward now a phalanx swims

Where guttural honking fills the skies,

Black-sculptured on approaching night

And southward bound, the wild-goose flies.

NINE

I

Behold the kindred human types

Tribe, Sept, and class, Race, Caste, and Clan;

Red, Black and Yellow; White and Brown;

Processions of Primordial Man

That wax apace, and stream across

In one unending caravan.

II

The Fisher-People with their shells

And dwellers of the Age of Stone;

The Kirghiz of the Western Steppes

The Greek, the Turk, the Mongol shown,

The Goth, the Frank,—I see them pass

Like flash-lights by a mirror thrown.

III

So, too, the Arab, burnoose clad

Who braves the stifling Simoon dry,

Adrift upon Saharan tides

His awkward camels lurching high,

Long, lank, uncouth, but staunch as Death,

Ships of the Desert, sailing by.

IV

Note the Caucasian in his pride

Who prates of moldy pedigrees;

A mushroom he, compared in Eld

To the impassive, sly Chinese;

Their records co-extant with Time

And swarming by the sundown seas.

V

Each comes and goes; as came and went

Rameses' millions; in their day

What boast was made of Egypt's Kings

How God-like seemed their valorous play;

But cynic years dispersed their line

Swift hurried with the winds away.

VI

Aye! even as motes they had their grace

For a brief moment, son and sire;

Then passed; as foam that sinks at sea

Or chords which flee the Minstrel's lyre;

Where rot the walls by Sidon raised?

And where the long-lost hulls of Tyre?

VII

And all men listen in their turn

To the same Sirens; greed of Gain—

Love—Hate—Revenge—the lust of Power—

And craze o'er fellow-man to reign—

Ambition's lure—these intertwine

Like links that form an endless chain.

VIII

Since Power is but the instant's clutch

And naught so trivial as a Name,

What crucial proof shall fix men's worth

On lasting tablets write their claim;

So that their memories may fill

A niche within the walls of Fame?

IX

The test is not of Birth nor Race

Since each is worthy of his hire;

It rests in what men do for men

Uplifted by the soul's desire,

To tread Life's fiery furnaces

And save their brothers from the fire.

X

And ranging far and searching deep

However though the annals be,

We find but one nigh faultless man

There was none other such as He;

The Jew who taught and practiced Love

The man who walked by Galilee.

TEN

I

Enough my Muse; thy message cast

As stone from out a sling is hurled,

Let drop to night; or re-appear

Where morning's gathering grey is pearled,

And the bent sun, like Sisyphus,

Toils laboring up the underworld.

II

Let be; thy wisdom knoweth well

The just degrees of right and wrong;

Although mayhap unmarked by men

Shall fall the echoes of thy song;

Unheeded by the pilgrim years

Unrecked of, by the heedless throng.

III

And yet before the highways part

And thou and I in darkness dwell,

Do thou thy swiftest Herald send

And this as final warning tell;

'Banish all hope of gilded Heaven

And laugh to scorn the fires of Hell'.

IV

Phantasmal dance those dual sprites

Mere witch-craft mummeries of the brain;

The lying sorcery of the Priests

A worldly influence to retain;

Where shalt thou go? What quest is thine?

Where falls the single drop of rain?

V

But Courage, Faith, and Constancy,

The cardinal virtues as I deem,

May well be worshipped, as indeed

The lilies of the soul they seem;

Undying in their fragrance rare

And glassed upon a sacred stream.

VI

Know thou, the Ideal Harmony

That fills all space, below, above,

Is not in Creed, nor Form, nor Rite

Nor in those things thou dreamest of;

But holds within its breadth and scope

The sole and only note of Love.

VII

Reject all Creeds; and yet in each

Seek such material as thou can,

With here a tenet, there a thought

Whether it sprang from Christ or Pan;

And make the key-stone of thy arch

The common brotherhood of Man.

VIII

And striving thus, a happier creed

In time to come shall burst its bud,

The pure air cleared of battle-smoke

And war no more by field and flood;

Where men can lift up guiltless hands

Uncrimsoned by a brother's blood.

IX

When nevermore in calm or storm

Shall hawk-like hover on the seas,

The canvas of opposing ships

Their pennants floating to the breeze;

And golden hopes will supersede

The apples of Hesperides.

X

When man-emancipated man

Through loftier purpose wins control;

With Justice as his only God

To reign supreme o'er heart and soul;

And Love, sun-like, illuminates

The one, the true, the perfect whole.

NOTES TO COSMOS

Notes to Cosmos