It has been long and hard for me,
This task of slow emergence from the clod.
Brute-shapes still prowl about me in the shadows,
Their fangs are sometimes fastened to my feet;
So that I cannot walk from pain of them,
So that I halt and cry out—lonely in the night!
Sometimes I see you, Woman—
You the watchful, waiting one of ages—
You with the dawn and godlike—
You past all torment that I know—
You the understanding.
Sometimes I see you in a shaft of light
Smiting the mists of valleys where I call,
Dividing them as with a two-edged sword
Swung by an angel! In that vision
Rage of tusk and tooth and fang
Falls like the waves in their wind-drifted foam
Upon the scarlet laughter of wild poppies!
I have deceived you;
You in turn have punished me—
Have punished me with a mere semblance of yourself:
A figure, rose-lipped, white fleshed,
With wild witcheries of ample breasts—
Limbs smooth and dimpled as for kisses—
A dear and tender fiction of yourself;
A fiction of yourself that did escape me,
Leaped up to claim those hills remote from me
Until I learned man must not chain a woman's soul!
O Woman, wait for me—
Be patient; for I strive
Out of the shadow
Where the brute
Still fastens with his fang
My bleeding feet—
My weary, stumbling feet:
Nor be afraid that I will fail you—
You holder of far morning heights—
You dancing with the dawn!
A SONG OF THE NEW GODS
The gods of vast Valhalla
Are silent in their hall;
Zeus looks not from Olympus;
Jehovah's rod has fallen
And Buddha sleeps among his Poppies:
The old gods, the great gods,
Thunder and nod no more!
Yea, though we fiction them,
Pretending that their stone eyes stare—
That their ears of marble harken,
We know that all the gods of yesterday are dead!
Weep not for Apollo;
Sigh not for Cynthia;
Call not for Aphrodite
Coming from the foam;
Beat not the breast for Balder—
Balder the Beautiful,
Slain by dark Loki:
These were but dreams in the night
Of the day that is ours.