I saw two lovers sitting on a star.
He kissed her lip, she kissed his battle-scar.
They quarrelled soon, and went two ways, afar.
O Life! I laughed, Nirvana.
And never a king but had some king above,
And never a law to right the wrongs of Love,
And ever a fanged snake beneath a dove,
Saw I on earth, Nirvana.
But I, with kingship over kings, am free.
I love not, hate not: right and wrong agree:
And fangs of snakes and lures of doves to me
Are vain, are vain, Nirvana.
So by mine inner contemplation long,
By thoughts that need no speech nor oath nor song,
My spirit soars above the motley throng
Of days and nights, Nirvana.
O Suns, O Rains, O Day and Night, O Chance,
O Time besprent with seven-hued circumstance,
I float above ye all into the trance
That draws me nigh Nirvana.
Gods of small worlds, ye little Deities
Of humble Heavens under my large skies,
And Governor-Spirits, all, I rise, I rise,
I rise into Nirvana.
The storms of Self below me rage and die.
On the still bosom of mine ecstasy,
A lotus on a lake of balm, I lie
Forever in Nirvana.
____ Macon, Georgia, 1869.
——————————————————————————————————— | The two poems which follow "The Raven Days" have not | | been included in earlier editions. All three are calls | | from those desperate years for the South just after the Civil War. | | The reader of to-day, seeing that forlorn period | | in the just perspective of half a century, will not wonder | | at the tone of anguished remonstrance; but, rather, | | that so few notes of mourning have come from a poet | | who missed nothing of what the days of Reconstruction | | brought to his people. | ———————————————————————————————————
The Raven Days.