Alone along the gleaming, white sea-shore,
The sea-spume spraying thick around my head,
Through all the beat of waves and winds that roar,
I go, remembering that you are dead.
That you are dead, and nowhere is there one
Like unto you;—and nowhere Love leaps Death;—
And nowhere may the broken race be run;—
Nowhere unsealed the seal that none gainsaith.
Yet in my ear that deep, sweet undertone
Grows deeper, sweeter, solemner to me,—
Dreaming your dreams, watching the light that shone
So whitely to you, yonder, on the sea.
Your voice is there, there in the great life-sound—
Your eyes are there, out there, within the light;
Your heart, within the pulsing Race-heart drowned,
Beats in the immortality of Right.
O Life, I love you for the love of him
Who showed me all your glory and your pain!
"Unto Nirvana"—so the deep tones sing—
And there—and there—we—shall—be—one—again.
Greensburg, Pa., April 9th, 1893.
[OUT OF THE DARKNESS]
Who am I? Only one of the commonest common people,
Only a worked-out body, a shriveled and withered soul,
What right have I to sing then? None; and I do not, I cannot.
Why ruin the rhythm and rhyme of the great world's songs with moaning?
I know not—nor why whistles must shriek, wheels ceaselessly mutter;
Nor why all I touch turns to clanging and clashing and discord;
I know not;—I know only this,—I was born to this, live in it hourly,
Go round with it, hum with it, curse with it, would laugh with it, had it laughter;
It is my breath—and that breath goes outward from me in moaning.
O you, up there, I have heard you; I am "God's image defaced,"
"In heaven reward awaits me," "hereafter I shall be perfect";
Ages you've sung that song, but what is it to me, think you?
If you heard down here in the smoke and the smut, in the smear and the offal,
In the dust, in the mire, in the grime and in the slime, in the hideous darkness,
How the wheels turn your song into sounds of horror and loathing and cursing,
The offer of lust, the sneer of contempt and acceptance, thieves' whispers,
The laugh of the gambler, the suicide's gasp, the yell of the drunkard,
If you heard them down here you would cry, "The reward of such is damnation,"
If you heard them, I say, your song of "rewarded hereafter" would fail.