Does he perchance, recall the sunlit days
Of childhood in some cottage gay with flowers
Where Italy, enthroned among her rocks
Broods o’er her vanished grandeur? Does the spell
Of romance conjure up the golden past
When his proud forbears bore the pomp of Rome
To seas remote, when Roman legions ruled
The servile world? Did he in flaunting crest,
And burnished armour tread the galley deck?
Or did a scourging destiny condemn
His pain wracked shoulders to the oaken oar?
To his dulled ears float strains of music sweet
From gilded cabins where the zest of life
Enthralls the voyagers, while his the hand
That drives the moving palace on her course
Through seas of shimmering light. A gnome begrimed,
Breathing foul dust and blistered by the heat
In caverns far below. A galley slave
Heaving and straining at a deadlier oar -
An iron bar that burns the calloused palm.
Whene’er the furnace gapes its dragon jaws
And blasts him with its breath, with reckless hand
He flings his youth into that Moloch’s maw!
And his reward? O bargain infamous
A mess of pottage for a birth right riven
Like Esau’s ancient sin. Repulsive fare
A stinking hole to kennel like a cur
Battling with vermin, foul and desperate
Too bitter punishment for branded crime.
Chained by the manacles of circumstance
To Vulcan’s smoking forge, a fate more dire
Than once befell Prometheus wracked upon
His cross of crags on grizzled Caucausus;
With every shovel speed the winged hours
His hopes, his dreams, his life but sordid lumps
Of coal to feed those flames insatiate.
Then Death, the pitiful, brings welcome rest.
His body, warped and shrivelled, slides adown
The tilted hatchway, weighted at the feet
A burned out clinker cast into the sea!
IMAGINATION
Blest Being from some happier sphere
O bend thy luminous footsteps near
Were Heaven’s gates ajar,
When down a moonlit path you came
With dazzling smile and wings of flame
Fair as the morning star?
Imagination, radiant sprite
With crescent crown and stars bedight,
And seraph’s eyes;
O guide us up that filmy stair
By ladders raised on buoyant air
To vaulting skies!
Imagination is the singing rhyme
In life’s dull prose.
She blooms among the cruel thorns of time
A beauteous rose.
No Circe’s spell is hers, the poppy’s lure
From present pain
In drug engendered dreams; but calm and pure
Is her sweet reign.
Her finger traces in the storm cloud gray
The rainbow’s arc;
She sees within the gnarled volcanic clay
The diamond’s spark;
Forecasts the harvests in the sodded rows
The plough shares fling;
When all the world is buried neath the snows
She dreams of spring.
The cave man followed up the savage road
The torch she bore,
She marks within life’s rock encumbered lode
The glinting ore.
Imagination melts in purple mist
The jagged peaks;
And petty things yield to this alchemist
The gold she seeks.
No priestess of illusions, vague, unreal
And not of earth,
She rather helps us know and see and feel
A thing’s true worth.
Along the wistful trail of yesterdays
Backward sad Memory directs her gaze
And points her withered hand.
“Tomorrow” is the magic word that cheers
Imagination onward through the years
Where lies her promised land.
Imagination only can explain
Those jewelled etchings on our window pane
By fairies of the frost;
From icy peaks and breaker fretted seas
To elven glens beneath snow laden trees
So cunningly embossed.
Calm reason tells us there is nothing there
But mists congealing in the frosted air;
’Tis false, calm reason lies.
For in that witching square the eye beholds
A glittering world of wonder that unfolds
Its luminious mysteries.
Imagination plumbs the deeps of space
To roam among the stars,
She gilds the workshop, lights the market place,
And sunders prison bars.
Her inspiration made Da Vinci thrill
And o’er his canvas shone,
And Michelangelo’s god like visions still
Endure in living stone.
Beyond the sunset’s molten lava flood
Lie mysteries yet untold -
Imagination sails those seas of blood
And mounts those walls of gold.
Her finger laid on blind old Milton’s eyes
Kindled no earthly glow -
And deaf Beethoven thrilled to melodies
No mortal ear may know.
Imagination decks the naked tree
With candles burning clear,
Until transfigured by her witchery
It blooms with Christmas cheer.
Life’s pathway leads us to the yawning tomb
And there it seems to end -
Imagination peering through the gloom
Sees visions that transcend.
Imagination marked the goal
That fired Columbus’ burning soul,
Till like a vision through the haze
A new world burst upon his gaze
That voyage of destiny.
And ancient chroniclers relate
Magellan, groping through the strait,
Beyond the blue horizon’s rim
Saw far off islands beckon him
Out to an unknown sea!
“Imagination rules the world” so said
The great Napoleon, and at the head
Of conquering armies drove his ruthless way
Made Afric sands and Russian snows obey
His iron decrees. Upon an Alpine height
Poised like an eagle, terrible as night,
He swooped on Italy. His boundless reign
Was the creation of his lonely brain.
On upstart thrones he set his underlings.
Like puppets played with kingdoms and with kings -
His fingers marked their bounds, his will their power
Earth’s dictator, in that tremendous hour
He dreamed like Lucifer, as grandly wove
His dreams into realty, then strove
For Godlike heights, and from those heights was hurled
And in his meteor fall amazed the world!
The naked truth itself is never true.
Stern facts are but the skeleton that binds
Our living fancies. If we seek to view
Truth absolute, her grisly horror blinds
Our eyes, for her’s is but the mocking skull,
Stark, hideous, the poor grain’s withered hull
After the kernel dies. The glance, the smile,
Expression, character, the soul beguile
When, taking form o’er Truth’s repellent base
Imagination beams with radiant face.
Imagination is the martial strain
That fires disheartened soldiers for the fray;
Her pitying fingers smooth the brow of pain,
She whispers low, - “This too, shall pass away.”
Her’s is the vision, the all seeing eye
That pierces where truth’s nuggets lie concealed.
Illusions crumble at her query, “Why?”
The Sphinx’s ancient wisdom is revealed
To her clear sight. She holds the golden key
That can unlock the guarded door of fate.
She is the lodestar of our destiny,
Her’s is the Godlike impulse to create.
The treasure that Prometheus once stole
From Heaven’s high altar is her sacred fire;
To the insensate clod she is the soul,
The Phoenix risen from the funeral pyre!
The atoms spin, the elements adhere
Till matter forms like mold: and vaunted life
A fungus growth upon a dying sphere
Whirls on into the dark. “The futile strife
“Of some vast mechanism’s grinding gears.” -
Grim science tells us - but the vision comes
Of life immortal ranging down the years
Through endless vistas of milleniums!
IN WELLFLEET BY THE SEA
“Why do you dwell in Wellfleet by the sea?”
Inquires some wondering friend,
“Is this quaint village in the dunes the end
To life’s bright trail, the world that you have known
Shut out behind you? From a weed draped stone
“A barnacle might thus survey the sky,
“As the grand pageant of mankind sweeps by.”
To this I answer, “Not this quiet place
But vaster regions are his home as well
Who humbly seeks where the immortals dwell,
Those kingly souls of every clime and race.
The seven branching candlestick ablaze
With wisdom’s radiant light
Brightens his studious library at night
And sheds its all illuminating rays
Across the lengthening years,
Till loving presences sages and seers,
Are his true friends. Must he alone abide
With Socrates or Shakespeare as his guide?
Art’s priceless treasures stored in Greece or Rome
The mighty masters limned
By the slow lapse of centuries undimmed.
Fade into nothingness beneath the dome
Whereon a mightier Artist graves His lines
And blocks His bold designs;
For He can etch with lightnings, and His dyes
Are wrung from clouds that drip with red and gold,
While silent watchers, awestruck, may behold
His wonders blazoned on the midnight skies.
One need not dwell alone beside the sea,
There are no bars
To sunder Him who walked on Galilee
Or blur the vision of the loftiest stars
No solitary being, set apart,
Is he who feels the soul sustaining calm
Steal o’er his spirit like a healing balm
From Mother Nature’s all embracing heart.
His dreams are lulled by the resounding sea,
The rhythm of the waves that never tire,
While sweeter than the strains of Orpheus’ lyre
The dying wind’s melodious minstrelsy,
Ranging this narrow bourne of surf and sand,
Seems echoing from the horns of fairyland.
And when he strolls in solitude, the breeze
That breathes upon his face,
Was never curbed by this confining space,
For once it roamed the lonely Hebrides.
The murmuring tide
That swells the shallows of this pleasant bay,
Washed coral islands half a world away
And coursed through boundless oceans far and wide.
Rather he looks with sympathetic eye
As with their faces tense and shut from heaven
By scorpion whips of fear and envy driven
The jostling multitudes of men rush by;
Spurning the bounties kindly Nature gave
As though in haste for an untimely grave.
No shadows cast by avarice or pride
Darken this countryside;
That tyrant trinity, fame, wealth, and power
Have somehow lost their spell. Each passing hour
Bears costlier freight than theirs, the gifts divine -
Health, gratitude, content. Those gifts are mine
So why should reckless wastrels pity me
With all my wealth, in Wellfleet by the sea?
PRINTED BY THE CAPE CODDER PRINTERY
ORLEANS, MASSACHUSETTS
Transcriber’s Notes
Perceived typographical errors have been silently corrected.
Unusual punctuation has been retained as printed.