ACT IV

SCENE: _The Chapel of the Castle--or Chapel of the Magdalen--a

few hours later. It is of stone, low-arched, gloomy, and

adorned with Byzantine mosaics of gaunt saints on backgrounds

of gold. The altar is in the rear, and above it a large

window, through which pours the still moon. In front of it,

to either side, rise two pillars supporting the roof, and

on one of them, halfway up, stands a stone image of the

Magdalen. Forward are two other pillars whose bases form

seats. The right wall has, set midway, a large door hung

with heavy curtains. In the rear are smaller doors leading

to a sacristy. The altar lamp and a few tapers burn._ ALESSA

_enters, rubbing her eyes as if to clear them of vision,

looks around, then calls uncertainly_--

_Alessa._ Good father! Father Moro!... He is not here.

(_Rubs her eyes again._)

The dead are strange! I knew not all their power.

It is as if her spirit still imprisoned

Hovered beneath the pallor of her face

And strove to speak. Good father!

(_Enter_ MORO.)

Ah, you were

There in the sacristy.

_Moro._ Yes. Your desire?

_Alessa._ The acolytes summoned from Famagouste

To aid your rites before her burial

Have come, and wait.

_Moro._ Send hither two.

(_Looks closely at her._)

_Alessa._ At once.

(_Is going. He stops her._)

_Moro._ Woman, this passes silence. There must be

Some question. Do you understand this wedding?

The evil that has risen in this house?

Speak.

_Alessa._ I may not.

_Moro._ As says Yolanda, who

Has been to-day impenetrable in all.

But who, now, in a lofty grief above

The misery that blasted her, seems calm,

And answers only,

"God in His season will,

I trust, unfold it soon; I cannot, now!" ...

And yet I heard

Her darkly bid the Paphian be gone----

From here--without her.

_Alessa._ And he would not?

_Moro._ No.

(_A pause._)

Does she not see lightnings now in Amaury,

Plunging for truth? What is't?

_Alessa._ The acolytes

Are waiting.

_Moro._ Go ... But if this hour bring forth

What you shall rue----

_Alessa._ Father!

(_Goes quickly, troubled._)

_Moro._ In blindness still!

For Vittia Pisani, who alone

Seems with these twain to share this mystery

Is silent to all importunity.

Oh, Berengere Lusignan!

But 'tis mine

To pray and to prepare. (_Listens._) The acolytes.

(_Two enter, sleek, sanctimonious._)

(_To First._) Come here ... You're Serlio,

Of the Ascension. You?

_2nd Acolyte._ Hilarion.

From Santa Maria by the Templars' well,

Which God looks on with gratitude, father.

For though we're poor and are unworthy servants

We've given willingly our widow's mite.

And now we ...

_Moro._ You are summoned to this place

For ministrations other than the tongue's.

Prepare that altar--masses for the dead.

_Hilarion._ Man is as grass that withers!

_Moro._ Kindle all

Its tapers. The departed will be borne

Hither for holy care and sacred rest.

So do--then after

Look to that image of the Magdalen,

Once it has fallen.

_Serlio._ Domine, dirige!

(MORO _goes. They put off cant and

set to work._)

_Hilarion_ (_insolently, lighting a taper_).

We'll have good wine for this!

_Serlio._ The Chian! Hee!

None's like the Chian! and to-morrow, meat!

Last week old Ugo died and we had pheasant.

_Hilarion._ When we are priests we'll give no comforting

To wife or maid--till we have sipped!

_Serlio._ And supped!

Though 'tis a Friday and the Pope is dead!

(_Silence. They work faster._)

_Hilarion._ There, it is done. Now to the image.

_Serlio._ Well,

Olympio, the cock who fetched us, said

That image fell first on the day----

_Hilarion._ Tchuck! tchuck!

Better no breath about that lord of Paphos

Or any here. For till the dead are three

Days gone, you know--! But there's the woman. Feign.

(_As_ ALESSA _re-enters;

hypocritically._)

The blessed dead! in Purgatory may

They briefly bide.

_Serlio._ Aye! aye!

_Alessa_ (_still troubled_). What say you?

_Hilarion._ Ah!

I lay that it is wise never to foul

The dead, even in thinking,

For they may hear us, none can say, and once

My mother saw a dead man who had gone

Unshriven start up white and cry out loud

When he was curst.

_Serlio._ O Lord!

_Alessa_ (_staring_). No!... Well, such things

There are perchance. And now they say that Venus,

The Anadyomene, who once ruled this isle,

Is come again.... But you have finished? Soon

They bring her body here.

_Hilarion._ Now have I, now!

It will not totter again. (_Descends._)

_Alessa_ Would that it might

Upon the head of ---- (_catches herself; calmly_)

You are awaited

There in the sacristy.... The chant begins!

(_The acolytes go. She grows more

disquieted._)

Begins! and lady Yolanda still awaits

Heedless, though Lord Amaury's desperate

As is the Paphian!... They near!... The curtains!

(_Goes to them and draws them

back. As she does so the chant

swells louder. Then the cortège

enters_--MORO, _the acolytes

with tapers_; BERENGERE _on a

litter_, AMAURY, RENIER, VITTIA,

_the women_, HASSAN, _and last_

YOLANDA. _The litter_, AMAURY

_by it, comes to the altar; the

chanting ceases._)

_Moro_ (_as_ AMAURY _bows, shaken_).

No moan or any toil of grief be here

Where we have brought her for sainted appeal.

But in this holy place until the tomb

Let her find rest.

_Amaury._ Set down the bier.

(_It is placed._)

_Moro._ Lone rest!

Then bliss Afar for ever!

_Amaury_ (_rises_). Be it so!

(_Turning; brokenly._)

But unto any, mother, who have brought thee

Low to this couch, be never ease again.

To any who have put thy life out, never!

But in them be the burning that has seemed

To shrivel thee--whether with pain or fear!

And be appeaseless tears,

Salt tears that rust the fountain of the heart.

(_Sinks to a seat. A pause._)

_Moro._ My son, relentless words.

_Amaury_ (_up again_). To the relentless!

_Moro._ God hear you not!

_Amaury._ Then is He not my God.

_Moro._ Enough, enough. (_To the rest._) But go and for her soul

Freight all of you this tide of night with prayer.

_Amaury._ Never!

_Moro._ I bid.

_Amaury._ And I forbid those who

Have prized her not!

For though nought's in the world but prayer may move,

Still but the lips that loved her

Should for her any sin beseeching lift.

(_Looking at_ YOLANDA.)

They and no other!

_Yolanda._ And, you mean----?

_Amaury._ Not one.

_Yolanda._ Then, mother----

(_Goes to bier._)

_Amaury._ That name again?

_Yolanda._ While I have breath.

(_Nobly._) Yes, though you hold me purgeless of that sin

Only the pale arch-angels may endure

Trembling to muse on!

Or though yon image of the Magdalen,

Whose alabaster broke amid her tears

And her torn hair, forbade me with a voice.

And you, whose heart is shaken

As in a tomb a taper's flame, would know

I speak with love.

_Camarin._ Unswerving love.

_Amaury._ Then, by

Christ, and the world that craves His blood, I think

She, if she would, or you, could point to me,

Or you, Vittia Pisani,

The reason of this sudden piteous death

Hard on the haunted flight before my father,

Whose lips refuse.

_Camarin._ She knows no shred of it.

_Amaury._ You lie to say it.

_Camarin._ Then will, still--if there

Is need.

_Amaury._ Because you love her?

_Yolanda._ Peace, peace, peace.

_Amaury._ A hollow word for what had never being.

_Yolanda._ Look on her face and see.

_Amaury_ (_at bier_). Upon her face!

Where not oblivion the void of death

Has hid away, or can, the agony

Of her last terror--but it trembles still.

I tell you, no. Grief was enough, but now

Through it has risen mystery that chokes

As a miasma from Iscariot's tomb.

And till this pall of doubt be rent away

No earth shall fall and quicken with her dust!

But I will search her face ... till it reveals.

_Camarin._ He raves.

_Amaury._ Iscariot! yes!

_Yolanda._ Again, peace, peace!

_Amaury._ That you may palter!

_Yolanda_ (_gently_). That she may not grieve.

(_Goes again to bier._)

For--if 'tis near--her soul with this is wrung.

Near! would it were to hear me and impart

Its yearning and regret to us who live,

Its dim unhappiness and hollow want.

Yes, mother, were you now about us, vain,

Invisible and without any voice

To tell us of you!

Were you and now could hear through what of cold

Or silence wrap you, oh, so humanly

And seeming but a veil--

Then would you hear me say--(_suddenly aghast_)

Ah, God!

_Amaury._ Yolanda!

(_She starts back from the bier._)

Yolanda!

_Renier._ Girl, what rends you?

_Yolanda._ Saw you not?

(_Rushes to bier and shakes it._)

Mother! you hear me? mother!

_Renier._ Girl!

_Yolanda._ She breathes!

(_Consternation. Some fall to their

knees._)

_Vittia._ What? What?

_Yolanda._ Mother! Her breast! Mother! She moves!

_Amaury._ God! God!

_Yolanda._ Stand off from her ... Mother!

_Camarin._ Her eyes!...

They open! open!

_Yolanda._ Mother!...

_Amaury._ See; her lips!

They strive to speak! O faintly, O so faint!

Can you not hear?

_Berengere._ Yolanda!

_Yolanda._ Mother!

_Berengere._ Renier!

_Renier._ Yes, yes?

_Berengere._ Yolanda--

_Renier._ Speak!

_Berengere._ Christ, save me ... Christ!

Yolanda's innocent, and I ... 'twas I.

_Amaury._ What? what is it she says?

_Berengere._ Camarin! Ah!

(_She shudders and dies, amid

low-uttered awe._ RENIER _bends,

lays his hand a moment on her

breast, then, with a cry of rage,

springs from her and draws, and

rushes on_ CAMARIN, _who awaits

him, desperate._)

_Amaury_ (_confused, as they engage_).

Yolanda; what is this?

_Yolanda._ Amaury, in!

Compel Lord Renier back! he cannot live,

You only could against Camarin now!

Wait not to question, but obey me! if

You ever--! (_As he rushes in_) Holy Magdalen, defend him!

(RENIER _falls back._)

Now, now defend him, if to chastity

Thou'rt vowed in heaven.

_Vittia._ Fool!--Camarin, strike!

_Yolanda._ He's wounded!

_Camarin._ Oh!... Berengere!... treachery!

(_He staggers and sinks back

heavily toward the pillar. There

is breathless, strained suspense.

Then he strikes the sacred column,

and as he does so the image above

sways, totters and crushes upon

him. A cry, "The Magdalen!" goes up

around._)

_Hassan_ (_hurrying to him; after awe and silence_).

He's dead.

_Alessa._ The Magdalen!

_Hassan._ No breath in him.

(_A pause._)

_Renier_ (_low, harshly_).

Bear him without then ever from this place,

That never more shall know a holy rite--

And from these gates, I care not to what tomb.

(_To_ AMAURY.)

Then shall you hear this mystery's content,

That still as a madness measures to your sight.

Bear him without.

(_The limp body is borne away.

All follow but_ AMAURY, YOLANDA,

RENIER.)

Now you shall hear, with shame,

But with exalted pride and happy tears;

Then come obliteration!

Speak, girl ... Nobility

Had never better title to its truth.

(_Kisses her hand and goes._)

_Amaury._ Yolanda!... he!... this reverence as to

An angel? Speak!

_Yolanda._ Amaury----

_Amaury._ O pause not!

_Yolanda._ Then--to save her who's dead--from death and shame,

I took her place within the Paphian's arms.

_Amaury._ O!... and by me, driven by me, bore this!

(_Overcome_) Pure as the rills of Paradise, endured?

_Yolanda._ For you!--and her who sleeps forgiven there,

(_With deep abandon._)

Now while her spirit weightless overwingeth

Night, to that Throne whose seeing heals all shame!

For her I did! but oh, for you, whose least

Murmur to me is infinite with Spring,

Whose smile is light, filling the air with dawn,

Whose touch, wafture of immortality

Unto my weariness; and whose eyes, now,

Are as the beams God lifted first, they tell us,

Over the uncreated,

In the far singing mother-dawn of the world!--

Come with me then, but tearless, to her side.

(_They go to the bier and stand as

in a dream. A pause; then her lips

move, last, as if inspired._)

While there is sin to sway the soul and sink it

Pity should be as strong as love or death!

(_With a cry of joy he enfolds her,

and they kneel, wrapped about with

the clear moon._)

THE END.

LYRICS

JAEL

Jehovah! Jehovah! art Thou not stronger than gods of the heathen?

I slew him, that Sisera, prince of the host Thou dost hate.

But fear of his blood is upon me, about me is breathen

His spirit--by night and by day come voices that wait.

Athirst and affrightened he fled from the star-wrought waters of

Kishon.

His face was as wool when he swooned at the door of my tent.

The Lord hath given him into the hand of perdition,

I smiled--but he saw not the face of my cunning intent.

He thirsted for water: I fed him the curdless milk of the cattle.

He lay in the tent under purple and crimson of Tyre.

He slept and he dreamt of the surge and storming of battle.

Ah ha! but he woke not to waken Jehovah's ire.

He slept as he were a chosen of Israel's God Almighty.

A dog out of Canaan!--thought he I was woman alone?

I slipt like an asp to his ear and laughed for the sight he

Would give when the carrion kites should tear to his bone.

I smote thro' his temple the nail, to the dust a worm did I bind him.

My heart was a-leap with rage and a-quiver with scorn.

And I danced with a holy delight before and behind him--

I that am called blessed o'er all who're of Judah born.

"Aye, come, I will show thee, O Barak, a woman is more than a warrior,"

I cried as I lifted the door wherein Sisera lay.

"To me did he fly and I shall be called his destroyer--

I, Jael, who am subtle to find for the Lord a way!"

"Above all the daughters of men be blest--of Gilead or Asshur,"

Sang Deborah, prophetess, under her waving palm.

"Behold her, ye people, behold her the heathen's abasher;

Behold her the Lord hath uplifted--behold and be calm.

"The mother of him at the window looks out thro' the lattice to

listen--

Why roll not the wheels of his chariot? why does he stay?

Shall he not return with the booty of battle, and glisten

In songs of his triumph--ye women, why do ye not say?"

And I was as she who danced when the Seas were rendered asunder

And stood, until Egypt pressed in to be drowned unto death.

My breasts were as fire with the glory, the rocks that were under

My feet grew quick with the gloating that beat in my breath.

At night I stole out where they cast him, a sop to the jackal and

raven.

But his bones stood up in the moon and I shook with affright.

The strength shrank out of my limbs and I fell a craven

Before him--the nail in his temple gleamed bloodily bright.

Jehovah! Jehovah! art Thou not stronger than gods of the heathen?

I slew him, that Sisera, prince of the host Thou dost hate.

But fear of his blood is upon me, about me is breathen

His spirit--by day and by night come voices that wait.

I fly to the desert, I fly to the mountain--but they will not hide me.

His gods haunt the winds and the caves with vengeance that cries

For judgment upon me; the stars in their courses deride me--

The stars Thou hast hung with a breath in the wandering skies.

Jehovah! Jehovah! I slew him the scourge and sting of Thy Nation.

Take from me his spirit, take from me the voice of his blood.

With madness I rave--by day and by night, defamation!

Jehovah, release me! Jehovah! if still Thou art God!

MARY AT NAZARETH

I know, Lord, Thou hast sent Him--

Thou art so good to me!--

But Thou hast only lent Him,

His heart's for Thee!

I dared--Thy poor hand-maiden--

Not ask a prophet-child:

Only a boy-babe laden

For earth--and mild.

But this one Thou hast given

Seems not for earth--or me!

His lips flame truth from heaven,

And vanity

Seem all my thoughts and prayers

When He but speaks Thy Law;

Out of my heart the tares

Are torn by awe!

I cannot look upon Him

So strangely burn His eyes--

Hath not some grieving drawn Him

From Paradise?

For Thee, for Thee I'd live, Lord!

Yet oft I almost fall

Before Him--Oh, forgive, Lord,

My sinful thrall!

But e'en when He was nursing,

A baby at my breast,

It seemed He was dispersing

The world's unrest.

Thou bad'st me call Him "Jesus"

And from our heavy sin

I know He shall release us,

From Sheol win.

But, Lord, forgive! the yearning

That He may sometimes be

Like other children, learning

Beside my knee,

Or playing, prattling, seeking

For help,--comes to my heart....

Ah sinful, Lord, I'm speaking--

How good Thou art!

OUTCAST

I did not fear,

But crept close up to Christ and said,

"Is He not here?"

They drew me back--

The seraphs who had never bled

Of weary lack--

But still I cried,

With torn robe, clutching at His feet,

"Dear Christ! He died

So long ago!

Is He not here? Three days, unfleet

As mortal flow

Of time I've sought--

Till Heaven's amaranthine ways

Seem as sere nought!"

A grieving stole

Up from His heart and waned the gaze

Of His clear soul

Into my eyes.

"He is not here," troubled He sighed.

"For none who dies

Beliefless may

Bend lips to this sin-healing Tide,

And live alway."

Then darkness rose

Within me, and drear bitterness.

Out of its throes

I moaned, at last,

"Let me go hence! Take off the dress,

The charms Thou hast

Around me strown!

Beliefless too am I without

His love--and lone!"

Unto the Gate

They led me, tho' with pitying doubt.

I did not wait

But stepped across

Its portal, turned not once to heed

Or know my loss.

Then my dream broke,

And with it every loveless creed--

Beneath love's stroke.

ADELIL

Proud Adelil! Proud Adelil!

Why does she lie so cold?

(I made her shrink, I made her reel,

I made her white lids fold.)

We sat at banquet, many maids,

She like a Valkyr free.

(I hated the glitter of her braids,

I hated her blue eye's glee!)

In emerald cups was poured the mead;

Icily blew the night.

(But tears unshed and woes that bleed

Brew bitterness and spite.)

"A goblet to my love!" she cried,

"Prince where the sea-winds fly!"

(Her love!--it was for that he died,

And for it she should die.)

She lifted the cup and drank--she saw

A heart within its lees.

(I laughed like the dead who feel the thaw

Of summer in the breeze.)

They looked upon her stricken still,

And sudden they grew appalled.

("It is thy lover's heart!" I shrill

As the sea-crow to her called.)

Palely she took it--did it give

Ease there against her breast?

(Dead--dead she swooned, but I cannot live,

And dead I shall not rest.)

THE DYING POET

Swing in thy splendour, O silent sun,

Drawing my heart with thee over the west!

Done is its day as thy day is done,

Fallen its quest!

Swoon into purple and rose--then sink,

Tho' to arise again out of the dawn.

Sink while I praise thee, ere thro' the dark link

Of death I am drawn!

Sunk? art thou sunken? how great was life!

I like a child could cry for it again--

Cry for its beauty, pang, fleeting and strife,

Its women, its men!

For, how I drained it with love and delight!

Opened its heart with the magic of grief!

Reaped every season--its day and its night!

Loved every sheaf!

Aye, not a meadow my step has trod,

Never a flower swung sweet to my face,

Never a heart that was touched of God,

But taught me its grace.

Off, from my lids then a moment yet,

Fingering Death, for again I must see

Miraged by memory all that I met

Under Time's lee.

There!... I'm a child again--fair, so fair!

Under the eyes does a marvel not burn?

Speak they not vision, song, frenzy to dare,

That still in me yearn?...

Youth! my wild youth!--O, blood of my heart,

Still you can answer with whirling the thought!

Still like the mountain-born rapid can dart,

Joyous, distraught!...

Love, and her face again! there by the wood!--

Come thou invisible Dark with thy mask!

Shall I not learn if she lives? and could

I more of thee ask?...

Turn me away from the ashen west,

Where love's sad planet unveils to the dusk.

Something is stealing like light from my breast--

Soul from its husk ...

Soft!... Where the dead feel the buried dead,

Where the high hermit-bell hourly tolls,

Bury me, near to the haunting tread

Of life that o'errolls.

ON THE MOOR

1

I met a child upon the moor

A-wading down the heather;

She put her hand into my own,

We crossed the fields together.

I led her to her father's door--

A cottage mid the clover.

I left her--and the world grew poor

To me, a childless rover.

2

I met a maid upon the moor,

The morrow was her wedding.

Love lit her eyes with lovelier hues

Than the eve-star was shedding.

She looked a sweet goodbye to me,

And o'er the stile went singing.

Down all the lonely night I heard

But bridal bells a-ringing.

3

I met a mother on the moor,

By a new grave a-praying.

The happy swallows in the blue

Upon the winds were playing.

"Would I were in his grave," I said,

"And he beside her standing!"

There was no heart to break if death

For me had made demanding.

HUMAN LOVE

We spoke of God and Fate,

And of that Life--which some await--

Beyond the grave.

"It will be fair," she said,

"But love is here!

I only crave thy breast

Not God's when I am dead.

For He nor wants nor needs

My little love.

But it may be, if I love thee

And those whose sorrow daily bleeds,

He knows--and somehow heeds!"

OH, GO NOT OUT

Oh, go not out upon the storm,

Go not, my sweet, to Swalchie pool!

A witch tho' she be dead may charm

Thee and befool.

A wild night 'tis! her lover's moan,

Down under ooze and salty weed,

She'll make thee hear--and then her own!

Till thou shall heed.

And it will suck upon thy heart--

The sorcery within her cry--

Till madness out of thee upstart,

And rage to die.

For him she loved, she laughed to death!

And as afloat his chill hand lay,

"Ha, ha! to hell I sent his wraith!"

Did she not say?

And from his finger strive to draw

The ring that bound him to her spell?--

But on her closed his hand--she saw ...

Oh, who can tell?

For tho' she strove--tho' she did wail,

The dead hand held her cold and fast:

The tide crawled in o'er rock and swale,

To her at last!

Down in the pool where she was swept

He holds her--Oh, go not a-near!

For none has heard her cry but wept

And died that year.

CALL TO YOUR MATE, BOB-WHITE

O call to your mate, bob-white, bob-white,

And I will call to mine.

Call to her by the meadow-gate,

And I will call by the pine.

Tell her the sun is hid, bob-white,

The windy wheat sways west.

Whistle again, call clear and run

To lure her out of her nest.

For when to the copse she comes, shy bird,

With Mary down the lane

I'll walk, in the dusk of locust tops,

And be her lover again.

Ay, we will forget our hearts are old,

And that our hair is gray.

We'll kiss as we kissed at pale sunset

One summer's halcyon day.

That day, can it fade?... ah, bob, bob-white,

Still calling--calling still?

We're coming--a-coming, bent and weighed,

But glad with the old love's thrill!

TRANSCENDED

I who was learned in death's lore

Oft held her to my heart

And spoke of days when we should love no more--

In the long dust, apart.

"Immortal?" No--it could not be,

Spirit with flesh must die.

Tho' heart should pray and hope make endless plea,

Reason would still outcry.

She died. They wrapped her in the dust--

I heard the dull clod's dole,

And then I knew she lived--that death's dark lust

Could never touch her soul!

THE CRY OF EVE

Down the palm-way from Eden in the moist

Midnight lay Eve by her outdriven mate,

Pillowed on lilies that still told the sweet

Of birth within the Garden's ecstasy.

Pitiful round her face that could not lose

Its memory of God's perfecting was strewn

Her troubled hair, and sigh grieved after sigh

Along her loveliness in the white moon.

Sudden her dream, too cruelly impent

With pain, broke and a cry fled shuddering

Into the wounded stillness from her lips.

Then, cold, she fearfully felt for his hand,

While tears, that had before ne'er visited

Her lids with anguish, stinging traced her cheeks.

"Oh, Adam!" then as a wild shadow burst

Her moan on the pale air, "What have I dreamed?

Now do I understand His words, so dim

To creatures that had quivered but with bliss!

Since at the dusk thy kiss to me, and I

Wept at caresses that were once all joy,

I have slept, seeing through Futurity

The uncreated ages visibly!

Foresuffering phantoms crowded in the womb

Of Time, and all with lamentable mien

Accusing thee and me!

And some were far

From birth, without a name, but others near--

Sodom and dark Gomorrah ... from whose flames

Fleeing one turned ... how like her look to mine

When the tree's horror trembled on my taste!

And Nineveh, a city sinking slow

Under a shroud of sandy centuries

That hid me not from the buried cursing eyes

Of women who gave birth! And Babylon,

Upbuilded on our sin but for a day!

Ah, to be mother of all misery!

To be first-called out of the earth and fail

For a whole world! To shame maternity

For women evermore--women whose tears

Flooding the night, no hope can wipe away!

To see the wings of Death, as, Adam, thou

Hast not, endlessly beating, and to hear

The swooning ages suffer up to God!

And O that birth-cry of a guiltless child!

In it are sounding of our sin and woe,

With prophesy of ill beyond all years!

Yearning for beauty never to be seen--

Beatitude redeemless evermore!

And I whose dream mourned with all motherhood

Must hear it soon! Already do soft skill,

Low-babbled lulls, enticings and quick tones

Of tenderness--that will like light awake

The folded memory children shall bring

Out of the dark--move in me longingly.

Yet thou, Adam, dear fallen thought of God,

Thou, when thou too shall hear humanity

Cry in thy child, wilt groaning wish the world

Back in unsummoned Void! and, woe! wilt fill

God's ear with troubled wonder and unrest!"

Softly he soothed her straying hair, and kissed

The fever from her lips. Over the palms

The sad moon poured her peace into their eyes,

Till Sleep, the angel of forgetfulness,

Folded again her wings above their rest.

THE CHILD GOD GAVE

"Give me a little child

To draw this dreary want out of my breast,"

I cried to God.

"Give, for my days beat wild

With loneliness that will not rest

But under the still sod!"

It came--with groping lips

And little fingers stealing aimlessly

About my heart.

I was like one who slips

A-sudden into Ecstasy

And thinks ne'er to depart.

"Soon he will smile," I said,

"And babble baby love into my ears--

How it will thrill!"

I waited--Oh, the dread,

The clutching agony, the fears!--

He was so strange and still.

Did I curse God and rave

When they came shrinkingly to tell me 'twas

A witless child?

No ... I ... I only gave

One cry ... just one ... I think ... because ...

You know ... he never smiled.

MOTHER-LOVE

The seraphs would sing to her

And from the River

Dip her cool grails of radiant Life.

The angels would bring to her,

Sadly a-quiver,

Laurels she never had won in earth-strife.

And often they'd fly with her

O'er the star-spaces--

Silent by worlds where mortals are pent.

Yea, even would sigh with her,

Sigh with wan faces!

When she sat weeping of strange discontent.

But one said, "Why weepest thou

Here in God's heaven--

Is it not fairer than soul can see?"

"'Tis fair, ah!--- but keepest thou

Not me depriven

Of some one--somewhere--who needeth most me?

For tho' the day never fades

Over these meadows,

Tho' He has robed me and crowned--yet, yet!

Some love-fear for ever shades

All with sere shadows--

Had I no child _there_--whom I forget?"

ASHORE

What are the heaths and hills to me?

I'm a-longing for the sea!

What are the flowers that dapple the dell,

And the ripple of swallow-wings over the dusk;

What are the church and the folk who tell

Their hearts to God?--my heart is a husk!

(I'm a-longing for the sea!)

Aye! for there is no peace to me--

But on the peaceless sea!

Never a child was glad at my knee,

And the soul of a woman has never been mine.

What can a woman's kisses be?--

I fear to think how her arms would twine,

(I'm a-longing for the sea!)

So, not a home and ease for me--

But still the homeless sea!

Where I may swing my sorrow to sleep

In a hammock hung o'er the voice of the waves,

Where I may wake when the tempests heap

And hurl their hate--and a brave ship saves.

(I'm a-longing for the sea!)

Then when I die, a grave for me--

But in the graveless sea!

Where is no stone for an eye to spell

Thro' the lichen a name, a date and a verse.

Let me be laid in the deeps that swell

And sigh and wander--an ocean hearse!

(I'm a-longing for the sea!)

LOVE'S WAY TO CHILDHOOD

We are not lovers, you and I,

Upon this sunny lane,

But children who have never known

Love's joy or pain.

The flowers we pass, the summer brook,

The bird that o'er us darts--

We do not know 'tis they that thrill

Our childish hearts.

The earth-things have no name for us,

The ploughing means no more

Than that they like to walk the fields

Who plough them o'er.

The road, the wood, the heaven, the hills

Are not a World to-day--

But just a place God's made for us

In which to play.

LISSETTE

Oh ... there was love in her heart--no doubt of it--

Under the anger.

But see what came out of it!

Not a knave, he!--A Romeo rhyme-smatterer,

Cloaking in languor

And heartache to flatter her.

And just as a woman will--even the best of them--

She yielded--brittle.

God spare me the rest of them!

Aye! though 'twas but kisses--she swore!--he had of her.

For, was it little?

She thought 'twas not bad of her,

Said I would lavish a burning hour full

On any grissette.

A parry!--and powerful!

But--"You are mine, and blood is inflammable,

Flaunty Lissette!"

My rage was undammable....

Could a stilletto's one prick be prettier?

Look at the gaping.

No?--then you're her pitier!

Pah! she's the better, and I ... I'm your prisoner.

Loose me the strapping--

I'll lay one more kiss on her.

TEARLESS

Do women weep when men have died?

It cannot be!

For I have sat here by his side,

Breathing dear names against his face,

That he must list to were his place

Over God's throne--

Yet have I wept no tear and made no moan.

No! but to lids, that gaze stone-wide,

Grief seems in vain.

Do women weep?--I was his bride--

They brought him to me cold and pale--

Upon his lids I saw the trail

Of deathly pain.

They said, "Her tears will fall like Autumn rain."

I cannot weep! Not if hot tears,

Dropped on his lips,

Might burn him back to life and years

Of yearning love, would any rise

To flood the anguish from my eyes--

And I'm his bride!

Ah me, do women weep when men have died?

THE LIGHTHOUSEMAN

When at evening smothered lightnings

Burn the clouds with opal fires;

When the stars forget to glisten,

And the winds refuse to listen

To the song of my desires,

Oh, my love, unto thee!

When the livid breakers angered

Churn against my stormy tower;

When the petrel flying faster

Brings an omen to the master

Of his vessel's fated hour--

Oh, the reefs! ah, the sea!

Then I climb the climbing stairway,

Turn the light across the storm;

You are watching, fisher-maiden,

For the token flashes laden

With a love death could not harm--

Lo, they come, swift and free!

_One_--that means, "I think of thee!"

_Two_--"I swear me thine!"

_Three_--Ah, hear me tho' you sleep!--

Is, "Love, I know thee mine!"

Thro' the darkness, One, Two, Three,

All the night they sweep:

Thro' raging darkness o'er the deep,

One--and Two--and Three.

BY THE INDUS

Thou art late, O Moon,

Late,

I have waited thee long.

The nightingale's flown to her nest,

Sated with song.

The champak hath no odour more

To pour on the wind as he passeth o'er--

But my heart it will not rest.

Thou art late, O Love,

Late,

For the moon is a-wane.

The kusa-grass sighs with my sighs,

Burns with my pain.

The lotus leans her head on the stream--

Shall I not lean to thy breast and dream,

Dream ere the night-cool dies?

Thou art late, O Death,

Late,

For he did not come!

A pariah is my heart,

Cast from him--dumb!

I cannot cry in the jungle's deep--

Is it not time for Nirvana's sleep?

O Death, strike with thy dart!

FROM ONE BLIND

I cannot say thy cheek is like the rose,

Thy hair ripple of sunbeams, and thine eyes

Violets, April-rich and sprung of God.

My barren gaze can never know what throes

Such boons of beauty waken, tho' I rise

Each day a-tremble with the ruthless hope

That light will pierce my useless lids--then grope

Till night, blind as the worm within his clod.

Yet unto me thou are not less divine,

I touch thy cheek--and know the mystery hid

Within the twilight breeze; I smoothe thy hair

And understand how slipping hours may twine

Themselves into eternity: yea, rid

Of all but love, I kiss thine eyes and seem

To see all beauty God Himself may dream.

Why then should I o'ermuch for earth-sight care?

AT THE FALL OF ROME

A.D. 455

Drink to Death, drink!

He's god o' the world.

Up with the cup--

Let no man shiver!

Up with the cup--

Let no man shrink!

Drink to death,

He's lord o' the breath

Of mortals hurled from the world

Into Oblivion's river!

Drink to Death, aye!

And then--to the dust!

Fill with a will--

And quaff like a lover!

Fill with a will--

Who dares a Nay!

Drink to Death!...

He lies who saith

That life is just--'tis a crust

Tossed to a slave in his hover!

Drink to Death!--So!

Who recks for the rest?

Love is above--

Or Hate, what matter?

Love is above--

Or Hell below.

Drink to Death,

For vile is the peth

Of Rome, and Shame is her name!

Then drink, and the goblet shatter!

PEACELESS LOVE

I say unto all hearts that cannot rest

For want of love, for beating loud and lonely,

Pray the great Mercy-God to give you only

Love that is passionless within the breast.

Pray that it may not be a haunting fire,

A vision that shall steal insatiably

All beauteous content, all sweet desire,

From faith and dream, star, flower, and song, and sea.

But seek that soul and soul may meet together,

Knowing they have for ever been but one--

Meet and be surest when ill's chartless weather

Drives blinding gales of doubt across their sun.

Pray--pray! lest love uptorn shall seem as nether

Hell-hate and rage beyond oblivion.

SUNDERED

God who can bind the stars eternally

With but a breath of spirit speech, a thought;

Who can within earth's arms lay the mad sea

Unserverably, and count it as sheer nought--

With His All-might can bind not you and me.

For though he pressed us heart to burning heart,

Knowing this fatal spell that so enthralls,

Still would our souls, unhelpably apart,

Stand aliens--beating fierce against the walls

Of dark unsympathies that 'tween us start.

Stands aliens, aye, and would! tho' we should meet

Beyond the oblivion of unnumbered births--

Upon some world where Time cannot repeat

The feeblest syllable that once was earth's.

WITH OMAR

I sat with Omar by the Tavern door

Musing the mystery of mortals o'er,

And soon with answers alternate we strove

Whether, beyond death, Life hath any shore.

"_Come, fill the cup_," said he. "_In the fire of Spring

Your Winter-garment of Repentance fling.

The Bird of Time has but a little way

To flutter--and the Bird is on the Wing._"

"The Bird of Time?" I answered. "Then have I

No heart for Wine. Must we not cross the Sky

Unto Eternity upon his wings--

Or, failing, fall into the Gulf and die?"

"_So some for the Glories of this World; and some

Sigh for the Prophet's Paradise to come;

But you, Friend, take the Cash--the Credit leave,

Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum!_"

"What, take the Cash and let the Credit go?

Spend all upon the Wine the while I know

A possible To-morrow may bring thirst

For Drink but Credit then shall cause to flow?"

"_Yea, make the most of what you yet may spend,

Before we too into the Dust descend;

Dust unto Dust, and under Dust, to lie,

Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and--sans End!_"

"Into the Dust we shall descend--we must.

But can the soul not break the crumbling Crust

In which he is encaged? To hope or to

Despair he will--which is more wise or just?"

"_The worldly hope men set their hearts upon

Turns Ashes--or it prospers: and anon,

Like Snow upon the Desert's dusty Face,

Lighting a little hour or two--is gone._"

"Like Snow it comes--to cool one burning Day;

And like it goes--for all our plea or sway.

But flooding tears nor Wine can ever purge

The Vision it has brought to us away."

"_But to this world we come and Why not knowing

Nor Whence, like water willy-nilly flowing;

And out of it, as Wind along the waste,

We know not Whither, willy-nilly blowing._"

"True, little do we know of _Why_ or _Whence_.

But is forsooth our Darkness evidence

There is no Light?--the worm may see no star

Tho' heaven with myriad multitudes be dense."

"_But, all unasked, we're hither hurried Whence?

And, all unasked, we're Whither hurried hence?

O, many a cup of this forbidden Wine

Must drown the memory of that insolence._"

"Yet can not--ever! For it is forbid

Still by that quenchless soul within us hid,

Which cries, 'Feed--feed me not on Wine alone,

For to Immortal Banquets I am bid.'"

"_Well oft I think that never blows so red

The Rose as where some buried Caesar bled:

That every Hyacinth the Garden wears

Dropt in her lap from some once lovely Head._"

"Then if, from the dull Clay thro' with Life's throes,

More beautiful spring Hyacinth and Rose,

Will the great Gard'ner for the uprooted soul

Find Use no sweeter than--useless Repose?"

"_We cannot know--so fill the cup that clears

To-day of past regret and future fears:

To-morrow!--Why, To-morrow we may be

Ourselves with yesterday's sev'n thousand Years._"

"No Cup there is to bring oblivion

More during than Regret and Fear--no, none!

For Wine that's Wine to-day may change and be

Marah before to-morrow's Sands have run."

"_Myself when young did eagerly frequent

Doctor and Saint, and heard great argument

About it and about: but evermore

Came out by the same door wherein I went._"

"The doors of Argument may lead Nowhither,

Reason become a Prison where may wither

From sunless eyes the Infinite, from hearts

All Hope, when their sojourn too long is thither."

"_Up from Earth's Centre thro' the Seventh Gate

I rose, and on the throne of Saturn sate,

And many a Knot unravelled by the Road--

But not the Master-knot of Human fate._"

"The Master-knot knows but the Master-hand

That scattered Saturn and his countless Band

Like seeds upon the unplanted heaven's Air:

The Truth we reap from them is Chaff thrice fanned."

"_Yet if the Soul can fling the Dust aside

And naked on the air of Heaven ride,

Wer't not a shame--wer't not a shame for him

In this clay carcass crippled to abide?_"

"No, for a day bound in this Dust may teach

More of the Saki's Mind than we can reach

Through aeons mounting still from Sky to Sky--

May open through all Mystery a breach."

"_You speak as if Existence closing your

Account and mine should know the like no more;

The Eternal Saki from that Bowl has poured

Millions of bubbles like us, and will pour._"

"Bubbles we are, pricked by the point of Death.

But, in each bubble, hope there dwells a Breath

That lifts it and at last to Freedom flies,

And o'er all heights of Heaven wandereth."

"_A moment's halt--a momentary taste

Of Being from the Well amid the Waste--

And Lo!--the phantom Caravan has reached

The Nothing it set out from--Oh, make haste!_"

"And yet it should be--it should be that we

Who drink shall drink of Immortality.

The Master of the Well has much to spare:

Will He say, 'Taste'--then shall we no more be?"

"_The Moving Finger writes; and having writ,

Moves on; nor all your Piety nor Wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,

Nor all your tears wash out a word of it._"

"And--were it otherwise?... We might erase

The Letter of some Sorrow in whose place

No other sounding, we should fail to spell

The Heart which yearns behind the mock-world's face."

"_Well, this I know; whether the one True Light

Kindle to Love, or Wrath--consume me quite,

One flash of it within the Tavern caught

Better than in the Temple lost outright._"

"In Temple or in Tavern 't may be lost.

And everywhere that Love hath any Cost

It may be found; the Wrath it seems is but

A Cloud whose Dew should make its power most."

"_But see His Presence thro' Creation's veins,

Running Quicksilver-like eludes your pains;

Taking all shapes from Mah to Mahi; and

They change and perish all--but He remains._"

"All--it may be. Yet lie to sleep, and lo,

The soul seems quenched in Darkness--is it so?

Rather believe what seemeth not than seems

Of Death--until we know--_until we know_."

"_So wastes the Hour--gone in the vain pursuit

Of This and That we strive o'er and dispute.

Better be jocund with the fruitful Grape

Than sadden after none, or bitter Fruit._"

"Better--unless we hope the Shadow 's thrown

Across our Path by glories of the Unknown

Lest we may think we have no more to live

And bide content with dim-lit Earth alone."

"_Then, strange, is't not? that of the myriads who

Before us passed the door of Darkness through

Not one returns to tell us of the Road,

Which to discover we must travel too?_"

"Such is the ban! but even though we heard

Love in Life's All we still should crave the word

Of one returned. Yet none is _sure_, we know,

Though they lie deep, they are by Death deterred."

"_Send then thy Soul through the Invisible

Some letter of the After-life to spell:

And by and by thy Soul returned to thee

But answers, 'I myself am Heaven and Hell._'"

"From the Invisible, he does. But sent

Through Earth where living Goodness though 'tis blent

With Evil dures, may he not read the Voice,

'To make thee but for Death were toil ill-spent'?"

"_Well, when the Angel of the darker drink

At last shall find us by the river-brink,

And offering his Cup invite our souls

Forth to our lips to quaff, we shall not shrink._"

"No. But if in the sable Cup we knew

Death without waking were the fateful brew,

Nobler it were to curse as Coward Him

Who roused us into light--then light withdrew."

"_Then thou who didst with pitfall and with gin

Beset the Road I was to wander in,

Thou wilt not with Predestined Evil round

Enmesh, and then impute my fall to sin._"

"He will not. If one evil we endure

To ultimate Debasing, oh, be sure

'Tis not of Him predestined, and the sin

Not His nor ours--but fate's He could not cure."

"_Yet, ah, that Spring should vanish with the Rose!

That Youth's sweet-scented Manuscript should close!

The Nightingale that on the branches sang--

Ah, whence, and whither flown again, who knows?_"

"So does it seem--no other joys like these!

Yet Summer comes, and Autumn's honoured ease;

And wintry Age, is't ever whisperless

Of that Last Spring, whose Verdure may not cease?"

"_Still, would some winged Angel ere too late

Arrest the yet unfolded roll of Fate,

And make the stern Recorder otherwise

Enregister or quite obliterate!_"

"To otherwise enregister believe

He toils eternally, nor asks Reprieve.

And could Creation perfect from his hands

Have come at Dawn, none overmuch should grieve."

So till the wan and early scene of day

We strove, and silent turned at last away,

Thinking how men in ages yet unborn

Would ask and answer--trust and doubt and pray.

A JAPANESE MOTHER

(IN TIME OF WAR)

The young stork sleeps in the pine-tree tops,

Down on the brink of the river.

My baby sleeps by the bamboo copse--

The bamboo copse where the rice field stops:

The bamboos sigh and shiver.

The white fox creeps from his hole in the hill;

I must pray to Inari.

I hear her calling me low and chill--

Low and chill when the wind is still

At night and the skies are starry.

And ever she says, "He's dead! he's dead!

Your lord who went to battle.

How shall your baby now be fed,

Ukibo fed, with rice and bread--

What if I hush his prattle?"

The red moon rises as I slip back,

And the bamboo stems are swaying.

Inari was deaf--and yet the lack,

The fear and lack, are gone, and the rack,

I know not why--with praying.

For though Inari cared not at all,

Some other god was kinder.

I wonder why he has heard my call,

My giftless call--and what shall befall?...

Hope has but left me blinder!

SHINTO

(MIYAJIMA, JAPAN, 1905)

Lowly temple and torii,

Shrine where the spirits of wind and wave

Find the worship and glory we

Give to the one God great and grave--

Lowly temple and torii,

Shrine of the dead, I hang my prayer

Here on your gates--the story see

And answer out of the earth and air.

For I am Nature's child, and you

Were by the children of Nature built.

Ages have on you smiled--and dew

On you for ages has been spilt--

Till you are beautiful as Time

Mossy and mellowing ever makes:

Wrapped as you are in lull--or rhyme

Of sounding drum that sudden breaks.

This is my prayer then, this, that I

Too may reverence all of life,

Beauty, and power and miss no high

Awe of a world with wonder rife.

That I may build in spirit fair

Temples and torii on each place

That I have loved--O hear it, Air,

Ocean and Earth, and grant your grace!

EVOCATION

(NIKKO, JAPAN, 1905)

Weird thro' the mist and cryptomeria

Booms the temple bell,

Down from the tomb of Iëyasu

Yearning, as a knell.

Down from the tomb where many an aeon

Silently has knelt,

Many a pilgrimage of millions--

Still about it felt.

Still, for see them gather ghostly

Now, as the numb sound

Floats as unearthly necromancy

From the past's dead ground.

See the invisible vast millions,

Hear their soundless feet

Climbing the shrine-ways to the gilded

Carven temple's seat.

And, one among them--pale among them--

Passes waning by.

What is it tells me mystically

That strange one was I?...

Weird thro' the mist and cryptomeria

Dies the bell--'tis dumb.

After how many lives returning

Shall I hither come?

Hither again! and climb the votive

Ever mossy ways?

Who shall the gods be then, the millions,

Meek, entreat or praise?

THE ATONER

Winter has come in sackcloth and ashes

(Penance for Summer's enverdured sheaves).

Bitterly, cruelly, bleakly he lashes

His limbs that are naked of grass and leaves.

He moans in the forest for sins unforgiven

(Sins of the revelrous days of June)--

Moans while the sun drifts dull from the heaven,

Giftless of heat's beshriving boon.

Long must he mourn, and long be his scourging,

(Long will the day-god aloof frown cold),

Long will earth listen the rue of his dirging--

Till the dark beads of his days are told.

INTIMATION

All night I smiled as I slept,

For I heard the March-wind feel

Blindly about in the trees without

For buds to heal.

All night in dreams, for I smelt,

In the rain-wet woods and fields,

The coming flowers and the glad green hours

That summer yields.

And when at dawn I awoke,

At the blue-bird's wooing cheep,

Winter with all its chill and pall

Seemed but a sleep.

IN JULY

This path will tell me where dark daisies dance

To the white sycamores that dell them in;

Where crow and flicker cry melodious din,

And blackberries in ebon ripeness glance

Luscious enticings under briery green.

It will slip under coppice limbs that lean

Brushingly as the slow-belled heifer pants

Toward weedy water-plants

That shade the pool-sunk creek's reluctant trance.

I shall find bell-flower spires beside the gap

And lady phlox within the hollow's cool;

Cedar with sudden memories of Yule

Above the tangle tipped with blue skullcap.

The high hot mullein fond of the full sun

Will watch and tell the low mint when I've won

The hither wheat where idle breezes nap,

And fluffy quails entrap

Me from their brood that crouch to escape mishap.

Then I shall reach the mossy water-way

That gullies the dense hill up to its peak,

There dally listening to the eerie eke

Of drops into cool chalices of clay.

Then on, for elders odorously will steal

My senses till I climb up where they heal

The livid heat of its malingering ray,

And wooingly betray

To memory many a long-forgotten day.

There I shall rest within the woody peace

Of afternoon. The bending azure frothed

With silveryness, the sunny pastures swathed,

Fragrant with morn-mown clover and seed-fleece;

The hills where hung mists muse, and Silence calls

To Solitude thro' aged forest halls,

Will waft into me their mysterious ease,

And in the wind's soft cease

I shall hear hintings of eternities.

FROM ABOVE

What do I care if the trees are bare

And the hills are dark

And the skies are gray.

What do I care for chill in the air,

For crows that cark

At the rough wind's way.

What do I care for the dead leaves there--

Or the sullen road

By the sullen wood.

There's heart in my heart

To bear my load!

So enough, the day is good!

SONGS TO A. H. R.

I.

THE WORLD'S, AND MINE

The world may hear

The wind at his trees,

The lark in her skies,

The sea on his leas;

May hear the song rise

From the breast of a woman

And think it as dear

As heaven tho' human.

But I have a music they can never know--

The touch of you, soul of you, heart of you. Oh!

All else that is said or sung 's but a part of you--

Ever to me 'tis so!

II.

LOVE-CALL IN SPRING

Not only the lark but the robin too

(Oh, heart o' my heart, come into the wood!)

Is singing the air to gladness new

As the breaking bud

And the freshet's flood!

Not only the peeping grass and the scent--

(Oh, love o' my life, fly unto me here!)

Of violets coming ere April's spent--

But the frog's shrill cheer

And the crow's wild jeer!

Not only the blue, not only the breeze,

(Oh, soul o' my heart, why tarry so long!)

But sun that is sweeter upon the trees

Than rills that throng

To the brooklet's song!

Oh, heart o' my heart, oh, heart o' my love,

(Oh soul o' my soul, haste unto me, haste!)

For spring is below and God is above--

But all is a waste

Without thee--Haste!

III.

MATING

The bliss of the wind in the redbud ringing!

What shall we do with the April days!

Kingcups soon will be up and swinging--

What shall we do with May's!

The cardinal flings, "They are made for mating!"

Out on the bough he flutters, a flame.

Thrush-flutes echo "For mating's elating!

Love is its other name!"

They know! know it! but better, oh, better,

Dearest, than ever a bird in Spring,

Know we to make each moment a debtor

Unto love's burgeoning!

IV.

UNTOLD

Could I, a poet,

Implant the truth of you,

Seize it and sow it

As Spring on the world.

There were no need

To fling (forsooth) of you

Fancies that only lovers heed!

No, but unfurled,

The bloom, the sweet of you,

(As unto me they are opened oft)

Would with their beauty's breath repeat of you

All that my heart breathes loud or soft!

V.

LOVE-WATCH

My love's a guardian-angel

Who camps about thy heart,

Never to flee thine enemy,

Nor from thee turn apart.

Whatever dark may shroud thee

And hide thy stars away,

With vigil sweet his wings shall beat

About thee till the day.

VI.

AS YOU ARE

Dark hair--dark eyes--

But heart of sun,

Pity and hope

That rill and run

With flowing fleet

To heal the defeat

Of all Life has undone.

Dark hair--dark eyes--

But soul as clear,

Trusty and fair

As e'er drew near

To clasp its mate

And enter the gate

Of Love that casts out fear.

Dark hair--dark eyes--

But, there is seen

In them the most

That earth can mean;

The most that death

Can bring--or breath

_There_--in the bright Unseen!

VII.

AT AMALFI

Come to the window, you who are mine.

Waken! the night is calling.

Sit by me here--with the moon's fair shine

Into your deep eyes falling.

The sea afar is a fearful gloom;

Lean from the casement, listen!

Anear, it breaks with a faery spume,

Spraying the moon-path's glisten.

The little white town below lies deep

As eternity in slumber.

O, you who are mine, how a glance can reap

Beauties beyond all number!

"Amalfi!" say it--as the stars set

O'er yon far promontory.

"Amalfi!" ... Shall we ever forget

Even Above this glory?

No; as twin sails at anchor ride,

Our spirits rock together

On a sea of love--lit as this tide

With tenderest star-weather!

And the quick ecstasy within

Your breast is against me beating.

Amalfi!... Never a night shall win

From God again such fleeting.

Ah--but the dawn is redd'ning up

Over the moon low-dying.

Come, come away--we have drunk the cup:

Ours is the dream undying!

VIII.

ON THE PACIFIC

A storm broods far on the foam of the deep;

The moon-path gleams before.

A day and a night, a night and a day,

And the way, love, will be o'er.

Six thousand wandering miles we have come

And never a sail have seen.

The sky above and the sea below

And the drifting clouds between.

Yet in our hearts unheaving hope

And light and joy have slept.

Nor ever lonely has seemed the wave

Tho' heaving wild it leapt.

For there is talismanic might

Within our vows of love

To breathe us over all seas of life--

On to that Port above

Where the great Captain of all ships

Shall anchor them or send

Them forth on a vaster Voyage, yea,

On one that shall not end.

And upon _that_ we two, I think,

Together still shall sail.

O may it be, my own, or may

We perish in death's gale!

THE WINDS

The East Wind is a Bedouin,

And Nimbus is his steed;

Out of the dusk with the lightning's thin

Blue scimitar he flies afar,

Whither his rovings lead.

The Dead Sea waves

And Egypt caves

Of mummied silence laugh

When he mounts to quench the Siroc's stench,

And to wrench

From his clutch the tyrant's staff.

The West Wind is an Indian brave

Who scours the Autumn's crest.

Dashing the forest down as a slave

He tears the leaves from its limbs and weaves

A maelstrom for his breast.

Out of the night

Crying to fright

The earth he swoops to spoil--

There is furious scathe in the whirl of his wrath,

In his path

There is misery and moil.

The North Wind is a Viking--cold

And cruel, armed with death!

Born in the doomful deep of the old

Ice Sea that froze ere Ymir rose

From Niflheim's ebon breath.

And with him sail

Snow, Frost, and Hail,

Thanes mighty as their lord,

To plunder the shores of Summer's stores--

And his roar's

Like the sound of Chaos' horde.

The South Wind is a Troubadour;

The Spring, his serenade.

Over the mountain, over the moor,

He blows to bloom from the winter's tomb

Blossom and leaf and blade.

He ripples the throat

Of the lark with a note

Of lilting love and bliss,

And the sun and the moon, the night and the noon,

Are a-swoon--

When he woos them with his kiss.

THE DAY-MOON

So wan, so unavailing,

Across the vacant day-blue dimly trailing!

Last night, sphered in thy shining,

A Circe--mystic destinies divining;

To-day but as a feather

Torn from a seraph's wing in sinful weather,

Down-drifting from the portals

Of Paradise, unto the land of mortals.

Yet do I feel thee awing

My heart with mystery, as thy updrawing

Moves thro' the tides of Ocean

And leaves lorn beaches barren of its motion;

Or strands upon near shallows

The wreck whose weirded form at night unhallows

The fisher maiden's prayers--

"For _him_!--that storms may take not unawares!"

So wan, so unavailing,

Across the vacant day-blue dimly trailing!

But Night shall come atoning

Thy phantom life thro' day, and high enthroning

Thee in her chambers arrassed

With star-hieroglyphs, leave thee unharassed

To glide with silvery passion,

Till in earth's shadow swept thy glowings ashen.

TO A SINGING WARBLER

"Beauty! all--all--is beauty?"

Was ever a bird so wrong!

"No young in the nest, no mate, no duty?"

Ribald! is this your song?

"Glad it is ended," are you?

The Spring and its nuptial fear?

"Freedom is better than love?" beware you

There will be May next year!

"Beauty!" again? still "beauty"?

Wait till the winter comes!

Till kestrel and hungry kite seek booty

And there are so few crumbs!

Wait? nay, fling it unbidden,

The false little song you prate!

Too sweet are its fancies to be chidden,

E'en of the rudest fate!

TO THE SEA

Art thou enraged, O sea, with the blue peace

Of heaven, so to uplift thine armèd waves,

Thy billowing rebellion 'gainst its ease,

And with Tartarean mutter from cold caves,

From shuddering profundities where shapes

Of awe glide through entangled leagues of ooze,

To hoot thy watery omens evermore,

And evermore thy moanings interfuse

With seething necromancy and mad lore?

Or, dost thou labour with the drifting bones

Of countless dead, thou mighty Alchemist,

Within whose stormy crucible the stones

Of sunk primordial shores, granite and schist,

Are crumbled by thine all-abrasive beat?

With immemorial chanting to the moon,

And cosmic incantation dost thou crave

Rest to be found not till thy wild be strewn

Frigid and desert over earth's last grave?

Thou seemest with immensity mad, blind--

With raving deaf, with wandering forlorn;

Parent of Demogorgon whose dire mind

Is night and earthquake, shapeless shame and scorn

Of the o'ermounting birth of Harmony.

Bound in thy briny bed and gnawing earth

With foamy writhing and fierce-panted tides,

Thou art as Fate in torment of a dearth

Of black disaster and destruction's strides.

And how thou dost drive silence from the world,

Incarnate Motion of all mystery!

Whose waves are fury-wings, whose winds are hurled

Whither thy Ghost tempestuous can see

A desolate apocalypse of death.

Oh, how thou dost drive silence from the world,

With emerald overflowing, waste on waste

Of flashing susurration, dashed and swirled

'Gainst isles and continents and airs o'erspaced!

Nay, frustrate Hope art thou of the Unknown,

Gathered from primal mist and firmament;

A surging shape of Life's unfathomed moan,

Whelming humanity with fears unmeant.

Yet do I love thee, O, above all fear,

And loving thee unconquerably trust

The runes that from thy ageless surfing start

Would read, were they revealed, gust upon gust,

That Immortality is might of heart!

THE DEAD GODS

I thought I plunged into that dire Abyss

Which is Oblivion, the house of Death.

I thought there blew upon my soul the breath

Of time that was but never more can be.

Ten thousand years I thought I lay within

Its Void, blind, deaf, and motionless, until--

Though with no eye nor ear--I felt the thrill

Of seeing, heard its phantoms move and sigh.

First one beside me spoke, in tones that told

He once had been a god,--"Persephone,

Tear from thy brow its withered crown, for we

Are king and queen of Tartarus no more;

And that wan, shrivelled sceptre in thy hand,

Why dost thou clasp it still? Cast it away,

For now it hath no virtue that can sway

Dull shades or drive the Furies to their spoil.

Cast it away, and give thy palm to mine:

Perchance some unobliterated spark

Of memory shall warm this dismal Dark.

Perchance--vain! vain! love could not light such gloom."

He sank.... Then in great ruin by him moved

Another as in travail of some thought

Near unto birth; and soon from lips distraught

By aged silence, fell, with hollow woe:

"Ah, Pluto, dost thou, one time lord of Styx

And Acheron make moan of night and cold?

Were we upon Olympus as of old

Laughter of thee would rock its festal height.

But think, think thee of me, to whom or gloom

Or cold were more unknown than impotence!

See the unhurlèd thunderbolt brought hence

To mock me when I dream I still am Jove!"

Too much it was: I withered in the breath;

And lay again ten thousand lifeless years;

And then my soul shook, woke--and saw three biers

Chiselled of solid night majestically.

The forms outlaid upon them were unwound

As with the silence of eternity.

Numbing repose dwelt o'er them like a sea,

That long hath lost tide, wave and roar, in death.

"Ptah, Ammon, and Osiris are their names,"

A spirit hieroglyphed unto my soul,

"Ptah, Ammon, and Osiris--they who stole

The heart of Egypt from the God of gods:

"Aye, they! and these;" pointing to many wraiths

That stood around--Baal, Ormuzd, Indra, all

Whom frightened ignorance and sin's appall

Had given birth, close-huddled in despair.

Their eyes were fixed upon a cloven slope

Down whose descent still other forms a-fresh

From earth were drawn, by the unceasing mesh

Of Time to their irrevocable end.

"They are the gods," one said--"the gods whom men

Still taunt with wails for help."--Then a deep light

Upbore me from the Gulf, and thro' its might

I heard the worlds cry, "God alone is God!"

AT WINTER'S END

The weedy fallows winter-worn,

Where cattle shiver under sodden hay.

The plough-lands long and lorn--

The fading day.

The sullen shudder of the brook,

And winds that wring the writhen trees in vain

For drearier sound or look--

The lonely rain.

The crows that train o'er desert skies

In endless caravans that have no goal

But flight--where darkness flies--

From Pole to Pole.

The sombre zone of hills around

That shrink in misty mournfulness from sight,

With sunset aureoles crowned--

Before the night.

APRIL

A laughter of wind and a leaping of cloud,

And April, oh, out under the blue!

The brook is awake and the blackbird loud

In the dew!

But how does the robin high in the beech,

Beside the wood with its shake and toss,

Know it--the frenzy of bluets to reach

Thro' the moss!

And where did the lark ever learn his speech?

Up wildly sweet he's over the mead!

Is more than the rapture of earth can teach

In its creed?

I never shall know--I never shall care!

'Tis, oh, enough to live and to love!

To laugh and warble and dream and dare

Are to prove!

AUGUST GUESTS

The wind slipt over the hill

And down the valley.

He dimpled the cheek of the rill

With a cooling kiss.

Then hid on the bank a-glee

And began to rally

The rushes--Oh,

I love the wind for this!

A cloud blew out of the west

And spilt his shower

Upon the lily-bud crest

And the clematis.

Then over the virgin corn

Besprinkled a dower

Of dew-gems--And,

I love the cloud for this!

AUTUMN

I know her not by fallen leaves

Or resting heaps of hay;

Or by the sheathing mists of mauve

That soothe the fiery day.

I know her not by plumping nuts,

By redded hips and haws,

Or by the silence hanging sad

Under the wind's sere pause.

But by her sighs I know her well--

They are like Sorrow's breath;

And by this longing, strangely still,

For something after death.

THE WORLD

_Vox desperans._

The World is a wind--on which are blown

All mysteries that are.

Out of a Void it sprang--and to

A Void shall spring, afar.

_Vox sperans._

The World is Visible God--who is

Its Soul invisible.

There is no Void beyond that He

Abiding fills not full.

TO THE DOVE

1

Thy mellow passioning amid the leaves

Trembles around me in the summer dusk

That falls along the oatlands' sallow sheaves

And haunts above the runnel's voice a-husk

With plashy willow and bold-wading reed.

The solitude's dim spell it breaketh not,

But softer mourns unto me from the mead

Than airs within the dead primrose's heart,

Or breath of silences in dells begot

To soothe some grief-wan maid with love a-mort.

2

On many sylvan eves of childhood thou

Didst woo my homeward path with tenderness,

Woo till the awing owlet ceased to cow

With his chill screech of quavering distress.

At phantom midnight wakened I have heard

Thy mated dreams from the wind-eerie elm,

And as a potion medicined and myrrhed,

As an enchantment's runic utterance,

It would draw sleep back to her lulling realm

Over my lids till day should disentrance.

3

A priestess art thou of Simplicity,

Who hath one fane--the heaven above thy nest;

One incense--love; one stealing litany

Of peace from rivered vale and upland crest.

Yea, thou art Hers, who makes prayer of the breeze,

Hope of the cool upwelling from sweet soils,

Faith of the dark'ning distance, charities

Of vesper scents, and of the glow-worm's throb

Joy whose first leaping rends the care-wound coils

That would earth of its heavenliness rob.

4

But few, how few her worshippers! For we

Cast at a myriad shrines our souls, to rise

Beliefless, unanointed, bound not free,

To sacrificing a vain sacrifice!

Let thy lone innocence then quickly null

Within our veins doubt-led and wrong desire

Or drugging knowledge that but fills o'erfull

Of feverous mystery the days we drain!

Be thy warm notes like an Orphean lyre

To lead us to life's Arcady again!

AT TINTERN ABBEY

(JUNE, 1903)

O Tintern, Tintern! evermore my dreams

Troubled of thy grave beauty shall be born;

Thy crumbling loveliness and ivy streams

Shall speak to me for ever, from this morn;

The wind-wild daws about thy arches drifting,

Clouds sweeping o'er thy ruin to the sea,

Gray Tintern, all the hills about thee, lifting

Their misty waving woodland verdancy!

The centuries that draw thee to the earth

In envy of thy desolated charm,

The summers and the winters, the sky's girth

Of sunny blue or bleakness, seek thy harm.

But would that I were Time, then only tender

Touch upon thee should fall as on I sped;

Of every pillar would I be defender,

Of every mossy window--of thy dead!

Thy dead beneath obliterated stones

Upon the sod that is at last thy floor,

Who list the Wye not as it lonely moans

Nor heed thy Gothic shadows grieving o'er.

O Tintern, Tintern! trysting-place, where never

Is wanting mysteries that move the breast,

I'll hear thy beauty calling, ah, for ever--

Till sinks within me the last voice to rest!

THE VICTORY

See, see!--the blows at his breast,

Abyss at his back,

The peril of dark that pressed,

The doubts in a pack,

That hunted to drag him down

Have triumphed? and now

He sinks who climbed for the crown

To the Summit's brow?

No!--though at the foot he lies,

Fallen and vain,

With gaze to the peak whose skies,

He could not attain,

The victory is, with strength--

No matter the past!--

He'd dare it again, the dark length,

And the fall at last!

SEARCHING DEATH'S DARK

When Autumn's melancholy robes the land

With silence and sad fadings mystical

Of other years move thro' the mellow fields,

I turn unto this meadow of the dead

Strewn with the leaves stormed from October trees,

And wonder if my resting shall be dug

Here by this cedar's moan or under the sway

Of yonder cypress--lair of winds that rove

As Valkyries from Valhalla's court

In search of worthy slain.

And sundry times with questioning I tease

The entombed of their estate--seeking to know

Whether 'tis sweeter in the grave to feel

The oblivion of Nature's flow, or here

Wander as gleam and shadow flit her face.

Whether the harvesting of pain and joy

Ends with the ivied slab, or whether death

Pours the warm chrism of Immortality

Into each human heart whose glow is spent.

Nor do my askings fall on the chill voids

Of unavailing silence. For a voice

Of sighing wind may answer, or it leaps,

Though wordless, from a marble seraph's face.

Or sometimes from unspeakable deeps of gold

That ebb along the west revealings wing

And tremor, like etherial swift tongues

Unskilled of human speech, about my heart--

Till, youth, age, death ... even earth's all, it seems,

Are but wild moments wakened in that Soul,

To whom infinities are as a span,

Eternities as bird-flights o'er the sun,

And worlds as sands blown from Sahara's wilds

Into the sea....

Then twilight bells ring back

My wandered spirit from the wilderness

Of Mystery, whence none may find a path

To the Unknown, and like one who upborne

Has steered the unmeasured summer skies until

Their calm seems God, I turn transfigured home.

SERENITY

And could I love it more--this simple scene

Of cot-strewn hills and fields long-harvested,

That lie as if forgotten were all green,

So bare, so dead?

Or could my gaze more tenderly entwine

Each pallid beech or silvery sycamore,

Outreaching arms in patience to divine

If winter's o'er?

Ah no, the wind has blown into my veins

The blue infinity of sky, the sense

Of meadows free to-day from icy pains--

From wintry vents.

And sunny peace more virgin than the glow

Falling from eve's first star into the night,

Brings hope believing what it ne'er can know

With mortal sight.

TO THE SPRING WIND

Ah, what a changeling!

Yester you dashed from the west,

Altho' it is Spring,

And scattered the hail with maniac zest

Thro' the shivering corn--in scorn

For the labour of God and man.

And now from the plentiful South you haste,

With lovingest fingers,

To ruefully lift and wooingly fan

The lily that lingers a-faint on the stalk:

As if the chill waste

Of the earth's May-dreams,

The flowers so full of her joy,

Were not--as it seems--

A wanton attempt to destroy.

THE RAMBLE

Down the road

Which asters tangle,

Thro' the gap

Where green-briar twines,

By the path

Where dry leaves dangle

Down from the ivy vines,

We go--

By sedgy fallows

And along

The stifled brook,

Till it stops

In lushy mallows

Just at the bridge's crook.

Then, again,

O'er fence, thro' thicket,

To the mouth

Of the rough ravine--

Where the weird

Leaf-hidden cricket

Chirrs thro' the weirder green--

There's a way

O'er rocks--but quicker

Is the best

Of heart and foot,

As the beams

Above us flicker

Sun upon moss and root!

And we leap--

As wildness tingles

From the air

Into our blood--

With a cry

Thro' golden dingles

Hid in the heart of the wood.

Oh, the wood

With winds a-wrestle!

With the nut

And acorn strown!

Oh, the wood

Where creepers trestle,

Tree unto tree o'ergrown!

With a climb

The ledging summit

Of the hill

Is reached in glee.

For an hour

We gaze off from it

Into the sky's blue sea.

But a bell

And sunset's crimson

Soon recall

The homeward path.

And we turn

As the glory dims on

The hay-fields' mounded math.

Thro' the soft

And silent twilight

We come,

To the stile at last,

As the clear

Undying eyelight

Of the stars tells day is past.

RETURN

Ah, it was here--September

And silence filled the air--

I came last year to remember,

And muse, hid away from care.

It was here I came--the thistle

Was trusting her seed to the wind;

The quail in the croft gave whistle

As now--and the fields lay thinned.

I know how the hay was steeping,

Brown mows under mellow haze;

How a frail cloud-flock was creeping

As now over lone sky-ways.

Just there where the cat-bird's calling

Her mock-hurt note by the shed,

The use-worn wain was stalling

In the weedy brook's dry bed.

And the cricket, lone little chimer

Of day-long dreams in the vines,

Chirred on like a doting rhymer

O'er-vain of his firstling lines.

He's near me now by the aster,

Beneath whose shadowy spray

A sultry bee seeps faster

As the sun slips down the day.

And there are the tall primroses

Like maidens waiting to dance.

They stood in the same shy poses

Last year, as if to entrance

The stately mulleins to waken

From death and lead them around:

And still they will stand untaken,

Till drops their gold to the ground.

Yes, it was here--September

And silence round me yearned.

Again I've come to remember,

Again for musing returned

To the searing fields assuaging,

And the falling leaves' sad balm:

Away from the world's keen waging--

To harvest and hills and calm.

THE EMPTY CROSS

The eve of Golgotha had come,

And Christ lay shrouded in the garden's tomb:

Among the olives, Oh, how dumb,

How sad the sun incarnadined the gloom!

The hill grew dim--the pleading cross

Reached empty arms toward the closing gate.

Jerusalem, oh, count thy loss!

Oh, hear ye! hear ye! ere it be too late!

Reached bleeding arms--but how in vain!

The murmurous multitude within the wall

Already had forgot His pain--

To-morrow would forget the cross--and all!

They knew not Rome before its sign,

Bending her brow bound with the nations' threne,

Would sweep all lands from Nile to Rhine

In servitude unto the Nazarene.

Nor knew that millions would forsake

Ancestral shrines great with the glow of time,

And lifting up its token shake

Aeons with thrill of love or battle's crime.

With empty arms aloft it stood:

Ah, Scribe and Pharisee, ye builded well!

The cross emblotted with His blood

Mounts, highest Hope of men against earth's hell!

SUNSET-LOVERS

Upon how many a hill,

Across how many a field,

Beside how many a river's whispery flowing,

They stand, with eyes a-thrill,

And hearts of day-rue healed,

Gazing, O wistful sun, upon thy going!

They have forgotten life,

Forgotten sunless death;

Desire is gone--is it not gone for ever?

No memory of strife

Have they, or pain-sick breath,

No hopes to fear or fears hope cannot sever.

Silent the gold steals down

The west, and mystery

Moves deeper in their hearts and settles darker.

'Tis faded--the day's crown;

But strange and shadowy

They see the Unseen as night falls stark and starker.

Like priests whose altar fires

Are spent, immovable

They stand, in awful ecstasy uplifted.

Zephyrs awake tree-lyres,

The starry deeps are full,

Earth with a mystic majesty is gifted.

Ah, sunset-lovers, though

Time were but pulsing pain,

And death no more than its eternal ceasing,

Would you not choose the throe,

Hold the oblivion vain,

To have beheld so many days releasing?

TO A ROSE

(IN A HOSPITAL)

Why do I love thee?--

Not because thy wak'ning lips

Were wooed to bloom by minstrel wind

Of Araby or Ind.

Not because thy fragrance slips

Into my soul--as if thou must

Be sprung of a mother's dust.

Not because _she_ gave her breast

To thee for one long night--she whose

Pure heart I ne'er shall lose.

But when I lay in sick unrest

Afar from those who are my own,

Thou camest from hands unknown:

Therefore I love thee!

UNBURTHENED

Not pain nor the sunny wine

Of gladness steepeth my still spirit as

I lift my gaze across the winter meads

Engarmented in stubble robes of brown.

For, as those solitary trees afar

Have reached unbudding boughs

To the dim warmth of the February sun,

And melted on the infinite calm of space,

So I have reached--and am no more distraught

With the quivering pangs of memory's yesterday.

But the boon of blue skies deeper than despair,

Of rests that rise

As tides of sleep,

And care borne on the plumes

Of swan-swift clouds away to the sullen shades

Of quelled snow-storms low-lying in the west,

Have lulled my soul with soft infinitude.

And now ... down sinks the sun,

Until, half-arched above the marge of earth,

It hangs, a golden door,

Through which effulgent Paradise beyond

Burns seeming forth along the path of those

Who, crowned by Death with Life, pass to its portal.

How soon 'tis closed--how soon! The trumpetings

Of seraphs whose gold blasts of light break o'er

Purplescent passing battlements of cloud,

Sound clear ... then comes the dusk!

WHERE PEACE IS DUTY

Dimming in sunniness, aerily distant,

Valley and hillside float;

Up to me wavering, softly insistent,

Wanders the wood-brook's note.

Anchored beyond in azure unending

Cloud-sails await wind-tide.

Oh, for the skylands where soon they'll be wending--

And, unabiding, bide.

Where Time aflow thro' infinite spaces

Stays for no throttle of pain!

Where the stars go at eve to their places;

Where silence never shall wane!

Where there's no sense but of beauty's wild sweetness,

Thought but of sweetening beauty!

Where wanting's stilled in unwanting's completeness--

Where peace is duty!

WANTON JUNE

I knew she would come!

Sarcastic November

Laughed cold and glum

On the last red ember

Of forest leaves.

He was laughing, the scorner,

At me forlorner

Than any that grieves--

Because I asked him if June would come!

But I knew she would come!

When snow-hearted winter

Gripped river and loam,

And the wind sped flinter

On icy heel,

I was chafing my sorrow

And yearning to borrow

A hope that would steal

Across the hours--till June should come.

And now she is here.--

The wanton!--I follow

Her steps, ever near,

To the shade of the hollow

Where violets blow:

And chide her for leaving,

Tho' half, still, believing

She taunted me so,

To make her abided return more dear.

AUTUMN AT THE BRIDGE

Brown dropping of leaves,

Soft rush of the wind,

Slow searing of sheaves

On the hill;

Green plunging of frogs,

Cool lisp of the brook,

Far barking of dogs

At the mill;

Hot hanging of clouds,

High poise of the hawk,

Flush laughter of crowds

From the Ridge;

Nut-falling, quail-calling,

Wheel-rumbling, bee-mumbling--

Oh, sadness, gladness, madness,

Of an autumn day at the bridge!

SONG

Her voice is vibrant beauty dipt

In dreams of infinite sorrow and delight.

Thro' an awaiting soul 'tis slipt

And lo, words spring that breathe immortal might.

TO HER WHO SHALL COME

1

Out of the night of lovelessness I call

Thee, as, in a chill chamber where no ray

Of unbelievable light and freedom fall,

Might cry one manacled! And tho' the way

Thou'lt come I cannot see; tho' my heart's sore

With emptiness when morning's silent gray

Wakes me to long aloneness; yet I know

Thou hast been with me, who like dawn wilt go

Beside me, when I have found thee, evermore!

2

So in the garden of my heart each day

I plant thee a flower. Now the pansy, peace,

And now the lily, faith--or now a spray

Of the climbing ivy, hope. And they ne'er cease

Around the still unblossoming rose of love

To bend in fragrant tribute to her sway.

Then--for thy shelter from life's sultrier suns,

The oak of strength I set o'er joy that runs

With brooklet glee from winds that grieve above.

3

But where now art thou? Watching with love's eye

The eve-star wander? Listening through dim trees

Some thrilled muezzin of the forest cry

From his leafy minaret? Or by the sea's

Blue brim, while the spectral moon half o'er it hangs

Like the faery isle of Avalon, do these

My yearnings speak to thee of days thy feet

Have never trod?--Sweet, sweet, oh, sealing sweet,

My own, must be our meeting's mystic pangs.

4

And will be soon! For last night near to day,

Dreaming, God called me thro' the space-built sphere

Of heaven and said, "Come, waiting one, and lay

Thine ear unto my Heart--there thou shall hear

The secrets of this world where evils war."

Such things I heard as must rend mortal clay

To tell, and trembled--till God, pitying,

Said, "Listen" ... Oh, my love, I heard thee sing

Out of thy window to the morning star!

AVOWAL TO THE NIGHTINGALE

Though thou hast ne'er unpent thy pain's delight

Upon these airs, bird of the poet's love,

Yet must I sing thy singing! for the Night

Has poured her jewels o'er the lap of heaven

As they who've heard thee say thou dost above

The wood such ecstasies as were not given

By nestling breasts of Venus to the dove.

Oft I have watched the moon orb her fair gold,

Still clung to by the tattered mists of day

And look for thee. Then has my hope grown bold

Till almost I could see how the near laurels

Would tremble with thy trembling: but the sway

Of bards who've wreathed thee with unfading chorals

Has held my longing lips from this poor lay.

None but the sky-hid lark whose spirit is

Too high for earth may vie for praise with thee

In aery rhapsody. And since 'tis his

To sing of day and joy as thou of sorrow

And night o'erhovering singest, thou'lt e'er be

More dear than he--till hearts shall cease to borrow

From grief the healing for life's mystery.

Then loose thy song! Though no grave ear may list

Its lyric trouble, still 'tis soothing sweet

To know that songs unheard and graces missed

By every eye melt on the skies that nourish

Us with immortal blue; and, changed, repeat

Their protean loveliness in all we cherish.

For beauty cannot die, howe'er 'tmay fleet.

STORM-EBB

Dusking amber dimly creeps

Over the vale,

Lit by the kildee's silver sweeps,

Sad with his wail.

Eastward swing the silent clouds

Into the night.

Burdens of day they seem--in crowds

Hurled from earth's sight.

Tilting gulls whip whitely far

Over the lake,

Tirelessly on o'er buoy and spar

Till they o'ertake

Shadow and mingled mist--and then

Vanish to wing

Still the bewildering night-fen,

Where the waves ring.

Dusking amber dimly dies

Out of the vale.

Dead from the dunes the winds arise--

Ghosts of the gale.

SLAVES

A host of bloody centuries lie prone

Upon the fields of Time--but still the wake

Of Progress loud is haunted with the groan

Of myriads, from whose peaceful veins, to slake

His scarlet thirst, has War, fierce Polypheme

Of fate, insatiately drunk Life's stream.

We bid the courier lightning leap along

Its metal path with spaceless speed--command

Stars lost in night-eternity to throng

Before the magnet eye of Science--stand

On Glory's peak and triumphingly cry

Out mastery of earth and sea and air.

But unto War's necessity we bare

Our piteous breasts--and impotently die.

WAKING

Oh, the long dawn, the weary, endless dawn,

When sleep's oblivion is torn away

From love that died with dying yesterday

But still unburied in the heart lies on!

Oh, the sick gray, the twitter in the trees,

The sense of human waking o'er the earth!

The quivering memories of love's fair birth

Now strown as deathless flowers o'er its decease!

Oh, the regret, and oh, regretlessness,

Striving for sovranty within the soul!

Oh, fear that life shall never more be whole,

And immortality but make it less!

FAUN-CALL

Oh, who is he will follow me

With a singing,

Down sunny roads where windy odes

Of the woods are ringing?

Where leaves are tossed from branches lost

In a tangle

Of vines that vie to clamber high--

But to vault and dangle!

Oh, who is he?--His eye must be

As a lover's

To leap and woo the chicory's hue

In the hazel-hovers!

His hope must dance like radiance

O'er the shadows

Of clouds that fling their threatening

On the stubbly meadows!

And he must see that Autumn's glee

And her laughter

From his lips and heart will quell all smart--

Of before and after!

LINGERING

I lingered still when you were gone,

When tryst and trust were o'er,

While memory like a wounded swan

In sorrow sung love's lore.

I lingered till the whippoorwill

Had cried delicious pain

Over the wild-wood--in its thrill

I heard your voice again.

I lingered and the mellow breeze

Blew to me sweetly dewed--

Its touch awoke the sorceries

Your last caresses brewed.

But when the night with silent start

Had sown her starry seed,

The harvest which sprang in my heart

Was loneliness and need.

STORM-TWILIGHT

Tossing, swirling, swept by the wind,

Beaten abaft by the rain,

The swallows high in the sodden sky

Circle oft and again.

They rise and sink and drift and swing,

Twitterless in the chill;

A-haste, for stark is the coming dark

Over the wet of the hill.

Wildly, swiftly, at last they stream

Into their chimney home.

A livid gash in the west, a crash--

Then silence, sadness, gloam.

WILDNESS

To drift with the drifting clouds,

And blow with the blow of breezes,

To ripple with waves and murmur with caves,

To soar, as the sea-mew pleases!

To dip with the dipping sails,

And burn with the burning heaven--

My life! my soul! for the infinite roll

Of a day to wildness given!

BEFORE AUTUMN

Summer's last moon has waned--

Waned

As amber fires

Of an Aztec shrine.

The invisible breath of coming death has stained

The withering leaves with its nepenthean wine--

Autumn's near.

Winds in the woodland moan--

Moan

As memories

Of a chilling yore.

Magnolia seeds like Indian beads are strewn

From crimson pods along the earth's sere floor--

Autumn's near.

Solitude slowly steals,

Steals

Her silent way

By the songless brook.

At the gnarly yoke of a solemn oak she kneels,

The musing joy of sadness in her look--

Autumn's near.

Yes, with her golden days--

Days

When hope and toil

Are at peace and rest--

Autumn is near, and the tired year 'mid praise

Lies down with leaf and blossom on her breast--

Autumn's near.

FULFILMENT

A-bask in the mellow beauty of the ripening sun,

Sad with the lingering sense of summer's purpose done,

The cut and searing fields stretch from me one by one

Along the creek.

The corn-stooks drop their shadows down the fallow hill;

Wearing autumnal warmth the farm sleeps by the mill,

Around each heavy eave low smoke hangs blue and still--

Life's flow is weak.

Along the weedy roads and lanes I walk--or pause--

Ponder a fallen nut or quirking crow whose caws

Seem with prehuman hintings fraught or ancient awes

Of forest-deeps.

Of forest deeps the pale-face hunter never trod,

Nor Indian, with the silent stealth of Nature shod;

Deeps tense with the timelessness and solitude of God

Who never sleeps.

And many times has Autumn, on her harvest way,

Gathered again into the earth leaf, fruit, and spray;

Here many times dwelt rueful as she dwells to-day,

The while she reaps.

TO THE FALLEN LEAVES

I hear the moaning rains beat on your rest

In the long nights of Winter and his wind--

And Death, the woeful, guilty of your fall,

Crying that he has sinned.

MAYA

(HIROSHIMA, JAPAN, 1905)

Pale sampans up the river glide

With set sails vanishing and slow;

In the blue west the mountains hide

As visions that too soon will go.

Across the rice-lands flooded deep

The peasant peacefully wades on--

As in unfurrowed vales of sleep,

A phantom out of voidness drawn.

Over the temple cawing flies

The crow with carrion in his beak.

Buddha within lifts not his eyes

In pity or reproval meek;

Nor, in the bamboos, where they bow

A respite from the blinding sun,

The old priest--dreaming painless how

Nirvana's calm will come when won.

"All is allusion, _Maya_, all

The world of will," the spent East seems

Whispering in me, "And the call

Of Life is but a call of dreams."

SPIRIT OF RAIN

(MIYANOSHITA, JAPAN, 1905)

Spirit of rain--

With all thy ghosts of mist about the mountain, lonely

As a gray train

Of souls newly discarnate seeking new life only!

Spirit of rain!

Leading them thro' dim torii, up fane-ways onward

Till not in vain

They tremble upon the peaks and plunge rejoicing dawnward.

Spirit of rain!

So would I lead my dead thoughts high and higher,

Till they regain

Birth and the beauty of a new life's fire.

THE NYMPH AND THE GOD

She lay by the river dead,

A broken reed in her hand,

The nymph whom an idle god had wed

And led from her maidenland.

The god was the great god, Jove.

Two notes would the bent reed blow,

The one was sorrow, the other love,

Enwove with a woman's woe.

She lay by the river dead,

And he at feasting forgot.

The gods, shall they be disquieted

By dread of a mortal's lot?

A SEA-GHOST

Oh, fisher-fleet, go in from the sea

And furl your wings.

The bay is gray with the twilit spray

And the loud surf springs.

The chill buoy-bell is rung by the hands

Of all the drowned,

Who know the woe of the wind and tow

Of the tides around.

Go in, go in! O haste from the sea,

And let them rest--

A son and one who was wed and one

Who went down unblest.

Aye, even as I whose hands at the bell

Now labour most.

The tomb has gloom, but O the doom

Of the drear sea-ghost!

He evermore must wander the ooze

Beneath the wave,

Forlorn--to warn of the tempest born,

And to save--to save!

Then go, go in! and leave us the sea,

For only so

Can peace release us and give us ease

Of our salty woe.

LAST SIGHT OF LAND

The clouds in woe hang far and dim:

I look again and lo

Only a faint and shadow line

Of shore--I watch it go.

The gulls have left the ship and wheel

Back to the cliff's gray wraith.

Will it be so of all our thoughts

When we set sail on Death?

And what will the last sight be of life

As lone we fare and fast?

Grief and the face we love in mist--

Then night and awe too vast?

Or the dear light of Hope--like that,

O see, from the lost shore

Kindling and calling "Onward, you

Shall reach the Evermore!"

SILENCE

Silence is song unheard,

Is beauty never born,

Is light forgotten--left unstirred

Upon Creation's morn.

DAVID

CHARACTERS

SAUL _King of Israel._

JONATHAN _Heir to the throne._

ISHUI _His brother._

SAMUEL _The Prophet of Israel._

ABNER _Captain of the Host of Israel._

DOEG _An Edomite; chief servant of Saul, and suitor for

Michal._

ADRIEL _A Lord of Meholah, suitor for Merab._

DAVID _A shepherd, secretly anointed King._

ABISHAI _A follower of David._

ABIATHAR _A priest and follower of David._

A PHILISTINE SPY.

AHINOAM _The Queen._

MERAB }

MICHAL } _Daughters of Saul and Ahinoam._

MIRIAM _A blind prophetess, and later the "Witch of Endor."_

JUDITH }

LEAH } _Timbrel-players of the King._

ZILLA }

ADAH _Handmaiden to Merab._

_A Chorus of Women. A Band of Priests. Followers of David.

Soldiers of Saul. People of the Court, &c._

DAVID

ACT I