WHO SHALL COMMAND THE HEART
_Because the starry lightnings and the life
Of all this Universe which is our Home
Weave round each soul a web of mortal strife,
Hard is its speech to hear and slow to come,_
_As to one waking from a lonely dream
The friendly taper dwindles to a star,
So to each man men’s faces distant seem—
Their dearest words sound faint and very far._
_Daily we pass, like shadows in dreamland,
And careless answer in the old curt tone,
Till Death breaks suddenly between us, and
With a great cry we know we have not known._
_Ah! surely, to have known and to behold
The beauty that within the soul abides,
For this Earth blossoms and the skies unfold,
For this the Moon makes music in the tides;_
_For this Man rises from his mould of dust,
Ranges his life and looks upon the Sun,
For this he turns and with adventurous trust
Forsakes this world and seeks a fairer one._
WHO SHALL COMMAND THE HEART
Who shall command the heart, that wondrous Thing,
That wild love-creature, roaming the wilderness,
That none can tame?
Roaming the world, devouring with eyes of flame, eyes of desire,
All forms of heavenly Beauty?
* * * * *
Say, little heart, that beatest pulsest here beneath the ribs,
Who chained thee in this body?—what Titan ages agone?—
Who muzzled thee to drive this crank machine,
Thou wanderer of the woods, thou crimson leopard,
No better than a turnspit?
* * * * *
Nay, but thy ’prenticeship long enough surely thou hast served;
The time has come, and thy full age and strength;
The cage-bars hold no longer, and the body-machine breaks down;
But thou art young and beautiful as ever.
Wild pard who lovest thus to hunt with Man,
I bid thee loose.
Say, wilt thou come with me, and shall we ride,
Companions of the Chase, the universe over?
FROM CAVERNS DARK
Behold, a hundred and a thousand lives,
And thousands more, in caverns dark within thee.
No secret wish that flits along thy fancy,
But lo! far back in some ancestral form
It dwelt, had eyes and feet, and ranged its life;
No thought, no dream, but long-dead men and women
Live in the quiet murmur of its wings
Far down, far down, and move about thy brain
And look on the Sun again.
Ah, silence! hearest not the whispering
In darkness, of those countless multitudes?—
That maiden fair who languished out her soul,
Long generations back, and spake no word;
That father whose young daughter to the grave
Bore down his heart with hers; that sturdy soldier
Who hacked and hewed in fervent piety
All who opposed him; that untiring mother
Who wore her life out for her children; aye,
And all the throngs that passed thro’ city streets,
Centuries gone, ’neath overhanging gables,
Or toiled on rustic leas—the cleric youth
Who dreamed romance in manuscript and missal,
Gurth herding pigs and whittling bow and arrows
In beechen forests; haughty baron, and serf,
And vain and timid and night-mare-ridden souls,
And trustful, proud, ambitious—all are there!
Hearest the whispering of multitudes?—
All dead—yet all are there.
And ages farther, born of the time before man walked the earth,
Wild forms behold! and roaming spirits of animals,
Hungering, thirsting, loving—beautiful beings
That saw and wondered worshiping each other,
And found their mates and fought their enemies,
And sang and danced and hoarded, skulked and scolded,
In passion’s every mood; yet never once
Turned eyes of consciousness upon themselves.
Unwieldy beasts that bellowed through the tree-ferns for their young,
And flying dragons and the roaring lion,
And bats and moths just glimmering thro’ the dark
Like faintest memories—aye, all are there!
Hearest the whispering of multitudes?—
All dead—yet all are there.
And in the ages yet to come the same:
A hundred and a thousand lives within thee!
And thousands more—which yet shall walk the Earth.
Dreams, faint desires, scarce conscious of themselves,
Shall take swift shape and people the lands with forms
Of thy conceiving, strange similitudes
Even of thyself.
And, hungering thirsting loving, beautiful beings
Sprung from thy heart and brain and sexual part,
Half animal, half angel,
Shall see and wonder worshiping each other;
And find their mates and front their enemies
Onward through long processions of the Suns,
By shores of other continents than now,
In unimagined haunts and cities fair,
To where they fade from view and take at last
Their flight from Earth to homes beyond the Earth.
This mighty Life—past present and to come—
Enfolds thee. This thou art. This thou upgatherest;
And this Thou, tiny creature, pourest forth—
Where now thou standest—
Lord of the world, from caverns dark within thee.
THE LAKE OF BEAUTY
Let your mind be quiet, realising the beauty of the world, and the
immense the boundless treasures that it holds in store.
All that you have within you, all that your heart desires, all that your
Nature so specially fits you for—that or the counterpart of it waits
embedded in the great Whole, for you. It will surely come to you.
Yet equally surely not one moment before its appointed time will it
come. All your crying and fever and reaching out of hands will make no
difference.
* * * * *
Therefore do not begin that game at all.
Do not recklessly spill the waters of your mind in this direction and in
that, lest you become like a spring lost and dissipated in the desert.
But draw them together into a little compass, and hold them still, so
still;
And let them become clear, so clear—so limpid, so mirror-like;
At last the mountains and the sky shall glass themselves in peaceful
beauty,
And the antelope shall descend to drink, and to gaze at his reflected
image, and the lion to quench his thirst,
And Love himself shall come and bend over, and catch his own likeness in
you.
THE WANDERING PSYCHE
You, who un-united to yourself roam about the world,
Seeking some person or some thing to which to be united—
Seeking to ease that way the pain at your heart—
Deceive not yourself, deceive not others.
* * * * *
For united to that which you really are you are indeed beautiful, united
to Yourself you are strong, united to yourself you are already in the
hearts of those you love;
But disunited you are none of these things
And how shall men desire a mere shell, or how will you offer them a husk
saying, There is fruit within, when there is no fruit—but only vacancy?
* * * * *
And these are the Gods that seek ever to come in the forms of men—the
ageless immortal Gods—to make of earth that Paradise by their presence;
But while you bar the way and weave your own little plans and purposes
like a tangle of cobwebs across the inner door,
How shall they make their entrance and habitation with you?
How shall you indeed know what it is to be Yourself?
I HEAR THY CALL, MYSTERIOUS BEING
I hear thy call, Mysterious Being;
In the dead of night, when the stars float grey overhead, and the
Northern lights flicker faintly,
In the blazing noon when the sunlight rims with a luminous ring the wide
horizon,
Flooding, enfolding all—
I hear thy call.
In the hollow depths below—I hear thee, Mysterious Being.
* * * * *
[I am swept out, as the tide to the call of the Moon is swept out from
the shores it knows—to wonderful other shores;
I am carried away, away, in a swoon to the ends of Creation.]
* * * * *
Deep, deep is Thy heart. As I sink in it, lo! there is nothing, nothing
which is not held by thy love.
On the surface there is rejection and discrimination, but in the depth
lo! everything is held by it.
Swift, swift is Thy flight. In an instant now here, now there—it is all
the same to Thee.
As the lambent fire of sex within the body, as the Northern lights with
luminous fingers over the sky—
So Thou through all creation.
As the great Sun blazing down at noon on the Himálayan forests, and
bathing each leaf the same for hundreds, thousands, of miles—
So Thou through all creation.
* * * * *
[Flutter on little leaves—ye that break the light into a million
beautiful forms!
Flutter on little worlds, that float in the æther of space!
Flutter on little hearts, whom the great Heart feeds and encloses!]
* * * * *
And thou, O stranger who dwellest perchance in yonder star, or globe
that circles dark about yon star,
Or thou, dear lover that on this earth of ours holdest my heart in
thine,
Can Death, I say, or Space or Time or Worlds avail in the end against
us?
* * * * *
Take me, great Life—O take me, long-delaying,
Unloose these chains, unbind these clogs and fetters;
I hear thy call—so strange—Mysterious Being,
I hear thy call—I come.
SO THIN A VEIL
So thin a veil divides
Us from such joy, past words.
Walking in daily life—the business of the hour, each detail seen to;
Yet carried, rapt away, on what sweet floods of other Being:
Swift streams of music flowing, light far back through all Creation
shining,
Loved faces looking—
Ah! from the true, the mortal self
So thin a veil divides!
THE OPEN SECRET
Sweet secret of the open air—
That waits so long, and always there, unheeded.
* * * * *
Something uncaught, so free, so calm large confident—
The floating breeze, the far hills and broad sky,
And every little bird and tiny fly or flower
_At home_ in the great whole, nor feeling lost at all or forsaken,
Save man—slight man!
* * * * *
He, Cain-like from the calm eyes of the Angels,
In houses hiding, in huge gas-lighted offices and dens, in ponderous
churches,
Beset with darkness, cowers;
And like some hunted criminal torments his brain
For fresh means of escape, continually;
Builds thicker higher walls, ramparts of stone and gold, piles flesh and
skins of slaughtered beasts,
’Twixt him and that he fears;
Fevers himself with plans, works harder and harder,
And wanders far and farther from the goal.
* * * * *
And still the great World waits by the door as ever,
The great World stretching endlessly on every hand, in deep on deep of
fathomless content—
Where sing the Morning-stars in joy together,
And all things are at home.
THE SONGS OF THE BIRDS, WHO HEARS
The songs of the birds, who hears? in the high trees calling,
All the long noon high calling?—
In the meadows below them the wind runs over the grass, the shadows
lengthen.
Who sees, who hears?—
In the wonderful height of heaven the clouds are flocked like sails,
Slow moving, floating, rounding from deep to deep.
The light swims slowly, changing over the world,
The distant peaks are touched; and the hills lie silent.
Who sees, who hears?
* * * * *
The fox-gloves tall out of the earth arise;
They stand up out of green shadow;
Out of night, out of seeds dim in the earth arising,
They look forth on the blue and green wilderness, and are changed as it
changes—
Changed out of all recognition.
Who sees, who hears?—
* * * * *
For all things melt and run—if you only watch them long enough!
And you cannot emprison anything in one shape—it will surely give you
the slip.
Nothing in essence dies, and nothing in mortal form remains. All is in
movement, long calculated, long determined on, with regard to another
kind of Form.
The diamond that you wear in your hair, the gold piece you hold so solid
in your hand—they are no more solid than a swarm of bees is solid, of
which the units are in constant motion to and fro, some leaving and some
joining the swarm.
They have other business than yours to attend to—they have other spheres
beside the market and the drawing-room—and they will surely give you the
slip.
* * * * *
The rocks flow and the mountain shapes flow,
And the forests swim over the lands like cloud-shadows;
The lines of the seeming-everlasting sea are changed,
And its waves beat on unmapped phantom shores:
‘Not here, not here!’
All creatures fade from the embraces of their names,
[And you and I, slow, slowly disentangling,]
The delicate hairbells quivering in the light,
The gorse, the heather, and the fox-gloves tall,
The meadows, and the river, rolling, fade:
Fade from their likenesses: fade crying ‘Follow! Follow, for ever
follow!’
* * * * *
Who hears, who sees?
Who hears the word of Nature?
The word of her eternal breathing, whispered wherever one shall listen,
The word of the birds in the high trees calling,
Of the wind running over the grass,
The word of the glad prisoners, the tender footless creatures, the
plants of the earth,
Rising too, bright-eyed, out of their momentary masks?
‘Not here! not here!’
* * * * *
But over all the world, shadowing, shadowing:
The dream! the vast and ever present miracle of all time!
The long-forgotten never-forgotten goal!
Over your own heart, out of its secretest depths:
In crystalline beauty!
Out of all creatures, cloud and mountain and river:
Exhaling, ascending!
From plant and bird and man and planet up-pouring:
Thousand-formed, One,
The ever-present only present reality, source of all illusion,
The Self, the disclosure, the transfiguration of each creature,
And goal of its agelong pilgrimage.
A CHILD AT A WINDOW
I sat in the dark, at night, outside a little cottage door,
And the light from within streamed through the casement and broke in
spray upon the climbing ivy-leaves.
And presently, overhead, a chamber-window opened, and a child peeped
silently forth,
And looked up into the vast night and at the all-trembling stars.
* * * * *
And at the same moment, in a far far globe wheeling unseen round a
certain star, a child-face peeped forth from its habitation, and looked
out into the night, even in the direction of the first child;
And in other globes other faces looked forth;
But they all shrank back and trembled, seeing nothing but vacancy, and
saying, How dark, how vast, how awful is the Night!
* * * * *
Yet all the while it was the great Day of the universe into which they
looked,
Lit by a million suns.
NIGHT
Darkness o’erhead, around,
A curtain closing down upon the earth,
Drowning the woodland tree-tops.
Stretching of hands, straining of eyes—to feel, to see,
To catch the faint faint glamor here and there amid the branches,
The wavering dubious forms and presences.
No floor, no sky, no sound. Only a soft warm moisture in the nostrils,
Folding and brooding all the land in silence.
APRIL
O April, month of Nymphs and Fauns and Cupids,
Month of the Sungod’s kisses, Earth’s sweet passion,
Of fanciful winds and showers;
Apollo, glorious over hill and dale
Ethereally striding; grasses springing
Rapt to his feet, buds bursting, flowers out-breathing
Their liberated hearts in love to him.
* * * * *
[The little black-cap garrulous on the willow
Perching so prim, the crested chaffinch warbling,
And primrose and celandine, anemone and daisy,
Starring the tender herb which lambs already nibble.]
* * * * *
Month of all-gathering warmth,
Of breathless moments, hotter and hotter growing—
Smiles turned to fire, kisses to fierce earnest—
Of sultry swoons, pauses, and strange suspense
(Clouds and dæmonic thunder through the blue vault threateningly
rolling);
Then the delirious up-break—the great fountains of the deep, in Sex,
Loosened to pouring falling rushing waters;
Shafts of wild light; and Sky and Earth in one another’s arms
Melted, and all of Heaven spent in streams of love
Towards the Loved one.
LUCIFER
Seest thou me pass—swift with my angels out of heaven propelled—
All stars and lightning in a fluid train?
Seest thou me pass, I say?
* * * * *
His brows, the Lord’s, in heaven are glorious;
His eyes give light there, fashioning and beholding rapt all forms
divine;
His mighty loins are plunged in night and shadow.
And I—
I am the lightning of the generations through them,
Seed of the worlds to be.
* * * * *
He is the Lord, in moment of creation, fixed everlasting,
The Universe entire—or little flower starred in ecstasy;
And I, orgasmic, fierce, His swift deliverance.
* * * * *
[Seest thou me pass—all stars and lightning in a fluid train?
From heaven down into chaos seest thou me pass, I say?]
THE OCEAN OF SEX
To hold in continence the great sea, the great ocean of Sex, within one,
With flux and reflux pressing on the bounds of the body, the beloved
genitals,
Vibrating, swaying emotional to the star-glint of the eyes of all human
beings,
Reflecting Heaven and all Creatures,
How wonderful!
* * * * *
Scarcely a figure, male or female, approaches, but a tremor travels
across it.
As when on the cliff which bounds the edge of a pond someone moves, then
in the bowels of the water also there is a mirrored movement,
So on the edge of this Ocean.
The glory of the human form, even faintly outlined under the trees or by
the shore, convulses it with far reminiscences;
(Yet strong and solid the sea-banks, not lightly to be overpassed;)
Till may-be to the touch, to the approach, to the incantation of the
eyes of one,
It burst forth, uncontrollable.
* * * * *
O wonderful Ocean of Sex,
Ocean of millions and millions of tiny seed-like human forms contained
(if they be truly contained) within each person,
Mirror of the very universe,
Sacred temple and innermost shrine of each body,
Ocean-river flowing ever on through the great trunk and branches of
Humanity,
From which after all the individual only springs like a leaf-bud!
Ocean which we so wonderfully contain (if indeed we do contain thee),
and yet who containest us!
Sometimes when I feel and know thee within, and identify myself with
thee,
Do I understand that I also am of the dateless brood of Heaven and
Eternity.
AS THE GREEKS DREAMED
On the loose hot sands at foot of the cliffs—
The cloudless blue burning above in furious mid day heats—
As I bask,
Bathing my brown-tanned body in the warm dry clean grit, or cooling it
in the sea;
And the sea creeps up, spacious, in curves along the shore,
With fringes of tawny lacework, and green and blue, deepening into the
loveliest violet,
And Aphrodite herself out of this marvellously beautiful robe, this
liquid cincture, swiftly gliding, for a moment stands,
(Her feet on the watery plain, her head in the great height against the
Sun,)
Vast, glorious, white-armed, visible and invisible;
* * * * *
As the sea stretches miles and miles, and the grey chalk cliffs and
capes, fainter and fainter, run forward into it, looking on,
And the fisherman slumbers in the shade of his boat, impervious,
And fainter still and more slumbrous on the horizon, in haze and silence
the far ships go by;
* * * * *
Through it all, meseems, I see
How the human body bathed in the sheen and wet, steeped in sun and air,
Moving near and nude among the elements,
Matches somehow and interprets the whole of Nature;
How from shoulder to foot of mountain and man alike the lines of grace
run on;
How, as the Greeks dreamed, in rock and rill divinest human forms lie
shrined, or in the wild woods lurk embosomed;
And how at length and only in the loving union and uncoveredness of Man
with Nature may either know or understand the other.
IN A SCOTCH-FIR WOOD
In a Scotch-fir wood—
Where the great rays of the low sun glanced through the trees, in open
beauty under the shaggy green,
Lighting stem behind stem in lofty strength interminable;
And the wild sweet air ran lightly by, with warm scent of pine-needles—
I heard a voice saying:
* * * * *
O Man, when wilt thou come fit comrade of such trees, fair mate and
crown of such a scene?
Poor pigmy, botched in clothes, feet coffined in boots, braced, stitched
and starched,
Too feeble, alas! too mean, undignified, to be endured—
Go hence, and in the centuries come again!
THE DREAM GOES BY
The dream goes by, touches men’s hearts, and floats and fades again—
Far on the hills away from this nightmare of modern cheap-jack life:
The finished free Society.
* * * * *
Finished and done with so much that clogs to-day the weary spirit, weary
body;
Finished and done with all the old cumbersome apparatus of Law and
Authority, with the endless meanness of ‘business’ and money-making,
with the silly paraphernalia of distinction and respectability, with the
terrible struggle of each against all, and the trampling of the weak
underfoot by the strong;
Done with the endless joyless labors for the bread that perisheth, for
clothing which keeps not the heart warm, for possessions which only
weigh their owners to the ground;
With envies, greeds, jealousies—loads and burdens of life too great to
be borne—Sisyphus toils that bring no nearer to the goal.
* * * * *
The grown man hand in hand with his little girl, walking the woodland
path,
With brown uncovered bodies, both of them, so glad, content,
unconscious;
And all the wealth and beauty of the world is theirs;
The Sun shining on their limbs; and in their minds the long results of
human culture.
The simple dresses of the public thoroughfare, used or not used with
quiet sense of fitness;
The simple diet so easily won, so gladly shared;
The stores of human science, human knowledge, accessible to all—for all
to use.
And Death no longer terrible, but full
Of poignant strange Expansion; Labor too
(Which is our daily death
And resurrection in the thing created)
An ever-abiding joy.—
A life so near to Nature, all at one with bird and plant and beast and
swimming thing,
So near to all its fellows in sweet love—
In joy unbounded and undying love.
* * * * *
The dream goes by, touches and stirs men’s hearts, And floats, and
waits, again.
SURELY THE TIME WILL COME
Surely the time will come when humanity will refuse to be diseased any
longer.
This list of filthy and hideous complaints,—too filthy to be calmly
spoken of: these small-poxes, typhoids, choleras, cancers, tumors,
tubercles,—dropsy, diabetes, uræmia—all preventible, and easy enough to
prevent;
And yet—incredible though it seems—men and women still tolerating and
condoning them;
Men and women who pride themselves on their culture, refinement,
punctiliousness of nose, and so forth—and who would turn up the latter
at the sight of a pig and a few fowls in an Irishman’s cabin—actually
tolerating in their own persons the perpetual presence of the most
disgusting organisms;
And other men and women, through sheer ignorance, believing such a state
of affairs to be necessary.
Surely the time will come when to be diseased, to spread disease around
one, or transmit it to descendants,
To live willingly in the conditions that produce disease, or not
strenuously to fight against such conditions,
Will be looked on as a crime—both of the individual and of society.
For since a little self-control, since a clean and elementary diet, pure
water, openness of the body to sun and air, a share of honest work, and
some degree of mental peace and largesse, are the perfectly simple
conditions of health, and are, or ought to be, accessible to everybody—
To neglect these is sheer treason;
While to surrender them out of fear (should one stick to them) of being
robbed of other things far less precious, is to be a fool, as well as a
coward.
Surely the time will come when people, seeing how obvious and simple is
the problem of human life,
Will refuse (even at the bidding of the Parson, the Policeman, Mrs.
Grundy, and the commercial Slave-drivers and Tax-collectors) to live the
lives of idiots;
Will refuse to do other work than that which they like, and which they
feel to be really needed;
Will cease to believe that their own well-being can only be maintained
at the cost of the Fear, Torment, and Slaughter of the animals, and the
Hanging and Imprisonment of men;
And will waste the hours no more in elaborately preparing food which,
when prepared, does but rot the vitals of those who consume it, and in
schemes of money-making and ‘business’ which but destroy their souls.
The time will come surely when we shall cease to burden our limbs and
becloud our skins with garments, the major part of which are useless,
unless as a breeding ground of ill-health, deformity, and indecency;
Shall cease to build walls and fortifications of property and possession
each round ourselves as against the others—deliberately confining so and
crucifying the great god of love within us—
And shall at last liberate our minds and bodies from that funny old
lazar-house of the centuries, of which none but ourselves, after all,
are the warders and gaolers.
THE ONE FOUNDATION
Only that people can thrive that loves its land and swears to make it
beautiful;
For the land (the Demos) is the foundation-element of human life, and if
the public relation to that is false, all else is of need false and
inverted.
How can a flower deny its own roots, or a tree the soil from which it
springs?
And how can a people stand firmly planted under the sun, except as
mediators between Earth and Heaven—
To dedicate the gracious fruits of the ground to all divine uses?
* * * * *
Think of it—
To grow rich and beautiful crops for human food, and flowers and fruits
to rejoice the eye and heart,
What a privilege!
Yet this to-day is a burden and a degradation, thrust upon the poor and
despised.
The Scotch farm-lad strides across the ploughed leas, scattering with
princely hand the bread of thousands;
The Italian peasant ties his vines to the trellised canes with twigs of
broom, and the spring sunlight glances and twinkles on him from the
cistern just below;
The Danish boy drives the herds home from the low-lying pasture-lands in
the sweet clear air of evening;
And the world which is built upon the labor of these disowns them, and
they themselves sink earthward worn out with unheeded toil;
While the Politician and the Merchant who flourish on lies and fill the
people’s ears and mouths with chaff are publicly seated in the highest
places.
* * * * *
And the Earth rolls on, with all her burden of love unheeded,
And sadness falls on the peoples divorced from the breasts that fain
would suckle them.
* * * * *
Think of it—
To place a nation squarely on its own base, spreading out its people far
and wide in honored usefulness upon the soil,
Building up all uses and capacities of the land into the life of the
masses,
So that the riches of the Earth may go first and foremost to those who
produce them, and so onward into the whole structure of society;
To render the life of the people clean and gracious, vital from base to
summit, and self-determining,
Dependent simply on itself and not on cliques and coteries of
speculators anywhere; and springing thus inevitably up into wild free
forms of love and fellowship;
To make the wild places of the lands sacred, keeping the streams pure,
and planting fresh blooms along their edges; to preserve the air
crystalline and without taint—tempting the sun to shine where before was
gloom;
To adorn the woodlands and the high tops with new trees and shrubs and
winged and footed things,
Sparing all living creatures as far as possible rather than destroying
them;
What a pleasure!
To do all this in singleness of heart were indeed to open up riches for
mankind of which few dream—
So much, so infinitely more than what is now called Wealth.
* * * * *
But to-day the lands are slimed and fenced over with denials; and those
who would cannot get to them, and those who own have no joy in
them—except such joy as a dog may have in a fodderam.
And so, even to-day, while riches untold are wrung from the Earth, it is
rather as a robbery that they are produced—without gladness or
gratitude, but in grief and sadness and lying and greed and despair and
unbelief.
Say, say, what would those riches be, if the Earth and her love were
free?
* * * * *
But all waits. And the thunderclouds brood in silence over the lands,
meditating the unlipped words of destiny; and the sky rains light upon
the myriad leaves and grass, searching inevitably into every minutest
thing;
And Ignorance breeds Fear, and Fear breeds Greed, and Greed that Wealth
whose converse is Poverty—and these again breed Strife and Fear in
endless circles;
* * * * *
But Experience (which in time to all must come) breeds Sympathy, and
Sympathy Understanding, and Understanding Love;
And Love leads Helpfulness by the hand, to open the gates of Power
unlimited—even for that new race which now appears.
* * * * *
And the blue sea waits below the girdle of the sun-fringed shores, and
lips and laps through the millenniums, syllabling the unformed words
which man alone can pronounce entire;
And the sunlight wraps the globe of the Earth, and dances and twinkles
in the æther of the human heart,
Which is indeed a great and boundless ocean, in which all things float
suspended.
A MIGHTIER THAN MAMMON
At last, after centuries, when the tension and strain of the old society
can go no further, and ruin on every side seems impending,
Behold! behind and beneath it all, in dim prefigurement, yet clear and
not to be mistaken—the Outline and Draft of a new order.
* * * * *
When Machinery has made affluence possible for everybody, and yet the
scramble for Wealth is keener than ever, the line between rich and poor
as sharp;
When locomotion and intercommunication practically make the whole World
one, and yet the Nations stand round armed tooth and claw, and glaring
at each other;
When it is recognised that culture and manual labor are not only
compatible but necessary in combination with each other, and yet society
remains divided into brutalised workers and cultivated nincompoops;
When men and women everywhere are hungering for community of life, to
pass freely, to love and be loved; and yet they remain frozen up,
starched, starved, coffined, each in their own little cells of
propriety, respectability, dirty property, and dismal poverty;
When the cells are alive and in pain, because the body is lifeless;
When thousands of pulpits preach religion, and there is not a word of
religion in it;
When the great web and framework of the old order, Law, is collapsing
with its own weight—myriads and myriads of statutes, overlapping,
overlying, precedents, principles, instances, tumbled buried one behind
another in inextricable confusion—and yet never before in the history of
the world was there such a rigid brute-pharisaical apparatus of police,
military and prisons to enforce the ‘heads or tails’ of the Courts, and
the cant of the ‘superior’ classes;
When the Millionaire appears on the scene—a new type of human being—as
the Dinosaur may have appeared ages ago upon the Earth, gigantic,
lumbering, fateful and dangerous; yet destined perhaps finally to break
down the ancient jungle of ‘Government,’ and the barriers of the old
Nationalities; and to be a link in the evolution of the future;
When Art is divorced from Life, Science from human feeling, Marriage
from Love, Education from Affection;
When to work freely at one’s own chosen trade and to interchange freely
the products with others is what almost everybody really desires—and is
obviously the indicated social form of the future; and yet when nearly
everyone is a wage-slave or works at work which he detests!
When the longing for the life of Nature, for the Air and the Sun, for
the freedom of the Earth and the waters, for liberation, wildness,
spontaneity, is upon folk as perhaps it never was before; and yet they
are mewed up more than ever in houses clothes, ‘business,’ and general
asphyxia and futility;
When similarly the longing for freedom of Sex is upon people, for purity
of love, unashamed, unshackled, creating its own law—and yet love is
everywhere shamed and shackled and impure;
When the Electric Tension in every direction, owing to this separation
of polarities, is becoming so great that the luminous spark, the
lightning, the vital flash, has become inevitable;
Then at last, not to be mistaken, the outline and draft of the new
creature appears—
The soul that soon shall knit the growing limbs glides in.
* * * * *
A new conception of Life—yet ancient as creation (since indeed, properly
speaking, there is no other)—
The life of the Heart, the life of friendship and attachment:
Society forming freely everywhere round this—knit together by this,
rather than by the old Cash-nexus:
The love and pride of race, of clan, of family, the free sacrifice of
life for these, the commemoration of these in grand works and deeds;
The dedication of Humanity, the wider embrace that passes all barriers
of class and race;
And the innumerable personal affection in all its forms—
These, and a proud beautiful sane utterance and enduring expression of
them, first; and the other things to follow.
* * * * *
The love of men for each other—so tender, heroic, constant;
That has come all down the ages, in every clime, in every nation,
Always so true, so well assured of itself, overleaping barriers of age,
of rank, of distance,
Flag of the camp of Freedom;
The love of women for each other—so rapt, intense, so confiding-close,
so burning-passionate,
To unheard deeds of sacrifice, of daring and devotion, prompting;
And (not less) the love of men for women, and of women for men—on a
newer greater scale than it has hitherto been conceived;
Grand, free and equal—gracious yet ever incommensurable—
The soul of Comradeship glides in.
* * * * *
The young heir goes to inspect the works of one of his tenants;
[Once more the king’s son loves the shepherd lad;]
In the shed the fireman is shovelling coal into the boiler furnace. He
is neither specially handsome nor specially intelligent, yet when he
turns, from under his dark lids rimmed with coal-dust shoots something
so human, so loving near, it makes the other tremble.
They only speak a few words, and lo! underneath all the differences of
class and speech, of muscle and manhood, their souls are knit together.
* * * * *
The Cinghalese cooly comes on board a merchant vessel at Colombo, every
day for a week or more, to do some bits of cleaning.
He is a sweet-natured bright intelligent fellow of 21 or so. One of the
engineers is decently kind and friendly with him—gives him a knife and
one or two little presents;
But the Cinghalese gives his very soul to the engineer; and worships his
white jacket and overalls as though they were the shining garment of a
god.
He cannot rest; but implores to be taken on the voyage; and weeps
bitterly when he learns that the ship must sail without him.
* * * * *
[Ah! weep not, brown-bodied youth wandering lonely by the surf-ridden
shore—as you watch your white friend’s vessel gliding into the offing,
under the sun and the sun-fringed clouds;
Out, far out to sea, with your friend whom you will never see again;
Weep not so heart-brokenly, for even your tears, gentle boy, poured now
upon the barren sand are the prophecy of amity that shall be one day
between all the races of the earth.]
* * * * *
And here are two women, both doctors and mature in their profession,
whose souls are knit in a curiously deep affection.
They share a practice in a large town, and live in the same house
together, exchanging all that they command, of life and affection and
experience;
And this continues for twenty years—till the death of the elder
one—after which the other ceases not to visit her grave, twice every
week, till the time of her own last illness.
* * * * *
And this is of a poor lad born in the slums, who with aching lonely
heart once walked the streets of London.
Many spoke to him because he was fair—asked him to come and have a
drink, and so forth; but still it was no satisfaction to him; for they
did not give him that which he needed.
Then one day he saw a face in which love dwelt. It was a man twice his
own age, captain of a sailing vessel—a large free man, well acquainted
with the world, capable and kindly.
And the moment the lad saw him his heart was given to him, and he could
not rest but must needs follow the man up and down—yet daring not to
speak to him, and the other knowing nothing of it all.
And this continued—till the time came for the man to go another voyage.
Then he disappeared; and the youth, still not knowing who or whence he
was, fell into worse misery and loneliness than ever, for a whole year.
Till at last one day—or one evening rather—to his great joy he saw his
friend going into a public house. It was in a little street off Mile-end
Road. He slipped in and sat beside him.
And the man spoke to him, and was kind, but nothing more. And presently,
as the hour was getting late, got up and said Goodnight, and went out at
the door.
And the lad, suddenly seized with a panic fear that he might never see
his friend again, hurried after him, and when they came to a quiet spot,
ran up and seized him by the hand, and hardly knowing what he was doing
fell on his knees on the pavement, and held him.
And the man at first thought this was a ruse or a mere conspiracy, but
when he lifted the lad and looked in his face he understood, for he saw
love written there. And he straightway loved and received him.
* * * * *
And this is of a boy who sat in school.
The masters talked about Greek accidence and quadratic equations, and
the boys talked about lobs and byes and bases and goals; but of that
which was nearest to his heart no one said a word.
It was laughed at—or left unspoken.
Yet when the boy stood near some of his comrades in the cricket-field or
sat next them in school, he stocked and stammered, because of some
winged glorious thing which stood or sat between him and them.
And again the laughter came, because he had forgotten what he was doing;
and he shrank into himself, and the walls round him grew, so that he was
pent and lonely like a prisoner.
Till one day to him weeping, Love full-grown, all-glorious, pure,
unashamed, unshackled, came like a god into his little cell, and swore
to break the barriers.
And when the boy through his tears asked him how he would do that, Love
answered not, but turning drew with his finger on the walls of the cell.
And as he drew, lo! beneath his finger sprang all forms of beauty, an
endless host—outlines and colors of all that is, transfigured;
And, as he drew, the cell-walls widened—a new world rose—and folk came
trooping in to gaze,
And the barriers had vanished.
* * * * *
Wonderful, beautiful, the Soul that knits the Body’s life passed in,
And the barriers had vanished.
* * * * *
Everywhere under the surface the streamers shoot, auroral,
Strands and tissues of a new life forming.
Already the monstrous accumulations of private wealth seem useless and a
burden—
At best to be absorbed in new formations.
The young woman from an upper class of society builds up her girls’
club; the young man organises his boys from the slums. Untiring is their
care; but something more, more personal and close, than philanthropy
inspires them.
The little guilds of workers are animated by a new spirit; to have
pleasure in good work seems something worth living for; the
home-colonists turn their backs on civilisation if only they may realise
a friendly life with Nature and each other; the girls in the
dress-making shop stand in a new relation to their mistress, and work so
gladly for her and with her; the employer of labor begins to doubt
whether he gets any satisfaction by grinding the faces of his men—a new
idea is germinating in his mind; even to the landlord it occurs that to
create a glad and free village life upon his estate would be more
pleasure than to shoot over it.
As to the millionaire, having spent his life in scheming for Wealth, he
cannot but continue in the web which himself has woven; yet is heartily
sick of it, and longs in a kind of vague way for something simple and
unembarrassed. He is pestered to death by sharks, parasites, poor
relations, politicians, adventurers, lawyers, company-promoters, begging
letters and business correspondence, society functions, charitable and
philanthropic schemes, town and country houses, stewards, bailiffs,
flunkeys, and the care of endless possessions; and sees that to cast all
these aside and devote his wealth if possible to the realisation of a
grand life for the mass-peoples of the Earth were indeed his best hope
and happiness.
The graduate from Cambridge is a warm-hearted impulsive little woman,
genuine and human to the core. Having escaped from high and dry
home-circles, she found curiously the answer of her heart in a
wage-worker of an East London workshop—a calm broad-browed woman,
strong, clearheaded, somewhat sad in expression, and a bit of a leader
among her trade-mates.
Having got into touch with each other, the two came at last to live
together; and immediately on doing so found themselves a focus and
centre of activities—like opposite poles of a battery through which when
in contact the electricity streams.
So the news and interests of the two classes of society streamed through
them. Through them too, folk from either side, especially women, came
into touch with each other, and discovered a common cause and sympathy
amid many surface differences.
Thus by a thousand needs beside their own compelled, was their love
assured, their little home made sacred.
* * * * *
Everywhere a new motive of life dawns.
With the liberation of Love, and with it of Sex, with the sense that
these are things—and the joy of them—not to be dreaded or barred, but to
be made use of, wisely and freely, as a man makes use of his most
honored possession,
Comes a new gladness:
The liberation of a Motive greater than Money,
And the only motive perhaps that can finally take precedence of Money.
* * * * *
Men and women mate freely again;
The sacredness of sex in freedom is taught in schools and churches; the
ulcer of prostitution slowly disappears; the wasted love that flows in a
morbid stream through the streets, or desiccates in grand mansions, runs
once more into the channels of free devotion and life.
One by one, here and there, in silence perhaps, unremarked, or perhaps
the centre of a little cyclone of excited abuse, a couple, offstanding,
exempt, determined, assert their right to the highest and best that life
can give.
[Fear not, gentle girl, the sneers of the womenkind, nor thou, young
man, the pointed fingers of who can credit not the truth of love.]
To lead their own lives, irrespective of all criticism and custom, and
graft into the great Heart of the world and each other.
* * * * *
Wild as a raven, and a free lover of Nature, is the Irish squire’s
daughter. She hates all the conventions and proprieties with an
instinctive hatred—she hardly knows why. She is loved by a man whom the
family consider beneath them. He is not without his faults certainly.
But when her parents turn fiercely on her and him, she determines at all
costs to stick to him. Her sister, the dove, approved and admired by
everybody, marries a young Earl just come into the title; and she on the
same day goes off with her friend, and is forbidden to cross, and in
fact never crosses, the threshold of her home again.
The newly-made wife, wedded to an army officer, finds almost immediately
after marriage that their temperaments are wholly incompatible. Instead
of sacrificing herself to ‘duty’ or propriety, she has the good sense to
insist on leaving him: on leaving him his freedom, and herself the same,
as far as may be, for the future.
And this is of a young man, a man about town and the clubs, and well up
in the finesse of society, but of real affectionate nature—who was truly
bored with his own pursuits and surroundings, and so for him too the
barriers vanished.
He fell in with a girl of quite rustic birth and life, but
bright-looking, and of sturdy almost stubborn common-sense and wit; and
was charmed—partly by her contrast to all that he was accustomed to.
Ultimately—and after some obstinate and exasperating refusals on her
part—he made her his wife; much to the disgust of his relatives—whose
only consolation was to find he did not intend to bring her among them!
She in fact felt (and he knew) that she could not cope with ‘society’
ways and customs, and her true instinct was to spare herself the
vulgarity.
They took a little house near London, and lived quietly and happily,
allowing any of their friends, who had good sense enough, to come and
see them—she meanwhile learning much about the great world, and he
learning much which he had never known before about practical work and
the needs of the people.
Then, later on, when he came into his estate, and they went down into
the country, instead of living in the ancestral wigwam they agreed it
better to build a decent-sized cottage in the grounds for their own use;
And the Hall and outbuildings they fitted up as Workshops; and gradually
getting the village lads and girls together found them employment at
various small trades and crafts;
Till with the output of good and artistic work, their market became
assured, and the affair grew rapidly in extent and solidity.
And the larger rooms they adorned in every way for library and reading
purposes, and music and entertainments of all kinds; and the grounds
were partly for recreation and partly for the cultivation of produce;
So that before long the place became much known and sought after, and
the employees (who all had a share in the concern) were mighty proud of
it.
Certainly the old county society felt somewhat shocked and
uncomfortable, and even the tenant-farmers thought things were being
carried too far;
But the young couple stuck to their programme, and as years went on, and
after various obstacles and opposition lived down, their lives became
the centre of the love and affection of the whole neighborhood, great
and small, but especially the small;
And they achieved a real distinction, and the finest kind of
aristocracy.
_O little sister Heart, without thy big brother the rude Brain what
wouldst thou do?_
_So I see thee sitting in thy solitary chamber, poring over a figure in
a cameo—_
_So yearning lost desirous, faint forgetful,_
_Failing almost thy daily service of the body._
_Then comes thy brother and snatches thee by the hand, saying, “Come out
here into the world:_
_See all these wonderful things, and all there is to do;”_
_And talks so eloquent, so persuasively,_
_Soon thou art busy with him and his affairs, and the great world
outside there in the sun;_
_Till presently he rests or sleeps awhile—and thou returning_
_Gazest again on the cameo in thy chamber._
FORMS ETERNAL AS THE MOUNTAINS
So, when for an instant my friends (and I myself) appeared like
insubstantial forms whirled to and fro in the world, now jostled against
each other, now carried apart—the sport of the winds and the waves, and
puppets moved by the tangled threads of chance:
All at once the heavens opened, and I beheld, magnificent, serene—
Like mountains in the morning towering over the earth, changeless, or
changing only as the mountains change,
[And Time and all the years were but a mist which rolled against them,
Hiding, revealing, here an outline, there an outline,
Here a ledge of blooming flowers, there a black and lowering crag]—
That other world where the Sun shines for ever,
Those other Forms that move not from their place.
SPENDING THE NIGHT ALONE
To lie all night beside the loved one—how lovely!
To hold in one’s arms something so precious, so beautiful,
Dear head and hair and lips and limbs that shrine eternity,
Through scent and sense and breath and touch and love—
Forgetting all but this one—all but this one.
* * * * *
And then again to spend the night alone, to resume oneself—
To sail out in the silent watches over the sleeping world, and drink of
the intoxication of space,
Calm, self-centred, to the great first One united;
Over-looking the wide sleeping-grounds of Time—forms of the past, the
future—comrades innumerable,
Lovers possible, all safely eternally embosomed;
Kissing them lightly on the lips, the forehead,
Leaving them sleeping,
Spending the night alone.
O JOY DIVINE OF FRIENDS
O joy divine of friends!
To hold within the circle of one’s arms
More than the universe holds:
So sweet, so rare, so precious beyond words,
The god so tenderly mortal!
* * * * *
Not kisses only or embraces,
Nor the sweet pain and passion of the flesh alone;
But more, far more,
To feel (ah joy!) the creature deep within
Touch on its mate, unite, and lie entranced
There, ages down, and ages long, in light,
Suffused, divine—where all these other pleasures
Fade but to symbols of that perfect union!
O CHILD OF URANUS
O child of Uranus, wanderer down all times,
Darkling, from farthest ages of the Earth the same
Strange tender figure, full of grace and pity,
Yet outcast and misunderstood of men—
* * * * *
Thy Woman-soul within a Man’s form dwelling,
[Was Adam perchance like this, ere Eve from his side was drawn?]
So gentle, gracious, dignified, complete,
With man’s strength to perform, and pride to suffer without sign,
And feminine sensitiveness to the last fibre of being;
Strange twice-born, having entrance to both worlds—
Loved, loved by either sex,
And free of all their lore!
* * * * *
I see thee where down all of Time thou comest;
And women break their alabaster caskets, kiss and anoint thy feet, and
bless the womb that bare thee,
While in thy bosom with thee, lip to lip,
Thy younger comrade lies.
* * * * *
Lord of the love which rules this changing world,
Passing all partial loves, this one complete—the Mother love and
sex-emotion blended—
I see thee where for centuries thou hast walked,
Lonely, the world of men,
Saving, redeeming, drawing all to thee,
Yet outcast, slandered, pointed of the mob,
Misjudged and crucified.
* * * * *
Dear Son of heaven—long suffering wanderer through the wildernesses of
civilisation—
The day draws nigh when from these mists of ages
Thy form in glory clad shall reappear.
ONE AT A TIME
A million faces, loves, bodies, lives—a million souls,
Pouring down Time—
As in a dream I see, and know my own.
All nations, classes, trades, ranks, temperaments,
[The soldier’s cap, the felon’s crop, the bishop’s mitre,
Under the eyelids of the peasant woman, beneath the burnous of the Arab
chieftain,]
A million souls, yet from the rest at once distinguished—by the first
glance revealed—
I see, and know my own.
* * * * *
[Nay through the ages, loved ones, true to you,
Inseparable at heart I still remain,
Nor doubt you for an instant, nor myself.]
* * * * *
But here, to-day, may-be of all One only
The hour, the strict Eternity of Time,
Presents—and I accept.
May-be the least, unworthiest as the world would say,
Yet even so sufficient—for blest the hour
Which brings what, else, Eternity would miss!
Another day the worthiest may claim me;
To-day we two alone will be the world:
And Love, the Lord of all, shall dwell between us.
THE DEAD COMRADE
There among the woods, after the battle returning,
In a little open spot—how well I remember it—
Where the ground was red with the blood of my lover, my dead comrade,
[Him whom to save I would have died so gladly, O so gladly,
Whom I could not at any time bear to see suffer even a little hurt,
So tenderly we loved, so tenderly,]
There on the stained red ground, in the midst of the clotted precious
blood, not even yet dry, stood a small yellow flower—
The little Cow-wheat they call it, with its slender yellow blossoms in
pairs, and its faint-tinged lips.
* * * * *
And now in the woods each year—in the silent beautiful woods, so calm,
so sweet—though the same flowers spring by hundreds—
Not a word do they utter of that awful scene, not a word of all that
carnage,
Of the splintered trees, the blood-smeared corpses, the devilish noises
and the sights and smells,
Or of the livid face and faint-blue lips of him I loved as never another
I could love.
* * * * *
O how can you grow so careless, little flowers, and yet continue ages to
grow under the trees the same—
And all the light gone out of the world for me?
Each year when summer comes and July suns,
To the woods I must go like one drawn by a fatal dread and fascination,
To see the sight I most abhor to see—
The patch of blood, and the unharmed flower in the midst,
And faint in death the lips I love so well.
PHILOLÄUS TO DIOCLES
How often at dusk, dear friend, when thou art absent,
Sitting alone I wonder of what thou doest,
And dream, and wait of thee.
* * * * *
All the sweet noons and moons we have spent together;
All the glad interchange of laughter and love,
And thoughts, so grave, or fanciful:
What can compare with these, or what surpass them?
All the unbroken faith and steadfast reliance—nigh twenty years twining
the roots of life far down;
And not a mistrustful hour between us—or moment of anger:
What can surpass all this, or what compare?
Could riches or fame?
Or if the Thebans honor me for their law-giver,
Or thou, Diocles, in Olympic fields art victor beloved and crowned,
What are these things to that?
* * * * *
And still thou growest upon me, as a mountain,
Seen from another mountain-summit, rises
Clearer, more grand, more beautiful than ever;
And still within thine eyes, and ever plainer,
I see my own soul sleeping.
* * * * *
Say, did not Love, the Olympian blacksmith, find us,
Æons ago, in heaven,
And weld our souls together before all worlds?
II.
When thou art far, and the days go by without thee,
Strangely I suffer.
Perhaps even so in winter suffer the plants and the trees, when the Sun
withdraws his life-ray;
Thin runs the blood in my limbs, sucked out of the arteries;
The heart shrinks closed and painful—I lose command and vigor;
At times like these, methinks, I too have strayed from my body,
Afar, in pursuit of thee, my sun and my savior.
III.
Thou art so beautiful to me, sweet friend,
Years bring no shadow between us;
Always I praise the very ground beneath thy feet,
That leads thee toward me,
And give my unbelieving hands free leave to hold thee,
For still to assure myself that thou art there
Is my first need.
* * * * *
Love, that entwined our souls before all worlds,
Binds the great orbs of heaven too in their courses,
But by no bond more lasting.
IV.
And sweeter far to suffer is it, dear one, being sometimes absent,
Than (if indeed ’twere possible) to feel the opposite pain
Of too much nearness, and love dying so
Down to mere slackness.
* * * * *
Now, as it is, the harp is firmly strung;
A tender tension animates the strings;
And every thought of Thee, and all the winds which blow along the world,
Wake a sweet áccord underneath the din,
And harmonize life’s wilderness for me.
V.
Therefore I say, stay, comrade, lover mine,
Nor wander far from me while life remains,
But let us rather, and if it may be, hand in hand,
Pass to that last strange change, therein perhaps to know each other
Nearer even than now.
VI.
Indeed, thou art so deep within my heart,
I fear not Death. And though I die, and fail,
Falling through stupors, senselessness, oblivion,
Down to the roots of being; still, thou art there.
I shall but sleep as I have slept before,
So oft, in dreamless peace, close-linked with thee.
HAFIZ TO THE CUP-BEARER
Dear Son, that out of the crowded footways of Shiráz,
With hesitant step emerging,
Camest and laid thy life down at my feet,
Faint and ashamed, like one by some divine wine vanquished:
* * * * *
I take thy gift, so gracious and sparkling clear,
Thy naïve offering, as of a simple Nature-child,
Wondering, like one who sees a rose in winter blooming, or cypress ’mid
a wilderness of rocks;
Or finds among the marl and clay beneath his feet
A ruby fair embedded—and stops and takes it.
* * * * *
[The Earth, so dead and gross, and yet to points of finest light
Still working in the silence of her unseen chambers!
And thou, great common People, slavish still and brute and ignorant, in
alley and tavern,
Yet in thy rugged mass fair hearts of finest glow
Infallibly condensing!]
* * * * *
Come, son (since thou hast said it), out of all Shiráz
Háfiz salutes thee comrade. Let us go
A spell of life along the road together.
IN THE STONE-FLOORED WORKSHOP
There in the stone-floored workshop in the middle of a great dirty
city—the windows half made up with dust—
Three men, astraddle on their horsings, and over their grinding wheels
bending.
* * * * *
The drum that brings the power from the engine-room pounds and thumps,
the belting slaps and crackles, whizz go the wheels so steady in their
sockets, and the streams of sparks fly rustling.
All is so old-fashioned, perhaps much as it was four or five centuries
ago;
The old stone trows half full of water, in which the wheels run; the
puddles, the mud, the wheelswarf spattered and crusting the walls and
even the clothes of the grinders with yellow dirt;
The rude wooden bearings for the axles, soused with water when they get
too hot; the drawing-up stones, emery wheels, polishers, glazers;
The little wheels, made out of fragments of larger ones, for hollow
grinding, and (more modern) the fan for drawing and expelling the dust.
* * * * *
There astraddle, in their rough clothes, with clogs on their feet, and
faces yellow-splashed, hour by hour bending over, the men sit—
With careful grasp of one hand and pressure of the other, holding the
blades to the stone—the pads of their finger-tips worn through to the
very quick where they now and then and unavoidably touch it in its swift
career.
* * * * *
Very careful and responsible is the work—the least slip may cause an
accident.
A man comes in from the hardening shop, puts down a bundle of
rough-shaped blades, and goes out again.
And still the heads sway rhythmically from side to side as eye and hand
follow their work across the wheel.
Very careful is the testing and examining of a new stone and the fitting
it on its axle: a single flaw and in the great speed it will fly,
bringing danger to all around it.
Now and then one pauses and takes a swipe out of a can; or throws his
band off, to change his wheel for another; or goes to the fire to
examine some blades which are heating in a tray over it.
Curt is the talk (of fancy-backs, rattlers, sours and wasters, tangs and
heels and shoulders), for the noise is too great, and the strain, for
much beyond monosyllables.
Dingy the den and dense the grit that settles thick upon everything.
* * * * *
Yet at last out of it all, out of this primitive scene, emerges
something so finished, so subtly perfect—
A razor, keen and brilliant, a very focus of light in the whole shop,
with swift invisible edge running true from heel to point, and ringing
so clear to the twang of the thumb-nail on it—
Emerges (his work done) a figure with dusty cap and light curls escaping
from under it, large dove-grey eyes and Dutch-featured face of tears and
laughter,
(So subtle, so rare, so finished a product,)
A man who understands and accepts all human life and character,
Keen and swift of brain, heart tender and true, and low voice ringing so
clear,
And my dear comrade.
THE TRYSTING
Far over the hills, ten miles, in the cloudless summer morning,
By grassy slopes and flowering wheatfields, and over the brooks, he
strides—
A young man, slender, wistful-eyed—with a great bouquet of flowers in
his hand.
* * * * *
Great roses, red and white (in the cottage-home garden gathered),
And sweet-scented ladslove and rich marigolds and mignonette and lilies,
All trembling in the glimmer of brimming eyes, and steeped in fragrant
memories,
With full full heart he carries;
And calls in spirit, the while he goes, to her so loved—
More than all other women on earth beloved—
His mother who bore him.
Till at length by the town arriving,
On her grave in the cemetery ground he faithfully lays them.
* * * * *
And this the trysting.
This the trysting for which in the little garden, with tears, he
gathered the flowers,
For which o’er the hills he hastened.—
And this, what means, what boots it?
* * * * *
There truly, below, with head fallen on one side, a shapeless
indistinguishable mass, her body lies—
Three years already from this life departed—
Nor hears nor sees, nor understands at all,
Senseless as any clod.
Above, the flowers he has brought lie wilting in the sun;
Around, the common-place dingy scene extends—the dreary cemetery,
The stones, the walls, the houses.—
What boots it all?
These senseless things that neither see nor hear,
To senseless things what message can they bear?
* * * * *
Yet he, he hears and sees.
A natural child, untaught, reckless of custom and what they call
religion,
He hears and sees things hidden from the learnéd;
He glimpses forms beyond the walls of Time.
Of bibles, creeds and churches he knows nothing,
And all that science has said about life and death and atom-dances and
the immutable laws of matter,
And all the impassable lines and barriers that the professors and
specialists have built up out of their own imaginations—
These simply exist not, for him.
He only knows she comes, the loved and worshiped—
Comes, takes the flowers,
Stands like a thin mist in the sun beside him,
Looks in his eyes, and touches him again.
* * * * *
And to its depth his heart shakes, breaking backward,
Tears rise once more, earth reels, the sun is splintered,
Stones, houses, and the solid sky dissolve,
And that far marvelous vibration of the soul,
Swifter than light, more powerful than sound,
Flies through the world, pierces the rocks and tombs,
And gains her Presence at the feet of God.
THE LOVER FAR ON THE HILLS
Here on this high top far above the world—
This mute and glorious scene, earth’s panorama:
[The swelling mountains, all in green and gold,
Round-topped, or broken into savage crags;
The valleys scarcely shown, like narrow rifts;
The slate-dark shadows, and the tarns and lakes,
And vistas over them to sunny lands
Of tiny patchwork, with quaint fields and farms,
White sails on waters, and the sun-splashed sea:]
Here on this high top dreaming, to it all
I find but one fit likeness—
Namely the gracious form of her I love.
The limbs and hair, the lips, the eyes, I love—
Twin heavenlit lakes—
And undulant lines that run from hips to shoulder;
Fair world of hollow and rondure, hill and plain,—
So solid-fair like this, so dewy-fragrant,
And all inwrought with that dear life that holds me.
* * * * *
How calm this air! this silence here in heaven
Calm blue, and tender hanging clouds delaying
To kiss their shadows on the hills’ deep breasts;
And far around this dream of human presence—
Nature, and my sweet Helpmate whom I worship,
With the dear god that dwells behind them both.
THE BABE
The trio perfect: the man, the woman, and the babe:
And herein all Creation.
* * * * *
The two, with wonder in their eyes, from opposite worlds
Of sex, of ancestry, pursuits, traditions,
Each other suddenly, amazed, confronting—
A nameless glory each in each surmising.
* * * * *
A frenzy as of Gods—
Imperial rage, flinging the goods of the world aside as dross, to reach
to a priceless treasure:
[He madly invasive,
She deeply wise, and drawing farther back
Even to the gates of Paradise as he approaches:]
Strange ecstasy of warfare!
Seisin and ravishment of souls and bodies,
Veils rent asunder,
Heaven opening measureless, overhead, in splendor,
And all life changed, transfigured!
* * * * *
And then a calm.
Weeks of humdrum and mortal commonplace,
And months perchance in monotone of toil,
But still behind it all some deep remembrance,
Some sure reliance,
And sweet and secret knowledge in each other.
* * * * *
And then the Babe:
A tiny perfect sea-shell on the shore
By the waves gently laid (the awful waves!)—
By trembling hands received—a folded message—
A babe yet slumbering, with a ripple on its face
Remindful of the ocean.
* * * * *
And two twined forms that overbend it, smiling,
And wonder to what land Love must have journeyed,
Who brought this back—this word of sweetest meaning:
_Two lives made one, and visible as one_.
* * * * *
And herein all Creation.
_O gracious Mother, in thy vast eternal sunlight
Heal us, thy foolish children, from our sins;
Who heed thee not, but careless of thy Presence
Turn our bent backs on thee, and scratch and scrabble
In ash-heaps for salvation._
I SAW A FAIR HOUSE
I saw a fair house standing in a garden, but no one moved about it;
And I said to some who stood by, Who is the owner or dweller here?
And they said, We know not. Sometimes we see a form at a window, but it
is for a moment only, and then it is gone.
* * * * *
Then I went up to the door of the house, and turned the handle very
softly, and went in.
And the house was like a place deserted, yet was there a kind of order
as if it might be used; and the tables were laid with victuals, and
there was no lack of necessaries or of comforts;
And servants passed along the corridors; so I asked one of them, Where
is the mistress of your house?
And he said, I know not.
* * * * *
Then I went on again, and passed softly through many rooms, and peeped
into others;
And at last in a far chamber I came upon the figure of a woman, alone,
and seated on a chair, with her head on her knees, and buried in her
hands;
And I said, Are you the mistress of this house?
And when she lifted her face I saw it was very beautiful, and her eyes
were glorious as the eyes of Love himself, but they were stained with
weeping.
And she said, This is not my house, it is my prison.
And I said, Are not these servants here to minister to you?
She answered, Yes——but what is that if they are only here to minister to
me?
But these rooms, I said, and well-set tables?
Yes—but what is that if they are only swept and garnished for me?
And this garden, and the fair outlook from it?
Yes—but since I may not even go my own errands beyond the gate?
And I said, How is that?
And she answered, Indeed I long to go down into the world, but I may
not; no sooner do I show the face of Love than I am execrated as one
forbidden and an outcast. For in this city so long as one remains within
one’s house one may do there what meanness and selfishness one will,
provided one keeps fair the front of the house; but to go forth openly
and share one’s life and the gladness of life with others, that is not
permitted.
* * * * *
And I said, It is a strange city.
And I went out and walked through the streets; but gloom and sadness
reigned, and only in some houses the noise of feasting and debauchery,
and in others a sound of weeping.
A DREAM OF HUMAN LIFE
I dreamed that I saw a wild and lonely promontory on which the sea beat;
and the waves dashed against rocky cliffs and bastions, and flew in
spray over the edges of them, and clouds drifted on overhead, mingling
with the seamist below in one veil which wrapped and shadowed all, save
where now and then a watery beam from the sun glanced through.
And in the midst among the rocks and crags was (it seemed to me) an
ancient ancient fane, like some far forgotten Abbey Church built in an
elder world—nor was it easy to say whether it was indeed built up of
ordinary masonry, or whether by some rude art it had been shapen from
the very crags themselves. But round about it and over the promontory on
all sides the rocks and cliffs were carven in strange forms—sea-monsters
half submerged beneath the waves, and serpents stretching along the
bases of the cliffs, and evil shapes thrown up on land and grasping at
the rocks with iron claws; and beside them forms heroic of men and women
on ledges here and there and pinnacles, through the mist half-shown—as
it might have been S. George against the dragon, or Andromeda to the
rock-face chained, or Perseus with the Gorgon’s head in hand.
But who they really were I could not well see. Only ever as the spray
and wind wreathed by, the figures as in mortal combat seemed to move and
menace each other, and serpents writhed and sea-beasts plunged through
waves. And from the ancient fane came the sound of music continually—now
low and distant, now rising with the storm and mingling with the
ocean-roar and wild cry of the wind: while overhead amid the breaking
lights was a fluttering as of Wings.
* * * * *
And presently a change came over my dream; and looking again I saw that
the storm had ceased, and the promontory was lying there in the
sunshine, calm and peaceful; and the rocks were black no more, but full
of color and glory; and the hero figures were in their places, at rest
and beautiful to look on; and even the monsters that had seemed so
terrible had a grace of their own, transformed in the peaceful light to
harmless grotesque things. And the whole land seemed to thrill with a
subterranean music, and on a high crag brooding over all was a figure
with arms outstretched.
* * * * *
And once more my dream changed; and I looked, and the rocks had become
like ordinary rocks and sea-cliffs, and grasses and wild flowers grew,
and little habitations nestled, in the hollows of them; and the sea
crawled about the boulders lying below them; and the promontory ran out
into the ocean, and ships went past it to all parts of the world.
THE COAST OF LIGURIA
A thousand years are nothing.
Once the Ligurian, sturdy and thickset, scaled these rocks,
And built his beehive huts of unhewn stone on the limestone terraces,
And gathered snails for food, and fought his tribal battles.
Now the Greek wanders along the shore, and oleander and rosemary
Shine in the moon for him, or Daphne hides
Among the laurel groves, or Heracles
Drives his red cattle home along the coast-line.
Later, the Roman makes great roads, and marches columns of soldiers
through the dust,
Where overhead some temple of Castor and Pollux on the height
Gives omen of good fortune. The Christian follows,
Peacefully toiling in his olive-garden,
Hymning the gentle god,
And turns the Temple to a shrine of Michael—rechristens Mars, St.
Martin.
But presently the Moor with fire and rapine sweeps the coast,
Or in his mountain-fastness, for a moment resting, watches the shining
scimitar of the sea
Sheathed in the bay, its scabbard. Then, in their turn,
Bishops and Barons rule the land, and rage against each other. In the
end the Modern
Buries it all in a big Hotel’s foundations
Or the embankment of a Railroad.
* * * * *
Yet still beneath the surface all is alive.
Still the old peasant-woman—grin-faced, big-mouthed, with big-palmed
hands, short fingers, and bandy climbing legs—among the rocks
Goes foraging for snails. The people still
Dimly athwart the mists of time remember,
Of Heracles the Savior,
How on this Plain, that Promontory, he rested
From his great labors in the West returning.
Still the little Church of St. Michael on the rock
Stands dearer to the folk for being pagan;
And still provençal songs and dances gladden the vintage;
And Moorish faces, and Greek, and old Phœnician,
Stir in the villages a stones-throw from the rail.
* * * * *
And still old names and festivals and customs
Linger along the coast and country side;
And still the hills stand, still the herbs diffuse
From the warm ground the old intoxication
Of aromatic sweetness. The waters still
Lap blue against the rocks. The snowy Alps
Look o’er the foot-hills and far out to sea,
To where and when perchance a worthier race
Than all that yet has been at length shall come
And gaze with grateful eyes upon their beauty,
And crown their slopes with gladness.
EASTER DAY ON MT. MOUNIER
(_In the Alpes Maritimes_)
Silence.—
Here on a rock in blue mid-air nine thousand feet,
The whole encircling sky flooded with light—the sun an unfaceable point
in the dazzling zenith,
Warm, windless, basking—the snow at our feet a million bright points
glittering;
And far around a multitudinous sea of peaks,
Frozen, of rock and ice, and fields of rounded whiteness,
And jutting shoulders, and slopes of shale, and walls,
Behind each other rising:
All drenched, dissolved, in light,
And waiting, silent, rapt, as if to break into song.
* * * * *
But not a sound.
Buried in invisible valleys—’mid pine and larch and torrent-beds below—
Villages ply their daily round of labor;
The peasant hacks deep the soil around his vine-roots, or with his long
pole beats the boughs of olive;
Far by the sea, mid garden-terraces, hotels and villas, the great town
keeps its carnival of Easter—
Unseen, unthought-of, here.
* * * * *
Here only rests the stillness of the Earth, waiting upon the glory of
the Sun; or here and there in some calm lakelet imaged.
Ages fly by, and almost without change; dim lines of floating cloud just
fringe the horizon; vistas of far lands, distant times, unfold;
And the silence of centuries holds the secret of history
Lost in the light of heaven.
AT MENTONE
Why speak ye not, ye beautiful lands and seas,
Hung like a magic curtain in the light?
What dumbness holds you, O divine vast Earth?
* * * * *
Ye stretches of smooth bare rock, dotted with cactus and aloe,
Rising so bold in the sun, from your deep dark gorges below;
Ye pine woods on the mountain flanks;
And ye, ye terraces of endless labor, planted with vine and lemon and
the abounding olive,
With peasant cots and cabins here and there, and cisterns where the
frogs croak night and day;
Why speak ye not, why speak ye not?
Why with that strange prophetic glance of yours
Hang ye in heaven there, magic lands and seas,
Nor say the word we wait for?
* * * * *
The Campanile and red roof of the village church show out seaward
against the sky-line; and the cypresses stand sentinel in the cemetery
on the hill above;
The borage-flowers beneath the lemon branches catch the hues of sea and
sky; runnels of water sparkle through the grass by the pathside; the
scent of orange-bloom is in the air;
Far back into the valleys stretch the gray shade and gloom of the
olive-yards; and the narrow tumbled alleys of the mountain-villages are
like huge rock-burrows of human beings;
The grizzled wrinkled old man on his little plot of ground, and the
young man beside him, work doggedly on with their mattocks through the
heat of the day;
The broad-bosomed placid-eyed girl tends her flock of goats on the
higher ledges.
* * * * *
Ye leafing fig-trees, like silver candelabra of green flame!
And ye, pale-blossoming peaches, dainty bright!
And ye, ye immemorial aromatic herbs and bushes— arbutus, myrtle,
lavender, rosemary, thyme—trampled to perfume by the feet of
long-forgotten races;
And thou, blue bay, with myriad points of light, and sky above with
subtle answering quiver,
And high far crests of gleaming purple crag, and snows beyond,
Flaming, all flaming in the light!
Why speak ye not?
* * * * *
Cave men and women and children, on your sides by the sea-shore,
Your long skulls resting still in the palms of your bony hands,
A score millenniums lying in the same position—
Why wake and speak ye not?
Why utter not the thoughts that were, for you, the world?
Ye dead that build the rocks, and are the Earth, and fill, without a
void, the crystal air!
And Thou one dead (for each and all of us)—one dead for whom our life
we’ld gladly give—
[Thou whose remembrance passes through all sights and sounds,
transforming and transforming them]—
Why through the veil of this material texture showest thou not, dear
soul of things, thy face?
What dumbness holds you?
O divine vast Earth,
Why utterest not the voice we long to hear?
MONTE CARLO
All the long afternoon in a cloudless sky, slowly towards its setting
the sinking sun
Looks on a scene of wonderful beauty.
Deep below over the rocks, through luscious tangles of geranium and rose
and heliotrope in flower, the sea sparkles a rich turquoise blue;
Palms mingle with mimosa and myrtle amid the gardens;
The little cape of Monaco stands out, a stone’s-throw across the
harbour—the mountains of Mentone run down to the sea—and overhead in the
clear air rise (two thousand feet) the great frowning rocks of Turbia,
with their ancient Roman tower.
* * * * *
In front of the Casino, on a gravelled space, dazzling in light, a
throng of all nationalities—Germans, Russians, French, Italians,
English, Americans—goes to and fro,
Or sits at the Café tables, sipping coffee and cognac and maraschino:
The puffy fussy Germans, the dull-eyed English, the feverish Russians
and French.
The band, beneath its awning, plays; carriages drive up, and automatic
cars with dusty occupants arrive; the newcomers alight and ascend the
steps of the Casino; fashionable women are in evidence, some carrying
long roulette-purses with chains;
Girls walk about singly or in pairs—pale, with carefully set profiles,
lips, hair, and with immense hats and choice-colored costumes,
orange-red or primrose or lavender or dead-white;
The knots, the groups, form and re-form; the waiters hurry to and fro;
while in a corner with easel and palette an artist takes a sketch of the
whole scene.
* * * * *
And still the sun nears its setting.
The air floats over, with the delicious scent of orange-blossom and
mimosa from the gardens; the shadows form in blue folds on the distant
mountains, the rocks overhead stand sturdier, more and more
bastion-like, as though an earth-shock might tumble them on the crowd;
In the little harbour the wharf-men, with dusty sashes round their
waists, are coaling a great white yacht, already half lost in shadow;
Along the shore in a green high-prowed boat some fishermen row and drop
their seine net in the same old fashion of centuries;
The peasant climbs his terraces of olive, the goatherd looks down from
his high perch among the rocks, and hears the faint strains of the band
and catches the glance of the dresses.
And still the sun nears its setting.
And still, within, as all day since noon, the feverish crowd sits or
stands round the tables;
Nigh twenty tables—well nigh a thousand people, for the most part bent
on business—all but a few by the glitter dazed of the eyes of the great
god Chance.
Hats doffed, a hush reigns; tiptoe they move about that huge saloon, as
in some Temple.
* * * * *
And now the great shaded lamps are lighted, hanging close over the green
cloth.
See! how beautiful is the face of this little old lady, with tiny
shrunken body and trembling mittened hands—the deep eyes, and dark
shades in the eye sockets, and pitiful tender mouth!
Each round she carefully places a gold piece on some compartment, and
watches for the result—nor seems to doubt her occupation for a moment.
Next her a young girl of eighteen or nineteen, aristocratic-featured,
sits intent, and hides her hot eyes and straight somewhat pinched mouth
under the brim of a broad white hat.
Close by again, see, a woman in black, of clear frank simple-minded
type, almost a rustic, standing behind a chair and trying one or two
throws;
And here a man, faultlessly attired and with absurdly unconcerned
manner, sitting close by a croupier, and every now and then changing a
thousand-franc note for gold—which he dots about the board in the most
casual way, and apparently with complete want of success;
And there, an old man with bald hot-veined forehead and grey hair,
deeply thinking, pencilling, computing, doubles his stakes with
determination as he steadily loses.
Two demi-mondaines in waved and fretted hair, with long kid gloves
covered with bracelets, push somewhat petulantly a little pile of gold
across the board—then rake together their winnings and walk away.
There again, in the shade of many standing behind her, sits a strange
Sibyll-like woman, with bat-wing trimmings in her hat. A half-formed
smile dwells on her impassive face. She always wins, they say; and not a
few furtively follow her lead in the chances.
Here is a young German student with old scars across his face; there, a
Dundreary-whiskered yellow-haired Englishman of a type almost extinct at
home; there, a business-like woman in mourning, with sharp nose and
decided manner, evidently retrieving the fortunes of her family;
And there behind her an elderly respectable English matron, most anxious
to speculate, but looking carefully round first to see if anyone
recognises her;
And here again a big-chinned, flabby French youth with a suppressed boil
on his neck.
* * * * *
Curious, the suppressed feverish sentiment of the whole scene, the
quiet, the politeness; the occasional sharp glances, or hurried
retirement from the table, the swift self-satisfactions, and the inward
gnashings of teeth;
The many faces seamed with wrinkles spreading fanshaped upwards from the
bridge of the nose, or with twirled goat’s-horn mustachios;
The little bald director on his high chair, white-skinned and
white-haired, with big head, and quick beady eyes glancing through
strong spectacles, watching closely the croupiers and the public;
The detectives among the throng;
The arrival at one of the tables of a roll of notes for a hundred
thousand francs, to support the failing bank—the little stir of
excitement among the gamblers, and the added stakes in consequence.
* * * * *
And now, outside, the sun has sunk.
Light-blue and white the calm sea lies beyond the palm-fronds, white
sails speck the horizon, and the blue shadows on the silent hills are
beautiful.
The fishermen have finished their haul, and stand chatting on the beach
as they thumb from the meshes of the net and store in baskets the fish,
which bring them a few pence for their day’s labor, presently to be
served up at fabulous prices in the restaurants.
The goatherds drive their goats homeward, with tinkling bells, and
peering over the rocks look downward on the Eden which they may not
enter.
The primitive peasant-woman, with great mouth and ears unlearned of
aught so modern as French or Italian, returns to the arched streets of
her hill-top village—Roccabruna or Eza or Turbia—and ere the glow of
sunset dies from the sky is fast asleep.
But the lights of the Casino shine reflected in the water, and the
strains of the band, through the scented air, vibrate, and from the
gaming-tables the crowd drifts to its supper-tables—while late through
the night the telegrams flash to Vienna or London or Paris.
INDIA, THE WISDOM-LAND
Here also in India—wonderful, hidden—over thousands of miles,
Through thousands of miles of coco-nut groves, by the winding banks of
immense rivers, over interminable areas of rice-fields,
On the great Ghauts and Himálayas, through vast jungles tenanted by wild
beasts,
Under the cloudless glorious sky—the sun terrible in strength and
beauty—the moon so keen and clear among the tree-tops,
In vast and populous cities, behind colors and creeds and sects and
races and families,
Behind the interminable close-fitting layers of caste and custom,
Here also, hidden away, the secret, the divine knowledge.
* * * * *
Ages back, thousands of years lost in the dim past,
A race of seers over the northern mountains, with flocks and herds,
Into India, the Wisdom-land, descended;
The old men leading—not belated in the rear—
Eagle-eyed, gracious-eyed old men, with calm faces, resolute calm
mouths,
Active, using their bodies with perfect command and power—retaining them
to prolonged age, or laying them down in death at will.
* * * * *
These men, retiring rapt—also at will—in the vast open under the sun or
stars,
Having circled and laid aside desire, having lifted and removed from
themselves the clinging veils of thought and oblivion,
Saw, and became what they saw, the imperishable universe.
Within them, sun and moon and stars, within them past and future,
Interiors of objects and of thoughts revealed—one with all being—
Life past, death past—the calm and boundless sea
Of deep, of changeless incommunicable Joy.
* * * * *
And now to-day, under the close-fitting layers of caste and custom,
hidden away,
The same seers, the same knowledge.
All these thousands of years the long tradition kept intact,
Handed down, the sacred lore, from one to another, carefully guarded;
Beneath the outer conventional shows, beneath all the bonds of creed and
race, gliding like a stream which nothing can detain,
Dissolving in its own good time all bonds, all creeds,
The soul’s true being—the cosmic vast emancipated life—Freedom,
Equality—
The precious semen of Democracy.
TANZBÖDELI
High on a rock that juts above the Lauterbrunnen valley,
Seven thousand feet in air, a little floor of grass,
Even and smooth, with flowers—
The little dancing-ground, they call it (and have called, how many
centuries?)—
And then across the gorge, and again some seven thousand feet higher,
In slopes of rock and ice, the Jungfrau towering over, Proud and
magnificent; and in her train seven mountains—