I 'm sober. After this I stick to beer,
And drop the circus when the sane folks leave.
A man 's a fool to look at things too near:
They look back, and begin to cut up queer.
Beasts do, at any rate; especially
Wild devils caged. They have the coolest way
Of being something else than what you see:
You pass a sleek young zebra nosing hay,
A nylghau looking bored and distingué,--
And think you 've seen a donkey and a bird.
Not on your life! Just glance back, if you dare.
The zebra chews, the nylghau has n't stirred;
But something 's happened, Heaven knows what or where,
To freeze your scalp and pompadour your hair.
I 'm not precisely an æolian lute
Hung in the wandering winds of sentiment,
But drown me if the ugliest, meanest brute
Grunting and fretting in that sultry tent
Did n't just floor me with embarrassment!
'T was like a thunder-clap from out the clear,
One minute they were circus beasts, some grand,
Some ugly, some amusing, and some queer:
Rival attractions to the hobo band,
The flying jenny, and the peanut stand.
Next minute they were old hearth-mates of mine!
Lost people, eyeing me with such a stare!
Patient, satiric, devilish, divine;
A gaze of hopeless envy, squalid care,
Hatred, and thwarted love, and dim despair.
Within my blood my ancient kindred spoke,--
Grotesque and monstrous voices, heard afar
Down ocean caves when behemoth awoke,
Or through fern forests roared the plesiosaur
Locked with the giant-bat in ghastly war.
And suddenly, as in a flash of light,
I saw great Nature working out her plan;
Through all her shapes from mastodon to mite
Forever groping, testing, passing on
To find at last the shape and soul of Man.
Till in the fullness of accomplished time,
Comes brother Forepaugh, upon business bent,
Tracks her through frozen and through torrid clime,
And shows us, neatly labeled in a tent,
The stages of her huge experiment;
Blabbing aloud her shy and reticent hours;
Dragging to light her blinking, slothful moods;
Publishing fretful seasons when her powers
Worked wild and sullen in her solitudes,
Or when her mordant laughter shook the woods.
Here, round about me, were her vagrant births;
Sick dreams she had, fierce projects she essayed;
Her qualms, her fiery prides, her crazy mirths;
The troublings of her spirit as she strayed,
Cringed, gloated, mocked, was lordly, was afraid,
On that long road she went to seek mankind;
Here were the darkling coverts that she beat
To find the Hider she was sent to find;
Here the distracted footprints of her feet
Whereby her soul's Desire she came to greet.
But why should they, her botch-work, turn about
And stare disdain at me, her finished job?
Why was the place one vast suspended shout
Of laughter? Why did all the daylight throb
With soundless guffaw and dumb-stricken sob?
Helpless I stood among those awful cages;
The beasts were walking loose, and I was bagged!
I, I, last product of the toiling ages,
Goal of heroic feet that never lagged,--
A little man in trousers, slightly jagged.
Deliver me from such another jury!
The Judgment-day will be a picnic to 't.
Their satire was more dreadful than their fury,
And worst of all was just a kind of brute
Disgust, and giving up, and sinking mute.
Survival of the fittest, adaptation,
And all their other evolution terms,
Seem to omit one small consideration,
To wit, that tumblebugs and angleworms
Have souls: there 's soul in everything that squirms.
And souls are restless, plagued, impatient things,
All dream and unaccountable desire;
Crawling, but pestered with the thought of wings;
Spreading through every inch of earth's old mire
Mystical hanker after something higher.
Wishes _are_ horses, as I understand.
I guess a wistful polyp that has strokes
Of feeling faint to gallivant on land
Will come to be a scandal to his folks;
Legs he will sprout, in spite of threats and jokes.
And at the core of every life that crawls
Or runs or flies or swims or vegetates--
Churning the mammoth's heart-blood, in the galls
Of shark and tiger planting gorgeous hates,
Lighting the love of eagles for their mates;
Yes, in the dim brain of the jellied fish
That is and is not living--moved and stirred
From the beginning a mysterious wish,
A vision, a command, a fatal Word:
The name of Man was uttered, and they heard.
Upward along the æons of old war
They sought him: wing and shank-bone, claw and bill
Were fashioned and rejected; wide and far
They roamed the twilight jungles of their will;
But still they sought him, and desired him still.
Man they desired, but mind you, Perfect Man,
The radiant and the loving, yet to be!
I hardly wonder, when they came to scan
The upshot of their strenuosity,
They gazed with mixed emotions upon _me_.
Well, my advice to you is, Face the creatures,
Or spot them sideways with your weather eye,
Just to keep tab on their expansive features;
It is n't pleasant when you 're stepping high
To catch a giraffe smiling on the sly.
If nature made you graceful, don't get gay
Back-to before the hippopotamus;
If meek and godly, find some place to play
Besides right where three mad hyenas fuss:
You may hear language that we won't discuss.
If you 're a sweet thing in a flower-bed hat,
Or her best fellow with your tie tucked in,
Don't squander love's bright springtime girding at
An old chimpanzee with an Irish chin:
_There may be hidden meaning in his grin._
THE GOLDEN JOURNEY
All day he drowses by the sail
With dreams of her, and all night long
The broken waters are at song
Of how she lingers, wild and pale,
When all the temple lights are dumb,
And weaves her spells to make him come.
The wide sea traversed, he will stand
With straining eyes, until the shoal
Green water from the prow shall roll
Upon the yellow strip of sand--
Searching some fern-hid tangled way
Into the forest old and grey.
Then he will leap upon the shore,
And cast one look up at the sun,
Over his loosened locks will run
The dawn breeze, and a bird will pour
Its rapture out to make life seem
Too sweet to leave for such a dream.
But all the swifter will he go
Through the pale, scattered asphodels,
Down mote-hung dusk of olive dells,
To where the ancient basins throw
Fleet threads of blue and trembling zones
Of gold upon the temple stones.
There noon keeps just a twilight trace;
Twixt love and hate, and death and birth,
No man may choose; nor sobs nor mirth
May enter in that haunted place.
All day the fountain sphynx lets drip
Slow drops of silence from her lip.
To hold the porch-roof slender girls
Of milk-white marble stand arow;
Doubt never blurs a single brow,
And never the noon's faintness curls
From their expectant hush of pride
The lips the god has glorified.
But these things he will barely view,
Or if he stay to heed them, still
But as the lark the lights that spill
From out the sun it soars unto,
Where, past the splendors and the heats,
The sun's heart's self forever beats.
For wide the brazen doors will swing
Soon as his sandals touch the pave;
The anxious light inside will wave
And tremble to a lunar ring
About the form that lieth prone
Before the dreadful altar-stone.
She will not look or speak or stir,
But with drowned lips and cheeks death-white
Will lie amid the pool of light,
Until, grown faint with thirst of her,
He shall bow down his face and sink
Breathless beneath the eddying brink.
Then a swift music will begin,
And as the brazen doors shut slow,
There will be hurrying to and fro,
And lights and calls and silver din,
While through the star-freaked swirl of air
The god's sweet cruel eyes will stare.
HEART'S WILD-FLOWER
To-night her lids shall lift again, slow, soft, with vague desire,
And lay about my breast and brain their hush of spirit fire,
And I shall take the sweet of pain as the laborer his hire.
And though no word shall e'er be said to ease the ghostly sting,
And though our hearts, unhoused, unfed, must still go wandering,
My sign is set upon her head while stars do meet and sing.
Not such a sign as women wear who make their foreheads tame
With life's long tolerance, and bear love's sweetest, humblest name,
Nor such as passion eateth bare with its crown of tears and flame.
Nor such a sign as happy friend sets on his friend's dear brow
When meadow-pipings break and blend to a key of autumn woe,
And the woodland says playtime 's at end, best unclasp hands and go.
But where she strays, through blight or blooth, one fadeless flower
she wears,
A little gift God gave my youth,--whose petals dim were fears,
Awes, adorations, songs of ruth, hesitancies, and tears.
O heart of mine, with all thy powers of white beatitude,
What are the dearest of God's dowers to the children of his blood?
How blow the shy, shy wilding flowers in the hollows of his wood?
HARMONICS
This string upon my harp was best beloved:
I thought I knew its secrets through and through;
Till an old man, whose young eyes lightened blue
'Neath his white hair, bent over me and moved
His fingers up and down, and broke the wire
To such a laddered music, rung on rung,
As from the patriarch's pillow skyward sprung
Crowded with wide-flung wings and feet of fire.
O vibrant heart! so metely tuned and strung
That any untaught hand can draw from thee
One clear gold note that makes the tired years young--
What of the time when Love had whispered me
Where slept thy nodes, and my hand pausefully
Gave to the dim harmonics voice and tongue?
ON THE RIVER
The faint stars wake and wonder,
Fade and find heart anew;
Above us and far under
Sphereth the watchful blue.
Silent she sits, outbending,
A wild pathetic grace,
A beauty strange, heart-rending,
Upon her hair and face.
O spirit cries that sever
The cricket's level drone!
O to give o'er endeavor
And let love have its own!
Within the mirrored bushes
There wakes a little stir;
The white-throat moves, and hushes
Her nestlings under her.
Beneath, the lustrous river,
The watchful sky o'erhead.
God, God, that Thou should'st ever
Poison thy children's bread!
THE BRACELET OF GRASS
The opal heart of afternoon
Was clouding on to throbs of storm,
Ashen within the ardent west
The lips of thunder muttered harm,
And as a bubble like to break
Hung heaven's trembling amethyst,
When with the sedge-grass by the lake
I braceleted her wrist.
And when the ribbon grass was tied,
Sad with the happiness we planned,
Palm linked in palm we stood awhile
And watched the raindrops dot the sand;
Until the anger of the breeze
Chid all the lake's bright breathing down,
And ravished all the radiancies
From her deep eyes of brown.
We gazed from shelter on the storm,
And through our hearts swept ghostly pain
To see the shards of day sweep past,
Broken, and none might mend again.
Broken, that none shall ever mend;
Loosened, that none shall ever tie.
O the wind and the wind, will it never end?
O the sweeping past of the ruined sky!
THE DEPARTURE
I
I sat beside the glassy evening sea,
One foot upon the thin horn of my lyre,
And all its strings of laughter and desire
Crushed in the rank wet grasses heedlessly;
Nor did my dull eyes care to question how
The boat close by had spread its saffron sails,
Nor what might mean the coffers and the bales,
And streaks of new wine on the gilded prow.
Neither was wonder in me when I saw
Fair women step therein, though they were fair
Even to adoration and to awe,
And in the gracious fillets of their hair
Were blossoms from a garden I had known,
Sweet mornings ere the apple buds were blown.
II
One gazed steadfast into the dying west
With lips apart to greet the evening star;
And one with eyes that caught the strife and jar
Of the sea's heart, followed the sunward breast
Of a lone gull; from a slow harp one drew
Blind music like a laugh or like a wail;
And in the uncertain shadow of the sail
One wove a crown of berries and of yew.
Yet even as I said with dull desire,
"All these were mine, and one was mine indeed,"
The smoky music burst into a fire,
And I was left alone in my great need,
One foot upon the thin horn of my lyre
And all its strings crushed in the dripping weed.
FADED PICTURES
Only two patient eyes to stare
Out of the canvas. All the rest--
The warm green gown, the small hands pressed
Light in the lap, the braided hair
That must have made the sweet low brow
So earnest, centuries ago,
When some one saw it change and glow--
All faded! Just the eyes burn now.
I dare say people pass and pass
Before the blistered little frame,
And dingy work without a name
Stuck in behind its square of glass.
But I, well, I left Raphael
Just to come drink these eyes of hers,
To think away the stains and blurs
And make all new again and well.
Only, for tears my head will bow,
Because there on my heart's last wall,
Scarce one tint left to tell it all,
A picture keeps its eyes, somehow.
A GREY DAY
Grey drizzling mists the moorlands drape,
Rain whitens the dead sea,
From headland dim to sullen cape
Grey sails creep wearily.
I know not how that merchantman
Has found the heart; but 't is her plan
Seaward her endless course to shape.
Unreal as insects that appall
A drunkard's peevish brain,
O'er the grey deep the dories crawl,
Four-legged, with rowers twain:
Midgets and minims of the earth,
Across old ocean's vasty girth
Toiling--heroic, comical!
I wonder how that merchant's crew
Have ever found the will!
I wonder what the fishers do
To keep them toiling still!
I wonder how the heart of man
Has patience to live out its span,
Or wait until its dreams come true.
THE RIDE BACK
_Before the coming of the dark, he dreamed
An old-world faded story: of a knight,
Much like in need to him, who was no knight!
And of a road, much like the road his soul
Groped over, desperate to meet Her soul.
Beside the bed Death waited. And he dreamed._
His limbs were heavy from the fight,
His mail was dark with dust and blood;
On his good horse they bound him tight,
And on his breast they bound the rood
To help him in the ride that night.
When he crashed through the wood's wet rim,
About the dabbled reeds a breeze
Went moaning broken words and dim;
The haggard shapes of twilight trees
Caught with their scrawny hands at him.
Between the doubtful aisles of day
Strange folk and lamentable stood
To maze and beckon him astray,
But through the grey wrath of the wood
He held right on his bitter way.
When he came where the trees were thin,
The moon sat waiting there to see;
On her worn palm she laid her chin,
And laughed awhile in sober glee
To think how strong this knight had been.
When he rode past the pallid lake,
The withered yellow stems of flags
Stood breast-high for his horse to break;
Lewd as the palsied lips of hags
The petals in the moon did shake.
When he came by the mountain wall,
The snow upon the heights looked down
And said, "The sight is pitiful.
The nostrils of his steed are brown
With frozen blood; and he will fall."
The iron passes of the hills
With question were importunate;
And, but the sharp-tongued icy rills
Had grown for once compassionate,
The spiteful shades had had their wills.
Just when the ache in breast and brain
And the frost smiting at his face
Had sealed his spirit up with pain,
He came out in a better place,
And morning lay across the plain.
He saw the wet snails crawl and cling
On fern-stalks where the rime had run,
The careless birds went wing and wing,
And in the low smile of the sun
Life seemed almost a pleasant thing.
Right on the panting charger swung
Through the bright depths of quiet grass;
The knight's lips moved as if they sung,
And through the peace there came to pass
The flattery of lute and tongue.
From the mid-flowering of the mead
There swelled a sob of minstrelsy,
Faint sackbuts and the dreamy reed,
And plaintive lips of maids thereby,
And songs blown out like thistle seed.
Forth from her maidens came the bride,
And as his loosened rein fell slack
He muttered, "In their throats they lied
Who said that I should ne'er win back
To kiss her lips before I died!"
SONG-FLOWER AND POPPY
I
IN NEW YORK
He plays the deuce with my writing time,
For the penny my sixth-floor neighbor throws;
He finds me proud of my pondered rhyme,
And he leaves me--well, God knows
It takes the shine from a tunester's line
When a little mate of the deathless Nine
Pipes up under your nose!
For listen, there is his voice again,
Wistful and clear and piercing sweet.
Where did the boy find such a strain
To make a dead heart beat?
And how in the name of care can he bear
To jet such a fountain into the air
In this gray gulch of a street?
Tuscan slopes or the Piedmontese?
Umbria under the Apennine?
South, where the terraced lemon-trees
Round rich Sorrento shine?
Venice moon on the smooth lagoon?--
Where have I heard that aching tune,
That boyish throat divine?
Beyond my roofs and chimney pots
A rag of sunset crumbles gray;
Below, fierce radiance hangs in clots
O'er the streams that never stay.
Shrill and high, newsboys cry
The worst of the city's infamy
For one more sordid day.
But my desire has taken sail
For lands beyond, soft-horizoned:
Down languorous leagues I hold the trail,
From Marmalada, steeply throned
Above high pastures washed with light,
Where dolomite by dolomite
Looms sheer and spectral-coned,
To purple vineyards looking south
On reaches of the still Tyrrhene;
Virgilian headlands, and the mouth
Of Tiber, where that ship put in
To take the dead men home to God,
Whereof Casella told the mode
To the great Florentine.
Up stairways blue with flowering weed
I climb to hill-hung Bergamo;
All day I watch the thunder breed
Golden above the springs of Po,
Till the voice makes sure its wavering lure,
And by Assisi's portals pure
I stand, with heart bent low.
O hear, how it blooms in the blear dayfall,
That flower of passionate wistful song!
How it blows like a rose by the iron wall
Of the city loud and strong.
How it cries "Nay, nay" to the worldling's way,
To the heart's clear dream how it whispers, "Yea;
Time comes, though the time is long."
Beyond my roofs and chimney piles
Sunset crumbles, ragged, dire;
The roaring street is hung for miles
With fierce electric fire.
Shrill and high, newsboys cry
The gross of the planet's destiny
Through one more sullen gyre.
Stolidly the town flings down
Its lust by day for its nightly lust;
Who does his given stint, 't is known,
Shall have his mug and crust.--
Too base of mood, too harsh of blood,
Too stout to seize the grosser good,
Too hungry after dust!
O hark! how it blooms in the falling dark,
That flower of mystical yearning song:
Sad as a hermit thrush, as a lark
Uplifted, glad, and strong.
Heart, we have chosen the better part!
Save sacred love and sacred art
Nothing is good for long.
II
AT ASSISI
Before St. Francis' burg I wait,
Frozen in spirit, faint with dread;
His presence stands within the gate,
Mild splendor rings his head.
Gently he seems to welcome me:
Knows he not I am quick, and he
Is dead, and priest of the dead?
I turn away from the gray church pile;
I dare not enter, thus undone:
Here in the roadside grass awhile
I will lie and watch for the sun.
Too purged of earth's good glee and strife,
Too drained of the honied lusts of life,
Was the peace these old saints won!
And lo! how the laughing earth says no
To the fear that mastered me;
To the blood that aches and clamors so
How it whispers "Verily."
Here by my side, marvelous-dyed,
Bold stray-away from the courts of pride,
A poppy-bell flaunts free.
St. Francis sleeps upon his hill,
And a poppy flower laughs down his creed;
Triumphant light her petals spill,
His shrines are dim indeed.
Men build and plan, but the soul of man,
Coming with haughty eyes to scan,
Feels richer, wilder need.
How long, old builder Time, wilt bide
Till at thy thrilling word
Life's crimson pride shall have to bride
The spirit's white accord,
Within that gate of good estate
Which thou must build us soon or late,
Hoar workman of the Lord?
HOW THE MEAD-SLAVE WAS SET FREE
Nay, move not! Sit just as you are,
Under the carved wings of the chair.
The hearth-glow sifting through your hair
Turns every dim pearl to a star
Dawn-drowned in floods of brightening air.
I have been thinking of that night
When all the wide hall burst to blaze
With spears caught up, thrust fifty ways
To find my throat, while I lay white
And sick with joy, to think the days
I dragged out in your hateful North--
A slave, constrained at banquet's need
To fill the black bull's horns with mead
For drunken sea-thieves--were henceforth
Cast from me as a poison weed,
While Death thrust roses in my hands!
But you, who knew the flowers he had
Were no such roses ripe and glad
As nod in my far southern lands,
But pallid things to make men sad,
Put back the spears with one calm hand,
Raised on your knee my wondering head,
Wiped off the trickling drops of red
From my torn forehead with a strand
Of your bright loosened hair, and said:
"Sea-rovers! would you kill a skald?
This boy has hearkened Odin sing
Unto the clang and winnowing
Of raven's wings. His heart is thralled
To music, as to some strong king;
"And this great thraldom works disdain
Of lesser serving. Once release
These bonds he bears, and he may please
To give you guerdon sweet as rain
To sailors calmed in thirsty seas."
Then, having soothed their rage to rest,
You led me to old Skagi's throne,
Where yellow gold rims in the stone;
And in my arms, against my breast,
Thrust his great harp of walrus bone.
How they came crowding, tunes on tunes!
How good it was to touch the strings
And feel them thrill like happy things
That flutter from the gray cocoons
On hedge rows, in your gradual springs!
All grew a blur before my sight,
As when the stealthy white fog slips
At noonday on the staggering ships;
I saw one single spot of light,
Your white face, with its eager lips--
And so I sang to that. O thou
Who liftedst me from out my shame!
Wert thou content when Skagi came,
Put his own chaplet on my brow,
And bent and kissed his own harp-frame?
A DIALOGUE IN PURGATORY
_Poi disse un altro.... "Io son Buonconte:
Giovanna o altri non ha di me cura;
Per ch' io vo tra costor con bassa fronte."_
_Seguito il terzo spirito al secondo,
"Ricorditi di me, che son la Pia;
Siena mi fe, disfecemi Maremma.
Salsi colui che inannellata pria
Disposata m' avea colla sua gemma."_
PURGATORIO, CANTO V.
I
BUONCONTE
Sister, the sun has ceased to shine;
By companies of twain and trine
Stars gather; from the sea
The moon comes momently.
On all the roads that ring our hill
The sighing and the hymns are still:
It is our time to gain
Strength for to-morrow's pain.
Yet still your eyes are wholly bent
Upon the way that Virgil went,
Following Sordello's sign,
With the dark Florentine.
Night now has barred their upward track:
There where the mountain-side folds back
And in the Vale of Flowers
The Princes count their hours
Those three friends sit in the clear starlight
With the green-clad angels left and right,--
Soul made by wakeful soul
More earnest for the goal.
So let us, sister, though our place
Is barren of that Valley's grace,
Sit hand in hand, till we
Seem rich as those friends be.
II
LA PIA
Brother, 't were sweet your hand to feel
In mine; it would a little heal
The shame that makes me poor,
And dumb at the heart's core.
But where our spirits felt Love's dearth,
Down on the green and pleasant earth,
Remains the fleshly shell,
Love's garment tangible.
So now our hands have naught to say:
Heart unto heart some other way
Must utter forth its pain,
Must glee or comfort gain.
Ah, no! For souls like you and me
Some comfort waits, but never glee:
Not yours the young men's singing
In Heaven, at the bride-bringing;
Not mine, beside God's living waters,
Dance of the marriageable daughters,
The laughter and the ease
Beneath His summer trees.
III
BUONCONTE
In fair Arezzo's halls and bowers
My Giovanna speeds her hours
Delicately, nor cares
To shorten by her prayers
My days upon this mount of ruth:
If those who come from earth speak sooth,
Though still I call and call,
She does not heed at all.
And if aright your words I read
At Dante's passing, he you wed
Dipped from the drains of Hell
The marriage hydromel.
O therefore, while the moon intense
Holds yonder dreaming sea suspense,
And round the shadowy coasts
Gather the wistful ghosts,
Let us sit quiet all the night,
And wonder, wonder on the light
Worn by those spirits fair
Whom Love has not left bare.
IV
LA PIA
Even as theirs, the chance was mine
To meet and mate beneath Love's sign,
To feel in soul and sense
The solemn influence
Which, breathed upon a man or maid,
Maketh forever unafraid,
Though life with death unite
That spirit to affright,--