_From
The
Hidden
Way_
BOOKS _by_ MR. CABELL
_Biography_:
BEYOND LIFE
FIGURES OF EARTH
DOMNEI
CHIVALRY
JURGEN
THE LINE OF LOVE
THE HIGH PLACE
GALLANTRY
THE CERTAIN HOUR
THE CORDS OF VANITY
FROM THE HIDDEN WAY
THE RIVET IN GRANDFATHER’S NECK
THE EAGLE’S SHADOW
THE CREAM OF THE JEST
STRAWS AND PRAYER-BOOKS
_Scholia_:
THE LINEAGE OF LICHFIELD
TABOO
THE JEWEL MERCHANTS
JURGEN AND THE LAW
(_Edited by Guy Holt_)
FROM THE
HIDDEN WAY
_Dizain des Échos_
BY
JAMES BRANCH CABELL
“_Tell me now in what hidden way is Lady Flora, the lovely Roman?
Where’s Hipparchia? and where is Thaïs?... Where is Echo?_”
ROBERT M. McBRIDE & COMPANY
NEW YORK : : : : : : 1924
Revised Version, Copyright,
1916, by JAMES BRANCH CABELL
_Printed in the
United States of America_
Published, 1924
TO
BEVERLEY BLAND MUNFORD
(_31 May 1910_)
“Most blithe and sage and gentle, and most brave!
O true clear heart, so quick to wake and war
Against despondency, lest questioning mar
One hour of living, or foiled hopes enslave
And sour another’s living! not to the grave
Do we commit you,--we that, watching, are
As men at twilight noting which bright star
Is leaped at, missed, clutched, swallowed by which wave.
“The star is gone?--So be it. It will rise
Elsewhere, and undiminished. Even thus
We know that instantly in Paradise--
Yea, in the inmost court of Heaven’s house,--
A gentleman to God lifts those brave eyes
Which yesterday made life more brave for us.”
CONTENTS
PAGE
APOLOGIA AUCTORIS 3
I.--MIGONITIS
AT OUTSET 13
THE OLDEST STORY 15
FALSE DAWN IN TROY 19
EASTER EVE 23
ST. MAGDALENE 24
MARCUS AURELIUS: A SUPPRESSED “MEDITATION” 26
AMAIMON VISITS THE THEBAID 28
DAME VENUS IN THURINGIA 33
II.--EPISTROPHIA
ONE END OF LOVE 37
VILLON QUITS FRANCE 40
INVOCATION: TO THE DARK VENUS 42
RONSARD RE-VOICES A TRUISM 45
JAUNTS FROM STRATFORD 47
INVITATION TO THE VOYAGE 49
STORY OF THE FLOWERY KINGDOM 52
THE HOIDENS 54
III.--LIBITINA
ACCORDING TO THEIR FOLLY 59
FOOT-NOTE FOR IDYLS 61
THE GOD-FATHER 63
BALLAD OF THE DESTROYER 66
EXHORTATION TOWARD ALMSGIVING 69
COMFORT FOR CENTENARIANS 71
THE CONQUEROR PASSES 73
THE MENDICANTS 76
IV.--HORTENSIS
ALONE IN APRIL 81
“--BUT WISDOM IS JUSTIFIED OF HER CHILDREN” 83
THE LOVERS’ DOXOLOGY 85
OF ANNUAL MAGIC: AT TWENTY 86
OF ANNUAL MAGIC: AT TWENTY-FIVE 87
OF ANNUAL MAGIC: AT TWENTY-EIGHT 89
OF ANNUAL MAGIC: AT THIRTY 91
THE DOTARD CONJURER 92
V.--MELÆNIS
UNCHARTED 97
SCHOOL-SONG 99
“AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING--” 101
BALLAD OF THE DOUBLE-SOUL 102
WHEN TRAVELLERS RETURN 105
ANNALS 106
“--AND EVER SHALL BE” 109
THE PERFECT REASON 111
VI.--SCOTEIA
TWO IN TWILIGHT 115
“IN FINE,--” 118
STY-SONG 119
THE TOY-MAKER 121
THE CASTLE OF CONTENT 122
THE PARODIST 124
THE DARK COMPANION 125
SEA-SCAPES 127
VII.--VERTICORDIA
THE AGELESS MAID 131
FROM AFAR 133
COMPETITORS 135
THE STRIKING HOUR 137
LIGHTS OF THE WORLD 140
“--OF ANISE AND CUMMIN ALSO” 142
“SWEET ADELAIS” 144
LOVE’S LOVERS 148
VIII.--RIDENS
BALLAD OF PLAGIARY 153
TOUCHING UBIQUITY 156
FANCIES IN FILIGREE 158
IT IS ENOUGH 160
AN ARCADIAN APOLOGIZES 162
ARCADIANS CONFER IN EXILE 163
THE EAVESDROPPERS 166
NOSTALGIA 168
IX.--APATURIA
GRAY DAYS 173
A WOOD-PIECE 175
LOVE GOES INTO WINTER QUARTERS 176
FLOTSAM 179
HEIRS UNAPPARENT 180
THE SUN’S HIGHWAY 182
THE OLDEST DITTY 185
TO THE SAME AIR AS THE PRECEDING 186
X.--ARMATA
LIGHT COINAGE 189
GRAVE GALLANTRY 191
BY-WORDS 194
ANOTHER LABORER WEIGHS HIS HIRE 195
RETRACTIONS 197
GARDEN-SONG 208
THE CAVERN OF PHIGALIA 210
AT PARTING 211
APOLOGIA AUCTORIS
“_Vous entendez bien joncherie?_”
APOLOGIA AUCTORIS
In agreeing to collaborate with Mr. Cabell, in preparing this volume
of his selections from my inedited verses, I have been influenced by a
number of considerations. I am attempting in this place to indicate a
few of these.
To begin with, it is generally known--according to the literary
reviewers,--that nowadays we are producing an indigenous “new”
poetry, of hitherto unknown directness and simplicity; and that, in
consequence, America is rendering her poets the unprecedented tribute
of purchasing their volumes. That, of course, is one consideration.
Conceivably, too, I think, it may be not unsalutary, at this especial
moment, to contrast the output of what has been, in another place, not
inappropriately described as “the new naïveté” with the productions
of poets who were in reality naïve. Conceivably, at least, one way
of learning what is actually “natural” is to observe the ways of
unsophisticated persons. This much preamble comes as warning that
hereinafter you may look to encounter, in default of the debatable
simplicities of “new” poetry, those genuinely simple melodies which
were born of ages less complex.
§
I admit that, poetry having become in some sort a salable commodity,
a book of verse no longer absolutely demands, as in the old days, a
preface to explain and palliate its existence. None the less, these
verses based upon pre-Renaissance formulæ must keep to the fashion of
their time, and come with a prose pursuivant.
For the way needs clearing, since the road is clogged with the makings
of an ugly syllogism. No matter with what joy we may admire “the new
naïveté,” the poverty of thought evinced in mediæval poetry remains
notorious; and it is, after all, only the mental gist of a poem which
is translatable.
Yet, in truth, the feature which repels, and troubles us, is not so
much that the thoughts of these men were feeble as that their beliefs
were firm. The springtide awakens loveliness and human joy therewith,
true love ennobles the lover, and death is a terrific adventuring
into the dark; such was their simple _credo_: and their belief in its
tenets was unquestioning. Now, it is perhaps more subtle to consider
spring as a meteorological phenomenon, love as an ingenious device for
perpetuating the species, and death as a logical progression toward
higher spheres of activity; yet each may be a miracle, for all that;
and not any longer to see its wonder may quite conceivably be loss
rather than gain. Ophthalmia is at the best an infirm basis whereon to
assume airs of superiority.
Just so, these mediæval rhymesters wrote by choice of what to us seems
prosaic because to them it was throughout heart-shakingly strange.
Their more alert perceptions were aware of a continuous wonderfulness,
on every side, which we have learned to overlook. It really is
astounding, when you come sanely to think of it, to find a frost-nipped
world converted overnight into a place of warmth and beauty; and
they said so, in the best language they could muster. We heirs of
more sophisticated ages cannot but assent; yet even those few of us
who are still guilty, say, once in a blue moon, of reading a little
time-honored verse, avert with more congenial interest toward the
straggling eccentricities of _vers libre_ and of polyphonic prose, with
such eye-arresting gambits as “We maidens are many of us older than
sheep,” and “Hey, old world, shove your staid bonnet over your ear!”
It were flippant to suggest this is the interest that we accord, with
livelier concern, to any other approach of the mentally unbalanced.
Yet wonder, not bewilderment, is the gateway to the palace of art. The
grand power of poetry, in particular, is its interpretative faculty
of so dealing with familiar things as to awaken a full and new sense
of their strangeness. And life affords nothing more remarkable than
its truisms. There is a waggish saying somewhere as to how eagerly we
would all scramble for the best seats if God heralded the coming of
the crocus by mailing circulars or announced a sunrise via the public
journals. The conceit is sound; for Omnipotence would, so to speak,
be versifying the commonplace by stressing its importance, much as
a noble rhyme and meter emphasize so insistently the thought they
clothe that the whole matter dwindles into bathos if (after all) the
thought prove mediocre. Yet the real wonderfulness of the terrestrial
pageant, even then, would consist, not in its felicities of color,
but in its commonplaceness. For the most beautiful and terrible thing
about a sunrise is that it happens every day. Just so the sun arose
when Pliocene monstrosities held the earth as their heritage, just so
it arose to waken the laborers of Nineveh, just so it arose as the
cock crew and Peter for the third time denied his Master: and just so,
too, it will arise--every day,--when Earth is a frozen clod, trundling
voiceless and naked through infinity. A sunrise has nothing to do with
man’s existence, for all that it serves to time his clocks and rouse
his factory-whistles; and therein lies the fundamental beauty of a
sunrise, which is above and beyond and indifferent to the utmost reach
of human achievement, and is therefore worthy to furnish recreation for
human thought.
§
Here, too, we touch one fallacy of our modernists who insist that
poetry should deal with workaday life, and develop the poetic side
of shopwindows and streetcars and pessimism. But in shopwindows and
streetcars and consistent pessimism is to be contemplated nothing
save what man, whether for good or ill, has heaped together in
defiance of nature. He made these things, however curious; he knows
the elements whereof they are compounded; and he comprehends--there
wakens disenchantment--that at a pinch he can patch up something
else of pretty much the same sort. Not hereabouts is to be found
aught fore-ordained and uncontrollable, or the beauty of fatality--of
Ἀνάγκη--and human inefficiency thereunder, such as the old Greeks knew
was necessary to art’s highest strivings.
And what is this Hellenic Ἀνάγκη, after all, but the commonplace
deified, with humanity as pawns? It is assuredly sheer commonplace
to point out that more or less unpleasantness inevitably follows an
elopement with another man’s wife, or that miscegenation tends to
shorten life; yet works of very real merit have been based upon these
truisms, and nobody worth hearing questions the poetry of the _Iliad_
or of _Othello_. Nor is in either case the commonplace an inessential;
attempting to imagine Helen as the fiancée of Menelaus, or Othello as a
Caucasian, you flounder into the inconceivable.
An element of triteness, in fine, must be conceded as necessary to
first class art. That which becomes a classic is, both by etymology
and human nature, something which belongs to a class. It is not in
any way unique; it is innocent of any “disturbing novelty.” Now,
neither Ovid’s Lynceus or Poe’s Dupin, nor even the indestructible Mr.
Holmes (of Baker Street, W. C.), could plausibly detect any disturbing
novelty in the poets of Raynouard’s _Choix des poësies originales des
Troubadours_ and Rochegude’s _Parnasse Occitanien_: and when we find
these tinkling verses, played always on the two strings of love and
death, astonishingly naïve, the thing is partly owing, no doubt, to
our superior perception of the proper ends of poetry, but partly too
to a more obtuse perception of life’s actual wonderfulness. So that in
criticism it behooves us, like Agag of old, to tread softly. By the
rarest luck, there is no such pressing obligation laid on many of us
touching poets--whether immortal or minor,--as compels us either to
criticize or to read.
§
And, truly, it is this consideration, above all others, which emboldens
me to make a volume out of those verses that, for the most part, I
“adapted” during my college life, from bardic byways of even more
ancient eras.... For the rest, a formal bibliography of the sources
of this little book was begun, and laid aside as entailing too much
labor squandered to no utilitarian end. Petronius and Villon, at
worst, require scant introduction to a generation which, the day
before yesterday at any rate, was familiar with _Quo Vadis_ and _If I
Were King_. With Alessandro de Medici, as he misconducts himself in
de Musset’s _Lorenzaccio_, many of us preserve a bowing acquaintance,
however few extend the intimacy to include his Latin or Italian
verses; which, if not positively unknown, would appear to have been
overshadowed, even for the specialist, by the similar diversions of
Alessandro’s more gifted great-grandfather, Lorenzo the Magnificent.
Then, too, Raimbaut de Vaqueiras and his beloved Belhs Cavaliers figure
at respectable length in all books treating of Provençal poetry. And
Nicolas de Caen has, at any event, afforded the late Mr. Howard Pyle
the subject-matter for some striking paintings.
To the other side, apart from any poetical repute, oblivion has
swallowed even Antoine Riczi’s queer part in the matrimonial affairs
of King Henry the Fourth of England. Such unfamiliar names as Charles
Garnier and Théodore Passerat and Alphonse Moreau are not likely ever
to cut a dash in popular romance; and, for very obvious reasons, just
as in the cases of Petronius and Villon, their verses have never been
adjudged particularly suitable for undergraduates to worry through in
colleges. These, therefore, are indisputably forgotten, if indeed in
any general sense they were ever known. Yet here as elsewhere--one
would like to think at least, with the discoverer’s thrill--the
“iniquity of oblivion” has scattered her poppy with rather injudicious
cæcity.
If Petronius be not precisely mediæval, he is past doubt more
antiquated than his present company in nothing save an accident of
birth. And the inclusion of those scattered pieces hereinafter given
severally under the name of Paul Verville has seemed on various grounds
desirable, in spite of their (comparative) modernity of tone. Into the
making of such decisions must always enter, of course, an element of
purely personal taste, wherewith proverbially there can be no disputing
to the arraigner’s profit. To those who do not honor maxims, it can but
be answered, with profound irrationality, that all the verses in this
book possess at least the common feature of owing their existence in
English to the fact that, once upon a time, to put them into English
seemed to their transcriber a natural and desirable action. No other
bond has ever united the contents of any book of English verse. And
although this particular excuse for making rhymes may very often prove
inadequate, experience tends to show that any other reason proves so
invariably.
§
This book’s sub-title appears to me a bit affected. But Mr. Cabell
believes that it will please reviewers, by enabling them to start
off with a smart witticism about its applicability to other books:
and so I yield.... Moreover, I find that, in printing a collection
of “adapted” verses, there seems to be no Median or Persic makeshift
whereby plodding translation may, with the desirable precision, be
distinguished from those less faithful paraphrases in which the
plagiarist has more temerariously pulled about his larcenies. Upon
consideration, this has appeared as satisfactory a rule of thumb as
any:--to indicate the latter class by mention of an author’s name; and
with the former class, to include also the first words of the original.
The curious may seek out at will the victims of some few unacknowledged
borrowings.
ROBERT ETHERIDGE TOWNSEND.
LICHFIELD _April, 1924_.
I
MIGONITIS
“_Autant en emporte ly vens_”
1
AT OUTSET
--After NICOLAS DE CAEN.
_Depart, depart, my book! and live and die
Dependent on the idle fantasy
Of men who cannot view you, quite, as I_
_For I am fond, and willingly mistake
My book to be the book I meant to make,
And cannot judge you, for that phantom’s sake._
_Yet pardon me if I have wrought too ill
In making you, that never spared the will
To shape you perfectly, and lacked the skill._
_Ah, had I but the power, my book, then I
Had wrought in you some wizardry so high
That no man but had listened...._
_They pass by,
And shrug--as we, who know that unto us
It has been granted never to fare thus,
And never to be strong and glorious._
_Is it denied me to perpetuate
What so much loving labor did create?--
I hear Oblivion tap upon the gate,
And acquiesce, not all disconsolate._
FOR I HAVE GOT SUCH RECOMPENSE
OF THAT HIGH-HEARTED EXCELLENCE
WHICH THE CONTENTED CRAFTSMAN KNOWS,
ALONE, THAT TO LOVED LABOR GOES,
AND DAILY DOES THE WORK HE CHOSE,
AND COUNTS ALL ELSE IMPERTINENCE!
2
THE OLDEST STORY
“_Jadis il était roy d’Argos_”
--ANTOINE RICZI.
He was a king in Argos,
She was a queen in Tyre,
And they went astray from the jogtrot way,
In quest of the heart’s desire.
They had pillaged, in royal fashion,
Rare raiments and spiceries
From the marts of Argos, to furnish them cargoes
For traffic in far-off seas;
And before them bright waters parted,
And the wind was fair.
_Because
Love leads us_--they spoke, light-hearted,--
_Who is lord over man-made laws_.
The High Gods noted them, idly
Lolling in Paradise,
And remarked they were erring widely
From rules the High Gods devise.
But the Most High Gods were wise,
And conceded:--_They are not as We
Whom no follies beguile; let them go for a while.
Yet presently all men must see
They attain not to where their desire is,
Lest laxity lose Us men’s love._
--Thus Wotan ordained, or Osiris,
Or Shiva, or Dagon, or Jove.
--_We must think of Our pontiffs in Argos
And praiseworthy prebends in Tyre,
Who would suffer dismay did the parish essay
To win to man’s heart’s desire._
So these two fared ever westward--
Elate, and in love with life--
Amid wide reprehension; for histories mention
These were not husband and wife
Who fared westward, ever westward.
--Beyond the Hesperides,
Where the slow long stroke of their gilt oars broke
The lisping of virgin seas,
They viewed the ends of the earth,
Where the Singing Maidens are
Enthroned above death and birth:
And they still fared ever westward--
Elate, and alone, and afar
From the yelpings of little people,--
For they viewed the ends of the earth.
Then the Gods gave word: and Their thunders stirred
To requite, and to silence mirth;
And that roving vessel was shattered
As a handful of shaken dust
Ere twice They thundered.
All peoples wondered,
And cried:--_Lo, the Gods are just,
And, look you, abated no tittle
Of punishment due these twain.
Even though They slumbered a little,
We knew They would waken again:
And, whether it was Bubastis,
Or Milcom, or Artemis
Or Baäl, or Zeus, interrupted this cruise,
We knew it would end in this
When he was a king in Argos,
And she was a queen in Tyre,
And they went astray from the jogtrot way,
In quest of the heart’s desire._
THE OLD SONOROUS NAMES OF THESE
THAT FARED BEYOND THE HESPERIDES
IN QUEST OF REST AND JOY AND EASE,
LONG SINCE WERE MOCKED AT; AND WERE HISSED
TO SEEK, THEY SOUGHT,--AND VIEWED, AND MISSED.
BUT LIFE REMAINS LIFE’S PLAGIARIST.
3
FALSE DAWN IN TROY
“_Helenam omnes amant; invidia semper movente_”
--ALESSANDRO DE MEDICI.
There is no man but loves her, I well know;
Yet mutinous women, muttering with pinched lips,
Cast side-long glances always when--unvexed--
Queen Helen passes; for she is very fair,
And they have only right and truth with them.
Women remember all the fevered years
This siege has lasted; all its many ills;
The plague; the hunger; the unnumbered men
Who died because this queen is beautiful,--
Men whom they loved, and she loved not at all
Nor even knew by name.
None but remembers
How coldly loved lips kissed her in farewell--
Coldly, because for fairer lips than hers,
And for the sake of brighter and tearless eyes,
This man went forth to battle. He thereafter
Beheld the plume of lithe Achilles leap
As flame among the fighting, or beheld
The sudden splendor of swart Diomed
Crash through the press of spears; and lay quite still,
Remembering that way Queen Helen has
Of laughter, when the little sigh breaks through
And spoils the music, or her way of speaking,
Which turns to music the most trivial words
Wherein that wonder and that wistfulness
Her voice has always held since Hector died,
Commingles with our rude and alien tongue
As honey with sharp wine. Such idle words
As any man who, with uncovered head,
Waits and makes way when princes will to pass,
May hear of her in passing, gladdened him,
For all that death was fingering his throat
Even now. He was content, remembering her
The Queen.
For she is very beautiful;
And doubtless Paris, too, gets joy of her
When in that gleaming place which is their home
Her soft arms lift, and clasp his neck, and loose
His helmet--scarcely dented as mine is,
Where that wolf-visaged Greek smote yesterday
Who smites no coward blows to-day, I think.
--But Paris loves not blows. And then he tells
His version of the battle; and they kiss;
And hear shrill women wailing over corpses
Without; and kiss once more. And so he lies
Upon his cushioned couch, and is content,--
Contented just to lie there, still as they
Who fought for his love’s sake lie now, and feel
Her fingers moving gently mid his curls,
And hear Queen Helen’s laughter.
It is for this
That hollow-eyed Œnone mumbles charms
On twin-peaked Ida; and gaunt Menelaus
Slays silently; and heaven is wroth; and the banks
Of slothful Styx, made populous with them
Whose bodies rot unburied on the plains
That girdle hapless Troy, are resonant
With lamentation.
Thus it is for this
One woman’s sake, whose beauty is as a fire
Fed by contending kings with honor and fame
And memories of distant homes and wives,
That all without there is a mighty stir
Of clanging armors, wrangling foreign tongues,
And many Grecian huts about our walls;
And famine and death within. It is for this
One woman’s sake--who sleeps now, and in sleep
Smiles, as I think, who may not see her thus,--
That we the common soldiers gather here,
Who are as naught in Troy Town, and go forth
As fodder to appease the fury of Death,
Who ravens by Scamander.
So we meet
In the deep dawn; and furbish up our arms;
And call one to another, in the dusk,
With hearthside sayings and century-old jests,
Until Æneas and Antenor come,
Our leaders, and with sharp words marshalling us,
Bid sound the trumpet, and the Tymbrian gate
Vomits us forth upon the barren plains.
4
EASTER EVE
“_Ses meurtriers donc ses rencontraient de bon cœur_”
--ALPHONSE MOREAU.
His murderers met. Their consciences were free:
The sun’s eclipse was past, the tumult stilled
In Jewry, and their duty well fulfilled.
Quoth Caiaphas:--_It wrung my heart to see
His mother’s grief, God knows! Yet blasphemy
Was proven, the uprising imminent,
And all the church-supporting element
Demanded action, sir, of you and me._
Quoth Pilate:--_When this Nazarene denied
Even Cæsar’s rule, reluctantly I knew
My duty to the state, sir. Still, I tried,
But found no way, to spare him yet stay true
In loyalty.... And still, the poor lad cried,
“Forgive them, for they know not what they do!”_
5
ST. MAGDALENE
“_Femme je suis, ridée, povrette et ancienne_”
--THÉODORE PASSERAT.
Must I abide forever in this place
Of bloodless folk, amid the vain outcries
Of fools that deem me holy, full of grace,
And skillful in foresaying prophecies?
Thou wouldst not know me in this wrinkled guise--
How couldst thou, O belovèd? I am she
Thou knewest those mad years in Galilee
When we were young. And now thy tale is told,
And I await death, shivering wretchedly,
A pitiful poor woman, shrunk and old.
They call thee god. Paul, when his choleric face
Enkindles from his ever-blazing eyes,
Swears thou art god, and blusters of a place--
A city that the man calls Paradise,--
Wherein thou reignest. Dear, am I not wise
That deem thee worthy of idolatry.
Yet man,--man whom I loved, and verily
Man whom I love, for all that I behold
Thy face no more, beloved, and I be
A pitiful poor woman, shrunk and old.
Yet westerly, where golden clouds enlace
Earth’s rim with heaven’s, kindlier kingdoms rise;
For there the fortunate Far Islands face
The ends of Ocean, and the sacrifice
Burns ever to Dis’ Queen, and no man sighs
In vain for quietude,--where even we
May win such grace of grave Persephonê
As to obliterate woes manifold
In dragging days that fretted sordidly
A pitiful poor woman, shrunk and old.
Man whom I loved, my heart cries out to thee,
_All that thou wert I loved!_--and so, let be
To dream of maids immortal arms enfold,
Nor rank with Dryopê or Danaë
A pitiful poor woman, shrunk and old.
6
MARCUS AURELIUS: A SUPPRESSED “MEDITATION”
“_L’impératrice a les beaux yeux_”
--ANTOINE RICZI.
Bright eyes in truth Faustina hath:
They are colored like that restive path
Which sunset cleaves across the sea;
They are as chill; it well may be
Their splendors, also, do but screen
Waste wreckage and coiled, slow, obscene,
Vague, ravenous things. It is of this
I think whenever her lips kiss.
She is brightly colored and soft and frail;
Her beauty like a tinctured veil
Hides and divides her heart from me.
Nor would I vex your secrecy,
Grave eyes, that screen her unguessed heart,
Wherein I ask not any part;
It is enough that ye are bright.
I praise you; and am expedite
Once more to touch Faustina’s hair
Caressingly, one instant, where
Her face lifts now, and shows how fair
That body is which Parcæ planned,
And fashioned fitly, to command
Such love as all men understand.
Grant her unfaithful, and wherein
Am I less favored by Faustine
Than were her heart all faithfulness?
Fools in their folly face distress;
But wisdom muffles wisdom’s sight
And looks for naught more recondite
In any woman’s grace than this--
Fair flesh, bright hair, and lips that kiss
So winsomely that thereupon
Man’s wisdom wins oblivion,
And right and reason, swooning, seem
Faint figments of a fool’s fond dream.
7
AMAIMON VISITS THE THEBAID
“_Quam luna adest video nocte illusiones dæmonum_”
--ALESSANDRO DE MEDICI.
Each night at moonrise is let forth from hell
In a fair woman’s shape--yea, I know well
How fair it is!--Amaimon; and thus stands
A darkling shade against stilled seas of sands
Made wonderful with moonlight; and speaks not.
What need?--Amaimon knows I have forgot
No one of those soft curves Amaimon wears.
So have I need of penance and long prayers:
Because since ever time began to be,
No woman, living, was lovelier than she,
Nor statelier,--yea, buoyant with that power
Her beauty loaned, she moved as moves a flower,
Mire-rooted, nodding by a pool wherein
Its double drowns, and dancing when its twin
Struggles in wind-stirred waters.
Nay, most sweet
Of women, I serve that Man whose tortured feet
Spurned Zeus from heaven, and for human sake
Trod evil down, even as folk tread a snake
And end all, once for all; by night and day
My prayers assail the ears of God, nor stay
For any bodily weakness till I gain
Surety of pardon through my body’s pain.
Hath God not pardoned me? Men tell of them
That bent with sickness touched my cassock’s hem
And straight were hale. They tell how these poor hands
Raised dead folk even. Throughout distant lands
My fame is spread, where emperors quake to tell
Their harlots of some recent miracle
Which I--nay, which High God performed through me
That God’s sole glory be proclaimed, and be
A scourge to scoffers.
So, being fain to die,
I bide that day when High God lifts on high
My soul, and sets me with His cherubim,
Remembering how I have striven for Him
And smitten heresy--yea, with sword and flame
Laid waste how many homes!--in His dear name,
Whose wrath is quenchless.
It is well with me:
O woman the fiend mimics, how is it with thee?
--With thee, enswirled in some unending sweep
Of ageless flame, whose fires forever leap
Like adders round the damned their coils consume
Not ever, nor relinquish! These illume
Bright tender bodies, such as Cæsar kissed
But yesterday, and now long torments twist....
Ey, what a host of women howl in hell
Who were when they wore flesh so lovable,
And whom men loved as I--
But thou art dead,
Rotted, and damned, long since.
When I am sped
To heaven’s loftiest courts, and thereamong
Made free of heaven, how shall I force my tongue
To honor Him that damned thee? and how be
Content with heaven? What, through eternity
Hear thy voice--thine, my lost love, loved in vain,
And lost, lost, lost, with only heaven to gain!--
Hear thy voice call in agony to God,
Who likewise hears--and heeds not!
Ey, once shod
With gold and clad in fair white linen cloth,
Shall I then be quite changed? and not be wroth
With God? but be as God is? and never know
Regret for thee, nor pity for the woe
Of shrieking fire-wrapped folk swept to and fro
Where Satan gibes at them and the worm stings?
Lust, who is overlord of living things;
Lust, by the heavings of whose leathery wings
The flames of hell are fanned to signal-fires
That mark each haven each human heart desires;
Lust, who with ceaseless and illusive snares
Derides our dreams and prompts us in our prayers;
Lust, who is strong and patient and cautelous,
And whom fiends name Amaimon in Satan’s house:
Plays thus at dice, our stake being my soul’s bliss.
_Nay, God is love_ (Amaimon whispers this),
_Nor pedant-like peers from far heaven’s vault
To estimate His children’s least light fault
As folk weigh gold, to the last hair-breadth’s worth.
Grant that this woman, living upon earth,
A little leaned to Marcion’s mad creed,
That High God grieves when unbelievers bleed
And Holy Church’s servants, or with rod
Or rack or rope, attest the might of God_:--
“Because a father’s love, pre-eminent
In Him, contrives no curious punishment,
But, even as earthly fathers check a child,
Reproves, and for love’s sake is reconciled”:--
_Thus runneth Marcion’s foul heresy.
This woman, then, must burn. It yet may be
All need not burn for all eternity;
And God at last may pardon Donatists,
And Athanasians, and Tritheists--
Ho, even Marcionites!--as lacking wit
Always to read aright God’s holy writ,
And, therefore, worthier of pity than hate.
For God is love; and love or soon or late
Forgives,--yea, even pardons thy dread to see
In God some burlier counterpart of thee._
Such blasphemies Amaimon whispers me
Nightly at moonrise: and I answer not.
What need?--Amaimon knows I have forgot
No one of those soft curves Amaimon wears.
So have I need of penance and long prayers.
8
DAME VENUS IN THURINGIA
“_Icy je regne, et je m’assemble tous les hommes_”
--THÉODORE PASSERAT.
Even to the Hörselberg they follow me,
These men Thou couldst not save: the hollow hill
Is thronged with them that have abandoned Thee
To follow her that yet endures, and will
Outlive all tenets. Canst Thou ever still
Our revelry, O Christ? or canst Thou stay
These lips that on my lover’s lips I lay,
Deriding Thee unpunished? Nay, God wot,
Here rest no pilgrims on Thy bloodless way,
Where in the Hörselberg we know Thee not!
We have no ending to our revelry;
Of lust and drunkenness we have our fill:
Thou hast the uplands, and the sun-bathed sea--
My mother sea!--is subject to Thy will,
Poor foolish Christ, that hadst not wit to kill
Her whom Thou hadst discrowned. I may not stray
Amid the fields of Paphos, and men pray
No more to me in Eryx; yet no jot
Of lust’s old worship dwindles, even to-day,
Where in the Hörselberg we know Thee not.
Wilt Thou not slay me for much blasphemy?
Strike and have done! Whom kindlier shouldst Thou kill
Than one begotten of the restive sea,
Thus penned, and turned a potent poison till
Man’s folly fail him?--I with futile skill
Snare ceaselessly; and never see the day
Smite huddling golden waves; nor feel the spray
Make glad my lips. My godhood is forgot.
I tread a hill more drear than Golgotha,
Where in the Hörselberg we know Thee not.
Christ, curse me not with immortality!
I once was Aphroditê; must I be
A thing unclean, and unto fools allot
All fools may crave, even for eternity,
Where in the Hörselberg we know Thee not?
II
EPISTROPHIA
“_Pour son amour eut cest essoyne_”
9
ONE END OF LOVE
“_Yolande dit, en soupirant_”
--ALPHONSE MOREAU.
_It is long since we met_,--she said.
I answered,--_Yes._
She is not fair,
But very old now, and no gold
Gleams in that scant gray withered hair
Where once much gold was: and, I think.
Not easily might one bring tears
Into her eyes, which have become
Like dusty glass.
_’Tis thirty years_,
I said.--_And then the war came on
Apace, and our young King had need
Of men to serve him oversea
Against the heathen. For their greed,
Puffed up at Tunis, troubles him_--
She said:--_This week my son is gone
To him at Paris with his men._
And then:--_You never married, John?_
I answered,--_No._ And so we sate
Musing a while.
Then with his guests
Came Robert; and his thin voice broke
Upon my dream, with the old jests,
No food for laughter now; and swore
We must be friends now that our feud
Was overpast.
_We are grown old,--
Eh, John?_--he said. _And, by the Rood!
’Tis time we were at peace with God
Who are not long for this world._
--_Yea_,
I answered;--_we are old._ And then,
Remembering that April day
At Calais, and that hawthorn field
Wherein we fought long since, I said:--
_We are friends now._
And she sate by,
Scarce heeding. Thus the evening sped.
And we ride homeward now, and I
Ride moodily: my palfrey jogs
Along a rock-strewn way the moon
Lights up for us; yonder the bogs
Are curdled with thin ice; the trees
Are naked; from the barren wold
The wind comes like a blade aslant
Across a world grown very old.
10
VILLON QUITS FRANCE
“_Demain tous nous mourrons; c’est juste notre affaire_”
--THÉODORE PASSERAT.
We hang to-morrow, then? That doom is fit
For most of us, I think. Yet, harkee, friend,
I have a ballad here which I have writ
Of us and our high ending. Pray you, send
The scrawl to Cayeux, bidding him commend
François to grace. Old Colin loves me well,
For no good reason, save it so befell
We two were young together.... When I am hung,
Colin will weep--and then will laugh, and tell
How many pranks we played when we were young.
Dear lads of yesterday!... We had not wit
To live always so we might not offend,
Yet--how we laughed! I marvel now at it,
Because that merry company will spend
No more mad nights together. Some are penned
In abbeys, some in dungeons, others fell
In battle.... Time assesses death’s _gabelle_,--
Salt must be taxed, eh?--well, we ranked among
The salt of earth, once, who are old and tell
How many pranks we played when we were young.
Afraid to die, you ask?--Why, not a whit.
Ah, no! whole-heartedly I mean to wend
Out of a world I have found exquisite
By every testing. For I apprehend
Life was not made all lovely to the end
That life ensnare us, nor the miracle
Of youth devised but as a trap to swell
Old Legion’s legions; and must give full tongue
To praise no less than prayer, when bidden tell
How many pranks we played when we were young.
Nay, cheerily we of the Cockle-shell,
And all whose youth was nor to stay nor quell,
Will dare foregather when earth’s knell is rung,
And Calvary’s young conqueror bids us tell
How many pranks we played when we were young.
11
INVOCATION: TO THE DARK VENUS
“_Audite litaniam, quam dulce in noctibus quondam_”
--? ARCHILOCHUS OF SICYON.
Hearken and heed, Melænis!
For all that the litany ceased
When time had pilfered the victim,
And flouted thy pale-lipped priest,
And set astir in the temple
Where burned the fires of thy shrine
The owls and wolves of the desert--
Yet hearken, (_the issue is thine!_)
And let the heart of Atys,
At last, at last, be mine!
For I have followed, nor faltered--
Adrift in a land of dreams
Where laughter and pity and terror
Commingle as confluent streams,
I have seen and adored the Sidonian,
Implacable, fair and divine,--
And bending low, have implored thee
To hearken, (_the issue is thine!_)
And let the heart of Atys,
At last, at last, be mine!
There are taller lads than Atys,
And many are wiser than he,--
How should I heed them?--whose fate is
Ever to serve and to be
Ever the lover of Atys,
And die that Atys may dine,
Live if he need me--Then heed me,
And speed me, (_the moment is thine!_)
And let the heart of Atys,
At last, at last, be mine!
HIC TONAT: DEA ADEST
Fair is the form unbeholden,
And golden the glory of thee
Whose voice is the voice of a vision,
Whose face is the foam of the sea,
And the fall of whose feet is the flutter
Of breezes in birches and pine,
When thou drawest near me, to hear me,
And cheer me, (_the moment is thine!_)
And let the heart of Atys,
At last, at last, be mine!
* * * * *
Long I besought thee, nor vainly,
Daughter of Water and Air,--
Charis! Idalia! Hortensis!
Hast thou not heard the prayer,
When the blood stood still with loving,
And the blood in me leapt like wine,
And I cried on thy name, Melænis?--
That heard me, (_the glory is thine!_)
And let the heart of Atys,
At last, at last, be mine!
Falsely they tell of thy dying,
Thou that art older than death;
And never the Hörselberg hid thee,
Whatever the slanderer saith;
For the stars are as heralds forerunning.
When laughter and love combine
At twilight, in thy light, Melænis--
That heard me, (_the glory is thine!_)
And let the heart of Atys,
At last, at last, be mine!
12
RONSARD RE-VOICES A TRUISM
“_Quand vous seres bien vieille, et quand je serais mort_”
--THÉODORE PASSERAT.
When you are very old, and I am gone,
Not to return, it may be you will say--
Hearing my name and holding me as one
Long dead to you,--in some half-jesting way
Of speech, sweet as vague heraldings of May
Rumored in woods when first the throstles sing:--
_He loved me once._ And straightway murmuring
My half-forgotten rhymes, you will regret
Evanished times when I was wont to sing
So very lightly, _Love runs into debt._
I shall not heed you then. My course being run
For good or ill, I shall have gone my way,
And know you, love, no longer,--nor the sun,
Perchance, nor any light of earthly day,
Nor any joy nor sorrow,--while at play
The world speeds merrily, nor reckoning
Our coming or our going. Lips will cling,
Forswear, and be forsaken, and men forget
Where once our tombs were, and our children sing--
So very lightly!--_Love runs into debt._
If in the grave love have dominion
Will that wild cry not quicken the wise clay,
And taunt with memories of fond deeds undone--
Some joy untasted, some lost holiday,--
All death’s large wisdom? Will that wisdom lay
The ghost of any sweet familiar thing
Come haggard from the Past, or ever bring
Forgetfulness of those two lovers met
When all was April?--nor too wise to sing
So very lightly, _Love runs into debt!_
Yea, though the years of vain remembering
Draw nigh, and age be drear, yet in the spring
We meet and kiss, whatever hour be set
Wherein all hours attain to harvesting,--
So very lightly Love runs into debt.
13
JAUNTS FROM STRATFORD
--“LOIN DE STRATFORD”: PAUL VERVILLE.
III--IN VERONA
“_Il m’étonne de voir que le vieux Capulet_”
I had not thought the house of Capulet
Might boast a daughter of such colorful grace
As this whole-hearted girl, with flower-soft face
Round which the glory of her hair is set
Like some great golden halo;--and, as yet,
Love is to her a word that, spoken, spurs
Wonder alone, since love administers
In nothing to the mirth of Juliet.
What if some day I woke this heart unharried
As yet by love, and won these lips more red
Than rain-tossed cherries?--_Look, the dancers go.
What’s he that would not dance? If he be married
My grave is like to be my wedding-bed._
--God rest you, sweet! the knave is Romeo.
XII--IN TROY
“_Le Scamandre engourdi, qui la lune illumine_”
Stagnant Scamander, which the moon--a slight
Frail-seeming crescent toiling through gaunt trees
Mid stars that follow her like golden bees,--
Makes glittering; beyond its marge a white
Glitter of tossed bleached bones where camp-dogs fight
For offal, and a glitter of panoplies
Where sentinels prowl; and partly shrouding these,
Thin fever-breeding mists and dubious night.
And one clear song--fond, as all love-songs be--
From Troilus’ fevered lips that give fond vent
To love and wonder and idolatry,
Snapped short; and mutterings of thunder, blent
With cries of mourners, and the garrulous glee
Of Cressida in Diomedes’ tent.
14
INVITATION TO THE VOYAGE
“_Quand le poëte d’Angleterre disait que ce monde_”
--PAUL VERVILLE.
_The world’s a stage?_--Well, faith! it may have seemed so
In days less bleak, when Arden’s brakes were green,
And Rosalind’s low insolent fond laughter
Woke mirth to charm that planet which to-day
Seems all one vast decorous hospital,--
Germless, immaculate, well-ventilated,
Whitewashed, and odorful with antiseptics.
And we that toss upon the softest beds,
While yet our fever lasts, are impotent
Beneath this dreary burden of right angles
And blank white walls. And so, we twist, and murmur,
And groan, and twitch the coverlets awry,
Which Mrs. Grundy, head-nurse of our ward,
Pats straight again, in curtseying to the doctor.
Lean Dr. Death, who never lost a case,
Comes thus; and daily pauses by one’s bed;
Fingers the pulse; declares the fever abating;
Writes a prescription for the apothecary,
Old Time; then cuts a jest or so,--departing
With dubious promises of one’s discharge
Next year, next month, next week, may be.
Ha, neighbor,
Slim pale-haired woman with opal-colored eyes,
Why bide his pleasure? Nay, let us steal out
Together, and--blithe mariners faring forth
On chartless seas,--seek out a vessel bound
For some politer port, made point-device
By Fragonard, Watteau, or whom you will
So the contriver of this hospital
Be not the architect.
Oh, dimly gleams
Our haven; for its ways are vaporous
With smouldering incense, mid whose loitering spirals
Frail cupids weave, eternally, long garlands
Of ribbons and pale roses,--weave unvexed
By any garish sunlight, since one star
Alone peeps out of heaven. See, the moon
Shows like a silver sickle to the west,
But casts no shadows yet; and twilight dims
All glow of color where resistless gallants,
Sleek abbés, and false subtle lovely women
Pass to the sound of tinkling mandolines
And hushed contralto laughter.
We will make
Rondeaux of life and triolets of death;
And be at peace; and never laugh aloud;
And grieve not though he mar those stately hedges
Wherethrough he leers--gaunt sensual Pierrot!--
To note the ankles of young Columbine.
Yes, we will smile to see her pirouette
With Harlequin in shadowed avenues,--
Yew-shadowed statue-haunted avenues,
Where pensive gods incuriously remember
Put-off omnipotence,--with Harlequin
While tricked Pierrot sings at her father’s window....
Smile, it may be, but never laugh aloud.
And in the autumn Columbine will die,
And Harlequin be sad a whole half-hour.
But Pierrot’s heart will break; and he will grieve
That so much earth lies heavily on her
Who trod the earth so lightly!--and will weep
Big facile tears, and babble to the moon.
Will you not go?--Then come. Give me your hand,--
That firm small slender hand. Tread quietly,
For Mrs. Grundy nods now, who will wake
Full-cry when all our fellow-patients chatter
And drone and bustle like fat surfeited flies
Round our dead reputations.
Let us go.
15
STORY OF THE FLOWERY KINGDOM
“_La belle Sou-Chong-Thé, au clair de pleine lune_”
--PAUL VERVILLE.
Fair Sou-Chong-Tee, by a shimmering brook
Where ghost-like lilies loomed tall and straight,
Met young Too-Hi, in a moonlit nook,
Where they cooed and kissed till the hour was late:
Then, with lanterns, a mandarin passed in state,
Named Hoo-Hung-Hoo of the Golden Band,
Who had wooed the maiden to be _his_ mate,--
For these things occur in the Flowery Land.
Now, Hoo-Hung-Hoo had written a book,
In seven volumes, to celebrate
The death of the Emperor’s thirteenth cook:
So, being a person whose power was great,
He ordered a herald to indicate
He would blind Too-Hi with a red-hot brand
And marry Sou-Chong at a quarter-past-eight,--
For these things occur in the Flowery Land.
Whilst the brand was heating, the lovers shook
In their several shoes,--when by lucky fate
A Dragon came, with his tail in a crook,--
A Dragon out of a Nankeen Plate,--
And gobbled the hard-hearted potentate
And all of his servants, and snorted, _and_
Passed on at a super-cyclonic rate,--
For these things occur in the Flowery Land.
The lovers were wed at an early date,
And lived for the future, I understand,
In one continuous tête-à-tête,--
For these things occur ... in the Flowery Land.
16
THE HOIDENS
“_Au point du premier jour, dans l’enfance du tout_”
--ANTOINE RICZI.
When the Morning broke before us
Came the wayward Three astraying,
Chattering in babbling chorus,
(Obloquies of Æther saying),--
Hoidens that, at pegtop playing,
Flung their Top where yet it whirls
Through the coil of clouds unstaying;
For the Fates are captious girls.
CLOTHO
_Why, upon that Toy before us
Insects cluster! Hear them saying,
In the quaintest shrillest chorus_:--
‘Life affords no time for playing!
And for each that goes astraying,
Featly as a planet whirls
Drops the stroke of doom unstaying,
For the Fates are captious girls.’
LACHESIS
_La, I thought it reeled before us
Tumbling, lurching, stumbling, straying,
In some sort of mumbling chorus!
Now I see them at their playing--
I too see,--and hear them saying_:--
‘Note with what fixed aim life whirls
Onward to set goals unstaying,
For the Fates are captious girls.’
ATROPOS
_Sisters, I am tired of straying.
Catch the Toy while yet it whirls!
Cleanse the Toy, and end our playing!_
--For the Fates are captious girls.
III
LIBITINA
“_Mort, j’appelle de ta rigueur_”
17
ACCORDING TO THEIR FOLLY
“_Ce que vous faites-là n’importe pas_”
--CHARLES GARNIER.
Ye that made merry through mirthless ages,
And jeered in the thick of the knights’ mêlée,
And derided all wrangles of sophists and sages,
And toasted your toes round an auto-da-fé,--
Do ye grieve, in your coffins, now worms assay
That motley logic of quip and pun
And elvish laughter?--or still do ye say,
_Whatever ye do there matters to none_?
Chuckling and shrugging, ye clutched such wages
As life allotted; then went your way
Into the dark, where no conflict rages,
No wrangles follow, no cruelties stray.
--LE GLORIEUX, ARMSTRONG, PATCH, BRUSQUET,
And SOMMERS! rest ye, for jesting is done,
And ye need not joke now as yesterday,
For whatever ye do there matters to none.
And a dream that he found in his tomb assuages
The brutish sorrows of TRIBOULET;
And DAGONET sleeps, and no more engages
To follow his master in any fray;
And CHICOT, too, makes his bed of clay--
Whither wins never the Gascon sun,--
Where baubles and sceptres alike decay,
And whatever ye do there matters to none.
My prince! it is better to quote than obey
The precepts of Solon and Solomon;
Yet the world they admonished is larger than they,
And whatever ye do there matters to none.
18
FOOT-NOTES FOR IDYLS
“_Le Sicilien chantait--mais c’est, ma foy, bien drôle_”
--THÉODORE PASSERAT.
_’Mongst all immortals tardiest is their tread!
Dear and desired, they tread with dainty feet,
By whose dear advent all are comforted
’Mongst mortal men!_ Thus, thus, thy verses greet
The Coming Hours--those Hours that from the heat
And mirth and friendly girls of Sicily,
Unheeding, haled thee to hell’s minstrels’-seat,
To edify austere Persephonê.
_The living may forget; only the dead
Are hopeless!_ sang blithe Corydon, where beat
Bright waves upon bright sands, and overhead
Pines murmured benisons. Now is it sweet
To rhyme of this in thy less glad retreat,
THEOCRITUS, who badest that song be
Immortal? and dost thou find that song meet
To edify austere Persephonê?
Now all old hours and all old years are sped
What profits it with thee if men repeat
Or all or anything thy live lips said?
Thou hast forgot Bombyca’s _ivory feet_,
The shrill cicalæ’s chirp, the lambkins’ bleat,
And Lacon’s _honied song on Helykê_.
What profits thee the honied sound of it
To edify austere Persephonê?
Lord of glad songs, for us the winding-sheet.
For thee the funeral pyre--_built near the sea_,--
Bids singing cease, and songless lips compete
To edify austere Persephonê.
19
THE GOD-FATHER
“_Primus in orbe deos fecit timor; ardua cœlo_”
--PETRONIUS ARBITER.
Always was fear the god’s ambassador,
Since first in traverse of high-tumbling seas
Man quailed and out of thunderings made Thor;
Or mid the desert’s dumb infinities
He shuddered, dreaming of Tanit and the Sphinx;
Or noting life’s large cruelty, surmised
Plethoric Zeus, with twinkling eyes that roam
Alcmena-ward.--Still as man fears, man thinks;
And presently each dread is canonized,
And duly terror is wheedled and exorcised,
And given his priest, and shrine, and hecatomb.