The House of Beauty!--Curst, yea thrice accurst,
The hope that lures one on from last to first
With vain illusions that no time fulfills!
XIX
Why will we struggle to attain, and strive,
When all we gain is but an empty dream?--
Better, unto my thinking, doth it seem
To end it all and let who will survive:
XX
To find at last all beauty is but dust:
That love and sorrow are the very same:
That joy is only suffering's sweeter name:
And sense is but the synonym of lust.
XXI
Far better, yea, to me it seems, to die!
To set glad lips against the lips of Death--
The only thing God gives that comforteth,
The only thing we do not find a lie.
THE LAST SONG
She sleeps: he sings to her: the day was long,
And, tired out with too much happiness,
She fain would have him sing of old Provence;
Old songs, that spoke of love in such soft tones,
Her restless soul was straight besieged of dreams,
And her wild heart beleaguered of deep peace,
And heart and soul surrendered unto sleep.--
Like perfect sculpture in the moon she lies,
Its pallor on her through heraldic panes
Of one tall casement's guléd quarterings.--
Beside her couch, an antique table, weighed
With gold and crystal; here, a carven chair,
Whereon her raiment,--that suggests sweet curves
Of shapely beauty,--bearing her limbs' impress,
Is richly laid: and, near the chair, a glass,
An oval mirror framed in ebony:
And, dim and deep,--investing all the room
With ghostly life of woven women and men,
And strange, fantastic gloom, where shadows move,--
Dark tapestry,--which in the gusts--that twinge
A dropping cresset's slender star of light--
Seems swayed of cautious hands, assassin-like,
That bide their hour.
She alone, deep-haired
As golden dawn, and whiter than a rose,
Divinely breasted as the Queen of Love,
Lies robeless in the glimmer of the moon,
Like Danaë within the golden shower.
Seated beside her aromatic rest,
In silence musing on her loveliness,
Her knight and troubadour. A lute, aslope
The curious baldric of his tunic, glints
Pearl-caught reflections of the moon, that seem
The voiceless ghosts of long-dead melodies.
In purple and sable, slashed with solemn gold,
Like stately twilight over slopes of snow,
He leans above her.--
Have his hands forgot
Their craft, that now they pause upon the strings?
His lips, their art, that they cease, speechless there?--
His eyes are set ... What is it stills to stone
His hands? his lips? and mails him, head and heel,
In terrible marble, motionless and cold?--
Behind the arras, can it be he feels,
Black-browed and grim, with eyes of sombre fire,
Death towers above him with uplifted sword?
THE DREAM OF RODERICK
Below, the tawny Tagus swept
Past royal gardens, breathing balm:
Upon his couch the monarch slept;
The world was still; the night was calm.
Gray, Gothic-gated, in the ray
Of moonrise, tower and castle-crowned,
The city of Toledo lay
Beneath the terraced palace-ground.
Again, he dreamed, in kingly sport
He sought the tree-sequestered path,
And watched the ladies of his Court
Within the marble-basined bath.
Its porphyry stairs and fountained base
Shone, houried with voluptuous forms,
Where Andalusia vied in grace
With old Castile, in female charms.
And laughter, song, and water-splash
Rang round the place, with rock arcaded,
As here a breast or limb would flash
Where beauty swam or beauty waded.
And then, like Venus, from the wave
A maiden came, and stood below;
And by her side a woman slave
Bent down to dry her limbs of snow.
Then on the tesselated bank,
Robed on with fragrance and with fire,--
Like some exotic flower--she sank,
The type of all divine desire.
Then her dark curls, that sparkled wet,
She parted from her perfect brows,
And, lo, her eyes, like lamps of jet
Lit in an alabaster house.
And in his sleep the monarch sighed,
"Florinda!"--Dreaming still he moaned,
"Ah, would that I had died, had died!
I have atoned! I have atoned!"...
And then the vision changed: O'erhead
Tempest and darkness were unrolled,
Full of wild voices of the dead,
And lamentations manifold.
And wandering shapes of gaunt despair
Swept by; and faces pale with pain,
Whose eyes wept blood and seemed to glare
Fierce curses on him through the rain.
And then, it seemed, 'gainst blazing skies
A necromantic tower sate,
Crag-like on crags, of giant size;
With adamatine wall and gate.
And from the storm a hand of might,
Red-rolled in thunder, reached among
The gate's huge bolts, that burst--and night
Clanged ruin as its hinges swung.
Then far away a murmur trailed,--
As of sad seas on cavern'd shores,--
That grew into a voice that wailed,
"They come! they come! the Moors! the Moors!"
And with deep boom of atabals
And crash of cymbals and wild peal
Of battle-bugles, from its walls
An army rushed in glimmering steel.
And where it trod he saw the torch
Of conflagration stalk the skies,
And in the vanward of its march
The monster form of Havoc rise.
And Paynim war-cries rent the storm,
Athwart whose firmament of flame
Destruction reared an earthquake form
On wreck and death without a name....
And then again the vision changed:
Where flows the Guadelete, see,
The champions of the Cross are ranged
Against the Crescent's chivalry.
With roar of trumpets and of drums
They meet; and in the battle's van
He fights; and, towering towards him, comes
Florinda's father, Julian;
And one-eyed Taric, great in war:
And where these couch their burning spears,
The Christian phalanx, near and far,
Goes down like corn before the shears.
The Moslem wins: the Christian flies:
"Allah il Allah," hill and plain
Reverberate: the rocking skies,
"Allah il Allah," shout again.
And then he dreamed the swing of swords
And hurl of arrows were no more;
And stranger than the howling hordes
Deep silence fell on field and shore.
And through the night, it seemed, he fled,
Upon a white steed like a star,
Across a field of endless dead,
Beneath a blood-red scimitar
Of sunset: And he heard a moan,
Beneath, around, on every hand--
"Accurséd! Yea, what hast thou done
To bring this curse upon thy land?"
And then an awful sense of wings:
And, lo! the answer--"'Twas his lust
That was his crime. Behold! e'en kings
Must reckon with Me. God is just."
ZYPS OF ZIRL
The Alps of the Tyrol are dark with pines,
Where, foaming under the mountain spines,
The Inn's long water sounds and shines.
Beyond, are peaks where the morning weaves
An icy rose; and the evening leaves
The golden ghosts of a thousand sheaves.
Deep vines and torrents and glimmering haze,
And sheep-bells tinkling on mountain ways,
And fluting shepherds make sweet the days.
The rolling mist, like a wandering fleece,
The great, round moon in a mountain crease,
And a song of love make the nights all peace.
Beneath the blue Tyrolean skies
On the banks of the Inn, that foams and flies,
The storied city of Innsbruck lies.
With its mediæval streets, that crook,
And its gabled houses, it has the look
Of a belfried town in a fairy book.
So wild the Tyrol that oft, 'tis said,
When the storm is out and the town in bed,
The howling of wolves sweeps overhead.
And oft the burgher, sitting here
In his walled rose-garden, hears the clear
Shrill scream of the eagle circling near.
And this is the tale that the burghers tell:--
The Abbot of Wiltau stood at his cell
Where the Solstein lifts its pinnacle.
A mighty summit of bluffs and crags
That frowns on the Inn; where the forest stags
Have worn a path to the water-flags.
The Abbot of Wiltau stood below;
And he was aware of a plume and bow
On the precipice there in the morning's glow,
A chamois, he saw, from span to span
Had leapt; and after it leapt a man;
And he knew 'twas the Kaiser Maximilian.
But, see! though rash as the chamois he,
His foot less sure. And verily
If the King should miss ... "Jesu! Marie!
"The King hath missed!"--And, look, he falls!
Rolls headlong out to the headlong walls.
What Saint shall save him on whom he calls?
What Saint shall save him, who struggles there
On the narrow ledge by the eagle's lair,
With hook'd hands clinging 'twixt earth and air?
The Abbot crosses himself in dread--
"Let prayers go up for the nearly dead,
And the passing-bell be tolled," he said.
"For the House of Hapsburg totters! See,
How raveled the thread of its destiny,
Sheer hung between cloud and rock!" quoth he.
But hark! where the steeps of the peak reply,
Is it an eagle's echoing cry?
And the flitting shadow, its plumes on high?
No voice of the eagle is that which rings!
And the shadow, a wiry man who swings
Down, down where the desperate Kaiser clings.
The _crampons_ bound to his feet, he leaps
Like a chamois now; and again he creeps
Or twists, like a snake, o'er the fearful deeps.
"By his cross-bow, baldric, and cap's black curl,"
Quoth the Abbot below, "I know the churl!
'Tis the hunted outlaw Zyps of Zirl.
"Upon whose head, or dead or alive,
The Kaiser hath posted a price.--Saints shrive
The King!" quoth Wiltau. "Who may contrive
"To save him now that his foe is there?"--
But, hark! again through the breathless air
What words are those that the echoes bear?
"Courage, my King!--To the rescue, ho!"
The wild voice rings like a twanging bow,
And the staring Abbot stands mute below.
And, lo! the hand of the outlaw grasps
The arm of the King--and death unclasps
Its fleshless fingers from him who gasps.
And how he guides! where the clean cliffs wedge
Them flat to their brows; by chasm and ledge
He helps the King from the merciless edge.
Then up and up, past bluffs that shun
The rashest chamois; where eagles sun
Great wings and brood; where the mists are spun.
And safe at last stand Kaiser and churl
On the mountain path where the mosses curl--
And this the revenge of Zyps of Zirl.
THE GLOW-WORM
How long had I sat there and had not beheld
The gleam of the glow-worm till something compelled!...
The heaven was starless, the forest was deep,
And the vistas of darkness stretched silent in sleep.
And late 'mid the trees had I lingered until
No thing was awake but the lone whippoorwill.
And haunted of thoughts for an hour I sat
On a lichen-gray rock where the moss was a mat.
And thinking of one whom my heart had held dear,
Like terrible waters, a gathering fear
Came stealing upon me with all the distress
Of loss and of yearning and powerlessness:
Till the hopes and the doubts and the sleepless unrest
That, swallow-like, built in the home of my breast,
Now hither, now thither, now heavenward flew,
Wild-winged as the winds are: now suddenly drew
My soul to abysses of nothingness where
All light was a shadow, all hope, a despair:
Where truth, that religion had set upon high,
The darkness distorted and changed to a lie:
And dreams of the beauty ambition had fed
Like leaves of the autumn fell withered and dead.
And I rose with my burden of anguish and doom,
And cried, "O my God, had I died in the womb!
"Than born into night, with no hope of the morn,
An heir unto shadows, to live so forlorn!
"All effort is vain; and the planet called Faith
Sinks down; and no power is real but death.
"O light me a torch in the deepening dark
So my sick soul may follow, my sad heart may mark!"--
And then in the darkness the answer!--It came
From Earth, not from Heaven--a glimmering flame,
Behold; at my feet! In the shadow it shone
Mysteriously lovely and dimly alone:
An ember; a sparkle of dew and of glower;
Like the lamp that a spirit hangs under a flower:
As goldenly green as the phosphorous star
A fairy may wear in her diadem's bar:
An element essence of moonlight and dawn
That, trodden and trampled, burns on and burns on.
And hushed was my soul with the lesson of light
That God had revealed to me there in the night:
Though mortal its structure, material its form,
The spiritual message of worm unto worm.
A FOREST IDYLL
I
Beneath an old beech-tree
They sat together,
Fair as a flower was she
Of summer weather.
They spoke of life and love,
While, through the boughs above,
The sunlight, like a dove,
Dropped many a feather.
II
And there the violet,
The bluet near it,
Made blurs of azure wet--
As if some spirit,
Or woodland dream, had gone
Sprinkling the earth with dawn,
When only Fay and Faun
Could see or hear it.
III
She with her young, sweet face
And eyes gray-beaming,
Made of that forest place
A spot for dreaming:
A spot for Oreads
To smooth their nut-brown braids,
For Dryads of the glades
To dance in, gleaming.
IV
So dim the place, so blest,
One had not wondered
Had Dian's moonéd breast
The deep leaves sundered,
And there on them a while
The goddess deigned to smile,
While down some forest aisle
The far hunt thundered.
V
I deem that hour, perchance,
Was but a mirror
To show them Earth's romance
And draw them nearer:
A mirror where, meseems,
All that this Earth-life dreams,
All loveliness that gleams,
Their souls saw clearer.
VI
Beneath an old beech-tree
They dreamed of blisses;
Fair as a flower was she
That summer kisses:
They spoke of dreams and days,
Of love that goes and stays,
Of all for which life prays,
Ah me! and misses.
UNDER THE ROSE
He told a story to her,
A story old yet new--
And was it of the Faery Folk
That dance along the dew?
The night was hung with silence
As a room is hung with cloth,
And soundless, through the rose-sweet hush,
Swooned dim the down-white moth.
Along the east a shimmer,
A tenuous breath of flame,
From which, as from a bath of light,
Nymph-like, the girl-moon came.
And pendent in the purple
Of heaven, like fireflies,
Bubbles of gold the great stars blew
From windows of the skies.
He told a story to her,
A story full of dreams--
And was it of the elfin things
That haunt the thin moonbeams?
Upon the hill a thorn-tree,
Crookéd and gnarled and gray,
Against the moon seemed some crutched hag
Dragging a child away.
And in the vale a runnel,
That dripped from shelf to shelf,
Seemed in the night, a woodland witch
Who muttered to herself.
Along the land a zephyr,
Whose breath was wild perfume,
That seemed a sorceress who wove
Sweet spells of beam and bloom.
He told a story to her,
A story young yet old--
And was it of the mystic things
Men's eyes shall ne'er behold?
They heard the dew drip faintly
From out the green-cupped leaf;
They heard the petals of the rose
Unfolding from their sheaf.
They saw the wind light-footing
The waters into sheen;
They saw the starlight kiss to sleep
The blossoms on the green.
They heard and saw these wonders;
These things they saw and heard;
And other things within the heart
For which there is no word.
He told a story to her,
The story men call Love,
Whose echoes fill the ages past--
And the world ne'er tires of.
SPIRIT OF DREAMS
I
Where hast thou folded thy pinions,
Spirit of Dreams?
Hidden elusive garments
Woven of gleams?
In what divine dominions,
Brighter than day,
Far from the world's dark torments,
Dost thou stay, dost thou stay?--
When shall my yearnings reach thee
Again?
Not in vain let my soul beseech thee!
Not in vain! not in vain!
II
I have longed for thee as a lover
For her, the one;
As a brother for a sister
Long dead and gone.
I have called thee over and over
Names sweet to hear;
With words than music trister,
And thrice as dear.
How long must my sad heart woo thee,
Yet fail?
How long must my soul pursue thee,
Nor avail, nor avail?
III
All night hath thy loving mother,
Beautiful Sleep,
Lying beside me, listened
And heard me weep.
But ever thou soughtest another
Who sought thee not;
For him thy soft smile glistened--
I was forgot.
When shall my soul behold thee
As before?
When shall my heart enfold thee?--
Nevermore? nevermore?
PROCESSIONAL
Universes are the pages
Of that book whose words are ages;
Of that book which destiny
Opens in eternity.
There each syllable expresses
Silence; there each thought a guess is;
In whose rhetoric's cosmic runes
Roll the worlds and swarming moons.
There the systems, we call solar,
Equatorial and polar,
Write their lines of rushing light
On the awful leaves of night.
There the comets, vast and streaming,
Punctuate the heavens' gleaming
Scroll; and suns, gigantic, shine,
Periods to each starry line.
There, initials huge, the Lion
Looms and measureless Orion;
And, as 'neath a chapter done,
Burns the Great-Bear's colophon.
Constellated, hieroglyphic,
Numbering each page terrific,
Fiery on the nebular black,
Flames the hurling zodiac.
In that book, o'er which Chaldean
Wisdom poured and many an eon
Of philosophy long dead,
This is all that man has read:--
He has read how good and evil,--
In creation's wild upheaval,--
Warred; while God wrought terrible
At foundations red of Hell.
He has read of man and woman;
Laws and gods, both beast and human;
Thrones of hate and creeds of lust,
Vanished now and turned to dust.
Arts and manners that have crumbled;
Cities buried; empires tumbled:
Time but breathed on them its breath;
Earth is builded of their death.
These but lived their little hour,
Filled with pride and pomp and power;
What availed it all at last?
We shall pass as they have passed.
Still the human heart will dream on
Love, part angel and part demon;
Yet, I question, what secures
Our belief that aught endures?
In that book, o'er which Chaldean
Wisdom poured and many an eon
Of philosophy long dead,
This is all that man has read.
SONG AND STORY
TO HARRISON S. MORRIS
_Ah, not for us the Heavens that hold
God's message of Promethean fire!
The flame that fell on bards of old
To hallow and inspire._
_Yet let the soul dream on and dare
No less Song's heights where these repose:
We can but fail; and may prepare
The way for one like those._
SONG AND STORY
I was destined, when a baby,
For that land which lieth hidden
In the moon; and whither, may be,
At their birth all souls are bidden.
She bewitched me then and bound me,
She a daughter of Apollo,
In a golden snare who wound me,
And compelled me thus to follow:--
Once she sent a stallion, sired
Of the Wind; a mare his mother,
Whom Thessalian madness fired,
And the Hurricane his brother.
And a voice said, "Do not tarry!
Mount him while the world is sleeping:
He, my beautiful, will carry
You, my Soul, into my keeping."
And I mounted: tempest whistled
In my ears, and, yawning o'er us,
Flamed the lightning; boomed the missiled
Thunder, crashing far before us.
On we hurled. The world was rubble
Underneath us; and the wonder
Of our passage seemed to double
Heaven's tempest and its thunder.
With us rode the air's wild races:
Wisps and witches; all the Brocken,
Stunted, gnarled, with fiendish faces,
Seemed around us, gibing, mocking:
Hate, that shook the heart with hooting:
Humpbacked Horror; gibbet-headed
Murder: and,--great ravens shooting
Over,--Fear, in bats embedded.
All were left; were passed like water
Hurling headlong from a mountain,--
Hag and elf and demon's daughter,--
Ere we reached that mystic fountain.
There we stopped. I drained a beaker
Old as Earth: the draught was fire:
On my soul the burning liquor
Acted like a new desire.
On again! The darkness lifted
Like an up-rolled banner. Scattered
Overhead, in points that shifted,
Shone the stars through tempest tattered.
Then the moon rose. Slowly, slowly,
Of a wild and copper color,
Rose the moon, in melancholy
Deeps; and all the stars grew duller.
And we passed,--an instant's scanning,--
Swift as thought, the spider-arches
Of the ray-built bridges spanning
Space between her lunar marches.
So I reached her kingdom, olden
As the God that was its maker,
Where the rocks and trees are golden,
And the sea and air are nacre.
Where, 'mid ingot-glowing flowers,
Over streams of diamond brightness,
Palaces of pearl and towers,
Wrought of topaz, loom in whiteness.
Here she met me with a chalice,
Like the Giamschid ruby burning;
And I entered in her palace,
From the world forever turning.
Centuries have passed, have vanished;
Still she holds me with her glory,
She, whom Earth long since hath banished?
She, the Soul of Song and Story.
AN INDIAN LEGEND
On a mountain by a fountain,
By a faintly falling stream,
Where upon the moss and flowers,
Sparkling, fell the spray in showers,
In the moonlight's mystic beam,
Once a maiden came to dream,
Came to sit and sigh and dream:
On a mountain by a fountain,
By a faintly falling stream.
To the fountain on the mountain
Rode a youth upon a steed;
In his hair an eagle's feather;
Round his waist a belt of leather,
Wampum-wrought with shell and bead;
In his hands a hollow reed,
In his hands a magic reed:
To the fountain on the mountain
Rode a youth upon a steed.
On the mountain by the fountain,
When the moon shone overhead,
While the maiden by him wavered,
Low upon his reed he quavered,
Piped and played and singing said,--
"Listen and be comforted!
Heart of mine, be comforted!"
On the mountain by the fountain
When the moon shone overhead.
By the fountain on the mountain,
So the Indian legend saith,
Paler, paler grew the maiden,
Paler as if sorrow laden,
Frailer, paler at each breath,
Saying, "Art thou Love or Death?"
And he answered, "I am Death."
By the fountain on the mountain
So the Indian legend saith.
Gone the mountain and the fountain
Where the maiden's soul was lost:
But in every stream you hear it
Whispering, sighing, like a spirit,
Hear the Indian maiden's ghost,
In the foam as white as frost,
Whiter than the winter's frost:
Gone the mountain and the fountain
Where the maiden's soul was lost.
JOHN DAVIS, BOUCANIER
High time, high time, good gentlemen, to sail the Spanish Main!
Three months we've watched for galleons and treasure bound for Spain;
Three months! and not a vessel, neither barque nor brigantine!
No Cartagena plate-ship, or De Dios, have we seen.
Our sails are idle as the wind, our ships as gulls or waves.--
And shall inaction rot us like a gang of shackled slaves?
Up, boucaniers! the land is wide, and wider far the sea--
Somewhere between the dusk and dawn and dusk some hope must be;
Some ship somewhere or city there beneath the Indian sky--
What matter whether east or west!--some ship with decks built high,
With treasure packed from stem to stern: some huge ship of the line,
Against whose ports we'll cram our ports, while all our cannon shine
And thunder; then, with blade to blade, and shouting horde on horde,
Swarm up her sides and sweep her decks with pistol and with sword;
And, sink or swim, our flag flies there, we boucaniers aboard.
Say, what availed your patron saints, Iago and Saint Marc,
Lanceros, Adelantados, against Ravenau's barque?
O butchers of good Jean Ribault, well might your cheeks turn pale
When Montebaro's brigantine shook to the wind her sail!
Around the coasts where New Spain boasts the haughtiness of Old,
Her tyranny, her bigotry, her sordid greed for gold,
From east to west, from north to south, among the Carib Isles,
Swift to revenge the Frenchman swept across the foaming miles.
The spirit of Pierre-le-Grand and of his gallant crew,
Who took a galleon with a boat, beneath the tropic blue,
Be with us now!--Up, gentlemen! and, Spain, oh, woe to you!
Prime arquebus and brighten blade, and let the culverin
Gleam, burnished as the morning-star, as through the foam we spin;
And now be glad as when we had Granada in our hold,
And stabbed the city's sentinels and took the city's gold:
New Spain's good homes and churches, aye, will not forget too soon
The boucanier, John Davis, sirs, who taught their Dons a tune--
Dutch serenades of belts and blades they danced to by the moon!
What helped the Latin of their monks to curse what Satan blessed!
Those pieces,--broad,--of eight and plate we counted in our chest.
And now that we may double or may treble every piece,
Pipe up the anchor, boatswain! and, before the hawser cease,
Let every sail salute the gale and every rope be taunt--
The Devil take all care and us, if jaundiced colors daunt!
The sea-gulls dip and dive and float, and swim and soar again;
Be like them, merry gentlemen, high-hearted!--May it rain
Rich galleons for us!--Mix a bowl and drink, "The ships of Spain!"
Be merry as the sea-gulls are; and, as the case may go,
Who cares a curse for wealth!--Now drink: "Here's to Spain's
overthrow!"--
Doff caps and follow: though the prize be over-fat or lean,
Kneel down now; give her praise who leads, Dame Fortune, our good
Queen!
Upon our prow she guides us now!--On to Saint Augustine!
VOYAGERS
Where are they, that song and tale
Tell of, lands our childhood knew?
Sea-locked Fairy-lands that trail
Morning summits, wet with dew,
Crimson, o'er a crimson sail?