Part 2

And he rose with the last despairing strength Of life's tenacity, And he swore by the blood of man in him, And God's eternity, "'Tis my life, my very soul he wants; That he shall not have of me."

Then his heart grew strong and he felt the earth Grow iron beneath his feet, And he drank the balmy airs of night Like rose-blooms rare and sweet: And his soul rose up as a welling brook, His life or death to meet.

And he spake to that unknown enemy there,-- "By yon white stars I vow, That be thou devil or angel or man, Thou canst not conquer me now; For I feel new lease of life and strength In this sweat that beads my brow."

They locked once more; the stars, it seemed Went round in dances dim, Where the great white watchers over each hill, With the black night, seemed to swim; But Jacob knew his enemy now, Could nevermore conquer him.

Yea, still with grip of death they strove, In iron might, until, Planet by planet, the great stars dropped Down over the westward hill: And Jacob stood like one who stands In the strength of a mighty will.

Then at that late, last midnight hour, When the little birds rejoice, And out of the lands of sleep life looms With the rustle of day's annoys, That other spake as one who speaks With a sad despairing voice,

And cried aloud, "I have met my fate, Loosen, and let me go; For I have striven with thee in vain, Till my heart is water and woe." "Nay, nay," cried Jacob, "we strive, we twain, Till the mists of dawning blow."

Then spake that other, "I hate thee not, My spirit is spent, alas, Thou art a very lion of men; Release, and let me pass; For thou hast my heart and sinews ground As ocean grinds his grass."

Then answered Jacob, "Nay, nay, thou liar, This is the lock of death: For thee or me it must be thus, The will of my being saith; Thou man or devil, I hold thee here Unto thy latest breath;

"For I do feel in thee I hold My life's supremest hour: I would as lief let all life slip As thee from out my power, Until I gaze on thy hid face, And read my spirit's dower.

"Yea, show thy face or who thou art, Or, man or angel or fiend, I rend thy being fold from fold, And scatter thee to the wind." Then they twain rocked as passions rock, When madness wrecks the mind.

For each now knew this was the end, And one of them must die, Then Jacob heaved a mighty breath, With a last great sobbing cry, And gripped that other in a grip Like the grip of those who die.

For he felt once more his spirit faint, And his strong knees quake beneath, And it seemed the mountains flamed all red At the coming of his breath; And he prayed if he were conquered now That this might be his death.

The tight grip eased, the huge form slipped Back earthward with a moan, And Jacob stood there 'neath the dawn, Like one new-changed to stone; For in the face of the prone man there He read his very own.

Not as man sees who reads his fellows In the dim crowds that pass: Nor as a soul may know himself, Who looks within a glass:-- But as God sees, who kneads the clay, And parts it from the mass.

And over his head the great day rose And gloried leaf and wing, And the little boughs began to tremble, And the little birds to sing; But on his face there shone a strength Like the power of a new-crowned king.

Afterglow

After the clangor of battle, There comes a moment of rest, And the simple hopes and the simple joys And the simple thoughts are best.

After the victor's pæan, After the thunder of gun, There comes a lull that must come to all Before the set of the sun.

Then what is the happiest memory? Is it the foe's defeat? Is it the splendid praise of a world That thunders by at your feet?

Nay, nay, to the life-worn spirit The happiest thoughts are those That carry us back to the simple joys And the sweetness of life's repose.

A simple love and a simple trust And a simple duty done Are truer torches to light to death Than a whole world's victories won.

The Tree of Truth

There grows a mighty centuried tree, Its roots athwart the world, Its branches wide as earth's wide girth By thousand dews impearled.

Its top is hoary, its wide boughs Reach out to heaven above, Its roots are knowledge, and its sap The yearning heart of love.

Men hack its branches, curb its roots, To trim it to their ken, Or hide its green in poisonous vines From evil's grimmest fen.

But evermore while ages wane, And centuries rise and die, Through dark, through light, through good and ill, Its saps the years defy.

For deeper in the heart of things, And older far than time, Its roots are fixed in those sure deeps From which the centuries climb.

Ages ago its girth was great; Its boughs o'er earth's wide lands; All peoples gathered 'neath its glades Where now old ruin stands.

But form and custom staled its green And curbed it into bounds Of pruning hooks and greedy walls That hemmed its sacred rounds.

And vast and wide where once to all Its radiant leaves were free, Far peoples paid, with earth's red gold, Its sacred home to see.

And summer by summer, yea, year by year, Still lower shrank its head, Till shallow deceit and life's despair Declared its heart was dead.

Then men cried, "We will hew it down, And build from out its wood A temple rare wherein to teach Us memory of its good.

"And 'neath its shelter we will keep, To hold the ages' youth, Those holy dreams our fathers drew From out the tree of truth."

They hacked and hewed, they sawed and planed, They lopped its branches wide, Till shorn and bare the old tree stood To every wind and tide.

And round its scathed and ruined trunk, Whence life had fled aloof, They built a temple carved and arched From floor to groinèd roof.

And reared a shrine where art was all The end of human pain, Till a sprout shot forth from the old tree's trunk And burst its walls amain;

A sturdy, wayward, wilding growth, That mocked their maimèd dream Of life and truth in legend carved On groinèd arch and beam.

Men stood amazed. The teachers cried, "Behold the curse of earth! Its life must die or all our words Are but as nothing worth."

"Nay, nay," cried others, "but let it stand, Perchance a miracle." Then straight about its burgeoning boughs Old bloody battles fell.

Wild clamor and clash of fiery arms, The old against the new. Mad hosts arrayed with banner and blade, Where war's wild trumpets blew.

But as they strove by gates of blood, With glad unconscious youth, Higher and wider skyward climbed The newer tree of truth.

And blithe within its boughs their nests The birds of heaven made, While at its foot mid earth's old ruins, The happy children played.

And form and cant were swept away, While under its dream sublime, Men drank anew 'neath heaven's arch From nature for a time.

Yea, still it spreads its antres vast, Through peace and clash of arms, And blossoms brave and blithe and free, O'er all earth's shrunk alarms.

And still men battle to destroy The living for the dead Old ruined trunk of that which towers Its glories overhead:

And strive for art's distorted ways, While from earth's heart of youth, Higher and wider heavenward spreads The ancient tree of truth.

Glory of the Dying Day

O glory of the dying day That into darkness fades away! O violet splendor melting down By river bend o'er tower and town! O glory of the dying day That into darkness fades away!

O splendor of the gates of night! O majesty of dying light That all a molten glory glows, Till purple-crimson fades to rose And dying, melting, outward goes In ashes on the even's rim, When all the world grows faint and dim!

O silvern sound of far-off bells Ringing, ringing miles away Over river, fields, and fells, Round the crimson and the gray; Pealing softly evening out As the dewy dusk comes down, And the great night folds about River, woodlands, hills, and town!

O glory of the fading hills! Splendor of the river's breast! O silence that the whole world fills! Sanctity of peaceful rest! Alien from the care of day, Now a petalled star peeps in: Now night's choruses begin, Musical and far away.

O glory of the dying day, When my life's evening fades away, May it in splendid peace go down Like yours o'er river-bend and town-- Not into silence blind and stark, Not into wintry muffled dark-- But, heralded by stars divine, May my life's latest evening ray Melt into such a night as thine.

September in the Laurentian Hills

Already Winter in his sombre round, Before his time hath touched these hills austere With lonely flame. Last night, without a sound, The ghostly frost walked out by wood and mere. And now the sumach curls his frond of fire, The aspen-tree reluctant drops his gold, And down the gullies the North's wild vibrant lyre Rouses the bitter armies of the cold.

O'er this short afternoon the night draws down, With ominous chill, across these regions bleak; Wind-beaten gold, the sunset fades around The purple loneliness of crag and peak, Leaving the world an iron house wherein Nor love nor life nor hope hath ever been.

Lazarus

O Father Abram, I can never rest, Here in thy bosom in the whitest heaven, Where love blooms on through days without an even; For up through all the paradises seven, There comes a cry from some fierce, anguished breast,--

A cry that comes from out of hell's dark night, A piercing cry of one in agony, That reaches me here in heaven white and high; A call of anguish that doth never die; Like dream-waked infant wailing for the light.

O Father Abram, heaven is love and peace, And God is good; eternity is rest. Sweet would it be to lie upon thy breast And know no thought but loving to be blest Save for that cry that nevermore will cease.

It comes to me above the angel-lyres, The chanting praises of the cherubim; It comes between my upward gaze and Him, All-blessed Christ; a voice from the vague dim-- "_O Lazarus, come and ease me of these fires._"

_O Lazarus, I have called thee all these years, It is so long for me to reach to thee, Across the ages of this mighty sea, That loometh dark, dense, like eternity; Which I have bridged by anguished prayers and tears:_

"_Which I have bridged by knowledge of God's love, That even penetrates this anguished glare; A gleaming ray, a tremulous star-built stair, A road by which love-hungered souls may fare Past hate and doubt, to heaven and God above._"

So calleth it ever upward unto me: It creepeth in through heaven's golden doors: It echoes all along the sapphire floors: Like smoke of sacrifice, it soars and soars, It fills the vastness of eternity;

Until my sense of love is waned and dimmed: The music-rounded spheres do clash and jar, No more those spirit-calls from star to star, Those harmonies that float and melt afar, Those belts of light by which all heaven is rimmed.

No more I hear the beat of heavenly wings, The seraph chanting in my rest-tuned ear: I only know a cry, a prayer, a tear, That rises from the depths up to me here; A soul that to me suppliant leans and clings.

O Father Abram, thou must bid me go Into the spaces of the deep abyss; Where far from us and our God-given bliss, Do dwell those souls that have done Christ amiss; For through my rest I hear that upward woe.

I hear it crying through the heavenly night, When curvèd, hung in space, the million moons Lean planet-ward, and infinite space attunes Itself to silence. As from drear gray dunes A cry is heard along the shuddering light,

Of wild dusk-bird, a sad, heart-curdling cry, So comes to me that call from out hell's coasts; I see an infinite shore with gaping ghosts! This is no heaven, with all its shining hosts! This is no heaven, until that hell doth die!

So spake the soul of Lazarus, and from thence, Like new-fledged bird from its sun-jewelled nest, Drunk with the music of the young year's quest, He sank out into heaven's gloried breast, Spaceward turned, toward darkness dim, immense.

Hellward he moved like a radiant star shot out From heaven's blue with rain of gold at even, When Orion's train and that mysterious seven Move on in mystic range from heaven to heaven-- Hellward he sank, followed by radiant rout.

The liquid floor of heaven bore him up With unseen arms, as in his feathery flight He floated down toward the infinite night; And each way downward, on the left and right, He saw each moon of heaven like a cup

Of liquid, misty fire that shone afar From sentinel towers of heaven's battlements; But onward, winged by love's desire intense, And sank, space-swallowed, into the immense, While with him ever widened heaven's bar.

'Tis ages now long-gone since he went out, Christ-urged, love-driven, across the jasper walls; But hellward still he ever floats and falls, And ever nearer come those anguished calls; And far behind he hears a glorious shout.

The Mother[1]

I

It was April, blossoming spring, They buried me, when the birds did sing;

Earth, in clammy wedging earth, They banked my bed with a black, damp girth.

Under the damp and under the mould, I kenned my breasts were clammy and cold.

Out from the red beams, slanting and bright, I kenned my cheeks were sunken and white.

I was a dream, and the world was a dream, And yet I kenned all things that seem.

I was a dream, and the world was a dream, But you cannot bury a red sunbeam.

For though in the under-grave's doom-night I lay all silent and stark and white,

Yet over my head I seemed to know The murmurous moods of wind and snow,

The snows that wasted, the winds that blew, The rays that slanted, the clouds that drew

The water-ghosts up from lakes below, And the little flower-souls in earth that grow.

Under earth, in the grave's stark night, I felt the stars and the moon's pale light.

I felt the winds of ocean and land That whispered the blossoms soft and bland.

Though they had buried me dark and low, My soul with the season's seemed to grow.

II

From throes of pain they buried me low, For death had finished a mother's woe.

But under the sod, in the grave's dread doom, I dreamed of my baby in glimmer and gloom.

I dreamed of my babe, and I kenned that his rest Was broken in wailings on my dead breast.

I dreamed that a rose-leaf hand did cling: Oh, you cannot bury a mother in spring!

When the winds are soft and the blossoms are red She could not sleep in her cold earth-bed.

I dreamed of my babe for a day and a night, And then I rose in my graveclothes white.

I rose like a flower from my damp earth-bed To the world of sorrowing overhead.

Men would have called me a thing of harm, But dreams of my babe made me rosy and warm.

I felt my breasts swell under my shroud; No star shone white, no winds were loud;

But I stole me past the graveyard wall, For the voice of my baby seemed to call;

And I kenned me a voice, though my lips were dumb: Hush, baby, hush! for mother is come.

I passed the streets to my husband's home; The chamber stairs in a dream I clomb.

I heard the sound of each sleeper's breath, Light waves that break on the shores of death.

I listened a space at my chamber door, Then stole like a moon-ray over its floor.

My babe was asleep on a stranger arm. "O baby, my baby, the grave is so warm,

"Though dark and so deep, for mother is there! O come with me from the pain and care!

"O come with me from the anguish of earth, Where the bed is banked with a blossoming girth,

"Where the pillow is soft and the rest is long, And mother will croon you a slumber-song,

"A slumber-song that will charm your eyes To a sleep that never in earth-song lies!

"The loves of earth your being can spare, But never the grave, for mother is there."

I nestled him soft to my throbbing breast, And stole me back to my long, long rest.

And here I lie with him under the stars, Dead to earth, its peace and its wars;

Dead to its hates, its hopes, and its harms, So long as he cradles up soft in my arms.

And heaven may open its shimmering doors, And saints make music on pearly floors,

And hell may yawn to its infinite sea, But they never can take my baby from me.

For so much a part of my soul he hath grown That God doth know of it high on his throne.

And here I lie with him under the flowers That sun-winds rock through the billowy hours,

With the night-airs that steal from the murmuring sea, Bringing sweet peace to my baby and me.

[1] This poem was suggested by the following passage in Tyler's _Animism_: "The pathetic German superstition that the dead mother's coming back in the night to suckle the baby she had left on earth may be known by the hollow pressed down in the bed where she lay."

Dusk

Down by the shore at even, when the waves Lap lightly on the reedy rims, and soft, One trembling star, a blossom, flames aloft, Where the sunk sun the western heaven laves With lowest tides of day; the tired world craves For the great night that cometh brooding in, With draught of healing over earth's far din, And blessed rest that recreates and saves.

Far in the breathing woods the whip-poor-will Reiterates his plaintive note; and hark! A dusky night-hawk whirrs athwart the dark, Haunting the shadows, till in silvern swoon, Hunted by her own spirit, strange and still, Over the waters comes the wan, white moon.

The Last Prayer

Master of life, the day is done; My sun of life is sinking low; I watch the hours slip one by one And hark the night-wind and the snow.

And must thou shut the morning out, And dim the eye that loved to see; Silence the melody and rout, And seal the joys of earth for me?

And must thou banish all the hope-- The large horizon's eagle-swim, The splendor of the far-off slope That ran about the world's great rim,

That rose with morning's crimson rays And grew to noonday's gloried dome, Melting to even's purple haze When all the hopes of earth went home?

Yea, Master of this ruined house, The mortgage closed, outruns the lease; Long since is hushed the gay carouse And now the windowed lights must cease.

The doors all barred, the shutters up, Dismantled, empty, wall and floor, And now for one grim eve to sup With death the bailiff at the door.

Yea, I will take the gloomward road Where fast the Arctic nights set in, To reach the bourne of that abode Which thou hast kept for all my kin.

And all life's splendid joys forego, Walled in with night and senseless stone, If at the last my heart might know Through all the dark one joy alone.

Yea, thou mayst quench the latest spark Of life's weird day's expectancy, Roll down the thunders of the dark And close the light of life for me.

Melt all the splendid blue above And let these magic wonders die, If thou wilt only leave me Love And Love's heart-brother Memory.

Though all the hopes of every race Crumbled in one red crucible, And melted mingled into space, Yet, Master, thou wert merciful.

Pan the Fallen

He wandered into the market With pipes and goatish hoof; He wandered in a grotesque shape, And no one stood aloof. For the children crowded round him, The wives and graybeards, too, To crack their jokes and have their mirth, And see what Pan would do.

The Pan he was they knew him, Part man, but mostly beast, Who drank, and lied, and snatched what bones Men threw him from their feast; Who seemed in sin so merry, So careless in his woe, That men despised, scarce pitied him, And still would have it so.

He swelled his pipes and thrilled them, And drew the silent tear; He made the gravest clack with mirth By his sardonic leer. He blew his pipes full sweetly At their amused demands, And caught the scornful earth-flung pence That fell from careless hands.

He saw the mob's derision, And took it kindly, too, And when an epithet was flung, A coarser back he threw; But under all the masking Of a brute, unseemly part, I looked, and saw a wounded soul, And a god-like, breaking heart.

And back of the elfin music, The burlesque, clownish play, I knew a wail that the weird pipes made, A look that was far away,-- A gaze into some far heaven Whence a soul had fallen down; But the mob only saw the grotesque beast And the antics of the clown.

For scant-flung pence he paid them With mirth and elfin play, Till, tired for a time of his antics queer, They passed and went their way; Then there in the empty market He ate his scanty crust, And, tired face turned to heaven, down He laid him in the dust.

And over his wild, strange features A softer light there fell, And on his worn, earth-driven heart A peace ineffable. And the moon rose over the market, But Pan the beast was dead; While Pan the god lay silent there, With his strange, distorted head.

And the people, when they found him, Stood still with awesome fear. No more they saw the beast's rude hoof, The furtive, clownish leer; But the lightest spirit in that throng Went silent from the place, For they knew the look of a god released That shone from his dead face.

The Vengeance of Saki

When the moon is red in the heaven, and under the night Is heard on the winds the thunder of shadowy horses, Then out of the night I arise, and again am a woman; And leap to the back of an ebon steed that knows me, And hound him on in the wake of hoofs that thunder, Of smoking nostrils, and gleaming eyes, and foam-flecked Flanks that glow and flash in the flow of the moonlight; While under the mirk and the moon, out into the blackness, Round the world's edge with an eerie, mad, echoing laughter, Leaps the long cry of the hate of the wild snake-woman.

Ha! Ha! it is joy for the hearts that we crush as we thunder! Ho! Ho! for the hate of the winds that laugh to my laughter! Ha! Ha! it is well for the shriekings that pass into silence, As under the night, out into the blackness forever, Rides the wild hate of Saki, the mad snake-woman!